Advertisers Tuning Out TV in Sign of Trouble for Media Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-14/advertisers-tuning-out-tv-in-sign-of-trouble-for-media-companies <comment><USER3> I don't see why people think that having TV and traditional media die out is a good thing. Major internet news and entertainment sources are not only as biased, but also capable of colnsealing it very well. Personalized propaganda is a nightmare we see raising. People living in the same household are so disconnected because they get completely different news coverage for the same events. Most content on the internet isn't of better quality either.

10 years ago I would never expect saying this, but old media (TV, printed newpapers etc) are now more reliable than internet-delivered content. At least TV and printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them.

<comment><USER4> > printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles > and videos after publishing them

That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid."

In old media, people would still believe it was russian goverment hacking. Now it backfired in the online world and "fake news".

<comment><USER5> _That 's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid."_

The record that a correction was made only exists if all involved parties wants it to. If the publisher/government/Google/ISP etc. has malicious intent, they could make changes silently and pretend as if nothing happened.

At least with newspapers, the physical copy of the previous version will always exist (barring the implementation of totalitarian government and 1984-style memory holes, of course).

<comment><USER6> This, the ability for people controlling the media to change history, is why archive.org was created. Do think about them when you contribute to "charities", even a few dollars per year goes a long way.

<comment><USER7> Assuming that sites don't block archiving (Vice and its sub-brands like Motherboard were doing this quite aggressively for a while, so there's basically no public record of what their articles used to say), and assuming the Internet Archive themselves can't be convinced to remove the archived copies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TV ad sales fell 7.8% last year. If ad sales continue to decline at that rate, in 10 years this market will be only 44% of its current size.

<comment><USER6> I'm seriously shocked that the numbers are still that high. I might be an outlier, but I haven't watch "TV" in more than 10 years, and a lot of people around me are the same.

We went from TV to an increase in DVD rentals, to Netflix, and now more and more to just rent movies from google etc...

As people are more ready to pay for entertainment rather than put up with ads, what worries me is the shift in to more insidious form of ads such as product placement.

<comment><USER9> > a lot of people around me are the same

Anytime you find yourself saying this, it's worth exploring how your own experiences might be biasing your judgement.

Recent research in the UK for example shows a much more nuanced view of the changes in TV viewing behaviour: [https://www.thinkbox.tv/Research/Nickable- Charts/Killer-Char...](https://www.thinkbox.tv/Research/Nickable- Charts/Killer-Charts/TV-advertisings-killer-charts-full-deck)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ROI on TV ad spend is practically incalculable so is it any surprise that advertisers would rather invest in channels where (almost) all spend is trackable?

<comment><USER11> That's not exactly true. TV attribution is actually getting very good these days, especially if you're equipped with a large pool of phone numbers/coupon- codes and a way to segment those numbers/codes in your ads.

TV advertising isn't exactly "dying" either. Personal injury law firms are actually finding TV advertising _more_ effective in this climate and are spending more money in it, filling the void left by other advertisers. That's even as they're increasing their digital ad spend.

(NB: Until recently, I worked in AdTech/MarTech for a large personal injury law firm.)

<comment><USER12> Yep, I'm seeing a lot of my competitors running these more often now. I work a few with law firms primarily handling development and online advertising/marketing. I've done print as well, but been dying to get into making tv and radio commercials as the clients have requested it. I struggle because for the ad buy itself is hard to find someone good to work with. It's a bunch of middle-men. Everything is segmented. I also really dislike the lack of hard figures and live data so it's difficult to give up that control.

Not to mention the commitment seems to be quite expensive. I can spend a few grand on Adwords and then turn it off the next month if I really needed to. It'll be amazing when I can make produce commercials and upload them to a platform that then airs on cable TV reporting back statistics.

<comment><USER11> You not only have to build your own attribution pipeline on the web & call side, but you need to pay for both Nielsen reports and Google Attribution 360.

Basically you need to either be a large company or an agency with clients that have deep pockets. We had to hire a fulltime TV buying person who had experience working with all of the relevant parties in our market.

Our yearly ad spend, all totaled, was somewhere around $100mil/yr.

<comment><USER12> Yikes, yeah that's the thing. That's so beyond any of my clients budgets. I've been pushing to do other things including billboards since I spend a majority of my time these days working on online advertising and seo which has had a wonderful ROI (putting the time in to get proper conversion tracking and funnels has been a treat) and keeping doors open but I want to take it to the next level for both personal growth and peeling back the curtain.

Plus, video production is something I did in the past so doing more of that could be exciting even if it's bland lawyer commercials for Judge Judy. $100mil/yr is a dream. Definitely get a sense of jealousy when I see other firms showing up on TV.

<comment><USER11> The model seems to be to land some whale client who will pay you enough to get it and then you use it for all of your clients.

That will work for Nielsen ($100k/yr!) but likely not for Google.

<comment><USER12> Yeah that definitely seems to be the play. I didn't realize how much these were, I just looked at google attribution 360 that seems fantastic to use. I viewed the Nest video of how they are using it. I don't know if I could ever get any of these lawyers to that point though. I work with newer and smaller firms. I really enjoy the aspect of helping people grow from very little - <USER2> just have a lot less money to play with but I can dictate where it goes, pick any technology stack, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get that advertising is effective by scale. You're more likely to choose something you've heard of. But I still can't help but feeling resentful for a company when they're out to steal my time and attention.

<comment><USER14> > steal my time and attention.

Is all unsolicited incoming communication such "stealing"?

<comment><USER15> Unsolicited communication is generally referred to as spam. Spam is generally considered bad because of the demands it makes of you, cognitive and resource- related. So the answer to your question is of course.

<comment><USER16> But it's usually a price you willingly pay in exchange for a service. You gave your email out to get something in return. You're seeing those ads because you want to read something else on the website. You've entered into a transaction where receiving advertising is an implicit trade you've made to get something else.

<comment><USER17> I don't know about you, but I've _never_ entered my email in exchange for anything knowing I'd get spam.

At the very least the transaction is unfair since the spam part is generally left very implicit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Then saw this study this morning done

""TV ad research finds sales impact of TV outperforms Facebook and YouTube"

[https://mediaweek.com.au/benchmark-tv-karen-nelson- field/](https://mediaweek.com.au/benchmark-tv-karen-nelson-field/)

Kind of curious did this come out intentionally right now?

<comment><USER9> There has been a lot of research into this topic over the past couple of years. Particularly as the effectiveness of digital advertising & ad tech are under increasing pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't used Hulu since they phased out the free tier, but I see in the article that Hulu generates $1bn in advertising sales per year. Do you still have to watch ads on the paid tiers?

<comment><USER20> The base streaming tier is $8/month and contains ads. The next tier up is $12 and has no ads.

<comment><USER21> $12 tier has limited ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> of course tv ads become more profitable with more of the proactive, thinking populace moving to more modern ways to consume like Netflix or Amazon. What's left is more and more the passive people that are more easily influenced by suggestions coming from ads.

This however is not a long term growth strategy. It's more like the last bump up before everything falls down. If I had a way to bet 6-7 digit amounts of money against tv I would do so right now.

<comment><USER9> It's a bold claim that Netflix & Amazon customers are more proactive & 'thinking' than others. Or that TV viewers are more passive & more easily influenced.

The claim of 'influence' is probably worth exploring: How does advertising work? What does it mean to influence someone?

<comment><USER23> Do you remember the news that insurers found Hotmail users are more likely to get into auto accidents and raised their rates? Hotmail users are people who haven't bothered to a superior service for over 10 years. I would not be surprised if those same people still exclusively watch TV instead of streaming

<comment><USER9> All that the Hotmail story really highlighted was the reliance on inductive reasoning by actuaries. It also didn't make clear whether they had identified drivers who caused accidents or had been the victims of accidents. Insurers will penalise people who make claims regardless of fault.

It's not a particularly useful comparison for this situation.

Also when 'people who watch broadcast TV' represent an overwhelming majority, the suggestion that they're essentially a bit stupid is well... rather arrogant, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess that is why I am seeing so many random ads on tv for "youth hormones" and other weird scam products.

</comment><comment><USER25> They'll be back with ATSC 3.0 and targeted advertising.</comment>


The Next Web: "Facebook confirms it spies on your Messenger conversations" - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2018/04/05/facebook-confirms-it-spies-on-your-messenger-conversations/ <comment><AUTHOR> _"The lack of oversight on such communication platforms could be harmful. In India, where Facebook-owned WhatsApp counts more than 200 million users on its encrypted messaging service, fake news, political propaganda, and other forms of misinformation frequently spread like wildfire."_

So what? I hate WhatsApp hoaxes as much as the next person, but compromising privacy is no solution to that. There is crap and misinformation in other media, too (mail, IM apps, blogs, comments), and that does not justify invasions of privacy.

Is Facebook (or Apple, or Google, or Telegram) going to determine what qualifies as "fake news", "political propaganda", and "misinformation"? God help us.

The way forward is to denounce always stupid chains, to demand sources and URLs for everything, and to educate newbies. Not surveillance.

This falsely "balanced" paragraph in the article is very dishonest.</comment>


AMC Theatres Refuses to Play Universal Films in Wake of 'Trolls World Tour' - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amc-theatres-refuses-play-universal-films-wake-trolls-world-tour-1292327 <comment><USER2> The cat is out the bag, AMC is fighting for relevance in a post covid world. Even prior Theaters were facing economic downturn. If AMC was a bit more alamo draft house, they might find more profit in the movie going experience.

That said, I don't think it will even matter. I don't anticipate people flocking to theaters to watch movies this year.</comment>


Groupon needs to pivot - <AUTHOR> http://startupdream.blogspot.com/2011/08/groupon-needs-to-pivot.html

<comment><USER2> I think Groupon is far too big now to "quickly pivot". Changing their strategy would also be a huge admission of failure at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely would be difficult...but pride and admission of being wrong would be a horrible reason for not changing course.</comment></comment>


An ode to Apple's awful MacBook keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/01/an-ode-to-apples-awful-mac-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> It really does suck. I have 20 years of professional software development on keyboards, the last 2 years purely on the 2017 MBP, if that in any way "qualifies" my opinion. This is a shit keyboard. Period. Probably not the worst keyboard in existence, but definitely the worst in its price bracket. Combined with the TouchBar I don't think they could have made my development life any more miserable. So if that was the goal, well done! You succeeded. The trackpad is amazing though.

<comment><USER3> It's been a while since I used mine since it was destroyed after falling 18 inches onto a wood floor (corner bent, screen connection shorted) but I'm pretty sure the Macbook 12 keyboard is worse.

Maybe by a millimeter or so.

There is absolutely no way in hell a keyboard like this should be found on a laptop favored by software engineers.

I'm not sure if Apple is seeing the writing on the wall here, but why not just launch a developer line? Make it thicker, heavier, give it more battery, a keyboard with a proper amount of travel, larger keys, more keys, whatever. Ditch the retarded touch bar. More ram. More config options. More ports.

If they want to keep topping themselves on largely meaningless metrics and/or aesthetic self indulgence then by all means do so -- sell those to the rest of the market. The bulk of the market will buy the pretty ones.

Give me an uglier one that isn't so awful to actually use.

Or, seriously, start dying the death of a thousand cuts. I'm really close to pulling out of the Apple ecosystem and retooling for other work. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

What? Don't care about the people who work on iOS/macOS software professionally? Don't need us? Why don't you go talk to Microsoft about that.

<comment><USER4> > _There is absolutely no way in hell a keyboard like this should be found on > a laptop favored by software engineers._

I don't quite get it. Why are software engineers favoring such a laptop? Shouldn't this be worded the other way around? "There is no way a laptop with a keyboard like this should be favored by software engineers"...?

<comment><USER5> It's tiny, super light, has decent battery, an "ok" CPU, 16GB ram and you can hook up a whole bunch of external peripherals including GPU via thunderbolt 3. It also doesn't have the coil whine the xps has and arguably better worldwide support when you use the premium partners rather than the apple store itself. In general the Macbooks aren't that much more expensive than the alternatives.

Not that I'm directly comparing it to the xps, since the macbook pro is probably more closely related to the xps, but still there's no other device with 16gb RAM in that segment. In terms of CPU the performance is pretty much on par with the Macbook air although it's CPU was last updated in 2015

I don't have one. I still use my 4 year old Macbook air. The only thing that bothers me is that I usually dual boot with linux and the newer macbooks are getting worse to run linux on.

<comment><USER6> When comparing to dell, I invite you to compare it to the latitude rather than xps. Latitudes are much more functional, not meant to be a fashion statement, have a keyboard with page up/down keys (which few other laptop keyboard have), while being light, powerful and upgradable. The only problem is that the fingerprint reader sucks.

<comment><USER7> > not meant to be a fashion statement

Is this a polite way of saying they're ugly?

<comment><USER8> Another way of thinking about this is that Dell made little to no compromises on function for aesthetics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a rant (and yes, she is VERY late to the party).

Other than the dust issue which I did have once (and got a keyboard replacement for), I am in the extreme minority when I say that I absolutely love the keystroke feel of this thing (MBP 2016). It's just the right amount of "clicky-clacky" and yet just shallow enough to hit a sweet spot for me.

So yes - they deserve flak for the dust issue. But the key travel and clackiness is really personal taste if you ask me...

<comment><USER10> I agree with you, while I've had both first and second (maybe third if we agree there is a third) of the new gen of keyboards and no problems with any of them - I accept that there has been some sort of design issue causing a higher than 'acceptable' level of faults with them. Regardless as someone who considers themselves a pretty hardcore fan of mechanical keyboards - I for some odd reason enjoy typing on the new ultra low profile keyboards.

I can't fully explain it - it just 'feels' right (after an initial bedding in period), I actually type /very/ fast on these keyboards - comparative to my desktop (with a Das series 4 with blue switches) which I personally found quite hard to admit (even to myself).

Obviously my experience is skewed due to not having any problems with recently low profile keyboards, but I am still quite astonished at how well I am typing not just on a laptop keyboard - but an ultra low profile keyboard.

<comment><USER11> Das 4 with blue switches at _home_ right, not at work? I think I would be shanked if I ever brought mine in again to the office

<comment><USER10> Blue switches at work - I do check with in those nearby my every 4-8 weeks (truly!) to see if my typing is annoying anyone, so far in (6 years or so on blues or similar) everyone just laughs and says they'll let me know if it's a distraction but this far it's not to them.

Several people have noted to the theme of the fact that typing has quite a rhythm to it, so it's not like an intermittent or seemingly random noise thus they don't seem to find it distracting.

By contrast people would be seriously pissed if someone had a desk phone plugged in or a cell phone with an audible ring tone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Switched from 2015 to 2018 model recently.

The good:

      - fingerprint for unlock is a nice convenience
      - 32GB RAM are nice. A much needed bump, allowing me run some workload on the client that previously required an additional workstation

the bad:

      - keyboard is noisy
      - touchbar = useless gimick - I actually used the F-keys and ESC a lot, now they are effectively gone.
      - touchpad much worse with it's fake press (i.e at drag and drop) and the increased size means more accidental inputs occur
      - removal of magsafe ... "it just works" apparently is too boring
      - headphone jack moved to the right so the cable gets in the way of the mouse
      - thermals ... I hear the fans spin up a lot more.
      - port mono-culture. maybe usb-c is the future, but my present is now full of dongles

Overall, I'd much prefer a 2015 or 2012 MBP enclosure with updated internals. Not to mention the hefty price increase YoY.

<comment><USER13> > I actually used the F-keys and ESC a lot

Then remap Caps Lock to Escape right now. There's no good reason not to, considering how easy MacOS makes it.

Can't help you with F-keys though. Never used them myself. On Mac OS there's usually an alternate keyboard shortcut. That row of keys is too far away from home row to be ergonomically useful.

My current keyboard doesn't have that row at all. Actually that was a bit of an issue since I'm using Windows with that keyboard, and unlike Mac OS, there's some real need for F-keys. So I had to remap F3 and F4, but that was all.

In my opinion, the trackpad is a really great idea on paper, as that row should never be used for frequent typing anyway. And it's pretty close to the screen, so it's not too far to look down. But it doesn't seem like they've managed to make it work in practice. I've seen some people who have had success with some customisation though.

<comment><USER14> > Then remap Caps Lock to Escape right now.

I already remapped Caps Lock to Control. And I use Control a lot more than Escape.

<comment><USER15> Use Karabiner-Elements to remap it to both. Escape when hit and control when held.

<comment><USER16> I wonder how many more functions we can remap on this one key before Apple finally removes it :/.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been a mac user since before the "i" came along. But as my all time favorite 2015 Macbook Pro ages, I'm concerned where to turn next. The current Touchbar Macbook Pro line seems to favor weight and slimness over true "Pro" features like having a desktop grade keyboard, speed and battery stamina.

Apple hit near perfectionism with the 2015 keyboard/ current desktop keyboard line, please don't try to put a portable keyboard in a machine made for professionals, just to free an extra fraction of an inch in height.

Apple used to make the worlds fastest, yet beautiful to look at, portable workstations. Please don't forget us actual professionals who type all day and care less about fractions of inches and shiny emojis.

Call it the Macbook Actual Pro and charge more I don't care, I just wanna get back to work.

<comment><USER18> I feel exactly the same with my late 2013 retine macbook pro. I'm actually thinking about buying the same model used now, just to be sure I have a replacement when my current machine breaks at some point, that seems more reasonable than betting on apple to remove the touch bar, and fix all the issues, in the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Meanwhile I'm over here quite enjoying it. I type on a Filco MJ2 50% of my time and my MBPr keyboard the other 50%. It's not amazing, but it ain't bad either. At least that's my opinion. And that's what this is all about really... opinion. (Except for actual key failures or issues like that)

Caps lock fails to properly engage on my 2015 MBP too, its not an issue solely of the new KB.

Sure there's issues, but I think people are kicking up WAY too much of a fuss. I too paid >$2000 for my 2017 MBP.

<comment><USER20> Your macbook is still new :) Wait until it gets slightly older... I got a 1 yr old 2016 model and the keyboard went horrible in no-time. I just got rid of it and returned to my 2015 MBP.

I'm somehow hoping some future model will have normal USB ports, HDMI and a normal keyboard... yeah like that's going to happen.

<comment><USER21> What's wrong with USB-C? Sounds like a cool idea in theory - you essentially don't need a docking station.

<comment><USER22> The entire problem is that you _do_ need a docking station/dongles to plug in the 99% of peripherals that are not USB-C.

Having USB-C ports is great, having only USB-C ports is a constant annoyance.

And this is before getting into the absolute shitshow that is the cable situation. Lots of cables are USB2 only. There are passive and active TB3 cables. Active TB3 cables cannot support USB 3.1. There are 3A USB-PD cables and 5A USB-PD cables. Of course you can't tell any of this by looking at the cable, only by plugging things in and wondering why they don't work. And these are the problems with 100% spec-compliant cables before getting into all the companies that completely ignore the standard.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough. If I ever get a laptop with USB-C, I think I'd replace at least my monitors and keyboard mouse to USB-C devices, so that I can get the "docking station" effect. Sucks if you don't want to do that (ex. because you've just recently bought them) though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The keyboard isn't great, sure, but I don't hate it nearly as much as I HATE the !@#$!@#$ touchbar, which constantly picks up presses I didn't intend with all sorts of "amusing" side effects.

<comment><USER24> The compulsory fakebar forced me to get my first Windows machine for many years. I do in all honesty find Windows fairly nasty compared to macOS, but having a whole row of useful keys replaced with an effete Englishman's private whimsy was a bridge too far for me.

For all the advances in hardware and software, there is no longer a single good (by my lights) laptop option available on the market.

<comment><USER25> I just chucked Ubuntu on a Dell, it's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

<comment><USER24> Was my preferred option, but I had too many niggling difficulties (driver problems, hdpi not working on essential apps, etc). Most (not all) are fixable with research, but I don't have time right now. TBH if I did I'd rather spend that time running or sailing or playing music, not setting up an OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It seems like Apple aren't actually practicing design any more

instead we have the superficial appearance of design - thinner, lighter, but less useful

same with innovation - what is the TouchBar except a desperate attempt to innovate, achieving only the superficial appearance of innovation while actually producing something of no value

</comment><comment><USER27> To everyone hating on the TouchBar - as you should - seriously consider the entry level MBP and just max out the specs. Voila, physical Esc and F keys. Adios idiotic touch strip.

Only downside is that only 13"es are sold this way.

<comment><USER28> And it's limited to two ports, at least in earlier editions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Come on, I wanted exactly this kind of keyboard: barely visible but clicky and tactile, since the early 1990s! Now I have finally got it. It feels great.

</comment><comment><USER30> I actually find it a great keyboard. However, I have mild RSI, and both travel and force aggravate it. I like cherry MX blue switches because I can avoid using much force, and I don't have to bottom out the keys, so I have a long habit of stopping my keypress when I get tactile feedback that the keyboard has registered the press.

So, I think a lot of people who don't like it could probably like it if they approached it like I do. And, in my experience, you don't need that key travel. You have to get used to stopping the keypress when it registers the press. However, the keyboard gives very clear feedback about that.

If you compare it to other keyboards you use and expect the same thing, it will disappoint you. Accept it as something different that you have to use and think about differently.

It does not hamper my speed or accuracy at all. I can type about 80 WPM with a negligible error rate (<1%. Obviously, the error rate goes up if I type faster.) I can type perhaps even more quickly and accurately on this keyboard than any I have ever used, and key travel literally just wastes your time and aggravates (perhaps even causes) RSI.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ok, I`ll just say it, I like this new mechanism and bigger keys much more than the keyboard before it. I like the size, clicking sound, pressure, precise movements... The only downside is that they had reliability issues, and I hope that they fixed that with 2018 version.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think it's funny that now when Apple happened to make a truly awful keyboard, basically everyone is raging. But PC makers has been building terrible keyboards for years and no one seems to give a damn. Or is everyone just assuming that keyboards are supposed to be that way on PCs? Also, this problem goes beyond laptops, most "affordable" keyboards that I've tried has been horrible as well. I'm typing at the moment at some standard logitech keyboard my fingers cry for every key I press. It's got a cheap feeling to it, the force it takes to press beyond the "bump" is way too great and the keycaps wobble. The only thing I like about it is the profile which is rather low.

<comment><USER33> I have an Apple USB external keyboard for when I have to do serious typing on the linux laptop...

Hopefully Apple will continue making awesome external keyboards and not suddenly decide to mess this up by making them stupidly thin, or removing the extra USB ports (so useful!) or converting them to USB C so need dongles to be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is funny. I agree that the keyboard is awful, but end-users don't seem to think the same, at least in my anecdotal experience. Both my mother and sister are avid Mac users, and when buying a new keyboard (for the workplace) they both searched for keyboards that emulated the macbook "feel". That is to say, they searched for keyboards that had the same light, floaty (horrible in my opinion) keystroke feel.

I don't know if it's a personal thing, or if you just get used to a specific type of keystroke over time, but different people like different keyboards.

<comment><USER35> > but end-users don't seem to think the same

True, but I think a lot of people feel the problem is that Apple has neglected the "Pro" aspect of the "MacBook Pro". The new pro's don't feel like a machine made for professionals; it's tailored for the average casual user. E.g. professional software developers don't need a damn touchbar. I want my effing escape key

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Credits to Sod's law, I've purchased a 13' MBP without touch bar two days before Apple announced their latest upgrade to the Pro series with an "improved" keyboard design.

"How bad is the keyboard anyway?" I thought, "Is it worth the hassle to change my laptop just to get the latest keyboard design?" So I decided to keep the same laptop and give it a chance.

Two months later and today, my previous gen MBP's keyboard's "Down" arrow key on the keyboard have 50/50 chance of responding to your presses, and it's driving me crazy

</comment><comment><USER37> The biggest mistake here are those ridiculous arrow keys

<comment><USER38> I'm on board. It's like ... Did someone discover that were not actually using up/down enough for equal arrow area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It all depends on what you want in a laptop. At work I have the largest (size, processing power, memory) MBP and I find the keyboard to be so-so; not to bad, but don't love it. This laptop is a clunker to carry around, so optimizing for a thin keyboard doesn't make sense to me.

For my personal laptop I have an 18 month old 12 inch MacBook and I love it. The keyboard is fine because I want my personal laptop to be small and light, with a good display.

</comment><comment><USER40> FWIW I've writen about 60Kloc on a 2016 MacBook 12 (i.e. not "pro") and it turns out to have worked pretty well for me. All of my development is in Emacs, so I'm pretty keyboard-dependent.

That doesn't mean it's been great: I went through three of keyboards, and would be on my fourth except that the MB had an unfortunate water incident. So in two years I had almost two weeks of not having my machine available -- that's pretty bad!

New I've had a 2018 MBP for about three weeks and the keyboard is better (but the machine is a lot heavier) and so far no kbd failures. (The touchbar is pretty worthless to me but mostly harmless).

(Honestly if you're typing in a lot of code and just typing make and lldb the MB was a great ultralight machine. YEs, building our whole system took a while but mostly you're just ending and recompiling one module and it's still faster than most several-year-old machines, which in the Mac world could reasonably still be in use. It doesn't have the horsepower for those huge IDEs but I don't use them anyway. They seem to use more cycles than the compilers!)

</comment><comment><USER41> I hated the "new" pre-2018 MBP keyboards.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dbg31415%20keyboard&sort=byPop...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dbg31415%20keyboard&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

But... I think with the new 2018s they've done some nice things.

You still have a stupid stupid touch bar on the 15s. I have a 13 without the touch bar, and it's a billion times better.

You still have a silly silly large track pad (and it has some bend to it in the middle... I don't like it at all).

BUT... the keys have just a tad more bounce to them. I think Apple did something to help with the dust issue, and a side effect is that the keys feel just a bit more responsive as you type.

Not saying it's great, or better than past versions, or even good yet... but it's a step in the right direction. And honestly it's probably all we'll ever get from Apple... so I'll take it. Hooray for keyboards that aren't quite as bad as the "new" pre-2018s!

<comment><USER42> > I have a 13 without the touch bar ... Hooray for keyboards that aren't quite > as bad as the "new" pre-2018

Then it's a 2017 as the FN one was untouched by the 2018 refresh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Isn't a bad keyboard part of the design, Apple has aways been removing I/O options and locking down the software. A bad keyboard is just the natural evolution of the concept.

Why should they give the average person the ability to type? Their buisness model is focused on passive consumption.

</comment><comment><USER44> Too little, too late. Apple have gotten away with it.

Typing this on a very crappy 2018 MBP keyboard, which I absolutely hate. If it weren't for the dependency that my job has on submitting apps to the App Store, I wouldn't be using Apple for _anything_ these days .. sad.

<comment><USER45> Is the 2018 MBP keyboard different from the 2016-2017 one?

I use a MBP 2018 and thought the keyboard was the same as the 2016-2017 MBPs (since the arrival of the touchbar).

It's understandable that you dislike the keyboard; feedback is awkward, like a shallow hard button button press as opposed to a keypress.

However, over time I have grown to prefer this keyboard over the 2015 one with the deep keys, and can actually type faster on the new one as well. The only thing I find absolutely useless and inconvenient, is the touchbar.

<comment><USER38> Glad you brought this up. I'm on the 14" 16'-17' MBP no-bar. Keyboard seems fine.

My previous 15" 14' MBP was nearly my favorite laptop experience ever. Exactly that but newer chassis and as a 14" would buy again.

(Typing since late 80s)

<comment><USER46> Honestly after a week with the new keyboards you get used to them and you don't notice them. If you're coming from a mechanical keyboard or deep-travel keyboard, it feels horrifically shallow at first, but after some time with it you cease to notice or even care. And this is what I think Apple is betting on.

If you found the 2014 MacBook Pros enjoyable, I think you'll be even happier with these. I certainly am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I got the first model with the new butterfly keyboard and the touchbar in April 2017 and I still hate it. I appreciate the idea of adding a touchbar for regular users. After all, it might be nicer for them to just press "Next Song" when using Spotify than fiddling around with Fn+F*. But for power users/developers, why do the most powerful MBP models come with these useless gimmicks? I'm using Dongles on 3/4 of the USB-C ports right now and that's not going to change anytime soon.

I wish Apple listened to developer's voices a bit more. To me, it's not a matter of price, either. I'd gladly pay more for a MBP with more/different ports and without a touchbar than I would for this model.

</comment><comment><USER48> I like the keyboard. Programming for 10+ years and swithching sometimes to Blue Cherry MXs. What I dont like is the touchbar. Completely worthless and in the way.

There is definitely a problem with the dust though, two keys already start to act weird and I keep my tech stuff clean.

</comment><comment><USER49> It is kind of funny (not really) how Apple went on a suicide mission with the MBP product line.

<comment><USER50> MacBooks have been doing quite well in sales for a good while, sometimes outselling competitors.

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro- sales/](https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro-sales/)

<comment><USER49> Absolutely, until they wont because people realize the shortcomings. I am a Mac user in the last ~10 years and most of this time MBPs beat competitors in many regards, making other vendors copy their solutions. As of today I have to make a decision to purchase a new laptop for somebody and MBP is not an option anymore because of the freakin' keyboard. Regardless how good the rest of it this already disqualifies it. I am certainly not the only one having issues with the newer models and soon you are going to see a decline in those numbers if Apple does not address these issues. You can't run on brand value forever.

<comment><USER50> > _I am certainly not the only one having issues with the newer models_

 _Many_ more people _aren 't_ having issues. Nor did I when I had an MBP (which I swapped for an iMac + 12" MB, and I'm thinking of getting the 2018 ones.) This isn't to downplay your concerns, but calling it "suicide" is hyperbole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> So how come no senior executive has been fired for this and the overall scene of Macs languishing for years? This is certainly far from how Apple desires its products and product lines to be perceived and written about.

Scott Forstall was fired (IMO, for a lot less) for the Apple Maps fiasco, though he could've contributed a lot more to the company if he were still around.

Something seems to be rotten right from the top, and there's no _honest_ acknowledgement of how bad the state of affairs is on the Mac side.

<comment><USER52> Companies predictably focus on the areas where they make the most profit. For Apple, that's clearly Phones, App Store, iTunes, even iAds. The laptop hardware and OS are clearly in a minority when compared to those big earners, so they just don't focus any attention on them.

<comment><USER51> But as prominent writers in the Apple/Mac space have been writing for years, the state of the Mac has been terrible for a long time. The absolute requirement of having a Mac to develop software for iOS, tvOS and watchOS makes it necessary that Apple focus on the Macs — even if the range of options is limited — to produce things that will help its primary market on iOS to grow.

Selling old and outdated hardware for high prices (set during product launch time) is even more insulting to the Apple brand.

I know that Apple's organizational structure is also to blame, but clearly it shouldn't take so many years to even get started on fixing things and showing some results.

Apple is losing with this attitude and negligence. One can only hope that it starts showing that it is serious about walking the talk sometime soon.

<comment><USER53> This is a pretty personal opinion so feel free to disagree but Mac OS X era Apple seemed to have the same air of Unix cool as Silicon Graphics, Sun or NexT back in the day.

It was probably never true but they gave the illusion of caring intensely about making delightful products.

All that changed when Apple's market interests shifted to larger, more lucrative consumer markets. Now things like good emoji support are more important that keyboard shortcuts for window management.

Apple is doing exactly what they should for their shareholders, I guess, but since they've gone all "Barney the Dinosaur" they just doesn't have the magic anymore for me. :(

Now their stuff just feels like dodgy "smart" TVs full of janky animations and features you know some exec thought was cool for a day.

If Apple was still Apple they'd be able to make announcements at their keynotes about fundamental stuff missing from macOS like, say, package management and make it sound cool. The magic is that they'd get non-nerds to care about it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I find it _OK_ to type with. Not absolutely terrible like the keyboards in the high school computer labs, and not great like <insert mechanical keyboard here> (I've never used a mechanical keyboard).

The main annoyance I have with it is that it's incredibly loud to type on when in meeting rooms, which is the only time I really use it (I have a full size Apple m=Magic Keyboard I use at my desk). It's obnoxious, especially if you're not using an external mic.

</comment><comment><USER55> Damn. This guy almost makes it sound like this is as bad as those puck mice from the late nineties[1]. But seriously, if you bought a laptop without trying out the keyboard first, you deserve what you get. No manufacturer has a perfect track record. Try before you buy.

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

</comment><comment> noir-york Apple built its brand on beautiful design.

But why do people want beautifully designed objects? Just to own something beautiful? Sure.

But also because it makes you look cool, attractive to members of the opposite sex, and earns the jealousy of yours.

But a keyboard which sucks ain't cool: sure the externals are great, but wrestling with a stuck capslock is the opposite of exuding _je ne sais quoi_.

Not cool Apple. Not cool. And therefore not beautiful.

<comment><USER56> > But also because it makes you look cool, attractive to members of the > opposite sex, and earns the jealousy of yours.

You really think a laptop has that effect on people? I do not.

<comment> noir-york Oh absolutely! As soon as I flip open my mac in a cafe, every other patron immediately turns towards me to jealously admire my mac before slowly turning away to continue drinking their coffee and work away on their own mac...

Of course a laptop doesn't have that effect on people! I was being tongue in cheek. But beautiful objects in general - think fine art, expensive watches, etc - sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Meh. I've had everything from super-clicky mechanical KBs (RapidFire or something kike that) to the flat butterfly keys on the MacBook. Like learning to drive or play guitar, it becomes muscle memory after a while. I've gotten used almost everything at this point in my life. However what I will NOT accept is a virtual keyboard. I need at least some kind of tactile feedback.

</comment><comment><USER58> The truth is that this is hardly a unique case - most Apple laptops released in the past 10 years have had serious hardware design flaws[1]. In this case it's simply a particularly noticeable/frequent issue.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)

</comment><comment><USER59> The keyboard is great. It means that I get a free battery replacement about every 2 years when keys start getting stuck.

</comment><comment><USER60> I bought my first MBP in 2017. Love the machine. Hate the keyboard. It is just very bad.

I only wished Apple acknowledged this and offered something as an apology. After all, this is what any car / phone / anything else company would do.

It's fine to make mistakes, just embrace them and send love back to your users.

</comment><comment><USER61> Travel distance.

Without some decent amount of travel distance, a keyboard lacks feel. I type 130WPM and can not develop a rhythm on the new MacBook pros. To the day, I love the MacBook Air and previous MacBook Pros circa 2015. In fact, I may buy one on eBay. Apple, give us back travel distance.

</comment><comment><USER62> That awful keyboard is the main reason why I haven't switched from my 2012 Macbook Pro yet

</comment><comment><USER63> I don't understand why everyone is so unhappy with it. Am I the only one absolutely loves this keyboard? I think this is the best keyboard on any laptop, and I wish I could have an external keyboard that is just like this one.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's a great keyboard ... when it's working. It's just not very robust.

</comment><comment><USER65> I feel I'm the only person in the universe that's never had an issue with the keyboard, and actively likes it (I don't like much key travel, but I do like clicky keyboards)

</comment><comment><USER66> ok here's one thing almost no one mentions and is hard for me to understand: i do almost all of my development work on my desk, where i have an external keyboard of my liking connected to my macbook. i only use the macbook's keyboard when i'm travelling, and mostly for typing the first 2 letters of the website i want to open on my browser. don't understand why people fuss about so much about the keyboard: if you don't like it just use an external one. what am i missing?

</comment><comment><USER67> Why would any developer prefer a Macbook running MacOS, over a Thinkpad running Linux? Thinkpads give you a full control hardware, and Linux gives you a full control of software.

<comment><USER68> If you're developing iOS or macOS software, you need a Mac.

If you want to do live browser testing in all major browsers, you need a Mac, and you _can_ do it with no other hardware, as you can virtualise all of Windows/Linux/Android/iOS under macOS.

Based on [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426](https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd031426), Lenovo support for Linux distro's is a mixed bag of "fuck you" and "Enterprise Edition", so "full control" is likely to mean "Full Responsibility", too.

Why would any developer prefer to run a hardware/software combination that has zero support if something fails, and predictably endless issue volleyball between h/w and s/w vendors if you happen to use one of the specific combinations that has support, over running hardware and software that is supported by a single company?

Personally, I prefer to spend my working hours actually making money. If you prefer to be endlessly tweaking kernel parameters or driver settings because you updated some software and now your trackpad works in reverse, well then good luck to you sir.

<comment><USER67> > If you're developing iOS or macOS software, you need a Mac.

I agree, that's probably the only valid reason for a developer to prefer a Macbook over a Thinkpad: if he needs to develop software for Apple hardware. But in the age of React Native and Electron, I never had to develop specifically for iOS / MacOS.

> Lenovo support for Linux distro's is a mixed bag of "fuck you" and > "Enterprise Edition", so "full control" is likely to mean "Full > Responsibility", too.

In practice, most Linux desktop distributions are developed and tested by people working on Thinkpads. In a non-Apple world, it's the OS developers who decide what hardware they support, not the hardware company.

> If you prefer to be endlessly tweaking kernel parameters or driver settings > because you updated some software and now your trackpad works in reverse, > well then good luck to you sir.

I don't remember having to tweak a single thing on my default Linux desktop installation since 2013. Everything just works out of the box, if you pick Fedora Workstation or Ubuntu, and your hardware wasn't released 5 days ago.

> Personally, I prefer to spend my working hours actually making money.

Yet, I see here people spending their working hours complaining about the hardware they bought from Apple, and the software Apple shipped to them with that hardware, as if they had no other choice in life.

<comment><USER68> > probably the only valid reason

It's a bad sign you're already talking in absolutes.

> in the age of React Native and Electron, I never had to

So, you release apps that you've literally never tested on the platforms you support? I bet they work _great_.

Arguing that Electron is a reason not to use a Mac, is like arguing that McDonalds is a reason not to learn how to cook.

> most Linux desktop distributions are developed and tested by people working > on Thinkpads

Great and I assume they'll be on-call to fix your issues at 3am when something goes wrong?

> it's the OS developers who decide what hardware they support

So.. it's "full control", so long as you pick a distro whose developers/maintainers have chosen to support the combination of devices in the laptop spec you chose.... sounds great.

> if you pick Fedora or Ubuntu

So now it's "full control" so long as you pick one of two distros, and hardware that meets their requirements to support...

> Yet, I see here people spending their working hours

Oh, I must have missed the new "posting during work hours" flag.

Also - I'd argue that _most_ people on HN don't get paid hourly, they're paid a salary, so if they fuck around on HN for 40 minutes whinging about their laptop, it doesnt actually cost _them_ anything.

> as if they had no other choice in life

Of course their are choices. I didn't reply to you because you said "I use Distro X on Hardware Y and it works great", I replied because you said "Why would any developer prefer a Macbook running MacOS, over a Thinkpad running Linux?".

People complain about "personal anecdotal evidence" being pretty low value - but it's still fucking better value than making blanket, absolute statements, which upon further digging are in fact nuanced with layer after layer of caveats and unstated details.

<comment><USER67> What I said, is that buying Apple hardware just to be able to test iOS / MacOS software doesn't make much sense, unless you work as a iOS / MacOS developer. I don't. And I never stated, that Electron is a reason not to use MacOS.

There are hundreds of Linux desktop distributions, because unlike in the Apple-world, PC users actually do have a choice. I mentioned the ones I have most experience with, because I cannot recommended to others what I haven't used extensively myself.

I was forced to work on MacOS for a year, and even though it was much better than Windows, it was still far away from the experience a complete Linux workstation can provide to a developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I could have lived with all its faults if the arrow keys were remotely usable. They are not. I challenge you to blindly find the up arrow without pressing the down arrow.

</comment><comment><USER69> Ive recently replaced mine under warranty and rep hinted that they've reworked it and fixed the original sticky key problems. Time will tell. My broke under a year.

</comment><comment><USER70> Getting real tired of the Apple apologists spinning it that Apple keyboards have never been reliable and this is perfectly normal. My TiBook G4 still works at 16 years of age, my 2006 Alu iMac keyboard is still used daily, my 4 year old MBP keyboard works fine. My 8 month old USB-C MBP has key deadzones and 5 glitchy keys and a few keys significantly louder than others.

It's crazy how apple managed to turn my most loved machine into my most hated with just a single design update.

</comment><comment><USER71> You know what's worse? Their bluetooth keyboard is not backlit so you can't use that as an alternative either.

</comment><comment><USER72> It really is bad.

I'm so close to "office-spacing" this keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER73> They should make a Cherry MX MBP. that would be badass.

</comment><comment> ux-app absolutely agree. The new keyboard is such utter garbage. Awful, awful design. I am positive that Ive approves these designs without actually using them. In a photo they look "magical" (fk me, how pathetic), but in use they are nothing but garbage, what a shame.

</comment><comment><USER74> The bio for Natasha Lomas states that she is a senior reporter for TechCrunch. Reporters don't generally write one-sided opinion pieces like this. TechCrunch should make it clear that this is not in any sense a news article or a product review.

[https://techcrunch.com/author/natasha- lomas/](https://techcrunch.com/author/natasha-lomas/)

<comment><USER75> > Reporters don't generally write one-sided opinion pieces like this.

First, they do, and they do it often. Second, it's not just a personal biased opinion without any factual basis.

<comment><USER74> Can you name one reporter at The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal who writes opinion pieces in the paper on a regular basis? Just asking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> This may be a bit off topic, forgive me.

Last spring my laptop running linux finally gave up and I decided to give the MBP a try.

The pros:

\- MUCH better hardware than anything else on the market.

\- The keyboard is great for me. Leaving mech keys on desktop doesn't feel as bad as it used to. I haven't encountered any inconsistency this article complains about with so many words--maybe I'm an outlier.

\- MacOS requires just about zero maintenance.

\- Better consumer software (DRM) compatibility (audible, hbogo, etc).

\- Better creative software compatibility.

\- The OS is pretty well tuned for battery life (I'm sure linux can be, I just didn't expend the effort).

The cons:

\- Much more difficult to customize. I do miss just how tuned I got my linux setup with a tiling WM (i3). I haven't lost significant productivity though.

\- Brew is not a first class package manager. Pacman/AUR and apt are a dream for developers.

\- Boot time is noticeably slower. At least it don't drop you into the OS with about 1,000 other processes in the scheduler like windows does.

This list is not exhaustive. But I'd not feel bad saying that the MBP is the best laptop experience. On a side note I also switched to iOS from android and am similarly satisfied.

For a no fuss, non free eco-system apple is still king despite any recent stumbles.

</comment><comment><USER77> In the old days, No one are using Mac for work apart form small group of Professional Artist. Steve Jobs hated the I.T of Cooperate Enterprise because they get to decide what their employees should use, not the user themselves.

One of the famous quote from Steve " If we succeed, they will buy them, if we don't, they won't! It will all sort itself out" [1].

The problem now are Apple products are getting bought no matter what they make. Businesses are now buying more Mac than ever. Whether we like it or not. The sales figure aren't showing how we vote with our wallet. The Mac Ecosystem has morphed itself into a mini PC market where its replacement unit are sustainable for the Mac business as a whole. There should be now close to ~120M Mac users and an annual 25M Mac sales unit, healthy for a 4 years replacement cycle.

And it is frustrating because 3 years after this Keyboard introduction and despite many of its users best effort and cried for improvement. Nothing has been done. The 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard are still getting double click and non working keys on Reddit and twitter. ( Sorry I can no longer locate the thread ). I guess more reports will come in as time pass by. And it is not as quiet as the MacBook Air Keyboard either.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65_PmYipnpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65_PmYipnpk)</comment>


Why Google Won't Help Your VC Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071017_927850.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_small+business

<comment><USER2> Good advice, but certainly common sense. Startups that rely on others are destined to fail.

Using AdSense (or any such mundane scheme) is a sad excuse for lacking the creativity to develop an innovative revenue model that fits your startup and the values of the user community.

Piggybacking on facebook? Don't even get me started with that one; that's a another whole world of problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not selling is not an 'independence' strategy. It's just a gamble that your competition won't wipe you out before you get sold...

<comment><USER4> Either that, or a gamble that your business model is capable of producing... _gasp_... profits.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's the other case.</comment></comment></comment>


Common Lisp as a Scripting Language, 2015 Edition - <AUTHOR> http://fare.livejournal.com/184127.html <comment><USER2> I have my own scheme-esque language that I use for scripts. 16 of its 48 primitive procedures ~correspond to unix system calls (open, close, read, write, seek, select, stat, link, unlink, mkdir, lsdir, chdir, fork+exec, wait, sleep, exit). It was very instructive to work on, and using something I know inside out is a welcome relief from the uncertainty I feel when intuiting (ba)sh.

<comment><USER3> Any reason you don't use one of the existing scriptable scheme like guile's?

<comment><USER2> Wanted to put my article-gleaned understanding of lisp to the test + get at the essence of what shebang-style unix scripting was about.

Here is a reimplementation of "cat" in it:

        #!/usr/bin/env imp

        (def copy-out (proc (x)
          (let f (if (file? x) x (open x))
               bytes (read default-chunk f)
               (if bytes
                   (seq (write bytes stdout)
                        (recur f))
                   (close f)))))

        (if (nil? script-args)
            (copy-out stdin)
            (each copy-out script-args))

Running external programs is a bit more verbose than normal shell, but there is some optional reader-macro sugar on top of fork+exec, e.g. the effect of the following is that /usr/bin/say gets run with those non-string args converted to strings and a voice comes out of my speaker.

        !(say hello there)
        => ((status : 0) (pid : 2945) (in : [File]) (out : [File]) (err : [File]))

<comment><USER3> > Wanted to put my article-gleaned understanding of lisp to the test

fair enough!

> get at the essence of what shebang-style unix scripting was about

FWIW, although convoluted, you can do that with guile, with:

        #!/usr/bin/guile \
        -e main -s

Or simpler with chicken:

      #!/usr/bin/csi -s

<comment><USER4> IMHO the nicest Scheme for UNIX scripting is scsh. Its APIs are really well thought out and represent a lot of design work that hasn't ever been replicated by another Scheme (at least that I've seen).

Some good examples of scsh scripting (some by the author, Olin Shivers) can be found at

[http://scsh.net/resources/scripts.html](http://scsh.net/resources/scripts.html)

The manual is also very good:

[http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html](http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html)

<comment><USER5> > The manual is also very good

The acknowledgements section made my morning, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm starting to use SBCL for scripting, and on the system with a Lisp on an SSD drive the startup delay is unnoticeable. My friends tell me that on non- SSD setups, adding --script to startup options makes SBCL load almost instantly. It skips various initializations, disables debugger and REPL, and ignores shebang if it's the first line of a script, allowing you to write:

#!/usr/bin/sbcl --script

in your .lisp file.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used Common Lisp from the mid 1980s until about 5 years ago when my customers wanted Clojure, if they wanted Lisp development done. I have never seriously used CL as a scripting language but for a while I was using Gambit-C Scheme for small compiled apps and command line tools. Gambit-C is very good for this purpose.

BTW, Clojure is "out" for command line tools because of the JVM startup time but I have thought about Clojurescript + node.

<comment><USER8> Nitpick, but Clojure's startup time isn't JVM startup time it's clojure.core startup time

<comment><USER9> This appears to be true, eg:

      cat <<eof > Hello.java
      public class Hello {
        public static void main(String[] args) {
          System.out.println("Hello, world!"); }}
      eof

      javac Hello.java
      echo "Main-Class: Hello" > manifest.mf
      jar cvfm hello.jar manifest.mf Hello.class
      time java -jar hello.jar
      Hello, world!

      real    0m0.153s
      user    0m0.132s
      sys     0m0.020s

vs:

      lein new hello
      cd hello
      # Pesty s-expressions, so hard to work with... ;-)
      cat <<eof|patch -p0
      --- project.clj 2015-04-16 04:13:09.734160136 +0200
      +++ project.clj.patch   2015-04-16 04:09:33.809504079 +0200
      @@ -3,4 +3,5 @@
         :url "http://example.com/FIXME"
         :license {:name "Eclipse Public License"
                   :url "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html"}
      +  :main hello.core
         :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.6.0"]])
      eof

      cat<<eof > src/hello/core.clj
      (ns hello.core
        (:gen-class))
      (defn -main
        "I don't do a whole lot."
        []
        (println "Hello, World!"))
      eof

      lein uberjar

      time java -jar target/hello-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar

Hello, World!

      real    0m1.060s
      user    0m1.400s
      sys     0m0.040s

(Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz, SSD drive)

<comment><USER10> Lisp on my Raspberry Pi is faster:

        pi@raspberrypi ~/lisp/ccl $ time ./armcl -n -Q -e '(progn (princ "hello") (quit))'
        hello

        real	0m0.112s
        user	0m0.020s
        sys	        0m0.080s

And the expression is first compiled to native code...

<comment><USER9> How does guile 2.0 do on that hardware?

<comment><USER10> Don't know. I don't use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use the _#!_ trick for scripts. Here's a Common Lisp script that sends me email every morning (run from cron) about AWS resources being used:

[https://gist.github.com/franzinc/acde9fd04a6b07745db3](https://gist.github.com/franzinc/acde9fd04a6b07745db3)

</comment><comment><USER12> I use SBCL for some scripting, and haven't found the overhead to be that bad just using #!/usr/bin/sbcl. For basic stuff, I just use zsh, so by the time I've switched to Lisp, the task is already at the point where startup time isn't a big factor.

I do have some compiled programs I use, but IMO they're a little too big to be called scripts.

An interesting idea would be the ability to dump a shared library of the core image, and then dump incremental changes as executable images that dynamically link to it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if the scales would tilt more in favor of separate images if you added a good tree-shaking step. You can bang out useful scripts pretty fast by pulling in a few helper functions from large libraries, but the more scripts share a library, the less functionality you can discard from the final image.

If you can cut the size of the core language's image in half with just a simple method like this, you could probably get impressive results using more sophisticated methods on images requiring a lot of libraries: [https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/f08f561264ff94391300](https://gist.github.com/burtonsamograd/f08f561264ff94391300)

</comment><comment><USER14> Fellow Lispers may perhaps also find helpful these notes I put together recently on shebang lines for various open-source Common Lisp implementations:

[http://ar.to/notes/common-lisp#scripting-with-common- lisp](http://ar.to/notes/common-lisp#scripting-with-common-lisp)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have used Chicken Scheme for a lot of script-like tasks.

If one doesn't want to compile first, that's fine. The interpreter's startup time is negligible.

</comment><comment><USER16> "the EliteBook has a touchpad that is particularly bad, even worse than the Thinkpad's in being triggered all the time by my thumb as I type"

I know what he means. These designers never learn...

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else feel like we could get along without the "'clit' interface" jokes?</comment>


Stream graph of online music listening history over the past 365 days by Artist - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2d20q5/my_online_music_listening_history_over_the_past/

<comment><AUTHOR> Made using Windows prog last.fm Extra Stats - [http://www.last.fm/user/C26000/journal/2006/07/30/383m_last....](http://www.last.fm/user/C26000/journal/2006/07/30/383m_last.fm_extra_stats)

via @shaggorama - In case anyone is looking for tutorials to make this type of graphic on their own, this style of graphic is called a stream graph . Here are some demos: D3 - [http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4060954](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4060954) Protovis - [http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/stream.html](http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/stream.html) Processing - [https://github.com/leebyron/streamgraph_generator](https://github.com/leebyron/streamgraph_generator) Python - [http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576633-stacked-graphs- us...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576633-stacked-graphs-using- matplotlib/)</comment>


Show HN: Add a mark as watched button to TED videos - <AUTHOR> https://www.markers.app/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea. You could even do this with all HTML5 videos possibly?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! I will definitely consider that as I expand the coverage of the extension.

Thanks for checking it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This feature makes sense to me. When I watch YouTube videos, I tag them as watched by voting up or down.</comment>


Ask HN: How hard would it be for me to get into an American college? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I'm a last-year high school student from Portugal. I've been programming for a few years and always planned to follow Computer Science or an equivalent degree such as Informatics Engineering. It was always a plan for me to take I.E. on my local university - it's cheap and it gets me a job. However, I've been thinking a lot about American universities and their attractive opportunities lately and so I've started to wonder how hard it would be for me to get into one and what I would have to do.
I'm obviously going to be honest about it - MIT, Harvard, Stanford and other "big names" are the universities that most attract me but, of course, those are also the most expensive and never in the world would I be able to afford any of those. On the other hand, I try not to be modest about it, and consider myself as a university-approved student because I can fluently speak English and have been programming for a few years. I also have certain things to vouch for me such as my GitHub[1] or my Launchpad[2] account. I also consider myself a nice guy, the kind of guy who wants to learn new things every day and I believe I have almost all of the characteristics that would make a university want me as one of their students.
I do know that a GitHub account is probably not enough to get me into college with a scholarship but I was hopeful it would help.
For me, it's okay if I take my degree where I live, it's not like I'm going to be sad, but lately the idea of studying in an American university has been occupying my thoughts and my parents said that I shouldn't give up on my dreams even if I can't afford them without help. I'll be finishing high school in a couple of months with good grades and I'd also like to know if it's too late to get into an American college/university this September.
[1]: https://github.com/davidgomes/ [2]: https://launchpad.net/~davidgomes <comment><USER2> 1\. For most US colleges (including all the ones you listed), you must apply by January 1 of the year you want to attend. There are a lot of documents you need to send in from your school and teachers so you need to start applying at least 1-2 months before that deadline. You also need to take standardized tests (SATs), so again, you have to plan for that at least 3 months in advance, and probably a lot more if you wanted to study for the test (and you really do need to study for the test). So it's too late to apply for entry in September. If you're taking a gap year you would be able to apply.

2\. Getting into the schools you listed is incredibly difficult, even for an American citizen. For an international/foreign student, the bar is set even higher.

3\. The top American colleges will usually offer financial aid to _everyone_ who needs it, including international students. These colleges are incredibly competitive (the three colleges you listed do offer financial aid). There is a special process for financial aid; you must specifically apply for it. Colleges that are not top-tier typically factor in financial aid into admissions; meaning those who need financial aid face a higher standard in admissions. Some colleges (usually the wealthiest) do not factor in financial need into admissions.

4\. I seriously doubt _any_ admissions officers will now with git or github is. Far more impressive are internships or actual products you have shipped on the App Store or online. And you really need to sell yourself - in your applications you would probably need to specifically say that X app is on the app store, X number of users and $X revenue, etc.

<comment><USER2> typo correction: "know what git or github is."

Addendum: Think of "selling yourself" as selling yourself to some clueless non-technical BigCorp business guy. They might know a tiny tiny bit about the buzzwords of various languages (there are these things called Java, Python, C++), they might know some technology buzzwords (iPhone app, Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS) but probably won't know others (node.js, Django, UIKit, etc.). So it's easier to explain in terms of "Accepted into App Store," or "Featured in TechCrunch," X number of users, X revenue, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> American Universities care about your grades and test scores, not just your GitHub.

If you have almost perfect scores on everything, and a history of doing cool things, you might get into MIT, Harvard, and Stanford.

By the way, Harvard is by far not the most expensive. They give a lot of financial aid as well. All these schools do.

</comment><comment><USER4> For most places, it is too late to apply for this September.

Your best bet is probably to go to the best university you can in Portugal, excel there, and go to the US for grad school -- or if you really want to, apply to transfer after a year or two.</comment>


Cisco Is Making It More Difficult to Use Pre-Owned Hardware - <AUTHOR> https://ifixit.com/News/cisco-is-making-it-more-difficult-to-use-pre-owned-hardware <comment><USER2> That have made it difficult for many years. Buying old hardware, and you need/want to update the OS on it? Nope, can't do that without a CCIE or someone certified to download that image.. All while you're trying to learn CISCO on the gear. Now there is virtual which makes it easier, but still CISCO is a trap. Dont just learn cisco, learn them all. Extreme, Dell, Arista, Mellanox etc. Cisco syntax is poor vs the others imho.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cisco smells money, they see their network as a service sub-brand Meraki pulling in tons of money from clients that don't want their network to brick.

I wish this would trigger a migration to other vendors that don't brick your hardware when you don't pay them for a license, eg: Ubiquiti, WatchGuard, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> netapp was one of the earliest to pull this</comment>


Why The iPad is not a "Fail" - <AUTHOR> http://www.mactalk.com.au/2010/01/28/why-the-ipad-is-not-a-fail/ <comment><USER2> Haha ... absolutely right on!

"They've seen this sort of thing happen before - having witnessed Apple's classic tactic penetrating the market through evolutionary features in the first few revisions of a product accompanied by aggressive and well-timed price cuts.To be as wildly disparaging as a great many people have been may very well end up fulfilling David Pogue's (one of the few exceptions) prophecy: 'As we enter Phase 2, remember how silly you all looked when you all predicted the iPhone's demise in that period before it went on sale.'"</comment>


Apply HN: Browsed – Make Sharing Obsolete - <AUTHOR> Vision?
http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is-browsed/
Crux of the idea?
Get rid of FOMO. Focus on building a people network and, content will follow. Rather than going to a bunch of websites to finding stuff your folks share everywhere, get them via one stream. Always be implicitly aware of what people in your network are interested in rather than what they want to appear when they choose to share selectively.
How it works?
- Install Chrome/Safari/Firefox extension for your favorite browser.
- Signup using Facebook (Or, some other online network) where you have built your social group.
- Every time you discover new stuff online (links, text, images, videos etc) they are transmitted to people in your network anonymously and vice versa.
- Initially, software will display content to you in the order of frecency with an expiry of 24 hours. But, because extension has access to your local browsing history, it will evolve to digest that data to always order the content based on your recent interest.
- This may include options to allow sharing by applying filters and type of content user wants.
- Also, sharing data exists just in your browser and, platform memory lasts for the period of delivery, similar to Whatsapp.
Concerns?
- Privacy
AFAIK, Most people would love to have a read access to their network info but, will be concerned about providing read access. It is likely that if you intimately know someone, you might be able to pinpoint the person it's emanating from but, that should be OK in future where people are willingly sharing most stuff about them via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etal. There has always been tradeoff between privacy and access and, I, personally believe that we are moving towards the direction where latter trumps former.
PS: I have been thinking about this idea for few months now. I'd love to get your feedback on this. And, if this sounds something few people will be interested in, can get to work on this. <comment><USER2> So basically, I install a browser extension, do social sign in so you get my friends list, and now any time I go to a page not previously in my browser history, it's anonymously added to the feed of any of my friends who also have the browser extension installed? And the hope is this stream of passively broadcast stuff from your friends is more interesting than Facebook or Twitter's streams of stuff your friends have curated and chosen to share?

Ignoring all privacy issues and ways to deanonymize, one big area of risk I see for you is in your ability to filter content. One of the main benefits of people actively sharing is that they tend to add context as they do it. They comment on it, add tags, editorialize the title, and even based on where they're sharing it you can assume a little more about the content.

Without all of that, your only option for "applying filters" and determining "type of content user wants" is to do some kind of machine analysis. How reliably are you really going to be able to provide that? Especially for images, which on platforms like tumblr and imgur are often shared without any context (even titles or tags).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that getting all this browsing data from users will rather decrease the signal-to-noise ratio early on. But, that simultaneously provides a way to explore much more content on web that remains simply unknown to most people because of a lack of discovery medium. From personal experience, Most people share a mere fraction of stuff they discover online. So, even though that might find some rare gem on web, they will share only items which they would be rather associated with in contrast variety of things they might be interested in.

Although, I haven't ironed out exact details, IIRC, Deep learning techniques have improved significantly to make sense out of data if fed a huge chunk of it. Basic Video and Image comprehension techniques are pretty advanced too. I'd like to believe that this system will evolve to serve the purpose too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting, it's certainly something that, well executed, could add a lot of value.

Do you have a mockup of how it would look like?

I'm currently thinking of a meld of stuff like Delicious or Stumble Upon or Longreads. Being more passive than Delicious or Stumble Upon should be a win, but would also increase the noise ratio.

I don't understand the " what people in your network are interested in rather than what they want to appear when they choose to share selectively" \- for example, if I'm researching technical stuff, I'm not sharing because I KNOW that people in my network don't want to know the latest about obsolete 4GL languages. Or embarrassing StackOverflow queries :) . Would those be shared?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think so too.

Don't have a mockup on paper yet. But, It will have minimal presence in Browser and, notifies the user subtly whenever the top recommendation changes.

That is exactly the case that misses out with current sharing platforms available. So often, when talking to a person, I come across tangential topics / ideas, which would never have thought of looking up otherwise. Same thing when you notice something on accidently snooping on a random persons' screen and notice something completely whack that you start digging in right away. Such instances make me believe that there is scope for properly showcasing all this data being generated in a usable way.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link from the post: [http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is- browsed/](http://browsed.xyz/blog/2016/02/01/what-is-browsed/)</comment>


Visualize and edit your Kubernetes cluster in real-time - <AUTHOR> https://icepanel.io/l/OhwjieuuK <comment><AUTHOR> We've been listening to the great feedback given by our community and early adopters and are excited to announce the launch of our beta macOS and Windows desktop app!

Visualize, create and edit resources on your Kubernetes clusters in real-time.

[https://icepanel.io/l/OhwjieuuK](https://icepanel.io/l/OhwjieuuK)</comment>


Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything - <AUTHOR> https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/ <comment><USER2> > But we've also mostly been doing it wrong, trying to explain the brain using > methods that couldn't possibly generate insight about the things we care > about.

Wow, it must suck to work in neuroscience and find out that your entire field is pointless because this guy says so.

<comment><USER3> This comment is inflammatory, how is it at the top? Statements saying we're doing it wrong are either revolutionary or misinformed, and I don't see that it's obvious either way

<comment><USER2> I thought it was a reasonable response to an inflammatory position. If you think you've discovered a new approach that works better than the current ones, you can announce it without dismissing an entire discipline as hopelessly ineffective.

<comment><USER4> I read the article (once) and didn't encounter this passage nor much criticism in general.

Most of the article outlines in a positive way the annealing idea and it's related extents.

Inflammatory 'comment', sure, but hardly a main theme for the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not like the lack of actual support in the data for this idea.

Not in developmental science, not in neuroscience. Not in how we understand cellular mechanics to work. Neurons and glial cells are born, grow, die and chemically change all the time.

Psychedelic therapy is in the infancy. Go and run trials before building sand castles of theory.

Most importantly, the testable assumption is what, adding energy would change belief? But of what form and sort? Neurons organize into attractors? Then what do they look like and what's the process? Without that it is woo.

<comment><USER6> Right. There is no testable assumption. This article is philosophy, which was the precursor to science. They are using an entirely outdated paradigm.

<comment><USER7> You may want to see discussion here: [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zcYJBTGYtcftxefz9/neural- ann...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zcYJBTGYtcftxefz9/neural-annealing- toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything?commentId=oaSQapNfBueNnt5pS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting but I would almost use the word "pseudoscience".

I mean a lot of it seems to be on the right track to me in a broad way, but its problematic because it is a mashup of real scientific ideas but the process seems to be more like a philosophical essay. You can't get scientific or engineering progress from philosophy.

There are good reasons that most of academia moved on from philosophy.

<comment><USER8> > There are good reasons that most of academia moved on from philosophy.

There are philosophy departments in almost every reputable University I know...

Everything that is non-STEM is underfunded, it doesn't matter if it is philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. This has nothing to do with academia itself, but with the managerial society we live in, where MBA-types decide on the value of everything with simplistic, dumb and short-sighted economic metrics.

Science absolutely needs philosophy. Science _is_ philosophy. There is not a lot of encouragement to do real science/philosophy these days, because this requires deep thinking and following all sorts of unknown paths. Everything must be justified in terms of what gadgets can be built with the discoveries.

We are going through a profoundly anti-intellectual stage in western culture.

<comment><USER6> To see the difference between science and philosophy, compare this article to a reputable scientific paper.

You will see that science includes a testable hypothesis, experiments and/or analysis, and conclusions derived from the data.

This essay contains none of that.

<comment><USER8> Philosophy encompasses science. Testable hypothesis are a philosophical idea, justified on philosophical grounds. You can't justify the very idea of "testable hypothesis and experiments" by using testable hypothesis and experiments. There is a branch of philosophy devoted to this type of question, called "philosophy of science".

One very famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper, gave us the idea that for something to be considered a scientific theory, it must be possible to devise and experiment that could, in principle, falsify the theory. Still, the issue is not settled and there are alternative positions. These are deep questions.

One interesting thing to retain here is that science provides empirical knowledge, but there are other forms of knowledge. You alluded to "testable hypothesis", and so you in fact deployed non-empirical knowledge.

The scientific method gave birth to a branch of philosophy, first known as "natural philosophy", and modernly known as "science".

<comment><USER9> I do not think there is any value in disparaging philosophy, but in responding to such attitudes in the current context, it would be more useful to discuss what the branch known as philosophy of mind is achieving now, rather than the significance of philosophy in the foundation of science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like articles like these where you can't tell whether it's about Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or Psychology till you're a significant chunk in.

</comment><comment><USER11> Paradigm-shifting ideas. Thanks for posting. Sounds like this could be A New Kind of Science.

<comment><USER12> For those who don't know, A New Kind of Science is when Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame wrote something like 1000 pages in layman's terms to convince you of his pet theory that the universe is a cellular automaton.

I didn't the hate the book but it was pretty weird and not super scientific.

<comment><USER11> I regret being so cynical about this post and the book I mentioned.

It's a really nice book. Lots of beautiful illustrations and interesting ideas with code snippets for generating those illustrations. I found it fascinating as a kid. The message wasn't too important for me, and I didn't really have the background to draw my own conclusions from it anyway.

Someone on IRC, who was a big fan, introduced it to me.

I actually started programming with this very book, copying the examples from it into Python and then Scheme (introduced to me by that same guy) and Common Lisp. I respect Wolfram's dedication. It's the type of dedication that brings us things like Mathematica and TempleOS.

The guy who introduced me to this book and then Scheme had contacts at Wolfram Research and later sorted me out with a free copy of Mathematica. I could never have afforded that with my pocket money, and I wasn't at university yet. He was a big underdog in the community and had his own problems too. What a great guy.

He's still going strong today: [http://xahlee.org/](http://xahlee.org/)

There's something to be taken even from book like this. It would be good to revisit and re-evaluate the book as someone who now has a semblance of an education in the area. I wish I didn't sell it.

<comment><USER13> I share your views. TempleOS and Mathematica are monuments to what the human creative spirit can achieve.

Let's not be too fast to pass judgement on their authors while having done 1/100000 of what they did

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > being young is like microdosing on LSD all the time

If we invent significant life extension, microdosing may be a required part of the protocol just to keep the brain plastic enough to function. It may already be beneficial as a routine geriatric prescription. "Go play with grandma, she's on her weekly trip."

</comment><comment><USER15> Another major area of life. Nice to read.

</comment><comment><USER16> To hold a concept of certain complexity within the brain the brain itself must have greater complexity than the concept.

Thus humans can never understand the brain because the brain has equal complexity to itself and for the brain to understand the brain then it must have greater complexity than itself which is impossible.

Like many other things in life, we can only hope to understand a simplified and symbolic representation of brain. The problem is... it's quite possible that human intelligence itself has no higher level abstraction that we are capable of holding in our head. The processes that create consciousness, stripped of all the fluff and irrelevant details, may be of sufficient complexity that our brains will not be able understand what's going on.

In short I fear that the ultimate goal of neurology may be a fruitless endeavor.

<comment><USER17> The problem with your line of reasoning, is that you are thinking in technological progress only through individual achievement.

This is what technological iterations, through generations of human beings, give us all. Humans achieve super-human level of technological achievements because we iterate over what others have left for us.

Knowledge is like a stair, made from the hard work of many great human beings, and even for hard problems, with enough ammount of iterations, and with consecutive progress (without social deterioration) we can achieve anything.

Somebody will fill that "last" step in the stair that will make a paradigm shift to all of us..

<comment><USER18> Yes. You might find interesting some very rated ideas as this article - Bayesian Brain. In this view, the brain is a complex system that learns to adapt to and predict its environment, similar to other complex systems like even companies.</comment></comment></comment>