Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html <comment><USER2> I met Prof. Tanenbaum in 2008, when I pitched AWS (Amazon Web Services) to the university staff. (I was Tech Evangelist for AWS in EMEA at the time).

I only knew about him because of his "fights" with Linus Torvalds, and because I've studied on a couple of his books (which I found excellent).

Meeting him was a big surprise: extremely funny, friendly, provocative, very smart, and in general someone you could instantly like. I loved when he would think about something and just close one eye, raise the other one to the ceiling, and make one of the funniest faces ever.

I felt so happy afterwards, for the honor of meeting him, and for the joy that derived from that attitude of his.

I wish every professor was as enjoyable (and competent) as him.

</comment><comment><USER3> I strongly recommend reading all of his books. They are very clear and non boring and the knowledge you get from understanding them is really the basics of what any programer should know I believe (well except maybe for the distributed systems book).

After reading this faq, I'm very curious about the travel book.

<comment><USER4> I love his Operating Systems book [0] which explains OS Concepts using Minix code

[0] - [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388)

<comment><USER5> I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is $150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this book would cost if it wasn't a textbook.

The same book in Amazon India: [http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems- Implementation-Tanenb...](http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems- Implementation-Tanenbaum- Andrew/dp/8120329554/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1426602500&sr=8-4&keywords=tanenbaum)

Update: Cheaper books bought in India may not be commercially exported out of India

<comment><USER6> Yeah, do they ship to Europe?

<comment><USER7> Not to Spain, at least: "Sorry, this item can't be shipped to your selected address."

<comment><USER8> And not to México either... :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard' > (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine?

Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being difficult to master.

<comment><USER10> You must be joking about Dutch being difficult to master. Dutch grammar is in every aspect simpler than German. The orthography is a bit awkward though.

Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). I guess he just got that knowledge from some old grammar book...

<comment><USER11> _Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ( "de" word)._

Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns:

      Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei.

Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is another question ;).

<comment><USER12> Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.)

The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.

<comment><USER11> _Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.)_

...if you know the sex of the animal. Also see here (the 'Toelichting'):

[http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_mu...](http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_muis_heeft_staart_bezeerd/)

Of course, these annoyances only exist because the distinction is going away, but hasn't gone completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below > 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven > days a week just to keep up.

Is this true? Seems crazy, how do you stand doing this for ~5 years?

<comment><USER14> Slight exaggeration on the IQ, less so on the amount of work.

Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep.

<comment><USER15> > Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of > sleep.

Sorry to interrupt you, but if you are reading HN while sitting on your lectures, why not just go home and get some sleep?

<comment><USER16> Sometimes the only reason you go to lecture is to be sure to catch important announcements. You can to that with little sleep, and in the meantime, you need something low-effort to keep you awake. So there's one theory.

<comment><USER15> Or you can buy a beer once a week to someone that will send you "important announcements" by email, and having a good solid sleep in own bed ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > I spent a lot of time working for the Sierra Club and lobbying in Sacramento > for a bill to protect San Francisco Bay from developers.

I imagine he meant a different kind of developers than those who are taking (or have taken) over the area.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have listened to as many of his lectures as I can find, and I am very interested in the work he is doing on Minix 3. 10k lines of code in the kernel makes for an easily approachable learning environment in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER19> Q: What inspired you to produce a personal FAQ?

A: See Computer Networks, 3rd edition, page 663.

Did you just tell me to go fuck myself?

I believe I did, Bob. I believe I did.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mr. Tanenbaum has retired from the Vrije Universiteit recently, see here: [http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid](http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to find good icon sets? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,<p>Just wondering if you guys have any good resources for where I can buy or would find good web icon sets? I generally use themeforest for templates but would like to be able to customize a little more with more icons. Any help would be appreciated :) <comment><USER2> <http://www.iconfinder.com/>

<comment><USER3> Thank you for recommending Iconfinder :-)

<comment><USER4> Thankyou for Iconfinder!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Fugue set is extensive and is my goto set. <http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/>

</comment><comment> jarek-foksa \- Some of the best icon designers are publishing their free sets on Smashing Magazine: <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/icons> By following the links under each posts you will stumble upon additional commercial sets.

\- There is ThemeForest's sister website called GraphicRiver.net which focuses on stock graphics.

\- Also don't forget about istockphoto.com and fotolia.com, besides stock photography they are also offering many icon sets.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like using the Pictos icon font (<http://pictos.drewwilson.com/>). This icon set has already been mentioned, but it should be noted that there are 3 icon image sets and then the font. The font can be used as an @font-face font on your site, which is a lightweight and very scalable way to add icons to sites and webapps. Plus, having the font icon in Photoshop makes quick mockups so easy!

</comment><comment><USER7> The sets from <http://famfamfam.com> are what a lot of sites use, they're excellent, but only 16x16.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://pictos.drewwilson.com/> (as previously mentioned)

<http://pictofoundry.34orange.com/>

<http://glyphish.com/>

<http://glyphicons.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I really like: <http://www.iconsweets.com/> & <http://www.iconsweets2.com/> but most of these are good suggestions. Download them all and start keeping them in an Icons folder and use what you like with each project.

<comment><USER3> You could also just bookmark the two icon sets here:

<http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Aiconsweets> <http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Aiconsweets2>

It's probably easier.

<comment><USER9> Not only did I not know they were available on IconFinder, but I would still bookmark the author's site as it's easier to get a look at the icons and they've got a PSD in the download that's very helpful to me. Your site does have individual downloads but 90% of the time I want them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.tabsicons.com/> and <http://pictos.drewwilson.com/> are my current goto sets.

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite for a while has been FatCow: <http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons>. 2000 16x16 and 32x32 icons.

<comment><USER3> They are all indexed and searchable here: <http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset%3Afatcow>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using <http://www.thenounproject.com/> a lot recently.

<comment><USER13> Never heard of it, but looks like a really neat project though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://icons.mysitemyway.com/> has several nice icon sets.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://dryicons.com> has some good ones and offers custom service.

</comment><comment><USER16> <http://www.iconlet.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Helveticons is a popular set. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure.

</comment><comment><USER18> For app design, we use GlyphishPro</comment>


Cloud tech can make a Supreme Court decision against Obamacare irrelevant - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/2933561/legal/cloud-tech-can-make-a-supreme-court-decision-against-obamacare-irrelevant.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If the U.S. Supreme Court rules for the plaintiff later this month in the case of King v. Burwell, 7.5 million Americans stand to lose their Obamacare tax credits. Such a ruling would make it illegal to sell subsidized Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage on the federal healthcare.gov insurance exchange website that runs on an Amazon EC2 cluster. But it will still be legal (read: ACA-compliant) to sell subsidized Obamacare insurance on a state run exchange using the same SaaS exchange application on a separate EC2 cluster. [http://www.cio.com/article/2933561/legal/cloud-tech- can-make...](http://www.cio.com/article/2933561/legal/cloud-tech-can-make-a- supreme-court-decision-against-obamacare-irrelevant.html)</comment>


Uncovering a Triceratops: Experiment searches for dinosaurs in Wyoming - <AUTHOR> https://experiment.exposure.co/uncovering-a-triceratops <comment><USER2> am I the only one that thought having read the title of Triceracop from Kung Fury[1]?

[1] [https://40.media.tumblr.com/3399c1b74b409c786160a1cb49e0e9a4...](https://40.media.tumblr.com/3399c1b74b409c786160a1cb49e0e9a4/tumblr_np71efysh01qevtc5o1_500.jpg)</comment>


High schooler looking for used copies of SICP - <AUTHOR> I'm a 10th grader (aged 13) interested in computer science. I got into it using [Scratch](https://scratch.mit.edu/), a programming website for kids. There I met Brian Harvey, the brilliant (former) CS lecturer at UC Berkeley.
I asked on the thread where all the CS geeks (and Brian) hang out if there was any way to get my hands on a copy of SICP cheaply, since naturally my parents refuse to get me one because they think that CS == IT. They (the Scratch people) suggested I ask on Hacker News if anyone's got an old copy they're willing to part with. So that's what I'm doing!
So if you've got an old copy of SICP around your house collecting dust, I'd be very grateful if you could email me at email@example.com and we could talk! <comment><USER2> Sounds like ChocolatePi is looking for a physical book: [https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/1847563/](https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/1847563/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fancy seeing you here! Nah, I'm thinking I'm just going to get one off eBay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here you go: [https://github.com/sarabander/sicp- pdf](https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> There's an online HTML version as well:

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/book/book.html](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)</comment>


On the "Learn to Code" Movement and Its Lies - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/be-seeing-you-and-so-on/1982aab8aa8e

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I haven't been exposed to the 'learn to code' movement in great detail; seen headlines but not read the content. That being said...

I think the article misses the point (it's possible that the much rhetoric of the 'movement' does too). The benefit of many more people being exposed to coding isn't to turn everyone into professional software engineers or computer scientists, but to teach people the basics of a tool that can aid in productivity even when used peripherally, and maybe understand computers a bit better than being magic boxes that are incredibly frustrating when they don't comply.

There are many, many workers at all levels who could benefit from some basic scripting abilities. This means using computers to compute things, to automate small tasks, produce good visualizations, etc. Increasingly, it is useful to write simple scripts to automate machines (such as in a factory).

I'm a scientist, so coding is obviously quite useful to me, but it's also useful to my dad, who is a lawyer and writes VBA macros to automate modification of legal contracts and so forth. My mother, a journalist and teacher, would have benefited a lot from being able to use Excel more powerfully, to batch process photographs, etc. The benefit for students to be able to check their arithmetic when learning higher-level math, or to be able to plot things when learning geometry or statistics or whatever is also great.

None of this means knowing computer science (beyond extreme basics like data types), just like the vast majority of math usage in the world doesn't require knowledge of proofs. And it may provide early exposure to those self-motivated autodidacts who will dig in, given half a chance.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see this as a good thing : maybe developers will get better recognition* once people start to realize what it takes to "code".

* for those of us that don't work in the startup scene

</comment><comment><USER4> "The movement also has a rather pronounced social justice slant."

Annnnnd then the conspiratorially-shaded bit about "Chicago" starts. FFS, dog- whistle much?

Also: "Like all great crafts, if you try to force it upon people, you only end up diluting it and its culture along with that."

Given what we saw of "its culture" in 2013, I'd say "diluting" the toxic waste would be a damn good start.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Non-profit organizations like Code.org, backed by large corporations and small firms alike, are rallying for "computer science" to become a core subject..."

"The movement envisions to produce 9-to-5 code monkeys who can write loops and conditionals, but who do not have any passion or true understanding of their craft."

I think those are the only two points you need to draw a line to the conclusion that this movement aims to reduce the cost to businesses of employing coders. It's a marketing campaign stemming from companies' frustration at having to pay programmers well above the minimum wage.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just introduce kids to MIT Scratch and let them play. And Arduino. Probably better done at home than in a large classroom.

</comment><comment><USER7> My view on the "Learn to Code" movement is similar to music or other arts. Not everyone has to get good at it, but it is worth exposing everyone in school. If you're not exposed, you may not know that you have a talent for it. And even if you never have a talent, you'll learn to appreciate it later.</comment>


7.5-inch e-ink display is powered completely by NFC - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/7-5-inch-e-ink-display-is-powered-completely-by-nfc/ <comment><USER2> That's cool, but it would be only useful for a single image, such a displaying a recipe.

<comment><USER3> Apparently supermarkets are starting to move to systems similar to this - instead of paper price tickets on shelves you have tiny e-ink displays built into the shelves, and when the store product layout is generated it also generates a database of what tickets should display what prices. Then all you have to do is have someone walking around updating the tags, it reads an identifier from the tag and uploads the corresponding price ticket.

Similarly, this works for any application where you have signage that doesn't need real-time updates but isn't permanent enough to be worth wasting paper over. To continue the supermarket example, recalled product lists at the front of the store, or employee notices in the break room would also be good candidates for NFC powered e-ink display.

<comment><USER4> When paper costs 5 cents a sheet, and these displays are hundreds of dollars, you have to update it a _lot_ to pay for itself.</comment></comment></comment>


Bringing WinJS cross-platform and open source - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/buildingapps/archive/2014/04/02/bringing-winjs-cross-platform-and-open-source.aspx

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is getting very serious about supporting their JS infrastructure. The new xbox will also run winJS, as well as windows phone 8.1.</comment>


Amiga: Legal Woes and Some Announcements - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqy12dTzlA <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/azvhwz/amiga_legal_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/azvhwz/amiga_legal_drama_wellsummarized_with_a_surprise/)</comment>


Show HN: Docker: Taming the Beast (Part I) - <AUTHOR> http://nschoe.com/articles/2016-05-26-Docker-Taming-the-Beast-Part-1.html <comment><USER2> In case you are not aware: Your site is unreadable on mobile (Safari / iOS) because the text is cut off left and right and there's no way to zoom.

<comment><USER3> Same on android chrome. Can't zoom out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes sorry about that. Thanks for reporting this. I'll fix this, it _does_ look horrible on mobile :/</comment></comment></comment>


Clojure spec Screencast: Leverage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cognitect.com/blog/2016/7/13/screencast-spec-leverage <comment><USER2> Great work with the video. It makes the benefits of clojure.spec much clearer.

clojure.spec is great because it finally makes Clojure a language with pluggable type system. I am sure Cider and Cursive can use specs to do things like show doc hints and compile time errors.

Also clojure.spec makes generative testing so much easier to use and understand for me somehow. I can see most clojure developers start using it in daily practice. There has been other initiatives for making generative testing easier in other communities like .Net but never became popular.</comment>


Facebook Co-Founder Joins VC Firm - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/34567/campaign-capitalist-chris-hughes-joins-general-catalyst/

<comment><USER2> Chris is a brilliant, down-to-earth guy. If you have a great deal and want VC backing and a great guy to join your team, definitely consider going to him. And to the guy who posted something about how hiring a Facebook co-founder is a stupid move -- you, and the rest of the haters on HN, need to get over your utterly obvious jealousy and insecurity. None of you have any clue what you're talking about (including that guy from Harvard).

<comment><USER3> in HN we use reply to respond to that someone we don't agree without generalizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hughes was also in Fast Company today branded as "The Kid Who Made Obama President."

[http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ellen-mcgirt/strike- indicato...](http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ellen-mcgirt/strike- indicator/third-act-chris-hughes)

</comment><comment><USER5> The VC world needs more awesome people like Chris Hughes. This is a win for the startup community.

</comment><comment><USER6> what is an Entrepreneur-in-residence?

<comment><USER7> Paid to have an office in the VC firm and sit in on pitch meetings with new companies. May help bring new deals to the partners. May have his or her own companies that may or may not be funded by the VC in question.

The local state owned biotech investment fund calls them "Executives in Residence" which I think is really funny.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know anything about the man in question, but it's at least a 55/45 bet to short a VC firm that hires a Facebook founder.

Too bad you can't short-sell VCs. :(</comment>


The end of MVC. Seems to be banished - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.apidesign.org/wiki/DCI

<comment><USER2> There's no need to sensationalize this. It's not the end of MVC and I'm not sure what's "banished" here. This sort of headline is a depressing trend.

But it is an interesting pattern for software architecture/engineering, and I'm glad to learn about it. I'll admit that after reading this summary I'm not entirely clear on how this marks any sort of revolutionary change in program design. Instead, it strikes me as a mental shift enabled by a few years' reflection on what MVC aspires to be. Indeed, the author says as much: "This may not seem like a really big change and indeed, technically, it is not. However the mental shift is huge!"

I'm not a Java developer, but in Ruby this sounds something like implementing a significant amount of program logic in modules rather than directly in a Merb/Rails/Datamapper/what-have-you model in order to achieve a looser coupling of the data/business logic layer.

So, I dunno. It's a really cool idea, and welcome to HN...but please change the headline to something less sensational/linkbait and more informative like - "Data/Context/Interaction - Thinking Beyond MVC Structure."

<comment><USER2> Update - here's a much better article than the one linked, written by DCI's creator (who also helped popularize MVC): <http://www.artima.com/articles/dci_vision.html>

<comment><USER3> Whoa, 8000 words. Anything more concise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From my reading, DCI doesn't supplant MVC, but is an architecture for organizing code. Object behaviors are mixed in (via mixins, traits, or templates) according to roles (the common examples are ATM withdrawal and deposit) which are implemented separately.

There would be a couple of benefits of this aside from the advertised ones: Automated tests are associated with the role bahaviors. Instead of testing all of the possible behaviors of an object, tests are targeted at the individual traits. Also, by separating the roles from the data it's easier to mock the data layer.

When code needs to be removed or refactored, it is easy to find the code (and tests!) involved. Adding features becomes less of a refactor, and more just adding traits.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought MVP already supplanted MVC. I haven't wrapped my head around DCI yet, but my first question is whether this resembles MVP in any way.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Claims to be the new modernized version of MVC, is it really promising?</comment>


How Best Buy saved itself (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/amazon-almost-killed-best-buy-then-best-buy-did-something-completely-brilliant.html <comment><USER2> _So, he used that practice to his advantage--by instituting a price matching system._

More like he used a price-matching program to swindle people.

Suppose you want a 512GB microsd card. You've heard through their ads Best Buy will match Amazon's prices, so you depart your house with cash in hand, happy you won't have to wait for shipping. You walk into Best Buy, pick a Sandisk drive off the shelf, and show the cashier that despite Best Buy listing it at $150, Amazon only charges $100, so please match their price.

Sorry says the cashier, this Sandisk 512GB U-3 V30 A2 Class 10 microsd card is model SDSQXBZ-512G-ANCMA, while the Sandisk 512GB U-3 V30 A2 Class 10 card on Amazon is model number SDSQXA1-512G-GN6MA so we can't price match.

Price matching means absolutely nothing when every single one of Best Buy's overpriced products has its own special model number that prevents them from ever having to price match anything.

<comment><USER3> My pet peeve is when you have to have places price match themselves (in store Vs. online).

I was recently at Lowes, I had found a Saw Horse online at their website for $80 off, and tried to price match it to themselves but when the cashier looked it up it came back the store's price (even though I still had the page open on my phone, and at my home computer at home).

Then got treated like _I_ was the one trying to pull a scam, rather than them discontinuing a sale mid-way through a work day, and me being caught by it.

<comment><USER4> Nowadays Home Depot (and I believe Lowe's also) has in-store pickup, so you can often buy the item online and pick it up shortly thereafter.

<comment><USER5> I made the mistake of ordering from HD online and received a different product than what I ordered. It turns out that they reuse SKUs for different models so the drones will pull the usually outdated old stock on the store's shelves.

<comment><USER6> That's definitely a mistake on the store's part and should have been a quick return / swap for you.

What generally happens is: (1) associate is dispatched to pick an online order, listed by SKU and bring it up front, (2) they arrive at the bay and start looking around for a match, (3) while they are supposed to verify down to the SKU level, sometimes they say "DeWalt 20V circular saw" = "DeWalt 20V circular saw", grab it, and move on, (4) repeat for the next order.

That's assuming there's stock in the store. In the event it's Ship-to-Store, you add the additional touch of warehouse getting it right. Although in my experience that rarely goes wrong (because automatic verification, etc as things go out).

I always do a SKU / item check if there's anything that might be a problem. In my personal experience, it happens ~1:50 orders (usually with easily confusable substitutions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked at Best Buy #583 in Mt Laurel, NJ from 2001 or 2002 or until 2003 Or 2004, from age 17 until 20, I think. I started working in their PC repair area when it was still "Best Buy services," black shirts instead of blue, a few years before the Geek Squad thing happened, and left a couple years after that transition. I went in to interview for the PC sales department, the manager thought I'd be better fixing computers, and it was the start of my whole career in technology.

Even back then, I remember a lot of their corporate-produced video content played at quarterly meetings would talk about the value in reinvention. They were very aware that companies that didn't adapt to the market were doomed, they'd reference old department stores for comparisons. It's not surprising that even though they stumbled for a few years, they still managed to turn it around.

I remember being very aware of the high production value of those same quarterly videos. They looked so expensive and were occasionally funnier than they had any right being. It stood out because we all felt under paid and under valued, we'd talk about how much those videos must have cost and how much we all could have used some help.

A few times a year, I still have anxiety nightmares where I'm late for a shift or I show up and there's a line out the door and nobody to help me. Or there will be miles of racks of computers that need virus scans run and I have to do all of them before I go home. It was the most stressful job I've ever had, possibly the most stressful job I'll ever have. It taught me more about troubleshoot software and dealing with angry people than I ever could have predicted. Simultaneously one of the worst experiences and a crucial one. Funny how that works.

<comment><USER8> I worked at Best Buy in San Luis Obispo around 2003 and it was clear that if you didn't sell enough warranties, $29 USB cables (wholesale cost about 80 cents), and (bafflingly) subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly you would get your hours cut to effectively 0. I got chewed out and nearly fired by my boss because a customer came in with a broken lens for their camera they'd just bought, and I told them a replacement was about $99 when _instead_ I should have apparently told them a warranty could be bought retroactively for $199 and that would replace the lens (this was a bald-faced lie, it had clearly been dropped).

Of course, consumers should expect that because Best Buy is blatantly evil, but the scummiest thing was that customers would walk in with a printout FROM BESTBUY.COM showing an item was $129, demand we match their own website instead of charging $149, and they'd be walked over to a kiosk showing that the product at bestbuy.com was $149. (They had a mock bestbuy.com running on the kiosk that looked like the web version but with in-store prices). Remember smartphones weren't a thing at that point.

[https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- lazarus23dec23-column...](https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- lazarus23dec23-column.html)

It was valuable as a reminder of just how bad most jobs are, and that most people in America are treated like absolute shit by psychopath bosses who themselves live in fear of their boss, and so on. It certainly was a motivator to learn to code.

Quitting the Wednesday before Black Friday was a thrill. It's supremely depressing Best Buy still exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This feels like a bit of a puff piece to me. Nothing in here felt "brilliant" to me. In fact, I'd argue Frys or Radio Shack did everything on this list better.

That being said, I do often prefer Best Buy to Amazon for tech things, for the same reason I prefer clothing stores to online shopping. For something that expensive and personal, I want to see it in person. I want to see if it'll fit (whatever that means... from sizing to the types of plugs, etc), see compatible products, etc.

I do love is how accurate their website is. It's usually right, and I'd love if more stores had an online way to see if something was in stock before I went all the way there. In my experience, Best Buy is the one that gets it right the most.

<comment><USER10> On top of that, it costs nothing to hold that item that's in stock for pickup, and during the worst of COVID you could not only curbside pickup stuff you put on hold, but arbitrary things not ordered in advance too.

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by the "worst of COVID"? According to all stats, it has been getting worse, not better. Unless you're talking about NYC.

<comment><USER10> Fair. Worst of COVID _so far, in my area_. When everything was shut down. Most business is open again here, with precautions. But with the school year coming, I certainly think another shutdown is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've commented here a few times that Best Buy really has turned itself around and now offers a great shopping experience. I have a location nearby and every time I go in to buy something the employees are super helpful and knowledgeable. They also have a decent selection and can usually have a pickup item ready in less than an hour. Additionally, they will price match with Amazon on most things.

I'll choose them over Amazon any time if they have the item that I need (which they typically do).

<comment><USER13> I can't imagine anything that I would want from Best Buy where I would need to ask an employee anything besides "do you have it in stock."

<comment><USER12> A couple of examples:

\- I bought an Apple Watch through them that was the cellular version. There was some activation error with the carrier when we tried to set it up, and rather than the employee I was working with shrugging it off and saying, "Sorry, you have to call the carrier", they handled it all for me and got it fixed before I left the store.

\- I bought a Logitech mouse. It was having issues with the cursor stuttering. I went to return it, they went though the process in store of updating the firmware to make sure it was a hardware issue, and then they gave me a full refund and recommended another mouse (which I still have and love).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe change title to "Best Buy used a combination of corporate strategy and emotional intelligence to save itself from ruin" (from the subtitle).

<comment><USER15> Good suggestion. Current title is really bad clickbait that does it no justice

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best Buy has the best curbside pickup program that I've experienced from any big box retailer. They became my "go to" place for buying anything electronic during the lockdown.

I just hope that experience continues to be solid now that their retail locations are open again...

<comment><USER17> I bought a laptop from Best Buy recently, and the limited amount of contact was great. Just pressed a button on my phone when I arrived, confirmed with the employee that the order was in-fact mine, and he put in my trunk without even getting close to me!

<comment><USER13> And then you end up with Best Buy crapware on your computer and usually they have worse specs. I have never seen as many 14 and 15 inch laptop screens with less than 1080p in my life.

<comment><USER17> I actually just used Best Buy as a vendor. I found the laptop elsewhere and it was the only place it was available (coronavirus shortages). It doesn't have any bloatware other than from OEM itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Best Buy was probably saved by states enforcing sales tax on Amazon and similar online retailers. Even price matching doesn't work when your competitor has a 5-10% advantage.

<comment><USER19> Yup.

Why doesn't Walmart complain every day that Amazon's a better tax cheat?

Mutually assured destruction?

The Land of the Giants podcast series also touches on Amazon's financing, capitalization.

Amazon's core innovations are, in order, 1) tax avoidance, 2) profits avoidance, and 3) treating knowledge workers as an inexhaustible resource to burn thru.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> These days one of the biggest value adds of buying from Best Buy (over Amazon) is that you know you won't be getting counterfeit products. My confidence buying consumer electronics from BB is far higher than from Amazon.

<comment><USER21> So I hear this line over and over in Hacker News. Do people really have that many authenticity issues?

I average well into 5 figures a year on Amazon stuff. Have been for years. Have never had an authenticity issue.

I buy sold by Amazon and 3rd party. Name brand and white label. Electronics and home goods.

I'm just not getting it?

<comment><USER22> I've been nailed more than a few times, mostly on lower cost items without prime (i dont mind saving a few bucks and waiting). Items I've gotten that are counterfeit:

\- Brand name lock

\- Serial Adapter (knockoff chipset)

\- Apple Watch charger (these are endemic)

\- Dell brand charger

You likely don't realize it but you probably have counterfeit items in your home right now, that were either very carefully copied or part of a "third shift". You also likely have refurbished items sold as new, and if you've ever gotten brand name things in plain packaging, cross-market items (such as intel CPUs that are sold at much lower prices in other regions, and then sold for a profit to the US).

<comment><USER23> CPUs might be a different story, but I have the same experience as others: if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point I don't really care.

<comment><USER24> > if I've gotten counterfeit goods I haven't been able to tell. At that point > I don't really care.

On an individual level, sure. If the real product fails 1/1000 of the time, and the counterfeit fails 1/100 of the time, you've got 99%+ happy customers of both. The damage is only really evident in the aggregate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Another massive halo for Best Buy in my opinion is their eWaste recycling program. Who else lets you take old gear, even big things like printers, and drop off to be responsibly recycled. It is crazy convenient and gives me a reason to shop there. Our store has shut down this due to COVID but I am looking forward to being able to recycle some more outdated IT gear when they resume. My dad has more eWaste staged in his basement to recycle as well.

<comment><USER26> I would argue this is another genius move on BB's part.

Who better to buy new electronics than someone who has:

\- clearly bought electronics in the past

\- is knowledgeable about e-waste recycling (guessing there is a strong correlation between this and disposable income)

\- is now inside your store because you have an e-waste recycling program

This by itself would be a brilliant move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Beside the click-bait title, it reflects an interesting feat. The turnaround of an electronic store in US where Amazon and Walmart are grabbing more and more market shares. I am glad that Best Buy found a more profitable path. I also bought my TV and replaced my microwave at Best Buy. The price was matching Amazon and I could see the products, and get them home. Employees were friendly and helpful. It was a nice experience.

</comment><comment><USER28> "fixed broken systems, like an internal search engine that gave bad data about which products were in stock;"

My Dad bought a TV at Best Buy several days ago. He looked for the model he wanted, couldn't find it. Went to the front desk and asked, they looked it up and sure enough it wasn't in stock. My Dad walks to the back of the store, finds the exact TV model he wanted with no assistance from any 'blue shirt'.

Sounds like they still have some work to do lol

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how much of Best Buy's success can be attributed to using 'emotional intelligence' to 'build relationships' with gullible people and sell $1,000+ HDMI cables to them. Does it happen a lot? Probably not. But selling one of those a week will likely pay for at least one salesperson's wage for that week.

I haven't shopped for myself at a Best Buy and years (and the last time I did, it was for CD/DVDs). And the salespeople trying to 'build relationships' with me are just awful. But that's likely because I'm a misanthrope.

I know what I'm getting into when I go to Best Buy. I'm going to go help a friend buy an overpriced laptop because they want my help since I'm an 'IT guy' and they want to shop at Best Buy for some reason.

<comment><USER30> Best Buy employees don't get commission. When I worked there 5 years ago, management encouraged us to add services to bulk up numbers, but employees never really cared because it never comes back to hurt them if they don't.

For those cables, I doubt you could find an employee that would recommend them to a customer. For accessories, the focus was more on the count attached to an order. Cheap HDMI cables were usually the recommendation because it would add something to the order and customers were more likely to get them over the $100 cables. Those overpriced cables are sold because there is always some customer that only wants to buy the best of the best and Best Buy is glad to help them with that.

So you are likely to get some salesman pressure, but it's not what people think it is. The pushing usually comes when you are checking out and they offer the protection plans. But again, if you tell them no, that's usually the last you will hear of it because it doesn't really mean much to an employee if they don't attach it.

You will find a crazy employee every so often that thinks acting like a car salesman will make them management's favorite person, but I think you could find those people at most jobs.

<comment><USER29> I didn't mean to imply Best Buy employees get commission. I only called them salespeople to distinguish the people who roam the tech aisles rather than work the register, Geek Squad, etc.

Anecdotally, I've definitely more than one employee try to steer me to the overpriced cables when I was just looking for a quick HDMI cable. I typically just ask them if the decently-priced cable fits into the HDMI spec. By that time they usually figure out it's not worth the time to try and upsell and move on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >and workers seem happier than ever.

My entire cohort from when I arrived in late 2017 is gone from my home store, including people who were there before me. For sales and ops, at least, the wave that brought BB its renewed reputation ended around early 2019. A lot of the incentives disappeared, and pay just didn't keep in step with workload or need.

I invite anyone confused about how workers really feel to head over to the Best Buy subreddit. They got rocked, hard, by the shutdown policies, and I'm personally glad I was separated when I was.

Edit: Also, I didn't realize that this article was more than a year old. Joly is gone. Corie Barry, the former CFO, replaced him last winter.

</comment><comment><USER32> An effective counterpoint to the charge that Amazon is an unstoppable monopoly.

<comment><USER33> Best Buy has hardly any competitors. The next closest thing we have to an electronics store is a Microsoft/Apple/Sony store. Best Buy has partnerships with two of those, and I don't think I've seen more than 1 of the other.

Most other places you can buy electronics also sell milk, sweaters, or both.

<comment><USER34> Target has a decent electronics section (nothing like a dedicated big-box store, of course).

<comment><USER33> Yeah Target is perhaps the least bad among the 'milk and sweaters' crowd. It seems like it's mostly there for impulse buys and/or video games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish Barnes and Nobles would find a strategy to combat Amazon competition. When I walk into a BN, it feels just like how Best Buy felt when it really seemed doomed (about a decade ago). BN is the only bookstore in many American cities, especially more rural ones, and I fear for a future in which the physical book buying experience is lost.

</comment><comment><USER36> This article is very believable. These are basically the things I noticed about our local Best Buy. First, the associates got less pushy and more personable. And second, they'll price match Amazon. It's not really fair that they must compete with Amazon, they should cost a little more for the showrooming privilege, but I can totally see how that was the only real answer. Now I buy things from them that I would otherwise wait two days to get from Amazon.

Also, Amazon is making it more appealing since their own product quality is in the tank. I've said it before, I'll say it again, if Amazon doesn't figure out how to have a "Ships from and Sold By Amazon" option that guarantees no counterfeits, and no intermixing with 3rd party products, they're going to steadily lose customers. And once you lose the trust of those customers, good luck earning it back easily.

</comment><comment><USER37> Click bait headline that was actually quite enjoyable to read.

<comment><USER38> clickbait is the logical endpoint of ad-based business models.

Ad-based business models are the logical endpoint of an ad-dominated landscape. See: people complaining about paywalls.

<comment><USER39> Way off topic at this point, but mobile game ads are an amazing study of this. They're ads for totally made up gameplay - not just CG, but like a totally different game made just for the ad. And it makes sense that the things that would drive installs and clicks doesn't have anything to do with the game itself - I'm sure that was discovered just through random A/B testing (as I'm sure this headline was).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I use Amazon to check for a variety of reviews and comparison data. Then I see if my local Best Buy has it in stock and at a comparable price. I haven't really had many nightmare Amazon scenarios, but Best Buy's logistics/distribution feels "safer", or at least equally safe.

I also haven't had issues with Amazon's returns, but have also had no issue with big ticket returns like TVs with Best Buy (I don't think I'd buy a TV on Amazon). Mostly, the few recent times I've been at Best Buy have been a pleasure (not quite Apple Store, but good enough) and the in-person experience a real value-add, that the positive vibe carries to my online shopping habits

</comment><comment><USER41> I just got tired of the FAKE apple product on Amazon - no matter how many times it said genuine it never seemed to be actually genuine. So I started buying more from apple directly, and other tech products from best buy etc.

Best buy is in a space that has so much fake garbage on Amazon it is astounding. USB 3.x (lie), xxWh (lie) and on and on.

I actually don't understand how amazon's systems can be SO bad at weeding out the scammers. Even more annoying, when you go to return something they do things like say - keep it (the junk) and here is your money back. Can't complain about the customer service but feels so wasteful.

<comment><USER42> There's a lot of good reasons to buy genuine Apple things only from Apple. If you have the Apple card you get 3% off. If you buy a pricey item you can get 24 months financing with no interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Interesting perspective of a retailer that invested in its employees and found success. It's sad to see employee benefits and loyalty and an all-time low across society when just a generation ago it was so strong.

</comment><comment><USER13> I just went to Best Buy last week. Shelves were empty, customer service was atrocious and they basically just sold phones, phone accessories, high end TVs, and computers.

I went looking for four things - a wireless microphone set like public speakers use, a mixer, a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch adapter and a 1/8 inch to Bluetooth adapter.

Three of those four we sold at Radio Shack when I worked there in the early 90s. The fourth is something we would have sold. All of course at a crazy markup.

I walked out and ordered everything from Amazon.

<comment><USER44> Kinda funny, now that you mention it, that they don't sell all the streaming equipment aspiring YouTubers would want to buy. Or the equipment necessary for our newly-WFH workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only one who absolutely _hates_ advisors? I don't need advice for electronics. I can do my own research. May be this is not a common thing for avg Joe? I always found the people at Bestbuy or any big stores are actually less knowledgeable than what I already know.

I think this goes along with anything I want to purchase. If I am in the Hermes store to buy a $700 scarf, I don't want their "advisors" to influence my decision. Not that I would go to the Hermes store, but just making a point :)

<comment><USER46> For some people, advisors are critical and under appreciated. Lots of people wouldn't know the difference between a hdmi cord and an ethernet cord.

The article mentions that they have toned it down "Be comfortable not to make a sale." No one has ever liked sales tactics but they do work, however Best Buy is willing to give up some sales for the overall brand I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I like best buy. They are not the cheapest but I get pretty good customer service and so a few bucks extra is fair. Whenever I need a new laptop this is the only place I can go to test the keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish Barnes and Nobles also did price match with Amazon

<comment><USER49> As a former B&N junkie (used to go there several times a week), for me at least the issue was stock. As Amazon encroached on B&N's business they made the unfortunate and classic mistake of trying to reduce costs, which generally meant keeping less stuff in stock. So now you want say "The Rust Programming Language" book and you want it now? The local B&N doesn't have it, nor do any nearby stores. They can ship to you or ship to store within a few days, or you can just get it on Amazon Prime.

Of course this is a hard problem to solve, they clearly can't have every book you'd want in your local store. But they could have regional warehouses with more stock and either same/next-day to store or even DoorDash type same/next day local delivery.

Ultimately, I think B&N were out matched by the Amazon juggernaut. Shame really, as going to B&N on the way home from dinner at a restaurant was a nice thing to do (wow, remember when you could go out to dinner?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> We know that law enforcement agencies have been deputizing the Geek Squad to search people's hard disks. Are Best Buy In-Home Advisors going to be deputized to search people's homes?

I don't want to "build a relationship" with a national retail chain. Just take my money and give me the widget.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is a 1 year plus old article

</comment><comment><USER52> tl;dr - a new CEO actually listened to employees and eve gave them back a discount program, embraced "show rooming" by price matching Amazon and (the vaguer part) builde relationships with customers.

But we on HN think the biggest problem Amazon has is fake goods, not Best Buy

</comment><comment><USER53> The current title is "Amazon Almost Killed Best Buy. Then, Best Buy Did Something Completely Brilliant". There's a subreddit called "saved you a click" where they basically answer click-bait-y titles with the answer in the title. For instance, the title could be

> Amazon Almost Killed Best Buy. Then, Best Buy Did Something Completely > Brilliant | They treated employees better, started price matching, and made > home visits

Of course, if the article is written well enough, you should read it anyways, but it always feels cheap to just pose a question in the title that could be answered in one sentence.

<comment><USER54> Clickbait headlines and articles-that-should-be-a-sentence often go hand in hand... but you can have the former without the latter. IMO this is an article worth reading. There actually isn't much filler here - every paragraph has a relevant statistic or describes a part of the business model changes, and it appears that Best Buy's success was due to "life by a thousand wins" rather than "death by a thousand cuts" \- each of which is enumerated and described concisely in the article. But YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> That title is cringe-worthy. Might as well have called it "Amazon hates this one simple trick"</comment>


Learning from Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/learning-from-twitter/

<comment><USER2> It's good to know that this situation will lead to improvements in jQuery.

However, I'm disappointed in how twitter, or more accurately, Dustin Diaz handled this situation. They identified some performance issues. Narrowed it down to a jQuery version but just left it there.

jQuery is open source so they could have done some investigating on their own and tried to narrow down what changed in that selector. Especially since this change was blogged about (as mentioned by John).

Not to mention various people helped out twitter by finding some pretty obvious flaws and made suggestions. Twitter has a lot of resources and I'm assuming a lot of talented Javascript engineers. This is a situation where they could have used their resources to contribute to an open source project instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's fair yet to say that Twitter won't do these things. The first step was fixing the regression as fast as possible.

<comment><USER4> And the second step was writing a highly-visible blog post slagging the free code they use in their many-million-dollar website before they actually understood the problem?

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

It's not hard to pinpoint the exact line of code that is causing the slow down and come to a conclusion. This could have easily been fixed without reverting to jQuery 1.4.2 and risk breaking other things in the process (assuming they upgraded to 1.4.4 for a good reason).

On top of that it was their own code which led to the slowdown. Passing the blame to jQuery seems wrong when it was their own mistake to disregard best practices.

Here is where Twitter failed:

1) Need better testing when updating a version of the library.

2) Need to understand what the library you are using is doing and how to avoid performance bottlenecks.

Basic stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use a generic version of the waiting-for-pause trick:

        // execute callback only after a pause in user input; the function returned
        // can be used to handle an event type that tightly repeats (such as typing
        // or scrolling events); it will execute the callback only if the given timout
        // period has passed since the last time the same event fired
        function createOnPause(callback, timeout, _this) {
            return function(e) {
                var _that = this;
                if (arguments.callee.timer)
                    clearTimeout(arguments.callee.timer);
                arguments.callee.timer = setTimeout(function() {
                    callback.call(_this || _that, e);
                }, timeout);
            }
        }

Use it like this:

        document.addEventListener('scroll', createOnPause(function(e) {
            // do something interesting here
        }, 1500, this), false);

Edit: Oops! The version in the article runs some code if any scroll event occurred since it last fired, but this one doesn't execute the callback until the user stops scrolling for some amount of time. Anyway, maybe it's still useful for some folks.

<comment><USER7> For anyone that's interested, two related techniques are called "throttling" and "debouncing".

<comment><USER8> Both of which are available in the awesome Underscore.js library: <http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why isn't John a billionaire already?

<comment><USER10> Heh, while I assume that this was mostly rhetorical and largely tongue-in- cheek it is a question that I've been pondering lately. (Or, more accurately, thinking about what work excites me.)

I've been working on jQuery full-time now for about 1.5 years (sponsored by my employer, Mozilla). Prior to that I worked on jQuery in my spare time for about 4 years while doing other things (I was in college, then in Y Combinator - Summer 2006, and then worked for Mozilla as a JavaScript Evangelist).

I've managed to pigeon-hole myself into the position of a JavaScript framework maintainer rather solidly (for better or worse).

That being said I really enjoy what I do and have trouble thinking of something that I would rather do as my day job. Being able to work on a piece of code that I've largely written from scratch and promote it to a community of eager users is my dream. I've often thought about making a leap into something else but struggle to think of something that would hold my interest as deeply.

I'm largely not interested in starting or joining a business. For whatever reason I frequently find that attaching a profit motive to work largely impedes my ability to be happy and seems to run contrary to my overall goals (educating people, giving good tools to developers -- and providing both to anyone and everyone, no restriction).

Perhaps I'll find some interesting project some day that will open the financial floodgates (or perhaps I'll enter a situation -- such as having children -- that will necessitate me earning more than I do now) but I'm quite content now where I am, doing what I'm doing.

All this being said, I'm constantly looking at and exploring new things. At the moment though most of that is outside the realm of JavaScript, or even computers, and mostly relating to art. It's unclear to me if that's something that'll hold my long-term interest (although it has for the past few years) but we shall see.

<comment><USER11> In my life, discovering jQuery is what made front-end development fun again. I think we're incredibly fortunate to have people like you helping us build software, and if it was possible to measure the aggregate impact of your work it would be staggering..

<comment><USER5> Same. Besides being a master of javascript, Resig also has a unique talent for API design which separates jQuery from competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> jQuery makes things almost too easy. As a result it gives confidence and power to a lot of people to write code that despite all sillines will still work. A professional JS developer would've debounced the scroll events and cached the selector results.

<comment><USER13> jQuery promotes bad practices. People assume $('something') is a cheap variable access, when in fact it could be pretty slowly executing several functions. So they don't bother caching anything.

<comment><USER14> I think by "promote bad practices" you might mean "abstracts complexity away from the developer".

This is true of just about any API. Nobody blames the API when their ORM layer generates a massive SQL query based on complex query input. Understanding the performance characteristics of the 'backend' is assumed.

<comment><USER13>
      $FOO in php is cheap.
      $('FOO') in jquery is expensive.

I don't think using $ to signify "Run some load of jquery code" was a wise choice. Newcomers who don't know what is going on under the hood will regularly write loops with $('FOO') inside them, which is crappy code.

They're doing what they think is best, so I don't blame them. I blame jquery for making it look cheap.

<comment><USER15> Why on Earth you assume that someone starting to use jQuery will come from PHP background, and more over, why should that person think that $FOO in PHP is cheap? I guess anyone thinking in terms of performance cost will be smart enough to understand what $() does in jQuery, especially when advice to cache selectors is on every wall.

<comment><USER13> idle in #javascript for a while. It comes up all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This sort of thing is one reason I hate websites which use a lot of Javascript when they don't need to. Another reason is that it breaks expectations of how websites should work.

<comment><USER17> To be fair, the expectation of how websites work is changing. Lots of small touches in applications aren't strictly necessary(animation, transparency), but they do make for an overall nicer experience. People have come to expect these things from modern websites.

<comment><USER16> > _Lots of small touches in applications aren't strictly necessary(animation, > transparency), but they do make for an overall nicer experience._

I can't offhand think of a single example where they've improved my experience. (With the exception of things like Google Maps where the JS is an important part of the user interface.) When, for example, a menu or picture animates open instead of appearing instantly, at best I feel mild irritation.

Maybe I'm just a cumudgeon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >since scrolling itself didn't change the DOM

Scrolling did indirectly change the DOM as you load more tweets when you scroll. But the point here is that the actual scrolling is not changing the DOM, the append is, and that's probably when you should update your query cache.

<comment> brown9-2 I interpreted this as meaning that not all scrolling changed the DOM, only scrolling that reached the bottom of the window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What in the world. I expected something interesting, but this is some major fail by twitter. Not caching selectors just boggles my mind. How can a million dollar web company do this?</comment>


Star Citizen's funding reaches 300M dollars - <AUTHOR> https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals <comment><USER2> One day the game will be done. Just like Tarkov.</comment>


Tectonic Shifts Altering The Terrain At Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/tectonic-shifts-altering-the-terrain-at-google-maps-27783

<comment><USER2> An uber-must-read for any map nerds out there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent, well-informed details.

And insofar as _Obviously, Google has not driven all of the streets in the U.S_ is concerned, I was going to verify that by pointing to a small town in the prairie, but just checked and saw that the major streets have street view whereas they didn't a week ago.</comment>


Is Tech Disrupting Education? – Chat with 2U's Jeremy Johnson - <AUTHOR> http://www.iafrikan.com/2014/06/20/tech-disrupt-education/

<comment><USER2> I think Tech is decoupling education, rather than disrupting it. Tech is taking one part of the experience (the classroom learning) and moving it out of the classroom. It doesn't replace the networking, research, parties, football games and other aspects.

Will this decoupling be disruptive? I hope so! School is too expensive. And so is ignorance.</comment>


Accurate, Robust, and Flexible Real-Time Hand Tracking [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/238453/pn362-sharp.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Supplement: [http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/238453/pn362-sharp- supple...](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/238453/pn362-sharp- supplementary.pdf)

Video:[http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/238453/pn362-sharp- video....](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/238453/pn362-sharp-video.mp4)

"Please note, we are using a standard Xbox One Kinect without any hardware modifications. The sunglasses are optional and were originally used for anonymity, and partly tongue-in-cheek."

</comment><comment><USER2> reminsd me of spaceX's take on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S- zEBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY)</comment>


CDE Open Sourced - <AUTHOR> http://cdesktopenv.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> I remember when CDE was awesome. It was not during this decade, er, century...

I think it would be useful for us to all pause and think about what being on the right side of history looks like. CDE could have gone open source back in the 90s and been extremely relevant and useful. I'm glad it's happened because I think there's value in having an accurate and complete software archaelogical history...but I doubt anyone will be digging into this as a project to do current work on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read this as:

"CDE open sourced..." <audience laughter, comedic pause>

"...on SourceForge" <riotous laughter, fade to black>

<comment><USER4> Pardon my ignorance, but what's wrong with SourceForge? Is it simply not as popular as other open-source project sites?

<comment><USER5> Sourceforge was great back in the day when it was the only (?) option for public code hosting besides running your own site, but it's not as "cool" now... it feels like most projects have left, only abandoned projects remain. Putting a "new" project there seems strange. I don't know if that's due to functionality or not though, maybe it's just that the UI feels dated. Even with free offerings, people pay attention to the usability and UI, and although I've never run a project using sourceforge, I don't think I'd ever choose (or recommend) it over github or bitbucket. I'd love to hear reasons why I'm wrong on that opinion?

<comment><USER6> I had a conversation with a senior engineer on SourceForge where he pointed out that most people forget that developers are actually a minority of their business: most of their users are nontechnical people that come to them to download binaries of things like zip utilities.

<comment><USER7> It may be true that download users are their business, but developers certainly are the drivers of the site. They produce the content.

Even then, the downloading experience is warped straight from the 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bad memories of writing CS assignments on overtaxed Sun workstations, with that crap WM. I fetishized those expensive purple boxes until I had to use one.

<comment><USER9> SGI Indys were my purple box fetish.

<comment><USER10> You mean Indigo, the Indy is blue :) (mine doesn't work anymore, alas, but the Octane is doing great).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just what we needed, a timely contribution to help bring Linux to the desktop. /sarcasm

<comment><USER12> Maybe soon we'll have open source Motif, then I'll finally be able to _not give a shit_.

Funny timing though, I'm pretty sure I saw a Motif app or two on one of the screens at NASA during the _Curiosity_ landing.

<comment><USER13> What is wrong with Open Motif: <http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/> ?

<comment><USER14> If you'd actually read the page you link to you'd see the part where it says "Read the faq for clarifications on the license... such as why Open Motif does not meet the Open Source definition."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like that it's on Sourceforge, as though they're inviting people to ignore it. That said, I'll probably try building it over the weekend, just for nostalgia's sake.

</comment><comment><USER16> CDE... Oh the memories.

This is a good thing. Those few unfortunate souls who have to care will now have free access to the code in order to figure out the problems they are having.....

</comment><comment><USER17> Excellent, was always my favorite GUI as was compact, fast, and could get on with things with the only real distraction being xeye's that you could get bored of very soon.

<comment><USER18> You what? I worked on a competitor to CDE. We existed first and were actually compact and fast. When CDE was announced it put a serious dent in our business, but then was vapourware for quite a while so our sales returned. And once available was bloated, ugly and slow.

We also had a side business in the graphical toolkit CDE used (Motif). Basically we took the Motif from OSF, fixed bugs and made a whole host of similar improvements and then sold and supported the result.

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

<comment><USER17> Sorry to hear CDE hits a nerve with you. Vaugly recall your product from my days at DHL and when we looked at UNIX on the desktop with SCO, but SCO etc priced themselfs out of the market on that one on comparision to windows.

So what happened to your GUI today?

As for Motif, well OSF is the Open Source Foundation right and if so selling open source, can see how that business model worked out.

IIRC your GUI was mostly desktop/PC based and in that CDE wasn't a competitor so i'm somewhat confused, but I belive you.

<comment><USER18> While we were a division of SCO, SCO weren't that relevant to us. They bought IXI to ensure stability in supply of their desktop. SCO distinguished itself from other Unix vendors by having a friendly desktop including for administrators and their tools.

IIRC our business was something like 3% of sales on Intel chips with the rest being RISC, although SCO itself isn't counted in that since we didn't sell on the platform (corporate took the software and customized it to their needs).

SCO definitely considered Windows (NT) to be the competitor. However SCO was considerably cheaper than the RISC workstations and operating systems. The changing usage patterns are what led us into the browser space, into making Motif look like Windows so when displayed on Windows it wasn't jarring, and then our foray into letting you access any app via your browser which became Tarantella.

OSF (you didn't get the expansion quite right) was a pawn in the Unix wars: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars> GUI issues in the Unix variants were the battleground in the early nineties, and finally petered out in the late nineties when Windows "won".

Our (IXI, not the SCO corporate parent) major product of the time was X.desktop which only ran on Unix systems using the X window system. ie it was Unix based apps to make Unix easy to use.

We then moved into "client access" which meant terminal emulators, X servers for Windows and file access (VisionFS) which were Windows based programs to make it easy to use Unix systems (except VisionFS).

Finally we did Tarantella which made it easy to use apps from just a web browser, and it was irrelevant if the apps were Unix or Windows.

Tarantella was eventually bought by Sun which was eventually bought by Oracle, but the product is still for sale. Some details at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop> (Disclosure: I was the architect for the non-gui protocol parts of Tarantella)

VisionFS is what I am most proud of - details at <http://www.rogerbinns.com/visionfs.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Speak for yourselves, I'm excited! Unity and GNOME and all the other useless crap civilisation has invented over the last decade and a half? Get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER20> Slightly off-topic:

What if they open sourced Open Step? Is that even possible to do? Would that change open source Un*x desktops forever or would no-one care?

<comment><USER21> I doubt that it would have significant impact. There is already GNUstep which is GNU implementation/clone of OpenStep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this might actually be useful for people on very restricted (or legacy) hardware? How does it stack up against eg: LXDE?</comment>


Desktop tool to find if your site shows Chrome's "Not Secure" warnings anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://httpschecker.net/guides/https-checker <comment> n-gauge I would have thought a simple grep would do the trick if you have the source code.</comment>


Programming Styles - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeinstructions.com/2008/10/styles-of-programming.html <comment><USER2> All programming styles of the non-thinker. That's the common underlying thing I see, non-thinking, jumping to a conclusion and running with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd add:

* Terse programmer: The only thing he loves more than one-letter variable names are non-alphabetic one-character variable names. Has won obfuscated code contests multiple times.

* Self-evident programmer: Doesn't comment any of his code because he thinks what it does is perfectly obvious. Could be a finalist in an obfuscated code contest, but would never dream of entering it.

* Premature optimizer: Must squeeze every ounce of performance even out of a "Hello world!" program.

* Fad-of-the-day programmer: If it was praised on a hot blog, it's his new religion.</comment>


Two Years After Raising $1.3M, System Shock Remaster Is on 'Hiatus' - git-pull https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2115044 <comment><AUTHOR> Yet another Kickstarter burn. The winning formula is something like: 1) Prep slick video, 2) Promise the moon, 3) Collect a bunch of cash, 4) Change your email address.</comment>


China's Didi Invests in Taxify, an Uber Rival Operating in Europe and Africa - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/chinas-didi-invests-in-taxify/ <comment><AUTHOR> Link for the official blog: [https://blog.taxify.eu/2017/08/taxify-partnering- with-didi-c...](https://blog.taxify.eu/2017/08/taxify-partnering-with-didi- chuxing/)

Taxify is happy to announce a strategic partnership with Didi Chuxing, the world's leading mobile transportation platform.

Under this new partnership, DiDi will invest in and collaborate with us to support our further growth and innovation across all markets.

We will utilize this partnership to solidify our position in core markets in Europe and Africa. We believe DiDi is the best partner to help us become the most popular and efficient transport option in Europe & Africa.

Will Cheng Wei, Founder and CEO of Didi Chuxing, added that Taxify provides innovative, high-quality mobility services across many diverse markets. "We share a strong commitment to harnessing the power of mobile technology to satisfying rapidly evolving consumer demands and revitalizing traditional transportation industry. I believe this partnership will contribute to cross- regional smart transportation linkages between Asian, European and African markets" Cheng Wei said.

Powered by AI technologies, DiDi offers an extensive range of mobility services, including Taxi, Premier, Express, Luxe, Hitch, etc., to over 400 million users in more than 400 cities. In addition to creating over 17 million flexible work and income opportunities for its driver-partners, DiDi leverages its AI capabilities to help cities develop integrated and sustainable smart transportation solutions.

We are very excited about this new partnership and hope that it will help us better the way millions of people move around their cities!</comment>


TINY: VNC for DOS - <AUTHOR> http://josh.com/tiny/ <comment><USER2> I remember setting this up about a decade ago on some old electroplating control system front end. It worked very well - unlike the rest of the software on there.

Unfortunately the DOS program it was being used to remote was highly picky on the hardware being used, and would refuse to communicate with the PLC if the PC was too new. Due to the harsh environment of the plant, we'd go through two or three computers per year. So there was a lot of digging around for old hardware until we realised it would run reliably in DOSBox with a suitable CPU speed set.

After that, our use case for TINY was no more, and we just used a VNC server for Windows. Saved a great deal of site to site travel and plant downtime while it was set up though.

<comment><USER3> Glad it worked out with Dosbox. Sometimes thats a no-go though because the software expect direct access to something or other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first I assumed this was some kind of toy project, but as I read more I realized this was intended to be serious industrial software.

Are pure-DOS machines still deployed in industrial uses? How common are they?

<comment><USER5> Incredibly common. There are industrial control systems in all sorts of factories that run hardware for which only DOS (XP is common too) drivers exist.

The companies that make most of these systems are out of business (mostly VARs that have a lifespan of 5-10 years), and nobody wants to retool a $3 million assembly line just to upgrade an OS.

Edit: I can think of a dozen times I woke up in the middle of the night to drive 20 miles to fix a DOS machine to get a plant working again. This is amazing.

<comment><USER6> Could you relate how you go about fixing a DOS machine? I'm imagining that technical experts get paid a lot of money and get flown across the country to get critical assembly lines working again. Am I far off?

<comment><USER5> This was many years ago, so it was mostly reboots, reconfiguring settings, and things like that.

But a good friend of mine has a very awesome job: he is employed by a very large manufacturing company that makes consumer products. They have dozens of plants all over north america, most of which run machines from companies that are out of business or the lines are no longer supported. When one of these antiquated machines break and the on-site service techs can't fix it or don't have spares they call him in. He will basically pull an old ISA card out of a machine, troubleshoot what broke, and replace board level components. He has a stash of old harddrives from eBay. Every version of old software you can imagine. In a few cases he has made new controller boards completely from scratch (including dumping firmware off of chips and flashing it on to new ones). When you are losing $200k an hour with a line down, "screw it I'll make a new one from scratch" isn't a silly response to the plant manager.

<comment><USER7> When the possibly of losing $200k an hour with a line down even exists, "screw it, I'll have a few spares made" seems like it would be a less silly idea the plant manager might want to consider.

<comment><USER8> Surely if you could lose $200k an hour, you would want to ensure you have spares for absolutely everything already on site before the problems occur. Redundancy is an amazing thing.

<comment><USER9> It depends on whether we're speaking of turnover or profit. An average profit of 200K$/h for a single production line must be very rare (but it may exist). You're almost always not really 'loosing' 200K$ (otoh you'll surely be late in delivering your customers, and that _may_ be valuable, think 'late delivering fees').

When you're 'only' earning an average 20K$/h (10% profit is an ok number I would say, but it may be far less if it's a common finished good), then it may have sens not to pursue buying couples of every single spare part you should have. The full price for always having in stock working spare parts for 100% of a 3M$ production line could be well in the tens of hundreds per month. At the end you're cutting your profit and that's the last thing you want to report to the board, as a plant manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those commenting about open-source: check out the zip archive[0] provided by the author. This project appears to be about a decade old; those files have modified dates of 2007/2008 (& perhaps the post title should reflect this).

Since it's freeware/"source-available", I wonder if they would consider making it publicly available or passing it on to a new maintainer.

Either way, very cool project.

[0]: [http://josh.com/tiny/download/TinyImage.zip](http://josh.com/tiny/download/TinyImage.zip)

</comment><comment><USER11> Title, " _TINY: VNC for DOS_ ", is not original and also incorrect. It is not using the VNC protocol. From the article: "[TINY] _is comparable to programs like VNC,_ […]".

</comment><comment><USER12> > I can honestly say without any exaggeration that this screenshot shows what > is, by far, the most amazing thing ever done with a computer in history. If > you look carefully, you will see that this is a Windows XP SP2 machine on > which I am using Sun's Java Runtime Environment 5.0 to run the TINY client > bytecode and connect over the network through a Linksys WRTP54 router back > to a virtual machine running on the same XP computer using Microsoft Virtual > PC 2007 to boot up MS-DOS 6.22 to load the TINY host and execute an old EGA > version of Tetris that was compiled with TASM 2.0. Through this arrangement > I am able to achieve performance comparable to a 16Mhz IBM PC-AT using my > 2.8Ghz Intel Core2. Wow. If you are not impressed, then you probably do not > fully understand what is going on here.

Why is this so impressive?

<comment><USER13> I suspect sarcasm.

> performance comparable to a 16Mhz IBM PC-AT using my 2.8Ghz Intel Core2

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is excellent. I have absolutely no use for it, but I wish it was OSS just so I could poke around and see how the host works. Either way, badass geekery.

<comment><USER15> > Source code and protocol documentation available- have confidence that TINY > will continue to be viable for decades to come (or at least until all your > CMOS batteries go dead)!

"source available" not being the same thing as "OSS", but it's something

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before I clicked the link I imagined that this was some sort of VNC client which worked inside a terminal window. Does such a thing exist?

(I mean something like this - [https://github.com/mustafaakin/terminal- webcam/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/mustafaakin/terminal- webcam/blob/master/README.md) \- except with a VNC image)

</comment><comment><USER17> Although not the same, it brings back memories of having webcams facing TVs/monitors, which allowed people from multiple locations to view the output of programs they had written running on actual harware (where the hardware itself allowed code to be executed over the network, but didn't offer a remote display option).

</comment><comment><USER18> BTW, the Josh who wrote this (Josh Levine), also wrote The Island Trading system (which ran on DOS I believe). Pretty brilliant guy; he was a subject of a very good book (IMO) called Dark Pools. Not sure if he's still doing this or not, but of your name is Josh xyz, he'll delegate xyz.josh.com to you (if not already reserved).

<comment><USER19> Looking at the Background, Josh wrote this to run Island. Bonus- you can read the original matching wbighe code at [http://www.josh.com/notes/island- ecn-10th-birthday/](http://www.josh.com/notes/island-ecn-10th-birthday/). It's written in FoxPro. Make sure you read the bit about hard drives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have no words to describe how great this is. I would even, but I find myself mysteriously unable to.

</comment><comment><USER21> I read VNC but my mind interpreted it as "VLC". I was mighty confused there for a while, yet intrigued. I expected something like video streaming to DOS and being encoded into ASCII art on the fly.

<comment><USER22> (Probably) won't run on DOS, but libcaca is a thing that VLC, mpv, etc support that does exactly that.

Edit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8g5NGUbDM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> FWIW whilst the FAQ claims VNC send passwords in plaintext. TightVnc docs claim:

>"for password encryption, VNC uses a DES-encrypted challenge-response scheme, where the password is limited by 8 characters, and the effective DES key length is 56 bits"

Which seems better than nothing at all.

I wonder if there's an SSH for DOS to tunnel the UDP packets over to avoid adding an intermediary to the system (though I guess a rasberrypi would be sufficient).

<comment><USER24> Poor security is worse than no security. At least the latter doesn't give you any false assurances.

<comment><USER23> >Poor security is worse than no security. //

Not sure on this. Mostly the security on houses only has to put people off a little, it doesn't need to actually be effective at keeping people out, it only has to do enough to stop a random passer-by. So don't keep your wallet open on the front porch and you're probably a million-times less likely to be stolen from.

That said I think if the author meant to echo this idiom he should have just said that. The way the FAQ put it sounded like "we really should have security here and I'm embarrassed about it enough to claim that it's what everyone else does to try and diffuse any suggestion it's a deficiency" rather than "we don't have security by choice".

Perhaps I'm just being over-critical of the one thing I noticed that was not quite right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you don't need MS-DOS bare metal hardware, it's worth noting that a Xen hypervisor HVM setup for an MS-DOS guest can provide a "VGA" \+ keyboard console over VNC. It's basically QEMU.

</comment><comment><USER26> As the page says the arrangement is using VirtualPC to emulate a PC and boot DOS, I noticed that VirtualBox has an option to host an RDP/VNC server in the settings. Wouldn't that be easier to configure?

<comment><USER27> The VirtualPC emulation is for testing. He's running this on bare metal machines in production.

<comment><USER28> Damn how I miss VirtualPC, the emulation was very good, so you could test low level stuff easily. It had a complete S3 Trio VGA in software, which worked very fast, not like it's "successor", HyperV, which is unusable for Linux graphic desktops.

<comment><USER26> Would it be faster then Virtualbox? I'm emulating Ubuntu on Linux with Virtualbox but perhaps switching to VmWare, Parallels or maybe VirtualPC will result in better performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If the source for this had been on Github that BAKCSPACE issue would have already been fixed ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> There's a spelling error in the software on the first screenshot.

BAKCSPACE -> BACKSPACE

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone know if this works with FreeDOS?

<comment><USER32> Yes, it should work fine, it uses it's own (actually Novell) TCP/IP external kernel (or stack) :

[http://freedos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Networking_Fre...](http://freedos.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_complete)

You can use this:

[http://www.veder.com/nwdsk/](http://www.veder.com/nwdsk/)

for tests.

It includes Tiny.

<comment><USER31> Sweet.

I've got a couple old DOS / early Windows machines that I'd love to resurrect, preferably with remote access. This + FreeDOS (which is my more typical go-to nowadays) looks to be close to perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> TSR, omg, that brings back memory.</comment>


Y Combinator Winter 2014 Batch Rankings and Quick Reference - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/app/research/y-combinator-winter-2014 <comment><USER2> Wow I hate the UI/UX on this page. I know that the page is responsive and probably designed with mobile-first users in mind, given the target might be busy people in SF and tapping the down arrow shows the company description, but:

As someone browsing the site on a laptop, I _hate_ the experience of clicking on each company's tile at the right most corner for a one line description, and all I get are two links: one link for the mattermark score on the left edge and the other for the company url on the right edge. And this disappears when you click on another company profile. ugh!

Yeah, so for others like me, this [1] is a better format, although I don't think it has mattermark rankings built in, it has a better interface for users on a laptop/desktop.

[1] [http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator- companies#ycw14](http://ycuniverse.com/ycombinator-companies#ycw14)

<comment><USER3> This is built specifically for mobile usage by people who are at Demo Day. For a desktop friendly style I'd suggest logging in to Mattermark and viewing the batch here: [http://mattermark.com/app/data?investors=YC_W14](http://mattermark.com/app/data?investors=YC_W14)

<comment><USER4> opened on iPhone - doesn't work. Expand function always scrolls screen too low and forces you to scroll manually back up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's really interesting how many of these companies seem to be direct competitors with recent YC successes. The Dating Ring is essentially a carbon copy of Grouper in description. Algolia looks to compete with Swiftype. Zesty v. ZeroCater, . AptDeco and Move Loot are competitors within the batch.

Those are just the companies that seem to be solving the same problem in essentially the same way, and not speaking to the broader competitors trying to solve similar problems like analytics, mobile communication, etc. Just those that seem really similar to recent successes. Also, I don't think this is a bad thing. Competition is a net win for productivity, and increasing the number of smart people attacking a problem is a good thing.

<comment><USER6> these are very much me-too companies. Algolia says they are database-centric but that's just marketing speak, search is search, "database search" is just facet search where you've told them the relevancy of each facet. TheDatingRing sounds like an absolutely horrible idea, it's like getting a Realtor but for the opposite gender. And their website is embarrassing. They miss the whole point, for many the act of using the dating site is itself rewarding. I've seen this a lot, people enjoy the online attention. Dating really isn't that hard, you don't need a realtor to find someone for you. Their real (online) competitor is facebook. AptDeco are competing against CL which is a waste of time, no matter how fancy the website.

This crop seems to be really disappointing. I didn't see a single company with any actual technology, it's all just me-too plus a little spin.

<comment><USER7> (I'm VP of Engineering at Algolia) Be sure I'm the first one hating marketing bullshit. Our team of 6 is composed by 5 engineers: we're developers/geeks/tech guys too :) When we speak about "database search" it has actually nothing to deal with "facet search". The 2 main differences of our engine comparing to "traditional/document search engine" is the way the ranking is working and the way we provide instant-search capabilities (not just "suggest" in a separated data structure like what you could have with ES/Solr, but real queries): we call that "database/record search". You may be interested by a blog post we wrote a few weeks ago describing our secret sauce: [http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm- unveiled/](http://blog.algolia.com/search-ranking-algorithm-unveiled/). If you need more details, I'll be happy to chat (feel free to reach me at sylvain at algolia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> even though its low on this list, I'm very excited about rickshaw, which I see essentially as a stripe for delivery for the real world. gorickshaw.com

</comment><comment><USER9> Lots of interesting projects here. I am especially interested in Ambition, this could be a very cool way to drive sales.

<comment><USER10> Ambition co-founder here, thanks for the interest and you're right that there are a lot of great projects/products/companies in this batch... it's been an incredible learning experience working alongside them for three months.

I'd love to tell you more about Ambition... I'll connect via email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are Move Loot and Apt Deco direct competitors? Is it normal for YC to fund multiple versions of the same idea in the same batch?

Both look like cool services and I wish either one was available here in Chicago.

<comment><USER12> Yesterday my investor decided to fund a direct competitor to my company. Solving the same problem, for the same target market, similar looking solution, slightly different approach. I sense a bit of competitive spirit in the near future. I've already ramped up the schmoozing to get the investors to like us more at a personal level.

I guess it's no big deal. Looking forward to leaving Europe for the next round anyway. With a few exceptions, the higher level VC's here are some of the worst people I've ever met. They literally hate technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kimono looks like Dapper[1] all over again, only instead of RSS, now it's all about APIs.

[1] [http://open.dapper.net/](http://open.dapper.net/)

</comment><comment><USER14> What does the number mean and where does it come from?

<comment><USER15> Mattermark score [https://mattermark.com/mattermark- score/](https://mattermark.com/mattermark-score/)

<comment><USER16> Do you know what no score means? Pushbullet seem like they should have one.

<comment><USER3> We don't score companies until we have 4 weeks of data, so for some that we haven't been tracking for long we just don't have enough info yet - sorry!

<comment><USER17> Has anyone ever studied whether momentum is a good measure for eventual success (whatever that might mean)?

<comment><USER18> Mattermark is fairly new, so I doubt that many companies would have had a concrete track record of success.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. We have 1 year of data, and are certainly backtesting. So far the only thing we can really test is whether momentum helps with fundraising... more on that soon

<comment><USER18> Good to hear! I was thinking of doing something similar, but no reason to duplicate effort

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With Kimono #1, scraping websites is alive and well! I wish Pushbullet had a score, very useful tool.

</comment><comment><USER19> lol. merge conflicts: "<<<<<<< HEAD"

</comment><comment><USER4> @dmor : hey! why did Immunity Project disappear from the list? Last time saw it there it was #3, which is already kind of sad for humanity :-\

</comment><comment><USER20> Didn't pg say there was a self-driving car startup? I don't see it.

<comment><USER21> Not everyone presents on demo day, some opt-out meaning they might not be listed here.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure they did demo. Sama posted a picture of their sensor on Twitter yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know if these scores have been predictive of success in the past?

<comment><USER2> AFAIK they haven't. The way they score [1] seems to suggest that they might be missing out on companies like [https://gorickshaw.com](https://gorickshaw.com) and enterprise focused companies because these company might not perform well on mobile downloads, inbound links, twitter followers, facebook followers and linkedin followers (the six metrics they track and score on).

I personally feel that inbound links, twitter + facebook + linkedin followers don't add all that much to painting a complete picture of the companies that might not be in the "social" space but I feel that if they keep at it long enough and keep iterating, they will eventually figure out how to be less wrong (Even most top VC firms aren't able to consistently pick only winners).

[1] [https://mattermark.com/mattermark- score/](https://mattermark.com/mattermark-score/)</comment></comment>


Classic Google Maps is gone - <AUTHOR> https://maps.google.com/?output=classic

<comment><USER2> Too bad. It was so much faster, and sucked so much less CPU :-/

<comment><USER3> welcome to the era of "you should upgrade your computer" and "We did no optimize it because nowadays computers are powerful enough"

<comment><USER4> Era of "modern" browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, really too bad. There's so much crap scattered across a google map these days.

But waddya want for free?

</comment><comment><USER6> Too bad. The current replacement sucks massively and is a pain to use. I guess the old one was just not evil enough.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://here.com](https://here.com)

<comment><USER2> Not bad... I can't find a way to turn on topographical data, though, which I'm a big fan of, as a bicyclist.

<comment><USER8> Click "Map View", lower right corner, next to the + and - buttons.

<comment><USER9> that doesn't show topographical data, seems to only show terrain, as far as i can tell, the areas in the mountains i hike often are not showing lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.google.com/lochp](https://www.google.com/lochp)

</comment><comment><USER4> Who needs more than 10 route points anyway? New feature allows you to not being able to enter more than that!

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyway, how is Bing Maps these days?

</comment><comment><USER9> am i the only one that hates the new UI ?</comment>


From 0-Day to Exploit - Buffer Overflow in Belkin N750 (CVE-2014-1635) - <AUTHOR> https://labs.integrity.pt/articles/from-0-day-to-exploit-buffer-overflow-in-belkin-n750-cve-2014-1635/

<comment><USER2> _±1300 bytes_

I wouldn't have thought it possible to generate a negative-sized request...

One of my pet peeves is fixed-length buffers in C code, of some size that (thankfully, it's checked to prevent going off the end - most of the time, at least...) has no real justification documented anywhere - "why use 72 bytes and not e.g. 80? Why 999, and not 1000 or 1024?" If you're going to use C, I think you should be paying more attention to memory allocation and how big things like requests/responses can be; otherwise, you should use a "safer" language possibly with dynamic allocation that can handle any size... but on a constrained system like a router that may not be possible (or it'll just turn into an opportunity for OOM DoS.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Side bar, who releases these? Is there a feed(s) that devops/sysadmin/people follow to get the CVE-X-Y reports or is it more ad-hoc/whoever finds them

<comment><USER4> Common Vulnerabilities and Exploits - [https://cve.mitre.org/](https://cve.mitre.org/). There are various aggregators of these. For *nix exploits, various distros will have bugs that (mostly) map to CVEs - e.g. Debian has DSAs.

<comment><USER5> From the site: "CVE is sponsored by US-CERT in the office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security."

Serious question: How worried should I be that my defacto, go-to database of software vulnerabilities is paid for by the United States Government? How independently run is it? Need I fret that vulnerabilities won't be publicized if they benefit government agencies?

<comment><USER6> One of the more common (and more visible) ways CVEs are assigned is by asking for one on a public mailing list operated out of Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was 11 months from discovery to public disclosure, interesting.</comment>


If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, Covid-19 Infections Would Plummet New Study Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/masks-covid-19-infections-would-plummet-new-study-says <comment><USER2> " If 80% of a closed population were to don a mask, COVID-19 infection rates would statistically drop to approximately one twelfth the number of infections—compared to a live-virus population in which no one wore masks."

</comment><comment><USER3> Why isn't this all over the news?</comment>