Has Ubuntu lost it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/has-ubuntu-lost-it--1162717

<comment><USER3> _Unfortunately, the learning curve was too great for most people, and users elected to put the buttons back in their rightful place with gconf-edit. "_

Some users did. The vast majority did not. The target market for Ubuntu doesn't even want to be using gconf-edit.

 _" Even today a Google search for 'window buttons on right' brings up a guide to fixing Ubuntu - and this is for a design change made two and a half years ago_

Yes, it's called the internet and it's a fantastic resource for looking up old information that people have archived.

The entire premise of the article appears to be "Ubuntu is opinionated. Here are the controversial decisions they made". I don't see any bearing on whether they've "lost it".

<comment><USER4> I don't think the article was very good at explaining _why_ they've lost it. A lot of controversial decisions turn out to be good in the end.

I think the biggest mistake has been to neglect Linux power users, which has been their biggest grassroots evangelists. At one point some years ago _every_ Unix guy I knew ran Ubuntu on their laptops because it "just worked" (well, compared to other distros). And some of them had started recommending it to friends and family. Nowadays, many of the same people are running Macs, and guess what they recommend? Macs (or iPads).

Their second biggest mistake has been the "me too" attitude. Netbooks popular? Ubuntu Netbook Remix! Oh wait, tablets you say? Ubuntu for Tablets! Google and Apple launch TV platforms? Ubuntu TV! Oh, and don't forget that we have a phone OS as well!

To make any one of these succeed they would need to dedicate great salespeople and marketers to secure deals with PC, tablet, TV or phone manufacturers or operators. Or they would have to make them so insanely great that people would line up to get them. Google TV, backed by a big company is pretty much dead in the water.

I would LOVE for all of these products to succeed and to use well designed open source products. But it's just not going to happen this way.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if that many devs are really into macs, most I know aren't and those who do are usually because their company uses/issues them one. In some parts its more peer-pressure than actual convenience. Still unity tries to copy a lot of OSX's look&feel to the point that its just awkward.

I would add that the problem with current ubuntu is that it tries to appeal to both casual and power users and manages to enrage both. Users coming from Windows (still 90% of all PC users) plain _hate_ unity and find it confusing, it used to be that i out of 3 people I showed ubuntu to would install it but after unity I haven't been able to convince anyone because the first thing they see is an OS that makes no sense.

All power users I know prefer even gnome3 to unity, but most stick to KDE and xfce. A lot and I mean a lot have moved to Cinnamon, no surprise there since that environment is awesome, basically what ubuntu should be like. Of course if unity is too mac-like Cinnamon is too windows-like, but it manages to pull a lot of stuff that unity just can't while remaining fairly snappy unlike the sluggishness of the "dash".

<comment><USER6> Since Windows 8 started shipping, its users trying out Ubuntu for the first time may be more familiar with Unity due to them both having similar search functions and layout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's funny when people complain about unity and how users hate it. The only users that even know what it is are the hardcore linux geeks. I used ubuntu back in the day (2006-ish) and moved off Linux because it was too much of a pain in the butt to use for everyday use... even my standalone email server I just gave up on eventually because it was too much of a hassle running linux.

I just started using Ubuntu again last year and... I couldn't figure out what this Unity thing was that people kept complaining about. I guess it's the menubar that appears at the top? And the transparent start menu thingy that pops up when you click the button at the top of the launchbar on the left? Is that what people are complaining about? Seriously? I didn't even notice that it was something that was supposed to be different after the first 2-3 times I saw what it did. Maybe because I'm not a hardcore linux guy? Maybe because it doesn't really look that different from Windows 7 / 8 stuff?

So... from a Windows user's point of view, I think Ubuntu is doing well. It's easy for me to use (it does take a lot of getting used to for the windows buttons to be on the left).. and honestly, for most people, we're in a post- desktop-OS world. Nothing matters outside the browser. I install Chrome and log into Chrome sync, and my world is the same across all desktops.... because the browser is everything. That, more than anything else has made my transition back to Ubuntu easy... because the OS doesn't matter anymore for day to day things. For dev, sure, you need your dev tools, and the environment matters a lot.

<comment> clark-kent Unity got a lot better with Ubuntu 12.04, it sucked when it first came out. I used to hate Unity but after some updates it's now my favorite desktop.

<comment><USER8> Using 13.04 now, and I tried reasonably hard to keep away from unity. Eventually I gave up when I couldn't deal with the small annoyances like screen tearing in XFCE and the buggy feeling of plastering Gnome3 over ubuntu. Im running Unity on 13.04 now and it feels stable and polished.

However, I dare say I could actually do away with the unity menu and replace it entirely with synapse and although I am used to it, a global menu is a stupid paradigm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "the Upstart init daemon (which pointlessly duplicated much of the work done in SystemD)"

I think this chronological confusion sums up the insight that can be found from the article.

<comment><USER10> Jup, I stopped reading when I got to that. If basic facts are wrong, then what else is wrong with this article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why we can thank Canonical:

 _" To innovate is to get a chance to define the future, but it comes with the risk of alienating your current users. The unique advantage desktop Linux has is that we can do both. Ubuntu can innovate while Mint, OpenSUSE, and all the others play it safe.

That's the advantage of the open source ecosystem that we've built up over the years. But we only have that advantage if people are willing to take risks. Mark Shuttleworth is taking a tremendous gamble. If it pays off, then the whole Linux community benefits."_

<comment><USER12> Canonical is making a huge difference for thousands of newbies, thanks to them they can use a Desktop Linux without the fear of complexity.

It's bravery to be willing to take those risks, not everybody have to follow that direction and the diversity of the linux ecosystem is what made his strength. Some will succeed some will fails, but at the end, the whole Linux community will get better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Summary: Ubuntu has become Windows. It's pursuing devices and fragmenting the ecosystem.

The problem with Ubuntu, by and large, seems to be a Metro style revolt against Unity although Unity achieved suckdom first. Things broke with change... often this was unnecessary change. But you know what? The nice thing about Linux is that there's so many more distros to choose from.

Linux Mint ([http://linuxmint.com](http://linuxmint.com)) for example is actually quite nice. Don't like Ubuntu? Don't use it for crying out loud! It's not like Windows; a whole 'nother platform. The same software you know and love will still work.

Best of all, it's got a bloody start button!

<comment><USER14> Fragmenting what? There were no solid ecosystem, ever, nor there's any.

There's Linux kernel, GNU base userspace (although some replace it with BSD or Solaris one, huh) and bunch of various software running above those. After this there were nothing common in those software since the very beginning. Just more and less popular software.

Edit: removed X11 as possibly common component, because I totally forgot about DirectFB, huh.

<comment><USER13>
      >Fragmenting what?

I can't quite figure that out from the article either, but from the language, I guess they're insinuating that the architecture changes ( in the Ubuntu way as opposed to the traditional "Linux way" ) will mean different approaches to software.

      Daniel Stone, contributor to X.Org (one of the base technologies
      without which we'd still be staring at blinking green text on a
      black background), put in: "I'm not worried about Wayland's
      future at all. I'm just irritated that this means more work for
      us, more work for upstream developers, more work for toolkits,
      and more work for hardware vendors."

<comment><USER14> I don't get the fuss about Wayland and Mir. Like inventing a new mostly- incompatible subsystem is something new in GNU/Linux world. I mean, there were no "Linux way" ever - just take a look at zoos of sound subsystems, network management subsystems, init/rc subsystems and so on. GNU/Linux world is well- known for having magnitudes of software doing same things but in completely different ways, sometimes with some compatibility layers (like ALSA-OSS), but frequently completely mutually incompatible. This is not good, nor bad thing, it's just that there's no any established rules beyond fundamentals POSIX and FHS (and even those are poked from time to time), just more or less popular approaches.

GTK ran on DirectFB just fine, without X11 stack, so getting rid of X11 is nothing new. There were XDirectFB that worked as a X11 server, too. Not sure if the code's maintained and works now, though - haven't visited that land for, IIRC, about 5 years. Anyway, and I don't remember any worries about that.

<comment><USER4> I think DirectFB is a bad comparison, since AFAIK it was never used widely by any distro. I think people are right to worry that a new graphics engine will lead to loads of wasted work dealing with compatibility problems and other issues down the road. Based on the massive amounts of problems caused by the sound system zoo, I understand the concern.

<comment><USER15> It's widely used on embedded devices, even if not on desktops.

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu, or Linux?

<comment><USER15> DirectFB, I meant (on Linux, typically everything above the kernel is pulled in as needed, no real distro in use).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hardcore Ubuntu user here. I come from a Windows background. I mean like for 15 years almost, I was running on Windows. When I first got introduced to Ubuntu (5 years ago), it was a breath of fresh air. I loved the terminal and I loved the freedom of choice and the fact that nothing was thrusted into my throat. It was really nice. Until they introduced Unity. It was one of the poorest User experience designed, ever. Suddenly the OS I was in love with became so alien.

Of course I could switch back to the original normal GUI with a few command line entries and a few option entries. But it was already too late. The flexibility I had in 10.xx was gone in 12.xx. 12.xx become so clunky, heavy and painful to use, that I had to abandon it altogether. I can back up my statements too - Try comparing boot/shut down times of 10.xx and 12.xx, you'll know.

Meanwhile, on Windows, the start button just disappeared. And I DID get used to it, but the fact that Ubuntu's Unity had become synonymous to Microsoft pushing their Metro UI into my throat was a nail in the coffin.

Now I run dual boot - Mac OS X along with Windows 8.1. I'm using the Mac OS for about a year or two now and it's really good at what it does. Almost feels like Ubuntu's 10.xx w.r.t boot times. And I never will be looking back.

Ubuntu is a perfect example of "Don't fix something if it ain't broke."

<comment><USER17> I felt exactly as you.

IMO, Ubuntu 10.04 was the best version. ever.

<comment><USER18> 13.04 server + xorg and fluxbox.

I know not what this 'Unity' hate is all about. apt-get still works last I checked.

You guys need to stop equating OS releases with the UI that ships with the desktop versions. 13.04 is loads better than 10.04, and it has nothing to do with whatever DE happens to ship with it. If you don't like Unity, download Xubuntu.

<comment><USER19> At the point where you are switching desktop environments you are already well into debian / slackware territory.

<comment><USER20> Except for the bit where ubuntu does regular scheduled releases.

<comment><USER21> This is why I choose Ubuntu over debian on my (3) servers. I don't want to cut myself on the bleeding edge of development but I'd prefer to stay ahead of the curve; easier when you have more frequent releases plus a good selection of PPAs.

<comment><USER19> Using fluxbox is a strong indicator that youre less more interested in the latest bells and whistles and more interested in "do things my way". I include dwm, ratpoison, awesome users in this camp as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER23> previously posted:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6051838](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6051838) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6051885](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6051885) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6050005](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6050005) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033705](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033705) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092040](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092040) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4126390](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4126390) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5993532](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5993532) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4432743](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4432743) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907225](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907225) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5131430](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5131430) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3069940](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3069940) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3681835](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3681835) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5290948](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5290948) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845506](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4845506) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071746](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071746) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4204684](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4204684) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366180](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4366180) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5140817](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5140817) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843320](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843320) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5851922](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5851922) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932835](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5932835) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818931](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818931) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344059](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344059) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718567](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718567) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4362884](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4362884) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2148927](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2148927) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726192](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726192) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516313](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516313) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510398](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510398) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3967543](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3967543) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853639](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853639) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5050894](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5050894) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4205347](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4205347) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853602](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853602) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5964628](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5964628) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550397](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550397) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016801](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016801) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668334](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668334) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4351090](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4351090) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855384](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855384) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337332](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4337332) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923126](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4923126) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4860925](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4860925) [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933767](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5933767)

<comment><USER24> That wins some kind of award, though I'm not sure what.

<comment><USER23> passive-aggressiveness?

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853639](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5853639)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Whenever I see a headline with a leading question in its title my automatic response is "no".

It's lazy writing and tries to colour my opinion before even presenting the facts.

<comment><USER26> You've adopted Betteridge's law of headlines: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER27> Is there a law about how this wikipedia article will turn up in the comments section of every headline with a question mark?

<comment><USER28> Not yet....we could call it eertami's law though....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know if commits 'offered' is tracked? One of the issues Google always had was they would submit their changes back to the community but then the community would reject them for one reason or another (a lot of the container stuff seemed to start out that way).

</comment><comment><USER30> i don't know, but opensuse continues to be awesome and more american users should try it out. i have to use a variety of linux distros for work, and i use opensuse on my own machines where i get the choice. it's so frustrating that such a polished, easy to use but powerful system gets so little love :o(

<comment><USER31> I too use OpenSUSE. I tried Ubuntu on my huge-screen Dell Precision M70, and it couldn't find the Nvidia driver. OpenSUSE got it right first time. I also think OpenSUSE is most like Windows, which is a plus for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ubuntu could have gone much further focusing on helping people learn to love the Unix CLI than trying to chase and reimplement GUI trends over and over for the last decade.

<comment><USER33> Really?

Anyone who wanted the CLI has had plenty of choices of various operating systems and distributions over the years. Ubuntu's strength is that it's useable and installable with a minimum amount of CLI. That means there's less of a barrier to newbies and casual users.

("Real" users can use blinking LEDs and chorded keyboards instead of fancy GUI cheats...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _> of the 100,000 kernel patches made in the preceding five years, only 100 of these came from Canonical_

Still better than 0, and that's not counting all the fixes they do to other system components and tools that other distros benefit from.

I think it's great that Ubuntu is using Canonical's resources to go in wild directions. I prefer Cinnamon as my desktop environment, but I'm glad Unity is being worked on too. It's awesome they want to be on phones and TVs, you never know where great ideas can sprout from.

That being said, I plan to give OpenSuse and Fedora a try soon just to see what I've been missing out on the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks like Canonical, as well as Microsoft, think that something in the form factor of a MS Surface is the way things are going. If you are going to have a desktop/tablet, you need a touch driven UI.

Five years ago, when Samsung Q1 UMPCs were exciting [1], I'd have agreed, but it turns out that tablets (with tiny their screens even when you plug in a keyboard), are crap for creation. People don't just want to be passive consumers.

Hence, this unified Tablet/PC idea is a bad one. I'm sure it'll fly eventually, just like mice over trackerballs, but that doesn't mean it's better. Dedicated devices that are good at creation and consumption respectively (PC, Laptop, TV, Tablet) are better. Unified Tablet/PCs yield interfaces that are bad for everything, and extra RSI from the touchscreen.

But it's the way of the future, so Linux had better be ready. Because soon it'll be hard to buy a laptop that isn't a tablet. And can you think of a better Desktop Environment for touch screen than Canonicals?

[1][http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Samsung-Q1-UMPC.ht...](http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Samsung-Q1-UMPC.htm)

<comment><USER36> > but it turns out that tablets (with tiny their screens even when you plug in > a keyboard), are crap for creation

Disagree massively. If you look at the iOS market, you'll see a ton of content creating apps making good money. For example, ipads are now better for making music on than laptops.

<comment><USER35> You may have a point there. I'm sure being able to draw on the screen is pretty good for art work too.

<comment><USER36> Yes the art app market is also very big. There's a really ignorant meme going round in tech circles that ipad is only good for passive consumption - <USER2> think it sounds smart but it couldn't be further from what is actually emerging in reality. (Have to say for some reason I can't ascertain, I hate to see people take pictures on an ipad - but go into a busy tourist spot in a big city now and observe.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What Ubuntu got popular off of was it's ease of setup. They now seem to be using that validation to justify their decisions in UI and everything else, which has nothing to do with what people liked about Ubuntu in the first place. I feel like their PR takes a "we know better than you" attitude for their decisions, but they never proved themselves to be competent at any of the things they're pushing for.

<comment><USER38> I get the impression that now most desktop distros have quite simple installers. Were they difficult before because of some technical obstacle, or simply because they hadn't spent the time to make it easy? (honest question - I didn't use Linux until Ubuntu). If it's the latter, that seems to give Canonical at least one point for knowing what users would want.

<comment><USER37> It wasn't the simplicity of the installer interface. It was the actual installation. Ubuntu did the best job simply working with a large variety of hardware. You installed it and you didn't have to do a bunch of painful manual setup by modifying a dozen obscure config files. Linux had the reputation of being a pain to setup, and ubuntu addressed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> _In a speech at the Linux Plumbers Convention in 2008 he criticised Ubuntu for not contributing more to the Linux kernel, saying that, of the 100,000 kernel patches made in the preceding five years, only 100 of these came from Canonical, creating the strange situation whereby the world 's most popular Linux distribution contributed only 0.1 per cent of the work needed to keep the kernel going._

 _Four years later, in 2012, Kroah-Hartman complained that "Canonical uses me as a gatekeeper of what bugs get fixed in their kernel package and sent to their customers. There's so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start..."_

If the Linux kernel maintainers are that upset about this then they should have used a licence that forced Canonical to contribute (code or financially), but they didn't, they made the Linux kernel 'Free Software', and that means Canonical can do what they want with it (freedom 2 in this case), so long as they are not restricting the freedom of others. Either change the licence or shut up.

<comment><USER40> Why? What is this new strange rule, that prevents one from criticizing others if one doesn't want to contractually force them to do the right thing?

<comment><USER41> That's what's going on in the other thread where some people are criticising Linus and some others say that he's not paid by them, so shut up.

My opinion is that even you're a volunteer, you should listen to criticism or don't call yourself a volunteer (as this usually means that you want to achieve something for the benefit of others (at least in part), or you're doing something in cooperation with others). If you're not completely isolated then your actions have an effect on others so you should be prepared for criticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Lost what? Sorry, lump me into the camp of linux die-hards who don't much care for Ubuntu. I grudgingly use it at OSI[1] because it's our standard, but I much prefer Fedora or CentOS. Although, once I muster up the time and energy to switch this Ubuntu box to KDE, I'll probably like it a lot more.

Anyway, having used Ubuntu on my work desktop for the past year and a half, I don't see what all the hype is about. It isn't "better" than Fedora in any way that is particularly noticeable to me, and the much vaunted "apt-get" seems to do exactly what yum does for me on Fedora. If it's better, it's such an incremental level of "better" that I find it hardly distinguishable.

But Unity... uuugggghhhhhh....

[1]: [http://www.osintegrators.com](http://www.osintegrators.com)

<comment><USER43> RPM/yum has grown up a lot, and yes -- it works as well or better than apt-get at basically everything now (openSUSE's zypper is actually spiffier still). But for a long time Debian and its derivatives had an overwhelmingly better package management experience, and a much larger universe of packages to draw on than the RPM distros did. And this intuition persists in the community.

Though I will say this: for all the feature and usability improvements we've seen in yum, the Fedora people seem to be trying their damndest to break them all by this insane wrapping in "PackageKit" that manages to succeed in both dumbing it down to the level of unusability _and_ "enhancing" the power user experience by spending 3-5 seconds every time you typo a command trying to figure out how to install "mkdri".

<comment><USER42> FWIW, Ubuntu has it's own "waste time everytime you typo a command" functionality, at least in the release I'm on. It's actually useful every once in a blue moon...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Any "open" community that has to publicly state that it will only work with those that have established credibility in its own community has "lost it"

I'll politely withhold my comments about the disasters of Unity and now Ubuntu mobile.

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems sort of unfair to compare kernel contributions from Canonical to a company like Red Hat simply because of the time-frame during Linux's development that Red Hat was a part of. Isn't is possible that Red Hat helped out more because it was around closer to the start of the Linux project?

Also, Canonical's and Ubuntu's strengths may not lay in kernel development, but instead pushing the boundaries in what can be done on the UI. I certainly don't remember Red Hat or SUSE doing the sort of risky things with their UI that Canonical is willing to try.

<comment><USER38> This is actually what the conclusion of the article says - that Canonical is taking worthwhile UI risks, and probably doesn't feel much need to work on the kernel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Never. When i saw the unity interface on couple of years ago, its truel impressive and new kind of UI. People would change M$ to Ubuntu its quite useful( unity UI).. I realy love the interface... Most of the hardcore linux geeks doesn't like that environment.in future it would be occupied any other interface..

</comment><comment><USER6> I personally find it interesting that they bothered to mention Ubuntu TV. That project hasn't seen a code commit in months, and by the looks of it there have been little effort to transition away from the deprecated Unity-2d base it's built on.

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't normally complain about articles. The content is valid. I'm having a hard time parsing over the ads though!

</comment><comment><USER48> Is nobody going to mention that atrocity of a pie chart rendered at an angle?

</comment><comment><USER49> Ubuntu lost it 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER50> I actually think all this ambivalence is Ubuntus bigest problem. Now it has become apparent that all along they wanted to go down the path of only using the kernel, and then build a whole new software-stack on top of it, just like Android.

But they have not communicated this to the community, all the community has seen is half-hearted attempts to contribute (to projects that they where going to get rid of anyways) and sporadic design changes that went to far away from the vanilla experience of gnome (making it feel fragmented), and then ultimately replacing fully functional software (with software that's full of bugs and obviously not stable yet).

Now, in the normal Linux community world, everything above seems like total madness, unless as stated in the first paragraph your endgame was all along to replace everything to make a unified product. If they only communicated this, I think they would have gotten alot of support and understandig instead of alienating them selves.

<comment><USER38> I don't think it is the case that they had always planned to build a whole new software stack. And that's not even what they're doing - Ubuntu runs loads of 'Linux ecosystem' applications, which Android never aimed to do.

On the system level, only last year they were talking about one day moving to Wayland - which they later decided against for reasons I don't know enough about to judge. My understanding is that they only made Unity because they felt they didn't have enough influence in the design of Gnome 3. I don't think there's as much of a master plan as you suggest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Once again, I feel that I'm the only one who knows it's possible to run non- Unity UIs on Ubuntu.

Window Maker. It works. I run it. Have for years. I can't be the only one, because it's still right there in the repos.</comment>


Does Twitter have a secret weapon for silencing trolls? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/12/7188549/does-twitter-have-a-secret-weapon-for-silencing-trolls

<comment><USER2> "gendered harassment"

I'm curious to see if the "anti-harassment" techniques enabled at twitter are motivated by politics or views of the employees at Twitter.

I feel like if it's anti-religious, anti-republican, or anti-men, it will not be considered harassment, just an opposing view. However, if it's anti-gay, anti-women, or anti-liberal, it will definitely be considered harassment, which is consistent with hypocritical social media and the majority of communities online.

The ex-Mozilla CEO was bullied, harassed, threatened, and was forced to quit, but many people even here on HN don't seem to think this is the case. It's stories like this that make me want to use my social and technical expertise to start Internet mobs against people with opposing viewpoints. I think some people just need a little taste of their own medicine. It's the only justice in the world that we live in, because starting an Internet mob and getting someone fired has virtually no consequence.

It's sad that opposing viewpoints are now considered "harassment" and silenced or the person's character is assassinated by "hastag warriors".</comment>


The maturing of the smartphone industry is cause for celebration - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/01/12/the-maturing-of-the-smartphone-industry-is-cause-for-celebration <comment><USER2> Is it mature, or has all the low hanging fruit been plucked?

I want things like a phone that I can set on a flat surface and it will project a large monitor view onto a white wall and also project a holographic(?) keyboard in front of the phone that I can type on (I'm not expecting to feel the keyboard since it is just light - but when I hit the A "key" it should type an A).

I want a battery that lasts a week.

I want a wired headphone jack.

I want it to be fully waterproof.

Etc.

<comment><USER3> Personal devices need to focus harder on actually improving people's lives rather than their time using the devices. All these antipatterns that arise from the overuse of information can be solved with the right focus.

<comment><USER4> perhaps a radically new approach is required. machines should serve us, not we them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish high-end manufacturers like Apple will take the opportunity here and further minimize the environmental and social externalities to justify a premium price.

I'm happy to pay a premium for high-end quality, especially if I don't have to feel guilty about it.

<comment><USER6> Which externalities exactly?

With battery replacements and iOS upgrades improving performance, it seems like nobody has done more than Apple here, and indeed their stock price is even suffering for it.

What more are you looking for, honestly?

<comment><USER7> The end of marketing phones as fashion devices. Phones should be seen as tools and they should be expected to last about 8-10 years. There is no reason they can't other than apple and the rest make a lot of money on people throwing out working phones to stay on trend.

<comment><USER8> I just don't see phones regularly lasting 8-10 years. I use my iPhone daily and don't have a strong urge to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, but even I tend to replace my phone ever 2-3 years - it just makes financial sense to do so, and battery replacements can only go so far with that.

As phones become more and more powerful over time, I can see my phone replacing my iPad or (perhaps) even my laptop - but I don't see them lasting as long as that. They're smaller (and therefore more prone to being dropped), with you constantly, and are mostly glass. Even with technological progress aside, I would expect most people to go no more than five years between replacements.

<comment><USER7> Just about anything can last that long if maintained. Current phones struggle to last that long simply because that's what works best for companies and there is little consumer demand for change.

Our current lifestyle of buying a new phone every 3 years is incredibly selfish and is destroying our planet.

<comment><USER9> Actually I think buying a new car every three years is much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm very optimistic that Apple is going to be forced to innovate outside of the iPhone for the first time in many years.

Mac users: rejoice!

</comment><comment><USER11> There is a related story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895064)

I think (as I said in the previous discussion) that the key issue with the lengthening phone upgrade cycle is security patches.

Manufacturers are trying very hard to have built-in obsolescence: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/dutch_court_says_sa...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/dutch_court_says_samsung_has_no_obligation_to_keep_old_phones_patched/)

Unless this fundamentally changes, most non-techy users will have to needlessly upgrade perfectly good devices, run insecure software or become much more savvy about which manufacturers are better in this regard - and the outcome is likely to be some malware has a very large distribution followed by a lot of press.

<comment><USER12> > Manufacturers are trying very hard to have built-in obsolescence

This would be a golden opportunity for a manufacturer to come out with a promised 5+ year support cycle. I think one of the reason they don't is because each manufacturer has 78 slightly different models every year to support, but in a maturing market they should have a better idea on what the market wants and cut that down. Why does know one learn the limited SKUs lesson from apple?

In that respect the Librem phone is arriving at almost the perfect time, it's close to PC levels of supportability.

<comment><USER13> Yup, I totally want that. I want a phone that will last 5 years or longer... ideally about 10 years, like the old ones used to.

<comment><USER8> The "old ones" were fundamentally different devices, though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It comes down to innovation. I bought iPhones because they were innovative. People aren't buying new phones because there is little marginal utility in upgrading anymore.

We can break the innovation opportunities down into several areas:

1\. _Hardware_

2\. _Operating System_

3\. _Software /Apps_

 _Hardware_ hasn't been innovated. The closest thing we got was the hope of a modular phone that was bought for the patents (?) and killed inside of google. The best thing we get is better cameras, biometrics, and screen resolution. Not many people care about cameras (not including selfies), biometrics is sort of a lame duck (who needs their face constantly scanned? or fingerprints as passwords for everything), screen resolution doesn't anymore because the screen size is so small -- majority of people play easy games, like LoL, PUBG, and Candy Crush clones.

 _Operating system_ experience is converging on features between iOS/Android to the point they are really indistinguishable.

 _Software_ is limited because of hardware specs, walled gardens, and the learning curve -- but much more nefariously I software devs might just be afraid if they build something cool these companies would just turn around and steal it/bake it into the OS.

Alternatively we could see adoption start moving horizontal into other peripherals like VR/AR/IoT devices (watches) -- but I'm not holding my breath on that until I see a company come out with something amazing. For instance the precursor to the iPhone was the Samsung i300, the leap from the i300 to the iPhone wasn't that big for me, but it changed a lot of things that just made sense.

The leap for peripherals right now would be too great to expect a magical turnaround in adoption -- but I would love to be first in line to be proven wrong.

So where does that leave us? Well we need to rethink things from the ground up again. We've hit local maxima with experience.

<comment><USER8> > The leap for peripherals right now would be too great to expect a magical > turnaround in adoption -- but I would love to be first in line to be proven > wrong.

I have a feeling that Apple forcing the move to AirPods is laying the groundwork for that. I would love an iPad that was just a battery and a screen, that connected wirelessly to my phone for processing. Likewise, I'd be interested in a laptop that did the same - but it has to be wireless, and the phone's battery would have to be at least two or three times the capacity of the iPhone X.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Phones still have a long way to go. They have all the corporate controls PCs don't, because corporations missed that boat.

I want a removable battery, micro-SD slot, audio jack, and control over the OS/interface comparable to my desktop. I don't give a crap about shaving a millimeter off the thickness, or 3 grams of weight. And I'm one who trims my backpack straps extra short.

<comment><USER16> Granted: buy Android.

<comment><USER17> Except for the non-crippled software part, even with LineageOS or similar. A desktop OS has a lot of software infrastructure that Android doesn't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apple has a stated goal of increasing the usable life of iphones.

These people need to realize it's strategic.

[http://www.asymco.com/2018/09/13/lasts- longer/](http://www.asymco.com/2018/09/13/lasts-longer/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Apple phones are relatively standard hardware with good software and a (unjustifiably?) high price tag.

So it should be no surprise that they last the same as other phones with similarly standard hardware (but considerably lower prices).

Nevertheless some Apple owners choose to ignore this or do not appreciate it being pointed out. :)

<comment><USER20> _Apple phones are relatively standard hardware with good software and a (unjustifiably?) high price tag._

In some ways, I wish this were the case. But my reading is that Apple's custom processors are still far ahead of the competition, and last time I looked it was hard to match Apple's fit and finish, especially if you are looking at anything other than the _very_ top of the Android market. And for something that you keep in your pocket and handle regularly, a feeling of solidity is worth something.

It's a tragedy that you can't buy an iPhone with an unlocked bootloader. There's some interesting potential for innovation there.

(This is even more true in some other market segments. The hardware for the last couple of generations of Apple Watch is amazing, and that makes OS- imposed limits on what third party apps can do tragic).

<comment><USER19> The A12 is peerless I admit, and a good 4-6 months ahead of the rest of the market.

It's a shame that Huawei phones can no longer be unlocked too, part of a trend towards dumbed down consumption devices I suppose.</comment></comment></comment>


LA Traffic moods this weekend - <AUTHOR> http://textient.com/2014/08/03/la-traffic-hows-the-weekend-moods/

<comment><USER2> Only 1 or 2 of the "positive" tweets are actually positive. The rest are negative or not applicable.</comment>


The Ministry of Magic official site - <AUTHOR> http://www.ministryofmagic.co/

<comment><USER2> It's missing a proper EU cookie disclaimer. Tsk tsk.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool site, but...

Nymphadora Tonks Head of Department of Magical Law Enforcement

Errr... Tonks died in the final book

<comment><USER4> Spoiler!

<comment><USER3> Sheesh downvoted for a correction...

book was out in 2007 and movie in 2011, not exactly a spoiler

<comment><USER5> And since 2007, many people too young then to read the books have become older and started them. Many people who were old enough but did not get around to it are now getting around to it. New people are being born every day who might someday wish to read and enjoy the books. A quick check at Amazon shows that the books continue to sell well--and I think it is a good bet that most of those are for people who have not yet read them.

As far as the movie goes, it has just recently made it to non-premium pay TV. Many many people who get their movies via cable or satellite and do not have HBO but do have more than basic cable/satellite are getting around to seeing it.

So yes, it is a spoiler to many people.

I've seen the first 6 movies, and am currently about 1/4 of the way through book 6. I happened to have already known about the death of that particular character, so your post didn't spoil anything for me, but I bet it did spoil it for some people here.

Some spoilers have become memes and catch phrases. Those new to Star Wars, for example, probably have no realistic chance of being surprised by what was the big shock to those of us who saw "The Empire Strikes Back" in the theater in 1980. For those spoilers that have not become embedded in pop culture, though, I see no reason we need to go around blurting them out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you successfully rejoin your old company/team? - <AUTHOR> I used to lead a team of about 10. Through a set of circumstances (neither good nor bad) I was transferred to a different project and then back again a couple years later. Now, that original team has grown to 45 and I'm just another cog in the wheel. I'm technically proficient, but my most valuable skills for this project lie in my institutional knowledge and leadership skills. The new team lead appears to act out of desperation to prove and assert her authority, so I'm concerned that she'll look at me as an immediate treat. How can I successfully navigate these waters and provide the most benefit to the organization as a whole while not sacrificing my own personal growth? Have you done something similar in your career? How did that pan out? <comment><USER2> Oh boy! Yes, I have done this personally and I have had teams where I brought people back. I did this in 2011 actually, I joined a team that I had built most of the original systems 7 years prior but now a whole new team of people were working on them. Only people that were the same were the CIO, president and a few others from different departments. So it was an interesting challenge because everyone thought I was a threat to the director/manager level people, when the reality was all I was there to do was write some code.

Best thing for you to do is to make sure the current lead sees you as an ally and source of historical knowledge that can prevent her from looking stupid or hitting preventable issues. The way you can work on that is to show support for her and provide background or knowledge but be open about changes and don't get defensive over changes. The worst thing you can do is become defensive which even if you are right in a stance will isolate you, or worse fracture the team into factions of them and you. So instead of saying we can't do X, say something more like, well if we do that we will need to likely address X, Y and Z. The point being you don't want to be a roadblock or a naysayer, you want to be a team player and of course you want to try and prevent stupid from happening but do so in a non-confrontational way. Also, when discussing issues don't always reference when you were there before. Just use your knowledge to help but not as a crutch or stick, and ask lots of questions so people will feel you value them regardless of if they are new or been there the whole time.

Hopefully that makes sense. The goal is to make yourself valuable to the team lead and team overall, but do so without using your past knowledge as a hammer. Use your knowledge as historical information that can help the team but don't be an obstructionist which is what I have seen a lot of in the past with people.</comment>


Stuck: Why the rent and mortgage-burdened don't always move to cheaper pastures - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/24/stuck-why-rent-and-mortgage-burdened-americans-dont-always-move-to-cheaper-pastures <comment><USER2> _Jose didn't have a job lined up in Missouri. They certainly didn't have the money for the moving costs; those would have to go on credit. Not to mention the fact that he'd also be leaving his home, his friends, and almost everything he knew behind in Colorado._

I moved someplace cheaper to get off the street. I did that in part by developing an online income under very challenging circumstances. I was able to make the move shortly after paying off my student loan.

On the one hand, we need more affordable housing. On the other, I see a lot of potential for reducing our current problems by providing more support for developing portable, flexible income via the internet.

What I did is not easy to arrange. It took me several years and I am certainly not in the lap of luxury yet.

I do get frustrated when people act like there is no housing crisis, there is plenty of cheap housing. Yeah, sure but it mostly isn't near employment centers. If you don't have an income, you can't afford housing, no matter how cheap it is.

The way to promote that idea without being a butt about it is to provide support for people to develop an online income instead of acting like they are just stupid or lazy that their life isn't working.

<comment><USER3> _On the other, I see a lot of potential for reducing our current problems by providing more support for developing portable, flexible income via the internet._

The problem is any online business involves competing with everyone on the Internet. Maybe the skills of fluent-in-American-English or leadership or persuasion or math or programming allow a few to make a decent income selling that unique thing. But any skill that can be mastered is going to have a flood of people learning it from all around world, reducing it's price online.

<comment><USER4> In 10-20 years, sure. So for those 10-20 years we should encourage it.

<comment><USER5> I think that's already the reality today. Many comments here on HN talk about how hard it's to find any decent paying gigs on sites like Upwork due to global competition.

<comment><USER4> Because they are looking at the wrong places. Business that knows about UpWork already knows how to handle race to the bottom. 99% of businesses in the US do not.

Being a contract programmer is dating. Are you a super star with great skills and great personality? Fantastic, you can do equivalent of $550/h and still work 30-40 hour weeks ( translation: you are super hot, super fit and rich - you get to play with anyone you want ). Are you just OK? Well, start taking $30/h jobs that give you same 30-40 hours but live in a place where you can buy a house for $40k.

<comment><USER6> That requires you to have two valuable and difficult to learn skillset instead of just one. You have to be a good programmer and a good salesperson too. That is a tough bar to clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's quite simple, really. The main reason they don't move to cheaper pastuers is: Jobs. The cheapest place in the US won't help much if you don't have any source of income.

We really need to start encouraging companies to put jobs in places where people can live. Or build places people can live near jobs. One or the other, or Both.

<comment><USER8> Companies won't put jobs in places where they can't find good candidates. It's a circular problem.

There are many factors and therefore many aspects to a solution, but I think one certainty is that education is required. Investments in public education and job re-training could go a long way to making those low-cost places more attractive to employers.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people who have choice will often pay more to live in places that have benefits other than available jobs. People want a safe place with a good social scene and stuff to do. Just ask Connecticut. Employers there are struggling to find candidates because everyone wants to leave the boring state. Conservatives love to blame the state's high taxes, but the high-value employees are so often moving to places like NYC and Boston where the taxes and living costs make CT look downright cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One problem is easy to solve - not wanting to move because your house is under water.

It's called "strategic default" walk away from the house, stop throwing good money after bad and three years after your foreclosure you can buy another house.

I did it when my house was $60K under water and I was "prequalified with a contingency" to start the process of getting a house built a month before I was officially qualified to get an FHA loan. The day I was qualified, the lender submitted my loan application.

I had no moral qualms about it. It was strictly a financial decision.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious about the moral qualms bit. I suppose I was raised differently (and in NZ/Australia, too) by my parents, but I read an article recently that was on HN about a man who lost maybe $110,000 servicing an underwater mortgage that was due to the GFC. Where do those "morals" stem from?

<comment><USER9> Some people think it's a moral responsibility to pay back a debt to the bank. The banks had no qualms about taking taxpayers money and paying people millions in bonuses.

The mortgage was a simple contract. If I didn't pay the mortgage they had the right to take the house. They exercised their right.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. The banks can and will screw you over, and they caused the damned issues in the first place! Morals have no place here, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me it's jobs. I move to a cheaper place for a while, and it was great, until I couldn't find a job in my industry. Then it was really bad.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised nobody is considering a family unit consisting of three equal (adult) partners rather than the standard two-adult nuclear family. Two workers and one homemaker could cover all the bills and allow for the care of the home and children.

Given the financial circumstances many Americans are living in, I can't imagine nobody's thought of it.

<comment><USER13> Are you suggesting 3-person "marriage"? Polygamy? That is evil! Only the devil marries multiple people! /s

Ill ask my GF if I can look for a 2nd (working) lady to cover some financial issues

<comment><USER12> Yes, but obviously not legally married as that is not currently possible.

<comment><USER14> In which case the obvious solution is to incorporate the family and write the articles and by-laws like a pre-nup.

Some use of the civil marriage system might also be required to realize a subset of the benefits enjoyed by traditional marriage partners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because moving takes money, and moving doesn't mean you'll be able to find a job when you get there.

<comment><USER16> What happened to finding a job prior to moving? How many people in this country just pack up all their personal belongings into a horse drawn carriage, and trek across the Oregon trail for a better life?

<comment><USER15> Not every career path allows for doing that. If you're not working a white collar job already, odds are you're not going to have the time to go out to the new area to interview, let alone be able to afford to get yourself out there.

<comment><USER16> I would guess most people aren't working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are plenty of online resources for finding jobs. My father worked in a steel mill for 20+ years, managed to go back to school as a much older adult, and get a job in an entirely new field(medical tech).

<comment><USER15> No, but if you're working two jobs, your time for doing that is extremely limited. Double so if you have a family. Your dad probably was not working more than 8 hours a day. A lot of people that the article is talking about are those that have to work much more than that.

<comment><USER16> My father worked double shifts most of my childhood, on rotation shifts no less. Dude worked his ass off, and still had time to build our house, advance his career, and was always around for baseball practice. No excuses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >But talk to just one individual who's gotten stuck (or even chosen to stay) in an expensive home they couldn't afford, and all that Econ 101 vocabulary starts to fall short. Or at least, you'll find fairly quickly that no one's housing decisions are governed neatly by the laws of supply and demand in the housing market alone. And that's because all of us — as consumers and as human beings — are part of infinite markets with infinite feedback loops, not all of which are easily predictable.

I struggle to understand why people who argue for rationality, i.e., people who I know are very very smart and extremely rational, turn around and _expect_ rationality from populations.

I've talked to highly intelligent bankers who are surprised when a market turns volatile/irrational, doctors who can't comprehend why their patients make irrational/poor health decisions, teachers who have difficulty accepting the disconnected nature of students whose very future depends on them doing well in a given class. Politicians who have this expectation that people will not break the law, or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or whatever other things that require rigid rationality.

Maybe it's a problem with empathy? Of "putting yourself in someone else's shoes?" Maybe it's not even _possible_ for extremely intelligent, relatively rational people, to adopt the mindset of people who (by choice, culture, or means well outside their control) live more emotional, instinctual lives. Even more insidious is when these exact people fail to recognize the irrationality present in themselves, inherent to the fact that they're human.

When I studied Anthropology, I'd even come across professors that didn't necessarily believe that human culture is irrational / arbitrary. There may be traits that continue to exist because natural selection promoted them (a religion that resisted the eating of pork and promoted evangalising happens to survive through dark ages because nobody is getting stomach parasites and because it replicates), but there's nothing _inherently rational_ about that.

TLDR my big word-salad rant -> I strongly believe, and have horded anthropological evidence to support this belief, that humans at scale are completely irrational, and to expect otherwise is foolish and irrational. One should _plan_ for irrationality.

Obviously moving away when rent is too high is the "right" choice, the "rational" choice, but being human is just too _messy_ for something as simple as that. Like the article says, there are just so many reasons that get all tripped up, some rational, some not, all just as powerful an influence on a human "decision tree" (again, too logical a structure to describe human choice-making).

I made such a dumb long post because I want to be challenged on this. If you take the time to reply with why you disagree with me I will be very grateful.

<comment><USER18> This is tangental but, incidentally, the hygienic laws of the Jewish people encompass far more than just not eating pork, and most of the wisdom in obeying those laws for health reasons far surpasses any knowledge at the time.

Some modern physicians wrote a book about this called 'None of these diseases'

[https://www.amazon.com/None-These-Diseases-S- McMillen/dp/080...](https://www.amazon.com/None-These-Diseases-S- McMillen/dp/0800752333)

To me the rational conclusion given the information above is that those laws really did come from a source of knowledge higher than the totality of human knowledge at the time.

<comment><USER17> >To me the rational conclusion given the information above is that those laws really did come from a source of knowledge higher than the totality of human knowledge at the time.

Can you clarify what you believe the source is?

<comment><USER19> G-d. Or possibly aliens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Much of it is about what is trendy, what is the cultural mecca of the moment. Unfortunately the overcrowded west coast continues to dominate the trendseekers mindset, which is why you have ridiculous housing prices all over, a severe homeless crisis, terrible traffic, and rampant overcrowding.

Make the midwest, south, and NE "cool" and trendy, and all the trendseekers who endlessly trucked out to the west coast will suddenly discover how "amazing" and "cool" \- and ridiculously affordable - Columbus Ohio, Shreveport LA, Rochester NY, or Madison WI are. The price of a downpayment in any west coast state will buy the entire home - cash - in those locations, and in many cases you'll have money left over.

<comment><USER21> It's much more complicated than that. Weather is a huge factor. Network effects are not so trivial or easily displaced. Walkability and public transit are major factors that contribute to those network effects and establish a city's culture -- which is a very difficult thing to reproduce. Not to mention politics. It's easy to say "just move to Shreveport!" But many, many people would feel very uncomfortable moving to these locations due to their religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or whatever. And maybe the city itself is much more liberal than its surroundings. However, there are still genuine political concerns that many individuals would have for policy decisions made at a state-level that would directly affect their well-being.

The major argument people from the midwest or the south give in favor of their locations is lower house prices. Many of the "trendseekers" have no interest suburban tract homes. I think the people advancing this argument should understand that a home is, for many, just one factor amongst many in determining where to live, and in many cases is not the strongest. Shreveport, LA is not "uncool" because of some accident of trendiness. It's uncool because it's uncool. There are no strong networks there, no extensive public transportation systems, no walkability, no political protections for marginalized groups -- etc., etc. It's a lot more than just trendiness.

I say this as someone who has never lived on either coast. Just keep in mind that much of America seems unappealing or unfriendly to people who are not from here for legitimate reasons.

<comment><USER22> Plus, I mean, the elephant in the room is jobs. I'd probably be pretty happy in Upstate New York, but the options for work are far fewer than they are near major, booming cities.

<comment><USER23> Just how many jobs do you need? It only takes one good one that pays the appropriate amount, right?

<comment><USER24> Maybe if it were a union job. As long as it's a right-to-work job, there needs to be a backup plan.

<comment><USER22> Besides that, the lack of available alternatives will almost surely depress your wages.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple web app playground - <AUTHOR> https://basedeploy.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

So, I posted this web app builder a while back and got some good feedback and some awesome customers, but it was just too complicated. Originally, it had a UI builder like webflow or something on top of the API builder. So, painfully, I ripped out all of the UI builder and tried to simplify it.

Now, it's like a jsfiddle meets a rails generator. Anyway, play with it for free and let me know if you think that it doesn't suck. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> It looks very nice. Would love to know what led you to create this and how you are going to grow it.

P.S. I was working on something similar since last two days. I used prism.js & Ace editor to create a Bootstrap 4 playground for my own blog (example: [https://codegim.com/embed/a3EZQmXj](https://codegim.com/embed/a3EZQmXj))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! When I would start working with new clients, I often wished that I had a simple way to set up an MVP or copy and tweak a previous project. I also wanted something where clients could go in and make changes without having to set up an environment.

Keep working on yours. It's fun and you'll learn a lot.

<comment><USER2> It is a great way to setup an MVP. Best of luck.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump on foreigners attending US colleges and wanting to stay - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/633695559900073984 <comment><USER2> People cite these old tweets trying to say he's a hypocrite, but I honestly don't think it's even that deep. A hypocrite presupposes a belief system for one to fail to consistently follow. I think Trump just shoots from the hip and says whatever he thinks will get him the most attention, power, or status at the moment. There is no belief system or set of values for him to be a hypocrite about.

<comment><USER3> > _There is no belief system or set of values for him to be a hypocrite > about._

He has been consistently antagonistic toward non-white poor people, even when it made him less powerful or less popular (right now, for example, and also when he kept insulting Puerto Rico).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's from 2015.</comment>


JetBrains Rider (cross-platform .NET IDE) Is RTM - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2017/08/03/rider-2017-1-jetbrains-net-ide-hits-rtm/ <comment><USER2> Nice. One of the things that kept me away from the .net platform, is that the only viable development IDE is Visual Studio.

Especially on OSX and Linux. I hope that together with the new .net core initiative, .net becomes truly cross platform like Java.

I used to program a lot in C# before buying a MacBook Pro a few years ago and really liked the .net platform.</comment>


The story behind:How we use K8s and spot instances to reduce cost up to 80% - <AUTHOR> https://tuananh.net/2020/02/20/the-story-behind-my-talk-cloud-cost-optimization-at-scale/ <comment><AUTHOR> author here: this is the story of how we make use of Kubernetes / spot instances and .NET Core to significantly reduce our EC2 billing cost in 2016.</comment>


Will We Ever Stop Eating Animal Meat? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/will-we-ever-stop-eating-animal-meat/570874/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Yes. As the price goes up, people switch to non-meat protein. Similar to what is hopefully going to happen with fossil fuels and renewable energy.

<comment><USER3> We'll need a way to get the vitamins and minerals that we currently get from animal meat, too. And people are already skeptical of pill vitamins (which is likely what will be included with these new type of non-meat foods to make them look just as healthy).

A lot of the foods have already had these nutrients destroyed through processing (to resist more time on the shelf) or genetic modification (to increase yield, etc). It's part of what's leading us to higher and higher numbers people with chronic diseases, cancers, etc.

We'll see more of that as we give up "natural meat", too.

<comment><USER4> Your remarks sound fairly _woo_ , yet not.

Most of the folks who are, say, antivaxxers firmly believe that metals, pesticides and other chemicals are a primary cause of chronic illness. The reality is that chemicals of that sort concentrate in fat stores in animals and get worse the further up the food chain you go.

It is one of the better arguments for eating vegetarian.

<comment><USER5> (This comment is a reply to two comments here, just to make it easier for me)

The woo part in the GP's comment seems to be a hidden implication that animal meat is not processed or hasn't had its nutrition destroyed or not been genetically modified or not been fed "pills that people are skeptical of". There's almost nothing "natural" about animal meat that's sold in stores. And hence the conclusion that some disorders would increase solely because of this is false.

The technical term for your description of the concentration of certain things increasing up the food chain is "biomagnification". [1]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was amused that the article didn't actually answer the title question directly. The implication seemed to follow Betteridge's law of headlines though. [1]

The article does rightly note that people don't care — "the moral and environmental costs of meat register as real, yet ignorable; snowflake static on the radar" — but this is not an American issue alone by any measure. I've seen people from other countries with a similar mindset.

I also don't think humankind will ever stop, wholesale or on an absolute basis, doing anything that's considered harmful in any way to anyone.

In the current scheme of things, it would probably be a combination of capitalism, consumerism, and some environmental catastrophes that would create some kind of a significant dent in animal meat consumption. That's quite unfortunate at many levels while having a significant negative impact on those who're usually helpless (human or nonhuman).

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Poll: Greatest productivity app on Mac? - <AUTHOR>

Just out of interest, I would like to know what applications/tools that people use on Mac to be productive.
I'm particularly keen on reading responses about To-Do lists app.<p>The best ones i've seen are: Things, Omnifocus, Wunderlist, The Hit List and Evernote. <comment><USER2> Terminal, DTerm, Quicksilver and Macchiato[1].

[1]: Yours truly wrote a Markdown editor, which I use to write pretty much everything. See my Show HN post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858412>

<comment><USER3> Just curious, but what do you use Quicksilver for? I used to use Quicksilver all the time, but I find Spotlight to do everything I needed. In fact, binding Spotlight to CTRL+Q makes it lovely for my needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> rescuetime. I put together a simple chrome extension which hijacks the newtab page and shows a biz dashboard + personal rescuetime stats/graphs. nothing gets you back to work harder than _seeing_ that today was only 50% as productive as yesterday.

<comment><USER5> Please share!

<comment><USER4> sorry, i've hardcoded biz apis and can't release it without lots of sanitization. the rescuetime aspect of it is really simple though! they have a decent api and nice js embeddable widgets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use my own little command-line todo tool - a rubygem called "j" <http://akash.im/j> I wrote that after I liked t- which RiderOfGiraffes wrote. And then there's tiling window managers, simple editors or whatever works for you and me.

Greatest? IMO everybody has their own greatest productivity app. Bothering about it too much itself is a productivity sink. Just keep using something and you'll find something singing the same tune as you are. Continue using it :)

</comment><comment><USER7> As far as to-do lists apps go, I rolled my own by combining a TextMate bundle with a few Ruby scripts and some keyboard triggers using QuickSilver. If you have a programmable text editor and are a programmer, this is a powerful way to go.

I also turned my TextMate into an editable wiki. TextMate bundles are pretty powerful. Because my wiki is basically a collection of text files, I can easily read them on-the-go using my DropBox iPhone app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started using TextMate recently, and I absolutely love it.

Care to share any interesting TM bundles that you like a lot?

<comment><USER7> The Wycats bundle makes it possible to narrow searching to within a folder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Handy! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quitting Mail.app and iChat when I'm coding.

Also a few useful tools: Alfred, The Hit List, TextMate, 0xED, Terminal, Evernote, BusyCal, Dropbox, Fossil SCM.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gmail Multiple Inboxes is how I triage incoming mail.

I have 4 panes layered vertically:

Top: Inbox 2nd pane: personal action items (i.e. must do 'today') 3rd pane: reading queue, but nothing personally actionable 4th pane: ding ding ding. Recently completed items that I still want to keep an eye on.

Each of the panes is based off of a saved search query.

</comment><comment><USER9> The greatest tool... is not wasting my time with productivity-fu so I can get back to the actual task at hand =P

I kid. I kid.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://teuxdeux.com/> is my choice. Awesome! Alfred (Quicksilver replacement) <http://alfredapp.com>

Shutting down Email, Chrome, iChat, TweetDeck while coding.

Black coffee ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Full screen apps in Lion just may be the best productivity boost I've had in a long time. Need to get away from distractions? If the program you're using can go full-screen, you're set.

</comment><comment><USER12> Quicksilver, Evernote, SelfControl, and Terminal. On the web app side of it, I turn to Google (Gmail, Docs, Calendar), and Remember the Milk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice list there. How do you use Terminal to boost productivity - is it only when your working with code?

<comment><USER12> Yes it's for code, and also a little more. I've come to learn that vim is quite the powerful editor. I use it to avoid internet distractions while writing code or even prose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've heard that vim was a popular IDE. Although, its not very appealing to me because i don't like its interface much.

<comment><USER12> If you like, there are configurations that make vim act like conventional text editors[1][2]. To paraphrase Umberto Eco, I like vim for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences[3].

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/05/vim- made-e...](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/05/vim-made-easy- how-to-get-your-favorite-ide-features-in-vim.ars)

[2] <http://cream.sourceforge.net/>

[3] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577,...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577,00.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Firefox is my productivity app.

</comment><comment><USER14> a second on Wunderlist (which I just started using), nvALT, OmniOutliner, MindNode Pro, and Quicksilver.

productivity detractors: firefox (processor pig), snackr (distraction), twitter (good distraction), reeder</comment>


I made a cell phone [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlRa-iH7PGw <comment><USER2> I gave this talk. Slides are here: [https://keminglabs.com/talks/#bangbangcon2015](https://keminglabs.com/talks/#bangbangcon2015)

I'll post some photos of the current version and more details on my twitter (@lynaghk) tomorrow (in 10 hours).

Software is all on an 8-bit Atmel microcontroller, written in C in the style of Harel Statecharts ([http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso...](http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/resources/statecharts.pdf)).

<comment><USER2> Photos of two current phone designs and PCBs are here: [https://twitter.com/lynaghk/status/632937349458956288](https://twitter.com/lynaghk/status/632937349458956288)

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic, good job! Any chance on making the source and design files available, maybe even through a libre license?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish the audience's audio wasn't much MUCH louder than the speaker. I had to turn the audio up to hear him, but the laughing was so loud I had to turn it down every few seconds.

Also a fun video to watch, but he kind of skips over some of the most interesting technical details (like writing the software).

<comment><USER5> Hi! I shot the video. We had some problems with the mic hookup on stage so I was using a mic all the way back at the camera that wasn't nearly as directional as I hoped. Apologies to everyone's eardrums !

<comment><USER6> You could have also run a noise filter over it I believe, the quality wasn't good even when the crowd was quit.

<comment><USER7> Well, you have the video now, you can download it and run said noise filter over it yourself..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought cell phone companies don't appear from nowhere because governments and/or organizations like FCC in the USA are not allowing just anyone to sell radio communication equipment (is that why cellular modems are _never_ open sourced, right?)

Is it because of the regulations that we don't see lots of cell phone manufacturers? If it wasn't for that, from this presentation I get the feeling that cellphones could be made to spec quite easily, say, by your regular hardware Kickstarter campaign: at least, the cellular modem shown in the presentation looks really self-contained.

<comment><USER9> I work for a wireless design services company. There is a large divide between using a Cellular module (e.g. Telit LE910) versus doing a chip-down Cellular design (e.g. Qualcomm/Infineon). This design has a module at its core.

Modules are based around the chipsets but they do the most expensive certification (both FCC and Carrier) work for you. As a purchaser of the module, you pay for this on each module.

Certifying a cellular end device is usually <$50K (depending on number of bands, # of carriers, fallback, etc.). Certifying a new chip-down cellular design can easily exceed $1-2M in just certification and testing costs. Development costs and complexity will also be increased.

<comment><USER10> _> Certifying a cellular end device is usually <$50K_

Suppose the author wants to (completely legally) use the phone he just built.

Does he have to go through this "end device" certification? Or does "end device" mean something else here?

what if he wanted to sell the phone?

I was wondering what the regulatory landscape looks like during the last portion of the talk -- it'd be a real shame if he put all this time into designing a beautiful phone and couldn't (legally) use it!

<comment><USER11> Sparkfun has a reasonable run down of FCC rules.

[https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/398](https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/398)

In this guys case there is an FCC allowance that you can build up to five devices for personal use that this cellphone project might fall under. Building a bunch to sell is a different matter though, especially since this is an intentional radiator vs. a unintentional one.

I get the sense that it's a bit of a taboo topic to talk about publicly in the opensource / hobbyist world. Adafruit and Sparkfun, the two major outlets for hobby electronics in the USA, for example generally won't discuss publicly what the companies stance on their FCC rules compliance obligation is.

My feeling based on reading a bit about it is that until you reach a certain scale the cost of FCC testing is prohibitive. So when companies like Sparkfun and Adafruit were starting out they simply followed best design practices and fudged a little on the FCC side of things by saying that their products fell under one of the exceptions or that they use a pre-certified module. Now that they are bigger it seems a small number of their products actually do get certified. It's a mess for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He mentioned that he bought that cnc machine like it was no big deal. I looked them[1] up, the cheapest one was 6 grand!!

Does there exist a sub 500$ cnc router that you can actually build interesting stuff with and interface with a computer?

[1][http://www.shopbottools.com/mProducts/basicPRSsystems.htm](http://www.shopbottools.com/mProducts/basicPRSsystems.htm)

<comment><USER13> There are some cheap CNC routers. They often require a bit of setup (i.e. sold as kits) or have questionable quality (3020). I'm not sure you'll find a high quality solution under $500 though.

Shapeoko 3[1] is $1000 USD

X-Carve[2] kits are $800 (upgrade to the Shapeoko2)

3020 Clones[3] are around $500-800 (all over ebay)

[1][http://www.shapeoko.com](http://www.shapeoko.com)

[2][https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve](https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve)

[3][http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=3020+cnc+rout...](http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=3020+cnc+router)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That guy is smarter than me, funnier than me, and most importantly works harder than me.... but I have an iPhone.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the iPhone part?

<comment><USER16> I guess that the iPhone does more things than the phone the guy made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is so cool. This guy kept everybody laughing and listening while presenting how to make a cellphone :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Similar project by Adafruit [https://learn.adafruit.com/arduin-o-phone- arduino-powered-di...](https://learn.adafruit.com/arduin-o-phone-arduino- powered-diy-cellphone/overview)

<comment><USER19> ...and by Dave Mellis at the Media Lab: [http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/](http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very nice! I've been following these tutorials in the hope of building my own cell phone sometime soon.

If you want a more step-by-step tutorial, Ben Heck's youtube channel is a very good source. He specifically has a DIY cellphone

Part 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SlcVTfP4MA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SlcVTfP4MA)

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

</comment><comment><USER21> Are there any pictures of the finished product? I'm intrigued.

</comment><comment><USER22> The audience reactions were like being at a wedding, anything you say is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER23> Feels like I'm watching some sitcom. Does anyone else feel the people are laughing too much?.. or probably the microphone is very near to the audience.

<comment><USER24> Yup, felt the same

<comment><USER15> Same of course. Elsewhere in this thread (9 hours before your posts):

> Hi! I shot the video. We had some problems with the mic hookup on stage so I > was using a mic all the way back at the camera that wasn't nearly as > directional as I hoped. Apologies to everyone's eardrums !

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10068086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10068086)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> He (they?) are working on a new "luxury" phone it appears. More info here: [https://keminglabs.com/phone](https://keminglabs.com/phone)

</comment><comment><USER26> If folks are interested in this kind've thing, this is an interesting Arduino- based project: [http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/](http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Kevin - what a wonderfully inspiring and HILARIOUS talk. You're fantastic! I create products myself (but with nowhere near your level of technical talent) - you can see some here if you want: [http://bit.ly/shedcreations](http://bit.ly/shedcreations)). Loved your delivery, intelligence, wit and raw perseverance. All wonderful. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or Facebook and please also post up an image of your finished phone - it wasn't so clear to see the finished article on your video. "Showbiz: always leave them wanting something more!". Much love, Shed www.ShedSimove.com

</comment><comment><USER28> Which conference is this?

I tried Googling "!!Con" and obviously the exclamation marks don't count as part of the search term. Apparently Google doesn't know what I mean by "exclamation mark exclamation mark con" either. There's also no link in their YouTube channel...

<comment><USER29> It's called BangBang Con

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very impressive, I notice he's using a chip for GSM/GPRS - UC15EA.

I'm wondering if anyone's used an SDR to make a cellphone, as I've seen GSM base stations implemented with SDR, but not cellphones before.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a person who does not use a smart phone but feels that nobody puts thought into the dumb phones - this has crossed my mind many times. Very very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Don't tell the FCC kthx!"

</comment><comment><USER33> its the kind of project im going to play some day

</comment><comment><USER34> Ok, you made a working cell phone. But are you sure you know how to do it? What if, next time, something goes wrong, do you have the proper diagnostic skills to figure out the problem?

<comment><USER35> That's discouraging.

He pretty much admits during the whole talk that he doesn't really know what he's doing. But he's doing it nevertheless. He's learning. And he's encouraging others to try and do stuff they don't know much about. And to celebrate small victories.

Also, I never ever have proper diagnostic skills to figure out the problem when I'm doing something I've never done before.

<comment><USER34> I didn't want to be discouraging. I was just phrasing what I would think if I just did something like he did.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, but the point of the talk is the opposite. It's more of a motivational talk than a tech talk. It was pretty good, the runtime (<15 min) and his attitude helped. He was OK with not really being sure of himself or what he's doing, and still he did it.

I'd bet the phone he made isn't going to be the last phone he makes. He'll make more. He'll learn more. Maybe he'll talk more, or write something up and then we all will know more.

Hell, after watching the video I was like "I gotta make me one of those. But with Slackware!!!" :)

Don't feel bad about a few downvotes. I just think you missed the point. (Also, I didn't downvote).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Several Books in Harvard Library Bound with Human Flesh - <AUTHOR> https://roadtrippers.com/stories/harvard-discovers-three-of-its-library-books-are-bound-in-human-flesh?lat=40.80972&lng=-96.67528&z=5 <comment><USER2> Bound in human skin, not flesh.</comment>


Will ZFS and non-ECC RAM kill your data? - <AUTHOR> http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this is why Apple backed away from ZFS? Would it mandate the use of more expensive ECC RAM?</comment>


Show HN: Cloud SFTP Server – SFTP Direct to Dropbox, Azure, AWS, Box etc. - <AUTHOR> https://couchdrop.io/sftp <comment><USER2> This is an intriguing product just for the novelty, but I'm not completely getting what itch it is trying to scratch?

Is it just to simplify connection to these various endpoints through a single "API" making switching backend providers "easier"? Or am I missing something?

If I am building my product on top of AWS or DropBox, or Box, or any of these, why would I not go straight to the vendor?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's more catered towards those who use traditional means and who have external users who need to upload or download files with more granularity.

It was originally designed for those who use Linux infrastructure and wanted to get their files to the cloud without needing to use jump boxes or provision their own server. It uses the native applications too so there is no need to install software.

But yes, it also acts like a secure backup service where you are not restricted to a single endpoint and you can control your data.

Also this offers more security such as limiting uploads from specific source IPs, permissions and ties in nicely for those who script (as there is also a SCP solution).

In the end, there was some interest so figured I'd share it here around the SFTP side and have some feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Completely unrelaed to the product but my brains registered the page as "cloud flare error page". I was the back button, but something felt off, and only by looking a second time, did I understand I really was on the correct page.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested in this as a convenient way to access some of my cloud storage providers, but I can't consider it responsible to use this until it supports OTP two-factor.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just one single feature of the StorageMadeEasy.com solution and commercial pricing seems equivalent but many more cloud storage's are available.

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I reading this right, the free plan only supports 10 transactions a month? Meaing 10 total connections?

<comment><AUTHOR> Potentially. I guess it depends on what you determine as a connection.

But it's basically an SFTP session. So you can upload and download as much as you would like from a single session/transaction.

Blurb from the website: "A transaction is defined by a session. So for example if you were to initiate an SFTP connect to an S3 bucket and uploaded five files and downloaded three files, then this would still be deemed 'one transaction'. However, if you initiated an SFTP session and uploaded one file, then closed the session and then started another session and downloaded another file, this would be 2 sessions."</comment></comment>