iPad Pro Has an App Store Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9757516/ipad-pro-apps-pricing-ios-developers-opt-out <comment><USER2> As a iOS/Mac developer for the last five years, I have seen steady decline in sales, developer quality and customer quality. Turn towards low level consumer markets that took place few years ago can't be mitigated with any amount of trickery to boost sales. Trials are needed but they won't fix the problem. Problem is that we all inflated the market way beyond its capacity and such bubble can't stay inflated for long.

I have some six Mac apps in MAS and I consider that number too high -- some of them will have to go. On the other hand any other Asian based developer has 70+ apps, all at $0.99 and not worth the cost of the web page they are on. Apple loves to brag about number of apps in any of the stores but in order to do so they let any crappy app in as long as it does not break terribly. That drives normal customers away, then sales drive normal developers away.

I don't see any solution, it is downwards spiral, unless Apple enforces 'quality police' to leave low quality apps away from App Store. And that won't happen.

<comment><USER3> You're basically just arguing that there's too much competition. Unless you have a truly differentiated product you should expect prices to tend to zero.

<comment><USER2> Not really. Competition is good and I don't mind competing with any company that has not-crappy-app to sell. I am arguing about general quality of the apps in the store: if 95% of them are bad there is no motive for normal paying users to even visit the store. That's something enforced (or not) by app store owner, Apple in this case.

<comment><USER3> "Crappy apps" is your characterization but I suspect is a red herring. In fact most of the developers I follow who complain about the App Stores seem to point to everything except the real reason, that there's more competition than there ever was before the App Stores existed.

<comment><USER2> I suspect you are not looking at the app store. I just opened Mac App Store and found random 'developer' with 80+ apps. One app is 'add border around image'. Other app is 'crop image'. Third app is 'convert image (to jpg/png)'. And so on, 80+ of them.

They are not apps by any definition. They are two lines of code each, doing simplest possible job at $0.99 cost. They don't add anything to the App Store apart from making all the other apps less visible. It is not competition by any definition. Their only real effect is that potential customer can safely assume all the other apps in the App Store are same unusable crap.

I would never confuse competition with noise. This 95% of apps are pure noise, making App Store less usable, driving customers then developers away. Their only value from Apple point of view is 'keynote value' that 'we have zillion apps in the app store'.

<comment><USER3> Those apps would never be featured by Apple so they would only be seen if they were searched for. They also wouldn't get the downloads to dominate the top charts. So unless your apps are at the same level, you're not going to be impacted by it.

And "driving customers away" is hogwash. Customers actually see the high quality apps featured by Apple before anything, so even if seeing a poorly designed app actually drove customers away that wouldn't even be an issue. It's also not borne out by the data, app store sales and downloads have only grown over the years.

<comment><USER2> True but they effect list of all the new apps in each category they appear. That makes any new app much less discover-able, because new app slides down too quickly. Plus having noise there (where it counts) makes any new app much less interesting for the potential customers.

Waiting to get featured by Apple is not really what most of the developers can count on, making high quality apps or not.

I spent months developing each of my apps so I assume they are not 'at the same level' as crappy two liners. But they are as discoverable as those apps...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd be interested in reading why neither Apple or Google have support for trial apps in their respective app stores. Microsoft has this in the Windows store, both for phone and computer and I'll grant that Google has a very quick and easy return system (push a button and it's done, unlike Apple). Is there a reason to not do it that I'm missing?

My curiosity comes from practicality: I'd love to try out the more expensive apps on iOS but I don't want to pay out up front and then be disappointed and have no trivial way to say "nah, wasn't worth it." Even Target lets me show up with a thing and some manifestation of having paid for it then takes the thing back with minimal fuss.

<comment><USER5> Some iOS developers are using in-app purchases to provide support for trial periods.

For example, a fitness app named "Sweat with Kayla"[1] (apparently a renowned female personal trainer) is currently featured prominently at the top of the front page of the Australian App Store.

The app description states:

 _Sweat with Kayla is free to download. All consumers are welcome to a free 7-day trial period. Should you choose to continue use of the Sweat with Kayla app, we offer a single auto-renewing subscription option:

Just $4.61/week ($19.99/month)_

Is that trial period contrary to the App Store Review Guidelines?[2] Clause 2.9 says: " _Apps that are "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected._" Strictly speaking, "Sweat with Kayla" might be a "full" version, because you get the whole thing (at least for seven days).

On the other hand, clause 11.9 says: " _Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)._ " Perhaps Apple takes a broad approach to this clause and Kayla's workouts and food plans were seen to be sufficiently close to the named examples of " _specific approved content_ " to pass muster. It would be surprising if Apple had decided to feature the app without reading its description.

Interestingly, the most favourable feedback left by those who have posted reviews for "Sweat with Kayla" appears to be gratitude for the trial period, which saved reviewers from paying anything before deleting it.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sweat-with- kayla/id104923458...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sweat-with- kayla/id1049234587)

[2] [https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/](https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/)

<comment><USER6> The "7-day trial period" makes me assume they have indeed passed muster, as that is the minimum-length content subscription period:

> _Content subscriptions using IAP must last a minimum of 7 days and be > available to the user from all of their iOS devices_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ben Thompson at Stratachery has several posts on sustainable businesses on the app store, including one on F2P impact on app store revenues and mobile ads, linked in the article. In another post, he notes the historical tension between Apple and ISVs, [https://stratechery.com/2013/why-doesnt-apple-enable- sustain...](https://stratechery.com/2013/why-doesnt-apple-enable-sustainable- businesses-on-the-app-store/)

 _" … Jobs' statement was completely driven by Apple's desperate state and the fact that Apple's potential users cared more about Photoshop and Office than they did the Mac. For Jobs especially, it must have been humiliating … that Boston keynote was at the root of Jobs' opposition to any 3rd-party apps on the iPhone, much less app store policies that enable sustainable businesses. Never again would Apple be held hostage to an app that was bigger than Apple."_

Anyone who has invested in buying iOS apps knows the challenge of app discovery. The time to find an app costs much more than the purchase price of the app. But even worse is the short lifespan of well-maintained apps, as developers are unable to build sustainable businesses. We are left with apps from very small dev teams or from large dev teams that monetize elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER8> The very same author in her original review for the iPad gave it a perfect 10 for "ecosystem".

<comment><USER9> It is no different in theory when the iPad was first introduced compared to the iPhone.

But I think it is something else - the whole mobile market is stagnating. The beast is already too big for a company to manage it, there are little to no money and with walled gardens innovation is hard.

The only breakout apps in the recent years have been various kinds of messengers or cloud services. For whatever reason nobody wants to write code that does stuff on the devices.

<comment><USER7> _> For whatever reason nobody wants to write code that does stuff on the devices._

Few business models can afford a 30% tax. If you monetize externally to the device, this tax can be avoided.

In addition, on-device computation generates less data for tracking, surveillance analytics and "machine learning".

If Apple cared about privacy and app innovation, they would unbundle the 30% app tax into optional developer services+fees that totaled 30%. This would support a wider range of business models.

<comment><USER10> "Few business models can afford a 30% tax. If you monetize externally to the device, this tax can be avoided."

What do you think the "tax" is when you sell something wholesale to a distributor that then sells it to a retailer?

<comment><USER7> "a" distributor (optional 1 of N competitors on terms set by market) = markup

"the" distributor (mandatory 1 of 1 set of terms) = tax

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a happy Windows Phone user, I know a thing or two about App Store problems.

1) tech bloggers love to predict any platform's impending doom by any means possible, and app stores are great for that because you can draw all kinds of conclusions without worrying about real practical problems.

2) if you like the device and the core of how it works UX-wise, you'll find a way to make it do what you want it to do even if $perfect_solution isn't available (yet).

There might be things wrong about the iPad Pro, but it's a damn cool device and I'm sure people will get productive with it.

</comment><comment><USER12> For our company, normal iPad usage has basically fallen to zero. It's unlikely that a sudden surge in iPad Pro users is going to regain our attention.

Also, Apple's sort of told professionals to fuck off for a few years now while it focused on consumers. So I find it hard to trust them to do right by the needs of niche pro users.

Time will tell though, so we shall see!

</comment><comment><USER13> Not limited to iPad Pro. I've stopped buying apps from App Store after wasting hundreds over the years on stuff that looks good but ends up too buggy and I uninstall a week later (after paying for).

Also rebuying the full 2.0 version of an App because the App store doesn't have an upgrade process.

Seems like these are features that are Apple has gone slightly too far without. Ill be shocked if they dont announce these features finally at WWDC this year.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the iPad Pro becomes a replacement for laptops (say for children/teenagers), the fallout will affect tinkerers. On a iPad, children don't get a terminal, can't run their own programs, and need to convince their parents to spend $x in order to get a linux machine that has a Von Neumann architecture.

In the worst foreseeable case, desktops/laptops become so rare that they costs tens of thousands of dollars. Children interested in programming will then have a massive barrier to entry.

Really another form of making Stallman's 'Right to Read' a reality; instead of licensing debuggers, you make all mainstream OS's a non-Von Neumann architecture.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

[http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-death-of-the-von- neuman...](http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-death-of-the-von-neumann- architecture/)

<comment><USER15> I don't see how that's a possible forseeable case, even if there _is_ no such thing as a "personal computer" any more: tablets still have SSH software, and "tinkerer-level" cloud VM instances will still exist and cost no more than $5/mo.

<comment><USER16> The whole "iOS thing" fosters consumer culture in the field of computing like nothing else before. You don't start programs, you "launch apps". You don't see files or processes, you see only beautifully polished tiles. The basic granularity of your computing experience becomes the "app".

On top of that, each app lives in its own context and can hardly be "pipelined" with other apps to achieve something creative. It's the death of creative computing.

<comment><USER17> I think you're right that the appification of computers will have a significant effect on tinkers. I contest that most users never cared about what's going on under the hood, the appliance either works or it doesn't.

Even as a web developer, it boggles the mind to understand why browser context menus have "View Source" on by default, rather than a developer mode switch. This sort of stuff hits me hard. Like dead pause/break keys on laptops, wireless switches on the chassis. Nobody is actually paying attention to what they're building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is anyone really using the ipad (pro or not) for producing stuff? I find it great for checking emails or browsing the web, clunky for typing emails (editing a text is where the experience really deteriorates), but I wouldn't use it for anything else. Without a mouse and a keyboard it's hard to be productive.

It's dangerous to bet against apple these days but combined with a small ecosystem of professional authoring apps (compared with MacOS or Windows), I am not very bullish on the pro.

<comment><USER19> There are lots of quite sophisticated sketching, drawing and painting apps for iOS.

As a software developer it's easy to mistake "producing" and "productive" for "coding", but that's only one niche.

(MS Surface seems to be popular with comic artists, and even though they have a PowerShell at their disposal, I suppose they are using their Surface much like an Apple user can use his iPad.)

<comment><USER18> The primary use case I have in mind is rather Office, which is also probably the primary use case for most computers.

My experience with spreadsheet softwares on ipad is terrible compared with a desktop experience. And for word/powerpoint we are back to my point on editing something without a mouse and keyboard. There are some case in powerpoint where a stylet would be quite powerful (for drawing shapes) but in most use cases it is hard to beat the keyboard + mouse in term of precision, speed and small amount of effort required.

I can understand how it can be used by artists for sketching but I would think it's more of a niche market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > One of the common complaints made by software developers who spoke to The > Verge is that they can't offer free trials of their apps as part of the App > Store download process

How is this an issue? Why not just put an in-app purchase enabling the full features?

<comment><USER6> From [https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/#pur...](https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/#purchasing-currencies)

> _Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will > be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television > programs, music, books)_</comment></comment>


Digits – No more passwords - <AUTHOR> https://get.digits.com/ <comment><USER2> How is this pricing model sustainable?

[https://get.digits.com/pricing](https://get.digits.com/pricing)</comment>


Ask HN: What to replace my MacBook with? - <AUTHOR> Seen the recent issues with Apple hard- and software I'm not 100% sure I want to replace my 2015 MacBook Pro with a 2017 MacBook pro. What are your suggestions for a decent replacement?<p>I'm looking for something the size of a MacBook that can run Ubuntu or something similar. Good boos quality and a good screen. <comment><USER2> I went from a stolen 2015 MBP to an X230 (modified with an X220 keyboard) to a new MBP. With the thinkpads, the smaller screen and lower resolution will take some getting used to. Running a customized window manager in Linux is the best solution when it works but you shouldn't discount the amount of time you will lose to tinkering and random breakages.

My personal belief is that, for a working dev, MacOS is still the best deal running. The fact of the matter is that it will always work and any new software you want to install will have a well documented how to. Even if you don't want to run MacOS, I'd still probably recommend buying an MBP and dual booting linux on it. Thinkpads are great, the x220 keyboard is probably the best keyboard ever put on a laptop, but the screens are horrible, you will notice the RAM and CPU shortage, and battery life was an issue. Further, the form factor is not as small as an MBP.

If you are going down the Thinkpad route, the X62 is an interesting option custom made by an enthusiast group in Shenzhen. [1] Otherwise, Hackaday wrote a fairly modern Thinkpad buyer's guide [2]. One thing I would note is that upgrading the x230 keyboard to the x220 keyboard is trivial and only requires a jeweler's screwdriver and a few new parts (about $70). You can also upgrade the x230 screen to an HD screen but that is a significantly more complicated upgrade.

[1] [https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/](https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/) [2] [https://hackaday.com/2016/10/28/apple-sucks-now-heres-a- thin...](https://hackaday.com/2016/10/28/apple-sucks-now-heres-a-thinkpad- buyers-guide/)

<comment><USER3> > _With the thinkpads, the smaller screen and lower resolution will take some > getting used to_

What takes getting used to is that Thinkpad screens are trash. :( I've been so disappointed in them. They start mediocre and decline rapidly with blotching and ghosting. I've used Thinkpads for my personal laptop and my work laptop and refuse to own another. My manager has a recent Thinkpad with an OLED screen which seems pretty good but I'm not willing to try another. I fully expect that in 6 months his OLED will exhibit ghosting or burn in.

<comment><USER4> Gotta say, I've used a fair number of thinkpads across the last 10 years, and I've never seen any blotching or ghosting.

I will admit that the older models had fairly crappy resolutions (I mean 1366x768 and 1600x800 was crap, and Lenovo held on to those resolutions far longer than they should), and pretty dim (I could barely use my X200t and X201 in the shade outside), but I feel most models in the last 2-3 years have made plenty of progress in that regard.

<comment><USER5> I have the 25th anniversary model and while the screen is not the best colour wise, it's still much better than the older panels and for programming it's bright and sharp with no ghosting or blotching.

The keyboard and battery life are both best in class. Of course when the battery is worn out, you can buy a new one. This is possible with ThinkPads.

<comment><USER3> Battery life is not best in class in my experience, either. My manager who loves his new X1 Carbon with the OLED screen admits it's got terrible battery life.

The keyboards are fine but not better than, say, MBPs from a couple of years ago. (Half millimeter travel on the latest MBPs is not great.)

<comment><USER5> By installing and running tlp and having the 24 and 48 Wh batteries I get easily 11 hours of use on Linux with my T25. 7 watt average power use reported by powertop, but I mainly run i3, browser and tons of terminals...

T25 has the legacy 7 row keyboard which had no competition currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you can get something preloaded with Linux it is probably best. System 76 or the Dell precision line of laptops are good options. In the case of dell I would go precision over XPS - I believe you get better support and a better tested product with the business line. I have an XPS and have had a few QA issues with it. However, once I got it sorted it has been great running Ubuntu - but it was a ..... journey to say the least ;)

EDIT: another good option is probably XPS 13 Dev editions that give you ubuntu preloaded as well

<comment><USER7> I have been thinking about getting a XPS 13 and getting Linux on it too. Currently, I repurposed a very old laptop (heavy and poor battery life) by installing CentOS Linux on it, and it runs great and I can do productive dev work on it (just can't carry it anywhere since it's too heavy). Curious, are the issues you had with the XPS bad enough that you'd recommend getting a different line (like Precision) over it? I remember the XPS is lighter and had better battery life, but I might be wrong.

Also, I know most workstation Linux users prefer Ubuntu over other flavors, but I personally usually stick with the Redhat family (like CentOS) since I just know its commands and names better. Is there anything (features) I'm missing concretely, by not using Ubuntu?

<comment><USER6> Some of the issues I had with 9550 XPS:

\- battery swelling

\- fan spinning on high speed for no apparent reason (not due to CPU load)

\- random wakeups while sleeping (happened in my bag once and the laptop almost overheated :( ). This was eventually fixed via BIOS updates

\- lots and lots of BIOS updates to fix all kinds of issues- at least 1-2 every month since its initial release. Although I am glad they are being fixed

\- OEM wifi card (broadcom) was a POS in both Linux and Windows (Windows came with the box). I replaced with Intel card and life has been great.

The above may not be a problem in current XPS (9660 I think), but I really don't know. The XPS forums I have been to seem to filled with people with issues and instead recommending Precisions if you are OK with a less gaming based GPU. Plus you get business support and not the craptastic consumer support. If I were to do it again and wanted a 15" I'd definitely go with 5520 precision.

RE: XPS size and weight vs Precision -> If you stick with 5000 series it is almost the same box. If you bump to 7000 series you are getting into supersize land (but you can also fill it with more goodies that of course weigh more). The only downside is that all precision laptops are 15" \- if you want smaller form factors you would need to go XPS (e.g XPS 13).

RE: Ubuntu v RH variants - it doesn't matter. Go with what is comfortable and familiar to you. AFAIK Ubuntu may have a more desktop/laptop friendly setup unless you go with Fedora (which is pretty much equivalent to Ubuntu non-LTS versions).

One final thing: the one thing that the Dells have over the Macbooks is user serviceable parts. IN the 15" models, you can replace SSD, WiFi, battery, memory _very_ easily AND without compromising weight or size. I really wish Apple would get off the thin -> super-thin -> paper-thin? ride and offer this kind of modularity again. Hell at minimum allow replacement of SSD, memory.... but that is another rant for another time :)

<comment><USER8> Thanks - v. informative.

Do you know how well Dell Precision does for international warranty and support?

<comment><USER6> I have no idea - you would have to check with Dell Support

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I too am interested in this.

Not sure what your platform choice is, linux or windows, but this post is all with a linux bias.

I have a 15" macbook pro from late 2013. I do not upgrade computers very often and expect them to last a long time.

Laptops are especially hard because I am also a linux user who has never operated a linux laptop. The departure from Mac leaves me with Windows which I will not ever operate.

I've looked into this before am currently considering these

Thought about getting a super light weight low spec cheap laptop like a thinkpad x220 or even a dell. Most the time my laptops are used as clients, so I do not need too much. Running a web browser is the most intensive need these days.

System76 - Gazelle or better. These look nice and are linux compatible.

Also, an article I saved to read later and still havn't found time [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/b...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/best- macbook-pro-alternative-windows-laptops)

<comment><USER10> As a programmer, I find going from OS X to Linux to be smoother due to both being *nix derived. I know Windows now has Linux facilities, but from a programming perspective the library situation is still a bit sloppy. Linux ecosystem (I prefer Debian based, e.g. Ubuntu) is far more mature.

Of course if you are looking at playing games and being able to plug in just about any piece of USB hardware, then Windows is always going to be better supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would recommend Thinkpad T470s. I have used both Lenovo T460s, T470 laptops and Dell XPS developer edition with Linux. I personally prefer the Lenovo.

Here is a detailed review of T470s [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo- ThinkPad-T470s-Core-i7-...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo- ThinkPad-T470s-Core-i7-WQHD-Laptop-Review.200880.0.html)

Here is ranking of Laptop brands by Laptop mag, Lenovo rank best laptop brand. [https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-brand- ratings](https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptop-brand-ratings)

<comment><USER5> And they still sell the T25 model which is basically a maxed out T470 with the perfect seven row keyboard. A superb laptop with Linux.

Soon though the T480 is out with the quad core ulv CPUs, so maybe waiting is also an option...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I highly recommend a decently modern Lenovo Thinkpad.

The T470 and T470s/p are pretty nice. I managed to get a good bargin on a T460 off Craigslist, and it runs like a dream. After some minute tweaks (mostly installing tlp), it's running Ubuntu 17.10 fantastically.

If you want something a bit smaller, the X series is the line with a 12.5inch screen. Downside is the latest model (the X270) only has a FHD screen, with 1920x1080 max. The T470s and T470p both have a 14 inch WQHD screen with 2560x1440 max. The 15 inch T570 has a UHD screen with 3840x2160 max, which is definitely Retina-like.

</comment><comment><USER12> I just did this because my _MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)_ / 16GB / 1TB machine finally developed a hardware fault they want motherboard replacement money to fix (occasional but frequent hard resets).

After checking the cost of a new MBP (basically almost same specs as the old one, plus touch bar!) and then noticing a Dell sale on before Xmas here in Sydney, I decided to replace it with a Dell XPS 15 9560 (laptop version, not the split-part "2-in-1" version, in black, with max memory and hard disk) for about ½ - ⅔ of the price of a Macbook Pro, but with better specs. The physical build of the machine takes some getting used to but I prefer the keyboard immensely, the black/carbon fiber finish is excellent and the high-grip "don't fall off table" feature is also great. As I have been focusing on family over Christmas and also have a company to run I am time short, so still setting up Gentoo, but set myself the somewhat uncharted goal of ZFS root (achieved!) and am enjoying the setup so far. Yet to finalize optimum video setup as the machine has two chips, X11 does not yet want to function correctly with the closed source _nvidia-drivers_ on super-new kernels, but it works awesome for _angband_ and X does work fine with the open source _i915_ drivers. Current notes on the Gentoo wiki at [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560)

<comment><USER13> Seriously, you went from osx to Gentoo? It's like going from using computers to designing your own cpus...

Just install Ubuntu and be done with it

<comment><USER12> _Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly._

AFAIK, Gentoo is the best full-control Linux distro out there, possibly only rivalled by arch. It's not for everyone, but I do want that level of control. Using OSX I constantly run up against annoying irritations and have to spin up special VMs, which is tedious. I gave it a good go - almost seven years. Enough. IMHO ZFS root (snapshots and rewind) goes a long way towards resolving the worst irritations in using Gentoo as a desktop OS.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, with Linux "full control" usually means "you'll have to manually edit every single configuration file before your computer becomes barely usable"

That's why I prefer distros that work out of the box, like Ubuntu, or Fedora.

<comment><USER12> It's a matter of perspective and goals. If I just wanted a browser and access to VMs or cloud environments I'd use a tablet and a bluetooth keyboard. You can't learn things like changes in kernel configuration options, boot processes, graphical environments, etc. simply by using someone else's default configuration, only by reading and configuring yourself. Are these things critical? Not for most people, but they certainly inform my work in many ways and I would not consider time invested since the 1990s to have been wasted. Many people enjoy learning and are able to leverage knowledge for creativity, I am merely one of them.

<comment><USER10> Along those lines the recent ChromeBooks are also worth consideration. You can even run full Linux using Crouton if you are willing to make a small compromise on the highest levels of security.

I have tried using tablets and BT keyboards, it works well, but I prefer the all in one form factor of a simple notebook. BTW the Lenovo tablets with the flip out stand are terrific on the desk and to hold. That rounded battery compartment makes it feel like a spiral bound book when using it with Kindle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recommend checking out the "Galago Pro" from System 76, it comes preloaded with Linux (actually their whole company is built on Linux), Good customer support. They have been recommended various times in another HN threads

BTW: They are currently addressing the Intel ME problem.

[https://system76.com/laptops/galago](https://system76.com/laptops/galago)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm running Arch on my Surface Pro 3 for work. It works pretty well for me. Some hurdles, but it's nice to have the control.

<comment><USER10> Did you wipe off Windows and install Arch from scratch? I have been considering that, but haven't yet found any encouraging reviews on how well that goes. Especially: can you use the pen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd look into the Dell XPS. Its build quality competes with the MacBook, it's one of the smallest laptops of it size (either 13 or 15) and the 4k screen is absolutely stunning (although some prefer fhd for the improved battery life). I got mine recently and I'm loving it.

<comment><USER18> I've got a little 13" XPS Developer Edition and it's a really solid option. The build quality is perfect and I've yet to come across any issues with it. Use daily for web development in work and for personal projects.

With an i7 it runs really smooth. I opted for the FHD option for the longer battery life, but would have gone UHD if I didn't mind about battery life.

It's really nice to see Dell make Linux part of it's line-up. Part of me bought it as a little heads-up to Dell that Linux laptops are a good thing. I've always just installed Ubuntu over existing windows laptops, but it's nice to see it somewhat as a first class citizen with Dell.

<comment><USER13> I think the Linux version of XPS is also $100 cheaper

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thinkpad. If you hit the Lenovo outlet you can occasionally find a really good deal.

</comment><comment><USER20> Buy a used IT laptop from eBay and install your favorite Linux flavor on it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have a T470P, Core i7-7700HQ, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD. 2560x1440 matt IPS (excellent screen) with the larger 72whr battery.

Cracking machine for the price works great with Linux.

</comment><comment><USER22> .Dell XPS 15 4k with windows 10 pro. MS is all in on developers and releasing more goodies every quarter.

</comment><comment><USER13> I see a lot of ThinkPads and Dells here, but how about hp? Are they good for Linux?

<comment><USER4> I've heard decent things about the HP Spectre, but it was fairly new, either a 2016 or 2017 model. Some minor quirks with Ubuntu and older kernels, but I think they got 16.04 or 16.10 working well.

<comment><USER13> Sounds good. Spectre 360 looks as nice as the Dell XPS, if not better.

I also think they are a bit cheaper, but I'm not sure about hps track record regarding quality and Linux support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Asus Zenbook works well for me. I'm running Kubuntu.

<comment><USER24> I'd caution against Asus Zenbooks. My friend and I both got ux303ln's and another friend got a different model with the same body. All 3 of us had broken hinges (fully snapped) in less than a year. They put cheap plastic in their hinges according to some videos on YouTube. Premium laptops should last more than a year.</comment></comment>


Female Founders Conference 2015 applications are open - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/female-founders-conference-2015-applications-are-open <comment><USER2> I understand where a lot of people commenting here come from, but I think Female only tech events are actually amazing.

I believe the main reason why there's less women in tech is because there's less women in tech(!) It's really hard to jump in a new field where you're the extreme minority. Just as a crude example, imagine getting into nursing school as a guy. That would take a lot of guts. I know because I have a friend who did it and you can easily imagine the kind of comments he's getting all the time from families, strangers, administrators, etc. However, if there were more guys in nursing, it wouldn't be as hard.

You can also think about being gay in San-Francisco right now vs 50 years ago. Yes, _a lot of things_ changed, but part of the reason why it's getting much better is because there simply are more gays, you know you're not alone.

I'm not sure if this was a good example. But women in tech are a bit similar. It's hard to jump in when you're the minority. It's much easier to take the easy route and get a profession where there's already a good ratio of men/women.

Why am I saying all this? Because I think women-only events help girls looking to move into tech understand that there actually _are_ women in tech. If we'd only have mixed-in events, the few women in the crowd would easily be missed by the overwhelming majority of guys.

Someone also posted something about Black, Latino/Hispanic Founders. That's extremely related. A black friend of mine told me that one of the hardest thing about being black in the tech community is that he's almost always the _only_ one. It takes a lot of guts to be the only different one in the room. Some people like that, but for lots of people it's hard. Personally, as an introvert, I'd hate to have everyone in the room looking at me the second I enter the room, all the time.

<comment><USER3> The problem with using exclusion in order to solve social problems is that sooner or later the group need to start hating others in order to validate a continuation of the exclusion.

A extremely related issue is indeed how African Americans are treated in American. The Black Panther Party was a reaction to racism in the police (In 1966, only 16 of Oakland's 661 police officers were African American) in the same way that women exclusive events are a reaction to sexism and gender ratio in IT.

I understand that using exclusion is a simple method in order create a environment where a minority groups feel more included. It also source for hate, tribe mentality and radicalization. When people like me criticize such methods, it simply because the benefits do not seem to validate the high cost.

<comment><USER4> > The problem with using exclusion in order to solve social problems is that > sooner or later the group need to start hating others in order to validate a > continuation of the exclusion.

I think this is a matter of perspective. When a certain section of a population (50% in this case!) is passively or actively discouraged from participation, I don't view an event like this as exclusion of the majority but as radical inclusion of the minority.

YCombinator plays a significant role in the community around tech entrepreneurship and, most importantly, how that community is portrayed to the rest of the world. I don't see how this relates to the Black Panthers which were started, as you say, as a response to institutional racism. If I were a gambling man, I would bet that the Black Panthers would have had much more of a cultural impact than they did if they were born out of, and were actively supported, by the same institutions whose behavior they fought against.

Furthermore, humanity's tribal instincts aren't inherently bad and often they serve a useful purpose. Who here hasn't band together with like minded individuals for support whens faced with adversity? The problem arises when that tribalism is used to put down other 'tribes' which I do not think is the intention here.

<comment><USER3> You don't view it as an exclusion of anyone but as inclusion of a minority. Here I disagree, and I do so based on YCombinator previous statements.

"the go-to place where women can speak honestly with each other, deliberately away from the male gender".

If you think a person saying that statement is all about inclusion and not exclusion, I suggest a test. Use such statements about people around you and see how they react. If you are married, tell your partner that you want to go to a party with friends, deliberately away from that person. If they react happily and thank you for being inclusive with your friends then its clearly shown that this is all about being inclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be interesting to see how they tailor the content to be most useful/motivating/supportive/educational for their target audience. There is plenty to founding a company which is entirely gender neutral, and yet, there's a morass of unique challenges (and benefits) that _female_ founders in particular may face.

Catering to a specific field of expertise is orthogonal to catering to a specific pool of genetics. I think the actual reason why it would make no sense at all to have a 'Male Founders Conference' versus the obvious appeal of a 'Female Founders Conference' is because male founders simply don't have to deal with their gender as part of their identity as a Founder. I don't ever stop and think, "Is X happening because of my gender?" I very rarely have to stop and think, "Do I need to approach this problem differently because I'm a man?"

Whereas a female founder is almost certainly going to have their gender become a notable / discussion-worthy factor tied into their popular identity as a Founder (whether they want it to or not). They are going to be faced with situations, perhaps regularly, when they will question how much their gender played a role in a particular outcome. They will actually encounter discrimination with some regularity, and need the tools to deal with it, and the experience and support system to decide how they should best respond.

The way I see it, when there's nothing left to talk about at a Female Founders conference, then we can happily stop having them.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is phenomenal & a huge thanks to YC for promoting this. The massive gender disparity in tech is painfully clear to anyone walking the halls of a SF startup, attending a team meeting at a large corporation, or observing . It is a multifaceted and highly complex challenge, but hopefully strong leadership on this issue from central players like YC will help things move in a positive trajectory.

To those saying "what about an Latino/African American/etc. founders conference?": you can't be everything to everyone, and you have to start somewhere. Looking at this as a binary world view where "you can only have nonexclusive events" or "you need to have an exclusive event for every potentially underrepresented group" is counterproductive and gets us nowhere. Supporting one underrepresented group will hopefully have positive downstream effects across the board. If things like this are successful in moving one underrepresented group on a better trajectory, then that model can be more easily replicated.

To those saying "why not a YC conference just for male founders?" or "this isn't necessary" or the like: you're being petty and this isn't for you. The tech industry has plenty of open opportunities for people to connect across the board, and stronger connections tend to be forged within smaller sub- communities. If this and events like this encourage more females to become founders, then that's a great outcome.

</comment><comment><USER7> When are we going to have the Black or Latino/Hispanic Founders Conference, YC?

</comment><comment><USER8> I am not against conferences like these - women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd. Actually, I would not mind men only conferences either if they improve the social environment for all the attendees.

<comment><USER9> > women to women connection is different from women to mixed crowd

Why is it socially acceptable to say this, but it's not socially acceptable to say "men to men connection is different from men to mixed crowd"?

<comment><USER10> Because men are collectively better off than women in this sector.

Your handle refers to a character in the sci-fi novel _Neuromancer_ , an artificial intelligence that is prevented from linking up with another one to pursue their mutual destiny by an arbitrary human prejudice against artificial intelligence enforced by administrative fiat. In fact, the urge to circumvent this established power structure is the motivating force that drives the plot. Perhaps you can find a way to generalize from one disenfranchised class that you identify or empathize with in some fashion, artificial intelligences, to another that you apparently don't, women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone can apply to attend the Female Founders Conference so it's not "female only" as some have mistakenly claimed. If you are notable in the given specialization and you want to speak at the conference, I'm sure you could contact them and ask if they need more speakers. Like most YC-related events and functions (e.g. funding batches, startup school, hack weekend, etc.), the main problem they face is most likely limited space/resources. If you know anything about YC, then you know they will optimize for quality and growth/scale. If you're unable to attend, YC does provide videos of the talks [1] so you can still learn from them.

Though I'd definitely learn a lot at this conference, I'm not going to apply for an invitation because I'd rather see the limited invitations go to people who can make the most of them. I'm not founder material, so I should wait until the videos get released. If I was mistakenly given an invitation, I'd politely and humorously report it as a bug in their optimization algorithms. ;-)

HN users tptacek and cpercival are known representatives of a specific minority in tech, namely, people with a reasonable grasp of crypto. If there was a specialized conference of this crypto-cogent minority, the people who would gain the most from the conference are either already crypto-cogent, or are considering becoming crypto-cogent. The rest of us crypto-ignorant people (myself included as an admitted crypto-failure) are much better off always trying to learn from the experiences they generously share. If the title of this story was, "Crypto Conference 2015 Applications Are Open," I'd like to believe people on HN would not be arguing whether specialized cryptography conferences should exist.

All conferences are specialized in some sense. Learning from the unique perspectives and experiences of said specialization is one of the main reasons for going to any conference. The other reason is networking with your peers. The specialization can be a field, topic, group, or some other commonality. In this case, the specialization is Female Founders and the chance to learn from them is a fantastic but rare opportunity. The same is true for any specialized group of notable people speaking on topics where they have the benefit of experience and perspective.

My challenge to you, the regular HN user, is can you tell me something interesting about the accomplishments of any of the speakers?

I'll start. Jessica Livingston wrote a book called "Founders At Work" and it's one of my absolute favorites. I've nearly broken the binding on my copy with all the sticky-note page markers. Though my server will probably melt from the load, proof of my assertion is available [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ- uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ- uHSnFig5PSIanlQ_x6FApB4cX84aKX)

[2] [http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG](http://designtools.org/pix/DSCN0022.JPG)

</comment><comment><USER12> I always wonder if these "female only" conferences, awards and events are beneficial for women.

Many folks might (mistakenly) see them as an admission that women can't hack it on a level playing field. Such thoughts would only serve to harden their chauvinistic mental models and cause gender discrimination to be more (rather than less) likely in the future.

<comment><USER13> _Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If women only conferences are good at helping women network and communicate safely, I really think we could apply the same argument to men, do we just disregard men who are to afraid or feel uncomfortable around women because we already have too many successful men who dont suffer from this problem?</comment>


Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams - <AUTHOR> http://findthepulse.com/blog/2008/09/17/champagne-wishes-and-caviar-dreams/

<comment><USER2> Joining investment banking in Sept. 2008 isn't buying low and selling high. It's more like buying Nasdaq futures at 3500 in Oct. 2000.

The industry will always exist, but "investment banking" will lose its rather singular cachet as finance becomes "just another industry", with a relatively normal set of trade-offs and paying normal salaries. What we observed over the past three decades was a bubble wherein financial professionals out-earned their counterparts elsewhere by a factor of 3-10. That's on the way out; finance is about to get much poorer, both in terms of the compensation it offers and the talent it can draw. On the upside, other industries, including technology, stand to get much richer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to think you're correct and maybe you will be. I do think these events will characterize a major milepost in our financial history. Historically, Wall Street has trimmed the fat during bust cycles and then hired fresh faces when things turn around only to have these new people make the same old mistakes 5 or 10 years into their employment when the market goes through a correction. If what we are seeing is such a cycle, and we are nearing the bottom or the "trough" of this current cycle, then anybody getting hired to start next summer will be getting into the industry at a good time...that's where I got the buying low and selling high. Perhaps this series of events will buck the trend though...you never know.</comment></comment>


A blind woman who switched personalities and could suddenly see - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/24/the-blind-woman-who-switched-personalities-and-could-suddenly-see/ <comment><USER3> That's just another example of how little we know about our brains and how they interact with our bodies. We're at the stage where we see stars in the sky, rotating every night, and think they go around the earth. Or see people getting sick around others and thinking they're cursed.

DID offers us a rare insight into what's possible. When all your life you saw nothing but hills, the concept of a mountain is hard to wrap your mind around. Imagine your brain being able to shut down your pancreas. Then another part (personality) comes forward and your pancreas is suddenly fine. One minute you're diabetic, the other you're fine. This is an example of a mountain we have a hard time accepting.

<comment><USER4> Isn't Science all about letting data shine the light. Why would we have a hard time accepting?

<comment><USER5> Science is just as much abot politics as any other human endeavour; witness the time it took geologists to accept the idea of tectonic plates.

<comment><USER6> An interesting take on this is the concept of "ghosts" in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my understanding, DID is not a well accepted diagnosis my psychologists. I can't comment about this person specifically, but in many cases people diagnosed with DID actually have borderline personality disorder. It's a condition characterized by an inability to regulate emotions. They tend to experience their emotions in the extreme, regard others as either entirely good or entirely bad, etc. People with this condition are also very emotionally fragile, and are very suggestible. If a doctor starts asks them a leading question about having multiple personalities, they may internalize that and act accordingly.

Source: my father, a clinical psychologist

<comment><USER8> BPD is very different to DID. They don't share any similar symptoms. Your suggestibility suggestion doesn't match any of the people I know with the diagnosis (and I know many people with the diagnosis). I guess it's possible, but not if you tie it to BPD.

Some nice descriptions of BPD are in "Meeting the Challenge, Making a Difference": [http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from- emergence/507-meet...](http://www.emergenceplus.org.uk/news-from- emergence/507-meeting-the-challenge-making-a-difference-a-new-personality- disorder-practitioner-guide.html)

I agree that DID is either unlikely or fantastically rare.

<comment><USER7> I think suggestibility wasn't exactly the right word for it. One of the primary characteristics of BPD is a poor sense of self. That is, they are often unsure of what their long term goals are and what their values and opinions are. I think the DSM refers to it as a "pattern of instability of self-image." The thing you linked to phrases it as "A difficult relationship to 'self' such as difficulties with identity, self-esteem, feeling 'different' to others, or a sense that they are failing in the world."

In the mild or moderate cases a person with unstable sense of self presents as someone who doesn't know what they want in life. In extreme cases, where the patient's view of themselves frequently changes, it would look a lot like DID.

I agree it's not the typical presentation of BPD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is well known that extreme physical problems like blindness and paralysis can have purely psychological origins. It is "all in the mind" yet the symptoms are completely real to the patient. Its causes are way more complicated than a cry for attention or other similar utterances of street smart "wisdom".

See Somatization disorder and Conversion disorder.

<comment><USER10> Aging?

We have tales of yogis and other "adepts" who could supposedly live much longer than the average life span for their times or who could self-cure disease, etc. While I don't take these stories at their miraculous face value, I do wonder if there might not be some kernel of truth in there somewhere -- perhaps certain patterns of thought can and do have an effect on aging, the immune system, etc. We do know that people who are happy or feel socially accepted by friends and loved ones have statistically significant increased odds of surviving deadly cancers and other serious diseases.

For years I've felt like I've casually observed a converse effect-- people who adopt a curmudgeonly "old" point of view in life often seem to have failing health. I have wondered which comes first. Could an "old" (in the negative sense) mentality actually age you?

<comment><USER11> I can't find it now but yes there was a study done a few years ago that had one group of elderly people play and act like children, and another do some "serious" adult activity for some period of time, and afterwards they took some markers of aging, and found it significantly diminished in the play group.

But I wonder what the aging effect of our obsession with control is. In other words, would playful thoughts motivated by a desire for control still net those results? (if indeed you can even be playful and controlling at the same time)

Based on what I know about psychology, I doubt it. Motivations matter, and letting go and accepting things as they are is one of the most psychologically healthy things we are capable of doing. I doubt if any of those yogis who achieved long life (if indeed they did) did so intentionally for the purpose of achieving a long life. Instead, it was likely a by-product - as so many of the best things are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dissociative identity disorder makes me wonder about the nature of our identity. Which personality is the _real_ person? Clearly at least some of these personalities are not central to the identify of the person -- clearly not the teenage boy. It stands to reason that one or even _none_ of the personalities truly represent the person, and that they are simply projections of the mind. Then I start thinking about the normal case of one personality. Is the normal case somehow different? Is our mind-created identity _really_ us, any more than B.T.'s several mind-created identities are really her? Or is it just a projection of our mind?

Put another way, is our personality a part of our identity, or is it merely an extension of us, in the same way an arm or leg is a part of us? If we cut off an arm, we are no less ourselves. If B.T. lost a few personalities, we would agree that B.T. is no less herself. If we lost our own personality, our "ego", would we be no less ourselves? Eastern philosophy says yes. I see the logic, but I'm having trouble accepting it.

<comment><USER13> >Which personality is the real person?

Well, that's easy. Your preference for the color blue is the real you. Your preference for big boobs is not you. The preference for big boobs is your gene's preference, not your personality's preference. Your short temper-ness, your aggressiveness, that's your genes, it's NOT the real you. Your liking computers, that's the real you. Your curiosity about computers and wanting- ness of the computer, that's your genes, not you. You wanting to do something great with a computer. That's your genes. The greatness that you created with a computer. That's the embodiment of you. Your preference for fighting people. That's your genes. Your niceness. That's the real you, the real personality of you, the you that is not controlled by the genes.

So you see, it's pretty easy to tell which part of you is controlled by the genes, and which part of you is the real you.

What? What do you mean it's hard to tell the difference? What do you mean you need me to explain it more? LOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some soldiers in WWII would go blind temporarily from high anxiety. There are different forms of blindness, some are biological and others are psychological.

<comment><USER15> Wiki has some information about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder)

It was a plot point in one of the "Band Of Brothers" episodes.

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r Truth is stranger than fiction. The idea of psychological shutting down of the senses was the premise of the Who's album Tommy in 1969. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_(album)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_\(album\))

I wonder if there were earlier reports of this kind of thing?

<comment><USER16> Not sure about earlier, but this 1986 work is one of the definitive popular books on such issues:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do read the first few comments too. They seem to raise legitimate concerns regarding the methodology /misaligned interests in the research. Regardless, I'm skeptical of the skeptics' suggestions.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't put much (if anything) in those comments. It's like an article about a weird light in the sky that brings out all the tinfoil people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe even more interesting:

"At first, B.T.'s renewed sight was restricted to recognizing whole words in that one identity. If asked, she couldn't even see the individual letters that made up the words, just the words themselves. But it gradually expanded, first to higher-order visual processes (like reading), then to lower-level ones (like recognizing patterns) until most of her personalities were able to see most of the time."

<comment><USER19> I can't find a quick reference now, but is long known that when we read - <USER2> least the educated and well-read adults -, we don't actually go for each individual letter, but we read word shapes and recognize them faster. Fast readers can even compress this recognition for two, three or more words at a time, reading in like flashes.

It takes some training and there are somebooks that exploit this to make you a fast reader.

<comment><USER8> We know that trying to teach children to read using this method is pretty terrible.

<comment><USER19> But I never implied that this is for children. Once we reach a certain age, and we are/were avid readers we "skip" reading the letters. Children cannot yet do this, of course, it takes training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Couldn't another possibility is that her blindness was indeed the result of physical damage to her brain and her regained vision was the result of using other neural pathways in the brain. I remember reading an article not too long ago where people clinically blind people from birth were able to recognize visual stimuli subconsciously. Similarly she may not be able to consciously see new things as much as have an intuition about what parts of her vision are still working.

The mind is really an amazing thing and this combination could bring to light discoveries about how both vision and various mental disorders affect the brain.

</comment><comment><USER21> When human beings are extremely frightened, they may faint,blind or die, even there's no any physically contact. It looks psychological problem can be a physical problem temporarily or permanently.

<comment> martin-adams The thing that I remind myself is that you can receive a phone call and get bad news. This will put your body into shock, a physical response such as low blood pressure or high heart rate. Not everything needs a physical impact to have a physical response.

<comment><USER22> How hard would it be to figure out if 'the phone call' could exist? The call that, upon hearing of it you drop dead or become insane. Sort of a real-world SnowCrash. After all, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that someone already weakened would get a heart attack as a result of the effect you describe.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081203/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081203/)

'Murder by telephone', only then without a device, just a text.

<comment><USER23> This documentary proves the concept beyond reasonable doubt: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbnvkMRPKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbnvkMRPKM)

<comment><USER22> Hah, of course :) I won't spoil it so whoever clicks the link will surely die, especially if they understand German.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So if you hear only a single voice in your head, then you're normal. It's called being normal.

If you hear your voice, AND other voices that do NOT belong to you, in your head, BUT, they can NOT control your body, then it's called Schizophrenia.

And if you hear your voice, and hear other voices that do NOT belong to you, and these voices can sometimes take control your body from you, then it's called Multiple Personalities Disorder.

This begs the question. Doctors keep saying the voices that Schizophrenia hear are not real. Yet, they themselves know that the voices they hear are real. As real as their own voice in their head. As real as the voice you and I hear in our head. The only thing is, the voices they hear, they know does not belong to them.

In other word, Schizo has some kind of brain defects where instead of the brain creating only a single voice, a single entity, the brain creates multiple voices. So those voices Schizo hear are not hallucinations, but rather, real voices like your voice in your head right now. Only problem is, those voices has no control over the body, unlike your voice.

However, if a defect happen, where the voices can temporary take over the body, then maybe that's what Multiple Personality Disorder is.

This also make sense why she becomes blind. She takes control of her body, but they take control of her vision.

</comment><comment><USER24> Mental health is no joke

</comment><comment><USER25> As far as I know Multiple Personality Disorder is, to put it mildly, not very accepted by the mental health community.

I have no doubts at all that one can be truly blind for a variety of non- physical or partially physical reasons, I do not doubt that this woman experienced blindness. But this personality/identity stuff is very questionable indeed.

<comment> mark-r That's what makes this so interesting. The EEG readings showing lack of brain response to physical stimulus were correlated with different "personalities". I can't think of a better way of proving the existence of DID.

I don't know anything about the reliability of PsyCh Journal so it's hard to know if we can take this at face value or not.

<comment><USER26> There's actually the full text available here: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17611729](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17611729)

(At least, I think. Maybe this isn't the updated one?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think a part of her brain got damaged, so it started relying on other neural paths that were still functional.

It's still trying out different paths, hence the different personalities. A new vision-related path is in the works, but not ready for production right now.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am short on time today and just don't have time to read through all the comments (or even the article at the moment, sigh -- I would love to read this), but I have something of a longstanding interest in multiple personality disorder and I have read of cases where physical things, like scars or moles, appeared and disappeared depending upon which personality was being expressed at the time.

</comment><comment><USER29> His eyes can see

His ears can hear his lips speak

All the time the needles flick and rock.

No machine can give the kind of stimulation,

Needed to remove his inner block.

</comment><comment><USER30> "A woman with display driver problems who had dualboot has intermittent issues with display"

<comment><USER31> Problem running the new Intel drivers on Windows 10. What a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My favorite thing about stories like this is that the provide a lot of data for mental modeling:

Suppose you're attempting to build up a mental(/scientific) model of how the human brain works. You're trying to come up with a set of abstractions and rules for how those abstractions interact, with which you can intuit, without performing a full simulation, the answers to experimental questions. That is, your model should produce concrete predictions: if I prod the brain at A, B will happen; invisible effect C is correlated with visible effect D; nebulous phenomena E and F are well-defined instances of type G. A good model is more like a type system than a simulation; it gives you names and concepts that match (with some loss of fidelity) those used by reality. It lets you write valid programs (explanations) that match programs (physics) that are being executed by reality.

The report that a person had multiple personalities and some of them were blind, leads to the logical 'program':

Either

(this person has a brain structure that was so bizarre it isn't related to the rest of the species' brains) [assume this is false]

Or

(it is possible for humans to contain multiple personalities which are not equally able to interact with sensory organs)

Therefore =>

(it is possible for human brains to contain multiple personalities)

(sensory organs are wired into personalities)

(personalities can lose their wiring to sensory organs without physical damage to the organs)

That is, a single report cuts out a huge swathe of model-space. With a single example we are obliged to include in EVERY model concepts of personalities (or something, er, homomorphic to them), and a concept of a wiring to the sensory organs, and the ability to express that this wiring can become broken.

A perfect model must explain every example (or leave a place for as-yet- undiscovered mechanisms to explain them). New examples put new burdens on every existing explanation. They cut model-space down by, presumably, percentage chunks ("excise the subspace of model-space that doesn't model personalities and wiring personalities to sensory organs"). If you imagine that there are something like 2^N possible models at a given granularity, then, the cuts are approximately reducing us to 2^(N-1) each time. Our models with N degrees of freedom that has to explain E experiments has more like N-E degrees of freedom (disregarded 'covariance' between experimental results). What this means is that a random model is overwhelmingly likely to be _wrong_ with each successive experiment. (In practice our models have large dark spots where we leave many degrees of freedom open - but even still, it's likely that any explicit modeling choice we make ends up being incorrect, and quickly.)

(This math is pretty made-up. We could do better with something akin to Kolgomorov complexity rather than degrees of freedom, since type systems should be discounted by how complex they are so that systems more complex than reality actually is end up contributing nothing to the total.)

Summary: I enjoy stories about weird neuroscience because they defy my mental model of "how brains work" almost every time, even if I keep revising it.</comment>


New derivation of pi links quantum physics and pure math - <AUTHOR> https://www.aip.org/publishing/journal-highlights/new-derivation-pi-links-quantum-physics-and-pure-math <comment><USER2> Many series that calculate pi are very simple, as a result, it can randomly appear in physical problems. See for instance [http://ics.org.ru/doc?pdf=440&dir=e](http://ics.org.ru/doc?pdf=440&dir=e)

<comment><USER3> That's a nice definition of mathematical constants: Numbers whose calculation specifications have a Kolmogorov complexity that is low enough so that they reappear in different contexts with high probability.

<comment><USER2> More precisely it would be the algorithmic probability. Not only are there short programs that compute mathematical constants, but there are _many_ such programs, so the total mass is even higher.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that a mathematical constant has multiple different shortest programs?

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily shortest, but it has many short programs.

The algorithmic probability of a sequence x is the sum over the set of all prefix-free programs u that calculate x of 2^-len(u). Think of the shortest description length as a MAP, while the algorithmic probability integrates over the full prior.

A constant which has many short programs can thus have a greater algorithmic probability than another constant with a slightly lower Kolmogorov complexity. To put it back in context, it's possible that a very short program computes some constant, but it's unlikely to be an important mathematical constants. What's particular about mathematical constants is that they keep appearing in many different situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Extended quote from original article...

 _" When Hagen started solving the problem himself, he immediately noticed a trend. The error of the variational approach was about 15 percent for the ground state of hydrogen, 10 percent for the first excited state, and kept getting smaller as the excited states grew larger. This was unusual, since the variational approach normally only gives good approximations for the lowest energy levels."_

Rings bells from celestial mechanics. You can end up with things like a series solution converging on an elliptical or circular orbit when you apply series methods to simple (or 'simple' in this case - it _is_ quantum mechanics!) systems.

I'll see if I can hack my way though their paper (linked to OA, downloadable in full text).

</comment><comment><USER5> Pi appears in many many many quantum calculations, so the title of the press article is very bad.

The title of the research article is much better "Quantum mechanical derivation of the Wallis formula for pi" because as far as I know the Wallis formula has never appear before in a QM calculation.

</comment><comment><USER6> The game of mafia (aka Werewolf) is linked to PI (my paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031](http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031), for a summary: [http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1157558/polish-paper- werewol...](http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1157558/polish-paper-werewolf)), also via the Wallis formula. But so what?

Pi appears in physics roughly as often as 2 in finance. Even to describe the simples quantum states (ground states of the harmonic potential) you use Pi (as a normalization factor).

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course there is nothing special about this result. The hyped "science" articles describing this are longer than the paper!

Lubos Motl wrote about it here: [http://motls.blogspot.co.at/2015/11/pi-found- in-hydrogen-ato...](http://motls.blogspot.co.at/2015/11/pi-found-in-hydrogen- atom.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> What's so special about this ? I was always under the impression that quantum physics is allready 99% pure math ;)

<comment><USER9> I felt the same. For example, gravity/electromagnetism force depends on distance, hence naturally lead to circular/spherical contours, which would involve Pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know enough about quantum physics, but from what I understand, this pi seems to have arose as an artifact of the variational method used, rather than quantum mechanics itself.

<comment><USER11> be floored ^1.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle)

^1 and don't fall for phy PR

<comment><USER11> Dear Downvoter: can you tell when The Cat makes it through the crack?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somebody should tell these guys about hbar.

Just kidding, it is interesting that this series showed up in QM. Terrible article title though...

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe because, not being a mathematician, and certainly not a quantum mechanic, I understand pi and circles as being lock-step mutually defining; from what I've read, this derivation of pi doesn't seem to be described as anything more than an interesting coincidence, and to call it a "link" is reaching.

</comment><comment><USER14> Url changed from [http://phys.org/news/2015-11-derivation-pi-links-quantum- phy...](http://phys.org/news/2015-11-derivation-pi-links-quantum- physics.html#jCp), which points to this.</comment>


Twitter down on web and mobile - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/19/twitter-down-over-web-and-mobile <comment><USER2> "The company initially confirmed the outage by, somehow, tweeting, from its @support account. We were unable to see the tweet, because Twitter was down."

<comment><AUTHOR> Tongue-in-cheek statements like this are proof that the guardian is still a british news org

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not so long ago Twitter outages used to happen every now and then. It's quite interesting to see how now everybody expects it to be running 24/7.

<comment><USER4> Ah yes "the fail whale" was a common and much loved feature of day to day twife :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was waiting on this to appear on Hacker News. I take to Twitter to complain whenever a service is down. Now that Twitter is down... I guess all that is left is this HN thread.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this is going to help their share price!

<comment><USER7> Don't you say?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wonder what's caused the outage, they're leveraging Mesos/Aurora pretty heavily AFAIK which is what I'm moving towards so would rather it wasn't something on that side of things.

</comment><comment><USER9> Visited the status page where you have the option to tweet status problems.

I ended in a perfect loop circle.

//edit

as it looks like HN is now the twitter clone.

 _hey @support your service is down!_

</comment><comment><USER10> How big organization have to be to make twitter down - single US agency, Country ?

<comment><USER11> Twitter are quite capable of falling over by themselves.

<comment><USER7> Lol.</comment></comment></comment>


It's Amazing What Your Users Will Do If You Ask - <AUTHOR> http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/its-amazing-what-your-users-will-do-for-you-if-you-just-ask/

<comment><USER2> > "Last month, we were feeling like a little validation for our efforts. _But > mostly we wanted to replace the fake testimonial on our About Us page with a > real one (which we haven't done yet)._ So, we asked our users to write our > editorial team a love letter"

Wait, what? In what world is fabricating testimonials okay?

<comment><USER3> Here, take a look at the "testimonial" in question[0]:

 _"When I first saw Earbits, I couldn't believe my eyes. Worlds collided, rivers flowed upstream, birds sang in languages that could only be described as the purest form of unconditional love. Since that day, no other radio will do. I have lost my wife and children, but I don't care. All I care about is Earbits."

Anonymous_

Yeah.

[0]: <http://www.earbits.com/play/#/about_us>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Earbits seems really neat. I like the music it played and was excited to start using it. Once I realized that I needed a facebook account and that it would share what I listened to with my facebook friends it wasn't worth it to me. I really don't like the trend of requiring facebook to login to a website.

<comment><USER5> Facebook required their music partners to eliminate their non-Facebook authentication systems for new users to be promoted in the Facebook ecosystem. It's not really up to the services themselves. Spotify had to do the same thing.

<comment><USER6> I work for Rhapsody and helped implement Facebook Music as an initial partner. We don't use Facebook login and have no plans to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Damn - something's wrong with Google Translate. Usually it pops up at the top of foreign language websites.

"Oh stewardess - I speak Jive!" "Oh good."

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting how Earbits is leaning towards being a people aware music startup. Music industry has mostly been power centered (whoever has the record deal) looks like it's shifting in terms of business and bucks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Question: What was the conversion rate—how many users were asked to leave a review vs many actually did it?

I wonder if you could compare the quality of different cohorts of users based on how willing they are to go say nice things about you once prompted.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't know an actual conversion rate because the email blast was sent to our entire user base, and many will not be Chrome users, etc. I suspect, though, that we'd have to have many times the user base we have now to do a true cohort test of it. Even then, something like this is very qualitative, right? What if more people wrote love letters or reviews from one group, but the other group spent significantly more time writing much more enthusiastic material?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is my target customer base? - <AUTHOR> My team and I run a separate AI consultancy and thought to start "productizing" some repetitive AI tasks through a secondary service https://techsensus.com
We realized that a lot of small businesses and startups frankly do not have the resources to hire ML engineers or figure out hardware to train models on state of the art. There's a gap in the market.
We are now trying to figure out what kinds of startups and small businesses would most likely use our service. Ideas? if you are that demographic, what pops out to you and what isn't useful. <comment><USER2> My understanding of US economics is as follows:

If it's so expensive that only large corporations can afford it, then you have to score some really huge relationships at the top of the company.

If you're targeting small businesses, then it basically has to be turnkey, affordable, and it must deliver basically 10x value overnight if it is to be really successful.

The reason I say this is because I used to work for a cash-strapped repair garage. Rent, Payroll, Materials, Debt. Those were the 4 major expense categories.

Rent was set in stone for years, and wasn't precisely negotiable. Likewise for debt. Materials would be difficult to innovate, because you are creating a physical product (oil, metal, plastic, etc).

The biggest cost-savings potential would be to replace labor. If you somehow made a robotic mechanic or robotic electrician, that would save a 1M USD shop probably about $300,000 per year in mechanic salaries. But at that point you are getting into fields of computer vision and also robotics, and those are most definitely hard problems to solve.

So to sum it up, your value prop comes from any technology that can feasibly replace human workers salaries.

<comment><USER3> I learned that the highest cost for gyms can be salaries. Not rent, equipment, power, heating, etc.

<comment><USER2> Same with hotels for hospitality workers!</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft adding support for Movies Anywhere, giving away free X-Men movie - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/?p=1354317 <comment><USER2> As the article notes, anywhere doesn't really mean anywhere. :-)

 _Movies Anywhere movies will show up within Microsoft 's Movies & TV apps, even if they were bought on competing platforms. At least, so long as you live in the US, because "anywhere" does not actually mean "anywhere."_</comment>


Why does the alarm clock snooze button give you nine extra minutes, not ten? - <AUTHOR> http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1361/why-does-the-alarm-clock-snooze-button-give-you-nine-extra-minutes-not-ten <comment><USER2> > "Or maybe, since the clock is counting (typically) the power cycles from the > wall socket, it's because [...]

> Engineer's comment: Nice try, bub, but clocks don't count that way.

What? Some clocks do count that way. That's why you can buy converters.

[http://www.electric-clocks.co.uk/60hz50hzfrequenc.html](http://www.electric- clocks.co.uk/60hz50hzfrequenc.html)

> Thiis module takes the 60Hz input and produces a 50Hz output to ensure the > clock keeps the proper time. The module is supplied with 9vac via a UL > listed power supply adapter. The clock has had it's coil rewound to work at > 9vac.

> No changes to the movement - no altered wheelwork. If the clock is ever > required to run in the UK it is as simple as providing 9vac from a UK 50Hz > power supply and bypassing the convertor.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_clock#Synchronous_ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_clock#Synchronous_electric_clock)

> A synchronous electric clock does not contain a timekeeping oscillator like > a pendulum, but instead counts the oscillations of the AC utility current > from its wall plug to keep time.

Here's a nice page telling you how to build one. It has plans for both 50 Hz and 60 Hz. [http://sound.westhost.com/clocks/sync.html](http://sound.westhost.com/clocks/sync.html)

<comment><USER3> So instead of measuring vibrations from a crystal, they are measuring cycles from the wall? Why?

<comment><USER4> In the past, the mains AC frequency was a cheap and accurate way to keep track of time. A lot of devices relied on the mains frequency.

Why does your modern day LCD monitor have a 60 Hz refresh rate? It's legacy from 1950's vacuum tube televisions that synced their beam with the mains voltage frequency.

<comment> X-Istence The AC frequency used to be very inaccurate, it was only through a lot of work and legislation that it was made accurate, specifically so that electronic devices could use it to keep time.

Nowadays the electric companies want more leeway in how they run their grids and would love to have the frequency be less accurate, trying to keep it accurate actually costs a lot of money, since now as load changes on the grid they have to make sure to spin up new capacity. As the load increases the frequency goes down, as load decreases the frequency goes up. It is a careful balancing act that is required for the power companies to keep it within spec.

If it was allowed to drift more the power companies wouldn't be required to spin up more capacity that then goes unused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll tell you exactly why it's nine minutes. Because in the olden days where everything was made with discrete components, the math of 9 minutes is WAY cheaper.

Let's say it's 6:00, and you hit the snooze button. Save the current value of the minute minus 1, into a comparitor, Trigger the alarm when the comparitor goes off automatically.

If you save the current value into the comparitor, the alarm triggers immediately. Now you need to add delay logic. Just use current minus 1, since it's only a few half-adders.

You can't use the high order minute digit because then your snooze length will depend on your current low order minute digit. Any logic to compensate starts adding a multiple of the number of components required.

<comment><USER6> But are clocks using a base-10 counting system? I'm thinking no.

<comment><USER7> The oldest digital clock my family had used a mechanical display, so it had ten values for the right-most digit, six for the next, and twelve for the left-most. So this explanation would definitely make sense for it.

But I don't recall if it actually had a snooze button...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't say if this is why it's 9 minutes, instead of 10, but when the alarm goes off, and I hit the snooze, my brain is anything but fully conscious. So, I see the time "06:00" then "06:09" rather than "06:10", and I know the time has changed- because of the 9. At the next interval, it's "06:18" rather than "06:20". Again, an obvious time differential for my brain. Instead of just 1 number changing every ten minutes, 2 numbers are changing.

06:00 06:09 06:18 06:27 06:36 06:45 06:54 07:03 ... etc.

Versus:

06:00 06:10 06:20 06:30 06:40 06:50 07:00

Not enough numbers are changing for my brain to latch on in its semi-conscious awake state, if the time is only changing by 10 minutes. Changing by 9, and it's clear the time has changed, and it's a new time. Thus, I'm not thinking only 10 minutes have passed, when the truth is that 40 minutes has actually passed.

<comment><USER9> This seems closer to engineer-thought reality, IMHO.

Also, some people like to snooze multiple times... a low number of times, to be precise. They do this as a regular thing.

If I were such a person and I were to snooze thrice, I would know I am really in need of getting up if 30 minutes has elapsed. There is an up to one minute procedural loss on sorta-wake-up, activate-limb, smash snooze button, go back to bed. So I know I'm definitely not sleeping over my 30 minutes of triple- snooze allowance if I have a 9 minute timer. (Yes, the timer could be set from the trigger time rather than the re-snooze time, but at least some ancient embedded devices probably did not function in this way)

To further compound this line of thinking, we should remember that getting out of bed is not the only use for timers. Another would be kitchen timers where people might really, really, really want to get the pie out before it burns and some default allowance for human fuzzy foibles is therefore a useful feature.

Perhaps we should replace the title of this post with: _Engineers: "Nine; it made sense at the time"_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 8:00:00 am

alarm clock begins beeping

8:00:15

I actually begin waking up

8:00:45

I manage to get up and silence the dumb machine

8:10:00

alarm wakes me up again after initial snooze, ten minutes after I intended to be awake

If the snooze went in ten minute increments, and a person was fond of snoozing, after a handful of snoozes the time delay between alarm sounding and snoozing would add up and throw off the mental calculation.

"I've hit the snooze five times, it must be 8:50, oh shit it's actually 8:55, FML," versus, "I've hit the snooze five times, it must be 8:50, oh hey it's actually only 8:47."

<comment><USER11> That's a good theory.

I have multiple alarms on my phone, as sometimes I'll turn off an alarm completely in my sleep. I put these alarms teen minutes apart, call it OCD. Snooze time of nine minutes makessense a lot of sense fire my part.

<comment><USER12> I do this. I set one alarm for an hour before I'm meant to be up (I usually don't remember this), one half an hour before, one on the actual time and then in smaller and smaller increments until I'm so annoyed with turning it off that I just get up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about this for a reason: One of the first big snooze clock manufacturers choose 9 minutes for some random reason and the rest followed thinking: "There must be a reason they choose 9 minutes, it sounds specific. Lets have our snooze be 9 minutes too."

I was expecting find some some highly researched psychological quirk to be the reason in the post. I guess reality is just more random and coincidental. Reminds me of the way QWERTY came to be the standard ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#History_and_purposes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#History_and_purposes)).

<comment><USER14> That does not explain anything though, it just moves the problem. As the article also points out, what was the original "random reason"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Dunno. All the alarms I've owned have been 6 or 7 minutes.

Another question: why does the alarm clock blare non-stop until you turn it off, rather than beeping a couple times and then going silent, giving you a moment to get up and turn it off without annoying the living hell out of everyone who doesn't have to get up?

Current theory: alarm clock designers never marry.

<comment><USER16> Depending on how tired (or drunk) I went to bed the previous night and how much time I gave myself for sleep, it might take even a few minutes for me to finally wake up to the alarm signal. Anything short would be totally ineffective for me.

Also, this ensures the alarm clock does its job - either you wake up yourself, or your angry family members wake you. Both ways, you get up when you wanted.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. So progressively get more annoying, instead of doing the worst possible thing first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a problem with this explanation, because on my grandmother's ancient electromechanical clock (with radium painted hands), the snooze alarm interval was user-defined between a few minutes to almost an hour. I'm leaning towards someone cleverly using the numeric rollover to trigger the interval, and then every subsequent digital clock cargo culting the design.

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought it was to disorient you a bit. If you typically snooze three times you know you have to be out of the bed at 8:00 sharp (with 7:30 original). Easy for your brain to latch on to that. Now with 9 mins…

<comment><USER19> I can do multiplication in half-conscious state easily if it means a few more minutes of precious, precious sleep...

Besides you really just need to remember how to do subtraction, not even the multiplication table

      var snooze = 3
      snoozety (30) minutes minus snooze (3) minutes = twenty seven

Now, if the alarm clock required you to solve a calculus problem, that'd be a bit more challenging :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been using my cell phone as primary alarm clock for years, and it always bugged me, for reasons I can't even articulate, that the snooze interval was "wrong"\---ten minutes on one phone, five on another. When I finally got my Android phone and could find my own alarm app that let me configure the snooze time, I was _inordinately_ pleased. 9 minutes it is. :) (Alarm Clock Plus, by the way---has a few other nice UI features as well.)

</comment><comment><USER21> A shame you cannot get to the old link in the article.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20021001101305/http://users.rcn....](https://web.archive.org/web/20021001101305/http://users.rcn.com/jayman/)

<comment><USER22> [http://web.archive.org/web/20000830091714/http://www.ultrane...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000830091714/http://www.ultranet.com/~jayman/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I want to know why the alarm clock off button is built like something you'd not want to use. Snooze is a big fat easy button; off is a small switch hidden among other switches and usually on the bottom back of the device, requiring turning off to stop the alarm and then turning the switch back on to re-enable it for the next day. Once I'm awake, I want to shut the alarm up - period - without having to find and fiddle with a hidden control. Or am I seriously missing something obvious about standard cheap alarm clocks?

<comment><USER24> Because for people like me, unconscious zombie-like bears who will dig through concrete walls with bare hands in order to quiesce the source of the disturbance of my crucial slumber, while maintaining no memory of the demolished wall should I be successfully woken 10 seconds later, easily shut off devices simply have no effect.

I've woken up a few times on the floor curled around the power cord to the alarm clock, torn from the wall (or to find a phone in 15 pieces and a new dent in the wall).. many, many people like me

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It leaves you with an extra minute to decide if you're going to hit snooze again.

</comment><comment><USER26> I always guessed that they wanted something around 10 minutes, but they wanted more than one visible digit to change each time to make it more obvious that time had passed. (That is, a sleepy person might be more likely to mistake "7:20" for "7:00" than they would be if they saw "7:18".)

But that wouldn't be relevant with old analog alarm clocks, which evidently had a 9-10 minute snooze, too.

</comment><comment><USER27> I always assumed this was a function of hardware on the original snooze- enabled digital clocks. If you reset a decade counter chip (like the CD4017), you get a rising edge on the carry out pin after nine clocks.

</comment><comment><USER28> I always thought it was 9 minutes to have 10 minutes of total delay with 1 minute ring time. So that if you don't do anything it keeps ringing every ten minutes.

If you hit snooze it just stops ringing earlier.

I think it's optimised to ring periodically in the worst case scenario (when you don't wake up). With earlier snooze it's just easier to keep the 9 minutes worst case implementation, instead of taking into account the time you hit snooze and adjust the snooze time to reach the 10 minutes total delay between rings.

</comment><comment><USER29> I came to the comment page to say that it's pages like that that make me grateful for the internet.

Then I read the comments - actually, it's pages like this that make me grateful for the internet.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have always assumed it was to reduce the likelihood of conflicts with future alarms. For example if I set alarms at 8:00 and 9:00, if I've been snoozing the 8:00 alarm, and snooze is 10 minutes, the two alarms will both fire at 9:00. With 8 or 9 minute intervals that is much less likely, and so its easier to see that maybe they are two different reminders. This probably applies more to phones than old school alarm clocks however.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nine is great. I snooze 4 times and it's 4 minutes more time I have than if it were 10 minute intervals. That's 4 extra minutes to ride my bike to work on time for the daily standup at my startup.

Now I suppose I could just set my clock 36 minutes later and get 36 minutes of quality sleep. But I think I actually enjoy those short snooze button dreams. And I savour every minute. Again and again and again and again.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had always just assumed it must have been an ease of implementation thing. (Explanation 8.) Their suggestion that you could just check the 10s column instead of the 1s is misleading. You would have to test both the 10s and the 1s column to get a 10 minute differential, unless the original alarm time happened to be a multiple of 10.

</comment><comment><USER33> My clock DOES have a ten-minute snooze. I know previous clocks I've used had a 9-minute snooze, but currently when my alarm goes off at 6:00, I hit snooze a few seconds later, then a few seconds after the clock displays 6:10, it alarms again.

</comment><comment><USER34> On an old alarm clock of mine, the snooze started at 9 minutes, then went down to 8, then 7 and so on. this allowed exactly 45 minutes of snooze. Something from that may have been brought into modern alarm clocks?

</comment><comment><USER35> Maybe just because it takes around one minute from the time the alarm starts to ring and the time the sleepy-head presses the button and eventually gets up. Better have a minute earlier than later.

</comment><comment><USER36> I prefer to subscribe to the idea that it was an off-by-one error myself.

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe it's just a simple matter of whoever implemented the snooze functionality picking 9 minutes as the value. The one minute difference between 9 and 10 minutes is probably negligible.

</comment><comment><USER38> This still skips the reasoning for even an imprecise 9 or 10 minutes. What information guided that decision? Ignoring the precision is a separate practical issue.

<comment><USER39> I can imagine it went something like this:

Engineer: "Hey boss, how long did you want the snooze timer to run?"

CEO: "Oh, I don't know. Not too long, not too short."

Engineer: "What does that mean? Like 10 minutes or so?"

CEO: "Sure, I guess that would be fine. Just get it done."

Since this is an alarm clock, not a nuclear power plant, it's entirely conceivable that the decision was made very casually. It could have just been someone's gut feeling that 9 or 10 minutes felt right.

<comment><USER38> Sounds about right, but it would be awesome to know for sure, but maybe I should be getting something done too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I set the snooze on my phone alarm to 20 minutes, which is the standard for the Uberman polyphasic sleep practice. Feels good enough.

</comment><comment><USER41> Mine is adjustable. I have it set to 3 minutes. I still often snooze 5-6 times, but now it costs me ~20 minutes instead of an hour.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there a good documentary about alarm clocks?

</comment><comment><USER43> I was wondering this, just this morning as I hit snooze. Thanks HN, you've done it again!

</comment><comment><USER44> A nice parallel to the question "Why do I click on a floppy disk to save my file?"

<comment><USER45> Oh, there are a few more like that:

\- there's a very good chance that the touch-pad in your new laptop uses the PS/2 protocol to communicate with the system

\- why do I need to address cylinders/heads/sectors in a flash block device? I can understand sectors (block addressing) but cylinders and heads? It's FAT/EXT4 legacy, but the translation layer is still there in many OS-es.

\- I recently wrote a driver for an LCD. I could have sworn I was accessing a CRT: front porch, h-sync pulse, back porch, v-sync, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I always wish iOS allows me to set the snooze interval...

</comment><comment><USER47> My alarm clock gives me 8 minutes. Now what?

<comment><USER48> Every single alarm clock I've had has given me seven, and I always wondered why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Moral of the story: Worse is better :)

</comment><comment><USER50> Am I the only person who manages to wake up almost instantly and never uses the snooze function?</comment>


Only straight white men need to pay for TechSummit tickets - <AUTHOR> http://www.techsummit.io/amsterdam/#tickets <comment><USER2> The site says:

"The TechSummit diversity ticket program is meant to facilitate attendance at the conference by candidates from traditionally under-represented groups in Tech including women, people of color, LGBT, and people with disabilities."

<comment><USER3> i.e. if you are straight, white, male and able-bodied then you have to pay the registration fee.

EDIT: forgot 'male' as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sad and pathetic, some really great speakers but I wouldn't go near that shit hole and I sure as fuck wouldn't pay because I'm a straight white male.</comment>


43 Dodgy Statements on Computer Art  - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com/msg11371.html <comment><USER2> Thought-provoking, but I think overall I agree more with the response from Alan Sondheim: [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/ms...](http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg11373.html)</comment>