I'm Quitting Email - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/i-wouldnt-say-ive-been-missing-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I like email. It is not controlled by Some Other Entity, I control my contacts, I only push when I need to, I can back it up, there is no flash munching my battery.

It allows deliberative thought and handles arbitrary file transfer (well, if your service provider isn't a stinker).

I don't get the email hate in the _least_.

<comment><USER3> This is MG and other tech pundit's job: flame some new random topic when there's a slow news day. Their job revolves around running around with their hair on fire about some new thing Killing something else or other. Everything is in absolutes and has dramatic effect to it. Honestly what they write isn't worth its weight in shit-streaked toilet paper. Tis a shame I forgot to put techcrunch.com back into my /etc/hosts file after I edited it out a little while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i'm going to be the one to say it - get over yourself MG.

twitter was the "end of email". facebook was the "end of email". IM was the "end of email". SMS was email "end of email". Google+ is now the "end of email". no no ... wait wait wait Apple iMessage is now the "end of email".

yet so email lives on and is still the best communication medium we have on the planet that works and is as universally understood as SMS.

good luck writing interesting stories over the next month. or alternatively - be prepared for G+ spam, twitter+ spam and all the rest. you're just offsetting one advanced SPAM medium for ones which aren't as advanced in SPAM filtering [outrageous generalization :) but true]

<comment><USER5> From what I understand from the article, it seems that he has another problem (information overload from too many people trying to contact him), not so much a problem with e-mail as a medium.

<comment><USER4> @wladimir - yeah I get that but it gets a bit tiring when every medium is the "next email" and now he's "quiting email" and then he'll "return to email" ... blah blah

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Email is the open social network that has managed to work for decades.

Will I ever be able to install and host these alternative social network apps on my server. Can I modify and re-distribute them? There are a few but they are too different (from email) and are big monolithic silos.

<comment><USER7> Well, there's StatusNet - you can modify, re-distribute and install on your server. The problem is that nobody uses it (relatively to email or Twittter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wish people would stop linking to obvious linkbait articles on Techcrunch. This one is just 8 pages of screencaps from twitter (because I guess copying and pasting was too hard) after a few paragraphs of the same trite "look at me, I'm so important I can't manage my email inbox!" BS that every person who fancies themselves important eventually comes up with. [0]

0: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Email_bankrup...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Email_bankruptcy)

</comment><comment><USER9> If your job is punditry then email probably has a tremendously low signal-to- noise ratio. Honestly I have no idea what kinds of communications happen inside TechCrunch, but I imagine all they really care about is whether MG is cranking out his delicious brand of linkbait on a regular basis. On the flip side, the amount of unsolicited opinion and blowback he gets is probably obscene.

Taking a break from email is probably a good idea, but ultimately he'll have to learn to manage it, because frankly email is a lot better than getting pinged on IM or Twitter DMs a hundred times a day. If I were in that position (and thank god I'm not) I'd switch to a new email address and only give it to people who really really need it.

</comment><comment><USER10> The only thing to come close to email in usefulness for me has been SMS (not counting the phone itself.) But even the email/SMS duopoly could soon change given the near ubiquitous presence of smartphones.

I'm just waiting for the evolution from "e-mail" to "e-conversation". Just create add protocols to add IM, video, audio, images, and possibly even metadata to allow for non-perfect presumed input (say, transcripts of audio/video, computer devised descriptions of images, all for search purposes).

Of course, I say "just", but sadly I can't see that kind of thing happening, despite my honest belief that it would be a benefit to all (think webmail clients) more than attempts to "become" the platform for the future (Myspace, Facebook, G+) that I think we can all see becoming a boom/bust cycle of "new hotness/old busted" if we're unlucky.

</comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't every celwebrity go through this stage?

<comment><USER12> +1 for celWEBrity

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did something similar.. I got rid of my iPhone. I no longer check it constantly, and loathe those who can't go a few minutes while in the company of others without checking or chatting(SO I'm talking to you!!) It's been a great freedom, even when alone, I have my thoughts and a book if I WANT! I actually just borrow a friends web phone if I want to check a web project real quick. I sometimes use an old flip phone I never cancelled if I deem important but I still rarely do so and appreciate the lack of noise. Nothing is more important now then it was 20 years ago, I'll be in touch if something goes down.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's hope he stops writing too, soon.

<comment><USER15> +100 to that

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we finally ban techcrunch here?

</comment><comment><USER17> what a tool

</comment><comment><USER15> And the Techcrunch Troll is once at it again with another stupid post.</comment>


TextDrive is Back - <AUTHOR> http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=33821&action=new

<comment><AUTHOR> More information here: <http://joyent.com/migration/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Someone talked to a lawyer.</comment>


Underwater Exploring Is Banned in Brazil (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/25/science/underwater-exploring-is-banned-in-brazil.html <comment><USER2> Governments at odds with archeology to protect the origin story of the country is common across the world.

In India, as recent as latter part of this decade archeologists found gold mine of evidence for >2100 year old Tamil civilization at Keezhadi including Roman artifacts[0].

There was no evidence of Hinduism found, for the matter of fact no religious artifacts of known organised religions was found there.

The archeologist who made the discovery was transferred and the excavations was halted. Fortunately, Tamil civilization is still very much in existence in the state of Tamilnadu,India; so the matter was taken to court and the court has now ordered continuation of excavation at Keezhadi & ordered the original archeologist back to the site[1].

But there has been numerous hurdles since, a blatant obstruction by the central government.

India is a culmination of several such civilizations, but the ruling party wants to project India as a 'Hindu Nation' which magically originated before any other civilization in the world. Unfortunately, they have the popular support for obvious reasons (You'll likely witness in the comments ).

Wiki[2].

[0]: [https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/keezhadi- hittin...](https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/keezhadi-hitting-pay- dirt-and-controversy/article19779268.ece)

[1]: [https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/keezhadi- excavations-h...](https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/keezhadi-excavations- hc-orders-transfer-asi-officer-amarnath-ramakrishna-tn-98413)

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

<comment><USER3> This really makes me wonder why controlling the understanding of anything older than 3000 years ago is such a big deal. Isn't there a statute of limitations on this kind of thing?

It might be tied to the ancient notions of lineage that have somehow persisted into the modern era and for bettet or fot worse link the ancient with the modern.

<comment><USER4> It's to manufacture legitimization for all kinds of claims.

One of the most notorious examples for this is probably Israel [0].

[0] [https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-twisted-logic-of- the...](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-twisted-logic-of-the-jewish- historic-right-to-israel-1.6654428)

<comment><USER5> For an interesting take on the ancient history of conflict among Semitic tribes, I recommend Matthew Woodring Stover's _Jericho Moon_. The ancient Hebrews come across a lot like marauding Bedouin tribes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm Brazilian so take my opinion with a bit o salt and pepper. I have no doubts our government circa 1985 was totally capable of such things. It was a military government, with lots of censorship (but 85 was they last days). So anything that could raise any question about our national identity was a threat for them. About the feasibility of atlantic crossings from west to east, mainly by odd, it's perfectly possible. The travel back otherwise is another history. Probably they mixed with our native inhabitants and they genes disappeared with the time (and with the arrival of portuguese in 1500). Even today, to question Brazilians national identity is tabu here.

<comment><USER7> I can see the 85 government willing to do that (I'm brazillian as well).

I doubt the Romans would arrive here though. They were not navy focused at all. There are detailed accounts of all sorts of trouble they went just to cross to Britain.

At the same time, we had plenty of pre-culumbian tribes here who were masters at pottery (like the Marajoara culture). These are probably pottery jars from one of these cultures.

I found funny what you said about this being a tabu. I don't feel that at all here in Brazil. On the contrary. Brazillians I know acknowledge the Pedra Furada site, for example, but most other countries ignore it, specially the US with their Clover first narrative.

<comment><USER8> > I found funny what you said about this being a tabu. I don't feel that at > all here in Brazil. On the contrary. Brazillians I know acknowledge [...]

do not mix up the current Brazil with the Brazil from a few years ago.

under the worker's party Brazil had great recognition of native cultures and new museums. under the current, elected under a parliament coup (the preferred left candidate just left political prison last week, after a year without trial), all that is gone, and the biggest two museums with Indian artifacts burned to the ground in under three months, one barely showing in the midia.... so go figure.

> I can see the 85 government willing to do that

the current government has a general as vice president (and the president is a failed military career turned professional politician), and everyone in the education ministry are career military, just like the 60s. I find it odd that you can see the problem clearly on the previous coup but not on this one.

<comment><USER9> Please keep obvious political propaganda out of this side. You may not like the current government and neither do I but the previous one was not healthy at all for our country.

<comment><USER8> you could practice what you preach :) I didn't vote for either, even on the last election, and would not have voted for him even if he was running. I'm further left.

> but the previous one was not healthy at all for our country

if enacting the very laws that allowed to go after the politic corrupt class in power since forever (even if backfired when it started to work), started a minimum income program in the entire country, paid off the international debt, kept oil reserves for national companies, etc. is a bad goverment... I guess you are right.

<comment><USER9> Maybe not your intention but thats basically what I would expect from a worker's party political propaganda.

It was bad because we got hit like a truck as soon as commodities prices and China's economy decelerated and government spending did not adjusted at all. Specially bad when lots of public money went to few conglomerates that were part of billionaire corruption schemes, bribe and money laundering. Also sending billions to other African and Central and South American dictatorships - infrastructure projects handled by the same companies involved in domestic corruption scandals. The Brazilian Worker's Party and companies like Odebrecht have a big finger in everything that's happening in Venezuela right now.

And let me say this about Bolsa Família: the minimum income program was created by Ruth Cardoso, the First Lady before Lula's presidency. Lula's original plan was called "Fome Zero" (Zero Hunger) and revolved about government supplying food to poor people much like Chavez did. He ended following mrs Cardosos' plan which is way better than his original idea but also bad because it had no escape mechanism like tying it to educational programs and was used over and over again to coerce the poor population into voting to the workers party.

Please. I may not know about what a bad government is but apparently further left means cherry picking facts to tell your own ideological charged version of history. Even PSOL (Freedom and Socialism Party) member Luciana Genro agrees that Lula and Dilma were criminals that looted the country and should be in jail.

I'm really sorry but every time you tell some rose tinted story about how things were good, names and terms like Odebrecht, Mensalão, JBS, Mariel's Port, Pasadena's Refinery, OAS and Camargo Correa will pop up. So as a brazilian it is a bit hard to swallow and borderline offensive okay?

<comment><USER10> So much bullshit

And thanks for the guy who thanks me for my nice argument in the immediate future

<comment><USER11> Can you please review the site guidelines and stick to them when commenting here, no matter how strongly you feel about an issue or how wrong someone else is? That's the only way this community can continue without destroying itself.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm Portuguese so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Did the Romans really have the tech to cross the Atlantic? I mean... it's though job!

We know Roman history very very well and no where in their records is this mentioned? Sounds very weird to me.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure how much tech you need. More like planning and luck.

Think about the vast ocean distances the Polynesian people covered, and it's my understanding that their level of technology was less than the Romans. Though I'm not really knowledgeable in that area.

<comment><USER14> Polynesians never crossed large open oceans. They island hopped.

<comment><USER15> The longest distance between islands is longer than the shortest distance between Africa and South America. So it's at least _possible_ with relatively primitive technology.

<comment><USER16> Polynesians had and still have extremely sophisticated stellar and solar navigation techniques (as well as deep observational knowledge of oceans and marine life) that far exceeded recorded European techniques until the advent of tools like astrolabes and sextants in the 1700s, as far as the extent of travel distances. There has been growing evidence of Polynesian contact with South America, including the presence of sweet potatoes (South American origin) which may have just dispersed somehow westward over the Pacific as seeds. But chicken bones (a South Asian origin) have been radio carbon dated to the 1300s in Chile. And a Polynesian settlement in the Auckland islands in the sub-antarctic dating to the 13th century has been found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hard to believe that a stern mounted oar-rudder would be a viable steering mechanism to make a 5,700 nautical mile trip from Rome to Rio de Janeiro especially since the "New World" is 1,000 miles closer. Europe had to wait until the Renaissance to get its rudder technology more robust.

The Brazillian law was probably a forward-thinking act to protect antiquities from leaving the country in the event there were underwater artifacts.

<comment><USER18> [https://www2.rgzm.de/Navis/Ships/Ship118/Image/118F3005.jpg](https://www2.rgzm.de/Navis/Ships/Ship118/Image/118F3005.jpg)

Photo of a reconstructed Roman rudder. Doesn't look so bad?

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the photo; this is the best one I have seen. I suspect the ropes could not secure each of those rudders in place for a transatlantic crossing even in moderate seas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone been able to find if there is any further progress on this site in the decades that have since passed after this article was published?

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone on quora said they recently began trying to look again:

>"Sir Robert Marx and I are now in the process of reinitiating the research we began in 1983 on this location where we found 3rd century Roman amphora. A sub-bottom profile scan by Doc Harold Edgerton identified a large non-natural object deep in the sediment, below the place we found the amphora. We believe that this is in fact a Roman wreck and are out to scientifically prove it.

#jameslynchexplorer"

[https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-Roman-galley-was- fou...](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-Roman-galley-was-found-sunk- off-the-coast-of-Brazil/answer/James-Lynch-128)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans- oceanic_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans- oceanic_contact_theories#Claims_involving_ancient_Roman_contact)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you take the "barca" from praca 15 to the Island of Paqueta, where I grew up, learn to swim, and at age 6 read my first books, I remember Jonnathan Livingstone Seagull , The crime genius, Tistu the green finger boy, Mamae nao pode saber, E proibido chorar, The little prince...

So when you take the barca and cross the Guanabara Bay, its like when you take the ferry train to cross from Hamburg to Copenhagen, and see the light generating crazy windmills, but is Dolphins who swimm and jump together with the barca going the same way to the Island of Paqueta

I remember when I was in Denmark, I stay at the home of a friend family in a farm, so beautiful, they are very nice and very knowledgeable, and the old father takes me to the woods to look for deers, and we were there in silence in the woods and I hear a sound in the leaves, and say something, and the old man says "there" and we see

Then we walk back to the wooden house, and on the way I say

You have good eyes

And the father says

You have good years

I love denmark and my family of friends

</comment><comment><USER7> The Romans were not good ship builders. I'm skeptic.

<comment><USER21> You don't need to be a good ship builder to cross the Atlantic. Thanks to the North Equatorial Current, you can launch almost any buoyant object off the West African coast and it'll wash up somewhere on the east coast of the American continent. You don't need sails, you don't need oars, you don't even need a tiller; you just need buoyancy, enough fresh water to survive the trip and the knowledge that the current exists. The Atlantic has been crossed on an array of utterly unsuitable craft including rafts, survival capsules and inflatable dinghies; an elderly French man is currently attempting to cross in a large wine barrel.

[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/frenchman-jean-jacques- sa...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/frenchman-jean-jacques-savin-adrift- in-barrel-hopes-for-land-on-horizon-after-100-days-mjxqwsdf0)

<comment><USER22> To end up in the Americas you'd first have to catch the Canary current. It's not certain that the Romans went that far south, although the _Periplus Hannonis_ attests that a Carthaginian expedition sailed as far as Mount Cameroon.

From the _Periplus Maris Erythraei_ we know that the India trade was well established in Roman times, but crossing the Arabian Sea and crossing the Atlantic are two different things. One you can do in a dhow, the other not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The Brazilian Navy has (...) in turn charged Mr. Marx with ''contraband'' of > objects recovered from other wrecks in this country. (...) the Brazilian > officials showed a catalogue of an auction held in Amsterdam in 1983 in > which, they said, gold coins, instruments and artifacts removed from > shipwrecks in Brazil were offered for sale on behalf of Mr. Marx and his > associates.

> Several attempts to give Mr. Marx the opportunity to respond to these > charges were unsuccessful. One phone call ended abruptly when Mr Marx said, > ''Don't bother me,'' and then hung up.

I have to side with the Brazilian government here, not because I think they're right (I don't know) but because their action will lead to the least harm.

If Marx is right, and Brazil has its say, then the worst that can happen is that an archeological site will be buried in a known location for several decades until someone else will give another try.

If Brazil is right, and Marx has his say, then the worst that can happen is that an irreplaceable archeological site will be plundered in haste with 20th century technology (which is, let's admit, not that great in digging up underwater ruins without destroying them), forever losing an opportunity to learn more about ancient Romans who made it to Brazil.

Not all wonders have to be excavated in our own generation.

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have an more sources that mention Romans in other parts of the world?

<comment><USER25> The Romans visited the Canary Islands. This is well known and acknowledged by mainstream History.

The Canary Islands are a great stop en route to America. In fact, that's the one Columbus used.

<comment><USER26> >The Canary Islands are a great stop en route to America. In fact, that's the one Columbus used.

If you're implying that should be used as evidence supporting romans having explored north america, that's really a stretch. Looking at a map, the canary islands are close to the roman empire's territory and the romans could have been there for plenty of reasons besides going to north america.

see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Islas_Canarias_(real_loca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Islas_Canarias_\(real_location\)_in_Spain.svg) and [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Roman_Em...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png)

<comment><USER25> I have not implied it can be used as evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd think most countries would be happy to claim a connection to Rome.

<comment><USER27> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If the theories about Norsemen crossing to North America are true, then I don't see it being too farfetched that the Romans could have done it too.

<comment><USER16> Romans didn't possess longboats which were capable of sea travel as well as riverine navigation. Romans stuck to coastal waters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is beyond ridiculous. I was already 14 in 1985, and coming from a quite politicised family I already read newspapers, both for our momentous point in History at the time, and for the Cold War (glad we won that).

Even if the military government did try to boost our national pride with History that, given what we still know, does necessarily begin with Cabral — previous landings were inconsequential — there is no way they would not be happy to claim a Roman connection.

If there is anything to Marx's claims, it would be because he was (seen as) a plunderer.

Anyway, the military government finished in March, and then we had a populist, centre-right government who could not care less for History.

</comment><comment><USER30> whats is more likely? one diver selling gold coins, or a huge conspiracy of >500 years

<comment><USER31> > _a huge conspiracy of >500 years_

From the diver's account, the wreck wasn't noticed until the modern era. No need for multi-century conspiracies. That said, yes, it seems more likely he made this up, given his looting of the antiquities.</comment></comment>


Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang <comment><USER3> Biggest problem with these games (I've found, anyway) is that your sword controller cannot magically stop in mid air when your virtual sword hits another sword or a wall or whatever. It really ruins the immersion.

<comment><USER4> It will also have to drastically downplay the importance of footwork. In a real swordfight, where to put your feet is nearly as important as where to put the sword.

<comment><USER5> This is why I don't like games talking about how 'realistic' they will be. Firstly, because anything that runs on a standard computer will be far from reality anyway, and secondly because often users don't actually want reality (eg. most FPSs have far from realistic walking speeds - for good reason. Also stylised graphics etc.).

That said, the concept of different styles of swordplay is great - and having more 'realism' in that is something I think is pretty admirable.

<comment><USER6> Don't get bogged down in the pedantry of realism. When 'realism' is mentioned in gaming, it really means 'realism that assists immersion'. You'll occasionally see articles about balancing realism versus gameplay - <USER2> something is real enough to turn you off the game (like boredom from slow movement speed), then it's reducing your immersion.

<comment><USER7> Johan Andersson, the designer of historical strategy games (Europa Universalis), put it best: "When realism gets in the way of fun, fun wins."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cameo by Gabe Newell <http://i.imgur.com/6vDza.png>, who is swordsmithing a crowbar :)

      Neal: "Hey is that about ready?"
      Gabe: "These things, they take time..."

<comment><USER9> Doesn't necessarily mean anything, but noticed the prototypes they're showing in the video seem to be running on the Source engine...

<comment><USER10> They're using Unity. Check the jobs page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "I'm the greatest sword fighter in the world."

"And you wrote the software."

"Yeah. That, too," Hiro says.

―Neal Stephenson, _Snow Crash_

<comment><USER12> I was most surprised that his new company isn't called Corporation 9592.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't mind putting a bit of cash towards projects where those involved really don't have the resources to pull it off otherwise, but does Neal Stephenson really not have enough cash to bootstrap this himself?

<comment><USER14> Looks like a PR stunt to me. Not that that's a bad thing.

The production alone on that video

$$$

<comment><USER15> Interesting how Kickstarter can be used both for PR and actual fundraising.

<comment><USER16> I always thought PR was a component of fund-raising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone remember Die by the Sword? Admittedly it was more sword flailing than sword fighting, but it's the only game I've played that had a semblance of direct control. It was also the first game to use IK for everything from sword fighting to rope swinging and ladder climbing. Even nowadays it's rare to see IK used in games for anything except relatively minor pose fix-ups (blending canned poses offers better control, and IK fix-ups can then be applied on top to get perfect alignment for aiming, etc).

<comment><USER18> You should try out Mount & Blade series then.

<comment><USER19> +1 on this, M&B with the difficulty settings cranked is the best you can get atm.

<comment><USER20> +2, and even the highest difficulty singleplayer is nothing compared to multiplayer. Beware, though, it has an extremely steep learning curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Real swordfighting is not about the sword, it's about the footwork. Just physically do not be where the opponent's sword is heading.

See: relatively little blade contact in extremely high level fencing.

<comment><USER21> Fencing raises another good point: realistic swordfighting is actually pretty boring compared to movie swordfighting. (If it weren't, then movie swordfighting wouldn't need to be so unrealistic).

If I'm gonna play a swordfighting video game I wanna be Errol Flynn, not Benjamin Kleibrink. [Who? 2008 Olympic foil champion. Yes, I had to look that up, that's the point.]

<comment><USER22> Competitive fencing is also a far cry from realistic swordfighting.

(There's a whole bit in Snow Crash about that, actually.)

<comment><USER23> > (There's a whole bit in Snow Crash about that, actually.)

Admittedly it was katanas in Snow Crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 As far as entertaining Kickstarter videos go, this one is certainly off to an auspicious start.

<comment><USER24> I found the second video further down even more impressive in its more serious tone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As someone who just finished reading Snow Crash today (great stuff btw, can't wait for another Stephenson's book) I'd be thrilled to see this and try it in action.

As someone who's been into martial arts for some time I'm very sceptic about this. There's a lot more to realistic fighting than just swinging and clashing swords: footwork, body movement, weight transfer...

Nevertheles, even if it won't turn out to be perfect it could stil be a lots of fun. I'll be watching their progress.

<comment><USER26> > _There's a lot more to realistic fighting than just swinging and clashing > swords: footwork, body movement, weight transfer..._

I agree. I'm pretty sure he's not aiming at making something totally immersive and realistic, but just a good game that has better sword play than anything else.

Many games do one thing pretty well, and are good enough for everything else. _Black_ had nice gun play; _Burnout_ had nice crashing. Hopefully this will have sword play that is better than just button mashing.

> _Nevertheles, even if it won't turn out to be perfect it could stil be a > lots of fun. I'll be watching their progress._

Yes, I'd settle for lots of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised there was no mention of the Mount and Blade[1] series, which took a serious look at this sort of combat through the use of contextual mouse movements for parries and attacks. I wonder if he's unaware of the franchise, or just didn't feel the need to mention it.

I'm also not convinced that today's odometry based controllers will give you high enough fidelity to model swords convincingly. Any sort of wiimote or kinect based sword/lightsaber game has always seemed very waggle centric without any deliberate movement. Also, I'm not really thrilled about the thought of having to buy plastic swords to swing in my room.

[1]:<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psLA87SgZcw>

<comment><USER28> Have you tried using 2 PS3 move controllers in the gladiator mode in Sports Champions? It's not great but it's not bad either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the most interesting games I've ever played was Bushido Blade 2. The best thing about it was realistic vulnerability: get stabbed once and you die (or maybe lose use of an arm). The disappointment was made up for by lots of quick rounds.

I always thought it was silly to have games where you'd get shot 20 times and keep fighting exactly the same, just lose some of your energy meter, then suddenly flop over and die when it reached zero.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, my immediate reaction to this is that I just want a real Bushido Blade sequel. The most underrated fighting game of all time IMO.

<comment><USER31> I think a friend showed me either that game, or one that was very similar. You were in any given map - which was effectively a field - and you would charge each other, and the player with the quicker reflexes lived, and the other one died.

It was interesting, but not at all fun - to me, it seemed like the equivalent of playing five card stud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> He's been wanting this since the mid-90's - not downplaying or being snarky, just making a point. This reminds me of Hero in Snow Crash.

<comment><USER33> Hiro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wish him luck. Various projects have come along with backing from people outside the video game industry with the goal of being more realistic, more revolutionary and so on. But it's a lot harder to make a playable fun game. Realism often isn't fun. Modern Warfare 3 is the culmination of 20 years of evolution from Wolfenstein, and still is nothing like being a real soldier.

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh man, I can't wait to yell "big board" to pull up the cheat mode screen.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm more of a minesweeper guy. Can they make a game that makes blowing up mines more realistic? How much would a Kickstarter campaign for that cost?

</comment><comment><USER36> Why is it named clang? So very very confusing.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clang>

<comment><USER37> Presumably it's an allusion to the sound of swords clashing. I bet most people haven't heard of the other Clang (C lang, really)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Entertaining video, but the production value was so high that it made me wonder whether this project really needs my money...

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm in from the headline alone.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm curious how they plan to implement actual medieval / early Renaissance combat tactics with a controller like the one in the video - how would you do half-swording or something like the Mordhau?

For people who aren't medieval geeks - half-sword is when you hold the sword halfway up the blade with your left hand, in order to deliver a more accurate, powerful thrust; perhaps after trapping your opponent's sword between your arm and body. Mordhau ("murder-strike") is when you invert the sword and use it as a mace. These things came about because swinging a sword into an armored opponent isn't actually going to do much to him.

It seems like the kind of combat you could simulate might potentially be fun, but wouldn't actually simulate a real fight from the period - not enough grappling / bashing.

<comment><USER40> It looks as though they're pursuing the unarmored combat of Liechtenauer than the armored knight combat of later period, where swords basically stopped being useful against breastplates and the like and folks went in more for maces and war hammers. Liechtenauer does, IIRC, have halfswording in the basic form but mostly it is about geometry and footwork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm amazed at how many HN readers have turned out to also be sword fighting experts! :)

<comment><USER42> Don't be. What, 20 out of 20,000? Even my daughters have had fencing in Jr. High.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As a former kendoka, this is a wet dream. I can finally put all that kata to good use!

</comment><comment><USER44> It's going to be difficult to get right. They seem to emphasize on the hand work, the swing, parry, thrust. Sword fighting is as much foot work as hand work, as I've learned in my fencing days way back. There are only a few hand actions, the lounge, parry/return, and indirect attack, on different zones, but the foot work is the major part of the game. Keeping and judging the distance is a tough skill. Close in suddenly, retreat and lounge, counter lounge, lounge and crouch, .etc. All these will be difficult to replicate in the game.

I wish them luck.

</comment><comment><USER45> Ok. So a famous author decides to make a sword fighting video game. Awesome. But.... I feel from the video that what they are really trying to create is a sword fighting _simulator_. Big difference, playability is incredibly important, we're all familiar with 'arcade modes' where realism is suspended to create an engaging, fun game. So I'm wondering how successful this 'game' will actually be.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm probably only moderately interested in the sword fighting game, but this is easily the most entertaining kick starter video I've seen so far.

</comment><comment><USER47> Reminds me of that Incantor wand controller

<http://incantor.com/>

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moveablecode/incantor- ma...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moveablecode/incantor-magic-made- real-a-real-world-mobile-based)

Maybe you'd want a difference in heftiness of the controller, but a similar swinging/waving api?

</comment><comment><USER48> Don't know about a sword fighting game, but I would gladly part with $20 to see Snow Crash rewritten in the past tense :)

</comment><comment><USER49> Clang getting some The Verge coverage [http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/10/3076307/neal-stephenson- cl...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/10/3076307/neal-stephenson-clang-sword- fighting-game) \- I hope these guys hit mainstream. I would love it if Neal could pull this off in a big way.

</comment><comment><USER50> When the Wii appeared, sword games was the first thing that came to my mind, but I don't there have been too many of them on the Wii. I was also hoping we'd see some martial arts fighting (or training) games for the Kinect by now, although the Kinect needs to dramatically increase its accuracy for that.

<comment><USER51> Yes, that came to everyone's mind. But what was the big title game involving a sword for Wii? Zelda Twilight Princess.

Originally designed for the Gamecube, it was ported to Wii with few changes. Basically, you wave the Wiimote left and right to simulate button 'A' and poke it forward to simulate a different button combination from the conventional Gamecube controller.

Having been a big fan of the game on Gamecube, I didn't like the Wii version very much. Most of the time your sword is used to cut grass or break pottery or something else mundane, so it felt like a lot of waving around just for show. Maybe even a little bit like having a TV remote with loose batteries that you have to shake a bit to get it to work.

Years ago I practiced a little martial arts and took 3 or 4 classes dedicated to practice swords. What I can relate from that is that picking up a sword- like object and waving it around purposefully for an hour is going to use muscles that you are not used to using. Even someone in good shape is going to feel it the next day.

This sounds like good fun exercise, but it seems like the market for a video game you can play from the couch will always be much larger than for a game that presents a realistic physical challenge.

Wii and Kinect games may provide interesting counterexamples; we should look up the sales stats for physical vs. sedentary games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If you want to sword fight "realistically", go out, buy a sword and join a sword-fighting club.

Darn, why do people try to solve everything with technology when there is a simple solution in the physical world!?

No matter how they dice it or slice it (ah ah), it's not going to end up "realistic" for anyone who has used a sword before.

<comment><USER53> I think this game and controller is targeted at the superset of people who was to sword fight "realistically" while playing a fun game, without all the bruises and sore muscles and years of training that accompany using a real sword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> >in a much more intuitive way than pulling a plastic trigger or pounding a key on a keyboard

A bit unfair to make that comparison. At the very least, the Wii Motion Plus in games such as Sports Resort fencing offers a better experience than that.

</comment><comment><USER55> Thinking about comparative advantage, and being the selfish sort, I think I'd rather see him do something closer to home. I don't play video games, and even a Neal Stephenson game isn't going to change that, but I love his writing.

</comment><comment><USER56> What are the technical challenges involved with building a high quality, low- latency bit of hardware? Even small lags in response are really annoying and kill enjoyment of the game for me.

</comment><comment><USER57> Rune! Was awesome. The way you could make your sword move with the mouse was amazing. Accuracy is what it is about. If this game could capture that feeling I am aboard.

</comment><comment><USER58> Everybody needs a hobby but I thought Reamde was Stephenson's break from revolutionizing historical / science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER59> An update has just been posted, only for backers though. Anyone mind sharing?

<comment><USER60> It's been incorporated into the front page. The only thing missing is that they want to use Razer Hydra as the controller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Video games? What happened to building the space needle with Google? :-)

</comment><comment><USER62> I absolutely adore the video, but the video should CLEARLY explain what the money is going to be used for. There is no mention (only allusion) to hardware development in the video at all.

Also, it's not clear from the video if the game will be playable _without_ the special hardware...

<comment><USER63> There is no special hardware. It's going to use an off-the-shelf motion controller to start.

There's a second video a bit further down with a bit more info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> he copied my realization! [http://www.riturajsatpute.com/2010/08/where-are- real-role-pl...](http://www.riturajsatpute.com/2010/08/where-are-real-role- playing-games.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have to say; sword fighting is perhaps the least interesting subject I could imagine, but since it's Neil Stephenson, he can have my money. I also enjoyed the part where he threw the cookbook at Sir Dumbass.

</comment><comment><USER65> If CLANG stood for something ridiculous then I'd be in.

<comment><USER15> Clean licked armor. 'N gore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Loved the Gaben cameo!

</comment><comment><USER67> TLDR: In a parallel thread ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4086805> ) multiple posters note how Pixar's 22 tips for storytelling apply to computer programming. Obviously AAPL took note, because Neal Stephenson is working on Clang now. The enterprise became the hot topic of yet another front-page thread ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4090845> ). They soon might find this handy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085318>

;)

</comment><comment><USER68> Gotta have that TFU</comment>


Hack everything without fear - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/17/Hack-everything-without-fear.html <comment><USER2> Like most hard things in life the most honest advice anyone can give you is stop worrying about getting stuck, embrace confusion and learn to love being lost. If you can learn to not lose confidence when you're in the wilderness then you have learned how to learn. Unfortunately this is challenging to do. It's like telling someone the way to do a pull up is to do a pull-up. For self motivated people this is all the coaching they need. For most however, they need someone to hold their hand through all the steps.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I was stuck for years, not being able to do a single pull-up, until I found a youtube video that explained how to progress in pull ups[1] The way was counterintuitive to me, so it would have never occurred to me.

The method consists in actually jumping, skipping the hardest part, then when being on top with the head above the bar, you let your body fall as slowly as you can. It turns out this works because in the eccentric phase your arm muscles are more powerful, but you are still able to progress overall.

The advice I would give is, as you said, embrace confusion but pay attention to where is your next mentor, the one that will show you that little trick or that little piece of understanding that will get you progressing.

[1](spanish)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQxbnI3QFBE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQxbnI3QFBE)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Another way is to work negatively. So in a sense you do a pull up by doing a reverse pull up— that is you start at the top of the pull us and lower yourself as slowly as possible (like in you're method). Just rather than pulling yourself up you just jump yourself or step up to the top. After so many sessions of that you'll be doing them without much difficulty.

I've found in learning the process can be similar. If I don't understand something I can only read so much and study so much. I have to get my hands into it. I will pull down a codebase, run it, change it, break it, fix it, try and emulate it from first principles and contrast that with my reading and repeat. The best way I've found so far is to couple that with bottom up learning— working and reworking the fundamentals as I capitulate and bounce off the walls of reverse engineering and experimenting. I can't confirm the benefits of that for anybody else but it works for me and keeps me interested

<comment><USER4> Uh, isn't that exactly what the parent comment just said? It sounded to me like they were doing negatives.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Not to me. But granted— they linked a video displaying supine form whereas I assumed, without watching, they'd shown wide pronate. The latter form is notoriously difficult and I felt like detailing further would be helpful.

The quickest example I could find (of pronate form) is this guy, (but he's right): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLXn2OtQmxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLXn2OtQmxo)

Wanted to add, off topic but for interested parties of the digression, a good resource— Scott.. from Boston? never checked. But he's pretty good: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogM8PlV1NI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogM8PlV1NI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This used to called a "can do" attitude. Back then I think it meant you were willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard physical work needed to put things right. Now that the world is more technical than mechanical, "can do" requires delving into circuits and SLOC, hacking far less visible and more complex entities. It's only when those circuits and apps are open that "can do" has a hope of staying alive.

In the closed worlds of today's mobile infractructure (i.e. iOS and Droid "walled gardens"), remaining "can do" is getting harder. If I could trade mine in for a truly open smart phone, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER6> I'm still using Nokia N900, which is pretty close. I've used Openmoko Neo Freerunner pretty long, but unfortunately its performance was hard to stand anymore. For development, I also have Samsung Galaxy S3, which was the last one to have its baseband separated from the CPU. Replicant works there, so it might be a good choice in this regard as well. Looking forward for Librem 5, Neo900 or Pyra Phone now - whichever happens first. You need to make some sacrifices (hopefully less and less as the time passes), but the choice is there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once I was interested in obscure code base because my motivation was to discover smth which a few people would know about. But these days, I see github repo with large number of contributors, who are smarter than me (often), it's an instant motivation killer. I rarely checkout other's code unless it's related to the problem I am solving.

<comment><USER8> I actually suffer from an extra problem. I no longer trust any program you can download off the internet, except for trusted repositories (ie most of canonical's ubuntu repos, debian etc). That has been a massive drag for me, because I can't just download super convinient programs on my work computer. It pretty much stalled my interest in (amateur/hobby) programming alongside with stopping the use of pirated software, except in VMs, which are slow and inconvenient enough to not bother running them very often.

<comment><USER9> I'm almost at the same stage that you are. I think that as powerful as traditional desktop operating systems have been, they are clearly less secure than mobile operating systems which sandbox applications. People have sensitive data on their devices, and it is simply far too easy to get harmful malware on your machine. Whether from an external developer becoming compromised, or actual malicious behaviour.

I still download popular 3rd-party programs (i.e. not in the OS repos), especially if they are open-source (i.e. just GitHub), and there is evidence of active maintenance with a significant number of contributors to the project, or if it is from a reputable, popular real-life person.

I think it is a real shame. I should be able to download any program and know that they aren't just going to be trawling through the files on my PC without the OS at least asking me (and so on). It's a tricky balance between sandboxed "useless" apps, and god-mode, but something that I feel desktop OS's need to focus on if their platform is to survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You don't know what you don't know until you go looking." Every good problem solver starts with the drive to want to solve the problem. People's motivations can vary from person to person, but these motivations are what drive them forward to want to solve the problem. Success is always a natural outcome of any problem solving technique used because even if the problem is not solved per the requirements needed, the experience of failing is still in many ways a success. The lessons learned from struggling and failing are committed to memory and can be used on another future problem. "Instead of looking for the answer, try to find a solution."

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not a "how to" like I thought it was going to be. It's a "do it" with some tips.

Where "do it" is go ahead and hack & submit a patch on that open source project you rely on instead of working around it, get past that fear.

<comment><USER12> I've never really understood why this is hard for people, especially in the era of Github where anyone and everyone can open an issue or pull request and generally be taken seriously.

<comment><USER13> I've found it easy with python recently.

\- Go on github, find the repo

\- Fork the repo

\- git clone [https://github.com/me/forked_repo](https://github.com/me/forked_repo)

\- cd into the repo, and 'git checkout -b me_myfix'

\- write your change

\- cd ..

\- 'pip uninstall forked_repo' so that you can work with your fork's clone instead

\- Sometimes, if the repo has a setup.py, some symbolic linking needs to be setup so we can easily do 'import forked_repo'

\- use 'import forked_repo'

\- later, you can do 'git push origin me_myfix' and submit a pull request from Github.

I think there is a better way but I did not think about this problem much. It would be nice if someone could outline how to go about this properly. And there's almost no chance I could do this with another language since I am not as comfortable with the building/packaging with other languages.

<comment><USER14> Sometimes you don't even need to do a pull request if you have your fork on the same platform.

A while back I needed py3k support in pybindgen so hacked it in and it magically got merged into the main branch. Surprisingly, as is -- I guess I can hack on the python good enough ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Do everything without fear" is also good advice. :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this article is fundamentally very bad, for one specific reason.

\---

Me: "Hi! I just found a bug in your program. If you do A, B and C, X doesn't work properly."

Maintainer: "Our test case covers A and B and works perfectly."

Me: "Yes, C is an edge-case your testcase didn't include, and which is what breaks everything horribly. You know more about modifying your testcase than I do, but I guarantee you that when you make the change, this will fail consistently."

Maintainer: "You must provide us a new testcase."

Me: "I don't know how to do that."

Maintainer: "Our existing test cases work fine."

Me: [ Gives up before frustration turns to anger ]

This happened. [https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl/issues/7872](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/7872)

\--

Me (on a sadly now-defunct forum): "I think it would be awesome if we ported my favorite application to this new OS"

Owner of application, unexpectedly: [ Long rant about the difficulty of porting things and that my ideas are going to affect him personally ]

Me: [ Freaks out ]

Forum maintainers: [ Words of comfort ]

Sadly there are no copies of the post in the Web Archive (I just downloaded the entire forum to check), but I remember the conversation well.

\--

New contributor: "Here's a patch to this program. It fixes this and that problem."

Long-term maintainer: "We don't do things that way."

New contributor: "It'll improve performance and simplify the code."

Long-term maintainer: [ Blah blah blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah(...) ]

New contributor: "...?!"

This is what came to mind when I thought about systemd.

\---

The thing the article is completely missing is the political element.

It exists, it's real, I wasn't warned I'd get bitten, and I have cognitive issues and don't know how to resolve confrontation in some situations.

I generally avoid open source communities nowadays. My experiences discussing closed-source software have consistently been less toxic!

<comment><USER17> What is actually in that GitHub issue does not match your story. For example, what we can see there is you providing an example with the concrete information all replaced with "(removed)", the other person asking for said concrete information, and you replying that you don't know it, even though you clearly did and removed it from your test case.

<comment><USER16> I must admit that I did have second thoughts about posting this after I'd properly typed it out. It sounded less pointed in my head.

You are technically right. The specific issue was that youtube-dl had a bug downloading WAVs from soundcloud. The WAV in question was privately linked to me, and it was the first WAV I'd ever encountered. It's not possible to search for "has WAV" on soundcloud. I had no idea how to find one, and was unsure how to go about uploading test media (eg if it would be taken down etc).

I'll admit that yeah there was some laziness and "just fix it" and unimpressedness in there. I'm at fault to an extent.</comment></comment></comment>


Technology and the College Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/fashion/technology-and-the-college-generation.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I finished undergrad last year. Email was a primary means of communication, a key part of all academic, extracurricular, and administrative tasks, and every was expected to (and did) check email multiple times a day. Once, the college cancelled classes due to weather and the tweet about it went out ~20 min before the email and many students got angry. People don't get push notifications from the public twitter account which mostly posts weird "engagement" content. Kids get email pushed to their phone. If they say they didn't get the email or "the attachment must not have gone through" they are probably lying.

To be fair, I went to a small and very professionally oriented college, not a large university. But this article seemed totally made up to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dumb trend piece article alert. How could email possibly be any easier to use? It is one of the simplest, most straightforward communication methods ever devised. If you can't figure out how to write an email, odds are you won't be good at communicating by any other means.

</comment><comment><USER4> Many people find email painful for exactly the reasons why it is such an important medium. It is the pipeline through which official information flows. Bills, notices from the boss, grades - all of it arrives in our email inbox. If facebook replaced email in our professional lives, suddenly all the fun would be sucked out of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> As having graduated from a large university and having worked at another one, there are several problems:

\- failure to understand customer needs. There is very little feedback considered in most university processes. It's "if you [student] don't like it, too bad." State schools offer on average less hand-holding compared to Ivys and private, which makes some sense.

\- failure to share and integrate between departments, giving the appearance of fragmentation and more work for the served affiliates (students, faculty, staff, visitors, etc)

\- failure to adapt to modern technologies fast enough. I started with desktop servers connected on public IPs and Apple Newtons, and ended with rack mounted gear in real datacenters behind hardware firewalls. The problem is partly that budget is yearly, top-down, not based on need. Also, most departments are cost-centers, not profit-centers (we were, so we had more leverage to suggest changes). Combine these and you get reactive capabilities devoid of marketplace competition^ that are a year behind the times, at best. Yeah, pretty nuts for a $160 m dept.

^ Our customers (other departments within the same hierarchy) often owned a-la-carte discretionary funding control over our departments' projects, so there was competition because opting for outside vendors would be loss of funding and more integration work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure anything in this article should be taken seriously.

This piece doesn't even seem to meet the journalistic standard of a mediocre high school newspaper, much less the NY Times.

My thoughts: The professors and the writer are the ones out of touch here. Were the professors really gullible enough to think that college students don't check their email regularly?

</comment><comment><USER7> if a Uni student says things like "I never know what to say in the subject line and how to address the person," - they probably shouldn't be at university at all.

<comment><USER8> No.

Doing my matura (sort of like the SAT's) I took advance level English just so I could get away from having to know how to properly write an English letter. I got a 98.5% and to this day (~6 years later) I couldn't tell you how to properly format something that is officially recognised as a Letter.

Email has thrown most of the old rules about addressing people out the door. _Nothing_ I learned in elementary or middle school about written communication is even remotely useful these days. The only times those things even remotely come in to play are when I have to write a formal letter to the government.

And even then I just google the correct format.

<comment><USER9> How hard is it to form a subject line for an e-mail? It should indicate what's inside the message; there really isn't much to think about here.

<comment><USER10> > How hard is it to form a subject line for an e-mail? It should indicate > what's inside the message

Except if you're sending encrypted e-mails :)

In that regard a colleague and I now use an incrementing integer for the subject, with occasional skips in the sequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >During the semester, they spent an average of 123 minutes a day on a computer, by far the biggest portion of it, 31 minutes, on social networking. The only thing they spent less time on than e-mail: hunting for content via search engines (four minutes).

This one really bugged me out. I would have expected that they would have been using their knowledge tools to access knowledge - which is probably at least 50% of what I do with my smartphone and 70% of what I do on my laptop. Hopefully they are seeking knowledge through other means and aren't just ignoring one of the best advances of all of mankind.

<comment><USER12> Search engines are designed to get you to bounce to a useful resource quickly. The longer you have to spend on a search engine, the worse it is.

123 - 31 - 4 = 88

I'm guessing those 88 minutes were spent on web sites found through a search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest problem I observed as a student is that sometimes the email solution chosen by the school absolutely sucks. Example: Microsoft Exchange, only accessible through the "simple" web portal interface that's locked down, feature poor, and it's impossible to use IMAP to pull your emails down to another client.

That school ended up emailing students' personal email accounts to get enough responses because the school's official email solution was so terrible.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is going to be quite a shock when they get their first job and realize the business world runs on email. Assuming they can land one.

<comment><USER15> They'll have a pretty hard time getting a job if they don't check their e-mail to find out when the appointment for their interview is.

 _"E-mail has never really been a fun thing to use," said Ms. Judge, 19. "It's always like, 'This is something you have to do.' School is a boring thing. E-mail is a boring thing. It goes together."_

And if they think that _college_ is boring, wait until they have to sit through their first meeting at work.

<comment><USER16> >And if they think that college is boring, wait until they have to sit through their first meeting at work.

I was with you until this. Boredom means you are not engaged to your full potential. If the "real world" is even more boring than school, people _should_ be complaining. (And someone should be making a killing on that inefficiency.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't get it. Configuring email on your phone should allow you to respond or read them as quickly as a txt. I am pretty sure that an educational institution would have a pretty good email system set up. is it a matter of students not knowing how to configure email on their phones?

</comment><comment><USER18> Email is the worst way to communicate crucial information, except for all the others.

/Churchill

</comment><comment><USER19> The only non-anecdotal data in this story appears in a last paragraph and contradicts the thesis.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can we stop posting articles behind paywalls?

</comment><comment><USER21> There was a comic not so long ago that had a "why I hate email" complaining that they never know how formal to be.

It is hard to believe that people have become some out of touch with each other that they can't figure out basic social etiquette.

At the same time I hop on Xbox and listen to 8 year olds who swear like sailors and think that is how you talk with other people who are "online". So maybe my surprise at the lack of etiquette is that I'm now 34 and can't relate to people half my age.

The regular death threats from people on Youtube who disagree with my stance on Pasteurized Milk should possibly also have been a clue.

I have changed my mind I'm just deluded. Young people have no clue how to interact anymore. (Hey you kids get off my yard)

<comment><USER8> > It is hard to believe that people have become some out of touch with each > other that they can't figure out basic social etiquette.

We haven't. But I think society is currently going through a change in basic social etiquette.

Just like when Shakespeare was alive, English still had a formal and informal "you" (you is the formal, thou the informal if I'm not mistaken). These days an esteemed professor might respond to a long and formally addressed email with "yup".

I've had it happen.

Also, it used to be normal for friends to sign letters with things like "Forever yours and eternally devoted, with love, ~Swizec"

Nowadays ... not so much.

<comment><USER22> > Just like when Shakespeare was alive, English still had a formal and > informal "you" (you is the formal, thou the informal if I'm not mistaken).

"you" was the plural and "thou" the singular, and, as is the case in several other languages, tradition was to use the plural in formal contexts (sort of the second-person equivalent of the "royal 'we'".)</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Starts to Woo Its App Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/technology/apple-starts-to-woo-its-app-developers.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The fact that you have to build an iOS app on a Mac, that you can't even set up a CI build on commodity hardware, or in the cloud, is pretty fundamentally developer-hostile. I'll start to feel wooed when they take steps toward fixing that.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for bringing this up since it's been massively painful for years. As an example, when I first started developing for iOS back in 2009, I had to buy a $500 used macbook before I could even get started coding. That hardware was obsolete within about 3 years (couldn't update to the latest OSX or XCode), so then I had to pony up another $800 for a refurbished mac mini just to still be able to develop. Meanwhile, Android Studio runs on... actually I don't know what it _doesn 't_ run on.

And yes, I know that leasing time on a mac for dev work is an option, but that gets rather pricey over time ($1 per hour or $20/month is not cheap if you need to work on and maintain apps for multiple years). And an RDC experience will never be as good as having the actual computer in front of you, even on a fast connection.

<comment><USER4> _That hardware was obsolete within about 3 years (couldn 't update to the latest OSX or XCode_

I call shenanigans - latest OSX and XCode running on a 2008 Macbook right here on my desk. I plan to get 10 years usage out of this machine - that's value for money right there.

<comment> k-mcgrady In my experience Apple laptops tend to hold their value pretty well so I'm guessing a $500 machine was 4-5 years old when purchased. So the fact OP could use it for 3 more seems about right. Personally I upgrade around every 4 years and the laptop is still in great condition for most people and sells for well over half what I paid for it.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately this seems to be less and less true over the years. When I got my MacBook about 4 or 5 years ago, it only had 4GB of ram and a pretty slow hard disk. If have upgraded it to 12GB Ram and a pretty good SSD, this is why I can still use such an old MacBook. For the new ones, I have to decide the RAM, and disk upfront and can't replace them anymore (this is especially worrying with the small lifetime with SSDs).

I wish Apple made their pro products more bulky so we can upgrade the hardware and let the air products be the sexy, thin ones for Starbucks hipsters.

<comment><USER6> As a long time mac user, I do agree that the lack of upgradability in their Pro line is a problem, and it probably should be the defining factor of Pro versus the Air/Straight Macbook line.

That being said, Apple has gone to pretty crazy lengths to ensure that it's modern OSes work on legacy hardware; I was a bit shocked to hear from my parents that they were able to install El Capitan on my dad's 2008 iMac, as I was wary about putting it on my 2012 Macbook Air due to performance concerns. I don't know if this was a conscious decision by Apple to cater to the idea of "Apple = Longevity", but it's very nice to know that a single purchase takes you pretty far. I think Apple could take it a step further and really win over more people if they added the millimeter or two to the Pro line and allowed for the upgrades.

It's really a back and forth thing for me; on the one hand, I wish I had more options and the ability to customize later on. On the other hand, since ~2010, the appliance like nature of the portables has worked so seamlessly that my only complaint comes from the lack of an option to upgrade, not the need for an upgrade. For my previous Apple laptop, my own incompetence when trying to do a repair hurt the laptop's longevity; had I not had butterfingers when working on the insides, I'm sure that I could have had another 3 years with my already 5 year old Macbook.

<comment><USER5> While I do agree with most things, there will be a need to upgrade something in the future.

When I bought my MacBook, 4GB of Ram were plenty but it is not anymore. Chrome takes to much ram and with 16GB, I don't have to worry about anything. Furthermore, apples new laptops are all dual core (until you buy the bigger one). This is also dealbreaker for me – quad cores are really awesome when using VMs. Sure a CPU cannot be updated on most laptops (and certainly not on apples but I can't blame really).

My point is that I'm afraid apples pro series has drifted into a state where their lifespan will shorten while the prices go up.

And apple's OS performs really good until you use third party applications that expect better performance then your sad 5-year-old MacBook.

<comment><USER6> Oh I'm not suggesting that it will never peak higher than what Apple offers; again, I do agree that it would be nice if the Pro line offered a little more to users looking for more oomph.

It's just that, again, by and large with everything with the Mac line up right now, you throw something at it and you're good to go. Even my 2012' Air can do moderately advanced video editing in Premiere, the only real bottlenecks being local storage and the CPU taking a bit to render video.

The current line up is not a perfect solution for absolutely everything, and Apple's power option in the Mac Pro line is just unacceptable for most people, even if it does bring a lot to the table. But in most cases, Apple's line ups do extremely well for a large majority of things you'd want to use a computer for. I too would enjoy a quad core in the Air/Pro line, or at least the Pro line, though I suspect the issue is heat, and as I said earlier, I'd happily take a bit of thickness to accommodate a heftier processor.

I certainly don't endorse letting Apple tell me what hardware I need; I also don't have too many complaints with what they've given. Price exaggerations aside, I find the price tag for the Macbook Air/Pro lines appropriate for the base models, and comparable to other 13" sized machines with similar specs and amenities (for lack of a better word). Such is sort of the nature with Apple and being a long time user - there's a lot Apple does that bugs you, but at the same time, there is a lot of good you get with the hardware and the OS.

<comment><USER4> _I too would enjoy a quad core in the Air /Pro line, or at least the Pro line_

The 15" Macbook Pros are quad-core [http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/specs- retina/](http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook-pro/specs-retina/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weak. The evidence provided by this article that Apple is wooing developers is :

\- Shorter review times. This is a genuine improvement. Can be seen here [http://appreviewtimes.com/ios/annual-trend- graph](http://appreviewtimes.com/ios/annual-trend-graph)

\- App store ads. If you have an app marketing budget this does nothing besides shift who you spend it with. We'll see if the roi is better but you'll be competing with some heavy spenders for the limited inventory.

\- The new subscriptions pay model with the 15% cut after one year. In my opinion Apple doesn't deserve any cut of the recurring money since they don't have to do anything to earn it.

\- Some new marketing documentation.

woop dee do

<comment><USER8> > In my opinion Apple doesn't deserve any cut of the recurring money since > they have to do nothing to earn it.

Aside from host the infrastructure that delivers the apps. Are they doing this to make money? Of course. But saying they haven't earned it is flat out wrong.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. Here is a list I made a while back of things they do for their cut.

* Maintains a user database including authentication, plus all the support costs (password support is very high)

* Payment handling (no one does it for free) including keeping up with tax authorities and legal systems in much of the world

* Almost unlimited (re)downloads for users to a reasonable number of devices. Bandwidth is cheap but not free.

* Backup and restore for application data. (That functionality is available to apps without extra fees.)

* A curated walled garden including a review process. Apple keeping the dregs out and avoiding the place turning into a cesspool means users can be more confident about the apps and that halo effect helps all apps in the store.

* Mechanisms to extend your app such as IAP, and an advertising solution etc

* Access to a large user base, with reasonably fair rules that everyone has play by

* They make all the above work together

It is certainly worth more than zero percent!

<comment><USER10> > A curated walled garden including a review process. Apple keeping the dregs > out and avoiding the place turning into a cesspool means users can be more > confident about the apps and that halo effect helps all apps in the store.

I switched from Android to iOS and I just don't see this at all. Yes I'm more confident installing from the app store because of the security model, but android is getting that too. I'm no more confident that an app or particularly game will be good or worth downloading or buying though, and I don't perceive apps to be high quality in general.

<comment><USER9> Note that I am talking about a comparison with no app store at all, not comparing Google to Apple. f there wasn't an app store at all - you just downloaded apps from random web sites instead like for much Windows software. Now have a random person go download VLC for Windows, or for that matter something like Java. Between hijacked installers, "download" sites, toolbars, dark patterns in the installers and who knows what else, the experience is very negative and would make users far less likely to install stuff. The app store helps alleviate those issues and increase user confidence in apps, which in turn helps those offering apps at the app store.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely valid point and comparison, thanks for clarifying and I definitely agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to work at a company whose flagship product is an iOS app. I have typically worked on web things and was working on the API used by the product. But it always struck me as strange how different of perceptions iOS devs had from most developers I've met about what constituted "reasonable requirements" from platform providers.

I get that you play ball with these things and pay what you owe to get access to the market of Apple customers. I do get that. But I also think that relationship is mutualistic, and that app developers bring a tremendous amount of value to the platform that causes people to buy Apple products in the first place. And I would argue that their value has not been assessed fairly by Apple given the amount of cut they require and the amount of stipulations they create about permissible ideas. Yes, a certain amount of these rules do make sense, but some are unbelievably arcane and arbitrary. For instance:

"Apps that unlock or enable additional features or functionality with mechanisms other than the App Store will be rejected"

It's absurd that something like this would be in your platform's rules. That eliminates a huge number of possibilities in app development that would have absolutely no negative impact on Apple's reputation or the safety of the App Store.

And it would be another thing if these rules weren't given much credence, but from what I've seen, developers are generally worried about being caught for these kinds of things during app review, and they take the policies very seriously.

I don't know if the iOS developers I've known are representative or not, but in any case I'm happy that some of them are starting to push back.

<comment><USER12> How doesn't that make sense? What if app developers started saying you could unlock 100 gold coins for free if you visit some website and click 3 ads or some other shitty experience? Maybe having that restriction is bad for developers but developers aren't Apple's only constituency, customers are too (Apple has definitely shown they care more about their customers than the needs of developers).

From a pure business strategy of commoditize your complements, encouraging app developers to have subscription pricing works against the interests of their customers (who want to minimize their costs). Yet they're obviously doing it because the long-term interests of customers is in having sustainable businesses develop those apps/services.

<comment><USER11> Note I didn't say that there weren't examples of applications that could be abusive if such a rule didn't exist. I'm saying that the rule is far too general and covers far too many benign ideas that could end up becoming incredible products. Many iOS apps have an admin console that can only be unlocked by special designators in their account on the server side, yet by this rule that would be disallowed. In fact the company I worked for disabled their admin panel for this very reason, despite the fact that it was very useful for debugging and field testing a released build.

EDIT: Also is there any evidence that companies in the App Store are more sustainable than elsewhere? I can see how this is possible, but it's also unintuitive that companies paying higher costs would end up keeping their apps maintained for longer.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's a surprise that Apple's rules chafe developers, I also don't think it's a surprise that Apple has a bias towards their customers which is why they're willing to have restrictive rules.

Ultimately it comes down to leverage, and they have plenty of it because they've aggregated a very nice demographic of users that are willing to spend money.

<comment><USER11> This is exactly the kind of "Apple is infallable" logic I'm talking about. How exactly does it benefit customers to limit access to safe, cool apps that violate some arcane rule they have? If they actually wanted to do right by their customers it stands to reason that they should work with developers to come up with a more precise set of rules that still keeps their reputation intact and their customers happy so that customers have access to _more varied_ kinds of apps. I'm an iOS customer (and not an app developer) who is irked by this, so there's at least an existence proof of people that feel the opposite.

<comment><USER13> > If they actually wanted to do right by their customers it stands to reason > that they should work with developers to come up with a more precise set of > rules that still keeps their reputation intact and their customers happy so > that customers have access to more varied kinds of apps. I'm an iOS customer > (and not an app develop

Apple's general MO around restrictions against abuse is to make them too strong, see what kind of useful apps get developed in other app stores that would be against Apple's rules, and then change the rules to allow for just those examples. So if there's an overly strict Apple rule, but no other good apps come out elsewhere, then the rule will stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is the beef that I have with Apple. Hands down the app store is rotten infrastructure to the core for app developers. In my experience, app discovery is so bad it shows everything but the app you were looking for unless the app you were looking for is in the top 10.

Most indy-apps are brutally left out in the cold. As a result, app downloads are stagnating.

[2014][http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero- app...](http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per- month/) [2015][http://www.businessinsider.sg/how-many-apps-people- download-...](http://www.businessinsider.sg/how-many-apps-people-download-per- month-2014-8/?r=US&IR=T)

So it boggles the mind why going forward we should invest months into the development in an app where the only benefit the app store brings is payment (for a free app) and versioning.

Apple is in dire need for an app store disruption.

<comment><USER15> These are complaints about visibility. Can you market it yourself? Then the app store provides cryptographically-signed peace of mind to users that they can use your app without their contacts stolen or their phones hijacked.

<comment><USER14> The problem with visibility is the following. Let's say you make a commercial/web-ad/etc for App "A".

The customer would with 0.05% probability click the link, but maybe remembers the name.

So now in their spare time they would think, let's look for this app "A" ? so they input the name and only "B","C", and "D" that have nothing to do with "A" came up, that would be not that good, right?

A real world equivalent would be: You are in a supermarket and want to buy "A" beer because you heard the radio commercial and the assistant guides you to the vegetable, the ice-cream, and the raw meat section but neither to "A" nor the beer section. So you need to know before you newly discover "A" in the beer section that there is a beer section and that "A" is the beer to try. If there are now 20,000 beers that is your problem right there.

In comparison, on Amazon it is more effective to find products through recommendations and "similar products" which help customers find new products.

The app discovery path does not work in the app store.

<comment><USER15> OK, I agree that finding a particular app by name has been broken for a long time in the app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really feel that at this point the biggest issue is Apple's lack of openness.

My biggest issue with Android is the UI. For whatever reason it's fragmented between devices, and when I worked in an area that needed to support both iOS and Android devices, I preferred helping those with iOS because it was much, much easier to support them.

However, in terms of troubleshooting beyond a certain point I discovered that Android devices were by far superior. On an Android I can get access to log files, low level network features and a host of other goodies (like the filesystem!) much more easily. Heck, some of the devices we eventually ended up using had great emulators and remote access tools - something iOS devices just don't have.

The company I worked for had a custom mobile app-based solution. Like any solution it had bugs, but we fixed more bugs in the Android version in shorter timeframes than we did for iPhones - largely because we had more options for people in the field who experienced intermittent and hard to track down problems.

The fact I can't view logs on an iPhone app on my iPhone seems ridiculous. And not being able to setup network filtering ion the device, well I know why Apple doesn't want that but it's not for any good technical reason - it's only to "protect" their ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER17> The complaint by Fanify is ridiculous. It's very clear the app "violated Apple's requirement that all in-app payments be routed through iTunes" so you can't pay through paypal.

Sounds like poor planning by Fanify to submit the app only 10 days before their planned launch, when they clearly didn't bother following Apple's T&Cs.

<comment><USER18> It does sound like poor planning, given the known realities of the app store. But I've never understood why Apple feels entitled to a cut of in-app purchases. They aren't providing any added value and in some cases (like w/ Kindle) they seem to be begging for an anti-trust suit.

<comment><USER19> One reason is that without it, there'd be nearly no paid apps. Every app would be free with some minute amount of functionality (to pass the review process) and an in-app purchase to unlock the "pro" version, with Apple getting nothing.

Apple built a platform and wants to extract value from that platform. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.

<comment><USER20> Nothing except the very large margins on the hardware.

<comment><USER19> A good rule of thumb is that a consumer electronics product should retail for about 2.5x the COGS (cost of goods sold). That's pretty much where the iPhone sits.

I don't see evidence of excessive margins on hardware; I see a company that's planned for and executed on proper margins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The App store has reached maturity and at this point, breaking through the noise is near to impossible if you don't have millions to begin with. There are those odd apps that like in the first couple of years, tear through to the top and are made over a month by an independent dev, but that is rare. The app store is no where close to as exciting as it was. Its basically become like the PC software market now, though with less liberty.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        "At one point, Apple raised a fundamental objection,
         saying that Fanify's method for tipping artists, which
         used the online payment services Venmo and PayPal,
         violated Apple's requirement that all in-app payments
         be routed through iTunes so the company could take
         its 30 percent cut."

Duh Fanify.. I am amazed at developers who complain about their apps not getting accepted when they clearly _never_ read the App Store Review Guidelines.

         "11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP)
         to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will
         be rejected."

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

</comment><comment><USER23> More like "Apple does a PR piece to convince developers that everyone else is being wooed so they should be wooed too". I miss the days when Apple used to generate hype simply based on great product, instead of artificial pieces like this.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am very surprised that it takes Apple years before they finally decide to release Siri API (supposedly). The benefit of speech assistant for apps seems huge. And would it been released earlier, Apple can collect much more speech data as well, which may help build next-gen Siri.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't really get the whole wedge of the article. Giving developers a Siri Kit is them trying to make it easier for them? Apple has continually improved developers access to the different hardware and software on the iPhone.

Same thing for the improvement of app review times. It's great they did it.

I don't see the connection between that and "stagnating" iPhone sales.

</comment><comment><USER26>
      "Developers Developers Developers Developers!"
        --Tim Cook WWDC 2016</comment>


Top Five Bugs of My Career - Solved - <AUTHOR> http://javadots.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-five-bugs-of-my-career-solved.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Original post listing the bugs <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=877310></comment>


Show HN: Keto friendly spots finder. Site uses Blazor - <AUTHOR> https://ketocena.com/ <comment><USER2> The search box:

1) Does not specify what we are searching for - location? Zip code? State? City? Type of food? You need to start typing and see what the autocomplete comes back with to know what to do.

2) Eats characters. I simply cannot type in it, because when it brings up the autocomplete list, it removes the last couple characters I type. The only way I could type in my city was to type one letter at a time, then wait for it to show something before typing another.

It is an idea with potential, but if you cannot even type in the searchbox, it is not ready for launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is good point. It is meant to be city names. I will improve the search box. Cheers for the help.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Open with Overleaf – A chrome extension to open/edit latex files online - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-with-overleaf/ogkcgcbjhhpamnmaaplbafkmedigofaa <comment><AUTHOR> Open with Overleaf is a chrome extension that I created which allows you to open/edit latex files online using www.overleaf.com without the need of any software to be installed on your computer.

Source code is available on github: [https://github.com/ishu3101/open-with- overleaf](https://github.com/ishu3101/open-with-overleaf)</comment>


Node Summary – Naive summarization algorithm for Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://jbrooksuk.github.io/node-summary/

<comment><USER2> Literally nothing about this is node-specific. It uses node-style function(err, result) callbacks despite doing absolutely nothing asynchronous. Hooray cargoculting.

I notice it was originally written in synchronous style, but rewritten using callbacks. Callbacks don't magically make something CPU-bound asynchronous. They just make it full of callbacks.

<comment><USER3> I would point out that there are cases where sync callbacks do make sense (granted, this does not look like one of them).

1\. You want to add optional results. See underscore's each function that returns an object for the current iteration, then an optional iterator value in addition, which you sometimes need.

2\. There are many functional patterns that utilize callbacks where you want to pass functions in as parameters (which could do anything, including accessing the file system or waiting on an external call). Underscore also has loads of examples where this is the case, despite being a sync library.

3\. This is probably the least valid reason, but sometimes you do not know going in whether or not a function you are writing will be async. If you create a sync interface, it will need to be changed if the function needs to be async in the future, or if it needs to pass additional results. In my experience the latter is not terribly uncommon. The former is pretty unlikely in library code, but I could see it happening in application code regularly. Breaking apis is not fun for anyone.

<comment><USER2> Callbacks ≠ passing functions as arguments. Callbacks (in the node sense) is passing a _single_ function as the _final_ argument which will be called _exactly once_ with an error or result.

The function passed to _.each is used to access the elements of an array. It is called once for each element. It is used as a mechanism to pass a block of code to _.each, _not_ to get a result from _.each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work. This looks similar to an algorithm developed in the 1950s at IBM by H.P. Luhn. Luhn's algorithm basically finds the most "important" words (mostly via frequency) and then ranks the "importance" of sentences according to the co-occurrences of these "important" words. The summary of the document then becomes the "top n" sentences in chronological order.

An implementation of Luhn's algorithm (which accepts a URL or HTML input and also handles relatively clean text extraction with boilerpipe) is available here: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ptwobrussell/Mining- the-S...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ptwobrussell/Mining-the-Social- Web-2nd- Edition/blob/master/ipynb/Chapter%209%20-%20Twitter%20Cookbook.ipynb#Example-24.-Summarizing- link-targets)

I haven't kept up much with "state of the art" summarization techniques, but this approach is pretty intuitive and works about as well as anything I can imagine (without getting into machine-driven language generation, which is a whole different topic.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing, If you take a look at line 53 in my original code: [https://gist.github.com/shlomibabluki/5473521#file- summary_t...](https://gist.github.com/shlomibabluki/5473521#file-summary_tool- py-L53)

You can change the code to run only -> for j in range(0, i)

* (instead of range(0, n))

and then store the same score both in values[i][j] and values[j[i]

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your original work! It was perfect to learn from, so thanks again!

I'll look at implementing your changes shortly, perhaps after a rewrite to circumvent the blocking behaviour experienced with the callbacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used this in a few production projects where I work - it does the job it needs to do.

<comment><USER5> Amazing! I'm glad it's worked for you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be nice to see some example output.

<comment><USER5> I just added the example output, [https://github.com/jbrooksuk/node- summary#example](https://github.com/jbrooksuk/node-summary#example)

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, developer of node-summary here! Thanks for posting!

I was wondering why it's being starred again :)</comment>


Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/mary_roach_10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_orgasm.html

<comment><USER2> Entertaining...but another example of how most TED talkers spend their time on trivial stuff. Then they go on TED and congratulate each other on how smart they are.

I would like to see more talks such as Bill G's on solving the world's biggest problem such as education and malaria.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure Ms. Roach would not agree with your dismissal of her work as "trivial". This is a bright example of stating your own value judgment as an absolute fact.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the subject itself is not trivial, but her approach was. I think she underestimated how much the average person knows about sex research. This stuff is not taboo: it's a popular topic in mass-circulation magazines, and "Kinsey" was a mainstream, surprisingly bland movie full of big-name actors. She needed to present new information or a unique perspective, and instead she presented a handful of factoids. The pig video was funny, but not particularly thought-provoking.

It also annoyed me that she kept cracking herself up with lines that weren't all that funny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's with all the sexytime on HN today?

Couldn't it wait until after 5? =]

<comment><AUTHOR> It's always 5 o'clock somewhere... ;)

Just keep the tabs open and go over it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I appreciated in particular the video on the Danish approach to startups.</comment>


7 Reasons Why The New iPad Is Named "The New iPad" - <AUTHOR> http://appchronicles.com/03/7-reasons-why-the-new-ipad-is-named-the-new-ipad/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty simple, Apple usually uses a one name paradigm for their devices and does not distinguish version numbers, the MacBook has always been a Macbook but has changed a lot over the years. Not sure all of this analysis is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time I see someone declare that we're living in a post-PC world, I die a little inside.</comment>


Roll your own MVNO - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/04/01/now-roll-your-own-mvno/ <comment><USER2> Is there really a market for MVNOs like this? It seems to me like a lot of overhead for getting essentially the same services as you would with a large carrier.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to do anything with mobile you will find yourself constantly running into obstacles created by the operators. Sometimes it would be a lot easier if you ran your own mobile phone network.

How about a 'web2.0' mobile operator? Lovely unlocked handsets, open apis, unrestricted pipes, etc</comment></comment>


Laser to disorient pirates - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19930-new-laser-to-dazzle-pirates-on-the-high-seas.html

<comment><USER2> "...the system can automatically regulate the intensity of the laser beam to ensure there is no lasting eye damage, he says..."

I wonder if the intensity can also be regulated in such a way as to completely ablate the surface of the retina.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a useful tool to have if you are a pirate and you want a better chance at shooting the crew before they shoot back as well.

<comment><USER4> Wait, bad guys can have weapons too!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to think of this whole situation as an arms race, and I wonder if any of the pirates are active in developing countermeasures to such systems, or even innovating on their own attack methods and equipment. The only photos I've seen are of guys in small wooden boats with AK-47s but one would assume that any technology improvements for the pirates would improve their piracy yields.

<comment><USER6> This sounds like a pretty expensive toy to me. It seems like chemical irritants (ex tear gas) would be more effective, and cheaper? I suppose you could get gas masks, but those might be harder to come by than oh, say, a 2x4 to hold in front of your face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What if the pirates have mirrors? What if they have laser safety glasses with the correct range of filters?

What if the laser that's tuned for a long distance reflects off of something closer and permanently blinds the crew?

This sounds like an expensive and dangerous solution that can be easily circumvented.

<comment><USER8> The effective intensity of a laser falls of as the range squared, so you need a pretty hefty laser to dazzle someone at range. The intensity of reflected laser light falls of with the fourth power of the range, making reflected light not much of a concern for the crew. Its quite possible for the pirates to put a mirror between them and the ship, indeed it should be quite possible for the pirates to just turn their heads away from the defending ship.

The problem for the pirates is that its hard to effectively attack something you can't look at, however. Red glasses might be an effective countermeasure, though, as other people have pointed out.

<comment><USER9> If the mirror is wider than the cone of the laser (1 meter in this case), then irradiance still falls off as the range squared. Reflecting the laser back at its source only doubles the range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "This is very much a non-lethal weapon," says Bryan Hore of BAE Systems in > Farnborough, UK, where the system was developed.

How's the old saying go? Stop a pirate with a non-lethal weapon, and you've stopped him for a day. Stop him with a lethal weapon, and you've stopped him for life.

</comment><comment><USER11> As they're only using a single green laser, I wonder if the pirates could wear a head mounted display, with a webcam attached, which could display only red- blue.

<comment><USER12> Those would be sunglasses that filter out green, otherwise known as red sunglasses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Prediction: It keeps the lolcats being cute, and the pirates don't bother doing anything else.

...

Oh, that kind of pirate.</comment>