Cancer therapy by RNA delivery to dendritic cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/articles/nature18300 <comment><USER2> This is certainly an interesting and theoretically promising method, that, if it works, should make it fairly easy to develop specific personalized "vaccines" for each person's cancer.

For background, dendritic cells are a type of antigen-presenting cells, which means their job is to pick up proteins, break them up into small pieces (antigens), and then show those pieces to T-cells, whereupon the T-cells can either say "looks like a self antigen, everything's fine" or say "that looks like a foreign antigen, raise the alarm!" and then initiate a specific immune response against that antigen.

The basic concept here is that if you have a specific protein that you want to raise an immune response against, you can do so by tricking dendritic cells into producing copies of that protein, which will then get presented along with all the other antigens for inspection by T-cells. You can pull off this trick by feeding RNA that encodes the target protein to the dendritic cells, and as a bonus, the fact that there's free RNA floating around triggers anti- viral defenses, which causes the T-cells to be extra suspicious of the antigens they're inspecting (i.e. it lowers their threshold for raising an immune response). But injecting RNA directly into your spleen isn't exactly practical, so instead they found that attaching the negatively charged RNA to some positively charged lipids in a specific ratio (which results in a specific ratio of charge to mass) causes them to localize to the spleen and then get taken up, translated, and presented by dendritic cells when injected intravenously.

So, put it all together, and the workflow for treating cancer looks something like this:

1\. Find a protein produced by the cancer cells that is either sufficiently different from the same protein in normal cells (due to mutation) or not produced in normal cells.

2\. Construct an RNA transcript that will produce that protein when translated.

3\. Attach that RNA transcript to the liposomes in the appropriate ratio, and inject it into your bloodstream.

4\. Let the immune system do its thing.

5\. Repeat as necessary to keep the immune response active until it's killed all the cancer.

Obviously step 1 is still the hard part, and the paper chose as a proof of concept two example cancers for which this step was already done. But finding a viable cancer-specific antigen is certainly orders of magnitude easier than determining the mechanism of a cancer and then developing a treatment specific to that mechanism.

<comment><USER3> Great summary, thanks for that. This therapy appears fairly elegant. Let's hope it makes it through trials.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it certainly seems elegant, but with biology (and science in general), you always have to keep in mind that the (apparent) elegance of an approach is predicated on the assumption that we have an accurate understanding of how the system in question works, which frequently turns out not to be the case.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the great summary. But I'm guessing previous immunotherapy based treatments are also based on stimulating T-cells to fight cancer cells. Any idea why they didn't work? This method only makes it easy to stimulate T-cells, but what about mutations in cancer.

<comment><USER2> The job of the immune system is to distinguish self from non-self and to seek and destroy any non-self that it discovers. If you want to get the immune system to fight something, you need to get it to recognize that something as non-self, preferably without also forcing it to recognize your own healthy cells as non-self (because then you'd have autoimmune disease). Cancer is an especially difficult case for the immune system because for the most part, cancer cells are your own cells with just a few mutations[1]. The vast majority of proteins produced by cancer cells are the same proteins that your healthy cells produce. They may be produced in different proportions, regulated differently, etc., but they are the same proteins. Even the proteins that mutated could have only a single amino acid change relative to the original. So the difference between healthy cells and cancer cells at a molecular level is much more subtle than the difference between your cells and bacterial cells, for example. It's not impossible for your immune system to identify cancer cells, but it's obviously not guaranteed either. (There's a nigh-untestable theory that a majority of cancers are actually detected and destroyed by the immune system long before they become symptomatic, so the ones we see are just the ones that managed to evade the immune system in their early stages.)

As I've mentioned above, this paper skips the hard part of finding a suitable protein target by picking two proof-of-concept cancer models for which a suitable "non-self" target is already known.

[1] Actually many mutations, but few that affect protein sequences, which are what T-cells mainly look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paywall: I read this as an ability to help in immunotherapy which works like a vaccine. I really am interested in what types of cancer this works with the strongest effect. They list soft tumors in Lungs.

The bellow citation seems to show that these are something that could work on all cancer types and is cheap. These are exciting times.

Now it will be another 5 years till we see this even in a trial for children? (Son and sister died of cancer and my daughter's 10 year old friend (same cancer as my sister) is in immunotherapy trial which we are praying for a miracle for her reoccurring brain cancer.

> RNA-LPX vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce, and virtually any > tumour antigen can be encoded by RNA.

<comment><USER6> It's very exciting, but as these therapies become more successful, we're going to have to tackle the adverse reactions both acute, and chronic. Granted, you're surviving cancer so that's not the primary concern, but it will be a concern.

<comment><USER5> Well that is the Number One Reason why they are going immuntheraphy the side effects are minor compared to Chemo and Radiation. This is your own body fighting the cancer.

<comment><USER6> I don't think "Minor" is accurate. A good friend just went through this to beat a strange form of metastatic blood cancer, and he was in the ICU for a week as a direct result. (and essentially comatose) It was worth it, since he went from, "Plan your death" to, "Full remission!". Still, he was strong going in, a lot of people would have died.

Right now, there's still a lot of art to the balance between having your immune system fight hard enough to kill the cancer, without setting off a cytokine storm that kills you. There's also the issue of longer term autoimmune complications, which I suspect will turn out to be the "secondary cancers" of the immunotherapy world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the full article for those interested: [http://rdcu.be/iFZr](http://rdcu.be/iFZr)

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the link

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Paper: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300)

Company release: [http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication- describes-f...](http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes- first-example-of-a-clinically-applicable-and-systemic-mrna-cancer- immunotherapy-vaccine/)

Really it is pretty random as to what cancer research and development gets more or less attention from the media and public. Merit has little to do with it. You should assume that any given article like this is representative of many similar ones that passed by without comment.

The most important thing for any approach aspiring to be widespread in the next generation of cancer research is how costly it is to adapt the platform to any specific cancer. The only way to make real inroads in control of cancer is to crush down the cost of addressing different cancers, making it a small project rather than a whole new research initiative each time around.

<comment><USER9> >The only way to make real inroads in control of cancer is to crush down the cost of addressing different cancers, making it a small project rather than a whole new research initiative each time around.

Agreed. And while this study's methods wouldn't be cheap per se, RNA-based methods combined with whole genome sequencing of tumors are much more cost (and time) efficient methods than approaches that require antibodies or chimeric proteins. I believe that these methods, in combination with immunotherapy, are the best candidates for future cancer therapy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> To keep things in perspective, in oncology the current success rate of treatments that enter trials is just 5%! See [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/02/are...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/02/are- things-getting-any-better-in-the-clinic).

Immunotherapy is indeed the most promising approach to cancer therapy so I'm optimistic, but the odds of success here are 1-in-20 if this is an average study, or perhaps 1-in-5 at best.

<comment><USER11> You certainly have chosen the right user name, but it is a logical error to use the success rate of all cancer trials to calculate the chance of success of this immunotherapy trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The breaking story in the popular press: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cancer-vaccine- imm...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cancer-vaccine- immunotherapy-universal-immune-system-rna-nature-journal-a7060181.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> This link does work, assuming it is the same article: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18300.html)

<comment><USER14> thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stupid/insensitive question: what if cancer were a species "feature" earned through evolution that helps reap people who made it through their reproductive years without accident or disease but are now more hindrance than help to the species?

<comment><USER16> Because evolution doesn't work on a species level, it works on a gene level. Genes that help propagate themselves spread more. A cancer causing gene would almost certainly be selected against, vs a gene that caused you to live longer and have more children - and spread more copies of itself.

The reason people die is not because it's better for evolution. It's because evolution simply doesn't care about maximizing life expectancy. Most organisms die long before they get cancer, so the fitness of a gene that prevents cancer is pretty small.

<comment><USER17> I take issue with your first statement- evolution certainly works at the species level (in the sense that population genetics is a thing). It does appear there is a population fitness that is selected for when two desirable phenotypes can't be accomodated in a single individual.

Also, "Most organisms die long before they get cancer, so the fitness of a gene that prevents cancer is pretty small." ignores the fact that there are genes preventing cancer (tumor suppressors), and those genes are under active selection.

<comment><USER16> >evolution certainly works at the species level (in the sense that population genetics is a thing).

That's not at the species level. That's, at the very best, at the level of _a very small_ group. And most of those theories have generally been discredited - it only works if the beneficial effect on the group is sufficiently large, see [http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism/)

>there are genes preventing cancer (tumor suppressors), and those genes are under active selection.

That doesn't contradict what I said. Those genes work well enough to prevent cancer in young organisms, but they are clearly not enough to stop all cancer.

Why hasn't evolution evolved away all cancer? Because even if there was a gene that could decrease cancer risk by _an additional 1%_ , it wouldn't actually increase fitness that much. A 1% decrease in risk is small on it's own, and then it only affects the 1% of organisms that haven't already died of other things. Preventing cancer is just not in evolution's priorities - at least not past a certain point.

<comment><USER17> I concede I was probably inaccurate in my statement about evolution and the species level; note, however, that I disagree with people who believe that the gene is the unit of evolutionary selection (I would refine it to say "functional region" rather than gene because I believe that mutations in enhancers and other transcriptional activators play a bigger role in evolution that mainstream science).

On to your second reply: I basically agree. We're mostly arguing about where that certain point is. Problem is: cancer is a disease that is closely tied to many necessary functional parts of multicellular organisms.

In a sense cancer is what gets people who weren't got by something more acute earlier, and probably evolution is addressing the more acute issues with a higher priority.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone OS on Mac Pro and 24″ Multitouch Screen - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvCo6-KhZT4&fmt=18 <comment><USER2> Are tilting multi-touch LCD screens even available?

<comment><USER3> Looks like Dell 2405FPW (I had one, great screen), which does rotate to portrait, but is not a touch screen.

<http://images.google.com/images?q=dell+2405+fpw>

Don't see any signs of third party touch screen add-ons, such as a platform under the monitor stand or a custom edge.

"Since this originates from Dreamfield.se, a group that works on HD post- production (note their about section: "Dreamfield are working with any aspect of post production and the main body of our products are made in-house."), I'm now 99% sure this is a fake." @[http://www.sampletheweb.com/2009/06/14/iphone- os-running-on-...](http://www.sampletheweb.com/2009/06/14/iphone-os-running- on-a-mac-pro-and-a-24-inch-touchscreen/)

<comment><USER4> Same exact thing I said when I saw the base of the monitor. And notice his head is extremely still (to the point of being odd), which is probably to make the keying (removing the 'green screen') more accurate. I noticed some spots in his hair that did not reflect reality. In addition, the real iPhone OS uses the accelerometer to detect orientation. I'm not aware of any monitor having this feature.

I too am 99.9999% positive it's fake. Nevertheless, fun to disprove. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I took a screenshot of my iPod Touch just to see if it could look so crisp on a big screen. even on my 13" macbook it looks pixelated. I consider this video a fake. (edit: video appears to be made by HD production guys, explains why the interface is smooth even on 24")

also, arm != x86 instruction set.

<comment><USER6> iPhone OS runs on x86 as well (see simulator in iPhone SDK).

<comment><USER7> More like they recompiled springboard and some other core iPhone apps to run under OSX. This is why you can use real Foundation types in the simulator that don't exist on the phone (NSCalendarDate), why you can use OpenGL extensions on the simulator that don't exist in hardware, and why certain UIKit transitions (i.e. Curl) don't work in the simulator. All the simulator is doing is running UIKit, Springboard, etc. compiled for OS X and running in an iPhone-shaped window.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think they would have the Springboard source code? These are people from an effects studio in Sweden ... there is no reason they should have that code I think.

I'm also convinced now it is a good fake.

<comment><USER9> He's talking about how Apple made the simulator in the iPhone SDK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gorilla arm.

<comment><USER11> For those who don't know what he means, see: <http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2009/02/gorilla-arm/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the simulator that is running fullscreen.

</comment><comment><USER12> That is really cool. I wonder where he got the hardware to pull that off? The tilt sensor and the multitouch LCD definitely make this an awesome piece of work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Website of the people who posted the video: <http://www.dreamfield.se/></comment>


Show, Attend and Tell: Neural Image Caption Generation with Visual Attention [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.03044.pdf

<comment><USER2> I have to say it is very entertaining to see all these innovations in the field coming in at this rapid pace. Its also great that most papers are there for everyone to read on arxiv.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did they release the code for this?

<comment><USER4> Coming soon!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Track credit card points, not only your budget - <AUTHOR> https://pointway.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I wanted to share an early beta with you. I'm looking to get feedback from interested users so that I can make the right improvements and feature additions.

Please note: there WILL be bugs, potentially even a webpage crash. My goal here is to get early feedback from users who are truly right for the platform. As for the stack, I worked with Node.js, Next.js/React (TypeScript front end), and MongoDB for the database.

If it looks interesting to you, definitely give it a shot and let me know what you think! I want to hear it all.

The idea is one that has been in my mind for such a long time. I like to look over my finances about one a month, and I want to be able to see everything from spendings to points earned, all in one nicely laid out interface. A budgeting tool is nice, but what about tracking your credit card points so you maximize your earnings and utilize them correctly? It's good to use both!

I suggest using a desktop computer or a tablet for the best experience.

Thanks in advance!</comment>


Scaling Git, and some back story - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/02/03/scaling-git-and-some-back-story/ <comment><USER2> > 1st party == 3rd party

This was actually the first thing that I actually noticed about Visual Studio Team Services, when I first looked at integrating my search and code analytics engine with VSTS. It was quite apparent that they wanted to make 3rd party developers, first class citizens.

Anybody who has ever worked in Enterprise, knows feature requirements are heavily driven by politics. And if you can't support the weirdest edge cases, resistance for adoption can become insurmountable. Having looked at VSTS, you could easily tell they wanted to reduce as much push back as possible.

<comment><USER3> It's a lofty goal to create tools with the view of supporting the direction of one of the world's largest software companies, with the ability to support single-person dev shops just as seamlessly. I don't know if it makes sense (i.e. would google's monorepo scale down like that? Is Microsoft hamstringing themselves in this way?), but I applaud the effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related backstory/POV from one of the lead developers behind this effort who's now outside MSFT in this tweet thread: [https://twitter.com/xjoeduffyx/status/827633982116212736](https://twitter.com/xjoeduffyx/status/827633982116212736)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they sort of gave up too soon on splitting up their repos. We've been through this before and made BitKeeper support a workflow where you can start with a monolithic repo, have ongoing development in it, and have another "could" of split up repos, sort of like submodules except with full on DSCM semantics.

Might take a look at section 5 of this:

[http://mcvoy.com/lm/bkdocs/productline.pdf](http://mcvoy.com/lm/bkdocs/productline.pdf)

which has some Git vs BK performance numbers. We actually made BK pretty pleasant in large repos even over NFS (which has to be slower than NTFS, right?).

And BK is open source under the Apache 2 license so there are no licensing issues.

I get it, Git won, clearly. But it's a shame that it did, the world gave up a lot for that "win".

</comment><comment><USER6> Great to see MS working on this, and also posting the code!

"As a side effect, this approach also has some very nice characteristics for large binary files. It doesn't extend Git with a new mechanism like LFS does, no turds, etc. It allows you to treat large binary files like any other file but it only downloads the blobs you actually ever touch."

It seems every day I see another attempt to scale Git to support storage of large files. IMHO lack of large file support is the Achilles Heel of git. So far I am somewhat happy with Git LFS despite some pretty serious limitations - mainly the damage a user who doesn't have Git LFS installed can inflict when they push a binary file to a repo.

I'm curious what other folks on HN use to store large files in Git without allowing duplication?

<comment><USER7> I yet have to run into a issue where i even want a large file in git.

<comment><USER8> The common case that I see are binaries that are being versioned through the VCS. Large binaries, be they libraries or the application, are stored in the VCS and it is used as the source of truth from that point on.

Git explicitly called this out as a bad practice. Other vendors, like Perforce, never really did an amazing job with it, but it worked and on top of that, created more reliance on the vendor's system. Now that most people see the shear productivity gains of Git over centralized VCS systems, everyone wants to move, but that comes with a catch. Many of these companies have large workflows built around the way that their old VCS works, and even have compliance rules that have that methodology written into things like their SOX compliance regulations.

It's this set of people, that generally have this issue. For everyone else, using just boring old disks is fine for packages and built product as that can be recreated from the SCM. Now, with LFS in Git, you can maintain the same workflow as you had in your old VCS, without changing the entire structure of the organization to work with it.

<comment><USER5> BitKeeper did stuff like LFS except you can have more than one binary server:

[http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bkdocs/HOWTO- BAM.html](http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bkdocs/HOWTO-BAM.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The sooner they admit TFS is dead and commit 100% to git the better.

In fact, I think everyone should use git :)

<comment><USER10> I think you mean Visual Source Safe ;)

<comment><USER11> I think he means Team Foundation Version Control

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13559662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13559662)

This article covers the end-to-end approach, whereas the other article and discussion are more focused on the GVSF filesystem driver used to support scaling git to repositories with hundreds of thousands of files and hundreds of gigabytes of history.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good story. It'd be interesting to see a portable version (which I guess would have to either run on Mono or be rewritten in something else); or maybe Google will release some of theirs. I'm impressed that Microsoft had the courage to scale mostly-vanilla git instead of hacking Mercurial.

<comment><USER14> During the presentation at Git Merge Microsoft mentioned that the are hiring Linux and osx driver experts. This suggests that they plan to release the fuse driver themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> these articles are less genuine and interesting because it is the same person with the same theme [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dstaheli](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dstaheli)

<comment><USER16> Its likely just a topic of interest. The frequency of submitting is not very high. Judge the piece on its merits.</comment></comment>


NSA shifts the encryption of gov and mil data to quantum-resistant schemes - <AUTHOR> https://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/ <comment><USER2> Title is a click-bait and a huge exaggeration over what is actually written there:

> IAD will initiate a transition to quantum resistant algorithms in the not > too distant future. [...] Until [next Suite of cryptographic algorithms] is > developed and products are available implementing the quantum resistant > suite, we will rely on current algorithms.</comment>


Make science PhDs more than just a training path for academia - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02586-5 <comment><USER2> I really like referencing the illustrative guide to a PhD when I think of a PhD [1]. The whole point of a PhD is to create that dent in the picture. I feel like the training path for academia is just an effect from pushing the boundary since you need to adhere to the scientific method. It's the same argument that some people make about engineer degree in college. I did not expect my university to teach me all practical skills (like how to weld, or machine things) because that is not the point of the education. The education is meant to gear you towards making principle based designs rather than history based design and in order to that, which requires a lot of theory.

[1] [http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in- pictures/](http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It ought to be a training path for academia too!

It's always struck me as strange that the skills needed to _get_ a faculty job (essentially, the ability to produce interesting data) are mostly disjoint from those needed to _keep_ the same job (management, grant writing).

</comment><comment><USER4> This topic always makes me a little suspicious. Are we trying to meet an industry demand, or are we looking for a relief valve for an excess of PhDs?

Doctoral students are such a good deal for universities, I can see why they'd want lots of them. Yes professional students and MS students pay tuition and sometimes TA a bit, but for high skilled low wage labor that lands big grants, there's nothing like a few doctoral students to write the code or do the lab work.

I'm not convinced that industry bound students need to lean these skills at low wages in a grad program with long completion times and high attrition rates. Elite JD students are completed in a consistent 3 years and have an attrition rate typically below one half of one percent, and they don't graduate ready to practice law. They learn this working brutal hours under stressful conditions at $180,000+ a year. Elite PhD programs take over twice as long and have attrition rates of about 35-50% depending on the discipline.

A shorter, more consistent practice oriented doctoral degree makes sense compared to a PhD but... is there a market for it? I'm not just asking if they'd get hired, I'm asking if they'd be hired at sufficiently higher rates than MS or BS holders to justify the expense and loss of earnings. Would it be competitive with those degrees + an MBA?

There are still reasons to do it. The nature of the job is also a factor. Senior CRUD bug fixer (or overstressed lawyer) might pay a little (or a lot) better that Senior analyser of fascinating data sets, and lave lower entry costs. But I can see why someone would pay a bit more to earn a bit less to get a more interesting job. There are limits though. Is a PhD or even one if these alternate doctorates really essential? Or even worth the opportunity cost?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather ensure research was better funded and thus a more viable career path (with more research institutes separate from colleges to level out the pyramid structure)

Otherwise it just seems like turning a PhD into job training - something which is already happening to many undergraduate degrees as the BSc becomes the new High School Diploma.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. And I feel like the whole PhD atmosphere of striving to do good research and discover new things is what makes the PhD graduate valuable. If it was like job training, that environment just wouldn't be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing that is nice about computer science, perhaps as compared the natural sciences, is that a Ph.D. is absolutely a valuable industry degree. Just look at some of the best examples: Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat to name two. Many modern companies in the computer industry - though not all - value Ph.D.s and actively try to hire them.

<comment><USER8> I agree they do, but in my experience they also make them do aptitude tests like whiteboard coding or asking trick math questions. These tests overlook the actual (rare) skills the candidate has in favor of skills more often known only to certain types of engineers and CS majors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In The Netherlands we have a specific degree on the PhD level but focused on practical research, called PDEng (Professional Doctorate in Engineering).

<comment><USER10> We have a similar thing called an EngD in the UK. There are about 20 institutions that do, most of them well regarded and from what I've heard do a great job at providing you industry links throughout.

<comment><USER11> I think the CDT programmes in various fields are also pretty good at preparing people for industry careers. A lot of PhD projects are either aiming to address industrial concerns and are industry funded or are tangentially related, and people who aren't industry funded benefit by getting exposure to that world through their colleagues.</comment></comment></comment>


Marijuana Majority Website Highlights Celebs And Tech Leaders Who Support Pot - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/marijuana-majority/?icid=trending7&grcc2=f734c88c056142a7be254f0c33e64f01~1350947329375~fca4fa8af1286d8a77f26033fdeed202~93b0d23eb4b7d686953a708194c12196~1350947329374~98~0~0~0~1~0~0~0~9~6~6~14~-1~5593392943429573887~~

<comment><USER2> I saw on the news in Seattle some interviews with people on both sides of Washington's marijuana initiative, which is basically a full legalization initiative.

There was strong opposition from a group I had not expected to be against it: medical marijuana advocates. They had two interesting arguments against full legalization.

1\. They believe that it is going to raise prices compared to current medical marijuana prices, and

2\. They are worried that the limit it sets for blood THC levels for DUI is below the level found in the blood of medical marijuana users. Many medical users would basically be unable to legally drive. (I've read that when one is using marijuana medically, the intoxicating effects of a given dose or much lower than when it is used by a healthy person, and so medical users driving while on medical marijuana are not actually driving intoxicated, but the proposed law does not recognize the distinction).

<comment><USER3> Regarding the second point, although the proposed level may not be ideal, there should definitely be a limit of some kind. I'm all for legalization, even for recreational use, but there is nothing funny about impaired driving.

<comment><USER4> Most studies find that marijuana use doesn't actually significantly impair driving ability. The increased risk is somewhere between 1.0 - 1.3x. In comparison, there are several other drugs with up to a 4x increased risk that are completely legal with no limits.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22785089>

[http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a- scienti...](http://norml.org/library/item/cannabis-and-driving-a-scientific- and-rational-review)

[http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/04/ep...](http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/04/epirev.mxr017.abstract)

<http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/40>

It's a little bit counterintuitive since clearly you can be so intoxicated that you are whited out, but the results are very consistent across numerous different types of studies. I certainly wouldn't recommend driving after smoking, but epidemiologically speaking there is little to no increased risk when averaged out across the entire population.

<comment><USER5> _Most studies find that marijuana use doesn't actually significantly impair driving ability. The increased risk is somewhere between 1.0 - 1.3x_

Uh that meta-analysis of 9 studies you posted disagrees:

 _Specifically, drivers who test positive for marijuana or self-report using marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to be involved in motor vehicle crashes. The increased risk of crash involvement associated with marijuana use is generally consistent across studies that were conducted in different geographic regions and driver populations, used different research design approaches, and were based on different methods for measuring marijuana use._

Further, one of those studies showed a 3.3x increase in crashes for high levels of THC-COOH in urine.

And as anyone who has been sufficiently stoned will tell you, there is no way in hell you should let them behind a wheel (or frankly, anyone who is mentally incapacitated). There is an upper limit just as there is for any number of prescription drugs that affect mental performance.

<comment><USER4> "Further, one of those studies showed a 3.3x increase in crashes for high levels of THC-COOH in urine."

That is the equivalent of something like half a beer, maybe one full beer at the most. And even the authors say that this is probably an overestimate, and most likely a substantial one.

If you look at the actual double blind studies, many of them can't even tell the placebo arm from the trial arm in terms of total accident risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I looked through the comments and was surprised that mostly there seems to be a discussion on if we should legalize it or not...

I was mostly intrigued by the principle and the layout of the site.

In todays time it seems like an awesome principle to just make a collection of noteworthy people and get people to twitter (generally: contact) them to get their point of view in order to use this quote for your cause.

Combined with a nice layout, catchy URL and clever use of social media, seems like things like this could be done with more causes than just this one.

While i know that most of you will think _"Well, not really a revolution, it has been done before. Where have you lived the last few years of your life to be intrigued by something like that"_ I personally never saw it in such a well executed form and manner.

How about doing the same with gay marriage.

FEEDBACK:

-) group feature is awesome

-> how about additionally making groups for the parties (e.g. "Republican Party Member"), guess that would be nice feature

-) how about a search function for looking up specific persons

<comment><USER7> _how about a search function for looking up specific persons_

CTRL-F works, it's all one giant page, after all :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People that want to smoke pot, can easily get it, legally, or illegally. But it's much better to offer a controlled environment for the users, instead of 'making' people go to dealers. This part is the biggest reason why Mary Jane is a gateway drug, which lots of people use as an argument why pot shouldn't be made illegal.. Think of how much money could be going to tax instead of 'criminals' abroad.

In the Netherlands, they have started requiring users to register for a weed card, which has been enforced in multiple provinces. Foreigners are no longer able to use coffeeshops. Just Dutch nationals that choose to be registered at a shop. The effects? More dealing on the street. People don't like being registered. Slowly but surely more and more people are registering, and the rest are getting it through their friends, or illegal dealers which is the worst situation.

Open it up as much as possible. No registrations, just show your ID, if asked, when buying at 'coffee shops'. Governments will be able to educate the users more. Grow it as a government, allow 'farmers' to grow too. Tax it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll let onlookers decide whether this is a discussion of politics on Hacker News (disfavored by many of the users who have been here longer than I have) or a discussion of something else. On my part, I'm curious about one empirical question: Richard Branson claimed in his blog post on the current law in Portugal (which "decriminalizes" marijuana but still treats marijuana possession and use as an administrative offense)

[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana- myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-holland-and-portugal-have-legalized- marijuana-19691231)

that marijuana used had declined since Portugal changed its law. That's an interesting claim. Do we have strong evidence from before-and-after policy comparisons in other countries that use of marijuana declines if use of marijuana is responded to by administrative sanctions rather than criminal penalties? If so, that would be food for thought for people like me (a generation older than most HN participants) who have seen a lot of promising young people in two generations "burn out" from marijuana use. Criminal approaches to social problems are harsh and expensive. If they are also less effective in dealing with reducing marijuana use than administrative approaches, and voters can be convinced of that, perhaps there is a path forward toward reforming marijuana laws on the basis that marijuana should be neither casually used nor a ground for imprisonment. (I think the actual enforcement practice in my state, Minnesota, largely is of the form of diverting users of marijuana to drug treatment programs.)

<comment><USER10> Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher than either before or after.

One factor in this, however, was the quality of alcohol being consumed. The drinks in a speakeasy frequently contained various poisons ranging from methyl alcohol to organophosphates to carbolic acid. Thankfully the US Government has largely seen the wisdom of not poisoning its citizens.

My understanding of drug treatment programs is that you may pay for them or face worse consequences. I was not raised to believe that justice should be so purchased.

On the subject of young people: pot dealers do not check IDs. Medical science indicates that marijuana interferes with pre-adult brain development. No one is proposing that marijuana be made more available to young people, or more generally that making it more widely available carries much innate benefit. The push for reform is simply an observance that, as with our other Prohibition, the cure is worse than the disease.

EDIT: Just to point out, possession of marijuana has been legal in Alaska for decades. For the most part, nobody cares. Some people smoke, some don't, nobody does it in public.

<comment><USER9> _Rates of alcoholism, arrests for public intoxication and deaths related to alcoholism under Prohibition in the United States were several times higher than either before or after._

Evidence for this? I've seen contrary statements from a very eminent criminologist on the deaths from alchohol, at least. What is the best source for statistics on such issues?

<comment><USER10> My source was _The Poisoner's Handbook_ , which suggests that deaths were not tracked well or at all in most of the US. The book gives statistics for New York City but a cursory examination of its sources does not seem to list where those statistics were obtained from. The best source for statistics likely doesn't exist, but likely bets would include hospital records and any statistics published by whatever coroner/medical examiner's offices you can find.

One source [0] seems to suggest that deaths were lower but rising. Deaths from poisoned alcohol tripled between 1920 and 1925.[1] The author of the latter paper (Mark Thorton) has written extensively on the subject, his book _The Economics of Prohibition_ may be informative.

[0] <http://druglibrary.org/prohibitionresults1.htm> [1] <https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The difference between the TechCrunch article headline and the HN headline is curious (the word "legalization" is left off of the HN headline, at least in its current form). I wonder whether this was deliberate, or just random chopping to some arbitrary character limit.

Regardless, the change is important. There is a big difference between "supporting pot legalization" and "supporting pot". I often wonder whether efforts toward the former are hampered by the fact that all sides in the debate tend to think of it in terms of the latter.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where I live in Mi there are billboards that say, "WE GROW THE BST OG!" All over the radio are ads to get your marijuana scripts. The biggest problem we are having here is the law left the question of dispensing medicine to each individual charter. So most around the state have passed 'moratoriums' waiting for a bigger rule to follow behind. But there are plenty of places dispensing medicine. Its amazing to me that a few states can legalize gay marriage and the democrats will put it on the ticket, but 17 states and the district of Colombia go medical and there is no discussion about it.

<comment><USER13> > Its amazing to me that a few states can legalize gay marriage and the > democrats will put it on the ticket, but 17 states and the district of > Colombia go medical and there is no discussion about it.

What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER14> The big problem with state-level marijuana-legalization is that the _state_ can make it legal, but the _federal_ DEA still aggressively prosecutes marijuana distributors.

[http://www.westseattleherald.com/2012/08/27/news/dea- orders-...](http://www.westseattleherald.com/2012/08/27/news/dea-orders-west- seattle-medical-cannabis-shop-clo)

Full legalization can only be done at the national level.

<comment><USER15> (I live in CA, and I have 3 MJ dispensaries in a 10-minute walk from my house; 7 more if I want to drive five minutes.)

You have raised an important point. This has turned out to be a problem in CA.

Pharmacies don't want to touch MJ because it's illegal under federal law. The regulatory arm of the state of California doesn't want to touch it for the same reason. Some cities attempt to regulate it, some don't.

Because the dispensaries produce a lot of cash profit (in violation of prop 215, but whatever), they have been able to fund lawyers to sue cities and invalidate all regulations. It turns out it's really hard to craft a regulation, even a simple one for licensing, that holds up to court challenge. The city of LA has given up and explicitly called in the Feds to raid the MJ shops. (The feds get them for tax evasion -- kind of a catch 22 because it's hard to report this income on your federal return; as mentioned, they're not supposed to profit but there's no way to check.)

I voted for Prop 215, but I really had no idea how quickly it was going to turn to shit. Pothead idealism meets serious potential for quick profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shame half of the list is obscured on my 13" thanks to a massive fixed header.

<comment><USER17> One weird screen resolution you're set to if a ~30px header takes up half your 13" screen.

<comment><USER3> I assume by header they mean the semi-transparent section with the over-sized logo and highlighted quote, which remains static as you scroll through the list of people.

It really is a pain to use.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the feedback - we'll add a button to hide the featured quote!

<comment><USER19> Does Paul McCartney really need a label? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those who would like to explore potential ramifications of legalization, consider <http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1316>

</comment><comment><USER21> "We need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts, and if somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do."

Guess which (former) political figure summoned this wonderful word storm :)

</comment><comment><USER22> The website on topic is <http://marijuanamajority.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> The website is marijuanamajority.com.

Do we really need techcrunch to interpret for us? Who's idea was that?

</comment><comment><USER24> On a somewhat related note, my `fortune` for today was

        Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students
        who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize
        it in order to protect themselves.
        -- Lenny Bruce

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't care if people smoke in their homes, but tell me how you are going to stop people from driving stoned and killing me.

Because people are arrogant about it and think they are perfectly fine and that it's not like alcohol - right now the fear of being caught with it in the car slows down that arrogance, once it's legal it's going to happen all the time.

Also there has to be some severe penalty for public smoking because I don't want you smoking it next to the playground just because you are now allowed to.

<comment><USER4> "I don't care if people smoke in their homes, but tell me how you are going to stop people from driving stoned and killing me."

In addition to the fact that marijuana doesn't actually significantly increase driving risk, the overall driving fatalities may actually decrease if people switch to smoking instead of drinking or using benzos. Driving fatalities have actually fallen more in medical marijuana states than across the rest of the country:

<http://ftp.iza.org/dp6112.pdf>

That being said there is some uncertainty because driving after mixing alcohol with marijuana is significantly more dangerous than driving after consuming either alone, but so far all the data seems to suggest that if anything legalizing marijuana will actually save thousands of lives per year.

<comment><USER26> Just go with "You'll get an effing DUI if you do" and you'll pay the normal alcohol tax on being an asshole and lose your license and if you hurt someone you'll be in mega bonus lawsuit land. Stop with this BS "MJ is safer than alkehol", who cares, if you're disabled, you're disabled, DONT....DRIVE. Also, drive stoned for me and prove it doesn't do anything. My friends couldn't pull it off with college aged reactions, you must be superman if you can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So we have pro-piracy and pro-marijuana on the front page... all we're missing now is MrBabyMan.

</comment><comment><USER28> How about a web site that shows celebs and tech leaders who support a woman's right to choose? Who are against it? For gun control laws? How about a web site against Italy's "articolo 18", which is much more relevant to startups than pot is?

Please, take the politics elsewhere. There are tons of sites for discussing politics. This is one of the few really good places for hacking and startups, so please let's keep it free of flame-bait.

It's in the guidelines, too, for what it's worth:

" Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic. "</comment>


Bay Area median home price first annual drop since 2011 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bay-Area-median-home-price-fell-2-3-last-year-14985353.php <comment><USER2> > The median price paid for a single-family existing home in the Bay Area fell > from $727,000 in 2006 to $430,000 in 2009

When people talk about the bay area housing market, it's often said that it remained strong during the GFC. This fact seems to contradict that talking point.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how useful it is to talk about the Bay Area as one market. During 2006-2010 things were very different from one zip code to another. I was just looking at some historical Zillow data from those years and some zip codes like Cupertino barely moved at all, for all those months. Others, like parts of San Jose dropped by as much as 50% and just recovered to their 2006 numbers recently. So maybe for some general sense of the numbers you can average the Bay Area market but when it comes to pricing an actual house and trying to see how recession-proof/prone it is, thinking of the entire SF Bay doesn't seem to make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an article from January 2020; not sure it is relevant in the current context.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps even more relevant. If there was already a down turn.

I noticed a number (4-5) for pre-foreclosures in Berkeley right before the shutdowns started.

Now there is a freeze on foreclosures in Ca, right? What's going to happen when it is lifted? I don't think it is going to be pretty.

<comment><USER6> East Bay is different than SF, Peninsula, or Marin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not an expert in this. Feels like, we are in uncharted territory. I was looking at 2 main params to compare Covid crisis with 2007/08 recession.

1\. Case Shiller Index for SF area (higher the the value, higher the house price) [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SFXRSA)

2\. Financial Stress Index (Ideally should be around 0. Higher the value means system is financially stressed) [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STLFSI2](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STLFSI2)

If you compare this against 2007/08 crisis. The Case shiller index for SF hasnt dropped much at all, even though the stress index is pretty high. Not sure, what am I missing. Would love for HN folks to educate me on this.

<comment><USER8> First thing to keep in mind is that the Case Shiller data you linked to only has data up to February. The FSI data is more up to date, but the big upswing was only getting started in late Feb with it being more visible in March/April figures.

The other thing to consider is that housing prices are likely to lag behind financial stress. If people are in financial stress, they are likely to sell off a second car or other luxury possessions before selling their house. Also selling a house takes time, so even when people do start selling they won't be on the market or closing sales straight away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In 2019. The demand in SF has actually gone up recently.

There really isn't any incentive to sell unless you plan on buying more homes in the Bay Area on your sale. The tax hit is too high otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't get too excited, borrowers have been more thoroughly vetted since the subprime crisis and everyone is familiar enough with the cycle by now that they'll hang on to their houses at all costs, to enjoy the recovery. Barring foreclosures, don't expect there to be a sudden wave of deals to be had.

<comment><USER7> People still have to make mortgage payments though? Given, the flush of cars sitting in the dockyard and such high unemployment rate, wont this affect housing prices a tid bit?

<comment><USER6> It will affect housing prices in working class or service industry oriented areas.

If a majority of your home owners are knowledge workers who are remote or bought a home in cash they'll sit on them.

If the knowledge workers get laid off then the aspiring home buyer is also likely to be laid off. People who bought in cash will still sit on them because they will have no reason to sell.

<comment><USER10> That is a pretty loaded assumption about the superior financial security of the knowledge worker. It seems clear from the numbers of developers being laid off and start ups that are financially failing that this assumption is imaginary.

The only financial security a knowledge worker has, in this current economic downturn, is the essential nature of their employer or their employer's cash liquidity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We were able to refi, and now officially pay less for mortgage and taxes then we would pay to rent the same home.</comment>


Publish everything you write (pretty much) - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/publish-everything-pretty-much/1839078656124990/ <comment><USER2> And if you're going to publish something, for heck's sake don't publish it on facebook.com. It's a terrible platform for content. To even read this article, I had to sign into facebook, deny a prompt to provide alerts, close 4 messenger windows, etc. etc. Not a good way to read.

<comment><USER3> You do not need to sign into facebook to read a public note.

<comment><USER4> You do need to sign in to continue to read previous notes tho, fwiw

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Pollute everybody's attention as much as you can, since occasionally you might say something useful"

It's the ego-centered approach to publishing, maximizing your returns, at a large cost to the commons. (If everybody follows that advice, the Internet will be a smouldering garbage heap. Wait, they do, and it is)

I'd much rather all of us focused on publishing something that has an actual chance of being useful. Be picky. Respect other people's time and attention.

And as a reader, choose authors that have proven to respect your time. (Or, alternatively, have others pre-filter the garbage stream for the jewels)

</comment><comment><USER6> The missing caveat form the title would be: IF and only if your goal in writing is to get your words in front of as many eyes as possible.

I write as an exercise to clarify my thinking and organize thoughts, and much of my writing is thereby naive and off-target because my thoughts aren't yet fully baked. I would not want something accidentally blowing up and getting 300K views unexpectedly. That simply isn't what my writing is for.

<comment><USER7> There can be value in half-baked writing. Blog posts by people stumbling to learn stuff can be really encouraging to people suffering from Imposter Syndrome.

At worst, someone wastes 4 minutes and discovers you're imperfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most comments are already contrary to the article, but to add to the sentiment, my English professor memorably said, "Free writing is like going to the bathroom. Very important, but you don't need to show the results to the world" (I think his wording was more eloquent, but the theme is correct).

</comment><comment><USER9> This needs to be read with the mindset that it's for people who've decided to publish opinions, and care about having more people read them.

There are lots of reasons you might not want to do that: you're the kind of person who picks stupid fights[0], your opinions are deeply hated by most people, etc.

For the people it's aimed at, I think it's close to being right. For many others, writing is a tangential part of what they do, and they ought to be a lot more careful. But that probably also means giving up on having a lot of people read their opinions. You can't spread your ideas with one hand tied behind your back.

[0] Not being judgmental here...I've picked too many stupid fights in my time.

<comment><USER10> There is nothing wrong with publishing your opinion. There is nothing wrong in engaging in reasoned, responsible discussion. There is nothing wrong in displaying passion towards a chosen point of view. You'll notice that I have very, very carefully chosen my words. I could probably continue in this vein for ages and not impress anyone.

I'm not sure where the balance is but I find discourse on HN tending towards saccharine with some excellent but infrequent counter examples.

wrt: [0] - I think that sometimes you have to be seen to tilt at windmills but you should choose your windmills carefully. Actually, you'd be surprised how effective a well chosen jab from a lance might be at the sweeps (think branch in the spokes of a wheel). Perhaps someone should have told that Spanish bloke or have I completely knackered this analogy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> contrariwise:

 _That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can't do both; the first one obliterates the second._

[https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad- correspondent....](https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad- correspondent.html)

(pardon the utterly horrible formatting)

</comment><comment><USER12> The attention merchants soliciting as much free content as you can produce so they can exploit it. The emails we get saying what is recently posted on FB and how you are missing out by not participating. It's all increasingly naked and greed driven...and quickly destroying brand allegiance and credibility...

<comment><USER13> But haven't you seen the new TV commercials?! They've changed!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really REALLY hope people will take the opposite approach. Publish well thought out, well edited, original pieces. Take your time and reflect. Quality over quantity.

<comment><USER15> Better yet, I'll only read people who take the opposite approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bad advice: Don't publish anything unless you have something of value.

Don't especially publish it on a walled garden like Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER17> Bad idea. Maybe for journalists on a deadline (and there's a plethora of that already).

Instead, publish what you believe is solid, worth the effort to read, and has lasting value ... for at least a small audience.

You have to be the jaded editor missing from the loop. There's plenty of verbal clutter in the world.

</comment><comment><USER18> And this way of thinking makes the world fill up with garbage. I'm doing the opposite: I never publish anything unless I'm proud of it and I can defend it as being of good quality. The world doesn't need another useless piece of anything.

</comment><comment><USER19> Extreme publishing?

<comment><USER20> publish early, publish often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People write for lots of different reasons. For a good many of those people, "publish everything" is heinous advice.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a terrible reading experience. Why is the prompt to log in so prominant?

At this point I would even prefer medium.

</comment><comment><USER23> >Publish pretty much everything you write because you can't predict what is going to be popular. There is a lower bar for quality, but barring dishonesty and literally unreadable prose, everything else should go out somewhere.

Extremely reckless advice, so many people have lost their jobs, friends, and livelihoods due to publishing the 'wrong' thing on facebook. And the definition of 'wrong' is ever-changing. Bottom line is you need to consider the downside tail risk if you want the upside tail risk, this post baits you with the latter.

<comment><USER24> Publish nothing, unless you absolutely have to.

<comment><USER25> So the opposite of a bad idea is not always a good idea.

Some things should be published. Some whistles need to be blown, some problems need to be brought to attention, people need to be held accountable, etc.

<comment><USER26> Those sound exactly like the public good's "have to" topics.

Personal details are the opposite. I share anecdotes with coworkers, and even those are completely sanitized unless they are specific enough to involve individuals. It's automatic redaction, I rarely even realize I'm doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is definitely not good advice.

</comment><comment><USER28> So, what's with all the Facebook posts lately? John Carmack, Kent Beck, Jim Black, etc...

Is Facebook pushing this?

<comment><USER29> John Carmack and Kent Beck both work/worked for Facebook so they're probably used to making internal posts in this format.

Kent Beck seems to make a lot of FB notes and this isn't anything new. [https://www.facebook.com/kentlbeck/notes?lst=1511963732%3A61...](https://www.facebook.com/kentlbeck/notes?lst=1511963732%3A612973674%3A1527281384)

<comment><USER30> Facebook is the new AOL, so it's kind of sad to see Carmack saddled with that baggage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This just sounds like Facebook begging for more content so it can profile more people.

"You just published a blog post on cats? We didn't know you like cats! Here's 15 ads about cats. And we sold your name to a mail-order cats-for-sex company. But that's OK because you agreed to that by clicking on something at one time years ago. Or maybe it was when you visited a 'partner' site and didn't click on anything at all. Still, it's all cool because we're 'friends' and you 'like' us!"

<comment><USER29> Not sure how closely you read the article, but it's a personal post talking about tweet engagement. It doesn't even mention Facebook nor is it an official Facebook post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is right up there with tobacco advertizing.</comment>


How's the UX? - <AUTHOR> http://howstheux.com/

<comment><USER2> As far as I understand, the UX designer, which would be me, is getting 20% of $10, which is $2. Consider the job took 10 minutes. I make $12 an hour.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> These kinds of setups are designed for people from countries with a low cost of living. For example in India, ignoring the rural/urban divide, the average wage is somewhere between 0.40 to 0.60 USD per hour. In that scenario $12/hour is incredibly good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, most of the UX designers in the community are American, recent HCI grads who are looking to buff up their portfolio with side projects. Does their UX feedback appeal to you?</comment></comment></comment>


Baron is a Bitcoin payment processor that anyone can deploy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/slickage/baron

<comment><USER2> [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309785.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309785.0) BitcoinTalk.org includes Baron in its security bounty program because it intends on using it within its own infrastructure. If you find a way to break it you can earn some serious money.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the CEO of Slickage. This was released a few months ago and I'm personally sorry for the downtime of demo. I hope people like it!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see a review of this code

<comment><USER5> it's OSS...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this use extended public keys?

<comment><USER7> As best I can tell, it does not do any key management. No reference to terms like "Key" or "HierarchicalKey" at all. My guess is that you have to give it the addresses you own, and it detects if payment has been made to them. Since it does not use "HierarchicalKey", bitcore's term for BIP32 extended keys, it probably requires that you constantly refill the address pool so it doesn't run out. Or it reuses them.

edit: I also just realized it depends on "bitcoin". It may rely on a running bitcoin core full node to handle the private keys.

<comment><USER8> Based on the fact that it has a "Bitcoind RPC port" option, I think it is safe to say that it just relies on a running Bitcoin Core node.

That means it does not support deterministic keys. Users will need to be careful to back up their wallet.dat file on a periodic basis.

<comment><USER2> That's correct. Currently it requires private keys on the Baron server, which means the wallet must be encrypted and backed up often. Encrypted means the keypool must be refilled periodically.

If there is sufficient demand it would be theoretically possible to include watch-only support so the Baron server need not have private keys online. Ideally this would work with a Hierarchical Deterministic wallet where the server does not need to be periodically refilled with unused addresses.

Hypothetically this could be done today with a javascript library that generates the public addresses as needed. I am not sure if such a library exists at the moment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Javascript as a language for handling serious amounts of money? I don't know...

<comment><USER10> NodeJS is very stable. Since JavaScript is asynchronous by design, NodeJS's performance is excellent.

<comment><USER11> Stable, performant. Secure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> live demo 502</comment>


Governments Are Spending Billions on Software They Can Get with Freedom - <AUTHOR> https://fosspost.org/analytics/governments-and-spending-on-software <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting. I wonder what prompted Munich to switch back and forth between softwares. Also, don't governments have some sort of internal IT infrastructure that helps them run more efficiently and oversees these costs? I also assume there are some factors at play here (like people being used to certain software) that make transitions very difficult</comment>


Who Needs a Sound Card, Anyway? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/who-needs-a-sound-card-anyway.html

<comment><USER2> Seeing as the word "latency" doesn't make an appearance anywhere on the page, I'm assuming anyone doing audio work will still benefit from a decent card. (Why? Because when you hit a key on your midi keyboard/drums, and want it to be like playing a piano/drumkit, you want the minimum latency before you hear the note so it feels more like the real thing)

<comment><USER3> If you wanna get pedantic, he _did_ say that the exception is people who invested in quality headphones, and if you're doing audio work, that exception probably covers you. I suppose there is a set of such people who only have high-quality speakers and no quality headphones, but now we're really picking nits.

<comment><USER4> It's a nit worth picking; I am ever-so-slightly hearing-impaired (congenital) to the point where I only need the $80 Bose headphones instead of the $300 imported-from-Europe headphones for my audio work, and motherboard sound cards are fine for quality but horrid for latency.

Everybody's got their own needs. :3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Right now I run my sound through a MOTU Ultralite, and I've got some Grados SR60s and Audio Technica ATH-M40fs, which combined cost me under $100 (used and on sale... but you can still get each pair for ~$60 - $70), as well as some rebranded Altec Lansing UHP336. (Other headphones I've owned include the MDR-7506 and DT-770s, and I've frequently used older sets of K240s and HD-280s)

That being said, I think the notion that you need $300 head phones + $200 in headphone amplification is absolute garbage. $60 in headphones will get you 80% of the way. My macbooks and my Thinkpads have had more than adequate drive for my headphones, but there's still a small difference when you are driving it with something like a MOTU/digidesign/whatever interface. Most the interfaces I've used were as good or better than the midrange stuff when it came to headphone amplification.

One thing I've noticed is that most DIY PCs tend to have much crappier noise performance than my laptops, and the problem is always a million times worse if you use the front panel audio jack. Not sure why, maybe that's why this guy wrote this article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh, what is this 'soundcard' thing he's talking about...

I haven't used a soundcard for more than 5 years. The last soundcard I bought was an SB AWE128, which I think was something like 10 years ago... After that, the motherboard integrated sound became pretty OK, at least for games and mp3 consumption, and from what I heard the SB cards were no longer getting better.

Sure, if you're a musician you might have other requirements. Or if you invest in quality headphones _and_ quality music files (not lousy old mp3s :).

<comment><USER7> I used a bithead on my computer with good headphones and FLAC/Apple Lossless files and it was nice, both linux and windows recognized the bithead right away but once that broke my headphones just got plugged in straight to the computer and the amplification isn't really a factor and not enough difference is head by my ears to make me go out and buy another bithead.

Soundblaster is pretty awful now, plus it doesn't even work on linux but my last card was a soundblaster as well probably around '05.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Several points which don't flow well into paragraphs:

1) On-board sound isn't very good, in my experience. Admittedly, my 2006 Macbook sounds considerably better than my 2010 Toshiba.

2) My favorite headphones are the Etymotic ER-4P. I found mine online for a bit under $200. They're an almost perfect aural match for my beloved NHT 2.5i speakers.

3) The Boostaroo is a horrible amp. Unbelievable hiss and distortion. I don't know how they're still in business. If you need a portable amp, look for a CMOY in an Altoids tin, off eBay. Cheap and (IMO) vastly superior.

4) A computer's case is about the worst environment I can think of for audio electronics. Get any sound card which gives a digital out, and feed that into any consumer-grade receiver that supports digital decoding, like a Pioneer from Costco. This way, your uncorrupted digital stream gets converted to analog well away from the noisy PC case. You'll be 90% of the way to a ultra- high dollar sound for a couple hundred bucks.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree with your points 1 and 4. Ofcourse your processor can calculate sound, but it's the AC that is important. When I plug in my headphones in my onboard soundcard and move my mouse I'm hearing noise and hiss. When I play music I can hardly hear it, but it's there and you will notice it when the music is soft.

Need great sound: get the digital signal out of your PC and have an AC outside your hardware.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a universal Self-Destructing Messaging app? - <AUTHOR> By universal, I mean Android and iOS compatible, I've looked at Wickr (unfortunately only iOS still) along with Vapor and 'Privachat'... None of them are out on android yet.<p>Do you guys know of one? Or maybe an email service that has self-destructing capabilities? Thanks! :D -aTMoZFeaR <comment><USER2> Self-destructing...I don't think so.

But any OTR-enabled chat (both users have to have it) encrypts every single message with a new key (at least 128 bit AES, depending on implementation). Most of them still go through a server, though. Retroshare uses OTR and it's also P2P, so it should be a little more trouble for them to get, but since they're tapping the cables, they're still getting it anyway - and this is why anything "self-destructing" would be irrelevant, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you mean read once messaging? The Client Server model makes this impossible.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_server](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_server)</comment>


The World's worst hacker (cracker) caught on video - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJagxe-Gvpw <comment><USER2> this is lovely, and I can _feel_ the kiddie in some irc channel going on and on about X not working while the wiser people tell him to download rootkit X and then go to the directory and the kiddie is replying that it does not work and he's working on windows and the older cr3wzorz tell him to set the permissions and he's replying that the tool is broken and it does not work and why doesn't it and so on and so forth. Just lovely :)

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, the older cr3wzorz as you call them are probably either of the same calibre or having a great deal of fun at the poor kid's expense. Either way, it made me chuckle!

<comment><USER2> I carefully restrained from writing "wiser" :)</comment></comment></comment>


The Shapes of CSS - <AUTHOR> http://css-tricks.com/examples/ShapesOfCSS/ <comment><USER2> I love the Space Invader style from this article. I'm making a 20 second animation for the game now... give it an hour and then post what I have.

Here is the current.. (ONLY WORKS ON WEBKIT) - Will add animation for other vendors once I have finished.

\----

Space Invader Animation CSS3 Only

<http://jsfiddle.net/dd454/20/show>

</comment><comment> jarek-foksa CSS was never meant to be used for drawing complex shapes. If you are using those hacks instead of proper SVG or canvas paths then you are doing it _wrong_.

<comment><USER3> Totally with you on this. Really sad to see that a "triangle" is actually a "border"! Seriously, WTF?! Or is it just me, and everyone else is ok with that?

<comment><USER4> It's just a funny thing to giggle at. But I really hope no one will use this in production.

<comment><USER5> I'm currently working on a site that uses it heavily in production for visual enhancements and details. It's a great trick that works well, and doesn't require any additional markup if you use :before and :after pseudo-elements. Using CSS instead of images means it's easy to programmatically manipulate it, as well. eg A color picker system with a notch that varies with the color being picked. The new Google+ design uses the triangle trick with a twist, making an open triangle that shows what's underneath it, like your cover photo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if the last space invader example can be extrapolated to generate any arbitrary pixel art.

<comment><USER7> I think it could be for one color pieces, but anything beyond that and it makes a lot more sense to use an svg or div based solution.

<comment><USER8> It makes more sense to use an svg based solution for almost all of these examples also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool demo, made even cooler because they stuck "contenteditable" on the style tags so you can play around with the shapes to see how they work right in the browser.

<comment><USER10> Right Click -> Inspect Element

<comment><USER9> I haven't seen a way to edit CSS on the before and after pseudo elements in the web inspector. If I'm missing something I'd love to know about it.

<comment><USER11> Its there, plain as day. <http://cl.ly/GwZz>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting collection, but as the intro states: _Any kind of CSS goes, as long as it's supported in at least one browser._

More impressive and useful would have been a reasonable floor above which the tricks were guaranteed across browsers. ...or at least a compatibility note next to each technique. For example, IE 8 can't handle rounded corners, so infinity, egg, packman, talk bubble, etc do not work at all. Version 8 is as high as Windows XP users can go with IE, so there's a lot of IE 8 out there still.

<comment><USER13> Most everyday problems related to rounded edges in CSS can be solved with CSS3 PIE (<http://css3pie.com/>).

How well these shapes would render though, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice!

A month ago I remember struggling to create those triangle pointy arrows for tool tips.

I was an idiot for not using Twitter Bootstrap in that project.. :-/

</comment><comment><USER15> Has anyone else noticed that at certain zoom levels, the triangle in the talk bubble looks disconnected by one pixel from the box? I have seen this problem with any similar use of the triangle hack.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I've seen that often. It's most apparent even without any zooming on mobile Safari. For this reason, whenever I use the triangle effect, I'll offset the element/pseudo-element by one pixel to avoid the gap.

<comment><USER15> Any ideas on a fix that works when the triangle must perfectly align with a box? In other words, when the base of the triangle should be the same width as the side of the box it touches. In this case, moving the triangle one pixel closer to the box means it does not fit perfectly against the box.

Example: <http://jsfiddle.net/PLMSA/>

<comment><USER5> Since it's basically a rounding error, I'm not sure if there's any way to avoid the gap without some overlap. In that example, a :before pseudo-element that's the same width as the box and one pixel above the triangle can provide the overlap without needing to offset the triangle itself.

<http://jsfiddle.net/enTz9/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very useful, though it has been posted numerous times before.

<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2876612>

<comment><USER17> It's certainly very cool, but is it really that useful? Or I could just be missing the bigger picture. I actually hope that's the case so I can learn something new today. But it just seems to me like making a png/gif image is much easier and more practical. I do love to see technology pushed to its limits though!

I guess one of the cooler applications of this shape making method would be the ability to transform one shape into another very smoothly with a relatively small filesize (as opposed to an animated gif).

<comment><USER18> There are more benefits:

Costs nothing to change colors. This makes it great for iterating.

No bandwidth costs as CSS is rendered on the client.

Infinitely scalable in size. No rasterization.

Availability of other CSS functionality, like shadows, animation etc

<comment><USER19> The last one is an issue, actually. The space invader one is the extreme case: it's already a shadow. And the border tricks for triangles are also shadow- resistant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I lost it at ying yang</comment>


Advice on moving to the cloud? - <AUTHOR> http://getclicky.com/blog/234/advice-on-moving-to-the-cloud

<comment><USER2> I'll save everyone some reading. The advice was:

Don't do it.

While I agree that in their particular circumstances that it's probably the correct answer, I don't think it's right for everyone. For one thing, their system isn't tolerant enough of downtime. If one of their databases goes offline, they've got some manual fixing to do to get it back up and going. Ugh. (I took this to mean that if you unplug the network cable, they have manual fixing to do. They might have meant power loss... And that's a little more understandable, but still not something you really want in the cloud.)

<comment><USER3> I was referring to power loss. Although in the cloud, it's not actual "power loss" that's the issue, but the end result is the same - the database is shut down uncleanly and must be dealt with before coming back online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You'll have to design your stuff to tolerate failure; use things like Chef for quick deployments so that provisioning new servers isn't a huge pain in the ass.

Further, the biggest thing to keep in mind is that your resources are shared. This is not too big of a deal for some applications, but for a database server, this can spell certain death (I/O doesn't virtualize too well; you can mitigate some of this by deploying a lot of slave machines for your reads.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think more interesting than the question is the fact that the questions was asked at all, by a company to the customers.

I'm a customer of getclickys and in most cases openness like this would be refreshing and it is but there is an element of 'flying by the seat of our pants' that could come across with this post.

<comment><USER3> Yes, someone on our blog raised a similar point.

The reason we are asking for advice is because we have zero experience running an app in a cloud environment. Well, we did build our own custom CDN using DynDNS and vps.net, but that's just a small part of our service. I'm scared of the cloud for running _everything_ , so just asking for anyone with experience to tell us what they think of the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have very very limited experience with EC2, a single small instance, for over a month, but I think that gives me more credibility when I say this, don't use EC2 unless you designed your whole app to run on servers you expect to catch fire and explode at any time, because my single little instance died within a month, then twice it, well, did something I've never seen happen before, blow out a device driver? So I couldn't ssh in, all I got was "PTY allocation request failed on channel 0", so now I'm on my fourth instance. I couldn't imagine the carnage if I had been running tens or hundreds of instances.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That is exactly my fear. Most of the commenters on our blog told us this probably isn't a good idea so we're very unlikely to do it at this point.

I'M JUST SO DAMN SICK OF DEALING WITH PHYSICAL SERVERS. :)

<comment><USER6> There's also the option of splitting your app between EC2 and your own servers, so you can run the more ephemeral stuff like web servers and caching in the cloud and the bedrock stuff like databases on your own quality hardware.

Then you'll have less physical servers to deal with :)

<comment><USER3> My concern about that is communication between web and DB servers. Some reports need hundreds of queries to generate - wouldn't the lag severely slow this down?

Most of our servers are DB anyways. We have 2 load balancers, 6 web servers, and ~40 DB servers.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it would, but you might be better served to rethink your app design to return multiple result sets, and/or do most of the relevant joining/filtering on the database, even if your DB is <1ms away from your web farm.

We run a good sized e-commerce site (Alexa top 1000; barely) and our ratio of DB queries per dynamic page is right around 2.5:1. You might not be able to get your query-per-page ratio into that range, but hundreds is certainly too many, IMO. Even "dozens" would be cause for concern, IMO. Moving your webfarm to a different datacenter than your DB is going to shine a spotlight on that problem, but even without that spotlight, you still have a problem.

PS: Even with pushing that amount of work to the DB, we have almost the inverted ratio of web servers to DB servers as you report.

<comment><USER3> Well, most of those queries are just to look up the "name" for a given ID. And of course we use memcached to cache almost everything. But it still requires a bunch of round trip requests to either the database or memcached.

Before anyone asks "why don't you just use a join?" it's because we have tons of different types of data stored in a couple of summary tables. It's 100x faster to just grab all the IDs and values, and then grab the names one at a time (most of which will always be in memcached) than to do it as a join. Don't believe me? We used to do it that way and the performance sucked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a very similar volume site (game analytics) ... I've always been afraid of Amazon because of the bandwidth and request based billing. I just use VPSs to scale when I have to ... it helps that my hosting guy is on my MSN Messenger.

Edit: Also your site looks terrible in Opera ... the CSS or JS or something isn't loading which is breaking everything.

<comment><USER9> FWIW: I'm not seeing any such phenom. My Opera (10.62) is scarcely discernible from Safari - both of which look very attractive.

<comment><USER8> Oooh I know what it was. One of the tech blogs had some annoying shit happening when you right clicked URLs that made the right click menu not show for me (slo0w connection here) so I blocked the subdomain.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X? - <AUTHOR> I'm at the point where I'm ready to retire from Apple. I happily switched years ago but recently realized that I'd dived in so hard to the ecosystem that disentangling is going to be really hard. I've learned looked at Linux laptops but it seems like an iffy decision unless I shell out for System76. I've been thinking more lately about coming back to Windows thanks to the Ubuntu integration.<p>What are your experiences here? Looking to get the experiences and suggestions of other people who've successfully gotten away from Apple. <comment><USER2> If you haven't run Linux on a laptop recently, I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised. As long as you're not buying a really cheap consumer-grade machine, or a bleeding-edge high-end machine, the chances it works out of the box are very high. Furthermore, the level of software support has improved drastically from even a few years ago.

Look at it this way. You're going to wipe and reinstall anyway, right? Might as well give running a real *nix a shot before you settle for less.

<comment><USER3> That is my suggestion as well. I can't go back to Windows, it just doesn't do it for me. I have been lucky to have my company buy laptops for me for the past bunch of years, but on my personal machine, the only reason I have Windows at all is for gaming.

For anything else I'm using some flavor of Linux. No question.

<comment><USER4> I recently installed Linux Mint to an external SSD and boot into it for gaming in Linux. Steam and many games work just fine in Linux. (I pretty much just play TF2.) I've used Linux on and off through the years, but don't use it daily in my work. I was very pleasantly surprised at how for the most part Linux Mint just works.

My current personal machine is a MacBook Air, but given the the direction Apple is headed with laptops, I won't be buying an Apple when I need to replace it. I don't want to use Microsoft spyware. So, I will likely use Linux for a new personal machine when my MBA is too old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ive been enjoying windows a fair amount recently. With the Linux subsystem it has turned into a surprisingly great experience. All the familiar unix tools are here now and Windows 10 is pretty tasteful as an OS. Only request I have from Microsoft is to add a feature to disable file notification hooks from file created in the unix subsystem. Creating a lot of small files has always been slow on windows because it pounds the antivirus. I was hoping that the unix sandbox would be exempt from this however I see the Anti virus works hard even when I do IO in the unix subsystem.

Also Hyper-V being built in and free means that you can have test VMs with snapshot capabilities built right in the OS which is nice since it allows you to avoid the VMWare/Parallels tax.

<comment><USER6> Can you exclude the directory from the AV's real-time scan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never bought into Apple. I think Windows 10 is great, but I love tiling window managers. So I run Linux.

Windows 10 provides a polished, efficient, well designed interface. You have to get pretty far out on the edge of hardware before stuff doesn't just run [e.g. my eight year old Dell Precision configured as RAID 1 on via proprietary third party BIOS on the mother board interfering with the Windows 10 automatic upgrade until I turned it off and disconnected the disks until the upgrade had completed].

On the other hand, Linux provides a deeply documented operating system with text configuration files. It affords ample opportunities to hone one's RTFM skills, e.g. a 2016 kernel upgrade that borked Synaptics drivers made configuring my new Dell an exercise in understanding X11, systemd, libinput, and mouse configuration. Getting a 4k display well sorted is still underway (thanks for being the exception to deeply documented Unity!).

The downside of Windows for me is that most free software is untrustworthy and Microsoft has not quite come around to a good package manager system for native applications. By which I mean, there's lots of read the news apps in the Store, but not MIT-Scheme or little utilities like nmap. What I would say is that when Linux sucks, it sucks very consistently in a particular way: there's a fix that I am left to find myself and it might involve patching and recompiling the kernel (though it usually does not).

Anyway, Dell Precisions and some XPS laptops, can be ordered with Linux installed (at least in the US). So it's not just System 76. Also, there's generally a good Linux story with Thinkpads.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd reconsider Linux. As long as you make sure the laptop is supported Linux is great if you're a developer.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the process of switching back from osx on a Mac mini to a laptop dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I've been using Ubuntu almost exclusively. There are very few things I miss, actually. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any now that I think about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I moved from OSX to Linux-only laptop in 2012. I'd intended to dual-boot, but re-installing Windows[1], even by itself, was much, much more pain than I expected; I eventually gave up on it. Go figure.

Linux having poor compatibility with laptops is, in my experience, a myth. Ubuntu worked fine, but I've since moved to Fedora, and extremely happy with it. Everything "just works". I can't really see my self going back at this point.

For me at least, the Mac's original value-proposition being a no-hassle Linux- like machine. Now that the real thing is hassle free[2], there is no point in anything else.

Finally, I've heard that it's gotten much better lately, with the "new" Microsoft (which I applaud) but, as a developer who did so for a few months this year talking about "just works", the amount of friction involved in building anything outside the narrowest "MSFT-only" niches on Windows is crazy. I'm not a ragey guy, but it got to me, and not in a good way.

[1]: The then-new Windows 8 installer had a forever-grey "next" button at one point in the install-wizard that no amount of hair-pulling seemed to fix.

[2]: I would still recommend spending a few minutes online looking for red flags when choosing a model to use.

</comment><comment><USER11> I haven't left Apple completely, but I've gone from having just a Macbook to also having a Thinkpad X220 running Win10 and Linux, an Asus Zenbook running Win10, and a beefy desktop running Win10 and Linux.

My goal has been to make it so that I can do most of my development work on any of the OSes, on any of the computers. Before the Win10 Linux subsystem, it was a little bit painful on Windows, but now it mostly just works. Node.js and Ruby native extensions have so far worked perfectly in WSL once I apt-get installed build-essential.

So far, I've only run into a couple of issues:

\- A few ruby gems with native extensions have given me some trouble on OS X, but were fine on Linux and Win10 (using the Linux subsystem).

\- Last time I tried React Native (a few months ago), there was a bug that prevented the build system from working on Windows. I found a fix had been added to the master branch, but hadn't yet made it into a release. I added the fix on my machine by hand and everything worked after that.

I mostly use VSCode and Atom for editing, so my editing experience is pretty consistent across operating systems. I've done a bit of F# in Visual Studio on Windows, and was able to load the project up unmodified in Xamarin Studio in OSX. I imagine it'd be the same now in VS for Mac.

I only use Photoshop occasionally, and it seems to perform a little bit better in Windows.

Other thoughts:

\- Ultraportable, high DPI laptops are a much better value outside of Apple land. I picked up an Asus Zenbook with a hidpi IPS touch screen, and pretty well exactly the same specs as the current Core M Macbook for $649CDN on sale. The Macbook sells for $1549.

\- Consider a previous generation Thinkpad if you'd like to run Linux. I picked up my X220 for $300CDN earlier this year. It was technically 'refurbished', but they refurb'ed it so well it looked like new. It had a crappy TN display, but I picked up an inexpensive IPS panel for it on eBay, and it was super easy to install. The Core i5 it in still performs well. A bit slow clock-for-clock than the newest i5s, but still lots of power for most tasks I've thrown at it. I'd say that Win10 and Linux Mint perform equally well on it.

\- Lots of Thinkpads make good Hackintoshes in case you ever want to try that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I switched from Windows to OSX about 7 years ago. I recently gave my MacBook Pro to my partner, I was interested in a new laptop, and looked at the market offerings. I was very impressed with what had been released in the Windows ecosystem; so much that I bought a Surface 4. Windows 10 is significantly more polished than the windows that I left. The Ubuntu subsystem also satisfies my requirements for Bash. All-in-all, I am impressed with how much Microsoft has improved.

</comment><comment><USER13> For me, switching between the two is painful - mostly due to difference in keybindings, and the only reason to keep a Mac around is the need to use it for projects targeting Apple's mobile platform. Windows seems to be a better PC-based gaming platform than either Mac or Linux, but overall Linux is what makes most sense for me - as a Unix and as a platform to get important and interesting stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ctrl vs CMD, again.

</comment><comment><USER15> having ads baked into the OS so deeply just feels weird to me. The lock screen[1] has ads, the start menu has ads[1].

there's a frustrating bug on 1511/10586.678 where all my carefully created file associations keep getting reclaimed.

[1] I'm not sure what they're actually called. :/</comment>