Pens Are Making a High-Tech Comeback - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/the-pen-is-back/ <comment><USER2> _" He's built a computer with almost zero latency—when you do something, the computer reacts instantly. Here, Bathiche has solved that infuriating problem where you write or draw on a screen, and the ink is always a half-second behind your finger."_

So few people get that. Alan Kay once wrote in the 1970s that it was as unacceptable for there to be a delay between user action and response on a computer as it was unacceptable on a piano. Now we have several gigaflops on every desktop and still can't get that right.

We really need this in web browsers. Especially on phones. When you click or touch something, something should happen _right now_ , even if more will happen later. Touch a link in Firefox for Android and see what happens, or rather what doesn't happen.

<comment><USER3> [http://lowendmac.com/2006/vintage-macs-with-system-6-run- cir...](http://lowendmac.com/2006/vintage-macs-with-system-6-run-circles- around-3-ghz-windows-pc/)

<comment><USER4> Vintage Macs also had 0% (seemingly) cursor lag and 0% cursor flicker. Took Windows 20 years to finally have a usable (coming from a Mac at least) mouse cursor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mistaken premise here in my opinion:

 _Think about typing the character 'a' on a keyboard. Fast, right? Just the one keystroke. "It is fast," Bathiche says, "if you make some certain assumptions. That the position of the letter 'a' is where you intended it to be, the font is the way you intended it to be, the size of the 'a' is what you intended it to be." All those decisions are made before you hit the key, and you often don't have a choice. "But with ink, you can dictate all those things, almost simultaneously as you're writing. I can put my 'a' here, or here, and I can make it as big as I want, as hard as I want."_

I can type wayyy faster than I can write with a pen.

So... yeah

<comment><USER6> Can you type LaTeX faster than you can write equations on a chalkboard? I can't.

<comment><USER7> I can. I used to do my math homework in LaTeX. I'm not saying I did it on paper and the final stuff was written up, I mean I was thinking in LaTeX. The PDF viewer was "check what I just did mode" and the text editor was "get thoughts down" mode.

It was proof heavy so there was a lot of English anyway. Add copy/paste for derivations with a lot of shared structure and it really pulls ahead. If you define your own macros and are good enough at programming them on the fly it's a neat though dumb Lispy symbolic math tool.

<comment><USER8> Same here, I picked up LaTeX to take notes in my computer graphics class because I didn't feel like writing it (my written equations were always pretty cramped, and my handwriting is garbage) and because it was a pain to represent equations in LibreOffice (what I'd been taking notes in before).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the 1ms touch delay technology also from Microsoft's applied sciences group.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4)

</comment><comment><USER10> I cannot think of another tech company that's as obsessed with pens as Microsoft is. They've been working on and promoting this stuff for what feels like decades now.

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_for_Pen_Computing)

I remember reading that MS basically killed the nascent pen computing industry by announcing their entry into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Better pen input would be great, especially for drawing.

How about some form of chorded keyboard or glove? A chorded keyboard was demonstrated in 1968 by Engelbart:

[http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mouses...](http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/1968Demo.html)

Google's Soli project might lead to better input:

[http://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0](http://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Soli looks very interesting. There is Smarter Objects from MIT Fluid Interfaces that is similar in nature, but has a more dynamic approach. It's certainly not as simple as Soli seems because of the augmented-reality component it uses. But if Google brings back Glass and ships Soli in IoT/smart household objects, then you'd have the same result.

\--EDIT-- Link to MIT Fluid Interfaces Smart Objects: [http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects/smarter- objects](http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects/smarter-objects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love an A4 sized one of these and a screen, monochrome would be fine, I spent so much of my life drawing out code/approaches on squared pads only to leave the pad at the office.

All I would want is some way of indexing them and one press to send as an email.

I'd drop 200 quid on that right now.

<comment><USER14> Have you looked at Boogie Board Sync?

[http://www.myboogieboard.com/na/products/boogie-board- sync-9...](http://www.myboogieboard.com/na/products/boogie-board-sync-9.html)

I tried it. I really wanted to like it, but the writing screen was just not bright enough for me. May be it will work for you.

<comment><USER13> I absolutely hadn't but that looks damn interesting, thanks!

What was the delay like in actual usage?

EDIT: This is literally what I was describing and have wanted for ages, US only but some ebay.co.uk vendors have them! I'm having one of these soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> input to response time is very important for VR

'I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f'd up is that?' -John Carmack [0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001)

</comment><comment><USER16> I have been using pen input since 2009 when I started university, and am glad that they're finally gaining traction as mainstream input devices.

The only problem is most of these new pens are actively powered by the annoyingly rare AAAA battery. I haven't been able to find a rechargeable AAAA from a reputable manufacturer yet. And the very fact that they require manual battery swaps is unacceptable in this day and age IMHO.

This is why my newest laptop was a HP Elite X2 1011 that I paid through the nose for, but at least has an older generation passive Wacom pen that does not require a battery.

If any laptop/tablet makers are reading this, please replace the AAAA battery slot in these active pens with Li-ion batteries and allow them to automatically charge from the laptop when placed into their holders.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reminded me of Dr. Ivan Sutherland's "SketchPad" demo; here's a video of it with Alan Kay commenting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can I get the Hacker News recommendation on the best affordable pens and notebooks?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Pen: Jinhao X750 ($10) is a no-brainer. Or the Platinum Carbon desk pen ($12) if you like really thin lines.

Notebooks: Rhodia, Clairefontaine, Leuchtturm1917, or equivalent quality. Should be around $15 depending on size. Moleskines are no-go (ink bleeds through page)

Ink: Private Reserve is a nice starting point. I am particularly fond of their foam green. $11 for a 66ml bottle.

Shop: I really like Goulet Pens. Good service, amazingly careful packaging.

Source: personal experience and preference.

<comment><USER18> I'd generally recommend the Pilot Metropolitan over the X750, I feel as if the Metro is a "surer bet" when it comes to QA, and it's only around five bucks more. Plus the Metro comes in fine and medium nibs so you have a bit more choice there.

Source: I have $100+ pens but I'm using a Metropolitan literally right now.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Interesting. My X750 sees quite randomly varying usage, and I really like how it's easy to "hard start" it after a couple weeks of non-usage. Is the Metropolitan similar?

Edit: after reading some reviews the Metropolitan is now on my buy list. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm glad they are making a high-tech comeback, but anyone else here also love (or prefer) using fountain pens?

<comment><USER20> Indeed. I have a nice Schaeffer pen and I do most of my notes and plans for code with it. I would rather forget to take my tablet than to forget notebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Suffering from RSI right now makes me think how nice it would be to code with a pen...

</comment><comment><USER22> "I can put my 'd' here, or here, and I can make it as big as I want, as hard as I want." "

</comment><comment><USER23> > he's built a computer with almost zero latency—when you do something, the > computer reacts instantly.

Oh, the irony.

It's Microsoft's own fault in the first place that we have an _operating system_ that is so horribly unresponsive.

And, now, umpteen years later, it's a _BIG ADVANCE_ that we actually make computers do what we want, when we want. Just like before Microsoft.

<comment><USER24> That's almost laughably incorrect, although unfortunately popular amongst a certain segment of the tech set. The nearly-impossible-to-use computers that did very little very slowly back in the 80s (and earlier) were not nearly as amazing as your memory is fooling you into believing. Sure, nearly-bare-metal OSes don't soak up much in the way of resources, but that only works in very narrow market segments, and computers are totally mass market now.

And in any case, you mean "before Windows" if anything, because DOS was fast as blazes (and did pretty much nothing as a consequence).

<comment><USER25> Essentially, when people think back to how responsive computers were "before windows", they are recalling computers which had no networking, and disks which were so slow that you would never write software which depended in real- time on getting that data from disk. You'd pre-load all the data you needed into your meager RAM and then, yes, for doing the one thing that was loaded into memory, with the data that was already in memory, the computer would be very very responsive. But when it came to saving or loading, you could go and get a coffee.

<comment><USER4> I have to say that in this case you're wrong. The Apple Mac Plus in my parents' closet, which I still fire up from time to time to play Dark Castle ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkbp4wurW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkbp4wurW0)), had a zero latency mouse (or at least imperceptible) with zero flicker. Took Microsoft at least 20 years to get something comparable. This is not a nostalgic mis-memory, or an exaggeration. Please find an old Mac from the 80's and simply move the mouse around.

> they are recalling computers which had no networking

The very first network games I ever played were over AppleTalk on a Mac, like NetTrek ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z40VMsXtl0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z40VMsXtl0Y) ... yes, that is digitized sound out of a 1984 machine), Maze Wars ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoEpgfTtUYg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoEpgfTtUYg)) and the venerable Bolo! ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz_gYZ5kMvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz_gYZ5kMvc)), the latter still one of the best multiplayer gaming experiences I've ever had

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How many tens of millions of dollars has Microsoft sunk in Surface, tablets and other touch technologies, only to have Apple eat their lunch? How many billions sunk in MSR every year yielding no commercial products? Microsoft has always needed to get their product vision from somewhere else, and for all of the hoopla about Nadella and open sourcing everything, that core fact about Microsoft hasn't changed. It's really sad because Microsoft has everything stacked in its favour to succeed. I mean it's not like like don't succeed on those products that they copy from others, starting from Windows all the way down to the Xbox and Bing, but when it comes to commercial innovation, that's not who they are.

<comment><USER27> Microsoft seems to be perfectly successful to me, no?

R&D, by virtue of being R&D, rarely makes it to the market in a recognizable form. My guess is that the lessons learned there certainly have been applied to their real profit centers.

<comment><USER28> Plus their massive patent portfolio has definitely paid off in various ways.

PS - I don't personally like software patents, but you cannot deny they make money for research-based organisations.

<comment><USER26> The patent portfolio is a good point, I'll concede that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Terraspace: The Terraform Framework - <AUTHOR> https://terraspace.cloud/ <comment><USER2> I do like the boilerplate module stuff, thats trick..

However a large number of people in the terraform ecosystem are already using terragrunt.

Can you use this with terragrunt?

<comment><USER3> Don't think so. They're pretty different in design. Unsure how that would work

Here's a page that covers the differences between Terraspace and Terragrunt [https://terraspace.cloud/docs/vs/terragrunt/](https://terraspace.cloud/docs/vs/terragrunt/)</comment></comment>


The Email Mafia (PayPal's Got Nothing on Email) - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupdigest.com/2010/07/28/email-mafia-paypal-mafia-email/ <comment><USER2> Ok, so DailyCandy is for fashion/style/shopping, Thrillist is for food/drink/shopping, IdealBite is for green, and Vital Juice is for fitness/nutrition ...

Seems like there are other huge markets that are ideal for email newsletters:

\- Sports news/scores for your city

\- Investing (daily stock tips and news)

\- Real estate (select listings that just went on the market in your city with good pictures like jet setter does)

\- Arts & entertainment (museum, gallery, theater, and movie stuff—though I think DailyCandy does some of this)

I'm sure some of these exist (especially investing) but weren't mentioned but I bet many are old-school and the spaces are ripe for improvement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post and I agree... I think newsletters fit with what people are looking for these days and the market is wide open.

A newsletter/founder that probably isn't big enough to make it on that list, but that I would highly recommend is Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter - <http://www.goodexperience.com>.

It is what originally inspired me to want to create a newsletter (which ended up finally being Hacker Newsletter - <http://www.hackernewsletter.com>) and is the only newsletter that I open and read each one. To me it is just like getting your favorite magazine, but better since I don't have to do anything but open gmail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Startup Digest is amazing. They started picking up our Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley events a few months ago, and our total membership has gone from 800 members to 1250 members in 3 months. Our San Francisco events have gotten 30% bigger per event.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jonathan, your event rocks and people love attending HF

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know basically nothing about this business.

I just read Jason Baptiste's two articles about how this is "serious business" and that was a nice overview.

Anyone else have a suggested reading list for learning more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, we will compile a list for our next post :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post in response to all of the recent HN discussions on email newsletters. Trying to shed more light on the profitable email industry that never gets talked about.

</comment><comment><USER6> The one thing people don't talk about with these newsletters: most of these emails are "bacon. " That is what the email industry calls spam's pretty cousin. People don't try to block these emails because hey, they signed up to receive them. But most people also aren't reading these emails.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this serious? I'm reading this after the Steve Yegge blog and can't tell anymore.

<comment><USER8> Email newsletters are serious business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anybody care to explain how you actually make money from an email newsletter? This article, and all the ones linked from it (and the ones linked from them) just tells you how much people sold their lists for. Never is it mentioned _why_ these lists are valuable.

I'm on a couple of the lists mentioned. They don't charge me anything. They don't try to sell me anything. How is this possibly valuable to anybody in terms of dollars?

<comment><USER10> Advertising. My employer makes big bucks on free email newsletters. The trick is having an engaged audience of people who advertisers want to reach. You can get ad rates that (at least in terms of CPM) are astronomical compared to the web

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this article is missing a lot of information. The "Email Mafia" is listed, but only a few mention total subscriber counts -- which in itself isn't an important number until you talk about open and clickthrough rates.

I also didn't see the newsletters that I regularly get in my inbox: Groupon, LinkedIn, Mint, Yelp, etc.

<comment><USER12> Linkedin, Mint, and Yelp are somewhat different. Email is part of their communication with users. Groupon and the other email companies use email as their primary service. They curate information and deliver it to their readers.

I have been thinking about doing something in this space, but after some initial customer development decided to give up on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting list of companies, another company I've seen is VitalJuice (city based, healthy lifestyle newsletter)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep the Pilot Group I believe also invested in VitalJuice

<comment><AUTHOR> direct link: [http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/18/vital-juice-marketing- cmo-n...](http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/18/vital-juice-marketing-cmo-network- vitaljuice.html)

"In 2006 they left their jobs and started a wellness consulting outfit, and for three months, worked with Revolution Health, a Steve Case-backed company. In May 2007 they went out on their own, tapping their own funds to create Vital Juice. In October 2008 they raised $1 million in Series A funding from Bob Pittman's Pilot Group"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you monetize newsletters with ads only, or are there other ways? Also, what kind of ads can you use? I don't think AdSense can be used in emails.

<comment><USER10> There are some newsletters that charge directly for their content, though those are the exception. You couldn't do that for just any market. For example, The Hotline from National Journal is a paid email newsletter that lots of politicos here in DC subscribe to.

I've even seen people who charge for the newsletter, but you can get it for free if you fill out an extensive questionnaire and "qualify".

<comment><AUTHOR> Lerter.ly Is trying to make charging for email newsletters easier. I agree that it's not right for every market though, we polled our audience and less that 1% were willing to pay $5/mo for the content. In the startup world there is just too much free info to justify paying for it.

<comment><USER10> I think that having _actionable_ content would be the key. People who work in politics have a lot riding on being in the know, so Hotline succeeds. I think this is also part of the reason why WSJ can charge for their website, but USA Today can't.

Thanks for the tip on letter.ly</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The People Behind the Perseid Meteor Showers - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/passing-showers-the-people-behind-the-perseids <comment><USER2> If anyone's interested in seeing the orbits of Comet Swift-Tuttle and its debris that forms the Perseid meteor shower, I made a webgl visualization here showing all the moving parts: [http://www.ianww.com/meteor- showers/](http://www.ianww.com/meteor-showers/)

<comment><USER3> Awesome awesome work! Splendid visualization, might as well put it today on my 2nd monitor as a screensaver.

One small remark - some of the meteors/perseids should lose their orbit and disappear when they enter some planets atmosphere, but they are constantly produced by the comet anyway. Might be good idea to also add the comet itself?

<comment><USER4> Agreed, very cool. Could you share if there is a specific procedure for adding webgl background animations, of what OSes this is possible in? Mac/win/BSD/*nix?</comment></comment></comment>


Five reasons why iPhone is still the best thing invented this year - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1677329_1678542_1677891,00.html

<comment><USER2> Okay, those are the five marketing lines as to why I should purchase an iPhone. Where are the reasons that it is the "best thing invented this year"?

Or, better still: Where are the reasons as to why it constitutes an invention at all?

<comment><USER3> From wikipedia:

An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else besides me think that the iPhone is not an invention?

</comment><comment><USER5> Yup, they evolved _past_ the graphical user interface :).</comment>


Ask HN: why is SMS so expensive - <AUTHOR>

I can get an unlimited 3G data connection for 50 bucks (in my 3rd world country!) these days. SMS should be replaced in the next years as more people do email/tweet over 3G... So, why is SMS so expensive? <comment><USER2> The cost of your data is actually irrelevant - SMSs are sent as part of the usual phone-tower communication system, they fill up empty space in a packet that is sent regardless of whether or not there's an SMS in it. If you're not counting overhead, they cost _literally_ nothing. If you do count overhead, then they still only cost a fraction of a penny.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Self-answering: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=449670>

</comment><comment><USER3> Because people indicate that's what it's worth to them, as demonstrated by their willingness to pay so much.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Texting is the closest thing to pure profit ever invented" -- Sir Chris Gent, founder of Vodafone.</comment>


Scaling Stack Overflow: Keeping It Vertical by Obsessing Over Performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/presentations/stack-exchange <comment><USER2> Or: the long term costs of supporting a poorly-aligned business model.

Vertical scaling would be much easier if almost everything was static, which Stack Overflow could and should be. But they need to shove heavily personalized advertisements down every user's throat to repay their venture capitalists.</comment>


Article 13 Is Back On: Worse, Not Better - <AUTHOR> https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/ <comment><USER2> You'd think those law makers would learn. Or maybe we're the ones who should learn.

When the original proposal was shot down, we were happy because we thought/hoped it was shot down for our reasons, but even then there were signs that some parties in the EU opposed it because it wasn't quite terrible enough. So now they made it worse.

I hope we can keep getting this shot down, but it seems to be important enough for the copyright monopolists to keep pushing this, and public opinion may eventually tire of this.

The good thing is that EU elections are coming in May. We need to know which parties support this so we can campaign against them. Let them bleed in the elections if they won't listen.

<comment><USER3> They have learned. 2 decades worth of learning from the failed dmca, which basically granted Google immunity from copyright violation.

Why should companies like Google be allowed to profit off content creators' work without complying with those content creators' licenses?

<comment><USER2>
      > Why should companies like Google be allowed to profit off content creators' work
      > without complying with those content creators' licenses?

If it's about profit, simply having YouTube pay all revenue from infringing videos to the real owner, might be a much better idea than to block all content.

The process might work like this: A publishes something, gets revenue from it. B claims copyright. YT suspends payment to A until the issue is settled. When B turns out to be right, B gets all the withheld revenue plus however much YT already paid to A, either to be paid by A, or to be withheld by YT from other payments to A.

<comment><USER4> Or it turns out B was wrong, willfully so, and A just lost their income. Sadly, this was A's most popular content and, since A was living paycheck to paycheck, they were unable to pay their rent and were evicted.

B went on to do the same to many other small content creators, because B has 100 million dollars in the bank.

<comment><USER5> Then A disputes the claim a YouTube asks B if the they are sure its infringing on their copyright. B lies and says yes, then YouTube sides with B while A gets a copyright strike, 3 of which and you lose your channel.

Scammers are also extorting money from Youtubers using this feature of Youtube's claim process. See: ObbyRaidz

<comment><USER2> In case of conflict, YouTube shouldn't blindly side with the most powerful party as they're currently doing. Legally the fairest way would be an impartial judge, but in practice small players can't afford the legal representation for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This has happened countless times: A very ill received proposal meets sufficient public resistance to be publicly labeled as "defeated", only to resurface in an almost identical version months/years later. It seems obvious that strong powers playing the long game are lobbying to see this passed.

<comment><USER7> This seems to have become standard operating procedure in the US, and it really kills peoples' trust of our legislative system. It's saddening to hear that the EU is not immune to it either.

<comment><USER6> I would say it's standard in most western countries.

<comment><USER8> Eastern countries too, unless they're too totalitarian to hold votes.

<comment><USER9> That is probably a property of representative democracy.

<comment><USER8> It's a property of all systems. Some asshole is going to try to abuse it to enrich themselves. That's why checks on power are so important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will kill any form of free expression on the Internet in Europe. Join me in considering France, and soon the EU, as an enemy of human rights. The European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10, is dead.

<comment><USER11> I used to be in favor of the EU, but over the last decade the more I learned about how it operated and what kind of regulations they passed, the more opposed I became to it. Just the fact that they're bringing this proposal back _again_ means that the "lawmakers" have zero respect for the general public.

<comment><USER12> I agree to an extent. If France decided to implement these laws in their own country, 30 something other countries could shrug and do their own thing, while the French could attempt to fight it on a local or regional level. While the EU has enabled plenty of good, it's also the perfect platform to implement less good policies such as this in the interest of corporations or rightsholders on an intranational level in a way that wasn't possible before. It's also much harder to be heard as a citizen on the EU-level. I'm not sure what the solution should be, since overall I support the EU.

<comment><USER13> France is an unitary state with provinces and cities. Copyrights are a national matter in unitary states.

<comment><USER12> It's not like there's a national place where you can set up shop and protest or strike. It happens on a local or regional level just because of how geography and people work. If the national government doesn't give a shit either way, then I'm not sure what I can realistically suggest here, but it's irrelevant to the point I was making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> we're getting the the Great Firewall of Europe in small but important steps.

expect to see more "Banned because you're from Europe" messages plastered all over the Internet.

except for VPN and moving to another country, is there any other way for a European to avoiding EU regulation?

<comment><USER2> Vote. Write and talk about this. Create awareness.

We need to shoot this down again and again until they learn. We need to vote them out of office and fix this corporate corruption in our government.

Most importantly, we need to get non-geeks to care about internet freedom, because as long as they believe the talk about how this is necessary, or simply don't care, the copyright monopolists will be able to get away with pressuring governments to undermine our freedom.

<comment><USER15> I don't think we even can vote them out of office. All proposed EU laws are created by the European Commission, which is made up of unelected political appointees that aren't even meant to represent the views of ordinary citizens. We really have little say. The European Council is a little better in that it represents member governments which could be voted out of power, but unless there's a huge number of single-issue voters in multiple states who care only about this I can't see this having much effect.

Democratic accountability in the EU is incredibly weak, and the member governments seem to love it because it's great for creating laws they couldn't get away with at the national level.

<comment><USER16> > unelected political appointees

This has no bearing on the legitimacy of the EU. Members of the commission are selected by the democratically elected government of their respective countries.

People that downplay the democratic legitimacy of the EU really, truly, unequivocally do not understand what they are talking about or have a malicious intention.

<comment><USER2> Legitimacy maybe, but democratic legitimacy is absolutely lacking. A country governed the way the EU is, would not be considered sufficiently democratic. The democracy for the commission is very indirect.

People vote for their national parliament. Parliament appoints a government. Those appointed governments then discuss who to appoint in the commission. Europarliament gets a say, but can only accept or reject the entire commission, not specific members in it.

The Europarliament is the only democratically elected body on the EU level, and its power is sorely lacking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a french i beg other european nations : please, don't let french law makers decide the future of european internet. They don't understand a thing about technology (or science in general) and have a passion for ideology and state regulation.

One of the reason we have had riots every single week for the last 3 months is because of their inability to make smart and pragmatic regulations. Don't listen to them.

<comment><USER18> French lawmakers do not decide.

EU legislation passes through majority support.

This is not a national issue so let's not try to make it one.

> One of the reason we have had riots every single week for the last 3 months > is because of their inability to make smart and pragmatic regulations

Except that many rioters want a rollback on pragmatic measures for purely ideological reasons, of course.

<comment><USER11> > _EU legislation passes through majority support._

Due to the way the EU is set up and the "EU parties" are set up, this basically means that France and Germany have a ridiculous amount of sway on the issue.

<comment><USER18> Number of MEPs is proportional to population... That's called democracy.

<comment><USER11> And democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Also, the way EU parties are structured, you can't even really consider it in that sense. It's possible to divide MEPs from France and Germany between EU parties in a way that voting along party lines would always give a positive outcome for Germany and France. (If you don't get what I mean by this, then think about how gerrymandering allows for a minority to take control over the majority. You can do the same with EU parliamentary groups.)

<comment><USER18> Well if you have a better alternative to democracy we're keen to hear it...

> It's possible to divide MEPs from France and Germany between EU parties in a > way that voting along party lines would always give a positive outcome for > Germany and France

That's not how it works.

The way it works is the same as in most countries: There are a number of MEPs per constituency and then the people vote to decide which party get those seats (proportionally to number of votes).

This has nothing to do with gerrymandering.

Your suggestion is plainly nonsensical.

<comment><USER19> Well, for example, the U.S. federal government was designed to cope with that problem: the Senate represents the states equally, regardless of population, and the President is elected by the electoral college, limiting the ability of large population centers to overwhelm the rest of the country. It's not a perfect system, and there will never be one, because humans are humans. But these problems are not new, and people were dealing with them a long time ago. Did the design of the EU not take them into account?

<comment><USER18> The US Senate and the Presidential election processes are certainly not things to try to copy...

They can both lead to anti-democratic results. In fact the Presidential election process was originally designed purposely to avoid giving the people a direct and full say.

That being said, the EU already has something similar... the member countries represented equally by their governments.

<comment><USER19> Raw democracy can also lead to undesirable results. It's not true that whatever 51% of the population wants is right or good. Do you disagree?

> They can both lead to anti-democratic results. In fact the Presidential > election process was originally designed purposely to avoid giving the > people a direct and full say.

That is one way to characterize it. Another way is that the process was designed hundreds of years ago, before electronic communication, air travel, etc. It was not possible for every citizen to see and hear the presidential candidates before an election. So, like the rest of the representative government, citizens delegated their votes to delegates, who would gather in- person, see and hear the candidates, and select one.

So do you really think it's truthful to claim that the _purpose_ of the presidential election process was to avoid giving citizens a full say?

I feel like you're being intellectually dishonest in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it hard to understand how anyone can think this law is a good idea.

Who exactly are they claiming to protect?

<comment><USER21> Because of the structure of the EU, the process of creating new laws is extremely vulnerable to lobbying. Parliament can only vote down laws, which can only be proposed by unelected officials.

So the leverage that the average EU voter has is only applicable at one very narrow point in the process (the vote to approve), while lobbyists can always buy influence with the lawmakers all they way through the process.

And this is the result. Though it does have to be said that the same process came up with the GDPR and that was a decent (and necessary) piece of legislation.

I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though

<comment><USER22> > I do wonder why FAANG aren't more active lobbying the EU, though

I think they know that article 13 is going to be beneficial for them. If law requires costly content ID, it will make half of companies go out of business or non profitable in Europe. I really think many companies are going to ignore Europe as a whole.

<comment><USER23> The approach that will continue to work for start-ups (both from Europe, eg Sweden is good at this, and the US), is to build out your service in the US first, monetize it there, and then push into the EU once you can afford compliance. This is already the ideal approach, anything the EU does to make regulation worse will merely increase the advantage of using the US as the springboard market. There's absolutely nothing stopping EU start-ups from first focusing on capturing the US market and then turning their focus back to the EU.

There's another approach that is less legally certain. Build up users in both the US and EU, and only monetize the US users while entirely ignoring all EU law. You allow EU citizens to sign up, and do not place any infrastructure in the EU or do any business there initially. Jurisdiction will be in the US. The monetized US users, which will remain lucrative, subsidize building out into the EU member state markets without any revenue generation. You capture the EU userbase in this approach, then later comply with EU law and monetize that userbase after you're compliant. Would work best for ad platform businesses like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.

If I'm operating a service in eg Brazil, I have zero obligation to comply with EU law (depending on treaties of course), nor do I have any responsibility to block EU citizens from signing up for my service. Let the EU users come in, comply with EU law later when you have to in order to monetize the market. Retro fines are one potential concern at scale, however that ends up being the equivalent of a speeding ticket and you own the market.

One of the mistakes that keeps being made by EU tech promoters, is thinking that they should be concerned with competing with the existing US mega platforms (such that the EU needs to build a search engine to rival Google, photo platform to rival Instagram, mobile platforms to rival iOS or Android, etc). That battle was over a decade ago or more in some cases. The focus has to be on the next inflection point opening that allows for a creation of the next mega platforms. With platforms and the Internet, if you don't capture the US market first, the winner in that market will almost always smash you (or buy you) unless you bar access to your market as in the case of China. That's due to the enormous monetary value of capturing the US market (and you pretty much get Canada with it automatically, a $1.7 trillion economy), it acts as a perpetual well of resources to over-spend on then divide and conquering other markets like the EU.

<comment><USER21> > If I'm operating a service in eg Brazil, I have zero obligation to comply > with EU law (depending on treaties of course)

this is not actually true. There are lots of examples, but the best two are probably:

Yahoo (a US company operating entirely in the US) being forced to stop users from selling Nazi memorabilia because it's illegal in France.

Kim Dotcom fighting extradition to the US from New Zealand, for Mega. Everything he did is perfectly legal in New Zealand, but that doesn't seem to matter to the US legal system.

If your service reaches EU customers, then the EU will apply their laws to your service. If you break those laws, then you may find yourself facing legal problems (extradition if available, from Brazil or any country you travel to that has an extradition treaty with the EU).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's almost unbelievable that they want to remove the single piece of protection that makes Article 13 remotely acceptable to me: exemption for SMEs. If many small European internet platforms were allowed to grow in place of the existing American megaplatforms we could have a more competitive ecosystem (i.e. platforms couldn't suddenly change their policies or UIs without risk of significant user losses) and upload filters wouldn't be a legal requirement.

<comment><USER25> But that's been the case as we haven't had article 13 yet, meanwhile where are all these competitive ecosystems?

<comment><USER24> Failing to overcome the network effect unfortunately. My (perhaps naive) hope for this copyright directive was that it would add a cost or limiting factor to the network effect, i.e. after your platform grows past a certain size you are accountable for every user and have to filter uploads at great cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think that all data scientists can pick up the baton here. Maybe we could have a nice analysis about the evolution of Article 13 and who supported what clause. Given that elections are in May this would be valuable information. For the DS people it could be a great example of how to communicate complex ideas in a simple manner. Just a project suggestion for ones portfolio.

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally I'm rooting for the worst possible version of Article 13.

Feed the lawyers, starve the businesses. Make the starkest possible contrast between countries where the lobbyists win, and everyone else. Sometimes you need to get bitten to learn to avoid the snake.

The EU can be to copyright law what Brexit is to internationalism and free trade. A brutal, public, and visible example that completely fucks a major economic player, to the obvious benefit of its neighbors.

The Internet is global. It is much easier to move a digital company than a bricks-and-mortar one, and this would give ample incentive. We will continue connecting the world, continue progressing, and continue making great money doing it. And all the EU citizens will be shut out of that for as long as our government can keep its eyes shut.

Their eyes will open a lot faster under visible economic pain and international embarrassment than they would on the present course.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, in a way, I hope after this Article 13, we (Europe) get blocked from all major "user generated content" sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, etc.

Try to explain it then to the general public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What constitutes a European website ? As long as you are not accepting local currency and don't have a registered company in Europe, are you still affected by this ?

<comment><USER30> Good question.

I host [http://0bin.net/](http://0bin.net/).

I comply to the regular take down notices, but by its very nature, I cannot filter the service since I cannot see what's been pasted.

Would it mean I'll have to move the server outside europe ? Would it mean I'll have to block european IP ?

<comment><USER31> This doesn't seem to be a for-profit service, so it's outside of the scope of the latest drafts of Article 13 thankfully. As long as you never put ads on it, you're good.

<comment><USER32> The french draft includes services older than 3 years.

The new proposal that the french are pushing has the following conditions which must ALL be met:

        Available to the public for less than 3 years
        Annual turnover below €10 million
        Fewer than 5 million unique monthly visitors

<comment><USER31> Another provision of the article limits its scope to services that "organise and promote" user-posted/uploaded content "for profit-making purposes".

The 3 criteria you quoted then further narrow which of the services matching the above provision need to deploy upload filters.

Come to think of it, the pastebin-like site is actually already excluded by the "organise and promote" criterium, regardless of whether it's profit- oriented or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The top-rated comment when they cancelled it last time was "seems like the system is working". So is it?

<comment><USER34> Depends on who you are and your perspective - it definitely is working for someone - just that someone is not representative of EU population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sadly, it is time we join the pedos and traffickers in Tor sites. Our discussion sites, our culture creation sites, all of those should be divorced from law enforcement's reach and be moved to safety. It might seem ridiculous to move a site like HN to tor, but it is ridiculous right up to the day it isn't, and then it is too late. We would also free ourselves of copyright, which in the current state only restricts creativity (the things you would put effort in, risky) and in practice fully allows duplicating complete works (effortless, no risk).

The time of running the web on the simplest paradigms (direct connection) that facilitate meddling has come to an end as any bovine lawmaker can give us impossible instructions that they do not understand themselves. It is time to assert the power of mathematics, let them stew in it a little while, let them realize they can't just shut the whole thing down anymore, and maybe in a couple generations they will have cleaned up their lawmaking act and we can try to join lawful society again. Maybe. But I expect that in time a fully torified core of sites will be considered a foundation of freedom, and not something to give up in any circumstance.

<comment><USER36> EU laws do not apply to the rest of the world. No need to spin up TOR. Put your site in California that should be enough. I don't see HN caring a rat ass about EU law, in the same way that HN did not ask for a publishing license from the Chinese department of communication.

The irony is that the French are the first ones to complain about the hegemony of sites like Google (burning tons of tax payers' money on useless projects like the Quaero search engine), but when they're given an opportunity to shoot themselves up in the foot repeatably, and to kill __ANY __hope of having __ANY __European site that __EVER __competes with the __US __then they seize on it. It 's the apex of stupidity.

I'm going to write an angry mail to my French representative tonight.

<comment><USER37> > Put your site in California that should be enough

What if you want the strong(er) privacy protections of the EU?

<comment><USER38> Then just wait till next year when CCPA comes into effect.

<comment><USER13> CCPA will not be enough. US needs a GDPA (General Data Protection Act).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if at some point it will just make good business sense _not_ to offer your service / product in the EU? I imagine the cost of developing and running software to comply (plus the fines for anything but perfect compliance) would exceed potential revenue from EU customers in many cases.

<comment><USER40> Do you mean as someone not living in the EU? More than 500M people live there and their primary market, when offering a service or a product, is indeed the European market.

<comment><USER39> Yes. Of course, if you are living in the EU, you are stuck with that market :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Stuff like this is why I've gone from being horrified by Brexit to hoping for a hard Brexit. The UK can do better than being stuck with Article 13.

<comment><USER42> The same lobbies exist in the UK, I'd expect a copycat law to land as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> At least they added an explanation with regard to "best efforts":

> When assessing whether an online content sharing service provider has made > its best efforts according to high industry standards of professional > diligence, account shall be taken of whether the service provider has taken > all the steps that would be taken by a diligent operator [...] taking into > account best industry practices [...]

Further, they added "future developments" to the state of the art of existing means.

Page 7, [https://www.politico.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Mandate-R...](https://www.politico.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Mandate-Romania-February-8.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER44> The admin of my Mastodon instance tells me he'll have to shut it down if this passes: [https://nerdculture.de/@ij/101541005474837977](https://nerdculture.de/@ij/101541005474837977)

</comment><comment><USER45> And they wonder why the Brits want out of this.

</comment><comment><USER13> HackerNews with Turnitin/Copyscape would be far worse than what it is now like. Really, there are just a few companies which can implement a "copyright" filter.

For text:

      *Copyscape
      *Turnitin

For the rest:

      *Google+Amazon+Apple (ContentID)
      *Microsoft+Facebook+Netflix ("Microsoft Rights", anyone?)

</comment><comment><USER46> to be honest, after reading this post and the julia link I understand why the law is bad but the idea it is worse simply because it applies to more groups is wrong. a bad law is always a bad law.

the small business exception merely turns a bad law into a bad law as a money grab because penalties will be assessed on a company with deeper pockets and likely increased just because of that.

the whole idea of exceptions to internet related laws recently based on size of the organization or just as worse, its "for profit" or "not for profit" method of business is just politicians moving their weaponization of laws into a new forum

</comment><comment><USER47> Perhaps the internet is only temporary and will soon be gone, at least in some parts of the world. Perhaps it will be confined to only a few countries. Perhaps something will be developed to replace it.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is a depressing thread. :(

</comment><comment><USER49> Liberte fraternite egalite

<comment><USER50> (It's the other way around -- "liberté égalité fraternité")

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Bravo la startup nation !

</comment><comment><USER52> Better source:

[https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/](https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/article-13-worse/)

<comment><USER53> OK, we changed to that from [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190204/09090341521/artic...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190204/09090341521/article-13-is- back-germany-caves-to-france-as-eu-pushes-forward-ruining-internet.shtml). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> One day nobody will care about this back and forth between EU politicians and they will finally pass a law that will destroy the internet as we know it. It's inevitable because we have to win every single time, they only have to win once. My point being: Harbours for creative and intellectual people will always be under fierce attack by the common fool, and they will always have to occupy a niche, hidden from the intolerant eye.

<comment><USER12> You're entirely right. Defending against the encroaching of our rights and the freedoms afforded by the internet (or freedoms in general) requires constant vigilance. A one-time win doesn't matter - big interest groups continue to exist and continue to pour money intro ensuring their interests are disproportionately represented.

This is a losing battle for us. It's a gradual chipping away at our rights that will continue because it simply requires too much effort on the part of citizens.

<comment><USER31> On the face of it, the fix is rather simple: Vote for politicians who listen at least as much to civil society as they do to corporate lobbyists.

Unfortunately, the political system currently structurally incentivizes the opposite, especially at the EU level, about which there is little reporting because that is all organized at the national level. If Julia Reda weren't an MEP and hadn't been sounding the alarm for years now, the first you heard about Article 13 may have been after the final vote in which an even worse version of it was enacted.

At this point, the Greens/EFA group in the EP is the only one which has even taken the time to build infrastructure to voluntarily track (necessary to even hope to achieve any kind of balance!) and transparently publish their lobby meetings online. (Here's an ugly backend view, the pretty one is on individual MEPs' websites: [https://lobbycal.greens-efa- service.eu/all/](https://lobbycal.greens-efa-service.eu/all/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Surely there's a less inflammatory article out there discussing this?

<comment><USER56> Sometimes truth is inflammatory. Art 13. is a natural disaster in the making. I've publicly debated many proponents, even had the plesure of debating mr. Voss and ... they have no clue what they are doing. Remember the US congress deposition of Google and Faceboko CEOs and how utterly uninformed they were? Well the elected representatives in Europe are no better.

Their response to most arguments on how this will hurt creators is "we're just trying to protect creators". No counter arguments, just "our intentions are good". Yeah, I've almost given up at this point. Most legislators just don't understand how modern economy and society works ... and the political groups (like the Pirates) who do, are having a very hard time growing due to overall apathy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> EU slowly starts to resemble old monarchies, detached from reality, "solving" problems that does not exists and totally missing important issues like Euro currency zone crisis, immigration crisis, lack of common and cohesive policy towards Russia and US, economic inequalities between old and new EU members, southern and northern EU countries.

After Lisbon treaty EU became some kind of mixture of the union of independent countries and a single organism. "The force" that is supposed to bind all countries into a single organism are EU council, EU commission and EU parliament. The real power is in the hands of the first two institutions - that's the EU bureaucracy which became a modern days "monarchy" \- people does not have any power to decide who is nominated to those bodies and those bodies can do whatever they want. EU parliament is pretending to be some kind of "democratic" control, but, at the end of the day, everyone votes "properly", if not, voting is repeated again and again, MPs are disciplined, some words are replaced with their smoother version and we get what we were supposed to get.

<comment><USER58> Why are these articles always used for anti-EU tirades? Did people also call into question the democratic legitimacy of the United States while SOPA was on the table?

<comment><USER59> The United States is pretty settled as a sovereign nation.

The EU is on a roadmap for complete integration along the model of the USA.

It's not unreasonable for people to stop and question whether this is what they want when they see that they have no power to oppose disagreeable, draconian laws like this one.

<comment><USER60> > The EU is on a roadmap for complete integration along the model of the USA.

That's news to me, especially since multiple EU sources have repeatedly denied this claim over the years. Could you provide a link to this roadmap of yours?

<comment><USER61> Has there ever been a time when the EU has devolved power back to the nations within it?

I can't ever recall something like that happening. But every decade or so there's a new EU treaty that transfers more power to the EU, eventually you end up with something that looks like the EU as the country and the old nation states as the provinces, but it happens so slowly over time that nobody really stops and asks if that's what everyone wants.

<comment><USER62> In France they did ask. In 1992 there was a referendum about Maastricht, where the 'yes' had a tiny lead over the 'no'. In 2005 the French people voted a resounding 'no' to the European consitution , so did the Dutch if I remember well. EU then modified minor things and renamed it the Lisbon treaty, which has been ratified by parliamentary procedure. So even when people opinion is being asked, it's completely circumvented. It is very clear that EU has never been about building a democracy, those that believe that are very naive.

<comment><USER59> > In 2005 the French people voted a resounding 'no' to the European > consitution , so did the Dutch if I remember well.

Along with this, The Irish were forced to vote a second time. Whether the same happens in Britain remains to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Article 13 looks like a really nice foundation for censorship.

It's interesting for me to see how EU socialistic tendencies correlate with things like "right to be forgotten", "article 13" and other initiatives. It's as if party nomenclature is worried about their self preservation already.

It's also telling to see how little effect citizens of EU have over these decisions.

</comment><comment><USER64> Theses are the same law makers who passed Net Neutrality too and laughed at Brexit.</comment>


Who cares about the stock price, Zuck should win the Nobel Peace Prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.sneakerheadvc.com/2012/06/01/who-cares-about-the-stock-price-zuck-should-win-the-nobel-peace-prize/#prclt-X2D9kRdg

<comment><USER2> I think the concluding paragraph really hits on a very good point, and one that people don't consciously realize too often.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay, I am a huge fan of the gay community, but if I was reading the news one morning and saw that Zuckerboy got a Nobel Peace Prize, you know damn well that I would spit coffee everywhere. He's done a lot of good, but he's done just as much bad. I'm not concerned enough to properly counter this article, but I think I've made myself pretty clear.</comment>


Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the US and multiple other countries aren't too far behind. Climate-change denial is our generation's ignominy for the future - <USER2> long that might be.

</comment><comment><USER4> Alternate link: [https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/comment- australia-i...](https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/comment-australia-is- committing-climate-suicide/ar-BBYArAP#interstitial=1)

</comment><comment> t-h-e-chief Australia not committing suicide; we are already dead - that's why they call us the down-under; the grave of the world. Killed by our wanker leaders.

<comment><USER5> Speak for yourself, maybe you're dead, i'm not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Australia knew the science and yet went ahead and kept electing conservatives who promised more coal, less taxes, less money for fire brigades and preventing fires, and to do nothing about climate change. They now experience the consequences of their choices. Hopefully next time they make better choices, like putting their current PM in jail for gross negligence and electing people who acknowledge the causes of this heartbreaking disaster and actually do something about it.

<comment><USER7> I don't hold much hope. This is the same country that elected the Liberals (the current government) on a policy of "stop the boats" and "the opposite of what the other party wants".

Murdoch's ownership of the media is extremely effective.

<comment><USER8> Murdoch newspapers in question.. caught not actually covering the fires.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the- australian...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian- murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic- races)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> California, Brazil and Australia. I have lost my hope. Next summer, there will be more. Nothing can reverse the damages made by humans. The only way seems to be reducing population to a sustainable level.

<comment><USER5> The "there will be more" part happened last summer, but thanks to media propaganda/manipulation/disinfo[0] you didn't noticed it, your attention was on Evil Bolsonaro and the Hong kong protests.

[0] [https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/761591604/bolivia-is- fighting...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/761591604/bolivia-is-fighting- major-forest-fires-nearly-as-large-as-brazils?t=1578141160887)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Forgive my ignorance but can someone explain how these kinds of fires usually start and why couldn't they stop them when they were small and easy to put away?

<comment><USER11> I think the main sources are lightning strikes, accidental human ignition and deliberate arson. A lot of people have been arrested for deliberate arson recently ([https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nsw-firefronts- uncon...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/nsw-firefronts- uncontrollable-as-state-braces-for-heatwave/news- story/4f006855e6b1598ba3a6d53c66391516)).

I would guess a combination of winds and high fuel load means a small fire can become an uncontrollable roaring blaze very quickly. I guess also a lot of fires could be started in areas that are not easily accessible to fire fighters so it might not even be an option to stop them while they are small.

<comment><USER12> ...and a fair few from the native Australian species, the Eucalyptus. Known to spontaneously combust and even spontaneously explode when spots of resin magnify sunlight. The leaves give off enough oils into the air that they can also spread a fire across a wide area through the tree tops. The plants and seeds are adapted to use fire as part of reproduction, and the seeds fire resistant. Just never normally on this scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While Australia has the wrong climate plan, Australia only contributes 1% of the CO2 produced in the world. So even if Australia went carbon free, it would still have the same problems--carbon dioxide circulates throughout the world. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_Au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_Australia)

<comment><USER12> Worlds largest coal exporter, at near 40% of the world's coal, puts Australia as the third highest global export source of CO2. Behind only Saudi and Russia (oil and gas respectively).

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia- co2...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-co2-exports- third-highest-worldwide/11420654)

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure it's fair to count a country's fossil fuel exports to its CO2 contributions. Arguably Australia could increase the price of coal by stopping its coal production but the effect would just be that mines elsewhere would reopen or increase production to meet demand.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure it's fair to give production and export a free pass in the accounting, as we do.

If coal prices increase it strengthens the case everywhere, for switching to alternative fuels. More solar, wind, hydro schemes will start, and some will replace coal with gas -- which although fossil is, at least, a step in the right direction. Of course mines may reopen, but if the world is ever to be serious about solving the problem that should be restricted, regulated or taxed by the nation with the reopening mines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Economic Suicide or Climate Suicide, those were the options.

People can call is climate claim denial all the want, but that is mostly down to them not understanding economics, and the economic realities

The climate issues can not be solved by banning things, taxing things, or regulating things. It can only be solved in the same way every other human problem has been solved. Innovation, we need to innovate our way out of the problem.

Looking to government solutions to the issue will always result in disappointment and no solution

<comment><USER12> Radium, Heroin and other patent snake oil medicines were solved by innovation not regulation?

How did we innovate around lead in petrol or pipes? Or the health consequences of smoking? Adulteration of food?

CFCs?

Seems like appropriate use of regulation, punitive taxation and banning has a long history of working well, despite your economic dogma.

<comment><USER15> You believe the Heron problem has been solved by government regulations? Or there are not Snake Oil product today sold with the complete approval of the government? And I am not sure what regulations your referring to around Radium...

The others are more of the same, some of it is misappropriation to how much the government actually impacted things vs normal market pressures, the government has the habit of coming in after society has already starting phasing out a product or practice then "regulating" the last few companies that have not changed yet as the pressure of the market leaders, it is form or protectionism to put competition out of business.

But continue to believe the government work for you, and not Large Multi National corporations. All evidence speaks to the contrary...

<comment><USER12> It has been solved in the sense of no longer being an OTC non addictive medicine suitable for baby. The war on drugs is an entirely unconnected issue.

No market pressures were affecting adulteration of food or tobacco until governments started acting. Post war the vast majority of adults smoked thanks to US marketing led campaigns to promote wider adoption, and their "torches of freedom" campaign to get adoption started among females. Nor was lead in any way declining, quite the contrary it was constantly increasing as car use spread. Asbestos was being used profligately until regulation came in. Thalidomide was outlawed in developed nations, yet those multi nationals quite happily sell it to the developing world, off script. There is _no_ evidence for their being on the side of the public interest whatsoever, yet countless, endless examples of their working against, from disinformation campaigns on smoking, fire retardants, DDT, lead in fuel, Bhopal, enough to fill a book. Capitalism _needs, absolutely needs_ constraining.

If governments today do not work for us, as they did in the fifties, sixties and seventies, it is because they have been mainly captured by the cult of neoliberalism and small laissez-faire hands of governance, and the libertarian think tanks and lobbyists, such that even the "left" is right leaning...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Google properly crawl and index JavaScript frameworks? - <AUTHOR> https://goralewicz.com/blog/javascript-seo-experiment/ <comment><USER2> There are no results.</comment>


A  99 year old lady becomes an iPad user - writes poetry  - <AUTHOR> http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/04/22/99-year-old-lady-becomes-an-ipad-user-writes-poetry/

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on a comment a reader left on the post, I thought I'd add a small personal comment.

I have such a senior lady in my family. One with 94 years and a pretty dull life. One that can't really read the small type on a regular paper book or newspaper. She is my grandmother and anyone who thinks 90+ year old ladies sit in front of a desktop computer and just starts doing things is saddly mistaken.

<comment><USER2> My grandmother is 90 and using a computer. I am happy to have set her up with one a couple of years ago, against the recommendations of other family members who thought it would be no good.

It is a standard Windows XP computer. She emails, surfs, writes letters and does online banking.

What is stopping your senior lady - eyesight can't be fixed with glasses anymore?

I admit I keep wondering if I should show my grandmother more interesting things, like social stuff. I am just not sure what - World of Warcraft maybe? I myself don't chat on the internet (except HN and Twitter), so I am not sure what would be a good place to send her to. Maybe just Facebook? (I also don't use Facebook, but maybe other family members do).

What would be a good site for multiplayer games? I myself use Brettspielwelt, but the user interface is not very good.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps send her to flickr, my grandmother loves to look at photos, so she might get a voyeuristic kick out of it.

I've preordered one of these for my grandmother and have started considering getting one for myself.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, but I was looking for something more social/interactive. Flickr seems passive, unless you take photos yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My limited experience of older people and computers has been very positive. All the older members of my family (70s - 89) use computers for email, research, shopping etc. The eldest (90 in June) has been playing with computers for years and until very recently was having fun with programming languages and wrote quite a few simple python utilities. A couple of them use and are comfortable with cloud based tools like delicious. If I asked, I think they would probably give up TV before their PCs and laptops.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that is great, and they are very fortunate. Unfortunately it doesn't match my experience with such seniors.

The ones I have contact with are totally intimidated by computers and can't seem to get past the complexity of using such simple things as the mouse and figuring out how the Windows work.

The ones which are more adventurous do use computers, but they loose their Windows and end up opening the same thing several times because the previous window was covered up by another, that kind of thing. This is where I believe the iPad makes such big difference to these people.

<comment><USER4> I know what an important tool computers can be to the older folk in my life; so, yes, if the iPad allows more seniors to benefit from computers then that's fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This story has been updated with a video from Fox12 Oregon, with an actual interview with the lady who has glaucoma and seems really happy about being able to read again.

She mentions that she could write, but she couldn't see what she had written.</comment>


Why hardware development is hard: Verilog is weird - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.github.io/blog/2013/09/07/why-hardware-development-is-hard/ <comment><USER2> The problem is that Verilog/VHDL isn't a "programming language" in the sense that C, Lisp, Haskell, or Python are programming languages. So approaching them with a programming language mindset is asking for a lot of pain and misunderstanding.

HDLs like Verilog and VHDL describe digital circuits, not algorithms and instructions for manipulating data. If C code is akin to instructions for getting to a grocery store and shopping for vegetables, HDL code is describing the blueprint of a house textually. Maybe the solution is building some ultra high level abstraction that can somehow encompass both problem domains, but given how difficult hardware synthesis with existing HDLs is right now I don't know if that'll happen anytime soon. And the fact that logic takes so long to synthesize and simulate really has little to do with Verilog's deficiencies; if anything it's a limitation of the register-transfer level abstraction that's currently used to design digital hardware.

<comment><USER3> The author touches on this, when he says:

"To write Verilog that will produce correct hardware, you have to first picture the hardware you want to produce."

I think that's the crux of the issue. Most digital designers _do_ have a picture of the actual hardware, as a block diagram, in their heads. When I write RTL, the process is very front-loaded: I spend hours with a pen and paper before I even sit down at the keyboard. The algorithms in question are only a small part of the work of building functioning hardware; where when designing software, I would let the compiler make decisions about how long it expects certain operations to take, and what to inline where, these are all things that I plot "by hand" when building hardware, before I even open a text editor.

I think, then, that the author kind of misses the point when he goes on to say that "you have to figure out how to describe it in this weird C-like [...] language" \-- to be honest, that's the same for all types of programming: when I go home and write C, I have to take abstract concepts and express them in this weird C-like language, too! Arcane syntax is irritating, but is not something fundamentally 'hard' (unless it's _too_ arcane, anyway).

By the way -- I also often wondered "why the hell does synthesis take so long?". I originally assumed it was because Xilinx's (and Synopsys's, and ...) software engineers were terrible and had no idea how to write efficient programs. This might be true, but I now believe is probably not the majority of it; if "why's it taking so long?" is a question that interests you, I recommend looking into the VLSI CAD tools class on Coursera.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/course/vlsicad](https://www.coursera.org/course/vlsicad)

<comment><USER4> By far, most of my time spent in FPGA dev so far has been envisioning the state machines and timing details involved. I use VHDL, so it's never been a question of "how can I make VHDL output what I want?"\---for me, it's always the struggle of "why can't I just ask VHDL to make n of these units?", where n is some upstream provided number.

I think the author might need to step away and look at it from the other side: how can we take a working, but overly-verbose language like VHDL and make it more powerful? At least VHDL was envisioned from the beginning as a hardware description language, and it definitely shows.

<comment><USER5> Generate statements are your friend.

<comment><USER4> VHDL generics and generate work nicely for 1d cases, but for 2d cases (systolic arrays), it's difficult to make the scripting really work without hard-coding a bunch of corner cases.

Another example is that defining barrel shifters is impossible to parameterize, because you need to hardcode the mux cases (see the Xilinx datasheet[1]). That's kind of insane, considering that bit-shifting is a very common and basic operation. This is particularly problematic if you're trying to describe something without having to resort to platform-specific instantiation blocks.

It's a little frustrating that VHDL doesn't have a higher-level standard instantiation library, because you're chained to a platform the moment you start doing anything other than basic flip-flops.

[1] [http://www.xilinx.com/support/sw_manuals/2_1i/download/xsisy...](http://www.xilinx.com/support/sw_manuals/2_1i/download/xsisyn.pdf) (pg 51)

<comment><USER5> Well, I suppose you could say assembly is an analog of writing hdl that is very structural.

I haven't done it myself, but generates can be nested. You'd have to check to see if your tools support it or not though.

With the xilinx example, I'm not sure what you mean. Is it choosing to do multi-level muxing vs a naive muxing solution? I'd start by just writing a simple behavioral version, and only if that didn't meet performance constraints would I bother doing anything structural about it.

It's late and maybe I'm just not thinking it through. I'll take a stab at some of this and maybe it'll be clearer to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So um, _why_ do they hate Haskell?

"it's politically difficult", "scary", "one person suggested banning any Haskell based solution"

Just going by his description (as I don't know much about hardware design except a single uni course ~15 years ago), it sounds as if a functional programming language like Haskell would be a perfect fit?

"one person suggested banning any Haskell based solution" \-- that's pretty much literally calling a taboo on Haskell.

The article doesn't really name any reasons for this, can anyone here explain, maybe?

The only reason I can imagine would be perhaps that if you've got some seasoned veteran hardware developers living breathing verilog that are used to doing it "this way" for decades, they will be adverse to change, especially if it means learning a new programming language, perhaps in particular if it means a new paradigm or because of Haskell's pure/mathematical/function theoretical bend? (I'm just guessing here)

However (and this is where I'm most probably certainly wrong), if you're developing systems that cost 8 figures to prototype, and the current solutions are super slow and/or inaccurate to test, shouldn't even seasoned veterans, at least some of them, be able to swallow their pride?

<comment><USER7> Functional programming doesn't make sense for this sort of thing as you can't define a circuit recursively. Mitrion-C is an example of a higher-level functional language aimed at configuring FPGAs. It's pretty useless unless you have insider knowledge on how the system works.

<comment><USER8> > you can't define a circuit recursively

Could you elaborate on this? Depending on what you mean, I might have a direct counter-example.

<comment><USER9> please show that example anyway :P pretty sure skylan_q means you'd run out of hardware gates if you try something infinite?

<comment><USER8> Well, you can define a combinational circuit as something that has n inputs and m outputs and it is one of:

* a gate,

* a circuit that takes two inputs and produces two outputs by swapping the order,

* a circuit that takes one input and produces one output,

* a circuit that takes one input and produces no outputs,

* the circuit obtained by taking two circuits and composing them in serial,

* the circuit obtained by taking two circuits and composing them in parallel.

This produces a simple inductive definition for combinational circuits. Synchronous, sequential circuits can be obtained by taking a combinational circuit and connecting the first n outputs to the first n inputs via D flip- flops. If you want asynchronous circuits, you can add another combinator that takes a circuit and a connects the first n outputs to the first n inputs without the flip-flops.

With these definitions, it's quite straight forward to manipulate circuits in a functional manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In school we learned VHDL. I found it EASY to adapt. However you have to ditch the notion you are working with a programming language.

So either build your own CPU in VHDL specifically optimized for you problem. Or "code" it like you would build hardware!

This means taking a different look at things:

for example storing in an array: you create a bus: address bus, of the width you need, data-bus of data width you need to write (keep it reasonable, or you run out of routing), and a write/read bit. Then hook your counter up to that, increment the time and databus, and have fun.

<comment><USER11> VHDL for FPGA's is easy but in the real world you need to deal with things like latency, PLLs, et al. There are few academic programs that make students aware of the trials and tribulations in modern hardware design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IMO the syntax of Verilog isn't so problematic. Adhering to a simple style guide will avoid most gotchas. The author does make a passing reference to the real problems though:

1\. Simulation is many orders of magnitude slower than the same code running in production (and you see code in production only after many months and dollars). You don't face this slowdown when writing software.

2\. Compared to software, there is much less code reuse in hardware. With software, it doesn't cost much if your binary is 10% or even 100% bigger, so your class can be written a more general/reusable but less efficient way. But a 10% increase in the size of a chip makes it significantly more expensive, so as a hardware designer you tend to create one-off 'classes' that are as efficient as possible, but less general/reusable.

<comment><USER13> You can overcome 2 by building a software that parametrizes your hardware.

Just like a core wizard, you can build a Python scripts that output the Verilog/VHDL code according to the desired settings. Not only accelerates the process, but may also prevent bugs on the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The aversion to Haskell is so severe that when we discussed a hardware style > here at Google, one person suggested banning any Haskell based solution

...curious, but why would folks in this field even care about what programming language is this based on? Theoretically abusing the concept, wouldn't you just use something Brainfuck based if you found a nice way to describe your hardware using some BF based software and DSL? Most attributes of programming languages that we software guys care about seem irrelevant at this level, so Haskell or C or Lisp, why would it matter?

<comment><USER15> Well, because some languages are harder. Haskell is a tough nut to crack (especially the "Monad" thing, but the type system also gives some question marks as well)

Yeah, functional languages are closer to what hardware does, but more importantly, they may be close _but not close enough_

As the example showed, you have several side effects. Combinational logic ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinational_logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinational_logic)) is a very good match to functional languages, however Sequential logic is "very different" (from an analysis point of view)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > not because of deficiencies in [Haskell], but because it's politically > difficult to get people to use a Haskell based language

I know tons of languages, but I've never really been able to understand Haskell. The whole monad thing is just...weird. I've read several descriptions, and had it explained to me multiple times on HN, but I still just Don't Get It. And I feel like I _should_ Get It, because I have a degree in math including an upper-level course in logic.

To me, that suggests a problem with the language design of Haskell -- maybe monads are a bad abstraction, maybe the syntax should be different, maybe there's a brilliant and simple explanation that I haven't found yet. But the bottom line is that the learning curve for people coming from other languages needs to be a lot lower for Haskell to ever be anything but a tiny niche.

<comment><USER17> There isn't much to Monads at all. One problem that some Haskell beginners hit is that they read some bunk monad explanations and only get confused, and that monads get so hyped up that when met with the actual description, they try to look for something more that isn't actually there.

Monads are just a set two or three operations on a data structure, which obey certain laws. The operations are either ( map(function,structure), collapse(structure), create(value) ) or ( bind(function,structure), create(value) ) where you can implement map and collapse in terms of bind, and vice versa. You don't even need to know the laws to use monads, only to create a new monad.

map(function,structure) is a function that applies a function to every element in the structure. Pretty straightforward. For example:

        -> map(addThree,[1,2,3])
        [4,5,6]

Collapse is a function which takes structures embedded in a structure of the same type, and gets rid of one level. For lists, it's the same as concatenating all sublists.

        -> collapse([[],[3,4],[6,1,2]])
        [3,4,6,1,2]

Create takes a value and puts it into the structure in the simplest way possible.

        -> create(3)
        [3]

These three functions are enough to have a monad over your structure, and are how monads are usually defined in mathematics. But lets look at the alternative.

For the sake of explaining bind, let's introduce a new function which we will just use as an example:

        -> func makeThree(value): return [value,value+1,value+2]

Let's say we have a list of values [3,1,5] and we want to apply makeThree on it to get a new list. Let's try doing it using map.

        -> map(makeThree,[3,1,5])
        [[3,4,5],[1,2,3],[5,6,7]]

We got a list of lists rather than just the simple list we wanted, but we can use collapse to get it into what we want:

        -> collapse(map(makeThree,[3,1,5]))
        [3,4,5,1,2,3,5,6,7]

And here is an example of using bind to do the same thing:

        -> func bind(function,structure): return collapse(map(function,structure))
        -> bind(makeThree,[3,1,5])
        [3,4,5,1,2,3,5,6,7]

This definition of bind is valid for all monads. I have used the list monad as an example here, but many other structures are also monads. You don't really see the power of what you can really do with monads until you use them in a language that supports them well. In the actual definition of monads, collapse is called join. The definition using bind is the one that is more popular in programming, while the definition using join and map is more popular in mathematics.

I'm not actually going to show what the laws governing the interactions between these functions are in this comment, but I can explain them if you ask.

<comment><USER18> TDIL, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something seems off to me about this post.

One generally simulates the RTL long before doing anything with gates. Mostly because RTL is faster. Only when you have things sufficiently nailed down, have done all the timing analaysis, etc, do you start running gate sims.

Even for pretty damn large designs, compiling RTL shouldn't be a big hinderance…minutes instead of hours.

Considering the magnitude of complexity involved with gate sims, I find it hard to complain. I can't speak for other vendors, but Mentor's questa does a pretty amazing job at optimizing and running at "speed."

The main issue I think is that simulations are generally single core affairs. When you've got millions of gates in your design, having to serialize that event simulation down to a single core is surely going to be a bottleneck.

When the simulators can run on multiple machines, partitioning the design (this is the tricky part), and run more in parallel, we'll see some speed advances.

But for that to work, you'd have to be very careful how you do your design. If it's spaghetti with tentacles reaching out from every part of the design to every other part, you probably won't have much luck splitting that up for parallel sims.

Personally, I think verilog _is_ weird, but I come from a VHDL background. Like verilog you have a subset that is synthesizable, but it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot with VHDL in my opinion.

I spend a lot of my time in SystemVerilog doing verification these days. It brings some nice concepts to the verification table, but what an awful language. It's like they stapled 3 different languages together, and took everything that is bad about OO and stuffed it in there without ever asking "Does this actually make Verification easier?"

<comment><USER19> VCS took 15 minutes for SV recompile and 60+ for clean compile (depending on level of "clean" and level of "compile") for "large" projects on top of the line servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obviously hardware development looks hard and weird to software people, in the same way C++ looks weird to an EE.

It's slow only because the synthesizer makes huge efforts in the optimization of the design, trying to pack the logic in as little resources as possible. Shut down optimizations and suddenly its blazing fast (like icarus verilog).

</comment><comment><USER21> Chip vendors often give you a way to instantiate on chip hardware (memories, latches, etc).

I found the path of least resistance (and highest performance) was to figure out what circuit I wanted, then basically use Verilog to wire these primitives together to make it. By causing verilog to use an actual memory block, rather than a stack of flipflops, you would yield a nice performance increase also.

The trouble is that doing that isn't vendor neutral, and the whole approach probably wouldn't be any good if you were targeting ASIC. It was just 'alright at college'.

In 'real' pro verilog development, do people do this?

<comment><USER22> I'm late to this discussion, but as a "real pro" VHDL coder, I can at least sate your curiosity.

At my company, we abstract the vendor specific implementations to have a common interface that we can then use to keep the rest of our code vendor neutral.

For example, within the "Dual Port RAM" section of our revision control system, we have separate files that instanciate memory control blocks for Xilinx Spartan and Altera's Cyclone FPGAs, and generalize the interfaces so that all I see when creating a design is a vendor agnostic "dpram" component interface. When I need to use one in our design, I just need to import the correct file into my build corresponding to the actual FPGA that will be used. Migrating to another vendor involves changing which file gets during synthesis.

Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would ask your team to take a second look at Bluespec. I had used it for a project some 4 years back, Even today When I have to code something I wish I had Bluespec.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cyclicity CDL is nice: [http://cyclicity- cdl.sourceforge.net/cdl.php](http://cyclicity-cdl.sourceforge.net/cdl.php)

<comment><USER25> I'd also like to point out MyHDL: [http://www.myhdl.org/doku.php](http://www.myhdl.org/doku.php) It allows the full power of Python (being just another module) while you're developing and testing, and when you're ready to compile to hardware you can compile the RTL subset of your program to Verilog or VHDL and take it to hardware from there.

The creator did a good talk about it at PyCon Taiwan earlier this year: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSgOpvr8FII](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSgOpvr8FII)

<comment><USER26> MyHDL is great, more people should use it. I find it especially powerful for building test frameworks. I love using the power of Python for all the verification logic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> LOL, I love this thread. Hardware is the new Software! But Hardware description languages are just that, structured languages that describe hardware. If you come from a background of programming, it will be hard for you. I am someone who comes from a background of hardware that had to learn software, but then when Verilog came along, oh man, was I in heaven. Do not think of VHDL or Verilog as a language, think of it more in terms of HTML, HTML is a mark up language for type setting, HDL is a mark up language for hardware. Hardware is not sequential, everything will happen at the same time unless you prevent that with a state machine. With sequential languages like C or Pascal etc., everything happens sequentially unless you go out of you want to try to make things happen seemingly at once. With HDL, you have the opposite problem, everything will happen at once on each clock cycle, unless you make a state maching to make things sequential. Once you see this, and the amazing power of it, you will see why I say... Hardware is the next Software.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't the reset synchronous? (Small Quibble)

Agreed that hardware language is generally hard to pick up on but "produced something random" is a bit strong (excluding bugs in simulators, which are a bit more common than I would've expected).

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm having a hard time reading this article, considering he starts off with false information like:

"The problem is that Verilog was originally designed as a language to describe simulations, so it has constructs to describe arbitrary interactions between events. When X transitions from 0 to 1, do Y. [...] But then someone had the bright idea of using Verilog to represent hardware."

Verilog was made from the start with the sole intention of describing hardware. Hardware programming and software programming are fundamentally different. Comparing them is irrelevant.

<comment><USER29> From Wikipedia:

"Originally, Verilog was intended to describe and allow simulation; only afterwards was support for synthesis added."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verilog#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verilog#History)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What computer setup do you use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> MacBook Pro retina with i7 haswell, 16gb ram, and 512gb ssd. I use fusion to run windows 7 and Ubuntu. I am really happy with it after 6 months and have grown to avoid hitting certain key combinations in windows or Linux that kick me back to OS X.

Strong points: Performance is really exceptional. No problems running visual studio and SQL server. Battery life is great as well. I get a days worth of usage out of it. Bought it refurbished from Apple so I saved some money.

Weak points: Some annoyances with slow wake up and connecting to wifi after wake. If that is the trade off for getting incredible battery life then it is OK.

<comment><USER3> Can you actually use the MBP keeping on your lap? I heard MBPs heat a lot and usual CPU working temps are always 60C+. How true is that? Are these comfortable to use on lap with all those high temptretures?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My main machine is the black beast, a Dell Precision T7400 with dual E5405, 12gigs 667mhz ECC, (2) 256G and a 500G mirrored pair. Video is Nvida Quadro FX 1700 driving a 20" @ 1600x900 and a 22" @ 1920 x 1080. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard and a Logitech M510 mouse.

I've had it for almost 7 years. It doesn't choke on anything since I bumped the RAM from 4 to 12G - I was having issues with running virtual machines.

Operating System wise it's got a 50 meg FreeDos partition at the front of the bootloader for when I screw things up. There's Windows XP Professional X64 edition and CentOS 6 on one of the 250G, the other 250G has Ubuntu Studio 14.04. The 500G has Windows 8 that was upgraded over a Windows 7 installation. By default Grub2 boots to Ubuntu Studio (without the low-latency kernel). By default the system will boot to FreeDos if I've hosed Grub.

I wound up with two different size monitors because there was only one 22" in stock and on sale when the old 24" died. It turns out that the 20" rocks because of it's lower DPI/larger pixels. I can kick a window to it and read it from further away - i.e. leaning back in my chair with the keyboard on my lap (the MS NE4000 is designed to sit in your lap, ergonomically no less).

Away from the desk, I use my Android phablet - an LG Optimus Pro. Now that I've got a Logitech K410 keyboard for it's even more useful. There's also an old Vostro in the house and my ancient Toshiba Satellite 1805-S203 with Wary Puppy (the video connector to the display has become dodgy, unfortunately).

Printers are my current focus. The Brother MFC-5405 crapped out on Tuesday. The refurbished Citizen GSX-145 from ebay arrived yesterday ($5 buy it now plus $20 shipping). Waiting on the right cable from MonoPrice - I stupidly ordered the IEEE 1284 the first time because it sounded better and I had overwritten the Centronics and Serial cable brain cells. I put the HP LaserJet 2605DN up for sale on Craigslist. The Epson Workforce 1100 will go down to the family room. The Satellite may wind up a wireless print server. [1] I'll probably get a bespoke scanner at some point. But I will soon be tractor fed impact ribbon reliable for when I want to print.

If you've read this far, there's probably something wrong with you. But obviously not as wrong as what's wrong with me.

[1] I stuck a Broadcom wireless G daughter card out of an HP laptop with a cracked screen in it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have Dell XPS L501x, which have upgraded with SSDs and RAM. It's i7 740QM, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 2GB nVidia GT 435M graphics. I have dual booted with Yosemite and Windows 8.1. Works for me!

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a macbook pro retina with 256GB SSD - i5 - 8GB Ram. Is really nice for travelling and working all over my house.

<comment><USER6> +1.

btw, are you having some laggy (high load avg) using yosemite?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most important stuff (no brands): SSD, two screens, mechanical tenkeyless keyboard.</comment>


Show HN: Randstr – random strings at the command line with unicode/emoji (go) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leighmcculloch/randstr <comment><AUTHOR> I've been learning go and this is my first CLI app. There's definitely some YAGNI in this.. _cough_ emoji _cough_..but supporting unicode/emoji led me to expressing the charsets as an interface instead of as a string or array of characters, which are so nice and so lightweight in go.

brew install leighmcculloch/randstr/randstr

or

go install github.com/leighmcculloch/randstr/cmd/randstr

Feedback welcome, especially on project structure and best ways to distribute go CLIs.

<comment><USER2> Curious as to how the use of emoji and other unicode effects your password management.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added unicode and emoji for fun which is where the YAGNI reference came from. I doubt many websites accept them, even Google don't. But you're welcome to give it a go:

randstr -charset ASCII,UnicodePassword</comment></comment></comment>