Another boring RSpec formatter? NOPE! It's just ChuckTesta(r) - <AUTHOR> http://chucktestar.com/

<comment><USER2> A screenshot of it in action would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is an example: <http://vimeo.com/32852547>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So what does it actually do?

<comment><USER4> It's an RSpec formatter (<https://www.relishapp.com/rspec>), meaning it formats the output from your specs (provided you're using RSpec) in a special way.

The reason why we did this is twofold. First of all it's a joke based on the type of humour known from Chuck's Testa ad ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LJP1DphOWPs), chances are he didn't mean to be humorous). When your specs fail, the formatter at first tells you that they pass, just to reveal the truth a second later. This was meant as a joke so we didn't attach any screenshots on purpose, as you don't usually explain a joke before telling it. We now understand this put many people off, and we probably could have done better.

ChuckTestar is, however, something more than that. If you're a Ruby developer chances are that at some point you may find the ability to use custom RSpec formatters useful. What we show with the open source code is how to overwrite default formatter's behaviour, how to add Growl Notifications, how to make your machine tell you (i.e. speak out loud) whether your tests pass or fail. We solve the problem of supporting both OSX and Linux. That's a bunch of really useful things packed into this small gem.

There's also a related blog post that I wrote explaining all this in more detail: [http://applicake.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/15/how-to- write-...](http://applicake.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/15/how-to-write-your- very-own-rspec-formatter-and-have-fun-doing-it/).

<comment><USER3> I'm a Ruby developer, and I know and use RSpec, and I still couldn't tell what it did. I know it's an RSpec formatter, but nothing on the page tells me how it changes the format, or why I care, other than that it invokes one of the fastest birth-to-death memes in recent history. I'm not going to install $RANDOM_GEM without actually understanding the value proposition.

Take a look at the announcement post for rspec-fuuu (<http://sjackson.net/2011/08/30/rspec-fuuu.html>). It says "Hey, it turns 'FFFF' into what you're really thinking: 'FUUU'". I understand exactly what the gem gets me, and why I should be amused. Your gem provides none of that. No examples, not even a sentence explaining how the output format changes. Even your lengthy blog post (which does a good job of explaining how to set up a custom formatter) tells me nothing at all about what your gem actually does. It's a bad sell.

<comment><USER4> After your advise, we've added a video showing it in action (<http://vimeo.com/32852547>) and we linked to it from the project page (<http://chucktestar.com/>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> pic or it didn't happen!</comment>


Apple's lack of daycare wasn't a mistake, it was a message - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/05/20/apple-campus-daycare/ <comment><USER2> Contrarian opinion click bait piece.

Apple is top heavy, just like the military. There many many many that have stayed because their job is safe, their ESP is vested and earning them tons for their nest egg. There are plenty of people with 10 yr, 15 yr or even 20 yr letters of appreciation hanging on their cubicle wall.

What's more important is dispelling this myth that Apple's work life balance is great or that they even pay well.

Unlike SF, working in SV most people skew older than 30+, have starter families, and live in the suburbs. Their lives are already established. But Apple is under market when factoring in the commitment you put in.

On top of that day care here in Cupertino or even the south bay are extraordinary expensive. Google has child care, they even hire full time child care providers that are even issued RSUs. But then, Google is building a cult that Apple once were while Apple is transitioning to being a campus that Google once were.

Ask the contract bus drivers here when you have a chance. They will all tell you the same thing. Of the people they pick up, whether it's Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, every Monday morning, the ones that look like they most want to shoot themselves are Apple employees.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing it was a typo, but the reference to SV workers having "starter families" brings up some fabulous mental imagery.

<comment><USER4> Note to self: No mater how bad things get, don't "pivot" the family.

<comment><USER3> If a starter family is like a starter home, after you spend 5-10 years saving money you would be expected to sell the starter family and buy a mid-range family in a better part of town. ;-)

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't you keep the starter family as a rental?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't you play devils advocate and say that lack of day care implies that you should go home?

If the daycare is on-site, a person might stay longer at work since their child is taken care of.

DISCLAIMER: I have no children which means that my comment is ignorant or how a parent might read the same article or "message".

<comment><USER7> To parrot the article. For companies that aren't trying to provide every other perk on the planet, this is a reason that makes sense. For a company that is including such things as work shuttles, food, and gyms... it is a little hazier.

That is, they are making a clear commitment to prioritize things that reduce the time you are away from the office. Having on site food is convenient for the employer. Less time away from doing work.

Daycare, though, doesn't really do much more than help the employee actually have a family life. You won't stay at the office longer, since it will close and you will pick up your child and go home.

I'd actually extend the idea further and say what else sets this apart is what people do in the other locations. It is not uncommon to network on a gym or cafeteria. Daycare? It probably can happen. Doubt it does.

<comment><USER8> It totally depends on context. My office doesn't have a gym, but there's one next door and we reimburse its membership fee. Colleagues seem to find it easier to go regularly during the workday, rather early in the morning or after work. I think it's fantastic that this kind of "break" is allowed and encouraged. In this city of dysfunctional transportation, saving you a "second commute" to the gym is a valuable service.

Food? A nice lunch that I don't have to think about beats packing PB&J or throwing away money on restaurant meals.

Dinner is provided very late, and is by no means an expectation, more of a courtesy to employees working late for other reasons. It makes sparse use of one cafeteria, where lunch overflows ~5.

Most engineers in my immediate area are solidly 10am-6pm unless something comes up. (Several have hour-plus BART rides to their families deep in the East Bay).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Apple's future, and their employees will not stay 25 forever.

Most of the Apple employees I know skew higher than 25 -- of the companies in the valley it seems to have the most long-term-ers.

</comment><comment><USER10> A couple of days ago someone here brought up a good point why companies should not offer daycare- wait times to get children into daycare in sf are between 8-10 months. So in case the employee is let go/leaves then it'll take almost an year for them to get their children in a new daycare.

<comment><USER11> If apple, and others, provided on-site day care it would take some of the pressure off daycare in the region and the wait times likely wouldn't be so long for everyone else (including people who get fired). Also, if they're arguing this is such a critical benefit it shouldn't be handled by apple because the impact of losing it is so great then why do they provide health care?

<comment><USER12> Because you don't have 10 month waiting lists for health care? You get it instantly at the new job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure Apple pays enough for their employees to pay for daycare if they need it.

I don't really think taking care of kids is my employer's business.

<comment><USER14> And yet, how the employee gets to and from work (shuttles), where the employee eats during the day (cafeterias), if the employee is fit and healthy (gyms, wellness centers) are all within the purview of corporate empires like Apple.

It's only a matter of time.

<comment><USER3> Transportation, food, and health/fitness services are benefits to the Apple employee. Childcare is a benefit to all the parents of the child - in most cases, only one of which is an Apple employee.

<comment><USER15> Transportation, food etc... benefit the entire family the same way childcare does because most families mix their finances.

For childcare, the benefit to the non-apple parent is financial plus whatever benefit they get from making it more convenient for the apple parent to drop off their kid for daycare.

For transportation, the benefit for a non apple family members is financial plus whatever benefit they get from making it more convenient for the apple employee to get to work.

<comment><USER16> > _Transportation, food etc... benefit the entire family the same way > childcare does because most families mix their finances._

They are not meant as services to boost the family finances though -- but to keep them at the company premises more.

<comment><USER15> How does that affect the OP's comment that I was replying to?

> Childcare is a benefit to all the parents of the child - in most cases, only > one of which is an Apple employee.

<comment><USER16> It adds context to it that the other benefits are not meant for the employees but for the company (and that we don't have much reason to expect one that doesn't benefit the company).

<comment><USER15> >the other benefits are not meant for the employees

This is only relevant to my reply if someone you're saying that Childcare doesn't benefit the company in the same way a gym membership does, i.e., keeping the employee around longer. I don't think you're saying this, so I still don't understand the point of your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not like Google's daycare is particularly accessible either. The cost is far above market rate -- almost 2x from what I've heard -- and your chances of getting in are <10%. It's not a free benefit, and it's not a benefit available to every employee by a long shot.

I think Apple's failure to start a daycare sends exactly this message: we're not good at running daycares.

<comment><USER18> This would be my guess, too - along with the fact that Google is fine outsourcing things outside their core competencies while Apple would want to micromanage the exact color and count of every toy in every class.

<comment><USER17> Well. Google does not outsource the daycares. So that would not be a delta versus Apple in this domain.

<comment><USER18> They started by outsourcing it, then eventually took it over and raised the prices by a lot. Sounds like it was pretty dramatic.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/05nocera.html...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/05nocera.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all&referer=)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Still don't get why people are constantly surprised at the difficulty of building a career and having kids. Having kids is a life choice with upsides (awesome upsides imo) and downsides. Same goes for having a career in tech. Wanna do both? You can, but YOU WILL have to work 2x harder than all the people doing only one of these (arguably, you'll also get a lot more).

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't see why any employer has to provide for day care. Instead allow people to work from home, pay for day care as a benefit etc. It would not be possible to build a day care easily to satisfy all employees since this is very personal. (Just like parents prefer different type of schooling)

And Google s day care is not free. And is like 2-3k a month ridiculously expensive.

<comment><USER21> 3k per month is not expensive in major cities for daycare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are companies morally required to have daycare? It's a nice gesture if they do, but my kids go to a regular daycare. Bonus is that they don't have to switch daycare when I switch jobs.

</comment><comment><USER12> They also charge for food and the gym.

</comment><comment><USER23> If there ever were people who could afford private daycare, it's relatively well paid tech workers (or any relatively well paid worker). If you wanna complain about lack of daycare, take up the cause for the people (moms) juggling multiple barely living wage jobs at the likes of global companies like wal __*mart, etc.

This is more like well paid persons' problems. There are people who need those amenities way more than appl workers.

</comment><comment><USER9> So would the Jony Ive designed diapers have a little Apple logo on the front?

</comment><comment><USER24> in fact I think of it the other way around. By not providing a daycare, they would want their working parents to go home on time. Having a daycare at work provides excuse to drop kids at care and work late evenings.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the Jobs-ian arcology, employees spring to life from the cloning tanks in bodies that look 20 and are preloaded with Apple software. Reproduction is obsolete, and so the ports have been removed from the design. Everything is smooth and white and rounded corners.

<comment><USER14> So you're saying that Ridley Scott got his ideas for Blade Runner 2049 while directing the 1984 Apple ad?</comment></comment>


Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463 <comment><USER3> [https://outline.com/pBJfhG](https://outline.com/pBJfhG)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand _this type_ of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people:

        A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.

<comment><USER5> One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance:

[https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided- Cable...](https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided- Cable/dp/B003CT08E4)

It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for instance, 2160p 60fps 10bit color to an expensive 80" 4K TV is going to be literally indistinguishable from the same video delivered by a $16 Amazon house brand HDMI cable.

Or this, it's a $340 cable for 1000BaseT Ethernet:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/gallery-we-tear- apar...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/gallery-we-tear- apart-a-340-audiophile-ethernet-cable-and-look-inside/)

People actually make the claim that their FLAC "sounds warmer" when transferred through this. How, exactly?

That's not enough? How about the $10,0000 1000BaseT Ethernet cable? [https://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/to-the-audiophile- this...](https://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/to-the-audiophile- this-10000-ethernet-cable-apparently-makes-sense/)

I can _sort of_ understand methodology and expensive equipment modifications to separate AC power from amplifiers, and shield AC power lines and such, keep AC power runs away from speaker wires, etc. That has at least some basis in technological reality.

<comment><USER6> I've always wondered whether I could sell audiophile SATA cables for those who listen to music from their hard drives...

Edit: a commenter below has a link to an actual audiophile SATA cable.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you can absolutely sell "HD SATA" cables. To paraphrase, "There's a new audiophile born every minute".

[https://jcat.eu/audiophile-sata-cable/](https://jcat.eu/audiophile-sata- cable/)

<comment><USER8> huh, besides the BS, isn't the file loaded into RAM first anyway?

<comment><USER9> You know what's next - sell audiophile-grade RAM. Gold-plate everything.

<comment><USER10> full stack audio grade computer, 40000USD

<comment><AUTHOR> Aim higher. That's cheap compared to the $90,000 DAC you need to buy [https://darko.audio/2015/11/the-select-dac-ii-msb- technology...](https://darko.audio/2015/11/the-select-dac-ii-msb- technologys-90000-da-converter/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think that you can consider extreme audiophilia to be an expression of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and therefore the audiophile industry is predatory in that it preys upon the mentally ill. I've seen it all - <USER2> $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs that were said to dampen sound-corrupting vibrations in your power amplifier. The people who sell these items know exactly what they're doing, and I hope more people will see them for what they are - common con men.

<comment><USER12> How do $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs (with no detectable physical effect) differ from, say, a $1,000 bottle of wine (which cannot be distinguished in a blind taste test from a $5 bottle)?

They're just class signifiers. The difference I see is that audiophiles are less prestigious than oenophiles, but I don't see how you get from there to "audiophiles have a mental illness".

<comment><USER13> > say, a $1,000 bottle of wine (which cannot be distinguished in a blind taste > test from a $5 bottle)?

Well for one thing, that's wrong- _distinguishing_ wine is easy. Even people who are just pretty into wine can identify different vinyards etc. and actual sommeliers can nail wine down to the year it was bottled and the conditions it was stored[1].

The thing you're referring to is that when you line up regular people and give them $5 and $1000 bottles of wine, they will rank them in essentially random order. That should be no surprise at all. People have their own favorites. When you line up experts, they can differentiate cheap wine from expensive wine, but inside a broad category (say $200-$1000) they will rank essentially randomly. Again, that shouldn't be surprising at all, because "quality" itself isn't what's being paid for or looked for. Each wine is developed for a _taste_ , not for some abstract quality metric that is the exact same for every wine.

Normal audiophiles will typically aim for objective metrics like THD, but the extreme guys are often aiming for subjective/vague things like timbre, color and soundstage. That leads to some esotericism. They also tend to have gobs of money to throw at this stuff, so a $1000 knob may be more about getting _exactly_ what you want, or even just prestige. Both rational choices. Regardless, its inherently way more absurd than wine because even audiophiles with the most virgin ears will get nothing from .001% THD (very high end) vs <.0001% THD (verging on a lab setup), and virtually all will get nothing from <.01% THD. On the other hand, wine fanatics who have found their favorite wine will be able to recognize it quite accurately.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQc0wfkU7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZQc0wfkU7I)

<comment><USER14> Oenologists can't even distinguish red from white in a blind test: [https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infam...](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html)

<comment><USER15> > The two wines were actually the same white wine as before, but one was dyed > with tasteless red food coloring

Yes, Oenologists assumed that the wine which was red was actually... red wine. This study is always quoted and is a sham IMO. What this is saying more than anything is "the placebo affect does work." which is totally true.

But IMO it doesn't say a whole lot about wine tasting being BS.

<comment><USER16> Then how would you do a blind test instead?

<comment><USER17> By actually making it blind so the color of the wine dies not predispose your expectation for specific notes or mouth feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The 82-year-old lawyer already had a $60,000 American-made amplifier, 1960s German loudspeakers that once belonged to a theater, Japanese audio cables threaded with gold and silver, and other pricey equipment._

Meanwhile, my wife plays her Dean Martin records through her own personal 15-watt AM radio station in the closet, picked up on vintage tube radios scattered around the house so the music sounds like it was intended by the audio engineers of the day.

There are all kinds of audiophiles. I don't understand any of them.

<comment><USER19> At least your wife's perspective makes sense—it's treating music as deeply experiential and contextual.

<comment><USER13> Not to mention that any recorded music is going to:

1\. sound quite different because it was recorded by several point microphones instead of your actual ears

2\. Already have distortion introduced by the microphone and recording equipment.

That distortion will obviously be quite small, but higher end audiophile setups will often be easily smaller. It does not make sense to spend $XX,XXX to get to .03% THD from .03000001% THD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Sounds like a great opportunity to sell overpriced batteries to audiophiles.

<comment><USER21> Heavy metal batteries. Classical batteries.

If only there was a genre of music called "deep cycle" we'd be on the gravy train for life. (Ref: HHGG)

<comment><USER10> solid state pop

<comment><USER22> (sound of capacitor popping)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I work in the audio industry, and I can say two things: 1) most everything they do is audio mysticism (i.e. complete BS), and 2) they are very profitable customers.

<comment><USER24> As a trained EE, non-practicing, I would think it would be far easier to install filters/conditioners on the line to normalize the voltage and current (e.g. performing phase correction). Also, if you had a local AC->DC->AC conversion, could probably get a more uniform power source frequency. Not sure, been a long time since ive studied this, but I think a lot of thw high- end audiophile stuff is snake oil. I've been able to listen to a couple of high end audiophile installs. The electrostatic speakers are amazing, but I'm not going to appreciate enough to justify a $120k install over my $2k commodity home theater sound.

<comment><USER25> You can ML electrostatics for much less than 120k. They do sound great, but are still too much for me :)

I'm happy with my 10 year old Paradigms. The next speaker purchase I make is going to get something smaller instead of floor standing. I'm at a point now where I want good sound for music and home theater in the smallest package possible.

<comment><USER26> I like the Martin Logan Motion series (with the folded/ribbon tweeter) better than the electrostatics. I have the LX16 bookshelfs and they are amazingly clear and diminutive and were like $250 each from Crutchfield.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I like about this article is that they just find a few weirdos in Japan who actually end up doing that, and you get a blanket statement like "Audiophiles in Japan" while the proper headline should be "A few crazy old rich people". Journalism at its best.

<comment><USER28> If you parse a sentence that begins "Audiophiles in Japan..." as making a claim about every Japanese audiophile or even most of them, you will find the world a confusing place. These sentences are everywhere. "Men are pigs", "tacos are awesome", etc.

Only two exemplars must exist for any such sentence to be true. Once you understand that, you will understand a lot more of what's being said around you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I always wondered how people selling some of these audiophile gadgets can justify to themselves over long run what might appear as a scam to many outsiders. But then I was explained that this is little different than my|your|their wife spending $$$ on some ridiculously expensive Bottega|Hermes|Burberry|... handbag. Which after all is functionally about the same as $1 handbag.

Some people choose handbags, or cars, and I guess them audiophiles choose thick cables, and concrete poles. Each to their own.

<comment><USER30> Handbag producers don't claim their bags contain magic. The audiophile stuff producers do. The are making false claims.

<comment><USER31> Luxury / designer products basically advertise by saying "if you buy this you'll look cool / more beautiful / stylish / whatever"

It's the same thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tubes, cables now this. It seems more like religion or superstition than technology IMHO.

If you want to take it to the limit, hire someone to come into your home and perform live for you, then you can eliminate all the sources of distortion.

Not only would you be hearing the ultimate perfect sound, you would be providing employment for artists.

Seems like a win - win to me :)

<comment><USER33> And perhaps at a fraction of the cost ;)

<comment><USER32> So true, a friend and I had a holiday party at my house and we talked about having a DJ but instead we went online and got a piano player instead for less money and honestly way classier and BTW, it was fun and nice, sort of a cool thing really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When I'm playing music on my stereo from my PC through USB, turning off the lights on my bathroom on the other side of the wall will momentarily kill my USB driver and as a result Spotify stops working.

Electromagnetic interference is no joke.

<comment><USER35> I had an old Dell laptop where I could "hear" an external USB hard drive spinning up in my headphones, but only if it was connected to a USB port on the same side of the laptop as the audio jack.

<comment><USER36> Dell is terrible about this; On my last 2 workstations I could hear my mouse moving if I plugged my mouse into the USB port next to the headphone jack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if a battery-inverter setup would give cleaner power for less money? For less than $40K you can buy a couple powerwalls along with a top-rate inverter/charger.

<comment><USER38> That's a double-conversion UPS: AC to DC, a small siphon for batteries and control hardware, and then DC to AC out.

I imagine an audiophile would say that the sine wave generated by such a setup wouldn't be smooth enough. They'd want something like a double-rotary converter, so that a spinning generator is making the final sine wave.

<comment><USER39> But the amp converts that AC back to a flat DC anyway!

In any case, PSRR ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_rejection_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_rejection_ratio)) is a real, measurable thing.

<comment><USER19> Such audiophiles don't believe in real, measurable things. And they certainly don't understand how power supplies really work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> When marketing a product one must consider the four basic segments: the smart rich, the stupid rich, the smart poor and the stupid poor.

Obviously you are not going to make any money selling to the poor, so strike them. Good luck trying to separate the smart rich from their money- they tend to save. Thus we are left with the stupid rich. High end audiophile products are a perfect fit for this lucrative segment.

</comment><comment><USER41> > he realized that electromagnetic interference from his neighbors' appliances > was propagating through their shared power lines, reducing the quality of > the sound he was getting.

This actually seems a lot more reasonable to me than the monster cable level of absurdity audiophiles are famous for.

When I last visited family my sister's home's electricity exhibited all sorts of overload artifacts. Her lights would dim when the neighbor's AC or refrigerator compressor ran. I convinced her to contact ComEd about it as it suggested there was an overloaded supply shared across their homes making voltages sag under load.

They sent someone out to just look around her house and act like they did something, then said nothing's wrong. Of course they're not interested in actually fixing the infrastructure when it involves costly work.

She's had an exceptional number of electrical appliances fail over the years she's owned the home as well, which I presume is related.

But I figure with this audiophile guy he could just run the system off a UPS using the mains just to top up the batteries.

<comment><USER42> > I convinced her to contact ComEd about it...

the power companies accurately assume that most people calling them don't know anything about electricity.

have a trustworthy electrician inspect the situation, and then they can figure out what the problem is, where the problem is, and convey said problem to the power company if it is actually their fault.

<comment><USER43> I'm not sure what you mean by "if". If it goes between houses, the blame is pretty certainly on the power company, isn't it?

You could argue that the voltage is still within acceptable bounds, so it's not something that needs to be fixed, but that wouldn't change whose fault it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I suppose these folks don't want to know that utility transformers transmit noise both directions, so this doesn't do much. It may help isolate from noise that comes from the audiophile's house, though — nasty current waveforms will cause noisy voltage drops in the house's wiring, and that will cause nasty voltage waveforms in the house (and everywhere else on the block, but less so).

A much better approach would be to buy a motor-generator pair with a decent- sized flywheel.

But this is all silly. The noise in question might cause audible noise in the power supply, but the power supply can go in a different room. As anyone who has listened to a problematic audio system can attest, the noise that really matters is the 50/60 Hz AC hum, and none of these hacks will help.

<comment><USER45> A utility transformer is an extremely effective low pass filter, any noise you are getting will be from the secondary side only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Once a producer told me that they mastered at 16bit 44.1kHz and then pressed records and CDs from those masters.

Ofcourse the records sold better because they sound much better...

<comment><USER47> Of course the records will sound better; they will have their dynamic range squashed to fit the medium. Compression sounds nice: all the quiet parts are so clear, yet the transients are cleanly articulated.

Compressed audio, like from a record player, also works better with a cheap back end. Protecting the record player's needle from skipping out also helps the amplifier and speakers.

<comment><USER48> Don't confuse the sound of compression with the sound of music being louder. Compression can help with poor quality equipment or noisy listening environments (e.g. cars), but it also adds audible distortion and is tiring to listen to for long. Most dynamic range compression in music is there to trick people into playing it louder (see "loudness war"), and louder music sounds better. Of course, you can get the same benefit without the distortion by turning the volume up yourself.

But despite vinyl being poorly suited to high dynamic range, the vinyl release sometimes has higher dynamic range than the CD/download release. This is probably because vinyl purchasers are thought to be more discerning customers. This isn't always the case; the most popular dynamic range measurement algorithm (see [http://dr.loudness-war.info/](http://dr.loudness-war.info/) ) is fooled by all-pass filtering, and vinyl record players do this, so the measurements will be falsely high for vinyl. Often the supposedly higher dynamic range vinyl release is actually from an identical master.

<comment><USER47> > _Most dynamic range compression in music is there to trick people into > playing it louder_

That's a relatively new phenomenon, together with the distortion.

Compression doesn't add audible distortion, except if it is used in an extreme way to boost the signal so that it sits at close to maximum volume.

Compression is a tool that can combat distortion. Reduce the transients; reduce the clipping.

Compression can be used to obtain more consistent distortion on purpose over longer envelopes of the signal, like in a common configuration in guitar audio: compressor followed by distortion effect.

Obtaining more consistent distortion can mean consistently _less_ of it, not only consistently more.

<comment><USER48> Audiophile grade equipment doesn't clip transients at normal listening volume. I agree that compression can help with poor quality equipment, but at the cost of permanently harming the sound on good equipment. Nobody complains about acoustic live music having too much dynamic range. The proper place for dynamic range compression is in the playback equipment, not baked into the audio data (DVDs/Blurays get this right with AC3 DRC). And compression used as an effect on individual instruments isn't what "loudness war" is referring to.

<comment><USER49> What's the dynamic range of vinyl? Usually 70 dB, whereas 16bit PCM is around 90 dB. That's what OP was probably referring to. Since the master was done for the CD then compressed for the vinyl it sounds softer/cleaner.

<comment><USER48> CDs do have superior dynamic range, but when modern mastering squashes everything within a few dB of full scale it hardly matters. But I disagree that vinyl releases[0] typically have lower dynamic range than CD releases (most often it's the same, sometimes it's higher, and only very rarely it's lower), and I disagree that lower dynamic range sounds better on good equipment.

[0] Talking about popular music only. I don't know enough about classical to say how it's done there.

<comment><USER49> I have no actual data about the musical signals present on the discs themselves (be they made of any kind of plastic with grooves or pits), I just mentioned the technological limitations of them. ( see also [https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)#My...](https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_\(Vinyl\)#Myth:_Vinyl_has_greater_resolution_than_CD_because_its_dynamic_range_is_higher_than_for_CD_at_the_most_audible_frequencies) )

However, as far as I know the loudness wars is coming to an end finally: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#2010s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#2010s) "Analysis suggests that the loudness trend may have peaked around 2005 and subsequently reduced, with a pronounced increase in overall and minimum album DR (crest factor) for albums since 2005."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> $100k in equipment, but I bet none of that went to an oscilloscope to actually quantify the problems they are imagining.

<comment><USER51> I bet you some of those dollars went towards the acquisition of some Brilliant Pebbles [0]!

[0] [http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm](http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm)

<comment><USER52> This must be satire, right?

<comment><USER53> There is no stupidity limit. Research flat Earth!

<comment><USER54> Actually it is quite fun to do thought experiments on what a flat earth would be like. I think (not a physicist) that the sea and atmosphere would end up dome shaped, centred on the centre of the disc. Non symmetric continents would cause instability so can't exist. I wonder what is on the other side?

For even more fun why not (re)read Sir Terry's oeuvre. Pissing yourself laughing is good for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Gonna toss a related idea out there: Converting single-phase AC power to DC requires treating a lot of ripples. Maybe an audiophile should convert three- phase AC power to DC to ensure higher power quality?

<comment><USER56> A motor-generator is a better solution. Preferably with a big flywheel.

<comment><USER57> Funny you should mention this. I'm concerned about how clean the feed is to his power pole. A dedicated line is definately needed, shielded etc all the way back to its own power plant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Since audiophiles are so gullible I wonder if you could sell even more stuff for them. For example:

* plastic surgery for ear lobes (Ferengi audio Inc.)

* ear wax removal and ear hair trimming services

<comment><USER59> You joke but there is no a priori reason that improvements in cochlear implants have to plateau at human-normal hearing.

This is an implant I would actually consider having done.

<comment><USER58> Hyperspectral cochlear implant would be cool thing to have.

When I had my ear wax removed by a nurse first time, it was really awesome experience. I had no idea how much it helped. For example when I was walking on the street, I heard strange rhythmic sound just behind me. Every time I stopped the sound stopped. Finally I figured out that the sound was coming from my backpack that was chafing against my jacket. Habituation removed the hyper-hearing sensation in 3-6 hours afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone remember the tests they did where 'serious' audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between the $200 cable and a coat hanger?

<comment><USER61> I do, here's some info.

[https://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell- th...](https://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the- difference-between-monster-cable-and/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm interested in the playlists of these guys. What are the songs that are worthy of being played on your $100K+ setup? I had never heard of that Queen song before, wonder what his top 10 songs are.

<comment><USER63> I'm not sure they have playlists. They probably spend more time tweaking their system than actually listening to music on it, negating the need for a playlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Seems like it'd be easier, cheaper, and more "accurate" to put conditioners on the input to the equipment directly... by doing this to the transformer you're still including your whole house and any noisy equipment (like lights) on your power line.

</comment><comment><USER65> Now to sell them a motor-generator set.[1] Total isolation from power fluctuations. The only connection between input and output is a rotating shaft.

I once worked in a mainframe computer installation which had one of those. Before switching power supplies, many mainframes used them for power cleanup. Cray used them to convert to 400Hz, so the power supplies had smaller transformers.

[1] [http://acim.nidec.com/generators/kato- engineering/products/m...](http://acim.nidec.com/generators/kato- engineering/products/motor-generator-sets)

</comment><comment><USER47> I have a power amp whose transformer hums once in a while, for periods of a few seconds. Then it goes quiet just as abruptly as it started humming. Someone is unbalancing the power in the building, causing a DC offset.

</comment><comment><USER66> After getting tinnitus, none of these things matter to me anymore.

<comment><USER67> Has there been any development that goes beyond masking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Most of the time the room where those high-end audiophiles have their equipment is just not designed to listen to music. The room around you is as important as the equipment. I remember making speaker tests in the anechoic chamber of my university, and it's just mindblowing, even with average equipment.

</comment><comment><USER69> These guys need to do the Richard Clark 10K challenge. Richard posited that when compared evenly, the sonic differences between amplifiers operated below clipping are below the audible threshold of human hearing. No-one took the 10 grand in 15 years if my memory serves me correctly.

</comment><comment><USER70> So he installed a pole to prevent perhaps fairly subtle common mode interference from his neighbor's appliances. Wouldn't a ham (or any potential EM source) in the proximity that he cannot control ruins his installation easily? Maybe he is lucky to not have them nearby...

</comment><comment> white-flame If their stereo equipment is so high end, then why are their input power electronics so crappy at producing clean voltages? Filtering and isolating against common noisy power lines seems a pretty obvious design consideration.

I love throwing that point at situations like this.

<comment><USER71> You could just use a proper sine wave filtering UPS which actually runs everything through the transformers internally to produce cleaner voltage.

I'd be inclined to make a battery powered mechanical AC generator with a big old flywheel on it to sell to these audiophiles :)

Regarding the equipment, most of the "audiophile" grade gear is analog, using very little input cleaning circuitry if any at all. Whether this is desirable from a sound quality perspective or not (assuming the input power is clean) is debatable. Would be interesting to see what an electrical engineer in the audio field says about this.

I'm sure there is some method to the seemingly mad claim that having your own "pole" could make a difference in your audio quality through your amplifier. If you consider that the coils on the other transformers that are positioned on the same medium voltage lines (running the other houses on the block for example) act as attenuators which partially soften out any harmonics from devices under them (like switching power supplies found in any computer), then effectively by installing your own, dedicated transformer (not actually just having your own pole) you would be isolating to some extent potential noise from those neighbors (noisy neighbors in the real sense), to only devices in your own home. If you think of electrical harmonics like sound waves, they would lose amplitude when traveling through the coils of a transformer. There are also ways for transformers to be built so that it prevents these harmonics from carrying upstream (see zigzag winding, isolated or "harmonic mitigating" transformers) but this would do nothing for the noise on the low voltage side coming from neighbors on the same transformer. This would be the power line equivalent of sharing a single broadband connection with your entire neighborhood while trying to play a latency sensitive game with no QOS.

It would have been really interesting to see the ocillosope before and after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The "can" attached to the pole is called a "pot." At least in the U.S., four homes are normally attached to a pot. But sometimes, you might have as many as eight. When eight are attached, you will have power drops, momentary losses of electricity. Without a UPS, your desktop will turn off. Or your stereo system will--flash on and off. Intolerable. The solution is an additional pot. Or this man' solution, a pot of his own. It's not so crazy, in areas where electricity is affected by a tropical climate or... not enough pots. I learned this while struggling with electricity issues after surviving Hurricane Wilma and talking to the repair crews.

</comment><comment><USER73> Commercial power is noisy and sloppy, especially in my neck of the woods. I use a double conversion UPS (always on) to clean it up. I can feed them with a generator and the output is still a nice steady clean sine wave. Beyond that, I use line conditioners and rf chokes to clean up the noise a little prior to reaching the ups.

Double conversion ups are not cheap. They start around 15x what you pay for the AVR UPS that you can find in electronic stores. My power is so sloppy that AVR UPS catch on fire after about 10 months.

</comment><comment><USER74> A tangent, but seeing as this thread has awoken the HN audiophiles: What should I look for/avoid in a DAC? Does it really matter if my source device is an iPhone/iPad?

Reading blogs and review sites talk about the personality of DACs has started to grind on me. Surely it's just a question of accuracy which can be summarized in a metric?

(I'm currently probably going to get a NAD D 3045 integrated amp/DAC, mainly for the specs, and fond memeries of being a teenager with a 3020).

<comment><USER75> There's a sharp curve of diminishing returns, for DAC's especially. The super cheap units you find for like $10-20 will usually have serious shielding / noise issues, which is immediately apparent upon listening. Beyond $100-200, the design and components are usually pretty competent, and what you are mainly hearing is just how the implementation was "tuned" by the manufacturer (not necessarily better or worse).

Playing from an iPhone or iPad is perfectly fine. Make sure EQ and Sound Check are turned off. Most music streaming formats are nearly impossible to differentiate from lossless (i.e. Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify), so I wouldn't sweat that.

<comment><USER76> > The super cheap units you find for like $10-20 will usually have serious > shielding / noise issues

That's not true if even possible (because dac and amplifier are on a single cheap). I've tested like five different DACs, from $2 to $150, even those for $2 that play distorted sound and don't bother putting output capacitors for headphones have no noise/shielding problems.

<comment><USER75> Not sure why it's not possible, though I could've had a defective unit. Specifically, I had a Fiio D3 ($20) which had bad background noise, even when not playing. I always assumed it was a power supply or shielding issue. The audio output from it actually sounded decent, just I could always hear the background noise. Don't think it was a grounding issue either, because it was the only DAC I ever had that consistently did that, no matter what system I plugged it into.

I've played around with the DAC built-in to the Raspberry Pi 3 as well, and that one was more of a distorted output problem, similar to what you describe with the $2 DAC.

Other DAC's I've tried (from around $75 and up) I've never heard noise / shielding issues, so again rapidly diminishing returns once you get past the super budget options, in my experience.

<comment><USER76> If you hear high frequency noise it's just means the amplifier has too much gain for your headphones and doesn't automatically mute when there is no signal (many do). But all amplifiers have noise. If you use the line output though, it doesn't go through the amplifier and of course doesn't have its noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Even if noise in the power signal were to influence audio quality to an appreciable amount, this way of solving the problem is rather curious for the uncompromising audiophiles.

Why would you install your own secondary transformer when you could just rectify the current, accumulate it and then use an inverter for a fraction of the price? Or even better just store the current and use it to power the audio equipment with direct current, skipping AC entirely.

<comment><USER78> Audio amplifiers already contain transformers, large capacitors, and rectifiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> "It's completely beyond my understanding," says his wife, Reiko, 57. "But if I take it away from him, he will lose the motivation to live."

LOL! I love it. God bless his wife.

<comment><USER80> The thing about that is that it isn't beyond her understanding. It's beyond _his_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> "It's completely beyond my understanding," says his wife, Reiko, 57. "But if I take it away from him, he will lose the motivation to live."

My telephone pole keeps me going...

</comment><comment><USER47> The thing is, that power upgrade is likely much more meaningful than the $60K amplifier or the stupid gold cables.

Clean power + $399.99 amplifier > dirty power + $60K amp.

<comment><USER39> A $60k amp should have a phenomenal PSRR, making power quality irrelevant. Then the amp quality becomes the differentiating factor, and one would hope that a $60k amp sounds better than a $399.99 amp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Wow. That's next-level not understanding Nyquist bandwidth "records are better" extremism. I also get why Nakamichi or early Mark Levinson audio gear was outrageously expensive: they were like modern Apple but in the 1980's... ridiculous engineering and design. Hipsters should love 'em too. :)

</comment><comment><USER83> I read through this and I'm surprised at all the negativity. Audio is subjective, and even if it's just placebo good for them.

In my limited experience audio is all about component matching. Sometimes you want distortion, like what you get from a tube amp. The right mix of distortion is what makes things sound good to some ears.

</comment><comment><USER84> If you want to get something legit of this nature, keep the AC power entirely away from the audio room. The wires in the walls can give off AC hum. Run DC over shielded twisted pair cables. At this level you'll also be doing something about noise from aircraft, wind, trucks, birds, and everything else.

</comment><comment><USER85> I believe the law of diminishing returns kicks in realllly fast in terms of 'ultra high quality audio'.

I have an external usb dac (Yamaha AG06), a pair of good studio grade monitors (Yamaha HS8's) and that's it for me. Exquisite listening quality without having to sell a kidney.

</comment><comment><USER38> Gizmodo's source: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who- have...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all- a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463)

</comment><comment><USER86> > There's a debate among audio enthusiasts about whether personal poles make > any meaningful difference. Audiophiles, though, "live in a kind of no- > compromises world," says Mark Bocko.

Plus the requisite "no blind A/B testing" world of course.

</comment><comment><USER87> It would seem simpler to just put in a lot of batteries and a pure-sine wave inverter.

</comment><comment><USER88> Geesh, I just sold my ranch last year that had its own transformer at the very end of a distribution circuit. I could have gotten extra for it's "audiophile grade electricity" if only I knew that was a thing!

</comment><comment><USER89> I am not to be a jerk with this comment but he spent 60k on an amplifier and 40k on his private power pole.

For that kind of money he could hire professional musicians to be playing real instruments in his living room.

</comment><comment><USER90> (2016)

</comment><comment><USER91> Sad. The naive and gullible fall victim to these scams and fads.

</comment><comment><USER92> At this level of fanatism I'd probably hold back with criticising them, because they might actually stab you if their lunacy bubble pops.

</comment><comment><USER93> Top end audiophiles seem bat shit insane, but if it makes them happy then I'm all for it

</comment><comment><USER94> Maybe try some common mode filters before investing in a private line.

</comment><comment><USER95> can someone explain why my phone and laptop both produce an annoying noise in 3.5mm jack when connected to AC? Is the lack of a grounding pin in the charger or the source at fault

</comment><comment><USER96> My only question is why BS like this has 169 points on HN.

<comment><USER97> Upvotes don't necessarily mean "this is a good idea".

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> DC i could understand. But AC ...

</comment><comment><USER99> Url changed from [https://gizmodo.com/obsessed-audiophiles-in-japan-are- instal...](https://gizmodo.com/obsessed-audiophiles-in-japan-are-installing- their-own-1785291714), which is cribbed from this.

</comment><comment><USER100> The amplifier converts the AC to DC anyway. Any marginally competent amp is going to include plenty of power filtering to reject noise. Surely with a $60,000 amp, it makes no difference whatsoever if your input waveform has some ripple.

</comment><comment><USER101> At what point does it stop being a hobby and turn into mental illness?

<comment><USER38> "The difference between a collector and a hoarder is a display case." -John Hodgman

<comment><USER102> Does that mean that by definition it is not possible to hoard display cases?

<comment><USER103> No, you have to put the display cases inside another, larger display case for it to not count as hoarding.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone Tried Cloudera CDP? - <AUTHOR> My company is considering Cloudera's CDP, and we're approaching a deadline. Cloudera's been hyping it up for a while now - I'm even getting ads for it on YouTube.<p>I'd just love to hear if anyone has tried it (particularly in Azure) and if it has met your expectations. <comment><USER2> I was one of the original cloudera engineers behind CDP. Happy to give feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of an odd thing to call yourself an "original engineer" behind a product that isn't even fully launched to all customers?

<comment><USER2> ohh mixed up my cd* . I didn't have anything to do with this cdp.</comment></comment></comment>


NodeUp 15 - Bears, Wolves, and Poppins - <AUTHOR> http://nodeup.com/fifteen

<comment><USER2> First off, I really enjoy your podcast, so thanks for taking the time to put out good content. One small suggestion though- It would be really helpful if your episode names were more descriptive of their content. It's not a big deal, but it's a bit frustrating when browsing my podcast feeds and I have no idea what the podcast topics are. Anyhow, just my 2 cents. Again, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure this Mikeal guy is a genius and everything, but is it really necessary for him to interrupt and contradict the other guy (was that Isaac?) every 3 seconds?

Anyway this Domains idea, is it something like:

        var domain = require('domain');
        var http = require('http');
        var fs = require('fs');

        domain.handleError('fsdb', data, function(err) {
          console.log('There was an error updating thing #' + data);
        });

        updateThing = function(id, data, callback) {
          domain.run('fsdb', id, function() {
            var options = { host: 'things.myserver.io', port: 80,
                            path: '/update?id='+id+'&v='+data.new};
            http.get(options, function(res) {
              fs.writeFile(data.fname, data.file, function() {
                callback();
              });
            });
          });
        }

So something in fs and http makes it call domain.handleError with the details if there is a problem with the request or file write?

Forgive me if I am completely misunderstanding or if this is a bad example.</comment>


Global is the new private - <AUTHOR> http://www.mankz.com/code/globalcheck.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I got to see the author present this the other day at the San Francisco Ext JS meetup. Pretty impressive stuff and a great presentation.</comment>


Rock Band's Cultural Shift - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/08/paul_is_dead.php

<comment><USER2> Rock Band is a fun game. It's a nice way to have a couple beers and kill some time with friends.

I get the feeling that, if RB and GH didn't exist, this guy would be complaining about other bands doing Beatles covers.

I'm pusing 40, but I'll make sure to stay the hell off his lawn in the future.</comment>


Show HN: An online primary school curriculum for maths and science - <AUTHOR> https://www.infinityschool.co.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> I created Infinity School to try and educate children in a more personalised way; through projects, making things and discovering concepts for themselves. Let me know what you think!</comment>


Ask HN: Any cool ARKit or ARCore apps out there right now gaining popularity? - <AUTHOR> Its been quite a while since ARKit and/or ARCore came out, was wondering if there were any apps built on this technology that became popular. <comment><USER2> I created an app that uses ARKit + Machine Learning (CoreML) called InstaSaber that projects a virtual lightsaber out of a piece of rolled up paper: [http://instasaber.com/](http://instasaber.com/)

It was more a proof-of-concept of the technology I'm working on, but I think it's worth checking out (it's free to download). I think you will start to see a lot more cool implementations of ARKit/ARCore that integrate with CNN's and do new and unique things.

Edit: 20k downloads in first week, I haven't bothered to market it though.

<comment><USER3> how ARKit is used in this case? Isn't ARKit for detecting plane objects?

<comment><USER3> oh, for rendering I guess

<comment><USER2> yes, that as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My app was featured on the App Store as "Game of the Day" and "Great on iPhone X" and has gotten pretty popular: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1312458558](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1312458558)

It's called Rainbrow and it uses the iPhone X's face-tracking capabilities to allow you to play the game with your eyebrows. Not exactly an ARKit app in the traditional sense, but it makes use of ARKit API's. It's also free!

<comment><USER5> What kind of retention are you seeing? Are users downloading it because it's a cool thing to try out, or are they coming back to it?

<comment><USER6> It's my goto when people want to play games on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the sentiment implicit in your question—that the initial hype wave of AR has cooled off—is valid. I believe one of the biggest reasons we've yet to see AR truly succeed on mobile is that it's prohibitively difficult it is to create AR content right now. You need professional developers and real budgets to create a single AR experience. It's too costly for businesses/brands/individuals to experiment or try new things, which is why there are only something like 2,000 ARKit apps on the Apple App Store [0]. Given that, it's not surprising that we haven't seen any big, behavior- changing hits aside from Pokemon Go and messenger frames.

You might be interested in what we've been working on at Metaverse [1]. The platform we're building allows non-programmers to create interactive content that leverages AR (our beta testers have already created over 30K experiences).

We've been at it for about a year and a half now and are still in beta, but it's being used by marketers, teachers, record labels, etc. [2] These people don't know how to code (most of them don't even know what ARKit is). They're ordinary people [3] who now have access to a powerful tool that lets them try new things, play with new patterns, and leverage otherwise-inaccessible technologies to solve their own problems.

The long tail of Youtube brought us unboxing videos, Twitch, and Justin Bieber; we want to see what AR (and software, generally) begins to look like when ordinary people have the power to create. I think that's where the really cool stuff is going to be. Check out our Twitter account to see some of the awesome things people are making: [https://twitter.com/metaverseapp](https://twitter.com/metaverseapp)

\--

[0] [https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript- of...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript-of- apples-q1-2018-earnings-call/)

[1] [https://gometa.io/](https://gometa.io/)

[2] [https://medium.com/metaverseapp](https://medium.com/metaverseapp)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VTbkDX694](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VTbkDX694)

<comment><USER8> FYI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t1g5_eGkJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t1g5_eGkJI) at the end points to gometa.io/gifts which is dead

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the heads up :) We leaned into a lot of location-based stuff in the early days (around the time of the Pokemon Go craze)--check these out: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6DjJ0GdBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6DjJ0GdBQ) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrWYFTDqfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrWYFTDqfU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me the AR furniture / product placements apps are one of the better use cases ( ikea, amazon. ) They're really the best way to see what that new couch will look like in your house. Also the floor plan creation apps have seen a fair amount of downloads ( PLNR, etc ) Then there's the fart app of AR: the tape measure apps. ( AirMeasure, etc )

<comment><USER10> Houzz also has a decent amount of furniture available for an AR preview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am extremely bullish on ar headsets -- I'm convinced it will flip several markets on their heads.

Adding AR to phones doesn't seem particularly interesting to me, though. Some technology is just a fad -- remember when people cared about ringtones? That's pretty much how I feel about snapchat filters, which seems to be the best use case people have found for anything close to AR. Pokemon go doesn't count (it's a GPS game).

I think ARKit is mostly a long play from apple to get people used to their API and prepared for when headsets come out.

<comment><USER12> Once it becomes social things may change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Check out our app Plane Finder 3D [https://planefinder.net/3D/](https://planefinder.net/3D/)

<comment><USER14> I would if you had an Android version.

<comment><USER15> Is there ARKit for android? I thought that was a set of Apple APIs.

Or are you just trolling?

<comment><USER16> ARCore is Google's equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dance Dance AR. I wont call it popular but we do see in-app purchases for full content unlocks.

[https://everyplay.com/videos/50667268](https://everyplay.com/videos/50667268) [https://everyplay.com/videos/50459819](https://everyplay.com/videos/50459819)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dance-dance- ar/id1294676909?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dance-dance- ar/id1294676909?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER18> We've launched an AR app working with museums that seems to be doing fairly well with audiences at this stage: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/civilisations- ar](https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/civilisations-ar). As a not for profit it's hard to say how that would translate into financial success, but it's doing okay with audience numbers

<comment><USER19> I tried Civilizations AR a couple of days ago. Great app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are pretty cool:

[https://lensstudio.snapchat.com](https://lensstudio.snapchat.com)

I've seen them show up a bunch online and on Snapchat.

<comment><USER21> As someone who spent a lot of time in the early AR space, it's disappointing to see that, a decade later, marketing teams haven't come up with anything better to sell the tech than dancing characters placed on tables.

But, hey, you don't need a black and white marker to do it anymore, so I guess that's progress.

<comment><USER22> I don't think AR is really going to take off until we have something closer to true AR glasses. The real power of AR is in contextual computing, that the system surfaces information as you need it / as you change your view.

Contextual: you look at a flower with your AR glasses and it tells you the species.

No Context: you look at a flower and a dancing hotdog appears on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My cofounder and I are making Arrow (YC W18), an ARKit app where users can add animated texts & emojis to the real-world, and share videos of it. Most popular feature is Automoji = emojis automatically appear as the camera detects real-world objects. Using ARKit + CoreML + Vision [http://arrowapp.io/](http://arrowapp.io/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think Artivive has some kind of traction at the moment, at least among the hipster artist demographic:

[https://artivive.com](https://artivive.com)

Kind of fun to see people having productive reasons to point their phones at paintings, though I'm sure it's giving some gallery operators conniptions ..

</comment><comment><USER25> The app which is really little more than a demo, but has had the most use in my house has been the lego ar studio

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lego-ar- studio/id1296734986?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lego-ar- studio/id1296734986?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been working on a sports data AR camera app. Coming to Android soon. Am just now starting to promote it. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rmxsports/id1329303993?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rmxsports/id1329303993?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER27> [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geogebra-augmented- reality/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geogebra-augmented- reality/id1276964610?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER28> JigSpace - it is early stages, but a cool idea.

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas [https://www.leoapp.com](https://www.leoapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> Somewhat related, has anyone seen anything being done with Watch 3?</comment>


Moog Music Gives Employees More Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/arts/music/moog-music-gives-employees-more-control.html

<comment><USER2> Brilliant! A great move to re-establish to covenant between employers and employees. A clear acknowledgement of how important the employees are to the company. I hope they do outrageously well with this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to the Moog store in Asheville a few months ago. The employees were really, really friendly. I'm glad to know they're being taken care of.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if a model like this has a place in Silicon Valley. I can't decide if I would prefer to just have my no-strings-attached options, or purchase actual shares in my current company which would presumably come with voting rights.

<comment><USER5> What disadvantages do actual shares come with?

<comment><USER6> Buying shares in the company you work for means you're less diversified than if you'd bought the shares in some other company. The biggest investment most people make is the investment of their time into their job+career. If you also invest your money there, you'll be in bigger trouble if your company/sector of the economy tanks than if you'd invested your money somewhere else.

Not really sure why someone would want options though... maybe if you feel like taking a little bit of risk on you can invest a smaller amount?</comment></comment></comment>


Samsung to Buy Harman International in an $8B Bet on Cars - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/samsung-auto-industry-harman-automotive.html <comment><USER2> Judging from the note 7, I think the bad guys found a new supplier for their car bombs...</comment>


Anton Sequel Makes Stronger Case for Custom Supercomputing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/02/04/anton-sequel-makes-stronger-case-for-custom-supercomputing/ <comment><USER2> A huge source of uncertainty in molecular dynamics comes from the force model, which are crude approximations of electronic structure. There is a great deal of active research on improved force models, many of which are implemented in AMBER ([http://ambermd.org](http://ambermd.org)) and can be used from most popular MD packages. Other approximations, such as the cut-off for short- vs long-range force evaluation, must also be validated.

Anton is built for a very specific configuration; the modeling assumptions may or may not be valid for a given scientific or engineering experiment. Its value is in being able to rapidly experiments for which the modeling assumptions have already been validated (and run those configurations for longer simulated time), but not for questioning the modeling assumptions or for developing better models.

<comment><USER3> This is a very underappreciated point. For example, in pharmaceutical drug discovery, what often matters most is the ability to play around with different modeling assumptions, and to do large-scale "search engine" work on different compound properties and how they might affect desired overall properties of the final product.

I wonder if one reason why this highly specific computational architecture is only deployed in two places (as far as I can tell) is because it's actually _not_ very applicable to mainstream molecular dynamics use cases? A lot of the business around pharma drug discovery seems to be pushing for more cloud computing solutions that offer better analytics APIs for engineers, rather than beefing up hardware for larger-scale simulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is an interesting time to bring out a new architecture. There was a time that any short term advantage a custom architecture would have over commodity chips would evaporate in 4 years, less than the depreciation time of the machine. However as the ability to scale commodity machines becomes harder, and they scale in useless ways (like the P4 debacle of focusing on video streaming performance) the economics once again shift to more bespoke machines. And some of these machines understand that memory throughput is just as important as instructions per clock and so you get more general purpose architectures with the memory bandwidth of modern GPUS. That opens up some interesting opportunities for large memory computation spaces.

</comment><comment><USER5> Has molecular dynamics had any big success stories? Have new drugs been approved which were initially found by in-silico screening using MD?</comment>


Form Design - <AUTHOR> https://gerireid.com/forms.html <comment><USER2> Great write-up! People tend to miss adding 'None' option to radio buttons.</comment>


The World Against ISIS Project - <AUTHOR> https://ghostbin.com/paste/ucsf3 <comment><USER2> According to some cartoonist the killer meme is: DAESH fighters are genetic dead-enders fighting to spread the genes of their leaders. And they are succeeding.

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133596339051/daesh- linguistic-k...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133596339051/daesh-linguistic- kill-shot)

</comment><comment><USER3> _> -Post mocking photos of Isis

>-Post photos of goats while @ing Isis members with captions talking about their wives_

That sure will show them!

<comment> jay-saint The effectiveness of this strategy is not so much mocking Daesh. The strategy can be effective by adding noise to their signal. This works in live protests as well, this is the electronic equivalent of a protest I saw in college. A white supremacist was giving a speech at a public library in central Illinois. Protesters out numbered actual audience members 2 to 1. They proceed to sing children's songs and play instruments. This blocked the message of hate helping to prevent further recruitment and coordination.

<comment><USER4> > They proceed to sing children's songs and play instruments.

Surely it's better to block the message by debating them? Children's songs make it look like you have nothing intelligent to say against them.

<comment><USER5> Sure, that would work if the group you're dealing with is receptive to the prospect of intelligent debate.

<comment><USER4> I can just imagine someone not already well informed walking away with the impression that the nice rational people who only wanted to talk about their ideas were being drowned out by the mob literally acting like children.

<comment><USER6> Have you ever tried debating with bigots? Both sides end up talking over each other.. I think it makes brilliant sense, to sing songs, hymns, etc and make the other side look dumbfounded and unable to respond..what do they do sing metal ballads about how all other races should be slaves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. You know you can trust this guy about how isis functions because he publishes his results as a poorly formatted .txt file.

2\. This is cute even if it doesn't work. I think you basically have to be in favor of 4chan, etc trolling ISIS instead of their regular targets :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was expecting some kind of indegogo-backed mercenary team.

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't anyone see how all this "trolling" plays into ISIS plans and they'll come out better? I can see lots of "at risk" Muslims who are already feeling targeted by western society who will just see this as everyone attaching their religion and identity and they'll convert over to join ISIS or try to do something in their name.

Mass peaceful demonstrations around the world I can see as a good, but they're kidding themselves if they think photos of goats are going to help.

</comment><comment><USER10> So _that_ 's what they were talking about!

[https://news.vice.com/article/anonymous-hacking-group- declar...](https://news.vice.com/article/anonymous-hacking-group-declares-war- on-islamic-state-following-paris-attacks)

</comment><comment><USER11> Flagged for being totally dumb.</comment>


Ask HN: Hiring excellent engineers - <AUTHOR> I have often wondered if the people at companies who hire middle of the road engineers do so because those conducting the interviews have never actually worked with truly excellent/exceptional engineers and therefore don't know what one looks like. <comment><AUTHOR> I think the overarching characteristic of "excellent" engineers I have worked with was being almost compulsive obsessive about their code, architecture, tests and process.

Each of them held their own code at higher standards than anyone around them and they did it because it was important to them and not to impress others.

</comment><comment><USER2> Who would hire middle of the road engineers?! Everyone hires only the top 1%, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sort of my point. You may think you only hire good people, but by comparison you are hiring middle of the road. Thus, you clearly don't know what a top 1% engineer looks like.

<comment><USER2> Well, I think all of this is just stories that we tell ourselves. Are some engineers better than others, yeah sure, but we're not gonna find that out in our silly little interviews we conduct.

I was being tongue-in-cheek with my first post, but I do think there is a flipside to what you say in the OP. If the people giving interviews are 25 and have only had one job since they graduated, they may mistake an unfamiliar way of doing things as incompetence.</comment></comment></comment>


Doing the Microsoft Shuffle: Algorithm Fail in Browser Ballot - <AUTHOR> http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft-random-browser-ballot.html <comment><USER2> Turning compare into a coin flip is a fun way to illuminate the underlying algorithm.

IE is said to use a heap/tree related sort[1]. The first thing a heapsort does is swap the last entry with the the front (where the front may have been swapped in the heapify step[2]). Thereafter it leaves the last entry alone.

Since the first entry in the unshuffled array is "Internet Explorer" if it survives the initial comparison it will always occupy the last (5th) place.

The other algorithms don't have a case with only one compare which is why they have more complicated distributions.

[1] - [http://www.smallapple.net/rnd/art/how_does_your_browser_sort...](http://www.smallapple.net/rnd/art/how_does_your_browser_sort.html)

[2] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heapsort>

</comment><comment><USER3> That is an incredibly long essay to describe a very simple problem. Don't randomize an array the way Microsoft does on browserchoice, because it's not random.

<comment><USER4> More subtly, don't ignore preconditions of methods. The custom sort method needs to implement several invariants, which the Math.random() approach ignores. This confuses the hell out of the sort algorithm (in turn, leading to non-random order)

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seem unreasonable there might be a bias to the 5th position, it would be the position you just finished paying attention to before clicking if your scan from left to right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this even what is shipping with Win7 EU? I would assume that the real browser choice screen is not in a browser window, and that this website was created quickly just to give people an idea of what it might look like. Do we even know who actually wrote the code?

</comment><comment><USER7> _sigh_ That's really quite embarrassing. You can see the source code here: <http://www.browserchoice.eu/resources/scripts/page.js>

The bug is at the very bottom of the file.

<comment><USER8> Spot the spelling mistake too:

// Genereate random browser order

<comment><USER9> At least the programmer got the function name right.

I'm saving this for an example of how _not_ to comment code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The worst part about the implementation is that the browser icons often appear unsorted initially, and then the sort kicks in 0-5 seconds later, and they all shuffle.

This has caught me out at least twice by clicking on a browser icon to choose it, then the order changes after I clicked and the wrong browser installer is launched.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its strange that MS got this wrong as the shuffling questions is quite common in the Microsoft interview (as in many other).

Though I do wonder if it makes any difference, may be they are taking this as an opportunity to do some research testing, my personal opinion would be that the browser in the middle position might have a slight upper hand than others.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps this is Microsoft, or someone who works there, thumbing their nose(s) at the EU - after all, what monopolistic corporation wouldn't be bitter at not having been able to buy out such an influential quasi-government organization [edit: and, worse, be forced to advertise on behalf of one's competitors]?

Don't get me wrong: I'm no fan of MS or IE. But I can see why they might deliberately fail to implement this correctly. [edit: ...]

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's intentional, unless Microsoft intended to give Google Chrome prime placement (more likely to be in the first 3). More likely this is just sloppy coding that wasn't QA'd properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So in essence, Microsoft just handed this off to one of their junior programmers and he wasn't aware of how to do random correctly.

I don't see this being a result of Microsoft's malevolence, merely a programmer's ignorance. I doubt that Microsoft would do something that would be caught while fighting anti-trust charges.

<comment><USER15> It might be an "oops" from a single programmer, but I thought a high-profile site like this would at least go through some basic code review. The bug isn't that subtle, either.

<comment><USER16> For the ui JavaScript? Certainly none of the places I've worked subject that to real code review.

<comment><USER17> Why doesn't your javascript code go through code review?

<comment><USER16> I'm not debating that it should (certainly if it's javascript that _I'm_ writing), I've just literally never seen that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> this was explained in the techcrunch comments at the time, wasn't it? also here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145073>

</comment><comment><USER19> Considering IE mostly shows up in the 5th position according to this article, who cares? Does it really matter? Mountain out of a mole hill.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't that depend on which positions are likely to be chosen by people? On what basis should we assume the 5th position is not favored?

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I figured someone would bring that up. First, I could ask the reverse question asking why you assume the 5th position is favored. Next, the requirements didn't dictate a study on the positions. Finally, it avoids the real question: Does it really matter? The placement is random (you can't predict the order reliably before you launch the page), and the options are present.

Does it really matter? No, even with understanding your point, and even thinking that it's an interesting thought that I'm sure we'll see answered.

<comment><USER20> _First, I could ask the reverse question asking why you assume the 5th position is favored._

Does questioning someone's assumption necessarily imply that one is making the converse assumption?

 _Does it really matter?_

I think that's an open question. Note that your definition of randomness is a bit off. The linked article shows that one can predict the occupant of the 5th position greater than 1/5th of the time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two Jet Skiers at Maverick's reef faced deadly 100-foot waves (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/DESPERATE-RACE-FOR-SURVIVAL-RIDING-FOR-THEIR-2652731.php <comment><USER2> video from the day [https://youtu.be/XJ5p-V3pjHY?t=177](https://youtu.be/XJ5p-V3pjHY?t=177)

<comment><USER3> Big, but certainly not 100ft. As a surfer it's really annoying how headlines throw around 100ft claims without any sort of verification. A 100ft breaking wave has yet to be surfed, let alone proven to exist.

<comment><USER4> Obviously you missed out on the action at Nazare in Portugal the last few years. Yes, there is a 100ft wave that has been surfed in 2013. Was big news at the time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtVQJCq2cCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtVQJCq2cCM)</comment></comment></comment>


Zynga's Founder Asks Obama To Pardon Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131219/17015425639/zyngas-founder-asks-obama-to-pardon-snowden.shtml <comment><USER2> Zynga? The Facebook game company that makes money stealing others work wants Obama to pardon Snowden? For some reason, I'm not convinced Snowden will get his pardon. What a poor publicity stunt.</comment>


Tax collectors chase rich New Yorkers moving to low-tax states - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich-new-yorkers-moving-to-low-tax-states.html <comment><USER2> > We have seen some auditors who say, 'Look, this is an ambiguous case, but if > you come up with X dollars, then we can see the change of domicile.'

That sounds more like gangsterism than the proper functioning of the State.

People should of course pay their taxes properly.

Seems to me that we should fix our idea of state citizenship. Right now, the Fourteenth Amendment just says that one's a citizen of the state in which one resides, with no definition of what that means. It's pretty obvious that one doesn't change citizenship just driving through a state, or spending a night there. But what about if one owns homes in two states? And it does seem odd that one can spend six months minus a day somewhere, and not have any tax liability. OTOH, free movement is _also_ important, and it would be pretty annoying to have to register for tax purposes if all one did was spend a weekend or two somewhere.

I think that it'd make sense to amend the Constitution such that state citizenship is, like federal citizenship, a birthright, and that to change one's citizenship to a different state one must go through a naturalisation process. Then states could write laws treating state citizens & aliens appropriately, and there'd never be any question of who is a citizen of what state.</comment>


Britain's libel laws are making things tricky for science writers - <AUTHOR> http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/cracking-the-spine-of-libel/?ref=instapundit

<comment><USER2> So the UK courts are to libel-lawsuit-mongers what Texan courts are to patent trolls?

<comment><USER3> There's been plenty of talk of "libel tourism" in the UK. The economist wrote something about this at the start of this year: [http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12903058)

As one example, this tourism hurts human-rights NGOs that have to prove their reports, which often endangers their witnesses, if indeed they will even testify, and threatens to bankrupt the NGO.

Singh's case is just an example of a much wider problem. It's not even that what he said was definitely not libellous--although I am no expert on libel law, far from it.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that it's far more costly to defend than bring about a libel case. And only the rich can afford to defend themselves properly. Anyone else may well have their career financially wrecked.

It's a limit of freedom of speach through fear of the financial costs of criticism--even if that criticism can be backed up with hard-evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article focuses on science journalists, not on scientists themselves. I wonder how this affects scientific debate. Scientific articles as a rule will say that something previously done was wrong, so given the asymmetry of risks it seems that in situations with large economic interest the scientists themselves would be open to lawsuits. I could see the fossil fuel lobby suing James Hansen, for example.

</comment><comment><USER5> In Britain international criminal lord could sue Interpol for libel and win.

I think that only sensible way to deal with the libel is to allow it. It's already that way in reality. If someone spreads a rumour about someone else to hurt his reputation the source of gossip is impossible to track and impact can be devastating despite all the clarifications and court judgements. Explicitly allowing for libel could do the same to impact of false claims that possibility of posting anything on the internet did to perceived credibility of any unverified information.

Those laws might be fine when small amount of influential people could effectively disseminate information but in the viral age of today, when false information written on someones anonymous blog can sweep across information agencies all over the world the libel laws effectively serve only trolls and powerful organization to fight journalists.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't follow the reasoning that Britain's libel laws are too strong.

\- Singh could have apologised if he didn't mean it, it is clear that he wanted to portray chiropracty as quackery. From what I heard he also said that the evidence in come cases was concocted: which is counterfeit.

\- The raised profile of this case is ideal to get at the truth, I know people have cancelled appointments after they read of this case.

\- He's not without friends, fund-raisers have been held across Britain to help him

\- This has furthered his career as a freelance journalist.

Court seems ideal to get at the truth of the matter. My feelings that he will come out of this very well, even if he looses.

</comment><comment><USER7> This one made me wonder: _"Moreover, English libel law favors the claimant — the person who says he or she has been defamed — in several ways. [...] in English libel cases, the burden of proof is effectively on the defendant. In other words, the defamatory statement is presumed to be false unless the defendant can prove it is true."_

Is there really a law system where it's the other way around? This would be slanderer's paradise. One could write libelous articles as long as one made them hard to disprove.

<comment><USER8> If you look at it the other way around, it's currently a supressor's paradise. If you say something I don't like, I can sue you and you have to prove that every tiny detail of what you said is factual. Most people aren't going to be checking the dictionary definition of every word they speak or write just to check that they're being 100% factual. So therefore the person suppressing their speech will most likely win. The rest of the world likes to be a bit more sensible, it's up to the claimant to show that the information was incorrect, for things that actually matter this will be relatively easy to do.

Free speech with a few people getting away with a bit of name calling vs supression of valid points due to tiny mistakes in delivery. I know which one I'd rather have.

<comment><USER9> > If you say something I don't like, I can sue you and you have to prove that > every tiny detail of what you said is factual.

Personally I don't have a problem with that. After all, you have to be very sure that you can win otherwise you're going to have to pay my legal fees, face a potential counter-suit, and worst of all, have your reputation tarnished even further. The thing is, people _should_ be checking their facts before publishing them to a wider audience. Also, I'm pretty sure that courts are open to the idea that sometimes terms and phrases can be interpreted ambiguously. "Tiny mistakes in delivery" is of course relative, but it's unlikely that the courts will rule in favour of the plaintiff where their case is clearly frivolous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Science, after all, is about evaluating evidence. Science journalism, sometimes, requires pointing out when evidence is weak or absent. This is especially important in the context of medicine and health, where misinformation or lack of information can be deadly."

What exactly is the problem then? If misinformation can be so deadly then surely one should have a sober mind and do all his work, also think twice about maybe three times about misinforming the public or "bending" the fact due to conflicting interests.

Surely if what Mr. Sigh said is true, then there is no case to defend at all as I would presume that those who are bringing proceedings are not so stupid as to embark on such a journey when it is certain that what is said is the truth. Perhaps Mr. Sigh exaggerated a bit, perhaps to such extent that he defamed them and speaking outright lies so as to defend his own profession. I suppose he would not feel good if I were a respected and an individual of influence and said that medicine is rubbish, just drink some water with sugar as the placebo effect will take care.

I would suggest that this has nothing to do with Mr Sigh, or science, truth, justice, or right and wrong. Instead the journalists hate the fact that they can not exaggerate stories to such extent as to tell lies in order to sell their papers. Science journalists are the worst, claiming contradictory findings every day and exaggerating all findings out of proportion.

The truth of the matter is that libel laws are there to protect the public. Lying is not a crime, but it does have strong moral condemnation. Defaming on the other hand is a lie of extraordinary proportion which cause so much damage to the defamed organisation or individual but also society as a whole. Tell the truth and you have nothing to worry. Lie and you do so at your own peril.

We can not have the forth arm of governing be unaccountable. Libel laws are there to keep journalists in check. If they became more lenient no one would benefit, not even the newspapers as no one would trust them any longer.</comment>


Career Development:  What It Really Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP - <AUTHOR> http://kellblog.com/2015/03/08/career-development-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-manager-director-or-vp/ <comment><USER2> At the company I work for, everyone is fully accountable for results, not just VPs. Individual engineers are not off the hook just because they followed the agreed-upon plan.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with spammers calling your mobile phone? - <AUTHOR>

I've gotten a bunch of spammers calling (leaving no msg) - i look up the numbers and they are reported as spam.<p>Specifically for android - what do you use to combat spam? <comment><USER2> Does Android not have a block caller feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean't to auto-block spammers

<comment><USER2> Never heard of one, but it would be nice to have a service that could help filter out spam calls</comment></comment></comment>


Push to Open Schools Is Guaranteed to Fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/push-reopen-schools-fail/614869/ <comment><USER2> How are other countries handling schools? I know that the US has been conspicuously bad at controlling the disease, and other countries are starting to open up, but schools in particular are warehouses for contagion. Are they opening schools?</comment>


Is Chrome taking share from Firefox? - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/03/is-chrome-taking-share-from-firefox.html

<comment><USER2> I wish Mozilla folks woke up.

I'm on Mac and, to be honest, once you get used to Chrome, Firefox is completely unusable. It is slow, cluttered interface, w/o any major advantages over other browsers.

I use Chrome on daily basis and it is _pleasure_ to browse the web. Folks, do not underestimate speed. It is one of the most important UI features.

<comment><USER3> Ironically, Flash is the main reason I'm using Chrome. Firefox is plenty fast, but tab isolation means that my browser crashes less often.

<comment><USER4> Out-of-process-plugins are slated for release soon. May not even require bumping the version number to 3.7 – instead we might see it shipped as 3.6.2. Here is the Mozilla project page for separate processes: <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not unexpected; for a lot of us Chrome was a refreshing reboot of the browser after Firefox became a little on the bloated side.

Incidentally I suspect Firefox has gotten as high a market share as any browser other than IE will ever get.

I fully suspect that over time IE's share (the high %age of which is mostly down to the "monopoly" aspect) will continue to be eroded to level off in the 30-40 range whilst other browsers, rather than just one, will fill the gap.

Also; is the increased safari explained by iPhone usage? are they counting Mobile safari in the overall Safari stats?

<comment> jim-greer On Kongregate at least the Safari growth is from the Mac, not iPhone.

And Chrome has taken share from both IE and Firefox on our site, but mostly from IE.

Safari Mac - 6.4%, up from 3.8% a year ago

Safari Win - 0.9%, up from 0.5%

Mac - 9.3%, up from 6.6%

iPhone - 0.4%, up from 0.3%

<comment><USER5> Wicked, actual data. Looks like I could be wrong then. (that's a huge jump for safari mac!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still use Firefox for my web development because I like Firebug much better than Web Inspector, but that's about it.

I use Chrome for everything else, and love it even more now that it supports extensions. My favorite thing about Chrome is the fusion of the search/address bar - you can just fire up a new tab and enter your search, rather than open tab, tab over to search, enter search.

<comment><USER5> It was a smart move adding that to chrome; I am completely unable to function in another browser now because of it.

Especially the auto-complete - type 2 letters and hit enter... :)

<comment><USER6> Agreed. With Firefox's auto-complete you still have to click on the list of links for it to navigate to that page, and if you enter a search term into the address bar it seems like it either does a regular Google (or default provider) search or a "I'm feeling lucky" search. The reduced number of clicks/keypresses in Chrome really make a difference for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes sense. If you haven't decided to upgrade from IE to Firefox, you sure as hell aren't going to be finding Chrome on your own.

<comment><USER8> Well, a lot of EU citizens have over the past few weeks. It'll be interesting to see where each browser's market share winds up in a couple months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I moved from Safari to Chrome. But before that, I moved from Firefox to Safari because FF is too bloated and slow on the Mac.

</comment><comment><USER10> Still waiting for a proper AdBlock on Chrome/Mac (ie. one that doesn't just hide the ads) and I'll switch.

"GWT developer plugin" for Chrome/Mac would also be nice although it's not that essential.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else have issues with text-selection being finnicky in Chrome, or is just my install (on Ubuntu 9.04)?</comment>


Importing with Absolute Paths in JavaScript/TypeScript Using Webpack - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/10/07/absolute-paths-javascript/#.WdjnlAK6lY4.hackernews <comment><USER2> I appreciated the suggestion of using aliases, and in particular the reference to Guilherme Oenning article ([https://goenning.net/2017/07/21/how-to-avoid- relative-path-h...](https://goenning.net/2017/07/21/how-to-avoid-relative- path-hell-javascript-typescript-projects/)) on using "@" to reference the src root.</comment>