Spectre-NG Multiple new Intel CPU flaws revealed, several serious - <AUTHOR> https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Exclusive-Spectre-NG-Multiple-new-Intel-CPU-flaws-revealed-several-serious-4040648.html <comment><USER2> Possibly not a hoax. Intel published this today [0]:

> Protecting our customers' data and ensuring the security of our products are > critical priorities for us. We routinely work closely with customers, > partners, other chipmakers and researchers to understand and mitigate any > issues that are identified, and part of this process involves reserving > blocks of CVE numbers. We believe strongly in the value of coordinated > disclosure and will share additional details on any potential issues as we > finalize mitigations. As a best practice, we continue to encourage everyone > to keep their systems up-to-date.

Also, AnandTech seems to have picked up the story [1] half an hour ago, although it seems to rely on heise.de's report.

[0]: [https://newsroom.intel.com/articles/addressing-questions- reg...](https://newsroom.intel.com/articles/addressing-questions-regarding- additional-security-issues/)

[1]: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12712/spectre-watch-more- spec...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12712/spectre-watch-more-spectreclass- vulnerabilities-to-be-announced-soon)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also the report (in German) [1] that the original release deadline was May 7th, but Intel has asked for another 14 days of leniency.

[1] [https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Spectre-NG-Intel- versc...](https://www.heise.de/security/meldung/Spectre-NG-Intel-verschiebt- die-ersten-Patches-koordinierte-Veroeffentlichung-aufgeschoben-4043790.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I missed any more serious discussion on this. Was there another more active thread?

</comment><comment><USER5> Why are they not disclosing assigned CVE numbers? Is there any risk in it?

<comment><USER6> Seriously. Until there's a CVE, this may just be an attempt to influence stock price.

<comment><USER7> Coming from c't and heise, I would be _very_ surprised if that were the case. Both are very credible, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this by chance another hoax, or an attempt to get people to stop patching? I can not find any credible details.

<comment><USER9> c't is a reputable German computer magazine. The chances of this being a hoax are slim, I'd say.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough. I am looking forward to them sharing a detailed analysis. As ComodoHacker mentioned, I too would like to see the CVE details or placeholder.

<comment><USER10> In the German comment section, the author of the article says they contemplated adding the CVE numbers, but decided against to protect the source. He promises to add them at a later date.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New Data Engineering Ecosystem: Trends and Rising Stars - <AUTHOR> http://insightdataengineering.com/blog/new-ecosystem/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me we are in the same place Front-End Web was a couple of years ago: There is an explosion of new tech and frameworks. BUT there seems to be a bump for the adoption of new tech for data engineering, the HIGH cost of migrating terabytes and terabytes of the company's data to a new system.

Migrating and integrating data is incredibly expensive. When you implement a new system you either have to migrate the data from the older system (= expensive) OR having both systems working in parallel one for "older" data and one for newer (= really expensive)

Currently the established risk-averse corporations, the owners of most of the non- social media and internet data, seem to be still testing enterprise Hadoop distributions like Cloudera and Hortonworks for daily enterprise data operations, and maybie have some projects on R&D for harnessing new "types" ok data (like sensor data from a factory floor or high granularity transport data for supply chain).

Still, I hope the best of the new tech can get a place inside the modern corporations that work on important problems like Energy and Healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER3> One file format I would also recommend, although definitely neither a trend or a rising star, would be HDF5[1], which has done a stellar job for me. It also a ton of wrappers, and has been widely used for ages (it's been around in some form or another since 1987 and has been adopted by NASA to store their Earth Observing System data).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_Data_Format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_Data_Format)

<comment><USER4> HDF5 is great, but has anyone developed a native Java version? The official version has a Java binding with a nonintuitive interface. And, it requires a lot of prerequisite installations which makes it a bit difficult to deploy.

But, I may be completely missing the best practices though.

<comment><USER3> JHDF5[1] seems to be a high-level abstraction that has a nice API from what I can tell. Can't speak to deployment or prereqs, but they seem to have a JAR[2] you can just throw in.

[1] [https://wiki- bsse.ethz.ch/display/JHDF5/JHDF5+%28HDF5+for+Ja...](https://wiki- bsse.ethz.ch/display/JHDF5/JHDF5+%28HDF5+for+Java%29) [2] [http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/java/hdf- object/##DOWNLOAD](http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/java/hdf- object/##DOWNLOAD)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its actually very simple with some clear winners emerging now:

Log / Stream Processing - Kafka \n Scalable Storage - HDFS \n Data Processing - Spark, Map reduce (in that order) \n Historical Analytics - Hive/ Spark SQL \n Real Time Processing - Spark Streaming, Storm \n NoSQL - Cassandra/ HBase \n NoSQL (In memory) - Redis \n Search - Elastic Search \n

Some more honorable mentions: kibana on elastic search - for analytics visualization \n druid - for analytics \n

Above are the basics - if you add them you will have 90% of the standard stack for big data.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, job security for Data Engineers. Nice.</comment>


Suspicious event hijacks Amazon traffic for 2 hours, steals cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/suspicious-event-hijacks-amazon-traffic-for-2-hours-steals-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> Ongoing discussion - posted 19 hours ago and still high up on the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16914698)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/5adf2844ecbe40692e003ad...](https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/5adf2844ecbe40692e003ad2/)

Some traceroutes captured during the incident. The results that show "Target unreachable" were the ones seeing the hijacked paths.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting to note that, although in this case the HTTPS certificate presented by the attackers wasn't valid, they may have been able to acquire an apparently legitimate certificate if the misrouting's effect extended to the infrastructure of a certificate authority.

</comment><comment><USER4> Transaction reversal would be nice, huh?

<comment><USER5> It's fascinating to watch cryptocurrency go through many of the same pitfalls that early banking went through. It seems like many of the problems crypto faces could be solved by opening a history book.</comment></comment>


Engineering a Better Alarm Clock - <AUTHOR> http://www.heuristicism.ca/2009/09/15/how-to-get-up-in-the-morning-the-forceful-approach/

<comment><USER2> Maybe he has sleep apnea: [http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/SleepApnea/Slee...](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/SleepApnea/SleepApnea_WhatIs.html)

This would mean no matter how much sleep, it's never enough.

By the way, there is considerable evidence that a significant number of ADHD cases in children and adults is really due to poor sleep with apnea being a major factor ([http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep- apnea/news/200608...](http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep- apnea/news/20060821/sleep-apnea-kids-brain-power)).

<comment><USER3> I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and can't tell you how much a CPAP machine has helped me. I'd wake up feeling worse than when I slept, and it's hard to pay attention in that condition, which might be the ADHD connection.

<comment><USER4> Which CPAP machine do you have? I haven't been officially diagnosed, but I'm pretty sure I have sleep apnea. I'd be willing to try out a decent CPAP machine to see if it helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I have never gone through this much effort to wake up in the morning-- although, reasonably costed, this would be a product I would consider purchasing--I can understand this guy's pain. I think he is a little worse than I am, since it only takes me 5 minutes out of bed before I won't go back, but those 5 minutes can seem like a whole day sometimes.

I think a lot of people who have good early-morning discipline don't appreciate how truly difficult it is for someone who just cannot. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that your brain might just not be wired for learning discipline in that condition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the fundamental problem with waking up has little to do with the power of the alarm clock. If the alarm clock could detect the sleep cycle pattern, it could wake you up when you're not in REM sleep so that you wouldn't wake up groggy.

When you get into a very rigid sleeping schedule, the REM cycles are more rigid as well and you'll tend to wake up less groggy since you're able to position your REM sleep cycles away from the wake up time. Waking up properly also doesn't require a clock that runs away from you.

So there's 2 ways to solve it: get a smart alarm clock that can predict/measure your sleep level, or fit yourself into a rigid sleep schedule for a long time so that your body adjusts to it.

<comment><USER7> I actually saw an alarm clock that did that (detected REM sleep), but I think it was a demo, and not a commercial product.

Maybe make use of OpenEEG and build one.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.sleeptracker.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _…or, just get a wife._

This hack only works with a spouse of opposite polarity. If you select for compatibility, then you will amplify the existing patterns of staying up late and turning off the alarm.

Now a baby, on the other hand...

<comment><USER10> No -- they'll just be pissed to keep hearing the alarm go off and you rustling the bed, unless you have to wake up at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've tried the <http://www.sleeptracker.com/>, but it was the first version having the stupid button on the face, which inevitably meant tossing and turning would disable it. Other than that, it was pretty good.

The new versions seem better, but I'm not going to sink $180 to find out.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting, but seriously, wouldn't it be easier to take some time to learn self-discipline, even while groggy?

Alternatively, go to bed earlier so you wke up at a decent time on your own. I wake up between 5:30 and 6 am every morning without an alarm. That's because I go to bed when I'm tired.

<comment><USER13> I'm a night owl. Even if I'm underslept and am tired during the day, I have the most energy and awake feeling at night. If I went to bed when I was tired, it would be 3-5 AM almost every night. Unfortunately I'm not yet able to sleep until noon and stay employed;)

As it is, I try to go to bed ~ midnight. It typically takes me a while to fall asleep, but it's the only way I can be up by 8-9 AM without being tired during the day.

<comment><USER12> I too was a night owl. Healthy diet, exercise, and something exciting to get me out of bed in the morning changed that.

<comment><USER13> I have a very healthy diet, I work out almost daily, and love my job, wife, and life. Still a night owl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _The obvious solution is to get a wife_

I tried that, but it didn't help. If we wake up early/on time, we end up just having sex and falling back asleep. If we wake up late, she decides that since I'm going to be late for work anyway, we may as well have sex, then I fall back asleep again!

If this keeps up, the only solution is divorce :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> One random idea for getting up in the morning I've wanted to try is an elevated bed which goes into freefall (and presumably repeats until stopped) - the idea being that freefall evokes a panic response which completely bypasses any conscious rationalizations or impulses.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hate having to wake up on mornings but love music. This is how I solved it:

I have installed the linux-dist openwrt on my Asus WL-500g Deluxe router. This router has two USB-ports to which I have connected an USB-soundcard and a 80gig 2.5 hard-drive. On the device I have installed Music Player Daemon which makes it possible to play music by controlling it either by php, or a MPD- client.

The client I'm using is a modified version of Pmix for my android phone. It's open-source, so downloaded it and added an alarm feature. Before turning of the light I set the time and select which albums it should play.

Works like a charm!

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered why they don't build alarm clocks based on sleep cycles? We sleep best in 45min REM cycles, and waking up in the middle makes you feel groggy. When setting the alarm there should be a dial that has sleep-cycles printed on it, and you turn the dial to select how many you want. The clock will read what time the alarm would wake you up as you select each setting. Select as many cycles as you can get, while still getting up on time. Then simply tell the clock how long you take to fall asleep.

</comment><comment><USER18> My main problem with waking up is not to get up, you'll have to do it at some point anyway. It has more to do with the alarm clock in itself, I sometimes wake up with the choc of the alarm sound. The strident noise catches me by surprise while sleeping and it produces a boost of adrenaline which I would love to avoid.

I pretty convinced that a very progressive and friendly sound as an alarm sound would work great.

Does anyone have any experience with such an alarm clock ?

<comment><USER19> I used to have the exact same problem and used something along these lines for years and liked it: [http://www.meijer.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=131845&#...</a>

<comment><USER18> Thanks I'll have a look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For me I use my work (<http://sleep.fm>) to wake up to and I leave my mac mini on so i have to get up, walk across room, turn monitor on & stop the alarm.

I don't share this fellow hackers pain(more so waking up got easier after getting into a 9 to 5 routine), but I do wonder how huge of a pain point this is? How many face this same problem and if you do, how old are you? thnx if you share!

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't have his problem, but I still think an alarm clock with weight sensors on my bed is an awesome idea. In much the same way that having lights that turn on when you enter a room is cool, having an alarm that turns off when you get up is something I can get behind.

</comment><comment><USER22> Most awesome project i've ever seen!

I have the same problems with getting up in the morning. It's mostly lack of sleep, I think. I just can't get myself to go to sleep early enough... perhaps a sleep schedule with 2+ sleep phases would suit me better?

</comment><comment><USER23> One of my previous roommates wouldn't wake up if there was a garbage truck inside the room. Nothing short of hitting him would do the trick. That's another idea for an alarm clock.

<comment><USER22> maybe he'd get calluses after a while, from getting hit in the same spots all the time, which is when you'd need to drag him out of bed and dowse him with ice water...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> While we are in the topic. It is not too difficult to me wake up in the mornings, but why do I get sleepy after lunch? Does it have to do with my diet?

<comment><USER25> I can't say your diet isn't involved, but that's what most people experience as a part of their circadian rhythm: <http://ride4ever.org/images/normalsleep.gif></comment></comment>


Bakeware – Compile Elixir applications into single executable binaries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spawnfest/bakeware <comment><USER3> As a more or less elixir beginner, elixir/mix releases remain confusing to me.

First of all, it took me way longer than it should be to figure out how to set the entrypoint of my application.

More importantly the resulting releases are kinda confusing, at least to me. Why does it need to contain 17 (13 .exe + 4 .bat) executables? Why are there 55 c-header files in the directory of the erts? Why are there so many configuration files?

I'm sure that they are there for a good reason, but the current solution is daunting, such that it lowers my enjoyment with the otherwise very elegant language.

IMO there should be a release approach that is very simple + compact, and extendable. This would allow people like me to hit the compile button and distribute my application in very manageable parts. Though further configuration it should be possible to end up the very adjustable release that currently exists.

This project seems to go into into the direction I would like. I hope the windows release is soonish such that can try it.

<comment><USER4> My experience is that preparing a release is much more straightforward since Elixir 1.9, which added release support to the Elixir standard distribution. That said I tend to treat a release as a black box, I haven't tried to understand what all those files are and I just interact with bin/myapp.

However I still have two complaints.

First, the system on which the release is built and the system where it's going to run need to be similar (same version of the same Linux distribution). In practice this means that these days we build releases in containers matching the target host.

Second, releases can't run mix commands so we have to write boilerplate code specifically for releases for things like database migrations, etc. It would be nice if writing app management commands could be a bit more DRY.

I could be wrong but at first glance it doesn't seem that Bakeware addresses these issue.

<comment><USER5> +1 on the issue of Mix commands. We also put in boilerplate code for database migrations, but eventually I decided this was stupid. Now I keep the source on the servers and just run Mix commands from there.

<comment><USER6> For Ecto, you can just run a function:

      migrations_path = Path.join(["#{:code.priv_dir(:myapp)}", "repo", "migrations"])
      Ecto.Migrator.run(MyApp.Repo, migrations_path, :up, all: true)

Since migrations are idempotent, and I always want to run up to the latest migration, I just include this in lib/myapp.ex in its start function. That way any time a new release rolls out, the first node with the new release automatically runs the migrations. (We always make sure our migrations are backwards compatible for at least X number of versions, which means never deleting tables or columns so that existing nodes don't break)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks great!

Did not look at it in detail, but I'm wondering about portability, eg how this works with system libraries, like OpenSSL. Is the resulting binary portable to systems with different C libraries than the ones the OTP system was linked against originally?

</comment><comment><USER8> I love this idea.

I've been using Elixir for years, on and off. The syntax is approachable, the actor model is solid and easy to reason about with many threads running. The Phoenix ecosystem is fantastic to work with, particularly now with LiveView making quick web UIs so effortless to create.

My main practical problem with Elixir over the years has been handing the tools I've created to others who might find them useful. Bakeware looks like the right way to proceed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone used elixir for building command line tools? It seems like this would be very useful for distributing them.

<comment><USER10> The readme file in the repo mentions a ~500ms start up time. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't want to wait half a second for a tool to start running. For context most popular Unix tools start up in 1-2ms.

<comment><USER11> On my PC:

      time node -e "console.log('a')" # 0.377 total
      time ruby -e "p 'aaa'" # 0.084 total
      time python3 -c "print('a')" # 0.020 total
      time elixir -e "IO.puts 'a'" # 0.117 total
      time _build/prod/rel/bakeware/simple_script Hi # 0.205 total without zstd, 0.212 with

Another question is which language loads modules the fastest (afaik Ruby is kind of slow when it comes to `require`).

<comment><USER12> > Another question is which language loads modules the fastest (afaik Ruby is > kind of slow when it comes to `require`).

I think both Python and Ruby loosely follow a similar model. The difference is that IIRC Python caches bytecode files, while Ruby compiles them from scratch every time. Not sure how big of a performance impact that has, especially for simple cases like this.

And just to toot my own horn, using Inko ([https://inko- lang.org/](https://inko-lang.org/)), I get:

        inko /tmp/test.inko # 0.470 total

Note that this invokes the horribly slow Ruby compiler currently in use. If you invoke the VM directly on the compiled bytecode, it only takes about 10 milliseconds to run. Using the `master` branch:

        vm/target/release/ivm /home/yorickpeterse/.cache/inko/bytecode/release/43/38021ddc9a3449ace13288a2fac894d1d3e2aaa.ibi # 0.008.8 total

In this case all modules (including the standard library) are included in the bytecode file, meaning no disk IO is necessary, and modules can be parsed in parallel.

This is something dynamic languages like Ruby and Python can't do, as loading modules is something that can be done anywhere at any time, so you have to process them one by one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In .NET we have a very similar tool for creating such packed binaries, dotnet- warp. I used it in one of my projects and quite liked it, since it's also quite easy to cross compile (cross-pack?) for the 3 major operating systems.

I like the general idea, your independent of the system wide framework version and it still has this "one-click" install procedure (dropping the binary in your path). However, I guess this is also the negativ Part. Users don't expect that a single binary extracts itself to somewhere --> uninstalling the binary leaves traces on the system.

Definitely looking forward to try it out for elixir, wondering how fast the erlang/elixir startup really is.

<comment><USER14> Complete n00b question -- you can do that?

The last time I touched anything .NET was about a decade ago. My somewhat old- school superiors were unimpressed with the ability to come up with a plain .exe at the end of the process. My lack of familiarity with how Visual Studio had evolved certainly played into it; the IDE made me feel like a chimp dropped into an airliner cockpit. I had the worst time trying to figure out how to turn off the "of course you have an enterprise server dedicated to delivering upgrades!" setting. None of it seemed to, uh, scale _down_ for our piddly purposes.

<comment><USER15> .NET Core is a ground-up rewrite of the frameworks and tools. It's completely decoupled from Visual Studio. This would get you started on a toy project (one source file, one project file) now:

        dotnet new console --output sample1
        dotnet publish --self-contained -r linux-x64 sample1

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/get- started](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/get-started)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> After using Go, I always felt the need for something like this in the Elixir world.

</comment><comment><USER17> makeself ([https://makeself.io/](https://makeself.io/)) is a generic way to do this for Linux that works for any Erlang/Elixir release -- meaning no use of mix or rebar3: [https://gist.github.com/tsloughter/d62aad6d67b263e69275376b1...](https://gist.github.com/tsloughter/d62aad6d67b263e69275376b1c80320d)

Maybe something as simple is possible for Windows as well?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wish something like this existed for Java

<comment><USER19> I believe GraalVM[0] makes your wish come true. It allows you to compile your Java code into a single binary and offers other features which makes Java a feasible solution for CLI tools.

[0] [https://www.graalvm.org/](https://www.graalvm.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> does it support hot code deployment?

<comment><USER21> Can vanilla Elixir releases, for that matter? Not from what I've seen - <USER2> love to know if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER22> I believe so.

I think this is what he was referring to: [https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot- cod...](https://blog.appsignal.com/2018/10/16/elixir-alchemy-hot-code- reloading-in-elixir.html)

<comment><USER23> Vanilla elixir releases do not support hot code reloading. Distillery releases do, however.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Always add. Never subtract. (An expensive lesson) - <AUTHOR>

I've been in the development game since the early part of the decade. When I first got started, I used a 1.0 release of a CMS along with a template I tweaked for my own use. I used the same CMS/template on three different sites; all of which were identical in name and content except that each one referred to a different U.S. state.
After I added the content/images, I left them alone. Each of these sites went straight to the top of every major search engine and remained there for almost a decade.
Every now and then I would add more pages/content/images. I would never remove old content - that is, until a couple of weeks ago.
About two weeks ago, I decided to make some very minor changes to the front page of each site. I removed a couple of words and removed/renamed some images. I purposely didn't update the template or the CMS, so that it wouldn't effect my search engine ranking. Unfortunately, it didn't matter.
The next day I was knocked off the front page of the search engines. I waited a while to see if the sites would settle back into their spots, but I don't think it's going to happen.
A couple of things I noticed... The more aggressive the competitors, the more damage to page rank. Competitors have always tried to copy my domain name in their content text/meta/key words, etc. Once I made the changes to my sites, these competitors were quickly ranked in my position. One of my sites had very little aggressive competition and it has recovered pretty well.
Also, I've changed images before, but usually just change the image and keep the file name the same. This time I didn't, for what ever reason, and it ruined a very profitable business.
I figured I'd mention this to all it might pertain. Be careful! You may add content, but you should never subtract from it or the consequences could be dire. <comment><USER2> An interesting piece of research could be if Google actually takes the top sites content into account when it ranks other sites? You say your site has been there for a decade, I wonder if it takes how you did your site as a "defacto" for any new sites coming in?

I know it could only be 1 of a 1000 factors but I wonder if this is true.

For example, I wonder if it uses context etc from Wikipedia and such to rank other sites around it. i.e. takes content and their context to rank them? So its not only down to links and content but how you use that content in relation to other sites?

In this intance, maybe you became the defacto and you went against your own rules. Does that make sense or even sound feasible?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting concept. That would definitely be worth looking into. It would be very valuable to consider this before changing old content.</comment></comment>


Show HN: System.sh cleans your system - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Hypsurus/system.sh/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, 404 for sure!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm getting 404.

<comment><USER2> Looks like the repo exists, however, it must not be public or has since been deleted. I can see him pushing to the repo here: [https://github.com/Hypsurus?tab=activity](https://github.com/Hypsurus?tab=activity)</comment></comment>


Stop telling your engineers what to do - <AUTHOR> https://productsolving.substack.com/p/problem-space-solution-space <comment><USER2> "As a product manager, your job is to live in the problem space. You should spend nearly all of your time focusing on your target customer, what needs they have, and what value you are going to provide to them. Nobody else in your organization is set up to spend time in the problem space like you are."

Couldn't agree more. I would add it's the PM's responsibility to bridge the gap between the Solution and Problem spaces, especially when compromises need to be made at implementation time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

I would agree with you. Being able to understand what activities go on downstream (solution space) of your work makes you even more effective. Glad you enjoyed the article.</comment></comment>


How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html

<comment><USER2> I think it's more interesting to look at what the crossing point is where it becomes useful to multitask.

Surely, when on hold with some company listening to "your call is valuable to us; please do not hang up; the expected wait time is 45 minutes" he wouldn't advise to just be on the phone.

When I need to run a 5 minute test suite before checking in some code, should I go read my email while I wait? What if it's 30 seconds instead?

Where is that point where switching to another task is the right thing to do?

<comment><USER3> This is a great point, and something I struggle with. Although, I think it combines the problem of focus as well.

While waiting for my project to compile and start, I switch to my browser, get lost in HN or e-mail and 5 or 10 min later forget what I was doing in the first place. When this happens several times a day, it becomes a real problem.

<comment><USER4> This is one of my biggest problems. When compilation, image creation, or device flashing takes longer than ~1 minute, then I will switch to the browser and get lost. 15-30 minutes later I will discover that my build, flash file, whatever was done, and will resume work (and feel really bad about it).

<comment><USER5> Instead of browsing, I do situps, pushups, etc. I get back to work the second my simulation finishes.

Well, sometimes I do that. It is effective when I do it.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I try to keep a newspaper or periodical handy, something offline and inert. While my project compiles, I read a few hundred words and do not get so engrossed I lose my original train of thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've made a pomodoro timer app that also gives me a summary over which apps and websites I have used during the last 25 minutes when a pomodoro is over. (<http://www.beatpoints.com/cherrytomato>)

This is good feedback about whether I actually managed to focus on the task that I planned.

However, I find that pomodoros are not the right granularity - to really be productive, I need to focus on one task for an entire day (related: pg's Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule: <http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>). This is still really hard for me to do.

<comment><USER8> Would be nice to have a cross platform version of this :)

<comment><USER7> I agree :-) For now, it's just a hobby project but if it becomes popular then I might put the energy and time into porting it.

<comment><USER8> Open sourcing it may be an option... then someone else would do the dirty work for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On Mac OS X, press ALT+CMD+H to hide all windows but the active one. I've been doing it the last couple of months and it's a great way to avoid distractions and focus.

<comment><USER10> That actually hides all other applications, not windows. Still, the effect is the same if either only one window is open in the current application or its windows completely overlap each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> While reading this article, I realized that somewhere around half-way through I had switched to another window to send an IM about something that had popped into my mind. It was a bit ironic.

I used to do work in 20-minute sprints. It was originally for eye strain, but I found myself very productive for those 20 minutes, as if I was driven to be sure I got things done such that the break didn't severely interrupt me. It really helped me focus on results.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how this result pivots on demographic elements, like gender, age, educational level etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me or did the word "multitasking" morph in meaning over the last decade? I used to hear it to describe doing many different, unrelated tasks over the course of a day, week, or month.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great post!

We've all been in the state of flow when we truly give the task at hand our complete attention. Quite impossible while attempting to split your attention.

I think its also worth thinking about the running dialog many people have in their heads. Focus on the past or the future in your head instead of being fully present in this moment is just as distracting.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is funny, how people trying to make old stuff new again and again. =)

The power of concentration, focus, impulse refusal and self-control were praised even in Upanishads. Then the Buddha become a great teacher to everyone, next this teachings was evolved into Zen and so on.

Most resent psychiatrist rediscover it again and again as 'gestalt therapy', 'curing experience', 're-framing' and other 'great findings'.

Read something on today's hot topic 'social intelligence' and you will find re-selling exactly the same ideas (from Hindu/Buddhism teachings) along with co-called 'scientific evidence' like scans of brain's activity and the like.

I didn't even mention the Matrix movie =)

In the essence, multitasking is about to decrease your productivity, because this misconception is based on concept that came from an IT field.

In IT multitasking emerged because you have too many unused CPU circles and they could be used to do some additional, background processes. Even today and average server spend most of its time in the idle loops.

In a dramatic contrast, our mind have no idle loops or unused powers. Often people have some deficits instead, like lack of focus, inability to concentrate long enough, to pay attention and so on.

Of course, it is acceptable to listen your ipod while you're doing some hard, dumb, physical job, that distracts your attention from the quite boring task. But if you're trying to use your mental capacity any distractions reducing your efficiency.

Some people are confusing multitasking with creativity, which is an ability to associate and link together things from quite different fields (say, Buddhism and modern cognitive therapy =)

So, it's much better to try to learn some thousands-year-old techniques to boost your concentration, focus, attention and some relaxation and priming up methods, instead of reading crappy blog posts. =)

<comment><USER16> > So, it's much better to try to learn some thousands-year-old techniques to > boost your concentration, focus, attention and some relaxation and priming > up methods, instead of reading crappy blog posts. =)

Buddhism had to start as crappy blog posts, too. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the end of the article:

As I was writing this, Daniel, my two-year-old son, walked into my office, climbed on my lap, and said "Monsters, Inc. movie please."

So, here we are, I'm finishing this piece on the left side of my computer screen while Daniel is on my lap watching a movie on the right side of my computer screen.

<comment><USER18> Yes; we read the article as well ... your point is?

<comment><USER19> Actually, I haven't read it yet - I tend to skim the comments first and then decide whether or not the article is worth my time. I prefer to avoid articles where most of the comments lament that "this post is bollocks/misleading/media spam."

I'm not saying the OP is any better than you accused... I'm just pointing out that not everyone in the HN audience reads the same way.</comment></comment></comment>


Calls with links, instead of phone numbers - <AUTHOR> https://toky.co/

<comment><USER2> How is this different from using the tel: URI scheme and making a cross- platform app to handle that? Sure, I don't need to know your phone number anymore, but now I have to know your Toky URL and to download their app.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Just get a call forwarding service, you can even use Google Voice, and embed tel: URIs in your website to that number. You get the same benefit (no one gets your actual number, as additional ones as well (voice mail, forwarding to different numbers on a schedule, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love that you don't have to download anything. I've been trying it out from my browser and it's pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's strange to have a demo for a voice chat system with no audio track.</comment>


Has a USB memory stick ever failed on you? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering how much of my info I should entrust to memory sticks. I'm curious to hear first-hand failure accounts.<p>Also, if the answer is "no", that would be interesting too. <comment><USER3> I've had one failure on an old 256MB Sandisk--after a few years it would corrupt files. Probably just worn out, as it got used quite a bit.

We buy really cheap 1 and 2GB flash drives at work for promotional handouts. I'd say maybe 4-8 out of every 100 are DOA and need to be returned. Don't know if the good ones are holding up a year or two later.

I recently received a new (Lexar?) drive and it would work fine until I got a few hundred MB on it, and then I started seeing corrupt files and other weird errors. I should try and RMA it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a 2GB one back when 2GB was huge, it's symptoms were odd: You could write to it, and the OS would appear to write fine, but all that would show were files called "00000000", which contained only huge amount of "0" characters. If you looked at the drive size specifically in Windows, it reported 16TB (yes terra, not a typo :P) but Linux still reported 2GB.

Aside from that, I have a story similar to joe_bleau's (and probably many other people). The company I work for buys them in bulk, branded with our company logos and containing promo material. They fail fairly regularly - <USER2> enough to get the material to clients, but not good for use after that! Terrible - but it's worth bearing in mind that they're the cheapest the marketing guys could find.

On the positive side I have a Kingston DataTraveler that I think I've had for 4 years, maybe 3. It is used all day, every day and hasn't missed a beat. I've recommended them to family and never heard of any problems.

The important thing to take from this is that if you buy quality, failures are rare - but try to never have only one copy of important data!

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently bought a 16GB Corsair Padlock2 secure memory stick, and the first unit was DOA. I did a RMA, and the replacement has been fine. I think that the first got damaged during shipping.

I had also bought a 4GB PNY memory stick a few months ago that would corrupt data. I detected it because I was PGP-encrypting the contents, but the signature would not verify upon copying to another machine. I tried several times, then reformatted several times, then tried a few more times before returning the stick for a replacement (in-store return this time).

I have had about a dozen sticks otherwise that seem to work perfectly, but I don't really trust them. I also use Dropbox (love, love, love it), several external USB drives, and a NAS for backups.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was doing some low level tech support for an on campus group during college. I set up a simple samba network share for everyone to trade documents on and then set up a really simple backup system. (daily diffs burned to cd, weekly full copies on an external moved off site).

However I couldn't convince one of the departments to use it. Their manager insisted that it was insecure (since i, as admin, would have access to their data). so instead they traded data back and forth on 2 flash drives.

Needless to say, one day they lost a ton of work on one of the drives and i was told to recover the data....

i don't do tech support anymore...

</comment><comment><USER7> Plenty of them. One startup I worked at had hundreds of cluster machines booting from USB drives. I'd say one or two failed every month. They were Kingston brand, too. But they got a lot of use (read and write) and there were literally hundreds of them going at a time.

It goes without saying: back up your data. Never trust your data to be stored in just one location.

Mode of failure varied, but it usually manifested itself in the form of a corrupt filesystem. A few wouldn't even show up as a device when plugged in.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been working on a full-time project to develop content for Linux LiveUSB keys.

We've seen dramatic differences between keys. The same image written to 2 different keys can produce hugely different results. My 16GB Sandisk key from Best Buy works without any problems. The cheap no-name key we acquired from a supplier has intermittent failures.

The problem appears to be with the controller in the key and not the flash memory. We were originally concerned that the wear-leveling was causing "fixed files" to migrate data between pages when writing new files to other areas of the filesystem.

So, we used the badblocks utility to write patterns to the key to exercise the flash memory and give the controller a chance to detect any bad pages. Then after we wrote the LiveUSB image we verified it against the original, and it passed.

However, after running badblocks, when doing lots of random, continuous writes we frequently see invalid data returning from the key. We assume that this is a race condition in the USB-to-flash-memory controller in the key.

The end result is that you get what you pay for. You may get away with using a cheap key, but you shouldn't trust it for all situations. A more expensive key will likely have better tested hardware that is less likely to fail when you need it most.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've had two fail on me over the years. One is a 1GB stick that only shows some weird size that reformatting won't even fix, and the other was a 2GB that completely died. After finding Dropbox though, I no longer carry a flash drive unless I'm giving a presentation and want a backup in case the internet is down.

</comment><comment><USER10> We had dozens fail.

Than again, I worked on developing embedded USB stacks. Those guys suffered quite a workload (but nothing astronomical).

Mainly: Random data corruption (~90%) Electrical failure - not responding to reset or power-on (~10%)

</comment><comment><USER11> I still have and use my first $49 256mb sandisk. Never had any issues. I now use a 8g U3 sandisk daily for 100% of my tasks. I live on portable apps.

The closest thing to an issue is I have noticed the total storage size has decreased a tiny bit, but this is supposed to be normal. After all with my email client alone I am doing 1000's of overrights and stuff.

Another thing is to always remember to eject the device properly. I have had corruption of files that way, but never any damage to the drive. I backup weekly.

Flash drives are a god send. I cant imagine carrying around compact disks anymore.

<comment><USER11> ...also, I own 10 various brands and sizes of flash drives, all work perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a 4GB Sony (I think) that I bought a few years ago. It has always corrupted bits of data here and there (think a few dozen lines of random noise in the middle of some code) so I pretty quickly learned not to use it for most things. It now holds mp3s for my car, which fails much more gracefully with garbled input than a compiler does.

But it was cheap and relatively high capacity for its time, so I wouldn't take much from that other than "you get what you pay for".

</comment><comment><USER13> I've had one fail after two years of use (it wouldn't show up on my mac and failed to sudo mount). I have one right now that glitches now and then. I only keep on my flash drive useful tools that come handy, although I also use it to transfer files between computers occasionally.

I never can completely trust a harddrive with important information. Just make sure you have multiple copies :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes, several. In fact I just had a Kingston become unreadable (even though the hardware was recognized) after just one month, had to RMA it. I have another transcend 4GB that is now eternally locked and read only.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does losing them count as a failure? If so, a lot have failed on me.

If not, never had one outright fail. At most, I've had a USB slow down transfer speeds once. But, I could still get all of my data off of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Had two fail. And also have broken two. Use Dropbox instead where possible.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've had a few break in the sense of wires/chips physically losing a proper connection, but that's a matter of holding it just so while you get your data off. Nothing worse yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've never had one fail. I've even sent one through the washer and dryer. Its casing fell off, but wedging the bare circuit board into the USB port still worked.

</comment><comment> T-R I had a 2GB Sony drive fail on me right as I was about to back it up. Worked on one machine, took it out, plugged it into another machine and it was dead.

</comment><comment><USER19> I accidentally put a USB stick in the laundry once – it worked perfectly well, despite being in hot soapy water for an hour.

</comment><comment><USER20> yes, I had an 8GB cheap stick (15 euro) that failed after some time. uploading worked for the firs 4gb or so, everything above that ended with an file size of zero or corrupted data.

</comment><comment><USER21> So far over the last 5 years I've never had a USB stick drive fail.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes had a one gb fail.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have used dozens over the last few years and none of them have failed. Granted some of the cheapo 512 MB ones I got for free at work I only used a dozen or so times before I lost them, so I don't know how long they would have held up if I used them over and over again over a long period of time. But I had a Lacie XTreme Key I used for everything daily from work, school, library and it never failed. I lost it before it failed, so I guess I am more of a threat to my data than the memory stick.</comment>


First ever blockchain based elections - <AUTHOR> https://coingape.com/sierra-leone-elections-2018-with-permissioned-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> Other countries also like india, china, where corruption level is very high, must take inspiration from it..</comment>


WePay's (YC S09) Group Payments Get Some Big-Name Backers, Including Max Levchin - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/23/wepay-group-payments/

<comment><USER2> For those who don't want to be charged a 3.5% transaction fee and are willing to work with a lot less features, there's always <http://billshare.org/>

Me and my roommates use it and it has suited our needs fine for years

<comment><USER3> One of the big differences I see here is that billshare doesn't handle the money! WePay actually handles accepting the payment, and distributing the funds. You can then get a check, or better in many cases, spend it using a WePay debit card!

<comment><USER2> Like I said, it has a lot less features :)

All it really does is expense tracking - you can post bills, and find out who owes who how much. There are also some semi-vanity features like stats on where the group is spending its money.

I think billshare is good enough when you know the people in the group and can trust them to repay you when necessary. Otherwise WePay is probably the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first company, <http://www.hoodeasy.com>, has worked pretty well using this model. We're a middle-man between clothing suppliers and groups of students. Our selling point is the ease of group-ordering. Our margins are a lot higher than around 3% gross but we have a very niche focus. Another startup in the UK, <http://www.wigadoo.com>, tried to do lead-gen for group-bookings of holidays and really struggled. They folded around August 09. Group ordering is definitely an interesting space. Sites like <http://www.groupon.com> have the model just perfect because they focus on facilitating the mass-sale of high- margin products where the fixed costs of those business are quite high. I wish WePay all the best.

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats, Guys. I really like what you're doing. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER6> is there some deadline for investments or something? Seems like this week we've had one big investment after another

<comment><USER7> just because they announced now, doesn't mean they raised money recently

<comment><USER6> oh no I know that, I just mean that there's been a ton of announcements these past couple of days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats to WePay on the funding, but I can't help but notice a similarity between our and their business cards! ;-)

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/toivotuo/2857596922/> (scred.com)

<http://img17.yfrog.com/i/f2w.jpg/> (wepay.com)

<comment><USER9> I can't help but notice a similarity between your business cards and Visa's credit cards! ;-)</comment></comment>


Dr. Fauci Backed Controversial Wuhan Lab for Risky Coronavirus Research - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741 <comment><USER2> This kind of research seems to be a rather normal and reasonable thing to do.

That being said, I have two issues with this article:

\- it makes the Wuhan lab story sound credible, while it is just another conspiracy theory

\- it paints Dr. Fauci in a bad light by linking him to that lab and the theory

The factually true info is the kind of research and the fact that it was cofunded by the Fauci org. Everything else is just spin.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the link to Dr.Fauci is only "click bait" but, after reading another linked article, I have changed my mind and now I think that the Wuhan lab theory deserves some consideration.

This is the more interesting article in my opinion:

[https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab- experiments...](https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments- that-may-have-started-coronavirus-pandemic-1500503)

<comment><USER4> My basic issue with the lab escape theory: if SARS-CoV2 is a natural strain (and there is at this point no evidence that it isn't), then why assume some researcher was patient zero, when millions of other people catch bat coronaviruses each year? The following interview (from [1]) puts it succinctly:

>"If you do the math on this, it's very straightforward. ... We have hundreds of millions of bats in Southeast Asia and about 10 percent of bats in some colonies have viruses at any one time. So that's hundreds of thousands of bats every night with viruses," Daszak says. "We also find tens of thousands of people in the wildlife trade, hunting and killing wildlife in China and Southeast Asia, and millions of people living in rural populations in Southeast Asia near bat caves."

>Next, he says, consider the data he's collected on people near bat caves getting exposed to viruses: "We went out and surveyed a population in Yunnan, China — we'd been to bat caves and found viruses that we thought could be high risk. So we sample people nearby, and 3 percent had antibodies to those viruses," he says. "So between the last two and three years, those people were exposed to bat coronaviruses. If you extrapolate that population across the whole of Southeast Asia, it's 1 million to 7 million people a year getting infected by bat viruses."

>Compare that, he says, to what we know about the labs: "If you look at the labs in Southeast Asia that have any coronaviruses in culture, there are probably two or three and they're in high security. The Wuhan Institute of Virology does have a small number of bat coronaviruses in culture. But they're not [the new coronavirus], SARS-CoV-2. There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let's compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it's just not logical."

[1]: [https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab- coronavirus...](https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus- china)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. It really change the priors, reading those numbers. I will read all the article.

Weighting against the lab theory also, it seems that there is not record of the "animal passage" technique was being used in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That seems like something necessary.

There are so many thing that I don't understand in all this, that I'm probably not qualified to have a strong opinion yet (or maybe never). For instance, I don't understand why bats are so prone to be source of viruses instead of other mammals.

<comment><USER5> If [https://healthcareinamerica.us/what-makes-bats-the- perfect-h...](https://healthcareinamerica.us/what-makes-bats-the-perfect- hosts-for-so-many-viruses-3274c019bb4d) is accurate:

* variable body temperature (they heat when they fly) * many species roost very closely in large numbers * weird immune system traits (they have very fast metabolisms, so they present an odd environment for pathogens)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "controversial"

Controversial for what? The lab should be backed, and has been backed, and was funded by many governments around the world. Funding should be tripled so we can find these viruses before they become pandemics (the reason for their research).

<comment><USER7> The controversy is explicitly described in the article:

>The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus. This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn't been deliberately infected contracted the disease.

>The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.

When you set these concerns next to 2018 diplomatic cables describing safety problems at the biolab in question [0], perhaps the accidental-release theory does seem worthy of investigation.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state- dep...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department- cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/)

<comment><USER6> Were those 200 scientists talking about a Wuhan lab program, or a completely different lab + program? My comment is about the Wuhan lab.

According to the article Fauci is cited as writing, that research took place in Europe and the United States. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk- wor...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth- taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In order to help the fight against the pandemic, it would be best if the general public was not aware of certain information.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, we will survive, while our enemy will die. Moreover, if we will supply our enemy with false information, it will work even better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So which is it guys?

1) It was man-made, and biologically engineered in a lab. It escaped containment.

2) It came into being because the Chinese eat bats. So China should shut down the wet markets.

Because it cannot be both.

The Trump Regime is lying and talking out of their asses, to cover up their own incompetence. And they are saying that it is both. And the American public are so gullible, that they're believing everything Trump's henchmen are saying (or at least his supporters are).

Perhaps a more plausible theory, is that it really did emerge naturally from some random mutation in nature. And the Chinese were the first to detect it.

The Lancet published back in January [1], a theory that the virus had no connection to the Wuhan Seafood Market, this was just coincidence that some early patients had gone there.

Thus, the virus existed, before it got to the seafood market.

The interesting new info, is that the French are now saying that they detected their first case back in December 27, 2019, after reviewing old case files [2]. This was 4 days before China published to the W.H.O. about the possibility of a new novel coronavirus.

How is this even possible? Did the virus just magically hop on a plane in December?

[1] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood- market...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may- not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally)

[2] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/french- politicia...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/french-politicians- row-lockdown-restrictions-can-eased/)

Edit: If you're going to downvote me, then provide some counter evidence to prove me wrong.

<comment><USER4> Just a note: a call to stop the sale of "bush meat" in wet markets is not dependent on how this outbreak started. AFAIK the practice has been considered a disease risk for some time. While obviously the pressure to do something is much stronger now, that pressure would remain even if the outbreak was conclusively shown to be unrelated, given public awareness of just how disastrous a pandemic really is.

>The Trump Regime is lying and talking out of their asses, to cover up their own incompetence. And they are saying that it is both. And the American public are so gullible, that they're believing everything Trump's henchmen are saying (or at least his supporters are).

Please limit the partisanship. The point you're making can be expressed in a way that is less vitriolic and more open to meeting of minds.</comment></comment>


RIM placing focus on Talent Acquisition amid layoffs? - <AUTHOR> http://alexblom.com/blog/2011/07/rim-placing-focus-on-talent-acquisition/

<comment><USER2> This could always be two things:

1\. You lack talent in one area, but have too many staffers doing something that you will no longer will be doing

2\. This is the one I hate: You want to get rid of experienced employees that cost too much to get new employees that cost less</comment>


ReactOS 0.4.6 released - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-046-released <comment><USER2> `In order to track ReactOS compatibility with Windows behavior, 1,088,893 unit test cases have been added since 0.4.5. This new release has been tested through 14,238,159 unit test cases, failing just 18,419 (a 0,129% ratio failure). Still, ReactOS is marked as Alpha for the moment.`

14M tests are impressive.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing they haven't been written manually?

<comment><USER4> 3 nested for loops may count as thousands of tests (not that it diminishes the value of the tests). Probably most of them come from Wine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is getting much better with each release. I'm seeing it each time more as a good replacement for the office machines that need to run the legacy software.

Plus, with this Windows exists no state surveillance involved nor costs with licenses, perfect for VM deployment.

<comment><USER6> I've used ReactOS at the past to automatically create Win32 builds for software (the real hardware ran Linux, ReactOS was booted in a VM), the command-line stuff tend to work fine. The main problem is that there are still tons of issues with the GUI side, including glaring things like region clipping (you can see obscured windows sometimes being drawn above other windows or areas in some windows not being drawn at all) and a single window being able to hang the entire UI (seems all window message handling is synchronized).

Older software tends to work ok (i ran Borland C++ Builder on it without major issues, beyond the GUI glitches i mentioned), but not perfect. Also old software sometimes tends to include 16bit components that do not work yet with ReactOS.

The file manager was also rewritten at some point and it seems to have issues (e.g. you need to manually refresh the desktop/a folder to see changes, drag- drop doesn't always work, etc). However it is much better than 1-2 releases ago, which shows that it gets a lot of development.

Command-line stuff seem to work perfect (although the current shell is quite primitive) though so, if nothing else it can be used for automated tasks.

IMO they should try to pay a bit more attention to getting the basics of the GUI side working since this will attract more developers who are interested in helping with the higher levels (as higher as working with stuff like user32.dll etc can be anyway) but don't want to mess with the low level stuff (graphics, etc). I think ReactOS is still at a point before the "snowball effect" with its developer popularity.

<comment><USER7> > i ran Borland C++ Builder on it without major issues, beyond the GUI > glitches i mentioned

To whom does the Borland C++ builder belong. Because I wonder if there will open a market to get old c++/pascal code running in ReactOS?

There is projects like lazarus and free pascal.

But if you can keep your legacy win32 stuff in a self contained ReacOS vm...

This will solve the enterprise problem of keeping legacy applications contained without win related licencing worries.

Also your long term support looks more promising with ReactOS compared to Win XP; But microsoft will still drag the bone along for a little longer if not indefinitely at a enterprise price, ofcourse.

<comment><USER8> Embarcadero was the company which made historically significant projects, like Turbo Pascal, downloadable quite a few years ago: [http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/](http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/)

<comment><USER6> Sadly, this stopped around when they changed the name back to Borland and years before they split into "Borland" and "CodeGear". I wish they would release Delphi 1 at some point, but that never happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can it run Doom?

Edit: Ok I'm impressed, apparently it can even run Doom III [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluGgjcXtEY)

<comment><USER10> Doom most probably use a very superficial part of windows. Mainly, whatever is needed to put a framebuffer on screen. So although this is definitely a good news, it's not that impressive. Does it run MS Word or Visual Basic ?

<comment><USER6> Assuming you mean VB6, apparently yes but with some glitches:

       http://s14.postimg.org/7xggyma75/VB6_React_OS.png

(not my image and it is 3 years old so it might work better now)

<comment><USER11> Note that VB6 was released in 1998 and thus was expected to work on Windows 95/98 and NT4 (and Windows 2000 when it came out). It is kind of sad to see that ReactOS is not there yet...

<comment><USER6> My guess is that most of API is generally there, but the issues i mentioned elsewhere in this post with the region stuff cause the glitches. This looks like a simple thing to fix (i've implemented regions at the past in an experimental winsys i was writing on Linux [0] so i have a general idea of how they work) for someone with knowledge about ReactOS' graphics stack, so i suppose there are reasons it hasn't been fixed yet (maybe it relies on driver support and they plan to change the driver model? Just an assumption).

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/v6NaqNW.png](https://i.imgur.com/v6NaqNW.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anybody have experience with using ReactOS for hosting e.g. videogame servers? I wanted to host the servers of a few old games in a vm (just for some friends), and I'd obviously much rather run ReactOS than some outdated Windows.

<comment><USER13> Wine would probably be worth a shot as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kudos to ReactOS team! I've never used it in production, but I tried it several times during the years and I was always fascinated by the efforts made to improve this OS.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would it make sense (understand: is it now stable and compatible enough) to use it as a development platform for Windows version of a software (supposing that we haven't any real Windows available)? Any experience with it?

I would be really interested in this use case.

Congrats for all this work through years!

<comment><USER4> The mingw cross toolchain works surprisingly well; pesign and msitools (living under the GNOME umbrella) can also be used to produce UI-less .msi installers through a (very) minimal Linux-native version of Wix called Wixl.

(I was one of the two original authors of msitools, taking care of porting Wine's msi DLLs to a POSIX environment. The other guy took care of making the API less Windows-like, ported .cab file support and wrote Wixl).

<comment><USER16> And if project using CMake then it's even better with MXE [1]. It's basically let you build toolchain with no effort by typing few commands and while I didn't test Wix it's perfectly capable of creating installer with CPack / NSIS.

Another option is to use AppVeyor CI + Microsoft's Vcpkg [2], it's also integrated with CMake and require no manual setup.

[1] [http://mxe.cc/](http://mxe.cc/) [2] [https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg](https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg)

<comment><USER4> NSIS (imperative) is much inferior to MSI (declarative). MSI tracks each file's users and is able to automatically uninstall packages as well as rollback installs that fail in the mid of a transaction.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the information. Now I have a reason to check Wix. Though so far NSIS worked well enough because we efficiently only have one component, all libraries needed just bundled inside and it's just 15-50MB in size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I was trying to run a legacy Windows application, would I have more luck with ReactOS or linux/WINE?

I know both projects share a lot of code, so if one is better, why is that the case?

<comment><USER18> One major difference is that ReactOS uses windows drivers for your hardware.

<comment><USER17> Cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And the livecd is just a 70MB zip file, interesting.

<comment><USER20> It does make me wonder where did the rest of the space in a Windows CD go to? I mean they needed a full cd for it and it wasn't even a live cd. And React OS should atleast have most of WinXP's features and yet is much smaller. What did microsoft use the rest of the space for?

<comment><USER21> Roughly 20% of the space used in Windows' exe's and .dll's is EXIF and similar metadata in image assets. It's very wasteful.

They probably never tried to reduce the size.

<comment><USER22> This seems unlikely, but giving you the benefit of the doubt - is there some research on this?

<comment><USER23> Windows is Bloated, Thanks to Adobe's Extensible Metadata Platform [https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated- than...](https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated-thanks- adobes-extensible-metadata-platform)

Also previously discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353)

It turns out that the overall Windows bloat due to XMP tags amounts to something like 5MB.

<comment><USER21> Interesting, I missed the follow up, and had only read [https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat- Gr...](https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat-Graphs.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can see that this is an awesome achievement but why would people, not involved in the project, choose to use it instead of other operating systems such as windows itself?

<comment><USER25> _What are the differences between Windows and ReactOS?_

 _There are mainly two. Firstly ReactOS is open source. Secondly ReactOS is Free. Also Windows (especially the newer versions) are known to monitor all your activity by default. So if you 're concerned about your privacy or just don't want to share any personal info, we promise (and you can check our source code) that we don't track any of your data._

<comment><USER26> "Monitor all your activity by default" is serious FUD here. There is some telemetry data collected and phoned home, but it's not like they're monitoring what websites you go to, what you write in your Word docs, etc.

<comment><USER27> Last time I checked, Edge still sent all your keystrokes to Microsoft in plaintext and over HTTP (not HTTPS).

So yeah, they are (at least were) monitoring not only what sites you went to, but also what you typed into them.

<comment><USER28> Went looking for it just in case it's true and... nothing. There's a case of predictive text system in windows 10 which can query for suggestions (there's an option to disable it), but no keylogger either in edge or windows that I can find. And the predictive text didn't use HTTP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Using a third party implementation of the Win32 API reminds me of vegan cheese. It's great in theory, but it's never quite good enough. You'll either end up giving up and eating real cheese (using Microsoft Windows) or use some other ingredient (a different software product that runs natively on your OS of choice).

<comment><USER30> Slightly off topic but you mentioned it. There have been some great developments in vegan cheese, most notably Daiya. The first time I tried it at a restaurant I sent it back thinking they made a mistake by giving me dairy cheese.

<comment><USER11> Going back to the topic, I hope that ReactOS/Wine will sometime become a better Windows than Windows itself. (This, at least, is what was said about OS/2). In some ways it already is, I am sure.

<comment><USER30> I agree. Although "better" depends on opinion and usage. For some of my needs, such as developing for HoloLens, ReactOS has a long way to go. But for other things, such as solving Windows crackmes, ReactOS might be a good candidate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This might be a good candidate for running my automation software in the future. I actually run it headless, but on Windows with a GUI for compatibility reasons with the way I wrote it (Visual Basic, WinForms, etc.). I was a little sad buying a Windows license for a single-app headless PC, and had to do a lot to mitigate unwanted Windows 10 behavior.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why should I choose this over a Linux/Wine configuration? Maybe it is compatible with Windows drivers?

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is compatible with some older Windows drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It supports .NET 2.0!! [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ReactOS-0.4.2-Released)

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there any popular CI-testing service providing ReactOS as a build/test/deploy target? It would be interesting if someone like Travis or Appveyor could offer that.

</comment><comment><USER35> I guess I should have bought a GeForce 9 series videocard instead of GeForce 10, as it's the last one having drivers for Windows XP. Might have worked with ReactOS.

</comment><comment><USER35> Which Windows version are they emulating now?

<comment><USER36> It's not possible to say that precisely; the closest thing I could find is this: [https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Missing_ReactOS_Functionality](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Missing_ReactOS_Functionality) .

<comment><USER36> On the outdated page [https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Version_Status](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Version_Status) you can see that Windows 2003 (the server version of XP) is a bit of a target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Will it ever be able to run Adobe Creative Cloud programs?

<comment><USER18> Don't see why not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does it run msys2?

</comment><comment><USER39> Cool

</comment><comment><USER40> Thank god, I was wondering what I'd replace Solaris with

</comment><comment><USER41> I really despise this. These developers could give the world someone new, instead they clone exactly what they believe is evil.

<comment><USER42> The great thing about developers working on a project in their free time, is that they can choose anything they want. They're not constrained by what other people think they should be doing, despicable or otherwise.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Astral – Augmented Reality social network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/casparwylie/Astral <comment><AUTHOR> I started this project when I was 16 and it is now 5 months into development. I'm interested to know what people think of the idea, and how I've decided to go about the project (see README for screenshots and details). Depending on the interest I receive, I hope to get it onto the app store soon. Thanks for taking a look.

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting! How do you place the pin so it looks like the pin in placed on the sidewalk/road?

I skimmed your code and you were analyzing the image to find buildings?

<comment><AUTHOR> The pin gets rendered in a 3D scene, and positioned via finding the difference between your current coordinates and the pins. The building stuff is so that people cannot see a pin when there should be a building in the way. I do this by using computer vision that analyses the map imagery.

<comment><USER2> Oh, that makes sense, but how do you render the pin in 3D when you see the pin in Augmented Reality. I see your screenshots where you see the pin on google maps and the pin when you view it I augmented reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a mimic - there isn't a method in apple maps that render it. I made the 3D versions myself. I use scene libraries that overlay the camera view (that is basically what AR is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice project! I'm especially interested by the possibility of a twitter-style feed per neighbourhood, the big red pins could look a little more varied though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan to make many different types/colours of pins for different topics (social, informative, advertisement, etc). Cheers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do Companies Hire `Inventors`? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently a software engineer. I am not fulfilled by it. It does afford my family and I a very comfortable living, however, in the satisfaction sense I got zero.
I used to work with software patents in the past, as a Researcher digging evidence for patent lawyers. I know how they work and I can do searches quickly (searches to figure out if such a thing has been done). Also, ever since I've been a child. I always think of ideas, in any way shape or form. Most of the time I hate reading and learning how it is supposed to be learnt, and I try to learn it by myself by playing with it. This sometimes (however slightly) leads to unusual and unique approaches and solutions.
My current company pays $1k for each patent filing. So far I got 1 (I'm working on another one currently, I also have one published Software Paper from my masters thesis). I gotta say, it feels pretty good to get an Invention on your name. I'm not gonna get any royalties cause company claims everything, but regardless, I feel worthy. A feeling which I never experience when my code is deployed and it is doing what it is supposed to do.
Is someone out there hiring Inventors a.k.a Serial Patent Filers for the sake of increasing Intellectual Property or for researching new market entry points or expansions?
At this stage in my career I have realized that I do not get any satisfaction from my work as a Software Engineer and I do not enjoy the usualness of the day-to-day life.
I would like something that I could do wildly; something that would be super chaotic but with possible success, and where I could work from anywhere, and get ideas about the most random possible things, and put them in paper to make them official ``Inventions``.
If you know of any such companies or roles - I would greatly appreciate you sharing them with me. May the good of the world find you!
Cheers! <comment><USER2> Some do, right now Google/Facebook/MSFT/etc are compiling "Brain Trusts" but the trick is you have to have a track record. If you spend the next 5 years getting published and collect a few more patents you might have a shot though.

Whats your area of expertise?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know what those job titles are (can be) ?

\- I'm shooting for a Patent Filing per month...from now on. Our IP team is gonna start hating me. Cause let's face it, not all of them are gonna be heavy hitters. But, I literally have discussions about ideas with people EVERY DAY, MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

\- Anyways, area of expertise? Hmmm..I've been on a lot of different ends of the spectrum in my career. I started in IT during college. Then did Software Research Internships every summer, in 3 different projects. Then graduate school - High Performance Computing & Compiler Optimizations. Then worked in Patent Consulting. Then worked in Cloud Software. Now I work I'm in Fintech.

\- I've touched a lot of areas and am a pretty good researcher in terms of finding what is already out there & challenging the state of the art. So I don't really have a specialty.</comment></comment>


Cofounder of Apple only has less than 50 followers in Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/ronaldgwayne

<comment><USER2> This is the famed "Sold 10% of Apple INC for $800" founder. Frankly, I gave this guys story to everyone I knew under the heading "don't be this guy" and I presume I'm not the only one who did so. I think it's cute that he has a twitter, but I'm not surprised at all no one cares what he has to say.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Wayne's story is intriguing and can give valuable insight into the reasons behind his actions before and after partnering with Steve2.

He also seems humble and honest with himself and to others, despite the obvious hindsight. He lived with his decision and went on to pursue his real interests without jeopardizing the interests of others.

To me he possesses qualities that should not be ignored. His character seems very strong and not motived purely by profit.

I'm quite sure he would be right here on HN hacking on ideas and building companies like the rest of us.</comment>


Design I/O's "Mimic" – Putting emotional machines within arm's reach - <AUTHOR> http://www.creativeapplications.net/openframeworks/design-ios-mimic-putting-emotional-machines-within-arms-reach/ <comment><USER2> Do we really want emotional machines?

I'd much rather have logical machines which can be understood.</comment>


Russia bans Pornhub, YouPorn – tells citizens to "meet someone in real life" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/russia-bans-pornhub-youporn-tells-citizens-to-meet-someone-in-real-life/ <comment><USER2> _In a now infamous post, Roskomnadzor quoted itself in reply to frustrated porn fans, retweeting what it said during a previous round of bans in 2015: "Dear Lyolya, as an alternative you could try and meet someone in real life."_

You know, they do have a point there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is the real reason why they did this (declining population):

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Population_of_Russia.PNG)

<comment><USER4> Sure it is. People don't have babies because they can watch porn and that's the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably not much BBC around in russia?

<comment><USER6> Nobody's touching this huh? I will give it a go. While I don't agree with censorship in any form I think the message about trying to meet someone in real life instead is OK and could have been circulated on it's own without resorting to implementing a block.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> bad because its censorship. good because porn is bad for your brain.

<comment><USER8> If we labeled drug bans as censorship America would quickly end its drug war perhaps.</comment></comment>


AI Listened to People's Voices. Then It Generated Their Faces - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/65689-ai-human-voice-face.html <comment><USER2> "Showed gender bias" had me giggling.</comment>


Group believes they have found the answer to the auto industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=136785515079

<comment><USER2> i highly doubt this would work.

hyundai is seeing success at the expense of the other automakers. take away their advantage and the buyers will spread out again, giving everyone somewhat equally sub-par performance instead of having the one business doing kind of well. more people will buy cars, sure, but i highly doubt that enough people will buy cars to make it to where all (or even most) will turn out growth.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Take a look: [http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-03-10-auto- buying-i...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-03-10-auto-buying- incentives_N.htm)

or Answertoautos.com

Kinda cool concept.</comment>


The Next Big Thing – How Axis Sells $170k of smart blinds / month - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kickpay.com/2019/08/12/ep2-the-next-big-thing-how-axis-sells-170k-of-smart-blinds-month/ <comment><USER2> Seems expensive...I wonder if there are DIY projects out there for it.</comment>


Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media

<comment><USER2> I read this in university and loved it. McLuhan can be a bit heavy-handed (and gets a bit self-important in his later works, imo) but this is a great starting point for anyone interested in media theory. V solid read.</comment>


Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/review-blackberry-10-is-better-much-better-late-than-never/ <comment><USER2> I am not falling for BB again !

In my last iteration of smartphone purchase, I bought a latest-at-the-time Iphone 3GS for my wife and the latest-at-the-time Blackberry Bold. Since then I have watched in envy as my wife could get so much done on her phone than I could on my BB. My BB never did much beyond email and BBM ( I love BBM )

In this iteration, I recently placed an order for Nexus 4 and a Iphone 5. maybe if they are still around in 3~4 years from now, sure I could consider going back to BB.

<comment><USER3> Did you even read the review? This isn't related AT ALL to the old OS7 Bold or any other Blackberry line, which were awful. BB10 can do much more than an iPhone and be just as productive while providing a rich media experience.

<comment><USER4> It's still relevant. Increasingly, mobile OSes are less about where they are now than where they will be. Apple have been outstanding in that regard- providing OS updates to really quite old phones. Vanilla Android has been just as great, but individual Android manufacturers less so. MS has been terrible. BB has a history of being terrible.

So, Blackberry's past is relevant. No, they might not repeat it, but absent of any other evidence, we can only judge them by past conduct.

 _just as productive while providing a rich media experience._

I don't even know what that _means_

<comment><USER5> Then I can only judge Apple by OS 7.

<comment><USER6> Mac System 7 was released in 1997. The earliest BlackBerry Bold (assuming that's the one under discussion, which I'm not clear of) was released in December 2009.

One of these things is not like the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I welcome any competition into the mobile OS market, especially if it brings a refreshing new take on design and user experience.

My devices all run Android and while it's usable, I'm not a huge fan of many aspects of the OS. While I don't plan on getting a BB10 device, I am interested to see if or how its innovations cause other OS vendors to adjust their own user experience.

<comment><USER8> I'm fine with the Android OS, still not a fan of the hardware. Although its gotten better, Android phones are still nowhere near the physical build quality of the iPhone 4 (including the S3 which I'm currently using).

<comment><USER9> When I held the iphone 5 it felt like I could damage it if I held it with a tight grip[ (I am a big man). My One X doesn't feel that way.

Perhaps what physical build quality means is subjective?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Blackberry has done a good job. It may not be iPhone/Android killer but it is definitely at par with the best in the league. Had BB come up with this 2 years back it would have been great. But I am willing to give them a chance. I hope the voice and screen sharing works good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lovely. This is really the first true smartphone OS since webOS that I'm actually excited for. The gestures are a little worrisome, however, with a 4-inch display. I have small hands, and it seems the gestures would require use of two hands...

Another thing I noticed -- it seems like the UI's colors and typefaces were ripped straight from Android's Holo interface. No big deal, just something I noticed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was put off just in the new BBM, where some options were hidden under the left swipe menu, other the right swipe menu and yet more under the top swipe menu. Not to mention options hidden under the button bar at the bottom. I don't want to spend my time looking all over in apps for an action. They need to set strict guidelines on where things go.

<comment><USER12> I sat down with a handset a few months ago with a QA guy at BlackBerry and had basically the same feedback for them. Apparently, it is something they're working on. I haven't seen the OS since launch so I don't know if this was addressed, at all.

They're hardly alone in this regard. iOS/Android suffers from the same problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know if BB has the ability to push OS updates direct to customer handsets? Years ago such updates required carrier "approval"/intervention, which meant updates occurred infrequently (usually after significant delay), if ever.

Edit: US carriers, specifically AT&T.

<comment> shawn-butler Nope. [0] However, on unlocked phones you can load whatever image will work.

[0] [http://us.blackberry.com/support/apps-and- software/desktop-a...](http://us.blackberry.com/support/apps-and- software/desktop-and-device-download-sites.html)

<comment><USER14> Not sure about BB10, but with previous BB's, you could always load whatever image will work. The "Network Carrier" branded version was unnecessary even if you had a branded BB.

Somewhat like Android. You can also load tweaked custom OS's, or "hybrid OS's" as they're known in the BB community.

<comment> shawn-butler Don't really think that's true. I mean it was in some sense but for example if you loaded a seperate spectrum compatible, carrier "image" it might be fine until the next reboot at which time the carrier service books would get reloaded.

So for example, you may have installed the bb maps and on the next reboot away they would disappear to be replaced with a link to purchase "AT&T Navigator", etc. The "AT&T Mall" would reappear, etc.

Service book configuration was something fairly unique to BB and allowed carriers to configure the user experience to a pretty significant extent.

Doesn't really apply to BB10 afaik so it's just reminiscing about the bad old days, irregardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone got the inside info on why they are waiting so long to release these in America? Should have been available unlocked at launch if they really wanted to regain the hearts and minds of the fickle American consumer.

<comment><USER16> Is an unlocked phone really that important to the majority of American consumers? They've showed quite readily in the past that they really don't care that much.

<comment><USER17> No. Majority would give you a blank stare if you mentioned a mobile phone being locked/unlocked.

<comment><USER18> I think T-Mobile may help to change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's also QNX based, so should be pretty rock solid, being a microkernel based RTOS with a small memory footprint. Also (interestingly), its network stack is based on NetBSD code.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's great to see a fully gesture based phone. I've always thought this would be the most natural way to interact with a touch based device, and it's always the gesture based apps and interactions that I enjoy using most on my phone. My only hesitation is whether gestures interfere with normal use of the phone. Will it confuse interactions in the game I am playing with the swipe to go back to the home screen, for example? If it does, it's going to be hugely problematic. But if it's done well it will be the most enjoyable and natural interface out there, I think.

<comment><USER21> I'd have to agree with you that gesture interactions tend to feel more natural then typical button pressing (e.g. pinch-to-zoom), but can be a little awkward for first time users. A customer who stops by a mobile phone kiosk while walking through their local mall might not know how to handle a BB10 device without assistance from a sales associate. However, gestures often become second-nature, and users rarely find themselves asking "how do I do this again?"

Swipe-upwards to unlock/return to homescreen requires initial contact with the screen's bezel, which should mitigate the number of times this gesture is unnecessarily actuated.

<comment><USER20> > Swipe-upwards to unlock/return to homescreen requires initial contact with > the screen's bezel

Hopefully that works well. However when playing games it's pretty easy to hit the bezel when you're aiming for something on the edge of the screen. I always used to have this problem (and still do) on Android phones with their capacitive / on screen buttons.

<comment><USER22> It works surprisingly well in Nokia N9. I think games are also allowed to disable the gestures while the game is in non-paused state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just found out about their 10k Developer Commitment last Friday and a few close friends and I are scrambling to get a Blackberry native app finished in time for the upcoming submissions deadline. Never having done this before all I can say is that it's been fun! :)

BlackBerry 10 is much nicer than I had anticipated and, although I won't be moving away from Android, I am excited for BlackBerry to make a serious effort at returning to the market. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure about gestures (can they be done with one hand?) but the unified inbox ("hub") sounds like a fantastic idea.

I don't understand why I can't see all messages from all my email accounts in one window, together with voice messages and texts (Tweets may be a little overwhelming, but they can be filtered out).

This really sounds great -- although it's probably not hard to replicate on another platform.

<comment><USER25> I got my Z10 yesterday and I can confirm that the phone (and all the gestures) are completely usable with just one hand. The phone size was selected pretty intelligently. I don't think the UI design would have worked with a bigger phone.

<comment><USER12> If you don't mind me asking, what platform were you on before? I'm considering ditching my iPhone for the Z10 as I'm so tired of Apple. I really miss the unified inbox in BlackBerry world and the hub sounds promising. App selection is not that important to me.

<comment><USER25> I was using galaxy s2x. A variant of s2 with a 4.5 inch screen. That was hard to use single handed. This is my first blackberry so no idea how it compares with previous blackberry handsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I thought it has a lot of interesting ideas. Although much of them can be emulated by any other platform, if BB proves to continue innovation especially in the business/corporate sector it could gather quite a following.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm psyched about the Q10. Just release it and take my money!

<comment><USER28> I'm surprised they're not promoting it more, it seems like an obvious win for they keyboard loving crowd.

Too bad it may be delayed until mid year.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/blackberry-q10-may- be...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/blackberry-q10-may-be-delayed/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My old Blackberry Curve 3G, which I use alongside an Android phone, still gives me a battery life of 3 days solid under normal usage.

Will they match that?

</comment><comment><USER30> Any word on PlayBook getting the BB10?

<comment><USER31> They've always said that all PlayBooks will receive BB10. Who knows when though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> i think people should give it a chance, too much negativity due to fanboyism.

<comment><USER33> Is it fanboyism, or could it instead be:

\- I need a phone that works

\- I only need one phone

\- I don't want a phone from a defunct manufacturer

\- App availability is more significant than platform quality

The first one means I don't want to debug your beta product. The second one prevents me from experimentally getting a bunch of different phones and seeing which one I like better. The third gives me pause when dealing with Blackberry, who have been having huge corporate troubles for years. The fourth is a reminder that if I were to switch there are lots of apps I'd be giving up with no replacement (SmartGo Books comes to mind).

The idea that Apple has everyone brainwashed is really quite absurd. Overpriced? Maybe. Overhyped? Probably. Bad? No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Go blackberry!!!!

Become another market for me to sell my stuff \o/

</comment><comment><USER35> I trusted blackberry from the bold 9000, with that trust I got a playbook thinking they will add more apps but after waiting for more than a year I got the iPad4,

Now I have a bold 9900, time to change my phone in a couple of months ,now the bb10 arrives I'm waiting for the apps that keeps my business running if it didn't show up I'm going to get the iPhone</comment>