Microsoft's New Edge Web Browser – How to Create Edge Extensions? - <AUTHOR> http://imacros.net/microsoft-edge-web-browser-how-to-create-edge-extensions

<comment><USER2> I think bringing a sane extension model to Edge is a bigger deal than any of the other improvements that Edge is making over IE11.

For a couple years now, I would have instantly switched to IE on my touch enabled Windows machines _if_ there were equivalent versions of my Chrome extensions available for IE. Overall performance, especially during touch scrolling and zooming, and memory footprint has long been dramatically better in IE than any other Windows browser (though Chrome seems to be trying to close that gap a bit lately).

If converting a complex extension like RES was really "easy to convert" with "only a few changes", that's going to be a very interesting development.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _There are "no plans" to make the browser (or its core engine) open source > but Edge proudly incorporates open-source code_

I'm tired of this trend. In my opinion saying you're using some piece of open- source library for XPath does not exonerate you from releasing a browser that isn't open-source in a market that has Firefox and Chromium. I'll bet they aren't going to release Edge for Linux either.

Microsoft has been copying Apple lately but Apple is the wrong model for Microsoft to copy.

<comment><USER4> > I'm tired of this trend. In my opinion saying you're using some piece of > open-source library for XPath does not exonerate you from releasing a > browser that isn't open-source

They don't need to be exonerated. There's no reason to turn enthusiasm for open-source into a feeling of entitlement that all software must be that way. Some of the best software I use is closed-source. I have enough complaints about Firefox and Chrome that if a better closed-source browser comes along I'm going to use it.

<comment><USER3> Given Microsoft's history with IExplorer, that personally I haven't forgotten, I won't touch another of their browsers unless it is open-source and portable to other platforms. Because there is such a thing called trust and trust violations, which in the real world often affect relationships between two parties. So they do need to be exonerated from my point of view. You're entitled to your own opinion of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why they even need their own web browser. Why not just ship Windows with Chrome. They could preset the settings to have bing as your home page. Or maybe that is illegal? What advantage to they gain by having their own browser? If there would be legal difficulties they could try to strike a deal with Firefox or Opera. On the same note I don't understand what Microsoft is trying to do recently. I mean eventually Windows is supposed to be free and everyone can get all the updates. .NET is becoming more open source. Visual Studio is becoming cross platform and this works on the free version. I like all these things, but I don't understand how they benefit Microsoft? The only explanation I have heard is that they are trying to "stay relevant", but what good is that relevance if they are giving Windows, .NET, and Visual Studio away for free? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> Because then everyone would be using Chrome – Chrome already has a far too large market share right now.

If we want to have a free market of browsers, we also need multiple vendors that compete, otherwise the market will stall (see IE6)

<comment><USER5> I was more asking how Microsoft benefits by pumping their own money and time into their own browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Unlike Chrome, extensions require a browser restart after installation._

That is not good.

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of Windows NT.

<comment><USER9> Or, uh, Firefox?

<comment><USER10> Restart-less add-ons have been common for a few years now for Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I played with Edge on my dev machine, here are my initial impressions:

> Its slow. I ran some benchmark tools and it is so far behind Chrome and > Firefox. (I know its still in preview)

> I dont like the idea of installing extension through Microsoft Store.

> Developer Tools is still behind Chrome or Firebug. Missing JS & CSS editing, > viewing cookie etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel like all of the changes Microsoft is making are not going to matter if they keep trying to build a walled garden. There's just no way that I'm investing any significant amount of time into technology that binds users to a one single app store.

<comment><USER13> I'm having a hard time parsing this comment in light of Apple and Google, which essentially do the same thing. The article mentions the extensions are similar to Chrome, so it's possible that someone will build a translation layer that will take underlying code and build the application specific bindings.

Thanks to Xamarin, you can build an application for any platform using C#, and even more, .NET is running pretty much everywhere now. So, I'm confused as to what technology you are referring to?

<comment><USER12> So, because Apple and (to a much lesser extent) Google lock down their platforms, I should be OK when Microsoft tries to do it too?

I don't use iOS for the same reason that I won't use any of Microsoft's newly walled-in tech and I don't use certain Google products for the same reason.

> what technology you are referring to?

I'm referring to Metro/Modern/Windows Store/Universal apps and Edge.

\- On Windows if I want to distribute a Metro/Modern app, I have to go through Microsoft's store. At least Android allows non-Google app stores and side- loading with the flick of a switch.

\- Metro/Modern apps are not allowed talk to desktop apps. Even Chrome extensions and apps aren't as locked down as Metro.

\- It looks like they're considering applying the same restrictions to Edge. Edge apps might only be able to talk to Windows Store apps.

None of this is OK with me. I never wanted Microsoft to do anything like Apple because I honestly don't like the way they do anything.

> .NET is running pretty much everywhere now...

 _Xamarin isn 't Microsoft and this is not relevant to my point but here is what I think about Xamarin._

Not yet. Not really. Relatively nobody is using Xamarin tools because they are too expensive compared to the free or low cost tools that are available for building straight iOS and Android apps (or even cross platform ones with Javascript).

<comment><USER2> I don't use Xamarin myself, but I don't think it's very accurate to say nobody is using their tools: [http://xamarin.com/customers](http://xamarin.com/customers)

If you spend any time at all talking with .NET developers (of which there are millions), many are very excited about Xamarin and being able to use their existing knowledge to build native cross-platform apps.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Website Creation for Twitch Streamers - <AUTHOR> https://www.watchme.lol <comment><AUTHOR> 1-Click website creation that would allow streamers to collect all their social media profiles in one place ^^

We also have some cool features like embeddable calendar creation, Spotify playlist sharing and many more. Subdomains are for free ({username}.watchme.lol) whereas if a streamer wants his own domain he can upgrade to a premium plan.

An example website is [https://alican.tv](https://alican.tv)</comment>


Platform sunk (cost): What is the value of a quarter billion Symbian users? - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/21/platform-sunk-costs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Asymco+%28asymco%29 <comment><USER2> The number of Symbian users means absolutely nothing, because they're not worth anything as they're not buying into an ecosystem.

The Symbian devices sold are basically 'done' -- they'll never improve, and the person using them is basically never going to buy a single app or a piece of content for them. A much better comparison would be total revenue of the Ovi Store against all the other stores. That means something.

I'll make this analogy:

I own an electronic door bell. It's made by a large multinational company who probably have sold way more than 200M of these -- but they just make widgets, and who gives a shit? That doesn't make it a viable platform.

The vast majority of Nokia phones running Symbian are just a door bell. They make calls and do the job, but that's about it.

<comment><USER3> A phone that makes phone calls - how ridiculous

<comment><USER2> If that's all your phone does and that's your objective then great. Congratulations: you've won. But you're also stuck in 2007.

If your objective is to make boatloads of money on a mobile ecosystem, that's not going to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I asked a few people around office who had stylish-looking Nokias and asked what they were doing with them. Turns out no one is looking to buy apps. All they wanted was a solid phone for phone calls. A quarter billion Symbians users who bring nothing, create nothing and buy nothing in the ecosystem is worth zilch, I'm afraid.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nokia plans to ship 150 million Symbian devices still and updates and support continue for a couple of years, so it's not going anywhere in a while. With that user base I'd believe it's still a viable platform to develop for.

</comment><comment><USER6> The value of them is less than 1 million WinMo phone users, when those quarter billion people replace their phones if Nokia doesn't have a compelling offer they will lose them to competitors. The article looks to the past rather than the future. We are on the brink of a revolution in computing, it's 1984 out there. Looking to the past will not give you answers as to the future right now. Nokia was once a tire company and before that a pulp mill (Nokian still makes the best winter tires), if anyone has the courage and conviction to reinvent themselves it's Nokia.

Symbian is sold on low margins. If Nokia was doing so well on Symbian why did they replace their CEO?

Symbian may have been a smart phone platform in 2005, but it is no longer. I haven't seen anything impressive on Symbian, and of the features that Symbian does have that others don't I don't see anything compelling enough to give up the App Store. iOS / Android / WinPhone 7 have mind share, and Blackberry has the corporate market which is kind of like IE, you'd like to ignore it but there are simply too damn many people willing to fork over cash to do it.

<comment><USER7> Yep, brand name recognition and usage is not at all the same thing as brand name loyalty. As mentioned in a previous thread, Nokia's market share has been dropping at the same time as the absolute size of the market has been growing. Somehow I doubt there are a lot of Nokia users who look at an iPhone and think, "Too bad. If only it ran Symbian OS ..."

<comment><USER6> That's one of the really interesting things about the Android market, when I talk to most normal people they describe their phone as Android rather than the Motorola, HTC, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


High-tech digital assistants channel an old form of literacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-02/siri-alexa-and-oral-literacy <comment><USER2> It's actually not even bad if people don't know how to read and write. It's great for tech stocks, and everyone will dictate beautiful letters with their phones.

<comment><USER3> And nothing will ever be written in private, everything will be filed in a central location. As training material for the speech recognition systems of course, surely nobody would do anything sinister with the data.</comment></comment>


Qnnpack: PyTorch-integrated open source library for mobile deep learning - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/ml-applications/qnnpack-open-source-library-for-optimized-mobile-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> That's an informative article.

Last time I took a look at TensorFlow Lite, they had a vision where you would export your model into a .tflite file (which is FlatBuffer encoded execution graph with weights) and then use it on mobile for inference like this, in pseudo-code :

      model = tflite.interpreter().load_model("my_model.tflite")
      model.set_input_data(my_input_buffer)
      model.execute()
      model.get_result(my_output_buffer)

Which is nice, since you can easily update the model by simply distributing a new file "my_model.tflite". The TFLite interpreter library would use whatever capability (SIMD instructions, DSP cores, etc) is available on the device to accelerate inference, so the application developer doesnt have to worry about writing different code for different platforms or even understand how the prediction works under the hood.

Is Qnnpack a library directly competing with TFLite? Are the file formats used for the model the same between tflite and this? Does it support TensorFlow Cores created by Google for inference, and/or more generally specialized cores like Qualcomm's DSP?

<comment><USER3> QNNPACK directly competes with the CPU backend of TensorFlow Lite and the gemmlowp library. The Caffe2 backend of PyTorch 1.0 integrates QNNPACK, and directly competes with TensorFlow Lite. QNNPACK targets only mobile CPUs, but Caffe2 integrates other backends for non-CPU targets, e.g. Apple's MPSCNN library for iPhone GPUs, Qualcomm's Snapdragon NPE for Qualcomm GPUs and DSPs, ARM ComputeLibrary for Android GPUs. Not sure what you mean by TensorFlow Cores: NVIDIA has TensorCores and TensorRT, and Google has Tensor Processing Units (TPU), but neither of these technologies are for mobile.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the precisions!

I was referring to TensorRT from Nvidia and TPUs from Google.

One of the strength of the TFLite API is that the same exported tflite model can run on both mobiles and servers. It may make less sense to run lite models on servers, because of the loss of precision but it may also have its own use case for very big models on cheap servers.

Nvidia sells Android devices and embedded boards for robotic, which will surely have some sort of TensorRT-derived cores if not already. Goole could one day integrate their specialized cores (security and TPUs) into their phones too, or into AI-oriented IoT devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Without repacking, the microkernel would have to read rows of A separated by potentially large stride. If this stride happens to be a multiple of a large power of 2, elements from different rows of A in the panel may fall into the same cache set. If the number of colliding rows exceeds cache associativity, they evict each other and performance falls off a cliff. Fortunately, this situation cannot happen when the panel fits into L1, as with the models for which QNNPACK is optimized."

I only very roughly understand the concepts of caching and eviction algorithms, but I wish processors and OS'es (which presumably can configure cache behaviour) would expose the current cache configuration so that compilers and library designers can take this into account in a more automated/uniform way. Alternatively how accurately do emulators model cache behaviour? It would be nice to see where a bottleneck is, or how long ago a needed value was evicted for profiling purpouses</comment>


Why Innovatio's Wi-Fi Patent Rampage is a Good Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/10/why-innovatios-wi-fi-patent-ra.php

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry for not being well versed in this, how is wifi software? I thought thats hardware/software mix.</comment>


Ask HN: Pandora - Silence When I go underground on subway - <AUTHOR>

I know everyone here is always hacking up cool stuff.  Does anyone have a solution to the terrible 1/2 hour long silence I face because I lose my connection. <comment><USER2> mp3s. More specifically podcasts of indie stuff and underground mixes.

Here is a start from Noise Pop:

[http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/noisepop/episode.jsp?essid...](http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/noisepop/episode.jsp?essid=43520)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have an iPod for that but I hear about rdio.com supporting download caches.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those posts that are indistinguishable from satire.

<comment><USER2> My first response was just "mp3s" but there could actually be some cool tech out there we don't know about and that got me thinking about my DJ friends who post their mixes of their shows online.</comment></comment>


iTunes built, and then broke, my meticulous music-listening system - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/23/15031054/how-itunes-built-and-then-broke-my-meticulous-music-listening-system <comment><USER2> For two years now I've used iCloud Music Library (iTunes Match) to handle exactly the sort of situation the article author describes. Bucking the trend here; I love it.

I've written a number of scripts (the main one is on npm) that run on a home Mac Mini server, converting FLAC to ALAC, and copying music which gets added to the library via the iTunes Add to Library folder.

Within minutes of hitting a synced drop folder music is converted, stored and uploaded. I then have access to that music on my phone and computer. I can access 100% of my personal 40k track library anywhere, and can listen lossless at home. I still have music in my library I ripped in the early 2000s.

I've definitely hated on iTunes plenty — the search is unforgivably slow and CPU intensive, and the app seems forever going backwards on usability.

Still, I have what seems like a miracle of the cloud. A reliable, personal streaming service, with none of the restrictions of Spotify or Apple Music. I'll deal with the inconvenience.

For the record: I've explored a similar system with Google Play, but Apple manages the best end-to-end ecosystem across devices in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> I'm also generally +1 on iTunes Match. However recently I've noticed my iPhone skipping songs frequently, no matter how hard I try I can't get those songs to play. I'm not sure if the fault is with my phone, itunes, match or something else, but it's not as seamless as I'd have liked.

It took me a while to notice as usually I'm not watching the screen of my phone when I"m shuffling around and such, but now that I know it happens i've been watching for it.

<comment><USER2> It happens to be occasionally too. I've ended up exporting and re-importing those tracks on the server and it tends to fix it.

Definitely an annoyance, but infrequent enough that I had forgotten about it until you mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Syncing is broken on all phones, practically. MTP is a disaster.

These days I just use Syncthing on Android. What works best for me on my desktop is Rhythmbox and a bindfs mounted to the Syncthing directory, which contains a file named ".is_audio_player".

[https://almost-a- technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplay...](https://almost-a- technocrat.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaudioplayer.htm)

After that, multiple playlists, podcasts, transcoded or not: it can handle it all wirelessly.

<comment><USER5> I used to obsessively manage my music like this on external HDs, syncing apps, and `beets` [1] to clean up the tags/album covers. But I've recently given this up in favour of Google Music and I'm in love.

I haven't stopped raving about the service since I started using it two months ago.

Just having your entire collection (and it has 99% of the music I'm looking for, something like 35 million full albums... just a simple search and button click away from adding to my library) and for stuff it doesn't have you can upload 50k songs, even stuff your pirate off private torrent trackers or w/e.

Getting new phones each year, new tablets, new laptops, etc I always ended up with a half-baked collection of music. I never set up a NAS to solve this unfortunately but now I don't feel the need to.

It's helped me rediscover so much music I've forgotten over the years and lost from my collection during various moves.

Now I'm in the process of building playlists, rating songs, and rebuilding the playcounts. Not having to worry about ever losing them again is very reassuring!

I got a 90-day trial with my Nexus phone and it's only $9/month after that... but you can also use it for free with ads which includes the 50k songs.

[1] [https://github.com/beetbox/beets](https://github.com/beetbox/beets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm on Spotify and Pandora despite having a huge music collection in iTunes. I dread having to launch it and have basically given up buying and managing my own music.

<comment><USER7> Just use Google Play music and upload your music to them. You get 50,000 songs. Plus if you just listen to your music its free.

<comment><USER8> And you can listen offline on your mobile.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you can. It pre-downloads two or four songs, I don't recall, from your current playlist and you can also choose to download playlists, albums and songs for offline usage.

<comment><USER7> My favorite money spent is on Google Play Music Family. I get my son, daughter and wife on it cost $15 and it includes ad free YouTube and the ability to play in background (Awesome for Podcast like content) and download videos (If I am going on a trip I down load a ton of stuff)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wanting an application to work is not an edge case. iTunes is an atrocity.

That old joke about emacs? iTunes is not a great operating system, and it still needs a decent MP3 player.

<comment><USER11> You mean a FLAC player :^)

<comment><USER12> Does iTunes even play FLAC files?

Apple developers have one serious problem: the "not invented here" syndrome. As everybody was using mp3, Apple wanted AAC. FLAC? Apple didn't invent it. So they just support their own rubbish instead [1].

[1] [https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002052?tstart=0))

<comment><USER13> >just support their own rubbish They support ALAC, a lossless format. Sure, converting is a slight hassle, but doesn't take long. The quality is the same as in FLAC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problems with iTunes extends beyond iTunes. I just want to drag and drop MP3s to my iPhone!!!

<comment><USER15> This! And no automatic syncing. I have no idea why deleted songs keep showing on my iphone and added songs keep disappearing from my iphone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it possible to get mp3s onto an iPhone SE without using iTunes? Either Windows or Linux is fine.

<comment><USER17> You can use Tiny Player, which is a simple player for iOS:

[http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny-player/](http://www.catnapgames.com/tiny- player/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Use CMUS is a small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like operating systems. [https://cmus.github.io/](https://cmus.github.io/)

Anyone wanting to program and hack their music should use this gem. It is the best music player I have ever used.

Installation instructions [http://macappstore.org/cmus/](http://macappstore.org/cmus/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Anybody have a good Mac alternative to iTunes? I found myself using VLC the other day on a plane because it is SO SLOW with big libraries.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this where I can complain about Apple Music completely screwing up all the album art on my own music?

Yes, this particular track I synced to the device also happens to be in some random music compliation CD from twenty years ago that's available on Apple Music. _It doesn 't mean I want to see that album art swapped into mine, dammit._

</comment><comment><USER20> By some strange coincidence I got the dreaded corrupted iTunes library shortly after I read this article. Years of ratings, playlists, play counts, and whatnot are gone :-/.

Last time this happened I couldn't find a way to fix this. Does anyone have any experience with the matter and/or tips for fixing this?

</comment><comment><USER21> On the subject of syncing, Apple's devices still† use USB 2.0 cables. In practice the software might be more of a bottleneck, but still.

†IIRC the iPad Pro actually supports USB 3.0 on its Lightning port, but the included USB cable is plain old USB 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER22> Question. Would you subscribe to a service that fixed all this? I've created a streaming service for personal use and I'm considering commercializing it.

Or am I just an old fuddy duddy who likes to own my music and I should just give up and go to iMusic and GPlay to lease everything.

</comment><comment><USER23> Use WALTR no need for iTunes, end of.

<comment><USER24> Unless I've missed something, WALTR doesn't solve the author's smart playlist / generate a "new playlist of the day" problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any great replacements for Windows?

* foobar is the most feature-rich, but requires a lot of customization and the auto-move functionality is not on par with iTunes file organization tool

* MediaMonkey is nice but the interface is lacking in simplicity compared to iTunes

<comment><USER26> I personally use Clementine, which I think is excellent, especially how it lets you browse by album rather than just Artist like some other programs.

<comment><USER27> I've been using Clementine for the past few years, too. It's really a nice "simple" interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Take this as a lesson in not using or relying on proprietary systems like that.

<comment><USER29> The thing is, iTunes - the music organizer part - is still one of the best ways to organize your music collection, make automated playlists, make them to sync. Apple bought iTunes and then developed it back when they made iPods and needed people to manage copying the music to their players easily, and there were some great design decisions made back then that are still present now.

However, they also piled tons of crap on the core functionality. Which sucks. But I haven't seen an application that is as good as iTunes for music library.

Anyway I switched to Spotify too, but the UI is frankly pretty terrible, especially on desktop.

<comment><USER30> Wait, Spotify UI is terrible? How would you alter it? I ask because I find it to be really good, especially since I came from playing my music on Windows Media Player and occasionally VLC(!).

<comment> k-mcgrady Not OP but take playlists in Spotify for a start. They push playlists like crazy and then have this silly little side bar for them that requires me to scroll if I have more than 10-15 playlists and is narrow so I can't see the full playlist names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> iTunes being shiat is a big reason why I don't listen to music as much. I am annoyed with constantly having to figure out what new crapped up way iTunes does X, annoyed with the integration of Apple Music into the iPhone Music app, and annoyed with all the maintenance. My music is a 250gb waste of hard disk space.

Riddle me this: why does the iPhone Music app require cellular data access when all I want to is play music local to my iPhone device? WTF is the app doing? I don't subscribe to the stupid music match function so what exactly is it doing?

</comment><comment><USER32> iTunes is the single worst piece of software I'm still forced to use. I would pay $100 for a better piece of software but Apple has their walled "garden". And they have billions but can't hire PMs and engineers that can build a better piece of software. So fuck them.

Anyone foolish enough to build a music listening system on top of them unfortunately deserves whatever they get. I don't have much sympathy.

<comment><USER33> Why are you forced to use it? The only time I see it is when it comes up on my macbook when I plug my phone in, then I just close it - and I could probably stop it showing up then too.

<comment><USER34> You can only transfer music via USB onto an iPhone via iTunes.

<comment><USER35> That's a good reason not to own an iPhone. Android may have its (many) faults, but at least I can transfer music onto it from my Linux command line with "adb push". Or I can take out the SDcard and just pop it into my computer and transfer it like I copy any other files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> VLC

<comment><USER37> How do you use VLC to sync a subset of star-ranked songs that haven't been played in X months to a device with a limited amount of storage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why are you eulogizing an existing product? Build something better or use something else.

<comment><USER39> It simply can not be done!

Apple is worth $ 750,000,000,000 and it spend last 16 years trying to build file synchronization tool.

<comment><USER38> Well not with that attitude it can't.

Have you even looked at other tools like Plex [https://www.plex.tv/](https://www.plex.tv/), Foobar2000 [http://www.foobar2000.org/](http://www.foobar2000.org/), Clementine [https://www.clementine-player.org/](https://www.clementine-player.org/), iSyncr [http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for- Android](http://www.jrtstudio.com/iSyncr-iTunes-for-Android), or DoubleTwist Sync?

<comment><USER39> Sarcasm? I used rsync for past 20 years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I don't really get the complaint. The author acknowledges they are a tiny edge case and Apple has clearly been trying to get away from syncing and make the devices work without computers for years now. The music industry has changed and streaming is now what most people are doing with these devices. I think, in hindsight, investing a lot of time in any music delivery mechanism is wasteful. It changes much too often.

<comment><USER40> It's not just music though. Stream if you will/want. I think it's a good model. But that doesn't work for pictures. I know - iCloud, but it's not even as reliable as iTunes. No way am I trusting it for the only backup of videos of my kids. This may be a HN edge case, but out there in the RW, folks are taking pictures at soccer practice that they want to keep forever. It's a real PITA if you can't sync reliably.

<comment> k-mcgrady Have you used iCloud Photo Library? Syncs between your devices and you can have it store local copies on your Mac so you have cloud and local copies (and you can backup the local copies with your usual solution). Much safer than sync IMO because the photos are synced and backed up before you can get to a computer (useful if you're on vacation and without a computer for a couple of weeks).

<comment><USER40> I haven't found iCloud to be entirely reliable. The total lack of feedback in sync progress and errors when something goes wrong drive me crazy.

More importantly, Apple charges a lot for storage and it can't be shared so each account needs it's own storage - and enough of it to store all pictures/videos or it won't sync at all. Basically it comes down to I don't want to pay Apple four times for storage (2 phones and 2 iCloud accounts) just so that I can have my pictures fully backed up and synced.

<comment><USER41> They charge me $0.99/month per 50GB of extra storage. I just buy one fewer candy bars per month.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Great things to instapaper? - <AUTHOR>

After weeks of bugging my friends I finally got instapaper for the iPad and wow, I'm really enjoying the experience of clicking read later and having a decent supply of articles to read on the train (I spend a lot of time on public transport).
My question for HN is... what next - I went through the Ask HN archive and instapapered most of the threads I wanted to read and a few external resources but I'm running out... (and I have a trip to london tomorrow and a trip to san francisco on monday)
What posts / sections would YOU 'read later' <comment><USER2> I don't know if you've already seen this, as it was featured here a couple of weeks ago, but if you have any interest in mathematics / programming (I'm going to assume you do) and want to learn about all sorts of interesting maths that will probably show up while programming,

<http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/fall10/mcs-ftl.pdf>

is an excellent pdf written by two MIT professors and a Googler. I know instapaper doesn't support pdf's right now but you could always run it through google docs and save the text from there.</comment>


Simple C++11 metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://pdimov.com/cpp2/simple_cxx11_metaprogramming.html <comment><USER2> This type of C++ code makes me sad. I can follow along and figure out what it's doing, but I really have to slow down and think about it. C++ template metaprogramming has the ugliest syntax of a "real" programming language that I've ever seen. Brainfuck might win for hardest to follow code, but god damn it, C++ is really trying.

IMO, Lisp did metaprogramming the right way, 40 years ago. It's built into the language and doesn't look like a hacked on cluster f __*. Anybody familiar with regular Lisp can follow along with Lisp metaprogramming, and it 's far more powerful than what's available in C++. And nowadays, the performance is even competitive.

<comment><USER3> How did Lisp solve (40 years ago) the problem of generating a compile time errors when types of the arguments into a function call did not match with what the developer of the function anticipated?

<comment><USER4> When you look at error messages of C++ inside of metaprogramming code you understand that the error reporting in case of argument mismatch is still not solved .... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool post. I have always disliked C++ MP because I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Judging by the first few examples (using, mp_rename) C++11 cleans it up and makes it understandable.

</comment><comment><USER6> While I know nothing about metaprogramming in C++, the book Metaprogramming Ruby is one of the most well done and thought provoking programming book I have ever read, one I always recommend. Really, even if you hate Ruby, it's worth your while to see how metaprogramming can be used to problem solve, which is ultimately what all this is about.

The most popular Ruby framework, Ruby on Rails, has quite the learning curve because it's based heavily on conventions enabled by metaprogramming. inb4 lengthy discussion of "convention vs configuration" and "magic."

</comment><comment><USER7> The title seems ironic. Templates are often the part of C++ where I feel like I'm a complete idiot. It's not exactly the C++ I like, but I like C++ anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> On a little less serious note, I hope Haskell and C++ merge into something beautiful. Peak performance (par aliasing) and peak expressivity/safety.</comment>


Bike Share Program Opens in New York City After Long Delay - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/nyregion/bike-share-program-opens-in-new-york-city-after-long-delay.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I had a chance to do five 10-40 minute bike rides yesterday (it was a beautiful day) using the new citi bikes. Here are my thoughts on the program:

I had to meet some friends in soho, which normally takes about 25 minutes by subway or 10 minutes by cab - I casually biked there in 12 minutes. It was great being able to leave my bike a block from where I was meeting my friends without worrying about locking it, and it was great that I could pick up another bike several blocks away to go home.

The bikes themselves are clunky and built like tanks, which seems right because the bikes will be used a lot and are always outside. The bikes ride slowly, which again seems right for a commuting bike in a crowded urban setting.

The bike stations are still having some issues that I hope will be ironed out shortly. Every time I tried to take out a bike the station would abort with a flashing red light the first three or four times, which was annoying. The station map was down all of yesterday, so I had to search around a bit for stations. That said the stations are nearly ubiquitous in downtown manhattan so it really wasn't a big issue.

Overall I'm really happy with the program and plan on using it a lot.

<comment><USER3> _The bikes ride slowly, which again seems right for a commuting bike in a crowded urban setting._

I actually prefer biking fast in NYC. The traffic lights are synchronized to 30mph traffic. It's not easy to sustain 30 mph (you need a racing bike or to be in very good shape) but I try to get up to 20-22 mph to limit my time spent at lights. Of course, this isn't an option if I need to be presentable and not sweaty whereever I'm going.

<comment><USER4> When is there ever 30mph traffic in Manhattan.

<comment><USER5> Manhattan traffic is mostly bad in peak traffic (weekdays during rush hours, major holidays when people are trying to leave, etc) on the approaches to bridges/tunnels and in the downtown/midtown core where said approaches are interacting with each other. Anywhere else, anywhen else, and it's not so bad; there's more traffic capacity on the island than there is to get on/off of the island.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [Shameless spam plug, hope it's relevant here]

Just today I have added New York's Citibike to my bike sharing project [1]. Feel free to give it a spin!

        List of juicy features:
         - Android version
            - Push notifications for stations of interest
            - Distraction free map!
         - HTML version [2]
         - Hacky goodie: realtime world map [3]

[1]: CityBikes - <http://citybik.es>

[2]: <http://api.citybik.es/citibikenyc.html>

[3]: <http://citybik.es/realtime/#citibikenyc>

<comment><USER7> That looks pretty awesome. How do you get your data? Do all those bike sharing services have real-time public APIs that you connect to?

<comment><USER6> Some have (for instance NYC, kudos to them!), other services do not have anything, and data has to be scraped from their website. Most of the time it's a pain in the ass that involves many different dodgy tricks.

I have a python library available at <http://github.com/eskerda/pybikes> that unifies all the data from different sources into the same model.

<comment><USER7> Awesome! Thanks for making that opensource!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what will be their position on visualization, statistics and user contributed projects reusing their data.

Their data feed is available [1], but in the terms of use [2], page 1, point 4 it says:

        4. Proprietary Rights in Website Content; Limited License to Access and
           Use Website.

        All content that is on the Website or that is available through the
        Website or any of the Affiliated Websites, including all designs,
        text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software,
        music, sound, and other files and their selection and arrangement
        (collectively, "Website Content"), is the exclusive proprietary
        property of Alta and its Related Parties, with all rights reserved by
        Alta and its Related Parties. [...]

[1]: <https://citibikenyc.com/stations/json>

[2]: <https://citibikenyc.com/assets/pdf/terms-of-use.pdf>

<comment><USER8> As a techie turned urban planner (starting a PhD in the fall!) I am constantly amazed by the level of interest in urban planning issues that the tech community has. Within the ranks of practicing planners, I feel there is the oldish guard, who maybe groks a little GIS, but otherwise doesn't understand the democratic potential of data and information systems.

Then there is the new insurgency of people who are "wizards" who come to the field with a high level of sophistication about coding, visualization, and analytics. To some of the older guard, these people are intimidating, because the new guard believes intuitively in open access to data through useful APIs, and repeatable analyses that consume the same data that everyone else gets.

Contrast that with the clickety-click Excel/ESRI paradigm that we're waking up from. Data is "public" but not accessible. Analyses are performed by an expert who you simply have to trust that they did things right, because all you have is a finished map.

I love the new direction that's coming in planning. In my city, we have a happy confluence of relatively sophisticated planners, a big tech scene, a lots of ped/bike/transit advocates, but there is still a gulf between what The People want in terms of data services, and what the various transit, city, MPO agencies have capacity to provide.

This pre-coffee ramble is a long winded way of saying, "keep fighting the good fight, and doing cool and interesting stuff with urban data."

<comment><USER9> How does one move into urban planning from being a techie?

I ask only because I want to solve social issues with tech.

<comment><USER8> I did a masters degree. It was strange going back to school after being out in the working world for a number of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like this is a bike rental program, not really a sharing program. My town (naively) tried a free bike sharing program years ago. They bought about a hundred bright yellow bicycles and set up racks around town. The idea was you go to a rack, take a bike, ride it to the rack nearest your destination, and leave it there. Of course within weeks all the bikes were either vandalized beyond repair or stolen.

<comment><USER11> The same system NYC just deployed has been in use in Montreal and London for years. You have to use a credit card or similar to get a bike, so there's some disincentive to mess about (they will charge your card if you steal the bike). That said, in the first few months after London got theirs, several of the kiosks were vandalized or stolen. That problem seems to have subsided (maybe the fools figured out there was no real money in it). But cycle theft in NYC is more rampant than in London, so we'll see how it goes. My fingers are crossed, because I've used the sibling systems and they're great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just took one out and back. The bike was good, but it whistled a little bit in the rain. The three speeds are great. I did have trouble docking the bike on my way back though and I had to go to a different station. I called the number but it was busy so I sent them an email.

This is still the best thing to happen to NYC in a while.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm pretty pumped up about this. I brought my helmet with to the city today and I have my key. I'm going to ride to my appointment at lunchtime. This just made those fold up bikes that people bring on the railroad obsolete.

<comment><USER13> you have obligatory helmets in ny?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they are mandatory in nyc but it's dangerous for even experienced bikers, so good for them to be smart about it.

I mean you don't really survive even the first impact and sometimes when you think you do, an hour later you don't: <http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/18/brain.injury/> (aka "talk and die")

<comment><USER13> for the city bike helmets are snake oil, especially on those town bikes where you don't flip. it's almost like wearing a helmet to walk your dog. unless you wear a downhill one, then grab the full armor too and pick up a fight with drivers.

in other words: the kinds of injuries an average helmet from the market would protect in some low margin of cases - probably won't happen. in the ones you fear the most - won't help you anyway.

<comment><USER14> I've been cycling almost daily for all of my life and only once had an accident where I hit my head, back when I was 6.

Disclaimer: I live in the Netherlands, bikes are everywhere.

The main difference is that here, you have experienced cyclists (you learn to walk, then you learn to ride a bicycle), dedicated bicycle lanes, and car drivers that know there's cyclists around and look out for them.

As for helmets or not, it's very much a factor of speed, risk of accidents, and the nature of the accident. Hit your head at a high enough speed (iirc, anywhere above 30 KM/h) and you'll get a concussion, even with a helmet. Maybe no cranial fracture, but still. Helmet won't protect you from breaking your neck or getting run over by a semi either.

tl;dr, I don't wear a helmet, I don't need to, and I live in a country where cyclists are common. You do see people wearing helmets, but they're usually children in busy cities or speed cyclists. Sometimes both.

<comment><USER15> FWIW, I had two bike crashes in the span of one week where I hit my head. They were both in races though. However, I was going more than 30km/h, and I got zero concussions. I am glad I was wearing them.

<comment><USER16> Did the helmets break?

<comment><USER15> They were both visibly compressed and/or cracked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you are in the city without bike sharing program, I recommend you to try folding kick scooter.

They are lightweight, you can carry it everywhere, your speed will be 2-3 times faster, than pedestrians.

Getting a kick scooter literally changed my life :)

<comment><USER7> That's pretty cool, especially if you live in a city which doesn't have cobble stone everywhere. I don't :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 13,768 miles in 6050 trips by 5pm yesterday: [https://citibikenyc.com/blog/2013/05/27/citi-bike-day-one- re...](https://citibikenyc.com/blog/2013/05/27/citi-bike-day-one-recap)

</comment><comment><USER19> Whoever did the JavaScript for the photo: you broke vertical page scroll gestures. Also, horizontal swipe on the photo changes the photo, but then we get moved to another article a half second later. Experience broken on the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice. Now all NY needs is some bike lanes and your rush hour will look like the Dutch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M>

<comment><USER21> We do have bike lanes. A lot of them in fact - though some of them are still pretty scary. I rode a Citibike up 6th Ave in the bike lane in the middle of the afternoon yesterday and it was a little hair-raising.

One of the _very_ cool things about this program is that all the bikes are equipped with GPSes, and combined with the data from the docking stations themselves, there's a stated intent to use this data to determine where more bike lanes and bike lane improvements will go in.

<comment><USER14> Don't worry, bike lanes in the Netherlands can be scary too, ;). Especially if you're a tourist and compete with natives that will go faster. Perhaps even moreso on a wintry day when it's slippery.

<comment><USER21> Ah, it's not the bikes in this case, but rather that you're riding in a painted lane on a road occupied by a sea of extremely aggressive cab drivers ;)

Some roads have protected bike lanes where you're separated by traffic via a concrete divider, potted plants, or parking spaces, and those definitely feel a lot less scary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting visualization of Boston's bike sharing program:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMBXdKj4iDQ>

</comment><comment><USER23> There's an organization working to start a bike share program in Seattle too! <http://pugetsoundbikeshare.org/>

</comment><comment><USER24> WIth DC and NYC both implementing similar programs, I can now dream of a day when the entire Acela corridor has a federated bikeshare system.

</comment><comment><USER25> It started yesterday.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I missed the date.

Sadly it seems a bike was stolen in the first hour it was live too.

<comment><USER26> Someone stole a bike before it was initially locked into the rack, which is pretty much a one-time event.

Not to mention the bikes have GPS and can be tracked down.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/first-citi-bike-has-been- stol...](http://www.businessinsider.com/first-citi-bike-has-been- stolen-2013-5)

<comment><USER19> I take it the citi bike program has taken steps to ensure there is no market for citi bikes. (Like _never_ selling them.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Charging for things on the web - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/2011/10/06/charging-for-things-on-the-web/

<comment><USER2> So, now that it's sold, the people that put up that $1-$13 are SOL?

I guess you always take a chance when you buy something online that is hosted without any guarantees (which I assume was the case here).</comment>


Painless AWS Tagging - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mpostument/awstaghelper <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, what to do if you need to tag a lot of ec2 instances, a more s3 and few other services? You can spend week by tagging them manually or you can use awstaghelper. Allow you to easy tag hundreds of AWS resources just in few clicks</comment>


Coursera raises 1Million+ USD for paid certifications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coursera.org/post/61047298750/a-milestone-for-signature-track-certificates-for-the

<comment><USER2> Nice to see that Coursera is beginning to prove their business model.

However, given that they are way past their minimal viable product, it's probably too little. Might grow though...</comment>


A $4.7B number for how much money Google makes off news industry is imaginary - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/that-4-7-billion-number-for-how-much-money-google-makes-off-the-news-industry-its-imaginary/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150813).

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know, thanks.</comment></comment>


First 100 users - <AUTHOR>

We have first 100 users in 1 day at www.kickborn.com <comment><USER2> You may wanna correct this snippet from there: "I can learning but i can search most of the stuff like"... sounds like someone born in the other side of the world talking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, i am the only developer. I will update it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Hope you tried the product. We have created a demo user which can be used to try it for free.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are rolling out the android app soon.</comment>


Safeplug: Safe, Secure, and Anonymous Web Browsing From Any Device - <AUTHOR> https://pogoplug.com/safeplug?HN

<comment><USER2> So is this nothing more than a $50 box that runs Tor for you, which is already freely available?</comment>


Ask HN: VR the next platform? - <AUTHOR> The mobile and web app market is heavily saturated at this point. Around 7 years ago, if you had a good idea and the technical chops to implement it, you had a chance at a successful business. These days, most ideas are already done, and the ideas which could still be successful have large barriers to entry (winner-takes-all markets, requires extensive insider-knowledge, or requires extensive personal network).
VR (naively) appears to be where web and mobile were 7-10 years ago. Had a few questions for VR developers surrounding this:
1) Do you see mobile VR/AR taking off?
2) Do you think 1-5 man teams can make successful products for VR/AR?
3) If a current web developer was interested in getting started in VR, what would you recommend they learn and invest in?
4) Does my naive assumption have merit? <comment><USER2> 1) Do you see mobile VR/AR taking off?

I guess, but like you said, there will be at least 7 years.

2) Do you think 1-5 man teams can make successful products for VR/AR?

I don't think so. I have a computer graphics background, computer graphics is pretty labor intensive. You often see startups in the areas of network, security ... you seldom see big successful startups in the graphics field. you need to hire lots of artists or have lots of money to outsource the work. or your idea is really smart like minecraft. Or you don't do graphics intensive games, like tiltbrush. but still 3d ui is more difficult that 2d ones.

3) If a current web developer was interested in getting started in VR, what would you recommend they learn and invest in?

I'd say webgl, and unity/unreal game engines. computer graphics in general. but if you are serious, you should learn c++ and native programing.

</comment><comment><USER3> VR/AR is an upcoming platform. Is it the next, or the one after that? Who knows. But yes, it is coming.

If you start now, I suspect you'll find some early success and interest, but it is yet to hit the "trough of despair", so you'll have to consider how you will live through that.

Current VR/AR I suspect can be compared to the state of mobile in the days of WAP. Not many people use it, but lots of people are talking about it.

Having said that, you don't have to go whole hog just into VR. I personally believe there are business opportunities in bringing highly dynamic visuals to business not in the VR space.

I've been considering this a bit lately, and when/if I get the time, I'll be looking at Unity because though you can make VR (and I think AR) scenes with Unity, you can also use it for 2d.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you clarify what type of visuals you're talking about?</comment></comment>


Facebook Labs or "Prototypes" to Launch Soon. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/2009/09/15/facebook-labs-prototypes-launch-soonvery/ <comment><USER2> Someone please explain the difference between this a FB's Platform. My guess - Prototypes = useful extensions of FB and Apps = fun & games?

<comment><USER3> Prototypes is trying out possible new core features. Apps are non-essential functionality.

<comment><USER2> Platform wasn't sold that way initially, in fact they bragged about how something as core as Photos or Gifts could be replaced by a superior version created by 3rd party developers.

I found the difference now - it's in the description of the main prototypes page: "Prototypes are product experiments built by Facebook engineers".

<http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php?app_type=6>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious what Similar Posts is going to be. Something like StumbleUpon for links?

</comment><comment><USER5> And they just launched. Well spotted!</comment>


New release of Dragonfire open-source virtual assistant runs fully on local - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DragonComputer/Dragonfire <comment><USER2> Ah, interesting. I've been keeping an eye on local-only desktop virtual assistants, thus far there's not really been anything even barely functional.

Looks like they're not kidding about the compile time of one of the dependencies, but it looks like they've done a good job of wrapping it effortlessly into the apt system.

I'll check back in after work and let you all know if it compiled successfully and if so, what kind of functionality it's got.

<comment><USER2> Compilation worked on my main computer, but I couldn't get it to work on the VM I tried at work.

Seems to be pretty good at voice recognition, but there's a noticeable delay while it parses my voice, maybe 3 seconds.

All things considered, it's light-years ahead of any other open source voice project I've seen, but it's not there yet. It's interpreted my mechanical keyboard strokes as voice about 5 times while writing this message, so it's not there yet, but I'll certainly be leaving it installed and keeping an eye out for updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat tangential: does anybody know if the recent advances and popularization of machine learning lead to some improvements in open-source handwriting recognition software/engines?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting!

Re "Local"

Please add support for WikiData dumps instead of requiring internet access to Wikipedia API service:

[https://github.com/DragonComputer/Dragonfire/blob/master/dra...](https://github.com/DragonComputer/Dragonfire/blob/master/dragonfire/omniscient.py)

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of BonziBuddy from the 90s. I've been using computers for a long time =\

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

<comment><USER6> Somewhere on the sourceforge ether is an open source parallel of BonziBuddy that I made in middle school, because I thought virtual assistants would be the wave of the future...

<comment><USER5> Also using Microsoft Agent?

<comment><USER7> RIP, Microsoft Agent

It was ahead of its time, and yet it was also such an artifact of its time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MIPSfpga 2.0: A CPU architecture course that's different from the rest - <AUTHOR> https://www.imgtec.com/blog/mipsfpga-2-0-the-cpu-university-course-thats-different-from-the-rest/ <comment><USER2> At least things have changed a little. A chap I know from school wrote a MIPS core for opencores & ended up on the receiving end of lawyers. [http://brej.org/yellow_star/](http://brej.org/yellow_star/)

Granted this was many moons ago, and they have to protect their IP.

<comment><USER3> It must have been either violating the last patent still active for unaligned access or plain old trademark violation. I don't know how these guys can get away with calling it a "MIPS" core either.

<comment><USER4> Imagination purchased MIPS Technologies 4 years ago for $100M so I think they have the rights to use the MIPS trademark.

[https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/acquisition-of- mip...](https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/acquisition-of-mips- technologies-completed/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I initially interpreted this as a new CPU architecture. Nope, Intel has the IP around mixed general-purpose and reconfigurable computing architectures.

Regardless, awesome idea for a course. Provide the source code for a complex architecture and let the students hack it.

</comment><comment><USER6> A bunch of people are saying on this project that the core should be open including the classwork. In the real world you don't have the ability for a Core to be open at all. Having a closed core with IP issues is probably more representative of the real world. It would be nice to have another class that you could take concurrently that would be the ying to this yang that would have an open core though. The best I could find about one with an open core is [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/P35/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1617/P35/) which details the OpenRISC 1200 but I don't think it goes in depth.

<comment><USER7> People used to say things like this about OS Kernels

<comment><USER8> Um BSD existed with source code since before I can remember and I'm old and cranky...

<comment><USER7> The fact a thing exists doesn't stop people from denying its possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... and now? Where is the course material? Where can I get the soft core?

I suggest you to look at RISC-V or OpenRISC 1200. It might not have the course material at the momnent, but the core is available. Help to create the teaching material based of this... ?

<comment><USER10> Yah, I'm really confused about why its OK to give the core to a professor to distribute to his students, but not ok, to just provide a click through to allow us folks not enrolled in a supported university to download it.

I'm sure I can dig around in the darker corners of the internet and find the code... So why not give it to me directly with a license to the effect, you can look at this all you want but you can't actually do anything with it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Since May 2015, over 600 universities around the world have licenced and > downloaded the MIPSfpga core, the Getting Started Guide, and the lab > exercises.

Seems pretty cool, but I'm just wondering, is there any reason the core must be licensed for them to profit on this? Or could the core be opened and just the coursework licensed?

<comment><USER12> They aren't doing this as a money making exercise. It's a way for them to get the MIPS architecture out in the open and have the next generation of engineers get familiar with it. I think the licensing is just a way for them to protect access to what is still monetisable IP while still making it available for teaching purposes.

<comment><USER13> > It's a way for them to get the MIPS architecture out in the open.

Most computer architecture courses of the last 25 years have already been based on MIPS (or any MIPS-like or -light adapted version for the course). That's because the MIPS ISA is simple, regular and elegant, and the original MIPS is a pipeline simple enough to be taught easily and nevertheless able to present most important problems and solutions that a CPU and a pipelined CPU may encounter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Closed cores and encumbered instruction sets are a thing of the past. CPUs and instruction sets are close to being commodity. One can already roll performant general systems with FPGAs. As FPGAs get more logic blocks that are amenable to building higher clock rate soft CPUs the general purpose CPU will be out.

If someone is going to have a full stack hardware class, why not use an un- encumbered soft CPU, specifically RISC-V, of which there are multiple high quality implementations in a variety of languages.

<comment><USER15> One day perhaps, but today my £300 FPGA runs a single 64 bit RISC-V core at under 50 MHz, and has an awful & proprietary toolchain.

<comment><USER16> If you are using your FPGA to run a RISC-V core then you are doing it wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Kung Fury gets an official DRM-free release - <AUTHOR> https://www.vhx.tv/kungfury/updates/kung-fury-short-film-available-for-download

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can't read it, here is the message:

Hi everyone!

We apologize for the "Streaming Only" option earlier on the Kung Fury: Official Short Film digital package. We cleared up some details on our end and you are now able to DOWNLOAD your digital movie purchase from VHX. We thank you for your patience and love for the project. It's been an insane few days since the premiere! You have all supported us in a major way and we are thrilled to share the movie with all of you!

-The Laser Unicorns and Kung Fury Team</comment>


Why we have so many problems with our teeth - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-have-so-many-problems-with-our-teeth/ <comment><USER2> The article posits the "soft foods" explanation for our poor teeth, but there is another, which starts with the research of Weston A Price: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price)

Price studied traditional cultures and observed that, when traditional diets were followed, people had perfect teeth. When an industrialized, Western diet was followed, tooth decay resulted. His book has the evidence, and is an easy read that you can browse in a few evenings. Edit: I found the whole book free online: [http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc....](http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html)

His research has been taken up by various doctors in the "evolutionary medicine" subfield, here are some introductory lectures:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4L0PzprcRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4L0PzprcRI)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ck0A5oKjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ck0A5oKjU)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCPwD59sDvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCPwD59sDvg)

Those are from the Ancestral Health Symposium, for which I have been a (volunteer) organizer for the last few years.

<comment><USER3> The article makes two points/claims.

\- Soft foods leads to small dental arches and thus crowding

\- carb-rich (i.e. Western diets) lead to decay

Basically, you're agreeing with the article.

<comment><USER4> It's not carb-rich diets, it's processed carbohydrates. Every culture on earth eats predominately carbohydrates, with a very small few exceptions like Inuit or some peoples in Africa. Asia has mostly rice, Africa various roots, South/North America it was corn, etc. Humans are (loosely) starch-ivores

<comment><USER2> Price observed that the great majority of traditional diets were high in animal fats. He theorized that vitamin K, which is mostly acquired from animal fat, was the key health-promoting factor. Humans are more likely facultative carnivores than grain-eaters.

<comment><USER5> Traditional to whom, to hunter gatherers? Early farmers living in tribes? Or people living under strong states that developed over past few thousands years?

<comment><USER6> I read the book, he travelled to multiple continents and generally this is pre- industrial diets, or prior to introduction of vegetable and seed oils, refined sugars, processed carbs, etc. Because he was able to do this research in the 20s, the industrial diet hadn't quite taken over. He also studied mummies in South America. They overwhelmingly had perfect teeth, prior to introduction of modern junk food.

<comment><USER7> I wonder how they survived berries. Because berries are not good for your teeth due to high (natural) sugar content.

<comment> blaser-waffle Modern fruits have wayyy more sugar than wild plants, due to years and years of selective breeding.

Even then you still have a lot of fiber and acid to slow down the release and absorption of sugars.

<comment><USER8> Also berries are fairly seasonal AFAIK

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a dream of one day being able to just replace _all_ of my teeth at once with one solid porcelain+titanium prosthetic without any interstitial cracks or crevices.

No more painful cavities. No more cracked teeth. No more need for floss or toothpicks, because there aren't any gaps for food to get stuck in. And it could be trivially sculpted to still have the same outward appearance of bullshit normal teeth.

<comment><USER10> My dream is that someone invents a fleet of nanobots that I can put in my mouth that will clean up all the plaque and repair any tooth and gum damage. Just pop them in at night, recall them all back in the morning.

<comment><USER11> Fun idea. Or going even further, have them also take care of your throat, stomach, etc. Just constantly roaming around, maintaining things.

<comment><USER12> There's an Outer Limits episode that's exactly as you describe. As with all it's episodes, it takes an unexpected twist that was not anticipated.

[https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_New_Breed](https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/The_New_Breed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This has been popping up in the news periodically for a few years now. However, as a parent of young children, I'm still trying to figure out the next step. That is, what to feed them that is nutritious, tasty, and also works the jaw. Raw carrots and overcooked meat are not tolerated for long.

Even if I don't serve them mush, al dente pasta and tender-cooked meats are quite soft. Home-made jerky and artisan-style bread (with a really tough crust) are the best I've come up with so far.

I did have an insatiable desire to chew on gum for a year or so while a teenager. In retrospect I wonder if it was innate. Didn't save my wisdom teeth though.

<comment><USER13> Chew toys.

Seriously - kids often chew on pens and other random household objects. Something less likely to make a mess/be gross or dangerous would seem preferable.

<comment><USER14> What's gum but a chew toy?

If you want it to also not rot teeth, don't put sugar in it.

If you want it to still taste like something, just put non-metabolizable sugars in it, like xylitol.

(There are already xylitol gums. Buy them for your kids today!)

<comment><USER15> Probably would have to be really tough gum. Early humans had more aligned teeth because they were chewing on connective tissue.

<comment><USER16> Have you chewed double bubble for any longer than 10s?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was fairly disappointed when Oragenics abandoned their modified streptococcus treatment, designed to replace the most harmful bacteria in the human mouth with a non-damaging one.

[https://www.oragenics.com/technology- pipeline/lbp/smart](https://www.oragenics.com/technology-pipeline/lbp/smart)

Last I heard, the few people who had tried the treatment are still completely free of decay and gum issues, but it's been a long time and there's no follow up, sadly.

<comment><USER18> I think there should be a serious look at whether dental industry is preventing these treatments from seeing the light, or at least quietly and deliberately ignoring them. Xylitol has almost definite benefits but most dentists have never heard of it.

<comment><USER14> > Xylitol has almost definite benefits but most dentists have never heard of > it.

I mean, it's in a lot of toothpastes and mouthwashes. Certainly it could be in more things, but dentists _do_ recommend those things it's in (without understanding exactly what makes one better than another, instead going on dentistry-association studies of the observed effects of various products. Presumably the scientists doing said studies know what xylitol is.)

It's hard to just put xylitol in regular foods, though, because people feed random foods to their pets all the time, and xylitol kills dogs. So it only ends up _marketed_ in the form of things you would never think to allow your pets to have in the first place. (Like mouthwash, or gum, or mints.)

You can certainly take your consumption into your own hands, though, and just buy a bag of xylitol to use in place of sucrose for cooking/baking/putting in your coffee/etc. (That is, if you don't have a dog.)

<comment><USER18> _A lot_ of toothpastes and mouthwashes? Any that you can find in local stores? I have to order mine from Amazon.

<comment><USER15> I'd buy a toothpaste with xylitol if I could, but I've never seen any in stores.

It doesn't have xylitol, but I do buy toothpaste with bioactive glass which helps remineralize teeth without fluoride.

I actually wrote an article about its history and why it disappeared from shelves in the US:

[https://medium.com/@ravenstine/the-curious-history-of- novami...](https://medium.com/@ravenstine/the-curious-history-of-novamin- toothpaste-620c6bef8881)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing this. I've been asking dentists about this stuff for years, not one had heard of it. When I last read about it, it was just referred to as 45s5, and I didn't realize it was available from a major manufacturer. Now I have a chance to get some.

Care to share your experience with using it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised that in nearly 200 comments, nobody has pointed out that hominid jaw evolution has been trending smaller for millions of years. Problems such as crowding and malformed wisdom teeth are a symptom of an in-progress adaptation - it is easier for evolution to change the size of the jaw than the number of teeth. Broadly, the issues with our mouths all fall under the umbrella of rapid (on an evolutionary timescale) changes to our diet and lifestyle, far predating the development of agriculture which is merely the latest brick in the wall. You may be able to mitigate some problems by adopting an earlier dietary style, but you may also cause other problems.

We are not perfectly adapted to any environment; we are a work in progress.

<comment><USER21> Oh, we are adapting I think, adapting to an environment where teeth don't to create much selection pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What about the tongue? After reading something strange in a book about meditation, where it said I should keep my tongue at the roof of my mouth, I got curious. Actually I was baffled because I couldn't do it. I literally could not keep a significant part of my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth without significant effort and actually strain. I did a survey between my friends and only one of them (my brother) actually kept the tongue in the described position naturally. Surprisingly (this is highly anecdotal, but still interesting) he's the only person that I know that doesn't have any teeth issues - only once he'd visited a dentist with a small cavity. This got me researching and there's actually a British orthodontist (Dr. Mike Mew) who actively pushes the idea that we should keep our tongue at the roof of our mouth and that it's actually our natural tongue position that _would_ develop if we kept our ancestral dietary habits, e.g. chewing hard foods like meat from since we were little.

<comment><USER23> This sounds like an interesting theory. I'm not really sure where my tongue could rest that wasn't on the roof of my mouth. The vacuum kind of naturally sticks it up there. I'd have to force it down otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is ample evidence supporting the theory that the standard western diet high in refined carbohydrates is the root cause or at least primary contributing factor of many of our society's most common health disorders.

I heartily encourage everyone to try radically different (but nutritionally complete) diets for a month or two, if for no other reason than to see how your body and brain responds. Go vegan, try keto/lchf, try carnivore, try soylent, try sated. See what, if anything, it gets you.

I like spending 80% or so of my life in ketosis (usually for 2-8 weeks at a time), due to the many small changes it causes in my body and mind.

One of the interesting side effects (for me) is a significant reduction in dental buildup, and after a few weeks of not eating sugar, much of the existing buildup (if I haven't had a professional cleaning recently) will spontaneously crumble and detach.

It surprised me when it happened.

<comment><USER25> Not to mention sugar. Societies that are not as heavily ....invested as western diets are in sugar seem to have much better teeth.

<comment><USER26> I've recently realized how Indians in general have such perfect teeth. Some of my Indian colleagues even say they've never been to a dentist in their life. It seems like anecdotal evidence supporting how diets are that important to teeth health.

<comment><USER27> Indians love sweets, most Indian sweets are loaded with sugar. Some sweets are literally served with sugar syrup which is just sugar and water.

Since we are talking about anecdotes, most of my Indian friends have had dental issues didn't matter if they were veg or non vegetarians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Hacker News community spends a _lot_ of time discussing the surprising importance of our gut biome -- this article does an amazing job bringing that biome all the way to the start of the line. Unsurprisingly, the biome in our mouths has enormous importance as well.

<comment><USER29> For anyone interested in microbiomes of the human body, gut or otherwise, 'Bacteriology of Humans - An Ecological Perspective' is a great book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Part of it is genetics too - I've been cursed with deeply-pitted chewing surfaces that are prone to cavities. A sibling with the same diet was not, and has never needed a filling.

One of my biggest regrets in life is getting amalgam fillings as a kid. Not that I would have known any better, or been able to protest it (they were the cheap and affordable option, after all). But knowing that a mercury compound is in my mouth 24/7 is not comforting.

I am reassured by studies indicating there are no toxic effects[0], but it's still one of those backburner things that one thinks about every once in a while. This fear alone has done more to motivate me to floss and brush properly than anything else. Luckily, I haven't needed a filling in almost a decade - but if I do, it will not be an amalgam one.

[0]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3388771/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3388771/)

<comment><USER31> There's also mercury in vaccines. But thanks to the miracle of chemistry, you're safe. Just like the chlorine in salt doesn't kill you.

<comment><USER32> You're using a bad argument. Dental amalgam literally contains elemental mercury: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgam_(dentistry)#Compositio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgam_\(dentistry\)#Composition) That alone is cause for concern, although it does not mean it's necessarily dangerous: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Recently I was wondering why we have so many mouth problems. Teeth are often misaligned, wisdom teeth need to be removed, TMJ (clicking / popping jaw) is extremely common. After researching, I came to the same conclusion that this article mentions at the end. Essentially we need to eat harder foods while developing in order to increase jaw size and strength.

The article touches on sleep apnoea as well. Apparently this can become a huge problem for developing children if their pallet is under-formed.

I think this is a big public health issue, and I think it makes sense to start some kind of large scale public health campaign to inform the public and avoid all of these dental issues.

There's a book about this, the introduction is online here [https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=29626&i=Introduction.htm...](https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=29626&i=Introduction.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting. So, it seems to be beneficial to have children chew on hard things when small to develop a larger jaw so that their teeth don't crowd. I guess chewing on ice would be beneficial in this sense. As long as they're chewing on it with teeth that will fall out as to not worry about damaging them...

I wonder what the aesthetic differences would be though. In a western beauty sense, I can imagine having a larger jaw being somewhat preferential for men but for women - isn't it not? Would it be enough to notice?

Wish I had known this growing up. Ironically, I felt like I did eat some hard foods but I wonder how much you have to eat in order for it to have a real effect.

<comment><USER35> It's not about chewing on something hard, but about pulling on something strong (away from your face). E.g. ripping chunks off a piece of meat. This will have the desired effect on their jaw, making them both healthier and more attractive.

<comment><USER34> > and more attractive.

I guess that'll vary on your definition of what's more attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reading this made me stand back up from bed and go floss.

<comment><USER25> Interesting that every so often there will be a news report about the ineffectiveness of flossing. i.e. from 2016: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/health/flossing-teeth- cav...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/health/flossing-teeth- cavities.html)

<comment><USER9> Flossing doesn't need to be "effective" to be worthwhile. All you have to do is not floss for a long time and then floss and sniff the floss.

<comment><USER36> This is actually what got me into flossing daily. I also think dentists doing this to patients, that is flossing their teeth and then having them sniff the floss, would be a lot more effective than simply telling people they should floss.

<comment><USER9> > _dentists doing this to patients_

I'm dying. "SNIFF IT! SNIIFFFFFFF IIIIIIITTTTTT!" TBH, that sounds like assault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there any actual evidence, though, that soft foods have led to smaller jaws (and therefore crowded teeth)?

When you look at traditional cooking all around the world, I just don't see any evidence that diets today are overwhelmingly "softer".

When you think of traditional diets, you think of boiled vegetables, milled grains made into porridge or bread, grilled fish and meat, and so on. I don't see any evidence that traditional diets were harder to chew in any way. People have been cooking and boiling foods to make them soft for many thousands of years.

And plenty of people today are raised on crusty chewy bread, chewy steak sandwiches, salads with chewy greens (kale), and so on. Not everybody, sure -- but those people (like me) still need to get braces terribly often.

So while there certainly appears to be evidence that teeth crowding has gotten worse, it's not clear that the hypothesis that small jaws are caused by soft food has been proven at all, or is even plausible.

</comment><comment><USER38> Human Teeth are terrible. The fact that we cannot regrow enamel, considering our life-span is a ridiculous, evolutionary design mistake. So wish we were Polyphyodont. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphyodont](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphyodont)

<comment><USER39> Why is it an evolutionary design mistake? It's perfect from an evolutionary standpoint. They get you through sexual maturity, reproduction and plenty of time to see after your offspring. What happens afterwards is bonus time on the planet, it's free-for-all everything goes wrt to your body. Evolution didn't 'design' us to last that long..

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I will recommend the book "The Story of the Human Body" by Daniel E. Lieberman. In his section "Unwise Wisdom Teeth", he writes:

"Just as your limbs and spine will not grow strong enough if you don't sufficiently stress your bones by walking, running, and doing other activities, your jaws won't grow large enough for your teeth and your teeth won't fit properly if you don't stress your face sufficiently from chewing food."

A fascinating book. One observation: modern human hunter-gatherer mothers typically wean their children at age three, while a mother who is a subsistence farmer can wean her children between one and two years. Thus, humanity underwent a population explosion once we started farming instead of hunting and gathering.

</comment><comment><USER41> Tired, so I'll skip my own interpretation - but I've become convinced that hydroxyapatite is overlooked. I subscribe to the importance of vitamin K too, although my experience with hydroxyapatite has been tangibly beneficial. I find it odd that it's as uncommon as it is, eg I've never seen it on a store shelf. Again, I'm tired, so I'm dropping an unvetted lazily found link on the topic below:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252862/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4252862/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Somewhat related was something on NPR the other day[1]. Diet has affected mouth morphology such that about 90% of people are affected by it and it's expressed in crooked teeth, poor sleep and other things.

Looks like diets over the last 400 years have had dramatic impact on human health mouth shape.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/05/27/8629631...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2020/05/27/862963172/how-the-lost-art-of-breathing-can-impact-sleep-and- resilience)

</comment><comment><USER43> Everyone, please be aware that if you brush too hard/wrong you can wear down your gums which will be very troublesome from middle age up! Get a softer toothbrush if you are sensitive!

</comment><comment><USER44> A couple of other reading:

* [https://elemental.medium.com/why-is-the-internet-obsessed-wi...](https://elemental.medium.com/why-is-the-internet-obsessed-with-this-cult-toothpaste-963dda060501)

* [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot/you-probably-dont-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot/you-probably-dont-need-dental-x-rays-every-year.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> I read somewhere that people in recent history have begun to mouth breath heavily compared to folks living before the industrial revolution.

A drier mouth has to impact the biome in your mouth I would presume, for better or worse.

Mouth breathing could have a lot of other disadvantages, such as sleep apnea, as mentioned in the article.

Mouth breathing obviously doesn't cause teeth crowding but I'm wondering how significant factor it is in overall dental health.

<comment><USER46> I think there's a link to tooth decay. If you're mouth breathing your teeth aren't being coated in saliva, so they can't be remineralized.

I read that distance runners can develop dental problems because of mouth dryness combined with sugary energy gels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> A)Teeth are sorta like regular ol' bones 'cept they're on the outside of your body and their purpose is to grind things. B) You don't really need all of them to survive + evolution. C) Humans live a really long time now and we just expect our mashy-grinders to keep up? D) Enamel doesn't like sugar which is in everything.

Bam. Scientific American here I come.

</comment><comment><USER48> The article gives us yet another set of reasons for avoiding the modern processed diet and sticking with unprocessed foods.

</comment><comment><USER49> I can't help thinking that this problem is being looked at backwards. Maybe in primitive societies good teeth were far more important to survival than they are today. If that were true, then people/children with bad teeth would not survive as well, and the record would show that those who did thrive had good teeth.

<comment><USER50> I think that hypothesis can work for many other things (eg I can imagine high myopia to be an issue for hunter-gatherers), but not teeth or bones: what we know of primitive societies and their eating habits is from looking at their bone remains and tools. Hopefully scientists having access to actual findings are not overlooking child skeletons with bad teeth when coming up with conclusions that our primitive ancestors had better teeth.

<comment><USER49> It is my understanding that only about 6000 ancient human skeletons have been found. [https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human- fossils](https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils) Many of these are incomplete. So the samples of children with bad teeth could easily not exist or be very limited. The same could be said for children with good teeth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> All that talk of the history of orthodontics and surgery and medical approaches were left out... too cheap, I guess:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800179/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5800179/)

</comment><comment><USER52> I was born without wisdom teeth.

According to my dentist its becoming more common and considered and a part of the evolutionary process.

</comment><comment><USER53> Fascinating - but was I the only one who had to go brush their teeth half way through reading?

</comment><comment><USER54> We have bionators and other tools to correct jaws.. not sure why those wouldn't work.

</comment><comment><USER55> Am I the only person around without any cavities or painful dentist memories?

<comment><USER56> Never had a cavity in my life, for some reason, and it's not like I'm OCD about my teeth. I just brush multiple times a day, floss less often than that

<comment><USER55> I brush twice a day and never floss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Sugar!

</comment><comment><USER25> Some anecdotal evidence: In my volunteer work with the homeless, and prisoners, dental care is painfully, ridiculously absent. As much as I am opposed to the idea of universal health care, I think we can all 100% get behind universal dental care.

<comment><USER58> Can you please explain how you're opposed to universal health care but 100% behind universal dental care? These seem at odds.

<comment><USER59> Not GP but dental care is a lot cheaper than medical

<comment><USER60> Maybe on average, but dental care can suck when you need a lot done. Root canals, crowns, and implants are expensive. And dentists often expect payment in full up-front before doing any work.

<comment><USER25> But it's a definitive payment. Medical bills from hospitals and doctors offices are often padded, or somehow magically they grow in cost. Dental bills don't. It's generally a one-time thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>