OS X 10.11 El Capitan: Review - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/ <comment><USER2> I stopped caring about OS reviews after virtually every Yosemite (10.10.0) review failed to mention the drop in performance and battery life and the discoveryd and Wifi problems last year. These were not isolated issues and a lot of people suffered them, I'd say in a much higher proportion than any first release of OS X since 10.0. At least the Ars Technica people are smart and recommend people to wait until 10.11.1 if they can (although last year Yosemite 10.10.1 didn't solve anything).

I have to chuckle when I see some reviews saying "UPDATE _RIGHT NOW_! THIS IS THE BEST OS EVER!". They said the same last year, what a coincidence. Personally, I feel that Yosemite 10.10.5 is very stable now, and I'll wait _at least_ until 10.11.2 to upgrade, no matter how many times people tell me how wonderful El Capitan is.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, I've had 3 different Macbooks, young and old (2011 MBP, retina MBP, macbook air), all on Yosemite, and had none of those issues.

It's not unreasonable to think the reviewers just didn't experience those issues.

<comment><USER4> I have a 2014 MacBook Pro and had the Yosemite Wifi issues. And looking at the Apple forums a ton of other people had them too. It has become better (from totally unusable) but Wifi still cuts out from time to time.

I wonder if these problems were already apparent during the test phase.

<comment><USER5> I have no issues. Until I enable my Bluetooth mouse. Easily solved by using the 5ghz band but really. An apple mouse fucks up my connection from my apple laptop to my apple access point. That's really unacceptable.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, physics sucks.

<comment><USER7> Modern WiFi and Bluetooth hardware is meant to have coexistence support so that the two don't trample all over each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's hoping my Macbook will successfully reconnect to Wifi when waking up. I'm not optimistic, though.

<comment><USER9> Just do what I did. `brew install sleepwatcher` and then make a script at `~/.wakeup` to turn wifi off and back on again:

        networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
        networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

I finally did this after the El Capitan GM didn't fix my issue.

<comment><USER10> I made a quick little zsh alias for the wifi commands:

      wifi () {
      	local opt=$1
      	case "$opt" in
      		(on) networksetup -setairportpower en0 on ;;
      		(off) networksetup -setairportpower en0 off ;;
      		(toggle) networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
      			networksetup -setairportpower en0 on ;;
      		(scan) /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport en0 scan ;;
      		("" | -h | --help) echo "Usage: wifi <option>"
      			echo "option:"
      			echo "\ton\tSet Airport adapter on"
      			echo "\toff\tSetAirport adapter off"
      			echo "\ttoggle\tTurns wifi off and then on again"
      			echo "\tscan\tList available wifi networks"
      			return 0 ;;
      	esac
      }

Note that this is only tested on my computer, ymmv, etc.

<comment><USER11> I'm so glad I use linux so I don't have to mess around with shell scripts to get my laptop working.

<comment><USER12> I remember using Linux on a laptop; <sarcasm>everything worked _so well_ without _any_ tweaking whatsoever.</sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I fear that this is one of the worse OSX updates. I've seen a lot of issues in the GM. For example my USB audio device (an amplifier) is no longer working. The Wifi connectivity issues are not fixed. The Airdrop connection between my MacBook and the iPad Air does not work. A Lisp system did not start because Apple removed some font protocol.

Stuff like Screen split between two apps are non-intuitive.

There is lots of good stuff, but Apple created also new problems or failed to fix really annoying old problems (like Wifi connectivity issues, the buggy and unreliable Finder, the annoying slowness of iTunes with larger music libraries, ...).

<comment><USER14> > my USB audio device (an amplifier) is no longer working

I have the same issue with my two USB amplifiers! I couldn't find anything about it online though.

<comment><USER13> There is a discussion group at Apple where lots of people seem to have the same problem with various different USB audio devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the review overstates the problems that developers might have with System Integrity Protection. It seems to me that if an application developer has to disable SIP, then that app developer is probably doing something wrong. Better to accept SIP as good for everyone, like app sandboxing.

<comment><USER16> Except that app sandboxing excludes a lot of otherwise useful apps.

<comment><USER17> On the bright side, at least none of Apple's pro apps on the App Store have been excluded due to breaking sandbox restrictions.

<comment> mh- Because app developers can request specific sandbox exemptions (so-called "temporary exceptions") when they submit to the app store.

You can view these exceptions by dumping the Container.plist inside a sandboxed app's container, e.g. for Calendar:

      /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "print SandboxProfileDataValidationInfo" $HOME/Library/Containers/com.apple.iCal/Container.plist

Look at the keys beginning with `com.apple.security.temporary-exception`.

(Also note that some Apple apps don't _have_ containers, like iTunes.)

<comment><USER18> Whoa, thank you so much for bringing PlistBuddy to my attention. I feel as much joy as when I learned about `/usr/libexec/java_home`. Maybe I should just start poking around in /usr/libexec and see what other awesome toys are hiding in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As expected, being on the Khronos board doesn't mean anything.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el- capitan-t...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the- ars-technica-review/7/#h2)

<comment><USER20> OpenGL is not improving in El Capitan and it's a problem for cross-platform developers.

<comment><USER19> Kind of, it is a problem for the developers that write their own engines, instead of using middleware.

For the middleware companies, it isn't a problem to write multiple backends, as it is the reason why they exist in first place.

Also OpenGL never had much use in the consoles, for example.

However, it just goes to show that company X will do Y, because they sit in some Y organization isn't given.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those that use ssh frequently on OS X, El Capitan finally supports ed25519 keys.

It was nice and responsive even over a slow connection over the weekend while having to RDP to a remote server.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm curious how much Metal matters but it seems like they went from GPU to CPU in Yosemite and then back to the GPU.

The review sorta skimmed on Metal but reported that it only worked on a Mac Pro 2013, which lead me to wonder why my 2008 Mac Pro couldn't run it with a GeForce 680 GTX, turns out it can. [http://netkas.org/?p=1405](http://netkas.org/?p=1405)

</comment><comment><USER23> What's the recommendation if you're using command/shell utilities on upgrading vs. clean install from Yosemite to El Capitan? I usually do a clean install, but would an upgrade be advisable?

<comment><USER24> I've done upgrades since 10.1 was released without issues. If you've followed Apple's filesystem layout and haven't altered system files or rely on some exotic kernel extensions, you'll be fine.

The one annoyance I've encountered is that the installer will move everything in /usr/local out of the way before doing the upgrade and moving it back. If you have a large Homebrew install, it will be much faster to move the directory first and restore it later rather than waiting for the file-by-file copy to complete, even on when using SSDs.

<comment><USER25> > The one annoyance I've encountered is that the installer will move > everything in /usr/local out of the way before doing the upgrade and moving > it back.

This can be a significant point. I thought my computer was bricked when I did one of the previous upgrades (maybe Mavericks?) and the upgrade took something like 14 hours (with no change in the progress bar).

<comment><USER24> It's definitely mind-boggling just how inefficient it is – feels like 1-byte writes followed by a full fsync based on how it can keep an SSD capable of 10K ios busy for a period measured in hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is Apple Mail in El Capitan playing friendly with Gmail?

In Yosemite, it's OK except for drafts. And that's of course a big 'except' …

<comment><USER27> For drafts, you can turn off synchronization of drafts to gmail's servers and it will fix your issues: [http://www.ivanexpert.com/blog/2013/04/gmail-dont- save-os-x-...](http://www.ivanexpert.com/blog/2013/04/gmail-dont-save-os-x- mail-drafts-to-server/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there any way I can get this today without being a "certified apple developer" or whatever the language is. I have to reformat anyway and really don't want to reinstall yosemite and then have my settings ovcerrun on the upgrade in 2 days.

<comment><USER29> Yep, Apple has a public beta channel now: [https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/](https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/)

<comment><USER28> While that took minimal effort on your part, I want you to know that it was really really helpful. Thanks a lot. Is this new or something? I couldn't find it a few weeks ago when the GM was released?

<comment><USER30> It has been out for quite a while, pretty sure it also was for Yosemite. There is also a public beta for iOS9.

<comment><USER31> Yep. Started with Yosemite and iOS 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> No Siracusa?

<comment><USER33> retired from writing the reviews: [http://hypercritical.co/2015/04/15/os-x- reviewed](http://hypercritical.co/2015/04/15/os-x-reviewed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Did any one on Yosemite had that random AirPlay icon poping on the bar. issue, even without any apple TV in the network ??

<comment><USER35> Yup I got it all the time and I still get it with El Capitan

<comment><USER34> have you paired any iphone over bluetooth., try to remove it and turn off the bluetooth. check if you still getting that issue., I created a local account and turned off bluetooth., havent seen it for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Finally implemented my favorite Windows feature, window snapping.

</comment><comment><USER37> And another version release updating apps I don't use, ushering in new interfaces nobody wants, while leaving core infrastructure (e.g. containerization, a better launchd interface for an amazing init system, an ancient filesystem, allowing things like rendering contexts across process bounderies, etc) leave me scratching my head. I feel like they're trying to convince me to abandon my tools because they have been messing with them for next to no reason since snow leopard. (exception: I love the app store and sandboxing.)

<comment><USER38> While it's true that this release doesn't touch your pet issues, I'm left scratching my head as to why you expect that Apple will _ever_ address some of those issues.

Containerization is unlikely to ever get a big push from Apple -- whatever half-hearted designs they had on the server space are long-since abandoned, and it's clear they favor far less heavyweight security measures for end-user apps.

"Rendering Contexts across process boundaries" doesn't even sound like it has a good use-case for any direction Apple's been working on.

<comment><USER37> > "Rendering Contexts across process boundaries" doesn't even sound like it > has a good use-case for any direction Apple's been working on.

Well web sandboxing for one, and running opengl through your terminal for another.

Containerization seems like a no-brainer to me since a) sandboxing naturally follows, b) it's a developer's heaven in terms of deployment, development, and testing, c) mac os x is now the only major OS in existence without any containerization capabilities controlable by anyone but apple.

And these aren't just pet issues, no developer I know (except perhaps iOS developers, for obvious reasons) welcome them. Even the non-technical users I know see them as "pretty" PITAes.

And it's not that I don't get _why_ they do it, I just wonder about how they view the *nix-ey developers who use the platform. I'm sure there must be plenty at the company itself.

<comment><USER38> > Well web sandboxing for one, and running opengl through your terminal for > another.

Sharing OpenGL contexts is about the opposite of sandboxing. It's unsafe.

And you can run OpenGL apps from your terminal just fine?

> Containerization seems like a no-brainer to me since a) sandboxing naturally > follows,

But it's a sandboxing that isn't useful on a Desktop machine. A mail app which sees a completely different container filesystem than my word processor does not improve my life.

> b) it's a developer's heaven in terms of deployment, development, and > testing

 _Except it 's not_, because OS X on servers is dead and gone, so what I'd really need is a container that works on my server, aka a Linux server aka I need a VM locally because it's not like OS X is ever going to be LXC compatible.

A container I can only use on my dev box isn't worth beans.

> c) mac os x is now the only major OS in existence without any > containerization capabilities controlable by anyone but apple.

I get that Docker has grabbed a lot of hype by reinventing jails to be venture capital compatible, but honestly, for OS X it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> <rant> Ugh. Apple software quality has been going downhill so fast lately I loathe seeing the "Software Update Available" notification.

If I'm lucky everything will still work, and it will merely scramble the interface and hide a bunch of stuff.

Unfortunately, my expectation is that on top of the interface scrambling, a bunch of stuff that's worked fine for ages will be broken in some stupid way I can't even imagine how it could happen, like it will start duplicating playlists on my phone again. Oh, and I'm guessing it will try to shove at least one unwanted, half-assed Apple service down my throat, integrate it with everything, and force me to search online for 20 minutes looking for how to turn it off, only to find out there's either no way to opt out, or the option is hidden in some obscure, unexpected location in System Preferences, or via some command line BS.

Every new release from Apple I get one step closer to switching back to Linux. Love their hardware, but their software people need to get their shit together. </rant>

<comment><USER40> So, don't update? I'm still running 10.8 on my 2008 Macbook and I only install security updates. If the new version doesn't have any features that you must have, why update?

<comment><USER41> Because Apple uses a version ratchet to force you to upgrade.

I essentially use only one app on my iPhone. It's a mobile banking app. On a regular basis, my mobile banking app stops working and requires me to upgrade. Sooner or later, to upgrade the banking app, I have to upgrade my iOS, which eventually forces me to upgrade iTunes, which eventually forces me to upgrade OS X.

Western civilization has been in decline ever since Snow Leopard was deprecated. I hung to that as long as I possibly could, but even I eventually had to upgrade to Mavericks. Mavericks is tolerable, but the writing on the wall is clear: to use Apple products, you will eventually have to surrender to the software update.

<comment><USER42> You don't really need to sync your iPhone with iTunes if you don't need to. Everything is supported as a standalone device.

<comment><USER41> I do if I want to update my contacts from my Mac.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Opt Out of Twitter's New Privacy Settings - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/how-opt-out-twitters-new-privacy-settings <comment><USER2> One of the things this mentions is that you can view what data Twitter has on you already, and viewing it has remarkably entertaining for just how bad their data is.

* I am apparently between the age of 13 and 55. They've really narrowed that down.

* I'm a male (the only accurate thing on here).

* I'm a corporate mom who is interested in eco friendly vehicles as well as full size SUVs.

* I own a domestic car, a luxury domestic vehicle and an imported luxury vehicle.

* I am looking to purchase three different types of vehicles.

* I am a senior citizen.

* I'm a millennial.

* I'm in generation x.

* My income is 125k, but my discretionary spending is $200k.

If this is really what they're sharing and how they're targeting their advertising then I've grossly overestimated their ability to datamine.

<comment><USER3> Is that because of the auto opt out(note I heard it was automatic, one of the browsers? Too busy to research properly atm sorry)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know, I've been looking at the Twitter settings and, compared to some other internet behemoths, it actually doesn't seem that bad. At least they are communicating clearly about everything they do and allow all opt-outs.

Thanks to the comment in this thread I went to [https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data](https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data) and got the list of advertiser data and it's actually a bit enlightening.

A cross-platform standard could still be better of course.

<comment><USER5> The thing that stood out to me was the 'Disable all' button. I don't know how that compares to other platforms, but it's a good feature to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Done. But looking at the individual settings made me chuckle. Is this supposed to be bad?

Twitter could sure learn a lot from Facebook (and others) about how to be evil. Try harder, guys--you're not even approaching a 2 on the Orwellian scale.

</comment><comment><USER7> Twitter seems to have changed that button into "Sounds good, review", which brings you to the settings page where not everything is checked.

Personalization and data setting was off by default for me.

They may not know how to make money but they sure do extinguish fires quickly.

<comment><USER8> > They may not know how to make money but they sure do extinguish fires > quickly.

In fact, those things may be connected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be nice to have a plain text description of the privacy policies and visual diffs of the changes.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a host list (or better, CIDR range) that can be blocked to avoid this nonsense?

<comment><USER5> You can only prevent entire java script files from reaching your browser by blocking domains, which is not helpful when js is required for functionality. I use umatrix and noscript. Both are set to block by default and tediously kept updated.

Google has recently started undermining my efforts on YouTube by sending ads over the same connections as actual video data. The shitty truth is that at the moment, there are no practical ways for the end user to properly manage the execution of other people's code on their machines that happens through app stores and browsers (including binaries downloaded with them).

<comment><USER10> On Android, uMatrix / uBlock aren't available for Chrome. I make heavy use of a router-based blocklist.

Otherwise, food for thought: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if_the_web_was_filesystemaccessible/)

<comment><USER5> Check out ipfs.io

<comment><USER10> Familiar with it. Swear I'd already included it as an extant system, though apparently not.

Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Question about an earlier post - <AUTHOR>

I had recently seen a HN post from a founder regarding his startup on analyzing a piece of writing. The founder was an ex-army guy.<p>I was wondering on how to get feedback on my writing skills and remembered that post that I had skimmed through. It will be great if someone can post the url if they have it bookmarked. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=301155>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :-)</comment></comment>


Will Apple Embrace the Web? No. - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/23378/Will_Apple_Embrace_the_Web_No

<comment><USER2> "claim chowder" is right... If Apple's plan is to sell more hardware through Safari lock-in, it's time to short their stock because they're doing it _allll_ wrong. Safari can't be "the next IE6" because it lacks proprietary features, and the bulk of its difficult to reproduce technology is open source and in fact, already in competitive use. Even if Safari were the best HTML5 platform, Chrome/Epiphany/(new WebKit browser) would provide an escape from lock-in.

And, they're going to do this by not supporting NaCl? Really? Let's call NaCl x86-Flash and be done with it. Running NaCl on an ARM processor is going to be way too slow. I get that people want to see performant web applications, but the way to do that is via a cleaner, more portable VM, like the LLVM project that Apple is funding.

So, shame on me for taking a bite of spam thinking it would be meaty.

<comment><USER3> _If Apple's plan is to sell more hardware through Safari lock-in, it's time to short their stock because they're doing it allll wrong. Safari can't be "the next IE6" because it lacks proprietary features_

Uhh, isn't the entire iTunes App Store/ecosystem one very large 800lb gorilla of a _proprietary feature?_ I think that's what they're betting the farm on. Devs will keep writing apps because of the gold rush mentality, and users will stay with the iTunes App Store ecosystem.

However, I agree with you that they're wrong. Unless iTunes App Store apps can stay compellingly better than Web apps, then Apple's strategy is flawed. Through HTML5 and NaCl, Google hopes to enable a compellingly good (natively supported) UX on any browser on any tablet, smartphone, or other mobile device. This will act to commoditize all mobile devices.

Google vs. Apple was inevitable. Google is motivated to commoditize its complements and one of the complements is mobile device hardware. Hardware is a core of the Apple business.

EDIT: The question you need to ask, "Is there any fundamental reason why a 'Web app' can't do everything a native app can?" The answer is no. Integration with the native OS won't be so much of an issue on an iPad-like tablet -- the whole point of it is that the OS gets out of the way! There are security issues with accessing local resources like the baseband, GPS, and filesystem, but these are solve-able. in fact, they're already been solved in non- mainstream systems.

EDIT: Will Apple go the way of Sun? Not necessarily. There will always be pain points in everyone's personal digital infrastructure. Apple will always be able to carve out a niche at the high-end of UX. The danger is that Apple will get stuck in a rut and get left behind at the high-end of irrelevance.

<comment><USER4> 'The question you need to ask, "Is there any fundamental reason why a 'Web app' can't do everything a native app can?" The answer is no.'

I'm not sure that "no" is as clear as it seems. There are lots of things that are technically possible, but don't gain any traction in the market because of their inherent shortcomings. It depends upon which "fundamentals" you're looking at. Are we talking technology fundamentals or experience fundamentals. From the experience perspective, I feel inclined to side with Steve Jobs on the notion that cross-platform software represents a lowest common denominator approach to UX.

For all the flack that SJ is taking over his stance on Flash, his open letter on the topic re-solidified his software philosophy. SJ -- and by proxy, Apple -- believe that in order to deliver the best software experience possible, one must control the software ecosystem from end-to-end. However, there is a dichotomy within Apple that few people have come to terms with. When it comes to the web, Apple is "open". It's about the only place that they could truly be called such, but they are, none the less. Jobs' comments in his open letter spell it out in words, and their continued commitment to WebKit shows it in action.

The problem with discussing experience fundamentals is that objectivity remains out of reach. Some people prefer a tiled, line-mode display to a bitmap GUI. I'm fine with that. Why wouldn't I be? What's aggravating is when any one individual foists their preferences upon the masses. I prefer the experience that Apple has managed to deliver, and that means giving up some ground on things like software freedom. That's _my_ choice to make, and the author here is bending over backwards to paint a false picture of Apple, Safari, and the web in general, just so we can all bite our nails over some Apple-controlled future. It's just ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He shows that apple is in a position to make safari the next ie. I'm not really seeing any evidence here that apple is, in fact, making safari the next ie. In fact, the first several paragraphs of are all full of evidence that apple is embracing the web, but those are all dismissed without a solid reason I could detect.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dude lost me with "Essentially, as long as the iPhone and iPad are able to retain mind-share, developer support and an unignorable market-share then Apple can shape the lowest common denominator for the web (even if that low is very high, like the best HTML5 / CSS3 support)"

<comment><USER7> He is talking about the smart phone market. You may add the iPad (tablets) to that.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was refering specifically to the "lowest common denominator ... like the best HTML5 / CSS3 support" non sequitur...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Progressive enhancement.

When web applications are available on all devices, but work better on some devices than others, people have an incentive to switch -- and that puts pressure on Apple to keep their browser competitive.

Note the large number of people that make video game console purchasing choices based on how well their favorite cross-platform games perform on each of the respective consoles.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author is right. Apple is trying to lock everyone into native apps and by doing so, selling more iPhones, iMacs, iPads, etc. But the web, and Google, is going to pass them by because Apple is not going to be able to change its business model fast enough to meet these demands, a lesson that many companies have failed to heed when planting their stakes in the ground.

In round one, Apple lost to Microsoft because they took the position that the hardware, not software, made the market.

In round two, Apple is again playing the same cards; the hardware sets the rules and the software feeds the hardware.

They'll lose out again ... to Google.

</comment><comment><USER10> When you embrace the web you get all sticky</comment>


FCC has 'serious doubts' about SpaceX's broadband service - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-spacexs-broadband-service/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Elon Musk's SpaceX has a month to convince officials at the Federal Communications Commission that its service is up to snuff to participate in an upcoming auction for government subsidies to deliver broadband to rural parts of the country. The agency said it has "serious doubts" that low-Earth orbit satellite providers, like SpaceX, will be able to meet latency requirements to qualify for participation in the auction.

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-77A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-77A1.pdf)

The agency made these assertions in a report published last week detailing the requirements and procedures for the first phase of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction set to begin in October. The FCC said it would allow low-Earth orbit satellite companies to apply for funds as low-latency broadband providers, but it said it was doubtful these companies could meet the sub-100 milliseconds latency requirement. "

</comment><comment><USER2> While it would be nice if SpaceX gets the rural broadband money, will it really hurt their business prospects? I can't think of another product or service where LITERALLY the entire population of the planet are potential customers without some other prerequisite (unlike e-commerce where you first need a device with a connection and a logistics/transport system to ship something to you).

Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA weren't covertly funding Starlink in exchange for USMIL early access to communications services as well as access to metadata for national security purposes.</comment>


Assange case: Americas Foreign ministers to meet over UK threats - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/oas-ecuador-uk-theats-asylum-984/

<comment><USER2> OT: I like OAS' birds-eye view logo Maybe I'm reading too deep into the logo but the symbolism (the the outward pointing spear-like flag poles in a circle- the-wagons type cluster) seems aggressive and appropriate</comment>


Mir's next steps – we need your input - <AUTHOR> https://community.ubuntu.com/t/mirs-next-steps-we-need-your-input/2140 <comment><USER2> At the very least, get Mir to the point where it's a drop-in replacement for Weston, the reference Wayland compositor. Then make whatever changes you feel like on top of that. If Mir becomes included in DE's across various distros, and if it becomes a runtime option when launching a session (in the same way that GNOME now lets you choose whether to run a Wayland or Xorg session at login), people will be able to A/B test Mir vs Weston, they'll send feedback, and the improvements can be upstreamed.

That's all I ask. The backlash against Canonical was in leveraging the Open Source community to make increasingly silo'd services. Canonical is moving in the right direction, first in discontinuing Unity in favor of GNOME, and now in making Mir Wayland-compatible. I hope the trend continues.

<comment><USER3> I think there's some misunderstanding in your comment about how Wayland works. 99.9% of Wayland desktops out there [1] do not use Weston. Weston is not Wayland's display server, it's a reference implementation of a window manager implementing the Wayland protocol(s). There is no separation between display server and window manager in Wayland, only a single master process, the compositor, which fulfils (roughly) both these roles. So if you're running, say, KDE Plasma, then your compositor is KWin, and Weston is nowhere to be seen. If you're running Sway, then your compositor is Sway. And so on. Wayland is only a protocol, not a piece of software (unless you count the shared libraries provided by the Wayland project).

[1] Guesstimate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "This is where server/compositor/window manager and panels/docks/desktop are all in a single process."

This sounds like gnome-shell, and it's atrocious. It's unresponsive and laggy under any sort of load, even the mouse cursor skips around

<comment><USER5> From _" Seven Laws of Sane Personal Computing"_:

 _I – Obeys operator

The operator shall retain full control of the machine at all times._ In particular, the handling of the keyboard, mouse, and other human interface devices must take absolute priority over all other processing. _The operator shall have the ability to issue commands and receive immediate confirmation of said commands at all times, regardless of system load._

[http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284](http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284)

<comment><USER3> Off-topic: It's sad how far away we are from sane personal computing (if I may use these laws as a definition of that term).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So X was horrible, because it is very old and blablabla, and Wayland the protocol got finalized without an actual implementation that people use in good old design by committee fashion (no?), and for some reason now everybody writes compositors instead of writing one for Linux in general... I don't really understand why, can someone explain? (I mean, I know about how Mir seemed to be regular Canonical NIH symptom, but why are they continuing with it?)

<comment><USER7> > So X was horrible

Was it?

I feel like someday someone is going to say something like "Man our VR world syncing protocol is really heavy, and we end up needing AGI-level LOD prediction to do it well, but compressing 360 degree light fields is wasteful and leads to latency artifacts... what if there was a protocol that allowed realities to render display-space fields directly to remote devices, but do the final compositing on the client?" and then someone will discover the X protocol, re-implement it with 3D SDFs instead of 2D rectangles, and all of the sudden X will be the new hot thing.

<comment><USER6> Sure, then let's do that.

I mean X as a client server visual/graphical terminal solution is pretty amazing.

But then it took more than a decade to get to the point where it seems that DRI extension is just not going to cut it.

And all the other built-in un-security has to go too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So Mir will become a Wayland compositor?

<comment><USER9> Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> :''( the Linux Desktop tragedy continues... umpteenth reimplementation, failure to address total train wrecks like d-bus and systemd because politics... and the realization that Windows has probably become a more secure environment... and Apple refusing to build decent hardware. Wake me up

<comment><USER11> Systemd is one of these things that brings many improvements... and gets talked down.

If it was at least criticized constructively, but no, it is something else than the "traditional" init, so let's just berate it.

And then we wonder, why the Linux desktop is always out of reach, when we dismiss anything, that helps to drag Linux out of the maze of one-off bash and perl scripts.

<comment><USER10> No. I'm no init fanboy, I'd have just adopted Apple's launchd and called it a day. No, criticisms of systemd are plenty and well argumented, and yet get systematically talked down. First that comes to mind is the cavalier reaction to leaving some firmware fs mounted rw because systemd used it during reboot; didn't matter uncautios mishaps could brick a device, team just won't-fix'd the report and called everyone else an idiot. Doesn't work like that

<comment><USER11> Apple launchd is way more limited, and has much narrower scope (single-seated, single-session desktop). We could talk days about features that systemd provides and launchd doesn't.

I've seen only single case of criticism of systemd that was correct and constructive (too bad I didn't bookmark it); I don't count rants that boil down to "it's different than I'm used to", or "it has broken my broken nfs config" as plenty or well argumented.

The efi issue was indeed a bug in the devices. If was up to the manufacturer to fix it, not for other software to maintain workarounds indefinitely.

<comment><USER10> "way more limited" is a feature not a bug! Eventually Systemd will grow a binary configuration registry, but by then people won't see the irony of it any more

<comment><USER11> It s a bug, not a feature. I like how systemd can reliably track even double- forked processes, or how can I override only tiny parts of the unit definition, without having to rewrite the entire unit and thus the original definition is still updatable by upstream packages. Or how it can inform me, in what state either the given unit or the entire system is, including last few lines from the log. Or that there is unified system for unit activation no matter how they are activated (on startup, on socket, on timer, on demand by dbus, etc). Or that it can properly solve dependencies among services, and miriad of similar, small things, that together make a huge qualitative difference.

Ironically from your snark, systemd uses simple ini files. Launchd uses a specially bloated xml, because plists.

<comment><USER10> We grew up with different UNIX philosophies in mind. IMHO, even Launchd's cron+init+inetd was a stretch, you're cool with a second OS sandwiched between kernel and user. Have fun

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wayland was already there, and there was nothing wrong with it. OK, maybe there was, but not the bullshit you made up to justify your NiH syndrome alternative.

Mir was pointless. Drop it. It should never have existed in the first place.

<comment><USER8> If I understand correctly, they'll drop the server part replacing it with Wayland. But they'll keep their compositor, which any Wayland based DE needs to implement anyway. They don't intended it for the desktop, since they are dropping Unity. It's for IoT and etc.

<comment><USER13> They can't replace something with Wayland because Wayland is a protocol and interface, Mir needs to implement code to speak that protocol.

<comment><USER8> OK, then they are replacing the compositor and changing their client, rewriting it to talk in Wayland protocol.

<comment><USER13> They are no removing a Mir component and add a Wayland component, they implement the Wayland protocol on top of existing code, maybe refactoring where it is needed, so Mir could talk wayland and still do the Mir stuff that is needed for IoT.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Light Table 0.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/04/28/light-table-040/ <comment><USER3> Aside: The 3d js demo (<http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_buffergeometry.html>) is close to a worst- case input for a video encoder, which is why the youtube video looks so bad.

Video codecs generally encode motion first ("move this rectangle left 10 pixels"), and then fix any residual errors ("apply this patch"). It is _far_ more efficient to transmit motions and residuals than an entire frame.

This demo actively resists motion encoding, since a 3d volume shifting perspective is approximated poorly by a linear shift. Almost every pixel is changing each frame, in an unpredictable manner. Youtube doesn't allow the encoder enough bits to represent the actual image well, and the result is a blurry mess with occasional flashes of clarity when the encoder transmits a keyframe (an entire picture, added to allow fast seeking).

</comment><comment><USER4> This editor has reached parity with Sublime Text in my workflow for these reasons:

1.) Vim bindings (less impressive accomplishment but necessary for me); 2.) fuzzy matching for files, commands, and settings (this concept really wins); 3.) having a browser as a tab(!, it makes working full screen a joy); 4.) object eval(!); 5.) and EXCELLENT autocomplete -- even in Coffeescript -- most likely a product of the eval stuff going on, but better than Sublime. Wow. GREAT WORK.

My wishlist of generic "power user" features: macros support (for ex., I'd like to set Cmd-Del to delete up one line), configurable margins, more preloaded skins, a way to easily change the color palette of a skin, and tmux / real-time collaboration equivalent.

I have gotten around certain quirks ~ add a tabset to simulate margins, also add a key binding for adding a tabset to mock the vsplit vim command

After the Nifty Minidrive failure and others, I can surely say this is the best money I've spent on Kickstarter.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate a little on how Coffeescript works in your setup? I was thinking of trying 0.4 out but I wasn't sure how exactly that language (which I use daily) might fit in.

<comment><USER4> It was plug-and-play! :D Here's a screenshot of it just working: <http://www.fixpunk.com/notes/?attachment_id=78> My setup is nothing elaborate: I have set watch commands on my coffee directories and work with a node server running.

<comment><USER5> Awesome! I'm trying to visualize how some of the features from the Javascript video in OPs post (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls>) would work. Are you using it as a straight editor or are you able to take advantage of the killer LightTable features in conjunction with Coffeescript (perhaps the new source-maps stuff takes care of it)?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I haven't seen the realtime eval work in Coffeescript - I have to save the file and refresh the browser. That said--the awareness of the workspace environment really blew me away and pays off in tab completion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those of us still stuck in the Dark Ages, I have patched Light Table so it can run on OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). You can download it here: [https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/lighttable/LightTable0.4....](https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/lighttable/LightTable0.4.app.zip)

<comment><USER7> Thanks Zach, much appreciated.

<comment><USER6> No problem. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a huge release - so many awesome new features. The Python integration alone has been one of the things I've been waiting for to really dive into Light Table and give it a spin for longer than 10 minutes.

Congrats to the Light Table team!

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks really awesome; looks like Hotswap for the JVM.

I wonder how they handle updating anonymous function references--in the JVM, everything ends up being a class name (e.g. Foo$1 whatever), so even "anonymous" classes technically have an identifier to say "here's the new code". I wonder what that is for Light Table/the V8 VM.

I'd love to see this hotswap behavior built into all JS wire/debugger protocols. Maybe a W3C spec?

Light table is really awesome, and really driving the bleeding edge, but debugging/inspecting/hotswapping seems like something other editors could do as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really want to improve/make new syntax languages for this and actually use it.

Problem is that CodeMirror's docs for it are a tad confusing and I'm not even sure if it will be as flexable as Sublime/textmate .tmLanguage syntaxing. Anyone got a good resource or advice on this?

For example, I want to highlight function calls in coffeescript, such as:

       obj.func '100', () ->

Where "func" is highlighted differently. I've accomplished this with a .tmLanguage with relative strife, so I am wondering how easy it will be to do things like this with CodeMirror.

Once this thing goes open source I'd be happy to revamp all of the syntax highlighting for js/cs/css/stylus/html etc. should this make any sense, though technically as it uses CodeMirror I'd be revamping for them instead. Of course this would mean editing the .css files provided by LightTable though, so I'm half right.

<comment><USER11> > Problem is that CodeMirror's docs for it are a tad confusing and I'm not > even sure if it will be as flexable as Sublime/textmate .tmLanguage > syntaxing. Anyone got a good resource or advice on this?

They are _more_ flexible, but a bit harder to get going with. Basically, you get to implement a full parser, if you want, or just a tokenizer (optionally keeping some minimal state).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool! Its great to see this progressing at such a fast rate, and I'm glad I got the chance to be a part of the Kickstarter. Are there any plans for Ruby support? I know Python was first as it was the stretch goal, but Ruby has been mentioned in passing a couple of times.

</comment><comment> i-blis This is an impressive release. They move forwards at an amazing pace. I had already been using LT 0.3.9 almost exclusively for my ongoing Clojure projects during the last month, switching back to Emacs only for heavy editing tasks.

I was really missing but the ability to (de-/re-)connect to a given client, which 0.4.0 provides. In my opinion LT is not just a code editor (editing features are pretty poor yet indeed) but a code experimenting platform. And there it rocks. Even in alpha, it compares pretty well with Emacs Live in terms of stability and usability.

ClojureScript, Node and JS support is a terrific move. This means I may even soon use Brackets (another nice node-webkit project) less for live JS HTML coding and debugging and live mostly in LT.

Congratulations Chris and Co!

<comment><USER13> I would say, rather, that it is not a mature code editor. It aims in all seriousness to do anything we expect a code editor to do, and I have every reason to think the project will succeed.

Chris is focusing on providing new functionality; the expected stuff can and should come later.

<comment> i-blis This is my understanding too. (This is why I said yet).

I am expecting a lot from the forthcoming plugin system. It will be nice to be able to script LT in ClojureScript (the language in which LT is mostly developed).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks pretty nifty! It's kind of like what Subtext and Bicicleta wanted to do, but never did (or haven't done yet). You get live update of the code and, apparently, live inspection of all the values in the code. The missing piece would be inspecting values inside a function call.

But it sounds like it's proprietary software? Why do you need that if you're getting funded through Kickstarter?

Either way, it looks like a really inspiring project, and I hope we see many more like it.

<comment><USER7> What happened with Bicicleta? I love the premises I saw listed in response to Perlis.

LT will be open source, just want it to get a bit more stable first.

<comment><USER15> > LT will be open source, ...

The licensing situation is really unclear. The Kickstarter page says, "In order to download packaged distributions, you'll need a license". But I expect that, if it's open source, I can get a packaged distribution by saying (I'm using Arch Linux):

        # pacman -S lighttable

<comment><USER14> Maybe he's figured out by now that most people now know better than to tie their programming career to a proprietary editor. The Kickstarter _was_ about a year ago. (Still, how is he going to deliver on his "50 licenses" rewards if he makes it open source? At this point, he's put himself in a position where he has to break his promise to somebody.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Holy shit, basically. I mostly do Python and JS, so this means that now Light Table is pretty much _THE_ editor for me. Huge update.

I can only hope for eventual PHP integration so it's useful to me also at work.

</comment><comment><USER17> Now that source maps are in CoffeeScript, any chance of future support? Also, vim bindings?

<comment><USER18> There are vim bindings. From the docs:

      Use the "Vim: Toggle vim mode" command from the command tab.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if will it be possible to associate user defined clojurescript commands with arbitrary vim keybindings? That would be great! Also, I wonder if there will be support for user defined vim like operators and motions... Or, alternatively, if the plugin architecture will be low level enough to support a vim "emulation" plugin.

Also -- very, very exciting work overall -- visionary even. Kudos!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't work with Ubuntu 13.04 :/ Binary is linked to libudev.0 but Ubuntu now uses libudev.1

Any chance me, as a non-tester and interested person, gets a "fix" for that?

edit: linking 1 to 0 works so far, but please consider a migration to new version - e.g. chrome did the same some time ago ago[0].

[0] [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups=#...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/chromium- bugs/riSCcPebuk4)

<comment><USER5> Someone below mentioned the same thing, with a response from Chris: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633069>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Been waiting for Python support since I first heard of the project! Getting an error trying to connect to Python 3 process, works with Python 2.7 though. According to OP's post Python 3 should be compatible, but I get this error:

Looks like there was an issue trying to connect to the project. Here's what we got:

        Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "C:\Users\way\.lighttable\plugins\python\ltmain.py", line 12, in <module>
        import ltipy
      File "C:\Users\way\.lighttable\plugins\python\ltipy.py", line 181
        print "no proc"
                      ^

SyntaxError: invalid syntax

which looks like a typical error when running 2.7 code on 3+. Anyone else suffering from the same issue or is something messed up on my end? Running Windows 64-bit, Python 3.3, IPython 0.13.

</comment><comment><USER22> I dream of the day Light Table has Go support.

<comment><USER7> You know, I looked into this briefly and based on the way go works, it's not clear to me how useful it would be. Go doesn't really have a good REPL, which is an indication.

If there was a decent way to handle dynamic evaluation though, it could certainly be added, and without too much issue I would imagine :)

<comment><USER22> Go compiles so fast you can just pretend there is dynamic eval. People sometimes use the "go run" command to compile and run Go source in one operation, that is not really too different from just invoking an interpreter. Go provides a lot of tools to parse Go source, I imagine between that, Go's fast compiler and GDB support it wouldn't be as hard as many compiled langs to support.

Also if I am figuring out something OBO (off by one) prone sometimes I use this to double check myself: <http://play.golang.org/>

<comment><USER7> The big difference is that you lose state every time you do that, the main goal with the eval in LT is to prevent that :)

<comment><USER22> If there is a way to consistently inject the input to the program (to lead to the same state), I would be OK with editing a Go program to cause (behind the scenes):

      1. moving a break point
      2. recompile
      3. run
      4. stopping at new break point

I think that happening behind the scenes could be made to appear like live editing in other languages. Go is fast enough compiling and fast enough executing that I think it could be pulled off as not appear laggy as well. But maybe I'm wrong and I don't understand well enough how LT handles other langs.

<comment><USER23> Have you ever used a REPL?

It is an interactive process. You are build pieces of the application bit by bit.

There is no complete application state where to set breakpoints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome, congrats on the release.

I'm very excited with the Python integration. I'm going to try doing some web development with Light Table now. One thing that would be very handy would be support for virtualenvs or requirements files to integrate into workspaces so that we can work on projects without installing all dependancies globally.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, virtualenvs support is an absolute must have for it to be considered seriously for Python development.

<comment><USER26> If you run LT from the command line after you've activated your venv it will use it.

      $ workon foo
      $ /PATH_TO_LT/LightTable.app/Contents/MacOS/node-webkit

<comment><USER25> That worked. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am very excited to play with Python eval on Light Table. I am on Windows. Python PATH is not set. So I had set it in Command-line. cmd was able to execute Python, but light-table is not able to detect Python PATH. How can I set Python PATH in Light Table on Windows?

<comment><USER28> You can set the environment variables in windows 7 by right clicking Computer then click on properties > Advances system settings (on the left), and then click on Environment Variables. Scroll down in the System Variables box, and edit Path. Add ;C:\<path to python> at the very end.

<comment><USER27> I had done that. Probably I have to restart the system to have Light Table understand the updated PATH.

<comment><USER28> I only had to restart Light Table after adding the path to python in the path envvar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be great to get a common lisp supported in Light Table...

<comment><USER7> People still use common lisp? _ducks_

In all seriousness, the plugin architecture will certainly allow for exactly that to happen. If you're interested in trying your hand at adding CL, I know a guy who could probably sneak you into the beta when it turns private ;)

<comment><USER29> I'll use Clojure when it gets LOOP.

<comment><USER13> Well here's where you might start: <https://github.com/tayssir/cl-loop>

Although the community seems to prefer the port of Iterate: <https://github.com/nathell/clj-iter>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not near any machines of mine that aren't Chromebooks. Does anyone know if the libudev.so.0 stuff is fixed? I don't see any mention of it in the change log, but I was really hoping they would have a fix for those of us not on Ubuntu so we don't have to symlink the new libudev.so.1 to so.0 just to use light table (yes other hacks exist, this was the most prevalent one...)

<comment><USER7> unforunately no. It's an issue carried over from node-webkit[1] and I'm not really a Linux guy :/ Someone could work on a fix for node-webkit, though and I'd pick it up in a heartbeat

[1]: <https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit>

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the quick response. I'll try to find some time to look into this. I know Chromium links to libudev for input device support so that it can do things like gestures, but I don't know that LightTable supports (will support?) them. It may be possible to do away with that linking but I may have to dig into the chromium code to do it.

<comment><USER7> I think Node uses it too and there's no way around that one I don't think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When trying to download using chrome, I'm getting a warning, saying "LightTableWin.zip is not commonly downloaded and could be dangerous." Guess it is a false positive.

<comment><USER32> So as long as a piece of malware is commonly downloaded, you have nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER33> The really popular malware WILL have fixes in an antivirus/malware database ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I might be missing something, but I feel like this is just reinventing IDEs that exist today (but are boo'ed by Sublime Text/TextMate guys.)

For instance, when it comes to Python, PyCharm (<http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/index.html>) seems far more powerful -- it provides live debugging/breakpoints (with the ability to change attributes of running code -- even for server code), code introspection, documentation browsing, refactoring, JavaScript debugging (integrated in FireFox), VirtualEnv support, tight integration with Django/Flask for templates, etc... And it's _fast_

So aside from the look and feel, what does LT have to offer?

The more tools the better, but I just wonder if anybody who has used a modern robust IDE can offer a comparison?

<comment><USER35> Fix and continue isn't live; its a start, but you still have lots of work to do in UX to display evaluation. I would try using LightTable before passing judgement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The author mentions [1] (at the bottom, under 'key bindings') that light table uses codemirror[2] as the editor.

I am really amazed with how well codemirror emulates basic vim key bindings [3], as I prefer to use ctrl-c rather than escape and I often find that vim emulators either do not support ctrl-c or do not support it well.

[1][http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables- numbers...](http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers/) [2]<http://codemirror.net/> [3]<http://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html>

</comment><comment><USER37> Huge changes. Can totally use LT as main dev env for JS and Clojure code now. Thank you Chris for this release

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe I'm doing things wrong and I haven't seen anybody mention this, but ...

... all of my code is on remote machines. Either in a VM or on a server, far, far away.

Is there a way to use SFTP to open files for editing?

<comment><USER39> It's easily done in Linux and UNIX via sshfs (it's what I use in the same situation as yourself): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSHFS>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wow its really coming along. Only one thing is missing from me living in this full time with browser tabs and the like is that I use my screens in portrait mode and would prefer to be able to tear off a tab and have it live in another window and then on another screen.

I realise I am an outlier. That said I can always just manually refresh the browser window on the other screen which I currently do anyway.

I dont suppose anyone else has a method of dealing with this currently?

<comment><USER41> I do the same, plus a watch/live reload task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I look forward to writing (essentially vim-) plugins for light table in javascript. Some day soon?

Extensions were mentioned on the blog about a year ago ([http://www.chris- granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers...](http://www.chris- granger.com/2012/04/15/light-tables-numbers/)), but as far as I can tell, they're still not here yet :(

<comment><USER7> The plugin architecture is something we have to be deliberate about given that it allows you to do literally anything we can do. I talk a little bit about the plan moving forward at the bottom of the post, but gist is that there's going to be one more public release, and then the private beta (for KS folks) is going to focus on really hammering out how we expose LT to plugins.

<comment><USER43> Is there a way to preorder in order to get into the private beta as well? I wasn't with the Kickstarter crowd. If plugins are as powerful as you say they are, I'm very interested.

<comment><USER44> Yeah, I found myself visiting the Kickstarter page today hoping there was some way I could fund the project months after it completed. Needless to say I couldn't. Seems like it would be a useful feature for projects like this - <USER2> doubt they couldn't find a use for more money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Smalltalk and Lisp Machines are back!

Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you're looking for the same kind of live reload web editing, I have such a plugin for Vim:

<https://github.com/jaxbot/brolink.vim>

<comment><USER46> nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Stupid question: "import matplotlib" is failing despite matplotlib being installed on my system (OS X) and working fine when I run python from the command line. I'm guessing it's something to do with my PYTHONPATH not getting imported properly. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

Edited to add: this is the first time I've properly tried LightTable and oh my god what a gorgeous piece of software. It's glorious. Just.. yeah. Job well done! :)

<comment><USER48> I just filed an issue that might be related: <https://github.com/Kodowa/Light- Table-Playground/issues/469>

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I really want to use this, but unfortunately the performance is still painfully lacking. Excited for this to get a little further along and more stable.

</comment><comment><USER50> Looks great!

Just confirmed matplotlib/pylab plotting working with Anaconda Python distribution. (To get LightTable to not use the system python, I had to go through some hoops... creating an environment.plist didn't seem to work.)

The dot-completion seems like it still needs work, but it's pretty neat to have an alternative web-based REPL front-end to the IPython kernel than just IPython Notebook.

<comment><USER51> Can you elaborate on the "hoops"? I am trying to get a similar thing working.

<comment><USER50> Well, it's not that much of a hoop. If you start LightTable from the command line, via "open /Applications/LightTable.app", then it gets your environment parameters, including PATH, which is the important one.

I tried to create a ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist file per the instructions here[1], but that didn't seem to work and I haven't bothered to fiddle with it more.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOS...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/Articles/EnvironmentVars.html)

<comment><USER51> Thanks for the tip. Got it working now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's really amazing, glad that I'm one of the backers when it's on kickstarter.

And I know it's shameless, but my LIVEditor project also allows you to "navigate to any page you want and start live modifying the it", I just made a 1-minute demo video here: <http://youtu.be/t91IoDxo9aY>

</comment><comment><USER53> I have to admit it, I never expected Light Table to be able to reach this point. Kudos to anyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER54> I will be watching Light Table much more closely after finally seeing the Python support. Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER55> I wish there was some way to set it up for use with other languages (ones that have Read-Eval-Print facilities.) I can't get very interested until I see that.

The UI font appears to be unchangeable. I can understand the motivation for that, but it renders pretty badly on my system.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm interested in writing a simple rest API using compojure as a learning exercise. Can anyone experienced give an outline of what a reasonable workflow would be to do this using light table? I see that light table can "connect" to my project.clj...

<comment> i-blis 1\. make a new lein project

2\. fill in the dependencies in project.clj

3\. open your src/core.clj (or whatever) in LT

4\. start coding

LT will automatically launch a client and connect to it. In between lein will have seamlessly fetched the dependencies for you (this happens automatically each time you launch or relaunch a client).

You can do manual (C-Enter) or live (Instarepl) inline evaluation in any of your project file or even connect a new fresh repl to the client to experiment from scratch.

<comment><USER56> Would you then recommend focusing development around some unit tests and eval- ing them as you do work? (that's what I am trying so far, seems ok)

<comment> i-blis Precisely. This is at least how I do it.

It is also pretty nice to have an Instarepl where you can see live changes, either in your source files or in a separate repl. Don't forget that if your paths and namespaces match you can require your namespaces at will.

<comment><USER57> I'm normally not a screencasts kind of guy, but is there a good one for using the REPL to assemble, oh, say a web app in Compojure? I started doing a Clojure/Compojure tutorial the other day and I thought I was doing way too much restarting to get changes to take effect (using emacs/nrepl).

<comment><USER58> Are you using the wrap-reload Ring middleware? That seemed to make most restarts not necessary for me.

<comment><USER57> Nope. Thanks for the pointer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Has anybody gotten the node.js connection working. I keep on getting 'In order to start a NodeJS client, you have to have node installed and on your system's PATH.' But, node is indeed installed, and in my $PATH. Running OSX with node v0.10.5

<comment><USER60> I have node in my global path, but it still won't run.

        The node process exited.
        The node process you were connected to suddenly quit. Check the console for more information.

And the console says:

         Error: No protocol method IDeref.-deref defined for type null

<comment><USER61> I have the same issue as you do. Node is in my global path. However, the console says a little more:

rror: No protocol method IDeref.-deref defined for type null: at Error (<anonymous>) at cljs.core.missing_protocol (file:///Users/jk/.lighttable/js/bootstrap.js:1384:10)

Additionally, I was able to get the node repl to successfully connect and launch whenever I directed it at a JS file which was compiled from Coffeescript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Absolutely fantastic. I spend about 30% of my time in Python and 30% in Node.js, using WingIDE and Aptana, respectively. I'm not going to abandon my current IDEs, but this has the potential to change my workflow significantly.

</comment><comment><USER63> I hoped ST3 would replace Emacs, but Light Table seems more like it now...

<comment><USER64> Sublime Text will never be a plausible replacement for Emacs as its design does not encompass all of possibilities a lisp machine provides. Sublime Text is a plausible replacement for any tool which only targets text editing though. It has many converts or new users whose use case is only a text editor though, so to that extent Sublime Text has been successful.

<comment><USER63> I don't understand what you mean. ST3 is scripted in Python. If Python was as pervasive in ST3 as elisp is in Emacs, and provided similar concepts (buffers, regions, markers, modes, hooks, advices...), why couldn't it "replace"[1] Emacs?

[1] replace here means "being as powerful as", not actually converting Emacs users, most which are happy with Emacs..

<comment><USER64> In answering this I will ignore details specific to the two tools (such as how the implementations are modified), the merits of either, how they are used, and only compare their design goals.

It is true that both tools are mutable and that hypothetically their potential use cases will overlap entirely.

The reason this will not occur though is a consequence of one tool aiming to provide a general environment by design and the other tool aiming to provide a general environment for a specific use.

Less abstractly, consider the difference between having a factory which produces a specific item and having a factory which can produce any factory.

Possibly the specific item the factory produces is sufficient for the recipients of the specific item, and further that specific item may even make other items the recipient possessed moot.

However, the factory which can produce any factory can still (and possibly already has done so) produce the specific item.

Emacs' design (and Light Table's) is much more similar in breadth to the factory which produces other factories.

Sublime Text is more similar in scope to a factory which produces a single item.

The difference in design choice leads to Sublime Text and other text editors being comparable in features and it is also why Sublime Text can replace Emacs' text editing functions.

At the same time the design choice also leads to Emacs being a RSS client but Sublime Text not also having that functionality (or being reasonable to expect), despite the potential for the functionality to exist in both tools.

The difference between the two goals is why Light Table is much more intriguing to me than Sublime Text is despite the utility Sublime Text provides and how well executed Sublime Text is.

<comment><USER63> I aggree, but I still hope that ST3 could go Emacs direction....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> @ibdknox- I wonder if you could comment on the the IPython frontend we see in this demo. I am very interested in the idea of inline javascript based plotting and am wondering if this was possible.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is really cool. Are there plans for intellisense? Although I know that is hard to do well in dynamic languages. Also, any plans for instarepl in languages other than Clojure? Great work guys.

</comment><comment><USER66> I am using OSX 10.8.3, and when I open the lighttable app, i see the lighttable logo/text and then it closes/crashes. Anyone had any similar issue? any know fix?

EDIT: Fix - sudo rm -Rf ~/.lighttable/

</comment><comment><USER67> Where is the source code?

<comment><USER68> This might be it: <https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-Playground>

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> The integration with Chrome is a nice way to get information about objects in JavaScript. Are you planning to similarly make run/debugging powered auto completion for python?

</comment><comment><USER70> How is it, if compared to IPython Notebook? Anyone familiar with both Light Table and IPython tried it yet?

[I'm Light Table backer, just want to know, if it is time yet to try it out... ;) ]

</comment><comment><USER71> Very impressive demo.

So happy to finally see python support.

What is used for the javascript rendering? I assume since they are using the chrome dev tools they are embedding chromium into Lighttable?

<comment><USER72> I am fairly sure that Light Table is a node-webkit[1] app, so your assumption should be correct.

[1]<https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit>

<comment><USER7> It is indeed. Chromium + embedded NodeJS written in ClojureScript.

FTW.

<comment><USER73> It seems to be possible to use the Chrome PDF Viewer. This could be nice for LaTeX development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> It looks amazing, but I haven't been able to get it to work since 0.2.

alert('foo');

Produces 'SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier'. I'm looking forward to the kinks being ironed out.

<comment><USER7> There's a bug for that one, <https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/449>

will get fixed tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Is there a way to have it evaluate all the Python in my file so I don't have to go and manually evaluate each function?

Also my "return" is not updated automaticall.

<comment><USER7> it should eval it all for you the first time you open the file, but cmd/ctrl+shift+enter should eval the whole file. Though it won't return results for each individual thing. Alternatively you can also select the entire file and press cmd/ctrl+enter to eval the selection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I keep getting - Failed to load resource: .lighttable/img/connectingloader.gif when I try to evaluate Python code. :(

</comment><comment><USER77> This is really cool, I love the Vim bindings. Well done, I look forward to following this project as it progresses.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm getting a "Couldn't find node.js" error when trying to connect to a node app. node is at /usr/local/bin/node

<comment><USER78> Yep, me too - it's a known issue. <https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table- Playground/issues/448>

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> This is awesome! I haven't used an IDE for a long time now but LT has shown enough to convince me to use one.

</comment><comment><USER80> Just started digging in Clojure + ClojureScript, so definitely trying Light Table as well!

</comment><comment><USER81> Please please please support Java in all of its glory and let me get rid of Eclipse!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER82> Hmm, I can not find that neat functions drag-drop layout from video...

</comment><comment><USER83> Python support! Thank you Chris. Will certainly give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER84> Awesome... but PLEASE ditch that vertical side menu. It's one of the worst UX decisions I've ever seen and literally gives the user a headache.

Pleaseeeeeee

<comment><USER85> I _like_ the vertical side menu. It saves valuable horizontal space, and adds a touch of class too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> This is awesome! Way to go LT.

</comment><comment><USER87> looking even more awesome. super excited to see Python support now.

</comment><comment><USER88> hmm… no mention of search/replace? Whatever, I'll try it anyway.</comment>


Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5441889/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1500-years-ahead-of-its-time <comment><USER2> Oh, I remember reading about his find in an old (1970s or 1960s) issue of Russian pop sci journal _Наука и Жизнь_ ( _Science and Life_ ; apologies if the unicode did not work).

I think one lesson here is that when the society does not value technology, technology suffers. It does not evolve on its own but needs encouragement and support. Just having smart people is not enough.

I sometimes wonder what our life would have been had our ancestors started focusing on science and technology earlier, like if the scientific revolution had occurred several centuries before it did. We could have been much, much farther advanced -- or we could be living in a new stone age, I do not know.

<comment><USER3> I remember something Carl Sagan said...something along the lines (paraphrased) that the scholars at Alexandria questioned the movement of the stars but not of social conventions like slavery. The machines they made were made for the amusement of kings or for weapons but not for easing the burden of work or increasing comfort for the common man. So when the mobs came to burn the place down no one was there to stop them.

<comment><USER4> Seems like something very self-serving for a modern to say, to claim that the ancient civilizations crumbled because they didn't follow _our_ values.

I wonder if we have seen the last collapse of civilization? Will our descendants marvel at the wonders left in our remains and chalk our decline up to our own moral failing? Will they condemn us for not following their doctrines?

"Such wonders these people made! But they were never willing to question their gods of democracy. Even as their technology grew more awe-inspiring, their governments grew more insane and profligate, until the whole structure collapsed. What mighty and foolish people!"

<comment><USER5> I doubt anyone will be agog at concepts as mushy as 'democracy'. Few people read history and exclaim 'feudalism? who ordered that?'. We tend to be surprised at technological advances that somehow failed to be exploited despite their, in retrospect, obvious value. The first inventions of things like gunpowder, movable type and apparently mechanical gears fall under that category. By that token, future-people are might stare at us in disbelief of the less-than-optimal use we made of, say, packet-switched networks or the radio spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia article,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism>

submitted to HN 425 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233792>

<comment><USER7> Submitted to reddit many, many times! Writing yet another blog post about this thing is a small cottage industry unto itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our ancestors were certainly not stupid ;-)

Gears were already used in India as early as 2600 BC, Aristotle described gears in his lifetime - about 400 BC, and Archimedes' worm wheel dates from about 200 BC. In 40 BC Vitruvius described a grain mill powered by a water wheel and gear transmission, and in 28 BC someone equipped a carriage with an odometer.

Brian Dunning devoted an episode of Skeptoid to the Antikythera Mechanism: <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184>

<comment><USER9> Could you please supply more information about the gears being used since 2600 BC in India? Wikipedia's extensive reference doesn't seem to have any <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears>.

Also, your initial statement is _sine dicendo_ , therefore useless and rather questions the reason of your comment.

Obviously the Antikythera mechanism is impressive because of the size and detail of the gears and their usage for computation.

<comment><USER8> I got the interesting information about gears from this document: [http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT- MADRAS/Machine_Desig...](http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/IIT- MADRAS/Machine_Design_II/pdf/2_1.pdf)

The reason for my comment that our ancestors were not as stupid as some contemporary people think, was in reaction on another post which stated that the Antikythera Mechanism was probably just a hundred-year old clock thrown overboard in recent times (I should have quoted that comment for clarity).

Some people cannot fathom that ancient people could realize impressive feats, just like we can. Take for example the pyramids: "the old Egyptians could never have build themselves, they must have gotten extraterrestrial help". This condescending view is also propagated by Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods' books.

<comment><USER10> > Von Daniken in his 'Chariots of the Gods'

It's a contender in the list of 'biggest pseudo scientific bs', runner up is the scientology junk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please don't miss the excellent two videos at Scientific American: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=140616529...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?lineup=1406165298&id=52209781001) I find amazing some of the technical details shown there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Published paper in Nature is at: [http://www.antikythera- mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera...](http://www.antikythera- mechanism.gr/system/files/Antikythera_Nature2008_submitted.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> > All I have to say is that if it wasn't for the miracle of Christianity, we'd > be on %@#&ing Mars by now.

Amusing comment.

Some time ago while looking at some painting in Florence depicting Ascension of Jesus I had following idea:

Time travel is actually physically possible only very hard to come up with. Christ was rouge time traveler who wanted to pose as god (like in 'Behold The Man') and got himself into a mess. Angels were rescue team that were to revive him and bring him back, but unfortunately the myth that our unfortunate traveler had started screwed up development of human thought so much that development of our science was delayed and took completely different path, far away from any ideas that might lead us to time travel before earth will be totally forgotten (Asimov's foundation like) or destroyed by future generations.

Since Jesus and angels that took him will land somewhere in the future there actually might be second coming. Sort of. i hope we will be able to compare notes on development on human thought then.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this a "computer"? The article really doesn't explain and to me it looks more like a clock. Clearly a very advanced clock but a clock none the less.

<comment><USER15> It depends upon your definition of "computer", of course.

A clock is a single-purpose computing device; it's certainly not a general- purpose computing device, which is what most people when they speak of a "computer".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From <http://www.antikythera-mechanism.com> :

"Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as not been a publication of the full text of the inscription."

Has anyone been able to find any of this text published anywhere?

<comment><USER17> You can read the original text yourself: <http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/antikythera_mechanism/> (you might need to download the PTM viewer and PTM files to zoom in close enough).

<comment><USER16> Yes, but it's in ancient Greek. I meant a translation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also see <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4184>

</comment><comment><USER19> 1500 years ahead of *our time. It's ridiculous to think that they could not have learned how to make special purpose computing machines.

<comment><USER20> I suspect the problem, and why much knowledge like this came and went over the centuries, is that so few people understood the why and how of it that once the local guy who did was killed or died, the knowledge went with him and his books were recycled, lost, or destroyed because they appeared meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find things like this extremely interesting. Oh the hope for a lost civilization and or technology that stumps modern society...

</comment><comment><USER22> I still like the orloj more :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orloj>

</comment><comment><USER23> This is the most utterly fascinating nugget I've read in a long time. The questions without answers really do boggle the mind.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Has it been established this thing works?

</comment><comment><USER24> Alternatively you can view this as evidence that catastrophic social changes set back humans by 1500 years.

<comment><USER20> Pessimist. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How did they manage to replicate the time selection dial on my half-built time machine? Speaking of which, I'm starting a fundraising campaign soon if anyone wants to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm going with clock thrown overboard on a vacation cruise or one of many complex geared machines used aboard ships throughout time for navigation. In any case, just happened to fall off a ship and land on the one below, about 50 to 100 years prior to excavation.

<comment><USER27> Luckily we have good dating techniques to avoid this :)</comment></comment>


Robert Scoble: I didn't sexually harass women as I lacked power over them - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/robert-scoble-i-didnt-sexually-harass-women-as-i-lacked-power-over-them/ <comment><USER2> That—more specifically the fact that he wasn't an employer—is a technically accurate legal argument that he didn't do anything for which he would be liable for sexual harassment.

OTOH, "sexual harassment" also is used to refer to the acts creating employer liability even when committed by coworkers and third parties.

So, Scoble, though with imprecise phrasing, states a reason why he would not be the legally liable party for sexual harassment claims based on his alleged conduct, but not a reason that the conduct would not constitute (or be a component of) harassment.

</comment><comment><USER3> apparently it's all over the board:

[http://www.employees-lawyer.com/sexual-harassment-law- califo...](http://www.employees-lawyer.com/sexual-harassment-law-california/)

<comment><USER3> Not all sexual touching in the workplace is sexual harassment, however. Federal cases have suggested that a single instance of breast-grabbing is not pervasive enough to constitute unlawful sexual harassment.18 It is not clear whether this case would have turned out the same way if it had been brought in a California court. But, the California Court of Appeal has held that two separate incidents where a supervisor rubbed his arm against the victim's breast were insufficient to establish unlawful sexual harassment.19</comment></comment>


Tesla's Stock Is Up 40% in Two Days. What's Going On? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/tesla-stock-price.html <comment><USER2> This is 100% just the short squeeze. The TSLA was heavily shorted by people who were really committed to the short and held on until the margin calls.

What's worst is that there was an uptick of short interest when it got to 500-550, because it looked like it reached a top. So probably "2" short squeezes in a row in this case

This is really devastating for the huge and almost fanatical TSLA short community. Some people/hedge funds have been short for years with a certainty that TSLA will totally collapse at some point. They may still be right but, but I'd be surprised if any of the long time (retail) shorters haven't been margin called at this point! I think that on monday only, short positions lost about 2.5b$.

<comment><USER3> The Tesla short community has always been full of much more professional investors who pay attention to diversification and position sizing. People like Chanos/Einhorn, with probably a $100 million+ short position, are only risking a few percent of their funds. It's relatively easy for them to liquidate other positions to provide collateral in the case the stock goes up. Also many own options to cap losses from going up.

As for the Tesla retail shorters, I still don't know anyone in that camp who has their entire capital bet against Tesla. Tesla longs are a much different story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Millennials are buying Tesla like crazy, without any real financial understanding of the company. Hopefully they are not burned too much.

<comment><USER2> Yeah it is kind of worrying how hyped up the stock is because of the fantastic last 2 weeks. I 100% could understand "hype" investing in Tesla when it was under 350-400, since the brand is cool and they make a good product even if the fundamentals have always been shaky.

But everyone needs to know that $TSLA reaching today's levels is NOT due to people wanting to buy it, it's mostly short positions being "forcibly" covered.

But some people just seem to always invest after returns reach crazy high unsustainable returns, not before. I know a lot of people around me who went from penny stocks->crypto->weed stocks-> and now seem to talk about tsla a lot, never buying anything before it peaked. I don't know if there's a name for them

<comment><USER5> > I don't know if there's a name for them.

There's a few: bagholder, sucker, etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or better yet, what will stop it?

<comment><USER3> Stocks eventually trade on reality. Sometimes it takes awhile though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got off the rollercoaster today. Hurt to do so after 4 years, and still regretting it a bit.

I really want to see TSLA a success as so much potential and cool disruptive tech to an industry that wants to keep us all in the dark ages.</comment>


I'm looking for a makerspace/hackerspace in NYC - <AUTHOR>

I am looking at joining a hackerspace in NYC.  Does anyone have any feedback or experiences to share?
I am leaning heavily towards 3rd ward because of their current sale.  https://www.3rdward.com/memberships.  At $250 a month 3rd ward is steep but manageable, that requires a year long commitment though.  I think I am willing to give it a shot.  I want to use the metalshop and build furniture.  I think for professionals it's an excellent deal.
There is also the Madagascar Institute.  Which has a welding shop and charges $70 a month. http://www.madagascarinstitute.com/  .  I'm a little worried about shop safety and guidance there.  It does look like a fun place.
I really wish Tech Shop were in NYC.  http://brooklyn.techshop.com/get_involved.html .  They have a pre-signup page for $2000 for a year's membership.  That is dependent on them building their NYC place which seems doubtful.
I don't think NYCResistor has the tools for the type of projects I want to work on.
What other places could people recommend? How is techshop in SF? <comment><USER2> Have you heard of <http://blog.makerbar.com/?page_id=83>? I know Hoboken isn't NYC but the path is pretty quick (post sandy) :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do they have metalworking and woodworking equpiment. From their homepage it seems to be a lot of arduino stuff.

Thanks though? Are you a member?

<comment><USER2> Not a member just heard about them. Not sure about that amount of space/tools - Here are some others in or around NYC/NY <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/New_York></comment></comment></comment>


COVID19: U.S. Officials Warn Americans to Brace for Likely Outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/world/asia/coronavirus-news.html <comment><USER2> It's been a little bit frustrating watching the evolution of this. Even today a lot of people are very unaware of whats coming and the preparations, at least from what we can see on the outside, are woefully inadequate in the US and other countries.

Back on Feb 10th the CDC had done 398 tests, it's now Feb 25th, 15 days later and they've only done 426 tests. The surveillance testing that was meant to be set up totally failed to work and still hasn't started.

The virus is 3+ generations on in Italy where it's gone from no cases to 322 cases and 11 deaths in a few days, and now cases are showing up in neighboring countries. Expect a similar kind of surprise "outbreak" to appear here in the US once we eventually get testing capabilities up to speed.

Probably the biggest disappointment has been the deliberate and dangerous misinformation that was spread online and on the news saying the flu was more dangerous. Most people I've spoken to have been under this false belief.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry, I don't at all follow your last sentence. The flu IS more dangerous. Upwards of 45 million people get the flu every single year, hundreds of thousands of those are hospitalized, and tens of thousands of those are killed by Influenza. I'm not at all seeing the "deliberate and dangerous misinformation."

<comment><USER2> My last sentence is referring to exactly what you're saying, your statement is dangerous and irresponsible because it is designed to make people think SARS- CoV-2 is less dangerous than regular seasonal flu. Comparing annual deaths from an established virus to the current deaths from an emerging virus is on the face of it absurd. You need to compare mortality rates, the rate of spread, and projected infections. You can come back and compare total deaths in two years after it has become endemic everywhere like the flu already is.

If I gave you the choice tomorrow of being infected with this seasons flu or the coronavirus, which would you pick? Hopefully you're smart enough to understand the difference between a 0.1% mortality rate and a 2% mortality rate.

Leading people to believe the flu is more dangerous has slowed (and is still slowing) the response, reducing preparedness, increasing the spread, and as such will have a part to play in loss of life from this virus.

<comment><USER3> No, the flu is still more dangerous. We're not talking about whether I have the choice of being infected with "this year's strain" or Covid-19. We're talking about risk assessment and realistic chances of catching them. The mortality rate of covid-19 outside Wuhan is 0.7% [1]. In the U.S. it's zero so far. I have a MUCH higher chance of getting influenza and dying where I and most people live. This could change and I certainly reserve the right to modify my preparedness and anxiety appropriately.

Alarmism and panic do far more harm in situations like this than the actual virus itself.

[1][https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus- update-79339-c...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus- update-79339-cases-2169-deaths-clusters-emerge-in-iran-and-italy-2020-02-24)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We just got the first confirmed case in Switzerland today: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and- diseas...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and- disease/coronavirus-news-uk-italy-china-south-korea-pandemic/)

<comment><USER5> Since the main GIS tool died I was using to monitor this outbreak I have been using [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22409640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22409640)

<comment><USER6> This one still seems to be working:

[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)</comment></comment></comment>


HN Dinner Party: Sat Mar 13th, Mill Valley, CA, I will be cooking - <AUTHOR> http://hndinnerparty1.eventbrite.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

Last week, I posted about coming to the Bay Area for a job hunt and cooking for HNers as a way to fill my spare evenings: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1154544> . Tony Stubblebine, CEO of CrowdVine has graciously stepped forward and offered his house for a HN Dinner Party.

Spots are limited so reserve quick if you want to get in on this. Food & Wine are provided so all you have to do is show up but if you want to help out in the kitchen, show up at around 5 and we'll try and find something for you to do.

I know some people are arranging carpools so if you want to organize one or get in on one, post in the comments.

Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!

<comment><USER2> I will be in SF for my job hunt too!

I haven't confirmed my travel dates yet, but could you hold two spots for me? I am aiming for this weekend, so the timing is perfect!

p.s. I see that the "I will bring Wine spots" are sold out. Please hold two "I will bring Beer spots" for me. I will actually show up with wine, not beer, though.

<comment><USER3> We're doing this first come first serve. One of the last bring-beverage discounts just got taken. There's only one more left. This is great networking. People at the party will know who's hiring and who's good to work for. You can't come to SF for a job hunt and skip this =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to thread-jack but for Atlanta residents we have a Hacker News meetup thursday evening:

[http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=376015031398&ref=m...](http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=376015031398&ref=mf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was halfway through the signup process when I realized I'd be at sxsw. Great idea though!

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! Someone should do one at SXSW, too.

<comment><USER7> A supper club from brooklyn that I cook with, ( Arazorashinyknife.com) is doing a dinner in Austin on Sunday the 14th. Definitely shoot me an email and I'll forward you the information, tell your friends! My email is in my profile

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Man I'm jealous. Anyone interested in doing this in Boston?

<comment><USER9> I might be...

<comment><USER10> I might be as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I paid full, but I'll probably more beer/wine anyway.

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone do one for us hungry Londoners!

</comment><comment><USER13> YAY!! can't wait!

</comment><comment><USER14> See you there.</comment>