Show HN: A free, lightweight static page to get stock quotes using the IEX API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks <comment><USER2> One thing I've taken away from this is vanilla Javascript seems to have come a long way, or I've just never taken the time to fully appreciate all the features

For example I didn't even realise JS supported string interpolation

[https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/blob/master/index.h...](https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/blob/master/index.html#L111)

<comment><USER3> There's some really good examples of this in Wes Bos' (free) javascript30.com course - 30 short videos all using vanilla Javascript and showing some really neat new features.

Another really awesome new feature which I can't remember if it's in that course or not, is fetch - super simple AJAX API using promises. It's also used in this app: [https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/blob/master/index.h...](https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/blob/master/index.html#L151)

<comment><USER4> I didn't know about fetch, that's pretty neat. Unfortunately for me, it isn't supported on IE: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API)

<comment><USER5> Fortunately, there is a very good polyfill[0] for it.

[0]: [https://github.com/github/fetch](https://github.com/github/fetch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat! I used this API to live-code a mini-portfolio-manager SaaS a couple of months ago: [https://anvil.works/blog/live-coding-stock- portfolio](https://anvil.works/blog/live-coding-stock-portfolio)

It let you pick the stocks yourself, and showed you historical graphs too. It was a bit more complex than this, but still only took an hour.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's definitely something I can learn from this. By the way, Robinhood API also gives you quotes for free [https://api.robinhood.com/quotes/?symbols=AMD,TSLA](https://api.robinhood.com/quotes/?symbols=AMD,TSLA)

<comment><USER8> I believe Robinhood doesn't have official API support so use it with caution.

<comment><USER9> According to their site, they'll have an official API in the "near future", and hopefully one that allows trades to be placed. Granted, they've said that for almost two years now. I fully expect to die of old age before it's available.

[https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/210216823-Ro...](https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/210216823-Robinhood-API-Integrations)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes this a "static page"? It's all non-interactive javascript.

<comment><USER11> Static doesn't mean no JavaScript or interaction. In fact many SPAs are just static pages served out of S3 and connecting directly to some API server to fetch data.

A static page means no processing is done on a web server to serve you the rendered content. This saves you time and money, and ensures scalability for any amount of traffic.

<comment><USER12> There are different meanings. Back in the day there was DHTML, where D stands for dynamic. So static page 10 years ago would mean no javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. I love the simple, succinct interface — I wish real financial companies like my trading account and my bank had even half this much sense when it comes to pragmatic design.

A few notes from taking a look at the code:

* I've very much started doing the same thing in my projects of just using modern JavaScript constructs like fetch and arrow functions without a transpiler. IE is never going to support any of them, but I've accepted that. Caniuse.com ranks most of them at 85%+ supported.

* It's neat to see that the IEX API supports batch requests (as opposed to having to pull one stock at a time) in its API which makes it possible to implement the project efficiently and in a way that doesn't have to store state.

* Nice work building it to support large users as well. A lot of installations probably won't have more than 100 stocks, but it'll break up requests into multiple batches of <= 100 if they do.

</comment><comment><USER14> I had not realized Google killed Google Finance until this post -- the search replacement is abysmal.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks good! IEX API also has experimental support for websockets ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not into stocks, but like the way you coded it. We don't see this sort of good examples that combines the old school simplicity and new JS / DOM API features.

</comment><comment><USER17> hmm, while this is cool i am not sure if it is a full-fledged replacement for the Google Finance "portfolios" feature. That lets you add the number of stocks you own for each symbol and shows you an aggregate gain/loss per day, etc. That was the main reason i was using google finance.

I have now transitioned to my own Google Sheet with the "=GOOGLEFINANCE()" function for getting the stock data. Works pretty well.

<comment><USER18> I'm no JS expert by any stretch but it seems pretty simple to add in code for that here. It'd be a chore to hard-code a big portfolio or one that trades frequently, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool!

As everything is done client side how about adding some parsing of the URL #hash/?query to encode data of a portfolio? That way you could have a single statically hosted version serving multiple people. Could even have a portfolio builder page that generates the encoded URL.

<comment><USER20> Here you go! No need to fork :)

[https://samdobson.github.io/stocks/?Banks=GS,MS,JPM&Tech=AAP...](https://samdobson.github.io/stocks/?Banks=GS,MS,JPM&Tech=AAPL,GOOGL,MSFT,AMZN)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, agreed this is a good idea and I added query param support here: [https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/pull/4](https://github.com/toddwschneider/stocks/pull/4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> But if a website uses JavaScript, how can you say it is static? IMHO, static is only Html+css...

<comment><USER22> In this context they mean you won't need anything more than a browser or basic HTTP server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Really cool! I love simple solutions like this.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like it gets an html page from [https://iextrading.com/apps/stocks/#/<stock>](https://iextrading.com/apps/stocks/#/<stock>) then scrapes it. Not really an API. Edit: ok, I'm wrong.

<comment><USER25> It uses the iex api. I have used the api before its really good.

Here is the code author uses to get data:

          const BASE_URL = 'https://api.iextrading.com/1.0/stock/market/batch';

            let url = `${BASE_URL}?types=quote&symbols=${symbols.join(',')}&filter=${filters.join(',')}`;

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would like to find something like this that is usable by Libreoffice Calc.

<comment><USER27> It looks like a simple html table, I think LibreOffice might be able to parse that. Else, it should be relatively trivial to change the output to e.g. csv which can be imported.

As for an alternative, and I don't know the options here, but maybe a plugin could be made that pulls the data into Calc itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The demo site is cool, wonder if IEX will appreciate the thundering herd from HN though?</comment>


Simplifying the Development of Hadoop Applications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.programmableweb.com/2013/09/11/simplifying-the-deployment-of-hadoop-applications/

<comment><USER2> This is a very good article and I think it covers the general problem that most Investors face: they want a Technology to work for them but they only have a general idea of what the Software does.

Delivering a finished product that can actually be used is not something that can be made overnight. And sometimes investors don~t have the patience.

</comment><comment><USER3> great article. finally a developer centric company</comment>


Airbnb admits rogue sales team used Craigslist for stealthy property drive  - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-sales-team-used-craigslist-for-stealthy-property-drive/ <comment><USER2> There is one part of this explanation that seems weird to me.

If you read through [http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a- billion-do...](http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion- dollar-company/) and look at the links delivered, they don't have any sort of affiliate IDs. Which means that Airbnb had no way to tie this traffic to that advertising campaign, and had no tracking.

It is possible that they legitimately were willing to pay a third party contractor something based on all of their traffic, no questions asked (I've seen that kind of deal with SEO companies before), but it seems odd.

<comment><USER3> more & more, i get the sense that a great % of the b2c startups that achieve critical mass do something 'sneaky' along the way to get over that initial hump.

in facebook's case, the untold story is they basically blasted the university email databases -- how else could you scale a social network when everyone's attention was already so diverted? (i'll give them credit though because plenty of companies have prob tried similar tactics (e.g. uloop comes to mind), but haven't turned it into much)

another semi-related one that stands out is how i've heard the reddit founders originated the conversation from a number of fictitious accounts and once the conversation picked up around them, they just let it take off on a life of it's own.

<comment><USER4> Reddit's way of solving the chicken-n-egg problem looks relatively much OK to me. It's tolerable even if it's deceiving. It's an acceptable way of kickstarting a community, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way the link between companies and spammers usually works is that the spammer is contracted at arms length as an 'affiliate' and is paid per lead. The company will try to be willfully ignorant of the tactics being used so they can claim that they just have an affiliate program and they don't know how the traffic is generated.

Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that this is what Airbnb did. In fact the original post said the emails had clean urls without referral IDs. To me that suggests a sloppy internal campaign with no metrics.

<comment><USER6> yeah, any company caught doing something like this would likely respond pretty much just like this, intentional or not.

rogue contractors or unauthorized employees, they were acting without the knowledge/consent of higher ups, they've since been fired or contracts terminated, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is from 9 months ago

"OK, I've finally had it with this company. I post some properties on craigslist from time to time, and I get tons of spam and scammers, but one that really sticks in my craw is airbnb.com

I have emailed them more than a few times asking them to cut it out, and that soliciting clients who post properties on craigslist is not the best way to do things.

Yet, here we go with the latest round of email solicitations from airbnb.com. I really hope someone from the company reads this. I know they are well funded by Y-combinator venture capital, so why outsource this type of work and spam?" <http://www.vacationrentalscommunity.com/forums/t/2767.aspx>

Interesting. Anybody know when this spamming actually stopped?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there an official response yet from PG regarding contracted use of Black Hat tactics as a starting YC company? I understand breaking the rules but black hat?

It seems like I could contract a spammer and discontinue the contractor services when getting a HN frontpage. The contractor would get a sizable exit sum. All because AirBnB is allowed to 'get away with it' after at least a year of doing it [0].

[0] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/airbnb-brian-chesky/>

<comment><USER9> It would be my opinion that PG probably doesn't care.

 _If this wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who like to beat the system._

<http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html>

<comment><USER8> I understand that, going against unjust rules, regulations and industry monopolies because otherwise economically; people pay more (taxi monopoly) or inconvenienced (no driverless cars allowed).

But these black hat email marketing tactics are akin to harassing people automatically without discrimination. Posted two properties? At least two emails from two 'women' advertising AirBnB. It's effectively destroying Craigslist if every company including my potential own escape backlash for spamming users.

Some people like me look to PG as a chaotic good role model for entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER4> I think most people are looking for PG's general opinion over the issue. He has had written about certain "naughtiness" in his essay(s?). To what extent does he think it's _OKAY_?

<comment><USER10> We shouldn't be looking up to PG as some sort of moral authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand the excuse-making ... if it is OK for 1 company to spam you, then surely it is OK for 1000 companies to spam you... Craigslist should be considering legal action at this point.

</comment><comment><USER4> They can't blame a sales team for this. It was their own responsibility to monitor sales team's activity.

<comment><USER12> Especially love how it is a contracted sales team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It depressed me when I hear about this kind of story, because it makes me realise tech and startups often aren't focused on creating a positive brave new world of possibility. Instead, it seems a lot of companies are simply emulating the arrogant stance of 80s big business.

</comment><comment><USER14> Better off saying nothing that trying to pretend that some rogue salespeople wanted to make money so badly that they spammed CL.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know why so many of you are looking for an official response from pg. Just because he invested in the company doesn't mean he can or will make statements on their behalf.

Honestly pg just probably invested, said good luck, and just went his own way checking up occasionally to chat. The guy has like 500 other things on his plate why would he micromanage airbnb?

It's their business, not pg's, so let them run it how they want to.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure pg will comment here, but it's not like this is insignificant - AirBnB is over 20% of YC's portfolio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the risk of revealing some intrinsic immorality or something, I don't really see what's wrong with this. It would be wrong of the sales team to claim to have used Airbnb for stays that never happened, or to invent false testimonials, but that's not the charge.

The allegation is that they emailed property owners and said, effectively, "Airbnb is great, you should use it" without saying how or why they came to hold that opinion. It's untruthful in the sense of not including the whole truth, but I'd put it decisively under naughty, not blackhat.

<comment><USER8> They 'illegally' spammed users for at least a year.

> It never fails that I get at least 20 marketing emails a day from airbnb > when I post a property on craigslist. I hope they do more of these PR stunts > than filling up my inbox with unsolicited messages. [0]

"I'm not a lawyer but I am an anti-spam expert.

They most certainly are illegal. They are unsolicited advertising (which is fine under CAN-SPAM, sadly), and contain none of the requirements of CAN-SPAM - a legitimate business address, and a clear unsubscribe link.

Just because they come from gmail accounts does not exempt AirBnB from the law." [1]

[0] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/airbnb-brian-chesky/>

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2605565>

<comment><USER17> I don't know enough to have an opinion about whether it's illegal, but even assuming it is, that doesn't mean it's immoral.

<comment><AUTHOR> Immoral: not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.

Typically, what is ethical is respecting the user wishes. If I say, "Don't contact me for commercial interest" (the checkbox when you post something on Craigslist) and you do so, I would say that doesn't conform to business ethics.

<comment><USER18> I'm not saying this was a good thing for AirBNB to do, but is violating the sanctity of the craigslist commercial checkbox the worst AirBNB has done? Sure, that's not a respectable way to do business, but we're not exactly talking about Enron or Bernie Madoff here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain the 'on' in this statement?

>> Airbnb does not publish the number of properties featured on the service but has confirmed today that it currently has around 110,000 listed -- around half of those __on __rival rental service HomeAway. >>

Does that mean that half their rentals are not exclusive, and are listed on both,

or

Does that mean that they list half of their on HomeAway?

<comment><USER4> Number of listings on AirBnb == (1/2)*Number of listing on HomeAway

<comment><USER19> Thanks, that makes the current 1B valuation proposition even more unsettling. Does this suggest that HomeAway has a 2 B dollar valuation?

<comment><USER20> Apparently, yes:

"HomeAway Prices IPO Between $24 And $27 Per Share, Now Valued At $2 Billion" [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/16/homeaway-prices-ipo- between...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/16/homeaway-prices-ipo- between-24-and-27-per-share-now-valued-at-2-billion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure everyday rental companies (with real agents) in the Boston Area post fake apt listings on Craigslist to attract customers. Also I know for a fact that they harvest listings from Craigslist and rental sections of newspapers to call and email owners hounding them to list and show their apts. Whats the difference?

<comment><USER4> Not sure about difference, they do have a similarity though - both are illegal & unethical.

<comment><USER21> It sounds like if the industry isn't enforcing itself and operating out in the open, no one really cares. Also once these companies get their hands on you they make you sign contracts so that you can only exclusively list through them. Its a screwed up industry full of commission based workers.

<comment><USER22> >It sounds like if the industry isn't enforcing itself and operating out in the open, no one really cares.

Thats some very strange reasoning you're operating on there. The fact the industry isn't enforcing itself only suggests that people don't care enough about this to reach the tipping point at which the upset people involved start to negatively affect the business of the perpetrators to the extent that not engaging in the undesirable tactics would no longer be profitable. Most people do care, and do hate it, but renters have to deal with that world for very short and limited periods of time over the course of a year and can't afford to invest the kind of effort needed to affect change in an industry completely unrelated to them.

Its like you're saying no one cares about all the generic spam they get just because the 0.001% conversion rate spammers have make it a sustainable business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> By the amount of emails sent and the similarity of emails, one could guess that they were indeed automated.

Honestly I don't really have a big problem with the tactic as both parties were winning, but I am not buying the 'rogue' sales team explanation.

Great product and business anyway.

<comment><USER24> Similarity and number are both explained by copy-pasting a pre-written message, which is not considered automation.

<comment><USER22> Just like my direct mail campaign is not automated because when the letters come out of the printer/stuffer machine I still have to lick the envelopes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Headlines that quote false statement should use quotation marks for clarity.

It is impossible to "admit" something that in one's self interest and is not a proven fact. A defendant in court can _admit_ guilt, but can only _claim_ innocence.

</comment><comment><USER26> If this goes mainstream, I can imagine the hotel lobby trying to beat AirBnB over the head with this issue. Perhaps even doing their best to instigate legal action by the government for potential violations of the CAN-SPAM Act.

</comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't "black hat" usually imply some kind of hackery or gaming of a system?

Assuming it was people sending the emails and not automated, I would probably classify this as deceptive cold calling. It's not something you'd want your own people doing, but you might just look the other way if some PR company is doing it on your behalf.

Morally, it's probably the equivalent of making a fake viral video.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's my advice. --

Never have sales people at an arms length. Instead keep them close, carefully monitor their work and fire the rogue ones.

</comment><comment><USER28> Would it different if this were HN instead of CL?

</comment><comment><USER29> 'Rogue' sales team or not, it looks like they could be facing some hefty fines under the CAN-SPAM Act: " _Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $16,000 ... both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that originated the message may be legally responsible._ "

[http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act- complia...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance- guide-business)

Sites like Craigslist would probably be unusable if everyone spammed users the way Airbnb did, so maybe the penalties are warranted.

</comment><comment><USER30> I applaud PG for showing incredible constraint on this issue, on this board. It's like a father standing firm alongside his guilty son, while tomatoes are being thrown on them, while the cowardly son keeps mumbling lies 'It wasn't me, my friends did it. I just watched', while the father just stands there and takes it.

<comment><USER31> Hey, I'd be fine too if someone was badmouthing my company which just took $100 million in investment :-)

Comes with the territory, I assume.

<comment><USER30> Well, these threads could've suffered mysterious deaths by now, but instead the other one has like 580 points :)

<comment><USER32> False premise. It's not as if by killing the thread the issue would have been capped altogether, no, it would have instead exploded and done exponentially more damage with accusations of censorship mixed in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A jQuery inline form validation, because validation is a mess - <AUTHOR> http://www.position-relative.net/creation/formValidator/

<comment><USER2> Cool idea, but there's no validation if JavaScript is disabled!

Shouldn't a complete solution automatically fall back to server-side validation?

<comment><USER3> You can't trust anything that is done on the user's end regardless of what they have enabled. Something like this is just a bonus from a usability prospective because the user won't have to wait until they hit submit to find out they made a mistake.

<comment><USER2> 100% right, and what I'm curious about how the validation requirements are specified. Surely you wouldn't want to do it twice, once for the server and again for the client.

Has anyone looked into this?

<comment><USER4> A lot of people have "looked into this" (Jakob Nielsen among them), and the only reasonable conclusion is that yes, you want to do it twice.

What happens in the browser cannot be called "real" validation, but if a user has to wait thirty seconds to be told that they've forgotten a field or entered invalid data, you can usually count on one fewer user. In the wild, that can mean a lost customer; in captivity, it means that user communities will skirt the corporate tools in favour of tools tha work for them.

On the other hand, there are ways around in-browser validation, some innocent (such as having JS disabled, which also implies that a jQuery-based app probably wouldn't work well at all), and some a little more sinister and deliberate, so omitting server-side, "true" validation is not an option.

<comment><USER2> I should have been more clear, sorry.

Yes, validation always needs to be done on the server side. What I'm wondering is if tools exist for automatically generating the client-side validation from the same rules that have been specified on the server side. If one were to use the JQuery-based tool that the article submitter created, you'd have double the work, and making changes would risk introducing inconsistancies.

<comment><USER5> Yes, there is at least one tool that does this. There is a Ruby on Rails plugin called Client-Side Validation. It generates client-side Javascript validation based on the existing validation in the model, which the server already checks against. You can find it here: [http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/client_side_validatio...](http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/client_side_validation). I haven't tried it myself, so I can't vouch for how well it works. There also may be other, newer libraries for doing this out there.

I certainly agree that elimination of this repetition would be very helpful when developing websites. If the code can be generated automatically for you, there are very few situations where you wouldn't want client-side as well as server-side validation. (Some of those few situations might include expecting the user to have a computer too slow for Javascript or being unable to expose the validation method to the user for security reasons.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing me to this plugin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the submitted link is a great example of what you've made, a little context never hurts.

Seeing as you've already written a write up on your blog, why not point to that instead?.

[http://www.position-absolute.com/articles/jquery-form- valida...](http://www.position-absolute.com/articles/jquery-form-validator- because-form-validation-is-a-mess/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, my bad wrong URL. Can't edit the link now.

Also, this isn't mine at all. Just found it on Reddit's web_design and thought somebody here would find it interesting. I was just rewriting a web form where I did my own inline validation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The email address validation is overly restrictive. Valid email addresses can contain + and other characters. So if I wanna use an email adress like email@example.com it gets flagged as invalid by the script. (I use it to do filtering based on the +keyword in gmail)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is an example. You can edit the regular expressions.</comment></comment>


Where do ghosts come from?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.200-where-do-ghosts-come-from.html

<comment><USER2> Too bad all of the "studies" they discussed were clouded by suggestive comments made to the participants for "ethical reasons." Those darned ethics always get in the way of science and business (well, only sometimes with business).

</comment><comment><USER3> There's not really much substance to this article. It would be interesting if the somewhat recent threads regarding nocebo/placebo responses were extended to ghosts.

<comment><USER4> There's substance, they just ended up _disproving_ what they intended to prove I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pareidolia.</comment>


Ask HN: Questions regarding choosing an Open Source License. - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, how are you? I've been browsing the site for some time but have just registered today. I'm a developer that's been working on a project on a technology that's fairly new but I believe has lot's of potential. I have the intension of doing an open source release and I need to choose a license.
Now, I'm going to release this as open source regardless, because I do believe the technology has a lot of potential and I want this technology to be adopted. But I want to do it in such a way that does not impede the possibility of me building a business around it in the future. So far, I favor the Apache License 2, I have gone through the full text but I don't know how it compares completely with other FOSS Licenses . So I'm looking for some advice.
There is the question of what do I mean by starting a business around it. Just being able to build services or products that use the library.
Questions I have:
. If a (future, hypothetical) client requires that I build a derivative product that is closed source. Can I (as the copyright owner) still use the library?
. Can a (future, hypothetical) competitor, sell derivative works based on the library (that might be open sourced to their clients) and not make them publicly available?
. What other license should I be looking at?
If it might sound like I'm thinking about restricting usage, it's not my intention. But, in an hypothetical future scenario where a business ecosystem develops around this technology I would be starting with a huge disadvantage (I'm geographically isolated, I would have very limited options regarding financing or choice of technical partners) and I want to understand the full implications of choosing whatever license I choose. <comment><USER2> Apache License 2 is among the most 'liberal' in allowing reuse, inside other open source or proprietary products.

As long as you're the copyright holder, you can always relicense the work however you'd like, and in multiple ways simultaneously. Practically, you can't revoke a previously-offered license for a prior version – people who retain and distribute that version under the previous license can continue to do so. But you can offer your own proprietary products based on your same codebase, or let others do so with your permission.

If you start accepting outside contributions – which is usually something you want to do, and a sign of a healthy project – your ability to relicense could become more complicated, because then you're mixing others' copyrighted work in, and they were probably assuming it'd stay under the license in effect when they contributed. (If the governing license is Apache2, then they were already giving very broad permission to reuse in other works, so even if you can't 'relicense' it should be OK to keep integrating their Apache-licensed contributions into all sorts of other things.)

A competitor could also use your Apache2-licensed code in their own proprietary offerings. Their extensions/improvements would be under whatever license they prefer.

If that's a major fear, you want to look into 'Copyleft' licenses, of which the GPL is the major example. They make use conditional on derivatives staying free-licensed. That reassures some contributors, but can also prevent some adoption you'd like to see.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply, it has cleared a lot of doubts.

I was really concerned about being able to reuse the code in a proprietary release, since my possible clients are limited and you sometimes you have to accept their conditions.

I will look at the GPL right now. The question I still have is whether a possible competitor might (even under the GPL) do a release, open source it to their clients but not make it publicly accessible, meaning I wouldn't have access to their changes. If that is still possible, then I would stick to Apache 2, cause I want the technology to be used.

Again thank you for your reply.

<comment><USER2> The GPL's terms do not allow someone to make a derivative and then 'distribute' it to some (such as paying clients), unless they also make the source available to others under the GPL.

But, if an unethical or confused competitor did convert your GPL'd code into a proprietary release, you'd still need to find out, raise a public objection, and possibly threaten/file a lawsuit to truly 'enforce' the terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand but "make the source available to others under the GPL" may mean give their clients source code under the GPL, not necessarily publishing said source code on the internet. (Though of course, the client may publish it on their own). Or I'm missing something and they do have an obligation to make it accessible? Anyhow I have chosen the Apache License. Thank you for clearing my doubts and for your reply.

<comment><USER2> You should ask the FSF (the foundation around the GPL) for the finer details of their preferred interpretation.

By my reading, essentially, anyone who gets a copy of the modified work must also be given the right to give it to others, and to get the source code.

I suppose your competitor could try to conspire with some small, cohesive group of customers to hide from you any evidence/copies of their derivative product. But, the competitor can't make this secrecy a license condition of using what they built from your code, without also violating the GPL's terms. So you could then go after them for violating your copyright, if you know they've added license terms.

(If they have violated your copyright/license, the remedy isn't automatically that you or anyone else gets their source code under the GPL; it could be some other correction/settlement/damages.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have contacted the FSF on one occasion ( regarding a patent problem ) and they weren't very responsive.

I have already decided on the Apache license 2 for this version of the project. But it's just a quick and dirty release that is intended to showcase the technology. I might in the future have to port it to a another language ( the project is too dependent on a library that's not actively being maintained and I might have to write my own version ). If I do this I will definitely look at the GPL license.

Again, Thank you for the reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New virus created that can completely wreck Apple computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.rt.com/usa/311597-new-virus-wreck-apple-computers/ <comment><USER2> I've seen an article from blackhat[0] talking about how someone attack the firmware of the battery, bit not the eathernet controller.

[0]-[https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- usa-09/CHEN/BHUSA0...](https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh- usa-09/CHEN/BHUSA09-Chen-RevAppleFirm-SLIDES.pdf)</comment>


Upterm – A terminal emulator and interactive shell based on Electron - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/railsware/upterm <comment><USER5> Hacker News macro:

Author: I wrote something for people who care more about features than performance.

People who care more about performance than features: I am personally offended that you created this.

<comment><USER6> typing latency (evident in all electron programs) is a deal breaker tbh - <USER2> becomes especially true for something like a term emulator

<comment><USER7> I don't notice any typing latency on Slack and I'm usually pretty sensitive to it. That said, Atom with a bunch of plugins can chug a little.

<comment><USER8> I don't notice any notable latency in discord, vscode, etc

But I do notice latency in hyper.js, and it just makes it feel very "dull", and that's what I think a lot of people know of electron terminals

plus the competition from native apps is a bit absurd in terms of performance, with most of the serious ones either rendering asap or on the next frame (when vsync'd)

<comment><USER9> and why would your experience of one terminal app based on Electron apply to all other terminal apps based on Electron? You even say that you don't notice latency in VSCode. A text editor and a terminal have similar problems to solve.

<comment><USER8> Never said it applied to all electron terminals

I would of tested this one, but no windows build, and I'm not using a linux install atm

editors don't roundtrip to a separate application through multiple buffers (bash, zsh, fish, or whatever) to decide if they need to show a color or letter or nothing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Like pretty much everybody, I can't stand electron. But there's an interesting angle here, which is integrating the thing running in the terminal emulator (the shell) with the terminal itself. What I'd be most interested to see though would be a terminal pushing curses support forward, since I use a lot of curses-based applications.

<comment><USER11> "Like pretty much everybody, I can't stand electron."

Except, you know, all of the folks that say that they like Atom or Visual Studio Code: [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology- mo...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-most-popular- developer-environments-by-occupation)

(Atom and VS Code were specified by 20% of voters in each category).

<comment><USER10> Well, naturally I'm discounting the opinions of people who disagree with me :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How's the performance? GNU yes can produce output at more than 10GB/s. Does it cope well with that? How about lots of output that contains lots of escape sequences?

<comment><USER13> Performance is definitely worse than in iTerm or gnome-terminal, but it's improved a lot in recent Upterm versions, and we plan to improve it further. I'd say it's good enough, but you can try yourself.

Recently there was this terminal performance test [https://danluu.com/term- latency/](https://danluu.com/term-latency/)

The author says that the most important things are typing delay and how quickly you can Ctrl+C a command, not how much text it prints per second. Upterm is good at both.

<comment><USER14> > Performance is definitely worse than in iTerm or gnome-terminal

I dropped those because they're _magnitudes_ slower than urxvt. You managed to make a terminal emulator that's _even worse_?

<comment><USER15> I don't mean to spark a controversy, but that's what happens when you use Electron.

<comment><USER16> LOL. I dropped Atom back to Vim the same reason.. electron apps are just too slow and memory-hogging compared to native apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Outside of VSCode, usually when I see an Electron based app it's an extreme turn off.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yay another mediocre electron app to waste computer resources on a trivial computing task!

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks really cool!

The only caveat is that I'm not sure I want to have another electron app chewing through 15% of my CPU...

<comment><USER13> Surprisingly it has pretty moderate resource usage. I have both iTerm and Upterm running on my laptop, here are the stats. Of course, your mileage may vary.

[https://imgur.com/a/bwD06](https://imgur.com/a/bwD06)

<comment><USER20> Running as in just having the app open and idling? Or is this comparing energy efficiency while actually using both apps?

<comment><USER13> Actually using both apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi, author of Upterm here. Ask me anything.

<comment><USER21> Windows version soon? :)

<comment><USER22> One that easily uses Bash on Ubuntu on Windows??

<comment><USER15> The actual term is _Windows Subsystem for Linux_ (WSL).

<comment><USER22> I'm hearing many terms for it ([https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&cli...](https://www.google.nl/search?q=bash+on+ubuntu+on+windows&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI0LyasrbWAhWFaVAKHURrD7wQ_AUICygC&biw=1680&bih=980#imgrc=iMINvYbTR09F4M:))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Tried it several months and left unimpressed. While by what the product aspires to be, it could be the IDE for command line, it's far from that. The only difference is essentially autocomplete, which is not intelligent (and probably can't be, nothing along the lines of parsing --help or man pages) and felt clunky when trying to edit part of a command and then try to get another "suggestion".

With zsh's built-in Ctrl+R it's at least possible to reduce list of suggestion and then travel up the history in those suggestions. While the more powerful fzf will give you the list of commands you've run in a selectable dropdown.

Upterm I think could be eliminating entire classes of tools which sometimes are unnecesary complex. Server automation could be part of pre-saved playbooks which are saved to your terminal history and can be easily brought up and run according to rules. Curl arguments could be arranged in a way where they are actually managable. Parsing --help and man pages (which is possible, there is a workable implementation in fish AFAIK). Upterm is in position to take on that functionality, but right now it's not much more than already mentioned hyper, but with custom handled prompt line.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the feedback! It's true that we're far from where we want to be, but we're steadily - event if slowly - moving into that direction.

Also, we recently integrated monaco-editor by Microsoft, so editing is much less clunky than it was before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While I'm a sucker for beautiful terminal emulators, functionally, I can't use it yet. Vim with scrolling using the fn keys doesn't work, seems to get frozen. Tmux doesn't work on it either. In theory, I'd be a user in the future if I can customize it to my liking the way I can with iTerm2, but for now, I won't be adopting it. Starred the repo, so I'll be on the lookout for future updates :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's strange. Vim and tmux work fine for me on MacOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fish seems to work wonders for me. I've been using it for more than a year and it works well. I welcome new developments for sure.

Autocomplete that was a little bit laggy on zsh simple works super fast on fish. Other features are also very nice. I think people who might be interested in this, might find fish interesting.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't get the hate for things built on electron. The technology is awesome.

Have some patience. It will eventually improve to the point where it is very low overhead and provides much richer experiences than we have in the terminal today.

Nobody is forcing you to use it today. Just be supportive because we want it's future.

<comment><USER27> > Have some patience. It will eventually improve to the point where it is very > low overhead and provides much richer experiences than we have in the > terminal today.

This is a very optimistic of framework/technology performance.

> Nobody is forcing you to use it today. Just be supportive because we want > it's future.

Using web stack for desktop application wasn't a technological choice. It's a much more a reflection of the inability of our industry to cohesively innovate

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think I'm ready to use a terminal written in Javascript. I don't have enough ram in my computer for that.

</comment><comment><USER29> that autocompletion is great!

it would be awesome if you had some way to support more commands - <USER3> if done in a more automatized way.. parsing the manuals (?)

<comment><USER30> I do man parsing for one of my projects and it is as painful as HTML parsing. OK the syntax is less complex but you still end up with the problem that the body of text is designed for human consumption so the formatting doesn't always follow the same rules from one man page to the next (tokens aside).

This means that while it is easy enough to pull flags from the man pages, offering usage suggestions is something too tricky to handle in an automated on-demand fashion.

I did toy with the idea of starting a new project porting man pages to a new document format designed specifically for utilities parsing (eg a JSON format with standardised fields). However even that would be a massive job to maintain without the support from other developers upstream.

But I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> what is the benefits over hyper [https://github.com/zeit/hyper](https://github.com/zeit/hyper)?

<comment><USER29> does hyper have autocompletion ?

<comment><USER32> Hyper + fish does.

Hyper + zsh can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great job!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems "for the 21st century" has become buzzwords for "running on Electron".

</comment><comment><USER35> I've not been able to find an adequate terminal emulator for Windows.

I found Conemu clunky (maybe I needed to spend more time configuring it, but out of the box it was fairly ugly, and borked out under some curses applications and when using tmux), PuTTY/KiTTY to be lacking some important features (like tabs) -- ditto cmd.exe.

IMO there's a real gap in the Windows market, be that a new terminal emulator entirely, or improvements to Conemu making it more intuitive and user friendly.

<comment><USER36> I use mintty with Cygwin. If you want tabs maybe you can try the fork called fatty.

<comment><USER9> If you are looking for a terminal to use with cygwin then you should check out [http://extraterm.org](http://extraterm.org) . It is in development but is stable enough for me to use full time on Linux and cygwin. Plus it has a bunch of other useful features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm not going to spend hundreds of megabytes to display text on the screen. Not to mention the input latency this will have between keystrokes. The style of autocompletion shown can already be achieved with zsh - <USER4> should not be a function of your terminal emulator, but rather your shell.

However, this is all just my opinion and maybe there will be a load of users, me and people who share my opinions will slowly descend into obsolescence.

<comment><USER13> I wish the same autocompletion could be achieved in ZSH. Then I wouldn't start this project at all. The problem with ZSH is that you have to

* Make a decision you want completion.

* Press tab for it to appear.

* Guess when your token is precise enough to be unambiguous or else cycle through results.

Not to mention fuzzy search.

It may sound as not that much of an overhead, but it's so much slower than what I have in, say, Intellij IDEA.

<comment><USER38> [https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions](https://github.com/zsh- users/zsh-autosuggestions)

Shouldn't be too hard to modify it to display completion data instead of entries from your history.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I'll take a look at it. Although, it seems to only show a single best match, unlike IntelliSense.

<comment><USER38> If you want to show all possible completions that's even easier: [https://github.com/hchbaw/auto-fu.zsh](https://github.com/hchbaw/auto-fu.zsh)

I prefer the other plugin though because it's less obtrusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Electron... no thanks! I will wait for Alacritty, in the meantime iTerm2 and Terminal.app are there...

<comment><USER29> I really think the auto completion benefits can easily outweigh the performance penalty of running a term on top of Chromium

<comment><USER40> You can have similar completion using zsh-autosuggestions, it is easy to configure. However, improving performance is difficult.

<comment><USER29> Clearly I ought to dig into the zsh world

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Tried to start it; blank page and no response...

as said terminal emulator should do one thing lightly. Tough the nice interface still made me download it.

Try building the same stuff with smtg else than electron ?

</comment><comment><USER42> i think we need to care about shit eating battery as much as we do care about ads eating bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER43> > based on Electron.

No thanks

<comment><USER13> It's your choice, of course, but in my opinion Electron is the only decent cross-platform UI framework. Without Electron there would be no Linux version.

<comment><USER44>
        [...] Electron is the only decent cross-platform UI framework

That's just not true.

What about Qt, wxWidgets, Tcl/Tk, or even Kivy?

<comment><USER13> In my opinion, Qt and wxWidgets apps look ugly. At least I never saw one that looks beautiful.

<comment><USER45> Telegram ? [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/d...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/dev/docs/assets/preview.png)

Battle.Net ? [https://i.imgur.com/VCNEhgm.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VCNEhgm.jpg)

both are made with Qt

<comment><USER46> I didn't know Telegram uses Qt. No desktop messaging client has better UI/X.

<comment><USER47> Really? I joined a few groups but couldn't figure out how to post, and there was an emoji drawer eating up 1/3 of the screen, and was unable to be hidden. I consider myself a smart enough person to write an app that performs the role of Telegram, I shouldn't have trouble learning to use it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak: Android has leapt ahead of Apple in many ways - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/16/steve-wozniak-android-has-leapt-ahead-of-apple-in-many-ways/

<comment><USER2> How about the original article instead of this blogspam? [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/even-woz- th...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/14/even-woz-thinks-the- android-bests-the-iphone.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Woz believes that Android's voice commands and built-in navigation system > are a big advantage

Personally, this is why I've kept my Nexus S around. I think the #1 thing I use it for is navigation while I'm driving. With a car mount it's as good as a TomTom/Garmin/whatever.

<comment><USER4> I have to agree with you on the nav issue: even buying a cheaper Android phone just for the nav abilities is worth it in itself. I tried many of the 3rd party nav apps and find Google Navigation superior to any iPhone options and easily matches TomTom etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The nav issue is a huge pain for me, coming to the iPhone from android. Waze is alright, but I live near a large amount of tolls, and it doesn't route around them like google's nav does - not to mention a large amount of small details and polish that is lacking as well. When google announced navigation way back when the original droid came out they did say it would be coming to other platforms ([http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/28/google_says_it...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/28/google_says_its_navigation_will_come_to_iphone_if_apple_approves.html)) I wonder if apple has blocked it at all

</comment><comment><USER6> The article's headline is misleading. FTA:

"If you're willing to do the work to understand it a little bit, well I hate to say it, but there's more available in some ways," said Woz.

<comment><USER7> I agree.

> Android has leapt ahead of Apple

Apples to Oranges (pun not intended). Android is no longer a company and Apple is not a operating system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine Woz has been waiting for Jobs' passing to say a lot of things about Apple.

(not 'waiting for' eagerly or anything)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder why woz uses Razr instead of galaxy nexus.</comment>


Airbnb's Original 10-slide Pitch Deck - <AUTHOR> http://tiffanyk.com/post/10611384492/honored-nathanblec-shared-original-airbnb <comment><USER2> the best part of this example is how simple and accessible it makes the business, if you are familiar with it or not.</comment>


US miscalculated benefit of better train brakes - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/apnewsbreak-us-miscalculated-benefits-oil-train-brakes-59923591 <comment><USER2> Its sad that they're still hauling all that fuel on rail instead of using pipelines, which are much safer. Stopping the keystone pipeline and other pipelines has made us less safe.</comment>


Japanese electronics firms: Eclipsed by Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21606845-electronics-companies-japan-are-starting-turn-themselves-around-they-are-shadow <comment><USER2> Karma.

They aren't the first to learn that they can't keep treating their customers poorly forever. Customers find alternatives. Word gets around.

I have had a Sony TV with a well-known defect that they continued making for years, disregarding consumer complaints. The rear 1/3 of the logic board wasn't supported and the gentlest bump would break it. My very expensive TV broke and they refused to cover it.

Way back when I used to maintain computers, the Sony Vaio laptops constantly had their backlights go out. Several different models. Sometimes the replacements would go out, too.

One time we had tape drives on back order. Some proprietary format that only Sony had at the time. They took so long to deliver them that we found alternatives. When they finally came, months late, they came without cables. It took another several months to get them.

Not to mention the debacle of PSN going down for a month and they wouldn't admit to me that they lost my credit card number. Recently, all of my game saves have been corrupted by their auto upload service.

I have regretted choosing Sony. Every. Single. Time.

<comment><USER3> 20 years ago I was a huge fan of Sony, but that was when the Sony brand meant high quality instead of just a high price.

Right now I like Apple devices for many of the same reasons I used to like Sony (great quality, easy to use, and their products work even better combined). Hopefully Apple can learn from Sony's mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be fair everyone is being eclipsed by Apple at the moment. The article is right that the CE market (at least for the established product categories) is brutally competitive and the strong yen has been crippling for companies. It looks like it is down by more than 20% against the dollar[0] fairly recently which will give Sony and the others a chance to compete again.

Apple hasn't been the biggest problem for Sony and the Japanese companies it has been the Koreans (Samsung mostly but also LG) who have reached a high quality level, with local affordable labour so that the designers can be close to manufacturing for better production development cooperation. The Won seems to be pegged to the dollar (it looks like it has been allowed to rise 10% recently)[1] so the fall of the Yen could bring the Japanese companies back into the game.

The interesting question is when/whether the Chinese brands will become serious players in the major CE markets such as TV and whether they will replace the Korean brands as the Koreans replaced the Japanese.

[0] [http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JPYUSD=X](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=JPYUSD=X)

[1] [http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=KRWUSD=X](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=KRWUSD=X)

[2] [http://blog.jtl.me.uk/sonys-decline](http://blog.jtl.me.uk/sonys-decline) \- Old blog post based on HN comment a couple of years ago that still holds up reasonably well.

Disclaimer: Ex-Sony employee (left about 3 years ago) who still recommends their products at least in the TV category.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right on. In the home electronics and appliances space, Apple offers very few items. The direct competition now is between Korean and Japanese makers. I've noticed some price creep in Korean goods now that they've elbowed Japanese products largely out of the American market. It almost seem strange these days to see a TV in the U.S. that's not a Samsung or an LG.

I also agree that the Chinese made products may challenge this current status, but Chinese products have very serious quality issues that may turn a purchase into a one-time thing instead of a repeated customer. Samsung is synonymous now with quality products.

It's surprising they haven't made more of a play in the videogame market. Until the Japanese import ban was dropped a few years ago, Samsung licensed, built, marketed and sold Japanese video games under local names like Super Gam*Boy (Genesis/Megadrive) -- Hyundai got the Nintendo Consoles each with similarly different names.

Also, Korea is pushing hard on design right now. The effects are mixed, but they're trying to break out of a pure copy-the-hot-design mentality right now. Chinese manufacturing is still very much in the copy-the-design mode vs. new design. But the effort is there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongdaemun_Design_Plaza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongdaemun_Design_Plaza)

Japan is still King of design right now among the three countries, able to bring about completely new products from whole-cloth at I think a higher level of quality and finish. But I'd say in 5-10 years the difference between Korean and Japanese output will be negligible.

I don't think the Won is pegged anymore to the dollar (I think that ended in the late 90s), but their largest trading partners either are closely pegged (China) or have very large trade relationships with the U.S. The Won is kind of like the Yen, relatively stable at around 1,000 Won to the Dollar and the Yen tends to be around 100 Yen to the dollar. At least it makes price comparisons easy when traveling!

<comment><USER4> > I also agree that the Chinese made products may challenge this current > status, but Chinese products have very serious quality issues that may turn > a purchase into a one-time thing instead of a repeated customer. Samsung is > synonymous now with quality products.

People said this about the US when the UK was centre of the industrial world, about Japan when the US was dominant, Korea when Japan was dominant. Looking just at the current state without that history I would agree with you.

The Won peg was just my assumption looking at the price exchange rate chart on Yahoo but maybe it was just a lack of precision, xe.com[0] seems much more accurate and shows a more normal looking graph.

[0] [http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=KRW](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=KRW)

<comment><USER6> In terms of China becoming the next big "competition" you may well be right. The one thing I would say is that China has such a large and growing internal market that many Chinese manufacturers may see it as being far easier to concentrate on the domestic market which they understand than an international market which they don't. Given that, it might take a lot longer for those Chinese brands to attempt to crack the international markets than you might think.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I agree with this as well. I think cars are a useful thing to look at. The Korean market went international relatively quickly once they started making cars because the domestic market is relatively small (even with lots of trade protectionism keeping foreign competitors out). The Chinese market is robust, but pretty much entirely internal at the moment.

Still, the Chinese market has shown that there's lots of talent out there able to build all kinds of things. We'll see how long it takes for the domestic markets to mature enough to put pressure on manufacturers to go global.

Overcoming the public perception of decades (generations even) of exporting essentially crap products will take a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel Economist is just bringing Apple into this discussion of the trouble Japanese electronics firms in order to attract more clicks. Apple makes no TV, display panel, fridge, DVD player, or dishwasher.

The real reason the Japanese electronic firms are in trouble is not because of Apple but Samsung/LG. IMO, it's not because Samsung/LG really excelled but because the Japanese firms stumbled/stagnated.

I remember reading last year or so that during a quarter (or was it a year?) Samsung's profit was bigger than the profit of top NINE Japanese electronic firms combined (including Sony). If you knew anything about the bitter history between the 2 nations, it is pretty astounding.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sony's loss of Vaio is a hard pill to swallow for me, since I basically grew up on Vaio, and may now find myself using Lenovo more since newer Vaios are not quite what they used to be.

Nevertheless I think that Japan's tech industry has a lot of advantages going for it. The corporate culture is conservative, but a side effect is that standards for testing and products released are usually very high. With high- tech manufacturing Japan has a lead over many competitors for developing products that fill high-end niches in the industry. Abe's reforms are favoring Japanese exports, making it easier for international consumers to afford Japanese products.

Maybe Japan's tech industry is "eclipsed," but do not expect it to go away as one of the industry's leaders any time soon.

<comment><USER9> VAIOs have almost always sucked for me: I remember them as being expensive and polished, but made from custom parts that tended to flake out at the wrong times and not work with Linux. That said, I bought one of the last Sony models: a VAIO Duo 11, and it uses, aside from the Memory Stick® reader, standard Linux-compatible parts, mostly from Intel. It's a nice little machine and seemed to mark an improvement for Sony. Alas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sony has been sliding downhill in terms of quality products for quite some time now, in addition to ignoring customer feedback/complaints. In my eyes, this was really only a matter of time. But, by no means do I think Apple is overshadowing the Japanese tech industry; the innovative and creative nature of japanese tech products will continue to progress, while I see Apple beginning to plateau in quality/creativeness after Steve Jobs' passing.

</comment><comment><USER11> right-click, open in incognito to read if you hit the paywall.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it fair to say that all of Sony's greatest hits were hardware based, especially things with moving parts (Walkman etc), and that they aren't so great with Software? These days, when the parts of (say) an android phone can be sourced from a multitude of places, software is the much greater differentiator.</comment>


Authorized biography of Steve Jobs to arrive in early 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/authorized-biography-of-steve-jobs-to-arrive-in-early-2012.ars <comment><USER2> Having read the awesome "iCon" when it came out several years ago -- and being genuinely shocked at the invasive story of Steve's life -- I'm very interested to read this and see how much his rather ... um, polarizing ... life story is diluted.</comment>


Tesla Shakes Up Market for Lithium, Other Metals - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-lithium-defied-the-global-commodities-rout-1462450790 <comment><USER2> Lithium doesn't weigh much of anything (even compared to oil), so a ton of Lithium is a LOT of lithium. Since as a commodity it's never traded in metallic form (too hazardous and energy-intensive to get it there, and not much market for straight metal, even as an input to battery production). It tends to be traded as carbonate, so a ton of lithium carbonate still has a very small amount of lithium in it.

The article completely misses the fact that lithium is not the most important metal in a lithium-ion battery. More pounds of cobalt are required than are of lithium (remember, lithium weighs almost nothing).

Lithium traditionally comes from briny lakes and salt deserts like those in Chile, along with other valuable commodities like Iodine and Nitrate.

Lithium occurs throughout the US in ores like Lepidolite, but it's never been considered cost-effective to extract it. I've found a way.

<comment><USER3> ED: Sounds interesting, I hope the economics work out.

Current production of lithium is low because demand for lithium is low. Lithium @ 17 ppm is actually more common than Lead @ 10ppm in the earths crust. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust)

PS: 37,000 tonns of Lithium are produced in 2012 vs 5,200,000 of lead.

<comment><USER4> I'm not real worried about resource availability limiting production of batteries, but the lead comparison doesn't seem to provide much information about how much lithium can be produced over short to medium terms.

I know next to nothing about geology, but a little browsing suggests that it is easy to find galena and that it is a much more productive ore than the typical lithium ores.

<comment><USER3> I am really only approaching this as an investor so take this in that context.

My point was, it's not really a question of how much can be produced, but at what price you can produce it. Right now the market is paying ~6,000$ per tonne which has been fairly steady if slowly growing over time. With battery's making up about ~1/3 of the market. At say ~12,000$ per tonne production could double in well under 5 years.

So, as long as Tesla is happy to pay 12k/tonne they can get more or less as much lithium as they could ever want. More importantly the price need not spike anywhere near that much as long as demand is predictable. In 5 years the price for most commodities is often more or less a function of the delta between expected demand and actual demand.

If you can get into production at say 4k/ tonne it's no question the market is growing so at the price is unlikely to crash any time soon. At ~6k/tonne cost cutting is going to be really important fairly quickly, but it's a reasonable investment. At 7+k/tonne it's a huge risk which is only worth it IMO if you can line up a long term contract at a fixed and profitable price or if you can tightly control costs and only ramp up in case demand spikes (ex: your mining something else, but you could also exact lithium from your tailing).

<comment><USER5> Lithium market is a three-company oligopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The headline is a misquote. The actual quote, from Musk in the article, is "In order to produce half a million cars a year…we would basically need to absorb the entire world's lithium-ion production."

That is very different that the entire world's lithium production.

<comment><USER7> Which is just another variation of something he's said since he announced the Gigafactory - "We'll produce more than the entire world's capacity of batteries."

<comment><USER8> And I'm still trying to figure out why everyone thinks this is a big deal.

Lots and lots and lots of companies end up at some point representing 50% of all sales, products, or activity in their market.

Hell, even Starbucks was opening coffee shops so fast they were targeting owning half of all coffee shops on the planet.

If he said he needed to quadruple the world output, I might furrow a brow. If he said he needed 8 times the world supply, I'd think he was nuts.

Double? That's just a really big growth market.

<comment><USER9> Indeed; at one point iPod production was consuming over half the world's flash memory. What happened? They built more factories. Prices of flash continued to drop aka "a functioning market".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In shocking other news: car, utility companies currently absorbing entire global fossil fuel production, a state of affairs which is set to continue

<comment><USER11> car makers, utility companies, plastic makers, paint makers, etc. You underestimate the utility of petrochemicals.

<comment><USER12> Transportation uses absolutely dwarf others, and many of the non-gasoline byproducts are only cheap because the gasoline itself is so in demand.

Gasoline itself was once seen as a useless byproduct of kerosene production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "that some call 'white petroleum'"

stop trying to make "fetch" happen

<comment><USER8> Utah Tea.

Well the next thing you know Elan's a billionaire.

The kinfolk said "hey move away from there!"

They said Californi' is the place you oughta be

So he loaded up the truck and he moved to Beverly

<comment><USER14> Last line should be "built a gigafactory"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Musk further said, "This is totally not related to why we want to mine asteroids."

<comment><USER16> SpaceX isn't planning to mine asteroids, that's Planetary Resources. [http://planetaryresources.com/](http://planetaryresources.com/)

<comment><USER17> Someone needs to get their space craft there....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't have wsj access to read the article, but for those looking for some help in doing the math Danielle Fong has an interesting collection of notes on calculating lithium ion storage growth (page 19) : [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/refs/DanielleFong- Growth...](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/refs/DanielleFong- GrowthRateRequiredInEnergyStorage.pdf)

(found via the energy storage section in [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/) )

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no shortage of lithium, even the USA has lots of it (owned by Canadian companies).

It's just they don't want to mine it until the price is much higher.

Kind of like oil vs gas prices.

But I am curious to see what the next level beyond lithium is for compact power storage. Lithium can't be the end of the line.

<comment><USER20> Where are we with the next-gen battery tech? It's like every 5 years we see some research lab announce a breakthrough but as if yet no real progress.

You would have thought it would be a priority for Musk to research next-gen batteries in a really serious way.

<comment><USER21> Heck, I'd say I see an article about new battery developments multiple times a year.

I wonder if the delay has as much or more to do with economics than actual research and development. It might not be in the best interest of a lot of players, whether that's battery manufacturers, or device manufacturers, to produce something that has improved longevity if that means fewer sales due to batteries wearing out.

<comment><USER22> Its economics in the manor that its non-trivial and time consuming to produce a physical good. A existing factory can take 6+ months to retool, especially if you don't want to interrupt its existing output much.

Also a bunch of the developments don't pan out for various reasons, like not being able to get the yield high enough to be worth while, requires large amounts of unobtainium, have very restrictive operating requirements not mentioned in press release (such as a 140F auto-ignition temperature), etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Article is actually titled "Tesla Shakes Up Market for Lithium, Other Metals" which is less sensational and more accurate.

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/149779-sodium-air- bat...](http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/149779-sodium-air-batteries- could-replace-lithium-air-as-the-battery-of-the-future)

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't really see the problem. It's simple supply and demand. Once the gigafactory is operation and demand goes up, supply will also go up in time.

I'm just worried costs will rise so much, the 35k for the Tesla model 3 will rise as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wasn't there recently an article that stated lithium had already tripled in price.

And if it reached a quadruple it would become cost effective to extract it from the ocean?

</comment><comment><USER27> How viable is lithium recycling?

<comment><USER28> There are so many discarded batteries from old electronic devices. Even chemical separation must be more effective than digging it out of the earth, right?

<comment><USER29> You'd probably assume liability for all of the other stuff that's around that thin lithium lining.

It must be cost, because I can't think of any other reason that we don't have micro-machine dis-assemblers for slowly picking apart our garbage in to neatly binned resources.</comment></comment></comment>


Tires slashed on Google shopping express truck in Mission District - <AUTHOR> https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/06/14/18757396.php <comment><USER2> I think the point that they miss is that an overwhelming majority of employees of these "gentrifying tech companies"(which aren't even in SF if you're google, how are they supposed to tell their employees where to live) are still "working class" i.e. "must have a job to pay for their lives." Sure there are billionaires but most engineers in SF are not part of a vast subversive ruling class.

Whatever they think about the evil tech companies, fuck people who sabotage other people's ability to make a living(like that truck driver who dealt with their shit, I'm sure HE is a plutocrat tech overlord right?)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is this a parody site or is this someone's idea of how to deal with the world?

</comment><comment><USER3> The only good thing about this approach is that these idiots are making themselves out to be the enemy and eventually they will just become a joke (if they haven't already). Related: OWS</comment>


Property Graph Query Language - <AUTHOR> http://pgql-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> Geeez. Looks strikingly similar to Cypher by Neo4J ([https://neo4j.com/docs/developer- manual/current/cypher/](https://neo4j.com/docs/developer- manual/current/cypher/))</comment>


Software that spots hidden social networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13915798

<comment><USER2> In short, there's clever software that finds connections between emails, and it's had some surprisingly good successes. Here are some salacious examples to titivate you, but we're not going to tell you anything about what it actually does, how it works, or cases where it didn't find anything.

As with most of these sorts of items I'm left hanging, no better off because I knew these sorts of tools existed, and worse off because I've wasted 5 minutes trying to find some detail or content.</comment>


Facebook founder called trusting users dumb fucks  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ <comment><USER2> Mark Zuckerberg thought the IMs were private, but the terms changed.

<comment><USER3> If true, he was a dumb fuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jokingly, at 19, when referring to a project so much smaller than Facebook that it was really a different thing.

Whatever you think about Facebook's privacy policies, this particular quote doesn't prove much.

This post is an instance of linkbait meets lynchmob. I think we'll let that predictable conversation happen elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> I agree on it not meaning much but let's not kid ourselves either. If you even joke about people being stupid for putting their trust in you than you probably aren't trustworthy. I had access to a pretty significant amount of user data when I was 19 too and I would have never joked about revealing it.

<comment><USER6> Really? I can excuse just about anything if it's really a joke. I would _so_ not want to be held accountable for the literal meaning of my friends' and my typical banter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cut Zuck a break. We are humans. We say stuff we don't necessarily mean. I am sure you can find equivalent off the record conversations from Gates, Ellison or anyone big name poking fun at how much power they have and how they could abuse it if they chose. To go back to when he was _19_ and pull this out makes it even more ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER8> He's still saying the same thing, just more eloquently now.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see two basic truths here that make this comment seem irrelevant to me...

1\. Users shouldn't put anything into Facebook that they wouldn't be willing to make public. Because even if Facebook never betrays your trust someone in your circle of friends surely could (Ever have a former lover turn into an enemy after a breakup?)

2\. I don't doubt Zuckerberg still feels this way but it doesn't really matter. Because regardless of how he feels the economic future of his company is tied to being trusted by the consumer. So I think he'd share your secrets in a second if it was just about personal integrity but I don't think he'll risk billions of dollars to do so.

</comment><comment><USER9> well, aren't they?</comment>


Microsoft bringing back the old OneDrive placeholder files - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/11/microsoft-blurs-the-line-between-onedrive-and-local-files/ <comment><USER2> Wonder why they removed it in the first place, it was such a pain when they removed it...

<comment><USER3> From what I read, it sounded like as it existed in Windows 8.1 the UI/UX was too complicated/confusing for users at the time and they were removing it until they solved some of the UI/UX problems.

It does look the UI has evolved (a dedicated column in Details view, some new clues in the command line even; in the demo the DIR showed the file size in parentheses, presumably to note a placeholder).

It also sounds like the UX has evolved with things like file prediction to predict some of the files to load/unload from a device.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone rather just be alone during work day? - <AUTHOR> How do you peers take it? <comment><USER3> If I manage to find somewhere in our open office to get work done in solitude, every individual who walks by feels the need to comment "oh, colanderman, you must be trying to get work done! Well I guess I'll leave you alone". It is so. Goddamn. Annoying. Like seriously, the fuck people, you don't need to vocalize every thought that pops into your head.

The only two solutions I've found are to (a) legitimately book a conference room, or (b) work from home. Except the latter reminds me how futile it is to spend such a short life working for someone else during all the beautiful hours of the day.

<comment><USER4> or those that don't check that a conf room is already booked and just show up expecting it to be empty. You still have that interruption "oh, I didn't know someone was using this room, sorry".

<comment><USER5> Locking the door is always an option I guess!

<comment><USER3> I've done that. It makes it worse. You get confused people jiggling the handle, knocking, and looking inside, as they try to enter the conference room they didn't book, after which you need to unlock the door, and explain to them that you locked the door to avoid interruptions, can they please go away and research the social signal a locked door is meant to convey.

The trick is you need to look unremarkable, yet also uninterruptible. I think the best strategy (short of finding an employer that values productivity) is to team up with someone else who values getting work done, and book a conference room with them. That way it looks like you're "having a meeting" and no-one will ask vapid questions.

Better still, dial your cell phone with the room's conference phone, so it looks like it's "on" to anyone peering through the door's window, and sit with your back to the door. People are less likely to try to take over the conference room if it looks like it's complicated to get you to vacate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I'd rather just be alone. Some weeks I manage to get as many as four days in a row working from home, but most I end up just taking Friday as a WFH day so I can focus on getting things done.

As I type this in my open plan office at 1:39 PM, there's a vacuum cleaner 20 feet away, three different conversations going on around me, the stairwell door at my back opening every minute, people walking in front, behind, and to the side of me, and the janitorial service emptying garbage cans. Every few days we'll get noisemakers, screaming, and clapping and cake for birthdays or work anniversaries.

When working from home, I get a good nine solid hours in with great focus and the occasional break to take pets out. From my, admittedly non-scientific reckoning, I get about three times as much done in one work day at home. I go into the office mostly just to be seen, to participate in social rituals, for physical meetings, and to be "available" for questions and drive-bys. It's not that I don't like my co-workers, it's that my office is noisy and distracting. And it's one of the quietest floors in the company.

When I worked for IBM and had a private, quiet office, it took some getting used to being alone. When I moved to full-time remote work, it was a really good balance for me: I could exercise during phone conferences, have a healthy and properly-proportioned lunch with my wife, and get a balanced amount of distraction and "away" time by taking the dogs out.

<comment><USER7> I recently worked remotely for a month while on a semi-holiday. It was a lot better than I was expecting.

I was worried I would end up not getting enough work done or worst yet appearing as if I was not getting enough work done. But being able to work remotely from a quiet place actually meant I got more work done in a shorter time period, and it also afforded me proper breaks from my work. Like heading out for 1-2 hours and doing Pilates, or going for a long walk in the park.

For me breaking my workday up into like 2/3 3-4 hour sessions, with exercise and other activities as breaks actually improved my work, and I was way happier than sitting in an office for 9 hours straight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I often retreat myself in the conference room to be "alone", more often than not headphones or me frantically typing doesn't seem to convey the image of me being focused. I used to be working remotely and miss it a lot just for my peace and focus, my manager told me I can't have a day or two working from home and I'm seriously considering leaving just because of this reason...my colleagues often says that I'm quite shut but tbh when I'm in my zone I don't want to be stopped every five minutes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work remotely so the only person in my home office is my wife who also has a remote job. I use headphones and we have a general understanding that during work hours we limit idle chit chat and if headphones are on, shoot each other a text.

For co-workers, they are also remote so we schedule meetings and chats. If something comes up we ask when we could interrupt via chat and the person responds when they can.

If the end of the day comes and a person hasn't responded we shoot an e-mail to get on the radar for the next day with the understanding that it should be handled asap the next day before entering a heads-down mode.

If extremely urgent then we pick up the phone.

</comment><comment><USER9> I recently took a remote job. Initially, discipline for work / non-work time was tough. But in the end, it lead to better habits and more productive time spent actually working.

I like working in offices, however working remote has been surprisingly pleasant (although I'm definitely more of an introvert).

</comment><comment><USER10> I enjoy the time I spend with most of my coworkers on most of my jobs - <USER2> I'm not working. Watercooler conversations, kitchen talk etc.

As soon as I'm working, I find people talking around me, getting up, or even simply being in my field of view, very distracting.

Not an enjoyable situation when you're working with quite a bit of legacy code with both complex logic and a few somewhat complex algorithms.

I try to get in the office earlier than everyone on my team, and I try to at least have a look at tasks that require concentration at that time of the day.

I find the notion that employers are worried that you might slack off working from home absurd, as I believe I'm not some special unique snowflake but part of a large subset of people that function like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like a mix of alone time and collaboration time. Ideally I'd work from home a couple days a week and be in the office the rest of those days.

Also - I invested in a "do not disturb" light that I flip on while on a call or while I need to focus on something. It seems to be pretty effective as most requests that would have been walk ups are now turning into emails.

</comment><comment><USER12> I prefer working with my team.

Years ago, when telecommuting was the bright future, I thought working from home would be great. I don't anymore. I'm more productive when I'm with the people I work with. We can discuss stuff, help each other, etc. More team cohesion, more cooperation, more knowledge sharing, more working in the same direction.

<comment><USER13> Agreed with you. I like being able to shoot off questions in person, and I like being asked questions in person. Four days a week at work is ideal.

<comment><USER12> And the fifth day with my kids. I find a 32 hour work week plenty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I absolutely love remote work. In fact, if I could not be bothered on slack by constant likes and rehashes of links I can go read and find on my own it would be even better. If I want a meeting of any kind it should be scheduled. I feel physical pain when my time is wasted.

</comment><comment><USER15> Even better than being alone, not having foot traffic anywhere near my desk would be nice. I don't know how the guy sitting right by the door does it. People coming in and out all day and walking right by him.

</comment><comment><USER16> From personal experience: in engineering, people are roughly split into two groups, ones who figure out by themselves, and others who ask. So when I worked in the office (in that particular geo), I put a thick cross on my developer career and added a second chair beside my desk. (I once did timing, and the average was 26 min between interruptions.)

Now I work remotely, in a different geo, and people still want to "talk to me", insist that I open the messenger app etc, call me on whatsapp (which our company prohibits BTW). No way around it. It is all the same people who asked questions when they were engineers, only now they moved higher up.

I am adding this useless personal anecdata only in hope we accumulate a big enough list so that HR and others realize that enough people consider important to be alone to get stuff done.

Some lore in our company tells about overachievers who would get up at 5am to be productive until the bulk of teams arrives at work. It was some 20-30 years ago, these days, one gets up at 5am to catch the train for this 2+-hour commute. Being alone is all we can have.

I don't want to go far, I just want to get my stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER17> I live on my own so I prefer being with people at work.

<comment><USER18> I can absolutely see how this is true for some people.

Conversely: I have a family, and find that a day of open-plan leaves me consistently too frazzled to hand much in the way of meaningful interaction with my partner and child.

I don't really know how to square these too, other than to suggest that different environments make sense for different people, and wonder how we can implement this without it getting caught up in status-game space ("why should X have the office...")

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 50/50.

I like productive chat but also having dedicated alone time is important.

Too much if either is not good

</comment><comment><USER20> Working with my team is important but I need at least one day a week working from home in my bath robe, not only for my own sanity but also to actually get things done. I don't begrudge anyone else that! Not everyone is an outgoing extrovert and that is just fine - as long as there are results!

</comment><comment><USER21> I much prefer and find it far easier to work when alone. I'd like to work from home more for this reason but have resigned to just putting in earphones to try block out the rest of the office. I definitely hope to find a remote job in the near future though.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm moving from programmer to more of an devops / architect role because I can't focus on building high quality code in noisy open offices.

Devops and architect stuff is a whole lot easier to do with open office since you don't have a million things in your head at once.

<comment><USER23> Unless it's a million microservives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I work in a big office (no windows) on the opposite side our site and it's glorious.

Co-workers think it's weird but they are office workers and sales so talking all day is 80% of their job.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't really have a 'team' as such these days (the joys of corporate silos) - I don't work in a vacuum, but the others that I interact with are spread out over the country, so I generally work from home 3-4 days a week. The office is open plan, and quite noisy on a 'busy' day, but a lot of my peers also work remotely several days a week, so most of the time its not too bad.

</comment><comment><USER26> Solo is great. But collaboration is the key to success.

<comment><USER27> If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why I like working remotely. Sorry l I don't have anything to offer for what to do if you're still in an office.

</comment><comment><USER29> We have an open office and the chatter ebbs and flows on mutual terms mostly. Doubt it would work with over 30 people. We're a fairly tight-kmit group and that becomes impossible after a certain size.

Our office has many places you can be alone, and we take advantage whenever needed. The open office warehouse echo still blows, but we manage

</comment><comment><USER30> I work as a consultant and I find that for "problem solving" in person communication with colleagues and clients is fundamental.

When I'm working on a model I just put my headphones and I know people will disturb me only if they really need to. Which is fine, I'm here to help in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER31> As I have to do a lot of stuff I can't do home I managed to get a small office room for myself .. I totally agree: It is frikkin' annoying .. don't they have something better to do? What also helped were Headphones and a sign reading "STFU, y u no w0rk?!"

</comment><comment><USER32> They're good. They only come to me when they're having a problem and it's only a few times a day so I can get a lot of work done. If I must, I close my door and put a sign "Coding but welcome" and I'm sure some just wait until it opens but I'll never know.

<comment><USER33> I hope you appreciate the fact that you have a door :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can't concentrate at work because open office.

Can't concentrate at home because Slack (virtual open office plan).

Always open office.

</comment><comment><USER35> I like working alone sometimes, when I feel like it would be beneficial to do so I just work from home. I couldn't do it all the time though and I enjoy coming into the office, mainly for the banter and hanging out with my colleagues / friends

</comment><comment><USER36> At my old company, under extreme cases, I put up a physical whiteboard on top of my desk with "Focus mode: on" and "Focus mode: off" depending on my mood.

Worked great, and nobody seemed offended. I may think that even the directors love it when they saw it.

<comment><USER37> I had a coworker who put on a hood with giant bunny ears when she had heads down work to concentrate on. You knew not to disturb her when the bunny ears were up - and it was very effective because you could see those huge ears from across the office so nobody wasted time walking all the way to her desk only to find her in focus mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It usually works better for me to work alone in a conference room, and I can see the people around me walking around so I don't feel like nuts, and yet I can focus on what I was working on.

</comment><comment><USER39> Depends on whether what I'm doing is interesting or not, having people around can mitigate the boredom, otherwise working alone is better.

</comment><comment><USER40> Don't underestimate the power of putting on headphones and keeping a concentrated face. Nobody interupts me when I do this

<comment><USER18> Lucky! That doesn't work everywhere...

(Over-ear headphones are a little more reliable than earbuds, but have comfort issues for some people)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yes, so I can play my extreme metal very loud on my hifi - and code

</comment><comment><USER42> Every now and then I'll fake some emergency and take some time to fuck off and be by myself. And do nothing. I have to lie because people need a reason, because being by yourself means slacking off from the global capitalist grind, and that's a no-no.

</comment><comment><USER43> absolutely</comment>


Seeking Wisdom - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/book/SeekingWisdom <comment><USER2> Here is the order link (Amazon doesn't appear to sell new copies (and it's cheaper)) from the original source:

<https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/orderform_v4.php>

Likewise I think this the only place to get _Poor Charlie's Almanack_.

<comment><USER2> Homepage of the book:

<http://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/seekingwisdom.html>

Also love this quote (about Poor Charlies Almanac):

"This book is something of a publishing miracle – never advertised, yet year after year selling many thousands of copies from its Internet site." — Warren Buffett, in his February 2010

Has anyone read Poor Charlies Almanac and if so would you recommend it?

<comment><USER3> Poor Charlie's Almanack collects many of Munger's best speeches. You can find some of them on the web (here is a transcript of his famous "Psychology of Human Misjudgment" speech: <http://www.rbcpa.com/Mungerspeech_june_95.pdf>); read one and see if it speaks to you. If it does, the book, which includes Munger's edits to these speeches, is a worthwhile investment of your money and time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Incidentally, I wonder if the "I'd like to read this book on Kindle" link actually counts for anything.</comment>


A brief history of aviation checklists - <AUTHOR> http://www.atchistory.org/History/checklst.htm

<comment><USER2> There was a great article on medical checklists in the New Yorker a few years back: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)</comment>


A WebAssembly interpreter written in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://webassembly.js.org <comment><USER2> I saw some tests, but WASM edge cases can get pretty complicated (especially around post-unreachable stack validation logic). I suggest "git-submoduling" the stuff from "core" at [https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/tree/master/test](https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/tree/master/test). This is a pretty good test suite for both your parser and your interpreter and doesn't require too much work on the part of a harness to support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I planned to support the spec core tests (that's why I implemented WAST in the first place).

<comment><USER2> Cool. I ran into lots of gotchas when I was doing it. Granted there is a much better written spec now. If you hit any snags, feel free to hit me up (email is on github profile which is on HN profile).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok thanks, can we connect on twitter? [https://twitter.com/svensauleau/](https://twitter.com/svensauleau/).

I can see on your GitHub page that you made the famous WebAssembly to JVM, nice job!

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I don't do Twitter or FB, though if you want to keep it public, feel free to start a gitter or just open a github issue/discussion and @-mention me.

(Thanks!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Now you just need to compile a JavaScript interpreter from C++ to WebAssembly... Makes me think of "The Birth & Death of JavaScript" talk [1].

[1] [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

<comment><USER4> We need brainfuck in this pipeline somewhere

<comment><USER5> I'd prefer C-INTERCAL or LOLCODE

<comment><USER6> Upvote for INTERCAL. Keywords like "please" and "maybe" should be part of every language :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That could be really useful to deploy on browsers without native WASM support. Can you give us an idea of the perfs though?

Since WASM is used for some performance intensive applications it would be useful to know how does this polyfill compare to native WASM /asm.js or regular js.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done a few benchmark but it's still too early to be relevant.

I want to take advantage of the optimization done by the JavaScript VM and asm.js in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one wondering whether or not this was created only because of the irony of a WebAssembly interpreter being written in JavaScript?

<comment><USER9> Maybe not, but I wouldn't be sure that that's it; the stated version on the top of the page is an important one, or at least is as long as IE 11 is a thing.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be better to just deploy asm.js alongside wasm? Emscripten can easily generate both, and a simple check can select which script to load.

        if(window.WebAssembly != null){
            loadScript('script.wasm.js');
        }else{
            loadScript('script.asm.js');
        }

<comment><USER9> Quite possibly! Only one way to find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Considering that all major [evergreen] browsers support it, what are the use cases for something like this? Adding support to IE? A starting point for polyfilling future versions of WASM?

<comment><USER12> Fair question. WebAssembly's browser support is indeed already pretty good, as I understand it.

Might be useful for old versions of IE, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do browsers that support WASM support reading the text format?

If not, this could be useful to write WASM directly.

In the article, the links under "The parsing is available for the following formats:" are broken. Does anybody know where they should point to?

As soon as it is possible to write WASM directly and have it execute it by the browser, I would start trying it out. I hope somebody will come up with a better textual representation then the currently proposed one with all the parenthesis.

<comment><USER14> You can already play with WASM directly in the browser.

[https://wasdk.github.io/WasmFiddle/](https://wasdk.github.io/WasmFiddle/)

[https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/](https://mbebenita.github.io/WasmExplorer/)

I prefer the explorer one.

The s-exp representation is great for doing compiler development, hence why it was chosen.</comment></comment>


Professor on 'Gilligan's Island,' dead at 89 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gilligan-island-russell-johnson-dead-89-article-1.1582181

<comment><USER2> Amazing how time flies. That picture of the cast is from half a century ago.</comment>