Interview with Raymond Carver (1983) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of interesting bits in this interview, but this stuck out to me in particular. Not sure I agree, but it's unusual to see a professional writer/artist take a stance like this:

"Listening to a Beethoven concerto or spending time in front of a van Gogh painting or reading a poem by Blake can be a profound experience on a scale that playing bridge or bowling a 220 game can never be. Art is all the things art is supposed to be. But art is also a superior amusement. Am I wrong in thinking this? I don't know. But I remember in my twenties reading plays by Strindberg, a novel by Max Frisch, Rilke's poetry, listening all night to music by Bartók, watching a tv special on the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo and feeling in each case that my life had to change after these experiences, it couldn't help but be affected by these experiences and changed. There was simply no way I would not become a different person. But then I found out soon enough my life was not going to change after all... I guess I came to the hard realization that art doesn't make anything happen. No. I don't believe for a minute in that absurd Shelleyan nonsense having to do with poets as the "unacknowledged legislators" of this world. What an idea! Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that. The days are gone, if they were ever with us, when a novel or a play or a book of poems could change people's ideas about the world they live in or even about themselves. Maybe writing fiction about particular kinds of people living particular kinds of lives will allow certain areas of life to be understood a little better than they were understood before. But I'm afraid that's it, at least as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps it's different in poetry."</comment>


Review My App: Mides IDE - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, I've been grinding away on this app for a couple of years, trying to build the best mobile IDE that I could on the iPhone / iPod Touch.  I have recently ported it to iPad and wanted to get some feedback.<p>Thanks!
 - <USER2> <comment><AUTHOR> <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mides-ide/id284965983?mt=8></comment>


PG's Hacker News account is 10 years old today - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg <comment><USER2> There have been three leap days between his account creation and now.

<comment><USER3> And three leap seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed this while passing through. Does this mean HN is 10 years old today?

</comment><comment><USER4> It'd be great to hear more on how PG built the community from scratch. Hacker news is definitely a daily read for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm more surprised that Hacker News in general is that old. Is it really 10 years since this community began? Because I've always felt like it was started more recently than that.

Then again, I feel the same thing about a social networks at the moment. I can't quite believe the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are anywhere near as old as they actually are.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not until Sunday, because leap year.

</comment><comment><USER7> Last comment 340 days ago? Hmm.. not exactly a vote of confidence in his invention.

<comment><USER8> He retired from Y Combinator last year. He is no longer a moderator here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who cares?</comment>


10 startups to watch from Y Combinator's Demo Day - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/03/27/ycombinator-demo-day/

<comment><USER2> I've spoken with a field engineer about building something similar to PlanGrid, but their concerns revolved around the ability to convert to AutoCAD automatically. From what I gathered, generally on a site people will draw everything out on paper, and then take the plans back where people will draft them up in AutoCAD. Unfortunately, CAD isn't an open source format. If these guys can make that happen, I think this would be HUGE.

If anyone from PlanGrid reads this, here's another idea that makes this useful (if you haven't already done this) -- for site checks, right now field engineers just have to go around and check things off to confirm they are where they supposed to be on the plan. You can use the camera on the iPad to snap a shot and attach it to the coordinates in your plan to actually guarantee it's there.

<comment><USER3> Actually, we just added the ability to attach iPad taken photos to project drawings in our last version.

You're right that people really wanted the feature - we're getting amazing feedback on it from our users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More software defined radios (Per Vices and the Phi)? Yes, please! This stuff is rather expensive and the field needs more options.

</comment><comment><USER5> > According to founder Ryan Sutton-Gee, the construction industry has some 17 > million people who use blueprints. With an average charge of $35 per person > per month, that has the potential to translation into a $7 billion > addressable market.

Yeah, about that ...

<comment><USER6> See, if you charge every facebook user $1 month this makes ... ah ... nevermind theoretical markets :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Noticed that 50% are primarily mobile[1]. I wonder how this compares to past YC batches? Obviously this figure does not represent this YC batch, but it definitely seems like YC is interested in mobile.

[1] iOS: PlanGrid, Pair, iCracked; Android: Sonalight, Kyte

<comment><USER8> iCracked is about hardware.

I think there's also some bad choices by the author, both of which are apps.

PlanGrid has been vastly over-hyped by the author, it's an iPad blueprint viewer. Big deal, tiny market. The construction industry already shares files electronically, sounds like the author bought into some PR bullshit. Kyte I also question being included too, a subscription model for a simple family filter for your phone? They'll be undercut in no time.

<comment><USER7> > _iCracked is about hardware_

Yep. _Mobile_ hardware. So that makes iCracked a mobile oriented startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unlike previous YC startups, most of these seem pretty trivial, and do not really solve any problems.

Perceived problems (e.g. PlanGrid): Do they actually know someone who works in constructions and has said "If only I could view plans on a computer instead of paper!". Paper is cheap, easy to use, sturdy and mobile with infinite battery life, and I'd guess works fine for most folks in construction.

More trouble than it's worth (e.g. Pair): Keep in touch with my SO? There's these things called phone calls, text messages, emails, skype... If I want to connect more with my SO, the last thing I want to do is spend time on yet another social network.

Bad economics (icracked): It's not hard to find somebody who does iphone screen repairs. The real problem is that the repairs are quite hard and therefor expensive, and I don't see how adding a middleman would make it cheaper.

What's missing is the obvious gain in efficiency that came with previous YC startups like Airbnb or Octopart.

Or maybe with the increased number of YC startups, PG is just throwing more ideas on the wall to see what will stick, or what the initial concept will turn into?

That being said, I wish all those guys good luck and success, and after all they are out there doing it, while all I'm doing is writing snarky comments.

<comment><USER10> Oh come _on_. This article is based on 2 1/2-minute pitches. Surely you can at least imagine that there's more to these startups than 3-sentence descriptions? Your assumptions are completely arbitrary. More detailed articles on iCracked and PlanGrid (and maybe others) made the HN front page a while back. If you're going to criticise, at _least_ do your research first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems to be a lot more interest in doing hardware than previous batches?</comment>


Is there any reason for desktop apps anymore? - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/09/is-there-any-reason-for-desktop-apps.html

<comment><USER2> Why is it that everything I read in this blog pisses me off?

Yes. Of course there is. We aren't nearly at the point yet where the Internet works as quickly as hardware. We don't have a world with wonderful connections everywhere. Desktop apps are leagues faster in every regard. And I'd say we need a long time before that'll be fixed.

Plus, once you work inside a web browser, you don't just have the layer abstraction, you have a visual abstraction. Know what I like about Mail and Newsfire? The fact that they have ultraminimal interfaces for what they do. When I stick that inside Safari, I suddenly have something that's uglier than the original thing was. Even MobileMe suffers from that visually.

For somebody whose URL would imply a high level of criticism, which is always good, these posts always seem to advocate very sucky things.

<comment><USER3> Quite a lot of people just run webapps in prism etc these days, so they pretty much look like desktop apps.

<comment><USER2> Nah, sorry. Not the came. The mere existence of a shell means you've got more interface than is actually necessary.

<comment><USER3> A shell? I don't follow.

<comment><USER2> With a desktop app, the windows of the app is part of the interface. With any SSB, the window just takes away screen space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Imagine slightly faster computers, faster virtual machines, and the ability > for web apps to, with appropriate permissions, access local resources like > storage and notification services. Then imagine browser windows without all > that browser chrome (buttons an such around the edges so the windows look > like app windows).

Is there any reason for trucks anymore?

Imagine a car, but much more powerful, and with a big trailer attached to it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I basically agree with the author, because:

1) as he says, with slightly faster computers, for more and more applications the speed will not be an issue. 2) Internet connection will be more common in the future (my prediction) 3) Even if you don't have Internet connection temporarily, you can work offline (google gears technology) and sync when you connect.

The advantages are: 1) Your data are online, so accessible from any computer without additional work. 2) The software itself is online, no need to install/maintain it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unlike all the soft suburban dwelling people, some of us realize there is a real world where things go wrong, and being able to still use your computer for critical things can be a life saver. Just ask the military, even if you SIPRNET is down you still want to pull up imagery, print out maps and plan your mission to go kill the guys who made our power fail.

</comment><comment><USER7> Physical devices is one reason. Doing firmware updates is impossible with a web app. It might _seem_ like a small thing, but look at how well Apple is using iTunes and QuickTime to create a beechhead in Windows. (QT needs graphic card and audio access, iTunes needs USB access)

</comment><comment><USER8> needing 10 million different logins... OpenID adoption is still slow.

Until the Facebooks and MySpaces get everyone used to using apps and not just dinky games, this will still be a big problem.

<comment><USER3> You use 10 million different desktop apps?

<comment><USER9> Actually, 20 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You're kidding, right?

</comment><comment><USER10> You're kidding, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes.</comment>


Pumpable Ice Technology - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpable_ice_technology <comment><USER2> Would love to have something like this in some kind of portable vest. So long as the cooling unit and battery pack are reasonably small, I could wear it anytime I leave my house (it's 35+C here in Tokyo and uncomfortable)

<comment><USER3> [https://coolshirt.com/](https://coolshirt.com/) is the industry standard for continuous-use systems, take a look :)

<comment><USER4> huh, never seen those used anywhere outside of motorsports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome.. I'm just reading Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. This is pretty much the technology that that they use to cool their 300KW sci-fi computers :)

</comment><comment><USER6> _there are many trademark names for such coolant, like "Deepchill", "Beluga", "optim", "flow", "fluid", "jel", "binary", "liquid",[4] "maxim", "whipped",[5] "bubble slurry"[6] ice_

What the hell? Can you get high off this stuff or something?

<comment><USER7> I think listing out every brand-name (without even linking to a single one) is just an example of what an unusual Wikipedia page this is, seemingly written by one expert in the field, but without the editing standards one comes to expect from Wikipedia.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, the apparently now-inactive _Swallow2011_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> slurpee/icee machines use this as well. As an engine mechanic, ice pumping is also used sometimes in refrigerated cargo trucks. Usually these trailers are carrying certain chemicals that become percussive-sensitive (explosive) at higher temperatures, but can be transported normally if chilled a little bit.

<comment><USER9> FCB (frozen carbonated beverages, the trade term for Slurpee/Icee) machines are not under hydraulic pressure, though. There might be a small amount of air pressure because of the beaters rotating on the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're building an new subway system where I live. To dig the tunnels, they first freeze the ground to stabilize it, and they use this system to do so. That's neat!

</comment><comment><USER11> Other applications: [https://www.acitydiscount.com/restaurant_equipment/search.cf...](https://www.acitydiscount.com/restaurant_equipment/search.cfm?_faction=1&VNameFrag=frozen) margarita machine

</comment><comment><USER12> >"Food liquid" or drink (a liquid that is specially prepared for human consumption) is a part of the culture of human society and not only a substance which addresses the basic human need to drink.

What a weird sentence!

<comment><USER13> Every sentence in that article is an act of wilful vandalism inflicted on the english language.

<comment><USER7> I love obscure pages like this... too technical to be removed, too obscure to attract users who would edit the content into a more readable form.</comment></comment></comment>


New IDE: code bubbles - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm <comment><USER3> I like the concepts of the bubbles and the fact that it show call execution so well instead of one file at a time. That's really cool, but what I find so amazing is that since they built on top of Eclipse they got much further towards a usable system like having an integrated debugger was a nice surprise to me. 10-20 years ago the gap between an academic project and a finished product would have been much wider. Not to mention they got to explore more ground with the concept. Just shows how open source software enables innovation better.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like the response has been fairly lukewarm, but to me this is some really nice (dare I say game-changing) stuff. Mindmap + IDE = great. Why? I have written in a variety of languages, and my number one complaint, whether it be with eclipse, textmate, vim, emacs, whatever, is the clumsiness of going from one file to another and then back to the original. Further, outside of actual development, when debugging, I really like to have all the different pieces open at once. This is a nice way for this to happen and is pretty slick with the different gui movement options. I, like other posters, would be really psyched if you could have some kind of MVC opener which would automagically open all the code files using a certain view. That would save a lot of time shuffling, and then save a lot of time by having them all displayed simultaneously. Anyway, I'm probably over reacting, but after years of having to go back to the mouse everytime i need to look at a new file or struggling to figure out in which square i put which file, this is definitely, in my opinion, a step in right direction.

<comment><USER5> _my number one complaint, whether it be with eclipse, textmate, vim, emacs, whatever, is the clumsiness of going from one file to another and then back to the original_

Emacs has a stack for this. Jump to related definition with M-., jump back to where you were before with M-∗. One keystroke is not exactly "clumsy", IMHO.

 _I, like other posters, would be really psyched if you could have some kind of MVC opener which would automagically open all the code files using a certain view._

I just open all files in the project with `eproject-open-all-project-files`. Then I can iswitchb between them. (Of course, there are lots of extensions that don't require you to have the files open to easily navigate to them; eproject, anything, ido, etc.)

<comment><USER6> Have a look at the 'Leo' editor, it has views on your source using 'cloned' nodes. It even allows you to group all the code around a bug and a fix together, document the whole thing and never move any of the original code around.

It's a pretty neat literate programming tool.

<comment><USER7> Leo is really nice and I've used it on real projects to refactor and study my architecture.

<comment><USER8> I'd actually say that Leo is horrible except for the one feature that makes it amazing (outlines). I find myself wanting to implement outlines in Vim but knowing I never will.

<comment><USER7> That's a fair assessment too. I don't use Leo for the general-purpose work and new code because it gets in the way when you know what you want to write. But it does work well if you need to learn what a large, spread out body of code is doing. Just realigning the position of code helps to spot some previously hidden repetition.

I would probably use it more if I wrote some scripts to autogen the outlines for entire codebases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That is a very interesting approach - instead of just presenting _files_ , this IDE is already abstracting out some of the semantic structure for you and presenting code based on its _relationships_. It's meeting you halfway. _And_ it keeps track of things the way you work - by explicitly acknowledging the task structure of the work, it's again meeting you halfway.

This is a really promising start. Very cool.

<comment><USER10> Programming hasn't been about files for a long time now. That's the reason that we have IDEs in the first place, and why I cringe when people talk about writing code in a text editor.

Any IDE worth its salt will do all the things in that video, except for the little draggable bubbles.

<comment><USER5> _I cringe when people talk about writing code in a text editor_

Yeah, because we have to type M-. to navigate to the related code.

(Also, insert rant about how "UNIX _is_ my IDE".)

<comment><USER11> Emacs is a text editor in the same way the space shuttle is a vehicle.

<comment><USER12> Can your emacs editor construct hyperlinked call graphs showing all callers and callees of a given function? Will this call graph generation remain up to date as I edit files?

Can Emacs give me a hyper-linked list of all usages of a given symbol and do it properly(lexical scope, etc.), not just doing a simple symbol search?

Can I edit my code in emacs, have a background compiler compile the file on the fly, and also provide error feedback, hilighting the problem lines with a tagged failure reason and also providing a hyper-linked list in another window as well? Last I checked, the best I could do would be to kick off a compile manually and navigate the errors as a linked list.

How's emacs' refactoring support? Judging by the following stackoverflow post, it's pretty poor: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/673554/how-can-i- refactor...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/673554/how-can-i-refactor-c- source-code-using-emacs).

How's Emacs' keyword completion? Last I checked, it was just a hacky dictionary look-up, whereas an IDE can semantically analyze the source to provide intelligent suggestions.

Even if you can get Vim or Emacs to do some of the above, it usually isn't as easy to use or as useful as an IDE. For instance, I know you can get call graph support in Vim using cctree.vim, but it relies on cscope, which requires refreshing the database manually, is slow to load, and tends to generate incomplete tag sets.

IDE's are, well, better integrated, and so can do many things a lot better than looser environments like Emacs and Vim. Their UI's tend to be a lot more powerful because they are not designed to be run on windowless environments. Personally, for small projects I use Vim and for large projects I use an IDE with a Vim emulation plugin like Netbean's JVI plugin.

<comment><USER13> Emacs can do whatever you want. If it doesn't, it can be added. In fact, Emacs _is_ an IDE...

It's just not a mouse-based IDE. Mouse clicking makes my hands hurt much faster than using the keyboard. I also find it annoying to switch from mouse<->keyboard, so I don't want a UI that relies on constant mousing.

<comment><USER14> Respectfully, I think you're avoiding the main point of the post to which you replied.

Good keyboard navigation in an editor is valuable, and many IDEs have poor support for it. On this we can probably all agree.

But as I read it, the grandparent post was about functionality. Modern IDEs have a level of semantic awareness that generic editors like Emacs don't, at least not without a prohibitive amount of effort to implement it. As a text editor, Emacs is very powerful. As a _code_ editor, it lacks support for even basic semantic analysis, which means such tricks as it does have are naive operations based on text matching. In a world where even entry-level IDEs have support for basic refactoring, auto-completion and code navigation, Emacs is the dinosaur that hasn't seen the asteroid yet: awesome raw power but completely unaware of the bigger picture.

<comment><USER15> The flip side of this is: Emacs was invented around the time I was born, and could be used to edit the languages that were available at the time. It can still be used to edit those languages, as well as the hundreds (thousands?) of languages that exist today. I won't be surprised if it's around in 10 or 20 years more, and _still_ able to edit every language under the sun at that point.

Emacs may have a shallower understanding of languages than an IDE, but the _breadth_ of languages it understands is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but when you're working on a project that uses only a few languages, specialised tools are always going to be much more effective, and you just update the tools as you update your choice of language(s). Jack of all trades is master of none, as the saying goes.

<comment><USER15> In many ways I'd love the luxury of writing code in just a few languages. The reality is though, at justin.tv, I've needed to write code in (at least) 7 different languages over the past 2.5 years. I would not have liked to learn 7 different IDEs on top of learning new languages. (We don't tend to gratuitously start using new languages - it's just often a requirement as a project gets more ambitious and wants to do more things and reach more targets).

<comment><USER14> I sympathise with you on the polylingual tendencies. I'm currently working on something for one client that uses several different programming languages plus the usual web-related stuff all on the same project (and with perfectly legitimate reasons, not just because of historical baggage).

Still, I think this raises an interesting question: is it more beneficial to choose exactly the right language for each project in isolation, or to adopt a "good enough" general purpose language that can be learned in more depth by the development team, and used together with comprehensive library support and a strong and familiar IDE?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's odd that it's so rare in software to find window widgets that push each other out of the way instead of overlapping.

I'm thinking of the gazillion pallettes in Adobe CS that _always_ occlude each other. You'd think they'd have figured that out by now.

<comment><USER17> Visual Studio sort of does this. When you drag one pane over another, the default is to have the panes be tiled or tabbed (depending on where you drag it). It's all very intuitive too, with the arrows to guide you through what you're doing. Visual Studio's window management is totally awesome and one of my favorite features.

<comment><USER18> Does it work well with multiple monitors yet?

<comment><USER17> I was watching a channel9 video where one of the devs claimed multiple-monitor support in 2010 was improved. I'm not sure how, or even what needs improving for that matter (I use VS across two monitors.)

<comment><USER19> VS2010 let you have 2 files open. In VS2008 you cannot have 2 sources code file open in each of your screen. Only one (of course you can put other windows to other screen but not multiple code windows).

<comment><USER17> Oh! I've never tried that. That explains it. I only put panels on my 2nd monitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see how useful it could be, but I wonder if it would be good for me. So far I've tried to run in exactly the opposite direction:

1\. not using mouse at all

2\. concentrating on what needs to be _done_ to what _object_... not _where_

I'm a heavy Vim user, so I'm relying on ctags / incremental searching / positions stack for a lot of work. This goes exactly the other way - <USER2> your way through to the point you want to get to.

On the other hand, I'd probably prefer to fix bugs in this environment instead of in Vim, because it gives a lot more context and freedom. It looks good for... let's say "exploratory programming".

Maybe it's time to think 2 different IDEs - for "writing code" and for "modifying code"?

<comment><USER9> But to your #2 - that seems to me to be exactly what this IDE is doing. That's the way I see it, anyway.

<comment><USER20> It's better than normal eclipse for sure - you get the arrow link between related methods, etc.

What I meant is that in Vim I go to a name in ctags. That's what happens - whether I'm in the same file, or different, or I looked at that tag before. Type in tag name -> go - that's all that happens.

With code bubbles, I could have the bubble already open, but just off the screen. Or maybe it's open in another dependency. Or maybe it's not open at all. I have to look at the screen, localise the bubble, make a decision and then do the action (either click existing bubble, or open a new one). Of course it's too early to criticise it, without testing beforehand. But it definitely got my attention, as something I tried to avoid. Having one good way to access stuff == less thinking.

Let's say that Vim is stateless, but bubbles are stateful :)

<comment><USER21> It should be possible to add equivalent keyboard shortcuts to Code Bubbles, so that finding a nearby bubble could be accomplished by ESC,/tagname or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Guys, we need a better way for exploring big open source projects (like Android, for example), preferably online. Google Code Search is pretty good, but I think there is so much more that can be done.

<comment><USER23> The most striking thing is how few people here have addressed this point. Everyone seems to be living in a fantasy land where "learning APIs" is as hairy as it gets. I've messed with portions of the Linux Kernel, Chromium, Mozilla, and Coda Filesystem codebases. In each occasion, tools like code- search (provided by lxr.linux.no, mxr.mozilla.org, Google COde, and even `find . | xargs grep`) have been invaluable in getting anything done.

Chromium, Mozilla, and the Linux Kernel were unpleasant, but manageable with the existing tools, because of the incredibly strict guidelines imposed upon contributors as far as code style and other things. On the flip side, the Coda Filesystem, which has grown as the result of many relatively disjoint Ph.D. research projects) requires a whole lot of help and handholding from the guys who have put a decade into it already. I can only imagine private code bases being a LOT worse.

An IDE that makes semantic relationships more obvious to the new guys would do a lot to ramp new people up faster and would really be a huge benefit from a community standpoint as well as just being generally helpful to existing developers.

That said, this is a good first step, and not necessarily perfect. It kind of looks like a toy now, so managing screen real-estate better would be the next big step, I think.

<comment><USER21> Do you find that "find . | xargs grep" is more useful than "grep -HnR" in some way?

I recommend setting up cscope for hacking the kernel. I haven't done any kernel hacking for a while, but when I did I found cscope (and vim+cscope) very helpful. Since it's database-driven and designed to run on systems from the 80s, it's still extremely fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome!

I'm kind of a weird mixed-bread developer. I'm now a heavy Vim user, but was once a heavy IntelliJ IDEA user. I'm also currently a heavy Resharper user at work. I understand the importance of really solid, visual tools, but I also understand the importance of simplicity and flexibility. There is a middle ground, I know it.

As an aside, I think that the GUI toolkit confusion is one of the biggest blockers to this sort of innovation. Terminal emulation is just the lowest common denominator. HTML/JS/CSS is the closest thing we have towards a portable, successful GUI toolkit. And it's simply still not quite ready to fight the advanced desktop graphics battle necessary for this sort of new bread of tools.

</comment><comment><USER25> 2 things

1\. /Way/ too much mouse-action for coding in my opinion

2\. I saw no mention of the best killer feature I can see for this, which is allowing refactoring and restructuring of code by extract bubbles, moving them around, popping bubbles... I've been wanting to perform refactorings in a visible fashion for quite some time now.

</comment><comment><USER26> nice. i can see myself using this for django projects (a bubble for the urls.py, another for the view and another for the template)

<comment><USER27> I'm thinking this won't work so well for dynamic languages. The demo video is using a Java project.

<comment><USER5> Because not declaring the type of variables makes code not work with bubbles?

<comment><USER27> The demo is relying heavily on code navigation features that are only available to static language IDEs such as "Open Declaration", "Find All References", code completion, navigating object hierarchies, code outlines, inline docs, and other fancy code traversal techniques.

<comment><USER28> Take a look at Squeak. The Smalltalk folks have been doing this for a long time _with_ the GUI utilities. SLIME is another dynamic environment that knows and can tell You much about itself.

<comment><USER5> This information comes from actually running the code.

Not that this is a bad thing, though. People seem really afraid of having the code they just wrote be executed, but I think this is an unfounded fear. And, as SLIME shows, you get great information from running the code; much better than mere static analysis.

<comment><USER21> I was about to ask, "Why don't they just run the code, and provide something like reverse debugging or VM state snapshots to explore different code paths?" but it seems that's already been covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of Smalltalk...

<comment><USER30> Specifically Squeak... I wonder if it is built with Squeak?

<comment><USER31> No, Eclipse.

<comment><USER30> It is an Eclipse plugin, yes, but it could still be written in Squeak?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Note: requires monitor with 2560 x 1600 resolution.

<comment><USER5> 1920x1200, actually. And that is not too uncommon; I've had my monitor at home for 5 years and it's that resolution.

<comment><USER20> I'd highly recommend any serious programmer with a screen smaller than 1920x1200, to upgrade... and get two of them while they're at it. After some time with that setup, it becomes painful to get back to something smaller.

I've tried 3 screens (in: square, wide, square configuration) for a while. I wouldn't say no, if anyone gave me that again, but I didn't notice any significant improvement over 2 screens.

<comment><USER5> I've written lots of good code on my 9" eeepc, and didn't really hate the experience that much. Conversely, I have 2 19" monitors at work, and don't really find it productive at all. (We are asking for 2x 30", which should help.)

The difference is that I use Linux/xmonad on my eeepc, and Windows XP at work. A good window manager will make your computing experience 1000x more enjoyable than a new monitor will.

(As I mentioned above, I have a 24" monitor at home and use xmonad with that. Needless to say, that is the best environment of the three.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [edit: fixed link]

This approach might be conducive to RFS 5: Development on Handhelds (<http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html>).

Bubbles - smaller chunks of information more suitable for a small display

Arranged in a spatial layout - fits with the spatial, panning style of the iPhone UI.

</comment><comment><USER34> The main benefit of this IDE, compared to terminal stalwarts vim and emacs, is the effective use of a large, high-resolution screen. The color-coding and context grouping is really slick; IMO vim gets a bit visually confusing if you split windows more than twice.

My main gripe about this system would be the normal one of moving back and forth between the keyboard and mouse. Also I wonder how sluggish it gets if you have multiple workspaces and debugger sessions open.

The alt+drag static call graph was another cool feature.

Ultimately, the best tool is the one you know best. Any IDE will have a very tough time competing with 30-odd years of developers perfecting all the small stuff in vim and emacs.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow, I've been dreaming of being able to do exactly this for a long time, but I didn't think I'd ever see it implemented.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have an unfinished project where I was attempting something similar - I am going to throw it up on google code now and I guess put up a demo in case anyone is interested in the code. It's all just simple javascript/jquery proof of concept. You can see it here <http://www.churchofturing.com/dragedit/dragedit.html> and google code is <http://dragedit.googlecode.com>

<comment><USER6> Nice stuff! I just played around with it for a bit and it seems you have the basis of something interesting there, now for an application!

<comment><USER36> thanks - I am always hesitant to release projects where I know it is only a quarter of the way there. But what good does it do just having it sit on my hard drive? hah. There are some key bindings working ctrl+space creates a new editing pane, ctrl+arrow keys should let you move between panes - however I wrote this so long ago that I did not know ctrl+space brings up a menu on mac. hah. The other key bindings do not seem to work on my mac either. If I get some time this weekend I think I will polish this up, get saving/loading/exporting working etc.

<comment><USER6> I've had this idea for a while and maybe this can be a part of implementing it:

A website where programmers can contribute 'widgets' which can be mashed together to create applications. Widgets would be written in python, and would have access to a bunch of underlying services and to other widgets.

You'd use an interface like what you have here as the 'ide' to create the bits and pieces of code that go in to making a component, and then a similar interface to combine components in to working websites.

The end result would be hosted on the same service, either using your own URL or using a subdomain of the service.

It sounds like a large amount of work though, to get that up and running, especially the security angle is a complicated one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the IDE I didn't know I was missing. Navigating around the code is undoubtedly the highest overhead task I do. This IDE seems like it fixes that problem.

</comment><comment><USER31> The smart tiling and interaction of "bubbles", beyond just IDE-centric actions, most intrigued me. I'm reminded, of all things, of playing with the Acme editor. The overarching task bar with nameable, savable, and shareable sessions was nice, too.

Such things strike me as generalizable beyond just IDEs.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting idea. Drawing a line between two procedures to find the shortest call path between them could save time navigating an unfamiliar codebase.

Edit: Also interesting - storing an old debug session with state and being able to visually compare that with a debug session made after code changes.

</comment><comment><USER39> Regardless of anyone's opinions of this particular IDE / workflow it's been clear for a while that the future of developer tools will almost certainly include:

\- IDEs that take advantage of greater knowledge of code than just a simple organization of text files (e.g. reflection, call stacks, static and dynamic analysis, etc.)

\- Tying bug-tracking, automated testing, and source control together in a coherent way.

\- Generally merging the developer workflow into a seamless experience instead of a disjoint series of steps across N sets of distinct tools.

Already we're seeing plenty of movement in this direction, with things like visual studio's intellisense, more in-IDE unit test tools, and the plethora of refactoring tools out there.

The days of IDEs that do little more than compile and keep track of collections of files for you are numbered.

</comment><comment><USER40> I thought this was a really interesting idea. In uni (college) I became pretty dependent on Mind Maps (using FreeMind) for planning essays. Laying all the relevant concepts and relationships out visually worked really well for me.

From that angle, I think anything that helps programmers visualize the structure of their software is a good thing. I think any half-decent programmer is good at maintaining these kind of relationship graphs in their head, anyhow. But that's no reason why tooling can't make that even better. There's potential for a programmer to visualise the structure of their program, beyond what they can hold in their head.

I also like that this idea encourages good overall design, short logically arranged methods, and neatly compartmentalises "workspaces" in a visual way.

I have a few criticisms, though:

\- Nowhere near enough keyboard-driving for my liking. :).

\- It'd be great if zooming out could transform the representation a bit, so instead of ant-size pieces of code the user could work with only the higher- level abstractions between the bubbles they've laid out. I see this happening from the "groups" and "workspaces", but not being inferred from the code itself.

\- Is there some other way to show bubbles that were opened independently, but are actually related in the code? Apart from drawing a specific line and seeing the call graph (which is neat, btw.)

\- I'm concerned about what happens when a single workspace gets bigger than a single window.

\- What happens when design (as it often needs to) breaks through neatly defined abstractions, and lines start needing to be drawn all over the place. Can Code Bubbles represent this without driving the programmer insane, and (also) can it represent this in a way which encourages the programmer to see better ways to refactor?

\- Arbitrary areas and names, in a flat namespace on a flat 2D plane, with no relationships between them, is nice and simple. However, it seems like it would limit you when working with big projects and lots of different, but related, spaces.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is very interesting. To me it looks like it creates a hybrid interface experience in between traditional programming and visual programming languages such as Prograph.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prograph>

</comment><comment><USER42> Its refreshing to see new ideas being implemented well. What makes this particularly interesting is the panning desktop metaphor (which seems to be getting more and more popular) and is quite appropriate for multi-touch screens (think ipad).

It would be most interesting to see this idea extended in this manner, and possibly alter it so coding can be done differently. One possible way might be to have a collection of functions available, then link them together to create new functions. In most cases, this could be done using relatively few commands, so could be done on a touch-only screen.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love Eclipse for enabling stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER44> What I like about Bubbles is that it manages to visualize the program more like how I think graphically. I've never been a text programmer. I see the code in a visual way in my head, far from typing on a keyboard. About the opposite of Emacs/Vim. I seldom remembers the names of classes and methods, but where they are in a code landscape where the code almost have different kind of colours and textures. Negative space and beautifulness of code is important to me, and it has nothing to do with the text itself. The less I need to use a keyboard the better.

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of the software that comes with the lego robotics sets.

<comment><USER45> Yeah. good for learning how to program, but silly afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Maybe dumb Microsoft MDI concept will stop to haunt us now. Each IDE for last 15 years has same set of functions, and they are vastly insufficient. Shit that happens in your typical program is really much harder to observe then it should be.

Program is interconnected mutating tree. Why the hell we are looking at its latest snapshot through set of flat files showing encoded parts of these trees grouped chaotically?

On the other hand, why anyone who tries to actually show trees forces me to enter 2+(2*5) as five nodes without using my keyboard?

</comment><comment><USER47> Neat concept, the problem I see immediately as it assumes I am coding in Java. This would be fine if you worked in only one language. I work in several languages within an average day.

<comment><USER5> Hopefully the interface points are well-defined enough that you wouldn't need a view like this over the entire set of projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Reminds me of Squeak, first, because of the white->blue gradients. Second, this is like the Canon Cat/Archy (Raskin interfaces), where you have tons of room, and you just demarcate segments you want to look at.

What was striking for me was the "capture my workspace and send in email" feature. Couple this with the Omniscient Debugger (<http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/>), and you've got me sold. Oh, but I'm a Ruby programmer.

<comment><USER49> I've wondered for a long time why debuggers don't _all_ have a "back" feature. Small controls on what's saved / how much memory can be used seem to me to be _easy_ to add to any debugger. Just save memory states and rewind, the whole thing can be implemented with a stack. If someone knows a good reason, I'd be interested.

You've ended up adding more things for me to read / look into. I love programming... there's _no_ way I can keep up with it all, so there's _always_ something interesting.

<comment><USER50> GDB 7 has supported going in reverse for few months now: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/news/reversible.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Whoa. This looks kind of amazing! It's almost like an evolution of the Smalltalk browser approach, but in a direction I would not have expected. I think I like it!

</comment><comment><USER52> Hopefully this will make working on the Gridspy project easier. Typically I have 3 IDEs open - my Firmware IDE, Eclipse + Visual Studio.

In Eclipse I am editing a twisted project (usually 3 different files at once but only 2 methods from each) and a Django project (probably about 10 files to juggle there).

In Visual studio, I tend to have another 10 files open (the firmware builds to Win32 too).

God it would be awesome to have all that on one monitor in little bubbles.

</comment><comment><USER53> I really like this, although is views seem to lend themselves very much to functional programming as the bubbles in the demo only show the methods of a class and obtaining a view of a class as a whole does not seem to be inherent to the IDE. With functional programming you only care about the functions so maybe that would be an ideal target for this IDE

</comment><comment><USER49> There are a LOT of good ideas in there. Will definitely have to watch / possibly extend this...

* saves for later ___

</comment><comment><USER54> Did this vaguely remind anyone else of Hugh Jackman's virus writing "IDE" in Swordfish: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUJFOuHIS4Q>

And on that note, how come all academic screencasts are so monotonous?

</comment><comment><USER55> This is one of the first things I've seen—for any language—that could be more useful and powerful than Smalltalk environments. The most useful feature IMHO is the chaining but having find references and the like in there is extremely attractive.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd like to see a mini map view, like in StarCraft, where you could select an area to instantly pan to that set of bubbles.

edit: ohh the top bar acts like that. Kinda cool. Very biased against vertical scrolling, which might be bad for certain kinds of files.

<comment><USER28> It has a mini map on the top of the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Looks good. It's so rare to see any real innovation in development IDEs. I also like the idea of colour coding bubbles or attaching icons to them, and being able to arrange them in chronological order.

</comment><comment><USER58> Looks pretty cool actually. There are often times when I need to see a little bit of code from a number of files, to trace what's happening. Anyone care to make an emacs mode for this?:-)

</comment><comment><USER59> Now if somebody just plugged this into Emacs, or just got me an extensible (Lisp-based) bubble system with SLIME so that I can connect to a Clojure environment and inspect my code…

</comment><comment><USER60> For everyone who has worked on a project with multiple directories, files, people and technology this looks really promising (if not awesome).

</comment><comment><USER61> Looks like something that should be implemented as a plugin for Eclipse or Visual Studio. Kind of interesting, though.

<comment><USER52> I guess that is why it is an eclipse plugin.

Pity it doesn't interoperate with all eclipse-compatible languages (just yet). I'd love to use it to work with Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm sure there's an emacs mode for that ;)

</comment><comment><USER63> this sort of thing would be awesome for boosting developer productivity if they have 3 24" monitors ... nowadays it's quite affordable to buy 3 24" monitors (at ~$300 a piece), and when they're all linked-up horizontally, an IDE like this one could truly kick butt

</comment><comment><USER64> Seems the next logical progression of the LXR. I'd love to see the linux kernel in this.

</comment><comment><USER65> Very cool. This is closer to how I envision my ideal IDE.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't think there's any reason to put the default video embed at 1080p. Just wasted a lot of my bandwidth, honestly; I didn't make it full-screen or anything and would have been fine with 360/480p

<comment><USER67> It's great they put it up that way as that seems to be the native resolution the demo was recorded at. That way, you get the optimum display quality of the text. Since most of the screen stays the same much of the time, it isn't that much of a bandwidth waster after all even at the higher resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I think they're trying to reduce the impact of the superhuman levels of concentration displayed by the uberhackers. I don't like it.

<comment><USER69> I disagree, they're augmenting the current impact of a super-human level of concentration displayed by an "uberhacker" by giving the fruits of that capacity to everyone. Automating a super-human level of concentration in one part of the development process will free up brain cycles for use elsewhere. The best developers won't instantly cease to be the best developers because of a mind-mapping IDE.

<comment><USER68> The second sentence of my earlier post was my idea of comedy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> now apple should sue them - they inveted it first - no doubt ;)

</comment><comment><USER71> C-x 2 C-x 3

<comment><USER20> Without screenshots / explanation / some more content, you're not very informative... (edit: I know it's emacs, but without explanations it's like saying C-x M-c M-butterflies)

<comment><USER71> Alright, I confess to being a little glib; however, I'm merely suggesting another way that people already commonly "see many fragments of code (or other information) at once without having to navigate back and forth."'

It's not nearly as slick as code bubbles, but it does work for many of the use cases suggested above.

<comment><USER72> Slickness is an underrated quality of good user interfaces.

<comment><USER73> Indeed, programming is more about conceptual understanding than typing speed. I see bubbles as being more useful for understanding how an entire code base fits together than emacs buffers and windows.

Though, if we had a desktop that is infinitely expandable, then emacs, and any other windowed application for that matter, could be put to the same use. Really, bubbles is best as a general workflow paradigm, of which programming is a sub problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Homeland Security shut down ATDHE - <AUTHOR> http://jamespanderson.tumblr.com/post/3070883182/why-homeland-security-seized-atdhe-net

<comment><USER2> I think the real problem here, or maybe the most corrosive problem here, is that there was likely no legitimate warrant provided for this closure.

I haven't investigated this case, but a similar case of "siezure" by the FBI involved a company who owed me some money. The company was legit and the siezure happened in the middle of a transaction with them. (EG: I'd paid, they had gotten the goods, but hadn't mailed them out yet.)

Anyway, the warrant said stuff like this: Under Article Blah, doing Activity Y is made a felony. Entity Blah located at Blah Blah, has bank accounts Blah, blah, blah and employees blah, blah, blah, blah and blah.

Therefore, we propose to seize all computers, phones, office furniture, rugs, ceiling tiles, and especially all property of value from blah.

Nowhere in the warrant was any probable cause presented indicating the company was actually engaging in "Activity Y".

Further, since a member of the government- a PR spokesperson, not a layer, had previously accused the company of engaging in Activity Y, the company had taken them to court, in order to get a retraction of the claim and admission that the company was not engaging in Activity Y.

The judge who signed the seizure warrant, that allowed the federal government to seize all of the property of this company _was the very same judge_ who was hearing the federal case, and thus had in his possession proof that the company was not engaging in Activity Y.

And still he signed the warrant. The companies assets were seized, still years on no charges have been filed, and of course the assets were sold and the FBI pocketed the money.

The corrosiveness is that judges, in my example one who knew for a fact that the company was not engaging in the criminal actively alleged, are signing seizure orders based on warrants that don't provide probable cause or any evidence of actual criminal activity.

Never mind that there is no provision in the constitution for the US federal government to shut down websites, and there is a prohibition of making any law that would allow them to do so.</comment>


Nigerian Scam took $110K from Kansas man; 10 years later, he's getting it back - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/news/state/kansas/article212657689.html <comment><USER2> Be careful. I already received few spams saying that I was eligible for a similar refund because I was scammed in the past [that is not true]. I just need to send some money to complete some procedures ...</comment>


Python implementation of wavelet rasterization - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ufoym/wavelet-rasterization <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested in a beginner introduction to what wavelets are generally, and how they are used - I did a blog post a while back using numpy: [http://kastnerkyle.github.io/posts/wavelets/](http://kastnerkyle.github.io/posts/wavelets/)

<comment><USER3> I see the "how [some of them] can be used [in numpy]" part there, it looks pretty good for that purpose.

However, it really isn't much of an introduction to what wavelets are, or what they might be good for in general and why.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Write a prequel GP! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wavelets were a big thing when I was at university (circa 1997). They were touted to be a giant leap in image compression along with fractals. Interesting to see people are still exploring that area of maths; much of the predicted technology never took off.

<comment><USER6> Well, and in fact the wavelet-based JPEG-2000 standard does produce better visual quality at smaller file size than the DFT-based JPEG standard. JPEG-2000 compressors haven't been as broadly adopted, probably because they're slower. I'm not sure if that's because of wavelets, because of unoptimized implementations of JPEG-2000, or because some other aspect of the JPEG-2000 standard makes it more computationally intensive. There's further discussion at [https://lobste.rs/s/oxuu1k/jpeg_2000_the_better_alternative_...](https://lobste.rs/s/oxuu1k/jpeg_2000_the_better_alternative_to_jpeg_that_never_made_it_big).

<comment><USER7> It's probably slower because of the wavelets.

You'll often hear that wavelets are faster than Fourier based methods, because the DWT is O(n) while FFT is O(n log(n)), but that doesn't hold up when the FFT window is a fixed size (as in the case of JPEG). Since JPEG uses a window size of 8px, the "log n" is 3, whereas JPEG 2000 uses a wavelet with 8 coefficients. So it's basically O(n) in both cases, with a much larger constant factor on JPEG 2000's DWT.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't JPEG use a window size of 8×8 = 64px, with a sort of boustrophedon diagonal path through those 64 pixels?

<comment><USER7> Yes to the first part, but both the DWT and DCT are linearly separable, so you can compare their performance by just looking at one dimension.

As for the zigzag path, it doesn't run through the 64 pixels, but rather through the 64 coefficients that come out of the DCT. That's part of the coding stage, which is a separate animal. That said, JPEG's coding scheme is way simpler, and probably way faster than JPEG 2000's, so that might also have something to do with the perf difference.

My overall impression of JPEG 2000 is that it seems like they started with "wavelets can surely be used to achieve superior image compression to JPEG", and then made whatever sacrifices were necessary, in terms of implementation complexity and computational resources, to bear out that premise. You could make similar sacrifices and beat the hell out of JPEG with a DCT-based codec too (e.g. with larger windows, overlapping transforms, better psychovisual models etc.)

<comment><USER6> I see! That makes more sense. Thank you for explaining?

A linearly-separated 2D 8×8 DFT should involve 6 butterflies per pixel, no? And I guess a 2D DWT with 8 coefficients results in 16 multiply-accumulates per pixel? Does it depend on the order of the DWT?

<comment><USER7> > Does it depend on the order of the DWT?

Not sure what you mean by the order of the DWT. Do you mean how deep you transform (how many levels of the transform you apply), or the number of taps on the filter?

It definitely depends on the number of taps on the filter.

IIRC, as for the depth DWT down to one scale coefficient is still O(N) (although there's another constant factor multiplied on beyond the number of filter coefficients). Even if you only do two levels, I believe you only cut the time in half, and you lose a lot of opportunity for compression if you do. I'm not sure what depth JPEG 2000 goes to, but it's probably more than three, so I think you can largely discount any perf gains there.

<comment><USER6> I meant the depth. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the paper, which I haven't read yet. [http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/schaefer/research/wavelet_raster...](http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/schaefer/research/wavelet_rasterization.pdf)

There's a large literature of rasterization techniques. Does anyone have insight into when this one would be useful?

Here are some other recent papers:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/cloop/LoopBlin...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/cloop/LoopBlinn05.pdf) [http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html](http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html)

[http://w3.impa.br/~diego/projects/GanEtAl14/](http://w3.impa.br/~diego/projects/GanEtAl14/)

[https://developer.nvidia.com/gpu-accelerated-path- rendering](https://developer.nvidia.com/gpu-accelerated-path-rendering)

</comment><comment><USER9> Apparently this technique calculates the _exact_ pixel values from box filtering the "infinite" resolution polygons. I wonder if the same technique can be applied for circular or elliptical arcs.

What are the most common rasterizer algorithms currently in use by vectorgraphics software? I mean pdf readers, postscript renderers, font renderers, etc...

<comment><USER10> Most rasterizers typically use some kind of super-sampling scanline conversion: [http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2007-July/0110...](http://lists.cairographics.org/archives/cairo/2007-July/011092.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does Python code always look like assembly code? Is this just laziness on the coder's part or is Python inherently unreadable?

<comment><USER12> I've always found Python to be pretty readable. Are you just talking about the matrix math, or the rest?

<comment><USER11> All of it. The 40 line methods with no self documenting variables, order or sense.

<comment><USER12> It's probably transliterated right out of a math textbook into Python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks like a perfect thing to try various python optimisations/optimisers on - numba, pypy, cython and shedskin to name 4.

<comment><USER8> This is the kind of massively parallelizable problem you want to put on the GPU. Python is mostly a good choice for a readable-code demonstration version.

<comment><USER14> So, pyopencl makes five?

[https://github.com/pyopencl/pyopencl](https://github.com/pyopencl/pyopencl)</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter labels Trump tweets as 'potentially misleading' for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21271207/twitter-donald-trump-fact-check-mail-in-voting-coronavirus-pandemic-california <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286)</comment>


The Satoshi Affair - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/andrew-ohagan/the-satoshi-affair <comment><USER2> It's worth your time (and extremely entertaining) to read Sarah Jeong's twitter commentary on this piece. She does a really nice job of highlighting all of the places where basic journalism, asking for outside expertise, or really any shred of skepticism and tough questioning would have killed the story:

[https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/744950977090838528](https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/744950977090838528)

<comment><AUTHOR> On the contrary, you'll get a lot more out of reading the article without preconceptions. I don't think it's really worth reading someones comments about an article made before they had even finished reading it.

<comment><USER2> Sure, you should absolutely read the article first! But I found that even after reading the article it was very valuable to read a journalistic perspective on the reportage.

It's also really interesting to contrast this story with the recent piece in The Atlantic about the provenance of a papyrus that mentions Jesus had a wife:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the- unbe...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/the-unbelievable- tale-of-jesus-wife/485573/)

The reporter does outside research, solicits opposing points of view, and generally is very diligent about trying not to be snowed. And, tellingly, he doesn't use unfamiliarity with the field as an excuse not to investigate Compare with this article: "From time to time during those months, I wondered what if, in some brutally postmodern way, the true identity of Satoshi could never be fully ascertained? What if Wright had every single element necessary to prove himself, but somehow couldn't? Anonymity – or at least pseudonymity – is an essential part of the cryptographic world."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > "the palm trees were throwing summer shade onto the concrete walkways – > 'Tailor Made Office Solutions', it said on a nearby billboard – and people > were drinking coffee in Deli 32 on the ground floor. Wright's office on > level five was painted red, and looked down on the Macquarie Park Cemetery, > known as a place of calm for the living as much as the dead."

Ugh, it's like wading through a New Yorker article. Less paying by the word please.

<comment><USER4> There have been plenty of terse short form blog entries about the saga, if you don't like the style of this piece you're free to close it and walk away without shitting on it.

I spent the afternoon reading this piece and thoroughly enjoyed the writing, including the flavor and detail you call out.

<comment><USER5> I enjoyed it a lot as well. This piece is a story about Wright, not cold, raw news about whethers he's Satoshi or not. Quite fitting, given that the Satoshi persona is fictive by construction...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't know, this long article was announced by LRB exactly at the time Wright successfully fooled BBC (1) (2) O'Hagan had actually spent a lot of time with Wright, believing he'll be able to report about historically important moment and person. I'm glad O'Hagan kept the courage to finish it and publish it for it surely gives some insight on how the scam developed, even if he doesn't understand the details of it, he can report on the human side. May 2016 it was:

[http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/05/02/josh-stupple/satoshi- ba...](http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/05/02/josh-stupple/satoshi-baby/)

"Andrew O'Hagan has had exclusive access to Craig Wright for the last six months. His forthcoming piece in the LRB will look at the myth of Satoshi and the journey of the man who claims to be him."

1) How Wright never proved anything: [https://dankaminsky.com/2016/05/03/the- cryptographically-pro...](https://dankaminsky.com/2016/05/03/the- cryptographically-provable-con-man/)

2) In detail: [https://www.nikcub.com/posts/craig-wright-is-not-satoshi- nak...](https://www.nikcub.com/posts/craig-wright-is-not-satoshi-nakamoto/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is the most plausible explanation of who Satoshi is IMO: a team of people tasked by (most likely) a government agency with developing a crypto-currency as an experiment.

The project is over, the people involved in it are probably bound to secrecy because the work was classified. They cannot spend a satoshi of the original bitcoin because that would be theft, probably a felony, possibly treason, who knows - either way that bitcoin and all the keys belong to their employer, not them, so you will never see anything signed by "Satoshi" to prove who "he" is.

<comment><USER8> _Here is the most plausible explanation of who Satoshi is IMO: a team of people tasked by (most likely) a government agency with developing a crypto- currency as an experiment._

I don't know why the hell the government would spend money and time on a project like this.

What in it for them?

<comment><USER9> > What in it for them?

A nice way to transfer money to clandestine operations world-wide, risk-free, for example.

For example, to fund a spy in China, you'd need to pay him in Yuan but the Yuan is a highly controlled currency... and guess what e-currency is highly popular in China? Bitcoin.

Just transfer your spy a couple of btc and have him trade the btc for local currency, in an eyeblink. Prior to btc, e.g. the CIA and other spy agencies had to fly in (and hand over!) literal bags of cash.

Guess this is why the Chinese government tried to crack down on BTC so hard, aside from the fact that BTC allows bypassing their currency controls and an outflow of money.

<comment><USER10> Is there any evidence the CIA and other spy agencies don't still use bags of cash? There are some arbitrary things that spy agencies are pretty low-tech about.

<comment><USER11> Bitcoin is much easier to smuggle than cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nobody wants to believe they were conned.

Check this out: the link in which Wright uses to say he can't prove he's Satoshi or risk going to jail, appears to be completely fraudulent: [http://bitcoinist.net/uk-law-enforcement-sources-hint-at- imp...](http://bitcoinist.net/uk-law-enforcement-sources-hint-at-impending- craig-wright-arrest/)

"Editor's Note (5-6-2-16, 2:43 AM EST): The SiliconAngle piece cited in this article was produced by an impostor site posing as the real SiliconAngle. This source article does not appear on the real SiliconAngle website, and was not written by SiliconAngle reporter Collen Kriel. Bitcoinist would like to apologize to SiliconAngle and our readers for any confusion. To ensure that you are reading articles produced by the real SiliconAngle, make sure you are using the correct URL: www.siliconangle.com."

</comment><comment><USER13> I stopped reading in the 4th line... _" They were looking for a man named Craig Steven Wright"_. I'm not going to spend more minutes of my life reading about an scam artist... Enough is enough.

<comment><USER14> The various layers of scamming are exactly what makes this article worth reading. I couldn't care less about Satoshi or Bitcoin. However, so many people and institutions suspending their own disbelief and putting their time, money and reputations on the line, only to watch it end how it did... That's a much more interesting story to me. Greed and desperation are like diesel fuel and fertilizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still don't understand why people so desperately want to find out who or what is behind Satoshi. It could be a person, it could be multiple persons, but what's to gain by identifying someone who gave the world something that's generally found useful, and all they asked for was privacy? Either you trust it or you don't. If you do not, what secret entity could be useful to be discovered behind the Satoshi identifier for you to trust it more or less?

I mean, for instance, I'm unaware of people trying to identify all members of the PaX team.

EDIT: For a community that asks for privacy in many instances, it's interesting we support the search to uncover what's behind the Satoshi identifier.

<comment><USER16> What makes Satoshi unique is that he/she/them sits on premined Bitcoins worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that while 100% transparent, hasn't moved or been cashed in. That alone is a peculiarity and makes for an interesting person.

Add to that the fact that once those coins start to move, it has the potential to affect the wealth of those who hold Bitcoin, for better or worse.

Future changes to Bitcoin are hotly contested, and often Satoshi's intent is thrown in to the discussion, and these changes will likely affect many. Were a verified Satoshi to weigh in, it would carry significant impact.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure Satoshi has coins that others don't know about, the early blocks were all Satoshi but later blocks were mined by dozens of enthusiasts. Satoshi could have easily made an anonymous fortune in the early days.

I imagine Satoshi is out there keeping a close eye on the cryptocurrency scene. Maybe one day if action is needed (funding infrastructure, adoption of a bitcoin successor, destroying bitcoin??) he will put the early blocks into motion.

<comment><USER18> Or he lost the password. Or the coins were in cold storage on a disk that crashed. Or maybe he simply deleted the first few because in the early days they were worthless.

Those are just some scenarios that strike me as a hell of a lot more plausible than someone sitting on a fortune for the hell of it. Why? Because we've all experienced those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> An entertaining read if you're into the cryptocurrency space, but all of the claims contained within must be viewed with extreme skepticism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unsure if you referring to the author's claims or those of the people quoted- could you expand with some examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sign with the genesis block key or fuck off - seriously the articles and claims aren't novel anymore. The breadth of delusion and nonsense is staggering - it's impossible to imagine that anyone of significant name in the field (e.g. Diffie, Hellman, Chaum, Shamir, Rivest, Adelman, Zimmerman etc.) would propose any other kind of proof.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are so many believable candidates for Satoshi, it's hard to know which one to pick. For another just as credible example: [http://hackaday.com/2006/06/08/i-just-invented- bitcoin/](http://hackaday.com/2006/06/08/i-just-invented-bitcoin/)

<comment><USER22> Another favorite proof of mine is screenshots! :)

[http://i.imgur.com/uoRncry.png](http://i.imgur.com/uoRncry.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Towards the end of the 1st section we find an interesting strategy for getting through airport security - have an accomplice just behind you who causes a fuss at just the right moment.

<comment><USER24> A similar device was employed in the Mel Brooks movie - High Anxiety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think what people need to understand is that he can both be satoshi and fail to provide proof, its not a binary. Factors affecting the outcome could be sociopathology, mental illness, ulterior motives and others.

<comment><USER26> Yes, exactly. People are yelling fraud. I'm also very skeptical, but the following is not a correct deduction: "he didn't move any original Bitcoin" -> "he's a scam artist".

I remember a TV reality-type show in which people took their heirlooms to be assessed for auction. One woman had what she thought was a priceless Stradivarius violin. The appraiser took one look at it and _immediately_ said it was a fraud. The violin was stamped "Made in China" somewhere inside. The guy says to her, "Strads are not made in China -- you've been scammed."

A funny thought occurred to me at that moment. Suppose that for some unfathomable reason, you stamped your Strad with the words "Made in China". Now, everyone calls you a fraud without a second look. Why would you do something so dumb? Maybe you were trying to make your treasured violin less tempting for thieves, maybe you were trying to hide its value from the tax authorities, maybe you forget to take your meds and were acting irrationally that day.

<comment><USER27> Interesting - this story came up last time I read a thread about Satoshi on HN. Here's my reply to it:

The appraiser did not do his work properly - after all, anyone can place a sticker on a Strad, but that doesn't make it any less of a Strad. It's also a poor analogy to use in the current situation. Multiple people did appraisals of Wright's claims and his show with Gavin Anderson, and found it lacking. They also noted the "Made in China" stamps - all the gotchas along the way - but they were only part of the analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Strangely opinionated intersection in an otherwise pretty entertaining article:

"""(Like the governments they despise, bitcoiners deal – when it comes to ideas – in 'white papers', as if they were issuing laws.)"""

Not sure if the author read it but the original paper is structured more like a regular journal paper than a traditional white paper.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is Craig Satoshi? Maybe. To say that he definitely is is to be an idiot. But to say that he certainly isn't is equally dumb. If it's a con, it's a pretty good con. If it's not, than this story is accurate. But the people who are saying a complicated a complicated situation is as black and white as "sign the block or fuck off, you're not Satoshi" isn't thinking. In a world of lifeless robots, it would be that simple. But it's not, and we don't. A man who has the identity may not want to prove it. But a con artist would do the same.

<comment><USER30> No, it really is that simple. He showed an interest in saying he is Satoshi, but didn't prove it. He's not "trying to hide his identity", he's trying to hide that he isn't Satoshi.

<comment><USER4> He showed an interest in not proving he is Satoshi as well, and didn't prove it. This isn't a negative you can prove (certainly not in the way you're saying.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given people appear unable to let go of the desire to find Satoshi, maybe it's for the best that the media believes they've found Satoshi.

</comment><comment><USER32> Satoshi needs to launch bitcoin 2.0 with appropriate changes. That would kickstart a whole new era and with his cred it would carry massive adoption.

</comment><comment><USER33> This might be part of the reason he still wants people to believe he invented all of this:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-wright-patents- idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-wright-patents- idUSKCN0Z61GM)

</comment><comment><USER34> Satoshi whoever you are and wherever you are..please never ever be found..your gift to the world does not need for your life to be under the spot light..the gift speaks for itself, quite well.

</comment><comment><USER35> George Orwell said there are some people you can fool all the time. What he didn't mention: those people are all LRB readers.

<comment><USER36> In what way do you think LRB readers are being fooled here? What false claims does the article make? If you just pattern-matched it as a 'Craig Wright = Satoshi' piece, you're mistaken -- it is really a (somewhat) behind-the-scenes story of how the whole affair played out. Although he doesn't come to any definite conclusions, the author is nowhere near as credulous as some commentors seem to have assumed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems like Wright is attracting more and more (overly credulous) journalists to perform fawning bio pieces on him in lieu of the only evidence that will ever actually conclusively convince anyone. This evidence, unlike the several hundred thousand extraneous words here, also happens to be something that is extraordinarily simple to provide: cryptographically sign a message that we can all verify. He has not provided this single, legitimate proof to the public and worse yet he has provided fake proof that shows a deliberate willingness to deceive. Moreover, he seems to have demonstrated a willingness to exploit journalists' and the general public's lack of understanding about cryptography. This seems diametrically opposed to the spirit of the technology he allegedly gifted to the world - Bitcoin.

<comment> T-A This is not a fawning bio piece. If it's too long (it IS very long), skip to Coda, and start reading at "Do you want to know what I think?".

BTW, the author's hypothesis is not half bad. In order to behave the way he did, Wright must have been sure the real Satoshis would not show up and ruin the show. How could he be so sure? Knowing that they are dead would be a pretty good way.

<comment><USER38> He's a con man... we just don't know who he's trying to con. From a confidence game perspective impersonating a recluse like Satoshi is a great choice, in fact a classic choice. Especially after that other fellow was incorrectly identified as Satoshi by national media and Satoshi didn't do anything to correct those claims.

<comment><USER39> You mean Dorian? Satoshi _did_ correct it. That's how anyone knows he's still alive.

<comment><USER40> Satoshi did NOT correct it. His P2P foundation account was hacked, just like his gmx email.

<comment><USER39> His P2P Foundation was hacked afterwards and then locked for good; but P2P Foundation confirmed at the time that as far as they could tell, it was Satoshi.

<comment><USER41> Was it signed? I was following pretty closely and my version of history also had that as being fake. This is one instance where I would love to be wrong though.

<comment><USER39> It was not signed, because Satoshi has never signed anything ever. But it was, as far as it's possible to tell, genuine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I ask my family to stop using TikTok? - <AUTHOR> I do not have a TikTok or similar service due to privacy concerns. I read over the weekend an unconfirmed post detailing very extensive information gathering that may be happening with TikTok's mobile app, including grabbing data about any other device on my local LAN.<p>Curious what this community thinks of the app. Should I be talking family members into uninstalling it? <comment><USER2> I would be inclined to say yes uninstall it. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638129)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes certainly. Even if they are okay with having their personal data collected for various purpose (including helping to train censorship models in China [1]), they are allowing them to manipulate their behavior with TikTok trends - some dumb, some dangerous, most of them being both [2]. It's unhealthy in every way.

[1] - [https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they- watch/](https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/)

[2] - [https://nypost.com/2020/02/13/the-dumb-dangerous- challenges-...](https://nypost.com/2020/02/13/the-dumb-dangerous-challenges- tiktok-has-spawned-so-far-this-year/)</comment>


Calling climate change 'catastrophic' makes it harder to find real answers - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/05/29/calling-climate-change-catastrophic-makes-it-harder-to-find-real-answers/ <comment><USER2> Bjorn Lomborg is a concern troll with a 501(c)(3) who has been saying that same thing for >15 years.

<comment><USER3> Ad hominem is another way of saying "this person has a valid point."

<comment><USER2> '...has been saying that same thing for >15 years.'</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Purge – A disk cleanup utility - <AUTHOR> http://getpurge.com

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. It generates a list of rarely used files and prompts me to delete them?

I __really __wish you 'd make a much better explanation. I really don't feel safe giving +x and running something named 'purge' off of a random github entry with a 2 line read me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. It's essentially a directory browser that displays file/folder sizes, can sort by file size, and allows you to delete files/folders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a long time user of ncdu and derivatives - how's this different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't heard of ncdu before, but at a first glance, it does look very similar. Purge doesn't do all of its calculation ahead of time, but when you enter the directory (and uses concurrency). The rendering libraries are also different (ncurses vs. termbox), and Purge is written in Go, so it'll easily compile for just about any platform. Thanks for the reference to ncdu; good to know about that!</comment></comment>


ICFP Programming Contest 2007 (just started, ends monday) - <AUTHOR> http://www.icfpcontest.org/ The contest looks interesting. The task is to convert one picture into another and you must do so by using a string of DNA-like tokens as input commands. There is a complex set of rules dictating this process. <p>I have only skimmed it so far, but it looks like a constraint satisfaction problem, and it looks like a lot of hardware would be a bonus. Lisp might actually be a good tool for this although I'll stick to something more comfortable if I decide I want to take it on.
<comment><AUTHOR> This one looks pretty fun. Basically you have a gob of DNA to start (long string of symbols) which you can add any prefix of DNA to. The DNA executes according to a sequence of rules which re-writes itself and produces a string of symbols (RNA) in the process. This RNA is then interpreted to draw a bitmap (as in, it defines actions like color selection, cursor movement, line draws, area fills, etc).

The goal is to take a gob of DNA which draws a certain bitmap, and then find a prefix for it such that the concatenated DNA results in (given) target bitmap. The shortest prefix with the closest solution wins. There are some memory and computational constraints too(size of DNA and number of operations on it).

Basically they make a very complicated constraint satisfaction problem which probably can probably only be approached with a machine learning approach. I would have liked my ML class a lot more if this was an assignment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to start working on it, you can contact me at the email in my profile if you want to help me with it. I live in palo alto if you are nearby. Hopefully at least one of my friends will join me saturday morning. Still not sure what language(s) i will use. It's worth noting there are 3 distinct parts of the program which can be written in different langauges (dna -> rna, rna->bitmap, machine learning wrapper)</comment>


One of the World's Top Aging Researchers Has a Pill to Keep You Feeling Young - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041800/one-of-the-worlds-top-aging-researchers-has-a-pill-to-keep-you-feeling-young?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email <comment><USER2> Goji berries seem to work pretty well for me.</comment>


Show HN: Polygonian - Paint a Picture with Translucent Polygons (HTML5) - <AUTHOR>

http://www.polygonian.com
Hi, I wrote a web application that paints a picture with a set of translucent (or semi-transparent) polygons. It was written in HTML5/Javascript and works (or should work) on all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari). It works on iPhone, iPad, even my Windows phone (but they are slower).
Seen something like this in the past? Very likely, as this was largely inspired by Roger Alsing's EvoLisa. http://www.rogeralsing.com and there were a slew of attempts to reproduce/improve/port EvoLisa. The topic was discussed multiple times on HN.
However, Polygonian is slightly different. It's really quite fast and the quality is very high. You can actually see some convincing results in minutes. And as a bonus you get to play back the evolution as a movie. Check these out:
http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=wyIRUOCp&action=movie
http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=gbBrDhDR&action=movie
BTW this started largely as an attempt to see how powerful WebGL is. In the end, I took WebGL out of the equation because it is slower than plain-old Javascript (I can explain anyone is interested).
Please let me know what you think. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Link:

<http://www.polygonian.com>

Movies:

[http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=wyIRUOCp&action=movie](http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=wyIRUOCp&action=movie)

[http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=gbBrDhDR&action=movie](http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=gbBrDhDR&action=movie)

More artworks:

<http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=T96dxr30>

<http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=67CTUqHy>

<http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=jq8AdtV2>

<http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=qtHBFncK>

<http://www.polygonian.com/app?art=1TSkyDga></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of music do you listen to while programming? - <AUTHOR> Usually I listen to '70s / '80s / '90s rock. What about you? <comment><USER3> My Youtube history for today includes:

Minimal Techno: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll90vpeeA4c>

House: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSxLX5y265Y>

Indian Tabla beats: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ3avjVpmec>

Ambient / Experimental electronic: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVA- sCmIl0w>

No lyrics, words distract me.

Must have a solid beat, it keeps me focused.

</comment><comment><USER4> Soma FM's Groove Salad <http://somafm.com/groovesalad/>

<comment><USER5> Groove Salad is very good, but sometimes it reminds me of porno music. I've been rotating between Space Station Soma and the Dubstep channel (which actually plays quality Dubstep (if such a thing exists)).

Soma.fm is one of the websites I like giving money too, I only wish they had cooler things in their store (I've got the mug, and the hoodies/t-shirts aren't too appealing to me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't code, but I started writing an all-text website, which kindof counts, right?

When I'm on the computer to do any kind of work, be it the website or accounting or anything, I listen to techno on Frisky Radio, downtempo on SomaFM's Groove Salad & psyambient on HBR1's Dream Factory.

</comment><comment><USER7> A mix of different stuff, and it somewhat depends on my mood and the environment. But _mainly_ metal and rock of various sorts. Usually a mix of stuff like Queensryche, Motley Crue, Deicide, In Flames, Borknagar, Def Leppard, Black Veil Brides, Halestorm, Emperor, Disturbed, Dokken, Europe, Iced Earth, Testament, Exodus, Overkill, Metallica, Megadeth, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Evanescence, Godsmack, Nocturnal Rites, Death, Cannibal Corpse, Crashdiet, Vains of Jenna, Sleaze Beeze, Twisted Sister, Steel Panther, etc.

But other times, I want something with no lyrics, so I usually dial up a shoutcast station playing some kind of trance / electronic music of some sort, or classical music.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.radioparadise.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> DJ Falcon live sets. You have to pirate them, since they are just recordings of him doing live shows and are not available commercially.

DJ Falcon is part of the French House genre. He has done a few records, but is known primarily for his live DJ shows and his collaborations with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk (Together and So Much Love To Give).

If you like Daft Punk, especially if you like their Alive 2007 live album, you'll probably like DJ Falcon's live sets. They're rhythmic, melodic, and interesting. There are frequently parts of 3 songs going at one time, which sounds like a recipe for disaster, but turns out utterly sublime.

</comment><comment><USER10> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5612136>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5440673>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397602>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051922>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5022601>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4994882>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4316581>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079566>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3981958>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3922221>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3900711>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643061>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3444804>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3399839>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3330961>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2957732>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2891596>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2848674>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499845>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239395>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2015331>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003313>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1995239>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851303>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833040>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813856>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734122>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1602430>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525445>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320804>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209378>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161002>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=929567>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=913911>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769769>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716219>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668087>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=394077>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=367418>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=212682>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144666>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139901>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75135>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831>

<comment><USER11> YES! We're keeping the tradition alive!

<comment><USER12> Unbelievable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mostly repetitive 4/4 stuff like house or techno, sometimes downtempo/ambient/dubtechno (at night). Preferably without vocals; I am not a big fan of these types of genres (when I am not working I would never listen to these) but I found them very good for coding - they eliminate unwanted noises though they do not need your focus because of the repetitiveness.

</comment><comment><USER14> EPIC: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bStRND- vJj8&list=RD02vpV_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bStRND- vJj8&list=RD02vpV_F23l-cU) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAsRnFa4NlY>

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://musicforprogramming.net>

</comment><comment><USER11> Heavy-f'n-metal! Usually of the melodic death variety. Currently: disarmonia mundi, from Italy.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXYhmqs4OaM>

Really gets the blood pumping!

</comment><comment><USER16> If I need deep concentration when programming then I find Drum & Bass works a treat. The music is fast, making your mind tick a bit faster and there are very few lyrics to get distracted by.

</comment><comment><USER17> RealX, it's Eve Online's background music. Some of it can be found on <https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames>

</comment><comment><USER18> I prefer total silence, but when I need something to listen to I go with classical. Piano and/or violin sonatas are my go-to choice.

</comment><comment><USER19> Absolutely no music while reading or programming. I find it impossible to concentrate unless there is complete quietness.

</comment><comment><USER20> TV shows I can half listen to (X-Men)

Movies I've seen a million times (How to Train Your Dragon, The Matrix, etc)

Music with lyrics I've heard a million times

Electronica

<comment><USER21> That's the kind of stuff I need in the background when I'm trying to sleep. As soon as I turn the background noise off I'm wide awake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Romantic FM - <http://www.romanticfm.ro/live>

</comment><comment><USER23> 80% of the time no music (Just peace and quite).

20% easy coffeehouse jazz with no lyrics (Art Blakey).

</comment><comment><USER24> None. But some time I hear english videos in background to learn english.

</comment><comment><USER25> Generally either electronica, glitch-hop, or 90s/00s alternative rock.

</comment><comment><USER26> Progressive psychedelic trance. Downtempo, psy-ambient, dub.

</comment><comment><USER27> <http://di.fm>

</comment><comment><USER28> Simon & Garfunkel (I'm in my mid thirties though)

</comment><comment><USER29> Either complete silence or trance without any vocals.

</comment><comment><USER30> i go for techno music to keep me focused on my work

</comment><comment><USER31> 99% of the time no music.

When there is music, it's post-rock:

 _If These Trees Could Talk

_ Explosions in The Sky

 _Mooncake

_ Caspian

<comment><USER32> Let me add Godspeed You! Black Emperor and your list is perfect :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Exclusively Danny Brown.

</comment><comment><USER34> Mujuice, Crystal Castles

</comment><comment><USER35> Going Quantum podcast

</comment><comment><USER36> Ghazals, Sufi, Qawwali, old Bollywood melodies[†], rare-few new Bollywood melodies[0], Rock[1], Rock&Roll[1], country, ballad, classical - <USER2> western(few)/Indian[2] and Indi-pop[3]

This pretty much sums it up. It's very mixed up. Many times I just trust iTunes' _Shuffle_ but it's never unique. Any programs for Mac that actually randomizes the queue each time I ask it to?

I prefer it when the sound is directly not coming into my ears through headphones/earphones, which is a problem at office, because it's distracting(yes, to me at least) and I feel uncomfortable - get a headache or it just doesn't feel as good as when it comes from a little distance at a serene volume. I used to set up a pair of speakers in farthest corner of my flat, but now it's a 1 bedroom flat :(.

Any one else with such choice or setup? :-)

..

[†] That means at least 30-40 yr old Hindi songs

[0] Most new Hindi film songs are below garbage

[1] The ones that doesn't include screaming(as in when you hate your vocal chords), hammering head and metallic objects on bodies, floors, drums and against many other surfaces and objects

[2] The ones that are easy to appreciate

[3] Not to be confused with Indie-pop :-)

<comment><USER5> I have similar music tastes, and might have some suggestions to add to your collection. Have you listened to Dub Qawwali[0] or the Ashla Bhosle Kronos Quartet collobration[1]?

[0]<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxWUrb0QZFs> [1]<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXjpck1SfjQ>

<comment><USER36> Thanks for [0] (had listened to few titles including one in your YT link but not all - will get them all) and yes I've listened to [1].

Saved on Spotify :-)

How do you manage the language, subtitles? Or you know Hindi/Urdu?

<comment><USER5> I was working on a Bollywood movie once in New Jersey and got into some of the music. I really like how the language _sounds_. But all I know in Hindi is how to pick out a cute girl and say "Acha Hey..." (which I learned from the Indian film crew)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How The Content Industry Almost Killed Blockbuster - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/27/how-the-content-industry-almost-killed-blockbuster-and-netflix/

<comment><USER2> blockbeester is already dead I thought?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, this is about how the rental business model was almost made illegal in the 80s.</comment></comment>


"Oops" (8M commits) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?q=oops&type=Commits <comment><USER2> there are many time travellers too, many commit dates are way ahead in future, year 2030 to 2088</comment>


Ask YC: Best hosted comment system? - <AUTHOR>

I need a hosted comment system that supports the following:

  1. Import my existing comments from Wordpress.
  2. Take care of all the user/spam issues.
  3. Be able to fetch the comment list and count via an API.
  4. Add some kind of other value (user pages, threading, etc.)
 I want to like Disqus.  Really I do.  I like their philosophy, and their site is nice to use.  They seem to do it all so very right.  And yet, I find it hard to trust their service when the Wordpress plugin is so badly broken out of the box.  (Parse errors that make me wonder how anyone's actually using it with a stock PHP install, not to mention very broken markup.)
Tangler, IntenseDebate and SezWho have also been recommended.  I've also contemplated some kind of automated system that would let you choose your favorite social media site (HN, Reddit, Digg, etc.), and then auto-post and just get feedback there.
Anyone with experience with any of these care to share?  (Or, anyone from Disqus wanna fix the broken?) <comment><USER2> I did see all 3 tweets you sent about this, but I didn't get a chance to respond yet.

      >> Parse errors that make me wonder how anyone's actually using it with a stock PHP install

There was one line that would result in a parse error if your server does not have shorthand support enabled. Syntactically correct, but compatibility oversight. It was fixed a while ago and will be included in the next release tonight.

      >> not to mention very broken markup.

What's broken about the markup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, ok, fixing the <? was pretty easy, then. Thanks for the fast response.

My complaints about the markup:

1\. img tags without alt, which is invalid HTML, and an accessibility problem. Further, some of these are "fake" links, in that they have inline styles to make them appear like links, and inline onclick actions, but are not wrapped in anchors, or given tabindex=0 to make them focusable. You actually can't activate them without using a mouse.

2\. css included in the , which causes an unsightly reflow, and is not valid html or xhtml. Wordpress provides an event that triggers at the closing  tag, I believe.

3\. despite the included css, and an id on almost everything, several elements have inline style attributes. Why is this necessary?

4\. An empty inline script tag? What's that all about?

Is it really necessary to _require_ javascript to even view comments properly? It seems like there's a lot of anchors with href="#" that could have reasonable fallback URLs given the data in $dsq_response. Heck, even the form could post to a disqus.com url, so you could comment without JS.

Also, like I said, I do really like where you guys are coming from. Seems like you've got the right idea.</comment></comment>