So You Want to Be a Hero? - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2016/09/so-you-want-to-be-a-hero/ <comment><USER2> I loved Quest for Glory (or Heroes Quest, as it was when my sister and I purchased the first one) when I was younger. We totally mini-maxed it, spamming "pick nose" and sneaking everywhere to max out our skills (and of course we were a thief, because they could do fight and do magic as well.)

What sticks with me, however, is how the story gave the player freedom while still remaining engaging (exactly the points the article makes). So-called computer RPGs focused on the most boring parts of role-playing---combat---and completely ignored the thing that makes RPGs what they are, the player's role in creating the story! Bards Tale and Wizardry games that are contemporaneous to Quest for Glory are decidedly weaker sauce. Games like Ultima that tried to create an open world mostly ended up filling that world with bland variations on the same theme, and lost any narrative drive through endless side quests. Although we ground like only kids with nothing better to do can, there was no need for excessive grinding in Quest for Glory. You could push the story forward fairly quickly, and every puzzle had multiple solutions.

Totally agreed with 32bitkid that Deus Ex is the closest contemporary game to Quest for Glory, combining strong narrative with player freedom.

<comment><USER3> Whoa, I never knew about the "pick nose" trick, I've played thru the game a number of times as thief, both the original EGA and the VGA remake.

IMHO, the thief was the best class, the only one where you could get all the skills. And that's only if you started on QfG I. Starting as any other class, or a thief in later versions, and at least one of your skills was a zero, which meant you could never use or improve it (as far as I've ever found out).

<comment><USER4> That's indeed what I remember as well, but in at least one of the sequels it made sense to transition to a fighter to gain the paladin powers on top of the rest. Playing for maximum freedom was actually incredibly constraining in certain ways; I vaguely recall that you get forced by class into a specific endgame for Trial By Fire.

I have to mention to anyone who stumbles across this comment that there have been remakes. The QfG1 remake in 1992 was okayish, but I personally preferred the 16-color version in all its limited glory. But the QfG2 remake in 2011 was worthy of multiple replays just like the original was:

[http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/homepage/homepage.h...](http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/homepage/homepage.html)

QfG3 is still playable via DOSBox if you can get a copy of the software. I want to play QfG4 again and I unfortunately have never played QfG5 as it landed when I was broke... but I _did_ get a copy of the soundtrack via some filesharing network at the time, and Chance Thomas's work on that soundtrack was absolutely gorgeous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first quote by Corey Cole on that page is brilliant, and is something so many game designers shoud probably keep in mind:

> Rule #1 is "The Player Must have Fun." It's trivially easy for a game > designer to "defeat" players. We have all the tools and all the power. The > trick is to play on the same side as the players, to tell the story > together, and to make them the stars.

So many game designers (especially amateur ones) seem to think game design is about screwing over the player at every opportunity. That it's a battle between the designer and the player, with the aim to make things as difficult as possible.

And the point about a lot of Sirerra's designers not actually having much experience playing video games kind of says a lot, doesn't it? Certainly explains how brutal most of their adventure games were.

<comment><USER6> Sierra games were some of my favorites. Too many games do way too much hand holding.

<comment><USER2> I played a lot of Sierra games but Quest for Glory was by far my favourite series. I think it's totally valid to take different views on game design, and no doubt there is an audience for may different approaches (e.g. there is a certain type of person who enjoys bullet hell games, which I find totally tedious.)

What irked me about most Sierra games is that each puzzle had only a single solution, and most of those solutions were totally arbitrary. The added "fun" in the earlier Sierra games was you had to figure out the arbitrary text to enter to activate the arbitrary solution as well. This is also very apparent in the Fighting Fantasy books, if you've every played them. The only way this makes sense to me is to consider dying part of the game and the meta-game, over many restarts, is the real game. I don't find this very satisfying.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree here too. HQ/QFG was the crown jewel of Sierra, and also their most underrated title. Space Quest deserves honorable mention. I really enjoyed getting away from the green grass and castles theme and it didn't take itself too seriously.

<comment><USER8> I loved Space Quest, but when I saw Hero's Quest sitting on the shelf in the shop, I picked it up, examined it, and then put it back. I didn't know it, and if it wasn't good it was a waste of around $80. So it sat there for months, nobody bought it, until eventually the shop discounted it.

My father came home one night, paper bag in hand. Handing it to me, he said "I've got something for you, it was cheap." I took a look, thought "MEH!" but put it in the Amiga just to please him.

Six hours later, I realised I should head to bed, but just one more monster! One more puzzle! I couldn't stop, I think I finally got to bed around 2am. Woke up the next morning, it was the weekend so no school, computer on, and away I went for the whole day. Finished it the next day, and then restarted it as a different class.

Even now, I still get asked about that game from time-to-time. I don't have it anymore, but YouTube does - he loves the cleaning montage at the castle, particularly the music.

I never managed to get into the sequel, but since someone's done a remake (linked to further down the forum) think I might load it up on my iMac and give it a play.

One of my all-time favourite games, Hero's Quest.

<comment><USER7> Point dad towards gog.com![0]

You could probably use the gog.com version of the game on your Mac if you don't mind configuring Dosbox on your own. On a Windows machine they work flawlessly off gog and for $10 for the whole pack.. well, I have a copy. And I have a shrine to HQ/QFG in my computer room with all the originals on a shelf.

I followed all 5 games from 89 to 98. Sierra's Interaction magazine is what kept me in the loop. HQ was the most charming by far and an amazing effort for a preliminary title. QFG2 was the best overall in the series. The combat, story and settings were more epic than the rest. 3 wasn't bad, I appreciated the setting and the large overmap continued on the epic feeling from 2. Lots of people like 4 the best, but I think it's the combination of green grass/castles theme that certain people seem to love and it was definitely Lori Cole at her best with the storytelling. While the peak of story for all the games, the dreary atmosphere wasn't my favorite. 5 was a little wonky compared to the rest. While I'm biased and do I prefer EGA>VGA>3D, it basically served to finish up the story. I just don't think VGA aged well at all and 3D doesn't either unless it's cartoon-style (think Zelda Wind Waker[1]).

Keep a lookout for Lori & Corey's new game, Hero-U[2]. I don't know what's wrong with major publishers who won't hire those two and give them free reign.

[0][https://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory](https://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory)

[1][https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zelda+wind+waker+&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zelda+wind+waker+&t=ffsb&iax=1&ia=images)

[2][http://hero-u.com/](http://hero-u.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The quest for glory I VGA remake was the first game I ever purchased with my own money as a teen; and it made a huge impact on me. (although I honestly think that qfg2 was the best game in the series). Though the mechanics have been explored in other games since, I still like to go back and play through 1-5 every now and then. They still hold up surprisingly well, through the glossy lens of nostalgia.

In fact, just this morning, my little brother asked me if the new dues ex is worth picking up and I described it as "scratching my itch for the old quest for glory series"

It's great to read insights into some of these games, though I sometimes worry about the history of a lot of the influential works in this medium. I'm afraid it'll get lost and unappreciated, and be unplayable. Can there be a "criterion collection" for early video games and interactive fiction. Is something that even matters? Maybe I'm just getting old.

<comment><USER9> For those interested in the series, and classic sierra adventure games in general, be sure to check out AGDI's remake of qfg2

[http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/](http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/)

They are a super talented bunch and its a worthy remake/homage/labor-of-love to finalize the series. I kind of wish I had the talent and dedication to tackle making qfg 5 into the vga style of the rest, and implement some of the other features that got cut from the final chapter. Cest la vie

<comment><USER10> I get x11 errors when attempting to launch on OS X 10.11

Anyone know a work around?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Our first (and Sierra's first) Producer, Guruka Singh Khalsa, taught us the > "Ken Williams Rule" based on something Robert Heinlein wrote: "That which he > tells you three times is true."

Originally written by Lewis Carroll:

      "Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
      As he landed his crew with care;
      Supporting each man on the top of the tide
      By a finger entwined in his hair.

      "Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
      That alone should encourage the crew.
      Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
      What I tell you three times is true."

(See also Appendix ל of the _Illuminatus! Trilogy_.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Corey and Lori Ann Cole are the best! I can't wait for their new game :) [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero- u-r...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/transolargames/hero-u-rogue-to- redemption/description)

<comment><USER13> Aw. For a second I thought, "Wow, an actual good Kickstarter?" and went to check it out. I found another 3-ring circus of "reward tiers", empty promises, and DukeNukemForeverWare.

<comment><USER14> Quest for Infamy is a kickstarter project that delivered a good quest of glory like game...

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/infamousquests/quest- fo...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/infamousquests/quest-for-infamy- an-adventure-game-by-infamous-que)

<comment><USER15> I played through quest for infamy as the thief character (of course) and I'd say it was at least as good as QFG3. Not without faults but worthwhile for any fans of the Coles' games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quest for Glory and Sierra fans who enjoyed this article may also really enjoy "Why We Loved Sierra Games". The Coles and some other Sierra designers said some nice things about this too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wua96SI6SBE&list=PLPAVYgFfed...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wua96SI6SBE&list=PLPAVYgFfeddJzax1X4VUj69Z1Vs4PqGlA&index=1)

</comment><comment><USER17> Loved all the Sierra games, especially Hero's Quest.

Any recommendations for PG (kids) for something similar today? Deus Ex seems good but not for under 10... I really loved the fantasy world, the interactive story telling, and the challenges of the Quest for Glory series.

Would pay good money for a hand painted, well crafted, modern point and click with an immersive story like this. The 8bit EGA/VGA stuff brings back warm memories but I don't think that's the thing that made it magical for me.

<comment><USER18> Apparently Heroine's Quest, a freeware game from 2014, is quite good [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/15/freeware- garden-...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/15/freeware-garden- heroines-quest/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's the pitch for Ubisoft's "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - Wasteland". There are several different ways to approach the battles.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJub3Kz2wI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJub3Kz2wI)</comment>


Tesla battery storage will accelerate exit of coal generators - <AUTHOR> http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/tesla-battery-storage-will-accelerate-exit-of-coal-generators-88203 <comment><USER3> Considering DB was one of the inv. banks involved in the IPO, I would most likely take what they say with a pinch of salt. A little more research into the price difference "claimed" between Tesla and other industry competitors shows that actually between 2007-2014 USD1000 per kWH to USD 410 kWh (study- [http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate25...](http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/full/nclimate2564.html)) and even to USD300 kWh for some industry leaders. Even with installation costs and inverter costs excluded from these figures, I am not sure that Tesla has done something absolutely "staggering" as claimed in the article (although I absolutely enjoyed Elon's keynote!)

<comment><USER4> Did you read that Nature paper? The "some industry leaders" = Tesla. In any event, the whole chart is based on pretty few data points with highly heterogeneous sources, so I'd take the average numbers with a pinch of salt. Prices are clearly falling at a reasonably fast clip industry-wide though.

<comment><USER3> Yes absolutely. Agree on Tesla being one of the industry leaders driving the innovation on bringing down battery pack prices BUT my point was what you have re-iterated in your last line - prices are falling on an average industry wide and to attribute that success primarily to Tesla is gross overstatement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is a look at the topic that is not so fan-boy about it. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why- teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/)

<comment><USER6> The fact that writers are actually having to drill down and do the math and see if Solar Power is less expensive in areas _where power is cheap and available_ is mind blowing to me.

I find it fascinating, that, by 2017, there will be areas in Hawaii and Australia, in which you can make an argument that Solar Power is now less expensive that grid power.

What these authors seem to fail to recognize (or highlight) in their criticism - is that these lines are being crossed 10-15 years ahead of time. Nobody expected parity on these edge cases until at least 2025-2030, and we're going to see it in 2016.

And, what they also seem to fail to recognize, is that the curves for solar are going down. This is just the start.

<comment><USER7> There isn't any reason for the author to bring up those points because they are irrelevant.

This article is about whether it makes sense to buy a tesla battery _right now_. It doesn't matter if solar will be half the cost in five years. If that's the case, just buy it then when the numbers make sense.

Let's say someone wrote an article reviewing a new apartment complex opening in the Tenderloin of SF. If they said that the crime there is terrible so people should look elsewhere, would you be complaining if they didn't provide in-depth projects of potential future crime rates in the same area?

<comment><USER8> It makes perfect sense to bring it up because the massive disruption this will cause to the global energy economy. Oil, coal, the structure of these are going to be altered massively. Think today how gas is used to blackmail the Ukraine and prop up autocratic political systems. There are very significant implications to all of this. By the time it becomes 'relevant' it will be ancient news to those who appreciate what's going on here.

<comment> semi-extrinsic The interesting question for solar power is not "When will stand-alone solar power be cheaper than coal/gas?". It is "How high can we push the fraction of solar power / total power before the power distribution grid fails?". You need base power generation to augment solar/wind, there's not a serious scientist in the world denying that, and the numbers I've heard quoted say you can't average much more than 50-60% solar and wind combined.

Right now, Germany is charging ahead on solar. Their current __peak __record is 50.4% of total power from solar, on a sunny midsummer day with low power usage. Meanwhile, all of their neigbouring countries to the east are doing massive overhauls /reconfigurations of their power distribution grids just to be able to supply Germany with enough base power, mainly from nuclear.

<comment><USER6> The "We can't do everything with solar" was what everyone was saying (correctly) in 2005-2010. But, the entire _point_ of the Powerwall product is that, _today_ (not next year, today), in parts of Australia and Hawaii, it is now less expensive, and more efficient, to go 100% solar. As the prices of batteries drop, and solar becomes more efficient, the number of places where that is true will only increase.

From the perspective of watching trends back in 2005, this wasn't supposed to happen until 2025, so it's arriving 10 years early.

There's nothing that would prevent a good storage system + wind + power from supplying 100% of the power requirements reliably. You just need to scale your Storage system to handle the periods in which solar/wind aren't driving power.

Regarding the Germany Scenario - Let's see how much nuclear they are going to require after they add a few Terrawatt-Hours worth of battery storage to their grid.

Finally, commenting on your "so Serious Scientists" \- there are a lot of them that have done the calculations and have come to the conclusion that _only_ a solar solution will supply the world with the power it requires so that everyone can have an first-world lifestlye. In particular, check out Nate Lewis's introduction to Solar Energy - [https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodca...](https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=385384449#ls=1) ,He "provides a beginner's overview of the concepts behind solar energy generation as well as the current state of the art and its potential role in future energy production."

It's eye opening - even nuclear power plants don't stand a chance versus solar (which, to be honest, is just harvesting the output of a really, really, really big fusion generator)

The missing component has always been storage, and Elon has jumpstarted that conversation. The powerall is interesting, the gigafactory is more interesting, but the fact that he realizes Tesla is only going to be a tiny, tiny element of a much larger industrial transition, is, in my mind, the most important part of this story.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Sorry, that's just missing the mark. In northern latitudes, where most of the world's energy consumption is currently located, the seasonal variation in solar influx means a 100% solar solution needs to do energy storage for months at a time. Continuing with the Germany example, the monthly-average production of solar power in January is ~ 1/15th the production in July.

And I don't believe we will ever be able to get the whole world up to current western consumption levels. More to the point, we really shouldn't, as current consumption levels in the west are clearly unsustainable.

<comment> semi-extrinsic (I'm not able to reply to ghshephard, so I put it here.)

My point about not getting everyone up to western consumption levels isn't mainly about the things you mention. It's more about the use-and-throw-away culture, plus the general inability of people to make stuff themselves. Imagine the impact if people started mending stuff and clothes, cooking their own food, taking the bicycle with a trailer to the local market to do the weekly shopping, etc. Not just on reducing direct and (mainly) indirect energy consumption, but on public health and general happiness levels! There's so much of our energy consumption that doesn't improve our lives in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER6> I won't argue about how we live in a terribly consumer-fixated culture - totally agree with you. Ironically, at this exact moment, I'm writing a review on Amazon, about how much I like my 15 year old Kaito KA007 hand-cranked radio. It's never seen a single battery, yet I've had it with me on camping, business trips, burning man - everywhere. 60 seconds on the crank gets me 20 minutes of radio. I hope to have it with me another 15 years.

Likewise, my Mountain Equipment Co-Op Backpack that I've had for 18 years - I've had that with me _every single day_ for 19 years, it's my laptop case, my tool case, my document holder - In the Amazon Jungle, Luxembourg, and with Network Engineers in London, Dubai and Singapore. I've used the _heck_ out of it - and it's still going strong.

So, I'm totally on board with having a very few things, that you take good care of, and last a long time.

But - this is a separate conversation (somewhat) from energy usage. Heat, Pumping/Processing water, cooling - they all have some physical minimum amounts of power. And even if you are living a hyper-efficient 40 gallons/day life style (Northern California, see [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/01/us/water- use-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/01/us/water-use-in- california.html) ) versus the rest of the world (See: [http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757](http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757)) - there are some physical limits as to how little energy you can use and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. We can only be efficient so far - <USER2> we're going to have to find a way to provide lots, and lots, and lots of power to everyone in the world, if they want to live a comfortable lifestyle.

Thankfully, much of that comes from having warm homes, and hot water - something that Solar does an admirable job of providing (bringing it all back to the original thread).

<comment> semi-extrinsic I agree wholeheartedly with all of this. But I think reducing consumption is probably the most significant thing a person can do to lower their CO2 footprint. My rule of thumb (which is fairly good across a surprising range of goods for ones that I've tested) is that at least 500g of CO2 is emitted for every dollar you spend, whether that's on electricity with our current typical fuel mix or on a cheeseburger or a plane journey. So if your electricity bill is say 5% of your monthly expenditures, electric energy usage is just responsible for 5% of your total CO2 emissions. This is very ballpark, but you get the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It certainly will.

I still think there is a fundamental need to re-think the energy market though - specifically on the role the power utility plays. Clearly they won't be selling a great deal of power but they play a key role in absorbing spikes (both up and down) and stepping in when the grid needs to be balanced. Somehow they need to be fairly compensated for that universal arbiter role & charging per unit of electricity doesn't seem to work well on this new landscape.

<comment><USER10> Not all electricity is consumed by homes or properties where "the amount of local energy resources" is within an order of magnitude of "the amount of power used by the facility". "Companies who provide lots and lots of electricity" aren't going anywhere; you're not going to run an aluminum smelting plant off of a local, plant-owned installation of solar panels, if for no other reason that it is a poor use of capital as a plant would not be able to invest to keep up in the changing landscape of energy generation.

While change is happening and change in inevitable I think you're greatly overestimating the rate of the change and badly misunderstanding the quality.

<comment><USER11> Do heavy industrial concerns with high power usage not already usually have an on-site gas or oil turbine to generate their own power and, often equally important, steam?

That's the situation I'm familiar with, but that may be a peculiarity of the under-developed grid in my area.

<comment><USER12> Some do, but that implies on-site supply of gas (oil would not be used for aluminium production much).

Building smelters next to coal fields is a way of producing cheap aluminium. Coal is still the cheapest way to make electricity - it's only places where the government has explicitly made this not the case that coal is expensive.

Generally unfavourable government regulations simply moves production to places without the regulation - for no net change in production or coal consumption. Sometimes it's a net negative if the new location has lower local emissions standards and technology.

<comment><USER13> Please provide sources. This is not true for the country I live in for new generation. I read somewhere it's not true for Australia either.

People are sometimes fooled by sunk capital costs of old power plants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From a friend who is in the battery business: "LIB loses capacity over time and cycle. Grid storage requires extremely large cycle life, cheap and high power capability for all the flow of renewable energy source. LIB only has the last one. Maybe Elon Musk can make it cheap but cycle life is still gonna be the problem needs to be solved."

<comment><USER15> Musk will warranty the hell out of batteries. Maybe they'll wear out in 5 years, but he'll have a giant battery factory in full swing by then.

Tesla cars are warrantied the same way. He over promises now to get traction, then uses the profit at volume to cover any gaps in initial deployments. It's a pretty solid plan, but you have to deliver or you lose your reputation. Musk knows he can do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I certainly hope this will be the end of coal. It would be the biggest single step forward in reducing GHG emissions.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand your comment. The death of coal is not a single step. It's already been happening because of cheap natural gas.

Look at this chart for a coal company[1]. It's already been almost dead and a major chunk of the coal GHG emissions are already cut way back (albeit at the expense of natural gas emissions).

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ACI+Interactive#{"range":"5y"})

<comment><USER17> Why post a stock chart for a coal company, when we have actual usage data for coal:

1949-2011: [http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec7_9.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec7_9.pdf)

2008-2014Q2: [http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pd...](http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pdf)

Unfortunately, it doesn't back up your claim at all that it's "almost dead"... It looks like we're about 18% off from the peak in 2007.

<comment><USER7> >Why post a stock chart for a coal company, when we have actual usage data for coal:

Sorry if it wasn't obvious, but coal companies have to make money. They are at the point now where they are on the verge of being wiped out by natural gas.

It will reach a point where coal makes absolutely no sense to invest in and the game will stop there. It's already at the point where nobody in their right mind is putting money into new large coal prospects.

<comment><USER18> So then, coal consumption is up?

[http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/HNRG](http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/HNRG)

A single company's stock production does not indicate the state of coal any more than Gateway's stock chart represents the state of technology.

<comment><USER7> >Hallador has a 45 percent equity interest in Savoy Energy, L.P., an oil and gas company with operations in Michigan.

It's a bit daft to point to a company that has a pretty be hedge against the decline of coal.

I pointed to ACI because they mostly depend on coal sales in the US so it's a pretty nice reflection of the US domestic coal market.

<comment><USER18> As has been already pointed out, the domestic coal market is not indicative of the entire coal market.

In the ten year period between 2002 and 2012 (the only figure I have the most recent numbers for) coal consumption went from 5 and a half billion tons to over 8 billion tons, and it's slated to hit 9 billion tons by 2019.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is hard to overstate the impact of this announcement.

Just as solar panels were not expected to reach $0.70/watt until 2030 (reached it last year), batteries were not expected to reach $400/kWh until years from now.

It is now quite possible that off-grid will make economic sense across wide swaths of the globe for new construction, across a subset for retrofits.

<comment><USER20> > batteries were not expected to reach $400/kWh until years from now.

What? Your ordinary starting battery for a medium-sized car has 65 Ah @ 12 V. That is 780 wH. They cost here < 60 € or about 65 $.

So they are significantly less than $100/kWh, and the technology has been around for more than a hundred years.

(These are starting batteries, not entirely suitable for storing e.g. solar which are currently a bit more expensive, but not nearly twice as expensive, and the difference in price comes just from manufacturing and sales volume).

<comment><USER21> Here [0] is a lead-acid storage battery, UK price £90 ($135) for 1.26kWh. That is $107/kWh.

You do not use the whole 1.26kWh each cycle - you only want to use e.g. 50% of that, so that you get reasonable battery life (fully discharge your lead-acid batteries, and you won't have any electrodes left). So $208/kWh might be the 'actually usable' value.

The harder number to find is battery lifetime - it depends on many factors (discharge depth, number of cycles per year, storage temperature, exact battery type, etc). And when you are doing cost-benefit analysis, this number is a vital part of your calculations. You also want to know 'if I wait x years, will the price of Tesla batteries have dropped so much that I would be better holding cash now, and buying Tesla batteries in the future).

This headline number is not the total cost of course, you need charge controller, inverter, building to house the batteries, etc.

[0] [http://www.bimblesolar.com/27DC105-105AH-12V?search=battery](http://www.bimblesolar.com/27DC105-105AH-12V?search=battery)

<comment><USER20> BTW that £90 clearly includes VAT, but is the VAT on home battery systems in UK 20 % or 5 %? Domestic fuel is 5% but that doesn't necessarily mean that the same reduced rate applies to replacement energy devices?

<comment><USER21> For ballpark numbers, I am not worrying about 15%. e.g. will your batteries last 10yrs, 20yrs, or more, is a bigger unknown.

But to try answering your question, here [0] the UK govt says it is 5% for battery banks for wind power, and for hydro power. Solar is not mentioned, my _guess_ would be that the rate on the battery we are discussing is 5%.

[0] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat- notice-7086-e...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat- notice-7086-energy-saving-materials/vat-notice-7086-energy-saving-materials)

<comment><USER20> Yes, this is not at all relevant for ballpark numbers, I was just interested whether the VAT rules appreciate the fact that these batteries are for alternative energy and not just generic consumer goods.

I'm afraid my country (Finland) taxes them with 24 % VAT just like almost everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can Li-Ion batteries in 2015 deliver enough charge/deplete cycles to run a house off the grid and not need to be replaced every two years?

Because use in laptops would demonstrate otherwise.

<comment><USER23> Laptop and mobile phone use are pretty aweful for batteries - they get hot a lot, and don't have much smarts for managing charge.

Considering there's 3 year old Teslas that are still running with 80%+ capacity, I'd say that yes, they can manage to last more than two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Question: How easy will it be to recycle these battery packs once they've been cycled too many times to be effective?

<comment><USER25> IKEA has recycling batteries service [http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/store/adelaide/services_recycling](http://www.ikea.com/aa/en/store/adelaide/services_recycling)

<comment><USER20> I think they can do it as a free service for consumer volumes, but if we talk about recycling the local power station's storage batteries, your local IKEA won't accept them. The question is more like "what kind of industry do we need to build to recycle the materials, and how to manage its emissions".

<comment><USER26> Tesla has already built recycling into the lifecycle (outsource to Umicore since 2011):

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> i like how everyone's definition of affordable is different. us centric net journalists seem to have a pretty low bar in particular...

<comment><USER28> Come on.

The definition is the relevant one for the context. The definition of affordable here is relative to the people who may buy it. If it is affordable for >50% of new homebuilders in US, Europe, Japan, etc, and for the minority middle classes in middle income countries (china, Brazil..) then it is "affordable" in the context that we are talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the City with many high rise building, installing Solar Panel in lower rise building causes horrible concentrated Light reflection. Generally I would rather have utility making solar farm then roof top solar panel.

<comment><USER6> I've always thought that was an indication of poor efficiency on the part of the PV Solar Panel module. Wouldn't you expect to see, on very efficient Panels, no reflection? Indeed, isn't the ideal to see dark black pools where the panels are doing their best work?

<comment><USER30> Even if the solar panel only reflects 1% of the light, the reflection of the sun would still be blindingly bright.

<comment><USER31> Welding filter shade 5 lets through more light than that.

<comment><USER6> Can you look directly at the sun with a Welding Filter shade 5?

<comment><USER31> Not continuously for hours, that takes about 14 or 15. But it isn't dazzling.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple WWDC 2010 Keynote - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc10/

<comment><USER2> If you (like me) would rather like to play the video with VLC, I have had success with these URIs:

* Low: [http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127i...](http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127iojapsoiujdv_220_ref.mov)

* Medium: [http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127i...](http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127iojapsoiujdv_350_ref.mov)

* High: [http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127i...](http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/1006ad9g4hjk/1006127iojapsoiujdv_650_ref.mov)

For me, it's a bit choppy in the beginning, but it starts working nicely within the first minute.

</comment><comment> Matt-Martin Use this link to bypass the streaming issue:

Simply watch it in your browser or wget it

[http://movies.apple.com/datapub/us/podcasts/apple_keynotes/w...](http://movies.apple.com/datapub/us/podcasts/apple_keynotes/wwdc10_keynote.m4v)

</comment><comment><USER3> You need quicktime.... FAIL!

<comment><USER4> Sadly, the Quicktime streams are not working on my Vista PC. The audio works, but not the video. And they QuickTime crashes. Man, it makes me realize how outdated QuickTime is these days....

<comment><USER5> I'm so glad Apple supports HTML5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I didn't expect such terrible useability from an apple website:

      - open the page
      - hover over "low" link, notice it's a .mov extention
      - right click the "low" link, select "save as..."
      - open downloaded file
      - windows firewall popup says it's trying to phone home.
      - click "no, block this"
      - quicktime opens and nothing happens.

Evidently, the file you download is not an actual video file, like it says it is. It's a placeholder for a stream. But since it never tells you this, the only sane thing to do when the firewall warning comes up is to block it. And of course, quicktime doesn't handle this common failure case.

Amazing.

More fun, now that the port's blocked, there's no way to watch the movie even if you just click the link.

<comment><USER7> I am pretty sure if you had just left clicked it like a normal person you would have been fine. And wow, 1 second after you click a video link, Windows Awesome Firewall™ says something wants to connect to the internet? I wonder what that could be? Maybe the movie I clicked on 1 second ago? Why I think I'll deny it! Hey, this stupid thing doesn't work! Apple sucks!

<comment><USER6> Why would you expect something that you just downloaded from the internet to immediately need to download more stuff from the internet? The whole point of downloading things is so that they're, you know, downloaded.

So no, I associate a piece of software connecting to the internet as it trying to download updates for itself or track your activity. Neither of which are things I want it to do, so it gets told no.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that most video downloads these days involve first downloading a file to tell your downloader how to get the rest of the data.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OSQA - Roll your own StackOverflow - <AUTHOR> http://www.osqa.net/ <comment><USER2> But before doing that, consider if the community you are trying to build already exists:

\- Lots here: <http://area51.stackexchange.com/>

\- Programming, etc.: <http://stackoverflow.com/>

\- Jobs: <http://careers.stackoverflow.com/>

\- Server Administration: <http://serverfault.com/>

\- Web Applications: <http://webapps.stackexchange.com/>

\- Gaming: <http://gaming.stackexchange.com/>

\- Ubuntu: <http://askubuntu.com/>

\- Webmasters: <http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/>

\- Cooking: <http://cooking.stackexchange.com/>

\- Game Development: <http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/>

\- Math: <http://math.stackexchange.com/>

\- Photography: <http://photo.stackexchange.com/>

\- Statistics: <http://stats.stackexchange.com/>

\- TeX and LaTeX: <http://tex.stackexchange.com/>

\- Computer Enthusiasts (OS, etc.): <http://superuser.com/>

The other two sites are just for support/feedback purposes:

\- Stack Exchange API: <http://stackapps.com/>

\- Questions about stack overflow/stack exchange itself: <http://meta.stackoverflow.com/>

And there are a multitude of other sites that have Q&A, the new kid on the block being Quora ( <http://www.quora.com/> ).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a realy bad idea. Of course I fully suport open source and self-hosted alternatives, but there are really good reasons for using the Stackexchange system. They will not only do all the hosting and management, but they'll help you find co-admins for the site and work out if there's actually a market for your chosen topic. If there's not a market for your chosen topic then there's likely to still be places you could ask questions like Quora or one of the existing Stack Exchange sites or Metafilter.

I can see this posibly being useful in a closed enterprise evironment when you want a way of helping coworkers solve problems. Maybe. But in that situation there's probably going to be a better way.

<comment><USER4> A really bad idea? It is a really good idea for communities that don't have significant market share but still want an SO style forum. For example there is an OSQA backed forum for Esperanto speakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just further evidence that design is hard and copying is easy. If it weren't, we would have the stackoverflow clone before the original.

Using this clone in many cases is impractical because hosting and administering the thing isn't free, and it probably will cost more to do this than to just use stackexchange.</comment>


Projects of Coursera 'Startup Engineering' course get funded - <AUTHOR> http://startupmooc.org/?resub

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, that there's a large amount of projects that are centered around Bitcoin or just use it some way.</comment>


Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://www.aauw.org/research/whysofew.cfm

<comment><USER2> Because it's a freaking lousy career that more women than men are smart enough to stay out of: <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science> ?

Especially given the much smaller fertility window women have?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please read the study, instead of making up rationalizations to avoid dealing with issues of stereotypes, gender bias, and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities. <http://www.aauw.org/research/upload/whysofew.pdf>

<comment><USER2> If, as I claim, it's a bad career, shouldn't those discriminating against women in university STEM careers be praised instead of condemned ^_^? The sooner someone bails out, the better, _if_ this thesis is correct.

(I.e. it would be a lot more productive if you were to address my point instead of totally ignoring it.)

<comment><USER3> Well, one could argue that, even if the careers suck, science/technology has a big impact on people's lives, so if it's gender-imbalanced that might lead to gender-imbalanced impacts on even people not in the field, as they're stuck using tech designed exclusively by men. On the other hand, that sort of ends- focused argument isn't a very good reason for any actual women to go into the field, unless they're particularly altruistic and doing it to better society.

But yeah, I think these debates do tend to assume that STEM careers are desirable, which is why there is no similar hand-wringing about how few women get construction jobs (<10% women). Certainly they're _well paid_ , which is probably the biggest reason STEM careers are seen as better than construction jobs, given that level of pay has become close to an exclusive measure of job desirability (e.g. we judge colleges and majors by average starting pay on graduation).

<comment><USER2> A further problem with the "STEM has a big impact on people's lives" thesis (as a motivator for going into it) is that the odds of _you_ making a really big difference are low and seriously unpredictable. Being perfectly prepared to figure out the structure and semi-synthesis of penicillin does you little good if you show up on the scene a few years after someone else did it....

<comment><USER3> Yeah, though my impression is that the current focus is mostly on the good- for-society angle: that it would be better for society if STEM fields as a whole were more gender-balanced, even if not necessarily better for the women actually _in_ those STEM fields.

This is a rather different argument than the more traditional one, that gender-bias/etc. is standing in the way of women who want to go into STEM careers but find themselves blocked. The focus these days seems to be more on women who _don't_ want to go into STEM careers, to figure out why and how we can change that, which is more of a focus on social-engineering/good-for- society outcomes, as opposed to the more traditional feminist focus on personal autonomy / right to pursue your career of choice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should games like The Sims be banned? - <AUTHOR>

These games glorify household work and can have a damaging effect on players as a result (e.g. wrt to career ambition).<p>In fact, one could argue that they are worse than violent games. <comment><USER2> I don't buy the argument. You'd need to show not only that fake mopping-a- dirty-floor is somehow more imprinting than fake shooting-the-enemy, but also that mopping a dirty floor is a detrimental activity.

Additionally, the game only glorifies household work to the extent that you think it does: you do household chores to make your Sim happy, so that he can advance his career, so that you can buy more stuff, so that your Sim is happy, etc. You could interpret this as a game that glorifies housework, but it also glorifies consumerism, hedonism, and career ambition.

Or you can play it for other reasons entirely -- like to observe the character interactions. (When I played it, it was mostly to build interesting houses...)

</comment><comment><USER3> No game should be banned. Period.

Just as no book or movie or song should be banned.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not very convincing. You're going to have to provide extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. You've only repeated one of the critiques of the game, which was actually much worse in the original Sims game. So in a way, they've already addressed the issue you have with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Heck, let's just ban employment and force everyone to be an entrepreneur!

</comment><comment><USER6> HN is not your personal blog.</comment>


All April Fools' Day Jokes on the Web Are Here (so they don't clutter HN) - <AUTHOR> http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/2012.html <comment><USER2> Every year some people complain about all the april fools jokes "cluttering" HN.

Sheesh people, it's one day a year. It's fun. If you don't like fun, don't visit HN for a day or two. Hell, it's the weekend. Go outside. Come back on Monday. You won't miss anything. And no one will miss you. Promise.

<comment><USER3> This site actually works better than HN for this list, though.

<comment><USER4> Part of the fun is seeing the posts mixed in with serious news. Even more fun, for the subtle jokes, is when you're not sure if something is real or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.reddit.com> is setting a new standard.

<comment><USER6> They are basically crowdsourcing their April's fools day joke. Genius.

<comment><USER7> What is it that they're doing? I was there, I realize it's April first, but I couldn't figure out what the he'll was happening.

<comment><USER5> They're taking live submissions from the community and promoting selectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My all time favorite is still the BBC story about the spaghetti harvest.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/new...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm)

<comment><USER9> Joke is (mildly) on the BBC, growing up we would always have spaghetti squash growing in the garden.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this page didn't look like something out of geocities in 1998 I might consider using it. :P

<comment><USER9> I thought this too, but (seriously) wondered if that was part of the joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also great: Adobe to charge developers per line of Actionscript code

[http://www.8bitrocket.com/2012/03/31/adobe-to-charge- develop...](http://www.8bitrocket.com/2012/03/31/adobe-to-charge-developers- per-centimeter-of-actionscript-code/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I like the Toshiba joke myself. I didn't imagine that Toshiba would join in on April Fool's Day, but I like the idea of an oblong tablet.

<comment><USER13> The trouble with the Toshiba video is a) you'd really have to check the date; and b) it'd probably sell more than most of the other tablets out there.

(That said, I looked at the Rhombus and thought to myself "hey, that corner makes it look really easy to hold comfortably", and I cried to myself a little inside.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I for one welcome the new gopher overlords of tuxfamily.org as announced on linuxfr.org (french slashdot like site)! Even better - I opened my own gopher server on guylhem.org as part of a "retro" project a few weeks ago ;-)

Quite fun to do, but good documentation to create a good looking gopher server is still lacking in 2012.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love this: The littlest iPod Nano case [http://www.padandquill.com/cases- for-iphone-ipod-touch/the-l...](http://www.padandquill.com/cases-for-iphone- ipod-touch/the-littlest-black-book-ipod-nano.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> This one is off-topic, but the first one that had me for a second: <http://www.criterion.com/films/28373-kindergarten-cop>

<comment><USER17> "Related Films" on that page might have been the first April Fools "joke" I actually laughed at today.

<comment><USER16> Ha! I didn't even pay attention to that until I read your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://google-au.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/google-street- roo-e...](http://google-au.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/google-street-roo- exploring-outback-one.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Every April first I am afraid to go on the internet, because some people are so effective at making their April Fool's Day jokes subtle that I'm quite afraid I'll read some great or horrible story that's a joke and not understand it's a joke, or even worse that I'll read some great or horrible story and think it's a joke when it's actually reality.

It's good to have a laugh, but it's too mainstream/common for me to really be comfortable taking anything seriously.

</comment><comment><USER20> Google Tap actually had me laughing. Especially "Todd Smith"'s wisdom. "You can tap in the morning. You can tap it at night."

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just an example of how not to do an April fools day joke. These guys are posting the feedback they collected back to their server which I think is immoral.

<http://www.embeddedmarket.com/Gift-For-Feedback.asp>

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a fun one: Replace LESS and SASS with MORE.

<http://morecss.org/>

</comment><comment><USER23> AdBlock Plus is showing me pictures of cats rather than ads. Not sure how you'd add that to the list.

<comment><USER24> It got me - I thought Squid had dropped the ball (because cat pics were turning up in the most unusual places and context) and restarted it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't forget new Google Cloud API which allows you to manage Clouds of course. [http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/google-cloud- api...](http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2012/04/google-cloud-api-cloud- coverage.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I appreciate the link, love the concept, can you do me a favor and turn off table borders, and go to <http://www.colourlovers.com/> & use it. Thanks again for the idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/multitask.html> Really liked this one since we all try to multitask all the time(and fail context switching)

</comment><comment><USER28> I really like the Google Maps gag. I hope it will still be an option after today.

<comment><USER29> Looks like geeks will make it rain before rappers do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Today is a good day to promote any low-quality site, since everyone Clicks on everything expecting to get a quick laugh.

And then they find out there was no joke. But they still got _FOOLED_.

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782230>

And please prepend 4/1: to any stories if you feel like submitting them.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you search for japan in the 8-bit google maps, the trees are cherry blossoms instead of pine trees.

I was disappointed that they don't show the castles as actual castles, though :/

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow, Google made at least 8 or 9 April Fools jokes this year. I know these are all just for fun, but doesn't this seem a bit excessive? It makes me feel like Google is focusing harder on portraying themselves as a place with a cool culture than focusing on making cool things (like they used to). It would be much cooler if Google really released half the things they facetiously made for today. I can only hope they have something earth-shattering up their sleeves with their autonomous car program.

<comment><USER34> I could certainly be wrong, but I took it as different departments doing their own thing rather than some organized effort by the company as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> and now google gives you the power to control the weather <http://goo.gl/EF8cM>

</comment><comment><USER36> Leave Stack Overflow open in the background for some time to get a special message from a Unicorn Clippy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Enter hypertask mode...

<http://i.imgur.com/UTvUH.png>

<comment><USER34> Out of curiosity, why not link directly to the source rather than taking a screen shot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> And then there was one more April fool's day link

</comment><comment><USER39> Adblock seems broken due to their cat nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER40> 8 out of 12 entries are from Google. Dont they have anything beter to work on?

<comment><USER29> One year they're going to come out and have the last X years of their pranks as real products. X years of pranks is actually a huge prank in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Just came to say I'm pretty pissed someone has done this, I don't _want_ to click on your website. I'm not interested. I want them to appear on HN, so I can glimpse on the front-page.

Edit: just clicked the link and I'm even more annoyed! I don't care what the _internet_ is doing on Apr 1st, I care what startups and other HN related entities are doing on Apr 1st. Something I cant do on that other site.

Might seem like a pointless rant, I just don't see the point of people fragmenting my experience.</comment>


A big-shot vc says we need inequality. What do economists say? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/14/what-silicon-valley-doesnt-understand-about-inequality/ <comment><USER2> I personally think the laffer curve has a maximum closer to Clinton era taxes. I also think maximum tracks well to the fastest long term growth. Will it fix everything no.

</comment><comment><USER3> $8,525 a month rent for an apt is ridiculous but I bet it's because no one is allowed to build new ones not because of income inequality.</comment>


Ask HN: Why have a knowledge base when anything is easily googleable? - <AUTHOR> For the past couple of months I have been entertaining the idea of starting my personal knowledge base. However, while this idea appeals to me as a person who likes to document stuff, I fail to see any purpose in having a knowledge base when any information lies within a google search. So my question is, why have it? <comment><USER2> >Why have a knowledge base when anything is easily googleable?

Because it isn't. It's not even close to "anything". Only superficial things are googlable, and even then google's NN algorithms sometimes manage to mess thing up, providing some useless links instead of a single correct one. That's why I tend to use google for quick search, but then I back it up with my own notes and articles/books/webpage archive. Of course, most of the times I will never use the things I store, but once in a while it saves me days. Knowing that I don't save regular stuff every kid can find in a minute even if the original resource is gone.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give you an example to make my point clearer.

For the past month I have been reading Sylvia Plath's biography and works. I decided to document what I had learnt about her. I created a sort-of wiki page of her in my personal notes app. But then I went to the actual page and found the same information there.

This made me think that I needed to change my approach and I came here to ask this.

<comment><USER2> >I created a sort-of wiki page of her in my personal notes app. But then I went to the actual page and found the same information there

Usually when I read wiki written by more than one man and need something more complex than "born xxxx, died xxxx", I feel like the page was written by schizophrenic with OCD i.e. the information is not consistent and writer is obsessed by formal correctness at the expense of clarity. Thus I cannot understand shit unless I'm already well familiar with the topic - but then what's the reason for me to read this article?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I maintain a set of text files some of which I refer to many times hourly to either read or write to

here are the more frequently used text files

\- work specific \- software specific \- general todo with daily entries \- general purpose knowledge \- vacation related with top tips per country \- nyc specific

within some of these files are top level categories with subentries

I have search tooling to probe the files ... sometime as simple as

cat file | egrep --color=auto -B20 -A20 'some string'

which will color highlight matches and show surrounding lines from the file

I find note keeping a critical skill everyone should adopt to varying extents ... my main software note file contains over 90,000 lines of text so is the keystone to my approach ( yes that's over 1600 pages ) ... as the complexity of my note keeping expanded so did my ability to organically do local searches so I am not in want of any outside tools ... all I use is vi and various flavors of grep

additionally I have a few directories with subdirs which are either project or topic or tool specific

having organizational skills when working on complex research projects which span months or years pays back in spades and note keeping is just one aspect

</comment><comment><USER4> Stuff disappears from the web, from Google's index. Jurisdictions issue diktats that information be removed.

I used to rely on tags on bookmarks to find things, only to discover that the pages I'd bookmarked had disappeared (bit rot, corporate pivot, corporate failure, death of the blogger, etc).

I now save pages I find useful to Evernote. It's not ideal, but at least it's indexed by Evernote (and some images are OCRd so any text in the images also ends up in the search index). I download PDFs and other non-HTML resources. I assume Evernote will disappear some day so I back up my notebooks regularly.

I've been online in some format or another since 1987, the only certainty is that the thing I distinctly remember reading a couple of years ago will either disappear from Google's index (Altavista, Veronica, Archie, etc) or will be removed (think of all of the blogs that used to live at typepad.com or vox.com or LiveJournals).

If it's valuable to you…save it.

</comment><comment><USER5> One more reason: There are so many sites writing on so many subjects but most of them are skewed for the Google algorithm.

Finding meaningful content that adds value is very rare. There is no guarantee you will get the same page next time you search, unless you can recollect a significant unique string from the page.

Hence, a knowledge base.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many things are not easily googleable.

\- things you figured out yourself

\- private or proprietary information

\- things that are only in books

\- things that are online, but as a side-note page 1735 of a large PDF somewhere, not next to what you'd think would be relevant keywords

\- things that are online, but on obscure, hard-to-find websites

\- things that were online, but the sites have gone by now

</comment><comment><USER7> I really struggle with the sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour that makes curating a personal knowledge base a meaningful and useful exercise. Nevertheless I did it for years using a Mac OS only suite of apps from DevonThink. Then my ancient MacPro died and I switched to Linux.

I kept the data because I kept thinking I would go back to it and do a better job curating it... but I just haven't done it.

Meanwhile the web dev in my circle of friends set up a bare instance of discourse on some cloud VPS somewhere (it was intended to be an escape from Facebook) and it's turned out to be great. I use it for a common place book and while the search isn't all that, it's good enough for me find older thoughts that I've had easily enough to habitually add to them as I come across new things that are related.

</comment><comment><USER8> I keep a work-log, every day I have a template which gets created via a macro:

         * DD/MM/YYYY
         ** Desktop Setup
         None.
         ** Meetings
         None.
         ** Tickets / Stories / Projects
         ** Problems
         None.
         ** Worked Hours
         #+NAME: hours-DD-MM-YYYY
         | Start |   End | Total Hours |
         |</comment><comment>-+</comment><comment>-+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-|
         | 09:00 | 09:00 |         0.0 |
         #+TBLFM: $3=$2-$1;t%.1f
         ** END

I record commands, stories, meetings, and other things. These are very very very useful to me for reference purposes, and absolutely not the kind of thing you can search google for.

Having your own notes/knowledge-base/wiki is good because it is stuff YOU care about, not stuff other people have posted.

</comment><comment> astro-codes I've been thinking for a while that a (sort of) mix of the two would be worthwhile.

1\. Personal knowledge bases seem to be high friction (have to manually add information and requires consistency).

2\. Google is leaky, you search for something, open a bunch of tabs, and then probably just close them all. What happens when you need that info again?

I was thinking that a dashboard built on top of Google search would be helpful. Something that keeps a note of what content is related to the search I made, and keeps a record / makes it easy to retrieve again later.

(Yes I know the manual effort involved in documenting what you learn is beneficial).

<comment><AUTHOR> > I've been thinking for a while that a (sort of) mix of the two would be > worthwhile.

Perhaps, that is a better way to go about it but that just becomes a glorified notes app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've talked to a lot of users of [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) and I've asked this question. Here are some reasons they gave:

1\. It is great to retain the research path along with the knowledge.

2\. When you research something on the web, you narrow down your list and then you act on it. It is very helpful to keep this list and be able to branch off from there.

3\. Collaboration becomes much easier

<comment><USER10> Wow, that site (histre) made me sign up and verify email before telling me the pricing structure or that there's no perpetual free plan. That seems like a terribly unfriendly UX.

Edit: After signing up there's no 'delete account' button/option/function.

Edit 2: Apparently histre really is your product. How do you recommend me to delete my account? There's no 'contact' , 'help', etc pages that I can find. Truly no method is provided to delete accounts or contact anyone.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the feedback. I'll make it more obvious. I've deleted it for you and replied to your email as well.

Thanks for giving Histre a try.

<comment><USER10> In all sincerity it looks like an amazing feature to have. I'm glad someone is providing this to the world, it's much needed for today's browsers.

I'm not personally in a position to try this out currently as the product I'm currently employed to work on with >$50MM quarterly revenue just got axed due to macro effects of coronavirus. I know you have a free 30-day trial but I'm not sure I want to invest the energy to learn a new 'flow' that I know I won't be using next month.

My earlier frustration was mainly because I'm heavily fatigued with the appearances of dark patterns in modern business products, particularly SaaS, but by no means limited to web or tech in general. I've had some negative experiences recently when trying to cancel services and it colors my perceptions when I'm evaluating new offerings. I have learned the hard way to be diligent not just in cancelling subscriptions, but also to fully delete payment methods in order to prevent accidental/fraudulent continuations of charges. Critically I've found it necessary to also try my best to delete my entire account as some companies have followed up with mistaken debt collection calls/letters for my accounts months after I've made recorded phone calls to cancel and removed my payment methods online. For me it's now difficult to trust companies with auto-renew contracts, as the value of my time spent fixing the 5% of cancellations I have issues with dwarf the total dollars spent on all services/memberships in the first place. It sometimes takes months of back and forth to get these debt collection processes cleared up.

I do have a lot of empathy for launching good products in today's increasingly difficult environment of new regulatory burdens, walled gardens that are hard to interact with, and juggernaut monopoly products that make it hard to provide alternatives to users. I wish you well and hope you continue to evolve the utility of bookmarks and browsing history for end users. There's a lot of value to create there.

<comment><USER9> I understand. Thanks for the detailed response. I will make things more obvious. There is no intention to make cancellation hard. Just a solo founder working hard to get all the pieces in place.

I'm going with $3/month as the lowest plan (instead of free) because this product is server resource intensive. I decided against VC funding as the funded companies in this space are just adtech companies in disguise.

I'll be happy to have you as a free user though. I'll send you an email with details.

Thank you for the kind words. Here is the latest feature I've shipped: [https://histre.com/features/highlights/](https://histre.com/features/highlights/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you can find a way to make KB organized then for sure it's better than simple Googling. Plus in many occurences I have to pull contents from quite a few webpages and put them under the same problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you actually go back to your KB to look something up? I feel like having a KB is merely a way of reinforcing retention of new information.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I do, for example I constantly look up how to do percentiles in Vertica. Man I can never memorize these, so I have a KB of queries and imported most of them into Datagrip using live templates starting with '_' followed by name of database. Some of them are technical stuffs and some of them are business stuffs (like how to get this piece of info from the tables).

I have other KBs but yeah I agreed that I do not go back very often, maybe just in training sessions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. The answers from google aren't always correct and/or up to date.

2\. Google can't help you if you don't know that something exists in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER13> Only common knowledge can be found on the net. You won't find institutional knowledge or 'old' stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just curious what tools do you use to keep a knowledge base

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, I am trying out obsidian[1]. So far, I really like it. To be completely honest, it's one of the reasons I want to start a knowledge base.

[1]. [https://obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> with so much knowledge, you need an index. And a large index is a knowledge base. Why not?</comment>


Startup Quote: Jeff Atwood, co-founder, Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/2163563107

<comment><AUTHOR> Teaching peers is one of the best ways to develop mastery.

\- Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror)

<http://startupquote.com/post/2163563107></comment>


The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm. - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4563e504dba92253?pli=1 <comment><USER2> The article touches a nice point with regard to implementation of CL by adhering to the ANSI specs.

Since a couple of months I am learning and giving a try to different languages or dialects based on LISP, and also reading a lot of such blogs. This blog is impressive, so were all blogs by PG on arc, and by a lot of others. LISP people all mostly so smart, and are writing so nice and effectively. And most of these smart people are capable of developing their own approach, dialect, libraries or programming languages around LISP. Finally what happens is that a newbie like me, does still not have a clue on which LISP to use to start with, to build a Sinatra(ruby)-like framework.

So I decide to develop my own language/dialect based on some LISP and the result will be again the same. Do too many smart people mean a chaos forever or is (should) there (be) hope for a mainstream LISP?

<comment><USER3> I know you weren't actually asking this, but if you're really looking for a Sinatra-like framework in a Lisp there are some pretty rad ones in Clojure. I've been experimenting with web programming via Clojure and have found it extremely pleasant. Check out this nice tutorial on Heroku's site: <http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/clojure-web-application>

<comment><USER2> Due to Oracle lawsuits of Google, any JVM based future product risks being a monetization target with software patents by Oracle; that is why I am trying to avoid JVM/Java based languages/dialects; it seems a dead end. or am I wrong?

<comment><USER3> IANAL but I wouldn't worry about it. I don't think users of Clojure (and Scala, JRuby, Jython etc) are in the same category as Google with Dalvik. All those languages compile (or some combination of interpret and JIT compile) to Java bytecode and then run on JVMs. Oracle's lawsuit against Google had to do with an unlicensed non-conforming Java platform. The Clojure Google group seemed to agree when the suit was announced [1].

[1] [http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/2b3955d33498e9b9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I totally get and sympathize with the enthusiasm part. But the CL-specific parts (to an outsider) reek of megalomania and no-true-scotsman.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an email from 2001.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can somebody give me a tl;dr? That looks interesting but it's a bit too long for this time of night.

<comment><USER7> Sort of:

A true developer is a competent, intelligent, caring enthusiast. The author presents himself as true developer of the first (computer industry) generation. His language of choice is Common Lisp, which has an unhealthy community full of negativity and egos. Since the author is enthusiastic about CL, he insists that each community member should be a true developer and help CL succeed.</comment></comment>


Campaign to make CA politicians wear their donors' logos - <AUTHOR> http://www.californiaisnotforsale.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The actual ballot initiative "15-0097" can be found at [https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/15-0097%20%...](https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/15-0097%20%28Political%20Contributions%29.pdf)?

Source: [https://oag.ca.gov/initiatives/active- measures](https://oag.ca.gov/initiatives/active-measures)

I am also trying to compile all information I have found so far and put them here: [https://caisnotforsale.github.io/](https://caisnotforsale.github.io/)</comment>


Or Perish - The Hacker Factor Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/474-Or-Perish.html <comment><USER2> > "But what if you want to make money? I mean, it took time and effort to > write that whitepaper. Well, self-published ebooks are a good option. If the > paper is really good and useful, I'll pay a few dollars for it. "

I am reminded of a quote from the preface of a book that was eventually CC'd and distributed as a PDF because it was too niche to publish.

"Our decision to publish on the internet came from a long and tedious course of attempting to work with both university and commercial academic publishers who failed to publish it. Bringing this manuscript to publication was an epic adventure in itself, so we decided to share our experience here, along with some commentary on academic publishing today and its inevitable demise." - "Pioneers of Soviet Computing" (<http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/85>)

While I haven't personally been involved in any academic publishing. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they've had to push so hard against open-access journals. The "No open-access publishing" clauses a lot of the major clearing houses tried sneaking into their agreements with researchers is a sign of weakness, no matter how successful. (And you could argue that it backfired spectacularly.)

So no, I don't think you're being unreasonable not to expect the things you don't expect from academic publishing. From an outsiders perspective the bullets you listed appear to be accurate.</comment>


Facebook.com is Down(ish) - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com?ref

<comment><USER2> Down for me, too (and others according to twitter): [https://twitter.com/search?q=facebook%20down&f=realtime](https://twitter.com/search?q=facebook%20down&f=realtime)

</comment><comment><USER3> Works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It came back for for a minute for me, too, but now it wont load...again. Seems to be spotty, hence the "ish". FWIW, a friend of mine is experiencing the same behavior.</comment></comment>


Temperament is a Skill - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/08/temperament-is-a-skill.html <comment><USER2> He's right there. Like every other skill, gaining the right temperament is a task that requires a lot of time and self discipline.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. It took me years to learn that listening is valuable (to me), and that it's not merely being silent until it's my turn.

<comment><USER2> Listening, and patience in general, are skills far too few these days, especially because many people falsely view them only as "sitting still"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best UI framework for Vue.js? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently using bootstrap, and was wondering if there are frameworks built to work better with Vue.js <comment><USER2> I am building an app with Quasar-framework now and really like the components.

As a benefit, Quasar has built in support that lets you add Cordova for mobile builds of iOS and Android and all the components will have look platform consistent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm using [https://iviewui.com](https://iviewui.com)

not many options to customize it. but it's very easy to use.

<comment><USER4> ElementUI

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im using vuetify. Is ok.</comment>


CrunchBase changes its license from CC-BY to CC-BY-NC - <AUTHOR> http://info.crunchbase.com/2013/12/12/updated-terms-of-service/

<comment><USER2> > "CrunchBase's new terms of service are clearer and more in line with the > best practices of the open content community," said Mitch Stoltz, a Staff > Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

No. NC is not "open content". See the Open Definition ([http://opendefinition.org/](http://opendefinition.org/)): "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the work in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the work from being used in a business."

I am disappointed that EFF, of all people, are helping TechCrunch to openwash this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > "Commercial uses do require a separate license to safeguard the community's > investment in the CrunchBase, as well as protect the dataset's integrity."

Unfortunately I doubt that community will see any part of the licensing fees.

Wired Magazine's comments: AOL Tightens CrunchBase's Licensing to Block Competitors [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/crunchase-alters- li...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/crunchase-alters-licensing/)</comment>


Why marketing and engineers don't mix. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/orangethirty/marketing_bits/blob/master/engineers_marketers_dont_mix.md

<comment><USER2> "Engineers hate statistics."

No, its that good engineers just understand statistics. Dear Marketing the plural of anecdote is not data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, good point. I meant that engineers hate having to deal with a bunch of useless statistics from marketers because they know most of it is fluff.</comment></comment>


Nestmetric a retention platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.nestmetric.com/customer_retention <comment><AUTHOR> Nestmetric's monitors the behavior of your customers and sends you real-time alerts when they are likely to buy or stop using your product.</comment>


Patrón Made Tequila Top-Shelf. Will Bacardi Dilute It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-31/patr-n-made-tequila-top-shelf-will-bacardi-dilute-it <comment><USER2> Agave (used in tequila production) is becoming scarce and their cost is going up. Tequila is expected to become more expensive as a result.

<comment><USER3> Tequila is made specifically from blue agave so they can't use other types of agave to produce it and still call it tequila.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Y combinator running in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://blog.klipse.tech/lambda/2016/08/07/almost-y-combinator.html <comment><AUTHOR> The idea of this article is to let the reader feel with his hands that it possible to write recursions without names.

Playing with the interactive code give a much clearer understanding of what's going on.

Especially, when one deals with such a deep topic like the Y combinator.

What do you think?</comment>


Google Chrome and (weird) DNS requests - <AUTHOR> http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=10312&rss <comment><USER2> _"Chrome also tries to find out if someone is messing up with the DNS (i.e. "nasty" ISPs that have wildcard DNS servers to catch all domains). Chrome does this by issuing 3 DNS requests to randomly generated domain names,"_

I have a question. Why would wilcard domains be 'nasty'? It's not that unusual, is it? Would Google discourage this?

I can imagine that a site uses wildcard domains to differentiate in the content it should serve, for example a blog provider: john.bloggo.com, luyt.bloggo.com, johndoe.bloggo.com etc... You wouldn't want to put a few thousand customer names in your DNS tables, instead use *.bloggo.com and let the webapp interpret the subdomain name.

Or in the case of some development server, ftp.domain.com, svn.domain.com, git.domain.com and www.domain.com maybe all should resolve to the same IP and find the corresponding service on that machine. If the admin were to add another service, say SMTP, he could just install a mailer on port 25 and he wouldn't have to adjust the DNS.

<comment><USER3> > Would Google discourage this?

Yes, I think so. When ISPs wildcard all domains, I think the typical reason is so that when you've typed an invalid name, they return a page with search results guessing at your intent. If I'm right (I might not be), then Google has plenty of incentive to stop that from happening, or at least know that it _is_ happening.

First, those pages with search results are often ugly, full of ads, poorly formatted, etc. Google would like you to have a nice experience in Chrome so that you're a happy user. If you see an ugly, messy ad-ridden page (especially if the ads _aren't_ Google ads) every time you make a typing mistake, Google loses out.

There are probably other more subtle and nuanced reasons that Google would dislike that practice, but I'm not really sure of specifics. (In fact, I'm not entirely sure that DNS wildcarding is even related to those ISP search pages...but I think it is.)

<comment><USER4> Also, if the ISP is answering every DNS query with "yes this is a valid domain" it breaks Chrome's domain discovery feature, described a bit further down the SANS article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure that, as this article states

"Chrome automatically tries to determine if the user typed in a domain and tries to resolve it in the background."

When I first switched my windows ipv4 dns settings to use opennic i noticed:

chrome knows that a string typed into the address bar (one that isn't already eventually found in history or typed before) that ends with any normal suffix .com .uk etc. is a url, instead of just a query to be sent to the default search engine.

but it doesn't know what to do with strings that have opennic only suffixes like .free on them.

unless i make it clear that i am typing a url and not a query, by putting <http://> on the front, it doesn't know that it is a url, because it has the non-standard .free or something on the end.

typing example.free or www.example.free for the first time just sends it to the search engine. so it seems chrome only knows/validates the official dns suffixes.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like something we'd like to fix. Please file a bug at <[http://new.crbug.com/>](http://new.crbug.com/>). If you'd like to dig through the code and post a patch too, that will likely speed things up: <[http://dev.chromium.org/developers/contributing- code>](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/contributing-code>).

<comment><USER5> i rechecked this with dns prefetching off and with it on.

in either case, anything with a standard tld puts the url as the top/selected result on the pulldown, with "send as a query to search" as the second possibility.

but if I have prefetching ON (which I didn't when I first encountered the issue) the prefetching finds non-standard domains (eg register.fur, register.ing) and their servers and homepage titles but the option to treat them as a url and just go to the page appears below the default option to treat them as a search in the pulldown, so just typing them in and pressing enter still sends them to search.

whether that is a big deal is up to you. it seems silly that something.suffix is not treated as a url when the prefetcher has already found it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I noticed the random DNS requests the other day when I had to tunnel my traffic over ssh from the local library, but didn't think to figure out what the requests were. Interesting that this article shows up now.

If anyone is interested, my auth.log shows: <https://gist.github.com/797184>

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting side effect of the helpful features in browsers are apparently sending DNS requests to unsuspecting parties.

The owner of www.go can't be all that happy with the flood of requests!

<comment><USER9> There's no .go domain :-)

<comment><USER8> You're right, the application was (apparently) refused. I remember seeing it go by and thinking 'wow, that's a really neat TLD', but never heard from it afterwards. Now I know why :)

<http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/report/dubai1.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chrome should stick to its true nature, do one thing well, and leave the DNS stuff (refetch after..., the weird anti-nasty system explained in the post) to a DNS cache daemon. Google could include one in Chrome OS, and don't turn Chrome (the browser) into a big pile of bloat.

<comment><USER11> Anti-nasty system, maybe. The prefetching thing can't possibly be implemented by the DNS cache daemon because it doesn't know what the user is currently typing.

<comment><USER10> I was speaking about the fact that Chrome also _re-fetch_ some of the (most used) DNS entries in the background when they are about to expire (like they do for the DNS "184.108.40.206" servers).

I agree that _prefetching_ however can't be done by a DNS cache program.</comment></comment></comment>


A Building in Motion: First Design of its kind - <AUTHOR> http://www.dynamicarchitecture.net/building.html The Dynamic Tower offers infinite design possibilities, as each floor rotates independently at different speeds, resulting in a unique and ever evolving shape that introduces a fourth dimension to architecture, Time. <comment><AUTHOR> What a awesome design: Each floor rotates independently at different speeds, resulting in a unique and ever evolving shape that introduces a fourth dimension to architecture, Time. Building has got wind turbines, self sustainable power source.</comment>


How to Fold a Julia Fractal - <AUTHOR> http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/?second <comment><USER2> I'm impressed with the explanations and everything... but what really got my panties in a bunch is the visualization technology. That is one of the prime examples I've seen of actually leveraging current web tech to communicate actual content instead of just doing fancy stuff just because. I was initially annoyed by the 3D header movement effect, but the content, graphs, and animations of the actual content made me completely forget that and allowed me to be bewildered by what we can do this day and age on the web. Congrats to the maker!

<comment><USER3> Consider the fancy header to be the first answer to: what happens when you put a 3D engine inside a webpage. This article is what happens 12 months later...

<comment><USER2> Hah I can relate to that! I will clarify something though, the effect is really cool and I actually like it. What annoyed me is that I had initially opened it and moved it to another pane (dwm here) and then when I moved it the main panel I was using a smaller window than usual and when I scrolled I couldn't hit any links, animation looked weird, and then I couldn't scroll past the header.

I browsed it again in a floating window in a different tab (or space if you wanna call it that way) where I keep a maximized chromium and I was no longer annoyed :) Good job on being on the cutting edge though, that is something I completely can appreciate.

<comment><USER3> Sigh, every time my site hits hacker news or reddit I have to mention this... it's a Webkit bug. I reported it 5 releases ago, it sits unloved and unfixed. I imagine i'll just redo the site before they address it.

<comment><USER2> Ohh that makes sense, I also wondered if it was Chromium in Linux thing so I opened it up in Chrome in my work iMac and I noticed the same thing, albeit less pronounced. It's very pretty when it does work so that kinda balances it out. In any case your content is worth it, thanks again for the awesome sauce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. I "understood" complex numbers, in that I could use them in specific contexts in the past and got that they represented rotation, but this really drove it home in a way that I could've used a decade ago. Great article.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am blown away by this intuitive explanation of _why_ Julia sets look the way they do.

I was obsessed with the Mandelbrot and Julia sets waaaay back in high school, with writing programs to produce them in real time, back on my 386. But I never had the slightest understanding of _why_ they looked the way they do. So to discover that now, almost 20 years later, is just amazing.

<comment><USER6> I could have easily written this comment! My favourite programming memory of all time was finally succeeding in turning the pseudo-code at the back of a book[1] that my mom had bought me into a Turbo Pascal program that would generate a Mandlebrot set. It was exhilarating!

[1] <http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0671742175/tag=canaamp-20>

<comment><USER7> Me too - among my first, and best, programming experiences was turning pseudo- code into QBASIC and marvel at the fractals and strange attractors growing on the screen.

<comment><USER8> I did so as well. I was fascinated that such a simple formula could produce an infinitely complex image. To build it, I used Lazarus/Freepascal and Wikipedia. It's actually still hosted on Google code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is wondering how the visualizations were made, he has another article about that here: <http://acko.net/blog/making-mathbox/>

</comment><comment><USER10> > If there's interest, a future post could cover topics like: the nature of > e^ix, [...]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very interested.

Great work!

<comment><USER11> I really enjoyed this too. Would love to see quaternions presented with a similar treatment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, simply incredible work. Stuff like this offers a glimpse into the future of what the web can be and how it can be used to pass knowledge on. I knew some of the concepts presented here, but I never knew what it all meant. Nice touch in adding the equations as well. Beautiful presentation.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the best use of 3d/svg(?)/html5 I've seen. Incredibly effective and really beautiful.

Certainly did make my macbook air fan spin up like in the old days of flash though ;)

<comment><USER14> this is webgl (at least the mathematical visualizations)

<comment><USER15> For some reason the Mandelbrot fractal (slides 30 and 31 in the second part) didn't render in Firefox but they worked in Chrome. Everything else seemed to work fine.

<comment> eric-hu Thanks for pointing that out! I just accepted the black panes in stride because the caption said "...this is not so easy to visualize"

I also noticed that the text of the page was angled away on page load in Chrome, but not in FF

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Beautiful work. This is a great marriage of medium and subject matter.

I particularly liked some of the the interpretations of the wave equation, which were new to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> The actual graphics flash and disappear on my Linux Chrome 23 machine. The header 3D shift works fine though.

<comment><USER18> For me, it fails in both Chrome Canary (26.0.1378.2) and Firefox says I do not have a compatible graphics card. (Possibly just hates my Optimus setup) And, of course, IE9 lacks webGl in the first place, so it doesn't even get to the point of causing a process hang like Canary did. All Windows 7.

Once I did find a browser that worked with the site, though- that's the best explanation of both fractals and complex numbers I've ever seen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am overwhelmed and feeling somewhat inadequate, such is often the case when reading material posted on HN (I can't be the only one!).

truly a beautiful 'story', fantastic execution. bravo!

</comment><comment><USER20> wow! I heard many times that great mathematician can picture theories in their mind... and that for some theories only few people on earth are able to picture them. I always wondered if that's true and for people using math on daily basis (mathematician or others) it's very important to picture what you are trying to achieve or only numbers matter? Thanks!

<comment><USER21> It's more the case that the numbers and the mental picture are the same thing. When I manage that kind of insight (rarely) that's what it's like anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The square root animation, slide 29-30, is incorrect. It should not tear at -i, it should tear at the direction of 1 instead. Other than that everything else looks fine. Amazing work.

<comment><USER3> By that point, the grid has been rotated 90 degrees, with the real axis on top. This is mentioned in the notes.

I did this because it fits the letterbox layout more in the later transitions.

Edit: I changed it so this is made obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I loved this so much. The visualizations were beautiful, and I'm appreciative of the effort that must have gone into such clear illustrations. The only thing I would suggest would be to make the slide progression arrows somewhat more eye-catching--I almost missed their presence entirely when I was quickly scrolling down the page trying to parse whether or not I was going to read the whole thing. As a result, I almost missed out on the defining part of the experience.

</comment><comment><USER24> Related: visualizing how the Mandelbrot maps onto itself: <http://code.google.com/p/mandelstir/>

</comment><comment><USER25> every time i visit webgl page, Xorg goes craz: (EE) [mi] EQ overflowing. Additional events will be discarded until existing ev ents are processed.

<comment><USER26> It may be worth working out what gfx driver you're using + posting a bug in the relevant place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would absolutely love to see more visualizations like this in e-textbooks. I think it would assist with the readers' understanding, particularly in secondary school math or physics where students may have difficulty grasping new concepts in geometry, algebra, and the like. As a math tutor, having something to show my students really helps things. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER28> I can only imagine this kind of excellent visualization combined with this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan- Gullberg...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan- Gullberg/dp/039304002X/)

I'm pretty sure the result would be the utter destruction of my productivity for a few years.

</comment><comment><USER29> Once you get over the 3D header this article is amazing.. the visualisations are incredible.

</comment><comment><USER30> Based on the comments, this sounds like a great article that I'll have to check out later... for the moment, however, all it does is crash Safari on my ipad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I suspect the mobile devices will not have the ability to display this content. However, if you enable WebGL on Safari via the Developer menu, the page will render really well on a Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This page was educational and interesting until it locked up my computer with the CPU pegged full. Force power off/on "fixed" the problem.

</comment><comment><USER32> A hit of DMT will show you the world of complex numbers/geometric patterns/higher dimensions that you can't even imagine in this 3D world.

</comment><comment><USER33> Really nice post, design and approach!

</comment><comment><USER34> good stuff. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Awful website. Completely unnecessary design over substance, I couldn't even change the URL to get away, I had to close the tab.

<comment><USER36> I was reading interestedly until my laptop fan got so loud I couldn't concentrate anymore and had to shut it down. The room is now a degree or two warmer.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Advent of Pixels - <AUTHOR> https://advent.klart.io/ <comment><USER2> I think our definitions of beautiful are not the same. :)

Funny website though.

<comment><USER3> That's why they say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought the purpose of the advent calendar is that you can open one new box each day, but on this page you can open everything.

<comment><USER5> The purpose of the advent calendar is also to develop the self discipline to resist the urge of opening everything on the first day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Potentially silly question but shouldn't I be able to see the design after clicking on it? After you 'open' a day the links on the designs, eg [https://advent.klart.io/1](https://advent.klart.io/1) and [https://advent.klart.io/2](https://advent.klart.io/2), give me a 404.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work, bookmarked for inspiration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm happy you like it :)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I get that it's for exposure, but does everything really have to be 'on' product hunt?

<comment><USER9> No. It's for exposure.</comment></comment>