Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/twitter-picks-berlin-for-german-headquarters-focus-says.html

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised more companies _haven't_ chosen Berlin. Big startup scene, desirable location, great transit links... seems to be obvious to me. I must be missing something.

<comment><USER3> I can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin.

Karlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its university is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany and coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet connectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out of the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup. Also, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region with better infrastructure and more companies.

Frankfurt/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and home to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX).

I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin.

<comment><USER2> _I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin._

I know it sounds like that shouldn't matter, but it does. People want to live in desirable places with other amenities than just good jobs.

I would agree that Frankfurt/Main would be a good destination too, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great news for the Berlin technology scene, if for the halo effect alone (big brands attract big talent). Berlin is indeed a great place to live, and I think a lot of companies will follow suit in the next few years.

Accordingly, rents will continue to rise sharply and all of the qualities that initially made Berlin an above-average-attractiveness choice for employees and employers alike will eventually evaporate - but that will take ten years, and lots of people and companies will build lots of awesome stuff in the interim, all while saving tons on rent and other living expenses.

Give it a whirl! 'tis a fantastic place. Ping me when y'all arrive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great news. Hamburg is usually very good in attracting strong online brands (Airbnb Germany, Facebook Germany) but this time they weren't and it seems that Hamburg as a online/tech destination is slowly questioned.

Hamburg and the people there are quite nice but Berlin it's a completely different ball game. Everyday, VCs shotgun boatloads of money to Berlin based startups, the largest European VC are moving to Berlin and really EVERYBODY is in Berlin right now.

</comment><comment> excuse-me Although presumably, like Google and Facebook, it will still claim that it has no substantial presence in Germany and all it's Eu revenue is generated in Eire and so pay no tax.

<comment><USER6> The real name is Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland if you need to disambiguate.

<comment><USER7> The "real name" depends on what language you speak. It has two official languages, and in one is Éire.

Edit: see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state> not sure why getting downvoted for factually correct information.

<comment><USER6> The real name is what people who live there actually use. You only sound like a twat when using Eire, or calling Irish "Gaelic".

<comment><USER8> Well, yes and no. I agree that I have never heard anyone call the country Eire (except for me when posting letters from the UK), it still remains that the canonical interpretation of our constitution is in Irish, as as such , the name Eire takes legal preference above the Republic of Ireland.

<comment> excuse-me Ireland is ambiguous and likely to annoy half the inhabitants, Republic of Ireland sounds like legal small print and "the south" is a euphamism if you don't know who you are talking to in a bar in Belfast.

So Eire is safest ;-0

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great news for Berlin, the place to be right now. I am using this thread for a shameless plug: if you are interested to come to Berlin and to work here please check out opportunities at our brand new startup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3653322>

</comment><comment><USER10> Why does twitter need so many employees? I could see like 50... Nothing has changed in years there, they have 1 product which is posting 140 characters. Everything else is pretty basic, just big scale. I don't get the need for thousands of employees.

<comment><USER11> I think they need not so many programmers but staff for call-centers, marketing, R&D etc.

<comment><USER10> What - call centers??? R&D? What are they researching - how store 140 characters?

<comment><USER11> They have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide analytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at call centers, support department etc.

All we see as users is 140 characters + apps <https://twitter.com/#!/download> as there is nothing to ask about :)

Look at <http://business.twitter.com/> they have more than just 140 characters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Kind of a game changer given that Google and Facebook chose Hamburg and Munich for Germany.

<comment><USER4> Munich is stuffy and expensive, Berlin is comparatively poor and open verrrry very late. The game hasn't changed - it's just a totally different environment, for vastly different hiring objectives.</comment></comment>


Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6468/999.full <comment><USER2> Now _this_ is fascinating!

This is a start toward what I'd call a sane form of ML Engineering. That is, assuming you can manage to mathematically express the fairness constraints ahead of time. It'll go a long way toward proofing against known hazardous functions.

One thing I'm curious of though is whether or not this approach severely increased training time. I'd imagine it would, since for every constraint you're stripping out a higher and higher chunk of possible functions to emulate. Although it makes me wonder whether the time viable candidate function could be found may be usable as a sort of walking stick to tease out relationships not immediately apparent in the data. I'd expect convergence/divergence of constraints and primary function optimizations to play a big role in determining whether your dataset will converge to a solution, or whether you just sent you're supercomputer loose on a wild goose chase.</comment>


Benefits of Reading Actual Books vs. On an E-reader - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/99408/science-has-great-news-for-people-who-read-actual-books <comment><USER2> What's more, a real, physical book won't just as you get to the end, cover most of the page with an impossible to shift banner that obscures the page and makes it impossible to finish. And it's asking me to "Like" it!

No chance - piss off.</comment>


Ian Lance Taylor – Linkers Part I - <AUTHOR> https://www.airs.com/blog/archives/38 <comment><AUTHOR> This is Part I of a series of articles on linkers, by Ian Lance Taylor, the author of Google's 'gold' linker.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_(linker)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_\(linker\))</comment>


9 Great questions to ask during the hiring interview - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dpaluy/9-great-questions-to-ask-during-the-hiring-interview-90a0be955a61 <comment><USER2> 3\. Who are you?

I would not call this a great interview question. The variance between candidates is so high it's inactionable. It also sets a tone that they know nothing about the candidate. With question five, "Who we are and what we do?"[sic] it seems hypocritical.</comment>


Using Backblaze B2 and Cloudflare Workers for free image hosting - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jross.me/free-personal-image-hosting-with-backblaze-b2-and-cloudflare-workers/ <comment><USER2> Edit: See replies below. Cloudflare CEO says this use case is fine.

This is a cool project and something I will probably use for some hobby projects.

I would caution against it for anything more than a hobby project as it violates the Cloudflare TOS:

> 2.8 Limitation on Non-HTML Caching

> The Service is offered primarily as a platform to cache and serve web pages > and websites. Unless explicitly included as a part of a Paid Service > purchased by you, you agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of > serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and > the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent > technology. Use of the Service for the storage or caching of video (unless > purchased separately as a Paid Service) or a disproportionate percentage of > pictures, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited.

[https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/](https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/)

For something small, they won't care. If your images make the front page of reddit, you might get shut down.

<comment><USER3> That's only for our traditional service. For Workers the ToS is different. Don't see anything troubling about this project!

<comment><USER2> Workers are being used to do some URL rewriting.

The main point of this article is to use a Cloudflare cache-everything rule and use that caching to create a free image host. From the article:

> I'd heavily recommend adding a page-rule to set the "cache level" to > "everything", and "edge cache TTL" to a higher value like 7 days if your > files aren't often changing.

<comment><USER4> The guy you replied to is the CEO of cloudflare. If he says it's OK then I'm pretty sure it's OK!

<comment><USER3> ^—- what he said.

<comment><USER2> In that case, thanks for the blessing. :)

<comment><USER5> I am not saying not to trust the word of the CEO, but this exact use case of using cloudflare as a image hosting comes up a lot on HN.

The word on the street is that they will start throttling and contacting you once you hit several hundred TB per month. [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Of course this is still extremely generous and the upgrade plans are usually still several orders of magnitude cheaper than any cloud provider per gb. But don't build a business or hobby project around cf providing _unlimited_ free bandwidth forever.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20139191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20139191)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368684)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13580113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13580113)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826389)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5214480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5214480)

[6] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829740)

(basically search HN for cloudflare + non-html)

<comment><USER6> To be fair, I was expecting to be contacted for this unlimited service way way waaay before hundreds of TB per month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Backblaze is cheap, but if you're uploading millions og files, beware -- there is no way to just nuke/empty a bucket with a click of a button. If you're not keeping filename references in an external database, you are left to sequentially scan and remove files in batches of 1000 in a single thread.

Support could not help, and it took me months to empty a bucket that way.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't really make any sense, Backblaze were not limiting you to a single thread - you were...

<comment><USER7> You do need access to an index/DB of all files in a bucket in order to delete them in parallel. Otherwise you're stuck paginating with the B2 API.

<comment><USER9> You need a DB of all of the _dead_ entries that need to be deleted, and that's a fine thing to have.

There are lots of problem spaces where deletion is expensive and so is time shifted not to align with peak system load. Some sort of reaper goes around tidying up as it can.

But I think by far my favorite variant is amortizing deletes across creates. Every call to create a new record pays the cost of deleting N records (if N are available). This keeps you from exhausting your resource, but also keeps read operations fast. And the average and minimum create time is more representative of the actual costs incurred.

Variants of this show up in real-time systems.

<comment><USER7> My case was really simple. I was done with my ML pipeline and nuked the database, but pics in B2 remained with no quick way to get rid of them and/or to stop the recurring credit card charges.

IMO an "Empty" button should have been implemented by Backblaze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very good info. Didn't know B2 is cheaper than S3.

<comment><USER11> It's cheap but it's proving unacceptably slow for me - sometimes I see 2.5s TTFB for accessing tiny audio files in my region (Berlin, EU). Server uploads are also quite unreliable, had to write a lot of custom retry logic to handle 503 errors (~30% probability when uploading in batch).

Great for it's intended use (backups), but I'll be switching to an S3 compatible alternative soon - eyeing Digital Ocean Spaces or Wasabi...

<comment><USER12> Those stats sound insane to me, and certainly don't reflect what I see.

I see 50ms or less TTFB, for images in the sub 200Kb range, and for videos in the 500Mb+ range, from Australia where the internet is still terrible.

I've only ever a single serve upload fail me - and it occurred when an upload hit a major global outage of infrastructure. In two years of regularly uploading 8Gb/200 files a fortnight (at the least), I've never needed custom retry logic.

<comment><USER13> I've been seeing pretty bad upload failures (probably around 30%) for uploading hundreds of 30-40 MB files per month to B2 from New Zealand since I started using B2 over a year ago.

And I'm not convinced it's connectivity issues, as I can SCP/FTP the same files to servers in the UK...

When I test using an actual software client (Cyberduck) to do the same thing to B2, I see pretty much the same behaviour: retries are needed, and the total upload size (due to the retries) is generally ~20% larger than the size of the files.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I have a webm media website where I've migrated hundreds of thousands of videos about that size from s3 to b2 with thousands of additional per month with almost zero issues. I didn't even have/need retry logic until I was on horrible internet from a beach for a month where long connections were regularly dropped locally.

Felt TTFB and download speed were great too considering the massive price difference compared to s3. Though also used Cloudflare workers anyways to redirect my URLs to my b2 bucket with caching.

<comment><USER11> How well can you cache the worker responses on CF? Can you prevent spinning one up & therefore incurring costs after the first given unique URL request is handled? Looking into now.sh for a similar use case (audio), but pondering how to handle caching in a bulletproof way as I'm afraid of sudden exploding costs with "serverless" lambdas...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't realize workers had a free plan. I avoided trying it for a while.

<comment><USER6> They added it very recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the script, edited to cache files forever:

[https://www.pastery.net/tdszux/](https://www.pastery.net/tdszux/)

I wrote a simple uploader script that adds a random ID to each upload so they don't clash, but this will work fine regardless.

</comment><comment><USER16> Using CloudFlare workers to clean up the URLs is neat but it seems like it would be really easy to reach the limits of the free tier.

[https://workers.cloudflare.com/docs/reference/runtime/limits...](https://workers.cloudflare.com/docs/reference/runtime/limits/)

You get 100,000 request per month and up to 1,000 requests in a 10 minute timeframe. So if you have a page with 10 images on it and you get 100 people visiting that page within a 10 minute timeframe, you will use up all of your free tier and all new visitors will get a 1015 error.

For paid plans you must pay at least $5 and get 10 million requests included and additional requests are 50 cents per million.

<comment><AUTHOR> You get 100,000 requests per day, not per month. The burst limits are definitely a concern for heavy traffic, but for just $5 you can remove the burst limits entirely, as you mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow I was just able to drop Google Drive for basic storage with this and rclone. Thank you!

<comment><USER18> We're you able to use Google Drive for web image hosting somehow?

<comment><USER19> images, pirated videos, you name it

[https://openloadmovies.bz/movies/men-in-black- international-...](https://openloadmovies.bz/movies/men-in-black- international-2019/)

Google seem not to care

<comment><USER17> i dont think it works

[https://openloadmovies.bz/movies/blade- runner-2049-2017](https://openloadmovies.bz/movies/blade-runner-2049-2017)

<comment><USER19> The one I linked works fine and rides on Google Drive, other pirate streaming sites often use Youtube as a backend, or even Google Docs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How are we feeling about Cloudflare stability versus AWS these days?

<comment><USER20> They rarely (or never?) go down at the same time for any reason, other than the standard Internet BGP drama that all providers are at risk of and have no control over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Backblaze has a 10GB free file limit, and then charges $0.005/GB/Month > thereafter.

is this true, I can have 110GB cloud storage for 0.5$ per month? it sounds TGTBT

<comment><USER22> 1TB OneDrive is $80/year ($6.66/month). So 110GB is $0.73/month. Not that far from 50 cents.

<comment><USER23> Protip - get a o365 home instead.

5x 1TB for like 50 bucks. Also skype minutes and office software

<comment><USER24> that's 50 bucks per month vs 80 bucks per year

<comment><USER25> o365 home is $99.99/yr (not $50/mo), and allows up to 5 users, each of whom gets their own 1TB OneDrive allotment, evergreen desktop and mobile office software, skype minutes, etc.

It's a much better deal than paying $80/year for 1TB of OneDrive if you have 2+ users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ironically, none of the images on the page are loading right now because of "Error 1101 Worker threw exception". So, you know, caveat emptor.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was entirely my bad. I was moving a few things around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> From what I'm seeing workers are used only for URL rewriting. This can be acheived much simpler with page rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Workers are also used for basic CORS headers, and stripping some other unnecessary headers. They're definitely not required, but I don't believe you can do URL rewriting with page rules; redirects, sure, but not rewriting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Some possibly simpler alternatives to consider: Google Photos, Netlify, Gitlab/Github Pages

<comment><USER29> There are actually a couple pretty serious limitations of the Google Photos API:

[https://tip.rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations](https://tip.rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Or just use Imgur, or Discord

<comment><USER22> Imgur deletes photos after a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> And compresses them heavily.</comment></comment></comment>


Clojure 1.5 - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojure/kzF5O0Yfdhc/discussion

<comment><USER2> There's a lot of new small improvements in this update which are great for Clojure users, but the fundamental difference between 1.4 and 1.5 is the reducer library which was implemented. It's added mostly for performance reasons: By using this library, you will utilize Fork/Join in Java, but with a functional interface instead of the "gory" one. Very interesting, because the complexity of a typical `(reduce (map ...))` won't change, and you're suddenly utilizing all the cores on your computer. Rich Hickey had a talk about the new Reducers library[1], and I'd recommend you to see it, as it gives you a good understanding of how it works (and why it was implemented that way).

Another slightly interesting thing is the sudden enhancement to _read-eval_ and EDN[2]. That's mainly because of the rough weather Ruby/Rubygems was in with the YAML-exploits, which caused a heated discussion on how the Clojure reader should act by default[3][4].

[1]: <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Clojure-Reducers>

[2]: [https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/changes.md#21...](https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/changes.md#212-new- edn-reader-improvements-to-read-eval)

[3]: <http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1153>

[4]: [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure- dev/zG90eRnbbJQ/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure- dev/zG90eRnbbJQ/discussion)

<comment><USER3> One my favorite features that came out of reducers - short circuiting reduce!

       (reduce
         (fn [a b]
           (if (> a 100) (reduced a) (+ a b)))
         (range 100000))
       => 105

I've often had to use loop/recur instead of reduce because you could not short circuit. No longer.

<comment><USER4> YES, I was hunting around for this in 1.4, happy to see it's arrived.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shameless self plug:

If you're interested in keeping up with clojure news, I recently started a clojure newsletter where we cover this sort of thing: <http://defnewsletter.com>

<comment><USER6> Here is an idea for you : instead of news ( which is nice but not of urgent concern) , could you send out something like a another list "A drip of Javascript" does( not mine -- I am just a grateful subscriber). Having weekly cool clojure lessons would be nice.

<comment><USER5> This is a great idea. One of the things we want to focus on is cool / useful code projects and how to grok advanced features (monads, ML, async io, etc).

It would probably be better to pitch that our angle is code-heavy rather than news-heavy. Thanks for this feedback. Also, A drip of Javascript is really cool. I just subscribed.

<comment> eric-hu Status Code, Javascript Weekly, and Ruby Weekly have similar layouts. They might be worth checking out for curating-inspiration as well.

Both Javascript weekly and Ruby weekly periodically cover idioms of their respective languages, I like those. Ruby Weekly seems to have more posts about code refactoring and style, which I also appreciate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reducers look interesting! The linked blog post by Rich hickey is an interesting read: [http://clojure.com/blog/2012/05/08/reducers-a-library-and- mo...](http://clojure.com/blog/2012/05/08/reducers-a-library-and-model-for- collection-processing.html)

<comment><USER8> My apologies for the slightly dumb question, and perhaps this is the wrong place to ask, but:

These sound like a really good thing, but what if I want to use map and not reduce? Is Clojure smart enough to understand that some other function not named reduce should be transformed the same way?

<comment><USER9> The brilliance of the reducers library is that map is implemented in terms of reduce. Namely, mapping a->b in a collection is the same as reducing the collection (starting with an empty collection) by appending the converted form a->b to the accumulated collection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do I upgrade just 'lein repl' to use Clojure 1.5?

        [bin]$ lein version
        Leiningen 2.0.0 on Java 1.7.0_15 Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM
        [bin]$ lein repl
        nREPL server started on port 41384
        REPL-y 0.1.9
        Clojure 1.4.0

I understand that Clojure is just a jar dependency, just need to find where lein's dependencies specified...

For a new project I would have specified Clojure 1.5 in defproject, but for REPL?

<comment><USER2> This is currently not possible with lein (bug/enhancement), but will be with 2.1.0. See #966[1] for details. As a workaround, any project dependent of Clojure 1.5.0 will utilize that for the repl. So when in a project using 1.5.0, the repl will be 1.5.0 too.

[1]: <https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen/issues/966>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The conditional threading macros are nice. I've been using them from clojure.core.incubator for a while as -?> and -?>>. Anyone know why the name change?

<comment><USER12> Looks like the equivalents of `-?>` and `-?>>` are now `some->` and `some->>`, is that right? Perhaps the name change is meant to avoid confusion now that there are multiple variants, i.e. also `cond->` and `cond->>`, which are different.

It also occurs to me that threading through `some->` and `some->>` is kind of like doing computations in the Maybe monad in Haskell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps this isn't the best place:

I eventually want to move on beyond ruby and java and try out a functional language. Clojure, Scala and Haskell all seem interesting. Haskell because it's pure functional. Scala and Clojure because they're functional and on the JVM, and out of the two, Clojure.

So it's between clojure and haskell in my mind. Haskell has a great tutorial book/website (<http://learnyouahaskell.com/>). Is there a great resource like this for clojure? (obviously there are many books, but what's the best, and ideally, does it have a free online version that I can try out before buying)

<comment><USER14> This is good if you are into roguelikes:

<http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/07/caves-of-clojure-01/>

All parts:

<http://stevelosh.com/blog/>

<comment><USER15> Thanks. Just completed peepcode's Clojure screencast based on <https://github.com/technomancy/mire>

This should be a nice follow-up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen many, many attempts at "automatic parallelization" over the years. Clojure 1.5's reducers are the first approach I've seen that I think might actually work!

<comment><USER16> The work-stealing part can be understood as automatic, but Java's FJ is responsible for that AFAICT.

Having to state "do this in parallel" (by using clojure.core.reducers fns instead of their clojure.core counterparts) is not automatic but _explicit_ parallelization.

I believe that the idea of a compiler that will infer the parallelizable parts of your code crosses the limits of computability.

<comment><USER17> The functions are in a separate namespace at the moment, but perhaps the ultimate plan is to make them the default? Does anyone know whether that is the plan?

I suppose there should always be an escape hatch to explicitly choose either of the two for a specific piece of code, but the default could be "JVM, please choose what's best for my code".

<comment><USER16> Parallelization has some fixed cost, so for small (i.e. _most_ ) work loads, using it results in worse performance. So I don't see reducers (or clojure.core/pmap, for that matter) becoming the default.

Generally, the part of a program worth parallelizing is pretty obvious: that that is long-running, must process lots of data, etc. Most calls to map/reduce/filter in the average (Clojure) program are nothing like that.

Finally and AFAICT, ForkJoin can do actually worse than a simple FixedThreadPool (as used by clojure.core/send) for workloads that are "symmetric" and not particularly divisible in subtasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would like to to know if clojure has big memory footprint. Since is doing dynamic class generation and so on. I did find something[1] on stackoverflow but i would like some more info from real production usage.

Thank you all.

[1][http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4058430/how-well-does- clo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4058430/how-well-does-clojure- perform-when-it-comes-to-memory-footprint)

</comment><comment><USER19> That's it I really need to buckle down and learn clojure. I just got the perfect project today since I have to use a certain Java only library and then do some text processing on the copious results of that library's processing.</comment>


USPTO lowers standards for obviousness - <AUTHOR> http://news.swpat.org/2010/11/uspto-weakens-obviousness/

<comment><USER2> _"The below text is a notice from the USPTO about tests they're removing in order to make it less difficult to pass the test for obviousness"_

Am I the only one how finds this was unnecesarily oblique? I needed to read it over 3 times to understand whether the tests had become more or less strict.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I was not sure what it meant the first time I read it either. Perhaps this is better: _Below is a USPTO notice describing how they will make it easier for patents to pass the obviousness tests_

<comment><USER4> I think even clearer would be: "... easier for patents to pass the _non_ obviousness tests". That is, they're making it harder for examiners to reject patents as obvious.

Contrary to the blogger, I think the obviousness bar is still much too low, and that this is, in fact, the biggest problem with the patent system. Now they're making the problem worse. I find this very dismaying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way I read it, they're not deleting any tests, but rather just providing additional case law guidance on three of them. The reason the other four aren't included is simply that there is no case law to be discussed for them, presumably.

The notice includes this paragraph:

 _Although the other rationales discussed in the 2007 KSR Guidelines are not the focus of separate discussions in this 2010 KSR Guidelines Update, it will be noted that obviousness concepts such as applying known techniques, design choice, and market forces [the items not discussed] are addressed when they arise in the selected cases. The cases included in this 2010 KSR Guidelines Update reinforce the idea, presented in the 2007 KSR Guidelines, that there may be more than one line of reasoning that can properly be applied to a particular factual scenario. The selected decisions also illustrate the overlapping nature of the lines of reasoning that may be employed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness. Although the 2007 KSR Guidelines presented the rationales as discrete, self-contained lines of reasoning, and they may indeed be employed that way, it is useful to recognize that real-world situations may require analyses that may not be so readily pigeon-holed into distinct categories._

Additionally, keep in mind that the USPTO can't change the test of obviousness. That is the role of Congress (and, some might argue, the federal courts). The USPTO is just giving advice to its patent examiners of its best interpretations of the existing decisions.

<comment><USER6> Obviousness tests derive entirely from the federal courts. The law (35 USC 103) itself is rather concise ([http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxl_35...](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/appxl_35_U_S_C_103.htm)):

A patent will not be granted _if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains._

The federal courts have interpreted this sentence into various tests over the years, which are then interpreted further into guidelines set forth by the USPTO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Holy cow, the 2010 guidelines on obviousness is 18,374 words long of complex legalese. There's no lawyer in the world that can say with any certainty what it means.

</comment><comment><USER8> _"The below text is a notice from the USPTO about tests they're removing in order to make it less difficult to pass the test for obviousness. Low obviousness standards (silly patents) is not the mains cause of problems, but it aggravates already-problematic domains such as software patents.

...

In 2007, there were seven tests – the classic teaching-suggestion-motivation (TSM), plus six newer tests. Failing any of these tests would lead to rejection due to obviousness. Those tests were put in place in 2007 in response to the landmark case KSR v. Teleflex. Under its new director, David Kappos, the USPTO has now deleted four of those tests."_

I don't see how reducing the number of obviousness tests from 7 to 3 makes it harder to pass, when failing _any single test_ causes a patent app to fail the whole thing. Wouldn't having more tests result in a greater % of failures, and hence more patents rejected for obviousness? What am I missing?

<comment><USER9> They're making it "less difficult," i.e. easier to pass. They claim that's ok because "silly patents [are] not the main cause of problems," so presumably they think they have some leeway.

<comment><USER8> Ah I see, thanks, misread it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's Sunday and I'm not behind on any work. It's raining out and I have nothing better to do. It is in my interest to understand patent law. But, I just can't make myself read the law.

</comment><comment><USER11> I may have missed it, but I didn't see the new 3 points that remain in the test anywhere in the article. Would appreciate it if someone could summarize the new tests in the comments.

<comment><USER11> After doing some searching, found <http://www.ipeg.eu/blog/?p=1742>, which claims only two tests survive:

(a) substituting one known element for another, which requires that the result obtained would have been predictable.

(b) the obvious to try rationale, which requires a recognized problem or need in the art and a finite number of identified, predictable solutions to the recognized need or problem.

I wonder if previously rejected obviousness claims can be reopened? If so, companies with issued patents have some strategizing to do.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link, but look again: it says those two tests survive _in addition to_ the traditional TSM test.

As for the last question, there's always a risk of an issued patent being thrown out for obviousness when one tries to litigate it. I wouldn't think this changes that much (although the KSR decision, on which this is based, might have changed it).</comment></comment></comment>


Artificial Intelligence, Autonomy, and the Economy [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF <comment><USER2> They make a great point about the difference between 19th and 20th century industrial revolutions.

In the 19th century, unskilled laborers became more productive, and skilled artisans less productive, due to machinery making their jobs easier (hence the Luddite movement).

In the 20th century the situation reversed, and unskilled laborers had their jobs taken and perhaps eliminated by full automation. Productivity went down for them and up for the people who owned the machines.

The well known concern for the 21st century is that as automation becomes more capable, it will raise the skill floor of human employability, which can only increase inequality (of productivity and thus life, thanks capitalism).</comment>


The best Cyber Monday deals according to Alexa: any Amazon-owned brand - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/3/20992885/best-amazon-cyber-monday-deals-alexa-private-label-brands <comment><USER2> Everyone is talking about Amazon promoting their own products, but can we talk about the type of products being promoted in the top 5? Security camera, Ring doorbell, Echos, i.e. all surveillance devices people are willingly and voluntarily putting in their private homes, just waiting for that data to be compromised by hackers, data leaks, you name it.

Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good.

<comment><USER3> Your phone can do all the same things as those devices, and it's a better target for attackers because it's always on you.

I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black friday), and I'm just not worried about it.

In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

I just assume all of my data is already compromised, and so is yours, and neither of us can do anything about it. I think it's only useful to mitigate real world risks that materialize from compromised data. So PIN-lock your credit to avoid identity theft, physically secure your home to avoid break- ins, block ads to avoid influence campaigns, segment and restrict your IoT devices to avoid jumpboxes inside your network, etc.

If I'm doing something that I do _not_ want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.

If you're trying to host secret meetings in your house, maybe you should consider building a secure room to facilitate that. There's a reason the feds take this approach with SCIFs, because there's really no other way to do it.

<comment><USER4> Are you arguing that we should give up on avoiding potential security risks because we carry phones?

<comment><USER5> They are also arguing that since they have given up on security and assume they are fully compromised everyone else should give up as well and just buy more of these devices for their homes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many comments refer to this as "Amazon promoting its own products over competitors" but that's not the right way to look at this. They aren't promoting their own products, they're promoting exclusively the Ring/Blink/Echo family.

In the past I've bought Amazon house brand clothing, batteries, sheets. They aren't promoting similar products that I'm likely to buy. Instead more than half the storefront is devoted to Echo products which I've never bought, and never will.

This isn't a case of "here's something we think you'll like," it's "here's something we want you to have."

<comment><USER7> Spot on. Also consumers are attracted to tech gadgets during cyber Monday sales so it's even way easier for them to sell those items over non- electronics.

</comment></comment><comment> reading-at-work To be the devil's advocate, what if those deals really were the best? What if Amazon sold those items at such a loss that no other deals could compare? (That's probably not the case, but just thinking hypothetically).

Also:

> That potential favoritism can come in varied forms... even right at checkout > when an Amazon customer is ready to buy an item from a non-Amazon brand. > This last tactic could be compared to a cashier in a physical store showing > you a deal for the store's own brand when you walk up to pay for a > competitor's product.

Would it really be considered anti-competitive if a brick and mortar store did that? I feel like I've had cashiers actually do that before, and I was grateful because usually it's a better deal on some generic stuff where I don't care what brand it actually is.

<comment><USER8> I don't believe that scenario holds water.

All five of the devices in the list are surveillance or spy devices which capture data that Amazon likely considers very valuable. As such, Amazon is likely selling many of these devices at cost or below because they provide Amazon with more data.

The list of five devices includes three cameras and two alexa listening devices.

<comment><USER9> Lots of hyperbole there. Ring doorbells aren't cheap and I pay for the subscription plan (fairly limited without it). It generates revenue on the subscription not the data.

<comment><USER10> I dont doubt they make money from subscriptions, but they have been reported as giving discounts/free Ring products to residents that choose to share.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/polic...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/police- offer-amazon-ring-free-exchange-access/592243/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me Black Friday and Cyber Monday really didn't have many deals. The Chromebooks I was looking at are all cheaper now than those days. Amazon devices really were discounted heavily though.

<comment><USER12> I used camelcamelcamel to check prices on a bunch of things I was interested in that were advertised as black friday / cyber monday deals. About 90% of them were the same price as normal or the same price as if you just waited for cyclical discounts to come around. There were a few advertised things that had legitimate deals of about 10-15% off the best price from the last 12 months, though.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I had my Black Friday shopping list ready and camelcamelcamel is a great helper in these situations. Easy to see if you're actually getting a real deal or it's better to wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't browse Amazon, but when I was ordering something their "Cyber Monday Deals" caught my eye. Oh, okay, I'll bite. Every single item under "Electronics" was an Amazon device. Really? Because, for example, $150 off an iPad Pro seems worth a mention (I bought one). Surely there was _something_ that was a deal that didn't have Amazon's logo on it.

I know, I know, smack 'em on the nose. I don't really care about that so much as the fact that Amazon isn't dead to me just yet, but they're on life support and every little niggle such as this gets me closer to pulling the plug.

<comment><USER15> Hope this doesn't get flagged, hn weirdly hides posts that mention-

Apple marketing.

They likely bought themselves into the top spot. Now that you are in the Apple ecosystem, you will be buying Apple stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Supermarkets and drugstores are notorious for this.

Supermarkets will often see a product that is selling well and copy it as closely as they can without going over the line -- similar colors, size, packaging -- then sell it under their own brand right next to the branded product at a more attractive price.

It feels unfair if you're a producer, but it's often just one of the costs of having access to the distribution platform.

</comment><comment><USER17> In other words, company is promoting its own product on its own platform. Some people don't like it.

<comment><USER18> In other words, something I paid for lies to me and misdirects me in order to make more money from me. Damn right I don't like it. Do you like it?

<comment><USER19> the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.

> misdirects me in order to make more money from me

literally the entire sales profession.

if you want everyone around you to be under some moral obligation to tell you the absolute truth at all times, you've got a larger cultural battle to fight.

<comment><USER20> > the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to > questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.

Poster didn't say anything about legal obligation.

<comment> reading-at-work The linked article heavily implies that legal action could be taken against Amazon for this, by bringing up other antitrust investigations that are happening. Hence the debate about legality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Didn't Google get into trouble for putting their own shopping results above other search results? It seems like Amazon should seriously be penalized for this. It's completely anticompetitive.

<comment><USER22> Amazon isn't a search company, so I think it's a little different case.

Also, if I call a Ford dealer and ask them for their best deals, why would I expect them to tell me about Toyotas?

<comment><USER23> Car manufacturers are legally barred from owning dealerships, it's the individual dealership groups who decide what to sell. Car manufacturers selling directly to the public decreased competition as the manufacturers didn't have any incentive to undercut their own prices between dealerships selling their own products.

<comment><USER21> Really? I thought Tesla owned all its dealerships and employed the dealers. Am I confused?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you own one of these you kind are bound to fall down the depths of the data harvesting gods.

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazon also slapped the "Deal of the day" label on many products during black Friday and cyber Monday, even though the prices for those products were still the same as before. No price drops but good at creating FOMO for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeah, I feel like there's a light slap coming Amazon's way for this. It's too blatantly anti-competitive.

It should probably be more punitive than it will be, but that doesn't seem to be the way our governments are going these days.

<comment><USER26> My local supermarket is a marketplace for lots of brands. They heavily promote their own generic brands. What kind of punishment should they get from the government?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Stop the presses ... I asked a Ford salesman what the best Black Friday car deal was and he recommended a Ford!

<comment><USER28> If Ford dealerships were a marketplace for vehicles other than Fords, I'd agree with this comment.

The issue I have with Amazon is that for many folks, they ARE the marketplace to buy goods. Pushing their own products as the "best Cyber Monday deal" is when things get a bit suspect, at least for me. And honestly, what represents "Best"? Best for the consumer? Or, best for Amazon?

(My cynicism is probably due to working retail (Staples) and having managers push us to sell Staples-branded items due to higher margins for the store/company (and we sales were happy to comply due to the higher spiffs). While I truly enjoy on-line shopping since I no longer deal with sales people, I'm fully aware that the algorithm pushing that "BEST CHOICE" IS the new "sales person". And they know more about me than any sales person in a physical store would ever know...scary.)

<comment><USER29> Used cars are a thing. Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell other vehicles and will almost always push the new model of their brand over the used model of the other brand.

<comment><USER28> > Albeit not identical, dealerships definitely do sell other vehicles and will > almost always push the new model of their brand over the used model of the > other brand.

I'd argue this will vary with dealerships. And, the pushiness would be more sales person, rather than the dealership.

For new cars, there are a couple reasons why a dealership may push a new car over a used car. The manufacturer may be providing volume incentives and the dealership needs to sale a certain number of models to meet that incentive. Or, a new vehicle has been sitting on the lot for too long and the dealership needs to move the vehicle (this is more true for used cars).

But, USED cars are a cash cow for dealerships. Either through trade-ins or auction purchases (based on the type of dealership), there's WAY more margin in a used vehicle than there is in a new car.

Unless it's a purely volume-driven dealership, dealerships will be perfectly happy to push a used car over a new car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I keep seeing this way too frequently - Amazon pushing everything towards a dystopian environment. These posts gets highly voted and then its as if we forget and move on let things be the way they were. Amazon has gained too much momentum and now its way too difficult to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Amazon just needs to hire Kris Kringle...

</comment><comment><USER32> This really seems to be anti-competitive behavior by a monopolist.

</comment><comment><USER33> Similarly, when I go to apple.com they say the best deals are all Apple-owned brands. I can't even buy a Kindle there!

<comment><USER34> These are two completely different businesses. Amazon is a marketplace that sells basically anything sold by anyone. Apple is a manufacturer who lists their own products or accessories for their own products.

<comment><USER35> When I walk into my local grocer, they offer better deals on the house brand and advertise as such. Why does Amazon need to push people toward someone else's product? We don't hold any other retailer I can think of to this standard.

<comment><USER34> Well in this case, the primary issue is around anti-trust and competition. Given that amazon has a bout a 50% share of e-commerce, this kind of behavior could be harmful to competition and well functioning markets. The counter argument is to say that their space is not e-commerce but all retail and thus Amazon is not a monopolist, but I would argue that this not a good precedent to set for a well functioning economy.

Most tech companies have avoided anti-trust by arguing that they don't hold monopoly power, but I think we are behind the game in terms of regulation. Again, I wouldn't have a problem with Amazon promoting their own products if it didn't have a strong effect on competition and how well markets operate, but I really believe that a lot of the placers are exhibiting monopolist behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can you buy Amazon products anywhere except Amazon?

I feel like this would be more legitimately "anti-competitive" if these products were available in all sorts of places (like most of Amazon's merchandise). But the only place to buy Kindles and Echos is Amazon.

<comment><USER37> You can buy Kindles and Echos and Rings at Best Buy, Target, and Office Depot. You can also buy Echos and Rings, but not Kindles, at Lowes. Home Depot has Rings, but not Echos or Kindles as far as I can tell.</comment></comment>


QuicklyChat (YC S12) Brings Push-To-Talk Video To Small, Remote Teams - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/13/quicklychat-brings-push-to-talk-video-to-small-remote-teams/

<comment><USER2> The protocol that seems to have emerged with the people I collaborate with is to use Skype and ping the person you want to talk to with a message like "Do you have a few minutes to chat?". If they're busy, Skype just shows they have a new unread message and they can answer it whenever they choose. If they're not busy, the person calls you back. If a long time has elapsed since the initial message, they reply with "Sure, call me if you're free now". This is actually less obtrusive than being in an office because if someone comes to your door and asks "Do you have a few minutes?" it's impolite to ignore them whereas an ignored Skype message just means you're busy or unavailable.

I'm not really seeing the huge benefit here. If you work with others who don't follow such a protocol, set your Skype status to busy and you can't get calls. They'll then have to message you and you can initiate the callback if you're free. And is it really that much of an issue for people to establish calls immediately that there's a compelling need to auto-answer in a mannner that's different from Skype's auto-answer?

There's also the chicken and egg issue... nobody uses QuicklyChat and I can't see anybody I know jumping to use it given that everybody is already on Skype and it's 99% good enough with screensharing, full mobile support, forwarding to a phone number when unavailable, and so on. Plus, potential cross-talk issues: Facebook is likely preconfigured with a "green/ping me" setting but you may be in a Facebook video chat with someone when an auto-answer QuicklyChat session starts from their buddy... now your buddy is an unwanted third party in your Facebook chat. Awkward.

<comment><USER3> I don't think chicken and egg necessarily applies here. It's not a general consumer app in the sense that it's more likely to be adopted by teams. If I manage a small 10 person remote dev team, I may just tell my employees to all get on it and use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, the use pattern we've been seeing is teams adopting it all at once.

With respect to biot's comment, a lot of teams have found effective ways to work remotely, but a lot of teams are still looking for more fluid communication channels. QuicklyChat isn't going to appeal to everyone, especially not at first, but it definitely seems like we've struck a chord with a fair number of people.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. It actually reminds me of this push-to-talk cell networks that I first saw advertised 15 years ago:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_(cellular_network)>

That technology definitely struck a chord with a niche audience. I think the product's name of MiKE was chosen to appeal to male-dominated industries such as construction where it essentially functioned as a walkie talkie with unlimited range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a pretty light innovation to me. I think a more important chat innovation is to know (for sure) if the person is actually online and working versus, online and not working, versus not online at all. Just noticing if the person is browsing the web versus on email is not enough information to know this. For example you can be on a word document creating your wedding invitations or for work. The app will have no clue. It needs to be an accurate record if the person is working or now. Then if you have that accurate record you can do a whole lot more with it as well (know exact times that you start and stop working).

The other potential chat innovation for business is having the teams configured ONE time by the company admin and then all team members are instantly in the correct teams and each person doesn't have to configure their teams.

Also better search of previous team discussions.

I'm guessing the business model will evolve :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Really nice and simple product. I'm going to give it a try for more personal reasons as Skype has become the bane of my existence.

I've had a similar idea to your automatic status updates: Some sort of contact/buddy list for your smartphone that tells you the best way to reach a particular person at that time. So if a friend is at work/class/gym, the app knows that and sets their status accordingly, displaying that the best and most immediate way to reach them would be text/work phone/gChat/etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> remote worker with majority of team elsewhere... I was just thinking of something EXACTLY like this... looking forward to see where it goes

</comment><comment><USER7> I think what's great about QuicklyChat is I can skip the initial IM-tag of "you there?" "free now?" kind of back and forth. While it's relatively quick, it does break my attention and when multiplied by every member of the team it does tend to add up. And I think it's great how it's so simple - that's actually a plus, not a minus, to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> I LOVE the concept.</comment>


IBM files a patent that would remotely stop cars at intersections - <AUTHOR> http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220100125402%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20100125402&RS=DN/20100125402

<comment><USER2> "Method and device to remotely deploy a stack of patent applications to block the passage of moving vehicles at a designated intersection"?</comment>


Content Based Intelligent Cropping - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.curalate.com/2017/04/13/content-based-intelligent-cropping.html <comment><USER2> As a photography enthusiast, this makes me cringe. I'll acknowledge that the samples they show came out fine, but I suspect that in the real world this won't work well as a generalized solution.

There are a lot of things that if you get wrong, you'll ruin the image. This is true from an artistic perspective, but even with a lower bar, it's very easy to crop an image to make the content distracting or disturbing.

There are rules of thumb, for example, about how to crop images with people. It's not just that you want to preserve the faces. You need to be careful about where on their bodies you crop: if you do it right at a joint, it will tend to look like the person is an amputee. So you've got to crop a leg at mid-thigh rather than at the knee, for example.

There's also an idea of "look space". If you crop so that the direction of the subject's gaze is toward the outside of the image (rather than toward the middle), the subject will tend to look crowded and the overall composition unbalanced.

And there are overall compositional rules, like rule-of-thirds, leading lines, etc. Cropping an image is likely to damage these, thus harming the aesthetics of the picture.

I won't make the claim that this stuff is impossible to automate (the very fact that I can list these rules of thumb suggests that much of it can handled without creativity as such), but doing so in a way that preserves the desirable qualities of a good image will require a LOT more sophistication than what's being brought to bear here.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if you could build a training set to teach a neural net to detect these things, then autocrop.

Some similar previous work that suggests to me this may be possible.

[https://research.googleblog.com/2015/10/improving-youtube- vi...](https://research.googleblog.com/2015/10/improving-youtube-video- thumbnails-with.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some time ago I tried to figure out the dumbest way to find important features in most photos given a certain resolution.

There's face/features detection (and other CV) in here, too, but you can get by with some really cheap tricks in a lot of cases. In fact, the meat is it finds things that are chromatically different or more, uh, feature-full.

[https://github.com/nkozyra/smartcrop](https://github.com/nkozyra/smartcrop)

(again, don't be fooled by the name. at some point I'd hoped it would be smart. it was a class project.)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Square pegs don't fit in round holes, but what if you have power tools?

Plastic fumes :(

> But it doesn't have to be this way! In this post, we present a technique > that we use for intelligent cropping: a fully automatic method that > preserves the image's content

This seems like overengineering. Why not just build a UI to quickly crop a set of images _exactly_ as desired, with a scalable box given the required aspect ratio?

Since it's likely you'll want to verify these kinds of images before posting them anyways, and might go back and fix some later, it seems like you're not really cutting down on anything other than maybe a few seconds per image to move that initial bounding box.

Though it's cool nonetheless.

<comment><USER6> For advertising, sure; each ad campaign has its own dedicated staff to do some busywork.

My own use-case for this, though, involves ~500k images (think company logos appearing in profiles like LinkedIn, fit to various layouts.) I certainly couldn't do _that_ (or even verify that) by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not the same thing, but really helpful for one of the most common cropping needs...cropping scanned images:

[http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/multicrop/index.php](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/multicrop/index.php) (scroll down to see examples)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've done some work on intelligent cropping for media assets that pertain to motion picture works -- 9591359 Blohowiak, et al.

Pretty neat field and projects. I think we haven't really seen machine vision reach ubiquity / full deployment yet.

</comment><comment><USER9> This would be a good approach to addressing the aspect ratio issue for video. You'd want a sliding window approach.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would you really want faces in e-commerce product shots?

<comment><USER11> I have had the opportunity of testing shots with & without faces, the conversation rate is way higher when faces are included.

In the past, cropping to remove faces was done for costs reasons. The retailers paid the model for printed use only and had to pay extra to use them on ecommerce websites.

We ran A/B tests, paid the models rights for ecommerce usage and demonstrated a steep increase in conversion.

The rights issue is the reason some companies provide "paste a face on pictures" automated services. Basically you buy the rights on a few headshots and the service stitches the faces & clothing together (see OpenCV stich functions...).

The problem is that while decent, the services often end up in the uncanny valley, actually decreasing conversion.</comment></comment>


Alexei Leonov, the first human to walk in space, has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alexei-leonov-died-cosmonaut-first-man-to-walk-in-space-dead-age-85-cause-of-death-not-released-2019-10-11/ <comment><USER2> I met him in 2003 in the UK when he was doing a lecture tour. His colleague was translating into English for us, and every now and then they'd rattle away between themselves in Russian, causing my friend's wife to giggle.

After the talk they did a photo session, and she spoke to them. "You have an interesting accent, where you from?" Asked one of them in Russian. "Siberia..."

Apparently they'd been jesting all the way through: "You can't tell them that...", "You watch me..."

RIP Alexei, space hero and nice guy as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Leonov was an aspiring artist as well as a cosmonaut. I remember standing in awe for some minutes when I first saw his sketch from Voskhod 2[1] a couple of decades ago.

He also wrote and illustrated _I Walk in Space_ , a Soviet children's book that fortunately has an English translation[2].

[1] [https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/first-drawing-in-space- cosm...](https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/first-drawing-in-space-cosmonauts- science-museum)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46726725-i-walk-in- sp...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46726725-i-walk-in-space)

</comment><comment><USER4> Alexey Leonov was also supposed to be the commander of the first Soviet lunar mission.

He and David Scott (Apollo 15) together have written a book 'Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race.'

[https://www.amazon.com/Two-Sides-Moon-Story-Space- ebook/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/Two-Sides-Moon-Story-Space- ebook/dp/B00FUX7RUI)

</comment><comment><USER5> Imagine yourself alone in space, unable to get back into the space station....having to open up your spacesuit to bleed air ... His Balls were made of steel. RIP Alexei Leonov:

"Connected to the Voskhod by an 18-foot-long tether, Leonov spent 12 minutes floating outside before struggling to get back inside his spacecraft. In the vacuum of space, his suit had ballooned to the point that it would not fit through the hatch. After opening a valve to bleed off pressure, Leonov finally managed to squeeze back inside.

</comment><comment><USER6> Given the state of Soviet engineering at that time along with the pressure to get a spacewalk before the Americans, I can't help but believe that the probability that Leonov would not come home must have been huge and yet, he did his job. As an American, I have tremendous respect for our astronauts in that era but that respect is certainly earned by the Soviet men and women who went into space.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, others weren't so lucky. The story of Vladimir Komarov [1] is heartbreaking.

[1] [https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/astronaut-vladimir- komarov-...](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/astronaut-vladimir-komarov-man- fell-space-1967/) (that specific account contains a bit of graphic imagery).

<comment><USER8> Particularly the why in the closing paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He was also blessed by the gift of painting [https://zen.yandex.ru/media/muzey_budushego/jivopis- kosmonav...](https://zen.yandex.ru/media/muzey_budushego/jivopis-kosmonavta- alekseia-leonova-5aae438f48c85ec0e085a998)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From Roscosmos [1]

[1] [http://en.roscosmos.ru/21012/](http://en.roscosmos.ru/21012/)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you like alternative/experimental music, check out The Race for Space by Public Service Broadcasting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Race_for_Space_(album)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Race_for_Space_\(album\))

</comment><comment><USER11> Met him about ten years ago while we were both in the hospital. He kept saying in heavily accented English to anyone who came within 15 feet, "first in space!"

Edit: ten years, not fifteen. Who can keep track anyway?

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but I am going to call this a pile of BS. Do you really have any proof of this? I am really surprised that you are upvoted on this, considering that on HN everyone requires proof of some sort (most of the time). One of his latest interviews was with EuroNews in 2017 ([https://youtu.be/2qEM6Unzsm4](https://youtu.be/2qEM6Unzsm4)), and he sounded very impressive for his age, in comparison with what you are trying to convey. And I am sure (judging from his multiple interviews), he could keep track of his time much better than you are anyways. P.S @kingkawn - do you have any interviews/profiles with any major news companies to prove your creds for verification to substantiate your claims?

<comment><USER11> Nope, just my own life. You can take it or leave it however you want, doesnt change that I lived it.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't count for much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Vichnaya Pamyat, and godspeed.

</comment><comment><USER15> "If the minimization of risks becomes the main goal of a scientist, engineer, or a government official, there will be no progress and everything will just stand still".

Said the guy who almost died and had to bleed off pressure from his spacesuit into space to get back into the airlock. Godspeed, Alexei Arkhipovich, may the ground be as light as a feather, as they say in Russia.

</comment><comment><USER16> What an amazing life he had.

</comment><comment><USER17> Salut to those who gunned themselves to the abyss, entrusting their life's to a thin film of technology bubbled around a raw heap of chemical energy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, if people go to mars and cook Chinese food, they will be the first humans to WOK in space! -Dad joke out</comment>


Office Space Redux - Thief wrangles micropayments into $50,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/201252/hacker-takes-50000-a-few-cents-at-a-time.html

<comment><USER2> And a guy on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire's Movie Week made a cool $250,000 just by knowing about that plot device from Office Space:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5monB4fIzy8>

It looks like he was excited to get that question.

</comment><comment><USER3> he's not a thief. he committed fraud by giving fake names when opening bank accounts, or something like that. then these companies voluntarily deposited money into his accounts; that part isn't _stealing_ , even if it's based on fraud.

also the article calls him a hacker not because he did something impressive with computers but because he did something illegal with them. sigh...</comment>


Sending URLs over skype? Think again. - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FVorsicht-beim-Skypen-Microsoft-liest-mit-1857620.html

<comment><USER2> I sure hope Google added OTR encryption to "Babel" as an option. It would certainly be a wanted feature, that would put them above Skype, and it's something Microsoft would never implement either. They have too many partnerships for surveillance with governments around the world to do something like that.</comment>


Open source object store database for Java/Ruby/Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.10gen.com/wiki/db.guide <comment><AUTHOR> It isn't ready for prime-time yet, but unlike other object databases, the licensing is clear (though not ideal IMHO--AGPL3) and it's under active development.

Here's the Github repo: <http://github.com/10gen/mongo/tree/master>

And the architecture: <http://www.10gen.com/wiki/db.guide.02_architecture></comment>


Why I Hate Facebook - Facebook Releases "Camera" - <AUTHOR> http://milesmatthias.com/post/23749606374/why-i-hate-facebook-facebook-releases-camera <comment><USER2> Apple has recommended this app already. Therefore they think it's just fine. Also, what about Camera+? Is that a sleazy name too?

I also want to point out that by default Google Plus on Android automatically uploads each picture I take. You know what I call that? Awesome. I don't want to bother doing it manually. However, I want to manually select the ones I want to share. If anything, facebook is copying that functionality.

If facebook only cared about it's revenue stream then their users would see a lot of in your face type ads. There are no popups and it is all done in a fairly classy manner.

This article suggests bias against Facebook and nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a few issues with this.

First, Camera had to already be in development before the Instagram deal so they did "buy out the competition".

Second, there is no way in hell Apple would have approved an application with the same name as one of the default apps if it was not Facebook. Are "clock" "messages" "newsstand" etc.. fair game/names for all App developers now?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do they need a second app anyway? If they could just merge the working upload functionality into their existing app and let us use our own camera apps. I almost feel they intentionally broke photo uploads in their app in the past 6 months in prep for this release.

<comment><USER5> Here is a pretty good example <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4019595>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disagree. If you look at all the three camera apps next to it (including instagram) they all have the camera lense. It seems facetious to suggest this is 'copying' Apple.

Also, what's the big deal with making it similar to Apple's App? Anyone who usually tries to copy them would be pitied because we know that copying Apple is a recipe for disaster. But because it's instagram, we know it's going to succeed. So it seems you have some sort of issue with Facebook spending $1 billion and then trying to grow the app from there.

Getting sick of the FB hate just because we now take it for granted. I've been through that phase, and it feels very unnecessary now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, I can think of better reasons to dislike them than they put another camera app up in the iOS universe. I agree that they would have been better off tweaking the Instagram icon rather than copying the native icon.

</comment><comment><USER8> >They took it a step further to design an icon that looks exactly like the built-in Apple Camera app.

Well...I wound't say _exactly_.

Also, If they're such an unscrupulous company, you could always stop using their services. The reasons you give for not doing so aren't real reasons-- it's laziness. I don't use FB at all and am still quite able to communicate with my friends and family (who may or may not be on FB). Go me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty sure Facebook was developing Camera for a long time before Zuckerberg pulled a fast one and bought Instagram.

As for the icon... it's a camera in an app button. What's the big deal? Facebook color is that blue. Default OS is white. I don't even have an iPhone and I know this.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree with you about the camera app. FB bought out the competition. I smell a antitrust case coming.

<comment><USER11> No it didn't. There are a million photo-sharing apps out there. Just because Instagram was the most popular doesn't mean it was the only one.</comment></comment>


Red Hat Now Provides Extended Lifecycle Support Add-on for RHEL5 - <AUTHOR> https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata

<comment><AUTHOR> What is funny is how common the misconception that they provided this for RHEL5 (for a total of 13 years or more of support) was before it actually happened.</comment>


The Last Question (1956) - <AUTHOR> http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html <comment><USER2> I read this when I was a pre-teen because my grandmother's brother gave me a compilation of asimov stories named '9 Tomorrows' and this story is one of them. The whole book really blew my mind!

I always wanted a laptop sticker saying 'My other computer is the multivac'

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also another short story by Asimov called The Last Answer [https://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last- answer/](https://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't explain it exactly, but somehow being written over 60+ years ago adds this other layer where you have this funny feeling of looking into the past to see the future.

</comment><comment><USER5> The story was written after the invention of the transistor, but it seems Asimov hadn't heard of them or didn't grasp the implications, and assumed that computers would be based on tubes (or valves, the word used in the story) for billions of years into the future (but eventually they would be "molecular valves" and a powerful computer could be only half the size of a spaceship).

<comment><USER6> Well, aren't transistors vavles for electric flow, that is valves for electrons

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Manga adaption

[https://mangadex.org/chapter/39016/1](https://mangadex.org/chapter/39016/1)

<comment><USER8> Ooh, I didn't know that yet. Thank you very much for the link!

I really like how it's built around the scrolling one has to do in order to read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite short story, I re-read probably once a year when I stumble across a random reference to it.

<comment><USER10> "For a Breath I Tarry" is also wonderful.

[http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/ZELQZNY/forbreat.txt](http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/ZELQZNY/forbreat.txt)

<comment><USER11> That was a wonderful story but has a somehow unsatisfactory conclusion to the question. Spoilers below

 _SPOILER_

The story appears to assert that to be human you need to have the imperfect faculties of a human body, but I would say that Frost started becoming human upon his creation which gave him curiosity

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's the human criterion. The criterion mordel asserts is, more or less, qualia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Audio version I:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq- tTjcc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0)

(with British accents for Jerrodd, Jerrodine & the Jerrodettes)

Audio version II:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOtx4sa9k4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOtx4sa9k4)

(read by Leonard Nimoy for added gravitas)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of those stories I randomly think about a few times a year.

</comment><comment><USER14> Long my favorite short story of all time. Greg Egan has some great short stories too.

</comment><comment><USER15> A song on the subject:

1\. Russian: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJNta- okRw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJNta-okRw)

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

Nerdiness warning.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh man, Asimov was so bad with futuristic ideas. If you'd like to read good thoughts about future, go for Stanislaw Lem (Summa Technologiae, Golem XIV)

<comment><USER17> What was bad about them?</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 10.04: The Perfect Consumer Operating System? - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7740/1.html <comment><USER2> For what people use personal computers for these days, I agree that Ubuntu is a good choice. Everyone's favorite web apps work, you can play movies, and you can make Word documents. Add a little eye candy, and people are happy.

What's even nicer is not needing CPU-sucking anti-virus protection scanning every file in the background, draining your laptop's battery life. If you want to install software, you don't have to go to some random website; you just open the software installation control panel, type a keyword, click a button, and start using the software. Even Apple realized this was a good idea, and copied it in the form of "the App Store".

There will never be a perfect desktop OS (ever use OS X or Windows!?), but Linux is certainly becoming a great competitor these days. I no longer shy away from recommending Ubuntu; it meets most people's needs, and it's easier to maintain that Windows or OS X. Who would have thunk it!

<comment><USER3> While it does succeed in areas where other OSes are weak (package management!), Ubuntu still has a lot of annoyances.

For example...

Copying and pasting is broken in some apps: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/11334>

Desktop icons cannot be auto-arranged: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/nautilus/+bug/20284>

Screensavers can't be customized: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome- screensaver/...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome- screensaver/+bug/22007)

Context menu for an USB pendrive shows "Unmount", "Eject" and "Safely Remove Drive": <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/453072>

There are a lot of others listed here: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs>

Checking off features on a list isn't enough to make a good operating system. Like baseball, you have to work on the fundamentals to win.

(Jeez that last sentence sounds corny.)

<comment><USER4> Did you just list bugs specifically shortlisted by Ubuntu as minor, easily fixed interface issues and use that very work to argue that they're not focussing on these things?

<comment><USER3> The first three bugs I linked to have been open for 5-6 years, so yes I'm saying they're not focusing on these things.

It's not solely Ubuntu's fault. A lot of the issues are upstream. The screensaver settings bug was closed as WONTFIX in gnome: <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316654>

Says the maintainer of gnome-screensaver: _I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme that requires configuration is inherently broken._

Yes, because it's not like I'd ever want the pictures screensaver to grab images out of a directory besides ~/Photos/.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've heard this sentiment before. Every year since 2000 has been proclaimed the year of consumer Linux. Yeah, sure, 2010 is the one and Ubuntu will do it. I've been testing every single release of Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE on my laptop for the past few years and never did any last more than a few weeks. It's just too abrasive an experience.

Sadly, I will download and try this year's crop and, predictably, they will be rubbish.

And next year, it will be the same story again.

<comment><USER6> Apparently you live in an alternate universe. I've been using Linux for my desktop OS since 1999, and Ubuntu since 2004, and it's been a consistently great experience. Sure, there are warts on occasion, but that's true with all OSes. Ubuntu has been solid enough to keep me productive by day (as a CTO of a company of over 1000 employees), and by night (as a consultant). I even bought a MacBook Pro last year and gave OS X a try. It lasted around a month. My frustration with its completely odd UI design decisions, dismal package management (ports, fink), and second-class treatment of open source software led me to install Ubuntu on the laptop and wipe OS X. Couldn't be happier with it now.

2010 may not be the year of Linux on the consumer desktop, but it's another year of Linux on _my_ desktop, and I couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER5> I'm very happy you've found that Linux serves your desktop needs. For me, I would never host on anything but Linux or FreeBSD, and my phone is a G1 Android.

But your desktop is only one of ~1-2% of desktops that use Linux. The "alternate universe", i.e. the 98%+ of the world, are happy with Windows or OSX, some of them by choice. Your clearly a very happy with Linux, but don't project this happiness on others.

The open source world could learn a lot from the story of Firefox. When the market was frustrated with a slow and insecure IE, Firefox came along being very fast and secure. Us geeks loved it, recommended it to non-techie friends and, these benefits were important to them too. What benefit does desktop Linux give me? The only real new benefit coming in Linux is the fast boot up. That is a real consumer benefit. I can't think of another real benefit in the current crop of distros.

<comment><USER7> The other real tangible benefit is $$$ certainly compared to the top end Windows releases, although the snow leopard price is hardly a deal breaker.

<comment><USER5> In terms of absolute money number saved, yes absolutely. But how much do you value your time in terms of learning and setting up a different OS?

<comment><USER8> I live in a third world country so at least my time is pretty cheap compared to a license.

Some hours reading the manual, web searching or asking in forums vs (26 8-hours working days) x ($15[The average income in my region]).*

Most people use Windows but have it unlicensed. I am not rich so yeah Linux look dirt cheap to me and I don't even use Linux I use OpenBSD. I definitely think the government should push open source in all areas we would be better off. Right now kids are learning to use Windows XP, Microsoft Office, Coral Draw, Flash and Visual basic 6. I have to remark that they are learning all this stuff in fairly mediocre way. Also don't forget government and public institutions sites that are non standards compliant and flash heavy.

*In my comparison $1 = 10 Pesos. The price of Windows 7 Ultimate is 4,004.17 Pesos in Mexico.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I made the switch to Ubuntu a bit ago and I know I'm not the "typical user" since I do design/dev work, but I see nothing about the OS that the average person couldn't pick up on in terms of its operation vs. Windows, and it's even more similar to OS X with regards to how it functions.

From my limited experience talking to people who've tried linux, what confuses them the most is the linux file structure, which can look a bit confusing until you come to understand it.

The average person probably doesn't need to know a whole lot about that, though.

Also, the UI and font rendering aren't quite there yet, but they're getting better all the time.

The biggest problem that I see, while I love Ubuntu, getting it to a point where I'm totally happy with it as an OS has taken more work than the average user would be able or willing to implement, i.e. doing things like cleaning up the UI and improving font rendering, and fixing some issues I had with Flash out of the box. I had to ditch Pulseaudio because it performed very poorly with my HD audio off my motherboard. Disabling that and installing/configuring ALSA was a bit of an ordeal that anyone not really comfortable with computers probably wouldn't want to undertake.

For me, the attraction to Linux (other than having a more productive work environment) is that I _can_ customize the hell out of it and make it however I want. Most people won't want that flexibility and will want it to "just work" perfectly out of the box. Ubuntu doesn't quite do that yet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Eh, I use Ubuntu as my primary OS, and I have for a number of years. I'm running 10.04 now, and it's good (obviously, or I wouldn't use it day to day), but I don't think it's any more than incrementally better than 9.10.

</comment><comment><USER11> I made the "switch" a few months ago to Ubuntu 9.04. It's not smooth at all. It regularly hangs (The current window fades gray). All I am doing is hacking django and browsing the web. Flash doesn't work. That might be a Firefox issue. Flash does work in FF 3.5, which I installed, but it installed as a separate browser, not an upgrade.

Also, my volume is too low to listen to music or watch movies, which was a bummer because I just moved and don't have a way to do either of those things.

<comment><USER9> Here's how I ended up fixing my low volume level issues in 9.10: [http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/447122874/alsa-in- ubuntu-...](http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/447122874/alsa-in-ubuntu-9-10)

And here's how I fixed Flash: [http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/451068353/while-were- on-t...](http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/451068353/while-were-on-the- subject-of-fixing-things-in)

<comment><USER11> Where do I send the check?

<comment><USER9> LOL glad I could help. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not even close. The 'cloud' is half-baked (I was rather embarrassed when I sent out share links for a PDF to a bunch of people, and it turns out that none of the share links worked, ever), no one cares about the music store when audio doesn't reliably work, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my experience, most linux distro's battery management doesn't even match windows xp out of the box (no clear way to tune it). It is the only thing that is stopping me from transitioning to linux full time.

<comment><USER14> Looking at the battery management on the 10.04 beta, the options seem very similar to the ones on my mac book. What do feel is missing ?

<comment><USER3> It's not the options, it's the actual power management. I have a netbook with XP and Lucid beta. The battery lasts 6 hours on XP and only 4:30 on Lucid. Both OSes are set to dim the screen and spin down the hard disk on battery power. The fan also comes on a lot more often when I'm running Lucid.

<comment><USER15> The opposite happens here, when I switch from Lucid to Vista. Did you try with a 10 year old version of linux? I think XP is 10 years old now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1218613>

</comment><comment><USER17> Why are we so fixated with getting 'the consumer' on Linux?

The only thing I can imagine is that more people using the software might increase the financial donations to FOSS organizations. I doubt it though.

In any case, if you can, please donate some money to any open source groups that you use regularly.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've just installed Ubuntu 10.4. I didn't spend much time in the new theme. I found it just looked ugly against the background of most website backgrounds. It didn't have any delimiter between different parts of the toolbars etc.

I was very impressed with the work thats gone into the boot time though. I don't have any timings certainly feels like my anemic old Pentium M 1.4Ghz laptop seems to boot in half the time it used to! Firefox 3.6 seems very snappy. Terminals load in less than a second. I'm not sure how much of the difference is just having removed all the accumulated crud though.

I'm glad I upgraded, though I was running an old 7.10 installation with a 2.6.24 RC Kernel which was the first one to support my Broadcom wireless card reasonably well.

</comment><comment><USER19> When will Ubuntu get an integrated backup solution? Sure rsync combined with cron works, but it keeps it out of reach for your average user (or even your lazy one).

<comment><USER4> Does Ubuntu One (their version of Dropbox) count?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A regular user should never have to go to the command line to do anything, but I can't seem to avoid that with Linux.

<comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, what do you find yourself having to use the command line for?

I tend to use it out of preference, but I can't offhand think of any "regular" tasks I do that would require it. Some more obscure bits of troubleshooting might occasionally require it. But even there the gui options seem to have almost everything covered unless you start going a lot deeper than any regular user will care to.

<comment><USER20> It was during troubleshooting, I couldn't get my dual monitor configuration to save unless I launched the config menu as sudo from the command line. Of course it didn't tell me this was the problem either.

<comment><USER22> A regular user doesn't have dual monitors, though.

That said, I've had some issues with previous versions of Ubuntu that took some mucking around to fix, especially with sound and occasionally with wireless (though the latter has always worked fine on my laptops).

<comment><USER23> Regular users? No. Gamers, Graphic Artists, People who work with anything involving large amounts of on screen data, yes.

None of these people should have to know how to use the CLI just to get two monitors working.

I had the same problem with dual monitors for the record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Linux will be used by regular people when the manual editing of configuration files is no longer necessary.

<comment><USER14> That has been unnecessary for a long time. The only time I edit config files is for things that an average user would not use (vim, shell, etc...). Which file do you feel are necessary to edit by hand in Linux ?

<comment><USER25> -/etc/fstab --> needed to get secondary hard drives to automount during boot

-/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist --> needed to install my wireless card

<comment><USER26> I'm curious- What advantage is there is to using the external drive on boot, rather than have automounter do it on login?

Also, the Ubuntu Restricted Driver's manager did't handle the card? How unusual. I've had it handle the majority of WiFi cards I've thrown at it. I suppose that's a compatibility issue- If Windows weren't pre-installed on a new PC, people would have to install drivers there, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Once again: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=928726>

</comment><comment><USER28> Not until they lose the Fisher-Price look.

<comment><USER29> Did you even read the article? The whole first page is devoted to the improved, more professional look of the OS.

<comment><USER30> This release has a different menubar color. That's nice, but it doesn't address the fundamental ugliness and disunity of the OS.

What Ubuntu needs is a change the magnitude of, say, OS9 -> OSX or XP -> Vista.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _The social networking client Gwibber is now built right into the desktop._

Argh! There's nothing I hate more than seemingly cool open source software being saddled from birth with _ridiculous_ names! Gwibber!? What was the author thinking!?

<comment><USER26> Twitter isn't exactly the poster-boy of great naming. Names grow on you when you use them more. GIMP, I'll give you, though...</comment></comment>


A demonstration of Schlieren photography, allowing us to see air that is moving - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLp_rSBzteI <comment><USER2> I wasn't sure what to expect, but wow this was really really cool.

I have a reasonable understanding of optics but I'm still trying to understand how this works. I'm looking at this explanation but still trying to break it down:

[http://www.ian.org/Schlieren/HowTo.html](http://www.ian.org/Schlieren/HowTo.html)

Anyone have a good intuitive explanation?

<comment><USER3> Veritasium did a pretty good explanation on it

[https://youtu.be/4tgOyU34D44](https://youtu.be/4tgOyU34D44)</comment></comment>