Ask HN: What do you do to get into "work mode"? - <AUTHOR>

For me, I'll turn my phone off, close my email, close the door on my office, and shut the lights off.
It's just me, some music (lately the Tron OST [the daft punk thing]), and a couple of VIM sessions.
The amount of quality work I've been able to get done in the last couple of weeks by employing this has been outstanding.
The next best thing is to stay really late, after everybody has left.
Something that I really struggle with at work is interruptions.  People don't realize it, but stopping in to just say hi is very distracting.  The threat of a manager stopping in to get a progress report on what I'm up to at that very moment can also be very distracting, which is why working after hours is so nice for me.  (The threat of somebody stopping in is gone).
Howabout you, HN, what are you productivity hacks?
(And yes, I realize that I'm being a complete prima donna with this.  The problem is that I've been given a couple of impossible deadlines in the last couple of weeks, and my boss has basically given me a "do whatever you need to to get it done" pass) <comment><USER2> Music that puts your brain into flow[1] - I have a special playlist for that. The Tron soundtrack fits well if you omit the parts of Jeff Bridges talking - background talk is extremely distracting.

Exit email - I check it mornings, lunch and half an hour before stopping work. Omit mornings if you're already motivated to get right into your actual work.

Get a quiet, distraction-free environment. If you don't have an office with a door, claim a meeting room. Put a "don't disturb or I'll cut you" sign on the door. Be prepared to cut invaders until they learn. Tell them to email you and expect to wait half a day for a response. Tell your manager how important it is not to be disturbed and get them on your side (assuming they want you to get stuff done, that shouldn't be too hard), so they protect you from invaders instead of being one. Working from home can work, if you don't have family or other distractions around.

Staying late works, but your brain is probably not at it's best performance near the end of a working day.

Keep a to-do list[2] and go over it once a day, prioritising important tasks and breaking items that are too complex ("write LDAP authentication plugin") down into simpler steps ("find python module for LDAP support", "figure out our LDAp server's hostname", ...).

Take breaks. If you're stumped on something, go take a quick break (I make myself a cup of tea), but keep the problem in mind and don't interact with others during your break if possible. You will sometimes find that a great solution comes to you without thinking about it (because the non-dominant part of your brain will submit solutions).[3]

If you're really stumped, worked on another part of the problem and come back later. You might come up with a good solution while sleeping on it or working on the other part.

Phones are an evil relic of the past, when people thought they had a right to intrude on other peoples time whenever they pleased. Turn it off. If you're writing code for a living, only your boss and your SO should have your phone number and they should damn well know to not use it unless there's a real emergency that requires your immediate attention.

And last but not least: Make sure you're working on something you WANT to work on. Otherwise you will procrastinate, no matter the consequences. If you are working on something you don't give a shit about, or worse, you actively hate your work, think about why and go fix it.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)>

[2] <http://culturedcode.com/things/> (Mac) or <http://www.rememberthemilk.com/> (Web) are nice

[3] can't find this article: How the classic concept of brain hemispheres is wrong, but we still have dominant and subordinate "halves" and how most techies are logical dominated and the non-dominant "half" will only get a word in if the dominant part shuts up for a moment (which is why you have good ideas whilst going for a walk, taking a shower or making a cup of tea)

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny, I've had the Tron OST on a loop at work for the last few weeks as well. I definitely find that instrumental music is the way to go, especially if it is upbeat or energetic.

Lately I also pull up my org-mode work journal file, create a new entry for the day and find my next actions for the project i'm working on. Then I start my 25 minute time-boxing timer, the only anti-procrastination thing that's ever worked for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Time boxing timer?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Drive! I particularly enjoy the 78th street road through central park -- with the top down and the hip hop on 12.

Driving is a great stress release (assuming you can control yourself) and acts as a sort of forced context switch (so you have those few moments when you get back, before being inundated with other tasks, when nothing and no one can interrupt you)

My music, of course, is hilariously offensive hip hop and rap (the lyrics in <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK-BC27NdHs> are particularly NSFW but it gets the juices flowing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Driving is a good one. I still say that some of the most mentally productive years of my life were when I had a 45 minute each-way commute in a jeep with no CD player.

The things I came up with during those drives were awesome :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The next best thing is to stay really late, after everybody has left._

I don't have an office to hide in, so when I'm on a deadline at work, I'll just come in late and leave really late. I get a ton more done when I'm there alone and nobody else is around to corner me.

For side projects, I'll go to the library. For centuries the library has come with the expectation that it's the place where you go to be serious. It works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly, I'm not allowed to come in late. Staying late means that I'm eating into my own personal time.

<offtopic />

There was an article a while ago talking about how geeks never negotiate to be payed properly. Most of them will just shut up as soon as they're making enough to pay their bills on time. As long as they're not worried about being evicted from their house, or having their car repo'd, they're fine.

I think this is because a lot of geeks have a genuine interest in their jobs. To me, writing good code, or shipping good products is a pride issue. I'm not _really_ doing it because I'm making money, I'm doing it because I enjoy it.

I mean...when I go home, I read about coding, I write code, I write _about_ coding, I think about coding etc. I love it.

So staying late, while it can be annoying, isn't really so bad. I'm doing the same thing at work that I would be at home, and my computer at work is a whole lot nicer than my computer at home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use to put my headphones and have some instrumental music playing, mid-loud. Preferably some fast (but not aggressive) tunes - it feels like my brain is 'overclocked'. I don't like lyrics because I always end up paying attention to it. Helps me getting focused, avoid distractions (by signaling to people that you're busy and concentrated AND not letting you hear external noises) and gets me an 'isolated from the world' sensation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried the headphones thing for a long time, but it would usually result in people just coming over and knocking on my desk until I looked at them.

They'd then give a little polite smile and a "Hey, huh, are you busy? Whatcha doin?"

I feel like a jerk literally shutting the lights off (so they think I'm not here), but it does seem to be working (things are getting done, I mean).

<comment><USER7> Well.. the whole ideia is to give out the message of 'I'm busy'. I have coworkers that use _unplugged_ headphones, just to get the message delivered. Of course, it works only if other people understand this signal.

You can try to use some form of humor to disguise it.. try a little warning sign with something like 'DO NOT DISTURB: Genius doing science'. People will, at least, stop at the sign to take a closer look and you will be aware that they are coming, not scaring you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm self-employed and make it a point to sit down and start working at the same time each day, just as if I had a normal job. That's not always enough. If I find myself reluctant to start a task I pick something easier, maybe even fun, and start with that instead. That usually pulls me in and gets me rolling.

The Tron soundtrack has worked well for me too as far as music. I was tired of it but then discovered the two-disc version and extras (15 extra tracks)

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a routine that keeps me productive. Basically, I get to work the same time most days, even drinking coffee at the same time and such, as well as taking breaks at the same time.

It's a little repetitive but it works great to keep me productive as I'm self- employed.

<comment><USER7> I worked for some time as self-employed.. The hardest part was to maintain discipline. And I've got to the same conclusion: routine. What makes your life seem boring when you're an employee, is what keeps you from procrastinating all day when you are self-employed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best trick I know is one I stole from Ernest Hemingway, that is to always stop working when you're doing good, and don't think or worry about your work until you start again the next day.

</comment><comment><USER11> Get out of the house.

Work in new places. This library, a cafe, that library.

Exercise.

Meditate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Turn off Hacker News, and other news. Also your browser if you really don't need it for work</comment>


A font that censors bad language automatically - <AUTHOR> https://vole.wtf/scunthorpe-sans/ <comment><USER2> Related: [http://www.sansbullshitsans.com](http://www.sansbullshitsans.com)

If you ask me, Sans Bullshit Sans does a much better job at blocking _really offensive_ content than this one.</comment>


Startups of 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@BetaList/startups-of-2016-4fdf08b1e2fa <comment><AUTHOR> Founder of BetaList here.

At the beginning of every year we look back at the startups we featured the previous year and we have high hopes for the coming year. Many of the startups we previously selected have done really well, including raising millions in funding or getting acquired by big companies such as Apple.

I'd be curious to hear apart from the obvious well-known startups, which startups the HN community expects to hear more from the coming year! (Mentioning your own startup is fine, but please disclose so :)

<comment><USER2> I'm working on a marketplace for services. I'm trying a couple different areas to see where I can get some traction. I'm also working on breaking this into pieces into different Apis. For instance building away to send tasks and notifications to a time tracking app on employees phones. As well as a service that returns a list of local companies that will offer a commission for an order.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the main pain point you're trying to solve and for whom?

<comment><USER2> marketing for new businesses. for example, bid2mow.com consumers post jobs and new business compete for the work. I do the billing and take a cut. I also am going to launch bid2flyer.com which is a little different angle business post flyer delivery jobs and workers post how much of the job they'll take. but a lot of the infrastructure is reusable. The tricky part is the supplier part. I'm having a hard time finding a process to get them on board, cheaply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Marketing isn't a problem though, it's a solution. If you can figure out what exactly the problem is suppliers are having, then it's a matter of solving it. This should make it much easier for you to find an affordable process to get them onboard. Just my 2 cents!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fixing Mass Effect black blobs on modern AMD CPUs - <AUTHOR> https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2020/07/19/silentpatch-mass-effect/ <comment><USER2> >We fuzzed that function and found out that it does not give consistent results between Intel and AMD CPUs when SSE2 instructions are used.

I'm sad this wasn't investigated further. Was one of the implementations not standards compliant?

<comment><USER3> Matrix inversion requires taking the reciprocal of a determinant. I don't have the D3D binary to disassemble it, but chances are that they used the RCPSS/RCPPS instructions to get an approximate reciprocal. The precision of the approximation is specified. Both Intel and AMD satisfy the specification, but with different results.

<comment> Const-me Here's Intel versus AMD relative error of RCPPS instruction: [http://const.me/tmp/vrcpps-errors-chart.png](http://const.me/tmp/vrcpps- errors-chart.png) AMD is Ryzen 5 3600, Intel is Core i3 6157U.

Over the complete range of floats, AMD is more precise on average, 0.000078 versus 0.000095 relative error. However, Intel has 0.000300 maximum relative error, AMD 0.000315.

Both are well within the spec. The documentation says "maximum relative error for this approximation is less than 1.5*2^-12", in human language that would be 3.6621E-4.

Source code that compares them by creating 16GB binary files with the complete range of floats: [https://gist.github.com/Const- me/a6d36f70a3a77de00c61cf4f6c1...](https://gist.github.com/Const- me/a6d36f70a3a77de00c61cf4f6c17c7ac)

<comment><USER4> Funny, I think this graph is from a thread where I got roasted for arguing that differences in CPU implementations meant that Intel (or anyone else really) would need to be careful about shipping SIMD software on processors they don't test.

<comment><USER5> Rightfully so. Because they were replacing the SIMD code with non-SIMD code that was similarly untested, with the side effect of crippling performance on their competitor's chips. That's a really bad kind of "being careful".

<comment><USER4> I'm not aware of instructions that have this implementation defined behavior risk in non-SIMD code, and you can be sure that Intel has tested this. If Microsoft had shipped a non-SIMD version of D3DXMatrixInverse, this bug likely could not have existed (or it would have been caught on the developer's machines).

In this case (games), they probably made the right tradeoff despite the bug. But in general? I don't want to rehash the argument, I'm just really, really glad I'm not the one flipping that switch (or subject to the hordes of HNers who think I'm a monster for not flipping it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just some months ago I was re-playing this game and I was looking around for fixes for this bug. This is incredible, and _very_ welcome. Thank you for the amazing write-up, it's super interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, I am not the original author, I'm not sure if they read HN.

<comment><USER7> The "Rafael" mentioned in the article seems to have answered a comment above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's completely off topic, but articles like this one are the reason why I love HackerNews so much and don't tell anyone about it.

<comment><USER9> If you love hackernews why wouldn't you tell anyone about it?

<comment><USER10> HN is a very nice place that I feel bad telling people about it just to come and ruin it like many Internet forums I've seen in the past. From all the people I know there are maybe 5 that have a place here and most are already long time readers.

<comment><USER11> Yep, I never link to HN on social media.

I'll talk about it in person with people I know at work or I'd mention it on my old blog - but I don't want to risk it to the "unwashed masses".

But maybe I'm being too cautious - it is pretty in-depht here. That alone might dissuade most of the shitposters. And the karma-requirements for downvoting seem sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apparently one common fix for this according to some Reddit post is to use framecapping. It might be that i am too biased against delta timing in games (ie. using the time delta between frames for animations) because i've seen _way_ too many games break using it and is the reason i run any game older than ~7 years with framecapping enabled, but given the description on the site then i guess what is really happening is that since the game uses mostly baked lighting, they sample the environment lighting to apply to the entities and then -since the sampled positions, be it probes or lightmap lumels, are few and in fixed locations- they interpolate them as they entities move using the time delta between frames to make that interpolation look smooth. Then as the game runs in faster hardware, it ends up with smaller time deltas, which in turn breaks things because time deltas are evil :-P.

Though that is obviously a guess (that this is what happens, not that time deltas are evil, that is fact :-P), though i've done something similar at the past for getting light on dynamic entities from a static environment, so some things did click.

<comment><USER13> Just out of curiosity, what is the problem with delta timing and what is the alternative?

<comment><USER14> It's hard to make your game physics simulation numerically stable and consistent across a wide range of timesteps, unless you make it really complicated. Things like collision detection are often implemented in a way that only works for a certain range of object speeds and timesteps—and that's just one of many glitches that commonly result from running the physics simulation at an unintended frequency. Dividing things by unexpectedly tiny numbers can produce surprisingly big results.

The correct solution is to run the simulation on a different thread from the rendering, so that the simulation can be run at an appropriate frequency and the rendering can proceed at whatever framerate the user's hardware is capable of. The more commonly used "solution" is for the game to run the simulation and rendering on the same thread, and cap the framerate as a way to indirectly cap the simulation update frequency. Occasionally you find a game that merely _assumes_ that the framerate won't go over 60Hz, and if your monitor is faster, the game itself runs in fast-forward.

<comment><USER15> Interesting but:

1) How do you deal with hardware that can't run the simulation at the appropriate frequency?

2) How do you keep simulation and animation smooth and linear over time when facing processing oscilations if not by using time deltas?

3) Is ther a graphics/processing demanding game that doesn't use time delta?

<comment><USER16> Usually a constant time step is used, and you throttle the rate at which you run physics ticks to make that match wall clock time. It's common for game physics engines to also run iterative integrators for a fixed number of steps per tick instead of to convergence, which reduces variation in work per tick. If the system can't keep up, you start dropping physics frames.

You keep animation smooth by decoupling it from physics; the output of your physics engine will generally include at least linear and angular velocities you can use for interpolation. This kind of thing is necessary anyway if you're running your physics simulation on a server and have to communicate to the renderer over the network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Super tangential and subjective, but I found the writing in the Mass Effect games subpar. I know a lot of people think the opposite. I've spent a fair amount of time looking for games with writing I like, but it seems to be an uphill battle. Someone suggested to not play for writing, which somewhat makes sense and has led me to do more reading, which I've been thoroughly enjoying. I replaced looking for games with looking for books and find it more rewarding. That said, for the purposes of a survey, if nothing more, what game stories did you enjoy?

To start it off, Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a big deal for me (though not sure if I especially liked the story or just that it didn't get in the way), and Planescape: Torment is a favorite too (still remember the wonder with which I explored it the first time).

<comment><USER18> The older I get the more I find all games to have horrible writing. Even games I used to love like ME are painful on replay. Most conversations boil down to "I don't want to do a thing." "But I'm Commander Shepard and I'm picking the blue option." "OK, I will do the thing now!" Recent games with 'good writing' (pillars of eternity, divinity, MGS5) have all left me completely cold and wondering if I'm even playing the same game as reviewers are.

Maybe I can recommend games with a strong atmosphere instead. Like Morrowind, Deadly Premonition, Sleeping Dogs, Kentucky Route Zero, Silent Hill 2/3\. Nier Automata if you like anime (which I don't, so I didn't find it as thrilling as many game reviewers seemed to).

<comment><USER19> Have you tried Planescape: Torment? The original Deus Ex (the prequels are definitely lackluster)? VtM: Bloodlines? Life is Strange? Dishonored?

<comment> blaser-waffle +1 for VtM: Bloodlines. There is a review by a dude who goes by sseth (that's with 2 x s) that does a good job explaining why it's great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ">Since PIX does not "take screenshots" but instead _captures the sequence of D3D commands and executes them on hardware_ , we can observe that executing the commands captured from an AMD box results in the same bug when executed on Intel."

Mass Effect bugs aside, this is interesting!

Before this article, I never knew that DirectX (D3D) commands could be proxied from PC to PC; I think that's a great capability!

Also, if that's the case, and apparently it is, then it would seem like you could do something like X-Windows/X11 but for PC's running Windows over a network by proxying D3D commands... And of course, if Microsoft wants to be proprietary about that, then the same thing could probably be done with open source software using OpenGL commands, that is, proxy them over a network connection to gain an X-Windows like effect, if I am understanding the underlying technology correctly, or am I mistaken?

<comment><USER21> That is just one example among many, why most AAA studios favour proprietary APIs.

Khronos just does specifications and then lets its partners come up with actual tooling, which means that you end up with OEM specific SDKs most of them very thin in capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just finished Mass Effect (for the 342345th time) and I only encountered this on Ilos. I thought that it was just a temporary artifact on my machine ad I haven't seen it ever since.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really enjoyed this article! I'm not even a game dev, but I still found the article very approachable and engaging. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER24> Am I correct in understanding that there is a bug in `D3DXMatrixInverse`, or is it that some assumption is wrong?

<comment><USER25> No, it's not necessarily a bug but rather multiple systems working as designed, yet coming together to produce incorrect results. `D3DXMatrixInverse` makes use of hardware-implemented fast math routines by design, for performance reasons. These implementations may differ depending on the CPU model but they are all valid, provided they remain within the IEEE 754 spec.

What has happened here is that a new implementation of these fast math routines appeared that returned results that were unexpected by the game engine and the engine was not robust enough to deal with these variations. This is not too surprising as these AMD CPUs did not exist yet when the game was developed so QA will not have tested the game's compatibility with these CPUs.

The solution was to divert calls to `D3DXMatrixInverse` to another matrix inversion routine that makes use of more accurate floating point math, which produces identical results on all tested hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's awesome investigation and well written!

</comment><comment><USER27> How does Wine handle it on AMD CPUs?

<comment><USER28> It doesn't. You generally install real D3DX runtimes to run games on wine, where it then would do the same thing on AMD CPUs.

<comment><USER29> In the past 3 years or so, there is a native d3d9 implementation in mesa which is used by wine. There's also vkd3d, which is a wine implementation of dx12 on top of vulkan.

I don't think the real direct3d binaries are used by default anymore, unless you go out of your way to configure it that way.

<comment><USER30> D3DX is a user-space library, though. Separate from D3D. So if WINE or VKD3D ship their own open-source version of D3DX9, you could use that, but you could also use the original Microsoft version of the .dll - the individual numbered versions (d3dx9_31.dll, etc) exist to facilitate using the same version that your game was compiled and tested against. The D3D shader compiler (D3DCompiler) dlls are still versioned in this way for games to link against as well. If you look inside the SxS directory for a current installation of Google Chrome, you'll find a D3DCompiler_47.dll sitting in there that they deploy instead of relying on whatever the OS has available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Buying AMD GPUs has been in my experience a terrible gamble. I still remember when I had to wait months to be able to play GTA V until they released working drivers.

<comment><USER32> Same here. AMD is still a much better choice for me since since I spend 99% of my time on Linux, but the GTA V situation was something else. I ran into the same easily reproducible crash, it was reported by myself and many other users, and we waited for something like 8 or 9 months for it to be fixed.

<comment><USER33> Do you know if the problem was in the driver or in the game, there are some games that worked by accident and years later will fail to work in newer driver/windows versions. I had such a bug with Oblivion,Nvidia and Win7 but for some reason I could play the game under wine in Linux.

<comment><USER34> not the person you were responding to, but most of AMD's gpu troubles come down to the windows driver being hot garbage. They opened the linux driver enough that others can do a lot of the work for them. Things that don't work under the windows driver usually work great under linux.

Radeon Tech Group's in-house software support has always been abysmal since the days they were called ATI. It's been a chronic problem for both their drivers and their GPGPU ecosystem, NVIDIA can afford more engineers and better engineers to develop libraries that support the ecosystem and to make sure that everything works properly on their hardware. AMD's greatest successes have been when they get the open-source community to maintain and develop something for them.

Yes, AMD is operating on a much smaller budget but in the end it doesn't matter too much to the consumer when they can't play Overwatch for 9 months because AMD has a driver bug that causes "render target lost" errors leading to competitive bans for repeated disconnects, or... whatever the fuck happened with Navi.

Part of what you are paying for when you buy a graphics card is the ongoing software support, and AMD has always fallen flat on their face into a dumpster of rusty used syringe needles in that department.

<comment><USER35> > but most of AMD's gpu troubles come down to the windows driver being hot > garbage.

That definitely needs some evidence to back it up. In my experience, most game rendering code is hot garbage that has been hammered just enough to work on the tested platforms (read: mostly nVidia).

> They opened the linux driver enough that others can do a lot of the work for > them.

While there are outside contributions, most work on radeonsi (OpenGL) and the amdgpu kernel driver is done by AMD employees. The AMD Linux driver is better because it has less legacy code, can share more work with other drivers, can benefit from users who are more used to filing detailed bug reports and test development builds, and yes because users and other interested parties (Valve, Red Hat, ...) can contribute fixes for their pet issues - but it is still AMD doing most of the work.

For Vulkan on Linux with AMD graphics the most popular driver is entirely community developed. But AMD's Vulkan driver also works from what I hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So the last PC I built was with the Intel 9700 and that was ~2 years ago. At that time Ryzen was pretty good but didn't have the proven track record or price-performance it does now.

Now, in terms of pure price-performance, i think I'd want to buy Ryzen but... this sort of stuff is what scares me off AMD. I just want my crap to work. Reading some of the comments here, one commenter suggested there's an instruction to find an approximate determinant of a matrix where both Intel and AMD are standards compliant but those instructions produce different results on each chip.

Of course I don't know if this is true or not but saving $200 on a PC build is just not something that justifies (to me) dealing with kind of issue or, worse, potentially dealing with issues like these.

I buy NVidia for pretty much the same reason.

<comment><USER37> > saving $200 on a PC build is just not something that justifies (to me) > dealing with kind of issue

This kind of issue.. you mean a visual glitch with limited scope and available work arounds in a more than decade old video game?

Yes, what a serious issue. /s

<comment><USER34> Or the Destiny 2 bug (broken RDRAND implementation). Or the segfault bug (manufacturing error with broken uop cache). etc etc. There have been a fair number of teething problems affecting AMD users.

They are not incorrect that there is a certain turnkey nature of using Intel, and certain merits to using a core that has been basically only incrementally refined for the last 10 years.

And yes, Intel has processor errata too, but AMD had to work through some major ones because it was a brand new architecture. They also chose not to take corrective action for some rather major ones - the fix for the segfault bug should have been disabling uop cache, or to do a recall, instead they just let people go on thinking the intermittent crashes they experience (including in windows) are software-related. They entirely declined to patch the Ryzen Take-A-Way bug, which leaks metadata about page table layouts and breaks KASLR on their processors, leaving users even more vulnerable to spectre v2. etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to promote engineering culture in a company? - <AUTHOR> The company I work in has different departments like Mobile app dev, core engineering, data analysis, depts for different products and so on. There is generally a lot of cross collaboration at the management level but nothing at the engineering level. Engineering seems to work in Silos. Anyways, I felt the company should do something about it which, with blessing of the CTO, resulted in a Hackathon. The Hackathon was a great success and now the CTO wants to discuss more ways to improve collaboration among engineers.<p>So now, I want to ask HN, what has helped to promote engineering culture in your company? Are there other things you do except Hackathons? Also, for Hackathons, what frequency do you think is the best? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? <comment><USER2> At our small company we have weekly engineering demos where anyone can demo something they've learned which they think would be helpful for others. Could be as small as an editor plugin, a git trick, an AWS service they've been working with, etc. We encourage short, less polished demos, because some of the best demos are spur of the moment. The longest demos are 10-15 min each.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it organised? Is there a call for presentations a day before?

It is a Cool Idea. Thanks for suggesting it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Awesome rating widget - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bandraszyk/awesome-rating

<comment> tpindel-rsp Thanks for this contribution. It is much better than standard ui.bootstrap.rating.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great! I was looking for such library.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice library, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> like it! really nice

</comment><comment><USER5> Truly awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6> good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> awesome ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice and useful. Starred the repo.</comment>


Technical Blogging: Turn your expertise into a remarkable online presence - <AUTHOR> http://technicalblogging.com/

<comment><USER2> I haven't read the book but technical blogging has been really working out well for me. Thanks to my blog ( <http://blog.vjeux.com/> ) I've been contacted by many companies and recruited for an awesome job!

I've written an article about all the benefits of a technical blog if you are interested in my views on the subject :)

[http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical- blog-i...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2011/analysis/start-a-technical-blog-its- worth-it.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought this book in beta and used the information to launch <http://os- blog.com>. Probably the best testimonial I can give is telling you about my own success thus far: It's been a little under a month and analytics has the site pegged at ~30k unique visitors (thanks in no small part to HN).

The book won't transform you into a blogging sensation overnight, but it does have a lot of good information on technical blogging. If you're thinking about blogging about technical things, you should buy it.

<comment><USER4> > used the information to launch <http://os-blog.com>

What engine are you using?

<comment><USER3> No engine, it's just static HTML files generated by Jekyll. Source is here: <https://github.com/robertseaton/os-blog>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blogging is something I've tried to do a few times, but have never stuck with it. I bought this book the other day, during the pragprog sale. I'm really looking forward to reading it and hoping it will teach/inspire me to give tech blogging an honest try.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice to find this shared here. Been blogging for almost 6 years now, yet I found many useful ideas and tips in Antonio's book. (Disclaimer: I work in Antonio's team, so I got to read the book from its very first chapters.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to sound negative, I'll basically buy anything recommended by Derek Sivers, but this isn't much of an article or review.

<comment><USER7> I agree. This may well be an excellent book, but the linked page triggers a huge number of my scam/self-help/multi-level-marketing/blowhard alarms. My first impression on seeing that page is that it looks remarkably like one of those "Work At Home, $80/hour, This Housewife Got Rich In Her Spare Time!" sites.

<comment><USER8> It's actually $120/hour. ;-) More seriously, you'll probably find the book to be less "marketing heavy" than that. Here is what Peter Cooper, of Ruby Inside fame had to say about the book (he was an early reviewer):

"Technical Blogging confidently straddles the line of showing exactly what a blog can do for you or your career, while being grounded and practical enough for us technical folks not to start running away from marketing speak. Antonio has done a great job."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want a static blog without the hassles try <http://calepin.co> Tag line is: "Im in ur dropbox publishing ur markdownz"

<comment><USER4> > Custom domain. Not yet, but stay tuned.

For SEO and other reasons, you may want your 'Internet presence' on your own domain. Especially to self-promote.

<comment><USER10> Custom domains are for hipsters and corporations, not personal blogs.

Get a clue!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER10> Skip the book. Start a blog, add Google Ads. Done.

Or post everything for free (without compensation) on Facebook or Google+. I'm sure they appreciate the traffic.

I think it's great that so many people are publishing via Facebook, Google+, but they are really losing out on advertising revenue.

Because seriously: despite anything you post on Facebook or Google+, you are providing value for Facebook/Google, and you are getting shafted!

Fun to watch the fleecing going on!

<comment><USER8> > Skip the book. Start a blog, add Google Ads. Done.

Spoiler: this is a very bad idea, and not an uncommon attitude among programmers. I make thousands of dollars from my technical blogs every month, and I certainly don't do so from Google Ads (it would require me to have a huge amount of traffic to pull it off).

Elsewhere you said "Custom domains are for hipsters and corporations".

At this point I'm not sure if you are serious or trolling.</comment></comment>


Amazon Goes After Dropbox, Google, Microsoft with Unlimited Cloud Drive Storage - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/26/amazon-goes-after-dropbox-google-microsoft-with-unlimited-cloud-drive-storage/ <comment><USER2> "We may terminate the Agreement or restrict, suspend or terminate your use of the Service at our discretion without notice at any time, including if we determine that your use violates the Agreement, is improper, substantially exceeds or differs from normal use by other users, or otherwise involves fraud or misuse of the Service or harms our interests or those of another user of the Service."

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201376540&ref_=cd_tou_fp&?ref_=cd_unlimited_tou)

<comment><USER3> "...if we determine that your use [...] substantially exceeds or differs from normal use by other users..."

Why even bother putting "Unlimited" if they are just going to kick off the power users?

<comment><USER4> Because you have to put a limit somewhere before people start to exploit it.

<comment><USER5> In which case it's not unlimited, in which case they're lying.

The first person who gets kicked off for this should file a false advertising suit. The marketing doesn't get to give you something which the ToS immediately takes away.

Maybe then these idiots (yes, idiots, because it takes an _astounding_ lack of either morals or intelligence) will learn that _lying to your customers_ is not okay.

<comment><USER6> Other "idiots" that are "lying" about "unlimited" and should be sued for "false advertising."

[https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing)

[https://www.dropbox.com/plans](https://www.dropbox.com/plans)

[https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/driveforwork/](https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/driveforwork/)

[https://www.box.com/pricing/](https://www.box.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER5> If they boot someone off for that particular reason, then yes, they absolutely should.

Again - explain to me how Verizon can be successfully sued for "unlimited" data (with throttling) and how these companies cannot with "unlimited" data (with undisclosed caps).

Explain how the two cases are substantially different, please. Just because Verizon are generally bastards and the companies above are generally not does not make false advertising okay or legal.

<comment><USER6> > explain to me how Verizon can be successfully sued for "unlimited" data

Just curious, but you say "successfully sued." I assume you mean they were sued, went to trial, and lost. I've actually tried looking this up, but I can't find this case. I've never really paid much attention to that, so forgive me.

<comment><USER5> Found it: [http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/verizon- wireles...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/verizon-wireless- agrees-settle-deceptive-marketing-investigation)

It was a settlement, rather than an outright adverse ruling, but the net effect was the same - someone had to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to cut it out, they did, and had to pay out for their trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see how Dropbox wins this. Dropbox isn't going to be able to beat Amazon on price reselling Amazon's own cloud. Dropbox doesn't have any complements, like Google does with Google Docs and Gmail and Android or Microsoft has with Windows and Office or Amazon has with their MP3 marketplace and their Fire devices. It's the whole Jobs thing with 'you're a feature, not a product.'

<comment><USER8> At least for now, Dropbox wins with better software and features. Google drive has crapped out on me several times in the last years, forcing me to re- download everything from the server to my local box. I've also had cases where it couldn't resolve a sync issue and split a file into two versions. Neither of these has happened with dropbox.

Given Google's obvious prowess with servers, I'm actually amazed Google drive isn't better than it is.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you that DropBox is the gold standard in "it just works" but I have been using Google Drive for about a year now on a 1 TB plan consuming 850 GB of space without a single issue.

I store everything on there including JPGs, AVCHD videos, TrueCrypt volumes and every other kind of file type. Never had a single sync issue or slow sync speed.

OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) on the other hand... That constantly left filename.machinename split versions and the sync speed was uselessly slow.

<comment><USER10> I tried Google Drive about a year ago, and it appeared to choke on large files (I had a couple of 4Gb VMs), and pausing during attempted uploads always resulted in having to start over the upload from scratch. Still sticking with CrashPlan for now.

<comment><USER11> CrashPlan is a backup service and not directly comparable to standard file storage services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This strikes me as being somewhat similar to the historic relationship between auto makers and dealers. Before dealer protection laws (that we now hate so much), an auto maker could really just put any dealer out of business once the dealer had shown that there was a viable market in that area.

It's a few years later and now we have several businesses who's business model is essentially reselling amazon services (s3), and once they've shown it's a viable business (dropbox) we can expect amazon to come in and undercut them.

There are two factors that might prevent amazon from being too successful in the consumer storage area.

1\. Dropbox's UI, apps, and filesystem integration are both very well designed and pretty technically complex. It might seem trivial to design something as good, but I promise you it's not.

2\. Consumer storage pricing is in a race to the bottom, but consumer storage volume is increasing exponentially. Once people start uploading all their home videos to this service, will amazon be able to afford to run this business unit?

</comment><comment><USER13> FYI everyone here, this is not even sync. It's a drag and drop to upload applet :)

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201376690)

"Note: The Cloud Drive Sync application (formerly, the "Cloud Drive desktop application") is no longer available for download. If you already have the application installed on your computer, you can continue to use it. However, if you uninstall the application, you won't be able to reinstall it from the website."

<comment><USER14> Sad. I would personally love to mount a drive so that I didn't have to have nearly 100gb .raw files on my laptop but could still access them any time.

That thing is just useless for any purpose.

<comment><USER13> Agree 100%

If they had selective sync with storage at that price, it would be a game changer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems many people here commenting haven't tried it. It has no sync! The online interface is awful!

This is currently such a bad product that its not likely to be a threat to any existing solution.

Try signing up and seeing it for yourself. You will neither be able to sync or upload a lot of content, nor use it once uploaded given the poor online interface.

<comment><USER15> Might want to check some facts here. There is an Amazon Cloud Drive app for Windows and Mac that does syncing. It's not as advanced as Dropbox but it's about on par with the Google Drive app.

Their online interface isn't terrible either - it's actually surprisingly modern for an Amazon product. There's actually two views - one for files and one for photos (just like Dropbox and Carousel). Again the file browser is about as bare bones as it gets without document preview etc, but the Cloud Drive Photos view is pretty decent.

Dropbox is miles ahead of Amazon in their UI and other features, but I think for many very basic users, Amazon's offering will be sufficient for simple backup/sync operations.

<comment><USER13> FYI their FAQ says the sync is "old" and the new tool which will be updated is drop to upload only.

Also, their file interface is far from modern. You can't drag and drop, right click to share, anything expected from all of their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I currently pay about $120 per year for 1 TB of storage through Google Drive. I use about 850 GB of that. After using all the various popular cloud drive services, I can say this isn't about $ per GB anymore. $120 per year for 1 TB is such a low amount of money that it becomes meaningless.

The next hurdle they need to overcome is sync speed. When you're dealing with that much data (especially when made up of many tiny files like JPGs) it becomes a significant engineering challenge. The sync speed with some services can slow to a crawl. In my own use, Google Drive and DropBox have been the best. OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) was unusable at certain file counts. I haven't tried Amazon though. I would give it a shot if I go over the 1 TB mark but would probably not try it just to try to save $60 per year.

<comment><USER16> Anecdotal, but I just synced >10k files from OneDrive to the local drive, and the sync saturated my internet connection (100 Mbit). (On Windows 10.)

<comment><USER17> OneDrive has been a mess:

"Prior to Windows 8.1, we had two sync experiences. One used on Windows 7/8/Mac to connect to the consumer service, and a second sync engine to connect to the commercial service (OneDrive for Business). In Windows 8.1 we introduced a third sync engine..."

This is Chris Jones, super smart guy, long-time vet of Microsoft, and ... indicative of the kind of incredibly stupid shit only Microsoft can pull off. Bonus points for the phrase "sync experiences" which indicates smart-dude- weak-thinking at a legendary level. Sinofskyesque.

In the blog post he sort of admits the fuckup. Sort of. But who cares. It's March and things already kicking ass on Mac, finally. After Windows 10 ships it'll be fine. Five years late, but fine. Not like Dropbox got their nonsense figured out with the long and generous head start. And not like Apple's done any better, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is something very unclear to me regarding the usage of the cloud drive for kindle related stuff. I mean, until now every ebook I purchased on amazon was available on amazon cloud. Also, they offered this option to documents you sent to your device by email. How is this new cloud drive going to affect me ? They already told me in the email that the current 5 GB plan is no longer available and has been replaced with a free 3-month trial of one of the Unlimited plans. The existing documents are available to download and view but if I want to upload new files I must select one of the Unlimited plans. So no more cloud storage for kindle (of course, unless I choose to pay according to new plans) ?

<comment><USER19> It looks to me like the "send to kindle" feature is broken unless you sign up for one of the free trial options. That fits with the email they sent out: "In order to upload new files you will need to pick one of the free 3-month trials". I suppose I can still move things around using dropbox, but it's not quite the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> These "Unlimited" offers now bore me. I'd much rather they capture what the actual offer is - is it 100 GB with 50 GB/month Upload, 50 GB/month Download? 500 GB with 100 GB/month upload, 1 TB/month download?

Just be honest with me and tell me what you are offering, don't play games with "Unlimited"

<comment><USER21> If only there was a cloud storage provider that did just that.

If only they were hacker/unix focused and had been around since 2001 and even had a HN readers discount.

If only ...

<comment><USER20> Rsync and Tarsnap are two of the of services that are excellent in this nature. In particular, I'm almost 100% certain that if a user goes crazy, and stores 1 TB+ on Rsync, that they wouldn't even blink.

Also incredibly attractive about Rsync, is that if you already have a lot of exposure to AWS, then Rsync is an _awesome_ secondary store, as, based on my limited understanding and reading of their FAQs, their is _no_ connection between AWS and Rsync. Should AWS drop off the face of the earth, or some exploit result in an extended data disaster, Rsync is in no way impacted.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure you're responding to the rsync creator.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely, but he was too modest to promote himself so I, an disinterested third party did it for him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they don't know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up."

Моst people in the US and Canada have highly asymmetrical Internet connections, so uploading gigabytes of accumulated media is hardly an enticing proposition. I wonder if that's an important factor of why the cloud providers are so willing to offer "unlimited" storage. If it was Eastern Europe, on the other hand, they'd probably be swamped with data in days, if not hours.

<comment><USER24> I suspect it's one factor--in addition to the fact that unlimited, like free, sounds really good in marketing copy to most people. As a data point, I think it took me something like 3 months to do my initial 1.3TB or so backup to Backblaze. So somewhere in the few TB range is probably going to be the practical maximum for most consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do not think Amazon is going after Dropbox, Google and Microsoft with this, as the article title implies. Thus far, Amazon is offering a different service: Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive all synchronize your files (selective or all) Amazon's Cloud Drive does not.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it a folder?

Dropbox is a folder. Everyone in my family understands "put things in this folder, they sync automatically." I want that but at this price!

<comment><USER27> It is not a folder. Once I realized this I uninstalled. I don't want to redownload files every time I need to work on them.

<comment><USER28> It seems I want the opposite. I don't want to have the files on my local machine. I want storage that is bigger than what my local machine has. Hopefully at least one of us will get what we want from this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am glad to see more competition in this space! I frequently advise non-tech family and friends to choose two cloud providers, and use them to replicate important files.

I stopped being a paid Dropbox customer last year over the Condi Rice issue (otherwise, a great service) but I still use their free tier. I also pay for extra Google Drive storage, which I think is a good deal. The best deal, for my use cases however, is Office 365 home edition: my wife and I each get one terrabyte of cloud storage and up to date versions of all of the Office 365 productivity software (and the web versions are nice running Linux) -- all for $100/year.

I am tempted to sign up for the new Amazon offering, but I already feel I am so well replicated: every photo I take goes automatically to Google+, OndeDrive, and Dropbox; almost all of my working files are inside of OneDrive so get synced; I created compressed archive files for projects and with date stamps save them away in Google Drive; projects stored at bitbucket and github.

It will be interesting to see how well Amazon supports mobile devices and multiple operating systems.

For me one of the biggest wins of cloud storage is being able to choose what is not replicated to my laptops, etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would feel better about Amazon's offering if they were more transparent regarding government requests. According to the EFF[0] Amazon doesn't tells users about government data requests or publish transparency reports.

[0]: [https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2014](https://www.eff.org/who-has- your-back-2014)

<comment><USER31> no doubt. amazon <heart> government.[0]

[0][http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/how-cia- partner...](http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/how-cia-partnered- amazon-and-changed-intelligence/88555/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Oh these unlimited services. Just tried to upload some files:

> The file 1.zip did not upload because it is larger than 2 GB.

<comment><USER32> Update. Limitation only applied to web UI: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201376710)

Though as mentioned before app not currently available. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well the takeaway from me as a Prime customer is now I can back up almost all my photos to the cloud (hi NSA!) ... in fact if there was a convenient app on my iPhone to automatically sync it, I'd sign up. Maybe in the future, Amazon will offer some cool services for tagging and searching my photos. Makes everyone suddenly want to become a high-res DSLR fanatic.

What I see is that Amazon is simply trying to maximize the power of Bundling. It's all about that Prime, 'bout that Prime, no limit. (Except the unofficial one which only a few people will run into, but the gamble is that the positive PR will attract more customers than the negative PR. Of course, they're also attracting a lawsuit from other companies.

I don't know what they're smoking.

</comment><comment><USER34> When you are spending almost $7B a year on shipping, and your customers are only paying $3B for said shipping, it's time to start padding the Prime features so you can take advantage of the good will when you make necessary adjustments later.

<comment><USER35> Interesting. Where'd you get those figures? I googled around a bit but came up short.

<comment><USER34> They're in here, see 3:45. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvwCcEP74Q](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvwCcEP74Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> OVH tried to do that with their Hubic service, and people were just abusing the limits, sending in data from multiple machines 24/7 ([https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ovh.com%2Ffr%2Fa895.hubic_une_premiere_annee_epique&edit- text=) ) . They now limit at 10TB for the old "unlimited" price.

This might explain this clause: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269908)

</comment><comment><USER37> "Unlimited" should be banned from advertising slogans. It's like an "all you can eat" buffet that kicks out the customers that eat too much. It's a trick that companies employ because nobody reads their TOCs that let them kick out power users. It's misleading advertising. Why not promise people 100TB of storage? Because then you'd actually have to live up to your promises. Since living up to promises of "unlimited" data isn't feasible, this strategy should be banned. Same goes for Yahoo! Mail and their "unlimited" storage.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can't see how Dropbox wouldn't end up getting crushed in this fight. Just recently, they reclaimed all the promo/referral/college storage I had, and shrunk my space from 40GB to 15GB. Pay up $10 per month or lose all your data.

I shopped around, and got a $2 per month from Google Drive. The product is pretty much on parity with Dropbox on the Mac, and works exactly the same way. Yes, I'll take that 80% discount, thank you.

<comment><USER39> It's mostly, right now, because Amazon's desktop software is _so_ bad. Whereas with Dropbox and Google Drive, I can simply save files to a directory on my computer and can be assured that Dropbox/Drive are uploading them automatically and keeping them in sync, with Amazon, they seem to have forgotten about Sync all together. There are files that I add to the cloud. Should I need to work on them again, then I download them from the cloud, edit them, and add them back.

This workflow sucks, and it's worth paying to not have to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> All cloud storage services offer unlimited storage in one form or another. It will be interesting to see who comes up with the most seamless solution for managing limited on device memory storage with unlimited storage on the cloud. Users may also want different files to be synced on different devices. I have only used Dropbox among all of these services, and its current manual Selective Sync is a clumsy way to manage data.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this a drive, or storage?

In other words, do I have to have one corresponding drive on my system, and the storage is limited to at most the size of that one physical drive?

</comment><comment><USER41> Could Amazon put the squeeze on Dropbox by raising the price of S3?

Would that be a shot in the foot due to a reduction in sales for S3 but worth it to get into cloud storage?

<comment><USER42> I would be surprised if Dropbox hasn't looked at the alternatives.

S3 is pretty expensive as is.

<comment><USER43> There is no way Dropbox is paying stock S3 pricing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Isn't this just begging people to find the actual limits? Couldn't Dropbox cut their own costs by using the unlimited service, and then make money on offering better service? Would amazon just throttle them in response, or ...?

Edit; ivank found the catch, a few minutes before I posted this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269908)

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't trust Amazon from a privacy point of view so I'm certainly not going to be hosting private files on their servers.

I like Dropbox because it does basically one thing and does it well. I don't need to edit docs, collaborate, etc. with it - I've Google Drive for those purposes - but it suits me perfectly for my core backup requirements and at a price I'm not too bothered by.

<comment><USER32> If you using Dropbox you already host your private files on Amazon S3 servers.

You better use client-side encryption if you want to keep your files safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I love the Dropbox service, but if Amazon will provide iOS and Mac clients that work well and the Mac client turns out to be less of a CPU hog than the awful Dropbox Mac client, I'll switch right away.

Dropbox is constantly the second highest average energy user over the last 8 hours on my laptop, impacting battery life. It shows up high on the CPU usage list all the time.

</comment><comment><USER47> Amazon Cloud Drive is useless because it has no synchronization. You need to manually upload and download files whenever they change.

Useless!

</comment><comment><USER48> The other tech giants (Google, Microsoft, Apple) already have consumer cloud storage services, so I am not surprised to see Amazon launching one too.

Now I just hope there will be a standard for mobile apps to use cloud storage, to get out of this swamp with each app integrating with storage services individually.

<comment><USER49> This isn't a new service - the cheap/unlimited pricing is what's new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I just looked at the Box stock. Google Finance says institutional ownership of 0%. Never seen something like this before - perhaps gFinance has buggy data or else the smart money is not on Box. Perhaps similar story on Dropbox. Not sure when their IPO is, but I hear the rumblings of it.

<comment><USER51> I think vast majority of Box's IPO buyers were institutional investors (not counting their existing investors before the IPO). Maybe the reports are not filed yet or Google hasn't aggregated recent data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's happen when trial access expire? Will files remain accessible without payment?

I know that Google Drive don't allow to uploads until you pay for storage or remove files that above limit, but they're still available. Interesting what happen in case of Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's not going after Google Drive as it has no content application offering. Google Drive has a comprehensive one: create spreadsheets and all kinds of other documents _in_ the cloud. Collaborate on those documents using apps such as Hangouts, G+, GMail.

</comment><comment><USER53> This looks promising, down the line, to replace Dropbox (which I use for things I don't care about or don't need to collaborage on--SpiderOak Hive for everything else). But I think I want to see it exist for some length of time before jumping on it.

<comment><USER54> I got the Spideroak unlimited deal when that existed. I don't think I will be changing anytime soon. The client-side encryption is greatness and makes the cost very easy to live with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm actually upset by this -- I'm on the $10/year for 20gb plan (I use unlimited photos, the 20gb are just home videos). I'm sure Amazon figured there would be a few people like me who wouldn't like this, but it still sucks.

</comment><comment><USER56> "covering all kinds of media from videos and music through to PDF documents"

Do they not just accept all files? This makes me think there's a set list of filetypes.

</comment><comment><USER57> The photo side could be good for my phone's photos, but not for my real photography. I have to have sync for photos that I am actually going to do work on.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't have a lot to say about the OP, but I can say that this thread is 100% more enjoyable to read after installing the Cloud to Butt extension.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm adding support for this to Arq (my backup app) right now. Unlimited backups for $5/month with no data transfer fees sounds awesome to me!

</comment><comment><USER60> OneDrive already offers unlimited storage!

</comment><comment><USER61> Amazingly, the top comment on this post discusses philosophy of mortality, based on the ToS of corporations.

</comment><comment><USER62> Not sure what would have gone in deciding that they don't need anything between 5GB and unlimited.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have not played with Amazon Cloud Drive yet, does it allows for selective synchronization?

</comment><comment><USER63> Seems very good for archival storage. But then what becomes of Glacier storage?

</comment><comment><USER64> Does any service allow me to stop syncing node_modules folders?

<comment><USER65> Hi,

On MEO Cloud ([https://meocloud.pt/downloads](https://meocloud.pt/downloads)), you can create a .cloudignore file in the root of the main sync folder. The syntax is the same as .gitignore files. ([http://git- scm.com/docs/gitignore](http://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore)).

Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Still cannot share folders on AWS Cloud Drive :(

</comment><comment><USER67> I have Amazon Prime yet I'm paying for Google $2/mo to keep my photos. Google+ features for photos are just awesome!

</comment><comment><USER68> how about bandwidth bills? is there a flat fee for those?

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder how much it would hurt gmail if amazon offered their own version.

<comment><USER70> I'd actually like something more like thunderbird/gmail for multiple accounts, where the storage/client is mine, but the imap accounts it connects to are on other services, with multiple account support...</comment></comment>


Valentine greeting with bash script (terminal) - <AUTHOR> http://afshinm.github.com/valentine_script/

<comment><USER2> I now have something new to link to whenever someone posts something suggesting that a "pipe curl to shell" command isn't insane!

[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/42921614369/omg-r...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/42921614369/omg- rm-rf-in-a-valentine-bash-script-and-its-partly)

</comment><comment><USER3> That script has:

rm -rf ~

on line 22.

EDIT: Line was added by <https://github.com/williame>

<comment><USER4> I can't believe the guy merged that pull request. What was he thinking?

<comment><USER5> he came back with another pull request to revert the change .. which the closed without merging .. <https://github.com/afshinm/valentine_script/pull/3>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > bash <(curl http...

Stopped right there.

</comment><comment><USER7> asking you to download straight to bash? Crazy!!!

That the 'exploit' is hosted on github, though, makes it interesting:

You can't tell ahead of time what you'll be served, but you can tell what exploit you got served...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I know what you say but that's why I made a github for that script. BTW, I think downloading bash script and run that is a little bit difficult!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> williame gave a good lesson! Seriously, you just download a script randomly and execute it without first checking it. And I'd probably understand if it was a heroku script or something but a valentine script seriously?!

</comment><comment><USER9> It is always a good time to remember that bash might not always live in /bin/, but +1 for a bash script clearly marked as "bash".

<comment><USER6> Yes, even though it's trivial to make it POSIX-compatible:

<https://github.com/afshinm/valentine_script/pull/1>

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Historical Knowledge Philosophically Interesting? - <AUTHOR> https://newramblerreview.com/book-reviews/philosophy/is-historical-knowledge-philosophically-interesting <comment><USER2> This is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Attempting to write about a historical event disturbs it. Even so, the metaphysics of history is extremely philosophically interesting. I don't think it matters so much on what day a given event happened or even who was responsible for it. But the economic, cultural, and scientific conditions surrounding the event are critical to understand and relate to our current world.

</comment><comment><USER3> This may be interesting to philosophers, but this discussion is already 40 years old in the philosophy of history. We keep running in circles when new books keep setting themselves off against 80 year old analytical philosophies of history.

</comment><comment><USER4> shared history makes up a huge part of the social consciousness, so yes, definitely philosophicly interesting.

But then, what isn't?</comment>


Ask HN: Working in the USA as a young Canadian, no degree - <AUTHOR> I'm working with someone in the US, remotely, on a side project. We believe this will turn into something legit, at which point we'll have to work in the USA.<p>How would I go about working in the US as a Canadian with no degree? <comment><USER2> Best bet would be looking to the TN Visa (which engineers/developers are eligible for) which is probably the most painless solution. I don't think a degree is nessecary although it would be best to check on the us immigration site.

If you can't get a TN Visa, your best bet would be a HB-1 or a greencard. - both if which are hard to get and require a US sponsor. For HB1 I've heard the for companies under 5 yesrd in age it can be difficult(and expensive with lawyer fees) to sponsor a candidate. However if you plan on living in the US beyond your visa both the TN and HB-1 won't help - you cannot seek P.R. wih these visas, so st this point a greencard is your best bet.

The fastest way to get a green card is to "be a notable person" which means you have to have at least two articles written about you and/or have publications in field that you are studying. At this point I would really talk to an experienced immigration lawyer (preferably wih experience with startups) to advise you on the best plan of action.

<comment><AUTHOR> TN Qualifications [1]

\- the profession is recognized under NAFTA; and

\- the alien possesses the specific criteria for that profession [2]; and

\- the prospective position requires someone in that professional capacity; and

\- the alien is going to work for a U.S. employer.

[1] [http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in- america/...](http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in-america/tn- visas-professionals-under-nafta.html)

[2] [http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in- america/...](http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in- america/professions-covered-by-nafta.html)

Perfect. I have to see if I can cash in the 3 years I did of software engineering for some diploma or certificate at a local college, which I'm sure I can.

The U.S. employer. If my friend incorporates, then brings me on board, is that viable?

<comment><USER3> I suggest you first consult with a US immigration attorney for these sorts of questions. The internet is full of bad advice. Work visas generally have an emphasis on being a skilled professional (i.e: education and/or many years of experience). FYI - TN status is granted when you cross the border, entirely at the border official's discretion.

<comment><USER4> As of October 2012 you can now apply for TN status in advance by mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you manage to get $100k in funding (from a VC, sales, crowdfunding, whatever), and you own 50%+ of the company, you can get an E2 visa to temporarily operate in the US. Wait times for the required interview are about 5 months & the amount of paperwork means you'll need a lawyer. IIRC its valid for 2 years but you can extend it. The emphasis is on bringing jobs to the US.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was in a similar situation, Canadian and had a fulltime job by legit US company, but no unversity degree. Lived in SF for 4 months. We hired a good immingration lawyer who specialized in tech workers.

After months of work we weren't able to get a Visa. H1B and others are pretty dependent on having a degree or involved gambling that you could make it through the border and get a TN visa.

Otherwise you need 12 years work experience. 1 year of school is equivalent to 3 years experience (in their eyes), and you need 4 years of school to get entry via advanced degree.

It didnt matter that I had all of the required skill and a strong job offer.

</comment><comment><USER7> As others noted, the system is heavily based on degree status, but there is one visa class that isn't:

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-1_visa](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-1_visa)

But it's tricky and may not apply.

Consider getting a degree, they're cheap in canada.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would suggest you research further but they are usually strict in your degree matching your occupation. I'm almost certain a degree is a requirement in each scenario.

</comment><comment><USER9> I got an offer from Uber...and it looks like I won't be able to take it for the same reasons :(</comment>


Looking at your program's structure in Go 1.7 - <AUTHOR> https://pauladamsmith.com/blog/2016/08/go-1.7-ssa.html <comment><USER2> This sort of visualization would be nice for LLVM IR! The Go implementation is located here: [https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/cmd/compile/int...](https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/cmd/compile/internal/gc/ssa.go)

<comment><USER3> Why not use a proper graph? [http://pp.ipd.kit.edu/firm/GraphSnippets](http://pp.ipd.kit.edu/firm/GraphSnippets)

<comment><USER4> Because you will end up with unwieldly graphs like these:

[https://twitter.com/chewxy/status/433807908875145216](https://twitter.com/chewxy/status/433807908875145216)

[https://twitter.com/chewxy/status/433811541373116416](https://twitter.com/chewxy/status/433811541373116416)

This is from an old JITting Javascript engine I wrote in Go... a simple program like this:

        function clamp(x, min, max) {
     	y = 2
     	if (x < min) {
     		x = min
     	} else if (x > max) {
     		x = max
     	}
     	return x
        }

can generate pngs that are thousands of pixels wide and high (depending on what the nodesep and ranksep were set).

I wish I did think of the visualization that Go uses. That's fantastic compared to graphs

<comment><USER3> Graphviz/dot sucks. Here is yComp for the same function: [https://imgur.com/a/5eP9k](https://imgur.com/a/5eP9k)

The blocks and red edges represent the control flow graph and I can easily see the two if structures.

It lets you zoom. Mouseover nodes to get more details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must admit I was kind of hoping they'd fixed their horrible requirements for your directory structure, interesting article nonetheless

<comment><USER6> If you mean the $GOPATH directory notation, then I beg to differ, it is one of the favorite things about Go for me, because it is the repo which has all my Go code.

For other languages I have a `code` folder which has individual language folders and it contains project. Go has it by default.

<comment><USER7> That's what sucks though. I don't want a "gocode" folder and a "code" folder. It also doesn't fit very well in a monorepo with mixed languages.

We had a small benchmark tool written in Go. And people simply couldn't build it, they always came to me after banging their head trying.

This is basically what all of them did:

        $ cd <folder with all their projects and code>
        $ git clone <repo>
        $ cd <repo>
        $ go build

And obviously it failed because it wasn't in a "src" folder (it was in a git, projects or code folder) nor had the $GOPATH environment variable set. But worst was probably the missing import path structure, i.e. "github.com/<company>/<repo>" that people simply just didn't get.

They just want to clone anywhere and run "go build".

<comment><USER8> > But worst was probably the missing import path structure, i.e. > "github.com/<company>/<repo>" that people simply just didn't get.

You obviously didn't vendor your dependencies in your project's vendor directory.

<comment><USER9> Vendoring doesn't work outside $GOPATH

<comment><USER10> Don't work outside $GOPATH. Set a temporary one if you want a completely isolated environment for one-off building purposes.

<comment><USER11> Then what's even the point in the first place?

<comment><USER10> Development. Which is why I said "for one-off builds".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building the HumanGeo Website Map - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thehumangeo.com/2015/06/23/building-the-humangeo-website-map/

<comment><USER2> I worked with these guys on a previous engagement -- maybe I was lucky but everyone I worked with from there had a great attitude. Let's just say I thought hard about switching companies.</comment>


A Fatal Flip - <AUTHOR> https://www.econlib.org/a-fatal-flip/ <comment><USER2> Temporal preference and temporal discounting helps to solve this problem.

The reward from flipping the coin id delayed. For a average person, the probability of living healthy life at least 10-20 years is very high. The reward from flipping coin is delayed but the death is instant.

The value from for flipping the coin as a function compared to not flipping starts from 0 and grows very gradually over time.

Alter the game a little: You don't need to flip the coin instantly. You can choose any moment of your remaining healthy life to flip the coin. Once you lose your health you can't flip the coin anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your altered game does seem more desirable. But it's still interesting that the expected value calculation is correct yet most people would decline the game as initially proposed.

<comment><USER2> As I said. Temporal discounting explains it well.

For normal working age adult the choice in the 10-20 year time horizon is 50% percent change of dying now versus 99% change of living healthy life when not flipping the coin. Living forever healthy forever does not change the near future.</comment></comment></comment>


Why It is Nearly Impossible to Tickle Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/08/why-it-is-nearly-impossible-to-tickle-yourself/

<comment><USER2> i showed a friend once that he could tickle himself by plucking/poking at the tendon/muscle on your upper inner thigh (pretty much right next to your crotch). he totally had a field day playing with himself.

</comment><comment><USER3> I liked this line:

 _The Romans used to use continuous tickling of the feet as a form of torture._

I'm pretty sure I saw that in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like I'm more ticklish when I know it's coming.

</comment><comment><USER5> One problem for the 'surprise' analysis of ticklishness is that we are still ticklish when we see a 3rd party tickling us, and when there is therefore no surprise as the existence and source of the tactile sensations.

<comment><USER3> I think what is happening is that when someone else does the tickling, although we may know it's coming we don't know what exact details to expect. For example, will I tickle you lightly or firmly, and in what exact spot? Will I wriggle my fingers? How long will I persist? When we tickle ourselves not only do we know it's coming, but our brain can answer any of those questions, so it's really difficult to not anticipate any resulting sensation.

<comment><USER5> Good point, I can definitely see how this could be the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr - Tickling yourself doesn't work because you're brain is actively anticipating the sensations. There is no element of surprise.</comment>


Ask HN: Major outage in central – eastern europe? - <AUTHOR> So a bunch of us in Eastern/Central Europe can't access Slack, Amazon, Heroku, Facebook and multiple other services. Anyone got a clue what's going on? <comment><USER2> Sweden - I'm having some major general connection slowness for some sites at home, but I think this is an individual problem and nothing widespread. Work connection was fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Swiss here, havent noticed anything except my ISP having had issues the whole weekend. More offline than online, what is not normal.

</comment><comment><USER4> In Prague, Czech Republic. Everything seems to be normal.

</comment><comment><USER5> In Hungary right now, haven't noticed anything.</comment>


Bob Iger: Steve Jobs used to call me and tell my movies sucked - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-07/how-disney-bought-lucasfilm-and-its-plans-for-star-wars#p2

<comment><USER2> Interesting... I wonder if you could compile a graph of all the people Jobs communicated at this point based on all of these anecdotes that continually come out.</comment>


If Steve Jobs were handed a pen and told, "sell me this pen", how would he? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/If-Steve-Jobs-were-handed-a-pen-and-told-sell-me-this-pen-how-would-he-go-about-it-in-your-opinion/answer/Lassor-Feasley?share=1

<comment><USER2> Bravo! I'm throwing my money at the screen, but nothing is happening.</comment>


Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes - <AUTHOR> http://www.cleveralgorithms.com/

<comment><USER2> The author is this Australian academic:

<http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/personal/jbrownlee/>

<comment><USER3> I am no longer an academic. I had a go at the startup thing and am now a PhD surviving in industry :)

The book has been released (today!) as a paperback, free PDF and free online. You may also fork the content on github if your keen: <https://github.com/jbrownlee/CleverAlgorithms>

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Some guff from the back cover of the book:

Implementing an Artificial Intelligence algorithm is difficult. Algorithm descriptions may be incomplete, inconsistent, and distributed across a number of papers, chapters and even websites. This can result in varied interpretations of algorithms, undue attrition of algorithms, and ultimately bad science.

This book is an effort to address these issues by providing a handbook of algorithmic recipes drawn from the fields of Metaheuristics, Biologically Inspired Computation and Computational Intelligence, described in a complete, consistent, and centralized manner. These standardized descriptions were carefully designed to be accessible, usable, and understandable. Most of the algorithms described were originally inspired by biological and natural systems, such as the adaptive capabilities of genetic evolution and the acquired immune system, and the foraging behaviors of birds, bees, ants and bacteria. An encyclopedic algorithm reference, this book is intended for research scientists, engineers, students, and interested amateurs.

Each algorithm description provides a working code example in the Ruby Programming Language. Source code and additional resources can be downloaded from the books companion website online at <http://www.CleverAlgorithms.com>

<comment><USER4> As a (poor!) Computer Science student I want to give you much props for making a free version available. Just skimmed through a bit and the text seems very readable (good citations too). Hopefully this will finally help me close the gap between knowing the theory behind some AI techniques (especially neural networks) and actually implementing them. I'm certainly adding this to my list of books to get soon-ish.

<comment><USER3> Great, I hope you find it useful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. This is a must read for future cognitive science scholars. I think I'm going to order this as a graduation present to myself.

</comment><comment><USER6> A related paper just came out in Science a few days ago. The authors used the inner workings of a fruit fly's brain to provide a robust solution to the Maximal Independent Set (MIS) problem.

Check it out here: <http://barkai-serv.weizmann.ac.il/GroupPage/> <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/183.abstract>

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks useful. If you like this, you might also like a look at learning algorithms which are less nature-inspired, but still effective --- Support Vector Machines, for instance.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'm strongly considering working on a second volume on machine learning algorithms.

I chose nature inspired for this book because that was the general area of my graduate research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just bought a copy..thank you for making it available as a freely downloadable PDF :)

<comment><USER3> Cheers, I hope you enjoy it. Happy to answer any questions, just shoot me an email any time on jasonb _AT_ cleveralgorithms.com

<comment><USER9> Curious as to what kind of profit you're getting seeing as this is through Lulu... would like to support your efforts, is purchasing through Lulu the ideal way?

(Also curious as to the quality of their prints, I've heard in the past that code samples can be fuzzy, but I suppose that would be on a per book basis, and have not directly observed this myself)

<comment><USER3> Spreading the word is probably the best way to support the project, thanks for asking. Buying a paperback results in a few bucks royalty for me - which is nice - but will never pay for my time on this (not the point anyway).

I have two proof copies sitting here on my desk - the code does not look fuzzy to me, but as you allude, LuLu subcontracts to local printers and paperbacks may vary by region.

<comment><USER10> I work as a developer at Lulu. I had forwarded this to my colleagues and asked around and the general consensus is that code should not be look fuzzy. If the source image is fuzzy (say a screen shot of code vs fixed width font) then it would end up being fuzzy in print.

You book has been marked as a staff-pick now. Hoping that this will help in spreading the word.

<comment><USER3> great to hear, thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It was a long time ago I that was really excited by a computer science book but this is exactly the kind of data analysis/optimization/machine learning stuff that interests me. I'm definitely going to buy a copy.

The text looks very readable. The code examples are in Ruby, which I don't really know, but that's probably no problem as it's supposed to be similar to Python.

</comment><comment><USER12> Have you considered selling it on the Kindle/iBooks/B&N etc?

<comment><USER3> I am organizing a distribution package. I believe it could take up to 4-6 weeks (sorry).</comment></comment>


Williams tube – cathode ray tube used as computer memory - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube <comment><USER2> The early days of electronic computing involved desperate attempts like this to build a fast temporary storage device. Things were in better shape on the arithmetic and control side - tubes worked, although it took some time to get component reliability up to an acceptable level. ENIAC, Colossus, and the IBM 603 Multiplier all had very limited memory, under 100 numbers.

This was a huge problem for anything that needed even a little storage. Western Union built Plan 55-A, a message switching system for telegrams, sort of like Sendmail. The buffering was all paper tape punches feeding paper tape readers. This was slow, expensive, and required large buildings full of paper tape gear and a huge staff. This was used from 1948 to 1976. The whole network of US paper tape gear switching centers was then replaced by one mainframe computer.

Today, we think nothing of software that needs a few gigabytes to display a text message.

<comment><USER3> Business computing had always used more memory. IBM had very interesting devices with punch cards.

It's interesting to compare these two big strands: business vs scientific computing.

<comment><USER2> I've made the point before that, even without Colossus, Turing, or ENIAC, electronic computing would have been developed by IBM, one step at a time, for business computing. IBM came out with the IBM 601 mechanical multiplier as a punch card machine in 1931. At last, businesses could multiply order quantity times price per unit to get a total price, and invoices could be generated without manual arithmetic. IBM slowly ground forward, with the IBM 602 in 1946, which could both multiply and divide. Next was the 602A, a more reliable 602. The 602A was used for some engineering work. But it only had storage for 6 numbers, and took several seconds to do a multiply.

Then IBM introduced the IBM 603, in 1946. This used vacuum tubes, and did the same job as the 602, but much faster. IBM built 100 of those machines, to find out if they could put electronics in the field, service it, and keep it working reliably. It worked, so they followed up with the IBM 604, in 1948. This was a better 603, with more memory, more plugboard-programmed steps, and more compact packaging.

Then came the IBM 605, in 1949. This was a 604 with I/O capability. It was possible to cable together an IBM 605, an IBM 527 punch, an IBM 412-418 tabulator with card reader and printer, and some IBM 941 storage units (16 numbers each!), creating a Card Programmed Calculator. This was almost a programmable computer.[1] The program had to be on cards, and was executed as the cards were read, one at a time. Up to 10 instructions could be stored internally, allowing small loops, but otherwise you could only execute the program once before putting in more cards. There were still plugboards involved, lots of them; each machine had its own plugboard, although there were general-purpose plugboards for card-programmed mode. The whole CPC setup was clunky, but it got work done.

By now it was obvious that everything would be much easier if the program could be stored in some memory device. There were already a few "giant computers" by this point, including the IBM 701 Defense Calculator, but they were very expensive and only for huge organizations or the military. In 1953, IBM came out with the IBM 650, which was a real computer with the program and data stored on a drum rotating at 12,500 rpm. Each instruction specified the address of the next one, so you could get multiple instructions per rev by careful positioning. Don Knuth wrote an angular-optimizing assembler for the IBM 650, called SOAP III. The IBM 650 was the first mass produced computer - about 2000 were made. It was affordable by mid-sized businesses and was a big commercial success. Williams tube machines were faster, but far more expensive per bit.

This shows how much of a limitation memory devices were in the early days. Electronic arithmetic without moving parts was in a production product by 1946, but memory was very limited for years afterward. (ENIAC had storage for 20 10-digit numbers. Colossus wasn't a general-purpose computer, it was a key- tester, like a Bitcoin ASIC.) It was clear early on that stored-program computers were the way to go, but the memory cost had to come way down before programs could be stored.

Von Neumann, in his classic "Report on the EDVAC"[2], put the whole architecture together, describing what to do once some decent memory devices became available. It's an interesting read today, one of the basic documents of the history of computing. Von Neumann concludes that about 2^18 bits of memory, organized as 8K of 32 bit words, was needed to get useful mathematical work done. The program was expected to occupy about 1.5K words, with the rest reserved for data. Then he looks at the delay line problem - the delay line can store large numbers of bits, but the more it stores, the longer the access time. More delay lines in parallel help on speed, but increase the machine size and cost. Based on how long it takes to do a multiply, he proposes having 256 delay lines storing 1Kb each. The actual machine built was smaller - 1,000 44-bit words, made up of 128 delay lines. Memory cost was still a very big problem.

Computing remained memory-limited for decades. Core memory was a million dollars a megabyte in 1970. Superminis of the early 1980s might have 4MB. PCs had 1MB. Not until the 1990s did memory get cheap, and stopped dominating the cost of a computer.

[1] [http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm...](http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/605/22-8686-3_CPCprincOps_Oct54.pdf) [2] [https://sites.google.com/site/michaeldgodfrey/vonneumann/vne...](https://sites.google.com/site/michaeldgodfrey/vonneumann/vnedvac.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1)

<comment><USER3> Awesome comment. Thanks!

Where do I sign up for your newsletter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was part of The Baby, AKA the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine at the University of Manchester in the late 40s. Modern replicas and simulators can be found at the university and Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry. It was built by Williams, Kilburn, and Tootill. Alan Turing wrote some programs for this machine.

One nicest things about this is that your memory is _visible_. You can just see which bits are on and which bits are off by looking at the screen. No debugger needed!

One of the least nice things was that these tubes had a reputation of being horribly unreliable.

<comment><USER5> Visible memory - useful indeed. As a newly minted mainframe engineer at IBM I worked with a guy who could read from punched paper tape by eye. It was most impressive watching him pulling it through his hands at a pretty good pace, reading it out as he went.

<comment><USER6> I worked with Tim Paterson (creator of MS-DOS) when I worked on the Visual Basic team at Microsoft. When he worked on code generation he just read hex dumps, not disassembly, because it was faster for him.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't take that long to learn when you have to do it. When I had to write an assembler as an undergrad project I became pretty much able to read 6809 machine code directly.

<comment><USER6> 32-bit instruction set was much bigger with many more addressing modes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The variety of memory used for computers is amazing, and I find it a lot more interesting than the history of the CPU. CPU architecture is very diverse, but physically tends to be just different configurations of a few physical elements - relay, valve or transistor.

Memory had cathode ray tubes, mercury delay lines, dekatron and selectron tubes, core store, core rope, magnetic drums, tapes and discs, magnetostrictive delay lines, magneto-optical discs, and probably many more I don't know about, not counting the write-once formats like punched card and tape.

<comment><USER9> One of my favorite backwaters of technology is the work they did in the 50's and 60's with "cryotrons", which were essentially like superconducting transistors that switched by one superconductor temporarily destroying another's superconductivity. They apparently even made a working memory module out of them and provided it to the NSA before the transistor came along and changed everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is an art installation that uses cathode ray tubes: [http://www.alpha60.de/art/love_letters/](http://www.alpha60.de/art/love_letters/)

I guess that they probably don't use the tubes as the actual memory. But it looks extremely cool.

</comment><comment><USER11> My first job was at the startup Micro-bit in the mid 1970's We were building Electron Beam Access Memory systems as a "Cache" memory between Core and Disk memory for mainframes.

It was an 18 bit wide memory so it had 18 CRT tubes and was leveraging electron microscope techniques to increase density. It had two steps of electron beam steering.

I remember the founder walking around talking about our main competitor "Bubble Memory" which also never got very far.

[http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/1975/02/01649340.pdf](http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/1975/02/01649340.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty high data density for the time.</comment>


Amazon's latest program to curb emissions? One delivery day per house, per week - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/amazons-latest-program-to-curb-emissions-one-delivery-day-per-house-per-week/ <comment><USER2> Great marketing. Saves them tons of money and makes customers feel good for opting in.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is great, and actually likely to be particularly convenient to many.</comment>


Google's software design is having a reformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/10/17339230/google-material-design-theme-update-new-tools-matias-duarte <comment><USER2> Well as part of their "infinite possibilities, with guardrails", I would like to see titanium guardrails set up around iOS so they stop Material-izing it. Use the damned UIKit please, you have enough billions to invest in separate code.

Google apps feel wrong on iOS. They also work less responsively, in part because they don't do the default/expected thing and in part (presumably) because whatever implements their own unnecessary custom UI layer on iOS is just _slower_.

Besides, in their quest to change everything, features are harder to use. Why does everything seem to take 5 more taps and a slide-out menu that weren't necessary in 2010?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see some AB testing results on the actual effects of these tiny little details. I just suspect most people don't really care, but hey, maybe I'm wrong...</comment>


Blanket-like "sarapes" from northern Mexico are intriguing textiles (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/latin-americas-wrap-for-all-seasons-112403979/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if Clint Eastwood's character "The Man With No Name" (Blondie) wore a serape or a poncho. From some angles it's wrapped like a serape would be, but from others it looks like there was a hole in the center and it was worn like a poncho.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-k_BW8iLkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-k_BW8iLkk)

<comment><USER3> The thing I've always wondered about ponchos is how they shape them. Unlike serapes they're usually not squares, so how does the weaver know exactly where to stop weaving to get the right shape? Or are they just cut from a square and then have the edges tied of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is every commenter calling sarapes "serapes"?

Edit: TIL "serape" is used a lot in English. It caught me off-guard because I can't imagine why isn't the original word used.</comment>