Illustrated Self-Guided Course On How To Use The Slide Rule - <AUTHOR> https://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Course.htm <comment><USER2> What a blast from the past. I can draw a direct line from my encountering a slide rule to ending up as a programmer. I owe my career to that device.

I was a nerdy 10 year old kid who liked doing arithmetic in 1970, but didn't know anything particularly advanced. I convinced my parents to get me a slide rule as a Christmas present that year; a basic white Post model 1447 - I know that because I'm looking at it right now. It's been in my desk drawer forever as I could never convince myself to throw it away, even though I've long since lost the sliding cursor.

Anyway, I got the slide rule, had fun with basic multiplication/division, but didn't understand what the S, T, and L scales on the back were for. Sine/Tangent/Logarithm? What are those?

Off to the library, where I picked up a Tutor-Text book [0] on trigonometry, discovered I'd better first learn some algebra, picked up another Tutor-Text book on that, and began a two-year tear teaching myself algebra to integral calculus. Which meant I tested out of a couple years of math in high school, ran out of courses to take, and in my junior year was allowed to walk to the local college to take 2nd year Calc classes.

At that college, they started letting me play with the computers, both an IBM 5100 APL machine over one summer, and hands-on access to the IBM 11/30 clone minicomputer that was the main machine. The math prof pointed me at Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", and that began my transition from pure mathematics to computer programming/science instead. I even wrote a MIXAL assembler/MIX simulator for the minicomputer that the college ended up using to teach an assembly language course.

So thank you, Post, Pickett, K&E! And Tutor-Text as well.

[0]: [https://gamebooks.org/Series/457/Show](https://gamebooks.org/Series/457/Show)

<comment><USER3> Similar background story, I was 8 in 1970, and my father knew what a slide rule was, and how to use it, so I learned a bit of trig from him before repeatedly checking out a textbook on trig from the public library.

True story: my son took an AP physics class in high school, (LASA) taught by sokeone with a PhD in physics. They had an oversized teaching sliderule hanging from the ceiling, where nobody could use it. It had become decoration, as nobody was left to teach with it.

When I was at the school for a "meet your student's teachers" night, one of the other parents asked about the side rule. Instructor didn't know how it worked.

So I explained it.

My wife still has her grandfather's slide rules from when he was the state engineer in the 50s and 60s.

<comment><USER2> I remember those large teaching slide-rules, but haven't seen one in decades. Great to know they still exist, if only as mysterious artifacts from the dark ages.

Neither of my parents were mathematically inclined, but they were content to let me forage for information on my own, with lots of trips to the library. Amazing how clear are my 50-year-old memories of 10-year-old me sitting on the floor with a trig book, drawing random triangles on paper, measuring them as carefully as I could with ruler and protractor, and verifying the law of sines and cosines with paper and slide-rule. God, I was such a nerd. Paid off well in the end, though :-)

Now I'm retired, and for fun, I work my way through the problems at Project Euler. Four years in, and only two more problems to go to hit 90% complete! It'll probably take me another year+ to finish them all (hopefully).

<comment><USER4> We end up doing a lot of back-of-the-envelope calculations for various odds- and-ends. I keep a 4' long teaching slide-rule next to my desk for this purpose. New employees are befuddled. Everyone else just accepts it as a fact- of-life when asking for my help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One under-appreciated aspect of a slide rule, is for instantly seeing fraction reductions at a glance. For example, lets say I want to find out what aspect ratio a given screen resolution is at. I can set that resolution as a ratio on the slide rule's C/D scales (i.e., 1680x1050 becomes 1.68 one C, lined up with 1.05 on D. Then I glance over, and see immediately that is 16 x 10 resolution.) If the value goes off the scales, look up to the CF/DF scales.

This is also great when you have a bunch of resistors and capacitors, and you need to build a circuit where the two are at a particular ratio. Set the ratio you want, then you can take whatever resistor you have, and see if you have a cap that is "close enough" to what you need.

<comment><USER6> Also ratio multiplications, e.g. when increasing the amounts of ingredients in recipes to match a particular amount of something.

So if the primary ingredient is chevre cheese, the recipe calls for 180 grams, but you can only buy it in 250 gram packages, you can set the slide rule to "180 over 250" and then just mechanically read off the proportionally correct amounts of all other ingredients.

Slide rules are indispensable in the kitchen to me and I'm surprised they're not part of standard kitchen equipment like e.g. scales.

Edit: Similarly, if the recipe is expressing ingredients in US units and you would want to know the international amounts, you can set the slide rule to the conversion ratio and again, mechanically read off the correct amounts as you go.

<comment><USER7> This is one advantage of the customary (English language non-metric) units: the common ones are full of rational factors (1/2, 2/3 etc) — it's pretty easy to adjust a recipe to the number of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few years ago I met Fred Haise Jr and got him to sign one of my Slide Rules. He was so excited to see it, took it from me, and started to show the event host how to use it!

He asked me what I use to lubricate it, and when I said "Pencil graphite" he got even more excited. Apparently a lot of the other astronauts had used fancy light lubrication oils, but he always used a pencil and never had any problems.

He was a lovely man, and it was fabulous to enthuse with him over this wonderful piece of technology.

<comment><USER9> Powdered graphite is an excellent lubricant that doesn't attract crud. My father had a little squeeze tube of it for locks; it eventually ran out and I haven't seen any more since.

<comment><USER2> You can find the small tubes at hobby stores, with the supplies for Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts. I went through several tubes during my son's years in Scouts.

<comment><USER10> You can also get it at hardware stores for lubricating locks.

<comment><USER11> The versions for lubricating motorcycle cables are finer and less messy than the cheap stuff they sell for locks. If you want to be neater with your slide rule, anyway :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who grew up in India in the 20th century: slide rules are unfamiliar, but we used log tables (calculators of any kind were prohibited through high school and standardized tests). For those unfamiliar, log tables serve to replace multiplication/division of floating-point numbers with addition/subtraction instead, making scientific computation a lot easier.

The main benefit of introducing this friction, rather than allowing calculators, is that it (a) encourages one to do simple calculations by hand, and (b) gets one in the habit of quickly double checking that log-table-based results fall in the correct ballpark. Calculators induce a sort of mindlessness where glaring orders-of-magnitude errors pass us by since we expect the machine to get it right.

With all that said, I don't know that I would recommend the use of log tables to high schoolers in the 21st century. That effort might be better utilized on more pressing needs e.g. statistical literacy. Many folks (including me) got entirely through STEM-focused high school knowing not even the slightest basics of statistical inference or causality.

<comment><USER13> I think that learning how to use a log table might cement certain relationships for more advanced students. But I do agree that in general there are probably better uses of one's time than to teach them as a first class citizen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another great thing about slide rule days is that results are naturally constrained to 2 or 3 significant digits, so you'd never see nonsense like "The mountain is 10km high, or 32808.4ft" as if the 10km figure was accurate to 6 significant digits.

<comment><USER15> I still remember the day I found out the "98.6 degrees" human body temperature was just an oversignificant conversion from "about 37 C, or maybe lower."

<comment><USER16> > I still remember the day I found out the "98.6 degrees" human body > temperature was just an oversignificant conversion from "about 37 C, or > maybe lower."

Really? According to Wikipedia, the Fahrenheit scale ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History)) is about 18 years older than the Celsius scale ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#History)), and I'm surprised that human body temperature wasn't included as a calibration. (But of course the fact that I'm surprised by it doesn't mean it isn't true!)

<comment><USER17> Fahrenheit was initially intended to have 96°F be equal to body temperature (in fact it was one of the three fixed points in the temperature scale, designed to have 64 steps between the freezing point of water at 32°F and human body temperature).

However after the introduction of Celcius, Fahrenheit was redefined slightly (with the freezing and boiling point of water being the fixed "nice" values for the scale -- to match the model used by Celcius) which resulted in human body temperature no longer having such a nice value. This also moved the 0°F value. So while technically Fahrenheit does predate Celcius and it did have a "nice" value for body temperature when invented, it was soon afterwards redefined such that arguably the value is just a conversion from Celcius.

In short, you're both correct. :D

<comment><USER18> Why did they come up with 96 instead of 100, a nice round number?

<comment><USER19> Imagine you've just made yourself a thermometer by marking off the 0° and 100° points. Now delineate the 2° intervals, using only the tools you would have had available in the early 18th century.

Now imagine making a thermometer by marking off the 32° and 96° points (64° apart). Now delineate the 2° intervals.

Considering those two tasks, 64 seems a much better number to me (only have to divide unit lengths in half) than 100 (have to divide something by 5).

<comment><USER18> Great explanation, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Alas! No specific mention of the circular slide rule [0]. I have one in my desk drawer that I inherited from my dad - who used it in the 1970s to confirm his hip hacker credentials to his colleagues (they were building the control circuits for early radio-therapy machines in a cancer research institute).

[0] [https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object- groups/sli...](https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/slide- rules/circular-slide-rules)

<comment> dan-robertson Circular slide rules tend to have smaller scales which may be harder to read but being circular has a great advantage. Look at how much effort in the OP is devoted to cases where the answer would ordinarily be off the end of the scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slide rules to calculators was an incredibly fast technology transition for the sort of people who would have been using slide rules in the first place.

A 5-function calculator was about $100 in 1974 (so about $350 in current dollars) and an HP scientific calculator was 3 or 4x as much. By about the next year, a TI scientific calculator was about the same and by a year or two later you could get an HP--which was the gold standard for about the same amount.

And that was around the price point where making them not just OK to use but mandatory was reasonable at least in higher ed. I was one of the first classes in college where calculators were the norm and slide rules were maybe something you brought for backup at exams. (Calculators were still LEDs so you had to keep them charged.)

</comment><comment><USER22> One of the nicest things about a slide rule is, you can easily see the sensitivity of the result to variations of your last input.

With a calculator, you get precision. With a slide rule, you get a value and its sensitivity.

</comment><comment><USER23> One unexpected advantage in some circumstances of a slide rule over current portable computing devices is that it does not have memory.

You are allowed to bring a calculator to ham radio license exams in the US, but you have to clear its memory (both data and program memory for programmable calculators) first. If the examiners aren't sure you have done so, they are supposed to disallow the calculator.

Unlike many other standardized tests, there is no specific list of what calculators are allowed. I brought my HP-15C, but wasn't sure that the examiners would be familiar with it and so wasn't sure I'd be able to convince them that I had cleared it.

I also brought a slide rule. That way if the examiners disallowed my HP-15C I'd still be covered.

They did allow the HP-15C, and it turned out that even though I took all three exams (Technician, General, and Extra) that day, I only actually used the calculator once. The questions are all multiple choice, and there was only one where a quick mental approximation wasn't enough to identify the right answer.

<comment><USER24> Nitpick: a slide rule _does_ have memory, but it is small and gets cleared when doing computations. One typically can store one number by moving the slide and another one by location of the cursor.

It also is fairly hard to hide the fact that the memory isn't cleared.

Many slide rules also have some read-only memory, for example 'storing' the constant π.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The "E6B Flight Computer" is a slide rule designed to perform various navigation calculations and is still a part of flight training for many pilots today. Once mastering it the old way student pilots are then allowed to use electronic versions or iPad apps that do all the calculations instantly.

</comment><comment><USER26> When I was in university, if you forgot your slide rule at an exam they kindly had a supply of log tables you could pick up from the proctor.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cool, now I finally know how to use this rule that I got when me and my siblings were clearing up the family house after my parents passed away.

It's really fascinating, I will show my nephews when I am back in the home country :)

Thanks for posting!

</comment><comment><USER28> Circular slide rules are still used today in aviation in the form of the E6B flight computer.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B)

<comment><USER21> Back when slide rules were still widely used and even after calculators had recently come in, you also saw a lot of industry-specific cardboard sliding scales that were basically slide rules with different types of units.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Oh this is wonderful. I first learned about slide rules from a math teacher back in junior high. I wasn't until a few years after that that my little sister gave me a slide rule for Christmas. \o/

After graduating high school I spent two years in Germany. Whenever I found a flea market or an antique store, I'd search for slide rules. I found two that were in pretty good condition. People always seemed a little confused as to why I wanted these. I guess they just didn't see the beauty in these simple, elegant devices.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been trying to figure out how to use my grandfathers Dietzgen Maniphase Multiplex Decimal Trigtype Log Log rule. I found the manual on this site! Very cool!

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm old enough that I had a slide rule when I was in school. Everyone did. They were built in to our pencil boxes.

Most of us didn't use them, except the fancy-pantses who also insisted on using mechanical pencils. But we all knew how to use them.

I'm graybeard enough that even through college, electric calculators were prohibited in class because they would give you answers without helping you understand the problem.

<comment><USER32> > answers without helping you understand the problem

This is my problem with common core math. It shows how to get to an answer, but I feel it bypasses fundamental understanding on why the answer is what it is.

<comment><USER13> I feel that common core focuses more on teaching the various methods than embracing the idea that correct answers and understanding are largely what matter rather than any specific method.

<comment><USER16> > correct answers and understanding

It's natural to lump these together as if they are a unit, but I think it's important to be explicit about the fact (which of course you know) that they are all too easily separable: it is incredibly easy, given sufficiently powerful tools, to get correct answers with little to no understanding. True understanding (not just "oh, I think I get it") that doesn't help to get answers is not nearly as common, but of course it exists, too.

<comment><USER13> Yes I totally agree with your sentiment that it is vitally important to separate the correct answer from the method by which it is achieved. Honestly understanding mathematics is more important at some level than getting the right answer to a particular problem. That's the whole point, once you understand the grammar and vocabulary of mathematical thinking you can attempt to solve problems that are totally unrelated to things you know and still sometimes get useful results. The overwhelming question of the ages is how do you teach with that goal in mind and take account of all of the different learning pathologies while doing it in a universally accessible and measurable way. I think the problem is intractable as it is currently being approached.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In an era marked by renewed interest in vinyl records, shouldn't there also be a corresponding interest in slide rules?

<comment><USER34> I dunno, man. I'm pretty well-versed in math and I find this page kind of baffling. I'm sure it's one of those things that is very easy to use once you learn it, but at least this introduction is very daunting. To do a basic multiplication (step 1 in the linked page) I need to use the C and D scales, each for two different purposes. Why not A and B? How do I remember it's C and D? Which part goes on C and which part goes on D? Then step 2 describes what to do if it goes off the edge of the scale, and it involves making an approximation. How do I know how accurate my approximation must be? Why is it to the tens digit? If I get larger numbers do I continue to use the tens digit, or some higher factor? We're only on step 2 and I'm already lost.

This definitely looks like a great tool, and I'm kind of sad I don't have one or understand how it works, but this kind of complex learning and memorization up against dropping a needle on a record you like isn't really a great comparison.

<comment><USER35> It works better if you know how the scales are constructed and get familiar with properties of logarithms (mainly variations on log ab = log a + log b)

C and D are plain log scales, where one decade is the length of the rule. They're sort of the default scales to use.

Multiplication is commutative, so you put either number on either scale. The important thing is that the distance from the left index of the scale is proportional to the log of the number (reading the scale as 1 to 10), so you want to arrange the scales to add the lengths corresponding to your numbers such that the lengths add up. (Or so that you subtract the length of the divisor from the dividend, if you're dividing).

You can get by without the approximation if you're willing to set up the multiplication, see that the product is out there in thin air, then move the slide to put the right index where you originally put the left index. (3 times 5: on the d scale find 3 and put the left index of the C scale there; opposite 5 on the C scale read nothing because there's no D scale there; try again using the right index of the C scale, which is the same thing as having another copy of the D scale out there to the right where the air was).

A and B are each 2 copies of a log scale. You can absolutely use the left side of A and B for your numbers to multiply, and the product will always be on the scale.

People normally use(d?) C and D because the precision is better and because the rest of the scales (like the trig and log-log) are constructed to work with them.

<comment><USER6> Nit: while multiplication is commutative, the property you meant to use was symmetry. I'm sure it was a mistake and you know this, I'm just pointing it out to prevent confusion for others.

Edit: s/competitive/commutative/

<comment><USER36> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutative_property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutative_property)

> In mathematics, a binary operation is commutative if changing the order of > the operands does not change the result.

Are you saying you disagree?

<comment><USER6> No, I had a brainfart and was thinking of associativity. I have no idea how it happened. Very embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Our math teacher, a former engineer, once brought his slide rule to class when we were in grade 9. He posed a problem and raced us to the solution, slide rule vs. calculators. He beat us all...

</comment><comment><USER38> I actually spent a bit of time learning about Slide Rules a few weeks ago as my Dad had put together a very cool interactive slide rule in JavaScript that I wanted to have a play with.

[https://adit.co.uk/sliderulev2.html](https://adit.co.uk/sliderulev2.html)

One thing that struck me was that it does require a good instinct for the magnitude of numbers to use. Lots of fun though and surprisingly quick to use.

</comment><comment><USER39> Simply put, I love a slide rule. My dad gave me mine for my 17th birthday, 48 years ago and I've treasured it ever since. It's the Pickett trig model and it served me well into my 3rd year of college as a EE. Its simple to use after you've been trained and totally reliable. It can also be quick as your skill using it develops. It sits in a drawer today but I take it out occasionally to play with. It truly is like a friend.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's a 'Professor Herning' whose YouTube channel has both good tutorials on their use, as well as comparing many models (and the various scales they have):

* [https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfessorHerning/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfessorHerning/videos)

</comment><comment> 4x5-Guy Being in Junior College in 1973, some of the kids had 4 function calculators hanging off their belt. The rest of us in a tech track usually carried a slide rule.

I did take a technical math class that involved programming a desktop calculator. Basically the first programming class I had.

I wish I remembered what brand it was, I'd like to try to pick one up if I could find one.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think practice with a slide rule also gets you to sanity check your method and think whether the answer can be correct.

Given how you could forget and inadvertently reverse the scales, etc, you have to think whether the answer you're getting makes sense by looking at the trend of the numbers. Plug and chug into a calculator takes some of that away.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm of the generation that missed out on slide rules by a decade or so. My parents had one thta i played with as a kid, and I learned to do multiplicication and division with it.

I'd like to get one now, mainly for fun, but if you want to buy one on Ebay in good condition, you have to pay quite a bit of money.

<comment><USER21> Plastic "student" slide rules are cheap on eBay. But, yes, quality K&E's etc. are expensive.

<comment><USER42> Since this is something I want to keep on my desk, not only for decoration but for actually copute things if I'm bored, I really want tone of the nicer ones.

It seems around 35 EUR is a normal price.

<comment><USER21> Quality slide rules probably cost a lot more than that when they were still being manufactured :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One of my favorite scenes in "Apollo 13" has a CO2 hazy Jim Lovell asking Houston to double check his math, and it cuts to a room full of engineers as they all grab their slide rules to calculate the answers Jim had just done in his head/scratch pad.

</comment><comment><USER44> My Dad, an engineer for GM/Cadillac, gave my brother and I each a slide rule back in the 60's. I remember marveling at the precision of it, and I did learn to use it for some calculations, but not to a level that impressed him :).

</comment><comment><USER45> I love playing with slide rules because it wraps my brain into using logarithms everywhere.

The game of Go also redecorates my thinking, in a way I cannot put into words.

Slide rules!

</comment><comment><USER46> Also check out the quarter-square method and prosthaphaeresis.

</comment><comment><USER47> Fascinating near invisible yet very high abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER48> how eccentric! would much rather prefer a yt vid / tutorial pls.

<comment><USER49> I think the preference is age related: Personally I prefer text over video, as I can process it at my speed, while with video I'm limited to the speed with which it's explained.

My children all seem to prefer video.

<comment><USER16> > I think the preference is age related: Personally I prefer text over video, > as I can process it at my speed, while with video I'm limited to the speed > with which it's explained.

> My children all seem to prefer video.

When I ask for text transcripts of our training videos, in place of having to sit through 20 minutes of poorly acted out skits (that, re-certification being a periodic thing, I have sat through some 5 or 6 times already in my 10 years on the job), I am always told "but people enjoy the videos"—as if providing transcripts were somehow exclusive of providing videos.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu Unity is dead: Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome-next-year/ <comment><USER2> Source article discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043631)

This is the second duplicate I have seen today on HN.

<comment><USER3> What's the other one?

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043860)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Canonical is also ending development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablets, spelling doom for the goal of creating a converged experience with phones acting as desktops when docked with the right equipment._

I'm surprised there isn't more discussion here about that part. I'm really saddened to read that. When the project was first unveiled, it looked like _exactly_ the sort of experience I want out of a smartphone.

<comment><USER5> This! I'm all glad about going back to GNOME and Wayland, but I really hoped Canonical was strong enough to put up a new mobile OS, even if just as a small player. It takes so much time (and money) to do so, and if even Canonical can't do it, I guess we can totally forget about a truly open source mobile OS in the near future, and maybe ever. That's a pretty sad future we're to, IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Google Fuschia?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gnome 3 is the best desktop environment I've ever used - my comment history on HN over the past 5 years definitely indicates as much. I'm not going to claim I've used all of them, but compared to what I've seen in Unity, macOS, and various versions of Windows (except Windows 10, which I have not tried), it's modern, fluid, and intuitive. To see Gnome return to the fold of Ubuntu is a huge deal to me and I couldn't be happier or more excited on this decision. Shuttleworth deserves a lot of praise and admiration for taking this bold (and likely painful) path.

(On a related note, I was reading up on Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel earlier today, and it feels very familiar to this.)

<comment><USER8> I originally quit Ubuntu because I didn't like Unity ... Gnome is great, I can live with KDE but now I'm moving towards even lighter solutions. I won't miss Unity at all!

<comment><USER9> What other lighter solutions are you using?

<comment><USER8> I've got XFCE installed but I'm working on learning RatPoison (a tiling window manager that doesn't use the mouse). It's a bit of a learning curve, so depending on what I'm working on, I switch between them (for now).

It's also a bit more of a pain to run multiple monitors with RatPoison and I've become well acquainted with reorganizing my screen configurations using the console commands to xrandr.

I also should have noted that I switched back to Xubuntu from Linux Mint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 8-10 years from now, I expect we'll see:

"Shuttleworth made it clear that the cloud isn't the financial future of the company. He wrote: 'The <latest-big-idea> story for Ubuntu is excellent and continues to improve.'"

I don't have anything against Ubuntu, but I do have something against chasing the latest fad. I know, the cloud isn't a fad, but mobile wasn't a fad either.

<comment><USER11> Cloud may be a fad, but Ubuntu is making a lot of money on it. Mobile may not have been a fad, but Ubuntu was losing a lot of money on it.

<comment><USER12> Android is killing it and there is no viable open alternative.

<comment><USER13> > Android is killing it and there is no viable open alternative.

Because of all the services Google provide on top of it. That's where the real value is, just like iOS, CyanogenMOD and co don't seem that popular. If Microsoft wants to make a come-back in the mobile space, that's where it needs to focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't care about window management, launchers, file browsers and all that other fluff. Usually you can customize that thing by e.g. using a custom launcher.

What I do care about is good hi dpi support, good font rendering, nice consistent controls etc. Somehow it seems that all these Linux window managers are just variations of superficial stuff (multi desktops, launchers, search...).

<comment><USER15> Sadly, this appears to be because _that stuff is hard_ and most hackers on Linux just don't care about it.

What they do get opinionated about are things that you mention (multi desktops, launchers, search...) so they work on those.

Not that that is a bad thing as such... but it leads to what you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a bit of a shocker. Mark Shuttleworth's post is worth reading. [1]

I actually liked Unity. There were a lot of reports of it being bloated and laggy but I found the exact opposite when I finally tried it. Unity was lightweight, fast and by far the most polished Linux desktop I have used which made all the bad press a bit mysterious.

There are a lot of folks online who seem to hate Ubuntu with an unusual passion and dismiss its projects as NIH. The key to understanding this is to seek out how many projects by Redhat, Fedora, Freedesktop or the Gnome ecosystem are dismissed as NIH? Zero. This is curious to say the least.

Redhat funds a lot of projects, its become a cathedral in the open source bazaar. The danger of centralization and concentration of power and money is the cathedral then becomes more interested in its own influence than anything it publicly professes.

[1] [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for- cl...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and- iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/)

<comment><USER17> SystemD is definitely attacked as NIH (and every other pejorative people can think of). And zfs fans say btrfs is NIH, etc, etc. I'd say RedHat gets just as much flak in that regard as Canonical.

<comment><USER16> Systemd was a highly controversial project and was attacked for a lot of technical and complexity reasons, not NIH. Btrfs origin is an Oracle project.

We are taking about a section of the community who carry the flag for Redhat and dismiss anything not from that ecosystem as NIH.

A typical example to show this is Snappy which precedes Flatpak. No one attacks Flatpak for NIH or demands they join hands with Ubuntu Snappy. Yet Snappy is routinely attacked as NIH and presented as another example of Ubuntu doing its own thing. There is definitely double standards and politics at play here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, this spells bad news for Qt and by extension any non-Gtk Linux environment. I was really hoping there would be more traction behind it to get a better non-C++ dev story; but it seems we're stuck with developing for two separate Linux environments (and other OSes) instead of writing once and having a binary that looks native in every OS with just a few platform- specific stylesheets here and there instead of entirely separate UI codebases.

<comment><USER7> I believe Gnome strongly encourages apps to be written in Vala (C#-alike with C support) now. [1]

The built-in official Gnome programming IDE ("Builder") seems to support "C, C++, Python, Vala, Rust and Ctags" too. [2]

Edit- A complete list of fully- and partially-supported languages for Gtk+ 3 is here: [https://www.gtk.org/language- bindings.php](https://www.gtk.org/language-bindings.php)

Edit 2- I was wrong about Vala! See comments below. :)

1\. [https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala) 2\. [https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Builder](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Builder)

<comment><USER19> Actually, quite the opposite, the GNOME folks have been moving away from it: [https://www.bassi.io/articles/2017/02/13/on- vala/](https://www.bassi.io/articles/2017/02/13/on-vala/)

I think the only Vala maintainer right now is from Elementary OS, where they use primarily Vala.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's a shame. I prefer the current Unity (16.10) interface to the other available options. It's simple, clean and intuitive IMO.

Haven't looked at Gnome since the disaster that was 3, having previously used it exclusively. Here's hoping it has improved (dramatically) since. Unity is lightyears ahead of where Gnome was last time I checked.

<comment><USER21> I'm hoping some outsiders (outside redhat/fedora/gnome) will have enough influence to stop some of the dumb things going on with gnome. This could be good for everyone ;-)

<comment><USER22> If that would be possible we would not have MATE or people/projects droping GTK for Qt, Gnome has a vision and it will follow it, and a big chunk of people like it for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for- cl...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and- iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/)

Source link.

<comment><USER23> Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing- ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and- convergence/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do any other Linux desktop environments show the applications menus in the title bar ( as OSX does ) ? I really like this feature, and Unity does it well. Unity is easily the best Linux desktop I've used; I've been using Linux as my sole OS for over 10 years and I've tried them all. I always felt that not liking Unity seemed to be nothing more than the contempt cultures fashionable position to take.

<comment><USER25> You can use XFCE or MATE with the "topmenu" plugin.

<comment><USER26> I believe KDE can do this now as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's with the hatred here? Gnome 3 is a technological disaster and it's extension system a ticking security time bomb. Unity is currently the only usable, modern desktop on Linux that doesn't break two months down the road because of incompatible extensions. On the other hand, maybe Canonical can put some sanity back into project.

</comment><comment><USER28> Well I'm disappointed about them dropping their phone project. There's too few players in the phone OS market and Android just has a woeful security ecosystem; most shipped devices only receive updates for a year or two at _most_. I'm still on Android 4.3 and really don't have any trust in my phone.

I'll still hold out hope that someday an OS that is similar enough to desktop Linux - one that can ship updates independent of the carrier or manufacturer - will rise and fill that void.

<comment><USER29> And it's really unfortunate that more devices aren't more open... considering there are plenty of third party ROMs with newer builds, but only as long as the binary drivers can be ripped out of other devices for new versions.

I've been using mostly devices supported by third party roms from the start, but that doesn't always mean the latest and greatest hardware. Currently on a Nexus 6P and will probably move to Lineage when it's no longer supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thank god. At no point did I like Unity. The way it integrated with the rest of the system seemed broken and all I ever got from it were countless problems.

</comment><comment><USER31> Really loved Unity for its clean presentation and its emphasis on tiling- through-keyboard-shortcuts, but it was clear I was in a minority. Sad about this, but not shocked.

<comment> marten-de-vries This is how I feel as well. Unity is trivially configurable to get out of your way: my launcher hides by default, and the menu bar disappears into the title bar, which also contains the clock, battery status, wlan indicator, etc.

I will miss features like that. I hope other DEs incorporate them before Ubuntu drops Unity definitively, or otherwise that the community will keep Unity 7 up-to-date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Unity had one thing going for it - it was compact. Gnome wastes a ton of vertical space on crappy 768x1366 displays.

Apart from that, Gnome is _very_ polished these days.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am somewhat exercised by this. I like Unity and have grown accustomed to it over the years, and in any case I think having choice in software is a positive thing. I hope that the community will continue development of Unity.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, I hope they do not decide to start moving away from desktops.

While I am technically capable of installing most distros or compile my own kernel to enable the modules I need, usually Ubuntu has a good enough default kernel configuration that is compatible with laptops to a level I am satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER35> It was inevitably. Canonical is too small compared to RH, they have no resources to make something as huge as gnome/wayland/libinput stack by themselves. I'm happy to know that we have a default DE now.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have grown used to Unity. Now they are stopping development on it? I checked immediately if this was dated April 1st...so this true?

I decided to stick with Unity because hit the sweet-spot for me when it comes to the functionality I actually want in a desktop environment. I was not happy with GNOME 3, nor KDE, nor any other desktop environment I tried. Now Canonical is pulling this again?

I just hope that there will be a UUbuntu flavour for the 18.04 release.

Next up ... will Mir be killed off too? ;) (Whoops ... didn't see that they are killing Mir too... :))

<comment><USER37> > By switching to GNOME, Canonical is also giving up on Mir and moving to the > Wayland display server, another contender for replacing the X window system. > Given the separate development paths of Mir and Wayland, "we have no real > choice but to use Wayland when Ubuntu switches to GNOME by default," Hall > told Ars. "Using Mir simply isn't an option we have."

<comment><USER21> This is the one part of the announcement that is a clear benefit. MIR has always been unique to Ubuntu and a waste of effort. If they put even half of the resources behind Wayland and Gnome, the remaining issues with them should get resolved quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Never liked Unity. It just didn't feel right, I wouldn't even know what. But I recently tried KDE Plasma and wow that's a really nice one!

<comment><USER39> Are you running KDE Neon? For the longest time I was using Kubuntu until I learned that it uses an ages-old version of KDE. KDE Neon uses a stable Ubuntu core with an up-to-date KDE desktop package.

<comment><USER38> I am actually running Kubuntu, guess I need to give Neon a try. The only reason I went for Ubuntu was for the drivers of the video and the headset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That will be great for Gnome3 extensions too. Although they are great and there are some very useful ones, I have this feeling that a few of them look a bit abandoned. There's much potential there to be explored.

By the way, I miss a few functionalities from Gnome2 in Gnome3. These extensions make it complete for me.

\- [AlternateTab][1]. I can't get used to grouping windows by application. It requires one extra step to get to a target window. I think workspaces do a better job for organizing windows.

\- [WorkspaceGrid][2]. I like this way workspaces are organized better than a single line. Makes them more accessible in a 4x4 setup.

\- [TaskBar][3]. I miss the task bar from Gnome2. I still use 'Activities', but it requires one extra step to get to a window. It's great for having an overview of your applications, though. I enable a single taskbar at the top.

\- [PixelSaver][4]. Remove the title bar and blends the close button with the task bar. Saves a few pixels when the window is maximized.

[1]: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/)

[2]: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace- grid/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/)

[3]: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/)

[4]: [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel- saver/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wish they did not make the jump to systemd so fast on LTS. I had to rewrite everything on a recent upgrade.

<comment><USER42> I've been running everything using supervisord lately -- then I only need to maintain a single system startup script. And I can use supervisord under OSX easily as well to run the same stack of stuff.

<comment><USER43> I use supervisord a lot as well, though I actually had issues getting it up and running on the latest Ubuntu. It seems that it isn't enabled immediately after installation via apt-get, but has to be manually enabled. Minor hiccup, but a small pain.

edit: specifically, I think this was my issue: [https://github.com/Supervisor/supervisor/issues/735](https://github.com/Supervisor/supervisor/issues/735)

which seems to be patched now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I disliked Unity. But overall its a loss. Its back to wandering the Desktop- desert again, always traversing from one "soon-to-be-good" Desktop to the next, none of them willing, to force the underlying applications to respect the users work, aka as storing once made decisions and sharing them between applications. I know, Unity didn't provide that either - but it was the one chance to move into the right direction on all devices.

</comment><comment><USER45> This can be good. In paper less fragmentation means bug correction, performance optimization, and others it's centralized with more resources and bigger communities. Who knows maybe this was the thing for Wayland to get out of the always-kinda-beta field.

I know there are some people who love Unity, and I hope for them a fork community-developed to emerge. It's sad when your software you use daily it's victim of something like this

<comment><USER22> Competition is always good, we noticed some non canonical projects getting speed when Canonical launched alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Never liked and never used Unity, but defaulting to GNOME 3 is also unattractive to me. MATE or Cinnamon would be more welcome.

<comment><USER47> Completely agree. Gnome 3 is pretty but annoying. Fortunately there is Lubuntu if you fancy a lighter, more functional DE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year" \- year of the Linux desktop is next year then - sounds about right.

</comment><comment><USER49> Never been a fan of Unity, glad they're dumping it and finally going back to something that works.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hallelujah!!!

<comment><USER51> Was anyone forcing you to use Unity against your wishes? Why are you glad I have one less option? In fact it was my daily driver for quite a while, I'm pretty sad about the news.

<comment><USER52> Diffusing resources. In this case one good option might be better than 2 mediocre options.

<comment><USER51> It doesn't automatically follow that all the developers that were working on Unity will now be working on Gnome.

<comment><USER53> Am not OP, but this is more than unity v gnome -

it is wayland vs mir, which had the potential to much more radically fragment linux GUI applications over the long run..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What's the point of using Ubuntu now? Fedora will look the same and will be better.

<comment><USER55> Ubuntu being debian based is a huge reason for me. Apt is both more familiar and easier to use than yum/dnf, at least for me, but I'm sure for many others as well since most of the time, the first distro they try out _is_ some form of Ubuntu.

<comment><USER19> I read this so often, but I have no idea why people think that.

* dnf's basic commands are all obvious: install, search, update and info - unlike the seperation between apt-get and apt-cache

* dnf automatically fetches and updates the repo cache

* dnf can rollback entire transactins

* dnf supports delta-upgrades, which speed up things a lot on slower connections

* dnf makes unattended upgrades easy (just add -y), apt may still ask questions even with DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

The new apt tool improves on some of these issues, but dnf is still a much better tool in my opinion.

<comment><USER56> Dnf? Oh, so they replaced yum? Which in turn replaced whatever it was RH used before...

In the meantime, apt-get has been there (and "good enough") from before yum even existed. I really don't like re-learning for the sake of it; the less I need to know to run a box, the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> THANK FUCK!

<comment><USER58> I also sighed with relief. Generally this is what happens with Linux desktop through several technologies compete and one comes through after a while as the winner. Now that Wayland is actually shipping and with the whole community shortly behind it I hope to see some nice improvements in the Linux desktop in the next few years.

If someone could fix Network Manager that would be nice though...

<comment><USER57> Seriously. When they announced Unity, the only thing I could think of was "too many cooks in the kitchen." I have no trouble with choice, but too many options is devastatingly fragmenting. The investment should have gone with Gnome to begin with, as Ubuntu had already made the commitment to that project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I no longer care. I'm having a blast with the user land under WSL.

<comment><USER60> Gotta admit- it's really cool. But I still more often than not fire up a linux under virtualbox on my windows box. I'm actually pretty delighted at how well vb works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> And if they are looking for a new fad, please let it be a natural language interface.

</comment><comment> grey-sunshine People just love to hate unity. Haters are losers.

</comment><comment><USER62> "Six years after making Unity the default user interface on Ubuntu desktops, Canonical is giving up on the project and will switch the default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME next year."

Yes, yes yes! That's fantastic! I hate Unity and I love GNOME. Good choice. Too bad it's going to be April 2018 until then, but this should teach anyone: It's never too late to revert a stupid design decision!

<comment><USER63> > "Six years after making Unity the default user interface on Ubuntu desktops, > Canonical is giving up on the project and will switch the default Ubuntu > desktop back to GNOME next year."

Now imagine if 6 years ago Canonical had spent all that time and effort into improving existing DEs and implementing Wayland-support instead of their (already then) NIH initiatives.

Where would we all be now? Certainly not still stuck in this same, unimproved X11 sinkhole (yes yes, apart from Fedora-users, I know).

Such a shame they had to spend more than half a freakin decade to realize their mistake.

<comment><USER64> > Certainly not still stuck in this same, unimproved X11 sinkhole

I really don't care about it being X11 under the hood, I care about the sidebar on the left being gone.

<comment><USER29> I prefer it there.. if Windows start menu weren't weird on the left, I'd have it there too... my mac dock is on the left as well. I have more horizontal space than I typically use, while vertical is at a premium.

<comment><USER64> I use fullscreen windows only, so all the space is used all the time anyway.

I think that had they made its position configurable as half the Internet asked for since the start, Unity would have been way less hated.

Anyway, there's still a top bar, the one that has the clock and so on. Two bars doesn't save space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's about time.

</comment><comment><USER66> They should get behind Enlightenment. I hear Samsung is big on it.

</comment><comment><USER67> Thank God. That thing is and always was an abomination.

<comment><USER51> Nobody was forcing you to use it. I found Unity had the best usability from all the OSes, including macOS and Windows.

<comment><USER29> I like the windows taskbar a little more... but prefer the top-bar (similar to mac), and don't care for the mac dock nearly as much as either. Unity is definitely better out of the box than most linux DEs imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The link to Shuttleworth's blog is failing with error 110: connection timeout. I am glad the article provides a reasonable summary.

EDIT - I am curious why I am being downvoted. Is the article not a reasonable summary?

<comment><USER12> Interesting articles are copied on this website: [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for- cl...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and- iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/)</comment></comment>


What I've Learned Working with 12 Machine Learning Startups - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/what-ive-learned-working-with-12-machine-learning-startups-a9a3026d2419 <comment><USER2> This could be resumed as "ML and AI are just tools, know when/how to use and be fine".

The AI hype takes for granted that you don't need to organize your data, not even understand it, just add another layer and things will happen by themselves. Dealing with this kind of expectation is hard...

</comment><comment><USER3> Excuse me for the expression, but it sounds like you are changing job like others are changing underwear. We would never call someone in for a interview if they change jobs that often. Why should we? As soon as it get a bit hard you are out of the door on your way to the next job. When we look at peoples CV and see this pattern the application get rejected immediately.</comment>


Apple Finds Christianity Offensive To Large Groups of People, Removes App - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncregister.com/blog/apple-finds-christianity-offensive-to-large-groups-of-people-removes-app <comment><USER2> "The Manhattan Declaration is an ecumenical document promoting traditional marriage, the sanctity of human life and religious liberty. It's been signed by almost 500,000 people and is extremely civil and respectful in language."

"Traditional marriage" is nothing but a euphemism disguising a belief about what other people should or shouldn't do. "The sanctity of human life" is nothing but a euphemism disguising a belief about what other people should or shouldn't do. Neither has much to do with liberty. Using euphemisms may make your language respectful but it doesn't change your intent. Use four-letter words if you want and I won't blink an eye, but try to tell people who they can or cannot marry (and thus receive unequal protection of the law) and we will have a problem no matter how you couch your words.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a follower of Jesus and take God pretty seriously and I can't find the energy to care about something like this. This sort of thing always strike me as a way to say "We're the good religious people and we believe X and we know we're the good people because we believe X." That's a bunch of crap.

If you read Paul's letter to the Romans his main argument seems to be that thinking being an insider is what makes you better is a path you don't want to be on. He goes to great lengths to show that just knowing what's right is meaningless because it's going to lead to judging people and feeling superior. To put it another way you could say the Christian point of view on this sort of thing is that "If you consider yourself superior to one person God considers you worse than they are." Paraphrasing Thomas a' Kempis a bit there.

If Apple banned an app that showed the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed I'd be more concerned. Those statements sum up with Christianity has meant to people for a very long period of time. This sort of thing shouldn't probably have been written let alone had an app produced for.

</comment><comment><USER4> This may get the 2010 award for most sensational headline. In no way does the article make the case that Apple finds Christianity offensive.

Sensational blogging at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a staunch atheist, but when I read this article, my first reaction was that apple overstepped their bounds here.

Then I read the text of the Manhattan Declaration. Sure enough, there is decidedly very anti-gay marriage and anti-choice language in it.

"...the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies..."

"...by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth."

This is pretty extreme language, and I don't think the app store should be a political soapbox for it.

<comment><USER6> So it's not clear to me: what is this app? Is it a text document? Did this group really go through development efforts to build an app as, basically, an ad?

If so, I think people are misunderstanding the point of "there's an app for that".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems reasonable to me. It's pretty clear that inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration is openly anti-gay (or, at least, widely perceived as such by the gay community no matter how much its purveyors would protest otherwise), it's just as much a violation as openly racist material would be.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why are some young talented people so eager to be on the losing side in this "culture war" (his words)? It's sad to see a guy like this who is ignorant of his own religion's history.

The Christianity of today is not the Christianity of 1000 years ago.

The Christianity of 100 years from today will not be the Christianity of today.

Christianity redefined marriage over the last two millennia, so clearly redefining marriage is Christian.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think that Apple should have pulled this. Certainly there are pro-gay apps on the store that some people find just as offensive as the gay community might find this app. However, Apple doesn't have to feature either of these apps on the front page or any other page and they can easily be made available only by looking explicitly for them. Wouldn't those measures debunk the idea of the app store being a "political soapbox"?

<comment><USER10> the government can't have an opinion. corporations? thats a whole different thing. Apple can do whatever they'd like with their app store. judging by how much money they're making, I'd bet most people either don't care, or approve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At first I was very wary of this. These people believe this, what's wrong with that?

Then I had a closer look, and I guess it's easily codified for me. Something is offensive if a group of people want to remove rights from another group, when the first group have those rights and don't benefit from the second losing them, except in an abstract, "It devalues us as beings worth of those rights!" kinda way.

Which, if you look at it, is also saying "We want to be better by having X, if you let them have X, we won't be better!" OR, in even simpler terms, "They're not as good as us. Fuck'em."</comment>


Mandrill gives all developers 60 days to switch to paid Mailchimp service - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/02/25/in-hostile-move-mandrill-gives-all-developers-60-days-to-switch-to-paid-mailchimp-service/ <comment><USER2> I hope this fires back to them. I love(d) their service, i just have no need at all for Mailchimp. I cant justify paying $10 a month for a service i have no use for just to be able to pay even more money to send emails.

I am happy to pay for Mandrill, am not willing to pay for Mailchimp tho.</comment>


The most impressive Nigerian startup I have seen. Precurio Intranet portal - <AUTHOR> http://www.precurio.com/index.php <comment><USER2> Man, it must be hard to run an online business from Nigeria. Huge stigma and lots of the internet ip-ban it, won't ship equipment and gear there, banned or at least heavily scrutinized on many banking/payment sites... must be a hassle to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive stuff. I wish they didn't use stock photos. No matter how nice the web design is, stock photos make it all feel "cheap". Please either take a camera and make your own photos, pay a professional photographer to make them for you or create a design that doesn't need photos.

Once again, avoid using cheap stock photos. (Same goes for avoiding using cheap production library music for videos on your site.)

<comment><USER4> Icons are ripped from KDE too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What is more impressive is that they have an Open Source component/model to it. I hope this will show that #madeinNigeria can be good at times if not all the time :).

Should huddle.net be Afraid :)?

</comment><comment><USER5> Would you really host your Intranet on the Internet? I guess it depends on the type of information you're handling.

Still, I wish these guys all the best.

</comment><comment><USER6> Uh ... I kind of interpreted the headline as saying that this was, somehow, a Nigerian (aka "419") scam. I guess it isn't, it really _is_ an impressive startup, that just happens to be based in Nigeria? Cool.

I hope (for their sake) that not more people have the same unfortunate prejudice.

<comment><USER7> true... the most impressive 'african' startup would have been a 'clearer' title..

<comment><USER8> Not really, as there are surely equally impressive startups from countries like Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. The difference between this being the most impressive Nigerian startup the author has ever seen and it being the most impressive 'African' startup the author has ever seen is vast.

The stigma attached to anything Nigerian on the internet is unfortunate, but will hopefully fade in time. And one of the best ways to overcome that stigma is to continue presenting sites like this which showcase a positive Nigerian commercial online presence.</comment></comment></comment>


Scale: API for Human Tasks - <AUTHOR> http://www.scaleapi.com <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting, is it safe to pass sensitive data to your workers?

<comment><USER3> If there's any information that's extremely sensitive, we'd work with you to find a good way to anonymize it to the workers. Other than that, we don't need to store your files so you could completely control the content. :)</comment></comment>


Comparison of lossless PNG compression tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.olegkikin.com/png_optimizers/

<comment><USER2> Linux, BSD, OSX ports of PNGOut: <http://www.jonof.id.au/kenutils>

<comment><USER3> MacOS X droplet GUI arount PNGOut: <http://www.gingerbeardman.com/pngenie/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title made we wonder if there was such a think as lossy PNG - apparently yes: <http://membled.com/work/apps/lossy_png/>

<comment><USER5> Any lossless format can be made lossy by simply performing a lossy pre-pass prior to the lossless compression.

The real challenge is finding a good way to perform the pre-pass; it's easy to pick a simple naive method, but optimality is likely exponential-time, or if one is lucky, polynomial with an intractable constant (using trellis).

The fact that PNG uses a dictionary-based compressor instead of a PPMD-like system likely makes the problem much harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On rare occasions, running your image through PNGOUT a second time will save you an extra couple bytes.

<comment><USER7> If that desperate, one could also try:

       for a in 0 128 192 256 512 1024 ; do pngout file.png -b$a ; done

(Or the equivalent for your favorite shell.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does PNGout do different? I tried optipng with -o9, which is an exhaustive search, and it didn't make the file as small as the PNGout one.

I though -o9 tried every possible method of encoding the png, but I guess it's missing something.

Edit: I found my answer: <http://optipng.sourceforge.net/pngtech/optipng.html> \- apparently the png filter can be applied to each row independently. But I think optipng uses the same filter for the entire image, not each row.

<comment><USER7> From optipng's todo.txt:

      - Compression improvements:
        Use zlib's deflateTune().
        Use 7zip's powerful deflation engine.
        (This is not possible with libpng, so a custom encoder is needed.)

AdvanceCOMP uses the same deflate code as 7zip. PNGout uses a deflation engine that claims to be better than 7zip's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There doesn't seem to be a Mac or Linux port for PNGOut; the link redirects to a forum about GTA. And isn't PunyPNG a web front-end for OptiPNG? That would explain the lack of any real differences between the two.

Also, would be good to know what flags were used when compressing the images.

// edit: See @ccollins post for a link to Mac/Linux/BSD ports of PNGOut.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe there should be a wrapper that runs them all and spits out the smallest file?

<comment><USER11> There is one: <http://imageoptim.pornel.net/> (not mine) unfortunately it's mac-only.

If I have time left I might try making a linux (Qt?) version myself in the future.</comment></comment>


Queen tours RIM - <AUTHOR> http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/802112

<comment><USER2> Oh.

I was wondering who was filling in for Freddie Mercury.</comment>


Monsanto Banned from European Parliament Due to Influence on Glyphosate Studies - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/monsanto-banned-from-european-parliament <comment><USER2> The doors of the American Senate are still wide open though, so what's the point?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this is a turning point, probably not, but we'll see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> About time, though given EP's real influence on policy (minimal), I'd question what difference this will make. It's with the Commission and Council that real power resides.</comment>


Show HN: FlubuCore a .net cross platform build and deployment automation system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/flubu-core/flubu.core <comment><USER2> I didn't see if this supported .NET Core?</comment>


Ask HN: Nicks how often are they used these days? - <AUTHOR> In 90s we always have referred to each other by nicks, it was elevating sort of personality not assigned to you from birth but realized these days people get confused when you do that even in my nerdy circles.<p>IMO it is a loss. <comment><USER2> They are still the norm on IRC-based chat applications and various forums. If you move away from social media networks, you will see nick usage a whole lot more

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a couple friends (in their 20s) who have nicks that they use pretty much exclusively for online communication, but it's increasingly uncommon. I've got a unique enough real name that I can use my first name on many services no problem, and if not my first+last is almost globally unique. People with more common real names often find more use for pseudonyms. I see it much more in the infosec community than anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER4> What does legally changing your name to your nick count for?

Joking aside, still see nicks commonly. Discord is almost exclusively screennames, IRC's as it ever was. Twitter is a mix of real/screenname, often with the same people having an RL name presence which is less used/more carefully curated.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was just chatting with some girl about this..Back in my AOL days you would get hit with the 'YOU=' or 'U=' as soon as you entered a chat. Mostly because we had thousands of aol logins and was always on a different account.

<comment><USER6> Can you explain this YOU= thing?

<comment><USER5> user: you= me: -txt Asking for our real nick or handle or screenname whatever you wanna call it....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My wife plays video games with a group of players and though they all know each other's real names by now, they still call each other by their game names. They call me "Mr. YYYY" where YYYY is my wife's nick name.

</comment><comment><USER8> Still common in infosec, gaming, and even just Twitter/Instagram accounts if the owner prefers to show a nick rather than their real name..

</comment><comment><USER9> Still common in gaming circles. I've met some of my gaming friends many times and they're still their nick to me.

<comment><USER10> I have a bunch of my online poker friends from 10 years ago on Facebook, but when I run across their feed, their usernames flash into my head immediately.

When we talk about the others, we only refer to nicknames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks Facebook for that. They somehow decided that your real life persona should be === to your digital one.

</comment><comment><USER12> I miss everything about how 'pseudo anonymous' used to be the norm on the internet

</comment><comment><USER13> What's a "nick"?

<comment><USER14> Nickname. "nick" for short; the IRC term is also 'nick'</comment></comment>


Preliminary Macintosh Business Plan (1981) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/2009/102712692.05.01acc.pdf <comment><USER2> Notice all the emphasis on how the Mac would benefit from being $1500, significantly cheaper than many other machines of the era, even Apple //.

Macintosh instead debuted at $2495 — considered by many in hindsight a big mistake. The much more usable version with 512k(vs 128k) was north of $3000. This is all in 1980s dollars, too.

(IIRC the launch of Mac coincided with a spike in RAM prices.)

<comment><USER3> Here's Andy Hertzfeld's view of how the Mac pricing evolved:

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Price_Fight.txt)

<comment><USER2> I had no idea that a $50 cost overrun on a disk drive pushed them up $500 to $1995! Not sure I agree with the logic there. Then it seems to have been one bad executive call from there to $2495 (thanks, Sculley). So you could argue (it's a stretch!) that the $50 drive price increase ended up driving the price up $1000.

<comment><USER3> Well, read that sentence again...

"When combined with _a few other recent splurges_ , it pushed us over the top, so we grudgingly accepted that the Macintosh would have to debut for $1995."

What those other "splurges" are is unclear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was this for the Jef Raskin-era Mac, that was more of a Canon Cat that what we today think of as a Macintosh?

</comment><comment><USER3> The plan mentions project "VLC" which seems to be the //c. But what was project "Doublemint"?

<comment><USER5> External minifloppies (Doublemint): [https://archive.org/stream/Apple_Lisa_MRD_Marketing_Requirem...](https://archive.org/stream/Apple_Lisa_MRD_Marketing_Requirements_Document_Apr80_alt/Apple_Lisa_MRD_Marketing_Requirements_Document_Apr80_alt_djvu.txt)

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Side-Channel Leaks in Web Applications - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=119060 Despite encryption, the contents of web application traffic may be inferred by side-channels. Some features like auto-completion can be especially susceptible. <comment><AUTHOR> Despite using encrypted channels, web applications can leak contents through side-channels. For instance, the response size of query auto-completion can reveal what you're searching for.</comment>


Learn lisp in 5 steps - <AUTHOR> http://anthonyf.wordpress.com/2006/07/13/learn-lisp-in-5-easlily-written-steps/

<comment><USER3> This list of steps applicable to learning any programming language. 1.) Switch to appropriate environment 2.) Download an IDE built for your language 3.) 2 + [insert language]Lint 4.) Read some books on the language 5.) Write a program that actually does something useful

<comment><USER4> Requiring an IDE specific to your language should be the exception, not the rule. Why the hell should you have to learn a completely different editor just to try out a new language? Is the language really so verbose and inexpressive that you can't even maintain it by hand?

<comment><USER5> An IDE is about making it easier to deal with your own code, not the language per se.

Any nontrivial program... say 50,000+ lines, would benefit from an IDE. Helps even simple tasks like finding all uses of a given function or pretty printing.

<comment><USER4> Oh. My objection isn't to having to learn _an_ IDE, it's having to learn a new IDE, _specific to that language_. If you already know an editor which is excellent for editing, indexing, searching, navigating, slicing and dicing text, why should you have to learn a new editor that only even works for that one language (that you may not even use, in the long run)? Being that tightly coupled to the IDE should raise a red flag about the language's longevity / flexibility.

If my editor/IDE has to call out to utilities included with the language to run build tools, generate some kind of navigation tags, etc., that's fine. Needing a completely different editor just for that language seems crazy, though. If it's going to insist on that, it should at least be Smalltalk. ;)

By all means, put your time into an IDE which will remain useful for the next years (if not decades).

<comment><USER5> Ok, I largely agree... you really should be able to get away with knowing any of vi, emacs, vs, or eclipse ... getting language specific features via addins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like anyone on HN has a basic idea of how to go about learning a programming language. If you sub in appropriate $books and $IDEs, there's nothing language-specific in the post. And to be honest, nothing all that new or all that notable.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, this is fluff, people are only responding to it because mentioning Lisp pushes HN's buttons.

If you want to read something good about Lisp, check out _Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming_ by Peter Norvig, David Kranz's _ORBIT_, SICP, Dybvig's _Three Implementation Models for Scheme_, or the Lambda papers (<http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I keep seeing all this talk of learning lisp but not a whole lot of rationale. Why should we learn lisp?

What will it replace? Why will it replace? etc...

<comment><USER8> I'll take a small stab at giving a satisfactory answer.

Some of these apply to all Lisps, some don't apply to different Lisps, for varying reasons of implementation.

There are two basic reasons for learning a language - personal growth and for creating a product. In the realm of 'personal growth', Lisp opens the doors in your mind to working with macros and homoiconic code. It also shares with other dynamic languages the features of closures, currying, and the usual benefits of first-class functions. Scheme (as opposed to Common Lisp) has continuations, which are very powerful. These are all features that open the mind to new ways of thinking, hopefully for the better.

In the realm of the pragmatic -

Lisp- unlike other modern dynamic languages I know of ( I think Smalltalk can do this)- maintains an ability to version running objects in a system. It can perform hot-swapping of code remotely without bringing the run-time down. I haven't delved into this deeply yet, but I plan to later on. I _believe_ Erlang is the only other major language that can hotswap well. Further, unlike the other mainstream dynamicaly typed languages going (Ruby, Perl, Python), Common Lisp can compile functions directly to native code. You will find SBCL is one of the best dynamic language contenders on the Alioth Shootout. (I'm not sure how Haskell and OCamls classify - I think they might generate binaries).

Therefore, Lisp is a good candidate for code that requires 'relatively' good performance, but isn't worth taking the time to do in C++.

The commercial Lisp implementations have GUIs that are supposed to work seamlessly on any of the 3 major OSs. That's a major feature in my book.

Lisp is famous for its ability to be expressive via its macro facility and the regular notation. So if you have a problem which your language is fighting you with - maybe you should find Lisp and check it out.

I've done some small work with a Lisp program that dynamically created random functions and then mucked with them on the fly in an optimization effort. It was, bluntly put, trivial to do the meta-function work. The chief difficulty was the actual algorithm (and my inexperience with Lisp. :-) ).

In regards to basic Lisp data storage, it is analogous to JSON's relationship with Javascript: really easy.

So to move this from a boostering to an engineering post, I'd like to consider some of the cons of Lisp.

Con 1 is the tooling. It's not as flashy as Java's or C#'s. If you need your IDE and refactoring tools, it's not going to fly for you. Personally, I just hang out in emacs for all development, so it's water off a duck's butt to me. :-)

Con 2 is the wreck of library finding. Quicklisp moved us into the 2010s with its release: it's on par or better than, say, cpan or gem. But there are still tons of libraries floating out there with crufty code that MAY be useful. This goes along with the ability of Lispers to write the same utility over and over again. Or, worse, have the same name for multiple libraries (clon for instance). I think that the library situation is getting way better though thanks to Xach.

Con 3 is the system integration. Like Python/Perl/Ruby, directly integrating into system calls is not trivial in the core language. This is massively different from C# or C++, where a system function just an using or an #include away. Common Lisp does have a solid foreign function interface from what I understand. I haven't used it yet though.

Con 4 is the lack of ability to run on super-low memory systems easily. Usually a Scheme-Lisp can be crammed in (I know of one that's been put on a system with 64K of memory). But I'm not convinced anything but C or ASM is the right tool for this job.

Con 5 is, let's face it, the weird. Continuations. Closures. Unrestricted lambdas. Macros. Parentheses. _It's not Python/C++_.

I'm not saying Lisp is the Uber-Language, the Ultimate Language From Which We All Go To (although historically, the ur-Lisp is the primordial ancestor of all dynamic languages from what I can tell). What I am saying is that it is a _respectable general purpose language_.

<comment><USER4> Haskell and OCaml both typically compile to native code, and since they have REPLs, may fit your criteria for "dynamic" languages (which is a very fuzzy classification). LuaJIT also performs _quite_ well, and IMHO is very pleasant to work with. Either way, Lisp performance is quite good, _significantly_ better than Python or Ruby, which are often good enough.

Lisp's convenient format for data was a HUGE win, for a while, but other languages have caught up. Python has dicts, Lua has tables, Javascript has JSON, ML has its variant types, Erlang inherited Prolog's terms (its parallel to Lisp's s-expressions), etc. All of the above are _extremely_ useful. Expressive data and simple code is far easier to maintain than overly simple data and compensatingly elaborate code. Languages without a good high-level format for structured data either lose out on a lot of functionality, or (sigh) fall back on XML.

Also, Quicklisp is quite nice, and props to Xach for setting it in motion.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what I mean by a 'dynamic' language. I know it when I see it. ;)

Well, less facetiously: if I can add in-language functions to the image, using the language facilities, while the deployed application is running/paused, I think of that as dynamic.

Data is an interesting thing. There's a crossover point between structured textual data that can be sucked in and when you want to start doing relational queries and stores. Then there's how data is handled in the program. The methods you describe above are very useful, but - insofar as I know of - <USER2> think they can be reimplemented without massive grief in other languages, depending on extensibility. Lua has a good reputation for speed; I take it you use it as a standalone?

<comment><USER4> If being able to update code from a REPL while it's running counts, then yes, though OCaml and Haskell (AFAIK, less experience there) usually involve more edit-compile-reload, to take advantage of the _utterly_ superior compile-time checking. OTOH, Erlang handles "change-in-flight" even better than Lisp does. Of the four, I prefer Erlang, but they're all respectable.

I use Lua both standalone and with C. (Its convenience with linked-in C code won me over from Python, actually.) It's my favorite general purpose language. Nothing against the great performance, but it was a great language before LuaJIT even existed.

Datalog also has a lot of potential as a data format. The industry seems to forget anything invented more than a fortnight ago, though, so it's probably passe until somebody charismatic finally invents it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Step #2 involves learning LISP. As I embark to learn elisp, am I then to re- install Linux and emacs and SLIME? Then make my way to step 2 again...</comment>


Berlin Airport Fiasco Shows Chinks in German Engineering Armor - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/berlin-airport-fiasco-shows-chinks-in-german-engineering-armor.html <comment><USER2> It's not the engineering which is at fault here, but constant fuck-ups by the political management. Two federal states (Berlin and Brandenburg), the German federal government AND the European Union all messing with the project.

I remember the Munich airport, which was finished on-the-day and moved in a single fucking night. This is what happens when politicians don't mess too much with stuff they don't understand.

<comment><USER3> "the new site, the smoke ventilating equipment installed throughout the glass- sheathed structure is faulty even after lessons learned from Germany's worst airport disaster"

That sounds like an engineering fault.

"There are deficits in the sprinkler system and a lack of fire protection on some steel girders used for construction."

Those sound like engineering faults.

"Planners also failed to consider that authorities might balk at an experimental nuclear reactor located under a planned flight path. ... "The risk of a plane crash and an aviation terrorist attack and the release of ionized radiation from the research reactor was insufficiently considered," "

That sounds like an engineering or planning fault, and not a "fuck-up by the political management."

In some sense though, most things everything can be traced back to a people/political problem. The Denver airport baggage handler project some 10+ years ago was due to taking on a very complex task with not enough time, the Hubble Space Telescope problem was due to a decision to reduce funding for testing, and so on. Shortage of building materials could be interpreted as bad planning to acquire the materials and bad management in not allocating enough funds for the task. Problems with the building ground (eg, an unexpected underground stream) could also be seen as bad planning.

So if you want to go that route, then you are welcome. Just be aware that that view means that essentially no project fails due to engineering being at fault.

<comment><USER2> Smoke ventilation/sprinkler systems: the requirements for the airport changed multiple times due to politicians changing stuff around.

Nuclear reactor: environmentalists and local interest groups forced changed flight routes, there was no way to predict this...

Certainly, there were engineering problems. But these happen at every project, it's management job to make sure there's timing buffers.

<comment><USER3> Hence your statement "It's not the engineering which is at fault here" is a truism, and didn't need to be said. _Everything_ falls on management, so with any problematic large-scale build site you can always say there "constant fuck-ups by the political management."

Here's what the court said, regarding the reactor:

Der 11. Senat ist der Auffassung, dass die streitgegenständliche Festsetzung der Flugroute rechtswidrig ist und die Kläger in ihren abwägungserheblichen Belangen (Gesundheit, Planungshoheit) verletzt. Der Festlegung des angegriffenen Flugverfahrens liegt ein Ermittlungsdefizit zugrunde. Das Risiko eines Flugunfalls und eines terroristischen Anschlags auf den Luftverkehr und der dadurch ausgelösten Freisetzung ionisierender Strahlung des Forschungsreaktors wurde nicht hinreichend in den Blick genommen. Eine solche fallspezifische Risikoermittlung wäre notwendige Grundlage einer Abwägung gewesen. Die Risikoermittlung war auch deshalb geboten, weil die Risikobetrachtungen für den Reaktor in Bezug auf den Flugverkehr veraltet waren und die Beklagte darauf durch die Atomaufsichtsbehörde hingewiesen wurde.

Reading the decision (through Google Translate), the planners used outdated information about the crash probabilities, which did not take into account that the flight path would go over a nuclear reactor which was not shielded against airplane crashes. The court took into account information from the Atomaufsichtsbehörde that it was not possible to structurally modify the reactor. There are other factors as well, but using the wrong information _is_ predictable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside the crash of Fling, the London startup that burned through $21M - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-fling-social-media-app-died-2016-11 <comment><USER2> "He swore at his father before hurling a partially-open Pret a Manger baguette in his direction. The baguette, believed to be prosciutto ham, narrowly missed and collided with a glass window above his head"</comment>


Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0916-2 <comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know, this is the biggest study of this kind so far, with a total of 2,618,862 participants.</comment>


RIM is rotting from within - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/233771/rim-rotting-within <comment><USER2> Speaking as an Ontarian with some familiarity with the Waterloo area, I strongly doubt that its rural location has anything to do with RIM's problems.

The "Good Old Boy" syndrome described can happen anywhere. The company is described as having 50-something executives who are out of touch making decisions. You can find hundreds of tech companies like this in Toronto, New York, Seattle, and SV. Some guys build a company, are successful, hire people just like them, times change, but they don't change with it, and refuse to hire new blood.

For a theory like this to be credible, it must explain RIM, but also explain other failures and successes. You can't posit that Apple couldn't have existed in Wisconsin and use that hypothetical as an example to bolster the reasoning that Apple couldn't have existed in Wisconsin. My question is, how did Microsoft succeed in the PNW? And why is it no longer succeeding in quite the same way?

I agree that Waterloo's talent pool is interesting by virtue of UW, but not as deep as SV. Then again, lots of SV companies make these mistakes, so I think it's more fruitful to look at the mistakes than to try to theorize about the environment somehow creating the mistakes, as if RIM would somehow be Apple if they had only relocated a decade ago.

<comment><USER3> I live in Waterloo and also think it's a stretch to call it rural. Sure, it's not a metropolis, but there are about 500,000 people in the immediate region. Toronto, the country's largest city, is also only an hour-and-a-half drive away, along a well-worn, built up commuter route. Overall, South-Western Ontario is the most populous part of the country. I rarely feel like I'm out in the middle of nowhere. There's a definite sense that the city is in Toronto's sphere.

<comment><USER4> Also, RIM isn't just in Waterloo. There's a fairly substantial Mississauga office that is in the Greater Toronto Area. RIM also has offices in Ottawa, the US and Britain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _it is unacceptable in this day and age that a global brand should have the vast majority of its citizens derived from a [...] less important country (Canada), that does not have a history of empire_

Wuhhh? The article makes some good points but this quote stuck out like a sore thumb to me. What on earth does that have to do with anything?

In any case, being in an unusual location is not necessarily a terrible thing. Companies in SV battle against employees jumping from company to company constantly- everywhere has its challenges.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that bit sounds like chauvinist BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see 'junioreven is the new 'jfruh, posting everything that hits ITWorld in the hopes it'll bring some page views to their site. Can we just set up some kind of RSS scrapey thing and be done with it, guys?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'll preface this with the disclaimer that I'm a University of Waterloo student, so my opinion might be biased. Despite this, I have no particular bias for RIM that I'm aware of, and couldn't see myself owning any of the products they currently produce. I've also never worked for RIM, but I have a number of close friends who have for co-op work terms.

There are a lot of things wrong with RIM, but I think the author of this article missed most of them, focusing largely on a bunch of points that were either irrelevant or incorrect.

First of all, as many have mentioned, Waterloo is not located in the rural heart of Canada, nor is there a particularly huge problem finding talent in the area. Like many universities we have a co-op work program during which students find employment at a variety of companies including Microsoft, Apple and Google. Bill Gates has stated that "Most years, we hire more students out of Waterloo than any university in the world, typically 50 or even more"[1]. This leads me to believe that it's not a lack of available talent that has plagued RIM, but the ability to attract and retain it.

Each term, RIM hires hundreds of students for co-op work terms. From a student's perspective, it doesn't feel particularly challenging to get a job there the same way it would for Google or Facebook. For this reason, I suspect the best and brightest of our classes likely end up working in the States, rather than sticking around here.

There are certainly some cultural issues at play here. Many of the people I knew who worked at RIM were never challenged by their work or held accountable for it and this lead to an incredibly low productivity. I've known people that show up to work there drunk occasionally and high consistently. That same individual went to work at a smaller mobile company his following term and was working unpaid overtime on weekends simply because he enjoyed the work. Of course, this is all anecdotal, but it paints a picture for me about what working for the company must be like.

In my opinion, RIM needs to hire fewer students, and pay them more competitively. They need to hold their employees accountable for productivity and team leaders and managers accountable for the people they oversee.

All this being said, I sometimes can't help but wonder if RIM's problems are over-exaggerated. True, they're losing market share, but they're still profitable on the order of billions aren't they?

[1] [http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo...](http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20051013/billgates_waterloo_20051013/#ixzz1gitjhEDV)

<comment><USER9> Also a UW student. This is hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's totally something I can believe.

One of the reasons why so many RIM jobs aren't as 'exciting' as Microsoft or Google jobs is because in the last last generation of RIM products, they actually had coops do a lot of work that got released into production, and then started playing hell after they left for the term. RIM apparently got burned pretty bad with that, so now attempts to limit how much coop work actually goes into production.

This was from gossiping with a RIM employee who I played Ultimate Frisbee with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Blackberry phones are _must have_ items for UK teenagers (its the BBM accounts, which are cheap or free here, add free wifi over college campus and you can chat for nowt). Skull Candy or Sony headphones listening to music and chatting on BBM is what they all do at lunchtimes. The demographic doesn't stretch to Dr Dre.

Surely some monetization potential there?

[http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/04/iphone-preferred-by-adults- bl...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/04/iphone-preferred-by-adults-blackberry- by-teens-in-the-uk/)

[http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-teen-girls-want- blackbe...](http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-teen-girls-want-blackberries- not-iphones/)

PS: As a 50+ Maths teacher, I achieved instant credibility by purchasing a payg blackberry recently, mainly because I like qwerty phones and wanted a G3 connection, and, yes I live in a provincial city in the UK. Another market?

</comment><comment><USER11> RIM is not done and saying this is nonsense. BlackBerry devices are still selling and will keep selling. They may never again have a huge market share but they are far from dead, a decent market share is all they need. Some people are delusional believing that people don't want BlackBerry smartphones anymore. As a current Android user I can tell you that my next smartphone will not be an Android one. I will not be recommending Android smartphones to anyone I know either. To me BlackBerry smartphones seem like a good choice and that is what I will be recommending if asked.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article is just BS if you are blaming RIM on Southern Ontario because it doesn't have any talent you clearly have no idea about it. How can you compare Wisconsin to Ontario that's just stupid.

</comment><comment><USER13> RIM has an office in South Florida and I believe they came here to pick up the unhappy Motorola Cell Division employees. Anyway, they hired a bunch of people away from Motorola that were just poor quality developers.

I don't think this bodes well for their future as the 2 phones I was involved with at Motorola (as a contractor) were pure disasters and a majority of the US people that were involved were hired by RIM.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmmm. _far from any technology hub that would contain a deep talent pool of developers._

So how do your account for their prior success?

And calling that area "rural" or "provincial" (well, it is within a Province, after all) is just geographically inept. If they were in Whitehorse, that would be one thing.

Perhaps their prior great success exposed them to the possibility of disruption?

I am wondering why we need the articles from itworld here anyway?

</comment><comment><USER15> RIM is done. Only a true miracle can save them.

<comment><USER16> I don't know what qualifies as a miracle these days but I don't think their task is unreachable. They have cash (as far as I know) and they still have some decent brand recognition. They also have a supply chain, and distribution.

They are still in a great position to make positive moves, the fact is they need to make those moves. Soon.

<comment><USER15> Yes, they could make a groundbreaking phone, but to make it profitable would require a miracle.

BlackBerry OS can't compete with IOS or Android, it's too specialized and too crappy.

I think their only way to save themselves is to fire 85% of the executives, which will never happen. They are in charge, and they are getting paid extremely well, while driving company into the ground. They are just trying to squeeze as much money as possible from the dying company, that's why their CEO makes these ridiculous statements.

<comment><USER16> The next phone is going to have a completely rebuilt OS. Are you already writing it off as non competing? How?</comment></comment></comment></comment>