Long before the dinosaurs, hefty herbivores called pareiasaurs ruled the Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2016/february/chinas-ugliest-fossil-reptiles.html <comment><USER2> We have been here for 4 mio years, right? So with their 10 mio years they are still quite ahead of us. Who knows if we can make it that long.

<comment><USER3> > We have been here for 4 mio years, right?

Depends on what you mean by "we". Our genus is a few millions years old indeed, but our species is only about 200,000 years old.

<comment><USER4> and we've only existed on an industrialized, environment-affecting scale for a few hundred years.

our rate of population growth and disregard for sustainable consumption is not gonna work out well for us. i suspect our habits will need to change drastically for humans to make it even another 1,000 years.

<comment><USER5> You are being rather optimistic.

Current projections have parts of the planet already uninhabitable before the end of the century (uninhabitable as in "you die even in shade and with plenty of water"). We are messing up our grandchildren's lives.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any links to further reading on that? This is the first time I've ever heard anything like that. It's pretty alarming.

<comment><USER5> This is the first relevant article I read [1]. I've since gone through google scholar and there is lots of relevant research. "Alarming" doesn't begin to cover it.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/persian-gulf- temperat...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/persian-gulf-temperatures- may-be-at-the-edge-of-human-tolerance-in-30-years/)

Edit: as a summary, researchers claim that parts of the Persian Gulf will reach the "threshold temperature" within the next 30 years, hampering human development in these regions. "Threshold temperature" is the temperature where the human cooling mechanisms shut down, i.e. 35C at 100% humidity or 45C at 50% humidity.

Once you reach this temperature, even healthy individuals are at risk of fatal hyperthermia. Note that this doesn't have to be sustained over the whole year - even a few days per year will likely trigger mass-migration. Climate change is likely to be the single most important issue we will have to deal with in the near future (we = human race).

<comment><USER6> The scientists that published that paper also produced a video to downplay the media's reporting of it: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/10/27/climate_c...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/10/27/climate_change_heat_waves_won_t_make_persian_gulf_uninhabitable.html)

> "Such conditions (the wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35C) would occur only > once per decade"

No doubt climate change is an issue, but taking the unique environment of a place that's already pretty brutal to justify such an alarming statement is stretching a bit I think.

<comment><USER5> That is not the only report. There appears to be a consensus that this will happen at the latest by 2100. This report claimed only 30 years.

And all these are not taking into account the record temperatures in the Arctic circle that are currently being recorded (+4C than last century), which increases the chances of runaway greenhouse effects.

As I said, use google scholar. This is not a conspiracy, these are changes that are happening _right now_.

<comment><USER3> An expression like "runaway greenhouse effect" is normally only used to describe what happened on planets like Venus. IIRC on Earth there is a consensus about something like that to have "virtually no chance" of being induced by anthropogenic activities.

The fact that you're so quick in using that expression suggests to me that you either don't know what you're talking about, or you just enjoy scaring people.

<comment><USER5> "Runaway greenhouse effect" is what could happen if the methane deposits in the Arctic Siberian tundra are released to the atmosphere. See [1] for more information.

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

Edit: if it's not obvious, "runaway effect" is another term for "positive feedback loop". The first paragraph of the linked article reads:

> Arctic methane release is the release of methane from seas and soils in > permafrost regions of the Arctic, due to deglaciation. While a long-term > natural process, it may be exacerbated by global warming. __This results in > a positive feedback effect, as methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas. > __

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They are described as "hefty" and "huge herbivores", and yet the scale on the skeletons suggest they are the size of a rabbit?

<comment><USER8> Where do you live that rabbits get to be 1-3 meters long and up to 600 kg?

<comment><USER9> They're what dropbears feed on in Australia.

<comment><USER8> This is why we can't have nice megafauna things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are ideas/features Uber should implement immediately? - <AUTHOR>

It can be for either consumers or other businesses. <comment><USER2> As much as I love meeting interesting Uber drivers, sometimes, I'd be so stressed and/or tired that I'm in no mood to talk to or up for a conversation with the uber driver. However, unaware of this obviously, the driver tries to engage me in a chit-chat which further irritates me but I wouldn't be let it show on my face just to be not rude. It's difficult to tell them that I'm not up for any conversation. So, while booking the ride itself, if there is a checkbox or something which lets the drivers know that the rider doesn't like to converse at this moment, it would be really helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Accepting cash payments.

RLY.

I avoid paying for anything in a way that I can be tracked. I avoid taking the discounts that grocery store loyalty cards would otherwise give me.

Consider that paying for anything electronically, is rather like having a complete stranger follow you everywhere you go.

<comment><USER4> You do realize you're using an app from a phone with this service? I'm pretty sure paying in cash won't do much in this case...

<comment><USER3> That's why I don't use Uber at all. For the most part I get around on public transit, that I pay cash for.</comment></comment></comment>


Carl Sagan wrote a design doc for a video game based on his work - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/259038/Carl_Sagan_wrote_a_design_doc_for_a_video_game_based_on_his_work.php <comment><USER2> I recently spent some time trying to turn a 2D simulation of Special Relativity into a game:

[https://github.com/blevinstein/SRAsteroids](https://github.com/blevinstein/SRAsteroids)

To see what it looks like, you can check out this youtube video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSCz7tRl1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSCz7tRl1s)

I wrote an engine that modeled object positions as "timelines", where position varies with time, and demonstrated the basic relativistic effects (length contraction, time dilation, and frequency shifting).

Unfortunately, I never really figured out how to turn these into actual game mechanics.</comment>


Lightweight web based outliner - <AUTHOR> http://thinklinkr.com

<comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to see if they used a framework to build it. That thing is screaming to be built with SproutCore.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice interface! Are you using the wave protocol? Will you be selling it for integration with other applications?

<comment><USER4> Thanks! We're not using the wave protocol. We could definitely provide it as a library you could integrate to. We'd just need to work out the details.</comment></comment>


Roger Ehrenberg: An open-source approach toward bond analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2010/05/bond-analytics-taking-an-open-source-approach.html

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in implementing this you could just contribute to

Quantlib (<http://quantlib.org>)

or RMetrics (<https://www.rmetrics.org/>)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see why the banks' trading desks would want to make the bond market less opaque, their flow trading desks benefit from it.

<comment><USER4> This is absolutely true. More transparency => more accurate valuation => less bid/offer. Investors might like it, but don't expect the banks to be on board.</comment></comment>


Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/28/finnegans-wake-james-joyce-modern-interpretations <comment><USER2> The article points out that the new versions of Finnegans Wake, the web annotations, graphic novel, twitter version, and so forth are all possible because the book has gone out of EU copyright. This is a good example of why limited-duration copyrights are a good thing, and why arbitrary extensions of copyright harm society.

Going back to the book, has anyone read it and found it worthwhile? I never managed to get through more than a few pages and suspect that it's not worth the time and effort to me. I found Ulysses was worth the effort, but I'm not so sure about Finnegans Wake - any dissenting views?

<comment><USER3> I gave it a go back in college, but didn't get far, even with the help of a skeleton key. I tried it because it was reputed to be "hard". But making a bunch of references to things / people / places I never had a hope of knowing about makes it more "obscure" than "hard" in my book.

<comment><USER4> Why is "hard" a good thing?

<comment><USER5> Sometimes (but not always), "hard" when applied to literature means thought- provoking and perspective-expanding. Those are good things. Never read this one though, so I'm not sure whether it's "hard" in that sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes - took 2 Joyce seminars back in college and never got through more than excerpts of FW. Funny process - at first you think Ulysses is hard, and it is, but you get used to that world. FW is dense.

Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project)

there is even a precursor to the hyperlink in the way that links to other topics jump around the work and imply multiple connections.

Things like [https://mannahatta2409.org/](https://mannahatta2409.org/) remind me of what Benjamin did in a way.

<comment><USER7> > Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project)

If we're throwing out ideas, I'd love to see a web version of Rayuela ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Julio_Cortázar_nove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_\(Julio_Cortázar_novel\)) ).

<comment><USER6> I remember reading that. At the time my absolute favorite novel. Its beautiful. He's a great great writer. The short stories. "A Certain Lucas"; "Around the day in 80 worlds" but nothing quite like Hopscotch.

Jumping to film - I always thought that a lecture/ essay on Blowup Blowout and ) a bit of a stretch) The Conversation

all descended from Cortazar's short story would make a great study.

<comment><USER7> I dunno—I was introduced to the short stories first, and none of the novels compare for me (not even Hopscotch, much as I enjoy it). Cronopios and Famas, We Love Glenda So Much, House Taken Over—he has hilarious, chilling, and beautiful short stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally, I think the biggest benefit that the internet can confer to FW is someone reading it out, rather than providing easier access to annotations.

I suspect FW is best enjoyed when done at pace, letting the poetry of the thing wash over you, rather than sitting down and assiduously looking up every single word, which I can only imagine gets incredibly boring very quickly.

What struck me about Joyce's reading of FW is (a) how quickly he makes his way through it, and (b) how this novel/poem is written for an Irish accent.

Compare Eliot's reading of the Waste Land: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqvhMeZ2PlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqvhMeZ2PlY)

</comment><comment><USER9> I dunno, _Moby Dick_ is like a whaling blog by a philosophy major complete with "links" to such things as the definition of whiteness and lists of whale types.

Also _Tristram Shandy_ is like the LiveJournal of someone popping dexedrine.

And of course _Inquire Within Upon Everything_ is pretty much literally what the title describes.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool. I've heard good things about reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest on tablets, because all of the footnotes are hyperlinks - easier than using two bookmarks as you read the book. There also was an internet forum for people who would read it each summer, following along and discussing to clarify confusion (called Infinite Summer, I think it's now defunct).

</comment><comment><USER11> See also the web work of Jorn Barger (coiner of the word blog), predating all of these examples, such as [http://web.archive.org/web/20130409060532/http://www.robotwi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130409060532/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/shortwake.html) (original website seemingly now defunct), and his attempts at linking Joyce with AI.

</comment><comment><USER12> I managed to get about halfway through FW before calling defeat, even with a guidebook that explained, paragraph by paragraph, what the heck was going on :)

<comment><USER13> I'm still working through Ulysses and it's definitely tough but manageable. Finnegan's Wake though just seems too difficult right now. I'll need to take a break from Joyce and return later to attempt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It opens with: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle & Environs."

and ends:

"A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun,"

and in between: bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnth unntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

I've been waiting for a good translation. maybe burgess??

</comment><comment><USER15> Pynchon is kind of like this. He layers so much symbolism and allusion layered into every sentence.

<comment><USER16> My thoughts exactly. Gravity's Rainbow could really benefit from a more, uh, "hypermedia" approach.

<comment><USER17> When I was in college there was a course called "Finishing Gravity's Rainbow". I didn't take it but I did have a (failed) go at the book at one point a very long time ago. It still seems like something for the bucket list but I honestly have no idea if the reward would be worth the effort. Some of Pynchon's other, more approachable books have been interesting but not, for me, "wow that was truly incredible" interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've just got this nagging suspicion that, for a non-English-major type, FW is not going to repay the enormous investment of time it would take to get anything out of it. Therefore, I have never bothered, and almost certainly never will.

</comment><comment><USER19> Milorad Pavic's Khazar Dictionary is another book with hypertext-like structure. You can start reading from any point in the book and it still works OK.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reading Finnegan's Wake is like reading an optimized Perl script. It's extremely dense and I give up after 10-20 minutes.</comment>


What's the Fastest Web Browser in the "Real World?" Chrome. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/whats-the-fastest-web-browser-in-the-real-world-chrome/

<comment><USER2> So this benchmark measured "how the population actually experiences web browser performance", and the article pronounces Google Chrome as the obvious winner, with the slight sidenote that FF 5 has a faster "perceived render time"?

It just seems slightly disingenuous.

<comment><USER3> Obviously Chrome is _really_ the fastest. Firefox just _seems_ the fastest ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The second metric, perceived render time (green), refers to the amount of time it takes for the visible portion of the page to load in the browser. Again, Chrome did well here (2.374 seconds), but in this case, Firefox 5 did better (2.18 seconds)."

I bet this gap gets larger the more tabs you add. Chrome starts choking after about 40-45 tabs... Firefox can handle 200 easy.

The problem with Firefox is that "tab groups" function is horribly broken(as in, should not have been included yet) and that Tree Style Tabs just encourages opening hundreds of tabs.

<comment><USER5> Do you find it a normal use-case to have 40+ tabs open in a single browser window?

I only ask because that seems like it becomes unusable ~20 tabs, maybe this is heavily subjective but I cannot maintain anywhere near that number of tabs in a single browser window.

<comment><USER4> I rarely have fewer than 40 tabs open... I usually have about 80-110 but I would like to bring it down to about 60 or so though. Tree Style Tabs makes it easy to gather up tabs but when it comes time to delete them I hesitate or they're hidden under a top tree node where it would take too much time to clean it up.

I think I just found an extension that could replace Tree Style Tabs. I was looking for something like this last month didn't see it. This puts the Tab Groups in the sidebar. .

Pano: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pano/> <https://github.com/teramako/Pano>

What I like about this extension is that the tree would only allowed to get 1 level deep. With Tree Style Tabs, many tabs I don't want anymore can hide under a top tree node. Also, it looks like it will play well with Tab Mix Plus and I can keep the top tab bar.

<comment><USER6> Honest question -- why?

The only time I have more than 2-3 tabs open is when I open a bunch of articles at the same time (like on HN), to read through one-by-one, closing them as I go along.

How do you keep track of all those tabs? Why not just use bookmarks, open what you're interested in, and then close it?

I'm sincerely interested in this from a UI point of view...

And if your interest is speed in visualization, if the answer isn't a special list of sites that browsers might pre-render in the background, so your favorite sites always "loaded" instantly?

<comment><USER7> I have tons of tabs open mostly because I hate the back button. Every time I open any new page it goes in a new tab. Any time a page will be relevant for more than the next five minutes, it gets moved to the front or back of my list (depending if it's for business or pleasure). If it might be interesting, it floats in the middle, otherwise it gets closed.

Admittedly this is probably a strange way of working with the web, but I like to be able to easily find things that I've been working on recently. Only at the end of the day do I fully scan through my tabs and bookmark anything I'll _need_ to reference later.

<comment><USER8> My pal has this usage pattern, as well. Seems nutty to me, but it goes to show everyone has their best way of working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Chrome is very fast and I do love it, but it still doesn't have a hardware accelerated HTML5 canvas. So if you open up a HTML5 game, IE and FF5 skip along nicely, but Chrome gets very choppy.

I hope they fix this soon, because if your "real world" involves "playing HTML5 games", Chrome is one of the slowest!

Edit: here's a little HTML5 "game", try it in IE9, FF5 and Chrome: <http://www.scirra.com/labs/ghostshooterfullscreen/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I find Chrome for Os X as being very "aggressive" with caching. Sometimes it's misleading as what I am seeing is not what I should see. That forces me to clear the cache more often than other browsers. I love the speed but start to wonder wether the price to pay is worth. I'm not even sure what I am saying makes any sense, does it?

<comment><USER11> Yes! They cheat! Sometimes my internet connection will go out and all my tabs in Chrome lose their scrolling ability! It's like they just cached a bitmap of the page instead of the actual page itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be interesting to see some additional data - for instance, the load & perceived render times for each browser under different operating systems - how is Safari on OS X vs Safari on Windows? Chrome & Firefox across Linux, Mac, and Windows?

I imagine that Safari is predominantly on OS X, and IE on Windows. Does that affect the load and render times? I guess since the two fastest (Firefox & Chrome) are also on all platforms, and probably more equally distributed, that would suggest that the OS isn't as important - but without more information, that is just a guess.

<comment><USER13> Fx is consistently faster than Chromium on my Linux machines, while my roommate notices the inverse on his Windows machines. It's definitely partially OS-dependent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Obligatory "what about Opera?"

<comment><USER15> Don't be silly. Everyone knows the only use of Opera is lifting their age-old features and advertising them as revolutionary.

\- remembers 5.12

<comment><AUTHOR> Ofcourse, I do love the Opera app for iPhone, which is a lot faster then the Safari standard.

<comment><USER16> That's because Opera Mini isn't a normal browser. It's something like a thin client. Opera's servers do all the rendering and shoot things to your phone in a little binary file which the app just has to display.

Opera Mobile and Opera Desktop are more conventional browsers.

<comment><USER17> There is a "thick client" opera browser as well. Good browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I only know one thing for sure around this discussion:

FF runs netflix without hitching on my 2008 macbook. Chrome drops frames about once a second and I get an un-watchable movie.

This very well could be because of Silverlight, but I don't know enough of about the underlying connections between Silverlight and the browser to judge this. As an end-user the experience is still the same.

I do, however, still use chrome for everything else. The unified search/url bar hooked me and I can't go back.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure how big a difference it really makes, but you can tweak the "perceived" render speed in FF by changing how long it waits between starting to get data and rendering the partial page. Go to "about:config" and add a new integer called "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to something lower than the default of 250 (milliseconds).

</comment><comment><USER20> And how much faster will page load times be with thorough blocking of ads and the kind of third-party scripts needed to gather this data? I'd bet even a halfway-decent ad blocker will make far more difference than choice of browser.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious about how much of this could be caused by the confounding influence of real world Chrome users being more technically savvy and therefore more likely to have good broadband connections.

<comment><USER22> Is that true? My computer savvy friends are slow to switch from Firefox, because they've come to rely on certain plug-ins. My non-computer savvy relatives, who kept switching back to IE if I gave them Firefox, are all using Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a cliche but we really do benefit from all the competition.

Heck I am still on Firefox 3.6 and perfectly happy.</comment>


Why You Should Never Skip Flossing Your Teeth - <AUTHOR> http://www.raymondduke.com/2013/01/why-you-should-never-skip-flossing-your.html#.UP68Hyc7Z8E <comment><USER2> FTA: _Just recently I decided that I would give myself another dental check up. I seemed to have forgotten my horse racing lesson because I was expecting to have perfect teeth, again. I didn't. I was given a bill that would be the equivalent of buying a decent used car. Ugh. Could I have prevented this? Yes, I could have. If only I had been flossing my teeth two times a day, I would have had less problems._

My personal anecdote: last time when I went to the dentist, for the first time in ~10 years, because a tiny bit of a tooth broke off while trying to strip a piece of wire with my mouth (yes I know that's bad), I expected my teeth to be in horrible shape. Dentist fixed my tooth and did a full check-up including X-rays, and as it turns out, my teeth where in near-perfect condition, no cavities or other bad spots, just some dental plaque that needed to be removed. I haven't flossed a single time in my 30+ years long life.

Moral of the story: flossing probably has nothing to do with dental health, as long as you brush your teeth and don't eat a lot of sugar.

<comment><USER3> Actual moral is probably that some people have better teeth than others.

<comment><USER4> I guess the molar of the story is clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly, there haven't been many (any?) studies looking at the efficacy of flossing for prevention of carries (cavities). What evidence is available suggests that flossing can reduce gingivitis (gum disease).

Relevant Cochrane review: [http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to- reduce-gu...](http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gum- disease-and-tooth-decay)

</comment><comment><USER6> While the current consensus among American dentists is that flossing helps prevent cavities, this (like what seems to be a frightening amount of what dentists believe about dentistry) is not actually founded on or backed up by scientific evidence. There is slightly stronger evidence that flossing helps against gingivitis (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22161438>).

As for dentists handing you a bill that would pay for a used car? There's an easy fix for that: ignore most of what they tell you, and get things fixed if/when they hurt. When the dentist has you sign a consent form that says "dentistry is not an exact science", take heed.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is this "flossing" he is talking about? Nobody I know flosses their teeth, is brushing and then using mouthwash twice a day not enough?

Also, having a public health care helps with the bills, I go for a check-up every year and never had any serious problems.

<comment><USER8> Where are you located? Every dentist in the U.S. will scold their patients for not flossing.

<comment><USER9> AFAIK, it is not promoted in Europe.

We're encouraged to brush after each meal, though, using fluorinated toothpaste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Europe (at least the parts I'm used to), many dentist don't even actively recommend flossing to their patients. Some do, but they're in a minority. The other will say it's good if you ask them, but won't try to get you to do it unless you have a specific affliction for which it is especially indicated.

<comment><USER11> adding (possibly) a couple datapoints, it's the same for my home country (italy) and where I live (hungary). Sometimes they suggest you floss, mostly they don't.

<comment><USER9> The same goes for France and Belgium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hate flossing. My teeth are packed tightly together. Getting the floss between them is tough so I tend not to do it I have to.

I recently picked up a waterpik off of Amazon for about $40. It's essentially a water pressure based flossing system. I love it! It's easy to use and gets those spaces that are hard to reach with floss.

If you struggle with flossing like me, I recommend taking a look. I've been very happy with the results so far.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I went through a bout with severe Periodontitis.

Just in case: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodontitis> "Periodontitis involves progressive loss of the alveolar bone around the teeth, and if left untreated, can lead to the loosening and subsequent loss of teeth."

My case was pretty severe. Mainly from drinking WAY too much pop and not brushing and flossing on a regular basis. It is true flossing helps your gums in a lot of ways and considering they're the main support structure for your teeth, you really should take care of them.

And even if there isn't any scientific data showing dental care and other diseases aren't related, shouldn't you just error on the safe side anyways?

</comment><comment><USER13> An HN thread from eighteen days ago on flossing and dental care in general

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5007968>

accumulated a lot of interesting comments after I last checked it soon after it was posted. Going back to those comments now is food for thought as I read this thread. I'm trying out some of the ideas that come from the article that opened the previous thread, for example by changing which mouth rinse I use daily. I still floss daily, and have for years, and since I began doing that (in adult life), my dentists have generally reported that my teeth are now in better condition than they were before I started that habit.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nutrition has a significant role in teeth health that is completely ignored by dentists. Apparently, vitamin D and vitamin K2 can do more for you teeth than regular brushing, provided that you don't keep your mouth sugared for too long: see e.g. <http://www.westonaprice.org/journal/journal-spring-2007>

And a pre-emptive answer to all those who will say Weston Price was a quack: No, he wasn't. Ignore the soundbites, read his studies, and modern follow-ups.

</comment><comment><USER15> A coworker of mine from way back had a dentist who put it this way: It's simple. You just have to floss between the teeth you want to keep.

Flossing twice a day? I thought I was awesome for once a day.

</comment><comment><USER16> My dentist gives me a guilt trip about flossing on every visit. I've always thought that was a bit odd because it would be in his best business interest for me to neglect my teeth.

<comment> T-hawk He's a professional. He genuinely cares about your dental health. Most medical doctors enter the profession because they genuinely want to help people, not exploit them for bucks. And prevention is very often the best method of help.

Compare him to the programmer who creates an extensible open framework, as opposed to the guy who throws together a dense hack that only he understands. The latter could be said to be acting more in his own interest, but the former is more dedicated to his profession and the greater good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article draws an analogy between flossing teeth regularly and staying on top of your game, in general.

I'm not a fan of the analogy in this case, but the tl;dr is: _don't rest on your laurels_ when you're #1 at something. Reference: <http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/rest+on+laurels>

</comment><comment><USER18> Apparently, flossing also helps to prevent heart disease. Perhaps that's just some unfounded pseudo-science being pushed by the floss-manufacturers but in any case I imagine it can't be bad for you. Twice a day might be a little overkill, though.

<comment><USER19> It's real science. Bacteria in your mouth can enter the bloodstream through wounds and travel to your heart.

//EDIT: Apparently, although the association between gum disease and heart disease seems to be science, the causal link is not.

<comment><USER20> What about wounds caused by flossing irregularly?

<comment><USER21> Seriously, and flossing undoubtedly pushes some food particles beneath the gum line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I floss all the time because it feels amazing

</comment><comment><USER23> Am I still on HN?

<comment><USER11> yes and not hellbanned AFAICT.

<comment><USER23> Nope. Just your standard flossing tips on HN. Nothing out of the ordinary here...</comment></comment></comment>


What's the best piece of software you've ever seen? - <AUTHOR> In terms of functionality, organization, or whatever other metrics you deem relevant.<p>What's left a lasting impression on you? <comment><USER2> Excel. In a very profound way it aligns with how humans naturally think. This is far beyond the concepts of UX/UI. It's like someone invents the pencil, and it becomes so ubiquitous you stop thinking about it as a tool that didn't exist all that long ago.

Having read most of Joel Spolsky's blog suggests this was not something that just happened. All the same, few have achieved what Microsoft has achieved with Excel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kubernetes, awesome abstractions. The community, ecosystem, SIGs, and corporate support are unlike an open source project that came before.</comment>


CountAPI – Count Arbitrary Stuff - <AUTHOR> https://countapi.xyz <comment><USER2> [https://api.countapi.xyz/hit/howmanytimesdiditellyounottocli...](https://api.countapi.xyz/hit/howmanytimesdiditellyounottoclickweirdlinks)?

</comment><comment><USER3> Integer as a service.

Programmers have truly jumped the shark.</comment>


Femtolisp: A lightweight, robust, scheme-like Lisp implementation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JeffBezanson/femtolisp <comment><USER2> Used to implement the parser/lowering for Julia! It's probably on the way out at this point, but it's served us very well this past decade.</comment>


Do you understand this first-grade child's homework? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/12/do-you-understand-my.html <comment><USER2> Firstly, I agree with other contributors that memorization is under-rated, and agree that lots of memorization gives a basis of "instant knowledge" for when you are working on more difficult problems.

However, this is a pretty good way of learning a general principle. Take the first example, "8+3". Over on the right you have boxes in groups of 10, and the first box has eight "counters" filled in. Now you add three by filling in another three boxes. This gives you ten full boxes, and another one left over. Thus 8+3 goes to 10+1.

ADDED IN EDIT: Now that I think of it, how many of you simply ignored the instructions to fill counters in the boxes to help you, and tried to see what was going on just by looking at the numbers?

Of the three that you are adding, two are used to make the eight up to ten, so you only have one left. In a sense you've moved 2 from the 3 into the 8, making the sum easier. Moving stuff around in an addition is very similar to moving stuff around (and then making a correction) in multiplication. This is how Art Benjamin squares two and three digit numbers faster than you can punch them into a calculator.

53 squared is 53 times 53. Move three from one into the other (remember the 3 you've moved around) so you get 50 times 56. Use the same trick but in a different way: move a _factor_ of two from the 56 into the 50 so you get 100 times 28, or 2800. Now add on the square of the three you moved earlier, giving 2809.

ADDED IN EDIT: How this works can be demonstrated clearly with an appropriate diagram.

If you're multiplying, moving _factors_ is the same sort of operation (both multiplications) so you don't need a correction. If you move by addition/subtraction it's a different operation, so you will need a correction.

However, all of this fits into a larger framework. Getting only a small part lets you do those bits, but as it fits together you end up with more than just the parts, you get a much larger framework.

This is actually, tangentially, related to the item I submitted 10 hours ago and which sank without a trace:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951250>

The same trick is used twice in two different context to give the Infinite Ramsey Theorem: Every infinite graph contains an infinite complete subgraph or an infinite null graph.

Very similar.

<comment><USER3> > ADDED IN EDIT: Now that I think of it, how many of you simply ignored the > instructions to fill counters in the boxes to help you, and tried to see > what was going on just by looking at the numbers?

I didn't ignore it - yet it didn't help. The instructions are ambiguous. How are you supposed to fill them in? What is the connection between the 8 in the first example and 8 counters? Are they the same by accident? Why should both results be the same (8+3 and 10+X) - I thought about adding 10 new counters, so that's 8+3=11, 10+8=18, 8+10=18 (although it doesn't make much sense either). Then thought about adding 3 to the lower box (not good). There are simply not enough information to "solve" this. Even if most people can guess what the right solution is, I don't think that's good enough for homework.

<comment><USER2> As has been said elsewhere, most likely examples were done in class, and this is extra work to act as spaced repetition. Without that lesson it might not be obvious to some. To me, it was, but only after I'd continued filling in boxes in the grid.

In general, homework is not intended to contain the entire lesson all over again. That means parents often don't know what to do, or how to help.

Further, lessons and homework are often not intended to be done by creative people without instruction. Creative people find unexpected ways to follow instructions the teachers (or lesson planners) thought were clear, obvious and unambiguous.

I see a lot of criticisms of lessons and homework like this, but I've also seen the frustration from teachers trying to create lessons that are EXCITING and ENGAGING and ENTERTAINING and THRILLING and WONDERFUL, because now they're not expected just to be good at teaching and experts in their subjects, but also entertainers.

This lesson/homework isn't perfect, but I think many of the criticisms aimed at it are misplaced and ignoring the context. This homework is being assessed as if it were a lesson, and that's unfair.

Finally, homework that my colleague's child is set is accompanied by a sheet explaining the lesson. My colleague hos no trouble helping with the homework, and constantly praises the variety of approaches and integrity of the work.

<comment><USER4> Right. I think this really sums it up.

My answer to the original question is, "No, but I would if I'd seen it before." The children, presumably, have seen it before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a lot of teaching (particularly math teaching) it seems that when a student doesn't understand the concept, the immediate conclusion is that there must be something wrong with the way it's being explained. Thus we have convoluted methods of teaching addition like this that in some way do make sense, but are mostly just another layer of confusion.

The proper way, I believe, is to just have the student learn the concept by rote. If you can't grasp conceptually why 8+3=11 then you should just memorize it.

After repeating enough times, eventually it will click and you'll understand it.

Additionally, there's no point in trying to teach the concepts of arithmetic. You'll be crippled trying to learn things like decimals, fractions, exponents or god forbid algebra or calculus if whenever you have to add you have to be "making ten" in your head. It needs to be memorized.

I believe this also holds true up to even much more complicated concepts than basic arithmetic.

For example, I find if I don't understand the proof of some theorem in one of my math classes, if I just copy it out of the book by rote, (translating the notation line by line to something I'm more comfortable with) then I sometimes will suddenly understand it.

\--

Addendum: I believe Kumon has a good method for teaching math. They put a very strong focus on a rock solid understanding of basic concepts. If things haven't changed, they give kids timed problem sets of basic problems to solve (memorize) with the expectation of 100% accuracy.

<comment><USER6> > You'll be crippled trying to learn things like decimals, fractions, > exponents or god forbid algebra or calculus if whenever you have to add you > have to be "making ten" in your head. It needs to be memorized.

/joke: they should just start with category theory -- it will produce a fine new generation of HN readers ;-)

> Thus we have convoluted methods of teaching addition like this that in some > way do make sense, but are mostly just another layer of confusion.

I think everyone conceptualizes and encodes basic arithmetic stuff in their own way. Some memorize it symbolically, some visualize, some think of number lines, graphs and so on.

Trying to "help" by providing tables, coins and all kind of "aides" just confuses some students who started to encode it differently.

<comment><USER7> _I think everyone conceptualizes and encodes basic arithmetic stuff in their own way. Some memorize it symbolically, some visualize, some think of number lines, graphs and so on._

I've always had a tetris thing going on in my head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We can guess they want different groups of numbers that lead to the same sum (e.g. 7+4=12; 10+2=12) but this lesson clearly has context outside of the paper itself - that is, the teacher explained what to do, and these are exercises based around that. Without that context, we're just guessing what the goal is.

<comment><USER7> That's a good point, but that doesn't make this assignment any less poorly crafted. It is common for parents to help their children with homework, and I would expect that to be taken into consideration when creating a worksheet that is less straight forward.

Even if the child knew what they were supposed to do, they'd have the explain the assignment to the parent... which they might explain incorrectly. Just another level of confusion.

<comment><USER9> On similar homework from my kids, there is always a presolved similar problem at the top of the page.

I can guess the intent of the exercise, but it would have been a lot easier if there had been a solved example.

<comment><USER10> That was probably on the page before, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think I understand it, but for a second there I'm sure I felt a cold chill go up my spine from some distant, forgotten, childhood trauma.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't like this kind of "illustratory" maths. In my opinion it will only distract the brain and make maths look more complicated than it is. My neighbour's kid once had to draw squares on paper to do multiplication. If I had been forced to draw 100 squares just to multiply 10*10, I would probably have refused to do any more maths for the rest of my life.

<comment><USER2> You're being up-modded for that comment, so people obviously agree with you. I think it's important to realise that not everyone does, because not everyone thinks the same way.

I've helped out in primary classes, and sometimes when I've done something like this kids have been so excited they've jumped up and run around, unable to contain themselves. They've suddenly seen _why_ something works, not just been told to memorize it.

It's the _range_ of ways of thinking about things that matters. Here's one that doesn't work for you. Fine. Find another. Use both. See how they're the same thing, but from different points of view.

Sorry, I'll go away and stop ranting now - I'm just getting angry and will say something I regret.

<comment><USER12> Sure, if it works for others, I have nothing against them using it. But don't force it on kids and make them hate maths.

Another silly thing I read about is associating numbers with animals. So "1" is the crocodile and "2" is the elephant or whatever. I can only say - wtf? Just another example - numbers are numbers, not elephants...

I just think to understand maths is to REDUCE the number of concepts (that's the beauty of maths). A lot of teaching concepts seem to increase the number of concepts instead.

I am not a teacher, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To play the role of devil's advocate, I can see what this assignment is trying to do. It's trying to teach that numbers (particularly discrete ones) are representations of a _quantity_ , not just abstract symbols that follow some arbitrary set of rules. I wouldn't be suprised if the kids who successfully learned this way would have an advantage over the rote memorization kids if you were to stick them in a Discrete class 12 years later. As soon as I saw the grids, my mind was screaming "pigeonhole principle!" But that might just be because I have a combinatorics exam in 6 hours.

</comment><comment><USER14> In modern educational parlance, this is "present, practice, produce". But it's missing the bloody present part. And the production.

A single worked example would save the student a lot of time.

Some educators like to say that students should be able to figure it all out for themselves. That students are better off not being taught. I guess it depends on the teacher - some teachers can add value.

</comment><comment><USER7> There seems to be a lot of clues but they all lead nowhere.

I don't think the goal has to do with adding to ten....

e: I think I get it, but I don't know what you're supposed to do with the second grid.

e2: Oooohhh. The grids are there to _help_ you get to your answer.

</comment><comment><USER15> From one of the comments "Whoever wrote this damned workbook is a mountebank and a fool." That would be an ed major, maybe even an EdD.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's funny, I just realized the way I do certain simple arithmetic is by actually counting in my head. 8 + 3 is 8... 9, 10, 11. But something like 6 + 5 I just have memorized. Maybe cause my brain has decided it takes too long to go 6...7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Or that I'd forget where I was without using my fingers or something. And now that I think about it, for 8 + 7 I use a third technique: I double 8, and then subtract one. Even though I'm pretty sure I have that one memorized correctly, I still seem to always do that check in my head. Ok, I think it's bedtime. Probably shouldn't admit any of this in a public forum. :)

<comment><USER17> I'm the same actually, although I am absolutely pathetic at arithmetic. 8+7 would probably involve counting for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As far as teaching children the facts of numbers, I've always liked Eliezer Yudkowsky's The Simple Truth:

<http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth>

Especially how it initially presents the concept as _magic._ Actually, maybe not a good way of explaining numbers to children. But I like the story nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't get the strong reactions to this homework. As far as I understand the assignment, it pretty much describes how I do arithmetic. It seems like a natural way of working to me, since nobody taught me to do it this way (if my memory doesn't fail me).

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if any of you have kids but this seems like a pretty normal work sheet to me.

Don't condemn or applaud it, it's just one of many ways the children will be taught to add. Some kids get it straight away and some don't.

It's just practice and practice is good.

</comment><comment><USER20> So simple that only a child could do it.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA-dMSDPFhA>

</comment><comment><USER21> just change the arrows into equal signs and it looks pretty clear, though i'm not sure if a first-grade child is more familiar with that notation. anyway this homework is part of a larger lesson in which almost identical exercises were solved ad nauseam. unclear textbooks isn't really one of the problems with education at any level. also: flagged.

<comment><USER7> I think the grids are throwing people off.

This is what the child is supposed to do: Grid (Draw in counters for second number, then count total of both grids) -> Fill in both bottom blanks with counted total -> Ten plus what equals bottom blank?

This is what we're doing: Add numbers -> Why the hell is there only one grid? -> Then we post our child's homework onto the internet

<comment><USER22> Agreed. The visual placement of the grid is a large part of the problem. You'd be able to discern the flow (and logic) of the assignment far better if the grid were placed in between the two sums, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Before giving this out, several identical questions would have been worked out in front of the class. So it's not a "figure this out from the worksheet" matter; it's a "recognize it's like the problems we did earlier".

It that context, it's a plausibly useful exercise; it's analogous to how I (still) total and multiply numbers in my head: determine the similar problem that gets to either a nice round number, or a memorized result -- then adjust for the remainder.</comment>


Show HN: Swift Guides – like RailsCasts for Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.swiftguides.io

<comment><USER2> When I was making my morning coffee today, I asked myself: "How quickly will a $9/month video service for learning Swift appear?" I thought three days, so I was wrong.

This is entirely too opportunistic for my tastes because:

1\. There isn't even any content yet.

2\. Swift came out yesterday, what the hell makes you an authority? (yes, I know most of the language features aren't ground breaking, but still)

3\. I imagine the people able to successfully teach Swift will also have great knowledge of the iOS/OS X APIs. I'd trust an existing Objective-C based learning tool way more than this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this anything else than profiteering spam?

<comment><USER4> If they actually make courses, yes it is a real product. If not, then yes profiteering spam. Give them a little benefit of the doubt, but if you doubt too much, don't give em your email.

<comment><USER3> That's the point - they are not making product, it's just "coming soon".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

In case you missed it, Swift Guides will be taking contributions. Once pro accounts are up and running we'll be doing a really generous revenue sharing deal for contributors. If you'd like to publish on Swift Guides just check the checkbox when you sign up for the list and I'll contact you directly.

[http://www.swiftguides.io/contribute](http://www.swiftguides.io/contribute)

<comment><USER2> I found an error in your copy on the contribute[0] page:

"...Sign up for the mailing list to be notified when __Stripe __Guides is ready for contributors to start adding content. "

That should probably be Swift instead of Stripe.

0 - [http://www.swiftguides.io/contribute](http://www.swiftguides.io/contribute)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The language just came out to the public yesterday, how can anyone start giving classes on this stuff? (Unless I'm mistaken, please correct me)

<comment><USER6> It just came out yesterday and they spent their time doing this instead of learning the language</comment></comment>


Show HN: Easy Webserver for Node.js, Python, PHP, with Free SSL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that Caddy ([https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/)) hasn't been mentioned yet. While I'm not entirely happy with the business direction it's been moving in, it's arguably much easier to use than nginx, doesn't require a container, and also automatically sets up TLS ("SSL") out of the box.

It doesn't provide a panel, but arguably once you reach a scale where you want to run >1 instances, you're probably going to want to go beyond a default configuration anyway, and use some configuration that's more tailored towards your usecase.

As a point of criticism towards this project in particular: the README makes it sound like it'll magically scale up your application, but it makes absolutely no mention of how to handle state (eg. your database) in that scenario. Spawning new instances (which this project does) is the _easy_ part of scaling, the difficult part is state management and it doesn't address that at all.

As a completely unrelated piece of advice, just because this is mentioned in the README: _do not_ under any circumstances make use of domain registration deals that drop the price for a common TLD like .com below $7 or so. There's a certain fee that the registrar has to pay to the TLD registry per domain, and if the registrar is charging you less than that, that means they're getting the money from somewhere else - often through hidden upsells, exorbitant renewal fees, convoluted transfer systems that try to lock you in, or other customer-hostile schemes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your detailed review.

Caddy is a server which is equivalent of nginx part in Captain. It's orange and apple. Arguably, I can replace the nginx part with Caddy. But captain has more to offer, like building pipeline and scaling.

Great point about customization! I'll add more hooks in the future to account for non-standard nginx configurations.

Finally, Captain doesn't support persistent data, i.e. database. Therefore, scaling up apps is much easier. But my plan is to support this in the future.

PS: Thanks for the heads up about the domain deals. I might have got scammed badly then :/

<comment><USER2> > Caddy is a server which is equivalent of nginx part in Captain. It's orange > and apple. Arguably, I can replace the nginx part with Caddy. But captain > has more to offer, like building pipeline and scaling.

The problem is that these aren't generalizable problems. Scaling requirements are going to vary depending on the project, also because of the state management issue I mentioned. This, in turn, means that the only projects you can scale with an out-of-the-box approach like this, are those that don't _need_ to scale (horizontally) in the first place. You therefore get little to no added real-world value from these 'scaling' features.

I should point out that this isn't a problem just with your project; I've noticed a general tendency around Hacker News circles to overengineer for 'scaling' (which usually refers specifically to _horizontal_ scaling), trying to invent magic scaling solutions that work for everybody (which don't exist), and completely ignoring that distributed systems are _hard_ and you usually want to scale vertically first.

This problem is compounded by the fact that most applications don't actually _need_ to scale horizontally, since they never get big enough to require it. This means that reviews of such 'magical scaling' tools are almost universally positive, because everybody is reviewing them based on the claimed benefits, not based on real-world experience with scaling requirements. This results in a feedback loop of recommendations for completely ineffective scaling strategies by people who never actually needed them.

> Great point about customization! I'll add more hooks in the future to > account for non-standard nginx configurations.

While this would seem to improve the project when viewed in isolation, it's important to realize that you're very likely to fall into the trap of non- generalizable problems.

A lot of monolithic frameworks actually have this issue; they try to provide generic implementations for problems that just aren't generalizable (because they vary too much by project, such as "content management"), and in the process they end up providing hundreds or thousands of different configuration options and hooks... to a point of complexity where it would've been easier and more reliable to just not use the framework at all. A typical example of this are general-purpose CMSes, which are almost inevitably unreliable, messy and insecure.

There's a serious risk of that happening here as well, if you start adding support for more customized setups; at some point, you're going to reach the stage where the complexity of your configuration options _exceeds_ that of the tools you're using behind the scenes (nginx, Docker, etc.). I suppose that'd be a form of the inner-platform effect, too.

I don't mean to discourage you here, but your current approach is very likely to result in something that tries to do a lot of things and none of them particularly well; not because you're implementing it wrong, but because this particular set of features just isn't generalizable as such. You'd probably get better results by providing a _collection_ of tools (and documentation!) for different tasks, that 1) can be used independently, and 2) don't require full control over the infrastructure configuration.

> Finally, Captain doesn't support persistent data, i.e. database. Therefore, > scaling up apps is much easier.

I don't agree that "scaling up apps is much easier" \- state isn't something that's optional, pretty much any real-world project (especially those that have to scale beyond one instance!) _has_ to persist state of some sort. There's only the choice of whether the tooling supports it, or doesn't. I'd consider it dangerous to present something as magically scalable without addressing this issue; it's bound to result in people having state consistency issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. It's great that it makes deploying small side projects easier. However, I am very wary of the fact that it seems to use a Node based HTTP server. Wouldn't it be far more performant and secure to build this kind of tooling on a wide spread HTTP server such as Nginx or Apache?

Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against Node. Hell, I use it on a daily basis. But I wouldn't run a Node based server and expose it to the internet. That's a bit too high risk for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's using nginx for routing :) nodejs is just an API to populate nginx configuration, creating new apps and other admin operations. When a request comes in for your app, the nodejs part is completely out of the equation. You can potentially kill the nodejs part and your cluster still work. You just won't be able to deploy apps, and make modifications. \----- Good point though! I never thought it will be preceived that way.

<comment><USER3> My apologies, I didn't look closely enough to figure that out. Forgive my ignorance :-)

Well done then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why doesn't the installation prompt you to set up a password? Firing up a server with a default password has been a really bad choice for over a decade...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Forgot to add it to docs. Thanks for reminding. I'll add it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wondering how this container with the included Letsencrypt will update the SSL cert after three months when deployed on multiple machines (which is a tricky task).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! Nginx, Let's Encrypt and Captain always sit on the leader node :)

<comment><USER5> 1\. I don't use Nginx on my Docker clusters because Docker Swarm does the load balancing already and I use bare Node containers without any Nginx. Reduces complexity and I can do all my low-level server config in Node as well and as good. Caching is done through CloudFlare or similar anyways.

2\. Even with Nginx, you would have two different Docker containers (one with Nginx and one without).

3\. And even if I had different container files: For a ideal cluster you need min. 3 managers (and in a perfect world another external load balancer before them or just a DNS with multiple A records to all managers (in case one manager drops)). Then, even if they run Nginx you need to sync the Letsencrypt stuff somehow.

Regarding the Letsencrypt (LE) and Certbot SSL renewal and why it's not simple: LE makes a know-well request to check your credentials every three months and because every node could and should be able to answer this request you have to make sure that all nodes have the same knowledge (either through secrets or through filesync or the underlying host OS of the front-facing server takes care of this).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly the writing style of the readme really doesn't inspire confidence, and "easy" seems like a really bad metric to measure how good something that should be performant, reliable and secure.

<comment><USER7> As someone with limited dev experience, I actually appreciated the writing style. Especially the inclusion of meta support in the Need More Help section[0].

[0] [https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/blob/master/...](https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/blob/master/README.md#need- more-help)

<comment><AUTHOR> This was actually the very sole purpose of this project. There are numerous similar products out there. Oh god, it took me hours and maybe days to learn them. So I made Captain for people how do not need super advance configs, to be able to deploy apps easily.

I am so glad that someone actually found it useful :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Moved to Show HN: I opened sourced the platform that I made to serve my personal side projects. It's basically an open source version of Heroku. Similar to Dokku, except it comes with Free SSL certificate support, clusing support, web interface and etc. Let me know what you think :)

<comment><USER8> So more like flynn and deis?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't dive deep, but I like how this is _some_ batteries included, and is tailored to web apps and nothing else.

It makes me think of how webpack won the builder/packer battle against gulp and grunt by assuming you're building a _web_ app, and want typical web stuff.

Just like you _could_ use gulp to build a C++ app but nearly everybody uses it for the web, you _could_ use Docker for hosting an IRC server but nearly everybody uses it for the web.

<comment><USER2> > It makes me think of how webpack won the builder/packer battle against gulp > and grunt by assuming you're building a web app, and want typical web stuff.

But... it didn't. Webpack and Gulp/Grunt aren't even the same _category_ of tool; on a real-world project, you're exceedingly likely to use a build runner like Gulp/Grunt _with_ Webpack (or Browserify).

Webpack is fundamentally a module bundler for non-CommonJS environments; it's not a general-purpose build tool, and isn't really suitable for glueing together any tools that don't directly relate to your browser-targeted bundle. In some projects that's all you need, but that doesn't mean it has somehow "won" from generic build tools - it just tries to solve a different problem.

<comment><USER9> Using gulp with webpack means you can't use webpack incremental builds. Why would anyone want that?

<comment><USER2> Why can't you? Gulp would typically only be responsible for _starting_ the Webpack task (in watch mode), not for re-running it on every input change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After seeing the whole video I can see a lot of effort has been put into creating this. Great work, very useful for web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I almost missed the part about it being GUI because I rarely play youtube videos. I did not expect it being a GUI tool! Nice!

A small suggestion - maybe show a GIF with a few screens from the app instead of a video? So that when someone opens the repo he gets a little preview of whats inside?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great suggestion! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a fan of so much GUI interaction, but very nice.

If you want to the slightly harder way (with less moving pieces), I highly recommend docker-compose + traefik (does the LE and proxying and subdomain) and a learning how to create a simple dockerfile either of the languages.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great job, looks cool!

How does it compare with UCP ?

[https://docs.docker.com/datacenter/ucp/2.2/guides/](https://docs.docker.com/datacenter/ucp/2.2/guides/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot :)

Captain to UCP is like a Honda Civic to a Ferrari :P Surely I would use UCP for an Enterprise grade if i have the money for learning investment, management and all the "enterprisy" cost that comes with it. Captain is written by a one bored guy on weekends in 3 months. UCP is written by a solid Enterprise.

<comment><USER13> I see! I would also add that UCP isn't OSS (one of the only commercial products of Docker).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Edit: turns out it's just a little harder to find.

Original text: I'm not the target market at all, but it's hard to trust a project that relies on Docker but doesn't have the Docker configuration in the repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> If by Docker configuration, you mean dockerfile, it's here: [https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/blob/master/...](https://github.com/githubsaturn/captainduckduck/blob/master/app- backend/dockerfile-captain.release)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great - you write with accessible and encouraging language. I noticed a lot of typos in the demo app and in the README - you would be well-served getting a proofreader to polish it up.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've used something similar before, gave up on it. I just use Nginx manually now, so much more room for customization, plus I know where everything is because I set it up.

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems great, will definitely give it a shot. One question: what about databases ? Can it handle that part too or do I have to manually set them up ?

<comment><AUTHOR> No :( It doesn't support persistent data yet. My plan is to add that support in future if people need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the effort here, I didn't expect the Web GUI here and it really saves a ton of time to quickly setup a test environment!

Will you also add a database?

<comment><AUTHOR> Database, in general persistent data, is much trickier to add as container for production purposes. I'll add some experimental features soon to support databases at least for testing.

</comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 I think everybody else has tackled it well so far -- so before I dive in for a better look:

Great job on the name!</comment>


Where Have All the Schematics Gone? - <AUTHOR> https://groups.io/g/TekScopes/message/163878 <comment><USER2> This situation (lack of schematics) is powering the open source test instrument surge.

Test instruments are an interesting space in the technology center mostly because they are never "obsolete." If they are operating to their original specifications and tolerances, they do the job just as well in 2020 as they did in 1960. As a result, test equipment can really hold its value well.

I recently paid about $700 to have my HP Spectrum Analyzer from the early 90's[1] calibrated. I bought the instrument for $1,100 at auction, it's working range is 9kHz to 12GHz. So for $1,800 I have an instrument that, if I were to buy the current generation model, would cost me nearly $18,000 or 10x that price. Even a "cheap" Rigol that only goes to 6.5GHz would cost $10,000.

So what to do when your sales are "one and done" ? It is a hard problem from a business model perspective.

[1] EDIT: Turns out it is only 30+ years old, not 50+. Its an HP8596E "portable" (weighs quite a bit :-).

<comment><USER3> Here's where I have to chime-in with a reality that people have yet to experience and most don't know about: The unintended negative consequences of RoHS.

I have over a dozen instruments and several tools that are, in some cases, over 30 years old. I think all of my scopes, signal generators, DVM's, logic analyzers, DSO's, probes, lab power supplies, etc. are pre-RoHS and, in most cases, significantly so.

The transition to RoHS, while, in principle, well-intentioned, is likely to prove to have been a massive mistake.

Lead-free solder has one major problem: Tin whiskers.

One way to think about this is that all RoHS electronics has a stochastic failure rate. I have devoted more time than I care to admit studying tin whiskers in the context of my work in aerospace. I have, in that process, consulted with NASA scientists who were are the forefront of long term research on the subject. The most salient take-away was that we had no way to predict or truly mitigate tin whiskers. The only mitigation in aerospace is to, quite literally, send chips to services that remove all lead-free solder from the pins (or remove balls from BGA's) and replace them with conventional lead solder.

If this plays out as it could, landfills are going to be piled sky-high with broken electronics. From phones to laptops, TV's, ovens, clocks...anything really. And cars, yes, cars!

Lead-free RoHS solder is a ticking time bomb and, in my opinion, one of the most misplaced decisions made in the name of protecting the environment.

I have HP-41 calculators I bought in the early '80's that still work as new today. That's to say they are nearly 40 years old. There is no way a RoHS compliant calculator will survive 40 years. That is nearly impossible. And so, millions of them will end-up in landfills. Well done European Union, you really helped the planet with that one!

For those not familiar with RoHS issues (a deep and wide topic), here's a starting point:

[https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2006-Lei...](https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2006-Leidecker- Tin-Whisker-Failures.pdf)

This is very real.

<comment><USER4> I had heard about tin whiskers, but always in relation to NASA. I had assumed it was only a problem in space, somehow related to lack of gravity and/or atmosphere.

Apparently it's just that NASA cares about reliability more than most, and hence takes the time to do more detailed failure analyses.

Thanks for linking those slides.

<comment><USER3> NASA has done tons of research on this over decades. I have read most of the papers they published and worked with a couple of their researchers. While the context was aerospace, the effect happens on earth just as well. Pretty much all of their tests are done on the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Company A treats its customers with respect, lets them maximise the return on their investment by giving them all the details and helping them keep the instrument going as long as possible.

Company B releases a product that works pretty much as well as Company A's but is cheaper (because it isn't investing in the aftersales support). Since support is an expensive business, by cutting it Company B makes more profit.

In the long run, Company B wins. Quite a few companies are smart enough to see how this works, and so morph from being an A type company to being a B. Evolution in action, the fitter (most profitable) company survives (shame about the prey..ah, "clients").

<comment><USER6> Indeed. I think this is a textbook example of market failure: Something where the most profitable course of action very clearly does _not_ align with the course of action overall best for society (which would be to maximize the lifetime of those devices if possible - but in any way not deliberately shorten it).

Hence this is a prime example where regulation would be needed.

<comment><USER7> > Indeed. I think this is a textbook example of market failure

No, it shows that markets work perfectly - they just optimize for what the customer wants to buy, not for some noble goal that you desire.

<comment><USER6> The customer wants that you deny them schematics?

The customer wants machines that are more difficult to maintain and repair?

Is the customer a masochist?

<comment><USER7> As the market data shows, most customers value a very low price over anything else. So the market delivers.

On the other hand, if the noble ethical goals that you list were more important for the customer, he would prefer devices that satisfy these goals (as much as possible) over low prices in his buying decision(s).

<comment><USER8> Have you considered for a moment that the customer knows very little about what she is buying, especially nothing at all about the long term value of the product? When the only thing you know about various alternatives is the price, how are you supposed to choose what's best for you?

Information scarcity is a defining feature of modern market, let's not forget that.

<comment><USER9> That's what makes this conversation interesting. People who are in the market for a $20K piece of test equipment are likely to be experts who are well equipped to evaluate the product's specifications.

<comment><USER10> Probably they are just as susceptible to hyperbolic discounting as others. So they undervalue the problem of maintenance in the future compared to saving some money now, even if they are thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remain amazed at how long some of these old products last. My last 2 phones (Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark. Meanwhile, I have a Tektronix DMM 252 from the early 1990s (which I now realize is a rebranded APPA 105), and a Fluke 8060A meter (labeled IBM) from the early 80s (1).

For the Fluke, you can, today, get the schematics online in the user manual (2). For the Tek, not so much (3). Regardless, they have outlasted my phones by 15-20x.

Oh, and while I'm on my old electronics worship soapbox, let's mention the HP 48G, one of the greatest calculators ever made, which runs Reverse Polish Lisp (4) and still has an active community (5), 17 years after production _ended_ and 27 years after release, and emulator apps for iPhone (6) and Android (

(1) [https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a...](https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fluke_digital_multimeter_8060a.html)

(2) [http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf](http://assets.fluke.com/manuals/8060a_3vimeng0200.pdf)

(3) [https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APP...](https://www.arc.ro/userfiles/docs/APPA/multim%20digitale/APPA%20103N-105N-106%20-%20manual.pdf)

(4) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_\(programming_language\))

(5) [https://www.hpcalc.org/](https://www.hpcalc.org/)

(6) [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/i48/id329454950)

(7) [https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48](https://www.androidmeta.com/keyword/hp48)

<comment><USER3> > My last 2 phones (Pixels) have died right around the 2 year mark.

See my post on this thread about the "mutually assured destruction" (as I sometimes call it) brought to us by those who pushed for a transition to lead- free solder. This is a real and massive problem that might come home to roost in a major way within the next ten to twenty years. Here's the link:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22220799)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not the submitter, but just for context, this is a post by the admin for the groups.io community for users of Tektronix oscilloscopes and related test equipment, answering a query from a user looking for service documentation on an instrument from the 1990s era, somewhat newer than most of those discussed on the group.

Service manuals from Tektronix, like those from Hewlett-Packard, used to include what amounted to a BSEE lab syllabus in their service manuals. They would include full schematics and operational theory that often went well beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining the gear. Often the documentation was written by the design engineers themselves, who were the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants of their field. The educational value of this material was (and is) immense. Not only could you get your scope up and running after spending some time with these manuals, you understood a lot about how it worked and what motivated the underlying design decisions.

Dennis is right in that this wonderful literature went away well before its time, but I think he undersells the other side of the argument, which is that these manuals would inevitably become less useful over time as well. It was true that management became less engineering-driven in the 1980s-1990s period, which was both unfortunate and avoidable, but it's also true that over the same timeframe he's referring to, companies like Tektronix and HP had to migrate to custom ASICs and software-heavy architectures that were inherently less user-serviceable.

These aren't like products from manufacturers like Apple, Tesla, or John Deere whose overt market abuses have spawned the right-to-repair movement -- they're the tools used by the people who design those products. The instrumentation companies had to stay well ahead of the technology curve, just as they do now, and increasing integration often has the unfortunate side effect of making the inner workings of the product less accessible to the user. Personally, I'm not sure things could have evolved much differently than they did, regardless of the ratio of MBAs to EEs in management.

Bummer, too, because those manuals were AWESOME. One thing that _is_ indisputable is that both Tektronix and HP stopped publishing component-level service manuals about 5-10 years before the technology justified it. Because their technology had to stay ahead of the market, a lot of gear that is still very useful in many applications today is now almost impossible to keep running.

<comment><USER13> _They would include full schematics and operational theory that often went well beyond what was needed by a technician who was tasked with maintaining the gear._

I see this trend with automotive manuals too; in particular, from the 40s to 60s when automatic transmissions were still a relatively new and complex part, the service manuals contained a huge amount of information on their theory of operation. Now, although they're even more complex (and computer-controlled), the most you get is how to take it apart and put it back together.

<comment><USER14> This is one of the down sides of "software is eating the world." A 1960s Ford C4 or Chevrolet TH350 is mechanical and applied physics, whereas a modern automotive transmission is mechanical and applied physics combined with a blackbox of software controlled electronics. While it's awfully hard to obfuscate mechanisms it's nearly effortless to do so with software.

<comment><USER15> I wonder why they don't document and publish their code in the same way they documented and published their mechanisms.

<comment><USER14> Because mechanisms instantiated are by their very nature "published," and any repairs are documented because they require intervention by the mechanic... or could be documented by anyone with enough knowledge and training to examine the mechanism.

Patents and other intellectual property methods are the only barrier to a competitor reproducing the mechanical product, but software allows additional barriers to reproduction as well as a means to prevent modification of the operation from the manufacturer's desired behaviors.

I'd also note that the era in which those mechanisms were created and documented included an expectation that owners often did their own automotive maintenance and repair and were far more mechanically-minded (it was an age defined by mechanisms) than current owners of autos.

<comment><USER13> Code also does not require the same type of service or is subject to wear, as mechanisms do.

<comment><USER14> While the hardware it runs on may require servicing, well-designed and well- implemented code should indeed be free of such a need.

Alas my experience in maintaining many codebases over the years suggest that most code needs a lot more servicing, itself, than the hardware it ran on. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is equivalent to what Apple has done. For a while they had their own in- house repair service through the Genius Bar, and it coexisted with independent repair shops. Now they try to prevent this with software lockouts on repaired equipment and designs that are increasingly difficult or impossible to repair. It's interesting to see similar patterns in other industries.

<comment><USER17> This is one reason that I don't buy Apple, so it comes with at least some consumer cost.

<comment><USER18> Only if there are more people like you than there are people who purchase Apple products _because_ of the "Genius Bar".

Which seems unlikely to me, although I wouldn't be surprised either way.

<comment><USER19> > because of the "Genius Bar"

The genius bar is not the problem. It's some things they have done more recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of course, troubleshooting _without_ a schematic is also an important skill. It is often done for laptops (which often don't have schematics, and the only ones available are leaks) as well as other consumer electronics.

The idea that it somehow stops competitors from copying the product is very weak; it's easy enough to reverse-engineer a design, and there are entire companies whose existence is solely to provide such services.

<comment><USER20> Oscilloscopes are very different from laptops, they all have a unique front end. Laptops are mostly a collection of reference implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My how times have changed. I remember schematics for my first computer [https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Re...](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_64_Programmer%27s_Reference_Guide)

</comment><comment><USER22> Louis Rossmann (independent MacBook repair owner and Youtuber) has recently been flying all over the US fighting for right-to-repair (r2r), from Maine to New York to Washington state to possibly Hawaii now. He's even learning about the plights of farmers unable to get their equipment fixed after they repair it themselves at harvest time because a factory-authorized tech has to use a factory magic box to flip a magic bit somewhere in the tractor to clear an error, while 20 farmers also want their self-disabled tractors reenabled too.

</comment><comment><USER23> You used to open any consumer TV or Radio and there would be schematics inside. When I bought an Apple ][ computer in 1978, the manual had full schematics in it. And I used it to fix things.

Intel had schematics for all their motherboards. Unfortunately they've left the motherboard business.

<comment><USER12> _Intel had schematics for all their motherboards._

Interesting, I didn't know that. Was that true all the way up until they left the business? What was the most recent generation of motherboards for which they published the schematics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For many years my purchasing policy for test equipment was "no schematics, no sale". I still try to stick with that as far as possible, but it means I don't buy much new equipment.

</comment><comment><USER25> I cannot count the number of circuit boards i have photocopied the backof photographed the front from all angles and created my own schematics..

Gets pretty hard with multilayer boards and smd components

<comment><USER26> I don't remember where exactly I saw this, but some boards even stack components, so that e.g. a tiny SMD part sits under a bigger component that has some empty volume under it (e.g. an SMD resistor under a socket or capacitor). Good luck finding that without taking the board apart completely.

To be honest, I think layouts like this are done for practical reasons like space constraints rather than to annoy reverse engineers. If you are serious and can disassemble a board, you will find these components immediately.

<comment><USER27> I stuck 01005 caps between BGA balls on a Spartan 3, but that was in attempt to solve an EMI issue, rather than a specific design goal.

<comment><USER26> Interesting! Did you run into any manufacturing issues with that? I'd be worried about that.

<comment><USER27> Yes. It took two attempts. The second attempt worked, electrically, but didn't have a measurable effect on the noise reduction, so did not end up doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> By the way, Purism shared the schematics of their Librem 5 phone. The only current phone with schematics I am aware of:

[https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnu...](https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Hardware_Reference/Chestnut.html#schematics)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've wondered this in the past. If you buy something from the 1970s it seems like everything had a schematic in the box. As if to imply many customers could try to fix problems themselves. Now, people will bring their car to the dealer to get windshield wipers changed.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's not just TI. The lack of schematics for electronic equipment across the board has been a serious problem for decades, and just gets worse over time.

</comment><comment><USER31> I feel like this is a perfect encapsulation of one of the core arguments around Right To Repair legislation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Schematics can't be copyrighted, so anyone could take it and make themselves an instrument. I think schematics disappeared around the rise of China. Companies didn't want their products copied. I think that is backwards. Only thing you may lose is R&D time which there are ways to recoup. Let's make schematics available again.</comment>


How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/ <comment><USER2> Quite damning that recycling is used to distract from the larger problem of plastics worsening externalities.

I'll never look at black plastic utensils the same way again.</comment>


Pictos Icon Font Server - <AUTHOR> http://pictos.cc/server

<comment><USER2> Using a font to provide icons on your website. It appears that the Pictos way is a font-replacement method using js? My first thought is that this should be relatively easy to replicate using <http://thenounproject.com> (or similar) as the source of the icons.

I like the idea: kind of an extension of sprites to using the font file as the sprite holder; not sure if that's any more efficient though due to the cross- browser issues of webfonts.

<comment><USER3> Nope :) There is no JS involved. Its a straight CSS file. Browser detection is done on the server by checking the headers. it's lightning fast :)

<comment><USER2> The reason I put the question mark there was that I wasn't sure if the example I was looking at was a full demo. I forget now which page - but it was definitely doing something with JS on empty divs - pretty sure it was the display examples on the front page; looking at them with inspect element on FF... although perhaps they just look like empty divs ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Drew is one of the most prolific designer/developers around. I wonder if he ever sleeps. You should check out his other projects too: <http://drewwilson.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting service, and very well executed.

The one problem that I have with pictograms-as-fonts is anti-aliasing. The designers that I work with spend hours to make their icons absolutely perfect at every pixel size that they'll be displayed at. This is particularly visible when the icon has horizontal or vertical lines. Most of the time you'll want them have a hard edge, and with anti-aliasing you can never be sure you'll get that result.

This will change in a few years when all our screens have high pixel densities, but for the time being I'm sticking with PNG sprites, with hand- tweeked pixels.

<comment><USER3> You can use this CSS rule to make them look like Photoshop:

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;

only works in webkit, which is most all mobile and chrome/safari.

<comment><USER6> This doesn't seem to work in Chrome on Windows; do you know of any workarounds there? That's not really a small market segment anymore, and I'm not sure I could sell our design team on font icons without a viable solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the advantages in using a remote service for this vs. hosting them yourself? I'm somewhat averse to taking out additional dependencies on other services if no compelling reason exists.

<comment><USER3> Everything is cached and served very quickly. The main advantage is you can change the icons on the fly at no additional cost. If you update your interface, add new icons or remove some, you can make those changes in that app and you don't even need to grab a new code snippet.

If you want to serve them yourself, that option is there as well. Thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The client list seems to be impressive, but I haven't seen those icons on any mentioned customer... is it true at all?

<comment><USER3> Yes it's very true. All the customers in that list are people who have purchased my icon sets. Some of them use then in internal tools, some use them for their public website or mobile apps. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pictos & Pictos Font have been around for a while, and my bet is that the vast majority of UX/UI Designers know of Drew Wilson's work. This is an extremely clever solution for an age old problem: As designers, we can now enable our clients to swap out icons to match their updated text/copy content.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a cool idea; but why they are using a png sprite for the icons on their own site?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, very strange that they wouldn't want to show off their product by actually using on their site.

<comment><USER3> If you click the "See Examples" button, you can view the font being used. Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great idea. I already bought Pictos icons and fonts twice (for personal use, and for my day work) and I always thought that it would be nice to be able to have a tool that allow me to use a subset only.

</comment><comment><USER13> Am I wrong, or is this a terrible rip off? Anybody who has the need for this should be able to host a single $19 file on their site for minimal cost.

<comment><USER14> if you only want two files of the entire set, its better for your bandwidth and the clients speed to have a custom font that only includes those two icons. It is fairly trivial with fontforge, but a lot of people don't have the time and/or ability to do it.</comment></comment>


pico.js - A Browser & Node.js JavaScript Library For Real-Time Audio Processing - <AUTHOR> http://mohayonao.github.com/pico.js/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> source: [http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/picojs-javascript- libr...](http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/picojs-javascript-library-for- real-time.html)

Info: pico.js is a JavaScript library for real-time audio processing. It allows you to generate audio using a simple API, using different sample rates (8000, 11025, 12000, 16000, 22050, 24000, 32000, 44100, 48000).

Optionally, you can use Flash player to play the sound being processed, as well as using HTML5 to do so. pico.js also is available as a Node.js module.</comment>


Eve V crowdfunded 2-in-1 laptops are ready to ship next month - <AUTHOR> https://www.slashgear.com/eve-v-crowdfunded-2-in-1-laptops-are-ready-to-ship-next-month-21482952/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if it can really beat Surface Book?</comment>