Show HN: LockedAway – A unique text experience - <AUTHOR> http://lockedaway.online <comment><USER2> I like that you can change the number in the login form after the name and type in the according month as the password and it will still work. E. g. addy01 january is valid as well.

Edit: Ok, apparently you just have to enter a password that has the same length as "december" and it will always work, the username is not important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tehe. December is always accepted. Otherwise people always get in on their second attempt, user name isn't considered at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice

My favorite interactive novel,

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986)

You play an astronaut who comes back to earth after 100 years and everyone is gone. You find one semi working computer. The game is that computer through which you piece together what happened.

It's pre world wide web so my memory of it might be much better than reality given it came out back in bbs/CompuServe days

<comment><USER4> If you'd like to refresh your memory, the game is playable online under client-side emulation at [https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Portal_1986) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Possible spoiler alert below.

Your Github repo reveals that one character has a specific mental illness. However, multiple personalities are not a feature of that illness: [http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity- dis...](http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder- multiple-personality-disorder?page=2)

<comment><AUTHOR> I should probably clean up the readme then. Those were an initial set of ideas when I started creating the story.

I went a bit off track.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had the idea to make this game after playing Christine Love's Even Cowgirls Bleed ([http://scoutshonour.com/cowgirl/](http://scoutshonour.com/cowgirl/)).

Features

\- Reverse Chronology to tell the story.

\- Told through the UI of an online journal.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of promise here! I really like it. Couple of thoughts I had that might be worth sharing:

\- Maybe I'm just dense, but it took somebody else mentioning the twist before I caught it. In retrospect, the picture should've been a pretty obvious clue. But perhaps the story could do more to make clear what's going on. It's tricky to write first-person and have it be clear that what the character sees isn't the same as what the reader does, but the payoff is amply worth it.

\- I might hesitate to cast a character's unique perception of reality in terms of a specific mental illness with defined traits. Two reasons: First, it opens you up to nitpicks around differences between what you name and what you portray, or conversely constrains the story to fit the disorder. Second, it's a bit disrespectful of both character and reader. "Here," you seem to say, "this person's inner life is interesting enough to share, something of which it's worth your while to partake." And that's great! I love that. But when you kind of turn around and go "I got you good, you were reading the DSM this whole time!", it feels like I've wasted my interest and that's just no fun for anybody.

\- Have you seen Twine? It's a platform for authoring static web-hosted interactive fiction. Basically lets you not have to build your own tooling, which it's great that you can and did, but that's time not spent on the story. Not sure if Twine would suit your needs, but it might be worth a look.

\- Telling a story in reverse chronological is hardmode. You have to develop a narrative that makes sense and rewards the reader in _both_ directions. Totally doable and this is not a bad first cut at it, but I kind of feel like another style might better reward this story. I mean, the essential tension here is between the character's reality and the reader's assumptions, and there might be other ways to let that tension build and resolve itself. Maybe an epistolary hypertext style where the reader follows her own path through the contents of a web diary, with some progress flags or similar to trigger "new post"-style stuff at points where it will make sense to the individual reader. That's not easy to pull off either, but I think maybe more so than reverse chronological, and it also offers the reader a sense of discovery that I think could be more present here.

Just some thoughts I had. I hope they're of some use to you. And for heaven's sake don't stop writing! I'm really looking forward to finding out what you come up with next.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Your first point scares me the most though. If a reader doesn't get the twist a great deal of value is lost and I doubt they are going to put in more effort to get a better understanding.

I never thought about plot like this before, and now that I do, I feel like the way I used mental illness was a somewhat cheap shot I used to create the twist. Twine I discovered halfway through after going back and have another look at 'Even Cowgirls Bleed', will probably use that for my next one.

But taking on reverse chronology was hard as balls. Turns out you can't just write a story forwards and just read it to someone backwards.

Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to comment.

<comment><USER4> You really did jump in the deep end, yeah! There are sharks there. But hey, even if it didn't turn out quite the way you intended, you didn't drown or get eaten, so on the whole I'd call that kind of a win.

As I said before, I hope you keep going! You seem to have good ideas, and that's the thing that counts. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you'll accomplish with practice.

Edit: Which reminds me, how can I best find out when you publish again? I've followed you on Github, but maybe there's a better option you'd be so good as to let me know about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Took me a while. But my new site is up. Complete with a way to subscribe to my stuff. More past projects to come too.

[http://jono.tech/](http://jono.tech/)

<comment><USER4> Neat, thanks!

(As and when you find the time, an RSS feed would be great to have, too!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting concept!

My feedback is that I'd frame it more as a story than a game. Guessing the password felt like it was going to be one of those Frvade-type games, but after that it was simply taking in the story.

</comment><comment><USER7> Probably unintentional, but the picture contains coordinates in the EXIF data which you may want to remove.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it. Now that it is in my github history though, it is probably more effort than its worth. But I may as well remove it from the live site. If you are ever in the neighbourhood come on over for a beer.

Thanks

<comment><USER8> Or you can just relocate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice read and flow plus a great end.

Personally i think the typos add to the realism.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will admit to the apostrophes that I skipped. That was purposeful. But now you have piqued my interest, was there anything else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice read. I liked it ... :)</comment>


Mob Wars CEO: Twitter Is Run by Hippies - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/06/23/mob-wars-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Ok, this Mashable article throws around some crazy stuff, mostly propagated by bad information in the CNN Money article. Let's straighten things out:

\- Jason Bailey is the CEO of Super Rewards (<http://www.srpoints.com/>). They do payment processing and CPA offers for social apps.

\- lolplaying (<http://lolplaying.com/>) made the game 140 Mafia. 140 Mafia implements Super Rewards for virtual goods.

\- Jason Bailey made the comment "I don't know who puts hippies in charge of these companies" in reference to Twitter not doing a centralized virtual currency.

\- The "CEO" of Mob Wars is Dave Maestri. He didn't say anything about Twitter, from what I can tell. Mob Wars is made by Psycho Monkey LLC

\- The "CEO" of Mafia Wars is Mark Pincus. Mafia Wars isn't a "sequel" of Mob Wars, it's a clone. Just like 140 Mafia is a clone of both. Mafia Wars is made by Zynga.

EDIT: Thanks to joshuaxls for corrections.

<comment><USER3> Good corrections, but you're still wrong about one thing. Super Rewards did NOT make 140 Mafia. lolplaying did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, twitter is run by a bunch of geeks that have seen countless companies like youtube get bought out for hundreds of millions, or in the case of youtube, ~$1.6 _billion_ , and are hoping to cash in the same way.

They're trying to let somebody _else_ come up with a way of monetizing it, and probably hoping for google.

<comment><USER5> By countless do you mean a handful?

<comment><USER4> It is considerably more than a handful

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Yahoo>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Microso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

<comment><USER6> Even bigger:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=f...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&hs=URI&num=100&ei=QcNCSt6SLYyYkQXhysj7CA&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org/+list+of+acquisitions+by&spell=1)

*If we had 'list of companies not acquired by anyone', or 'list of companies quietly making a reasonable profit', we could compare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >I don't know who puts hippies in charge of these companies.

"These companies" being the ones the hippies start. The same ones guys like this don't know how to start either. Let's keep guys like this away from "these companies."

<comment><USER2> To be fair, Jason Bailey's company is profitable and doing 8 digits in revenue a year. How much is Twitter making again?

<comment><USER8> _How much is Twitter making again?_

What does it matter? They're certainly not starving (yet). These hippies started up something from scratch, are having an incredibly fun time doing it, getting funded, making waves and headlines and may yet make money. Ev already got loads of cash from selling Blogger before. And wasn't that the same question people asked of Amazon and Google before? How much were they making two years after launch?

<comment><USER9> Amazon: 15.7 million in 1997

Google: 86.4 million in 2001

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As much of a douche as Jason Bailey comes off as, and as random an idea as virtual currency is for Twitter, there's this:

 _They do not need to rush into a business model, especially with their eye- popping growth._

Is that the growth fueled by celebrity curiosity and spam of all types? Do they really have unlimited runway?

The quality of Twitter is going downhill so fast that I can't help but think it may have already jumped the shark masked by huge amounts of worthless traffic. I know, I know, "you choose who you follow," but at this point I'm getting followed by so many porn bots that blocking them is almost a daily task.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ugh, I really don't want twitter to do payment processing because I don't want my idle chit chat mixing with my bank account.

</comment><comment><USER12> I unfollow people who play games like that, drowning my twitter and facebook with stupid posts. I think a lot of people do.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is that a veiled compliment? I quite like being called a hippie.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe making Mob games makes you think you're in the mob.</comment>


Minimize use of CxO titles at early company stages - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/minimize-use-cxo-titles-early-company-stages <comment><USER2> _If they're not a rockstar, I'd make the case that they're your "development head / lead"._

How do you even know if your lead developer is a "rockstar" or not--especially if you're the non-technical co-founder? Are you supposed to give him/her coding tests?

The term "rockstar" needs to die, now. It's a meaningless mumbo-jumbo term invented by someone who didn't understand what developers do.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely hate these meaningless titles. I just started work in the corporate world. After a month I literally want to kill myself.

We use the following terms:

To do items -> ACTION TASKS!

Manager -> _Champion_.... groan

Meetings -> "Social". As in, "in ten minutes, we're having a social in room 10D.

Cooworker -> Friend.

We have to use these terms, there are so many more, that combined with the fake forced "i love to work here" attitude day in day out is absolutely crushing me.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget _Leaders!_

In Manager -> Leader in the HR context and then the Leader -> Champion in the project management context.

<comment><USER3> I have 3 months left at this internship at which point I'm going to hermit and develop my own shit for the next year. I just need to stick this out since it pays a fat paycheck, funding my food and rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny memory, at a startup weekend in a team as the only technical resource. Had my headset on but wasn't listening to music... was somewhat amusing as everyone passed out C letter titles for an idea that wasn't even implemented. Took my headset off when someone claimed CTO "CTO huh? What am I doing right now?... Oh you don't actually know? You want to be the CTO but you don't know what your only engineer is doing?" Walked off after that.

<comment><USER6> Startup weekend is probably one of the last places on earth to find legit entrepreneurs/founders. I've been to 2 and never will be going again- such a mental drain to accomplish so little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would think that being a "Chief $FOO Officer" would require that there be other $FOO Officers in the company, who all report (maybe indirectly) to you.

If your company isn't big enough to have middle management, it's not big enough to have Chief Anything Officers. It's completely nonsensical.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always believed that from a risk/reward, legal liability standpoint, being $NOBODY making $ GAZILLIONS was the ideal state. This trend is diametrically opposed to that approach.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree with most of this post but I think more often than not founders do not care about CxO titles. They just want to get shit done.

On the contrary people outside the company (investors, press, everybody) needs/wants to know which position you and your cofounders fulfill when you meet them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't founder/co-founder a good enough indication that you do everything? and if its not implicit enough maybe I can just make my title CXO to get the point across :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, yes, and yes. Owner, Founder, maybe President, but CxO just looks ridiculous. Way too many one-person company CEOs out there. I believe this title grab began when CEOs started getting skewered in the media for being overpaid. End result, lots of free titles self-dubbed. I suppose that had the positive effect of lowering -average- CEO pay everywhere :)

<comment><USER11> CXO titles in any small business look ridiculous. I worked at a small company where the 'IT Manager' over 3 people (developer, junior developer, system administrator) called himself the CIO. Why? So he could demand a salary that (along with the owner/CEO, the accountant/CFO and floor manager/COO) crippled the company and so it would look better when he moved on. Of course, now that he was a CXO level, he just sat on his ass, drank coffee and made promises to the company owner that everyone else had to make happen, so he looked good.

CXO positions being grabbed at small companies is a sign of a group of dysfunctional, self-congratulating morons looking to ride this to other places willing to pay them even more to be called CXO.

<comment><USER12> One reason for grabing a C-level title early on is to avoid someone else getting it later as the business grows.

Often, if there's no CTO for example, they might be tempted to hire a more senior person in that role. But if it's taken, well...

<comment><USER11> And when the person who was there to grab it isn't qualified for the position? Just because you were there early doesn't mean you're the best person for the job.

CXO titles at small companies are a sign of bad things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ha! This is great, it looks as if this article was written for Soylent Corporation. I personally hope their company succeeds, to the point where they're going to have some awkward title changes. :)

<https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body>

<comment><USER14> Proposed new titles:

Founding team: Soylent Red

New hires: Soylent Green

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Minimize use of titles at early company stages" would simplify this a bit.

<comment><USER16> Right, with regard to _use_. Early on, titles mean nothing operationally. However, they're armor against people being hired above someone. Frankly, although I can't officially prevent it (unless a majority-shareholding CEO) if someone's going to be hired above me, I fucking _want_ it to be a company-wide earthquake if it happens, in order to discourage the phenomenon where high- level positions are handed out as political tokens. It goddamn better be painful and dramatic for the company if some outsider is hired above me, to take advantage of my fucking hard work.

The reason VCs don't like to see CxOs already in place is because it makes it harder for them to use the company to hand out jobs to their underachieving middle-aged friends looking for executive sinecures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Warning: Limit Break ahead. (Yeah, you thought I was always Limit Breaking. No, this is a real one.)

This is complete and utter douchebaggery and your IQ will drop 5 points if you read it to completion.

I'm sorry, but if I'm going to go anywhere near a pre-funding startup, I better fucking have some domain X over which _no one_ will _ever_ fucking be hired above me. Sorry, but if I wanted to work at a company where people could be hired above me without me having a say in it, I'd take the $200k+ hedge fund job and wouldn't touch your startup with my worst enemy's dick. This is how talent sees it. Accept it or fail at your own peril.

Job titles don't matter for fuck-all early on, but companies tend to have a weird dynamic. For a long time, titles don't matter and they're _so_ inconsequential that they're never used (business cards are blank on the title line). Sure, someone might be "Chief Revenue Officer" but the only people who even know he has that title are the CEO and Board. When titles are inconsequential, you hurt yourself by bringing them up. So don't. The title is something you have, for later on when you need it, but not something you use-- at all. It just sits there for later purposes.

So, in the early stages, while it's important to _have_ titles, I will agree that you shouldn't explicitly "use" them much. For a 10-person startup, they don't mean _anything_ , operationally, except for where a person will be when they start to mean something. Through this, they motivate talented people to stick with the company even when things get painful.

And then... the company gets to a point where titles _do_ matter and, by that time, I better fucking have one. Unless you can convince me that your company will _never_ have job titles, in which case I don't want to be "that guy" who brings them into existence.

OP seems to support the idea of an early employee taking a pre-emptive hit ("Engineering Director" instead of "VP/Engineering" or "CTO") so other people can be plugged above him, often without his consent. This is because the real perk of being a VC is being able to hand out executive positions in other peoples' companies to your underachieving friends. Fuck that. That's bullshit. You'll never get talent if you take this guy's advice.

<comment><USER17> Most successful VCs are not so willing to risk their investment by putting incompetent people into executive positions.

The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows. The first salesperson may well not be ready to build a sales team. The accountant might not have the breadth to be a CFO.

In addition to money, good VCs bring in experience that can dramatically increase the chance of success. They need some flexibility in the organization to be able to do so.

That being said, your comment is an excellent warning to people joining an early stage startup. Know what you want your role to be if and when the company is successful and negotiate appropriately.

<comment><USER2> _The fact is that often the lead developer who builds the first version of a product does not have the skills and experience to be the CTO as the company grows._

Ok, I admit I've never even worked at a startup, so perhaps I'm missing something, but this idea just smells fishy. Why on earth would the lead developer who built a software product from the ground up, possibly single- handedly, not have the "skills and experience" to continue running that codebase as the company grows? Like someone with experience "at scale" and better connections is going to come in later, read/understand all the code the technical co-founder wrote (or perhaps just hire a team to rewrite everything from scratch using a more "scalable" software stack), and take over as CTO, relegating the co-founder to a subordinate role? Has that ever worked?

<comment><USER16> I think that his argument is that, as the job of CTO becomes more of a management/connections role, it's better to have someone else in it.

I actually agree. The right people to build a business are often not the right people to maintain it at maturity. I'd want the title of "CTO" if building someone's product, but I would agree to abdicate it if I agreed with the choice of successor, and was genuinely convinced he'd do a better job than I could. I just wouldn't be happy not to have a say in it. I want to be able to say, "if you hire him above me, then I leave and you just had a CTO quit".

Titles make it hard to demote or fire someone because if they punt you, they just "fired their CTO". You want a title because when millions (and potentially billions) are on the line you can't trust people in power, even if you think you've known them for years.

<comment><USER2> Right, the key distinction being that in your scenario, the title change is entirely voluntary, and even beneficial from the perspective of the technical co-founder, because he wants to continue working on the codebase rather than having his time taken up by all the politician duties that C*O roles entail.

I think in the OP, it seemed like more of a "you shouldn't let your first developer be the CTO because you want to be able to hire someone more experienced above him when your startup gets big enough to attract real rockstar talent" type of angle. Which, as you pointed out, is repulsive.

<comment><USER17> "Repulsive" needs some logical support. If your first developer lacks the necessary skills, it doesn't make sense to put the company at risk by setting him or her up for failure.

<comment><USER18> Hire a better first developer. If you go in to screw the guy working for you (and by my lights, what you describe is screwing), you invite bad karma.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rethinking madness: inside the world's oldest mental asylum - <AUTHOR> http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/madness-worlds-oldest-mental-asylum/index.html <comment><USER2> >In having the photographs, it's hoped we can show that they were made with care and precision for the benefit of the patients – not necessarily to harm.

In every depiction of the lunatic asylum, and as seems clear from history, it's obvious that the goal of interventions is improvement - of the patient, of society by their confinement, and so on. One can desire to do good and still perpetuate unspeakable cruelty and harm.

Shockingly, no mention of Foucault's "History of Madness", which I love and is well worth reading if you are as interested in this subject as I. Foucault says these institutions began primarily as a _moral_ category, and that confinement was a way to isolate the "unreason" of the mad from society in an age of Reason.

The modern medical tradition certainly inherits from this moral categorization. The patient is depraved, sick, different, needs to be "corrected".

One of the great confrontations that needs to be made in this century is with the idea of the "normative", of the singular human that everyone must be measured against (and somehow found wanting), a prominent tent-pole of our modern understanding of humanity. The "normative" needs to be replaced with the garden - humans, like all life, are a basket of diversity. We differ from each other in our very natures; forcing us all towards an ideal, "correcting" our sicknesses so we all become alike in thought, is the wrong model for us.

<comment><USER3> Thankfully I've been seeing progress in the professional world in this regard, at least in regards to autism and schizophrenia.

Treatment that is more focused on 'living with' rather than on fixing, repressing, or medicating. More emphasis on creating and finding the right environment to function in. And in the case of autism, less focus on treating the umbrella-term 'autism', and more focus on specific treatment for specific issues (many of which are not unique to autism).

Perhaps this is only my experience, but I hope it reflects a larger shift in thinking.

Sadly I notice much less of this in 'regular society'. Mental health issues are still 'icky' to many people and beneath a thin veneer of acceptance there's ultimate very little patience or understanding for the outliers.

> The "normative" needs to be replaced with the garden - humans, like all > life, are a basket of diversity. We differ from each other in our very > natures; forcing us all towards an ideal, "correcting" our sicknesses so we > all become alike in thought, is the wrong model for us.

So true. It sometimes feels like a white lie to talk about the 'upside' of various disabilities, but when I look at my past it's not a lie at all. I, with my 'special condition' am liked (loved, even) often precisely _because_ I'm 'weird'. Two friends of mine suffer from schizophrenia and it's not a lie to say that their 'condition', and the resulting worldview, hardships, and so on are immensely valuable.

<comment><USER2> I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post- structuralist, Perry is a Jungian), but both of them were firm believers that schizophrenia was a process that could be worked through; Perry in particular believed that it was a _healing_ process, not a destructive one, and that successfully going through it (to the other side) involved a reconstruction of the self that left people better-equipped to deal with their lives. I recommend his book, "The Far Side of Madness", for this reason alone, that it contains stories of people who recovered from schizophrenia and felt it had somehow improved them.</comment></comment></comment>


OpenID Connect - <AUTHOR> http://openidconnect.com/ <comment><USER2> This gets rid of delegation. :( Delegation was what sold me on openid in the first place. Why would delegation ever need or get buy in from email providers, ISPs and social providers? Delegation allows me to own my identity without owning it's management and that is the most wonderful thing about openid. I don't want to be thought of as me@facebook all over the web because I don't control how long facebook will exist or not go rouge or not ban me. It is very important that I be me@mydomain on the web with me2@facebook only currently being delegated the responsibility of authenticating me and providing my details.

Removing delegation removes the major part of open from openid as far as I am concerned.

<comment><USER3> Delegation still works, but you'll need to run or use a server which is willing to assert your domain name.

<comment><USER2> Ummm... it would be nicer to have something where my domain can simply assert that me@mydomain is equivalent for the moment to me2@otherdomain and the otherdomain has to do nothing extra. If the otherdomain has to assert mydomain then I no longer have total control and it all is suddenly a lot less transparent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great but will only be useful if Facebook, and to a lesser extend, Microsoft get behind it.

Google seems to be sold since it is basically a souped-up OAuth and Brad Fitzpatrick now works there.

<comment><USER5> David Recordon, who wrote the big post on that page actually works at Facebook. As does Luke Shepard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> OpenID was DOA when they decided that URLs were identities rather than email addresses.

You can argue all you want about the technical merits of that decision, but the reality is that email _is_ identity for pretty much everyone that doesn't code.

<comment><USER3> This proposal supports using email addresses as identities.</comment></comment>


Show HN: CollabQA – Capture and prioritize questions for uninterrupted meetings - <AUTHOR> https://collabqa.com <comment><AUTHOR> Ershad from CollabQA.com - I built a small web app to capture and prioritize questions during meetings/talks. Attendees have the option to vote questions. All data are sync-ed (in almost real-time) across active sessions.

A lot of people are switching to online meetings during these unprecedented days. I thought it would be useful to have a tool like this so that the speaker can speak uninterrupted and can answer/discuss all questions after finishing the talk.

It can also be used as a simple (and sharable) to-do app, a poll app or even as a shopping list.

It's built using Elixir and Phoenix.LiveView. Thanks to them for creating a wonderful tech stack to build real-time applications.

</comment><comment><USER2> I can see this becoming a very useful tool to be used along with Zoom or Google Meet since both of these don't have a robust way to handle this issues! Interesting tool Ershad!

Can I add a password to the session though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Each session is private and can be accessed only through its unique URL which contains a non-guessable random string. Would you still be interested in locking with a password? Can you please describe a use-case?

<comment><USER2> Maybe because I don't want my CollabQA session to be bombed like how people are doing Zoom Bombing?</comment></comment></comment>


The intertwined quest to understand biological intelligence and creating AI - <AUTHOR> https://hai.stanford.edu/news/the_intertwined_quest_for_understanding_biological_intelligence_and_creating_artificial_intelligence/ <comment><USER2> I was disappointed that the author didn't mention the evolution of neurogenesis as the driver for modularity and more complex architectures. Simply trying to design modularity won't be enough. We're going to need to incorporate developmental models that are themselves a product of evolution. What's interesting about this is that gene regulatory networks that evolve and which orchestrate development from a single cell to a complex organism and those networks can also be modeled as neural networks. In effect, evolution took the most powerful computational system (gene regulatory networks) and reimplemented it with neural networks.</comment>


Show HN: Map plot of JCPenny store closings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/primaryobjects/penny/blob/master/readme.md <comment><USER2> FYI: It's spelled _Penney_.</comment>


Sign this petition to get Ron Gilbert the Monkey Island rights back - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-give-the-monkey-island-intellectual-property-to-ron-gilbert <comment><AUTHOR> HN, come on - we can make this happen :)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best minimal CSS framework? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, I'm a backend programmer and it's been quite some time since I worked with anything frontend related. I'm not bootstrapping a quick project, kind of prototype to "throw" out there and see what is the feedback. Meaning that I know very little about CSS and I don't really want to spend days trying to learn how to properly use complex fancy tools.
I'm looking for a basic grid system (possible responsive), a few buttons, forms, and so on - the usual stuff CSS frameworks are done for.
Bootstrap and Foundation would be my default choice but they cause a bit of a overhead. Is there any minimal framework out there that would speed up the process? Maybe based on bootstrap or foundation, just simpler.
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> Found Picnic css the other day and I'm just waiting for the right excuse to use it. [http://www.picnicss.com/](http://www.picnicss.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Baseguide is great because it is robust and customizable with a very small filesize.

[http://basegui.de](http://basegui.de)

</comment><comment><USER4> Another candidate: [http://www.basscss.com/](http://www.basscss.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Check out pure.css at purecss.io. It is lightweight(4 kb) and covers a number of common ui components.

</comment><comment><USER6> try [http://milligram.github.io/](http://milligram.github.io/)</comment>


Ask HN: What does Slack do that a self-governed IRC/Matrix server doesn't? - <AUTHOR> I knew before that Slack was popular for project- and work-related team communications but I recently came across some articles about their IPO and was stunned how much the company is worth. How is it that people value this technology so highly?
I use Mattermost (the open-source alternative) at work and from what I can gather, everything there is equally possible with IRC or Matrix. The only excuse I can think of is that they streamlined the process of getting it running which is probably valuable for overloaded DevOps teams.
What is the added value of Slack compared to these protocols? <comment><USER2> Take all the rich client features of your popular messenger platform (Facebook, Whatsapp, Snapchat, etc) weld them on-top of an IRC-like protocol to enable 'rooms' and you have Slack.

It's not a new or clever idea, but their marketing efforts have been brilliant. To such an extent in fact, that there are now a bunch of Slack clones out there all trying to do the same, complete with the same sort of interface.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fact that it works out of the box, the UI is good and lots of third party integrations available.

My employer recently switched from Slack since it was closed source (and management is crazy about everything needs to be open). We switched to XMPP and Movim for the web interface. Worst software I've ever used. Looks awful, unreliable, and having absolutely no support other than some hackers working on it in their free time doesn't make me comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Devops, a standard client, friendlier interface for non-techs, built-ins like file sharing & images.</comment>


Copyrighting the English language - <AUTHOR> http://fhtr.blogspot.com/2009/08/eu-court-rules-11-word-snippets-can.html

<comment><USER2> Also, copyright, unlike patents REQUIRES copying. A patent can infringe accidentally, even if you didn't know the patent existed. With Copyright you must have actually copied from a copyrighted work for your work to be infringing.

<comment><USER3> Is comparing the same as copying? Would it be copying if someone tells me whether something I make is the same as their copy or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But in doing so, you will violate so many copyrights that you'll forget about all the new ones you acquired.

<comment><USER5> You are not violating copyrights, because you are not copying other works. However, as nobody would read that text, you can't really enforce copyright because they did not derive their work from yours.

<comment><USER6> But, if you've published that work once, eg on the internet then you can re- publish the same work when another party comes up with their own version (AFAICT). So when AP publish their equivalent of your prior published phrase you simply re-publish that identical excerpt - you've haven't copied from them you've simply taken a timing queue.

You need a good date on your copy, I believe you are still allowed to register a work with the US government, so that would do, or get someone like archive.org to take a copy for you.

What could AP do?

You might also try for prominent publication of your word lists so that you can argue that AP copied you based on them having the opportunity, but I don't think you'd swing that one by a long shot.

This is absolutely not legal advice by any stretch of the imagination!

<comment><USER4> How do you define "publish on the Internet" when it's terabytes and terabytes of data? Just buy a domain and host the files from home for a minute, and technically you've "published it on the Internet."

What I'm saying is, to register a work with the US government, you'd have to filter out all the already-copyrighted 11 word combinations, which would be virtually impossible. Without a distinction made between the already- copyrighted sentences and your "original" ones, I don't think you could have a copyright on the original ones.

<comment><USER6> No, you're not copying those short phrases from anyone else, you wouldn't need to filter them out. This is establishing a point for yourself where any 5 word phrase from now on can be published by you relying on your own publication as a prior source.

<comment><USER4> If your generation of the new phrases is considered to be a purposeful act that you performed in order to obtain the copyrights for them, then the generation of existing copyrighted phrases would also be a purposeful act, and hence would be copyright infringement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haiku poems have been held to be copyrightable; at 17 syllables, they may be 11 words, or less.

<comment><USER8> Someone should do a search of all haiku poems then and check to see which ones coincidentially match up with 11 words that were written before the poems release.

Personally I think if you want to copyright something you should keep it to yourself. Don't poison the pool with the content that you own in order to extract royalties from the rest of us. It's bound to leak through sooner or later.

Let the criterium be that if you perform something in public or spread it _it becomes public domain_ instantly.

This will upset lots of apple carts but I really think it is the only thing that in the long term will make sense.

<comment><USER6> Gah, the internet ate my thoughtful response: PD doesn't protect your right to be named as author, IMO that moral right should be protected as it is in the Berne Convention.

Copyright [supposedly] ensures that works move into the public domain. The problem with copyright is that the terms should be of the order of 15 years, not life + 70.

Without copyright books would simply not be edited - editorial staff couldn't be paid as on release an opposing publisher (lulu?) would simply grab the book and publish an identical but lower cost copy. The first copy sold would have to assume the costs of the entire production, authors, publishing staff, printers, machinery.

Bands would probably still fill venues. But songwriters would be working for free as they could never demo a piece without "spread[ing] it".

DRM and contract law would fill the void and IMO less pieces would ever eventually enter the public domain and the arts would no longer provide most of the careers it does now.

A painter may still sell pictures, but a photographer could only sell each one once. Any advertiser could use your personal picture if you published it online. Anybody could claim your programming library, not only for free, but as their own if they could access the code in any way.

Copyright is not _all_ bad.

<comment><USER8> Precious few of your examples would seem to me to be a 'loss' of something, most of them would simply change the theater we're operating in.

Copyright is not all bad, but that is not the issue here. The issue is whether the sum total of the effect of the existence of copyright is a good thing or a bad thing.

My suspicion is that it is a net negative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'm looking around for a new work setup for a software development environment. I can choose freely both for software and for hardware and since I like macOS and use it myself for quite some time the choice seemed obvious.
My problem is, for a decent upgrade both in RAM and disk space I have to go for a $2199 model (the new MacBook Pro touch bar with 16GB RAM and 512GB disk) which seems to leave almost no budget left for anything besides the monitor.
So, having said this, I do have a question: do you believe that this year's MacBook Pro is worth this value? I'm willing to give up some things from my setup (likely a usb-c dock that I'll buy on my own later for example) if it really means I'm getting a laptop that's worth it.
The primary reason I'm inclined to go with this year's model is the T2 chip that I believe to be of significant value for its added security during boot, Touch ID, disk encryption and camera and microphone processing. This is something I personally value but I wasn't able to find much technical reviews about this chip that would prove its worth to me.
I don't particularly care for the touch bar (I admit it may be useful, but in my opinion they should've only added it above the function keys and only if it didn't mean a great bump in price) so, apart from the reason above I'd be open to choose another model.
What's your opinion on the current MacBook Pro offering?
PS: I do have to say though that all their pro hardware seems to be very overpriced for their current offerings and even though I love their products I have to admit that if I really were in the market for a personal laptop, I'd have a very difficult time choosing myself between a Mac or a PC. <comment><USER3> Absolutely not. I have the top of the range 15" MacBook Pro and I despise it, it's without question the worst computer I've ever owned.

1\. The Touch Bar is appalling if you're at all a touch typist. It puts destructive actions just an accidental brush of the finger tip away. 2\. The keyboard is failing all over the place. My left command key has fallen off, and three keys occasionally stick resulting in double entries. 3\. The trackpad is so big that there's nowhere to rest one hand while you scroll with the other, resulting in exposé happening when you're just trying to scroll a web page. 4\. It crashes a LOT. I reckon roughly one kernel panic a week since I've owned it.

It's absolutely killed my confidence in Apple hardware and after owning Macs for over 20 years I doubt I'll ever buy a Mac again. It's made me a permanently angry person.

<comment><USER4> If you're crashing once a week you're definitely doing something incorrect on your end. Apple may have poor QA, but there's no way it's _that_ poor.

<comment><USER5> I don't see how you can blame a user for repeated kernel panic issues.

<comment><USER6> You are user spacing it wrong.

<comment><USER7> Isn't the point of a user space to protect the kernel and keep the OS from crashing?

<comment><USER8> No.

What userspace is is where you work happens. It has no universal obligation to protect the kernel.

You could possibly say that the point of _working_ in userspace (instead of in kernel space) is to protect the kernel.

<comment><USER8> Seems I'm either wrong or I'm punished for being rude.

In the latter case, sorry. I honestly agree I should have caught that.

In the first case my thought process goes as follows (hoping someone knowledgeable will correct me):

\- user space may very well contain hostile processes (trojans, rootkits, - even intentionally in the case where a user inspects malware in some kind of container or chroot environment.

\- user space _may_ contain mechanisms that attempts to protect the kernel, but a typical kernel (linux, and I guess most other free kernels) cannot rely on it.

\- I tried searching for _userspace protect kernel_ and the closest thing I found was the act of separating userspace from kernel space protects the kernel which is what I tried to point out in my post above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No. I bought the $3,500 version on the advice of my partner and feel cruelly ripped off. The keyboard, which I dislike, has already been replaced. The Apple Store guy tried to accuse me of getting water on the keyboard, but that is incorrect. My partner's identical machine also needed the keyboard and motherboard replaced. He got a loaner (I didn't) and they tried to accuse him of the same thing.

I would much rather have purchased 2 MacBook Airs for the price. (I do web development and the MacBook Airs are surprisingly fast for my purposes.)

But more likely I'll go with something like a Lenovo next time. With Apple much less willing to honor its warranties I don't feel anchored to its computers, which I used to love, anymore.

<comment><USER10> Lenovo Thinkpad T series laptops are built like tanks, have proper keyboards, some have water-resistance, most have easily-removable batteries. The T480 has a _30_ hour runtime with dual batteries, and starts at about $800 USD. I'd try to turn that into a hackintosh or find an A1278 because it has 2x drives (optical turns into second drive bay), works with 16 GiB of RAM and the battery isn't glued in. On the latter, I'd send it to Rossmann in NYC just to have the JTAG header removed and exposed traces sealed (Apple BOOO, poor craftsmanship)... yes, Apple sells computers with logic boards that are prone to corrosion, shorting and other damage due to substandard engineering and manufacturing.

<comment><USER11> But the Lenovo is coming from a company who has _repeatedly_ shown that it doesn't give a shit about user privacy. Remember superfish? Or Lenovo Service Engine?

<comment><USER12> That doesn't happen on business machines like Thinkpads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's value is in

(1) combing a no-fuss GUI and the ability to run most major proprietary apps with a UNIX underpinning. If you also want to combine that with multimedia work (serious photo and video editing, graphic and print design, DAW work, Linux is a no-player, you need either Windows or OS X. Yes, there's Inscape and a few other tools, but only outliers use them and you'll be missing on almost all major tools and commercial products).

(2) some not-found-elsewhere niceties in the hardware (great trackpad, fine display, sturdy all-one metallic, construction, top-notch SSDs, no-fuss sleep/wake, nice latch, great aesthetic, and such).

(3) works nicely as an ecosystem of products

(4) Finally, it's in resale value.

It's value is not and has never been in bang for the buck or big performance.

And it has lost points regarding (2) through the loss of magsafe (another handy exclusive feature), worsening of the keyboard, and drop of some handy ports.

> _PS: I do have to say though that all their pro hardware seems to be very > overpriced_

Some of it is (e.g. Macbook Air/Mini/etc are long in the tooth, at this point you're paying just for the privilege of using OS X, which many don't care about that much). But their costlier models are not really overpriced, they're just high-end.

I often look to get a comparable machine for Windows, and when you add the same things from machines from Dell, IBM, Razer, you get at the same price range very soon. I'm not talking about some custom rig desktop with faster cpu and gpu, but about getting something comparable at all levels (their top of the line laptop machine, comparable monitor, ssd, construction, etc).

For me it's still worth it. I like OS X, do lots of programming work (some native, some remote thru SSH), lots of multimedia with Adobe apps and DAWs, hate tinkering (and even more so hardware tinkering and custom rigs), and don't mind paying a premium for something I use 10+ hours each day. I also don't work with .NET, in which case I'd use Windows.

<comment><USER14> Also the lightweight and tight form factor.

I have travelled a ton with it and its help up the whole way for 14 months and 36+ flights domestic and international.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a PC person and just got a brand new Macbook Pro 2018 i7 16GB of RAM for work. The keyboard is pretty terrible if you're used to mechanical keys. The trackpad (with the "taptic feedback") while strange and annoying at first, grew on me and is nice. MacOS for Java dev has been fine. The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem. I personally don't like MacOS more than Windows 10 after Windows 10 got the Linux subsystem. I hate all the USB-C only stuff. I can't plug anything in anymore without tons of dongles, and I can't seem to find a dongle that has all the ports I want on it at once. And the ones I have to buy are crazy expensive. The thing gets REALLY hot when doing anything taxing. It warmed my entire desk up where I noticed it when touching the desk from 5 inches away from the laptop. It burns my legs when I'm wearing shorts. It also slides off my legs because it's made of slippery metal. The speakers are very nice. Webcam is okay (all laptop cams suck compared to phones). Touch ID is okay I guess. I shut my laptop off when I'm done using it and each time you do that you have to type your password back in to use touch id, so I don't find myself using it that much.

All in all, I think if I had a choice, I would choose something else over a 2018 Macbook Pro. At least considering how much it costs.

<comment><USER16> > The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock > very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem

I started using a 2017 Macbook Pro last week. First thing I did with the touch bar was set it to be all function keys rather than app-specific stuff. I still miss the feedback of hitting the escape key, but otherwise it's okay.

<comment><USER17> There's quite a few apps (both open source and proprietary) that enable haptic feedback for the touchbar. I recommend trying them out if you're missing the feeling of actually touching the escape key.

I think they leverage the same feedback mechanism that the track pad uses to make it feel like you're actually clicking.

Links: \- [https://www.haptictouchbar.com](https://www.haptictouchbar.com) \- [https://github.com/niw/HapticKey](https://github.com/niw/HapticKey) \- [https://community.folivora.ai/t/touchbar-haptic-feedback- imp...](https://community.folivora.ai/t/touchbar-haptic-feedback- improvements/2313)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> NOTE: New low-end MacBooks may be announced in 2 weeks or next month.

Have you identified how much RAM and disk space you actually need for your workflow?

If you just want something "good enough" you might be able to make do with even the $1300 Core m3, 8GB, 256GB, 12" MacBook [0], or even a PC running macOS in a VM.

Otherwise the answer is "as much as you can afford."

I haven't compared markets lately, but I think that although you'll find PC laptops that exceed MacBooks in a couple specs here and there, you may be hard pressed to find something that betters a MacBook across the board in many areas (including Thunderbolt 3, SSD performance, trackpad, color gamut and battery time) and still beats it at price. Then of course there's the value of the OS.

The Touch Bar can also be surprisingly handy if you give it an honest chance. Search for third-party tools that let you customize it, like BetterTouchTool [1].

[0] [https://www.apple.com/shop/buy- mac/macbook](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook)

[1] [https://lifehacker.com/customize-your-macs-touch-bar-with- be...](https://lifehacker.com/customize-your-macs-touch-bar-with- bettertouchtool-1827125801)

<comment><USER19> For a Java developer, Eclipse and IntelliJ will happily eat over 8GB on a midsize project, especially if Spring + related plugins are involved.

For a Javascript developer, a typical webpack based build chain in live reload mode + chrome debugger + app using a front end framework will also easily go over 8GB.

So for the two most common classes of developer, I couldn't reccomend a 8GB MBP. At work I need to work on both, and my 16GB MBP is woefully inadequate. Chrome debugger + (VS Code or IntelliJ) is enough to summon this screen: [https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgu...](https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgur.com%2FT3pbc.png&f=1)

<comment><USER18> It's pretty grim that you can develop, build and test native apps with more features (graphics, UI etc.) just fine in 8 GB but twice that is woefully inadequate for anything with Java in it.

<comment><USER20> It's the same with .Net. I wouldn't consider developing Java or C# without 16Gb really. It's mainly the IDE that needs it, but also the build time, starting up services etc.. I guess this is similar with a lot of use cases these days. Web browsing is pretty expensive once you've got a few tabs open. This seems to be less of an issue on my desktop than my laptop though so maybe there are a few factors in play. Slow PC is frustrating though and my apk build is currently taking over 20mins...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The attraction of programmers to macOS née OS X has always been its UNIX foundations. Programmers love UNIX. Programmers made UNIX for programmers.

Unfortunately, from the epoch until very recently, UNIX has had GUIs ranging in quality from absolute shit to mediocre. That's finally changing with Free Desktop (Wayland + GNOME/KDE, and support libraries).

OS X gave programmers a UNIX core with a beautiful user interface layered on top. And what a joy it is to use.

But these days, you can easily make do with a much, much cheaper laptop running GNU/Linux if your budget and/or conscience dictates, and have a pretty good experience.

<comment><USER22> Then the difference became battery life. It's been a few years since I ran linux on a laptop; has that improved?

<comment><USER23> It has! I've been using Ubuntu on a thinkpad x1 carbon (2017) for almost a year. Battery life is between 6-8 hours everyday use including work. Probably see between 8-10 if I'm not doing any programming

<comment> dan0- Similar experience on a Thinkpad T440 with a 1080p screen swap, I can easily go 5 hours before I need to swap to the big battery, which buys ne a few more hours. Games seem to halve that though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I recently went through the new laptop experience. When it came down to it, I couldn't justify spending the money on an MBP that would meet my needs.

My decision came down to a few things:

1.) I hate the touch bar and you can pry the function keys out of my cold, dead hands. (I like saying that.)

2.) To get an MBP that will provide enough power for me, I'd need to upgrade to a touch bar only model.

3.) MBPs are seriously expensive.

4.) There are other, really good machines that can run real operating systems and provide all the power for a fraction of the cost.

5.) To get an MBP with similar performance to those other machines, I would have to pay approximately $1,000 more. If I invested that money in an RESP (a registered educational savings plan, it's a Canadian thing), I'm pretty sure my girl could afford an extra semester in University.

<comment><USER18> > _To get an MBP with similar performance to those other machines, I would > have to pay approximately $1,000 more._

Examples?

MBPs have been reported to have the fastest SSDs on the market since 2016 [0], and I doubt you can get laptops with the same resolution and wide color gamut for much cheaper.

[0] [https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro- ssd/](https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/)

<comment><USER24> MBPs do have great SSDs, but I don't particularly care about (or optimize for) resolution or colour.

If you remove those from the mix, there are many examples. The Dell XPS series, higher end Zenbooks, and Lenovo Ideapads all beat the MBP.

<comment><USER18> So it's disingenuous to claim "similar performance" by arbitrarily removing metrics from the mix.

<comment><USER25> On the contrary, it's disingenuous to act like resolution or color are metrics of "performance" when the colloquial usage of the word generally refers to processing speed and memory capacity. I/O speed would qualify, but is only one metric; it is correct to say it is outperformed by other machines at lower price points when accounting for the CPU and RAM.

<comment><USER18> That's cherry-picking specs and definitions.

The ""colloquial usage of the word"" very much includes I/O performance; disk speed has historically been the _worst_ bottleneck, aside from network access.

Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view at a time.

Most cheaper laptops do not present the same value as a MacBook Pro unless you ignore some of the advantages of the MBP you're comparing against.

<comment><USER26> > Resolution also affects performance: it's how much information you can view > at a time.

Not for me. My 40-something-year-old eyes mean that the amount of text I can view on a monitor is restricted by the text size, not by the resolution of the monitor. Retina displays make not a jot of difference to me. YMMV, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had to switch to a new laptop last year after my old MBP first generation retina died.

I couldn't justify the price, the specs and the keyboard of a new MBP anymore and after much deliberation I chose a $1200 HP Spectre x360.

I do mostly web development work (Ember.js, PHP and Node), and after running Win10 for a few weeks and hating the performance (especially for Node). I installed Ubuntu Budgie, and have been smoothly running it ever since.

The latest Linux kernel provides me with excellent battery performance and for a machine a third of the price I must say I made the right choice.

<comment><USER28> Any problems with the touch screen working in Ubuntu? Can you still use the pen to sketch in drawing programs etc?

I need a good Linux-friendly laptop with touch screen for sketching as well as code dev, so I'm very curious about this one.

<comment><USER27> Sorry. Only just saw your question.

The touchscreen works out of the box, but I don't use it that often, the few times I've used it I noticed that if I have an issue it's mostly related to the program I'm using and the lack of proper touchscreen support for that particular program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You don't need to buy new. I find this "new everything" by default to be very sad.

As a developer, you'd be well served by a 2015 (if you like the old keyboard), 2016 or 2017 MacBook Pro. Why do you want to spend so much money to pay for Apple Corporate to get even wealthier? Even something like a certified refurbish machine will get you what you need (with full Apple warranty), AND leave you enough money for peripherals and accessories.

Buy a tool of course, that works for your job, but don't be clouded by the idea that you _need_ the newest, the latest gadget to do basic development.

<comment><USER30> Old laptops have old batteries that need to be replaced. Since it's Apple this will likely cost enough to justify buying new.

<comment><USER31> I got a MacBook pro 2013 15" max spec 16gb/nvidia gpu. 430 cycles (not a lot) and if it needs replacing Mac store will do it not that expensively. I paid 900$ u.s. on eBay. Model had a bit of scratches but who cares made it way cheaper . OP just buy a refurbished max spec 2013/2014 15" off eBay .

Only gripe I have is that it sometimes doesn't ground well with the unibody casing

<comment><USER32> I have a late 2013 macbook pro 13" ~500 cycles and 86% capacity

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use a MacBook Pro Retina 13" Early 2015, and it's amazing. I hope it lasts forever.

I've tried a friends new MBP and I can't stand the keyboard, or the dongles. When I sit at my work desk, I have 2x DisplayPorts to my monitors, a USB 3.0 hub, and often a USB thumb drive. Swapping to USB-C would be a pain.

My biggest gripe with Apple's current MBP line up is the insulting specs you get for the price. I can buy a 128GB SSD delivered for £24, I imagine at bulk wholesale Apple is barely paying £10 - yet that's what they put in their 'entry level' £1,250 13" MBP. Absolute madness.

<comment><USER34> > When I sit at my work desk, I have 2x DisplayPorts to my monitors, a USB 3.0 > hub, and often a USB thumb drive. Swapping to USB-C would be a pain.

So with your setup that's four cables to reconnect each time I need to get up for a meeting, where as I have a single cable (that single cable provides power, USB, a 5K and a 4K display, and Ethernet in my setup). Yep, sounds less painful to me too!

<comment><USER33> I don't want the answer to everything to be "Buy a dongle". I have a similar setup at home to my work setup, almost identical - do I need another dongle/hub for home?

I also work from my parents house if I'm visiting, they have a monitor I use, and my girlfriends parents (again if we're visiting) has a dual screen setup in their office I can use.

Do I buy a Hub/dongle for each location? Do I carry one with me at all times? (Good job they made the laptop light as I'll now need 38kg of adapters).

Oh wait, I don't have any of these problems, I just take my 2015 MBP and it plugs in to whatever is there. Nice.

<comment><USER33> Also, let's not get started on the travesty that is the loss of MagSafe...

<comment><USER34> Because yeah, there ~aren't any~ _actually is tons of_ comparable USB-C cables with the same breakaway mechanism as MagSafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've use Mac laptops as my primary work machine since the nineties. This year, with the MacBook Pro problems, and noticing that I was almost always working from my home office these days, I got a 5k iMac instead of a new laptop.

I'm delighted with iMac. The monitor is amazing, and it has quite a bit more horsepower than a comparable Mac laptop.

<comment><USER18> AFter trying various combinations for years, I settled on keeping a nice big iMac at home and getting a lowest end MacBook for portability + an iPad for bed/couch.

It's been the ideal setup for me so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I just bought a Dell XPS after eight years of Mac use. Zero productivity loss, now I can test pen and touch GUI on the laptop. Can run Linux, can run windows. Honestly, the 4k display is even better than my last Macbook's retina display. Oh, and the Dell's keyboard is much better. The big win: function keys.

<comment><USER37> Which version did you buy?

I bought 9350 (Skylake) when that came out and this really scared me away from XPSes (multiple issues, motherboards replaced, the worst thing being Thunderbolt integration with the TB16 dock).

I generally like quick and nice Dell support service but would rather not have to use it.

<comment><USER38> I have the 9560, and I love it. I got it as an open box unit from Microcenter right when the 9570s were coming out, so it was a great deal. I use it for side projects and as a personal laptop, I would love to use it instead of my T470 work laptop.

It took a lot of fiddling to get Linux running on it, but it all works now. I have it set up with 18.04 with the root on ZFS.

<comment><USER37> Glad to hear it works well for you!

> I have it set up with 18.04 with the root on ZFS.

I was thinking about using ZFS too. Unfortunately it's not so easy to setup correctly (full disk encryption etc.) on Arch as it is on Ubuntu...

<comment><USER38> Yeah, my desktop is root on ZFS with arch as well, even with the LTS kernel I was always running into issues with mismatched SPL/ZFS and the kernel, I'm trying the DKMS package atm. That took me an entire day to get running.

<comment><USER37> Do you get that many benefits from ZFS? I was thinking of using it for backup via zfs send/receive and snapshotting before pacman updates but the sheer amount of work made me stay with ext4 and luks setup. Too bad as I'd really want Tor give ZFS a try :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> People talk a lot about how awful the virtual escape key is (it is terrible), but another big problem is trying to use an IDE debugger with the touch bar function keys. The problem for me is, I want to rest my fingers on the keys and you just can't do it since they are a touch screen. Even the IntelliJ first class touchbar support just doesn't cut it. It just makes me miss Visual Studio on a boring old Dell keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER40> FWIW I spent this last summer coding while traveling on a Macbook Air I bought for $999.

I was considering buying a more powerful laptop for the trip, but I'm glad I put it off.

If I needed more power, then I would just ssh to Linux box. I even used X forwarding once! It worked with XQuartz -- my first time I using it, and it was passable.

Anyway, I really like the Macbook Air -- and I used it for everything -- coding, presentations, taking videos/pictures, video conferencing, listening to music, watching Netflix, health data, etc.

I ran BOTH an Ubuntu VM and a Windows VM on the Macbook Air too! Computers can do everything now!

</comment><comment><USER41> Consider getting a Thinkpad. They are quite indestructible (at least compared to Macbooks -- the ThinkPad durability used to be legendary but has also gone downhill quite a bit these days). The value per dollar is also quite high, especially if you can get a corporate or student discount (you might be surprised what you are eligible for with a still-working @.edu email address or an old corporate job that you no longer work for).

</comment><comment><USER42> I recently upgraded from my 2015 rMBP to the 2018 model you're looking at. I agree the Touch Bar is a dumb gimmick (for a dev's purposes at least), but the keyboard has grown on me, and the 6-core/12-thread CPU is a serious boon for dev work.

I wrote up a few more details here: [https://tylerayoung.com/2018/07/23/the- worlds-shortest-revie...](https://tylerayoung.com/2018/07/23/the-worlds- shortest-review-of-the-15-inch-2018-mbp/)

<comment><USER43> One of the nice things about the Touch Bar is that you can use it to hold a bunch of useful info without cluttering your prompt.

<comment><USER44> I tried the 13-inch touchbar model for work and I despise the touchbar in every way. I realized quickly that I have to have a physical Escape key... but more importantly, I never want to have to look at the keyboard for information, that's why I learned to type in the first place!

I exchanged it for the non-touchbar model (despite having two fewer USB-C ports for some unfathomable reason, fuck you very much Apple for that) and I've been much more satisfied with having the physical keys back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Gotta chime in here:

I'm using the new MPB at work (they give them out for free so why not), and I can't say that I _really_ have any problems with it. Granted, they keyboard is...weird (such tight, low action on the keys) but not horrible, the touchpad is _HUGE_ , but I generally don't have a problem with this as I don't use a mouse. Lastly, the touchbar is (as others have mentioned) just _completely_ unecessary. Why Apple? Do you care about web surfers _that_ much more than devs? (Answer: yes). Granted, the physical specs of the machine aren't _crazy_ (quad core, 16G RAM, 256G SSD, Intel Core i7), pretty standard for a upper- shelf laptop.

So I recently bought a HIDevolution Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501VI 15.6 inch Gaming Laptop. It has Windows (which makes me sad), but I _cannot WAIT_ to get this baby out of the box. Intel Core i7, 1TB SSD, 24G RAM, Nvidia 1070 (swappable), quad core It's a tiny little beast fit for gaming, dev work, and running a node for smart contract work.

I honestly feel like I've broken the mental spell that Apple had over my mind. We all know their computers are 150% the cost, for 70% the performance - <USER2> for some reason I kept buying Mac laptops. No more though! I'm free, and I refuse to go back to burning my money for a _cool_ laptop. I'm done. Finite.

<comment><USER46> > I honestly feel like I've broken the mental spell that Apple had over my > mind.

Same here. For me, it was the lack of updates on the MacBook Air, and the horrendous mess that is the OS since 10.10 (10.13 is the worst Mac OS I have ever used. I started with 7.5.3).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I recently upgraded to the new 2018 model with Core i9 and 32GB of RAM. For my kind of development the RAM was a huge bottleneck and since I upgraded it's been definitively better, I did had a rMBP 2016 which I was angry at just like the others, but I decided to give Apple one last chance and so far I'm fairly happy with my rMBP 2018 (i9/32GB RAM) so I'd recommend it

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a 2018 15" MBP with 32gb of RAM. So far, knock on wood, it is acting fine. I am going to buy AppleCare+ immediately now after reading these comments. I feel even more ripped off though. This doesn't include the $300 I had to spend on an OWC TB3 dock to be able to connect my other drives, wired ethernet, etc.

I bought this machine because my entire workflow has been Apple for 25 years and the thought of switching is overwhelming. I have tried to go "cold turkey" before and switch to Windows and I just can't get used to it. For a few things yes.

However, I am more determined to try and get out of Apple's grip. So, I am moving parts of my workflow to Virtual Box VM's and slowly adding more and more until I get comfortable, find solutions, etc. Hopefully by my next laptop purchase I can find a non-apple machine.

The touch-bar is pointless. I hate it and don't use it unless I have to. The keyboard still feels weird to me. I tend to use an external keyboard and mouse.

<comment><USER49> Windows is by far the most annoying operating system out there. You want Linux. It's really easy to use these days and works pretty good. It's not perfect and you will have some trouble shooting but it's a lot better than sitting and waiting for Apple or Microsoft. You become totally dependant on them. No developer should ever be dependent like that.

<comment><USER48> I'm using Ubuntu in VMs now and for servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I love the MBP 15" 2017 keyboard. Works great for me.

I love the USB-C ports.

Touchbar is meh. I ignore it.

Cost is not really an object for a machine I use 10 hours a day to run a fairly solid "lifestyle" business. I don't even give it a second thought.

</comment><comment><USER51> I use the latest 2018 one for work. It's ok but just ok. Personally I will not be buying a MacBook pro as the current models stand.

Not a fan of the touchbar. I accidentally hit buttons on it as i rest the tips of my fingers on the top row, the siri button on the top right above delete was the biggest problem. Likewise I hate the context of the keys switching between apps, the escape key dispersing or volume buttons diapering. I've configured the touchbar to be a fixed constant layout now so the keys do not change however I've had a few instances where it's gone completely blank and had to restart. The lack of tactile feel is a big loss.

I've also had a few times where I thought I hit the famous keyboard issue with dust in the keys. Luckily after a few keypresses whatever was in the keys worked it's way out.

The size etc is nice especially comparing to my 2011 MBP however I feel it's now form over function. The 2011 I pimped out with upgraded memory and SSD, that's no longer possible and you have to spec it up front at cost. The 2015 model I have is probably the best model for form/function however that's still a 2015 model 3 years out of date.

Most of my work is in the terminal, Emacs or tools that run on Linux, the only Mac software I really love and will be hard to loose is 1Password. I've got a 2018 IMac as a desktop which I considered ok value for an all in one with good screen but feel if I need to buy a personal laptop instead of using works, as it stands I'll likely get a Dell XPS or similar and go back to Linux on the desktop. Based on the Surface Book Go being able to run Linux the next gen versions of Surface Book could also be interesting if they also follow the Go.

For me to buy a MBP now they'd have to loose the touchbar, fix the keyboard, come down in price for memory/disk as no longer up-gradable. All unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER52> I've posted about the Surface Book a ton of times, but I can't recommend it enough. I bought it when Apple delayed their MBP offering, and I'm glad I made the switch.

As a Linux desktop, there were some teething issues with the first gen Surface Book, but I've managed to get Debian running with minimal fuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> There is only 2 good reasons to buy a mac. Applications you use are Mac dependent, you need crazy long battery life. I haven't used a chrome book, I have heard they're pretty good. Considering those things, if you want to get power, buy a Dell Precision or an HP Zbook, or a Lenovo T series laptop. Dell Precision laptops are built like tanks, real workstation workhorses. Dell/Zbook/lenovo laptops will never give you fantastic battery life, but boy will they blow the doors performance-wise off anything apple has to offer you. If you do open source development, moving to kubuntu w/ plasma will feel quite comfortable for most people. Use Latte-Dock, boom, got your osx style doc, and it's fast. Font rendering on linux these days is insanely nice, fonts are bold, crisp. The only negative these days I say is go with AMD chips on the laptops since they have better support and don't have screen tearing like nvidia does atm due to lack of proper vsync support.

Vmware, so long as you run it on a non-ntfs partition will run insanely fast. I run windows 10 on vmware, and it runs fantastic.

My laptop is a Dell Precision 7510 w/ 64gb of ram, 512gb NVME Samsung Evo 950, + 2tb Samsung Evo 850, Quadro M2000M w/ Intel graphics. Runs beautifully on linux. Just don't expect to get fantastic battery life from it in linux as right now, that is the only thing that I think needs a lot of work. Windows got horrible battery life as well. I think Apple with osx has windows & linux beat on battery life.

Also.. with regard to keyboards, if you type fast, just say you're a touch typist, I'd say that Dell Precision & Lenovo keyboards are some of the best out there for typing for long time. If say you type 60wpm+ you'll enjoy them considerably. If you type for any duration on a mac, the tips of your fingers over time will start to feel a stabbing feeling, I don't get this with my dell. I do have a Late 2014 model mac laptop which I just replaced the keyboard, and I still have this problem with the laptop, something to do with short key travel.

<comment><USER54> The MB Pro the OP is asking about doesn't even have crazy long battery life though. Its battery stores less energy than the MB Air IIRC. My 2016 MBP 'Escape' gives up after about 4 hours with not much more than Safari browser and an editor running.

<comment><USER34> Check energy consumption tab in activity viewer. Something is likely vampiring power without you realizing.

<comment><USER53> Yes, did that. Nothing showed up :/

<comment><USER54> Neither here. Safari was chugging along, WindowServer, bla bla. Nothing suspicious. I should add that a "Service Battery" warning has popped up recently, so maybe it's just an issue with my machine. Will bring it in.

<comment><USER34> > I should add that a "Service Battery" warning has popped up recently, _so > maybe it 's just an issue with my machine._

Yep, all 2016 MBPs have terrible battery life, _when they have faulty batteries and are directly telling you that's the issue!_

<comment><USER54> That battery warning came only recently. Battery life has been terrible all along. Anecdata, anecdata. But again, the design capacity of the MBP battery is less than that of the MB Air. It's a questionable trade-off for a "pro" machine.

<comment><USER34> > the design capacity of the MBP battery is less than that of the MB Air.

Correct, the MB Air is rated at 12hrs for "wireless web", the MB Pro is 10hrs for "wireless web".

> It's a questionable trade-off for a "pro" machine.

You must have a very opinionated view of "pro" that doesn't fit the normal reality. A usual "pro" (at least in Apple's context) is usually (but obviously not always) sitting somewhere with a power outlet. The battery is intended for meetings or other moderate duration periods of disconnect. If you want a laptop for being completely mobile, then go with one designed for that purpose (MacBook, MacBook Air, iPad w/ keyboard). If you want desktop class performance in a portable form factor, then there are trade-offs, and battery being one of the heaviest parts, that's usually it. While I think Apple's obsession with thinness at all costs is questionable to me, laptop weight being as minimal as possible isn't, especially to my back that carries it each day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> No. I own one and regret buying it. The fingerprint sensor is the only useful bit of the touch bar, missing esc key is annoying if you use vim, and the keyboard is pretty terrible, even if I hadn't seen different keys come off or come loose. Have another appointment to get it fixed next week.

<comment><USER56> I explicitly avoided the Touch Bar, so it sucks I had to get the lower specs and fewer ports. I already remap Caps Lock to Ctrl and after playing around the ESC would really bother me. The travel on the new keyboard grew on me pretty quickly, but after almost a year I think I'm getting double-letters on certain keys and I still really really hate the half-height arrow keys. It sounds so silly, but if they released a new version with fill-sized arrow keys and maybe one other gripe (like an updated camera--seriously, this is the same camera on my 6yo macbook) I'd sell this one and buy another. Otherwise I'll probably put up with this for a few years until I'm fed up and find a PC laptop I'm willing to live with...

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Do you _really_ need 16GB of RAM, more storage and a beefy CPU? For reference, I'm using a 12-inch MacBook with a _dual-core_ M3 processor and 8 GB of RAM as my daily driver and it's more than enough; this thing somehow runs IntelliJ and around 5 Docker containers in the background (including Javascript stuff with 1000+ dependencies) and has plenty of resources to spare.

Now I do agree the new MacBooks have a lot of drawbacks (I'm typing this on a keyboard where the "R" key is no longer responding; autocorrect is my saviour) but the time saved not having to tinker with shit in Linux or Windows (and be put to actual, billable work instead) means I can literally buy a new machine every month if needed. Not ideal but for me MacBooks are still the best option at the moment.

<comment><USER34> > Do you _really_ need 16GB of RAM, more storage and a beefy CPU?

Why be so presumptuous? My main computer is a 12 Core Xeon Mac Pro with 128gb RAM and dual high end video cards and I still run into issues _needing_ more horse power (which admittedly AWS/GCP makes mostly easy to consume).

<comment><USER57> I'm just basing this on my own experience where I used to always demand more power (and completely dismissing the new MacBooks and basically anything below 32 GB of RAM) until I realised that actually a low-power machine was perfectly usable for most development work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> You can definitely get a cheaper PC laptop with similar (or actually better) specs.

Examples:

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/273405851977](https://www.ebay.com/itm/273405851977)

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/153078138692](https://www.ebay.com/itm/153078138692)

It's more of a choice of the OS, I feel like. I don't get how you can't simply copy files between a macbook and an iphone. With a PC it's trivial.

<comment><USER56> I'm curious, how do you copy files around? Between PCs I'd probably go for Dropbox first. To be a network share client in Windows 10 I go to the Network browser, then had to enable searching for network servers--I'm not sure how to serve files. I found the behavior kind of fickle...but it might be my hardware/network. The little I've seen of sending files over BlueTooth on any platform has been a miserable experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Honestly the MacBook Air is still an amazing value. I just bought another one before they discontinue it. It was just over $1k, keyboard is still the old pseudo mechanical kind before they switched to butterfly, 8gb ram and 512 ssd. 12 hours+ battery life means I only charge mine maybe twice a week between programming and browsing.

The ONLY thing I would change would be retina but I value more battery life than a better display.

</comment><comment><USER60> If you prefer macOS, then yes it's your best option. If you're content with windows or linux, I'd suggest a dell xps or thinkpad x1.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's worth switching from Mac to something else in 2018.

1\. OSX is still fantastic, a sturdy UNIX like OS. So there will be some friction when you're moving away to an alternative, but it's not as bad as it was in maybe 2015 when windows wasn't even up for consideration as a developer machine for many and Linux variants were far from being non-flaky (because of lack of manufacturer support mostly).

2\. Windows is catching up with the introduction of WSL, many developers may now setup their LINUX ready projects completely in Windows.

I switched from Macbook Pro 2013 to ~$1,000 Xiaomi Mi notebook pro (i7, 16GB, Dedicated GX card, better battery, HDMI port, 15inch, Mac like keyboard and touchpad, fingerprint reader). I run a right-swipe virtual machine and run chrome all day without issues. It's a good for 3 years machine. Screen is fullhd though.

</comment><comment><USER62> I got an Air mid 2013 for $2200 NZD and that has been my main dev machine for the last 5 years.

I was going to buy a new MacBook after the latest round of updates but the price was insane.

Ended up building a Ryzen 2700+ PC with 32gb ram and running a bunch of dev vms on there. Now I just ssh into those from either the pc or my air.

</comment><comment><USER63> Lenovo just released the thinkpad x1 extreme. You can get 16gb ram and 512gb ssd for $1975.

<comment><USER64> with an awesome ThinkPad keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I recently purchased a used 2013 model max specced. Definitely worth it. Loads of ports. Great retina screen. 16gb of ram. Fast CPU.

On the other hand I was not going to pay the prices for a current model, which lack the ports I like (hdmi, sd card, usb a).

</comment><comment><USER66> I paid $1200 for a maxed-out 2015 13" MBP at the beginning of this year, and I would recommend that in place of a new MBP for most people. It was unopened/brand new, from a certified seller. The one I bought it from is out of stock, hopefully other certified sellers still have some.

I have a 2013 15" MBP (barebones spec), previously had a maxed-out 2016 15" MBP (with touchbar) for work, and currently have a maxed-out 2017 (also with touchbar) for work. I really dislike the new keyboard, and the USB-C ports are still a pain point. I never use the touchbar, in fact I wish I didn't have it at all.

</comment><comment><USER32> UNIX backbone, with many powerful applications available.

Especially when you include Keyboard Maestro, Karabiner Elements, Hazel, Contexts, Alfred.

Also, tend to be good, lightweight machines, no hassle, and reliable.

</comment><comment><USER67> No. I returned my new 13 inch 2017 MBP within a week and bought a refurbished 13 inch 2015 MBP with 16gb of RAM and 500gb SSD for $750 on eBay.

</comment><comment><USER68> I own a 2009 MBP and still use it for the few apps that aren't available on my other systems.

My workhorse system is a desktop lotsa RAM, SSD + TBs of HD, triple monitors - and running Ubuntu on it is far better experience than the MBP ever was.

When on the road, I use a ChromeBook or a Lenovo tablet (depending on whether I expect to type much).

Gave up on iPad and iPhone years ago. I used to be an Apple fan, but since Steve Job's passing, the company has become yet another mega-corp chasing profits. The magic is no more.

</comment><comment><USER69> Yes, a great machine for Xcode. The only thing I don't like about the Touch Bar is the lack of a hardware escape key.

</comment><comment><USER70> No. In all seriousness if you need a lot of ram and cpu resources you should be remotely controlling a big, loud, beefy xen or kvm hypervisor that is remote to you.

No laptop is going to substitute for something like a used $800 Dell poweredge r910 with 32 cores or a selfbuilt, new, 16 or 32-core threadripper or epyc machine.

The 12" MacBook (not air) is a great little laptop if you can deal with the single usb-c port.

</comment><comment><USER71> I literally bought a chromebook yesterday to test drive as a dev machine because my experience with the new MacBook Pro has been so bad.

I've owned and used Macs extensively since 1994.

</comment><comment><USER72> Unless you use macOS or iOS in production, just buy a regular laptop and install Linux.

A very minimal setup with XFCE can give you decent performance and battery life.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm not sure if it is even fair to call it Pro.

</comment><comment><USER74> Apple forgot how to manufacture macbooks since 2015. Keyboards are absolute garbage and touchbar is a marketing gimmick that rarely anyone uses, even video editors as well since you can go with a MX Master 2S mouse for that. You aren't going to care about touchID, disk encryption, camera and microphone processing as much as you think you will. Because a shit keyboard is going to be painful on your wrists for prolong periods of typing / coding. Trust me it is an AWFUL keyboard, I've touched and felt them before. 2015 feels like a solid mechanical keyboard, 2018 is like the worst nonmechanical keyboard you can buy off amazon. Plus you lose the slick cool lightup apple icon in the back.

Buy a "used" 2015 Macbook pro one on amazon here. Better keyboard, legacy ports (its got USB and HDMI). Look for listings with good images and ratings. Good sellers will tell you the exact battery cycle on the used ones. I've done the homework for you, just bought a 15" macbook pro after 5-10 hours of researching GPU / CPU spec benchmark, thunderbolt2 eGPU compatability, getting opinions from many experts both on reddit forums and youtube, etc. I built my own windows computers since I was 13 so I know what to look for. This is the best spot to buy one since you get Amazon's return policy.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00XZGUL8W/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00XZGUL8W/ref=dp_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

You might want to look at these listings every so often to find a used one you really want. The only trustworthy alternative location IMO is ebay, because that's where the sellers are at.

Its the last good one from apple. You'll spend ~$1500 for a 15". Don't buy a 13" IMO, screen real estate is already small as it is. You may or may not need a built in graphics card, its only about 30% better than the dedicated GPU around that time.

I bought mine for $1500. It was "used". Only had 21 battery cycles, for all intents and purposes it was brand new to me. I chose not to get a built in GPU because of potential issues it might have using an external GPU.

Peripheal accessories, I use a 2nd monitor from Gechic. You need an HDMI based portable monitor, they are the only ones that make it. Because if its not HDMI it causes the CPU fan to spin really loudly.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M9CXOTV/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M9CXOTV/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

For backpacks to carry macbook, I use this personally, after researching every backpack in the market. Its designed specifically for most HN'ers in mind, IMO

[https://www.amazon.com/eBags-Professional-Laptop-Backpack- So...](https://www.amazon.com/eBags-Professional-Laptop-Backpack- Solid/dp/B00DU0PEA8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8)

If I need a more powerful PC I use my windows computer

</comment><comment><USER75> For me, Yes.

</comment><comment><USER76> I have had nothing but issues with my MBP. Within 2 years

It stopped booting for some hardware issue.

Both the speakers are screwed up

The charger is not working

2 of the 5 little dots where the charger connects are now blackened and expanded.

WORST PURCHASE EVER</comment>


Justice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-scalia-spent-his-last-hours-with-members-of-this-secretive-society-of-elite-hunters/2016/02/24/1d77af38-db20-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html <comment><USER2> Wow. Surprised to see this is the Washington Post. Lots of info from public records that basicially insinuates Scalia was part of a benign club.

</comment><comment> r-w I regret having had enough faith in HN to click on this. Try harder, sensationalist journalism. There's no "deeper narrative"—it's just a bunch of old men playing a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Russian roulette.</comment>


"Linusgate" over 250 Messages About CoC Complaints Against Linus Torvalds - <AUTHOR> https://linuxreviews.org/%22Linusgate%22_Leaked:_Over_250_Messages_About_Code_of_Conduct_Complaints_Against_Linus_Torvalds <comment><USER2> Expression of political views isn't the problem. Imagine you're in a workplace setting. Would you want Linus as a colleague; would you hire him? Forget hard technical skills for a moment: if you're going to spend 40+ hours a week around colleagues, you need to ensure they are reasonable, kind people for your own mental health, and for the health of your organization.

<comment><USER3> You aren't around him for 40 hours a week. You're dealing with him only as long as it takes to get changes into the kernel, a software deliverable with an incredible vulnerability to malicious injection of low-quality crippling code without _active_ measures being taken to ensure code quality and architectural conformance.

That he was blunt, unequivocal and direct is not a failing on his part, but on the listener's for getting so in a twist they couldn't get the requested fixes in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The top of the page says:

> Original story by techrights.org. Published 2020-09-03.

And it links to:

[http://techrights.org/2020/09/03/linus-debconf- linusgate/](http://techrights.org/2020/09/03/linus-debconf-linusgate/)

Why not post that?

</comment><comment><USER5> "Note: The complaints and the event itself happened in 2014."</comment>


Analytics Talk: Peter Skomoroch - <AUTHOR> https://www.airbnb.com/meetups/ejs83rxek-analytics-talk-peter-skomoroch

<comment><USER2> If anyone has topics they'd like to hear more about in the talk, post them here and I'll try to cover them.</comment>


Induction of regular languages - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_of_regular_languages <comment><USER2> I wrote a parser for IBM mainframe job control language (JCL) a decade ago. It was an interesting and infuriating excercise. I had access to several hundred jobs in a production batch system to validate agaisnt and the IBM online manual. When I was done I was sure I knew the code of the original and exactly how it was implemented, even having never seen it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The wiki page links to "Language identification in the limit" [0], aka "LIitL", which is quite a cool idea about "learning" regular languages.

I've thought about making an inductive inference based regexp generator which attempts to generate an expression for a given a set of inputs, but never got around to investigating it thoroughly. Understanding the formal limitations on what languages can be covered with this technique is satisfying.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_identification_in_t...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_identification_in_the_limit)

</comment><comment><USER4> Some time ago I've applied Evolutionary Algorithms to the same problem. I did not have much time to develop it further but I think it is another viable approach in addition to ones listed.

[http://www.crocodile.org/lord/RSS_XML_Schema_induction.pdf](http://www.crocodile.org/lord/RSS_XML_Schema_induction.pdf)</comment>


Privacy – Government Information Requests – Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/ <comment><USER2> > In the second half of 2016, Apple received between 5,750 and 5,999 National > Security Orders.

So there were >10,000 national security threats in 2016?</comment>


Citing Need for More CS Grads, Amazon Future Engineer Expands to UK - <AUTHOR> https://slashdot.org/submission/10456476/citing-need-for-more-cs-grads-amazon-future-engineer-expands-to-uk <comment><USER2> >Research shows the UK needs 21,000 more computer science graduates on average, every year, to meet the demands of the digital economy.

This contradicts with most of the Amazon Software engineering jobs in the UK which are targeted to mid-seniors only. Given that this is the case, it is better to hire 1,000 senior engineers to do the work of 21,000 CS grads that need to be trained for the job, which doing that is costly.

The UK just doesn't have the core computer science skills that are needed by FAANG companies. Amazon just bring in engineers from other countries on a work visa just to 'fill in the demand'.</comment>