ICANN Approves New .XXX Top Level Domain  - <AUTHOR> http://domainnamewire.com/2011/03/18/icann-approves-new-xxx-top-level-domain/

<comment><USER2> I disapprove of this cause it will make it easier for antisex campaigners to try to censor the internet.

You could hack the system by only using a .xxx domain for your personal emails when dealing with the state. Tax man: "we can't send you that legal notice because our software blocks that domain" me: "not my problem"

<comment><USER3> I approve of this cause because it will make it easier for parents, corporations, and others with an interest in preventing access to adult material to do so.

To me, this makes the case of people that want _real_ , imposed censorship weaker, because you can say, "Just block xxx and be done with it". With .com, they can say that someone needs to protect you because you might accidentally go to a bad .com website or something like that, so active filtration is needed. If .xxx becomes the standard and the .com just redirects, it will be easy for people who don't want porn to not get it, people who do want porn to get it, and people charged with filtration to relax a little bit.

Why is this bad? How does it strengthen the argument that the internet should be actively censored?

<comment><USER4> Should porn sites be forced to adopt .xxx? What about softcore porn? What about sites that discuss porn? Porn industry sites? Sex discussion sites? Sex education sites?

The point is, .xxx draws a line, and there is quite a bit of disagreement as to what should be on which side of that line.

"I block .xxx but I still saw {thing I don't like}! They should be required to use .xxx!". "I need to access {important_resource.xxx} for {reasonable reason} but my school/university/ISP/telecom/church blocks it!

(Not to mention the whole can-of-worms that is inter-national law. Consider the differences in policy between countries like Saudia Arabia, Sweden, and the US.)

<comment><USER3> Nobody should be forced to use anything. It has to be a standard that develops organically, and of course a lot of porn will continue to exist on .com. That's never going to go away. .xxx just makes it easier for what's there, and may earn pornographers some goodwill.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't this kind of undercut the argument you made above about simplifying the censorship issue? If .com sex sites continue to exist, then nothing really changes at all... (?)

<comment><USER3> It's a matter of making _some_ things easier to filter, which is better than not making anything easier to filter at all.

<comment><USER6> That's the situation we have now, isn't it? Some things are easier to filter, since there are lists of porn sites under any TLD and appliance makers utilize them today. So, your improvement is pretty much nil.

<comment><USER3> No, that list has to be constantly updated, as things come and go. xxx would be a whole namespace that could be blocked and you'd never have to worry about maintaining that portion of the filter. Assuming decent uptake of xxx, it'd relieve some things. Right now, everything is in .com, and new domains have to constantly be added to blacklists. If more new things start going into xxx than com, we'd have half as much work, since xxx is blocked right away.

This is all dependent on good adoption of xxx of course, but if the TLD doesn't exist it's not even possible. So we're happy the opportunity is presented, and I think that mainstream pornographers that want social tolerance will prefer the xxx TLD as a means to illustrate their good intentions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the operator gets its way, the .xxx TLD will reportedly have three sunrise periods[1]:

 _The first period would allow owners of porn-related trademarks to claim their .xxx domain names and use them as normal, ... the second would enable non-porn companies that don't want their brands associated with adult material to basically "turn off" their trademarks in .xxx domains, paying a one-time fee. ... The third proposed sunrise would allow owners of non-trademarked porn domains in other TLDs, such as .com, to get their equivalent .xxx using an automated Whois check._

A comment from the author on this item indicates that they hope to begin sunrises in June, landrush in September. I have a feeling they will be _expensive_.

[1]: [http://domainnamewire.com/2010/12/07/xxx-will-have-three- sun...](http://domainnamewire.com/2010/12/07/xxx-will-have-three-sunrise- periods/)

<comment><USER7> And when the flow of money from that second .xxx sunrise category starts to slow down, they can introduce .sucks on which, for a one-time fee, each trademark holder can park a "no it doesn't" rebuttal page. Then .isterrible and then .OwesUsMoreMoney .

<comment><USER4> I want a .iloveicann

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my biggest fear:

An internet provider blocks the domain. At first, nobody will complain because "every other media does the same"; then someone will complain, but everyone else will scourge this person as a "perv" and before we realize we have a huge precedent against net neutrality.

<comment><USER9> Or, significantly worse, someone writes a law making it illegal to host "adult content" outside of .xxx domains. It's a lot easier to legislate/enforce filtering when all the "bad stuff" is conveniently on a single TLD.

<comment><USER8> Damn me for not noticing that. I can already hear it: "think of the children!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This whole TLD thing is stupid. Why do I have to choose amongst the .com/.net/.org buckets? (Or even worse, register _all_ of them to pre-empt squatters.)

<comment><USER10> It's not entirely stupid. Although, if you are arguing specifically against the non-regional TLDs, then I would probably agree with you.

.gov was a bad idea.

.gov.us (or .gov.ca.us) is not.

Outside of obviously regional things. amazon.de and amazon.ca serve their purpose fairly well.

I would agree that the difference between ibm.com and ibm.org and ibm.net is impractical at best.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. .gov was a bad idea, along with .com/.net/.org/.co/.mobi/.me/.biz/.info/.etc

I don't see the need to have a distinction between amazon.de and amazon.ca. If Amazon wants to segment by country, they can do that on their own, not by offloading onto DNS.

Getting rid of also silly things like .co.uk would be great, but raise lots of uncomfortable questions. Ideally, DNS is would be nationally/politically blind, with the exception of government entities under .gov.*.{gTLD}

<comment><USER11> .me is a ccTLD is for Montenegro.

<comment><USER4> That's not how GoDaddy is selling it. One could make an argument that it ceases to become a ccTLD once anyone can register it for "novelty"/domain- hacking use.

<comment><USER11> Godaddy doesn't operate the registry for .me. ccTLD is just a class of TLDs established with a specific purpose. The purpose might get de facto expanded at the country's discretion, but that doesn't obviate the original purpose. The people of Montenegro would disagree with your claim that .me was a bad idea.

With no geographic-based TLDs, you introduce a need to disambiguate non- related brands which would have been perfectly distinguished by ccTLDs. Compare <http://www.era.mk/> and <http://www.era.pl/> \- neither organization is controversial in its right to the TLD in its country, but one or both would have to settle for a disambiguation otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Disambiguation by business might be an idea - but then which TV1 gets priority? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's high time to register comcastsu.xxx

<comment><USER13> My ISP is less likely to be available for long: coxsu.xxx

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So who else is camping out the night these go live to snatch (see what I did there?) one of the premium domains to cash in on later?

<comment><USER15> I don't have much honor left, but a domain shark I will never be.

<comment><USER16> I dunno. pr0n.xxx seems like a fun one to play with, no pun intended. Or goatse.xxx, uni.xxx or ha.xxx.

<comment><USER15> But then you are not really domain sharking it, are you? You are actually using it (or planing to do so).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As somebody who used to work at an adult company (and has a different adult company as one of my clients), I'll say that most adult companies are probably excited about the idea of making it easy for parents to block these domains, but not excited about the possibility of being forced into using them (and the subsequent possiblity of ISPs blocking .xxx domains en masse). Some of adult sites' biggest customers are in countries where porn is illegal, and giving ISPs an easy way to block the entire industry would hurt adult sites even more than they are already.

On a side note, why hasn't a .app TLD been created yet?

<comment><USER18> The process for creating TLDs is very slow; even if someone proposed .app on July 10, 2008, ICANN would still be pondering the process for evaluating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In regard to stratifying domains and simplifying the process of omitting adult content, I think this is a great idea. While the "evil empire" image is easily applied to ISPs (in regard to purposively blocking access to these sites), realistically, unless they want to lose a whole hell of a lot of business, they'll leave it alone.

<comment><USER20> I bet most ISPs in China don't want to even think of any content filtering, but Great Chinese Firewall is still a reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, what is the technical definition of content that should be in this TLD?

</comment><comment><USER22> If I were a good-looking female actress in showbiz (0/4, dammit), I'd love the prospect of seeing "<myname>.xxx" on the web.

Most of these people already get fan sites with some permutation of their full name. (Hyphenation, .net, .org). Maybe now we'll see a common trend if <air quotes> "fan sites".

</comment><comment><USER23> I can see why people would want this, but it sets an interesting precedent.

Now that we have a "NC-17" TLD, are we going to start seeing "R", "PG-13", "PG" and "G" TLDs as well?

Likewise, if the internet is going to have a redlight district, is it going to have a financial district, china town and so on?

<comment><USER20> > a financial district

.biz?

<comment><USER24> I've always hated .biz. I don't think I've ever seen a legit company with a .biz domain name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why, why, why?

<comment><USER26> To make more money for ICANN, probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is certainly going to be the most blocked TLD ever.

<comment><USER8> I think there are sysadmins blocking it preemptively as we speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Back in the day - there was an article I read about "The never ending sex.com battle" which was about the sex.com domain squatting/stealing debacle...

I thought it was a great name... so I registered neverendingsex.com thinking I could easily monitize it based on the fact that sex.com as a landing page was making several million per year...

But I didnt do anything with the domain and let it die, and someone else grabbed it.</comment>


How does a relational database work? (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://coding-geek.com/how-databases-work/ <comment><USER2> "Nowadays, many developers don't care about time complexity … and they're right!"

Massive facepalm.

A developer who doesn't care about complexity (both structural complexity of the code, and execution-time complexity of algorithms he uses) is simply incompetent. No ifs and no buts about it.

<comment><USER3> I mean, the very next sentences are:

> But when you deal with a large amount of data (I'm not talking about > thousands) or if you're fighting for milliseconds, it becomes critical to > understand this concept. And guess what, databases have to deal with both > situations!

I think they're just anticipating an audience who only deal with fragments of data in frontend or "backend" services. That statement holds when you're never really dealing with more than tens of elements.

<comment><USER4> I fixed a performance bug today that was caused by too many queries across tens of rows of data. Hey, why keep it in memory when the database can get it for you in only 5ms! 80 times per call

Admittedly, this was a bit of an outlier case, but you get enough of those and you're spending real money on extra hardware to keep up

<comment><USER5> The original quote is not about things generally taking a long time, but about time _complexity_ i.e. differences between things like O(n), O(n log n) and O(n^2). For example, if the way you fixed that performance bug reduced the time by a fixed multiple then you didn't affect the time complexity, even if it's now much faster.

Maybe you already understood that but your bug description makes it sound like complexity wasn't necessarily the issue.

<comment><USER4> My case was about time complexity from calling the DB 10x times more than necessary. Even though these things are all fast now, as an engineer, you still need to know the techniques to avoid the slow bits

Although my example was only O(n^2), the constant of each n being over the wire to the DB blew the runtime up to a significant number. So even an n-squared algorithm with small data sets can kill your app. We changed it to be O(n) over the wire to make it reasonable

<comment><USER6> If you're making the same db call for n items, 10 calls and 1 call are both O(n).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All I see is: "Error establishing a database connection".

Is it some terribly ironic post?

<comment><USER8> Try the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z-c0s5-...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z-c0s5-AdZ8J:coding- geek.com/how-databases-work/+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently, a book was published about implementing Git in Ruby as a way of learning Git internals. There was a long thread here about that, and about others porting the code to their language of choice

It occurred to me that a book about building a database system in an easy to read language would be a great way to get hands on with the various algorithms used by modern database technologies - and may be more broadly useful too

<comment><USER9> I haven't been able to get my hands on the book, but Edward Sciore's "Database Design and Implementation" is supposed to be such a book.

<comment><USER10> There is no logical reason this book should be as expensive as it is: [https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?cm_sp=SearchF...](https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?cm_sp=SearchFwi- _-SRP-_- Results&kn=sciore&sortby=17&tn=Database%20Design%20and%20Implementation)

Worldcat shows some libraries have it: [https://www.worldcat.org/title/database-design-and- implement...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/database-design-and- implementation/oclc/680582801)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ...thanks for reminding me of my advanced relational db exam I just had today!

But in all seriousness, the fundamentals of how relational DB's work and physically execute queries should be at least in the back of the mind of any engineer who writes SQL for a living. Great article!

</comment><comment><USER12> "Error establishing a database connection" \- Not very well apparently :)

</comment><comment><USER13> "Error establishing a database connection" hn hug of death?

</comment><comment><USER14> I get "Error establishing a database connection" :_D

</comment><comment><USER15> On of the best article i could read on database.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very good indeed, Quite the explanation, the storage part would be an interesting thing to see, for instance in SQLite, what is this binary file created in the filesystem, or how is it's data organized.

<comment><USER17> SQLite documentation covers this quite well, see "Database File Format" [0] or have a look at pager.c source code [1]. SQLite database is actually recommended by Library of Congress for archiving [2]

0: [https://www.sqlite.org/fileformat.html](https://www.sqlite.org/fileformat.html)

1: [https://sqlite.org/src/artifact/422fd8cfa59fb917](https://sqlite.org/src/artifact/422fd8cfa59fb917)

2: [https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/data.html](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/data.html)</comment></comment>


WhatsApp: a new trick to free up space on your phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.5to9news.com/whatsapp-a-new-trick-to-free-up-space-on-your-phone.html <comment><USER2> Not available in the android version 2.17.323

<comment><AUTHOR> The functionality is available for testing on Android beta version 2.17.340.</comment></comment>


Pseudo-Science Behind the Assault on Hydroxychloroquine - <AUTHOR> https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/02/pseudo-science-behind-the-assault-on-hydroxychloroquine/ <comment><AUTHOR> Alternate link: [https://www.zerohedge.com/health/pseudo-science-behind- myste...](https://www.zerohedge.com/health/pseudo-science-behind-mysterious- assault-hydroxychloroquine)

<comment><USER2> I fear that the fact that zerohedge picked this up will make it even more political than what it is now.

Proper trials, like the one by U of Minnesota, will give hopefully answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Misleading headline. Big money behind those attacks.</comment>


IBM ported Go to s390x mainframes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/linux-on-ibm-z/go <comment><USER2> They have a lot more software in the works, such as Cassanda, MongoDB and Spark [1]. It's a push to have good software support for the IBM LinuxONE machine [2], essentially an IBM z Systems (z13) mainframe that will only run Linux on KVM (i.e. without expensive z/OS or z/VM 'legacy').

I'm not sure about the costs, but it might make for a compelling platform as a 'private cloud' solution. A single mainframe is a lot easier to maintain than racks full of x86 boxes. Apparently one LinuxONE Emperor machine can run up to 8,000 Linux VMs [3] (not sure with what load).

[1] [https://github.com/linux-on-ibm-z](https://github.com/linux-on-ibm-z)

[2] [http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/linux- one.html](http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/linux-one.html)

[3] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxone-ibms-new-linux- mainfra...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxone-ibms-new-linux-mainframes/)

<comment><USER3> _up to 8,000 Linux VMs (not sure with what load)_

Traditionally mainframes were superior for loads that were IO bound rather than CPU bound. I suspect that this is still the case.

<comment><USER4> The mainframe hardware isn't anything special (I've said this before, I still have access to a z114). You can probably host that many lxc containers on a decent x86 server too. Not that you probably want to.

The z114 CPU doesn't keep up with anything > midrange x86, and its IO capabilities are limited by the inifiniband links it uses to communicate with the IO drawers. A pretty basic dual socket E5 v3 has more PCIe bandwidth available than you can get out of the z114. It appears that is the case for larger machines as well (aka there are E7 configurations with significantly more bandwidth than the z13). And yes, I've heard all about SC's and all that. But what most people fail to realize is that most storage adapters have some form of ARM/etc cpu onboard that does most of what the SC does on a mainframe, and people have been fighting the CPU vs offload engine battle for years for network adapters.

So, a lot of the mainframe advantage is in zOS/zTPF and not the hardware. Running linux with its inefficient block layer, misses the point.

Heck, your probably better off running linux on POWER8.

<comment><USER5> A company I worked for about 10 years ago had an IBM s/390 mainframe for about a month. Our manager at that time had previously worked for IBM and was trying to move the company over to hardware managed by IBM.

The biggest selling point was redundancy in the hardware being able to handle CPU/RAM/Disk/PSU failures without taking down the Linux VMs running on it.

Our workload was network bound, not much CPU or Disk IO load.

We ended up using generic Intel PCs (some custom built, some Dell and some IBM Netfinities). We had more down time with the IBM managed Netfinities, then with the custom built rack mount servers.

Back then we also had some Sun UltraSparc E3500 & E6500s, but we found that the Java VM (from Sun!) was much slower on the UltraSparc CPUs then on Intel CPUs.

I find it interesting that we had much better results from generic no brand rack mount servers then most of the expensive "enterprise" class servers.

Note: This was over 10 years ago.

Anyone have more recent experience with servers in a self-managed DC or co- location? It seems most companies/developers now use cloud/vps/hosted servers.

<comment><USER6> It's really not possible to make a blanket judgement. The lot of high end systems boil down to brand name, software compatibility, "one throat to choke", and vertical integration. While the first two are mostly meaningless, the last two can have profound network effects. IBM has been able to realize nice vertical integration across most of their current systems, and they have some world class people doing CPUs, compilers, OSes, application stacks. If you have a problem with the mainframe you have one company to deal with.. that could be very good or very bad (somewhere brand name aka reputation does matter). In consumer terms, it's kind of like Mac vs PC.

It's also not so easy to judge x86 as low end. Stratus and HP make some really high end fault tolerant/instruction retry x86 servers that could be considered mainframes IMHO.

Low end x86 servers are "good enough" for a large portion of what people use servers for, and a massive amount of work has gone into making distributed systems that can scale and handle faults semi-predictably. That said, I'd much prefer my bank account to reside on an IBM mainframe SysPlex for the time being.

Sun kind of struggled in the CPU market as well as indecision around x86 for a long time, it's one of the primary reasons they are now part of Oracle. Those E3500/6500 systems are very high quality and would probably still be running fine today if performance isn't the only measure of worth.

I've long been a fan of IBM's POWER system p or whatever they want to call it depending on the day of the week. It's positioned somewhat in the middle of x86 and mainframe, but you generally get more powerful systems than x86 with mainframe inspired reliability. Still, these fill a much narrower niche than cheap x86 boxes.

<comment><USER5> I agree with what you said. I was just relating the experience I had.

We also had two large (U8) Compaq ProLiant servers that we used to run Oracle DB. We didn't have any problems with them, and only replaced them with newer faster Dell servers later. The redundant PSUs and hot-swap drives were the main reason we ran our database on them (one master, the other a standby slave). Those server were later used for our beta site (used for staging/development).

We later ported the backend Java service to C++, which most likely would have run fine on the UltraSparcs, but I think we had already sold them or returned them back to the vendor. I really wished Sun's UltraSparc T1 & T2 CPUs had taken off. I think they could have really good CPUs, but it was hard to compete with x86 because of all the software that was already compiled/optimized for the x86 architecture.

For us it was important to be able to fix problems quickly. Having to call in a service tech. to fix a hardware problem just increased downtime. Also we just had really bad luck with the IBM Netfinities, all 4 servers had a bad motherboard which failed in each server at different times. After that we didn't have any problems with them.

Personally I prefer to deal with generic hardware that I can service myself when a problem happens. But for some companies, it is better to have managed hardware with service contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm [https://github.com/linux-on-ibm-z](https://github.com/linux-on-ibm-z) has got all kinds of cool goodies: Docker, Cassandra, Kubernetes, Spark

<comment><USER8> And a nice picture: [https://avatars2.githubusercontent.com/u/11740175?v=3&s=460](https://avatars2.githubusercontent.com/u/11740175?v=3&s=460)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the deal with z / z/OS? Is it a non-unix OS? I can't find a ton of info in my naïve googling.

<comment><USER10> System z is IBM's mainframe architecture (the hardware).

z/OS is the flagship operating system. It is at its heart a batch-oriented system, but it does have a Unix subsystem (called USS for "Unix System Services", formerly known as MVS OpenEdition or OMVS) that is in fact certified against a rather old version of the Single Unix Specification.

So in a way, z/OS is in fact a Unix system, but that is kind of like saying that Windows is a Unix due to Cygwin or Microsoft's Services for Unix. Mostly, it is very non-Unix-like.

Interestingly, IBM also offers a number of other operating systems for System z, including VM (although that system apparently does little but host virtual machines), TPF (a "real-time" transaction processing system) and zVSE (formerly known as DOS/360, another, smaller batch-oriented system). And, of course, Linux is available from a number of distributions. Oh, and just for good measure, Open Solaris was ported to run inside VM, although I am not sure what became of that or if anyone is actually using it.

<comment><USER11> Wait, is it a UNIX system or have a UNIX subsystem? Those are different. I know it has the subsystem. I'm trying to recall when someone said it was a UNIX. Stuff I read on it is more MVS than UNIX. Example with some data:

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

<comment><USER12> It has a Unix subsystem. It is a lineal descendant of OSes which predate Unix by quite a bit, and has grown by accretion since then.

It's POSIX certified. Linux isn't. That should tell people quite a bit about POSIX, but it never seems to...

<comment><USER13> POSIX isn't actually about operating systems. POSIX (1003.1) is about source- level compatibility for 2 languages: C99 and shell scripts.

If your C programs use only C99+POSIX facilities, and your shell programs use only POSIX features and utilities, and they work on a platform, then that platform is eligible to be POSIX certified. POSIX doesn't care about the kernel or syscalls or anything like that. It cares about libc, libm, libl, and a couple of file paths.

<comment><USER14> Actually to a certain extent, I think one could call POSIX the actual C runtime library.

As C runtime + POSIX calls (I know it didn't exist back then) is what defined C when it was still UNIX only, but ANSI didn't want to make the language standard that big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it possible for a mere mortal with an equivalent amount of cash to get ahold of Z/OS to play around with (for use on the Hercules emulator or somesuch)?

I've looked around with no success, so I'm guessing not, but any clarification would be nice.

<comment><USER16> IBM's official product to run z/OS on an intel box is here:

[http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ratideveandtesten...](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ratideveandtestenviforsystz/)

It's just under $5k USD for a 12 month single user license:

[https://www-112.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/buyingtools/paexpr...](https://www-112.ibm.com/software/howtobuy/buyingtools/paexpress/Express?P0=E1&part_number=D0M21LL&catalogLocale=en_US&Locale=en_US&country=USA&PT=jsp&CC=USA&VP=&TACTICS=&S_TACT=&S_CMP=&brand=SB03)

<comment><USER15> Ouch... Guess that answers it definitively then. Shame that if someone wants to learn, they have to resort to copyright infringement...

<comment><USER17> Seems like a good startup opportunity -- z/OS as a service. Buy the $5000 license and then rent it out to users for $10 a month. Maybe the terms don't allow it? Fuck them. Disruption, baby!

<comment><USER18> There were places around that rent time. There was also a place offering free accounts, I don't even remember the name now. There's one hell of a learning curve, makes it really hard to do anything other than poke around when you don't know the params to code in a jcl to compile a program. My first gig was mainframe cobol, the company put everyone thru a 3 month training program, that's the only reason I know anything about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is awesome? I'm not entirely sure though.

<comment><USER20> Write once, compile and run anywhere. Go is gaining traction. IBM doesn't want to lose a sale to an organization that has adopted Go.

<comment><USER21> lol, last time I talked to IBM Linux was Linux was Linux.

Shouldn't Go stuff simply run on their LinuxVMs on Z?

<comment><USER22> Processor architecture is not processor architecture is not processor architecture. The Go compiler produces native binaries.

<comment><USER21> They were always talking about their "bare metal" visualization, I thought they could virtualize CPUs too.

<comment><USER23> Emulation is never going to be fast.

<comment><USER24> Sure it is. The s390x instruction set is microcode emulation on top of a POWER-derived microarchitecture, just as modern x86 chips are microcode on an underlying microarch.

<comment><USER25> Completely wrong. s390x runs on its own dedicated hardware, it is not emulated on POWER. POWER and s390x are completely separate.

source: worked at IBM on their compilers team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe for support of Open Ledger since OBC is written in Go:

[https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gcuomo/en...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gcuomo/entry/The_Force_of_Blockchain_Awakens?lang=en)

<comment><USER23> It's for Docker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Note that we do not accept pull requests"

Strange.

<comment><USER28> That text is unmodified from upstream's README.

It's a little unfortunate that GitHub provides so little room to add your own README to a fork, short of modifying upstream's README in the source code itself. You get a sentence at the top, which is about it.

<comment><USER29> I've seen people create their own README and move the upstream one to README.upstream or similar. Seemed sensible to me.

<comment><USER2> But unfortunately that change will then be included in all pull requests, unless you create a clean branch for every change you want to get into upstream.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jolla's MeeGo-based Sailfish OS: Maybe next big smartphone platform - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/europe/heres-what-jollas-sailfish-os-the-future-of-meego-looks-like/ <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in this article, but the Android compatiblity might be a big thing.</comment>


Parody of clickbaity posts on high sales/signups in no time with no skills - <AUTHOR> http://medium.com/@mattsydeworks/how-product-hunt-helped-me-grow-a-list-of-12-989-483-288-valuable-subscribers-and-generated-220k-4406c175add0

<comment><AUTHOR> Refreshing to read post that highlights how abundant, irrelevant[1] and clickbaity[2] these how-I-got-a-zillion-insta-sales-and-signups "growth hacking" posts are.

[1]Usually zero potential application for any other situation

[2]Worse than exaggerated, such titles are usually fabricated in that the story is opposite, e.g. got-X-users-in-2-days turns out to be activation of emails already collected over a span of a up to a year before launch.</comment>


How should a startup outsource software development - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupguys.net/startups-guide-to-software-development-outsourcing/ <comment><USER2> > For first time entrepreneurs, who do not want to risk the product > development, or those on strict time constraint, outsourcing is a quick and > easy solution. Outsourced product development can be highly successful > provided all parties are clear on goals and being tightly managed.

Pretty much all non-technical first-time entrepreneurs that I have met are on strict time constraints and unclear on goals.

In my experience, startups which outsource generally result in really poor quality software due to the lack of an agile feedback loop.</comment>


iminlikewithyou invites [All Gone] - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play."

Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like one for a friend of mine. Can you email me and can I send it to her, or do you need her email address? Mine is in my profile.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my bedroom and was in bed before the room was dark.

\-- Muhammad Ali

</comment><comment><USER4> Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

\- Plato

</comment><comment><USER4> We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

\- WH Auden

</comment><comment><USER4> If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

\-- Abraham Lincoln

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> lets make this more fun, post your favorite quote, and vote up the ones you like. The 4 users with the highest votes on their quote at the end of the day today get the invites :)

<comment><USER5> That would make it very easy to game the system. What you should do is pick the four you like best, even though it puts you on the spot.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, I'll pick my 4 favorite, its just that giving them away seemed boring :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> waleedka - what is your email address?

<comment><USER4> It's on my account page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see it there...

<comment><USER4> Opps. My bad. I put it in the 'email' field thinking it'll be displayed. Now I know better. Added it to my account now. waleed_ka ((AT)) hotmail.com.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Full DIY PC Hardware Guide to Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://timdettmers.com/2015/03/09/deep-learning-hardware-guide/ <comment><USER2> the guide recommends some old gpus for low budget options.

but doesn't tensorflow require compute capability > 3.5? that means at least gk208 and gk110 level gpus.</comment>


Ask YC: Review my webapp coded in the past few days - <AUTHOR> http://www.soundsabitlike.com

<comment><USER2> Make it so hitting the random tab works even when you're on the random tab. If I hit the random tab repeatedly, nothing happens. I have to hit another tab and then come back to he random tab to get another random selection. (Ubuntu, Firefox 3.5.5, from canonical's package)

I think "next" on the random page does what I want, but I also think it's more natural to hit the thing called "random" when you want another random selection. Especially when your mouse is already on "random" and you aren't interested in what was just served. "Click - click - click - OK, this one."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good point, implemented it that way now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about let users submit songs which sounds alike? e.g. This bollywood song (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxd6po6wL4w>) music is totally alike this 'final countdown' song <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_IKcMl_a9A>

<comment><USER3> Very cool idea though! I love it! I can think of at least 50 bollywood songs right now which I can submit. I'm sure many music lovers will know much examples on top of their heads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Notice however, that it's not for well known remakes, more for not-so-obvious similarities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like it! It would be great if you could add a big play button, that plays 10 seconds of song A and then 10 seconds of song B (or whatever timespan the submitter defines).

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice example of false dichotomy ;0)>

Excellent idea though, I imagine the output data could be worth quite a lot. Are you pitching it at the Cheezburger people?

<comment><AUTHOR> which one is the false dichotomy ? :)

<comment><USER5> It's either the one made by the dinosaur or the one dipped in barbecue sauce. ;0)>

(in case anyone missed it, not all songs fit the two options "awesomely similar" and "completely unalike")

<comment><AUTHOR> ah, you meant that, ok :) Yeah, that was intentional :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Add the song information above or below the video. When you play the video you lose sight of what song is playing. I'm hard of remembering, so I noticed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I'll add it next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! I hear similarities in songs all the time. Now I have a place to document them :)

</comment><comment><USER7> clever little app. good luck!</comment>


Here's How Uber's Co-Founder Is Going to Take on Amazon and EBay - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/uber-s-co-founder-has-a-new-shopping-app-and-this-is-how-it-works

<comment><USER2> > For example, if a potential customer wants to replace a particular pair of > shoes, she can snap a photo of the old ones and upload it to the app, which > routes the request to a relevant store that's also using the app. There, a > salesperson can respond with info, prices, or photos of merchandise. The > customer can then buy her replacement shoes through the app and arrange > delivery

Is this search and exchange always worth the time of the business though? In small bits here and there, sure, it's no different than asking a roaming associate at a brick and mortar. But what about Amazon and eBay levels of hits? Is it really the responsibility of the business to find exactly what you're looking for?

I'm imagining many user frustrations from:

\- poor communication (on either end)

\- user indecision ('do you have any other versions?')

\- overwhelmed associates

\- associates just not caring enough to put in the effort. Yes, they can be fired, but if you honestly think a (most likely) teenager making minimum wage that is willing and diligent to help all customers is hired and positioned at all retail outlets then you need to join the real world.

Solving this problem is clearly non-trivial, but the CEO does have a proven track record, so i'm excited to see what happens.</comment>


Ask HN: Improper use of logos - <AUTHOR> While looking around for a SaaS offering for a need, I notice that a lot of companies seem to have logos of "partners" that I am certain they did not get permission for.
For instance, a small company I noticed had logos of Dropbox, Evernote, Google, Salesforce, Box, Google Drive, MongoDB, Cisco as their "Ecosystem".
How do I notify the right authorities to let them know about unauthorized usage of logos? <comment><USER2> _How do I notify the right authorities to let them know about unauthorized usage of logos?_

I'll be honest with you - this is not a problem that needs solving, and it's not a valuable use of your time.

It reminds me of a recent Scott Adams article about who gets most offended by Donald Trump - and the answer was _other people_. So much frustration and negative media goes around in circles because of outragists fighting a battle, not for themselves but on behalf of ... other people they assume exist. Worse still, this gets in the way of actual causes where real people are impacted but don't get support or recognition because it's easier to run a "won't somebody think of the children" type headline.

It's fair to assume that Dropbox etc might have an issue with a small company using their logo without explicit permission. But do you know that's the case? With Trademark infringement, there's no 'authority' as such to notify - you'd need the rights holder to take action to protect their Trademark from being used in this manner. The fact that there's "a lot of companies" doing it would indicate to me that it's not important enough for Dropbox etc to worry about.

And if they're not worried about it, don't waste your valuable time and energy worrying about it on their behalf.

If that doesn't convince you, then here's how to prove me wrong: 1) Approach these companies - probably their marketing departments first, who will advise legal. 2) Ask how much they will pay for someone to identify and take down these unauthorized uses. 3) My guess is they'll spend something close to $0.

The great news is that if you prove me wrong, you'll be able to link to this comment about what a fool I was. I promise to take it in good humor.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you mentioned what company you're talking about, it might be easier to get help. Is there a reason you're not doing that?

As JacobAldridge points out, the "authority" in this case is the owner of the logo being used, so you'll need to find contacts at each company. On the Dropbox side, you can email firstname.lastname@example.com in general with questions about brand use. If the logo use is truly inappropriate, that team can decide whether to reach out to the startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> How do you know they don't have permission to use the logos?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because they are all from different industries and are unrelated to the small company's field.

Also in the blog, they have huge blogs posts publicizing big partnerships. They only have 1 or 2 blog posts with one of big brand name companies.</comment></comment>


How would you flip 5k - <AUTHOR> Her first thought is house flipping, not sure what people think about that. I've heard of good results with short term corporate bonds from some family. How would you flip 5k into a running business? <comment><USER3> You only make money flipping houses if you do most of the work yourself and hustle on buying materials and PC items. It is extremely rare to make a profit if your use contractors. You have to keep in mind the transaction and holding costs as well.

The best way that I know of using 5k in a business is to buy stuff at a good wholesale price and sell it for a good price. If you mark up 50% the 5k becomes 7.5k and then you do it again and now you have 11.25k and so on - <USER2> beauty of compound interest. But again, you need to know your target market and there is some work to be done.

Corporate bonds? I'd think you'd better do at a casino.</comment>


Why Email List Building Is the Best Killer Sales Strategy - Startup-School http://startup-school.net/email-list-building/ <comment><AUTHOR> Good old email spam rebranded from crime to Killer Sales Strategy. I receive lots of emails from such startupers, they send me lots of junk every day only because I registered somewhere long time ago. Not much better than penis enlargement.

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't comment for everyone but I spend a significant amount of energy filtering out all advertisements in email. Honestly, for me, there's more business potential in helping me to stop receiving ads in email than to sell me something through it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny that the article includes "you're setting yourself apart from the snake oil peddlers of the world" as the writing and the surrounding web page makes me think of it as nothing other than snake oil.</comment>


Cuckoo hashing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_hashing <comment><USER2> Hash tables are data structures that map keys to values. Cuckoo hashing has good storage efficiency and predictable worst case performance. Simpler designs like linear probing don't perform as well as Cuckoo hashing when the table is near full.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from addressing potential collisions, what other use cases does this strategy have?</comment>


EInk Screen Acts Nearly Like An LCD Screen - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/eink-screen-acts-nearly-like-an-lcd-screen/

<comment><USER2> It's hard to tell from the video, but he's showing both before and after the hack. Each time he switches to a new activity he shows the normal mode with full refreshes every time anything happens, then he taps the screen four times on the right side of the screen and it switches to the higher refresh rate where animation looks significantly better.

<comment><USER3> He switches at :24, for those that closed the window the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's all about low expectations. If I didn't know how hard it is to do this with e-ink that video would have made me think "man, that tablet sucks!".

</comment><comment><USER5> My Kobo Touch, released last year, can do the same stuff. What's so special about not refreshing an eink display?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is potentially fantastic. But what i'd really like to know is how does this affect the battery life-- how much more power efficient (if at all) is it than an LCD when you are scrolling or such??

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why we still use the same old E-ink technology on the market right now. There are a number of other technologies (Mirasol, Liquavista, and more) which are better in terms of contrast, refresh rates and all. It could be all linked to pricing: if nobody is ready to pay for a e-reader costing more than xxx dollars, maybe we will be stuck with E-ink for a long time. It may be "Ok" for some people, but for me e-ink has a far too low resolution to be attractive enough to replace paper.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a bit off topic but my Kindle Touch makes a high pitched squeal every time the E-Ink display updates (It sounds sort of like a muffled hard drive seeking). It's only possible to notice when it's really really quiet, and it might be high enough that adults can't hear it. I've been wondering if this is specifically a Kindle thing or an E-ink thing in general, and if the screen didn't refresh the noise might become extremely irritating if used in a quiet setting.

<comment><USER9> most likely a ceramic capacitor in the display power circuit (piezoelectric effect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, that looks awful. I'm sure it's terrible for battery life, too, so why not just use a screen that's designed to be more than static paper? I guess this is kind of clever... what will be really amazing is when LCD/eInk hybrid screens become a reality.

<comment><USER11> You may want to take a look at PixelQi Displays, they already built a hybrid. It is not perfect by all means, but it gets really close. There is a tablet based on it as well, the NotionInk Adam [1].

[1] www.notionink.com

<comment><USER10> That's kind of cool, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not too shabby. I could get used to the lag and flashing, in return for visibility in sunlight.

Any idea if this ruins screen lifetime or brings battery life to even worse than LCD (with so many repaints)?

<comment><USER13> it would wreck your battery life because the life of the battery is almost directly tied to the number of screen refreshes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why it's so slow sometimes and so fast others. Also, where the `ell are the Pixel Qi readers? The B&W mode on the original OLPC is like a LCD pretty effectively emulating eInk as opposed to this case of eInk trying to catch up to an LCD.

<comment><USER6> As the linked XDA developers thread explains, this is showing both 'normal' and fast-refresh mode. So the times when it is fast are the point of this video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of my dad's old 486 laptop with monochrome monitor and ridiculously slow refresh rates. To get this out of e-ink, a technology designed for static text and images, is pretty damned cool.

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks absolutely terrible compared to some electrowetting technologies (e.g., <http://www.pixelqi.com/> )

<comment><USER17> Pixel Qi is not electrowetting, it's LCD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> EInk is screwed right? Am I right in thinking that its only advantages are superfluous readability and battery life?

<comment><USER19> It's a matter of taste, as evidenced by the success of both eInk and LCD devices on the market. For me personally, I think the improved readability is well beyond superfluous: I regularly bring my Kindle to the beach and read in direct sunlight, a feat that's not possible with other display tech right now. Plus I can bring an eInk device with me on holiday and not worry about charging it or even packing a charger is a win in convenience.

Someone pinch me when PixelQi becomes mainstream, or Samsung does something with their Liquavista purchase, or maybe when Mirasol shows up in the market.

<comment><USER20> Everything I've seen of Mirasol makes it look like the colors are really washed out. Reminds me a bit of Polaroid transfers:

[http://media.lawrence.com/img/croppedphotos/2008/08/23/psu_b...](http://media.lawrence.com/img/croppedphotos/2008/08/23/psu_behind_lens_polaroid_th_t640.jpg?a6ea3ebd4438a44b86d2e9c39ecf7613005fe067)</comment></comment></comment>


150k Website Teardown Part Three: WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://freshchalk.com/blog/150k-small-business-website-teardown-part-three <comment><USER2> > Cloudflare appears to have zero impact on Google PageSpeed Scores for small > business WordPress sites.

That's embarrassing.

> My personal theory is that small business websites don't receive enough > consistent traffic to benefit from the distributed CDN provided by > Cloudflare. The CDN will only improve performance if visitors hit the cache > repeatedly. Otherwise, a CDN can actually slow things down!

Good point. A CDN also won't buy you much without the proper Cache-Control headers [1]. I wonder how many of these sites installed the plugin but didn't bother to configure it properly [2].

[1] [https://wordpress.org/support/article/optimization- caching/#...](https://wordpress.org/support/article/optimization- caching/#browser-caching) [2] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/227342487](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/227342487)

<comment><AUTHOR> A high percentage, I would guess.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am the author - happy to answer questions here.</comment>


Mongoose and async and ES2015 arrow notation create a cocktail - <AUTHOR> https://icyflame.github.io/blog/100daysofwriting/2017/05/27/day-99/ <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone here who would be able to provide even a bit of offhand experience with issues like these or a pointer to _where_ the problem exists would be highly appreciated!</comment>


Salesforce Tower every day for a year and a half while being constructed - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/8cpog1/i_took_a_picture_of_salesforce_tower_every_work/?st=JG2XTYCI&sh=f61f7b63 <comment><USER2> On foggy days (most days in SF let's be honest) the tower disappears into the clouds, while all others sit below the line. I wonder if it breaches the fog on the upside? Anyone been up there? That would be quite a sight. I know the golden gate bridge often does, at 746 ft, while salesforce tower is over 1000 ft tall, so it seems possible.

<comment><USER3> SOMA isn't fogged in like other areas of the city (ex. Sutro Tower and other areas), so not sure it will be a thing. There is some fog in SOMA, but usually not the thick blanketing kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tower itself is pretty bland if not downright ugly, but hopefully it will spur development of an even taller building(s) with some true character.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The Bank of America tower right next to it is far more interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/pov_steve/3456068987](https://www.flickr.com/photos/pov_steve/3456068987)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're ever in the Bay Area, go across the bridge to Sausalito and look back at the city at sunset. The Salesforce Tower looks like a chrome cylinder jammed into some mashed potatoes. It's incredible how much newer and shinier it looks; totally out of place.

It'll probably dim with age, but right now it really doesn't fit with the rest of the buildings due to sheer newness.

<comment><USER7> There has been a lot of construction of the same style going on in the last few years. Here are 14 new buildings coming up - [https://sf.curbed.com/maps/san-francisco-high-rise- map-2018](https://sf.curbed.com/maps/san-francisco-high-rise-map-2018) \- all of them with the new glass look. The skyline is going to change fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was just in San Francisco over the weekend, and this tower really caught me off guard. Thing is fuckin massive, completely changes the skyline.

Crazy to think about in a city as notoriously expensive as SF.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pardon the naive question, but is a high-rise corporate office like this one (and firms in NYC) preferable to a sprawling "groundscraper" campus (Google, FB)? Which layout costs less? How does this affect management and organizational structure?

<comment><USER10> One thing is location. Very hard to get a lot of land and approval to build a sprawling campus in the center of a city like San Francisco.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, Salesforce was originally planning to build a 14-acre campus in San Francisco (the Mission Bay neighborhood), but had to scrap those plans due to growth[1].

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Salesforce-s-fast- gr...](https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Salesforce-s-fast-growth-halts- Mission-Bay-campus-3365461.php)

<comment><USER12> They seem to have managed the growth just fine. I don't think they wanted to manage a massive construction project.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zilla Slab: A common language through a shared font - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/zilla-slab-common-language-shared-font/ <comment><USER2> If you want to see how the ligature mechanism works, go to [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Zilla+Slab+Highlight](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Zilla+Slab+Highlight), type the sample text "mozilla", and watch it turn into the Mozilla logo when you type the 'a'.

<comment><USER3> How on _earth_ does this work?!

<comment><USER4> Font ligatures!

Certain special combinations of characters can be treated by a font as having a special rendering known as a ligature. In CSS3, rendering of these is controlled through the 'font-variant-ligatures' property: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font- varian...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant- ligatures)

For a small example of text with and without ligatures for the common 'fi' and 'fl' combinations:

[https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0](https://codepen.io/anon/pen/MvbPdo?editors=1000#0)

<comment><USER3> Super duper. I thought that it only worked for two-letter combos. Very cool Mozilla, or should I say Moz://a !

<comment><USER5> Yes, pretty smart trick, now they get their logo integrated easily in many apps.

I use Fira Code for coding, ligatures are really nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I must admit the whole idea of font design mystifies me. If you put 100 fonts in front of me, I'm not sure I could tell you which ones looked better than others, beyond serif/sans-serif and tall/fat. For someone to put this much thought into a font is just a bit mind-boggling to me, much less focus on whether a colon is "too heavy" (whatever that means). The only reason I can tell the difference between any of those letters is that they pointed it out. If they had just changed fonts midway through a paragraph, I doubt I would have noticed beyond a simple "something's different, but I can't put my finger on it."

Still... that font is pretty, so they must know what they're talking about!

(This is not meant to disparage anyone in any way. Just musing aloud at how I don't "get it".)

<comment><USER7> > If they had just changed fonts midway through a paragraph, I doubt I would > have noticed beyond a simple "something's different, but I can't put my > finger on it."

So you do get it, just on a subconscious level! That's exactly what good font design is all about: being invisible. It just so happens that being unnoticeable is incredibly difficult to achieve, and changes all the time with culture. A good font matches the tone of your message while remaining clear and understandable. That's because fonts aren't for robots, they're meant to be read by humans.

What Mozilla is doing here is actually a branding exercise!

<comment><USER6> Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away from the experience. I notice color and contrast a lot more than I notice typeface. The number of times I've said to myself "this font choice is awful" is pretty small, and is limited to relatively crazy fonts. I wouldn't notice the difference between Zilla Slab and any other slab font, other than the special colon/i thing they did. I don't even know what a slab font is, and I couldn't pick one out of a lineup of random fonts.

<comment><USER7> > Well, I guess my point is that it wouldn't have added or taken anything away > from the experience

You already said that you would have felt like something was off. That's detracting from the experience even though you don't consciously know why.

A ton of effort goes into choosing the fonts of the hundred different things you see every day, so you've been trained to unconsciously associate different fonts with different feelings. You don't need to be able to pick a font out of a lineup in order for font choice to affect your experience. If I spend enough time on Mozilla's site, I'm going to start associating Zilla Slab with internet-related things, even though I still can't distinguish slab fonts. Your brain's good at things like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So they commissioned a high profile typographer to create a custom typeface just 3-4 years after they commissioned a high profile typographer to create a custom typeface? Makes you wonder if donations to Mozilla will help to keep the web open or help to do a third rebranding.

<comment><USER9> We didn't throw away Fira Sans, which is the typeface of Firefox. However, we wanted to update the Mozilla brand apart from the Firefox brand, and so Zilla Slab was commissioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A little off-topic, but do any Mozillians here know if there are plans to release t-shirts again with the new branding? It's no longer an option on the Donate page.</comment>