Apple Reports Third Quarter Results - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/ <comment><USER2> I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again.

The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit.

The result is that Apple doesn't build the computer most of their potential customers want -- a $1000 Macbook. I understand that they don't care about the $300 netbook market, but not offering a decent $1000 laptop is a bad idea. It means they are going to loose consumers and students – there are decent alternatives at that price point. Or, people like me, who just keep using their old Macbooks because the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance.

Where does this lead us? I don't see how the Mac should grow from here, and as a Mac software developer that worries me. I want to be in a growing market, not a stagnant one. I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know.

<comment><USER3> _I care a lot about the Mac, and I 'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again._

Well, what do you expect people to buy? I'm sitting on a six year old MBP, having gotten rid of my 2009 iMac. New iMac? Meh, it might come to that, but I already have enough displays. Mac Mini to go with the display I already have? Surely you jest to suggest a four-year old model. Mac Pro? See: Mac Mini. Current laptops aren't an option unless I get desperate (i. e., current MBP dies tomorrow). I mean, I _want_ a new Mac, there just isn't anything out there that makes me feel like I'd be getting an upgrade.

So my theory is that a lot of people are in the cycle I've been in for the last three years: "Meh, I'll wait to see what they have next year...<year passes>...Meh, I'll wait until...holy shit, is this thing really six years old?...<year passes>"

<comment><USER4> This is precisely why I like Apple. The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. I used that computer at least 10 hours a day, _every single day!_

I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. We're talking about a dollar an hour here. I've literally spent more money on coffee over that time.

<comment><USER5> I'm typing this post on an 11 year old Dell Latitude D830 running Ubuntu. 5 years is not some amazing lifespan for a laptop, especially these days with such incremental improvements in processors year over year.

Unless you're gaming on your laptop your requirements probably aren't that much higher than they were half a decade ago.

<comment><USER6> It's an amazing lifespan for anybody who has ever operated a windows laptop.

<comment><USER7> I have a 10 year old Dell Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz running Windows 10 being used as a Plex Server. It's only slow when overtaxed because I haven't bothered upgrading to 8GB of RAM or replace the hard drive with an SSD.

Luckily it has a gigabit Ethernet port so it can take full advantage of my gig internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MacStories has some nice graphical visualizations comparing this quarter's results to previous quarters.

[https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2018-results-533-bi...](https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2018-results-533-billion- revenue-413-million-iphones-116-million-ipads-sold/)

<comment><USER9> On why the US tax rate should be raised: access to the most profitable market: [https://2672686a4cf38e8c2458-2712e00ea34e3076747650c92426bbb...](https://2672686a4cf38e8c2458-2712e00ea34e3076747650c92426bbb5.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/2018-07-31-15-40-37.jpeg)

<comment><USER10> This might make sense if the US had a territorial tax system, like much of the rest of the world. But the US rate applies to the _global_ profits of US-based companies.

The mix of high rate and worldwide (non-territorial) taxation is why so many US companies end up being acquired by foreign companies. Then you don't have to pay US rates on your worldwide income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cash on hand now upwards of _$230B_. Your average CNBC talking head would probably recommend a large acquisition soon. Names usually whispered about include: Uber, Tesla, Snap or Netflix. Or a content studio such as Comcast, Disney, or Fox.

But such advice ignores the gargantuan growth that cloud services are experiencing right now. Although iCloud, iTunes, ApplePay and the AppStore are almost solely focused on consumer internet and retail. It's conceivable that $APPL would make a push to deliver more SaaS offerings. Perhaps analagous to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite for profession digital content creators.

<comment><USER12> They should buy Sony. It would give them:

\- Universal Studios

\- PlayStation (aka a big foothold in the living room) and some of the most creative game studios

\- Awesome displays (TVs)

\- Bigger footprint in the consumer electronics market

\- ... and most important of all the best camera sensors in the market (including camera phone sensors).

<comment><USER7> The console market is minuscule compared to the phone market.

Sony has only sold 75 million PS4's since it was released ([https://www.businessinsider.com/ps4-playstation-4-lifetime-s...](https://www.businessinsider.com/ps4-playstation-4-lifetime- sales-2018-1)). Apple sells almost that many iPhones in a good quarter.

TVs are big and bulky and have something like an 8 year replacement cycle.

<comment><USER12> But it would be 82 million Apple TVs overnight after a software upgrade.

Not to mention PlayStation Vue could become Apple Vue.

<comment><USER7> And PS Vue would only be of use in the US.

At the end of the day, PS Vue doesn't offer anything compelling enough to acquire. A few subscribers and a bunch of licensing deals to broadcast TV over the Internet. Apple could get the same deals as Sony, Sling, Directv, Hulu, etc. Cable networks aren't exactly being stingy about licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great conversation thread here. I will add my bit: I have been an Apple customer since buying serial number 72 of the Apple II (and worked writing software for 45+ years).

I love the iPad. I use Mac laptops for programming at work and my personal projects, but, I use my iPad for SSHing to my servers, reading, audio books, watch movies, research material for new books and technologies I want to learn, take online courses, write, etc.

Yes, laptops are great for writing code, but much of my thinking time is done with an iPad. When I retire, I can imagine just using a remote VPS for recreational coding with whatever can get decent screen space and a keyboard for a few SSH shells, and everything else could be an iPad.

<comment><USER14> Can you recommend apps you use for SSH'ing to the servers?

What do you use to write? I have just started with the Apple Pencil and love it, use Notability. Any recommendations here will help.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.blink.sh](http://www.blink.sh) <\- so far the best terminal.

Includes mosh support so you can sleep your iPad, switch between LTE/Wifi, etc - then later continue your terminal without interruption.

<comment><USER16> IMHO the absolute best thing about Blink is that it lets you use caps lock as control. Since doing this remapping on my laptop it is now a part of my muscle memory but no bluetooth keyboards support this in hardware and iOS does not support it in software; Blink manages to support this in the app and it makes my SSH sessions and remote editing so much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it a bit funny that the title of the consolidated financial statements PDF [1] is "Microsoft Word - Q318 Earnings Press Release - Word.docx".

I guess Apple's accountants use MS Office?

1: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q3FY18ConsolidatedFinanc...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q3FY18ConsolidatedFinancialStatements.pdf)

<comment><USER18> No CFO on the planet will ever approve of a statement prepared on anything other than Excel.

<comment><USER19> Except it's not Excel, it explicitly says "Microsoft Word".

<comment><USER3> Right, because if you use Excel you're probably not firing up Pages to do the quarterly report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Killed it again:

      - Revenue: 53.3B (17% YoY)
      - Net Income: 11.5B (40% YoY)

<comment><USER21> Macbook Pro sales down to 2010 levels. Worrying for the HN crowd, no? Bloomberg tech reporter saying that the Macbook is going the way of the iPod. :/

<comment><USER22> Apple still relies on the MacBook, and specifically MacOS (of which the MacBook is the flagship product line), as a development platform for all of its other devices... Within Apple's current platform strategy, Apple does not have any alternative for the MacBook. So, it's currently not possible for the MacBook to go the way of the iPod...

<comment><USER23> Sure it can, they still sell an iPod Touch model from 3 years ago.

Heck, if all they sold was a Macbook Pro from 2015, quite a few developers would be _happier_ about it.

<comment><USER7> They did up until a month ago....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I believe around $199 a share is when AAPL would become the first company ever to have a market cap of $1T. It could happen tomorrow. For reference, the first $1B market cap company was US Steel in 1901.

<comment><USER25> Well, if you inflation-adjust, there probably were $1 trillion companies.

<comment><USER26> There have been several. Saudi Aramco is one right now (and has been for some time), but it's not publicly traded.

[http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies- all-...](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all-time/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Basically the opposite of Twitter's and Facebook's results.

Reporting says services revenue (App Store, Apple Care, Apple Pay, iTunes) is up _31%_ , despite heavy competition in those areas.

<comment><USER28> Well, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, App Store is where you're going to get your apps, iTunes is where you're going to buy, versus stream music, and who else to trust to fix your iDevices than Apple themselves? So where's the competition?

<comment><USER29> For buying music, Amazon. It does a surprisingly good job on the Mac.

For streaming, Apple is still an also-ran, even on the iPhone, and even with 40 million subs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> $4.7B in iPad sales. That's 4.7 BILLION. At nearly 10% of their revenues, the going-going-gone tablet category _still_ has some legs. Who would have thunk?

/edited the numbers. I had mixed up the Mac and iPad revenue figures.

<comment><USER30> iPad sales should go through the roof later in this year.

The acquisition of Texture and the upcoming refresh with iPhone X style design should drive a lot of of users to look at iPads as a magazine replacement. Especially if it comes free as part of your existing Apple Music subscription.

<comment><USER31> _Again?_ Feels like all the magazines around here went through their "digital edition with these cool features" phase 4-5 years ago.

<comment><USER29> IIRC, it was called Zinio, and didn't work very well. Crashtastic.

If Apple can do it right, something could happen here.

Especially if it makes it cheap and easy for independent publishers to climb on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> seals the deal. $1200 base model Iphone here we come.

<comment><USER29> Three months after that... $1,200 base model Samsung phone.

Three months after that... $1,200 base model LG phone.

Three months after that... $1,200 base model no-name Chinese phones.

<comment><USER33> ?? Wasn't Samsung the first to produce $1000 phone last year, followed by Apple a few months later?

or if you are insinuating that everyone else is merely copying Apple's pricing strategy (or anything that is Apple), or just copy, copy, copy, Apple fanois website is that way --> Appleinsider.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> R&D spending up 26% y/y.

Other revenue(watches and AirPods) up 37% y/y.

</comment><comment><USER35> Earnings call:

[https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings- call/](https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings-call/)

</comment><comment><USER36> The iPhone is a beast and a market leader - that is known, and shown in these results.

The Mac however is in decline - Apple seem to have abandoned it in favour of their cash cow (as many on here have complained) and these results just further prove it.

</comment><comment><USER37> iPhone Market share (~11%) and unit sales of iPhones are flat compared to last year on a no-growth market. Service and Mac sales seem to be dependent on iPhone sales.

Quarter by quarter Apple turns into a one trick pony where most income depends on the success of their smartphone market share of ~15 +- 4%.

If there were a novel approach to smartphones/mobile computing - Apple/iPhone would look a lot like RIM/Blackberry in 2010/2011 where sales and revenues (services) skyrocketed yet analysts were warning us. Yet there's to tech rising to kill smartphones. So Apple is safe for some years ahead.

Welcome to trillion+ valuation AAPL.

<comment><USER38> >Welcome to trillion+ valuation AAPL.

The word welcome as if someone already has a trillion cap and welcome them. But in fact no one has done it, and even if they did by real dollar and for a short moment; There were one or two companies that touches the trillion market cap for a few hours / days and came back down. Apple may be the first one to truly worth it.

<comment><USER37> Aren't there non public oil giants who're worth more? Like Saudi Aramco?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Major congrats to them and to the late Jobs. I'd be in the Ballmer category... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycUOENFIBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycUOENFIBs) Making telcos "subsidize" it, must be right there with the "pay just the minimum on your credit card" business wise. Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone else notice that after hours trading puts em a few mill shy of a trillion?

</comment><comment><USER41> there have been about a dozen new hires at my work, each of them getting a new mac book and accessories to develop on.

multiply that by all of the new hires across the country and some of the lowest unemployment numbers in years and you've got a good set up for apple's hardware division to make a ton of sales last quarter.

...

but unfortunately, looking at their data, it looks like I was wrong: unit sales for macs fell by 13% compared to last year, and 9% compared to last quarter.

interesting.

Edit: downvotes because I made a prediction before looking at the reports then acknowledged I was wrong and didn't delete my post. Cool.

<comment><USER42> Might surprise you but the vast majority of IT units hiring people are not giving them $1500-$2000 Macbooks

<comment><USER43> You only spend $2000 on your mac books? My last one was $3,750 after shipping and taxes.

<comment><USER44> Wow!! Can you say it is absolutely worth it?

<comment><USER43> It's extortion. MacOS is the only good consumer OS built on *nix, so I'd probably pay 3x if they charged it.

<comment><USER44> Haha fair enough. I too like the OS but that pricing point is way too steep for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> who knew emojis were so profitable

<comment><USER45> slack

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Apple is making great money selling consumer products and services. It's time Apple uses some of that money to build better hardware for developers without considering immediate profits. We need MacBook Pros that are actually designed for professionals. No touch bar, better keyboard, better CPU and GPU. Consider it an investment on your developers.

<comment><USER30> I am a developer and I really love the new MacBook Pro.

The CPU is now on par with the rest of the industry, keyboard issues largely resolved and the TouchBar is incredibly useful for developers. Look at the recent update from IntelliJ to see some of the future potential. Contextual buttons that completely change depending on what is selected is something nobody could ever remember with Fn keys e.g. refactoring specific buttons when a method is highlighted.

<comment><USER47> > I am a developer and I really love the new MacBook Pro.

I'm guessing you don't use vim.

<comment><USER48> Being a Linux kernel and OS developer for a defense company, vim has been my main editor for quite awhile, and I have no issues with the touch bar on my new 2018 MBP. For those that require the tactile feel, there's always remapping caps lock, as well as utilizing other key combos: [http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key)

If muscle memory is that engrained within the user that he or she cannot utilize any of the aforementioned alternatives, nor adapt to the difference in feel of the touch bar, then your choices are either an older iteration of the hardware, or switch completely. Claiming that, "you don't use vim," if you enjoy the new MBPs is, however, off the mark, IMO.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should we launch a spacecraft to collect energy? - <AUTHOR> Should we launch a spacecraft along the same orbit in reverse and collect it in 6 months?
it could have a supercapacitor to collect the sun's energy and then we could use that to power the earth (or a country's) energy needs?
how big would it have to be? <comment><USER2> You need a LOT of fuel to make a spacecraft go in the reverse orbit. A LOT!!! To make hard turns the satellites use the gravity of another planet.

Also, the mass of biggest satellite we can launch now is only about a hundred tonnes (less than a boing 747), if it goes to a low orbit and it is much smaller if it has to go higher. With a back of the envelope calculation, you can store about 6 million batteries there. For comparison, the population of New York is 8 millions, so you can give them less than a battery to each one of them.

And increasing the mass of the satellite or the fuel amount, makes the fuel in the launching rocket much much much bigger. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation)

Perhaps you can try to gain some intuitive idea about satellites playing the Kerbal Space Program game: [https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/](https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/) The simulation is not totally accurate, but it's good enough and there are some mods to increase realism later.

(It's also not easy to store the energy for 6 months. Try storing a charged rechargeable battery for 6 month and using it.)

Note: This look like a nice question for [https://what- if.xkcd.com/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/) You can try submitting it there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure that smashing a supercapacitor (whatever that is) into the earth at twice orbital velocity will really do that much to help anything...

You could put a solar collector into earth's orbit so it would always be in the sunshine and <transfer the energy in some way>. However no one has a way of making this seem economic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space- based_solar_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power)</comment>


How popular is Swift? It's already the number one language on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/12/08/how-popular-is-swift-its-already-the-number-one-language-on-github/ <comment><USER2> This seems like a meaningless metric to me. I'd care a lot more about the number of repositories of projects using Swift.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickbait</comment>


Dick Dale, "The King of the Surf Guitar," Has Died at Age 83 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dick-dale-died-king-of-surf-guitar-dead-age-83-cause-of-death-unknown-2019-03-17/ <comment><USER2> R.I.P Dick Dale - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKpsuGMeqHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKpsuGMeqHI) amazing piece and probably the only piece I have heard !!

<comment><USER3> Also listen to this (1927)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW6qGy3RtwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW6qGy3RtwY)</comment></comment>


GoDaddy bans top white supremacist and neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/14/godaddy-bans-neo-nazi-site-daily-stormer-for-disparaging-woman-killed-at-charlottesville-rally/ <comment><USER2> > a note appeared on the Daily's Stormer's website claiming it had been taken > over by the hacking activist group Anonymous "in the name of Heather Heyer a > victim of white supremacist terrorism." But a Twitter account claiming to be > linked to Anonymous said it could not confirm that the Daily Storm was > hacked. "Remain cautious," it advised.

I can't tell if the Washington Post is serious. The entire idea behind the Anonymous movement is that anyone can claim the "Anonymous" branding. You can't reach a "representative" for anonymous because it's an ad-hoc collection of people that decide to call themselves that name.</comment>


Ask HN: What hardware do you use for your home network? - <AUTHOR> To make a long story short: In a few months I will be moving to a part of the city where I no longer have Google Fiber internet access. (AFAIK, with Google Fiber your only option is to use their network box - and it's always worked well for me.) I don't want to end up renting the hardware from the cable company so I will soon be in the market for a modem, router, modem/router combo, etc.
I'm just looking for speed, security, and good network signal throughout the house. I don't do anything too complicated with my network so hacking/rooting/whatever is not a selling point for me. I may at some point want to set up a PiHole on the network but I'm not convinced I'll ever be motivated enough to do that. My ecosystem is Apple hardware along with various other device such as a Nintendo Switch, Kindle, and LIFX smart bulbs. Historically, I would have gone with an Apple AirPort but, alas, Apple has put that product line out to pasture.
What hardware do you use and what hardware do you recommend? <comment><USER2> I've got FIOS, with a dmarc box that provides a hot Ethernet jack. But I am spending the extra for a 'business class' FIOS link, which I suspect is how I have a hot Ethernet jack on the demarc.

So the only 'vendor' provided hardware is the FIOS dmarc box that connects to the fiber line. Verizon's awful router that they normally supply sits, unplugged, next to the dmarc box in my basement.

The dmarc then connects to a Linux PC that is my firewall/router box for the rest of the internal network. That box runs Slackware and my own custom firewall setup. It contains four Ethernet cards, the first is a point-to-point link to the FIOS demarc, the second connects to the internal Ethernet, the third connects to the wireless AP, and the fourth is point-to-point to the VPN box that $job deploys to allow telework (this is because I don't trust $job's VPN box to not attempt to spy on me, so it is also fully isolated via those custom firewall rules from any other network device on my network).

Every device on the inside that is not 'portable' is hardwired in (Ethernet). I.e., no 'wireless' for devices that stay put. And 'portable' items with ethernet jacks (laptops) also spend as much time hardwired as possible.

For wireless (phone, tablets), there is an AP connected to the Ethernet card for wireless.</comment>


"Pig Ebola" Is Spreading Uncontrollably in China and Vietnam - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/6/6/18655460/china-african-swine-fever-pig-ebola <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20110514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20110514)</comment>


Wikileaks cables reveal US pressuring Canada on IP enforcement - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/wikileaks-cables-reveal-us-pressuring-canada-on-ip-enforcement.ars <comment><USER2> This is one of many reasons that the majority of Canadians fear a Conservative majority. Stephen Harper would likely push through a Canadian equivalent of the DCMA.

<comment><USER3> While "many" is very vague, I think the vast majority of Canadians don't have a clue about IP, anti-circumvention, DRM or the DMCA (I mostly know this as I've talked about these topics with non-technical people).

However it is a component of the general feeling that the conservatives are essentially Republicans-lite, basically using the Republican's "southern strategy" of media manipulation and fear, anti-crime propaganda, subtle racism and fear of the "other" to pander to a particular class of voters.

In my opinion (Canadian currently in the US).

<comment><USER4> In the US it has traditionally been the Democrats who have had stronger ties to Hollywood and the recording industry. The DCMA, for example was both signed and supported by Clinton. At this point, unfortunately, their support is pretty widespread on both sides of the aisle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be voting against the Conservatives in this election if it weren't for the fact that my right to vote has been taken away from me since I haven't resided in Canada for longer than 5 years. So much for "citizenship". <http://www.letcanadiansvote.com>

Edit: Someone seems to have assumed I'm not Canadian. I am. I've got Loyalists and Quebecois for ancestors. My family's been in Canada since before there was a country called Canada. Nor do I have dual citizenship (although my children do).

<comment><USER6> It's funny that people think voting changes things like this, especially when the issue in question is something that was drafted up by a room full of lawyers and lobbyists.

<comment><USER7> It should change, and surprisingly it's possible: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2484677>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We have a lot of these issues here in Australia thanks to the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) [1] — though to be fair, that's not the only cause.

Thankfully, due to the way statutory damages are legislated here, we haven't seen the MPAA/RIAA vs. Joe Bloggs cases in our court system. Roadshow Films (and friends) did try and sue a major ISP, however (and lost) [2].

[1]: [http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2004/08/03/austral...](http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2004/08/03/australia_welcomes_american_dmca) [2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_Films_v_iiNet>

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't surprise me they're pressuring. What does surprise me is that we didn't capitulate the moment they asked. Now that's change I can believe in while it lasts.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another obvious conclusion brought to us by Wikileaks. Have any of the leaks brought us anything productive? It's apparent that they are using information as a weapon and are only using it to attack the US Government.

Jullian Assange is "obsessed with power"[1] and is using the information leaking selectively and with very purposeful timing. I'm not surprised that those in the government are calling for his assassination. What I don't understand is why the IT press is still painting a neutral to positive picture of the organization and not demanding that he leak _all_ the information that he has. What ever happened to the proposed bank leak, presumably about Citibank?

[1] [http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/02/09/wikileaks-f...](http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/02/09/wikileaks- fires-back-at-defector-over-book-claims/)

<comment><USER11> "Have any of the leaks brought us anything productive?"

How about all the democratic uprisings in the middle east?

All the leaks are pure facts. The truth is always worth being told. Would you rather live in a dream world that really doesn't exist?

<comment><USER12> _The truth is always worth being told._

I count this as a point against Wikileaks as an organization. Would you not agree they've engaged in a considerable amount of spin? At the very least don't you think that "Collateral Murder" was not simply a matter of "pure facts"?

<comment><USER13> Collateral Murder was one big unedited video sandwhiched between some editorializing. There was spin, but the pure facts were not obscured or omitted.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, I had read (although I can't find the link offhand) that the Collateral Murder video was, in fact, edited by Wikileaks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pagers, faxes and cheques: Things that might seem obsolete, but aren't - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49906336 <comment><USER2> I remember setting up an office multi-function printer/copier/scanner/fax device five years ago and then being pretty dumbfounded when I wanted to test functionality: I didn't know how.

Luckily, there are some services on the Internet that will send you a fax if you give them their number.</comment>


Scribd Raises $22M for Its Subscription E-Book Service - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/02/scribd-khosla-funding/

<comment><USER2> Because of the horrible usability experience, I've felt nothing but unadulterated seething hatred for Scribd ever since the first time I was forced to use them. I hope this venture fails, catastrophically.

<comment><USER3> And they pretty much just "resell" infringing content. Scribd "cribd" as in stolen seems like a rung or two below quora and experts-exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh, didn't know Scribd had changed focus to become an E-book service. My impression of Scribd has long been that it's a piracy-pdf site.

<comment><USER5> Might you have said the same thing about YouTube?

<comment><USER6> YouTube made it easier to upload and watch short videos. Much easier. Scribd is an automatic Close-Tab for me. A usability nightmare.

I don't want to subscribe to Amazon's service, and have very little expectations for Scribd.

I'm amazed that the investors doubled down on such a poor end user experience, but I guess they are seeing good paying customer growth. Paying customers growth will fade away unless the end user experience is fixed.

<comment><USER7> > I'm amazed that the investors doubled down on such a poor end user > experience

Sunk cost fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty misleading to say "Any Device" when the service doesn't work with ebook readers, arguably the best devices for reading ebooks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know of a subscription service for physical books? Becoming enchanted once again witb being able to turn an actual page. Looking for a Netflix of books

<comment><USER10> I'm really not sure if you're serious, but have you considered a library?

<comment><USER9> This is like asking me if I've considered going to a department store instead of using Amazon. Yes, I'm aware of that thing called a library. But I want the books to come to me and I want a wider selection than my local library might carry.

<comment><USER10> You can typically request books that they don't carry, which they can get for you.

<comment><USER9> That's a good point, thanks! Still, nothing would top getting the books to just show up in my mailbox....

<comment><USER11> Libraries offer e-books, [https://www.overdrive.com/](https://www.overdrive.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't Amazon kind of already eating their lunch on this one?

<comment><USER13> I haven't used amazon's service, but everything i've heard about it is complaints. it sounds like there's plenty of room for competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> isnt oyster doing that as well?

<comment><USER15> Yup. And there's also 24symbols.com</comment></comment>


Converting a Guitar Effects Pedal to Output MIDI - <AUTHOR> http://www.csun.io/2017/08/25/midi-guitar-pedal.html <comment><USER2> Anybody come across a pedal/switch that would output sustain MIDI signal? Or would Arduino's MIDIUSB work for a DIY version? I have a couple of keyboards (Roli Seaboard block and Roland JD-Xi) without sustain pedal inputs and would like to use a sustain pedal with them

edit: found one - [https://webaudiotech.com/2017/02/20/a-piano-sustain-pedal- to...](https://webaudiotech.com/2017/02/20/a-piano-sustain-pedal-to-midi-usb- adapter/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember being in a guitar store and hearing a pedal that converted a guitar, chords and all, into MIDI piano samples of each note being played. Or that's what it sounded like. It blew my mind! Does anyone know what pedal this was?

<comment><USER4> I bet it was the Roland setup. I forget the model, but it uses individual pickups for each string and some huge 9 conductor cable to go to a decoding box. I still have one somewhere. The latency was terrible, and more than one note at a time was a gamble, but it was fun for string sounds with a slow attack. Some guitars in the 90s even had the setup built in.

To go back even further, check ot the original, the VOX Guitar Organ. Lots of vids on youtube.

<comment><USER5> With more modern tech it should be possible to make quite a small decoder that fits into the body cavity, then shoots out the MIDI via Bluetooth LE. (And fix the latency issue to boot.)

Do you know if anyone has attempted such a feat?

Am embedded electronics designer, for context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome! The market is really short on good MIDI pedals. Most pedals are in the €150 - €500 range and they have no versatility. You have to buy different pedals to be able to connect it to different gear. When you compare them to MIDI controllers from of the likes of Akai and Korg it's just depressing. They have velocity sensitive buttons, wireless-, USB-, standard MIDI and beautiful hardware for less than $80.

Someone go make a Kickstarter!

<comment><USER4> Okay, I will be the guy.

MIDI is dead.

The latency, is simply not musical. I have worked with midi since the early 90s. Its a low baud serial connection. Play 5 notes at once? Nope, its now a really fast appregio. Got a nicer keyboard that sends velocity, aftertouch and control commands? Even more quickly flooded.

The problem is, its such a widely implemented standard, and yet there are few, if any, out of the box midi-on-chip solutions that make sense.

If someone produced a new standard, focusing on latency, and somehow made a midi failover/compatibility mode. Midi2 if you will... that could be easily implemented by device makers. The whole world would get better music.

<comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but these days everyone usually sends MIDI over USB. It doesn't have any of the problems you described, every computer has USB ports in some form or another. Every operating system has default drivers for these devices, so they usually work out of the box. Yes, MIDI as a hardware standard is dying. But why should we care when we have something more universal that replaces it?

<comment><USER8> USB isn't optoisolated. This is its killer flaw as a replacement MIDI transport.

<comment><USER5> It can be, see [https://www.adafruit.com/product/2107](https://www.adafruit.com/product/2107)

Surprised the high-end gear doesn't built it in!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I bet you could also use Dictation Commands if you're recording on a Mac, to press the record button by talking.

<comment><USER10> Depending on what you're activating via the pedal, the timing is very important (e.g. starting/stopping a loop). Voice wouldn't be a good fit in that case.</comment></comment>


Facebook Adds In-Game Offers Option For All Developers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/08/facebook-adds-in-game-offers-option-for-all-developers-hoping-to-further-diversity-revenue/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> On the other hand if you had taken your app on your own domain, you don't have to deal with any of these limitations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know if TrialPay will still be involved here?</comment>


Edge: Have a Competitive Advantage or Don't Compete - <AUTHOR> http://powerstartups.net/2011/06/edge-have-a-competitive-advantage-or-dont-compete/

<comment><USER2> Binary logic: think in it or don't.

Anybody else?</comment>


New York City has chosen this trash can of the future - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90440147/new-york-city-has-chosen-this-trash-can-of-the-future <comment><AUTHOR> It's gonna be "great" until the first backpack or pipe bomb blows up, shrapnel kills some kids and their parents sue because NYC didn't do like every other terrorism-experienced city and install clear plastic bag receptacles that are basically just an aluminum ring suspended in the air and emptied frequently. An example would be like: London's Victoria Station (when I last visited).

A metal container + rapidly expanding gas = shrapnel. Those decorative concrete and stone trash bins are especially vulnerable to large explosives placed in them..</comment>


Ask HN: What's your favorite mouse - <AUTHOR> As a heavy workstation user I have typically gone with gamer mice like the Logitech g9 or g500 and now my g500 is failing. I've started looking around and see a lot of mice are hardcore gamer which now come with a lot more functions than needed. I've always been partial to gamer mice for their durability, ergonomics and construction. Being curious, I started thinking about what hardcore workers actually prefer for mice. Would love to hear. <comment><USER2> [http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-D58-00026-Intellimouse- Optic...](http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-D58-00026-Intellimouse-Optical- Mouse/dp/B00005TQ08)

This was the best mouse I've used in my computing life.

I miss the symmetrical layout with large forward/back buttons.

<comment><USER3> I'm still using mine from 2002. Love, love, love it.

<comment><USER2> Mine was almost as old, but it developed an odd symptom where the back button who register as double click.

Seems like a known defect with this mouse which is a shame, because it was otherwise perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a very nice trend in gaming to try to recreate the Microsoft Intellimouse. There are a few examples, but I think the current best one is the Rival. Most likely my next mouse after my supply of Razer Abyssus run out (I replace my mice every 3-6 months).

[http://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Rival-Optical-Gaming- Mouse...](http://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Rival-Optical-Gaming- Mouse/dp/B00G6IJ5QK)

</comment><comment><USER5> I use vertical mice exclusively. Have since probably 2006 maybe. I get no wrist pain and as I recall it took about 2 days for the vertical style form factor to feel as normal as a traditional mouse. I can go to regular mice, but I get wrist pain after a few hours or day of work. Observing your bones and your wrist twists using a normal mouse which creates strain on it. So the Evoluent Vertical Mouse 4 which isn't cheap, but has been great is my mainstay at my desk. Also the Microsoft Sculpt Ergo Mouse I have in mmy bag as a portable. Note that's Sculpt ERGO because there are a couple sculpt mice by Microsoft. And if you want really cheap, you can get the Lugu Lake vertical mouse wired for like $10 USD. That's cheap enough to try out and then if you don't like it, you could just give it away. Anker makes a couple vertical mice too on the affordable side IMO. other than Anker, Every mouse I've listed here is both one I've used for a good period of time. All are rated pretty well.

<comment><USER6> I also found the Evoluent to make may wrist pain all but disappear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.ianker.com/product/98ANDS2368-BA](http://www.ianker.com/product/98ANDS2368-BA)

Anker 8200: economical; software-configurable colours (sorry but I cannot stand blue lights, like what some mice are limited to); easily allows switching between 4 levels of precision, which helps when drawing in a graphics editor; forward and backward buttons, which are not only essential in a Web browser, but are also very useful when switching between scroll positions in a long code file; good tracking; and overall a nice feel.

</comment><comment><USER8> Logitech MX518. I like how it looks and how it feels. I'm not a fan of heavy mice and don't mind the cord at all. Unless I'm totally out to lunch, I've had this mouse since 2005.

<comment><USER9> The 518 is an awesome mouse. I have the G5 which is basically the 518 with a rubberized exterior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a programmer more than a gamer. I have a fondness for wireless & free scrolling mice. I'm currently using a Logitech m560 which is okay, but the balance is off.

I'm looking to upgrade too. My contenders are the new Logitech MX Master ( [http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/mx- master?crid=7](http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/mx-master?crid=7) ) and the Marathon m705.

i prefer smaller, so I'm leaning towards the m705.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want the "non-gamer" version of the G500, get the M500. They're 30 bucks on eBay and Newegg.

The M500 was my favorite mouse for a long time, but due to wrist troubles I'm trying to avoid the mouse altogether an only use the keyboard. I have a Logitech Trackman Marble trackball now. It could be better but there's not a great deal of choice in trackballs.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm no gamer, and I love the IBM travel mice for its handy size and scroll wheel "feel." I tend to buy them in big batches and spread them around. Sometimes you can find batches of 10 on eBay quite cheaply.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006HYQ5](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006HYQ5)

</comment><comment><USER13> Although I am a gamer, I dislike having a mouse with too many buttons no matter what type of computing I am doing. I've been enjoying my Steelseries Rival for a while now. Good feel, adjustable DPI so you can tune it to your liking, has a reasonable number of buttons.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a gamer and after I "used" 2 razer mouse within a few months each, I went back to a regular 10€ random mouse and still use it years later.

As for working I couldn't care less what I should use as long as it works fine.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found the gamer and most modern mice too hi-res/sensitive for my tastes, so I bought about a dozen used older Lenovo mice on eBay for my supply. That whole box cost less than many new individual ones.

</comment><comment><USER16> G500s.

After my G500 broke after a few years of heavy use, I bought a RAT 7, which was terrible. Uncomfortable and a bad sensor. Returned it, got a G500s, couldn't be happier. It's just a good mouse.

</comment><comment><USER17> Steel Series Sensei. Once you can precisely tune the speed and acceleration of a mouse it's really hard to go back. Also, some of the wireless mice have noticeable lag.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like my Logitech m310, single battery wireless mouse. Enough to have one on all my boxes.

Available for ~$20 easily on eBay.

Prior to that, I liked the Microsoft Explorer mice, but they are wired, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a Razer Lachesis and have since I played video games. It's lasted me a lot of clicks, spills, ragequits and wins.

It collects skin, but I find cleaning it grossly enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seriously, for work: buy a Wacom tablet. Mouse for gaming.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Nexus Silent Mouse. It has a mechanism that makes as little sound as possible while still having a good feel.</comment>


Unidentified object in a strange orbit past Neptune - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-an-unidentified-object-in-a-strange-orbit-past-neptune-and-no-one-can-explain-it <comment><USER2> I would like to take this opportunity to say that wikipedia is truly awesome. I've searched for Niku and I found wikipedia's article on it here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_KT19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_KT19)

What makes wikipedia awesome is the article's edit history -- the article was created about 21 hour ago. Yet, it's more informative and straight to the point than the article posted in sciencealert.com.

Kudos for the wikipedians who made this happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> News discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12272560)</comment>


Autistic People Can Solve Our Cybersecurity Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/11/autistic-people-can-solve-cybersecurity-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Once again science fiction has explored why something like this might not be a great idea (minor spoilers ahead).

Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" explores some of the pitfalls of exploiting the mentally disabled in service of a ubiquitous surveillance state.

<comment><USER3> I think we need to reconsider the blanket conflation of "autistic" and "mentally disabled". Especially considering that one of the premises of this article is that autistic people are disproportionately capable of work in cyber security (which is a knowledge field).

Further, the proposal seems to amount to A) giving those autistic individuals with a propensity for cyber security a job and B) giving the support in dealing with the downsides of autism. It is hard to see where the "exploitation" is happening without arguing that all employee relationships are exploitative. I suppose you could argue that the fact that autistic people are underemployed means that we could pay them below market wages. However, even below market wages could still be very good wages (relative to other fields, we get paid very well); so this arguement would fall into the Copenhages Morality trap. [0] The proposal is also consistent with just paying them market wages, which avoid the problem entirely.

[0] [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of- eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

<comment><USER4> The ASD spectrum has became sadly a pollack painting at this point where for nearly a decade people been throwing everything at it but the kitchen sink.

Lately things are changing and likely for the better where autism and I would say the actual kind is getting back to the spot light with other disorders either being completely thrown out back to the shrinks couch or being classified under neurodevelonetal disorder other.

In some countries it became so bad that you don't need to even see a doctor to be diagnosed with autism with sadly all the perks it gives you including almost magical shield against dismissal, and yes people are taking advantage of it.

I've seen 25-35 highly intelligent and not specifically socially awkward people being diagnosed on the spectrum these days by private diagnosis centers in the U.K. without as much as seeing one doctor.

Niether these people nor likely Turing are exploitable nor in a position to ignore what they see or be incorruptible, they aren't some mentally disabled drones with free processing power or mentats.

And those who are and need constant assistance while might have some amazing skills aren't trainable to be analysts.

There is something wrong today when parents say "our child got diagnosed with autism" and instead of hearing sorry they hear wow they'll be great at math, I would like to see the authors of this article actually spend and hour at a assisted home for the autistic it might prevent them from writing this crap.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How affordable is a degree for a CS job in your country? - <AUTHOR> I'm having trouble finding good compiled information covering more than a sprinkling of the Americas and Europe, so I figured I'd ask HN.
How affordable is it in your country as a resident to attain a respectable degree for a computer science job? By respectable I mean a FAANG would consider hiring you based on the degree and the university (4 year BA/BS minimum).
If you can reference affordability to another nation (such as the US, UK, CA, etc.) that's even better. Please consider typical incomes after taxes if you can.
ESPECIALLY WANTED Figures from Asia: India, China, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, etc. <comment><USER2> Approximate facts from Finland: Bachelors program is 3 years and Masters (which basically everybody does) is extra 2. There was a major shift from direct subsidies to government-backed loans on 2017 but first I'll refer to the benefits I got.

My university fees were about 100 eur / year + books etc. Housing was subsidized by 80% so if you live on the campus on a shared two-bedroom unit you had to pay out of pocket maybe 50 - 60 eur / month. In addition I got a "salary" of 330 eur / month while studying, so not in summer break during which I was doing internship. You can get a student loan as well, up-to 400 eur / month. If you graduate on time the government will pay 40% of your student loan on the part in the excess of 2500 euros.

Under the new system students get paid 250 eur / month + the 80% housing cost (up to a limit), and can get up-to 650 eur / month loan. You are expected to work during the summer and there are still no benefits. If you graduate on time the government will pay 30% of your student loan on the part in the excess of 2500 euros.

After graduating and working for some years you can expect a salary of 3500 - 4500 eur / month which is about 2500 - 3000 eur / month after taxes. Here the salary differences are very small across jobs and tax progression is fairly high as well. Add employer's expenses and 24% VAT and then hardly anyone can afford to hire someone to clean their home once a month so everybody does it themselves instead.

Finnish source: [https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opintotuki](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opintotuki)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the US, the range goes from from $0 to $400k. There's a benefit in prestige and connections from the higher priced ones, but you can absolutely succeed with the $0 option.

Most Ivy League schools have need-based scholarships that bring the cost to $0 for students from low-income families, but you need great entrance test scores. Lambda School (I'm an investor) pays you up front, and takes a percentage of your income later. [https://lambdaschool.com/about](https://lambdaschool.com/about)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking to compare degreed programs only unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> Still, I think the fact that the range goes from $0 to $400k for degreed programs in the US means that assigning a particular number is fairly meaningless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Looking for typical costs like median or average (not atypical extremes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Germany: essentially free. In my city the university charges a mandatory 16 Euro (18 USD) per month for all-access public transport.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of taxes do Germans pay? It gets difficult to compare a German higher education to other nations when the costs are embedded in taxes instead of tuition. That's part of the reason I want to compile more information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Israel:

annual tuition of BA 2019: 10,289NIS

annual median salary 2018: 12*7,452NIS = 89,42NIS</comment>


Are we heading towards another market crash? - <AUTHOR> I would consider myself a passive investor - I don't tend to check the market too often as I'm mainly invested in large U.S index funds.
However, as of late every-time that I do check the market it seems to be in the red. One of my holdings is the Vanguard Index fund and it's constituents are all large fortune 500 U.S companies. Needless to say, it's not a bad representation of where America is economically at given anytime.
So the fact that it's been on a downward spiral has raised some red flags for me, should we be worried? Is it likely that we are towards a recession?
For anyone with knowledge of economics it's a known fact that market corrections have to happen roughly every 10 years or so but we're pushing 6 at this point from the 2008 market crash.
Any thoughts, input here would be great.
Cheers! <comment><USER2> Almost certainly. The entire economy is running on smoke and mirrors.

Take a look at this article that describes how companies are borrowing money to buy stock in themselves in order to push up their own share prices: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/companies- tur...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/companies-turning- again-to-stock-buybacks-to-reward- shareholders/2013/12/15/58a2e99c-4aef-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html)

<comment><USER3> Companies borrow money to rebuy shares when their earnings are greater than the interest cost. If your earnings are rock solid, then you earn a return by rebuying your shares. Of course nothing is guaranteed so you need some margin of error.

Interest < Earnings * risk

Not surprisingly, when interest rates are low, companies borrow more money to do this. It's also a feedback cycle where companies pay higher prices to buy their own shares. But it's still worthwhile because money is cheap.

Thus, answering the original question, a market crash won't likely happen until interest rates rise. Recently there have been data that suggests the Fed might be able to raise rates, thus the mini sell off. But there is nothing solid yet. It's not the big scare, but the environment is building that there could be one. Doesn't mean it'll happen though.

<comment><USER3> By feedback cycle I mean that companies tend to do more backbacks when the market is high. Which seems counter-intuitive, but makes sense because the market is biased higher when interest rates are low. And then company buybacks push it higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably. Despite all the propaganda, a bunch of "passionate" 20 something developers slinging javascript code are not worth $100K+.</comment>


Windows 10 could have synced email, contacts, calendars with all major providers - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-pim-sync-partnersonly <comment><USER2> Outside of Outlook at work, I can't even remember the last time I used an actual "client" for e-mail. I use the browser interface of the couple different email services I use.

This is likely just a support/cost issue. When you leave something "open" in Windows, it has to be tested and supported and it's not as simple as "all of these things use the same protocols". So they narrowed the support strategy and focused testing on the main email services.

I see no problem with this.

<comment><USER3> Local email backups are one compelling reason.

I've had an e-mail address since 1999 or so, back when usa.net was still a thing. Until about this time last year, I was strictly a webmail reader. Never saw the point in configuring Outlook/Eudora/Thunderbird/Geary, etc. HTML email inside my browser worked just fine, and it meant I could check it from any computer, to boot.

Then I read some story on HN about a guy getting his gmail account shutdown and subsequently losing access to his emails, his Drive, his Photos, several websites he had hosted through Blogger, etc. And since these were all "free" services provided by Google, when they decided to shut down his account, he had no legal recourse.

The idea of losing 10+ years of emails at the whim of my provider didn't sit well with me, so at that point I installed Thunderbird on my desktop and started keeping a local copy of all my e-mails. Just in case.

<comment><USER4> I've had a similar experience.

From 2003-2008 I used a free hotmail account. Then I got on the gmail train and had all mail forwarded from hotmail to gmail.

Last year I went to check my hotmail account and couldn't find any emails older than 1 year. After some research [1] it seems that if the hotmail account wasn't accessed within the last year, they purge your inbox :(

Moral: Always keep back-ups, don't rely on web-services, especially free ones

[1] [https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/oemail...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-orestoremail/all-my-old-hotmail-emails-have-been- deleted-how-do/fbb99c4f-80c3-4f2c-9d75-c2c3bd8bd107?auth=1)

<comment><USER5> And you can download everything from Google with Takeout:

[https://takeout.google.com](https://takeout.google.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is being unintentionally ironic with the title. Windows 10 does have support for all major email providers. The article is claiming it could just as easily have support for niche ones as well.

I really don't know why people are assuming that MS is being malicious -- they support exactly their direct and realistic competitors to Exchange. If the author seriously thinks that 腾讯首页 or Nextcloud, which doesn't even have an email server component, are sapping users from Exchange he's crazy.

<comment><USER7> QQ, Yandex or GMX are niche? You're suffering from a severe case of US- centrism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, the decision to lock down to a golden path smells more to me like a way of keeping support responsibilities constrained. What happens if the integrating service has a quirk? Microsoft and that service might argue which service is at fault and in the meantime customers will blame Windows.

<comment><USER9> It's probably this. For any "open standard" there's going to be a few different interpretations of what that means across the board. Different services often have sightly different ideas about how their APIs should work, which causes weird edge cases. Supporting all clients arbitrarily without first making sure they all work is a headache for devs and is likely to result in crashes/data loss/etc.

I'm guessing that the client was never designed to be a fully fleshed out classic email app. They probably have some baked in ease of use/set up features that they had to explicitly included on a per provider basis. Having a list of pre-approved clients that are guaranteed to work probably satisfies the grand majority of users while leaving these features maintainable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to run CalDav and CardDav compliance tests against all the providers and see who's actually compliant. This seems like a "We don't want to deal with someone wondering why their ______ service won't work even though it's returning a completely invalid response" decision.

</comment><comment><USER11> Windows could have had a proper update system that security updates all software not just Microsoft products. Instead we got the Windows store updates which is a strange in that normal Windows programs do not get security patched.

In the future I think Windows will be a paid compatibility layer in Linux. Building on SQL server libraries for Linux could be a start for such a compatibility layer. Cloud and web apps has made Windows desktop more irrelevant.

Most likely there will be an Linux desktop alliance between for example Ubuntu, Amazon, Steam and PC makers that will make the Linux desktop more user friendly.

<comment><USER12> Ubuntu has gotten less user-friendly over the years. Out of the handful of distros I use, it is the only one that gives me frequent crashes with the various widgets that come with the distro's default desktop environment.

Configuration tooling is also convoluted and buggy, as they build on top of existing configuration tooling, so now there are more points of failure. And the software repositories are often multiple versions behind the latest stable release.

Ubuntu is doing great things for Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why settle for promoting support for open protocols and standards when you have the power to pick winners and losers in the market?

</comment><comment><USER12> How is this any different from Google arbitrarily deranking/delisting search results, or YouTube arbitrarily demonetizing videos?

<comment><USER14> in those cases, people are also rightfully annoyed, but you can't tackle all the worlds problems in a single blog post

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What would be a worse headline?

Something like that probably:

> Sniggering Linux users who believe in open code and open standards can take > a hike. The Online Accounts systems in GNOME, Ubuntu Unity, Plasma, and MATE > do the exact same thing as Window 10

ouch. but to be fair you can configure carddav/caldav manually on linux (but well I didn't liked evolution so much, mutt is okish but only for text. well mac mail.app is worse since it can't send csv files correctly (it adds unnecessary lines into it depending on the encoding)) (and well gnome only supports 3 email providers with cal/contact sync in their boxes which is microsoft, google and exchange (you can also add generic smtp/imap of course but it's about caldav/carddav), and one can prolly use nextcloud for carddav/caldav sync which is supported in the box aswell)

<comment><USER16> The GNOME accounts panel allows the addition of arbitrary CalDAV, CardDAV, IMAP, SMTP accounts.

Also worth pointing out that iOS and macOS also do, too.

<comment><USER15> where? [https://imgur.com/a/apKjy](https://imgur.com/a/apKjy) (ubuntu latest, I also have a fedora but I only have the machine remotly which I can't access at the moment, but I'm 100% sure that is has no way to setup caldav/carddav directly inside the accounts panel)

<comment><USER17> I can confirm that at least Fedora 26 cannot. You have to go via evolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After spending a rather long time without Windows and Outlook I've recently been using the current version of the desktop and web client. It's quite functional and the workflow and features work intuitively and it actually looks nice but the font sizes and layout really bother me. Having used a Mac for very long the font rendering of Outlook on Windows makes it even worse for me. I find it more work to read and identify what to read. I have noticed a certain number of individuals at my previous workplace often missed some e-mails and thinking about it made me remember that they Windows Outlook users and where I work now a lot of people simply don't seem to read their e-mails and everyone is using Outlook on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is their junky Windows Store mail app, right? I'm an Outlook jockey, so it's been a while since I've tried to use that - primarily because it wasn't all that usable.

I've been guilty of it in the past, but you gotta love some good armchair programming (from the OP):

> In my estimate Microsoft, it's just a matter of changing about six variables > in the code and adding some text strings!

</comment><comment><USER20> But, you can? If you open the mail app and choose add account pop3/imap is an option. What is this guy smoking?

<comment><USER13> The article is about the CalDAV and CardDAV protocols which is the IMAP equivalent for syncing your calendars and contacts.

<comment><USER21> So the article incorrectly titled as it uses word "email" while W10 does support arbitrary POP/IMAP/SMTP mail systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This blog post uses a work around featured in another blog post on the net. I filed a bug for this a while ago (after discovering said post) on their Feedback app, several times. I'd really love to believe in Microsoft and their push for UWP and a better ecosystem but their priorities aren't on functioning and featureful software but instead only appearing they are building functioning and featureful software.

</comment><comment><USER23> It took a long time, but this is one of the things that Apple seems to have finally gotten the hang of.

iCloud sync of to-do lists, notes, contacts, calendar, and Handoff between 6 computers and iDevices is a big thing that keeps me in the Mac ecosystem.

It wasn't always reliable, and the first few years were particularly rough, but it's been working flawlessly for me for the last couple of years.

Naturally, there are other people for whom things are not so smooth.

<comment><USER24> Hand-off of phone phone calls and copy & paste between devices impressed me the most.

<comment><USER23> Every now and again I'll forget my phone in the car. I only find out about it when an incoming phone call starts ringing on my Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One thing that I actually hate on Windows 10 compared to Windows 8 is the native apps - it is a huge step backwards.

I have a Microsoft Account on my work (Office 365) email address.

Windows 8 worked perfectly - if you signed in to Windows with a MS account, it would ask you "do you want to use your personal or organisation account" and then you could add your email account with the same message.

Windows 10 on the other hand just errors out...

[https://superuser.com/q/1267281/4386](https://superuser.com/q/1267281/4386)

This is most annoying because Outlook does update the "system" calendar or the home screen, you get none of the rich integrations. Cortana just errors out whenever you try to interact with the calendar.

What's funny is, I can use my Office 365 account on my Mac without problems and use Siri to make appointments, get notifications when to leave etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> I tried using the Mail app for my work Office 365 email account because the web UI is so awful. Turned out the app is pretty much exactly the same. Bulk operations, except deleting (the one bulk operation I never wanted), are pretty much impossible to do; simple UI features, like copy/paste are broken in several ways; search is close to useless; annoying extra "features" I have to turn off ("@" replies, chat). Any benefit OS integration provides is completely negated, and then some, by all the other inconveniences of the app.

</comment><comment> Digital-Citizen The article says:

"Sniggering Linux users who believe in open code and open standards can take a hike. The Online Accounts systems in GNOME, Ubuntu Unity, Plasma, and MATE do the exact same thing as Window 10. There are underlying CalDAV and CardDAV sync engines (Evolution Data Server, Akonadi) that power them but the user interface only expose two–three providers like Google and Yahoo! with no option to auto-discover or manually configure any other providers."

I think this takes a needlessly limited view by casting the limits imposed on users of nonfree software onto free software (which is odd because elsewhere the author says they love free software). Here's the overlooked difference: with a free software program, one can improve the code to add the desired functionality and interoperability. Users can even get together and collectively fund a programmer to help them out. By contrast, Microsoft Windows 10 Email app is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating). Even technically capable and willing users are prohibited from reading the relevant source code, modifying it, and distributing it to help others. Even if Microsoft alters their code to add missing functionality, users likely gain no software freedom in the process. Users aren't allowed to inspect and rebuild the software. Software freedom leads to trusting that software and proprietary software is often malware ([https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware- microsoft.html](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html) for pointers to how Microsoft's software is often malware). Software freedom is the key to understanding the difference.

This limitation has nothing to do with GNU/Linux systems (unfairly referred to as "Linux" in the article; see [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to- avoid.html#Linux](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Linux) for more on this) per se; software can be ported to other OSes and the desired features could be available there too.

Standards that allow interoperability are a good unto themselves, just like software freedom, and we should push for both, use both, and improve both to meet our needs, not "take a hike" as the author suggests.

With software freedom users don't have to beg a software proprietor (who is also a known NSA collaborator and multinational antitrust violator) to make the software more interoperable. They can help themselves, they can hire someone to help, they can ask the community (perhaps in more kind words than the article) to help. These are potent options that render the software trustworthy (regardless of who wrote it) and with sufficient improvement even cross-platform.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there Gnome integration for CalDAV, out of interest? I'm always interested in knowing how Gnome and KDE fairs against Windows.

<comment><USER13> It's mentioned in the article. GNOME (and KDE) supports it, but has the same problem as Windows where they only let you configure it from major branded providers. You can open Evolution, configure it there, and have it work globally in all GNOME apps, but this is poorly documented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Don't want Windows near my mails / contacts / cal anyway.

Windows serves three purposes for me:

1) Launch browser

2) Launch VLC

3) Launch Steam

<comment><USER29> 4\. launch eclipse at 9am

5\. close eclipse at 5pm

<comment><USER30> s/eclipse/Visual Studio/

Or Solidworks, Quickbooks, Photoshop or whatever it is you do between 9 and 5.

<comment><USER19> I try my best never to close Visual Studio... some of the solutions I work on are so painful to reload. Double-click the sln, ho to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, come back, and it's still thrashing disk and locked up. Much better to keep everything warm.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Analysis shows major decline of Oracle's involvement with Java EE - <AUTHOR> http://jj-blogger.blogspot.com/2016/04/java-ee-8-what-is-current-status-case.html <comment><USER2> As for these JSR's: I have a strong feeling that Enterprise Edition has become a little detached from the real world.

Java SE is fine but the audience and industry is becoming not interested in Java Server Faces and Portlets as society is shifting to client-side technologies to do same stuff with JavaScript, TypeScript, etc. Java SE is enough to work on server providing RESTful interfaces to the outside world.

Regarding JMS: may be it is a variety of Java asynchronous processing/storage tools that don't need EE at all (like Actors, Hazelcast, Hadoop, Redis, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Society has shifted from the client to the server and back again a couple of times before, and don't forget that one of the biggest web sites out there (Twitter) has switched back from the client to the server.

Pure client-side technologies have many disadvantages, including a long initial load time, high local memory usage and high CPU usage. Ironically, a browser tab in Chrome can easily take up a magnitude more memory than a Java EE server takes up.

And don't forget that the client-side ecosystem is anything but stable. Google the phrase "javascript framework of the week" and the term Javascript fatigue.

Even if you do want to go with client-side UIs, there's a wealth of technology in Java EE to back these; JAX-RS, WebSockets, JSON-P, Bean Validation, JPA, JTA, etc etc.

<comment><USER2> You are right about JAX-RS, WebSockets, JSON-P, JPA, JTA, etc: there are no replacements for these Java EE technologies in client-side technologies.

But I have a feeling that author is judging about whole set of EE technologies by JSRs that loose their popularity at the current time. I've provided explanation for that.

As for Chrome: the lifecycle of the UI in Chrome is different than UI lifecyclein JSF/Portlets. JSF/Portlet builds the DOM in memory, sends the output, GC cleans up after. This happens per request. But I've seen GC utilization in JSF under a big load. It wasn't nice. Also, JSF/Portlets' APIs are mostly synchronous.

Also, browsers are evolving. Client-side technologies are easier to learn. Server-side is harder. That's why I don't believe in major shift back to server-side. Twitter is relatively simple application. This is an exception, I think. There will be cases when server-side rendering is more efficient. But UI will be much simpler (no templating support, for example).

<comment><AUTHOR> >But I have a feeling that author is judging about whole set of EE technologies by JSRs that loose their popularity at the current time.

That would have been a viable explanation, I agree.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case. I follow all the Java EE specs very closely, and this inactivity by Oracle concerns each and every spec. JPA as pure backend technology didn't even get an update, then after much asking a maintenance release was scheduled, but that's completely quiet again. JAX-RS, same deal. Spec lead didn't show up for months, and then occasionally he shows up saying little more than: "no! we're not going to do that"

And the same thing is true for brand new specs like MVC and Security. They were started with much enthusiasm, and then at exactly the same time as the graphs in this article shows (just after JavaOne) commits and mails from the spec leads completely plummeted.

>I've seen GC utilization in JSF under a big load. It wasn't nice.

I've actually seen the reverse. Which version and implementation of JSF was that?

See for instance this: [http://jsfcentral.com/articles/understanding_jsf_performance...](http://jsfcentral.com/articles/understanding_jsf_performance_3.html)

The GC churn of JSF is rather good, and better than for instance Spring MVC + Thymeleaf, which people somehow expect to perform better.

> Also, JSF/Portlets' APIs are mostly synchronous.

In what respect? Many JSF applications uses AJAX quite intensively. And WebSockets is used a lot too. PrimeFaces has its own Atmosphere based implementation for a long time, while JSF 2.3 will adopt the approach introduced by OmniFaces which is more Java EE standards centric.

But while an interesting discussion, I'm pretty sure client-side vs server- side is not the main thing the article is about, which is really about Oracle silently and without giving any reason all of a sudden doing almost nothing anymore.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it legit to learn machine language with the 6502 (Commodore64) - <AUTHOR>

I'm a long time computer programmer but have never learned assembler but I have always meant to.
I came across "Should Programmers Learn Machine Language": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=807117 and I agree it's time.
As an Android (Java) programmer these days it won't be directly relevant (it is possible to include ARM assembly with the Android NDK) but will be for general knowledge so this opens up the question of WHAT machine language.  I've recently also developed a passion for computer history going back to the first electronic computers (and it's precursors).
My first computer was a Commodore 64 and I've played with emulators of such from time to time.  So I was thinking what if I learned 6502 Assembler?  Is that worthwhile or a waste of time?  Or maybe not a waste but would I generally be better served by learning ARM or x86?
Thanks for any insight. <comment><USER2> Learning 6502 (the C64 is actually a 6510, but basically the same thing) asm will be absolutely worthwhile, not in the sense that it is a directly usable skill but in the sense that it will give you a greater understanding of the lower levels of computer operation which will help in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways when you are doing virtually any type of programming.

As far as ARM or x86 being more useful, I'd stay away from learning x86 (particularly modern x86) as your first assembler because it has evolved to be more of a compiler target language than a human-understandable assembler. ARM isn't as bad on this front (though it is ramping up in complexity lately). 6502, 68000 or MIPS would be my recommendations for a first-timer though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Thanks. I had heard the argument made that ARM is ideal because it is a RISC processor so less to learn. Regardless as it likely won't be directly usable if the general concepts are as readily, if not better, learned with the 65XX then that's perfect.

Thank you!

BTW, just discovered this community. Pretty cool so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not to take this thread off topic but I've also been getting into the fascinating history of computers. I've almost finished the book Code by Charles Petzold and it was like a lightbulb going off in my head. So interesting and so exciting.

I'm now itching to dive into assembler so based on georgemcbay's comment I'll give 6502 a go.

On a side note, @geeksonhugs, do you know of any other good books or documentaries exploring the history further?

Thanks in advance</comment>


Why functional programming matters (1990) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.pdf <comment><USER2> Finally read this paper a couple of days ago. Even though i thought i already understood the concepts of higher order functions and laziness, and had used them on my every-day programming, the paper was still quite enlightening.

One of the things i hadn't considered before is how much laziness can help to build modular code. The last section in the paper, about implementing the minimax algorithm, is a great example of this. The `evaluate` function is first naively defined as a simple chain of a couple of functions that iterate the tree of all possible game positions. Then a series of improvements are applied to it (e.g. pruning the tree to allow the algorithm to work on infinite trees, or ignoring branches that cannot yield favourable moves), but what's really nice is that thanks to lazy evaluation these improvements can be implemented as independent functions that are just "plugged in" the chain, without having to modify the original functions. For example, the original function that generates the whole game tree doesn't need to be changed to implement pruning.

I'd really recommend the paper to anyone who might be wondering "why all this fuss about functional programming?". It's not only very accessible, but also full of beautiful code examples solving very practical and concrete problems. I personally felt a bit sad having to "back" to the imperative programming world in my every-day job after reading it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read this paper the first time while working on an Apache project. Shortly after created a sub in reddit, and now it has almost 1.700 users subscribed.

Feel free to share, vote, comment there too :) [http://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprogramming/](http://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprogramming/) A very healthy community, lots of interesting stuff in different programming languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> This paper was written 25 years ago; have any studies yet justified the extravagant claims made by Hughes and other FP advocates of substantial increases in productivity, correctness, and modularity?

<comment><USER5> Credible empirical investigations of programming language efficiency are too hard to carry out (though they could be done in principle). However, what we can do instead is look the evolution of programming languages: what features do the latest creations have, what features are older languages retro-fitted with? What ideas have seen little uptake?

(i) Higher-order functions: Yes, slam-dunk win. Essentially all new languages have them, Java and C++ retrofit them.

(ii) Lazy evaluation order by default: mostly dead. All new language use eager evaluation, even SPJ is sceptical that lazy evaluation should be the default. Scala has an interesting approach: eager by default, but you can switch to CBN (although not full laziness) if required. This hybrid form enables you to define control-operators easily, while keeping the simplicity and efficiency of eager evaluation. Exceptions are languages with dependent types that are really theorem provers (e.g. Agda).

(iii) Purity: dead. All new languages have side-effects. The widely used FP languages like Haskell, Ocaml and F# have side-effects. Exceptions are languages with dependent types for Curry-Howard-based theorem provers (e.g. Agda), because there is no convincing Curry-Howard correspondence using state.

(iv) Everything is function application: open. This may work reasonably well in purely sequential languages, but there are theoretical reasons to believe that message passing is not function application (while function application is a special case of message passing).

(v) Types. The answer on this one depends on whether one is a proponent of statically typed languages or not, clearly an unresolved question. For dynamically typed languages, the question is moot, so the rest of the discussion is irrelevant to those who think that static typing is a bad idea.

(vi) Types (1), type inference: Slam dunk winner. All new languages have inference or wish they could have it but don't know how to do it (Scala). There are probably some hard trade-offs between expressivity of types and efficient decidability of type inference (B Pierce termed Hindley-Milner a "sweet spot"), so we might have to tolerate some type annotation being required, e.g. in local or bidirectional inference.

(vii) Types (2), algebraic data types, pattern matching: winner. Most new languages have them in some form.

(viii) Types (3), monadic encapsulation of effects: open. Most new languages have not yet embraced this. Some conceptual problems not yet solved, e.g. destructors for state monads. There are also expressivity problems, e.g. not all effects can easily be expressed as monads, and composition of monads doesn't always work as desired. Moreover there are pragmatic questions about whether monadic encapsulation should be required or optional.

(ix) Types (4), higher-kinded types: open. Not all new languages have them, but HKTs are generally considered useful, but not super important, cf Rust's evolution. If monadic encapsulation of effects is used, then HKTs become highly desirable, cf the recent Scala fork.

       </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Any other suggestions?

<comment><USER6> Really, really have to say I disagree with (iii). Purity is growing more and more day by day. From other comments you seem to have taken a fairly non- standard definition of purity and I'd encourage you to stick with the normal one as it'll let you talk about more interesting things—see further comment on (viii).

I don't think (iv) is open at all. The fact that you can encode everything as function passing is an interesting trick, but it's merely one of several (you can, e.g., also encode everything categorically or via supercombinators and graph reduction, which turns out to be more practical for lazy languages). Function application is just one really well understood semantic foundation.

I find (v) far more subtle than you make it out to be. The standard static/dynamic types divide is silly because both sides are talking about different things. The static side wins completely because honestly, taken at face value, they don't claim that much. All languages are typed, some have interesting type theories, some compilers reject programs which are syntactically OK but violate the type theory.

(viii) is interesting. In my mind, you've conflated this with what most people would call purity---however, monads are merely _an_ implementation of effect typing/purity. Others exist and are experimented with. Also, composition of monads always works as desired... there's no strange edge-case to it. It's merely that they don't compose like functions in a simple way. When you examine what they would entail you learn that they ought not to as well.

(ix) HKTs are sort of a gateway drug to type-level computation. It's remarkable how many languages just more or less let their type-level language wither and die. I'm not claiming that HKTs are a slam dunk victory, but I would be willing to bet that the evolution of languages will lead us to (a) having them universally in the next two decades and (b) wondering why everyone was so hung up on HKTs---I mean, I suppose I can understand singletons, but HKTs? Really?

<comment><USER5>
         monads are merely an implementation of effect typing/purity.

Yes, and the one Haskell has chosen. Is it the right way? Most newer languages are not following Haskell here, instead they have effects like state and exceptions 'directly. That's what I was pointing out. And yes, composition of monads is a bit non-canonical.

As to HKTs, I agree, languages should have them. I was just pointing out the state of the art, post Haskell.

<comment><USER6> I would suggest that effects which are "directly" embedded are impure effects (w.r.t. our other thread). Essentially, without reifying them into values with types it's harder to reason about them.

A more interesting dividing line are things like computation effect typing in languages like Bauer and Pretnar's "Eff" or McBride's "Frank".

[http://www.eff-lang.org/](http://www.eff-lang.org/)

[http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/slindley/papers/frankly- draft-...](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/slindley/papers/frankly-draft- march2014.pdf)

But yes, if you consider other "practical, modern" languages, many retain impurity.

<comment><USER5> There are very different options.

First, approaches like Eff take pure functional computation as a basis and layer effects like call/cc or concurrency on top of that. I think it's better to go the other way and take concurrency, or, if you want to start sequential, a lambda-calculus with jumps a la call/cc or lambda-mu, as a basis see pure functional computation as a _restriction_ of the base calculus.

Second, it's unclear that effects should be reflected in types for reasoning. That road leads to complicated typing systems without type inferences (see also dependent types). I think the following alternative is more appealing: stick with lightweight types (think Hindley-Milner), and leave reasoning to an external calculus (variants of Hoare logic).

<comment><USER6> That "analytic" style you suggest is really interesting, too. I'm not sure I have a dog in the ultimate race and I'd love to see both analytic and synthetic styles flourish, but from a mere terminology point of view I'd distinguish between the two languages in means of describing them as "pure" or not.

I also really worry that external proofs will ultimately be neglected in practice. I suppose this is again a "UX of Types" thing, but I'm something of a believer that anything that you do not literally demand of the programmer will eventually be sacrificed.

<comment><USER5> I'm not totally sure what you mean by "external proofs will ultimately be neglected".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Probably one of the most popular reposts on HN, if you search this title.

</comment><comment> Ono-Sendai I don't find the parts on lazy evaluation very convincing.

</comment><comment><USER7> FP and the arguments have evolved in the 25 years after this paper. Laziness by default was important because it forced language and library developers to invent new purely functional constructs such as monads and functional reactive programming. Functional programming has won with lambdas in every language and even mainstream GUIs getting programmed with React.js, pure Flux architecture and Immutable-js.

<comment><USER8> Given that "anonymous function" is the same as "lambda", please use "anonymous function", because it's self-explaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If functional programming actually mattered we would stop having to remind ourselves why it matters.</comment>


The "VIP syndrome": A clinical study in hospital psychiatry  (1964) - <AUTHOR> https://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Citation/1964/02000/_THE_VIP_SYNDROME___A_CLINICAL_STUDY_IN_HOSPITAL.12.aspx <comment><USER2> The article talks about the difficulties of mental treatment of prominent politicians.</comment>


New Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://maps.google.com/maps/about/explore/?status=invite

<comment><USER2> Is it too much to ask for a mapping service that doesn't try to be smarter than me? I don't _want_ 'recommended venues' or maps that 'get smarter with use'. I want directions from Point A to Point B (sometimes) or a bird's eye view of an area (other times), and that's it. I don't want to 'be social' or any of this other claptrap they're trying to cram down my throat. Yeesh, I'm in my thirties and I already feel like a crotchety old man.</comment>


Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@eligoldstone/meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss-aff0a3dd132e <comment><USER2> Some good quotes:

> _In reality the semantics of this arrangement frees companies from any > social responsibility._

> _The app also makes service requests for users casual, fun, and — crucially > — impersonal. When a customer reviews the service they have been given, the > real life implications of that action are far from their mind._

This is kind of the original sin of all "sharing economy" businesses: they help people abstract away the sometimes-unpleasant problem of treating service providers like human beings, in exchange for "sharing" (read: extracting) wealth from local communities.

</comment><comment><USER3> <In reality the semantics of this arrangement frees companies from any social responsibility.>

Being free of _consequences and liability_ is not the same as being free of social responsibility.</comment>