Nearly all [UK] councils hand user tracking data to marketing companies - <AUTHOR> https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/11/96-of-councils-found-to-hand-over-users-data-to-marketing-firms/ <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't just an issue of marketing wanting a Facebook Pixel.

In some cases, councils turned their websites into revenue streams and thus were being paid to include adverts on their site that tracked users, browsing council content.

[https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/website- advertising/](https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/website-advertising/)

<comment><USER2> Ask residents whether they want this stopped if that means higher council tax and my bet if they'll all vote for as many ads as possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you ask a resident if they want to be tracked by ad companies as they organise a funeral, they might think twice.

[https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/births-deaths-and- marriages/dea...](https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/births-deaths-and- marriages/deaths/organise-a-funeral/)

<comment><USER2> I doubt it.

All of this tracking by ad companies is overblown in some circles but most of the public don't really care, especially if it helps keeping their taxes down.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feminist Hacker Barbie – the Internet rewrites the original book - <AUTHOR> https://computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> There are many problems with this. As an uncle, I find the options for girl- toys to be so depressing. I'm sick of the excessive pink.

But I'm glad people have decided to rewrite it. Its a pleasure to hear Barbie tell it like it is: "I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux" [https://computer-engineer- barbie.herokuapp.com/view/118](https://computer-engineer- barbie.herokuapp.com/view/118)</comment>


534 Job Applications: Finding a Life Path During Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://cactushr.com/blog/2017/03/20/534-job-applications-finding-a-life-path-during-crisis/ <comment><USER2> 534 job applications over an eight month period seems like a lot. I don't even know if I can reasonably say that there are ~500 companies in my city who a) have a position open for what I do and b) I'd want to work for. And this guy in particular seems motivated where I would've been surprised if he would consider working at a company he was only somewhat interested in.

That aside, I have a sense based on personal experience that going to meetups related to your industry may provide a worthwhile parallel route to sendin job applications. The tech industry (I realize the author is in HR) is especially wonderful in this, as you can have a variety of consistent meetups ranging from programming languages, to AI, to civic and government engagement, to technical book clubs. Sure, you still need to have a skillset, but connecting with other people can increase the chance of serendipity.

<comment><USER3> In fairness, it seems very unlikely that he only applied to jobs 1) in his city, 2) at companies that "have a position open for what [he does]".

He likely also applied to jobs that he wasn't super pumped up about, in case the job (or other factors regarding the job) turned out to be awesome.

Unsolicited advice: I'm not sure if you're actually looking for a job (or will be in the future), but try not to limit yourself so much before even starting. It feels like your comment had a lot of excuses/reasons why it won't work for you/your industry. It's not true: getting a job can be a grind. Sometimes that's just what you have to do. When you've applied to dozens of companies, or turned down dozens of offers, you'll have a much much better idea of what's possible what isn't worth the effort (plus you'll have a ton of very useful experience and skills because of it, to boot).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately this is a buyer market globally because of the high supply from everywhere, so high that every open advertised position is going to end flooded by applicants in a short time. On the other hand, word of mouth still makes wonders locally so the quickest path to a job in a given place is asking relatives, friends and friends of friends.

</comment><comment><USER5> 55 TV series to speak fluently.

This was very interesting. For ease of numbers lets say that this means 20 episodes at 30 minutes per episode, so about 10 hour per series.

So, after 550 hours of Mandarin, would I be fluent?

And, in addition, did he watch it with subtitles or not?

Anyone on HN know of a study?

Edit: Didn't know about fluentu but someone beat me to it - [http://www.fluentu.com/chinese/blog/2015/02/11/mandarin- chin...](http://www.fluentu.com/chinese/blog/2015/02/11/mandarin-chinese- movies-on-netflix/)

Edit 2: Math correction

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth, I'll chime in with my personal experience as a white guy who learned Mandarin. 5500 hours is just under two years of consistent 8-hour days. In my opinion, spoken Mandarin is not actually all that difficult compared to other languages once you adjust to the presence of tones (there is basically no conjugation or changing word prefixes/suffixes on the fly, tense uses simple particles, etc.). After 500 hours of classroom study and about 4000 hours of immersion in Taipei and Beijing, I was pretty close to fluency in speaking. I think you probably could be as well.

However, even after all that time I was only able to read and write at an elementary school level. Reading, writing, and speaking any dialect of Chinese are basically three separate skills. You can easily know how to say words and have no idea how to write them, or know the meaning of a character, but not know its pronunciation, or my favorite - be able to easily read an entire sentence, but then only know how to write half the characters properly if asked to write it out 5 minutes later.

So, in my opinion, yes 5500 hours would get you to spoken fluency in Mandarin without too much difficulty. But unless you are really good at memorizing things (I'm not), don't expect to be able to read and write at a native level in that time frame unless you had exposure to written Chinese growing up.

<comment><USER5> My math was off. It is 550 hours. That is much more reasonable. Do you think it is still possible to be fluent in speaking?

The reading and writing part surprises me. Is that different from English? I don't remember what it was like to learn it in the first place so I don't remember if I initially had trouble writing something I had read.

<comment><USER6> Not in a normal sense. I know the DoD has immersive programs for training interpreters and SIGINT people to language proficiency as quickly as possible, but I don't think 550 hours is nearly enough for Mandarin. Even assuming 12 hours a day of full immersion, you're looking at fluency in 45 days. This is only feasible if you've already had a lot of exposure to the language. For example, many people outside the US are exposed to English movies, TV shows, ads, and grade school language programs growing up, which makes it easier to later learn English seriously. If you're not a Chinese American, this situation is unlikely for Mandarin.

Yes, most other writing systems, including English, use phonetic alphabets. If you learn the set of letters, you can at least sound out any word, and make a good guess at spelling something you know how to say. Chinese is a logographic writing system. There are thousands of "letters" that you have to learn individually, and there are generally only hints in the logograms about pronunciation or meaning, so you're basically memorizing how to read and write every single word individually. If you don't know how to write the character, you can't "sound it out" like you can in English. You're just stuck. This also leads to frustrations in even using dictionaries to look up word meanings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The getting professors to fail you is such a great hack! But it's also really alien to me: In the UK, if you fail the first time, you can resit the exam so you can pass the module... but the exam mark is capped to the pass grade.

I also applaud his work ethic. However, when reading inspirational things like this, it often seems hard work is the only option. But working smart is also valid, and there's definitely a sweet spot of effort vs grade. I'm really not trying to diminish this guys work, quite the opposite. Keeping up with high achievers is (by definition) hard, and it's really easy to get stressed out. Getting top marks doesn't help too much in life (although it usually doesn't hurt) - especially if you don't intend to stay in academia. Other activities (working part time, hobbies) can also be really beneficial for their direct results (money, experience, balanced and healthy lifestyle) and indirect results (can also look good on a CV).

Finally, his English skills are awesome. My English skills also improved dramatically watching English TV and movies, and while frustrating at first, in the end it's a very fun route to improve one's skills.

Is there a site that ranks shows and movies on how easy they are to understand (e.g. how strong are the accents, how difficult is the dialog)? If not, it's definitely something I'm interested in starting!

<comment><USER8> As far as i know each university has its own rules. Certainly there was no capping when I was at uni.

<comment><USER9> Right, and on the flip side, when I was at Cambridge, if you failed you would be "sent down" (expelled) there were no resits. It's possible that the pass fail mark was really low though, because I did spectacularly badly in my first year and still managed to graduate

<comment><USER10> When I was at Cambridge I heard about people retaking the year, although if I understood correctly, those people are identified ahead of time, and don't actually sit the exam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enjoyed the article. Definitely confirms my belief that the best way to learn languages is full immersion. I couldn't even tell that the article was written by a non native speaker until the author said, so hats off for fooling me. :)

<comment><USER12> At the beginning of the article the author states that he set off to Learn English and how he succeeded and you only realized that he was not native until the author said so? Really amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know this is meant as a motivational/instructional article for finding a career, but I found this says more about Greece's economy than anything else. The motivating part for me, is that here (in Canada) things aren't nearly as bad as they are in Greece. All my close peers (in Canada, States) never had to persevere as hard as this author did in order to find a job. Even a job like his.

<comment><USER14> Actually the BIS just had a report that put the Canadian banking sector as the riskiest, ahead of Greece. Most leveraged consumer in the world. I moved out; it's about to implode. If I was still there I'd raise some sheep. They're smarter than the legions of Govt educated 33x leveraged owners of the most expensive housing market ever.

<comment><USER15> I'm kinda amazed at what's happened in Canada. They largely missed the 2008 meltdown because their banking industry was still well-regulated and didn't participate in shenanigans. So apparently they decided to deregulate their banking sector and engage in shenanigans? Because now they look pretty much exactly like the USA in 2007.

Case in point: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/the- market/mortga...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/the- market/mortgage-fraud-on-the-rise-among-brokers-trying-to-help-clients- qualify/article27051297/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank you for your comments and concerns. I indeed applied to positions in other countries even though I wanted to stay in my country for family reasons. Some of them were very targeted and indeed they called for an interview, some were more generic. The purpose of the article is to promote planning and putting goals, make choices and dont give up. The title as "finding a life path" was not mine and I do not consider finding work as a life path. However, in order to achieve and perceive your dreams, you need to work. And you need to work somewhere you enjoy. The path to achieve that is the one I writed.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's so terribly unfortunate that "finding a life path" is so dependent on getting a job

<comment><USER18> Most people aren't born in possession of everything they need to survive. So whether it's a traditional job or hunting/gathering you're likely going to have to work. Why see it as unfortunate if you don't have to? Sure, it would be great if we were post-scarcity but we're not. Work in some form is going to be a significant part of your life path. Go into it with the attitude that it's a fact of life and make the best of it. If you convince yourself it's unfortunate you're likely to experience it more negatively than necessary.</comment></comment>


Forget Apple and Google – Contact Tracing Apps Just Dealt Serious New Blow - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/05/12/forget-apple-and-google-contact-tracing-apps-just-dealt-serious-new-blow/#7c24133f2172 <comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

 _> ... with the take-up of its TraceTogether app hovering at too low a level to make enough of a difference ... From today, May 12, Singapore's SafeEntry goes fully operational. Anyone visiting a wide range of locations will need to check-in with either a national form of ID or by scanning a QR code on their smartphones. Those locations include workplaces, schools, stores, hotels and healthcare facilities. Businesses failing to check-in visitors or customers risk penalties. There are even moves to include check-in processes inside taxis and on other transit systems. "Deployment will be made mandatory for places where individuals are likely to be in close proximity for prolonged periods or in enclosed spaces" .._

</comment><comment><USER2> I feel like Zac Dorfman doesn't really understand what he is talking about.</comment>


The Future of Recycling Is Sanitation Workers Rejecting Your Bin - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/the-future-of-recycling-is-sanitation-workers-rejecting-your-bin <comment><USER2> Then everybody just resorts to tossing everything into the _garbage_ bin, which doesn't get rejected.

The people doing the recycling need to do at least one of 2 things: educate the lay people, or hunker down and process what they get before sending it off to the next step (usually one of several Asian countries, apparently) where it gets rejected and sent back because the percentage of recyclable material is too low for them to process.

Lay people are constantly blamed, yet the recycling companies also show no interest in processing what they receive before shipping it off. I guess they don't want to get their hands dirty. This is unacceptable, and needs some serious overhaul to make it work as we are all led to believe it works.</comment>


Show Your Support For Unity3D Editor On Linux - <AUTHOR> http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/platforms-unity-editor-for-linu

<comment><USER2> "My operating system is linux and as such I have had to make the difficult decision NOT to program in Unity3d and develop primarily in php and html instead."

I don't even know where to begin...

<comment><USER3> That has to be a troll.

<comment><USER4> Has it? I'm just about to move in an opposite direction (PHP development being 2-year long accident).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that this would come up when just recently I read about issues debugging Castle Story on Linux[1]. The problem took so long to fix because there aren't Unity development tools for Linux. So even though the issue was trivial in the end it took a ridiculous amount of time to track down.

[1] [http://www.sauropodstudio.com/dev-diary-number-seventy- seven...](http://www.sauropodstudio.com/dev-diary-number-seventy-seven- community-sound-and-shirts/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Please don't vote for this unless you would actually use it.

If a lot of well intentioned but not actually Unity developers upvote this it will only serve to take their time away from doing features that will benefit their real userbase.

<comment><USER7> SteamOS = Linux, so more devtools that run on Linux means more developers developing for SteamOS, which means SteamOS gains more traction quicker. So I'd vote for it even if I'm not going to be an early adopter.

<comment><USER6> Unity already lets you build for Linux. Develop on Windows / OSX, build for Linux. You just can't run the actual development tools on Linux.

<comment><USER7> Debugging platform-specific issues without a debugger is less than ideal.

<comment><USER6> Unity lets you do remote debugging. Just build with Development + Script Debugging turned on and then you can connect your debugger to your game running on the same network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I will not be showing my support because Unity3D is proprietary software. Ask them to free their source code instead.

<comment><USER9> Precisely. Keep proprietary software out of Linux. The main reason we can get people to switch to Linux is freedom. If it becomes as full of closed programs as Windows, we won't get anyone to switch because there's no reason to (and no benefit). It's FOSS or nothing.

<comment><USER10> I love linux. It's my operating system of choice. I think, all other things being equal, it's a superior operating system for just about any use case (other than really edge-case scenarios). I especially enjoy the freedom of the operating system, in every sense of the word as applied to software.

But understand this: the vast majority of the population just doesn't care about "freedom" when it comes to software. They care more about two other things, about in equal measure: 1) does it work well enough to do what I want; 2) can I hold somebody else accountable if/when it doesn't? The latter may be even more important at the "big enterprise" level, where generally "I need to make sure my ass is covered if something this thing touches breaks" outranks "I need to make sure this is a good solution for my company" on the list of priorities. The fact is that FOSS does a decent job of filling (1), but a really poor job of filling (2).

In light of this, the notion that people will switch to linux simply because of the free-ness is a bit, well, naive. Sure, it happens. It isn't happening in large numbers and, in my opinion, isn't likely to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd actually prefer a linux version of the Unity WebPlayer before the editor.

</comment><comment><USER12> My game server runs on Linux, developing client and server in the same OS will be great!

</comment><comment><USER13> If games made with it can run on Steam then I'd probably buy this just to play around. Who knows, I might make a 3D game masterpiece.

<comment><USER6> You can already build your games for Linux with the current version of Unity3d.

The Unity3d development environment runs on OSX and Windows.

The support ticket is for running the development environment on Linux.

<comment><USER13> I don't run Windows and never an Apple product for my own use, which is why I replied to this thread in the first place, if this dev environment would run on Linux and the games produced by it do and they can work on Steam like the sample I tried with the Steam SDK; great, I'd consider buying it, the development environment, for Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's try to get the editor working properly on OS X first.

Whenever I try to set a breakpoint and debug the app hangs and I have to force quit.

I recently found out that the secret trick to get debugging to actually work is to click the button to connect the debugger to unity "really quickly" (seriously).

<comment><USER6> Debugging on OSX works fine. OSX Mavericks broke it but now it is fixed with Unity 4.3.

There is a weird thing with Monodevelop on OSX where the "connect to debugger" pane is super laggy, and yeah, you have to select your debugger connection as fast as possible. If you let it sit there it doesn't work for some reason. That's been a bug for years.

My other annoying OSX bug is that for some reason on my macbook pro retina (it worked on my old macbook pro) the shift-cmd-b hotkey doesn't work. Other than that I haven't noticed any problems with Unity3d on OSX vs Windows, and I use Unity3d on both for 8+ hours a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The big deal for me is that a unity3d headless server only runs on windows. I have an architecture the produces customized video content, I'd love to write a unity module but cannot until Linux is supported.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish to developp games next year, I will go to a school, I know that we'll have to make project where we'll be able to choose our Engine.. I will use Unity3D Editor if it comes to linux !

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd be a lot more interested in supporting anything Unity3D related if it's licensing wasn't so outrageously expensive (for any platform).

<comment><USER6> Unity3d is a tiny fraction of the cost of any competing engine. Unreal Engine / Farcry start out costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and some studios might even be paying 1m+ for their licenses.

At $1500 a developer (or $4500 if you need iOS + Android licenses), Unity3d is a steal. Plus you can happily develop with the free version until your company is making 6 figures in revs. The free version is lacking some features but until you get really serious about Unity you don't really need it.

<comment><USER18> Unreal Engine used to be licensed that way, but they've moved to a royalty model that actually makes it pretty cheap for small studios, and free for hobbyists. The current licensing options are,

Non-commercial use: free

Commercial use for in-house applications (e.g. training simulations): $2,500 per-seat

Commercial use for end-user-oriented applications (e.g. game development): $99 plus 25% of royalties above $50,000

Full terms: [http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/licensing/commercial_license...](http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/licensing/commercial_license_terms/)

<comment><USER19> Ouch. App stores often take 30%, which means that only 52.5% (0.7*0.75) of what the user pays goes to the developer. That is quite a significant number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not a fan of Unity, but more Mono everywhere is better for everyone (some healthy competition for JVM).

</comment><comment><USER21> What about just using Vim, Emacs, nedit, gedit, or whatever your favorite editor is on UNIX/Linux? Why do we need a special editor just for Unity when there are already plenty of good alternatives?

<comment><USER22> Unity3D is not just a text/program editor but rather an IDE for making games (as far as I understand, I've never used it).

<comment><USER23> the text-editing part of Unity3D is pretty terrible, and I do most of it in vim. But it is good for viewing models and moving components around without building your own model viewer or mouse-driven Entity-System editor</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin price will crash to zero, Nouriel Roubini says - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/bitcoin-price-will-crash-to-zero-nouriel-roubini-says.html <comment><USER2> it hung around a $700-$1000 for several years.</comment>


The Org Charts Of All The Major Tech Companies (Humor) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6

<comment><USER2> Also submitted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707858>

and here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2710082></comment>


Man's Best Fiend - <AUTHOR> http://www.historytoday.com/tyler-d-parry/man's-best-fiend <comment><USER2> Having two German Shepherds and living in a mixed neighborhood, I've become very conscious of this. Some black people are very fearful of Shepherds, some love them (often from having worked with dogs in the army). I feel a special responsibility to be on the lookout for people's reactions and adjust my behavior to accommodate their needs when I'm out and about. As I used to intensely dislike dogs myself until I rescued one it's not hard for me to relate to people who view them with anxiety.

Sad to say, there are also some people who get shepherds precisely because of this history, knowing and intending to have an intimidating effect on black people. Some of the German Shepherd Groups on facebook attract clusters of racists who delight in posting 'takedown videos' put out by police departments showing criminal suspects being caught or even mauled by dogs. Pointing out the wild statistical improbability of some people's posting patterns as an example of bias has resulted in me being kicked out of groups because my comments were 'making people uncomfortable.' It's a sad fact that some people teach dogs to aggress specifically on people of color, which is an awful thing to do not only to the people around them but to the dogs themselves. Dogs are emotionally intelligent creatures to begin with and Shepherds are among the most intelligent breeds. They think a lot and they dream a good deal; k9 police officers can't sleep with their dogs because the dogs are liable to bite in their sleep. Those who project and perpetuate their prejudice by training an animal to express it strike me as particularly loathsome people.

</comment><comment><USER3> It hurts me to read this. History just shows how horrible humans can be to one another.</comment>


Swiftype Explains Their Cloud Stack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leanstack.io/swiftype-explains-their-cloud-stack/

<comment><USER2> I keep seeing Sentry for exception tracking pop up all over the place these days. I'm using Airbrake now and the experience has been so-so (my main complaint is the slow interface). Is it worth the switch?

<comment><USER3> Sentry is great, and it's open-source. So you could run your own instance of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is this a stack? It's a collection of third party providers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pingdom should probably not be in "Group Chat" category.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nor New Relic in the "Email Marketing" category...</comment></comment>


How to catch a cryptominer on your Kubernetes infra - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubecost.com/blog/network-egress-traffic-costs/ <comment><USER2> I think it's a bit disappointing how unsophisticated these cryptominer attackers are. If you have the ability to spawn arbitrary Docker containers, you can get root privileges on the host -- which would make tools like this one (which as far as I can tell only measures container network traffic) useless.

The real solution is to stop exposing access to Docker (or Kubernetes without any RBAC rules) to the open internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that appropriate configuration/policy management is part of the solution for preventing these attacks on Kubernetes, but our view is that monitoring also plays an important role.

<comment><USER2> I should've said "limited in usefulness for detecting moderately-clever attackers" rather than just flat-out "useless". Monitoring is obviously a useful tool regardless of whether it will always help you detect attackers in your network. You could use nf_conntrack on the host as well but that could also be bypassed by a root process on the host.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Paired programming interview, what should I know? - <AUTHOR>

I have a programming interview coming up. I will be paired with someone more senior from the organization. It's my job to identify a small feature or refactoring that I would like to do to a code sample I previously provided. The interview will take ~30 minutes and I've been told that ideally the feature should only take 10 - 15 minutes to implement.<p>I've never paired before, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect. Further, this interview is for placement in a group for experienced programmers--not for a job interview. I'd love points on how to prepare and things to do / not do during the interview. <comment><USER2> You could try to get used to it with something like [http://www.airpair.com/](http://www.airpair.com/) or pairing with someone you know.

The main thing is, don't get too obsessed with making it work. Most of the time they just want to know how you work, and if they could get along with you. When they talk, listen, and think ahead to the bigger picture of what you are building before replying, and implementing.

Try to relax, reflect his thoughts with your own observation/planning, and you will do fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's all about being able to effectively communicate your thoughts in realtime. Try programming "out loud" for an hour a day as a warm up. Just work as you normally would, narrating what you're doing and why you're doing it.

There's a lot of different kinds of pairing. Try to research what exact methodology they're practicing so you know what kind of role you can expect on game day.</comment>


I Quit The iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/31/i-quit-the-iphone/ <comment><USER3> I think there's a lot more to this situation than we know right now. Apple hasn't commented officially on the situation yet. Has Google? I read some (second hand) reports that AT&T denied any role in the removal of the Google Voice applications which makes sense since they offer various models of Google Voice capable BlackBerries. This leads me to wonder if Apple isn't working on a deal with Google to officially support Google Voice in the iPhone OS. It certainly makes more sense than Apple making this huge anti-competitive strike against a company they are otherwise friendly with over a product that is invite-only and not even a blip on the radar to Apple. A deal between the two companies opens a lot of interesting possibilities especially when you consider Apple is looking beyond carrier exclusivity and is rumored to be launching an iPod Touch with a built in microphone -- along with the rumored tablet device. Until both Apple & Google release a statement on this I'm convinced they're working on a deal. Apple has been known to withhold information for PR purposes even if it's causing them bad PR. (ie, copy & paste in iPhone 3.0. They could have just said yeah, we're working on it -- but instead they refused to comment)

<comment><USER4> Apple and Google working on a deal doesn't fit. If that were the case, why would Apple spit in Google's eye by rejecting their app? If that were the case, why would Google develop and submit their app in the first place?

<comment><USER3> That is a mystery. It doesn't really make any sense either way does it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but feel that if you consider your phone just a phone, rather than a defining characteristic of your personality, you're less likely to be so outraged at its shortcomings.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it's neither. Maybe it's just that some people consider their device as a hybrid personal computer / phone. Then it becomes rather annoying that you can't control what's installed at it.

<comment><USER5> You may consider it part personal computer, but the people owning the network it needs to function don't. They made this pretty clear when you bought it, and the cell phone industry in America has behaved this way since it's inception. It really shouldn't be a surprise.

I agree it would be _desirable_ to have a hybrid personal computer / phone that would give me as much freedom of software as my desktop, but the iPhone isn't that, nor did it claim to be.

I also can't install whatever software I want on the cable box I got from Comcast. Nobody's ranting about that though.

<comment><USER7> _I also can't install whatever software I want on the cable box I got from Comcast. Nobody's ranting about that though._

You also did not pay to _buy_ that box from Comcast either. You're leasing it from them, with full expectation from Comcast that you will give it back if/when you terminate service, and from you that Comcast will replace it at no charge if/when it breaks or stops working.

With the iPhone (or any cell phone for that matter), you have _bought_ the phone, and it becomes your own personal property. You do not have to return the phone if you cancel service, and the provider is under no obligation to replace the unit if it breaks (unless you paid extra from the start for a warranty).

That is why nobody rants about their unit from Comcast.

<comment><USER5> It depends. If you agreed to a 2 year contract along when you bought your iPhone, you haven't yet completely paid for it.

Also, if you cancel your contract before it's up, you DO have to return the iPhone.

If you paid extra for an unlocked iPhone, then yes you have a point. But then you also have the freedom to go to another network without those restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Steven Frank "quitting" the iPhone is a bigger deal. If the rumours are to be believed then Arrington is about to be a competitor to Apple (in the tablet space). That plus his history of histrionics kind of tempers my interest in his opinions of the iPhone.

<comment><USER9> Who is Steven Frank?

<comment><USER10> He's an independent developer of Macintosh (but not iPhone) software.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Frank_(developer)>

(I didn't recognize the name, either, but I remembered his startup -- Panic -- from an earlier story about how they almost got bought by Apple: <http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>)

<comment><USER11> This is a nit, but Panic's not a startup. They're just a top-notch Mac development shop who's been around forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm feeling pretty disillusioned about my iPhone recently. I'm basically waiting for a sufficiently-captivating Android device. I'm curious to see what the Hero will be like, once I have a chance to hold it and they've had a chance to smooth out (and speed up) the software stack.

<comment><USER13> I've owned my trusty Nokia N95 (8gb) since late '07 - before the original iPhone came out, and it's been funny to watch the evolution of comments on HN... It's like a bunch of people bought into the iPhone hype and have slowly come to realize they're left with a subpar phone that provides poor service. Not to mention the iPhone has actually gotten _better_ since it's initial release, so that tells you even more.

And here I am, still taking 5 megapixel pictures and quality VGA video with my 2-year-old N95-8gb, something the iPhone _still_ can't do. Sure, it's a bit thicker, but I get 3G, crystal-clear reception with AT&T, and get my Google Voice.

All one has to do is browse GSMArena or PhoneScoop to realize how far behind the iPhone is to the majority of phone manufacturers. Apple does UI extremely well, but they've largely proven that they're really just the next Motorola RAZR... A cutsey little fashion phone that breaks often, performs poorly, and hardly gives the end-user what they're really looking for.

Just looking at phones like the Samsung i8910 (which does _720p HD_ video) helps one realize how far behind Apple is on the phone-tech curve:

[http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_omnia_hd- review-380.ph...](http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i8910_omnia_hd- review-380.php)

<comment><USER14> What the iPhone taught me is to ignore cell phone reviews that dedicate most of their space to listing specs and features. Whoever wrote this review is not experiencing the phone the way I would, or the way any typical user would. Does he really need to tell us that the calculator has "a very limited set of functions" but that "Luckily, you can find third-party alternatives?" What kind of readers does this guy have that he's not afraid of losing them to boredom at this point?

Another case in point: I found the section about the web browser buried on page six underneath a larger section devoted to audio quality, which includes frequency response graphs and a table of audio measurements. And when it comes to the web browser, it says it "would have used somewhat more user-friendly interface" and "could certainly use a bit of fine tuning." It describes how to bypass the "unresponsive" and "slow" zoom feature by tapping a text section to zoom it but notes that it "is sometimes a hit and miss thing as the web browser fails to fit the text on screen." If you ask me, you don't want to use this review to illustrate that Apple is "behind" on cell phone technology.

<comment><USER13> _What kind of readers does this guy have that he's not afraid of losing them to boredom at this point?_

The kind of readers this "guy" has are the 2+ million unique people that visit per month (see compete.com chart) who are actually interested in every nook and cranny, pro and con, detailed form and function, and in-depth overview they need to make an logic-based, informed, $700 decision. First-version phones can be notorious for having major problems, and those issues need to be discovered before blowing a grand buying one.

All the iPhone taught you to do is ignore the negatives of balanced phone reviews, because the majority of your comment is

1) attacking the layout of the review and

2) restating a few pre-release issues of which the iPhone had _plenty_ itself

What do you expect from a review? That it'll hide all the problems and only tell you the positive features of the phone? I certainly wouldn't trust a review website that does that.

As I said before, I bought a Nokia N95 back in _2007_ that had 8gb, GPS, 3G support, Google&Nokia Maps, music player, FM radio, 5 megapixel camera, and VGA video support. I also get Google Voice, and while there aren't as many Symbian apps in total, let's just say I don't feel like I need iFart Mobile. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention I can easily take my phone to any GSM carrier I want? I think I also forgot to mention I can do basic tasks you'd expect a phone to do, like MMS and choosing the sound for your alarm clock.

If there's any phone that's behind on tech, it's the iPhone. Not only do you get subpar performance, you're also locked into a little cage where Apple decides what you get to do, and to me that's not a phone for a hacker.

<comment><USER15> If you're willing to hack around in a phone, then a jailbroken iPhone offers very similar software functionality. At that point your tradeoff is polished user interface versus a better camera and FM radio.

<comment><USER13> Being a mobile nerd, I fully agree with you =)

However, dkarl is arguing his point from _"the way any typical user would"_ As a "typical user", if he's easily annoyed by how an in-depth phone review is structured, I could hardly imagine the litany of complaints he would come up with when the _typical user_ was subjected to the mess of software and hacks required just to enable a few basic features that one can get from a $20 candybar.

I think the majority of our disagreement comes from the difference in the type of users we are. I'm a power user and have owned 7 phones prior to my N95 in the past 5 years. Dkarl seems to just want a basic fashion-phone and does not really care about having a bleeding-edge mobile device.

<comment><USER16> Except the "typical user" will never succeed at typically using those supposedly basic features on that $20 candy bar.

Your mom can and will use every feature on the iPhone.

<comment><USER14> Even worse, users like me who do figure out how to use the features may not want to. Personally, I'm the kind of user who walked around for years saying, "I wish I had a web browser on my cell phone," when I did in fact have a web browser on my cell phone. It was just too crappy to be worth using. Apparently sometime when I wasn't paying attention "power user" was redefined to mean "feature freak," but given that definition I won't dispute my non-power user status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Michael Arrington does know how to keep things interesting. Even if we resist, somehow articles from TechCrunch reach the front page of HN. Not that I have any real problem with it, but can we somehow filter the front page to contain a maximum of 5 or so sensationalist articles?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This Google Voice fiasco by Apple and/or AT&T is slowly mushrooming into a nuclear cloud. I wonder when CNN, BBC et al will start picking it up...

When this hits mainstream, who knows what kind of public backlash will ensue.

<comment><USER18> Public backlash ensues when there's the possibility of something affecting them. How many people actually have (or care to have) a Google Voice number?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a little petulant, but the plot over why kill GV is interesting. Since skype is on the iphone, and GV is on other phones with AT&T, it is curious why GV was rejected.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just thinking through this problem some, I had a quick thought that would be neat to see: "Carrier Apps". These apps would have lower level access to the iPhone and to allow true background processes (listening for calls, texts, setting a data connection). You would download a carrier app and it would "install" itself as a preference pane. Basically I would like to see carriers treated more like preferences/apps than partners. I know this couldn't happen until after AT&T exclusivity came to an end. I think it makes sense: Apple could then converge the iPod touch/iPhone into one product. Don't want a cell service? Don't install the app. Makes room for the tablet to be dropped in for use with a 3G provider or just as a wifi device too. Just a thought. I'm sure there are plenty of holes in it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure exactly how the tech works, but if GV works over the data network, similar to skype, I'm concerned the quality, connection time, and amount of dropped calls would be worse than a regular call. The iPhone drops enough calls as it is, I imagine it could get much worse if the phone had to open an app, third-party or not, and place calls over the data network.

And what about SMS? For me to use GV full time, I need the ability to send SMS's from my GV number. MMS as well. I hope this functionality will be built into the app, if one ever makes it to the device.

<comment><USER22> GV only uses the data network to initiate the call. All the actual calling is done over the voice network. And SMS is free with GV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think Arrington is bluffing here and I'm calling his bluff.

I would probably do the exact same thing in his position. There's no way I would quit the iPhone, and I bet he won't either. He's just using his powerful voice to put more heat on AT&T and Apple to reverse this decision.

And I'm glad he is. I hope it works.

<comment><USER24> No, he's using his 'powerful voice' to get more hits to his website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd only own a phone for the computer/WiFi part. And I won't have some freaking manufacturer telling me what software I can and can't run on MY computer.

That HTC Hero that's in the pipeline looks awesome. (Price??) I saw an advert & review for it yesterday for the first time. (It runs Flash! uses SD card.)

<comment><USER25> OK, I can answer my own question: Price: 435 Pounds, SIM-free. Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Voice transcription sounds pretty cool (in Google Voice). It's speech recognition, but the nice thing about this particular application is that it doesn't matter if it's not real time.

<comment><USER27> They've got quite a lot of bugs to work out of it before its ready. I've had google voice for about a month and have yet to get a single transcription that was useful.

<comment><USER28> It's pretty good for recognizing telemarketers and wrong-number collections calls at a glance, and then banning their numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The title should be "I quit AT&T".

<comment><USER30> Should have titled it "Fuck You, AT&T." I would have done it. The company deserves no sympathy, not just for cell phone coverage.

<comment><USER9> I hate most phone companies, I hate most credit card companies, and I hate most banks. Evil corporations.

Edit: Love the groupthink voting against my relevant comment. Keep it up please!

<comment><USER31> I hate those things too but why do we care if you do? Maybe provide some substance and stop whining about groupthink?

<comment><USER9> Fair enough.

I hate them because they bait and switch, and are deceptive about the value they provide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'll take your iPhone then.

</comment><comment><USER33> I Quit TechCrunch!

<comment><USER34> This reaction doesn't make any sense to me. I think it's become fashionable (especially on HN) to bash on the startup world's "paper of record" with pretty poor evidence.

So we end up with comments that start with:

"I hate Tech Crunch as much as anyone else but," "Arrington pushes startups he invested in" "Everything's about twitter" "I don't read Tech Crunch because of their focus on x but," "Tech Crunch doesn't break real news" "Tech Crunch needs a real editor" "Tech Crunch only does favors for friends" "Tech Crunch only wrote this as linkbait"

And now, with no relevance whatsoever to a meaningful discussion about the article, we get a knee jerk, play to the haters, "I quit Tech Crunch!".

In this community, I feel there needs to be a base line of respect for entrepreneurs and the people that help them. And make no mistake, Michael Arrington is both. If you have a legitimate gripe, write something constructive. There is little or no value, however, to reinforcing this idea that everything Tech Crunch does is wrong or bad.

<comment><USER35> Ok, I'll take a stab at this. I know basically nothing about Arrington. I don't know what he's invested in or who he's friends with, nor do I care.

What I do know is that TechCrunch publishes utter trash. It's a tabloid that caters to the geek crowd. The articles are poorly written and even more poorly researched. Some of them are based on sources as flimsy as a single sentence fragment of a tweet if not a complete fabrication or speculation.

What is purported to be news is heavily editorialized. What is purported to be analysis is the kind of tin foil hat stuff one could expect to see in the typical Slashdot comment. Simply put, the TechCrunch writers are lousy journalists- if you can even use the word "journalist" at all.

In my opinion, some of the people at TechCrunch have questionable ethics. Revealing a company's internal documents in piecemeal over the course of a week to give readers some little voyeuristic thrill while raking in the advertising dollars is wrong. It would be one thing if they were blowing the whistle on something illegal or immoral that was going on there, but those documents revealed nothing of real value. It was simply a peek behind the curtains.

TechCrunch is not in the business of information and certainly is not the "paper of record" for startups and entrepreneurs. They are in the business of selling controversy where it doesn't necessarily exist. It is for this exact reason that they often have a headline designed to stoke the nerd rage fire on top of an article that is little more than some asshole's opinion or wild guess about how something is going to play out. When TechCrunch actually does publish something newsworthy there are usually several other sources with better coverage and better writing.

I will continue to flag TechCrunch submissions.

<comment><USER34> This is precisely the problem. My suspicion is that you should be flagging individual articles, not sources. That's no better than my grandfather ignoring any hard news reporting that comes from the New York Times because it has a "liberal bias".

In the case of Twitter's internal documents, the reason you saw nothing of "real value" is precisely because Tech Crunch drew a line between releasing information that could be damaging to individuals and the company and things they could report that were relatively benign. They received much more information than they ended up publishing. Tech Crunch could have made more in ad dollars had they just published everything. They painstakingly satisfied an obligation to share information with the public and protect companies and individuals who they saw as having done nothing wrong. Whatever side they ended up on, they certainly tried to be transparent about it.

As for the opinion part of reviewing startups and their software, I don't see any other way to go about it. Most small startup companies that are covered in Tech Crunch are based on a few facts (company name, founders, employees, location, backers) and then a review of their product or service. This is inherently an opinion. There just aren't that many "facts" about startups at the beginning. There are beliefs and perceptions. You can disagree with the opinion or analysis, but I don't see how you could avoid having one.

<comment><USER36> According to your logic, we should put exactly the same trust in an article in NYTimes vs an article in the National Enquirer, only "flagging individual articles", that is, ignoring the well-deserved reputation of either source.

That's not how people normally treat news sources or opinion sources. New York Times worked hard to establish the quality of its reporting. Tech Crunch worked hard to show its reader s that quality takes n-th place in its reporting to sensationalism, sleazy behavior, unsubstantiated rumors, heavily biased reporting, etc. etc. Both publications should enjoy the fruit of their labors.

It's an unfunny joke to call Techcrunch "a paper of record" for anything. I'm not saying it's the National Enquirer of the startup world, but it's much closer to that than to being the New York Times of the startup world.

Since Techchrunch now has zero credibility with me, and I think its articles should be treated as untrusted and biased by default, it's a waste of time for me to dig through a heap of garbage to find an occassionally honest and informative piece. Thus the strategy of flagging all Techcrunch submissions is a sound one; the only reason I don't is that I'm too lazy to remember to.

<comment><USER34> I'll quote pg from a few months ago:

"A fine, ringing denunciation. But let's consider performance. Do you learn more about startups from TechCrunch or the New York Times? I learn much more from TechCrunch. By the time the NYT gets around to writing about a startup, the news is usually pretty old. And they often get the story wrong, despite their supposedly greater professionalism, because they don't understand the domain as well as TC's writers do.

If you think there's a better source of information about startups than TechCrunch, what is it?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500780>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I Quit HN!

</comment><comment><USER38> So he's been using the perfect phone for two years then a new service comes and gets rejected and he drops the best mobile computing platform ever?

I know everybody is milking the GV fiasco, but this borders on stupidity.

<comment><USER39> He's got a phone that drops calls, doesn't work well in his home and can't run the apps he wants to run. Stupidity eh?

<comment><USER24> >> "a phone that drops calls"

This whole "The iPhone drops calls" thing it like blaming Ferarri because your car keeps skidding on the dirt track roads in your country. If you want a telephone system that works, don't live in the US.

<comment><USER39> Except it drops calls significantly more than other phones on the network. This isn't an issue confined to AT&T. They have released some firmware updates to help which is further evidence that it's not just the network.

<comment><USER24> All I know is that it never drops calls in the UK, and my experience of cellphones and landlines in the US has always been absolutely abysmal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Has anyone elses 3G Iphone SLOWWWWWED down like 10 fold?

</comment><comment><USER41> Boohoo! Cry me a river Arrington...

</comment><comment><USER42> If I understand correctly...he's "quitting the iPhone" because it's an unsatisfactory VOIP handset...

Of all the things Apple claims the iPhone to be, I don't think this is one of them; so I'd say that the problem has more to do with his purchasing choices than anything Apple and AT&T are up to...

<comment><USER43> Google Voice ain't VOIP. Here's what it is:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Q9MJdT5Ds>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow! There is a pretty strong reaction against Apple. OSNews released an editorial yesterday that promises to publish news for the next 1984 days that works against Apple's PR. [http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_198...](http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_1984_Days_of_Bad_PR_for_Apple)

</comment><comment><USER45> How dare they stop our Google overlords from collecting even more information on us.

</comment><comment><USER46> Looks like Mikey is looking for some filler for a slow end-of-week news cycle. Plus, he can continue to add more follow-up "content" on Pre & Android experiences.

Just more "jurinal"-istic pablum. Next.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have loved the Automobile, but now I am quitting the Automobile.

This is not an easy decision.

I was there in January 2007 when it was announced and I bought the first Automobile as soon as it was available. I happily bought the Automobile 3G a year later. I've proudly yelled "I Am A Member Of The Cult Of Automobile." I've been an unabashed cheerleader for this mode of transportation to all who'll listen. And I've scoffed at drivers who said they'd abandon the platform.

But I'm not going to upgrade to the Automobile 3GS. Instead, I'm abandoning the Automobile and DOT. I will grudgingly pay the $175 DOT unregitration fee and then I will move on to another mode of transportation.

What finally put me over the edge? It wasn't the routinely congested highways, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an Automobile (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I've lived with that for two years. It's not the lack of parking spaces at home. I've lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn't the lack of a feed bag, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the speeding debacle.

Most of you won't know what I'm talking about, so I'll explain.

Speeding is a way to get where you're going faster than everyone else. Here's an overview of the service if you aren't familiar with it.

I've always wanted to use speeding but there's a big switching cost - <USER2> your automobile and dying. Too many roads are not built well enough to operate an automobile at sustained high speeds and are too dangerous to use for speeding.

But now Firestone is planning on rolling out a new line of tires that are supposed to handle well at high-speed, so I can drive as fast as I want no matter what condition the road is in.

Or so I thought. Chevrolet and the DOT are now making speeding illegal. Why? Because they absolutely don't want people doing exactly what I'm doing - driving as fast as they want and using their roads as a racetrack.

So I have to choose between the Automobile and speeding. It's not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Firestone isn't forcing the decision on me, Chevrolet and the DOT are. So I choose to work with the company that isn't forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that's Firestone.

So what mode of transportation will I use next? Well, that decision is easy, too. I'd move to the goat because I believe it is the best vehicle out there other than the Automobile 3GS. But Firestone hasn't created a tire for the goat yet, just motorcycle and bicycles. So for now I'm going to use the new bicycle speeding tires. As soon as something better comes out, or Firestone makes an tire for the goat, I'll switch. And keep on speeding. No long commute to work for me.

And Chevrolet, if you ever decide to put the hammer down on DOT and do the right thing for your loyal customers, I'll consider switching back. In the meantime, I'll just use one of many go-karts parked in the garage to test out new roads.

<comment><USER42> I knew I'd take a beating on this comment, but I think it's a valid point, and I'm willing to bleed for it.

<comment><USER47> Valid point? It looks like you played mad libs, I don't see your argument.

<comment><USER42> If you own a device that relies on a shared resource you should expect there to be rules to ensure the resource is shared safely and fairly among all who use it. In the case of a cellular network, the resource must also generate enough revenue to maintain it's own operation, so users shouldn't be surprised when limits are placed on activities that compromise this revenue-generating ability.

I'm not saying that what AT&T and Apple are doing is right; I don't think anyone knows enough to say for sure, but I think allot of people complaining about it should take a wider look.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Have children? Here's how kids ruin your romantic relationship - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/have-children-heres-how-kids-ruin-your-romantic-relationship-57944 <comment><USER2> I think the lesson is that marriage, kids and long term relationships don't work for egomaniacs. Learn to find joy in other people's happiness and actively invest in it. You are not the center of the universe and you can't bend everything to your will. Deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "On average, couples' satisfaction with their marriage declines during the > first years of marriage..."

That's rather baseless. Generally speaking couple's satisfaction increases in both their relationship and in life after marriage, on average. That's actually been statistically proven. Additionally, last I checked marriages fail and succeed equally, over time.

<comment><USER4> Also the more extroverted the woman, and introverted the man (in hetero relationships, obviously), the less happy people are. Extroverted women and introverted men get less happy, where as the opposite is true for introverted women and extroverted men.

<comment><USER5> That is interesting. Could you share a source for your claims?</comment></comment></comment>


What Packt pays its course authors revealed - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20181110070042/https://www.upwork.com/job/Authoring-Video-Course-with-Packt-Publications_~01cff536271520c978/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was made aware of this posting by Packt on Upwork. It seems that they pay their video course authors $1000 and a 16% royalty for a 3-4 hour video course.

This _seems_ to be comically low. Packt seems to have a reputation on HN for being a "lower end" publisher, but this puts those $10 fire sales they have on content in a new light.

<comment><USER2> I think they are majorly based in India,and while these rates aren't stellar, they may be par rates in India.</comment></comment>


If you installed Windows 7 Beta...you might want to back up your MP3s - <AUTHOR> http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/D/B/FDBFC5A5-51CD-4C8D-9F18-7BCC3810498E/Windows%207%20Beta%20Release%20Notes.htm#ID0E6G

<comment><USER2> You might want to back up your _entire system_ before installing a beta OS...

</comment><comment><USER3> That's why it's called a beta.</comment>


Wireless power transfer achieved at 5-meter distance - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/tkai-wpt041714.php <comment><USER2> it's amazing that we still aren't at nikola tesla's level, even after more than 100 years.</comment>


Want to pack JS and CSS really well? Convert it to a PNG - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/want-to-pack-js-and-css-really-well-convert-it-to-a-png-and-unpack-it-via-canvas <comment><USER2> This is what I love about JavaScript right now. The air of innovation is everywhere. It really is an exciting language to be developing in right now. It reminds me of the early days of Java.

</comment><comment> X-Cubed It would be interesting to see how it copes with proxy servers (like the ones Opera use) that downscale images to reduce the traffic on mobile networks. It would be a good idea to checksum the code to make sure that it is what you're expecting to receive.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a cool hack, if impractical.

</comment><comment><USER4> And so the "pure CSS images" trend has come full circle.

<comment><USER5> This means you could do a pure css image and put it in a PNG ... !

Mind bending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonder if it'd make sense to make a lib/gem out of it.

<comment><USER7> Definitely not.

"And before anyone else points out how gzip is superior, this is in no way meant as a realistic alternative."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This as 3 purposes,

      1. show of some neat trick
      2. hide code
         a. hide code on a 3rd party site
         b. hide code in an image that actually looks like an image ( steganography ),
            thus hiding parts of the code within several images.
            for a really good time, hide some unique data on
            one machine that acts as a key
      3. save per file system space

i think gzip uses the same compression algorithm as png files so, to reuse this is silly. the browser supports gzip anyways

i saw this as part of a 10kapart competition, and maybe they were trying to make up the difference between the actual size of the bits used and the file system size. i think although this is interesting, but, it defeats the point of the 10k limit; which, was there to show what one could do without server side scripts, and I think a build script .... counts.

<comment><USER9> I did write to the 10kapart to ask about using this technique before working on the app. Their answer was:

"As long as it works in the required browsers and it's 100% client-side you're welcome to use it in your app."

So the build script ... doesn't count. As long as everything works in the browser, it's good. The end justifies the means :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Been there, it's really cool but impractical in many respects and no real performance gain. It's also a bitch if you update code on a regular basis.

<comment><USER9> It was definitely not convenient during development. When I was testing for IE9, every change in the code needed to be encoded to the PNG image. But having an automate build script really helped speeding up things. YUICompressor caught all the major bugs during the build process so as long as my un-minified/unencoded scripts worked, I was pretty sure that the PNG version would work as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am surprised that an algorithm designed to compress a graphic image would be at all useful for compressing bytes of text.

<comment><USER12> For a lossy algorithm based on human vision characteristics (e.g., JPEG) it would be quite surprising. However, PNG is lossless and is based on DEFLATE, a general-purpose compression algorithm. So actually this makes perfect sense. (See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Compr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Compression))

<comment><USER13> PNG uses a predictor tuned to image data, though, so it's a bit tricker than that. But it's good enough for this purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This post follow along the same lines, however a bit more blackhat[1]. He also did another write up about using images to store xss data a while back. It is great if the image is loaded into javascript, other wise it will not work.

[http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070604/passing-malicious-php- thro...](http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070604/passing-malicious-php-through- getimagesize/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool hack. Of course, running GZIP on your server renders it all useless.

<comment><USER16> original article:

> And before anyone else points out how gzip is superior, this is in no way > meant as a realistic alternative.

<comment><USER17> What's the use case then?

<comment><USER16> there has to be a use case?

<comment><USER17> Of course not! But if there's no use case then this is getting an awful lot of buzz for no real reason other than Ajaxian running a story on it, considering that it's not that new. [http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/05/compression-using- canvas-an...](http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/05/compression-using-canvas-and- png.html)

It's been on reddit or hacker news before, this year iirc.

<comment><USER16> as the ajaxian article stated, i _believe_ that people are trying to make use of it to squeeze the most out of the size-limited javascript contests that are out there. but, i've not seen an entry that does yet (haven't looked that hard though).

<comment><USER18> I think js10k limits entries to those only readable in UTF-8 which, I believe, a PNG (compressed or uncompressed) does not meet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Using the same process (combining data into a png => sending to browser => reading out specific chunks from the png), could you also have a script that combines all the images in your stylesheet into a CSS sprite, sends it to the browser, and then crops out each image on the client-side?

Then you wouldn't have to mess with all the trickery required to layout a CSS sprite and positioning it properly in your stylesheet. Of course the compromise would be the performance hit the first time the browser loads your site and has to crop the images out.

<comment><USER20> Or just do what we do in Cappuccino, and use Base64 encoded data URIs (or MHTML in most versions of IE): [http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2009/11/11/just- one-file-with-...](http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2009/11/11/just-one-file- with-cappuccino-0-8/)

Base64 bloats the size a little bit, but it's recovered as long as you enable Gzip transfer encoding.

<comment><USER19> Interesting. What are your experiences with handling the disadvantages of using data URIs? [1] The biggest disadvantage that I see is:

 _Data URIs are not separately cached from their containing documents (e.g. CSS or HTML files) so data is downloaded every time the containing documents are redownloaded. Content must be re-encoded and re-embedded every time a change is made._

Based on this, it seems like this would still work well for images specified in your stylesheet, but not so much for images that are specified directly in your HTML, because it would bloat HTML file size, and unless the user's browser caches the HTML file itself, they'll have to re-download the large HTML file over and over again.

Also, according to Wikipedia, base64 encoding makes the file size 33% larger than the binary file, and compressing it (as with gzip) only shaves off 2-3% of the base64 file size. Is this accurate? If so, it seems gzip encoding the transfer doesn't really recover the file size bloat you mentioned.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme#Disadvantages>

EDIT: Now that I think about it, if you base64 encode all the images in your stylesheet, won't that make your website look like ass for as long as it takes to download that stylesheet? Usually, this isn't a big deal because a text stylesheet gets downloaded pretty quickly, but now it will be larger in file size than the total sum of all the images that were specified in the stylesheet.

<comment><USER20> Well, our approach works great for rich JavaScript web applications like those built with Cappuccino, not so much for websites. We don't have image URLs specified in stylesheets at all, but rather we use JavaScript to build up the DOM and set the src of all img tags (or background-image style properties, or canvas drawing, etc). That gives us the opportunity to replace the URLs with these data/MHTML URIs looked up through a map (URL -> data/MHTML) that gets populated when you load the sprite.

Regarding the "Flash of Unstyled Content" effect (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_of_unstyled_content>), I believe this has been fixed by modern browsers, as long at the stylesheet is loaded in the head section, since the browser won't display anything until those resources have been loaded (not 100% sure about this, it doesn't affect the kinds of apps I'm talking about anyway)

Regarding Base64 + Gzipping, no, that's not accurate:

 _"Base64-encoded data URIs are 1/3 larger in size than their binary equivalent. This overhead is reduced to 2-3% if the HTTP server compresses the response using HTTP's Content-Encoding header."_

This is saying the overhead is reduced from 33% _to_ 2-3% over the raw image sizes, which is insignificant relative to the performance gained by significantly reducing the number of HTTP requests.

You last point doesn't apply to web applications where, for example, a progress bar can be displayed before showing any of the application UI.

<comment><USER19> Oh cool. Yes, I must have misread that compression stat.

 _We don't have image URLs specified in stylesheets at all, but rather we use JavaScript to build up the DOM and set the src of all img tags (or background- image style properties, or canvas drawing, etc)._

That's really interesting. Since that's not explained in the article you had linked to, I'm assuming Cappuccino did this before switching to data URIs?

Thanks for taking the time to explain this approach more in depth.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, you should read a bit about Cappuccino, it makes drastically different decisions about how an application should be built on top of the browser, but as a result it gets to do complex things like this image spriting extremely simply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A blueprint for the perfect phone - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49291004,00.htm <comment><AUTHOR> I'd personally prefer a flip form factor and a qwerty keypad but I'd still buy the outlined phone if I could.

Remember that Y Combinator is waiting for a team to make a functional, usable phone, you should apply if you think you can do it.

<comment><USER2> A keypad is important because so many girls are into texting.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like texting just as much as the next member of Generation Y but the keypad makes email a lot easier too and I compulsively check my email on my phone.</comment></comment></comment>


Will Banning Cryptography Keep the Country Safe? - <AUTHOR> https://qvault.io/2020/02/05/will-banning-cryptography-keep-the-country-safe/ <comment><USER2> Article does not answer the question posed by its headline, but it is a short, yet good discussion of moral panics, and legislation driven by moral panics.</comment>