A few simple steps to vastly increase your privacy online - <AUTHOR> https://thetoolsweneed.com/a-few-simple-steps-to-vastly-increase-your-privacy-online/ <comment><USER2> Cough, cough...

> A non-profit giving away free software makes sense. Some of the biggest > companies in the world giving away free software is suspicious.

followed by...

> Fortunately, you can tell your computer which DNS to use. The company > Cloudflare has a publicly accessible DNS at the address 188.8.131.52 that they > claim is encrypted and secure.

So wait, you suddenly forgot the axiom you used just a few paragraphs back? Clouldflare is a for profit company and they give something for free but hey, this time it's not suspicious? Strange standards you live by...

<comment><USER3> I don't think the author forgot the axiom; they seem to acknowledge that they just don't know of anything better in that case:

> That's about the best you can ask for with a centralized infrastructure for > the internet. A recurring theme in this quest for data ownership and privacy > is that you can only take it so far before you have to ultimately trust a > company or entity to do what they say they're doing.

<comment><USER4> "they seem to acknowledge that they just don't know of anything better in that case"

They don't know you can run your own DNS server ?

It's technically trivial (for this audience) and it's basically free (very low traffic and resource instance or droplet or VM ...).

<comment><USER5> how much daily traffic does running your own DNS server generate? (to keep up to date with the domain-IP binding?)

I am really interested in trying this...

<comment><USER6> The DNS requests corresponding to typical HTTP traffic would be negligible compared to that HTTP traffic. DNS servers generally don't generate any traffic except when you perform a query.

Should be <512 bytes per request and after a particular domain name is queried it doesn't need to be queried again for some time (depending on TTL).

<comment><USER5> so its really only somewhat anonymizing if many people use it? is there some kind of distributed DNS table through TOR or something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a reason these "how to privacy your browser" changes are all are not bundled with browsers — because the capability to maintain them as they are today is a one in a thousand skill or less. Maintaining this collection of changes is a significant burden that requires an ongoing investment and a willingness to deal with the technical fallout of these choices every day. So:

Please don't apply these steps to non-technical people's browsers. They will result in an endless litany of broken banking websites, annoying support calls, memory issues, and in general a terrible user experience for others.

Guides like these are why my most common technical support first response for _experts_ having browser issues is to have them reset their browser settings and remove all addons and try again. Non-experts rarely require that, unless they tell me that an expert "made it better" for them. Don't be that expert.

<comment><USER8> >They will result in an endless litany of broken banking websites, annoying support calls, memory issues, and in general a terrible user experience for others.

This is some FUD you got going on here. Changing DNS will break notjing. Neither will blocking referrals, blocking trackers, blocking ads. In the rare case it does, you're one click away to disable everything! Neither will your system get slower, much to the contrary you will save memory, network data, and battery.

<comment><USER9> A few minutes ago, my ad blocker broke the login form of my cellphone provider. A non-technical user would probably not think to turn off the ad- blocker, and would assume that the website is broken. Not being able to log into your phone provider (or bank) is a pretty serious inconvenience which should not be taken lightly.

<comment><USER10> If a login form breaks because of an ad-blocker then the site _is_ broken. Ad- blockers have a bigger market share than most browsers!

<comment><USER9> I agree that the website is the thing that is broken. Their code looked like this:

      reportToTracker('userActionSubmit');
      submitForm();

The first line threw an exception. They should have surrounded that line with a try/catch block. And they should have tested against popular adblockers as well as popular browsers. But it's also within their right to not care about adblockers, and live with the consequences of upset customers. Unfortunately, very few customers will complain, so this becomes an externalized cost which the website owner never sees.

Practically speaking, if I install an adblocker on my friend's computer, and their mobile provider website stops working, then I personally feel some responsibility for making my friend's web experience a bit worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I come across one of those articles promoting "use Firefox instead of Chrome" I wonder if I'm the only one having those huge performance issues with Firefox on macOS. I seriously tried to make the switch from Chrome to Firefox a few times in the recent years because of all the dark patterns Google is pushing upon its userbase with Chrome, version after version. But Firefox _feels_ significantly slower, makes the MBP fans go crazy and drains the battery like hell.

I've come to the conclusion that at this point it's no option for me to make the final switch to Firefox, as much as I'd like to. But I try to cut off Google's prying eyes from my browsing behaviour as much as possible:

\- uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger is all you need to block the most nasty privacy invaders, seriously.

\- I don't use the sync feature.

\- I don't use Gmail, so there's no reason to login to my Google account, ever.

\- I used Youtube's thumbs-up button as sort of bookmarks for my favorite videos, now I have a bookmarks folder for Youtube videos, which is ok for me, but might not be for everybody.

\- automatically clear browsing data after quitting Chrome.

My dream browser would be Firefox with Chromium under the hood, but that's not very likely to happen...

<comment><USER12> If you care about privacy, you shouldn't be on a Mac anyway. Their privacy policy amounts to "you can trust us".

<comment><USER11> Privacy is always about trust. I trust Apple (more than others) because they never gave me the impression they are doing anything shady with my personal data behind my back. Unlike Google.

<comment><USER12> Privacy is only about trust when you can't know what software does. That's only a concern with closed source software and services. Much of Apple's software is closed, much of Apple is based on services. The one thing you can trust is that, at some point, something they do with data they have will displease you. Software that doesn't even try to collect data is the only acceptable kind of software.

Using services obviously requires trust as far as data your client software exposes, but if you choose closed source clients, you've given up on privacy at a fundamental level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, the dns server of my provider against Cloudflare DNS it is. That seems to be a good idea for people in unfree countries like iran.

But since my provider knows every ip i connect to, they already have everything they need in the first place, even if i dont use their dns.

So handing over the dns requests to a third party seems to be a rather not so smart move to me.

edit: oh, and the cloudflare dns servers are located within the 5 eyes states? nice...

<comment><USER14> > But since my provider knows every ip i connect to, they already have > everything they need in the first place, even if i dont use their dns.

If you connect to something fronted by CloudFlare your ISP can see you connecting to CF, if they provide your DNS then they can see what you're connecting to that's fronted by CF. A subtle yet important distinction.

Ignoring that, switching from your ISPs DNS prevents all kinds of shit they like to do like redirecting to ads on an unknown domain.

<comment><USER13> > redirecting to ads on an unknown domain

I can cleary see that, in states like iran or china, getting redirected to somewhere you did not chose to go is really problematic, but getting redirected to ads by your own provider, does this happen in your country?

In germany, i guess, this would be quite illegal for a provider to do and be considered as attacking the ingetrity of the dns system for personal gain.

>If you connect to something fronted by CloudFlare your ISP can see you connecting to CF, if they provide your DNS then they can see what you're connecting to that's fronted by CF. A subtle yet important distinction.

Well, most of the time, you would connect to ips that are not fronted by CF servers, so theres nothing to gain there.

<comment><USER15> In the cases where I've seen this happen, the DNS provider is rewriting NXDOMAIN responses. So, when you make a typo, you hit a "helpful" error page that has ads and tracking in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My only remark is that changing dns to an external server is detrimental to privacy, speed, and arguably security. I'll focus on privacy because that's the article's focus.

The power of tracking comes from a central organisation being able to follow almost everyone. Having a birthday calendar on your toilet that your friends can also look at is not creepy, but a worldwide central birthday database might be creepy depending on how private you consider the information. Similarly, changing all our DNSes to 220.127.116.11 is giving Cloudflare, the NSA, and anyone who hacked Cloudflare or any intermediate router (such as your ISP's internal routers and backbone Internet routers), the ability to track our dns requests. If you leave it set to the default, probably your ISP, then someone would have to hack all ISPs on the planet to track all of it.

Furthermore, if you're not paying for it... I'm paying my ISP, but not Cloudflare. Unlike XS4ALL, the ISP I have a contract with, I have no legal guarantees regarding what happens to the data from Cloudflare.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, Cloudflare doesn't know me from Adam but my ISP has my billing information. It basically depends on your threat model. I'm pretty sure I'm way down the ladder for the NSA, but maybe I don't want an employee at my local ISP getting in a tizzy about me because I frequent sites they don't like. And who knows in today's world what websites might outrage them? I live in a small town. This might actually be a thing I need to worry about.

This discussion is prompting me to look into dnscrypt as a short-term solution.

<comment><USER18> your ISP can see your internet traffic regardless of which DNS server you use.

By using Cloudflare you are sharing your internet history with _yet another_ company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Install a PiHole ([https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)) and redirect all port 53 (DNS) traffic to it. One of many guides:

        https://scotthelme.co.uk/securing-dns-across-all-of-my-devices-with-pihole-dns-over-https-1-1-1-1/

Every device on your network now fails to resolve any advertising/tracking/etc. URL. Great system, and "just works".

<comment><USER20> I did this a while ago, but don't see a huge difference with ads. I confirmed that around 13% of traffic is getting blocked.

<comment><USER21> Add some more lists, I'm slowly ramping up my blocking and sit a little higher than you in terms of %. I see a big spike in blocking when other users are around - obviously it depends heavily on where you go. Are you using an ad blocker on your device too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Switched back to Firefox since the Quantum release and I'm very happy with it. On mobile I still use Chrome, but I'm gonna check out how FF works on mobile :).

<comment><USER23> Firefox mobile on android is a vastly better experience. The number one reason is you can run adblock which turns many mobile sites from ad-filled disasters to readable sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This misses out on the fact that ISPs regularly employ Transparent DNS Proxies and your DNS requests may never actually reach CloudFlare.

Using something like DoH or DNSCrypt is the only real solution for now till OS support for DoH or DoTLS rolls out.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is very solid advice (although I'm not familiar with all those browser extensions and can't endorse them).

To go a step farther, I make two suggestions:

(1) using the uMatrix extension and disabling javascript by default. This completely blocks fingerprinting. If a site doesn't work, you can always re- enable JS in two clicks.

(2) Use a VPN or Tor Browser to better hide your site browsing behavior from your ISP.

Not completely related, but

(3) Be very careful what software you install on your computer, tablet, and phone (especially apps).

</comment><comment><USER12> "Be sure to turn off uBlock Origin and Smart Referer for sites that you value"

No. Anyone that cares are privacy should have a strict no-whitelisting policy. Find a way to advertise without third-part scripts, find some other way to make money, stop trying to monetize all together, or just stop existing.

<comment><USER26> I believe this is a personal choice to potentially give up privacy for sites a person values and/or trusts. It's fine for you to believe that no site should make money via advertising, but others can have a different view and act on that opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here is a quote from the Smart Referer section:

It's kind of a dick move to the sites you like since it removes valuable analytics for them, so you can (and should) whitelist domains that you want to keep sharing data with.

Why removing that information a "dick move"? When I visit a bank, restaurant, or grocery store, those places don't know where I came from before entering the store unless I have merchandise from other places. The most they can gather is that what clothing I'm currently wearing and if they keep tabs on my previous visits.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking more of media sites that rely on ad dollars to pay the bills. Unless they have a direct subscription option or other way to pay for the service, you're eating into their bottom line. The real world analog would be newspapers and the ads they run.

<comment><USER27> Even then, newspapers either run ads without needing to know who their customers are, or solicit this information from their customers voluntarily. People like my parents don't know that a referer is involved unless it is explicitly pointed out to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been using the Brave browser for the past week or so. It feels like Chrome, without the ads and spying. This article recommends Firefox. Are there good reasons to choose one over the other?

<comment><USER29> Brave uses Chromium under the hood, so if you're paranoid you could assume that Chromium has some kind of backdoor integrated.

Also, to my knowledge Brave Software Inc. is a For-Profit organisation.

Despite those facts I am personally using Brave. In my opinion you already cut out most of the "bad stuff" of Chrome with this choice.

<comment><USER30> If you're paranoid, you could read the source of Chromium and confirm it doesn't have a backdoor integrated.

<comment><USER31> I take your point, but it's really not practical.

Any large codebase is nearly impossible to scour for this kind of thing, particularly a web browser which is an immense mound of source. There's so many ways to build in a backdoor, so many ways to build a way for you to later load a back door, that it's not plausible, even for a seasoned developer, to reliably find it.

You have to stop such things with source control. The surface area of a new fix or feature is much easier to analyze for vulnerabilities, intentional or not. I do this on a daily basis, and it takes work.

<comment><USER32> well if you don't trust chromium, as a consequence you cannot trust any apps built on electron (slack, github desktop, etc) and you can't trust a single thing on android. that's pretty steep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How does switching to a third party DNS increase privacy? might as well use your ISP's server since they already know what sites that you visit (unless you use a VPN and this article doesn't talk about that)

</comment><comment><USER34> > You don't have someone following you around from store to store writing down > every product you touch or look at, and then block you from entering other > stores until you watch an ad.

Great point. Online advertising is creepy.

<comment><USER35> > You don't have someone following you around from store to store writing down > every product you touch or look at, and then block you from entering other > stores until you watch an ad.

Give this time, honestly. Stores are explicitly moving towards this to the extent that it's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Also recommend facebook container for firefox, for those using facebook. i've been using it for a long time and it hasn't intefered with my browsing.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Firefox is developed by a non-profit company, Mozilla, explicitly dedicated to users' needs. Google and Microsoft make money off of users in different ways and we can never be sure that their business decisions are going to align with what we would want as users."

This gives short shrift to what is a complex set of interdependencies.

All these browsers rely on the existence of web advertising, including Firefox.

Are web ads among "users' needs"? Who decides what comprise users' needs? Users?

The reality is that whatever Mozilla defines as "users' needs" will also, at least in part, represent the needs of the company authoring the competing web browser. That is because the Firefox authors are paid indirectly from the coffers of their competitor.

Mozilla Foundation cannot take a stand against web advertising because its competitors rely on web advertising to make money. And Mozilla Foundation in turn relies on money from its competitors to pay its employees. Mozilla is aligned to some extent with the business decisions of its competitor.

Ideally employees of Mozilla Foundation would be volunteers and Mozilla Foundation would pay them solely from donations from users. This is not what happens.

Mozilla Corporation (for-profit) can, e.g., sell access to Firefox users' searches to Mozilla's competitors. e.g., Google. The profits might then be used to pay Mozilla Foundation employees. Some of those employees might leave and go to work for Google to start a competing browser.

Firefox may be the lesser of multiple evils, but let's be honest it is not solely dedicated to users' needs. It has its own needs -- paying 100's of employees -- and, given the current arrangement, it must to some extent serve the needs of its competitor in order to meet them.

If for example there was a user who did not wish to support the web ads business then Mozilla's decisions could never align 100% with what that user would want because she does not want to support the web ads business. Mozilla is paying employees by doing business with a competitor that gathers user data and sells access to users to advertisers.

I am not downplaying the value of Mozilla. I am only pointing out that they are probably not 100% aligned with all users. They are also partially aligned with their competitor who is selling ads in order to make money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, thanks for posting. I'll try to incorporate this nuance in future posts.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There were a lot of questions about VPNs in response to this post, so I addressed them here: [https://thetoolsweneed.com/one-sorta-simple-way-to- vastly-im...](https://thetoolsweneed.com/one-sorta-simple-way-to-vastly- improve-your-privacy-online/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I tried to switch to Firefox several times, and each time I go back to Chrome because I use Google Sheets and it doesn't work offline on Firefox, which is a must for me. :'( I guess I should quit Sheets, but my spreadsheet cannot be easily converted to Excel or LibreOffice.

<comment><USER39> I run both. They allow me to mentally partition things on desktop.

On Android, FF is my default and I open Chrome when I need to. Firefox on Android supports uMatrix / uBlock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you're going to install uBlock Origin then I recommend looking at uMatrix (same author) which does all the same thing but gives you much, much more control.

It can be annoying and force a lot of refreshes, but it blocks a lot more things more consistently than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER41> The most important and easiest step is installing NoScript and going temporary whitelist only.

</comment><comment><USER42> > DNS > Cloudflare

How about dnscrypt? The DNS servers offered through dnscrypt are much more trustworthy IMHO. Also it is trivial to setup n DNS servers and to randomly select a different server on each request, removing a bulk of that centralized nature of DNS.

</comment><comment><USER43> De-install all your X509 trust anchors and only re-install the ones you understand.

</comment><comment><USER44> Never heard of Startpage before. How trustworthy is it compared to DDG?

<comment><USER45> At least they're not Google. So even if they are collecting data about what you're searching for, they have less data to link it to and probably less power to use it than Google does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The canvas and referrer plugins are new to me. This is great. I always wondered why canvas is enabled by default. The ratio of useful to tracking uses has to be 1:10.

</comment><comment><USER47> How safe is using Cloudflare from a EU perspective? Is it a big improvement, if some day the American government might just request it to hand over all the logs?

</comment><comment><USER48> What's the current state of the art (i.e., lowest setup time and least maintenance) for downloading the entirety of Wikipedia and browsing it locally?

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://www.opennic.org/](https://www.opennic.org/) DNS servers are better than 188.8.131.52

</comment><comment><USER50> Use Apple devices and software as much as possible?

<comment><USER51> Apple's walled garden is not one I want to play in. I will not trade one corporate master for another.

<comment><USER52> You are conflating two completely independent points due to personal preferences, which of course are very valid.

The point still stands - with the current and known track record, Apple devices are likely more trustworthy than Google, Microsoft or <insert Asian manufacturer here>.

<comment><USER51> Ignoring my personal preferences and acknowledging that Apple is the most privacy-conscious for-profit corporation in the arena:

_Apple is still a for-profit corporation._

<comment><USER52> Exactly, but purely in terms of privacy it seems to be the best bet unless you would like to manufacture your own smartphone.

Apple's profit, to date, relies less on user data than any of the other companies.

<comment><USER51> You're assuming I need a smartphone.

<comment><USER21> I think the comment applies to other off-the-shelf hardware too. What do you use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> For DNS, Quad9 is a better choice than Cloudflare, as it is a not-for-profit public-benefit organization, CF is for profit company

<comment><USER54> I believe that at one stage the Quad9 resolvers were owned by IBM. A brief look at the site indicates it was transferred to CleanerDNS, which is a 501(c)(3). Do you know how much involvement IBM still has in the project, if any?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The guide was fine until "Switch DNS to 22.214.171.124".

The real solution is to use your own DNS resolver (I've been running Bind on my laptop for years with no issues). If that's not an option, it's still far better to keep using your ISP's resolvers -- yes, your ISP may be evil, but at least you're their customer. When a separate for-profit company provides a "free" service, how can the product be anything but your personal data?

</comment><comment><USER56> The argument for switching to Firefox seems weak. I don't doubt there are very solid reasons to do so, however the author's argument comes down to "I, personally, just trust this one more, and I'm lazy and don't want to worry about it." Okay.... that's nice.

<comment><USER45> Chrome tracks you even if you're not logged into your Google account. Another good reason to support and use Firefox is that we don't want to end up with only one browser engine, giving Google complete control over the future of the web and the rest of the internet.

<comment><USER56> See, that's a perfectly valid and logical reason right there. Unfortunately, the author didn't go into that and just left it at personal preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I always assumed Mozilla has too much of a little brother relationship with Google to trust that they are truly independent.

I use Brave and it's good enough for my browser expectations.

</comment><comment><USER58> > _The company Cloudflare has a publicly accessible DNS at the address 22.214.171.124 > that they claim is encrypted and secure._

For it to be "encrypted and secure", the client would have to be configured to use DNSSEC, yeah? As far as I'm aware, most clients don't come with DNSSEC enabled (in OOBE configurations), so isn't this a bit misleading?

<comment><USER59> I don't think so. Instead you would want DoH (dns over https). DNSSEC is designed to protect against MiTM and is not really effective at anything else.

<comment><USER58> Fair enough. Cloudflar's promotional site for 188.8.131.52 seems to tout DNSSEC pretty heavily and only mentions DoH once, I believe.

Still, clients still need to be configured for DoH, yeah?

<comment><USER60> You do need client support but these days that's not uncommon: Android Pie, Chrome, Firefox, and curl all have built-in support and there are apps for iOS and Android, and once you've enabled it it will work almost everywhere. I believe most clients default to dual resolution so it won't break if you're on a network which interferes (e.g. a ton of Cisco captive portals used that address in error) unless you've enabled hard-fail mode.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pyramid 1.3 final released, official Python 3.2 compatibility - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/pylons-discuss/WVA9sAGwa5I

<comment><USER2> Incidentally, be sure to check out sontek's PyCon stuff (many websocket examples, built with Pyramid+gevent-socketio): <https://github.com/sontek/pycon2012>

</comment><comment><USER3> Been reading a lot about Pyramid lately, both praise and criticism. From your experience, how does it compare to Django and other Python frameworks?

<comment><AUTHOR> In my opinion they aim for different groups of developers. It's more of a question if you like monolithic frameworks like django where you "get more" at the expense of flexibility vs. pyramid where you are in control of what is going on, the components are better - like default orm sqlalchemy or templating but the learning curve is a bit stepper - but you are way less likely to reach a dead end when "something happens" in the middle of the project(yeah i know it shouldnt be the case but we all know how reality is sometimes).

Personally after I did django tutorial and more "magic" appeared, I decided it's not a project for me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Someone Mucking Around with Voting System? - <AUTHOR> I saw this post stamped 1-min ago at the top of a popular thread started 17 hours ago: http://prntscr.com/kw5lj2
It seemed a bit odd being a new comment at the top so wondering if HN sees manipulated posts? It might have just been a timing thing as I saw it drop down quite quickly.
I was returning to this thread from earlier so maybe that influenced something? <comment><USER2> HN seems to give new comments a temporary recency bonus so that they have a chance to be noticed and upvoted and this contribute to the discussion instead of completely buried at the bottom of a page that very few people will scroll down.</comment>


Please Don't Steal My Focus - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001011.html

<comment><USER2> The problem is more complicated than it seems. Apps have to be allowed to take focus otherwise a newly-launched app wouldn't have keyboard focus. You'd click on a link in your email and the web browser would come up but then you'd have to move the keyboard focus to the browser yourself.

Usually these bugs are caused by someone fixing another bug. It seems even wronger when a dialog box or some other new window comes up, and the focus is not on it. This gets reported, and the programmer fixes the problem by taking focus.

<comment><USER3> How about this:

_User_ triggered apps/windows/dialogs are allowed to take focus, because it's clearly the user's intention to open/use that app. This does not hold true for automatic updater windows, such as update boxes, new chat messages, etc.

OS X for example gets this half right, with the play sound and bounce dock icon features. The perpetually bouncing icons can drive me crazy, so the best solution would be if cmd-tab automatically put apps demanding user attention first in the open apps list, so that as soon as there's a dock bounce, I can get to it with one quick cmd-tab. That way I can get to it fast and I don't run the risk of the spacebar-ok|cancel disaster (which in minor forms has happened to me before too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah... And nearly everybody (as always) complain about "stupid windows _unable to stop_ apps from stealing focus". Actually this stuff is configurable, there isn't a standard UI for it, but little freeware "Tweak UI" tool lets you do just that, see the screenshot: <http://kontsevoy.com/tweakui.gif>

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks. That's sweet. The Windows XP link is about halfway down this page:

[http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppow...](http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the other hand, on Linux I use a terminal called tilda. The newer window managers have focus stealing prevention. It prevents tilda from stealing the focus like it should. Focus stealing prevention has interrupted me _far_ more often than focus stealing ever had.

"Apps should never steal focus" is a pretty broad generalization that's not always right. Then again, most Linux apps do not randomly pop up dialogs trying to alert you of something.

</comment><comment><USER7> OSX apps don't always get this right.

Happened to my wife yesterday - she was trying to use the BART website to print herself a one-day parking pass. She was using an OSX 10.4 powerbook with Firefox and choose Save As PDF. Unfortunately something went wrong with Firefox at that moment and another modal dialog appeared.

This dialog unfortunately obscured the first one but for some reason did not have the focus. She freaked out because now she couldn't safely quit the application and she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to get back to the site without having to pay again.

Luckily the number for her parking pass was visible on the screen so she recorded that and called the help line.

I don't think this is a browser issue, and I think the only solution is to insist that all modal dialogs implement the ESC key as Cancel. The vi editor got this right 30 years ago: you should always be allowed to press ESC to get out of whatever mode you're in.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that Firefox on Mac is a second class citizen, and it uses modal dialog boxes.

As for the Esc thing, I can't recall a case where a Mac native application didn't press "Cancel" when I hit escape. I think there might be problems with ported applications though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I dislike is when I launch a program like Photoshop, which initially opens up it's window, but it then has to hit the disk for about 10 seconds or so before it can really load, so of course, as soon as I launch it, I alt-tab away to a browser window or something else, but then when Photoshop or whatever else it was that I launched finishes loading, it steals focus back from me. It should wait quietly until I'm ready for it, or better yet, when you run a program, it should load whatever it needs to load into memory before opening up its window at all and then when it's ready to give me a usable application, then open up.

</comment><comment><USER10> When I moved from reddit to hacker news, I was hoping Coding Horror wouldn't follow.</comment>


Mysterious repeating radio signal traced to unexpected outer space location - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/mysterious-repeating-radio-signal-traced-to-unexpected-location/ <comment><USER2> I like to think that some of those FRB sources originate from a microwave oven, as was shown to be the case at Parkes radio telescope in 2010.

[https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/451/4/3933/1119649](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/451/4/3933/1119649)</comment>


Tea Party: Scalable Git Server with Gitea, Postgres and Traefik - <AUTHOR> https://git.habd.as/comfusion/tea-party <comment><USER2> If this is your own project and it meets the guidelines, this might be better posted as a Show HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks grzm. I didn't know that existed. Will try it out! :D

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR>
                      Bretheren, and Fellow Commitizens !

       You  may depend, that thoſe odious Miſcreants and deteſ table Tools

to Miniſtry and Octocat, the Tea Consignees, (thoſe Traitors to their Company, Butchers, who have done, and are doing every Thing to Murder and deſtroy all that ſall ſtand in the Way of their private Internet,) are determined to come and reſide again in the Town of Redmond.

       I therefore give you this early Notice, that you may hold yourselv-

es in Readineſs, on the ſorteſt Notice, to give them ſuch a Reception, as ſuch vile Ingrates deſerve. JOYCE, jun. (Chairman of the Committee for Tarballing and Feathering.

      If any Perſon ſould be ſo hardy as to git rm this file, they may

expect my ſevereſt Reſentment. J. jun.</comment>


Algorithms, Data Structures, and Design Patterns for Self-Taught Developers - <AUTHOR> http://antjanus.com/blog/web-development-tutorials/learn-the-unlearned-algorithms-data-structures-and-design-patterns/ <comment><USER2> What I seek are better resources for engineers and scientists who are self- taught developers. I, along with many of my peers, have technical schooling and deep understandings of mathematics and optimization, but ventured little outside of Matlab in undergraduate courses. Finding learning materials that are between targeting non-technical levels (e.g. "Programming Collective Intelligence") and targeting academic computer scientists (e.g. classic algorithm textbooks) has been difficult.

<comment><USER3> The best algorithms book for the self taught developer is the latest version of Sedgewick.

<http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/>

<comment><USER2> Great, thanks. I'll read it this weekend.

The one book I found amazing for learning was Cracking the Coding Interview. The brief summaries of data structures followed by lots of examples and solutions helped me to develop an intuitive sense for run-times that made more academic texts approachable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems to prefer Quora, Reddit, etc. to the famous text books. Not so good. E.g., tough to find better authors than Knuth and Sedgewick.

It happens that recently I posted an answer to his question in

         https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5631365

It appears that the author regards the famous texts as too difficult to read? No, they are mostly easy enough to read, especially for the material the author seems to want to learn.

The author seems to suggest that without a good university course, learning that material is difficult. However, programmers long learned about, say, AVL trees or heap sort from Knuth's TACP or just journal articles -- I first learned quick sort from a journal article -- instead of university courses. The material is not very difficult.

As I wrote in my post

         https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5631365

can get an overview of the topics so that know what is more versus less important and then use the famous books just as reference material and not try to study all the contents from cover to cover. For the overview, a few good lectures would be sufficient, but lists of the more popular topics are easy to find and mostly good enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think my article didn't do justice to my beliefs. I don't use Quora or Reddit as a source of information per se, it's a place for discussion and I happen to find information there once in a while. That happens but I always research it further outside of Quora.

I don't believe that University courses are the way to go. Otherwise, I wouldn't have dropped out. But I do reference to them because you can easily skip around in the lectures and find what you need.

Learning from books is fine as well, however, I don't have the exposure to that material most of the time. If you have any ideas or reference you suggest I should add, let me know. I would only reference something I've used or someone else recommended. I wouldn't mind reading this stuff either. Like I said, I just don't have the exposure to these books.

<comment><USER4> > I don't believe that University courses are the way to go.

Well, there are pros and cons here. I'd say that the main issue is quality. If you are getting material directly from a famous, tenured, chaired, full professor at a top research university, say, Princeton or Stanford, then you have a good shot at getting the best quality there is. That sense of quality can be important in picking good future directions and avoiding poor ones. So, the stuff you get from Knuth, Sedgewick, Ullman, etc. is going to be tough to improve on. There are ways at times to have some improvement, but basically start with Knuth, etc.

If you want to get the stuff from Knuth, etc., good, but you don't necessarily have to get it in person; their books can also be good. In my education, I got my sense of quality from some high end material in pure and applied mathematics, and that sense of quality applies well enough to computing when read from Knuth, etc. So, the courses I took in math were important.

I'd say that likely somewhere do need some good courses from some good people. If you can't get such courses, then pick very carefully what you study. If you see something in both Knuth and Sedgewick, then likely that is an important topic, so take it seriously. If you are going to buy a car, then you will investigate well before you buy. Do the same for topics in computer science. That is, there's a lot of junk out there, and you could waste a lot of time on that junk, so be careful in what you pick to pursue.

But in the end, just for computer science, no, you don't actually need courses. I've taught courses in computer science at two major universities, but I really never took a course in computer science and, instead, learned from Knuth, papers, and what I dragged over from pure and applied math. I've published in computer science and artificial intelligence but, still, never took a course in the stuff.

By "exposure to that material", I'm unsure just what you mean: Go to a library, photocopy 20 pages or so from each of Knuth and Sedgewick, take notes on the rest, and call it done.

In the end, first cut, what you want from Knuth and Sedgewick is mostly just to use them as references. To this end, maybe get copies of the tables of contents. Might be able to do well enough just from Amazon.

Uh, for 'Knuth', mostly I'm talking about just his volumes 'The Art of Computer Programming', TACP. His volume 'Sorting and Searching' is the most relevant here. One of his other volumes has a fantastic collection of binomial and combinatorial formulas. If you have trouble going to sleep, that volume could do wonders.

Or, the main material is so simple we can cover it right here: You want to know the basic material on algorithms and data structures. Great. So, the main algorithms you want are just what Knuth calls "sorting and searching". For sorting, learn at least merge sort and quick sort. For more learn heap sort and radix sort. The heap data structure is darned clever; I recommend you learn it. Right: Radix sort is what the old punched card machines used and in an important sense is the fastest of the four I mentioned. That's an hour each. Likely Wikipedia could be enough for these. Actually Wikipedia has a super cute animated GIF on what heap sort does. For an exercise: You have a disk file with 100 million numbers. You want to read the file once and end up with the 100 largest of those numbers. Write some software using the heap data structure to construct a 'priority queue' to make this operation fast. This is real: I needed it in my work and coded it up. It may also be a standard Google interview question.

For searching, that's first cut mostly just binary search, and that's mostly just what anyone does when looking up a word in a dictionary. Read about binary search for an hour and write a binary search routine. Done. Exercise: Suppose you have 1 million key-value pairs in an array sorted in order on the keys. Suppose you have 100 keys and for each want to look up the values. So, you can just apply binary search 100 times. Right. But could you speed that up a little? What would be the 'best' way to speed that up? For this last, there may be a research paper in it. Maybe. This exercise is real: In my work I needed to do this, thought of a solution, wrote the code, and it's in my production software. The solution I found I'm sure is significantly faster than just doing binary search 100 times, but I don't know the fastest solution (and don't much care).

Publish? The world is awash in computer science profs who would jump through flaming hoops to publish anything they can get accepted. So if you publish, then in a sense you have beaten a lot of them. So, net, no one can say you are not a computer scientist, even if you never touched Rails. And for silly job interview white board exercises to 'see how you think', can just say that your best evidence on how you think is in your published papers, which actually is a good answer. Besides, really it's nobody's business 'how you think' as long as you do, and a published paper proves that you do think well. Maybe you think only standing on your head in a shower. Fine.

For more in binary search, suppose for some positive integer n you have 100 million n-tuples of floating point numbers and want to put this data into a data structure to permit, given one more such n-tuple, a fast way to find its nearest neighbor in the 100 million. Yup, it's a real problem I had once. So, likely a first step will be something like binary search except on the n dimensions. Now you will have reinvented k-D trees, and it's in Sedgewick. Now for the rest, that's another exercise!

For data structures, of course you know arrays from just nearly any programming language. With arrays you can construct queues, linked lists, etc. These are too trivial even to describe.

Then, of course, there are trees. First cut, these are dirt simple. There are some issues in 'storage management', but now mostly can leave that to the programming language, e.g., any of the Microsoft languages on the 'common language runtime' (CLR).

Then with trees, can have a 'binary' tree, and that just means that each parent has at most two children. Then can quickly see how to have the 'leafs' of the tree have your data. Data? Right, that is mostly just key-value pairs, and you want to 'search' given a key and look up the value. We're talking something about as sophisticated as working with file folders or index cards.

Well, a binary tree can become 'unbalanced', so often we don't want that. So, the first good solution was AVL trees in Knuth. Now there are red-black trees, likely in Sedgewick. They are cute. They are also the basis of collection classes in object oriented languages and the 'look up' means in several interpretative scripting languages.

Such balanced binary trees are so good that they are nearly a 'do everything' data structure and remove much of the interest in hash tables, extensible hashing, etc.

But trees can be not just binary but with each parent with multiple children. Then have a multi-way branched tree. The main one of interest is B-trees from Bayer and McCreight or some such, at the time at Boeing, long ago. They are used much like AVL trees, that is, are balanced, and mostly are for storing data in direct access, fixed length records on hard disk. Then likely B-trees are or have been the key bottom level means of access for all or nearly all of database.

There's no end of more, but here we've outlined s most of a first cut. Can cover it well in two lectures, and I gave you an outline in a few minutes. We're not talking a biggie here.

Then there is the big-O notation. So, suppose have a sorting algorithm, and for a positive integer n when sorting n items the sorting time grows proportional to, say, (n)ln(n). So, we say that the algorithm runs in 'order' (n)ln(n) and write that as O((n)ln(n)).

Look up in Knuth the exact definition of big-O. Personally I don't use big-O notation so don't remember the exact definition. I could guess. But once I looked up the exact definition and tried to redo calculus with just big-O notation instead of the usual limits and concluded that the goal was either too clumsy or not possible. So I'm not a fan of big-O.

For computing just saying that the execution time is proportional to, say, (n)ln(n) is good enough (as accurate as we please for sufficiently large n even if not very accurate for small n), and big-O is only a little more precise but still quite crude as a way to express running time. E.g., usually in big-O people are only counting, say, comparisons or multiplications and ignoring everything else. In particular they usually ignore virtual memory locality of reference, effect on cache concurrency, etc. And they omit the constant of proportionality out front. Gads. So, big-O is usually quite crude. So getting too serious about big-O notation is to try to polish something better flushed.

Why care about (n)ln(n)? Because in sorting the usual alternative is n^2, and easily in practice the difference in running time is very important.

This stuff about running time, that is, 'computational time complexity', is a big theme in high end computer science research. Indeed, the famous unsolved problem P versus NP is just about running time. That is, it's easy enough to find an algorithm that solves problems of size n, for positive integer n, in time proportional to 2^n, but what we would like, first cut, is an algorithm that is guaranteed to solve the problems in time proportional to n^k for small positive integer k. Find one of those and collect $1 million from Clay Mathematics in Boston and get your choice of chaired, full professor slots at leading research universities. You will also get a nice parking spot, a nice table at the faculty club, a nice office with a good view of the quadrangle, get to meet rich people the university president wants to give money, etc. Commonly you will have your choice of undergraduate coeds as your secretary. So, rush right away and find an algorithm that shows P = NP and f'get about all the details of C++, TCP/IP IPv6, PowerShell, Python, Rails, IIS, SQL, LALR parsing, ASP.NET, HTML5, etc.!

Or with your algorithm, to heck with the professorship and, instead start a company, Optimization as a Service, OaaS, and be worth, say, $10 billion. Am I joking about the $10 billion? Not really. An algorithm that showed P = NP would be one of the largest steps up in the 'ascent of man' ever.</comment></comment></comment>


UX Movement - Articles on Interface Design - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/

<comment><USER2> Too bad Anthony comes off as a jerk in his comments.. e.g in the article about left aligned search buttons.

<comment><USER3> Wow. That one article ([http://uxmovement.com/forms/left-search-buttons- perform-fast...](http://uxmovement.com/forms/left-search-buttons-perform- faster-than-right-ones/)), along with his dogmatic replies there, made me delete the bookmark I just created for his site. It's one thing to come off as a jerk on the internet, but another thing altogether to be so completely misguided on the layout of a simple search form.

<comment><USER4> Why would you say he is misguided? I'm not taking his side, I'm just curious as to what the solution to the problem would be.

<comment><USER5> I am not an expert on the subject, but I also think he is misguided here.

In the Western world, where we read from left to right and top-down, we also expect our UIs to follow that order: first you type something and then you click on a button. Also I don't know if these visual fixations are really relevant here. Power users will use the enter key, so for them it's the best, anyway, if the button gets out of the way. Computer novices, on the other hand, will look away from the screen at the keyboard, while typing.

Even Google places the search button at the right of the input bar. I am sure they have A/B tested every possible variation and this turned out to work best. Last but not least it's simply what we are accustomed to.

<comment><USER4> That's good enough for me, since it makes more sense.

A followup question: It is indeed best when the button gets out of the way. What assumptions are safe to make about the computer literacy of your visitors (i.e. they know to hit Enter to submit)?

I realize that this depends on the target demographic, but we should have a set of standards, I think. It influences everything from UI streamlining to what content goes below the fold (can we assume visitors know how or when to scroll?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This blog's made quite a few appearance on HN: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=uxmovement....](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=uxmovement.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure the content is interesting but the website's design seems dull and generic.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is so good about it?</comment>


Show HN: Weekly email of upcoming IPOs, filings and newly-public companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.iposweekly.com <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: launching a weekly newsletter to track upcoming IPOS: [https://www.iposweekly.com/](https://www.iposweekly.com/)

Tracking upcoming IPOs seems like a genuine pain point for retail investors. People periodically check IPO calendars then forget about them.

e.g. these Reddit posts: [https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/999irr/tracking_upc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/999irr/tracking_upcoming_ipos/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/SecurityAnalysis/comments/76zj0v/al...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SecurityAnalysis/comments/76zj0v/alerts_for_upcoming_ipos_spinoffs/)

So I'm launching a simple weekly newsletter of upcoming IPOs, filings and companies that just went public.

"Doesn't this exist already?" IPOScoop is often recommended as a source for this data but has no obvious newsletter. Fidelity has IPO alerts but you have to create a Fidelity account.

Finance is not an industry I know at all so I might be way off with this idea. Using [https://carrd.co/](https://carrd.co/), [https://emailoctopus.com/](https://emailoctopus.com/) and $100 in ads I can try and validate it.

If it does work the nature of the content lends itself really well to automation/ outsourcing.

Here's the link again: [https://www.iposweekly.com/](https://www.iposweekly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I love the idea, always forget to check upcoming IPOs to invest in. Just subscribed

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks!</comment></comment>


Things Are Getting Ugly In San Francisco: Protestors Stopped A Google Bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/protestors-jumped-in-front-of-a-google-bus-and-stopped-it-from-moving-2013-12

<comment><USER2> Things could be worse -- at least the protestors aren't naked.

</comment><comment><USER3> What nonsense. Who pays to stop at the curb? Why would Google pay? They're just grasping at straws, because housing prices are rising, and they want to blame something.

This is such a reach, its laughable.

<comment><USER4> Private cars get fined for stopping there.

They're not blaming the bus for high housing costs. They stopped the bus to get attention, which worked.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Dgw generates Golang struct, and simple functions from PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/achiku/dgw <comment><USER2> Cool. Is there a reason why you didn't think it would be possible to contribute/extend xo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi author of xo! It is really a great library, and many designs of dgw is inspired by xo! And, yeah, I still think it is possible to contribute/extend xo, and would love to do it. However, since our project needs composite primary key/autogenerat key compatible SQL so badly, I created my own repo to just solve our problems. Plus, it was difficult to unit test xo, since it doesn't have *_test.go file at the moment.</comment></comment>


Tesla's First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-first-quarter-deliveries-plummet-11554337912 <comment><USER2> Data point: I'm a current Tesla owner who during Q1 was in the market for replacing my remaining gas-powered car with an EV. Looking at the options available, the direction I'm seeing with respect to charging infrastructure, and the character of the company (yes, there's a touchy-feely part to me), I went with a Jaguar I-PACE instead of another Tesla. I feel that directly contributed to at least one lost potential sale for Tesla.

If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.

For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.

<comment><USER3> Jaguar, Audi, and BMW are all working on electric cars to compete directly with Tesla. These are large car companies who know how to build millions of cars per year. They have large dealer networks already in place to sell and service their cars.

Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.

<comment><USER4> Tesla builds more cars per quarter than Jaguar already. But yes, competition is (finally!) coming and that's a great thing.

<comment><USER3> Jaguar is part of Tata. If Tata gets good at manufacturing electric cars in large quantities it would be a big deal.

<comment><USER4> The point was more that Tesla has already scaled beyond the level where "these companies know how to build cars" is reasonable spin. Tesla's building plenty of cars, making money doing so, scaling rapidly, and can only be expected to be doing better still by the time those competitors arrive in the market. That's not to say that they won't be highly competetive cars, they might (I for one certainly hope they are). But you don't get to handwave away Tesla's existing success on the basis of production numbers.

Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.

<comment><USER5> They still have only 1! factory. Compared to any almost any other automotive manufacturer that is a bespoke operation.

<comment><USER6> They have greater capacity to build batteries than any other car manufacturer.

They have a greater propensity to build BEVs than any other car manufacturer, since they are all dependent on dealerships who live and die on income from servicing ICE vehicles.

There is not going to be any rapid change to BEVs from established manufacturers. It will be all talk, no action until the last dealership closes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's more or less generally agreed that Tesla has the best in class battery, charger and perhaps drive train, including motors, technology.

However, they have a single car plant and struggle with production and quality, after sales support and so on.

I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers. Something akin to Intel and computers, so that you can buy a car with _Tesla inside_. That will allow Tesla to focus on it's core strength and innovate while leaving the car manufacturing, QA, sales, support and such to traditional car companies.

<comment><USER8> You think thats bad. Tesla is about to have to head to head with all the majors who are now starting to finally harvest about a decade of their own research in the space (prompted by Teslas early success).

Musks ambitions and outbursts strike me as a man who suffers from the top killer of successful entrepreneurs, The skill/talent portability fallacy. It's this idea because you did something similar well, that your ability should port to "things like it." Seems like Tesla is going to extend itself to death.

<comment><USER9> It's probably going to turn out that the guys who've been building cars for a century can figure out battery technology faster than the battery guys figuring out how to scale auto manufacturing

<comment><USER10> All the German car manufacturers have in terms of engineerig talent and cultural is mostly mechanical, and brilliantly so.

But, the electronics suck.

Some of the most talented chemical, physical materials and electrical engineers work for Musk's companies.

You can just tell that Tesla's were not designed with teams in silos. I don't think car makers are currently capable of that.

<comment><USER11> Germany has a _lot_ of electric and chemical engineering talent - you might have heard of Bosch and BASF. These companies are already involved in the car manufacturing supply chain. "Working in silos" allows engineers to specialize and get in-depth knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I want to invest in Tesla or any other company (another ex: Boeing), I'd ask myself this q: Is this something temporary problem that smart people would easily able to overcome? Or is this something fundamental or structural issue that's gonna be there long-term. I don't see this delivery issue for Tesla dragging on beyond this quarter. Lately, I have seen specifically with Tesla that short-term concerns have been dragging down the stock way too much.

<comment><USER13> And then I would just shrug my shoulders and buy more index funds. Investing in individual companies, no matter what you think you know, is always unwise compared to index investing.

<comment><USER14> My first foray into US shares was in a managed funds which saw me lose 25% of my net worth and they still took their 1.5% fee for their service.

I decided I'd rather lose money due to my own decisions and loaded up on AAPL instead which ended up being recouping my losses and then some. I basically limit myself to major tech co's since that's where I see the consolidation of wealth ending up which has proven to be a smart bet so far. As long as I have good convictions about a company I'm happy to invest directly, maybe in retirement when I stop caring enough to follow companies closely I may consider a managed fund with a proven track record to diversify the risk.

<comment><USER13> Managed funds are a ripoff, and not index funds. There is nearly infinite data showing that S&P 500 index funds outperform every single investment strategy.

I would be focusing on bonds indexes right now though, that's just me. Good luck with the lifetime win/loss if you keep this up.

<comment><USER15> Bond funds are the one place where active management actually does make sense...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting tweet shows lots of Tesla's sitting in inventory after being rejected by customers or other problems.

[https://twitter.com/Latrilife/status/1113799586567426049](https://twitter.com/Latrilife/status/1113799586567426049)

<comment><USER17> Even worse, I was driving around the other day and saw entire parking lots full of inventory at this weird thing called a dealership, maybe GM and Ford are going under since they have all this inventory sitting there?

<comment><USER18> Most cars at dealerships don't have "dead" written on the windshield. I'm not sure what that means, but it doesn't sound that great.

<comment><USER19> _shrug_ , someone made a poor choice when assigned the task of triaging the product returns. Should've used a database or some other sort of private index, this publicity looks bad.

> Tsla was always storing cars at 761 but not this many

Production is up, ergo returns are up.

The count of units returned is useless without normalizing it against the units produced. Of course, even with that it's likely a bad score for Tesla. There have been many public reports of poor quality product leaving the factory because of Tesla's challenges scaling up production. These returns are just the inevitable outcome from those earlier reports.

<comment><USER20> > Production is up, ergo returns are up.

Production is down actually from Q4 2018.

[http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla...](http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla-q4-2018-vehicle-production-deliveries-also-announcing-2000)

> Production in Q4 grew to 86,555 vehicles

[http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla...](http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla-q1-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries)

> In the first quarter, we produced approximately 77,100 total vehicles

<comment><USER21> Production is up year over year, no?

We don't know what timeframe the tweet author is talking about. Did he mean there weren't many Tesla's there last _quarter_ or a long time ago?

<comment><USER20> > Production is up year over year, no?

I mean, that's expected for a growth company. What's unexpected for a "growth" company is a sudden halt in growth.

Why would production drop by roughly 10% and deliveries drop by 30% in one quarter? I think most people were expecting a drop of some kind due to the loss of the $7500 tax credit, but 30% drop is far larger of a drop than almost anyone ever expected.

Note that Tesla also dropped the price of all M3 by $2000. So Tesla also has lower-margins in Q1 2019 than Q4 2018. Lower-margins AND lower-volume is a pretty bad sign.

<comment><USER17> Unforeseen logistics issues when delivering to a multitude of countries.

It's not a bad sign, they have the best selling EV in the world and expect to be profitable from here on out.

If they they aren't profitable the next 3 quarters then I'd be worried.

<comment><USER20> > Unforeseen logistics issues when delivering to a multitude of countries.

Why did PRODUCTION drop? What happened to US demand? The M3 sold 61,000 Units Q4 2018 in the USA alone. Why would expanding to China + Europe lower both production and deliveries?

Why would Tesla only make 51,000 M3 cars when trying to satisfy China + US + Europe?

Note what Tesla said: > At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally.

Okay, so lets say all of those vehicles in transit were delivered in Q1. That means Tesla "would have" delivered 70,000 cars (total, S+X+3), which is still a 20% drop from the 90,000 (S+X+3) delivered in Q4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla...](http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla-q1-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries)

>we had only delivered half of the entire quarter's numbers by March 21, ten days before end of quarter

<comment><USER23> Wonder of there is a way to buy these tesla with small defects.

<comment><USER24> Yes. If you go to a Tesla store they should be able to match you with these vehicles. Plenty of datapoints on r/teslamotors

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apparently, they have 10,000 cars in transit to customers right now as part of their international roll-out. Still came in worse than the worst analyst estimates. US deliveries of the M3 also tanked in January and February after a record December. March saw an uptick, but it's still far below the December number. But this has likely to do with the end of the subsidies.

<comment><USER26> Tesla appears to have huge logistical issues in Europe and else where. From the mess with the delivery of Rich's [1] Model X or one German Youtubers[2] Model 3. Here is a video of Tesla's pilling up in a mall parking garage [3]

At this rate the company will not exist very long even if they make the best car. Why is Tesla so incompetent when it comes to logistics when others do not have these issues? Who is in charge?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxSQuGeoug8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxSQuGeoug8)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS5Q6iiQRgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS5Q6iiQRgA)

[3] [https://twitter.com/gupamf/status/1113283728640368646](https://twitter.com/gupamf/status/1113283728640368646)

<comment><USER27> _" Why is Tesla so incompetent when it comes to logistics when other do not have these issues?"_

Rapid expansion? I can't think of another car company doing nearly 400% year- on-year sales growth like Tesla has.

<comment><USER26> But how do you not plan for that? It's not that people are waiting for non existing cars. They are waiting for cars that have been produced and are sitting in lots and ship yards.

<comment><USER17> Remember how the last U.S. car company to make it to mass production was over 100 years ago?

Scaling up cars is really, really hard. It is not software.

<comment><USER28> While scaling up is hard, it's not like the expertise to scale up doesn't exist. The auto industry is pretty established, and I'm sure that there are companies and/or consultants that could help Tesla out.

<comment><USER29> Had any other car company ever scaled up as rapidly as Tesla is?

<comment><USER30> No. The last "new" American car manufacturer was GM, which was founded September 16, 1908 in Flint, MI.

"ha ha ha Tesla is so bad at logistics, they suck so much! Look how much better everyone else is!"

Imagine how much better I'd be at literally anything if you gave me a > 100 year head start!

<comment><USER31> Not only do countries other than the United States exist, but many of them are considerably better at car manufacturing.

<comment><USER30> Sure, but the article is about a new American car company, and we are discussing problems with production ramp. People often use GM or Ford for comparison, and I'm pointing out the silliness.

Most of the EU based car manufacturers are even older than GM / Ford.

<comment><USER31> By volume, the largest EU car manufacturer is Volkswagen, which barely existed before WWII. The other German manufacturers also had to start from scratch.

<comment><USER30> Volkswagen was founded May 28, 1937, and they were the fuhrer's favorite. That's still 66 years head start. I bet if I gave you a 66 year head start in virtually anything you could probably do a better job than I will when I start.

You've not disproved the underlying meaning of my statement really. I don't see why people are downvoting it as the content is sensible.

<comment><USER31> Volkswagen was used for war manufacturing pretty much as soon as they started and never manufactured commercial passenger vehicles until years _after_ the war.

If you made that point about Daimler or BMW you might have a point, because they actually made cars before being turned into Nazi war manufacturers and bombed into oblivion, but Volkswagen was never anything _but_ a Nazi war manufacturer until the end of the war.

> You've not disproved the underlying meaning of my statement really.

What, that learning how to manufacture large numbers of automobiles is a lost art from the 19th century? The underlying meaning of your statement is absolute garbage because there's half a dozen East Asian companies that figured it out since 1960, some of them even since the mid-1980's.

<comment><USER30> Ummmmm Hitler ordered the manufacturing of the Bug in April of 1934. This was before WWII.

Civilian production was _stopped_ at the start of the war, but it was definitely being built before the war, as evidenced by many historical sources.

<comment><USER31> > The construction of the new factory started in May 1938 in the new town of > "Stadt des KdF-Wagens" (modern-day Wolfsburg), which had been purpose-built > for the factory workers.[15] This factory had only produced a handful of > cars by the time war started in 1939. None were actually delivered to any > holder of the completed saving stamp books, though one Type 1 Cabriolet was > presented to Hitler on 20 April 1944 (his 55th birthday).[15]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_People's_Car_project)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> These kind of posts are good publicity right? I don't see any other car company we follow so closely on the market. Tesla is the only name I can see come up again and again here, and guess what, most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas.

<comment><USER33> I would love a Tesla if they were 50% cheaper.

I used to think that the big car companies weren't able to bring a competitive EV to market because they were bigger than Tesla and bogged down in layers of management.

Now I'm wondering if Tesla was just over marketed and overly ambitious entering the market and if these later entry EVs from main stream car companies in the next few years will be just as good at a fraction of the price.

EDIT: to clarify, I'm not comparing the price of EVs, but the price of a Tesla vs the price of a traditional gas-powered car. If I was only willing to buy an EV, then yes Tesla looks like a great deal.

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure why i'm jumping into this thread, but 50% cheaper!? You want a brand new electric car for $17.5k USD?

Even the cheapest ICE cars sold in the US have trouble hitting that number... That just seems like a completely unreasonably high bar to hold EVs to at this point since things like batteries are so much more expensive than an ICE engine.

<comment><USER35> A quick search on cars.com reveals 1,700 new cars within 50 miles of my zip code for under $15,000.

I agree that a decent EV for that price is just not practical yet, but cheap ICE cars have no trouble hitting it.

<comment><USER34> That's fair I guess, I did a cursory search and saw things from Toyota and Nissan in the $16-18k range, and I didn't really search more.

But I was also expecting to compare MSRP, but I now realize that it's not really a good comparison since Teslas are bought less like cars (with haggling and discounts) and more like a new phone (you pay the price they set). Still, I'm floored that ICE cars are that cheap!

<comment><USER35> Yeah, you can believe the MSRP for Tesla but for other cars you need to see what the local dealers are offering. (And even then, it's approximate.)

The low end gets very basic, but some people just want cheap transportation and don't care about features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Everybody knew this was coming: one month of deliveries on the boat to Europe, the availability of the 3 outside of North America affecting demand for the S & X outside of North America, and news of the Y Osborne'ing the X. The numbers for S/X are worse than expected, but I'm sure it's within the bounds of Tesla's planning scenarios.

<comment><USER37> Well, yeah, parts of it were expected. The part about accelerating the shipping of cars to China because of soft demand was a little out of the blue, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They had an order backlog, and they filled it. Now, like the rest of automotive, they're sales-limited. All the big US auto companies have been able to make more than they can sell since 1956. (In the spring of 1956, supply caught up with pent-up WWII demand. Then came the era of chrome.)

Tesla is in a business where many customers just want to pay their money and drive away with a car. Not "preorder" and wait for months. If they get it right, you'll order on line and the car will show up in a few days. The loaner should show up the day you order.

<comment><USER39> if you're in the market for a new car what makes you think being able to get one immediately is a priority?

a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make. i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.

honestly a few months seems really reasonable given the time spent making the decision?

<comment><USER40> > if you're in the market for a new car what makes you think being able to get > one immediately is a priority?

Because I'm not buying a car for fun, I'm buying one because my old beater is giving up the ghost.

> a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make.

A car is not an investment. It's an expense.

> i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of > the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.

The last time I bought a (used) car, I walked into a dealership, told the salesman what model I wanted, and asked him to show me his inventory. I looked at some cars, test-drove one, he told me to make an offer, I did, and paid cash.

I had to deal with exactly zero upsell pressure, all of five minutes of haggling, and to say 'no' twice to an offer to finance.

Be upfront about what you want, that you're ready to buy if you like what you see, and don't take any bullshit. Your dealership experience will be much better for it.

<comment><USER39> but this used car experience is not competing against a new tesla sales model..

<comment><USER3> What vkou did can easily be done with either a used car or a new car -- go to a dealership, see the inventory, test drive the car, buy it and go home with it all in the same day.

In fact, it is easier to do this with new cars because the dealers are more likely to have a car with your preferred combination of option packages in stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Official statement for reference: [http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news- release-details/tesla...](http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release- details/tesla-q1-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries)

</comment><comment><USER42> But still, the number of Tesla's driving around here in the Netherlands is just impressive. I do believe in a bright future for the Tesla car brand.

<comment><USER43> You do realize that they were subsidized a lot. If you got in early and combined it with some other subsidies the 100k model S cost about 20k. Now that the subsidy is largely gone i'd be surprised if the sales stay that high. You see the same with the Mitsubishi Outlander: sales dropped to nearly zero after the hybrid subsidy was taken away.

<comment><USER44> €80k subsidy? Surely there'd be a national outcry.

<comment><USER43> You are right, it's 70k. Source: [https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/70-000-euro-subsidie- vo...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/70-000-euro-subsidie-voor-een- dure-tesla-helemaal-terecht~b4221307/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As was expected as they re-tooled the production line and started delivering internationally.

<comment><USER45> This was possibly _expectable_. But it was not _expected_. Per their press release:"Because of the lower than expected delivery volumes…"

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What do you think is fair p/e? High share price is reflective as to the eAse that Tesla has raised capital. The trend is still very positive on increased revenue. Would be interested to know % of Tesla spend that didn't go towards current prodcucts.

Didn't realize how agressive expansion was. Tesla seems like it has not exceeded its ability to repay debt but is taking increasing risks despite making electric car market viable.

Building a semi prototype I guess is different than buying supercapacitator company for limitless recharge (prius style super capacitor battery to augment lithium ion power source) and building factories to actually build thousands of vehicles and now their batteries (Panasonic might lose monopoly)

Integrated battery manufacture alongside vehicles/power users could be next step towards decreased costs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Percent change in sales from Q4 2018 to Q1 2019

      Tesla -30% (90,700 to 63,000) (deliveries)
      Bolt -30%  (6212 to 4316) (sold)
      Leaf -33%  (4029 to 2685) (sold)

Source: ir.tesla.com, random news articles on quarterly automotive deliveries from google news.

</comment><comment><USER48> Pre-market is... not looking very understanding this morning for $TSLA, to say the least.

<comment><USER49> If you look at the bigger picture, it's lost about one week of gains and it's been rising and falling 10% for a while now

<comment><USER50> It does often seem that any news report about TSLA "soaring" or "plummeting" turns out to really just be a small'ish osscilation. At this point I tend to take most of these with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER29> The media tends to overstate how much a single story moves a stock. Not limited to Tesla, and I would say 10% is actually one of the larger movements than is typically associated with a single story within a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> As a Tesla Model S owner I'm not at all surprised that the sales of the S and X are down. They are pushing the Model 3 hard, so hard that they dropped the reasonably priced S and X models from their lineup.

There is a huge price gap between the 3 and the S now and the differences between the cars is so slight that it doesn't make sense to buy an S today. Even worse the S and X haven't had their interior update yet so they look old compared to the 3.

</comment><comment><USER52> [https://www.fleetcarma.com/electric-vehicle- outlook-2019/](https://www.fleetcarma.com/electric-vehicle-outlook-2019/)

There are 3 million EVs on the road today, of which around 2 million reside in China

</comment><comment><USER53> Tesla vehicle deliveries in first quarter:

Q1 2019: 63,000

Q1 2018: 29,980

Q1 2017: 25,000

Q1 2016: 14,820

Q1 2015: 10,045

Q1 2014: 6,457

Q1 2013: 4,900

Q1 2012: 0

Visual chart: [https://twitter.com/EcoHeliGuy/status/1113648662054199297](https://twitter.com/EcoHeliGuy/status/1113648662054199297)

</comment><comment><USER54> This figure makes me wonder how other car manufacturers are able to generate demand. Honda alone sells 1m+ cars per year in the US. For all the news, Tesla will likely make 400k deliveries during entire year around the world.

<comment><USER55> Tesla's market is extremely niche. Luxury car to an uneducated car buyer.

Car enthusiasts won't get a Tesla because Tesla's ARE inferior to the competition at that price point.

You don't buy a Tesla because you want your car to work for 2 years without breaking, you buy a Tesla to show friends.

I know luxury Ford products sold 20k/yr, and those were some seriously high end SUVs. Same price point.

I cannot see how Teala is sustainable.

Edit, the reliability problems aren't unique to Tesla, any new car has them. I don't understand why people straight lie about it not having reliability issues.

<comment><USER56> Teslas are superior, not inferior. It's simple physics, BEV means higher acceleration, lower center of gravity, better cabin volume, quieter, and most importantly: you don't contribute nearly as much to destroying the climate or causing asthma and emphysema in children. How do you counter these basic BEV advantages? Are you in favor of releasing emissions for thousands of years?

<comment><USER55> This is a Strawman comment, from an uneducated car buyer.

There are plenty of higher quality electric vehicles.

The acceleration is one tiny aspect of customer satisfaction.

Tesla has worst in class interiors and reliability. Not having buttons or trays is something only Tesla can get away with.

Is it better for the environment to buy a used car? Or better for the environment to buy a new car?

<comment><USER57> Just to let you know, you've now called anyone who disagrees with your opinion "uneducated" multiple times. This really rubs me the wrong way.

You need to realize that other people have different priorities than you do. Not everyone cares that their car be as luxury as possible. They just want a good electric vehicle, and there's nothing that beats the Model 3 at that price point -- not in range and not in performance. Yeah, maybe it doesn't have leather seats as nice as the BMW, but most people don't prioritize surface-level luxury above all else, and especially not hardware/car nerds.

<comment><USER58> FWIW i've owned 3 BMWs and a 2018 Mercedes and I _much_ prefer the seats -- both from a comfort and materials perspective -- in my Model 3 (2nd gen seats).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Tesla has come a long way when 70k cars manufactured and 63k delivered is considered a bad result. 10 years back they were making 10 cars a quarter

</comment><comment><USER60> is now a good time to buy? [serious]

<comment><USER61> Now is a good time to buy put options.

<comment><USER62> Is that not technically untrue as this is already priced, with options being very expensive due to high implied volatility now?

<comment><USER63> You'll know when your options expire ^_^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Tesla Inc. said new-vehicle deliveries in the first quarter fell 31% from > the previous three months

Wait a second, so this isn't a year-over-year number? Don't shipments of basically everything fluctuate seasonally? Is this even a meaningful metric?

Alas, the paywall prevents me from knowing. But in general "people buy 31% more high end cars around the holidays" doesn't seem like a clearly incorrect hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER64> So with a click baitey title, can we get a TLDR?

</comment><comment><USER65> Has anyone ever calculated the total environmental impact of a Tesla?

It seems that Power Stations + Millions of Tons of mining for rare earth minerals must make this a mega-polluter?

<comment><USER30> Admittedly a biased source, but their reasoning seems sensible: [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-greener-think-getting- greene...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-greener-think-getting-greener-look- manufacturing/)

As the cost of solar + wind + static storage drop, the more renewable energy sources are used to power factories. The more renewable source used to power factories, the greater the impact on the vehicle. In this, Tesla leads the way.

<comment><USER65> It is helpful that the author quantified some of the issues, however there are many factors involved:

* Does the authors CO2 estimates for battery production actually include "mining" or just "assembly"? From reading it, it seems to just include assembly of final components into a battery.

* Moving tons of rare-earth minerals from Point A to Point B for battery production requires yet more CO2 output.

* Wind + Solar still requires massive batteries somewhere, which still requires massive mining operations.

Further, with $40 shale oil now a reality, its getting harder to make the economic case.

<comment><USER66> Which rare earth are you talking about, and in which quantity?

<comment><USER65> Those who really care about the environment, know that reuse and recycling are the best approaches. So, you could buy a 15-yr old Toyota or Hyundai, since that carbon footprint already exist. You shouldn't be needlessly creating more deadly CO2.

Further, in terms of energy density: solar, wind, coal, natural gas all pack far less joules per gram than petroleum.

These are inconvenient truths that unfortunately conflict with the slick marketing messages of your luxury golf cart salesman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> It feels wrong that they charge for autopilot when it's just software--they should give it away for free. This really affects how I feel about buying a Tesla when it's in the cart. I wonder if sales would go up if they just gave it away for free, and if the economics still work out.

<comment><USER17> This comment made my head hurt so bad.

You pay for software all the time?

<comment><USER67> Sure, it just feels wrong in this case. Who wants a Tesla without autopilot? If they're trying to sell as many as possible, give the software away for free.

<comment><USER17> Now that you mention it, if they're trying to sell as many as possible, why not just give away the car for free? People love free cars.

<comment><USER67> That's just bad for business.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free Syrian Army homemade tank uses PlayStation controller in fight against ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/3/6905541/free-syrian-army-homemade-tank-uses-playstation-controller-in-fight

<comment><USER2> Necessity is the mother of invention.</comment>


Zelda De-make - <AUTHOR> http://labs.benpurdy.com/zelda/ <comment><USER2> The associated blog post from Ben Purdy: [http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking- zelda](http://www.benpurdy.com/blog/2014/3/demaking-zelda)

<comment><USER3> What technique is being described here? : "I decided that the map would contain as much game data as possible... I could tweak the placement of things using photoshop rather than having to hunt down data in a text editor."

Does this mean he used some kind of PSD to level compiler? If so, where can I find such a software?

<comment><USER4> Presumably it just means that the engine constructs the levels from an exported image (such as a png, not a psd), instead of creating the levels from a more complicated data system. Because he knows the exact sizes of things, and "sprites" are a 1 to 1 mapping to game objects, he can easily do this. In a more complex game this would be impossible, but it works very well for his purposes.

<comment><USER5> Simcity 4k uses a similar technique for the region definitions. They're actually just an image file, each pixel represents the size of the different city zones, and IIR the RGB color of the pixel had some property as well. So if you wanted a region with all small or all big cities, you just opened up the file and edited it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just wish I could see my current orientation! (Seriously though—from a given screen, I have no idea what the result of A is going to do or what the arrow keys are going to do. If i'm at a square and facing left, hitting the left arrow key will move me left, but if i'm facing any other direction, hitting left will rotate me. It's important that I know which way I'm facing.)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I thought about that problem quite a bit. I decided it's just gotta be one of the challenges to playing this thing, otherwise I'd have to cheat and use something more complex than a single pixel (or add some kind of transparent or blinking "cursor" in front of the player).

<comment><USER8> How about single-pixels-with-(8-bit-looking-)textures? A slight gradient darkening away from the "front" of the character would make all the difference.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly what I had had in mind for a solution. It's an aesthetic compromise but, in my opinion, a boon to gameplay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a fantastic commentary on what makes a game fun. I'm always intrigued by titles that require nearly no art skills. "Thomas Was Alone" kind of surprised me in that way too because it was successful side by side with other titles on Steam while using an art style that was so simplistic almost anyone could have done it.

<comment><USER10> Hmm. I don't think that saying "Thomas Was Alone" required nearly no art skills is fair at all. If your only definition of "art" is static, visual art that comes across in a screenshot, then sure, but that's not all that there is to art, and it's not even the hardest part of a video game.

Just writing off the polish given to the jump physics, the water, the narration, the small touches like dynamic lighting and rain, and everything else as "not art" doesn't sit right.

<comment><USER9> I meant drawing skills. I agree with you it's not a fair characterization of art at all, but probably a mistake on my part due to years of "art" class in school which was typically resigned to painting/drawing/crafts none of which I was any good at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This quickly went from "I'll play for just a minute" to "where are those darn last triforce pieces!?" Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know. I find that pretty frustrating, because I've no idea what I'm picking up and having in front of me or what I can do. It's probably only interesting if you know the original by heart...

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty good work. Didn't like it at first but then ended up playing it for a few minutes, even though I wasn't in the mood for playing games. I noticed one thing though, I looked into the code (it's neat and tidy!) and the game logic (updates) was built into the render function that gets called with requestAnimationFrame. Might be a problem on devices that aren't refreshing @60 hertz because the game runs as fast as the user's monitor.

<comment><USER7> Good point. At 30hz I expect it'd be like playing it on the NES when too many enemies were on screen at once.. This flaw crossed my mind when I was building the game, I decided to just ignore it and hope most people are running at 60hz rather than tie all the various game timing to fractional deltas or implement one of those fixed delta game loops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Memory is an interesting thing. I haven't played the original Zelda in many many years and immediately knew where to go when I was dropped into the game.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not only does Ben seem to have infinite energy for making cool shit, he's also a nice guy.

Nice!

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of the end of REDDER[1]. Strip away the aesthetics of any modern game, and you've got something very similar to this.

[1] [http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992](http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/529992)

<comment><USER16> I hadn't played REDDER before. It's pretty fun. Reminds me of Metroid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've long thought a minimalistic style like this could be very useful in teaching game design and discussing game mechanics. You can learn a lot about a game by breaking it down like this.

<comment><USER17> You may be interested in Jeremy Parish's "Anatomy of a Game" series: [http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a- game/](http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/)

<comment><USER5> Interested is too mild a word. This is fantastic, Jeremy Parish is also a legend in the retrogaming community. Retronauts (old and new) is a must listen to podcast.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I've been following his work for a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for taking the time to make it work on mobile devices.

<comment><USER7> It works?!? hehe.. I jammed mobile controls in late last night after seeing a lot of mobile traffic on the analytics, only had my phone for testing so I'm assuming it's buggy depending on the device, glad it's working for you!

<comment><USER19> Mostly works... The buttons tend to get "stuck" on or unclickable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Played for a good 15 minutes. Nice job.

Just finished A Link Between Worlds for 3DS. Highly recommended for Zelda fans.

</comment><comment><USER21> Really nice. Reminds me of ZZT.

<comment><USER22> ZZT was brilliant. So simple and abstract visually, but it was programmable! I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for all the hours spent writing ZZT-OOP.

<comment><USER23> I found a copy of Burger Time and played through it the other month, after not playing it since I was a kid... some of the games people made with ZZT are extremely creative and a lot of fun, even if they seem pretty crude now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This has been awesome. Thanks! I was kinda disappointed that I didn't need to get to Death Mountain after getting the 8 pieces. A 1-pixel Ganon would be cool!

<comment><USER7> I would have loved to get that in there, but I finished the win/die screens just minutes before midnight at the end of the 48 hour limit, it almost wasn't winnable at all.. Putting Ganon in would be fun, but I need to call this project finished or I'll just keep adding stuff forever. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Awesome! But the secret passages do not appear to be there... :P

<comment><USER26> I tried moving and bombing so many tiles!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is very well done.</comment>


Real Estate Will Always Be The Best Investment: Time To Augment It - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/08/augmented-real-estate/ <comment><USER2> A horrible post. It's complete lack of substance is appalling. As a guy whose specialized in real estate at pwc and as a real estate agent in my early years.

I can tell you that the economics of real estate is a dead horse depending on the amount of down payment, region and interest rates.

I had created a spreadsheet that shows the annuals losses with net present value and time value of money. If I can find it then I'll post it.</comment>


Show HN: Ghit.me – hit counter badges for GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://ghit.me/ <comment><USER2> Does it really work? Because [https://camo.githubusercontent.com/61a470c896d89cc50b78b606b...](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/61a470c896d89cc50b78b606b42c766d1afb0000/68747470733a2f2f676869742e6d652f62616467652e7376673f7265706f3d62656e77696c6265722f62617368696473) images on GitHub READMEs are cached by GitHub.

<comment><USER2> I guess refreshing the above link repeatedly answers the question: the images are not cached, just proxied through camo.githubusercontent.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah Github's proxy [1] respects Cache-Control headers, so it will just pass through.

[1][https://github.com/atmos/camo](https://github.com/atmos/camo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> ...but why? I guess hit counters were cool in 1993 but Github has much more meaningful data there on display already: forks, stars, PRs, etc. Not sure how hit counters help?

<comment><AUTHOR> People like to see how many "hits" their stuff gets, especially in real time. Of course those other engagements are a lot more meaningful.</comment></comment>


Brain teaser: what does this switch statement print? - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/theonewolf/5486167 A nefarious programming bug awaiting all C programmers...especially when coding on low sleep! <comment><USER2> Every time I forget to type "case " I'm instantly corrected when my editor (rightly) removes all indentation and puts the label on the leftmost column.

<comment><AUTHOR> vim? My editor does this too thank God :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No discussion of C switch statements is complete without a reference to Duff's device: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duffs_device>

<comment><AUTHOR> You had me at: "interlacing the structures of a switch and a loop"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not really a brain teaser: the only case being the default, and the rest simply being labels, makes for a very straightforward program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, the point being that you can compile an "almost correct"-looking switch statement with labels instead of actual case statements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't you need to say "case" before every case statement?

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely the issue, very easy to miss, still compiles, looks normal.

<comment><USER6>
        $ echo $CFLAGS
        -Werror -Wall -Wextra -Wold-style-definition -Wmissing-declarations -Wredundant-decls -Wmissing-noreturn -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Wwrite-strings -Winline -Wformat-nonliteral -Wformat-security -Wswitch-enum -Wswitch-default -Winit-self -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wundef -Waggregate-return -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wnested-externs -std=c11 -pedantic

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice safer CFLAGS :-) But yeah, that's why this is a "brain teaser" rather than a "compiler teaser." It's not that it _can't_ be caught with a compiler, just that it's easy to miss and acceptable to compilers with default flags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this supposed to reveal something insightful about switch statements in C?

<comment><AUTHOR> That you can compile with with labels instead of _any_ actual case statements :-) although your source, at a cursory glance, looks like it has valid cases defined.

<comment><USER8> This is why you compile with -Wall and -Werror...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How obvious!

And yet I missed it :(

</comment><comment><USER10> -Wswitch-enum

<comment><USER6> -Werror=switch-enum -Werror=unused-label

(but you get the point :D)

<comment><AUTHOR> that's why it's a "Brain teaser" and not a "compiler teaser."

If you were inspecting code without a compiler it's easier to miss.

The standard '-Wall -Werror' catches it (arguably, it'd be nice if everyone _at least_ did -Wall by default).</comment></comment></comment>