Mini antimatter accelerator could rival the likes of the Large Hadron Collider - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809112435.htm <comment><USER2> I've always imagined that the adjective was needed because under a desk somewhere, perhaps pedal powered, was a "small hadron collider"

Robert E. A. Harvey, Comment on The Register, 28th December 2011

Prescient!

<comment><USER3> There are lots of small hadron colliders. Hadrons are just composite particles made up of quarks and held together by the strong force. This includes "exotic" particles like mesons and high energy baryons, but it also includes the "mundane" baryons such as protons and neutrons. So technically any proton accelerator is a hadron collider. Which includes the first cyclotron, a proton accelerator built in 1932 that was only 27 inches across, a very "small hadron collider" indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Colliding electron and positron beams could have implications in fundamental > physics. For example, they could create a higher rate of Higgs bosons than > the LHC can, allowing physicists to better study its properties.

Didn't the Large Electron-Positron Collider _fail_ to detect evidence of the Higgs Boson?

<comment><USER5> No, it succeeded in confirming the existence of the Higgs boson. In fact, that's largely the reason Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.

<comment><USER6> LEP[1] did no such thing, you're talking about the LHC.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Electron%E2%80%93Positron_Collider)

<comment><USER7> Wow, I misread the OPs comment as the LHC also and thought I was experiencing the mandela effect haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a variant of plasma wakefield accelerator, or something else?

If so, staging is an issue from what I understand. Even at 100GeV/m, you'll need many stages to reach interesting TeV territory, so this is a crucial aspect if it wants to beat the LHC.

Some relevant discussion on PhysicsForums: [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron- wak...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/two-stage-electron-wakefield- acceleration.948303/)

<comment><USER8> I read the pdfs but didn't dig in too much, however the main difference seems to be the generation of a beam of positrons instead of electrons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't find it in the article (perhaps I overlooked it) -- but what do they mean by 'mini'? Especially considering the LHC has a circumference of 16 miles...

<comment><USER6> They mention 100GeV/m gradients in the paper. If you could get that for 150m you'd have 15 TeV, comparable in energy to LHC (~14 TeV).

As I understand it, you can't just build a pipe and get the full gradient for X meters. Rather you build a (relatively) small device which has the 100GeV/m gradient, and then you'd glue many such devices back-to-back. So you get some overhead from the interconnects etc. Still, with 10x overhead it's "only" one mile.

The other point is that not all applications need TeV scale. For such applications maybe just a few stages would be sufficient. In which case it might be room-size or less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm really curious about the spacecraft propulsion applications of this.

<comment><USER11> I was about to laugh at this commenter for watching too much Star Trek but decided to read a little. Turns out Robert Forward did some work on this and it's not so bad.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281](https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2281)

<comment><USER10> Ion drives are just particle accelerators so why not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found.

>It is possible this article may have been removed after being published.

I can't seem to find an archive either.

<comment><USER6> This is the paper the article was based on/linked to: [https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...](https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301)

PDF is surprisingly freely available.

<comment><USER13> It's true that many physics journals aren't open access, but essentially every paper written since 1992 is available on the arXiv, so not that big of restriction.

Incidentally, the full text of the article is available in HTML too, which might be easier on mobile.

[https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelB...](https://journals.aps.org/prab/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.081301#fulltext)

<comment><USER6> Sure, just refreshing not having to go the extra step and find it on arXiv :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Article has been removed?

</comment><comment><USER15> Explain it to me like I'm 5 please?

<comment><USER16> Computer simulations (without actual experiments) of improved advanced techniques to produce a "shower" of electrons and positrons by hitting a metal target with a laser, which are then accelerated and confined with a second laser driving plasma waves.

The figures in the article, with lasers reflected by mirrors and particle beams going through the mirrors, suggest a very small but decently powerful single stage accelerator; using this technique as a building block for a large accelerrator isn't discussed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There seems to be a push lately in UK media of running newstories about "making Britain Great again", just last week we had a story about a new spaceport, this week there is stories without source about EU caving in to all brexiteer demands and so on

All while the country is teetering on edge and could drag down its neighbours into another recession (selfmade this time), the NHS and local authorities remain in crisis, pound is weakening and inflation keeps going up.

It sucks being stuck sort of speak between 2 of your good neighbours undergoing a mental breakdown and self harming

<comment><USER18> I would say there is push lately to picture UK situation in very black colors and I believe many of those claims are not really justified.

Firstly, inflation is not going up, at least I couldn't find any evidence of that.

Secondly, looking at the UK trade partners (for instance here [http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top- import-p...](http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import- partners/)) I see that UK has trade deficit will all EU countries, given the fact that UK has well develop economy they can in fact gain on leaving UK and relaying on bilateral deals (and I guess those who are bashing UK most will be first in the queue to start trading with them - Germany approach to Nord Stream that can be potentially dangerous for EU energy safety shows that when it comes to money, EU "unity" is thrown away quickly).

Third, weakening pound is actually good for UK, the goods they produce are cheaper, so event if imported goods are more expensive at some point this will come to equilibrium.

Fourth, UK has still hidden gems like tax havens here and there, including the one at the very center of London - quite convenient for all the rich people who, accidentally, have also a lot of political power and surely they would not like UK to be hurt too much.

The only danger I see is that Scotland might try to gain independence and walk away with the oil taken from the North See, this would shrink UK domestic market and could indeed do some harm.

<comment><USER19> >I see that UK has trade deficit will all EU countries... they can in fact gain on leaving...

This is an absurd fantasy. If trade deficits on their own made you poorer, the UK and US would have been reduced to third world status decades ago. The Uk has very low unemployment, there just isn't a free labour pool available to move into manufacturing. Hands up anyone from the UK here who wants to give up their job to go on to a production line, or wants that for their children? Forcing people out of better paid more valuable jobs into low end manufacturing, driving up costs for UK consumers, to serve some mercantilist daydream won't make the UK any richer.

<comment><USER20> > there just isn't a free labour pool available to move into manufacturing

Does the government care about manufacturing? They closed the mines and moved towards a "service economy" last I heard..

> who wants to give up their job to go on to a production line, or wants that > for their children? Forcing people out of better paid more valuable jobs > into

There are northern towns that would love those jobs. Their children are currently at lidl checkout counters and behind pub bars.

<comment><USER19> So we're going to close all the Lidls and pubs? You're not making any sense. By definition those people are already employed and whatever happened in manufacturing or any other sector, those jobs would still need to be done.

<comment><USER20> Maybe those jobs would pay more if there weren't 4 people applying to each role - enough to buy more options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could you get it in a handgun form factor? Asking for a friend.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone explain why using antielectrons instead of electrons means the accelerator can be made smaller ?</comment>


Mozilla not commenting on whether or not their Google deal has been renewed - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/firefox-faces-uncertain-future-as-google-deal-apparently-ends/4241

<comment><USER2> From Marco's post

> Now, it's a bloated, slow, unstable monster that's often a pain in this web > developer's ass.

Firefox needs its own Firefox spin-off as Mozilla did back in the day.</comment>


Apple Maps will remember where you parked your car - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/15/apple-maps-will-remember-where-you-parked-your-car/?ncid=rss <comment><AUTHOR> But will it work in multi-level parking garages? I haven't found one that does yet.</comment>


Tips for first time server rack buyer - <AUTHOR> https://tuananh.net/2020/04/01/tips-for-first-time-rack-buyer/ <comment><USER2> And think about how much power you need.</comment>


Three Radio Theremin: Convert Old Radios into a Theremin - <AUTHOR> http://yurisuzuki.com/works/three-radio-theremin/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting, and I was curious if anyone has created similar instruments and could share them here.

Other references: 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin#cite_note-67](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin#cite_note-67)</comment>


PostgreSQL/FreeBSD performance and scalability on a 40-core machine [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.kib.kiev.ua/kib/pgsql_perf_v2.0.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is an updated version of the report originally discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956796)

Some memory debugging options were inadvertently left enabled in the original investigation. This report covers the testing redone with the diagnostics disabled.

</comment><comment><USER3> This paper is a tour de force. Well worth the read.

Two things I wonder about:

1\. Is the extra overhead of the fast path worth incurring on every call for most use cases or should you only stall with a Postgres system?

2\. What were the false starts in his analysis? How did he bail from them? What are the insurmountable bottlenecks?

<comment><USER4> I haven't looked at the patches, but it seems unlikely that the checks for the fast path will add significant overhead to calls that aren't on the fast path. The fast path work should apply to other programs that use shared memory in the same fashion: large shared memory allocations, without a backing store, accessed by many processes across many processors.

The lock reduction work in the buffer cache and page queues should apply more generally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Section 6 is an interesting incidental discovery of a performance regression in the scheduler due to the gcc->llvm switch (a missed inlining opportunity), which when fixed should provide a speedup on quite a bit of high-thread-count code even if it doesn't otherwise hit any of the performance problems postgres had.

</comment><comment><USER6> A comparison of Linux & DragonflyBSD to FreeBSD [1]

I'm a huge user and fan of FrerBSD.

Given the remarkably poor performance of FreeBSD, I hope the OP link and the link below bring focused attention to freebsd to resolve these bottlenecks.

[1] [http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20...](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20140310/4250b961/attachment-0002.pdf)

<comment><USER2> This investigation starts from the tested in the DragonFly report. You can see the shape of the red line in the graph on page 13 ("stock") is equivalent to the DragonFly report.

<comment><USER7> The graph from this report and the DragonFly report are a bit different in their shapes (and the number used to produce them). For example, look at the dropoff in TPS from 10 threads to 15 threads for the "stock" kernel in both reports -- the dropoff in this report is much more significant. My guess is that it's because DFly's report used a 20-core machine running 40 threads, versus this report which used a 40-core machine running 40 threads; however, their machine is using Ivy Bridge processors vs. the Westmere processors in the FreeBSD machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got 24 core machine from Ebay for very reasonable price. I learned a lot and improved my product significantly, money well spend.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, would you care to elaborate on the machine and what you learned?

<comment><USER8> HP Proliant 585 G2 from 2007. It has 4x6 AMD Opterons 8xxx with DDR2 etc. I guess it is no longer cost effective to run those 24/7, but they are still very powerful.

Old CPUs without power savings features are great for testing multi-threaded applications. Modern CPU might decide to switch-off some parts during test, rendering result inconclusive.

This beasts power requirement looks scary, but with some care it runs in ordinary house. I use separate AC circuit usually used for air-conditioning. It is very loud (like hoover). I usually run it about 30 minutes a day.

I work on concurrent Java stuff. Fork-join, CAS, low latency databases etc. I mostly use this machine to verify things I read somewhere. I found that about 60% of things I read about concurrency is wrong. For example messaging (actors) are not really that great compared to well designed threads with locks & CAS.

Right now I want to replace memory allocator with global lock (linearly scales up to 6 cores) with CAS version, which should scale up to 16 cores.

<comment><USER5> Interesting way of finding something to do with those! I've also been intrigued by the old Proliants on eBay, because the prices seem quite cheap initially: $250-400 for massively multicpu things with tons of RAM. But I've been scared off each time by a mixture of the weight and power usage. One listing even specified that delivery would be made to your loading dock (sadly I do not have a loading dock), although that was for a big Itanium machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
       > 3 Samsung SSD 840 in single-volume RAID-1 configuration.

A 3-way mirrored RAID? That seems like an odd setup, especially for a benchmark. I guess (?) reads could be faster with an additional drive, but the system had 1 TB of memory so would pgbench create a working set beyond that anyway?

<comment><USER11> I've been using 3 mirrored drives for the last few years because I want extra protection.

Think about it, one drive suddenly dies and you need to resilver/resync a new drive. What if there are some bad blocks on the existing drive that's left?

With ZFS and 3 mirrored drives, these bad blocks would most likely be healed during the resilver operation.

<comment><USER12> Aren't bad blocks detected during scrubbing? I assumed scrubbing every two weeks (as I do) should reveal read problems before any drives fail, at least in the common case. Maybe there's something important I'm missing?

<comment><USER13> No, you're not missing anything. Scrubbing catches it all. Seems your parent is concerned about errors between last scrub and a failure.

This is why I have a backup system that I zfs send to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WIPO boss: the Web would have been better if it was patented - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/08/wipo-boss-the-web-would-have-been-better-if-it-was-patented-and-its-users-had-to-pay-license-fees.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think that the web would have even been patentable. HTTP is essentially FTP without persistent sessions. HTML was based on SGML. And hypertext existed before it was used in HTML (1960s). So there seems to be too much prior art there for it to be patentable.

Also, the demise of Gopher, an early competitor of the web, gives us a hint of what might have happened if the web had been patented. From Wikipedia's Gopher article:

"In February 1993, the University of Minnesota announced that it would charge licensing fees for the use of its implementation of the Gopher server. As a consequence of this, some users were concerned that a licensing fee would also be charged for independent implementations. Users were scared away from Gopher technology, to the advantage of the Web, which CERN disclaimed ownership of. The University of Minnesota later re-licensed its Gopher software under the GNU GPL."

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)>

<comment><USER3> Did you ever bother to read the HTTP vs. the FTP specs? "Remotely close" rings any bell?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. You see some asinine things on the internet from time to time but thats in a category all of its own.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well this isn't inflammatory political choir-preachery that should be flagged.</comment>


Powerset's Erlang-based clustering technology is now open source - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/KirinDave/fuzed/tree/master

<comment><USER2> I'm the architect for Fuzed. I thought I'd explain how powerset uses it production for the main site.

Fuzed sits in front of processes that run Ruby, and are bound to PARC's parsing and grammar analysis libraries. These self-identify to the system and each report their own unique API (the services are heterogenous in both function and version).

Every time you fire a query at powerset, it is sent via JSON-RPC to the frontend of our internal fuzed instance, which then does query analysis before forwarding it to the part of the system that actually does search retrieval. For every one query fired at the powerset frontend, our fuzed cluster takes 2-3 hits, so it has to scale pretty well. So far it's performed admirably even under load. The Erlang runtime is proving to be extremely stable.

<comment><USER3> Hey. I started playing with Fuzed after the Railsconf presentation and I have to say that I'm impressed. I got a 10 node instance running in no time and it was nicely balanced. I'll be submitting some patches in the future before I fork it on Github. Major kudos to you guys for releasing it! Now with Fuzed and PoolPartyRb, there's no more excuses for not being able to scale easily.

PS: The headline of this post is a bit misleading since Fuzed is tied to Rails as well (Chassis binding)... not just Erlang.

<comment><USER2> Well, it is and it isn't. Powerset doesn't use the rails functionality at all right now.

P.S., we want more language and framework bindings. I have about half a mzscheme erlang binding done (Erlenmeyer on my github) because I'd love to see arc bindings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been playing with this for a couple of days now on EC2 - I was able to spin up a minimal stack in a few hours from nothing and just keep adding nodes to make it keep being able to take more traffic - it's pretty sweet.

I've packaged a couple of EC2 AMIs (32 and 64 bit versions) that I'll make public in a day or two and a script that uses Net::SSH to automate most of the spinning process. I just finished the video for a screencast on this and I went from zero to a 9 node cluster that could serve 300 req/sec on a non- cached Rails app in development mode, all in about 12 minutes.

It really is fun to play with - now to find a reason to use it...

</comment><comment><USER5> I have one question about Fuzed. (Turned out to be a few questions, oops.)

What happens when a Master node dies? (Or, say it's EC2 instance kicks the bucket, rare but possible. Or in the case of a non-EC2 deployment the hardware just fails.)

My limited understanding of Erlang leads me to think the unhandled death of a Master node is the death of all the nodes in the cluster.

Further, I understand this does not have to be. I remember there being some way for another node to respond to the death of another node, handle that death, and let things continue along.

Is anything like this set up in Fuzed? Would this be handled by having multiple master nodes for a cluster, and they watch each other?

Would there be any difference in setting up Fuzed to handle the death of the Master node process and the disappearance of the Master node instance?

<comment><USER2> I have a few answers for you:

When a master node dies, all the worker nodes go into a hibernation state, pinging the master's previous hostname until they can reconnect to that host, and then they reregister their resources with the master's resource_fountain.

One of the next major features for fuzed is handling the master as a single point of failure. We're exploring two options currently:

1\. When a master dies the cluster can re-elect a new master on one of the machines in the cloud and everyone re-registers their assets. This process assumes that master death is relatively rare, and so minimizes the resources necessary for redundant operation at the cost of a slight time gap in service while the master is re-elected and resources are re-registered to it.

2\. Clusters can create numerous masters which all maintain identical state. When one dies, another master will move forward and become the primary master. This approach requires more hardware in the cloud, but even if the master faults are common they don't allow for a gap of service.

As for the difference between process death and machine death, yes there are differences. If you're interested in how we handle it, please check out master_beater.erl (great name, huh?), which is a gen_fsm that worker nodes use to eagerly reconnect to the master. Also check out the fuzed.ap and fuzed_supervisor.erl. Erlang provides very good resources for handling this.</comment></comment>


Filtering Test For Business Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://abardapart.com/filtering-test-business-ideas

<comment><USER2> #1 should become something that he can add unique value to, based on experience, expertise, or skills.

If you reverse the order it would be: solve a real customer problem, that they are willing to pay for, where you add unique to the solution.</comment>


What's the best book to read about JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> I am an old Java programmer and while I occasionally change Angular directives or play with Vue, I have little knowledge about the inner workings of JavaScript. I am afraid that most JavaScript books are outdated in a world ruled by transpilers and linters or they lay out the knowledge in a 'how-to' manner instead of explaining how-it-works. <comment><USER2> Not books per se, but you are probably interested in frontend specific stuff, as you mentioned Angular and Vue. (Not directly inner workings, but somewhat linked):

Coding Style: As a quick reference and to learn about some bad patterns (and how to avoid them), I can recommend the airbnb style guide [1]. They also link to eslint rules, which always have a reasoning why a rule is considered, e.g. the no new object rule [2]. A really interesting thing in the code style corner is prettier, which auto-formats source code pretty [3].

References: The Mozilla Developer Reference Manual, e.g. for String.match [4]. It also has explanations for browser APIs. To check if you already can use a certain browser feature, I recommend caniuse [5]

Now, as you also mentioned your an "old Java Programmer". I think it's quite interesting what goes on the JavaScript space and which features are ~~stolen~~ borrowed from which language. Good search queries to understand the language and it's features (especially the new ones) would be

\- Javascript Classes vs Prototype

\- Javascript Decorators

\- Javascript Arrow Functions (Lambda)

\- Node.JS Streams

\- Reactive Extensions

\- Flow vs. TypeScript

Well I hope that some of that info is usable for you, if you have any detail questions, please just comment :)

[1]: [https://github.com/airbnb/javascript](https://github.com/airbnb/javascript)

[2]: [http://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-new- object.html](http://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-new-object.html)

[3]: [https://github.com/prettier/prettier](https://github.com/prettier/prettier)

[4]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/match)

[5]: [https://caniuse.com/](https://caniuse.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Four major suggestions:

\- "Eloquent Javascript" is an excellent introduction to JS from the ground up: [http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)

\- The Mozilla Developer Network docs are a comprehensive set of references for the JS language and web APIs: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript)

\- Dr. Axel Rauschmayer's books are the best "full reference" books for all of JS syntax and behavior: [http://exploringjs.com/](http://exploringjs.com/)

\- Kyle Simpson's "You Don't Know JS" is a deep dive into the way the JS language works: [https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know- JS](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS)

I also have links to some additional meta-resources as part of my React/Redux links list: [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links/blob/master/javascript-resources.md) .

</comment><comment><USER4> Kyle Simpson's books.

His books transformed my understanding of Javascript. He basically bursted into the chest of Javascript, grabbed its beating heart, and then pulled it out and showed me (just like in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom").

His series "You Don't Know JS" gives you a profound understanding of the language. It really teaches you why JS does all of the weird things it does.

I wasted a lot of time by not reading those books earlier.

<comment><USER4> Also "Professional Javascript for Web Developers" by Zakas is a pretty classic text too. Gives you a ton of background on Javascript, not as much as Simpson though (but the alternate perspectives are useful). Where this book really helps is by explaining how the browser works. Things like the DOM and "document" and "window" along with the HTML5 APIs aren't Javascript but you need to know them as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me, _JavaScript: The Definitive Guide_ is worth having because it explains and documents vanilla JavaScript. In particular, I found its separation of the abstractions:

1\. JavaScript as programming language

2\. JavaScript as a browser API

particularly helpful in so far as it lets me evaluate information in blogs and StackOverflow answers and elsewhere. Often these two different meanings of 'JavaScript' are interwoven and it created confusion for me.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also, Crockford:

[http://javascript.crockford.com/](http://javascript.crockford.com/)

And be sure to check out WebAssembly which allows you to compile bytecode (wasm) and run in a browser VM:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAssembly/Concept...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/WebAssembly/Concepts)

Good luck!</comment>


How many squares can you see? - <AUTHOR> http://www.puremango.co.uk/2012/08/how-many-squares-can-you-see/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the "how many squares are there on a Go board" puzzle: <http://senseis.xmp.net/?HowManySquaresOnAGoBoard>

Hint: This time it's _less_ than 18*18.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in other people's methodology and working out.

I got 40, but I'd be interested to see why other people discounted things that I counted as squares. (Unless they just didn't see them.)

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure the biggest "gotcha" for people is squares consisting of multiple smaller squares. Unless you've encountered problems like this before, it's not intuitive to consider the 2x2 or 3x3 squares (and they might even miss the 4x4).

This iteration of the problem is more interesting because of the two inner squares. It simultaneously makes you think you figured it out too early (I got the inner squares AND the tinier squares they were made up of! That must have been the trick!), and suggests the larger problem you might be missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The correct answer, at least for me, is 18.

If the question had instead been "how many squares are in the image", the answer would have been bigger.

<comment><USER6> Well I certainly see one square right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most people go through life on instinct, first impressions and use heuristics to guide them, and the strategies invariably let them down. Computer scientists, the minority, are obsessive compulsive with things like correct answers to problems and procedures.

This is what makes many accomplished computer scientists seem a bit odd. We use massive amounts of energy to pay attention to the tiniest details and making sure an answer resonates with all known available information.

If you are not careful, paying attention to such remote details gets you to miss the point of the exercise, to socialize and have fun. There is no prize for getting the answer right.

What I gather from this is that 10% of people are abnormally obsessed with being right about every statement, and 90% are not. If one who got the right answer worked hard to correct the others, the others would say: "sheesh, what a nerd, I didn't come on facebook to work!". I came to socialize.

<comment><USER4> I think you're reading too much into it - the point actually _is_ the puzzle. Some people find it really fun to have their mind challenged, even in small ways like this. It's the same idea as picking up a sudoku every day.

The reason that such a low percentage of people got this right is probably the most obvious one: Only those who have a math background (so that they encountered actual problems like this), or who have a natural impulse to be a little OCD about obtaining and verifying the answer, will be likely to get it right the first time. That doesn't mean that both they and those who got it wrong can't have fun with it.</comment></comment>


Google shuts down Amazon unionization website - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/05/23534490/google-shuts-down-amazon-unionization-website <comment><USER3> The union group may have good cause to sue Google for defamation. Google has the right to terminate their use of Google services. But for Google to say that unionization information violates their terms of service [1] may be defamatory. Nothing in the terms of service prohibits this.

On top of that, Google's action may violate the National Labor Relations Act.[2] This could be construed as collusion between employers to violate the rights of workers to organize. Google has a record of colluding with other employers to violate labor law, from the famous "anti-poaching agreement".[3] So Google could have a hard time in court over this, since a pattern of illegal anti-labor activity has already been established.

[1] [https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.htm...](https://www.google.com/intl/en/sites/help/program_policy.html) [2] [https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations- act](https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act) [3] [http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach- order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

<comment><USER4> With perhaps the rare exception for specific kinds of discrimination, can't Google pretty much terminate use of it's services to anyone, for any reason? Assuming they aren't paid customers, it's not like Google has a contractual obligation with said group. Of course these sorts of douche moves reflect poorly on a company and people may choose to boycott or campaign against in response, but that's about it.

<comment><USER3> This is a specific kind of discrimination. Labor organizing is one of the specific kinds of activity protected by law.

<comment><USER5> Sure. There are things that _Amazon_ can't do to interfere with organizing at Amazon. I would be surprised to learn the law covers third parties.

<comment><USER3> It's an issue involving third parties if the third party colluded. If there was any communication between Amazon and Google in this matter, that would be a problem.

The NLRB has recently been deciding cases involving employee criticism of employers in social media.[1] "The focus of many of these recent rulings has been the protection of the right of employees to communicate with their coworkers about their terms and conditions of employment. Indeed, the NLRB has increasingly defined the contours of this right expansively." There are lawyers who take on such cases.[2]

[1] [http://www.postschell.com/site/files/post__schell__nlrb_arti...](http://www.postschell.com/site/files/post__schell__nlrb_article__kate_kleba.pdf) [2] [http://employee-rights-atty.com/the-censor-he-has-a-face- and...](http://employee-rights-atty.com/the-censor-he-has-a-face-and-he-is- us/)

<comment><USER5> Neither of those address third parties. They both involve relations between employers and employees. Even if Amazon did somehow convince Google to take the site down, there are plenty of other avenues for employees to communicate. You would have a very hard time selling this in court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't very clear to me how google could "shut down" a site. So I checked the archive of the site in the wayback machine, linked in the article. Here's the url:

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

So they were running on Google site's. The site violated _that_ TOS. While I don't know the particulars, this seems like less of a story than if Google had somehow wiped an ordinary domain from search results.

<comment><USER7> What part of the TOS did they violate?

<comment><USER8> There's this from [1]:

"Google may also stop providing Services to you, or add or create new limits to our Services at any time."

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/)

<comment><USER9> Yes, of course there's an ass-covering provision in there that says they _can_ shut you down at any time, with no recourse.

We'd still like to know _why_ they did so, in this case.

<comment><USER10> They were advocating for the interests of labor over the interests of large high tech companies. Any success that group attains against Amazon would also damage Google's interests.

<comment><USER11> Why has this been downvoted? Remember all the stories we've heard about Google refusing to give earned bonuses to employees who shared their salary information? What about the google exec who was blacklisted for the offhand comment that software engineers should probably unionize? We've seen plenty of evidence on HN of this sentiment. Though Google today might have changed its views.

<comment><USER12> Probably because we have no idea why Google shut down the site - they're not always clear and it's not always obvious.

Stating that Google shut this particular site down because 'they were advocating for the interests of labor over the interests of large high tech companies' is long-jumping to a completely unsupported conclusion.

<comment><USER11> That makes sense--the comment wasn't speculative, and we do not know for sure. Given the history though it might very well be true.

<comment><USER12> It might. I don't think it passes the Occam's Razor test, though - <USER2> Google, I'm more inclined to go with 'an algorithm did something automatically somewhere.'

<comment><USER13> I don't know about Google, but many companies automatically block any resource that receives X number of DMCA or abuse letters.

While a human being looks at it; they just put up a generic "this blank has been blocked for terms of service violations".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article seems stale - the site is working again: [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/) .The link in the article is a bit deceptive: It's not to the site, it's directly to an error message.

Did someone here verify that the site ever actually down, or was this a cool publicity stunt?

<comment><USER15> The site was definitely down a few hours go with a terse message about it breaking "terms of service".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is the site that was disabled, as it was on Jan. 18 on archive.org: [https://web.archive.org/web/20160118052937/http://sites.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160118052937/http://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

"Amazon has a management abuse problem. This was made clear in the August article by the New York Times. Even worse is that Amazon is in denial about this problem and claims that all employees should report their management problems to HR or to Jeff Bezos himself. This site documents all of the cases where Amazon managers have mistreated their employees and escalating only made it worse and never helped the employees deal with their bad managers.

Amazon is a great company for its customers. It's about time that it became a great company for its really hard working employees as well.

To add your story to this site, email theFACEofAmazon @ gmail.com or anonymously leave a voicemail at (425) 310-2347. We will never disclose your personal information, so please include as many details as you are comfortable sharing."

</comment><comment><USER17> I saw the original posting while it was still alive and found it really helpful. Yet more similar stories to the ones I occasionally hear (I'm in Seattle). The immediacy of those stories tends to slip away and I find myself applying for interesting AWS jobs. Reminders like this make me press their "Withdraw from All Jobs" button. Better me pressing it now, than it being pressed for me later.

</comment><comment><USER18> You know, multi-level boards have a long history in the United States and the world. I would like to see other representatives on boards. I know that Denmark has required employees on boards for years, but I think that system can be improved. I would like to see something more like "corporativism" \- where interest groups can be represented on boards in order to force corporations to consider society as a whole, and not just their own obscene profits.

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://web.archive.org/web/20151222211210/https://sites.goog...](http://web.archive.org/web/20151222211210/https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/)

I am particularly interested in the "FIRED FOR CONTACTING JEFF" story.

<comment><USER20> The site's back up, so your wish has been granted: [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired- for...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/fired-for- contacting-jeff)

<comment><USER19> Doesn't go into much detail either unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the article: UPDATE (2/7/2016, 4:33 p.m.): Google tells us that the website was flagged by another user as spam. After Google manually reviewed the site and found this was not the case, they put it back online.

</comment><comment><USER22> And you can tell whether one is a chemist by the way they pronounce "unionization".

<comment><USER23> "unionized" is a bit better for this purpose. It's rare for chemists to talk about the process of ceasing to be ionized.

Another shibboleth is "coax": One syllable or two?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Definitely a very heavy-handed move on Google's part. They could at least have told these people _why_ their site was being shut down. The fact that they didn't says a lot about how Google actually views its customers.

I would love to be able to donate to the site's owners to keep their site running on another hosting service.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is blatant violation of the terms of service of Google. Time to sue Google.

<comment><USER25> They brought the website back. So what does that mean? Someone made a mistake, problem undone.

<comment><USER26> It means that a lot more people will read the articles on the site than before.</comment></comment></comment>


New insights on pesticide exposure and autism - <AUTHOR> https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2018/9/papers/autism/index.htm <comment><USER2> _METHOD: The investigation was derived from the Finnish Prenatal Study of Autism, a national birth cohort study based on a nested case-control design. Cases of autism among children born between 1987 and 2005 were ascertained by national registry linkages. In cases of childhood autism and matched control subjects (778 matched case-control pairs), maternal serum specimens from early pregnancy were assayed for levels of p,p '-DDE and total levels of PCBs.

RESULTS: The odds of autism among offspring were significantly increased with maternal p,p'-DDE levels that were in the highest 75th percentile, with adjustment for maternal age, parity, and history of psychiatric disorders (odds ratio=1.32, 95% CI=1.02, 1.71). The odds of autism with intellectual disability were increased by greater than twofold with maternal p,p'-DDE levels above this threshold (odds ratio=2.21, 95% CI=1.32, 3.69). There was no association between total levels of maternal PCBs and autism.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide the first biomarker-based evidence that maternal exposure to insecticides is associated with autism among offspring. Although further research is necessary to replicate this finding, this study has implications for the prevention of autism and may provide a better understanding of its pathogenesis._

This would be more convincing if someone went and correlated DDT contamination levels in a region with autism levels in the same region.

<comment><USER3> Why is that more convincing? Since people can move around, and your exposure levels during pregnancy won't necessarily line up with the environment the child lives in (and thus informs the rate of autism statistic), I would expect this serum assay to be a more convincing measure. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> What you're missing is that most chemical damage to infants is done in-utero, at their most vulnerable time (why you don't drink when pregnant).

<comment><USER3> No, I explicitly accounted for that, which is why I mentioned that measuring the rate of autism (which is measured as the number of people diagnosed with autism in a region) might not line up with exposure during pregnancy (which could have occurred in a different region entirely, especially if the autism diagnosis lags behind the birth)

<comment><USER4> What are you talking about? Region and location has nothing to do with this study.

They took the serum of the pregnant mother, measured that for the pesticide, and found it was a statistically significant predictor of autism.

<comment><USER2> The whole thread is responding to my suggestion that you ought to also find a geographical relationship between DDT application and autism.

<comment><USER4> Oh, shit, you're right. I didn't read your part not-in-italics.

Well, I suck. I was rude and incorrect. Thank you for taking the time to keep me humble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, this is a case-control study, which has huge limitations in generalizability of conclusions. You probably learned about them in your intro to statistics course. Take this with a grain of salt.

Case control studies in themselves can't prove causation. It can, however, make shadowy insinuations that are definitely worth following up on in a more rigorous way. The first indications smoking caused lung cancer came from a case control study.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would like to see the same investigation in a different population. The difficulty is that we don't know how many different kinds of associations they looked for in this population - they mention no link between PCBs, but that doesn't necessarily mean they _only_ looked for an association between DDE and PCB. If, for example, they looked for an association between 100 compounds, the chances are pretty good that there would be some positive correlation from at least one of them.

Doing the study in a different population, where you're only looking for this one particular association increases the likelihood it's not just chance.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you haven't read it pick up a copy of _Silent Spring_ by Rachel Carson which covered the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the effect on the wider ecosystem.

The awareness she helped raise contributed to the founding of the EPA and the banning of DDT.

<comment><USER8> >>The awareness she helped raise contributed to the founding of the EPA and the banning of DDT.

..and caused the deaths of millions of people to malaria [1]

[1] [https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rachel-carson-cost- million...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-rachel-carson-cost-millions-of- people-their-lives)

<comment><USER9> That's a controversial claim.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Criticism_of_restrictions_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Criticism_of_restrictions_on_DDT_use)

and you have to balance the effects of reduced DDT use (even if that did cause malaria resurgence) against the overall effects of getting public interest into the consequences of newly invented chemicals, and creating the EPA and general oversight of pesticides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they had studied number of mosquito bites received and the probability of autism, would they have gotten the same result? Or if they studied outdoor air temperature during pregnancy and autism, would they have seen a link? Probably ... so be careful about assuming causality here.

<comment><USER11> Autism has also been linked to maternal age. Maybe older women just happen to also have more DDT because they had more time to accumulate it or they were alive longer for when DDT was widely used.

<comment><USER12> The study controlled for that:

> The odds of autism among offspring were significantly increased with > maternal p,p'-DDE levels that were in the highest 75th percentile, with > adjustment for maternal age, parity, and history of psychiatric disorders...

<comment><USER13> They also could/should have adjusted for paternal age, which may be a significant factor (see [1] for lots of links). (There is some interesting statistical stuff going on with paternal age -- some researchers claim if you bin by birth year some of the paternal effect disappears, which is odd! However, the article under discussion considers only children born between 1987 and 2005, so it's not a huge range of birth years...) They do have data on paternal age, but they don't include it in Table 1. Odd.

[1] [https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age- autism-e...](https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/link-parental-age-autism- explained/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Although banned for more than 30 years in many countries due to suspected > health effects, chemicals such as DDT and PCBs still exist in the > environment due to their slow breakdown and the way they accumulate in > plants and animals in the food chain. According to the CDC, most of the U.S. > population has detectable levels of DDE

These sentences are crying out loud to all of us, especially all of us that are pushing products meant to be eaten, applied on skin, sprayed in the air, sprayed on plants we eat, without adequate and long-term testing, focusing only on perceived short-term advantages (Was DDT efficient? Damn it was!)

<comment><USER15> How do you do a long term study on anything though? genetic mutations are fairly common. Take any large sample of anything living and there will be genetic differences. Even a field of roundup-resistance GMO corn after sprayed with roundup will not all have the same DNA, and I just gave the best odds of killing anything not the same DNA. You cannot know for sure that one of those random mutations isn't very harmful, and there is no way to know which of the thousands of plants actually has the mutations that need to be tested - nor do you even know which mutations will survive more generations (because they are from a grandparent seed plant)

<comment><USER14> It was very difficult back then, it's even more difficult now. Think about 5G: we know already that it's a huge safety hazard[0]. But we'll use it when it's out anyway. Why? Because of short-term benefits. Because the negative effects cannot be measured immediately. Because the tech industry is extremely powerful and there is no way we can avoid 5G, it's simply too late.

[0] [https://www.thenation.com/article/how-big-wireless-made- us-t...](https://www.thenation.com/article/how-big-wireless-made-us-think- that-cell-phones-are-safe-a-special-investigation/)

<comment><USER15> The article you linked can be summed up in this line in the middle: "The absence of absolute proof does not mean the absence of risk". In short this is a religion: you cannot prove me wrong therefore I'm right.

<comment><USER9> Scientific research can be used to answer questions. We don't need to rely on faith one way or the other. That's why these scientists are calling for a moratorium and safety research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This might be a true association but still not explain most of the cases of autism in kids being born today- DDT has been illegal in most countries for 30 years. There must be something else accounting for the more recent cases- perhaps another chemical having a similar effect.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Seeing how long it has taken us to find this DDT-Autism link it makes me wonder how many other pesticides since have an uncaught link.

<comment><USER9> This isn't a DDT-Autism link, it's a preliminery curiosity in the data that is motivating further research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are bug sprays safe? Is deet different from ddt or are they similar molecules?

<comment><USER18> DEET (a repellent) is not DDT (a poison). Use Icaridin/Picaridin or Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus (not Lemon Eucalyptus Oil) if you don't want to use DEET. All three are commonly available in the US, demonstrated to be highly effective, and recommended by the CDC: [https://www.cdc.gov/zika/prevention/prevent- mosquito-bites.h...](https://www.cdc.gov/zika/prevention/prevent-mosquito- bites.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Could some research-savvy person check the paper to see if there's any causality proven, or just correlation?

<comment><USER20> Longitudinal studies are typically observation only, so even the stronger ones won't establish causality. But that doesn't mean the conclusions aren't valuable.

For example, if we know that DDT exposure in particular increases the risk of autism, then we can start looking at how those chemicals interact with cells, and find out more about autism at the biochemical / cellular level and even create a drug that counteracts those processes. Then we get into experimental trials which do establish causality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Modern psychology seems more and more plausible

</comment><comment><USER22> Yay for real science! I hope this means we can go back to being a measles-free society again.</comment>


Sortix 1.0 Operating System Released - <AUTHOR> https://sortix.org/news/1.0/ <comment><USER2> "Poor third party code tend to not compile which draw attention to it and is an opportunity to fix it. (...) The lack of compatibility constraints compared to other operating systems makes it possible to make a cleaner implementation."

I like what I'm reading here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite an achievement.

The author is terrifyingly young: [http://maxsi.org/](http://maxsi.org/)

<comment><USER4> When you said that, I expected 15, not 25.

<comment><USER5> I too was expecting a minor child, not a young-ish adult.

I don't feel like checking it now but Linus was pretty young too when he released his kernel.

<comment><USER6> Yep; Linus Torvalds born 1969 would have been ~22 years old when Linux was first released in 1991. -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux) & [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks amazing. Git, gcc, libcairo, libdsdl, python and nasm ports? ISC license? Very, very cool. But why don't you host your project on Github?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! As Zikes say, a little competition is good and gitlab is working out fine for me. I used to be on gitorious and it got bought by gitlab so I moved. I prefer being on a platform I can theoretically port.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for hosting [https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix](https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix) on GitLab! Feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you ever need anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like his ongoing work with the old cruft: [https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix/wikis/ports](https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix/wikis/ports) which reminds me a lot on OpenBSD.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very cool, I'd love to know how someone remains motivated to keep going with a project like this; It's no small achievement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to start new coding projects weekly to play with one thing or another, not getting anywhere. With Sortix, there's now so many interesting areas to work on that I can work on whatever I fancy, and then still slowly accumulate useful changes. It's fun working on the components, but it's also fun putting a whole system together, and you learn a lot in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> incredible. blows my mind how people can build stuff like this. I do Web development and this seems Soooooooo far out of my reach

<comment><USER12> You eat an elephant one bite at a time. I've found that the majority the of intimidating complexity in projects I've tackled is directly related to handling legacy hardware and edge cases for things that don't matter anymore, it is surprising how simple things like shells can be.

<comment><USER13> Half my CS education was implementing various parts of operating systems. These things are pretty straightforward if you've got a few books and aren't trying to throw every imaginable feature into the mix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just booted this in a vm. Pretty cool!

editor is use-able. python on there, Asteroids is working fine, too. Will be following the progress. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER16> Congratulations on your own OS, but could you tell me why should i use your OS instead of other ones? I don't see any comparison anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You shouldn't, but it could be an addition if you want something to tinker with. I've been dogfooding with it, for instance completing my functional programming university course using just it and a scheme port. I discourage comparisons because it sets unrealistic expectations rather appreciating it for what it is. This release is a base for future work and to be something that can benefit me in other ways.

<comment><USER17> So what you're saying is it's just a hobby and won't be big and professional like Linux? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A C++ base kernel. Nice!

Now someone just need to use Rust to build yet another kernel? :-)

<comment><USER19> Surely you've heard of Redox[1]?

[1] [https://github.com/redox-os/redox](https://github.com/redox-os/redox)

<comment><USER20> sort ox

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does this add that other OSs don't have?

<comment><USER22> It's this guy's hobby kernel project. Everyone's gotta have one. He's been working on it for 5 years or so. You're surely not asking for apples-to-apples comparison with production quality operating systems?

But compared to other hobby/DIY operating systems, this seems to be a fairly complete system with a real userspace and ports of real applications. Which makes it much more finished than 99% of similar projects.</comment></comment>


Safer C Code Using ATS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2010/06/02/safer-c-code-using-ats.html <comment><USER2> See [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sdl/archive/2010/05/13/visual-c-2010...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sdl/archive/2010/05/13/visual-c-2010-and- improved-sal-support.aspx) and the articles it links to for Microsoft's approach to the same problem. I think Microsoft's approach is nicer because the annotations are inline with the C/C++ program text.

<comment><USER3> I agree -- that ATS stuff is hard on the eyes. The goal is laudable, but the medicine is worse than the disease with the way they implemented it. The MS approach is a lot easier to get people on board with, I think.</comment></comment>


Introduction to the Zig Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://andrewkelley.me/post/intro-to-zig.html <comment><USER2> Cool project. The "more pragmatic than C" design goal reminds me of game developer Johnathan Blow's Jai language [1]. It seems like Zig is still in very early stage, are you planning to incorporate any Jai-like features? I especially like its SOA keyword for quickly changing data layouts [2].

I really like this corner of the language design world. People always say that C is too entrenched and none of these languages are compelling enough to make a large number of developers switch, but I disagree. Someone said that C and Lisp are two local optima in the space of programming languages... I think that Lisp probably is, but C is only near a local optimum. There is a true local optimum remaining to be found.

[1] [https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md](https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md)

[2] [https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md...](https://github.com/BSVino/JaiPrimer/blob/master/JaiPrimer.md#data- oriented-structures)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this elsewhere in response to a similar question:

> I've been following the project, and he has some great ideas that I plan to > shamelessly copy such as Struct Of Array support. Running arbitrary code at > compile time is on the table, but I haven't figured everything out about it > yet. Jonathan Blow is an interesting character. I have a lot of respect for > him, but I don't always agree with him. I feel like his perspective is > insightful but also limited in some ways. I'm sure the same is true for > myself, but all that is to say, our respective languages will be (and > already are) different enough to warrant being different projects. For > example, one of my goals is "friendly to open source package maintainers > (such as Debian)". This entails things like keeping a meticulous record of > how to bootstrap the compiler without compromising security, having a > reproducible build, providing ways for the maintainers to configure various > things, etc. Based on what I know about Jon, he'll either be completely > apathetic about package maintainers, or potentially even have a hostile > attitude.

> Also no spoilers for The Witness please. I'm waiting until it comes out on > Linux to play :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks very interesting. The author is apparently a contributor to Piston [1], which is written in Rust, and the language seems to share some similarities with Rust.

[1] [http://www.piston.rs](http://www.piston.rs)

</comment><comment><USER4> > At the end of the day, all that really matters is whether the language > helped you do what you were trying to do better than any other language.

Absolutely. But one problem that new languages face is that libraries are part of how much the language helps you do what you are trying to do. So to gain any traction, a new language needs to have libraries...

> Complete C ABI Compatibility

... and there they are! Nicely done, though this is a fairly common solution these days. Or, it could be regarded as a cheat, because you don't have your own library...

> Alternative Standard Library

... and another point of criticism dies.

I also like the difference between debug and release builds. All in all, this looks pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are many new C ripoffs, but nobody seems to acknowledge Cyclone ([https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/](https://cyclone.thelanguage.org/)) which is a lot older. It was even backed by a corporation (AT&T), but never succeeded. I wonder why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it has something to do with this:

> Cyclone is no longer supported; the core research project has finished and > the developers have moved on to other things. (Several of Cyclone's ideas > have made their way into Rust.) Cyclone's code can be made to work with some > effort, but it will not build out of the box on modern (64 bit) platforms).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing I like C for is the simplicity. Writing C after working in a very verbose language for a while is refreshing. That said, my few wishes for a C replacement would be generics, methods, and namespacing. The last two are to avoid funky naming schemes everywhere. Maintaining the proper low level control and simplicity would be a top priority though.

Overall this project looks interesting. I'm interested to see where it goes in the future and what design trade offs end up being implemented.

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand this point of view. Is C not (very) verbose? Even if it's just because of the manual memory management.

<comment><USER6> In a way it's verbose, but less so on a syntax level. There's no need to deal with interfaces, classes, or exceptions. The boilerplate code you write tends to serve a practical purpose, as opposed to a syntactical one. Sure you have to deal with a lot of error handling and memory management yourself, but the language doesn't get in your way or create much friction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks pretty promising actually. I love the methodology laid out for the language. I just wish more languages would move away from the C syntax. While we're all used to that syntax I think Python has been more successful in demonstrating the practicality of whitespace for readability. And considering that readability is a major factor for this language I think it's a shame it doesn't use whitespace more effectively.

<comment><USER9> The big downside to using whitespace in this way is that if you are trying to generate python, especially from another language, it's a nightmare. Explicit delimiters make meta-programming much easier.

<comment><USER10> That sounds like a good reason to not use indentation – since Zig is so low- level, it is a good candidate for machine-generation. But I can't think of a good reason for Zig to separate statements with semicolons instead of unescaped newlines. Zig-generators should be able to generate "\n" as easily as ";".

The only reason to keep semicolons I can think of is to look familiar to C programmers, so as not to scare them off. I'm not very familiar with that demographic, but I think most of them would be fine with it, especially if they have used other semicolon-less languages. Semicolons, which are present on about 50% of lines, add visual noise and the cognitive load of remembering to type them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Having semicolons introduces simple redundancy to the language. If you leave off semicolons you introduce more ambiguity, which can make error messages less clear since it's less obvious to the compiler exactly what was the mistake the programmer made.

Think of it like a sliding scale: on the far extreme of no redundancy, a typo could be a runtime error instead of a compile error. On the far extreme of redundancy, you have to express your code twice in different ways. Having semicolons is a reasonable balance between the extremes.

<comment><USER10> I think I understand why semicolons make good error messages easier to implement. However, I don't see anything that makes that same quality of error messages _impossible_ in a language without semicolons. It's just a matter of how much time the language writer is willing to spend on slightly improving the user experience.

Semicolons help get a better error message for the following typo, if `foo` can take either 0 or 1 arguments:

      if (true) {
        foo(;
        bar *= 2;
        baz(
          "first",
          "second",
        );
      }

The compiler can easily tell you that you forgot a ) on line 2. If semicolons were optional, the program would be this:

      if (true) {
        foo(
        bar *= 2
        baz(
          "first",
          "second",
        )
      }

The simplest error message to implement would complain that you forgot a ) somewhere within lines 2 to 7, and also that the argument to `foo` contains two statements instead of one expression. This error message would be less helpful.

However, with the semicolonless language, you _could_ still write the compiler to give the better error message. You could have a heuristic that that this combination of errors suggests a different error, or you could parse indentation for error-checking purposes. It would just require more work on the part of the compiler writer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how feasible it would be to decouple data size from type & overflow semantics, a la this comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7103347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7103347)

<comment><AUTHOR> The comment you linked is insightful and the commenter is indeed in the target audience for the language. One point I didn't understand is this: "decoupling of on-the-wire layout from in-memory layout". What does that mean?

This is good stuff, and I plan to work on some embedded projects to experience firsthand the needs of this kind of project.

<comment><USER12> On-the-wire refers to serialisation (writing to file or socket). It would be great to be able to specify both in-memory layout and serialised layout: the former typically contains padding, which is a waste of space in the later. There may also be endianness differences, different datatypes, etc. That would remove the need to manually write de/serialisation routines if they should differ.

<comment><USER13> So basically capnproto built into the language?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is Zig's position on memory safety? Rust is, correctly IMO, memory-safe even if that can cause some discomforts when programming (I hear this is temporary, and mostly subsides as one gains a better understanding of lifetimes and borrows). On the other hand, Jonathan Blow's Jai eschews language-guaranteed memory safety in order to allow the programmer greater freedom, but does nothing to prevent use-after-free, double-free, null deref, etc. (Edit: this is based on my understanding of his language as it was in his last demo. I don't know what plans he has for the future, but I think that with him calling Rust a "big idea" language and rejecting that philosophy, we should not expect Jai to do much to prevent incorrect manipulation of memory.)

If we take those two languages as the extremities of a spectrum, where would you put Zig on that spectrum?

<comment><AUTHOR> Closer to Jai. That's all I really have in response to the question though. It's a bit of a simplistic measurement. To get a better feel for the answer you could browse the source code to the Tetris game implemented in Zig linked in the article.

<comment><USER10> Direct link to the Tetris game's source code: [https://github.com/andrewrk/tetris/tree/master/src](https://github.com/andrewrk/tetris/tree/master/src)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's quite funny how much the debug vs release builds resemble the fastOpt and fullOpt stages of Scala.js. Except that fastOpt actually produces decent runtime performance thanks to incremental whole-program optimizations. But time spent too compile and undefined behavior handling are very much the same.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a plan to add a generic resizable array type? That's probably the number one thing I miss in C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I'm going to see how well this works as part of the standard library, since it would have to allocate memory.

And then operations like append or resize could return an error (since memory allocation can fail), and I want to make sure the semantics for that are reasonable.

That and a Map data structure I want to make sure have convenient semantics since these primitives are used in many software applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's cool. Do you tinker in any lispy dialects?

<comment><AUTHOR> (I (tried (once (in (college (but (lisp (is (not (my (style)))))))))))

<comment><USER18> Obvious question: How is that worse than

        I(tried(once(in(college(but(c(is(not(my(style()))))))))))

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just being flippant. It was not a real criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks awesome, but, oh, the irony...

A language to replace C implemented in C++. ;-)

<comment><USER20> Plenty of languages that have been used instead of C for a while have been coded in C++. I don't see the issue since he's using LLVM, which I believe is a wise decision.

<comment><USER19> It's _not_ an issue.

Did anyone here watch the video? I mean the author said a lot of cool things about being more pragmatic and all that stuff, while implementing it in LLVM/C++, what may be, as you say, a wise decision.

There's no assignment of guilt, I just found it ironic.</comment></comment></comment>


Making Atoms instead of polygons in games in "Unlimited Detail"- Euclideon  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKUuUvDSXk4

<comment><USER2> Wow. I really hope this is viable, real technology and not vaporware. I'm not even a gamer and this looks awesome.

This would be really excellent for medical and research purposes too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why the video is in 480p- seems like you would get a much better idea of the differences bw screenschoots with a higher res. Cool idea though

</comment><comment><USER4> The demo is great but the same question remains : What about animations ?

<comment> jc-denton Guess we will know more once the sdk is released.

</comment></comment><comment> jc-denton Interview with the inventor: [http://thisismyjoystick.com/interviews/interview-bruce- rober...](http://thisismyjoystick.com/interviews/interview-bruce-roberts-dell- unlimited-detail-technology/)

</comment><comment> jc-denton This is one of the few ideas which I would actually invest money in it. If I had money ;)</comment>


The Underrated Pleasures of Eastern European Dumplings - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-underrated-pleasures-of-eastern-european-dumplings <comment><USER2> Eastern European food (and Mexican and some Chinese cuisines) are deeply underrated - they belong in the same category as French or Japanese, but long- held prejudices devalue them. It's a pity, but it also means you can get an _amazing_ meal for cheap in Greenpoint.

<comment><USER3> When I lived in California, Mexican food was cheap and almost always delicious. Where I currently live (somewhere in Europe), Mexican food is always expensive, sometimes good, but most often mediocre. I am yet to have an amazing and cheap Mexican meal over here.

<comment><USER4> If someone held a gun to my head, and told he to open a restaurant with my meager saving; I always felt it would be a take-out burrito place.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't like a burrito, or pizza.

My point is I think a clean burrito joint would go over practically anywhere.

It needs to be clean, and the portions need to be generous, and the owner needs to keep an eye on the business.

<comment><USER5> In many parts of Europe kebab shops have taken the role that burritos and such occupy in Americas; the dishes are a bit different in ingredients and taste, but they're similar enough in the business details & way of consumption to be pretty much replacements for each other.

<comment><USER6> The US is ready for a kebab invasion. It will almost certainly happen in the next five years.

The peak will hit when a franchise chain of kebab places goes national.

I'd keep my eyes on Chicken & Rice Guys (3 locations around Boston, plus a truck), but they really need ten million dollars or so to win the domestic market.

<comment><USER7> And after trying to steal my countries idiotic politicians statement about smashed avo and millenials, you'll be stealing our HSPs [0] next!

[0] Halal Snack Pack, served originally by west Sydney kebab shops, it's literally the greatest food to eat drunk. Which I find amusing — we do love our irony down here!

<comment><USER8> Oh dear lord I love HSPs. Nothing like shovelling 2000 calories of meat and potatoes down your gullet after a boozy night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One day I'd like to eat a flight of dumplings from all countries that have something that could be construed as a dumpling.

</comment><comment><USER10> We have those dumplings in Slovakia too, they are called "pirohy". They are pretty delicious but its a lot of work. I also think that food is slowly dying as most of the people I know don't make them any more.

<comment><USER11> Australian living in Slovakia here. Shout out for Bryndzové halušky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone here lives in Portland OR...go to Kachka and have the sour cherry vareniki. Everything there is great, but those in particular are incredible.

<comment><USER13> Bonnie Frumkin Morales, The chef at Kachcka, released a cookbook recently which is a must-buy for anyone remotely interested in Russian cooking. Everything I've made from it has been a gem.

</comment></comment><comment> your-nanny We make pierogi every Christmas Eve. It's a lot of work.

<comment><USER14> Mrs T's sautéed in butter with some bacon bits is a lot less work and still pretty tasty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cuisines are like languages: all are good when you understand them, the difference is that some are easier to get into (e.g. Italian food or English language) than others. They evolved slowly over the centuries and what was not worthy would not stick.

When you arrive in Poland its cuisine can be very difficult to get used: pierogi (dumplings with potato or cabbage inside.. hardly ever meat!), sour soups, overcooked cabbage.. but then you start to discover sauces, creative salads, breaded fried stuff, sophisticated cakes and you realize that their cuisine is just as good as others.

Portuguese _Açorda_ (1) is literally old bread inside hot water with herbs, a bit of olive oil and eggs. It looks austere but if you imagine yourself some centuries ago with only these ingredients, I challenge you to make something better.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A7orda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A7orda)

</comment><comment><USER16> Pro tip: since fairly recently, Trader Joe's carries fairly authentic Pelmeni in the US. They have a little less meat than Pelmeni would usually have, but other than that they're surprisingly good, even by Russian/Ukrainian standards.

</comment><comment><USER17> My grandmother used to make awesome blueberry dumplings (вареники з чорницею) which were served with smetana (a type of sour cream) and they were wonderful! My teenage-girl cousins would make room in their diets to just a piece - I can only imagine the willpower needed! The blueberries were locally picked from the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine and very fresh.

Next up in Eastern European and Middle eastern cuisine - Cabbage rolls!

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a little further east than Ukraine et al but I absolutely love the Taiwanese dumpling chain Ba Fang Yun Ji Dumplings ([https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g13808671-d101...](https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g13808671-d10191409-Reviews- Ba_Fang_Yun_Ji_Dumplings-Zhongshan_District_Taipei.html)).

</comment><comment><USER19> Eastern European dumplings are Mongolian dumplings, Mongolian dumplings are Chinese dumplings ;)

<comment><USER20> They've evolved as they traveled through the cultures! I've had all of them and there are very distinct differences.

Mongolian dumplings are very similar to steamed Chinese dumplings, but strictly with ground beef or mutton.

Eastern European dumplings are smaller, usually boiled and made in bulk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Adding Kreplach to the list: https ://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreplach

</comment><comment><USER22> Speaking of Eastern European food, what do you folks think about schnitzels?

<comment><USER23> That's an Austrian dish.

<comment><USER24> At the time, Austro-Hungarian empire controlled a big chunk of Eastern Europe.

So they both have schnitzels, though the Austrian version is veal and the EE version is pork.

In the end, it is a variation of Italian dish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> they are no more eastern European than Chinese, European pierogi it's pretty much same stuff as Chinese jiaozi, so the title it's misleading

<comment><USER26> You're right that pierogi, and in fact all dumplings, and even pasta, originate from China. However, they are different. The differences may be subtle to someone who is not familiar with them, enjoys generalizations, or lacks taste buds.

The world of dumplings literally spans the globe and is extremely varied!

You can put different things in them. Even if you look at "meat stuffed dumplings", you can use different types of meat, that is prepared and flavored in different ways. The dough can be made of different types of flour and with ingredients in different proportions. They can be boiled, deep fried, pan fried. They can be eaten by themselves, or doused in butter, fried onions, sour cream, bacon bits, or who knows what. The choice of stuffing is tremendous, spanning meat, cheese, potatoes, fruits, and mushrooms! Don't even get started on different shapes, which are also an important part of the meal.

It's like saying "bread is bread" and throwing croissants, sour rye, and cron- bread into the same proverbial basket. Technically true, but does not add much to the conversation.

<comment><USER27> How it is possible to know who invented any sort of food? You never can be sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bon vivant trivia, tribal sneers, celeb gossip & huffy etiquette advice seems to be about all the wealthy inner city is interested in these days. Shame the infection has spread here.

<comment><USER29> What?

<comment><USER30> Somehow, even an article about dumplings is offensive.

<comment><USER28> Not offensive. Boring and trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Stopped at "... varenyky, the Ukrainian version of what in Poland are called pierogi...."

</comment><comment><USER32> Disappointing how HN seems to have gone all-in on being a "mental floss" site.

<comment><USER33> Today does have a couple more outliers than usual but if you look back at previous front pages at archive.org, you'll see it hasn't changed all that much. Five years ago today there was an article on Stonehenge, a Kickstarter for a feature film, and a "my best life hack" piece: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130425093132/https://news.ycom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130425093132/https://news.ycombinator.com/)

It's part of the mandate of HN to cover an assortment of everything, not just tech and startups, so long as it gratifies intellectual curiosity ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)). That's one of the best things about HN, in my view, so I hope it doesn't change. Can dumplings gratify intellectual curiosity? Of course they can!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Design a Cryptocurrency that Could Only Be Mined by Phones / Tablets? - <AUTHOR>

About a month ago it came to light that some developers were making money by using their customers' phones to mine cryptocurrencies: http://mashable.com/2014/03/27/android-app-bitcoin-malware/
While this approach is clearly a lot more efficient at alienating users than at producing actual revenue, due to the low performance of mobile CPUs, this article made me wonder whether creating a mobile-only cryptocurrency has ever been attempted and if not - why is it a bad idea?
I'm not an expert on CPU architecture, but could a protocol be developed that would make the mining process only accessible to mobile processors (ARM)? Or would the only way to accept a device for mining be to provide it with the necessary software via a controlled app store? Such a cryptocurrency would greatly reduce the effect of mining farms on the network and would therefore make it a lot more compelling for individual users to user their devices for mining (at night, while charging, etc.). It would also create opportunities to develop mobile payments, app monetisation, etc.
What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> "could a protocol be developed that would make the mining process only accessible to mobile processors (ARM)?"

No. In the worst case, use an ARM emulator on a faster machine.

In any case, the validation is in the network communications, not the ability to run specific software. Someone could reverse-engineer what program does, re-implement the protocol, and port it to any other hardware.

</comment><comment><USER3> the problem is cryptocurrencies are based on an algo which can be run anywhere. as long as you've got the compute power you get the credit(bitcoins etc) Second you could always build an emulator of the phone on a more powerful computer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Its ok if u like a hot phone and 1hr battery life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not if you only allow the phone to mine when you are not using it, when it is charging, connected to WiFi, and when the temperature sensor is being monitored. The user could also only give permission for mining in short periods of time.</comment></comment>


Damn shortcuts, where are you? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.self.li/post/17708337936/shortcuts-in-evernote-webapp

<comment><USER2> Great article! I completely agree, Evernote should implement this sort of feature straight away. Bookmarked jQuery Hotkeys :D</comment>


Don't Shop Your Term Sheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=655

<comment><USER2> Note to self: Ignore Chris Dixon.

A small number of VC's have a real value add. I would not shop Sequoia's term sheet, but a second tier VC has little to leverage other than cash.

<comment><USER3> correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> puhleeze. If your startup is hot, shop the fuck out of it. VC's are lemmings; once they decide with their collective hive mind that you're the hizzy, it's basically impossible to piss them off enough to kill the deal.

OTOH, if you're not hot, they will use any lame excuse to walk, and you won't have anything to 'shop' in the first place, other than warm fuzzy talk at the end of an expensive lunch.

<comment><USER4> If you read through the whole article and the comments, the author adds more nuance to this advice than the title suggests.

It boils down to "shopping your terms verbally is fine, just don't flash your actual physical term sheet around town."

<comment><USER5> Hm, I distinctly recall reading:

 _Also, don't shop a verbal offer._

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between verbally shopping a written offer and verbally shopping a verbal offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That would have a lot more credibility where it not coming from an investor. A VC writing an article that says "just sign the term sheet immediately without having your attorney review it" is actually preposterous.

His overall sentiment is not necessarily without merit (that you should shop around terms/valuation verbally rather than emailing out copies of the term sheet to every VC on Sand Hill Road) but wow did he go about expressing it poorly.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know anything about VCs and funding, that being said how are you supposed to get competitive bidding going if you can't shop term sheets, or verbal offers as this article suggests?

What are you supposed to say, "I have a very good feeling VC X might offer me 4, so you are going to have to offer 5." You can't haggle unless you have concrete alternatives to push the price up.

<comment><USER9> As i am reading into this whole "raising money" topic recently, this is what i came across in Venture Hacks.

My understanding is, shop around, but, don't say it as "shop around". Use other languages or excuses.

<http://venturehacks.com/articles/shop-around>

This is the summary:

Summary: A deal is only as good as its best alternative. Keep improving your alternatives until you have a signed term sheet. And keep developing your current offers or they will die. Finally, don't say "shopping around", it puts investors off their stroke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> yeah, many people selling, for example, bandwidth also try to keep prices secret; as far as I can tell it's nothing more than an effort to make the market less efficient.</comment>


Ask HN: Mac or Linux based laptop for development - <AUTHOR> I'm coming from linux world but after using macbook for 3 months I'm tempted to buy a macbook buy they are pricey and at the same time I don't wanna leave the Linux ecosystem <comment><USER2> It totally depends on what kind of development work you want to do. Windows apps? Then get a Surface Pro or the like.

iOS or native macOS apps? Get a Macbook.

Web development? It doesn't matter as long as you're comfortable using the respective OS (macOS or Linux).

Data science? If you plan on using the built-in GPU for machine learning, don't get a Macbook. The 16" ones have AMD GPUs that aren't well-supported for ML, everything below has Intel GPUs which, while plenty powerful for day-to- day usage, aren't usable for ML. Get a Thinkpad or Dell with a Nvidia GPU and an Intel GPU, so you can use the dedicated GPU for ML exclusively. If you plan on running such workloads in the cloud (as many do) it doesn't matter.

Backend work? Depending on the backend, it won't matter. PHP, Ruby, Java, Scala, Python, Go, Rust, ... can be done on macOS and Linux equally well. ASP.net and the like will require Windows.

Devops-heavy work? If you expect to be running lots of VMs on your laptop, get a Linux laptop with as much RAM as you can cram into it. A 16" MBP with lots of RAM will do, too, but that's going to be pricey. If you can run such workloads in the cloud, it doesn't matter.

If you want the most versatile, also get a Macbook. It'll run Linux and Windows virtualized just fine, macOS natively, you can do Android development and iOS development, all in a single machine. Depending on your needs a spec- ed up Air may be powerful enough, still not exactly cheap though. That's what I do, but with a 13" Macbook Pro (plus GCP instances for ML training).

If you want to stick with Linux in earnest, and don't see yourself developing native macOS or iOS apps in the forseeable future, get a Dell or Thinkpad with good Linux support for your distro of choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see I totally agree with what you said. I have always thought about buying a macbook but i always remained hesitant due to it's high price but what I believe is it's worth its price I don't plan to do machine learning for that you probably need a heavy machine such as a desktop with GPUs. But coming from a Linux world I wanna settle on one stable os instead keep distro hopping i might just go with macbook

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, barring catastrophic failure, which seems to be rare, these things tend to hold up quite well. My previous Macbook lasted me about 6 years, I had its battery replaced half a year ago without any issues; it's my backup machine now, and if it weren't a tad too sluggish at some tasks, I would have postponed the upgrade another year. Lots of people (on HN, too) run even older Macbooks, apparently happily.

Just be sure to get the latest gen, especially for the 13" Pros ones – you absolutely want the 2020 keyboard (physical ESC key, no failure-prone butterfly mechanics, really nice feel, "old" arrow key arrangement that is easier to find by feel) and the newest CPUs. I have both keyboards (my own 2020 one and my 2018 work laptop) and the difference is crazy. But as I mentioned before, have a look at the current Air as well – cheaper and still plenty powerful, depending on what you need.

<comment><USER3> my 2012 16gb ssd macbookpro is running okay the only things lagging behind now are graphics for light gaming and the battery is pretty shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It all comes down to a matter of taste really.

IMHO: If you can afford it, get a Macbook of some kind. For a laptop/desktop, I would take macOS over Windows or Linux, any day. IMHO, macOS has the best apps and the best desktop experience. With Homebrew, you can install ~99% of all CLI utilities that you could run on Linux.

I switched from Linux to macOS seven years ago and so far there are no Linux applications that I haven't found a good alternative for.

But to each their own and YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree I'm just waiting for the new one to come out with arm chip

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can still have it all on a Macbook plus with Windows and Linux installed too.

Macbooks have the g̶o̶l̶d̶ diamond standard of trackpads from any other laptop you can find. Triple boot Windows, macOS and Linux without any effort or need of 'Hackintoshing' and in general, Touch ID and Apple Watch authentication in macOS on a Macbook take the pain out of repeatedly typing in passwords for SSH, PGP, password-managers etc.

macOS on a Macbook just adds the added extra convenience Apple gives you which doesn't exist on any Linux laptop which makes development effortless and gets out of my way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed with what you mentioned after using macbook for three months I'm getting used to the eco system and the smoothness

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm typing this on my primary machine, a late 2012 MacBook Pro. That's 8 years of full daily use, travel, downloads, compiling, running Docker, etc. And I really do mean every single day, morning onwards. Not saying all MacBooks will stand up that long, but my secondary laptop is a 2010 MacBook Air, and it's still kicking, though OS upgrades aren't available anymore for it. Aside from the keyboard problems of the past few years (one of the reasons I waited to upgrade), I've found them to be very reliable. Even my PowerBook with the Motorola CPU was still running up until a couple of years ago when I cleaned house. And as they can run OSes in VMs (Linux, FreeBSD, Windows ...), I feel the MacBook Pro is the best development platform, and really, best platform for most things. I have mutt installed for email, so you can still run all your CLI 'apps' if you like. Yeah, it is truly an awesome machine. And this one, 2 months before Apple Care expired, I took it in for a 'checkup' \-- they replaced over $1,100 worth of parts, including the logic board. I hadn't noticed anything wrong about the machine, but apparently it didn't meet their standards. If you're already leaning that way, buy one, use it for a while, and if it's not what you want later, sell it and consider the loss as you renting the laptop for that period of time. I could upgrade now the keyboards are fixed, but, well, this still works. Now I think I'll wait for the ARM- based MacBooks coming hopefully later this year.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have done codec development, heavy C++ programming, web development (front end), worked with MS Office exclusively for a year when I was a "manager" and now onto to blogging and copywriting. My trusty companion in all of this has been my Macbook Pro 2015 (Early) and it has never once crashed or stopped working.

I have seen so many Windows machines come and go and nothing can hold a candle to a MacbookPro. This is my personal opinion - ymmv. But, if you are looking for a 1-time purchase that will last you atleast 6 years, and you use your machines carefully, then a Macbook Pro is worth the investment.

Fair warning: I have no idea how the ARM-based macs are going to turn out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your workflow seems heavy just curious should I wait for arm based macbook or buy the one with intel

<comment><USER8> The first ARM laptops won't appear for another few months at least, and they'll be "1.0 Apple products" anyway. You should not buy a 1.0 Apple product. Apart from the traditional quality-control issues of such releases, community and support resources for it won't be there for some time. Unless you can wait for 2-3 years, if you want a Mac you should probably buy it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am using Thinkpad E14 . I find it perfect for my usecase. It supports Linux 100℅ , built very well, has best keyboard, has flawless efi firmware.

</comment><comment><USER10> Get Windows. WSL is great. And the machines powering windows are also great. I recently deleted my Ubuntu 18 setup and using Win 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just switched my laptop to windows after being on linux for three years and have used three different distros But now i just want to settle on one thing that just runs out of the box i think I'm gonna go with macbook

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You need both and windows as well.</comment>


The Jargon File - <AUTHOR> http://catb.org/jargon/html/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the URL for the background image, if you want to block it: <http://catb.org/jargon/graphics/linen2d.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER2> Are we due for an ESR comeback?

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it in response to this complaint: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294854> which I agree with. The more these stories are recognized as part of the background of our culture, the less they will be posted.</comment></comment>


Collapse of the American Empire: Swift, Silent, Certain - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/109027/collapse-of-the-american-empire-swift-silent-certain

<comment><USER2> And we'll see rise of new empire... Which will be named - United Provinces of Canada...

To be serious, I suspect that the fall is going to be much bigger, think whole civilized world, Western and developed parts of Eastern world. The failure of civilization, so to speak...

<comment><USER3> In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.</comment></comment>