Linus Torvalds: Pearls before swine - <AUTHOR> http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2011/02/pearls-before-swine.html

<comment><USER2> I've done stuff that normal people would consider ubercool - doing illegal raves, run one of the hottest bars in Ibiza, throwing parties for the jetset.

When seen from the outside it looks amazing - you get to talk to models, you get free booze, get in for free at all the clubs and have sex with models.

The thing that nobody tells you is that it's hard work. Most of the actors that go to the oscars aren't there to get drunk or laid, for them it's a chance to talk shop with their colleauges. When James Cameron is talking to Natalie Portman he isn't chatting her up, he's trying to get her to star in his new movie. If, by accident, John Cusack gets drunk at one of the clubs he gets into for free he'll be all over the tabloids and he won't get that next role, so he can't do it.

A friend of mine just came back from a tour with a known rock-band. They worked hard from nine in the morning until after midnight six days a week. The last day of the week they just wanted to get home to their families. No screwing around with models, no getting drunk and no clubbing. Just hard work. The rockstar life is mostly something the media makes up.

Remember that the grass is always greener on the other side. Or as Brad Pitt once said "Fame's a bitch man"

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, there is Charlie Sheen

<comment><USER4> "I exercise regularly. I eat moderate amounts of healthy food. I make sure to get plenty of rest. I see my doctor once a year and my dentist twice a year. I floss every night. I've had chest x-rays, cardio stress tests, EKG's and colonoscopies. I see a psychologist and have a variety of hobbies to reduce stress. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't have crazy, reckless sex with strangers.

If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."

From Chuck Lorre, producer of Two and Half Men. <http://chucklorre.com/index.php?p=329>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post put a big stupid grin on my face, just imagining him walking around, and nobody knowing who he is. Him being far more influential and more important than most people in the room, and yet having trouble explaining what he does.

It sounds like a family reunion trying to remember people names and telling everyone you make web sites for a living.

<comment><USER6> Though it's getting easier to explain what he does--Android phones are everywhere these days.

<comment><USER5> But Android is only a small part of why he is influential and important, it is the most visible I suppose.

<comment><USER7> "Well, I've created the operating system that runs about every 5th smartphone". "Well, and some other things".

<comment><USER6> In the US Android is up to about 1/3 of smartphones these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Hi, I'm Linus"

"Nice to meet you Linus. What do you do?"

"I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal"

"Really?"

"People know me."

"Well I'm very happy for you."

"I'm very important. The internet runs off my software and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

<comment><USER9> "Wow, how much does your software cost?"

<comment><USER10> "Well, I just give it away for free"

<comment><USER11> "So, its kind of like Windows? That was free with my kid's laptop."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "So here's a shout-out to my new BFF's Jon Hamm and DJ."

Can someone please make it happen that Linus gets an appearance in Season 5 of Mad Men? He could play an IBM salesman or something like that...

<comment><USER13> Get over to Reddit. They're good at making things like that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It just occurred to me that if I'd gone to the "Night before the Oscars" party, Linus would have been the only one I'm 100% certain I would have recognized and been certain about his name.

<comment><USER15> Hello, my name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Leenucks.

<comment><USER16> You wouldn't believe it but for many of us non-native english speakers, _his_ pronounciation is obvious and sounding naturally, while the "english'ized" one is funny if not ridiculous.. ;)

<comment><USER17> You're right. Once I learned about "Latin vowels" a lot of things fell into place in regards to pronouncing foreign names and places.

This goes far outside of just the Latin-derived languages. We use the Latin alphabet, after all. So if the language can be written with this alphabet somehow (even if the locals don't usually use it), there's a pretty good chance that you should assume they use the Latin vowels, too.

No guarantees, but I've managed to surprise more than a few people by pronouncing things correctly.

<comment><USER18> The difference is that most languages don't reduce so many vowels to schwas. If you just _pronounce the vowels_ , you'll do much better with non-English words. And assume i = ee, a = ah, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I live next door to a celebrity chef. When I met him, he comes up to me, introduces himself like he's running for office, then there's this pause because he's waiting for the typical "regular guy meets celebrity" reaction. "Haven't you heard of me?"

Nope sorry. As far as I'm concerned you're just my neighbor who doesn't walk his dog and lets the yard fill up with dog poop.

I much prefer attitudes like Annie Lennox, who once said something about how it's nice to do your own laundry for a change.

<comment><USER20> I met Billy Bob Thornton in a bar in Minneapolis one night. I'd worked a long day and was walking back to my hotel room, when I looked over to my left and saw Billy Bob sitting at a bar with 2 or 3 other people. Well I went in and grabbed a seat right next to him, ordered some food (wish I hadn't, kind of rude) and eavesdropped on his conversation. They were talking about baby names of all things. I knew a joke about baby names, so I nonchalantly told my joke to a guy whom I later learned was Billy Bob's manager, who told Billy Bob that he had to hear my joke. Billy Bob turned toward me with the biggest grin I've ever seen and all I could think was "Don't screw up. He won an Academy Award!" I somehow nailed my joke and Billy Bob shook my hand as he introduced himself, "I'm Billy." I must have said something boring afterwards because Billy politely returned to his previous conversation. That was ok by me, Billy made my week just sharing a moment of his time and being a nice guy. Glad I met him instead of your celebrity chef neighbor.

<comment><USER19> Was the ordering food the rudeness or the eavesdropping?

<comment><USER21> This is the socially exceptable form of eavesdropping. You know, where you make it obvious you are eavesdropping and then enter the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Tove pissed off Warren Beatty by asking his name not just once, but twice" is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while.

<comment><USER23> Reminds me of when a fanatical Mariners fan friend of mine came across Alex Rodriguez and another player. She promptly went running up to the pair and exclaimed "Oh my God!! Dan Wilson!!!!!"

<comment><USER24> I'm surprised she didn't spit on A-Rod.

<comment><USER23> He was absolutely livid. This was back when he still played for the Mariners, in case that wasn't clear. I would have paid anything to have seen his facial expression.

<comment><USER25> Which, in the end is why we couldn't keep him. Sigh.

<comment><USER25> Odd down vote. I was just saying he left Seattle, then Texas because he wanted to be in the limelight. Sheesh!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow, Linus sleeps 9 hours a night -- maybe the health gurus _are_ right when they say more sleep makes you more productive.

<comment><USER27> That's some flawless reasoning.

<comment><USER19> The maybe saves it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone remember Blake Ross' reaction blog post to the Time 100 dinner he was invited to? His website (blakeross.com) has been taken offline and I wasn't able to quickly find the post via the Wayback Machine.

<comment><USER29> Hah, didn't expect to see that while reading this thread. The post is here, although it's missing CSS and the images from that evening: [http://web.archive.org/web/20060613002629/http://blakeross.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060613002629/http://blakeross.com/2006/05/16/a-toast- to-serendipity/)

Was definitely a crazy night. I enjoyed reading Linus' post.

<comment><USER29> BTW, some news from today that's relevant :) [http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=748155473273&set=...](http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=748155473273&set=a.583434525373.2180063.205733)

<comment><USER28> Yeah, I just saw your tweet about this — what a crazy coincidence, a 5-year- old blog post mentioning red-carpeting in front of Will Smith dragged up as you announce another meeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> well, sounds like a progress. Linus, the top-geek, finally got invited there. That means recognition if not from Hollywood circles, yet from a circle near it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Apparently that's the first and only blog post that Linus has given the label 'FULL RETARD'.

</comment><comment><USER32> I just wondered how many of the films that were up for oscars used linux in the production process? (editing, CG, sound, etc.)

<comment><USER33> If the movie featured any sort of CGI, they most likely used Linux at least for the rendering. Windows licences for your entire render farm are expensive.

Autodesk's Maya (A 3D animation modeling and rendering package) is fairly dominant in the movie industry, actually won a full Oscar in 2002, and is entirely tri-platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not that I'm a huge fan of Linus (though I love his operating system), but I'd rather chat with him than anyone else at the Oscars... unless RMS happens to be there.

</comment><comment><USER35> To most people, Linus Torvalds is probably "that evil guy on Lost".

<comment><USER36> Linus (Lie-ness), not Torvalds

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would be in the same boat. I actually like a lot of movies but I am so disinterested in the kind of celebrity idol worship that most are that I don't remember the names of a lot of actors/actresses.

I reserve all my idol worshipping for linus

</comment><comment><USER38> "since geeks in general are seen as the crème de la crème of society". Strange statement, my impression is that geeks don't receive at all enough credits. Every average legal or doctor is a super star compared to a geek at least in Italy. It is also embarrassing for a society to put on the TV screen everybody but not the guy that created software that really is running the internet. Linux and Git are huge.

<comment><USER39> Sarcasm.

<comment><USER38> Ok, thank you, completely missed the point :)

<comment><USER40> I read your comment and all I could think was "See? It happens to other people, too!" :-) (I'm in Italy too btw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> That's a pretty good life actually, not being bothered by people outside of his field constantly.

</comment><comment><USER42> The title reminded me of "The Fountainhead" quote. Or is it a common one?

</comment><comment><USER43> Glad to know this that Linus had a good time. His contribution to software are undoubtedly great. But I don't understand what this article has to do with 'hacking' and why is this the most highly rated 'news' article today.

</comment><comment><USER44> "since geeks in general are seen as the crème de la crème of society"

He must be living on a different planet than mine.

<comment><USER45> Yes, on one that has sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> he sounds depressed

<comment><USER47> Really? How?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hey shouldn't it be Linus's blog? You would only write Linus' blog if you were indicating plural possessive such as indicating that it is the Linus family's blog. Not sure about this one. Could it possibly be that Linus Torvalds made a mistake? I think so.

<comment><USER49> Either Linus's or Linus' is acceptable in current English usage. Source: "James's hat (James' hat is also acceptable" <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Think of every crucial system running Linux... It seems that this story is backwards. He should be the celebrity, all these idiots were just in front of a camera at some point.

<comment><USER51> Please. I agree that our celebrity-focused culture is idiotic, and Linus has accomplished more than most of us ever hope to, but calling actors "idiots" is insulting. Most of them work hard just like we do (some harder), and are quite good at their job.

After all, are you not entertained?

<comment><USER52> Remember, it's cool to affect a proud lack of knowledge in many areas ("football, what's that?") but to not know about famous people or things in computing is simply a sin.

<comment><USER53> It would be funny to ask someone who was affecting that something like "Then what have you accomplished?" See I could picture Linus being completely oblivious to celebrity, there's a seriously big deal that he came up with while he was busy not watching popular movies.

If the person saying "oh football what's that?" hasn't actually done anything really impressive then what _are_ they doing if too busy to notice pop culture? Just living in a cave and staring at the shadows?!

<comment><USER54> > what are they doing if too busy to notice pop culture? Just living in a cave > and staring at the shadows?!

If they're doing that, then they're doing philosophy.

<comment><USER19> Or they're a suburban home dweller with cable and a 50" flatscreen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Be A Successful (African) American in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/04/greed-trumps-race-how-to-be-a-successful-african-american-in-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER4> Excellent article, full of excellent thoughts and ideas. I hope it'll remain frontpage material to clear some misrepresentations.

 _"Heard Yeezy was racist, well, I guess that's on one basis, I only like green faces."_

I guess I'm like Kanye then: I'm green-biased, because in the end, that's the only thing that matter - profits :-)

"Underrepresentation does not equal racism" is also a great idea to cite - <USER2> cares about one's representation?

Profits are what matters. Is there a white resentment about having too few white players in the NBA? As long as they are good and get well paid, who cares?

<comment><USER5> So the last line made me think: why do I hate the idea of the All-American Basketball Alliance[1], but support programs to increase diversity in software?

But it's not a contradiction: I have seen nothing to lead me to believe that a talented player of any race will not get a fair chance in the NBA. It's all about winning, but the opportunity is there for everyone.

So isn't SV all about winning too? Yes, it is—but we know a _lot_ less about what leads to winning. There are no draft combines where everyone gets show what they can do. Nobody writes code competitively directly against other programmers on TV to prove they can produce at a high level. Companies play it by ear. The NBA knows how to evaluate talent. We don't.

Here's a fun example: "PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world "hoops." Probably no one even knew how to play "hoops." Basketball would be bad enough. But "hoops?" That guy clearly wouldn't have fit in. He'd have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him."[2]

Welp, guess I wouldn't have been able to get hired at PayPal. Not only do I like to play basketball, I've said "shooting hoops" a lot. You're going to turn down someone who aced your tests because of a hobby and the phrase he used to describe it? You really think that's the secret to success? You're flying by the seat of your pants in a world without good metrics and you don't know which things you did contributed to your success and which things didn't. You're _actively discouraging_ diversity of culture (which is not directly the same thing as diversity of gender/race, but it makes it a lot harder to have the latter).

And it's that still-sometimes-present active discouragement of diversity that I find frustrating about many parts of the programmer community.

[1] a basketball league venture in the southern US that required players be white, that I believe folded quickly a couple of years ago

[2] [http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter- thiels...](http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay)

<comment><USER4> IMHO, it may be a contradiction - there is no need for any specific program to encourage some specific group (even if one is a member of a given group, and could take advantage of the program for profit in the short run, because one don't get better in the long run by having it easier it the short run)

I can't say anything about paypal - I wasn't there, and I don't like to pass judgements.

But if they indeed were _that_ dumb not to hire a good candidate only for the sports he plays, it's no wonder their product sucks more an more. Personally, I'm eagerly waiting for a competitor until bitcoin gets more momentum.

BTW one thing I'd like to say - the opportunity in coding is there for everyone - it's even more open than the NBA because the judge is the market, and with the current technology everyone can easily start a tech company and compete globally.

It's a pure and perfect competition.

There's no need to be hired be a company - you create your company and show your product to the market. If it works, if it does what people need, you will get money.

<comment><USER6> _it's even more open than the NBA because the judge is the market_

Interesting, I have the exact opposite viewpoint - I can see the _result_ of a software project, but I have very little insight into the contributions behind the scenes. In sports, I (and the rest of the world) can see the contributions of the atheltes and judge merit for ourselves.

For example, I know the new iOS maps have problems, but (aside from press leaks) I don't have a lot of insight into who did what. On the other hand, I know from watching Knicks games last season that Jeremy Lin was the real deal. I know the result of the 2012 Super Bowl (Giants beat Patriots) and I also saw the contribution of the team members (for example, Tom Brady throwing a perfect pass to Wes Welker at he end of the game that Welker dropped).

I've always see athletics as the closest ideal to a meritocracy that we have in our society.

<comment><USER4> We _do_ have opposite viewpoints because I see the one man company or consultant as the closest ideal to a meritocracy.

But still +1'ing for this very interesting opinion - because you're right, in a company which more than 1 employee it's hard to judge the individual performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it odd that HN loves to upvote 'more women in tech' articles but never promotes any article related to increasing African American or the Latin American population in the tech community.

<comment><USER8> I for one only actually care about women in tech to improve my dating pool. Not sure what more minorities would do for me.

<comment><USER9> I care about the "people in tech" pool containing as high a percentage of the "qualified people who could be in tech" as possible, as both a hirer and a buyer/user of tech. If there are qualified women or minorities who aren't working in tech for artificial reasons (their early-childhood education deterring them, racism or sexism in the workplace, etc.), that affects me as a white man.

I don't have as much self-interest in whether people from Ohio, Eskimos, or women are proportionally represented. (I sort of care in an abstract way, because tech jobs are great and a good way to live a happy life, but if there were some innate reason why gingers were comparatively far better at medicine than at tech, I wouldn't cry that there were few gingers in tech.)

The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.

<comment><USER10> > The nice thing about capitalism is that even with my own self-interested > motivation, it tends to solve problems like this.

It really doesn't, for two reasons. 1) the rational actor model is a bad abstraction, and irrational prejudice can be an important factor; 2) there are various "bootstrap" problems in any given field that can keep unbalanced equillibria even in situations where discriminatory forces aren't actively pushing things towards those equillibria.

Women in tech is actually a striking example of this phenomenon. If you look at "qualified" in terms of something measurable like Math SAT scores above 600 (typical for a decent engineering program), women are dramatically underrepresented relative to their qualifications.

You would think there would be strong pressures to get more women into the field, given the ostensible shortage of engineers, but companies make no such attempts (partly because the self-selection happens long before they can really influence things, and partly because of "boostrap" issues).

<comment><USER9> My experience (MIT, late 1990s) was that there were about 45% females to 55% males (+/- 5%), and in some programs (Biology, Earth Science) there were more females than males. CS undergrad was maybe 65:35, and Physics/Math were more skewed. I'm assuming everyone was approximately the same level of qualified coming in.

I think "med school leads to a great career" was a major factor.

Among people hiring, it's pretty common to actively search out new sources of candidates -- "Australia", x new education program, prior military service hires, etc.

I agree the early stage problems need to be solved by someone other than those hiring in the short term, but it's absolutely the case that a qualified (female, black, whatever) candidate will get a fair shot at many (most?) companies today. In large organizations, there is still some pressure to hire those candidates preferentially, and even in a small startup, hiring female technical employees early is preferred because it makes it a lot easier to hire even 20-30% female employees later, vs. an all-male 20 person company trying to hire its first female technical employee. (Sorry, but I don't count employees as a single class -- if 100% of your engineers are male and you have a female office manager, that's not really the same thing as a company like Quora where the first hire was a great designer and front-end developer who happened to be both from Facebook and female.)

So, hopefully solving the "demand side" also helps people solve the "supply side".

<comment><USER10> There was an MIT study in the 1980s and 1990s that found that females were outperforming their SAT Math relative to males when it game to college GPA. So they adjusted the admissions process. As a result, females come in with roughly a 30-point lower SAT Math, but ultimately end up having similar GPAs once in school. So to get that 45/55 mix, the school did have to take affirmative measures.

That said, MIT is way ahead of the industry on this. Only 18% of engineering graduates last year were women. This is despite the fact that about 45% of all high school seniors who score 600+ on the SAT Math, and 40% of all high school seniors who score 700+ on the SAT Math, are girls. Even at the perfect 800 level, it's 33% girls.

And this isn't directed at you, but whenever I see "aptitude" in these discussions I get skeptical. A lot of people don't agree with the findings in the "Bell Curve", but even if we take those results to be completely true, the fact of the matter is that the differences don't really matter that much in the range we're talking about. It's an explanation for why there are so many fewer female Einsteins, not why there are so many fewer female Cisco engineers.

And it's not even the math and tedium. I was pretty shocked to find that half of Big-4 accountants are women. About 30% of one major Big-4 firm's partners are women. These numbers blow away anything you see in engineering, in a field that is arguably much more numerically-intensive and boring.

The fact is that the other professions are leaving engineering in the dust when it comes to making representation in the field equal to aptitude. Accounting firms and law firms are dealing with the next issue--which is how to have a strong representation of female partners while dealing with the fact that the partnership push coincides with women's prime reproductive years. And they're making progress on that issue. Engineering is in the rearview mirror, hanging with the neanderthals in banking.

<comment><USER9> Ah -- I think the line from MIT Admissions at the time was that everyone was equally qualified, but they recruited more heavily in underrepresented groups. I didn't put much thought into exactly what measures they would take.

If you did take Bell Curve as completely true (which is a very lively debate), a shifted normal distribution would substantially change the makeup of a career field (otherwise equally distributed) picked from those with IQ>130 or something. It probably is fair to say Cisco engineers are smarter than the US average, although probably less so than top startup founders. In real life hiring is not on a single metric, of course, particularly later in one's career. But, a one+ SD shift would lead to really different populations at 115, 130, 160 IQ, in addition to absurd outliers like Einstein. (Plus, there's plenty to call into question IQ and specific measures of IQ, like Feynmann's relatively average score. I personally think it's far more predictive in the ~50-115 range than anywhere else.)

(The reproductive-years issue does seem like a fundamental one, especially in a career where your first 10 years are just the start. Are there any good URLs or books on how accounting and law handle this?)

<comment><USER10> First, note I'm not endorsing the Bell Curve, but exploring the implications.

There isn't a consensus on sex-linked differences in IQ, but none of the realistic studies show anything close to a 1+ SD shift. You see results like a 0.33 SD shift or a 1 point narrower standard deviation. What you see on the SAT Math is a 0.3 shift in mean and a slightly narrower SD.

Also, as a practical matter, engineering is not a profession of people 2SD+ above the mean. It ranges from Texas Tech to MIT. Typical IQ's for engineers are estimated around 110-120. If we look at SAT Math scores, 600+ would be a reasonable estimate. At the ~600 level, there are about the same number of males and females, with the gap growing to about 30% females in the perfect-800 pool (3SD above the mean). In other words the observed disparities far outstrip what would be expected from standardized test scores. Even taking the studies more favorable to the aptitude argument, you'd have to have engineers at 150+ before the observed male-female ratio was consistent with what would be expected based on IQ scores alone (5:1).

And of course, this assumes the only relevant measure of engineering aptitude is SAT Math performance or IQ. In that sense it's probably an upper bound for the measure of engineering aptitude.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the whole discussion is predicated on if Bell Curve were accurate.

I'd gone back to race, not gender. I think I've seen studies which say African-Americans are as much as a sigma below general population of the US, and certain Jewish or Asian populations are a sigma above, which is 2 sigma net, which is HUGE. I don't know if I buy these studies, but to the extent that IQ measures scholastic aptitude and culture vs. innate genetic intelligence, it's possible.

Engineers at large companies are maybe 1SD above the mean; founders or "10x engineers" at startups are 2SD+.

So, a 2 sigma difference at the 1 and 2 sigma above mean levels would be huge, which is observed in the population of startup founders and famous startup engineers. But there are plenty of other explanations which would account for exactly the same observation even if there were zero difference on population "aptitude" -- it's just one plausible explanation.

(There's also the argument that Asian immigrants to the US are potentially the top of a 3 billion person set, and the total number of African-Americans is something like 30mm. But the Ashkenazi Jewish population and African-American populations are on the same order of magnitude in the US.)

<comment><USER10> The race issue... well it's just not my little pet issue, LOL. My point is that I see these arguments being brought up in the context of women in engineering, not just minorities, and the underlying math doesn't support the conclusions even if we use the studies that are more favorable to the point. The numbers I've seen Richard Flynn throw around are a 1:5.5 ratio of women to men at 155+ (almost 4SD). While 1:5.5 is just a little under the representation of women in engineering, the 155+ figure is far beyond what you'd find for a practicing engineer. It might characterize the set of engineering professors at top schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really appreciate this article - very thoughtful. Re: the "Increase the pipeline" section, I agree this is a great place to start. But while "the reasoning behind such skewed ambitions begins at home," I think it's also more of a media problem. We can name rap artists and basketball players because for the media, sports & entertainment are king. Thankfully, we can point our kids to Barack Obama - my daughter already knows "Pesident Obama" she's not even two yet, and our kids will aspire towards a broader set of ambitions. But we could also use a little help from the media highlighting achievers in other realms.

</comment><comment><USER12> As an aside, I am amazed how much conversation CNN's story has fueled and continues to fuel...and it has been so many years! Whether it was a good representation or not, it was one of the first to really discuss the topic, and there is a lot of value in that.

<comment><USER13> Yep. That and I'm sure that it sparked more people of color to move upon tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article indeed!

During all of the arguments he made i couldn't help but think about the "lack of successful women in tech/business"-discussion that is - i guess - <USER3> going on not only in my country.

1) Underrepresentation does not equal racism

or bias against women

2) News reports are focusing on the wrong part of the story and there are many women very successful already

3) Greed trumps gender

And also when he mentions possible solutions:

-) Increase the pipeline

Exactly. Often many women in my classes were very good at maths/science, yet only very few went on to really study something like maths/science or something strongly business-related.

</comment><comment><USER15> This article is great.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Underrepresentation does not equal racism" contradicts the academic party line ("systemic racism"). If a white person said something like that, they would get a lecture in "denying privilege". If an asian person said it, he would be ignored.

But I agree that the author's way of thinking is far healthier for any given individual. Which is why the author is so successful.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean by "academic party line"? The university system is not a party (let alone a communist party). Phrases like "denying privilege" are not general to all of academia, they are specific to certain people. What is your interest in portraying all academics as people who deliver lectures in denying privilege (or whatever)?

Leave the people who develop knowledge and disseminate it for the rest of society alone with your political agenda.

<comment><USER16> I have never heard an academic in a race-studies, Sociology, or Communications department seriously grapple with criticisms of the "systemic racism" hypothesis for the white/black performance gap, and nor have I heard any other hypothesis offered. Students and professors outside those departments dutifully recite the same theories. As far as I can see, academia is a den of groupthink and cultural Marxism when it comes to such issues.

<comment><USER18> Steven Pinker is a highly influential academic who criticizes positions like "underrepresentation implies discrimination". See for example his best-seller The Blank Slate (2002).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook reports BBC to police after requesting sexualised pictures of children - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/bbc-tells-facebook-about-child-porn-on-the-network-fac-1793033881 <comment><USER2> > Facebook asked that the BBC reporters send the company images that they'd > found on Facebook's secret groups that the BBC would like to discuss.

I don't remember too much regarding my university criminal forensics lectures, but here goes: If the BBC reported that they had found child pornography to Facebook, then Facebook should investigate and alert the appropriate authorities. They can't delete the images as they're _evidence_ , I'm sure they have a way of setting images to be non-public or 'hidden' whilst these kinds of things are dealt with.

As for Facebook reporting the BBC, I can technically see why. We were always taught (it was a class dealing with software used by police forces to scan phones and PCs) if you were on a job and found something, don't make a copy to give to your manager, don't email it to someone etc - all of these can fall under the 'distribution' part of the law.

What makes the title interesting is Facebook _requesting_ the images. If someone at Facebook was informed of the images content being child pornography, I'm not sure how the law would work in this instance. BBC are distributing, Facebook are requesting, both are in the wrong. If this was a case of BBC reporting an 'indecent' image without much context, Facebook may very well request to see the content, BBC are still distributing, I'm not sure what this means for Facebook.

Long story short: If you ever find CP online at work etc, don't save it, don't alert a manager, don't email it or a link to it, report it to the correct authority for your area, then alert a manager or boss - anything else and you run the risk of conspiring/distribution.</comment>


Tin Plasma Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation Makes 5nm Integrated Circuits Possible - <AUTHOR> https://www.trumpf.com/en_US/applications/euv-lithography/ <comment><USER2> If you're interested in chip fabrication, I heartily recommend watching [https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4](https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4) \- it goes over the evolution of how they make transistors all the way up to 2009 state of the art, with a follow up talk in 2013 ([https://youtu.be/KL-I3-C-KBk](https://youtu.be/KL-I3-C-KBk)).

Both of them mention how Intel is sinking billions of dollars into ASML to try and get this process working, and how impossible everyone thinks it is, so I'm skeptical that they finally got everything squared away now :)

<comment><USER3> TSMC and Samsung are also exploring EUV, so it's not just Intel. New lithography is necessary to continue shrinking, otherwise mask costs will rise exponentially (literally).

<comment><USER4> Can you explain the exponential rise in mask costs with shrinking? My naive understanding is that you simply can't resolve features below some fraction of the wavelength. How do more expensive masks get beyond that?

<comment><USER5> What you can do is basically use partially overlapping beams to energize an area smaller than any of the individual beams (think venn diagram). Its a similar technique (except in 2 dimensions) to radiation therapy where multiple beams of radiation are passed through healthy tissue such that their intersection point is on cancerous tissue. That way only the cancerous tissue receives a highly damaging dose of radiation while the healthy tissue receives significantly lesser dosages.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't usually work because the the diffraction limit PSF is usually Gaussian and therefore the overlapping region can have lower fluence than the peak regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this, I realized that I have no ability to differentiate actual in use fab technology from science fiction. What the engineers and scientists do in modern fabs is in my mind more impressive than the entire Apollo program.

<comment><USER7> A lot of people talk about how wide-reaching the technologies spun out from NASA in the Apollo Era were; whereas I see the research that goes into making chips smaller has an equal if not greater reach. Considering how widespread the modern IC is these incremental improvements need to become more and more novel, to the point where entirely new approaches need to be designed to combat the limits of physics itself.

<comment><USER8> The weird thing, in a sense, is that tech that seems close to nanotechology and nanomachines exists simultaneously with extremely mundane tech.

Trumpf is generating nanoscale EUV but I'm still hammer nails into the wall to support my coat hanger rod. What's up? Where's my flying cars, etc.

<comment><USER9> You are willing a needlessly complex solution to a problem that can be solved more efficiently using other methods.

You don't need a flying car - you need a hole which you can jump in and pop out at your destination with the least hassle.

<comment><USER10> Is that a pitch for the Boring Company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A tidbit, a one of more lunatical proposal for the next gen fab design is to build it around a multimegawatt cyclotron, and have the light source problem "solved for good"

The genuine problem with tin plasma laser is its power efficiency. An early adopter runs can bare with 0.02% energy efficiency, but imagine, say, a few 20 line fabs and their power consumption.

Another very important advantage of this design would be getting a more stable, easily tunable, and more narrowband light source. Tin plasma has around 1nm deviation in its spectrum, while a cyclotron can get to picometres on an arbitrary wavelength.

And with all above, you get a supremely tempting option to try diffractive optics, and do away with all geometry imposes nonsense of EUV reflective optics...

<comment><USER12> I had a similar idea of using synchrotron to generate very low wavelength light for lithography... I guess costs are an issue!

<comment><USER11> The "lighbulb" in 3400 costs as much as a small research synchrotron already

<comment><USER13> What's 3400?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.asml.com/-/media/asml/files/products/twinscan- nx...](https://www.asml.com/-/media/asml/files/products/twinscan-nxe3400b.pdf)

<comment><USER14> A 26x33 mm die would yield 86E9 transistor. Pretty impressive.

<comment><USER15> Not a useful comparison. A single neuron is far better networked to its neighbors and far more complex/nonlinear than a transistor. There are already chips out there with 1e11 transistors, but they don't run "ai" even a little bit.

Assuming you need something like 1e5 transistors to approximate one neuron, you'd need like 100m^2 of die area and interconnect to actually emulate a brain.

<comment><USER16> And you would still lag due to speed of light issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the applications of shear-flow stabilized Z pinches is to generate short wavelength light from xenon plasmas.

<comment><USER18> This is why I read HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why are people putting lots of effort into extreme UV generators when we could just use x-rays? We know plenty of ways to generate and focus x-rays...

<comment><USER20> Just a guess as I am not in the industry but I would imagine has to do with the photoresists and masks - perhaps we don't have ones that work with X-ray. Not much good using a wavelength that passes through or is unabsorbed by the resist material!

<comment><USER21> IIRC we don't even have masks that can really take EUV, the mask is destroyed after each exposure.

<comment><USER22> I think the masks can take it but their is a ton of difficulty in inspecting the masks themselves for defects. IIRC the leading candidate at the time I was in the industry was to actually expose wafers and then scan the wafers for defects which originated on the mask, hoping to not confuse these with other process defects. Not sure how they ended up solving that one.

<comment><USER23> Do multiple exposures and see which defects come up more than once?

<comment><USER22> Yeah - typically print the entire wafer then compare dies within a field (usually there are multiple dies exposed in a single exposure) to see which defects are in the same place on each field. This won't work if there is only one die per field, as could be the case for an exceptionally large server chip. In that case you probably need to predict what the image will look like based on design files and then compare with the actual image and look for differences. You could also e-beam scan the whole wafer but this can take a while (like 30 days when I was around), night damage the wafer, and bumps up against the reliability of E-beam components. It wasn't being seriously considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For the curious: 100,000,000 transistors per square millimeter, from the site.

<comment><USER25> I'll be making an attempt here to compare that number to the complexity of programs in software. It's the first time I try to do this and I'm sure I don't know enough to make a good comparison, anybody please correct me.

The binaries of Firefox on Debian Stretch (oldstable), when just counting the main program binary and .so files, amount to about 100 MB of compiled code. These are stripped hence will mainly consist of binary code and constants.

Making a flip flop in hardware requires 6 transistors IIRC. What if I compare 1 bit in software with 1 flip flop in hardware--OK, code is constant (could be etched as a PROM, but that's a useless comparison), but represents some complexity that probably needs more transistors to represent. E.g. an if statement (after evaluating a value to be dispatched on) needs a conditional jump assembly instruction (8 bytes?), and perhaps another jump instruction when the success branch is finished (another 8 bytes). This comes down to 128 bits, 768 transistors with my stupid calculation; enough to route data etc.?

So, encoding a program of the complexity of Firefox (binary part) as hardware would then need 100e6 _8_ 6 = 4.8e9 transistors. Given 100e6 transistors per mm^2, this would need 48 mm^s chip area, a chip 7mm*7mm, not far from what CPUs use?

Thus, today's web browsers and CPUs seem to be comparable in complexity? Or, a web browser could be encoded entirely as hardware and about fit on a chip? I find that unexpected and a bit surreal, loading a huge program like Firefox is just bringing in the same amount of complexity into the running system as there already is active in the CPU? Or, another line of expectation in my thinking is, CPUs are very small compared to the large programs, programs are being serially executed with a smallish set of instructions precisely because complexity in Hardware needs to stay small. Actually maybe that's not really true?

I'd welcome better insights.

<comment><USER15> You could probably do some estimate based on the relative entropy, which should be vaguely comparable between hardware and software

<comment><USER25> Are you talking about Kullback-Leibler divergence? Will have to read up on that. Or can you clarify what you mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What if we utilized the 3rd dimension just a wild idea. Also designed chips as long rectangular, more surface area.

<comment><USER27> we have been in various ways for a long time. as you stack higher and higher it gets harder to get the heat out, and its already really tough to get the heat out.

Like intel's fastest gaming processor, the 9900k, the major difference is better heat dissipation material between the die and heat spreader.

laptops and phones are mostly all thermally limited

die shrinks help with this, but only if you don't increase performance as you do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let's do hard gamma lithography already.

</comment><comment><USER29> I can imagine on a few decades company's data center on a single square meter chip :)

<comment><USER30> That would be colossally inefficient - essentially the size of the chip means that electrons would be taking multiple cycles to get from one side to the other. The solution would be localizing processing into distinct processing units on the one die. At the point you've reinvented multiple cores and it starts becoming cost effective to split them into separate chips to improve yields :)

<comment><USER31> That is only on a clock locked chip. There are chips with designs where different parts of a chip where clocks run at different cycles.

<comment><USER30> Most modern chips already use numerous clocks (aside from anything else propagation delays for the clock signal is already a problem).

The problem is not simply "because clock cycle" it is "if electron takes Xns to get from one execution unit to the next, then that's Xns of functionally idle time". That at best means additional latency. The more latency involved in computing a result the more predictive logic you need - for dependent operations the latency matters.

An asynchronous chip does not avoid that same problems encountered by a multistage pipelined processor, it's purely a different way to manage varying instruction execution times.

But this doesn't answer the killer problem of yield. The larger a single chip is the more likely any given chip is to have errors, and therefore the fewer chips you get out of a given wafer after the multiple weeks/months that wafer has been trundling through a fab. Modern chips put a lot of redundancy in to maximize the chance that sufficient parts of a given core survive manufacture to allow a complete chip to function, eg. more fabricated cache and execution units than necessary, at the end of manufacture any components that have errors are in effect lasered out. If at that point any chip doesn't have enough remaining cache/execution units, or an error occurs where it can't be redundant, the entire chip is dead.

The larger a given die is the greater the chance that the entire die will be written off.

That massive ML chip a few days ago worked by massively over prescribing execution units. I suspect that they end up with much greater lost area of a given wafer than many small chips, which directly contributes to actual cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Jetpack 0.7 - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalabs.com/jetpack/2009/12/23/announcing-jetpack-0-7/

<comment><USER2> My view:

\- Chrome extensions are beating jetpacks by a long shot.

\- There should be a unified/standard way to build extensions for browsers based on javascript.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this give Firefox a little breathing room from the coming Chrome onslaught? I've heard developing AddOns for Firefox is a real pain and that AddOns for Chrome are easy in comparison. That, plus Chrome's speed is supposed to really start eating into Firefox's user share.

<comment><USER4> Yeah on all counts IMHO. I'm currently developing both firefox and chrome extensions and there is an order of magnitude difference in effort and technical complexity between them.

Jetpack is a great start for extension developers and it gives the FF team the ability to implement multiprocess browsing without breaking extensions left and right. As it stands now, FF is basically one big single threaded JS process (with other non scripting stuff delegated to other threads as possible). Small caveat: I am reasonably sure I understand how it works under the hood having worked so closely to it while writing extensions but I may have details wrong.

I'm a Chrome fan and full time user, but I think Firefox will reign king over the modern browsers for a while. They need to break the single threaded JS loop, finish up the out of process plugin work and continue work on reducing the overall memory footprint of long-running Firefox sessions from buggy extensions and the complexity of working with long lived , fragmented heaps. Jetpack itself will help contribute to some of this.

Firefox is still architected in places for machines of Y2K while Chrome had the advantage of assuming modern machines.

I wouldn't count the Firefox team out at any rate. They make a lot of progress on platform and footprint every release.

<comment><USER3> Are you saying that most of the Firefox codebase (with the exception of the JS engine) is written in JS? The DOM parsing?

<comment><USER4> Most of the core infrastructure (DOM, layout, etc) is C++. The UI is XUL (XML layout language) with much of the supporting UI logic written in JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do like the idea of Jetpack - but I don't see it really taking off until it's built in, which it hopefully will be, once it's mature.</comment>


Bare Metal in a Cloud Native World - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/bare-metal-in-a-cloud-native-world/ <comment><USER2> Running physical servers from Packet has been amazing for us. They open sourced their provisioning stuff too: [https://tinkerbell.org/](https://tinkerbell.org/)

<comment><USER3> Happy to hear it! Alex also put together this pretty comprehensive list of tooling in the space which is worth a look: [https://github.com/alexellis/awesome- baremetal](https://github.com/alexellis/awesome-baremetal)</comment></comment>


Judge a (Clojure) Programming Book by Its Cover - <AUTHOR> https://dragan.rocks/articles/19/Judge-a-clojure-programming-book-by-its-cover <comment><AUTHOR> The books in question:

1\. Deep Learning for Programmers: An Interactive Tutorial with CUDA, OpenCL, MKL-DNN, Java, and Clojure

2\. Numerical Linear Algebra for Programmers: An Interactive Tutorial with GPU, CUDA, OpenCL, MKL, Java, and Clojure

[1] [https://aiprobook.com/numerical-linear-algebra-for- programme...](https://aiprobook.com/numerical-linear-algebra-for-programmers) [2] [https://aiprobook.com/deep-learning-for- programmers/](https://aiprobook.com/deep-learning-for-programmers/)</comment>


Xbox One: Microsoft's All-In-One Home Entertainment System - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/21/heres-your-new-xbox-one-microsofts-all-in-one-home-entertainment-system/ <comment><USER3> Most of the comments here focus on Microsoft, Sony, and gamers; I'd like to (indirectly) bring the traditional cable co into the discussion.

Last semester several Comcast reps gave my class a presentation which included a summary of their media strategy, a demo of their new cable TV platform/cable box, and a Q&A section. Their new cable box (a small, black, ATV-like 'dumb' set-top box) is progressive: it has a modern UI, connects to the Xfinity cloud platform, and can be updated through software rather than hardware changes.

However, one student asked their VP of Media Acquisition a simple question: "Who is your biggest competitor?" His answer shocked us.

"Microsoft."

At the time (~March), he told us Comcast expected Microsoft to stage a coup to claim "input A," the consumer's primary content interface. Traditionally, consumers would have their cable boxes plugged into input A and their gaming consoles plugged into input B. Microsoft, he said, would attempt to take over input A by including a cable jack in the back of the Xbox and offering live TV alongside streaming/web browsing/apps/games.

Looks like he was spot on.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. As soon as I saw CBS (which weirdly, was first presented in the context of the voice-activated command feature), I knew it had a pretty good chance of taking over the "input A".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to be impressed, but it's really hard. I have friends that work at Microsoft and have worked on various bits of this platform. I know personally the incredible amount of hard work that gets put into this product.

This presentation just feels... empty.

It's largely middle-aged men (and a woman who worked at tv companies) dryly reciting a badly written script with significant intentional pauses intended for applause after non-funny jokes.

The opening demo was kind of interesting. It's hard to tell if the tv/kinnect interactivity was staged or not, but it seems real enough to be impressive. More of this please.

Followed by a guy that no one knows or cares about, speaking at length the hardware, about how revolutionary the new product is. He doesn't actully say anything much about how the new system is built beyond "5 billion transistors and 8gb of RAM!", while briefly flashing some tech specs floating next to an amorphous blob of 3d Xbox parts.

Then we get to see a non-MS exec from EA introduce a 2 minute interview with some sports guys....

SHOW THE DAMNED GAME!!

Look, when you're showing off your product SHOW IT OFF. Don't put your fatty bag of mostly water in between the product and the people trying to learn about it.

Then the stream died for me after the CBS/Time Warner lady started talking. I caught the end where guy #1 is talking about Stephen Spielberg and Halo, the it died again.

For the HN audience, there's a ton of lessons to take from today. Talk about the product, don't get in the way, and make sure your tech supporting the launch works and is stable. Everything else will take care of itself.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft said ahead of time that all software-related discussion would be saved for E3. This was a features and hardware-only event.

[http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/20/4347614/microsoft- reveals-i...](http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/20/4347614/microsoft-reveals-its- two-part-console-reveal-for-the-next-xbox)

<comment><USER5> They should have said that at the beginning of the presentation, not announced before the event and/or somewhere else.

That being said, there was almost _no_ hardware talk today. I _know_ there's some good hardware and engineering in that black slanty box. That's all I've heard hinted about for months, about how impressed we'd be with the hardware, etc. Next to nothing was said about it.

<comment><USER7> But it has eight gee-bees!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most people I know who own a PS3 consider it essentially a blu-ray player.

Most people I know who own an Xbox consider it essentially a Netflix player.

These people bought games, but they don't really play them.

I've got naught but my anecdata, but I think attempting to bill this new console as an entertainment system that _happens_ to also play some great games is a very, very good idea.

<comment><USER9> Why? They just alienated gamers while showing non-gamers that they've been overpaying for a glorified Netflix machine.

I've been a diehard Xbox fan since I first got my hands on the original, but this makes me want to switch back to Playstation.

<comment><USER10> What more do you want them to tell you as a gamer about the new system? They released specs and talked about the cloud gaming capabilities. Having more 3rd party game makers demo games for the system doesn't really improve my appeal to the console.

I already knew the new xbox would be the next gaming console. It seems like they went for the non-obvious, and wanted to talk about the other features. The games are going to be the draw for gamers, and I'm sure those will be just fine.

<comment> simba-hiiipower agreed. people make it sound like they removed some essential features, just because they didn't emphasize them enough (or because they emphasized others more).

from what i've seen this appears to match the ps4 in every way - even down to the architecture. the only difference is they glossed-over all that and decided to focus on the ways its differentiated..

<comment><USER11> They removed the ability to buy, sell, and lend games. You have to pay an undisclosed fee to "install" a game that has already been installed, which is mandatory.

<comment> simba-hiiipower the rumor you're basing that on doesn't appear to be entirely accurate [1]. either way, i don't think its fair to draw judgment one way or another until they actually explain how that will be handled..

also, this issue is nothing new and is certainty not unique to microsoft or the xbox. i think its fairly well understood that there's going to be a change in this area as the way content is distributed continues to evolve..

whatever the actual implementation is, i'm pretty sure it wont be as bad as you're implying (... _removed the ability to buy, sell, and lend games_ ) and will probably be standard across the industry - and structured in a manner as not to totally decimate the second-hand market..

[1] <http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4348916/xbox-used-games>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone actually interested in playing games (and I know that may make me a minority here), this was the best commercial there will likely ever be for the Sony PlayStation 4.

<comment><USER13> Yes, before I saw your comment, I was going to post something similar. I am also one of those weirdos who just wants a really powerful and reliable gaming console. No muss, no fuss, no "social", no voice-activated doo-dads, just really good games and not much else.

<comment><USER14> I'm afraid that even in the console world the gamers are now becoming a minority, Nintendo opened the way and now the others follow, the "hardcore" , whatever that means, gamers are a minority, you need them for the launch and some games but they are really an small proportion of the possible customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Will the Xbox continue to be the "America-box?" A huge amount of this conference focused on services that are irrelevant to those outside the US (even irrelevant to Canadians). This all looks great if you have a stellar cable package and live in the USA where you get ESPN, but what about everyone else?

<comment><USER16> Indeed: [http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-live-tv- available-i...](http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-live-tv-available-in- us-only-at-launch-requires-separate-device/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the underlying OS Windows 8? I think Microsoft can give its Windows 8 apps platform a big boost by giving them presence in the next Xbox.

EDIT: Looks like they use Windows 8, but the Windows 8 apps will need to be modified to work on Xbox. From Engadget:

 _In terms of whether apps will be cross-compatible between the regular Windows Store and the storefront accessed by the new console, we're told they won't. Developers will have to do a bit of work to make a Windows app suitable for the Xbox, not least in terms of tuning their UI for Kinect or the wireless controller. But Microsoft's engineers told us that the underlying similarity between Windows 8/RT and Windows for the Xbox should make this a pretty easy feat for coders. [ Ref:[http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-runs- three-opera...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-runs-three- operating-systems/) ]_

<comment><USER18> The underlying OS is three different OSes, apparently. One of those is likely based on Win8 (Metro Snap and Metro IE was present).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
      > 1080p camera... 60 FPS. Field of view increased by 60%....
      > motion tracking... detect skin pigmentation changes related to heart rate

_In soviet russia, home entertainment system watches YOU!_

Seriously, imagine being able to measure consumers' emotional reaction to your advertisements... if you were worried about information being gathered about you, with google adwords targeting you by search, or facebook data-mining your social network, you ain't seen _nothing_ yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> It is definitely telling that it took them 30 minutes into a 60 minute presentation to talk about games, then another 10 to talk about a non-sports game. Yes, they're saying they're going to talk more about games at E3, but a reveal is a "put your best foot forward" type of event, and Microsoft seems to be going for a "games are an afterthought" type of approach.

Compared to the PS4's continuation of Sony's "games first" philosophy and Nintendo's "we're sorry core gamers!" philosophy with the Wii U (that's not working out so hot right now, given how lukewarm core game developers are to it), it may be a risk that pans out for Microsoft, but it's a bit unfortunate: gaming—and not just sports gaming—has made gains into mainstream culture over the past decade, and it doesn't seem like it really needed to be brushed aside in order to "win" this generation's console war.

</comment><comment><USER21> For me...the first xbox really rocked my world. I dropped in a mod-chip, used XBMC and my eyes for a home-entertainment system that can read digital files were finally opened.

I haven't used an optical disc for a movie since.

I used the original XboX, then transitioned to 360, then to PS3 - now my PS3 does what all of my previous xboxes did.

But....the truth is, with the 360, I was so blown away by how easy it was to connect to all my MSFT networked devices that I would gladly give this new xbox a chance to rock my world again.

MSFT has really gotten XboX right. Every. Single. Time.

I hope they don't try to lock down this one - where you can't play 'pirated content' and they have some hardware DRM or some bullshit like that.

That's the only reason I will wait until others try it out.

If it doesn't allow me to watch the content I want to watch - then I won't get it.

If I can......I just may.

Then again...my current PS3 is already pretty awesome so I may not need to.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was most interested by their Live TV offering. But does anyone have any details on how they get the TV stream? One of the slides mentioned HDMI In/Out - does that mean it's going the GoogleTV route? I have a logitech revue - <USER2> I absolutely hate it.

<comment><USER23> Most likely it will have to work with an external subscription. The guy on stage mentioned that he uses Comcast and then did the demo. So I imagine it will work like Google TV and just be a glorified channel changer without any content of its own.

I too have the Logitech Revue and it eventually just became a netflix box for my kids. We just switched back to having a dedicated laptop for our TV and never looked back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neither Sony or Microsoft have told me why I need to buy one of their next-gen consoles.

I own a PS3, Xbox 360 and a gaming PC. The 360 came first and combined with Xbox Live it became my default gaming device. Probably 60% of my games are for my Xbox 360. After a few years with my 360 I bought a PS3 because there were some exclusive games I wanted to play. In 2010 Battlefield 3 came out and I built a gaming PC for it because in my opinion the Battlefield series excels when played with a keyboard, mouse and servers that can accommodate large scale battles.

A strange side affect of building that gaming PC was that I started buying games for my PC instead of my consoles because the games looked and played better on my PC then my consoles.

This next console generation is going to be the most homogenous yet. Developers will be able to make a game that works on PC, Xbox One and PS4 so easily that brand loyalty will mean a lot less.

Unless Microsoft actually releases some TV features that actually work outside of the United States I don't know if I'll be buying one of these new consoles. I'll probably continue buying games for my PC until a platform exclusive game (which are becoming increasingly rare) comes out.

<comment><USER25> I've built a gaming PC before. What I underestimated was how nice it was to have my console in my living room. Having to get up and go into another room to play games meant that games never got played. And then the PC started getting flaky and then it was old and new games didn't look good any more. This happened _very_ quickly.

My consoles always work (no red ring on my 306 yet, knock on wood) and the new games always play great. I'm almost definitely getting one of the Microsoft or Sony next-gen consoles. I would definitely consider a steambox as well, as I love the idea of a living room game PC... Though I'm not sure how I'm supposed to manage the wireless keyboard and mouse while sitting on my couch.

<comment><USER26> Just plug an xbox gamepad into the PC, most newer games will let you use it instead of keyboard/mouse (assuming it's a game that actually makes sense to play on a gamepad).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a gamer living in Bolivia, 90% of the features peddled as REVOLUTIONARY will weigh in at ZERO for me.

I'll be getting a PS4. I read that you can't even play used games on the XBox One.

</comment><comment><USER28> Surprised no one is talking about Skype.

This is a killer app and a genius acquisition by Microsoft. Having so many young, tech users using Skype is going to have a massive flow on effect to other users in particular older ones.

</comment><comment><USER29> So now I can have a UI with ads overlaid on my TV ads? Fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this is fantastic for folks like me who have to juggle between my htpc (which has a cablecard so I can watch live tv on my media center) and my xbox (which I use to play games). Ofcourse il still have my htpc connected and use it frequently for other things (I am not sold on IE on xbox) but atleast it will make switching between watching tv,netflix, hulu and my games very simple. microsoft can take my money now, i want one of these things !

</comment><comment><USER31> In our house, we have a 1st-gen ATV, Roku HD (again, older gen), and an XBox 360. We've largely found them redundant in most senses, except for the following:

Can't watch Xfinity on the Roku or ATV, can't watch Netflix or unfiltered Youtube on ATV (can't get any VEVO content on the ATV), can't rent Amazon movies (prime is OK on 360) on 360 or ATV, and can't serve music from multiple computers to 360 or Roku.

We can flip that around and say that no one device gives us all of the entertainment (and gaming options) that work best for us. I like to play a few games here and there, so there should be some console. I haven't even bothered to bring in the cable box (it actually only got plugged in long enough to authorize us for XFinity) because I've run out of HDMI ports (there's a blue- ray player in there too, because I'm sure as heck not going to pay Hulu for their buggy service just so we can stream the Criterion Movies, when most are on DVD/BD)...

I like the concepts that MSFT is showing off here. I haven't reviewed the remote music service from MSFT in a while, but last time it lacked the simplicity of the ATV, especially for multiple libraries. If they've got that improved, the ATV is gone. (Having no other real value to us.) If they'd remove the restriction from paying to rent videos on Amazon, the Roku would be gone too. My partner uses all of these devices for her entertainment, and would happily switch to just an Xbox 1 if it does the job well. I'd be happy to have to maintain fewer devices (each with their own problems, let's not get down that path!).

I'm not sure about the source of much of the angst here, but it does sound just about exactly what our household has been looking for.

</comment><comment><USER32> I know the voice features have been available in the Xbox already, but I am really excited about them in the new Xbox. I expect them to be light years beyond on what they are now and key piece of the devices functionality. If it works really well it could open a whole new way of interacting with computers. It could also open the door to voice activated home automation, by training the masses to use voice controlled devices.

</comment><comment><USER33> With WiFi direct, I wonder if this'll finally bring Miracast/WiDi mainstream. Maybe the ability to stream audio and video wirelessly is a niche feature, but for me Airplay is the one thing keeping me on Apple's platform.

</comment><comment><USER34> So this is a Windows-lite PC, cable box, Xbox video game system? It has hdmi in right?

I'm officially old because I do not find this interesting at all. My son will want it, so we will have it, but as a person who buys a lot of tech, I am not seeing the appeal.

I think it is the all-in-one, do-everything approach it Microsoft is taking with this that disinterests me. Why does every company want to be your everything now a days?

<comment><USER35> Normally I'm against do-everything devices, but IMO this is a stroke of genius.

Everything about operating a TV today is _pure pain_. The centerpiece here is an obtuse, 100-button remote that no one fully knows how to use. You use this remote to get at the "mode switcher", which changes you from TV watching mode, to bluray watching mode, to gaming mode, to whatever else you do with your TV.

It's painful, not to mention a lot of people have receivers to handle the audio portion of this. It's like a really, really bad KVM.

The only way to eliminate that pain was to take over all of the above responsibilities, and MS just did that. With any luck this means you will basically never have to touch your TV's god-awful remote ever again, and the terms "Video 1", "Video 2", and "TV" will cease to have any meaning.

<comment><USER36> You're still going have a layer of terrible user interface where you're picking through all the kitchen-junk-drawer full of items that Microsoft has packed into this device. It won't be labeled "Video 1, Aux 1", true, but you'll still have to pick through every time you want to use the system. Probably end up being more of an interface problem, actually.

Power on, wait, skip special offers from Microsoft, no I don't want to update the console today, click to make anti-virus warnings go away, okay, now I can pick whether I want to play games or watch TV, TV, live TV or internet, internet, now pick the Netflix channel, and start watching! Hurray!

Yeah, that's so much better than picking "Video 2" and using the Netflix box.

<comment><USER35> Oh come on, no console - including the 360 - has ever been like that. There has never been an anti-virus, much less one that prompts you at startup. Console software updates are few and far between (twice a year on MS's schedule), not to mention it looks like they're doing more and more in the background.

Nor has Microsoft or Sony ever held up anything so you can watch a special offer. This is just FUD.

Go watch the keynote, they cover all of this. They're betting on voice control lowering the "depth" of the UI. Instead of "TV -> live TV -> Sy Fy -> Star Trek" it's just "go watch Star Trek", ditto for on-demand, ditto for sports, ditto for games even. Everything they showed today indicates single-action-to- final-destination.

<comment><USER37> I can't wait till families start having loud arguments about what show they want to watch, each trying to be louder than the other, so it picks up their voice. This was designed for families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why does it look like a VCR?

<comment><USER39> Box type consoles have always been iconic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Xbox one is more a media center than a vg console itself.

Sadly we're witnessing the second vg crash. No more hardcore gamers, no more preowned games...

It seems that if we want to have a REAL GAMING EXPERIENCE, (this includes fun, creativity, good stories, simple controls) we will need to go back to the past.

Fortunately, 'retrogaming scene' will gather more adepts. =)

<comment><USER26> Eh, there are just more gamers now than there were before so there's _a lot_ of money to be made by targeting the huge mainstream audience.

If you want more interesting games there's no shortage of stuff from indie developers or even AAA devs who are not EA and co. Including almost ridiculous numbers of "new retro" games. That market hasn't shrunk (if anything it's larger) it's just now a smaller proportional piece of an overall larger pie.

Plus if you wait for Steam sales you can get games so cheap (often 50%+ off) that you don't really need preowned games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I guess people still care about t.v.

<comment><USER42> There's a world outside the US. E.g. in most of Europe there are virtually no Netflix or Hulu-like services. Nearly everyone uses a Cable or DVB-T service.

A bit painful, considering that my ISP just announced to upgrade my connection from 120/10 MBit/s to 150/15. The bandwidth is there, but I guess it's hard to make licensing arrangements.

<comment><USER35> Even in the US, even in areas with good enough broadband to stream all your content, people still care about broadcast television because of sports. MS's focus here with ESPN and the NFL is bang-on.

<comment><USER43> " _MS's focus here with ESPN and the NFL is bang-on._ "

I disagree. They managed to partner with the NFL but yet not show any games. Most of the games for my favorite team I still can't watch. Seems really lame to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Shame so many anti MS people on HN that this gets flagged off the front page so quick :/

</comment><comment><USER45> This thing is seriously ugly. Makes me think of the first XBox.

</comment><comment><USER46> You can have two things on the screen at once. Such innovation.

<comment><USER47> For a video game console? Yes. Yes it is. GameFAQ's up right next to the actual game? Control panel where you can control your livestream?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> After seeing the presentations for the WiiU, the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One I think we really another gaming company. Apple or perhaps even a startup.

<comment><USER49> Well, there's Valve who are supposedly developing their 'Steambox'. Hopefully they'll reveal more about that soon given the Sony and MS announcements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wait until Microsoft unveils its first ever XBOX TV.

</comment><comment><USER51> Years ahead, but still can't make a sandwitch!

</comment><comment><USER52> So no XNA replacement?

<comment><USER53> This isn't the talk where I would expect any mention of developer stuff like XNA. It wasn't even core gamer targeted, with such a heavy focus on sports/Call of Duty. This was meant for a wider audience. E3 is the earliest I would expect them to publicly talk about the developer tools.

<comment><USER52> Thx for the friendly response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The other discussion is here.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5744967>

It was up at #3 then went to the second page,strange.

</comment><comment><USER55> Was a brilliant presentation IMO. Maybe Sony's extremely disappointing PS4 event set the bar too low, but anyway this Xbox One announcement gave me goosebumps. The possibilities are endless. Let's see what they have saved for E3.

</comment><comment><USER39> The thing about Xbox 360 not having Blu-ray just made streaming/renting/buying a lot better. Why go to a store when you can just turn the Xbox on and do the same thing. I do want to say that it is a great option for the people who buy Blu-ray discs, but I like the convenience of not being attached to huge, physical disc libraries.</comment>


iPhone X – Not Yet - <AUTHOR> http://prodissues.com/2017/10/iphone-x-not-yet.html <comment><USER2> > If removing apps won't get my phone to better behave, I'm going to do a hard > reset. That will downgrade me to iOS 10 (or even 9), which I hope will be > more usable.

Not true. Apple's servers are no longer signing iOS 10.3.3, it's impossible to downgrade through any means. [http://api.ineal.me/tss/status](http://api.ineal.me/tss/status) [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/04/apple-stops-signing- ios...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/04/apple-stops-signing-ios-10-3-3/)

</comment><comment><USER3> As an Android user I am not sure whether to believe this tired story about how new iOS releases slow down the phone and make you 'have to' upgrade to a new device. I am sure there have been historical precedents where Apple have moved e.g. from 32 to 64 bit and made a tranche of older devices practically unusable. But is this really the situation today?

I think that there will always be those that grumble about progress, e.g. people that complained 'Win 7 slower than Vista', so it is hard to tell. But have Apple upgraded things so that the iphone 6 feels slow and users of the device feel compelled to upgrade? Not wishing to start an opinion based flamewar but, as an Android user seeing all as well in Apple land, I would like to know if there really is a performance issue on iOS 11 / iphone 6.

<comment><USER4> I can attest first hand that iOS11 slowed my iPhone to a crawl. We're talking multiple tens of seconds lag with basic operations like opening the camera, opening the keyboard, etc. The same is true for everyone I know personally who has used iOS11 (a head-count of about seven so far).

This really isn't progress. iOS11 introduced practically nothing in the way of improvements or new features, but instead has made a lot of devices practically unusable.

<comment><USER5> Multiple tens of seconds to open the camera??? I'm on a 6S and have had no issues with it.

My old iPad Air slowed a bit, but never into multiple tens of seconds. Maybe 3-4 seconds to enter multitasking view (which is bad enough, don't get me wrong).

What phone are you on? Have you tried a factory reset?

<comment><USER6> I also find it difficult to believe that 8/8 people have a 20+ second delay opening the keyboard - that just sounds nigh-on impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really hard to fathom how Apple fucked up iOS 11 so badly. I feel exactly the same as this guy, but I have an iPhone 6s.

It's slow, the battery drains, the text is big and ugly (Messages, Inbox, Chats), the goddamn Calculator app is broken. And somehow the usual retort to this is "Have you tried disabling blah blah blah or doing so so so". I don't _want_ to dick around with my phone. It worked fine, now it's broke.

Literally the only reason for me to upgrade would be so I can have a phone that's exactly the same as this one, except it's missing a headphone jack and costs more. That's hardly a value proposition.

Jesus, Apple. WTF?

<comment><USER8> The one regression I've been experiencing is the wifi. I have pretty much unlimited 4G, but a very bad wifi connection in my bedroom.

Because of Apple's silly disabled-but-not-really wifi and bluetooth, my wifi keeps switching to on, seemingly randomly, but probably whenever it loses and then reacquires my home wifi.

As a result I have to keep turning wifi off in settings, which is a bit too rigorous, or I have to keep remembering to turn off wifi in the bedroom.

I can't help but feel there's a use-case myopia at Apple that, for whatever reason, is starting to become problematic. For me, at least, and I think I'm pretty much their ideal customer (aside from not having a wife and kids).

<comment><USER9> I use a iOS VPN app called Speedify, that simultaneously bonds wifi/cellular channels into a single channel, ostensibly for speed sake. It seems to handle situations where either wifi or cellular is flakey, and even has a redundant mode, where all traffic is sent via both channels simultaneously. Redundant mode is not fast, but it is rock solid reliable. I use it if I want to make sure I don't drop a VOIP call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've created an account on HN just to talk about how bad iOS 11 has been.

I've tried iOS 11 on - a 6s plus, 7 plus (mine and a friend's), 8 plus, an iPad Air 2. I have to experiment with quite a few devices for work related reasons. The 7 plus had the Intel variant.

The battery has been just bad, just horribly bad on all but one 8 plus.

I've never experienced such a poor quality update from Apple.

Apple is quite stubborn when it comes to UX choices, but the Wifi and Bluetooth toggle issue is just inexcusable. I have a great LTE plan but poor Wifi in the bedroom. One night, I forgot to turn off the Wifi from the settings app. I was habituated to toggling it on or off from control centre. I woke up in the morning and saw the battery had gone down by 30%. The device was at full charge at night. The phone kept trying to reconnect to the Wifi all night and ended up draining 30%.

I live with Apple's design/UX choices which they force upon the users because it usually just works out in the end. But this is just stupid! I have never been this aggravated with an iOS update.

It's silly changes for the sake of change. That's it.

I'm so hopping mad right now with the update that I'm considering Android again. I do not want to pay premium prices for such horrible software quality.

I've no intention of buying any high end Android as they loose value quite fast. Maybe a cheap, sub 300 USD phone. I don't care for updates at that price. I'll just swap the phone every year if I want the update.

</comment><comment><USER11> No matter what Apple says: battery life on my iPhone plummeted after I installed iOS 11. Speed went down a bit, but that was you be expected. Hoping 11.1 will address the battery issue.

As far as I know, a factory reset won't downgrade you to a previous version and it's nearly impossible to do so.

Obviously yes, you don't need the fanciest, latest iPhone in most cases. Mine is a 5s, and I may upgrade to SE eventually.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER12> iOS 11 has been such a disaster for my iPhone 7 that I'm moving away from Apple altogether. The phone is full of UI glitches, unreliable, has horrible battery life, Bluetooth connections fail constantly, and it's so generally slow it can't even reliably play a pre-downloaded podcast while opening an app without it stuttering badly. They've put out some bad software updates in the past, but this one is pretty inexcusable especially when you consider it took away as many useful features from the iPhone (3D Touch app switching, Notification Centre from Reachability) as it added.

<comment><USER13> Yep, same here. It's a dumpster fire. I just ordered a Pixel 2 XL. Fingers crossed...

<comment><USER14> Same here. I've got Apple phones, iPads, MacBook and iMac. Have had Apple phones since the 3G. This update is the final straw, my phone has gone from good to unusable. Siri takes so long to process commands now that I've stopped using it. Everything is so slooow. I just preordered a Pixel 2 XL as well.

<comment><USER15> I usually quite like Google's flagships, but I can't justify the price any more. My Nexus 6P's battery only lasts two hours nowadays, as it dies at 40 or 50%. I don't want a phone that costs a small fortune and barely lasts two years, especially one that doesn't have a headphone jack.

Immediate updates are nice, but the downsides are too big. I'm looking for another phone model I can switch to, maybe the LG V30 or some Xiaomi phone.

<comment><USER16> Similar situation here, I just upgraded after my Nexus 5 finally started dying (random reboots and only a few hours battery life). I considered the Pixel & Pixel 2, but the price made me think twice. More importantly, I wanted a headphone jack & wireless charging, which my Nexus 5 both had.

I ended up getting a Galaxy S8, since it has both the headphone jack & wireless & also a microSD slot. I love the hardware, and I'm mostly happy, though Bixby & the Samsung Apps are infuriating (protip: don't create a Samsung account!) Switching to Google Launcher has helped, but I wish the phone was pure Android.

At the old Nexus price points, the Samsung A5 [1] looks really nice. If it had wireless charging I probably would have bought it instead.

[1] [http://www.samsung.com/au/smartphones/galaxy-a5-a520f/SM-A52...](http://www.samsung.com/au/smartphones/galaxy-a5-a520f/SM-A520FZKAXSA/)

<comment><USER15> Hmm, interesting, thank you. My main problem with Samsung is the crapware, which pretty much guarantees that the phone will always be way behind on updates. Maybe Android One is a good alternative?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of the iOS updates I've used, iOS 11 has been the worst one by far. I know some of the issues are due to my phone, but there are visual glitches, broken components (playing music won't actually show in the Control Center until restarting phone), messed up keyboard inputs, poor battery life, and poor performance in general that seemingly are software only. I'm almost certain that they took more experienced engineers away to other projects and left the less experienced ones with iOS, and possibly downsized the team, based on the seemingly obvious issues. I'm also sure they were testing so hard for iPhone X that they didn't test for older devices so much.

At least the 10th anniversary has passed, so I'm hopeful for next year actually being a good iOS update again.

For the people who down voted me, why?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been using the 5s since it came out(love the form factor), and always update iOS immediately. Have never had any problems. IDK where this need to buy a new phone comes from. If you like your phone, you can surely stick with it

</comment><comment><USER19> Battery life on iPhone 8 is awesome. THe speed and overall smoothness of how the phone runs is great too.

The iPhone 8 isn't a huge leap in innovation but in UX its a marked improvement even over from my iPHone 7.

</comment><comment><USER20> Factory reset to iOS 11. Apple's update system is like lottery. I factory reset when updating on Mac and iPhone.

<comment><USER21> For a lot of people, including my own experience with multiple devices i have, this didn't help. If it did, it maybe made a 10% difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I don't like the conditioning of buying a new iPhone just because mine is 2 > years old, and want out of the Apple marketing machine.

Amen. Stay strong.</comment>


How to send email via Gmail using Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://21ccw.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-send-email-via-gmail-using.html

<comment><USER2> Better not hand-deliver your own mail, folks. Just use your system's MTA to take care of the mail delivery and call out to something like send_email ($to, $subject, $body) that sends mail as the Erlang process' user. Postfix will let you use gmail as a relay host with: relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587</comment>


California drought, visualized with open data - <AUTHOR> http://cida.usgs.gov/ca_drought/ <comment><USER2> This presentation format was terrible, which is a shame with so much interesting data to present. Kudos to the data research, but please consider re-publishing in a sane format.

<comment><USER3> I agree totally, I switched to FF to see if that would help but sadly it doesn't. The data is awesome, but presentation really makes it impossible to see.

I wish the data were near real time, I knew this was a bad drought, but what I was hoping to see was what impact the last few rains have made on the supply.

<comment><USER4> Agree too - so the reservoir data goes up and down but I don't know what that's supposed to be illustrating, same with the other stuff like snow packs.

I hoped to see something that would make me think 'wow that's serious' but it doesn't seem clear to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting that irrigation is the largest use of water at ~60%, but livestock and industrial are only 0.5% and 1.5% respectively. I would have thought livestock and industrial use would be larger. Is this distribution of water common in other states?

<comment><USER6> Probably not. Agriculture in the western US relies on irrigation due to water scarcity, but places like Iowa have the opposite problem. They actually shunt water off of their fields. Also, losses of agricultural water due to evapotranspiration are higher in CA than in a state like WA due to the hotter, drier climate in CA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bummer, data ends right before last major storms rolled in. I would like to see how this data has changed over the course of the last week.

<comment><USER8> USGS Water Year runs from October 1 to September 30 (of the next year.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_year](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_year)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can find realtime data from LA Aqueduct sensors over at [http://api.thirsty.la](http://api.thirsty.la)

I always like to plug my own scrappy scraper here when water issues come up in hopes that someone else might do something more exciting with the data.

Note that the samples are a couple days old - their sensor network sometimes goes down, and I get the opportunity to correspond with the kindly LADWP IT staff every so often.

</comment><comment><USER10> Permaculture & other forms of sustainable agriculture really needs to be a part of this discussion. Natural ecosystems retain water on the land and increase rainfall.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A)

The east coast has lots of people & lots of trees. California has lots of people and not many trees.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why does scrolling the page change the timeline? _confused_

</comment><comment><USER4> 'Firefox is recommended for the best viewing experience' weird

</comment><comment><USER12> This does not work well on mobile

<comment><USER13> It didn't work well on desktop either. I can't wait until the "navigate to different things as the user scrolls" trend dies—this would have been SO much more effective without that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Argh, this page is _terrible_. I do _not_ give you permission to hijack my scrolling mechanism. Stop it. Stop it now.</comment>