Have you ever uninstalled an app based on aesthetics? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes.

Although most often I make initial _choices_ that are based, partly, on aesthetics.

Poorly organized user interfaces are the chief culprit here. Bad typography is another non-favorite; especially with apps that present a lot of type that needs to be read during use.

Since I do a lot of design and development of and with graphics applications, I'm pretty particular about the appearance of things in general. I had a drawing application once that did a horrible job of rendering lines, especially curves. Bunches and knots galore. While the output looked okay at high enough resolutions, the onscreen display was a real impediment to its use. And things flickered terribly while moving elements around.

And a certain large graphics application company switched to a dark grey color scheme for a lot of their apps that's really an affront to my older, squinting eyes. The fact that their UI's organization went to hell in a hand basket was just icing on the cake.

The worse use of color that I can think of was a database editor from 25 or so years ago. I've forgotten the name, but if you got to using it too fast, changing screens, making large selections, etc., it could induce an epileptic fit faster than a Pokemon episode played at high speed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely. The dissonance caused by _re-implimentations_ of standard UI elements has caused me to uninstall _many_ phone applications, several desktop applications, and avoid purchasing a few mainstream applications.

If you don't think the stock UI works well for your application, then you either have special needs, or are wrong. Special needs can be implemented however you like, since they're by definition not handled with standard widgets. Re-implementations of standard widgets, however, immediately stand out to me, and make using an application similar to listening to out-of-tune musicians.

</comment><comment><USER4> Back in my PC/Windows days (~3 years ago) the aesthetics of all the linux distros I tried made me uninstall them. Something about the fonts just drove me crazy and I couldn't handle using them. For me, on an individual app basis, it really depends on the function. There are apps that look great but all the chrome makes a horrible UX, generally that is more likely to drive me away. The aesthetic should be at a certain level, but beyond that it's more about the UX for me.

<comment><USER5> This is just about the only thing keeping me from using a Linux distribution over OS X.

<comment><USER6> It's funny you mention that because I use both Linux and OS X but not on the same machine. I feel my Mac is too pretty to sully with as a dual booting system. I know it's nuts but that's how i am.

I'm one of those who stayed away from Linux for UI (read: ugliness) reasons. It took me a long time before I became comfortable with it. I finally stumbled on Crunchbang Limix which gave me all the great things I loved about Debian in a light system with OpenBox as the window manager. I mention this because my Linux machine still has an ugly UI but I like it. Why?

I think it's because it embraces its ugliness. It's meant to be light and fast and is all about function over form. So now my Lonux machine is used almost exclusively for getting things done. I mean really freaking working hard. I definitely get things done on my Mac but I use it for pleasure (maybe leisure) whereas the Limux is For Work Only.

I think a UI can put you in a certain mentality that affects how you work. In a world where you've got two UI's that both have equally great UX (because the two don't always exist together) the subjectively prettier UI will probably lend itself better to play time whereas the "ugly" one will get you more focused on the task at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't speak to "apps" as the current mobile definition (no smartphone), but I definitely have uninstalled programs with poor interfaces.

Probably the best example for me is mp3 players. I've been using WinAmp for over a decade now, and love it. It's stylized as a widget which is exactly how I view a music player - a compact but powerful side tool. At the suggestion of friends I've made honest attempts at other players like iTunes, WMP (yes), FooBar2000, but the featureset and style of WinAmp keeps drawing me back in.

Sidenote: Are there any physical mp3 players that offer queuing for songs? Being able to hand pick the next couple songs and then let the randomizer take over when they're done is probably the greatest feature ever to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely.

And it goes both ways. I would have never thought I needed an app like Path, but I gave it a try when they released Path 2.0 purely because I loved the design. Now it has become one of my most used apps, super easy to keep my GF and brother/sister updated on the more personal things going on day-to-day.

</comment><comment><USER9> All the time. If something is incredibly useful, probably not. If it's not something I depend on though, I'll get rid of it real quick.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, but most of time time, I don't install apps in the first place that aren't aesthetically "adequate" for consuming scarce attention.

If you consider that your time is a scarce resource, why would anyone spend time using apps that didn't look/feel great? Unless they were objected to for their job -- but even then, there almost has to be some alternative.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sure, if it does the job then it does the job - but if there are two bits of software that are pretty much equal then I'll choose the one more pretty!

As an example, I just switched from Colloquy to Lime chat as my IRC client. Colloquy matched my needs perfectly, but so does Lime... So I switched based on the UI.

<comment><USER12> I recently made the same move, Lime Chat supports full-screen and is much simpler than Colloquy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes. Hell, I've uninstalled apps for their icon, because they weren't useful to me at the moment and visibly offended me.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think most people can give you an accurate answer for this -- the effects of aesthetics on user retention are probably much more subtle.

Example: It's possible that altering the aesthetic of an app in some way will lead to an x% increase in the rate of uninstallation, yet none of the uninstallers would point to "aesthetics" as the reason for their uninstallation or even recognize it as one of the contributing factors.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes. Especially if you include platform faux-pas in "aesthetics". One of the worst offenders is when someone makes something "cross platform" while ignoring all the conventions of all platforms except their primary dev platform. Generally speaking, those lead to an immediate uninstall, since they're so awful to do anything with.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nope. If it does the job and isn't a pain to use, I don't care how it looks.

<comment><USER6> Really? Are you sure? I'm surprised. What if you had a choice of installing an ugly app that gets the job done then learn of another app that gets the job done just as well but is prettier? Let's say they're both free. You've never been in that situation?

Personally, I recently switched from one app to another that had less features than the first solely because of the UI. UI can actually be a feature in itself. In my case the UI was important enough for me to forego an app with several extra,museful features that I replaced with other apps in a workflow instead of an all-in-one package. I'm wondering if many people say they're all about function over form (especially developers of any kind) because it's looked at as a superficial reason by peers. Kind of like turning down a girl for a date because she's on the chubby side despite her amazing personality. You know you shouldn't be shallow so you gotta make sure you give a good excuse. Something like "I'm not quite ready to date after my last relationship" will do just fine as a face-saving reason.

<comment><USER16> With girls it's a libido thing; either she turns you on or she doesn't. It's not the same thing as choosing software.

My only concern with software is how usable it is. If it looks pretty, but I have to do a whole bunch of operations to get something done, it has a poor UI and I'll pick an alternative. If it doesn't have the flexibility to do exactly what I want, I'll look for an alternative (which is why I choose a commander- style file manager instead of the OS default). If the UI is misaligned or has some weird color scheme or ugly pictures, I really don't care so long as I can get things done quickly. I don't care enough to get nit picky about looks when it comes to software.

It's not about shallowness; it's about priorities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aesthetic? I haven't yet although I could see it happening assuming the better looking app had the same features and I wasn't going to lose anything by switching over.

UX however, is another story. Many well-designed apps have spent time on their user experience and it's a component of their design. Many times the "uglier" apps will have design issues that impair usability, rather than just not look as beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER18> I often uninstall apps based on how the UI looks.

</comment><comment><USER19> I did. More often, I don't install apps that look ugly, and also avoid some companies and products for things like making aesthetically bad ads, having crappy webpages, logos, or even stupid-sounding names. It's irrational, but sometimes I won't use an app/webapp because I just _hate_ how the name sounds.

</comment><comment><USER20> I assume that by "aesthetics" you specifically mean visual beauty. With a more general definition of "aesthetics," any time you remove an app because you don't like it would qualify.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not necessarily an app but I remember signing up for Tagged.com because everyone was talking highly about it...but man the UI WAS HORRENDOUS so I had to delete my account.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes - I went through several ugly iPad calculator apps before finding one that wasn't taxing to look at.

But... I still have Illustrator and Photoshop on my mac.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm currently looking for an IRC client, and being a relatively simple app, I'm making my decision based solely on how it looks!

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, but only with highly competitive markets, like the 4-function calculator. _cough_ Think harder...</comment>


Millennials Moving to Suburbs Will Change Economic Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-03/millennials-moving-to-suburbs-will-change-economic-development <comment> j-c-hewitt I live in the country remote working like some of the other commenters here after being priced out of NYC (where I'm from) and the Bay Area (where I worked for a few years). That I have great internet and wonderful amenities are two key pieces.

However after having run small businesses and/or freelancing for 10 years I can say that it is not something that everyone is cut out for.

The problem the cities have now is that they are not priced for people who work for a living. They are priced for people with access to intergenerational wealth and/or who don't work and just live off investments. Everything from the cost of property to the tax structure penalizes people who work severely and rewards people who own property and live off capital gains lavishly. Everything in the laws screams out "YOU SHOULD NOT BE WORKING HERE/EARNING A SALARY/STARTING A SMALL BUSINESS -- MOVE OUT, PEASANT."

People included in the "PEASANT" category include people earning low to mid six figure salaries. There is only so much that people will tolerate working hard to make their landlord rich. Other cities in the country that aren't the big offenders that everyone complains about don't really have this problem.

It is a problem that there is a solution for, though: move out, buy property, save money, work less, enjoy life more, get to keep the stuff that you used to give up to your landlord for the privilege of a few square feet in a dirty, stinky city with infrastructure that would humiliate someone from a country that isn't as backwards as the US.

<comment><USER2> Totally agree, and Canada is worse - we have very few major cities to choose from, and the two major ones (Vancouver and Toronto) are insanely expensive to live in on an affordability basis, due to the terrible wages Canadians enjoy compared to the US.

And worse, our already large but planned to increase annually immigration levels, much of which are wives and children of the world's 1%, who also coincidentally choose to live in the two cities above, essentially guarantees that working class people (by that I mean anyone that actually works for a living) will be eventually pushed out, unless some sort of a public dorm system is introduced.

<comment> j-c-hewitt Right... and the conventional 'working class' as in service workers, some factory workers, and the like have to live stacked up in probably-illegal conditions while the white collar 'working class' lives in tiny apartments paying as much in rent for a 1 bedroom as a guy with a lavish multi-hundred- acre horse farm estate with 8 bedrooms pays for his mortgage in the country.

<comment><USER2> And the cream on top: the white collar worker living in a shoebox is paying 40% income taxes while the estate owner has no taxable income, despite buying a few new $100k+ cars per year. And the government "doesn't see" any of this happening.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the accumulated wealth of the rich person has already been taxed.

<comment><USER4> The accumulation of wealth (income) has been, the accumulated wealth (property) has not (except insofar as they wealth is held in asset classes subject to property taxes.)

Whether income alone, property alone, or some (and if so, what) particular combination of those two _should_ be taxed is a matter of some debate.

<comment><USER3> You have to buy assets. The income used to buy them has already been taxed. Then, whenever those assets generate further income, that additional income gets taxed.

You can quibble about what the tax rates should be, but I was responding to somebody who made it sound like wealthy people pay no taxes, which is an utter misrepresentation of the situation.

<comment><USER2> > but I was responding to somebody who made it sound like wealthy people pay > no taxes, which is an utter misrepresentation of the situation

I wish you were right, however:

[https://globalnews.ca/news/3773729/richmond-incomes- downtown...](https://globalnews.ca/news/3773729/richmond-incomes-downtown- eastside/)

A huge percentage of recent sales are to overseas investors (untaxed money), most of the appreciation wealth is accumulated by people who bought > 10 years ago, so no tax as it is their primary residence. So even though it seems hard to believe, in fact the majority of the money in this system is untaxed.

And if you're not familiar with the downtown eastside:

[https://www.straight.com/news/847631/photos-three-months- dow...](https://www.straight.com/news/847631/photos-three-months-downtown- eastside-fentanyl-crisis-grows-bad-worse)

<comment><USER3> I find it hard to complain too much about untaxed wealth in the form of primary residences. This is a vehicle that is available to vast swathes of the American & Canadian public. As such, it doesn't really bolster the argument that wealthy people somehow pay less taxes, which is what I was responding to.

<comment><USER2> Does this bolster the argument?

[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/3ddbwb/vancouver-dirt- now...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/3ddbwb/vancouver-dirt-now-earns- twice-as-much-as-all-of-the-citys-workers-combined)

In case the logic isn't obvious:

If you own a house, you are wealthy.

Houses earn more than wages.

No taxes are paid on capital gains of primary residence.

Why should I have to pay higher taxes because I worked my ass off in school and continue to work my ass off, but someone who lucked into winning the modern day Canadian lottery gets a free ride? The legislation wasn't written with this scenario in mind I can tell you that for sure.

Our historic social contracts are starting to break down, if the state doesn't uphold it's end of the bargain, I don't see why I should uphold my end.

<comment><USER3> I know plenty of non-wealthy, middle and working class people (born to middle and working class parents) who own houses. They aren't wealthy because they still have a mortgage for most of the value of the house. They may be wealthy in 30 years when their mortgage is paid off, but they aren't now.

Wealthy citizens of the U.S. and Canada all had to pay income taxes on the money they used to buy the assets they own. People who are wealthy enough to get by entirely on income generating assets were probably at one time in the top income tax bracket, which means they forked over about 50% of their income to the government. Which, btw, is a much higher percentage rate than people in the lower tax brackets.

So, do wealthy people have it easier than non-wealthy people? Yes. But they had to earn an unbelievable amount of money (since they had to pay half of it in taxes) to get to that point. So maybe it's not actually _that_ unfair. And, since high earners pay a higher tax rate, maybe it's actually kinda fair.

<comment><USER2> > So, do wealthy people have it easier than non-wealthy people? Yes. But they > had to earn an unbelievable amount of money (since they had to pay half of > it in taxes) to get to that point.

Usually, but not always. _That 's the point_.

In some geographical regions in the world, ownership of real estate is starting to trump everything. When it comes to net worth, your income is largely a rounding error. Strangely, when this discussion is raised, a variety of standard responses seem to be raised, in this case, "oh, you're saying that this is the case _always and everywhere_ \- since that is obviously false, therefore your entire premise if false, end of discussion".

Another common conversational diversion tactic (that worked for several years in Canada) was shutting down any complaint by playing the race card. Since it is usually people from mainland China (unsurprisingly, considering the scope of new wealth in that country) who are involved in massive real estate appreciation is most parts of the world, again and again in all Western countries we've seen dissenting voices silenced by accusing them of racism, _often by their very own governments who are supposed to be managing these things and protecting the best interests of citizens_. And boy is it effective, up to a point. Citizens in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are finally getting fed up with their governments to brush off racism accusations, but it's far too little, too late - things are so far gone, nothing can be done without destroying the Frankenstein economies that the overall economy depends on. I often wonder if that was the plan.

People living in the US probably don't notice this nearly as much, as you have a large population and enjoy a massive and powerful economy, whereas foreign entrance into our markets cause significant effects.

<comment><USER3> I think we're largely aligned here. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I'm very open to restrictions on foreign purchases of residences. And I totally agree with your remarks about charges of racism being used to shut down valid complaints about a government not privileging the interests of its own citizens over citizens of other countries.

I am a little more optimistic about things in general, though, for a couple of reasons:

1\. I think Canada has a serious construction policy problem. My wife is from Langley, BC (we were just there over the Easter weekend). There is tons of land available to build on in BC. It's incredulous that housing costs are so high with so much undeveloped land.

2\. All it takes is a crash to flush all the investors out of the housing market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I lived in San Francisco for the past seven years, but moved to Missoula, Montana because living in the city and even surrounding places like Oakland, South Bay was increasingly way too expensive. I count myself lucky that I am self-employed and work in an industry that I can easily do remote work as the job prospects in Missoula mostly center around low-wage service work.

At the end of the day, I moved to Missoula so I can do my part as a millennial and start buying diamonds again.

<comment><USER6> Are you afraid that you won't be able to find quality remote work at some point? As much as I'd love to go far off into the woods, my job prospects - even as a confirmed, life-long remote employee - are so much better being close to an urban center with solid transportation connections to major cities.

<comment><USER7> I work remotely for Bay Area startups. Have for the past three years, been consulting for six (lived in SF prior).

The burden of trust always falls on you, the developer. So you offer concessions to mitigate risk and hustle in the beginning to establish trust:

0) Reach out directly to the prospective job. Show them how you can make a remote arrangement work.

1) Offer a short term contract up front - if you're not "a good fit for each other" the terms allow either party to walk with little notice.

2) Offer to fly out to meet the team personally (most other prospective engineers won't do this). Factor this cost into your rate and _do not_ bother them with additional travel expenses. Tell them you'll "foot the bill".

2a) Give them a single invoice with one number - make it easy for them to pay you.

3) When you've finally joined the team remotely, quickly offer up cosmetic suggestions on PR's, open up new PRs to improve the on-boarding documentation, tackle a couple of simple stories and get a PR out within a few days.

4) Get the senior devs to do walk-throughs of the code on Slack. When you encounter something semi-difficult that Google can't answer, that would probably take you a couple of days to unravel but a senior dev already knows, _call_ them on slack. Swallow your pride. Make a call.

5) Goes without saying - don't miss the standups. If you were in the office, it's easy to see that you're doing something else. When you're 1500 miles away, especially in the beginning, nightmares of the remote dev going MIA kick in quick.

<comment> gm-conspiracy Regarding your #2, in my experience as a remote dev., I have visited HQ multiple time per year.

Would having the company coordinate your travel and expenses give you insight into how the company functions?

<comment><USER7> Some of the startups in SF are pretty small, just ramping up in terms of head counts and may not have someone in charge to deal with travel logistics (you could be the first remote dev ever).

If you're trying to get a signal regarding whether the company is going to pay you and pay on time, request a tighter payment schedule, e.g. net 10. That reduces the risk a bit on your side (you won't end up working for two months for free) and isn't much different on their end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > As millennials age into their 30s and homeownership is on the rise, > demographics are now moving against urban landlords.

> We know how and what to build when we're dealing with an influx of young > urban renters. But what will they want as they age into their next phase of > life, and how can policy makers meet their needs?

A lot of this article seems to be pinned on an unwritten idea that the suburbs are where you go when you want to grow up. This seems like a bit of a trap for developers and speculators, to me: at least in the city I live in, there has been some focus on urban development to provide services for families of all sizes.

<comment><USER9> The dealbreaker is schools. Without getting into a fight about why urban schools are dysfunctional, they are, and that will drive families to suburbs. While millenials are having kids somewhat later, it doesn't look like there will be a dramatic drop in the percentage of millenials who will ultimately have kids.

<comment><USER10> Depends on the city. Millenials could also push for changes and upgrades in urban school districts.

<comment><USER11> They could, and some will...but the majority won't have time/inclination with the obligations of work/family and will just move to the suburbs (if history is any indication).

This is basically been the case for decades in the U.S.

<comment><USER10> It could be like that, but the new generation has proven to be very different from the baby boomers, so who knows.

Other countries seem to get by just fine with living in cities and having kids.

<comment><USER9> > Other countries seem to get by just fine with living in cities and having > kids.

Other countries don't concentrate all their disadvantaged people in the cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I lived in the subburbs in long island, millenials felt pretty left behind. Home prices were over a million dollars with very little opportunities for renting. Most people either rented semi-legal basement apartments or lived with their parents. It wasn't till I moved to New York City that I started to see people my age doing well. It's a very safe city, has a huge culture of renting, and with higher wages. Unless you have the money to afford a home, it's better to live in a city and rent.

<comment><USER13> Depending on the city, buying a house is a big liability too, and just doesn't make any financial sense unless you're sure you're going to be there for at least 8 years. What if you get a new job on the other side of town? What if you want to move in with your significant other, and they work somewhere else? As a renter, it's not that hard for you to pack up and move to a more convenient location so your commute isn't so horrible (or to have a more equitable commute between you and your partner), but when you own a house, you're going to lose a huge amount of money just by selling it thanks to ridiculous closing costs.

<comment><USER14> > What if you get a new job on the other side of town?

For starters, I'm not moving. I hate moving and find it very stressful and disruptive.

<comment><USER13> Ok, so you just got laid off at your job, and you can't find anyone on your side of town to hire you. However, there's a company on the opposite side of town that will. What are you going to do? Spend 45-60 minutes commuting each way, or move?

<comment><USER15> Work on the other side of town? 45-60 minutes? LOL. My commute is 2 hours each way. It's not the end of the world and living this far from everything allows me to own a home and put my kid in a good school. I'm not going to rent a shoebox in a gang war zone just so I can get a 20-30 minute commute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand how the article can bemoan high rents but then also say urban cores are overbuilt? Overbuilding drives down rents, which isn't great for developers but not exactly a problem for the rest of us.

Miami is going through the same, so many condo towers are going up it's suppressing rents - in the most expensive area of the city. Yes, they are premium units, but the supply drives down rents across the board.

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing it's because many cities still strangle development. "Overbuilt" could be concluded from a lack of feasible projects within a city.

There's also the nebulous problem of investors buying units in new luxury buildings but not occupying or renting them. This could preserve high rent prices as new units are not being faithfully put into the housing pool. Stories about that pop up often but don't seem quantified as an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> OR millennials are moving to the exurbs not because they want to, but because cities are too expensive when you have a family and don't want roommates. Much of the rest of the world is happy to raise families in cities... why not here? The solution should be to build infrastructure and improve the schools in urban cores, not invest in suburbs.

<comment><USER19> IMO cities are crap if you have certain hobbies.

If you want to have a garden, or a wood shop, or race around RC cars or drones, or big pets, a city just won't work well for you.

Most people are happy in cities because their lives aren't much more than sleeping, eating, going to work, and then maybe going to some social events or watching tv, which is a perfect description of millennial life so far.

<comment><USER20> If you live in Midtown Manhattan or the Loop in Chicago, I can see why you'd believe that. But if you live in the outer neighborhoods/boroughs, thats not in the slightest bit true.

<comment><USER21> I live in Brooklyn. The hobbies I cannot participate in, mostly due to not having a car, that I once enjoyed:

Autocross/Track days

Sporting clays

Golf (dragging clubs on the subway is not fun)

Kayaking

Camping

There are other things to do, but NYC is a bad place for a person making less than 6 figures to participate in a lot of outdoor activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> With housing inventory at an all time low, and the market at higher highs than peak bubble in 2006 (in most markets), this doesn't seem like a problem anyone needs to worry about at the moment.

Perhaps the solution to the 2006 mortgage crisis shouldn't have been to immediately and urgently reinflate the bubble. Oh well. Same story, different year. Maybe the fed can finally play with negative interest rates during the next downturn!

</comment><comment><USER23> It's funny because this article thinks we can find jobs outside of cities...

<comment><USER24> > It's funny because this article thinks we can find jobs outside of cities...

But it's an article about living in suburbs... suburbs of cities... where the jobs are. You can catch a train (or take a company bus or drive in the US I guess) from a suburb into the city for your job. That's what suburbs are.

<comment><USER25> And that's even assuming the jobs are actually in the city. While tech jobs in urban cores have increased in recent years, in a lot of places the majority are still out in the exurbs and suburbs--including in the case of the Bay Area. (The difference being that in regions like Massachusetts, housing prices are a lot more reasonable in many towns outside of the urban core.)

<comment><USER20> I mean that's kinda a given about the Bay Area. Outside of SF, its just suburbia on steroids

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Important to note that Urban areas continue to grow, but the rate at which they've been growing is decreasing, while suburban growth rates are increasing again. To me, the comparison feels a bit dodgy, as a much smaller change in suburban population will move the growth rate for those areas compared to Urban areas, due to lower populations, and Urban centers continue to grow, just slower than before.

<comment><USER27> I don't think that's right:

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big- am...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american- cities/)

> Nationally, 26 percent of Americans described where they live as urban, 53 > percent said suburban and 21 percent said rural. (This comes close to the > census estimate that 81 percent of the population is urban if "urban" is > understood to include suburban areas.)

Of course, that's response-based, but if you look at the character of most American cities, there's very little truly dense urban areas. Though even the definition of suburban itself can cover a wide range, since "suburban" Los Angeles has a lot of 8-10K person/sqmile areas and "suburban" Dallas generally is more like 4K, and then others are even less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't know if this chain of events actually lines up. The way I see it, autonomous vehicles will allow anyone (not just millennials) to reclaim that lost time commuting, which can be used for work and thus make the idea of commuting from the suburbs not all that bad. Then people won't mind moving far away from the city centers given that the commute is no longer a fruitless activity. Personally I'd be very happy to live an hour away from a city if it meant that I could use the 2 hours round-trip to do work (if I still had to work in an office).

<comment><USER29> I think that wish would be corrupted quickly.

Oh so you commute all the way out to the suburbs? Hey since we know you'll have nothing to do anyway please complete these additional tasks. If you work on the way home we won't bother you after you actually arrive there.

<comment><USER30> Just say no.

Exploitative behavior only becomes an expectation when enough employees prove willing to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The first paragraph has an assumption that might be proven wrong. This generation might not have children like the previous generation did, at least not in the same numbers.

<comment><USER32> Good point. Depends on the generation you are referring to. Gen X? Child rates have been slowly decreasing since the 70s. I imagine most expect that trend to continue, but I"m not sure that it would be enough to preclude a substantial desire to move into the suburbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As an aside, I wish articles would just put the age ranges in the title for the group they are referring to, rather than a blanket term like "millennials". For example, if millennials [0] includes anyone 22-37, the image in a person's mind of "a millennial" could greatly vary from someone fresh out of college to a a young couple with a baby. That creates a disconnect from actuality if the article is referring to a specific subset in their late 20s-early 30s.

[0]: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining- gen...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-generations- where-millennials-end-and-post-millennials-begin/)

<comment><USER34> Up to folks with teenagers, you mean. Many couples have more than a baby by age 37.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> after moving from seattle to a smaller city , my wife and I regret it a great deal and plan to move to an urban location permanently, with our young child. It was a voyage of self-discovery.

<comment><USER36> Can you elaborate why? Based on the reference to your young child, is your regret based on daycare and school choices?

<comment><USER35> * Terrible transit.

* Anti-tax attitude

* Limited multi-cultural experience

* Less forward-looking attitude (this is hard to verbally pin down).

With respect to the child, it'll be more difficult in the city. But I want to stress that as a gestalt system, the big city is a better place to live for all of us. If we had the opportunity work out, we would live in Manhattan (but the relocation is a substantial logistical problem at present). Opportunities exist in the big city that are not present in smaller cities or suburbs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As someone on the younger end of what seems to be considered "millennial" (graduating from uni in May), I hope this means cheaper rent in cities like New York, Austin and Boston?

<comment><USER38> I know that rents in those places has plateaued, but there's so much demand that even a steady outstream of new parents might not make a dent in housing prices. NYC rents dipped recently for the first time in years, but as somebody who's currently shopping around for apartments in NYC, the changes aren't really substantial to the end renter.

<comment><USER21> It appears to me, based on looking last year and this year, that the L train shutdown is starting to distort rents in desirable neighborhoods outside of Wburg. People are fleeing Wburg in favor of places like LIC, Astoria, and Downtown Brooklyn before L service is suspended. Probably a great time to look in Wburg if you can commute via ferry or stay in the neighborhood though.

Edit: I should add that people aren't just leaving Wburg, anywhere along the L line is impacted. I suspect it's creating a rental price floor in other parts of the city, at all price points.

<comment><USER39> As someone whose current lease on the L doesn't end until this October/November, this scares me.

I've been wondering how many 100's of dollars average rent for a bedroom will rise (100, 200, 300?) in the other BK neighborhoods that young, childless, salaried people tend to live. I've found that one of the biggest benefits of NYC is the salary to rent ratio (compared to other major American cities) if you're OK with roommates and a 30-45 minute commute on the subway. I wonder how much the L shutdown changes the math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> We'll, I would have loved to stay in the beautiful green and generally family friendly city I lived in, but once you're at a point where one has to spend around 2/3 of the income on rent to have sufficient room for kids there's simply no other choice than moving to a village. Nearly everyone of my friends with kids did exactly the same.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yet another article which attempts to use Millennials as a homogeneous cohort to paint some broad-strokes policy questions to ponder. In fact, the generational cohorts are significantly less relevant than income [1] in correlating with where and how Americans live and work. Urban revival is driven by high-earning, middle-aged adults, working in downtown jobs that have seen the highest percentages of wage growth. But most population growth and job growth happens in the suburbs, where people with lower incomes fall, Millennial or otherwise.

The much talked-about phenomenon of urban cores gaining jobs faster than their suburbs was confined to certain cities [2], and was entirely untrue in others. In the general case, suburbs have consistently posted higher rates of employment growth [3][4], and command a higher absolute number of jobs. In fact, some of the highest growth areas are metropolitan areas that hardly even have an urban core that stands apart from its suburbs [5].

Suburbs everywhere are living on borrowed time, because as their infrastructure ages, they will develop the same problems circling back to lack of funding as the big cities that gave rise to them in the first place, but without the political and business clout that big cities mustered up to retain their relevance. As the infrastructure ages, the taxes will rise, discretionary funding on quality-of-live services like schools will be reduced, and the most wealthy will begin to move out into a new ring of exurbs (or edge cities), or back to the urban core, leaving progressively poorer people to remain and take their place.

Only suburbs which can successfully pivot to being employment centers can avoid this painful demographic crunch.

[1] [http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/30/urban-revival-not-for-most- am...](http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/30/urban-revival-not-for-most-americans/) [2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/upshot/more-new-jobs- are-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/upshot/more-new-jobs-are-in-city- centers-while-employment-growth-shrinks-in-the-suburbs.html) [3] [https://www.brookings.edu/research/where-are-the-jobs- cities...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/where-are-the-jobs-cities- suburbs-and-the-competition-for-employment/) [4] [http://www.newgeography.com/content/005264-suburbs- continue-...](http://www.newgeography.com/content/005264-suburbs-continue- dominate-jobs-and-job-growth) [5] [http://blog.indeed.com/2017/03/08/bounceback-for-job-and- wag...](http://blog.indeed.com/2017/03/08/bounceback-for-job-and-wage-growth/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Just today on Reddit, there was a "shower thought" that being a Millennial is like starting to play monopoly where there is a hotel on every property. My response is that, of course all the properties in the major cities have hotels and are expensive, but there are many properties still up for sale for cheap if you move out a little. The first rule of negotiation is being willing to walk away.</comment>


Wargames - <AUTHOR> http://overthewire.org/wargames/ <comment><USER2> If you are looking for more wargames like this, [https://www.wechall.net/](https://www.wechall.net/) has a large index and allows you to keep a persistent score based on which challenges you have completed.

</comment><comment><USER3> OverTheWire has some really fun wargames. I made it through Bandit and Leviathan not too long ago, and I only have one more challenge in Natas. They do a good job on the difficulty overall, not too difficult to start, but it ramps up pretty steadily, giving you a chance to learn. I'll have to get back on this over the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER4> Quite a few of these wargames has an interesting history. I think at least Leviathan, Narnia, Behemoth, Utumno and Maze originates from a site I believe had the url wargames.net about 15 years ago. That site got transformed into dievo.org (Digital Evolution) which later closed. intruded.net picked up the wargames to keep them online and they then ended up on overthewire.org.

I have very fond memories of hanging around the wargames.net and later dievo.org irc-channels in my late teens talking to the wonderful and talented people there (lots of swedes if I remember correctly). While the late night talks might have messed with my school grades somewhat I'm pretty sure I learned more from those people than I learned from school anyway. :) I probably wouldn't work as a developer today if it weren't for those communities so a big shoutout from Woodman if any of you are reading this! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a lot of fun on this site. IIRC this is where I first learnt to exploit a buffer overflow.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome stuff. I've blown through the majority of the Bandit levels pretty quickly but looking at the other games it seems they easily go way beyond my skill level. Easy to get started and keep going through the levels since it's all ssh. Would highly recommend anyone thinking about it checks this out.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are amazing.. finished a bunch over a night out. Although I feel they might have to prepare for the HN/slashdot effect... Lots of people might be trying to ssh. :D

<comment><USER8> It did start to feel rather sluggish a few minutes ago...

Don't know whether that was my computer, my Internet connection or their servers groaning under the load ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a surprise, it only works in Chrome... More specifically, in FF the menu on the left is missing, Wwich at first I though may have been a first challenge...

<comment><USER9> Oops, a fresh ff install fixes it. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did these years and years ago when it was called something else, but I can't seem to remember the name.

<comment><USER11> Pull The Plug.

<comment><USER10> Yes! That's the one. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I keep reading this as "Wargmans", like the war-mongering version of Wegmans or something.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice idea and progression of difficulty. I second this as very good and smooth intro.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow this is awesome!</comment>


Lubuntu Development Newsletter #9 - <AUTHOR> https://lubuntu.me/lubuntu-development-newsletter-9/ <comment><USER3> Interesting for a dist focused on resource constraints to be using the new/shiny instead of old and small.

Perhaps W is more efficient?

> Q: Why are you switching to Wayland? A: The X implementation is old and > won't be updated to address the way desktop Linux is used today. Window > managers are an afterthought, and many things aren't implemented correctly. > Wayland is a modern take on the Linux display system.

Would have liked if this was expanded on a bit. Using X on 18.04 now and while not perfect (in the security area) nothing else about it is currently holding me back.

<comment><USER4> Is it a fact that X is "smaller" than Wayland, and more resource efficient?

X was designed with far more ambitious goals than Wayland, so it's not a foregone conclusion that it's "smaller" (implying cheaper) just because it's older.

<comment><USER3> In the sense that I first used X on Linux on a 486 in the early/mid 90's. It was snappy then and snappy now.

Also I like being able to minimize crashed windows, something other major OSs haven't done.

<comment><USER5> > Also I like being able to minimize crashed windows, something other major > OSs haven't done.

What major OSes besides Windows and Mac OS did you have in mind?

<comment><USER6> Given that he referenced a 486 he might be referring to earlier versions of both.

Prior to Windows XP (possibly NT/2000) applications using GDI wrote directly to video memory and if one crashed it could create a black hole on your screen. I believe Windows Vista was when Microsoft introduced true off screen rendering and added GPU based composition of the desktop. GDI/GDI+ are now considered legacy and the issues the OP described aren't much of a problem anymore.

I believe Quartz is the OSX/MacOS equivalent to GDI on Windows however it's been less problematic than GDI and I believe OSX was launched with off screen rendering and composition that made the issued described by the OP impossible. I have no idea of OS9 or prior versions performed desktop composition.

<comment><USER5> The OP comment wasn't specific on timing - it sounded like a description of the recent era but if so wouldn't be accurate unless you go back to the turn of the century.

OS 9 was similar to old-school Windows with direct memory access. Users of either definitely were impressed by the stability of newer systems – Windows NT was a big jump, which OS X matched with minor improvements, and something like BeOS was truly impressive for being able to seamlessly recover from most driver crashes by restarting the entire display subsystem, which IIRC Windows took another decade and a half to match with Windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I've been hiding under a rock or something but I don't think I've heard of Lubuntu before. I took a quick look at the home page but still: when this and not some other distribution?

<comment><USER8> it used to be aimed at 10 years old hardware. Now its less clear, they just changed their positionning a few months ago

<comment><USER9> Not very smart of them. In mu LUG we usually suggest Lubuntu for those PCs that are a bit older. Now I don't see what the point is. Most would rather run MATE than LXDE if there's no difference.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, when a project loses a clear message, it's more likely to die a slow death than anything else. However, they did point out why they made that change: even recent distros could actually run very decently on older hardware, which made them lose their former "edge" on that matter. Personally, I think LXDE/Lubuntu is obsolete. Xfce/Mate can be very good replacements with low footprint these days.

<comment><USER10> > Personally, I think LXDE/Lubuntu is obsolete.

I suppose this is precisely why the project is changing direction. LXDE/LXQT are pretty cool desktop environments and I'd hate to see their development come to a halt even if I'm personally not a user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My only real issue with Wayland is that I don't think anyone has given real thought to heterogenous graphics card configurations, GPU hot plugging, Optimus, etc. X11 is not much better, but people have at least built hacks for it at this point.

It does seem like heterogenous DPI with multimonitor will be possible to a degree so that's nice.

<comment><USER12> Heterogenous graphics card configurations can be supported on Wayland (e.g. Sway 1.0 supports them). GPU hot plugging could be supported by compositors as long as you don't need the compositor to change the GPU it's rendering on (it's just not clear how this looks like API-wise -- and it's very difficult to obtain hardware setups that support those). Clients could then be restarted to use a different GPU. Wayland is not not limiting factor here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Will x11vnc still work with Mir? If not then how will I remote in?

<comment><USER12> No, it won't work.

There are some possible replacements (e.g. [1]) but it's still a work-in- progress.

[1]: [https://github.com/swaywm/wlr-protocols](https://github.com/swaywm/wlr- protocols)

</comment></comment><comment> 70122-_6 If I am not mistaken - I'd say the standard specs for Lubuntu on a Mini PC are exactly the same a those that were discussed for -UbuntutV (yes there's a subreddit).

But the guy in charge never wanted to do Lubuntu-mini, although but Ubuntu Netbook remix finished eight years ago.

[https://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr](https://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr)

' Its a revo-70 by the way.

</comment><comment><USER14> Weird move. X is a big reason I and probably others use Lubuntu. It's not bloated but still compatible with everything and therefore easily configurable and personalizable. For example, I have xbindkeys for keyboard shortcuts with a bunch of scripts that use xprop, wmctrl, xdotool, etc. Wayland breaks those. And if mandatory, it will definitely force me out of lubuntu. Gnome flavor dictatorships don't work for lubuntu.

<comment><USER12> >It's not bloated

X11 has a big number of issues. Security, very complicated mechanisms (like how clipboard is handled), HiDPI are some of these issues. X11 _is_ bloated (for instance it has an drawing API).

It's not like Wayland makes things that were possible on X11 impossible, it's just that replacements for everything don't exist yet. For instance there's no standardized way to make panels/docks/notification daemons. Same goes for screenshooters and screen recording. We -- the wlroots developers -- have been campaigning to push new protocols to bridge the gap. For instance the layer shell mentioned in the article is a protocol we try to standardize [1].

[1]: [https://github.com/swaywm/wlr- protocols/blob/master/unstable...](https://github.com/swaywm/wlr- protocols/blob/master/unstable/wlr-layer-shell-unstable-v1.xml)

<comment><USER14> I meant Lubuntu as not bloated. I'm fine with X11 bloat compared to Wayland, given that I can't even use Wayland with most things I do everyday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder when Debian, SuSE, et al will do this too.

XWayland will probably still sit around for a very long time even beyond that point though. Time will tell how hilariously it gets integrated.

I'm especially glad the video driver situation means X will hang around for a long time. I'm currently learning the X wire protocol and what I find the nicest about it is its eminent _hackability_.

Wayland, on the other hand, is just a compositor. Seems comparatively boring, from the perspective I have (as an outsider who has dubiously picked through some poorly written documentation that doesn't inspire much confidence). Compositing chews more (system!) RAM, too; an X client doesn't need to allocate any memory of its own, only the X server holds the actual image of the window in memory (GPU memory obviously, and if you're using compositing, main memory as well).

Yes, X has a thousand bugs. Yes, it would fall down a hundred times a second if it were actually possible to feed it into afl. Yes, I had it deadlock on my laptop (when running a program through xtruss and xterm tried to print too fast). Yes, I'm still yet to enable XF86Ungrab (introduced in 2010: [https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/commit/?id=7d2543a...](https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/commit/?id=7d2543a3cb3089241982ce4f8984fd723d5312a1)) so I can fix broken grabs (at least the most recent one that happened this morning - when NFS momentarily timed-out _right bang in the middle_ of me clicking in a menu bar and the menu [window] actually opening).

Yes, XKB needed an XKB2, and then XI, and then XI2, because nobody thought we would need more than 256 individual input buttons (mice sometimes eat 30 keys from X's perspective...). DRI needed a DRI2 and then DRI3. Yes, Xinerama is actually named PanoramiX and not even used anymore thanks to RandR 1.2 ("RandR 1.2 enabled, ignore the following RandR disabled message." ... "RandR disabled"). And that's not even mentioning XFIXES and XC-MISC...

About 4-5 days after starting on poking the X protocol specification for the first time, I crashed into [https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107568](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107568), which was highly amusing. I think that's been in there for 27 years. Not sure whether to call it a leaky abstraction or a case of "someone forgot their mechanism-over-policy hat that day", or both. But anyway. Not a critical bug, but a good illustration of poorly thought through design and implementation.

I'm sad to see X die. Not from the it's-so-terrible standpoint; from that view, sure, yeah. But nostalgically speaking, it's older than I am :) and I guess it's sad to see things move on after having existed the way they are for so long (it's {h,cl}ung on for 30 years).

I know, I know, it'll exist as a legacy component for the next 20 years. But that isn't the same as "nobody uses Perl but it's always installed anyway because some random init-time thing might call it." You can't just "call X". Having X floating around in the form of Xwayland is very similar to XQuartz; as a legacy component, I can see a status quo developing where the integration is subpar, but the situation isn't annoying enough for the people with the "social commit bits" to be insufficiently annoyed to fix it. Hopefully the integration is well-designed and keeps up with the times, at least on 2D screens with keyboards and mice.

I wonder where Wayland will be in 15 years.

Same for X. It'll be interesting.

As an OS evaluator, I just wish Linux would _stay still_. Design things properly the first time (and actually put the time and effort in)! Hopefully Wayland doesn't have to change anything major for at least 20 years. (Why do I cynically expect it to have a tangle of circular dependencies on systemd and dbus within 10. :/)

As a power user/sysadmin, I am _not_ looking forward to having to fuss around with Wayland and get it working. (I mean working _properly_.)

As an end user, I hope I don't actually have to put my sysadmin hat on at all.

As an inveterate tinkerer who likes hacking things in the true sense (finding interesting ways to reuse things :D), I'm sad because X is fun to figure out. (Try it.)

From the perspective of a UX designer who likes building efficient integrated software, I have to sadly reiterate a comment I made 2 years ago (before I accidentally locked 'i336_): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13334053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13334053)

> _I 'm really sad X11 is legacy software myself, as an aside. It's a > disaster, sure, but now we have one more layer of "uhhhh..." for all the UX- > types to get scared away by: it used to be "(WinAPI) vs > ((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))", which was embarrassing enough; now it's "(WinAPI) > vs (X11((Qt)/(GTK+)/(Xlib/XCB))/Wayland((Qt)/(GTK+)/(???)))" which is just > plain annoying for low-level graphics hacker wannabes - I can make a WinAPI > app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I > HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland._

I guess this is the major point of my tired rant: I wish I could wet-fish all of Linux and yell something along the lines of "stop increasing the surface area developers must target!!!! Backward compatibility is not developer responsibility!!", but I can't, because Linux is a bazaar, and everyone is too busy trying to compete for the most amount of responsibility they can elegantly juggle.

<comment><USER12> >Wayland, on the other hand, is just a compositor.

Wayland is _just_ a protocol. There a multiple compositors (GNOME, KDE, Weston, Sway, etc) implementing the protocol differently.

>I'm sad because X is fun to figure out.

I'm currently implementing the drag-and-drop protocol in our Xwayland WM [1]. Trust me, this is far from being fun. Very far, it's not even funny.

>I can make a WinAPI app in C that opens a window in a few KB, where as to do that in Linux now I HAVE to support XCB and also write my own tiny UI for Wayland.

Sticking to broken old standards is not going to be the solution. We have to move forward. There are many embarrassing things in X11 -- Wayland gives us an opportunity to start from scratch.

[1]: [https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/841](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/841)

<comment><USER15> > _There a multiple compositors (GNOME, KDE, Weston, Sway, etc) implementing > the protocol differently._

Genuine question. How can I run a mixed environment, then? I can mix and match Qt and GTK apps without any thought in X, and furthermore, I can run Metacity with Plasma, or KWin with one or more gnome-panel instances. (If the processes are still named like that... it's been a while, heh.) Yes, in practice, I will admit I wouldn't probably do that, but the kind of flexibility - <USER2> expansive upper bound - is what lets me also go to the other end of the extreme and set up a lightweight environment that does function exactly the way I'd like it to.

I'm a bit scared of "implementing the protocol _differently_." Meep. How differently? After having read a bit, I see that Wayland is standardized, but still - how well will things interact, in the worst case scenario? With X, it's "...ooookay, so my dock has decided to acquire a titlebar, and I can resize and move it around the screen. This is... nice?" \- but with Wayland, would things not appear on the screen at all, for example, or would my session [choices] be genuinely unusable [together] at all?

> Sticking to broken old standards is not going to be the solution. We have to > move forward. There are many embarrassing things in X11 -- Wayland gives us > an opportunity to start from scratch.

Pragmatically - not nostalgically speaking - I do completely agree.

I actually just stumbled on [https://blogs.igalia.com/dape/2018/03/21/updated- chromium-le...](https://blogs.igalia.com/dape/2018/03/21/updated-chromium- legacy-wayland-support/) and learned that Wayland has been running webOS in LG TVs for the past 4 years. That's truly impressive, I didn't know that.

I'm really impressed that Chromium and Firefox both support Wayland now, not to mention GTK and Qt.

It's going to be interesting to see how things go over the next few years.

> _I 'm currently implementing the drag-and-drop protocol in our Xwayland WM > [1]. Trust me, this is far from being fun. Very far, it's not even funny._

I see. I had a look at some of the linked issues. It doesn't look particularly fun, yeah. It's very important work though, very cool.

I also just discovered what wlroots actually is, which looks rather interesting too. Something I know will need to exist at some point is the Wayland equivalent of Xvnc, aka a headless display surface that "displays" solely via VNC. This would be a good building block for that.

Poking around has helped me understand the Wayland model a bit better, thanks.

\--

One question that immediately comes to mind about Wayland is how well I could "warp" Wayland clients from one backend to another (within the unbroken constraint that both backends remain on the same machine), without closing/destroying the client first. The purpose being a) to move windows between isolated/disparate video heads (should be achievable with a compositor.....), b) to move clients between an actual video output and eg an Xvnc-style headless backend, and c) to restart the compositor or upgrade the video driver (in some future world where graphics drivers are livepatch- aware), without a session restart. This would probably be viably implementable with a thin proxy layer (which does 0.1% protocol decoding, passing the rest through transparently - perhaps even via a SHM LFQ or similar). Implementing this proxy, and adding some things to the spec that momentarily "puts clients to sleep" to avoid difficult side effects with queued instructions, could be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So... does XWayland work for Nvidia yet?

<comment><USER12> I've seen some Xwayland patches to make the proprietary NVIDIA driver work in compositors that support it.

Mandatory link to NVIDIA rant: [https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you- nvidia.html](https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html)</comment></comment>


How to Frame a Brain : Kawasaki - Lakoff - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/08/how-to-frame-a.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Lakoff's stuff is seriously mind-bending.

 _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things_ by George Lakoff

[http://www.amazon.com/Women-Dangerous-Things-George- Lakoff/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Women-Dangerous-Things-George- Lakoff/dp/0226468046)

<comment><USER2> I was in B&N when you posted this and checked it out on your recommendation. Purchased.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is an e-commerce business a tech-start up? - <AUTHOR>

-SORRY FOR THE REPOST, I wanted to post specifically here, not the News board.-
OP: Full disclosure: I'm far from a hacker/techie. If my terminology is off or I'm over using the word tech, lol, please feel free to correct me, I am eager to learn within this arena. I am someone fascinated by the idea of creating a start-up using tech, but I have no tech background or experience. I can design a pretty snazzy, aesthetically pleasing site using templates etc., but wouldn't know where to begin to build one from the ground up. I have an AMAZING e-commerce start-up idea (don't we all though?!). I've tried shopify and similar sites to build a template of what the site would look like, but there are numerous web components I want to add which go beyond the scope of what they offer. I want to have someone come on board to help with that side, and have started looking into a few of those founder-matching sites.
I'm curious as to what people on the other side of the fence might think. Would an e-commerce business be considered a tech start-up? Are they the type of projects a hacker/techie would get behind. Or is it more something you just hire out for an initial build? <comment><USER2> Let's break it down a little bit.

First, is an ecommerce company a start up. According to the current generation's definition of start up, kinnnda sorta. A start up is synonymous with growth. Ideally, an ecommerce company should be that, but if it is something that falls into more like bespoke systems, then no, it isn't a start up. Yours sounds more like the product type kinda of ecommerce site (sign up and set up your shop) so yes it would fall into a start up category at some point.

Second, is it tech? Forget being a start up for a moment. Is an ecommerce company a tech company. Having worked in the ecommerce field, I know the answer to be this; you decide whether or not it's tech. The ecommerce experience I had was largely a sales driven one. Tech took a back seat for it. I've consulted for another ecommerce company, whose primary focus was great customer care, followed by online conversion optimization. Their tech interests were limited to customer profiling and facebook ad targeting. None of them were tech start ups. They were just start ups (ish).

This begs a question. What makes a startup a tech startup? For example, what makes medium a tech startup? In their case it's all about the experience of the writing application and reading. Technology is solving tough problems and driving them forward. And that's really it, is technology solving the problem? More importantly, is tech driving the business forward.

In the cases I mentioned, tech was the back seat. Tech enabled us for sure, and if the site was down we'd be dead. But really, it was just a magento site with a custom theme on top of it.

In your case, beyond building out the initial product, what's going to be a primary driver of the business here? Is it all about the marketing? Pushing sales people hard? Being crazy about customer service? Building a product that does some technically amazing things along the lines of data crunching? Thing is, you probably don't know yourself. You might like to think it's all about the product, but at some point you might decide that you've done enough on the product and everything is driven by a 'phone-to-phone' aggressive salesforce. Who knows?

Short answer to your question so far, if you envision fast growth of users, and your business is driven by technology solving real world hard problems, then it's a tech startup and yes, a hacker/techie would get behind it. A start up using tech is not the same as a start up driven by tech. As for interest, techies are attracted by interesting problems. The best way to know if you've got an interesting problem on your hand, is to talk to them about it, and see if they are interested.

Heck, I got behind the ecommerce venture I was in simply because I was using technology to solve backend problems in the company. That's what got my gears rolling.

But all this raises a more serious question. Are you doing this primarily because you are fascinated with the idea of a tech startup? Or are you doing this because you have a real problem that you've (ideally) validated and you want to solve and you need strong technology backing it? You've probably guessed the answer should never be the former. One last note before ending this long comment, don't force your startup to be a 'tech' one.

Maybe it's not and that's cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forget about whether your idea, which you haven't told us anything about except that it is e-commerce, should be labeled startup. What matters is the quality of your insight and the other person. If your thing is as lucrative as you say, break everything down and identify the parts that you will be responsible for so the other person will need you. Your idea is amazing if you can prove to a serious developer that your plan will quickly make both of you rich. Build a minimum viable product then iterate. These things often take longer than we think they will, which is why a technical co-founder in it for the long haul beats a freelancer incentivized only to complete the requirements you thought to list, all other factors being equal.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO, there are very few pure tech startups. MongoDB and ElasticSearch comes to mind. Everything else is just using tech to solve a business/consumer problem. IE. Spotify, Netflix, Flipboard, Appointment reminder, basecamp, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And looks like its still not in the ASK section, sorry. :(

<comment><USER5> It is!

<comment><AUTHOR> Whooo! (There was a delay before it showed up here)

Now interested in responses :)</comment></comment></comment>


Can anyone enumerate any recent lisp projects involving AI? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I got something like this en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_projects

this is a very informative page, and almost all cognitive projects are lisp based....(others have not mentioned anything) The problem is, almost started in the 80s (still mantained). The bigger problem is, there are just handfull of projects which started in the 21st century (and they are not clear)...

</comment><comment><USER2> Many links off of: <http://www.cliki.net/AI> & <http://www.cl- user.net/asp/tags/ai> at which I'll try to add at least: <http://code.google.com/p/malecoli/> & [http://cl- www.msi.co.jp/solutions/knowledge/lisp-world/produ...](http://cl- www.msi.co.jp/solutions/knowledge/lisp-world/products/CLML-en.html) <https://github.com/mathematical-systems/clml>

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe that the Cyc Knowledge Base still has lisp components although they are translated into Java for deployment. The functional style of lisp is used, not CLOS or other lisp object orientated techniques.

<comment><AUTHOR> Anything recent, which started in 21st century? Good mention of cyc though....

I suppose there is no java in Cyc.... Only lisp.....

<comment><USER3> I left Cycorp in 2006. At that time various DARPA AI projects featured a number of different languages - mostly Java. Constraint Programming, NLP, Neural Nets. Machine vision is C, e.g. OpenCV. Speech Recognition & translation is C, e.g. Sphinx - Darpa Communicator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I belive you, though wikipedia dosent mention it. Returning back, are there any recent ai projects featuring any lisp dilect????</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix suspends Big Bird - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/netflix-suspends-big-bird/

<comment><USER2> Just another reminder that when you _subscribe_ to something intangible, that doesn't mean you _own_ it.

As a father, I can sympathize with parents who may be a little distraught to find Sesame Street missing from it's usual place... when one was hoping for a few minutes of peace.

But if you don't own the tap, somebody else can turn off the water at a most inconvenient time.</comment>


Colonizing on Mars and beyond?? - <AUTHOR> We hear big time that we need to colonize Mars in the near future as there is potential destruction of earth and humans should be ready to deal with it. My question is
1. We have the earth where we all live and thrive. But we are destroying it, by various means and are not bothered to safe guard what we have. But we are so much into travelling to Mars or some other planet where you don't know whether humans or for that matter animals/plants can live and thrive on those? There are lots of variables, like the basic gases for life, water, gravity and myriad of others we take for granted as we are already adapted to live in this environment on Earth. Or this travelling to mars, mining the moon etc., basically some one trying to make a quick buck at the end of the day in the name of advancing science.
I am not against the development of science and technology, but looking from what and how things are going, it looks like its more of someone or a corporation trying to make money at the end of the day than science or safety to humans?
Why not focus more to safe guard the Earth we have? <comment><USER2> Maybe. I believe the people who want to colonize mars will appeal to the people with money. This can be done through FUD (Were gonna destroy ourselves, we need a backup, etc) and it can also be through economic incentive (if you colonize mars, you will have all the real estate, there is precious metals/resources, vast opportunity, blah blah blah). My view is that we as a species in general want to explore and expand, and as a result you see us using techniques that will allow us to appeal to the people that can make that happen.

EDIT: Spelling</comment>


Weighing the lightest particle - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/weighing-the-lightest-particle <comment><USER2> Disappointed to see a Fermilab publication throwing around weight and mass in the same sentence, such as "neutrinos must weigh less than 2 electronvolts".

Further, it may be common in HEP to use natural units and thus eV is OK but in a (somewhat) lay publication, that really should stay eV/c^2 until natural units are introduced.</comment>


Software Engineering in North Korea - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-06/kim-jong-il-bowls-for-murdoch-dollars-with-video-games-made-in-north-korea.html

<comment><USER2> Nosotek's price list: <http://www.nosotek.com/pricelist.pdf>

Obviously _someone_ out there thinks 1600 euros a month is a good deal for two guys who cannot IM you when they run into a mind-numbingly common blocker. Or that the internet connection (and the salary of a third politically-reliable guy to censor the internet traffic of the first two) is worth another 800 euros of productivity to two guys who have never heard of stackoverflow and don't go on Skype to do language exchange to improve their English skills.

But for me, if I want a cheap Korean-speaking programmer, I'd go to Yanbian or Shenyang in Northeast China. And if I wanted to do my part to liberalise North Korea, I'd lend some money to a Chinese cross-border trader so he can buy more South Korean DVDs and cellphones to sell in Sinuiju.

<comment><USER3> Oh, and they make no guarantees that they'll get anything useful done, either. From the last page:

      Nosotek grants no warranty for work results. Nosotek does not make estimations about the time needed to finish a project or task and does not guarantee to finish a task in any defined time frame.

Schedules? Work products? Pah!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: An editor that let's me write without distraction - <AUTHOR>

I am a writer and I am often too distracted by things like formatting my text, pagination or things that have nothing to do with my writing like gmail notifications on my chrome. I am wondering if the HN community knows about a text editor that let's me write without much distraction. Something that has a spellchecker and a nice font and not much else. If it can shut off my internet while I am writing that would be a plus :) I used to use emacs but its font it too ugly. <comment><USER2> <http://emacswiki.org/emacs/SetFonts>

</comment><comment><USER3> Writemonkey[1] is a clutter-free text editor I use for prose with a lot of customization and power under the surface--it calls itself "zenware". I highly recommend it.

1: <http://writemonkey.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> OmmWriter (<http://www.ommwriter.com>) is my tool of choice. It will fill the screen, block out notifications, has very few formatting options and even the menu disappears. By default it'll play some soft music and has a "peaceful" background but those can be removed. It doesn't have a spell checker though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Write Room [<http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom/>] (Mac/iOS)

</comment><comment><USER6> Notepad++

Like notepad, but with basic features (tabs, indentation, syntax colors) for virtually any language you program in.

</comment><comment><USER7> emacs darkroom mode is also nice for distraction free writing.

Here is a screenshot: [http://www.martyn.se/code/emacs/darkroom- mode/darkroommode-s...](http://www.martyn.se/code/emacs/darkroom- mode/darkroommode-screenshot.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> something like this?

<http://www.iawriter.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> What font are they using. That is nice alas I use Linux and I also virtualize a windows 7. Is there a similar application for Linux or Win?

<comment><USER9> <http://www.boldmonday.com/en/nitti>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hashify.me (web)

.

Scrivener (Win/Mac)

.

Sublime Text (Win)

OmmWriter Dana (Win)

MarkdownPad (Win)

.

MultiMarkdown (Mac)

TextMate (Mac)

Marked (Mac)

Calepin (Mac)

Markdown Pro (Mac)

.

Elements (iOS)

Heart Writer (iOS)

Writing Kit (iOS)

Paragraft (iOS)

Write! (iOS)

<comment><USER11> sublime text is cross platform Win / Linux / Mac. Also it has a mode called Distraction-Free Shift+F11

<comment><USER10> I did not know it was portable. Thanks for the correction :)</comment></comment></comment>


Tales from TCP Towers (1996) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20050215200551/http://home.xnet.com/~raven/Sysadmin/Simes/ <comment><USER2> Oh man. I did ISP work for an Australian ISP Microplex (later Optus Internet) in the late 1990s to early 2000s. It was the most unprofessional, negative yet strangely awesome period of my life. I also learned never to date someone you work with, no matter how cute and nice they might be.

This seems almost precisely like this.

Edit: just realised that the lady I dated (or the guy who married her) might recognize who I am as she was a geek like I am and her husband more so. He's a lucky guy (I'm also very happily married!).

<comment><USER2> Feel I need to explain just how unprofessional the call centre was (given this was over a decade ago, I think it's safe to say this now!):

* one of the guys used to answer the phone with "Microplex, Ghengis Khan speaking!" and nobody seemed to notice

* there was an infamous incident where male porn (well, with a telephone tastefully positioned over the model's male member) was printed in a staff magazine

* I remember a story told to me whereby they used to use 2DayFM as the hold music, but the queues were so long that someone called the radio station to complain and they actually put her to air, live... And of course all the waiting customers heard the complaint

* the wait times were so long that an old guy once fell asleep and my supervisor was called to try to rouse him, as he was snoring pretty loudly and the operator didn't want to hang up on him...

* dropouts were a problem, and due to time pressures one day a CSR told a customer it was caused by sun-spots, a fact that was reported to Australian Personal Computer

* 2nd level support were cowboys, but fairly awesome

* There was an incident where one of the reps stole the blue iMac, not sure exactly what happened but he seemed to have gotten away with it...

* someone used NetSpear on a customer in a misguided attempt to help them via remote support - they got fired...

* the marketing team ran an email competition, but completely forgot to tell anyone and 6 months later it was discovered that there were like 6,000 entries. Nobody won anything at all.

* telnet was being used for the billing system, which was some sort of text based Informix database. Eventually a security guy came in and realised the problem and ssh was used instead

* the accounts guys were crazy, one guy used a bin lid and stuck a toilet paper roll on the front, and used to run around the office with it stuck over his head screaming "exterminate, exterminate!", pretending to be a Dalek.

* this made another accounts guy wait till he was out for lunch, and then he took the guys headphone, got some chutney and put it into his headphone ear-piece. Not entirely sure how far it escalated after that...

* an amazing amount of porn were stored on the PC hard drives of the second-line teams computers. They used to swap out the hard drives when they thought they might be audited

* the y2k guys decided that a good way of fixing Windows NT machines was to take out DLLs that looked "suspicious", thus rendering some workstations inoperable midway through 1999...

* the amount of drugs, sex and alcohol was, by all accounts, fairly amazing

* to exact revenge on an unliked team leader, one guy filled up some condoms and put them in the supervisors desk drawer...

* that same guy defaced another CSRs home page, but only because the guy was entirely stats based and did anything to get rid of the customer (like anything!)

* another CSR wanted to decrease their call talk time, so they used to rub their headset microphone on their stubble and pretend the phone line was breaking up, then eventually ended the call mid-sentence

* another CSR would start many calls with an Irish accent, if things got a bit tricky they'd say they were escalating the call then come back on the line with their normal voice, claiming to be the supervisor

Yup, remarkable. Truly the Wild West days of Australian Internet. No idea what was going on with other ISPs. I doubt Malcolm Turnbull would have let that sort of stuff happen at Ozemail...</comment></comment>


SEC Proceeding against Athena Capital Research [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/34-73369.pdf

<comment><USER2> Matt Levine's Bloomberg article is a good layman's explanation of the issues: [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-16/high- speed-...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-16/high-speed- traders-put-a-bit-too-much-gravy-on-their-meat)

They were wrong and got punished, but the market would have punished them eventually anyway, and it sounds like it was already doing so. The SEC filing states that this scheme lost them $3mm on an index rebalance day when activity in the closing auction peaks. That should be a great opportunity for anyone intermediating between the continuous and auction books, so it is very surprising that they'd lose. Someone probably caught on that they were manipulating the close and waited for a big day to take advantage of them, or there was so much activity that they didn't have enough ammo to goose the price like on slower days.

Also, to be clear, there is nothing illegal about HFTs intermediating between the continuous and auction books or the majority of HFT activity. These guys were charged because they committed fraud, the use of a computer was ancillary.

<comment><USER3> I have never read a bad Matt Levine article. That guy is amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can safely ignore Newsweek's coverage. The meat is in the SEC action:

[http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/34-73369.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/34-73369.pdf)

Basically: Athena targeted stocks with closing time imbalances between buys and sells, where NASDAQ ran a special order routing process, and traded with itself to influence the price reported at market close.

The dollar amounts the SEC describes are insignificant (that's obviously not a defense for the firm charged with the behavior).

<comment><USER2> I don't believe they were trading with themselves. They were accumulating stock in the opposite direction to hedge their imbalance-only order. However, the way they accumulated that stock was done in a way that would impact the price received on the closing order.

So imagine they sold 10000 shares imbalance-only in the auction at 3:50. They would then buy 2500 immediately, slowly pick up another 2500 in the next 9 minutes, then do the last 2500 in the last second. The initial trades would get them into their hedge at a low average price, and the last-second ones would push the price of the closing auction up, maximizing their return on their imbalance-only order.

If you read the case, it seems like this didn't always work if they had slippage on the close or they got so aggressive that they would "flip" the imbalance and not get filled on their closing order at all, instead being stuck with a bunch of shares from crappy prices. The people trading with them in the last two seconds could also keep replenishing their orders and prevent them from spiking the price. Sounds like a dangerous game of high-stakes chicken.

<comment><USER3> You're obviously right; the Levine article you posted downthread does an excellent job describing the high-level strategy they employed. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being very familiar with this type of trading, I am very surprised that they were that stupid to trade in big size near the close.... I'm also surprised that this was a successful strategy on the Nasdaq... especially in 2009 as volatility was coming down quite a bit from the previous years.

What the SEC really should be investigating is the rampant use (or probably misuse) of d-quotes on the NYSE. These effectively allow you to put on-close orders after the on-close cutoff time of 1545. These orders get routed to specialists and god knows what theyre doing behind the scenes.... I havent run the numbers but I would wager that last-15 minute volatility in NYSE names is way higher than on NASDAQ. Get rid of the d-quotes and get rid of the specialists....

</comment><comment><USER5> Stupid question about this line on p.11:

> Respondent Athena cease and desist from committing or causing any violations > and any future violations of Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule > 10b-5 thereunder

Why does the SEC order a firm to desist from committing violations of some rule? Aren't firms supposed to be not violating them anyway, regardless of whether they are specifically ordered by the SEC not to?

<comment><USER6> Seems odd, right? My guess is it's primarily about future remedies: Violating an injunction (once in place) adds another potential remedy against the actor if the actor does the same act again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand that the SEC is also asking Athena to cease and desist, but did Athena's scheme actually make them money? If so, a $1M civil penalty doesn't seem like much of a deterrent for those thinking to do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> So can anyone explain why this is a problem? Because it seems that some people just made a clever algorithm that didn't hurt anyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> of course this happens look at the the difference between the spot vix and the futures settle price...

<comment><USER10> To manipulate VIX price, don't you need to buy/sell an order of more magnitude of SPX contracts. On the same topic, I'm not a big fan of the RLS of RUT contracts as it gives so much uncertainty on settlement day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Leah McGrath Goodman is not a reliable source for news edit: someone changed link from newsweek story</comment>


SoftBank Owned Patent Troll Sues to Block Covid Testing, Using Theranos Patents - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200316/14584244111/softbank-owned-patent-troll-using-monkey-selfie-law-firm-sues-to-block-covid-19-testing-using-theranos-patents.shtml <comment><USER2> If you haven't clicked through, the confluence of huckers in this story is simply unbelievable:

> Honestly, I wasn't sure how to begin this story or how to fit all the > insanity into the title. It's a story involving patents, patent trolling, > Covid-19, Theranos, and even the company that brought us all WeWork: > SoftBank. Oh, and also Irell & Manella, the same law firm that once claimed > it could represent a monkey in a copyright infringement dispute. You see, > Irell & Manella has now filed one of the most utterly bullshit patent > infringement lawsuits you'll ever see. They are representing "Labrador > Diagnostics LLC" a patent troll which does not seem to exist other than to > file this lawsuit, and which claims to hold the rights to two patents (US > Patents 8,283,155 and 10,533,994) which, you'll note, were originally > granted to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos -- the firm that shut down in > scandal over medical testing equipment that appears to have been oversold > and never actually worked. Holmes is still facing federal charges of wire > fraud over the whole Theranos debacle.

<comment><USER3> > Honestly, I'm used to all sorts of awfulness, but this one piles awfulness > upon awfulness, and takes it to a level of pure evil. The lawyers filing > this lawsuit on behalf of "Labrador" should remember what they've done -- > filing a bullshit patent trolling lawsuit, on behalf of a shell company for > a notorious giant patent troll, using patents from a sham company, and using > them to try to block the use of Covid-19 diagnostic tests in the middle of a > pandemic. I wonder how they sleep at night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > That Defendants be enjoined from infringing the Asserted Patents, or if > their infringement is not enjoined, that Defendants be ordered to pay > ongoing royalties to Labrador for any post-judgment infringement of the > Asserted Patents;

I'm trying to figure out what on Earth could make the first approach appear like a sane course of action to anyone. Apart from reeking of evil it's not like they have their own production line ready to go - they'd get nothing from it. Lawyers being lawyers playing hardball and forgetting what time it is while PR dozed off? Obviously they have to assert the patents however bullshit they may be, but goddamn.

(Yes, the stupidity basically irks me more than anything else)

</comment><comment><USER5> Has this story been noticed by any other media outlets? If this is all true, the parties involved deserve to be shamed into oblivion, but will need more attention for that to happen.

<comment><USER6> Just got it from Bloomberg related email, so it is getting noticed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope they don't have similar patents in other parts of the world. Looks like it's a US patent so can't cause too much pain outside the US

</comment><comment><USER8> Professor Scott Galloway needs to comment on this.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the equivalent of hoarding toilet paper, except in this case the toilet paper is a patent.

<comment><USER10> No. Hoarding toilet paper is a harmless, if annoying, way for panicking people to cope.

This is one of the most evil thing that's been attempted in months. I sincerely hope everyone involved on the suing side will get imprisoned under some emergency "don't fuck with healthcare in the middle of pandemic" law.

<comment><USER9> Good point, I should be more careful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rents</comment>


Rackspace CDN and other services unreachable - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rackspace <comment><AUTHOR> Seems like DNS issue. rackspace.com does not resolve, also rackcdn.com. Because of this even status.rackspace.com is unreachable.

<comment><USER2> I called Rackspace and the rep said it was a DDOS attack.</comment></comment>


ARM programming, where do I start? - <AUTHOR> http://ask.metafilter.com/95878/ARM-programming-where-do-I-start

<comment><USER2> OK. These are the two books you need when you start out programming for ARM chips:

ARM System-on-Chip Architecture (2nd Edition) By Steve Furber (the guy who designed the bloody chip!) [http://www.amazon.com/ARM-System-Chip- Architecture-2nd/dp/02...](http://www.amazon.com/ARM-System-Chip- Architecture-2nd/dp/0201675196/ref=sr_1_3?e=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270705044&sr=1-3)

ARM Architecture Reference Manual (2nd Edition) By David Seal [http://www.amazon.com/ARM-Architecture-Reference- Manual-2nd/...](http://www.amazon.com/ARM-Architecture-Reference- Manual-2nd/dp/0201737191/ref=pd_sim_b_6)

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on what you want to do. Getting a beagleboard would be a no brainer to start out.

[http://www.amazon.com/ARM-System-Developers-Guide- Architectu...](http://www.amazon.com/ARM-System-Developers-Guide- Architecture/dp/1558608745) is a good book, you might want to buy a copy.

Some handy things to know about ARM.. logical operations can be added on to ALU instructions for free -- lots of speed gains there...

If you have never done any embedded programming; expect things to take longer to write, and frustration levels can be pretty ugly.

If you get an ARM chip that doesn't have floating point, and you need to do something mathematically intensive, look into fixed point math. Make everything you can into a table (most ARM chips have enough memory so that you can trade space for speed)

Don't give up -- embedded requires tenacity.

Oh, and Codesourcery provides good pre-compiled toolchains, but you have to dig around on their website a bit to find them.

<comment><USER2> "If you get an ARM chip that doesn't have floating point..."

Or that there is no dedicated instruction to divide. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, you can get started on an emulator such as qemu:

<http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/>

<comment><USER5> Or even start playing with eg Android SDK/NDK which runs their emulator on qemu. Pretty much all mobile phones run on ARM though so pick which ever you are most comfortable with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off the wall idea... but you could buy an old Archimedes or RiscPC off eBAY. There's an ARM assembler built-in (OS, BASIC V, assembler, and some apps are in ROM).</comment>


TermKit - Next Generation Terminal/Command Application - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unconed/TermKit

<comment><USER2> caveat: I'm extrapolating from the descriptions and screenshots.

I think it's kinda neat, textual shells need to embrace the power of graphical representations (as in CLIM for Common Lisp). Nonetheless, I don't think that overloading something like "cat" with the ability of showing images is a good idea. Classic unix tools have a precise semantics, and if you start messing around, they may become inconsistent. (For example: does "cat pic.jpg | strings" extracts EXIF? "cat pic1.jpg pic2.jpg" concatenates two images in a single image? Horizontally or vertically?)

If you decide that you don't need the power given by homogenous textual representations, scripting and anonymous pipes, maybe something like the verb- noun metaphor of QuickSilver is more suited.

</comment><comment><USER3> As cool as this look, I don't really understand the point. If it's not supposed to be a terminal emulator, what is it?</comment>


Is This The Future of Touchscreen Tech? New Video Will Blow Your Mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X-GXO_urMow

<comment><USER2> Fabulous production values on a par with a scifi movie.

Glad to see how Corning, an old line US glass manufacturer, has remained innovative and competitive worldwide.</comment>