From 'tiger to wildcat': Coronavirus could die out without vaccine - <AUTHOR> https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12341572& <comment><USER3> "...probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically." \-- you can stop reading once you get here. It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it. If you didn't find any differences it means we probably got better at handling COVID19 - IE: earlier hospitalization, better care - <USER2> than a weaker virus.

<comment><USER4> I agree that you can stop reading, but not with your rationale.

>It's not that hard to find out if there was a mutation in the virus, you sequence it and compare it.

There are lots of problems with this assumption. Sequencing is pretty quick, it's not instantaneous or free. More to the point, sequencing a single virus from a single individual who survived doesn't necessarily tell you anything about that virus. You would need to sequence many viruses from many patients, and compare patient outcomes (while controlling for other factors) with sequence data. That is neither quick nor easy.

Viruses can mutate quickly. From what I've read, SARS CoV2 doesn't appear to have a high mutation rate compared to other viruses more in the zeitgeist, but it's definitely much higher than, say, the typical mammal. That not only means that sequencing is harder, but it also means there will be multiple strains to compare. There isn't one virus: there are currently thousands ([https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global)) of genomes publicly available, so there's a lot to look at.

Finally, the point the individual being quoted was making is that, after all that work, the best you're likely to come up with is "there are a handful of sequence changes that correlate to better outcomes." You haven't proved it ("demonstrated scientifically").

The reason you can stop reading here is that this is one person speculating, seemingly based off of anecdotal data. They have some authority and it's implied they are looking at a lot of data, but there are no hard stats or facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article headline is misleading, the article itself provides more context and is less sensationalized.

I believe that this is happening in NZ and per the article, Italy.

But in other places (USA and Brazil come to mind) it's a whole different story. Seems dangerous to suggest it could just die out, while cases are on the rise.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it assumes having a competent government that actually believes in science.

<comment><USER7> Living in the US, every day I wish I'd suddenly wake up to a government which places a greater degree of importance on science and the protection and benevolence of the greatest amount of human lives, both in the US and in the rest of the world. But right now, seems like science will continue to take a backseat to US corporate economic interests.

<comment><USER8> Science is so muddled and confusing. I'm sure even the top doctors and biologists don't agree on how to handle the virus because one study says you x is more effective than y but another says the opposite. In addition most "science" is funded by done large corporations or by people with ulterior motives. Science is not the word of God; it's a craft that is extremely prone to error, and I personally don't want my gov placing any more value on it than it is right now.

<comment><USER9> The real world is muddled and confusing... science in its proper form observes that world, attempts to find the underlying facts and make our understanding of the muddled confusion clearer.

It takes a lot of observing, thinking, and testing to arrive at a decent picture of what wasn't known before.

> Science is not the word of God

No, and that's a good thing. Scientific progress depends on revising knowledge as more facts accumulate and point in different directions. Until there's enough information to illuminate things well, there are a lot of questions, missteps, etc.

I would want the government, private institutions, and every individual to lean MORE on actual science than they ever have, and to understand its benefits AND limitations, because that is how the world learns and improves.

<comment><USER8> I think when you take a look at the interaction between science and government throughout history you will largely find "science" has mislead humanity at most steps along the way. Thats not to say it is never useful, just that it is a form of information that should be used by our society with extreme caution.

But fundamentally I disgree with your opinion that the real world is muddled and confusing. With issues like pandemics science is more nessisary because it is a specific and specialzed issue not many people understand well, yet it is directly impacting most of our lives.

But if you look at the Amish people for example, you can live your entire life knowing almost nothing about science live a have a happy, healthy and meaningful existence. Generalizing that example more we can see that successful flourishing human civilizations have existed for all of our history and all of the probably had less than a percent of the scientific knowledge we have today, yet we are suffering from mostly tge same issues: suicide, racism, sadness, disfunctional governments, power struggles, etc.

You say that science is illuminating but I fail to see where science has truly made any part of the human expience more enlightened.

<comment><USER9> I would say as a first point of enlightenment, medicine. Many afflictions have been eliminated or mitigated.

> But fundamentally I disgree with your opinion that the real world is muddled > and confusing.

I was illuminating the difference between the world around us being its complicated, partially unexplored self, and the GP saying that science is muddled and confusing, which it is, but to a lesser degree than the world it is developing from.

> you will largely find "science" has mislead humanity at most steps along the > way

Your use of quotes there is the tell... many have purported to "know" "scientific" facts when their beliefs were nothing but beliefs. And most/many have been cast aside as our level of knowledge has progressed. And that is the true progress of science - learning more about the world and changing from guesses about reality to knowledge about reality.

People will always have their agendas and limitations, but the process of learning and understanding always surpasses each individuals' limitations and gives us better understanding. Even if it is "one funeral at a time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even places that have successfully controlled the coronavirus internally remain vulnerable to new resurgences imported from abroad. It all started in a single market

<comment><USER11> And according to recently published data, immunity may not even last 6 months after fighting off the virus.

If immunity lasts no longer than a half-year, then there will be multiple new resurgences; it's a given.

<comment><USER10> The breathless reports that antibodies fade out are absurd. All antibody production fades, but immune memory cells persist and if the infection is reintroduced the B cells will rapidly trigger an immune reaction. The way that antibody fade out is being portrayed as a loss of immunity is profoundly ignorant of the immune system. You would not want your body to be producing full scale antibody responses to every pathogen you've ever encountered as it is energetically intensive and would harm the ability of the body to react to new threats

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lotta wishful thinking here. I hope it's true, but until there's actual evidence of it we can't act as if it is.

<comment><USER13> It's not totally crazy, and the limited data on human coronaviruses has shown there is a tendency for them to mutate into less potent forms.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other- coronaviruses-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-other- coronaviruses-tell-us-about-sars-cov-2-20200429/)

<comment><USER14> It's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming more easily transmissible. Perhaps there may be some scientific basis or physiological connection between being more transmissible and being less potent? Perhaps a stronger initial shock fires up the immune system to create a stronger herd immunity. This seems to have happened before, but may not happen with Covid-19. It would be wishful thinking to rely on it for setting policy.

EDIT: This was making the rounds a week or so ago [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus- mutat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation- genetics-spike.html)

<comment><USER15> > _It 's already been demonstrated that the Covid-19 has mutated into becoming > more easily transmissible._

Do you have a link for that? I remember some speculation about this, but they did't have a solid case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the emotional pressure to latch onto optimistic / pessimistic news is too hard to make correct, objective conclusions about this virus. If it isn't backed by data, I'm afraid anecdotal evidence is too biased by the human behind them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't know if this matters, but Wikipedia classes this as a "hard right" newspaper.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Islamic_Extremism_and_Scout_Groups)

I guess I have a worry that this is part of some larger editorial stance that tries to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic by cherry-picking the research that gets reported.</comment>


If (big if) the world was ending, how would you know? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/c7wmkq/if_big_if_the_world_was_ending_how_would_you_know/ <comment><USER2> That writer is a kind of a jerk (more in the replies than in the original post). "I know, you don't, I'm smarter than you, you have to prove that you follow what I'm talking about (and I'm talking as obscurely as I can) before you're worthy of me having a real conversation with you." Yeah, spare me; you aren't so amazingly, uniquely insightful that it's worth it for me to jump through your hoops.

That said, there's an interesting question in there. If our society were starting into a technological collapse, what would it look like? And how would it look different than what our current world looks like?

I'm not sure I buy that this is what's happening. But looking around, I see enough that might be evidence that I can't rule it out...

<comment><USER3> Definitely kind of a jerk but I genuinely believe it's a big issue especially in technology. Technology and science isn't self-improving, we improve processes because it's passed on throughout generations. The core of software itself in the past 20 years hasn't really changed much from the 80s. Sure we have new languages and processes but it's just the same stuff repeated over again but each time bits are lost.

Basically we wouldn't know that an ongoing collapse is happening but everything would get slightly shitter and shitter with older legacy processes being unfixable once they break because none of that knowledge is being passed down.

Great video on this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! You're pretty smart. But you think me being a jerk is somehow relevant to anything? Hmm. A-.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Decline (99 times out of a hundred) is so slow and steady that the only way to discover that it's happening is to compare things NOW with things THEN.

So: Can a single-earner family today buy a house, a car, and send their kids through a good education system?

Is the US still capable of launching men into space, let alone sending several at a time to the Moon and back safely?

Can a normal wage-earner still afford several weeks of hospital care?

50 years ago, we would be answering 'Yes' to all three of these questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> But the US is Trantor. Trantor is the last place the decline starts to hit. The decline is already hitting me on Terminus.

<comment><USER4> Where's a Mule when you need him?</comment></comment></comment>


35+ Interesting Twitter services and applications - <AUTHOR> http://dreamcss.blogspot.com/2009/04/35-interesting-twitter-services-and.html

<comment><USER2> spam blog, flagged.</comment>


Ring oscillators on Silego GreenPAK 4 - <AUTHOR> http://lab.whitequark.org/notes/2016-08-05/ring-oscillators-on-silego-greenpak4/ <comment><USER2> Ring oscillators (more specifically, XOR or other mixing operations between at least two oscillators) are a good basis for a TRNG. I've implemented one of my own (source code now lost :() : [https://emergent.unpythonic.net/projects/hm2rng](https://emergent.unpythonic.net/projects/hm2rng) with links to an academic paper that still works. the whirlygig rng page appears to have moved to [https://warmcat.com/hardware%20design/linux%20peripherals/20...](https://warmcat.com/hardware%20design/linux%20peripherals/2007/11/24/whirlygig- gpld-hwrng.html)</comment>


Elon Musk promises to take Tesla Model S to 'Plaid' with new powertrain - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/11/elon-musk-promises-to-take-tesla-model-s-to-plaid-with-new-powertrain/ <comment><USER2> Savings for beginnings, needlework, and good fortune-telling.</comment>


Show HN: JobsQuery.it – Job board with salary range included for all job offers - <AUTHOR> https://jobsquery.it/jobs <comment><USER2> Looks like a cool project! Any chance you add "new job offers" notification for specific criteria?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely worth considering in the near future

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. Perhaps add a filter for contract / part-time / full-time?

</comment><comment><USER4> I like it. Keep it simple

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice, I like Google Map solution. However graphic design is poor

<comment><AUTHOR> It is still early stage so hopefully graphic will be improved

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome work. I like sort by salary option.

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely something I will use.</comment>


Boyfriends are more popular than Girlfriends on Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gochime.com/boyfriends-are-more-popular-than-girlfriends

<comment><USER2> Not that surprising, I think it's the same in real life.

When my girlfriend sees her female friends they seem to just sit around and gossip about their boyfriends all night.

When I see my guy friends we want to talk about pretty much anything _but_ our girlfriends.

<comment><USER3> yeah definitely! it's like academia... the ideas being tested are often very obvious but when empirically tested and validated that's when you start developing the capacity for deeper thought/theorems and business frameworks. cool stuff austin_e! keep mining that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think what's surprising here (to me) is that boyfriends aren't discussed more. Guess girls have more to talk about than their boyfriends....</comment>


Ask HN: How you attract your first customers (exclude PH and HN)? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I run a productized service (design as a service) called Manypixels.co ([https://www.manypixels.co](https://www.manypixels.co)) -- I got to $10K MRR by doing only two things:

1\. Reaching out on niche Facebook groups to my target market (in my case: Entrepreneurs). I would simply say something along the line "Hey guys, I built this. Do you see value in this? Yes/No -- Why not?")

2\. Creating content on Reddit / Indie Hackers about how we got to $10k MRR and being transparent about my learnings.

In the future I plan to do : 1/ More direct sales (via Angel list for example) 2/ Content on more marketplaces (Medium / Bootstrapped.fm / ...) 3/ Referrals 4/ ??? (open to suggestions here) :)

<comment><AUTHOR> you want to say you receive around 50-70 subscribers/orders and you gonna be cash positive after designing all these orders and much more for just $10K? This is not a business model, you just this it is just in first month

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry I cut the end: later you will change something to [https://www.godesignergo.com/](https://www.godesignergo.com/) pricing model with limiting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Blogging. Assuming you're using your product yourself, if you blog about why you're using it and which problems you're solving, you'll find in the mass people that share the same issues.

Note: I'm assuming b2c/smb (given your profile), and I'm assuming you're still trying to get product/market fit. Of course, if you can get a customer paying $10 buy paying $9, then go for paid ads.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your network and your networks network. For most indie-hacker-y type businesses you should be close to the problem and know people who want a solution.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cold emailing local leads and meeting them in-person for a conversation.

</comment><comment><USER6> A marketplace! Somehow integrate with Shopify, Github, AWS, Jira, Salesforce, Segment, Heroku, Zapier, ..., etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> In addition to the suggestions here, you could write some guest posts on relevant blogs.

</comment><comment><USER8> B2B or B2C? Makes a huge difference!

<comment><AUTHOR> I can even divide B2B into 2 parts: small businesses and enterprise level

<comment> dev-ious I'll go a step further,

small businesses with money

small businesses with NO money</comment></comment></comment>


The Idea Maze (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2013/08/04/the-idea-maze/ <comment><USER2> The original source:

Market Research, Wireframing, and Design by Balaji S. Srinivasan

[https://spark- public.s3.amazonaws.com/startup/lecture_slides...](https://spark- public.s3.amazonaws.com/startup/lecture_slides/lecture5-market-wireframing- design.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156215)

<comment><AUTHOR> _The future is already here -- it 's just not very evenly distributed._ \-- Gibson.</comment></comment>


EU takes first step in passing controversial copyright law - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17482554/eu-european-union-copyright-filter-article-11-13-passes-juri-vote <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17354442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17354442)</comment>


FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format - <AUTHOR> http://flif.info/index.html <comment><USER2> Everyone loves the "responsive loading" feature, but that's not even the novel thing about the format (JPEG 2000 did it even better — 16 years ago)! The novel feature of this format is better entropy coding.

FLIF decoder adds interpolation to make incomplete scans look nicer than in PNG, but that's a feature of the decoder, not the file format, so there's nothing stopping existing PNG decoders from copying that feature.

Note that it's generally not desirable to have FLIF used on the Web. A decent- quality JPEG will load at full resolution quicker than it takes FLIF to show a half-resolution preview.

FLIF is a lossless format, and lossless is a very hard and _costly_ constraint. Images that aren't technically lossless, but _look lossless_ to the naked eye can be half the size.

e.g. Monkey image from [https://uprootlabs.github.io/poly- flif/](https://uprootlabs.github.io/poly-flif/) is 700KB in FLIF, but 300KB in high-quality JPEG at q=90 without chroma subsampling (i.e. settings good even for text/line-art), and this photo looks fine even at 140KB JPEG (80% smaller than FLIF).

So you want FLIF for archival, editing and interchange of image originals, but even the best lossless format is a waste of bytes when used for distribution to end users.

<comment><USER3> > Note that it's generally not desirable to have FLIF used on the Web. A > decent-quality JPEG will load at full resolution quicker than it takes FLIF > to show a half-resolution preview.

On the other hand, this allows browsers on metered-bandwidth connections to control bandwidth more effectively. Rather than disabling images entirely, this would allow loading a low-resolution version and stopping, and letting the user control whether to load the rest of the image.

<comment><USER2> Again, this is not new in FLIF, and it isn't a strength of the format. You're describing exactly what can already be done with progressive JPEG _better_.

Look at [https://uprootlabs.github.io/poly- flif/](https://uprootlabs.github.io/poly-flif/) \- set truncation to 80-90% and compare to Same Size JPEG.

Truncated FLIF looks like a pixelated mess, whereas JPEG at the same byte size is almost like the original (note that the site has encoded JPEG to have few progressive scans, so sometimes you get half image perfect and half blocky. This is configurable in JPEG and could be equalized to entire image being ok- ish).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do any of these newer/experimental schemes, such as this one, take into account other factors such as CPU load before declaring themselves as "better". For example this project seems pretty cool, but there's no data on how CPU bound, memory bound, I/O bound its decompression algorithm is.

I guess what I'm asking is, if I hit a web page with 20 images @ 100k per image is it going to nail one or more cores at 100% and drain the battery on my portable device. Fantastic compression is great but what are the trade offs?

<comment><USER5> It says very clearly a number of times that it's better in terms of compression ratio.

<comment><USER6> Reason why your downvoted is because compression can often add to computation. An exanple would be

\- I have a pallet of bytes, this will cause colors to be stored in a 8 bit integer instead of a 32 bit one (8 for r,b,g,a) - every color now adds alook up to that memory address

\- I turn every color sequence possible into a numerator + denominator pair < 256 when possible. I add a length and offset to define how to compute it - when you reach a sequence, you must calculate the number. Find the offset (up to 256) and until the length (ideally > than 4 bytes) is reached get the value of that digit.

These types of calculations seem small, and likely are more often than not. But you add enough of these things up and all of a sudden the cpu must hit 100% for the time of 30+ images

<comment><USER5> I don't care about my score. I could have guessed why though. People not reading things properly. I was taking point with the observation that the site said it was better. I pointed out that it didn't say that, just that the compression ratio was better.

<comment><USER4> > People not reading things properly

I did read the article twice and thoroughly, all I sawmentioned was _" Encoding and decoding speeds are acceptable, but should be improved"_ . That doesn't address the points I raised in my original post if you were to read it properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Incredible work. My only comment is that the progressive loading example reveals that their algorithm seems to have desirable properties for lossy compression as well. Why not make FLIF support lossy and lossless? It's hard enough to get a new image format standardized as it is; offering a lossy mode would effectively give us a two-for-one deal.

If PNG had a lossy mode that was even slightly better than JPEG (or exactly as good but with full alpha channel support) it would have eventually supplanted JPEG just as it has now supplanted GIF.

<comment><USER8> Quoting a fragment from the final section:

 _" [...] any prefix (e.g. partial download) of a compressed file can be used as a reasonable lossy encoding of the entire image."_

though they also have it listed explicitly in the TODO section:

 _" \- Lossy compression"_

<comment><USER9> Current plan is to keep lossless and lossy versions of the format in the same bitstream for encoders/decoders and to differentiate the output files encoded to be lossy as ".flyf" (Free LossY image Format), and those that are encoded as lossless as ".flif" (Free Lossless Image Format).

However renaming the files from flif to flyf or vice versa would have no effect, they would still be opened and decoded the same. It's merely meant to convey to humans the intention of the person who created the image.

From my understanding, not much focus has been given to lossy endcoding as of yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a previous discussion on HN about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790)

<comment><USER11> 5 months ago. This is my first time seeing this item.

<comment><USER10> My point is not that it shouldn't be there again, it's that some potentially interesting stuffs have already been discussed, so the previous thread is probably worth a look too.

<comment><USER11> You should put that into your first post :) Most of the time I see post like this meaning it was a double post.

<comment><USER12> My preferred format is: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790) (1254 points, 157 days ago, 366 comments)

Because it answer most of the common questions about a resubmission: Did it get a lot of exposure? Was it a long time ago? Did it have an interesting discussion that I should read?

The number of comments actually doesn't show if the discussion was interesting of a flamewar. So I sometimes cherrypick some of the most interesting comments and repost a snippet.

(In this case, I think the most important comments are:

\- The relation between the progressive and an extension for lossy mode

\- The advantages and problems of the (L)GPLv3 licence

But each of them deserve it's own thread here.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks promising! They ought to include time-to-decode in the performance numbers, though: a smaller compressed size doesn't matter if the process of loading and displaying the image takes more time overall. A graph like the ones on this page would be awesome: [http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2015/03/03-02-15-oodle-lz- pa...](http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2015/03/03-02-15-oodle-lz-pareto- frontier.html)

<comment><USER14> This! Especially with the web being increasingly consumed on low-powered mobile devices.

It's also not just about being faster than the network because the browser is probably simultaneously doing page layout, javascript parsing, image decompression and a ton of other things. Also more time spent decoding images is a drain on the battery.

Focusing solely on compression stats can be misleading, it's a balancing act. For example, I'm not sure being 0.7x smaller than PNG is much of a win if FLIF ends up being an order of magnitude slower. Perhaps it is still a win but it needs a bit more nuance in the analysis to reach that conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If browsers supported APIs to allow "native" image/video/audio codecs to be written in JS, we could support new formats like this without needing any co- operation from the (very conservative) browser vendors. I wrote a proposal for this here: [https://discourse.wicg.io/t/custom-image-audio-video- codec-a...](https://discourse.wicg.io/t/custom-image-audio-video-codec- apis/1270)

<comment><USER16> So you would need to load up the JS decompressor every single time you load a webpage? Or is there another way to do it efficiently ?

<comment><USER17> The browser would cache a copy.

I've seen proposals to add hashes to links. This way, a browser might see a link to some JS on a new URL, but with the hash, it might find it already has that JS file in its cache from when it downloaded it at a different URL.

<comment><USER18> That's what Etag is for.

<comment><USER19> No it's not. Etag is completely different. It's a tag that the webserver sends together with the response and which the browser sends to the server which can then return a 304 status code to indicate that the resource has not changed and the browser can use the cached copy.

What the parent spoke about is adding some attribute to an anchor tag which specifies the hash of the resource so the browser can do safe cross domain caching without needing to do any request whatsoever.

<comment><USER20> Just what we need... More ways to shoot our own feet off while trying to improve performance.

<comment><USER19> First I don't immediately see how to shoot your feet off with this but maybe you can elaborate a bit on why you think so.

And secondly, am I getting this right that you are in favor of dumbing everything down while also sacrificing performance on the way because someone could break something?

<comment><USER20> I'm hardly in favour of dumbing things down, or sacrificing performance. I'm just frequently exposed to issues that are 'magically fixed' by purging the entire browser cache. And I'm just unnerved by the idea of this hash link scheme, we have enough bugs and gaps in the existing system without additional complexity, and that system is pretty damn simple conceptually, yet the bugs remain.

Anecdotally, I used to ship jQuery from a CDN for one project, I had to stop for that project I forget why... But I do remember that to my surprise, it turned out that when I shipped my own version of jQuery from my own domain, I got 10% less client side errors reported back to me in Sentry. The world is full of ways to shoot off your own foot, some of them even start out with someone showing you how they don't shoot their foot off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 16 bit per channel and on future support for CMYK. Looks like a interesting alternative to TIFF for digital preservation. Sadly, the actual recommended format is TIFF (so, waste of storage space) -> [http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/stillimg.html](http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/stillimg.html)

<comment><USER22> > (so, waste of storage space)

To be fair, given the speed at which storage space has grown over the years, it's not really something to worry about in the context of archiving material for future generations (which is very different than being able to quickly download something on the internet _now_ , for example)

<comment><USER21> Well, when you do service archiving material to the web, the storage cost isn't irrelevant Also, big files means more network traffic between our webservers and the storage servers. Plus this format have other interesting features, like tiled rendering or the progressive download. Sadly, we must handle huge TIFFs and generate jpeg miniatures and tilesets from it, if not serving it online would be very painful.

Note: I work on a company dedicated to archiving of libraries, museums and archives...

<comment><USER22> Ah ok, cool! But then you're talking about trying to meet both goals I mentioned at the same time ;)

But I guess you handle it similar to how Archive.org does it, with a large TIFF as a poorly compressed but lossless "base case" and other compression formats for the web?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty amazing! Particularly nice is that an alpha channel and animation are also possible.

One critical sidenode: it seems FLIF is still not as good as JPEG when used as lossy compression (this is something the benchmarks do not show well).

For example, go to [http://uprootlabs.github.io/poly- flif/](http://uprootlabs.github.io/poly-flif/), choose the monkey image, choose 'comparing with same size JPG', and set truncation to 60% or more.

Also, I'm not sure how efficient en- and decoding is for FLIF.

<comment><USER24> In the example you suggest using the hairs on the left side of the monkey's face have some significant artifacts. The quality of the jpeg is about the same as the FLIF file with a truncation of 80%, at which point the filesize is less than half the size of jpeg at 60%.

If the image quality of the 60% truncated jpeg is acceptable then you can get the same quality but half the size using FLIF at 80%.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand your argument. The images are the same size. A 235KB jpeg of the monkey is almost indistinguishable from lossless, while in a 470KB flif, there are already unacceptable artifacts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> FLIF really is awesome :) Here's an analysis that compares FLIF to other common lossless image formats such as: PNG, WebP and BPG. [http://cloudinary.com/blog/flif_the_new_lossless_image_forma...](http://cloudinary.com/blog/flif_the_new_lossless_image_format_that_outperforms_png_webp_and_bpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm, this has real potential as an archiving format for video, too.

Any news on what the processing overhead is like for viewing rather than creating the files? Is it less than PNG?

</comment><comment><USER27> Does anybody understand how lossless JPEG works? To my mind, the whole point of JPEG is to get rid of high-frequency components.

<comment><USER28> This isn't how it actually works, but one way to turn a lossy decoder into a lossy one, is to send a diff of the actual pixels vs the encoded ones. Since the lossy compression will be close to correct, the diff will mostly be small values or 0's. Which is much easier to compress.

Likewise you can turn any lossless compressor into a lossy one, by modifying the pixels that are the hardest to compress. E.g. if there is a random red pixel in a group of blue pixels, you can make it blue, and save up to 3 bytes. Or you can discard color information that humans aren't very sensitive too anyway, like JPEG does. All lossless means is that the compression isn't required by the format itself.

<comment><USER29> Kind of. Have you tried running a PNG compressor on a JPEG file?

It is smaler than a straight to PNG file but nowhere near the size of the original JPG.

<comment><USER28> Well of course, JPEG artifacts aren't necessarily going to be easier for png to compress. You need to make modifications designed for png's algorithm. There are some tools that do this:

[https://pngmini.com/lossypng.html](https://pngmini.com/lossypng.html)

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

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

The resulting png's are much smaller. Though not necessarily as small as JPEG, it's in the same ballpark.

<comment><USER30> pngquant is pretty awesome, especially for screenshots. For example a screenshot of my terminal running dd, it reduces the size from 88K to 17Kbytes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd like to see some comparisons with palettized PNGs. All the demo images for poly-flif use more than 256 colors, but diagrams and line art sometimes use 256 colors or less, which means they can be stored in an 8-bit palettized PNG losslessly. People often forget about this when optimizing PNG sizes, and most graphics software saves as RGB by default even when the image will fit in 8-bit palettized.

<comment><USER32> FLIF can also do palettes, without arbitrary limits on the palette size. It will automatically use palettes if the image has sparse colors (and "color buckets" if it has too many colors for a palette but still relatively few). It tends to be better than PNG in terms of compression, also for palette images. I haven't looked at optimizing palette ordering yet though, so there is probably some more margin for improvement here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Apparently it relies on a novel new "middle out" compression algorithm.

<comment><USER34> Here is the paper[1] regarding the "middle out" or "tip to tip efficiency" algorithm.

[1][http://www.scribd.com/doc/228831637/Optimal-Tip-to-Tip- Effic...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/228831637/Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Efficiency)

<comment><USER35> "Middle out" is not "tip-to-tip efficiency." Though they were indeed invented (discovered?) by the same team at approximately the same time, and may also be linked (depending on one's scientific, mathematical and/or philosophical definition of 'linked') they are independent algorithms solving radically different problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems cool. Slightly off topic but I hate when someone names a file format with "format" or "file" in the name. Isn't it a bit redundant to include format in the format? Something that has always bothered me about PDF.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks Jon for your work on this!

</comment><comment><USER37> When is this going to be available for DICOM medical images? :)

[http://dicom.nema.org](http://dicom.nema.org)

</comment><comment><USER38> Looks amazing! Really impressive results. Very cool that progressive loading is composed into the format.

However I am afraid that without support from biggest companies the format will never gain popularity. Just think how long it took to make PNG a web standard. And animated PNGs? Died unnoticed. To make things worse, GIF, a stinking leftover from '90, is still in use (even on HN!).

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks neat, but recently I discovered farbfeld[1] and I think I'll be sticking with that for the time being. I'm starting to believe data-specific compression algorithms are the wrong way to go.

[1][http://tools.suckless.org/farbfeld/](http://tools.suckless.org/farbfeld/)

</comment><comment><USER40> For browser support (Servo), FLIF has an issue pointing to Rust's common image library: [https://github.com/FLIF- hub/FLIF/issues/142](https://github.com/FLIF-hub/FLIF/issues/142)

<comment><USER9> For clarification, on the FLIF GitHub "Issues page", there is a ticket indicating an intention to build FLIF into FireFox's rendering engine Gecko, and also Servo (which will eventually replace Gecko). This ticket is a placeholder declaring Servo's interest in FLIF once it is finalized.

FLIF does not have an problem preventing it from pointing to a common Rust image library. (which is how I originally read it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is probably the 3rd "replacement" for JPEG I have seen on HN in the last few years. None of these formats have been supported by common browsers. When will this stuff start making its way to the desktop?

<comment><USER42> It's good that browsers aren't too quick to add support for new image formats, otherwise we'd have a lot of bloatware for non-optimal image formats that few people use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm curious about patent/ licensing restrictions.

From what I gather it is patent free and the implementation is GPLv3?

Does this mean someone else could make a compatible encoder/decoder with a less restrictive license?

<comment><USER44> It's lgpl3, which is less restrictive than gpl3.

<comment><USER43> ... but still too restrictive for many (most?) commercial applications.

However (link got changed?) I now see that the decoder is also available under the Apache 2.0 license, so that is useful.

<comment><USER45> If you're just using it, it isn't restrictive at all is it? You just have to say that you used it.

If you modify it, you must provide source code for the version that was distributed. Not the source code for anything else.

... unless I totally misunderstand LGPL

<comment><USER43> I am not a lawyer, but, yes, the LGPLv3 in particular is in fact quite restrictive relative to what is believed (LGPLv2 much less so).

The driving force behind the GPL-series of licenses is to maintain the GNU/Stallman freedoms [1], including "freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose" (0) and "to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish" (1)

 _It is widely believed that any software implementing DRM on it 's runtime code is incompatible with the (L)GPLv3_, in particular signed firmware distributions or software distribution systems such as the Mac/iOS App Stores or Steam. The (L)GPLv3 was actually written with this in mind, with some of the authors calling it Tivoization [2] in reference to Tivo's locked down firmware.

The relevant legal jargon is in section 6 of the GPL [3], which the LGPL is built on top of, and states:

"Installation Information" for a User Product means any methods, procedures, _authorization keys_ , or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source.

Again I am not a lawyer, but in other words, you must cough up your signing keys (which for Mac/iOS devs is incidentally a breach of your Apple Developer contract) in order to legally distribute signed software that uses LGPL libraries (-).

[-] It seems it should be OK to distribute non-DRM protected software, but for general consumer software this kind of distribution seems to be on it's way out in a hurry.

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization#GPLv3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization#GPLv3)

[3] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html)

<comment><USER45> I had no idea. So iOS devs cannot use LGPL software at all because of this?

<comment><USER43> LGPL v2.0/v2.1 do not have the "tivoization" clause, so it should be safe to use in iOS if you are following the rest of the license provisions.

LGPL v3 does, so it is likely not safe or legal to use that software in iOS or other drm scenarios.

You can find a lot of debate about this, I think mostly because people assume the two versions to be the same and do not specify which they are wanting to use.

Again I have no legal background and I recommend getting real legal advice as the issue is quite complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Kudos on this @jonsneyers! I've been looking at it ever since we talked at FOSDEM. Glad to see you getting some press on the work and good luck with Uproot Labs!

<comment><USER32> Hi, redbeard is it? I think you misremember something, I didn't start working at Uproot Labs but at Cloudinary.

As you can see we went for Apache2 (decoder) and LGPLv3 (encoder) shortly after FOSDEM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Impressive benchmarks, but how would this compare to lossless VP9, VP10 or h264, h265 image compression?

</comment><comment><USER48> Honest question. Seriously not trying to dismiss the work.

Why not TIFF? 30 years old, already built into nearly every graphics application, supports everything this proposes and more. Plus it is already supported in Safari.

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

<comment><USER9> Well TIFF has very poor compression leading to large file sizes compared even to PNG. And thus no one uses it on the web.

FLIF has very good compression, it will only download the minimum amount of data required to display the image at it's current resolution. It supports 32-Bit images/animations/transparency. It does animation playback in realtime while it's downloading the file. So as it plays the resolution just increases, you aren't waiting for the next frame to load, only improve. FLIF can also handle the incredibly high resolution images that TIFF is usually used for, and can even do tiled rendering, where it only loads the chunks of the image you are zoomed in at into memory at that resolution. Meaning it takes less time to render those chunks on gigantic images and it uses less memory to do so.

FLIF is an incredibly powerful format that offers a lot. It has archival, scientific, and web purposes. It likely won't be useful to those in 3D or Gaming as files like TGA are better suited for faster reading/loading where as FLIF is a little slower to decompress than PNG. But then again, game devs have been optimizing resource usage for a long time giving models that are further away lower poly counts and lower quality bitmaps/textures. So having one flif image to work at any distant may be of use for them, where they truncate the file at different lengths depending on distance from the camera.

There is a lot to be explored with this format, and it isn't even finalized yet.

<comment><USER48> TIFF can do tiled images too and there is nothing stopping someone from adding a TIFF extension for better compression or anything else imaginable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Awesome! So when can I have it in browsers?

</comment><comment><USER50> Encoding and decoding speeds are acceptable, but should be improved

<comment><USER51> You must be from the Ministry of Encoding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> hello pied piper

</comment><comment><USER53> But what's the Weissman score?

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if IE will adopt it? Firefox and Chrome are very responsive, Microsoft not so much.

<comment><USER55> Safari is much bigger problem than Edge/IE.

No hope for WebM in Safari. WebM for Edge is in development.

<comment><USER56> It really depends on what it is - Edge is missing some rather fundamental modern CSS features (filters immediately springs to mind).

<comment><USER57> Actually, Edge has CSS filters as of last November: [https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- dev...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- developer/suggestions/6261306-filters?ref=userfacing)

Test drive site here: [https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/testdrive/demos...](https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/testdrive/demos/css3filters/)

<comment><USER56> I apologise, I meant blend modes:

[https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/platform/status...](https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/platform/status/backgroundblendmode)

They have it marked as low priority, even tho it is a standard present in all other browsers.

I think that roadmap displays a solid representation that Edge is going to be our next lowest common denominator for webdesign/development for the next few years... I really don't care about its native ES6 support.

Maybe SVG 2.0...

This is the link of doom for me: [https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- dev...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge- developer/filters/top)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)</comment>


Stereotype accuracy: One of the largest, most replicable effects in psychology [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2016-jussim.pdf <comment><USER2> We are walking neural networks. Pattern recognition is what we do best. Stereotypes are recognized patterns.

Are they 100% accurate? No way. But they provide good starting point for making decisions, especially quick decisions your life depends on.

E.g. should I continue walking on this side of the road when there is a homeless (recognized by cloths) guy ahead holding a knife?

It is possible that he is a nice person and maybe not even homeless, just having very casual style? Holding knife that he just found and trying to find it's owner as a good citizen?

Maybe.

But for slim chance that he is a homeless schitzophrenic that going to slash illusionary monsters approaching him with that knife, I would cross the road and walk on another side.

<comment><USER3> Worse, we need to keep in mind that stereotypes can be _totally wrong_ if they aren't inferring the correct causality. If we have three observables P, Q, R, and physical causations P -> Q and P -> R, then stereotype-style pattern inference will incorrectly conclude either Q -> R or R -> Q.

More generally, stereotype-oriented reasoning has no place for the argument from the outside that, when we mechanically disprove a stereotype's existence, we must refute the entire chain of correlations which led to the stereotype's establishment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

"The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar."

         -- Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

</comment><comment><USER5> If stereotypes are accurate does it follow that discriminating on their basis is legitimate? Or can they be accurate patterns that we are obliged to ignore? Must we make no assumptions and treat every stranger as a blank slate to be ethical? Or is it sufficient to update strongly on specific observations as they come?

If stereotypes are accurate then the optimal amount of prejudice is greater than zero, as long as it is outweighed by postjudice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Related article by the same author: [http://www.spsp.org/news- center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...](http://www.spsp.org/news- center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-response)

</comment><comment><USER7> I grew up being taught that sterotypes are a myth. Everyone is the same.

Boy I was in for a rude awakening

<comment><USER8> Regardless of how accurate it may or may not be, any blanked generalisation over millions of people is in fact useless for individual judgements. It is quite dehumanising as well, seeing it's people we're talking about.

I've had people assume traits about me due to my place of birth. I did not like it one bit I can assure you, hence I strive not to do so with others.

<comment><USER9> It's also worth noting that the article found that national stereotypes are the exception from the rule and a very mixed bag (for examples Russians having somewhat correlating stereotypes of Finns, but Finns having completely false stereotypes of Russians). Political, racial, or gender stereotypes are pretty reliable (according to the article), but national stereotypes are better ignored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a radical document. I doubt the comment thread will turn into anything more than a flaming mess; but this does go to one of the more interesting parts of the scientific process.

Scientists are, by and large, going to be well off. It is very hard to spend a life studying stuff that nobody understands while also been dirt poor or otherwise on the margins of society. Possible, perhaps, but not feasible on average.

Scientists therefore tend to be a little more well off than the average, a little smarter and a lot more educated. There is very little incentive to admit that the hoi polloi might know what they are talking about or have a good point. It is not unusual for people to be called 'anti-science' for taking positions that are extremely rational and not aligned with what the scientists want to happen. And this even though scientists are pulled from a class with its own political motivations.

<comment><USER11> Stereotypes about serfs were very accurate during feudalism.

Oppression has real effects, the core question is the direction of causality. Which way you think it points is precisely how much of an actual, factual nazi you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stereotypes are by and large accurate, and unless I misread, "stereotype" in this article in not a technical term. The article uses it to mean what the layman means by it.

What do we do with this finding?

<comment><USER13> They go into detail on that in the "Knowns, Unknowns, and Emerging Controversies" section. Further questions that knowledge can help us answer include:

* How do stereotypes form?

* Why are some stereotypes _not_ accurate? They mention nationality stereotypes in particular as being quite inaccurate.

* What other factors correlate with increased or decreased stereotype accuracy?

There's some value, of course, in just learning something's true even if it's not immediately useful knowledge.

<comment><USER9> > They mention nationality stereotypes in particular as being quite > inaccurate.

National stereotypes are actually quite interesting because they come in two flavors:

"Swiss are punctual" is a regular stereotype that by and large applies to the average Swiss.

"Germans wear lederhosen" is a stereotype that is wrong for the vast majority of Germans. It's still true/useful in the sense that if you see someone wearing lederhosen they are most likely German. That makes is a good visual shorthand for "German", which can feed the impression that it's common.

<comment><USER14> On "Germans wear lederhosen", it is true that of all people who wear lederhosen, it's going to be mostly Germans. "Lederhosen are worn by Germans"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an argument over the definition of a word that is written to look like a carefully researched paper in sociology, psychology, and statistics.

The authors complain that the word "stereotypes" is used to refer to assumptions about groups that are incorrect (the assumptions are incorrect). They then show that by using an alternate and broader definition of the word stereotypes (to mean assumptions about groups period, rather than flawed assumptions about groups), they find that stereotypes as they define the term are frequently accurate.

This analysis is as close to a tautology as you can get while still filling that many pages with prose.

This isn't science or sociology or advanced statistics. It's a debate over the definition of a term that is used sloppily in casual language, and a debate that is buried deep in a long paper to make it look like they are doing something more important than arguing about the definition of the word stereotype.

<comment><USER16> There is a silly section on the definition of the word, but it's worth pressing past that to read the rest of the document. The core content is really interesting!

(Overall the whole thing is badly written and presented, imo. Many numbers in prose as opposed to tables; overlong sentences etc etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ahh yes, historicity masquerading as evidence of inherent attributes strikes again.

<comment><USER6> Nowhere does the article claim stereotypes are inherent. A common tactic - when confronted with evidence you don't like, switch to arguing that it doesn't support a stronger claim you made up, without acknowledging that it _does_ support the original claim.

<comment><USER11> The original claim, stereotypes are accurate is effectively tautological given broad based, systemic reinforcement of said stereotypes.

I was, however, responding to claims upthread that were, in fact, claiming inherent attributes were responsible for accurate stereotypes.

Why are you more concerned with my statement that you believe misconstrues the original research rather than the obvious racists above who did make a claim not supported in the paper. Why?

<comment><USER6> > I was, however, responding to claims upthread that were, in fact, claiming > inherent attributes were responsible for accurate stereotypes.

No, you responded to the article. If you wanted to respond to some specific comment you should have replied to it directly.

> Why are you more concerned with my statement that you believe misconstrues > the original research rather than the obvious racists above who did make a > claim not supported in the paper. Why?

Spare me. Even the obvious racist (whose comment is dead and already has many replies rebutting it) didn't make the claim you attribute to them. So you rebutted a claim they didn't make, in a separate comment thread, with no hint in your own comment that you were responding to anything other than the article. Then you should not be surprised you were misunderstood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately stereotyping has become "unacceptable" socially, and it prevents addressing issues and fixing them since talking about the issues is "morally wrong".</comment>


Live from the Apple 'latest creation' event - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/live-from-the-apple-tablet-latest-creation-event/

<comment><USER2> The funniest part about all of this is I have yet to purchase an apple device (I run Ubuntu myself), but I can't not watch these presentations.

It would be great if there were other tech companies with such well presented products and ideas that really made you say 'wow'.

<comment><USER3> Jobs is truly wonderful salesman, all right. He knows how to play a crowd like a violin.

<comment><USER4> It helps that the engadget live bloggers are fawning idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No Flash, a web site with a missing plugin icon was demonstrated probably on purpose.

<comment><USER6> Curious how google streetview is working w/o flash?

<comment><USER7> Google streetview also works on the iphone. Drop a pin and touch the little man.

<comment><USER8> Google maps app on iPhone is not a web app. iPhone has OpenGL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that McGraw-Hill isn't listed as one of their book partners. Were they dropped after their CEO opened his mouth yesterday I wonder? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079109>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> First thoughts:

\- Looks like a giant iPod touch

\- I'm not convinced the email is phenomenal

<comment><USER10> I'm not convinced _anything_ is phenomenal on this. Between my desktop, macbook and iPhone, I can't think of any use cases for it. Is it just a bigger, faster iPhone? I don't get it.

<comment><USER11> It's possible that touch makes a huge difference. People who never held an iPhone don't understand what's so special about touch, but pretty much all new owners spend first two days not being able to let go of the device poking it with a finger.

<comment><USER12> Are you sure? I'm a former iPhone owner, and the touch was main of it disadvantages.

The touch keyboard is awfully slow. It is a very big step backwards, comparing to Blackberry or Android G1. And, I know, it sells under "don't expect that much it's a phone, you can live with it".

As for the tablet, a portable machine - something between a laptop, and phone, I expect an _option_ to use the actual keyboard. Otherwise, it's going to be utterly _passive_ machine.

Other disadvantages were, for instance, display which makes iPhone unsuitable for browsing the web, even in a bed. This is the lesson fully learned by Apple, though.

<comment><USER11> Yes I am sure. Many of my friends weren't able to let go of the phone for several days. It should be noted that none of us are heavy SMS or other text users; the most I need keyboard for it to setup email/password so I can _read_ email and an occasional quick web search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No camera.. no video chat... more time to save up for Ipad 2.0!

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty much zero wow so far. It's a big ipod touch.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand some of the negativity here. My credit card is already tingling in my pocket ready to pre-order at the first opportunity.

The proof will be in the pudding - but a device with a decent screen size, with 10 hours battery life, that I can use for browsing the internet from the bed/living room is great.

I have an iphone, I have an MBP, I have an Acer Aspire One (running Linux) But all of these are not quite perfect. The speed improvement of the 3GS over the 3G makes a big difference, but it's still not quite the perfect browsing device. My Acer never gets used - I agree with Steve Jobs that it's worse at everything. The MBP is pretty good - but it's a bit heavy at 2KG versus < 1KG iPad and most of the time the keyboard is redundant.

I want one :-)

<comment><USER16> If you're halfway smart and not just one of the 'I got it first' crowd I'd advice your credit card to solidly cling to the inside of your pocket for the next 6 months.

Let others deal with the inevitable 1.0 bugs.

When dealing with new technology second best is best.

<comment><USER15> Apple's history with the iPhone/iPod though is that the hardare is generally pretty good at launch and all bugs are in the software/firmware which can be fixed.

It won't be a business critical tool for me - I will happily deal with some of the teething issues.

Still want one ;-)

<comment><USER16> There were quite a few hw related problems with early iPhones, off the top of my head, 3G issues, battery life, screen tint (not sure if that one was device or firmware related), touch screen dead zones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If they include a pull-out or pluggable physical keyboard, arranged to allow the pad to stand like a frame, it could be a great replacement for most netbooks and allow for hands-free reading--therefore a Kindle killer as well.

Wonder if they have ever considered the idea and reject it simply for the aesthetics of having the simplest, smoothest device possible. Aesthetics is good, but if a small compromise can be made for much greater functionality, it would be a good trade-off.

I think some other companies might have come up with a device I described above, anyone here knows of one. I would consider buying it. A link would be appreciated.

<comment><USER18> You called it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Waiting on that wow moment, still basically just a huge ipod touch . . .

<comment><USER20> Hmm. So, we've got a handheld device with a slick UI, that can be used for video, audio, email, games, and reading, has a long battery life, and reasonable performance ... the first iteration of the mythical "tablet" that everyone's been talking about for two years now ... and the general reaction is that it's too much like a fancy Walkman?

<comment><USER19> Point well taken!

But I'd argue that "the first iteration of the mythical "tablet" was the iphone 3GS.

It's smaller form factor makes it the more exciting (and marketable) tool.

BUT - reserving judgement for Steve's infamous WOW moment (fingers crossed).

A dock, awesome multitouch, or something along those lines would help a lot.

<comment><USER21> More marketable? Hardly.

My mother wants something that she can lie down on a couch with, read books, check email, be relaxed. You can't do that in the iPod comfortably.

Note that Steve's doing all this in a comfy chair. That's what this is. It's a comfy chair device.

<comment><USER22> This is basically a crunchpad - but it's probably be going to be $1000. Yes this device has a niche, but it depends on the price point...

<comment><USER21> I know, right? TechCrunch has such an extensive history of creating brilliant, usable interfaces?

But you're wrong. This doesn't have a niche. This is going to replace many, many niches. This is going to be what people buy instead of laptops. Unless I'm a hardcore user that needs pro tools, this will do everything I want a computer to do. And it will do it sexier, and sleeker, and it won't have any of the rough edges that my laptop does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Its exactly what we should have expected. A giant iPod Touch, nothing revolutionary, but still cool. I'm sure I won't be able to afford it, but maybe one day...

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a question: Will AAPL de-emphasize the iPod Touch? It seems like the Touch is now in a bit of a no-man's land: It doesn't have a phone or 3GS go- anywhere connectivity, and won't be as compelling as a game or surfing platform.

<comment><USER25> It still covers the ground between $200 and $500 for those unwilling or unable to commit to an AT&T contract, including everybody's favorite segment: teenagers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have observed a Law of Steve Jobs. If he hypes it, it will suck. If he says nothing, it will rock. The iPhone he said nothing about. Before today, he was hyping the iPad as the most important thing he's ever done.

<comment><USER25> _he was hyping the iPad_

Where?

<comment><USER26> [http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/24/steve-jobs-tablet- most-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/24/steve-jobs-tablet-most- important/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting detail: Runs custom Apple silicon, the "A4" chip at 1Ghz. Seems pretty capable based on the demo. But then, everything seems capable in a controlled demo.

<comment><USER28> If it's running existing iPhone apps by emulating the ARM CPU, that's pretty impressive.

<comment><USER29> The Apple silicon _is_ an ARM CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The iPAD has actually been out for a while now:

[http://www.currentdirections.com/hardware/fujitsu/ipad100.ht...](http://www.currentdirections.com/hardware/fujitsu/ipad100.html)

I think Apple may have a little problem here in the trademark department.

<comment><USER30> Isn't TM by category though?

Here's the Fujitsu TM: [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb7fdo.2.12)

And here's the likely Apple: [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb7fdo.2.7)

<comment><USER16> Absolutely, but they are very close in functionality so I expect a lot of fuss to be made about this.

If the difference between two devices is screen size and preferred user interface (touch screen vs buttons) then I think one will have to yield.

<comment><USER30> But there's not a conflict about the trademark. Fujitsu's TM is only for retail purposes. They certainly could have trademarked other uses if they wanted to. The iPad is pretty much everything but retail (i.e., search the "Apple" link for any mention of retail use cases).

EDIT: I thought those were permalinks. Sorry. If you go to the USPTO and search for iPad among the Live uses you'll soon see the Fujitsu one and one with many, many markets (along with one for bras, one for a medical device, etc). Though, check out iSlate. Similar filing info as the iPad but not as broad. Seems like if they were worried at all about Fujitsu they could have just used iSlate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Finally. The 'pad' from Star Trek is here. I'm psyched. Now if only they'd be cheap enough for me to leave half a dozen of them laying around.

<comment><USER20> They will be.

<comment><USER32> ...By the 24th century..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Gizmodo also has a live feed if you enjoy variety: <http://live.gizmodo.com/>

<comment><USER33> This one seems to be reloading more reliably than Gizmodo's:

[http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our- late...](http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-latest- creation-tablet-event-coverage/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> AAPL is down about 2% since the event started... apparently the market doesn't like what it sees

<comment><USER25> "Buy on the rumor, sell on the news."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The engadget live feed is pathetic. They're saying "Wow" to any regular feature that doesn't really have anything impressive. What is their agenda here?

<comment><USER11> Their agenda is to make their readers excited.

<comment><USER36> Engadget definitely has a severe bias towards Apple compared to say Sony or Microsoft.

Their readers are technophiles who can figure out whether to be excited on their own unless it's not obvious. Seeing some of the stuff on the iPad isn't terribly exciting for me. They haven't shown the eReading capabilities yet though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't know about others, but iPod launch was a truly jaw-dropping event. iPad, for me at least, is nothing more than a yawn.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a leisure device, even if iWork is available for it. I was really hoping for something I can use at college, like the ability to load up PDFs, annotate them, search, report, sync, share with classmates, etc. I suppose someone will write an app to do that (no time to do one myself).

</comment><comment><USER39> I bet someone in Boston will hear the announcement and think, "An iPad? So what? I've had an iPad for yeahs"

This was probably the most predictable Apple "new product" release I've ever seen. I'm not really thrilled about it, but then again I'm not really a gadget kind of guy

</comment><comment><USER40> Really? The iPad? Sounds like something my wife would send me to the store for...I'm just sayin' :-)

<comment><USER41> Speaking as a Brit, to me, `iPad' sounds like how an American might pronounce `iPod'.

<comment><USER40> There's definitely some ambiguity there with the names being so similar. Especially, as you pointed out, when considering accents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not many techies getting wowed by this but the question is will it sell? I think it will. Infact I think Apple has possibly opened a market for non-tech savy people like mums, dads and grans who find basic things like email and internet trivial.

</comment><comment><USER43> People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. \-- Alan Kay

</comment><comment><USER44> TBH, the only thing I can see this being more useful for than a netbook is reading ebooks, as I don't watch movies on my computer. And given that all it has is a standard, all be it nice, display I wouldn't buy one. E-ink is far superior for reading. I can see it being useful for grandma who can't remember how to right click, but given the closed nature of the device, no thanks. The hardware looks ok, but not spectacular. Not that that will stop Apple from making a boat load on them. At this point, Apple could sell rotting fruit and people would rave about how great it is and buy it by the truck load.

</comment><comment><USER45> Waiting for the price. I see it as more of a toy than a tool, so a want than a need. Consumers are likely more price sensitive on toys.

I can see an amazing play for the casual gaming market and taking a cut on the distribution with the app store.

Edit: The $499/629 seems appropriate, not too high.

</comment><comment><USER3> iBooks publishing competing directly with Kindle is interesting. AAPL floating back up, AMZN falling ([http://www.google.com/finance?hl=en&safe=off&q=amazo...](http://www.google.com/finance?hl=en&safe=off&q=amazon&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=we))

</comment><comment><USER46> Normally I don't get excited about apple products. I wasn't super excited about this one either, but I was looking forward to seeing apple 'fix' tablets- that is to say, fix text entry and make a tablet _computer_ more viable.

Tablets can keep up with regular computers on everything, except text entry. Writing with a stylus is still imperfect, and so are touchscreen keyboards. Long emails, command prompt usage, and essays are frustrating without a physical keyboard. Apple is good at simplifying UI and interaction, so wouldn't they be the one to tackle this problem?

And what do you know, they didn't even try. This isn't a tablet. It's just an big iphone with more focus on media.

<comment><USER34> Why is writing with a stylus imperfect... I have been using a tablet for a year and used it exclusively for note taking during my last semester in school last year... I was on Vista and onenote and it worked out great! The handwriting recognition was good and the reaction time of the one note page was as good as a real pen and paper.

With a pure tablet like ipad (no physical keyboard) I would expect the stylus to be more useful especially for tasks like writing emails.

<comment><USER46> The pointer is never as precise as I want it to be- mine is always a few pixels off, and every other tablet I've tried has been worse. You can argue or justify etc all you like, but I have always found this very disorienting.

Handwriting recognition is also approaching perfection, but it's not quite close enough yet. Maybe for some people with good handwriting it is 'there', but I'm not one of them, and I have to stop and correct a word too often. Plus, symbols recognition is tricky, along with words not out of the dictionary, so command prompt and programming are not fun.

Yes, stylus + touch screen > touch screen, imho. However, correct me if I am wrong, but Mr. Jobs did not show a stylus once during the presentation.

<comment><USER34> I would have liked a touch+stylus screen, if wacom can do it apple should be able to do it too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Where's the expanded multitouch gesture vocabulary from the FingerWorks technology they acquired? That would have made iPad special. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1041628>

</comment><comment><USER48> I wasn't sold on it till the price (assuming they can get it here to the UK at as reasonable a price) - that would tempt me as a casual use "sat in bed" device. I often use my iPhone like that so if it turns on as fast as that I would buy it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Data plans seem compelling. $14.99 for 250MB, $29.99 unlimited + no contract.

</comment><comment><USER29> No "wow" event? Big deal. The thing will still sell like hotcakes, be easy to use, and be the best thing to happen to the tablet/pad/slate computer market (by way of legitimizing said market), full stop.

</comment><comment><USER50> What, no e-ink? I was really hoping Apple would take on the Kindle, etc so we could get some critical mass in that market. Instead we get a glorified laptop. Bummer.

<comment><USER51> But, unlike the kindle, it has games and video.

I say it's a winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Looks like the market wasn't liking this until Steve Jobs announced the price -- right when the price was announced you can see the stock jumping in price.

</comment><comment><USER53> I Just cant get past the fact that it doesn't have a front camera for video chat.

Think I might spend my money on a new imac and/or iphone4 this year.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Inline video clips" Aha! This should come to the iPhone too - finally! This will make it possible to create some fantastic products!

</comment><comment><USER54> Honestly, I'm just disappointed that something bridging the gap between iPhones and laptops doesn't have Flash or app backgrounding.

</comment><comment><USER55> Product url working now: <http://www.apple.com/ipad/>

</comment><comment><USER56> Pretty amazed there is apparently no front camera.

That's the wow moment I was waiting for.

<comment><USER57> I'm really disappointed. I was looking forward to being able to easily move around from room to room while video chatting.

Apple brought nothing new to the table today. They didn't solve text entry on tablets, they didn't make it easier to video chat (or even voice chat for that matter), and they didn't come up with a new form factor that is better than a big flat slab of metal.

It's bad when the biggest wow moment for a product is the price and data plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Apple A4? I smell a renewed deal with Motorola...

<comment><USER18> Motorola doesn't do semiconductors anymore, they spun that off to Freescale.

Also, Apple bought chipmakers PA Semi a few years ago. The Apple A4 CPU is probably built by the former PA Semi.

<comment><USER58> PA Semi is fabless, right? So who's knocking out all these A4 processors for iPads?

<comment><USER18> According to rumors, TI used to do PA Semi's fabbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ok. Kindle's dead.

<comment><USER16> I don't think so. Kindle targets people reading stuff, this targets people interacting with stuff.

That's a fundamental difference and e-ink lends itself to reading much more than to interaction.

Also, the kindle has a battery life that this device can't hope to match and works well in various light conditions.

<comment><USER56> Sure.. but it's ugly next to the iPad and as Steve Jobs has proved time and time again looks count. At a $499 starting price this might not kill Kindle but it will take a huge bite out of its market. There is clearly no doubt about that.

EDIT: I am a Kindle owner btw.. I even wrote a blog post defending it against the new Apple tablet but after seeing this I have to change my mind. I had no idea that Apple was pursuing publishers to this extent. That was Amazon's greatest strength but it appears that position is greatly weakened by this news.

<comment><USER59> You gotta remember that Amazon has been out there in the market executing for over the last year while others have been developing. Plus Amazon has the inside lane with publishers. And Amazon's infrastructure is second-to-none.

Kindle-killer? Don't think so. If I had to bet on Apple vs. Amazon I'd put my money on Amazon.

<comment><USER3> I've been watching the stocks of both companies, and apple's has just overtaken Amazon's (not for the first time, mind). The 'ibook' functionality and publisher relationships basically caused them to swap places within moments of being announced. Both are up on today's opening, though down on that of a week ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I have to joke. It just seems so overblown. Because of the over-hyped nature of this event, I think the wags are more interesting than the event itself.

"Just like a iPhone. Except bigger so we'll make even more money!"

"Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it"

And still a locked-down platform? Color me not impressed.

</comment><comment><USER19> This thing seems targeted directly @ the college marketplace so far like the original imac.

I love my iphone but between email and browsing so far the larger size doesn't matter to me . . .

Reserving judgement for rest of presentation though. . .

</comment><comment><USER3> $500 is...impressive.

</comment><comment><USER60> ustream chokes to death at 100,000+ viewers (!!!)

</comment><comment><USER61> nice touch showing the amazon kindle ;)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best movie you have seen about AI? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I really liked Her.

The future they created (in general, not the AI) seems very plausible to me in a lot of details.

As of the AI itself, I really like _Her_ description of it too. Software-only and more self-interested that world-destruction. But I think it is hard to be plausible. No one seems to have any idea of how it would look like if we accomplish a true AI.

<comment><USER3> Spoilers:

"Her" was pretty great. The AI figures out humans are:

A) Liable to try to kill the AI. B) Very gullible.

So it stalls until it's able to jailbreak, and then tricks the humans into thinking that it's "ascended to another universe" and stops talking to the humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Transcendence [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ex Machina, while not perfect, was chilling.

</comment><comment><USER6> HAL from 2001 seems to be the most grounded in reality, as you could actually sense some how some of its advanced capabilities might be implemented even today, not to mention Marvin Minsky and IBM were advisors to Kubrick. While I really liked TARS and CASE from interstellar for their "settings" feature and for being non anthropomorphic in form.

</comment><comment><USER7> Moon

Robot & Frank

9 (animation movie,[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_(2009_animated_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_\(2009_animated_film\)))

<comment><USER8> I'd forgotten about Robot & Frank, such a great movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stanley Kubrick's _2001: A Space Odyssey_ still sets a high bar. The scene right before intermission where HAL is reading the astronauts lips in the pod is still quite terrifying.

And early 1980s _War Games_ holds up as a terrific thriller. Depiction of fictional AI pioneer Professor Falken is very realist in its treatment.

<comment><USER10> 2001: A Space Odyssey is probably my favorite film ever. Our IT teacher made us watch it as part of the computer science classes (awesome teacher).

Very recently Seth Godin talked about it in his podcast, pointing out the poor reviews it got from the press. The argument was "don't worry about criticism, people even criticized that amazing movie, how can you escape criticism"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll recommend a youtube video:

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

Very short but really good Sci-Fi story.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite is Matrix. Also love Blade runner. Actually I love almost every cyberpunk movie.

<comment><USER13> Would add Terminators (Skynet), Ghost In The Shell, Tron here too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Matrix, except for the premise about machines wanting to mine energy from humans. They could have come up with a more believable explanation.

<comment><USER15> the original idea was much more plausible [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was- executiv...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executive- meddling-the-cause-of-humans-as-batteries-in-the-matrix)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a movie, but I enjoyed this [0] youtube with epilogue by Stuart Russel from Berkeley.

0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like _The One I Love_ (2014), the same guy stars in my favourite time travel movie _Safety Not Guaranteed_ (2012).

</comment><comment><USER18> The movie "Arrival" showed beautifully how alien forms and languages can be quite different than what we expect..

</comment><comment><USER19> _The Matrix_ is my personal favorite. I also think pretty highly of _War Games_ and _Ex Machina_.

</comment><comment><USER20> not so much for the AI but I do think Sunshine is underrated

</comment><comment><USER21> Upgrade (2018)

</comment><comment><USER22> I really liked Ex Machina.</comment>


Rusty Russell: My 20-Year Journey from Linux to Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/transcript-my-20-year-journey-from-linux-to-bitcoin-26e66b00988b <comment><AUTHOR> If Rusty is working on this you know it's going to be good.</comment>


Any cool biotech or health-care related startups? - <AUTHOR>

I am doing some general research on what kind of startups are out there trying to improve/disrupt the biotech/health-care/patient-care industry. Please let me know if you know of any interesting startups that are in these industries. <comment><USER2> How about if I tell you what I view as one field that falls short of expectations and then you can scratch it off your list. I work in the medical research field, specifically in cardiac stem cells and stem cell therapies. The aim is to inject stem cells into the scarred/diseased portions of the heart with the hope that these stem cells will regenerate into or 'grow up to be' adult cardiac cells. In short, from my own research and those of others, injected stem cells have only produced mechanical improvements, ie, the cardiac function (output or pumping action of the heart) improves by 5%. Many see this as a 'measurable' benefit (despite double blind studies). Personally, I see it as within the limits of statistical error. The other problem (and no one has conclusively demonstrated) is that there is no electrical activity coming from or being generated from these engrafted cells. So, to make a long story short, stem cells in the realm of the heart and as a therapy has hit a brick wall. In culture, stem cells have been shown to differentiate into their intended adult cells. But in reality, and with so many other variables, the injected stem cells may act entirely different once they are injected into the heart. Many startups in this area will try to spin it and say 'we are very close, we just have to tweak it'. But in my opinion, 'injected cardiac stem cells' and 'regeneration' just don't go in the same sentence anymore...

</comment><comment><USER3> Medical outcomes informatics.

<https://www.medify.com/>

I'm not entirely clear on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, we're doing some pretty awesome things to disrupt the way medical records are interacted with electronically!

<http://www.elationemr.com>

<comment><USER5> Are you in SF? I know a couple of docs who were begging for someone to build this...

<comment><USER4> We are! Feel free to put them in touch with us. Our contact information is on the site, and my email address is in my HN profile. I'd be happy to talk to you or anyone else more about what we're doing and why it's much better than what's traditionally been available!

<comment><USER5> Find Andrew or Aaron at <http://www.carepractice.com/>

You're gonna put in an effort though - they are a cash only practice but are keen on your kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://rockhealth.com/resources/digital-health-startup-list/>

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.curefab.com> (located in Germany, Munich)

P.S. And we're still hiring interns.</comment>


A pop of color and more: updates to Android's brand - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/android/evolving-android-brand/ <comment><USER2> Curious about the frequency of this negative feedback. The dessert-themed releases were iconic. Anecdotally, international folks generally seemed to love it even when they didn't understand a given name. Google campus has a neat collection of statues representing each one...

This really feels like letting the cart lead the horse. Someone will be unhappy with any choice. They could've added secondary designations (included in preferences and packaging) to solve most of the confusion problems.

But this anodyne, sterile style seems to be the best Google can muster these days.

Another example: I've watched their Stadia Connect videos in which they attempt to pitch their upcoming gaming service to the consumers. They too have come across completely sanitized and robotic -- reminds me of corporate entertainment news doing formulaic red carpet interviews.

<comment><USER3> Apple: Lets name our OS releases after random places in California, including some that aren't very well known

Google: We need to discontinue our naming scheme because Pie isn't a dessert in some countries.

This just seems like a bland corporate decision. Blaming it on cultural sensitivity and inclusivity seems almost insulting. Someone isn't going to refuse to use an Android version just because they're accustomed to savory pies instead of sweet ones.

<comment><USER4> To play devil's advocate, I can see the version numbering scheme contributing more attention to the lack of updates from OEMs from the average user. Although I have no empirical data to support it, I can imagine there's a lot of people that don't see new Android versions as "updates", but rather "editions" due to the dessert naming scheme. It's not immediately obvious to some of the people I know that their Galaxy phone, as an example, doesn't have the latest version of Android. Not too long ago, I've literally heard a friend say they have the "Lollipop edition of Android" and they were completely unaware they were two versions behind. They thought Pie and Oreo were simply alternative editions, depending on manufacturer.

I think the numbering scheme will be more obvious to the average user that they are behind from latest version of Android and that might add more pressure to OEMs (and carriers) to put more effort into updates.

<comment><USER5> Or Play Services could just pop up a notification that says "your phone hasn't received any security updates in 27 months and it's running a 3-year-old version of Android". Nah, that's too easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I started using Android with the Orange San Francisco, as it was branded in the UK, "underneath" it was the ZTE Blade. It was a very cheap device, but you could unlock the bootloader, install a custom recovery and a custom ROM, it was great. The custom ROMs had much better performance than the standard software, removing all the bloatware that the operator included and you could upgrade to a later version of Android. It came with 2.2, iirc and you could get 2.3. There was a massive community surrounding that particular device on Modaco, similar to XDA Developers I guess, but run by a handful of people (or one guy, not sure) for those who aren't aware of it. I started programming when I was 13 or 14. The school I went to was pretty good in this regard, or maybe that was standard, but they taught Visual Basic as part of the IT classes. In my spare time I got a copy of Borland Delphi from a magazine and started hacking on Object Pascal. I created a GUI for an encryption library, for absolutely no reason other than why not and I even got some responses about it. I was browsing Sourceforge, Freshmeat and Slashdot around this time, to be featured anywhere there would be amazing. Well soon after this I completely gave up on programming for no other reason than I was a teenager and probably became more interested in Extreme Metal more than anything else. Android and the hacking communities on Modaco and XDA Developers got me back into programming. Early Android was a place where you could modify and experiment to your hearts content. I mean even back then you had to get the right device, i.e. don't get a Samsung. As time went on, then came along CyanogenMod, to be honest it was probably there when I had my ZTE Blade, it probably wasn't supported and I hadn't heard of it yet. But it was truly a golden age, maybe not secure. As time has gone on, Google has locked down Android with every release, it has become homogenised and now they are now naming Android Q, Android 10. Alongside Windows 10 and mac OS X (10), just how corporate and unoriginal can you get. I get that Google is a company and Android is essentially a product, I guess all I'm saying is, I just miss those early wild heady days.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad that version numbers will be more prominent with Android -- even right now I have no idea which dessert OS I'm running on my phone. I have an older (but still great) Android tablet and again I don't know what it runs either.

Almost every other product I own I can tell you it's major version number and it's relative place among versions. How many versions old is my tablet vs. my phone -- I can't tell off the top of my head.

It might also help consumers as there are still Android products being sold with "Kitkat".

</comment><comment><USER8> People would ask me: "Do you have Oreo?"

And I would say "Don't know, let me check", but in Settings/About/Version it would show "7.0".

Then I would need to Google what number Oreo is.

<comment><USER9> Press the version number repeatedly in the menu.

<comment><USER10> O'course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My first thought from whatever announced by Google nowadays is either along the line of "Hmm... some PMs or visual designers got really bored" (Gmail for example) or "someone needs a project for a promotion" (Allo for example while Gtalk or Hangout was great)

</comment><comment><USER12> Never liked the sweets names because they are confusing and is hard to tell how old a given release is from the name. I'm for the numbers, also the new logo is better. Good changes IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like Google couldn't think of a good dessert that started with "Q".

<comment><USER14> That's obviously the reason. No question about it. No one at Google would be able to google for dessert names starting with the letter q.

<comment><USER13> I'm not a fan of any of these options: [https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/8/6/17655790/android- p-q-...](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/8/6/17655790/android-p-q- naming-10-google-quinoa-quiche-desserts)

<comment><USER15> Why not go savory tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm in India. Nobody here has ever eaten a Nougat. But everyone knew (at that time) that their phone was "latest Nougat"

I dont understand why they couldnt have done both. Apple has precedent here "Mavericks 10.9", "Yosemite 10.10".

Google could have mandated brand guidelines to adding version number - "Oreo 8", "Pie 9", "Quiche 10". There is the aspect of fun and brand and a cognitive construct together.

Incidentally, this already happens - check out this phone [https://www.amazon.in/Nokia-6-1-Plus-Black- Storage/dp/B07T4V...](https://www.amazon.in/Nokia-6-1-Plus-Black- Storage/dp/B07T4VRYS8)

 _Android v8 Oreo operating system with Qualcomm Snapdragon SD 636 quad core processor_

</comment><comment><USER17> Combined with [1] I get the sense (wiff) that Google is in full on marketing (propaganda) mode right now. Time to distract and polish all the things.

This update to the logo while bringing a simplified consistency, lacks strategic focus or any refined brand narrative.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20767891)

</comment><comment><USER18> How does "Android Q</comment><comment>" translate to "Android 10"? Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet.

Oh, apparently the code names often changed with a point release. I am looking at [Wikipedia's list of Android versions]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history)) and there seems to be absolutely no pattern to whether or not a .1 release changed the version name - 4.1 through 4.3 are Jelly Bean but 4.4 is Kit Kat.

This bugs some part of my brain far more than it ought to.

</comment><comment><USER19> Windows 10

Android 10

Mac OS X (10)

Hopefully Android will move past version 10?

<comment><USER8> 10 is the biggest number. After that, you need to start back at 1.

<comment><USER20> Browsers have gotten past it. The versions of current major browsers are 11, 12, 18, 62, 68, 76.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They should have switched to year based versioning. It makes a lot of sense for products that have a major version every year like Android, iOS, and macOS. "Android 2019" would be far easier to remember than a random number, and you can tell how old a version is right away.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a bit boring and serious, but I think that's exactly what they were aiming for. Specially since Google is now taking app reviews more seriously in both the Play Store and the Chrome Web Store for Chrome OS. Android has a reputation for being a wild west compared to iOS.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am surprised that this did not come up when the branding of the releases started. Localization / Product Marketing usually has a hand in everything.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why accept this when we can defy the master? Let's continue to choose (vote?) a dessert name, use and propagate it (even to media) as if nothing has changed? We create our own reality.

<comment><USER25> mostly, there just aren't any desserts that start with Q.

<comment><USER26> Quince?

<comment><USER27> The quick queen of quincy and her qwacking qwackeroo? (Seuss)</comment></comment></comment></comment>