Sci-Hub and Alexandra Basic Information - <AUTHOR> https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2019/03/31/sci-hub-and-alexandra-basic-information/ <comment><USER2> It should also be noted that Elbakyan has suffered personally from her enormous contribution to science: she is currently living in fear of extradition to the United States, where scientific publishers have obtained several multi-million dollar judgments against her [Wikipedia].

<comment><USER3> The Wikipedia page says says she has had default judgments entered against her in the United States for _civil_ offenses. If I am not mistaken extradition requires _criminal_ offenses, and usually only a limited number of offenses are deemed serious enough to be "extraditable". It also requires an extradition treaty. Does her country of residence have an extradition treaty with the United States?

A Nature article some years ago mentioned she has no assets in the United States. The plaintiffs are therefore unlikely to ever collect any of the $15 million in damages.

<comment><USER4> Even if she can't be extradited, she definitely cannot travel to the US, which is a shame considering that most of what is happening in the digital space in general is still there.

<comment><USER5> A lot of others probably would rather _not_ visit the US even if they could, given the current political climate and the whole security theater surrounding the borders.

<comment><USER6> _raises hand_

I'd love to visit the US sometime, but right now I'd rather not go there for the reasons you mentioned. The only exception would be if my job required it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another thing Sci-Hub gets right is UX: I have online access to many papers through my uni, but it takes like 7 clicks, 4 redirects, and a minute of my time to get there -- when the system works at its best! Through Sci-Hub, it reliably takes one click and 5 seconds. Of course that's what I'm going to use.

<comment><USER8> Haha yeah. I'm also a researcher at a big uni and I do have legit access to every relevant journal for me. If I need a new paper I do a google scholar search first, and if it doesn't say "pdf" but instead wants me to jump through hoops to log in and download then I just hit my bookmarklet to get it from scihub.

<comment><USER9> Same here. I even use SciHub to get my own papers. It's way easier to get them through SciHub then browsing through old file/folders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elbakyan is a hero, but it seems like if anything happens to her sci-hub will die. Her writings in the past appear to make her seem she is at least a little anti-social, so I don't hold out much hope of her creating a team.

As others have said, she has truly built a Library of Alexandria.

<comment><USER3> "... but it seems like if anything happens to her sci-hub will die."

This article in Science suggests otherwise:

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading- pira...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated- papers-everyone)

"Even if arrested, Elbakyan says Sci-Hub will not go dark. She has failsafes to keep it up and running, and user donations now cover the cost of Sci-Hub's servers. She also notes that the entire collection of 50 million papers has been copied by others many times already. "[The papers] do not need to be downloaded again from universities.""

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing to think of this as mass civil disobedience across nations. And unlike pirating movies, professionals in the field are tacitly supporting it, if not outright advocating for it.

<comment><USER12> How can we not?

A new paper in my field recently came out regarding how to reduce patient reliance on a particular med, with possibly better results for the patient. The paper had data to back this up.

I couldn't get it through my institutional subscription. I got it in 5 minutes through sci-hub.

Why a tax-paying patient shouldn't get up to date care from their tax paying physician through data gathered and analyzed via their tax dollars is baffling.

<comment><USER13> I'm surprised it took you five minutes. I usually see papers appear in five seconds. The site is shockingly fast. Just append the DOI of the paper to the domain and presto!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the ongoing saga of a brilliant female kicking a big dent in the universe -- all by herself! Predictions of the demise of sci-hub are greatly exaggerated. How do we know what steps she has taken to make sure sci-hub is not totally dependent on her? Let's assume the best outcome, instead of the worst.

<comment><USER15> Better to assume the worst, so that we can help her and retain access should it come to it. E.g. better that people with the capability assume the worst and make backups now than assume the best and we don't have a copy later.

<comment><USER16> Seed a torrent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Access to medical research articles through Sci-Hub has saved the lives of at least two people whom I know.

Well done, Ms. Elbakyan.

<comment><USER18> I would love to hear specifics if you can share them.

Personally, I've used articles obtained through Sci-Hub to guide my approach to managing my own rare health condition. I wouldn't say it saved my life, but I've found the information very useful in figuring out the relative merits of new treatment options.

In particular, there is one specialty journal that's only available by institutional subscription at a cost of more than $2,000 per year. The publisher was particularly unhelpful in trying to find a way to enable access for patients. So despite trying to do the right thing, I just go to Sci-Hub to get this info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those of us datahoarders, how large is sci hub? Surely it compresses extremely well considering it's all human readable text? I would love to mirror it via a torrent or on ipfs and whatnot, and I have a gigabit connection with roughly 80TB of space I can throw at this.

<comment><USER20> It's mostly composed of PDFs actually. Judging from my own library the average publication is about 2 MB, and I believe about 1e8 publications are currently indexed, so it's on the order of hundreds of TB.

<comment><USER21> Either a) those pdfs contain images or other graphics that don't compress easily or b) the text is not compressed.

<comment><USER15> Or c) The text is terribly compressed. Probably a lot of the "text" is also a scan of text as well.

Could be an interesting project to try and make a sci-hub optimized compression system.

<comment><USER22> DejaVu format

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sci-hub is truly a modern-day Library of Alexandra. I hope the modern day counterparts of Julius Caesar fail.

<comment><USER24> We used to say the same thing about Gigapedia (later library.nu) and had the same sentiment about Smiley (the admin).

And similarly about Grooveshark.

The truth is that, these types of things always come to an end. It is of utmost importance and urgency for the Sci-hub infrastructure to be made distributed and resilient.

This make me thing, could it be possible to set up a Smart Contract in some blockchain to achieve a similar thing? (I understand that this works by using user/passwords provided by some people, so it may not be feasible given the easiness to look at the information). That way the system will be very resilient given the nature of blockchain.

Nevertheless, I think I give more merit to Library Genesis. Even though the concept of Sci-Hub is very good, it is mainly a proxy... whereas Library Genesis actually is saving human knowledge.

<comment><USER25> what.cd is a similar example in the music department.

<comment><USER26> what.cd was private and invite only though with strict seeding policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > There a people though, who create mirrors of Sci-Hub articles database. I > run a few mirrors and other mirrors are run independently, and Sci-Hub also > uses accounts to access library resources provided by others.

I haven't found anything about setting up a mirror. Is there a link somewhere explaining how?

<comment><USER28> Library Genesis provides torrents [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/repository_torrent/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/repository_torrent/) and usenet [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/repository_nzb/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/repository_nzb/) downloads of their full database. They also give away the source code for their user interface [http://libgen.io/libgen/code/](http://libgen.io/libgen/code/) Setting a mirror is trivial if you have a server with sufficient disk space and basic Unix admin skills

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is Alexandra's bio in her own words. [https://sci- hub.tw/alexandra](https://sci-hub.tw/alexandra)

tl;tr/ cannot read Russian

The west treated Alexandra badly. Russia will never give up Alexandra. Alexandra is a true hero. Alexandra, alone, has done more for opening up the science more than all Open Access activists combined.

<comment><USER30> >Alexandra, alone, has done more for opening up the science more than all Open Access activists combined.

This is the difference between reformist and revolutionaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Sci-Hub started by accident, there was no Big Plan behind it. After a couple of months, users asked to add some option to donate and help the project." These are the signs of a really great project. Much needed.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've lost count of how many articles I've been paywalled from accessing but ended up getting through sci-hub.

I have gotten so much utility from it that I have donated a number of times.

Frustratingly there's still certain papers that I've failed to find. Random example: [http://jddonline.com/articles/dermatology/S1545961612P0742X/...](http://jddonline.com/articles/dermatology/S1545961612P0742X/1). I even tried paying for access to this journal and weirdly none of my credit cards worked. So, it's not always even an issue of "oh you're just not willing to spend money".

It is shocking to me how much quality research is gated behind paywalls and thus hardly ever sees the light of day. The scientific ideals (or perhaps enlightenment ideals?) of free distribution of knowledge and community collaboration are completely forgotten. Academic science has been made a complete mockery.

/end rambling semi incoherent rant

<comment><USER33> You can always try asking on Twitter with the hashtag "#icanhazpdf" \- it's worked for me: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICanHazPDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICanHazPDF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I regard Alexandra as one of the prolific geniuses of our time and a hero that world needs right now.

Have benefitted immensely from Sci-Hub. I wanna contribute to their cause but currently they only accept bitcoins.

I am from India. Does anyone know how else can I contribute? Online bank transfer is my preferred route. Also, I don't have an account on PayPal.

<comment><USER35> How is bitcoin not an option for you? You can buy it with virtually every possible payment method online that I know of, and if you prefer offline, you can buy it in the streets as well.

If you can find a way to get some euros on my bank or PayPal, I'd be happy to send you coins.

<comment><USER34> When bitcoin was a thing last year, there was crackdown by financial regulators in India on many bitcoin users.

I admit I don't understand the full technicalities but it's better to err on the side of caution and stay away from it.

Hence, direct bank online transfer.

<comment><USER35> Why though? If they see BTC as goods then it's the same as buying a piano; if it's currency then it's the same as buying euros. Is either of those things illegal in India?

Also I assume this would be a small amount, not something that would have a tax impact regardless of whether it's a good or currency.

<comment><USER34> As valid as your arguments are, I wouldn't like to mess with India's version of Internal Revenue Service, no sir :)

They have already outlawed bitcoin publicly. That's their official stand.

<comment><USER35> Alright, thanks for sharing your situation! (hope that's the right word)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/why-sci-hub- is-...](https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/why-sci-hub-is-illegal- and-what-you-can-do-about-it/)

 _When Sci-Hub became known, I thought that it will provide a good case against copyright law. When the law prevents science to develop, that law must be repealed._

 _Nothing of that happened. Instead, Sci-Hub was quickly banished as an 'illegal'_

</comment><comment><USER37> Great article! She is indeed a hero (or heroine, if you prefer).

</comment><comment><USER38> sci-hub has made a meaningful difference to my life. I hope Elbakyan survives her trevails.

<comment><USER39> Same, and few days ago my native country blocked the website and mirrors. Hopefully I'm living somewhere else now, but still, it makes me angry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I truly hope she is able to find others she can work with in order to maintain and build Sci-Hub. She is an inspiration and a great example to those of us that believe in the ideals of transparency, freedom, and the pursuit of truth through science.

</comment><comment><USER41> a must for your bookmarks toolbar:

        javascript:window.location='http://sci-hub.tw/'+window.location

</comment><comment><USER42> This is an excellent resource to understand sci-hub's genesis.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish billionaire do-gooders like Gates or Buffet buy Elsevier etc. set the knowledge free and restructure how they do business. Sadly this would cost a fortune. RELX, the owner of Elsevier has a market cap of $42 billion. Can a 51% owner a company torpedo its business model without being sued by the other 49%?

<comment><USER43> I think evaluating Gates as a do-gooder is somewhat inaccurate. His charitable actions all seem to align to increase his stock portfolio. And not only would open-sourcing scientific knowledge not likely help his stock portfolio, but it is antithetical to everything he has ever done in the software world.

What really needs to be done is more and more editors and editorial boards of Elsevier-owned journals revolting, as happened with Lingua, the prominent linguistics journal, where the entire editorial board resigned and started the Open Access journal Glossa. (Lingua lingers on as a 'zombie journal', filled with articles of very dubious quality. But everyone in the field knows this.)

<comment><USER44> What really needs to be done is the government needs to require all research that is funded at all with tax payer money (which is the vast majority of research) must be open access to all

<comment><USER45> They already do.

Here are links to the major US funding agency's policies.

NIH Public Access Policy: [https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm](https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm)

NSF: [https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/](https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/public_access/)

DOE: [https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Publ...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/08/f18/DOE_Public_Access%20Plan_FINAL.pdf)

DoD: [https://discover.dtic.mil/products- services/](https://discover.dtic.mil/products-services/)

PubMedCentral ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/)) hosts full-text for biomedical journals that don't automatically provide un- paywalled access to covered articles, as does DTIC. The one caveat is that there is an optional one year embargo for journals that aren't open access.

You can often find PDFs on researchers' home pages, and preprints are increasingly common too.

<comment><USER46> Wait, on at least one axis, the DoD is less evil than the Elsevier? Oh, how the tables turn...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What percent of Sci-Hub is research papers or other publicly funded material, and what percent is more general, not publicly funded material, such as articles from popular science magazines like "Scientific American"?

<comment><USER43> Certainly what people go on Sci-Hub to get are research papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think one of the best way to shield her against threats would be to host thousands of sci-hub mirrors. How hard can this be done considering the size of the whole site?

</comment><comment><USER49> How many terabytes is Sci-Hub today?

<comment><USER50> ~70TB

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Where does sci-hub actually get the papers from in the first place?

<comment> Liber-Abaci It's a proxy service that uses university credentials for access direct from the publisher(s) [https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/some-facts- on-s...](https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/some-facts-on-sci-hub- that-wikipedia-gets-wrong/)

I would assume graduate students around the world pass them to her to use and she just starts up a VPN to imitate the location of the university. That said it's not like these publishers are losing money, universities are still paying for the access like they always were. Plebs such as myself could always get a free copy of some paper by requesting a printout from the campus library just now I do it from my phone instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > I was interested in politics and always supported communism.

I wonder if this simple statement will change people's views on the project.

<comment><USER53> Maybe for some but this explains her motivation.

Communism as a pure ideology is just as appealing to some as pure Libertarianism is to some others.

Arguably this is better motivation than that of one Kim Dotcom and on par with Aaron Schwartz.

As long as she is not actively involved in politics she is worthy of support.

<comment><USER54> > As long as she is not actively involved in politics she is worthy of > support.

One of the most effective ways of changing the broken system would be for her to get involved in politics. Yes, she's a communist, the current political spectrum around the world is almost wholly dominated by capitalists, (yes, even in China).

Having a few high-profile communists would certainly do no harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> There is another difference with Aaron Swartz: I'm not sure if Aaron would block access for a whole country over petty squabbles. [1] TL;DR: a few grateful scientists named a newly discovered bug in her honour, she took offence and banned Russian IP's as a form of collective punishment.

I find the whole story deeply fascinating, because it's a rare case when a person of very questionable moral values (I believe most people here would find her behaviour and views reprehensible) does unequivocal good to the society. It's so easy to fall into the trap of black-and-white hero narrative, but sometimes reality is just more gray and weird.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@alexandraborissova/sci-hub-banned-in- rus...](https://medium.com/@alexandraborissova/sci-hub-banned-in-russia-by- its-founder-citing-bulling-by-liberal-81feca464863)

<comment><USER44> >>>because it's a rare case when a person of very questionable moral values (I believe most people here would find her behaviour and views reprehensible)

What behaviour? Blocking Russian IP's or releasing data to all?

I find the blocking of Russian IP's to be petty, which I believe she backed down from but then had the ISP in Russia start banning the site.

I dont think it raised to "reprehensible"

Now if you mean ignoring Copyright law, and releasing copyrighted works to the world, I do not find that in anyway reprehensible, I am universally anti- copyright and do not believe it should exist at all

<comment><USER56> Not a tenable position unless you qualify it. It amounts to saying here should be no protection for those whose work output just happens to consist of copyable material?

<comment><USER57> It's not a position I agree with, but I think it is tenable. A lit of good could come from allowing everything to be freely copied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Thank you Kazakh government for causing Sci-Hub to exist. All we need to do is get anonymous ecash added and we'll have a perfect information market.</comment>


U.S. Treasury upgrades website to better track federal spending data - <AUTHOR> https://beta.usaspending.gov <comment><AUTHOR> Good to see this happening. I wonder how Steve Ballmer's USA Facts [1] initiative will fit in to a world where this exists. USA Facts covers state and local governments which Treasury obviously does not. I think just exposing the lack of consolidated & easy access to basic data is worth the effort that Steve put into it. Its clearly working.

[1] [https://usafacts.org/](https://usafacts.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: Whats so special about intercom.io - <AUTHOR>

I see a lot of startups using it, but compared to something like zendesk, it much, much more expensive. <comment><USER2> Intercom is (1) user profiles and event tracking like a MixPanel Lite, (2) live chat, (3) in-app and e-mail drip and segmented messaging, (4) customer feedback/polling, and (5) support/help desk.

Zendesk is a support/help desk product that recently acquired a chat company.

They're not alternatives unless you're only shopping for a help desk solution. Intercom does more, and the additional services they provide are easily tied to customer acquisition and engagement, which makes them valuable and easy to justify spending on.</comment>


Why the Future of Software and Apps Is Serverless (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-and-apps-is-serverless/ <comment><USER2> Some days ago in HN there was a post about how expensive and slow was serverless. Maybe in a long distant future…</comment>


Google Nexus 4 goes on sale in US/Canada - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_4_8GB?id=nexus_4_8gb

<comment><USER2> Cart Updated: The following items have been removed from your cart because they are currently unavailable. Nexus 4 (8GB) - Out of Stock

Also, I can't believe that _Google_ of all people, can't run a store that can handle load. Instead, it's server errors and mysterious blank pages and "Sorry, a problem happened" pages. Disgusting.

<comment><USER3> I really don't think they care about this. This is the third time I have had this kind of experience with Google. Google IO 2011 and 2012 had the same sort of experience.

I have had a phone in my shopping cart at least 5 times, only to have it disappear. This is unacceptable.

<comment><USER4> > This is unacceptable.

Obviously not, since you keep trying to buy it (I'm not being glib; I mean this as a serious observation). As long as people keep trying to make them take their money, they have little incentive to fix it (but not _no_ incentive, since it does damage the brand).

It certainly doesn't reflect well on them, though.

<comment><USER3> Who cares about the phone? I will be mildly upset for a few days about their lack of care in these matters, but I will move on.

It is unacceptable because its Google, and the image that they want to convey as a trusted partner in financial transactions. Do they really think that I (or anybody else) should trust a company that exhibits this kind of attitude towards transactions with handling my mobile wallet? Not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The website seems to be overloaded, it keeps throwing errors whenever I try to place my order.

[Edit] tried many times, further I went was the Visa processing thing which never went thru as the devices ran out of stock.

I understand the limited stocks, but I find it peculiar that Google can't handle the load on the Play Store.

<comment><USER6> I managed to make it all the way through on my third try. My first try got pretty close to the end before dying. I'm fairly sure that I didn't order two phones, but it's certainly possible that I did. I imagine it will be pretty easy to unload if that happened...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Finally got one! But what a terrible experience.

Given the resources and experience available to Google, the obviously high demand for a product such as this on launch day, and the absurd number of errors and issues at almost every step along the way, it's hard not to consider the possibility that Google is doing this on purpose. I mean really -- a caching issue that causes the phone to show as sold out every so many refreshes? Then again, all they'd really be accomplishing is making the "Play Store" look dumb and unusable.

Anyway, I digress. Here are some tips to getting through:

1) If you haven't ordered something via Google Wallet before, go here (<https://wallet.google.com/manage>) to fill out your payment info and billing address in advance. It's much faster and more reliable to do it here than to try to do it in your shopping cart while buying the phone.

2) Once the phone is in your shopping cart, just repeatedly click "Proceed" every second or two, even if the button is gray. Eventually you will get a popup that will let you order.

3) It's normal for the phone to have disappeared from your shopping cart if. Just go back and add it again. It's also normal for the phone to show as sold out. Just refresh until it says you can buy it again.

<comment><USER8> ^ Just followed this. It worked. Seems like they are batching the stock avail. Got the 8GB at 9:45 PST Good luck!

EDIT: server interacting popups are the root of all evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's like registering for Google I/O - we would all LOVE to throw hundreds of dollars at Google for one of their products, but for whatever reason, we can't.

</comment><comment><USER10> For all that is holy, why can't Google show to folks outside US/Canada at least some specs and promo pages of the device? I'm not even asking for ability to put a preorder, but why are we left only with the silent void with literally nothing but "Sorry! Devices on Google Play is not available in your country yet"? What a brilliant way to disappoint people and divert thousands of potential customers away.

<comment><USER11> Considering the troubles they've been having keeping the thing in stock, I doubt "diverting potential customers away" is really a huge concern for them.

The specs and promo page are available at google.com/nexus. The play store really doesn't have anything other than a buy button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 11:00 CT

The 8 GB version now shows availability and the 16 GB version does not. It is not clear what is happening with regards to site/infrastructure issues or sold out status of the 16 GB version.

11:05 CT

The 16 GB version briefly showed itself as available. I successfully added it to my cart. But, I immediately received an error when trying to check out.

11:10 CT

Both the 8 GB and the 16 GB are not showing availability.

12:06 CT

Because I kept seeing them become available on and off over the past hour, I had a feeling it was an infrastructure problem. Every 5 or 10 minutes, I logged out, logged in, saw that they became available, added them to my cart, tried to check out and received an error. That led me to believe that they're just having issues.

I was able to successfully order both the 8 GB and the 16 GB at 11:57 CT and 12:04 CT respectively.

Clearly, the cries of "SOLD OUT" being heard across the web are incorrect.

<comment><USER13> It went live at 10:30 CT

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had to keep hitting the "Proceed" button dozens of times in order for it to succeed. Finally got the Google Checkout popup to work properly and completed the order.

If you see it being marked as sold out, refresh or clear cookies. Apparently it's a caching issue.

Edit 12:10pm ET: caching doesn't seem to make a difference; may actually be sold out now. Surprised at (a) high demand and/or low inventory, (b) that Google struggled to keep the site responsive.

<comment><USER15> I'm not surprised the site wasn't responsive, just look at Google IO ticket sales for the last two years. It's kind of amazing that an internet giant like Google can't figure this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The bumper case is also now showing "Coming soon". [https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_4_Bumper...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_4_Bumper_Black?id=nexus_4_bumper_black&feature=accessories#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDExMSwiZGV2aWNlLW5leHVzXzRfYnVtcGVyX2JsYWNrIl0).

I wonder if they took the merchandise down while they work on the load issues.

<comment><USER17> I also experienced a failure of Google Wallet on another purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had it in my shopping cart after multiple errors on the site, only to have it disappear, and now its unavailable again. Seriously Google?

If Google expects people to funnel their financial transactions through them, they have to get this kind of thing right. This is the third time they have proven unfit to handle this kind of rush.

</comment><comment><USER18> So. Any word on how many were available, and when they'll get more in stock? A lot of people are pretty disappointed right now. I was able to get it in cart only twice out of many attempts, and never was able to proceed to the next step.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apparently it is still not sold out.

I had an order for a 16GB go through and got a receipt in my email just now. @ 2:10PMEST.

I refreshed the page repeatedly until the string "Add to Cart" was found in place of "Notify". When this happened my browser window popped up and I got a notification from OS X notification center saying it was time to fill out my order. It worked flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER20> My fiance and I had to tag team the site to finally get an 8GB after the 16GBs ran out. Got a confirmation number and receipt, but haven't received the confirmation email yet.

It's like trying to get a bag o crap, but with a phone!(tm)

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anybody confirm if the 16GB was ever available?

I see 8GB available but not 16GB.

<comment><USER22> It was available and I think I managed to get one. I have yet to receive an email confirmation, but it shows up in my list of past purchases from Play. I bought it around 8:40 PST.

<comment><USER23> Same for me. My order is timestamped at 8:50 PST.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a temp charge on my credit card, but nothing in Google Wallet, and I never managed to see the confirmation page. Crossing my fingers.

EDIT: about 20 minutes later it showed up in Google Wallet as pending. There is hope!

</comment><comment><USER25> Soldout.

Added it to my cart, kept trying to proceed with the order but it kept saying there was an error (in their ajaxy way) until it showed an empty cart and on the product's page the "in stock" changed to "coming soon".

</comment><comment><USER26> I managed to order one, after struggling with the checkout process for around 10 minutes @ 11:50 ET. I think I have seen at least three different types of errors, on the cart as well as during the payment stage.

<comment><USER17> I ran into a problem trying to get it to take my shipping address, then it removed them from my cart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Had about 7 failures after hitting the 'Buy' button. Hopefully more 16GB are available soon.

I can't imagine the 8GB would sell out, with only 5.5GB of usable space that's pretty small for a phone today.

<comment><USER25> It did sell out in other countries...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder when will the stock be available again? And will it be a much larger stock? I'm not rushing to buy, but I hope to have some order this week.

</comment><comment><USER29> Mine still says "Coming Soon".

At one point, I was able to get it into my cart. Then I had 2. Then I had none. Great experience /s.

</comment><comment><USER30> What a terrible experience, especially from Google.

Added the phone to my shopping cart a few times and it disappeared. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER6> It appears that I managed to order two of them. Anybody in or near Ottawa, Canada want an 8GB model?

Edit: sold.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yeah, It flaked out on me too. I don't think I got one.Never did receive an email about it going on sale.

</comment><comment><USER32> I got charged, but I haven't seen any confirmation in my orders or email that it worked.

<comment><USER6> The last page should say "Thank you. Your order has been placed, and you will receive an email shortly with the details of your purchase."

To the right is a link that says "Order Status". Right click on that to open in a new tab. That will contain your order number, which should be enough for you to resolve any problems with your order.

I haven't received my email yet, almost 15 minutes after ordering, but I will be saving a copy of that order status page...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They are sold out of both the 8 and 16GB according to the customer service number.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wonder when the next batch will be available.

</comment><comment><USER33> 9:11 AM PST - 8GB sold out.

</comment><comment><USER34> why aren't they taking pre-orders and/or back-orders?

<comment><USER35> It's too hard to figure out. Nobody at Google can do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is so exciting as a Android user and such a repeated slap in the face as an early adopter of Wallet.</comment>


Show HN: VidGrid – A large-screen news channel viewer with simple audio control - <AUTHOR> https://vidgrid.tk.gg <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

When I was at university (early 2010s) I worked a lot on student media, and got really into what the future of news would look like. Around the same time Microsoft backed a company called LiveStation which has since closed down, but had a nice feature that allowed you to open multiple streams from different news channels at the same time.

When I went into professional media, and the offices of The Times, the BBC, The Guardian and the like, this format is common on large screens in the central newsgathering areas: you need to see several feeds at once. But there wasn't a system that I know of that you can have on your workstation, especially one that allows you to switch your audio feed as simply as a click.

So I built VidGrid over the last couple of weekends to make this experience accessible to all my colleagues around the world working at home through these challenging circumstances.

It gives you easy access to news channels that offer a free open-access playlist file (or you can paste your own). Those that are protected (sensibly) by CORs or some other DRM technology it obviously can't load.

It's built in React with a heavy dependency on the fantastic multi-source React-Player, and it's my first 'significant' (in my terms) project, though I've spent a lot more time in the last few weeks coding than I did in the office.

I hope it can be of use to some of you, or if any of you have colleagues or friends in newsrooms you can pass it on.

Thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great job! The professional term is multiview(er), you might be better off in search results etc. by including that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I had no idea what I was searching for to try and find professional alternatives, so this is helpful :)</comment></comment>


US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars <comment><USER2> Will somebody please forward this to the ACTA negotiators?

<comment><USER3> > Will somebody please forward this to the ACTA negotiators?

What makes you think that they haven't known the numbers for years?

More to the point, what makes you think that telling them the numbers will change their position?

<comment><USER4> Telling them we know the numbers (or lack of them, really), too, might change it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the end of the article it says

the GAO also noted that numerous experts told it that "there were positive effects [from piracy on the economy] and they should be assessed as well."

But it doesn't state any. Does anyone know what these positive effects might be?

<comment><USER6> As noted above, if the pirated software does not represent a lost sale but is used for something that is a net benefit to the economy, it's a positive effect. And even if it does represent a lost sale, it still might be positive if revenue is redirected from the movie industry and instead to something that has a higher multiplier value like some more labor-intensive thing.

Clearly the assumption that it's all loss is ludicrous, the people who pirate software or whatever probably are mostly in segment of society that already use all their disposable income. If they couldn't pirate, they would either forego it or redirect their spending from something else. Given that the net savings rate of the US population, at least, is negative, it's not like people are hoarding cash while pirating stuff...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I were the G.A.O., I'd be calculating income from taxing the "intellectual property" that the state protects.

(personally, I'd prefer settling numbers on this take, which does not require money changing hands: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1252512> )

</comment><comment><USER8> Assuming that each download is a spoiled sale is utterly wrong.

People download stuff from net because it cost them nothing, they have good connectivity and the process runs in background. People share stuff because it cost them nothing.

Sharing works only on flat-rate tariffs. That is the starting point.

<comment><USER9> _Assuming that each download is a spoiled sale is utterly wrong._

It also brings up interesting questions like, "What other purchases would they have forgone?"

<comment><USER10> That point always bothered me about the whole "our economy loses X billions because of piracy". If people would have purchased everything they pirated, then some industries would have gained those X billions, but the flipside to that is that other industries would lose the same amount of money. So you would create Y million jobs in the entertainment industry, but you'd lose Y million jobs in other industries. Is that an acceptable trade? Probably not.

<comment><USER11> It's an interesting place to dig though.

When someone pirates something he may otherwise have paid for, it isn't necessarily a net loss in production. Imagine that one person pirates software A, which he would have bought and spends the money on software B, which he would not have bought. Now imagine another person does the reverse.

Same amount of money goes into these two software companies, twice as "much" software comes out. There is a consumption benefit (that goes to the pirates). If the pirates use that software to create more wealth, that is benefit leaking back out into the rest of the economy.

Because of the way size is usually calculated (like volunteer work), we wouldn't count that pirate as having gained anything. That is probably not the right way of looking at things. Even if it is, it is very hard to say that anything "cost the economy X.'</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get good at regexes? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't really understand the question. Writing regexes seems fairly straight- forward to me, as in I just do the first thing I think of most of the time.

This makes me think I'm in the 'not good at regexes' group. The most advanced things I use are multiline, non-capturing, non-greedy modifiers and back- references in the pattern or replacement. If it goes beyond that I parse.

Anyone mind posting some more advanced usages that come up?

</comment><comment><USER3> Play regex golf: [https://alf.nu/RegexGolf](https://alf.nu/RegexGolf)

Since many people are not good at them, whenever I use a regex in code, I add a comment with at least one example of the text that is to be matched, and note what the regex is also attempting to avoid. This is also a learning activity.

There is also the "Mastering Regular Expressions" book.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to work at a Perl shop. The language makes it so easy to use regexes that you risk abusing them, but nevertheless that exposure has helped me become quite proficient with regexes. I use Perl one liners whenever I need to deal with text data on the command line, so that keeps me exposed to regexes.</comment>


List of cognitive biases - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases <comment><USER2> If humans debuggued their brains, the world would be saved.

This needs more political awareness.</comment>


Ask HN: Language/framework pros and cons for writing a web server nowadays? - <AUTHOR> I'm not looking for "best," but I would like to hear what you guys would consider for choosing between some of the modern languages/frameworks.
Despite the flak that PHP gets, many successful web servers have traditionally been written using PHP, and with modern frameworks like Laravel which use PHP's OOP features it seems acceptable.
There are also great Python frameworks like Django, Flask and Pyramid (I love Flask, and I don't see much talk about Django these days).
Rails seems like it has always been a top choice, even recently.
I also frequently see articles touting Java as a robust web server choice.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> Django and Rails are similar in the sense that they come with batteries included and favor convention over configuration. Also, Django recently received a grant from Mozilla, so expect some great features to be added.

[https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django- awar...](https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/dec/11/django-awarded-moss- grant/)

Personally, I've worked with Django, Rails, and The Spring Framework (Java).

I'd choose Django or Rails. I do prefer Django, but Rails has a much more vibrant eco system and a lot more plugins (gems) that let you do things pretty fast.

Really you need to be clear on what problem you are trying to solve, because one framework might be better than the other. For example, I've worked with Rails and it has great support for apache solr. If I needed to do full text search on a lot of records and use solr to index them, I'd choose Rails.

Define the problem you're trying to solve, and see which framework is best suited for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the goal?

What is the architecture?

What is the business proposition?

Who is going to maintain it?

What kind of data will be in the backing store?</comment>


TED: Sam Martin: The quirky world of "manspaces" [4.5 min video talk] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_martin_builds_a_room_of_his_own.html

<comment><USER2> Nothing about the spaces in this video is specific to men. Why not just discuss spaces for people that are passionate about something?</comment>


Internet freedom around the world keeps decreasing - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2016/11/23/internet-freedom-decreasing/ <comment><AUTHOR> The story regards access to social media sites in various countries where such access is blocked, however, I'm sad to see there is little subject given to the number of file-sharing sites which have come under fire in the last few years, especially by governments under pressure from the MPAA and the like.</comment>


Further simplifying servicing models for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/08/15/further-simplifying-servicing-model-for-windows-7-and-windows-8-1/ <comment><USER2> Good to see they're going back to a simpler branching/linear model. The combinatorial explosion of versions to test/support with 20+ independent patches PER MONTH must be/have been ridiculous.

They've been moving this way for a while - see SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc.

 _Pros_ :

* Hopefully faster install times / smaller downloads

* Hopefully better tested/tested together releases.

* No longer running into bugs that have already been patched because an administrator thought "we don't use feature X!" and have suppressed the update.

* Easier to say your software requires "Windows 7 SP1 with October 2016 CU" than "Windows 7 SP1 with KB1234 and KB124213" \- if you could figure out exactly what patches you needed anyway!

* Easier to verify patch status - hopefully they'll put a version number somewhere easy to find

 _Cons_ :

* Harder to track down regressions to a particular patch. Note that sometimes issues were cause by particular combinations anyway so this should reduce that type of bug.

* Can't avoid specific regressions

* Can't avoid feature changes you don't like - not that you really could forever under that old model either.

* Larger download times, if you were being selective with updates.

Much Hope.</comment>


Is 2013, the year of Linux gaming?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/332124,is-2013-the-year-of-linux-gaming.aspx

<comment><USER2> There is a "Is 20xx, the year of Linux gaming" thread somewhere every year.

<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2021249>

<comment><USER3> And there is someone who always beat me to post this answer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I like the position of the comma in the title.

<comment><USER5> The NYT grammar blog had an excellent entry on this: [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most- com...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma- mistakes/)

The author, a college professor, lamented how many students still come to his class making this mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because android has the Linux, We already have dominating Linux games - right?

Microsoft has been crushed in the mobile game space by Android/Linux.

<comment><USER7> crushed in the mobile space by Android/Linux?

Apple completely dominate mobile gaming. 84% of all mobile gaming revenue is on iOS as per [http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/mobile-gaming-revenue- appl...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/mobile-gaming-revenue-apple/)

<comment><USER8> Interesting that the article claims that Apple dominates mobile gaming but then shows a graph that does not include any of the dedicated mobile gaming platforms such as the Nintendo DS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I doubt 2013 is the year of Linux gaming because lets be honest everyone has been saying 20xx is the year of Linux is some aspect. However, the support behind Linux appears to be stronger compared to 2007. I don't want to speculate Windows 8 was behind it, but it kind of is (Gabe from Valve expressed his disdain for Windows and their new app store model a while back).

Linux is as good if not better than Windows. It has come a long way and gaming will definitely be just another feature of Linux in 2 to 3 years time. I'm predicting 2014/2015 is when Linux gaming becomes really hot and everyone releases games on it.

<comment><USER2> As a developer I find Linux very annoying to use. I have tried Ubuntu on different boxes, even on powerful gaming computers, but it doesn't seem as stable as Windows 8 does. Launching programs, or switching between windows has sometimes a little bit of lag (and I'm on an i7, 8gb of ram etc...) I hate having the slightest bit of lag. For me it would be easier to work on linux, but its just not as nice to use as Windows 8 is.

<comment><USER10> Or then you have a super fast, super productive desktop with no distractions. Depends how you configure it. Here's mine. (the configs can be stored to github, of course)

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/Screenshot%20from%202013-02...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/Screenshot%20from%202013-02-15%2016%3A21%3A49.png)

It's not doable on OSX or on Windows. It's damn fast on my own macbook (2008 edition) and on my work desktop (i5, 16 GB, SSD)

<comment><USER11> Don't you want to make blog post about your setup or something?

I love Linux, but I don't like Gnome Shell or Unity (or KDE or something), and on Desktop it's easy, you just install awesome and run with it. But for a few years I had only laptop, and I was always afraid that things like sleep, or volume and brightness control keys woudn't work, because they seem to be tied with Gnome for some reason.

If you could share some more about your setup, that would be great.

<comment><USER10> Oh, you can start the gnome-settings-daemon with your WM and you get the sleep, the keys, the nice fonts etc. from Ubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a mobile game developer it's strange that no one has brought up the obvious conclusion that Linux will win because Android will win.

Android has a good shot at being the platform for all things in the future, ie. Ouya and Green Throttle.

As the cell phone doubles in power every year, in the near future we will realize that our cell phone has way more than enough power to run our main stations and gaming needs. The graphics chips on normal phones today are already astounding.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see anything in this space attracting Windows gamers to Linux, but if you are already a Linux user, things are getting better.

No one can really claim "year of Linux gaming" until we start seeing a wide variety of publishers releasing AAA titles. And until that happens, windows gamers will like it or not remain with Windows.

<comment><USER8> It is early days yet, proving any market for Linux games _at all_ is big at this point.

Linux has always had a hurdle in the (probably mostly wrong) assumption that Linux users will pathologically not pay for software.

<comment><USER14> Why would GNU/Linux users pay to use proprietary software? As long as these games are proprietary, they will only see adoption among recent Windows converts who want the same experience. What's the point? I mean I get it that Windows 8 is bad, but I've seen the same share of gripes about Unity.

Plus a lot of these companies offer low quality ports and little to no customer support for Linux users, and if you don't use a supported distro then too bad for you. So again, what's the point? It's the same bad experience as using Wine.

<comment><USER8> Why would you not pay for proprietary software? It seems like asking "why would windows users use free software?".

Of course there are some who will only use 100% free/open source software for ideological reasons but these people are a small minority of Linux users in practise.

Most of the new indie game Linux ports work quite well in my experience though YMMV I guess. It would be unrealistic to expect support for every distro.

<comment><USER14> It wouldn't be unrealistic to expect distro support if these were free software packages that distros could patch and package up for their own needs. But they aren't, they are proprietary blobs distributed through a proprietary app store that is only supported on Ubuntu. And that's the thing with proprietary software: you DON'T get what you pay for. Personally, I refuse to play proprietary games, they offer nothing to me and the experience is always negative. I think it is a farce to say that the technical benefits of GNU/Linux are not owed to the fact that it is an entire ecosystem of free software. If you believe this is a question of ideology, and you willingly disregard it, then what is the problem with Windows?

<comment><USER8> You probably aren't the target market for Steam in that case.

If there was a compelling collection of open source games I would certainly play them but that has never really been the case.

There are tangible advantages in having open source tools and components such as compilers,kernels and desktop environments even without every program on the system being open source.

<comment><USER14> I would not consider GNU/Linux users the target market either. I would consider the target market to be Windows users that don't want to use Windows for whatever reason. These people don't care what they use as long as it isn't Windows, they aren't loyal to any one system for any particular reason.

Personally I do not derive pleasure from just playing games, I need to be able to study their source code and modify them. So I see no advantages in having proprietary games on my system. I hope that other GNU/Linux users acknowledge this as well. The one true value of the system is that it is GPL-ed.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure what the difference is between a GNU/Linux user and a person who is using GNU/Linux because they don't want to use Windows.

If you look at places like /r/linux on reddit the Linux fanboys there are practically wetting themselves over steam.

I agree that more open source games would be a good thing, but I don't see it as necessarily more important than having access to the unedited recordings of a piece of music.

<comment><USER14> Is someone really a GNU/Linux user if they have no respect for the core values of the system? I personally don't understand the exuberance on reddit. It's just another package manager in the already large sea of them, and a proprietary DRMed one at that; it doesn't really seem to provide any practical advantages to anybody. I believe it did on Windows, where even developers didn't have any reasonable package management system until a few years ago. But I see no real business strategy here. Also funny that you mention that because as a hobbyist musician I think it would be pretty cool to have CC- SA'ed masters of some of my favorite songs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there is a real possibility that Linux will be a legitimate gaming platform from this point on thanks to steam and html5 games, it will still take a few years to knock MS off their throne due to the proprietary nature of DirectX and the perceived ease of development using it. When almost every game is supported on Windows, it will take a serious effort (like the steam box) to change that paradigm. The only reason I still use windows is because of the gaming. Wine helps a lot here as well, but it's not perfect. Developers will have to see the benefit of targeting linux before it becomes the platform for gaming.

<comment><USER16> The point is not 'the perceived ease of development' or something technical like that.

The issue is commercial. The mere existence of PS3 games proves that, as the PS3 was very hard to develop for, but it was worth it because the games would sell.

Steam makes possible for developers to target Linux and sell the games there, in an easy convenient way that is easier to use than pirating games via torrents, but with some DRM to prevent uploading the purchased game to torrents just after the purchase. Ubuntu also has a store that sells games, I can see at the very least: Bastion, World of Goo, Amnesia, Braid, Space Pirates and Zombies. I don't know if they use any DRM, I guess the answer is no.

The final success of this endeavor is also of commercial nature. The number of games sold in Linux will determine the future of Linux gaming, and nothing else will, no matter what the technical merits of Steam in Ubuntu are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might be a little naive, but I'll ask.

I'm completely unaware of games, or any software, that is sold specifically for Linux (sold, being the keyword here). I've never installed Linux and purchased software for it.

So, my question, does the Open Source ecosystem for Linux simply eclipse the for-profit software, or are there special licensing requirements that are difficult to comply with?

<comment><USER18> Neither. <http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/> is currently showing off their Linux sale, you can page through the games they are selling and become less naive/unaware of what is out there. It's no Windows, but there are some games.

<comment><USER19> One of them is Half-Life. It's fifteen years old.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/?snr=1_614_615_linuxrel...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/?snr=1_614_615_linuxrelease_linuxrelease)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There used to be these articles with the title "The year of the Linux mobile phone" around 2006. If anything we will see something like Android /using/ Linux. Linux is, after all, just a kernel. Having said that, the gaming platform (The Android OS if you will) of 2013 will probably be HTML5.

<comment><USER18> Steam has now officially launched its Linux client, rounded up a surprising number of Linux games, and is selling all of them at a decent discount for a week. It's do or die time for games on Linux. There is currently no such effort for HTML5 games and I can't see what the advantage would be in making yet another incompatible platform on top of the Linux kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No. SteamBox is vapor. There is no EA FIFA. And there are no significant Linux only titles.

<comment><USER18> If Steam can get viable business out of selling indie and smaller-publisher games then that is self-sustaining even if Linux does not take over the entire industry (FIFA, Deer Hunter, etc.)

<comment><USER19> They may be able to make a business out of it. For it to be the Year of Linux gaming, publishers need to be doing so. I can still run Solitaire on my Windows 2000 laptop, but that doesn't make it a gaming platform in the sense implied by the article. Few people are going on eBay to pick up a Windows 2000 laptop for gaming, likewise, few people are going to install Linux in order to run games.

<comment><USER21> why install it when it could be a live cd that boots straight into steam?

<comment><USER19> Maybe Steam could send these CD's in the mail and offer like ten free hours of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I could see this happening, but more in the sense that 2013 is where linux gaming becomes a reality. Not that 2013 is going to be the year that linux gaming becomes dominant.

</comment><comment><USER22> The two games i enjoyed the most in 2012 were played in linux: FTL Faster Than light, Redrogue. I don't care much about fancy graphics, i prefer a good story and gameplay.

</comment><comment><USER23> The real question is: "Is 2007 the year of the Linux Desktop?"

<comment><USER18> It wasn't, largely because of games. PC clones sold for years under the thinnest pretense that they were business machines, with games being one of the biggest reasons people bought them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> probably not this year.. but 'soon'. from my point of view, linux is a great choice for gaming, not only that this 'platform' is much more open than windows/mac, it's also extremely lightweight compared to windows. we have already seen that great games can be created using opengl (Rage for example).

looking forward to the day i'll finally purge windows from my hard drive. installing linux and playing some recently released AAA titles^^

</comment><comment><USER25> The year of Linux gaming? no. Will Valve use Linux for a gaming console? Yes. Similar but not the same.

<comment><USER8> Not sure if I see the distinction. Whenever a linux based system becomes popular for some use people always seem to make the claim "but that's not _really_ Linux". I'm not really sure what the definition of _real_ Linux is.

Besides, it would seem that whatever games are made available for steambox would be binary compatible with other Linux distributions anyway (and software for other Linux distros should run on steambox) unless they do something really crazy with it.

<comment><USER26> _Not sure if I see the distinction._

For me the distinction is, can I play the game on my computer running my distro of choice, or can I only play it on the Steambox, which happens to be running Linux.

 _it would seem that whatever games are made available for steambox would be binary compatible with other Linux distributions_

I have seen nothing that would indicate this one way or the other.

<comment><USER8> It would seem odd for them to launch the Linux client with the fanfare that they did and then pull the rug out from under everyone once the Steambox is launched, though I suppose it _could_ happen. Besides making Steambox fundamentally incompatible would actually be more work than using standard parts.

Regards distros, they don't seem to mind people repackaging for other distros though it would be unrealistic to expect support for running the games under every conceivable distro of which there are thousands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> OUYA and Steam Box are going to make a dent, but it's going to be because of the economics of it more than anything else. Both Steam and OUYA are software that rely on companies like Apple, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, and Intel to spend billions of dollars on hardware R&D and they can just run their software stores on top of them. That makes the economics of putting out a box that hooks up to a TV and plays games a lot better.

For instance, with OUYA they can spend say $20-50 in parts to build the latest ARM box and turn around and sell it for $100. The total cost of R&D to design and build the OUYA is probably less than $10 million. There is already an existing pool of Android software with an average selling price of less than $5 a unit. It will probably launch with hundreds or thousands of games on day one. Compare that to the PS4 which will launch with probably 5-10 games and have maybe 100 games year one, and each game will cost $60 (or more).

OUYA - $100 + < $5 per game. PS4 - probably $400 + $60 per game.

OUYA - say $10 million to develop/produce PS4 - say > $1 billion to develop (PS3 CPU alone cost $2 billion to develop)

In short, the economics for both development of hardware and selling of software have shifted down so dramatically that it is going to hurt the PS4, XBox 3, and Wii U substantially. It already had a huge impact on the mobile space.

SteamBox is going to be basically the same story only at a $200-300 price point and with $5-20 games.

Why on earth would people (especially parents) pay $400 for a console and $60 for a game when they could pay $100 for a console and $5 for a game. You can buy a lot of OUYA games for the price of a next gen (or even current gen) console.

The market for $60 games won't go away, but it will shrink fast.

Linux is a big contributor obviously, but it's as much about the hardware economics as it is the software.

<comment><USER8> There's a qualitative difference between the games you can economically produce for a $5 launch price vs what you can produce for a $60 launch price.

That's not to say that more expensive games are necessarily better, just that there are no shortage of people willing to pay $60 on launch day for games like COD or Skyrim.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GRID, a free database of the world's research organisations - <AUTHOR> https://www.grid.ac <comment><AUTHOR> We've been building this for a while and now have our first public release!

It's a database of 48,598 research organisations around the world, many with added metadata. CC-BY, so you can grab it and use it in commercial applications. It's been useful internally and we wanted to share it.

You can download the full db here: [https://www.grid.ac/downloads](https://www.grid.ac/downloads) (the JSON version has all the metadata, the CSV is there for ease of integration with basic info) or explore what's present here: [https://www.grid.ac/institutes](https://www.grid.ac/institutes)

And a final link, the announcement blog post: [http://www.digital- science.com/blog/news/digital-science-lau...](http://www.digital- science.com/blog/news/digital-science-launches-grid-a-new-global-open- database-offering-unique-information-on-research-organisations/)

[I was asked to resubmit this, if you've seen it yesterday!]

</comment><comment><USER2> Perhaps it's just me, but "GRID" rather than "Grid" has unfortunate connotations.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I follow, what are the connotations for you?

The capital letters were just chosen because it's an acronym.

<comment><USER2> GRID is the old, now rather offensive name for AIDS: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay- related_immune_deficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay- related_immune_deficiency)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that is rather unfortunate. Thanks for the heads-up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Photos & Details about the Royal Canadian MintChip hardware - <AUTHOR> http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/04/14/MintChip-DevKit-Pictures-And-Information/

<comment><USER2> Ah, that's why nothing happened when I plugged the USB stick in. I never noticed that it was an adapter for the chip.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if bitcoin users feel threatened by this project..?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seriously has nothing to do with bitcoin. It's more like paypal but with hardware tokens that can store value. The money on the chip is canadian dollars.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. So if you lose the token, you lose your money, like a real wallet?

<comment><USER2> Yes. There's a limit of $500 you can store on the chip.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Two Maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/09/10/Old-School <comment><USER2> _"... I have grave doubts about whether the "book", I mean in its paper form, has or even deserves a future. ..."_

Map nerd here. Bray is really talking about a subset of what you use maps for. If by book Bray means printed, this isn't true for navigation or traversing land, sea and air. When I go to places I don't know, I carry a printed topographic/thematic map. A digital map is no use

* when I have to access terrain to work out time & distance (do I have enough time, food, how do I get out?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/246924231/in/set-72157...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/246924231/in/set-72157616056945713)

* is slightly less useful for nav when it's out of date, but still useful (where is the road?) ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/243481085/>

* when I need to know the terrain or vegetation (how tired am I going to be going up this hill?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3432835303/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3432835303/in/set-72157623478985429)

* or show me the big picture covering a large area (how many hills do I need to climb to get to the top?) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5308817363/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5308817363/in/set-72157625712635020)

However digital maps are far superior in scenarios where information is changing for a given terrain. A digital map is superior when:

* showing bushfire coverage over specific area. It allowed you to ask, _"what if"_ questions ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3298613958/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3298613958/in/set-72157614354760776)

* shows there's a big fire (hotspot) at this point & smoke going this way, now! ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3302263039>

* showing bushfire coverage over a large area ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3305597012/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3305597012/in/set-72157614354760776)

* shows freak country wide weather pattern & quickly indicates today will not be a good day (comparison with past, indicates severity) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3307836768/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3307836768/in/set-72157614354760776)

And the last case. Where am I at the moment in the city? ~ [http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5309444952/in/set-7215...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/5309444952/in/set-72157625712635020) This is what I think Bray is trying to say. Map coverage of urban areas is being disrupted. This I would agree with but I don't have his faith in the hi- tech approach. I always carry a printed description of the street names & a Melway page ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melway>. I simply don't trust tech to get me to a particular spot at a particular time, 100% of the time. Don't even get me started on GPS.

<comment><USER3> I'm quite confused by your examples.

* terrain data: if that map were scanned into digital form, would it be less useful? If it were in digital form to begin with, you could probably overlay others' data / have it calculate time for you. Is this worse?

* digital maps are _far_ more likely to be up to date.

* terrain / vegetation: what if it were in an overlay? Or, going the Flickr route, how about geotagged photos appearing where they were taken? If a paper map has the info, so can a digital one.

* big 3D object: Google Earth? Though, granted, it's a 2D projection - there are intrinsic disadvantages there.

* GPS / guided routes: well yeah, route-finding is hard, building numbers aren't 1:1 with their location, and GPS often isn't high-enough resolution to really know where you are. But what about the map aspect in a city? My iThing shows me road and structure data that's _far_ more detailed and up-to-date than any map you can purchase and reasonably keep with you, and tells me about accidents / construction in bigger cities, accurate to the hour or better.

So, the only real reasons being... bigger is better, and 3D is great (but immobile)? And battery life and durability, of course, though they weren't listed.

I would find it _extremely_ likely that you can't find digital maps with the same information as paper ones you can buy - I still need to go to the DMV to do some things, for no real, rational reason. Such is the world. But that's not intrinsic to the medium, it's merely a consequence of it being newer. Less _available_ doesn't count, that attribute will reverse itself in time. What is it about _digital_ that you find less _effective_?

<comment><USER2> _"... What is it about digital that you find less effective? ..."_

@Groxx simple, KISS.

I'm not sure you go the kind of places I do. I need reliability not technology. _'Carry nothing new'_ is a motto that saves you from potential equipment failure. The argument you are giving is about ideal format. Mine is about reliability of use in the field. I'm more concerned about that hill I have to traverse on foot than finding _"Joe's diner"_ or the cheapest alternative place to eat while driving a car.

 _"... digital maps are far more likely to be up to date. ..."_

Agreed here cf: the digital examples I gave. Digital maps for display (phones, pda's, GPS) are really suited for showing directions from A to B & _"thematic"_ layers of information that changes often, using the the cadastre & topography to define location. Thematic information changes often. The cadastre less often. The topography very little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not fully sure what the author is trying to say here.

Is it that a small screen isn't as good for looking at geographic information? If so, then I completely agree. But large tablet screens, touch surfaces, pico-projectors, etc will all come, and be cheap in time.

Is it that there's a high density of information on an atlas? Well, yes, there is - but this isn't necessarily a good thing. It can be hard to focus on the information that you want. A large LCD surface, where you can choose which layers you do and don't want, is surely better: maybe I just want to see contour and topo information, and don't want to see political boundaries.

Maps are awesome, and were great technology. But we're starting to see digital versions that will far exceed the paper ones in almost every way.

<comment><USER5> At least in the short- to medium-term, it seems unlikely that we'll get tablet-like machines that are of a size to compare favorably even to a travel- size road atlas, much less a bookshelf or library atlas like in the OP. The physical size of it is useful because it can take up a larger portion of your field of vision, which better helps you get a sense of place within the mapped region. Even in a large browser on my 24" iMac I have a somewhat frustrating sense of looking through a too-small window that is blocking some of what I want to see. If I zoom out, I lose resolution.

So maybe eventually, but I don't think we're "starting to see" electronic atlases that uniformly exceed the paper variety. They are better in some ways and worse in some ways, and that will remain true for at least another couple decades, I think.

<comment><USER4> The Microsoft Surface is 107cm x 56cm. I haven't done it, but I'd say the experience of looking at at atlas on it, with multitouch zooming, and the ability to turn on and off layers, compares favorably to using a library atlas, like in the OP.

Is it compact and portable? No - but neither is a library atlas. How long before this sort of technology is common place? Or a wall projector and multitouch setup?

I don't know - but I strongly doubt it'll take decades. Decades is an awfully long time these days.

<comment><USER6> AIUI the display resolution of the Surface is 1024x768. That's not going to be even slightly like using a large atlas, no matter how big it is.

(A display that large with substantially more pixels, plus all the wonderful interactive things you can't do with paper, would be a fine thing indeed. But the Surface isn't it, at least not yet. Maybe there'll be a Surface 2 with much higher resolution?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Atlases certainly contain a staggering amount of information, but with their usual size I would be hesitant to say that they are without equal in terms of information _density_. Unless perhaps we mean bits/page, but that seems like it's cheating a little.

This said, I do love my old atlas.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think question here is if Paper or Digital Format is better. The majority of arguements we know, but there is also one more interesting question. Online and Offline?

No matter currently how good digital copies of a map are, items like mobiles have technical issues and if i m stuck somewhere without signal or the battery is dead, a paper map is all we can use. Thinking of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a potentially default phone , i would still always have a paper map in the car cause the pain of being without one when something like that happens is worse then the convience of it being on my phone all other times.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, digital maps have a huge advantage in the level of detail they can provide over a much wider area.

I still carry a Thomas Brothers street atlas of Los Angeles in my car as a backup. If you haven't seen the old Thomas Guides, they're a wire-bound book of a couple hundred or so pages; mostly a grid of detailed map pages, each covering something like a 5x5 mile square of the city. They also have index maps, freeway maps that just show freeways and their off-ramps, dozens of pages of street-name indices, etc.

If I take a few hours drive (say, to Phoenix, or San Diego, or Las Vegas, or the SF Bay area), I probably won't have such detailed paper maps with me, but digital devices would be able to provide a similar level of detail in any of those places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least with computer map pages, I don't have to worry about the atlas company (Rand McNally) leaving out some states due to space limitations.

</comment><comment><USER11> information expressed in physical form is always better than digital.

especially if it's aged.

maybe this is me getting old, but I feel like younger people dont see this anymore, unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> You're just conflating utility with pleasure. Whether or not such behavior increases with age is a different debate, but I will pose the question: is that a good thing? For _your_ happiness, quite possibly. For _everyone's_...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps>

[http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Maps-Atlas-Cartographic- Curios...](http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Maps-Atlas-Cartographic- Curiosities/dp/0142005258)

<comment><USER13> <http://www.bigmapblog.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> why nobody has managed to create digital cartography as beautiful as this yet?

I mean, ability to pinch zoom into satellite photo of my neighborhood is awesome and such, but I'd change it any day for beautiful (and correct!) offline cartography like Times Atlas.

<comment><USER15> The kind of information packing that you see in a good map (like the _Times Atlas_ ) is nontrivial. Deciding which features to show, how to label them, and how to arrange the labels is a knapsack problem. Plus, it often involves hard-to-quantify local constraints about what's most important in a given area. (As a trivial example, a pond is a lot more important in the middle of the Sahara than it would be in Bangladesh. There are many more subtle versions of this.)

While it's certainly possible to come up with good algorithms, and outfits like Google Maps and Bing Maps have, maps are judged by esthetics and practical usability as well as quantitative criteria[0], so the best results are likely to be hand-tuned.

0\. Maps as opposed to the underlying GIS data, which is easier to judge solely by whether it's complete, precise, and accurate.

<comment><USER16> I can't remember / find the artcle (proly on HN) that explained how google maps does (some of) the information packing, and visual display/emphasis of what's important.

<comment><USER15> I thought I remembered something like that but I couldn't find it. Since you mentioned it I looked a little further and found <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1311136> . This links to a page which has rotted away; here's a Wayback Machine version: [http://web.archive.org/web/20101223025250/http://www.41latit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101223025250/http://www.41latitude.com/post/557224600/map- comparison) .

Thanks for the push!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The best blogs you are not reading - <AUTHOR> A couple of days ago a reader of my blog (http://www.jgc.org/blog/) wrote a nice note saying that he was happy to have discovered it and it was one of the five blogs he reads all the time.<p>It made me wonder what blogs I'm not reading that I should be.   We see lots of blogs come up here over and over again.   What gems are there out there that we're missing? <comment><USER2> BetterExplained is nice (<http://feeds.feedburner.com/Betterexplained>)

Dan Weinred of Symbolics/Common Lisp/ITA Software fame has a good blog, although he hasn't written in a while (<http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/feed/>)

Instigator Blog has some good posts about startups (<http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstigatorBlog>)

Skrenta has good observations about search engines and entrepreneurship ( <http://www.skrenta.com/atom.xml>)

Skydeck has good posts about the mobile phone industry, mobile development, and OCaml (<http://skydeck.com/blog/feed/>)

TheFeelGood has cool music ( <http://thefeelgood.com/feed>)

Why Does Everything Suck has good observations about the technology of business, New York, PIMs, databases, etc ( <http://feeds.feedburner.com/whydoeseverythingsuck>)

I've got more obscure ones if anyone's interested.

</comment><comment><USER3> My technique is tagging new blogs with "sandbox" in Google Reader and then either promoting them out of there or nuking them after a week or so.

I also find I go through ebbs and flows of interest in some subjects... so when I first started blogging I read lots of blogs about blogging... now I'm reading lots of blogs about Ruby.

I still have yet to find a good recommendation engine for blogs, although I use the subscribe number on FeedBurner as a good indication.

My blog is at <http://InternetDuctTape.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a perfect machine learning project for someone. Put in the blogs you read, how much you like them, and get some recommendations, both blogs and other people who have tastes similar to yours.

Indeed, Google Reader has a feature just like this...

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, collaborative filtering applies to blogs too, but I wanted to hear people's opinions of different blogs. After all, I come here for the people not the algorithm.

<comment><USER4> If 20 or 30 of us each post the 20 or 30 blogs we follow... a big mess ensues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I regularly read <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/>

Not sure how obscure that is among hackers, but there you go.

<comment><USER2> Lots of good stuff about technology and education, lots of stuff about flying, photography, and dogs too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well obviously you should be reading my blog. :) <http://parveenkaler.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.anarchaia.org/> tumblelog

</comment><comment><USER8> via: <http://xrrg.com/x/r/53-web-20-feeds/>

43 Folders. A different look into the minds of freelancers. <http://www.43folders.com/rss.xml>

A List Apart. Since 1998 they've been promoting the proper use of web design methods. Their ideas are original and they've set in motion many critical layout standards. <http://www.alistapart.com/feed/rss.xml>

AfterDawn. Optical Media meets Web 2.0. <http://rss.afterdawn.com/afterdawn_news.xml>

Apple Hot News Ticker. Get the good stuff directly from the source. The Apple blog will keep you up to date with Official Apple announcements and product releases. <http://wdirect.apple.com/home/2008/ticker.rss>

AppleInsider. Looking for iPhone, iTunes, or just Apple Rumors in general, AppleInsider is one of the authority blogs covering this topic. <http://www.appleinsider.com/appleinsider.rss>

Ars Technica. Ars Technica is looked up upon for creating original content in the Technology industry. <http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/BAaf>

BetaNews. <http://www.betanews.com/rss2>

BoingBoing. Looking for something totally unique, BoingBoing publishes interesting tidbits found from around the web. <http://feeds.boingboing.net/boingboing/iBag>

CenterNetworks. <http://www.centernetworks.com/rss.xml>

CodeBetter. <http://codebetter.com/blogs/MainFeed.aspx>

Coding Horror. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/codinghorror/>

Consumerist. Consumerist has gained trust from many people by making Corporate wrongdoings public knowledge. Consumerist has also connected companies with their customers in an effort to solve a variety of different issues. <http://consumerist.com/index.xml>

Copyblogger. "Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Succes." That's their tagline, that's what they're all about. <http://feeds.copyblogger.com/Copyblogger>

Daily Blog Tips. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/DailyBlogTips>

EcoGeek. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/EcoGeek>

Engadget. <http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml>

Fast Company. <http://www.fastcompany.com/rss.xml>

Freelance Folder. <http://freelancefolder.com/feed/>

Freelance Switch. <http://freelanceswitch.com/feed/>

GigaOM. <http://gigaom.com/feed/>

InformationWeek. <http://www.informationweek.com/rss/all.xml>

Joystiq. <http://www.joystiq.com/rss.xml>

Lifehacker. <http://lifehacker.com/index.xml>

MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors. <http://www.macrumors.com/macrumors.xml>

Mashable! <http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mashable>

Neowin. <http://www.neowin.net/fb.php?page=all>

NewTeeVee. <http://newteevee.com/feed/>

Official Google Blog. <http://googleblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default>

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/defau...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)

ProBlogger Blog Tips. [http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMon...](http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney)

Read/WriteWeb. <http://readwriteweb.com/rss.xml>

Scobleizer. <http://scobleizer.com/feed/>

Search Engine Journal. <http://www.searchenginejournal.com/feed/>

Seth's Blog. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/sethsmainblog>

SimpleBits. <http://simplebits.com/xml/rss.xml>

TechCrunch. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechCrunch>

Techdirt. <http://www.techdirt.com/techdirt_rss.xml>

Techmeme. <http://www.techmeme.com/index.xml>

Jason Calacanis Weblog. <http://www.calacanis.com/rss.xml>

Mozilla Blog. <http://blog.mozilla.com/feed/>

The Unofficial Apple Weblog. <http://www.tuaw.com/rss.xml>

TorrentFreak. <http://feed.torrentfreak.com/Torrentfreak/>

VentureBeat. <http://venturebeat.com/?feed=rss>

Webware. <http://www.webware.com/8300-1_109-2-0.xml>

Wired Culture. <http://www.wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,2,00.xml>

Wired Top Stories. <http://www.wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,,00.xml>

Woot! Fullfill your urge to buy cheap stuff that's probably going to break real soon (b/c you're not always blogging, are you?). <http://www.woot.com/Blog/Rss.aspx>

xrrg - News for Internet Fiends. <http://xrrg.com/x/atom>

Y Combinator Startup News. It's like Digg but chock full of startup cheese. <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> (looks like you're already here)

Yahoo! News: Apple/Macintosh News. <http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/applecomputer>

Yahoo! News: Internet News. <http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/internet>

YouTube :: Blog. <http://www.youtube.com/rss/global/our_blog.rss>

AnyWired. <http://feeds.feedburner.com/Anywired>

</comment><comment><USER9> You're missing <http://www.curi.us/> , enjoy :)

And <http://www.settingtheworldtorights.com/></comment>


Emacs Hint #2 - Workspaces - <AUTHOR> http://emacsrookie.com/2011/09/25/workspaces/

<comment><USER2> Emacs also comes with desktop-save-mode

[http://www.gnu.org/s/libtool/manual/emacs/Saving-Emacs- Sessi...](http://www.gnu.org/s/libtool/manual/emacs/Saving-Emacs- Sessions.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this. I just downloaded emacs yesterday after reading so many things here about how great it is.. then I sort of stared at it for a bit and closed it. Now I feel like I can actually spend a little time learning to use it without as much initial time investment.

<comment><USER4> I'm also a novice emacs user. I know a few commands, but I'm aware that I've barely begun to scratch the surface of what it can do.

I've been using it every day for about ten and a half years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As usual, with the million ways to do everything in emacs, there's also workgroups.el, which is what I use: <http://www.github.com/tlh/workgroups.el>

I was on revive.el/windows.el before that, and elscreen before that, but both hadn't been updated in quite a while, and I always had to piece together both serialization and management. workgroups.el just works for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh, I just wrote a similar tool for myself a few weeks ago. I use the sawfish windowmanager and have C-F7 set to cycle between emacs windows. I wrote some elisp to add a term ("my-workspace") to the titles of the windows in the current emacs invocations, and to tell sawfish's C-F7 to cycle between the emacs windows whose titles contain that term. Works quite well, and keeps my different projects entirely separate.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a good reason to actually use this?

Doesn't your window manager already have workspaces? And in them you can add non-Emacs windows!

<comment><USER8> One reason to use it is Emacs Server.

Basically, even when I have multiple open Emacs frames (window-manager windows) they are all actually instances of the same Emacs processor, sharing the same buffers. This offers many advantages, but means that I can't really use my window manager's multiple desktops for Emacs like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great site.

BTW anyone know how to get erc to reconnect after waking my laptop from sleep?

<comment><USER10> Just type "M-x erc" without closing any of your channel buffers. It will create a new erc process, which all the buffers will reconnect to.

<comment><USER9> ahh nice. So then I just close the old buffer with the dead erc process, I imagine?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is amazing... this is exactly why I love Emacs....</comment>