Mathbreakers: Explore mathematics in a 3D game world - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mathbreakers/mathbreakers-a-3-d-math-exploration-game <comment><USER2> My sister just released a game early access on Steam[1] called "The Counting Kingdom"[2]. It targets the U.S. core math curriculum for 6-8 year olds.

The idea is that by embedding mathematics into the core mechanics of the gameplay – instead of having it simply be a hurdle players have to get by before they get to further gaming (e.g. a popup quiz) – will allow players to consistently reinforce, grow, and retain their learning without necessarily consciously thinking about learning. It's learning through play.

I think the notion has legs, but I think it will really take a strong effort between game developers and educators alike.

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/302750/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/302750/) [2] [http://www.countingkingdomgame.com/](http://www.countingkingdomgame.com/)

<comment><USER3> Hi choffstein, I'm also one of the Mathbreakers founders.

Counting Kingdom looks awesome -- thanks for sharing! We definitely share the same philosophy about learning through games. Popup worksheets != gameplay!

We'd love to chat and nerd out with you and your sister. How do we reach you?

Cheers! Vivian

<comment><USER2> You can grab her by e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com or twitter: @LittleWorldsInt

<comment><USER3> Sweet. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The early Math Blaster series that I played as a kid in the 90's was amazing to me. Just thinking about those games gives me nostalgia. IIRC, there was an actual storyline and the math mini-games were absolute fun. Thinking about it now, it felt like I wasn't even doing math, but just playing a typical fun game.

Probably wouldn't work these days, though. Before, you had the coolness of just being on a computer and didn't care much about 3D graphics.

<comment><USER5> The Island of Dr. Brain was a lot like that for me. Although we've heard tons of comments from kids like, "I loved this game even though I knew I was doing math the whole time". :-]

-Charlie, co-founder

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading the comments, I can't help but feel people are being overly negative about this project. Math education is a huge, sprawling, decades-long endeavor. It involves so many disciplines and moving parts and areas of pedagogy. Math education for college graduates is an entirely different thing than establishing basic numerical concepts in early minds and teaching kids to be confident manipulating symbols using mathematical rules to achieve tangible goals. I think it's an incredibly fruitful idea to take these simple math concepts and put them in an immersive 3D environment, and this project hits the nail on the head in regards to how we get there.

There are two main obstacles to achieving learning: Engagement, and efficiency. A lot of efficient ways of teaching end up not being engaging, and a lot of engaging ways of teaching end up not being very efficient.

I strongly believe that math education of the future will be one to tie these together in an important way, and I think Mathbreakers is the best attempt I've seen so far to bridge that gap in a practical, accessible way for youngsters. They have derived all level design and concepts from working directly with teachers and playtesting on students in real classrooms. They have achieved tangible results so far, after only a year of work. I can't imagine where they will be one year from now.

Kudos to the Mathbreakers team, I think this is one of the coolest projects to come out of Kickstarter I've seen in a while.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's not math. It's calculation, a process that computers can carry on without actually thinking.

<comment><USER8> Yeah get those kids learning category theory!

<comment><USER5> Indeed! One of our supporters recommended using "zero" to kill addition monsters, and "1" to kill multiplication monsters, representing the different identities of fundamental operations. We don't have any "multiplication monsters" \-- yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > (Student, from the promo video) -- "This should be our homework".

What a good idea! At least for some part of the homework.

I remember we had our course back when I was in 7th through 9th grades. It used to be called "Informatics" (this was in a ex-Soviet Block country).

First we used these strange MSX, Z80 based machines ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX)), then donated used IBM PC machines running DOS, Norton Commander and all. And we did some "boring" stuff like learned to copy files with NC. Did some spreadsheets, but the best part was we got to play games for grades. Sokoban (including a strange MSX clone of it). Then Lemmings. Then others. They would usually be logic games. That was really invaluable and kind of maintained my interest in computers.

<comment><USER10> You were most likely an outlier. This video game should not be homework. Inmates running the asylum.

<comment><USER9> But ok why shouldn't video games be homework? Isn't regular homework a game? "Fill this spreadsheet with answers" X*5=15... etc. Solve this equation... That is very much a game. You get a score in the end -- a grade. And hopefully you learned something. The "learned and internalized something" part might be accomplished better with a video game.

The problem was that for kids at that point, who haven't seen or experience computers, showing that you can copy an abstract thing like a file from one window of NC to another was just very boring. It would have accomplished the task of forcing us to repeat and memorize the step enough to pass the final exam but it wouldn't have left with with an interest in computers.

Seeing a game and thinking logically how you would beat Sokoban. Teaches some planning, problem solving on one level, but it also shows of what computers can do -- play music, display graphics, hold the maze in memory presumably or on disk, keep score.

<comment><USER10> Your putting words in my mouth, I said nothing of a spreadsheet and nor was I saying that all video games shouldn't be homework. But _this_ video game looks like low quality edutainment.

These kids should be playing with Mindstorms and writing Logo programs, not playing accounting quake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can remember disliking 1998 2D Mac math games quite a bit. From what I can remember you would solve one little arithmetic problem after another and there would be some fun graphics around that. And they were exactly as boring as doing hundreds of little arithmetic problems.

I wonder if this game is actually interesting or they found a few happy kids for the video.

<comment><USER5> Hi, Charlie here, co-founder of Mathbreakers (not the OP tho). This game really is different; there are no worksheet style problems (NumberMunchers et al.)

Our whole idea is to treat math and numbers like toys that fit together, so you can experiment and play with numeracy and interesting calculators.

The goal is twofold: Change kids' mindsets towards math to make it more fun, and to help them understand emergent properties of numbers (like you can use any factor of a number to add up to that number in quick succession)

This is just the first step towards that, and it's aimed at elementary students. Soon we hope to be making 3D graphs with enemies on them that you have to "graph" out of your way (and other cool game-y applications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some time ago I collected a list of games, that are related to science/education, but at the same time - can be played for fun (so it's not "gamified exam preparation") [https://hackpad.com/Science-based- games-J0X4MSberlM](https://hackpad.com/Science-based-games-J0X4MSberlM)

<comment><USER13> That is a great list!

I think the "can be played for fun" is really important. One of the big problems with "edutainment" is that they focus too much in the educative focus and not enought in the entertainment value. Sure, it may have all the basic math operation, but is it fun? Does it engage the kid? If not, maybe fractions and division should be dropped and more focus should be placed in the mechanics.

On a related note, one of the most interesting ways to be educational in a game (and other media) is via Tangential Learning [1]. Does anyone know of any research related to it?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning#Tangential_learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning#Tangential_learning)

<comment><USER12> I agree. It seems that often people deeply misunderstand games. It is not bonus points, achievements that make a game great.

Especially as playing (in general) is a way people and animal start learning the world (physical and social), by interactions, trials and errors. Wolf pubs are not getting awards in a hunt-training. They, well, play.

Man-made games are 'abstractions' of such things (much like sweets are 'abstractions' fruits).

Too bad that current education misses the fact that children have natural curiosity. And builds the whole system around forcing them to learn or (as with bad gamifications) tricking them into it.

Sometimes giving opportunity to learn but not forcing it is the best way to go, see e.g. [http://www.economist.com/node/18741484](http://www.economist.com/node/18741484).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It reminds me A Game Of Numbers [http://agameofnumbers.com/](http://agameofnumbers.com/) (Ludum Dare turned into a release).

</comment><comment><USER14> This game is awesome. Backed and looking forward to wearing the shirt!

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think this is a great idea, for several reasons:

Arithmetic is a very small part of mathematics, and perhaps the least important. But even as far as arithmetic goes, I don't see this game giving children a good "number sense". Why are different numbers the same size? If we don't relate the abstract concept of numbers to counts or sizes, then arithmetic is just meaningless manipulation of symbols.

Worse, the game doesn't seem open-ended. Children need not figure the answer out themselves, because they can just try an action and see what happens. I can see children just trying different actions over and over until they finally perform the winning combination. And I can also imagine the possibility of children thinking that they understand a subject when they really don't (for example, not being able to generalize beyond what they've seen in the game).

On a much smaller note, I hope the game has more to it than "when the result is zero, things disappear." For multiplication and division, doesn't it make more sense for that to be 1?

I don't see a video game like this helping kids to learn math and to _learn to enjoy_ math. The children like the game because most video games (such as Mathbreakers, I'd say) are stimulating. What kid doesn't love video games?

So I've been quite a curmudgeon. What _do_ I think kids should do to learn math in a fun way? I totally agree that games are a great idea. But I think a game such as the ruler/compass construction game [1] (featured on HN before) is a much better game. The ruler/compass construction game allows you to interact with the mathematics in a much more open-ended way than Mathbreakers. It emphasizes the importance of thinking logically, rather than simply manipulating symbols. Unlike Mathbreakers, which takes a complex system of base-10 arithmetic and adds to it even more complex game mechanics, the geometry game has extremely simple mechanics. You can let children simply play and come up with their own shapes, or they can try to make certain specific shapes (the link has several challenges). And the geometry game is deep! With these simple mechanics, we can encode some of the most interesting and challenging problems. For example, whether someone can construct a 17-gon [2] (and if so, how to do so) was only answered by Gauss (in the affirmative) in 1796. (Of course, that's not a puzzle we'd give to children! But how about a hexagon?)

So really, the geometry game is one that should be appropriate and challenging for people of all ages and math backgrounds! And it doesn't need to "dress up" the math with auxiliary puzzles and cartoon characters and 3D worlds. The math is already interesting as it is.

And finally, from Lockhart's Lament [3]:

      Simplicio: Then what *should* we do with young children in math class?

      Salviati: Play games! Teach them Chess and Go, Hex and
      Backgammon, Sprouts and Nim, whatever. Make up a game. Do
      puzzles. Expose them to situations where deductive reasoning
      is necessary. Don't worry about notation and technique, help
      them to become active and creative mathematical thinkers.

[1] [http://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/](http://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptadecagon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptadecagon) [3] [http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.p...](http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

<comment><USER5> You make a good argument. As a co-founder, my original vision was to make a 3-D math playground, pure and simple; to visualize math concepts on multiple levels working together, because I know there is a lot of interplay between things like algebra, multiplication, primes, geometry, and set theory. But as a non-genius it's often difficult for me to visualize it.

The best part about working on Mathbreakers for me has been that I HAVE seen emergent properties. Once, Pascal's triangle appeared because of a repetitive action you could take with our built-in mechanics, an (a+b) multiplication gate. It was amazing!

However, we steered towards a narrower and flashier product to stay alive as an educational games company. Your statement "The math is already interesting as it is" may be true for some, but convincing an 8 year old that it's as interesting as Minecraft is not an easy feat.

Re "open ended": making a 3D open ended world that makes sense and doesn't break is HARD. We're definitely headed there, but it's going to be a journey.

It sounds like you have a similar passion for math as us. I'd love to chat sometime; maybe you can help us see a clearer path to a better game. :-]

email@example.com</comment></comment>


A Look at a Vintage Sony CD Burner - <AUTHOR> http://tech.mattmillman.com/a-look-at-a-vintage-sony-cd-burner/ <comment><USER2> Not Found It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

<comment><USER3> Nothing on the front page either, maybe the post was deleted?

<comment><USER2> For all the people interested in the subject I have a consolation link "Burning a CD in Windows 3.11 / PC CD Recording history" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgche_U5D2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgche_U5D2g) Warning, style of the video is a little ghetto :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Anyway… let's take a look at this beast.

Yeah, it's a beast alright. How are we supposed to know without a visual? An image would be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Where's the rest of this post?

</comment><comment><USER6> When vintage CD burner linkrot happens - does it even make a sound?

</comment><comment><USER7> 404</comment>


Adobe confirms it won't support Flash on Android 4.1 - <AUTHOR> http://m.engadget.com/2012/06/28/adobe-confirms-it-wont-support-flash-on-android-4-1/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully the absence of Flash on _both_ major mobile platforms will help speed its demise on non-mobile platforms as well.

On the other hand, this news might just precede another announcement from Google saying "don't worry, Adobe doesn't support it anymore, but we do", just as they did for Flash on Linux.

<comment><USER3> What is your problem with flash, really? I honestly can't think of a better platform for web games (and it's one of the easiest way to develop 2d games, regardless of web or not).

The only thing I can think of is people who don't care about games, in that case flash does seem like an annoyance more than anything (we can do without flash restaurant sites or punch the monkey banners, but i suspect html5/js will just take its place there).

But really, it's a great game development platform and mostly runs really well on windows and these days well enough on linux & mac (assuming the programmer isn't doing something dumb like a busy waiting loop, which would suck resources regardless of platform).

haxe+flash runtime is my favorite environment for developing (and playing) 2d games by a long shot, so I am always a bit puzzled by all the flack it's getting.

<comment><USER4> What's the problem with Flash?

1\. Ceaselessly the biggest security hole on desktop computers.

2\. Proprietary.

3\. The need to install it in the first place and keep updating it. (And, no, I don't want it to auto-update.)

4\. Can't cut and paste text from it. It's ridiculous to have to _manually_ write down an address or phone number from a Flash-based site.

5\. Search engines don't properly index it.

6\. A Flash developer can hold you hostage by not giving you the "source" (the FLA master file).

7\. It's allegedly a major source of browser crashes (or so I've read though I can't prove this).

8\. It's slow. A website is insanely bloated to use Flash when text and pictures could have communicated the same information.

9\. It imposes DRM even when the content owner didn't intend it. Think of all the subterfuge and trickery necessary to download a Flash video even when the website owner wouldn't have minded.

<comment><USER5> You should leave #6 out of your list. Your argument would be much more compelling for it. (Compilation/obfuscation is the norm, not the exception.)

<comment><USER4> You're quite right. I was thinking of an unsophisticated site owner with simple requirements (like a restaurant site) who hires a designer. He wouldn't know to put into the contract that all source code must be delivered. In such a case, he'd be better off if the designer used straight HTML. At least then there's a chance that someone else could edit it or maintain it.

<comment><USER6> Although I agree with the problem of the developer not handing over the source files, the same problem potentially exists if the designer doesn't hand over the source Photoshop and/or Illustrator files. Granted, that's not as big a deal as withholding Flash files, but it's there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It appears that no one who has commented so far has used Flash on ICS.

I use Flash on my Galaxy Nexus, and it runs perfectly fine for everything I want to look at. Sure, it's rubbish for things like games and full-flash websites (the latter should be long gone by now anyway) but for watching Flash videos on news websites it's fantastic, and it works just as well as it does on the desktop.

I want Flash gone as much as the next guy, but video on HTML5 is no more usable.

<comment><USER8> Video on mobile browsers should launch a video player like YouTube does when you follow a link their site. But also there should exist an attribute to avoid this for some cases.

<comment><USER7> YouTube isn't the only Flash video player though. What if you click a Vimeo link? What about a link on the BBC?

It would be ideal if there were a good native solution for all videos, but I can imagine this to be quite a hard problem.

<comment><USER8> I said "a video player" meaning a generic one. like when you click an flv link or rtsp, that launches the stock video app in my phone (ics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's Adobe's long term strategy here? I'm happy to see it go, but this seems like it would just be hasten the demise of Flash on the internet. I haven't been following this, but assumed that Adobe benefited from the ubiquity Flash on the desktop. Have they just chosen to get out of this market altogether and concentrate their efforts elsewhere? Or is there a master plan I'm not seeing?

<comment><USER8> Adobe's core business is not developing platforms, but developing the editors and tools for designers. Graphic design, web design, vector, raster, doesn't matter. They make money selling their software, not deploying flash all over the web.

Here you have a link to a comment I made a few months ago, about Adobe's shifting strategy regarding Flash: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3503774>

I'll copy here some parts, so I can edit a little, mostly to adjust for current trends:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Their business is to make and sell amazing Editors. CS is their main product. They bought Macromedia, just to own much of the market of Designer-oriented applications. And Macromedia filled a Gap.

But from now on, they are investing heavily in building tools for HTML5. -You can see them building Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools. [1] (this link is almost a year old, so I'd expect them to have something much more advanced by now). \- They are building HTML5 Editors [2] \- They stopped developing Flash Player mobile. [3] In the same post where they state that they will stop developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, they state: Adobe to More Aggressively Contribute to HTML5. Ok, ok, they also state that they will keep working in Flash for desktop. But it's like when any software company says: "We'll drop X, Y, Z so we can focus on A". That's something said to please their shareholders, so it doesn't sounds like "As our products are no longer needed, we'll just kill them".

If you are a guest inside the browser, and the browser developer just throws you away (iOS, Windows 8 in Metro, only running in whitelist-pages), you have to move somewhere else.

Adobe just wants to keep selling their Creative Suite. So, the best thing for them to do, is to focus on HTML5, because they now know that Flash is doomed sooner or later. And they are doing it. I expect to see in the near future something like Adobe Flash Professional but designed for HTML5.

[1] <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/> [2] <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/> [3] [http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash- focus.htm...](http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html)

One more thing: Imagine for a moment that you are Adobe. You have an amazing suite of products, and a few of them are based on Flash. You realize that the browser developers have chosen to work and invest in something else. You go through all 5 stages of grief [4]. You deny it, you get angry, you bargain, you get depressed, but finally at least, you accept it. You HAVE to adapt and you have to work with them. But you won't have anything to sell for at least 1 or 2 years. And you still have this wonderful suite on the market. What do you do? Do you go out and yell: DON'T BUY IT! WAIT UNTIL WE RELEASE OUR FUTURE- PROOF PRODUCT!!! Of course not!!! You say We are already working on Flash Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment experiences But at the same time, in the same paragraph you say: _We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged._

Read it again: _a smooth transition to HTML5._

TRANSITION.

That's their way to say: "Keep buying and using our products, while we develop our HTML5 editors. Then, you can buy our new products and move to HTML5 too."

They have went through the last phase. They have accepted it. And they are adapting, good for them :)

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>

</comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting how hard they are pushing this; there is still quite a lot of Flash on the web ... at least most smaller sites hosting / streaming video seem to still rely on it. I actually would have thought they could make a decent bit of revenue just by offering it to OEMs as a selling point. Perhaps they see even more revenue by forcing all the recalcitrant sites still using Flash to buy Adobe's tools as the easiest upgrade path to get onto HTML5.

<comment><USER11> If things go like they did in the past, 4.1 being widely adopted is years away. I don't see this having much if any impact on anything right now.

<comment><USER10> Well, if they are pulling it from the market then it will have an impact much sooner than that. I suppose device manufacturers might ship it bundled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm afraid the reason Flash works poorly on platforms other than Win32 and Adobe is dropping the platform support is that they don't have the people that understand their code anymore, and there's noone to make it run (properly) on new platforms.

<comment><USER13> If you had a choice, would you work on a project like that? Some of these projects spell doom when they show up on a resume because they're already associated with badness. Once that happens, good luck getting any good people to work on it. As you can see, such a situation can sustain itself.

I call it "The Bozo Loop", incidentally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is the downside to this, in that by forcing rapid adoption of web video via <video> they are going to force h.264 on everyone and if libavc ever gets attacked by mpeg open source video software is doomed. Why can't we just use ogv :(

<comment><USER15> You're practically limited to h.264 anyway on mobile devices none of the hardware has support for anything else.

<comment><USER16> Every Gingerbread and up phone has support for WebM.

<comment><USER17> _Hardware_ support?

<comment><USER18> Newer SOC's have hardware support for it.

OMAP4470 supports it in hardware (so galaxy nexus like phones).

OMAP54XX supports it in hardware.

Tegra 3 supports it in hardware.

So just in time for this development ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If Adobe allows Google to adopt flash and continue support to develop and support it then I don't see any problem. Android is Google's baby so they need to adopt the flash development. Adobe is fecked up if they don't allow it.

As far Flash being terrible. I have never had any negative experiences. This blanket negative view of flash is just hype. It is used all over the place. In the hands of a bad programmer, any application can be terrible.

Performance tests between flash and html5 don't show much advantage to using html5.

The PRIMARY and ONLY reason for moving to html5 is that it is not proprietary.

As far as security hole, it was put there intentionally. Windows OS is one big security hole so it is like pointing to a tree in a forest. Other reasons are frivolous.

So we should move towards html5 but keep flash player working on all platforms until full migration of internet occurs to html5. There is simply too much flash content so it will take a long time to migrate.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seriously, Flash just needs to die and the sooner the better. It's horrible. I'm not even talking programming here (I know nothing about Flash programming). It's a horrible _user experience_.

One of the things I'm thankful to Apple for is in them taking a stand against this horrible experience and hastening its demise. Lack of Flash on iOS is a _feature_.

Flash isn't horrible _per se_. It's horrible because Adobe is completely incompetent in making it run stably and on platforms other than Windows (and even there it's a stretch). Were they competent and the Flash experience just worked, I'd be fine with it.

The suckiness of Flash is what's driving the adoption of HTML5/JS because, let's face it, HTML5/JS isn't exactly a mature platform yet.

I just wish there was a way I could run a browser with Flash even installed without being bugged by "You're missing plugins. Would you like to install them?" Flashblock, Click-to-Flash and the like help but I'd rather not have the software installed at all.

It makes me sad that Chrome bundles Flash and can't have it conveniently extracted either.

To be fair, Apple didn't kill Flash (much as I'd like to give them credit for it). Adobe did.

<comment><USER6> But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience on? Is it a matter of a Flash app that's badly designed? Because that's not Adobe's fault. If one were to duplicate the app's horrible user experience over to iOS does that mean the user experience for iOS apps can be considered as horrible? If I write some bad javascript that causes the browser to consistently crash does that mean that javascript or even the browser sucks?

Lack of Flash on iOS is a feature for you. Let's not assume what's good for you must be good for everyone else. I for one have never had much of a problem with Flash on the hardware that I use, but in some circles a negative opinion always outweighs a positive one.

The complaints about the problems you describe just running the Flash player on several different platforms are rather well deserved. It does seem that Adobe has decided at some point to drop the ball on the whole thing. But the player does support backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning. I've always thought that possibly the majority of their problems relate to that. They should try just ripping out support for anything that uses versions less than actionscript 3 for a leaner plugin.

But, this statement does seem more about the Flash player itself in the browser. It doesn't necessarily mean that Flash, as in the platform, will die. It'll probably live on as its own platform that requires something like Adobe Air to run on some hardware.

Also, almost everything you hate about Flash's "user experience" will live on in the canvas tag. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by user experience.

<comment><USER21> >But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience on?

Can't speak for them, but yeah, I mean, in the end it is all subjective right? You can try to measure it, but sometimes Shit Just Doesn't Feel Right™. That's how I've ALWAYS felt about Flash. Before Steve Jobs said it, before Google was a company and I was little, and after I anxiously installed it on Android only to once again be sad by how awful it is.

Also developers at WWDC or Google I/O wouldn't cheer if either company said "We're going all in on Flash." they would look at their neighbor and say, "Wait...what? Why?"

<comment><USER6> But then I could make you a Flash app that does nothing but show a blank 640x480 stage with a simple button and then you would say "that just doesn't feel right"? But if I did the same thing in canvas you would react with "that's better"? That doesn't address my question about what is meant by "user experience". It is a tool, nothing else. Unless someone can show me a common trait across almost all Flash apps that is some sort of fail that can be directly tied to Flash then I attribute complaints of user experience to the developers of the app, not the tool.

Now, if you were to say that your experience with Flash in general on mobile devices is that it tends to crash and is slow; then that makes sense. That would be a user experience problem directed at Flash. It just seems to me most complaints of user experience with Flash is based on a misguided hatred of Flash itself.

The reason everyone would react that way with your hypothetical is because that would be stupid, that's not what Flash is for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Flash is a platform and it is very unique virtual machine. It has its own features. Since it is a virtual machine it has great potential. I think most problematic part that Adobe has to face is fragmentation. It is very complex task to maintain a complex VM ( which consists of very high level graphics capabilities) to run smoothly on every single hardware. Flash has provided lots of great stuff which is not provided by any platform before. Even now there is no any other choice for specific tasks like P2P video.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't understand why they haven't just made FP open source... Flash on the web is maybe dead, but it is still usable for kiosks, games and AIR-related stuff (AIR used to be a best idea for platform-independent wrapper of active PDFs, thus killing it is a strike into this technology). So it is possible to sustain the Flash market for years with minimal costs...

</comment><comment><USER24> its not really that adobe won't support it. its that chrome is default and never supported it.

I bet we can install ICS's flash and whatever req. libs and it works with other browsers.

<comment><USER25> If you can install it from the market it will likely just work with Firefox.

<comment><USER16> They're blocking installs after August 15th, so if you want it, you'd better hurry. Though it isn't clear what happens if you've installed Flash previously, but not on the particular device you want it on.

<comment><USER26> _In an update on its official blog, Adobe said that there will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1 and beginning August 15, it will start limiting access to updates to only users that have Flash Player installed._

From [http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/06/29/abobe-pulls- support-...](http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/06/29/abobe-pulls-support-for- flash-player-on-android-4-1-limits-new-google-play-installations-from- august-15/)

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4175853>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a good move. I'm glad Adobe is coming to terms with the end of Flash. Moving resources away from Flash to other areas where Adobe is successful is a win for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER28> here's to hoping that google will step in here as they did with linux and make it run anyway...

<comment><USER29> I think that's exactly why Adobe did it. Save money by making google do the work for us.

<comment><USER30> _The company had already said that HTML5 was the way forward on phones and tablets -- now we know just how quickly it's backing up that claim._

Why don't we just move onto HTML5 now? I use iOS devices and completely removed Flash from my Mac months ago. There is a Safari plugin to force the use of the H264 stream from youtube.

Haven't missed Flash at all.

<comment> k-mcgrady I would like to do this but I've found that YouTube's HTML5 player is terrible. Buffering is always erratic and just loading the page causes my browser to freeze for 5-10 seconds (it usually starts working again once the video is loaded into the player). As much as I want to see Flash go away it's still the best choice for web video on a desktop machine (at least on YouTube).

<comment><USER31> Yes, the Youtube HTML5 player is bad, but the Safari plug in mentioned (I think it only works on Mac) is great. It's called youtube5 btw

<comment><USER30> Yes, unfortunately it is for OS X Safari only <http://www.verticalforest.com/youtube5-extension/>.

But it does show you can get on just fine without Flash. There is no equivalent Chrome extension. I don't know why. A completely Flash free experience is the reason I use Safari.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And I confirm that I will turn off flash in all my browsers now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Gnash to the rescue!

<comment><USER14> Why not just bake libflv support into Firefox / Chrome <video> tags?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing, but because that only covers video?</comment></comment></comment>


The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1942834,00.html

<comment><USER2> Perhaps that is why some call them the "naughts".</comment>


America's next Mars rover will be called Perseverance - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51761833 <comment><USER2> That sounds a like "tempting Fate" to me.

It would be ironic if a craft called 'Perseverance' crashes and is destroyed before it even gets a chance to say 'Hi Guys, I've landed safely.'</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best books/articles on web marketing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to learn more about web marketing and the best ways to do it today. Do you all have any suggestions on where I should start? Print books, ebooks, and articles are all welcome!<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> I somewhat disagree with lavish that your marketing methods depend on your business category. In some cases you might choose one channel over another if it suits your content or audience better but, generally speaking, the core concepts of good marketing don't change much across industries and time.

I've consumed a great deal of information on marketing and I can tell you that most (quality) materials are going to give you similar information. The tactics of marketing change depending on the platforms you use, but the actual principles of marketing are quite simple.

Most of the useful information you'll come across is geared toward understanding your audience and mostly centers around a series of steps similar to the following:

\- understand your brand (what your mission is, etc...) \- identify your audience \- identify where your audience spends time \- engage with your audience in an honest and authentic way by sharing valuable information (helpful, funny, inspiring, etc...) \- build funnels to move people from interest to your end goals.

Telling compelling stories and offering valuable content are lessons that pop up time and time again.

Like I said above, the core principles of marketing are simple and timeless. The most effective kind of marketing is the kind where you're not really "marketing" at all, you're just sharing valuable stuff that gets your audience excited in some way.

For a very comprehensive collection of online guides, I'd take a look at QuickSprout: [http://www.quicksprout.com/blog/](http://www.quicksprout.com/blog/) You can find a list of guides in the sidebar.

CopyBlogger, IttyBiz, Moz, Social Triggers — all good resources for marketing ideas.

<comment><USER3> Good points. I would add that 99.99% of marketing books/sites/blogs/magazines aim to keep you as a reader. Which means that they will simply keep feeding you stories about marketing without telling you the real basics. You may only learn what works by doing it yourself. Learn about simple sales techniques, some copywriting, and off you go. The reason marketing is hard is due to how it is more a constantly changing process than a static one. You cannot rest on your laurels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a fan of \- Moz.com hosts an overwhelming amount of information. \- Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath \- UnMarketing by Scott Stratten \- Influence by Robert Cialdini \- Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff

While it's focused on kids, you might find some additional ideas in this article: [http://kidscreen.com/2013/08/12/marketing-to-kids-and- famili...](http://kidscreen.com/2013/08/12/marketing-to-kids-and-families- with-dr-carlas-appistential-crisis-marketing-tonic)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you haven't looked through Quora yet, here's a decent place to start: [http://www.quora.com/Web-Marketing/What-are-some-good-web- ma...](http://www.quora.com/Web-Marketing/What-are-some-good-web-marketing- books-blogs-and-forums-to-get-started-and-become-a-pro)

</comment><comment><USER6> What kind of service/product do you offer? It depends on your business category.</comment>


Avoiding Arbitrary Code Execution with nginx and php-fastcgi - <AUTHOR> https://nealpoole.com/blog/2011/04/setting-up-php-fastcgi-and-nginx-dont-trust-the-tutorials-check-your-configuration/

<comment><USER2> This is another reason why it was a good idea to have my big application consist of only one public file which can easily be whitelisted. Everything else lives outside the web root and is never directly executed.

        location ~ ^/index\.php {
            proxy_pass   http://localhost:8080;
        }

Everything else in the web root is static files and can be served directly. The rest of the application uses an URL routing scheme based on PATH_INFO

<comment><USER3> I use something similar but a bit simpler to read:

      location = /index.php {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
      }

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, am I glad I caught this link--I'm just now switching my servers from Apache to Nginx/php-fastcgi, configured more or less just like the article says...

I decided to switch to Nginx for the fabled performance benefits and relatively simple configuration. But this now makes me wonder what other gotchas there are in store for me... I have a long history with Apache, maybe I should just stick with it after all...

<comment><USER5> Articles like this is exactly why I come to HN.

I was planning to move my server from Apache to Nginx soon. I suppose it's as a good time as ever to learn any gotchas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was totally unaware of this issue in Nginx/PHP-FPM - going to check my conf files now!

UPDATE: Here's the thread on this issue right from NGINX.org <http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,88845,page=3>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that was the first page I found too: it's also the first result for "php nginx 0 day." I link to it a couple times in the post. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In fact, this is well documented: [http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls#Passing_Every_.7E_.5C.php.24_...](http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls#Passing_Every_.7E_.5C.php.24_request_to_to_PHP)

</comment><comment><USER8> For strong security (especially for frameworks like CodeIgniter):

location = /index.php { proxy_pass <http://localhost:8080>; }

It only runs exactly index.php in the root.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does this same issue exist within Lighttpd with a FastCGI setup?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. I do plan to test that later today though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tested with the suggested configuration from the lighttpd wiki. I could not replicate the issue, which is strange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this PHP-FastCGI specific, or is PHP-FPM affected too?

<comment><USER11> PHP-FPM _is_ FastCGI, with a process manager thrown in.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I'm not a sys admin, so I wasn't sure :) Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


The U.S. is funding dangerous experiments it doesn't want you to know about - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-funding-dangerous-experiments-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about/2019/02/27/5f60e934-38ae-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html <comment><USER2> {The U.S., Russia, China, The U.K., ... any country that can afford it} is funding dangerous experiments it doesn't want you to know about.</comment>


Ask HN: CS as a philosophy - <AUTHOR> I think of CS as a sort of philosophy, art, and sometimes a religion.
For me, the manipulation of ideas in CS and Math are the stuff that make me interested in these two disciplines in the first place. This feels more or less artistic and powerful. Think of lambda calculus for example, or linear algebra (in it's geometric interpretation) or even ordinary calculus with limits and stuff. These things represent reality and are so beautiful they almost seem godly, or at least to me.
I always have this feeling and it's what pushes me everyday to turn on my computer and stay all day constantly looking at millions of tiny light bulbs and hitting plastic buttons with my fingers.
Personally, I have never felt any other thing pushing me to CS (or Math) and I have a tendency to infer that this is the only reason (or at least the main one) why people love CS.
I would like to hear stories of other people about that matter. <comment><USER2> Art, sure. I don't see how it is a religion, and only barely a philosophy--it doesn't address any of the questions those attempt to answer.

(Noting that some aspects of philosophy are involved, the same way they're involved in math or science. But not a philosophy like Buddhism or Hegelianism, for examples.)

</comment><comment><USER3> allow me to make your day:

\- Computational trinitarianism, or how 1.) propositions as types, 2.) programs as proofs, and 3.) the relation between type theory and category theory are one and the same thing [0]

\- Scott aaronson's excellent "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity" [1]

\- "From Philosophy to Program Size" by Greg Chaitin. Arguably Chaitin's work (notably Chaitin's omega) is a quintessential example of what lies at the intersection of mathematics, computation, and philosophy.[2]

\- From the inimitable Juergen Schmidhueber, "Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes" [3]

\- A computational biology paper that presents a meta-learning scheme for cognition and emotion. This paper's idea has really stuck with me.. That and the whole notion of the "Dark room problem" (you could, probably, really easily come up with a strategy for living life according to a hybrid of what this article presents + any kind of philosophy there is) - "Emotional Valence and the Free-Energy Principle" [4]

[0] [https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trinitarianism](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trinitarianism)

[1] [https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)

[2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0303352](https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0303352)

[3] [https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4360](https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.4360)

[4] [http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003094)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! That's a lot of stuff to dig into! Thanks a lot for sharing. xD

<comment><USER3> enjoy, I think these are good ideas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If this interests you, I recommend reading more about the theory of computation. Turing machines, finite automata, NP hard problems, etc.</comment>