Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://bitcannon.net/post/finding-an-alternative-to-mac-os-x-part-2/ <comment><USER2> For anyone thinking of switching, here are some thoughts.

First, you'll hear all about arch. It's lovely, it really is. But, if you like the "just work" nature of OSX back in the day, look at Ubuntu proper or Ubuntu-gnome (if you don't like Unity). I'm sure people will chime in here with others that they have thoughts on here, though in my experience, Ubuntu is the best at this game and it's not even close. Yes, it has problems too (let's not start the nitpicking thing, I'm making a general statement), but it is by far the best stable linux desktop. Fedora is acceptable, particularly of late, but it /still/ is behind Ubuntu.

Second, with Ubuntu/Debian, stick with whatever is in the archive or PPA. Everything else isn't worth the pain. Perhaps Snaps can improve this problem, though I'm sceptical. Linuxbrew and other such things will not be worth the problems they bring.

Third, use a stable UI. Don't go with Pantheon, Mate, Cinnamon, Elementary or something else like that. Again, it's not worth the pain. I personally don't like KDE though it would qualify as "stable" along with Unity, Gnome-Shell and XFCE. I prefer Gnome-shell and Unity so that is what I use.

Lastly, things will be worse in some ways from OSX, and much better in others.

If the advise looks pretty straight forward, it is. Stick with the known working, well supported projects as your base, tinker in customisation to suite, and don't go with lesser known/supported projects if you only really care about something "just working".

<comment><USER3> I just switched back from Arch to Xubuntu recently and could not agree more.

I had been using Arch for over 5 years and I really enjoyed it but these days it's just not worth the effort. I had to format my hard drive and start from scratch and just didn't want to go through the pain of setting everything up to what it was before so I just went straight to Xubuntu. I was very positively surprised at how much just worked the way I wanted it to work out of the box. Sure, the default installer installed a bunch of packages that I did not want but it's easy to remove those.

<comment><USER4> > I had been using Arch for over 5 years and I really enjoyed it but these > days it's just not worth the effort. I had to format my hard drive and start > from scratch and just didn't want to go through the pain of setting > everything up to what it was before so I just went straight to Xubuntu.

The installation work can be trivially automated with a shell script (note though that the Arch wiki generally discourages this). The benefits of this are that in the process of creating the script, one has a good sense of the installation process and can customize it, unlike the case of Ubuntu and many other distros where a lot of stuff happens behind the scenes. The con is that this script needs to be kept up to date with the (occasional) change in the Arch project.

I have had good success with this method - over the past 2 years and 3 fresh installs on laptops and a desktop. Basically, with a new laptop and a reasonably fast internet connection, I can go from the USB installation medium to a complete desktop environment tailored for my needs with everything configured correctly in ~ 10-15 minutes, with minimal interaction needed during the process (only to set things like the password).

Also note that in most use cases some post installation tweaking gets done, such as the installation of new applications as per interest.

So there are primarily 2 things the script can handle: 1\. The annoying "low level work" \- network configuration, boot loader configuration, etc. This should be relatively stable and fixed across a variety of hardware.

2\. Application specific configuration needs (e.g vimrc, .bashrc). This may evolve over time/usage patterns - for this one can try keeping the script up to date, or not bother and simply focus on 1 above.

<comment><USER5> Anything can be automated but it's the effort required to do that which is the hump. when you can just click through a UI otherwise.

<comment><USER6> [https://arch-anywhere.org/](https://arch-anywhere.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I _really_ don't get why someone would want to change platform while doing his damnest to keep things _exactly_ as before. Instead of, I don't know... embracing the changes? Maybe try something new??

I mean switching to Linux but using a homebrew port instead of the native package manager? Really?

<comment><USER8> If I were to switch, it would be because I am disappointed in the company that manages my current platform (Apple) not because I dislike the platform experience. The point of a switch for me would be to keep my workflow but extract the element I dont like (Apple); to that end I would switch platforms and then try to keep everything else as it was before.

I really don't get why that seem's so off.

<comment><USER9> I think it's the general pattern that's off, and that pattern may or may not apply in this case. The general pattern is that a developer builds up a lot of skill with one specific instance of a broad category of software: a programming language, an OS, an editor, a 3D graphics API, whatever. For one reason or another, they move to another instance in that category. The first time anyone does this, there's a natural tendency to try to make the new software conform to the patterns of the old software, without learning the idioms of the new software first.

Example: in college I had to work with some C code written by a professor who was apparently a Pascal diehard. He included a header in everything he wrote which #define'd Pascal keywords to their C equivalents:

#define BEGIN {

#define END }

...etc. I like Pascal just fine (Turbo Pascal 3.0 forever), but this just seemed belligerently pointless.

Eventually the person gets more acclimated to the second system on its own terms, and when the need arises to use a third system, they just go straight to learning the idioms of that system first, they don't try to make the third system conform to a previous system. I've got to think that the Pascal guy stopped using that header after a while, and didn't bother making a new one when circumstances made him move to a third language.

Anyway, so IMO that's the general pattern that people might think is off, because we've all had to deal with it in one form or another, but I don't think that's necessarily what's happening here.

<comment><USER10> I think bash was (is?) written in that kind of C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went through a lot of the same experimenting and found a happy home in Fedora 25. I was totally up and running with all of may various accounts setup and software installed within about 2 hours...which came as a shock.

There have been some adjustments but it's been very smooth. Adding the non- conflicted 3rd party repos suggested by Korora was a big help.

<comment><USER12> Also happy with Fedora 25. Only thing that is still missing from the good UX on Fedora 25 is (proprietary) software delivery but I hope that that will be soon solved with flatpaks[1].

[1][http://flatpak.org/](http://flatpak.org/)

<comment><USER11> I've used Fedy so far. Worked for me for most of the major stuff without any surprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Elementary OS is a shallow, ugly, uninspired and lazy attempt to make money.

It's trying really hard to imitate Apple – they even have these "Human Interface Guidelines" somewhere that read like some sort of Apple parody. In reality it's a fake, thin veneer of a user interface bolted onto a generic Linux distribution. Apple software may have their own faults. I think most of the whining is just boredom, but iTunes for example is definitely not the pinnacle of UI. But the beauty of macOS has always been in getting some things exactly right with the competence and attention of a master craftsman/woman. I'd name text rendering as an example, or sleep.

Elementary OS is made by people who think wearing a turtleneck makes them Steve Jobs, but they just don't get that you also have to throw a prototype or two at your CXOs from time to time :)

I don't think Linux on the desktop will benefit from such cloning. Just look at Open Office: a UI that perpetually felt four years out of date that probably took five times as many hours of work as the google docs that actually made Office unnecessary.

<comment><USER14> I honestly haven't paid attention to elementaryOS drama, but I don't want to give them shit if they are at least trying, even if not entirely successfully.

I admire open source, but open source software suffers very strongly from "programmer design". It's a difficult process to get these things right, and I wouldn't expect some distribution to pop up overnight that does things on the same level of refinement as OS X. These things take time, and we need to encourage projects that do try.

<comment><USER15> Removing the window menu in all applications is not trying.

Really, there is something as 'being too minimalist'. To the point of being almost useless.

When I tried to use the default video player of EOS, there was no option in sight to add a subtitles file.

I can understand not being able to fine tune the font used for subtitles. But removing the feature altogether?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a Mac user, whenever I run Linux, I get depressed about how bad the font rendering is. It's getting better, though it sometimes requires installing a special non-free version of Freetype and setting some global config that I can never remember. I always lose track of which distros get it right without requiring any tweaks. However: While the glyph rendering in the article's screenshots looks quite, the _kerning_ is just awful.

For example, here [1], upper left quadrant: "Ap plications", "A ppC enter", "C alendar". Anyone know why it's so bad? Is it a configuration flag?

[1] [http://bitcannon.net/images/2017/4k-elementary.png](http://bitcannon.net/images/2017/4k-elementary.png)

<comment><USER17> Check out the program Infinality. It has settings for different rendering methods including one that mimics OSX. It works great for me although I will admit that I am not one who notices this stuff easily.

<comment><USER18> Apparently Infinality has been abandoned, and can cause problems, so might want to be careful installing it. I recently had an issue where I could not log into Gnome, I took it as an opportunity to reinstall Arch as I wanted to do a fresh install anyway, but have since found out (from the podcast Linux Action Show) that the issue was very likely due to Infinality. Just a heads up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm very satisfied with _Linux Mint 18_ and _Cinnamon_. Everything ran out of the box on my Thinkpad; It comes with nice looking fonts that render well; The _Mint-y_ theme is quite beautiful (IMHO); It's a Debian/Ubuntu derivative, so you get very good support and a lot of packages; High-dpi scaling works very nicely, especially since version 18.

If you need a replacement for _Alfred_ , you should have a look at _Albert_ [0]. I use Albert in Linux Mint as a replacement for the Main menu.

[0] [https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert](https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert)

</comment><comment><USER20> Exactly the reasons I can't stay switched. Too much drinking around. When I was younger I loved fiddling with Linux but I'd rather do other things with my time so I use a Mac.

Millions of people get their work done with Linux every day and it works great and people love it - but it's not the Mac feeling or way. You have to learn to like Linux for what it is, even if it's not perfect. You might miss a few features but it's easily ran on a variety of hardware these days and for the most part works great. The T450S I have Ubuntu on is the best it's ever been in my 15+ years of running Linux on laptops. Heck it wasn't even that bad back then with my Dell C600 and RedHat 7

<comment><USER21> Exactly. I love Linux on servers. Easy to work with, easy to develop for, etc. But OSX is just much better for day to day task. Everything more or less "just works". Plus with modern C++ I can usually easily develop locally and deploy to Linux (with some CI to make sure compatibility remains).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > A Long Term Support (LTS) release makes sense for servers but for a desktop > I think it's the wrong choice.

For many Ubuntu users, the LTS release is the best choice. The base packages remain stable and supported. The Linux kernel is updated automatically every six months and the next update is scheduled for next week when Ubuntu 16.04.2 will be made available (existing users will get upgraded automatically.)

If you want any actual development packages which are not provided by the system packaging, you can (and should) install them with Ubuntu Make ([https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make)). Anything Jetbrains, all Eclipse packages, Go, NetBeans, SublimeText, Arduino, Android Studio, Scala, NodeJS, Kotlin, DART, and more.

edit: typoes

<comment><AUTHOR> > The base packages remain stable and supported

Problem is they weren't stable. I ran into bugs in the old so called stable packages that were fixed in newer versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd love to switch to Linux but about 50% of my income depends on Photoshop.

If there was a way run it fast and reliably I'd switch in a heartbeat. Basically no crashing, hardware accelerated (GPU) display/filters and a color profiled workflow. Booting to Windows to generate the profiles would be acceptable.

Last I checked, however, neither virtualization (even with GPU passthrough) nor Wine where quite there. Besides, with the tight release schedule that the Creative Cloud imposes, I don't think it ever will.

</comment><comment><USER24> If anyone is looking for an open source alternative to Pragmata Pro, I found Iosevka[1] to be a great replacement.

[1] - [https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka](https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka)

<comment><USER25> I absolutely love Iosevka - language/character support (IPA!), efficient yet legible, lots of weights/character variants... A bit surprised how seldom it's mentioned, to be honest.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain to me the benefit of this compared to a traditional programming font like the Microsoft Consolas?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more compact so makes better use of the space available. Subjectively it's pleasant to look at and if the software supports it there are ligatures to make code look better.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, will give it a try when back at work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My experience with elementary had a lot of the same warts. It looks nice and I want to like it but the packages are way too out of date, considering I was used to using Arch and OSX with Homebrew. I just dont see why elementary cant just be a shell (DE) project instead of a full OS.

<comment><USER27> .. that's like saying 'why can't macOS just be a DE on top of Linux/BSD?' If you want something that's totally cohesive, centralization is the way to go.

Having said that, there are definitely some major issues. One of the most contentious is not having a minimize button by default. Their reasoning is 'well if you close one of our apps, it resumes state when you start it up again, which is effectively the same as minimizing'. Not only do their apps not reliably resume state, most other apps don't support this, and their response is 'well that sucks.. but they should adjust their app to work with our specific distro gimmick kthxbai'. Another big one is multiple Window management: if I have 5 windows open of the same app and want to temporarily hide two of them, minimize accomplishes this easily. With Elementary, I have to pick which one I close last because that one will 'resume state'.

Another baffling thing is them _not_ using the 'global menu' in the menubar that Ubuntu (and macOS) have. The global menu is probably one of the main reasons people like macOS so much (even though they don't realize it).. you know that whatever app you're in, you can always find all actions in the menu bar. Preferences are always under $APPNAME, Print is always under File, Hiding and viewing interface elements is always under View, etc.

Their (Ubuntu's as well) installer also doesn't use home partition encryption by default, nor does it offer an easy way to set up LVM on LUKS. This is a problem with most distros though.. with macOS having your disk FileVaulted is extremely straightforward and simple. It's literally flipping a switch. And the use of it is simple as well: Boot up, enter user password (which is also the encryption password) -> decrypt disk and login.

They also do some funky stuff to the Ubuntu installer since installing 16.04LTS gives me working Wi-Fi on my MBP 2015 Retina, but installing Elementary OS (which is based on the same 16.04LTS) doesn't even detect my Wi- Fi chip. The firmware and driver are there, so it should work (doubly so because same base distro), but it simply doesn't.

<comment><USER26> I guess my point is that I don't see Elementary as doing anything that really requires an entire new OS. If they did enough special things it would be worth it.

I totally agree on Global menu. I use Gnome and I miss global menu dearly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have a Windows system and a 13 Macbook retina laptop and by far prefer the Unity desktop for speed and polish.

Unity is unbelievably sleek and fast and everything mostly just works. Those of us who have struggled with Linux desktops since the early 2000s will know what a massive leap this is.

Now if you can get this experience pre-bundled by hardware vendors then those who are not locked in to other platforms by platform specific apps can definitely use this productively. But if they have to install the OS and fiddle with drivers then it becomes a completely different ball game like it would be if they had to install Windows or OSX from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER29> Small point: QuickTime on MacOS does have speed controls. You press FF or RWD while holding command (or possibly option) and it will speed up or slow down by 10% each time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, never thought to try that.

<comment><USER30> Try holding option/alt on most controls, it usually have something nice hidden.

E.g. alt+clicking the button that shows/hides the notification center (that's the name?) will toggle notification popups.

Another one, alt+clicking the wifi will display additional data about it.

Holding alt while right clicking on an app in the dock will toggle between "quit" and "force quit" as well.

Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My dev home these days is Arch + i3. This allows me to spend minimal time window-managing, and I tend to find most packages I need either in the official repo or the AUR. My Linux computing experience basically consists of bash, gcc, gdb, qemu, and emacs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Only reason I use OS X instead of Linux are the commercial apps. Not because of how Mac OS X looks. I like to pay for apps when/if they are better than their free/opensource counterparts, but very often those are not available on Linux.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a commercial multiplatform apps marketplace, similar to Steam but more productivity focused?

The marketplace could even provide developers with an SDK to enable them to easily create packaging, networking and UIs without having to use OS specific libraries. Basically anything that usually has to be done for each platform separately. Similar to how Unity3D helps with multiplatform game development.

Something like this could push developers to release commercial software on Linux, too, because it would be basically just another build from the same source.

And who knows some day Adobe and other big players might release their products like Photoshop, Lightroom etc on it.

</comment><comment><USER32> A note on the unicode code points, I have found I can use the same keyboard layout on Mac and Linux (including right alt magic like # on the British layout) by using the "Mac" layout in the initial configuration. Works a charm of you are a flip flopper (which I am).

</comment><comment><USER33> Re: Slack

Why not just use the web version? Seems to be exactly the same as the app as far as I can tell

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it is basically the website wrapped in an app. Having it as an app makes it easier to launch, switch to (Alt-Tab), it shows up in the task list, can be pinned to one or all workspaces, this kind of thing.

<comment><USER34> Chrome profile. Done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > For now Windows is off the table.

It's a pity there's so much antagonism against Windows from MacOS/Linux users.

I've been using both MacOS and Windows on a daily basis for the past ten years (and a lot of Linux before that) and to me, Windows has become the best OS for developers.

First of all, let's get this out of the way: Bash works just fine. Install a distribution and a console with bash and you'll get everything (dotfiles, ssh, etc...) working under an hour.

Another important point is that Windows is the most keyboard friendly OS out of the three. As a developer, I use my mouse as little as possible so it's vital that I have access to all functions and all menus from the mouse. MacOS is terrible in that area (how come I still can't pop up the File menu from the keyboard in 2017?).

Windows also has some of the best file managers of all. My preference is for xPlorer2 because, again, I can manipulate files at the speed of light with just the keyboard, but there are plenty of alternatives.

Anyway, keep an open mind if you're looking for another OS and make sure you include Windows 10 in your trials, or you might be missing out on something that will make you at least as productive as you used to be with your current OS.

<comment><USER36> I am both a MacOS and Windows user, I have trouble completely recommending Windows 10 to anyone solely on the basis of Microsoft's invasive telemetry services. That and the catastrophically anti-consumer upgrade paths they forced on people.

I am still running Win 7, and still have a MBP with MacOS installed. At this time I'm not buying another Mac laptop/desktop(LOL) but if I do get a new laptop that is Win only I'm going to install Win 7 over Win 10.

Windows Explorer to me is way more intuitive that MacOS Finder, which I find to be more difficult to use.

<comment><USER37> You'll probably have trouble installing Windows 7, it's not even supported on Kaby Lake processors anymore and the security patches are going to stop in 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The article mainly serves to remind me of why I switched from linux to mac a few years back. All that configuring stuff just isn't how I want to spend my time now. I can't think of the last time I spent any 'sysadmin' time with my macbook (other than clearing space off my undersized SSD). I won't repeat the obvious over-used marketing phrase, but it's been pretty much true in my experience.

The trouble is with Apple falling so far behind on hardware, and enforcing the developer-hostile 'touch bar' faux keyboard to the few new machines they do bother to introduce, it's hard to see what happens next. For the first time in my computer-using adult life, there just isn't anywhere good to go when my current machine needs replacing. Linux demands more of my time than I'm willing to give it. Windows is adware. MacOS runs on hardware I don't want (Hackintosh? Might as well just go linux).

</comment><comment><USER39> As some are pointing out the perils or maybe horrors of not having what OSX offers - the ease, the "just works" thingy. To be honest so does Windows and a lot of Linux distributions now.

What is one point here, and most important for me at least, is that Apple Air line probably going off the air. The price point (value for money) of it was what convinced me to buy my first Apple product (4+ years ago; and last so far except a keyboard as I couldn't find a decent third party one in India). The cost of a machine that I don't need and don't like much either is isn't justifiable just to remain in a particular ecosystem I became comfortable with.

My battery is dying and the machine itself is showing signs of age. I know I won't like it but when the time comes I will be looking for alternatives too if I can't get OSX in an affordable way.

</comment><comment><USER40> > I had a custom PC built for work. It has a fast Intel CPU (4Ghz i7-6700K), > plenty of RAM and fast SSD storage

If I got this right, he built a desktop PC? How is he then comparing his custom-built PC to the Macbook Pro, which is a laptop. Maybe he should have saved the pain of finding the replacement and bought the Mac Pro?

<comment><AUTHOR> Step one was the PC. For about 6 months I sshed to the PC from my MacBook and used iTerm's tmux integration to do development on that machine. This is phase 2 using that machine without the MacBook. Eventually I'd like to get a non- Apple laptop (if the experiment sticks), but one step at a time.

</comment></comment><comment> tim-- > Things did not go as smoothly with Slack. [...] This feels like something > that is harder than it needs to be in elementary. Especially since it is a > simple double click on a stock Ubuntu installation.

> After all, most parts of the elementary desktop environment (pantheon) are > in the Arch User Repository (AUR).

So, Mr. Author, let me get this right: in Ubuntu it was really easy to install Slack. Just a double click of a package.

Then you thought that Arch Linux was better then Elementry because you couldn't double click a dpkg file, so you installed the Elementary stuff through the AUR. A website that would require you to use the command line before you could get Slack even installed?

Ubuntu does have old versions of drivers and applications. As Elementry is based on Ubuntu, it is to be expected that you would recieve older driers inside Elementary.

</comment><comment><USER41> The two things that have kept me from switching completely from macOS to Linux (currently Fedora) all these years have been a good alternative to Mail.app and Sequel Pro (MySQL client).

Are there any good alternatives available on Linux?

<comment><USER42> I just stumbled upon N1, although I haven't tried it:

[https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail](https://github.com/nylas/nylas-mail)

<comment><AUTHOR> I does indeed look good (to me) and they have hired a designer that I greatly respect to work on it ([https://dribbble.com/sdw](https://dribbble.com/sdw)) but it's an Electron app (goodbye memory) and requires you to hand over your email account details to Nylas: [https://support.nylas.com/hc/en- us/articles/217518207-Why-do...](https://support.nylas.com/hc/en- us/articles/217518207-Why-does-Nylas-Pro-sync-email-via-the-cloud-)

<comment><USER43> Hey-- I work at Nylas.

We're transitioning away from cloud sync for almost all functionality. More info here: [https://blog.nylas.com/nylas-mail-is-now- free-8350d6a1044d](https://blog.nylas.com/nylas-mail-is-now-free-8350d6a1044d)

<comment><USER41> It would be nice if the client was usable without having to register with you guys. Is that something you're looking into?

PS. SSL Labs gives your site an F grade due to CVE-2016-2107.

<comment><USER43> Looking into both-- thanks for the heads up.

Edit: Fixed now. We should have an "A+" rating. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I use the same setup of tools at work as at home on 2 different systems. OSX at work and Linux Mint at home. Love mint, it's fast, lean and simple (and has basically everything debian has)

<comment><USER45> I wish they finally fixed the freezing bug in Cinnamon; every time I switch to a user while logged in as another user Cinnamon goes down hard (Intel systems, Core M and i5). And 1/3 of suspend/resume attempts end up that way. I use Mint for >4 years but this is starting to kill me :( HiDPI is fantastic on Cinnamon, 4k is a joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wouldn't it be fun if Apple turned this latest underwhelming MacBook Pro release for developers/professionals into something magnificent on the next release? Something like a MacBook Pro, Creator's Edition that attempts to address all the criticisms of the current crop of MacBooks. Sure, those laptops will sell for a double premium and nowhere near the volumes of standard MacBooks, but that's a small price to pay for keeping their developer mindshare.

<comment><USER47> That's more or less what is rumored to appear later this year: a no-hold- barrels high-end version with latest cpu, 32gb of ram, top graphic card and larger battery. Whether it really happens, though, it's another matter; the rumor might well be Apple trying to do some damage control.

<comment><USER38> But it will not have a real keyboard, new macbooks having replaced it with a bizarre hybrid (3/4 of a keyboard + a tiny screen aka 'touch bar').

So it will be entirely useless for touch typists, ie. most developers.

I like macOS, but my current MB Pro will be my last.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Given all the friction and various issues, I still don't see why a hackintosh with well-supported hardware running macOS isn't an option.

<comment><USER49> Because it's illegal. Do we have no respect for laws anymore?

<comment><USER50> Yeah, no it's not. Apple hasn't launched iCountry yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > All the videos I've encountered so far online and offline have played fine. > Unlike QuickTime X player on macOS the GNOME video player has speed > controls!

Is there a way to get better performance out of Gnome video player when scrubbing back and forth in a video? Quicktime 7 and X on macOS (and commercial tools like RV on Linux) are great at this, and it would be cool to have an open source equivalent.

<comment><USER7> Wait, gnome has a video player?

Why would anyone user anything other than videolan VLC?

<comment><USER52> Because mpv is better

<comment><USER7> In what sense?

I don't think I've ever used mpv, I am really curious why you believe it is better.

The reason ive stuck with vlc is because it can handle anything you throw at it, and has a responsive and minimal UI. If I find anything equally good I wouldn't mind trying it out

<comment><USER53> mpv beats VLC at that game. :)

<comment><USER54> ...aren't they both using ffmpeg? Where's the difference coming from?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I started to look for an alternative after the recent MacBook pros refresh debacle and I found Thinkpad plus Arch Linux to be a fantastic combo.

</comment><comment><USER56> Let's just hope Apple takes the comments on the latest Macbooks serious. So next time we won't be having articles like this anymore.

</comment><comment> Ar-Curunir I don't think that Linux on a Macbook will be problematic; I've been running Arch on mine for the past 2.5 years, and it's been mostly great.

And I really enjoy the up-to-date nature of Arch compared to Debian distros; I don't look back fondly upon the trouble I had to go through to use new packages with Ubuntu back in the day.

<comment><USER57> It depends entirely on the luck of which MacBook you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a 2013 MacBook Pro is that likely to be a good or bad one?

<comment> Ar-Curunir I have a 2014 model; everything works great except the webcam, but there's efforts to get that working too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> For people looking for good apps on linux, I'd recommend Franz[1]. It basically replaces all of your chat/messenger apps, including support for facebook messenger and Whats app. It runs in the background really well.

[1]:[http://meetfranz.com/](http://meetfranz.com/)

</comment><comment><USER59> What's this no 4K at 60hz thing I keep seeing in threads this month?

I'm driving two 4K@60hz Dells _and_ the built in screen on an older MBP 15". Granted, it's finicky to get set up right, but it works w/ configurable screens and right cabling.

<comment><AUTHOR> You probably have a discrete GPU. The 13" 2013 era MacBook Pros like mine with only Intel graphics can't do 60Hz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I feel like this thread keeps repeating that there is no good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER61> You can use lesspass.com as an open source alternative to 1pass or enpass. Would love to hear how it measures up. I use keypass in a rather manual way myself.

</comment><comment><USER62> Installed ElementaryOS for a friend who essentially just needed a browser. He absolutely loves it and i'd consider it should i find the need to switch.

</comment><comment><USER63> Unrelated, but what do people think about enpass? I'm looking for an alternative to 1Password that runs on Linux. Lastpass is another candidate.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Pass is pretty good; you synchronize across devices using a git repo, good command line support, and generally easy to use.

<comment><USER63> Doesn't pass expose metadata?

<comment> Ar-Curunir To your git repo, yes. If you have a private server set up, then it's not a problem, but if you're using the big cloud providers, then that's something you have to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's a shame that the new mac labtops are so bad, especially now that they've had that huge breakthrough in disk speed, in recent years.

</comment><comment><USER65> Lol there is no alternative, unless you don't care for any of macOS's features that makes it so great.

<comment> Ar-Curunir What "great" features? Buggy and slow interface? Inferior terminal and UNIX support? Lack of customizability?

<comment><USER57> Are you talking about macOS here or DOS cuz it's a weak move to take shots like that with zero explanation.

Furthermore, you sound like you're describing Linux itself. You're either a troll or terrible at indicating sarcasm.

<comment><USER66> Why are you not responding this way to the thread starter? He gave zero explanation of how OSX has "great features". I've made the switch from OSX to Linux (after over a decade of using Macs) and the only thing I miss is Network Link Conditioner, just because the Linux equivalents are a bit tedious.

<comment><USER57> Mostly because it's not hard to acknowledge both sides have good and bad parts. I don't understand how you can be so obvlivious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Windows is a proprietary, closed source OS. It is not a valid choice imo.

<comment><USER58> The author actually was using Mac OS X before this, and it being proprietary wasn't a problem.

<comment><USER67> Proprietary hardware+software was the problem, proprietary software isn't much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> sudo apt-get install neovim

</comment><comment><USER69> It's just so much work getting Linux to work on the desktop. The hatred and bios against Windows 10 is baffling. It's fast, stable, secure and reliable. I've been running it for 6 months and never had an issue. I run Linux VMs via VMware and they work great, especially in Unity mode (v7).

And now with WSL it's becoming increasingly easier to keep using Windows. The "forced" reboots/updates is simply 2 config changes away from getting out of your way (takes 10 seconds) and the recommended apps takes 30 secs to uninstall. Seriously it isn't rocket science, it makes me laugh seeing developers (who are technical in nature) complain and struggle configuring the OS, all the while they'll gladly spend hours/days/weeks configuring Linux. For what? "Freedom"? Please.

</comment><comment><USER70> A lot of us are on this journey. Apple blew it. They lost me as a customer when I had to hurriedly replace my 2012 mac mini with a 2014 model and came to find out the RAM is soldered to the board making my 16GB DIMMS worthless. No forgiveness for cheapening their product and their brand.

</comment><comment><USER71> > _A Long Term Support (LTS) release makes sense for servers but for a desktop > I think it's the wrong choice._

LTS releases make sense for plenty of desktop use cases: enterprise/education SOEs; kiosks; non-technical users; even developer workstations in some cases.

<comment><USER72> Personally, I find that an LTS along with a container system like Docker, snap, flatpak, or subuser is the best way to go. Stability + flexibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Honestly, just get Elementary OS, this is the closest you can get to MacOS if you are "get things gone" kind of person. And support the team too! They do a great job!

<comment> Ar-Curunir Did you read the article? The author evaluated Elementary OS and found it lacking for a number of reasons.

<comment><USER73> Sure! And did you read my comment? I don't say "people who want to recreate their own desktop from all the software available" but rather "gtd" kind of people, who doesn't mind if their nvidia driver is from 4 months and not from yesterday. As long as everything works who cares? Sure, OP has his points (although the neovim is not the case anymore), but same bugs appear in other distros, unfortunately :(

<comment><USER74> Sorry, but the parent commenter had a point - it sounds like you did not pay enought attention to the article.

        > elementary almost completely removes menus. As a heavy
        keyboard shortcut user this makes discovering shortcuts
        difficult

        > the Mac App Store, Homebrew and Arch Linux. With each of
        these it's a simple matter to install the latest version
        of a tool or application. On elementary I ran into a
        number of cases where software I wished to install did not
        exist in the Ubuntu repos or were outdated

        > as time went on I started running into more bugs [...]
        At this point the system was actively harming my productivity

This doesn't seem to fare very well for your 'as long as everything works' view. The difficulty to install popular software is the exact opposite of that. I love Elementary OS and its UI style/guidelines; found it many years ago, but have stayed with OSX since. As the author mentions, basing it on a Ubuntu LTS release comes with consequences and is a questionable decision for a desktop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fyre Festival organizers blew all their money early on models, planes and yachts - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/story/fyre-fest-organizers-blew-all-their-money-months-early-on-models-planes-and-yachts <comment><USER2> I see good news. "Only one model — "Gone Girl" actress Emily Ratajkowski — labeled her promotion as an ad, as required by the Federal Trade Commission. The other models' omissions are now the subject of a class-action lawsuit."

If you put your face on things that defraud people, you should pay a social penalty, and in this case it would seem, for some, a financial one.

<comment><USER3> It seems odd to sue the models when this kind of lawbreaking is so common - I'm reminded of Microsoft's influencer campaign that raised a stink among the YouTube audience a while back. While I absolutely believe that these models did wrong by not discussing the nature of the promotion, I'm left wondering if the only reason they are being litigated against is that they deceived the wealthy.

Another data point for the argument that the law is applied differently to protect different interests, I guess.

Unrelated, I'm glad Ratajkowski did the right thing here; always nice to see people you've heard of following a moral (or at least legal) path despite their peers.

<comment><USER4> It seems odd to excuse those low on the totem pole in what was essentially a scam.

There's this odd part of American culture that considers marketers and other 'influencers' immune from criticisms. I don't agree with it and stinks of the long debunked "just following orders" excuse. This allows lower-tiered scammers to play up a "but I just work here, go after my rich boss not me," narrative which co-opts class warfare rhetoric to make themselves immune from any criticism or consequences.

>I'm left wondering if the only reason they are being litigated against is that they deceived the wealthy.

Legal fees are expensive. I don't have $250,000 laying around for legal fees but the wealthy do. The same way Hulk Hogan's wealth and connections weren't enough to take on Gawker, so Thiel stepped in. In both cases the wealthy took on the moral position. Its odd that you're suggesting that because the wealthy are involved and not 'regular joes' that they must be taking an immoral position.

<comment><USER3> Please do reread my comment. I never said the position of those undertaking the suit are immoral; on the contrary, I specifically stated that the models involved were culpable. I'm merely stating that were the victims not wealthy, this violation of the law would likely never have been punished. I'm pointing out a systemic issue in the legal system, in giving greater access to the capitalist aristocracy.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's so much the wealth of the victims as the size of the transaction (ticket price) as well as the total spend. It makes a class action lawsuit (where the lawyers will get a % of the value recovered) attractive, whereas if it was a smaller purchase, with the same number of affected customers, that might not be compelling to lawyers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      Serious logistical planning for the festival didn't even begin until late February or early March

This is just so beyond the pale.

i did logistics for a collective of artists and this is about the amount of time you need to get a couple containers from Zurich to Torino.

Ironically, customs is not really the big issue, provided that you get the paperwork right, the t's crossed and the i's dotted. This blasé attitude about "don't worry about customs" would have made me run far and wide from any such project.

Amateurs!

</comment><comment><USER7> After all this I can't believe they are actually trying to convince people to take VIP tickets for next year instead of a refund.

<comment><USER8> They probably have no money left to refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised people even arrived at the island.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reading the headline made me think of George Best.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yet, right in the middle of this Vice article when I loaded it, is a video ad for an overpriced vodka with beautiful model staring back at you and making eyes with the camera.

(The point is: don't act all high and mighty about companies using models to sucker you into buying stuff when you're doing it yourself. I reloaded the page and now it's a semi-famous DJ talking. Strike two.)

<comment><USER12> But next year's is going to be awesome and hey, the tix are 2 for 1 if you just be-leeve! The essence of a good scam is that at first, you have the dream and they have the money and at the end, you have the money and they have the dream.

<comment><USER11> That pretty much describes 2016-2017 in America in general, doesn't it?

<comment><USER13> Sums up the world really, most every country has a version of this. Status and notoriety has always been used to sell, it's horrible, but it's hardly a uniquely American thing.

<comment><USER11> Was referring to our current president.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


French sailor slashes around the world solo record - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42383438 <comment><USER2> 1575 km in 24 hours means over 65 km/h or 40 mph or 36 knots.

That's mind boggling.

The Virgin Challenger 2 power boat had the same speed crossing the Atlantic.</comment>


The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455 <comment><USER2> Wow!

"Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence."</comment>


The Road Taken – History and Future of U.S. Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/books/review/the-road-taken-by-henry-petroski.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> In the U.S., apparently "infrastructure" means "roads". Hardly a mention of trains, _no_ mentions of optical fibers, electric grids, etc.

<comment><USER3> There's a reason for that. Here in the US, we don't consider train tracks to be "infrastructure" because they're almost all privately owned. Amtrak has to lease track usage from heavy freight railroads, and their trains have to sit and wait any time a freight train wants the track: freight has priority over passengers in this country.

Optical fibers are not infrastructure here, because that's all privately owned too (even if the land to put it on was gifted to the corporations who own the fiber).

Electric grids are privately owned too, but their owners are regulated as utility monopolies.

So basically, only roads and bridges are actually publicly-owned.

<comment><USER4> Why would infrastructure have to be "public"? Trains and mail is partially privatized, fiber/copper entirely and still those are considered infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the whole idea behind the worry that US infrastructure is falling apart is that the government has a role to fix it.

Obviously, with roads and bridges, it's the government's job to fix those, since those things are owned and operated by the government.

However, do you think that the government should be handing buckets of cash to Comcast so they can maintain their cable internet infrastructure?

Should the government fork over money to Verizon, AT&T, etc. to maintain cellular infrastructure?

Should the government hand money to CSX to maintain their railroads? (Over and above the money that Amtrak pays them to lease the track, that is.)

As for the mail, that's not privatized: the USPS is wholly-owned by the US federal government. But as I understand it, it's entirely self-funded. Unless you're talking about UPS/FedEx.

If the infrastructure is privately owned, why should the government use taxpayer money to maintain and upgrade it? That's the epitome of Mussolini- style fascism: the government working solely for the corporations and not the people. If the infrastructure is really that important, and the corporate owners aren't taking care of it, then it should just be nationalized.

<comment><USER4> > However, do you think that the government should be handing buckets of cash > to Comcast so they can maintain their cable internet infrastructure? […]

I don't have an opinion on that topic, but traditionally governments take over private infrastructure companies if that is necessary to continue the service. TFL in London is a government body but when the subway system was initially developed they were entirely private companies.

<comment><USER3> That's how it was in Manhattan (NYC) too, and that's why the layout of the subways doesn't seem to make much sense: they were all started by competing companies 100 years or more ago.

The problem isn't "taking over private infrastructure to continue the service", the problem is when the government funnels money to private corporations to continue the service. If the corporation can provide the service all by itself using free-market economics (more of less, there's probably some utility regulation needed), then fine, but if they have to be propped up by the government, then they shouldn't exist and it should be nationalized. A prime example of this is the government gifting tons of money to internet providers like Comcrap to make infrastructure improvements, who then just pocketed the money and didn't make any improvements.

IMO, all critical infrastructure should just be government-owned, and operated much like the USPS but with less Congressional interference. The USPS operates basically as a private company, except it's owned by the government and isn't for-profit, and is overseen by the government. Overall, it's worked pretty well except for Congress screwing around with it from time to time (like requiring them to pre-fund all employees' retirement with a law in 2006). The MTA (the company that runs public transit) in NYC works this way too. Putting the safety and security of your nation into the hands of a privately-held corporation that's only interested in profits is sheer lunacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Guardrails should be designed with their ends buried in the ground so that vehicles can't crash into them, for example"

Maybe I'll read this because I shall like to see his reasoning. Many guardrails used to be like this. My recollection is that when guardrail ends are buried, vehicles can easily run over the end so the middle of the car rides up over the guardrail. This can flip the car over--either onto the road or onto whatever the guardrail was supposed to be guarding.

So my understanding was that the reason guardrail ends are now simply exposed and capped off is because it's better to collide head on with a guardrail than it is to ride over a guardrail and flip over.

[edit] this is further discussed at this link. Maybe the book discusses this better than the review did.

[http://www.crashforensics.com/papers.cfm?PaperID=53](http://www.crashforensics.com/papers.cfm?PaperID=53)

<comment><USER4> > Maybe I'll read this because I shall like to see his reasoning. Many > guardrails used to be like this. My recollection is that when guardrail ends > are buried, vehicles can easily run over the end so the middle of the car > rides up over the guardrail. This can flip the car over--either onto the > road or onto whatever the guardrail was supposed to be guarding.

Yeah, I remember this coming up in discussions in Austria as well. The current design of guardrails involves moving the guardrail terminal out of harms way: [http://www.land-der-erfinder.at/wp- content/uploads/Leitschie...](http://www.land-der-erfinder.at/wp- content/uploads/Leitschiene.png)

And for retrofitting guard rails between lanes where there is not enough space, they installed shock absorbers: [http://www.land-der-erfinder.at/wp- content/uploads/Aufpralld...](http://www.land-der-erfinder.at/wp- content/uploads/Aufpralld%C3%A4mpfer.png)

If you crash into those it crumples.

<comment><USER6> <they installed shock absorbers>

In the SF Bay Area, such junctions of guardrails tend to be preceded by what look like huge plastic garbage pails filled with sand, apparently to absorb as much energy as possible without (or, at least, before) bouncing such vehicles back into traffic.

The other extreme was a freeway case (locals to the San Jose area can see this now, on 85 northbound in Cupertino between the onramp from 280 westbound and the Fremont Ave. exit) where the guardrail began about 10 feet from the side soundwall, leaving a car-width's gap to the right of the guardrail. A perpendicular soundwall was about 30 feet beyond.

One evening, a car went right through the gap and into the perpendicular wall at full speed.

Subsequently, the guardrail was extended at an angle to meet the side soundwall.

<comment><USER7> 280 is a north/south freeway, despite the north side going due west in the area you describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ben-G In this somewhat related article the controller of SF discusses how the city's budget is used: [http://www.sfexaminer.com/san-franciscos-9-billion- question/](http://www.sfexaminer.com/san-franciscos-9-billion-question/)

It's fairly obvious that there isn't enough $ for infrastructure investment on a municipal level.

I'm not entirely sure how the system in the U.S. works but it appears that a city is responsible for the maintenance of its own roads. For transit cities like SF this is somewhat unfortunate. The 7 million people living in the Bay Area use these streets frequently but a majority does not contribute to funding them.

Probably city tolls (for regular streets, not only bridges) could help mitigate this issue.

<comment><USER8> > a majority does not contribute to funding them

There are all sorts of taxes: property taxes, toll roads, sales taxes, etc. The 7 million will pay these taxes in one way or another.

<comment><USER9> Paying directly for something is better than paying indirectly. Because you consider the cost of a resource before you use it.

If we all paid a hotel tax instead of paying for hotel rooms, a lot more people would be staying in hotels and there would be no way to allocate scarce resources when demand is high, other than first come, first served.

That would mean chronic hotel shortages and ever-increasing amounts of public money being spent to build new capacity so that nobody goes without when demand is high.

And that's exactly what many people face at rush hour: a shortage of available road. Except we've been conditioned to think this is somehow normal and unsolvable, when its actually artificial.

In Singapore, they have demand pricing and a lot less congestion at rush hour.

<comment><USER4> > Paying directly for something is better than paying indirectly. Because you > consider the cost of a resource before you use it.

That does not work because it disadvantages the areas which are underdeveloped.

> In Singapore, they have demand pricing and a lot less congestion at rush > hour.

But Singapore is tiny and quote homogenous.

If there were no legal requirements for USPS for instance to operate all over the country then Alaska would not have a mail service at all. There are areas too sparsely populated / too poor to afford infrastructure and (federal) taxes are necessary to finance it.

<comment><USER10> > If there were no legal requirements for USPS for instance to operate all > over the country then Alaska would not have a mail service at all. There are > areas too sparsely populated / too poor to afford infrastructure and > (federal) taxes are necessary to finance it.

Isn't that just the market saying it's too inefficient for anyone to live in Alaska?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What the government really needs to do is adopt newer software that will allow for better tracking of what needs repairs, what has been repaired, when something was last inspected, what needs inspection, and repair reporting tools. They should also adopt software that would allow them to better schedule all these repairs efficiently and in a timely matter. All this software should have contractor bidding platform integrated into it and also be integrated with scheduled utility repairs.

This software can be used to anticipate budgets since you would know what upcoming repairs and inspections are needed. It would also prevent the situation where a city finally paves a nice new road after 15 years of potholes and then 2 weeks after completion the gas companies come in and tear up the road to do their work and do a shitty job patching the road back up so you're left with potholes again within a year, all thanks to poor communication.

I know a few cities have adopted apps that allow residents to report needed repairs and they've been working great, both with upkeep and cost savings. That should really be proof of concept enough to make the needed changes, but I suspect there will be a long pause to the politicians can give their friends enough time to make a similar knockoff product and grant them an over-priced contact.

<comment><USER4> > What the government really needs to do is adopt newer software that will > allow for better tracking of what needs repairs, what has been repaired, > when something was last inspected, what needs inspection, and repair > reporting tools.

May I ask what the point of that would be? It's not like figuring out what's broken is a hard task. This sounds like it would drive up infrastructure cost even more than it already is.

<comment><USER12> That's like saying the software world don't need issue trackers/scrum boards/todo lists because it's easy for devs to figure out bugs...

City projects operate at scales beyond most companies... Coordination is kinda important for a decentralized organization running multiple billion dollar projects that impact thousands upon thousands of shareholders and consumers.

<comment><USER13> Managing these kinds of projects doesn't need sophisticated software (not that software is a bad thing, in itself). It needs competent managers. Most city managers are political appointments, selected to meet some arbitrary diversity quotas, etc. and are not the most competent person available (often far from it).

<comment><USER12> It's a little of A and a little of B... We need competent people to manage the system, but we also need systems that give greater transparency into the state of the city.

As the parent poster pointed out, it's pretty common for low-level managers not to know about overlapping work in other departments... or for higher level managers to get data that's been sanitized by several levels of management. Even better would be giving citizens access to at least some of the data, making sure the right decisions are being made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's been some movies about the future of US infrastructure. They usually have the name "Mad Max" in them.</comment>


Templates for Cutting Gears from Wood - <AUTHOR> https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/index.html <comment><USER2> Matthias Wandel here.

Funny how my old stuff shows up on hacker news from time to time, though it was less than a year ago that I ported it to javascript, used to be flash, cause when I created it more than ten years ago, javascript canvas wasn't mature enough yet.

<comment><USER3> Hi Matthias!

Big fan of your videos. I hope your tendinitis improves and you can make it back into the shop soon to make more power tools out of old furniture other people have thrown out.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Matthias is one of my personal heros, I've been reading/watching his stuff for years. His videos are mostly what got me into woodworking and made me see it as more than just a way to build furniture. I built a bandsaw, out of wood, based on his plans: [http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a- band...](http://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-bandsaw.html)

<comment><USER5> Fantastic read, thank you. Hopefully you're not put off metric for life -- so much as put off low-quality tools. I'm a bit envious that you have a thicknesser at less than a year 'into woodwork'. Presumably one of the benefits of living in North America. (In AU decent workshop tools are hideously expensive, with limited ranges available domestically.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to go further down the rabbit hole check is youtube channel. [https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel](https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sort of related tool I made a year or two ago: [http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack](http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack)

I used this tool to make a PVC front rack for my bike: [http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack/attached_side.jpg](http://dougkoellmer.com/front_rack/attached_side.jpg)

I tried to do all the calculations by hand, but eventually realized I needed to make a little custom CAD program like this to help me. I tried more general-purpose CAD programs but couldn't figure out how to set up the constraints I needed.

Anyway I think there's a lot of usefulness in purpose-built online tools like this for generating templates and plans. Such programs are pretty easy to whip up too using the Canvas API and a basic geometric primitives library.

<comment><USER8> Do you know about OpenSCAD and OpenJSCAD?

[https://www.openscad.org/](https://www.openscad.org/)

[https://openjscad.org/](https://openjscad.org/)

They are both basically "CAD/CAM for programmers" \- and allow for parametric models to be designed. In fact, there are more than a few models like that on Thingiverse, so if you needed to resize something to fit your needs, you can (plus tons of gear and other similar custom power-transmission systems).

Of course, that's all for design and modeling - it wouldn't help for other problems, where some form of calculation and checking of a "model" (in the sense of a simulation or idea - not necessarily a complete physical object rendering) is needed.

You see a ton of these kinds of tools in the electronics and hobbyist realms; quick calculators to tell you how much resistance to use for various LED configurations, or 555 timer customizers for common circuits - things like that. I know of one out there which gives you torque/power curves for a variety of different RC hobby electric motors. There are of course several for physics simulation and testing, too...

<comment><USER9> > it wouldn't help for other problems

I once had a problem with OpenSCAD when I needed to sort - within model - objects of different kinds. The example sorting algorithm (a quicksort) is shown in the documentation, but it was working only with a particular kind of objects.

Long story short, OpenSCAD turned out to be powerful enough to have a Lisp written in it. Lisp manipulated strings and allowed factoring out the sorting algorithm and applying it with different comparison algorithms, supplied as parameters. Given Lisp, I think it's possible that a lot of things can be done in an OpenSCAD script.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> do a youtube search for "wintergatan" and you will find an artist making very nice use of wooden gears

<comment><USER11> He says in one of his videos that he uses Mathias's Gear program (the one linked) too

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking that this would only be good for light duty as at least some of the teeth would be along the grain and liable to break off. Then I went to the homepage and, indeed, there are pictures of gears with the teeth glued in so that they have a different grain from the underlying gear.

<comment><USER13> A better option would be to use aircraft or marine grade plywood—somethings that's guaranteed not to have voids. It'll be a lot stronger than making the teeth individually and attaching them to a round core.

<comment><USER14> The strength of wood is quite directional; since the plys in plywood are not in the same orientation, it's almost by definition less strong than a solid piece of the same type of properly oriented wood.

<comment><USER15> A lot of people believe this, but it is incorrect. In plywood, the glue transfers the load across the faces of each ply from strand to neighboring strand through the adjacent plies. This can result in a stronger bond between neighboring strands than if no cross-plies were present. This amounts to more than just splitting resistance.

As a parallel case, consider multi-ply composite construction, where sheets of fabric, sometimes of sheets with a single fiber orientation, are laid at angles to each other to spread the loads in exactly this way. They both better approximate an isotropic material, and are stronger than an equivalent thickness of singly-oriented plies all in the same orientation.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I agree that wood reinforced glue is stronger than wood, but it's not really speaking to improving a wooden gear as above.

Gears are subject to predictable stresses, and so being able to orient a material to best handle those stresses will make a stronger gear. Plywood, like anything else, is a compromise that, as you say, has a more isotropic character. Obviously, there is a wide range of strength in wood, and so plywood. I think it's reasonable to say that one could construct a stronger gear using teeth from readily available solid wood, then readily available plywood. Good luck finding hickory plywood :).

To your first sentence though, if you take the same size and quality solid board and piece of plywood at your local hardware store (making a reasonable attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison), the board will be almost certainly be stiffer and stronger with the grain, than the plywood will: [https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_...](https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_12.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A friend of mine made a similar tool with vector asset export options:

[https://geargenerator.com/](https://geargenerator.com/)

<comment><USER17> Should let him know his site breaks the back button

The visualization there is pretty cool though!

</comment></comment><comment> munk-a I am impressed and amused that this tool supports zero spoke gears.

<comment><USER9> I'm impressed with negative gears :) . No other numbers though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What makes these specifically for wood and not, say, metal?

<comment><USER19> I think usually metal gears are not cut by laser cutter or CNC router, but instead slotted using a milling cutter one tooth at a time and then the blank is rotated to the next position to cut the next tooth.

But of course if your metal gears are large enough to cut from the flat side then this template will work fine.

<comment><USER14> There are many ways to make gears, hobbing is one of the commonly used processes for cutting them from a blank. There is a cutter that looks something like a milling cutter, but it is turned in sync with the gear blank: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very cool but cutting with a band saw seems very subject to creating irregularities in the gears.

<comment><USER21> Probably intended to be cut with a laser or a CNC.</comment></comment>


Information Overload: The Failure of NSA Intelligence (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlyeEbUiXJI

<comment><AUTHOR> Shane Harris, author of The Watchers, reveals that U.S. intelligence agencies collect too much information to process competently.

"We have essentially created an official system of surveillance that is very good at collecting dots," he says, "and doesn't do a very good job of connecting them."

Here's the full video:

Shane Harris: The Rise of America's Surveillance State

[http://fora.tv/2010/03/04/Shane_Harris_The_Rise_of_Americas_...](http://fora.tv/2010/03/04/Shane_Harris_The_Rise_of_Americas_Surveillance_State)</comment>


Robohash Wars - <AUTHOR> http://robohashwars.com/

<comment><USER2> After scrolling down to the footer, I found <http://robohash.org/> linked: "Robohash is a easy web service that makes it easy to provide unique, robot/alien/monster/whatever images for any text. Put in any text, such as IP address, email, filename, userid, or whatever else you like, and get back a pretty image for your site."

<comment><USER3> right, we just built this site as a quick way of doing fun comparisons between robohashes to see which looks cooler

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure what's supposed to happen.

<comment><USER3> it's just a quick way of comparing robohashes to see which looks cooler!

<comment><USER5> The "wars" and "Fight!" implies the robots will actually battle in some way. It's not clear that your site doesn't do anything but show you the non- fighting robots.

<comment><USER3> we would have called it robohashsidebysidecomparison.com but it didn't seem as sexy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recall the original robohash thread. This is obviously something built using it. I'm mostly curious about how this made it to the #1 article with only 9 votes, in 20 minutes.</comment>


How to start an E-commerce business - <AUTHOR>

I have several ideas I wanna work upon but i don't know the procedure and what to do.I have completely no idea how to start I just need guidance. <comment><USER2> It's quite simple. 1st - you need to decide what platform do you want to build your shop on (i.e. magento, opencart, presteashop etc. - just google it and pick the one you find best fit for your needs) and where do you want to host it 2nd - make your own theme (or buy it - usually there is quite a theme market coming with each platform) 3rd - get your logo done 4th - get your supply chain sorted 5th - connect card gateway (and/or paypal) to your platform (there are many mods available, some are free and some are paid) 6th - you are on-line, from now on you focus on tweaking (branding, SEO etc.)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I work at WooThemes. We have [WooCommerce]([http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/](http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/)), a eCommerce platform. If you have any questions about how to get started, let me know. I'm happy to help with this.</comment>


Dear Facebook Notify. The internet wasn't just built for a handful of companies - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kozkozkoz/dear-facebook-notify-the-internet-wasn-t-built-for-just-a-handful-of-companies-2429ec26aa7a <comment><USER2> This is really interesting. People often accuse reddit of manipulating which post go to the top, but those claims pale in comparison to how...blatant this feels. I don't mind Facebook being the dominant platform, I just wish that they didn't also manipulate which content I get.</comment>


The next big thing: Africa - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4849

<comment><USER2> I really hate these articles that paint really broad swaths of generalizations on entire continents.

People, Africa is not a country! There are 40+ countries in Africa at the moment. Some are more stable than others. Some have had good success since decolonialisation. Others are in perpetual civil war. Many are still recovering from past events. If the author meant Africa is the next big thing for mineral exploitation. That would seem obvious, but the creation of a sizable, sustainable, educated middle class for the entire continent seems decades away.

<comment><USER3> Which countries are in perpetual civil war? Are these wars confined to smaller regions within the country or do they encompass the entire country?

What's your opinion on the Balkan countries? Are they also in perpertual civil war?

<comment><USER4> If Africa was as overrun with NATO troops as Bosnia is, Africa would be as peaceful as Bosnia is today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it the next big thing after BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China)? Because those countries still have yet to fully develop.

<comment><USER6> I think so - as these countries have their middle classes develop, they're going to need cheap labor to fulfill the roles that their citizens are no longer willing to do themselves. So, far in the future, China will export its low-wage factory jobs to Africa as China increasingly focuses on the type of goods that are currently produced in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish that would happen. I really wish. Foreign Policy is generally an excellent publication but I just don't see that happening.

Apart from a few countries such as South Africa or Botswana, African countries don't have anything resembling a middle class, whose existence is indisposable for things like commerce, political stability or a fair judicial system.

It's really a shame but I'm afraid Africa will remain impoverished for a very long time and I can't see the Western World or anyone else being able to help them as it is now obvious that throwing money at the problem won't solve it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Africa is doomed.

After Mandela dies there will be a Rwanda style massacre of the remaining whites and no one will care.

The Chinese will then move in and build a pitiless slave empire and no one will care about that either.

All worse case scenarios will come true, a massive die off of blacks, pollution, strip-mining and extinction of many African wild species.

I'm sure the anti apartheid movement will be very proud.</comment>


Show HN: Open Source Game Clones - <AUTHOR> http://osgameclones.com/

<comment><USER2> Did you make this site? "Show HN" implies that you did.

In any case, it has been posted repeatedly here, including within the last year ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184463)), which makes it count as a duplicate, as described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the original author of the website, but i collaborated to improve it from time to time commiting in its Github repository ([https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones](https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones)).

I post it here because lots of new games were added recently (e.g. [https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones/pull/169](https://github.com/piranha/osgameclones/pull/169))

<comment><USER2> Ok, that's fine! You can always add a first comment to a thread like this to explain the context if you want to.</comment></comment></comment>


Oxy starts first solar farm to power oil production - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/dixa8a/oxy_starts_first_solar_farm_to_power_oil/ <comment><AUTHOR> Something doesn't add up.

I suspect there's a large part to this story that's escaped (or been obscured by) the reporter.</comment>


Ask HN Readers: Advertising on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Woah, wait a minute. Put the fangs away, True Bloods. In the measly 174 days (actually longer, just didn't create an account) I have been hanging out around here and enjoying your company, insight, intelligence and humor, I might have missed this topic being discussed.
I think the YCombinator news aggregator, the quality of the submissions and the quality of the community compel me to news.ycombinator.com as the first stop when I want some intellectual stimulation. Some visit gossip sites when they have a down minute or bored moment on the internet, I turn to you and here.
But what brought the majority of core users here--if I may assume--was YCombinator the firm, which kicked off this community with like-minded people who set the tone that this will not become a site for spam, memes, or flames, rather thought provoking and conversation provoking news, information and discussion.
YCombinator "the firm" is a trusted venture group that funds the early stage startups--something utterly invaluable to economic growth.
So I ponder this: Digg has struggled with monetizing their site (something that is a must for their long-term survival) and you can make your arguments as to why. BUT, I do not believe that YCombinator would have the same problem. Why? Because they do not need to monetize this community off-shoot they created to survive. In fact, I'm sure they have absolutely no interest in  making money from ads here whatsoever.
So, instead of serving ads for the purpose of monetizing, what if for the purpose of funding?
Huh? What? Yes, for funding. What if that money was put into funding startups in some way shape or form? Either traditionally or rewarding startups for winning contests?
I'm sure there are tax and business implications in doing this, but throwing out a ridiculous idea isn't always ridiculous.
Lastly, there seems to be a very niche (yet diverse) demographic that uses this site which would yield higher rates to collect on ads and I'm sure we can trust that YCombinator wouldn't place irrelevant ads in our face. I'm sure there are a few businesses/entrepreneurs in this community alone who would want to buy time/space.
I leave you with that and hope that I did not 1. repeat something that has been discussed a million times before and 2. wasted your time.
Cheers, James <comment><USER2> Maybe a good idea, but ... who is going to click on the ads? I cannot imagine any of the member here trying to get any information via clickable ads, although it maybe possible that a few clicks can be generated for special offers applicable to HN only. Personally I vote no ads!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi James, good idea in principal, but I vote _no ads_.

This is a great site, one of the Mercedes Benz's of IT sites. I think ads will make it cluttered. Not everything in life needs to be monetized. Nobel idea, but my vote is for pure conversation.

<comment><USER4> I agree with Scott. Money will complicate things. I think YCombinator and PG have better options for revenue than ads here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site already does have ads. They appear as stories with stuff like (YC W08) in the title.</comment>


Show HN: Electron/browser-free reactjs slack app (40M usage) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cztomsik/slack-app <comment><USER2> While I love the idea behind it, this is based on Servo's WebRender, which is not at all ready to handle anything more than toy web pages. So applications built using this are going to have to have very simple UI.

I really do wish Mozilla would put more resources into making Webrender on par with Gecko/Webkit/Blink. There is a huge market for light weight, embeddable, rendering engines.

<comment><AUTHOR> webrender is already enabled in firefox nightly so I wouldn't say it's just for toy pages

also, it's more like skia, a low-level "drawing" thing, on which gecko/servo (engines) depend on - and webkit/blink could too (in theory)

and finally, this project has nothing to do with webpages, it's about being able to quickly develop GUI applications using familiar technologies.

1\. it's node.js library so you can use anything from npm and you can use any nodejs tools, debuggers, profilers, etc. 2\. you can use react & react libraries/devtools (vue in future) 3\. there's flexbox 4\. subset of css (no cascading & there will be some minor differences) 5\. hot-reload

so I would put this somewhere between electron & flutter

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, I assumed web-render was the complete rendering engine behind Servo and was a Gecko equivalent. But my point still stands. A major convenience with Electron is that, if it runs on Chrome, it runs on Electron and pretty much everything runs on Chrome, so I don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out work arounds for things not supported by the rendering engine. And the 'subset' of CSS alone would be reason enough to not pick web render.

I do apologize if this appears as bashing your project, it really is not, and I'm sure going to spend a few weekends pushing it's limits, but I'm just super frustrated with the state of embeddable web rendering engines on the desktop, and my comments are mostly directed towards Servo and Web-render.

<comment><AUTHOR> the point of this project is not to "turn this webapp into a cross-platform gui app" (electron is really good at this and I think this is where we agree)

it's more like: \- let me make a cross-platform gui app really quickly (hot- reload) \- without having to learn a ton of new APIs (so I can reuse most of my css + javascript + react knowledge & tools) \- without overhead of web platform (DOM, lots of APIs, custom elements, shadow dom, paintlets, audio, video, geo, battery, ...) \- while still being able to use any package from npm

I completely understand why you are skeptic, but if people are interested in flutter, I think they should be interested in this too (if not more). No offense taken, I'm glad for your feedback.

BTW: subset of css) this is rather about cascading (css-in-js vs. real css with global classes, etc.) html) major motivation here is "what if we could do webapps without dom?" like that we are using frameworks anyway (react/vue/...) and basically all applications are now built using components so what if we could send shapes directly to GPU?

So it's not about being able to reuse everything, but it's about being as much familiar as possible, instead of reinventing everything (like flutter does)

<comment><USER3> With regards Flutter, keen to see it come to the desktop, there are some experiments. [https://github.com/Norbert515/flutter_ide](https://github.com/Norbert515/flutter_ide)

<comment><AUTHOR> time will tell but I have really hard time understanding why they couldn't just use any already established platform (tools, libs, tutorials, books, common knowledge, stackoverflow, ...)

+google is famous for killing its projects and technologies really often so I'll wait for a while before hopping on this train

<comment><USER3> The chrome guys who started the sky experiment, now flutter, used JavaScript for the first few iterations. I think they went with Dart because they were able to get the Dart GC customised for flutter. The big feature that the Flutter team got from Dart, that they didn't know they wanted, was stateful hot reload.

Seems being able to build UIs with hot reload feature is a winner.

Norbert's experiment, looking at building an editor in flutter, looks very cool. As he says it a lot of work building everything from scratch, but starting with a widget editor is a cool idea.

The concept, in flutter, of every thing being a widget, even the app itself, is very powerful.

I agree, time will tell, with people like Norbert, who are outside of google, I'm interested to see what they and Google do with flutter this year.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, but stateful hot-reload is also possible with react and other frameworks so this is hardly a thing against javascript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> while i love alternate slack client, Wey is looking much more promising

[https://github.com/yue/wey](https://github.com/yue/wey)

<comment><AUTHOR> wey was inspiration for this - but mind this was done in one day and the intent was more about showing what's possible with node-webrender :-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to have generic contract drawn up? - <AUTHOR>

I need to have a generic contract put together for some freelance work. Does anyone have any recommendations for services or people who are affordable. <comment><USER2> You can find templates online, Obie sells some templates. In the end it doesn't cost that much to find a decent lawyer to draw up a simple terms and conditions contract that is decent, or take one of the templates you like and have an attorney go over it for you. So you spend $200-300, that is cheap to protect yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Generic contract' sounds like an oxymoron.</comment>


Only race cars should burnout - <AUTHOR> https://brettshavers.com/brett-s-blog/entry/only-race-cars-should-burnout <comment><USER2> This is a risky comment and probably too snarky. But this is a fundamental pattern in English and I wish at least native speakers would get it right.

NOUN: burnout shutdown failover

VERB: burn out shut down fail over

Just about any verb+adverb pair follows this pattern in English.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about the others but to burn out as the correct verb and to burnout as the incorrect verb mean two different things. I'm pretty sure this exactly the same phenomenon that gives us things like "to Google" where Google is a noun.

<comment><USER4> > _but to burn out as the correct verb and to burnout as the incorrect verb > mean two different things_

They don't, though.

<comment><USER3> sorry i haven't seen many race cars burn out like candles or burn out like overworked employees. i have seen many though perform burnouts where they _warm up_ the tires to increase how sticky they are.

<comment><USER4> > _i haven 't seen many race cars burn out like candles_

I think you're getting confused by ommitted implied words. When a race car burns out, it is burning out _its tires_ not itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>