Show HN: Kirby's Dreamland 2 level viewer, in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2016/03/reverse-engineering-kirbys-dreamland-2.html <comment><USER2> I was really pleased with the vgrep technique he used at the start to figure out what changed the map data. I often forget just how awesome our eyes are at spotting changing stuff at a glance and small datasets don't take long to manually look at.

Simply open the working RAM and look at it; lo and behold the thing is right _there_.

(There's some super spiffy things built on this idea, the one I was really excited to see come out was ..cantor.dust.. [0], which was never released.)

[0] [https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/](https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/)

EDIT: formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa.

I can't tell if this is a joke, or 100% serious. I'm trying to find a download link because damn this looks cool. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER2> Totally for real, but a bit of a vaporware. You can get a demo version from this reddit thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/1izity/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/1izity/cantordust_a_binary_visualization_tool)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now we reverse engineer the reverse engineering tool and create an open source version that can hook into /proc/mem and other streams instead of just files :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We changed the URL to this one because it tells the story. The submitted URL was [http://github.com/lf94/kdl2viewer](http://github.com/lf94/kdl2viewer). Both are great.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could you add some screenshots or GIFs to the readme, to give a sense of how it works for people who don't have a ROM handy?

<comment><USER5> This is a much interesting link: [http://ecc- comp.blogspot.com/2016/03/reverse-engineering-kir...](http://ecc- comp.blogspot.com/2016/03/reverse-engineering-kirbys-dreamland-2.html)

Has some screenshots too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, document.org in the repository is a reflection of that post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like the compression is a variant of LC_LZ2, used in lots of Nintendo games: [http://www.smwiki.net/wiki/LC_LZ2](http://www.smwiki.net/wiki/LC_LZ2)

</comment><comment><USER7> >Kirby's Dreamland 3 for SNES, except it's rare and worth at least $80

I have that game, always loved playing that game, and am surprised to know it's now worth at least $80!

</comment><comment><USER8> How did you dump the rom?

<comment><USER9> Chances are he didn't. Verified dumps are all over the internet.

However, a sufficiently motivated individual can create cartridge dumpers with hardware like Arduino and a broken Game Boy (to harvest the socket for convenience). The cartridges for most/all game systems are widely understood by this point thanks to the efforts of reverse engineers.

Of course there are also pre-built dumpers available through various sources. They are not unique to the present-day. Even when the SNES and Game Boy were still selling on shelves, there were devices created specifically for copying cartridges to alternative storage such as floppy disk or custom cartridges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why?

<comment><USER2> Conveniently, section 1.1 of the current link [0] covers this (it's one of the earlier sections).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11300075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11300075)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rundown? Can you use that in a sentence?

<comment><AUTHOR> run·down

noun

noun: rundown; plural noun: rundowns; noun: run-down; plural noun: run-downs

ˈrənˌdoun/

        1. an analysis or summary of something by a knowledgeable person.
        "he gave his teammates a rundown on the opposition"

<comment><USER12> I think it the parent meant to reference Oscar in "the Office"</comment></comment></comment>


New hints of volcanism under the heart of northern Europe - <AUTHOR> https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/new-hints-volcanism-under-heart-northern-europe <comment><USER2> Interesting, but the headline is a bit misleading. "The heart of Northern Europe" sounds like it's in the Nordic countries, whereas the study is about the Eifel region, in the West of Germany and pretty close to the heart of Europe.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's kind of a big deal, since there's plenty of known volcanism in Italy. Eifel is still along ways from Pompeii though.

To put it another way, I wouldn't worry until they start having hot springs over there.

<comment><USER4> The region is full of nuclear plants though.

<comment><USER5> Define 'region'. Germany as a whole has six nuclear power plants left, with planned shutdowns not after 2022.

[https://www.bmu.de/themen/atomenergie- strahlenschutz/nuklear...](https://www.bmu.de/themen/atomenergie- strahlenschutz/nukleare-sicherheit/aufsicht-ueber- kernkraftwerke/kernkraftwerke-in-deutschland/)

<comment><USER4> The German one's are indeed extinguising, but the reactors Thiange (Belgium) and Cattenom (France) are still operational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's new about it? The Eifel region (a part of which is literally called Vulkan-Eifel) has been known for centuries if not milleniae for its volcano seas. "Maar" is even part of many city names in that region.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps a better title would be "Hints of new volcanic activity under the Eifel region". The geographic background is well known, but the study finds the activity was larger than expected:

> The Eifel area is the only region in the study where the ground motion > appeared significantly greater than expected

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Those lakes seem to have no flow of water in or out, so I guess they just rely on groundwater flow to refill it, but how come it didnt overgrow and fill up with mud centuries ago?

<comment><USER9> A lack of flowing rivers carrying sediment to the lakes probably helps the lakes, there is less mud to fill them up.</comment></comment>


When HHVM doesn't work quite right - <AUTHOR> http://ma.rtin.so/when-hhvm-doesnt-work-quite-right <comment><USER2> You might check out [http://circus.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://circus.readthedocs.org/en/latest/) instead of supervisord; you can restart managed processes on a schedule, and it also publishes events to zmq and statsd for integration with any other tooling you might want to use for health checks.

<comment><USER3> Even that is not necessary. If the original service was running under systemd, why not just use service instances? (see description in [https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understandi...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understanding- systemd-units-and-unit-files) for example)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 3.8 and 3.9-dev are way more stable than any previous version.

We used to have to restart hhvm weekly to prevent white screens of death but no longer with 3.8+

3.8 is also 10% faster than previous versions: [http://hhvm.com/blog/9803/hhvm-3-8-0](http://hhvm.com/blog/9803/hhvm-3-8-0)

<comment><USER5> I just started a new Laravel project and decided to try hhvm. Unfortunately, on 3.8.0 it segfaults under load just serving the default Laravel page. It's really unfortunate since I'd love to give hhvm a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> When did you try it? HHVM 3.8 was only released officially a week ago, perhaps you were on the unstable branch?

<comment><USER5> I just started the project 2 days ago, and it was installed from the official HHVM repository:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0x5a16e7281be7a449

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu](http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu) $(lsb_release -sc) main"

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install hhvm

$hhvm --version

HipHop VM 3.8.0 (rel)

Compiler: tags/HHVM-3.8.0-0-gbb32f8d645b28561d8491870c44730b9b3f08d35

Repo schema: 74bee5d310450724cfd49245fd6c2e1e4323b10a

<comment><AUTHOR> if you can run it under gdb, repro, and get a "thread apply all bt" that'd be very helpful. The HHVM team is very responsive on GitHub issues!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's cool I guess, but this article is more about setting up a load balancer than it is about HHVM. I was hoping for some juicy bit about it completely hosing up on some obscure PHP function.

</comment><comment><USER7> "nginx does provide health_check in its commercial builds, but at this time I'm not too inclined to pay $1500/server/year for the pleasure."

But Varnish does it for free out of the box ! Quick example from the documentation ([https://www.varnish- cache.org/trac/wiki/BackendPolling](https://www.varnish- cache.org/trac/wiki/BackendPolling)) :

backend b0 { .host = "phk.freebsd.dk"; .probe = { .url = "/probe.cgi"; .timeout = 34 ms; .interval = 1s; .window = 10; .threshold = 8; } }

</comment><comment><USER8> Who goes "this software has stability problems" and decides the correct solution is to go with the even more unstable branch?

<comment><USER9> People that have identified leaks affecting them which are fixed on the nightlies?

<comment><USER10> People trading some known bugs for a whole heap of new ones, ones likely to change all the time? Doesn't sound like the smartest operations move.

Given they've gone and written stuff to automatically restart the processes under certain conditions anyway, might as well just catch the memory leak and restart, rather than gamble with "not for production use" software in production environments.

<comment><AUTHOR> The build we're using was considered pretty safe and was performing better for us than 3.7.x - of course we aren't grabbing the new nightly constantly and plan to move to a "stable" branch soon :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sweet, I am going to borrow your health check script. I can't wait until official packaged support for the ZMQ extension.

</comment><comment><USER12> > First, I disabled HHVM via systemd and substituted in supervisord.

Why? what does supervisord have that systemd doesn't provide?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not aware of a method to manage pools with systemd, also it requires processes to be daemonized which would make configuration a little messier. Also I'm simply more familiar with supervisord as systemd only recently became the default init system in debian.

<comment><USER12> > I'm not aware of a method to manage pools with systemd

I'm not sure what you mean by manage pools. Maybe you're asking how to make multiple processes? Check out unit templates, they're the ones with an '@' in them. see `man systemd.unit` for more info.

> also it requires processes to be daemonized which would make configuration a > little messier.

It does not. infact, it prefers you don't. Check out the various service unit types. see `man systemd.service` or [http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.serv...](http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html#Type=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> in the time you read this article, facebook developers have added another 1500 lines of php and pushed most of it to production.</comment>


Ask HN: What could UK do with a no-deal exit to save its economy? - <AUTHOR> I have been wondering amidst these short sighted news stories - What could UK actually do to save itself in the event of a no-deal exit?
As in, what kind of economic levers do they have to stay afloat or even try to get ahead of the pack..
Can they just reduce tariffs and taxes so much that all of UK becomes an easy tax haven?
Or reduce taxes, tariffs and incentivise businesses so much to compensate for the loss of access to EU and steer them to look toward everyone else?
What could their move be? <comment><USER2> Here's a sample of what the UK could do to help (but not definitely) save itself in the event of a no-deal brexit:

1\. Set corporation tax lower than any EU country.

2\. Create generous startup investment vehicles that are open to EU startups who transfer their HQ to the UK.

3\. Sign small limited set trade deals with every country they currently don't have deals with because of the EU - think pareto and don't worry about the small stuff right now.

4\. Deregulate the finance industry even more with the caveat that they help with this transitory period.

5\. Borrow money and invest massively in infrastructure ONLY creating jobs

6\. Subsidise large internationally competitive UK companies in return for staying/playing ball.

7\. Speak to the US about dissolving NATO and replacing it with something else that's cheaper and more focused now that the EU has talked about building their own army.

8\. Aggressively push commonwealth trade.

9\. Throw out lots of laws and regulations around corruption, bribery etc. to increase trade with countries with lots of money and few morals.

10\. Deregulate "greenfield" housebuilding investment - the UK has a massive shortage of housing. There's a lot of jobs there and a lot of foreign investors who want to take their dirty money out of their own country.

11\. Continue fracking and other dirty industries that make money but make life worse.

12\. Change the law around retirement benefits being payable outside of the UK - would be unpopular but all those pensioners in Spain, France, Greece, Portugal etc. would have to move and spend their money in the UK or in Gibraltar.

13\. Cut workers rights to make it a better place to hire workers for companies who move to the UK for say a 10-year transition period.

No doubt a lot of these wouldn't be straightforward and without a majority government I fully expect a lot of people to say "not possible" but the general idea is that almost all options (good and bad) are on the table because of a no-deal brexit.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1,2,3,5,6&8 seems like "good" things to do in the spirit of being competitive as a country. But, the rest are mean spirited and have a lot of potential to backfire in direct and indirect ways.

There sure are cronies and crooks everywhere in the world rooting for such mean spirited opportunities.

Time will tell what the U.K. Will stand for I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Greed will always conquer everything, that is, the large corps, banks etc are greedy and if they want somehting to happen then ultimately it will

I hear this all the time from Brexiters who are apparently unaware that Brexit itself refutes this thesis.</comment>


First PyCon in the Philippines - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pyconph

<comment><USER2> The presentations were awesome! Can't wait for the sprints!</comment>


Porsche is showing off an electric sports car - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/501986/porsche-is-showing-off-an-electric-sports-car-that-could-take-on-tesla/ <comment><USER2> _Porsche expect it to be a production car within 5 years._

So this shouldn't be compared with Tesla's current offering. This is going to have to compete with the products Tesla are making in ~5 years time. Statements like "It charges in 15 minutes, faster than Tesla's superchargers" are effectively meaningless unless Tesla make absolutely no improvements to their charging technology over the next half decade. I think Tesla have the edge here.

<comment><USER3> The 15 minute charge time is based on an 800V charger. There's nothing magical here. Tesla (and the Nissan Leaf, and some other eVs) use a 400V charger which charges to 80% in 30 minutes. If you double the voltage, then cutting the charge time in half is what you'd expect.

The thing that isn't mentioned here is that setting up a 400V charging station is already expensive. Tesla has taken up this expense themselves creating its SuperCharger (400V) network that all Tesla owners can use for free. I don't see anything in this article indicating Porsche is planning to do the same with 800V chargers. If they are that would be amazing, but I doubt it. Setting up 800V charging stations would be even more expensive than the 400V ones Tesla has invested heavily in.

Honestly, the best thing VAG (VW Audi Group, who own Porsche) and all other EV manufacturers could do is put a Tesla SuperCharger port in their vehicles to allow for using the SuperCharger network.

<comment><AUTHOR> Porsche can probably more easily afford to setup the 800V network than Tesla can its 400V network. They have a large, wholly self-sustaining business. Their operating profit of $3.x billion last year is comparable to Ford's operating profit.

<comment><USER3> Of course they can afford it, that's not the issue. The issue is that EVs are 100% of Tesla's revenue, so the investment is obviously worthwhile, even necessary. EVs are none of Porsche's profit, they are just putting this out there as a concept thus far, so it's unlikely they're going to make that kind of investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Mission E can even "reflect the mood by displaying an emoticon in the dashboard".

Porsche's PR/engineering team are losing the plot if they consider that a feature worth speaking about.

<comment><USER5> I also thought that was a totally bizarre feature.

The only use I can think of is collecting the data and using it to determine and suggest enjoyable routes. So the Sat Nav can suggest an alternative route that might be slower but is a lot more fun to drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original press release contains more information. It seems like they are already using the drive system in race cars right now. The "Porsche Turbo Charging" seems to require special charging stations though.

[http://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/iaa-2015-porsche- mis...](http://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/iaa-2015-porsche-mission-e- mobility-all-electrically-concept-car-11391.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Charging any EV in 15 minutes is going to be challenging in a residential area, I suspect. Imagine going out with a full charge and driving like a maniac with the goal of draining the charge completely in 15 minutes. How much energy did you turn into tire smoke during that 15-minute drive? That determines how much available power you'll need to charge that puppy back up in the same amount of time. 250 HP * 750 W/HP = about 50 kW for 15 minutes....? On a residential 220V circuit that'd require 225-amp service. The thermal losses will be massive.

Once again, the only way this even remotely makes sense is to standardize the battery form factor and swap them.

<comment><USER8> As long as they remain expensive and unpopular, electrical service simply won't be an issue. If you're buying a $150K sports car, dropping around $3K to upgrade to 400 amp service is pocket change. People who live in extreme rural areas or service needs to trench thru solid rock ($30/ft!) or live in extreme tax areas could pay a small multiple of that, but its such a small percentage it'll round down to nothing.

Two problem areas are what if entire subdivisions go electric, distribution lines are going to need upgrading, and that will not be cheap. For that matter it trickles up all the way to the plant, shutting down gas refineries is going to mean installing lots of coal burning electrical plants...

The other problem area is if electric cars drop to reasonable prices, the used market will suffer horribly in the early years if a couple years old electric sells used for $7K but it'll cost $3K to charge it. This will create a class distinction where rich people charge their cars in 15 minutes and poor people leave their cars plugged into standard extension cords overnight.

Something to think about with swapping is its so dangerous WRT connector damage and immense weight that even trained industrial users generally don't do it on pallet jacks up to medium size forklifts. It seems to "work" as a technology up to push lawnmower size, no bigger. Also the cost of swapping is staggering, now the cars engineering is compromised by having removable batteries ($$$$) and obviously people need to own multiple batteries ($$$$$). It rapidly becomes a financial win to simply not drive more than 200 miles per day or to become a multi-car household.

<comment><USER7> Good points for the most part, but with regard to swapping, no one needs to own any batteries at all. You pull into an existing gas station and drive away _5_ minutes later -- at most -- with a battery that was charged overnight at a centralized plant with optimum efficiency, minimal thermal losses, and no last-mile infrastructure problems.

Yes, this will be expensive, but not doing it this way will be even more expensive in the long run. It will require intelligent, government-enforced standardization of modular battery form factors, which is why it will probably never happen. We just _have_ to have our VHS-versus-Beta and our BluRay- versus-HD DVD wars, even when there is demonstrably zero consumer benefit.

<comment><USER8> Its interesting to abstract out the contentious electric car and just try to find consumer or even professional analogies, looking at just physical bulk and practical and safety issues.

Swapping giant dangerous things in and out of very expensive life critical safety issues by and for semi-trained to completely untrained consumers at random times and places.

There is nothing like it in all of commerce that I'm aware of. The closest analogy I can think of is renting a u-haul trailer for a car, and that is totally survivable both for an individual customer and as a sustainable business model, but not fast, convenient, attractive, cheap, appealing. And a uhaul trailer is enormously simpler than hundred of kilowatt level electrical wiring and lithium batteries that explode when mistreated and weigh enough to kill someone if dropped, so its far too simple an analogy.

There being nothing like it in current commerce means its probably doomed because you'd have to roll out something totally new in the world of logistics at the same time as rolling out something new in the world of automobiles. And you can't "cheat" and roll out electric cars first because people will get used to and not mind home charging making it a very hard sell to switch to inferior cars and batteries that can very expensively and difficultly be swapped.

The only real hope I can think of for that business model is massive advancement in control semiconductors such that you can make a "raid array of batteries" so a lunch box battery can haul your car to the nearest charger when necessary, essentially the electric car equivalent of a gas can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this actually exist, even as a one-off? It's a bit ambigous whether they're "unveiling" and "showing off" an actual car that you can sit in and drive, or just some pictures.

If it's the latter, then this seems to be a very weak offering, vaporware FUD so lame that it actually makes the company putting it out seem worse than if they'd just kept quiet.

<comment><USER10> It's a concept car - so it's a "one-off" and seeing as how it was at the IAA in Frankfurt, I'd say it actually exists.

If you RTFA you'd have found this link: [http://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/iaa-2015-porsche- mis...](http://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/iaa-2015-porsche-mission-e- mobility-all-electrically-concept-car-11391.html)

Found an event pic on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/PorscheNewsroom/status/64371873566939136...](https://twitter.com/PorscheNewsroom/status/643718735669391360)

<comment><USER9> I did RTFA, and that link, before I asked as all the images look like obvious renders to me (with the possible exception of the interior shot).

Apparently something physical does exist, given the Twitter pic, but it's still not clear if that's a dummy that needs to be rolled into position, or if it's a car you can actually drive. And whether it fulfils the various claims (15 minute charging combined with the claimed range seems something worth shouting about, even apart from the rest of the car)

<comment><USER10> Porsche doesn't f*ck around. It think the questions would be valid for a start-up, but not one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world. Porsche is also not a stranger to "electric" vehicles (see 918).

<comment><USER9> It's enough of a stranger to fully electric cars to be announcing a concept car for 5 years out that hasn't been confirmed for production, that doesn't really seem to add anything new beyond emoticons and holographic eye-tracking dashboard controls.

Given the apparent disruptive nature of this change to existing car companies that cling to their ICE engine technology as their reason for existing, I'd probably be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to some random new entrant created by a Chinese battery manufacturer or Netflix competitor who don't have such a big stake in the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is excellent news, it means that VW is testing the electric car waters. While Tesla has to trickle down all of its technology into wholly new cars, VW can trickle down consumer level stuff into electric VWs (and yes, I know about the e-golf but it only goes 83 miles on a charge and isn't even the blip the Nissan Leaf is).

</comment><comment><USER12> Sorry air heads, it's water cooled:

[http://www.porscheengineering.com/filestore.aspx/Porsche- Eng...](http://www.porscheengineering.com/filestore.aspx/Porsche-Engineering- Magazine-02-2014-Le-Mans-%E2%80%93-Battery-Development-for- the-919-Hybrid.pdf?pool=peg&type=download&id=pemagazin-02-2014-artikel-lemans- batterieentwicklungfuerden919hybrid&lang=en&filetype=default&version=3e549e9a-c26c-11e4-a19d-001a64c55f5c)

(seriously now though - nice document about the 919 hybrid)

</comment><comment><USER13> An excellent essay about "concept" products, including (of course) cars:

Why Apple doesn't do "Concept Products"

[http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept- products/](http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Kidding here, but after a few hypercar Porsche 918s caught fire being refueled because somebody thought it'd be just fine to put the gas filler next to an exhaust port, I'd be interested to see how they deal with electricity.</comment>


How to design a popular programming language - <AUTHOR> http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-design-popular-programming.html <comment><USER2>
        1.  Find a new platform that will be a huge success in a few years.
        2. Make your language the default way to program on that platform.
        3. Wait.

Isn't that a bit like saying that you can start a startup by:

        1. Find a new market that's untapped.
        2. Make your product the best product in that field.
        3. Wait.

Strictly speaking that is probably _correct_ advice. It's just not very useful. It just begs too many other questions: How do I find an untapped market? How do I make it the best product in that field?

<comment><USER3> The article isn't actually meant as a guide. It's meant as a commentary on what makes programming languages popular, and the conceit of a "guide" format is just a rhetorical device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the quote about network effects:

> The network effects from language adoption are immense. Programming is, > despite appearances, a deeply social profession. To write successful > software quickly, you must exploit the skills of other programmers — either > directly, by hiring them, or indirectly, by using library software they've > written. And once a language becomes the most popular in a niche, the supply > of both programmers and libraries for that language rapidly accumulates to > the point where it becomes economically irrational to use any other > language.

It reminds me a bit of something I wrote a while ago:

<http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics>

Java and .Net/C# are "anomalous" also because they have massive corporations pouring a lot of resources into them, which helps.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I'll reduce that further:

      Programming is, despite appearances, a deeply social profession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Incidentally, this theory predicts that all the new(ish) programming languages attracting buzz these days — whether Ruby, or Scala, or Clojure, or Go, or whatever — will fail to attract large numbers of programmers._

I'm a little confused. Hasn't Ruby already passed this test, or am I just biased because I enjoy writing in Ruby? I was under the impression that Ruby and Python were largely equivalent in popularity and notoriety, as evidenced by Rails and Django, for example.

<comment><USER7> I do agree that Ruby has passed this test since there are quite a few Ruby projects out there, a ton of startups and even some big names showing interest in it. There are webhosts out there which specialize in Ruby deployments which is a big win if you see Ruby as a web language.

However, I would disagree on the comparison with Python which has a much larger community base than Ruby. Rails may be more popular than Django but Python has even penetrated desktop apps like Hg, Bazaar, Meld etc. which is one area Ruby is still to affect significantly. But having said that, Scala, Clojure and especially Go are not nearly as popular as Ruby or Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I were to design a programming language, I'd design it to be _good_ , and to be easy to integrate with existing projects/codebases, and let popularity worry about itself.

To my mind, Rich Hickey is the paragon of programming language creators. He scratched his own itch, he did a hell of a job, and now his language is quickly becoming popular with zero corporate support or explicit marketing.

<comment><USER9> Hickey is the man. I've learned from and enjoyed all of his presentation videos that I've encountered online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminded me of this <http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html>

_Let's start by acknowledging one external factor that does affect the popularity of a programming language. To become popular, a programming language has to be the scripting language of a popular system._

</comment><comment><USER11> Terrific post, but he's overlooking the .NET framework. It has successfully made "cross-language interoperability work well." Granted, you're limited to windows programming, but that's not his point. Moreover, you could even argue that C# has overtaken VB as the dominant language for programming on the .NET platform.

<comment><USER5> .. if you're willing to live in the set of languages coerced to fit in the .Net object model.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying I don't like to get out of the .NET box; I do. But the point was within a single framework you have multiple languages that work well together.

I'm fairly language agnostic, but out of curiousity, what language doesn't .NET have that you want to work with? All my (language-y/syntaxy) needs are pretty much filled between IronRuby, IronPython, C#, and now F#.

<comment><USER5> Haskell and Erlang.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough. I do nearly 100% web development, so I haven't messed with those yet. They still don't give you anymore language interoperability than anything else, though.

<comment><USER5> Erlang does, sure. You can find libraries to make erlang nodes in most languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Er, that should be "How to design a popular systems programming language." Since web stuff isn't dependent on a platform the language of choice can be very fluid. Remember when nearly all webapps were written in Perl?

</comment><comment><USER13>
        - Nobody has figured out how to make cross-language
          interoperability work well.
        - The network effects from language adoption are immense.

False. Depends on the context. Does REST "work well?" Does the ability of JRuby apps to call Java libraries "work well?" The answers are too context- dependent.

The 2nd is spot-on!</comment>


Overflows in SafeInt - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/593 <comment><USER2> Regehr's current project is, essentially, fuzzing C compilers. His blog is very much worth following, if only to disabuse yourself of the notion that GCC is infallible. (Not that the others are better, mind.)

<comment><AUTHOR> And that the C language spec is either broken or to unspecific.

<comment><USER3> Like any other spec. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the SafeInt authors (Microsoft Corporation) can't avoid integer overflow bugs, then _who_ can?

btw, the SafeInt3.hpp header file is almost 7000 LOC (including comments)!

</comment><comment><USER3> Some background on integer overflows:

<http://www.fefe.de/intof.html></comment>


GitHub CLI allows you to close, reopen, and add metadata to issues and PR - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/changelog/2020-05-11-github-cli-allows-you-to-close-reopen-and-add-metadata-to-issues-and-pull-requests/ <comment><USER2> Hah, I just learned GitHub is using my Go package to access the GitHub GraphQL API v4 in this CLI. That's neat.

[1] [https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/ad3a5903b2d327c1da8959708ef9...](https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/ad3a5903b2d327c1da8959708ef9b65b290da87e/go.mod#L20)

<comment><USER3> Nice! I'm not sure exactly why a rather minor update to the GitHub CLI is near the top of HN, but looking at your project (and then seeing the link to your presentation) made it worthwhile for me.

<comment><USER4> Hah, same exact feels here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So does Magit Forge [1]. I'm sure that the GH CLI is useful, but I sure do love being able to do this stuff without leaving my editor!

[1]: [https://magit.vc/manual/forge/](https://magit.vc/manual/forge/)

</comment><comment><USER6> What happened to ``hub``?

Found the answer: [https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/ad3a5903b2d327c1da8959708ef9...](https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/ad3a5903b2d327c1da8959708ef9b65b290da87e/docs/gh- vs-hub.md)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm particularly interested in what "metadata" is in this instance? Is it arbitrary?</comment>


3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500 - <AUTHOR> http://additivepartdesign.com/3d/printers/2016/06/01/3d-printer-comparison.html <comment><USER3> I enjoyed this article, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. This quote, _" With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part."_ really summed it up. It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive machine." and that is great. What is missing is it is _every friggin ' part_. Seriously, all of the $2,000 printers have quirks that hit based on part geometry, especially in ABS. Part too long? need to add hold down tabs to prevent warping. Too many overhangs? extra supports. Too long a tool travel? Up the hotend temperature so that the extruded material doesn't cool down to much.

You can make great parts but every machine is different, and every part you make has a slightly different requirements. "Real" manufacturing tools are all about the repeatability and setup. Pretty much any machining center can take a gcode file, look at it, and adjust itself to make the best possible rendition, or warn you if it can't do so and meet its advertised tolerances. A hobby machine you print it, you tweak the parameters, you print it again, maybe you tweak the gcode a bit, and finally you print a really nice part.

What gets you repeatability? measuring. There are so many things that you can measure and hobby machines don't. Who puts glass slides (accurate to a tenth of a micron) providing position feedback on the x, y, and z stages on a hobby machine? Nobody, the slides and readers cost $1K just by themselves. There has been some motion toward monitoring the feed of the filament to give a "stripped filament" warning, but who measures the actual flow? the temperature of the melt chamber and feed path?

I really enjoy my 3D printer, I'm printing out a damper for a meat smoker as I write this, its going to be glorious, but its also the 3rd time I've printed this particular part to tune it up. We'll see how it works on the smoker.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to the wonderful world of quality control :)

Making _something_ is easy, making something with a high repeat accuracy and very low fail percentage is super hard.

I learned this the hard way myself with an IO expander for the Atari ST that I designed. I needed it to drive the lathe/mill controller, the ST simply had too little IO capacity so with a bunch of decoders and latches I was able to drive a much larger number of motors and relays.

The first one worked like a charm. So did the second and the third. But the fourth, we couldn't get it to work no matter what. Part variability led to some signal arriving _just_ that much earlier causing the latches to remember data that was still stale. The reason was - in retrospect - quite simple, the design had assumed that the input to the latches had long stabilized before the latch pulse was sent. But because on the ST the latch pulse took a different route as well there could occur a tricky situation where the output of the buffer driving the data bus on the far side would still be rising. To make things worse, this would not happen repeatably, only with certain patterns of 1's and 0's. In the end, a single buffer in line with the latch pulse caused enough delay to stabilize the input to the latches and that solved the problem.

(Of course not with _every_ board...).

Anyway, that was electronics, this is mechanics but the same principles apply.

Something funny is happening in youtube land, classical music.

There are a whole pile of 'youtube wonders' that can play an enormous variety of material but that have never in their lives done a live concert. It took a long time before one of those miracle people owed up to the recipe: record hundreds, or even thousands of times. Pick the best.

That's the difference between an actual pianist and youtube miracle workers: a pianist can do what they do repeatably, youtube miracle workers would end up being booed out of actual performances.

Repeat accuracy is _very_ hard, mechanics, electronics, playing the piano, the subject hardly matters.

I've been reading all kinds of books and articles about quality control last year and I believe that in a mature market it is the only absolutely critical element in any production process. If all your competitors are doing good QC and you don't you're dead. Everything else can be fixed but without repeat accuracy you'll be fighting a lost battle.

Another way to look at this is that for real world stuff where there is a whole company dependent on the output of the 3D printer the cheap one is too expensive, and the expensive one probably is cheap.

That's because if you were allowed to make a million parts with each and you could take the best part from each set of parts they'd be very close. The 'best' part of those two might even be from the crappy machine. But if you needed just 50000 parts that would simply work your cheap printer (or even a small army of them) would wear out long before completing the order, and that's what makes them expensive.

<comment><USER5>
      A pianist can do what they do repeatably, youtube miracle
      workers would end up being booed out of actual
      performances.

[http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling- cirque-...](http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-cirque-du- soleil-jason-fagone/)

      Partly this was an illusion created by the combination of affordable
      video equipment and the Internet; young jugglers now kept their
      cameras running all the time, so if they hit a trick one time out of
      100, they could upload the proof and make themselves look like gods,
      even if they'd never be able to execute the trick onstage, like
      Gatto could.

<comment><USER4> Exactly like that.

That's a lovely article by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The Stratasys printed part was printed with ABS material, 100% infill with a standard layer height on normal detail settings. Not having direct access to the machine I was not able to extract any real nitty gritty details on the overall print set up. For the Lulzbot print that I created I used HIPS material with a 0.5mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height, 25% infill, 4 top and bottom solid layers, 45 mm/s print speed with standard acceleration, 240C extrusion temperature, 110C bed temperature, and an extrusion width of 0.6mm."

This is an apple to oranges comparison. I work with a Lulzbot 5, a Lulzbot Mini, a Stratasys dimension elite, and two polyprinters on a daily basis and have been working with 3D printers for over 10 years as part of my job. Why was a material like HIPS ever used for comparison with ABS if both machines can print with ABS? Why was the extrusion width 0.6mm on a 0.5mm nozzle? Why is he comparing a 100% fill print with a 25% fill print? Why didn't he mention that the Lulzbot Taz 5 he was using has a $500 print head upgrade to let it print soluble support material as well? This whole article just reeks of either someone who is either very new and inexperienced to Hobby 3D printers or was intentionally trying to make the TAZ 5 look bad. I have done similar comparison studies myself and have come to drastically different conclusions. We sold the dimension elite a while ago.

<comment><USER7> I had some of the same questions...my suspicion is basically two fold

1) the infill change may have been intended to make the print times comparable (he suggested both were about 18 hrs)

2) He may have been attempting to compare the default (or default-ish) settings of each machine

<comment><USER8> Hi, I wrote this article. To answer your suspicions.

1) Realistically they are within an hour of each other regardless of infill so the total print time was negligible in this experiment. A few changes on both machines could make either or print much faster. 2) Yes, it was my intention to have the same layer heights and overall print settings as close to each other as I could.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the information

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the article: _" One defect I observed on the Lulzbot printed part was the blade portion of the tool had a split in it from not bonding correctly. This was most likely a cause of pushing the 0.5mm nozzle to its limits in terms of layer height but a little glue and some pressure would fix this split no problem."_

Er, that's called a "reject" in manufacturing.

This is the basic problem with low-end filament-type 3D printers - weak layer bonding. You're welding a hot thing to a cold thing, which never works well. And there's considerable thermal expansion, and thus shrinkage, in the material, which produces internal stresses between layers. That's where things crack.

<comment><USER10> "This is the basic problem with low-end filament-type 3D printers - weak layer bonding. You're welding a hot thing to a cold thing, which never works well."

Bonding always works well for me and many others. The author of this story choose to use a material (HIPS) which really should still be considered experimental for most FDM printers. I've personally never had a lot of luck with it and instead choose to use either PLA or ABS with a heated chamber & with those two materials can build very strong parts with no boding problems whatsoever. Here's an example of a violin I've recently printed:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/patcheudor/26263996272/in/date...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/patcheudor/26263996272/in/dateposted- public/)

Note that I've now printed five violins and in the 100's of hours it has taken to do so not had a single failed print even when printing thin (typically .40 mm) shells.

<comment><USER9> Thin is the good case. It's thick parts that have problems. At TechShop, things seem to crack around 2cm-3cm thickness.

<comment><USER10> I routinely do thick 100% fill parts in ABS with no issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an unfair comparison.. Having used a Stratasys Objet of around a similar price point, the amount of detail you can get is incredible -- down to fractions of a millimeter.

Sure, for the prints that were pictured in the comparison, either can do relatively well, but the point of higher end printers is for higher resolution prints, different materials, shapes of the print, etc. To ignore all of those use cases and focus on a generic print that a hobbyist would make, of course a hobbyist printer would suffice!

<comment><USER12> Exactly - this is a pretty simple part, without fine details that would actually test an expensive printer.

Its like comparing how Facebook or Word works on a netbook vs a top-end desktop.

And I'd say furthermore, although not knowing how the part is used - with such flat features and 90-degree corners, probably the best way to make this would be sheet metal, which with a waterjet cutter, press break, and spot welder could be produced in 1/100th the time and cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention at all of the strength/rigidity/hardness of the jigs. The professionally printed one was made from ABS, which is a harder plastic than HIPS. It is also possible that the professional machine bonds the plastic filament to the workpiece better. The best way to test this would be destructively.

Of course, if the jig is just going to be used for a short period of time, structural integrity doesn't matter. And the hobbyist machines are just going to get better as technology improves.

<comment><USER14> Also missing from the discussion are tolerances. If the Stratasys is able to print meeting high significantly higher design tolerances, that alone could justify the price tag. Certainly in other areas of manufacturing, adding zeros to the accuracy/repeatability of a system often adds zeros directly to the price tag.

If you can get a print hot off the printer and immediately say "LGTM" without further ado, that may just mean your application isn't very demanding.

<comment><USER15> Underrated comment here. The same exact part can cost $20 or $2,000 to produce depending on tolerances!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi, I wrote the article. I am really enjoying the comments everyone has contributed. One major detail I left out was the amount of failed parts that came out of the professional machine prior to getting a good one. I was unaware of the reject rate at the time I wrote this. In addition, the production tool ended up having resin added and then sanded to cover up some of the imperfections on the "professional" print.

<comment><USER16> What was the reject rate? Also, some of us have asked some other questions about tolerances and material properties in other comments on here; could you answer them? I'm sorry about the somewhat intemperate comments of some of the other commenters.

<comment><USER8> I can't give you an exact reject rate but it went through at least 3 iterations before being acceptable. As for tolerances and material properties (overall strength of the part) the Stratasys machine is superior in both aspects. As I mentioned in the conclusion of the article, I would like to do more experiments on the parts including dimensional analysis and possibly a tensile or compression test. Having 1 data point (1 tool from each machine) wouldn't be the best results for an accurate comparison but I would still be interested in the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A few years ago in grad school I spent about a month designing a 3D printed case for a Raspberry Pi + Camera [0]. We used a Makergear M2 (a $2000 printer at the time).

The process had some frustrating moments, but overall it was an amazing experience. 3D printers allow for a wonderful iterative design process. Come in in the morning, pull parts off of the printer, measure, test fit, etc. Tweak in CAD, or start working on the next part, and start printing your changes/additions before lunch. By mid afternoon the print is done, and you usually have time to do another round of changes that you can start printing before you leave for the day.

Of course, this is all assuming that your printer is working continuously and that you're ok tossing a lot of filament from those test prints. My experience with the M2 was that typically I could get it dialed in and it would print great for 2-3 weeks before it started misbehaving. Sometimes it was a simple adjustment (re-level the bed, etc.), but most of the time there was no obvious indication of the problem, and I'd spend several frustrating days leveling, calibrating, cleaning, and generally tinkering until it started working consistently once again.

There are also plenty of issues with the print quality and precision, but I've already written more than I intended, so I'll skip them. Needless to say, it was sufficient for our needs. IIRC, our final cost per case was $4 in material (PLA) with a print time of about 6 hours.

It's a fascinating technology, and it's mind blowing how far it's come in the last decade. I'm not sure that the FFF/FDM style printers will ever get to the point where they're ready for use by the general public, but the overall technology is here to stay. I wouldn't be surprised to see 3D printers become as common as microwaves in my lifetime.

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/JkF1WQ4.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/JkF1WQ4.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have never seen a 3D printer, although I have seen a model (of a house plan) made with a 3D printer. You folks who live near civilization and 'make' communities are so lucky! :)

Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine?

I imagine a machine that prints the model slightly oversize, milling and then perhaps finally warming the surface to polish it, all as it goes...

I would love to have access to a hobby 3D printer as I have this idea that won't die about making a cylindrical version of the Enigma [http://wiki.franklinheath.co.uk/index.php/Enigma/Paper_Enigm...](http://wiki.franklinheath.co.uk/index.php/Enigma/Paper_Enigma) with glowire or alternatively tracks for ball bearings, as a cheap present people can buy at, say, Bletchley Park gift shop. Silly thing to get fixated on.

<comment><USER4> > Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine?

No, and there likely never will be. Why would you wait for hours to then _still_ have to mill down your final product when all the advantages of 3D printing are then lost _and_ all the advantages of milling are lost?

The advantages of 3D printing are that as an additive process it will work in many environments where a subtractive process would not, the advantages of milling are that - as a substractive process - it can make a final result that is substantially stronger than most of the things you could do with a 3D printer and that it most likely is much faster.

Re-working or finishing like that is typically reserved for casting and other cheap mass production processes.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking of smooth curves.

Judging from the photos, even the expensive print has a voxelized appearance. I've certainly seen that in the one 3D print I've handled too.

So my idea was to print slightly oversize, then mill and polish for perfect curves.

<comment><USER19> Don't people often just use acetone or another solvent to smooth the surface of chunky prints (outdoors, I hope)? How effective that would be would vary depending on the plastic, but it seems easier than milling (if not especially precise).

<comment><USER4> Sandpaper? File?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If his conclusion were true companies like Shapeways would only use cheap hobby printers. But ofcourse it is not.

Reliability, support, accuracy, all lacking with hobby printers.

<comment><USER21> _If his conclusion were true companies like Shapeways would only use cheap hobby printers. But ofcourse it is not._

It's far from a perfect analogy, but with servers Google demonstrated _really well_ that the cost of high-end 'professional' equipment can be a waste of money where cheap, commodity kit can be used at scale instead. It's not completely unreasonable to think that a farm of cheap 3D printers could be used in place of one high-end model eventually.

<comment><USER22> People are freaking expensive. I think that is something that you miss easily.

200k sounds expensive for a printer, yet that is the cost of 1 guy for three years (assuming western country).

The 200k machine just has to be a small bit better than the 2500 machine for it to pay off so fast it is ridiculous. A commodity approach to printing sounds like it would involve a lot of quality checks and other really pricy manual things that would eat up that 200k in under a year.

If you can remove all human costs, then yes, commodity gear is likely better, because you are paying for gear that knows that humans are expensive, so even small savings in humans translate to a ton of cost, and so the professional gear is priced accordingly.

<comment><USER21> _The 200k machine just has to be a small bit better than the 2500 machine for it to pay off so fast it is ridiculous. A commodity approach to printing sounds like it would involve a lot of quality checks and other really pricy manual things that would eat up that 200k in under a year._

Owning the 200k machine has to be better than owning _80_ of the cheaper machines for it to be better. In a lot of scenarios that will be the case - <USER2> you need the improved resolution, reliability, etc that the 200k machine offers then the cheaper machines just aren't an option. In time though, as the cheaper machines improve, the expensive machine may stop being a better option.

<comment><USER23> "In time though, as the cheaper machines improve, the expensive machine may stop being a better option."

Or in time the expensive machine gets cheaper.

<comment><USER21> That might also happen, but _in general_ cheap things get better faster than expensive things get cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The professional printer printed out almost 4x the amount of material in the same time (100% infill vs 25%). If it had the same settings for hollow infill, it likely would have been much, much faster.

</comment><comment><USER25> What a weird article!

The low-cost part is as good as the high-cost part ... except in all of these ways that it's not, that I will outline here. Oh, and I basically just eyeballed them, instead of measuring them. Oh, when pieces were missing due to failure to print, I just kind of assume that they would have printed okay with some tweaks.

What!? Amusing.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's another interesting comparison: $20,000 vs $600: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotV...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotVs20000UPrintSEPlus.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER16> I read this whole article hoping to find the part where he tests the tensile strength, impact resistance, stiffness, and dimensional accuracy of the two parts. It never came. Except for the part where he had a delamination ("split"), which I guess means zero strength for that part of the part.

I've been fairly disappointed with the strength of Prusa-Mendel-printed parts I've made. Even if you don't have complete delaminations, it's easy to get poor layer adhesion, which makes the parts fall apart under the least strain. You can fight that by turning up the temperature and filament feed rate, at the cost of dimensional accuracy (which you can compensate for in theory but I haven't done so successfully, being just an amateur) but the higher heat also weakens the PLA. Maybe this weakening is hydrolysis due to water absorption in the filament; I don't have a way to measure that, except printing the same thing a second time after dehydrating the filament, which I haven't done.

I was surprised to find that 100% infill is not always the strongest option, even holding part geometry constant. Lower infill settings produce a more compliant part, and it can consequently withstand higher impact energies.

I don't think you should hold part geometry constant when changing machines or especially entire fabrication technologies. You should play to the strengths of the machine you have. I know that's contrary to the outlook of 3D printing, but it's true. Things like topology optimization can easily generate forms that are impossible to injection-mold, relatively easy to FDM, and much stronger. If you have the option of 25% infill, you can probably get a stronger part by deploying the plastic you saved as ribs outside the main body. And so on.

</comment><comment><USER27> It would have been nicer to have seen a comparison using the same material as well as a series of parts designed to test for specific issues in 3D printing.

Add to this printing 100 copies of each part and we might have ended up with a useful set of data points.

</comment><comment><USER28> 3D printing, especially hobbyist machines, is still in its infancy and produces disappointing results. A large flat piece warps. The resolution is coarse. It takes too long to produce even a simple piece. The machine needs constant monitoring. It's at the equivalent of the DOS stage of personal computing.

I wrote code to produce STL files. These files are accepted by hobbyist printers. I sent it to a professional shop, they complained one of my triangles wasn't closed, couldn't fix it or tell me which it was. Wonderful.

<comment><USER29> You probably knew this one, but still: [http://runningahackerspace.tumblr.com/post/113272014704/sure...](http://runningahackerspace.tumblr.com/post/113272014704/sure- we-have-a-3d-printer)

<comment><USER28> That looks so sad :o(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Neat project comparing FDM.

Now, let's be a little more fair and start looking at what production companies will be buying:

[http://www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/3d-printers.html](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/printers/3d-printers.html)

[http://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/production- series](http://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/production-series)

No contest. Having multiple hundreds of thousands of colors, properties (like heat-resistance, flexibility, different opacity), various different materials, automated easily removable supports, decent precision, and serious speed beats the shit out of your desktop model any day of the week. Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER23> The difference between food at a good restaurant and a great restaurant isn't huge.

The price however usually is.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd like to see a similar post ten years from now, see how things have evolved. I didn't realise how precise some of these industrial 3D printers were! This gives me a lot of hope as to what I might have in my house in a decade.

</comment><comment><USER32> What's also important when comparing 3D printers is maintenance cost and effort. For example: The Ultimaker 2 we have in our Hackerspace needs regular replacement (about every 600 printing hours) of the PTFE Coupler (hot end part). Also sometimes you need to perform a cold pull ([https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/19510-how-to-apply- atomic...](https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/19510-how-to-apply-atomic- method)) if the nozzle is clogged.

</comment><comment><USER33> Surely the high gloss finish on the black material is drawing attention to a lot of the flaws as well? I'd really like to see a same colour comparison between the two.

</comment><comment><USER34> I see cheap 3D printers like I saw linux in 1995: not quite the functional equivalent of a $100K SGI workstation, but still a great way to get experience in the area. You just have to understand that much of your time will be spent tuning the printer, and fixing it, and upgrading it. I don't know that the Statasys fails nearly as often as a cheap printer.

</comment><comment><USER35> 3D Printing is really great for industrial designers who want to prototype products. My uncle is an industrial designer and I remember how costly it used to be for him to come up with a simple prototype. Today a $2500 printer can get one pretty far in a few hours, trully revolutionary. It gives a greater margin for experimentation, trial and error.

</comment><comment><USER26> Using different material and different infill is a bit of an unfair comparison. Using 100% infill causes more problems with warping due to shrinkage, thus increasing the difficulty. Using 25% avoids this, but decreases stability a bit.

Regarding the print quality in general, I think an Ultimaker 2+ would give you better results (also at a price of 2500$).

</comment><comment><USER34> Be aware that the high end printers include features that are patented, for example soluble support, heated build chambers, etc, all have IP around them that may prevent companies selling inexpensive printers from including those features directly. This could translate to better results from the high end printers.

</comment><comment><USER36> "The Stratasys machine uses a separate dissolvable support material that can be washed away with a special salt water solution."

This can be achieved with dual extruder models Makerbot 2X or its FlashForge clone, under $2500.

Use HIPS as the support material, print in ABS and dissolve HIPS in d-limonene.

</comment><comment><USER37> 3d printer testers should use a default model with complex geometry which makes comparison much easier. For instance,

[http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1019228](http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1019228)

</comment><comment><USER38> This seems like an interesting hobby. How much time is needed to achieve a reasonably high understanding of this work? Not industrial grade expert, but a knowledgeable layman. And where/how can I educate myself?

<comment><USER39> I'm not even an engineer, and I have made one. But, making a 3D printer by yourself from ground up (or assembling one with the parts bought from china etc.) takes a lot of time. I only paid attention at my spare times, so it took my months. But I must say that, it is a very satisfying hobby. I strongly recommend it :)

But if you want to buy one, you can find very nice 3D printers at $250 - $300 range from aliexpress etc. It may take hours, a day or a week for calibration (depending on your printer model and printed part quality expectations), and you are good to go.

But I must say that, 3D printers need maintenance and that can take your time as well.

If you want to educate yourself, [http://reprap.org/](http://reprap.org/) is the site you would want to visit. Not only for making your own printer, but calibrating and maintaining a bought 3D printer as well...

<comment><USER38> No, I meant using a 3d printer to build cool stuff.

<comment><USER40> As a start you can just go to Thingiverse to search for a model that fills your need and send it to the printer. That would take you all of a couple of minutes. Per try, until it comes out ok.

If you want to try your hand at 3d modelling then you'll probably download Sketchup as a start and noodle around while watching youtube tutorials on the side. In about 8h you'll feel confident enough to actually model something meaningful. After ~40h you'll be able to knock together a model quite proficiently.

After you'll have gotten tired of Skethub producing broken STLs and not allowing you to change your mind after modelling a thing, you'd move on to one of the real CAD software package, like Solidworks or Fusion 360 (which is great for beginners, btw). That rabbithole goes exactly as deep as you've got time for :)

Fiddling with the printing itself will take a bit of setup time before each print and then a lengthy wait (hours to days) to get the result, or see it fail in some new and unfunny way. It's not really all that difficult, to be honest, just takes some time to develop an intuition about what's likely to fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Additive manufacturing is bad from the getgo. Anything with errors, adding upon with errors, is unsuitable for large scale precision manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER42> aren't resin printers increments better than normal 3d printers?

<comment><USER43> Yes, SLA printers like the Form 2 do offer better print resolutions than FDM printers of a similar price.

[http://formlabs.com/products/3d-printers/form-2/](http://formlabs.com/products/3d-printers/form-2/)

The downside is they can't work with as wide a range of materials compared to FDM printers, and the materials they can work with tend to be more expensive.</comment></comment>


Tilt: Visualize your Web page in 3D - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/07/tilt-visualize-your-web-page-in-3d/ <comment><USER2> Significant discussion from three weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2786114></comment>


Why Gorgeous User Interface Design is Important - MyColorscreen Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mycolorscreen.com/post/4576460465/why-gorgeous-user-interface-design-is-important <comment><USER3> Yes of course gorgeous user interface design matters. But pitching two calculators up against each other is missing the point.

Beauty matters when everything else is equal. It's very easy to make something a simple as as calculator look good if you got the chops, because the UI have been solved for you.

But interface design is not just about how it looks. It's about how it works. And I will take something that works over something that looks good any day.

<comment><USER4> To resonate on your comment : when thinking about UI design, I personally never dissociate visual and behavior.

The UI behavior has to comply with the visual metaphor it manipulates. This is quite hard to do properly for people (like me) that does not master one of the discipline : UI behavior is controlled by code, and with a slight lack of care, it slips easily in a spaghetti nightmare if you want something finely tuned, and UI visuals, well, also needs great skills.

A team that manages to set up a cooperation for those two competence will bring you great UIs.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. But there is one area that I wish more developers would explore and that is the ability to code proper transitions. To actually sit down and do some research into motion graphics.

Right now that area is primarily explored by flash developers and there are many really cool geeky things you can do to optimize transitions. If you really wanna shine as a developer with these kind of interfaces, learn how to optimize your transitions.

Why is this important?

Because it's what happens between the clicks that going to create the feel of the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate the term "User Experience". Especially considering that most people think that user experience is about making the crap as shiny as possible.

A good user experience has nothing to do with looks....make the crap fast (especially on mobile) and as easy as possible to use. That's "the secret".

<comment><USER6> Aren't you overcompensating? Looks are quite obviously not everything but are you really suggesting that looks don't matter at all?

(I'm unable to use apps with imperfect looks. An ugly icon is enough. It just drives me crazy. I have to delete them. I'm strange that way and most people are probably not like me but still … I can't really believe that looks don't matter at all.)

Edit to add a little tangent: That's not to say that custom "beautiful" interfaces are always desirable or easy to pull off. If you don't have it in you the end product will be a horrible mess. (Especially for all those poor picky people like me.) Sticking to the stock UI is probably the best idea in the vast majority of cases. Going custom requires serious talent and an unquestioning attention to detail. At least if you want to please me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is entirely lacking analysis and relies purely on subjective assumptions to back up its judgments. A little digging around and pulling out a few "whys" would have been appropriate here. As it is, it might as well be blog-spam.

</comment><comment><USER8> I must be an engineer. I liked the three losers better.

</comment><comment><USER9> At least compare equal products. On the list Awesome Note VS Ultra Notes I, are the only comparable ones (even though iPhone app vs Android App).

"Calcbot VS Calculator", is like comparing HP-48 vs Mac inlcuded Calculator. "Bjango VS Musical Pro", the former is a disk scratching app, while the latter features a metronome and tempo.

Edit: UI and UX reflect the functionality, features, plans, mission, identity (the one people identify and wear shirts about), etc. If the application and its functionality itself is not comparable, why should the UI be?

</comment><comment><USER10> what's wrong with SDK buttons? or how does it matter on a calculator? Google uses "SDK" buttons and everything. Hacker news hardly makes an effort in the UI direction. yet its the best I know. If all things being equal, UI wins? if all things are equal between your product and someone else's then I think you have a serious problem on your hands.

<comment><USER11> You've just given examples where a great UX has made up for any apparent UI- deficiencies. SDK buttons are "good enough," in that they're UI elements that won't negatively impact UX on their own (implementation obviously matters here). "Good enough" is all you need when you have a superior UX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone actually took the Metronome example code from Apple and made it an app? _Really?_

</comment><comment><USER13> Somewhat nitpicky, but I think sometimes UX matters more than UI, and there are elements of both in these examples.

From Wikipedia: User Interface (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface>) \- The aggregate of means by which users interact with the system (e.g., all the means of input and output)

User Experience (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience>) - <USER2> architecture and interaction models that impact a user's perception of a device or system ("all aspects of the user's interaction with the product").

UI is the "how" of creating an interface (implementing shiny controls, that sort of thing) and UX is the "why" (creating a good experience for the user).

What's interesting is that there are many counter-examples... for example Craigslist. Terrible UI/UX, yet it is wildly more popular than it's closest competitors. For a while Plentyoffish was the most popular dating site, same thing there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree! Another example is Reddit and Dig. But I believe the trend will eventually give weight to UI to be as equal importance as UX as web styling technologies evolve (CSS3). I am not saying that UI will overthrown UX, but I think It will goes together.

Thanks for commenting by the way. :)</comment></comment>


Rolling out the Redcarpet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/832-rolling-out-the-redcarpet

<comment><USER2> The author of libupskirt on GitHub's fork (Redcarpet):

 _I'm not sure why they forked libupskirt rather than use a vanilla version, however the fact is that they took it over and heavily pushed it in a direction that is opposite to the very core of its design.

I did and will do my best to get as much as possible from this fork into my repositories, however there a deep philosophical and design differences that unfortunately make their changes quite independent from mine._

He then makes a comment on each change:

[http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/wiki?name=redcarpet-...](http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/wiki?name=redcarpet- reviews)

Interesting read.

<comment><USER3> Very interesting read. We'll be happy to have our changes pulled into libupskirt proper (and vice versa!)

      > He then makes a comment on each change

s/he/she :)

<comment><USER2> Damn, the one time I don't use "he/she" or "they". Thanks.

Sorry to the author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this (mentioned as an afterthought in this blog post) is nice:

 _syntax highlighted code blocks in GitHub Flavored Markdown_

        ``` ruby
        require 'redcarpet'
        markdown = Redcarpet.new("Hello World!")
        puts markdown.to_html
        ```

</comment><comment><USER5> List of languages it supports (found in the Wiki editing screens): <http://pygments.org/docs/lexers/></comment>


Follow-up: Why they use gray code at the pediatrician's office - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/tech/stadiometer.html

<comment><USER2> I still don't get the point of a $250 stadiometer, when you could get a $20 steel ruler and just screw it to the wall. Also, why won't these kids get off my lawn?

<comment><USER3> I agree, he doesn't seem to fully explain this. Why were the "rulers" constantly losing calibration? How does the stadiometer fix this?

The rest of the article I find to make a rather valid point, though. Things are often "SNAFU" for reasons an outsider has no clue about.

This can breed unwarranted arrogance. It can also breed a mess, when an outsider (e.g. consultant, or executive having read the latest "Mind the Gap" opus) starts changing things without understanding what's really going on.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In response to the thread a couple days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580919></comment>


Can Superfunds and the SIV Save Australian Venture Capital? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2015/10/06/can-superfunds-and-the-siv-save-australian-venture-capital/ <comment><USER2> The "superfunds" from the title are the superannuation funds

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia)

"the arrangements people make in Australia to accrue funds to replace their income in retirement. Superannuation in Australia is government-supported and encouraged, and minimum provisions are compulsory for employees."

And SIV is explained in the main article, it's the "Significant Investor Visa":

"Under the SIV scheme, investors who invest a minimum of AU$5 million into Australia, with at least $1 million of it going into an Australian venture capital fund will get permanent residency for themselves and family after four years. This could be a major win for Australian VC's, since the previous SIV scheme brought in a reported AU$4 billion from processing over 800 visas, to mainly Chinese investors."</comment>


Review our product (At the moment supporting Android) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqardius.net

<comment><USER2> I tried creating an account, never got a "your account is created" message on the page or in a email. I also tried logging in using the app but i guess my account isnt set up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, even if it doesn't say so, it is created, just use the login form.</comment></comment>


NunuStudio: a browser-based IDE for 3D and VR applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tentone/nunuStudio <comment><USER2> Don't listen to the HN haters, this is incredible and really exciting! Thanks for contributing such a great project and making it Open Source - that takes a lot of bravery and courage. Keep it up, very impressed!

<comment><USER3> Yea, so I don't know much about web development but I spend quite a lot of time in the Unreal Engine, and to see something like this in a web browser was really impressive!

Although it wasn't immediately obvious as to how to add scripts and create actors etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, Javascript-based VR. That's easily five years away from being a pleasant experience with anything but the most modest of scenes. And by then we'll be using WebAssembly.

It's all well and good, in a sense, so long as your main loop does little more than queue some buffers, shaders and materials before handing over the work to the GPU; but as soon as things become dynamic JS really starts to show its limitations.

To wit, I checked out the cannon.js demos and giggled as their examples screamed along at a sweat-inducing 3 fps, showing little more than a small stack of low-resolution spheres failing to tumble to the ground. The machine I'm using isn't a beast by any stretch of the imagination, but this is ludicrously poor performance even for it.

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't JavaScript, it's singlethreading. If your main loop does little more than queue the drawcalls you're doing it wrong. Web workers work.

And ideally your physics engine doesn't live in the browser context, for the same reason you don't draw geometry on your CPU. It's a specialized computation suited for a specialized environment. It's easy enough to run actual native Bullet Gpu-accelerated _outside_ the browser and bus diffs to your renderer.

90FPS in Javascript-based VR is happening today. I'm doing it.

I'm nonetheless excited for the optimizations we'll make in the next 5 years, though it has less to do with wasm and more to do with cutting out the fat on the path to the GPU, both at the scene graph and webgl layers.

<comment><USER6> A modern GPU has 720 GB/s of memory throughput. To achieve even a fifth of that in the environment typical of an AAA game titles, you need to efficiently invoke the host ogl drawing commands. Nvidia has some discussion of this in their bindless texture white papers. Essentially, the bind/unbind steps in OGL and similar have started to degrade performance.

This is not going to be easy to do in javascript, although VR/4k is not the limiting factor, rather it is the complexity of the scene.

<comment><USER5> Yup, you're totally right.

A lot of it boils down to figuring out how to coalesce and pipeline your rendering (mostly a THREE.js problem) and submit it quickly and efficiently to the GPU (a webgl layer problem).

You'll have to trust me that there are people actively working on these things -- the people providing the VR platforms. But these are things that need work at web infrastructure layer, not something that will be solved by moving away from Javascript, which is not the bottleneck.

And there are actually already workarounds for most of these. We just need to massage the workarounds into default-on features in our browsers and frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "runs direcly on the browser without the need for additional plugins using WebGL and WebVR."

WebGL isn't a plugin, is it!?

<comment><USER8> I believe they meant "runs directly on the browser without the need for additional plugins _by_ using WebGL and WebVR".

<comment><USER9> What are the plugins using WebGL and WebVR? I never heard of such plugins.

<comment><USER10> It means it doesn't need plugins because it's using WebGL and WebVR, which are baked into the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some hints: The Field of View in the demo is bad.(You can query the screen parameters and estimate the viewers distance).

Also your normalmap calculations could be improved.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this would be cool to use for prototyping some ideas in VR.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does it support PBM? Physically Based Materials?

<comment><USER14> Yes because three.js does. (I helped implement that in three.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this differ from the threejs editor?

</comment><comment><USER15> "Nunu" is what - at least in Poland - you say to toddlers when you mean "don't do that".

A very adequate name.</comment>


Someone fix timetracking - <AUTHOR>

My work is on us to log our hours while @ work(moreso then we already do). Most of the developers take time-tracking as a chore and hardly any of us reliably enter hours. The software is horrid and the entire process is ridiculously tedious. Someone has to fix this. <comment><AUTHOR> It should be something passive. Something that tracks your time the whole month/week/day and u just open up a panel and drag your time accordingly (ie, 4 hours using ECLIPSE IDE). Something that just requires the user to categorize or organize his time. Not track/enter it

</comment><comment><USER2> What should it be like?</comment>


This hidden iPhone trick does wonders to speed up your phone - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2016/01/01/iphone-slow-trick-speed-up/ <comment><AUTHOR> I tried it and it actually fixed an update problem I was having with App Store.</comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone share their experience with logo shootout sites like logosauce? - <AUTHOR>

We are looking to create a new logo for our startup and are thinking of crowdsourcing the project out for a small fee ($250-300) to a shootout website like http://www.logosauce.com
1.  Does anyone have experience with these types of sites?
2.  Are there are any other competitive sites that we should be looking at?
I know it's sexy to work with a logo designer, but I think there's probably a good number of them banging away at these websites. <comment><USER2> <http://99designs.com/>

I have seen quite a lot of quality work done on these sites.

<comment><USER3> We used 99designs (formerly SitePoint Contests) for two logos with good results. I wrote an article about the process here:

[http://inthebox.webmin.com/getting-a-great-logo-reducing- the...](http://inthebox.webmin.com/getting-a-great-logo-reducing-the-field)

Though I just noticed all of the images are dead (I guess because of the domain change)...gotta fix that.

I definitely found it a good way to get good work. I've been told by several designers that contests are offensive...but I've found it _really_ hard to hire a designer that I work with regularly, at any price. Designers, I suppose, being creative types, aren't often strong on on-time delivery, responding in a reasonable time to queries and requests, etc. I've never yet found a designer that I could count on, who also does good work, despite many attempts. (And I'm not cheap. When I have run contests, the prizes we offer are always the highest on the site at the time--and I've regularly paid "going rates" for icon work and other bits of design. Nonetheless, keeping a designer focused on our projects has been extremely difficult.)

Anyway, I think design contests provide large corporation style design workflow for small companies. Design firms often work on spec for large companies, at least for the initial pitch. I don't think it's a bad thing to bring that kind of process to small businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spec work is evil: [http://andrewhyde.net/spec-work-is-evil-why-i-hate- crowdspri...](http://andrewhyde.net/spec-work-is-evil-why-i-hate-crowdspring/)

<comment><USER5> The link doesn't really say _why_ spec work is unethical. It seems like they are frustrated because designers can do a bunch of work and then not get paid if they don't win the contest. That doesn't seem unethical, that's just how the system is set up. If it isn't a good deal for you as a designer because you can get better jobs easily, then don't participate in these contests.

Personally (I'm a programmer) I would never do work for someone else with payment contingent on whether they liked it on not. But I don't think it's evil or unethical to do so, it's just not a good deal for me, so I don't do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We used 99designs.com for our logo (www.dojolearning.com) as well as the new logo and product box for www.sitellite.org with great results. Our design was done by a separate designer though (he did 3 different styles that we offer in a handful of colours so customers can choose).

The key was to provide good and prompt feedback, which resulted in improvements to entries. Communicate and be appreciative of their effort and it seems to go a long way (doesn't it always though? :).

We also looked at designs from other contests and sent messages with "hey I like your designs!" to designers who were really good, and that seemed to help get a few top-notch designers onto our contests too.

I've since recommended this approach to several other companies I work with, and they've been very happy with using 99designs as well now.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love it, you get sooooo many choices from uber creative people. Just don't be a cheapass. Better to spend $500 and get hundreds of submissions, instead of spending $100 and getting only 10.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had a great experience with 99designs-- but I have mixed feelings about the subject, since I'm not sure that it is healthy for the design industry....

<comment><USER9> I'm probably biased, because I work for SitePoint (which owns 99designs -- though I have nothing to do with that part of the operation), but have also previously owned a design contest site (GFXcontests.com). I'm not so sure it is bad for the design industry.

Reasons why it's good:

1\. It provides portfolio building opportunities and real-world client experience for new designers

2\. It provides hobbyists a good way to try their hand at professional work

3\. If the contest holder (client) holds up their end of the bargain and provides all entries with quality feedback, it provides useful practice for designers.

4\. I've heard from a large number of designers that participating in design contests led to more visibility for their portfolios and in turn helped them land regular, non-contest employees

5\. I can say with confidence that a number of designers on 99designs at least are earning healthy five-figure incomes from contest work

6\. Many designers are able to sell losing designs as templates (though contest holders should be careful to put in a stipulation that designers should only be allowed to do that once they remove your name/IP from the design)... or they can repurpose the designs for another contest or client

Why it might be bad:

1\. The No-Spec people will say it takes paid opportunities away from designers (I might rebut that it gives more designers the opportunity to compete for work and make a name for themselves -- and that no top tier designer I know is struggling for work)

2\. They'll also say that it is unfair for designers -- who are asked to create work with no guarantee that they'll be paid (the rebuttal here: if you don't want to work that way, don't participate -- and as I said above, losing designers can still often make some money from that effort)

Just my (perhaps biased) two cents.

<comment><USER10> _"... The No-Spec people will say it takes paid opportunities away from designers ..."_

Hey catone, have you added any form of ranking or leader board tied for designers tied to feedback from visitors or clients? One way to counter criticisms would be a ranking or grading system that allows good work to be recognised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used crowdspring for web design and had an amazing experience. They have sections for logo design as well as other design services.</comment>


Alternote: Alternative Evernote Client for Mac Goes Golden Master - <AUTHOR> http://alternoteapp.com

<comment><USER2> I always wished Evernote would store my text as text and Alternote seems to be the first tool that (at least tricks me---in the good sense) that I can use Markdown to enter my notes.

<comment><USER3> Full Markdown support is coming in version 2.0 early Spring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So far it's a much better experience than the Evernote editor. Now if we can only figure out a way to shoehorn in some encryption...

<comment><USER3> Encrypted text support will be added in one of updates after the Mac App Store release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent app. Very clean interface. It's like your default note app, but connected with Evernote

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your compliments!</comment></comment>