CSS is fine, it's just really hard - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jdan/css-is-fine-its-just-really-hard-638da7a3dce0 <comment><USER2> This is one of the things in the industry that has always bothered me so much. I could rant about it for hours.

There's this attitude that a lot of programmers have that if something is hard humans are the problem because they are not smart enough.

I saw it recently with the discussion around C/Curl.

Lots of comments saying "DUH! The C programmer was stupid he made a buffer overflow. It's not the language's fault.".

It's like yeah right we get it.

What pride is there in creating or hanging on to something that doesn't respect us as humans?

I advocate for a shift in attitude. If people are having problems with a tool we should have a low tolerance for that tool and put the blame on it, not on the humans.

It is the tools that is not good enough for humans not the other way around.

And in case of C. Goddamn it haven't we had enough buffer overflows in the past decades?

Yet a smart ass comes along and thinks everyone else is stupid I'll never make a mistake.

There's a point when we have to say enough is enough.

I don't want my grandchildren to be fixing buffer overflows in OpenSSL in 20 years.

In the same way I don't want them posting on StackOverflow "how do I vertically center this piece of crap in this case with css?".

And have 50 different answers. "This hack works just be careful if the parent's position is absolute it's gonna turn alive and come eat your family." someone else replies "if that happens you can just hit it with a hammer until it falls".

Get off my lawn.

<comment><USER3> You won the argument when you picked how to center in css as an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "robot" generated CSS the author ends the article with looks clever. I'll ignore the logic that since CSS is bad we should write Javascript instead. Rarely is the answer "write more javascript" or "find a way to make javascript the answer."

I digress. The example at the end of the article suggests that each element would have its own unique class, and the CSS will be compiled and duplicated across all elements. This could have the side effect of increasing the bloat of both the HTML and the CSS, although it can be forgivable in some situations.

But now you have HTML and CSS hidden in the complexity, and all of it is managed via Javascript.

Makes me wonder.</comment>


Malleable Systems Catalog - <AUTHOR> https://malleable.systems/catalog/ <comment><USER2> > Tools should strive to be easy to begin working with but still have lots of > open-ended potential

I don't think this matches the definition of "tool", or at least not a good one.

Good tools tend to have specific applications (screwdriver), or are hard to master (carpentry gear). You never see a professional replacing a toolbox w/ a multi-tool for a reason. There is a _necessary_ trade-off between efficiency and flexibility.

This description of "tool" sounds more like "clay", maybe this idea requires a better analogy.

<comment><USER3> Flathead screwdrivers are used for zillion different things, though. From prying open cans of paint, to making holes in stuff, to short-circuiting CMOS reset terminals.

Now, a powered screwdriver is immediately less versatile. A lot of modern software tools are like powered screwdriver with a single head permanently attached.

<comment><USER4> Fantastic metaphor</comment></comment></comment>


January 14, 2008: The day the market lost faith in Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/12/remembering-january-14-2008-the-day-the-market-lost-faith-in-apple/ <comment><USER2> Also potentially relevant, from the article's comments.

Eric D. : "Steve Jobs looked thinner during that presentation than we'd seen him before. And over the next few months, he lost more weight. The market, rightly or wrongly, believes Apple's fortunes are tied to Jobs.

You mean Android hegemony, right?"

</comment><comment><USER3> > _" I'm hoping someone can explain this because to me it makes no sense."_

It might be because 2008 was a letdown to the press compared with 2006 (Intel) and 2007 (iPhone). The press was looking for a major new products and significant improvements to existing product lines - see: [http://gizmodo.com/343246/what-to-expect-at- macworld-2008-an...](http://gizmodo.com/343246/what-to-expect-at- macworld-2008-and-why-we-think-it-will-be-bigger-than-usual)

Sure the Air generated some buzz, but importantly the Gizmodos of the world were predicting it would be "Bigger than Usual" The big news came later in the year with the Appstore and Apple was moving towards announcing new products in the summer rather than at the new year (this New Year's announcement wasn't even made by Apple but by Verizon).

<comment><USER4> Too bad the press didn't get the memo that the iphone SDK would, in time, provide plenty of news.

<comment><USER3> If development tool releases were newsworthy, the Techcrunch would be so busy writing about Microsoft you would rarely see anything about Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's typical for the stock of high-growth companies to be harder hit in a recession (a higher _beta_ ).

This doesn't explain the time of onset of the trough, but contributes to its depth and breadth. They are likely several factors.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm more curious about the cause of the steep walled canyon of P/E lousiness from mid-October of '08 that lasted almost exactly a year.

<comment><USER7> The article discusses this: it was the earnings collapse of the rest of the S&P500 during the deep recession. This collapse didn't hurt Apple proportionately, but since their stock dropped off quite a bit despite that, their P/E was way down relative to the rest of the S&P500. (3x cash on hand at one point, the author says, which is pretty crazy)</comment></comment>


Holy Panda Keyswitch - <AUTHOR> https://mechwiki.com/holy-panda/ <comment><USER2> Is this linked because the switches reached $6 each?

I am not surprised. The mechanical keyboard community has a good contingent of people that have a lot of money and nothing to spend it on. People post their keyboard pictures to reddit with a Rolex Submariner or a $750 bottle of scotch in the background. I don't mean this as a criticism in any way, but there is very much that element to it. People pay $600 for a set of keyswitches to get a $600 set of keyswitches, not because of the incremental value over a $0.10 keyswitch.

<comment><USER3> I use mechanical key switches and definitely do have other things I'd rather be spending the money on, but I find that they do substantially increase my typing comfort (I didn't spend $600, but did spend over $300 on my keyboard) so do personally find they're much better for me than $0.10 key switches.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I'm talking about mechanical keyswitches when I cite 10 cents. That is approximately what the Cherry clones run for in quantity. (They are about 30 cents at retail.)

You may cringe at "clone" but the reality is that after the MX patent expired, the Chinese manufacturers are making way better switches than Cherry ever did. Cherry got so bad that the competition forced them to retool; they would have been perfectly happy selling you scratchy switches from decades-old tools if it weren't for the innovation that is happening in China.

<comment><USER4> In my experience of Red and Brown switches, Gateron ones have always been more pleasant to use than Cherry ones. On my desk at home I have a Cherry MX Brown board (Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro L) that I am seriously considering taking apart in order to replace the switches because a cheap mech I got years ago with Gateron browns is probably the most plesant switch I have ever used.

Edit: Having said that - I admit my sample size is small and I did enjoy the two Cherry MX Blue boards I have used.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty impressed with Gateron's switches, at least in the form of the Healios switch that they manufacture. Very smooth. Very quiet. Tighter tolerances than the Kailh switches I've used.

<comment><USER5> I'm saving up for an Ergodox split keyboard with Kailh Copper switches. Now I'm wondering if I should try to find Gateron switches instead.

<comment><USER2> The Ergodox EZ has "hot-swappable" switches; you just pull them out and snap new ones in. So you can get the keyboard now and experiment with switches forever.

Edit to add: I have two EZs. I also ordered my first one with Kailh's copper speed switches and found them TERRIBLE. Speed switches are very hard to type on. (Imagine pressing Enter when you mean Backspace. It's stressful!) The hair-trigger on the switches combined with not knowing where backspace was on that keyboard made learning a very difficult experience. I now run Healios (linear) and Box Navy (clicky) on my Ergodoxen.

I would also recommend getting comfy with QMK before your keyboard arrives. Install the build tools, make a Github fork for your configuration, and make sure you can build images easily. You will want to tweak stuff extensively when you are just getting started, as the default layout is pretty garbage. (So are the online configuration tools.)

<comment><USER5> good to know, thank you for saving me from a lot of potential hassle!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be a lot more interested in this wiki entry if there was a bloody force graph. Without that we have to rely on baloney like "a short rounded bump". What is the definition of short? Rounded? Why is "bump" quoted in the article?

If you can't provide a force graph, at least publish the total travel, the activation force and distance, the deactivation distance, and how far the tactile feedback is from both.

<comment><USER7> [https://plot.ly/~haata/377](https://plot.ly/~haata/377)

Most tactile mechanical switches have what I call 'slack' at the top before the increase in force: following is my daily driver keyboard's switches, the Novelkeys/Kailh Box Navy.

[https://plot.ly/~haata/415](https://plot.ly/~haata/415)

The Holy Pandas have the bump begin at the very top of the travel, which lends to a firmer feel at the top and a smoother-feeling tactility.

<comment><USER6> I thought I had replied earlier, but it appears it was eaten.

Thank you for posting those, that picture is worth a bunch of words.

That said, it doesn't seem like a mechanical switch I'd want to use. The lack of correlation between the tactile feedback and the activation point would drive me nuts. To me, the value of the tactile feedback is to indicate when the switch has been activated, so I can type without having to bottom out the switches.

<comment><USER7> There are in my opinion two sorts of tactile switches: the ones where the tactility exists so you can be reminded to not bottom out (like Cherry Brown), and ones where the tactility induces you to bottom out, like rubber domes (including topre) and Box Navy.

These have the heaviest point before the tactile 'collapse', so once you clear the bump it's mostly smooth sailing all the way to the bottom, but there's enough resistance to eat up most of the energy before impact.

This is of the latter sort.

<comment><USER6> That's fair. But bottoming out is hard enough on finger joints that I typically consider them to be a hard pass.

And, having used Topres, they don't really remove much of the energy you had to use to bypass the peak. It's still a fairly hard impact at the bottom.

<comment><USER7> Bottoming out depends on a lot of things.

Topre offers a little padding on the bottom as you squish the rubber.

Plastic plates or PCB-mounted switches offer a little give.

Personally, my daily driver has thick steel plates, but it's a small board and I type on my lap, so my thighs cushion the blow.

And regardless of what keyboard I use, I bottom out, really heavily. Box Navy switches are considered rather heavy, but I bottom them out with no trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or skip all this Holy lubed Pandelioz nonsense and get a Steelseries Apex Pro. Astounding smoothness, Hall effect action (no contact), very close to the original TK Microswitch keyboards I used and loved back in the late 70's at MIT. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_keyboard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_keyboard)

Great review at [https://youtu.be/jfz9TgeZ9m0](https://youtu.be/jfz9TgeZ9m0).

<comment><USER9> Why yes that is also a keyboard.

What do you suppose the odds are that a gaming-peripheral manufacturer sat down and came up with a better switch implementation than any that the mechanical keyboard community could?

<comment><USER10> Optical/Hall Effect switches generally require special PCBs some part of the sensing is often surface mounted to the pcb instead of integrated into the switch housing. There is a hall effect board coming out the mechanical keyboard community called the Keystone ([https://kono.store/blogs/keyboards/the-future-of- keyboards)](https://kono.store/blogs/keyboards/the-future-of-keyboards\))) but generally speaking such an undertaking is to big for the community in general. Requiring both full switch design (generally new switches from the community are simply tweaks to existing designs, maybe just a slight adjustment to the stem, spring, or leaf) or new layouts using existing switch footprints (generally speaking just the cherry mx footprint, but there are quite a few pcbs that will support cherry mx and old ALPs/Matias switches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Weight: 67g bottom out if using Panda springs, 100gf bottom out if using Halo True springs_

That is ridiculously stiff. I wonder how comfortable they are for extended periods of typing.

<comment><USER2> Switches do not activate at the bottom of the travel, they typically activate about halfway down. The force increases linearly to the bottom-out point. (For tactile switches like these, there is an additional spring that is unrelated to the bottom-out force, which makes the first half of the travel non-linear.)

The travel after the activation point is just to prevent your fingers from pushing the keys all the way to the bottom. Once you hit the bottom, infinite force yields a movement of 0mm, so it's "infinite grams". So you should look at these numbers as how much cushioning you need after you hit the activation point. With purely linear switches, you don't need a spring to "catch" you, so you can go lower. With tactile switches, the force abruptly goes to almost zero, so momentum will carry your fingers farther down the travel. The bottom- out spring is designed to dissipate that energy before you slam the slider into the bottom of the switch. (As a thought experiment, imagine a car suspension spring as a keyswitch that requires 1 nanometer of travel to activate. You would not tire yourself out typing on that, and you would never bottom out.)

I use 67gf bottom-out switches, "Healios", and they are very middle-of-the road in my opinion. I have used lighter switches, I have used heavier switches. I do not bottom out on them, but they do feel about as light as I'm willing to go. (I use Box Navy as my daily driver, which are quite a bit heavier in terms of activation force. Also louder!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Two relevant links here for those interested:

1\. If this has piqued your interest in mechanical keyboards, head on over to [http://old.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards](http://old.reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards) and fall deep into the rabbit hole; and

2\. Massdrop or Drop or whatever actually went out and manufactured these — I think the first batch sold out but keep an eye here if you're interested in Holy Pandas: [https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-invyr-holy-panda- mechanical-...](https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-x-invyr-holy-panda-mechanical- switches)

(Looks like they're doing another batch - good timing)

<comment><USER13> Holy hell I never knew the old.reddit.com domain existed.

Thank you!

<comment> _-___________-_ Pretty much the only way to make Reddit usable these days!

<comment><USER14> Another good tip is to always request google.com as a desktop website in mobile safari. If you don't, you get mobile google, which forces you to go to the AMP reddit, which then pops up multiple banners every page load asking you to install mobile reddit so Reddit can track you. Entirely unusable and endlessly frustrating.

I think I'm an oddball who uses google.com to browse reddit, but I prefer to to the apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anybody can recommend a decent unconspicuous full mechanical keyboard that does give the feedback but doesn't bother everyone around? I've seen plenty of gamming kbs that I wouldn't use in an office, I'd like to find one that looks just like a regular keyboard.. Don't care if it's wired or not

<comment><USER16> Do you consider Topre to be "fully mechanical"? IMO Leupold has nice keyboards which look decent.

<comment><USER15> I have no idea, I'll check them out. The problem is that I am not sure how noisy these are, I'm sure the feedback is good enough. Btw, I don't care if a keyboard is fully mechanical as long as it has a nice feel to it. Leopold looks nice too.

<comment><USER17> They're pretty quiet on their own, but also have further silenced variants (often called type-s or some such). Also look for Topre Realforce or HHKB Pro 2. The latter is what I generally recommend to folks that want to get a good board without having to wait around for the typical group buy periods. The small form factor takes getting used to, but I love it. There's a newer model called HHKB Pro Hybrid that has both wired and bluetooth, but iirc it's a bit hard to find right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish these switch could be cheaper and mass produced

</comment><comment><USER19> How do they compare to buckling springs?

<comment><USER20> They are very different, but as someone who has been a die-hard buckling spring user since childhood, I found I actually really like them.

I wen to a Mechanical Keyboard meetup (for the first time) last year. I brought my model Ms for people to try out. Someone there had brought his boards and had one of them for sale. Without knowing what it was, I typed on his board he was selling and instantly liked it. He was only asking $200 so I bought it. He was telling me it was using Holy Panda switches, but I had no idea what that meant. I just liked how it felt.

It has a very strong tactile bump, right at the top of the travel.</comment></comment>


ASK:HN Is HN accessed more by mobile or desktop/laptop? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> My guess is desktop/laptop between 9am and 5pm

</comment><comment><USER3> my own use case is 30-45mins on the laptop each evening, smartphone during short breaks throughout the day.</comment>


Can the Google Phone Be Saved? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2225815/pagenum/all/ <comment><USER2> I think the main reason the G1 didn't do better is its lack of effective advertising. It's actually a better device (though I hear the G2 is actually going to do away with some of the advantages of the G1, the morons).</comment>


What to do about Detroit. - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/what-to-do-abou.html

<comment><USER3> This is ridiculous.

 _I was in Detroit last week... I have family there. I also drive a car. And I would rather that the world doesn't melt and the economy thrive. So I'm uniquely qualified to weigh in on the automobile industry._

Which would make me uniquely qualified to weigh in on the intricasies of modern farming since I have family that lives on a farm, went there last week and use dairy products on a regular basis.

On a more serious note, there are some basic economic insights that Seth seems to have completely missed: Some industries are skewed towards a scattered market with a lot of small players. Others are skewed toward a few large players. One of the main factors involved in this is fixed cost vs. variable cost. The automative industry has enormous fixed costs that it has to incur before it has a product that is ready to sell. This is true even if there are suppliers that can deliver most of the parts. Safety regulations alone costs hundreds of million for each model. This fixed cost has to be spread out across however many cars you sell. This is why some industries, such as the automative, semiconductor and aeronautics industries, have a few large players. If you only sell 1000 cars your fixed cost would be a prohibitively high percentage of the final price of the car. So there are a few large players because there are significant advantages to economies of scale.

Other industries, like carpenting, consulting and software don't have high fixed costs before they can go out and sell a product. Which is why there are a lot of small players in these markets.

Seth should stick to marketing.

<comment><USER4> Good point on industry dynamics, but I'm pretty sure he was being tongue in cheek.

<comment><USER3> you're most probably right, I just got pretty pissed at reading such a broad sweeping post by a guy that has no idea what he is talking about.

Guess it shows :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I'd spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car company turnkey. Make it easy to get all the safety and regulatory approvals... as easy to start a car company as it is to start a web company."

If it is ever as easy to start a car company as it is to start a Web company, then something is wrong. People can't drive their browsers into each other at 100MPH.

Also, there is no problem with the idea of big car companies. Big companies have increasing economies of scale and can offer significant savings to consumers. A poorly-run big company is a problem, not the size of the company itself.

<comment><USER6> And this is why hackers should not make comments on mechanical and electrical engineering. Especially web hackers - who have absolutely no regulatory (nor moral, usually) concerns when it comes to the safety and reliability of their products.

I consider myself a hacker, but I am a mechanical engineer by training. I've worked in car plants, and I think I'm much more uniquely qualified to speak on this subject than the blog author.

People do not comprehend the kind of cash that a car company needs (and _should need_ ) to get into the market. Let me detail the process of producing your car's _radiator motor_ (just the motor!):

\- Come up with your awesome motor design (doesn't cost a lot, assuming you and your fellow startup partners are good engineers)

\- Draft your designs (draftsmen around here are unionized, and paid a great deal for their work)

\- Build a proof of concept. In fact, build several (requires access to a very extensive machine shop, and unless your founders are all exceptionally talented machinists, you have to pay unionized labour more money to get this done)

\- Now build several hundred more prototypes. These will go through performance and reliability testing. This will require access to heat testing chambers, sound testing labs, strength testing machinery... you name it. Each of these labs can't really be rented, and cost tens of millions to build and staff. Each piece of equipment needs to be certified by the relevant safety and regulatory body ($$$), and you'll need several people on board full time just to document everything to the minutae required by the same bodies ($$$). Do you know how much a certified laser micrometer costs?

And that's just to get your _first working prototype_. You're already probably 8-digits invested by this point, and you haven't even yet built out the necessary infrastructure to mass produce your product. By the way, casting a mould for a single part (e.g. your motor casing) costs $200-300K by itself, so moving towards production is not cheap either.

 _Now_ multiply that by the tens of thousands of parts in your car.

People (especially software types) simply do not appreciate the sheer, ridiculous amount of effort (and money) it takes to keep them safe. This is also why I'm always wary of cheap goods, because I have seen first hand the difference between well-designed, properly tested products vs. not.

The car industry can never move back towards a tiny-startup model. Sure, there may be room for smaller players, but "thousands of startups" like the web model will never fly, unless you enjoy having your wheels fly off the axle as you drive.

<comment><USER7> I'm not disagreeing with you, but what about F1. F1 is the most expensive form of motorsport, yet every year, every team builds a completely new chassis, and models to compete in the next season. F1 cars have to go through destructive crash testing too. It costs anywhere from $60M to $400M a year to run an F1 team. They are building highly complex machines with carbon fiber and exotic metals. If they can do it efficiently on smaller budgets (look at the smaller teams especially, Force India, Williams, Scaudro Toro Rosso, Super Aguri), how different would it be to build a car prototype out of metal using conventional construction?

<comment><USER6> The main differences are that:

\- A 1% failure rate on an F1 car may in fact be considered acceptable, but completely insane in a production car that may sell millions of units a year. F1 drivers, despite all that we can do, also accept a much higher level of personal risk than most other everyday drives.

\- F1 cars only have to worry about a single passenger, and due to the controlled nature of the race a more limited number of failure modes... which is to say the scope size of the problem is significantly reduced - <USER2> designing for F1 is already non-trivial!

\- Carbon fiber is almost impossible to work with on a mass production basis - the nature of the material prevents high-precision parts from being made, which is hell on a production line, but easier when you're hand-building everything

And you're right - it's entirely possible for a limited-size team to build a car from scratch - assuming they had all the parts as it is. It's entirely _impossible_ for them to attempt to build the drive train, engine, all panels, structural parts, suspension, etc etc, from scratch. It's also very difficult for them to afford the sort of testing required to get this car to market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill He is right about the effect all those regulations have on innovation. I remember too, about 10 years ago talking with some programmers from a major car company, they had to fill out 17 pages of documentation in order to change a few lines of code in their system.

<comment><USER6> And this is precisely the way it should be. Everything when it comes to cars has to be meticulously documented.

You reduce the diameter of that bolt by 0.01", thinking it'll save the company some money, and be strong enough to do its job, and somebody will later come, assuming the bolts weren't changed, and put more load on it. And then one will snap, resulting in a horrific crash that kills everyone in the car. And then the company gets sued, and pays out millions in compensation, not to mention the guilt of having shoddy engineering kill someone.

Code is no less capable of killing innocent people.

You might think that this sort of bureaucracy stifles innovation, or reduces your productivity - but the fact of the matter is that it _saves lives_ , not to mention documents proper liability, etc etc.

<comment><USER8> I would like to see a cost/benefit study of such onerous regulation. "It saves lives" is a cop out justification the same way "for the children" is. Costs. Benefits. Calculate you some, or get out of the way.

<comment><USER9> It so true though, that it bears nearly continuous repeating. As a society, we have to make a choice. How many fatalities are we willing to accept per million vehicle miles? The answer can't be zero unless we want no cars at all. The _onerous regulations_ are how we as a society choose that number. Are the regulation always efficient? No. But they are how we choose.

Its also important to remember that other counties and peoples with different world views will have radically different conceptions as to what this acceptable number is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you have thousands of cars from hundreds of car companies your local garage will have parts for a dozen of them.

There are products which lend themselves to 'the long tail'. The repeated failure of niche brands like DeLorean and Bricklin may indicate that cars are not among them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I agree completely! Spend money encouraging innovation and solving tomorrows problems, not keeping the existing oligarchies on life support. Congress should be considering investments and negotiating term sheets like VCs (but they won't).

<comment><USER12> Wrong. Congress shouldn't be investing at all. Seriously, the returns when congress invests and when private investors invest are so drastically far apart that I am continuously left wondering how congress can convince voters to let it continue.

<comment><USER13> Well, there is one way around that; let congress invest in VC's with historically high returns, but don't let them place the onerous restrictions on the money that usually surrounds public funds (labor laws, oversight, documentation through the ying-yang), instead merely restricting to an area of investment.

<comment><USER12> Better option: Reduce taxes so that money can be invested _by the people who earned it._ Radical huh.

<comment><USER13> You'd also have to reduce qualified investor laws.

And honestly, reducing taxes _even further_ in this crises doesn't strike me as a reasonable way to handle a global credit crunch...

<comment><USER12> You don't need to be a qualified investor to invest in the general economy. Banks, mutual funds, and a dozen other easily accessible instruments willingly do that for you.

As for reduced taxes, I would argue that it seems like the ideal way to combat a global credit crunch. The government has the lowest cost of capital and the lowest default rate (at least the US govt. does). Thus it would be more efficient to leave the extra capital with private citizens and use deficit spending. Of course it would even more efficient to just not have the federal govt. spend as much but then its not like hell is about to freeze over anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know Seth Godin often gets bashed on HN for lack of insight, but I think this post is surprisingly insightful.

<comment><USER6> Insightful to the layman, but to any (traditional) engineer worth his salt it's just crazy talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> I consider myself a traditional engineer, at least a traditional 21st century engineer... by insightful, I meant the "food for thought" insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gee, we're sure fortunate to have the sage Mr. Godin to lead us in this fog of uncertainty. His decades of experience in marketing will surely guide us through this industrial misfortune.

Opinions are like assholes...no, right now opinions about the economy are like assholes...

</comment><comment><USER15> Whether or not he knows what he's talking about, he didn't mention the _other_ advantage of having a more diversified gallery of manufacturers: none of them would be "too big to fail". Yeah, there's economy of scale, but that has to be weighed against putting all our (collective economy's) eggs in a few baskets.

</comment><comment><USER16> uhm. is he saying he wants to buy a car that's surprisingly innovative with its heated wing mirrors but lacks another company's life saving side collision impact distribution lattice?

these 1000 car companies all made innovations that COLLECTIVELY would make 1 decent car. why the hell would you want to buy a car with 1 or 2 of these critical features? eventually as a market settles, desirable features are consolidated, it's the reason why we don't have 1000 companies making PC operating systems and browsers...

<comment><USER17> You might not, but maybe some people would. That's where innovation comes in: finding a mix of features so people choose what is important to them at different price points. What doesn't work doesn't sell, and then back to the drawing board. Many people drive motorcycles, after all.

What would be interesting would be if alt-energy cars were classified as a different type of motor vehicle, with a relaxed set of regulations. This would allow for new companies to make them, and for established companies to make them cheaper. Then after the market is established, and many companies have innovated in the industry, then slowly ratchet up the regulations on them. Just a thought.

<comment><USER16> it just seems to me that he's trying to re-evolution something that has already evolved.

i'm just saying, evolving further is more attractive than declaring this lineage a failure and going back to knuckledragging. it feels like when these a-hole anarchists think society would be better off if everyone had to defend their property with shotguns instead of having the system of law enforcement and crime-science we have now.</comment></comment></comment>


Is There Beer in Space? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/is-there-beer-in-space <comment><USER2> Somewhat surprised to not see Vostok Space Beer mentioned:

[http://vostokspacebeer.com/](http://vostokspacebeer.com/)

This is my kind of science: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUh4w68yNGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUh4w68yNGk)

:-)</comment>


Physics of Cricket (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/cricket.html <comment><USER2> The science of swing bowling is fascinating, and makes cricket watching a beautiful, nuanced affair.

This article helped me understand the basics of swing, and explains why moisture in the air makes a huge difference, as does the condition of the ball: [https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/17104279/the- science...](https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/17104279/the-science- swing-bowling)

One of the most successful fast bowlers in cricket, James Anderson, is notorious for his ability to be able to swing the ball when there is moisture in the air. So much so, that he is referred to as James "Clouderson": [https://www.quora.com/Why-is-James-Anderson-known-as- Clouder...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-James-Anderson-known-as-Clouderson)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the links!

The first one appears to be missing all the pictures and figures he refers to.

[https://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/1143037.html](https://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/1143037.html) seems to be equivalent but with the images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cricket is a rare game where the condition of the tools used to play the game (the ball) is allowed to alter over the duration of the game. This differs from almost all other sports such as baseball, where new balls are used after every hit or less, and in tennis, where new balls are used after a set number of games.

Imagine how different baseball would be if they only used 1 ball per side for the entire game. Within a few innings, the ball will have much more variance and unpredictability.

<comment><USER5> And one has to plan for it, don't use your reverse swing bowler early on or start with best swing bowling playing batsman etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly it seems to be out of print, but Bob Woolmer's posthumously published _Art and Science of Cricket_ [0] is an incredibly expansive and throughly researched study of cricket as a sport. It seems to have been really difficult to translate the physics of cricket into actionable things for players, but this book is in my opinion the best attempt.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com.au/Bob-Woolmers-Art-Science- Cricket/d...](https://www.amazon.com.au/Bob-Woolmers-Art-Science- Cricket/dp/1770076581)

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read it, but I presume this is about time dilation during a test match.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actually it is very interesting even to understand what is the difference between legal bowling vs. chucking (> 15 degree flex at elbow at point of release ). Bowling in cricket is not as straightforward as pitching in baseball.

<comment><USER9> The correct definition of the legal action is "whatever it took to keep Muralitharan bowling".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TFA article failed to mention the recent Australian innovations in achieving swing-bowling.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would love to know about how different cricketers used these to their benefit

<comment><USER11> There are similar levels of abject nonsense in cricket as baseball. It's useful to have proper scientific analysis of these things to counter stuff like "all reverse swing is cheating because it's not scientifically possible" given that some of it clearly has been cheating. And yes various cricket commentators and officials have said just that. One umpire changed a ball on the Pakistan team with no more evidence than "it's swinging so you're cheating" resulting in a walk off.

Beyond that kind of thing it's no more useful to players than differential equations are to David Beckham when he finds the optimal path from a spot kick over the wall into the top corner of the net. He's solved that diffeq but he's not consciously aware of how he's done it and could probably have done so in the time of Roman numerals.

<comment><USER12> What about coaches? I wonder what state of art softwares look like these days now that iot is so common place. I remember Bob Woolmer, so ahead of his time - had an idea that the batsman would have a mini display so that they can rewatch the last ball before playing the next one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "The crowd loves a batter who can hit sixes."

Batsman.

sigh.

<comment><USER13> Not anymore, now that women's cricket is being heavily promoted.

All the top level players and commentators were referring to "batters" during this past Australian summer.

Times are a-changin.

<comment><USER14> I've seen the term batswoman used on TV and in print.

<comment><USER13> I think that's being discouraged by officials now, as the degenderfication of language becomes more customary.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Darwins artificial ecosystem could be key to colonising Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11137903

<comment><USER2> What exactly about this suggestion for colonizing Mars has been falling on "deaf" ears, who's been suggesting that we "improve [the] environment by force" on Mars?

The few plans I've seen involve trying to terraform Mars slowly by introducing something like genetically modified high-altitude lichen and going from there. Of course in the process of doing so we'd use the organisms that work, not "force" the things we wish would work.

The challenges of terraforming Mars will be very different than dropping a few trees on Ascension Island, which is what the Royal Navy did.

As an aside, I recommend the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson for an overview of how Mars might be incrementally terraformed through that method.

<comment><USER3> Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" is pretty good too (I found the chemistry in it quite fascinating).

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert- Zubrin/dp/068483550...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Mars-Robert- Zubrin/dp/0684835509)

However, these days if I ever did end up on Mars (unlikely, I know) I'd probably me a Red rather than a Green.

<comment><USER2> Personally I don't see much reason why we shouldn't aggressively terraform Mars, including bombarding it with ice-rich asteroids to thicken the atmosphere.

Having to walk around in space suits indefinitely if you want to go outside sucks, even just getting the atmosphere to a point where you won't suffer bruising from decompression if you go out with a face mask would be a huge improvement.

Why would you want to keep it as it is?

<comment><USER4> > Why would you want to keep it as it is?

To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it.

<comment><USER2> > To learn as much as possible before you irreversibly change it.

That's valuable too. But Mars's main value to humanity will be as a second home, not as a geologic curiosity.

We'll be much more secure as a species if we have a second planet where we can walk outside and breathe the air, even if the temperature will be stuck at ~250K.

<comment><USER5> Get a head start ruining a second planet because we're going to finish ruining our first pretty soon..? ;)

<comment><USER6> So... we ruined this planet by making it less habitable, and we'd ruin Mars by making it more habitable?

I take it we're supposed to leave the entirety of the universe exactly as it happened to be before we realized that we're capable of rearranging very tiny little bits of it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's certainly interesting, but the article itself could be better written.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain> implies that it wasn't really Darwin's efforts, nor is it a true example of an artificial ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Key difference: one is an island on Earth, the other is Mars.

</comment><comment><USER9> link to google maps [http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364...](http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=-7.943126,-14.364624&spn=0.131421,0.219727&t=h&z=13)

<comment><USER10> link to Green Mountain photo: <http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4235237>

(thanks to hitting street view on the google maps link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a wonderful story. Thanks, KoZen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm, thanks?!

Not exactly hackerish or star-upish I know but I was going along this guideline:

 _anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

I find it fascinating that as a race we have reached a point where we are seriously discussing the possibility of making another planet hospitable enough to maintain human life.

<comment><USER11> There are off-topics and off-topics. Yours was one of the good ones. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "to explore .... and boldly go ..."

does this count as split infinitive?

<comment><USER13> Yes, but split infinitives are a more powerful and better form of expression.

To not split an infinitive is to create a weaker and less coherent thought stream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> After we bring "climate change" to Mars let's also bring huge government debts, religion, pollution, dictatorship and WMD's! It will be awesome.

Or, alternately, we could try to fix/solve/eliminate those things before spreading to other planets.

<comment><USER10> Well detonating a series of thermonuclear warheads under the Martian polar caps would certainly help distribute CO2 and water ice into the upper atmosphere and to the equatorial regions where the ices have the potential to melt. What an excellent suggestion, I'm putting you up for a Nobel Prize!

Please, you have a high enough Karma to know not to make asinine BS posts. We don't give a crap about religion or politics here except when it's relevant, and no where in this article was there a discussion on politics, religion or any of the other topics you noted.

Despite the fact that watching rapid ecological changes on another planet would give us vast amounts of data on changes in environmental patterns and countless information on how climate change might affect our planet. Terraforming Mars is important beyond our species pathetic problems, in that our expansion to other planets might give our species the longevity to solve those problems than get hit by a rogue asteroid, comit, or other such object we've yet to see.

<comment><USER8> Some of your remarks are rude. In contrast, my own comment was neither rude, "disallowed" or inappropriate. It was my honest opinion and expressed both concisely and impartially. Just because religion wasn't mentioned elsewhere in the thread does not mean I can't mention it. It's on topic in that it's related to bringing changes to another planet.

I'm totally down with the idea of getting humans onto other planets, at the very least to make sure we don't have all our eggs in one basket. I'm just saying I'd prefer that we resolve these other issues first. Just because you may disagree with it, doesn't mean my comment deserved to be down-voted into karma penalization territory. Groupthink, indeed...</comment></comment></comment>


Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels - <AUTHOR> http://karpathy.github.io/2016/05/31/rl/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating.

Many years ago, when I wanted to become a programmer and I didn't know anything about code, I used to fantasize and be amazed by programs. Code was like dark magic.

This is how I feel today about machine learning. Neural networks, liquid state machines. It's wonderful voodoo to my eyes.

I hope one day I get to work in that field, it seems so useful for solving big world problems. I have notice a definite rise in articles being written and shared on HN about it lately, that's great.

For those completely in the dark, I found this library to have great wiki pages about the basics of neural network programming. Great read, I recommend it. [https://github.com/cazala/synaptic/wiki/Neural- Networks-101](https://github.com/cazala/synaptic/wiki/Neural-Networks-101)

<comment><USER3> Oooh liquid state machines/reservoir computing, what delicious voodoo. Look up optical reservoir computing, what wonderful nonsense. Smash the thing into a million random pieces and look out for the pieces that happen to make your problem easy. Wht. But it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reinforcement Learning is one of the most exciting areas of research in machine learning and AI going on right now in my opinion. It is going to play heavily in creating AI that can make decisions in dynamic environments.

A great introduction to the topic is the book Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction by Sutton & Barto. You can find the official HTML version of the 1st edition and a PDF of a recent draft of the 2nd ed. here: [https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/the- book.html](https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/the-book.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> In almost all real-time networks playing games, there's very high jitter in inputs. Even when the machine is moving straight, it's always very keen on doing some wiggling with the other keys.

My question is: Is it possible to eliminate that by further training? Naively you could drop 'stupid' inputs, but I assume that may also mess with the machine's understanding.

<comment><USER6> Notice how the output (or the network) is stochastic, not a solid value. You could certainly tweak the output sampling function to reduce jitter.

Further training may also reduce this, but technically, since the jitter is not causing any reduction in the reward, it might not. The best approach would likely be to alter the reward system to discourage jittery play...but again, there is no point because it does not reduce fitness.

I suppose where this is important is in robotics where jittery movement might actually be dangerous, or wear down hardware. In that case, you could certainly use an output smoothing function and tweak the reward.

<comment><USER7> May be you could introduce a (small) penalty to every keystroke. This might select against unnecessary movement and thus reduce jitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the context of AI and gaming, I definitely recommend this series of three youtube videos:

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

Some games are played better than human would.

<comment><USER9> These videos by Tom7 are indeed great. They don't display the use of deep learning though; the method is something quite different [1].

Maybe you could use the objective functions of Tom7 to determine which moves are good or bad in order to train a policy network?

[1]: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/mario.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/mario.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A neural Network is specializing in one particular problem set? You can not create Meta-Neural networks that reconnect the specialized Networks or grow new ones?</comment>


Show HN: PJON website - <AUTHOR> http://www.pjon.org/ <comment><USER2> Nice website, beautiful illustrations, I'm wondering where the protocol fits in with the standard OSI model. It looks like layer 1 or 2, but optimized for constrained hardware? What's the purpose?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ciao woah, thank you for your feedback. The protocol is now in its 0.3 release so is now under development, but it is structured in a 2 layer model, with Strategies or Data link layer and PJON protocol layer or in OSI protocol and transport layer. It is optimized to be extensible, configuration driven and with a low overhead. If you are interested in the protocol specification take a look to the latest (0.3) [https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/specification/PJO...](https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/specification/PJON- protocol-specification-v0.3.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are there libraries for any RTOSes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ciao PJON has been implemented in python [https://github.com/Girgitt/PJON- python](https://github.com/Girgitt/PJON-python) by the github user Gitgitt

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do you like it?</comment>


How an investor who turned me down ended up sleeping on my couch - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/32043142087/how-an-investor-who-turned-me-down-ended-up-sleeping-on

<comment><USER2> Interesting story, though I think the title of this post could have been a lot more appropriate if he had stricken the word "how" and gone simply with "An investor who turned me down ended up sleeping on my couch." There's not much how here. Though I do agree, being kind and building karma is never a bad thing.

<comment><USER3> Right, the headline is misleading, at least to me. Sleeping on someone's couch usually means said sleeper is having a rough time and needs a roof over their head. I assumed this story was about an investor who turned Joel down, then hit a rough patch and ended up needing to sleep on Joel's couch out of the necessity of shelter.

Still, a good story.

<comment><USER4> I doubt Jon has hit a rough patch - perhaps more like, staying with a friendly tech entrepreneur whilst in town rather than spending another night in a hotel room

<comment><USER5> Right. Jon often lives on the road and spends a ridiculous amount of time helping startups and startup programs. Definitely a 'hard time' in terms of commitment (particularly if you ask his wife;) but far from hard times in the economic sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >I was very naive and looking back at some of the things I did and the way I wrote emails or thought about building the startup leaves me feeling grateful for how much I've been able to learn in the last few years.

One of the things I just learned is how much better that sentence sounds than the kind that has 'cringe' in it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Although Jon refused us, he was kind enough to spend over 30 mins giving me feedback. Of course rather than listen, I was spending the 30 mins trying to convince him to give us a shot.

I remember exactly where I was during the call. Good times.

I am happy I learnt early never to bun bridges. You'll never know when you might need to cross.

</comment><comment><USER5> generating good karma is a shitload more fun...and pays off</comment>


Rocket v0.4: Typed URIs, Database Support, Revamped Queries - <AUTHOR> https://rocket.rs/v0.4/news/2018-12-08-version-0.4/ <comment><USER2> I am truly moved by what this small (probably one, maybe two person?) team has accomplished here. Just look at their code and its organization, while noting how languages like Rust, Nim, and Go show us how to tackle the software complexity in various software domains. Having been in the enterprise field for a handful of decades, I am convinced that work such as this is signaling a brave new world of software development that is just ahead of us -- small teams, phenomenal productivity, which needs to combine with a grasp of architecture processes to taken on complex IT stuff. After having been in the SAP, Dessault PLM, and Oracle database-centric industries for some decades now, and I am convinced that a new generation of software software engineers with imagination and willingness to learn aspects of the businesses they serve, they will take on these sprawling legacy systems with much less effort than we think it should take right now. Exiting times are ahead for those who use these opportunities, I'd say.

<comment><USER3> > a brave new world of software development that is just ahead of us -- small > teams, phenomenal productivity

It's also the brave new world that lies behind us. Doom, one of the most influential computer games due to technical innovation, was created by a team of 3 programmers (and 8 non-programmers).

Small teams of brilliant people can produce phenonemal results. Unfortunately in big companies a manager is not only measured by his results, but also by his budget and the number of people under him. The division of 100 people simply looks more impressive than the room of 10. So you end up hiring lots of (at best) mediocre programmers, pay them as little as possible, and use big architectures and processes designed to cope with idiots (Enterprise architectures and Enterprise processes, as we call them).

<comment><USER4> Calling anyone who isn't brilliant an idiot is a bit. . . uncharitable. Most of us here, myself included, (and probably you) are not rockstar/ninja programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some super exciting stuff in this release, but what caught my eye was this:

> Aynchronous Request Handling (#17) > > In 0.5, Rocket will migrate to the > latest asynchronous version of hyperand futures with compatibility for > async/await syntax. Of utmost importance is preserving Rocket's usability. > As such, these changes will be largely internal, with asynchronous I/O > peeking over the covers only when explicitly desired or required. As a side > effect, we expect a substantial performance boost from the migration as well > as resolution to long-standing issues.

Lacking async was my main reason at the time for switching out a hobby project from Rocket to Actix, It's exciting to see that this might change soon as Rocket really just hits the nail on the head when it comes to useability. It _feels_ fantastic compared to so many frameworks both in Rust and other languages.

<comment><USER6> I don't really understand this. Futures don't "peak from under the covers" they hit you over the head with syntax. And iirc Rocket uses a thread per request model.

So I'm guessing they have optimized their threaded model with futures, plus given you the ability to turn on a non blocking mode, but your routes will need to use futures if you do that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> All of this is done while pursuing a computer science PhD at Stanford, teaching, and other life activities. Sergio has been digging deep for a really long time. It is great to see that others are helping to advance Rocket's mission but as with most open source projects, the primary author moves it forward. This release isn't just about new features or rewrites. It's about passion for one's work. It's about grit. It's about uncompromising commitment to excellence.

While there will ever be only one Sergio in the world, there are many others in the broader Rust community who are signaling many of the same positive qualities. The signal is only increasing in strength as new talent adopts the language for critical path work.

I am more optimistic than ever about Rust as a tool for general use, not just because of the tools but because of the leadership in its community.

</comment><comment><USER8> Once rocket makes it to stable, I think it will be the go to choice for web development in Rust. The focus on creating a great developer story makes rocket a joy to use.

I am shocked that Sergio maintained rocket alone for so long. I would have figured there was a team of 3-4 people working on rocket. Glad to see he is getting help!

<comment><USER9> I'm really eager to push for use of rocket (and thus rust) at work, but while rocket being on version 0.x it probably is a tough sell. The benefits rocket (at least seems to) bring feels obvious and I notice every now and then at work that "hey, this would be so easy to do with rocket".

<comment><USER10> As a whole, Rust developers see 1.0 as a stability commitment and to my knowledge, everybody (well, not Rouille) wants to be async and depend on Futures 1.0. I believe Futures 0.3 is most of the way to where the Futures team wants 1.0 to be and the initial roadmap was trying for 1.0 in 2018 so my uninformed guess is that we'll see Futures 1.0 in the first half of 2019. I expect the whole Rust network server ecosystem to shift around over the coming months as Futures and async/await come online in the next few months.

<comment><USER11> So, Futures are moving into the standard library; there's been a last minute procedural issue over one name, and then they'll be in. So "futures 1.0" isn't as important, the futures library mostly provides extra utilities, not the core of futures themselves. It's likely this means they'll be in 1.33, February 28 (if my math is right)

<comment><USER12> > So, Futures are moving into the standard library; there's been a last minute > procedural issue over one name, and then they'll be in.

That's just the open issue around pinning.

There are however a few open discussions around the futures/task/waker parts, from the other RFC. I just wrote down a list of the open points here: [https://github.com/aturon/rfcs/pull/15#issuecomment-44549238...](https://github.com/aturon/rfcs/pull/15#issuecomment-445492382)

<comment><USER11> Oh right, I forgot about that but, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've toyed with various Rust web frameworks and I think rocket is one of the most promising. A thought out, high quality project. The person behind it strikes me as someone who pays attention to details, from the codebase, docs, all the way to the presentational website. Kudos!

<comment><USER14> I lurk the Matrix room for Rocket and I have no idea where Sergio finds the time to near single handedly develop a huge web framework while helping at least a dozen people a day get into it on the IRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never tried Rust or Rocket, but it appears to be gaining popularity, so I have the following questions for existing users:

What's it like to work with? Do you prefer it to JS/PHP/Python for web related projects?

Can you iterate on code quickly, or is there a compile step on every iteration?

Are there stable libraries for interacting with MySQL/Redis/Postgres asynchronously?

Is there good IDE support, for example in Atom?

Thanks!

<comment><USER16> It's a bit rough to work with still - the IDE support is still a work in progress (though improving) and there is a compile step with every iteration (incremental compilation has improved this too).

Diesel is the main library for interacting with SQL databases, it wasn't async last time I used it, and a quick web search tells me it still isn't - this has been a BIG problem with Rust over the last year, as everyone waits for the async implementation to finally become stable.

Rust is a funny beast at the moment - you have to deal with the learning curve, you have to deal with the unstable/pre-1.0 libraries (some of which are fine), you have to deal with all the errors the compiler throws at you.

But once you've done all that, something magical happens: you end up with software that is mind-blowingly stable and blazingly fast. It doesn't throw segfaults, it doesn't leak memory, it just works, and works amazingly well.

<comment><USER17> Isn't diesel being sync largely hid behind a connection/thread pool? Generally you want to limit the connections to the database anyway, so a connection pool is desirable...

<comment><USER18> Aren't those orthogonal concerns? A connection pool lets you share the same connection across multiple threads of execution. Async lets you share the same thread of execution across multiple actions waiting for IO to happen. For the best performance, you want both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone able to lay out some of the reasons why you might want to write web applications in rust? I was under the impression rust was designed as a safer language for low level systems programming. Thanks!

<comment><USER20> I'd say that in all the talk of Rust being a C replacement, what gets lost is that it is also a very expressive, modern, functionally flavored language, perfectly suitable for higher-level programming.

If you want type safety, speed, expressive language & native binaries, Rust is a good choice.

<comment><USER21> Sure, however you do pay the _significant_ cost of having to satisfy the borrow checker. There are other nice expressive languages where you don't have to do that so if you actually don't need the speed Rust is maybe not the best choice.

<comment><USER20> > you do pay the significant cost of having to satisfy the borrow checker

Right, but this is presumably a one-time investment while learning Rust, much less of an ongoing hurdle.

<comment><USER21> I disagree. It's something you always have to think about. It might get easier but it doesn't magically go away.

<comment><USER20> You often _should_ think about it in other languages too, ie to avoid concurrency bugs. If you don't, there's a good chance your program isn't correct, even if accepted by a less strict compiler.

<comment><USER21> Yes. But the point is that you don't have to "dumb down" your program to prove to a static analyser that it is correct.

Look at the kind of programs that NLL now allows. You wouldn't have to jump through those hoops in another language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It concerns me that you have to use a Rust nightly build to use Rocket. Am I off the mark on being concerned about this?

<comment><USER23> AFAIK Rocket has always been focused on developing an ergonomic type safe API to building web applications. Many things it depends on, codegen, proc macros, that sort of thing, are yet to be stabilized. I'm not affiliated with the project, this is just what I've read about it.

There are other frameworks you can use if you want to use stable, many of them are async already. Granted, none are really 'mature', but this is a new-ish space for Rust anyway.

<comment><USER11> Most of that stuff is now stable; the major thing it's waiting on is a fairly technical detail that gives Rocket more informative errors. If Sergio was willing to regress a bit there, it could be on stable, in my understanding. But developer experience is kind of the whole point, so he's making the call to wait longer.

(EDIT: I just reviewed the flag list and I am 99% sure this is true; the never type could use a library instead, and I am pretty (but not %100) sure proc_macro_hack could fix the other one. It's quite possible I'm wrong, but in the end, it's still basically three features left to go.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> With all due respect, 166 packages to compile for a 5 line hello-word is so Nodejsy. It is a smell, a red flag. We should learn more from Go and Erlang.

I hope the Tide will do.

<comment><USER25> >166

Yikes!

Does anyone know where I can get an overview of the entirety of rocket's dependency graph. Crates.io only lists 11 direct dependencies.

<comment><USER26> You can use the `cargo graph` [0] command to get a graphviz view of the dependency graph. The `Cargo.lock` file which Cargo generates should also contain all the information you want in machine-readable form.

[0]: [https://github.com/kbknapp/cargo- graph](https://github.com/kbknapp/cargo-graph)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did anyone manage to build a SaaS product in Rocket yet?

Looking for ActiveMerchant equivalent in Rust.

How do you handle subscription billing?</comment>


Farming Invented Twice in the Middle East, Genomes Study Reveals - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farming-invented-twice-in-the-middle-east-genomes-study-reveals/ <comment><USER2> I studied anthropology as my college minor and the consensus in my classes seemed to be that farming was never really a new discovery that was 'invented.' Rather it seems likely that ancient people had known about the possibility of raising crops for a while but had simply forgone that in favor of less labor intensive hunting and foraging. Later, as the large game that early humans relied on began to die out, we resorted to the much more labor intensive lifestyle of farming.

Some points of evidence include:

1) The advent of farming coincides roughly with the Late Pleistocene Extinction event which saw many of the large game mammals (human prey) die out

2) Bone samples from the era show that the advent of farming coincides with a decline in human height and greater enamel defects showing malnutrition. This is strong evidence that farming was a step down for our early ancestors not a step up.

3) Tribes like the San Bushman and early Australian aborigines knew full well about farming but chose to forgo it because in their region, food was plentiful enough to be hunted and gathered. This is evidence that farming is not necessarily the result of new innovation (people don't instantly and automatically switch to farming just because they know about it).

see:

[http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake- in...](http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the- history-of-the-human-race)

Based on this it seems like farming was not invented separately in separate places but rather that most early humans were aware of the possibility of farming and that switched to it as conditions deteriorated as a result of climate change at the end of the last ice age.

<comment><USER3> Interesting thoughts. Agriculture (even horticulture or herding) vs. immediate-return hunter/gathering of course isn't a single invention but a complex co-operative enterprise necessitating quite an array of disruptive changes in lifestyle and establishment of social structures such as hierarchy, property, trades (constructing, protecting grain storage caches etc), marriage etc.

Anything so complex, you tend to figure out various optimizations (from tooling to timing and beyond) from painful long-term on-the-ground experience. I'd argue "the knowledge of farming" is really that, rather than the simple notion that planting seeds may (or may not) grow new plants.

That ancients "kinda sorta knew" that "planting" (or discarding) a plant's seeds someplace may yield a new growth there, I don't doubt. Of course actual _farming_ needs to yield a maximum of kcals per acre/crop, given the massive amount of labour investment and social disruption required. To maximize this yield over the generations under the given local conditions (weather, soil, crops), isn't that the _actual_ "knowledge of farming", only obtainable by doing the actual toil over the decades and indeed centuries? And when they encountered a new crop, a new soil or a new clime, knowledge for maximizing ROI had to be gained from scratch.

<comment><USER4> If you ever interested in this sort of stuff then the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" [1] explores all these trade-offs in great depth (and places them in the larger context of the development of human societies in general.)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Stee...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Steel)

<comment><USER5> I thought academic anthropology was moving away from ideas like Diamond's "Geographic determinism" and towards a more "Historical particularism" view of civilizations progress?

<comment><USER6> G,G,S is focused on why civilizations arise in the first place, and also why it is that Eurasian civilizations became so more powerful over the long term than any others, and for that he has a good explanation. He agrees there are many other factors involved in particular cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> the article suggests that farmers from different regions domesticated different animals and farmed different crops and concludes this as a strong cultural tradition that could not have been communicated.

I don't agree with this. What these communities were domesticating or farming is indicative of their local geography and would worked best for them in that region, it's not enough to conclude that since they are farming different crops, then they must have come up with idea independently. That's like saying we found group A burning wood and group B burning leaves therefor they must have discovered fire independently.

If you can find tools or instruments that are unique or specific documents that highlights varied farming processes that are unique then you have a better argument, and even then I wouldn't state it as conclusively as the article suggests.

<comment><USER8> The article mentioned that genetic markers suggest that the two groups did not mingle (much or at all) which is why they have this hypothesis.

<comment><USER7> For knowledge to be transferred from one group to another, all it takes is one person. For genetic markers to change it would need at least two, in good health and enough intermingling for it to be evident.

It's still not strong enough.

<comment><USER9> On the face of it seems highly unlikely to me that two groups had a level of contact that was enough for farming knowledge to be spread between them but not enough for genetic flow between them.

Farming is not a simple technology. It's a way of life and encompasses a package of technologies.

And the crops and animals raised in the respective origins could be raised in both locations so there's no obvious reason why diffusion of the farming knowledge would not be accompanied by the spread of those crops and animals.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1126996260026605568 <comment><USER2> I've recommended @foone's feed on here before, but I'll do it again now. I don't even know who this guy is or how I started following him, but his feed is full of interesting fun threads like this, often looking at older tech like this. I think most people on here would really enjoy following him.

<comment><USER3> His Twitter is Patreon funded which he literally never advertises, so I will do it for him. [https://www.patreon.com/foone](https://www.patreon.com/foone)

<comment><USER4> It's "literally" in the bio.

<comment><USER5> I haven't seen him tweet about it once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great content, and then I followed @foone and one of the recommended people was another account that I just followed because the pinned tweet was this: [https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/732005292808900608](https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/732005292808900608)

I saw it before and probably on HN itself, but was left hidden in some place in my memory, it is an amazing project!

<comment><USER7> Had the pleasure of meeting @foone in Seattle a month ago. Definitely follow that twitter, this is -normal- levels of awesomeness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a good debugging advice related to this story: "if your code is the same but suddenly starts behaving differently, check for hidden state."

<comment><USER9> It's more like code than state, isn't it? The thing that changed is the implementation of a circuit for computing the result of some calculation, i.e. a function.

<comment><USER10> I very often think of the current definitions of functions as part of the program state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > you carefully dump acid on them, and you visually extract the ROM data.

Super interested in how that works. Do they literally map out the chip at a transistor/gate level?

<comment><USER12> Yup check out [https://hackaday.com/2017/05/02/how-to-reverse-engineer-a- ch...](https://hackaday.com/2017/05/02/how-to-reverse-engineer-a-chip/) and Ken Shirriff's excellent blog [http://www.righto.com/search/label/reverse- engineering](http://www.righto.com/search/label/reverse-engineering)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You know, I think the crashing demo is more compeling game design wise. I watch it and have an itch to pull up a bit the nose and give a bit more throttle. That itch is the demo pulling me in, causing me to want to play. The perfect landing is meh, clearly the computer can do it, why would I bother picking up the controls? Interesting that the developers disagreed enough to roll a new chip, at what I guess was a considerable expense.

<comment><USER14> (Spoiler)

My understanding was that the "perfect" landing was first, using the old version of the chip. Then the new chip changed the physics calculations and the demo replay became a crash landing.

So the "crash landing" cartridges are the newer revisions and I'd guess the motivation to change the ship was a simple "update this dependency to the newest version".

<comment><USER15> It's a bit different than that. The newer version here is physical. So they would stop making the older version at some point. Not like software that the old version is always available. They likely realised it was happening, but just didn't think fixing it was worth it.

<comment><USER14> Good point. I wonder if the devs of the game even consciously decided the change at all or if the DSP1 supplier at one point simply started shipping the version with the fix.

Which, ironically, would be an early example of forced automatic updates messing things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm just gonna say Pilotwings 64 is one of the few games out there that really hasn't had a ~proper~ sequel.

Come on Nintendo.

<comment> the-tomster Pilotwings Resort was a launch title on the 3DS. Neat little nod to Pilotwings (SNES) and Pilotwings 64 launching with those consoles. It was really cool seeing it on the 3D screen.

<comment><USER17> I have this and can highly recommend it. Can be picked up at a fairly reasonable price. Also, if you don't really like the 3D, you can always turn it down/off.

As a game, Pilotwings Resort is definitely a worthy successor to the N64 version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This hits on something I've wondered about for a long time. Since carts did _not_ just include data, but also mappers and coprocessors, how do you write an emulator that can accurately play an arbitrary ROM dump?

Does your emulator have to have knowledge of every single game, and what mappers and/or "helper" chips each had, and emulate just the ones appropriate for a given game?

<comment><USER19> They do, absurdly enough. See for example BSNES, [https://byuu.org/](https://byuu.org/) , here's a quote from their most recent release notes: _" If the coprocessor firmware is missing, bsnes will fallback on HLE where it is supported, which is everything other than SD Gundam GX and the two Hayazashi Nidan Morita Shougi games."_

See past HN submissions about the extreme lengths BSNES goes to in order to get this data: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3675123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3675123) , _" In order to extract these programs from most of the DSPs, we had to decap the chips, scan them in with an electron microscope, and 'tweak' the processors to allow us to dump their protected program ROMs."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A fascinating read though there were a couple of small mistakes.

>Pilotwings came out a month after the SNES, not a year.

>ROM as in a file copy of the contents of ROM chips is not technically short for "ROM dump" because, though it is a ROM dump, the usage of ROM to describe it does not originate with usage of the term ROM dump.

</comment><comment><USER21> TLDR: Some NES game cartridges contained coprocessors. The Pilotwings math coprocessor had 3 revisions and one of them produces slightly different outputs, even though the game ROM is identical.

Star Fox had a 2D/3D chip called Super FX that sounds a lot like a GPU. It's pretty cool that console games of that era could augment your existing hardware to support their requirements.

<comment><USER22> The most hilarious enhancement chip is the SA-1, used in the Super Mario RPG and other games.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#SA1)

It's essentially the same exact chip as the SNES's main CPU. Except three times faster.

Imagine buying a game for your 3ghz PC that ships on a flash drive. And that flash drive also contains a 9hz (edit: whoops, 9ghz, haha) Intel Core i9 CPU.

<comment><USER23> A 9hz microprocessor would indeed be something. Start the game up, come back 10 days later and one frame would almost be rendered...

<comment><USER24> It might even be longer than that... I wonder how long it would take to render one frame of a modern game by hand if everyone on the planet joined in (let's make it easy and render at 160x120).

<comment><USER25> I don't even have a napkin to write on so this will be the most back of the hand of calculations.

One floating point calculation for a human would probably take on the order of 2 minutes. That's 1/120 FLOP. Let's round it to 1/100\. It's not like we're accurate here.

Let's say a GPU is 1 TFLOP. That means the GPU is 100 trillion times faster than a human. With 10 billion humans on earth (again, let's just round these numbers), that makes the GPU 10000 times faster than the combined power of all humans.

I don't think computational requirements scale linearly with resolution, but let's just assume it does. Your regular 1080p screen has roughly 100 times the pixels compared to your 160×120 screen. 10000/100 = 100, which means that the framerate of your manually computed game will be 1/100 of the performance of a regular GPU playing in 1080p.

I welcome someone else to make the same calculation. It'll be interesting to learn if I'm close to a reasonable answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I enjoyed this but I hate twitter as the delivery method for things of this length. Its a terrible way to digest the content.

<comment><USER27> Came here to say the same. Someone needs to tell these people that Twitter is not a blogging service...

<comment><USER28> Or you should be a little more sensitive and read about the OP and why he doesn't use a blog (severe ADHD).

<comment><USER29> Source?

<comment><USER30> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525434)

[https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128](https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not a fan of this essay type thing being on twitter, split into lots of little tweets.

<comment><USER32> Twitter seems to be in this weird space where they have enough usability positives over other social media (pretty broadly accessible, doesn't pester you to log in, you can post NSFW content without it getting taken down) that I guess people just force themselves to use it, even if a blog post would be better formatted.

<comment><USER33> I think it's the combination of feeling easy to do (both UI & not feeling pressure to write a formal essay) and getting immediate feedback. For most people blogging is mostly solitary in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A lot of people are complaining about twitter as the delivery method for this kind of content. I actually really like it, having things broken up like this makes it much easier for me to digest because of my ADHD

<comment><USER27> I have "ADHD" as well. Your brain is like a muscle, and when you actively avoid using it a certain way then it becomes harder to do things that way. The attention economy and the "ADHD" epidemic have a parasitic symbiotic relationship with one another. I'm sure you remember reading books as a kid, so you weren't born like this.

</comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi No video of the crash landing, though?

<comment><USER35> It's the very first tweet?

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Oh, of course. I have become spoiled from years of graphic improvements in games, I was expecting a depiction of the plane being torn to pieces or an explosion to show that it crashed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I often enjoy foone's discoveries, and this was a particularly interesting one.

 _I just wish it wasn't all on Twitter._

Why not put the text, plus pictures and whatever else (links?), into a blog posting, or just some HTML page with basic formatting? And then link to it with just the first Twitter post. Provide an RSS feed if you feel extra charitable (which is the way I enjoy most of the content related to this that I read).

On Twitter alone, it's just terrible.

That being said, while the format is terrible, the actual content here is brilliant, especially in that level of detail, and exactly what I'm looking for on Hacker News.

<comment><USER37> Heh, from foone themself: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1066547670477488128.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1066547670477488128.html)

 _Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there 's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?"_ _CAUSE I CAN 'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT._

The short story is they are quite open about having ADHD, and that's what causes the long twitter rambles, but also what makes it very difficult to assemble it into a blog post. Every once in a while foone's wife will edit a popular thread into a blog post, examples: [https://foone.wordpress.com/](https://foone.wordpress.com/)

If this seems like a particularly good story to you, maybe you'd like to edit it into a draft for a blog post and gift that to foone?

<comment><USER38> Just copy tweets to post?

<comment><USER39> I've tried on multiple occasions to go on twitter, but it like trying to read a newspaper with strobe lights as a reading light. How this became a format will haunt humanity for generations. There is no difference in updating a blog versus being forced to open one of the worst applications known to humanity.

<comment><USER28> This is how the majority of young people consume content, when they read at all. I get that people don't like it who grew up on blogs, but it is what it is at this point and it's a lot like yelling at clouds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Unrolled version: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1126996260026605568.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1126996260026605568.html)

Great story!

<comment><USER41> For all those who hate trying to read this as a tweet: please see parents' link. There's a whole site built to compile all these into a blog like thing for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Twitter is the worst platform for long-form content like this.

<comment><USER43> > Twitter is the worst platform

Ftfy

Seriously twitter is one of few things I hate with a passion. Everything about it stinks. I don't even use twitter but I randomly get rate limited: "you can't see this content because your rate is too high" \- first time I click on twitter link in two weeks.

It's just mind boggling how it became so big while being so absurdly terrible.

<comment><USER44> This happens every time for me and a bunch of others have reported it. I think it's meant to be a dark pattern to get you to use the app. To get around it you have to reload the page from the browser reload button.

<comment><USER43> Funny how this dark pattern pushed me to never use twitter again though I'd be willing to bet it works more often than it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ah interesting, the demo changes based on the state. In a way it's a growing organism.

</comment><comment><USER46> >>> then you collect all three types of DSP chips, you carefully dump acid on them, and you visually extract the ROM data

Tell me more !! How? Do a YouTube video on this ! Hell, Netflix will pay for a ten episode series on hardware hacking easy!</comment>


How We Turned 200 Hours Effort Into Zero Revenue and 22 Subscribers - <AUTHOR> http://everydaydreamholiday.com/2013/01/16/how-we-turned-200-hours-effort-into-zero-revenue-and-22-subscribers/

<comment><USER3> Sharing this information and your thought processes is great, so thanks for doing that. Looking at your website, it's still not clear to me why I would want to sign up - there's no call to action on the homepage saying what I'd be signing up for, just a tagline, a slidehow with a cryptic headline and a find out more, and an advert (and some blog links below the fold).

Why not put "spend 10 minutes, everyday, being taken on a journey around the world" front and centre on the homepage? (I found that text on the why sign up page only after the slideshow got to the last slide, then it moved, then I found the buttons to get back to that slide, etc etc, gah!)

I like the concept, although I'm not sure I want to read 1000 words a day on a random location – on the one hand, 1000 words can be skim-read (and the pretty pictures admired) in ~5 minutes; on the other, if it was a little longer and did take ten minutes, would I want to read it every day? Probably not, and if I'm not going to read it I probably don't want it in my e-mail inbox.

The advantage of a weekly digest is that I can read the ones that I'm interested in _. I really look forward to my Quora digest for example. Daily engagement is something I give to my wife, not a travel blog.

_ Not everyone wants to go around the world and experience everything, but most people would be interested in, say, 10-30% of your destinations. I think your target audience of people who want to go everywhere and experience everything is too small and I almost wonder if its (not trying to be rude here, but can't think of a better word for it) snobbery on your part - I'm guessing you have all travelled a lot and see a lot of value in experiencing things from other cultures and places, even if they are not to your taste. Most people aren't like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your time and input Robin, greatly appreciated.

Re: Call to action, I've made a minor tweak so the slide you mentioned is now front and centre. It can be improved, and will be - super valuable suggestion.

We can definitely do something differently around your "read 1000 words a day" thoughts. The emails are generally 3-4 photos and 150 words, which can be clicked through to the long article by the fraction of readers specifically interested in that location (or bored that day). That fact isn't clear from the site, and may be putting people off.

Your snobbery point is well made. I don't feel we're targeting people who want to go everywhere - more people who are entertained by varied travel stories, even if the story merely confirms that they never want to do that themselves.

Lastly - if we end up changing the whole business model from daily to weekly, I'm voting for _Daily engagement is something I give to my wife, not a travel blog._ to be the new company tagline. Thanks again.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I hadn't signed up for the e-mail I'm afraid so I hadn't seen the daily e-mail is just a section of the blog entry. That makes more sense and does enable the sort of filtering I was thinking of.

Best of luck, glad the input was helpful – I should get on with some real work now :)

<comment><USER4> Just throwing in my vote as another person who doesn't want this daily but would happily receive it weekly. I have enough happening in my inbox without adding another message every day - but once a week would be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author and OP here - I'm one of the co-founders with kerno

I had some insightful feedback on Part 1 from swombat about it being too 'us centric' and not clear about what's in it for the reader. He was right, and Part 2 is hopefully slightly better in that regard (they were written together and split for length); but we really do believe there's value in laying it all on the table.

To that end, I'm also happy to answer any other questions anybody has.

<comment><USER5> I had a look on the first page and had no idea what I get as a customer other than an email a day about a place.

I looked further and it looks like youre monetising by hooking people up with travel guides?

Be really clear about what your value proposition is for your customer, why would they sign up now?

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Be really clear about what your value proposition is for your customer"_ \- This is the key learning I've had from the feedback so far.

And just to clarify - the monetisation plan doesn't involve connecting people with travel guides. Maybe it should?

Our pre-launch survey gave us some great feedback about 'we want local insight', and there was also some strong feeling about 'give us an experience, not a guided tour'. So monetisation will (in current plans) involve advertising, possibly embedded into the daily experience (cafes, destinations, maybe even guides) - although we have yet to determine how we do that openly and without including any awful places.

<comment><USER5> Also be careful of what people #tell# you they want and what they actually want (ie pull a credit card out).

Try and figure out how to align the needs of the advertisers and your customers and it will make things easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMHO I like the concept but your "travel post" could use a visual refresh. I think the top of the post could have a google map showing start location to end location. It sounds really stupid but many people cant connect the location to its place in the world. I think the key to success for your site will be in revamping the posts to feel less like blog posts with massive blocks of info.

Contact me for some help on doing this if you want. I have a day job but could be an "intern" of sorts. I am sending you an email so you can have mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maps were something in the original plan, and they're now back on the agenda! Thanks Rylan - I'll be checking emails shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks very nice but as per some of the other comments, there is not enough "grab" or focus for me-it seems very generic. How about adding a forum? Countries/Places/Ideas/Wants/help required/local contacts etc. - If you take a look at Pistonheads.com (cars) - the forums make that site work and visitors returning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some great ideas Spants, so thank you for sharing. One month in, we're certainly focused on the initial offering (daily entertaining email) more than some of the other features you suggest. There's plenty of competition in the sector, so we don't want to try and be all things to all people.

As a user, I'm really happy with the forums at TripAdvisor and ThornTree - <USER2> thoughts on how they could be advanced or improved upon would be welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Posted today and relevant: [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/01/dig...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/01/digitalization- and-the-value-of-various-tourist-locales.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks tgrass, good find and a REALLY interesting question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first thing I do when I go to your site is look to see if there is a city guide for a place I've been to, but none are available and I am just prompted to sign up for a newsletter, which is clearly not what I want. The daily destinations seems like a very generic travel blog. I think there is opportunity in interactive city guide, and I'd gladly pay for one if it was somehow and everyway tailored to me. Wallpaper city guides are pretty good [1], but they are kind of one dimensional.

[1] <http://uk.phaidon.com/travel/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Draggner. If it's city guides you want, we can suggest everything from Lonely Planet Encounter Guides ($5-$10 each) to the newly launched WikiVoyage - and really, they're great! We have no intention with competing with them.

I agree there's an opportunity in the market for an interactive city guide - it was something we discussed, but aren't intending to focus on for now. Why?

Because we believe in email. We'd rather be called an entertaining travel blog than a generic one, of course, and your insight has revealed how we probably aren't being clear enough about our website v our emails. Thanks.

Ultimately we'd rather be known for entertaining emails than a comprehensive travel website. That's the choice we've made - it's not right or wrong, and you may see us in the interactive city guide market one day. Or someone else may seize it - and then we'd all be happier!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love it! I signed up but I guard my inbox like a fortress so will probably make these skip the inbox then set a weekly reminder to read over them (alternatively, you could offer a weekly digest :) )

</comment><comment><USER11> Those posts to Reddit, especially the meme post, are ineffective because they scream spam. Most users of those subreddits will see right through your intentions of creating artificial discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, all part of learning our way around a new community. Aiming to add relevent content (ie, not just submit every story to /r/travel), and learn from the karma feedback system when we're doing that and when we're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Less than ten hours per subscriber is not bad. In-house enterprise software can get to hundreds of dollars in development costs per user _click_ before getting cancelled.

<comment><USER13> I think the difference is that enterprise software eventually nets you a $200,000 contract, while the OP company distributes free email and makes money through affiliate links.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. While I'll take any compliments or acknowledgements, comparing us to enterprise software is a long bow. Although if it's long bow comparisons we're looking for, it is worth noting that we have more Twitter followers than the first 37 Presidents combined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "take control and make 10 minutes of your day truly yours."

I read that and immediately signed up, but to echo Robin_message, I am not sure I want to be told about places I probably won't go. There has to be other ways you can make this 10 minutes work for me. I'll be waiting.</comment>


Software Updates: Courgette (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette

<comment><USER2> courgette is cool, but the deassembly and reassembly process is disasterous if your machine is busy. I have significant fps drop while fullscreen gaming and chrome updating the same time. It hogs 99% of cpu and disk io

<comment><USER3> Since it's a background process, it really ought to be set to low priority. Doesn't really matter if it takes 15 minutes to expand the diff vs 1.

<comment><USER4> > We want smaller updates because it narrows the window of vulnerability... We > have enough users that this means more users will be protected earlier.

<comment><USER5> You misunderstand that sentence.

They are referring to the number of updates they can deliver per unit of Google outbound bandwidth, not the amount of time it takes to run that update. The sentence that you elide with ellipses makes this clear:

We want smaller updates because it narrows the window of vulnerability. If the update is a tenth of the size, we can push ten times as many per unit of bandwidth. We have enough users that this means more users will be protected earlier.

<comment><USER4> The exact same reasoning applies to _applying the patch_ : if it takes 10 minutes to apply the patch with normal priority, and 30 minutes to apply in the background, then that's another 20 minutes of vulnerability for that user!

Geez.

<comment><USER5> You are confusing throughput with latency. Google is optimizing for throughput.

<comment><USER4> And you are simply not responding to my point. Please explain why taking 20 minutes to apply a security patch is safer than taking 10 minutes to apply a security patch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something new? This is like Old news is so exciting. And I thought there was a legal battle on going on about the usage of Courgette.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if it's made it onto the front page, I guess it's safe to assume some people think it's interesting.

I submitted it because I hadn't seen these details before. Seems an admin has now added (2009) to the title, which is helpful since there's no obvious date on the page.</comment></comment>