Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2013/05/stones-of-jordan/ <comment><USER3> I remember a similar bug in the original Asherons Call (amazingly, still running with regular content updates!). Three or four years in, they added a new, very expensive object to the game (a "Pyreal Scarab" for anyone who cares). It cost a lot, so the idea was that people wouldn't be (at that point in the economy) buying many.

Now, in Asheron's Call, the world is _huge_. There are hundreds, if not thousands of vendors. And three of these vendors were set to sell their goods in stacks of up to 1000. Unfortunately, Cost of Pyreal Scrab * 1000 > 2^31, which wrapped. I can't remember if you either just got the goods for free (which you then sold back for huge profit), or if you actually got paid to take these things. Either way, overnight, the economy was destroyed. The entire game state had to be reset from backups; a dreaded _rollback_. Worse, the developer took a few days to do this.

Trust me, out of all the customers whose data you _don't_ want to muss with, it's hardcore MMORPG players. Even though I was just a player, I can still remember the outrage all these years later. It taught me to always use appropriate types for objects with "value", and I've never accidentally used signed or floating point storage for currency again.

<comment><USER4> Haha - I was the one who was responsible for adding the Pyreal Scarab. I remember freaking out that night when I was playing and went to Teth's vendor and saw what was happening. I called up the producer at the time at 2am and said there was a "problem".

"Oops." --Devilmouse

<comment><USER5> Awesome man! Asheron's call was an inspirational game for me growing up, nice to see one of the original devs :) (Sorry for being totally off-topic!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what happens when we let machine constraints trump semantics.

When you say int, you usually want an actual integer, not an integer with an arbitrary limit. In this day and age, having that limit there is simply premature optimization.

I think having a nice bignum type--one that looks and feels just like a normal numeric type--is very important. It should also probably be the _default_ ; you should only switch to a machine type if you have a good reason. With gmp, big integers perform well enough to be used widely.

<comment><USER7> > In this day and age, having that limit there is simply premature > optimization.

You say this with certainty. Do you know of studies of real-world programs where machine-sized integers were replaced whole-sale with bignums?

<comment><USER8> All Ruby code does this. Mathematics can still be performant because of tagged pointers. If the MSB is set, the value is a Ruby object. If it's not set, the value should be considered a native data type.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps I should have been more specific. I know that there are languages that have this property. My question is if there are studies on the performance impact. Preferably in a language that is suitable for high-performance applications (like games).

<comment><USER9> The python example is good here, because originally the Python language had separate types for unbounded-integer and machine-sized-int. This happened as part of the move from Python 2.x to Python 3.x, right along with changing strings from byte-arrays to unicode.[1]

There has been lots of fuss and even pushback about the change to use unicode instead of byte arrays, but I have never heard anyone complain about semantics OR performance of the switch to a single integer type.

[1] - <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0237/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just another reminder that it's never worth bypassing the normal deployment process. Every year or two I learn a similar lesson myself: it's so tempting, the fix is so small, it couldn't possibly break anything (heck, I once had a data-gathering script that made a bunch of read-only calls to our system's API cause a live issue). Just say no.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, I am not sure if anyone would try posting 6 billion gold onto a PTR equivalent of the RMAH or whether the RMAH is even available on the PTR, which might explain why it wasn't tested.

<comment><USER12> If you set the limit to 10 billion of something, you need to test that 10 billion actually works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kingdom of Loathing had an integer overflow bug way back in 2004. It let players set their currency (in this case: meat) to the max value of a 64-bit integer. The game spent the next several months setting up meatsinks in an attempt to reduce the amount of meat in circulation.

<http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Black_Sunday>

<http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Bugmeat>

<http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Meatsink>

<comment><USER14> It's nice that they resolved that mostly in-universe. They didn't go and ban everyone, but instead changed the gameplay to compensate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds be of a bug waaaay back. In the original Elite, you could obtained a missile lock on a space station, then dock and sell all your missiles, launch, and finally fire a missile (you still had the missile lock). Suddenly you have 255 missiles! 0-1 = 255 in unsigned 8 bit integer math!

You could then sell all your new shiny missiles for loads of money. Made a hard game a bit easier.

<comment><USER16> Those games (Frontier Elite and First Encounters included) had loaaads of bugs like that.

Another one in FE had you put in passenger holds, fill them with passengers, then sell the holds -- this would obviously not work as you had to evict the passengers first, however the game logic credited you with the cash anyway because the check came _after_ the money had changed hands.

<comment><USER17> The amount of cash you had was stored in savegame files as 4 bytes. A few changes with a binary editor and suddenly you had millions of cash ;-)

<comment><USER16> Yeah but that's true of most things that're not obfuscated. I used to use the Amiga Action Replay on my Amiga to alter memory on the fly in games like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hard to understand why people spend so much time on a short game like Diablo III. Even before I finished it on inferno the game didn't make much sense, I just finished for the sake of it, which I regret.

Most Super Mario games requires way more abilities than that and less time.

Don't waste your limited time on earth playing consumption-driven games. I've been trying Eve online for a few days, It does not looks promising, it seems that Eve also is also driven by item accumulation and not actual playing.

<comment><USER19> It's basically a very pretty slot machine. I played quite a bit of D2 and D3. The thrill comes from grinding for hours (and hours and hours) and finding that one item that earns you hundreds of dollars. (Yes real dollars) You can thank the the Real-Money Auction House for both destroying the game and being the one thing that keeps so many people coming back for more.

<comment><USER20> I loved Diablo 2 and probably spent a good portion of my high school hours playing it. I was very excited for Diablo 3 and tried to get into it but just couldn't.

I felt that they just took a ton of ideas from WoW and implanted them into Diablo. Sure it may have made them more money but it made it a lot less fun.

<comment><USER21> If you liked Diablo 2, Torchlight 2 was made by the same people, and is the spiritual successor to Diablo 2.

<comment><USER22> Marvel Heroes is made by David Brevik - He had the original idea for diablo 1 and played a bigger role in diablo 2 than the guys that made torch light 2. Lets no mention his failed project with bill roper on hellgate london though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > ... where players volunteered to tested the patch to ensure that there were > game-breaking exploits ...

Is this an error? :) Although I assume the players would very well enjoy game- breaking exploits, as long as they are to their advantage.

</comment><comment><USER24> The fact that the diablo economy has reached the point where users are running around with 6 billion gold shows its been broken for much longer.

<comment><USER25> Why? It's just a matter of scale. Until very recently, Romania's currency was such that most middle-class families had 8-10 digits in their bank account at any given moment, and the economy is relatively healthy.

Good items sell for hundreds of millions. The number of zeroes doesn't matter, as long as the balance between items and monetary value is stable.

<comment><USER26> "The number of zeroes doesn't matter, as long as the balance between items and monetary value is stable."

And you're not just starting the game. The way that D3 drops work, the first few times you're visiting the auction house, it's to buy, not sell (unless you get very lucky).

The game was also balanced around the auction house - meaning fewer high quality items drop, with the belief being that you're selling those few high quality items & kitting yourself out from the auction house.

When I first played, the difference between playing with just the drops I got versus kitting myself out from the auction house were vast. Some people might enjoy the challenge of just playing with dropped gear, but just as many do not.

<comment><USER27> " The game was also balanced around the auction house - meaning fewer high quality items drop, with the belief being that you're selling those few high quality items & kitting yourself out from the auction house."

AFAIK, Blizzard collects interest on each real money transaction, so if they're optimizing for maximization of that interest (I'm assuming they do) they aren't minimizing occurrence of the rarest of the items. They should behave like diamond cartel...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel sorry for the players who were amused by this and will now likely get banned. I don't know when video games started to be like a bad elementary school where you get punished for experimenting or finding a loophole, but it seems like it's punishing one of the fundamental joys of games. Or at least one of the joys I remember being particularly rewarding as a child.

<comment><USER29> I agree to some degree but MMO games in general are serious business and a special breed, especially when real currency is involved. It was most definitely against the ToS and I am sure that most of the players who participated in the exploit knew that. Also there were people who were using this bug to make real life money through the real money auction house, those people in particular can't be surprised that they were banned.

<comment><USER28> I don't know... wasn't there an article on here a few days ago celebrating how EVE online doesn't ban people for doing the exact same kinds of things?

<comment><USER30> I think the difference is that this completely broke the economy, while the exploit in EVE was much more fixable. All they had to do in EVE was take away some people's loot and they were good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bitcoin has also suffered from an overflow bug, requiring a fork to fix it: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures#CVE-2010-5139)

</comment><comment><USER32> It is odd that they're using 32-bit numbers when you'd be hard pressed to find a 32-bit only CPU and machines with over 4GB of memory are the standard.

Good luck overflowing a 64-bit unsigned.

<comment><USER33> I don't find it that odd. 32-bit applications are still very common, if not the standard. Most processes don't need more than 4GB.

More importantly, blindly increasing all of your 32-bit integers to 64-bit is going to double your memory usage, and ultimately just mask the real issue (i.e. improper bounds checking).

<comment><USER34> The actual money fields are probably small compared to the infrastructure used to track them. It's not going to double the amount of memory usage. I'd be surprised if memory use, network traffic and database I/O went up by more than a percent or two.

<comment><USER33> I agree for this one integer, they obviously should have been using 64-bit. I just take issue with the implication that Blizzard is somehow at fault or unusual for (presumably) not running a 64-bit stack.

They made a mistake for sure, but 32-bit vs. 64-bit architectures should not be on trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remember World of Warcraft had a similar issue. The total amount of copper and in turn gold a player could have was the positive half of a signed 32-bit integer.

<comment><AUTHOR> That didn't cause an exploit though. It just meant that the user couldn't get more than that amount of gold.

Although back in those days, if you had that much gold, you were controlling the economy by yourself anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> sad mirror: <http://pastebin.com/YYPM4uQK>

</comment><comment><USER37> The scary thing is that integer overflows are considered rare so unlike things like null-pointer dereference no one really checks for them (heck, it seems impractical checking for it).

In this case, how should they defend against an overflow? Impose an arbitrary limit on gold?

<comment><USER38> Use 64 bit integers everywhere.

<comment><USER39> Why not 128 bit integers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I told this in their forums many times: you cannot have both real world money and one digital currency at the same time. Farming gold is hillarious. You need to implement instead something like bitcoin and it's the only way to stop the inflation.

</comment><comment><USER41> Something like this used to work in Sim Farm too: buy and sell a piece of land and watch taxes grow until they flow over and you get a bunch of money instead of paying. If only this worked in real life :-)

</comment><comment><USER42> Is this sort of hyperinflation intentional? Or a sign of economic ignorance? I don't get it. Gold is as common as dirt, and players are pumping huge amounts of it into the economy on a constant basis.

</comment><comment><USER43> 420,081,335,014 is 420 billion not 420 trillion.

<comment><USER44> English is handy enough to have two "scales", where these words have different meanings.

In the short scale, you'd be right, but the author probably uses the long scale.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_scale#Comparison>.

It's one of those things that makes English ... interesting to learn as a foreign language. :)

 _EDIT_ : Actually no, I mis-read the table on the Wikipedia page. The author was simply mistaken, and has corrected that. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

<comment><USER45> Also, basically no-one uses the long scale anymore. Which is a shame. -illiard is a fantastic suffix.

<comment><USER46> Well, if no-one is pretty much all the non-english-speaking world, then yes.

<comment><USER47> The Chinese don't use the long scale either, at least not in this form - <USER2> count in magnitudes of 10,000.

<comment><USER46> I wasn't aware of that. To be sincere, I also made the mistake of looking too close home. I was mostly talking about the non-English-speaking 'western hemisphere'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Coming soon to the real world with Ben's continued money printing. Maybe we can rollback the bank accounts to pre-1999!

</comment><comment><USER49> is the link down? Can't access content - keeps loading here..

</comment><comment><USER34> I hear the D3 Auction House was written in Oracle.

This explains /everything/.

</comment><comment><USER50> Heh, this reminds me of when I played Diablo 2. I duped so many sojs/items that I had multiple accounts just filled to the brim. I rarely play Blizzard games nowadays, but as long as there are games with any type of currency that can be sold, it will always be exploited.</comment>


What's Causing SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Delays - <AUTHOR> https://www.teslarati.com/whats-causing-spacex-falcon-heavy-delays/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr: Delay happened after cryogenic fuel load and before ignition, suggesting it might be an issue with dynamic loads caused by thermal contraction in the interface between the rocket and the pad. But this is very speculative; SpaceX themselves haven't said anything, some issues are expected when you do a wet dress rehearsal for a new rocket type that's never had one, and there are a bajillion other possibilities.

<comment><USER3> It has also been unusually cold in Florida recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they blow it, they'll come close to the Soviet N1 explosion.

Either way, spectators win!</comment>


The Greatest Python Web Framework - <AUTHOR> http://web2py.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got a job for web2py! No more Django!

Why do I love web2py?

* batteries included

* don't have to do all those stupid imports

* documentations

* better admin

* ORM sucks. DAL is better.

* Works anywhere. Windows, Google App Engen, everywhere!

* Compeltely secure from any attack (see [http://web2py.com/init/default/what](http://web2py.com/init/default/what))

I feel so liberated from the confines of Django and the fanboyism of Flask.</comment>


UX ≠ UI - <AUTHOR> http://kentnguyen.com/ios/ux-is-not-ui/

<comment><USER2> UI is a subset of UX.

Craigslist has a shitty UX, but it's free. The search is terrible, it's spammy, it's not semantic in any way, and post administration is weak.

But it's free. You could argue that being free is part of the UX, but I think that's a specious argument.</comment>


Front-End Developer Handbook 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://frontendmasters.gitbooks.io/front-end-developer-handbook-2018/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was posted a few times but didn't get traction. However, I found interesting views on several trending topics, so took a risk of reposting.

A quick overview is here: [https://frontendmasters.gitbooks.io/front-end- developer-hand...](https://frontendmasters.gitbooks.io/front-end-developer- handbook-2018/2018.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I like it but aren't we almost done with the target year? How have these predictions held up.</comment>


The end of autonomous cars as we know it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@eran_39947/the-end-of-autonomous-cars-as-we-know-it-27ad9ffeb749 <comment><USER2> Autonomous cars are not perfect, but they do't have to be, they need to be better than humans. This is a much lower bar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does Medium ban proofreading before posting now?</comment>


Errors in Chromium - <AUTHOR> http://cppfiles.com/chromium.txt <comment><AUTHOR> This are the links to the articles by Andrey Karpov in which he describes the errors he found in Chromium project and the libraries used by the Chromium project, using his static code analysis tool PVS-Studio:

memset: [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0553/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0553/)

break: [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0554/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0554/)

memory leaks: [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0555/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0555/)

typos: [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0556/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0556/)

untrusted data: [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0557/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0557/)

Here is his post about all of this on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/Code_Analysis/status/958629791988633600](https://twitter.com/Code_Analysis/status/958629791988633600)</comment>


Anatomy of blekko's press launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.skrenta.com/2010/11/anatomy_of_blekkos_press_launc.html

<comment><USER2> _The Mashable piece alone received more than 1,400 retweets._

How many of those 1400 retweets are just bots automatically retweeting anything coming from Mashable? The dark secret of twitter marketing is that the number of tweets can be so misleading because of the bot activity. You'll also see a ton of twitter bots when you get coverage on RWW, and I'm sure others.

And yes, I've actually watched live coverage of articles I'm interested in (e.g. covering my sites) spread and checked out most tweets that came up. It's quite easy for a human to spot a bot vs real user tweeting once you look at their twitter stream. Most are bots.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> btw, when the WSJ broke our embargo, I was on my way into the office. We were planning to get there around 3-4pm for the 9pm PT launch. Some folks were already there and turned the site live since the first press had gone up.

But techcrunch has a policy of not posting their story if an embargo is broken, so we didn't get the TC story that we had briefed them on.

<comment><USER3> TechCrunch goes one step further. Often Arrington will get the PR firm handling the press release to allow them to publish their story a solid 10 minutes before anyone else. If the embargo is set for 9pm PST, TechCrunch often shoots for 8:50 and most of the time they are allowed. As a result, they break the story and get a ton of inbound traffic.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why anyone would shamelessly downvote me. I wasn't lying. This sort of thing happens every night.

Just look at Brightcove 5's launch that happened a few hours ago (9pm PST). TC posted their story at 8:50pm, everyone else followed at 9pm PST.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that he specifically calls out their PR firm as being good. Seems that most of the advice I've seen lately goes in the other direction, eschewing a PR firm entirely in favor of more guerrilla-style marketing.

I think in the end, like most other things, it depends on the type of company you're trying to build. In Blekko's case they're trying to build a search engine, so they want to get as much mainstream press as possible. Someone like GitHub, for example, with a much more technical and focused user base, did just fine by going to conferences and buying developers free drinks.

<comment><USER5> As a journalist who agreed to Blekko's embargo, I'll give you my take. Very few companies can get journalists to agree to an embargo. Most startups don't have the luxury. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Zynga, Foursquare can do it. It's a question of importance and dilution. When you agree to an embargo, you don't know how many other sites you are competing against and you judge whether it's important enough to cover even if you don't get much interest in your version of the story.

Blekko, as a well-funded entrant with great tech cred trying to bust into a very interesting and nearly monopolized field, clearly counted.

If you are smaller and don't have that buzz, you don't have that luxury. Depending on your size and market, you don't need a PR firm (a good PR advisor is worthwhile). For many companies, it's better to figure out the place and writer you really want to cover you and offer an exclusive. You can then get follow-on press from other places by offering them untold angles -- especially ones that that writer or place would be interested in.

As a journalist, I hate embargoes, even as I understand why and how they are useful.

But the best advice I can give is not to think of blogs/publications as simply places to exploit. Writers can smell that from far off. Learn to cultivate relationships. Be a source. Critique our stories. Suggest trend stories and cool stuff other people are working on. Ask to talk off the record when you meet us at events and conferences. Learn to speak openly and honestly on the record.

In turn, you'll likely find writers you like. Writers will tell you things off the record (things we can't print) and are people who may write about you not just in this venture, but in your next. Writers are, like you, part of the tech ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you actually have a specific written agreement with the WSJ not to publish until Monday?

Because they (admirably, IMHO) have a policy of disregarding these ridiculous one-sided embargo agreements. If you want them to hold back on a story, you have to ask them FIRST. You can't just spam them a press release that says pretty please don't publish this yet on the top.

Typically the only exception is if you're giving them an exclusive (and, again, you need to get that in writing _before_ you send them your top secret press release)

</comment><comment><USER7> Really excellent article. A launch is way more than just pushing a site from dev to production.

</comment><comment><USER8> why do search engine launches get such enormous press attention?

<comment><USER5> 1\. Search is hard and fascinating. 2\. There's built-in conflict. Google is a huge near-monopoly. Journalists and their readers love conflict. It's the heart of any good story. 3\. Most of the time, building a general purpose search engine requires a really substantial amount of capital and technical expertise. That means there's big risk involved. This ups the drama quotient. See #2 (DDG being a very big outlier here).

<comment><USER9> Don't forget the institutional imperative: Google is a competitive threat to people who buy ink by the barrel. Anything that takes them down a peg is newsworthy. See also Facebook, who do not have the "we're do-gooders, leave us alone" PR shield that Google assiduously cultivates.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I think that's wrong. A very small number of media owners think that. And even they did, they'd have to think that search in general, not just Google is the threat.

Anyone writing about tech and especially those writing digitally knows that search drives tons of traffic. And no tech reporter I know would ever take direction on coverage from the business side of their publication.

Blekko got written about because they are a great story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who was their PR agency and what is the ballpark fee to coordinate a launch like this?

<comment><USER5> Sutherland Gold, a small boutique agency that represents, among others, TheFind.com. No idea on their price.

<comment><USER11> I used to work at SutherlandGold and would be happy to make an intro for any companies that are interested in talking with them. Email in profile.

(In case anyone is curious, I have absolutely 0 financial stake in the business so I will not make a dollar wether you hire them or not, just offering to help if anyone is interested)

<comment><USER12> Can you give a ballpark range on prices?

<comment><USER11> Like anything, it depends. I'd rather not say too much about SG's pricing publicly (since I don't work there and don't speak for them) but it's similar to other agencies in the same market. Ballpark, that means 10k-30k depending on your company's reputation, the scope of work, which people from the agency are on your team and compensation structure.

You don't really pay a whole lot more for higher quality agencies (I could go into theories on why but will save that for another post). Companies almost never hire bad agencies because they can't afford good ones. Far more often it's because they don't know how to find (or identify) the good ones or because the good ones don't want to work with them (it's a big risk to an agency's reputation to take on a bad client).

If anyone wants to email me I'd be happy to go into more detail privately. If you have any general PR questions that aren't agency-specific (hiring agencies, hiring consultants, how PR can be successful, etc), I'd be happy to answer those publicly.

Edit: In case anyone is curious, other YC companies SG has worked with are Xobni (I worked on this account), Scribd (I worked on this account too), Loopt, Zumodrive and maybe others I'm forgetting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What questions you ask interviewing mid-senior front-end devs? - <AUTHOR>

Do you expect your people to know all/most of the hot recent frameworks & tools or you prefer them to have the deeper knowledge of the underlying principles? How do you distinguish good and experienced developers from the mediocre ones? <comment><USER2> I usually start with asking them to describe the technologies in their ideal stack. That gives a good platform to talk about frameworks, technologies, and challenge them with the bits and bogs.

I'm looking for:

* Technical skills (on a rather broad level): how much experience do they seem to have? Are they interested in their field beyond work?

* How clear is their communication? Can they argue well?

* How well their preferences align with ours in terms of technology.

<comment><USER3> What is the value in their technological preferences aligning with yours? I ask because that simply encourages me to tell you what you want to hear in the interview.

<comment><USER2> It helps to determine how future-proof your hire might be. If a candidate wants to learn, say, Android development, they will be very unhappy writing PHP tests in a year's time.

(But then, it's nothing new. Rule of the thumb is always, hire for attitude and train for skills - and not the other way around.)

Oh, and lying happens all the time. The only way around it is getting better with inter-personal skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on the company.

Wherever I've worked, they all expected deeper knowledge. How else would you distinguish good vs mediocre ones? It takes time to get good at anything and getting good means deep knowledge of at least one thing, plus the requisite breadth. Mediocrity misses the first part.</comment>


The State of Owner-Controlled Computing as Talos Winds Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/the-state-of-owner-controlled-computing-as-talos-winds-down <comment><USER2> Why wasn't Talos on the front page? Were you too busy seeing what's new in the world of locked-down gadgets, HN?</comment>


Top areas with highest tech startup density - <AUTHOR> http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/young-high-tech-firms-outpace-private-sector-job-creation.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Fort Collins right now attending Colorado State in my last year and went to high school in Loveland and must say I am very surprised at this.

With that being said, over the last 5 years this area has seen a lot of growth, with a lot of college grads staying in the area professionally.

In Loveland, a start-up called MadWire [0] sprouted up while I was attending Loveland High and is thriving now. They are even looking for a $500,000 incentive from the city to expand their 5+ story building over-looking Loveland Lake, and are likely going to get it to bring in new jobs to the city.

My girlfriend also recently got a front-desk job at Propel Labs [1], a new bio-tech start up located in downtown Fort Collins that has a great company culture.

This makes me really excited to graduate as I hope to get on with a start up in the area. Colorado is a great place to live and I have no intention of leaving.

[0] [http://www.madwirewebdesign.com/loveland-web- design/](http://www.madwirewebdesign.com/loveland-web-design/)

[1] [http://propel-labs.com/](http://propel-labs.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for learning a new framework/platform for a .net developer - <AUTHOR>

I'm a programmer with fair amount of familiarity in ASP.NET, WinForms and WPF development in C#. I'm looking forward to learn a new language/web framework after reading lots of posts here in HN where users tell their experience in developing weekend apps in platforms i'm not familiar with.
So suggest a new language/web framework for me.
Requirements : 1) Should be hostable on a linux server (main reason why i want to learn a new framework). 2) Languages/platforms similar to C# and .NET will be appreciated. (need not be very similar. just not a radical difference in how i code) <comment><USER2> If you are a .net person on Linux, you should probably look at Mono(<http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page>) I found this discussion on StackOverflow about Mono-based frameworks:[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/587159/has-anyone-used- an...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/587159/has-anyone-used-any-net-code- generation-frameworks-in-mono-subsonic-nettiers) On the other hand if you are open to learning new languages like python or ruby you could check out Django or Ruby on Rails

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered Mono. But I want to learn a new language. Thanks for the Django suggestion. Tried RoR once and felt that it didn't fit my style.

<comment><USER2> Sure. I found The Django book (<http://www.djangobook.com/>) a good book to start with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What kind of stuff do you want to build - one of the few things going for the .net stack _(excuse me, I'm not exactly a fan)_ is that it's widely implementable in server apps, web apps and even mobile apps.

Even in web apps, it would be useful to know the kind of project(s) you want to work on. Java might be ultimately your best bet if you want to continue doing big enterprise grade stuff where as Rails might be ideal to learn if you want to move into fast-iterative startups (Even if you don't like the style).

<comment><AUTHOR> I really don't want to restrict myself to enterprise grade apps. Java is too enterprisey I would say just like .NET. It's just my opinion. Meanwhile, frameworks like Rails are what I'm interested in. Fun and for personal projects. Doesn't matter whether it fetches me a job or not. After searching through HN, Django and Rails are what looks to be dominant recommended frameworks here.</comment></comment>


Full stack and generalist devs: Get paid to earn a MSC or MSE from CMU - <AUTHOR>

This is a legitimate work-study program...emphasis on the work. Degree is considered impugned income, you only pay taxes. Working on applications of real-time scaleable analytics. Contact thread owner for details. <comment><USER2> Hi can you tell us more ?</comment>


Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF) on Routers - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_path_forwarding#Unicast_RPF_(uRPF) <comment><AUTHOR> Submitting this because I only recently discovered it was a thing.</comment>


The endowment effect: It's mine, I tell you - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11579107&fsrc=RSS

<comment><USER2> _The endowment effect was controversial for years. The idea that a squishy, irrational bit of human behaviour could affect the cold, clean and rational world of markets was a challenge to neoclassical economists. Their assumption had always been that individuals act to maximise their welfare (the defining characteristic of economic man, or Homo economicus)._

I see this kind of thing over and over again, but I don't believe it.

What I don't believe is that anyone really ever thought that Homo Economicus was _really_ the way that humans behave, rather than a massive simplification of the spherical-cow variety aimed at making economics tractable.

To a first approximation, people will act to maximise their own benefit. To a second approximation, they're blithering idiots.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I beat the solo development blues? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently working solo doing client work in my own company, which I set up after my computer engineering degree. It's great experience and I've learned ALOT about business and development, but I feel there's a big gap in my knowledge as far as working in a large dev team is concerned.
I figure I have 2 options:
1) Join a big company on a large project.
2) Develop in the open source community.
Option 1 would go against my entrepreneurial/hacker spirit.
Option 2 would be nice, but I code in cakePHP and there's no interesting or active cakePHP open source projects to contribute to (Except maybe the core code.. which is a little out of context for me).
What is one to do?
My idea was to wrangle up some cakePHP developpers and start building a library of plugins and components for common things that I've coded (multiple file uploads, authentication, user management, site news, photo album, forum, etc..). I figure I'd share my code with people and we'd collaboratively work towards the best solutions towards all these problems. Kind of like a cpan for cakephp.
Is this a good idea? Does anybody want to join me? Does anybody have any other ideas? <comment><USER2> Adventure time!

> Do you actually want to work in a large dev team?

      -- Yes

        >> Why ?

          --- Want to gain knowledge about 'working in a large dev team'

             >>> Why?

                ---- Because... it might be useful?

                    >>>> You're stupid.

                ---- Don't know.

                    >>>> You're stupid.

                ---- Some actually valid reason.

                    >>>> Wonderful! Please state it next time.

          --- Want to learn about [insert hard thing here].

             >>> What's stopping you?

                ---- Nothing.

                    >>>> Damn strait!

                ---- Not motivated enough to learn it by myself.

                    >>>> Join a start-up dealing with [insert hard thing here].

                        ----- But... but... it's against my entrepreneurial spirit. (Which, by the way, please don't lump together with the hacker spirit, you insensitive clod!)

                             >>>>> Wipe off your wah-wah tears?

          --- Want to be around people.

             >>> Hint: The open source community doesn't hit up bars after work.

          --- Need large team experience to tackle cool problem X.

             >>> Are other people tackling cool problem X?

                ---- Yes.

                    >>>> Join them.

                ---- No.

                    >>>> You don't need large team experience. Take your passion and just get to work.

          --- Don't know.

             >>> Read 'Getting things Done'. Also: You're stupid.

      -- No

        >> Then why did you post this?

          --- Because you're silly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Working on an open source project is extremely different from working on a large corporate software project. For example, there are few consequences for missing deadlines (if there are any deadlines), there is little to no management structure, and there are no perpetually changing requirements that you have to meet. There are plenty of things you can learn from working in a large company from both positive and negative examples, and it sounds like you want to learn those things.

I don't see how working for a big company would be more against your entrepreneurial/hacker spirit than school was. You're going there to learn something. It won't always be pleasant, but it's a means to an end.

Also, as an entrepreneur, you'll eventually have to manage people. I assume it would be much harder to do a good job of managing people if you've never had a boss before.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could work with/for me.

Seriously.

I am one of those "non coding" founders. I come from the entertainment biz and know first hand that there is a need for web app suite that would help about 1.5 E+3 people each to do what I did for the last 5 years.

The tools that exist for what I want to have developed either are no tools at all, something like a business process checklist, or do 30% of what is needed or required for the final outcome and does it poorly because the company that provides the tools does not want to give too much control to the user over the process.

I have personal seed money (not a ton, about 10k usd) to develop a demo with someone, and would rather have someone interested in startups than a dbase programmer off Craigslist.

I did some interface diagrams/sketches and wrote quite a bit on needed features. The 1.5 e+3 entertainment professionals (like me) in question work together twice a year to do about 3 e+9 euros worth of business each time.

If done properly the web app would be self enlarging/viral within this community.

<comment><USER5> 1.5 e+3 = 1500 people. Is this large enough of a market? It seems like it may not have much growth potential ...

<comment><USER6> It depends on how much those folks will spend to reduce their pain. And then there's the wannabees who you might get to pay for junior versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 4) learn a framework other than CakePHP.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that CakePHP is so easily deployable, so I need it for client work. (Alot of my clients won't switch hosts, so cakePHP has been a key tool for me).

I'm also not interested in learning yet ANOTHER language/framework now. I'd like to work on something in a larger group that will overlap at least a little with my current work.

<comment><USER8> Then you might as well join a big company, because the entrepreneurial/hacker spirit dictates that you _must_ be willing to learn something new every day.

<comment><AUTHOR> To my credit, I also tend to recognize that I fall into the trap of learning new things because I like to learn new things and never use them. This is the same trap that catches you always starting projects and never finishing them.

Learning a new language to me would be just that; starting a NEW project. Instead, I'd like to take something I know well and learn to do _even more_ with it. That to me would be an educational effort well spent.

In that vein I feel that working with other devs who code at my level on a collaborative goal would be something I have yet to experience and that I think I could learn alot from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Use Cake to build an app that you can sell online as a service. If the service takes off, there's all kinds of opportunity for learning as it grows and technical requirements change (scalability, security, etc).

I've been doing client work in my one company for years (7 to be exact) and while it's an okay model for making a living, the revenue is connected with the hours you put in, which to be honest sucks. It means you can grow by adding people or becoming a bit more efficient, but neither of those allows for exponential growth. As such, it's not the right model for startups.

Instead, you want something where you make residual income every month off something like subscriptions. With that type of model, you make steady income (if you can sell it) and there's the potential for exponential growth without exponentially increasing the number of people involved.

As for ideas, most software you can write that you install on your own server (Cake type stuff) can be made as an on-demand service as well. And most jobs that are done in a consultancy can also benefit from software to make those jobs more efficient. I say pick one and go for it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Option 1 - seems like an easy way out, and would probably negate your experience so far since "big companies" might not value your skills.

Option 2 - is very hard to do unless you have an idea that the community really really needs.

In my opinion you two other options: Option 3 - try to expand your company by getting project contracts and not hourly contracts and get a decent size project to hire a partner, then go from their hire as you find more projects. (this is harder than I make it sound here, but worth it).

Option 4 - Come up with 10 ideas that you think you can develop within 40-80 hours (2 weeks) using cakePHP, this is the 6 month road. If any one of these generate enough ads revenue to allow you to not do client work all the time then it will give you time to think about what to do "next". You can then try to hire more employees, grow your business, go back to school, or even join a big company.

</comment><comment><USER11> If cakePHP works for you then use that. I'd look to build something that uses something that PHP and cakePHP is good at.

For a while I've been thinking about a wikipedia for apps. Where people contribute code rather than text and help others build applications out of it, by using a plug-n-play sort of functionality.

From the 10 minutes I spent thinking about PHP, it seems to me that the one thing it has going to it is that it makes it easy for your users to upload code onto the site to modify it. E.g. Ning and Jotspot.

So maybe instead of a cpan for cakephp. A cpan for web apps. Where I can go to create a basic application, by choosing modules and plugging then together or adding applications that others have built to my stack.

</comment><comment><USER12> You could try expanding your current company with additional developers and tackling more complex client work. If you add on cakePHP developers, perhaps a more collaborative environment will spawn a unique idea to develop into a web application.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm in a similar position to you. Since going solo I've missed working with other people and have found that I'm learning new skills slower without regular code reviews, pair programming, etc. Here are some solutions I've been looking at:

1) Join a small company, such as a startup or web dev studio. The small size will ensure you have a chance to have a varied role and to do lots of different things.

2) Team up with other local developers to form a cooperative or studio of your own.

</comment><comment><USER14> option 3) build and grow your own business, if there are enough opportunities and the money is good.

i know that i'd be willing to jump into something like this if the pay was good, with a small group of consultants.

and i wouldn't mind joining, either, though i use codeigniter. ;) would have to learn cake. also, have the experience in large corporate development.

</comment><comment><USER15> I rented a cheap room. Got an internet connection and then invited my friends over. We hack a few hours every night after work. We each have our own projects (outsourced ones or pet projects).

The good thing about this is that we never get bored. and we share our ideas.

</comment><comment><USER16> You do web dev, you could also consider getting into a JS library.

And I recommend everyone who works in a team read <http://producingoss.com/> \-- its insights aren't just good for open source code.

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't addons.mozilla.org written in CakePHP? They might need open source helpers.

If you did the same sort of thing for the Code Igniter framewor, then we'd be willing to help/donate a tad bit in that endeavor.</comment>


Adobe joins the Chromebook party, starting with Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/adobe-joins-chromebook-party-starting.html <comment><USER2> Well this is interesting.

Their FAQ[0] contains some more information, but still does not explain everything. They say _" however, instead of being installed on your local machine, it is running in a virtualized environment so can be accessed from any Chrome browser or Chromebook. Because this version of Photoshop is running in a virtualized environment, you open, save, export and recover files from/to your Google Drive rather than your local file share."_

It would seem that they are indeed streaming the video (VNC-style). More over, space requirement is only 350MB (Photoshop is normally much bigger), and there's also this:

 _" If network connectivity is lost, you will need to launch a new session. A recovery folder called 'Photoshop Recovery' will be created in the root of your Google drive. To recover files, simply double click to open a file."_

Overall, this doesn't sound good at all. If they are streaming screen "video", color correction and pixel-level precision in design is going to be tough. Photoshop seems like one of the most difficult programs to work via VNC.

[0]: [http://edex.adobe.com/projectphotoshopstreaming/faq](http://edex.adobe.com/projectphotoshopstreaming/faq)

<comment><USER3> Whose to say this is VNC-based? VNC is very old technology. RDP/NX solve a lot of these problems. Or this could a x-server like application. Who knows, but I doubt Adobe is launching something that uses VNC-type technology where it samples and over-compresses the screen. I imagine things like color precision are well taken care of.

Also, anyone else notice this amusing note at the bottom of the FAQ:

Please post your issues to [Insert Forum Link]

<comment><USER4> If you were building this for a modern Linux client, wouldn't spice be the logical technology to leverage?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE_%28protocol%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE_%28protocol%29)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am little bit concerned about the way technology trends these days.

It feels like sooner or later, big companies will have all the hardware and software hosted on their side and people will only get access to play it according to companies rules.

This is actually a concern to my freedom as well.

I want to own my hardware and software power. I want to run everything offline if i want to. I don't want to click "I agree" button for all the actions i am doing.

It also means everybody is kind of forced to use their devices how these big companies are decided to. They are selling you an apple, but they don't let you to eat it however you want.

I will be happy as long as they give me the option(and not to force me use cloud) to keep my hardware and software on my side.

<comment><USER6> On the flip side, you can consider that traditional proprietary software installs usually have full access to read and modify your system, often in ways you don't expect or wouldn't consent to. Running in a virtualized environment in a browser significantly reduces access to your system. So if you run a free software local install with proprietary programs running in a jailed browser environment, you are probably more secure than you would be if you had installed them locally.

<comment><USER7> But think this through...if you don't run _anything_ locally then what, exactly, are you protecting on your local system by running things remotely?

Although honestly, for something like photoshop I really don't see a problem. It's a creative tool, and probably isn't producing interesting data for the NSA, et al. The real security concern here is Adobe's, in that they want to protect _their_ software from _you_ , the user. They want to set up an annuity-style revenue stream, and the only way to do that is to protect the binary image of their software. So they did that.

Really, the only objection I would have to this is that it adds a (sometimes rather difficult to meet) requirement that you have a solid internet connection to run what used to be a stand-alone application. More philosophically, I object to the _horrible waste_ this kind of runtime requires, particularly of network bandwidth. Perhaps, though, this is the price of saving the premium proprietary software market.

<comment><USER8> You are protecting your private information in cloud A from company B. I can trust different groups with different information without giving them all access to the whole set.

<comment><USER9> Except for Google, who will (eventually) actively mine all of it, likely by way of some plausible universal search feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And this is the logical conclusion of the death of the 56K baud modem. There was a prophetic (if early) contest at Sun to 'imagine the future' and the winner got a SPARCStation. As a networking guy I tried to imagine what was going to change when the 'big yellow hose' (which is what 10MB Ethernet looked like at the time) came right into your living room. And one of the things that changed was that you could work at 'home' like you did at work, which at the time was most of the stuff on a beefy server with lots of CPU + storage and just the X windows on the local machine. (this worked fine with a lot less than 10MB of bandwidth of course, but it was conceptually a 'return to mainframes' pitch)

The economics are pretty sweet, given the marginal cost of one additional subscriber to a cloud 'hosted' environment. Google Drive / Drop box gets the storage requirement out of the way. Company X, acquires/operates a small server farm connected with a generic 10G pipe to the 'web' (this is an off the self config at places like Switch in Las Vegas). Sign up a bunch of subscribers where you have a 'free' tier to sop up excess compute and a paid tier for folks who care enough about response times to pay for them.

The dependency on the network has always been troubling, but once the network is like house 'power'. so many things one does depend on the house having power available, making it a requirement becomes less and less onerous. Combined with things that make traveling with data annoying (like cross border inspections) and I can see this as the future of application level computing for a lot of things.

Interesting that terminals are the future once again.

<comment><USER11> The power/electricity analogy here is what's really key - there will come a time when the ubiquity of being "online" will be the same as the ubiquity of "the power is on." It's so prevalent in modern society we really don't think about it.

It took me a while to realize that this is where Google is headed with ChromeOS/Chromebooks. Ultimately, "applications/apps" will not exist, there will just be the web and all personal computing devices become thin clients. What to use photoshop? great, go to //photoshop.adobe (or something); Office? //office.microsoft; play the latest COD? //callofduty.activision. [EDIT: also note the importance of search in this scenario...]

I think google's bet is that just like CompUSA and other computer retail outlets have died, so too will "app stores" that sell digital equivalents of physical boxed apps. All apps will become services available openly on the web.

It's definitely exciting, though I realize it makes a lot of people scared and there are definitely security risks that need to be kept in mind. But overall I see it as another step in the democratization of access and knowledge. A few hundred years ago, only the privileged had access to resources enabling them to read and write and create things. A few years ago, only those with some serious cash could (legally) purchase a license to operate a copy of Adobe's products. Now, any kid with 100 bucks and a decent laptop can spend 3 months with the entire Adobe catalog available to them. Pretty soon, that "high- powered" hardware requirement will be gone and the market opens up even further and pricing will drop even more.

That's pretty awesome.

<comment><USER12> It's not awesome at all. It's the death of personal computing.

What to use Photoshop? Pay a perpetual monthly fee forever, with no control over which version of the software you are using. Adobe jacked up the price this year for the new version despite a lack of new features? Tough, nothing you can do about it. It's either pay up or lose access. The new version is buggy? Tough luck.

Want to modify any of the software on your computer in any way or install any local software? That disables the trusted DRM and none of your remote apps will load anymore because your machine is no longer trusted. (We already have this on Chromebooks for DRM video).

Want to cancel your Microsoft Office subscription? Fine, now you've lost the ability to view any of your documents any more.

Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad, they just shut down the servers forever. Sorry, no refunds.

All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined for terrorist terms, for your safety of course.

All your files hosted in the cloud and data mined to build marketing profiles.

Every piece of software having the ultimate in user lock-in - total control over the users data.

I find it hard to imagine a more dystopian future for software.

<comment><USER10> Uh no.

You see the reason personal computing _exists_ is because it was people who wanted this level of control and "their own computer" started using these cheezy "calculator chips" to build their own computers. What they could do was a lot less than what the mainframes/minicomputers/workstations could do but you could own your own.

All of those things are still true.

But there is a rub. Today you can go on some warez forum and get a cracked Adobe CSx suite and run it on your machine at home. That feature goes away, Your only option is to run Gimp, and if it doesn't have features you need, then you get to write new features yourself because, well its open and you have the source code.

So the world will change, it always does, but the ability for engineers and hobbyists to have their own computers that do exactly what they want them to do, that won't change.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but you then end up with two entirely divergent software ecosystems.

As it stands two people, one of whom uses Linux/LibreOffice/GIMP and another who uses Windows/MS Office/Photoshop are able (bar some possible formatting issues) to share data and collaborate together because they can share files via dropbox or USB dongles.

Once Photoshop and Office move entirely to the cloud there will no longer necessarily be "files" to share.

<comment><USER10> That is true, and to the extent that those cloud applications don't use an open interchange standard you won't be able to share documents with them. Having lived through this from before[1], it isn't as dire as you might imagine. What happened last time is that it forced a lot of interchange formats. Will be interesting to see if it does that again. All of the market forces are still there, person A wants to send a document to person B, etc. Of course everyone can send HTML or RTF documents like they do today.

[1] Intel used MultiMate for its documents (as did a bunch of lawyers) while nearly everybody in the tech space was using Interleaf. Xerox was trying to be the paperless glue for the middle. We got PostScript out of it, which was an interesting compromise.

<comment><USER14> The difference here is that you actually had a copy of the data. If the vendor (e.g. Microsoft) decides to lock you in, they will keep the data in the cloud, with their app being the only access point. Then, locally you will only have a copy of "application state" at any point in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those wondering how the "streaming" version of Photoshop is implemented:

 _Project Photoshop Streaming is identical to the Photoshop you'd install locally with a few notable exceptions. This build can be accessed from any Chrome browser (Windows only) or Chromebook and does not require a full download and install. In other words, this is the same build of Photoshop you'd typically download and install from Creative Cloud, however, instead of being installed on your local machine, it is running in a virtualized environment so can be accessed from any Chrome browser or Chromebook. Because this version of Photoshop is running in a virtualized environment, you open, save, export and recover files from /to your Google Drive rather than your local file share. Also this Beta version of the virtualized environment does not have support for GPU consequently GPU dependent features are not yet available (coming soon). This build also does not yet support for print._

[http://edex.adobe.com/projectphotoshopstreaming/faq](http://edex.adobe.com/projectphotoshopstreaming/faq)

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty excited to see how utterly wretched the performance will be!

<comment><USER17> If you can play an FPS remotely (and I have - and it works) then I think this is a walk in the park.

<comment><USER18> Maybe if you're playing a 30FPS "cinematic experience."

Meanwhile, the hardcore PC FPS gamers with 120hz+ monitors running the game at 2x displayable framerate can't even tolerate the latency from enabling vsync.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is stupid. Latency (which _can 't_ be reduced below the speed of light without circumventing the laws of physics) is incredibly detrimental to drawing and digital painting, two of Photoshop's most popular use cases. A frame or two of lag really hurts responsiveness (a frequent concern when using a large brush on a slow PC), and network latency to nearby servers in the US starts at around 30ms and only gets worse. Client side prediction helps a lot in video games, but predicting a graphics editor basically entails having the entire editor, at which point the "cloud" is doing nothing but storing your files.

I will never understand why people are so obsessed with the extreme of the thin client ideal. They are a good choice in a world where the network is fast and low latency, while client devices are underpowered and expensive (VT100s in a lab with minicomputer in the next room). Meanwhile, we've lived for at least the past two decades in a world where the network (on the cellular and home broadband ends) is slow and high latency but our client devices are incredibly powerful and cheap. The period of time where this makes any sense for anyone except for proprietary software vendors that want to close off any possibility of pirating their products has long since passed.

The appeal of "compute clusters" for most "power user" tasks especially diminishes when you realize that shitty off-the-shelf PCs from 10+ years ago were perfectly capable of running programs that did most of same stuff as their modern versions. New functionality has been added, of course, but most of the increase in resource requirements came from selfish programming from generations of programmers that never learned how to optimize. There's no reason that a Chromebook with a cheapo ARM or low-end Intel SoC shouldn't be able to natively run a better optimized graphics program like Paint Tool Sai with CPU time/battery to spare.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. But only if that's how it's implemented (essentilly VNC to a centralized app). But if it runs code locally, then latency should be fine. I've not seen any details on what they're actually providing, so it's hard to tell what they're offering. I'd assume it's a continuation of their "creative cloud" offering, which as far as I know, caches the application code (and assets) locally?

<comment><USER18> The article and comments ITT suggest that it is not like the existing "Creative Cloud", but instead works like VNC, or perhaps renders UI locally while doing all the actual image editing on a server. If it was all client code, there's no way it would run acceptably on cheapo Chromebooks (because Photoshop is a behemoth, mind, not because it's inherently impossible to edit graphics on a low-end device).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I the only one who thinks it's crazy that after all these years, Chromebook is the one who made Adobe port Photoshop to a linux-based OS?

<comment><USER21> Photoshop used to run on IRIX ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No thanks.

A glorified X-Windows/RDP/VNC/... terminal in form of a browser.

I love my cores, my GPU, my hard disk, ...

I rather stay on my beloved island seeing the ships sailing away a certain destiny of doom.

</comment><comment><USER23> All your pictures are belong to us.

(From p. 117 of the EULA: ([http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/legal/licens...](http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/legal/licenses- terms/pdf/CC_EULA_Gen_WWCombined-MULTI-20121017_1230.pdf)) "All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Adobe and its suppliers.)

<comment><USER24> You're misunderstanding what that sentence means. In context:

 _3\. Intellectual Property Ownership_

 _The Software and any authorized copies that Customer makes are the intellectual property of and are owned by Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers. The structure, organization, and source code of the Software are the valuable trade secrets and confidential information of Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers. The Software is protected by law, including but not limited to the copyright laws of the United States and other countries, and by international treaty provisions. Except as expressly stated herein, this agreement does not grant Customer any intellectual property rights in the Software. All rights not expressly granted are reserved by Adobe and its suppliers._

The rights being referred to are rights that Adobe (and its suppliers) have in the software. Courts long ago decided that, absent specific wording to the contrary, implicit rights and obligations can be read into contracts. This type of specific wording tries to avoid that from happening.

I haven't read the rest of the document so I can't speak as to whether the EULA does indeed transfer/license your rights to Adobe, but if there is such a provision, this is not it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Probably has something to do with the BLAST browser client that VMware is doing with chromebooks.

[http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2014/08/vmware-nvidia-google- wor...](http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2014/08/vmware-nvidia-google-working- together-deliver-graphics-rich-applications-enterprise-cloud-desktops.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is big news. Chrome OS now has the potential to destroy Windows.

It will soon run a large range of Android apps, and a good virtualization solution would mean that business applications could be written for Linux and run on any platform that runs Chrome.

If I was Microsoft I'd be very worried right now.

<comment><USER27> I'm not Microsoft, but as a user I'm worried. I certainly will not be supporting these kinds of anti-user lock-in SaaS platforms. I'm hoping users will ignore them, and they will fail.

<comment><USER28> I hope so, but I doubt this will happen, thanks to _business users_.

When you run a company, you don't want your graphics stuff to tinker around software and talk about freedom or whatever. You want them to get their job done, to make one graphic after another, to fulfil contracts. You need to pay for the software anyway, and as long as you have cashflow you can pay for the "services" (if you can't, you have bigger problems).

So, like always, companies will trade off freedom for convenience. The rest will have to follow, and the world will be worse off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's not clear to me why this supports only Chromebooks and Chrome on Windows. It seems like they would have had to go to the trouble to explicitly _disable_ support for Chrome on Linux.

Are Chromebooks so different than the shipping version of Chrome for Linux?

<comment><USER30> > Streaming Photoshop can be run on any Chromebook or Chrome Browser.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they disable support for chrome on linux. It's possible that it can run on Chrome for Linux but Adobe won't necessarily provide support in the same way that they provide support for the Windows version.

<comment><USER31> That's probably the main reason. It's too bad though because it would be great to have it available on linux, even in an unsupported offering.

<comment><USER32> chances are that once it comes out someone will hack it/reverse it to "run" on a standard Linux setup

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Didn't Google show off Chrome extensions that were low-level like C code a few years back? If I remember correctly, they even showed off an in-browser image editor and video games, what ever happened with that?

<comment><USER34> NaCl is very much alive, much to my chagrin (I hate Google's pushing of proprietary stuff like NaCl, it's like Microsoft with ActiveX a decade or so ago).

However, I suspect Adobe are unwilling to port Photoshop to NaCl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> My understanding is that Adobe's previous cloud offerings download the programs to your machine, where they execute locally, saving files to the cloud. Is this how Photoshop works here? Or are they doing VNC/remote desktop style access?

I really hope it's the former - having virtual machines / LXC instances synchronized down to the Chromebook would solve those last few use-cases. (For me, my IDE is the only thing missing from a Chromebook and stopping me using it as my primary machine).

<comment><USER29> The current version of Creative Cloud is really just a different license; indeed you do still download (say) Photoshop, it just pings the Adobe servers to ensure that you have paid your monthly or annual licensing. To call it "the cloud" is really in name only, as it's no different than the Photoshop that you pay a one-time fee for and install from DVD.

This is totally different, as you suggest, it's a VNC-style access for Photoshop. (Since there is no Photoshop for Linux.)

<comment><USER36> Really the cloud offering in the name applies to their storage (20 GB as individual, 100 GB as a business account [1 TB should be standard at this point imo]), Typekit and Kuler. The applications, like you said are pretty much the same as always with full local installations.

<comment><USER37> But this suggests Adobe might move to remote execution SaaS at some point in the next few years.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's always been the ultimate goal of CC.

A lot of SaaS is waiting for faster broadband. CC Saas will be limited at 10MB, but as speeds creep up to 100MB and beyond it's going to start making more sense.

I think the rent-your-cycles model sucks for users, and is against everything personal computing was supposed to do.

But it's a no-brainer for corporates with a captive audience for life, zero piracy, and easy surveillance.

<comment><USER36> Yeah it's not a change I'm excited for if it does materialize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't it make more sense to port this to a "real" Linux first? Photoshop is often quoted as a killer app that keeps people on Windows.

<comment><USER38> CS6 already has gold status under Wine, works quite well. They could "port" it to Linux just by wrapping it in a Wine container and fixing a few bugs, much like gog does with games (using both Wine & dosbox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It would interesting to see what happens when people start to load the server. Rendering images, and any other form of image processing, can be really heavy. On my desktop workstation it can take large amounts of processing time when working with large files.

IMO, this is where cloud based solutions don't work well. It would be cheaper to have your own workstation which you can count on always having access to the GPU.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting - so it's Adobe's Photoshop on a VPC, but is only for Windows/Chrome.

Remote storage of your designs/files, remote execution, like manipulating via remote desktop/VNC, but hopefully more usable.

My two concerns would be a) privacy of data and b) upload/download costs/time - some of the files involved can be huge.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what "initially with a streaming version of Photoshop" actually means. In a roundabout way, this is Photoshop on Linux, which is interesting.

<comment><USER42> This is a web application version of Photoshop. Nothing more (and it should run on any OS with a modern browser).

<comment><USER43> Are you sure? It sure sounds like this is a version of Photoshop, running in a managed VM in the cloud by Adobe.

<comment><USER44> The client is still Chrome, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is huge, no matter what kind of technology or compromises being made, it shows the acceptance and maturation of chromebooks in the general public.

<comment><USER45> Only if you define "general public" as the intersection of Google Apps for Education customers and Adobe Creative Cloud licensees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I really, really wish they would port Photoshop to Linux - it's going to be the killer app for Linux, hugely driving up adoption.

<comment><USER47> I don't see how, can you elaborate?

<comment><USER48> As a weh developer, I need photoshop, thus I'm stuck with either a Mac or Windows system.

I'd much prefer to drop the VM's and go full Linux. I can't. Because of Photoshop.

<comment><USER49> Totally agree with you. I would just use Linux if I could run Illustrator with out any special setup on Linux. Instead I have a MacBook Pro.

<comment><USER47> I think you two are a minority, that is why Adobe doesn't care.

Most programmers aren't artists/designers.

<comment><USER46> This has nothing to do about programmers.

Artists/designers have two choices today to use Photoshop - windows or mac. In third world countries, buying either is quite expensive. You get a whole range of laptops/desktops in Asia with Ubuntu installed (including Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.). It would be really cool to open it up to the Adobe ecosystem.

<comment><USER47> Even if third world countries represent a meaningful fraction of artists and designers, thinking that they actually buy software is not realistic. Their piracy percentages are >90%. Why do you think Adobe is switching to a network model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> We went from Computer terminals to independent computing and now back to terminals (just on a network).

</comment><comment><USER51> This would have been more interesting if they'd ported Photoshop to asm.js, or even NaCL...

</comment><comment><USER52> It's really hard to distinguish the Chromebook on the photo from a MacBook Pro. The Chromebook designers should really come up with something of their own instead of copying Jony Ive's design for Apple if they want the laptop to have a better image than poor mans MacBook.

<comment><USER53> If I had a nickel for every apple fanboi claiming google steals from apple I'd be rich. Please, get over it, let's not act like apple doesn't copy.

<comment><USER52> I can get over it. Even if it's more like cloning than copying.

I found an old issue of Wallpaper Magazine from 1997 with ad's for Mark Newson's watch named Ikepod. Both the name and the watch are similar to the iPod that appeared first time in 2001. Apple has off course copied a lot it's design from Braun's Dieter Rams. Rams is has retired, but Newson has just started working for apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> i dont know if i like the idea of depending on a zillion diff companies for everything i do or own on the computer to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how it saves the file, ie. just uploading the diff, or the whole file. First would sound a lot nicer, especially when working with 1gb psd's

</comment><comment><USER56> I have some serious doubts about the usefulness of this -- considering how long it will take to "open" a large PSD file.

There's also the issue of sensitive/confidential content -- Adobe is putting a very large bulls-eye on themselves. Since your PSD/etc files are being uploaded to Adobe to "open" Photoshop, they'll have to be stored there, and that is very attractive to nefarious individuals.

I understand that in actuality the files are stored on Google Drive, but the data itself eventually exits Google's network to enter Adobe's. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe keeps copies around for their own convenience, eg: caching or historical metrics.

<comment><USER57> How is that any different from trusting Google Drive with your data? Or Dropbox? Or any other cloud backup services?

I'm not saying that it's not a problem, because it clearly is, but it sounds like it's a bit too late to be this worried about our business-related files stored on remote servers/services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> How did they move a C++ code with a GUI toolkit running an event loop from OS7? How do they weeks spent optimizing each C++ function translate to the web? Is this a complete rewrite? The technical details are mind boggling.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is the natural progression of the most pirated software app on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER60> if you buy chromebbook you must be inherently stupid to think you will get something good out of it. Beside stealing data there is nothing good about it. Chromebook == trash</comment>


EE to launch 4G mobile services in 16 UK cities in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19543042

<comment> k-mcgrady Good news but EE coverage is terrible. Before I signed up (it was T-mobile then) everything looked good on the coverage map, yet the coverage in my area is really spotty. This would have kept me a customer but then I checked their coverage on a place I'm moving to soon (a medium sized town) and neither t-mobile or orange has any coverage at all. O2 and the other major UK carriers to need to start moving on 4G. New phones are all starting to ship with it and none of the carriers are supporting it. It'll be another 2 years before it's rolled out widely.

<comment><USER2> I'm sure they'd love to get 4G launched but they're all being held up by the fact that OFCOM haven't had the spectrum auction yet</comment></comment>


Apple releases 10.6.5 Update - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4250

<comment><USER2> I'm hoping this update fixes the wireless issues I'm having on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro. To get an idea of how bad it is, I'm forced to use Ethernet to watch Youtube without a 5 minute allowance for buffering.

Wow, technology has really come a long way. I just made a complaint about not being able to watch streaming video instantly from anywhere within my apartment without any cables attached.</comment>


Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/why-office-workers-cant-sleep-and-why-thats-bad/ <comment><USER2> Interesting however there is data going back to the 1920's about changing lighting at work (Taylor I think) that shows that the very fact of changing light levels improved output.

However when the changed the lighting levels back output improved again. It looks to me this is based on poorly designed studies, the including of trigger words like "kids" "iPad" is a bit of a red flag.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

<comment><USER2> Thank you that is the guy who I was thinking of - its a long time since I did my production engineering courses.

<comment><USER4> Hawthorne was a place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The main reason why offices have gotten dimmer is that energy conservation codes limit the amount of power you can use for lighting. Most office type spaces are only allowed 0.9 - 1.1 watts per square foot compared to 3 watts per square foot in the past. Part of that reduction is also that lights are vastly more efficient, but designers are also incentivized to use as little lighting power as possible.

Lighting power is also tradeable among spaces. If you want to use some extra light for a fancy lobby space, you can make the office areas dimmer as long as you still come under the allowed total overall.

Energy codes are in general a good thing, but there are some tradeoffs and unintended consequences.

<comment><USER6> > 0.9 - 1.1 watts per square foot

So with LEDs, one and a half 60 watt equivalents per square meter? That's pretty bright. If I'm doing my math right that's enough for 1000 lux.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how you're calculating that, but if you're just looking at the lumen output of the bulb, the lighting level is measured at the work surface. In an office, that's at 3' off the floor and the light is at the ceiling which is at 8'-10'. Lighting intensity decreases with the square of distance, so if you have 1000 lux right next to the bulb, you're going to have considerably less 5' \- 7' away.

Add to that that those aren't the kinds of fixtures that are used in offices. People don't want to look at bare bulbs (and they also create glare) so most lights have some sort of lens that is going to reduce the light output somewhat.

The target lighting level for offices is 30 footcandles or about 322 lux. Even 1000 lux is nowhere close to being outside on a sunny day which is more like 100,000 lux.

<comment><USER6> > Lighting intensity decreases with the square of distance, so if you have > 1000 lux right next to the bulb, you're going to have considerably less 5' > \- 7' away.

But you're in the range of square-of-distance bulbs. An array of lights on a ceiling gives approximately the same lighting as if you had a uniformly glowing ceiling and all the light went exactly down.

You'd be outputting a good amount more than 1000 lumens per square meter of ceiling. Most of that hits the work surface of the same size, so you get 1000 lumens per square meter, which is 1000 lux.

> some sort of lens that is going to reduce the light output somewhat

A lens shouldn't reduce it by much if it's doing its job.

> Even 1000 lux is nowhere close to being outside on a sunny day which is more > like 100,000 lux.

Yeah but it's a lot more than 300! If there's a problem it's probably not caused by energy rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember and wish there was another culture about sleep. I saw this documentary about the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) wherein a physicist was staying awake for 48 hours so he can focus on his work. The IAS is famous for hiring the best scientists and letting them work on whatever they want. I am not a genius like him but I wish I could use my restlessness to my advantage and work in long stretches of time and just sleep when my mind stops spinning.

<comment><USER8> I had medically diagnosed insomnia for a period. If your insomnia is anything like mine then you'd have a decent idea about if you're going to sleep that night or not. If it's 1am and I'm still wide awake then I'm not getting quality sleep that night. What do you have to lose by going to your PC at that time and working for 6 hours before work? You're going to be tired tomorrow anyway any attempting to sleep for another 5 hours isn't going to help.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious about this idea of insomnia. I'm between jobs right now which means I don't have to get up. That means for whatever reason (my genes?) I find I'm not tired until 5am, 6am often. I sleep 7 hours just fine. So the only thing about it being "insomnia" as in "unable to sleep" would be some artificial reason I have to get up in the morning. Am I making any sense? It seems like it's only insomina because someone/something is forcing you out of the schedule your body wants. Well, I don't know your body. I'm talking about mine but just saying. I'm getting my sleep just not a the times other people claim I should be getting it.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder)

<comment><USER11> Also:

[https://circadiansleepdisorders.org/](https://circadiansleepdisorders.org/)

There is also a email discussion list (toward the bottom of the left side).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.

<comment><USER13> You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work.

After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

<comment><USER14> Your solution to this is just to look at the world through rose tinted glasses?

<comment><USER15> the GP solution puzzles me too. i don't want this to be the solution. i wear glasses and my eyes are already damaged and now i need to filter out the color blue? what about we start making better monitors and screens instead?

<comment><USER13> That would be great. When they're done replacing every screen in existence, if they could replace all lightbulbs in places people visit during the evening with warmer bulbs (hotels, common spaces, street lights, etc), the lights in all the new car dashboards, everyone's headlights, every cheap piece of electronics that's covered with blue status LEDs...

Or you can just filter out some of the light right in front of your eyes and achieve a workable solution today.

As an added bonus, I think you'll find it actually reduces your eye issues. Tried out the filtering basically because I couldn't think of a reason not to and the first time I put the new glasses on it felt like I'd stopped squinting and relaxed my eyes for the first time in years. I get way fewer eye-strain induced headaches now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The part where they spoke about various populations sleeping for around an hour longer each night in the winter is very interesting to me.

<comment><USER17> It is quite logical, the night is much longer and we used to depend on the light cycle. Also many animals hibernate in the winter, we just sleep a bit more, it is an adaptation to environmental conditions: less light, less food, movement in lower temperatures require more energy, sleep conserves energy.

In my country we have a bit less than 9 hours of light in December and over 15 hours in June, we continuously adjust for it.

<comment><USER16> Well yes, it makes sense evolutionarily, but I don't think I had ever specifically heard someone suggest that not following such a pattern in modern times might have bad effects

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here are links to more concrete studies concerning this effect.

Action spectrum for melatonin regulation in humans: evidence for a novel circadian photoreceptor. Brainard et al. [https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/21/16/6405.full.pdf](https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/21/16/6405.full.pdf)

Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock. Berson et al. [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/295/5557/1070.ful...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/295/5557/1070.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone tested bright indoor lighting and its effect on their own sleep.

I have some LED studio lights for video work by my desk all the time. I'm wondering if I should just turn them on while I work each morning. From what I can tell:

1\. LEDs won't cause sunburn/skin damage 2\. There's no blue light risk of them if they're not rates above a certain level of light output and you don't stare directly at them.

I have to check the light rating, but it seems like there shouldn't be negative side effects to this. My new apartment gets little direct sunlight, so I've been feeling daytime darkness more acutely.

<comment><USER20> I bought a huge 10,000 lux lamp that was supposed to emit similar wavelengths to daylight because I found myself to be a bit sleepy during winters all day long. That one managed to "wake me up" and I ended up as productive as in summer. Some people also use it to alleviate their seasonal depression (never had that). I have it illuminating my workspace behind my back. I believe our eyes have some special "wake up" receptors that react to sunrise and this type of lamp seems to engage them.

<comment><USER17> Can you provide some details on that lamp, especially power consumption? It seems an interesting experiment that I would like to try.

<comment><USER21> I have one of these, but honestly haven't used it enough to assess it. It seems well made and bright enough to make a difference without being intolerable. I think it draws 14 watts.

Verilux HappyLight VT43 Luxe 10,000 Lux LED Bright White Light Therapy Lamp ($100)

[https://verilux.com/products/happylight- luxe](https://verilux.com/products/happylight-luxe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For a more historical take on our relationship with the night, I highly recommend At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch</comment>


Ask HN: Building MVP - User Registration/Management - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am building a web application using Twitter Bootstrap, with PHP and Javascript to do the back-end. I am relatively new to programming.
I am trying to integrate some kind of user management script (registration, log-in/out, etc.) into the site, or to code my own. I have seen some suggestions of tutorials (like http://buildinternet.com/2009/12/creating-your-first-php-application-part-1/), however, they all have limitations (e.g. this one does nothing about form validation, etc.).
I would like to learn (ideally in one guide) to create my own script. However, building this element of the application is necessary but does not need to anything more than workable.
Are there are any pre-made solutions that are easy to integrate with Twitter Bootstrap, that don't have significant bugs (I've bought one script already, which contains at least one infinite loop when a user requests a forgotten password)?
Any advice is greatly, greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> You may want to look to leverage a PHP framework (i.e. CodeIgniter, Yii, Zend, etc.) to help facilitate some of the heavier lifting for you. I prefer CodeIgniter, and have had good luck using ion auth (<https://github.com/benedmunds/CodeIgniter-Ion-Auth>) for user management.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks SABmore. I have looked at CodeIgniter before, but my web application is very simple (in terms of the code I am deploying). I'm a bit reluctant to choose a framework just for a log-in script but will look at Ion Auth.

Am I right in thinking that (a) there is no good, working, error-free way script/method of doing user management or (b) a tutorial or guide that explains building something fully fledged - with things like proper security and validation, etc.

There are many tutorials out there, but reading nearly every guide's comments reveals bugs, or things left out.</comment></comment>


How Google could get thousands of open-source developers working for free - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is to use a social news site whereby developers would submit their open-source projects and only Google employees would be able to vote although the results would be made public.

If you are working on something that Google cares about, then you will be encouraged to pursue it harder to increase your chances of landing a job at Google.

<comment><USER2> Google employees are only humans, too, you know. At least I think so... You make it sound as if working for Google was the ultimate fulfillment for every hacker, and that everything that somebody from Google says should be treated as a holy prophecy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you heard of Summer of Code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but that would not be getting people to work for free.

<comment><USER3> Ok, strictly speaking, SoC is not free.

But SoC stipends are tiny, _almost_ free.

Also, remember that Google vets each proposal, so they're funding those projects they'll be able to leverage in code, people (SoC is a great recruiting tool), or both.

The result of SoC is not so different from what you've suggested.

<comment><USER4> _Also, remember that Google vets each proposal, so they're funding those projects they'll be able to leverage in code, people (SoC is a great recruiting tool), or both._

False. Google only approves the Open Source projects which apply for SoC slots, but it seems to me that any established Open Source project can get SoC slots. It's the Open Source project's leaders who choose which of the project proposals to actually fund, not Google.

<comment><USER3> _It's the Open Source project's leaders who choose which of the project proposals to actually fund, not Google._

No, it's the other way around; each code project submits a proposal to Google, and Google decides which project to accept or not (I'm part of a user group which submitted SoC applications this year).

The user group ("mentoring organization" in Google's terms) does have to file an application, once, at the beginning, so that Google can verify them, but after that, each project proposal from that user group/mentoring organization is subject to Google's approval.

Just being an established Open Source project does _not_ mean automatic entry to the SoC.

<comment><USER4> I was part of Google SoC in 2005, and it was Miguel de Icaza of the Mono Project who reviewed and decided to accept my application. NOT Google. Google just gives each project a certain number of slots to fill. So at least in 2005, it was the Open Source project that picked which applicants to fill their slots with.

How would Google be able to judge the worth and merits of each proposal to the OS project anyway? :)

I also did _not_ mean that being an established Open Source project meant that the project automatically gets SoC slots. But it does seem to me like established Open Source projects can pretty easily get slots for SoC. In other words, Google isn't too picky, nor are they only looking for contributors to the projects that Google finds useful.

<comment><USER3> _So at least in 2005, it was the Open Source project that picked which applicants to fill their slots with._

My only exposure to SoC is this year, so it sounds like the process has changed.

Currently, the "mentoring organization" has to be accepted by Google (not sure why really), but after that, each student proposal _also_ gets scrutinized by Google as well -- I guess it's how they keep all those new hires busy ;)

 _But it does seem to me like established Open Source projects can pretty easily get slots for SoC._

That's probably true, though I did hear anecdotal evidence about a large number of Apache projects not getting funded for whatever reason -- it's surprising, since you would think that Apache in particular would be important to them, unless they're already beyond using Apache themselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Inconvenient Truth About Dynamic vs. Static Typing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jooq.org/2014/12/11/the-inconvenient-truth-about-dynamic-vs-static-typing/ <comment><USER2> Since static typing systems use dynamic typing to determine the static types, his comment about dynamic types languages being dead is simply wrong.

Many years ago, it became obvious that static typing is useful in some class of programs, dynamic typing is useful in another class of programs and soft typing is useful across them all.

A range of typing systems exist now, they will continue to exist into the future as long as we have need of digitally based computing systems.

We live it and we continue to solve the problems put before us.

As a side not, it was interesting that he didn't specify a List("abc", 0, 0.2) and answer what the static type of such would be. There are many examples of data structures that has non-uniform base types which can only be determined at runtime.

Let the silly season start.

<comment><USER3> In Java, the type of such a List("abc", 0, 0.2) would be List<? extends Serializable & Comparable<?>> or something like that. There's always an appropriate type for any expression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Dynamically typed languages are dead

The author seems to overlook existing efforts from the dynamically typed end of the spectrum to add type inferencing and optional static typing to dynamic languages. Either as type checkers e.g., mypy [1] or for runtime improvements.

[1]: [http://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html](http://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html)</comment>


The First Car to Bear the Porsche Name - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-does-an-the-worlds-first-porsche-drive-lets-find-out-11564756570?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> "Fuel Economy: 20 mpg, mixed driving (est.)" Crazy to think of how little progress we've made on that end, assuming the reporting is accurate.

<comment><USER3> Have we? Modern diesels easily get 60-70mpg(49-58 US mpg) without even trying, and modern petrols are not much worse - I recently drove a small VW Polo with a 1.2L I4 90bhp petrol engine, fully loaded with luggage, and averaged 54mpg(45 US mpg) over 600 miles. Even my own Mercedes-AMG with 381bhp can easily average 32-35mpg(26-29 US mpg) when driven on longer trips.

<comment><USER4> The diesel comparison is perhaps not entirely fair. The density of diesel is about 833 kg/m3 compared to 740 kg/m3 for gasoline. This gives diesel about 13% higher energy density per volume.

<comment><USER3> Sure, that's why I gave two petrol examples as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was it stolen Tatra, or Nazi military vehicle?

<comment><USER6> I tried finding out about Ferdinand Porsche some more and I doubt he needed to steal a design for a car, seeing as he has had a highly successful career as an automobile engineer after the war, even winning the 'Car Engineer of the Century' (according to Wikipedia). That is not saying that he didn't steal anything, but I am saying that he had a certain ability. Also, the line between inspiration and stealing in creative pursuits is quite thin.

The 'Nazi' part of your remark does make sense as a valid critique. Then again, many innovations have come out of war and he did go to prison. Although on Wikipedia we can read:

> The innovative 4WD design never raced, but the money it received was used to > redeem Ferdinand Porsche from prison.

It feels odd that you can redeem yourself out of prison for taking part in some of humanity's worst crimes. Then again, there are recent examples of horrific crimes against humanity that go unpunished in order to make profits as well, so it is the norm apparently.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, of course, but the Typ12 was created (just) before the Tatra V570 (second prototype, the first looked very different):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Type_12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Type_12)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_V570](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_V570)

and it seems like both Porsche and Ledwinka worked at Steyr so it is very possible that some earlier Ledwinka project at Steyr "inspired" Porsche, and possibly also viceversa, in any case they had very similar education and experience in overlapping years.

I find more probable that this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ledwinka#Volkswagen_contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ledwinka#Volkswagen_controversy)

> In any case, of Ledwinka, Porsche admitted "Well, sometimes I looked over > his shoulder and sometimes he looked over mine"

is actually accurate.</comment></comment></comment>