Police Return Seized Hardware to Victorious BitTorrent Admin, Trashed - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/police-return-seized-hardware-to-victorious-bittorrent-admin-trashed-110313/

<comment><USER2> "It almost appears as if a frustrated FACT employee trashed the hardware on purpose before it was sent back. How else could it turn into such a mess, and why take the computers apart piece by piece in the first place? What were they looking for? Warez?"

I suspect that the cops are worried that, if they boot up the computer, it'll have a program which notices something is wrong and wipes the hard drive. So I'd guess they take the hard drives out and inspect them separately. At that point, they probably don't care about the rest of the computer, so don't care how it's treated. What they did was horrible, but perhaps this explains it as something other than malice.

What's the line about incompetence often being a more likely cause than malice?

<comment><USER3> EDIT: I just realized that this case was in the UK. I don't know how much of what I'm about to say applies to their judicial system, but I'm going to leave it here anyway for those familiar with the UK to comment on.

I did computer forensic work for the US Trustee system. Chain of evidence and the whole deal, because occasionally, our evidence would be handed over to law enforcement and used in criminal cases. I can tell you that at no point during the process should any component treated with any level of disregard. Something called the "chain of evidence" is required in order for anything you find to hold up in court. Here's a brief list of the steps taken when a computer is picked up and examined.

* Arrive at the scene, record the datetime, and fill out your pick-up forms. These forms include information about what is attached to the computer (displays, printers, external hard drives, any random devices, etc). Anything that stores data is taken with. You also catalog the general environment. What was around the computer? Did the place look trashed? Cleaned out? Just moved? Anything meaningful to the case is cataloged on the pick-up form.

* If the systems are turned on, record the datetime and shut them down.

* Unhook peripherals and pack the computers up in the van.

* As you're about to leave, record the datetime and fill out your vehicle mileage log.

* When you get back to the lab, check the computers in to lock-down. More forms including a complete inventory, and (you guessed it) more forms with the data and time on them.

* The computers are stored in a locked room with logged access until they are ready for examination.

* At exam time, you check out a computer or two (recording the datetime!) and head to a lab station. Here, before you do anything, you start to fill out your exam form, which requires that you document every alpha-numeric string you can find on the outside of the computer. We also took photos with a little point and shoot.

* Next it's time to extract the hard drives. You open the system up and pull one hard drive at a time, recording the manufacturer, model, serial number, size, sector count, etc. Anything on the label gets recorded and photographed. You also record where it was attached to (IDE channel and master/slave or SATA port number).

* Once you have the hard drives in hand, you attach them to the write-blocker (we used hardware) and hook them up to the forensic workstation (we used EnCase).

* I'm going to skip the forensic examination portion because it's not relevant to the physical condition of the returned hardware.

* After the examination, we would place the hard disks in protective plastic shells that we purchased and label the drive as evidence with (surprise!) the datetime, case number, and identifying information for the exam form (which linked the drive back to the computer)

* Rinse and repeat for each drive.

* At this point, you have a computer (sans-hard-drives) and a handful of hard disks that you check back in to the lock-up. Hard drives went in a HUGE data-safe fireproof cabinet. The PC case was screwed back on with minimal hardware and put back on a shelf.

* When a case was over, and assuming the debtor in question wasn't brought up on criminal charges and allowed to receive their hardware back, we returned the computers with the hard disks still in the plastic cases, but our labels clearly indicated the computer ID and SATA/IDE channels, so reinstallation was simple. Other times the equipment went to auction. If the equipment went to auction, we'd typically reinstall the drives to get best market value (heh, like that ever happened).

So the point I'm trying to make is this: at no point during the legitimate forensic process should a computer be banged up, subjected to dirt, or generally mistreated. Should this case have gone to court, every single one of those factors could be used by the defense to show mistreatment of evidence. What investigator would want to risk their case on something as simple as maintaining the chain of evidence? This is the #1 thing they hammer in to your head during forensic training.

I don't have any statistics on hand, but cases are won and lost on the basis of sound evidence. Whoever did this did it maliciously and intentionally. There is zero question in my mind.

<comment><USER4> > * If the systems are turned on, record the datetime and shut them down.

Did this ever lock you out of any machines configured to use Whole Disk Encryption or out of encrypted, mounted volumes? You could have dumped the keys out of ram, etc.

> we used EnCase

Did you ever come across any _exotic_ filesystems that EnCase can't read, like XFS?

<comment><USER3> > Did this ever lock you out of any machines configured to use Whole Disk > Encryption or out of encrypted, mounted volumes? You could have dumped the > keys out of ram, etc.

At the firm I worked for, preservation was priority #1 any time we were walking in to a case with high trial-risk. In order to discover that the system was encrypted, I would have to use the computer. Using the computer means changing it. Protocol was really straight forward: If it's running, shut it down and get it to the lab.

Because we were working in the US Trustee system, we were dealing with business owners who were either in bankruptcy where a trustee had been appointed, or receiverships, which almost always involves a trustee (or like appointee). This means we weren't chasing kiddie porn, we were looking for the movement of money. Were we to encounter end-to-end encryption, the password is just a "motion to compel" order away. Failure to comply means you sit in a jail cell until you cough up the password.

Having said that, I don't recall ever having to go that far. Neither did we encounter any seriously hardened systems. Anyone smart enough to encrypt a system end-to-end at a company was usually on our side by the time we got there. In large businesses where this type of encryption is common, there is an IT person who can get past it. Bad business people have a tendency to make enemies out of their employees, and the trustee knew who to take care of.

In instances where we didn't have access to employees with the required knowledge to get in to systems, we relied on industry tools. We were mostly trying to crack in to things like QuickBooks files, Outlook PSTs, and protected documents, so not what you'd normally expect from a geek perspective (john, l0pht, etc). A lot of the stuff was proprietary, and at the end of the day, brute force and dictionary attacks were usually very effective.

We rarely encountered disk-level encryption on the systems we examined. App and document level passwords were the norm. I used to run the disk images through STRINGS(1) to extract every bit of text on the drive. Then, I'd break whitespace to newlines and use that as my dictionary. When you have three or four computers worth of strings, coupled with relatively unsophisticated users, you don't often strike out. We had a 100% success rate using standard crackers and the technique outlined above. It seems that users can't resist typing their password in plain text at some point in the life of their computer.

> Did you ever come across any exotic filesystems that EnCase can't read, like > XFS?

I don't think I ever examined a computer that wasn't Windows XP. These were strictly business cases, so anything that wasn't Windows was a server, and that was a very rare case. Most of the time, we got approval to simply run the server systems in question to get the data we needed. The rules of engagement with servers were a little different. Servers involve a lot of multi-user access, so the chain of evidence requirements were a little different. We had to be the most careful with the personal workstations of the owners and accountants. I'd find emails requesting off-shore accounts, shell companies, etc. These had to be bulletproof in order to pin down the business owner.

I can't stress enough that I operated in a non-criminal, largely unsophisticated environment. Our rules for preservation were mostly precautionary. There was very little trial risk in our organization. It was mostly a matter of trying to identify assets and dig up any evidence that the owner was acting in a way that would put them in hot water. The trustee would use these items to squeeze the debtor in an effort to repay lenders.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the response. I'm not even in my 30s yet, but I feel old when I hear about John the Tripper and l0phtcrack. :)

> Failure to comply means you sit in a jail cell until you cough up the > password.

I don't think this has precedent in a US court. The closest I can find is the following. He messed up by being initially cooperative:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Boucher>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_States)

This is also relevant for those interested in disk encryption:

[http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers- fail-...](http://news.techworld.com/security/3228701/fbi-hackers-fail-to- crack-truecrypt/)

<comment><USER3> That certainly didn't stop the trustee from threatening with motion to compel orders in just about every case we worked. IANAL, so I have no idea what the enforceability is. Every law enforcement/trustee's worst nightmare is a well- informed suspect/debtor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read a few stories now about property being seized by the police and returned damaged or not at all. What legal options does one have in that situation?

EDIT: from the comments:

> _Yes he has recourse, if the police didn't find anything illegal in their > search then ALL damages must be paid for._

Fair enough. What if they had found something?

<comment><USER6> In the US if the authorities use civil forfeiture they can keep your property even when you aren't even charged with a crime and there is little you can do to get it back. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture>

It is generally used in organized crime and drug cases but has expanded greatly in recent years. It is now routinely used to seize cars in DUI cases. They can and do legally keep the property without even charging the driver with DUI or any other crime. <http://www.slate.com/id/2243428/>

I don't know about the UK but I am surprised any property was returned.

<comment><USER7> Alarmist. Civil asset forfeiture is not _carte blanche_ for local and state governments to take property. There is an elaborate due process system surrounding it. The often-cited statistics about how few forfeiture cases are accompanied by criminal convictions are obviously and clearly biased: much crime goes unpunished, and if you are in fact running drugs (the nexus of the vast and overwhelming majority of forfeiture cases), you're probably not going to go to court to get your Escalade back.

Details:

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_0...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000983 ----000-.html)

In one sense (I'm not married to this argument), declaring all asset forfeiture to be an unconstitutional tyannical abhorrence --- call this the "Radley Balko Line Of Attack" --- plays into the hands of those who would abuse it. There is virtually no chance that the fundamental process of asset forfeiture will be reworked. Both liberals and conservatives, both Republicans and Democrats all support it. Unsurprisingly, because in most cases, you really do want seized those things the government seizes.

A far better way to foil people who would abuse civil forfeiture would be to educate people about the processes made available to people to recover property. One simple point rarely brought up by Reason Magazine: a simple written request filed within something like 90 days of the forfeiture is all it takes to force the government to defend their seizure in court.

<comment><USER6> It's only alarmist when it isn't happening to you or someone you love. It happened to my nephew, several thousand dollars in cash seized from his college dorm room (he was a bartender, but should it matter? it isn't illegal to have cash is it?), no charges filed and it would have cost him more than they seized to attempt to get it returned. Back in the 80s, when I was in high school they seized a local family's home because someone said they bought acid from a boy who lived there. It made big news back then, this stuff was new. The family lost the legal battle, they couldn't prove they didn't know their kid was selling acid. The authorities couldn't prove he was selling acid either, but that doesn't matter in these cases. To have your property returned, you must prove you are innocent or ignorant which are both almost impossible things to prove.

<comment><USER7> Why would it cost him significantly to have it returned? According to US code, a single note is all it takes to force a court procedure where the prosecutor has to demonstrate a nexus between the money and a crime. What would it cost your brother to go to court by himself? What would he have to lose?

Look, I see the issue here. Clearly, if the government was _randomly_ taking thousands of dollars from people and forcing them to go to court to keep it, that would be a miscarriage of justice. But that's probably not what happens in reality.

Under what auspices was your nephew's cash seized? What's the other side of this story? Is there really not another side to this story?

<comment><USER6> There is. A kid left the frat and drowned in a river (it was a frat room not a dorm room). Drugs were suspected. I'm not sure why. They executed a warrant and took the money. BTW the autopsy found no drugs in the dead student's system.

Anyway, you make this sound so simple, just send a note and go to court. Most people are extremely intimidated by this stuff and they just want it to end. Especially when you've already been violated and had your reputation impugned. The advice they were given was it wasn't worth it.

Asset forfeiture is a serious problem. [http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial- justice/easy-money-civil-ass...](http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/easy- money-civil-asset-forfeiture-abuse-police)

"In 80 percent of such cases, the owner is not charged. The standard of proof to be met by the authorities is the minimal "probable cause" standard. If the owner wishes to regain possession, he has the onus of proving in court that the property is "innocent"; his standard of proof is higher: a preponderance of the evidence. In some cases, property has been seized for acts someone other than the owner performed." <http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr- ma-hy.html>

edit: I doubt they are doing this randomly, but they seem to be opportunistic and they do target certain types of people - youth, poor, minorities. The right to seize valuable assets is corrupting in nature. I think you'd see it drop dramatically if the government wasn't allowed to keep the assets as a fund raising mechanism.

<comment><USER7> Again: that 80% stat? I'm certain it's true, but it's meaningless. The stat you want is, how often are challenges to seizures denied. Because --- and I'm not saying this is what happened with your nephew --- it is very likely the reason that 80% of those seizures don't match up with a conviction is that the people whose assets are seized are in fact criminals.

Recognizing that doesn't mean I think civil asset forfeiture is problem-free or that Radley Balko doesn't have an argument with his stories on this issue. But you can't just cite that stat as if it opened and shut the case.

I agree that one sensible step to take would be to foreclose on the use of the assets as local funding mechanisms. I agree entirely with that.

Finally: I think your nephew was given bad advice.

<comment><USER8> I don't think it matters much whether many challenges are successful. When it takes years and costs more in unrecoverable legal fees (it's a civil court case, not merely a request) than most seized property is actually worth, very few victims are going to bother.

[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2009/1209/p02s06-usju.h...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2009/1209/p02s06-usju.html)

<comment><USER7> I don't know how bad it is at the state level, but according to the US Code, at the federal level it shouldn't take years; there's a rigid statutory timeline on hearings, measured in increments of 30 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Folks we are losing our basic human rights a little bit at a time here. It's like back thousands of years ago where if you wanted to convict someone of a crime you sneak them away in the night, torture them, set their house on fire, attempt to manufacture some evidence, then wreck their life then leave them alone for a little while. Vigilante justice, get 12 men together, and what they want is the law.

It seems like some government agencies are turning into old vigilante justice squads. Going around, setting people's lives upside down, being judge jury and executioner, then the victim is left to pick up the pieces where the real criminal escapes justice from the law because the other branches of government don't care.

It's like the 1200's all over again. We made laws against this sort of thing for a reason. If you want to challenge the legality of some entity or transaction then you can't just go and set their house on fire and then go hide when it turns out you were wrong.

<comment><USER10> Populism based jurisprudence will sink to the level of rigor demanded by the populace: not much. It will also be subject to fashionable morality. That is, the courts will tend to favor the party that is more aligned with the ideological winds regardless of the facts of the individual case.

This is devastating to the economy, as contract law relies on consistency. If parties can't expect predictable/neutral arbitration this greatly raises the costs/risks of investment.

This is devastating to personal justice, as minorities (ideologically, culturally, ethnically, etc.) face an uphill battle instead of neutral arbitration.</comment></comment>


TED Talk: Peter Norvig: teaching 150,000 at once - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYclUdcsdeo

<comment><USER2> cs212 is way better than most of the cs courses in my university, I don't know if I should feel glad about it or not.</comment>


I've put the recent Khan Academy videos in a channel [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.topchan.tv/show/public1/252

<comment><USER2> how did you manage to create your own channel? i plan on using this a lot more in the coming weeks as i transition off of cable, but i'd love to make my own channels!

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I built the site so I can create the channels. :)

The site is in beta now. Letting viewers to create their own channels and own feeds is in the plan. There are two areas of viewer customization. One is to create viewer's own channel list, assigning the channels to the backend video feeds. This allows the viewer to narrow from hundreds of channels down to a dozens of favorites. Another area is to let registered user create video feeds from Youtube, mixing and matching videos. The new feed can then be assigned to a viewer's channel.

I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestion as I'll go ahead to build the rest of the site.</comment></comment>


Languages Which Almost Became CSS - <AUTHOR> https://eager.io/blog/the-languages-which-almost-were-css/ <comment><USER2> Layout should have been constraint-oriented, not procedural. You should be able to express "Bottom of this box is adjacent to top of that box", and such. All those constraints go into a constraint engine, and a layout is generated. This is something a WYSIWYG editor can generate.

To get a sense of how this could work, try sketch mode in Autodesk Inventor (there's a free 30 day demo) You can specify that a point must be coincident to an edge, that an edge must be coincident to an edge, that something must have specified dimensions, that some dimension must have a numerical relationship with another dimension, etc. Inventor goes further, supporting constraints on diagonal lines, circles, arcs, ellipses, etc. Whether layout should support curves is an interesting question, but the technology exists to make that work.

The people who designed HTML5 and CSS thought procedurally, not geometrically. It shows. Designers think geometrically, and a geometric constraint system would make sense to designers.

<comment><USER3> Constraint layout systems are O(n^2) algorithms, while a procedural layout algo can be O(1) or O(n). I think out of practicality it wasn't adopted. It would be better if both were available, but such is life.

[http://floriankugler.com/2013/04/22/auto-layout- performance-...](http://floriankugler.com/2013/04/22/auto-layout-performance- on-ios/)

<comment><USER2> It's used for screen layout in MacOS Lion and Grid Style Sheets.[1] There's also a subdomain that goes faster, and simple layouts should be in that subdomain.

The idea is to get away from programmer-oriented layout input.

<comment><USER4> Right, but neither Lion or Grid Style Sheets were available in the early 90's. It may have been possible to implement, sure, but we're talking early enough in the web's history that the performance of the styling engine was a legitimate concern.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but now we're past all that and people still come up with bullshit reasons that CSS SHOULDN'T be replaced when there is every reason to believe that we can do a better job now that we've suffered through 20 years of learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Contrary to popular perception, Mosaic was not the first graphical browser. > It was predated by ViolaWWW

Neither was ViolaWWW the first grahical browser.

In fact the very first browser by Sir Tim Berners-Lee was already a graphical browser (even with WYSIWYG edit mode later known from Frontpage/Dreamweaver) - made possible by thr advanced NeXTSTEP operating system and its window builder IDE (nowadays known as OSX/macOS and XCode respectively): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP)

<comment><USER7> When people talk about "graphical Web browsers" in a historical context, they're not just talking about browsers that run in a GUI. The term specifically refers to browsers that can display graphics and text in the same window. The earliest versions of WorldWideWeb (Tim Berners-Lee's original browser) couldn't do this. It used NSText (NeXTStep's native text-display object) for displaying pages, and at the time NSText didn't support inline images, so WorldWideWeb relegated images to separate windows at the time. It did eventually become a graphical browser in this regard, once NSText had the necessary inline image support, but ViolaWWW beat it to the punch.

You don't hear much about graphical browsers anymore, not because they died out but because they became such an overwhelming majority that it no longer made much sense to make any distinction. But a few non-graphical browsers are still in development; Lynx is probably the most famous of them.

<comment><USER8> Is the original source code that Tim Berners-Lee wrote available anywhere? I would think it would be an interesting read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! [http://browsers.evolt.org/browsers/archive/worldwideweb/NeXT...](http://browsers.evolt.org/browsers/archive/worldwideweb/NeXT/)

Interestingly, some of the code "still resides on Tim Berners-Lee's NeXT Computer in the CERN museum and has not been recovered due to the computer's status as a historical artifact."

<comment><USER9> Also check out [https://www.w3.org/History/1991-WWW- NeXT/Implementation/](https://www.w3.org/History/1991-WWW- NeXT/Implementation/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> DSSSL looks amazing. Truly a shame it didn't catch on. Maybe we'd have a client-side Lisp instead of Javascript too.

<comment><USER11> Can we have a do-over on the web? I've seen (and even nominally participated) in something of a resurgence of Gopher as something of a shadow web for nostalgia-addled geeks. Gopher isn't an awesome protocol, but I love anything that recaptures the spirit and decentralized nature of the old web.

At my curmudgeon-iest I like to imagine we carve off our own web where S-expressions reign, there is no Google, and a million timecubes bloom.

<comment><USER12> When I was 6 years old, in 1996, my parents gave me a book about "Cyberspace" to go along with our dial-up internet connection (on our Pentium 100mhz Windows 95 computer!). This book showed me Gopher, and MUDs, and changed my life! I wish I could remember the name of it, it was a bright yellow cover with a superhero on it, I think.

I miss Gopher, in a rose-tinted glasses nostalgia-driven way

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure I had the same book! The "superhero" was called "CyberSarge", yes?

[https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Kids-Ted- Pedersen/dp/0600590...](https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Kids-Ted- Pedersen/dp/0600590186/175-9303664-6802514?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0)

<comment><USER12> YES!!!! That's the one! Holy crap, well done, I never thought I'd see it again! Oh man what a nostalgia trip:

"GEEK: A geek is someone who is really excited by computers and proud of it" \-- this is the reason I was proud to call myself a geek from 6yo onwards :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was also JavaScript Style Sheets: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, I'm working on adding something on that now.

Edit: Done, should be live shortly!

<comment><USER14> Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "HTML is the kind of thing that can only be loved by a computer scientist. Yes, it expresses the underlying structure of a document, but documents are more than just structured text databases; they have visual impact. HTML totally eliminates any visual creativity that a document's designer might have. — Roy Smith, 1993"

Seems like an odd request in 1993. Sure, Prodigy had visual impact, but it was pretty hard to read. HTML's starkness seems in part due to the fact that styling options were limited by the technology and the ones that existed were easily abused.

Writing long sentences as headers (<h1>) or all-caps (caps-lock) were styling options at the time... and often misunderstood and abused.

/ü

<comment><AUTHOR> You also have to think about who the audience was (Unix users) and what they were used to (Gopher, irc, plaintext email). With all of those technologies they were used to being in control of the styling of what they consumed. One person's styles for irc could be completely different than another's, and that was fine. The idea that things should be published with one rigid style which must be used to consume it was foreign and not all that attractive.

You could make a case that the only reason any of this happened when it did was because the browsers were reducing the amount of control the end users had on the page styling. If Mosaic had been super configurable in it's styling, it's possible it would have taken even longer for CSS to come about.

<comment><USER16> What burns me up is that CSS was supposed to allow site authors to have sensible defaults for their pages while enabling me to override them, and yet when I set a dark theme in Firefox all hell breaks loose.

Honestly, the web was better end-user experience for me on links in a terminal: I was able to read text and submit forms, and that's all I really need.

<comment><USER17> You can do that (of sort) in Firefox by

Preference | Content | Colors

* change the Text & Background colors

* uncheck system colors

* always override

<comment><USER16> Yeah, but the problem is that modern pages are written in such a way that that almost always displays garbage. I tried to do it for a few weeks, but it was _terrible_ looking.

<comment><USER17> I've set it up to follow Solarized dark color scheme.

Yes it'll take some time to get used BUT totally worth it, especially when you're reading text a lot :D

I did test with light themes, I have to agree it looks worse compared to dark themes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a web developer, I see two main issues with web styling:

First, the web was built around sharing technical papers. That means HTML structure focuses on those elements that are relevant to papers (outline layout via H* tags, tables of data, not much else), and not the sort of things that marketing and sales want to push. (ads, rails/gutters, etc). Those of use that suffered through the early "slice-and-dice" method of making web pages are painfully aware of that. I'm a big fan of technical papers, and my expectations of flash and glitz are minimal (I, for example, hate the modern trend of not using the full width of my window.). Despite this, I feel we keep trying to stay true to the origins of the Web rather than allowing for the actual USE of the web.

Second, in an effort to keep the content machine-parseable as well as allow for agents of different devices, CSS is applied separately from content/structure (theoretically). Specifically, the concepts used DO NOT MATCH the concepts used in developing desktop applications. Even Flexbox, the most recent attempt to fix this, only loosely relates to the way desktop applications would layout the content.

I'm a huge fan of the GOALS involved in HTML/CSS, but after working on web stuff for over 20 years (not using CSS quite that long), I feel I can say it's been a failure. We've spent that all or most of that time with painful workarounds for basic tasks like: center content (particularly vertically!), Adding a left rail/right rail, filling the height of a container, matching the height of the visible window, making sure layered content is zindexed properly, and those are just the ones off the top of my head. We've invented and reinvented ways to do things like drop down menus, toggleable buttons, modal windows. Heck, from the very start people implemented their own authentication windows because the appearance and capabilities of the browser- based solutions didn't match the demands.

After 20 years, and with the benefit of all the experience of desktop development to add in, I feel like we shouldn't be fighting to manage such basic requests, that we shouldn't be reimplementing field validation and error messages YET AGAIN because even the latest advanced offerings just don't cut it.

We should be able to have:

* "flexible" content (appearances adjusts to visible space)

* machine parseable content

* attractive UI

...without it requiring the dramatic hoop-jumping we have today.

<comment><USER19> How else would things go when people use a tool for which it was not designed to do? It's an evolutionary thing. A need is identified, a feature addressing the need is proposed. Then new needs are identified, new features are proposed.

The problem wasn't in the tool, the problem was the tragic slowness in the browser vendors implementing the features into the actual browsers. Don't forget that for many of those 20 years we had competing standards of different browsers doing their own thing. If the vendor didn't like a proposed feature of CSS, it didn't get implemented. I wouldn't blame CSS for that.

Every complaint that I see about lack of features of CSS or how long it took for the features we do have to get implemented I blame the browser vendors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a fantastic lesson in history. I have nothing more to say than this is what I come to HN for.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a great post. I really appreciate these longer digs into the past that go behind the 'what' to explain the how & why of where we got where we are; and just as much the futures that could have been and why they didn't happen. I keep thinking there's room for a decent series discussing the evolution of Rust, since that design process was such a public thing.

<comment><USER22> I have a talk at the ACM's conference about the history of Rust, but with that much time, there's only so much you can do. The RFC process has helped document a lot, but there's still years of history before that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've never understood why you need CSS, I just do it all in VRML

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea that 3D visualization was being considered in 1994 before CSS was even released is absolutely fascinating, and a testament to how forward- looking early Hypertext proponents were.

Skip down to Marc Andreessen's 'Future capabilities' for Mosaic: [http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0099.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0099.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> @fat's talk about this [42:07]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iniwPUEbPUM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iniwPUEbPUM)

</comment><comment><USER25> > It is pretty clear how this proposal was made in the era of document-based > HTML pages, as there is no way compromise-based design would work in our > app-oriented world. Nevertheless, it did include the fundamental idea that > stylesheets should cascade. In other words, it should be possible for > multiple stylesheets to be applied to the same page.

> It its original formulation, this idea was generally considered important > because it gave the end user control over what they saw.

Content (i.e. ad) blockers are a logical extension of this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Writing pages in a web site is a mess, polluted by different syntaxes, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery things, MarkDown, ... It's a miracle that Wikipedia exists! Several works have been done to bring some unity, for instance Skribe, Scribble, LAML, SXML, but they generally lead to complex systems devoted to coders and forgetting web designers and, of course, beginners.

The {lambda way} project is built as a thin overlay on top of any modern web browser, and devoted to writing, composing and coding on the web, where the markup, styling and scripting are unified in a single language, {lambda talk}.

Commenting this work, somebody wrote this: « Reminds me of John McCarthy's lament at the W3C's choice of SGML as the basis for HTML: "An environment where the markup, styling and scripting is all s-expression based would be nice." »

The project can be seen here: [http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/) or in [https://github.com/amarty66](https://github.com/amarty66).

Do you think that {lambda way} is on the good way?

<comment><USER27> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER28> And yet, if everybody followed this logic we would never get new standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To me, PSL looks the most promising, at least the conditionals would have come handy. CSS only 'recently' got features like the CALC() function which is a blessing.

However I have to agree with the decision to put it aside, because remember how implementing something seemingly simple as CSS went in the days if IE5,6. It was a disaster and something more complex like PSL would have been even worse.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd like to see CSS-shaped HTML like this:

      doctype html
      html {
        head {
          title Hello there
          script type='text/javascript' src='main.js'
        }
        body {
          p class='one two' {
            span Sample text
          }
        }
      }

Is there an HTML preprocessor using a similar language?

<comment> K-Wall Jade comes somewhat close but opts for the offside rule rather than brackets and abbreviates class and id with . and # respectively.

<comment><USER31> Just FYI, Jade has been renamed as Pug, for whatever reason. [https://github.com/pugjs](https://github.com/pugjs)

<comment><USER32> Legal reasons :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Typo:

> When HTML was announced by Tim Burners-Lee

"Berners".

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

<comment><USER34> While you're there:

"fatal flaw which would plauge" -> plague

Great article!

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I love how Bert Bos' homepage pretty much uses CSS to the fullest extent possible (as it should) [https://www.w3.org/People/Bos/](https://www.w3.org/People/Bos/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone missed it, there's a discussion with Robert Raisch, the developer who made the first stylesheet proposal, in the article's comments.

</comment><comment><USER36> And several years before that, there was Motif Toolkit.

</comment><comment><USER37> Love the RELEVANCE selector in CHSS. Could use that today.

</comment><comment><USER38> I spent a long time learning XSL/XSLT. The theory was we'd represent the data on a web page with XML, and then determine how it's to be displayed with XSL/XSLT. I think browsers still support it, but it never caught on.

<comment><USER39> Which is very sad, because it's a totally sane way. Have a set of different low-level languages to describe a screen layout, a paper layout, a audio layout for the blind, a single high-level language that describes content, and three transformations written in a very powerful yet pretty much declarative language. What not to like?

For example, sometimes we may need to enumerate certain things, e.g. headings. Normally this is a part of the final typesetting package (LaTeX or MS Word, whatever). But with XSLT and XSL/FO we have a different share of responsibilities: XSLT computes the numbers and XSL/FO typesets what it's given, so it has one less thing to worry about. This is great, because typesetting is complex enough already.

Besides, XSLT way of creating styles (xsl:attribute-set) is one of most elegant I've seen. It's very simple (one element and one attribute) and very powerful at the same time: you can easily inherit styles and/or use mixins or combine these approaches and there's no ambiguity. Besides, it's generic.</comment></comment>


Firefox web browser (iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/firefox-web-browser/id989804926?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Whilst at the core this is the same as Safari and Chrome for iOS being able to sync bookmarks and history is a big deal for me.

Will Apple ever allow a different rendering engine?</comment>


Behind Google's Antitrust Escape - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323689604578221971197494496.html <comment><USER2> > The FTC's decision also shows how anti-Google lobbying from rivals like > Microsoft Corp. MSFT -1.87% had little effect.

They managed to initiate and sustain an 18 month FTC investigation into someone who did nothing wrong, generating a mountain of FUD and anti-PR along the way. It sounds to me like their lobbying had a pretty big effect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Much more interesting and important was the FRAND settlement wrt the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, but besides Google agreeing to provide reasonable access to those Motorola wireless patents that are standards based, other highlights include:

1\. The FTC found little or no evidence of search bias toward Google's own products;

2\. Google agreed to refrain from scraping content such as restaurant reviews;

3\. Google agreed not to penalize websites in search rankings if the site opts out of Google's verticals (e.g. shopping);

4\. Google agreed to give advertisers more flexible access to its AdWords platform.</comment></comment>


The unsolved secret of David Jones' perpetual motion machine [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-tyne-41638926/the-unsolved-secret-of-david-jones-perpetual-motion-machine <comment><USER2> Apparently its known to be fake by David Jones. He did reveal how it was made but the recipient is still keeping it secret.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4762778/How-r...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4762778/How- riddle-bike-wheel-finally-solved.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> As a side-side question, is it just me or "unsolved secret" doesn't sound "right"?

I mean, "unsolved problem" or "unsolved mistery" or "unrevealed secret", but "unsolved secret"?

<comment><USER4> "Unsolved {riddle|puzzle|mystery}" are the usual forms for a headline of this type in the UK. Part of the Beeb may have briefly lost the rule book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given the age of this creation,the era of crystal radio[1] as a power source would be my first leap-to conclusion, whilst not enough to get it spinning from a standstill, enough to maintain motion once at speed from an initial hand-spin.

How could you test this - place in a faraday cage.

If that kept it running then my next thought would be some form of dry-pile battery[2], which is equally old enough technology wise and also proven to last many decades [3].

But certainly a fun puzzle to ponder.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamboni_pile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamboni_pile) [aka dr-pilebattery] [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell) [example of dry-pile battery operating for decades]

<comment><USER6> My first thought was also a long-lasting battery and an electrostatic motor similar to those used in that bell. That along with the large moment of inertia of the wheel and very good (possibly magnetic suspension?) bearings, makes it possible for it to continue rotating for a very long time.

Also, for a second looking at the title, I thought it was going to be this guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Jones_(video_blogger)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Jones_\(video_blogger\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could it be something simple like a combination of measures designed to allow it to rotate for an extremely long time: \- Vacuum enclosure (remove air resistance) \- Perfectly balanced wheel (reduce bearing wear) \- Excellent quality bearing / lubrication \- Small electric motor & battery to provide enough force to allow for continuity once started externally

</comment><comment><USER8> When he first built that and wrote it up in his Daedalus column, I sent in my guess as to how it works. He replied, and said that wasn't it.

Some students stole that wheel once, it continued to run, and they couldn't future it out. They gave it back after three weeks, embarrassed.

He built four of those wheels. Here's another one.[1]

I'm really impressed that they are running long after his death.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dpmP_H1LBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dpmP_H1LBM)

<comment><USER9> What was your guess?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If it's not possible to access the machine and experiment on it, how can we possibly know if somebody actually explained the trick correctly?

</comment><comment><USER11> Have they tried holding a geiger counter up to it?

</comment><comment><USER12> My guess is it powered by changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure like Cox's clock:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_timepiece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%27s_timepiece)

</comment><comment><USER13> I missed David Jones' work when he was alive. Does anyone know of online resources about his inventions and writing? His books are out of print and hard to get hold off.

<comment><USER14> They're available on AbeBooks last time I checked. Buy "The Inventions of Daedalus" and if you like it also "The Further Inventions..." which are both fantastic.

Alternatively you could read through his columns in back issues of New Scientist and Nature at your local library but won't get the additional commentary and goofy drawings.

Finally, there's a documentary on his perpetual motion machines (possibly mentioned, haven't rtfa yet) which is more about the man than the machines. I had to write to its creator to get a copy though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So is there only one in existence? I take it his family will not allow anyone to dismantle the contraption.

<comment><USER2> Supposedly this one was made by David Jones in 1999 in a Vienna museum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dpmP_H1LBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dpmP_H1LBM)

<comment><USER16> Heat sinks indicate sterling engine? The one from the first one is probably also sterling although not as obvious.

<comment><USER2> That's what I thought. Some sort of sterling engine. Yet sterling engines need a heat source and sink. Perhaps the fireplace is a proper heatsink?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unsolved and unverified are different.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm no expert, but every criticism I've ever seen of people's attempts at perpetual motion always seem to involve the fact that some part will wear out eventually. Such as "magnets will lose their pull over time" or "friction will eventually wear down this gear."

I don't think those are valid criticisms of the machines. They are perpetual motion machines, not perpetual no-maintenance machines.

<comment><USER19> I can't think of any serious criticism of a perpetual motion machine that is based on that. What are some examples you've run across?

<comment><USER18> Well then you seem to agree with me? I'm quoting experience casually reading various articles in my lifetime regarding the machines. Again, I am not a scholar in this field.

<comment><USER19> How am I agreeing with you? I'm asking you where you've seen that kind of critique. It's not one that would be used in a middle school physics class or article aimed at the general public.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can my website use Tumblr to reach 18 year olds? - <AUTHOR>

A few websites such as Mint and OkCupid are known (in part) for their popular and informative blogs. I've created a website geared towards students entering college and recently created a blog on Tumblr to help promote it. However, instead of writing about the product, I'm giving daily college advice.
I've been following some tags and following users that post about graduation. That's brought me around 220 followers in a couple of days.
From what I've seen, a lot of content on Tumblr tends to go viral. What are some tips to make my blog popular on Tumblr? <comment><USER2> I'd look at strategic posts on Reddit. The demographic seems to be mostly teenagers (people in high school, or new to college), droves of them.</comment>


This Tiny Cube of Cold Brew Is the Only Caffeine You'll Ever Need - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/126382/nootrobox-go-cubes-cold-brew-caffeine-gummy-nootropics-taste-test-and-how-it-works <comment><USER2> Interesting concept but I cannot stand Mic.com's concept of infinite scrolling. If I want to be bombarded with content that is of seemingly loose relevance, I'll peruse my spam folder.

I'm sure it captures some interest, but I would imagine it's difficult to convert that interest into a repeat visitor since there is no abstract to the content. Does this practice work? Where's the satisfaction of getting to the bottom of the page - it's like this site was designed for people with ADHD.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just keep a bottle of caffeine pills at my desk. They cost pennies per pill, don't yellow your teeth, and take almost no effort to consume.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is just something about that morning cup of coffee though!</comment>


Ask HN: SEO impact of HN's URL "itemid" vs. an actual title? - <AUTHOR> What is the reasoning behind only an itemid in the URL for HN? Is there an SEO impact?
For instance, a url on reddit may be:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ea7ee/what_would_the_horizon_look_like_if_you_were/
while a link on HN looks like:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465163 <comment><USER2> As the person who wrote the code for the SEO part of the reddit URL, I can tell you that there is definitely an impact. It made a huge difference at the time, because reddit wasn't really on Google's radar. Today I suspect it would have less impact for reddit.

For HN, I get the impression that they don't really want to be all that optimized for Google, so it probably hits their goals just fine, but it probably does hurt them a little bit. But since the words are in an H1 right at the top, probably not all that much.

Edit: The code in case anyone is interested:

[https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/cfd979fa0119191257eadc...](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/blob/cfd979fa0119191257eadc4ccfcada60968984a1/r2/r2/lib/utils/utils.py#L936)

<comment><USER3> To me your comment demonstrates why it's really hard to figure out anything worthwhile about SEO.

You wrote that code almost 8 years ago[1]. Google and other search engines have changed a lot since then. Who knows if this has any impact today?

Actually did you even A/B test it at the time? Or just turn it on along with a bunch of other changes?

It's hard to tell, and there's so much SEO (mis)information out there based on old anecdotes, and all the players doing A/B testing for this sort of thing on a big scale keep their data to themselves.

1\. [https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/353ad2a](https://github.com/reddit/reddit/commit/353ad2a)

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty confident that no one A/B tests URLs for SEO purposes. How would you A/B test this anyway? You can't exactly serve Google different URLs and see what works (in fact, this would ruin both approaches).

<comment><USER5> You're definitely wrong about that - there are whole businesses built on building "case studies" that try to decipher the inner workings of Google's algorithm.

These days most tests are run by buying two domains that are a combination of random letters/numbers, setting up two nearly identical sites, and doing identical linkbuilding to both - then seeing which one ranks higher.

It's not exactly scholastic research quality, but repeated enough times it gives you an idea of what's working "right now".

<comment><USER6> This method wouldn't work. To make both results comparable you would have to put the same content on both sites, which would result in one of both pages getting hit by the duplicate content problem.

<comment><USER5> It actually works great; the "duplicate content problem" only impacts pages on the same domain, not identical content across multiple sites. It's possible to make a lot of money by taking the content of mild authority sites and putting it on a high authority domain - can outrank the source sites in short order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _What is the reasoning behind only an itemid in the URL for HN?_

It's easy to code

 _Is there an SEO impact?_

Probably, but as SEO is search engine _optimization_ , if a site doesn't care about search engines, then it also probably doesn't care about optimization of those searches.

<comment><USER8> To be fair putting a title and an item id is nearly as easy to code, just the "overhead" of a rewrite rule.

<comment><USER9> It's not exactly a huge amount of work, but validating and sluggifying text is also part of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Technically "no" the SEO goals for HN would appear to be unaffected by the choice :-).

And in this case its actually a good thing. If you scroll through the /new pages as I do you will see that a lot of people try to use HN like Reddit as an SEO tool to get more views to their web site. That can be facilitated by a link baity headline cum URI which gets indexed with the keywords of interest of the day.

By simply putting 'itemid' in the link text HN gives very little "link love" to keywords and so is not as easily exploited by "digital presence" folks (aka people who try to SEO their client's sites or products).

</comment><comment><USER11> When I Google for "SEO actual title" this page is the first result.

[https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=seo+actual+title&ie=U...](https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=seo+actual+title&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

<comment><USER12> That's a fairly specific search term though. I'm not sure I'd use that as the only evidence that it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER13> It's really not that specific. It's not the _only_ evidence that it doesn't matter, but if google can pick up on a 3 word query (one of them being "seo", an extremely competitive keyword) in <30 mins then it's safe to say hn is doing fine.

<comment><USER12> Google polls sites that provide primarily discussions regularly. Doing an exact query match makes the most sense to do as step 1 of a query. So even if HN was trying to actively prevent this I think Google would still have an easy time.

<comment><USER7> _exact query match_

You keep saying exact query match, but commenter above used 3 non-consecutive words out of the 12 words in the title, and did not use any sort of quoted search text.

Indeed, it even works with just two words out of the title:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=seo+actual](https://www.google.com/search?q=seo+actual)

The point being that HN's use of just the id in the URL has a minimal, if any, effect on search ranking.

<comment><USER12> > You keep saying exact query match

Only said it once =/

> The point being that HN's use of just the id in the URL has a minimal, if > any, effect on search ranking.

A single data point absolutely _does not_ indicate whether the id in the URL affects SEO or not. Your Google search is context specific (to you) so I would certainly expect it to show up near or at the top. But what about those who have never touched that page or even have gone to HN? The more specific the title the better overall but none of this gives us data about the id in the URL being good or bad for SEO.

Likely I think it's more of a UX than an SEO thing. But still don't go off a context specific, single data point to decide whether something is true in general or not.

<comment><USER7> _Your Google search is context specific (to you) so I would certainly expect it to show up near or at the top._

New VM at aws, no previous Google searches. Still #2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is an SEO impact, however HN is not that oriented on general public and it has no ads so it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER6> > There is an SEO impact,

Any source for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What you are referring to is a "slug" [1] which adds another searchable dimension to the content. This appeals to marketers trying to add searchable keywords to boost discovery. Not having one won't affect HN since "everything's present" in the forum. For instance, if you google the title of your post it is ranked #1 in the search results [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_URL#Slug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_URL#Slug)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=Ask+HN%3A+SEO+impact+of+HN%2...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Ask+HN%3A+SEO+impact+of+HN%27s+URL+%E2%80%9Citemid%E2%80%9D+vs.+an+actual+title%3F&oq=Ask+HN%3A+SEO+impact+of+HN%27s+URL+%E2%80%9Citemid%E2%80%9D+vs.+an+actual+title%3F&)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure HN doesn't want urls to provide an SEO boost either for themselves or the people submitting - and if so, I would tend to agree with them.

It's well know that pg doesn't want this site to have mainstream appeal, so having HN articles list high in search engines would probably be a problem they would want to avoid, but also, submitters shouldn't have an incentive to use this site to boost their own SEO by submitting low-quality linkspam.

If it were me, I would go even further and route every link through a dereferring proxy just to mess with their analytics as well, and block everyone except maybe IA through robots.txt. For a site which is meant to be about discussion and thought-provoking stories and not content aggregation for the sake of ad revenue, I think SEO is a cancer.

</comment><comment><USER17> A site doesn't need to be selling something (ads) to implement good SEO

What is the reasoning behind only an itemid in the URL for HN?

Like someone previously mentioned, easier to code, less thought required around site architecture and optimization

Is there an SEO impact? Yes, from a basic standpoint, descriptive URLs are easier to crawl, index, and rank accordingly. They help readers find info better when searching for questions + answers

From a more highlevel standpoint, descriptive URLs and an optimized site structure helps in many ways including SEO, analytics, accessibility, and more. Reddit does it well

<comment><USER18> > What is the reasoning behind only an itemid in the URL for HN?

The reason is because it's the minimum information required to do the job. HN was built to function by PG who built it old school as a demonstration of his custom programming language, it's clearly not been optimized for SEO and putting a slug in the URL adds nothing functionally and thus the engineer had no reason to add that feature. It also uses tables for layout, has embedded style information, and saves all state to files on disk using no database. It's hardly a "best practices" type application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Frankly, the usage of having keywords in the URL is a very minimal factor. If everything were equal for a URL with the keywords in the URL and one without, there wouldn't be much more of a benefit to the one with the keywords in the URL.

However, if your overall site structure is one that has topics and subtopics or categories and subcategories, it would help the user see that site structure. For example, in the reddit example above, users can get directly to the askscience subreddit by removing part of the URL and going directly to [https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/). Setting up URLs like this is a good practice, the URL would then follow the site's breadcrumb trail.

For H/N, I don't really see any benefit, at this point, for using keywords in the URLs. There's just no SEO benefit.

</comment><comment><USER20> I can think of a couple of impacts:

\- Shorter urls are easier to copy and share.

\+ Keywords in the url may increase search engine rank.

\+ Full title in the url helps readers know what they're clicking.

There are advantages to having the full title in the url for both SEM and readers. However, as others mention, HN wasn't designed for SEM and contains no ads to profit from it.

<comment><USER21> >Full title in the url helps readers know what they're clicking.

Almost every website I've seen lets you re-write the url. For example,

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4eaqjb/something](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4eaqjb/something)

and

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4eaqjb/anything](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4eaqjb/anything)

both go to the same link.

<comment><USER22> HN could simply add a '&title='. No need to change anything in their routes, just change the link in the main page.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472694&title=ask- hn-s...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472694&title=ask-hn-seo- impact-of-hns-url)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My understanding is that originally [and perhaps currently] Hacker News uses the file system for storage and that the id number is the name of a file on disk. A few years ago, I recall a discussion about a reorganization of the files from a single [or few?] directories into a more broadly branched tree. The basis for doing IIRC so was to improve performance.

My impression is that this would be a simple way to produce a RESTful interface. When the resource is a file on disk, how complex does application layer routing have to be?

Anyway, my guess is that general SEO is not particularly high on the list of features to implement. On the other hand, if adding Algolia and the API then it's another story. That was also a substantial improvement to the feature set. It might even turn up the aforementioned discussion about the file system hierarchy [I think PG wrote the post].

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER24> HN wasn't intended to be used as a tool to improve your SEO. It may increase your visibility to actual people or you may sometimes, through HN, get noticed by other websites but don't expect it to directly lead to an improvement in the SERPS.

<comment><USER25> I think the question may be regarding indexing HN itself, not the sites- linked-to. If I wanted to find discussion about "what would a horizon look like ... " by searching those terms, would reddit be favored because of those terms in the URL?

<comment><USER26> It depends on a multitude of factors but a huge weighting will be given to the page with the largest number of __high quality __links pointing to the site. Notice i said 'high quality'...

The URL structure isn't always that important, but it helps.

<comment><USER25> > The URL structure isn't always that important, but it helps.

If that's the case then all else aside the answer to the question being asked is, "Yes, there is an impact" and perhaps "but it's not significant enough to justify changing HN"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why does the URL text matter for SEO? Wouldn't a crawler be looking at the page content?

</comment><comment><USER28> As a user, I would find it helpful to have a more human readable permalink / slug for the "at a quick glance" purposes. As someone w/ some knowledge of SEO, it would most likely add value as well.

<comment><USER6> Isn't the link text human readable enough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> HN doesnt really care. Even if slugs didn't provide any SEO benefit, I would implement them purely for usability reasons. xyz.com/learn-seo looks much better to a user compared to xyz.com/46765475

</comment><comment><USER30> Doing 'SEO' is like punching smoke. Build for those visiting and using your website.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't think search engines are the main source of readers for HN.

</comment><comment><USER31> I never understood why a slug should be considered a signal.

<comment><USER32> These might be a few:

\- Though it's not much more difficult, it does show you spent a little more effort on the website to not just leave the pk there. I would think this would be more relevant for sites not using a framework like wordpress (which we absolutely know from search results filters that google can categorize sites in this way...)

\- Legacy... older websites that are pure static pages will likely have good keywords in the file name, since it would be maintained primarily by humans looking at directories of files.

\- Social significance. The link would be more likely to have a better social impact because the content of the page could be determined whether its an anchor tag, posted in irc, or sent in gmail. You might argue that just because the page name has the keywords doesnt mean the content is about that, but I would argue google can quickly detect and demote those kind of things (aka the page title is only really relevant to your seo if it's also relevant to the content... otherwise it's essentially just a random primary key).

Just my thoughts...

<comment><USER31> I find all these 3 are contrary to the definition of a URL, and the whole idea of using slugs just screams "game me".</comment></comment></comment>


Aviary - Creation on the fly - <AUTHOR> http://a.viary.com/ <comment><USER2> What is this supposed to be? This link takes me to a page with:

      Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0221'
      Invalid @ Command directive
      /apps/erroregg.aspx, line 1
      The specified 'Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" Title="Error" ' option is unknown or invalid.
      Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'
      [MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]Unknown MySQL server host 'db1.plime.com' (11004)
      /config.p, line 358

<comment><USER3> This is funny. They have deployed an ASP.NET app to an IIS server supporting only ASP classic. Brings up memories of good old ASP, back in the day. That was real hacking just like QBasic. I loved it. And I wouldn't wanna go back... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Works for me. From first glance, seems like they're probably overextending themselves... Adobe's whole product line as avian-named web apps?

</comment><comment><USER5> 4 hours later: still an error... are WE supposed to create something here on the fly?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you build a relevant audience on Twitter? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a freelance Ruby on Rails engineer trying to build an audience and develop a personal brand on twitter. To do so, I want to understand how to provide consistent value to a technical audience in 140 character chunks.
I'm especially interested in hearing from folks who've built a large audience themselves. What works? What doesn't?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> There are thousands of blogs available on every subject now a days that its pretty hard for people to find yours until you have some kickass content. But there are ways.

Create a Quora Blog, write terrific. At the end of the post, leave your Twitter handle for people to connect. There is this unique feature about Quora blogs, you can promote your blog to targeted audience using Quora Credits. You get these credits by asking questions, answering questions. Use it to build audience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty simple, really. First I've tweeted a couple of things like my own blog, other articles, news, comments, opinions - all related to my area of expertise. Then I searched for related keywords and started following other people. A bunch of them followed back and now I'll get retweets, replies and traffic to my site when I tweet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Writing mostly will reward you many followers, of course if you tweet relevant stuff for you audience. The more retweets you get, the more people will follow you.

Having a blog will surely increase following ration, again, you must write interesting things and share.

The more you share the more followers you will get.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't tweet a lot but most of my ~250 followers came mostly from my blog (as far as I know). My blog traffic comes mostly from HN and Google Search.</comment>


Gay Pride: the game - in honor of today's Supreme Court decision - <AUTHOR> http://gaypride.clay.io

<comment><USER2> Enough already.

<comment><USER3> I can't email you, so I'll ask you here to please stop posting so many political comments to HN. An occasional few are one thing, but you're taking it way too far.

I know it can be hard to stop when one feels oneself in a minority, but political grievance is not what this site is for.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I will post what I feel. Just like everyone on HN.

If the site isn't about politics, we shouldn't have any posts about gay marriage, climate change, Obama, etc. Just Technology and startups (which is my point, actually).

A game about gay marriage is completely about politics.

You are just upset because I disagree with your person political views.

So in the future, please stop having political articles here on HN and I will stop posting my opinions. Fair?

<comment><USER3> It isn't about disagreeing with you, though I understand why it seems that way. It's about respecting the intent of the site.

Sometimes when users feel outnumbered by others with opposing views, they go on tilt, posting too many inflammatory comments in quick succession. Too many, because nobody can produce dozens of comments on end while keeping them all substantive. And inflammatory, because the sense of being surrounded by enemies leads one to cut corners in civility and consideration. (It feels like self-defense: they're the ones ganging up on me, it's only natural to react a little strongly, etc.) Such comments never remain unanswered, and so we get flames all over the place. This amounts to unpremeditated trolling.

Often the accounts that do this are single-purpose political accounts or throwaways, and those are pretty easy to ban, but sometimes they're good HN users, and it doesn't feel right to ban them, though I don't know what else to do besides ask them to stop.

If I say you can't scatter cigarette ash in a high-risk forest fire zone, that isn't because of prejudice against smokers. Yours isn't the only account that's been overdoing the political vitriol, but we haven't seen any other doing it so much. That may be because we don't see everything.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Blip – Web Audio looping and sampling library - <AUTHOR> http://jshanley.github.io/blip/

<comment><USER2> Fun! Starting with one of the fiddles I came up with this: [http://jsfiddle.net/q8jt8o36/22/](http://jsfiddle.net/q8jt8o36/22/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Incredible. I love the visualization, it fits the music perfectly. I could watch/listen-to this for hours. Great work, tobr

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure others will find this reminiscent of the Minecraft in-game sounds, which makes me wonder whether they have similar logic to create on the fly, or just a pre-recorded looped audio file.

I'm assuming the later due to resources.

<comment><USER4> The Minecraft soundtrack was composed by Daniel Rosenfeld[1]

1: [http://minecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Daniel_Rosenfeld](http://minecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Daniel_Rosenfeld)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm quite impressed by this. I can easily imagine some pretty sophisticated productions with such a small amount of code. For instance, your _Better Looping_ example is basically a step sequencer.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you still need flash fallback for web audio so should use a mature library like Sound Manager. I looked through the JavaScript for this and saw nothing like that. Might be good for a demo or hackathon or something that doesn't need to work everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it's limited to those browsers that support the Web Audio API. The point of this project is to show off what the emerging API is capable of, and to keep the overhead low. Adding those kinds of dependencies would defeat that purpose.</comment></comment>


Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5886178/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation <comment><USER3> _Novels require descriptions, comics require painstaking drawings, films and television require either hours of expression deadening makeup or expensive CGI. In a video game, rendering an asari or a hanar requires the same amount of work as a human._

It is easier to have alien life in both a novel (descriptive) and a comic (visual) than in a video game (kinematic).

 _Want a cast of thousands? No problem. Need a mob of hundreds of individuals representing fifteen different species rendered inside an colossal ancient space station? No sweat._

Clearly this person has never made a video game.

 _I don't need to explain why the option to have a non-white, non-male, non- straight person as the main character of a blockbuster action science fiction story is important._

But you do need to be explained the difference between shared and tailored culture. Having a "diverse" hero of a popular television show has an affect on society. Having a "diverse" hero of the instance of the video game that you are playing has an affect on a single individual (and maybe some friends).

 _One can spend hours tweaking physical appearance (not mere a few options of "races") to get a character of any ethnicity and build. Oh, and sexuality is an option too. Shepard is yours to design._

That's just windowdressing the choose your own adventure. The backstory that you change won't affect the plot any more than picking a "race" in those "unimpressive old games".

I opened this hoping for something insightful, but was presented with an adolescent boy's wonder of a story written in a shiny medium. For all of the alien diversity, every picture on the page is humanoid. For all of the glory of the malleable video game, a descent novel would have twice the depth and ten times the perceived diversity. He purports to appreciate the humility of the portrayal of humanity, but it sounds like the whole story is about a rise to power.

If you like Mass Effect this much, do yourself a favor and go read a good book.

<comment><USER4> Wow, you are the type of person that put down new mediums. This attitude is more dangerous as it will inhibit the new art form's potential by putting it down in favor of an old but more importantly different medium. Books and games are not exclusive to each other. Stop pulling down games when it wants to aspire to a great storytelling format. Stop imposing your cynicism when glimpses of ambition shows in games. Stop this shit.

<comment><USER5> This is not about new media. There are great games who tell awesome story (I would suggest Planescape: Torment for the old ones, KOTOR2 for new ones, and Aquaria for the indie ones). This is about Mass Effect specifically, which is not really spectacular. It's power fantasy with good pacing and structure and it borrows from movies in ways of soundtracks and atmosphere, yes. But the universe it happens in is pretty boring compared to, say Eclipse Phase or The Culture, the "diversity" is laughable, and I would suggest that characters who are gay only in some playthroughs are pretty dangerous idea.

I would on the other hand argue that Mass Effect series is bad for the video game industry -- for many people, it made voiced main character mainstream. That is bad, because it's very expensive, so not only it makes video gaming industry harder to enter for new businesses, it also makes even the rich studios trim dialogue and actual choice in game to the lowest common denominator.

However once again, this is not about new media. Check works of Paul DeMarinis if you want new media, it's full of win.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand why Planescape: Torment gets so much love. I tried it out because of the hype, and found it has an interesting world, but the story itself was pretty vanilla, and the engine was just another form of isometric D&D game. I was bored and gave up halfway though.

Sure, the story might have improved towards the end, but a good story should have you throughout, and not make you drudge through the early stages.

<comment><USER7> Isn't it obvious? Torment wasn't a game, it was an interactive novel in disguise. The most interesting stuff in the game doesn't happen in the top half of the screen, it happens in the long lines of narrative and dialog at the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I enjoyed both Mass Effects, and think that they're both well-polished, and conducted in an interesting world. I don't think it's the most awesomest evar as this article does, but a lot of the naysaying so far in the comments are overfocusing on the negatives. But if we're talking about inclusiveness...

 _I don't need to explain why the option to have a non-white, non-male, non- straight person as the main character of a blockbuster action science fiction story is important_

This highlights an interesting current even in mainstream culture - <USER2> depictions of homosexuality. Pretty much it's fine... as long as the homosexuals in question are lesbians... and they have smoking hot bodies. There are 12 romance options combined in both games. Four of them are for either gender protagonist. One is a human woman. Three are of a race with only one gender, that happens to look like human women. If you play with a male main character, you won't be exposed to the slightest homosexual visual, even if you really want it.

<http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Romance>

It brings in another interesting effect - wildly different races are wildly different, crazy body types and so forth... as long as you're male. If you're female... well... you get to look like a human female. Every turtle-man alien we see is just that, a man. They have females, but we never get to see one. Same thing happens in World of Warcraft - the male character models are really different, but females all have similar body shapes.

<comment><USER8> This contrasts unfavorably with older media. In the broadcast television show torchwood the main character is a bi-sexual male. In Iain M Banks popular "Culture" series of novels it is common for some species to change gender, for example.

in contrast, the extent to which the Mass Effect franchise pushes the envelope of, say, the social norms of j. average suburban American community is roughly on par with the average pg-13 movie.

<comment><USER9> The writer of the article didn't consider any novels to be in the running (or non-US television shows really), so of course Banks didn't warrant consideration (although humanity is in a pretty privileged spot in The Culture, just not terrestrial humanity)

The general setup of Mass Effect vis a vis humanity's political significance is pretty similar to Brin's Uplift Universe. We're small potatoes and upstarts and most of the players hate us.

I'd also have to say that the article almost seems to ignore Mass Effect 2, in which humans are (or can be, depending on what you did in the original) pretty much running things. (that's how it was for me, and I believe the proximate cause was that I didn't go out of mY way to save the council at the end of thE first installment, because I hate the worn out "let millions die to save the privileged few / my girlfriend" trope in action adventures.

<comment><USER10> And the main character who saves the day in ME is a human. I thought that was a weird thing to overlook in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps the best piece I have ever read on io9 (which is admittedly not a high bar to clear). I have a few quibbles with it, particularly the bit about not having too many aliens that look " _suspiciously_ similar to humans," but in general the conclusion is well-supported.

<comment><USER12> Yes, a lot of the species in Mass Effect are humanoid in shape, but when the author says "suspiciously similar to humans", he really means "exactly identical in appearance to humans except for one tiny difference", which is the standard set by budgetary restrictions in live-action media. Most of the major species in Mass Effect are indeed humanoid, but I don't think any of them are nearly similar enough to humans that anyone would ever for an instant mistake them for human (unless they've been to a lot of Blue Man Group concerts).

<comment><USER13> _but I don't think any of them are nearly similar enough to humans that anyone would ever for an instant mistake them for human_

Really? The article says " _Run around the Citadel and you'll be damned if you find more than two or three humans out of hundreds of citizens milling about, shopkeepers hocking their wares, and government officials eyeing you suspiciously. The entire government of the galaxy, known as the Council, is run by non-humans._ "

That all sounds exceedingly human to me. You can't start an article with _engulfs all of science fiction's greatest universes_ and then say that. There are some /really/ great universes out there. A government? Seriously?

A _government_? A _mixed species_ government? Shopkeepers? Wares? This isn't an amazing genre beating non-human future, this is small-town-humans-in-space- in-weird-bodies. AI and FTL and life goes on? Multiple civilizations and they're all basically equal in brainpower?

Take a read of this short story [http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three- worlds-collide.pd...](http://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds- collide.pdf) and then say this game is Taking Non-Humans Seriously as a concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I enjoyed Mass Effect, but Mass Effect 2 undid my interest in the series.

Mass Effect's locations offered some freedom of movement - they felt like actual _places_.

Mass Effect 2's settings were extremely constrained by comparison - no longer living locations to explore, but very much tight funnels that might as well have had "== One Way =>" signs posted.

<comment><USER6> If you mean the ability to land on planets and then spend more time fighting the bouncy vertical movement of your vehicle than actually moving around the map, then yes, I guess ME1 had more freedom. I found them about the same in terms of linearity, but I was very glad I didn't have the bounce-o-matic sessions anymore.

<comment><USER15> What platform were you playing it on? I have the PC version and enjoyed every moment in the Mako - it goes up, down and side to side like a boss, and you don't even have to maneuver around obstacles :-)

<comment><USER6> PC here as well. Sure, you can drive over all but the nearly vertical mountains... but hit the slightest bump and the Mako is like a superball. Mako was fun at first, but planetside gets tedious fast: loading screen - bounce - bounce - hit anomoly 1/2/3 and do same minigame for all - bounce - short, unsatisfying vehicle firefight - loading screen. ME2 was much better - here's a planet, grab the resources, if there's a special mission, _then_ you get a loading screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're wondering why a puff piece featuring the Mass Effect series is on io9, it's because the third game in the series is coming out on March 6th.

<comment><USER17> ...

I just went to the shop and bought ME 1 & 2\. Now I feel like a complete idiot, as I knew that ME3 is coming out soon, and didn't connect the dots.

:/. I hope 1 & 2 even remotely match the description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _It's the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more_

The best, most inventive, written SF never made it to the movies/TV, or was beaten to an unrecognizable pulp in the process.

No particular snobbery on this, just think you should be aware of it. If "important" is equivalent to popular or well-known, that's another kettle of fish. I'd say no.

<comment><USER19> What makes SF so damn good is its ability to surprise and challenge us. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Hollywood has decided mainstream audiences are allergic to, so they recycle the same old tropes again and again. Anything new and interesting must be shoe-horned into the familiar shapes, or ignored.

For example, how many times have you seen this one: hero's buddy is brutally, callously murdered by generic bad-guy, he decides on revenge and possibly discovers some love-interest at the same time. He is nearly beaten, but by skill and courage wins through to triumph over the bad-guy, although not so conclusively as to preclude the making of a sequel.

That is basically _the_ Hollywood plotline, with minor variations. It's present in anything from Avatar to Beverley Hills Cop. The really good Sci Fi makes a point of defying this cliché so it never gets to the screen. Given what happens to SF when it _does_ make it (unrecognizable pulp) this is probably A Good Thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Greatness of Mass Effect that I was able to exterminate Arachni, kill the council and give collector base to the Cerberus. Humanity value in the story is that they are new enough to challenge the order of things. Cerberus is the ultimate startup accelerator!

<comment><USER15> Yeah, and then the head of Cerberus got indoctrinated and turned all their resources against humanity... Damn, I'm going to have to replay ME2 just to destroy the Collector base and generally try to fk with TIM :-D...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess this game never really clicked for me. It seemed too much like a video game version of Babylon 5 on rails with predictable sub plot cliches. I enjoyed it for sure, but I don't really consider much of it ground breaking or revolutionary, as I've seen these plots in various other media forms for decades, and the gameplay felt like any other BioWare RPG I've played.

<comment><USER22> The full voiceover (including player lines) was one of the big things that really sold it for me -- it's really hard to go back to other RPGs and play a silent nobody after playing mass effect (which was one of the reasons I never go into Dragon Age (aside from it being bad)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The next generation is bookended by episodes about how small and limited human awareness and reach are in the universe they inhabit. If anything I find TnG much more realistic in that the enterprise almost always encounters beings that are far more primitive or so advanced as to be somewhat incomprehensible.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what scientific developments or artist interpretations inspired by Mass Effect could come around like those that have come around from Star Trek. [http://roadtickle.com/things-we-have-now-that-star-trek- inve...](http://roadtickle.com/things-we-have-now-that-star-trek-invented/)

<comment><USER25> Maybe the LHC will give us the precursor to the Mass Effect drives/relays/weapons?

Or giant talking mud-snail people... but I'll bank on the weapons I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Except I never understood why all the work in writing and researching this rich universe and back story got wasted in the main story arc which was pure hollywood b-movie action...kill-the-evil-cackling-bad-guy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Mass Effect? I've heard of that. The other universes he mentions, those I _know_. I think he is overestimating the amount of people playing videogames vs. the amount of people reading and watching television.

Of course, popularity is not a measure of importance, but it is a measure of influence. I don't think Mass Effect is very influential. At least, none of the authors I read have ever mentioned it, AFAIK.</comment>


Indonesia cuts certain Instagram, WhatsApp services amid deadly riots - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/indonesia-cuts-instagram-whatsapp-services-deadly-riots <comment><USER2> Fun fact: Reddit was already banned there.</comment>


Neo4j for Graph Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://neo4j.com/blog/announcing-neo4j-for-graph-data-science/ <comment><USER2> I wish they would just serialize cypher output in formats that work with common graph data science libs... rather than wrapping everything slowly into their own ecosystem.</comment>


What colour is it? The Time. Now in colour. - <AUTHOR> http://whatcolourisit.scn9a.org

<comment><USER2> I'd love to have this as a screensaver

</comment><comment><USER3> lol this is great. Running it on one of my monitors full screen for now :)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is oddly pleasing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Love this!</comment>


Chess game in 487 bytes – new record - <AUTHOR> http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64962 <comment><USER2> I keep saying it, but the demoscene is probably the 3rd great software movement (after commercial software and open source/free).

It's a weird kind of 3rd way, it's not open source, it's free as in beer, there's tons of help/guides/talks available, but source is rarely made available due to the competitive nature of the scene. Demogroups (or members of groups) frequently end up in the commercial world and it's been C64->Amiga->DOS->Windows for the most part, almost completely skipping Linux, OS X and other x-nix derived platforms (though there are plenty of exceptions). It's unusually prolific, there are literally tens of thousand of pieces of software and at least a half million pieces of music produced by the scene...and it's almost entirely purposeless with scant few connections to the commercial world.

The result is frequently stunning technology _and_ art (and sometimes technology that's so elegant it's basically art on its own), splinter scenes and a constant showcase of real-time techniques that continue to push what even grizzled computing veterans think is possible.

And oh yeah, it's mostly populated by people young enough to have not even graduated college.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not chess if it doesn't allow castle. From the comments ([http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64962#c715279](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64962#c715279)):

> Well... It is clear to me that you put more interest in making a small chess > program that in making a good chess program. That's understandable even if > the result is a program very easy to beat but... you cannot say that > BootChess is a complete chess program because it does not allow to castle > (didn't tried promotions, underpromotions, en passant pawn captures, > stalemate... but I bet that are not supported, are they?) and, worst, it > does not care about avoid to place a King in check. Every chess player knows > that it is illegal (the movement CANNOT be made) to place your king on a > square controlled by your rival pieces. If you allow it, then this is not > chess.

<comment><USER4> " It is clear to me that you put more interest in making a small chess program that in making a good chess program"

That's pretty much obvious

It's an exercise in programming, it's not "the ultimate chess software"

<comment><USER3> The obvious interpretation of "good" in that sentence is that it would allow the player to play chess according to universally defined and agreed-upon rules. Castling is one such rule. While I think one could argue there is some leeway with allowing the king to move into check since it doesn't _prevent_ 2 players familiar with the rules from playing a valid game, inability to castle does not pass this litmus test. Castling is integral to the game and is neither obscure nor rarely invoked, even at the novice level - a game without it is simply not "chess". While I agree this is an impressive programming exercise and worthy of recognition in its own right, calling it a "new record" is like claiming a marathon record after running 25 miles

<comment><USER5> To play the devil's advocate, castling was a pretty late addition to the rule of chess compared to most other rules, so there used to be a game called "chess" which did not feature castling (nor the option to move pawns initially by two squares). Some regional variants of chess [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_chess) did not feature castling fairly recently (and differed from mainstream chess only by a few points), and there are stories of Indian chess players who became masters in Europe (as late as the early 20th century) even though they had learned to play without castling (can't recall the name of the one I had in mind, but there are such anecdotes at least for Mir Sultan Khan).

I agree that it would be nicer if the implementation followed FIDE rules, though, and that not being able to castle significantly changes the strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad they mentioned 1K chess for the ZX81 [1] which I remember typing in from a magazine listing, and then playing against quite a lot (it was better than a 10 year old me). Neither program is capable of castling.

[1] [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/](http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/)

<comment><USER7> If they can't castle then they aren't complete.

Or do you mean the ai can't castle, but you can?

<comment><USER8> It was a ZX81. "It's not a complete implementation" was presumed for anything running on that tiny thing. The base model had 1K RAM, which _included_ all video & OS memory space. Getting it to do _anything_ meaningful was a challenge. That somebody, back then, could get a sane implementation closely approximating chess running on it was _amazing_.

<comment> david-given 1K Chess for the ZX81 was 672 bytes long; the ZX81 had 672 bytes free. (Although it was more complicated than that because the ZX81 'framebuffer' changed size depending on what was on the screen, so a screen that was mostly white gave you more spare RAM.)

Also, because the ZX81 more-or-less did its video in software (again, it's more complicated than that; if you really want to know, you'll need a strong stomach. Let's just say that it hinged on abusing the Z80's built in DRAM refresh and the framebuffer was executable), which meant that the only time you could do processing with the screen turned on when it wasn't doing video. And the video took 75% of the run time.

The ZX81 was less a computer and more of a pile of hacks flying in close formation. The fact it ran at all was a miracle.

<comment><USER6> How the ZX81 display file worked:

[http://www.user.dccnet.com/wrigter/index_files/ZX%20Video%20...](http://www.user.dccnet.com/wrigter/index_files/ZX%20Video%20Tutorial.htm)

Note the encoding of that page causes it to render incorrectly at least in Firefox. Using View → Character Encoding → Western fixes that for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the readme file (BootChess.txt) He quotes a great HN comment thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940938)) from ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7940212)), a 128 byte raycaster written by the same author. The title of that section is "Proving know-how remains valued". This post has already generated some similar gems like this one ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8954853](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8954853)).

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see this appear on HN!

For info the author also released an impressive serie of very tiny intros ranging from 64 to 256 bytes which can be found on his personal site : [http://olivier.poudade.free.fr](http://olivier.poudade.free.fr)

</comment><comment><USER11> The README file is really interesting: [http://lpaste.net/119343](http://lpaste.net/119343)

<comment><USER12> If you enjoyed that README, you might also like Jason Scott's talks. See this one about the history of early pirates in the BBS days:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5AceLYWE1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5AceLYWE1Q)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! Looks interesting. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Source code: [http://olivier.poudade.free.fr/src/BootChess.asm](http://olivier.poudade.free.fr/src/BootChess.asm)

</comment><comment><USER8> For interesting contrast: Toledo Nanochess [http://www.nanochess.org/chess3.html](http://www.nanochess.org/chess3.html) is the smallest C implementation of a full & decent chess program.

</comment><comment><USER14> Couldn't get the OS X binary to mount and I'll have to fire up a VM to try a different binary.

However there is a nice txt file, Bootchess.txt that has some interesting excerpts. I was curious if it has an AI, to which it does:

" Usually the heart of any midly advanced computer chess games includes a MinMax function (or its unique call merging sister function NegaMax) called recursively evaluating both sides' possible moves and trying to minimize loss whilst maximizing captures : each evaluation pair rundown is called a "ply" in chess jargon. It can take Kasparov some 27 moves to battle a 3-ply and the champion programs competing with grandmasters usually have at least 5-ply. In the case of BootChess there is alas not enough space (512 bytes binary program size and 640 bytes RAM execution environment) for such level of sophistication. It uses a variant : while maximizing captures it tries to minimize the taxi/Manhattan distance to the opponent's black king rank. This weaker ai element combination will be named "TaxiMax" for the occasion and can be viewed as a half-ply plus."

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice to see that the RSi guys (who I have been a fan of since the begin 90s; especially the Amiga stuff was very impressive, both in skill but also art) still take challenges like this one. Disadvantage here is that whenever I click a Pouet.net link, I can pretty much say farewell to my productive day...

</comment><comment><USER16> With such a small number of bytes wouldn't it be viable to run some sort of optimization to minimize the code even further?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does it run on a ZX81? If not I'd guess it might be using short cuts not available on the original machine.

Easy way to get them smaller and be legitimate chess (This seems to be missing half the rules) would be let white move, then resign. You might have to allow white to resign / offer a draw as a move as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> That would include 1) rules for the movement 6 chess pieces 2) board definition and initial setup 3) end conditions 4) exceptions. A tweets lenght worth of each, neat.

<comment><USER19> "Exceptions"??

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh ! and this one is a PC boot sector. Sexy

</comment><comment><USER21> reminds me of the runner-up in the first js1k competition (even better): [http://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750](http://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750)

</comment><comment><USER22> WTF??? What is that page?

</comment><comment><USER23> Yeah, well this guy can launch a GUI in zero bytes! Beat that!

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=18860](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=18860)</comment>