Connect 2016 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://connectevent.microsoft.com/ <comment><USER2> We've got some announcements coming that makes today's keynote worth watching trust me. I am speaking as someone who helped pull this event off and is sitting back stage :)

<comment><USER3> Can you please update key announcements here as they come, as I can't watch the live stream. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER2> We'll have everything (videos) available on-demand after the event, we're also pushing live over 100 8-12min short videos on topics you guys might be interested in it will all be on [http://channel9.msdn.com/events/connect/2016](http://channel9.msdn.com/events/connect/2016)

We'll also have detailed blog posts and a special edition of MSDN magazine that is going live shortly with lots of stuff to read through. ill do what I can to get you folks links.

thanks for your interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just tuned in - I see they're using the iOS Simulator on Windows. Have they explained how? That's one of the main reasons I use a Mac still.

<comment><USER5> The Xamarin tools have supported using a remote Mac to run the simulator. Microsoft has an iOS shim library and Objective-C tool chain for porting apps to Windows, but it's very much in preview.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I see. Less exciting, though I suppose inevitable.

<comment><USER6> If only running OS X as a virtual guest on a Windows host was supported. Then you could use that as the remote mac that is used with the shim.

It's sad that I'm completely serious, because that _should_ sound ludicrous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Visual Studio 2017 RC announced by Nat Friedman. (CEO of Xamarin prior to acquisition).

e: kinda surprised its the mobile group who's announcing RC for VS as a whole

</comment><comment><USER8> Just saw Github CEO Chris Wanstrath deceptively hail Microsoft for having the most outside contributors... from his slides:

\- 16,419 Microsoft

\- 15,682 Facebook

\- 14,059 Docker

\- 12,841 Angular (Google)

\- 12,140 Google

Makes me wonder whether he's included React in the Facebook numbers...

<comment><USER9> Yes, it's included. Remember Microsoft has VSCode, Typescript, .Net, Cognitive Toolkit and more on Github. Google would be #1 if Angular was hosted under the Google org.

I remember first seeing these stats in Github's infographic which they released a month or two ago: [https://octoverse.github.com/](https://octoverse.github.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- Microsoft has the most contributors on GitHub

\- Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member

\- Microsoft announces Visual Studio 2017

\- Microsoft announces Visual Studio for Mac

\- Microsoft announces Visual Studio Mobile Center

<comment><USER11> I missed part of the key note but it sounds like MSVS for Mac is subscription only?

If that's the case, it sucks :(

<comment><USER12> No, they mentioned there's a free edition of Visual Studio for Mac they're publishing as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Title should have a warning about automatically playing content, although I guess with more "modern" devices background tabs' actions don't matter as much.

<comment><USER14> At this point in the internet, it's almost a given that any single link you click is going to have an auto-playing video and 5 MB of JavaScript tracking scripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft: _For our first demo, let 's build a todo app using the MEAN stack on a Mac._

HN: _Hell is freezing over._

</comment><comment><USER15> The girl demoing VS 2017 pronounces tuple as 'TWO-pull'. That can't be right, is it?

<comment><USER16> YMMV, but I've heard both TWO-pull and TUP-pull in academic and professional contexts. From a quick google search it looks like both pronunciations are generall accepted. I prefer TWO-pull myself!

[1] [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12980/how-to- pron...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12980/how-to-pronounce- tuple)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12737515/how-do-you- prono...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12737515/how-do-you-pronounce- tuple)

<comment><USER15> interesting - do you pronounce qiuntuple, octuple, etc. the same way?

<comment><USER17> Yes, but according to the OED there is an exception. "Octuple" is correct pronounced "ock TOOP lay".

I kid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio- mac](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac)

Page is available now, but the download link is still broken ATM.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wednesday, November 16th

10:00am - 12:30pm EST (15:00am - 17:30pm GMT): Keynotes by Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman

I suspect a big announcement about .NET on Mac. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Goodies:

Visual Studio 2017 cross-platform support

Visual Studio for Mac

Microsoft joining the Linux Foundation

What I don't like is the way Microsoft integrates and advertises VS Docker integration, VS CI/CD functionality where everything is supposed to run automagically and their attitude that it's OK for devs to be clueless about these technologies and underlying processes but hey, they still should be comfortable using them.

Today's Microsoft motto: "super easy, super simple, yet powerful". I'm not buying it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Big thanks to GitHub CEO for coming on stage at Connect(); they are such a great partner

Jim Zemlin from Linux Foundation is on now.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does it mean that Microsoft may release some phone in near future (year? two? three?) with SDK based on Xamarin?

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the live stream URL?

EDIT: The link live streams on Edge, but not on Firefox

<comment><USER21> here's a youtube live link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUUd4S3FBrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUUd4S3FBrQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Linux won a long time ago and now it's doing a victory lap. I'm glad Microsoft joined the team.</comment>


Netflix: Cloud Architecture Tutorial  - <AUTHOR> http://perfcap.blogspot.in/2012/03/cloud-architecture-tutorial.html

<comment><USER2> Does it include a primer on continually marginalizing Linux users?

<comment><USER3> Linux users are already in the margins, Netflix didn't put them there.</comment></comment>


Drones and satellites spot lost civilizations in unlikely places - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/02/drones-and-satellites-spot-lost-civilizations-unlikely-places

<comment><USER2> Maps please! I want to look on Google Earth and see some of these hundreds of settlements!

</comment><comment><USER3> Lidar, mentioned in the article, has also been used in Central America: [http://www.caracol.org/include/files/chase/CCW2013.pdf](http://www.caracol.org/include/files/chase/CCW2013.pdf)

It's a really clever, very simple technique: by taking the furthest return, you can see through gaps in the forest canopy to get a high-resolution map of surface topography beneath it.</comment>


Socialcam 4.0 Launches Today - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/28/socialcam-4-0-instagram-for-video-adds-themes-and-soundtracks/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty impressive to launch a new version the day after Demo Day. I don't think anyone has done that before.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the biggest release we've done since video filters - Ammon and Guillaume are allstars! Socialcam = Army of Three

<comment><USER3> Congratulations.

Um, can one get their video out of socialcam yet? When last I tried it, it was a trap. Videos were uploaded, removed (iirc) from my device, and there was no way to get them back.

<comment><AUTHOR> All videos taken on the Socialcam iPhone app are saved to your camera roll. Also you can save Socialcam videos to Dropbox :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's surprising how much adding a soundtrack changes the whole feel of a video. Great work, guys, keep it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seth - I totally agree - I don't think we realized how important music in video was until we started to play around with beta versions of this release

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Soundtracking is slick and the focus on speed is always welcome. All this. 3 guys. Impressive.</comment>


Tell HN: Recruiters and Bizarre Skillsets - <AUTHOR>

HN'ers, this is from a real email I was sent by a recruiter. What you you think if you received such a set of potential positions?

  Position: .NET Developer
  Must Have Skills: .NET, C#, SQL Server 2005 (2005 or better), OOP/OOD.
  Preferred: WCF, workflow, messaging
  Wish List: Mono or MonoTouch , Erlang, Scala, F#, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, Redis, Couchbase, Raven DB
  Years experience: 5

  Position: Web Developer
  Must Have Skills: .NET, C#, Javascript, HTML5, Jquery, SQL Server 2005 (2005 or better), OOP/OOD.
  Preferred: WCF, workflow, messaging, MVC, Mono or MonoTouch.
  Wish List: Erlang, Scala, F#, Rabbit MQ, Zebra MQ, REtis, Couch Base, Raven DB
  Years experience: 5

  Position: Mobile Developer (Android)
  Must Have Skills: .NET, C#, SQL Server (2005 or better), Java, OOP/OOD.
  Preferred: Mono for Android
  Wishlist: Erlang, Scala, F#, Rabbit MQ, Zebra MQ, REtis, Couch Base, Raven DB
  Years experience: 5

  Position: Mobile Developer (iOS)
  Must Have Skills: .NET, C#, SQL Server (2005 or better), OOP/OOD, Objective C
  Preferred: C++, Mono or MonoTouch, SQL Light, IOS 4 (or better), Core Data, Smalltalk
  Wishlist: Erlang, Scala, F#, Rabbit MQ, Zebra MQ, REtis, Couch Base, Raven DB
 What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> If the recruiter is going to be so uneducated about the technologies that are so important in our industry, I wouldn't bother working with them. They'll surely screw up the salary negotiations and not have done the background research on the firm they are trying to place you with.

I have a recommendation for a good recruiter if you are looking for one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should be pretty easy to find, but if not, my email is email@example.com, any recos or leads gratefully received.

My iOS apps are at [http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/watmough- software/id302009...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/watmough- software/id302009270)

I also have 10+ years oil and gas software experience, including Visual C++, MFC, .NET, Oracle, SQL Server 2005 etc., working 8 years for a big service co, and 4 years for a really great software consultancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related: I was poking around oDesk for niche languages a couple of days ago and found three jobs for Excel scripting and one for a salesperson that all listed "Clojure" in their requirements. I don't know if they think it's French for "getting things done" or what, but it gave me a good laugh.

<comment><USER4> Actually, that's my fault. We (oDesk) recently introduced a job post text parser that examines the text of the job description and auto-suggests skills. The parser uses the levenshtein distance to find approximate matches, and in the cases you flagged, the job descriptions used the word "closure" which the parser converts to "clojure." I probably need to add "clojure" to the parser's stop word list...

<comment><USER3> Heh, interesting. I can't believe it didn't occur to me that an overzealous algorithm might be to blame.

FYI, you'll probably also want to add "closure" itself if a lot of people are using it in that way, since there's a Google library called "Closure" that might get added to your skills database at some point.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have to confess, I emailed the recruiter back and let her know that this gave a bad impression, though in this case, it seems that it may be the company that's clueless.

Either that, or they have a bunch of H/L1-Bs that have exactly these jobs already and they are just doing the mandated advertising for 'an American worker'. Bwahaha.

If it is the company, then I feel bad for the recruiter. They're hardly to know what a dogs breakfast of requirements this is.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is (assuming it's what it stands for) Object Oriented Programming really considered a "skill"?</comment>


Peru: The Future of Gastronomy - <AUTHOR> http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014-09-23/peru-the-future-of-gastronomy

<comment><USER2> We traveled to Lima a few years ago, and the variety and quality of the food in the grocery stores and restaurants was astounding. For the equivalent of 2 to 5 bucks, you could get a lunch that would cost easily six times that in the U.S. -- _if_ you could find anything equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Peruvian cuisine is one the finest in the world.

It's almost like the "melting pot" of cuisines, much like New York is the melting pot city of the world. A place where everything from American (Lomo Saltado), Italian (Tallarin Verde), Asian (Arroz Chaufa), and everything in between are elevated to their grandest stage with the help of all the varied ingredients cultivated in the Andean nation. Also, you've never really had ceviche until you've had Peruvian ceviche - sweet potato and all!

Also, Peru is a trip especially if you're into archaeology and Mesoamerican history as I am.

<comment><USER4> > Peru [...] Mesoamerican history ...

Pre-Columbian history, maybe? (Mesoamerica is Mexico and Central America.)

<comment><USER3> Correct.

Sorry, I was thinking of Maya instead of Inca.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm - I visited Peru (Lima, Arequipa, and Cuzco) 15 years ago, and with the exception of sopa criolla and some good fish, nothing was especially exciting. Cui (guinea pig) was interesting.

But then, it wasn't that long ago that one's decent choices in London were mostly Indian/Pakistani, and the situation's much improved now. So good on Lima for evolving.

<comment><USER6> Lima didn't evolve.. restaurants did. like the article says, these foods have always been there, Gaston just brought them to the fancy restaurants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is no exaggeration. Peruvian is by far my favorite cuisine.</comment>


Heads, I Win. Tails, You Forget We Had a Bet - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/09/we_remember_predictions_that_come_true_but_forget_the_flops.html <comment><USER2> Maybe too re-known by the HN audience, to be "news", but in the classic "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos there is a part, titled "A STOCK-MARKET SCAM" where the point is extremely well-made (the simplified scam described is a way to make a relatively small number of people believe that 6 consecutive weekly stock market predictions were accurate):

"If this is done knowingly and with intent to defraud, this is an illegal con game. Yet it's considered acceptable if it's done unknowingly by earnest but ignorant publishers of stock newsletters, or by practitioners of quack medicine, or by television evangelists. There's always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe."

and, later:

"There is a strong general tendency to filter out the bad and the failed and to focus on the good and the successful. Casinos encourage this tendency by making sure that every quarter that's won in a slot machine causes lights to blink and makes its own little tinkle in the metal tray. Seeing all the lights and hearing all the tinkles, it's not hard to get the impression that everyone's winning. Losses or failures are silent. The same applies to well- publicized stock-market killings vs. relatively invisible stock-market ruinations, and to the faith healer who takes credit for any accidental improvement but will deny responsibility if, for example, he ministers to a blind man who then becomes lame."

</comment><comment><USER3> Taleb has a similar message The Black Swan. There is very low risk to making wrong predictions and a ton of upside if one is right.</comment>


Ionic Beta 4: Our Biggest Update Yet - <AUTHOR> http://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-huge-update

<comment><USER2> Awesome work! I especially appreciate your attention to detail (native-like keyboard experience, "Adamclick", and large collection support!).

Thanks for keeping up the great work!

<comment><USER3> This is kind of huge to me, some tiny projects I've considered spending my free time making wouldn't really work with the default webview keyboard so this is pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SO EXCITED TO USE THIS SOON.

I'm working on a big new project that is all Angular based and the fact that there's an Angular based mobile app framework that is focused on speed and replicating the native feel is just fantastic. I'll probably be able to reuse 75% of my front end code immediately in my mobile app.

<comment><USER5> A friend showed me an app yesterday on an iPhone 5S and I couldn't tell if it was native or Ionic. Pretty exciting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We love Ionic. It's by far the best and most rapidly improving way to build mobile apps with web tech.

</comment><comment><USER6> How tightly coupled is ionic to angular? Is it possible to use their components in a non-angular project?

<comment><USER4> This is directed at both your comment and the other reply to yours: Angular is a very very opinionated framework. To get as much benefit as possible from it, there's not really an option to make a "universal" framework with Angular as an option. There are few other frameworks that actually use the same workflow as Angular.

I think Ionic has chosen a smart path by building on top of Angular even if you just consider how Angular uses directives. Ionic has built a whole suite of custom mobile specific directives that are approaching native speed.</comment></comment>


Steam'd Penguins - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/ <comment><USER3> What will make this truly interesting is if 3rd party game developers follow in Valve's footsteps and start porting their games as well. Because that will hopefully then lead to more attention from graphics card driver makers, solving one of Linux's last remaining weaknesses compared to Windows.

With Microsoft following Apple into the post-PC era (or "PC Plus", as MS COO Kevin Turner likes to call it), Linux will be the last major OS with a traditional desktop metaphor as its dominant UI. Despite all the statements that the PC is dead, I think it will still have widespread uses, at least until brain-computer interfaces become a reality, because touchscreens simply cannot replace keyboards/mice in a large number of contexts.

<comment><USER4> Even on Linux, Ubuntu is moving toward Unity and Gnome3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I applaud what they're doing, it's a bit weird how that post keeps throwing around open-source rhetoric when neither Steam nor any of Valve's games are open source. The only regard in which this has anything to do with open source software at all is that the platform happens to be predominately GPL-licensed, and may conceivably become an indeterminate amount more popular if more games than L4D2 get ported.

<comment><USER6> What 'open-source rhetoric'? It isn't a Valve Open-source blog, it's a Valve linux blog - open source is not really relevant at all to this post.

<comment><USER7> It is, since they recently hired SDL developer - and it appears he will be working on it full time, same goes for darkplaces engine creator. So this is direct help to open source libraries.

<comment><USER5> They've been hired to work on their respective libraries and publish the code openly? What's Valve getting out of that?

<comment><USER8> these guys know linux graphics and audio stacks from the inside out. having such people around the office which you can come to, ask pretty much any question and get a meaningful answer is practically priceless IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like Microsoft has really tied Valve's hands here. Unless something has changed recently, all apps installed on Windows RT will have to come from MS's app store (marketplace? bazaar?), which doesn't bode well for the future of Steam on the platform. I'm hoping they end up doing a lot more than porting Steam to Linux, because outside of Valve's efforts, most of the games on there are not (and will likely never be) Linux compatible.

<comment><USER10> This would mean that (pretty much) the only way you could game on non-Apple hardware would be to install Linux, which would make Linux the go-to OS for gaming, something I doubt Microsoft would let happen.

I really doubt Microsoft wouldn't allow Steam to run on Windows.

<comment><USER11> They will still allow people to game, just you will have to buy all of your games via the Microsoft Store rather than Steam/Normal Download/DVD

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, there are multiple approaches to Linux software distribution (for free-as- in-beer closed-source software, like the Minecraft client, Skype, Chrome or Steam):

1\. Pump out versioned tarballs, and let distro maintainers deal with packaging. 2\. Create a very thin launcher, and deal with updates yourself in the Launcher. Minecraft does this. 3\. Provide package repositories for Ubuntu and Fedora and deal with updates yourself. Chrome does this.

I think (1) and (2) are preferable. (1) is also the easiest to implement (!), but may result in delayed distribution to the end user.

It is possible to mix (1) and (3), of course.

<comment><USER13> The chromium project releases their updates for Ubuntu users thru a PPA, but Canonical also distributes stable packages. A mix that is working really well.

God forbid #2, a system-wide system for downloading and updating applications is one of the zen-things about using the Linux-based OS's.

How it works on Mac OS X and is chaotical, and the way Microsoft does it, with countless messy installers and self-updating apps is hell to deal with.

<comment><USER12> Well, Steam is by necessity an independent package manager. So you can't really have that Zen if you want to use it. Might as well update itself, too. ;)

<comment><USER14> To pinkbucket: you seem to have been hell-banned when your account was new. You will need a new account. My condolences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Among other things, porting their software to Linux might bring other fruits:

* You can run many instances of a dedicated game server (roughly in the hundreths mb of ram usage) on the same OS, or through virtual machine so it could be moved.

* Gaikai/OnLive live kind of game streaming - again no cost for OS - so they can run each instance of the game per one installed OS and stream video for the rest.

* Console - probably customized version of Linux, and if possible the game running in ring 0 with the kernel. Drawing almost directly to the hardware, without going to API's, user and then kernel functions. (Avoid vertex/index buffer checks, and many other things).

<comment><USER5> > You can run many instances of a dedicated game server (roughly in the > hundreths mb of ram usage) on the same OS, or through virtual machine so it > could be moved.

As this very blog post explains, Valve's dedicated servers have always supported Linux.

> Console - probably customized version of Linux, and if possible the game > running in ring 0 with the kernel. Drawing almost directly to the hardware, > without going to API's, user and then kernel functions. (Avoid vertex/index > buffer checks, and many other things).

A system like that would be so different as to barely benefit at all from the reality of what Valve is doing.

<comment><USER14> It allows them to amortise porting efforts with sales on multiple platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No mention of the fact that a bunch of games on Steam already have Linux versions? Or do their blogs usually ignore non-Valve software?

<comment><USER17> Yeah it would have been nice to see that mentioned. I was curious at how many games could possibly launch with the Linux Steam launch, and there were more than I realized:

[http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?title=Native_G...](http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?title=Native_Games)

<comment><USER10> I buy mostly indie games, usually the Humble Bundles, so a very good chunk (maybe most?) of my library of 100ish games have Linux versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My biggest hope out of all of this is that Nvidia will get its act together and release proper drivers for Linux now. I honestly don't care all that much about games except that they might force Nvidia to actually care about Linux.

<comment><USER19> wut.

nVidia has always cared about Linux. They've supported non-Windows platforms well for a very long time. They've done a lot of work to provide a good workstation experience on Linux. Today the notable exception is Optimus, but I'm hoping that's going to come down the pipe as nVidia pushes its inevitable KMS branch further down the line.

AMD drivers are still not really usable; you can work around some of the bugs with open-source drivers, but then your speeds are severely crippled.

The mantra among Linux users has always been "buy nvidia". Those with ATI quickly grow to regret it in my experience; a meaningful illustration may be that my parents have two Linux boxes, both relatively low-end PCs with onboard graphics. One of these is almost four years old now, and has an onboard nvidia GPU. The other was purchased three months ago and has an onboard AMD GPU ("APU" according to marketing material. Bobcat? Or was it Bulldozer?). We _still_ use the 4-year-old machine for gaming there because the nvidia drivers are actually sufficient to play the game; the new machine is using an open- source driver due to Catalyst bugs and runs games at probably 20% the performance of the machine _16x its age_. That's the experience you get with nVidia's competitors.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like you missed the discussion on Torvald's "Fuck You" video and nVidia's response. nVidia only cares about Linux when it's easy.

<comment><USER21> Torvalds was angry about Tegra, not GPU drivers.

<comment><USER22> Possibly, but their GPU drivers are also frustrating crap. Yes, AMD/ATI's drivers are far worse, but nvidia is still dropping the ball. Binary blobs in your kernel are bad for everyone. Kernel developers are often rightly uninterested in kernel problems that occur in environments that are "tainted" by black-box code. Nvidia's driver doesn't play nicely with the Linux GPU stack and ecosystem. Consider their "twinview" nonsense, requiring a legacy xorg.conf, and duplicating functionality present in the standardized xrandr 1.2. Fullscreen programs are an iffy proposition at best with nvidia's drivers, made even worse if you have multiple monitors, as a result of their refusal to work with the community and the standard tools.

A game developer as important as Valve officially supporting Linux has the potential to force nvidia to finally start playing nice, or even better, get their head out of their asses and just open-source their drivers and get them into the kernel. That way every nvidia user on Earth can benefit from an officially supported, open, community-driven driver.

Slim chance, but I would've said the same about native L4D2 if you'd asked me 2 months ago.

<comment><USER21> The nvidia driver codebase is HUUUGE, much of it is valuable proprietary information, and much of it is third party. It would be extremely challenging for nvidia to open source it, from both legal and business perspectives.

I _do_ hold out hope for nvidia gaining full xrandr and kms support at some point. The latest beta drivers have _significantly_ increased xrandr support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well I will not put money where my mouth has been and buy Left for Dead 2. I have been wanting a lot of Valve games, but I swore off all non-native games after Minecraft ( if Notch can do it so can everyone else )

<comment><USER24> What do you mean by "non-native"?

<comment><USER23> something that needs WINE to run. I want a Linux binary I can run.

<comment><USER24> Did you miss this part: _it now runs natively on Ubuntu 12.04._

<comment><USER23> Right which is why I am buying it. They have earned their money

<comment><USER24> Oh! You said "I will not put money where my mouth has been" did you mean "now"? :)

<comment><USER25> Money spent cannot be eaten (or.. put in one's mouth)

<comment><USER24> It doesn't mean eating, it's about talking. <http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+money+where+mouth+is>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm going to show my lack of linux history here... why not Debian? Are they really building something that is native to ubuntu that you wouldn't work in <insert-debian-fork crunchbang or mint>?

<comment><USER27> This is why I think they just miscalculated. They still dont know the religious wars of Fedora vs Ubuntu, or rpm vs deb.

I was seriously hoping for a Valve distro, which would be perfectly tuned for all things media (they hired the SDL guy). Maybe have Steam as the package manager for everything.

Instead, they just joined a camp - this is not good.

The other way they could have approached it was to support Android - not as a playing system, but rather as a console device connected to peripherals - <USER2> sponsored some project to run Android apk on Linux with access to the sound and graphics layer (SDL?? )

<comment><USER28> _Instead, they just joined a camp - this is not good._

This is exactly what they should be doing, not further fragmenting an already gratuitously fragmented market.

Every time some commercial vendor makes a move into Linux and people start bickering about distros I just /facepalm.

<comment><USER27> actually I am indeed talking about the "bickering" that is going to start. I use Ubuntu myself and am most definitely not bickering about Fedora.

However, the Linux market is already fragmented. And even worse, it is deeply religious. Just google for the bickering that ensued when Meego chose rpm over deb. People have already started talking about why not Arch, etc.

The point that you are missing is that, if anyone could unify the Linux fragmentation it is Valve. Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it).

I want Valve to succeed - how will it succeed in a severely fragmented market ? Can it justify the cost of its Linux team then ? Android is having a similar problems in version fragmentation. People have posted articles here on how they are unable to justify multiple version (distro?) development. Multiply that problem by a thousand - different audio toolkits, poor driver compatibilities. I am not able to see how they are going to succeed, unless they unify _atleast_ the multimedia toolkits (something like CoreAudio)

<comment><USER28> _Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it)._

<http://xkcd.com/927/>

Anybody willing to switch distros just to run a game might as well just install a Windows partition.

<comment><USER29> Eh, switching from Fedora to Ubuntu would not be a big deal at all. The differences really are quite minimal and the actual install would take what, half an hour tops? The effort to install a windows partition would be much higher.

<comment><USER11> I think they are responding to the suggestion that Valve releases their own distro.

Would certainly take me significantly more than half an hour to switch to Fedora though since I would need to re-learn the package manager, move all my settings across and figure out the subtle differences in configuration etc.

<comment><USER18> Valve releasing their own distro would be just craaaaaazy. That would be like Amazon or Google doing it. Why bother? There is an awesome one out there for free (Ubuntu).

If Valve wants to make their own console, which is the more likely case, they can license Ubuntu support for cheaper than they could make a terrible distro and it would be win-win-win (which is, of course, better than a win-win scenario).

<comment><USER27> Amazon or Google _is_ doing it - ChromeOS, Android, Amazon's fork of Android....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how much of this is really Valve's effort into making Linux a Gaming platform and how much is just to put pressure on Microsoft to relax the policies on Windows 8 that would make the Steam model invalid.

If this path will lead to a world where gamers don't depend on Windows, that would be awesome for users and really stink for Microsoft.

<comment><USER8> my personal belief is that valve wants to do a linux/x86/steam game console and this effort is a "let's see what we can do with linux" proof of concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Steam and Adobe are the only 2 things stopping me making the switch the Linux.

<comment><USER32> This. And flakey drivers.

I think this is a big step for Linux on the Desktop. I look forward to the day I can ditch OS X and Windows and replace it with a Unix that has a nice UI, stability, and is open.

<comment><USER11> Flakey drivers are a really big sticking point now, for certain hardware like video cards (most of my drivers "just work").

I've started using Unity (shock, horror) and the whole thing provides such a polished experience that most of the time I forget that I'm using a desktop linux distro. Problem is that when everything is so well polished, problems stemming from bad drivers (nvidia) become _really_ jarring.

I'm hoping that wayland will go a long way to addressing this somehow.

<comment><USER5> Wayland can't do anything about drivers. Gallium3D, and manufacturer support for it, might. Most of all, though, if Valve starts supporting Ubuntu as a first-class platform, they might be able to put pressure on GPU manufacturers to improve their drivers.

<comment><USER11> I thought (correct me if I am wrong), that part of the reason that graphics drivers were so messy was that they had to integrate with X which is archaic and not really designed with hardware acceleration in mind.

IIRC the nvidia Linux drivers actually replace parts of X with their own proprietary stuff which makes things hairy when integrating with software designed around "standard" X.

For example nvidia "twinview" seems to make many applications believe that my two 1920x1080 monitors are actually a single 3840x1080 monitor. I can correct this by using a seperate X session for each monitor but then this stops compiz from working.

<comment><USER33> > For example nvidia "twinview" seems to make many applications believe that > my two 1920x1080 monitors are actually a single 3840x1080 monitor. I can > correct this by using a seperate X session for each monitor but then this > stops compiz from working.

NVidia ships Xrandr in 302 drivers (now in beta, available to ubuntu in ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates) so this should be a problem of the past.

It's been very annoying though, especially games which try to be clever and position the window centered on the screen or maximize to full screen have been half on the left and half on the right monitor.

<comment><USER11> I can fix it for many (not all) applications by adding this to /etc/environment.

SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_DISPLAY=1

SDK_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=1

What surprises me, given the number of programmers that use 2 monitors. How does this stuff not get found when applications are being tested?

Not like it would be a difficult fix either, just test for weird resolutions like 3840x1080 then ask the user "are you using 2 monitors?", if they answer yes then adjust the rendering target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Valve may be sealing their fate as the most successful game publishing company for this century.

<comment><USER35> There's a lot of century to go.

<comment><USER29> Quite so. The differences between 2000 and 1912 are hard to truely fathom. I don't know how you could possibly attempt to predict at that sort of timescale. Even a decade would be pushing it as far as I am concerned.

<comment><USER34> I don't think it's too long of a time span considering these guys started in 1911:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Outside the Quake series, I think Left 4 Dead 2 would be the most impressive game ported to Linux to date.

<comment><USER29> More recent than the Quakes, Doom 3 had a Linux build.

<comment><USER11> Not more recent than quake 4

<comment><USER29> Ah! Good point, I completely forgot that existed.

<comment><USER37> And Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which was actually pretty great. It also had megatextured maps, which were nifty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will be interesting to see what happens to games sales/usage figures when they release this.

I'm going to guess that most people who are Linux users but are also interested in games will already have a Windows partition that they use for gaming.

So it might be that any increase in Linux gaming on Steam is exactly matched by a decrease in Windows gaming.

I doubt there are many gamers out there who would love to play AAA proprietary games but are holding out until they are ported to Linux.

<comment><USER38> Well I did not buy AAA games that I wanted to play that were windows only(like Portal 2[1]), but I would bought them if they are ported to Linux, so I would argue that they will expand their user base(a little). I must admit that in case of some games were to good to miss and I played them on wine(like Witcher 2 - my excuse is that it was DRM free and different enough that it was worth rewarding even when there were no Linux version).

edit: [1] - I mean games with no native Linux version(Portal 2 have also Mac version)

<comment><USER11> Perhaps, but I imagine the number of people in the entire world like this are measured in the 100s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I just hope they release tarballs of executables or something, because targetting Ubuntu and Ubuntu alone is quite bad. They might say "We'll support other distributions in the future". Yeah, I know that, you will support Fedora.

If you released tarballs (or even open sourced Steam and all your games {just kidding}), it would work, out of the box, on every single distribution.

<comment><USER40> I sure also hope they release tarballs. But supporting officially only one distribution makes sense. With proprietary games, they are in the land of consumer rights and consumer support. They can only say "we support X" if the software really runs on X, X being Ubuntu here. If it doesn't run, the consumer has the right to get his money back (instead of getting it back out of goodwill).

If another distro patches a driver and thus L4D2 runs worse or not at all (or something like wayland changes the infrstructure more than we expect and another disto moves first), this would be an issue for them without that official focus on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER11> Hopefully they won't actively try and prevent people from running it on other distros though, providing they find a way to do so.

If you're a die hard Arch/Gentoo/Slackware user you're probably used to not having much in the way of commercial support anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I read the title as "Valve Linux Box" and was a fairly disappointed.

<comment><USER42> I would think that this is just the first stage towards said box. First, they make their software work on the only OS you can ship for free and then they make their own distro, which they put on their box. If they're smart about it, their distro will be fairly common, with few customizations, so that they can pull in a lot of the open source fixes.

<comment><USER18> I said this somewhere else in this thread, but making their own distro would be just craaaaaazy. Ubuntu is already free, comes in several varieties and is, frankly, better than anything they could do for the cost.

If they make a game console, which is rather likely it seems, they could just license Ubuntu embedded or ubuntu core (can't remember what it is called) for orders of magnitude less than it would cost them to build their own distro. Anything else just doesn't make sense.

Now, not saying they'll do that. The game industry is notoriously bad with NIH syndrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not releasing it in the Ubuntu software store instead of making a new one?

It would be the sensible thing to do if they cared about gamers on Linux. But I guess Steam is more about owning and controlling the channels of software sales and distribution.

<comment><USER11> That's exactly what Steam is about and always been about, what else could it be about?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone here use software RAID on Linux? - <AUTHOR>

We've been struggling with software RAID.  First on SuSE 10.3, not on SuSE 11.0.  We're finding that we occasionally have a disk failure, and then the entire RAID device becomes unavailable and dismounts itself.  Using mdadm tells us the individual disk isn't working, and that the RAID isn't available.
(Note:  I'm deliberately not using the technical terms here because I need to find out what other people's experience is of this.)
Does anyone here use software RAID 5 on SuSE?  If so, what are your experiences?  I've searched around using Google but there doesn't seem to be any problem that crops up repeatedly.  In fact, the general impression is that software RAID works on SuSE Linux 10.3 and above.
I would welcome contructive comments and advice.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I am using RAID1 on my PC and RAID0 on some servers, all software raid with mdadm. I never had any problems temporarily removing one HDD from the array (when I needed some free space for a short time) and resyncing it again, but I always marked the drive as faulty (mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --fail /dev/sdb2) and then removed them (mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --remove /dev/sdb2) before re- using it.

Resyncing the array is just as simple: Partition the disk, create a partition that is the same size as the other RAID1 partition and re-add it to the array (mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb2)

</comment><comment><USER3> The most reliable general solution on linux is 3Ware RAID cards, but linux software RAID generally works, as other posters have noted.

If you are having persistent problems, you should search carefully for a flaky hardware cause. Are the drives in an external sata enclosure that might have a barrel-type power connector that is sometimes jiggled ? Are all the problems always on the same motherboard -- perhaps it has a bad IDE controller ? Are the drives overheating ?

If your drives support it, try to use the smartmon tools to see if one or both is having errors. Also, consider writing a script to dump and archive the output of smartctl -a . Next time you have an issue, look at those outputs over time, and in addition to the badblocks and so on, look at the recorded number of times the disk has been powered up, and see if this is consistent with the number of times the computer has been rebooted.

I have done a lot of RAID stuff, and currently I am moving away from it and making servers that have just one disk in them. The reason is, is that I have decided that the best way to acheive reliability is to have two copies of any important computer. RAID sometimes seems to introduce more problems that it solves, and switching to a second machine that is maintained by rsync is quick and always works.

<comment><USER4> _I am moving away from it and making servers that have just one disk in them._

Going forward, I've also decided to stop using RAID and simply replicate across servers. One major reason is the introduction of high-quality, low-cost SSD drives. I anticipate that a single SSD will have a lower chance of failure than 2 HDDs failing at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you afford a 3Ware card- even a used one? Nothing compares to a solid hardware RAID solution, in terms of quality, reliability, and performance. I suffered the failure of several RAID-5 software arrays in linux about 5 years ago (despite the failure of only one disk) and decided that it wasn't worth the trouble. I switched to 3Ware and have never had a problem since, despite numerous disk failures and replacements.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've suffered failures with hardware RAID, two different cards, two different manufacturers. I was assured by several people that software RAID is now reliable, so I switched from hardware RAID.

I note that you recommend the 3Ware card - not one I've used. Thank you for the information, I'll do some research on that.

In the meantime, more comments, advice, information and anecdotes welcome.</comment></comment>


Startups that are actually making money...not on advertising... - <AUTHOR> Anyone know any startups that are becomming more well-known / popular that are actually making money (how?) in this terrible economy without depending on advertising?  Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what your popularity metric is, but here at GitHub we're making plenty of money on subscriptions for private code hosting without a single advertisement on the site. We've also never taken any outside money. GitHub was designed from the very first line of code to make money off of recurring fees for premium features while bringing in traffic, goodwill, and buzz by making everything free for open source. So far so good!

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone asked a similar question awhile back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375417>

Some of the better comments:

Some startups and annual revenue numbers (unsourced): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375896>

Someone who modeled 37signals revenue: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375771>

Nextproof and bigfolio.com <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375575>

Hope that helps!

<comment><USER4> I'm the guy who modeled 37signals revenue. You can download a spreadsheet with all my calculations if you follow the link above... I would appreciate any feedback from those who have experience in the area to improve my assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like patio11's thing: <http://www.bingocardcreator.com>

Well, I don't really "like" it, as I could hardly care less about bingo cards, but it's a nice reminder that there is money even in what seems like really weird niches.

<comment><USER6> Just released my annual report, incidentally, if you care to read it.

[http://kalzumeus.com/2008/12/21/bingo-card-creator- year-2008...](http://kalzumeus.com/2008/12/21/bingo-card-creator-year-2008-in- review/)

Highlights:

* $20.7k in sales from 1/1/2008 to 12/21/2008

* $10k in profit, which is about 62% YOY growth (did I hear something about a recession?)

* Works out to about $100 an hour. (It is a part-time thing at the moment.)

* Taking myself full-time in 2009, hopefully. (Got another product in the works.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do you rule out depending on advertising? :/ Is income from advertising not real money?...

FWIW Mibbit makes real money, all from advertising at the moment. Premium paid accounts are planned, but it's a lot more work than just putting some useful adverts up.

<comment><USER8> It's real money but whether it's going to be stable is yet to be seen. That's why the curiosity.

<comment><USER7> Is anything stable? I haven't seen a good reason why online advertising would be hit harder than say subscription based saas.

Fair enough to only consider one though :)

<comment><USER9> advertising seems more stable than subscription based. At least according to the Economist, advertising spend changes little during recessionary periods.

<comment><USER10> I work in advertising, and we are seeing several clients greatly reduce their spend.

<comment><USER7> What sort of advertising? I can see "brand awareness" advertising being reduced, but why reduce any 'results based' advertising? There's not real reason to reduce advertising that yields a positive ROI - which is easily measurable these days usually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Micropayments + virtual goods & streaming music rights: <http://imvu.com>

<comment><USER8> Interesting work. Looks like your value prop vs. SL is that your world is more straightforward and simpler (in a good way). I.e. most people going to SL really just want to chat and goof around and don't need the complexity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Poll Everywhere - <http://polleverywhere.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm selling software and books, both on-line and the old fashioned way.

</comment><comment><USER14> yep - good 'ol subscriptions at <http://uploadthingy.com> \- just started 2 new thingys too....

<comment><USER15> I think what you are doing with the Thingys is brilliant .. Keep it up !

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We've been making revenues for a while at HubSpot (<http://www.HubSpot.com>). Business model is simple: monthly subscription for access to software that meets a need (internet marketing).

We've never sold advertising before (though we do have decent traffic on <http://grader.com>).

</comment><comment><USER17> We just sell merchandise -- t-shirts, posters, etc. We were thinking about doing advertising stuff, but since we're a video game site, we decided to just give our users what they wanted (swag) rather than what they go out of their way to block (ads). It's been working exceptionally well, though that's largely attributable to the talent of our designers.

<comment><USER18> off the main topic but I'd love to stock some gamer hoodies on our retail site, ping me if you'd like to partner or have any leads (hasan {at} hoodiepeople.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://ticketstumbler.com>

<http://draftmix.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://www.freshbooks.com>

</comment><comment><USER18> likely a bit diff from the core web app focus on HN, but we are a startup online retail site, launched in late September, smack dab in the midst of the big meltdown and fared pretty well in the 4th quarter. December provides a natural lift for retail, so Jan numbers will be very interesting but overall we did much better then projected and seem to be gaining decent traction in our niche: www.hoodiepeople.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks - these comments help. economy is terrible (cant just say you have a great idea and you want to postpone thinking about money) and ad based revenue models arent really getting a lot of love these days...makes sense to look at examples of successful startups that dont depend on ads to see what they did right

<comment><USER21> You're buying into the hype. Think for yourself, don't listen to the news about the 'terrible economy'. This is just a way to push the blame from yourself to external factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Zynga FTW there.

<comment><USER19> Any idea on specific numbers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Etsy <http://www.etsy.com>

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://theladders.com></comment>


Apple says recent Wikileaks CIA docs detail old, fixed iPhone and Mac exploits - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/23/apple-says-recent-wikileaks-cia-docs-detail-old-fixed-iphone-and-mac-exploits/ <comment><USER2> If you're not familiar with the iPhone platform and you're interested in just one technical detail to help navigate these stories, let it be this: the iPhone 3G platform bears very little resemblance to the modern, post-touch-ID phone. The platform security system at every level, from boot chain to hardware domains to OS security, evolved more in the last 10 years than any previous platform had in 20 years prior.

That doesn't make an iPhone 7 impregnable, but it should inform any analysis you do of stories about phones being tampered with "starting in 2008"; that's a little like talking about SMTP server security "starting in 1993".

<comment><USER3> As an iPhone 3G user who spends a lot of time bouncing between countries, this makes me think I should upgrade to something more recent the next time I'm headed anywhere there's a risk customs may inspect my devices.

<comment><USER4> Will that help? There have been many stories (some posted on HN) of customs saying "unlock your phone or be detained indefinitely".

<comment><USER5> Unless you have to, leave your fancy device at home and bring a dumb(er) travel phone with you that only contains the information you need for that trip. And there's nothing stopping you from loading more information on it after you've made it through customs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, it is an old exploit. This ArsTechnica article [1] has more on the timeline

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/new-wikileaks- dump-...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/new-wikileaks-dump-the-cia- built-thunderbolt-exploit-implants-to-target-macs/)

</comment><comment><USER7> if you're interested in how iOS security works, apple publishes white papers on the subject.

[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> The CIA exploits are important because most people never update anything. It doesn't matter if you have fixed the OS for the exploit if the fix is never installed.

<comment><USER9> Thankfully, Apple is pretty proactive about getting people on the latest version of the OS. IIRC, iOS 10 runs on over 80% of devices now.

<comment><USER8> People still have to actually run the update. Most non-tech types I know, never ever run software updates.

<comment><USER10> according to actual data rather than anecdote, iOS 10 is installed on ~80% of devices, and only 5% have something older than iOS 9.

[https://developer.apple.com/support/app- store/](https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/)

<comment><USER11> I am the 5%!

<comment><USER12> the hackable 5% :-)

<comment><USER13> Some people stay on old versions of stuff specifically for that reason. The wait for exploits that give the user root access to his own property can be excruciating!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Keep in mind, not everyone has the newest shiny iPhone7 in the world. The HN crowd probably is not representing the average iPhone user.

<comment><USER15> So, who is the average iPhone user? What percentage of iPhone users could the CIA docs exploit be applied to?

<comment><USER16> I think almost none is the answer seeing as this vulnerability only affects iPhone 3G users.

<comment><USER17> I know of three people who use iPhone 3G as their alternate phone when the other battery dies and/or international phone when traveling.

The phones don't just go away, they're get passed down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how old the leaked CIA docs are though. Are there any contextual clues that it's current?

Someone might have sat on a copy for years before leaking.

Edit: Quick scan shows there are some docs with dates in 2013, 2014, 2015. So at least some of it is fairly recent. No real way to tell, though, if it was all pulled at once, assembled over time, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apple fixed those particular exploits, yes.

</comment><comment><USER20> If there were ever any doubt that Wikileaks is a bad actor, let this be the proof.

Regardless of the fact that this is a patched, nearly decade-old exploit, they're trying to make a scene rather than go through ethical channels.

<comment><USER21> Your assertion that full disclosure is unethical will require some substantiation for us to believe it.

I am wary of anyone who claims that giving me access to raw source material is not acting in my best interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> CIA must have a bunch of embedded workers at Apple, Google, etc all adding subtle bugs that can later be used to hack the devices and services. I imagine other intelligence agencies must have them too. If they don't, then they're not doing their job.

<comment><USER23> > _If they don 't, then they're not doing their job_

The CIA, which has limited domestic authority, compromising American companies' products is not only not their job, but also illegal.

<comment><USER24> If they have done everything legal, would wikileaks exist?

<comment><USER23> > _If they have done everything legal_ [ _sic_ ]

I never said the CIA always conducts itself legally. My point was that "their job" is defined by the law. CIA agents infiltrating American manufacturers to break their products, even if intended for foreign customers, is illegal and thus not "their job".

> _would wikileaks exist_

If I understand correctly, you're saying Wikileaks' existence is proof of the CIA's impropriety? That assumes anything secret is illegal. Not true. Classified information is legal [1].

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Based on our initial analysis, the alleged iPhone vulnerability affected > iPhone 3G only and was fixed in 2009 when iPhone 3GS was released.

"fixed" probably isn't the right word.

<comment><USER26> what is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the same Apple that has maintained on their website that their OS is "secure by design" and no additional security steps are needed.

See [http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%22secure+by+design%22+site...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%22secure+by+design%22+site%3aapple.com&d=5011627184166823&mkt=en- US&setlang=en-US&w=Xmhyb2VI15fnBjltF7miMeCVnoX2utCg)

<comment><USER28> It is</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review "Pivotal Tracker for SEO" - SEOaholic.com - <AUTHOR>

We just soft launched http://seoaholic.com.
To a more technical audience, we call it 'pivotal tracker for linkbuilding' - enter your site, your keywords, track your performance over time, and get link suggestions, but most importantly, it provides lightweight CRM so you can manage your efforts over the long haul.
It's early stage but we have active users (and take credit cards) - so it's time to get the HN community to give feedback.
Technical stats: written by HN:barmstrong; in Rails, Resque (the Redis-backed queue from github), and MySQL. <comment><USER2> Well, I tried it on one of my projects and it was very insightful. I think I'd really have to sit down with it and spend a few hours digging in to the info it's giving me. The auth integration was very helpful in getting me to try it out. Design and layout is concise and functional, so good job there. I like it, and wish the best of luck. I'll probably be back.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a useful tool, but seems overpriced in comparison to the competition, so perhaps you could look at the pricing structures.

One obvious competitor is caphyon.com who do Advanced Link Manager and Advanced Web Ranking which have vastly more functionality for a similar price to your Bronze license, and no limits on sites and keywords. They run as desktop apps which can be seen either as a disadvantage but probably an advantage (in that a user doesn't have to trust someone with valuable commercial information on profitable keywords and so on ).

</comment><comment><USER5> Clickable link - <http://seoaholic.com></comment>


New camera system creates high-resolution 3-D images from up to a km away - <AUTHOR> http://www.hw.ac.uk/news-events/news/new-camera-system-creates-high-resolution-3-d-11809.htm <comment><USER2> In case you're wondering, this story got no love on HN when submitted yesterday, or earlier today. This one may have more luck, and it will be interesting to see.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5517580>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5524479></comment>


ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers [2008] - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/06/ascii-pronunciation-rules-for-programmers.html

<comment><USER2> I sometimes try and pronounce ! as a click, since that's what it normally means in writing.

# is hash and must only be hash (as a Brit, hearing others call it "pound" is very irritating)

I can't help reading "=>" (commonly used in Scala) as "implies", which sometimes confuses my non-mathematical colleagues</comment>


Deceased GOP Strategist's Daughter Makes Files Public - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased-gop-strategists-daughter-makes-files-public-that-republicans-wanted-sea <comment><USER3> More context:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Commerce_v._New_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Commerce_v._New_York)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_North_Carolin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_North_Carolina)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/judge- delays-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/judge-delays- decision-census-citizenship-case-after-hearing-evidence-gop-n1014286)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship- que...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/census-citizenship-question- hofeller.html)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-to-review-motive-of- trump...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-to-review-motive-of-trump- administration-census-citizenship-question-11561505305)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The files:

[https://www.thehofellerfiles.com/](https://www.thehofellerfiles.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Some possible similarities to the situation with the late Bill Broeksmit of Deutsche Bank and his son Val: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/business/val-broeksmit- de...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/business/val-broeksmit-deutsche- bank-trump-whistle-blower.html) .

<comment><USER5> _That_ is a very strange article.

<comment><USER6> David Enrich, the writer, Burned him purposely. He reappropriated all Val Broeksmit's work and research - including his deceased fathers documents - <USER2> passed them off as his own.

Enrich included all Broeksmits work into his book. The New York Times strangely enough supported these behaviors. They've been promoting his book's release.

Broeksmit and Enrich have been battling it out on twitter. Its an epic fight.

<comment><USER5> Wow. Thanks.

I guess that Enrich isn't expecting any other potential sources to trust him.

And if the New York Times has supported Enrich's behavior, it damages their journalistic integrity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found some good advice on one of the slides:

 _Make sure your computer is in a PRIVATE location.

Don't walk away from it and leave your work exposed. Password protect your monitor screen – with a short cycle.

Save and log off if you're going to be away for long._

From "What I've Learned the Hard Way" [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NI53QSEta45KNKdkdoGn- wvpyt...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NI53QSEta45KNKdkdoGn-wvpytN_YOCe)

<comment><USER8> How about 'don't spend your life subverting democracy so your family members can expose you after you die'?

<comment><USER9> Seriously. They don't learn why not doing it is the right thing to do, they just learn how to hide it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This needs a torrent. Badly.

<comment><USER11> That's the ingenious thing about torrents. Literally anyone can make one.

Anyone.

<comment><USER12> From /r/datahoarder: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3D8FF2A3B20CEF8C3EA966F0657F1E4235141090

<comment><USER8> Seeding that. Crazy ratios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "These are matters that concern the people and their franchise and their access to resources. This is, therefore, the property of the people".

Is this true?

<comment><USER14> Literally? No, it's her storage device and her data on it. This is a figurative argument about why she wants to release it.

<comment><USER13> How do you know it's her property? I guess it was her father's property and now is in her possession. Does this automatically become her property? The device and the data?

I guess we have a generation facing this new problem. I have only seem discussion about how services like Facebook should handle the data of deceased people. I didn't realize your kids (and spouse?) can just take your device and release it. This future seems scary to me.

<comment><USER15> While I certainly don't think all things in the digital space map perfectly to things in the analog space, there's literally centuries of precedence for descendants of someone who's deceased to make decisions about publicly releasing their journals, correspondence, unfinished manuscripts, and so on. Most of Emily Dickinson's poems were published after her death by her sister; author John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer-prize winning novel _A Confederacy of Dunces_ was discovered and submitted for publication by his mother after he committed suicide; Franz Kafka's _The Trial_ was only published because Kafka's executor defied his dying wish to burn his unpublished works.

tl;dr: I don't think the ethical questions here are affected by whether the deceased's writing takes the form of ink on paper or bits on digital storage.

<comment><USER16> But some of this data may be subject to other ownership rights, nondisclosure agreements, etc.

<comment><USER5> True. And that's probably why she put it online.

Before it was too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Life-hacking democracy:

 _Hofeller had manually entered "%18_ap_blk" into nearly every draft of his mapping software when he mapped North Carolina's districts; "%18_ap_blk" is a formula that shows the number of African American citizens of voting age in each district_

He made a custom software program already in the _1970s_ to disenfranchise blacks.

(From Wikipedia.)

<comment><USER18> One wonders what the monetary value of that disenfranchisement has been over the years. Will we ever broach that issue?

<comment><USER19> Is this what is called reparations?

<comment><USER17> Usually that is referring to reparations for slavery. (But it could include gerrymandering too IMHO. It's something perpetrated by the state against an ethnic group.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's something odd about that URL.

It takes me to

[https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org...](https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/2020/01/05/785672201/deceased- gop-strategists-daughter-makes-files-public-that-republicans-wanted-sea)

Edit: And there's nothing at [https://choice.npr.org/](https://choice.npr.org/) itself.

This is from a German IP address.

<comment><USER20> GDPR compliance. If you used US you wouldn't get that interstitial.

<comment><USER5> I get that. But there's no page there.

> Unable to connect

> Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at choice.npr.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This can't be good, there's a scan of a persons passport in there, pictures of abuse and so on..

</comment><comment><USER22> It's sad that stories like these end up getting flagged while other political stories more favorable to the right end up doing fine. It's clear a lot of people didn't even read the article and likely just flagged it because it contains 'GOP' in the title.

</comment><comment><USER23> The "bombshells" according to the article are that her father planned gerrymandering for the North Carolina state legislature... like every single political party in power everywhere where gerrymandering is legal.

The actual bombshell? That "gerrymandering" is pronounced with a hard "g".

edit: I'm seeing from some of the comments that there are worse things in the actual files. more: Hofeller's actions were gerrymandering based on race, which is illegal and wrong.

<comment><USER14> Uh... drawing a political district on the basis of race is quite expressly _illegal_ in the United States. What is newsworthy here is that it's a pretty clear smoking gun that that is exactly what was happening.

<comment><USER24> Isn't a brief glance at the shape of some congressional districts a smoking gun that it happens all the damn time?

<comment><USER25> Yes, but if this were a Democrat strategist NPR certainly wouldn't have covered it.

<comment><USER26> NPR covered Democratic gerrymandering in Maryland many times, e.g.:

[https://www.npr.org/2018/01/14/577969855/gerrymandering- in-m...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/14/577969855/gerrymandering-in-maryland)

<comment><USER25> Lol the angle in that story is that Democrats should "give up" gerrymandering to convince Republicans to do so. I don't think this counts as "pro- Republican" (or "anti-Democrat") bias.

<comment><USER26> The point is that it draws attention to Maryland, which is gerrymandered by the Dems - contrary to your claims that they'd ignore that. Why is it supposed to be "pro-Republican"?

(Nor is it the only story NPR has on gerrymandering in Maryland, by the way - merely the most recent one.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Mixed feelings. On the one hand, we all know that most if not all politicians are corrupt, so the greater transparency that modern technology offers us to expose this truly does help to make the world a better place. On the other hand, the constant obsessive search by one of the parties to discover "bombshells" from the other while turning a blind eye to the corruption of their own party is upsetting. I cannot help but feel that this blind obsession to winning the zero sum game at any cost leads you to become the very thing that you are fighting against.

<comment><USER28> > we all know that most if not all politicians are corrupt,

We do? Seems unnecessarily cynical. If that were true than by corollary most if not all people are corrupt, and that does not match my experience by far.

<comment><USER27> Invalid logic. It is not necessary for most if not all people to be corrupt for the same to be true of politicians. Many people are gullible. Many people are easily manipulated. This is especially true of those who are young, and prone to adopt the ideology of the group. But yes, I do believe that a significant portion of the population possess the brain anomaly that manifests as narcissism and these people are more successful than others at climbing political hierarchies because they are unrestrained by conscience.

<comment><USER27> If you are curious about this phenomenon, you might want to research "the flying monkeys of the narcissist"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Has Uber killed off its self-driving trucks? - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/has-uber-killed-off-its-self-driving-trucks-3ebd2eb0e51 <comment><USER2> "Uber Freight" was supposed to be a freight forwarder, a booking service for cargo. "Uber for semitrailers", if you will. Call for a truck and driver, and someone comes, connects to your trailer, and takes it somewhere. There are already other companies offering that service. There's no one dominant player, so Uber might be able to muscle in.

Uber registered with the US DOT as a freight forwarder, not as a trucking company. Freight forwarders are carriers, even if they don't own any trucks. They have financial responsibility for the load getting to the destination in good condition. Uber doesn't get to claim they're just a booking agent.

This service doesn't seem to have launched. But that's what previous reports said Uber Freight was.

<comment><USER3> Another startup called Cargomatic tried to do this a few years ago. They raised $15MM but ended up shutting down last year due to logistical issues and not being able to meaningful generate revenue. One of the founders even came from a family who were in the trucking business. I think it's a good case study for the various challenges any entrant in this sector will need to solve in order to "disrupt" the old way of doing business.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/cargomatic-uber-for- truckers-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/cargomatic-uber-for-truckers- history-founders-investors-2016-8)

<comment><USER4> > logistical issues

This is a funny excuse for a company in the _logistics business_. You'd think they'd be good at at least that one thing.

<comment><USER3> Funny, indeed!

They supposedly had employees entering stuff into spreadsheets by hand. I recall that this was due to there being so many edge-cases, which made it difficult to automate processes.

The bigger problem I think with freight ever moving to self-driving is the legal liabilities involved. Consequences of even minor accidents are amplified with the size+mass involved.

We might see a hybrid system with auto-pilot doing the majority of the driving similar to how we currently fly planes, but I can't imagine how that would markedly improve the economic margins.

<comment><USER5> >We might see a hybrid system with auto-pilot doing the majority of the driving similar to how we currently fly planes,

That seems a very plausible scenario. Improves safety (which is a big plus!) but doesn't really do much for the financials overall.

<comment><USER6> One manned cab in a convoy with one or more self-drivers following does make for more enticing financials. You still have someone on hand to deal with paperwork, tire inspections, breakdowns, etc. with lower labor costs overall.

<comment><USER5> Potentially. But then you have to transfer drivers to the depots where they will pick up the other cabs in the convoy. The financials _may_ work. We'll see. FWIW, driver cost seems to be about 1/3 the operational cost of trucking today. And about 21% of trucking is over 1,000 miles. [1] So that 21% is probably your target.

[1] [http://www.atri-online.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/ATRI-O...](http://www.atri-online.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/ATRI-Operational-Costs-of-Trucking-2014-FINAL.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a German the self driving company Otto is really confusing. It doesn't only have the same name but also almost exactly the same logo as Otto, the decades old and second largest online retailer in Germany:

[https://www.otto.de/](https://www.otto.de/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_\(company\))

<comment><USER8> I feel like the founders were just making a phonic play on the word 'auto'.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_engine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope not. After the Budweiser / Uber test I had an idea for a film script.

Red necks with pre-electronic cars and an improvised EMP device are running around hijacking self driving beer trucks.

I was thinking it would be kind of Fast & Furious style.

<comment><USER11> This fear is overblown.

You can do everything you mentioned already.

Just put up a barrier on a road to stop the truck, and then shoot the driver.

Police aren't going to be able to protect drivers in the middle of nowhere.

Now ask yourself, why does this not happen right now?

<comment><USER12> Because police are more inclined to pursue crimes with a human victim. It's like the difference between robbery and burglery being where someone is in the house or not. One gets harder look because there is a terrified victim and escalation could've meant death. The other is just property loss.

<comment><USER13> Randomly put a guy in 1/5 trucks but make the guy not visible. Loudly state on the outside of the trucks that many trucks are manned. Criminals have no way of knowing which trucks have people and which don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I walk past the Uber/Otto trucks every day (three or four are kept on Harrison St in San Francisco between 3rd and 4th), and while the trucks are still their with their very visible lidar/cameras/etc, in the last week they've removed all mentions of Otto from the trucks (previously they had the Otto branding on the doors).

<comment><USER15> Do you have any pictures? I'd be interested in seeing them.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.google.com/search?q=otto+trucks&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=otto+trucks&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER14> Yep! Specifically: [https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.files.wordpress.com/2017/...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/otto_trucks_in_san_francisco.jpg?w=640) (that's them parked in the lot on Harrison) and then you'd erase all the OTTO branding :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought the logic of pursuing self-driving trucks was that it was generally easier than self driving taxi services:

\- Mostly highway miles (or you could arrange it to be so) \- Fewer weight requirements \- Better economics (a greater % of the economy is dependent upon trucking logistics than taxi services)

This isn't to say that there's a big master plan of making a trucking company, more that making a self driving trucking company is a very practical step on the path to full autonomy.

<comment><USER18> My impression is that Uber simply can't afford to not be the absolute first in driverless taxis. They're burning money to stay in the taxi business. Their entire business model relies on keeping the price somewhere in the range of what it is now and not paying a driver.

It might be that the marginal advantage of not having a driver on the highway section of truck delivery is not large enough to justify building out a trucking network. They'd have to establish relationships, buy trucks, service the trucks etc. all of that would be time and money that isn't going into their big bet.

<comment><USER5> I've said this before, but this just seems crazy to me. Nothing I see suggests that 100% autonomous door-to-door driving as a commercially offered service is just around the corner. Even if it reliably worked technically you're still years away from being able to offer it to the public. Not even Uber could flaunt the law that flagrantly.

And the thing is that we're not there. Even if you say it's a decade out (which seems pie in the sky optimistic to me), can Uber really afford to burn through cash for another 10 years?

[ADDED: I didn't make my point well. I do think legal/regulatory will take some time independent of technical readiness, but IMO it's technical readiness especially in all the corner cases that's the long pole.]

<comment><USER19> Elon Musk stated that their technology is 2 years away from full autonomous driving. Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year.

Waymo has already started a real pilot of fully autonomic driving for regular people in Phoenix area. I predict that means they are less than 1 year away from ditching training wheels and launching it fully.

Some think that changing laws to make legal will be the hard part but I see the opposite: states will be competing for who's first to make it possible.

Many states, including CA, already made testing possible. You just sign up and ask "can I test my self-driving cars, on real roads, possibly destroying other cars on those roads and killing people. Pretty please?".

Laws are hard when they're controversial and self-driving cars are political goldmine:

* dramatically less deaths and other kinds of destruction due to less accidents

* cheaper transportation

* the sheer coolness of self-driving

It'll take only few states in US to allow it and other states will have to follow or the politicians will look very stupid if a taxi drive in SF costs $1 and the same is $10 in Chicago.

No-one will have to flaunt the law, it'll get changed very quickly.

<comment><USER20> >Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year.

But that's not really a very impressive feat compared to 3-5 days of non-stop driving in NYC. I mean who cares if it can go cross-country? I want it to take me from my apartment to the office to the grocery store to Target out to dinner and then back home again.

Hundreds and hundreds (probably >1,000 even) of those cross-country miles are going to be desolate and essentially carless.

<comment><USER18> If I could get something close to an RV that could do the highway section to a national park or another major US city while letting 2+ people sleep in the back I'd be very interested in getting that and doing a very cheap vacation across the country.

As it is driving on a boring highway all day and finding a hotel at night sucks. I'd much rather leave the driving to the night while we sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not exactly news that the Otto team went straight to work on cars after the acquisition.

Nor is it news that Levandowski and Kalanick hatched this scheme while Levandowski was still with Google. (read the second from top comment): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205)

</comment><comment><USER22> Uber is likely keeping a low profile with its autonomous initiatives until the Waymo lawsuit blows overs.

I'm sure we can expect big things from them as soon as that lawsuit ends.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wouldn't it be disastrous to do so?

Elon Musk said that Tesla will be releasing an electric truck in the later part of this year [1].

Of course, self driving capabilities will be added afterwards.

Wouldn't it make sense for Uber to have this very same capability as well?

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

</comment><comment><USER24> lol dozens of paragraphs of speculation, and then Uber directly denies it at the very end. Talk about a waste of a read. This pretty much summarizes most blog articles these days.</comment>


Steve Wozniak says would consider return to Apple  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/us-apple-wozniak-idUSTRE7375PU20110408

<comment><USER3> This is a very typical Woz story. A reporter asks Woz a hypothetical question. Woz gives an honest answer. Reporter ignores the statistical insignificance of the hypothetical scenario and reports result as if it has 100% probability of happening.

This happens to many great thinkers.

Obligatory made-up scenario:

Reporter: "If you were in a plane crash in the Andes and the only food you could find was bodies of dead passengers would you eat them?"

Thinker: "Hmm.. interesting hypothetical scenario. It is of course impossible to know what anyone would do in such a situation without experiencing it, but it is obvious that the logical thing to do is to eat the bodies so you can be strong enough to seek help. Whether I personally could eat a human is not yet proven."

Reporter: "Cannibal!!!"

<comment><USER4> I've had the opportunity to meet with and talk with Woz before. The man really can't be anything but honest and he just loves talking - to anyone - <USER2> technology. He's almost the anti-Apple in that respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "In this episode, while investigating the 75 year old wreck of a Federation transport vessel, the Starfleet starship USS Enterprise-D crew discovers the former Chief Engineer of the Constitution class starship USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), alive in a transporter buffer. After being cleared by Dr. Crusher, Scott is eager to see the advances in technology including a tour of the Engineering deck, but quickly finds that his old knowledge has long been surpassed and his efforts to help are instead getting in the way of normal operations..."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_G...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29)

<comment><USER6> Indeed, Apple is no longer a tech company, they are now a brand like Coke and Nike.

<comment><USER7> <sarcasm> Indeed! Tablets have been around for years and suddenly there's an Apple logo on one and the fanboys act like it's some sort of technical advance.... </sarcasm>

<comment><USER6> Well, uh, tablets _have_ been around for years. And suddenly there's an Apple logo on one, and the fanbois did act like it was amazing. What was amazing was putting phone software on a tablet instead of Windows Tablet Edition on a tablet.

<comment><USER8> So you say that it is amazing but the "fanbois" are somehow wrong in finding it amazing? I have trouble understanding that.

I'm not aware of any widespread denial of the existance of tablet PCs by "fanbois", I remember them quite enjoying mocking those tablet PCs, especially by contrasting them with the iPad. Longer battery life, thinner, lighter, no keyboard, running no desktop OS, you can get one for $500 – all those features together are a genuine innovation and they touch on both hardware and software. That doesn't mean that some or all of those individual components didn't exist in other products often long prior to the iPad.

You can't build the iPad without knowing what you do. Just look at how Apple's competitors are still struggling. If making a tablet people want to buy was just a question of taking existing technology and marketing it right there would have been credible iPad competitors much earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm impressed to see a news article about Apple actually list Ronald Wayne as one of the original founders.

He might be the fifth Beatle in some ways, but he was there at the start.

<comment><USER10> Like Monte Davidoff at Microsoft.

<comment><USER11> Like Craig at Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where I think Woz would be a good fit for Apple would be speaking on college campuses and indirectly recruting the best talent for Apple.

But the biggest challenge would be for him to stay on message. First time he disagreed with Jobs in public as an Apple employee it would be very awkward. For that reason alone I don't think it would ever happen.

Woz is going to be the commencement speaker on May 6th at my alma mater, Michigan State University. They're planning a livestream of his commencement address and I will post the URL on here as soon as I receive it.

<comment><USER13> >First time he disagreed with Jobs in public as an Apple employee it would be very awkward.

Yea, but the illusion that celebrities are perfect is IMO ridiculous, and dates back to what I call "legacy" PR based on controlling the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Woz went back once before, and at one point his manager actually gave him a bad review. Good thing it was pre-internet, or the mgr would never live it down.

<comment><USER15> Source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The first question that came to mind: Does his early computing technical whiz still live up to today's Apple and industry standards?

</comment><comment><USER17> In a number of ways I think Woz actually seems like an interesting fit for Microsoft, in terms of compatibility of culture and bringing values to the table that could move the business forward.

I'd be quicker to buy stock in Microsoft if Woz were signing on, than I would Apple.

<comment><USER18> _I'd be quicker to buy stock in Microsoft if Woz were signing on, than I would Apple._

I'd be quicker to buy canned goods and ammunition in such a scenario, because the next thing coming over the mountain will be either zombies or Jesus.

<comment><USER19> Thank you for that. I'm not normally a fan of humorous posts on here, but that was the best laugh I've had all week!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But would Woz join the Google Android team?

</comment><comment><USER21> Abused housewife says would consider return to husband.</comment>