Researcher says careers should be longer but have more breaks along the way - <AUTHOR> https://work.qz.com/1314988/stanford-psychologist-laura-carstensen-says-careers-should-be-mapped-for-longer-lifespans/ <comment><USER2> Since Dr. Carstensen's opinion seems to be landing on the wrong side of the HN consensus, let me play the devil's advocate.

> "We need a new model," Carstensen says of the current norms around career > pacing. The current one "doesn't work, because it fails to recognize all the > other demands on our time. People are working full-time at the same time > they're raising children. You never get a break. You never get to step out. > You never get to refresh. . . .We go at this unsustainable pace, and then > pull the plug."

I believe this explanation is intended to _sell_ the idea, but I don't believe this should be the motivation for driving towards a different model. Rather, I'd suggest the motivation to be to enable "productive unemployment" as automation continues to spread. Hear me out.

If there's a consistent and unwavering societal expectation to enter the workplace full time between the ages of 19-22, there'll also be a persistent risk of political upheaval when employment numbers stagnate or falter and when people feel as if they're not achieving what's expected of them (or generally when they're unable to eat), a scenario which will continue to play out and perhaps even become endemic as automation and various branches of AI capture more and more unskilled and skilled labor categories, respectively. Shifting labor expectations allows for a more potentially graceful transition over the course of a few generations to a model where people can choose which direction to take their lives, either studying something in depth before diving into a niche that still needs human talent or focusing on exploring their own personal passions as the world around them continues to operate mostly automatically.

It's a very Gene Rodenberry-esque position to take, and it's perhaps _ludicrously_ optimistic, but a model like what Dr. Carstensen is pitching might make sense in facilitating a gradual transition to a more automated world.

This is the very basic kernel of an idea, and I expect what I've just voiced is crude enough to be utterly dismantled on deeper analysis, but I voice it to get minds thinking moreso than to say "Laura's right and you guys are all wrong"\-- nah. It's just a passing thought.

</comment><comment> default-kramer I'm currently working 26 weeks a year (one on, one off) and it is awesome. I realize that I'm very lucky to be able to do this - I have low expenses, almost no debt, and programming pays well enough for me to live comfortably on about half my previous salary.

I used to be planning for early retirement, but this trade-off seems safer. After all, I could spontaneously die the day after I retire and then what was all that work for?

<comment><USER3> This is really cool, haven't thought about it before. Do you work for the same company or do you find a new job every year?

<comment><USER4> They're taking about having a 9-day weekend, not a 6-month vacation.

<comment><USER3> I see. I read it as 1 year on, 1 year off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked really hard for 10 years after grad school, then retired for 4 years to have a kid. Changed careers and worked hard or another 8 years, and then retired for 3 years when we had to deal with an extended family illness. I'm currently on the 4th year of my 3rd career. Working hard and taking long breaks has really given me the opportunity to learn and grow, and stay young (most of my team won't believe I'm twice their age).

<comment><USER6> Curious, how do you prep for comebacks after 3years break? Do you switch fields with each career? Do you try to keep your toolset sharp on almost daily basis since day one of your long break? Thanks

<comment><USER5> I owe it to intellectual curiosity as a lifelong learner, by accumulating skills and building upon them, and having time to think about problems. With the light speed innovation of business, finance and tech these days, the breaks actually gave me time to catch up. It was much harder to do this working heads down. I was an early user of Coursera and edX as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"There is no real reason why we need to work this way. The hardest thing is, how does [change] start?" Carstensen said. But "once it starts, there's very little question that it's going to roll on."

I will continue to work intensely for my first 10 years of career and retire. Additionally, I'm raising my children to do the same.

The rest of the slaves can feel free to "take time off and work until they're 80".

I can't believe how far our of touch this women is from the nature of dominance hierarchies and productivity.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a lot riding on the word "shouldn't".

She sounds like she is saying we should structure society in such a manner that this is possible.

She's not saying individually you could try this at the present time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let me guess he's tenure, and got it at age 40....

</comment><comment><USER10> Life should not be about work and productivity. Retirement at 80? This researcher has totally lost touch with the reality of society outside of Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER11> She's advocating almost the exact opposite of the stereotypical Silicon Valley model.

This is the fourth paragraph of the article:

> _" Rather than a four-decade professional sprint that ends abruptly at 65, > Carstensen argues, we should be planning for marathon careers that last > longer but have more breaks along the way for learning, family needs, and > obligations outside the workplace."_</comment></comment>


How Wufoo Turned A Profit In 9 Months By Selling Slick, Simple Forms - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/wufoo-kevin-hale/ <comment><USER2> I heart Andrew Warner. So would always recommend his interviews.

Outside of that...you have to hand it to Wufoo, simple is what wins these days. Take Go Daddy for example...if you were to look at their dashboard for more than 2 minutes you would have a spinning headache..constantly trying to upsell and show you more information than you can handle.

Simple wins (and is worth paying for).</comment>


Ask HN: Its summer 2016, you need to build HUGE JavaScript app, what do you do? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone, before we start, lets try not to turn this into framework wars!!
We are now seeing quite renaissance of web frameworks, transpilers, and even standards getting approved faster than ever, there is almost no documentation on how to build large web apps, and some of the texts that are out there are quite outdated.
Also, some of the texts that do exist, they focus on solving framework specific problems, e.g. faster Angular 2 SPA's.
Yet, there are almost no material on how to write, deploy and maintain REALLY big Js app, consisting of many SPA's, reusable elements, theming, even different instances for different customers.
It would be great if someone who IS working on such website, and he IS using latest technology to share his experience with us.
- How do you develop, and organize your JS code?
- How do you manage partial deploys (not building/minifying/uglifying whole code base just to deploy single fix)? - How do you manage reusable components?
- How do you handle complex components, where something is SPA on one page, and just a component of a bigger system on next.
- How do you do deploy/testing/staging in general.
I have this feeling that this topic is not covered at all, and the demand its getting higher by the day, so lets start discussing it here. <comment><USER2> EmberJS would be a good fit for you.

IMHO, usually it isn't the framework in isolation, but the surrounding ecosystem of plugins and dev tools that give one a hard time.

Ember solves most of them off the bat - [http://emberjs.com/blog/2015/06/16/ember-project- at-2-0.html](http://emberjs.com/blog/2015/06/16/ember-project-at-2-0.html)

Please read through their release cycles too, especially the LTS ones - [http://emberjs.com/blog/2016/02/25/announcing-embers- first-l...](http://emberjs.com/blog/2016/02/25/announcing-embers-first- lts.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends. June, July or August?

<comment><USER4> If it's August and you're in Greece, you just hire someone in the other part of the hemisphere to do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is a REALLY big js App in terms of sloc in your mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I guess 100k+

but more than sheer lines of code, I'm talking complexity i described above.

<comment><USER6> I'd use separate libraries rather than monolithic frameworks. By the time you finished there'd be good chance the framework will be abandoned or have a huge backwards-incompatible update or two. With separate libraries you can swap those bits out, or otherwise it's manageable for you to take ownership of them by yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of the problems are organizational and often due to scope changing over time, but in my experience aren't problems as much as opportunities for learning and optimization and leveraging technology.

This is not unique to single page apps or JavaScript based apps but apps in general.

With tools like Jenkins (and the ability to have multiple staging and testing servers) it is pretty straightforward to set up a system that continuously runs tests on the master etc branches. Similary, there are tools out there that will make compilation of us and assets fast, especially if only part of the code is changing. This depends on your technology stack specifically but in most architectures this is doable.

As a guideline, you want to optimize / parallelize your testing so a full set of tests runs in some amount of time -- we aim for under 2 minutes. Front end tests can't run this fast unless you massively parallelize things but we use <15m as a guideline.

There should be a single button deploy that works in 99.9% of all cases and the deploy should only run after all tests pass. Due to setups that only allow deployment of tags that passed all tests and passive in the background always running tests setup it should be reasonable to have a deploy fully run in <5 minutes, including all compilation or assets! non-front end tests, code style tests, etc.

Why are you worried about deploying so often? Realistically you want a simple deploy process but if you are deploying so many times per day without a 300+ eng team working in the code base there is probably a bigger issue in play that has little to do with deploy speed or efficiency. Your teams can only design, produce,test, refine, optimize etc. features at some speed which is certainly slower than your deploy speed.

Similarly, think about the human process of reviewing code, prioritization, communication of blockers, communication to the rest of the organization, and all the people involved and final directly responsible stake holders. Is that running well? If you are managing a large app, and have multiple single page apps and components etc you are either running an enterprise or business facing eng team or are at a later stage consumer company. In either case, think about the successful organizational structures and processes for other parts of the business (if they are working well) and apply some of those principles in improving the eng. process.

If your marketing team is truly killing it, ask them how they organize and keep iterating and improving.

The things that cause issues in engineering organizations are typically a step higher than the problems you brought up. If your deploy process involves one specific person doing some specific arcane thing, if your team is not aware how deploys work or complain about speed of tests ( they always will but if non-front end tests take actually a long time ) your problem in not in technology but rather lack of oversight and ownership over these functions of the engineering org. You don't have clear ownership or responsibility assigned properly or your team members don't have the avenues to suggest, take ownership of and carry out improvements. That would be the number one problem to look at, in my mind.

* I used you to mean the reader in general</comment>


How Stripe beat Braintree at their own game - <AUTHOR> http://movingfulcrum.com/stripe-vs-braintree-why-braintree-lost/ <comment><USER2> I feel like this article was a bit weak. I agree that IMO Stripe is better but the reasons given where the bare minimum.

\- Easy Signup

\- Easy to use and Understand API

\- Checkout widget written in JS for a drop in solution to payments

\- Reasonable fees

\- A stripe library for pretty much any language

\- Supports Apple Pay and Bit Coin (pretty early on too)

The list goes on and I'm sure some of my points cross over to others but Stripe pretty much has it all.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from the same guy who brought you "Why FogBugz Lost to Jira" BTW [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313489)</comment>


Is Palantr discriminating against Asians? - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/26/technology/palantir-labor-department-lawsuit/index.html <comment><USER2> Why has no one gone after the Ivy League schools? It is an open secret that they discriminate against Asian applicants.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: The plural of anecdote is anecdotes.

Context #1: I am Asian.

It was during intern recruiting season, at a campus recruiting fair, when I talked to Palantir. I felt the 'interview' with the campus rep went well. In the ensuing weeks, I receive 'real' follow-up interviews from every other company present at the career fair that I made an active effort of applying for. By that, I mean research the company's financials, history, products and culture, then writing catered personal statements and resumes. Every company except Palantir. I, being young and conspiratory, just assumed Palantir, being an enigmatic blackbox analytics engine, ran my resume through a government sponsored quantum computers and decided I wasn't a fit. And that was okay.

Context #2: The CS department I attended is well-regarded. (If selectivity is any indicator, whether causally or correlational, the average underclassmen GPA to get admitted into the major is around a 3.8. US News ranks the department in the 'top 10' CS programs, albeit that's also a proxy since these rankings are based on graduate programs). Not to rest on these laurels, but my resume also include things beyond school: student organizations, volunteering, personal projects, etc.

After college, I left my carefree internship days behind for a 'real job' at FinTech company doing BIG DATA and Data Science, wooooo. Again, I applied to Palantir.

Context #3: I've received job offers from big four tech companies, startups, as well as financial institutions in Chicago / NY / Hong Kong / Singapore / London. This is not intended to brag or show that I am exceptional. To the contrary, this reflects that I am the very antithesis of an aberration, insofar that I fit the job qualifications that employers seek.

At least I got an automated response from Palantir this time. Yay, I exist.

 _We regret to inform you that we do not have a position which currently matches your background and experience at this time_

Let's not presuppose Palantir uses a machine to select candidates. Assume Palantir has some statistical / classification / decision model in the abstract, which could be implemented in the form of human recruiters, company culture / managerial, or an actual machine.

What would Palantir's preference for the false-positive versus false-negative rate of this model be? I currently work at Google which is notorious for its high false negative rate (turning many suitable candidates away). Is Palantir's false negative rate so high such that I can land a job at Google and many other places, and not even get a phone screen at Palantir? Palantir makes software for counter-terrorism, surely they are cognizant of the implication of these Type I, Type II errors. Landing a job at a company X, and a company Y, are not statically independent events. So this outcome is just odd to me. Maybe I'm on a terrorist watch list?

Context #4: In my Software Engineering capstone during college, I was (assigned) to a group of 7 students, including myself. We were supposed to work on a quarter-long project. Everyone got along. Everyone contributed. Everyone was willing to compromise. Except for one person. This person contributed zero lines of code. They bossed everyone around. Where the rest of the team were vectors moving in relatively the same direction, this person was a drag force. This designated, errr, assigned "leader" constantly derailed the team's direction. Halfway through the quarter, this person dropped the course and didn't inform anyone on our team. I had to fill in for this person's hand- wavy role (mostly bureaucratic requirements the course instructor set forth to make sure people were working: a student managing another student and writing reports about it....). I've worked with a hundred people over the years, but this was the first and only time I've met someone who added negative value. I was STUCK in a handful of courses with this person, aswell. They would constantly ask selfish questions during lecture just to show off how smart they are. They cheated on the exams, too. This person went to work at Palantir right after college.

What features / variables / factors does Palantir select for in Software Engineers? CS Degree? A good school program? Relevant work experience? Last name? Treating me as a data point, there must be some other factor that far negatively outweighs the positive points on my resumes. Whatever this scarlet letter was, my irresponsible selfish classmate did not possess this. This classmate was not Asian (this isn't too important of a detail to me , but I anticipate someone to ask a follow-up question on this). I'm not even that upset about the accusations of racial discrimination. I'm more personally irked by the fact that companies have this veil of stupidity in their hiring process where many qualified people do not make it through for whatever reason while dishonest, selfish, incompetent, irresponsible, non-team players slip through the HUGE cracks.</comment>


How to change keyboard color on galaxy S7 or S7 edge - <AUTHOR> https://nxttechy.com/how-to-change-keyboard-color-on-galaxy-s7/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's how to change the keyboard color on Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge. The reason you might want to do this might be because you're having issues with your keyboard or the changes your phone got from its recent update. No need to worry because the steps I'm going to provide are as simple as ABC.</comment>


Apple Aperture: Senior QA (2004-2005) - <AUTHOR> https://techreflect.net/2019/12/10/aperture-senior-qa-2004-2005/ <comment><USER2> The strangest thing for me reading this is that, well, I loved Aperture. I used it loyally from v1 until long after it was EOL'd. I spent thousands of hours in it, and it really fit my ideal workflow.

There was a lot of functionality/crap in there that I did not use, a lot of functionality was hidden away behind context menus and a lot of promised features around integration with plugins and 3rd party never really materialized, but in terms of core function it was a total workhorse.

Apple ultimately went to great lengths to purge it from existence, even for those of us with paid licenses who'd been told (or at least safely presumed) that we'd be able to install it on new machines via the app store, even if it wasn't available for purchase. In reality, they removed the binary from the cache. At one point, I went through a ridiculously elaborate process of obtaining a certain kind of physical license from eBay and spent hours emailing random Apple employees - likely some of the folks mentioned in this story - getting them to make exceptions and pull favours to make it possible for me to install it one last time before Catalina pulled the rug out for good.

Fuckin' Apple.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I never found a system that fit the way I wanted to work as well as Aperture did, so I quit bothering to drag around my DSLR. Then I quit bothering to offload pics from my phone. Then I quit bothering to take them in the first place.

Which is all a shame because I loved photography for a couple decades, and now I have small kids and I'm sure I'll regret it, but it's just such a pain in the ass to do these days if I don't want my entire life tethered to services and data in the fuckin cloud.

<comment><USER4> I was a huge Aperture fan myself, and have since moved to DxO. They put out a new version every year that has an upgrade fee, but there's no issue staying put for as long as you like. And it's 100% filesystem-based, so it's much easier to work into whatever backup workflow you like; cloud or otherwise.

I actually like it so much, that I even use it since I switched to Linux recently. I have a Windows VM with one app installed that I boot up every month or so to process photos.

<comment><USER2> Just learning about DxO for the first time. I purchased another app called Luminar that I tried once and wasn't totally blown away by. What I'm looking for is a sane workflow and lightning quick navigation, hopefully with some basic edits and tight photoshop integration.

One of my favourite things about Aperture+PS was being able to spawn an edit process that, when you save the file in PS, created a duplicate version with the changes back in Aperture. The more I think about it, this was the secret sauce. Is this replicated in DxO?

<comment><USER4> Oh, I have no idea about that, sorry. Don't use Photoshop myself. I just need to do some cropping, lighting/color/contrast adjustments and noise reduction, then I move on to the next family photo. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was always going to wrong from the minute I read "we had a collection of demos ... and a hard deadline to launch a year later at a Photo exhibition".

That isn't a real deadline, it's a management ambition. And a badly set ambition, based on some demos and the belief they could scream good code into existence.

Apple is getting better at this - see how it now pulls announced features from releases if they aren't ready - but it's still a terrible approach.

To make parents work weekends without their children for an entire 6-month period just to try and hit a management fantasy is a symptom of a toxic culture.

(And is also counter-productive. The slow and buggy v1 that resulted wasn't good enough to capture the market — but it _was_ enough to finally wake up Adobe, who dramatically accelerated efforts on Lightroom, which launched first on Mac and went on to dominate the market)

<comment><USER6> Even Lightroom arguably hasn't achieved the technical abilities of Aperture...it's slow.

Plus now there's a fork of Lightroom "classic" and a weird cloud-only version, and also Adobe's subscription pricing. There are a few other apps that have added digital asset management, but overall, there's really nothing that has taken its place.

<comment><USER7> Affinity might have something in the works, no official news that I can find but it's been rumored for years and seems like an obvious product for them.

Edit: most recent I can find is that a year ago they weren't working on it [https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/78025-when...](https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/78025-when- are-damcataloging-and-tethering-features-coming-to-affinity-photo)

<comment><USER8> That is disappointing, because Serif makes amazing products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a former manager I always read these management failures and wonder how on earth these people ended up in their positions. To be fair, I hated being a manager but I enjoyed having a happy, confident and competent team. So maybe the job just attracts people who love drama.

<comment><USER10> As a former manager (who sounds like a good one), are you able to shine any light on why management cultures appear so reluctant to eject malignant managers?

Any bad employee will damage the business and those around them. But where a typical bottom-rung grunt has a very small scope of influence and is relatively easy to fire, even a mid-level manager has more than enough power to ruin entire departments; and once they're c-suite the game is all but done.

<comment><USER11> _why management cultures appear so reluctant to eject malignant managers?_

A typical engineer will gladly stab another in the back for something so trivial as what nearly-identical-anyway programming language or framework or IDE to use. Meanwhile managers, like lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers and every other profession, prioritise solidarity within the profession. We can debate whether that's good or bad but there's no doubt why they prosper while engineers are the first to be outsourced or exploited.

<comment><USER12> > Meanwhile managers, like lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers and every > other profession, prioritise solidarity within the profession.

Have you worked for any length of time in those fields? Don't know if you ever worked as a lawyer but "solidarity" isn't a core value.

<comment><USER11> _Don't know if you ever worked as a lawyer but "solidarity" isn't a core value._

Solidarity to the profession. They may squabble amongst themselves but they'll never compromise the general prestige of lawyering. Nor tell the client that what they do is easy and anyone can learn it, even if that's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wasn't old enough to be paying attention when Aperture first released, but because I've only ever heard great things about the program, I kept expecting this story to end with some miraculous turnaround for the engineering team.

That didn't happen. And while the author doesn't say that Aperture 1.0 was bad, he doesn't appear to have thought too highly of it either. Separately, it's hard to imagine such a rushed and mismanaged process producing a stellar end-product (although, I'm sure stranger things have happened).

What was Aperture like at release? Were later versions a substantial improvement?

<comment><USER14> We were proud of it given the circumstances. I'll edit the quote below to make that more clear.

"So, we shipped the product and introduced it at the show as planned. Despite a long list of warts and terrible performance, I thought it turned out well given the schedule and the circumstances. I continued to use it as my primary photo app, even though I'm not a hard-core professional. Others on the team were too bitter, such that they refused to use the final product."

\- cricket

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this kind of working environment normal at Apple? This isn't the first story I've heard about mandatory long hours and screaming in the office. Can anyone else chime in?

<comment><USER16> Reading that story made me feel sick. As a young Engineer my dream was to work at Apple, but I'm happy I never did.

I don't understand why people tolerate that kind of treatment. Never in a million years would I work nights or weekends or allow anyone to scream in my face. That's just not life.

<comment><USER17> Flash-in-the-pan stories like this are fascinating to me. I've never seen this kind of drama at work. No nights, no weekends, no screaming, no passive- aggressive snubs like the gift-bag iPods. I did a double take on the dates when I first saw this on Daring Fireball--who has this much to write about in a year or two?

On the other hand, I've never built a product from scratch so quickly. Google and Facebook didn't exist when I started my current job. Now they're gazillion-dollar companies. I've had projects on my wish list longer than Aperture was a product.

<comment><USER18> Aside from a hospital or a life-or-death situation, I can't think of any other time where screaming in a workplace would ever be remotely acceptable. Ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These are the kinds of posts I live for on HN. Stellar inside look.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Fast forward ten years and the Apple Watch team offered me a job working on > SwiftUI in 2015. (The project started on the Watch team).

That's an interesting nugget I've not heard before about history of SwiftUI!

</comment><comment><USER21> Such a shame that Apple let go of this program... all in the name of their new cloud services. Apple had the big chance to show the world what a joke Google Photos is in comparison... now it's more the other way round in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Many people, including myself, developed long-term health problems. One > person, as I mentioned, had a nervous breakdown, others just took forever to > get any spark back in their careers. I would look these people in the eyes, > and they had this look like someone close to them died.

The same thing happened to me last year, and basically this is the reason I have been shadow-banned from HN. I stayed for 2.5 months only, but it was still too much, because I thought I got a decent salary. It cost me twice as much since then because I wasn't able to work since 4 months and I have no clear idea how I will crawl out this huge hole despite taking antidepressant, tranquillizer and going to psychotherapy every week.

DON'T PUT A PRICE TAG ON YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, and get out of a terrible job until it's too late! It's not worth it, believe me!

<comment><USER23> Hang in there mate, it will get better. Humans are resilient. FWIW I see your posts fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I started reading it, I came across this:

> "Since this was a professional product, they knew the quality had to be > high."

I sighed heavily because instead we got Photos.app. Which is just bad and sad.

But then I continued to read about all the management screwups and development hell. And I now I know _exactly_ why Photos.app is such a disaster.

<comment><USER12> Photos is amazing. Not sure when you've last used it.

<comment><USER25> I use it at least once a week and there are a lot of places where it could be improved when it comes to stability or making you feel like it's a safe place to store your pictures.

I always run into this issue and I'm not alone, some people put their libraries in disk images just so they can properly eject their external disks: [https://annoying.technology/posts/ebd70c6c5715bcd8/](https://annoying.technology/posts/ebd70c6c5715bcd8/)</comment></comment></comment>


PCem – An emulator for various old PCs - <AUTHOR> http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ <comment><USER2> Really hope PCem gets network support at some point. There was a branch implementing ne2k support but it's old and didn't apply to master cleanly last I checked. Setting up an OS on it was a bit of a pain in the ass, the only way to transfer files was to create ISOs with them and mount them in the emulator.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whats the point of emulating all of these variants? Aren't they all similar enough that you can run the software with just one particular machine emulated and it would work almost identically? I thought that was the whole point of the PC.

<comment><USER4> Your statement mostly applies to the AT/286 era and beyond. Very early PCs were not clones but rather MS DOS compatible which is different (BIOS was not compatible). Even when true clones appeared with compatible BIOS system designers like Tandy would try to innovate with things like "Tandy Graphics and Sound" which are sort of PC Jr graphics but not quite, etc. Having the ability to emulate the older machines is a boon to gamers.

However, I have no idea why anyone would want to emulate Cyrix chips or later PCs other than out of curiosity. A lot on this list does seem superfluous.

<comment><USER5> >However, I have no idea why anyone would want to emulate Cyrix chips or later PCs other than out of curiosity. A lot on this list does seem superfluous.

Gaming, mostly. A lot of computer games from back then simply will not run on modern machines. Even after things fell into place with DirectX/OpenGL, Windows is such a complex system that keeping all those millions of plates spinning at once is simply impossible

There's games today that I can't run from the last 15 years alone, like Westwood Studios Command & Conquer series. The company is defunct, and the buyer (EA) lost the source code over a decade ago, if you believe the rumors. There's simply no other way to RUN the game past Windows 7 (EA no longer bothers patching it to work on newer systems with their re-releases)

The only alternative is really to simply buy the older hardware, which is becoming increasingly scarce and difficult to maintain (why would we keep these 30 year old Video card drivers says someone at AMD, before rm -rf'ing them off the FTP for instance?)

<comment><USER6> I have had luck with non-game 16-bit programs in Wine, you can look programs up in the Wine database to see if they work: [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=910)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The sources for the emulated devices are very interesting to read. E.g. [https://bitbucket.org/pcem_emulator/pcem/src/c3548dff8c8b235...](https://bitbucket.org/pcem_emulator/pcem/src/c3548dff8c8b235bde952201154a8eb340613272/src/vid_s3.c?at=default&fileviewer=file- view-default)

I imagine the emulations are based on some public docs or existing driver implementations, and probably not completely accurate--but accurate enough to work with some (most?) drivers. Emulating a lot of old hardware at that level is impressive.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wonder if this will replace DOSBox which is derelict.

<comment><USER9> I don't think DOSBox is "derelict".

[http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt](http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt)

<comment><USER10> It might not be, but it's easy to understand why a casual observer would think so. The latest news on the dosbox website is from 2013, and the latest version (0.74) was released in 2010 according to the date on the sourceforge download page.

I wonder why they have not made another official release?

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, GOG (Good Old Games) are quite happy to ship 0.74 (including wasting 1.5 megabytes of space in most games by shipping the source) with their commercial games - even the latest one 11 days ago (yes, I bought it just to check!)

[https://www.gog.com/forum/general/whats_the_latest_dosbox_ba...](https://www.gog.com/forum/general/whats_the_latest_dosbox_based_game_released_on_gog)

<comment><USER11> the "wasted" 1.5 MB probably are the simplest way for them to be sure to be GPL compliant.

<comment><USER9> True, but wouldn't they be compliant pointing to [http://gog.com/dosbox](http://gog.com/dosbox) as well?

<comment><USER11> I think that would work just as well and would have been my first idea too, but IMHO it's kind of an elegant solution to do it this way. The recipient can very easily find the exact version used and they don't have to maintain that information somewhere else. Especially if they add specific patches -> I know that they often modify the game binaries, but maybe they have custom DOSbox changes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> what is this? qemu?

site nor repo has any description or faq

<comment><USER9> Nope, appears to be a completely different emulator. Looks to have been initially Windows only, although there's a version for Linux now.

<comment><USER13> There's a Linux version but it is pretty much unmaintained. It receives the occasional update but it's slower than the Windows version, has less features and the UI is terrible.

<comment><USER12> alrigth then. let's fire up virtual box with a Windows image to check this out :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if it includes the BASIC ROM chip.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't. You have to provide the ROM files yourself.</comment></comment>


Introducing GIF search on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2016/introducing-gif-search-on-twitter <comment><USER2> > "GIPHY delivers real-time GIFs as they happen, helping to power Twitter's > live commentary and conversation," says Alex Chung, founder and CEO of > GIPHY.

Someone built a 30+ person company around animated GIFs. And they say there isn't a bubble...

<comment><USER3> They're rehosting loads of copyrighted content, too.

<comment><USER4> That was pretty much how YouTube started. Content ID wasn't part of their MVP.

<comment><USER5> Content ID was added _because_ of the legal issues YouTube faced.

<comment><USER6> why are there no legal issues with giphy.com?

<comment><USER7> Because they're not making enough money for anyone to care yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny that Twitter is doing a GIF search because Twitter encodes GIFs as MP4s for bandwidth/performance reasons: [http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt- tell...](http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt-telling-you- about-gifs)

I am assuming from this announcement that Giphy's Series C pitch deck was just one slide saying "we have a partnership with Twitter; give us money."

<comment><USER8> When will they add support for long GIFs with sound? /s

There's a weird trend of taking full HD YouTube videos, converting them to soundless, bad quality GIFs and then upload them to twitter or imgur, where they're then encoded back to video. Quite often this goes without source to the original. I assume that people doing this just want to show the important content on the respective platform rather than sending a link (although twitter and reddit embed YouTube videos). Or is there another reason?

<comment><USER9> Viewing a gif or mp4 is much more lightweight on mobile than a youtube video.

<comment><USER10> YouTube regularly transcodes all uploaded content into several different varieties of MP4 container. If you're on iOS, then all videos you watch on YouTube are MP4s.

<comment><USER9> I don't mean lightweight in a technical sense, I mean lightweight in terms of user experience. To view a gif (or gif converted to mp4, webm, whatever) I know it's silent (don't have to worry about muting my phone), I don't have to load the youtube app or the bloated youtube site. All I do at the most is tap to play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What the hell is Twitter turning into? A broadcast Messenger chat? It seems like to me that Twitter is increasingly promoting the mindlessness often found on sites like Reddit; In my opinion the attempt to increase the number of GIFs in an attempt to resume growth to millenials is misguided, and will lower the quality of Tweets overall (not that it was high to begin with), and will likely further alienate parts of its existing userbase, as we saw yesterday.[1]

[1] [http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/](http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/peedinthepool/)

</comment><comment><USER12> How is what GIPHY is doing not just plain copyright infringement? I get the "search Engine" spiel, though questionable, on their site. But there is no attribution on Twitter/Slack etc.

<comment><USER13> Don't gifs come under fair usage mostly? Can't claim a 5 second clip of a show/movie is copyright infringement

<comment><USER14> IANAL but it would probably depend on the GIF itself. Using a particular file format doesn't waive your rights as far as I know.

<comment><USER15> Well that's obvious and also doesn't answer the question about the "mostly" case.

Fun to note is the gifs of entire movies in kilopixel resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it's something they already had for free and are now rebranding/repurposing, fine. But, there are many other features I'd rather have, like better lists, or a more open API for 3rd party apps to build off of.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes I worry that our descendants many centuries from now will refer to this period of history as, "The Moronic Age."

<comment><USER18> [http://www.xkcd.com/1601/](http://www.xkcd.com/1601/)

<comment><USER19> Playing the curmudgeonly "kids these days" character is a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

<comment><USER20> Its also a beautiful thought terminating cliche that, whether designed to or not, shuts down introspection into a current society/time.

I get it, Socrates complained about the youth of today, that doesn't mean that there aren't societies that really need someone to point out the failings of the current zeitgeist, or that we aren't creating a culture based around consumerist banalities.

Societies before us didn't have mass-market advertising, industrialisation, instant communication devices, etc. Pointing out the inanity of our tech scene and commercial activities, is i think, not only accurate in its assessment, but I think a much needed cultural critique...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Twitter is becoming worse in every way in order to chase the users of a larger social network that's worse in every way. The timeline isn't just about to become disjointed, it's going to become more inane as well.

<comment><USER22> Twitter is all about who you follow. Follow people with similar interests and it's great. Follow random people and non-suprisingly, the experience is going to suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> God bless Twitter - solving the hard problems

</comment><comment><USER24> It's sad to see such an important tech company reinforce the use of an outdated pseudo-video format like GIF.

<comment><USER25> They actually transform the GIF and serve a loop of the mp4 video.

<comment><USER24> Right, as do most "GIF" websites I know of. But they don't allow users to directly upload MP4/WebM videos, do they? So they still encourage and require the use of GIF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hope I'm not the only one who looked on their task bar to see the date wasn't close to 1 April!

But aside from the seriousness of this feature, I think there's something crucial here - and it's where emojiis were pointing at - its easier to tell a story with a picture, and pictures can cross the language barrier. I expect there to be more and more reaction images / gifs across Twitter, Facebook, even on hacker news on day. I bet that in 2 years either HN will have animated gifs, or it will be less busy and people will be somewhere else where there are some.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interestingly, Kik did this last year as alternative solution to custom stickers and emojis other messaging apps have. Looks like this trend is catching on with other services.

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/chat-app-kiks-newest- featur...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/chat-app-kiks-newest-feature- makes-sending-gifs-as-easy-as-emoji/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyone in here acting like Facebook didn't get the exact same backlash for all the changes they made in the last 5-6 years. You'll recall there was never such thing as a newsfeed back in the day... Twitter will be just fine. This is absolutely the right move and you will all forget about this and go back to tweeting as soon as you're done complaining I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there any way to download the actual GIF yet? Last I looked it was impossible, which sucks for small-palette aliased animations.

</comment><comment><USER29> Twitter actually doing something their audience wanted and/or could benefit from? Color me impressed.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand why they'd choose this particular feature? Which group of users is this for?

<comment><USER5> Millennials.

That is not a snarky response.

<comment> atom-morgan I'd add startups as well. At a previous company Slack was basically for sending GIFs all day long.

<comment><USER5> Modern startups are typically run by Millennials, so same difference. :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think Twitter is making the correct move here. It's always been the holy grail of Vine and others to try to create quick consumable content without making others create it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Ironically the 4chan crowd who create most of the world's shareable GIF content are either banned from Twitter because a feminist got outraged or have left of their own volition.

<comment><USER33> Those darn feminists, always getting so offended by innocent comments from the fine, upstanding folk on 4chan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Glad they're focusing on the important issues then.

</comment><comment><USER35> Twitter is definitely going bankrupt in the next 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER36> ahhaha...love itt

</comment><comment><USER37> I think Twitter just won the internet

:badger badger badger badger:

</comment><comment><USER10> GIPHY is dealing with gif files, which are much larger and less efficient bandwidth-wise than silent webm videos, such as those peddled by Gfycat. Why on earth would GIPHY be the way to go instead of a company looking to improve the paradigm?

From a technology perspective, dealing in GIF at this obnoxious volume will be needlessly expensive and difficult to scale.

Perhaps GIPHY has convinced VCs that they are a new medium within the 'storytelling' trend that many brands are latching on to. But I don't see GIPHY being able to scale this product successfully to the point where they can start monetizing, without having to abandon their antiquated file format.

<comment><USER38> GIPHY encodes each GIF as an html5 video as well ([http://giphy.com/gifs/FsCMq6RYX4ySk/html5](http://giphy.com/gifs/FsCMq6RYX4ySk/html5)).</comment></comment>


Interview of Frank Schilling, the World Famous Domain Investor - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/archives/002242.shtml <comment><USER2> What a shame... It's because of people like him most Web 2.0 companies have shitty names: because all imaginable .com names have been stolen by these scumbags.

<comment><USER3> If they get there first how are they stealing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that he doesn't see much of a future in .tv, .mobi etc. Not sure I agree with him there, but then I'm not a multi-million domain speculator.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a good interview.</comment>


Show HN: Domain2IP.net - API to provide the IP address of any host/domain - <AUTHOR> http://domain2ip.net

<comment><AUTHOR> I use it in a google docs macro to keep on eye on what IP addresses my cloud servers currently have.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use Android's capability to connect devices via OTG? - <AUTHOR> My laptop's hard drive died irrecoverably and it may take a while to get a replacement. Meanwhile, I managed to connect some USB peripherals (a 4-port hub and a keyboard + mouse through it) to my Alcatel OT-5065D smartphone via an OTG adapter and find the experience pretty revolutionizing.
Why? Because when combined with Termux (since the smartphone runs Android 5.1) it gives me the ability to install pretty much all working environment I got used to (NodeJS, gcc, git, SSH, Nano, Python, wget etc) and use all screen space wisely without virtual keyboard. In fact, I'm typing this way right now.
If only I had a Miracast dongle... that would convert the smartphone into a full-featured Linux box with a nice screen resolution.
Do you use this Android functionality to convert your own OTG-enabled devices from content consumption to content production? <comment><USER2> I wasn't aware of Termux. That is a _really_ handy app. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of it like a Cygwin for Android. It provides a compatible environment, not the emulation. But it's really enough in 95% of the cases.

Btw, I can post my nanorc just in case anyone wonders how to get more editor space on such a screen on a smartphone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11327207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11327207)</comment></comment></comment>


Instagram gets redesign, new filter and 'Lux' image enhancement - <AUTHOR> http://www.ihelplounge.com/ihelplounge/2012/02/instagram-gets-redesign-new-filter-and-lux-image-enhancement.html

<comment><USER2> The new icons are ugly. The new filter is worthless. And because they've shoved it between two existing filters, they've buggered muscle memory for my fast path.

Every update they do, they pick something to fudge downwards into slop. If they'd release Instagram 1.0 and promise never to bugger it, I'd pay for it again.</comment>


NAFTA: U.S. proposal for cross-border data storage at odds with B.C., N.S. law - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-data-storage-privacy-1.4220272 <comment><USER2> I've run into similar restrictions twice with clients.

For one, we had to put together a homebrewed Twilio-like service that connected to Canadian SIP trunks. That was a fun project and I learned way more about telephony and VoIP than I'd ever cared to :). Super fun though, there's still something magical about making an HTTP request and having your phone ring, and, for me at least, it's even more magical once you know how all the machinery works to make that happen.

The other was pretty straightforward: immigration lawyer who needed Canadian- hosted email. His concern was Patriot-Act-related. Having read the Canadian privacy legislation and the Patriot Act, he felt that he couldn't simultaneously be compliant with both laws if the server was hosted in the USA. Canadian privacy law requires you to disclose to your customer if their data is accessed, and the Patriot Act requires you to keep your mouth shut.</comment>


Introducing React Refetch - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.heroku.com/blogs/2015-12-16-react-refetch/ <comment><USER2> hmmm, I'm just wondering: can we make this a redux middleware or an "store creator"?</comment>


Checkboxes Are Never Round - <AUTHOR> http://danieldelaney.github.io/checkboxes/ <comment><USER2> That Aeon Magazine example looks like they tried to use radio boxes and couldn't figure out the HTML to do it properly and gave up.

Now, I just made the mistake of looking at Aeon's HTML source and its fine, but definitely some strange bugs (label for not matching input id is one obvious thing where someone failed some basic HTML SAN checks).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is part of a larger problem where management doesn't listen to the coders/designers about UX issues.

Aesthetics often win out over UX or keeping the code base maintainable because management doesn't have to deal with the code and rarely use the website themselves to see how terrible the UX is.

</comment><comment> aman-pro It actually depends on how well you do it. ionic framework uses round checkboxes and does it really well. [http://ionicframework.com/docs/components/#checkbox](http://ionicframework.com/docs/components/#checkbox)</comment>


Alan Kay: Is Computer Science an Oxymoron? - <AUTHOR> http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_is_com.shtml

<comment><USER4> Is anyone interested in Alan's point? He knows that computer science is a math. Computer science is to computer engineering (including programming) as theoretical physics is to experimental physics. The problem is that computer scientists haven't done anything relevant to 95% of computer engineering for decades, and computer engineers apparently stopped reading the computer scientists even before that.

</comment><comment><USER5> _"I'd like to welcome you to this course on Computer Science. Actually that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, it's not a science. It might be engineering or it might be art. We'll actually see that computer so-called science actually has a lot in common with magic. We will see that in this course. So it's not a science. It's also not really very much about computers. And it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators. And biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes. And it's not about computers in the same sense that geometry is not really about using a surveying instruments."_

From Abelson in the first SICP lecture: [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson- sussma...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman- lectures/)

<comment><USER6> "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - <USER2>

<comment><USER7> "... but they don't call it telescope science." - <USER3>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Computer science is _not_ a science. It is a math.

Science is the attempt to find counterexamples to disprove your ideas on how a given system behaves. It involves conducting experiments to give input data for constructing a model, and then trying to find corner cases that break the model and allow you to refine or otherwise rework your model until it accounts for all your data.

Computer science has none of this. Computer science is the art of coming up with definitions that are of use to solving certain classes of problems, with formalisms to back them up. That is math.

<comment><USER9> Sure math only allows deductive proofs but without induction how would people ever get to the proof? Mathematicians do hypothesises and experiments too. I'm sure mathematics is regarded as science.

<comment><USER8> Induction isn't the core of it. The idea is that you try to find counterexamples in science, and you _don't_ have proofs in the general sense. Ever. The best you can say is that "If I guessed right, then I have math that worked out." Nothing more. Mathematics allows a definite "This is a solution that exists to this problem.". In Science, you can say that a solution exists to a problem, but that's not the tricky part -- the tricky part is figuring out the right problem to solve.

Science is effectively an attempt to reverse engineer the universe. Imagine that you were given a clock by a client. A very ornate clock that he doesn't want you to take apart. Then he tells you he wants you to make schematics for the clock so precise he could put together a precise functional duplicate. But you're not allowed to take it apart.

I would say that does not that count as mathematics, although mathematics would certainly have a use as a tool to prove that the behavior is correct in all observed respects. But you could probably find a new minute difference in the way the hand moves, and that would blast all your carefully crafted mathematics to bits.

I'm not slagging on mathematics, and I'm not trying to glorify science and say that one is a more powerful superset of the other.

They're both very useful and very tightly intertwined disciplines, but they're also very different. In a way, you could say that math is the study of solving problems, and science is the study of finding physically meaningful problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "PowerPoint is a terrible idea because it takes everything interesting about what computers can do and brings it into an expensive form of paper. Alan now jumps into a demo of the system he's using that isn't PowerPoint. He draws a car and then animates it with a script. This is based on what children do with his system, Squeak. "

I found that tidbit interesting. The thing is, when you invent new things, you need some type of metaphor for what already exists, or people will have a hard time adopting it or using it.</comment>


Icon fonts and their usefulness in iOS development - <AUTHOR> http://kylerosenbluth.com/2012/10/8/fonts

<comment><USER3> Anyone interested in using Icon Fonts should definitely check out [1] - <USER2> allows you to generate and download icon fonts by selecting vectors from different packs.

[1] <http://icomoon.io/app/>

<comment><USER3> Haha, yeah... I originally found out about it when browsing the Chrome Store [1] - if you download it as a Chrome app, then it even works offline..

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icomoon/kppingdhha...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icomoon/kppingdhhalimbaehfmhldppemnmlcjd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What, no FF Chartwell?

<http://tktype.com/chartwell.php>

As long as you can turn on ligatures in your font rendering API per-platform, this is a fully cross-platform solution to graphing, in a font file.

(Using printf's, basically, to do complicated graphs - absurd and awesome!)

<comment><USER5>
       Hinting and the Web
       Webfonts are not currently offered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, I might be a bit slow. Can somebody explain to me the advantage of using a font file instead of a sprite png?

I understand that there would be advantages with a high resolution display. It would scale automatically. Anything beside that?

<comment><USER7> The better question is what does this gain you over a vector format.

<comment><USER8> Can you do sprites with a svg, though? If not, there's the single file aspect.

<comment><USER9> I just started using it icon fonts. I was initially using SVGs using an IMG tag, but the issue there is that you can't change color, opacity, or style it with CSS.

You can sprite SVGs, but you have to maintain it just as you would have to maintain a sprite of PNGs. The only advantage being that a sprited SVG would scale to a HDPI monitor without needing a second set of higher resolution images.

I ended up going with icon fonts because it requires significantly less CSS than dealing with the position of an icon in a sprite. I actually find it is easier to maintain since I can style icons with shadows, opacity, color, etc.

One drawback, using icon fonts generally means having flat icons. You can't have fancy 3D-like iconography.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a script which generates iOS tab bar icon-sized sprites from the Font Awesome icon font: <https://github.com/jogloran/Font-Awesome>

</comment><comment><USER11> This title is pretty poor, could we get it changed to "How to use icon fonts in iOS development and why they are useful" or something like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to apply 10,000 hours rule as a life-long learner - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Don't.

The 10,000 hour "rule" is a complete myth.</comment>


Ask HN: Are developers less likely to pay for curated data? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering building a pay site that curates already existing technical info from various other websites. Are developers less likely (then regular people) to pay for stuff they could find in google if they put in the effort? <comment><USER2> From my experience, curating and charging for information that's readily available for free is in direct opposition with the developer / hacker ethos. There are a lot of us who spend a great deal of time creating things of value and sharing it with the world, answering people's questions and contributing to the knowledge-base at large, for no other reason other than to pay it forward.</comment>


IBM Preps Power9 for AI and HPC Launch, Forges Big NUMA Iron - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/10/16/ibm-preps-power9-ai-hpc-launch-forges-big-numa-iron/ <comment><USER2> I got IBM to fund the FreeBSD port, they will be at the upcoming devsummit [https://wiki.freebsd.org/VendorSummit/201711](https://wiki.freebsd.org/VendorSummit/201711). My interest is in commercial workloads.. the memory and I/O bandwidth are right where they need to be, and everything else about the uarch is gravy (ISA is quite nice for network processing, byte swapping load/stores, nice short fat pipeline, massive cache)

Pricing is actually quite good with the SuperMicro POWER9 systems, especially against Intel's "scalable processor" family regression where you pay a 4 or 8 socket CPU tax for 2 socket Intel SPP Gold and Platinum configs.

I think POWER9 will be both the first and most cost effective way to reach 400gbps content delivery in a 1u platform.

<comment><USER3> That's cool, may I ask how you persuaded them to bring the FreeBSD port up to date?

<comment><USER2> Your other comment about NFLX makes you seem suspiciously and hilariously like a sock-puppet account so I can't actually be candid on that now.

For getting vendors to do things, it helps that I have a 8-figure HW spend. I'm not GOOG/FB, but it's enough in what vendors call "cloud services provider" tally that their sales orgs are very hungry for. I have great and fledgling relationships with Intel, SuperMicro, Dell, Chelsio, Cavium, and now IBM in the context of FreeBSD for high throughput scale out workloads.

<comment><USER3> > Your other comment about NFLX makes you seem suspiciously and hilariously > like a sock-puppet account so I can't actually be candid on that now.

I really wondered why they didn't mention POWER at all two weeks ago in the blog post. And now this post allowed me to raise the question. I'm curious what you think I represent for me to be a sock-puppet.

I cannot prove it, obviously, but this is just a throwaway account of a single person who doesn't represent anyone and definitely isn't paid to participate on Hacker News. Neither am I employed by any large or well-known organization to have some kind of intent. I'm just a programmer who wishes we had more POWER machines just like Raptor is trying to achieve.

I did feel uncomfortable asking the question as it might be obtrusive and thought I managed to word it defensively enough. Sorry, looks like I failed :).

> For getting vendors to do things, it helps that I have a 8-figure HW spend.

Thanks for answering!

That's encouraging to hear, although sounds like I would need to be the operator of a video hosting or cdn network or HPC cluster before I could request a consultation with engineering executives. I'm most excited you have good relations with Chelsio since I love their NICs and FreeBSD drivers. I couldn't care less about Intel NICs tbh.

<comment><USER2> Mainly because I have been trying to sign them up with similar reasoning. A lot of people spent foolish amounts of capital on arm64 enablement, I'm glad FreeBSD has it for embeded stuff, but the server-class silicon just sucks compared to intel, amd, and P9. Follow along and watch in 2018 :)

<comment><USER3> Hah, I never understood the appeal of AARCH64 either. It's not like it's some super clean ISA or that they won't run into similar power-vs-IPC conumdrums when they start to create x86 competitive server CPUs.

I've always been fascinated by the ARM and PPC embedded support on FreeBSD, which reflects the real market and not some fantasy land. Which also explains the sad state of the POWER port right now.

I'm fairly certain that RISC-V will eat ARM and it already started on the bottom end with embedded chips being replaced with RISC-V. nVidia, storage (SSD, HDD) vendors already have RISC-V silicon deeply embedded, hidden in sight. I feel like it will be the FOSS "revolution" all over and more progress because there's no need to pay stupendous amounts of licensing fees to ARM Inc. One could have done this with OpenSPARC too, but for political reasons or technical limitations of the ISA, it never took off.

My prediction is that many embedded ARM chips will be replaced by RISC-V. It won't be free because someone has to create the desired chip IP, unless you're happy with the free ones, but there will be competition that doesn't involve a parent licensing agency grabbing all the money for an ISA they invented 30 years ago. Good times to be a compiler codegen developer :).

<comment><USER4> Woah: there's little risc v's in wide spread heardware hidden in plain sight?

<comment><USER3> These things are very hard to find concrete data about for outsider, which I am one of, but at least nVidia has published that they're building their new Falcon controller chips based on a custom RISC-V architecture. It's hard to tell how widespread it is since they are not buying chips from Renesas or MIPS and looking at the board wouldn't necessarily show you there's a RISC-V chip in there. All we need now is a high performance variant of lowRISC to combine it with its safety features, port seL4 and MirageOS to it. Then would get finally get back what we had with the old Burroughs machines and enjoy safety and performance without having to choose.

Anyway, they announced this publicly in 2016 so I assume it's already hidden in some nVidia hardware. I also read about a storage vendor (Seagate? or WD?) working on a transition to RISC-V, but I cannot find it right now.

[https://riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1100_Nvidia_...](https://riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Tue1100_Nvidia_RISCV_Story_V2.pdf)

The reasons cited sound like those we heard about Linux and Samba or Linux and Apache in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Oak Ridge is getting around 4,600 Witherspoon nodes to crest above 200 petaflops of peak performance with Summit, most of which comes from the six "Volta" GPU accelerators in the system…"

The CPUs in HPC increasingly exist primarily to keep the GPUs fed. I'm curious why they don't target having simpler/cheaper CPUs that can be moved closer to the GPUs. Throw away stuff like SIMD units; anything that can be done there would be better done on the massively parallel GPU.

<comment><USER6> > I'm curious why they don't target having simpler/cheaper CPUs that can be > moved closer to the GPUs.

You can certainly buy silicon that's set up that way from Nvidia.

<comment><USER7> Can you provide a link? Is it an ARM system?

<comment><USER6> The Parker SoC that comes with the Jetson TX2 came to mind immediately, since I've got one:

[https://www.hotchips.org/wp- content/uploads/hc_archives/hc28...](https://www.hotchips.org/wp- content/uploads/hc_archives/hc28/HC28.22-Monday-Epub/HC28.22.30-Low-Power- Epub/HC28.22.322-Tegra-Parker-AndiSkende-NVIDIA-v01.pdf) [https://elinux.org/Jetson_TX2#Processing_Components](https://elinux.org/Jetson_TX2#Processing_Components)

Six different ARM CPUs (two different kinds!) on the same silicon as a fairly powerful GPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When the recent Netflix FreeBSD kernel optimization article was posted, all I could think of was why they didn't use a POWER machine for its higher memory throughput. Same would be true for SPARC, but that hardware is even less available and I wouldn't trust Oracle with my money or engineering effort.

Then I checked to see FreeBSD's POWER port and it didn't look as readily supported as Linux is, so I assumed that's one reason. Contrary to SPARC, POWER servers can be had from more than the main vendor and it's the only high performance server where you have a chance to get the source code for the microcode and firmware in auxiliary mainboard chips, leaving just the GPU and NIC. This alone I would think would be a reason for safety-conscious users to consider and buy it instead of trying to disable Intel ME.

I still think Netflix ought to evaluate POWER9 (POWER10) and possibly improve the FreeBSD port, and would love more industry support so that little teams like mine stand a chance to get reasonably priced POWER9+ servers.

The completely free aspect is one reason I believe Kollab is using it for their servers.

<comment><USER8> >why Netflix didn't use a POWER machine for its higher memory throughput.

Probably because there is no POWER9/10 option available from AWS and Netflix is a heavy user of AWS.

<comment><USER9> The Netflix Open Connect appliances are custom-built hardware they send out to ISPs. [1]

As evidenced by their heroic efforts to tunes performance[2], and their careful choice of hardware[3], they could certainly deploy POWER if they chose to.

[1] [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/)

[2] [https://medium.com/netflix- techblog/cdb51dda3b99](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/cdb51dda3b99)

[3] [https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Speaking of NUMA, I'm glad that AMD Threadrypper will force more developers to get familiar with it, since it's the first mainstream single-socket system that uses it. It will bring it to the attention of more developers than just those who tested regularly on multi-socket machines of their employers.

</comment><comment><USER3> BTW, the new POWER chips can run in a new endiannes mode and therefore lift the big-endian requirement, if that's a concern of any code base.

<comment><USER7> POWER and PowerPC chips have been bi-endian for a while. Since POWER3 would be my guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will ordinary programmers be able to buy one?

<comment><USER11> Sadly, it's only for extraordinary programmers.

<comment><USER3> I don't know, I mean, programmers spend so much money and little value hardware just for brand value and such, so the money is there. But those that spend that amount of money on computers are seldom in the group of those who have an interested in a POWER machine.</comment></comment></comment>


A Medieval Emperor's Natural Language Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://resobscura.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-medieval-emperors-natural-language.html <comment><USER3> In a way, this is historical clickbait. Mention the rumours about Frederick II to get people talking about how wacky this episode is. But don't mention that Frederick II is just one of several historical figures claimed to have carried out this experiment (one of the earliest is in Herodotus over 15 centuries before) and that it ever happened at all is dubious.

<comment><USER4> Also the first three paragraphs have no relation to the rest of the article and seems placed here for apologetical or political purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I actually agree with you about the post being disjointed - <USER2> Obscura is basically just my historical notebook where I jot down unusual things I might want to remember. Was teaching the Crusades to my world history class this week, hence the content about that.

Like I say toward the end, I'm mostly interested in the case as a hypothetical early example of pseudo-Lamarckian thinking (i.e. the assumption that babies somehow "know" their parents' language despite having no contact with them).

<comment><USER5> > that babies somehow "know" their parents' language despite having no contact > with them

But this can be easily found out by talking to these Chinese twins who grew up in the US. Do they speak Chinese naturally? I guess not. I don't believe language would be hereditary.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2399360/Chinese- twin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2399360/Chinese-twins- separated-birth-adopted-2-American-families-reunited.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, naturally _we_ know that, in a post-Darwin world. But from a history of science standpoint, I'm interested by early attempts to understand aspects of heredity before Darwin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A similar story appears in Herodotus, Book 2, Chapter 2, but here the ruler is the Egyptian king Psammetichus, and the children survive: [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D2%3Asection%3D1)

</comment><comment><USER7> >As late as 1760, the author of A New Complete English Dictionary speculated that Hebrew was the "language which God taught Adam." However, he noted that "others hold for the Syriac, Childee, Ethiopian, or Armenian" as potential first languages.

Anyone here who knows what language Childee might refer to? Ive never heard of it before and searching it gives no clue.

<comment><USER8> I am guessing Chaldean, language of the Chaldeans (sometimes archaically Chaldees)

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Neo- Aramaic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Neo-Aramaic)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do senior Node.js developers actually exist? - <AUTHOR> The title says it all, can someone good at using a relative new technology be considered "senior" at it on some point? <comment><USER2> I really hate the framing here...there are _senior devs_ who _use_ NodeJS.

It's not like being a senior dev in language or framework A magically means you're a complete and hopeless noob the second you switch.

Sure, you'll have rough patches, but being a good senior dev specifically implies that you know yourself well enough to handle such transitions.

<comment><USER3> This seems accurate to me. A senior dev can move between tech stacks and not loose their title. At the same time, to me that same senior dev will be the one that recognizes when they are still learning a tech stack and won't be afraid to ask questions of anyone that might know, regardless of that person's title.

I think the difference is you can be a senior developer, but be learning a new stack or learning a particular technology. The key difference is you will recognize the patterns and practices that generally make code more stable, maintainable etc. A person with 1-2 years of total experience will make more mistakes learning any technology than a person with 10 years of experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes they do. Generally they're not considered senior because they have X years specifically dedicated to Node.js, but instead they have X years of proven development experience with the last 2+ focused on Node.js.

</comment><comment><USER5> Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Yes. There are very senior engineers where JavaScript/Node.js is just one, of many, languages/runtimes that (s)he works with.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on the amount of things and deepness the developer has actually experienced/seen/solved/set up with that particular framework. I wouldn't assume someone is a senior only based on the years of experience. I've interviewed candidates with 5+ years PHP who are still lacking basic knowledge to be a senior.

Start with: what does senior mean for me and my company?

</comment><comment><USER7> There are developers that have 4-5 years of node. Most senior nodejs developers have previous experience working with different language(s)

</comment><comment><USER8> Node.JS really hasen't been around that long for there to be the super senior people unlike Java, C++, C.

<comment><USER9> You can be a senior, very experienced developer using a particular tech stack without all of that experience being developed with that tech stack.

In fact, I'd say at a senior level a developer _should_ have considerable _breadth_ of experience and the ability to comparatively evaluate tech stacks, not just skill in using a particular tech stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, one notable one.

[http://www.quora.com/How-is-TJ-Holowaychuk-so-insanely- produ...](http://www.quora.com/How-is-TJ-Holowaychuk-so-insanely-productive)

He recently left Node.js.

[https://medium.com/code-adventures/farewell-node- js-4ba9e7f3...](https://medium.com/code-adventures/farewell-node- js-4ba9e7f3e52b)</comment>


How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3n8ea/how-sierra-and-a-disgraced-cop-made-the-most-reactionary-game-of-the-90s <comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot more details and background here, but not quite so easy to read - [https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/chief-gates-comes-to- oakhurst...](https://www.filfre.net/2019/07/chief-gates-comes-to-oakhurst-a- cop-drama/)</comment>


Email as Identity: Google Turns on WebFinger - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_enables_webfinger_for_google_profiles_email_as_identity.php <comment><USER2> The use of a URL in OpenID confused a hell of a lot of non-technical people. If WebFinger turns into "OpenID, but with an e-mail identifier," that might not be a bad thing.

<comment><USER3> I'm a web developer and I still don't get OpenID. Whenever I try to use it I'm just ran though a bunch of authentication/handshake/who knows what pages. Only to have to re-login the next time I visit in the same awkward way that oftens breaks on me. WTF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first thought was "cool! Now I can tell everyone who cares what I'm up to, just like the old days!"

Then I remembered facebook...</comment>


Node.js Debugger in Practice - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/node-js-debugger-in-practice-a97d0df4d33e <comment><AUTHOR> Super short article on how to attach various debuggers to a node process. AFAIK way more straight to the point than more official documents.</comment>


The 'best job in America' pays $105,000 - and you've probably never heard of it - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-best-job-in-america-for-2020-pays-105000-a-year-and-youve-probably-never-even-heard-of-it-2020-01-14?mod=home-page <comment><USER2> at least for us you could change the title :)

we might have heard of front-end devs before....</comment>


Ask HN: Lets talk about Opentable.com - <AUTHOR>

The "Lets talk about Etsy" post seemed to get some really good insight and feedback, so I thought I would do another about Opentable.com.
I will throw out some questions to get things going:
1) How did opentable overcome the Chicken and the egg problem?  Did they build up a roster of restaurants before they even opened the consumer side of things?
2) Did OT start with just San Francisco?  How fast did they expand into other cities?  Or did they go from SF to nation wide in two steps?
3) How hard was it for Opentable to change the way people made reservations?  Was the market ready for it or did it take a long time to get people to make reservations this way? <comment><USER2> From my understanding OT was a POS software provider first and only launched their reservation system after they had achieved a certain level of market penetration. As a result they didn't have to try and convince POS providers to integrate with them (the hard part) because they were already running their own platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> OpenTable was founded in 1998 and ~$5mm a year on its 5-6 year journey to profitability. (Luckily, they were smart with cash during the boom, and had a $48mm pool of dotcom-era VC money.)

This TechCrunch article is great for financial details:

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/30/opentable-files-for-ipo- and...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/30/opentable-files-for-ipo-and-reveals- its-finances/)

</comment><comment><USER4> regarding question 2: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/08/18/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/08/18/FD97228.DTL&hw=opentable&sn=043&sc=581)

</comment><comment><USER5> They need to redesign their site. I clicked it, thought it was a placeholder domain/seo page and closed it.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious how much their business model is centered around people organically going to their site and thinking "well, I'd like to go out for dinner somewhere - let's see where I can get a table" as opposed to arriving directly on a landing page for the particular restaurant from which they got the link.

I know if I'm going to go to the kind of place that needs a reservation, I'll have one in particular I've got in mind, as opposed to thinking that I'm just interested in going _somewhere_ that needs a reservation.</comment></comment>


Docker are requiring logins to download their binaries again - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io/pull/7446 <comment><USER2> Don't worry, PR for fix is back on the menu.... again.

[https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io/pull/7464](https://github.com/docker/docker.github.io/pull/7464)</comment>


TcpKiller: A small GUI application to kill a process listening on a port - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ayedo/tcpkiller <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everybody! I often had the problem that I could not find which process was listening on a port that I was trying to bind to. Of course there are already many ways of doing that, but I found myself googling for the same terminal command, and even forgetting the alias I had set for it in my .bashrc over and over again. I wanted to learn some JavaFX, and as a hobby project implemented a small 'task manager' for processes listening to TCP ports. It's released as open source, and maybe it's useful to somebody else as well? Stars are very appreciated :)</comment>


Finding your perfect Console Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.consoledeals.co.uk

<comment><AUTHOR> We've recently launched a rebrand of our console bundles comparison. We believe it's one of the best affiliate sites on the market thanks to it's elegant responsive design, decent page speed comprehensive search system and sheer number of deals.

It probably took us around 5-6 weeks to get it right but we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.</comment>


How I met our first investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.tophatmonocle.com/blog/2010/11/24/how-i-met-investors/

<comment><USER2> great story. I have found the same to be true all too often, never giving up says a lot for those who make it. I will never forget after dropping out of college to chase my dreams how mad my parents were at me. When I met my first investor and told him I had dropped out to pursue this even though I had a full ride scholarship and less than a year to finish he was amazed. It was something that had never struck me as odd before.

And I will never forget after the long board meeting I had with the VC firm who eventually bought my company. The guy who had originally found me walked out of the meeting shook my hand and said the words I will never forget, at first they stung, but after a while it meant the world to me.

"Zach, you know what we like so much about you?" what's that?, I asked "You have too much of an ego to fail, we're in."

Sometimes having the right amount of belief in your project means that you do not even realize how dedicated you are, you make irrational decisions that seem like the only choice at the time and you sacrifice things that however insignificant they seem to you, would be a huge deal for some people.

</comment><comment><USER3> More broadly, it just shows how important time is to any startup.

You never know when some chance meeting will lead to a key hire, a biz dev deal, or even a new investment.

The longer you keep going and working at it - the more chances you have for this moment to happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> The car crash threw me for a loop, very entertaining read. Not sure if this is exactly relevant, but here's a good TED Talk ("Keep Going Until We Stop"): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cakm2nIQWo>

</comment><comment><USER5> luck = preparation + opportunity

and you'll have more opportunities the longer you stay in the game, and the more you expose yourself to other people. I've heard it described elsewhere as "maximizing your people surface area" in order to maximize the chance/frequency of opportunities that will available to you. do that, plus be prepared to act on them, and you're golden.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminded me of pg's "How Not to Die" <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> Irrelevant to the topic, perhaps, but... tophatmonocle.com? I am envious of your address, sir.

<comment><USER8> I actually read To Phat Monocle the first time I glanced at it :)</comment></comment>


The Biggest Opportunity Everyone Is Missing in Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/tech/9548/the-biggest-opportunity-everyone-is-missing-in-self-driving-cars <comment><USER2> But sometimes you do want to drive into a wall. If a child runs out into the road too close to brake and you're traveling 35MPH, the result of driving into a wall is liable to be whiplash for you and a bad scare for the kid. The result of not swerving into the wall could be a criminal investigation for you (plus a civil suit) and death for the toddler. Aviation tends to have fewer trolley problems than driving does.</comment>


How Silicon Valley trolled Mozilla's CO out of office - <AUTHOR> http://tryary.com/news/1272/how-silicon-valley-trolled-mozil

<comment><USER2> Publicly crucified 6 years later due to the intolerance of the community. I thought that's what we're trying to avoid...

</comment><comment><USER3> > the tech community proved itself remarkably intolerant this week when it > forced the .

Are.. you.. kidding.. me?...

A - I think lgbti I employ should not be allowed the same rights as my other employees

B - We want equal treatment under the law.

Which one of these is intolerant again?

<comment><USER4> Well, you can argue anything if you start from a false premise, like case A above. I'm just not seeing that in [https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at- mozilla/](https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/)

<comment><USER5> This article also runs under the premise that a CEO should be held to the same standards as someone without the same sweeping policy making ability a CEO has. That seems to be a common appeal in these articles.</comment></comment></comment>


White board/Dry erase alternatives? - <AUTHOR>

Fellow HNers,<p>Have any of you had any experience with the various white board/dry erase solutions available?  I'm looking to paint one or two walls of my home office.  So far I'm aware of the Rust-oleum Dry Erase and IdeaPaint options.  Are there any serious contenders I've missed?  Is the IdeaPaint worth the premium?  Thanks muchly. <comment><USER2> Overlay shower board rather than using a "paint"? I've got no experience with the paint, but I can't imagine the rough texture of drywall would lend itself well towards "painting" on a whiteboard.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also Whitey Board that you can stick on and off the wall.

<http://www.whiteyboard.com/></comment>


As Apple moves into fitness, rival wearables vanish from stores - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/12/apple-nike-jawbone-stores/

<comment><USER2> :( I would prefer more competition.</comment>


New phenomenon is causing controversy across the music industry. - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/9367019/Maroon-5-and-the-new-phenomenon-baffling-the-music-industry.html

<comment><USER2> Everything old is new again.

This sort of thing was mainstream in the 50s. British acts would record and release cover versions of US hits months before the US record companies got round to releasing the original versions in the UK.</comment>


Anonymous Seeks to Legalize DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121433-Anonymous-Seeks-to-Legalize-DDoS-Attacks

<comment><USER2> This is about as legitimate as claiming that forming a human chain and preventing people from going into a place of business is a form of free speech.</comment>