The Pixate Project: Bringing CSS to Native Apps - <AUTHOR> http://benzilla.galbraiths.org/2012/08/27/pixate/ <comment><USER2> In Java at least this has been tried before. There was something called the Jaxx Framework [1]. jaxxframework.org now seems to be defunct so I guess it died.

Personally I'm unenthused.

For one thing, the typical reason to write native apps these days is that it's a mobile app. Certainly on iOS you'd be better off staying on the reservation. There's only 2/3 resolutions to support anyway (plus two orientations for each). Android is of course more varied.

For desktop apps, you're getting increasingly specialized software (the rest going to Web apps) and your best bet is still to stick to the native libraries (Cocoa, WPF, etc).

[1]: [http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/2006/03/style...](http://weblogs.java.net/blog/enicholas/archive/2006/03/style_swing_com.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure Java in general is a good graveyard to check for "what not to do" save for choice libs like NIO, Netty, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. I don't understand why people are hating on CSS (for one, their hatings don't include reasons _why_ ); to me it is a beautiful way to separate form from function. Changing that one button from green to blue? Easy enough with or without CSS. Changing that same button in every one of its 163 possible locations? CSS saves lives in these scenarios.

<comment><USER5> If you have a large code base with lots of UI then CSS becomes very brittle to change. Nest some UI elements that have never been nested before and something will break. One tiny change in one place affects something somewhere else. You have start making exceptions, a duplicate a rule here or maybe an !important there. Eventually you're got nothing but exceptions.

Personally, I think the _concept_ of declarative styling is brilliant but the implementation in CSS leaves a lot to be desired. It's far more error-prone than necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did this for iOS 2 years ago for a hackathon. <http://cssapply.github.com/CSSApply/>

It's not entirely done but it's a good start for someone.

The video explains it more: <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/16073539/highlight/187549>

<comment><USER7> That looks pretty good. I also have a homegrown solution that does something similar but uses a css-like syntax but isn't like css. It's sufficient for my purposes though lacks many of the things your solution has. I'll have a more detailed look at CSSApply, and see if I can add to it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GTK 3 uses CSS for user styles and themes too, I think. See [https://desktopsummit.org/sites/www.desktopsummit.org/files/...](https://desktopsummit.org/sites/www.desktopsummit.org/files/Theming%20GTK3%20Widgets%20with%20CSS.pdf)

This replaces the old `.gtkrc` system.

Those with recent Ubuntu desktops, try it out!

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it somewhat suspicious that the original Pixate kickstarter was for ¢200,000 but they cancelled that 6 days prior to the deadline, with only ~$21k raised [1]. Now they're back with a new kickstarter for $25,000 (which they've passed) [2]. This article also raises the same questions [3]

This might not be too suspicious except that no where do they address what happened in the first campaign and what has changed since. Why did they need $200,000 a month ago but now only need $25,000? What has changed?

As the Dragons Den catchphrase goes, "for that reason, I'm out"

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2015210423/pixate- beauti...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2015210423/pixate-beautiful- native-mobile-apps-with-css)

[2] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixate/beautiful- native-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixate/beautiful-native- mobile-apps)

[3] [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/26/is-pixate- astroturf...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/26/is-pixate-astroturfing- kickstarter/)

Edit: added the links

</comment><comment><USER10> And then there's Blossom[1], which does the opposite: remove CSS from web apps.

Blossom lets you build native-quality web apps for mobile browsers without every touching the DOM or CSS -- it's 100% JavaScript.

(Full disclosure: I developed Blossom earlier this year.)

[1] <https://github.com/fohr/blossom>

</comment><comment><USER11> I found this interesting when I saw it before. I had thought of something similar after seeing Nimbus Chameleon <http://blog.jeffverkoeyen.com/nimbus- chameleon> The difference for me however was I was just thinking iOS and was wondering if something could be created that utilized the UIAppearance APIs in UIKit [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UIAppearance_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html)

Edit: I realized I ran into something that does almost exactly what I wanted a couple weeks ago on github <https://github.com/robertwijas/UISS>

</comment><comment><USER12> Qt supports CSS stylesheets: [http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/stylesheet- examples.htm...](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/stylesheet- examples.html)

Qt has also QML, which gives developing "native" apps bit web feel.

</comment><comment><USER13> CSS layout for native apps? I have to hack heights for a vertical center position?

<comment><USER14> check out the CSS3 flexible box model... it'll blow your mind :)

<comment><USER13> CSS3 is just a standard. Do you have any full CSS3 implementations embeddable in programs?

I'd rather invent something new layout engine than using the lame CSS way. For example I want place an box A next the box B on its right at the distance of 50% of the height of the box C on the left.

<comment><USER14>
      "CSS3 is just a standard."

That's a very strange criticism. Would you prefer a proprietary black box to do your layout for you?

      "Do you have a full CSS3 implementation embeddable in programs"

Another strange one. You can embed webkit and gecko in a desktop app.

On iOS the recommended way of getting formatted multi-line text is to use a UIWebView (webkit)

      "I'd rather invent something new layout engine than using the lame CSS way"

I'm guessing you've never actually written a layout engine before. They're notoriously hard to get right.

      "For example I want place an box A next the box B
      on its right at the distance of
      50% of the height of the box C on the left"

You could either use a pre-processor (such as LESS) for the placement of Box A, or if its position is a dynamic property then you can set it using JS.

<comment><USER13> > Would you prefer a proprietary black box to do your layout for you?

How many times have you look into webkit or gecko source code to fix layout problems?

If you think a layout engine is complex enough that need to be open sourced, you are doing it wrong.

Layouts should be simple and intuitive. Not a cluster fuck of div's and hacks.

> You can embed webkit and gecko in a desktop app.

Which is basically an html5 app right?

> I'm guessing you've never actually written a layout engine before. They're > notoriously hard to get right.

Yes I have never written anything like that, but I can tell you native app development (Visual Studio, XCode) layouts are much simpler and more powerful. The problem with HTML and CSS is that they are eigher document flow based or absolute position. It's hard to do relative or responsive layouts right. It's easier to do it right in native ways. There are much richer containers, control groups and docking options.

> a pre-processor (such as LESS) for the placement of Box A, or if its > position is a dynamic property then you can set it using JS.

Oh wow, Javascript for layout, right.

<comment><USER14>
      How many times have you look into webkit or gecko
      source code to fix layout problems?

That's not really the point. Let's use the Adobe Flex Framework as an example. If you bought into Flex 5 years ago then you're probably starting to feel a bit nervous. The reasons being:

      1. Adobe are themselves signaling that
      HTML is the future by releasing HTML5 tools (Edge)
      2. Adobe have abandoned mobile Flash development
      3. Developer mind-share is firmly in the HTML camp.

Now, if the full adobe/flash stack were open source and there were multiple companies working on it, it would be less of an issue as the technology you invested into would continue to be supported. The fact that you, personally are not working on the flash/flex core would be irrelevant, as is the case with HTML5 and the open web.

      If you think a layout engine is complex enough that
      need to be open sourced, you are doing it wrong.

I'm at a loss trying to respond to this. If you think writing a layout engine from scratch is easy then you simply don't understand the problem very well. Even writing a good _text_ layout engine is _very_ hard to get right, and text layout is only a subset of the whole problem. Not only that, but layout is an orthogonal problem to the one you're trying to solve (unless you're writing a browser or word processor), so the time you sink into it is wasted.

      native app development (Visual Studio, XCode) layouts are much
      simpler and more powerful

It's simpler because the complexity is abstracted away from you by the IDE/tools. The actual (hidden) application logic driving the layouts is just as complex if not more so.

      The problem with HTML and CSS is that they are either
      document flow based or absolute position.

Absolutely agree with you here. The document paradigm has been abused horribly to allow for complex layout on the web, and its roots are painfully evident - it certainly wasn't meant for this type of work.

      It's easier to do it right in native ways. There are much richer containers,
      control groups and docking options.

Agree here too. Having said that though there are great advances being made, the flexible box model being one of them.

      Oh wow, Javascript for layout, right.

That's sarcasm not a rebuttal :)

Going back to the original point, I think that CSS for native layout may be an OK idea, CSS certainly has it share of strengths and weaknesses. One thing this approach has in its favor is a low barrier to entry for web developers which may help bridge the designer/developer divide.

It's been fun sparring with you :)

all the best, eli

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I already have a frontend engineer considering switching to native iOS and Android apps just so he can get away from CSS.

I am not exaggerating, that is 99% the reason for his desire to abandon ship. He complains about CSS _daily_ despite being one of the more knowledgeable people I know about CSS, save for the rare occasion he asks me a question.

Why should I react to this project by doing anything other than lighting a molotov cocktail?

<comment><USER15> I have honestly never heard of anyone not liking CSS before reading this thread, except for maybe people just starting out who don't understand it. I am an experienced front-end developer an agency and I love css when it's enhanced by a dynamic language like sass or stylus. It's quick, powerful, and easy style many elements at once and create beautiful and lightweight custom UI elements. The only thing I don't like is having to work with it cross browser, but that has _nothing_ to do with css as a language.

I studied iOS development for a few months, read a 600 page book on it, and tinkered around with it for a while and found myself begging for CSS. Native custom app interfaces seem backwards to me - the difficult of writing core graphics methods for every bevel, rounded corner, gradient etc has a lot of developers just using cut images for everything. Disclaimer, I'm way way more experienced with css than i am with core graphics - just my impressions.

<comment><USER16> I often find myself wishing for CSS widgets, so to speak. A reusable component of HTML and CSS that can be inserted without inheriting anything from the parent elements. You can achieve this if you take a lot of care, but it should be a lot easier than it is.

But where CSS really falls apart is in layouts. What is just a simple equation in a native application ends up being a myriad of hacks to get things flowing right in CSS. Javascript comes with the missing pieces, but introduces its own set of problems if you try to rely on it.

> the difficult of writing core graphics methods for every bevel, rounded > corner, gradient etc has a lot of developers just using cut images for > everything.

On iOS, the QuartzCore framework provides declarative methods for those common style choices (rounded corners, gradients, etc.).

<comment><USER14> The new CSS3 flexible box layout changes all that. It's incredibly rich and designed to obviate the need for clumsy CSS layout hacks. Check it out if you haven't already... it is the missing piece for app-like layouts for the web. The incredibly complex layouts that can be achieved with minimal CSS and _no_ JS is astounding. Pair this with text-overflow and with ~ 50 lines of CSS and some _very_ basic html you can achieve wonders.

Not only that but it's usable today. Both webkit and gecko have very close implementations with only minor edge cases, none of which are insurmountable.

Not sure about iOS support for the new layout modes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The web is dead, its all about mobile - <AUTHOR> http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/the-web-is-dead-its-all-about-mobile/

<comment><USER2> Why do we get such ridiculous statements/ headlines from people that actually run web companies? The web will never die, as it's the backbone for all of these mobile implementations. You simply cannot deploy a large web application with the ease of use that a mobile device requires. These things must operate in tandem, not one instead of the other.

I think it should be obvious why mobile devices are going to show a higher view number than those from a web browser; people don't like to surf the net on their laptops while taking a shit.

<comment><USER3> > _Why do we get such ridiculous statements/ headlines from people that > actually run web companies?_

Because it is literally the definition of link bait, it's a title people are always going to click on, and so it's a title that has been used often.

If I look to my left in my office, 3m away I see facing me the orange cover of Wired's "The Web is dead." cover, and next to it the 1997 cover of the same magazine that boldy proclaimed "Kiss your browser goodbye" - partly as a reminder not to get carried away with ideas like these, and partly because they make me laugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's nice to get some hard numbers around mobile vs. traditional computer usage. I think this says a lot about what people want to use, it's not like these guys don't have a good site to speak of, they've been working on it for years.

As much as I don't like the fact that the open Web is atrophying, I don't think there's any denying that it's the way things are moving right now. It's what consumers are demanding.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm, well as an iPad user, I'm pretty sick of every Web site trying to channel me into downloading an app, I tend to just you the Web site. The only site I can think that I use via an app is IMDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does POF monetize traffic to pof.com?

</comment><comment><USER7> Now this link is dead. Flagged...</comment>


Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14Biology-t.html?hp <comment><USER2> Ok, too much fluff and too much text. Anyone want to do a geeky 2 paragraph summary of the information contained in this article.

What are people doing and how? How might someone do whatever it is that is being done? Is there anything valuable or interesting here?

</comment><comment><USER3> At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I don't get what differentiates the (new) "synthetic biology" from the (old) "genetic engineering". They seem like the exact same thing to me (I'm open to be convinced otherwise though). The only difference I can find is that one term has been pilloried by the green movement, while the other has (for reasons not quite clear to me) escaped most of that negative attention.

People have been talking about all of these genetic engineering fantasies for my entire lifetime. The technology is still not there to put all the pieces together "like Legos" as the arcticle seems to suggest. I am happy to see that this stuff is getting people interested in science, and biology in particular. But this article makes it sound like you could just go order a bunch of DNA and make yourself a little bacterium that does whatever you want. We're still a bit far from those days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Synthetic biology is a subtype of genetic engineering where the focus is on building up a set of modular parts that can be used to assemble "living machines" with (relatively) minimal effort. Think "Lego Mindstorms" for bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good related talk from Future Ruby

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/che-synthetic-biology>

</comment><comment><USER5> God schmod, I want my monkey man!</comment>


Why the Facebook iOS Application is so large - <AUTHOR> http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-the-facebook-ios-application-is-so <comment><USER2> If you're having difficulty loading this webpage, it's because the author decrypted Facebook's iOS binary and listed all 18,000 header files.

Yes, this webpage is merely a list of 18,000 headers.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. The article gives the insight that the binary is sooo big, not just assets as one would think.

2\. It shows how the classes are extracted

3\. It presents the classes for you to browse.

The word "merely" is downplaying the information being shared by the author.

<comment><USER3> Barely does 1 and 2 since 3 causes browsers to actually slow down to a crawl. The second that 18k list started to load, my browser turned ridiculously slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the inline HTML code block is not optimized for such a use-case. You can read the content here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066530)

Still my point was about the content being simply a list, which it is not (for better or worse in this case, I know :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR Facebook app has 18k classes, if you want to know what they are look here: [https://gist.github.com/quellish/473f513fbd1310233a8e](https://gist.github.com/quellish/473f513fbd1310233a8e)

FB App is 114MB in size, but loading this page in Chrome will use a good 450MB, idk how they managed that.

<comment><USER5> > FB App is 114MB in size, but loading this page in Chrome will use a good > 450MB, idk how they managed that.

Comparing the size of the binary with the size of the memory used by the live program is apples to oranges. The two metrics don't have any correlation whatsoever.

<comment><USER6> He doesn't compare the size of the binary with the size "of the memory used by the live program".

He compared the size of the binary with the size (in Chrome's memory) of the idiot's webpage complaining about it.

Which he obviously knows is Apples to Oranges, but it's still fun to know and illuminating (the guy blames FB for being too careless with their app size but is too stupid to watch for his web post's size).

<comment><AUTHOR> I love how easily some ppl on HN call someone an idiot. Way to encourage people to share.

I found it interesting even if my browser ate 260 whatever MB of memory. Doesn't make him an idiot, just a little bit lazy about optimizing his blog (which is not used by millions like the Facebook app)

It seems none of the cool kids with lean blogs managed to post this stuff or get it on HN. I'd love to read their articles about it, but hey, they don't seem to exist.

<comment><USER6> > _I love how easily some ppl on HN call someone an idiot. Way to encourage > people to share._

We live in the "social sharing age". People even share what they had for lunch. If anything, people should be encouraged to share LESS or more meaninful stuff only.

> _It seems none of the cool kids with lean blogs managed to post this stuff > or get it on HN. I 'd love to read their articles about it, but hey, they > don't seem to exist._

Serving something you want to read doesn't mean there should be no criticism for serving it in a bad way.

If you had only one chinese restaurant in your city, one that served bad food, would it make sense not to complain for their good quality because "other restaurants don't serve noodles at all"?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Serving something you want to read doesn't mean there should be no criticism > for serving it in a bad way.

There's criticism of serving something in a bad way, and then there is calling someone an "idiot".

Should we instantly call every single person an idiot for making a mistake?

I wouldn't say that the food was bad here, it was just a bit cold.

> We live in the "social sharing age". People even share what they had for > lunch. If anything, people should be encouraged to share LESS or more > meaninful stuff only.

This is off topic, but I don't think people should share less. If you are bothered by it, you should read less. Maybe we should have better tools for filtering. But information is everything, something as banal as "I had a bad day" has value. Tracking social sentiment for example.

<comment><USER6> > _There 's criticism of serving something in a bad way, and then there is > calling someone an "idiot"._

True.

> _Should we instantly call every single person an idiot for making a > mistake?_

No, but what if they do that first by pointing fingers at the stupid FB devs?

> _This is off topic, but I don 't think people should share less. If you are > bothered by it, you should read less._

This still leaves the problem of an overproduction of pointless stuff, which aside from the ecological issues and time wasted by those producing it, also makes deciding "what to read" among the avalance of BS more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was expecting a bit more nuance and insight than '18,000 classes, lol, FB is dumb.' At the very least, it'd be interesting to note what the size of the app might be after app thinning goes live next month.

<comment><USER8> Details on app thinning?

<comment><USER9> In brief, a new feature of iOS 9 that allows app resources to be delivered on a device specific basis..meaning that, for example, a user with an iPhone 5 will no longer need to download assets meant to support the 6+ or iPad. More here: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/app-thinning-will- be-a-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/app-thinning-will-be-a-major- boon-for-8gb-and-16gb-iphones-and-ipads/)

<comment><USER10> Not just assets, but also the compiled binary will be for that architecture alone. ARM6, ARM7 etc. Really cool stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This so called "investigation" of the Facebook app can be done much simpler. Locate the app in iTunes, rename the .ipa file to .zip, unzip and run otool and nm on the binary. The author list 18,000 header files which is not much of an investigation nor much interesting. Though the staggering number of classes does admittingly somewhat explain the enormous size of the FB app. I do not use the FB app, but generally it can be equally illuminating to look in the Resources/ folder of an app if you wonder where the size came from.

<comment><USER12> No. You have to jailbreak and "crack" the app to get at the code segment, which makes this more of an effort than you make it out to be. Unless you know something I don't?

<comment><USER13> The symbols themselves are not encrypted, so you can still list those without cracking the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Their binary alone is 118MiB? Even with all the auto-generated crap in there (I hope no human chose those names), how do they manage that?

I wonder how long it takes for an iPhone to even load that thing into memory before it starts executing any code..

<comment><USER15> > I wonder how long it takes for an iPhone to even load that thing into memory > before it starts executing any code..

I takes my iPhone 4s about 5-10 seconds to start it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems to me that huge part of this was auto-generated (and auto-structured), and each .m/.h contains very few lines of code. I don't know what FB app does, but with 18000+ fully functional non-excessive handwritten modules you can just win the internets. Oh wait~

</comment><comment><USER17> They are obviously very lost and reinventing wheels, rather than learning and applying the right design patterns for Apple platforms. I talked to a Facebook iOS person on here recently who was under the impression that GCD offered no help with concurrency problems.

</comment><comment><USER18> Chrome asks to kill the page after a bit. Does this content exist in a cleaner state?

<comment><USER19> I opened it in the opera version of chrome and it loads no problem. The browser isn't the best at everything but sometimes it works when everything else fails.

<comment><USER20> There is no Opera version of Chrome. Opera uses Blink, that's it.

<comment><USER19> Apparently Chrome uses blink too. But now I can see how one is not the other even though both use the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I _hope_ it's a mechanism to make it possible for new employees to actually work on this app.

Perhabs someone with experience on large complex applications can share some insights?

Otherwise, I pity the FB employees who gets assigned to this project. " _Here you go, fix that button, here 's 18k files to digest_".

Surely they must've decoupled it into oblivion in order to have a class that manages "just that", so

1\. new employee can work in an "isolated" context (although he really isn't)

2\. can locate where to write and debug in this complex codebase.

</comment><comment><USER22> But then they can say. In 2.0 we improved performance 50%!! And repeat this process of headline news several times!

</comment><comment><USER23> unneeded complexity

<comment><USER24> Lots of money, lots of employed engineers, everyone needs to do something.

That's the case with a lot of tech today - it's done for the sake of letting people do something. Which, I guess, is not that bad, in the end things are brought to perfection, even though they're not strictly 'needed' in the product. The fast CPUs and enough RAM take care of the added complexity and everyone's happy.

<comment><USER25> I hope that's not the case, considering there are much more interesting things Facebook employees could be working on (not necessarily even for the betterment of society).

<comment><USER26> It seems to definitely be the case for designers (300+?), I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for engineers.

10,000+ people to keep the service running?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've never seen an iOS application quite like this. I wonder how they even manage it. Tons of subprojects perhaps?

<comment><USER27> I wonder how much of it is automatically generated.

<comment><USER28> That's a good question. Is much of this the output from some GUI design tool? There seems to be a class for every GUI element.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's what I call a fat client :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Makes me remember of that time they had to cheat on Dalvik because they hit the 65k methods limit 8-) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8162342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8162342) (blog link is dead)

Anyway, I find this to be pointless, when the majority of that size is probably taken by assets.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, Hacker's Coffee - <AUTHOR>

Primary link: http://hackerscoffee.org
I thought Coder's Coffee (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010355) was a great idea but disagreed with a few aspects of its execution (registration solely via linkedin, iOS app only, manual approval process, brittle: crashed every time I used it on my phone).  I noticed the app had stopped working entirely last week, and went to the site (http://www.coderscoffee.com) to discover that the project seems to be no more.
I re-implemented the concept, minus my grievances, in about 20 free hours I had last week (and also took the opportunity to make a time-lapse video of the development process, something I'd been wanting to do for a long time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlll6SN-Ybk).
This is very minimal and rough around the edges design-wise, but it has the critical features I'd been after. Just the features I wanted to make it capable of solving the problem of introducing me to other like-minded developers.  I welcome observations/suggestions/improvements.
At the very least, you can grab a coffee with me if you're in New York:
http://hackerscoffee.org/users/98722/pub <comment><USER2> Looks pretty nice! You have a classic chicken and egg problem...nobody will be active on it until other people are active on it. But with you in NY, me in Chicago, and presumably many HNers in SF it shouldn't be too hard to get a few first meetings going.

(And if anyone wants to talk to a young, ignorant hacker who just inherited a startup and works for a second...hit me up! <http://hackerscoffee.org/users/98727/pub>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I thought about astroturfing my area with accounts just to make it not look like a ghost town, but felt it was against the spirit. I felt the best thing that I could do in this respect would be to make sign-up as frictionless and semi-anonymous as I could (plus let people toggle on and off account visibility) because I and most other tech folk I know are hyper-protective of their identity online. One of the huge turn-offs of Coder's Coffee for me was mandatory sign-up-via-linkedin. My modest goal for the end of the week is to make one local appointment for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Impressive. Hopefully one day I'll be able to whack out a weekend project like this.

Thanks for the time-lapse video, was very interesting to see someone else's working perspective especially.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! Was hoping for a more realistic profile for Jesse P :D

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice work, the timelapse video is great as well.</comment>


Youth Unemployment Hits 52-Year Low - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/youth-unemployment-hits-52-year-low-1534455755 <comment><USER2> Could you post the text here in the comments? There's a paywall.

One issue with the standard unemployment rate calculation is that it's defined as # of unemployed people divided by the total labor force. The total labor force does not include people who are not looking for work.

So if someone is unemployed and then stops looking for work, they drop out of the equation entirely, and the unemployment rate goes down.

It's important to also have the "labor participation rate" metric (those in the workforce divided by total working age population), which gives more context on the overall trend.

<comment><USER3> In general the media only does fairly short reports on the unemployment rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) regularly publishes a much wider range of data, including the "labor participation rate" that you're talking about.

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: [https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)

Data broken down by age: [https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force- particip...](https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force- participation-rate.htm)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that.

Seeing the data broken down by age is really interesting.

Young people (16-24) are not participating in the labor force as much as time goes on. On the other hand, there's a significant increase in participation in the population 65+, moving from ~12% in 1996, to ~22% forecasted in 2026.

Some of that increase would likely be due to better health / ability to work later in life, but a fair chunk would likely be due to people not being able to afford retirement.</comment></comment></comment>


The Last of the Magicians: On Jack Parsons and JPL - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-last-of-the-magicians

<comment><USER2> Neophilic interests often span areas that are taboos within (American) mainstream society. It seems to come with the territory of genius, but some are better at hiding it than others. Tesla's ether physics and Wilhelm Reich's orgone come to mind. From [1]:

(Eric S.) Raymond observes a high concentration of neophiles in or around what he calls "leading edge subcultures" such as science fiction fandom, neo- paganism, transhumanism, etc. as well as in or around nontraditional areas of thought such as fringe philosophy or the occult.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neophile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neophile)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I always got the feeling that transhumanism and the singularity is today's flavour of this "fringe philosophy". Not with as much sex, though.

<comment><USER4> Oh totally. Transhumanism is older than civilization too. Humans have been trying to go beyond themselves ever since they started thinking about the concept of self, and augmentation with technology began with clothing, tattoos, and of course drugs. Modern transhumanist ideas are just a rehash of a very deeply ancient impulse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not the last.

Not even the latest.

Ridley Scott is producing a documentary on Jack Parsons. This... should be good. [http://boingboing.net/2014/10/28/ridley-scott-to-produce- min...](http://boingboing.net/2014/10/28/ridley-scott-to-produce-minise.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I listen to a comedy podcast called "The Dollop" that's hosted by Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. I'd recommend it to anyone who appreciates a bit of light-hearted reflection on some American History. In any case, they did a pretty great episode about Jack Parsons, but more from a "Who put this guy in charge of anything?" perspective;

[http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack-parson](http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack- parson)</comment>


YUI Powered Pacman - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalinsane.com/api/yahoo/pacman/ <comment><USER2> That feels insanely fast on my MacBook. Isn't there a way to run it on a 30 fps timer and slow it down a bit?

Great look though.</comment>


A tasty looking chocolate bar for the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> http://beekn.net/2013/12/ibeacon-my-love-is-like-chocolate-for-the-internet-of-things/

<comment><USER2> very cool, basically 6 ibeacons with wifi and sensors. how much is this gonna cost?

<comment><USER3> can't see the pricing on the page yet</comment></comment>


Show HN: Boutline – MeteorJS based platform for sports fans - <AUTHOR> http://www.boutline.com

<comment><USER2> I see many features that would traditionally be better modeled with a relational db. Could you share some of your successes or difficulty with using MongoDB? Its the number one thing that turns me off from Meteor every time. Manually managing your joins seems like a real pain, especially considering how easy other frameworks like rails make it out of the box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we have been facing a few issues with Mongo and Meteor. Latency is a big problem too. But i guess the guys at Meteor are working on it as we talk.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Made completely in MeteorJS and with 10k users in the waiting list, Boutline caters to sports fans and drives sport conversations. You can follow teams, meet other fans and share moments with them. Would love to get your feedback on the product.

<comment><USER3> How do you get 10k user that fast?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ive posted on new section about how we reached 10k waiting list. you can check it out there. Let me know more about your experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would be great if you can test it out and let me know so that I can work on the bugs right away.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need more teams, and more content.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hope to have some social login

<comment><AUTHOR> @txshon theres facebook integration for now. Social logins will come up soon. Mobile app is around the corner.</comment></comment>


Climate change expert's fraud was 'crime of massive proportion,' say feds - <AUTHOR> http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/16/21911592-climate-change-experts-fraud-was-crime-of-massive-proportion-say-feds

<comment><USER2> For clarity: his fraud was not related to climate science at all, but "for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job."

<comment><USER3> THIS fraud was not related to climate science, but who can imagine what else he can do?

<comment><USER4> Well I think the problem is that from the title, NBC seems to suggest (at least in my opinion) that he is a scientific researcher. I think he's actually a policy maker, which puts his credibility in a different light.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First off, from what I can gather, he's a policy advisor -- a law maker, not a scientist. This makes the title somewhat disingenuous, at least in my opinion.

Second, this story is 3.5 months old:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/former...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/former-senior-epa-adviser-beale-expected-to-plead-guilty- in-900000-pay- fraud/2013/09/04/6a5ce06c-1574-11e3-be6e-dc6ae8a5b3a8_story.html?hpid=z1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the relevant House Oversight Committee hearing from Oct. 1, 2013: [http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EPAI](http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EPAI)</comment>


Ask HN: as a non-U.S. based developer, should we host in the U.S.? - <AUTHOR>

Will our data be under surveillance? Should we now think about hosting outside the U.S?<p>Can we trust any U.S. based technology companies? <comment><USER2> It could be under surveilance if you allow it to be surveilable. If you aren't taking precautions to keep it out of the hands of hackers, the government is certainly not going to have a hard time getting at it.

General surveilance is easily avoidable...

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you trust China based technology companies?

Can you trust EU based technology companies, where governments have similar programs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that to say, no, U.S. companies can't be trusted but it doesn't matter cause no-one else can be trusted either?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alot of countries have libel or otherwise stupid laws that criminalizes freedom of the press in the name of protecting privacy. Despite surveillance and the DMCA American laws are very friendly to digital publishers compared to other nations.

Compare Britain for example which has developed a reputation for libel tourism. People of different nations hire a local law firm to file a libel suit on their behalf against local critics. This bankrupts the critics who have to travel all the way to Britain to defend themselves or risk the local government respecting a British damages judgement.</comment>


Ingenious Funding Deck using WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://www.pinerly.com/deck/3d

<comment><USER2> Hi guys, thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it.

The tech isn't new, however the execution and spin we put to it is, main reason behind this was to show case our team in a different manner than everybody else typically does.

<comment><USER3> If you really want to differentiate yourselves, allow users to post their decks on THEIR web pages instead of forcing users to your site. THIS would be a value many would pay for.

One other thing. I asked my tech-not-so-savvy wife to watch it, and her issue was the frame that said "this deck took 4 days...".

"FOUR DAYS!!!" she cried... forget it. Perhaps you should frame that "frame" better. How long does a deck take to make from start to finish? What's the tech level required?

Ideally, a deck should be able to be made from scratch in minutes.

<comment><USER2> you miss understood, we created the entire space + the deck in 4 days from scratch in webGL

if we were to replicate this experience for anyone it would take 5 minutes to setup as easy as uploading photos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> valid point - I think it's unique in the application of the technology more than anything else. They seem to think outside the box in all the right ways.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is one of the most unique showcases of a team's talent that I've ever seen. very well done through-and-through.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been through a couple of startups, sold one, blah blah blah... It's usually the guy who is labeled "genius" that gets cut first :) Interesting concept, but hardly new... this was what SecondLife looked like 5 years ago.</comment>


What Is Mathematics and What Should It Be? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/mamarim/mamarimPDF/hersh90.pdf <comment><USER2> Dr. Zeilberger writes a rather pleasant rant. He appears frustrated with the lack of imagination in mathematicians which occurs when they focus too strongly on the axiomatic nature of mathematics, and seems to wish that we take a step back from the powerful axiomatic tools we have developed, so that we may search for what is 'really true about the world' rather than 'playing a mathematical game/believing in a mathematical religion'.

Three specific complaints he has involve a belief in infinity (and limits), which he asserts do not exist in the real world; a delay in the publication of a pair of papers on which he worked, due to a variety of circumstances; and a "pernicious" influence of axiomatic mathematics which leads to "stupid" questions such as Hilbert's Second Problem.

The failed publication of one paper is _particularly_ notable, as it claimed a counterexample of Fermat's Last Theorem (according to Dr. Zeilberger's "Opinion 123", on his Rutgers website), and (ibid) was recognized by Andrew Wiles himself as one of three _possible_ counterexamples: the reason given for this oversight was in fact the acceptance of the decidedly non-rigourous statement "it is easily seen ..." (ibid). This particular instance seems to contradict the main thrust of Dr. Zeilberger's rant against a mathematics overburdened by rules.

Unfortunately, little example of what mathematics SHOULD look like is offered - beyond a statement that 'obvious things should be treated as such' and an assertion that infinities and continuities do not occur in real life/nature/the universe. While such a statement may be understandable coming from a respected (and clearly accomplished) combinatorist such as Dr. Zeilberger, physics has yet to demonstrate conclusively that space and time are discrete - undisproven interpretations of quantum mechanics exist which allow for continuities, and 'the size of the universe' is defined as that which we can see (ie, within ~13.8 billion light-years of Earth/Sol) so that actual infinities are ruled out only because of our inability to perceive them.

Perhaps Dr. Zeilberger needs to think outside his own discrete box.

<comment><USER3> Re: infinities and continuities, to my understanding, it has been proved than interaction with the world is inheriently discrete determined by Planks constant - I am not a physicist, so may be wrong.

If we cannot interact with arbitrarily precision and can only ever observe a finite universe, does it make sense to even ask if the it is any other way? Should it be figure out how to interact with the world using some new fundamental mechanic, other than a wave bound by C and h, it opens the question.

<comment><USER4> Even if the world is fundamentally discrete, that does not mean that continuous models are not valuable. They are.

We are used to doing discrete approximations to continuous problems, but the other way around works too. For example, evaluating the sum

1 + 1/4 + ... + 1/n^2

is quite hard. On the other hand, we may approximate by the integral over x^2, which remarkably has an easy formula.

Continuous and discrete models complements each other, they are not mutually exlusive.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't trying to say that continues models are not valuable, only that the question "is the world continues?" does not make sense if we can only interact with it in a discrete way.

<comment><USER5> That is simply a rewording of the question: is it useful to use continuity to model the world.

<comment><USER3> This is getting quite philosophical now. It depends on the intrepetation of "world". If we mean the universe then no, it is to our current understanding of it, not useful to model it's entirety using continuity, if we can only messure it discretely. If by world we mean a subset of the universe, then it makes perfect sense, because the world might be on the macro level where this "discretness" is far smaller than we ever want to go.

<comment><USER5> I think you should concentrate on the world model in my sentence rather than world. I have something I want to analyse. How is it useful to think about it and what techniques do I want to use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am truly confused by this screed.

>• Stupid Question 2: Trisect an arbitrary angle only using straight-edge and compass.

>Many, very smart people, tried in vain, to solve this problem, until it turned out, in the 19th century, to be impossible

>• Stupid Question 3: Double the cube.

>Ditto, 2^(1/3) is a cubic-algebraic number.

>• Stupid Question 4: Square the Circle.

>Many, very smart people, tried (and some still do!) in vain, to solve this problem, until it turned out [...] to be impossible.

>Today's Mathematics Is a Religion

>Its central dogma is thou should prove everything rigorously.

To me, that's the entire point. You prove things rigorously so that (among many other reasons) when someone considers trying to square the circle, you can point them to the proof that the circle cannot be squared.

<comment><USER7> >• Stupid Question 3: Double the cube.

         (X^3) * 2  -- Done.

>• Stupid Question 4: Square the Circle.

         r is known. X is not.
         pi * r^2 = X^2
         sqrt(pi * r^2) = X , for positive X

oh, geometrically? No. Algebraically works cleaner, and for any arbitrary positive solutions for r.

>Its central dogma is thou should prove everything rigorously.

That's not a dogma. Its a proof because anyone, no matter whom, no matter when, or where in the universe, can duplicate these results and show they are logically true. Or they can show the results are logically false, no matter the inputs given.

It's not "dogma", as some high edict by a Pope or something. A rank amateur could further the field by proving a new theorem - because the _person_ doesn't matter. The soundness of logic does.

<comment><USER8> > oh, geometrically? No. Algebraically works cleaner, and for any arbitrary > positive solutions for r.

I hope you're not being serious. Just in case you are, your algebra is wrong. I'm quite certain you didn't look up what "doubling the cube" means, since the (faux) algebraic solution is y = cube_root(2 * x^3). It undercuts the rest of your comment.

<comment><USER7> Doubling the cube was being ridiculous to prove the bad language to explain the problem.

If it really meant doubling the volume of a cube of X unit size, then absolutely it's (2 * x^3)^(1/3)

<comment><USER8> I don't think the author was trying to give a precise description of the problem. "Doubling the cube" is a term of art. It's like if he used the word "derivative" and you thought it meant a cheap copy of something, and then went further to prove how silly calculus was because of your misunderstanding of the term.

You're also selling the problem short. Doubling the cube is about producing a finite algorithm (given a limited set of operations) that realizes the value of (2 * x^3)^(1/3) concretely. An algebraic solution does not do this, because it stops at the inability to realize, say, the cube root of 2 explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > In particular, one should abandon the dichotomy between conjecture and > theorem.

Wasn't that the status quo before the 20th century? It's strange to suggest that working with infinite (or rather, ideal) objects is stupid. The sheer amount of progress in 20th century mathematics provides incontrovertible evidence that ideal objects are a useful reasoning tool. This is even true in combinatorics: working with generating functions is working with an algebraic structure on infinite streams...

This essay is written to incite... there is so much in there that invites comment from everyone who has ever spent five minutes thinking about these things. At the same time it is lacking in examples for ways in which a mathematical world without rigor would be better than what we have today. So instead of getting worked up about the essay itself, does anybody here have concrete examples where a lack of rigor lead to faster progress?

<comment><USER10> It seems strange to me for the author to write that, and then to end with:

> _But I do believe that it is time to make [mathematics] a true science._

Surely any 'true science' has a dichotomy between conjecture or hypothesis, and theorem or accepted fact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing is preventing you from using computers cleverly to gain a better understanding of mathematical problems you are facing. But abandoning or discounting the importance of rigor is down right stupid. The great achievement of mathematics is the vast repository of irrefutable statements which will stand for eternity. And this comes from rigor, which helps and does not hinder.

Going back to his example, how does it help if we all collectively agree that, yes, there must be infinitely many twin primes because of computational evidence X, Y and Z. Nothing more than agreement has been achieved in such a case. And we are none the wiser in the way of insight or explanation besides the computations we already had...

<comment><USER12> > But abandoning or discounting the importance of rigor is down right stupid.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_school_of_algebraic_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_school_of_algebraic_geometry#Collapse_of_the_school)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From an engineering perspective... Mathematics looks like an add-on to natural language designed to express precise concepts in the simplest possible way. (Simple != easy, of course).

In a scientific or engineering context mathematics evolves naturally whenever the requirement for precision exceeds the capability of the available language and you have the right folks around to develop it.

<comment><USER14> As evidence, look at how math looked before we formalized notation. For example, the algebra book by al-Khwarizmi (the guy whom algorithms are named after). Wikipedia has a commented excerpt: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al- Khwarizmi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al- Khwarizmi#Algebra)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mathematics is the art of highlighting the necessary consequences of a situation. That's all.

The situations that we mathematicians mostly consider are axiomatic constructs, because it's easier to then unambiguously establish necessity.

That this art, its methods, techniques and tools, happens to be so useful to other sciences (and in fact most of human knowledge) is an interesting phenomenon...

<comment><USER16> Mathematics is also used for purely abstract entertainment.

Also, your definition applies to physics as well.

<comment><USER15> > Also, your definition applies to physics as well.

Um.... I think that it looks like that a lot of what maths does is shared with physics, but I think (I could be wrong) that it's mostly because physics has adopted the language of mathematics.

That having been said, there is an aspect where they are definitively different. Physics is motivated by the understanding of the physical world. For instance a physics theory gets dropped when we discover that we mis- observed whatever it was meant to explain. This doesn't happen in maths. The theories in maths (here defined as axiomatic structures) do not need to align with the natural world and get studied for other reasons than because they would increase the understanding of the natural world. Such understanding may eventually happen, but was not the motivation factor.

What do you think ? :)

<comment><USER16> In my opinion, math is:

\- an extension of pure logic

\- not a science (since it cannot be falsified)

\- only indirectly concerned with observations (because we don't know the universe)

\- used to predict, but also to reason about the past (big bang theories)

\- a tool

\- a game (puzzle)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading the word "pseudo-problems" sets me off to a rough start. But calling problems stupid merely because they're unsolvable is a mortal sin, specially if there's a non-trivial reason _why_ we cannot mathematically go from this to that. That the impossibility of squaring the circle is due to it's equivalence with the transcendentality of π is in itself an interesting piece of mathematics.

<comment><USER18> He didn't call them stupid because they were unsolvable. He called them stupid because they didn't exist on any practice.

And, of course, the knowledge that solved them also become essential to other areas of Math, so I also don't like his framing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This gentleman needs to watch Feynman talking about the difference between maths and physics.

Science is all about gathering evidence and the scientific method focuses very heavily on _observation_ and _testing_. Basically, it is impossible to conduct science without data.

Maths is data independent. More data or less data doesn't influence what maths is. Maths links the axiom and the result - once a result has been prooven to follow from an axiom, the data is irrelevant. No amount of observation or testing will change the value of Pi.

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

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't say it's data independent. Look at goldbach's conjecture. While there is no rigorous proof, it seems almost impossible to be the case that it is not true. A lot of conjectures like that are based on data gathered first.

<comment><USER19> You are referring to an as yet unsolved problem. The maths is as yet un-done!

Sure, there is data that suggests it is probably true. The scientific can say there is enough data to be almost certain it is true and move on. The mathematical community cannot say for certain it is true because it is not yet prooven. Which is why they are still working on it.

<comment><USER20> I would suggest that formulating conjectures based on data is part of the mathematical process, would you not?

<comment><USER19> I would suggest that formulating conjectures based on data is specifically not maths.

Some mathematicians start with data, and no doubt about it data is effective. But I'm specifically saying that that is employing a tool of the scientific community (see [1]) as a starting point before then proceeding to do some actual mathematical work. This distinction is why maths is often classified in the Arts rather than the sciences.

But if you can point to a maths textbook that teaches someone "general theories" by printing 10,000 data points followed by a QED then I'd suggest it is a pretty extraordinary theory.

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

 _EDIT_ I'll throw in an example; a software consultant might be involved in invoicing for a project. The invoicing is still accounting work, even if it is being done for a software project.

<comment><USER21> Formulating a conjecture and proving a conjecture are two different activities. A conjecture is based on incomplete information (data gathered so far), and then we try to prove or disprove it using the mathematical tools available (and sometimes developing new tools).

Consider making the observation (shown as a table):

      +-----+</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  n  | sum(1 to n) |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  1  |      1      |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  2  |      3      |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  3  |      6      |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  4  |      10     |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  5  |      15     |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      |  6  |      21     |
      +-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+

We can come up with the formulation: sum(1 to n) = n(n+1)/2 by several methods, but from the data given it's only a conjecture. Depending on how we came up with that formulation we may already have proven the conjecture. Or if we constructed it using the data only, we can prove it via induction or other methods.

The same is how many other conjectures begin on less trivial examples. The four color theorem, for instance, was notably hard to prove (and there was a lot of controversy over its method of proof). But it was still just a conjecture until they laid out their proof, though no one had ever found a counterexample.

</comment><comment><USER22> Mathematics is a formal science, not an empirical science. In other words, both Zeilberger and those he criticizes (as he characterizes them) are wrong. Some interesting books on the subject...

"An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure" by James Franklin

"German Science" by Pierre Duhem

</comment><comment><USER23> It is unclear to me why this rant was necessary. The field of applied mathematics and other mathematical modeling sub-fields seems to be what the author means when he talks of mathematics as science and of mathematical truths. His criticism would have been much more salient if applied mathematics weren't thriving today more than ever--with the explosion of computational power every field now seeks to make evermore complex mathematical models of the problems they study and solve.

</comment><comment><USER24> That was very unpleasant to read but what he basically proposes is to change "don't know if true until proven true" to "true until proven false" which is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't say I like the essentially manufactured grievance against Hardy and his young man's game quote, completely out of context. It is a cheap shot and has nothing to do with his argument.

</comment><comment><USER25> >[..] Since slaves did all the manual labor, the rich folks had plenty of time to contemplate their navels, and to ponder about the meaning of life. Hence Western Philosophy, with its many pseudo-questions was developed in the hands of Plato, Aristotle, and their buddies, and 'Modern' pure mathematics was inaugurated in the hands of the gang of Euclid et. al.

Some call it "contemplating their navels", some other call it curiosity. I'm reminded of this _other_ essay [1] that was discussed on HN a week ago:

>[..] throughout the whole history of science most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.

Regarding the rest of the Zeilberger's essay ... while it is intuitively obvious that there _something_ odd going with the assumptions in problems like the Zeno's paradox (that's why we call them paradoxes), it is certainly not intuitively obvious what that something exactly is, because it took us a good amount of principled application of curiosity (and quite while of time) to see _why_ and _how_. What you'd call a mind that does not yearn to know the details but instead yells and lavishly prefers to drop "that's stupid" in boldface and with an exclamation point? I'm not sure, but "uninteresting" comes to mind.

In general, it's easy to see that ancient Greeks were mistaken on some issue or their ideas on some other ones were downright silly now that we have spent over two millenia improving on them and developing the ideas and tools such as "experimental science".

[1] Abraham Flexner, "Usefulness of Useless Knowledge", _Harpers_ 179, 1939, [https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf](https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14558775)

</comment><comment><USER26> My formulation would be something like this: Mathematics is how you discover further truths about worlds that have objective truths. We don't know if the world "we live in" is such a world but it contains a lot of those other worlds =)

<comment><USER27> Brilliant!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just consider that academic math refused for over 300 years to acknowledge the existence of complex numbers, leaving the problem to the engineers. No scientist could afford this substitution of dogma for reality.

<comment><USER29> I don't have a problem with the pure math crowd doing their own thing. They absolutely discover some amazing things using their techniques. What I have a problem with is that these people write the math textbooks. Why are we bamboozling our poor children with this impractical, esoteric, overcomplicated, pseudo-religious, gobbledygook? Primary and secondary school mathematics need to change focus to applied and computational math.

<comment><USER21> Since I haven't been in a K-12 math classroom in about 10 years (contemplated becoming a teacher and visited some friends' classes), what's the gobbledygook we're teaching kids these days? I don't recall any gobbledygook from my years in K-12 education (excepting an awful, awful long-term substitute teacher). Arithmetic and algebra (K-8, basically), geometry, trig, and calc were all practical and applied (the latter two in advanced science courses and work rather than daily life).

I think more probability and statistics courses would be easily justified. Regarding computational thinking, math in the K-12 level is computational thinking more than it's based on proof construction. Computational thinking should be added as a subset of the math and science courses. I think it helped many of my college classmates who weren't in CS to understand computational thinking when we ran simulations using matlab of experiments, or in the reverse used it to process our results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hate combinatorics. Number theory and algebra are so beautiful and profound and I feel combinatorics just sucks out all the soul.

Also strange that he cites Hersch, who, if I remember correctly became relevant during the post-modernism vs science wars, unless this is from that particular conflict--in which case I wasted my time reading this at all.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Its central dogma is thou should prove everything rigorously"

I'm really worried that peoples who have knowledge in computer science doesn't get that from a false statement you can prove ANYTHING. And yes literally ANYTHING. Should we accpet models of computer that can compute faster than speed of light....?

<comment><USER32> I'm not convinced that you're really worried about that. You seem fairly dramatic, to be honest.

<comment><USER31> That's some undergraduate logic and it was my first weeks in college so yes i'm concern of what people get from expensive computer science degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We are already suffering greatly in computing because reduction of rigor. People who can't handle rigor in mathematics, the tool that every freaking scientist in STEM should seek a different, more enjoyable, field.

<comment><USER32> offer some proof of this?</comment></comment>


Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem - <AUTHOR> https://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-prediction-problem.html <comment><USER2> Interviewing is hard and unpredictable. At Google, I'd say 50% of the engineers wouldn't get their own job again from an interview. Though I would say that nearly all of them are up to par. I think having a harder/stronger screen can account for that noise in some ways.</comment>


ITunes U Proves Better than Going to Class - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/itunes_u_proves_better_than_class.php <comment><USER2> Maybe it's better for psych or english, but I'd like to see the results for math or engineering classes. In those classes, the slides were nearly useless, but anything written on the blackboard was gold, so the "audio and video of the slides used in class" would only give you half the picture.</comment>


ZeroRPC for node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotcloud/zerorpc-node

<comment><AUTHOR> ZeroRPC for Python was posted a few months ago. For reference, here's the discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761954>

</comment><comment><USER2> Is the ZeroRPC protocol documented anywhere?

I settled on using ZeroMQ + MessagePack to glue together my Python, Ruby, and C++ components, but haven't yet decided whether to use an existing RPC protocol or roll my own. ZeroRPC looks like a good candidate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately no, but it's in our todo list.</comment></comment>


Payment Systems in the US Are Bad - <AUTHOR> http://www.barelyusable.com/payments-systems-in-the-us-are-bad#.ViUnOa0SEVg.hackernews <comment><USER2> > Basically my bank knows I have a long password, but they don't want it all. > They want only the selected letters. Why? Well, if somebody was to intercept > the letters that I've typed on the keyboard, they would only get a part of > my password. And if I refresh the page, it will ask for a different set of > letters.

> I feel it's fairly safe, yet I hate it.

You should hate it, and it undermines the argument that Poland's doing things any better. Being able to ask you for just certain characters in your password means the password is NOT stored securely. It's not being one-way hashed, it's being stored either as plain-text or with reversible encryption.

<comment><USER3> > _Being able to ask you for just certain characters in your password means > the password is NOT stored securely._

Thinking about this, they could create N different permutations of the password and encrypt those, and when you login it asks for 1 of N permutations of your password.

The downside being if there are N finite permutations and the attacker has one, the could just refresh the page until they go the permutation that is needed.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's technically possible because they do display some of the letters.

They are just probably stored plain text or encrypted the password somewhere but I don't there is way to be a one way hash.

I'll be on just plain incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I moved from the USA to New Zealand in the early 90s I was surprised at how much easier the banking was. Sure it's a much smaller country with only about 25 banks (about six banks have most of the accounts). The key here is that every account number has the same format and is unique across the country, and the banks co-operate to make transfers easy. Paper checks are so rare you can shop for weeks and never see anybody pull out a checkbook. A debit card system (EFTPOS) was live in the 90s and all of the big consumer banks supported it; soon most shops supported it too. If you are using the web, paying somebody in a different bank is as easy as if they were at your bank. If you pay somebody at the same bank as you the money transfer is nearly instant; if they are at a different bank it may take 1-2 days.

It's not fair to compare a country of 318 million with a country of 4.5 million, but a little co-operation between the big players might be a good start. New Zealand's banking co-ordination was the result of an industry consortium, not a government agency.

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite anecdote about how structurally behind the US banking system is is the Check 21 act: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act)

9/11 caused severe problems for the US banking industry because $6Bn worth of paper checks were still being flown around the country daily on jet planes. The grounding of all planes on the week after 9/11 severely gummed up the workings of the financial system because bits of paper weren't getting to where they needed to be. It took until 2004 for congress to finally force banks to end this archaic practice.

Business Insider has a good article about the entire process: [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-death-of-the-paper- check-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-death-of-the-paper-check-2013-3)

</comment><comment><USER7> The explosion of payment/transfer options in US online banking is basically because there is a vast menu of combined authentication and pricing schemes. So we end up with dozens of awkwardly branded, difficult to use, expensive products, some of which you can only use between accounts at the same bank.

Now that most banks offer mobile deposits, personal checks are the best money transfer product.

</comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic, but ITT people seem to not be understanding the difference between hashing and encrypting.

This is a bit scary. One-way hashing is not reversible (except by brute force), while two-way encryption is reversible. This is a massive difference that I wish more people understood.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not a great article.

First, there are 1000s of banks in the USA. In many/most other countries, there are fewer than 10 making it much easier to coordinate.

Second, there's much more "pull" in the USA where recipients pull funds from senders. This is a key reason why commerce is so much larger in the USA. "push" adds a lot of friction to commerce transactions.

<comment><USER10> The US system is still pretty bad. Banking throughout Europe works a bit differently everywhere, but the basis is that you have wire transfer for basically free (inside the Eurozone, this covers the whole Eurozone). Paying rent? Just set up a monthly wire transfer.

"Pull" also works and is common in many european countries through direct debit. You give amazon/your electricity provider/whomever your bank account number and they just pull the money from you. No sketchy credit card companies needed, fraud is pretty minuscule.

<comment><USER11> > The US system is still pretty bad. Banking throughout Europe works a bit > differently everywhere, but the basis is that you have wire transfer for > basically free (inside the Eurozone, this covers the whole Eurozone). Paying > rent? Just set up a monthly wire transfer.

The reason this came to be is that the Eurozone sets up a more beneficial system for the banks than the status quo. Barriers to international transfers hurt both small and large banks, and having many sets of laws and politics around the rules made them exceedingly difficult to change. The Eurozone fixes this.

In the US, interbank transfers are regulated by the banks themselves (NACHA) and the majority are performed in partnership with the Federal Reserve. The banks have all the power to improve payment and transfer systems, and none of the impetus. We have been stuck on a 40-year-old daily batch-file processing system because the banks make too much money on wire fees.

It took threatened action by the Fed and Congress for NACHA to finally make same-day transfers mandatory for 2016. Note that this is still not a real-time system, and we are very, very far from such.

> "Pull" also works and is common in many european countries through direct > debit. You give amazon/your electricity provider/whomever your bank account > number and they just pull the money from you. No sketchy credit card > companies needed, fraud is pretty minuscule.

This is how ACH pull works in the United States. It is enticing because the ACH network is very low-cost and the credit card networks are not involved. And yet it is a consistent source of fraudulent activity. There is nothing inherent in a "pull" model that prevents fraud; you need additional controls around the relationship to prevent that.

<comment><USER10> It actually is way older than the eurozone, those systems were just generalized to apply to all of the EU + EFTA with the SEPA payment system. I guess this stems more from a stronger hands off approach in the US.

> There is nothing inherent in a "pull" model that prevents fraud; you need > additional controls around the relationship to prevent that.

I read a bit up on direct debit and it seems like they have fraud problems in the UK, while there's next to no fraud in Germany. I guess the reasons are that you can revert it for several weeks, it's perfectly traceable who did it</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could you please review and critic my startup's landing page? Thanks - <AUTHOR> http://www.chilledlime.com

<comment><USER2> My first reaction to the page was "where do I look?" The key to a landing page is to explain exactly what the problem is that your product solves. If I'm not motivated by the solution to stick around, I won't. Re-organize your landing page into a top to bottom path, going from a general overview of what your product solves [8-12 words] down to concretely what your product is.</comment>


Stop Whiteboarding - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gregorymazurek/stop-whiteboarding-8ed99abfdc12 <comment><USER2> From TFA (although I realize he's not advocating for this):

"Two of my colleagues will be joining us in a few minutes but I think we can get started. I'd like you to whiteboard an answer to the following prompt: given a string, write a program in any language you want that reverses the string."

I have not, and will never, do such a thing on an interview. It'd be the shortest interview in history if I were ever asked to.

We have hired plenty of great people just by talking through the relevant technology and asking open ended questions. My thing was usually to talk through HTTP in detail, and I would loosely time how long it would take to get through chunked encoding. Then I'd ask "how would you solve this problem" question, to see how they attack a problem and how they stand up to me poking (sometimes unreasonable) holes in their plan. You don't need panels, committees, quizzes or any of that bs--just ask questions you know the answer to until you're comfortable that they're competent and pleasant to be around.

(I may or may not have gotten Entity Framework tech support for free from an interviewee once in the past, but we don't speak of such things.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I found this a useful quick read: we all know interviewing is often "broken" (for some value of broken); this is some good, constructive ideas and examples of how to do better.

In particular, asking questions without a predefined narrative seems to be a winning strategy in these stories. There simply _is_ no way to ask how to e.g. reverse a string and turn that into a critical thinking problem. By giving up control of the destination instead and asking questions that explore a new, un-predetermined topic, the interviewer can create a much richer and meaningful exploration for _both_ sides.

Giving up control as a means to empower appears to be the order of the day again. It's quite the metameme.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, I don't like it. The thing about welders is, thats all they do. They weld one piece of metal to another piece of metal in a way that is PREDETERMINED by a 'higher up' (usually the structural engineer on the project.) When I am looking for an engineer I want someone who is well rounded because I want them to be able to solve unknown problems. So having a Java person know the structure of an Angular project is good, especially if they are going to be working on a project that uses Angular as the front-end. Also I like to put people under the stress of explaining themselves because if they can't take that stress what kind of stress can they take? That is not to say that I don't like to do both styles of interviewing when I look for someone.

</comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR Whiteboards are bad. Just kidding, keep the whiteboards and don't ask stupid questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> whiteboarding helps me think. Such a click-baity title ;)</comment>


iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Preliminary Benchmark Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8559/iphone-6-and-iphone-6-plus-preliminary-results

<comment><USER2> The A8 chip is "only" a dual-core and clocked at a relatively modest 1.4GHz. It's heartening to see it beat competing 2+GHz Quad-cores. To me, it looks like Apple is comfortable enough with their marketing strategy to stay away from the pointless GHz rat-race that exists in the Android world.

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

<comment><USER3> Methinks Apple has decided/realized that specs are a cop-out. Customers are, all too often, inundated with numbers not so much to prove how good the product is, but to conceal that it's not good enough. "Meh, the new iPhone has a mere 1.4GHz dual-core, but _our_ product has a 2+GHz quad-core!" really means "here's some numbers that _look_ overwhelmingly superior, in hopes that will distract you from the fact that it isn't."

Apple went "retina" to end the pixel-count competition: if you can't _see_ the pixels, you don't care how many there are. Apple refused to state RAM size for mobile devices from the beginning: user doesn't have an option, and rarely (if ever) notices the limit, so the actual memory size doesn't matter. Processor count & speed is irrelevant if it's used efficiently enough to practically outrun the competition.

Sure, Apple does provide _some_ specs. People are too used to seeing such numbers, despite few needing to see them IF the implementation is done right. People want options, so some specs are flexible (at a price). But remember that behind the scenes at retail, the devices options are labeled little more than "Good, Better, Best": most users don't want better numbers, they want superior performance with whatever it's got. Those gloating about size are likely less able to use it.

<comment><USER4> This is something I've been harping about for a long time. Apple is a _user experience_ company, not a hardware or software company (perhaps they're the only UX company out there).

There's an old saw about the railroads getting killed by the tractor trailer in the 20th century because they thought they were in the railroad business, when in fact they were in the transportation business. This time, Apple knows exactly what business it's in, while the competition seems to have no idea (compare the highly-curated experience of shopping/buying/shipping/using an Apple product to the Android or Lenovo analogue).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The really interesting data point to me is the 6+'s 13.7 hours of WiFi browsing versus the LG G3's 8.8 hours. Both are 5.5" screens with ~3000 mAh batteries, but the iOS/A8 combo lasts more than 50% longer.

<comment><USER6> The LG G3 has a 1440x2560 QHD screen. It takes more power to dive more pixels.

<comment><USER7> So Android pushed 77% more pixels using only 50% more power? Sounds like Android is more efficient!

Obviously power is more complex than just that, but seriously Android's reputation for being inefficient is really not justified due to things like this, where resolution differences are completely ignored.

<comment><USER8> A minor correction: The iPhone 6+ renders at 1242 x 2208 but scales it down to 1920 x 1080. So 30% more pixels at 50% more power?

<comment><USER9> It's the physical pixels that suck most of the power, so "77% more pixels" is more accurate.

Certainly the GPU on the iPhone 6+ is going to take more power because it's rendering at 1242x2208 rather than 1920x1080, but that's a minor effect compared to the physical screen power draw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To give you a faint idea of how meaningless battery benchmarks are vis-à-vis real life usage, here are results from Phone Arena - [http://www.phonearena.com/news/All-bow-to-the-new- endurance-...](http://www.phonearena.com/news/All-bow-to-the-new-endurance- kings-Sony-Xperia-Z3-and-Z3-Compact-score-a-record-battery-life_id60922) \- 9+ hrs for Xperia Z3 and 6+ for iPhone 6+ which is lesser than the S5.

"We measure battery life by running a custom web-script, designed to replicate the power consumption of typical real-life usage"

In other words I would be very surprised if any of these benchmarks translate to anything close to the numbers they proclaim.

<comment><USER11> Showing two different benchmarks doesn't actually prove that battery benchmarks are meaningless.

<comment><USER10> Well they are both web browsing battery life benchmarks. If loading different web pages shows 5+ hours of discrepancy then yes from a user standpoint they are precisely meaningless.

<comment><USER12> No, it might mean that one of the benchmarks is meaningful and the other is not. Or it might be that they test different scenarios and could be useful to different groups of users.

What the discrepancy tells you is that there's something odd about the benchmarks that could stand to be better investigated/explained.

<comment><USER10> > there's something odd about the benchmarks

You say odd, I say meaningless :)

<comment><USER12> Ok, but they're not the same thing. Odd might just mean a different set of underlying assumptions that cause the numbers to misalign, or perhaps a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised no one mentioned the ability to use custom ROMs and kernels on android devices with optimized CPU governers and overclocking on demand and how that affects the phone's performance.

Android stock branded phones are packed with bloatware from the carriers. This is something apple actually has a grip on due to how closed their platform is.

I'm running c-rom with lean kernel on my Galaxy Note 3 and running just one of those benchmarking programs, I get results that are a lot better than what anandtech shows. Still not better than apple, but pretty close to them for a last generation phone.

I'll try to run all of the benchmarks sometimes this weekeend and do a post.

<comment><USER14> Could you please elaborate what is "c-rom with lean kernel" and how can I run it? (on the original HTC mini). I bought it because I wanted a non-Android smartphone that's not huge and decently built, but I'm tired of HTC Sense.

<comment><USER15> (S)he's talking about running a custom operating system on their phone. Check out xda-developers if you want a overview on the topic. I haven't actually done it myself, but they're the people to talk to.

Side note, I'm confused, you bought an Android phone because you wanted a non- Android smart phone? HTC Sense is still Android, just with a custom skin.

<comment><USER13> Sorry I can see how this is confusing, but it's basically what mpthrapp said.

I've got a unbranded version of android suited for my phone with an optimized kernel (lean kernel).

It runs a lot faster, the battery lasts longer, and I don't have to deal with 200+ bloatware apps on the phone...

Here's the page for C-ROM. See if it's compatible with your device.

[http://www.c-rom.org/](http://www.c-rom.org/)

lean kernel for note 3 [http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2488233](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=2488233)

Your best bet is to just get on xda-developers forums and go to your device's section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was waiting for some independent battery tests and this kind of confirms what I suspected would happen. Apple is back to absolutely destroying Android on the battery front.

Some might not remember, but the drive to bigger Android screens was actually mostly driven by battery life. Android has always been subpar in this critical respect, the first devices were absolutely terrible, I suspect primarily because Dalvik is nowhere near as efficient as cross-compiled objective C and the rather more restrictive background task management on iOS.

iPhone 5's were holding their own and then some against the much larger battery Android devices, so now that they batteries are the same on the 6's there is no contest. Yes, bigger screens do eat more battery, but the ratio of battery/screen size actually favors bigger screens, ergo why tablets get incredible battery life. (and why the Note has always been a great battery performer)

I've carried a Nexus since the very first one, but I think I might jump to a 6+, the advantages are too much to ignore. I'll wait to see what the Nexus X is first as I really love Android these days, but I sure would love that battery life and camera.

Nice to see Apple put the screws down.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, this would be all very well and good if Apple started shipping phones with larger batteries. The fact that battery life per mAh (may be) better on iOS than Android means nothing if Apple keeps on rejecting larger batteries in favour of thinness.

I know a lot of people would much prefer a slightly thicker iPhone 6 (that didn't require the camera to protrude, for one) if it meant a larger battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to see some PC-phone comparisons now that they're starting to approach parity. By my calculations, the new iPhone seems to be roughly as fast as a 3 - 4 year old Macbook Air.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a handy Reddit thread[0] with reports of actual "real world" usage.

[0][http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2gzxx1/post_your_batt...](http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2gzxx1/post_your_battery_stats_screenshots_when_your/)

<comment><USER20> I'm always confused by the terms "Usage" and "Standby". Between those two which is "Time off charger" and which one is "Screen Time"?

<comment><USER21> I think there's a pretty good explanation here: [http://www.scottyloveless.com/ios-battery- life/](http://www.scottyloveless.com/ios-battery-life/)

<comment><USER20> Ok that explains it a little bit.

So Standby time is basically "Time off Charger", and Usage is supposed to be "Screen on time"? Except I have a feeling that "Usage" includes any time when your phone is not sleeping (which would include not just the time when you have the screen on but also any time when the processor is doing stuff in the background).

What draws me to that conclusion is the ratio of usage to standby time that some people in that thread have. I have a hard time believing that most people are staring at their screens for half of their waking life. I mean even if you didn't leave the house all day you'd still have to take your eyes off the thing to prepare food, urinate, put your clothes on.

<comment><USER22> Yep, listening to podcasts (with the screen off), for example, is definitely "Usage".

I'm not quite sure how the phone counts background activity that doesn't notify the user or require user interaction (e.g. Mail checking for new emails, …).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wish they would include the iPhone 5 results. Most people keep a phone for two years.

<comment><USER24> You can run the benchmarks yourself!

[http://www.webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html](http://www.webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the real standout here is NVIDIA. Shield was such an interesting product from the very beginning, it's nice to see how it is actually holding up against some of the "big boys".

<comment><USER26> To be fair, the Nvidia shield mentioned in these benchmarks is a 8" tablet, not a smartphone. I think k1 hasn't yet been shown in a smartphone form factor. Given the limitations caused by size, it's not really a fair comparison.

<comment><USER5> Especially considering that these devices are all thermally limited: [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SoC- th...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SoC- throttling.0012-640x480.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems odd they report 10 hours web browser battery life for the iPhone 5. I'd be lucky to get 1-2 hours of constant browsing.

<comment><USER28> They are using Wifi and pausing between page loads (so that fast phones don't load 4x as many pages and lose the test).

On Wifi 10 hours sounds closer to my experience than 1-2 hours.

<comment><USER27> My phone is 2.5 years old at this point. Maybe I've been losing battery capacity so gradually I've never noticed.

That would be amazing to have 13 hours of browsing with a new phone. (as reported in the article)

<comment><USER19> The iPhone 5 was only released 2 years ago (21 Sept 2012), yours can't possibly be 2.5 years old.

<comment><USER27> Ok, apparently I have a 4S. Maybe it's older than I thought.

<comment><USER28> I know someone with a 4S and the battery really struggles now especially when using GPS.

<comment><USER29> This happened to me. I bought a Mophie Juicepack for it and it solved the problem...by doubling the weight/volume of the phone.

Got an iPhone 6 on friday.

Yesterday I went on a 2.5 hour, 30 mile bike ride, and the iphone6 battery meter was essentially still at 100%. My 4s would have been well under 50%. Of course, the M8 is why, but after 3 years of recharging the 4s every night the battery was really starting to feel it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Seems like Apple really knows what consumers want. I spend about 90% of my iPhone time in Safari/Chrome. Advanced 3D graphics are nice and all but I rarely take advantage of them, I'd expect that most users are the same.

<comment><USER31> The top apps include many graphic heavy games, your usage is most likely not typical (which should be fairly obvious considering what site you're on).

Currently top grossing for the US: Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Pandora, Game of War - Fire Age, Farm Heroes Saga.

<comment><USER32> I'm not certain there is a direct correlation between the apps that make the most money in the App Store, and the apps that people spend the most time in.

It would mean that all the built in apps, and all the free apps in the App Store relatively unused, and that advertising models are a fools errand as no- one spends enough time in the apps. I suspect companies persuing these kinds of apps, including apple, are seeing enough usage to make a business case for their actions.

<comment><USER31> Of the free apps in the US store right now are keyboards (new for iOS 8 and don't really count as "apps") and Facebook Messenger, iTunes U, Amazing Thief (game), The Maze Runner (game), Instagram, Facebook, Beach Buggy Racing (Game), etc.

Games are extraordinarily popular on iOS. I see people gaming constantly on planes, trains, busses, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't do a lot of gaming on my phone or on a tablet, so seems to me that the best bet right now (for me) is an iPhone 6 Plus.

</comment><comment><USER34> OT: AnandTech founder Anand Shimpi retires from journalism to work at Apple: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/anandtech-founder- ana...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/anandtech-founder-anand-shimpi- retires-from-journalism-to-work-at-apple/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder if it's time to start scaling mobile benchmarks by the size of the device.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't the "offscreen" test do that? i.e. render something on an offscreen, fixed and uniform resolution on all devices?

Although battery performance should probably be normalized to battery size / amperage, yeah. Bigger phones usually have the same resolution as their smaller siblings but larger battery capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do we know how Apple's Cyclone shows roughly 4x better IPC against Krait at Sunspider benchmark? Are the extra registers and bigger L1 enough to explain that?

<comment><USER38> My best guess is that the Sunspider benchmark like single-threaded performance, and Cyclone destroys Krait/Cortex here.

As for why, Cyclone's core are bigger, wider compared to Krait/Cortex, and are Out Of Order. (This is a nice article on that: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/179473-apples-a7-cyclon...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/179473-apples-a7-cyclone- cpu-detailed-a-desktop-class-chip-that-has-more-in-common-with-haswell-than- krait))

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Shouldn't this included iPad too comparisons too, since it includes the Nvida shield? Else, the Nvida shield should probably not be up there.

<comment><USER40> Nvidia made quite interesting SoC, that's why they placed Shield in the comparision. iPad has only slightly boosted iPhone SoC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can someone explain where there is such a huge gap between the 6 and 6+ when it comes to the Onscreen GFXBench test?

<comment><USER42> Presumably because the 6+ has a much larger screen.

<comment><USER43> Made even worse by the fact that it renders at 2208x1242 and then downsamples to 1920 × 1080.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How well are 4k monitors supported under Linux? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I really wanted to cry when I saw what a 4K monitor did to my KDE4 desktop... - It is much worse than I expected and not even remotely close to being finished: [https://community.kde.org/KDE/High- dpi_issues](https://community.kde.org/KDE/High-dpi_issues)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a 4k monoprice monitor. It works just great under ubuntu 14.04LTS with a Geforce 960 and the tested nvidia blob driver. Ubuntu allows 1.5x window title scaling, made things nicer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty good from what I've seen. I've been using one for the last year. One notable thing is that if you're using more than one monitor, you might have issues if they have different resolution (it's unlikely you can do 2x 4K monitors). It's rather tedious to get X + your WM to run two different DPI on the two screens. I ended up having to run two X servers for two monitors, which has its own limitation.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends. I've had a Samsung U28D590D ([http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/monitors/LU28D590DS/ZA](http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/monitors/LU28D590DS/ZA)) since October 2014 with a Radeon HD 7970. Only until kernel versions 4.2-4.3 and xf86-video-ati 1:7.6 have I been able to get the DPMS to properly activate. It was maddening having to ssh and and play the prod the DPMS state until the monitor flickers back on. However, I quickly gave up on any HiDPI and desktop environments and stuck with xmonad. Works like a charm now.

</comment><comment><USER6> It isn't a 4k issue as much as neither GTK3 nor QT5 wants to really make any effort to force adoption of DPI-aware code, unlike what, say, Android and iOS and Windows 10 has done, which is to force apps to have layouts specific for certain device sizes and also be HiDPI aware, with OSX not doing specific layouts but still requiring HiDPI awareness.

</comment><comment><USER7> Amusingly enough - old school tiling wm manager setups like dwm work best on retina screens. I really enjoy using dwm on a retina display with crisp tiled emacs windows.</comment>


Warren Buffett: Here's How I Would Solve the Trade Problem (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/2016/04/29/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/ <comment><USER2> If the only asset the Squanders have is land (which they already own) and the only thing the Squanders and Thrifts can produce is food (which the Squanders are getting from the Thrifts in exchange for Squanderbonds), then why would the Squanders give Squanderbucks to the Thrifts to buy Squanderbonds?

Better for the Squanders to let the Thrifts exhaust their soil from overfarming, while the Squander soil regenerates. Then, when the Thrifts realize they face starvation, the Squanders can hire them as indentured servants to farm Squander Island land. The Squanders can keep the Thrifts on a near-starvation diet so that Squander soil isn't exhausted until Thrift soil regenerates.

While the Thrifts are toiling on Squander soil and serving the Squanders hand and foot, the Squanders can annex Thrift Island and ensure total ownership of all productive land forever.

The Thrifts could avoid this fate, of course, by eating their Squanderbonds.

As the old proverb says, if you owe the bank $1000, it's your problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000, it's the bank's problem.</comment>


Founders. We matter. repeat as much as we can - <AUTHOR>

Yes we do. I am working on my startup.At the end of it my product may be truly crappy, but I matter. We build things that changes the way people connect between themselves and their environment. We always beat ourselves or worry so much about not doing enough that we fail to see what we have accomplish so far. No one can tell you what will work or not. No one knows if your product will beat Google's. it may, it may not. But at the end of the day do not quit, because you may changes lives upon lives and that buddy is worth more than the 30 millions Yahoo is going to offer you. <comment><USER2> Who cares if the product is crappy as long as you learn about your strengths and weaknesses, and what you like to do and what you don't. At our age, just learning that is very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> And gosh darn it, people like me!</comment>