Ask HN: What day to day tasks do you automate? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have a script called update-my-things.sh, which updates my Python's pipsi scripts, my Python's pew virtualenvs, my Rust toolchains, my VMs, my local software Git mirrors, etc.

All stitched together in (bad) Bash.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems interesting. How often do you use this script? and is there any other part that you failed or found very boring?

On a side-note; I loved sandspiel.

<comment><USER2> > How often do you use this script?

I run once in a couple of days. Didn't automate the execution of this "meta- script" because I don't want it to run whenever I am using the resources its updating.

> is there any other part that you failed or found very boring

Yes, the VM updating part. Starting each VM, waiting for them to start, updating packages via apt-get, stopping, waiting for them to stop. This was boring and done on trial and error until it just works now.

> I loved sandspiel

I am not the author, just saw on lobste.rs and reposted here because I loved it too! All credits go to this guy: [https://github.com/MaxBittker](https://github.com/MaxBittker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like to rotate my desktop background regularly, so I wrote a small script to download the daily image from a known website and save it in a folder. Then my OS picks up a random image from that folder each minute and set it up as background image

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a small PHP script that crawls a daily deals forum for my list of keywords and sends me an email if there is any title matching it. Has helped me saved a lot of money :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Updating story progress on JIRA

<comment><USER6> It seems interesting. How does your script to do that?</comment></comment>


McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook out for violating company policy - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/03/business/mcdonalds-ceo-steve-easterbrook-steps-down/index.html <comment><USER2> Viz., being in a relationship with a subordinate.</comment>


What Is Left to Do After Your Open Source Project Is Done - loup-vaillant http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/after-your-project-is-done <comment><AUTHOR> Software projects are never finished, they are abandoned.

<comment> loup-vaillant I disagree. Software doesn't rot, and scope can be bounded. One _can_ finish something well enough that it requires virtually zero maintenance.

TweetNacl is finished. Monocypher is close to being finished. Many UNIX utilities are effectively finished. The only way such stuff requires maintenance is when something big happens, like the C standard starts breaking compatibility or something.</comment></comment>


Building an IOT Platform: Centralized vs. Decentralized Models - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-iot-platform-centralized-vs-decentralized-models-rodriguez

<comment><USER2> I found this an interesting view... but I think there's another model that's a combination. The author assumes all devices will talk to the cloud-based service, although in the "Decentralized" model the devices may talk amongst each other and THEN out to the cloud.

However, there could also be model where all the IoT devices communicate with a local hub within a building and then communicate back to the cloud through that local hub. So the model is "decentralized" in that it does not have reliance on a central hub... but "centralized" _within_ the local area. Perhaps this is a "Distributed Hub" model or something like that.</comment>


The Second Amendment Isn't Prepared for a 3D-Printed Drone Army - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-second-amendment-isnt-prepared-for-a-3d-printed-drone-army <comment><USER2> The Second Amendment isn't prepared for an army of nefarious wizards wielding deadly spells, either.

You can't "print drones" in any meaningful use of the word "print". Not now, probably not for decades. The solution to a fantasy threat using fictional technology is not to "gut the US constitution".</comment>


Introduction into Decomposition Methods of Linear Equation Systems in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://thoughts-on-cpp.com/2019/06/12/numerical-methods-with-c-part-4-introduction-into-decomposition-methods-of-linear-equation-systems/ <comment> Const-me The math parts are good. C++ parts are less so.

Arrays can be on the stack just as vectors. The main cause of performance difference between them is cache misses, stack is almost always well cached, newly allocated heap memory almost never.

It's rarely a good idea to write matrix libraries these days. Eigen switched to developer-friendly MPL license in 2012, I've been using it since then and it's awesome. It has substantially more internal complexity, but when used correctly it's faster that naïve solutions by an order of magnitude. Template metaprogramming pays off for their use case.

Quite often you know sizes of your matrices at compile time. If that size is 3x3 or 27x27 or something else reasonably small, switching to compile time sized matrices can improve performance by a lot. These fixed-size matrices and vectors are essentially value types, they have no pointers to chase and they don't use dynamic memory.

When you have complex formulae operating on vectors and matrices, if you use auto for intermediate variables, Eigen code often compiles into a single loop over the source data. These intermediate things of human-unfriendly types are essentially compile-time futures.</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with an unhappy (possibly delusional) client? - <AUTHOR>

I've recently had issue with a client who decided to cancel a contract just as things were coming together.
They've since refused to pay for any of the work done, and my contract has left me in a bad position only entitling me to the deposit which was small.
I've followed up with a letter from a lawyer, but they responded in kind saying that if we go to court they will file a counter claim for loss of earnings due to my failure to deliver anything of value.
This is of course total rubbish, since they cancelled the project before the deadline and they caused all the delays in the project (failure to produce a working API, and graphic design work took 2 months longer than it should have).
How would you handle this? The client is going to stick to his guns, and continue to spread his story till we take it to court. My lawyers have advised me we would probably win, but the time and money investment would be significant (more than the outstanding debt).
I can happily accept the monetary loss, but the possibility of this guy spreading bad word about me around London is unacceptable and he's certainly the type to do so. Any advice? <comment><USER2> You say he will _continue to spread his story..._ and _the possibility of this guy spreading bad word about me around London..._ yet you haven't given any context as to why he cancelled or what the original issue was.

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue is odd. The original context is that the app was delayed significantly. This was largely due to their API not being ready or functional, or in some cases fit for purpose (Facebook login was somehow supposed to work via Basic Auth on all http requests to their servers - security nightmare).

I was originally promised that 2 weeks after accepting the contract all the resources I needed to build the app would be ready (graphics, API, etc). This never happened, it was dragged out for a couple of months before I started to see the resources I needed to build the app. However in that time I built several prototypes using different mobile platforms, implemented what I could given the resources available to me, and generally prepared the framework for the app - all the stuff a good developer should be doing while waiting for graphics and APIs.

3 months in they decided to pull out, no warning, no complaints about issues. All they told me was that the app wasn't 'fit for purpose' and that it wasn't high enough quality and that the look and feel was wrong. The look and feel was designed by them! They also claimed that I had delayed the project and failed to deliver on time which is total nonsense of course.

I believe there was a lot of excuses from their team, the company is very loosely coupled, with just a director, a developer who has stake in the company but is not full time committed to it, and a graphic designer on contract. I strongly believe the coder claimed his API was complete (I was told that it was complete by their director - but know that the API was incapable of handling login, search, messaging, various other essential features of the app). I think their director chose to believe his coder over me and so all the blame for the delayed app was suddenly placed upon me.

Being blamed for my own mistakes I can understand and will happily accept. Being blamed for other peoples incompetence isn't acceptable!

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, these things happen. With that context, I can't imagine they would actively try and tarnish your reputation. It was a cancelled project. It happens. If the cost of legally pursuing your losses outweighs the end result then chalk it up as a lesson learned and move on.

Also, it might be worth reviewing your contract terms so that things like the delivery date for resources is pre-agreed before anything is set in stone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've since had a lawyer create a better contract for me.

Definitely need to look at how to better communicate with such clients, handling expectations and getting everybody on the same page is the hardest thing about contracting if you ask me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Download tax worries US porn industry - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Download-tax-worries-US-porn-industry/articleshow/4146397.cms

<comment><USER2> This article is complete fluff.</comment>


Brainstate – All your meditative needs in one place - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brainstate-binaural-beats/id1003074122?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> My brother and I have recently created an app called Brainstate - <USER2> Beats & Brainwave Entrainment. This app was created as a school project to help students reduce stress and anxiety and help with relaxation and meditation. Anyone who knows about binaural beats knows they're not just for students, they're for anybody to use whenever they want. Listening to binaural beats are different than listening to music. They are frequencies that are played in each ear that must be listened to with headphones in order to work. Each headphone plays a different frequency and you heard the difference between those two frequencies, created the "beat" sound. These frequencies imitate naturally occurring frequencies that happen in our brain every day and whichever frequency you listen to will give you the desired affect that the frequency is associated with. Our app is different from any other binaural beats app on the store because it offers a very large range of frequencies and pitches to choose from and it is very educational. Someone who doesn't know how to use binaural beats may become lost with the other apps, but Brainstate teaches the average person all they need to know. Any downloads, rates, and reviews would really help us get more visibility on the App Store! Thanks a lot guys! :)</comment>


Browser Font Rendering Inconsistencies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stephaniestimac.com/posts/2020/06/browser-fonts/ <comment><USER2> Summary: if you're specifying a bold font style (700) but not supplying a bold version of the font (only 400 and 600), Safari creates a "faux bold" on its own, while other browsers fall back to the next-closest weight (600).

Neither behavior seems more obviously correct, since you're asking for something that doesn't exist.

Moral of the story: whenever you're using webfonts that come in a variety of weights, make sure you're loading font files in the weights you're intending to use! Otherwise behavior may vary.

(And in contrast to multiple comments here, this has _nothing_ to do with macOS using different/darker types of antialiasing than other operating systems. That is not what this article is about.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem arises when you're invoking a style (like `h1` or `h2`) that by default requests a bold weight, but the `font-face` declaration only supplies a WOFF declared "font-weight: regular". In that case, the browser will try to synthesize a bold style by "smearing" the regular.

One fix for this is to set heading tags to "font-weight: normal".

Another fix is to supply two `font-face` declarations for the same WOFF file, covering both regular and bold, so that when the browser asks for the bold version, it just gets the same thing.

(Strictly speaking, I would classify this as user error, not a browser flaw, though it's an easy mistake to make)

<comment><USER4> People hit this so much, it's maddening.

In this case, they're using Google Fonts, which already does the latter: [https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Poppins:400,600](https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Poppins:400,600)

Testing this on my own, I'm not seeing a difference between safari/chrome/firefox on macos. If there's only 400 and 600 weights present, they use the 600 for bold elements. If there's a 700, they use that. You only see faux bolding when there's nothing provided in the 600–900 range.

I think the difference here might be moreso about browser font handling on windows? Though I'm still not sure how they got to the bold result at the top of the screenshot…I wouldn't expect safari to apply a faux bold when the 600 weight is there, and that sure looks like the proper 700 which apparently wasn't being called.

Sidenote: I didn't know about the font-synthesis property until this. Looks like it is intended to prevent any sort of faux bolding or faux italicizing from happening. That's cool.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps it would have been better then if the web standards never allowed for defining usage of the nearest available weight. It seems to certainly have created enough confusion in the microcosm of just this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why would it be a bug if two browsers don't render a h1 element the same, if you don't specify how you want it to look?

<comment><USER7> That definitely makes it sound more like undefined behavior than a bug.

<comment><USER8> Implementation defined :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe related — there was a Chrome bug regression that was recently fixed that rendered the thickness of font-sizes above a certain threshold incorrectly, large bold text wouldn't be bolded - [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=105765...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1057654)

</comment><comment><USER10> Damn it folks, stop trying to make your designs pixel perfect!

There will _always_ be font rendering inconsistencies. It's how the web works.

> The cross-platform problem is a harder one to solve as you can't control how > the operating system handles font rendering.

Bingo.

So stop trying! Embrace flexible designs and differences in rendering

<comment><USER11> I think the problem described in the article is a bit beyond 'pixel perfect', though. the font weight is DRAMATICALLY different. Text being way too thin or too thick can have an impact on readability.

<comment><USER12> A similar problem occurs with the valuable Japanese font "Yu Gothic", which is available on both Windows and Mac by default (both availability is rare).

(Not surprisingly no English info available) [https://neos21.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/01/05/000629](https://neos21.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/01/05/000629)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These rendering differences also impact vertical alignment with specific fonts, which will absolutely drive you mad if you're trying to troubleshoot.

Take a look at Github's redesign in Firefox. Button and icon alignment are generally off by 1-2px everywhere because of it. Guessing they're just living with it because Firefox is down in the single-digit percentages of browsershare these days.

<comment><USER5> It's important to keep in mind that the bitmap output of various font rasterizers isn't universally the same. If you're designing websites expecting text nodes to have the exact same dimensions, you're making a critical mistake.

<comment><USER13> Yes different fonts have different dimensions, but I'm talking about the same font across different browsers. The issue is that Firefox and Webkit render the baseline of some fonts with a 1-2px difference.

It's impossible to vertically align Helvetica consistently in Firefox and Chrome without some browser-specific adjustments, but Arial works fine.

<comment><USER5> I am, too. The same font rendered by Core Text, FreeType, and Direct2D/DirectWrite will not have the exact same dimensions every time despite coming from the same exact file.

Say I render a font with no anti-aliasing on an embedded device, because it's marginally more expensive to do so. If I did anti-alias it, you have to account for possibly growing the bitmap size to do so. If I did, am I no longer compliant with web standards? No, because the web standards don't specify dimension requirements for text nodes from source fonts.

Further, there are multiple different types of ways to anti-alias. Should the web standards dictate how?

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I misread.

The annoying aspect to me isn't the change in dimensions, but the inaccurate baselines. If we could reliably align text based on its baseline it wouldn't be an issue. "align-items: baseline" would be brilliant if it actually worked cross-browser.

It's pretty telling that Github doesn't even bother to solve the issue in their redesign, they've seemed to write off Firefox text alignment idiosyncrasies.

<comment><USER5> It would have been great had I known details like this much earlier in my career, but when people talked then about "pixel perfect" designs, I don't think most people understood then what sacrifices you have to make to do so! Box size calculations should be the same, I think, surely. But text specifically has no such requirements for equal precision.

In truth, that type of work would require you to know the output sizes across every supported browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there something happening in the font world I don't know about? I just spent the past day struggling with fixing my fonts on Arch Linux. I finally just deleted all xorg packages that give bitmap fonts becuase I couldn't get any of them to load right in Firefox. This was after a font package totally broke my installation a week ago.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tangential but I made getsnapfont.com to test how fonts look like on various OS/browsers.

Unfortunately most designers I've worked with don't acknowledge these inconsistencies when designing. For them, their 2x retina mac represents the vast majority of users.

</comment><comment><USER5> draw_down was downvoted for this, but I agree. If you're going to write an article on this, you _should_ know, or at least try to.

This would have been more educational if perhaps instead of the author guessing at what behavior should occur, they read the standards[1][2][3] and told us what should occur. There are even definitions in the specifications for how to lookup the nearest available weight.[1][4]

It seems like the author doesn't understand what liberties you have as an implementor. For instance:

> In the computed tab, Edge, Chrome and Firefox are all showing font-weight: > bold to be computed to a font-weight of 700, whereas Safari's computed font- > weight doesn't have a numerical value, it just remains computed as "bold." > But this still doesn't explain much.

Well, OK, but the _author_ didn't explain much. This little tidbit isn't meaningful, it's just an observation without an explanation as to why. But a cursory read shows the specifications clearly state that bold is the same as 700.

> Wait.

> I add ,700 to the end of this string: Poppins:400,600. My heading re-renders > and now matches Safari.

Well, yeah.

From Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS 2.1) Specification, "15.6 Font boldness: the 'font-weight' property"

"If the desired weight is less than 400, weights below the desired weight are checked in descending order followed by weights above the desired weight in ascending order until a match is found. If the desired weight is greater than 500, weights above desired weight are checked in ascending order followed by weights below the desired weight in descending order until a match is found. If the desired weight is 400, 500 is checked first and then the rule for desired weights less than 400 is used. If the desired weight is 500, 400 is checked first and then the rule for desired weights less than 400 is used."[1]

From CSS Fonts Module Level 4, "5.2. Matching font styles"

"If the desired weight is inclusively between 400 and 500, weights greater than or equal to the target weight are checked in ascending order until 500 is hit and checked, followed by weights less than the target weight in descending order, followed by weights greater than 500, until a match is found.

If the desired weight is less than 400, weights less than or equal to the desired weight are checked in descending order followed by weights above the desired weight in ascending order until a match is found.

If the desired weight is greater than 500, weights greater than or equal to the desired weight are checked in ascending order followed by weights below the desired weight in descending order until a match is found."[4]

> So what do I do to render headings consistently across browsers and > platforms?

Read the specifications. If you're arguing that Core Text doesn't draw like FreeType or Direct2D/DirectWrite, well, sure, but the specifications don't force you to output particular bitmaps.

[1]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#propdef-font- weight](https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#propdef-font-weight) [2]: [https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-3/#font-weight- prop](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-3/#font-weight-prop) [3]: [https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-weight- prop](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-weight-prop) [4]: [https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-matching- algorith...](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#font-matching-algorithm)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's a webkit thing.

Try

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased

and you'll get the version with less weight, while 'subpixel-antialiased' is the heavier one. This weight difference is more noticeable in white text against dark backgrounds.

Photoshop offers several options on how to render text that show different "weight" in a similar way... they're called "Crisp", "Strong", "Smooth", etc. In particular there's a "Mac LCD" one which I think matches this "issue" seen in Safari.

<comment><USER5> As far as I know, -webkit-font-smoothing doesn't change weight, it changes rasterization. What you describe in Photoshop also isn't weight, it's rasterization.[1]

See my post below. This is developer error from not understanding the font- weight implementation. The real answer is browser implementors use an algorithm to determine the nearest available weight. Succeeded standards, depending on how up-to-date the browser is in compliance, use slightly differing algorithms.

As a designer, you must specify exact weights, and understand what the keyword values translate to in the CSS standards. All other behavior is fallback.

[1]: [https://www.thegraphicmac.com/improve-text-appearance- with-p...](https://www.thegraphicmac.com/improve-text-appearance-with- photoshops-anti-aliasing/)

<comment><USER17> Yes, it changes rasterization. It's because MacOS has a legacy of dilating the pixel outlines when subpixel antialiasing is enabled.

When subpixel antialiasing first appeared on OS X, the FIR filter affected the gamma curve, making the font seem too light or thin. Correcting gamma the right way was expensive at the time, so they changed the rasterizer to dilate the outlines, increasing the contrast of the text.

At that same time, the *nix APIs like Xft just cranked up the coefficients of the filter so that the sum was ~40% higher than it was supposed to be, which also worked. I think that was a better method than sabotaging the outline shape.

<comment><USER5> That's fascinating, I wasn't aware of such details!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In which a novice web struggles aimlessly before giving up?

Compelling stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser? [http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/](http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Could this be related to macOS font smoothing? System Preferences > General > uncheck "Use font smoothing when available"

<comment><USER21> Yes, if you remove "use font smoothing" the font weight gets lighter and closer to other OSes rendering. Big Sur gets rid of this option, but I don't know if the underlying option is still on or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a well known Mac thing, and its one of the top 5 reasons why I moved away from OSX and refuse to support Apple users.

Safari enforces the OSX "thick antialiasing", causing really thick fonts. This also causes really thick fonts, unreasonably so, in normal non-web apps.

The reverse, unfortunately, is true: a lot of web developers worship at the altar of Apple, and have screwed up perfectly good websites by making their fonts too thin: on _every other OS, with every other browser_ thin fonts _break_.

If you are a web developer, for the love of all that is holy, test your website on a normal Windows machine, with a normal 100% DPI conventional monitor, in both Chrome and Firefox. If it misrenders, this is on _you_ , and you will look positively incompetent to the 95% of users visiting your website.

Apple users are a vocal minority, they do not represent the silent majority who will easily click away from your website because its unreadable.

The fix on OSX, if you're still willing to use that, is `defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 1`, and if you have a non-Retina display, combined with `defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool NO` to turn sub-pixel font rendering back on.

Defaults are 2 and YES, respectively. AppleFontSmoothing accepts values 0 through 3. 0 is off, 1 is light, 2 is medium, 3 is french roast columbian bold.

<comment><USER23> _This is a well known Mac thing, and its one of the top 5 reasons why I moved away from OSX and refuse to support Apple users_

Seriously? You changed operating environments because of font weights? That seems a little over-the-top.

<comment><USER24> Only on Safari, even.

Yet this comment over all brings up a good point (re: downvotes).</comment></comment></comment>


Million Dollar Consulting Hot Tips - <AUTHOR> http://summitconsulting.com/articles/index.html <comment><USER2> The site looks bad (remembers me the "rich dad" kind of thing), but the articles are actually very interesting and useful.</comment>


Google PageSpeed Insights Now Includes Real-World Speed Distributions - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com <comment><USER2> But you still can't have some inlined `data:image/*` SVG's on your page or you get "An error occurred while fetching or analyzing the page". Even though chrome renders the SVG just dandy.

<comment><USER3> Can you provide a specific URL or example where you're seeing this? I can't reproduce this: [https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Foutput.jsbin.com%2Fligefam%2Flatest)

<comment><USER2> Didn't post before, because looks like link farming, but [http://test.thirtytwomachine.com](http://test.thirtytwomachine.com) . If I remove the inline `data:image` files, pagespeed doesn't error out anymore. When I hit this problem, I found other people getting this exact behavior according to their online posts. Nuke the inline svg and pagespeed works again.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Can I bug you to file this on [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pagespeed- insights-d...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pagespeed-insights- discuss)? We should investigate what's going on there.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for caring about a grumpy (non-paying) customer. I'll file it.

I see similar svg issues are posted already: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/pagespeed- insight...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/pagespeed-insights- discuss/svg$20%22An$20error$20occurred$20while$20fetching$20or$20analyzing$20the$20page%22%7Csort:date)

<comment><USER2> Also, the error message is a bummer. "An error occurred while fetching or analyzing the page". If you told me some parser state in the error, at least I could feed that back to you guys, even though it'd confuse a great many web developers.

<comment><USER3> Yep, good feedback. Will route it to the team :)

<comment><USER2> Here's the google groups thread I just started:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pagespeed- insights-d...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pagespeed-insights- discuss/m4n2gW4ES6g)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This says that the HN homepage is 2.7MB. Seems a bit high, but I'm on mobile so I can't verify. Is that right?

<comment><USER3> I think you're misreading the copy: "PSI estimates this page requires 1 additional round trips to load render blocking resources and 0.0 MB to fully render. The median page requires 4 round trips and 2.7 MB. Fewer round trips and bytes results in faster pages."

The 2.7MB is a reference to the median.

<comment><USER4> Just looked at a reasonably popular post with 116 comments using Chrome developer tools. Came in at 230KB of html and 4.5KB of css/js/images. This would qualify as way larger than the median page, since most pages are stories with <10 comments, user profiles, or individual comments.

How is google getting 2.7MB? Are they also fetching the third party URLs in discussion threads? Or maybe they mean median session?

<comment><USER5> (Edit: pwinnski was faster than me)

I think 2.7MB is the size of the average web page on the Web on mobile (3.4M on desktop). Which is quite scary. (Edit: though this may refer to pages that are being developed and tested in Page Speed, see the other comment).

I wrote a whole (private, small) website with pictures (photos and images) and styles that includes a maze using JavaScript in 0.6 MB total. I didn't spend too much time in optimizing this.

I cheated a bit: links in this website point to anchors in the same HTML file. This does mean that without this trick, one page would be even lighter.

I would find it hard to write a 3MB webpage without doing it on purpose. Something is wrong with Web development. Stop wasting resources!

<comment><USER6> Ripppp I just put up a new site and Google is saying that it took 6 round trips and 4.1mb to fully render.... [http://www.themindsetapp.com](http://www.themindsetapp.com) . It's just a wordpress site atm, any tips to reduce it?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please take this personally - <AUTHOR> http://jbeckwith.com/2015/02/01/please-take-this-personally/

<comment><USER2> When I talk to my customers/users/clients I go to great lengths to let them know I want their feedback. I outright tell them "you aren't going to hurt my feelings".

I aim to delight the users or my software. If they use my product in a manner which it wasn't intended, they aren't (necessarily) "doing it wrong" \- I probably failed to anticipate how they would use it or make it intuitive to use.</comment>


Logs were our lifeblood, now they're our liability - <AUTHOR> https://vicki.substack.com/p/logs-were-our-lifeblood-now-theyre <comment><USER2> All this effort to distill user behavior and user intent from logs... why not just ask them?????

I'm still waiting for the option to see the ads that I want to see. I want to see movie trailers, something that I rarely see now because I don't watch TV. I want to see new video games. I want to see new books, what sports event are going on, etc. Why not ask me? It's literally not rocket science here but billions are spent on machine learning, clicks, storing exabytes of data or more trying to figure this shit out.

Just ask me for fuck's sake, I'm more than willing to watch ads in exchange for a useful service!

<comment><USER3> Honestly, I want a subscription service that allows me to see most major websites without ads.

I think someday someone's going to realize just how silly the advertisement game is, and as long as the payment structure is in place, we can get a much better web experience.

For example, may of us pay a small monthly fee for Netflix. I'm sure that a small monthly fee could add up to more than what most sites make from ads.

<comment><USER4> > think someday someone's going to realize just how silly the advertisement > game is, and as long as the payment structure is in place, we can get a much > better web experience.

You're not the first, or tenth, or millionth person to think of this. Hell, even just limited to HN, micropayments and general content subscriptions have been discussed for a decade. Consumers are in a way that equilibrium where they don't want to pay for web content (esp text web content), and the path to getting them to the equilibrium of paying without thinking about it (like with Netflix or power) is unclear.

It's not just theoretical: Companies like Google have also been experimenting with this for yeaaars, to diversify away from the risk (whether regulatory or technological or otherwise) of relying on ads as a primary revenue source. There are complications beyond consumer behavior, like bringing the colosally complicated ad ecosystem under a single payments system (since nobody wants to pay for a service that only removes some fraction of ads from the web).

<comment><USER5> > Consumers are in a way that equilibrium where they don't want to pay for web > content (esp text web content), and the path to getting them to the > equilibrium of paying without thinking about it (like with Netflix or power) > is unclear.

You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix. The path is absolutely clear: Customers are willing to pay for added value that's proportionate to the cost.

The problem for publishers is they do not add any value that would justify customers paying enough for their content. Few people will pay for a newspaper subscription when there are 10 other newspapers offering 90% of the same content for free.

There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.

<comment><USER4> > You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix

This isn't how equilbria work. Netflix was a superior product to piracy in many ways: no perceived legal risk, reliable access, high quality guaranteed, way better ease of use. These barriers were high enough that plenty of people didn't pirate at all and stuck with nonsense like DVDs for way too long, so the incentive path pointed smoothly towards switching to Netflix, a Pareto improvement for non-pirates and a fairly easy trade-off for pirates.

There's no such path for web content: adblockers are unquestionably legal, easy to set up, provide a better experience, and even non-users of adblockers have a trillion non-paywalled sources in an ecosystem where it's tough for strong brand loyalty to survive en masse. What advantages do you imagine a paywall option offering to people when their alternative is better in almost every respect?

> There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up > to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author touches on the cargo cult belief that data has inherent value, so collect all of it, hire a data scientist or ML expert and point them at it, and watch the value flow!

Seems to come from the same place as the belief that the Cloud magically makes everything resilient and scalable without any extra effort on your part. Just put it in the cloud, and then give your CTO a bonus for suggesting the cloud, and suddenly you don't need to worry about sysops.

Don't get me wrong, "log all the things" is a good place to start when you need to figure out what's actually worth logging - but it needs to be followed by a rigorous prune.

Otherwise your data-lake turns into a data-swamp, you collate a lot of noise that makes it harder to find signals, and people eventually end up spending a lot of time trying to figure out what's actually used, if any, when Hadoop gets full or the S3 bill gets too high.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was really hoping this would be about the lumber industry.

<comment><USER8> Thanks to GDPR, we're no longer allowed to count the rings to reveal PII.

<comment><USER9> Not to mention the crazy restrictions around acorns

<comment><USER10> They're nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This brings up really good points. One of the best practices going forward is to minimize storage (and logging) of any personally identifiable information.

Under GDPR, IP addresses can be considered PII, so it makes sense to set up an anonymizer for nginx ip address logs. There is a great Stack Overflow answer on this: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6477239/anonymize-ip- log...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6477239/anonymize-ip-logging-in- nginx)

But also there's some app hygeine involved. At least one of the recent "data breach" notifications involved not an actual leak of personal information, but unsanitized logs containing personal information that should not have been shared intra-organizationally. I forget the company that did this, but they notified as if it had been a breach even though passwords had just been logged internally.

When testing it's convenient to do stuff like ``` console.log('username: ', req.body.username); console.log('password: ', req.body.password); ``` but it's all too easy to forget about it when you're working on a million things. So a big part of the solution is mindfulness (do I _really_ need to log this?)

<comment><USER12> _" Under GDPR, IP addresses can be considered PII, so it makes sense to set up an anonymizer for nginx ip address logs."_

One thing I wonder about is what you would do if, say, you have an abuser on your site that you need to ban due to behavior detected after the fact through a log file.

If one needs their IP in order to ban them, but their IP is anonymized, what do you do?

<comment><USER13> One way hash of the IP.

<comment><USER14> The search space is so small you can simply create a table with all of the hashes and use that to reverse the hash.

<comment><USER15> You could always salt it.

<comment><USER5> Salts are only useful when you already know which hash to check e.g. because the user supplied the username that picks which password hash to check. When matching an IP against a list of salted hashes, you need to hash the input with every possible salt to compare against all hashes in the list. So for performance reasons, it's probably not feasible to use more than one salt (or a small number of salts). Then it's again very possible to reverse the list of salted hashes because the search space is number of all IP addresses times number of salts used, which is way less than the number of all hashes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 5 user Nielsen test referred to in this article is quite inaccurate. If ( and that's a very big if) the users are IID, then yes, 5 users is all you need. But your users from Russia aren't the users from USA aren't the users from China etc. Even if your userbase belongs to single country, there's differences between CA user vs TX user vs NY user etc. Further, the analysis isn't static in time! So you as a single user will be a different person tomorrow because you are more familiar with the software, or your mood is better, or your worktable/mind is less cluttered so you can pay more attention etc. In other words, world isn't multinomial coins with fixed head probabilities. Here the coins are people & the probabilities change over time. So the only sufficiency statistics are order stats. Hence logs. Nielsen adds a massive caveat "The formula only holds for comparable users who will be using the site in fairly similar ways" \- its possible to find such people in very homogenous groups. Like if you have a GRE saas & target all only the white college kids taking the GRE, hopefully 5 white kids is enough. Now you bring in black & brown & hispanic & chinese & so forth...maybe 5 of each. Or maybe you want to separate by sexes, so 10 of each...it gets complicated very soon, which is why its much simpler to just log everything/everybody.

<comment><USER17> > The 5 user Nielsen test referred to in this article is quite inaccurate

> "The formula only holds for comparable users who will be using the site in > fairly similar ways"

This is the article where Neilson breaks down what is being tested, and why it is statistically relevant.

[https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to- test-w...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test- with-5-users/)

Neilson is looking to solve HCI(1) and Human Factors(2) issues - and most of these are byproducts of having to have a deep (insider) understanding of a product and that bubbling up into your UI. You are going to catch a lot of errors that fit the adage "can't see the forest for the trees". Having sat through a LOT Of these tests, you will pick out user frustrations, and reasons for product abandonment that would likely be NON apparent in a log.

Your examples of US/China, TX vs CA and GRE with race and class MIGHT be relevant but it is going to depend a whole lot more on what your building. The problem is there are other means and places where these issues might manifest, and again use testing would tell you a lot.

If we were to build a VR game that used a chopstick like interface, and test it only in china, we would likely think that we had a good product. If we find out later that "this isn't selling in America" then testing in that demographic group would quickly give us the insight that people lack the muscle memory to use this intuitively. There isn't any log in the known universe that would give us that clue, and "test here" can (and likely would) be gleaned by other means.

When you get past HCI and Human factors log data can be useful, and be a contra-indicator of the results of formal testing. Given a choice between A and B in a formal setting may give you one set of results even with a large sample size, but real world behavior turns out to be very different. This is akin to people slowing down when they see a police car - but driving fast when one isn't present or kids acting differently because they know someone is watching. We aren't discussing UI and UI interactions were now discussing human behavior, and preference. I can't tell you how many times I have seen the non preferred solution be the winning one in an A/B test, but I would generally bet against what the group likes and pick the most garish solution as the winner.

These behavioral types of tests can only really be driven by logs, by people being themselves and "feeling" unmonitored, and accurate demographic (to your point) slicing and sorting. En mass people are far more predictable than they would like to believe. Were delving into something more along the lines of Asimovs Psychohistory(3) as I don't think these sorts of statistically predicable behaviors have been given a formal name.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–computer_interaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human–computer_interaction) 2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors_and_ergonomics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors_and_ergonomics) 3\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_\(fictional\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Addressing the value (and limits) of sampling:

Yes, statistical sampling _is_ a hugely useful practice, and is frequently used, at least by those who are familiar with its power and capabilities.

Depending on _what_ you can see, it may or may not be particularly useful. For activity logs, you _are_ getting a bunch of relevant information, though if you stick to just sampling log records, you may miss useful information, such as paths through a site, session data, and the like.

In doing analysis of the scale and scope of usage and activity of the late and unlamented Google+, I had the opportunity to sample based on _profile IDs_ , which Google had helpfully stashed in a set of robots.txt sitemap files, back in 2015. More recently, when seeking information on the number, size, and activity of G+ Communities (effectively: groups), I could perform a similar sampling based on the group IDs, also provided via sitemaps.

For a basic assessment of how many active users and groups there were, a small sample, as few as 100 or so IDs, _selected at random_ , were sufficient to give a general feel. But there's a lot of variance hidden in 2 billion registered users (as of 2015), or the 8 million Communities existing as of January 2019. And for detailed measurement of the most active users and groups, a very small fraction of the total (0.1% of users, and the top 50 or so of 8 million communities, or 0.000625%), the releative sampling population wasn't the total user or group count, but that small subset, _randomly distributed throughout the whole_ , comprising that sample of interest.

To find the very most active users and groups, in other words, you have to sample a _lot_ of datapoints.

(Mind: if I'd had log data, they'd have fallen straight out of that. I didn't. Which is itself another lesson: in most cases you're interested in _activity_ and not _population_ as a primary analysis variable.)

Given my tools and methods -- requesting URLs and scraping, from a desktop system over residential broadband -- there were limits to the amount of sampling I could do. 50,000 profiles were doable in a couple of days, but a larger pull would have scaled linearlly in time. For Communities, I did a largish pull based on a minimum level of resolution I thought would be useful, based on 12,000 (again, randomly selected) Communities.

In the end I lucked out as a third party was able to provide a comprehensive dataset of _all_ 8 million communities and summary metadata, from which I could validate my earlier sample-based methods.

But yes, working with hundreds or thousands of records, rather than millions or billions, often makes sense, is useful, and requires _vastly_ fewer resources (compute, time, bandwidth).

For getting a rough idea of just</comment>


Why iPhone 5 needs to be lighter - <AUTHOR> http://alexknight.net/blog/2011/3/7/why-iphone-5-needs-to-be-lighter.html

<comment><USER2> Totally agree iPhone 5 should be lighter. The iPhone 4 is great but a tad too heavy in one hand. I think the back glass adds weight and they will switch to aluminum.

</comment><comment><USER3> If my iPhone were any lighter, I'd have trouble telling when it's in my pocket and when I've forgotten to grab it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Or 'How to know when you should start working out.'

<comment><USER5> I thought I would be the first with the same snarky comment :) Seriously though, I use my iPhone 4 in much the same way all the time and have never found it to be too heavy in any way. The solid feel also makes it less "toy like", which really doesn't impact function, but sure makes me feel better about what I spent my money on!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to compare bubble charts programmatically? - <AUTHOR>

1.) I have data points for a bubble chart of age vs weight [['<15 yr', 30], ['<25 yr', 60], ...]
2.) I also have 4 or 5 canned models for overweight population, malnutrition, etc.
How to tell (programmatically) if a given set of data matches any of the pre-determined models.
What specific math or statistics literature I need to look for direction. <comment><AUTHOR> Specific stats literature too look for 'Goodness of fit test'

Answered here [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6933227/how-to-compare- bu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6933227/how-to-compare-bubble- charts-programmatically)</comment>


Social Credit Systems, coming soon to a democracy near you - <AUTHOR> http://fama.io <comment><USER2> This main thread this is related to is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363).

Please don't editorialize titles like that. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay so everyone go here: [https://fama.io/product/](https://fama.io/product/)

It has examples of what Fama "finds". Here are some from the website (some might be offensive):

1\. "white people can't say the n word, but at least we can say we know our dads and that police don't target us"

2\. "Kyle and Pete are really trying to convince me that One Direction is cool. They're one more gay comment away from being kicked out of my apartment."

3\. "Work is the last place I want to be right now"

4\. "Black men like thick chains because it reminds them of the good 'ol days"

5\. "You can't buy a girl a drink and not have sex with her after, I don't care what you have to do, get what you paid for."

6\. "Unpopular opinion - black lives only kind of matter."

Plenty of racist comments there. But getting red flagged as a potential 'toxic employee' for saying that you don't like your job? I mean come on... That's dystopian as hell and straight out of 1984. Call me old fashioned but I don't think people should lose future employment opportunities for a few dumb twitter comments. This is taking political correctness to some next-level techno-nightmare.

Maybe it's time to get ahead of the curve here and make a startup that provides people with new identities complete with online banking, 'social credit', and face masks to fool humans / AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> How about I make this offer to companies I'll show up do my job to the best of my ability and get a paycheck, I'll also agree to not talk about politics religion or other contentious issues that lead to bad feelings.

In return you agree to judge me on how well I do my job and make you money and we all agree that whatever shit I do on my own time is my problem not yours. How's that sound?

<comment><USER5> This is Madness! Madness I tell you!

Honestly, this used to be the norm but now? There is no norm. Only a race in all directions, in the hope of optioning a goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Companies already scan social media. No surprise someone built a company around it. Too bad it does not root out toxic or incompetent management.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious about the legality of it. How do we know it won't discriminate illegally? Or how does an employee dispute the information?

<comment><USER8> The applicant likely will never know why they were rejected. How long would it take for someone to realize they could assassinate the character of a rival or someone they simply didn't like by posting with a fake account in places the AI is likely the source input? The target might never know that the false posts exists while being silently passed over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny how just using the culturally appropriate term "toxic workplace behavior" and all of sudden it doesn't sound so bad. Who wouldn't want that.

<comment><USER10> The workplace extends into personal life now. People tweet shit publicly, and they publicly associate themselves with a company via Linkedin. So if this person says the wrong thing, people will harass them and the company they work for.

It's the sound business choice to see which employees are saying online and screen for people who could say the wrong thing and cause PR issues for the company.

<comment><USER11> The question is - does the "bad PR" really matter? Is there actual data/research proving that it in fact has an impact on the business profits? I doubt that people won't go and watch the latest Guardians of Galaxy just because James Gunn is back at directing it. I wouldn't put that much weight on the usual twitter outrages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm split on this. On one hand this company is pure evil (as i've said before), but on the other this would exactly what I would use to screen employees that I'd hire. There is some terrible shit people say online that reflects who they are as a person who I would want to stay far away from the company I built.

EDIT. An example of what I would screen for are the following: \- "locker room" discussions on a profile they put their name on. off color jokes and all that \- "woke" discussions about oppression and how you're more oppressed if you are X, while group Y isn't

Both of those are people who I would not want around.

<comment><USER4> But does it really matter so long as they don't bring it into the workplace. Like does it matter if the person you sit next to spends their free time beating squirrels as long as they don't spend hours of time talking about it at work and making you look at their pictures?

On the flip side would you want to have on your team someone who sucks at their job and who you always have to cover for but they spend all their free time helping teach one eyed orphans how to do multivariate calculus?

Does it matter as long as they keep their personal life at home and their professional life at work?

<comment><USER10> You're right, it doesn't matter. What matters is that stuff that can be viewed as controversial or actively discriminates against someone/group of people can be found under their name.

Look that story a few years ago where a woman tweeted something like "I'm going to Africa something something aids. jk I'm white." People got pissed and attacked her company.

I don't care she said that. I care that she was stupid enough to say that under her own name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's the company behind

I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363)

Right?

</comment><comment><USER13> I have engaged in what this company might call "toxic" behavior in online forums, It does not mean I will behave like this in the work place.

Sarcastic, anti-social internet trolls are some of the smartest people you'll ever meet and are the people you want working for your company. And they are generally smart enough no know _not_ to behave like that in the workplace.

<comment><USER8> Do you set up your accounts in a way that makes it easy for others on those forums to associate you with your employer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Previous threads of interest:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363) (today)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22086331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22086331) (14 days ago)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371715) (2015)

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw this on Twitter and emailed a request to "firstname.lastname@example.com" to remove any and all information they have on me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I highly doubt that this is legal in EU, but I'm not an expert.

The reason is that at my current client, we are not allowed to google a name from an incoming resume, due to privacy reasons. Not even search that person on linkedin.

Maybe they are overinterpreting the EU privacy law, but I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would criticize this product but I don't want to lose future employment opportunities.

<comment><USER18> You want to work for companies that use this service?

<comment><USER17> Someday we might not have a choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can't wait to make people who disagree with my worldview destitute!

</comment><comment><USER20> This may just select for obedient employees. Which, may very well be what employers need. But, it could potentially eliminate diversity of opinion. (Presumably that offers some advantage...)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think this is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit)</comment>


Show HN: Fjump – navigate the web faster utilizing Chrome's tab-to-search - <AUTHOR> https://fjump.to/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a simple tool I build over a weekend and I use it regularly since. I hope it gets more attention now (this is the second time I'm posting it here).

<comment><AUTHOR> # Motivation

The idea behind it is quite simple.

Chrome offers a quick way to search websites, for example, by typing "you" and hitting Tab Chrome offers to search YouTube (assuming you've visited YouTube before).

fjump.to utilizes this behavior and offers a quick way to navigate to web pages.

# Usage

Go to fjump.to, create a command by:

a. choosing a trigger, "jira" for example

b. assigning a URL for that trigger, [https://my-company- jira.atlassian.net/jira/software/projects...](https://my-company- jira.atlassian.net/jira/software/projects/my- project/boards/37?assignee=123456789765432)

Now, you can type fj, hit Tab, type jira and Enter.

fjump's index.html will load, it will execute a short script that looks for the command trigger within your local storage, if it finds one it will redirect you to that command's URL, otherwise, it will offer you to fuzzy search other, similar commands you've defined.

Hope you find it useful.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Launching $10/month Xbox Game Pass - <AUTHOR> http://news.xbox.com/2017/02/28/introducing-xbox-game-pass/ <comment><USER2> A move following on the success of EA Access: [https://www.ea.com/eaaccess/](https://www.ea.com/eaaccess/)

The Playstation 4 has PS Now ([https://www.playstation.com/en- us/explore/playstationnow/](https://www.playstation.com/en- us/explore/playstationnow/)), sorta. This press release throws a bit of shade:

> One of the best things about Xbox Game Pass is that you can discover and > download the full titles directly on your Xbox One. That means continuous, > full-fidelity gameplay without having to worry about streaming, bandwidth or > connectivity issues.

<comment><USER3> Nvidia is also rolling out GeForce NOW: [http://www.geforce.com/geforce- now](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now)

People have also rolled their own solution: [https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised- and-much-faster-run-your-ow...](https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much- faster-run-your-own-highend-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html)

<comment><USER4> Bit of a difference here. TFA and Parent are discussing unilmited video game streaming packages, as a gaming parallel to Netflix or Prime Video.

You're linking to articles about _cloud gaming hardware_ services, which could be used in tandem with the above streaming services, or could be used to play games you already own.

There is the possibility to create lock-in by tying the two services together, but hopefully market forces will prevent this.

<comment><USER5> Additionally confusing since NVIDIA offers two different products with the "Geforce NOW" brand.

The "Netflix for games" version is here:

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/geforce- now/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/geforce-now/)

Some explanations at the FAQ: [http://www.geforce.com/geforce- now/faq](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now/faq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if we are going to get to the point where people no longer "own" any traditional media, such as movies, music and games, and rather pay monthly subscriptions to have access to a giant library of all these things.

It's certainly in both the consumer's interest (massive library of content) and the company's (revenue generated for dated content).

I worry about the implications of this, ie. exclusive content released only on certain platforms or just the lack of control over the media you're paying for (titles removed, modified, etc.)

Interesting to think about.

<comment><USER7> This feels more broad than digital media.. Car sharing of expensive autonomous cars means nobody will own a vehicle, the 'capital class' has purchased most of the housing as investment so far fewer people will own homes, all of the fiber and most of the WISPs use expensive proprietary equipment so to access the internet you need to rent their devices, etc. etc. is there any area where ownership is actually increasing?

<comment><USER8> I guess the other way of looking at this is that people are freed from owning non-investments. Where previously you had to own if you wanted to use, now there's an alternative.

 _But_ (and big but) that does rental-trap those who can only afford to rent, with no surplus income to invest. And makes monopolies even more dangerous (PS: #&@+ Comcast).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope subscriptions kill "paid DLC". Enough of this trend of shipping crippled-by-default games that require you to pay extra in order to have what should frankly be called "the finished game".

Once you're paying a monthly fee, the games had better be complete, offering _all available content as the games were meant to be played_. Otherwise, it would be just another scam to seem "cheap" until you add up all the extra charges to download more.

<comment><USER10> Define "complete". The vast majority of day-1 and post-release DLC is content that was created by the development team after the gold master (the thing burned to retail discs) was complete, so that the studio doesn't have to lay them off.

There is the question of how this interacts with digital-only releases, but you don't see it as much there.

Also: Why is it your business to say whether somebody can sell expansion content for a game or not? Are premium services somehow immoral?

<comment><USER9> The problem is that what passes for a finished game these days has diminished compared to years ago, for the same base price. It is easy to see for instance that an older RPG easily had 100-150 hours or more of play, while modern ones top out at 40-50 "unless" you pay more for extra "chapters" (read: stuff that should have been there when you bought the game). They release HALF a game for the same $60-$80 or whatever they would have charged years ago, except now they know full well that they will demand _another_ $5-$20 or more to obtain the rest of the game. It is a racket that rewards crippleware over quality.

<comment><USER10> I can empathize with your displeasure here but this argument represents a complete misunderstanding of games and how they're constructed.

'100-150 hours or more of play' is completely meaningless. A game can be 150 hours because it's completely padded out with awful grind (i.e. WoW's widely reviled kill 10 rats formula, widely disliked formulaic Ubisoft Open World Games with repetitive side-quests), or a 5-hour experience with adjustable difficulty, optional objectives and high replayability (multiplayer!)

You simply can't judge the value of a game based on play time, no more than you can judge the quality of a piece of software by the length of its features list or the quality of a film by its running time.

I would make arguments that the quality of the experience you get out of retail games is much higher than a decade ago, due to increased budgets, better technology and general design refinement:

* Almost universally better tutorials

* More widespread access to options like control remapping and sensitivity adjustments

* Access to patches that fix obscure bugs and performance issues found after launch

* More consistent UI and narrative feedback telling you where to go in a game (so you don't get lost if you take a break)

* More consistent availability of adjustable difficulty levels and 'gimme' help in response to multiple retries

* More games that offer alternative paths and solutions

* Cloud saves

* Automated checkpointing

You can view some of these things as steps back from what you liked in (picking random examples here) Final Fantasy 7 or even Final Fantasy 12, but for the vast majority of game players (now a HUGE audience compared to a decade ago) these changes make games more accessible and are generally steps forward, despite some weak points.

I'm the sort of person who happily dumps 100+ hours into a JRPG, but I still find that things have generally moved forward. Most of the high-profile 'short' games I purchase are stellar experiences, some of them are genuinely on par with movies. Others are cheap enough that the short duration is not a weakness - I didn't spend much on Life is Strange or Firewatch but they were very memorable and delivered exactly what I paid for. If you want a big sprawling RPG those are still out there, and they're great - Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy 15 and Xenoblade X are 3 recent titles that I thought stacked up well here for a lower cost (considering inflation) than you would have paid in the past (especially if you use Amazon prime to buy games below retail!)

<comment><USER9> I don't have a problem with making games more accessible. The problem is that game companies aren't being honest: they are charging prices AS IF the game were complete, when what they should be doing is stating up front is that what's shipped on Day 1 is worth FIVE dollars, not much more. They should state clearly that DLC is not just "extras" but virtually half the game, for additional charge, withheld from the start.

Similarly, I agree that patches to _fix bugs_ are useful. Unfortunately, game companies have realized two things: (1) apparently it is now "OK" to ship games on Day 1 that ARE BROKEN, especially if you reach a certain point in the content where major breaking bugs are revealed or maps are practically empty or areas have been cut off, etc.; and of course, (2) is that companies realized updates don't have to be just for bugs, they can be used to siphon more money out of people for the content that belonged in the game from the start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Smart idea, don't know how it will affect the quality of games moving forward as it seems that titles that would sell for lets say $40 a piece will now be included in a bundle and probably get a fee out of that $10 a month.

On the other hand yes subscription/rent is the way to move forward. You lease a car, you subscribe to netflix, prime, hbo, now you subscribe to gaming libraries etc at some point will happen with food if its not there yet.

<comment><USER12> The most reasonable solution is for games to get a cut per hour someone played them. This would tend to push replay-ability on the upside, grinding on the down side. However, expect Halo 27 to be sold for full price then DLC and only after that get added to the game pass.

<comment><USER13> [removed my comment]

<comment><USER12> I think this is somewhat balanced by the full price on new games.

Getting instant access to a large catalog of old games is mostly about replaying them. In other words, people will not be download that gem to replay it because they already got their three hours from it. Honestly though I can't think of a game that world be worth 60$ for 3 hours, but I can think of lot's of games that cost 60$ but did not hold my interest for 3 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Over 100" sounds like an incredibly small number. I'm guessing most people could just buy the ones they like used for less than a few months of the subscription. Although, the concept of "used" is a bit insane when the disc is little more than a key to get to the current version of the game that just gets downloaded.

<comment><USER15> >the disc is little more than a key to get to the current version of the game that just gets downloaded.

Hoo boy this burned me bad when I bought Half Life 2. It was 2004 and I had a dial-up connection, so I bought the DVD from the store instead of purchasing it from Steam. No way I could download that big of a game in any reasonable time. Well, it turns out the DVD I bought from the store was just an installer for Steam and a CD key, the game didn't actually come on the disc. So Christmas day, I'm attempting to download 5GB on 56k along with everyone else who just got the game that day.

<comment><USER16> What I remember about the original release of the game was that the DVD had the game, but it was encrypted. You could pre-load it onto your machine, and when it released, they'd provide the key over Steam, and the game would decrypt.

Or maybe I'm confusing that with a pre-release encrypted file that you could download ahead of time, to save the download later. I'll have to look at my disks when I get home; I was pretty sure that they had the full data for the game on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if this will kill the second hand games market the same way Netflix murdered Blockbuster.

I don't really know how quickly you can buy a second hand game for a reasonable discount, but if games people currently buy second hand appear in a subscription instead I think that means GameStop is dead since that's their main driver of profit AFAIK.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do we have any information about how game developers are compensated for including their games in this new subscription option?

</comment><comment><USER19> Key thing for people like me will be the difference between this library and the Games with Gold library.

If you're new to Xbox though then this is an incredible value. Imagine a kid getting an Xbone for X-Mas and the parents spending another $120 and the kid gets effectively unlimited games for a year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was upset when I found out that changing my nickname costs $10. I don't even own an XBox and this was the game community thing on Windows. I think it's called XBox App or so.

They should have just limited the amount you can change your username in a given time. But I guess free money this way.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems a bit pricey. If they would throw the Xbox Gold sub with this, it might be worth it. EA Access has a great library and you can find an annual key for that for less than $30. Though this is definitely better than PS Now since you actually download the full game rather than streaming it.

<comment><USER22> > If they would throw the Xbox Gold sub with this, it might be worth it.

I think this would be an great deal for $10 a month.</comment></comment>


Xfinity Flex- Comcast to Charge You $5-Month for a Bootleg Roku - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/comcast-wants-to-charge-you-5-a-month-for-a-bootleg-ro-1833493197 <comment><USER2> Using "bootleg" in the headline is misleading IMO. It implies there's something illegal or at least shady going on, which is what I assumed when I clicked the article. "Roku Clone" would be more accurate.

<comment><USER3> Rental models are pretty shady, in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Contrast with Now TV in the UK, which is rebadged Roku equipment, but subsidised.

The box was £15(?) ($20) with 1 months free movies. Pay as you go after that.

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

Edit: On second reading this looks like marketing. Nowtv is owned by Sky, who is controlled by Rupert Murdock, who I normally stay well clear of, except when he's giving me money off Roku boxes. I just watch the free to air stuff on it, so he doesn't actually make any money off of me.</comment>


Microsoft launches Windows 10 on ARM - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12119/microsoft-launches-windows-10-on-arm-always-connected-pcs <comment><USER2> From Microsoft's Secure Boot OEM policy[0]:

> The firmware setup shall indicate if Secure Boot is turned on, and if it is > operated in Standard or Custom Mode. The firmware setup must provide an > option to return from Custom to Standard Mode which restores the factory > defaults. On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only > Standard Mode may be enabled.

[0]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/design/com...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/design/compatibility/systems#systemfundamentalsfirmwareuefisecureboot)

<comment><USER3> Translation: The ARM "computers" will only run software Microsoft blesses. Can we call it a computer anymore? It is more like a tablet when Microsoft demands digital restrictions management on the software that runs on the device.

<comment><USER4> _> Translation: The ARM "computers" will only run software Microsoft blesses. Can we call it a computer anymore?_

Why don't people take Apple to task for doing the same thing? You can't take an iPad and install Linux on it, or Windows for ARM. You're locked into running iOS. Apple doesn't even allow downgrading iOS.

Same with Android devices that come with a locked bootloader. You can't install anything other OS version/flavour than what the manufacturer dictates.

Yes, it's unfortunate that Microsoft has this policy, but why is it that people only complain loudly about locked bootloaders when it comes to Microsoft products?

Apply the same standard to Apple and Android products with locked bootloaders. Microsoft isn't the first one to do this, and they won't ship nearly as many devices as other manufacturers who lock down the boot process.

<comment><USER5> The op is complaining about calling 'computer' rather than 'tablet' this ms product. The ipad and iphones and android phones are tablet and phones, not computers.

<comment><USER6> They are all technically still 'computers'. Their form factor doesn't change that.

<comment><USER5> This has little to do with the 'technical' meaning of the term.

The big _practical_'distinction' nowadays between a 'proper computer' and a 'tablet/phone/etc' is between being open for modification, creation and alteration by the user, or to be a walled garden where only the manufacturer chooses what can be done and installed.

The Ipad Pro may be powerful as a computer, but we think about it as a tablet because it uses IOS and its walled garden.

The OP is complaining that MS is trying to push its new product into the computer space even tough it's locked down via Windows 10S. It's not true that nobody 'takes on Apple about this' \- it's simply that Apple does NOT do that on its COMPUTERS (i.e. the Mac line).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The difference between this and Windows RT is that this will emulate an x86 chip to allow you to run apps compiled for Intel.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how Microsoft eventually dealt with this: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/06/intel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/06/intel-fires-warning-shots-at-microsoft- claims-x86-emulation-is-a-patent-minefield/)

Intel seemed to indicate at the time that it was really interested in any licensing around the x86 ISA.

<comment><USER9> As far as I understand, they don't emulate the x86 instruction set, but instead cross-compile it to ARM native instructions. That means that whatever implementation details are behind the patented x86 instructions are irrelevant, since there is no emulation of those instructions, they are just replaced by equivalent ARM instructions. Intel will probably still sue, but I expect them to settle out of court.

[http://www.techradar.com/news/a-closer-look-at- windows-10-s-...](http://www.techradar.com/news/a-closer-look-at- windows-10-s-windows-10-on-arm-and-windows-10-iot)

<comment><USER10> Isn't that equivalent to emulating it? Like emulators for video game systems that have both an interpreter and a JIT recompiler, the latter is just an optimization of the former. They both must interpret the instruction set of the target and run equivalent instructions on the host.

<comment><USER11> Patents have a funny feature, in that they (are supposed to) apply to a specific implementation. So "equivalent effect" is not enough for patent violation in the general case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope and expect Apple to watch this closely. Playing with the iOS 11 on an iPad pro 10.5 suggests a bit what a Macbook Air might look like in 'appliance' mode with one of their customized ARM processors.

The really interesting bit however is whether or not ARM notebook computers can become a 'thing' for real. There have been a couple of runs at it by people without the resources to do something competitive with the thin and light laptops of today, doing it "for real" has always seemed a bit out of reach.

It becomes more and more clear to me that something like a Chromebook type OS and a walled garden app store is a really attractive proposition for people who don't do development on their machines.

<comment><USER13> Try RDPing from iPad to Windows 10, for me it feels amazing, and I'd gladly buy iPad-like device with Windows 10 for working on the road.

<comment><USER14> Aren't you just describing literally the Microsoft Surface?

<comment><USER12> I've got both a Surface Pro and an iPad pro and it would be a Surface with an ARM processor, sort of. The sort of comes from the fact that the windows resources are remote in the iPad case which allows for faster response and more media/storage on the remote machine. The Surface Pro doesn't last quite as long on battery power as the iPad does and it can be constrained in its storage space (I've got an additional 256MB SD card plugged into mine and its still tight).

But the interesting thing for me are the two approaches to window dynamics. The Surface Pro is difficult to operate with a finger, ok with the stylus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something I wanted from Apple.

First time Microsoft seems to be more focused than Apple (which works on semi- innovations like touchbars).

<comment><USER16> I expect Apple would either switch entirely, or not. But fracturing the desktop doesn't seem like something they'd do. ARM would have to be the clear path forward.

<comment><USER17> Mostly I don't have the feeling they want to invest more into MacOS. I feel they would much rather push everyone into iOS, a locked down platform where they have full control on what people can do or not and monetize every single step (whether that is realistic or not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, as Windows will be available on ARM, we will have more laptops with ARM, more than just Chromebooks. This seems like a win for users.

<comment><USER19> But with a locked bootloader, so not necessarily

<comment><USER20> This might be a non-issue. The only people who are likely to care about installing alternative operating systems are power users, and power users may still prefer to buy more powerful Intel systems.

<comment><USER21> As a power user, I'm still looking for a good ARM battery efficient 2-in-1 to use as a light laptop and tablet that runs Linux. Not to use as a production machine but for content consumption. Being able to continually read a book or article while coding or performing a task on production machine would be better then having to swap between the two on one computer. Wouldn't choose Intel for that.

<comment><USER22> Having more shipping ARM devices gets you closer to that, even if these devices have a locked bootloader. The more robust the ecosystem around ARM with UEFI gets, the more the parts become commodity and if there's enough demand, someone will start shipping them with Linux or unlocked bootloaders.

(Hate UEFI all you want, but standardizing on something is much better than the Android world where every SoC requires a custom bootloader and if the manufacturer doesn't support the kernel you want to run, tough. Having a standardized platform to run on means you can have a Linux distribution that supports running on any device that supports the standard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish they launched an OS that has bare minimum interruption with things I do not care about. I seriously do not need anything from an OS than just a super lightweight interface to interact with applications and filesystems. Why is it so hard?

The mail.app vs outlook is a great example of useful and useless UI. Both app does the same.

<comment><USER24> I've seen firsthand the amount of work that goes into building a complex, scalable system and the problem with your statements are that 1) It's hard to measure at scale what each of your users cares about. This is especially true with "lightweight" interfaces - simpler UI means you have to carefully decide what you want to expose. 2) Generally the older software is, the more bloated it becomes - this is inescapable. The only real solution to this problem is full rewrites which rarely happen because they're so expensive and time- consuming. By the time you ship an OS it might already have some bloat. 3) People like what they are used to. Remember the backlash with the Metro interface? Windows users would never get behind a major change to the Windows UI - everyone has been using it for almost 20 years now.

<comment><USER25> Especially 1). So many different people view what is an MVP differently, especially for an OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know if/when Windows 10's x86-on-ARM thing might come out for _phone(s)_? I don't really care for the emulation on laptops but I need to upgrade my phone and this is a factor.

<comment><USER27> Combined with the Continuum thing for Windows Phone ([https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/Continuum](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum)) this would be incredible. You could use your phone as a desktop replacement.

Unfortunately, it seems like Microsoft has given up on Windows Phone already.

<comment><USER26> I thought it was _supposed_ to be for phones. That's what I read last year: _" I'm hearing this Cobalt [x86-on-ARM] technology is aimed at phone and possibly tablet/desktop devices."_ [1] I'm confused when it became a laptop thing at all.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-x86-on- arm64-emulati...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-x86-on- arm64-emulation-a-windows-10-redstone-3-fall-2017-deliverable/)

<comment><USER28> It's always been something of a laptop thing? Microsoft since Windows 8 has made it somewhat clear they think Windows needs a strong presence on ARM tablets to A) avoid Intel hegemony, B) remain competitive with the iPad in that space. "It doesn't run any of my apps," was perhaps the biggest complaint about Windows 8 ARM tablets, so it makes sense that x86-on-ARM was a big strategy push before the next attempt.

Beyond that, rumor has it that Microsoft hopes selling tablets/laptops with ARM will open the Windows ARM space enough in the meantime while the Windows team is finishing the next version of key Windows shell components (nicknamed the "Composable Shell" or CShell), which would be make the Continuum experience for say Phones stronger because instead of switching entirely different shell applications (start menu, taskbar, et al) between form factors, the same applications responsively adapt themselves.

<comment><USER26> I'm confused, I just quoted an article from 2016 saying it was about phones and possibly tablets/desktops, and you say it's always been a laptop thing? Anything you can quote from 2016 to that effect?

<comment><USER28> The Verge's article from 2016 says "laptops are expected to be the first devices", and brings up Windows RT as the predecessor, just as I mentioned it:

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft- window...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft- windows-10-arm-desktop-apps-support-qualcomm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do the devices that it runs on make good linux machines?

I would love something as light as the Galaxy Tab S2 (Less then 400g!!) that I can use with Linux and a type cover.

I would be able to work everywhere I go. Because carrying around 400g with me all the time would be worth it.

<comment><USER30> You can run Linux on Chromebooks.

<comment><USER29> There is a 400g chromebook?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The 24-hour, always connected battery life dream may be a reality by this time next year.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not a fan of ARM CPU but I'm quite curious about the x86 emulation on Windows 10 ARM platform, does it run like qemu-user-static-x86 just like how Wine did? (while all x86 syscall/WinAPIs have direct replacement on Windows 10 ARM)

Should someone generously share some articles, I'd really appreciate that help.

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought Intel threatened to sue if Windows run x86 apps with Intel emulation on ARM?

So QCOM is being sued right and left (Apple, Intel, and governments all over the world)?

<comment><USER34> > _So QCOM is being sued right and left (Apple, Intel, and governments all > over the world)?_

For what it's worth, if you do competitive business like Qualcomm does, there will most likely be at least one pending lawsuit against you at any given time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So can I dust off my Surface RT that's effectively a paperweight?

</comment><comment><USER36> It will be interesting to see if this ends up in the industrial/rugged handheld market, or if Microsoft has conceded that market to Android for good.

I guess it could be up to the device manufacturers.

</comment><comment><USER37> So what are people going to use this for? Servers? Tablets?

<comment> david-cako I think Microsoft is just realizing what Apple realized 8 years ago: ARM is the next x86 for the type of devices that people want to buy.

<comment><USER38> I think you forgot about Windows RT.

<comment><USER20> Windows RT was not a failure because of ARM, or because the hardware was not capable. Windows RT was a failure because, once again, Microsoft showed that they are completely incapable of reading the market. They tried to market a Windows experience to consumers and then did not deliver on the Windows experience.

<comment><USER38> You might be replying to the wrong comment. I didn't say anything about Windows RT being a failure. The only meaning I was trying to convey was that Microsoft DID try to push an ARM platform many years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> What is the performance on the cross compiled apps? What about directx or opengl support? Benchmarks please for chrome or ie or Firefox.

<comment><USER30> Something tells me Edge will have an advantage, at least for awhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> With Microsoft partnering with Qualcomm, won't it just increase the monopoly of Qualcomm? Is it even possible to increase monopoly?

</comment><comment><USER41> Hopefully this partnership will allow Qualcomm to bring the Snapdragon performance on par with the Apple CPUs.

<comment><USER42> This is unlikely. Apple's CPU budget for it's devices is likely much higher than anything Qualcomm's customers are willing to pay (vs the current snapdragon pricing). Apple's CPUs are very very large and consequently relatively expensive. As an example, a latest gen snapdragon 835 has 3 billion transistors, while Apple's A11 has 4.3 billion.

<comment><USER43> And those numbers severely understate the difference since, IIRC, a much larger fraction of Apple's SoC transistor budget is devoted to its application processors.

EDIT: Found an image. More a simple understatement than a severe one.

[https://wccftech.com/apple-a10-fusion-cores-bigger-than- comp...](https://wccftech.com/apple-a10-fusion-cores-bigger-than-competition/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's obviously not easy by any stretch of the imagination to port something as complex as Windows to a new platform, but I'm still surprised it took THAT long to finish this.

<comment><USER45> Windows has been running on ARM for ages. Windows RT was an early go, but even before that internal builds of Windows for ARM were kept around.

Windows Phone 8 ran on the Windows 8 kernel, and Windows 10 Mobile ran on the Win10 kernel.

It seems like the hard part here was doing the seamless emulation of x86 apps. Writing a production quality general purpose emulator is hard.

<comment><USER46> It's not like Microsoft doesn't have examples to draw on: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Will developers be able to build classic desktop (Win32) ARM applications?

<comment><USER48> The code is there in Visual C++, and people could already built native ARM applications to run on (jailbreaked) Windows RT. But reading between the lines, it seems that MS will not currently offer that option, but rather encourage people to write UWP/Modern apps, and emulate x86. MS themselves are compiling Office natively for ARM (like they did for Windows RT, and like they do notepad, calc, ...).

I wonder how UWP apps work technically on ARM. I heard apps will be compiled on the fly to run on ARM. Managed code (C#) just runs on the CLI or can be AOT compiled. But C++ is also a first-class citizen. Will you ship x86 code that is emulated/recompiled, or will you ship both x86 and ARM, or some kind of intermediate representation (like I think you do on iOS)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm curious about how that battery life would be like with a linux installed.

Also, I wonder the internals of that x86 emulation, if a linux program can leverage it?

<comment><USER50> Linux has supported x86 emulation on ARM chips for many years now, I think even before Android started supporting x86 chips.

<comment><USER51> Eh kind of? qemu can be used with binfmt-misc to do CPU emulation while still passing syscalls to the running kernel, but it's a long way from perfect - there's various corner cases that cause problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> From the same people that brought us Windows RT and ARM Surface tablets... got many of my clients to buy them... and then magically decided "Windows RT and ARM sucks. We don't support them anymore."

So I'll hold my breathe before recommending ANY of my clients use this.

</comment><comment><USER27> Intel lawsuit in 3… 2…

<comment><USER53> Maybe dumb questions:

1\. How can Intel sue MS for emulator, but linux(qemu) can get way with it?

2\. Why MS tries to push the emulator, when they can just port their programs (already ported to Win RT I think) and provide developers some tools to port their apps?

<comment><USER54> There are zillions of old Windows programs whose developers are long gone. They're never getting ported. The only serious way to do this is to emulate/translate old apps automatically.

<comment><USER55> This is a big difference between os x/iOS and windows/Android. On the apple platforms developers are expected to keep doing all kinds of things in response to apples directives. Nobody will do that for windows and Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Good. I still don't want it.

</comment><comment><USER57> Windows RT 2. We know where that went.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can't wait to see windows on a RPi soon... If windows even can run on 512 megs.

<comment><USER59> There's been a trimmed down "IoT" version on RPi for a few years [https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-on-the- raspb...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-on-the-raspberry-pi- what-you-need-to-know/)</comment></comment>


"This is the dumbest publishing platform on the web." - <AUTHOR> https://txt.fyi/ <comment><USER2> So it's like pastebin, but without all the ads? And more geared towards writers? Looks good! I like how simple it is. Sometimes less is more.

</comment><comment> jim-jim-jim I can see myself using this quite a bit. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great stuff. Minimal + Functional.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's brilliant. Thanks.</comment>


Magna Carta: 800 Years of Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiked-online.com/magna-carta

<comment><USER2> I'm not a fan. It was a bad document.

It was a power grab by dukes and barons. What hideous crime had John committed? He started a court in which commoners could sue their lords for mistreatment and get heard by the king.

And another thing, the phrase "jury of your peers"? Yeah, that's from the magna carta (it's nowhere in the US Constitution, incidentally), and it was meant as a guarantee that only nobles could be on a jury of another noble. Wouldn't want those peasants having any say in it...</comment>


Show HN: A Simple Tool to Reduce Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://www.simplyeasy.cz/war-on-procrastination/

<comment><USER2> I think I'll have time to look at this tomorrow. Maybe.</comment>


Ask HN: GF cheated on me, so packing up and moving to UK, advice plesase :( - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys,
Long story short, I'm moving to UK in the next few days, just found out my girlfriend has cheated on me and aswell as this I just need a change of scene.
Questions for the UK guys.
* Where is the best place to move to that is cheap so I can get myself settled in, anywhere at all in the country but possibly just outside London?.
* Where is free wifi and some place I can work throughout the day that is fairly cheap? (I am a web designer/developer).
* Any tips on moving over? I'm just gonna bring a duffel bag and laptop.
I don't mind if I don't get any offers but sure It can't harm to ask. Would anyone have a spare couch so I can crash on for a day or 2? :( Thanks.. <comment><USER2> Is London your only option?

I only ask because it's an expensive city and if I were to pick and relocate my choice would bar none be Berlin. It's been discussed on HN before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3221799>

On a personal note, life events like this almost universally often become positive events, because they force you to question your assumptions and leave the safety of the familiar.

Chin up lad, the whole world is ahead of you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply phaet0n,

I'm based in Ireland and don't speak any German and I wouldn't know anybody there. UK is right across from me and I have some clients there. No, sorry I should have been more detailed with my question. I should have said:

* Where is the best place to move to that is cheap so I can get myself settled in, anywhere at all in the country but possibly just outside London?.

Thanks again

<comment><USER3> Manchester has a half-decent startup scene. It's cheap, big, vibrant, and two hours from London so you could go to see clients in a day. Free WiFi everywhere I've had a cup of tea in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're be interested in coming over to China, I'd be glad to help ;)</comment>