Traffic Engineers' Epic Fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/15/traffic-engineers-epic-fail <comment><USER2> Traffic engineers didn't decide to put two different school across from one another. Perhaps they could have built the elementary school and high school on the same side of the street? Like say, in the giant empty field right there next to the school (pictured in the article).

Traffic engineers didn't decide to put the school on a busy arterial State- Designated Highway. Syracuse Utah has just 6 main arterial roads, and over 50+ small slow neighborhood streets. 90% of the roads in this town are _already_ slow side streets safe for children (the exact ones StrongTowns advocates for), why did they build the schools _exclusively_ on the 5% of roads designated to handle actual traffic needs?

\--

Ironically, we have a safer way to build streets like this. It's called a freeway, and it's great because it keeps nearly 100% grade-separation between people driving and people walking, while still handling massive transit requirements at high speeds. But we can't have those in cities, because StrongTowns hates them. They are too safe, promote affordable housing too much, and let people get to too many places too quickly.

StrongTowns gets the luxury of claiming every street should be impossible to drive on, and can prattle on about how cheap it is to destroy a street (it costs nothing!). Because StrongTowns does not do any actual engineering or design, they are simply a political campaign against cars.

Real traffic engineers have to actually handle transportation needs of real citizens everyday. Real traffic engineers don't get the luxury of just wishing away peoples lives, or jobs, or homes. So while I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, I don't see anything wrong with traffic engineers work here.

I see a school system that decided building two schools on opposite sides of a "State Highway 108" was a great idea, and is now suffering terrible consequences because of it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Route_108](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Route_108)

<comment><USER3> You haven't even established the timeline here. In any case, it doesn't matter, _someone_ decided to put a crosswalk across a four-lane 40 mph road. There is no world where this is acceptable design backed by evidence.

And in any case, if the tradeoff you are suggesting is dead kids versus "impossible to drive on, war on cars" I'm sure where an engineers opinion will fall. But traffic engineers aren't all that.

<comment><USER2> > if the tradeoff you are suggesting is dead kids versus "impossible to drive > on, war on cars"

It never was. The suggestion is "don't put kids in the few areas of the city specifically marked as dangerous".

It's like building a school inside of a river, watching kids drown, and suggesting the _water_ is at fault and should get out of the way. Or building a school on an airport runway and complaining the noise scares the children and suggesting the _airplanes_ are at fault and should land elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> We mark areas as "dangerous" and thats it? A kid is dead, but really, its noones fault?

I'm afraid your thinking on this is roughly 60 years behind. Of course vehicular deaths are not "natural".

<comment><USER4> >A kid is dead, but really, its noones fault?

You don't don't seem to be reading what the OP is writing. They are clearly laying the blame at the feet of the people who decided to build 2 schools on opposite sides of a dangerous street. Where are you getting "it's no ones fault"

<comment><USER3> Nobody cares there are schools there. It has no bearing on the safety of street design. There are sidewalks, the infamous crosswalk over 40 mph lanes: clearly it's a residential area.

To blame the school placement (likely decided by the very same governmental body doing the street design) is the epitome of the problem here: "what are the pedestrians doing on my street".

<comment><USER4> You just completely ignored my post . You don't seem to be reading what people are writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A side note but something that this article relates to. Here in Pacific Beach California, the traffic engineers have created a perfect storm of pedestrian danger. See, they've installed these lighted flashing crosswalk signs activated by a button on a pole. Awesome idea, as a pedestrian I can hit a button and think that drivers are alerted to my crossing.. as a driver I no longer have to search the shadows on sidewalks for pedestrians because of the lights. Now as a pedestrian and a driver I'm conditioned to depend on the lights.. but now that they've been in place for months the lights are failing and public works doesn't replace them regularly. We now depend on the lights to keep peds safe, and their unreliability is an accedent waiting to happen.

<comment><USER6> London is the opposite: red lights are merely advisory for pedestrians. People just cross the streets. That has trained drivers to be very attentive.

Add in that usual London traffic moves at about bicycle speed, and the central part of town is a very human friendly place.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty great, and the bike lanes just keep getting better.

<comment><USER6> Yes. It's gotten so good that I feel the main impediment to cycling has become air quality rather than cars.

<comment><USER8> Those factors seem to be related, don't they? b^)

<comment><USER6> At most tangentially.

I am glad they added a new "t-charge" (similar to the older congestion charge) to specifically target cars with worse emissions recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes car drivers have to slow down. Maybe on a big, straight street. Maybe on a state highway. Maybe on the main street in town. Even in those situations, if there is a crosswalk in regular use for most of the day, they've got to slow down. If they don't, the street must be changed until they do. That is the most important task a traffic engineer in small-town Utah has. It shouldn't take 15 crashes in 5 years to prompt that action. It shouldn't take an additional fatal crash with a child victim to prompt it.

Anyone who doesn't understand any part of this should never drive on public roads.

<comment><USER9> You can put all the speed limit signs you want on that street, but it doesn't change the fact that the road is too wide and straight and people will go the speed they feel comfortable at, regardless of the signs.

That street needs to be narrowed, have parked cars on the side, have speed tables, a boulevard, dynamic feedback signs, or other traffic calming measures. Physical objects and changes to the environment are what cause drivers to slow down in urban environments, not flimsy metal signs.

There have been numerous studies and research projects on this. Here's one by the Federal Highway Administration showing the effects of various traffic calming techniques in situations just like this one: [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/08067/](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/08067/)

<comment><USER8> You're preaching to the choir. All of that stuff is what I meant when I said "If they don't [slow down], the street must be changed until they do." I assumed there were already signs in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Compelling article, but marred by the click-baity title. It would be more respectful of the bereaved to reserve "Epic Fail" for things less tragic than the loss of a child. "Tragic Failure" might be more appropriate.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, "Epic Fail" in my mind is most associated with humor from meme culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems like it couldn't hurt (even if cars drove 20 mph) for the crosswalk to be about 10 times more visible as well. There's a small sign, but people don't always notice those, nor do they often think to look for them on a stretch of road not near an intersection.

And in fact, based on Google Street View imagery, it appears they are in the process of doing exactly that:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-112.0647278,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-112.0647278,3a,75y,20.28h,88.49t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1snEiLYiNnALhLbENgKyO3rg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

My city has some crosswalks with big, obvious flashing lights similar to this, and they really catch your attention more. Some of them have button that immediately turns the flashing lights on so you don't really have to wait for lights to cycle like you do at a normal intersection, which probably makes them more effective.

<comment><USER13> The four lane street (San Antonio south of El Camino) near where I live used to just have painted crosswalks but after two pedestrians were killed in a short span of time they added the flashing lights in the crosswalk to the ones close to El Camino and Foothill, no one has been killed crossing the street in the ten years since even though traffic anecdotally seems to have gone up a lot (knock on wood).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How about actual civil engineering and commute design?

DO NOT have public schools and other such facilities RIGHT NEXT to the high speed corridors.

Those belong in the middle of residential areas.

Design it for the safety of the pedestrians too. Some nice unclimbable walls that clearly show no other path across than the crosswalk (with as another reply stated, should be BRIGHT and VISIBLE).

Yes, there should be safety space between the road and that wall; but it should deny reward for skipping the crosswalk.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Traffic Engineers' Epic Fail"

"Let's Turn this Dangerous, Expensive Road Back into a Safe Neighborhood Street"

"Dying to Widen Highways - Oregon's DOT seems to be more concerned with making cars go faster than saving lives."

The site seems to have a rather ... specific focus.

<comment><USER16> It's a blog about city planning that is espousing a contrarian view. It isn't limited to cars, but it does take a strong point that designing cities around cars has significant consequences.

<comment><USER9> Strong Towns has far from a contrarian view.

Perhaps to civil & traffic engineers, but to urban planners, it is well known the detrimental effects streets can have on cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _The street separating these two schools in Syracuse was designed for speed, > which means it was designed to kill._

This is hyperbole. The street is designed to efficiently move car traffic. The design error here is in creating a situation where a large number of children will walk across it. The author's goal appears to be to design streets so that they make getting hit by a car less deadly, which strikes me as perverse.

It's certainly possible to make the street better for walking across by making it worse at efficiently moving car traffic, but it's also possible to replace the crosswalk with a pedestrian overpass and eliminate the conflict entirely.

<comment><USER18> Any street that doesn't seriously consider the safety of people needing to cross it is functionally a wall or a hazard, whatever the uses surrounding it. If you create a conflict and _don 't try to make it less deadly_, how do you describe that?

Pedestrian overpasses require those who cross to physically _climb over_ traffic. Better than a wall, but let's acknowledge the cost of that. They're also enormous and expensive, whether you design them terribly or well.[1]

The calming proposals include: narrower lanes, a raised median, and a traffic light to explicitly priortize and protect pedestrians when crossing. What about those makes them an imposition?

[1] [https://candysdirt.com/2016/04/28/fugly-pedestrian-bridge- ha...](https://candysdirt.com/2016/04/28/fugly-pedestrian-bridge-harry-hines- walnut-hill-cost-us-4-6-million/) [http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Footbridge-an- eleg...](http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Footbridge-an-elegant-new- icon-in-East-Bay-3171157.php)

<comment><USER17> Requiring people to climb over traffic doesn't seem like an unreasonable imposition in most cases. That sort of physical activity is even a health benefit for most people. I'm sure there are exceptions.

All of the calming proposals create an imposition. The whole point of traffic calming is to impede the flow of traffic so as to reduce its speed. Without effective alternatives, reducing the speed of this road reduces its capacity to get people from one part of town to another, and it appears that state road 108 is, in fact a major road. It provides access to a number of businesses including a Walmart supercenter, churches, four public schools and city hall.

The obvious alternative to driving is a public bus service, which also uses the road. It stops near the two schools hourly most times of day.

So to make the interaction of the road and the schools safer, the city could redesign the road and make traffic worse, more substantially redesign the whole transportation infrastructure, or add a pedestrian overpass. The latter is not an insignificant project, but it usually costs less than the examples you linked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My condolences to the family. I hope this can learn to valuable learning from this loss of life.

Really interested in what data analysis is done in the states regarding (KSI - Killed and Serious Injured). In the UK we hold good data and can related designs and design improvement to the KSI.

I strongly agree with the article, we should aim for zero-killed. The balance can be vehicle congestion vs. space vs. cost vs. time. Because our modelling is very good we can tell the impact of a new school and the behaviour of the pedestrians. I could talk about the hierarchy of roads, but Traffic Engineers need to start influencing the politicians that make some of the decisions. How ? - By clear data and model that show with this design you will have this KSIs.

</comment><comment><USER20> Every time I travel to the USA on business I am aghast by how poorly the cities are designed for use by human beings, and how evident it is that the free mobility of automobiles is the primary consideration of urban design.

Just look at those pictures. How can anyone live in that area and not think that they live in an environment and society that is openly hostile to pedestrians (school children)?

<comment><USER21> In this kind of place, humans receive cars two years before they receive personhood (16 to drive vs. 18 to be the sole signer on a bank account). Thinking of drivers and people in general as separate categories is nonsensical. If a place isn't easy to drive to and park at, then it _isn 't_ designed for the human beings who live in American suburbia.

Mainstream American culture holds that it is apartment buildings and street life which are the true menaces to children. From the Street View, this place would be considered ideal to raise a family, because there's plenty of room for huge houses and huge yards/open nature areas between them.

That children can't transport themselves beyond the closed-world snow-globe of your immediate subdivision is considered a feature, as it limits the trouble they can get into. The most they should be doing without your accompaniment (in this mindset) is playing with other neighborhood kids in parks or in each other's houses.

<comment><USER22> Your first sentence here is most interesting to me. This is an aspect of car culture that's sometimes overlooked, but what it does is infantilize adolescents and provide an arbitrary blocker to normal human behavior (e.g. shopping, visiting cafes alone, etc) until the child is old enough to drive to those places. A kid in Manhattan is _in_ society and has access to everything his parents do. A kid in the suburbs is _outside_ society, in some very meaningful sense. His access to the broader culture is mediated through television, perhaps, but he's not actually _there_. He visits society when his parents feel like driving him there. [0]

Who is surprised, then, that the car represents freedom to so many of these kids? Where I grew up, a car was needed for _everything_ , which meant that I had almost no access to the normal world at age 15 and almost unlimited access on my 16th birthday.

Like a fish who doesn't know what water is, most Americans don't even realize that car culture is all around them. And an appreciation for the status quo is baked in _very early._ The car is simply how you get places. How could it be any other way?

[0] I think this is actually really important. A twelve-year-old should be able to pick up some groceries, mail a letter, grab a bite to eat at a lunch counter, and so on, but these basic acts of socialization are completely alien to suburban kids.

<comment><USER23> As somebody who has bad knees, 11 acres, horses, a goat, a dog, and some cats, I really do love car culture. It might be unpopular to say it, but I personally think big wide streets with lots of parking that make point-to- point personal transport possible are simply awesome. I lived downtown in my area for a while - yes, I could walk to a lot of places and I didn't drive my car as much, but I also absolutely _hated_ it. My next move was to skip right past the suburbs and into the fringe of farmland, and I now commute ~17 minutes and ~16 miles to work every day (80% 80mph freeway), and I love it. I get to have my tractor _and_ my software engineering job. God Bless 'Murica :-D.

<comment><USER22> I think your situation is great! The problem arises when you have a million or so people who all want that same experience in the same small area. It just doesn't work very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is bullshit. A street designer has one job, to make the street good for driving. It is pedestrians responsibility to look and cross safely. It is driver's responsibility to not hit people who may have strayed onto the street. It is the car's responsibility to detect a human and apply the brakes automatically. It seems only the street designer did his job properly.

<comment><USER25> I'd love to agree with you, but unfortunately as humans we are not infallible. We cannot rely on people to look in every direction and see every hazard constantly. The driver may have been distracted, for example by sun strike, and the pedestrian may have not seen the car due to its colour.

Roads need to be designed for their purpose, and their purpose also includes allowing pedestrians to cross safely even if the pedestrian and the driver suffer from a momentary distraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Um, what isn't being pointed out is that there is a freakin' WalMart Supercenter _right around the corner_. That road is a thoroughfare--this isn't the "middle of nowhere" like the picture makes it look.

I have lots of questions: Why isn't there a pedestrian bridge? Why are the schools on opposite sides of the road when there is obviously land on the same side? Why is there a major thoroughfare in front of a school?

I know the answer: nobody is willing to sign off with _money_ until the outcry is large enough. It seems like the traffic engineers know that there is a problem (15 accidents in the last 5 years and a traffic light plan already in flight), but you can tell from the article that all their solutions are _cheap_.

That tells me everything I need to know.

<comment><USER27> Here's my guesses...

> Why isn't there a pedestrian bridge?

Signals that you don't really care about people walking or people with disabilities and want them to drive.

Ok, that was flippant, I realize, but the only time I've seen anyone use prefer overpasses and such is the Vegas strip and that's because it is outright hostile to walk next to or across.

> Why is there a major thoroughfare in front of a school?

Everybody is driven to school. Look at the land use around the school.

<comment><USER28> There are tons of pedestrian bridges in Hong Kong, for instance [0]. This is over a complicated intersection with a large street that has a lot of bus traffic, so it makes more sense for people to go up and over to cross the street rather than for there to be ground-level crossings with confusing traffic patterns. Hong Kong is very pedestrian friendly.

[0] [http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/45505811.jpg](http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/45505811.jpg)

<comment><USER29> Just for further illustration, from my own childhood in a less dense, car obsessed town/city:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.2516734,149.0794549,3a,60y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.2516734,149.0794549,3a,60y,291.49h,100.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sG9qOa- UzdIq9I7tGG3u63A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en)

[https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.4122069,149.1282473,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@-35.4122069,149.1282473,3a,75y,101.8h,89.15t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1so2pZf3ZrIQUWgQ2qqHoS7A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why is the math wrong if this is a "traffic engineer"?

> A quick physics lesson: The force of impact from a car increases > quadratically with speed. This means that doubling the speed quadruples the > force of the impact.

That is absolutely not what quadratically means.

<comment><USER31> It's not? I'm not a mathematician, but Wikipedia says "In mathematics, a function or sequence is said to exhibit quadratic growth when its values are proportional to the square of the function argument or sequence position."

<comment><USER30> That's my point. The wiki definition you have cited is correct, but it doesn't compute with the article.

<comment><USER32> I'll save everyone else the trouble.

The original data is from [https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2011Pedest...](https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeed.pdf)

If you look, on page 9, you can see the plots of impact speed vs risk of death. They are clearly non-linear, and they you can also read that they tried various fitting methods for missing data (and quadratic best fit things).

I'm just guessing that you are confused because it does not appear the constant for the x^2 term is >1.

<comment><USER33> Quadratic relationship is between the speed and force of impact.

If you want to accelerate pedestrian to certain speed you have to pump kinetic energy into him. You do that by applying a force over some distance (distance is how much pedestrian will squish during impact before it starts moving with the car) so to acellerate to double speed, you need to pump in quadruple energy, you need to quadruple the force since squishing distance is the same (until you reach speeds that pulverize pedestrian bones).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is your python editors? - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors <comment><USER2> Vim. Since it would be possible to do something like this:

      :! sudo find / -name "python" -exec rm -rf {} \;

</comment><comment><USER3> Pycharm for larger projects and database stuff or just vim if I'm hacking a small one-off script

</comment><comment><USER4> atom/vscode almost exclusively for the last year

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am curious to know your favorite python text editor or IDE you use.</comment>


What Datebase System Do You Use? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious what database system you use. MySQL? PostgreSQL? CouchDB? SQL Server? Who rolls their own? <comment><USER2> PostgreSQL. Sun's purchase of MySQL is making it suck, to me that is.

</comment><comment><USER3> mysql, mostly because it is easy and i don't have any projects that run into mysql's shortcomings or aren't DB agnostic. might eventually switch to postgre.</comment>


Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test - <AUTHOR> http://lacker.io/ai/2020/07/06/giving-gpt-3-a-turing-test.html <comment><USER2> >"Ten years ago, if I had this conversation, I would have assumed the entity on the other end was a human. You can no longer take it for granted that an AI does not know the answer to "common sense" questions."

[...]

>"Now we're getting into surreal territory. GPT-3 knows how to have a normal conversation. It doesn't quite know how to say "Wait a moment… your question is nonsense." It also doesn't know how to say "I don't know."

"GPT-3, why do two wrongs not make a right -- but three lefts, do?" <g>

</comment><comment><USER3> Good read, but I wish the author would have conducted a better Turing test by having someone that does not know beforehand interface with the AI. Add a control, find more people for both acting as control and participating in discrimination, and it would have been fascinating to see the results of such a test.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if it's just coincidence that all the "heavier" answers are whatever was listed second.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's just coincidence. A lot of "A or B" questions tend to have B as the correct answer with the first option just being there to confuse the reader. I find it likely that a statistical algorithm would pick up on that.</comment></comment>


Startup School Final Speaker List - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/startup-school-final-speaker-list <comment><USER2> I wonder: do these people follow Hacker News?

<comment><USER3> Paul Buchheit seems to visit regularly: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paul>

You may also have noticed Paul Graham: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg>

I'm not aware of accounts of any of the others, though I'd be surprised if most of them hadn't heard of HN, especially the investors.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what I would make of the billionaire Mark Zuckerberg squandering his time by reading my useless comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weirdly I was just reading about an Australian version of this concept:

<http://www.startupschool.com.au/>

<comment><USER5> Hmmm... sounds shady... $998, only ten participants, and they imply that one of the reasons the fee is that high is because they spent it on advertising?

One of the speakers founded rentoid.com - which seems pretty cool at first glance. The other apparently founded a startup that sells ideas for $423.

Actually I'm sure they're legit, but it's a ripoff compared to the real Startup School. Even if I lived in Australia, I'd still pay for a ticket and fly to California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a great mix of rising stars and longtime veterans in a wide range of fields.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know what I'll be doing this Saturday!

<comment><USER3> Following the coverage on Justin.TV in my case. Hopefully by next year I'll be able to afford to fly out to CA and experience it live.

<comment><USER8> Think it's worth it to see this kind of thing via a video link?

I'm not convinced - most of the value I get out of going to conferences is in meeting other people. If anything good or interesting gets said, it's usually all over the internet quickly in any case, meaning that I don't really need to sit there watching N hours of video.

Looks like a fun one though; YC and its offshoots are one of the few things that manage to make me miss the bay area a little bit.

<comment><USER3> Oh, absolutely. Better than nothing though, I guess. Flying out there isn't something I can do on a whim right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reads like a whos who of... fill in the blank.</comment>


X-Ray Backscatter Imaging Safety From Basic Principles - <AUTHOR> http://compilerbitch.livejournal.com/218216.html

<comment><USER2> Here's my take on the post from a radiation physics point of view.

I'm not convinced that these pose a great radiation risk. I would be mostly concerned about people with genetic conditions, who could not normally undergo x-rays, but then again flying itself might be worse from a radiation point of view. I'm much more concerned about the civil liberties issue.

 _Firstly, I'll say one thing: there is no such thing as a truly safe radiation dose._

The problem with this statement is that there is very poor data for low dose, long term exposure. And as you can imagine, it's not exactly easy to set up controlled experiments. The generally accepted model is the linear, no threshold model, which agrees with his statement. But there is some evidence for a threshold limit (below which cancer doesn't occur) and slight evidence that small amounts of radiation is actually beneficial (hormesis).

 _At a fundamental level, the main effect we need to be concerned with is high energy particles smashing into a piece of DNA and doing just the right amount of damage to cause the cell concerned to start doing something it shouldn't._

Actually, for photons (x-rays/gamma rays), most damage is done by so called indirect damage, where the photon creates a free radical (in this case OH.), which then interacts with DNA.

 _it's worth remembering that one hit that gives you cancer or leukaemia is enough to kill you. Just one. Even though most interactions won't kill you, it only takes one good one to finish you off._

This is just plain hyperbole. You almost certainly need multiple radiation interactions to produce DNA damage that will result in fatal cancer. Most DNA damage is repaired by the cell, most persistent DNA damage is benign, and most cancer is killed off by the body. That's not even to say anything about the fact that once a cancer gets to the point of discoverability that most are survivable (you still don't want cancer though!).

 _I remember hearing somewhere, years ago, that there is an extra component between the primary and the secondary that slows down hard X-rays to soft X-rays_

This was in reference to the hydrogen bomb. You can not (generally) change the energy of x-rays. You can "harden" an x-ray beam energy distribution by filtering out the lower energy x-rays, but not the other way around. I assume he really meant neutrons.

The main mistake he (and others) makes is seeming to not understand the nature of radiation dose and how that relates to the body. Dose is simply the amount of energy deposited by radiation per unit mass. It can be thought of as a density like quantity. The related term equivalent dose is used for setting radiation exposure limits and takes into account the biological effects of different radiation types (and energies) and different tolerances of organs and tissues.

When people see that low energy radiation is mostly absorbed near the bodies surface, this seems to concern them a lot. What is more important is what the actual dose is. From a general carcinogenesis point of view, it's actually considered better that the dose is not to the entire body

What's generally not understood is that limit of dose to a specific part of the body (e.g. skin) is higher than the limit of the total body dose. This is because your body is better at dealing with localized damage, than it is with systemic damage.

<comment><USER3> >>But there is some evidence for a threshold limit (below which cancer doesn't occur) and slight evidence that small amounts of radiation is actually beneficial (hormesis).

Interesting, but one question.

That part about a threshold sounds a bit strange?

Are you ignoring alpha (because you have to ingest/breath it) -- or do mean that there can't be unrepairable DNA damage from a single alpha particle?

<comment><USER2> According to my radiobiology text (Hall), "mammalian cells on average experience over 100,000 DNA lesions per day as a result of replication errors, chemical decay of their bases, attack by reactive oxygen species, or exposure to ionizing radiation. However, the mutation rate in mammalian cells is quite low owing to the development of DNA repair pathways that handle each type of damage."

Basically the threshold hypothesis assumes that the body can successfully repair up to a point, beyond which the risk of cancer increases with the increasing number DNA lesions.

Alphas (and other charged particles heavier than electrons) act in a slightly different way. They can do more direct DNA damage. They can also occur externally, from cosmic rays or accelerator beams. I only addressed photons because we were talking about the body scanners.

<comment><USER3> OK.

I only read a compendium for a course I didn't take. :-) Was a cool subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone needs to go through these with a dosimeter. On a regular basis.

Taking the manufacturer's word for it isn't even good enough for software or gas mileage; we rely on third-party benchmarking.

And where's the independent safety auditing to check for hardware dose limiting in case of faulty software, for example?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25>

You couldn't roll out a medical device like this, but foist it on the public at large and suddenly the testing requirements are very lax.

Field testing is essential. You can't just use a model that the manufacturer "kindly" provides for free. (To do proper Consumer Reports, you have to buy a unit on the open market incognito.) And you can't test for wear-and-tear malfunction by using a brand-new model.

I found this report:

[http://publicintelligence.net/nist-rapiscan- secure-1000-reda...](http://publicintelligence.net/nist-rapiscan- secure-1000-redacted-radiological-safety-report/)

Which doesn't mention who provided the unit, and seems content to test it in black-box mode, focused on the externalities and not the actual hardware or software internals.

What about possibly buggy software updates?

iPhone apps get more auditing trying to release a new version than this thing.

<comment><USER5> A medical device would also have to be safe for its operators.

<comment><USER6> Yes. I suspect, if anything develops, we're going to hear about illnesses among the TSA workers standing beside these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Though usually omitted from public sources about H-bombs, including all of > the sources I managed to find this morning with a bit of Googling, I > remember hearing somewhere, years ago, that there is an extra component > between the primary and the secondary that slows down hard X-rays to soft > X-rays, because in the form of hard X-rays they would otherwise just go > through the secondary without significantly interacting with it.

Could this component be a fogbank ([http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/11/what-fogbanks- co...](http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/11/what-fogbanks-cost/)) just discussed on HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1928233>)?

</comment><comment><USER8> Not disagreeing with the math or anything... but does anyone see the stomach and lungs and stuff are? I mean, since we don't have a true global source of x-rays there's bound to be some shadowing (ass cheeks for an example), and all the stuff going on in the chest looks like a combination of shadowing, artifacts, and human mind gone wild?

If we can only see the shin bones cause there's like half a centimeter of flesh there, how can we see the lungs without seeing the rib cage???

<comment><USER9> I would imagine it has to do with variable penetration and/or a form of constructive interference or resonance, due to factors I couldn't specifically identify offhand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Um... you could go into the scanner wearing a radiation-measuring device on you that sends data live to your server. I even doubt that would be illegal, although you'll probably end up on a couple lists.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about tin foil underpants?

<comment><USER12> turns out somebody's actually marketing them: <http://gawker.com/5695677/></comment></comment>


A tiny tool to make using GitHub for code reviews a tiny bit easier - <AUTHOR> http://reviewth.is/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting but GitHub already has a fine code review system. A coworker put together a script named pullme[1] that automates GitHub's push- to-topic-branch-and-issue-pull-request workflow. I've been using it for a week or two and it has made my workflow so much better.

[1]: <https://github.com/AndrewLorente/Pullme>

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice idea, but GitHub already has pull requests which work wonderfully for code reviews.

When I'm finished working on my branch I can submit a pull request. Everyone else on the team gets an email and can take a look at the new changes. We can have a conversation about the code and people can pull the branch and make their own changes. It's all very seamless and works great for remote teams.

<comment><USER4> This highlights my only real complaint with github (Started out using Fogbugz / kiln [Hg])... Why does EVERYONE need to be notified?

This is counterproductive. We have 15 engineers and we all work on different submodules. When I issue a pull request (Or create a new issue) I would like to be able to select a subset of people to ping about it instead of announcing it to everyone. the current situation just creates a pile of messages 90% of which you don't care about so you have to filter them to find the ones that are relevant to you.

Along the same line I think it'd be nice to send something to a particular person that says, "Hey, YOU must review this and approve the pull request".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea, but I would really prefer not having to mess with my commit messages for every other system. Its okay for issue trackers (because the commit is definitely referring to an issue/task now and in the future), but it gets really messy once you use the issue text as a notifier.

We usually ask for review using comments and by addressing users directly, but AFAIK, github does not allow you to hook into that... :/

<comment><USER6> It should do with the event API: <http://developer.github.com/v3/events/types/> (IssueCommentEvent and/or CommitComment)

For GitHub usernames you don't need that, but I could see that being useful for email addresses.

<comment><USER5> Thank you. I skimmed the documentation, but I only found the event timelines. I didn't know that the v3 API had such fine-grained control for hooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the record: this was made before GitHub pull requests worked with the same repo, and before the event API. It hasn't really been touched since.

I do agree that it's not ideal for the review request to be enshrined in commit history. We've not used this for some for that reason.

</comment><comment><USER8> does code review need to be tied to your scm? i can see how it means slightly less work, but what's the minimum infrastructure you need to make it independent of the scm? i would guess it's little more than some bash and procmail scripts (assuming unix).

<comment><USER9> The kernel model (git format-patch, git send-email, git am --signoff) might be automated a little bit more with procmail scripts that auto-apply patches sent to a mailing list once they've been acked as needing no further revision. That workflow has the benefit of decentralisation, but I don't think other SCMs have the equivalent commands. Widespread support is particularly necessary for the people who initiate reviews, since they are more numerous and less likely to have specific tools installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would it be more appropriate to use _git notes_?

</comment><comment><USER11> We use pull requests to review code before it gets merged into master, works really nicely.

</comment><comment><USER12> On the same topic, here's a chrome extension to make comment boxes have a monospace font:

<https://github.com/jdz/github-font-fix>

It helps a lot when typing code and markdown syntax in the comment boxes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice work, looks useful - if my employers used git that is, sadly I'm stuck on svn (for work)

</comment><comment><USER14> nice, but the example on the homepage doesn't follow the git commit message guidelines[1].

it would be nice if you could fix that, so as to not spread bad practices any more than they already are.

[1]: [http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit- messa...](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit- messages.html)</comment>


Elon Musk to pay for water stations, filtration at all Flint schools - <AUTHOR> https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2018/10/elon_musk_to_pay_for_water_sta.html <comment><USER2> Michigan legislators under pressure from the auto dealer lobby passed without debate a law at 2 am preventing Tesla from selling cars in the state.

Musk's response was to establish Tesla Tool & Die in Grand Rapids hiring over a hundred employees. Now he's helping Flint children receive clean water in their schools. You don't see the auto dealers in the state helping Flint.

Currently if you want to buy a Tesla you need to either go to Chicago or Cleveland.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good for him doing this, but how about as a country we solve this problem? I thought this was the richest most advanced country on the face of Earth ever? We can't even provide water that doesn't give you cancer or mental disabilities? Come on.

<comment><USER4> Well, most of the money simply doesn't belong to the right people unfortunately. But that's a problem pretty much anywhere on this planet.

Musk might be a nutjob and I'm already seeing the day where he goes completely bonkers, but sometimes that guy just gets shit done where others would talk and talk and talk. I wonder how he'll be remembered in a hundred years.

</comment></comment><comment> java-man is it possible to filter lead using a filter? how good are these filters?

wouldn't make more sense to actually fix the root cause, i.e. the pipes?

<comment> village-idiot Reverse Osmosis systems will remove lead.</comment></comment>


Rewordio.us Stats - YTD - <AUTHOR> http://www.richpalmer.org/rewordious-stats-03182011-ytd

<comment><AUTHOR> We got some good traffic (and growing!) after John posted a new feature here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341175>

Wanted to share some stats pre-HN effect. I'll do another update soon.</comment>


Ask HN: How transferable are web dev skills? - <AUTHOR> I know some HTML, CSS, JavaScript (via jQuery mostly), MySQL, PHP, and basic web server admin (LAMPP stack set up and operation).
I work on hobby projects for myself.
I'm wondering where these skills can be transferred outside of the web development world.
I tried a little iOS dev once, just a very basic app, but I felt disconcerted by the hardcore object orientation and the naming conventions. <comment><USER2> They are transferrable. You'll still have a learning curve but it'll be shallower than if you didn't know any development.

Not only that, but open-mindedly exploring new ways of doing things once will make you a better web dev, make it easier to learn the next thing, and keep you from getting stuck in an identity trap, i.e. "I am a COBOL developer" rather than "I know lots of COBOL (but moved on when the market did)"

Just watch out for the typical 'developer new to a language and tries to make everything just like their old language' trap.

...and the 'I now know a dozen architectural approaches to solve this problem so suffer from paralysing indecision' trap.

Also, recommend reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It's short and has a nice take on skill transferability

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the answer. I have read ZAMM.

I remember the quote about how the an artist making a painting isn't very different from a motorcycle mechanic maintaining a motorcycle. That ultimately it's about applied quality.

<comment><USER2> Exactly, maintain the mindset that you can absolutely master the problem once you've learned your way through it and you'll be fine. It's a pain to have to re-learn libraries and APIs, but new idioms are always interesting.

It's also important not to get caught up in the tribal ego-driven BS, or bias that says one idiom is better than another because it happened to be the way things are done in a previous language or framework. Maybe that's a general problem, or maybe it's heightened in the software world because we're (statistically speaking) a bunch of overprivileged daiper-babies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are transferable skills BUT it's very hard to find a job that isn't a keyword match for your previous job.

I have a lot of C/C++ experience, but that experience has a market value of $0 when applying to other jobs. There are transferable skills, but employers don't want transferable skills, they want someone who's already an expert in their stack.

I.e., most of my current work is LAMP, but I'm not getting any serious interviews for non-PHP jobs. Learning new stuff on your own doesn't help much, because most HR/Headhunters say "Only paid experience in a tech stack counts."

Regarding mobile development, my current interest is Unity. With Unity, you can use the same code on Windows/Android/iPhone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the answer. Am going to check out Unity.</comment></comment>


"I don't give a @!#? about aesthetics... I have a business to run." - <AUTHOR> http://www.gkogan.co/blog/designers-dont-talk-like-designers-get-hired/

<comment><USER2> Your entire blog post can be summed in a single interaction that took place in the movie, "Man on the Moon." A comedic biographical look at Andy Kaufman's Life.

"Don't you want your people to have a modern interesting show?"

"No I want people, I can't sell drinks to an empty room. You're in show business, show BUSINESS. If there is no business, there is no show."

While its slightly apples and oranges. Its something a decent number of Designers and would be Artists have to learn at some point. No business, no show.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might depend on the product too. E.g. for mobile apps aesthetics and design trends seem to be more important than for websites. However it's more difficult to apply regular business metrics in the centralized environment of mobile stores.</comment>


Airpods Are the New iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@michaelenko/why-i-believe-that-airpods-are-the-new-iphone-c75e408f9435 <comment><USER2> This reads like parody... some people wear earphones to prevent interuption.

We have far higher visual bandwidth than aural.

Apple tried a voice-controlled ipod shuffle years back, and quickly reverted.

But... it is an intriguing solution to the problem of making computers smaller yet still usable. Google glass was one kind of solution; but earphones are another. Why not have 5G earphones, instead of a phone?

They could even be called "ear phones".

</comment><comment><USER3> One step closer to Iain M. Banks' neural lace.</comment>


Microsoft Surface Studio - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/26/13380462/microsoft-surface-studio-pc-computer-announced-features-price-release-date <comment><USER4> That looks pretty awesome, and it makes the iMac seem even more tired which I assume was intended. It is startling to have a story about IBM extolling the virtues of Macbooks for business and Microsoft launching a platform targeting designers, it really is amazing. But setting all of that aside for a moment....

The screen. Clearly that is the thing which makes this announcement. For me, the 3:2 aspect ratio is so more reasonable for computers than 16:9. And having a zillion pixels is wonderful although my CAD package (TurboCAD) still doesn't deal well with the high DPI screen off the Surface Book, I'm sure it would look silly on this machine.

My experience with the Surface Book tells me that the PixelSense technology is really great for drawing. I have both it and the iPad Pro and not too surprising, at twice the cost, in my opinion the Surface Book's drawing experience is better than the iPad's. I base that opinion on precision of the drawing, expressiveness, and the response time.

Touch. Microsoft is really doubling down on the whole touching thing and so far Apple has stayed away from it with its compute platforms. That is both a strength and a weakness. The rest of the ecosystem doesn't always understand what to do, so you get controls that are too small to use your finger on sometimes, and odd sort of multi-monitor experiences where things appear on one screen and then when you resize them they jump to the other and try to adjust for "touchiness".

If the tools people can get their act together, and by that I mean the designer tools (I for one would love to see a schematic capture and board layout system that was touch enabled and pen enabled) then I think it is only good news for Microsoft, if they can't, then Apple will look really smart at not adopting a "gimmick".

Either way these things are hugely fun to use and play with.

<comment><USER5> "The screen. Clearly that is the thing which makes this announcement. For me, the 3:2 aspect ratio is so more reasonable for computers than 16:9. And having a zillion pixels is wonderful although my CAD package (TurboCAD) still doesn't deal well with the high DPI screen off the Surface Book, I'm sure it would look silly on this machine."

It may interest you to know that there is a reasonably priced 1:1 aspect ratio monitor available for purchase on amazon:

EIZO FlexScan EV2730QFX 26.5" Square IPS Monitor 1920x1920 (EV2730QFX-BK)

I bought one to tinker with.

<comment><USER4> That is pretty cool. Oddly enough something I've been thinking about would be a high dpi "ribbon" screen, something that is perhaps 14 - 16" wide by 3 - 4" tall. To sit just behind my nice mechanical keyboard. That screen would have application specific tool bars with large icons and easy to tweak controls (sliders, buttons, etc). That would allow me to give over my "big" display to the project workspace, whether it was a circuit, MCAD design, or illustration. The "special sauce" being that I could render to it as a screen and it would have multi-touch capable gestures for the controls.

I prototyped some of that with a mimo 10" touchscreen[1] but in my vision touching a control on the 'ribbon' screen doesn't steal the mouse pointer :-). I've been playing lately with some ST Micro 32 bit parts that can drive a display and use BT LE to communicate back to the PC. It may be possible to "download" control panels to the screen and then get the feedback through a BTLE handler rather than trying so somehow hook the event handler of a standard App and have it take control selection events from this screen/non- screen entity.

So if you find a long and narrow high DPI screen, DVI, MPI, or even VGA driven would be ok. And a capacitive touch layer, I'd love to get one of those to play with.

[1] [https://www.mimomonitors.com/collections/10-inch- monitors](https://www.mimomonitors.com/collections/10-inch-monitors)

<comment><USER5> These exist and they are called "bar type displays" and are usually used for gate information in train terminals.

NEC has a fairly inexpensive one that you can buy on amazon for $675[1]:

Nec Display Multisync X431bt Digital Signage Display

... however the resolution is relatively low - <USER2>

There are others that are in the 4k range but I can't find the link right now ...

[1] [http://www.necdisplay.com/p/large-screen- displays/x431bt?typ...](http://www.necdisplay.com/p/large-screen- displays/x431bt?type=support)

<comment><USER4> That NEC display is nearly 4 feet long. I am thinking the same width as a full size keyboard so on the order of 15 - 18". 1920 x 480 would be ok for a display that was 18" wide and 4" tall. Although I'd prefer it be 3450 x 768 (192 dpi)

<comment><USER5> Not sure if you'll make it back to this thread, but I found the other (much more interesting) manufacturer of bar-type displays:

LiteMax and their spanpixel line of panels:

[http://www.litemax.com/en/product/category/Spanpixel/22](http://www.litemax.com/en/product/category/Spanpixel/22)

I see smaller (15 and 19 inch) displays as well as the "smart shelf" displays.

Here is a 3840x536 display @ 43.5", which is the one I am interested in:

[http://www.litemax.com/en/product/Spanpixel%204355-INU/40](http://www.litemax.com/en/product/Spanpixel%204355-INU/40)

<comment><USER4> The Spanpixel ones are exactly what I was looking for! Now to try and figure out how to get them, I see that Avnet is a rep for them so perhaps they will be able to help me out.

<comment><USER5> They don't look cheap ...

Glad I could help :)

<comment><USER4> Sure, but if you can make a prototype and develop a kickstarter that goes way over its funding goal, then you can either negotiate a better price, or other manufacturers will come out of the woodwork to serve you because there is a huge overcapacity glut on LCD glass.

<comment><USER5> Also, not sure if you saw this (I didn't, at first) ... if you look at the top text on:

[http://www.litemax.com/en/product/category/Resizing%20LCD/22](http://www.litemax.com/en/product/category/Resizing%20LCD/22)

it appears that they are cutting up existing LCD panels up to make these screens ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $2,999 and the best GPU option is a last-gen mobile card? The default 965M is a crappy budget card (half the performance of the 980M), and if you want the 980M you have to pick the $4,199 configuration.

And _hybrid_ drives!? This thing starts at $2,199 and you can't even get a full SSD? I know 2D designers probably won't mind the GPU, but they could definitely benefit from a true SSD.

Hell, the recently announced Razer Blade Pro has top of the line _everything_ (including a desktop GTX 1080 GPU, 1TB SSD, and 4K screen suitable for photo/video editing) and it still costs less than the 980M Surface Studio: [https://www.wired.com/2016/10/razer-blade-pro- laptop/](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/razer-blade-pro-laptop/)

I must be missing the value proposition here because that price seems absurd, especially for a computer presumably geared towards professionals.

<comment><USER7> typical HN naysayer, if Apple did this everyone would be raving about it. Maybe you missed that the screen also includes a Wacom digitizer ? Compare the price to a 27" Wacom Cintiq and it might make more sense to you. Other than that it's gorgeous, GPU performance is adequate for the usecase, better than the 5K iMac anyway.

<comment><USER8> No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have to say this is the first time in years when there's a feeling that MS has outpaced Apple. The product looks amazing.

<comment><USER9> As an Apple (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, PowerBook, PowerMac G5) user for 15 years, of photo processing & inDesign layout, I agree.

XCode & iOS development is going to keep me on Apple for now, though, but the Linux subsystem for Windows is really appealing. The BSD Unix environment is the whole reason I went with Apple in the first place. OS X is basically a Unix workstation & perfected anything the Linux desktop wanted to be.

Surprised MS went with nVidia 980s instead of 1080s, & Win 10 still a little clunky compared to OS X.

<comment><USER10> > the Linux subsystem for Windows is really appealing

In theory. To anyone who feels that way, please try it out for yourself before making a leap. I thought it would let me develop Ruby on Rails under Windows like I could do on Linux or macOS. I discovered a whole bunch of unimplemented features that prevented this. After a couple of months of commenting on bug reports and watching and trying, I gave up. I'll check back later. YMMV.

<comment><USER11> The biggest issue I have had with their subsystem is that of the file system (NTFS). The fact that I can't have long paths and can't soft link seem ridiculous.

<comment><USER12> NTFS has a functional equivalent to soft links in the form of reparse points, although I don't know to what degree that feature is exposed in the UI, if at all. Last time I looked into it (admittedly, years ago) they could only be created via the command line. Not sure what you mean by "can't have long paths" though, NTFS allows you to programmatically create paths up to 32,767 code points long:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa365247.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa365247.aspx)

<comment><USER11> Windows seems to have a certain hard limit on file path characters (a max of 160) which they seem to have recently removed [0] - So while my point is technically moot it's not enabled by default.

As for soft links, a lot of linux tools create soft links (ln -s from to) and generally that fails on NTFS (I tried installing a bunch of npm modules and all had this specific issue)[1].

[0] - [https://mspoweruser.com/ntfs-260-character- windows-10/](https://mspoweruser.com/ntfs-260-character-windows-10/)

[1] - [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8232778/nodejs-npm- insta...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8232778/nodejs-npm-installing- modules-on-ntfs-partition)

<comment><USER13> It's a max of 260, and it's a Win32 subsystem limitation, not the limitation of NT OS or NTFS file system - and even in Win32 there are escape hatches for it, it's just that you need to know of them and use them explicitly to get such support.

With respect to symlinks - NTFS supports them, but there are subtle semantic differences with POSIX. WSL does actually support symlinks (i.e. you can do ln -s), it's various other behavior around them that breaks, like trying to untar a file that contains symlinks.

The team said that they're working on a custom implementation of symlinks that would provide proper behavior (but wouldn't be seen as a symlink from Win32).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if they had any creative leadership left... but it doesn't matter, for some reason they've seemed to abandoned mobile despite having all the pieces in place.

Their mistreatment, lack of support and quality assurance of the mobile side of the platform has been dismal. It's very weird, obviously they can do hardware, they have the ecosystem to back them up and the API teams have been doing some great stuff when it comes to w10, yet they've seemed to given up on mobile.

I must say I don't understand it, how can such a big player as Microsoft abandon such a strategic area of their ecosystem? I understand that it's hard to be a profitable in the harsh reality of consumer electronics and that the money is in business... but yet, if you're not in mobile you're leaving a gaping hole in your ecosystem that leaves the other parts vulnerable. I don't understand why they don't simple pour resources into mobile with the same enthusiasm as tablets/laptops and gaming.

Something must be off with the leadership or I'm missing something

<comment><USER15> What is going to set Microsoft apart in mobile at this point? The fact that you probably can't answer that is why Microsoft is still at the drawing board. One day they will return to the mobile world, probably next spring; but for now launching a good smart phone, even a great smart phone, that lacks the eco-system of Apple and Google is DOA unless it has something else appealing about it.

I suspect the "Surface Phone" will be announced next spring, and I'm sure Panay and his hardware team will knock it out of the park, but without Windows 10 Mobile catching up there's no point in releasing it even if it's the greatest phone hardware ever created.

Once the proper software that can set Microsoft apart is in place, it will strike. The smartphone market is so saturated right now they could catch everyone off guard and make a dent.

<comment><USER16> This. I think this is why they are pushing UWP and convincing more people to build apps for Windows 10 using it. If this strategy succeeds, they'd have everything in place for a relaunch. It would be so seamless for developers to support Windows 10 Mobile, they'd just do it.

<comment><USER17> Actually I strongly beleive the Linux subsystem in Windows 10 will be used on The next Windows Surface/Phone to accommodate Android apps and the android market. Then UWP will demonstrate its performance and Graphic API advantage. Hell Microsoft could even import android projects into UWP projects through the flexibility of CLI if they really wanted to.

<comment><USER18> That's a pretty silly belief. MS failed at running Android apps. They also failed with their attempts to port iOS apps to their platform. In fact, all of those "bridges" have been burnt to the ground.

One more thing, Microsoft will never be able to use the Google Play store unless they make an Android device that passes all of Google's requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Love it.

It even has a version of their ergonomic keyboards, something that I cannot really understand with Apple, how can one even manage to program in such flat keyboards.

Apple, one of the first companies to introduce ergonomic keyboards to the world.

<comment><USER20> Even worse is that horrible Magic Mouse - it's an ergonomic nightmare. Of course there a good alternatives from other brands but none seems to feature a good touch surface. I hate scrolling in steps like it's common with non-Apple mice. So, it's either good ergonomics or touch scrolling in any direction.

<comment> why-oh-why I keep seeing comments about the Magic Mouse' "horrible ergonomics" and really don't get it.

I've had "ergonomic mice" for a while before and, yes, they felt perfect in my hand. The issue is that _I move the mouse with my fingers_ and not with the whole arm, so my palms stops touching their _oh so ergonomic surface_ pretty soon, defeating its purpose.

<comment><USER20> By alternatives to the Magic Mouse I mostly meant mice that aren't that flat.

However I actually use a vertical mouse by Evoluent and in my opinion the vertical position is the real benefit. It really reduces wrist pain for me. However it still comes with the same limitations as any other non-Apple mouse: No touch scrolling, not even horizontal scrolling. Which is why I use a touchpad as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Starting at $2,999 to $4,199

Product Page: [https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface- Studio/productID.5074015900)

*Surface Dial included

edit: as pointed out below you do get a Surafce Dial with the purchase of the studio. I originally looked at the "what's included" section where the dial was not listed.

<comment><USER22> Compared to a 27" Cintiq QHD Touch, the pricing is very competitive.

<comment><USER23> Yup, people considering this for a standard PC aren't really making an apt comparison.

All the creative people I know said Cintiq set the bar, looks like MS is making a square aim at that market.

<comment><USER24> I have often wondered why only the graphics/video people are called "creatives". :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> At first I applauded Microsoft for continuing to advance the desktop computer market. This is something I wish Apple would continue to invest in but is clear they're moving towards building machines for the engineers to build iOS software.

However then I jump into the Microsoft store and check it out...

$4,199.00 for the high-end option gets you a hybrid drive, probably connected over an older SATA bus and a graphics card from last year? USB 3.0 only and no Thunderbolt?

Is this a system that was designed last year and it took a full year to get to production?

Sorry if I'm being bitchy, but to me this is typical Microsoft only going the 80%.

<comment><USER26> Why, pray tell, would Microsoft include a thunderbolt port, an apple standard, on their device? It had licensing issues before, not sure if it still does or not—wouldn't be surprised.

I'd want a USB-C port before I'd want a thunderbolt port!

<comment><USER12> Thunderbolt is an Intel standard, Apple was just an early adopter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> With its Subsystem for Linux aimed at developers and now this desktop PC for designers, it seems Microsoft is quickly catching up with Apple. Now if they could release a good alternative to the MacBook Pro that would be great.

<comment><USER28> MS is definitely taking the steps in the hardware department that Apple has been lagging behind on.

But I still feel Windows itself is not a productive OS. I'm big on keyboard shortcuts but MS is very much mouse based. Being required to use my pinky to try and hit CTRL instead of my thumb to hit COMMAND to do simple things like copy and paste is HUGE to me.

I didn't use a Windows machine for 3 years and when I did need to use Windows again it was extremely frustrating. I remember switching from Windows to OSX and it felt more natural.

Anyway, MS is definitely making some cool stuff and I like the direction they're going. But I'm still not ready to go back.

<comment><USER29> > I'm big on keyboard shortcuts but MS is very much mouse based.

Incorrect. You can operate the entirety of Windows with just the keyboard.

Please tell me what you cannot do with the keyboard in Windows and I'll straighten you out.

OS X/macOS is definitely worse with regards to keyboard acceleration. For instance, here's a glaring omission on Apple's part: try opening any window from the menu bar (e.g. the BetterSnapTools preferences dialog) then switch away from it with ALT+TAB and you'll be unable to switch back to it.

<comment><USER30> I came to Mac in 2009 expecting great keyboard shortcuts because of everything I had heard.

IMO they were fewer and less consistent than Windows and Linux shortcuts at the time and a huge disappointment.

(Example: no consistent way of selecting from cursor to end of line - <USER3> was no end button and which modifier to use varied with the application you used...! I have joked that the superior touchpad on the Mac is an adaptation to make it usable despite its inconsistent keyboard shorcut handling.)

<comment><USER31> _no consistent way of selecting from cursor to end of line_

Cmd-shift-right arrow. There are others, but that's the one I use and I don't recall it ever not working.

<comment><USER30> You might very well be right now but IIRC between 2009 and 2012 this was hit- and-miss for me. I cannot remember which applications anymore but I was a Java programmer back then as well.

<comment><USER32> I've seen keyboard issues in JVM based IDEs before, specifically Webstorm.

I've also seen some keyboard shortcuts not mapped properly in Firefox and Chrome. e.g. in the Chrome console the home and end keys don't work as expected under macOS

I always assumed these were cross-platform library issues but I don't know for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a reminder, Pixelsense means that the whole screen is a short range camera. Put a QR code or similar on it and Windows can read it and react accordingly.

<comment><USER34> That was the technology of original Pixelsense, now MS is just using the brand name for high quality display like 'retina' is for Apple.

<comment><USER33> It would be careless of them to water down the brand like that, after having developed the technology in the first place.

<comment><USER35> The current use of "Surface" itself is an example of Microsoft watering down a brand in much the same way; it might be careless but it's absolutely consistent with Microsoft's past behavior.

<comment><USER36> Surface originally was a large windows tablet that doubled as a "table" it also had fancy sensors underneath that allowed you to do a couple of cool things and other way cooler things that never came to fruition.

Seems like it would have died off as a huge blundering $10k per table mess by Microsoft. Or as a badly thought out Windows RT Surface tablet. I would have liked another Surface table (one that actually got better support than a few WPF/Windows widgets) but I'd say now Surface is a huge brand for Microsoft with laptops/desktops.

<comment><USER35> Sure, it's a broader brand, but one with less coherent meaning; the same that would be the case with moving Pixelsense to a generic label for high- reoslution displaces rather than a specific mark for displays with, among other features, close-range camera-based object recognition.

In fact, there's a fairly close parallel between the broadening of the two brands between the two since Surface was originally the brand for devices incorporating Pixelsense, which was the brand attached to the combination of particular UX technologies, including the camera-based object recognition.

<comment><USER37> Especially here as you see the Dial incorporated into a Pixelsense environment, it's a very interesting start to convergence between a lot of the things explored and prototyped on the old Surface tables converging into the new brand. A lot of the concepts of the Surface Studio feel very much like more polished concepts "back" from the Surface table. The drafting desk form factor of the Studio very much echoes the tables, only smaller and more convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm not sure why you need the world's thinnest LCD for a desktop, it's not like you'll be mounting it on a wall or something.

By the way, that presenter is a pretty good actor, but he was trying way too hard in a way that was distracting. The way he called out someone in the audience at one point made it seem like he has standup comedy experience and was trying to connect with the audience but it made no sense.

<comment><USER39> > presenter is a pretty good actor

That's not an actor by the way. It's Panos Panay, who leads Microsoft's devices team.

<comment><USER40> I'm sure he speaks exactly like he did in this press conference when he's at home with his family!

Acting != make believe. The dude was hamming it up to the point that he seemed like a caricature of a product announcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Apple release iPhone 7, which is then eclipsed somewhat by Google Pixel.

MS announce this immediately before the MacBook announcement.

Conclusions are that (a) Apple are leaky and (b) rather than _avoid_ Apple announcements, their competitors are now happy to compete with them. A bad sign for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER42> Nvidia GTX 9xxM - from what I understand 10xx cards offer the biggest difference in performance generation-to-generation seen in a while on the mobile side - the 10xx mobile versions are basically identical to desktop versions, 9xx are not even close - so why put last gen mobile tech in to a high end professional desktop product ? Especially considering the likelihood of VR proliferation in content creation - I couldn't justify buying this just because of that considering the price tag.

<comment><USER43> I imagine the protracted development time is at fault. The guy from Penny Arcade wrote a blog post where he said that he tried a prototype a year ago, so presumably this has been in development for at least a year and a half. Probably the 9xx was the best they had at the time and when the 10xx was released they were too far along in development to swap it out. The next one should have it though.

<comment><USER42> >The next one should have it though.

Yea for me this is a skip until they update the hardware - it's just too expensive to have to replace in a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Surface Dial looks very, very cool. Innovation in the HCI space is greatly welcome. Could not find any info on whether you can use 2 at the same time. That could have some incredible applications!

<comment><USER45> Reminds me a lot of the Griffin PowerMate.

[https://griffintechnology.com/us/powermate](https://griffintechnology.com/us/powermate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The two things that Macbooks have had over Windows laptops, in my opinion, is high resolution screens and a fantastic trackpad.

Windows laptops, even on the high end, still tend to screens no better than 1080p and crappy touchpads. My wife hates the touchpad so much she always uses a mouse and has the trackpad disabled.

I just got an HP Elite x2, which is basically a Surface Pro and I really like the pen and touch input. Apple pioneered touch on the iPhone, but continues to refuse to add it to <del>OS X</del> macOS.

<comment><USER47> So I've not tried enough windows touchpads to comment on that, but from what I've seen there's quite a few Windows laptops with higher res screens than 1080p

e.g.

Dell XPS 13 - can have a 3200x1800 screen

Lenovo Carbon X1 - can have a 2560x1440 screen

HP Elitebook G3 - Can have a 2560x1440 screen

Microsoft surface book - 3000x2000 screen

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 - 2736 x 1824 screen

<comment><USER46> I didn't mean to imply that there are none. I meant that they are incredibly rare if you consider the number of Windows laptop models available. The vast majority have either 1366x768 (low end laptops) or 1920x1080.

<comment><USER48> But you can't compare Macbooks to $500 laptops. You need to compare them to ultrabooks like the XPS 13, where you'll see that the gap isn't so big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Great hardware, interface ideas look really interesting too. This could actually be some vision that can get mainstream in the future.

I would seriously consider buying one, if not for one thing - OS. After recently installing Windows on Bootcamp I can honestly say that I hate the thing. It made me swear constantly for 15 minutes. I wish MS finally wrote a new OS from scratch. They seem to have the right idea about where to go, but Windows looks like a 40 year old after series of plastic surgeries - it's supposed to look young and modern, but after you get passed the surface you can see all those menus that are almost two decades old.

<comment><USER50> Everything Windows is so entrenched in eating its own dogfood, so it probably will never change. But what I wouldn't give for a ground-up POSIX-compliant Windows OS. It's stupid, it's unrealistic, but it would be so, so awesome.

<comment><USER49> For me it's not even about being unix-like (though sounds nice). I would just want them to get rid of all the legacy garbage and start from scratch. They have nice design language, good programming environment, multiple platforms - everything is dandy. The only problem is all the stuff left for compatibility reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Would be nice to be able to buy that and the display separately.

<comment><USER52> I agree. I got an all in one from dell 5 years ago and the only reason I keep it around is that it has an hdmi in. If I could use the display without booting up the computer, I would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The hardware quality gap between Windows machines and Macs is closing quickly thanks to Microsoft's investments lately

<comment><USER54> I own a Surface Book, have since a month after launch last year. For the first six months it was so unreliable that I couldn't use it for anything. Crashes, docking issues, external monitor issues, trackpad issues, sleep/wake issues, just one damn thing after another. Things got better for a few months starting in June and it became my primary personal device -- just had another bout of frustration with a Windows update that could not complete but kept trying. I love the hardware, the experience has been the worst I can remember. Don't know if I have the patience for round two with a Surface Book 2

<comment><USER50> This is eerily similar to my experience with Surface Pro 3. I absolutely love the hardware, with the conditional statement that it doesn't work as advertised most of the time. Forced updates broke functionality...and the actual hardware failed: I got a touch dead-zone, but Microsoft gave me a complete replacement after a year (the customer service was exemplary)

My Surface Pro 3 has never felt _reliable_. I can't count on it working the same way one week to the next, which is unfortunate. I told a colleague this morning that I was surprised that the last two machines I _really_ wanted were both Microsoft hardware (Surface Book and Surface Studio).

But I also won't invest in new Surface hardware until I see lots of user feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> [http://i.imgur.com/OZ3fLPZ.png](http://i.imgur.com/OZ3fLPZ.png)

What happened at 2:25-26 with a Mac named Studio Admin?

<comment><USER56> Good catch. Guess someone in PR likes to use mac?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> this is true innovation.

mean while.. an OLED stripe.. aghem.. a Razer keyboard

<comment><USER58> I agree, Microsoft has been really leading in innovation over the last few years, with the surface book last year and the studio this year. I have been really let down with Apple lately and their lack of willingness to innovate. Hopefully we will see something truly innovative from Apple on Friday, but I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Well hell did froze. Who would have thought that we'd live the day that Microsoft is launching a product specifically aimed at designers. This was supposed to be Apple's turf for decades.

</comment><comment><USER60> Absolutely love all Panos Panay's demos. It's truly "Nobody Does It Better".

</comment><comment><USER61> As a software eng. this is not something I need. I have realized that because computers are designed and programmed by engineers, we had what we need from the very beginning. I am glad that now its designer's turn to get some tools.

<comment><USER62> The touch input I don't care about, but I definitely want that display. How can anybody that works with text all day not want more pixels and sharper text?

<comment><USER63> I actually like coding with bitmap fonts very much, which becomes too tiny if shown on a high-dpi screen.

<comment><USER62> Doesn't that mean you just have to pick a larger size for that typeface or turn on scaling? Now that I think about it, a 28" 4500x3000 display will definitely have scaling turned on. Bitmap fonts should still work just fine, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> As with other recent Microsoft devices, I feel like:

\- This computer looks very good

\- The specs look more than decent (skylake, 32gb ram...)

...but

\- It's going to be poorly distributed (at least where I live, in Asia). I'm not even expecting a synchronized worldwide release.

\- I'll have a hard time working in an Unix-friendly environment (the only reason why I bought macs so far)

\- I wouldn't be surprised if it's insanely overpriced in Asia (like the Surface Book is)

So I'm pretty sure I'll unfortunately have to pass, and so will most people I work with.

The Microsoft buying experience is horrendous, and that's too bad now that their OS sounds OK, and their hardware is probably the best PC hardware you can get.

<comment><USER65> > \- I'll have a hard time working in an Unix-friendly environment (the only > reason why I bought macs so far)

The new Windows Subsystem for Linux is actually pretty good.

<comment><USER66> I agree, I expected loads of compatibility issues and weird bugs, but I have been pleasantly surprised. Integration with apt package management is solid and has so far worked like a charm.

My only complaint is that I had to opt in to the bleeding edge test versions of Windows 10, so my computers keep restarting themselves (often deleting registry settings like keyboard remaps and custom global hotkeys in the process) practically weekly. Anyone know of a way to keep my bash shell without having to (practically) reinstall Windows every week?

<comment><USER67> The latest update to the OS, Windows 10 Anniversary (I think?), includes the WSL. It doesn't have some of the latest features that you'll find in the insider preview, such as file watchers or launching Windows programs, but it's personally got everything that I need to build JS apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The video at [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface- stud...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface- studio/surface-studio) is a bit more informative and shows the Surface Dial in action. I looks like the graphics from an old Blackberry this is the future video[1]. Very cool, since Microsoft's version makes sense and Blackberry's was confusing.

1) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1KLm4SErdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1KLm4SErdQ)

<comment><USER69> That dial is bizarre. I have two hands, why would I replace one amazing hand with a heavy, large screen obscuring piece of machined aluminum to do something that my hand could already do?

<comment><USER37> Haptic feedback. The implication in the videos is that people are often manipulating the Dials with their off-hands without needing to look to back at the Dial. It's like a well worn knob in your car you don't even have to glance at while you are driving.

Also the videos show it both on and off the screen as users have different needs to work with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I probably won't buy one of these, just as I didn't buy the first iteration of the Surface, but will definitely consider future iterations. If anything, these products greatly boost my estimation of Microsoft as a brand. If I were still more in my photography/design days, I'd have a hard time resisting buying the Surface Studio (assuming its reviews aren't disastrous. For the past decade I hadn't contemplated buying anything else besides Apple when it comes to PCs. Microsoft has made a great case for how much innovation can still be done in this field.

</comment><comment><USER71> I can't believe people are complaining about this thing! This is what the Studio is up against: [https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Cintiq-27QHD-Creative- Display/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Cintiq-27QHD-Creative- Display/dp/B00R7QJAHY/)

Look at the damn thing, shitty (i presume) TFT display, no capacitive touch (i think), and no computer attached.

This is a great value proposition to those kind of people. Though if this had a gaming tier GPU and a bit better specs this would be literally _the_ machine.

</comment><comment><USER72> I would like to buy just the display, please. A 4500 x 3000 display? That sounds amazing for writing code.

</comment><comment><USER73> $3000? It had better be really something.

I wonder how well VST synth modules work on it? I like my iPad synth toys, but they are not compatible with Mac.

</comment><comment><USER74> The feedback I am seeing for this product seems generally positive even with a lot of delight from some corners. It will be interesting to compare the feedback for this against tomorrow's feedback regarding the Mac announcement, a pillar of which seems to be the bar they've added to the Macbook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER75> I don't care about anything else but how come today's high end computers start out with 8gb of ram? That was probably enough 2 years ago. Now it's enough for a net book. My phone has 4gb ram now. And they expect me to pay ~$2500 and get 8gb in a desktop?

</comment><comment><USER76> If it will run Linux, I'll buy one immediately...

<comment><USER34> At minimum Ubuntu in Windows will be there.

<comment><USER77> That is not what a Linux user usually means when they say "If <device xyz> will run Linux". Windows Subsystem for Linux doesn't support (officially, or even cleanly) any graphical Linux apps, for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> If I could get this screen (along with it working with the pen and the other accessories) but hook it up to my existing desktop I would be all over it. Even if it was still $2,200. But a 980M is just not going to cut it as my primary graphics card...

<comment><USER79> [https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1113579-REG/wacom_dtk...](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1113579-REG/wacom_dtk_2700_cintiq_27qhd_27_interactive.html)

There you go

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I can kind of understand the need for non-upgradable phones and laptops, since they are more useful when they're thinner and lighter. But stationary devices like this and Apple's iMac are unnecessarily wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER81> I think I'm sold at 3:2 display.

</comment><comment><USER82> As a side note, it's amazing to see that despite everyone ragging on apple and claiming superiority to them, they all copy their advertising style.

The copy on the google pixel site and this site are both very obviously apple- ish.

edit: down vote away, doesn't change the fact that these websites scream "we want to be apple". Though I will say, the tides are changing for apple judging by the amount of people hurt by this comment.

<comment><USER57> you mean the CGI flybys of the unit being virtually constructed? Yeah APple pioneered that idea, I actually didn't like that part of the surface PC promo.. Like who cares what the internal hinges look like!? They need to stop doing close flybys of irrelevant subjects

The usability portions of the video were awesome though

<comment><USER83> _Exploded views_ are not something Apple invented or pioneered, they surely polished them to new marketing levels, yes. They are a staple for product designers, so Apple's Jony might have pushed for their repeated use.

also there was this 2002 art installation [http://www.influx.co.uk/blog/damian-ortegas-cosmic- thing/](http://www.influx.co.uk/blog/damian-ortegas-cosmic-thing/)

<comment><USER57> i should have clarified, they hugely popularized their usage for marketing towards consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> $3K is very expensive. Looks like they are catering to the iMac market. It should be interesting to compare with tomorrow iMac release lineup.

<comment><USER85> Well it is definitely better then current iMac. Will see tomorrow indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> This concept seems to "re-surface" very couple years, and I just cannot get over the first time I saw it... well, saw the mockery of it, at least: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY)

<comment><USER87> It is all birthed from the desire of software engineers who play dungeons and dragons and want a programmable gaming table.

When I interviewed at Microsoft I played with one of those tables, and there was definitely a dice roller app.

No lie I would love to own one of those tables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> It's hard following behind Steve Jobs and Apple, but I gotta give this guy props on his salesmanship.

</comment><comment><USER89> At the end I really expected him to unlatch the screen from the base and walk away with it.

I have no good reason to expect that and I can't imagine that feature would be very useful at this size, but I still expected it for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER90> Poor Cintiq is losing more and more market share with these sort of products.

<comment><USER91> I haven't seen any sort of mass exodus from Wacom in the pro market yet. Wacom makes highly specialized hardware for graphics professionals. I don't think any fly by night piece of prosumer hardware is going to make them lose TOO much sleep.

<comment><USER91> Additionally, I think they'd likely be far more concerned if Apple released an iMac like this (which I wish they would). Reason being, most graphics pro's are already on iMacs and if they suddenly had the drawing capabilities and form factor built into their go-to system, they might have less of a need for an additional piece of hardware (Cintiq, Intuos). Apple is known to pay attention to the kind of details artists care about in implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> it's interesting that they didn't announce the actual screen resolution, just the number of pixels. I found the answer in the ars article : 4500x3000

</comment><comment><USER92> after reading couple of criticizing comments, I can't stop thinking how this people would have reacted if Apple released exactly the same product!!!

<comment><USER12> Much more negatively, I would assume. I know I'm much more inclined to cut MS some slack just because it's exciting to see them try new and interesting things. They're still making the computer equivalent of concept cars here, so some degree of high price/low volume/odd choices is to be expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> The video does an amazing job, the product looks great.

I've never tried a Surface: do they have a special screen technology to avoid the fingerprints?

<comment><USER94> The surface book picks up fingerprints pretty steadily, but it's not as bad as other devices I've owned, and they're very easy to clean off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Pretty. Going after the mac market for media creation is a smart move, as that's a big driver of the mac's appeal over windows

</comment><comment><USER96> Microsoft is moving in on Apple's turf.

</comment><comment><USER97> But does it have a USB port?!

In all seriousness, pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER98> Even the table they presented it on looks like it was lifted from an Apple Store...

</comment><comment><USER99> Win10 is too clunky, otherwise the offer is very compelling. But not enough to switch.

</comment><comment><USER100> DCI-P3 monitor for that price, hot damn! I wonder if it's 100% coverage?

</comment><comment><USER101> Dear Microsoft,

Could I just have that display please?

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER102> Is there a price anywhere on the page or am I just missing it?

Edit:

Its mentioned on other site 2999.

</comment><comment><USER103> A desktop with a rear camera? Interesting...

</comment><comment><USER104> now if I just code like in Shenzhen IO on it, i'd buy one.

</comment><comment><USER105> beautiful

<comment><USER105> Downvoted for what?

<comment><USER93> I didn't downvote you but "beautiful" is not really a constructive comment. :)

<comment><USER105> There is a difference between downvote and ignoring the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> the website feels like someone has copy-pasted apple.com/imac and changed the pictures using Microsoft Frontpage

<comment><USER107> I guess you are talking about the website? Because the product couldn't possible be more different than the iMac, if any the product feels like an iteration over the Dell XPS 27 line

<comment><USER106> yeah. I haven't used and won't probably use this device but marketing wise, it's exactly same as what Apple does. that makes sense to get downvotes though since 99% of this thread's audiences are Microsoft zombies :)

<comment><USER107> I am writing this on a MacBook Pro so I don't describe myself as a Microsoft zombie (I didn't downvote you either) and I find this machine way more appealing than an iMac.

I have a marketing filter in my mind so I couldn't care less about the design of the website.

<comment><USER106> true, a friend of mine is using Surface 4 and he's really happy. as I said, I'm not sure how good or bad this device is but at least marketing wise, they are doing exactly same as Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> They can do all the marketing they want, I just feel like this is gonna be the buggiest thing I ever used if I tried it.

<comment><USER109> How's that? I tried an surface pro a while ago and the touch screen worked fine. They had some issues to work around scaling, but iirc those are mostly sorted out.

Frankly it looks amazing.

<comment><USER110> I'm an avid surface user, which doesn't make sense because 90% of my tweet history is me yelling at Microsoft that a windows update is preventing me from giving a presentation, again.

So, as much as I love the platform, the issues for me are

1\. Windows 10 updates are not sane. They do not schedule properly, and do not try to tell me otherwise because I have invested probably 40 hours total at this point trying to sanely schedule them. If you disable them, your build of Windows will go out of date and your machine will reset randomly until you turn them back on. Also, on a surface pro, updates take ~30 minutes to 6 hours. I joke not. So result: I'll roll into work at 8, have a presentation at 9, pop open the machine, and see "windows is configuring your update.... 39%" and know that I won't be working on that machine until after lunch. Maybe.

2\. Random, impossible to track, unrelated bugs. Plugging in a second monitor causes all sorts of weirdness. It gets stuck in tablet mode. It'll refuse to go into tablet mode. The task bar will refuse to go away in fullscreen mode for some apps until a reset. It'll forget my office app credentials. Onenote will crash a hundred times. It'll soft-eject the microSD card randomly, but usually in the middle of a file transfer. Keyboard won't be recognized. Pen tip will fall out and they'll charge you 12 bucks for a replacement pack with 3 inside, 2 of which you'll instantly use.

I love the surface because it _perfectly_ fits my needs, but damn do I also hate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> It looks great!! But no ethernet port, only 4 USB3. Absolutely not enough for a high-end PC user. It's a bit pricey. Looking forward to see they sell the display apart.

<comment><USER112> It has an ethernet port:

[http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/26/13380462/m...](http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/26/13380462/microsoft- surface-studio-pc-computer-announced-features-price-release-date) [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/microsoft- announces-s...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/microsoft-announces- surface-studio-all-in-one-touchscreen-pc/)

<comment><USER68> Microsoft's official tech spec page: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/surface/devices/surface-stud...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/surface/devices/surface-studio/tech-specs)

      Connections & expansions
      4 x USB 3.0 (one high power port)
      Full-size SD ™ card reader (SDXC) compatible
      Mini DisplayPort
      Headset jack
      Compatible with Surface Dial on-screen interaction*
      1 Gigabit Ethernet port

<comment><USER111> Thanks. Too bad it doesn't show on this page: [https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/product...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.5074015900)

<comment><USER113> If you look at the "Compare Surface Models" section below the "Tech Specs" section, you'll see the following listed under Surface Studio in the last group titled Ports:

      Four full-size USB 3.0
      Ultra-High Speed Full-size SD card reader
      Headset jack
      Mini Displayport
      Ethernet

<comment><USER111> they just added back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> $3000 for a machine with anemic specs is going to be a tough sell. Who exactly is this computer for? As for that puck device - I couldn't help but laugh when the presenter, dressed in all black as if attending a funeral, used it to emphasize how passionate his scribbles were on a document. Who does that? Who would ever do that? And more importantly, who ever thought this would be something you would even want to devote time to demo?

</comment><comment><USER114> I don't understand who this product is for, someone who is not a PC enthusiast but has 3000$ to spend on a PC? I guess the target audience is like high end design studios that need to outfit their stylish new office with matching computers that no one will ever use because all the real work happens at home on people's macbooks at home.

That said I love the dial thingy, I think it has some great ideas behind it and is potentially also a nod to the incredibly popular Griffin powermate which I believe is still a popular product.

<comment><USER115> The target market is not a PC enthusiasts but creative professionals.

<comment><USER45> >> The target market is not a PC enthusiasts but creative professionals.

I would also add that another target market is other Windows PC makers.

In the same way that the Surface and Surface Book showed what touch-based Windows devices could be, I imagine that Lenovo, Dell etc. will probably get some inspiration from this product and produce their own variants for a bunch of different market segments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> A shame the OS is just terrible. Windows 10 is so hostile to me as a user, constantly pestering me about updates or missing DLL files. Bleh. I installed Plex in January, today after not booting my machine for about a month, I wanted to watch a video and got some random DLL missing.

How a DLL can go missing while the box is turned off is a mystery to me, but there you go. I don't trust my Windows box.

I trust my iMac much much more.

<comment><USER117> The last time I had such an issue with my (fleet of) Windows machines goes back to XP days.

<comment><USER116> Cool, not my experience though.</comment></comment></comment>