Ask HN:  How to reduce sloppy mistakes? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I make a ton of sloppy mistakes when I code.  Stuff that leaves me kicking myself when I spend 20 minutes trying to debug it.  Even though I've gotten better at programming, the number of sloppy mistakes I make is still way too high and its my biggest time drain.
I think part of the problem comes from writing code, glancing through it quickly, and then testing it with a large number of "F5s".  I'm trying to get away from this and am reading my code more thoroughly before testing to see if it works. Anyone struggle with the same issues?  HOw did you improve?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Don't use a debugger - think when something doesn't work. The feedback you get by thinking about your own code teaches you much faster than anything you get with compile/run/debug cycle.

"I think that without a debugger, you don't get into that mindset where you know how it behaves, and then you fix it from there. " [http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastard- speech.h...](http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastard-speech.html)

<comment><USER3> I have downvoted you by accident while using an iPhone. This is terrific advice though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Making fewer mistakes isn't the only solution. You can also make them cost less.

For example, I make a lot more typing mistakes typing into text editors than I used to do when typing on a typewriter. But I type net faster, by a lot, because fixing mistakes is so easy.

There are several ways to make mistakes cost less in programs: writing functional code; using a very abstract language; writing programs in layers; testing every change as you make it, in a repl.

You can switch modes, too. I sometimes start by writing something rapidly and comparatively carelessly, and then later when I reach a natural stopping point, I'll reread it carefully.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try setting yourself a mental challenge of having a subroutine/code snippet work the first time you run it. Start very small. You'll be surprised at how hard this is, and trying this repeatedly can build good habits of reasoning about code.

<comment><USER6> Strangely I had the experience (almost 46 years ago) of writing a program a week for a semester, without encountering either a bug or compilation error. It wasn't until my first assembly language program that I encountered one (a period in one statement where a comma should have been). They were to be sure, very simple programs (similar to the very easiest problems on Project Euler).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like to write my code in my head before I write it with code. Try to imagine all your code and then the code you are going to write and then run through it in your mind. Think of some special cases in your mind. Suppose you are writing a function that accepts a parameter. Okay, so go write it in your head and then imagine, what if someone passes in a string or an int? are these different cases? do I throw an exception, do I return a particular value? How will that affect the rest of the code? What if the code is converted to a library and used by someone else? Could a string be a valid parameter?

Then run through the code in your mind. Does it work? Pass in some variables.

Your mind can process information much faster than you can type it out. If you build the image of your code in your mind, you can map it out in a matter of minutes, but if you start coding without the image, you make more mistakes.

Some other commenters have said write it out or draw it out. This is a good idea if you can't keep it in your head. Do flow charts and state diagrams and things like that _before_ you start coding.

</comment><comment><USER8> _...the number of sloppy mistakes I make is still way too high..._

Compared to what?

You may not have a problem.

Sometimes "code, mistake, fix, code, mistake, fix, code, mistake, fix,..." is faster than "code it perfectly once".

For me it usually is. I'd rather crank stuff out quickly and fix it than drive myself nuts thinking it through.

Stupid syntax and typing errors will go away with repetition. Otherwise I wouldn't worry too much as long as you keep cranking forward.

[For what it's worth: I do not use an IDE, I do not use color or syntax highlighting, and I use debug as a last resort. Many here disagree with me, but I believe my brain internalizes those things that help me avoid stupid mistakes by coding without training wheels.]

<comment><USER9> Why would syntax highlighting, etc. be "training wheels"? I understand that training wheels restrain what you can do with your bike, but what's the downside to coding in an IDE?

<comment><USER8> My experience is that when I code in a simple monochrome text editor, I have instinctually learned and internalized syntax, reserved words, etc. much more quickly. Kinda like shooting a basketball into a smaller hoop or driving a stick shift. Everything just flows better and I rarely have OP's problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using a statically typed language might also help, as the compiler can catch a lot of really stupid errors.

<comment> mjl- exactly. when i read the question i thought: i bet you are using some dynamic scripting language.

use a language a programming style that lets you catch errors early. it's amazing how much time i've wasted testing for errors after small changes in ruby programs. errors that a decent language & compiler wouldn't have allowed or detected much earlier. some languages just weren't designed with this in mind. i no longer program in ruby.

related: once upon a time, i had the idea that i should be able to write a program and have it compiler & work at the first & final attempt. code was in c. of course that failed miserably. especially with the lack of c coding experience. the lesson: don't try to be silly/"smart", use the tools to your advantage. (if your tools don't have advantages, don't use them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd say even more F5s (assuming that's how you compile/run). There's nothing wrong with using the computer to catch a missing semicolon or parenthesis. If it takes you 20 minutes to find the error, maybe it's because you haven't been running your code _often_ enough, rather than the reverse.

Coding is debugging just like writing is revising.

</comment><comment><USER12> "The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less." ~ Piet Hein

In other news, I try to check my answers by deriving them two ways. If they agree, then I at least have a good defense :). If I'm working on something that can only be reached one way (like pulling data from a database), I assert boneheaded things that should be true about code + data structures. Sometimes it's superfluous, sometimes it catches mistakes.

If you don't work in a language that provides stack traces on crashes, add logging. You'll get a rudimentary stack trace of what was happening when everything went to hell, as well as have a small radius for where the crash occurs.

<comment><USER6> +1 for Piet Hein - I love his hypererllipse and super eggs, as well as Melior (based on hyperellipes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would say get better at using a debugger and/or use a higher level language.

My guess is that worrying too much about low-level correctness while writing your code could lead to very poor productivity and even OCD.

</comment><comment><USER14> Try to consider all possibilities for failure and all inputs or contingencies. If you are still coding and don't want to interrupt your "flow" to go write an error handler, just put an assertion or a comment or something that will force you to go back and write it before you compile. That way you'll know when the problem is actually solved.

With that in mind, perhaps also think about the way you are structuring your development. Do you have a mental (or physical) sketch of the code before you write it? There's something to be said for having a bit of paper to scribble on before and during the coding process. Map out little examples (e.g. "test cases") and think about how you will deal with all of them.

Finally, writing stubs (i.e. functions or modules that are basically empty) when you first start can be great. If you know you're going to need some pieces of functionality in order to solve your problem, then write stubs for those and then solve the problem (i.e. write the main program flow). Hopefully then when you come to write the supporting functions that do most of the heavy lifting, you will have clarified your intuitions around how they are supposed to work.

So my advice would be to be a little more rigorous in your approach _before_ you get to the point of having screenfuls of code in front of you.

</comment><comment><USER15> I carefully read my patches before I commit them. Probably sounds pretty obvious, but I find that I can catch most problems by simply running "git diff" and then carefully and slowly reading through the output.

This is especially true when I'm editing existing code rather than checking in new functionality. I read the diff while mentally asking myself "is this going to change anything other than what I intended it to change".

</comment><comment><USER6> Code review. Even if you don't have someone to review it, you can pretend to explain it to someone else, a line at a time.

Error logging. When you make a mistake, and find it, document it, with as much of the reason why you made the mistake as you understand. Keep a diary of these for a few months, and you'll be surprised by how much you learn, as well as learning which mistakes you're most prone to.

</comment><comment><USER16> Speculation: Based on the principal that you can't improve what you don't measure (or, what you measure you improve), you could keep a log of the sloppy mistakes you make. After a while, maybe patterns will emerge and you can attack 'mistyping numbers' separately from 'missing cases in a switch block' and 'correct behaviour of nested-if took 5 attempts'.

<comment><USER17> I was going to write exactly the same thing, but you've put it more eloquently than I could. Also, it would seem to me that just "writing more test-cases" wouldn't get one very far as the tests are going to be as sloppy as the original work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sounds like a symptom of typing too much and thinking too little.

This may be a little old fashioned of me, but any time I try to solve a problem that isn't immediately obvious, I write it down on paper first (or whiteboard it).

If you can't hold the solution in your head and visualize it, then you should try to break the problem down into smaller chunks so that you can at least fully visualize all of the moving parts.

Around my office, I have a set of maxims that I always emphasize in order to keep our quality high - #2 on the list is to always measure twice before cutting (or writing, in this case); rule #1 is to pick the low hanging fruit first. There's no point in starting to code a solution until you know with a level of certainty what it is you're trying to achieve. Lots of people with debugger syndrome don't know where they're going until they happen upon a solution by coincidence instead of by intention.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've found that copious use of assert statements has done wonders for reducing the amount of time I spend debugging. Its a good idea to use enough assert statements that when there's a problem it is reported immediately instead of propagating and causing weird symptoms that you have to track down. At the beginning of every function I think to myself "what am I expecting here" and then put in 2-3 assert statements to make sure my expectations are met. For example, if I'm passing a data structure that I expect to be filled, I assert that it is non empty.

When I encounter a bug I write an assert that reveals the problem before I fix it in order to prevent having to deal with the same issue more than once. This is especially big for me since I work with a lot of (other people's) data.

</comment><comment><USER20> Use shorter code/compile/run cycles. Use print statements instead of a debugger (much faster to scan input than step through a debugger). If something doesn't work, it's likely related to the change you just made. If you coded for a long time since last testing, it's much harder to mentally identify where the problem might be.

It's ok if you don't get it perfect all of the time. It's the 20 minutes debugging that's killing you. Shorten your cycle and eventually you will get less sloppy (or immediately know where/what the sloppiness is before you even run). It will be like that typo you "know" you made even before you finished typing (something won't feel right and you'll go back and fix it before you read the debugging output).

</comment><comment><USER21> Before you hit compile, look at the key lines of code that you just wrote and think about exactly what you expect them to do. Then compile and run the code. Don't rush to compile. It'll take longer in the long run. Also, it's less enjoyable to program that way. I prefer a careful, focused style where every line is carefully written.

I know what you mean about hitting F5 all the time. I usually program that way when I don't feel like thinking. I want to cross my fingers and hope that it works. When I notice I'm doing this, I need to stop and think about what it is that I'm doing. I'll often write down in text what I'm trying to do. Or I'll turn off the computer and think about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Write tests before you code, and spend more time planning software with pen and paper before you actually write it. If you're having doubts about your abilities or solutions and work as part of a team, ping team members or friends.

</comment><comment><USER23> While it can be fun to make big sweeping changes, I find that silly errors are easy to catch when I keep all my changes small so here's what I do:

\- When I'm working with a fast compiler, I setup a small CI system to immediately compile my code and run my tests every time I save my changes. If I can't do this for some reason then I setup a trivial background script to do this constantly and watch the output in another window.

\- I try not to cut corners. It's easy to stay in the flow once I have things setup so that I can build and extend my tests and scaffolds along with my code.

Small moves, Everest, small moves...

</comment><comment><USER24> tests tests tests

I use a little tool that runs unit tests on compilation, when Im doing something new that unit tests works well with, I write a bunch of tests and just code until I have 100% tests passing.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. We aren't writing code on punch cards, getting it right the first time isn't a huge deal.

If you make a lot of mistakes, have sanity tests cover your ass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Everyone's going to say "test driven development" or "think before you write" but honestly, the only thing that has ever truly worked for me is pair coding. Just have a buddy sit over your shoulder and watch you work.

It's a bit like the integrity mechanism of developing two copies of the same software, done by totally separate teams. You and your friend are both thinking about how to solve the problem, but separately, which means the likelihood that both of you make the same dumb mistake is fairly low.

</comment><comment> gaia-forming 1\. Get a good editor, and watch the syntax highlighting.

2\. Start unit testing your code, there are plenty of libraries available for this.

3\. It comes with experience.

</comment><comment><USER27> Code a little bit at a time. If there's a bug, you know it was due to what you just added.

</comment><comment><USER28> Automated testing is the only way to improve the baseline quality of your code. It's painful to do in the beginning, but think about it like exercise -- once you make it part of your routine, you'll be healthier overall.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some good advice already.

Don't try to always be coding. You need to have total focus when you work. If you work when you don't have it you are just creating more work for yourself later. It's a net loss.

</comment><comment><USER30> In addition to the methods suggested here, make sure you're taking care of yourself. Eat well, get enough sleep and exercise, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER31> Two parts:

1) ASSERT. Catch the mistakes while they're still dumb.

2) Take advantage of your type checker to catch mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER32> You just need the following: proper editor, proper debugger, years of painful experience.</comment>


Debian reproducibility statistics - <AUTHOR> https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/reproducible.html <comment><USER2> On a side note: A point that many a company ignores when they demand some assurance so their software vendor a) can be held liable b) will hand over the source in case of drama, is to give the source code in Escrow. The number one error these companies make is to think that source code without a reproducible build environment means anything at all. Reproducibility is not easy. I applaud Debian (and in the older days TrueCrypt) for giving this more exposure.

<comment><USER3> Someplace my company has a closet with a computer containing Windows XP (not sure which service pack, but not the latest), and and old version of visual studio, just in case we need to fix a bug. I know we still have it because the project got resurrected recently and we had to clone the harddrive a few times because nobody could find a copy of that version of visual studio that can be installed. (Microsoft dropped support for whatever version of WinCE with no upgrade path)

<comment><USER4> We have a bunch of VMs cloned from ancient machines for the same reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a nice progression [https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/stats_issues.pn...](https://tests.reproducible- builds.org/debian/stats_issues.png)

Project started in 2014 it seems.

<comment><USER6> I'd invest in that

<comment><USER7> _But would you have been able to hold your nerve through May?_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone shed some light on what exactly "reproducible" means in this context?

<comment><USER9> It's a term for binaries (usually ELF) being byte-to-byte equal in two different runs of a compiler. This way you can build a binary package from source package and if its content is the same, you know what source code was used to build the package, and then you can e.g. inspect the code for backdoors or build debug symbols without planning for that beforehand.

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

<comment><USER10> And why Debian is not reproducible?

<comment><USER11> because during the compilation, some package use date-dependent stuff, for example (I dunno the exact details though)

<comment> vertex-four Also some build systems create artifacts as a result of timing-dependent algorithms. Simply put, if two things A and B run simultaneously, and A completes before B, then in some compilers/build systems/etc the result can be different from B completing before A. GHC, as a well-known example, suffers from this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also this page of tools: [https://reproducible- builds.org/tools/](https://reproducible-builds.org/tools/)

disorderfs is nice for ferreting out readdir()-ordering effects.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is Docker (or any other container platform) a facilitator to reproducible builds? Making the environment standard between builds is probably easier in a container.

<comment><USER14> Docker is part of a broader "reproducible build environment" strategy, but doesn't really help with some of the things that cause problems (timestamps, kernel version, random IDs).

<comment><USER15> Docker seeks to reproduce a functionally equivalent software environment, motivated by version management concerns. Debian is trying to reproduce bitwise identical build products, motivated by security concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if switching from cmake to buck[1] and buckaroo[2] would simplify and increase reproducibility.

[1] [https://buckbuild.com](https://buckbuild.com)

[2] [https://buckaroo.pm](https://buckaroo.pm)

<comment><USER17> Based on the experiences of systemd, gtk, and X11 in switching to Meson, I'd think Meson might be the best choice here. While Buck, Bazel, Pants, etc. are designed for large projects, Meson is designed for small-to-medium-size projects and integrates with pkg-config, which in turn should provide simpler integration with distribution package managers. My experiences with Bazel demonstrated that integration with distribution packages can be quite difficult.

<comment><USER16> why I'm consider that using pkg-config in buck may break reproducibility: [https://github.com/facebook/buck/issues/1430](https://github.com/facebook/buck/issues/1430)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The lack of a .yet TLD is a real missed opportunity.

<comment><USER19> Meh, joke sites like this aren't nearly as prominent as sites for apps, I'd really like a .app TLD instead. That said, the distinction between app and service is blurring a lot, so Spotify and VS Code probably both qualify for .app but one also has a web interface. Everything is confusing, let's just stick to .com

<comment><USER20> Why do you consider this a joke site?

And just because you are easily confused, everybody should stick to .com only?

<comment><USER21> The link was originally to [http://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/](http://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mods, how come my post was completely edited? :)

<comment><USER22> The _is-foo-bar-yet.com - > NO/YES_ trope has been off topic on HN for years, mainly because such pages are unsubstantive but also because it's long been a cliché.

If we can find a more substantive page to link to on the same topic, we'll sometimes change the URL. Usually we post a comment explaining that we did so, but it depends who's on duty at the time.

<comment><USER23> I personally don't think _is-foo-bar-yet.com_ has been played out, nor do I agree with editing cliche links like this. The link is more substantive than you let on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe im missing something but it seems the justification behind this is based on a situation in which source wasnt open. Debian _is_ open so why is reproducibility a priority?

<comment><USER25> I know Debian has lofty goals with respect to reproducibility, but on a purely "I hate waiting for builds", getting deterministic object files can prevent spurious linking. For example: change a comment, watch your code link for 10 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mmm. Think of the CO2/power savings at a big coding shop like, I dunno, Google...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Free Engineer Jobsearch Video Course - <AUTHOR> https://course.jobsearch.dev/01_introductions/01_course_intro.html <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Hello all, given the recent layoffs felt like it was worth sharing this resource.

My friends and I produced a free online video course for job searching and interviewing. We hope you will find this useful.

For what it's worth, I was part of a layoff several years ago. It was a weird thing to go through, but looking back I can certainly say things turned out for the better. If there's any way I can help or if you want to talk please feel free to reach out. Email in profile</comment>


Publisher Realizes Google Books Isn't Evil, But Quite Beneficial - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20100310/2349508514.shtml

<comment><USER2> It's amazing to me that the guy actually changed his mind on the issue. It's like getting some Vatican Cardinal to convert to atheism.

<comment><USER3> As cliche as it may sound, I think that the publishers are simply afraid of that which they don't understand. I rarely use Google Books but the few times I have I immediately noticed that what I am looking at is not the entire book. The fact that this isn't well know by the publishers makes it clear; they have no clue what Google Books is, but they don't like it.

<comment><USER4> The whole situation seems similar to physical books in stores. Anyone can walk in, pick one up, read, and never pay a cent. But publishers don't complain about that.

Because most people won't try to read whole books this way. It's inconvenient by being time-consuming. Google Books is also inconveinient (for different reasons). There are exceptions, but they exist for both cases. The fact that GB limits how much content they show also pushes readers to buy the books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that book publishers really DO have something to fear from piracy. Not right now, obviously- real books are hands-down a better experience than reading on a computer. But the digital means are going to get more and more compelling over the next few years, and a generation is going to grow up with a different concept of "book".

disclaimer: I've never used an ebook reader. I _have_ read books on my computer screen.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't propose doing this, but would it be possible to automatically extract the entire text of a book from Google Books?

I mean, if I search for something it will give me the pages just before and just after, right? Can I then conduct searches for rare phrases found on the pages just before and just after and work my way outwards? Or have they done something to prevent this?</comment>


When Will Self Driving Cars Become Mandatory? - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009628.html

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing in about 20 years you'll start seeing propaganda to force it.

But that's just the beginning. After that you'll start seeing some kind of kill switch being mandatory. Then you'll start seeing more regulations to dissuade people from even owning cars, autonomous or not. And then of course the final step is to impose "sign ups" for when you want to use some government vehicle (all in the name of global warming, or whatever name they'll switch to by then).

</comment><comment><USER3> It may not happen because of resistance to it, but it definitely should. Automobiles are a huge source of preventable death and injury. Manual driving would have never been legal if we had _started_ with autonomous automobiles.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can have my steering wheel when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.</comment>


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Why Every City Feels the Same Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/why-every-city-feels-same-now/615556/ <comment><USER2> I have spent the last year trying to open up a cafe and small space where I could build custom motorcycles. I think on paper it is the kind of project that people would say brings life to a city but the city I live in seems like they have designed their zoning laws to be as stacked as possible against someone like me opening up a business that does not fit a cookie cutter mold of some other existing business, at least not without hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay lawyers and architects.The building I want to use could be moved into tomorrow without a penny of changes.

I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but that's not what we are talking about here. I can't put a cafe (literally an espresso machine and a few tables and chairs) in a structure in residential neighborhood without a huge investment in lawyers and architects and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

And then surprise surprise, all of the things open in the city are chain restaurants which everyone complains about backed by large corporation who have huge budgets for construction, and architects, and lawyers and palm greasing so our cities slowly morph into this.

It really sucks.

<comment><USER3> > and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a > two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review > board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

Your complaint is that your new business has to not be a fire hazard or completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

I get you on the fact that zoning laws can get pretty wonky, but these requirements here seem pretty reasonable to me.

<comment><USER4> > completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

One of my favorite coffee shops is a little hole in the wall in the basement or an old brick building.

Despite the fact that to get to the shop, you need to go down a narrow set of exterior stairs, the owner was required to put in a wheel-chair accessible bathroom. It's a small space and the bathroom is nearly as big as the seating area.

It's an asinine requirement.

The owner looked into moving to a different spot a block away, which would have been on the main level. He backed out of that when the city told him he needed to install a grease trap to meet code. This despite the fact that nothing he sold contained any sort of grease or oil that would make it down the drain.

Zoning laws and HOAs are great in concept. But they tend to get taken over by the Delores Umbridge [1] types who love nothing more than punishing people for violating stupid rules.

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

<comment><USER5> Zoning laws and HOAs really aren't great in concept, but they're also not the same thing as disabled access laws and environmental regulations.

<comment><USER6> San Jose, CA had a streak of ADA torts that resulted in small businesses closing shop : [https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee- in-...](https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee-in-san-jose- closes-due-to-ada-lawsuit/) [https://www.ktvu.com/news/times-up-san-jose-deli- closing-its...](https://www.ktvu.com/news/times-up-san-jose-deli-closing-its- doors-after-nearly-70-years)

<comment><USER7> FYI, Crema moved a few blocks away and is still open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the fundamental error here is to think this is in any way a new phenomenon. This line, in particular, holds the key:

> Others evolved over the centuries: Islamic architecture encompasses both > Moorish horseshoe arches and the turquoise domes of Uzbekistan, but the > unified features such as minarets and geometric ornaments _tell you these > are lands conquered and converted by Muslim empires._

(Emphasis mine)

This architectural homogenisation has always happened to some extent except that, in the past, its sphere of influence was limited to the area of a certain empire, nation state, or religion. Nowadays the actors are powerful corporations with global reach, and hence the homogenisation is global in scope rather than more localised.

There may be a solution to this but I don't think calling for a preservation of local architectural style and culture is it, because it's not dealing with the root cause of the problem.

That may go back to valuing function over form and getting the most value for money out of buildings, although neither do I think this is a complete explanation.

<comment><USER9> That's a good point - in the past, when lands were conquered by the Muslim empire, they started to share architectural style. Now, as more lands are conquered by the international-corporate-capitalist empire, they too start to share an architectural style ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Building codes have made it extremely expensive and time consuming to build anything other than cookie cutter boxes. Of course the code also reduces fire danger and roof collapses are extremely rare now. The cost is uniqueness. Yet another case where you can't get something for nothing.

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

<comment><USER11> And yet another case, I suspect, of the Pareto principle: 20% of regulations are load-bearing. They keep lead out of our pipes, asbestos out of our ceilings, and make electrical fires thankfully rare.

The remaining 80% all look good on paper (or they wouldn't be there) but do things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if there's an accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be happy to extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers. Or dictate ceiling heights so that the occasional 2 meter tall customer won't hit his head on exposed pipe.

But these regulations aren't optional "best practices", they have the same weight as ones which prevent building collapse, fire, and cancer. And the sum total is a landscape which is prohibitively hostile, in many cases, to starting a small business.

<comment><USER12> > do things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if > there's an accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be > happy to extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers

This is not a scalable solution. Now does the business have to have the same hours as your business? If not, what does the handicapped person do when they have to use the restroom and it's not available? If we want disabled people to be full members of our society, we just need to pay the costs of reasonable accommodations to their needs.

<comment><USER11> 1) the insistence that every regulation scale perfectly and apply in all cases is the root of the problem

2) I did point out that each regulation, taken in isolation, looks like a good idea: you're illustrating that with your objection

3) There will always be a gap between reasonable accommodation and perfect accommodation, and what's reasonable is always subject to some debate: the effect of this is to push the reasonable further out into the realm of the unreasonable, in pursuit of the perfect

After all, no one wants to strand a wheelchair user with nowhere to pee. Certainly I don't.

But no one, wheelchair or no, can enjoy a coffeeshop which never existed because the starting costs were too high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a little ranty so it's difficult at a skim to get the core arguments of the author down

But the main call to action seems to be to preserve local culture, architecture, and design, rather than letting the world become a homogenized corporate sameness enforced by hegemonic powers.

A noble goal, but not one that's really actionable. The architectural sameness spreads for the reason most architecture spreads, which is practicality. Ultimately the people with deep pockets build and buy, and those people are influenced by current trends and what is most practical (affordable and featureful).

You can show me the most beautiful architecture in the world, and I'll show you a builder creating a bastardized version of it with 30% more square feet.

The mcmansion with 30% more square feet makes the sale.

<comment><USER14> Collective action, especially purchase preferences, are notoriously hard to change but that's where the action comes from. The trend of putting every dollar into square footage, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, didn't come from nowhere. They are easily quantifiable metrics about a house that sorta-kinda- if-you-squint give you an impression of livability and they're what every house searching tool gives users to filter on and $/sq. ft is the most prominently displayed metric for "value." Worse, even if _you_ don't care about playing stupid games, you still likely have to play if you ever want to sell your house.

Changing how we evaluate the quality of a house changes how they're built.

<comment><USER13> That's true. I've been looking at housing a lot because I'm hoping to buy next spring, since my wife and I finally just finished saving enough for a down payment.

I've started considering it a "smell", if you will, when a recently- constructed single family home is in the range of 2800-3500 square feet. Almost inevitably, I look at more detailed pictures on the floor plan and layout and see all sorts of weird choices - a little "half office" right at the top of the stairs not even in its own room (just like, an empty space). Questionably shaped rooms that interact strangely with the roof. And so on.

Additionally, my personal preference is not even to have that much space - I'm nearly content with 1000sqft for a family of 3, what could I do with 3 times that much? - but I must confess that I do play the value-per-sqft game without meaning to when I'm comparing a 1500 sqft against a 2000 sqft home.

<comment><USER14> I'm in the same boat. Currently looking at houses but largely content with out roughly 1100 sq ft two bedroom apartment for a family of tree. I wish I could find houses where the layouts are as thoughtfully planned as our current place. It's so frustrating to tour a house that's on paper twice the size but manages to feel smaller. Like I can fit more stuff in the house but it's not any more livable.

<comment><USER15> My wife and I have always felt this way, we could fit our rather large family in a _much_ smaller space if it was designed around the way we spend our days.

When we had 2 toddlers and an infant and went apartment searching, we kept getting shoehorned into 3 bedroom apartments because of the size of our family, but half the time, the apartments just traded space in the living room for an extra bedroom, which we didn't really need because the kids spent all of their time with us in the living room.

We often felt like we were being judged for not wanting more space for the kids, when in reality we were trying to find the biggest common space we could.

<comment><USER16> Square-footage-cram is a lot like feature-cram in software. We don't like to do it, but it's unfortunately how we have to market to unsophisticated "checkbox buyers" of product.

I would personally love a half-sized well-designed home with character and a unique architecture that uses its area well. But, you have to pay an arm an a leg for it. Unfortunately the budget market caters to buyers who limit their home criteria to "price per square foot". So instead we get giant borg cube houses built right up to the lot line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> About Apple's new headquarters:

 _Shaped like a spaceship, it also suggests to the local community, which grants Apple huge tax breaks, that the company could take off and relocate anywhere in the world, whenever it wants._

This seems precisely backwards. A massive, stylish new headquarters in Cupertino makes it _harder_ for Apple to relocate anywhere else in the world, and ties it more to the local community. Indeed, the fact that Apple HQ is in Cupertino seems to define the essence of Cupertino more than anything else. I feel like the author is distacted by appearances and ignoring the substance.

<comment><USER17> The point is the perception, not the reality.

<comment><USER18> It's particularly curious that they compare Apple Park with the Pentagon. It's a very similar design concept—arranging offices in a ring so as to maximize efficiency. But while Apple Park's "UFO" aesthetic has the implication that it could take off at any second, the Pentagon was architecturally inspired by a star fort, which has the complete opposite connotation—one builds a fort when one is very determined to stay in the same place.

<comment><USER19> Ironic then that the Pentagon was designed to be temporary.

"It was supposed to be temporary.

The Pentagon was the brainchild of Army Brig. Gen. Brehon B. Sommervell, who, in the early 1940s, pitched it as a temporary solution to the then-War Department's critical shortage of space as the threat of joining World War II became imminent.

The plan was approved, and on Sept. 11, 1941, construction began. About 296 acres of land were designated for the building, which was supposed to be turned into a hospital, office or warehouse once World War II was over."

[https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/18674...](https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1867440/pentagon- history-7-big-things-to-know/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read another article a few years ago, I think also in The Atlantic, that approached this from the angle of every coffee shop, hip restaurant, and, importantly, Airbnb looking the same everywhere.

Isn't this just the result of globalization? As people travel more, won't tastes naturally converge? And while I'll miss cities having their own distinct flavor, I'm also not sure it's inherently bad that things look more similar. What is bad is that the style and culture we're landing on is driven by the class of people who bounce between world-class cities.

<comment><USER21> Maybe this article was the one? [https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb- aesthetic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic- global-minimalism-startup-gentrification)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Everything_ feels the same now.

Websites, they all look like they used Bootstrap.

Smartphones, well they basically _are_ the same as everybody has the latest iPhone.

Fashion. Everybody wears jeans.

<comment><USER23> I'm of the opinion that optimization is a natural enemy of variety and diversity. Our businesses, economy, and more encroachingly, culture, are dictated by the requirement for many to optimize on cost and ROI. As such, we converge on all but a few well established optimized processes we essentially copy and repeat. Occasionally "disruptive" strategies emerge and find a new, better cost/ROI optimization solution.

Variety and diversity on the other hand need to be able to discard cost/ROI focused optimization. They need to be inefficient/"wasteful", they need to take time and more resources because they're new or their fundamental variance that makes them appealing are defined by their very state of being sub- optimal. They need to be able to fail and iterate, not fail and die.

I'm a proponent of optimizing on certain factors like cost, time, space and so forth under certain conditions, but I think we need to stand back as humans and be mindful of processes we seek to optimize and ask if some of them are factors we _really_ want to optimize on. Do we want more square footage so we can cram another person or piece of furniture in or do we want to change our target optimization to include aesthetic appeal, variety, mental health... and so forth. We have our priorities way off as a society, I'd argue, and those priorities are being less of a choice and more of a mandate for many.

Right now we're on a runaway freight train across society to optimize on cost and ignore everything else. This pandemic is sure to expedite that problem with the economic toll its taken. That cost saving/ROI optimization strategy, in our economic system, will "win" most times over other choices. If we are able to relax the financial constraints of many, then we can use that slack to focus on other factors that aren't always cost and profit driven.

<comment><USER24> Doesn't that question simply devolve into, "How much more are you willing to pay for variety and diversity?"

Shopping at boutique stores certainly offer a more memorable shopping experience, better dining, or more engaging products than Amazon or Walmart, but at substantially greater cost/risk. When efficiency/safety becomes primary among your desiderata, variety and diversity will suffer.

This is the exact conundrum covered well in Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" which bemoaned the social cost arising from city/village design that was optimized to serve too narrow a set of priorities, thereby eliminating opportunity to experience and share common spaces in more than one way.

<comment><USER25> Most "boutique" stores sell the same made in China junk as every other store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article explains why travel in a lot of the US (born and raised here) is not interesting except for New Orleans and maybe Austin, or SF and Berkeley. There's a despair here that I bet the French or Portuguese have a perfect word for.

I hope old Europe doesn't fully go this way because it's my favorite place to go. It's oldness is very soothing which is a sensibility or modality I got from my father.

<comment><USER27> I've traveled most of the US on wheels and I feel this. I have an intense urge to take my oldest car on a long unplanned roadtrip just for the adventure of doing it, but I never go because 'Where would I go? It's all an interstate and a bunch of nothing new". Yes, there are small towns, but even through those you have to drive 15hs to find something that stands out.

What they don't tell you in movies about the American roadtrip in a convertible is that it's really long no matte where you go and really boring for the most part.

<comment><USER28> I travelled using a 50cc motorbike from France to Istanbul.

Avoiding motorways was necessary, but it turned out to be an amazing improvement. I now actively try to travel using just back roads and I try not to be in a hurry to reach a destination. I now find travel is best done slowly, unoptimally, via the less usual routes, and that the journey is often the best part (especially when travelling with a good travel buddy).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."

<comment> blaser-waffle "At least we're not Detroit!"

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Its interesting. I don't have experience with a large variety of cities, but Seattle and DC I am quite familiar with. They do not feel the same to me at all. Lots of history and monuments, and there are still pretty strict height restrictions in DC. Just don't have any of that feel in Seattle. The primary commonality is the horrible traffic. But, if you go to Bellevue and Tyson's Corner they feel the same. Perhaps DC is unique? Perhaps I am biased to the region I grew up in? How do other feel DC and Seattle compare?

<comment><USER31> Can't speak of DC but I feel that even culturally, large cities have more in common with each other than they do with the sparesly populated regions in their own countries.

London, Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Seoul, KL, Singapore, Cape Town, Shanghai, Buenos Aires... Same same but different.

<comment><USER32> Rome is an exception to the others. The centre is low-rise and packed with stunning ancient Roman buildings. Compared with, say, Milan. The suburbs are much more similar, though.

<comment><USER33> Pretty sure that's legislated in Rome. Similar in Jerusalem.

<comment><USER34> Also DC - nothing can be higher than the Washington Monument in the district.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Haven't read the article, but here in Europe I see more McDonalds, Starbucks, Subways and UberEats in my own city as times goes by.

I hate it.

edit: I forgot the KFC and BurgerKing. WTF is Kentucky Fried Chicken doing in the most northern city of NL?

<comment> blaser-waffle COVID is gonna kill the small local joints. Large chains, or well-entrenched local places are the only ones that will survive. Over time, they take over.

Post-COVID is going to look like a cyberpunk dystopia.

<comment><USER24> Probably true, but will that dystopia persist indefinitely? I doubt it. Yes many iconoclasts will lose their small business in the next year, but a couple years thereafter I suspect new gainsayers will arise. They may be fewer or farther flung geographically than before. But with some of the other likely consequents of COVID like a long-term rise in remote work and less commuting, more funky restaurants are likely to pop up in less expensive enclaves where more of us prefer to live and can better afford to set up funky shops of our own. It's still hard to predict the future.

<comment><USER25> Business come and go. A city is resilient not because of the business but because there is something.

Chains come and go too. Kmart used to be bigger than Walmart, now gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm less concerned with central business districts having the same architectural form. That's clearly function following form to some extent; people who work in those places want space and light, and as much of it as possible in a small area. I'm more concerned about the Brooklyn-ification of everything. Interior aesthetics, menu items, playlists, etc., are converging in places like Saratoga Springs and Omaha in a way that really dulls the sense of place you used to get traveling America.

</comment><comment><USER36> At least in Europe they don't. At all.

<comment><USER37> Even Europe has seen a great deal of architectural convergence. The Nordic style, for example, spread from Finland to the surrounding countries, and if one has known the Baltic countries since the 1990s, one marvels at how in the post-Soviet era they have begun to converge architecturally, and in terms of certain aspects of urban planning, towards the Nordic countries.

<comment><USER38> >The Nordic Style

Do you mean Nordic Classicism or Funkis?

<comment><USER37> I mean Funkis and post-Funkis trends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Here, in the Netherlands, towns get more similar. Mostly because all the shops are part of the same big chains, with the same cheap building style, and the same ways roads are upgraded. Cities all have their own history, so there is more variation there.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's so much more to how a city feels than its architecture.

Though I do agree that the International Style is a bit overdone.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you think about it, it's a weird consumerist way to think about buildings -- what's important about a building is why I, the tourist, thinks of it, and not the people who have to use it every day. Most people don't spend their time going from hotel to hotel not knowing where they are, so buildings aren't built to keep those people from being bored.

<comment><USER42> What is really consumerist about it is that it is the ultimate first world problem in treating minor inconveniences as grand oppression and demanding the world change how it operates alienated, smuggly alienated from the realities of production and calling themselves enlightened for it.

Get a disgruntled real estate developer with a few drinks in them to lower inhibitions and demand make less homogenous housing. Prepare for an earsplitting rant about every last detail they need to go through from economies of scale, cost of getting it, to building codes to zoning approval processes and meetings as they lack and the utter presumptious cluelessness of the demand from someone practically irrelevant to the whole process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> no it doesn't, I fail to see how is Prague same as Beijing vs KL vs New Delhi for instance unless you stay in CBD like author of this piece and I am pretty sure it would feel very different also in Africa

</comment><comment><USER44> There are a lot of words in this article that are not really important to the argument so it takes awhile to get to the actual less link-bait conclusion.

TL;DR: architecture is another means of control and we shouldn't let corporate architecture (headquarters) or current hegemonic / imperial designs take over the local uniqueness because it is acceptable but instead embrace local architecture. The article highlights some places under threat, and some good examples and ends with a plea to avoid blotting our our current desirable places that are unique with hegemonic buildings. [many many examples included]

</comment><comment><USER45> To the degree that there is a certain sameness, at least in the US, the other thing that probably contributes is chain stores/restaurants. It's more pronounced in some places than others but both urban shopping malls and places on the street overlap a great deal from city to city.

<comment><USER25> Our needs as humans are mostly the same, as are our wants. Thus chains to fill the same needs the same way everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Obviously it's the internet.

But the internet also allows one to go deeper into cities.

So at the moment we are still breaking even.

In part poverty helps keep things different, this to is disappearing. The destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants. Pre internet it might have been a local burger joint.

Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a (designed) shipping container Irish pub.

<comment> blaser-waffle > The destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

You lost me here.

> This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a > ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to > McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants.

Do some reading about all of the terrible things large fast food conglomerates have done to our food supply. Cheap food is easy to get in places like India -- rice and dahl for what would be pennies in USD -- and eradicating their culture via McDicks benefits no one.

> Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a > (designed) shipping container Irish pub.

This sounds like all of the worst parts of Irish drinking culture, inside a metal container, and without any of the things that make Irish pubs appealing, such as old crackpot sods who've sat at the same stool for ~20+ years.

<comment><USER46> > and eradicating their culture via McDicks benefits no one.

It's up to you, but when I stopped calling Microsoft M$ it allowed me to mature a little in the software world and be able to critically look at things. It sounds silly, but for me it worked.

[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6185/is-m-for- micro...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6185/is-m-for-microsoft- allowed-considered-ok/6188)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> On the same note, why is every city council obsessed with attracting tourism? For whatever reason it's seen as the holy grail of industry.

<comment><USER48> It's relatively non-polluting and leads to growth in amenities that can also be enjoyed by locals.

<comment><USER49> Middle-class tourist travel is responsible for something like 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe you meant that it was locally non-polluting? That jet fuel and gasoline burning doesn't pollute the tourist destinations much more than everyplace else, although it pollutes more than almost anything else.

edit: changed 20% to 8%. Removed "IIRC."

[https://www.carbonbrief.org/tourism-responsible-for-8-of- glo...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/tourism-responsible-for-8-of-global- greenhouse-gas-emissions-study-finds)

<comment><USER48> > That jet fuel and gasoline burning...

According to the article you linked:

> The rise is largely driven by an increased demand for goods and services – > rather than air travel, the research finds.

But yes, as far as local job-creation goes, tourism is much more palatable than heavy industry. Would you rather live near charming shops and restaurants or a big factory?

<comment><USER18> Would you rather work in a charming shop or restaurant as a minimum wage service worker dealing with the public, or as a better-paid skilled worker in a big factory?

<comment><USER48> Doesn't matter to the city council. Homeowners pay property tax and vote in local elections. Wage labor commutes in to do whatever jobs they can get.

<comment><USER18> And without middle-class jobs, you don't get any homeowners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Some time back I was looking at a commercial building/space for a personal music studio which would be only for myself, not teaching etc. I was shocked at the prices for even sub-par buildings. If you think homes are expensive, buying a commercial space is even higher in major cities.

</comment><comment><USER51> From 2015. Crosscut: "The new Seattle, where everything looks the same"

[https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where- everythin...](https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everything- looks-the-same)

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe part of that feeling is due to the perfect grids cities are laid out as in America (North and South)? In Europe, roads look like they've been drawn by throwing a game of Mikado on a map. It definitely gives them some character. :-D

</comment><comment><USER53> Aside from the article the main header collage is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER54> Shops, restaurants, clothes virtually all the same too.

</comment><comment><USER55> "Now"?

People have been making this complaint since the 80's.

<comment><USER25> In the 1980s they told me it goes back to the 1960s. It is safe to assume the the grandkids of the first humans said much the same. And their grandparents complained that kids these days dont know how to behave like they did when I was a kid...

<comment><USER55> Well this is more than a good-old-days argument. Highly homogenized architecture nationwide really took off in the 80's as did the prevalence of franchises and the consolidation of department and grocery stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Every place feels the same because every place is the same place; Earth. I can assure you that the only people who have even been to a different place have no trouble remembering which place they are in.

</comment><comment><USER57> They don't.</comment>


Qantas plans non-stop flight from Perth to London - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/flights/qantas-plans-nonstop-flight-from-perth-to-london-on-new-boeing-7879-dreamliner-aircraft/news-story/4182a52cc1982d37338a7dd469773956 <comment><USER2> Not quite far enough ...

Sydney-London non-stop would be awesome. Sydney-New York non-stop would be awesome. But stopping in Perth vs. Singapore? Meh.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yss, but how much?</comment>


Tell HN: Watch YC Startup School Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupschool

<comment><USER3> I apologize for being harsh, but there has not been one major justin.tv stream that I have seen that has been enjoyable to watch. Seriously. Last year's startup school, this year's startup school, the wolfram alpha launch. It's either the audio cutting out, the video freezing, or both. I appreciate that the service is free and that they're working hard to get it to work, but honestly, this has happened so many times to the point where I'd just rather read people's summaries of the talks than trying to tolerate the choppy videos anymore. It's gotten a bit ridiculous.

I get they're a YC company, cool, but in following years, you should give an alternative, like UStream, etc, if the quality there is better. I try to avoid justin.tv as much as possible in general now.

<comment><USER4> The audio's "cutting out" because the mic level in the room is way too high. Notice how the video remains smooth while the audio stutters.

<comment><USER5> I've been trying to watch and the video has been pretty choppy too.

Not trying to hate or anything, but I'm pretty bummed about this. I was really looking forward to watching it.

<comment><USER5> Just to follow up - the stream has gotten a LOT better - watching Chris Anderson now. Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will recordings of the talk be posted online, preferably with slides attached? It would be wonderful if they were and i am sure that i'm not the only one that would appreciate it.

Watching inspiring talks like these are a real godsend for me, especially since i don't have the possibility to attend anything similar to this in real life. We don't have many web or startup related events here in Gothenburg (Sweden) and the availability of them online is as close as i come to meet these incredible people. :)

<comment><USER7> I miss Omnisio, it was perfect for talks accompanied by slides.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the speaker list (from [http://ycombinator.posterous.com/startup- school-final-speake...](http://ycombinator.posterous.com/startup-school-final- speaker-list)):

Chris Anderson _(Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine)_

Paul Buchheit _(Founder, FriendFeed; Creator of GMail)_

Jason Fried _(Founder, 37signals)_

Paul Graham _(Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb)_

Tony Hsieh _(CEO, Zappos; Founder, LinkExchange)_

Mitch Kapor _(Partner, Kapor Capital; Founder, Lotus)_

Greg McAdoo _(Partner, Sequoia Capital)_

Mark Pincus _(Founder, Zynga, Tribe, SupportSoft, Freeloader)_

Biz Stone & Evan Williams _(Founders, Twitter)_

Mark Zuckerberg _(Founder, Facebook)_

<comment><USER8> looks like the order changed, here's a pic of the actual schedule that someone posted: <http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/756/scheduleyo.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is there only one monolithic video clip which can't be scrubbed to skip ahead or go backwards? <http://www.justin.tv/clip/2493eb6f993f6e24>

And why is it only 2 hours long?

Is there any place to watch the entirety of the day's talks?

</comment><comment><USER10> Off-topic.

I love justin.tv, I have been following it since its early days of justin's stunt on lifecasting. I have seen the site morph over time. But the site in its current form is just very ugly UI. The chat widget is horrible and the bar on top is very out of place. They need to look at other live streaming site for decent UI design.

</comment><comment><USER11> Will I / Can I find all the presentations somewhere? (not live)

</comment><comment><USER12> The chat on that stream is as bad as youtube comments.

<comment><USER13> Is there any way to turn it off? For now I'm just using the "ignore" feature to block as many of those people as possible.

The fact that it's constantly moving is very distracting, and it adds so little value.

<comment><USER12> If you click the options gear-like icon, there's a "Hide Chat" option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I see a lot of comments about the video being choppy. I did not have this problem on my end. The video was fine for me in the Austin area. I have a ton of bandwidth in with bursting and had no choppy video whatsoever. The choppy video might be a bandwidth problem caused by your ISP overloading the node with other residential customers. I know from experience that some do this, and on Saturdays it can really slow things down.

I did notice the audio cut out but it was coming in as static so it might have been physical mic problem onsite vs. the actual audio delivery from the server to the client.

By the way YCombinator--GREAT JOB with this live broadcast, I loved it, it was GREAT!

Launch early and iterate!

<comment><USER15> I am in Dallas with 50mbps fios and I did notice many more problems with the archive version of the first talks. They improved the feed later in the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great! Unfortunately the sound keeps cutting out.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish they would sort out the speaker's audio. The audience mics are fine.

<comment><USER18> So it is the speaker's mic? I was wondering the same, why the audience audi seems fine but the speakers are always falling out ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hopefully they'll just have video recordings posted online with the slides like previous years.

<comment><USER20> I agree. The audio kind of fails here...

<comment><USER21> Pretty sure we will. There's a camera in back, and I think it'll be on webcast.berkeley.edu when it's over.

<comment><USER21> P.S. I'm the guy whose computer was being used to present, who's been doing tech in the front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Zuckerberg's talk is tremendous so far. The guy's killing it. His grasp of details at the company is pretty darn impressive.

</comment><comment><USER23> Video is really choppy, seems like there is a lack of bandwidth somewhere.

<comment><USER24> I got that at one point with the stream during the 37signals talk - <USER2> cutout, so assume its a network issue, on top of bad mic...

Talks hosted anywhere else?</comment></comment>


Become a Hustler - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/6436cd95ed2a

<comment><USER2> I'm not a fan of "Look at how I made a quarter million dollars" articles, but paying the price is how to get things done.

</comment><comment><USER3>
        I'm competing with myself.

It's good to know that I am not crazy reading this. It was very encouraging, knowing that there is path to hustling and this road is not walked alone.</comment>


Khronos Releases OpenGL 4.3 Specification with Major Enhancements - <AUTHOR> http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/khronos-releases-opengl-4.3-specification-with-major-enhancements

<comment><USER2> I noticed one bullet point:

"increased memory security that guarantees that an application cannot read or write outside its own buffers into another application's data"

I don't know much about OpenGL, but would this address some of the WebGL security concerns?

<comment><USER3> WebGL is based on OpenGL ES, not OpenGL. (ES here stands for "embedded systems") Concurrently with OpenGL 4.3, Khronos also released OpenGL ES 3.0, the update for the spec which can reasonably expected to guide a later version of WebGL. On my reading, OpenGL ES 3.0 does not seem to require a comparable level of data safety.

The security aspects of the interaction between GPU code and HTML clients are all well-addressed by the current WebGL spec. Which particular concerns are you talking about?

One possibility where the new OpenGL 4.3 requirements might help is in current desktop WebGL implementations which translate WebGL (which is OpenGL ES) to OpenGL (the desktop). But WebGL is sometimes translated to OpenGL, sometimes to Direct3D via ANGLE, sometimes to OpenGL ES directly. Finally, relatively few desktop drivers actually implement the latest OpenGL spec anyway; OS X does not even have OpenGL 4.2 yet, despite being out for a long while now.

All this is to say that 1) I don't believe the new requirements will have no immediate impact on WebGL security and 2) WebGL buffer security is a non-issue (whether WebGL clients crash the video drivers or not is a different story).

<comment><USER4> Well for example an uint32_t index buffer - it might contain indices that are outside of what's allowed. If the kernel/driver verifies this everytime, it might slow down somehow the operation. It's totally possible that the driver/chip somehow "clips" this, or being a bit of undefined operation - simply ignores it.

There might be other cases too.

<comment><USER3> WebGL mandates that the user agent check indices: [http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/specs/latest/#ATTRIBS_...](http://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/specs/latest/#ATTRIBS_AND_RANGE_CHECKING)

As I alluded above, the current WebGL spec is actually fairly well-designed with respect to trying to crash display drivers.

The word "undefined" actually only appears once in the current spec, in a bit about canvas drawing buffers being preserved across frames. And, in fact, in that case it mandates implementations to clear the buffer before any WebGL call can read the contents to prevent leakage.

Most of the claims of WebGL security issues are either to old versions of the spec (which leaked data to shaders and led to things like timing attacks) or are currently a bit on the hyperbolic side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> very useful summary:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6134/khronos-announces- opengl-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6134/khronos-announces-opengl- es-30-opengl-43-astc-texture-compression-clu)

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the main problems of previous texture compression methods like DXT2 was that they were encumbered in software patents.

This made implementing OpenGL in opensource quite problematic.

Does anyone know if this is also the case for ETC2 / EAC texture compression? I didn't really find any details on this.

<comment><USER7> Read the summary posted by bryanlarsen: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4345768>

Basically, ETC and ASTC are royalty-free parts of OpenGL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> naD Qo'noS Daq vam jaj</comment>


Ask HN: How does Apple expect us to dump PCs without a mouse? - <AUTHOR> Who cares about whether it's 5 years old or not.  I don't want to lift my hands from the keyboard to touch the screen.  Am I missing something here?  Why is there still no bluetooth mouse support (or some replacement) on the iPad Pro. <comment><USER2> The answer to this relates to how Apple intends - and has always intended - the iPad to be used: first and foremost, it's a tablet. There is still a big debate surrounding this form factor and its standard use case. Whilst Microsoft appears to be aiming for the "laptop with a removable screen" market, Apple is firmly coming at this fight from the opposite direction; the iPad is very much a tablet that you can attach a keyboard to if you really want.

Now, whilst Apple has conceded that the on-screen keyboard isn't quite up to scratch for enough people that it warrants proper external keyboard support, I think it's highly unlikely they're going to extend that to mouse support. Think about the 'Pro' moniker. Professional artists will use the Pencil (plus touch control with their fingers). Professional writers will use the keyboard. Neither group has a huge need for a mouse - if they do, they certainly don't seem to be shouting about it at the moment.

So the vast majority of pros, doing work, aren't looking for mouse support. Casual consumers (there's a chance that Apple is phasing out all iPads except the iPad Pro which, to be honest, makes the name seem a little unwarranted, but that's another story) are best served by the touch screen, and are using tablets in their hands, not placed down on a surface, and certainly not on a surface with enough room for a mouse.

Even if a pointing device were required, I'd argue against a mouse for the table form. Mice require certain surfaces to work properly, if at all. They either come with an annoying wire, or an annoying requirement to source and charge batteries (although the latest overpriced offerings from Apple are trying to deal with that). They sometimes sort-of support the excellent swipe controls that trackpads have nowadays, but rarely, and they're not as good. Mice are pretty bad, and are probably nearing the end of their ubiquity. If Apple really were to support a pointing device (which, as another poster points out, would require software changes that I'm not even going to begin to address), they should go with a trackpad or a trackpoint on the Smart Keyboard.

Having said all of that, I clearly don't understand what your use-case actually is. What do you want to use a tablet for that requires mouse support?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Why is there still no bluetooth mouse support (or some replacement) on the > iPad Pro.

Because iOS apps would have to be revised to support mouse clicks, scroll wheels, mouse overs, contextual menus, etc. Or maybe iOS would just treat the mouse as a single finger, limiting its usefulness.

A mouse or equivalent would be useful for certain things, such as VNC, emulators, and testing desktop versions of web pages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some (a lot of?) people use PCs in a way that doesn't really improve much with a mouse. Apple continues to invest in other products that do have a mouse because, at least for now, they don't expect _everyone_ to be able to give up a mouse.</comment>


Reditr - The "Tweetdeck" approach to Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://reditr.com

<comment><USER2> I remember the last time I used it it had some silly comment signature that apparently couldn't be removed?

Has this been changed? This program really interested me but with something like that I could never use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not on the app anymore. Though in older versions you were always able to remove it, it was never forced.

<comment><USER2> Ah, okay. I couldn't find where to remove it.

Interesting app, I might end up using it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How you approach addressing PR comments in Open Source projects - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I have been a bit active recently on a Chrome extension repo that I found very useful with PRs and enhancements suggestions. However, sometimes I felt that the comments are very opinionated by the maintainers and at some point made me just stop trying to "contribute" and just maintain my fork. I am wondering if there are any best practices in dealing with OS collaboration.
On a similar note, I want to ask how people usually approach addressing PR comments. For example, for one PR I had over 10 comments and the Github page was flooded with comments that I wanted to address. It was crazy at some point to keep track of them as I dont want to push every commit for every fix I did so that I can see the `outdated` collapsable code block that Github shows. I have came up with this idea https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github/pull/1407 which allows you to have a task-list like feature on the PR comments.
Would love your thoughts on this.
Thanks <comment><USER2> I've found that not just with open-source but even in the private sector (engineers at big companies can also be extremely prideful and opinionated) I need to essentially treat them with kid gloves, even if they're a 50 year old bearded man.

I acknowledge the merits of their work in the body of my comments, and I posit that I'm merely trying to further refine their already good ideas. Did I mention how good their ideas are? What great ideas that I'd love to contribute to. Each time I get push back I acknowledge the points addressed, and I carefully guide them to realizing that my pull request is in fact their idea, and it's a great idea because all their ideas are great.

for adressing PR comments I usually try to classify them first upon whether or not their filler (meaningless), require addressing (valid questions) or require action (code change). Sometimes issue tags and stuff can also be helpful. I'll typically go back through the comments after fixing stuff, and like a :thumbs-up: to say i read it, and i'll @ them link to the change if it's action required.

It's really tricky man. Even though we all call ourselves engineers--we're all still just humans. Just remember you're dealing with humans and if it comes down to you've got your own fork you maintain--well make it better and then people will use your fork :D</comment>