Face swapping with Python, dlib, and OpenCV - <AUTHOR> http://matthewearl.github.io/2015/07/28/switching-eds-with-python/ <comment><USER2> [https://vimeo.com/29348533](https://vimeo.com/29348533)

<comment><USER3> Wow! That is creepy and impressive at the same time.

<comment><USER4> See also [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2VvvOWWquo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2VvvOWWquo) using dlib and opencv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! But people should be aware that this type of thing is patented left right and sideways. I wrote a patent for automated actor replacement in filmed media in '05, filed it globally, and it began being awarded in '08 in the various regions it was filed. Here's one of the US versions: [http://www.google.com/patents/WO2007035558A2?cl=en](http://www.google.com/patents/WO2007035558A2?cl=en) I no longer own it; now it is part of a broad family of patents collectively forming a "Personalized Media" infrastructure. It is owned by a major media company I'm not allowed to disclose.

Essentially, it is possible to replace people, objects, environments, & audio elements automatically through a series of techniques. Those techniques form the basis of a powerful advertising and message delivery infrastructure. And the collective IP is already owned by a major media conglomerate.

<comment><USER6> This is literally what's wrong with the patent system.

Discouraging people from exploring ideas and building things 'because its patented' is fundamentally wrong.

I bet there are a million patents out there for 'automated face replacement'. I just hope very very much, that somewhere there is some prior art that makes them all _completely worthless_ and bankrupts whomever is making any money from them.

<comment><USER7> >> Discouraging people from exploring ideas and building things 'because its patented' is fundamentally wrong.

Who's discouraging? Being aware that it's highly patented doesn't mean you shouldn't play around with it, it just means that you probably shouldn't be trying to make money off of someone else's work.

<comment><USER8> The thing with software patents though is that most of the time they've preventing you from making money off of your own work, just because someone at one point did that same work first. Patents are needed in industries where r&d is expensive enough to warrant protecting inventors for a sizeable time so they can recoup their investment. Software r&d is too cheap for patents on software to do anything but harm.

As a quick rule of thumb, whenever people are being advised never to look at patents, as they are in software, that's when those patents do more harm than good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 OpenCV is an awesome Swiss-army steam-shovel (thank you Willow Garage!)

In the 90's, there was Kai's Power Goo (now owned by Corel) and probably something similar used by Conan O'Brien's art dept. to produce the "If They Mated" segments. It's such a shame tools owned by big companies are effectively locked away from ever being marketed again by asserting IP rights.

I really think intellectual property needs a principle similar to adverse possession [0]; that is, if it's not being actively used in a meaningful, sustained venture, another shop can reboot it. (Giving capitalism the right to fork.) Btw, I'm not the first, nor the last, to conceive of this. [1]

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession)

1\. [http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v16/16HarvJLTech327...](http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v16/16HarvJLTech327.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> And it had to be fucking Miliband?!

Well that said: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gentlemangabers](https://www.reddit.com/r/gentlemangabers)

(Before you go dig up the actual source code: it just uses a web service to get the coordinates of the faces)

<comment><USER10> >And it had to be fucking Miliband?!

Did you see what happened here the last time someone used Lena in their example?

<comment><USER9> No, I did not.

By the way, I was shocked the first time I saw what the full picture looked like... 8-)

<comment><USER10> A lot of the discussion was focused on the use of a crop of the Lena image. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8704629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8704629)

>I was shocked the first time I saw what the full picture looked like.

Me too! Ironically I probably wouldn't have ever seen the uncropped image if not for the controversy around the common use of the cropped version.

<comment><USER9> Haha, my God. Kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is _exactly_ the kind of thing that Menpo makes easy: [https://gist.github.com/jabooth/a52019f6e7c09f2a3e01](https://gist.github.com/jabooth/a52019f6e7c09f2a3e01)

(Forgive the rushed nature of this, literally just whipped this up in the last 20 mins. Will provide a link to the menpofit model in a later revision)

</comment><comment><USER12> Matching the low frequency image information is a good simple approach to do the blending, but better results can be achieved with Poisson image editing: [http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Fall07/Papers/Perez03.pdf](http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Fall07/Papers/Perez03.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> The amount of mathematics that goes into automating faceswaps is awesome. The fact that anyone can do this at home with the sole purpose of generating a funny image is great!

</comment><comment><USER14> How long does this take to run? Could it be done in real-time?

</comment><comment><USER15> This was a great and interesting article to read. I have really enjoyed all of this very cool information. Hozho](http://www.thecasesolutions.com/hozho-a-16335">Hozho) Case Solution

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't this like totally giving away the Enquirer's[1] secrets? I enjoyed the discussion too. Next up, deriving a set of makeup (cosmetics) steps that need to happen to have your face recognized as some other persons face.

[1] a gossip newspaper which often (always?) has dubious photographic evidence backing up their claims.

</comment><comment><USER17> Neil deGrasse Tyson with Peter Serafinowicz face: [https://youtu.be/gr4gIK7Bv3E](https://youtu.be/gr4gIK7Bv3E)

Had fun over the weekend playing with this system. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> The result doesn't look like Ed Milliband, though...

<comment><USER19> Well, it looks something between Milliband and Voldemort...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome. How long did it take to develop?

</comment><comment><USER21> FACE/OFF: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119094/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119094/)</comment>


Ask HN: How common are international emails in the wild? - <AUTHOR> I'm guessing the answer is "not at all"?
Just playing around with setting up a new site from scratch here and I noticed that international email validation is not present in input type=email html forms nor is it in the filter_var php email validation function.
Not a single international email listed on Wikipedia's page [0] validates.
And in fact, a few of the non international ones do not validate either. Mainly the ones with double quotes in the username.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_email#Email_addresses <comment><USER2> I live in an English-speaking country, which obviously clouds my experience to some extent, but in the entire time I've been on the Internet, I've _never_ seen a Unicode email address anywhere or ever received an email from one. I'm guessing that they would break many systems that don't expect Unicode in email addresses (which is why they don't validate).

Does anyone know if there's something like punycode[0] for email addresses?

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode)

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean "international emails"?

Like, are there people who live outside of whatever country you are in, who also exist and have valid working e-mail addresses? Yes, there are people in the world for whom that is true.

Do you mean something about the character set that is used to display their e-mail address in a localized form? If that's the question you mean, then perhaps you should expand on that, and then ask your question.

As it is, your question really doesn't make any sense at all.

<comment><USER4> Agreed it didn't make any sense. OP, please change title to say "email addresses" instead of just "emails."

<comment><USER5> and "unicode" instead of international</comment></comment></comment>


Privacy expert resigns from Alphabets Smart City proj over surveillance concerns - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/privacy-expert-resigns-from-alphabet-backed-smart-city-1829934748 <comment><USER2> What a track record for this project... Two people resigning from it because of privacy issues... I am not looking forward for private companies to take over municipal government responsibilities.</comment>


Coupon code 'GOBBLE' - $1 .com domains with GoDaddy - <AUTHOR>

I think everyone here can benefit from this. It basically works out to 9 domains for the price of 1. This works for the first 15,000 customers. <comment><USER2> MediaTemple.com has $5 domains right now that will be $5 for renewal as well ... not as cheap up front but cheaper over time. Just signup on the bottom of their page, or check out their blog post: [http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2010/11/10/mt-domain- partner-p...](http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2010/11/10/mt-domain-partner- program-5-domain-registrations/). New accounts only, though.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for spreading the word! To be clear, new and existing customers can take advantage of the pricing. It is $5 for new domain registrations.

<comment><USER2> Ah, nice to hear! So is it possible to get more than one domain at this price? And are renewals going to stay at $5/year for sure? Thanks MT for the special!

<comment><USER3> It is for the first domain registered- each domain after is $15. This $5 first domain price is good through the rest of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great coupon! Just used it and got a good one tonight. BTW - it does not work for renewals. Renewed 2 .com's in the same cart purchase and did not get the promo.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't seem to work for me, have the first 15,000 already been taken?

</comment><comment><USER6> Just used this coupon. I believe it only works once per customer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does this work for renewals?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, but I doubt it. I've noticed a lot of their coupons don't work for renewing domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i used the following to renew for 7.48$ or something ..

OK412</comment>


The Tech Giants Must Be Stopped - <AUTHOR> http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-tech-giants-must-be-stopped/ <comment><USER2> Antitrust enforcement, which enjoyed broad support on both the right and left in the early decades of the 20th century, prevented firms with greater market power from acquiring or driving out of business smaller manufacturers, retailers, service providers, and banks. This was designed to ensure a relatively broad distribution of economic activity outside of big urban centers and preserve a direct connection with, and responsiveness to, the members of the communities served by those local factories and firms.</comment>


Whisper CEO suspends editorial team, maintains Guardian report is inaccurate - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/10/25/whisper-ceo-suspends-editorial-team-but-maintains-that-the-guardian-report-is-inaccurate/

<comment><USER2> > _the Whisper CEO continued to argue that the Guardian's report was mistaken > about a number of factors, because it "made technology-related inferences > based on discussions with non-technical people."_

More deflection. It hasn't worked, and won't start working now. In aviation this is called "controlled flight into terrain."

<comment><USER3> Or 'putting on a lifejacket to prepare for ditching a 747 in the middle of the Atlantic in winter in a force 10 gale at night'.</comment></comment>


Pixelmator 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelmator.com/ <comment><USER2> Pixemlator is positively awesome, one of the highest quality + polished native apps I've used, at insane value! It quickly became my primary graphics editor of choice.

Though it's weird that I bought a copy years ago and am still getting free upgrades? I'd happily pay for an upgrade again.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad others like it, but I find it a massive pain every time I use it. A million things seem the opposite way than they should be to me. I really, really wish there were more all-purpose lightweight image editors on OS X so I could get away from it. I suppose it's high time I gave Gimp another shot...

<comment><USER4> Have you tried Acorn?

<comment><USER3> I have not, at least not in a long time. I think last I tried it it was still a little early so I ended up with Pixelmator. I'll give it another shot, thanks for the reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is probably the most successful Lithuanian IT startup (which is still based there, as far as I know). As a Lithuanian, I'm feeling really happy to see how far and awesome they got!

<comment><USER6> I've been using Pixelmator since they pushed it to the Mac App store, and all this time I thought they where German... good to know I was wrong!

<comment><USER7> I've bought Pixelmator twice now. Once on the App Store and once before. $30 is IMO way too little to pay for an app of this quality.

Very happy to see Pixelmator continue to enjoy some well-deserved success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I haven't downloaded v3 yet, but I love using Pixelmator for quick edits and tweaks to images. It loads much faster on my MacBook Air than Photoshop, and I've found the learning curve to be much lower too. All while having 80% of the features from Photoshop; which for my basic needs is 98% of everything I'll do.

Version 3 looks like a huge win for customers, really excited to be grabbing the update for free from the App Store. Although honestly, I'd pay for it again at this point.

<comment><USER9> Almost made this exact post... I was looking for a Photoshop clone for Mac and stumbled on Pixelmator years ago, it's definitely not as full-featured as PS but it's a fraction of the cost and it does what I need it to do 98% of the time. For $30 it's a steal, especially if they're upgrading it like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 36MB to download the full app. It takes up 66MB on my disk. Photoshop CC takes up 1.1GB, that's 20 times as much – quite a contrast.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what takes up that much space in Photoshop. I suspect the brush files, iirc those take up quite some space. I can imagine Pixelmator uses much more native / vertex images, like those you can create using PaintCode [1], which generates a bit of native Objective C code to produce the image you draw in that app. Paintcode is a great way to reduce the size of your app's downloaded content, btw.

[1] [http://www.paintcodeapp.com/](http://www.paintcodeapp.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Vectormator is awesome, but still can't export to either EPS or SVG.

I'm hoping they add it soon - SnapSVG, the Raphael replacement, supports animating SVGs created in other apps: [http://snapsvg.io/](http://snapsvg.io/)

<comment><USER13> wow! I didn't know Pixelmator could do that. It's an instant buy for me! I've been looking for a replacement to illustrator for a long time.

Please Pixelmator people give love to vector graphics!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anybody spread some light on the business model they are trying to follow? I know they sell software, but with a single software for $29 and few employees. They need to sell quite a few licenses to make it.

I know its an ignorant statement, but can anybody explain it to me.

<comment><USER15> I'm also curious how well this will work in the long run. Apple doesn't have a good model for paid upgrades on the app store and so far they've refused to implement anything to deal with it.

<comment><USER16> They've made enough money at this point that they could just tell all their developers to work on whatever they wanted and they'd still be well off in the medium term.

Their next big product should be a good standalone vector engine app that people can replace Illustrator with. That'd save a lot of designers I know several hundred dollars a year. Especially with Adobe's cloud stuff getting more and more mandatory…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, layer styles! This was the only major thing missing compared to Photoshop. Everything else was already far better than Photoshop for my use.

</comment><comment><USER18> Did anybody else spend half a minute trying to interact with the "app", then give up and close the tab, thinking it was broken before coming back here to discover that it was just a full-page screenshot of a desktop app?

I'd never heard of Pixelmator, so I made the natural assumption from what came up on screen that it was some form of web-based photoshop thing.

But it's not. And there's nothing but a screenshot above the fold. So it just looks broken.

I wonder how many potential customers they're bouncing this way.

<comment><USER19> This sort of negative commentary is always distasteful.

Any person who's used a computer in the last twenty years would understand that the interface is not responding and try alternate input methods (like scrolling, one of the most common paradigms on web pages.)

It doesn't "just look broken".

<comment><USER20> It's not negative commentary. It is a legitimate user interface issue that several people experienced. It is also super easy for them to fix. Sometimes(always) when you launch a new product or design, you want feedback on the silly little things you wouldn't have thought of that could potentially turn people away. The attention span of cold clicks is measured in seconds. Any silly issue can push someone to click off. I have used a computer extensively for many years and thought it was a live demo for a few seconds. As they say in web usability, don't make people think.

<comment><USER19> The dramatic hyperbole drives it from being "surfacing an issue" to negative bashing.

"Did anybody else spend half a minute trying to interact with the "app", then give up and close the tab, thinking it was broken before coming back here to discover that it was just a full-page screenshot of a desktop app?"

xauronx, and the majority of the other folks explaining the issue, took a much more reasonable approach—"it was a .5 second instinct to interact with it and then I figured it out. Not sure if that constitutes a negative UI experience or not, but it IS an issue. "

It's just unbelievable to think that anyone familiar with a web interface would get so confused by the screenshot that their only recourse would be to abandon ship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice if they made it cross-platform, like on Linux/Windows and even Android/iOS eventually. It might give Adobe a run for their money.

<comment><USER22> I doubt this will happen anytime soon. Pixelmator is heavily dependent on OSX- specific tech, like core graphics. Porting it to other platforms would require basically reimplementing all this functionality from scratch, making it performant, and then recreating the entire UI.

<comment><USER23> Indeed; ~half of the technologies listed in their splash image for the "New Image Editing Engine" are Apple-specific: vImage, Accelerate framework, vDSP, Core Animation, ColorSync, Core Image, ...

Some of these have rough equivalents on other platforms, but the interfaces definitely don't line up exactly, so it wouldn't be completely straightforward to shim them. Others simply don't have existing equivalents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, I just checked all the tutorial videos. I've never seen such delightful Demos in my life, makes me want to buy the thing. I wonder how effective would it be to create UI's for Mobile apps in Pixelmator, I'm donwloading the Trial.

</comment><comment><USER25> What a fantastic application! I wish more companies operated like the Pixelmator Team

</comment><comment><USER26> Remember "Google buys Sparrow"? I wonder if we'll see "Adobe buys Pixelmator" in the near future.

<comment><USER10> I'd rather it not be acquired, but if it were, I'd much rather that it be acquired by Apple. That company doesn't currently have a full-fledged image editor in its software lineup and probably wouldn't cancel or cripple the product. As Adobe already ships several full-fledged image editing tools, I don't have much faith they would leave this product intact.

I use Adobe products for much of my day, but I still hate them for what they did to GoLive CyberStudio.

<comment><USER27> Those 2 have an obsessive, abusive relationship. Adobe cancels Premiere for the Mac, Apple releases Final Cut Pro. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has a mole in Pixelmator who calls the Apple batphone if Adobe starts to sniff around their office.

<comment><USER10> I do agree with you that Apple and Adobe have a strained relationship, it has been so for decades. However, your example isn't correct.

Apple bought Final Cut Pro from Macromedia in 1998 and released its first version in 1999. At the time, Adobe had been releasing new versions of Premiere for both Mac and PC for years, and the product only went Windows-only in 2003 (when it renamed the product Premiere Pro.) In 2007, it started releasing Premiere for both platforms again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks like the v3 update still doesn't support NetPBM files (.pgm, .ppm, etc) - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm_format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netpbm_format)

A much earlier version did support this common file format, but for some strange reason it was removed in 2.x.

A pgm/ppm file is a wonderfully simple format - it is basically a simple textual header followed by a binary dump of the image data. So it is trivially easy to parse and load or save. It is for this reason that it is so useful, for example when working on image processing algorithms, it is so convenient to export test data, intermediate results and so forth.

I hope they will (re-)add support for pgm/ppm files soon. If you think this would be useful too, please vote on the support site.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks nice, but no thanks. I think I will stick with GIMP (it's free!)

</comment><comment><USER30> Note to Pixelmator folks:

      Turn good-looking pictures into spectacular.

Perhaps that should say:

      Turn good-looking pictures into spectacular images.

Or something.

<comment><USER31> Grammatically speaking, you might be best off with,

      Make good-looking pictures spectacular.

Or:

      Turn good-looking pictures into spectacular ones.

I think "good-looking pictures" is an awkward phrase that negatively affects the whole sentence. Personally, I would go with:

      Turn a good image into a spectacular one

or, brevis:

      Make good images spectacular

<comment><USER32> Or "Turn 'good looking' into 'spectacular'".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I like the clever use of css-based animations on the marketing site. The Invision feature tour ([http://www.invisionapp.com/tour](http://www.invisionapp.com/tour)) does a great job of this as well. It probably goes unnoticed by the majority of visitors, but I think it communicates great design and attention to detail in a very subtle way. Hats off to the designers and marketing team that built a great site to get the message out.

</comment><comment><USER34> Has anyone tried using this for web design? Any idea how it compares to Photoshop in that regard?

(Obviously Photoshop is not great for web design, but it's still the de-facto standard...)

<comment><USER35> I think Sketch would be more suitable for web design.

<comment><USER36> Is Sketch a suitable replacement for Illustrator? I've been trying to find the right application to replace Illustrator for my very-infrequent needs which can't justify Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription pricing.

<comment><USER37> We use Sketch + iDraw. Both are not Illustrator, but they deal well with the vector stuff we need. (I'm a dev, not designer, so don't really know exactly what's going on, but we migrated from PS + FW to these tools over a couple of years).

<comment><USER38> I also use this setup. Sometimes Sketch can be a little fiddly to get SVG export working properly, so iDraw fills that niche nicely for me.

I'm glad to finally see Layer Styles in Pixelmator, for years this feature has been preventing it from being comparable to Photoshop in the eyes of many. The forum was full of people requesting it, the argument was they wanted to "get it right" rather than rushing, which is valid, but it's not really any different from Sketch or Photoshop, so I'm not sure that was really the truth (maybe a Pixelmator dev could shine some light on that?), that said - it's here now so no complaints :-) excellent work chaps & chapettes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pixelmator is great (and I've bought it long ago), but I still have just one simple feature request:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GwKIsQX...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GwKIsQXpSmsJ:support.pixelmator.com/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D4%26t%3D8651+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER40> I really wanted to love Pixelmator but this update finally makes it usable for me solely for baseline support in text.

</comment><comment><USER41> My first thought when on the iTunes web page of Pixelmator: "$29.99, wow this is nothing for that many features"

My second thought when on the App Store Page of Pixelmator: "Update [for free since I bought yrs ago Pixelmator]": WTF these guys are awesome

</comment><comment><USER42> I am very impressed with this and for $30! Giving photoshop a run for their money!

</comment><comment><USER43> Can it save 16-bit tifs? I've searched but didn't find any mention.

<comment><USER43> I've found it in their forum. _We 'll have more to say about 16-bit support later this year when the new Mac Pro is out._

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Nice!. I was glad when I found Pixelmator as an easy to use image tool on OSX after working with Paint.Net on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was expecting a paid upgrade, and would have gladly paid because I love it, but this is just great :D

</comment><comment><USER46> Between this and Sketch I think I am ready to never buy another copy of Photoshop or Illustrator.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish the color selectors were better. The pallets need work imho. Otherwise, love the update!

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone know how PSD read support has come along?

<comment><USER49> It was pretty much flawless as of 2.2.1, with the obvious exception of layer styles.

<comment><USER50> Layer styles are HUGE with photoshop work. Once they get that under control, I wonder what else they'll need to make a dent, maybe some design maven to vouch for the tool

I am downloading now. I've always loved the simplicity of the app, very Mac- like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> this is awesome, i wish I had a mac to make use of it. Are there any good alternatives to this on windows?</comment>


Emacs 26.1 released - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-05/msg00765.html <comment><AUTHOR> A few more (personal) highlights from the release:

* New minor mode 'pixel-scroll-mode' provides smooth pixel-level scrolling.

* The networking code has been reworked so that it's more asynchronous than it was (DNS resolution and TLS negotiation do not block Emacs main thread).

* Emacs no longer prompts about editing a changed file when the file's content is unchanged. Instead of only checking the modification time, Emacs now also checks the file's actual content before prompting the user.

* A new submode of 'html-mode', 'mhtml-mode', is now the default mode for html files. This mode handles indentation, fontification, and commenting for embedded JavaScript and CSS.

* Improved CSS mode

* Intercepting hotkeys on Windows 7 and later now works better.

<comment><USER2> Also better look and feel[1] for Mac (including dark mode) users with

      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(ns-transparent-titlebar . t))
      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(ns-appearance . dark))

[1]: [https://imgur.com/aRdxPk0](https://imgur.com/aRdxPk0)

<comment><USER3> Wow, just tried it out and it looks really good. What theme are you using? (ref. screenshot)

<comment><USER2> It's doom-nord from the doom-themes package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suggest to anyone serious w/ Emacs to follow the master branch. I have been compiling once a week since almost a year and did not experience any breakage. My routine is fetch, see the output from "git diff HEAD..FETCH_HEAD -- etc/NEWS | less", pull --ff, compile and install. The benefit being you don't get a whole bunch of news when you update to a major version, but get there gradually; and also the master has the newer features. They keep that branch really stable.

<comment><USER5> I similarly encourage any Mac users who are serious about emacs to use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's fork, which adds several usability improvements that RMS refuses to endorse and is just generally a better experience on Mac. Mainline GNU Emacs feels clunky and obsolete by comparison.

<comment><USER6> _that RMS refuses to endorse_

What's his rationale?

<comment><USER7> That Emacs should not give an advantage to non-free operating systems.

Now, because Emacs is free software, this doesn't prevent anyone such as Yamamoto to go and modify Emacs. Rms doesn't want _his_ officially-sanctioned version to have Mac-only improvements, but he also defends the GPL which allows other people to do so. Rms isn't going to go and tell Yamamoto to take down his fork or anything (but he probably will tell macOS users at every opportunity that they are working with an abusive OS).

<comment><USER5> It might be abusive in the sense that it's nonfree but at least it's functional.

Year of the Linux desktop jokes aside, I've just lately got sick of how broken Linux is on most laptops, even ThinkPads which are supposed to be the gold standard.

My ThinkPad never had working suspend resume, for example, which is just basic stuff that Linux can't seem to get right.

I'm not 24 and childfree any more. I don't have time to fiddle with acpi or systemd.

<comment><USER7> I've used two Thinkpads. I'm currently on an X1 5th gen running Debian stable and it's the most blissful computer experience I've ever had. Everything works, the damn thing is fast, 12 hours of battery life and it's so light. I don't understand this magic but I'm glad it's there.

Previously I was on an x250 also on Debian stable which also worked flawlessly until I dropped it hard. It was just a little heavier and a little slower than my current X1.

On the topic of Macs being stable; I've seen my coworkers experience a lot of grief during the past few months with some macOS updates.

I'm not saying that the experience is in general better with one setup or another, just that mine has been good. I'm sure your experiences are valid too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those unfamiliar with GNU Emacs version numbers, they always start at X.1, not X.0, so this is the first major release after 25.1 released in September 2016.

<comment><USER9> Lest someone misread this and think that Emacs hasn't had an update in 2 years: That says "major release". The previous release was the 25.3 minor release in September 2017.

<comment><USER8> And least anyone misunderstand your comment and misses the big picture, those are all in principle minor bugfix (although with some new features).

The release you're referring to has maybe 20 lines of non-autogenerated code changed, and was "an emergency release to fix a security vulnerability in Emacs".

By and large new Emacs features only get released every 2-4 years. If you write any non-trivial Emacs code you're only targeting the major releases, and if you're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have your feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to walk around and argue with you.

It's one of the remaining free software projects that really takes its time with releases.

1\. [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html)

<comment><USER10> It's a mature, solid platform, it can't just "move fast and break things".

> _and if you 're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have > your feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to > walk around and argue with you._

Lest someone misread _that_ and comes away with a misconception about the big picture - that's true if you're contributing to _Emacs proper_. I.e. you're writing C and Emacs Lisp code which is meant to be included for release with the main project.

99% of the things you can dream of adding to Emacs can be done in Elisp, and shared with other people immediately. Since Emacs is a stable platform, you probably won't have to worry about the underlying API breaking until your current newborn is old enough to start asking where children come from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years.

Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a tutorial to learn the basics.

But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

<comment><USER12> I'm not a programmer but I have dabbled in code for a while. Emacs honestly made me love using my computer again.

Give yourself a full day for the tutorial and then try to stick to it even though for a while you will be slower and clumsier at everything. This will pay off massively.[0]

Make it part of your routine. Apart from coding in it, use it for email (mu4e/offlineimap), for git (magit), as a local and remote file manager, for writing notes and running a diary (org mode), for submitting papers (LaTeX/Auctex), for your terminal...

Speaking for myself, it actually improves my quality of life, and I feel like I've only scratched the surface.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10942008/what-does- emacs...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10942008/what-does-emacs- learning-curve-actually-look-like)

<comment><USER10> I'd skip e-mail at the beginning, because it can be a real pain to set up (not necessarily on Emacs end - but the whole offlineimap thing, credentials, etc.). But I very much recommend magit - if you're using git, it'll blow your mind.

[https://magit.vc/](https://magit.vc/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Flymake has been completely redesigned

Hmm, I just switched to flycheck. Is it worth checking out this new flymake?

<comment><USER14> No. Flycheck is the 7th most downloaded emacs package and the 3rd most popular package that's not a library. It's directly behind helm and magit. You can't just replace something like this with a thin stroke. The only reason flymake was rewritten was because the emacs devs couldn't get flycheck into emacs core, which IMHO is for the best. emacs releases is just too slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Completely OT, but I remember when building Emacs was like "there goes my afternoon". On my current desktop (which is kind of snazzy, I admit), it takes less than 30 seconds wall clock time. This is one aspect of The Future(tm) I definitely appreciate. ;-)

<comment><USER10> You have one mother of a desktop there. Or, you're not doing a clean build :).

For me, full clean make takes AFAIR something like 10 to 20 minutes. i5-2400, 12GB RAM, SSD drive. Still, totally worth it :). I've been running Emacs 26 for 2 months now.

<comment><USER16> You are compiling it with "make -j 8" (or -j 4), right?

<comment><USER10> Oh.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> TRAMP support for gdrive! That sounds amazing

</comment><comment><USER18> 24 bit color support on terminal!!

</comment><comment><USER19> For the uninitiated, .1 means actual first release.

So this is the first official release of Emacs 26.

</comment><comment><USER20> Scrolling with the trackpad seems way better by default, no more mouse-wheel- scroll-amount/mouse-wheel-progressive-speed hacks !

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know if the concurrency support has made it into TRAMP yet? I recently switched to sshfs because I couldn't stand having TRAMP block my editor while saving remote files.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do any of you know if tramp does still freeze if remote prompt´s ´text´ has special characters? this is a bug that used to bother me last year.

</comment><comment><USER23> For those more familiar with emacs; what happened with the idea of moving to guile scheme? Is it done? Abandoned?

<comment><USER24> It is not an idea that is supported by the whole Emacs community. It is an idea that is supported by the Guile community and RMS. Work has been done to make Guile Emacs work, but it is still slow (as it doesn't seem to compile elisp before running it) and somewhat experimental.

It really just needs someone to make it work more reliably and then demonstrate that it is a desirable thing not just in theory but in practise. Nothing short of doing the work would be sufficient to convince the most active Emacs developers.

The person who had been doing most of the work on Guile Emacs isn't currently making progress on this end, so other interested people are welcome to participate in the effort.

(I'm a Guiler and Emacs user and strongly support the idea of letting Emacs sit on top of the Elisp implementation in Guile.)

<comment><USER25> > It is not an idea that is supported by the whole Emacs community.

One problem is portability, Emacs Guile means alienating Windows users. Guile does not run on Windows.

As it is now, I can use same Emacs on my home Mac system, on my work Windows 10 computer and on various Linux servers.

<comment><USER24> > Guile does not run on Windows

This hasn't always been this way, though, as far as I know. It is also not an insurmountable obstacle, but it is one of many small things that make Emacs developers worry.

Another problem that makes Guile Emacs somewhat less attractive is the difference in string handling. Emacs deals well with improperly encoded strings (because that's what people throw at it), whereas Guile prefers to either deal with byte streams or properly encoded strings. Shuffling strings back and forth between an Elisp and a native Guile representation is not very attractive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any advice for installing 26.1 alongside a debian repo 25.1.1 build?

</comment><comment><USER26> this is pretty cool:

> TRAMP has a new connection method for Google Drive

</comment><comment><USER27> There isn't a windows compile available yet 8( \-- yes, i don't have a choice at work.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps try RC binary until the release is ready?

[https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/](https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/)

<comment><USER28> Adding as of 31st, the above has a real 26.1 candidate to be promoted to main site in a few days.[0]

[0]: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2018-05/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2018-05/msg00825.html)</comment></comment></comment>


C# .NET Core versus Java fastest programs - <AUTHOR> https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/csharp.html <comment><USER2> .NET Team member here. We don't look at these specific benchmarks. Our belief is that they are wild west w/limited moderation of what is reasonable/real- world and not. Not necessarily a reasonable comparison, but we focus on TechEmpower[1]. You can check out the latest .NET performance improvements in our latest blog post on the topic [2].

[1] [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

[2] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance- improvemen...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvements- in-net-5/)

<comment><USER3> I am thoroughly impressed with you what your team has accomplished. Roughly 7-8 years ago, the company I work with switched away from .NET (to Go) largely because our performance with IIS for HTTP traffic running .NET was...poor by comparison to other available options. I wrote a blog post[1] on the subject.

It's been exciting to watch the hard work you and your team are investing to make .NET (Core/Framework/etc) faster. In fact, virtually every single issue or point I raised in my blog post has been addressed to my sanctification and then some. The Techempower benchmarks show the massive strides you've all made and now I'm delighted to see .NET consistently performing at or near the top of the benchmark even without heavy customization/modification. To this day, I still really love C# as a language and there are a number of significant things in C# that I wish the Go ecosystem would adopt. If/when bootstrap a technology stack again, you can bet that C#/.NET will be the top contender on the list of options.

Thanks again for all of your effort. It is very much appreciated and admired, even if I'm not using that tech stack at this point.

[1] [https://blog.jonathanoliver.com/why-i-left-dot- net/](https://blog.jonathanoliver.com/why-i-left-dot-net/)

<comment><USER4> > Roughly 7-8 years ago, the company I work with switched away from .NET (to > Go) largely because our performance with IIS for HTTP traffic running .NET > was...poor by comparison to other available options. I wrote a blog post[1] > on the subject.

After reading this quote, and as a former .NET developer, I was really interested in the performance issues/story your blog would go in depth about. Instead, I found it strange, as I skimmed your blog, that I didn't see any specific scenario or perf numbers/bottlenecks discussed (seeing as you specifically state your company moved away from .NET due to IIS perf issues) - it was very generalized/hand-wavey. Do you happen to remember anything specific? Or were the reasons your company moved away from .NET literally the contents of the blog post?

It seemed to me that your frustration was more surrounding the MS bloated tooling &/or windows.

Some quotes from your blog:

"Once I used TFS on a small job and it was a monster--just like everything else from Redmond. It infected my project files and contaminated my source directories. Yuck. No thank you. Give me command line git any day...or perhaps SourceTree if you need a little love from a GUI."

You could definitely have used git back then.

"As a .NET developer, when you start a new project there are a few things you'll typically do (by hand, of course):

        - Create a new solution
        - Add it to Team Foundation Server
        - Create a corresponding website entry in IIS
        - Create a new SQL Server database
        - Associate the Entity Framework with the solution (typically for projects created after 2010)
        Start designing your database and your ActiveRecord entities."

You absolutely did not have to use EF or TFS, even back in 2014.

The post ends with:

"And that's why I left the .NET Framework because it kept reasserting itself and wanting to be more than it was: an implementation detail."

<comment><USER5> It's usually the company policy that use TFS for C#, not developers. Usually it's the Microsoft marketing scheme to include .NET solutions with TFS.

<comment><USER4> > It's usually the company policy that use TFS for C#, not developers.

I agree, but remember we are specifically talking about a company that switched it's whole business off .NET. A company that makes such a decision is probably one that could also make the call to switch version control systems without changing stacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Only a few seems to be plain code vs plain code. For the C# code there's use of unsafe, SSE/AVX intrinsics and calling C code to do the job (PCRE for the regex).

Certainly it's nice that you have these capabilities in C#, but at least for me it limits the usefulness of the results.

<comment><USER7> Handicapping one language to the featureset of another is unreasonable. You'd also have to disable a host of JVM features (such as hotspot) for a "fair" comparison, which is ridiculous.

Calling C is unfair, though. JVM can do the same and it should be implemented the same way.

<comment><USER8> > Calling C is unfair, though. JVM can do the same and it should be > implemented the same way.

If you want to benchmark C code you can just benchmark a C application. You run stuff in a VM like the JVM or CLR because you want things like memory safety. If you allow native code in something like a regex benchmark then all your benchmarks are basically about: How fast can the JVM/CLR call native code. And say absolutely nothing about how fast the VM itself is.

So using native code in these benchmarks is just silly and basically makes the whole thing meaningless.

<comment><USER9> How fast your managed code can call native code is an extremely relevant performance detail sometimes. It's far from the only thing you should benchmark, but it is a useful thing to benchmark.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely, but then that should be a separate benchmark, designed to test exactly that.

Same with intrinsics. Have a benchmark that tests how good are the intrinsics, are there any significant overhead etc.

When I look at generic names like "n-body sim" I'm thinking ok, let's see how generic mixed floating-point code compares between the languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just looking at some .NET programs, they all use unsafe code, which is always faster than using garbage collected memory management, so the results aren't surprising.

<comment><USER11> It's using features of the language. Is that not what this is meant to measure/compare? .NET has unsafe, SIMD, and value types which opens it to a whole world of programming that Java is currently unsuited for.

<comment><USER12> One would think that a benchmark described in reference to the performance of the virtual machines themselves, would be measuring the performance of pure bytecode (or a JITing thereof), not the performance of native code linked into the runtime.

<comment><USER13> Using a native regex extension lib is the norm for "scripting" languages so totally reasonable to benchmark like that. How do you define when it's OK to use a native extension and when it's cheating?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seeing the debian.net domain name, I'm a bit saddened to be reminded that DotNet Core is open source, yet still not available on Debian without installing packages from external sources (like the deb packages MS provides):

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=779970](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=779970)

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=779969](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=779969)

Right now the official install instructions want you to trust Microsoft keys and I'm not really a fan of that. Further, it installs a custom package repo and in the past I've had very negative experiences with PPAs so I tend to avoid them.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/core/install/linux-d...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/core/install/linux-debian#debian-10-)

<comment><USER15> > Right now the official install instructions want you to trust Microsoft keys > and I'm not really a fan of that.

Why?

<comment><USER14> Because I don't want to trust Microsoft more than I have to. It'd be the only non-distro provided keys on my computer.

I would subject myself to them. Maybe in 5 years they decide that to download, you need a Microsoft account login?

This weakens one of the core strengths of GNU/Linux, that every software installation is only an apt get away. Also, Debian packaging does a level of vetting that the software complies by their packaging policies, which ensures that it is truly libre.

I know that Microsoft has their UEFI signing keys in all the IBM computers around the world and has signed the desktop Linux bootloaders as well, and I respect that they do this, but that's a different part of the stack. I understand that _some_ entity needs to sign the bootloaders, and Microsoft has since shown itself to be a reasonable guardian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everyone just games these benchmarks by calling out to C libraries. It's better to actually compare the slowest programs for each language instead of the fastest ones, because those are usually idiomatic.

<comment><USER17> > Everyone just games these benchmarks by calling out to C libraries.

Really?

Please say which of the n-body programs do that.

[https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody.html)

Meanwhile, sort by program source code size —

[https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody-gz.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I took a quick look at the code, it's nothing alike.

It seems they have people submit solutions to the problem and compare the fastest implementation for each.

<comment><USER19> And the fastest implementations aren't the fastest either, I was able to knock about 10% off one of the Java examples from 2010. I suspect the C# folks were a lot more motivated to "prove" that C# was no longer slow.

As others have pointed out, if you want to test C#'s ability to call C-functions in an unsafe way, then fair enough. Otherwise, with memory safety enabled, they are roughly comparable.

That said, I did port the C# version to Java and it added about 20% extra time, even with some of the cheats (algorithm optimizations) it has implemented.

<comment><USER17> > I suspect the C# folks were a lot more motivated to "prove" that C# was no > longer slow.

One person became curious and was brave enough to contribute their programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Take with a grain of salt, JVM tuning is an entire art and science, probably same with CLR.

<comment><USER21> Presumably, these are comparably tuned.

<comment><USER22> The .net benchmarks use architecture-specific SIMD intrinsics. There's no equivalent on the JVM, though JEP 338 aims to add a vector API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe I missed something, but there doesn't appear to be a benchmark between JNI, JNA, and pInvoke. Most my experience with .NET/Java has shown it is fast enough in most cases, but then run into areas that need to be optimized into Native Code. This calling of Native "C" code can be slow with JNI and generally just fast enough for .NET pInvoke. I haven't ever had a reason to test JNA.

</comment><comment><USER24> Unity also shows how you can use C# for high performance game code with their custom burst compiler. They even switch some of their C++ code to C#.

<comment><USER25> They're moving away from the managed runtimes and compiling straight to native code — it's not really comparable to what is being discussed here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I thought I remember a post about them shutting it down from a few years back. Did they reopen it, or did I just fabricate that memory?

<comment><USER27> Who are "they" and what is "it" here?

<comment><USER26> Oops, I reworded my question and removed the antecedents.

"It" is the benchmarks game and "they" are the maintainers of the benchmarks game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> .NET core was slower than mono which was slower than JVM for running real time multiplayer games (3d math, serialization, reading and writing from multiple streams) as of a couple of years ago, did something big change With the runtimes very recently or is this just coding to benchmarks?

</comment><comment><USER28> The regex-redux one looks like more of an endorsement for the PCRE2 jit.

<comment><USER17> Like compare `regex-redux #8` and `regex-redux #5` ?

[https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/measurements/csharpcore.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> These are pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER29> Did you guys actually read the code in the benchmarks before downvoting me? Both sides are terrible.

<comment><USER17> Please be specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So do Go, C, and many others.

</comment><comment><USER31> JVM clone edges out JVM. Fantastic.</comment>


Cloud9 shutting down, will be AWS-only going forward - <AUTHOR> https://i.imgur.com/96sGoI2.png <comment><USER2> ah memories of 2016, when cloud9 was just in beta</comment>


Samsung launches 28-inch 4K monitor for just $700 - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/179486-samsung-launches-28-inch-4k-billion-color-monitor-for-just-700

<comment><USER2> I'm confused. Can someone explain to me why I would want to buy this monitor, rather than, for example, the Seiki Digital SE50UY04 50-Inch 4K UHD 120Hz LED HDTV, which is available from Amazon for $700 too?

I already have a 27 inch IPS monitor with HD resolution, which was a nice upgrade to what I had before. The Seiki would give me 4K resolution with almost 4 times the display space. Am I missing something fundamental?

<comment><USER3> The Seiki only supports 4K at 30hz, and is sized to be a TV rather than a monitor. It's far less practical to use a 50" display at 2' away than a 28" display of the same resolution. You could maybe even manage 2-3 28" displays on a desk.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the answer.

I never play video games, so the 30hz refresh rate wouldn't be a drawback for me, and I already have my 27" monitor set almost 3' away from my viewing position. It would be much easier for me to come up with $700 for a new monitor; $1400 to $2100 would be out of reach.

I would really like to see how well a tiling window manager would work with a screen that large.

<comment><USER4> >I never play video games, so the 30hz refresh rate wouldn't be a drawback for me

30Hz is painful just for normal use. You can't move your mouse precisely any more because the screen doesn't update fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great to see Dell and some other manufacturers finally pushing the envelope. One domain that's been severely lagging behind in terms of racing to the future is displays. Most displays from 10, 15 years were sure bulkier but provided much better quality and resolution. It's starting to change and I'm glad as someone with extremely poor eyesight :D

</comment><comment><USER6> Aren't TN panels considered inferior to IPS and PVA?

<comment><USER7> Yes, not suitable at all for design work due to color shift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll gladly pay $1k for a 30-32" 3k IPS monitor. Someone please make one and take my $.</comment>


University Of California Approves Major Open Access Policy To Make Research Free - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/02/university-of-california-approves-major-open-access-policy-to-make-research-free/

<comment><USER2> This is a relevant read: [http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why- is-science...](http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science- behind-a-paywall)

</comment><comment><USER3> The policy is imperfect, though, due to an opt out clause. [http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1413](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1413)

<comment><USER4> Without that clause, many major researches will leave UC because they have virtually no journal to publish anymore. Indeed, that sucks, but you have to attack this problem in steps.

The fact that it's an opt _out_ is significant. Most universities haven't even gotten as far as saying "dear staff, please think about doing that open access thing once in a while". UC says "You're going to do open access, unless you really don't want to and then you can do otherwise". The push is very strong. The university, centrally, very clearly and unambiguously declared what they think is the right direction. Scientists can respond by asking for UC's (financial / political) support with starting new initiatives and open journals, or when pressuring existing journals to go open.

In the longer term, actions like these may actually help UC _attract_ top scientists. If you write a paper, you prefer it to be read by as many people as possible. The only reason to be OK with it being behind a paywall is if, somehow, through something culturally grown, it is the only way to advance your career. If you can have similar career chances publishing openly, then that is very attractive indeed. I think many researchers will find that this makes writing papers more worthwhile, more fun.

I'm looking forward to when all modern scientists have a blog on which they post abstracts and download links, including comment threads and all the fast, dynamic interaction that entails.

<comment><USER5> Why would they leave? Major researchers need to publish in major journals in order to get tenure - if they choose to publish only in lower quality open access journals, they are perceived as weird and low status.

If UC requires open access this problem is solved. Every researcher has the perfect excuse for why they didn't publish in a closed journal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now if University research could not be patented, we'd be getting somewhere ...

<comment><USER7> Why would that be important?

Many professors conduct research that they wish to commercialize in their startups/side companies.</comment></comment>


HTML clocks using JavaScript and CSS rotation - <AUTHOR> http://joncom.be/code/css-clocks/

<comment><USER2> It's funny.

This is actually really cool, but all I can see is this:

> Warning: This isn't going to work in any currently available version of > Internet Explorer* or many older browsers.

And all I can think about is _screw Internet Explorer_.</comment>


Use Arrays in HTML Form Variables - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/use-arrays-with-html-form-inputs <comment><USER2> That's been in Rails since... the beginning.</comment>


Introducing the Humble Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/store <comment><USER2> I guess this is just me, but I feel humble bundle lost their way a long time ago, when they started selling games with DRM and that we're not multiplatform. I stopped buying from them after that, and this store seems a continuation of that trend. Even the name humble bundle seems self-righteous to me, considering they are just a store.

<comment><USER3> When did that happen? I've bought most bundles, and not a single game had DRM or didn't work on Linux.

<comment><USER4> Not a single game didn't work on Linux? Check out the current bundle. As far as I know none of the games work on Linux? They used to mention platform prominently. Now there's absolutely no mention on the front page of Linux, nor do they have the platform money split...

Definitely not the first time recently either.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was the Humble _Indie_ Bundles that run on win/linux/mac, and that's still true as far as I know.

<comment><USER6> Yep, and the "with/for Android" bundles too, for the most part. (Not the Mobile bundles, though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if they are going to start seeing some push-back from Steam now that they've adopted a continuous model vs. the previous pseudo-flash-sales model. I think most of these titles are available for a higher price on Steam, but I know for me one of HBs big selling points is the content distribution via Steam. For instance Orcs Must Die 2 is almost 20 bucks cheaper on the new store. Does anyone think Valve is going to view The Humble Bundle as more competitor than partner now?

<comment><USER8> This is exactly what I was concerned about when I first saw this.

I can't see how Valve is going to welcome this as a permanent purchase mechanism unless they're getting a cut.

On the other hand, perhaps their recent change to how Steam keys were distributed (i.e. they're not shown anymore, you have to link your Steam account) was part of some private agreement with Valve to allow this.

<comment><USER6> Valve seems fairly okay with other stores selling Steam keys without the flash sale model: off the top of my head, Amazon and Green Man Gaming both do it. There's even precedent for a flash-sale bundle seller also having a separate store (Indie Gala and the Gala Store).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kinda jumped the shark I think. The original Humble Bundle concept, folks donate works that get sold for arbitrary money, which then gets donated to charity, was pretty cool. But it got weird. There was stuff which was sold as 'books' but were poorly mashed up web blog type sites.

I no longer know what these guys stand for.

</comment><comment><USER10> At this point I'm not entirely certain what/how the Humble Store differentiates from Steam itself? Do they just have some sort of affiliate relationship with Steam to offer games at different prices and then control of the revenues so they can donate to charity?

<comment><USER11> The ability to choose how the money is distributed amongst charities, the developers, and the Humble Store may be the big differentiator in this case, just as GOG's is their DRM-free stance.

<comment><USER12> The Humble Store doesn't seem to let you tailor the distribution. Click on "What is the Humble Store?" and you'll see:

 _Get your games and contribute to awesome causes. Here's where your Humble Store dollars go: 10% Charity, 75% Creator, 15% Humble Tip._

<comment><USER13> Ugh. Most of my buys would skew 75% charity. With 10% for charity and 15% for admin this is little more than "greenwashing".

<comment><USER14> Actually, I never give a penny for charity in my bundles. :-) Maybe that's because I'm non-us so I don't see and understand what they do.

<comment><USER15> Child's Play is frequently a charity that HB will include. The very general description is that they help donate games and gaming systems to kids in hospitals:

>Child's Play works in two ways. With the help of hospital staff, we set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, books, and other fun stuff for kids. By clicking on a hospital location on our map, you can view that hospital's wish list and send a gift.

>Child's Play also receives cash donations throughout the year. With those cash donations, we purchase new consoles, peripherals, games, and more for hospitals and therapy facilities. These donations allow for children to enjoy age-appropriate entertainment, interact with their peers, friends, and family, and can provide vital distraction from an otherwise generally unpleasant experience.

(from [http://www.childsplaycharity.org/about](http://www.childsplaycharity.org/about))

edit: I am having a really hard time blockquoting this. Sorry. Working on fixing this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can personally recommend the following from this batch:

Don't Starve: a brilliant, brutal wilderness survival game. Great sound and art. Mine/craft cycles combined with a lot of world to explore and secrets to uncover, and permadeath.

Prison Architect: a prison designer and deep simulator of guards, prisoners, bottles, tunnels, and sundry.

Rogue Legacy: a roguish 2D action platformer where each life's dungeon crawl takes you further into a skill/stat progression

The Swapper: a 2D puzzle platformer with a cloning gun and something to say

Gunpoint: a 2D sneaky hacking game, where you break into buildings and rewire security systems to steal intel

</comment><comment><USER17> I take it that they only sell Steam keys for the titles without the "DRM FREE" icon? This has confused me in the past.

As a Linux user, I'm a big fan of Humble because they actually pay for new game ports, so it is often the case that a Linux version debuts in a Humble Bundle.

But with Linux games getting mainstream _and_ HB increasingly becoming a Steam reseller I would much rather see GOG.com introduce Linux as a platform (and also maybe hire some guys to look after Wine status of games).

</comment><comment><USER18> It appears that bitcoin, a payment option for the bundles, is missing as a payment option for the store.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like how they clearly display what platform the games are for and which games are DRM free.

<comment><USER20> You can't filter by DRM free though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I appreciate the evolution of the Humble Bundle idea. The indie bundles seem to be obvious wins for the developers, the non-indies seem like sensible plays to make more money on older titles, and the promotion of worthwhile charities is legit. And you can always move your Humble Bundle tip to $0 if you don't think they deserve it - what's not to like?

</comment><comment><USER22> Why does the Humble Store only have so few games on display? It's online (per Humble Widgets) for quite a while now and has dozens of games. Such as at the following link. Yet in the new store, it isn't found.

[https://www.humblebundle.com/store/vvvvvv](https://www.humblebundle.com/store/vvvvvv)

<comment><USER12> Games that sell through the Humble Widget get a 95/5 revenue split (as opposed to 75/15/10). For that reason among others, I think Humble needs permission from each developer to sell their game in the new Humble Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Meh...the bundles have been hitting fast and heavy recently. I guess this is the next logical step. Rather just wait for a steam sale to be honest. The reason the bundles were so appealing to me was the ridiculous price you could pay for a ton of games.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would rather see the store have all the old bundles available at some price instead of individual titles that cost more than the bundles they're going to be in if we just wait.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm more interested in the fact that they are selling Arkam Asylum GOTY + Arkam City GOTY + F.E.A.R. 2 + F.E.A.R. 3 + two other games for (currently) under 5 bucks.

<comment><USER26> Those kinds of bundles are usually Hail Mary plays for more sales for the publisher (WB).

Case in point, THQ did the biggest Humble Bundle ever, because they went bankrupt and needed the money for liquidation.

<comment><USER27> EA topped that with the Origin bundle.

<comment><USER26> Ah right, forgot that Origin bundle was higher.

I'm actually curious how much EA netted with each sale, given the bandwidth costs for some of the huge 20GB games must not have been cheap.

<comment><USER6> EA donated 100% of their share to charity. They netted people actually bothering to install Origin.

[http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/58256397346/introducing- th...](http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/58256397346/introducing-the-humble- origin-bundle)

<comment><USER28> Not to mention the tax write off that they'll get for donating such a large sum of money. It's definitely a win-win for EA since they were able to market their Origin platform in the deal.

<comment><USER29> Pretty ethical marketing too. Giving away a bunch of games to encourage donations to charity is better than pulling games from Steam and releasing games as Origin exclusive like they have done in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is just a short list. Aren't many games already in the "store" (i.e. sold through HB widget for fixed price)? [http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store](http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store)

Or they plan to add them gradually to the new site?

On the UI side - they should add a DRM free search filter. Otherwise it will be annoying to sift through various DRMed stuff which HB adds lately.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, so now Linux has enough traction to support multiple competing marketplaces maybe this means there should be some exclusives for the Stores, somehow .. think these parties can pull this off?

</comment><comment><USER31> I only found out about Humble Bundle a few weeks ago. Wish I had known sooner. My Steam collection would be huge by now.

<comment><USER32> Luckily there are weekly deals and monthly deals.

P.s., the game Chivalry that is in the store now is awesome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It seems like a missed opportunity to not allow variable pricing like their normal the bundles.

Maybe that only works in a sale scenario.

</comment><comment><USER34> itch.io has been doing something like this for a while. It's getting popular!

</comment><comment><USER35> Does not render on IE 11!!!

<comment><USER36> IE? Who cares. You might as well complain the page doesn't render in Netscape!</comment></comment>


Did Bitcoin just break 'Psychological $60' heading past $100 or will it crash? - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoinity.org/markets?theme=light

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically I am just speculating wildly, however I think that $60 may be a 'mental wall' for a lot of traders in BTC that could signal a quick movement either to/past $100 or trigger sell-offs.

<comment><USER2> Why $60 instead of $50 or $32?

<comment><USER3> Possibly it will catch the attention of traditionally bearish Babylonian investors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals></comment></comment></comment>


In Due Diligence – need iOS App prototype in 3 weeks. Have 400$. Please help - <AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I have been working 50-75% below the poverty line for years, have been throwing Heideggerian Red Herrings to protect secrecy for years to not invoke imitative competition, and don't generally tell people about my startup. I am going to tell HN limited things so that I can find help. Please don't buy the domain on me :(. We are not live yet.
Here goes, please don't steal me or eat me - KEYWORDS for C O N T R A C T I T iOS app prototype - there is more depth than this but you have to talk to me because I'm not posting publicly: Post-Monetary, Gifting Economy, Single Field Input, No Segmentation (Generally), App of all Apps, Generalized Ordered Algorithmic Learning System (I am responsible for this but will require help from the Developer).
I've been working my entire adult life for a meeting I had yesterday with a premiere VC firm that is part of Peter Thiels network. They really liked me. They really liked what I'm doing, and how it sounds. Now, I'm in a type of Due Diligence (pre-diligence maybe?) where a Yes and money in the bank is possible. They want a prototype of the app in 3 weeks.
I have 400$ for someone that can help me over the next three weeks pump out a prototype/Alpha that we can add 3-6 more weeks of work too afterwards and get on the market once we have the funding in the bank. I am ideally looking for someone who will be willing to relocate to San Francisco once in the bank, however, if someone just wants to help me and perhaps we can work something out where they have a job remotely once we get funded - I will consider that on a selective basis.
Please help, I will love you forever. I am looking for early employee or potential Founder/Chairman-type people (on a selective basis). We are planning to have the first clean cap table in the industry, with no dilution for early people. Generous equity.
https://www.facebook.com/eddieequilibrium is my Facebook. Please message me if you'd like more information.
<3 <comment><USER2> I think this secrecy is not your friend.

I won't patronize you with how the idea doesn't matter etc. I am sure you have heard it all before and can make your own decisions.

But what I will point out here is that the idea is so vaguely described, that it is completely uninteresting. I think a really good partner would want to know exactly what the thing is before giving up energy and time to jump aboard.

I think of all the great people I know, and I can't think if any of them would reach out to someone on the basis of "Post-Monetary, Gifting Economy" etc

Although HN is enormous so maybe you will have some luck.

Wish you well.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's much more to it. The VCs have that information. People should message me on Facebook to get more information. It has a growth innovation to decimate Advertising and chew up existing markets to spit out new markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> write to me at email@example.com, I own this app dev agency agicent.com and might assist you if you are for real. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any more thoughts?</comment>


Don't Hate Her, She's Just the (Subway) Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/nyregion/subway-mta-social-media-alerts.html <comment><USER2> The innovation here is that this PR person works in the Rail Control Center, with the people who are actually running the subway. Not in some PR office. She's surrounded by the people who are telling the trains what to do, controlling signals and switches, and dealing with problems. She can see the track boards and listen to the comm loops.

Contrast this with big sites which have status pages showing everything is just great half an hour after it's hit the mainstream media that they're down.

It's very New York. When Maersk Shipping had a big hacking incident and was down for most of a week, the best no-bullshit info was coming from someone at the Port Authority who edits their feed for truckers. Maersk PR was saying "almost everything is fine". The Port Authority trucker feed was saying stuff like "Maersk can't take outbounds at APM, only one gate is open for inbounds, don't return empties at this time". That brutal honesty beats horsing a semi over there to find out you can't unload.

<comment><USER3> Seems like it's a new communications channel which is ripe to get PR'd into uselessness, just like the company's official channels.

Maybe it can't be, because there has to be _some_ useful channel to tell people that, no, those ships aren't coming in today or that train isn't going to make it on time or so on, but if the company sees a value in presenting the happy face to _everyone_ , it has an incentive to make whatever deals it needs to in order to ensure all public or not-private channels stay on-message. This works out to NDAs and encryption, usually.

Maybe that's impossible at a practical level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hate to say this, but the MTA/Subway in NYC has reached the level of service that you can expect from a third country system. The pain is even worse during the summer where all stations have a mix of scorching heat and humidity, and it feels almost like you are in a sauna.

The MTA doesn't just need more money, but a completely change in leadership as well, and putting new people that have higher expectations on the service, and that actually use it themselves.

Even simple thing like "scheduled maintenance" notices look like they were design for lawyers and not normal people.

The current management is totally dysfunctional, and yes Ny Gov. Cuomo is part of the problem. (and the boob wants to run for President). He is going to run down the country just as he is doing with the MTA.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/new-york- subway-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/new-york-subway- andrew-cuomo.html)

<comment><USER5> It needs... robots.

Robots for all the things that a commuter doesn't directly interact with.

The humans belong in the human interface and can remain in the stations; MAYBE as actual patrols on the train looking to provide assistance and keep the peace (and also having access to get in to the control area in case an over- ride is required).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I checked out their Twitter feed a couple days ago (had to reroute due to a broken rail at Wall St. and wanted to see a picture or something of the broken rail). I was amazed how polite and helpful they are to the most irate customers. It really does seem that the social media team calms down a lot of angry people.

Meanwhile, I am surprised at how desynchronized their various data sources are. I check mta.info before I go on a subway trip, and did that this morning for my commute to work. Delays on the 4 and 5, but none on the 2 and 3. I go down to the 2/3 platform and there is an announcement playing saying that the 2 and 3 are delayed (for the same reason given on mta.info about the 4/5; signal problems at Borough Hall). The website apparently didn't get the message. At least I had cell service while waiting...

<comment><USER7> The worst part about mta.info is that it'll show scheduled work on lines, but it doesn't show closed stations - so the C looks like it skips 86th but not 72nd, when in actuality 72nd is closed for repairs and you ain't getting on or off a train there. If you need to plan a trip, you have to check at least two places.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the updates are honestly pretty bad.

For that broken rail incident, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten home. The announcement said Clark St. was closed, which is my station... but I am pretty sure, in retrospect, that they meant that there would be no Manhattan-bound trains at that station because they're being rerouted over the 4/5, but I think Brooklyn-bound trains were not being rerouted (as that rail wasn't broken). They were very unclear, and so I just took an alternate route. They could have been completely clear, but chose not to.

(I'll also point out that they provided walking directions from Clark St. to Borough Hall... but they provided directions to the actual Brooklyn Borough Hall, not the subway station with the same name. Oops.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have friends who have and currently live in NYC and I know the MTA gets a lot of flak from them and sometimes for very good reason.

I have to say though all things considered this is a shining example (to me) of something that is typically very opaque - government agency public relations- and giving it some honest try polish and actually trying to meet people where they are (e.g Twitter)

Does this paper over all the problems of th MTA? I'm sure it does not! I do think they're at least trying though and that's a lot more than can be said of other gov agencies I have dealt with.

<comment><USER9> The German train system uses TTS in all stations to announce (among other things) delays and cancellations. Cancellations are usually followed by the phrase "we apologize". This has always been for me the most infuriating part: that the fakest of apologies was attached to it.

In contrast, getting actual information about the delay works for me, precisely because it feels more honest.

<comment><USER10> The most infuriating part for me with the local transport agency in Cologne (KVB) is the verbosity. They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

This is especially bad with cancellations because it lists every major stop (with station name and time) for the canceled tram. So instead of getting the important information instantly you are stuck waiting for the message to end and then repeat to the point that's actually important. I realise this is a technical limitation because apparently all affected stations get the same message but this seems fairly archaic while at the same time also being an obvious cost-cutting move over having actual announcements.

In general however the infuriating part about the apologies is that instead of "we apologize for the inconvenience" a more literal translation of the one you see most often -- "Danke für Ihr Verständnis" \-- is "thank you for your understanding", which comes off as super passive-aggressive compared to the more apologetic but much less frequent "Wir bitten um Verständnis" ("we ask for your understanding"). Sure, they're both hollow phrases but thanking you seems extremely condescending.

<comment><USER11> The best display technology IMHO is the old electro-mechanical split-flap. They update pretty fast, and they make one hell of a racket when they do so everybody in the train station knows when something updated (this is a feature). They're sufficiently versatile to display information a train station needs to. They also have a certain aesthetic that simply cannot be touched by modern LCD/LED displays.

<comment><USER12> You must be one of those hipsters who lugs around a typewriter to cafes.

\- They are very slow compared to digital. \- They aren't versatile, they can't display arbitrary information. Each message has to be crafted individually and fit in among the rest. Which makes it nice for station lines since there are a small number that never change. Anything else? Not so much. \- The noise is not intentional, it's more of a bug than a feature for sure. In a busy train station they change every minute or more so as an alerting mechanism it's near useless.

<comment><USER11> We're talking about train station displays, not arbitrary displays. Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display so obviously I'm talking about a restricted domain. They don't need to display arbitrary information and the range of information they need to display rarely changes since that typically involves construction. The noise, an unintentional consequence of the mechanism, provides utility to train travelers and is therefore a feature.

In a busy train station the duration of the split-flap change provides an auditory clue to what's going on. If you hear one or two rows update then nothing out of the ordinary is happening. If you hear several rows update that might be a good indication that your train is now on the board, or it could signal mass delays. For many years I went through 30th Street Station in Philadelphia with a split-flap board in the middle and I loved that board. When I'm at airports with LCD boards, I always miss it. LCD boards are trash, you don't notice them changing unless you're staring at them, almost always have text too small to read unless you're standing directly in front of it, and are completely soulless.

I learned to type on a Selectric years before my family bought our first computer. I haven't touched one since.

<comment><USER13> > Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display

You _say_ that, but I'd be willing to bet that this guy has: [https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/](https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/)

<comment><USER14> Oat Foundry Split Flap displays do real-time typing, real-time display of 3rd party data, and oh so much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an improvement over how things worked before, but the end state for this has to be an API definition for service changes so that services like Google Maps and Citymapper can update my routes or estimated travel times.

I don't want to plan a route in Citymapper and then have to check myMTA for service status.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the feeds she monitors is here: [https://twitter.com/NYCTSubway/with_replies](https://twitter.com/NYCTSubway/with_replies)

</comment><comment><USER17> I live in NYC, and I follow transit news very rigorously.

This article underplays the extent of the problem, which is that the information they give is _just not actually correct_.

First of all, the MTA made a big deal about rolling out the subway countdown clocks across (almost) all the stations. Except, for the old BMT lines[0], the clocks are just... not actually accurate! They're literally just publishing the scheduled times, and almost never actually update it to correspond to a delay[1][2]. Delays are dramatically worse across every single subway line than they were ten years ago[3], so by this point, those scheduled times are almost completely useless. Thankfully, the BMT countdown clocks are a different style from the IRT ones, so as a rule of thumb: if it's black text on white background, then it's completely useless, and if it's green LEDs on black background, then it's probably-somewhat-useful, but still not necessarily up-to-date.

Even for planned service changes, they publish information in unbelievably obtuse ways[4]. Yes, they're technically correct. But the point is to communicate things clearly, not to publish statements that are defensibly not- wrong in a court of law.

Just last month, they decided to stop service for the express trains midtown (or run it in two segments - I never figured out which). They didn't tell anyone, so an entire train full of passengers went two stops downtown and two stops back uptown. Because they also held the train before one of the stations, we literally took half an hour to end up right back where we started[5].

[0] For the most part, any line with a letter instead of a number, like the A/C/E instead of the 1/2/3

[1] [https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/950863996323794944](https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/950863996323794944)

[2] [https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/948727423444639745](https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/948727423444639745)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subway- delays-overcrowding.html)

[4] [https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/933826118364299266](https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/933826118364299266)

[5] [https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/1000422530736377857](https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/1000422530736377857)

<comment><USER18> > Except, for the old BMT lines[0], the clocks are just... not actually > accurate!

I can't say I agree. I've been a daily commuter on the ACE, 1, and NQR/BD trains since the introduction of the clocks and found them all to be wonderfully accurate.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's almost surely a case of remembering the handful of times when the clocks were inaccurate because they caused you trouble, while forgetting the hundreds of times when they worked correctly. They do work correctly most of the time, and the A division works even better than the B division, as you'd expect. (the opposite of what OP claimed.)

<comment><USER17> > Yeah, it's almost surely a case of remembering the handful of times when the > clocks were inaccurate because they caused you trouble, while forgetting the > hundreds of times when they worked correctly.

It absolutely is not availability bias, as demonstrated by the concrete data included in one of those links.

But even if it were - the whole point of having those signs is to alert you about the actual state of the subway, factoring in delays or service changes. Otherwise I could just download the PDF of the scheduled train times from the MTA's website and look at that. (Yes, those exist. There's almost no reason any person would ever need to look at them).

> They do work correctly most of the time, and the A division works even > better than the B division, as you'd expect. (the opposite of what OP > claimed.)

No, that's not the opposite of what I said. The A division is the IRT lines. Those are the ones that use the ATS system (which was outdated even at the time it was rolled out), and that's why the IRT lines (the ones with the LEDs on black background) are at least somewhat useful. Even if the train is delayed from its normal schedule, the times posted there are supposed to be somewhat accurate because it's using the ATS signal data.

For the B division (the BMT lines), you might as well be using the static PDFs that post the idealized train schedules[0]. I am not exaggerating; that's literally the data they are displaying. Once in a blue moon, for _very_ serious delays such as a train accident, it will tell you that a train is "delayed" instead of telling you the updated ETA, but that doesn't help, because you want to know _how long_ the train will take, rather than just the fact that it's "delayed"[1]. Most of the time, though, it won't actually update the time at all, and it'll keep displaying the wrong estimate until the train is literally about to pull into the station (at which point it'll skip straight to "0 minutes away").

The reason they don't tell you more information is because that information doesn't exist. They don't know where the trains are, beacuse the BMT lines use outdated signaling technology that's decades old, and the MTA has stonewalled all efforts to upgrade them[3].

So, in short, the BMT countdown clocks are useless because:

* They only publish the scheduled times, not the actual estimated arrival times

* Only about 50-60% of BMT trains arrive according to the times posted on those schedules

* For the remainder, it usually displays the wrong information, because it doesn't have any way of knowing that the information is out-of-date

[0] [http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/tacur.pdf](http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/tacur.pdf)

[1] Saying a train is "delayed" doesn't give me any useful information, because I already know that about half the trains are delayed. And since it doesn't tell you what the scheduled ETA was, telling me that it's "delayed" from the scheduled ETA is also pretty useless[2].

[2] If the train is scheduled to come in 20 minutes, but it's been delayed by five, that's different from if it's scheduled to come in 3 minutes, but has been delayed by 10. Those two situations are displayed _identically_ on the BMT countdown clocks, with no way to distinguish between them.

[3] The official MTA party line is that they want to wait and do the really expensive, comprehensive, state-of-the-art overhaul. In reality, that means that they've been saying this for nearly thirty years, and have actively fought all attempts to provide quicker and cheaper ways of achieving the same end results.

<comment><USER18> > * They only publish the scheduled times, not the actual estimated arrival > times

Do you have a source for this? I'm positively certain it's not true. I time my commute every morning with the online subway clock that matches exactly with the one in the station -- I leave my apartment when the Q is ~8m away and it always arrives shortly after I get to the platform. I've only encountered one situation where the clock was unacceptably wrong: a downtown A train at 59th that was 1m away for over 5m. That happened over a year ago and I still remember it.

Similarly, when delays happen the clock does get updated accordingly. Today was a good example -- 24m for the next N train during commuting hours :/

I think you may be confusing the countdown clocks with the kiosks. Once upon a time they did display the scheduled time. I'm not sure if they still do but the above head displays are without a doubt more accurate. Anecdotally speaking, the margin of error seems to be roughly +/\- one minute. I'm aware that's anecdotal evidence but I simply don't believe that somebody could take the subway on a daily basis and think the countdown clocks are that inaccurate.

<comment><USER17> > I think you may be confusing the countdown clocks with the kiosks

No, I'm not. I know the difference between the kiosks and the overhead clocks.

> I simply don't believe that somebody could take the subway on a daily basis > and think the countdown clocks are that inaccurate.

Benjamin Kabak, whom I linked above, has been covering the MTA and transit in New York for over a decade, in addition to being a daily subway rider. Offhand, I can't think of a single independent journalist who has more comprehensive knowledge of the minutiae of the NYC transit systems than he does, let alone a more established track record of documenting not only the visible problems, but the factors that create those problems. If that, combined with the other data provided, isn't convincing, I don't know what else could be.

<comment><USER18> You haven't really provided any data. A few random tweets about incidents, only one about the countdown clocks where the next response offers a probable explanation.

You're trying to sell me on a different version of reality, here. You're telling me a system I rely on every single day is completely unreliable.

Do you live in NYC? Do you take the trains? Go put your theory to the test. Go sit at at a busy train station for 20m and watch the countdown clocks tick down until the train comes. I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised. The countdown clocks are just about the only part of the MTA system that works.

<comment><USER17> > You're trying to sell me on a different version of reality, here.... Give > the MTA their single, well-deserved victory. Put your theory for the test. > Go sit at at a busy train station for 20m and watch the countdown clocks > tick down until the train comes. I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I'm not trying to sell you on anything. In fact, I'm not even interested in continuing this discussion. I've provided you with a reference to the most well-respected journalist covering the technical details of the MTA and NYC transit. If you're really interested in learning more, it's not hard to do some basic Googling and find their extensive coverage and analysis of this problem.

> Do you live in NYC? Do you take the trains? I'm so confused -- are you > astroturfing for some reason?

Just because someone presents information that contradicts your anecdotal experience, that doesn't mean they're astroturfing. Though at this point, if you're going to start slinging bad-faith accusations with no basis, it's pretty clear this conversation is going nowhere.

<comment><USER18> > it's pretty clear this conversation is going nowhere.

Yes, obviously, because you keep saying "look at the data" while providing none of relevance. Nobody's arguing that the MTA is rife with delays and poor planning, we're talking about the countdown clocks specifically.

The countdown clocks do not show the scheduled time. They use Bluetooth receivers to physically track the trains [1]. Your fundamental premise is wrong.

I'm honestly curious -- do you Uber everywhere? How often do you take the train?

1\. [http://www.thetransitwire.com/2017/09/01/mta-uses- bluetooth-...](http://www.thetransitwire.com/2017/09/01/mta-uses-bluetooth- tech-for-next-train-info/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As much as the system might be bad, remember the human behind the service.

<comment><USER20> Then the human can fix the awful service and stop feeding us bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get the hate. I just love to have a good information system.

People hating those messages never had to live in countries with failures occurring without any feedback.

<comment><USER17> > I don't get the hate. I just love to have a good information system.

That's the exact problem. We _don 't_ have a good information system: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17442606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17442606)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Check out these Split Flap displays - real-time updates, API integrations, oh YES. [https://www.oatfoundry.com/split- flap/](https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Can I recommend that "MYmta" should be replaced with "MyMTA".

<comment><USER23> You can, but I suspect they'll stick with the former: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymta/id1297605670?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymta/id1297605670?mt=8)

Seems to me they've branded it this way intentionally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Don't hire pr people, make the trains run on time. It works for japan.</comment>


Show HN: I built a simple utility for PC pilots. - <AUTHOR> http://fsxflight.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The app is basically a little bridge to feed data from Microsoft's abandoned but still popular Flight Simulator X into popular iOS aviation apps ForeFlight and WingX. It was my first time building an app for Windows or writing C#. Coming from the iOS world I found it a useful exercise. I built mostly for myself. I had previously been relying on a Rube Goldberg solution of bluetooth dongles and jailbroken iPads. I figured I could throw it up for $5 with gumroad and see what happens.</comment>