Defense Secretary Ash Carter Releases Hack the Pentagon Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/802929/defense-secretary-ash-carter-releases-hack-the-pentagon-results <comment><USER2> Perhaps .mil and .gov will quickly scan the rest of their systems for the same set of vulnerabilities, but I fear it is more likely that they will spend months in the RFP and contract process, and get around to scanning systems for the _same set_ of vulnerabilities 1 or 2 fiscal years from now.

<comment><USER2> The defense.gov story has much more detail than the phys.org version I was working from.

[http://phys.org/news/2016-06-hack-pentagon-reveals- flaws.htm...](http://phys.org/news/2016-06-hack-pentagon-reveals-flaws.html)

defense.gov: _Starting this month, DoD is embarking on three follow-on initiatives. First, will be the development of a vulnerability disclosure process and policy for DoD so anyone with information about vulnerabilities in DoD systems, networks, applications, or websites can submit it to the department without fear of prosecution. Next will be the expansion of bug bounty programs to other DoD Components, in particular the Services, by developing a sustainable DoD-wide contract vehicle. Lastly, incentives will be included in our acquisition policies and guidance so that contractors practice greater transparency, and open their own systems for testing - especially DoD source code._</comment></comment>


Another dubious claim that someone has "decoded" the Voynich manuscript - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/no-someone-hasnt-cracked-the-code-of-the-mysterious-voynich-manuscript/ <comment><USER2> Of all the Voynich theories, I find those suggesting it was produced through a mechanistic method to be most persuasive. Several statistical properties of the words just don't match up with any natural languages, and there is a large amount of repetition of individual words with small variations, but hardly any repeated phrases. One recent idea is that successive words were copied from early ones, with small rearrangements of the glyphs [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.6639.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.6639.pdf) . As such, the text gains the characteristic of looking like a language, when in fact it is meaningless gibberish. Possibly this was done as way of fooling somebody rich to buy it; at some point it came into the possession of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, and was clearly a very desirable artifact even in the 17th century.

<comment><USER3> The "hoax" is a tempting hypothesis. There were many suckers who would have paid big bucks for a mysterious manuscript.

But... how would a medieval forger know about linguistic patterns of natural languages, that weren't discovered until centuries later?

The Turkish guy's hypothesis sounds like the most plausible.

<comment><USER4> Hoax should be the hypothesis of last resort. If you have a theory that Voynich is written in a specific cipher or language, you can test it via internal consistency, reconstruction, cognates or sound laws. Statistically, Voynich has morpheme distributions typical of spoken language. Someone could have generated the text from a random distribution or method, but that's a non-falsifiable hypothesis.. given some statistics you can always generate such a trivial theory

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clearly it's written in Medieval Perl.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah this was fun to read about when the Guardian mentioned it a week or so back. The guy appears to have invented a language (Proto-Romance) and made claims that this was the usual script for said language, and cracked decoding it. And all this after only two weeks study.

Anything that can shed new light on the book is intriguing, but I'm not buying this without extraordinary evidence.

<comment><USER7> "Extrapolated" might be a better term than "invented", to be fair to him. His "Proto-Romance" seems to be an attempt to extrapolate an intermediate between Vulgar Latin and the early Romance languages after they had differenciated into Old French, Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, &c.

"Proto-Romance" is a real term, but it's typically used to refer to Vulgar Latin.

<comment><USER8> Speaking as someone with a linguistics background, I would say "cobbled together" is more accurate. Cheshire's "proto-Romance" was built by choosing words more or less at random from various Romance dictionaries (and a few non- Romance ones) without coming up with a rigorous explanation of the grammar or the sound changes which produced this result.

Usually, if you're proposing a proto-language, you need to give a consistent and reasonable set of rules that have both explanatory and predictive capability in terms of one language becoming another. I can posit a rule, for example, that a Latin _b_ in between vowels becomes a _v_ in Italian: the Latin _taberna_ becomes the Italian _taverna_ , the Latin _diabolus_ becomes the Italian _diavolo_ , the Latin _habere_ becomes the Italian _avere_. This rule means that given a Latin word, I can predict what an Italian word descended from it would look like, and similarly, if I have an Italian word, I can speculate what the Latin word it descended from would look like if it were indeed of Latin origin.

The Cheshire paper makes no effort to explain the rules that get you from Latin to his "Proto-Romance", and in turn to modern Romance languages. It's all ad-hoc, based on grabbing whatever happened to resemble his decoding, which is why words are borrowed from wherever he could find a match.

(Also: to be totally pedantic, the _b_ -becomes- _v_ rule mentioned above is not the complete story, and there are exceptions, e.g. Latin _habitus_ becomes Italian _abito_. It's a good first approximation, though.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Language Log discussion: [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42749](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=42749)

</comment><comment><USER10> This video explains it all:

[https://youtu.be/lhtZc-nFNt0](https://youtu.be/lhtZc-nFNt0)

<comment><USER4> This was a low-effort post, but I agree that Derek Vogt/Stephen Bax's theory is under-appreciated. Other hypotheses are either nationalistic , working back from the author's favorite theory to justify why it's Hindi/Turkish/your culture here, or flavors of the null hypothesis, such as explaining away the linguistic patterns as a sophisticated bogus language.

Vogt starts by comparing the writing system to similar-looking classes, identifying internal (in)consistencies and _testing_ the theories on likely cognates for stars and plants.

Derek did a good job with internal reconstruction, and in light of the recent star chart update someone with knowledge of Romani should attempt to falsify his hypothesis. You might not succeed, but honest historical linguistics is a satisfying journey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love that book.

Every time I look at it, I get the feeling someone had a vision. Maybe took something particularly great. Maybe was just a little too bat shit. Maybe drank bad mead?

Whatever the source for the excellent illustrations, they convey a strange land with compelling oddities. It is all fantastic!

Should this prove to be trolling?

Epic whoever you were. Well played.

<comment><USER12> I think the Voynich Manuscript was written by someone who let his/her part of the brain responsible for language understanding run in reverse, so generating a new language. This new language, "speaking in tongues", follows the rules of Universal Grammar, so all frequency analysis will point to it being a legit language, yet the language itself will be forever indecipherable. The same holds for the undeciphered Zodiac cyphers. The "one time pad" used by the creators was probably forgotten the next day.

<comment><USER13> The phenomena you mentioned (speaking in tongues) is called Glossolalia, and yeah, it is essentially rhythmic mouth yapping with enough resemblance to other 'human utterances' to be misread as an actual language.

<comment><USER11> Side note:

I was once part of a youth group and was strongly pressured to do that.

My inhibition was profound. At that moment I gave organized religion up. I am not religious, but do seem spiritual. Go figure.

Between that and being told who to hate and what platinum album was gonna send me to hell, it was enough.

I could have done it that day. Make up some stuff, or just let the vocalizations flow. But why?

I did find the others listening to garner meaning super interesting. There is a sort of resonance possible too. Speakers, or utterers more precisely, pick up common elements. The whole affair becomes sort of tribal.

Over time, all sorts of status, membership, meta basically, is inferred through many sessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I decoded the Voynich manuscript! It just says "Hey lookit this weird crap" over and over in a bunch of made up languages.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why is there any doubt about the age of the manuscript? Hasn't it been carbon- dated?

<comment><USER15> OK, the first link answers the question. Why does the article in ArsTechnica make it sound like it could possibly a fake made by Voynich?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 100% serious, I still maintain this is the most sensible explanation for the Voynich manuscript [https://www.xkcd.com/593/](https://www.xkcd.com/593/), though now I'm starting to consider that hyper_reality's explanation is even better: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962448).

(TL;DR: xkcd - D&D book; hyper_reality - scamming someone rich.)

</comment><comment><USER17> If nothing else, to the non-expert like myself, at least this claim seems plausible. I've seen a wide range of other claims that seem way off-base. It seems unlikely to be of Meso-American origin, for instance.

I kind of hope it remains unsolved. The document is far more compelling as a mystery than whatever its contents might be.</comment>


SF tourist industry struggles to explain street misery to horrified visitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SF-tourist-industry-struggles-to-explain-street-12534954.php <comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16271229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16271229)</comment>


General Purpose Decimal Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> http://speleotrove.com/decimal/

<comment><AUTHOR> This came up in the Z80 and calculator threads, basically some folks care really really deeply about precision. I met Mike Cowlishaw at a conference and used his Java code in building a toy CAD system which could very accurately represent room sized things with a precision of 1 nanometer. (18 digits, 9 ahead and 9 behind the decimal point). Surprisingly it is not too bad carrying around theses 36 digit fixed point numbers.</comment>


Arabic and Hebrew Speakers Can Both Read This Script - <AUTHOR> http://www.wnyc.org/story/arabic-and-hebrew-speakers-can-both-read-script/ <comment><USER2> Which is fascinating, but I'm missing a key part. How do you handle spaces in one word? Ie what if the words in the two languages don't have the same length? I'd assume it'd start to look as "ugly" as the sliced english. And I looked but didn't notice any examples of it (although I don't read hebrew or arabic).

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone should create a high-density programming font based on this principle.</comment>


Phone Makers Could Cut Off Drivers. So Why Don't They? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/technology/phone-makers-could-cut-off-drivers-so-why-dont-they.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> It would be a massive breakthrough in machine learning to create software that figures out if the phone is being held by a driver or passenger, and unsurprisingly this article claims they "could" do it without presenting a method. What a load of rubbish.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. A related issue: the console in most cars disables many functions while in motion, such as the ability to dial a phone number or change settings. That prevents the _passenger_ from doing so as well.

<comment><USER4> What consoles do that? I never experienced that, even basic cars like a rental Ford Focus give you full control from the steering wheel including making a call.

<comment><USER5> My roommate's late-model Subaru Crosstrek. We seriously have to pull off to the side of the road so that I (the passenger) can change the BT pairing so that my phone plays music instead of his. The experience is so incredibly aggravating that it has put me off Subarus completely.

<comment><USER6> My Hyundai won't let you pair a phone while moving, but it will let you switch which previously paired phone it is connected to while moving. It's critical for couples that share cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What an absolute waste of an article. It just repeats itself over and over and over quoting different people each time.

"They should fix it, blah blah blah. Make them do it, blah blah blah."

If you don't answer the question of HOW then you just completely wasted your readers time.

There is the tiniest mention in passing about something using sound waves to guess the location of the person holding the phone. It doesn't work well.

And that's it. What a useless article.

<comment><USER8> Gave up less than 3 paragraphs in...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "But if the behavior has addictive qualities, can drivers really be expected to police themselves?" the article asks, nearly at it's end. Not answering it, of course, because if drivers actually are responsible for their actions, the rest of the story in meaningless.

<comment><USER9> Yea, that's just one step down the path to a world where meaningless and unscientific personality tests (which is all of them) are used to dictate who is allowed to do what, all in the name of safety. I would much rather have the liberty rather than the illusion of safety.

Another way to look at it is that, to quote Heinlein, ignorance is it's own death penalty. In principle the people dumb enough to drive while texting will kill themselves faster than people who aren't so dumb. On the other hand the risk of collateral damage is pretty high, so it could be ineffective. Having the police issue citations for it is not very effective, but probably worth it. Not an easy problem to solve, and one that's only going to get worse.

I think that the only technical solution that might fix it would be truly self-driving cars, and you have to expect that to be pretty far off. Even if they were available right now it would take at least a decade to get good enough market penetration to really reduce the risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are what technology, pray tell, will prevent the driver from user their phone while driving, while at the same time allowing their passengers to use their own phones?

Also: a great way to put Uber and Lyft out of business.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Even ignoring things like gps / maps, music, and audiobooks / podcasts, car passengers will not tolerate their phone being disabled. Or passengers on public transit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What kind of infantilized nanny-state fingerpointing scapegoat culture are we living in here? It is beyond ridiculous to say phone makers should be responsible for fixing this problem. Not just because of the impossibility, but because of the slippery slope of impossibility for all the other things that all the hand-wringing in the world won't put under the control of major corporations' safety initiatives.

How about this: texting while driving is as dangerous as drinking and driving yes? How about giving it commensurate penalties and drivers license revocation?

<comment><USER12> Or we could have the phone makers fix it directly.

There. Problem solved.

And we didn't even need to get thousands of local government agencies involved in enforcement! We just fixed the problem at the source: the cell phone manufacturers.

Would you rather fix a million separate problems - the millions of texting drivers - or one problem at the cell phone manufacturer?

How much would your solution cost vs my solution?

Systematic solutions that remove human judgement from the solution will always be better than any solution that's dependent on human judgement to work.

The nanny state exists because people are dangerous idiots. And they need to be nannied.

<comment><USER7> You didn't solve anything. You did the equivalent of yelling and crying and saying "you fix it".

Unless you also have a suggestion of _how_ to do it?

<comment><USER12> The solution is to force phone manufacturers to disable phones in moving cars.

<comment><USER13> So passengers phones are disabled, too?? No thanks.

<comment><USER14> How many dead souls per passenger phone call are you willing to trade off?

<comment><USER11> You say that in a shocked tone as if we don't already accept a huge number of motor vehicle deaths for the convenience of driving.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't exactly answer the question now, does it?

 _Tu quoque_ fallacy.

It also presumes my lack of awareness of the additional problems.

As I'd commented and cited in this thread: mobile-device distracted driving is a factor in 25% of motor vehicle accidents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Today while I was driving I was waiting to make a right turn. I waited for a car to pass and then pulled out and followed the car. While the car was passing me I could see the driver texting. It was a teenager / early 20s. I followed him for 3 miles on my way to my destination. The speed limit is 50 mph. There are trees on either side of the road and the road is pretty narrow. There are hills and curves so visibility is pretty limited.

The teenager was all over the road. At one point he crossed into oncoming traffic while he was going up a hill with limited visibility. It's a marvel he wasn't killed. I vowed never to bike along the road in this community. This kid could have easily killed someone.

I was in a rural community. Lyft /uber aren't a solution. I'm not sure if the phone companies can solve this but man it's super dangerous out there if you aren't in a car.

<comment><USER16> In my neighborhood, we have had a lot of cars driving into fixed objects like trees and buildings, during clear weather. It feels like texting while driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Um because many people use phones in cars who are "not" driving. How are companies suppose to determine when a phone is being used by a driver vs the passenger right next to them or the people in the back seats? For someone not driving there are countless good uses such as taking photos/video of sights, games, directions and more such as calling someone for an address, or for reporting your own or someone elses emergency.

Trying to ban it will never work since people will always find a way around it or even worse alternatives, and any company that does, another company will exist or popup offering the ability.

Just like with the industry trying to stop illegal music downloads it was futile to stop them until instead the provided a better alternative (cheap streaming, easily accessible high quality music). In the case of cars, Apple and Google are hoping to entice users into using safer more convenient options that holding a phone in their hand, with CarPlay and Android. The downside being it will take a long time before the average person has a car with that available.

</comment><comment><USER18> Same reason car radios don't lock out their controls when the car is in motion, and why the driver's side visor flap doesn't lock up the mirror.

<comment><USER19> Cars do lock out everything on the console except maybe the volume control.

<comment><USER20> Some cars. All my Audi locks out is pairing a new phone. Most rental cars I've had are similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be an adult and don't use your phone while you're driving. Tired of this argument.

<comment><USER21> It's true. Better yet, disable cellular access for most apps when you don't have Wi-Fi - to your pleasant surprise you might actually start noticing the world around you, driving or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Matt Richtel, the author of this piece, is not unfamiliar with the subject of distracted driving. Indeed, he's written the book on the subject: _A Deadly Wandering: A tale of tragedy and redemption in the age of attention_

[http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of- tra...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of-tragedy-and- redemption-in-the-age-of-attention/oclc/889949815&referer=space_alien_cat)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's very simple: I will not purchase a phone with this feature. Period. I don't need technology nannying me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hold phone manufacturer, vendor, and carrier executives, engineers, and sales and marketing staff responsible for manslaughter charges for each death linked to phone use whilst driving.

I suspect a solution to the problem will be found rapidly.

This is a problem. It's a _current_ problem. People die, at the rate of 350 per year: [http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities- ce...](http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-cell-phone- crash-data.aspx)

Cellphone use causes over 1 in 4 car accidents: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphon...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphone- use-1-in-4-car-crashes/7018505/)

An earlier study put cell phone distraction at 2,600 deaths, _and another 330,000 injuries_ , in 2005: [http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell- phones-kill-thou...](http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell-phones-kill- thousands-snarl-traffic.html)

Those are lives snuffed out or altered forever, plus the families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers affected. Hundreds of thousands directly, millions indirectly.

For the convenience of a text, phone call, or music?

If the issue is one of driver (or passenger) convenience, versus _the lives_ of innocent drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, or pedestrians unfortunate enough to share the road with those who are unable to resist the lure of devices _designed to be as addictive as possible_ , then I'm going to side with safety, and against convenience. We've tried common sense. It's not working, people.

The largely irrational invective expressed within this thread against the suggestion itself strikes me as a very strong argument for technolgical blocks an very strong product liability, such as that which I lead off this comment with.

The argument that self-driving cars is an easier problem to solve than "is my cellphone being used in a car", or even "is my cellphone being used by a driver in a car", strikes me as ... less than convincing. I may be wrong.

The point that an immediate retroactive software or OS change can fix the problem, but self-driving cars will take a a minimum years, if not a decade or more, to emerge (if ever) seems to have escaped many as well.

Neither is is the job of an op-ed writer in a nontechnical newspaper to supply the technical solution. We don't require those calling for a public policy or international relations measure to specify turnkey solutions. Only to make a compelling case that the change ought be implemented.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, LG, Samsung, and many others have been murderously irresponsible.

Including, I'm quite sad to say, far too many HN commenters here.</comment>


A Methodology for Retiring Products - <AUTHOR> http://neovintage.org/2016/01/24/a-methodology-for-retiring-products/ <comment><USER2> Here's my strategy, which seems to work. Build product A to the point where it can run on its own with a skeleton support team.

Build product B such as if it is a completely new product. Incentivize people to move from A to B. Don't bitch if they don't. They'll keep paying you and won't cost you much to support.

If the domain changes such that it requires drastic changes to product A, then you didn't do step 1 properly.

It's working so far for the product I have now. The biggest complaint is "Hey, I hate the way you did X, I want the other one back." "OK, here you go: <url>".

They keep paying.

I don't understand it. The new one is awesome. Ah well.

</comment><comment><USER3> It helps if your industry has an accepted framework for EOLs. Semiconductors, for example, has a commonly used spec with recommended data, timeframes and communication styles.

It also helps if you risk-manage your supply chain. Most of the hardware EOLs that I've seen involve a 3rd party supplier suddenly shelving a factory or piece of equipment with little notice.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Recommendations for moving to another service.

I think the article understates the importance of this. As a customer, I won't be nearly as upset about a product being killed if you show me some good alternatives, so that's critical.</comment>


Should Your Startup Offer Virtual Internships? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2011/03/should-your-startup-offer-virt.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d7a3cce163b2cf0%2C0 <comment><AUTHOR> I have multiple students, with tons of passion, from great schools wanting to work at my company - but i feel like it would be difficult without being able to sit next to the kid and really teach them / explain what we need!

</comment><comment><USER2> I've explored various "virtual internships" but was told by every formal internship program that they required a physical office space with full time, on site, supervision.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really?? Have you ever worked with companies like youtern? Internmatch? There are some cool options out there for virtual interns but just unclear if there is less value for both parties?</comment></comment>


Fukushima clean-up falters six years after tsunami - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-falters-six-years-after-tsunami <comment><AUTHOR> I would love to have more information about why are the robots unsuccessful. Is it such a challenge to send a cable connected robot into a damaged building?

<comment><USER2> From what I read a few weeks back, the radiation is so strong that it affects the machine even with additional shielding. The robots don't last very long when the go inside and the closer to the core the quicker they burn out.</comment></comment>


It's Official but Sad: TrueOS Is over as Once the Best Desktop BSD OS - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-More-TrueOS&utm_source=discoverbsd <comment><USER2> I'm not surprised at all. I followed PC-BSD since from time to time since its inception. With only one developer and hundreds of users and no sponsorship it was to be expected.

Maybe it would be a good idea for FreeBSD team to release an official GUI installer since some folks want to run it on the desktop.</comment>


What Every Founder Should Know When an Acquirer Comes Calling - <AUTHOR> http://exitround.com/what-every-founder-should-know-when-an-acquirer-comes-calling-acquisition-exit/?utm_content=buffer2bb78&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

<comment><USER2> My bet: the most important bit of advice you could give any startup about managing acquisition offers is: _assume the offer is going to fall through_. Funding negotiations are something many startups have a lot of experience with, and they're notorious for unraveling late in the game. Acquisition talks are much worse: they take longer and are more likely to fall apart.

An acquisition negotiation that dies late in the game is especially demoralizing. When you're getting a company funded, you're talking to lots of different investors, and may even have multiple paths to fund the company (institutional VC, a convertible debt round, &c). But failing to close an acquisition feels more like a verdict about the company and its prospects. For one thing, you have fewer potential acquirers than investors. For another, to get even a little bit engaged in an acquisition talk, you have to get yourself in the mindset of a near-future exit.

Things to watch out for:

* The (usually inadvertent) management shift from sales to "business development", where you start bouncing around the industry talking to different people about acquisitions

* Acquirer optionality --- the article correctly points out that the acquiring _firm_ isn't necessarily prioritizing lower valuation about all else, but remember that deals are usually instigated and closed by specific _people_ in the firm, whose careers are most definitely going to be evaluated by the perceived success of the purchase --- long story short, the bizdev guy at your potential acquirer is likely to keep you on the hook longer than you'll be comfortable.

* Infecting your team. I'm actually not sure it's all that standard for acquirers to do rolling team interviews. I've been a part of a couple (and a party to a couple more) now and haven't been formally interviewed despite very senior roles. I'd be wary of letting an acquirer "interview" anyone on my team before I was reasonable sure the deal will close.

The other thing to know about acquisitions is that they are _fucking expensive_. If you haven't done one, you probably have no idea. You are going to get very, very friendly with corporate attorneys, and if you've got counsel now reviewing sales contracts and whatnot, be aware that the attorneys that manage your warrants and reps and stuff are way way more expensive than those contract review people are.

The good news about legal expense and team risk is that they can be used as deal qualifiers: if an acquirer balks about committing to something before interviewing the team, or about legal costs, the deal might not be there. If it isn't, it's important that you know that!

<comment><USER3> Absolutely spot-on. ALWAYS assume it's going to fall through, and put your BUSINESS first, not the discussions. As long as you keep the business growing, the acquirer will not walk away (assuming they're serious in the first place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly disagree with some of this advice. No detailed term sheet, no access. No one gets to interview team members before "It's at this point the buyer should come to you with a pretty cut-and-dried view of exactly how they're looking at the transaction."

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps ridiculous to even consider this at the early stage we're at, but that was full of useful information to bear in mind to avoid missing an opportunity.

Particularly appreciate being made aware of the preparation that can be done in advance.</comment>


Digital Minimalism for the Working Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zdsmith.com/posts/digital-minimalism-for-the-working-hacker.html <comment><USER2> To me, true minimalism on my desktop came from stopping messing around with different window managers, IDEs, whatever to try to maximize my experience.

Specifically, command line interfaces to Slack and GPM just add more headache and frustration.

My setup: a terminal with tmux; Firefox; Spotify. (Recently switched from GPM, would recommend). Stock everything except dark themes on some stuff and caps lock->ctrl.

I don't have some super-enlightened workflow where everything is in terminal or has keybinds or something. But more importantly, I'm not continually wasting time on changing my env and adding complexity.

<comment><USER3> Learning to stop spending so much time customizing everything and work with the defaults was one of the hardest but most productive lessons I've learned over the years. I used to have a custom bashrc and custom vim and everything on my phone was custom and I put a lot of effort into it. I even found the perfect keyboard layout for me and switched my keyboards to that. To the point where I couldn't effectively use someone else's machine.

And then I became a consultant and was logging into someone else's machine every day, often when I couldn't install any customizations at all. I learned to love bash as-is, and vim as-is. And my custom launcher stopped working, so I switched back to the default Android launcher. And then my work gave me an iPhone that I couldn't customize. And suddenly I was spending more time working and less time customizing and my productivity shot through the roof. All I had to do was stop seeking things to make me work better and actually just start working. And in addition to higher productivity, I now had more free time in the day because my work got done faster.

It really is freeing in a Zen-like fashion to just use a tool as-is and not constantly wonder how you could make it 5% better or 3% faster.

<comment><USER4> The most important, non-default vim configuration for me is line numbers, and a simple "set number" when ssh'ing onto a machine to check logs has basically become my digital equivalent to getting a solid, familiar grip on a hammer before swinging it.

<comment><USER5> :set rnu nu

All I need to get started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author echos some things I've been feeling about my work environment (the desktop). There is a lot of friction that comes when each of my applications wants to be its own immersive experience. My take-away from his post is that he seems to be iterating away from those rich, colorful, and distracting interfaces to something that is kind of interface-less.

This, too, is my dream (or sorts).

\- Spotify without the spotify interface. (Google Music, in his case)

\- Slack without the slack interface (IRC, I guess)

\- Email without the web-client or sluggish Apple mail interface.

I know there are CLI for each of those use cases. But it takes commitment to learn and get them working to your liking.

<comment><USER7> I think I'd go a little further, even: not only is there friction moving from one "immersive" application to another, there seems to be some expenditure of energy necessary to actually make the switch. Each fights in it's own way, not only to deliver on it's function but to somehow tempt you into spending ever more time with that particular application.

A console or text-based interface seems like a big equalizer; for sure it's often easier to manage a console application but it puts hard limits on how much attention these applications may siphon away. Perhaps it's easier for my attention to wander than others, but when the task at hand is particularly boring or unpleasant, I find I can waste quite a lot of time browsing through music or "catching up" on likely useless Slack conversations. Since I've moved them to a text-based interface, I do feel I am wasting time like this far less often.

<comment><USER8> This is exactly the reason why I've tried to port as much stuff as I can to my terminal. Productivity in the sense of using a program faster is a nice by- product, but preserving my attention is way more important to me. To me it seems nowadays you don't pay hard cash for things online, you pay in attention. I'm trying to get my digital experience to serve me again instead of me serving to something which I'm using.

On a sidenote: Any tips on making my digital experience less attention focused? For instance I would really like to use surf or uzbl but they don't have support for MacOS and I would still need an adblocker/ reader mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > There's a way in which you could say that Emacs is a place whereas vi is a > tool.

This really resonates with me, and I have to say I agree.

I try to treat my browser as a tool, it holds state only for as long as it's open. I pretend that at any time the browser (or computer) could crash and I would loose my place.

I use my web browser (I switched back to Firefox from many years with Chrome) very similar to how I use my email inbox.

For email this is "inbox zero". If I need to reread an email, respond, or do something with a message, I mark it as unread. Unread stuff gets cleared at least once a day (often more now that I have a smart phone). I open my email and work it down to zero (or as close as I can) and then I close it. Email acts as a tool, a communication / todo list, hybrid.

An unread email is the same as an open browser tab, it symbolizes work-in- progress.

With my web broswer, I open it as needed and open as many tabs or even windows as I need. When a tab, window, or page is no longer needed, I close it.

To "save" a page I create a bookmark (but I can't tell you the last time I've actually used bookmarks to find something). Another way I "save" is when I'm tearing down my web browser, I pull a page's tab out into it's own window. This marks it as "unread"; I need to do something with it.

This process doesn't really save the page, it just allows me to clear out the other tabs and context out of my head. It helps me focus, and reminds me to just do that task on the single tab instead of letting it linger.

I close my web browser multiple times a day.

I follow this practice with my terminal windows as well.

<comment><USER10> To easily emulate this sort of browser behavior, just use it in Porn Mode (Privacy Mode).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The way I see it, my whole computing environment is necessarily a kind of place. Emacs happens to be a really good one.

So, I use Emacs as a window manager. My computer boots into a full screen Emacs, so I don't think of it as opening Emacs — I think of my computer as an Emacs-based thing, which in turn contains a bunch of other tools (like M-x shell for running shell commands).

The way the author uses xterm with tmux and Vim, I use Emacs instead.

My environment has a large font and no syntax highlighting. I find that language mode regexps so often get confused that they're more annoying than convenient.

I would really, really like to try working with an e-ink monitor. Slow latency and monochrome would be a benefit as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER12> > I find that language mode regexps so often get confused that they're more > annoying than convenient.

For what language modes do you have that experience? I haven't used emacs myself much, but in other editors, most syntax highlighting descriptions are pretty good. The only exception to this rule is highlighting Haskell, which is apparently a monstrous challenge that no-one can even do remotely well.

<comment><USER11> It's really, really hard to make a completely correct mode based on regexes—just consider the challenge of writing a regex that correctly highlights the syntax of regex itself, which you need for JavaScript, Ruby, and lots of other languages.

Heredocs in shell, metaprogramming tricks in Ruby, reader extensions in Lisp, nested quotes, etc etc etc—I might be weird, but I feel like I run into these edge cases a lot, when editors think my parens are unbalanced when they're actually not, and so on.

Auto-indentation rarely formats things the way I want, too, and I very rarely need anything more advanced than shifting blocks in and out.

I also just find it a bit strange that we have culturally started to believe that editing code is nearly _unthinkable_ without different colors everywhere!

<comment><USER12> I completely agree that highlighting code with regexps is almost useless, but if emacs is not capable of doing more than that (or its language modes usually do not do more than that), I think that emacs is at fault here, not syntax highlighting.

In sublime text, for example, the syntax definitions are basically stack machines (if I'm not mistaken), and can therefore parse any context-free grammar. This is clearly powerful enough to handle all the edge cases you mention.

<comment><USER11> Well, that's cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Every change I've made in my working environment over the past year or so > has also been a lessening of immersiveness. My interfaces have become less > rich, less colorful, less dynamic.

I really like the author's place -vs- tool metaphor to contrast wannabe immersive experiences with tools that stay out of your way. I don't think it makes sense to avoid having places you go to (where you feel "at home") -- I mean that very generally, but even in the specific case of computing, your goto places might be your favorite browser, the command line, the unix system, Emacs, your IDE etc. A place where you feel at home, at control, with a sense of the multitude of possibilities lying ahead, and still in the driver's seat.

The important requirement then is that the environment shouldn't try to nudge you around (especially towards misaligned goals). This is where most web/software platforms of today come up short, IMHO.

This metaphor is also the best elucidation of Alan Kay's pithy quote (reproduced approximately): To me, a computer is worth more than my car, because of all the things it enables me to do. Most people, however, pay about as much for a computer, as they pay for a TV, and use it in roughly the same way.

<comment><USER14> I also like the distinction of "tool" and "place". It feels like a useful mental concept.

I can see a relation to the economics of software development. Companies want their products to be places, so they capture a slice of your attention and deepen awareness of their brand. Nvidia is an example: It is just a single part of the computer hardware, yet it comes with a GUI tool and often demands attention.

Free software can afford to become a tool. Imagine if you boot a Linux desktop and various involved projects show you a series of splash screens first: This desktop experience brought to you by systemd, dbus, dnsmasq, CUPS, NetworkManager, PulseAudio, Gnome, Mozilla Firefox, Gnome Keyring Daemon, gvfsd, and bash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else remember the WinAmp era of music software? There was a time when basically every app for playing music on your computer lived inside a little floating window that you carried with you to all of the other apps you were using at the time.

That really did help me think of my music player as a tool and not a place. Though the little scrolling text could be distracting sometimes, I do occasionally find myself missing that style of interface.

<comment><USER16> Well, I've never had a single reason for abandoning WinAmp for playing music that lives on my hard drive - so yes, I do remember.

WinAmp is a tool, and it still works. If you aren't using it, perhaps you actually want a place instead of a tool?

<comment><USER15> I do still want a tool, but I no longer maintain a local corpus of music files. I prefer streaming services these days.

<comment><USER16> Yup, but a streaming music service is a place. A tool is something that you have.

For that matter, Winamp is still a tool you can use to access streaming services: rtsp streams / internet radio / ShoutCast / etc.

The problem is not with the tool, it's with the places you want to bring your tools to. They specifically don't allow you to do that. They close down the API's and take down alternative clients.

Spotify feels like a place because it is a place, and it's not your home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "There's a way in which you could say that Emacs is a place whereas vi is a tool."

As an Emacs user, I agree with this. The author's preference for more tools and fewer immersive applications still resonates with me because I see Emacs as a place for all the tools I need for development and writing.

<comment><USER18> That's true. Emacs is a platform, a virtual Lisp machine. The Web is another platform. Plus our OS plumbing, usually Unix.

Understanding my computer this way has brought me a lot of sanity. I only use a tiling window manager (xmonad), Emacs, a browser (firefox) and a Unix terminal (urxvt).

Previously I was trying to move most of my computing into pure Unix CLI. While it was fast and simple, I found most ncurses applications (e.g. mutt, remind, irssi) do not really compose as well as simple Unix programs do (e.g. wc, grep, xargs). Moving everything to elisp packages instead (e.g. org, notmuch, magit), where all elisp nicely blends together has been a great improvement. Plus dealing with configuration in a functional way, by switching to NixOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems I'm heading in similar direction as author of the post. I switched from Gnome to i3 (I don't even have display manager installed), from Nautilius to ranger and then to [lf]([https://github.com/gokcehan/lf](https://github.com/gokcehan/lf)). I use a lot of CLI tools like weechat. I'v been using Emacs for few months but now I prefer Kakoune - it's easier to customize. My [website]([https://www.teddydd.me/](https://www.teddydd.me/)) is pure html+css brutalism without single line of JavaScript...

I just feel tired of huge, complicated software that requires big time investment to customize. I want things to be simple and modular. My setup is not beautiful, might have fewer features than full DE, but it's ergonomic and I understand what all my configs do.

</comment><comment><USER20> i3wm has been a huge productivity boost for me as a development machine at home for the following reasons:

      - no distractions
      - minimalism, most navigation on the keyboard
      - easy to setup a startup script that preloads your default screens / workspaces / apps setup
      - easy to map your workspaces in your mind

From machine boot to coding: 30 seconds.

[https://twitter.com/Phonosheet/status/952179820447911936](https://twitter.com/Phonosheet/status/952179820447911936)

<comment><USER21> I've been experimenting with moving my "getting work done" setup over to an old laptop running just Mint Linux for that exact reasoning. I end up getting so distracted on my MacPro desktop, because it's got everything on there. Movies/Games/Messaging/Email etc. I need just a distraction free environment that still allows me to do web development.

<comment><USER22> Instead of mint, if you are doing a new install and looking for a minimalist approach with i3, consider wattOS distro microwatt edition.

I found it on distrowatch; I installed it about 6 months ago on an old laptop and I'm pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the response, is that based on debian/ubuntu? I need to have that environment to mirror production environments.

<comment><USER23> Yes.

[http://planetwatt.com/new/index.php/about/](http://planetwatt.com/new/index.php/about/)

"wattOS is a lightweight Linux operating system remastered from the core Ubuntu Linux build."

<comment><USER20> I did not know the existence of this distribution, thanks i'll look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Emacs doesn't feel like either a tool or a place to me. If you use emacsdaemon and emacsclient, it becomes not a fixed place you work in, or a completely static tool, but something like a part of the ether you can draw from when needed. There's background state, but much less of the spatial/navigational burdens the author talks about. It's interesting they go on to mention mpd.

I'm not just saying this just to nitpick - I think the stateful daemon concept is a useful extension to the place/tool metaphor and might be a way to achieve the author's desired web browsing experience.

For example, what if web browsers could move tabs to a sort of "invisible window", and there was some shell command like "recall-tab Hacker News" which foregrounded them into a new window? I think something like this might be already possible with something like surf or uzbl and window manager cooperation.

<comment><USER25> Most tabbed browsers allow opening pages in a new tab. At a previous job I used [https://github.com/mbhutton/chrome-duplicate-tab- detector](https://github.com/mbhutton/chrome-duplicate-tab-detector) ( [http://chriswarbo.net/git/chrome-duplicate-tab- detector](http://chriswarbo.net/git/chrome-duplicate-tab-detector) ) for chrome, which was useful for switching to URLs from other programs (e.g. if a Web site's integration test failed, the error message would include a URL to see what (unexpected) output was found)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Funny because I just went the other way. I was running Arch/i3 on a Lenovo W530 I had for work. At some point I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to use my headsets over bluetooth. I wanted to have no issues with monitor DPI and scaling and the dreaded optimus Nvidia technology. I don't want to have to think about which port I use to connect to an external monitor. I want Wifi to be a solved problem. Boot the laptop, choose the network, enter password, done. I want good battery life and the most basic compositing features enabled.

In hindsight it's crazy that I'd fiddle with WM_STATE_SOMETHING in compton so that X has shadow but Y doesn't if they overlap with transparency (or something like that). My dunst notifications looked very aesthetically pleasing but... so do countless default notifications on mainstream distros.

Yes, the whole mopidy/mcp/whatever looks really rad, especially if a program uses vi(m) keyboard shortcuts, but my music player really isn't something I want to think about and learn. Playing music isn't such an integral part of my work day that I need to make it more efficient.

I am now using a MacBook Pro at work and on my desktop at home I use Antergos with Gnome. The latter is perfect as it gives me up-to-date packages and easy access to the AUR, while still coming with the bells and whistles of Gnome.

I am also not sure if tiling windows really improve your productivity. I would say that most people would be better of having their apps on full-screen, to minimize distractions, instead of having all sorts of windows side-by-side.

Ultimately I nowadays resonate more with what some other posts have mentioned: pick a platform and programs with sane defaults and only deviate from them if it's really worth it. If your job requires you to look at several terminals at the same time constantly and things like terminator/tmux/gnome-terminal don't do it, then sure, look into i3 (herbstluftwm/[insert flavor of the month]). Anything else I would now consider premature optimization.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting read, but ultimately I was left confused as to the purpose of the article. As far as I can tell it was to express the author's disdain for the modern web stack (an embarrassment for web devs, to be sure) and to advocate using vim (yawn).

<comment><USER28> I think I mainly understand the point author tries to make: for example, it takes time to learn all of the shirtcuts in any GUI application (let's say, Slack) and become a power-user in it; so why not have a proper console interface if it's the same case for pushing buttons?

Nevertheless Slack still manages to do it badly: Cmd+Shift+K takes 3 seconds to load the list of channels for a quick jump. How's that considered usable?

It's something I generally miss: the ability to do actions using the keyboard. I think IDEA did it relatively well: their double-shift "Search everywhere" window works both fast and literally searches everything, providing something quite familiar to the console.

<comment><USER29> > it takes time to learn all of the shirtcuts in any GUI application

I'd say in most cases it takes more time to learn a console application. GUI's these days are, mostly, pretty intuitive. CLI applications are not intuitive at all.

The difference is, for me, that GUI use quickly levels out in efficiency. _If_ I have learned the CLI commands and know them well, I generally can do tasks a whole lot quicker than a GUI I know well. It just has a higher up-front cost, which may be very worth it, to not worth it at all, depending on how much you use the application.

<comment><USER11> CLI programs that have decent --help feel very intuitive to me, especially if they're designed by someone with experience using command line tools.

GUI programs can be intuitive too, but they also have their own special anti- intuitive things: meaningless icons, weird drag and drop paradigms, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Emacs is sort of a weird beast -- simultaneously tool and workbench. It can be infinitely shaped to fit the task at hand -- while it is in use -- but it integrates relatively smoothly with all the other tools available in a modern Unix environment, allowing those tools to extend the reach of Emacs without becoming part of it.

But really, I -- and everybody else -- should really just use an IDE. For OO languages you _need_ to have intelligent refactoring (and IntelliSense) and so you _need_ to have an IDE. Refactoring tools are to programming what nondestructive editing is to image editing: a total paradigm shift in workflow that no one these days can live without. It takes a lot of effort to extend Emacs to understand the target language well enough to support these features (and it won't be done in elisp).

</comment><comment><USER31> There's a lot of arguments that various people make regarding the supposed superiority of different setups.

1) It is claimed that using keyboard-only controls reduces "context switching."

2) It is claimed that tiling window managers are simpler and more logical, because you use more of the screen real estate and keep everything open all the time.

3) It is claimed that vim and emacs are better because the brief keyboard commands allow for amazing power with few keystrokes.

Alas, these are almost all arguments voiced by people who grew up with technologies built around severely limited hardware constraints. GUIs were terrible for the longest time, and ten or twenty years ago you certainly couldn't get acceptable performance on them when working remotely.

There are very good reasons why people would avoid all of these tools. Hardware is much better. Compositing window managers are much better.

It is particularly understandable that people avoid vim and emacs. And there's really no empirical evidence at all that they save time, improve accuracy, or anything else.

And any empirical studies on this question would have difficulty isolating the variables. People who do understand systems at the low level, and with all the historical context, could very well be better programmers in some ways... but not because of their environment.

Thinking you could become like Richard Stallman by using emacs is cargo cult reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been fantasizing recently about using a Bluetooth keyboard (Twiddler3) connected to an eInk reader to do most of my work both locally and on remote machines/instances. The eInk reader would have just enough power to run spacemacs. I can currently do this on an Android smartphone, but the experience is lacking because of the screen-size.

<comment><USER33> I already have enough frustration using an eink screen for reading books around the refresh rate of updating that page that I couldn't even imagine the pain of trying to use one interactively.

<comment><USER34> Imagine then what life was like when an editor meant a line editor and output universally referred to stacks of fan-fold green and white lined paper.

The 'refresh rate' of a line editor would be a couple of seconds at best and to do an edit-compile-test cycle would be on the order of a couple of hours, two per day if you are lucky, but most likely only one per day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> related, "Optimal colors to improve readability for people with dyslexia" [1]

[1] [https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text- customization/r11](https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11)

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there an Acme / Plan 9 theme for Sublime? Initial Googlings don't show anything.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can someone please identify the font used in code snippet (image)?

<comment><USER38> [https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/](https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/)

To do this: ctrl+U (in FF) -> look for css link at top of html -> look for font names near top of css.

<comment><USER37> Thanks a ton!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought I was alone.

Every one of us minimalists draws the line somewhere else. I like vim, Python, Rust, RSS, web of documents rather than web of applications, static blog generators, roguelike games, symbols and _symbolic_ graphics in computer games and boardgames. I prefer Ultima IV graphics to Ultima V graphics , because the latter started drawing individual torches, chairs, dishes, bushes, etc.

I'm not anti-modern. I just have an eclectic taste. I pick what I consider the best of various areas. I dislike most social media. I would like Twitter if it wasn't overrun by bots. I have a phone I can throw and break a window with, in fact I fell on it from my bike and it's still okay, but my clavicle broke. When people are starting at their smartphones I either look around (in a bus etc), at other people, through window, or read a book. I'm saving for an E-ink device, it's too bead the technology stagnated because of tablets and smartphones.

I hate being labeled a luddite or cranky because I don't sheepishly run into every innovation. Not all change is progress.

<comment><USER39> > I'm saving for an E-ink device, it's too bead the technology stagnated > because of tablets and smartphones.

While I'm one who thinks there's always room for improvement, I've owned about 5-6 various Kindles and if you're interested in having hundreds of books on one portable device you should just grab one.

I've got the 1st (I believe) Paperwhite and it's all I need. I've looked at the newer Paperwhite and the Oasis but I just don't need the improvements they offer. Any paperwhite is fantastic. The reason I did upgrade to the paperwhite from whatever Kindle I had prior was the backlight was an absolute revolution. I used to have a battery powered light I had to stick on my previous kindle.

The $80 for a Paperwhite is a great deal for what you get. I have 0 complaints. It could be a little faster and I prefer buying books on Amazon from my phone or laptop (edit: and not through the Kindle directly) then reading them on the Kindle but it's not a show stopper at all.

Also, word of advice, if you're into Audible you can often find better deals by buying the Kindle version w/ Whispersync. I've almost bought $15-20 audible books before then saw that the kindle book was $7 and after that purchase the audiobook would be $3-5. It's not always the case but I can frequently find good deals on buying both.

<comment><USER10> It's more matter of lack of money than "waiting for the right one". I would prefer a colorful screen so I can comfortably read programming books too, but there are workarounds, like typeface trickery described in the article.

Also, I would prefer a device that isn't from Amazon. They're probably all "made in China" anyway so any of them can be bugged, I guess...

<comment><USER40> Learn a little about electrical engineering and you can take off your tinfoil hat about everything being "bugged"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like various discussion forums and talking to people online (often on IRC - when I'm programming). I like exchange of ideas, even arguing - as long as it remains respectful.

I consider message boards / forums bloated and clunky. I miss usenet and threaded discussion. Disqus technically does that, but it takes what, 20 seconds to load ? And after recent acquisition it's only going to get worse.

I think threaded discussion is much more like natural human conversation than "topics" on message boards. That's shoe-horning discussion. They invariably get off topic sooner or later, and moderators pride themselves on deleting posts that stray too far.

It boggles my mind why topic-based message boards remain popular.

<comment><USER41> Maybe Talkyard is a bit different? It's new forum software, threaded, inspired by Hacker News: [https://www.talkyard.io](https://www.talkyard.io). (I'm developing it)

With improvements over HN: [https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can- be-improved-...](https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be- improved-3-things)

Hmm I think threaded discussions, make the more sense, the more people join the discussion. If 999 people talk about something, they're going to split up into smaller groups, each group talking about a sub topic = thread. And everything laid out in a flat way = a huge mess. But if just 5 people talk about something — then they can stay focused on the same thing all of them. Flat = more ok.

<comment><USER10> Indentation depth is an issue for me, too. I would solve this differently: color coded post backgrounds (or similar indicators).

Parent post = red indentation 1 = orange yellow, blue, green, brown, grey, black, white, etc. Then colors could cycle.

I think it would make it easy at a glance to recognize which posts respond to what, after some initial getting used to. No clicking required and I think it's more intuitive.

For colorblind users you could use SVG pattern backgrounds. In fact, it could be better for everyone, because you could have more patterns than visually distinct colors.

<comment><USER41> This is an interesting idea I think. Actually, on narrow screens, I don't use more than one or two indentation levels. Thereafter everything is flat — and instead of arrows, there're clickable "In reply to @username" text one can click and jump to the parent comment. Here, the color coding you describe, could maybe be helpful.

When there _is_ enough space for indendation, though, I'd prefer indenting. Otherwise, cannot visualize more than the first indentation depth, right.

(Hmm not sure what you have in mind with _" no clicking required"_ — Hacker News and Talkyard also don't require any clicking?)

<comment><USER10> I don't mean colors _instead_ of indentation, I mean in addition to. Indentation works well when there are very few replies and few indentation levels. But once there's a long debate, it becomes a well. Then when the well ends it's very hard to immediately tell what it's responding to.

No clicking required - I mean clicking to jump to parent. That's introducing GOTOs to online discussion. If possible, I'd rather have a more intuitive way. Or maybe even something as blunt as printing the indentation level directly as a number!

<comment><USER41> Aha, now I think I better understand what you mean. When coloring posts in the way you have in mind, then, to find the parent comment, one would look at the comments above, for a comment in a certain _color_? Then one won't need to rely so much on the indentation depth.

Hmm that's an interesting idea. I'm a bit worried the resulting page would make use of too many colors — maybe a grayscale and patterns would be better (like you mentioned).

One would, however, still need to click-and-jump, or scroll-manually, to find the parent, if one needs to reread it, and it's not on screen. I think the colors would mainly be useful on large screens, where one sees the parent comment without scrolling. On mobiles, I think click-to-jump-to-the-parent is more user friendly (rather than scrolling-scrolling-scrolling and scanning for a certain color).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been running basically the same stuff for the last six years. I have a somewhat modified fork of dwm, a lightly modified version of Termite (simplest working VTE3 terminal I could find), and my emacs (which has had basically the same configuration for the last four years). Most things take up the whole screen or the left or right division of it. I run the same thing on my high memory Xeon workstation that I do on my repurposed Chromebook and my OpenBSD ThinkPad.

I can't really do anything about employer mandated Slack, but most corporate or hosted email is accessible through IMAPS and SMTP. Can't do much about Spotify, but I don't use that while working anyway, I tend to buy music files if it's convenient to do so, and I play those in cmus.

<comment><USER43> Clementine is the simplist Spotify replacement application I could find to avoid using their clunky app.

<comment><USER44> I wish one of the streaming services would just embrace the mpd model and ship as a music daemon that speaks a well-defined protocol + a reference client. They could brand this as something like "music for IoT"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think avoiding mouse interfaces is a valid goal. Mouse is necessary only for a few things:

\- graphical programs (but Blender makes a heavy use of hotkeys) \- some games \- new interfaces. Mouse is easier to use initially. Websites fall into this category, I'd say they're even a pathological case: it's pretty common for a website to radically change its interface. It can be partially dealt with, for example Konqueror used to display link hotkeys when you press CTRL. I need to look it up.

Most of the time you don't require extra precision a mouse offers. A button press is binary, so why require precise movements, mess with icon sizes, etc ?

</comment><comment><USER45> I do this with emacs .</comment>


Ask HN: Any cool project I can do with my 2006 Intel MacBook? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN
I have a 2006 Intel Macbook which surprisingly still works. Are there any cool projects I can do with its components if I took it apart? Crowdsourcing for ideas here. I can pick up basic soldering if needed.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Sell it on eBay and donate the money to your local food bank.

<comment><USER3> Install a lightweight distro on it and donate it to someone who needs a computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just some random ideas: Media server / file server / Pihole

<comment><AUTHOR> oh first time I've heard of pihole. Interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lot of DIY smart mirror projects/tutorials using old hardware on hackaday. No idea how easy or hard dismantling the screen of macbook is though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That site looks interesting</comment></comment>


Open letter to Silicon Valley: A True Story - <AUTHOR> http://technitoblog.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't know, pretty snarky. Seems to read : you guys in the valley are pretenders, we're going to get some "real" ideas to see how you do with them, then we'll uh talk about them.

Ideas are free, if you don't like the investment choices of Y combinator or the rest of the valley than by all means, come on out, put out your shingle, and start funding _real_ game changers. In all seriousness, bring it on, please.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, in an attempt to convey humor it came across as snarky-- which is exactly what I feared would happen. I have a feeling this misunderstanding will likely be perpetual and that is not what I want. So, I decided to word it differently to assure that this isn't perceived as an attack but rather an attempt to rouse whatever it is inside of us that encourages us to aspire to be better. I am beyond glad you were first to comment!

<comment><USER2> Sort of FYI this:

" The irony is that the culture in which these technologies derive from has become a place where democracy is increasingly serving the plutocracy of Silicon Valley, likely at the expense of innovation. "

Isn't humor, it is critique. It is also wrong.

It isn't irony (the word you were going for is paradoxical) there isn't a 'democracy' and there isn't a 'plutocracy'. So when you start that way it sounds like you were going for profound but missed.

My suggestion, if you're open to it, is to actually write what you think you mean. Don't try to make it sound 'smart' just try to make it clear. Use rhetoric you are comfortable with and try to write it at the 'top level' first, which is to say don't try to embed any clever subtext. If you're going to be cynical you should be able to cite examples.

Re-reading it again you're entry says: 1) I'm (the writer) sad

2) I don't understand the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

3) I think people writing about technology are tools and that is part of the problem.

4) I am not like these people who don't have morals I'm going to only write truth.

5) Join my quest but sending all your press releases to me.

Now, if you've been successful at communicating your message to me through your blog (and it is always possible you haven't and I've misread it) then it might have easily been a single paragraph thusly,

"My impression of Silicon Valley is that startups, VCs, and journalists [inadvertently?] collude on creating an understanding of what is worth doing and what isn't. That collusion harms innovation by not giving voice to ideas outside the group. In this blog I'm going to try to look at the ideas that others don't, and bring them to your attention. To avoid conflicts of interest, I don't monetize this content."

If I did correctly read your intent, then it would also help if you provided an argument [1] for this group think you feel is pervasive since that would help people know if you were worth reading, and finally the whole monetization thing is non-obvious. Folks who don't have an obvious source of income for their writing are often treated with great suspicion if it isn't known they are independently wealthy.

[1] Strongly recommend you take this course: [http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.asp...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4294) which will help with that. You can listen to it in your car.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm learning a lot from this exchange. I think your statement is a combination of truth as well as simply misreading what I was trying to say.

Sometimes, I have a tendency to create my own dialect in which only I understand the context (self note: stop doing that). I am of course open to suggestion and you are spot on-- it does sound like i'm trying to sound smart ( _cringe_ ) Def going to re-word that to express myself in a more straightforward manner.

This isn't a blog to enviously rebel against those that have worked and deserve the position they are in, but rather a blog to alleviate the organic ramifications that are out of their control. This isn't a blog to cover startups or ideas that aren't getting covered-- theres likely a reason why they aren't. I am not hating on people that write about technology-- this is their job and many are very good at it. But, the reality is they are working for a company that desires to increase their bottom line just like any other business-- as they should. My point is because of this, the ecosystem is click driven. Which means a much greater frequency of startups will be covered. Which means even if a startup is doing nothing new and the technology is rather unimpressive, the brand attached to it means clicks ($$) so it gets coverage.

When this is done at such a frequency, the greater the likelihood the companies that are doing dynamic things fall through the cracks-- creating a lower standard that isn't producing optimal results of what the space is capable of.

Many of the startups I cover probably will be startups i've read about else where and never even submitted anything. So, in essence this is just a filter to differentiate from startups written for clicks due to brand equity and startups that are doing dynamic things-- built upon a culture that emphatically acknowledges this standpoint. That doesn't mean A16Z startups won't get covered. That doesn't mean Y Combinator companies won't get covered. This does mean not all their portfolio startups are doing dynamic things that legitimately deserve acknowledgement.

And the only way to fully keep intact the integrity of this blog without question is to not monetize. This is a hobby for me. Startups are my passion and I like to write. I love giving product deep thought-- where are they headed with this and what can this ultimately become and what sort of impact can potentially proceed and how this will affect the ecosystem? I want to read about startups that force my mind to think about these things, kind of like your response has forced me to think deeper about this blog. And then cover them from this perspective with the intent to set a higher standard for everyone to aspire to.

That's really all i'm trying to do-- and maybe your standpoint of cynicism is a result of me not initially expressing myself properly (aka the first paragraph).

<comment><USER2> Excellent. I generate lots and lots of communications every day and find that being misread is a way to score my effectiveness. Paul Graham points out that his essays can't really have pages of footnotes to cover all the possible interpretations of the writing and he is correct. We strive to make it understandable to the widest possible audience and go from there.

I suggest you really closely examine this thought :

 _"The reality is they are working for a company that desires to increase their bottom line just like any other business-- as they should. My point is because of this, the ecosystem is click driven. Which means a much greater frequency of startups will be covered. Which means even if a startup is doing nothing new and the technology is rather unimpressive, the brand attached to it means clicks ($$) so it gets coverage."_

There is a whole lot of assumption going on in there, and while you do have to assume some things [1] its not true that you can assume all things. To check yourself you can try to reason your way from first principles to the conclusion that you expressed above.

You can stipulate that businesses want to be profitable. Some will argue with that saying some businesses are non-profits but the point is sufficiently accepted that you can get away with just stipulating it. Then you claim based on that one stipulation that the desire for profit makes the business "click driven." That bit of reasoning is weak, on what basis can you claim that the only source of revenue for the web site is "clicks"? And I'll assume you mean advertising clicks but how does that manifest here? The issue isn't that your claim isn't credible in the small, you can say 'Techcrunch is supported entirely by ad share revenue generated by the click through rate on its pages' (and cite some reference for this), but you cannot generalize and say 'all people who write about technology' live or die by the clicks they get on their blog. I will give you a really clear example,

Robin Harris writes the Storage Mojo blog (<http://storagemojo.com/>) where he talks about trends in the storage industry and the various players. He has advertisements on his blog, but he doesn't live or die by them, rather he lives on being a consultant to folks who want to tap into his wisdom about the storage industry. That wisdom comes from putting in the hours watching the industry. He doesn't care if you don't read his blog, but he does care that Tom Georgens (CEO of Netapp) does. But more importantly to this discussion he is a good example that your assumption about the relationship between tech writers and money, _as a generalization_ , is invalid.

Walking through your own reasoning can be a great way of figuring out if you are 'fooling yourself' or are really on to something. You know others will demand you defend your viewpoint so having done the home work you are prepared to engage right away. Then you jump into this:

 _"When this is done at such a frequency, the greater the likelihood the companies that are doing dynamic things fall through the cracks-- creating a lower standard that isn't producing optimal results of what the space is capable of."_

This is a pretty classic move. It reads like you have convinced yourself that the reason you haven't found folks who talk about these innovative startups is because all tech journalists are click driven, and thus 'the space' is not performing as efficiently as it could.

The challenge though is that your reasoning is counter to about 200 years of free market research starting with Adam Smith. It would be safer to start with the assumption that free markets work and are efficient and thus if you're not seeing the content out there that you would expect, you should dig into why that is. (hint: it isn't because the techno-journalists are click whores)

Last bit as this is getting too long, this one:

 _"And the only way to fully keep intact the integrity of this blog without question is to not monetize. This is a hobby for me. Startups are my passion and I like to write. I love giving product deep thought-"_

Integrity comes from the author, not from the money (or lack thereof, I know people with no money and no integrity). Great to make a statement of your principles on your blog somewhere and actually stick to them. Do that long enough and people will believe you. The rest of this statement is pure gold, you are passionate about startups and you like to think deeply about them. So go forth and do that, write your pen dry as my grandfather once said. Don't over think it. There is a good chance nobody will care, but in your passion you will find reward (one of the ways I tell people they can discriminate between true passion and one that isn't, is people engaged in their true passion don't care at all if nobody else cares, just the doing is so wonderful that they do it.) If you cannot be passionate in a blog nobody reads, then perhaps its not really your passion after all. You will get lots of chances to talk to people and all of that research and thinking will give you a chance to make insightful observations and eventually, folks might seek out what other things you written, but it starts with you just following your passion not really caring if anyone else cares.

[1] There is a funny joke about a wife talking to her mathematician friend about commitment while driving around in the car. She says "You won't agree to anything, like there is a house painted white in this neighborhood, see there is one right over there." To which he responds, "Well all we know is that _one side_ of that house is painted white."

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose the difficulty in my stance is that my views are primarily for the most part qualitative-- meaning there really isn't data that could sufficiently back me. It's an opinion that could seem very vague when trying to quantify and then sourcing why this came to be is really all speculation.

There is such an abundance of money floating around in the space, consumers are increasingly becoming more likely to adopt these technologies, creating an environment most likely susceptible to innovation-- but the output isn't as significant as these realities should potentially suggest.

Forget significant technological breakthroughs, such as Peter Thiel frequently refers to-- I'm even talking about already existing technologies that aren't fully being leveraged and if they were could further lead to these significant technological breakthroughs. Why isn't this the case? Why is it that even though curbs can be lined with some sort of proximity sensors I need to drive 45 minutes to blindly search for a parking spot when these sensors can ping me the nearest spot when making a query? I think of all the data from every aspects of our lives that is quantifiable and we create on a daily basis and how if this was curated then interpreted to the consumer, how much more efficient lives we could live-- why isn't this so? Why is it that that the digital world is still yet to merge with the real world? Even from a product standpoint-- I find that i'm increasingly using products where it almost seems as if the founders aren't using the product themselves. I come across way too many flawed user experiences and to be honest it is beyond frustrating to me. Last week a 20 under 20 special highlighting the Thiel Fellowship aired on CNBC, so I set my TiVo to record it not knowing it was a 2 part special-- TiVo knows this. Why would I want to watch one part and not the other? Why wouldn't a notification popup "Since you've recorded this, It's very likely you'd want to record this as well. Would you like to?" This is a minuscule example but I believe everything that i'm saying stems from not a lack of resources, not a lack of ideas-- but rather a lack of depth in their thought when conceptualizing a solution to the problem all the way through to executing.

So why is there seemingly such a lack of thought? There are many possible reasons why, many of which are likely out of my control-- but I do believe that part of this problem which I can potentially make a difference in, is a deficiency of inspiration. Inspiration is directly correlated to consumption-- so if people aren't inspired enough I feel it's not illogical to question what they are consuming. Technito is my attempt to cover startups and review user experiences in such a way, highlighting the subtle features that most oversee but really confirm the user experience of companies and founders that make you scratch your head and question. The reader, should it be an entrepreneur will be inspired to view product in a much deeper way and should it be a consumer will walk away with setting a higher standard and having greater expectations for the products they use which will ultimately trickle throughout the entire ecosystem.

Independent bloggers that aren't reliant on ad revenue, such as Fred Wilson are likely not going to be as click driven-- but the reality is the bulk of content created (especially covering startups) that most of us are then consuming aren't coming from independent bloggers, but rather tech journalists working for media companies. I'm not claiming that the only source of revenue for these sites are ad clicks-- but traffic is their currency, and they are well aware of that.

My integrity is something that I take pride in for the fact that it will always remain in tact. What I was referring to was the integrity as far as the public perception is concerned-- which any way you look at has it's best chance of fully remaining in tact if the platform isn't monetized.

I am relatively new to the HN community-- I'm probably going to post this link a couple more times with the hopes of maybe gaining some traction. Do you have any suggestions for titles/headlines that would appeal most to this community? "Open letter to Silicon Valley: A True Story" does seem a bit hostile now that I think of it (the irony)-- which was likely why you perceived it the way you did in the first place. Any suggestions? This is all just a figment of my imagination of I can't get readers!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sublime Text 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/3

<comment><USER3> Why is this making news? It's been in members-only beta for months now.

<comment><USER4> Because a new build has just released. And not everyone does know that it's been in beta for months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any ST3 users want to share how it compares to ST2?

<comment><USER6> I love the new ST3. The speed improvements are really compelling. I use it as my default editor for simple text and HTML editing. The stability seems great, so I would not let the beta tag put you off trying the new version. I keep ST2 handy for the more complex tasks.

The main hurdle before I complete the switch is to see all the plugins available for ST3. At the moment using Package Control it is still too much guesswork to figure which plugins are ST3 compatible or not, and many plugins (including Package Control) have to be installed manually. For me the following plugins are still broken (errors on loading the scripts at startup): Http Requester, Tag, SublimeCodeIntel, BracketHighlighter, SublimeLinter, FileDiffs, Alignment, Theme - <USER2>

ST3 itself is great, I just hope the 3rd party plugins get on board quickly.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I wish they would have forked the repository. It's a real pain trying to figure out what is python3 and what isn't.

<comment><USER6> In the meantime I found this listing from Wbond of the ST3-compatible packages: [https://github.com/wbond/sublime_package_control/wiki/Sublim...](https://github.com/wbond/sublime_package_control/wiki/Sublime- Text-3-Compatible-Packages)

I found that Bracket Highlighter is actually compatible but the Github URL has to be added as a repo to Package Control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any word on whether the Git plugin has started working? I'm waiting for it before making the switch.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this a strict upgrade over ST2, or more of a features++ stability-- muscleMemory-- style thing?

<comment><USER10> It's the other way around: packages-- stability++ performance++

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll get excited when it has live editing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow! This is getting intense</comment>


How to Deploy Mssql Server - <AUTHOR> Deploying MSSQL server on High availability using powershell.i need script for this can someone please help me <comment><USER2> Check [https://github.com/dsccommunity/SqlServerDsc/tree/master/sou...](https://github.com/dsccommunity/SqlServerDsc/tree/master/source)</comment>


HP supercomputer in orbit is ready for researchers - <AUTHOR> https://spacenews.com/hpe-supercomputer/ <comment><AUTHOR> > "We took a system from factory floor with no hardening, no preparation, > running an open source operating system," Fernandez said. "The majority of > the community didn't think it would function or wouldn't last long."

> HPE relied on software to make the computer resilient.

> "We monitor power, cooling, components," Fernandez said. "When they get out > of nominal range, we isolate them, work around them or do something. Each > system is self-sufficient with fault detection and isolation."</comment>


Truck firm wants to deploy delivery drones on the move - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/29/workhorse-drone-deliveries/

<comment><AUTHOR> > _The idea is simple enough: as the truck makes its rounds, the roof-mounted > HorseFly UAV selects, transports and drops off a parcel right outside the > recipient 's front door._

It's a very good and practical idea. The truck becomes a moving honeycomb or the aircraft carrier. Cool!</comment>


Analyze your customers and API data in R through the Canopy Labs Console - <AUTHOR> http://insights.canopylabs.com/?p=526

<comment><AUTHOR> We're quite excited to be releasing this feature and would love to hear your thoughts! If you're an R user or do a lot of data analysis with R, while also collecting data online, do let us know! We'd love to chat.</comment>


The Gimmick of the Novel of Ideas - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/06/25/the-gimmick-of-the-novel-of-ideas/ <comment><USER2> "...the novel of ideas reflects the challenge posed by the integration of externally developed concepts long before the arrival of conceptual art"

"These came to obtrude against a set of generic expectations—nondidactic representation; a dynamic, temporally complex relation between events and the representation of events; character development; verisimilitude—established only in wake of the novel's separation from history and romance..."

From the 1st para. Does this stuff mean anything?

<comment><USER3> "The challenge that the novel of ideas faces: how does one integrate the exposition and discussion of ideas in the context of a novel (when the origin of those ideas is not the novel itself)?"

"[The techniques used in the novel of ideas] are in conflict with some expectations [enumerated here...] about how a novel works, that in turn were established as novels became more than historical retellings and romances stories".

It is stuffy, but not meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like the sort of thing that could come out of GPT-2</comment>


Buy Matthew Broderick's old movie computer and possibly impress Ally Sheedy - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/362522/buy-matthew-broderick-s-old-movie-computer-possibly-impress-ally-sheedy

<comment><USER2> For a long time I was actually convinced that the Pentagon was run by the WOPR in those days. Would be cool to own it, even if it's not the original from the first movie.</comment>


Open Source Is Better Than the Closed Stuff (Until You Hit 1 Million Lines) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/coverity-report/

<comment><USER2> Would this mean that open source communities would work better for modular systems, since each independent module has a relatively small codebase? Unix & NPM come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like they are finding numbers to support the specific application of the bazaar and cathedral models for projects.

I don't completely agree with the methods (static analysis), or the sample size (368 projects), they used, but they were consistant when measuring. (Which is better than most project quality metrics)

</comment><comment><USER4> I seriously wonder about sample size and representativeness. What projects are they looking at in either group?

</comment><comment><USER5> Static analysis alone seems like a truly poor way of judging "defects" in any non-trivial system.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a good enough heuristic to me.

Doesn't have to be perfect, just indicative.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are the Apple AirPods? - <AUTHOR> AirPods have been in people's hands a few days now, how are they? Met your expectations? Any problems exercising in them, or having them fall out? <comment><USER3> I have the Bose Quiet comfort i20s (for air travel), QC35s (for development mode), the PowerBeats 3 (I wanted to say for working our, but in reality it was to experiment with the W1 chip that's also found in the AirPods), and now AirPods.

The AirPods are by far my favourite.

The newer EarPod design (the ones that aren't the oblate spheroids) fit my ears really well, and so do the AirPods.

I find them much more comfortable than the PowerBeats (which uses the same W1 chip).

The pairing felt much better with the AirPods.

Re: Expectations

They surpassed my expectations. iCloud syncing of bluetooth pairing information is nice. Being able to hear the sound in my environment is also good when exercising.

Invoking Siri is so much faster using the EarPods an it is with the Apple Watch.

You can also double tap the side to answer calls (which I didn't hear about in any of the reviews).

We use SIP phones at work, and I've found an app called Groundwire ([https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/groundwire-business- caliber/...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/groundwire-business- caliber/id378503081?mt=8)) that integrates with call kit.

Re: Having them fall out.

I have not been able to get them to fall out, even when trying.

<comment><USER4> What about when you take a jumper (pullover) off or put one on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like them. They're cool. They're not as effortless as they pegged themselves to be. Sometimes I hear that digital 'noise' that happens with wireless audio... And they hurt in my ears after half an hour. Something I feel I'll get used to.

All in all, a worthy purchase, a few :O moments, and the ability to wrestle with my dog and forget they're in, but still be listening to music... Pretty fun moments.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm also curious about these. Seems annoying to have another device to charge (and potentially leave behind somewhere and lose). IMO Apple is again trying to solving a problem that we don't really have. I get that that's what [arguably] drives innovation and new product segments, but there seems like a limited "unmet need" here.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't have these, but I do have a cheap pair of wireless around-the-neck kind. Even those work well.

But the main thing that no one but apple seems to get is the "recharge story". It's obnoxious to have to plug these things into a micro USB.

The Apple Watch and AirPods are how everyone should be doing recharging - <USER2> cradle that stores your device while it charges it.

<comment><USER8> How is the cradle any less annoying than micro USB? It only seems more restrictive than the cord.

<comment><USER9> In what way does it seem more restrictive?

I own both the BlueBuds X (which uses micro USB) and the AirPods. I love the BlueBuds X, but the charging solution for the AirPods is _vastly_ superior to that of the BlueBuds. To me, the charging case is one of the killer features of the AirPods.

When you take them out of your ear, they conveniently pop into the case for safe keeping. While they are in the case they are always charging. They also charge incredibly fast. This makes it virtually impossibly to be "stranded" with dead headphones. Even when I ran the AirPods almost completely down, I was able to charge them from 2% to 84% in just a few minutes.

I've had several times where I've had my BlueBuds die on me and I wouldn't have a backup pair of headphones. The AirPod case's battery is large enough that you can get an additional 24 hours of playback from them. This means you could potentially not charge them for days and still be fine.

<comment><USER8> That's fair, I guess I didn't consider the convenience of a carrying case that doubles as a charger. I definitely agree that the speed of the charger is a killer feature. Is that something that couldn't be achieved with Micro USB?

To me, using a standard Micro USB cord means that I don't necessarily need a specific charger for the Airpods, I can mix and match chargers with one of the other accessories that use the same standard. Also, remembering to charge the case seems like an additional step that I will likely forget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem is the milliseconds of delay from Airpod to Airpod, apple can't figure out how to fix that.

<comment><USER11> I'm wearing them now and cannot preceive any delay. Is there a specific audio file to play to truly test it?</comment></comment>


This shoe brand claims to have built the 'sneaker of the future' - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/11/20/greats-sneaker-future/#DB7Elsb8ysqc <comment><USER2> so the future of sneakers is a shoe that says hey you bought a real shoe... so much awesome.

maybe the future of that future is a drm shoe where if you aren't the person who bought it or aren't wearing the matching socks it slices your foot off so you can't wear it any more.</comment>