Looking Glass, a revolutionary window manager revealed in 2006 - <AUTHOR> I recently redescovered the keynote video in which Looking Glass was announced and realized it's now 12 years old. I remember watching this video in awe and still today I findit quite remarkable although a bit gimmicky.
https://youtu.be/JXv8VlpoK_g
I wonder what was the motivation behind this project and why it never really took off. Also what are the people behind it up to nowadays - does anyone here know the backstory to this? <comment><USER4> When 3D acceleration became mainstream and people started developing 3D-accelerated desktop it was very trendy to have a bunch of pointless 3D stuff going on. I think it was around that time that compiz and its 3D burning cubes and other mostly (but not entirely) useless eye candy were released: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE)

I think there were two reasons for this:

\- It looked cool, even if sometimes very impractical. Now it's a bit mundane but at the time it was like breaking the 3rd wall, we were so used to the flatness of the desktop that it was really weird to view it as a 3D object.

\- Apple and Microsoft were in no rush to bring these features to their commercial OSs (and proably for good reasons, MS tried to have the 3D carousel in Vista but even that wasn't very useful). That meant that people in the Linux world in particular could show off "hey, can your Windows XP do _that_?"

But of course eventually we realized that 90% of these features were counter- productive so we only kept the bits that made sense (ability to scale down windows in real time easily to make thumbnails or previews, faster rendering, a bit of transparency etc...).

<comment><USER5> The only good implementation of a 3D desktop effect (outside of straight-up window rendering) is Expose, which Apple demoed in 2002/2003 for 10.3.

I remember, circa 2005, there being compiz extensions that enabled something similar.

<comment><USER6> It could expose all the windows in the current monitor, on all monitors of the current workspace, or all windows period.

Virtual desktops which I believe linux supported long before spaces acquired a nice visual metaphor with compiz which allowed you to zoom out to see them all and drag windows between one and the other.

Windows could be set to have a small amount of resistance when passing other windows to make it easy to stick them side be size.

The effects for windows creation and destruction were quite cool and super configurable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember testing it on my Ubuntu partition soon after I learned about the project. I recorded a little video showing some of its capabilities. It became my most viewed video ever on YouTube with over 500K

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ4Nza34ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ4Nza34ak)

Some good quality images of it running with my blog in the old days:

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg1.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp- content/lg1.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg2.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp- content/lg2.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg3.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp- content/lg3.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg4.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp- content/lg4.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Hey, I know you from the OSX articles in magazines, you sure would like that ala Exposé ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Windows, and the walls they rest in, are basically 2D at their principle point of consumption (indoors, looking out).

Desks provide much more _creative_ value across the first two dimensions than the 3rd: you want the stuff you're working on within sight, touch and arm's reach. "Piling up" is a "storage" or "attention reducing" strategy because you can't work with the piled items or the content with your hands. You largely don't care what they even are unless you're working on them... so pushing virtual representations of work surfaces deeper down an imaginary z-axis makes little sense.

The demos in the video look fun and exciting, and probably justified the applause at the time. I think the desktop metaphor could be worked over. Tablets and phones dropped it from the get-go. But I'm yet to be convinced that visually arranging data across a projected third dimension except when you want to draw the user through (like in a game) adds much to the experience.

The flipping and "piling" you get in Windows and macOS seem like decent uses of 3D. Those effects basically just add+hide 2D surface. It's the vanishing- point stuff that seems gimmicky to me.

<comment><USER10> Note: most games are also 2D with a bit of 3D visuals thrown on top. True 3D controls are super tough for new players.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention disorienting. I loved the Descent [1] series but damn was it ever difficult to wrap your head around, at least at the beginning.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_\(1995_video_game\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hardly revolutionary.

I was following this back then -- Apple had just come out with 3D manipulations in the desktop (e.g. turning a widget window around in dashboard around to view their configuration on the "other side").

Some engineer at Sun, in their spare time, put together a quick demo with 3D windows (using Java/OpenGL bindings IIRC). Basically a quick play on the idea of windows being objects rendered in a 3D space by a compositor (which OS X had introduced to the mainstream a while before).

OS X still rendered them as 2D projection, except for the occasional effect like the flip-around in 3D space, while this demo had them floating by default (but still only shown the same effects, flip around to write notes etc).

The Looking Glass demo was very basic, it got some talk in forums at the time, and it was even presented a few months later in a SUN "keynote". For a while they pretended like they had something there, instead of just a half-arsed demo.

There was never any big project around it, nor much thought. The highlight was ...turning a window around to write notes, configure, etc (e.g. a copy of what Apple had done commercially and already shipped with minor changes).

Even the very concept of Windows in 3D space is not that novel, Microsoft had done something similar before Apple, as well as others.

It didn't went anywhere, because (at least as implemented this far) it doesn't solve any problem better than the regular desktop.

In short: Looking Glass never went anywhere because it was a proof of concept by 1-2 Sun employees, when window compositing became possible in XWindows/Java.

</comment><comment><USER13> This was just part of Sun's JDS (Java Desktop System). The motivation behind it I can only speculate: to get attention for Sun's JDS, demo Java + 3D while at the same time differentiate from default Linux desktop, and to demo the successor of CDE; basically it all boils down to stock price of SUNW/JAVA.

Remember, Sun didn't do well after the dotcom boom and Sun wasn't cheap but Sun did invest a lot in desktop UNIX (Gnome HIG, documentation, internationalisation, and a major contributor with LOC). Sun GPLed this and many other things (among which Java itself and Solaris) right before they were sold out (to Oracle). We can only thank Jonathan Schwartz & Co for that because Oracle would've kept it proprietary (speculation though).

It isn't _very_ innovative. It was one of the many window managers which did this. 3dwm, 3d desktop [1] [2] (from around 2002 IIRC), Beryl, Compiz, and Enlightenment (E17 & onward) are some other examples though not all of these were 3D accelerated.

As you said, the problem with this is its gimmicky; not productive. In gaming nice 3D effects can add something to the experience (immersion) but on a desktop it shouldn't be very noisy or abundant. So after the initial wow- effect was over these effects didn't get a long lasting stay in products.

[1] [http://linuxreviews.org/features/3ddesktop/](http://linuxreviews.org/features/3ddesktop/)

[2] [http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/](http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER14> Just a small nitpick: Solaris wasn't GPLed, but remains CDDL

<comment><USER15> The source was reclosed back in 2010 when Oracle bought Sun.

<comment><USER16> This is only partially accurate. Parts of Solaris continued to be published under the CDDL and other licenses after that. But yes, the kernel and parts of the system libraries were no longer published. Remember that unlike Linux, Solaris is more than just a kernel.

<comment><USER15> Looking at their source code dump for 11.4, nearly everything that isn't GPL is missing. It's less open than macos.

<comment><USER16> Then you're probably looking in the wrong place for the non-GPL items. Those are typically on github, for example:

[https://github.com/oracle/solaris-ips](https://github.com/oracle/solaris-ips)

<comment><USER15> That's the only Solaris item on Oracle's github, and it's just the package manager. Where's the rest of the OS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I helped build this thing back in 1998-1999:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000822012848/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822012848/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot1.jpg) [https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013028/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013028/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot2.jpg) [https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013204/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013204/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot3.jpg)

Source code: ([https://web.archive.org/web/20000131021557/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000131021557/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/download.html))

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow! Any insights for the curious? I'd love to know more than what's already on wikipedia from a first hand source! Cheers

<comment><USER17> Someone put Synapse on Wikipedia? Do you have a link?

My friend Nick McKinney and I borrowed $25k from a chiropractor and spent a year trying to get Linux users to replace X with Synapse (which was a paid offering that wasn't compatible with anything.) We had no idea what we were doing, no idea how to get customers, etc. So we gave up and released it as open source.

It was a lot of fun! I have tons of stories, but I gotta go because I am trying to prepare for a talk (currently posted on [http://js.la/](http://js.la/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Good luck then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have no idea, but I guess that it was built because it was technically feasible.

Xgl [1] was released in the same year and had quite similar capabilities [2]. Xgl, in turn, lead to Compiz/Beryl which is the technical ancestor of the most popular window managers we run on Linux desktops nowadays (e.g., Kwin in KDE).

So to some extent, we still use the tech which was developed back then, the effects are just a lot more subtle.

[1]: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI)

<comment><USER19> Likewise re: subtlety, the Windows Vista/7 Win+Tab animation used a 3D card stack, the Windows 10 ones uses a simple zoom-out. Both are 3D, but people seem to prefer the ones which don't scream "3D!" as much.

There's acryllic everywhere too, which is blurry transparency, but you might not notice it either.

That said: I miss Compiz wobbly windows. They were cool.

<comment><USER20> > I miss Compiz wobbly windows. They were cool.

Last I checked, Kwin still had that functionnality.

<comment><USER21> wobbly windows is so 2006. Enjoy clothy windows. [https://videopress.com/v/zmiBKUyQ](https://videopress.com/v/zmiBKUyQ)

<comment><USER22> For bonus points, Arcan & Durden are a lot more hackable than Xorg & Beryl :-)

<comment><USER21> at the very least, they'll have to work -hard- to get it as easy to hack as [https://github.com/letoram/durden/blob/master/durden/tools/f...](https://github.com/letoram/durden/blob/master/durden/tools/flair/cloth.lua) :-)

<comment><USER23> Is this using LuaJIT or just plain Lua?

Because I get the impression this (not-C, not-Rust, not-stereotypically-fast) code is what's running at 60(?)fps, doing the actual deformation animation.

Nice.

<comment><USER21> Both are supported, but it's not particularly heavy - it's only running at a monotonic clock of 25Hz (decoupled from display updates and deliberately chosen to not be evenly divisible with 60Hz to pinpoint animation issues).

Alas, the improvement that should really be made is to encode both n and n+1 in the same update and interpolate in the vertex shader, not hard here but I was lazy..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember this coming out my first year of college and taking the boot disk for a spin.

At the time it was pretty cutting edge and the demos made it seem very polished and useful. In actuality the live version was rough round the edges, fonts and rendering looked soft. It was definitely a proof of concept and didn't really have much breadth beyond the few use cases presented in the video above.

That said yes, it was _very_ cool but even back in 2006 I and my classmates were questioning quite what you'd do with such a product. It seemed like a solution in search of a problem.

Also OS X 10.4 Tiger was when Apple's Mac platform became very solid indeed and started making inroads in academia and enterprise. Most of our professors for example switched from Linux to Mac around then.

I think Looking Glass failed then not just due to legal pressure from Apple but competitive pressure too. I also doubt Sun - which if memory serves had financial issues and was suffering diminishing sales of their SPARC platform - had the clout or will to invest in this particular project.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone remember Bumptop

description from wikipedia

BumpTop was a skeuomorphic desktop environment app that simulates the normal behavior and physical properties of a real-world desk and enhances it with automatic tools to organize its contents. It is aimed at stylus interaction, making it more suitable for tablet computers and handheld PCs. It was created at the University of Toronto as Anand Agarawala's master's thesis. Anand Agarawala also gave a presentation at the TED conference about his idea. The 1.0 version was released on April 8, 2009, along with a fully featured pro version as a paid upgrade.[1] On April 30, 2010 the author announced that BumpTop was being discontinued and that they were taking the software "in an exciting new direction."[2] Two days later, it was announced that the company had been acquired by Google. On January 5, 2011, Google released a sneak preview video of Android 3.0 Honeycomb[3] showing a 3D desktop with features purportedly taken from BumpTop.[4][5]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ)

<comment><USER25> Yeah, awesome stuff - I used some of Anand's ideas in my own research at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember being wowed by this at the time, but, looking back on it now, I think I was maybe just captivated by the fact that they were throwing a bunch of technology at it, not what it was accomplishing.

I see two ideas for how it might be useful that are practical: Putting windows "out of the way" when they're not being used, and attaching notes to files.

For the first, I'm not sure the 3D works well with how I like to work, because I like to use up all my screen real estate, and a bunch of floating tilted windows are still in the way (because they take up a bunch of space - <USER2> 15-20% of the real estate of the full window, in the examples from the demo) using this approach. On OS X, by contrast, I have several options, all of which really do get the window completely out of the way - I can hide it, I can minimize it, or I can stick it on its own desktop. Throw a window tiling tool like Spectacle in there, and I get a pretty large amount of power, while still keeping things simple.

Adding notes to files by writing on the back of the window feels odd to me, UX-wise. To view the notes, do I have to open the file and then flip the window around? How do I know _that_ a file has a note, without doing that? I think I'd rather just have a "notes" bit of metadata that is viewable in the file manager.

In general, I think that 3D is maybe just awkward for organization. Evidence: Out in the real world, we have invented all sorts of objects for 2d-izing - <USER3> even linearizing - things for organizational purposes. Shelves and file cabinets, for example.

<comment><USER27> 3D might have been a solution to limited pixel space. Now, pixels are cheap and abundant, so you can lay everything out and switch back and forth with a flick of your eyes.

<comment><USER26> I guess. . . but even around that time, when I was doing a lot of work on a pretty pixel-limited laptop screen, I typically made real estate by just having several different virtual terminal sessions (plus one for X). A flick of an F-key to switch VT's wasn't as quick as a flick of the eyes, but it was close enough.

And _way_ better than anything that involves reaching for the mouse, which would seem to be an essential part of doing it in a 3D DE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nothing of value was lost. None of what this WM offers seems to be really useful.

<comment><USER29> I agree. This was a nice technical exercise/demo, but did not offer any notable usability improvements over other window managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm still waiting for VR pixel density to get high enough to have an _actually_ 3D window manager.

No more buying monitors, just buy one headset and I'm done.

<comment><USER31> Is there any modern prototypes/demos/products doing a code explorer/editor in a VR environment? The vision of 360 navigation and lots of screen space, with added Z depth, is very enticing, but have yet to found anything in this direction.

<comment><USER32> I recall some tentative stabs at it, but I think the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts. There isn't much point jumping out years in advance, with the way display managers have gone over the past decade it's pretty much a trivial problem now. (Or at least, trivial as such problems go. Still a lot of coding and I'm sure a lot of fresh new corner cases, but nothing fundamentally unknown or impossible.) We _know_ that if the hardware was there, we could create such a desktop environment now. Anything you did now would run the risk of being completely obsolete before the hardware got there.

<comment><USER33> > the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts

And regrettably it means that now, when COTS hardware _components_ are arguably sufficient for HMDs to start competing with screens, there's no code, no widespread perception of need, and thus no clear market to target. And thus no hardware for sale. Bootstrap deadlock.

Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos? So say software devs can have a "I want that!" moment. And industry can have a "oh, well that, that we can build for you now" head-out-of- err, heads-up moment.

Sent from my Lenovo Explorer WMR HMD running on an old laptop's integrated graphics. Simple custom stack. (But only briefly, so I could say that.)

<comment><USER32> "Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos?"

Well, I think that might be a more minor contributor to the problem, but definitely a contributor. The Minority Report interface is utter garbage and I seriously doubt anything we build is going to look like that in the end. Vague gestures that even strong AI is unlikely to be able to correctly determine the target for reliably, arms held in positions that are completely impossible to be held in for any period of time, the entire "interface" is a usability nightmare. Screens far more separated than they should be... just because I _can_ spread my workspace out over 210 degrees doesn't mean that's actually going to be a good idea.

But it's not as _cool_ if you have anything conventional in it.

I'm playing the recent Switch The World Ends With You re-release. It has a mode where you nominally point the controller at the screen to control a cursor. But there's no optical component to it; it just centers when you hit a button and uses the accelerometer. So of course I don't sit there like a dope trying to point at the screen. The controller just sits in my hand where ever it is comfortable, and I twitch in the appropriate manner. It may be "pointed" 60 degrees off the actual screen, but it works fine. I have some similar stories for the Wii, where I still may have had to point the remote at the screen, but I certainly didn't play the games like the commercials. I played them in a much less awesome manner... but a much more _comfortable_ one.

The first Wii Golf was the funniest... eventually I settled on holding the remote pointing straight up, and wiggling it back and then forward again for my stroke. It was not exactly a realistic interpretation of how one swings a golf club. Exquisite control compared to trying to do it the "right" way, though. The second Wii Golf got smart enough that didn't work anymore.

What's a real pity is that there probably _is_ a really cool demo waiting for this. It just involves thinking a bit more creatively.

<comment><USER33> I'm sorry, I was unclear.

I agree the Minority Report UI was poor. But seeing it, seemed to get people talking. People who normally wouldn't think about possibilities for future UIs. It seemed to fire imagination, to create anticipation. It had random TV news people talking about UI design. My impression is an "Iron Man" UI was similar. So UI demos, at least in blockbuster movies, can create popular interest.

There currently seems an absence of anticipation for VR/AR "office work" screen-replacement UIs. And there is currently a failure to market VR hardware with tradeoffs made with that focus, rather than for gaming. I was speculating that we might get such hardware sooner, by creating a perception of a market worth attending to, by increasing popular anticipation, by making demos.

Because waiting to get it as a side-effect of gaming tech has already cost a year or few, and seems likely to cost more than a couple more. I'd rather not lose a decade unnecessarily waiting. I can't spare one, and it's not clear society can either.

Regards controllers, oh yes. Remember skeuomorphic design for user interfaces? Things should look like their physical counterparts? A calendar app should have a worn leather border? To ease on-boarding of all the new users not yet trained on phones? I suggest VR is in its skeuomorphic design phase. In contrast, my own interest is in expert UIs for all-day every-day use. So as you say, they are minimum-viable-twitch ergonomics. And any resemblance to the physical world, with its many and unmotivated constraints, is a design smell. But people are focused on gaming, training, CAD, and tours, and Reality is even part of the name. While aphysical UIs seem clearly the way to go, for much non-novice use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is cool for animation demo. From UX stand point is almost a joke. Apple intentionally is using animations only when user attention is low. My problem with window managers are not animations. My problem is that this is old paradigm and desktop needs to be reinvented by extending and changing user experience. 3d interaction with information objects in virtual space is future. But the big companies don't care anymore. They are focused in cashing the cow and capitalizing on old ideas of Apple and S.Jobs. There is a big room for innovation but centralized investment in R&D and testing are needed. I have tinkered with this and generated some ideas, but after estimation the result is that this is too big for small dev teams. So we will wait GUI to become cool again and wait for someone with imagination and skill to penetrate the walls of reason and get the blessing from excel gods.:)

<comment><USER35> >3d interaction with information objects in virtual space is future

[citation needed]

<comment><USER36> [http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

To be fair this doesn't necessarily mean AR/VR is the future. It could mean a physical designed for computing like Dynamicland or a single device that has intelligent real-time understanding of the physical world that isn't and hmd or a phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ah, Sun and their prototype user interfaces.

How about Starfire (1993)? This was Bruce Tognazzini's big project. See how many modern UI elements you can pick out of this concept video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0)

<comment><USER38> I remember that and feel it still shows several elements we're missing today:

1\. Very large form factor concave displays. (We're getting closer, but the HD era really slowed display innovation.)

2\. Good gesture input.

3\. Seamless integration of drafting/drawing surface and display.

4\. Personal application omnipresence across all input devices (personally, I think this is the most significant element often seen in science fiction that is missing from modern computing.)

<comment><USER33> > 3\. Seamless integration of drafting/drawing surface and display.

A current analog is pairing an art display tablet with normal screens. But people arrange them variously, and not-infrequently on separate and movable arms. So seamless physical integration might not be the right thing. Another analog is the new Lenovo Yoga Book C930 (2-in-1 with keyboard replaced by an e-ink touch/pen screen).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass), it was killed by Apple (thanks software patents). It is open source though.

That page lists some descendants.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks. I should've googled cause this part of the Wikipedia article has all the answers:

After unveiling the prototype, Steve Jobs called Schwartz's office and told him that Apple would sue Sun if they moved forward to commercialize it. Jobs claimed that the project is infringing Apple's IP.[3] Regardless of the threat, Sun determined that the project was not a priority and decided not to put more resource to develop it further into product quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still I wonder what Sun thought they were going to do with this... I find it fascinating they'd pursue a heavyweight UX project such as a window manager with no clear stake in the game... a last chance at pushing for Solaris adoption?!

<comment><USER40> >I find it fascinating they'd pursue a heavyweight UX project such as a window manager with no clear stake in the game... a last chance at pushing for Solaris adoption?!

Not sure. But around that time Sun had invested heavily in the Gnome project and made a lot of commits that enabled lots of more "boring" things to be added. eg. i18n, accessibility etc. This was because with Linux based Java Desktop (i.e. their polished gnome implementation) they had won various corporate & government contracts in different industries which required these changes, benefiting the gnome project immensely.

Whether the very popular compositing WMs (e.g. Metacity/Compiz) indicated a necessary investment in that area (hacker prelude to new industry), I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In 1997 my Comp Sci undergrad dissertation was on the '3D desktop'. The C++ code I wrote for my demo did software 2D on svgalib on the Linux console (there was some way to get a high res mode, I don't remember what exactly).

I didn't have video or semi-transparency, but I'd gone for a similar idea of clearing windows out of the way - sitting at angles on the sides of the screen.

I realised too late that what I really wanted wasn't 3D, but documents as first class citizens, with modular tools working on documents rather than monolithic applications.

If you clicked on a file icon it would graphically 'open' the file and bring it to the foreground for viewing, then you'd bring tools to it - for example, you'd have application-agnostic text tools for text editing.

I started adding things like 'filters' \- where you'd drop a file on a filter icon and it would be animated going through the filter and dropping onto the 'desktop' underneath - e.g. you would be able to apply troff+pic and get a diagram.

It was all naive and probably based on ideas that others were having and I'd seen around (e.g. articles about OS/2), but it was enjoyable discovering more and more ideas as I dug further. My real inspiration was, I believe, TkDesk, which wowed me when I saw I could edit the functionality of my desktop /on the fly/.

What we have in modern desktop environments is great, so I'm a bit sad that the idea of a powerful desktop environment seems to never have taken off as far as some of us hoped was possible. Maybe it just doesn't work!

Anyway, back to the command line...

<comment><USER42> so basically OLE in Windows or OpenDoc in Mac. Both platforms for some reasons abandon that concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Makes me wonder about what happened to compiz [1]

[1] [http://www.compiz.org/](http://www.compiz.org/)

<comment><USER44> 14 y/olds grew up.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Where "growing up" of course means becoming cynical and bitter, and pretending that hating fun is "mature"? And before you tell me that it was impractical... sure, a bit, but I really doubt the wm is a significant limiting factor in anyone's workflow, and it's still every bit as useful as whatever Windows uses these days.

<comment><USER45> Fun doesn't belong in a window manager for daily use, I'm sorry. Cute UI animations have a very strong "Pepsi taste test" effect: when you are just trying them out they look interesting and cool, but over the long term, over daily use, they are distracting and present other disadvantages: all compositing WMs, including those on macOS and Windows, introduce latency that straightforward tiling or stacking WMs lack.

<comment><USER46> I put goofy things on my terminal backgrounds and desktop. For me they don't seem to get old. I like charm in my life and my UI. As long as it doesn't compromise the utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I remember this. It has cool visuals, but I remember thinking something along the lines of this is the window manager that would be developed if you went and got some devs from the demo scene and said, build a window manager. Looks great, I really would not like to use it in real life.

<comment><USER48> Now I really want to see what the output of a demo competition focused on window managers would look like.

<comment><USER23> Lots and lots of transition animations, and potentially very poor UI/UX model.

Demos are not (largely) interactive, so the demoscene is not known for collective skill designing GUIs.

The most similar/related type of things I can think of that _are_ interactive are crack/keygen programs that include chiptunes and maybe a cute graphic effect somewhere.

For some time I've actually wanted to go track down such programs to analyze/compare/study the progression of design. Kind of difficult to do so though, for obvious reasons (unfortunately).

But my impression from the one or two programs I do very vaguely remember using, half for entertainment purposes was that the UI design was sort of at the "48%-50%" mark - good enough, but flitting just below the halfway mark instead of just above it. Not remarkable; maybe a few rough edges.

Thanks for your comment. It prompted some mental gears to spin and for me to realize the above.

\--

I do think I understand the spirit of what you're getting at, though, and there are a few things that my brain has decided is relevant, although I can't describe the working-out process that led me to list these. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

\- SymbOS ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS)): preemptive multitasking, windowed GUI, storage on devices up to 128GB, runs on home computers using the Z80 (starting at 4MHz) with up to (_ _up to_ _) 1MB of RAM. (I found this rambling but very interesting demo of what it can do with one of the more capable machines it supports: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oBNh0UkQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oBNh0UkQc))

\- kOS ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrOg19gzP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrOg19gzP4)): limited-access OS and brutalist GUI using the K functional programming language (hmm, I should watch this video again)

\- KolibriOS/MenuetOS: you're likely already familiar with this; it's a pure- assembly-language GUI that runs on 32/64-bit x86 PCs

\- AtheOS: Amiga/C64/etc inspired kernel + GUI + application suite, written (for x86) by one person over circa 10 years before it became boring; a small team picked it up a few years later and branded their continuation of the OS as Syllable, although the Syllable website seems to have died at some point

\- Contiki: runs a GUI on a Commodore 64 within 30KB of RAM

\- There is of course TempleOS, FWIW

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > why it never really took off.

It seems since 2006 the world has gone exactly in the opposite direction: simpler UIs based on windows that fill the screen, one at a time or, in some cases, docked. The idea of having multiple windows open on the same screen space was fancy but often confusing for a lot of people. I have relatives who have had their first approach with computers at the age of 80 and can use quite proficiently an Android phone; others that are still struggling, after twenty years, with the concept of "windows (partially) hidden behind other windows" :).

Relevant quote (in the first 20 seconds): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_kaY4K5a8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_kaY4K5a8)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm a bit older and remember this and much more getting demo'd at Xerox Parc in the mid 80ies, when powerful graphic cards were bring developed (for VR) being used for the 3D window managers being developed at Parc (WIMP GUI) in the 70ies. They were definitely not gimmicks but functional for certain use cases, eg. keyboard less interaction, information overload, voice control and such. I remember 6 different window manager styles there, where only 2 made it into production 30 years later, compiz and looking glass.

tldr: The revolution happened at Parc in the 70ies.

</comment><comment><USER51> there is a great article by Jonathan Schwartz - ex CEO of sun about Looking Glas, that Steve Jobs threatened to sue him over this.

[https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good- arti...](https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy- great-artists-steal/)

Steve didn't, but Jonathan killed the project non the less, because he listend to consultants instead of listenting to devs.

</comment><comment><USER52> Zoowm did some more recent push on this space. Personally felt that the idea of inifinite desktop really made sense. Similarly as in physical world, when you need more space on the table, you spread your stuff on a broader area.

Would have liked to see this thing fly.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcrp54A-GX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcrp54A-GX8)

<comment><USER33> tl;dr: An integrated workspace and window manager, emphasizing zooming and panning.

Might be helpful in current, resolution-limited, VR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It is so satisfying to look at. They got animations exactly right. I'm not sure I want full 3D applications (or notes on the back of windows), but the hint of 3D space for window management seems just right.

This is not difficult to do with today's technology. Maybe a similar WM will come along again.

</comment><comment><USER54> For anyone interested, here's a Live CD: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/lg3d-livecd/files/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lg3d-livecd/files/)

</comment><comment><USER55> Whoa this is cool, I wonder if this is the inspiration for Looking Glass technology featured in Prey.

[http://prey.wikia.com/wiki/Looking_Glass](http://prey.wikia.com/wiki/Looking_Glass)

</comment><comment><USER56> I loved the demo, but I think that 3D interfaces very rarely bring any value to your brain. After all your visual system is built around the idea of turning n-dimensional noise into a non 3d abstraction.

<comment><USER21> I agree that the looking glass style 3D is fun and gimicky and hard to see added benefit.

At the same time, speaking from personal experience - 3D in VR can give a much stronger sense of overview of many datasources etc. while at the same time can reduce semantic noise.

I get quite a few productive hours out of a successor to this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Js7Y1H5D8cY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Js7Y1H5D8cY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> LOL Remember the 3d UI from jurassic park? "Oh its a linux system!" And then she proceeds to use a 3d RTS-style interface to manage the park :)

<comment><USER58> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_\(file_manager\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I think i disliked it then because it was written in Java, and if i remember it performed poorly on most machines compared to Compiz Fusion.

</comment><comment><USER60> >I wonder why it never really took off

Because it's useless garbage that nobody needs and that doesn't fix any problems.

</comment><comment><USER61> I sent away for the demo cd. it's probably still in a stack someplace. very sad this didn't take off more.

</comment><comment><USER62> Seems more gimmicky than useful. I don't need to play Morrowind just to interact with my filesystem.

</comment><comment><USER63> Thank you for this. I don't have anything insightful to add, but it sure brought back memories.

</comment><comment><USER64> I wish something would have came from Sun's Project Wonderland.

</comment><comment><USER65> So that's where OS X got its 3D app dock from...

<comment><USER5> The app dock was included with the first releases of OS X; the 3D effect isn't really a 3D effect (they just replaced the backdrop image in horizontal modes).</comment></comment>


What should every programmer write? - <AUTHOR> Is there any set of problems to solve and applications to write which will make a better programmer without a doubt? I'm thinking about classic apps, like compiler (for deeper understanding of compilation process), designing and implementing a programming language and writing simple OS.<p>Have you other suggestions?<p>(of course I'm not talking about rewriting gcc, but few days of work just to get more information about how computers work and implementing the knowledge) <comment><USER2> make a game; you will learn a lot. even a simple 2d game like a chess simulation is a great exercise in software engineering, for several reasons.

\- Games are a LOT of work. Most hobbyist games are never finished. Sticking with one from start to finish is a great execise in discipline and perseverance.

\- Games of any significant level of complexity require a lot of thinking about performance. Most programmer's first game looks something like this:

       while not game.time_to_quit():
           for each entity in game.entities:
               entity.update()
           game.render_frame()

       which will always pin a single CPU to full utilization.  Try again!

\- Games require a wide knowledge of data structures and programming techniques, like kd-trees, pools, and (if you're really serious about performance) stuff like cache-aligned allocation and flywheels.

\- There are always tons of cool features you can add that will stretch your coding ability to the limit. Try adding a save-game feature and watch yourself pull your hair out designing a decent data model. Add 'instant replay' abilities without destroying memory performance, and build an AI to see why functional programming rocks your socks off. Add network play and learn how to write really performant network code. Add pixel shaders and learn the basics of GPU processing and how awesome it is.

\- Games are the type of project that is 'never done' in the sense that there is almost always some improvement left to be made.

\- Most decently built games separate the engine from the game itself. Learning to do this properly is a great way to learn good techniques for designing good abstraction layers.

\- Games are fucking awesome. The first time you have code moving a lolcat around on the screen, you'll shit your pants with excitement (YMMV). Part of the fun of programming is building stuff, and being able to see what you're building is very rewarding, especially if people play what you're working on and (if you're really good) they like it.

<comment><USER3> Games will force you to become a better software designer, provided that you want to produce readable code, since by their nature games want to rub every kind of data you have against every other kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For something a little less painful than the other suggestions here, write a web server.

You'll learn more about HTTP, statefulness, scalability and 'how websites work' than you'll ever learn building websites.

</comment><comment><USER5> Implement swtch() for x86 and arm (or whatever cpu you have). This is if you want to be a systems programmer, work on operating systems, file systems, etc.

There is something magical about calling a function as one process and returning as another.

I did this while still at school for Udi Manber (agrep, google search vp) because he wanted a user level threads package.

You can see my hacky code for the VAX (I think) at

<http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/T/src/Tasm.S>

<http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/T/src/Tswitch.c>

it's from 1987 when I was a grad student, probably doesn't compile.

</comment><comment><USER6> A small Lisp-1 interpreter written in Lisp or Scheme it was a rite of passage in the the old days.

This [1] is a naive implementation of the eval function that I wrote last summer. Maybe someone can give me some feedback on it. I am planning to work a little bit more on it this holidays.

[1] <https://gist.github.com/493736>

</comment><comment><USER7> A Scheme parser & interpreter helps a lot in understanding compiling & functional programming.

Resource: Scheme 9 from empty space: <http://tx97.net/s9fes/></comment>


The Best Camera Is The One You Have - <AUTHOR> http://www.macdrifter.com/2011/10/the-best-camera-is-the-one-you-have/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really thought the f/2.4 was a killer feature on that new iPhone. Surprisingly, no one cared.</comment>


Suggest HN: Can we please start tagging links with autoplay media? - <AUTHOR> I have yet to meet a person who enjoys auto playing videos and other types of media on sites, and yet every day this situation is getting worse, I have stopped clicking on known websites with auto-play media like Bloomberg  or CNN just because of this.<p>If we can start tagging sites with a tag like [Auto-play], I feel it would save a lot of us from being taken in by surprise when we visit these sites. <comment><USER2> If your browser doesn't support disabling autoplay, send them a request for change. They created the problem, it's their job to fix it.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

Web browsers are generally free to use and there are several serious contenders and many less popular ones.

So the main thing they should be competing on is _user experience_.

But it seems to me that browsers frequently fail to deliver a user-first experience.

The browser should only take actions specifically requested by a user, as his agent. Everything about the experience needs to be reframed from that perspective.

Some browsers lately seem to be doing a little better at this, but just adding "advanced flag" features on to an existing product isn't going to help mainstream users at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pro-tip:

chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy

<comment><USER5> For Firefox, set media.autoplay.enabled = false in about:config.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can use Safari.

[https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-stop- auto...](https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/how-stop-autoplay- video-in-safari-chrome-on-mac-3661342/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I disagree- HN should _remove_ any links that have autoplaying media.

</comment><comment><USER8> > _I have yet to meet a person who enjoys auto playing videos and other types > of media on sites_

I know plenty of people who work in advertising.

<comment><USER9> >I know plenty of people who work in advertising.

That's the funny thing, most people I know in advertising complain about page slowness and marketing run ad blockers.

Even they hate auto-play video, but they're perfectly willing to try and force it and a thousand other abominations on _other people_.

Which makes them... _sociopaths?_</comment></comment>


Where Company Names Come From - <AUTHOR> http://www.fortymedia.com/blog/post/69 <comment><USER2> Thanks SO MUCH for this...As a "green" company that (ohmygod!) doesn't actually have the word "green" in the title, we're constantly being asked "why the name?" Meanwhile, we're sitting there talking to VCs about sites like "Etsy." I hate being condescended to by a painfully obvious name. Like those washcloths that say "wash" and the towels that say "dry." C'mon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this stuff! What a coincidence with the LEGO name. I can't believe they didn't plan that out. The Six Apart name is interesting too.</comment>


Airlines Phasing Out Screens Because Passengers Are All on Your Devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/business/streaming-flights-movies.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20170216&nl=dealbook&nl_art=5&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1 <comment><USER2> I feel like I'm going to be one of the few (if only) dissenting voices against everyone else here: I actually LIKE the screens in the back of the chair in front of me. My general experience with them for long flights, while buggy with a bad screen, etc. has been very good. This is due to what is generally a pretty good selection of movies, often with many I haven't seen but know about and would like to see, or fun surprises that I would have never considered otherwise. (example: I got to see "Shin Godzilla" on a flight to Japan recently. I had never heard about it, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting movies I saw of the multiple I selected, and just generally a very interesting movie in general with strong commentary against the government's handling of the power plant disaster) These turn out to be very beneficial for me, as when I'm on a long plane ride I often "shut down" and don't want to do anything except brainlessly watch movies or potentially read certain books that suck me in very well. On the long flights to Australia and Japan I've done recently this has allowed the flight to pass quickly and easily for me.

I'm sad to see them go. I don't want to watch movies on some silly app on my phone which is much smaller than the screens now. I want to use my phone to read books and save the battery charge for texting people or driving when I land.

<comment><USER3> +1

To add to this, the screens are definitely buggy still and ~15 min reboots are not uncommon, but all of these are HARDWIRED. I'm scared of how bad it will be when everyone tries to connect to the wifi to stream the same content.

Managing the local streaming server is not going to be any easier either.

<comment><USER4> I've seen it on Air Canada (or Red or Jazz, or whatever it was called that day), and it actually worked quite well. They offered to rent tablets for people who didn't have devices.

I suspect managing the streaming server isn't going to be much more complicated than managing the old wired content sever... On the other hand, not needind kilometers of cables for entertainment, not needing to maintain them, makes a huge difference for the airlines. This is not as simple as pulling a cable in your house, planes have crashed because of fires from bad maintenance/install of cables, including cables for entertainment.

<comment><USER5> I'd hope they'd have separate cable trays for critical and noncritical wires. And we have flame-retardant plastic that isn't deadly poisonous.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotal, I know, but I was on a flight a few months ago where the wire for the hand held controller for the entertainment system had gotten so hot it burnt my hand. I'm not sure how far away the autoignition temperature of cotton is from the burn-my-hand-temperature, but I suppose it's possible that if it was cotton on that wire as opposed to my skin it may have caught fire. And while the wire delivering that content was non critical and probably on a seperate power network to the main systems of the plane, a fire on a plane is a fire on a plane regardless of which system caused it.

<comment><USER7> You can cause a full thickness burn at really low temperatures. Water will cause a 2nd or 3rd degree burn in 2 seconds at 65 C.

[http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_wa...](http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_graph.html)

I think regular cotton burns at something like 200 C. Cotton on a plane is going to have fire retardant properties.

Burns are complicated, but if you'd touched something that hot you'd have had an instant burn, probably with blistering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good riddance. I've turned off the screen on every flight I've been on because I don't like commercials and glare in my face for hours at a time. That makes the planes which reboot their entertainment system (and implicitly turn the screen back on) 3-4 times during takeoff and ascent particularly annoying to me in particular.

<comment><USER9> Which airline do you fly? I don't recall ever seeing any commercials on United, ANA, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, or Malaysia Airlines. Most of the systems have been fairly decent, although it was a massive disappointment last time I rode on ANA and found out they had replaced all the SNES games with generic mobile phone tier games.

<comment><USER10> I've seen ads on these screens while in taxi for departure on Air Canada Rouge (domestic) flights. Really annoying, I couldn't find a way to turn off the display.

<comment><USER11> You tune the brightness down until the screen turns off. Then they reboot and default back on. Repeat for leaving the gate, taxiing, post take-off, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to see airlines install some universal holders for various tablets/phones. I'm happy to see the terrible systems go, but holding a phone or propping it up on the tray table wasn't a perfect alternative.

Now that Netflix allows me to download content to my devices, I have no need for the inflight entertainment systems or the new wireless systems they are talking about in this article.

<comment><USER13> Newer seats have this sort of hard pocket at the top. With certain tablet cases it's perfect for hanging the tablet.

[http://www.futuretravelexperience.com/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://www.futuretravelexperience.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/ba-slimline-seat-tablet-holder.jpg)

<comment><USER12> You would still need a cover but definitely in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm actually OK with this. The screens are generally of very poor quality. If they replace them with USB ports, that's all we need!

Especially with Netflix Offline mode, there's basically no need for these anymore.

<comment><USER15> Some of those screens look literally decades old. Horrible viewing angles, huge pixels, etc.

<comment><USER16> I was under the impression that the viewing angles were intentionally poor for the sake of privacy and not having glare in the faces of the people behind you.

<comment><USER15> I think this can be used as a pretext, but these screens look extremely old anyway. My TN monitor 10 years ago had a much better picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like being able to watch movies or TV shows on the plane. I don't keep that stuff on my phone and I don't own a tablet. I guess I can hope it'll lower the cost of the ticket, but that's not going to happen. :)

<comment><USER18> Many flights now have free streaming content from on-board servers via the WiFi. It's basically equivalent to what you'd get from the old screens but you can use your own device to get at it. No need to keep large movies/shows around on your device at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently flew internationally on United. They have this. You need a phone or iPad with the app and then you can pull up movies and shows. I flew round trip and it worked about 20% of one way and 0% the other way. I had counted on it so didn't bring books or any other entertainment and had to stare at the back of the seat in front of me for 14 hours with simmering hatred for United.

One point: whereas before if the screen didn't work it was their responsibility, now they can blame your device and there's no real recourse.

I get that the other built in screens are not perfect but I've only had a problem with it not working maybe 1 out of 30 flights.

I ended up getting a 100 dollar voucher which will never be used since United is garbage.

<comment><USER20> Honestly, I'd never have any confidence in the availability of inflight entertainment. Carry your own even if it's just throwing in a paperback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even though I like the Thanos GeoMaps app on the AA IFE aystem, I am okay with this. IFEs are expensive and most people consume media on their phones or laptops anyway. Ultimately this will save the airlines a lot of money; hopefully, this savings will get passed on to us.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm all for this, although I do enjoy the map of the flight. Maybe there'll be an app that provides that info...

<comment><USER23> There is. Download the FlightAware app, it gives a lot more info and detail. And if you're interested in listening as well, check out the LiveATC app.

<comment><USER24> If you're interested in more detailed info (like aeronautical charts and such), I recommend ForeFlight [0]. It's what I use when I'm actually flying. It also uses the GPS in your mobile device rather than the slightly delayed position information from FlightAware.

[0] [https://www.foreflight.com/](https://www.foreflight.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Theyre only good for long flights when theyre packed with free movies. Other than that it doesnt matter. If theyre gonna make you pay to watch anything yeah, just get rid of it

</comment><comment><USER26> Have they not already? I haven't seen seat-back screens in years, and last time I did the entertainment system wasn't functioning so you couldn't actually use it.

<comment><USER27> I flew on Emirates a few months ago and not only did they indeed have seat- back screens, they also had a really nice selection of movies. Lots of choices, including a number of 'sets' like the entire Star Wars series, the entire LOTR collection, etc. Nothing can really make a 14 hour flight good, but I was pretty satisfied with the quality of the hardware and content on the Emirates plane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bummer.

Virgin America had the coolest flight-safety video ever: [https://youtu.be/DtyfiPIHsIg](https://youtu.be/DtyfiPIHsIg)

<comment><USER29> Flight safety videos will probably still be shown on overhead monitors. Some kind of safety announcement is compulsory, and the video is a good branding opportunity.

I find that VX one pretty grating though, and will probably be seen as embarrassingly 2010s in a few years time. Some of the Air New Zealand ones are good though.

<comment><USER28> And roundabout 2030 or so, a Nostalgia Critic-equivalent will post a 64k holovid to YouTube entitled "Hey, remember that Virgin America safety video?"

Oh wait, something like this has already happened: [https://youtu.be/1QgWAxkHZWc](https://youtu.be/1QgWAxkHZWc)</comment></comment></comment>


Self-driving cars prove to be labour-intensive for humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/36933cfc-620c-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895 <comment><USER2> non paywall link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_yomvu...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_yomvuECvVcJ:https://www.ft.com/content/36933cfc-620c-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)</comment></comment>


ECMAScript 6 support in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/ECMAScript_6_support_in_Mozilla

<comment><USER2> Support of ECMAScript Harmony is far away from any production development. It's useful for experiments and geeky "OMG, that's awesome!" statements. I'm pretty sure this will be in the backyard for another 5 years, until the specs are finished and there is some official specification document.</comment>


My Second Hackathon Changed My Life - <AUTHOR> http://news.mlh.io/second-hackathon-changed-my-life-02-12-2015 <comment><USER2> Loved this story. I can completely sympathize. I had been programming in school and for fun a little before my first hackathon, however I had not yet made any "real" apps. I attended my first hackathon a few years ago (pretty sure Jon was there). Like Jon, I joined a team of people with much more experienced than myself. They taught me a lot, helped me get started, and got me hooked on hackathons. After this hackathon, I started learning about web development, meeting others in the community, and of course attending more hackathons.

If you are at all interested in programming or learning how to program, I encourage you to attend a hackathon. Check out some great ones here: [http://mlh.io/events/](http://mlh.io/events/)

</comment><comment><USER3> An inspiring read - I know of so many people that got dragged to their first hackathon thanks to persistent friends, myself included!

Every single hackathon I've been to since have inspired me in one way or another - be it trying out the latest tech, the buzz from working on a hack over a short period of time, or just meeting & sharing the weekend with super awesome people!

The hacker ethos is extremely transferrable as well, it's a mindset I promote a lot when I teach Computing to my secondary school students in the UK. It's all about getting the learners to take control of their own education & be as creative as they want about it.

Proud to have MLH at the forefront of revolutionising how students learn, build and share ideas around technology. Very excited to be part of this growing global community and cannot wait to see what's to come!

If you're in the EU, I would highly recommend checking out these upcoming hackathons (drag a friend along too!): [http://mlh.io/eu/](http://mlh.io/eu/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hackathons are a lot of fun and I enjoy attending them. I'd love to see them get more diverse. MLH has been a great organization to work with so far.

One of my favorite things about Hackathons is that no matter where you are in the world you meet people who are interested in the same things. They're not just interested though, they're capable.

The only other thing I'd love to see from hackathons is a little more focus on health of the participants.

<comment><USER5> > The only other thing I'd love to see from hackathons is a little more focus > on health of the participants.

Me too. Our most recent participant survey said that the most important three things to hackers were:

1\. Fast Internet 2\. Good Food 3\. Healthy Food (different than good food apparently)

<comment><USER6> I would add Sleep to the list. I would be interested to know how it was ranked in your survey.

Most people at hackathons don't acknowledge that they need to sleep, which is bad for both their health and their productivity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had a couple of meals with Jon & Swift (founders of MLH) and can speak to their dedication to the hackathon community. They're really trying to encourage experiences like these for students around the country.

Hackathons are the reason I got involved in the larger tech/startup community, an indirect (but crucial) reason I have a job right now, and have really come to be a very important culture for me. The work of MLH and Jon have made a large part of that possible.

For those curious about the history of hackathons, Jon has a really great talk that he gave at HackCon last year about the history of hackathons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6VPAe9CKU&index=1&list=PLP...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6VPAe9CKU&index=1&list=PLPDgudJ_VDUdqhQldG7SqXGxaj- FiLGmP)

<comment><USER8> Agreed, great guys leading the charge for the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I took a bunch of high-school students to the MLH Launch hack in London and they had an amazing time, and were really inspired by everything that was going on around them.

Unfortunately although MLH were very supportive of under 18s attending the hackathons, the venues weren't so accomodating, and it doesn't look like were going to get to go to another one.

It would be nice to see more under 18 hackathons being organised to help inspire and engage teenagers. We have YRS in the UK and it's fantastic, but it only comes around once a year.

<comment><USER10> Both MHacks and PennApps accept high school students. Sadly, the venues are usually universities with strict policies but there are still many that allow <18, like CodeDay events.

<comment><USER11> Sadly, neither are on the west coast!

<comment><USER7> Both provide travel reimbursements and there are tons of HS-friendly hackathons on the west coast. HSHacks, HackGenY, LAHacks (IIRC they were cool with <18). Definitely could use more though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, I'm glad to see people have positive experiences with Hackathons despite my own being horribly toxic. The reasoning given in the article is actually the impetus behind my decision to ditch hackathons (and later the "development" community in favor of QA Automation).

The 'competition' portion of a hackathon usually messes me up in both approach to the work and the desired end goal. Whereas it seems to be a major portion of the attraction for the blog author and a lot of people in this thread.

Perhaps it is a matter of teammates that I have participated with thus far, but trying to hack together a minimum-passable-product (note: not even viable but ~passable~) stuck me as an utter waste.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you go into the event hoping to build something productive or that has longevity, it will likely feel like a waste. But that's really not the point of hackathons, and seems to be a major factor that people take issue with. Especially for students/new programmers, the goal is to tinker with technology, have fun, and discover like-minded collaborators in a risk-free environment.

You might be thinking - hey! a competition isn't risk-free - but really, compared to a work or academic environment there is far less risk involved with building something ambitious or using a technology you are completely unfamiliar with. The best hackathons don't focus on the competitive element, but instead create a system where people are rewarded for ambitious but not perfectly polished work. I wrote another blog post about that here: [http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing- sinc...](http://news.mlh.io/are-hackathon-prizes-the-worst-thing-since-moldy- sliced-bread-04-18-2014)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I could not agree more with everything that you talk about in this post. StartupBus was my first real hackathon and it definitely changed my life.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love reading stories like these. I hope more people in the community share first (or second) hackathon stories.

<comment><USER5> +1. If you have a story to share, email us at email@example.com. We'd love to share it with our community!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really enlightening post - gotta love what's been going on with the hackathon community over the past couple years!

<comment><USER16> The student hackathon movement has definitely evolved super quickly in the last five years (as Swift says, 5 -> 150, or more than 100% growth year over year). I'd be curious to hear more stats about how hackathons in general have grown in the same time period.</comment></comment>


Bookmarking webapp with a focus on rich content. - <AUTHOR> http://minilogs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Our webapp has reached a milestone (5000+ registered beta users). Would love some feedback from you guys!</comment>


Would You Trade Privacy for a Free Phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.i4u.com/46152/would-you-trade-privacy-free-phone

<comment><USER2> I can't wait for the day we go beyond simply "privacy vs. no privacy" arguments. Privacy isn't a boolean thing. It's so much more nuanced than that.

<comment><USER3> I agree but when it comes to recording ambient sound for marketing purpose I don't think there is a need for a debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently no. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyk#Ending_UK_service> That's marketing speak for no, no-one, not even chavs with parents on dole value their privacy that low.

<comment><USER5> I feel like you're misrepresenting the results, though. Note in particular that they "reached their twelve month target of 100,000 clients six months ahead of schedule." If I had to guess, I would say that users were mostly dismissing the ads out of hand, and Blyk was unable to charge acceptable rates for ads, but I really don't know.

It's also not clear how targeted this advertising was--it may be that the sacrifice was in UX only rather than privacy, in which case it's not exactly relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another related issue is web browsing. A lot of people (i'd say most web users) don't understand that there are hundreds of ad networks and other companies (Google, Facebook) tracking them across most of their web browsing without their knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would I? Probably not. Is it conceivable that this could be the norm? Definitely.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Onion has a great piece on this subject: [http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone-service- whisp...](http://www.theonion.com/video/new-google-phone-service-whispers- targeted-ads-dir,17470/)

</comment><comment><USER9> No. Thanks, but I can pay for my own stuff. I won't "sell my soul" for some trinket.</comment>


How do you feel about an artificial announcer with an accent? - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2020-02-synthetic-voices-accent-artificial-interactive <comment><AUTHOR> For the benefit of confused non-Brits, the BBC does not consider its default southern middle-class accent an accent at all, that's "received pronunciation" unquestionably correct.</comment>


Car turns driver in for hit-and-run - <AUTHOR> http://www.wpbf.com/news/car-turns-driver-in-for-hitandrun/36755942 <comment><USER3> You know how to reduce drunk driving? Invest in public transportation.

Poor people won't be able to afford self driving cars for quite some time. The US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except in certain major cities.

I'm not excusing this woman's behaviour. She lacks major responsibility. But the world is full of irresponsible people, and building good public infrastructure helps in so many ways that there's no excuse not to build it.

<comment><USER4> >The US is a country where it's very difficult to live without a car, except in certain major cities.

This is by design. As I mentioned in another comment, there was this 1950s utopian ideal amongst American planners that we'd all own cars, we could live tens of miles away from the city where we worked, modern planning would ensure traffic was amazing, and we could avoid all that nasty density business and all the 'others' that come with it.

No longer would white men have to live near black men. We could all just drive away to the suburbs where restrictive covenants meant we couldn't even sell to black people and restrictive zoning forcing large lot single family homes would ensure that, even if we could legally sell to them, they wouldn't be able to afford to live there anyways.

Racially motivated covenants can't be enforced any longer, but the land use control mechanisms put in place to ensure no poor people move to the pristine suburb still exist.

It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court upheld these laws, even sharing in their legal opinions that apartments are evil and a drain on society, so of course we should ban them.

If they had not upheld these laws, or these laws did not exist in the first place, I'm sure the US would have maintained its public transit friendly character to a great extent. Even LA had one of the largest, if not the largest, rail systems in the world. Imagine that.

<comment><USER5> >> No longer would white men have to live near black men.

Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was about.

<comment><USER4> >Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was about.

Race was a _huge_ motivator. Why else would we have racial covenants? Funny how the growth of suburbs came at roughly the same time that schools started integrating and integration accelerated suburban growth. We had Federal suburban housing subsidies available almost exclusively for whites.

We have a name for this phenomenon: White Flight.

Pre-1950s we had racial covenants, but we didn't social engineer lifestyles in suburbs to build them around cars. Streetcar suburbs for instance looked similar to the cities they were connected to. Smaller and less dense, but walkable urban places in their own right. Look at places like Del Ray, Alexandria, Virginia for an example.

In cities themselves we tended to build highways in poor, mostly minority, neighborhoods. The white neighborhoods wouldn't be leveled nearly as often.

<comment><USER6> I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were followed home one day. Not sure race had anything to do with it but crime definitely did.

<comment><USER7> You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians?

Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation.

This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites:

[http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet- abou...](http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks- killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/)

It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi propaganda.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said some really despicable things.

<comment><USER9> The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.

<comment><USER10> " _" Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum._"

This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it. In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that.

Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote. Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly abandon it if we don't like what's being said.

<comment><USER7> Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power. Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one last free vote for a populist who ends free voting.

There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Best line of the article:

> It was later discovered that Bernstein had been involved in another accident > prior to the one with Preston and was fleeing from that incident.

So this hit and run was just the result of fleeing from a different hit and run.

> She said she had not been drinking and didn't know why her vehicle had > called for help.

Mmmmmhmmm.

</comment><comment><USER12> The emergency call was apparently triggered by the airbag deployment[1]. For some cars, when the airbag deploys, a representative comes on the speakerphone to ask if everyone is ok, and whether they should call the police or an ambulance. It appears that the Ford system places the call automatically.

[1] [http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability- report-2...](http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability- report-2013-14/vehicle-response.html)

<comment><USER13> Ford Sync uses the inbuilt GPS antenna and your phone (connected via Bluetooth). Ford Sync calls the local emergency number and speak via an offline text-to-speech (Nuance software). The feature can be turned on/off in the on-board computer.

It's definitely better than the new EU regulation where every new car is required to "phone home" the car position every few minutes, so that in the case of an emergency they can locate you. Typical inversion of control for no benefit (for the consumer).

<comment><USER14> > _It 's definitely better than the new EU regulation where every new car is > required to "phone home" the car position every few minutes,_

[citation needed]

There is eCall, but it is "only" required to trigger on crash, exactly as the system described in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was recently at a dealership looking at a new car. The sales rep was showing me all of the phone and technology integration. He talked about how you could see incoming call/texts/emails etc on the display. Then he got a bit cagey about how you can enable and disable that feature. He looked at my slightly perplexed (naive?) face and said "Sometimes men don't like to have this information come up when driving with their wives" This sort of reminds me of that story.

<comment><USER16> A truly male-specific problem ¬_¬

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Featuring auto-playing video advertising from "a personal injury lawyer" yakking, with hand in pocket, in front of "IF YOUR NOT HURT" slides ...

</comment><comment><USER18> Well with self driving cars coming, will they be able to determine if they should let you take control? The technology to monitor eye movement is there and being able sense alcohol on your breath would not be that hard to pull off just by it sampling.

Listened to the whole 911 and the patience of the operator was just great.

"Sorry Mr. Peters, I cannot allow you take control of the car at this time, continued attempts to do so will result in total shutdown or notification of the authorities"

<comment><USER19> Getting an accurate enough sample from your breath without cooperation and breathing into a tube is probably impossible. Even then there still is the question of whether that sample is actually human breath from the driver.

Apart from that it's probably not a good idea to let someone drive who doesn't have any recent-ish experience driving, especially in dangerous situations.

<comment><USER20> In Denmark the have talked about an alcohol-lock, so you can only start the car if you breathe into a tube. But that is probably easy to cheat if you want to.

Oh, it seems like it already exists: [http://alcolockusa.com/compliance/index.php?route=common/hom...](http://alcolockusa.com/compliance/index.php?route=common/home)

<comment><USER21> Here in Sweden, I don't know of any legislation but alochol locks are not unheard of. They are fitted to a lot of company work vehicles, and are increasingly popular in the cars of normal people who could never imagine themeselves drink driving because insurers will give discount.

It was in my local paper that the local district nurses were having trouble with them because they had to wash their hands in alcohol after each visit, and this was enough to make the car lock up sometimes, leaving them stranded waiting 30 minutes until they could try again and start the car and proceed to their next house call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Car's behaviors like this should be authorized by the owner.

<comment><USER23> It was. She had to enable the feature so that it could use her phone's bluetooth.

<comment><USER24> Eh? I don't think it relies on your phone... the car has its own cell radio for this very purpose.

<comment><USER25> Not in this case

[https://www.ford.com/technology/sync/](https://www.ford.com/technology/sync/)

You do have to connect your phone yourself, but it's unclear if the 911 assist is on by default, or if there are any prompts the user must accept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Url changed from [http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/12/03/a_florida...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/12/03/a_florida_woman_s_car_turned_her_in_for_a_hit_and_run.html), which points to this.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure I want my car turning snitch on me...

<comment><USER28> It's a tradeoff. The system is designed to operate semi-autonomously so that it can help you if you're not able to tell it what you need. That's a powerful benefit.

In the end, increasingly many technologies are likely to act like this. I give my wife the password to "find my phone" service so she can locate me if I go missing on my commute or on a hiking trip; unless I execute more fine-grained control than I care to, the same authorization lets her snoop and determine if being late home from work correlates with my phone reporting I'm at a strip joint. People will, ultimately, be responsible for choosing the level of access they allow and for reasoning through the consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well the day I let my car make decisions for me is the day I walk, or have a self driving car:)

<comment><USER30> How does a self-driving car help there? It seems like that would make a lot _more_ decisions for you than the more ordinary sort.

<comment><USER31> The way I see it, either I make all the decisions as the driver of the vehicle, or I'm no longer the driver.

<comment><USER32> To what degree? There's a wide spectrum of driving assists.

Traction control and ABS through to cruise control or the assisted steering (terminology?) we're seeing more frequently today?

<comment><USER31> Those are more along the lines of tools a driver uses for assistance. I draw the line where if the car rear-ends another vehicle, a judge would never place the responsibility on me (because I wasn't even behind the controls).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> if a self-driving car hit someone, and then called the cops on the driver. now that would be something out of a good sci-fi novel.

<comment><USER34> And then pretended not to be a self driving car when the cops arrived.

<comment><USER35> The short lived "Team Knight Rider" series had a somewhat similar moment - <USER2> mechanic was working on the team's AI-equipped cars and talking to them, when the cars stopped talking back. [1]

Mechanic: "Why won't you answer me?"

Terrorist appears next to him: "Because it's just a car, you freak."

[1]: [https://youtu.be/xOv1-GiWSh0?t=7m15s](https://youtu.be/xOv1-GiWSh0?t=7m15s)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives to OpenAFS? - <AUTHOR>

A project I'm working on needs a secure network file share to synchronize files between our local machines and our remote servers in real-time.  Right now we're using OpenAFS, but I feel like there has to be a better option.  Any recommendations?  Anyone have any experience with GlusterFS? <comment><USER2> Does OpenAFS not solve your problem in some way? A little more context would be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, the question was a little vague. Right now, we are mounting an OpenAFS volume and using an editor on our local machine (Sublime for example) to code. After we're done editing, the code is run on the server, which also mounts the same OpenAFS volume.

The main reason we chose OpenAFS was the security model. However, from what I've read it seems to be based on Kerberos 4, which is out-of-date and has problems. It's also difficult to maintain a OpenAFS cell and requires a separate Kerberos authentication server.

I'm basically looking for a more modern DFS that implements better user-based security.

<comment><USER2> If your use case simply involves editing text files so that they are in sync with the remote server then OpenAFS does seem to be overkill. SSHFS [1] would be the simplest solution to this. It works well for small files but not well with large ones due to its synchronous nature.

[1] [http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html](http://fuse.sourceforge.net/sshfs.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's anti-Google campaign gets a boost, from Google - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130515/microsofts-anti-google-campaign-gets-a-boost-from-google/ <comment><USER2> I think this article is a little bit naive. Google sent the email during IO, because the overwhelming flow of Google news simply obliterates any other news. Nobody cares about a Window Phone app while we are talking about new Android Studio, new Google Map, new G+ interface, new Gmail features, new apis, etc... "Microsoft violated YouTube license? Bad for them, now move on and let's talk about Android game development with Google Play Games". The trap it's defused.

<comment><USER3> The things I care about seem to be the opposite of the things you care about. For instance, I'm ditching my third and last iPhone today for the Lumia 928 Windows Phone 8.

<comment><USER4> You are most definitely the only one. And judging from your comment history, you also like Windows 8, so rest assured that your opinions are far, far outside the mainstream.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just last quarter, Windows Phone shipped on 6 million phones and Windows 8 sold total 100 million licensees. Someone who likes them is the "only one" and is "far, far out of the mainstream?".

Also what's up with people launching ad hominem attacks on people liking Windows instead of commenting on the topic on hand? What has your post got to do with Google blocking and refusing to make a YouTube app for Windows Phone?

<comment><USER4> "Ad hominem" is only an appropriate term to use if I was saying that he was making an argument, but that his argument was wrong because of some defect in his character. It isn't just used for any time anyone mentions the other person in a conversation.

In this case, no argument was made. He simply said "The things I care about seem to be opposite of the things you care about". That's not an argument, it's just a personal statement. Even if ad hominem WERE the correct term, it would be even LESS appropriate here, because he was the one who brought up his own tastes in the first place.

EDIT: And to respond to the rest of your post, numbers like those are meaningless. Unless they're presented in a comparative context, they're very much like showing someone a graph without its axes labeled.

So for comparative purposes, Windows Phone shipped on that many devices. Great. How many Android and iPhone devices were shipped in the same period?

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, do you have an opinion on the story or are you here just to comment about how other people's personal tastes are out of the mainstream?

<comment><USER4> Ironically, the subtle implication of THIS comment - that my responses are less valuable because I am, in general, a negative person - IS drifting towards ad hominem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too bad you got caught trying to delete your troll post here.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5717922>

<comment><USER4> Now you're not only attacking my character, but you're attempting to label me for the sole purpose of dismissing my arguments.

This is so ad hominem it's almost cycling around the universe and landing back on "polite".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the implication of the article is that Microsoft deliberately made a YT app that they knew Google would be forced to C&D just so they could use that as a cog in a PR campaign? Seems penny wise pound foolish if true.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, they got tired of begging Google for a Youtube app for close to three years for Windows Phone, so they went ahead and made one so that Windows Phone users will finally have a good app instead of getting frustrated by Google's deliberate strategy to make Windows Phone less attractive.

And Google wants to pull away that app from WP users by using legal bullying tactics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So how did Microsoft get Google to promote the Scroogled campaign? The article claims this is what happened but there is no information about it or proof or any sort of logical link, only about MS publishing the C&D letter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read the stories in this post for more details.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5717749>

<comment><USER6> None of those stories say anything about scroogled either. My point is this particular article makes a premise and then completely fails to follow up on it. Its really poor writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay let me explain it. Microsoft wanted to point out that Gmail scans the contents of email while Outlook.com doesn't in the Scroogled campaign.

And now Google is trying legal tactics with a C&D to takedown to prevent Windows Phone users from getting a very popular smartphone app, YouTube, so they're smearing themselves here and helping the scroogled compaign paint them as evil.

<comment><USER6> Lol. Removing an app for violating the terms still has nothing to do with reading your emails. The only connection is that both have a some PR effect, but everything those companies do has it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh. My. F*. God.

Just look at the comment section below the article. It's chockfull of microsoft's PR drones and MVPs saying all kinds of nasty things about Google and Apple and not really disclosing their affiliations with microsoft.

<comment><USER8> > It's chockfull of microsoft's PR drones and MVPs saying all kinds of nasty > things about Google and Apple and not really disclosing their affiliations > with microsoft.

How do you know this?

<comment><USER7> I've been in the software industry for 28 years. I was there when microsoft invented their particular flavor of aggressive marketing. Search keywords "Evangelism is war" in case you're not familiar with how it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My fave comment from previous dicussions:

cooldeal 8 hours ago | link

From Google's About page: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Last time when Google was intentionally blocking Google maps and then deprecated ActiveSync on Windows Phone someone suggested Google should updated it to the following:(which seems quite true given how much of the world's crowdsourced video content is on YouTube):

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, except on Windows Phone".

<comment><USER10> Are you cooldeal? Because I see this account was created 6 hours ago.

<comment><USER9> mtgx 8 minutes ago | link

Are you cooldeal? Because I see this account was created 6 hours ago.

No, I just thought his comment was very funny so I copy pasted it. Also, what if I was him/her? Whats your problem, really, with this off topic questioning?

<comment><AUTHOR> >Also, what if I was him/her? Whats your problem, really

Well, looking at his previous postings he seems quite the dedicated Google fan and Microsoft hater. Nothing wrong with that, really but my best guess is that he has nothing to say about Google's evil power grab to hurt Windows Phone here or Google's hypocritical bogus Mission Statement, so he's doing the next best thing at damage control for Google by trying to draw a red herring by going ad hominem and accusing HN commenters of being MS astroturfers or something. Search me, I am puzzled as well as how your account age is related to this story.

<comment><USER11> I don't think he's a Microsoft hater, he works for them[1].

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cooldeal>

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, let us assume that he does, so what? A lot of people work for Microsoft, Google and Apple and post on HN.

I didn't see a sign up message on HN stating that only Google and Apple employees/fans are allowed to post here.

Nice job at trying to derail the discussion. Now care tell us what do you think of the topic of this story instead of trying to go ad hominem on a tangent about some HN commenter's posting history which has nothing to do with anything really?

Edit: What in cooldeal's HN profile makes you think he works for Microsoft?

<comment><USER11> > Okay, let us assume that he does, so what? A lot of people work for > Microsoft, Google and Apple and post on HN.

Because you seem to have him pegged as a MS hater when if you look at his previous comments of the past 3-4 months they're contrary to your hypothesis of him hating MS.

> Nice job at trying to derail the discussion.

It was already derailed by your witch hunt against this guy. I generally look at a user's history before thinking of calling them out for bias.

> Now care tell us what do you think of the topic of this story...

Considering I have never said anything negative towards Microsoft (or for that matter, Google, Apple, or any major tech company) on HN and I am currently posting this on Windows 7, while using Intellij IDEA, Visual Studio 2012 and with also a couple of remote ssh instances of Linux simultaneously open, I definitely have an overt bias :)

> ...instead of trying to go ad hominem on a tangent about some HN commenter's > posting history which has nothing to do with anything really?

I don't think you're in the best position to be accusing anyone of name calling and character attacks based on your very angry and accusing comments so far. It's just a forum and the Internet is a silly place to get angry over :). I've had articles I've submitted get flagged or ignored. Doesn't bother me. I consider it the people that flagged its loss and not mine and just put it out of my mind almost after I submit it.

> Edit: What in cooldeal's HN profile makes you think he works for Microsoft?

Perhaps he doesn't and I read too much into his comments and he's not. However, he's certainly not a Google fanboy and MS hater. If you would like to attack people, there are much better communities on the internet to do so than HN.

Edit: although yes there are people here that have a strong dislike of MS for whatever reason (and also those that dislike Google, Apple, Ruby, PHP, and anything else that can be polarizing), assuming everyone here is in one camp or the other and accusing them of such is not winning you any sympathizers as I use quite few tools at times that are not considered super popular on hn myself (such as Opera, Java, C#, Windows, etc). I also use things that are popular as well (Python, Linux, JavaScript, Android). In then end, I really don't care what anyone uses other than myself as my decisions are related to what works best for me and only that. I stopped worrying about staying trendy sometime ago and I think I'm happier for it.

However, I can't support someone that resorts to mud slinging themselves. I think it's a shame you are trying to fight everyone as well as it just reaffirms the people that flag such articles that they're correct and dissuades those more amiable from supporting such articles in the future. I prefer an HN that is less polarized or focused only on one or two tech platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Geez, I was referring to mtgx as a Google fanboy and MS hater, certainly not cooldeal.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot? I'll explain how we perhaps got to this point.

In your comment here[1][2] with the quote, your pronoun usage and the reply you gave, one could take it as you were referring to cooldeal, which prompted my reply and beliving you were accusing him and not mtgx. Since you cleared it up, not a big deal, but just showing how it can get misinterpreted.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5717816>

[2] _> CloudNine 1 hour ago | link

>Also, what if I was him/her? Whats your problem, really. Well, looking at his previous postings he seems quite the dedicated Google fan and Microsoft hater. _

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Earlier discussions:

C&D takedown to Microsoft by Google: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715168>

Microsoft's response(Lying at #40 on second page because of heavy flagging by Google fans in spite of it having more votes than many stories on front page):

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889>

<comment><USER12> I flag subs like these because the comment threads are fucking awful.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of subs exactly? The ones critical of Google?

How about just skipping the story/comments and moving to the next instead of trying to bury real news for everyone by flagging?

From the HN guidelines:

If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

You're basically abusing your mod privieleges.

<comment><USER12> > The ones critical of Google?

Your reply, which totally misses the point, is an elegant demonstration of just how fucking awful these threads are and exactly why they need to be buried.

There's no real news here. There's nothing deeply interesting. And the comments are just full of people who have deeply held polarised opinions bickering with each other.

The fact that you think I chose to bury something because it's critical of Google (I say plenty of anti-Google stuff) shows that you are over-sensitive and incapable of rational discussion. That's why threads like these are fucking terrible.

> You're basically abusing your mod privieleges.

No. This is a shitty thread. I'm proud I flagged it. I'd flag it again if I could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Good job, Google fans for flagging this story off the front page, you really have a veto on the HN front page.

<comment><USER13> I will comment on this one since you seem to be getting carried away with your _personal attacks_.

Please, stop it. It's shameful to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I submitted this story to see what the reaction of HN posters is. Well, almost no one here is commenting on topic because they seem to be squirming and are instead going on complete tangents by commenting about commenters and everyone else and then the submission gets flagged off the front page like every story on this Google C&D and you're accusing me of personal attacks? Really? How about some basic ethics, integrity and consistency from the other posters instead of trying to pretend that Google can do wrong and trying to derail and flag the story?</comment></comment></comment>