Adding an audio play indicator to your page's tab with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2013/08/22/adding-an-audio-play-indicator-to-your-page-s-tab-with-a-few-lines-of-javascript.aspx#.UhaIoA8Y0MU.hackernews

<comment><USER2> Firstly, I didn't think HN would allow ▶ in the title, so congrats on the "new Rickroll" effort. Hope it doesn't get banned tomorrow :). (Google in fact strips the fun characters from SERP titles.)

[Edit - and it's already gone in the time it took to write this]

I've been using this pattern on [http://player.fm](http://player.fm) for some time now. I agree it's best to just "use the force" of the DOM and base the title symbol on the actual media element's state. Some additional points to consider:

* Another option is to also show a paused or stop state. I did that for a while using a black square character (■), but it looks ugly when people bookmark the page. The same thing happens when bookmarking pages with the play symbol, but that's rarer and at least people have a way to turn it off (ie pause the track).

* Instead of using the title, you could also use a favicon. Although I've been promoting dynamic favicons since I discovered the technique [1], I actually think title is better for this purpose. Why? It lets you retain the actual favicon, it's more portable, it's become more standard. Favicon can be good for more dynamic properties like Scott Schiller's graphic equalizer favicon demo (which I can't find now).

* It works fine with Flash if you use a Flash-compatible JS library like SoundManager or jPlayer.

* It should absolutely be a standard browser feature, but the reason it wasn't is because of the Flash runtime. It presented a black box to browsers so they couldn't actually determine if playback was happening. It's been documented in these bug [2] [3]. It's become less critical as HTML5 media has become more dominant, and I think Chrome and Adobe teams have managed the detection more feasible with Flash.

1\. [http://softwareas.com/dynamic-favicons](http://softwareas.com/dynamic- favicons)

2\. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486262](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486262)

3\. [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3541](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3541)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been playing around with getUserMedia today (via RecorderJS), and in Chrome, it will display a pulsating red button over the favicon whenever it is streaming the data. Pretty neat.

I'm still going to do a lot of messaging around the recording state in the page itself, though, because, I'm not actually recording the whole time that the media stream is connected - I just have it connected the whole time so that I don't need to re-request permission to record.

</comment><comment><USER4> This was mentioned when YouTube started doing this but some of the comments here don't seem to be aware of it.

Chrome will indicate when sound is playing right now if you add "–enable- audible-notifications" to the commandline (easier done on Windows than MacOSX) and even works for sound coming from Flash plug-ins. Of course since it requires a commandline to work, there are likely some issues associated with it (but it has worked fine for me.)

Once this feature no longer requires a commandline, this idea will still be useful for people who use other browsers.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a custom JavaScript template, that loses this when the new hash URL is generated. So I used it like so...

        $('a').bind("mousemove", function(event){
                document.title = document.title.replace("\u25B6","")
                $("audio").each(function(index) {
                    if(!this.paused) {
                        document.title = "\u25B6 " + document.title.replace("\u25B6 ","")
                        return false;
                    }
                })
        });

</comment><comment><USER6> Er, this doesn't seem to be working on herdingcode.com.

Still a great idea, though animating it (there are a few unicode music symbols you could probably cycle through) would make it even better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which browser? I tested w/ Chrome stable and IE11, but I'm surprised if it doesn't work in any modern browser.

<comment><USER7> For me, the audio player is largely broken until every asset on the page has loaded. If you press play before all those facebook buttons do their thing, then the page reloads. I am running the latest chrome stable.

The audio player appears almost immediately, but doesn't actually work correctly for ~15 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If audio detection is based on the <audio> tag, the browser is in a much better position to build a solution, since it would instantly work on all HTML5 audio websites and not be constrained to only using the browser title. Regardless, this is a awesome, simple solution for now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it ironic that this article is misusing the very pattern it's trying to promote? If placing ▶ in the title is supposed to signal that audio is playing, then maybe it shouldn't be used by pages that aren't playing any audio...

</comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't there a browser with a mute button on every tab?

</comment><comment><USER11> I seem to remember reading something about how this was coming down the line for Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I linked to that at the end of the post. It's been in Chrome Canary for a long time but hasn't made it into stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this impact screen readers?</comment>


Mac OS 10.7 is out today, and I don't care - <AUTHOR> http://jseliger.com/?p=1880 <comment><USER2> _Linux machines still sometimes want you to edit files in /src to get your damn wireless network working._

ಠ_ಠ

</comment><comment><USER3> then why bother posting?</comment>


I made a Pomodoro Timer in Python using PyQt4 - <AUTHOR> http://amjith.blogspot.com/2010/09/pomodoro-timer-written-in-python-and.html

<comment><USER2> But did you write it using the Pomodoro technique?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried. :)

<comment><USER3> Do you think you can make port it Google App Engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've created is a desktop timer. I'm not sure what you mean by porting it to Google App Engine. Are you thinking of making it a webapp?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but I'm not familiar with python... Not yet at least. Considering the cost of a web app on Google App Engine is quite low, such a web app can still be profitable, even at $5 per user.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A discretization attack [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/papers/categories-20200918.pdf <comment><USER2> Once again, a reminder that for more than a decade, we've been living in a djb monoculture. I fear the day djb is retired (or compromised .... hopefully that hasn't yet happened).

<comment><USER3> If it brings you some relief, he's a teacher for multiple universities (at the very least one in Chicago and one in Eindhoven). He's passing on his knowledge in this way as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This paper is surprisingly accessibly written given the complexities involved and depth of expertise of the author, DJB, who has made great contributions to many fields.

Unfortunately nearly all decision making processes are vulnerable to this kind of attack: processes are never clear, selection criteria always up for debate, and generally people pick a special option to present preferentially.

This generally just leads to suboptimal decision making - we're lucky to have DJB's focus here to improve this one.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've said it elsewhere, but...

If I were carrying out this attack against NIST, and it had failed up to now (i.e. they chose 'wrong' from my perspective), my next step would surely be to publish something which calls into question the conclusion they came to. This would cause everyone involved to start second guessing, loose confidence in the process, and make it easier to re-mount the attack either now, or in the future.

N.b. I assume this document has been written in good faith and with the best of intentions. It's just hard not to see some contradictions mixed up in there.

<comment><USER6> "We're susceptible to process attacks" plus "pointing it out might be an attack on the process" is much much better than not being aware of attacks on the process.

Supposing this is DJB attacking the process, well, the other participants can simply find the fly in his ointment, point it out, and stop the attack. It's hard to argue that DJB's paper doesn't represent progress then since we can both, reason about its claims and reason about it being an instance of an attack on the process, whereas prior to this we weren't seriously considering attacks on the process at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting... Attacking the standards process. Poor NIST, besieged on all sides. They should just give up on cryptography, they are fatally compromised by their connection to NSA.

<comment><USER8> One could suggest they were under attack, even breached, but their refusal to reveal details of their analysis suggests a worse conclusion.

<comment><USER9> Again. Stop us if you've heard this before.

[https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7045](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7045)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting. But one part confuses me. It claims NIST was manipulated via discretization to favor Kyber over NTRU. But when I look at Figure 4.5 (which hasn't been discretized), it seems to say that Kyber is in fact better. Draw a line connecting the Kyber points (open red squares) and a line connecting the NTRU points (solid green circles). The Kyber line is slightly more up and the the left (better).

</comment><comment><USER11> For perhaps some background behind this paperthere's some lively official discussion here [0] by many participants after the round 3 candidates were announced.

[0] [https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/m/#!forum/pq...](https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/m/#!forum/pqc- forum)

<comment><USER12> Non-mobile link: [https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/#!forum/pqc-...](https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/forum/#!forum/pqc- forum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent paper. Aside from the main points, I notice that the key phrase "category theory" is in the abstract, to aid indexing, but there's no category theory here. I don't think djb's unaware of abstract algebra, so I wonder why he chose this otherwise-irrelevant phrase for indexing.

<comment><USER14> It's not only in the abstract - "category" occurs all over the document. Possibly he's poking fun at category theory/theorists.</comment></comment>


Techy co-founder hero person - <AUTHOR> Looking for a technical co-founder... where better than the HN community to find ambitious cool people naive enough to want to change the world. If you're looking for a project lets go :) <comment><USER2> You'll have to be more descriptive to get feedback. Almost every developer gets this request, like it's the idea that matters.

Who are you, what are you bringing to the table, what areas do you want to work on?</comment>


Building Your Happiness Framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/building-a-happiness-framework-in-your-compan

<comment><USER2> > what is the point of living if we are not happy?

This seems like a foolish statement. There are many points of living even when unhappy. A few that come to mind:

\- live and suffer in exchange for happiness later (working at a crummy job to earn money or a promotion)

\- live and suffer, that others might be happy (defending people is a purpose, but I doubt it makes many _happy_ )

\- live and suffer, because it will turn around one day (hope)

<comment><AUTHOR> these are all true. I guess I should put something in about the struggle to get to happiness sometimes. I meant the statement as really an overall generalization.</comment></comment>


Amazon Looking to Buy Capital One? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bankingtech.com/735552/amazon-looking-to-buy-capital-one/ <comment><USER2> Amazon, which has some very large amount of knowledge on your consumer spending habits if you use it regularly is now looking to get the complete financial picture for a not-so-insignificant percentage of the world.

There's some powerful stuff you can do with that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work for Capital One, and this is almost surely pure speculation. I wouldn't even call it rumor because there is no trace of evidence to this speculation.

I say put your skeptics head on if the title of the article ends in a question mark (and also sources cited do not directly discuss the matter at hand).

<comment><USER4> How about a wager?

My first wager is that you're not in a position to know if it's being discussed.

My second wager is that it happens. For starters I'll bet you $100 with 40:1 odds that it does happen. Happen defined as "Both parties announce intentions to merger/acquire within 6 months from today."

<comment><USER5> You are 2.5% confident that something is going on that the parent poster doesn't know about? While I applaud your willingness to bet, your first 2 sentences indicate much more confidence than your proposed odds.

<comment><USER4> I think the odds in my proposition give me sufficient edge to proffer the bet.

<comment><USER5> But you implied there was a 97.5% chance that the parent was right. You basically agreed with the previous post, while saying they were wrong.

<comment><USER4> I didn't agree. He said it would not. I said it could. I said it was more likely than he said and I would put money on it.

Your use of basically is ambiguous.

<comment><USER5> If I say there is a 97.5% chance that the parent was correct, am I more agreeing or disagreeing? WEP standard says that anything above 94% is "almost certain", so you 'basically' said that it was "almost certain" the parent was correct.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probabilit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probability)

<comment><USER4> These words you are putting in my mouth don't fit.

97.5% probability is nothing like almost certain.

I think we just have different viewpoints on precision and language, friend. I still like you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Regulators in the US are taking interest in the large sums collectively kept > on stored value cards and the associated mobile apps. "The money stored on > these cards – and any similar stored value accounts – are effectively the > same as bank deposits and as the total value now exceeds the deposits at > smaller US banks, regulators are seeing a need to apply oversight," O'Brien > says.

What exactly are these "stored value cards" with associated mobile apps? Things like gift cards? Or are they talking about Apple and Android Pay?

<comment><USER7> It sounds like they are talking about gift cards, gift card apps, and alternative payment apps. These days that's probably a very large umbrella.

Everything from a Google Play or iTunes app to apps like BlendCard, Gyft, Dwolla, Venmo, Square Cash, etc... would likely fall into this. Depending on how PayPal is structured any funds you have sitting in a PayPal account could also fall under this umbrella; which that alone is probably a significant number these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can somebody explain how Amazon could buy them if Capital One's total assests are worth $334 billion? Presumably the valuation would be some multiple of that. Amazon doesn't have enough liquid cash, so how would they do it?

<comment><USER9> You've raised like five questions in three sentences, so here's the low down: Capital One isn't worth $334B. It manages assets worth $334B. Those are the totals of the deposits creditors have with it. Capital One is worth $44B as of this writing[1].

Many companies have fixed capital assets worth less than the company, because they've financed those assets with debt, which would have to be acquired or repaid at the time of the company's sale. Some companies have close to no fixed assets but are worth much from their prestige or ability to execute. Some companies have secondary liabilities that are worth much more than their assets - See Yahoo, who were at one point worth less than the valuation of their holding in Alibaba.

Buyouts are rarely done in cash. They're often done in financing, with several banks lending money to the company to cover the total purchase price. They're also frequently done in stock, where the buying company gives the acquired company shares in the buyer equal to the value of the acquired - Either by issuing new stock, or by simply buying up the old, or some combination of the two.

[1][https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:COF](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:COF)

<comment><USER10> Buying Capital One with Amazon stock would probably be an appealing proposition to Capital One stock holders: [http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/AMZN#eyJjb21wYXJpc29ucyI6IkNP...](http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/AMZN#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%3D)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Regulators in the US are taking interest in the large sums collectively kept > on stored value cards and the associated mobile apps. "The money stored on > these cards – and any similar stored value accounts – are effectively the > same as bank deposits and as the total value now exceeds the deposits at > smaller US banks, regulators are seeing a need to apply oversight," O'Brien > says.

There is zero chance the new administration is going to make new regulations that are unfriendly to financial institutions.

<comment><USER5> I am not a fan of the new administration, FTC, CFPB, or even FDIC, but all regulations have disparate impacts on banks depending on their size and structure. The large banks have benefited from recent complicated and nebulous regulations with high compliance costs. Re-regulation is why the too-big-to- fail banks have gotten bigger. Deregulation would benefit smaller banks, and harm the larger ones.

<comment><USER12> I guarantee that big banks will be involved in any deregulation, and will be working to steer it in their favor for competitive advantage. It happens with any _change_ , whether it's adding regulation, re-regulation, or deregulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazon's business model is based on great service to customers at a low price. Capital One's business (edit: their credit card business) is based on screwing consumers for as much money as they can legally (another edit: my impression is based on anecdotes from many years ago, before the ING acquisition).

Those aren't very compatible business models. If Amazon wants a bank, there's probably a lot of options with better synergies.

<comment><USER14> > Capital One's business is based on screwing consumers for as much money as > they can legally.

Harsh words for someone who runs a bank with no overdraft fees!

I always thought their business model was giving people with starter credit (like college students) credit cards and car loans.

<comment><USER13> > I always thought their business model was giving people with starter credit > (like college students) credit cards and car loans.

This is what I've seen of them. They offer college students (who don't know better) really bad credit card deals with high fees and high rates and sneaky "gotcha" contract terms.

Although I may be overly harsh since my impressions of them are all based on their credit cards. For all I know, their other banking services are ethical.

Also to be fair: by the time Capital One acquired ING, I was too old to know many college students so my anecdotes were all from before then.

<comment><USER14> They gave me a first credit card with 1.5% cash back rewards, a nice website and easily accessible customer service over chat. Not once have I cared what the interest rate was, of course, so they could be getting you there.

The rewards system works better than everyone's current favorite CSR, because you can use it to refund past purchases instead of just buying hotels with points in the Chase store.

The benefits that try to compete with Amex (like extended insurance) are harder to use since you have to actually call in instead of just filling in web forms.

<comment><USER13> After yours and other comments, I suspect my information is just really out of date.

Here's some stories I had heard back when I was in college: no cash back or other rewards on the card for students, $2/month on an unused $500 credit line, a $38 late fee (late = paid the day due after noon eastern time, regardless of consumer time zone), and a rate that skyrockets after any missed payments.

Again, these may have changed since then since there's several replies of people with good experiences.

<comment><USER15> I had one of their cards years ago when I was in college. It was as you describe. Years later I now have a personal and business card with them and the terms are good with a decent mileage program (and they have a real nice mobile app). Of course, now I have excellent credit/ income. I think they're all the same In That regard. If you have poor/no credit you're going to get taken advantage of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazon would ruin the good culture growing at capital one.

<comment><USER17> Implying what exactly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13662945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13662945)

<comment><USER19> It doesn't count as a dupe if the post didn't get significant attention: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). HN allows a small number of reposts in such cases because good articles often need multiple cracks at the bat to get seen.

I'm not sure this is a good article though. It seems to be nothing but a rumour.

<comment><USER17> What makes a rumor good or bad? This certainly isn't the first article on here that is speculation.

<comment><USER19> Supporting evidence, I suppose?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A multi-user hologram table - <AUTHOR> http://newatlas.com/hologram-tables-euclideon/50868/ <comment><USER2> I have little faith in this company or approach to holograms. Euclideon has shown off their voxel based renderer for years as something that will revolutionize gaming and real-time production as we know it - but it has done no such thing. It's certainly interesting tech.

The cheesy, clearly photoshopped teaser images here do nothing to inspire confidence - and based on the technology they described - I don't believe it would work the way it looks in the image. They were vague on the details of the implementation - but from what I understand, it works like this. The table has two images projected onto it per person - each in a different wavelength - and the glasses filter out other images. Thus you have stereoscopy per person. I'm not sure if this approach could make color holograms as shown - but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

What this won't allow is holograms which protrude from the table. You can make stuff go inside of the table - or seem like it's coming out when you are directly above - but not hover over it as in the teaser images.

They also don't talk about the positional tracking technology other than:

> The computer knows where the glasses are. The glasses have some boxes with > little microchips and microcomputers that we build on the side of them.

<comment><USER3> I'm still wondering where the money is coming from. I would also like to play around for years with this kind of technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Dell hopes that his tables will be used in workplaces for city planning as > well as arcades.

As someone with a background in urban planning, these kinds of statements always convince me that nobody knows what urban planning entails.

Funny enough, at community meetings, many planners like to avoid realistic renderings of changes. For example if you want to give people an idea of what sort of size buildings could have under a proposed upzone, you don't want them fixated on the color of the brick facade in the rendering.

I can't really imagine a holographic display helping planning in any real sense beyond getting school kids excited.

<comment><USER5> It could be used for that exactly, getting the public interested in new development projects. Not sure it would be worth the cost though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had worked on earlier model of Microsoft surface table. They had the same pitch that these multi user multi touch devices will be used by education and banking systems etc. they don't work simply because its not solving any problem. Why would people go out of their way to learn new ways of designing, developing and communication just so they can share their work in hologram? What does it solve? Until this is answered AR and VR are not going anywhere.

<comment><USER5> AR has huge business potential in any job that requires use of both of your hands, especially for tasks where you're moving around and don't want to be tied to a monitor.

I agree with you when it comes to jobs that are currently done with monitors on desks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it too late to rename these various stereoscopic systems to something other than 'holograms' ? Because they're not holograms.

Holograms work by interference and have the property that when cut into pieces each piece is a (dimmer and narrower FOV) copy of the whole.

Stereoscopic systems could be called 'stereograms' ?

<comment><USER8> The new startup marketting language...

Holograms = Augmented Reality

Hover Board = Self balancing wheeled vehicle

AI = algorithms, sometimes big data, rarely machine learning or neural networks

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Easy way to tell a faked 3D display: look for imagery lying along a line of sight that doesn't intersect the display medium. For example, the dinosaur's head and the tops of buildings stick out above the display's edges as seen from the viewer's location in the video.

Objects may be in front or behind the display's surface, but the display medium has to lie in front or behind every part of the object.

For all practical purposes, photons travel in straight lines, and require some medium to create or redirect them. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will suddenly discover an easy way to change that fact.

</comment><comment><USER10> So as I understand correctly this is the same as with 3D movies in cinema, but now the computer knows where each glasses are and is changing the phase of the light for each user.

Interesting tech and although the article is full of shopped images and a video that doesn't tell a thing, this might actually work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Holograms are just a terrible idea. I can see the use for AR in business, services, and education. But as far as we can throw it, it's pretty useless compared to video.

</comment><comment><USER12> Total Vaporware. What does "Theoretical Atoms of Light" mean? and what are "Small slip on sunglasses"?

<comment><USER13> Euclideon has a long history in this space of making relatively scammy claims out of technology that may seem far out to the average person, but is actually fairly bog-standard graphics techniques know by professionals in the field that aren't used because of their crippling drawbacks in the applications that people care about.

For instance, you can read this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837948) and bear in mind that 2213 days later, the skeptics in that thread have basically been proved out by future results. (Although you can edit out the people who misunderstand octtrees and argue about the storage requirements for them.)

While we can't know what tech they're using for 100% certain, and they may have put their own twists on it, the most likely underlying tech they are referring to is sparse octtrees: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/985893/what-are- sparse-v...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/985893/what-are-sparse-voxel- octrees) They are a real data structure. It is fantastic for static content and has amazing performance characteristics. However, if you are a programmer who has ever done any tree-type stuff, even if you haven't done 3D graphics, imagine trying to "animate" a single point by moving it in that structure. The algorithm to do so is quite simple... it's just impossibly expensive because of the staggering amount of tree traversal you must do. And due to the way the octtree subdivides, you can't even win with a vague handwave at "caching", though motivating that with math would take me longer than I have here. It completely fails to scale to anything like what the world today considers 3D graphics if you want any motion at all.

Further, there were other telltale signs that that was the technique they were using, such as repeated cells in the rendered video that were clearly just repeated cells in the octtree (a trivial elaboration to understand once you understand the data structure). If you looked you could even see them being aligned on powers of two.

Last I knew Euclideon had decided to change their focus to scanning high- resolution 3D images of things like cathedrals and such. I thought that was actually a good idea, it's a perfect fit for what their tech can actually do. Perhaps doing real engineering work and producing a real product of real value wasn't proving as lucrative as fraud. Certainly it's more _work_. They weren't even trying with that press kit, as others observe the tech described is going to be literally incapable of producing things that look like those concept photos.

You'd think they'd at least change their name, at this point.

I'm also hoping the Euclideon Defense Squad is tired out at this point. (Well, it's not really the Euclideon Defense Squad. It's really the Squad of People Annoyed That Some People Claming Things Are Impossible, What If You're Wrong, They Thought We'd Never Break The Sound Barrier, Didn't They? It just happens to be that the Euclideon was the topic _du jour_. But that's a bit long. It also tended to miss the fact that even if what they're describing is possible that doesn't mean Euclideon are the people to do it....) They're scammers. It's pretty much proved at this point, I don't even feel like that's a libel risk. They've not produced what they said they will in the past, and if this is their current focus, they will continue to not produce it. Since what they were trying to produce in the past was impossible, their failure to produce it was no great surprise. This table they're describing may be possible, it just won't be as impressive as they are promising. Possibly useful, though. Unless they really were stupid enough to tie it to their voxel technology, in which case _awhoop_ there goes most of the use cases again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The VO dude sounds like the "Point Cloud Data" dude from Unlimited Details.

Heck the video even shows the same type of scenes...

</comment><comment><USER15> why all the "designers" who talk about awesome holograms continue to draw their imagined devices like they can display something outside of the boundaries of their screens?

also, interestingengineering.com is a cancer, people who write/edit their articles have understanding of the world on level of three years old children.</comment>


The Oh-My-God particle - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle

<comment><USER2> > in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a > 5-ounce (142 g) baseball traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph)

Similar energy but, luckily for us, completely different impact dynamics: a myriad of small interactions along its path in the atmosphere and in the Earth (I don't know the maximum depth, maybe it's even possible for it to traverse the planet), releasing energy a bit at a time, instead on one single sudden crash.

Yes, baseball is still more dangerous than an "Oh my God!" particle :-)

<comment><USER3> Especially if we accelerate that baseball to relativistic speeds: <http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/>

<comment><USER4> Am I the only one that thinks the latest What Ifs aren't quite as good as the first few? It seems the first ones took a lot of research, time and energy while the last several were whipped up in half an hour.</comment></comment></comment>


Disconfirming Ebooks - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2015/disconfirming-ebooks/ <comment><USER2> It may be much simpler than that. It may be that e-book adoption, like almost all emerging technologies, follows the classic Hype Cycle - we're just past the peak.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, but as the author noted in his followup, linked at the top, he didn't bother to vet the NYT article before pontificating on its points, which we know to be bogus unless you believe books == the big 5 publishers and the smaller ones who follow their lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article makes the same fundamental mistake that the NY Times article did that it refers to. It ignores the rise of self publishing and bases everything off the AAP. Author Earnings has some other things to say, with data: [http://authorearnings.com/report/september-2015-author- earni...](http://authorearnings.com/report/september-2015-author-earnings- report/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't Facebook added RSS? - <AUTHOR>

If I were Facebook, I would add an RSS section to the site.
People already use Facebook, but adding RSS would give them more information on what sites I value.  Furthermore, it would make it easier for me to share the articles that I value through its site.
Although as a user I might be leery of using Facebook for RSS, there would be a lot of benefit for Facebook and the users.
Side benefit, with facebook buttons on practically every site - it would be trivial to add a subscribe button and then it would auto-populate the RSS into users accounts. <comment><USER2> Exactly because Facebook cannot monetize it, nor could Facebook deliver their advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because then you'll spend more time in your RSS reader and less time on Facebook.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't corona testing be done in bulk? - <AUTHOR> I have often wondered why it isn't possible to combine swabs from large numbers of people and PCR the soup to check for the presence of a virus. In the best case, one can eliminate large numbers (dorms, hospital janitorial and nursing staff) at one shot, and makes frequent (daily) testing possible for people at risk). If the sample tests positive, then perhaps (perhaps..) it is possible to figure out the affected subset in a log number of further tests. Am I missing something? <comment><USER2> more samples together increases offchance of crossover contamination producing a false indication.

under the assumption that a corona virus case displays symptoms around day 5 it doesnt make any sense to test if the results come through at the same time as symptoms would arise in positive case.

in my area there is a claim of 3 days shipping of a sample before tests are performed and results submitted.

if you have a lot of samples, abunch of 96 , and 48 well sample trays then bulk testing is efficient if you are careful. If you have to wait, to accumulate samples for a batch, that is not soon enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure i understand the issue of crossover contamination. If you mix together say 500 swabs and if no one has the virus, then will there be a false positive? My understanding is that there won't be. And you have saved 500 people-hours of testing time in one go.

I was thinking about this when our university was closed and upwards of ten thousand people were told to go home. It is good for them and for everyone else on public transport to get a clean chit.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know it doesn't take 3 days to do a test. It takes that much time because of shipping time and demand on the machines and crew. Doing bulk testing should alleviate the latter.

<comment><USER2> ahh you are talking about taking all samples and combining them, this would destroy the ability to trace transmission across reported contacts. i takes ~3hours to run the test if your very familiar with the procedures the problem with centralized testing is the delay if samples are shipped and handled from distributed locations.

the process involves a proceedure that is very sensative to initial sample frequencies. if there is a lot of negative samples mixed with a small number of positive samples there is a pretty good chance that when you remove an aliquot you will sample a population of samples and have artefact.

the chance of amplifying non targeted RNA [human] is increased in this way thus increasing chance of false negatives.

cross over is about handling series of samples. the more samples on the bench at once the more chance to incidentally combine them, from things like "tip drip" or spatter.</comment></comment></comment>


If I was rethinking Digg - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2012/07/if-i-was-rethinking-digg.html

<comment><USER2> I feel like building a welcoming community is far more important for attracting women than just having a flowing interface and scrapbooking functions.

Your user interface doesn't matter if the early adopters create a community that tolerates things like "Tits for GTFO!" "Get back in the kitchen" or "stfu and make me sandwich." And unfortunately, early adopters tend to be men.

Edit: Not to say that it's impossible to create a community focused on women - I just wanted to point out what I see as the major barriers.</comment>


Symbolics.com, the first registered domain name, has been sold to a link farm. - <AUTHOR> http://symbolics.com/

<comment><USER2> Don't encourage them by linking to them.</comment>


Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464.html <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that the IPCC is considered by some to be too conservative in its estimates [1].

Just before they released their 2007 report, a paper was published in Science comparing the predictions from the 2001 report with actual changes in global temperature and sea level. [2] While the 2001 report had forecasted a rise in temperature of 0.15C - 0.35C, the actual rise over that period was 0.33C. Meanwhile the rise in sea level over that period exceeded the IPCC's predicted maximums.

So while the IPCC may be "dialing back" their predictions, they do have a known tendency to err on the side of conservatism.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Clim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Conservative_nature_of_IPCC_reports)

[2] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm)

<comment><USER3> I believe, but hope I'm proven wrong, that climate change has passed the tipping point.

The earth's massive carbon sinks are now sources. Melting tundra, burning forests, boiling oceans (acidification).

If we stopped all human CH4 and CO2 production (stop the economy), the atmospheric levels will still increase.

I also hope that we humans are clever enough to figure out how to sequester CO2 on a massive, industrial scale.

Many humans will certainly survive. But it'll be a bumpy ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author: _because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is._

Note how unmathematical this approach is. The whole premse of the article and the content are: "There are different numbers, some strange qualifiers in front of them which changed but which I'll ignore, but because I compare just the numbers, they are smaller than before so we can happily continue with global warming."

The facts are different.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=todays- clim...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=todays-climate- change-proves-much-faster-than-changes-in-past-65-million-years)

 _To hold the temperature increase to about 1.5 degrees, the globe would need to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, and then have negative emissions._

The author's article ignores the timeframes too, like it doesn't matter at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> I never knew what to think of the whole Climate Change thing. I consider myself a careful skeptic, going on the assumption that the science is much too large to put together. Although I never really questioned the idea that there is evidence of warming or man-made warming, I always questioned the the stated impact.

I've always felt that much of what was presented to us was exaggerated, and I've always felt strongly that the climate scientists were too closely bound to politics, and thus whatever truth was found was obscured by rhetoric. There was also several solutions presented that skated well past the line of absurdity. [1]

Here's to hoping that the climate panels have learned from the mistakes of their past and begin to offer truly critical and balanced opinions, no longer employing scare-tactics.

The hard-core pro-CC crowd accused me of being all sorts of things I am not, such as a wasteful litterbox. Actually, I purchase very few things and certainly never buy Palm Oil or other items that are environmentally destructive. I don't use plastic bags, and I don't drive a car.

In regards to this article, I still don't know what to think. I really wish the report itself would come out before the media jumps all over it and destroys the meaning of this paper, as it is rather important. If the report does say this, I would wonder what changes have occurred in the climate thinking and world to wheel back this much.

[1][http://www.treehugger.com/culture/hose-to-the-sky-still- spew...](http://www.treehugger.com/culture/hose-to-the-sky-still-spewing- so2-idea-to-stop-global-warming.html)

<comment><USER6> No offence but people such as yourself really are the worst. It's clear that you have absolutely no scientific knowledge about the subject but yet believe you know enough to disparage experts in the field. If you don't know about the subject (and I don't) the only sensible position to take is an objective risk management one:

Chance of worse case scenario (10%) x Impact of worst case scenario (Severe) = Prepare Contingency Plans.

<comment><USER7> Its just as valid for people outside of climatology to comment on this as it is for people outside of finance to comment on financial issues.

<comment> mkr-hn I try to read opinions from a variety of experts before taking a position. No climate change denier I've met shares this habit.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure what a "climate change denier" is. If your scientific opinion requires you to demonize your opposition then something is definitely wrong.

<comment> mkr-hn A climate change denier is one who denies that the climate is changing. It says nothing of how they came to that view or the merits of their view. There's no demonization in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but this is just stupid.

> > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley) > and > [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Matt_Ridley](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Matt_Ridley)

If you want to have an idea as to his economic credentials, he's, in a nutshell, responsible for the first bank run in the UK in about 130 years.

Here are just the effects of the state I live in: [http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/climate- scien...](http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/climate- science/climate-change-impacts/queensland)

<comment><USER9> This is a great example two fallacies in one post.

The first is a fine ad hominem example: "This is just stupid" -> Links to the author -> He is not qualified. Does not refute his claims

The second is the Hasty Generalization fallacy: Referencing a single instance as indicative of all areas

<comment><USER8> > Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from > preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. > Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the > range of the IPCC's emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 > chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the > harm.

He caused a bank run, which is all about balancing predictions with risks. It's all about evaluating economic impacts. He is entirely unqualified to make the statement above from that single data point alone.

About the hasty generalisation, I didn't mean to indicate that these would be the effects across the world, and I though that much was obvious. Most of the world doesn't even have coral reefs, for example. It's just that a global perspective might be in order, and most people here aren't likely to live in Queensland.

<comment><USER9> >He caused a bank run, which is all about balancing predictions with risks. It's all about evaluating economic impacts. He is entirely unqualified to make the statement above from that single data point alone.

Oh I won't refute that, perhaps he is unqualified. That doesn't however refute his argument. It only states that you'll have to look at the argument that much more carefully because he is not likely to be a great source.

What is common with folks justifying the ad hominem is that it is really just a short hand for the argument from authority fallacy. It is implicitly advancing the idea that the merits of the argument rest on the person giving them as though if it were someone else it would be more correct, which of course is wrong.

I think it is reasonable to assume that most people look at the person making an argument and if they are confident in the person, they will take the argument as a truthful assessment. To me though this is lazy and essentially delegates reason, so IMO it is always worth identifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To say that the benefits of increased vegetation outweighs the rise in sea levels and summer temperatures is breathtaking in its stupidity and cruelty. The people who are the most affected by climate change are the poorest and least able to relocate. In which way does humanity benefit if millions die in Africa and South East Asia whilst wealthy industrialists get to farm further north than previously.

It's also bizarre to be thinking so short term. So we benefit if there is a 1.2 degree increase in the next 70 years. What about the 70 years after that, and after that ?

<comment><USER10> Why would millions die? Rising sea levels won't come as a tsunami, it's a slow,gradual rise in sea levels. Of course this will cause havoc for the world's poor, but it's not like we can't plan for it.

<comment><USER6> Because millions are dying today as a result of preventable malnutrition or disease. What makes you think the world is going to act to save poor people in SE Asia or Africa ?

And slow changes to climate don't instantly cause millions of deaths it is gradual as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Matt Ridley should stick to blowing up banks and leave the climate alone.

[http://www.monbiot.com/2010/06/01/the-man-who-wants-to- north...](http://www.monbiot.com/2010/06/01/the-man-who-wants-to-northern- rock-the-planet/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not really a scientist, so I can't take any sides here, but I would like to point out a few things (make your own rational judgments). I do know the true principles of science, if little about its practice. Real science is unbiased. Everyone in these threads seems to get so heated that their "side" is right (I've been guilty of it as well, its an easy trap to fall into). Well, real science does not care about sides, it cares about boiling down a system of variables into a probable hypothesis. Even the most likely hypotheses have been shattered - I'm not saying that is the case, but sometimes climatology feels more like faith than science. Real science aims to prove its results wrong, not to prove them right.

Climatology/meteorology/etc are actually very difficult types of science because you cannot simple put the earth in a confined test area where you can tweak the variables on a small level. Yes, we all know that increase in CO2 = increase in greenhouse effect, that is child's science and not a real question. The real question is how much impact do human beings really have on the atmosphere, and to what degree should we change our behavior (if at all) based on that? There are so many variables that are difficult to predict (or even determine in realtime) - the sun's energy output, how much CO2 gets processed by trees, how much CO2 gets trapped in the upper atmosphere (it happens, despite it being heavier than other types of atmosphere), underwater volcanic activity, and so forth. That, and try doing a thermodynamic simulation at earth's scale - the best we can do is very crudely rough it. That said, there is no reason we should trash our environment just because we don't know what is going on - there are a million reasons to gravitate towards clean energy (in particular, sustainable energy).

All I can say is, if you are a real scientist, constantly question your own beliefs, don't fight for them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Given that the WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch, I would recommend taking anything it says about climate change with a giant hunk o' sodium chloride.

<comment><USER14> Have you found something wrong in the article? This would be a more constructive comment.

<comment><USER13> I would have thought it to be self-evident, but since you ask...

It's an opinion piece written by a notorious climate-change denialist. Its main source is a document that hasn't been released yet. It is full of breathless hyperbolic speculation, e.g.: "Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings." It puts the emphasis on the "facts" (because there are precious few actual facts) that support Murdoch's political position and downplays the facts that undermine that position, e.g. "Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is." and "...there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm." i.e. because things might not be getting quite as bad quite as fast as was predicted, that everything is therefore going to be hunky-dory and we should all stop worrying and just carry on burning fossil fuels with abandon, because, hey, we have a 50-50 shot that it will all turn out to be a net win.

I could go on, but life is too short to spend too much time debunking creationists, truthers, and denialists. If you want more, start with this:

[http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/08/2265541/breaking...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/08/2265541/breaking- bad-matt-ridley-exits-wall-street-journal-column-as-a-climate-science-denier- of-the-third-kind/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Politicians like Matt Ridley can say what they like. I'll believe that things have changed when experts in the field begin to say so, and not a moment sooner.

<comment><USER16> Your stubborn stance on the issue sounds like the type of response a religious fundamentalist would give when questioned about their beliefs. The "experts in the field" have been shown to make excessive predictions in recent years, perhaps we should keep an open mind about who to trust?

<comment><USER15> Keeping an open mind is one thing, but if you ever take what any politician says at face value, then you're nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Climate Change (rebranded Global Warming) is such a heated and controversial topic, including in academia, that turns decent people into crazed maniacs (think of Apple or sport team fans). I suggest to stay away from it until something conclusive emerges from the study.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is my thought on climate change, and something each party overlooks while paying scientists to do research that supports their point. Lets just pretend that hypothetically, we are 100% sure global warming is not caused by human- manufactured pollution. With that being the case, what do we do? Take off pollution controls? Turn every city into a place where you need to wear a mask to breathe? If you've ever been to Shanghai or even Los Angeles it is pretty obvious there are problems with pollution beyond damaging the ozone. Personally, I think that millions of people being able to actually breathe is more important than chemical company x stock price going up because they didn't have to "waste" money on proper disposal and soot filters...

The fact that we get bogged down in a discussion of whether the ozone is being damaged and overlook whether our lungs are being damaged just blows my mind.

<comment><USER19> CO2 does not damage the Ozone layer. CO2 is not soot. CO2 does not damage our lungs. Even though it has recently been added to the EPA's list of pollutants (because of the climate change debate), CO2 is not even what people would readily identify as "pollution" \- like chemicals that irritate eyes, lungs or sinuses.

The debate is how much - if any - negative impact is being done to our climate by a chemical that is an inevitable byproduct of the combustion of carbon- based fuels (which, outside of nuclear and hydro, offer the cheapest source of energy), and is combatting the risk of negative impact worth the economic impact to our economy.

I am not making a statement about climate change. I am only saying, respectfully, that you deeply misunderstand the debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I just wanted to point out that the author is a politician and not a scientist. Also, the globe has warmed by 6-8 degrees F since the last ice age. The temperature difference that the author considers "beneficial" is the difference between Manhattan being a vibrant city and being buried under a mile of ice.

<comment><USER21> You are mistaken. He is, in actual fact, a scientist. Ridley has a DPhil degree in zoology from Oxford, and he's a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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

<comment><USER20> I stand corrected. The author is a politician and a terrible scientist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It must be because of all of those carbon credits people purchase.

<comment><USER23> and now we can solve water shortage crisis with water credits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone else think it's weird how when you click on the WSJ link it drops you three links deep into WSJ?

I imagine most folks use new tabs, but this was kind of weird trying to back button out of the WSJ site.

</comment><comment><USER25> I invite people to read a bit of background information on Matt Ridley before they read this article.

<comment><USER21> Why? Did the author make an argument based on a claim of subject matter expertise?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I outsource DevOps? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wasting too much time dealing with setting up EC2 instances, configuring servers, etc.
I'm sure those things are trivial for a lot of people who do them for a living, so it seems like a good thing to outsource.
But I'm not sure where to go. oDesk? Elance? Or are there sites that specialize in this?
My ideal service would be some kind of crowdsourced technical support marketplace: I post the task I need done and people can then bid on it. Or maybe just a service that I pay $50 a month to take care of whatever problem I encounter.
Alternatively, if anybody reading this wants to become my "help, why is this thing not working!?" person feel free to get in touch via my profile. <comment><USER2> $50 buys you a maximum of 30 minutes of an experienced person's time. And if that's your upper limit, most experienced folks won't bother.

You might find a decent person in a developing country who will trade a couple hours for that same amount, but the search will be time consuming (ergo expensive).

There is the issue of trust -- keys to the kingdom, etc. And availability -- do you need same day response time?

You might be asking for more than you're willing to pay for.

Edit: this service does exist, of course. But nowhere near your stated price point.

Edit again: you'll find that people are happy to answer your questions about _how_ to do things, for free. But the tedious process of _doing_ those things, and taking responsibility for the success of the actions, as defined by you -- who might not have fully specified or understood the implications of your request -- that won't be free. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the price of such a service would probably be much higher. If I took an audit of how much time I spend on this stuff monthly, I'm guessing paying $200-500 would not seem out of proportion. Anyway it's just speculation at this point until someone points me to/builds such a marketplace.

<comment><USER3> You're not far off. One of my customer, a startup, pays me a flat $400/m to take care of one Debian server (PostgreSQL+ Play + Lighttpd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to make a couple of assumptions and if I'm wrong just ignore the answer. I'm assuming you are using either PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, or .Net. I'm assuming these are either web servers, worker servers, caching servers, or database servers.

With those assumptions made I'm going to suggest some services to use. I don't work for ANY of these companies. I run a small startup that uses most of these companies.

For web servers I would recommend using AWS' Elastic Beanstalk. You don't pay anything extra to use this service in addition to the EC2 servers you are using now. If you use reserved instances it is also cheaper than pretty much any other PaaS out there (Google App Engine gives it a good run for the money). Recently I did a spreadsheet outlining the savings <http://goo.gl/AL5Cj>. The spreadsheet was done before the most recent AWS price reductions so the m1.small prices aren't right.

For worker servers I recommend using PiCloud. You can install anything you want and they only charge you for the time your jobs use. Granted you have to use Python to interface with jobs but does that really matter in the grand scheme. I personally use Python anyways so its a bonus. Depending on the job it might be more appropriate to use AWS' Elastic MapReduce offering.

For database servers I recommend using either RDS or Xeround (<http://www.xeround.com>) a MySQL provider if you have to use a relational database. If you have the luxury of using a NoSQL option then use Cloudant (<http://www.cloudant.com>) a CouchDB DBaaS company or AWS' DynamoDB server.

For caching servers use AWS' Elasticache service or Garantia Data's (<http://www.garantiadata.com>) Memcached or Redis cloud.

<comment><USER5> I support this answer. The reality is that outsourcing the devops work is simply moving from IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service, e.g EC2) to PaaS (Platform as a Service, like RDS, Heroku). You just won't deal with infrastructure, servers, network or operating systems anymore.

You will lose the ability to customize or use obscure frameworks.

On the other hand, you will simply have to do operations such as "increase the number of web workers", or "add more replication for this DB" which are high level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is exactly why I decided to use a PaaS for matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>) rather than dealing with our own dedicated or VPS or cloud.

We use Pagoda Box and love it. For the stage we're in, it's great. I can spend my time iterating the product based on customer data instead of fiddling with granular server controls.

</comment><comment><USER7> OpDemand or perhaps putting your time momentarily into Chef might pay off? I am still skeptical about the first but it might be cheaper to start with while Chef does a fairly good job of automating provision, configuration, and integration. Problem seems to be initial setup and if you have an unconventional platform.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best part of DevOps is Test-Driven-Development (TDD). This cannot be outsourced cheaply yet unless you know _exactly_ what you want to do and you're able to communicate this clearly.

Just my humble opinion.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.supportresort.com/plans/sysadmin/>

Red Hat or Microsoft Certified syadmins for under $4 per hour, with a monthly commitment.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be happy to help out dependant on your needs, feel free to ping me with further details, the sort of stack you're dealing with and your requirements etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think such a place exists.

Maybe it should.

But how would you ensure trust and security? This could be quite dangerous to your business...

<comment><USER12> Shameless plug...

Such a place exists: <http://www.advection.net/>

We do offer devops as a service, since 2003. We publish rates, though you'll find them under web development pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know of at least one startup focusing on DevOps for other people. <http://www.opsline.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> I am willing to work for free if you're not evil. I dont expect much in return :) other than good experience. SGlIZWxsb0JvbGtlQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ==

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/About+Opscode+Chef>

<comment><USER16> It's a steep learning curve, but Chef is totally worth learning if you want to automate ops. Use the time you're wasting on ops to learn Chef instead. If your outsourced ops guy is worth his money, he's probably going to use Chef anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can't outsource your custom DevOps for that amount of money but switching to Heroku or another PAAS might be a cost effective option.

</comment><comment><USER18> Happy to help for little questions and so on... Drop me an email: firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


DNA And Computers Are Reading Each Other - <AUTHOR> http://edge.org/3rd_culture/church_venter09/church_venter09_index.html

<comment><USER2> Wow what forum of people there! If the roof fell down in that building, ... :)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a pity this won't get many votes because of the timing of the posting (which seems to be a big factor in making the homepage of HN), it's very interesting stuff.

Scroll down for the videos.

<comment><USER4> 'In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already— life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. "We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer," George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made'.

Amazing stuff! 40 years from now login to have your genes changed to change the colour of your eyes. Pity I will probably not be around!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wait ... the Singularity is over the corner! In 10 years you'll become part of this synthetic life.

<comment><USER3> I doubt it.

The singularity may be a fluke of observation bias, it is very well possible that because you are always at the forefront of technological development when you are alive (or you'd be living in the past) you perceive this tremendous advance during your lifetime, leading you to conclude that pretty soon we'll 'take off'.

The singularity has been nicknamed 'the rapture of the nerds'.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Singularity must be the next metasystem transition (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition>), the Control of Culture.

As soon as old media will get napstered and Culture will become impossible to be manipulated, and, as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web --- we will have a new digital universe assuring parallel existences and a gateway to the 'old' biological life.

Is that good enough for a Singularity?

<comment><USER3> > as soon as we uploaded ourselves completely to the web -

I think I see a few technological snags there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Europe Keeps Messing Up in Greece in 1 Chart - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/how-europe-keeps-messing-up-in-greece-in-1-chart/257608/

<comment><USER2> This article, of course, assumes that the IMF's prediction is made in good faith as a representation of their policymakers' true beliefs about the future. It doesn't allow for the possibility that the IMF is releasing certain figures deliberately (which is not only possible but probable).</comment>


On Working Remotely - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-remotely.html <comment><USER2> Wow. I guess I'm completely different from Jeff.

I have no need whatsoever for a "coding buddy." I'm considerably more comfortable working on a project solo. Even with a good team, I hate the coordination overhead.

I _can_ , of course, and good team skills are important. I'm not saying that. But the coordination costs of software development increase super-linearly, so I tend to prefer using the minimum number of people that can possibly do a job. The break-even point is around 4-5 - after that, adding more people makes things _slower_ , unless you can split the project into autonomous chunks.

<comment><USER3> My order of preference:

Working with better programmers than me > Working solo > Working with others

I guess it is a common preference

<comment><USER4> It is. I agree with you but if you're working with programmers better than you which one of these three is the situation from their perspective? At least some of the better programmers have to be willing to bend on this or you never work with anyone better.

<comment><USER5> You only need to perceive that the other programmers are better, they don't actually need to be that way. And given that competent people generally underrate their abilities [1], you could have a team of equally highly skilled people who all think they are working with a team that is generally better than them. I actually think this would be an ideal situation.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

<comment><USER6> They don't have to be _better_. What is "better" anyway? More efficient algorithms? More normalized data? Fewer bugs?

For me, it's about experiences and perspectives. When I work with other programmers who have unique approaches to problems that help me work more efficiently, I enjoy working with them.

I also enjoy working with less experienced programmers who are willing to learn and practice new, more efficient methods.

I really dislike working with programmers who think they are awesome, but are really clueless. I try to help them, but their pride gets in the way. It's funny when they try to school me on stuff. I just don't have time for that. I feel bad for their clients.

But sometimes I run across people who know little tricks or constructs and I'm like, Wow, that's awesome, teach me more!

<comment><USER5> I'm with you that 'better' is highly subjective, and in the case of inexperienced and wanting to learn vs any amount experience and excessive pride I'll take inexperienced any day. Technology is too diverse and filled with rapid change to ever think you don't need to be open to new ideas and improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _One guy working all by yourself alone. This didn't work at all for me._

Funny, I have trouble working any other way.

 _I was unmoored, directionless, suffering from analysis paralysis, and barely able to get motivated enough to write even a few lines of code._

I am totally grounded with tons of work and a million ideas of what to do and how to do it. I'm having so much fun, my biggest problem is finding time to triage all the possibilities in my head.

I understand OP, but that's just not my experience. Programming can be a lonely lifestyle. I have my code and my cats to keep me company. I love them both.

[EDIT: I don't want to leave the wrong impression; I am very social and used to find it challenging being alone. Not anymore. I just bury myself in my work, which is something that has to be done anyway. Now I don't want to be bothered when "I'm busy", but I _do_ want to be bothered at most other times. Dinner with SO, time with friends & family, and visits to the hn virtual water cooler fit in perfectly. Now back to work - see you in a few hours.]

<comment><USER8> Since you and lukev shared similar experiences and are currently modded highly, I want to say I am the opposite of you and more like Jeff, but like he said, maybe we're a rare breed among programmers.

People make me feel empowered. I enjoy the watercooler talk, I feel depressed when I lunch alone (really, really down. For days). I like to talk, I like to make people laugh.

I think the lesson is to know who you are. Jeff and me like social, you and lukev like more lonely. Don't rely on blog posts telling what's better, find what works for you and go for it.

<comment><USER9> Oh God, eating alone is the _worst_. Especially at a sitdown restaurant. It's like God teasing you about your lack of friends.

<comment><USER10> Eat at the bar if you can. Sometimes its actually an advantage because you can get a single seat at the bar even when all the tables are filled. I do agree with your sentiment though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The minimum remote team size is two."

By definition, I suppose, since a one-man shop has nobody to be remote _from_.

I disagree though. I'm self motivated enough to run with stuff on my own. I've built a lot of big successful things with a team size of one, and I find it the perfect team size during the prototyping and buildout phases of a project.

Sure, once you hit maintenance mode it's nice to have another person along to share the pain and help generate the discipline needed for months of refactoring and slow iteration. But when you're actually building something, I'm all about small teams.

So now we have two datapoints. If I were the author, I would have gathered a few thousand more before publishing this article.

</comment><comment><USER12> I disagree somewhat. I dont feel that I "Bleed ones and zeros" but find the solitude in my home office far less distracting than an office cubical, and tend to be way more productive.

I think you really just have 2 basic types of people: those who want to get their work done(and do it well) and those who arent really committed.(for whatever reason, incompetent, lazy, bad work ethic, not interested in the work, etc...) If you have a team of the first type, you will get things done, if not, you wont. A less experienced developer with motivation to get things finished will not let distance get in the way.

<comment><USER13> Not to go off on a tangent about office architecture, but I feel that cube farms are the worst of all worlds for any intellectually demanding work.

One extreme, private offices for everyone, works pretty well in that you have quiet when you need it and you can also collaborate verbally without disrupting others.

The other extreme, a bunch of people in one room, works pretty well in that you can get a peripheral sense of what everyone else is doing, talking to the person next to you doesn't require hollering through 3/4 height walls, and you can always put on your headphones to signal "leave me the heck alone".

The middle ground, cube farms, tend to eliminate both useful silence and useful noise.

Personal preference matters, too. Some people just can't function in a noisy bullpen environment, while others tend to just "go dark" and run in the wrong direction if left alone.

My company is planning on moving into a new office space divided into just two sections, one speaking-in-normal-tones-is-OK bullpen, and a distinct shut-the- hell-up fishbowl space to accommodate the different work styles. I'm eager to see how it works. I actually see myself shuffling from zone to zone depending on the nature of what I'm working on.

<comment><USER14> Another middle ground is where everyone has an office with a door that closes but there are 2-3 engineers in that office. Back in the day when AT&T Bell Labs was the coolest thing ever, that was the system they had and the best companies I've worked for replicated it as well.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've worked a handful of places that have done that. It only failed me when I was working at a place where my office mates where on different projects, so all of their interaction was just noise to me, and all of my interactions was just noise to them.

I find it works well if the 1-2 other people working in the same space are working on the same thing, ideally as a cross-functional team, (i.e. don't have an office full of "UX" people down the hall from an office full of "DB People")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm working remote and love it. But I'm a very introvert guy. I don't like smalltalk, I don't like talking to a group of people, it exhausts me. But I love to philosophize with one person, when one thought generates another one, when both appreciate the thoughts of the other and go together beyond their own border.

Most of the communication with my teammates is done by phone and a request tracker. If someone develops a new feature or a customer has a demand, everything goes over the rt. It works pretty well, you can always see what your teamates are working on, and how they solved a problem.

<comment><USER16> He he, I did a double-take when you said you didn't like smalltalk. I was like, hey, object-orientation isn't so bad.

Guess I am one of those introverts too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good article.

The part that was missing was: your mileage may vary.

I love hearing about how teams make it work. But over and over again I see a team do things one way that worked wonderfully well for them and then everybody else just copying that. Then it doesn't work.

Every project is a new game.

It's a well-worn anti-pattern

</comment><comment><USER18> Remote work and distributed teams provides one heck of a challenge for sure. We've been finding our way by trying different things and succeeding or failing - but I certainly agree with what Jeff Atwood said about keeping up with chat and mail lists... We're very cross-platform, so video chat doesn't work all that well for us across Linux, Windows, and Mac, etc... But I think the weekly status reports to the team has been forgotten, so we'll have to start that up again. :)

I did a presentation for EclipseCon 2010 about our challenges that you can find here (with links to a slide): <http://www.eclipsecon.org/2010/sessions/sessions?id=1156>

Great article though. Today it's nearly impossible to avoid a distributed team to get stuff done!

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't stress enough the _persistent_ part of the "persistent mailing list."

I worked as a remote employee in a group where we had half the team (couple dozen folks) in an office in Toronto, and the remainder of us scattered about in remote sites across the US.

We had a mailing list for questions along the line of "Hey, this question is important but not enough so to bug anyone in chat." It wasn't persistent in any usable manner; it archived to an Exchange shared folder hosted in the main office, and I learned that searching these folders over VPN was an exercise in futility.

Basically then you'd have new people hiring on and not having the organizational knowledge pent up from all the decisions made in the past. They'd make bad decisions in their work because either a) they couldn't search the list for help and just decided to cowboy it, or b) they mailed the list, got blown off for asking a question that has been asked dozens of times before they showed up, and will just cowboy it the next time.

<comment><USER20> The best enterprise collaboration tools merge read-/post-by-email features with a rich web application. This gives everyone a chance to stay in touch whether they're on a laptop or a blackberry.

Edit: Forgot to add my agreement that Google Groups-style search and archiving is key as the parent poster asserted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> the fact that people are "chatting" on HN seems to prove his point that you need human contact during the work day

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems a bit odd to me that he talks about working remotely and how awesome it was, but then all the coding jobs for his site (which he was somewhat selling in this entry) are for people "in an office in NY".

But I agree, if you're working by yourself, you definitely need a very structured workplan, and it's very good to have someone to "report" to, even if they're not coders, but just as a grounding point for feedback and a passive nag to not slack off and get things done.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's much better working on a truly distributed team than being the one remote worker on a mostly-centralized team.

My group at Mozilla is distributed across seven cities (I think) on two continents. We use all of the techniques Atwood listed. At Mozilla, where a large portion of the staff is in Mountain View, it helps that my manager is working remotely just like me - so I'm not more remote _from him_ than anyone else is.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some good tips in here, we run a fully distributed team and had overcome similar challenges.

One tip I would add is pair-programming on complex parts or sticking points through screen and vim, we have an ec2 instance dedicated for pairing which everyone has access to.

<comment><USER25> I was surprised at that omission from the article. Getting tools to ease remote pairing is one of the most challenging things about remote work. We ended up making Emacs a hiring requirement just because working from screen is such a crucial part of what we do.

<comment><USER24> yes, vim or willingness to learn is currently a hiring requirement for us. Not a religious thing, just happend the first two guys we hired preferred vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Mumble is a great project that works well for teams. Low bandwidth, high quality voice chat.

<http://mumble.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER27> Oddly, at my last job, we used ventrillo. I happened to have a server from playing WoW, and so I just had the rest of the team use it. Cross-platform, low-bandwidth, and worked awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At the risk of plugging my own thing, this situation is the reason we built Twiddla, so I'd recommend checking it out if you're trying to build stuff with a distributed team.

Mostly it was to deal with communicating little graphical changes to remote designers without resorting to MS Paint and email, but it does chat and voice too, so it pretty much wraps up the whole "tools you need" section in one thing.

<comment><USER28> Hi, from personal experience, our 2-man team found TeamViewer a bit more useful though.

Twiddla has its strengths but it failed when we tried to share a dynamic website. It only excelled in sharing static websites so we were unable to share websites that required a log-in or a form submission. We ran in to a lot of time consuming problems when using Twiddla so we abandoned it because we just did'nt have the time to play around. I guess it is more for communicating with remote designers and it definatly is way better than MS Paint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've worked on a distributed team for three years now. We've found that regular phone conversations and weekly "status" emails (nothing formal) really help the process and keep everyone connected. Typically we use email and Skype to communicate, but if an email conversation begins to get too unwieldy, we simply get on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER30> Teamviewer, DropBox and Skype are the best tools I've used for remote working.

<comment><USER31> add mikogo and callgraph to it

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder how the projects like freebsd, webkit, chromium, and thousands and thousands more are successfully going on without such pathos and attempt to impress the world.

Shared culture and vision plus trac with several plugins (or code.google.com) are enough.</comment>


Leaving Amazon: What I learned over the last four years - <AUTHOR> http://www.iseff.com/post/90245011/leaving-amazon-what-i-learned-over-the-last-four-years

<comment><USER2> I am envious of someone talking so highly of a company they are leaving. I can't say I ever have. Good luck on your new adventure!

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree completely with the point on "customer obsession". The last company I worked for didn't have much of a customer focus while my current company is truly obsessed with the value we deliver to the end customer.

Needless to say the earlier company has gone under while the current company has been going from strength to strength.

I'm not to clear on the point of "frugality" though. My current company does spend a lot on what could be considered trivial stuff to make us comfortable and it makes for a rewarding working environment. Does anyone have an opinion on "frugality"?

<comment><USER4> Frugality is probably relative to the industry you're in. Amazon is a retail company, where margins are low, and the overall health of the company can hinge a lot on managing all the seemingly small expenses that crop up in running a business.

If you're in a higher-margin business like software, maybe the Frugality trade-offs look different. Would Fog Creek be doing substantially better if it spent substantially less per developer? They might be doing a little better, but I doubt it would be enough to materially impact the business. And it may require that they put more of the company's resources into recruiting and hiring, to handle increased turnover.

I suspect that the author is heading to a startup as his next step, which may be why Frugality is standing out to him. If you're not cash-flow-positive yet in a business, then keeping your spend rate down by any means necessary can make the difference between success and failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite line:

"But, I don't think this is the only reason Frugality is a core value. Amazon's focus on customer experience means that they are always trying to lower prices. If the company can do something more cheaply and pass those savings on to the customer, they will."

<comment><USER6> I still don't think that "doors for desks" is the right way to treat your employees, no matter how bargain-crazy your vision.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you understand -- doors make terrific desks!

<comment><USER8> The point of the door desk is more than just saving money on a desk. It serves as a constant reminder that you should not spend money on something that does not help your customers. You can argue that this is a bad way to treat your developers, but most people would agree that a desk is a lousy way to spend money instead of, say, having better technical equipment.

<comment><USER6> Developers are still people, and people do care about aesthetics.

<comment><USER9> Can you link me to this "doors for desks" thing? This argument's interesting, but I can't say I've ever heard of this before.

<comment><USER7> Doors are large, sturdy, _finished_ pieces of flat tree-product. They are very cheap compared to material intended for counters, and are available used for free. They already have a hole (doorknob) for you to put your cables through.

For legs you can use some combination of: shelving, filing cabinets, sawhorses, brackets+lumber, and a-la-carte legs.

At my parent's software startup they used doors for desks for their whole 20-year run. Be careful though -- with great surface area comes great responsibility! Once my mom's desk clutter reached critical mass, it stayed that way for 15 years (18" deep in the back, 2" in the front).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Other perspectives:

<http://coderific.com/employers/7>

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com- Reviews-E6036.ht...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-com- Reviews-E6036.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> _"This comes after three years of full-time work and a summer internship in 2005. Surprisingly (or not, if you know Amazon's growth), that made me older than something like 80% of all Amazon employees in Seattle, the headquarters (and older than a much higher percentage of ALL Amazon employees)."_

The next time that someone tries to tell me that software development isn't a young man's game, I'm going to point to this. Three years out of college, and he's older than _eighty percent_ of the company's employees? Even for the software industry, that's incredibly suspicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I should've been more clear: "older" did not mean age, "older" meant "at Amazon longer than others."

<comment><USER11> Ah. Still suspicious, but in an entirely different way...

<comment><USER12> I worked at Amazon from 2008 to 2009. There were a number of recent college graduates there, but the average age felt a bit older than that. I don't have any data to back this up, but Amazon most certainly does not hire an unusual proportion of "young" people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, but I hoped author learned more than 2 things in 4 years.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I expected he'd come up with a Top Ten(tm).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Damn, a fine post. Read somewhere a long time ago a common trait of long time successful companies is a clear and commonly applied mission statement. It doesn't have to be printed in the company brosure, but has to be a set of core values which describe the company.

What's really nice in this post, and _very_ rare today, is that he stopped the count at 2. It's such a simple thing, and yet so powerful. I have no idea who this guy is, but I think highly of him already.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey wait a minute! I totally know you. You went to the U(C)! Hah!

Also, I spotted a copy Founders at Work infiltrating your office: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/iseff/434121419/in/photostream/>

Do all devs at Amazon have offices with doors?

</comment><comment><USER17> Since when is interrupting someone's life to shove an advert in their face considered "helping the customer", "making their life easier" or "making their experience with your company better"?

All advertising email is spam, "solicited" is just a weasel-word to sugar coat the fact that you are trying to pound your company name into someone's head harder than all your competitors are doing with their name, and keeping up the status quo that this is an acceptable thing to be doing.

 _Obviously, not all customers find this to be the greatest experience_

Do _any_ customers find receiving an advert in the middle of their daily workflow _the greatest experience_? A _great experience_ of any kind?

[Edit: transactional email, though, sure - make that more pleasant]

<comment><USER18> I get worthwhile notice of new albums by my favorite bands once in a while. Marketing isn't necessarily about self-promotion, it's also about making the connection between what you have and what somebody else already wanted. In good (Soviet) marketing, product searches for you.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Logo tip - I used unicode characters for our logo. - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm learning to keep things simple.
I'm on startup no. 2 and have just put up a sign-up and twitter page.  For the twitter page I needed a profile pic or logo of some sort so I've hacked together a little logo using unicode characters.  Have a look: https://twitter.com/#!/TheSuperOwl
I think it looks quite cute, it's a temporary thing until we get a designer on board.  The 2 founders are not designers (product person & developer) so we don't want this to hold us back with getting things going.
It's quite fun - I think we can play around with the unicode characters in the meantime. For example when our little Super Owl was first born his wings were down and now that it's been some time since he hatched his wings are lifted up.
I know this all probably sounds a bit trivial and silly in the grand scheme of things - but I thought I would share my wee unicode / logo hack with you.  Maybe it's useful? <comment><USER2> Another great cheat: the AIGA pictogram symbols, which you can download for free with the Google search [aiga pictogram EPS].

<comment><AUTHOR> oooh, nice I like that tip.</comment></comment>


Sergey Brin: Native Apps And Web Apps Will Converge Soon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/chrome-os-versus-android/

<comment><USER2> I understand the Google's vision of OS-agnostic computer experience, but anyway, I fail to see how will Sergey solve the inherent problem that the native app programming will usually give the developer more possibilities. I still prefer the model like one being used by Evernote - the client is native, and only data is synced on the cloud.

<comment><USER3> I find using native apps with files in Dropbox works better for me (docs, Freemind mindmaps) than using web-based equivalents.

Of course, things like Google Docs win if you want to eventually share the document, but for personal stuff I'll be sticking to Dropbox.

<comment><USER4> Maybe thats why Google develops native client: <http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/>

Still looks pretty alpha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've just had a flashback to the original JavaOne conference.

<comment><USER3> It took me quite a long time to remember that I spent that conference doing booth duty. I seem to remember some rather large gentlemen getting rather upset with us when we tried to carry our own boxes from our rental car to our stand....

<comment><USER6> Never get between a Teamster and his drayage pay. It's fun paying $1000 to move stuff 200 feet isn't it?

<comment><USER3> They really were quite menacing in a professional kind of way - even more so than corporate lawyers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just _don't_ get why everyone is sold on web apps. They are an absolute pain to develop compared to writing native apps.

I know people talk about deployment and so on, but really, that is easily solved with auto-updating clients.

I for one wish web apps would go away and we could go back to native clients.

(For LOB anyway which is what I spend a lot of my time on)

<comment><USER8> I agree - I'm not sold on web apps in general, but they do work very well for certain things (email is the classic example).

Despite the hype, I'm not sure how many people are really sold on them. In practice I use native apps 99% of the time. When I'm number crunching Excel, Matlab, Python are all native. When I'm programming (even developing webapps!) Emacs, Mercurial, etc are all native apps.

Web apps still have a long, long way to go before I will be ready to do my day to day work in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I dont think they will converge that fast. I definitely don't see myself writing html and javascript code for a computer program. The web languages unfortunately are ad-hoc pieces of different technologies shuffled together. Ad-hoc is generally good, but its done in a disorganized way which is what I don't like about it. Why bring the same chaos to native?

<comment><USER10> "Ad-hoc is generally good, but its done in a disorganized way which is what I don't like about it."

I think each piece does it's job well, and better than if someone tried to somehow consolidate multiple web languages into one.

HTTP has proven itself robust and versatile, especially with the wide spread adoption of REST development strategies. It also allows you free choice of language to implement on the server. Before the popularity of web development took off, language choice was largely circumscribed by the environment to which you wanted to deploy (the current controversy over iPhone OS hearkens back to those days).

That's true of JavaScript in the browser today, but Javascript has proven flexible enough to allow for many different ways of programming in the browser (Cappuccino, jQuery, etc.). And simply by the size of its installed base, it is inspiring innovations in dynamic language performance that remind me of what happened with Java and byte-code virtual machines.

HTML and CSS split the job of content form and appearance nicely, and the speed of HTML5 adoption by competing browsers has been impressive, in my opinion. I think that the CSS approach of separating styling from the content is superior in many ways to traditional desktop development.

<comment><USER11> I think the situation with web languages and technologies is vaguely like the situation with C++ in one particular way: It isn't that they're really good, it's more that they've been around so long, evolving at glacial pace, and there is such a huge community compelled to use them, that we've collectively figured out how to make them passably effective.

If I were designing a web application platform on purpose, major design criteria might be: 1) data and apps hosted remotely, 2) discoverable apps/services, 3) hypertext-style linking of resources, 4) ability to fully exploit client CPU and GPU power for UI, and for compute where appropriate, 5) consistency with common desktop UI concepts (like drag/drop), 6) flexibility in languages and developer tools, allowing for compiled, statically checked languages for those who like them. With the current web, I think we have 1-3, but not 4-6. (I think I would trade the enforced niceties of HTML/CSS for more flexibility in the UI.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I want to see is a platform where native software is accessed in terms of resources, aliased locally and cached. Why should software need to be downloaded and installed? Something like apt or ports but on-the-fly and more fine-grained, for things like controls and graphics.

<comment><USER3> The only thing that I've seen that tried to split executing application code between the display server (i.e. the bit you have locally) and the application process was NeWS:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS>

I had great fun programming with this (especially with the Hypercard-like HyperNeWS environment).

Once you the hang of interactive programming in PostScript it was a lot of fun.

Of course, you could argue that web browsers are doing this with Javascript - but that's at a different level of abstraction.

<comment><USER13> isn't this what X does?

<comment><USER3> Not really (at least not unless X has changed a lot since the last time I had much low level dealings with it) - NeWS allowed the client application to sent chunks of code to the display server, not just commands to display things. And not just chunks of any old code, but a full PostScript environment with all that it implies.

There was also a shell (psh) that allowed you to log in directly to a display server and interact with display objects. I remember logging into a colleagues NeWS server process (we had security turned off for some reason) and rotating one of his windows by 20 degrees just by running a single PostScript command.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Please excuse my ignorance but can someone explain to me what message is being given to developers? Is it to develop in Java (for Android) or to develop in HTML/css/Javascript combo?

<comment><USER10> Google is not giving a message, they are listening for the message that the developers are sending to them. That is the reason they gave for having separate but overlapping development stacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Um, Air, Silverlight, Java? A prediction of equal insight, "The sun will rise tomorrow."

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's use the app:// protocol to deploy native C++ apps over the web with full access (in a non linkable way, so grannies don't get their computers pwned). Just drag and drop app://myfunnycat to your toolbar and run it from there.

Just a thought

PS. hmm, let's drop the double slash and the TLD, just the app name will suffice, and make the DNS understand it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting. Isn't this kind of exactly what Paul Graham's been talking about for years?

</comment><comment><USER18> Please don't joke, in some way they will converge, but my quad core is not a dumb terminal executing javascript.

<comment><USER19> This discussion is more about how the code that runs on your machine gets to be there, and when it runs, and less about where it runs (client vs server).

The way things are, this requires way too much admin on the part of people who would rather not have to think about it.</comment></comment>