How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac - <AUTHOR> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/01/27/how-a-great-product-can-be-bad-news-apple-ipad-and-the-closed-mac/

<comment><USER3> That Apple is creating a closed system is of little surprise. Steve Jobs is all about control. It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term.

Making use of a closed-system and trying to be the best in a category assumes that you have access to the most brilliant minds in that field, and the most brilliant marketing campaign. What makes Apple great? Well, they can control every aspect of their production because they own all their own tools and can keep out the crap. Also, they have slick industrial design. For now they also have some of the most brilliant minds in the industry, but not all of them. This is why they will never achieve world domination with their products. I suppose I could make use of their own advertising to make an example : "I'm a mac, I'm a PC". You are either an apple person or you're not. Their closed- system allows little flexibility. They would be doomed to what they used to be were it not for them opening their file formats to standards.

Why is this not the best approach? Because of human innovation. People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. This is what apple is doing, but because their products are so innovative, consumers will go for it.

Google is much smarter; they know what to hold onto and what to open up for the masses. Even though they employ many geniuses, they are always on the search for new innovative ideas. That's why they purchase so many startups, or so I've been told.

That's why I believe in a race between Google and Apple, Apple WILL lose eventually.

Closed-systems should actually drive innovation because they must be circumvented. That's why Apple products are cracked all the time. So I guess the challenge then is, that if you aren't happy with Apple, build a better product and market it as well as they do. All things being equal, the open- system product will win every time. You can't employ all of the brightest people yourself, all of the time. I think Apple will learn this in due time, and then things will change.

A sidenote is that a large part of Apple's appeal is simplicity because of their closed-system. If anyone could create an opem-system as turnkey as theirs, they'd come ahead by far. I think one of the closest systems to being fully open and turnkey I've seen so far is Facebook Connect, but I'm starting to become too long-winded, so I'll leave it at that.

<comment><USER4> > _People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc._

Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner of Per Se here in NYC and French Laundry in CA, among others) talking about a new-ish restaurant of his in CA, Ad Hoc.

Ad Hoc has no menus. They make meals and serve them family style. You take what you want from the dishes provided. You have choice only within that range.

He argued that true luxury was the freedom _from_ choice. Now in a political context, this is Orwellian and terrifying. But in the context of a meal, it made a lot of sense to me. Let a great chef do his or her magic, and I will try any damn thing they put in front of me and thank them for the privilege.

For us as hackers, computer use is more like politics. We want the openness to do what we want, to dig around, to break things and fix them again, to change things. For most people, however, computer use is more like a meal. Give them some great toys to play with and they won't mind the limitations at all.

<comment><USER5> But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices.

This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do.

Imagine if this policy had been in place on their desktop or laptop computers. Half of the technologies that they themselves use and tout as great would not exist. LLVM/clang? WebKit? Heck, the Mach and BSD kernels that this is all built on. None of this would have been created in a closed ecosystem with restrictive policies, and yet Apple is perfectly happy to take advantage of it while not letting anyone else play in _their_ sandbox.

The hypocrisy of their policies makes me sick.

<comment><USER6> Your third paragraph sums up the link very well. Yes, many customers win in the short-term, but they will lose in the long run. I'm one that thinks web apps are the future, anyway, so Apple's focus on specialized apps that can't be ported to other platforms very easily and without having to invest a whole lot up front is going to bite them hard.

When html5 matures and is more widely adopted, developers will sidestep the ridiculous shackles of the app store approval process... effortlessly. At that point, it'll be a competition between the best developed browsers and the most inexpensive mobile devices that will still deliver a very good experience. Google, I think, will come out on top then w/ Google Chrome OS.

<comment><USER7> When html5 matures? Seriously? Have you ever done any web development? Have you looked at html5? It's an incremental upgrade, nothing that's going to let you do new interesting things with all the new, interesting hardware we have. Plus, it will still be very, very slow compared to code running through fewer layers of indirection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This post adequately sums up my concerns.

Here we have a device that doesn't support USB thumbdrives, doesn't support dropbox (at least system-wide, I assume the dropbox iphone app would work), is unable to run ruby or any of my other dev scripts/tools, cannot install firefox or firefox plugins, etc.

I do not want to see computing head this direction.

<comment><USER9> My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos, look at photos of their kids/grandkids, send e-mails to their relatives oversees, and read their favorite books on it, all without the need for a "computer-savvy guy" who has to teach them how it works, and fix it when it's broken. In other words, it's a logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution. I understand you need to run your Ruby scripts, but this product was designed for the 99% of the people in this country instead. You're not the target audience.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, without an open platform, the new, innovative ways of working with this machine will never be invented.

This is about far more than running your own Ruby scripts. It's about the fact that true innovation cannot exist in such an environment. And the problem is, you will not see what you're missing; people won't bother developing new technologies that have no platform they can legally run on.

Would the Web exist if Microsoft had been able to ban Netscape from running on Windows? What new, groundbreaking technologies are we missing out on because it's not worth the time and effort to create something new if the platform vendor can simply forbid you from publishing it?

<comment><USER10> This is alarmist nonsense.

The App store and the iPhone have fostered a colossal amount of innovation, and made a lot of normal non-techy people very, very happy. And a bunch of techies too.

And in the end I hope it doesn't come down to open source advocates getting their way so they can install vim, but it being about my Mum being able to use it without having to phone me saying that it's all gone wrong again and can I talk through 3 hours of trying to fix the damn thing.

<comment><USER11> _I hope it doesn't come down to open source advocates getting their way so they can install vim_

Installing vim isn't mutually exclusive from having a usable system.

<comment><USER4> Some of us might argue that installing Vim is the sine qua non for a (truly) usable system. (For what it's worth, I just love me some Vim. Overall, I'm on the "this device is perfect for most people" side of this actual argument.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is only one thing I want Apple to do at this point.

Open up developer ad-hoc provisioning. Keep the App Store closed, heck, make it even stricter, but give that alternative, ad-hoc channel a chance. You don't have to publicize it; all you need to do is to change a single number in a plist somewhere on your activation servers from 100 to unlimited.

Then the hacker community will focus on adding features to your product instead of on compromising its security.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know of no other company that can charge $100 for 16GB of flash memory. Differentiating on real features like 3G is good and expected. Differentiating on commodity hardware like memory is unfair.

With the ubiquity of SD and micro SD and need for more and more storage due to the explosion of digital media, they don't even provide a port. Obviously, they don't provide a port because it would destroy their product line. When you have the cheapest digital electronics providing these ports and high-end hardware like the iPod/Phone/Pad not providing it, that says a lot. It says "we don't care about anything except our product the money in your wallet."

It's ironic that MS gets so much flack from developers in the OSS purist and Apple fanbois camps about their closed products. They've always been the most open from the hardware perspective and they've always been great to developers. Apple is just the opposite.

If we care about an open future in computing, we need to think clearly about which platforms to develop for.

<comment><USER14> _I know of no other company that can charge $100 for 16GB of flash memory. Differentiating on real features like 3G is good and expected. Differentiating on commodity hardware like memory is unfair._

Ahem: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/blu-ray-maker-re- boxe...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/blu-ray-maker-re- boxes-500-player-charges-3500/)

<comment><USER13> LOL. That's one of the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The revolutionary thing about this tablet is that it's not a Mac. Tablets have been around for a while and haven't caught on because nobody wants to buy a keyboardless laptop running a normal OS.

If you are worried about openness, then look to Android. I'm sure we will see a plethora of Android tablets that will be like a large Droid/Nexus One just like this tablet is a large iPhone.

<comment><USER16> But the design will be shit and you won't have the user base.

<comment><USER17> "design will be shit"? I think that the Nexus One has eliminated that argument.

<comment><USER18> Really? Everyone I know who has used one says that bottom touch bar is a PITA. It keeps getting hit by accidental touches. Speaking of which, if you have a touch screen, why do you need that many hardware controls?

<comment><USER19> Huh, I like it. Especially the universal back button; it provides a much better flow than the iPhone where you have to go back to the home screen and relaunch the app you were in when you got a text message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately, this is what people like my mom and my sister want: something dead simple and easy to use like iPhone.

Both OSX and Windows still give them a lot of trouble.

It's hard to pair both freedom and flexibility with ease of use and simplicity.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately? Yeah, how dare they want something different than you!

<comment><USER20> Yes, it's unfortunate that the system they want comes with apair of handcuffs. I guess there is nothing wrong with it if you don't notice it.

<comment><USER22> Restrictions only matter when they limit you from doing things you want to do. For the vast majority of consumers, the closed nature of the iPad isn't a restriction, it's a convenience.

We need to understand that the average HN reader is not the target market here. We're generally more technical and are willing to tolerate more complexity and maintenance in return for a greater level of freedom over our software and devices. The things we regard as important are not seen the same way by most people. They just want an appliance that makes the things they do every day as easy and hassle-free as possible.

<comment><USER20> As I've mentioned in my original post I understand it. I was just clarifying to a reply as to why I'm not happy with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bet someone at Apple is thinking hard about how could they seal the MacPro case too. It's the only system they sell that you are allowed to open and upgrade or tinker (beyond something limited like a RAM upgrade).

Apple is no longer called Apple Computers because they will not sell computers anymore. They will sell closed devices with a closed software ecosystem. They will also sell the best devices money can buy.

<comment><USER24> What? They have clearly segmented the market, they're not taking a "let's seal everything" approach.

The Mac Pro is made for power users and developers, it's made very easy to open and add hardware to.

The iPhone is made for everyone on the planet who can afford it, it is made to be very easy to use for normal use cases and very hard to screw up to the point where someone needs someone else to fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I want my tablet for entertainment, not for work.

And the iPad fits the bill 100%.

$499? Unbeatable!

</comment><comment><USER26> Eh, every time I hear this argument my response is the same: if they stop making open Macs, I'll stop buying Macs. I'm not married to it, and there are open platforms to switch to.

When they make a new thing I don't want, it doesn't make the old stuff I did want any less cool.

</comment><comment><USER27> Apple has managed to maintain consistency and provide a level of experience over the years by tightly controlling the platform. This is just another manifestation of that. Look at the App store, the fact that you have to use hacks to get OS X running on a PC or that you buy Apple computers with OS X being pre-loaded as examples of that.

If you don't like the closed platform you can grab a PC, but I think this is just how Steve Jobs does things -- he likes to have as much control as possible so that Apple can deliver a certain type and level of experience to users.

<comment><USER19> Macs are wide open. Apple creates the default user experience, but you're free to develop and run any software you want without begging for permission. Apple's total control over the iPhone/iPod/iPad platform is a change for the worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My position is if I pay good money for hardware it's mine and I will do with it as I please. And I will not buy it until it has been hacked (and I can install Linux on it ;-) ).

Same with my iPhone. It wouldn't be half as useful without being jailbroken.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am reading a lot of concerns that Apple has created a closed system. You are right, Apple has a closed system. That's what Apple has mostly sold for years.

What I think is exciting is that this device breaks new ground. It's only version 1.0. Better devices will come out. Hopefully, from companies other than Apple. There's virtually nothing stopping another company from selling an open platform, one that runs open software, has open hardware, has WIFI, has USB and has higher screen resolution than the 1024x768 that my 8 year old iBook has. And, hopefully someone will deliver a device that uses low power open cores.

Stop complaining. Start dreaming up something better.

</comment><comment><USER30> I believe Apple's success stems from its portable devices, mainly the iPod and the iPhone. Both of those devices could take full advantage of Apple's closed door policy. The iPod and the iPhone are _extremely_ well built because Apple had complete control over all the parts. All the other phones on the market just felt like cheaper plastic knockoffs. Furthermore, Apple is somewhat lucky that the functionality you'd want from these portable devices is very limited and so Apple didn't miss any of the market by providing such limited functionality.

However, devices bigger than iPhone - in the netbook/iPad range - <USER2> significantly more functionality. I believe Apple missed the boat with the iPad, especially if it really is targeting grandpa and grandma. People are becoming more tech savvy and they will be less and less willing to shell out money for an inflexible device that only serves a rigid set of predefined functions.

The iPad, I'm sure, is constructed extremely well. However, taking it to the bathroom, to bed and around the house in general isn't the same thing as taking it everywhere you go. Apple's success is in building beautiful durable portable hardware. The iPad just isn't portable enough or flexible enough for people to want it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree with the article. I look more forward to a light weight Chrome netbook. I don't know if it is the offing or not, but perhaps a Chrome netbook could forgo a physical keyboard and have a popup virtual keyboard like my Droid (although that adds the expense of a touchscreen). Bonus points to hardware manufacturers: sell a Chrome netbook that looks like a iPad, but has a slide out physical keyboard like my Motorola Droid phone.

</comment><comment><USER32> Apple has become the prime example of closed computing. It has its benefits: the iPhone is painfully easy to use, has very few viruses, and works pretty much all the time (except when AT&T drops, but that's a separate worry).

Google is trying to take the opposite pole: you can do pretty much anything on an Android phone, but that includes buggy software with bad UI design.

There will always be both positions. Both have benefits to different people. To a HackerNews audience, the open system will almost always seem better -- HackerNews types enjoy tinkering and will tend to be advanced users. But not everyone shares the HN love of tinkering.

</comment><comment><USER33> At first I was let down with it being closed system. But after a night to sleep on it, I'm starting to warm to the idea.

I'll never use the iPad for work, and in the same way I can't bring myself round to using a Mac Mini as my media centre, I don't want the hassle of a full OS over a purposely built OS for the task(s) in hand. All I'd want to do on the iPad is browse the web, read, watch videos, and perhaps play some games.

Overall as long as this isn't Apples future strategy for the Mac platform (which would be suicide), I think it's a nice product, which by the looks of it, will do the job it's made for brilliantly.

</comment><comment><USER34> This could be the big step for the developers' dream of using the actual target device as the host for developing(end-to-end toolchain and the debugging host of course). Success of open systems(both HW and SW) comes from this marginal-looking(huge in fact) idea. So, the hardware is there, but unfortunately they lack the determination. It is sad to see Apple performing even worse than MS on this very department.

I personally will insist on "not" buying any Apple product unless they develop a strategy to innovate(as they did in the past) instead of trying to monopolize the scene...

</comment><comment><USER35> Personally, I don't have a problem with iPad being closed. I have problem with a lack of an open alternative (or several). I'm using an iPhone, but I'm sure as hell glad there is the Android.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the biggest obvious point people are missing is that Jobs intends many, many people to own a MacBook _and_ an iPad. Probably an iPhone, too. They serve different niches in the ecology of your technological life.

(Oh, and if you've got some other laptop and pick up an iPad just how long do you think the average user will last before drooling a little more over the MacBook lineup?)

</comment><comment><USER37> If I were Adobe, I'd be furious. Exclusion of Flash from this platform is a slap in the face, despite Jobs' perspective of how it would break his App Store model. If it weren't for Adobe focusing their Creative Suite development on Jobs' platforms, Apple wouldn't have had the design community's support that it had for so many years. Apple owes Adobe.

<comment><USER38> If it weren't for Apple, Adobe wouldn't EXIST. Considering what Photoshop was first developed for and solely for Macs for several years. And the only reason Adobe even still bothers to develop for Mac is because of the very high percentage of the design community who are married to their Macs and won't use anything else. If I recall correctly, something like 40% of Photoshop installs are on Macs, which considering the general desktop userbases percentages is fairly dramatic.

<comment><USER39> No, it would mean that Photoshop would have been developed for PCs, or possibly for the workstation class machines of that era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I see the iPad as a communal home machine that floats around the house. It replaces newspapers, books, magazines, remotes (for music and hopefully TV), picture frames, and for some video game consoles. Eventually it will control your oven, door entry system etc. To me it's a "home computer."

</comment><comment><USER41> Funny thing that under the article advertisement for this appeared:

[http://www.ideal-case.com/demon-silicone-series-case-for- iph...](http://www.ideal-case.com/demon-silicone-series-case-for- iphone-3g-3gs-halloween-collection.html?gclid=CPGX153TxZ8CFcGAzAod7hGRgA)

</comment><comment><USER42> I see the iPad not as a "PC" but as an appliance, albeit a really sophisticated one.

<comment><USER21> Exactly, it's an appliance like your microwave and refrigerator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> i'd like to see one IRL - but i dont see the iPad being especially easy to use with regards to its size.

on an iPhone you can easily type with your thumbs, grip it firmly and you can use all sorts of multi-touch gestures.

i cant see that happening with a 10 inch tablet.

you would need to hold it / balance it on one hand and then awkwardly control it with your other hand. Doesnt seem ergonomic.

maybe one of the accesories they should release is an iArm, so we can hold it with two arms and confidently use gestures and such with your iArm

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1082824>

</comment><comment><USER45> I can hardly wait until some astute techies pop this thing open and take off its whalebone corset.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's really easy.

You use the iPad to:

\- read a book \- surf the web \- organize/look at/show off photos \- watch videos/movies/tv shows \- listen to music \- send/receive emails \- play games \- use maps/calendar and the 140k+ apps available in the app store

Anything else, use a Mac (or Windows/Linux).

</comment><comment><USER47> In my mind:

For surfing the web: iPad > netbooks

For reading books: Kindle > iPad

<comment><USER48> You've never even held and iPad. How can you come to either of those conclusions?

<comment><USER49> Because we all know how much more comfortable it is to stare at e-ink than at a backlit LCD for hours on end? Also, battery life.</comment></comment></comment>


Content for SEO or SEO Social Content [Infographic] - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchenginefather.com/content-for-seo-or-seo-social-content-infographic/ The dilemma is open: in an era where search engines rely less and less and less traffic running above always return it still makes sense to talk about SEO techniques. Or it makes more sense to talk about Social Media for conveying viralizzazione and their content. <comment><USER2> nice....</comment>


Ask HN: What is your best method to learn new things? - <AUTHOR> I have traditionally used book, and now some blogs.  During my drive to work, I use audio books and podcasts.<p>I am looking for rapid techniques to learn new things.  What are some of your best methods? <comment><USER2> Reading a book is a recipe for procrastination. I just don't have the willpower to read upfront.

Build an easy 2 hour project in the technology. Like a basic bug tracker. Dive in knowing _nothing_ , no learning first. Consult google as you go.

I need to build something first, then read little bits here and there. Eventually sitting down to learn the "proper" way to use the technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cultivating a genuine curiosity for the topic, for me that means be driven by my own questions in the first place. A side project could be a form of a question, don't feel guilty for not finishing those projects, some aspects of the project will answer your question and the other uninteresting parts will be never finished, and it's fine.

Also I used to read books linearly and the whole thing, recently I'm experimenting with these other ways from How to read a Book pdf[1] which I saw posted on HN[2]

[1] [http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf](http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446)

</comment><comment><USER4> Become a producer of knowledge rather than just a consumer. When you create new knowledge, you synthesize what is already known and thus learn with a purpose (vs. being passive). Alternatively, solve a problem. When you identify a problem that you want to solve you will retain and apply related learning better than if you are simply reading or listening.

</comment><comment><USER5> Listening to lectures is a good start. I found that listening to it at 2-3x speed multiple times works best for me. Skimmimg a variety of articles on the topic, this helps for understanding the jargon used in the field. Jargon intimatedes me when I'm reading for a thorough understanding. So if I already have a flavor of the field it becomes much easier to grasp what is written. The best method yet is just spending time with people who know a lot about that field.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't have a magic solution. I tend to learn best in the typical formal classroom way. I like to watch lecture, read the material, take notes, and work practice problems. Ultimately it's the practice that really helps me learn something. Most things I know really well I know because I had a work related or personal project that I could use those skills for.

</comment><comment><USER7> Come up with a project that you want to complete that requires the thing you're using. Then work on the project. It'll help you figure out what aspects to focus on, realize what you don't understand, and become familiar with the gotchas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have taken this exact approach with my side project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most efficient way to learn is to find out the original problems that these new things trying to solve. Learn as much as possible about the historic context of these problems and solutions. Having this big picture in mind will enable you to learn much faster and deeper.

Another thing is to apply what you just learned in practice as quick as possible. That will help convert your new knowledge to ability.

</comment><comment><USER9> It may sound stupid but it works for me. Read, listen, watch something in relaxed manner before you go to sleep. Problems and information is always clearer next morning. Doesn't work, too much to learn? Rinse and repeat.

Taking notes as you listen helps too.

</comment><comment><USER10> I read then take notes on what I read, summarizing the concept(s) so I solidify understanding.

Once I understand the concept(s), I practice these concepts by creating examples and solving the examples.

Finally I analogize and connect the concept with previous knowledge, i.e. internet is to spider web and quarternary numeral system is to DNA. Quarternary numeral is related to decimal numeral system in that they encode real numbers to limited symbols.

From there you can create small projects to reinforce a combination of concepts in your brain!

</comment><comment><USER11> What I typically do is create something, then try to teach how to make that something to other people. In person is good, but tough. Screencasts and blogs are great for this.

While teaching, you really get sudden moments of clarity as to why something is like it is, or why you had to do it this way.

</comment><comment><USER12> carpool

<comment><AUTHOR> can you elaborate?

<comment><USER12> Communicate with other people while driving. You learn a lot!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best HTML5 UI Frameworks? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what other UI hackers are using to build rich HTML5 applications?  Ideally a framework that has a layout manager and a large component set.
ExtJS is nice but expensive and has a very restrictive licensing scheme.
KendoUI doesn't look as nice as ExtJS, but still has a fairly good list of UI controls.
jQueryUI just doesn't have very many controls.
What is the HN community using in this space? <comment><USER2> Note: I work for Sencha (who makes Ext JS). I am also the creative director, so I would agree, we look the best :)

Now, "best" is relative, depending on your goals. Both of our frameworks, Ext JS and Sencha Touch, include every bit you need to make an app: Layout system, UI widgets, MVC, data binding, templates, I could go on. We also include a build system, so you can only use the pieces you need, so, even with all that we offer, your app is not "bloated."

That said, there are pros and cons to modularity vs. a unified system. There are some great microlibs out there, and independent devs are in an exciting stage right now, being able to mix and match frameworks as they see fit. From a team-based or enterprise perspective, though, this is not ideal: You are working with various APIs, certain frameworks can have duplicate code (ie. there's overlap in what jQuery and Underscore provide), and you're relying on individual devs or the open source community for fixes and enhancements. It's also a bit of a testing nightmare, as you need to re-test every time you update an individual component.

Also, we have a JavaScript-based API to creating things with our framework, which is quite different to the progressive enhancement method of other frameworks. The benefit to this, again, is performance, and a better architecture for an application. On the downside, this can be harder for novice web developers (those who focus on HTML/CSS instead of JavaScript).

At any rate, hope that helps some in making your decision. Let me know if you have any other questions-

</comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I work for Telerik (who makes Kendo UI).

Kendo UI is a relatively new entry in the HTML/JS UI space, but the engineering is based on over a decade of building professional UI for the web. We are working hard to build a complete framework that has everything you need to build sites and mobile apps with HTML5 and JavaScript.

Some of our advantages: \- Based on jQuery (familiar & less overhead for jQuery fans) \- Built for performance (JSPerf us against anyone. We're fast.) \- Clean, simple, easy to learn API \- Lightweight and modular (use what you need) \- Aggressive roadmap (3 major releases each year) \- Affordably priced ($399 with a year of updates/support!)

We just shipped a beta of Kendo UI Mobile, and our next major release will happen in March. The best way to compare Kendo UI, though, is to download it and give it a try. It's fun to use and I think you'll enjoy the developer experience.

<http://www.kendoui.com/get-kendo-ui>

Hope that helps.

-Todd Anglin @toddanglin

</comment><comment><USER4> Dojo has some nice widgets:

<http://dojotoolkit.org/widgets>

<comment><USER5> Right I would second Dojo, one thing to remember with Ext is they switched their licensing between versions, so if you are releasing a commercial product, you will have to make available your source code or pay for alternative licensing. It may not be an issue for your project, but there are a good deal of quality liberally licensed toolkits in this space such as Dojo, YUI and MooTools. For me personally I tend to use Dojo or a bolt together pattern of (Require, Backbone, jQuery, jQuery UI widgets both free and commercially sold ones).</comment></comment>


The iPad needs its Hypercard - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/the-ipad-needs-its-hypercard.html

<comment><USER3> If you want to see the Beethoven Hypercard thing mentioned in the article, there are some "action shots" in Douglas Adams and Tom Bakers' "Hyperland" video, about 18 minutes in. The whole video is really good, though - <USER2> should watch it if you have the time. [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7190175107515525470&...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7190175107515525470&ei=6Ca2S-XLCoTWqgKpmq2TDg&q=hyperland)

</comment><comment><USER4> > The web has made producers of us all.

Not even close, and the imbalance between creators of content and consumers of content on the web is growing every day.

> If the iPad is just another consumer platform for consuming and not creating > content, then it will just be another way to watch TV or listen to music or > download information. Convenient, yes, but just another device.

The iPad is not a TV or an iPod. It's already a two way device.

> To be something different, the iPad must not be just a delivery platform but > a creative one, offering professionals and amateurs an opportunity to create > a unique experience with interactive media.

The device isn't creative. A piano isn't creative. An iPad isn't creative.

The iPhone has Ocarina, or Layers, or Everyday Looper, and so on. There's no reason to think the iPad won't run such apps, and better.

More importantly, most people don't think of themselves as "creatives", but there is content they do want to create and share such as email and photos or Facebook statuses. The iPad makes that easier than ever.

iPad lets anyone easily express themselves to their social circle.

PS. Speaking as a former Hypercard programmer, seems to me something as simple as iWeb can meet casual "info app" creator needs, while HTML5 + Canvas feels like today's Hypercard on steroids: <http://www.canvasdemos.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> > Not even close, and the imbalance between creators of content and consumers > of content on the web is growing every day.

It used to be a pain to publish content on the web. Then came along Blogger. It used to be near impossible to share or embed a video in a webpage. Then came along Youtube (who solved the hard problem of converting uploaded video quickly to a shareable format - which turns out to be Flash video) It used to be unthinkable/difficult to broadcast little bits and share it with people you know or don't know (Facebook, Twitter).

I argue that we are all becoming content creators - the content isn't groundbreaking - it's just that some of us aren't reaching an audience because we're just saying "Hello, World".

And I think the network effects of Reddit/Slashdot/even News.YC allows some previously undiscovered voices to gain a bigger audience, albeit temporarily.

Also, the power of the Internet is in ability to connect. Niche sites (check out iboats.com formums). Witness savvy teenagers like Blair Fowler creating an audience in the hundreds of thousands on YouTube and (more importantly) generating thousands of comments on their videos (even the ones where they promote the product that they've been paid to do so).

And, if you doubt the power of discovery mixed with random luck:

<http://twitter.com/lovelybutton>

<http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9015331>

<comment><USER4> > I argue that we are all becoming content creators - the content isn't > groundbreaking - it's just that some of us aren't reaching an audience > because we're just saying "Hello, World".

Enjoyed your comment. Perhaps we're saying the same thing: self-expression, democratized.

What an apt username!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. A wallflower is not always a wallflower. I can talk about the topic of democratized self-expression for hours, in person, to the point of nausea.

My brother-in-law had a PC laptop for years. Kids used it mainly for Brainpop.com (warning addictive site for kids). He used it for email,

Then he got a MacBook Pro. And, suddenly, he's authoring photo slideshows and videos in iPhoto, iMovie. Producing content that is of very specific interest to him (his family) for a very specific audience (his mother, father, sister).

<comment><USER4> I agree. I hope the iPad feels as accessible as finger painting, albeit less messy:

[http://michael.terretta.com/an-information-appliance-for- the...](http://michael.terretta.com/an-information-appliance-for-the-caveman- in-u)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never used Hypercard, though I am aware of it.

I've noticed a couple of things, though:

* Many people howl for the return of Hypercard

* There are dozens of Hypercard clones/reimaginations/etc out there that no one seems to be using.

What is it that the implementations out there are missing that make them undesirable to the people demanding Hypercard? Is it just lack of ubiquity, or something else?

<comment><USER6> I believe every Mac came with Hypercard.

It was one of those thing that you didn't really need and wouldn't seek out, but was awesome once you found it. It's like MS Paint + the web. Flash dev is probably the closest to it and Flash is so ubiquitous that it would be hard justify using another toolset for something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Think bigger. What is needed is a new way to construct software altogether, that works as fluidly with a touch interface as with a keyboard.

Why are engineers so shortsighted? "Build an app creator for the plebes, but us serious engineers will never build software with an iPad!"

On the contrary. Your keyboard is going to be slowly ripped away from you over the next decade. And you'll be happy about it.

BTW: Starting this weekend, I am working on this very problem. Check back in 6-9 months :)

<comment><USER8> I've been working on something like that for a while now -- maybe we could share some ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the biggest reason you don't see a hypercard clone take off is that html/javascript was inspired by hypercard in the first place, and the barrier to learning basic web development isn't much higher than hypercard-like tools. A beginner friendly IDE that inspires creativity could be neat though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Building a Hypercard-like tool specifically for iPad would be a great idea for a start-up.

<comment><USER11> Except that Apple specifically prohibits interpreted code. You'd have to do a web-based Javascript version which could be interesting, but performance would be much worse than a native app.

<comment><USER12> Javascript performance could _easily_ exceed the performance of HyperCard back in the day, in absolute speed.

<comment><USER13> Could? Javascript is one of the better VMs. It's easily faster than hypercard from back in the day.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to Search for Remote Jobs? - <AUTHOR> Do you have any platform to suggest in order to search for remote jobs? <comment><USER2> I used this when looking and think it needs to be shared wider. Everyone should feel free to contribute! (Not mine btw I found it during my last job hunt)

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1PYwbCTY7h0CNHeer9J0VRzE/edit#gid=1279011369)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for using my spreadsheet :) all feedback welcome!

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much for making this. It made my job search incredibly easier. I have been sharing this with all my friends lately!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working remotely for nearly 10 years now and I think it's a mistake to look for "remote" jobs. If you've got a strong skillset then most developer roles can be remote. If a company allows developers to work from home some days (which is most these days) then full remote is just a point of negotiation. I usually try to be as flexible as possible, offer to spend a couple of weeks on site in the beginning to get to know people (I prefer this actually) and make it clear that I can come over if there's team days and that sort of thing.

This has definitely gotten far easier over the last couple of years and I think post covid the trend will accelerate.

<comment> em-bee not everyone has the ability to travel. especially now. making remote a non negotiable. so if they are not 100% on board up front, i feel it would be a waste of energy to even apply.

i don't like to work for someone if they feel they are not getting what they want. that goes for everything i manage to negotiate. sure, i may be able to take advantage of their need and negotiate a bunch of perks, or a higher salary than what they offered, but if they are unsure about it, and as a result their expectations are extremely ly high, then that doesn't create a good work environment.

underpromise, overdeliver doesn't work in such a case

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a few hours you will see lots of fresh job postings here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

I.e. the monthly HN hiring threads. Some of the offerings will probably be for remote positions.

You will also be able to submit a "looking for a job" post there.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yea, I'm really digging working from home. I'm nervous my employer, who I am otherwise happy with, will force me back into the office full time in a couple of months.

It actually has me considering looking around for a "true" FT remote position. If this is a permanent paradigm shift, I'd really prefer to NOT live close to any major city.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I am trying to get as far away from all major US cities as well. Remote work is hear to stay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> LinkedIn Glassdoor Indeed Stack Overflow Jobs ([https://stackoverflow.com/jobs](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs)) Remote Ok ([https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/))

Not sure what kind of roles you are looking for but for some particular technologies there are specific job posting platforms like Elixir Jobs ([https://elixirjobs.net/](https://elixirjobs.net/))

</comment><comment><USER9> These links come up a lot and work well.

[https://weworkremotely.com](https://weworkremotely.com)

[https://remoteok.io](https://remoteok.io)

[https://hnhiring.com](https://hnhiring.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> On my last remote job hunt I have tried to find a job through the listings on different remote-first job boards but as many have already pointed out the number of applications is just too high and you might be turned down because you are asking for too much money compared to other devs.

Here's what I did instead -> Go on Linkedin, hit the search, filter to "Content" and use phrases like: "Looking for software developer", "Looking for _your domain of expertise_ person", you get the idea. You will be able to find a dozen of fresh listings every other day from recruiters, hiring managers or even CTO's. The goal is to get to the job offer before it gets posted.

The technique worked very well for me as I've approached a hiring manager this way and got a job offer days later.

The limitation to this is the size of your Linkedin network since it searches just up to the 3rd degree connection deep.

A good alternative is Twitter where you could use the same approach but I haven't tried it much myself.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> I've heard that toptal ([https://www.toptal.com/](https://www.toptal.com/)) is a good place to start, because you can get paid decently and you get in touch with serious employers.

I don't have experience with them nor am I affiliated to them, so to take with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER12> I've heard the opposite, that the pay was low and the expectations were high, as in that they don't respect your off time and expect you to be on-call.

<comment><USER13> Don't you set your own rates and timings at Toptal? From what I can see it functions more as a talent agency than as an employer.

<comment><USER12> I'll ask my friend next time we chat, but if its anything like other online agencies, you can set your rates, but such agencies draw clients who want cheap labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On a similar thread these two where mentioned

[https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

[https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've found my last two jobs through stackoverflow. They have a filter for remote. [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?r=true](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?r=true)

</comment><comment> pat-jay I think [https://freshremote.work](https://freshremote.work) hasn't been mentioned here yet. It's a bit of a newer site, but covers all kinds of remote positions worldwide with a clean and fast interface. Also provides keyword, category and region filters to narrow down a job search.

</comment><comment><USER16> So probably not gonna be the most popular answer here but: LinkedIn. A lot of companies have hiring needs still and are remote only and decided remote will now be at least part of the strategy going forward, if not embracing it completely.

</comment><comment><USER12> As someone who seeks out remote positions exclusively, now more than ever, you'll be able to find remote work.

Try the dedicated remote work job boards, but also check your standard job listing companies, too.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://indeed.com](https://indeed.com) \-- You can specify remote

</comment><comment><USER19> Besides 'HN Who is hiring' I'm looking at aggregators

[https://workaline.com/](https://workaline.com/)

[https://remoteweekly.cc](https://remoteweekly.cc)

[https://remotelypeople.com/](https://remotelypeople.com/)

Also, you can find remote jobs in those decent list of companies [https://www.levels.fyi/still-hiring/](https://www.levels.fyi/still-hiring/)

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://remoteworkjobs.io](https://remoteworkjobs.io)

<comment><USER20> Here's a good list of remote work job boards: [https://github.com/lukasz- madon/awesome-remote-job#job-board...](https://github.com/lukasz- madon/awesome-remote-job#job-boards)

There's also this: [https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wCeKcivSEseEnrsnDrhn...](https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wCeKcivSEseEnrsnDrhnFMQBPpdKGLdOmZmZ4miLpoM/mobilebasic#h.wrx6p6ksp20a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In late 2020–2021 — just about anywhere :)

<comment><USER22> Not really... I've applied to multiple positions on linkedin and the only one that responded was a rejection because I was asking too much; their hourly rate that could offer was between 15$ and 20$. Hamburg startup rates, apparently, according to them.

I was asking 72k$ per year for a PHP position with 6 years experience working for a company and around 3-4 years part-time freelancing.

<comment><USER23> Small startups will pay peanuts. Also remote jobs will usually pay less because the supply is much higher, you compete with 100x more devs than the local devs, some from poorer countries where 20/h is a good rate.

<comment><USER14> > Also remote jobs will usually pay less because the supply is much higher, > you compete with 100x more devs than the local devs, some from poorer > countries where 20/h is a good rate.

Is there any data for this?

In my limited experience this was not the case but I've never really looked for a remote job

<comment><USER22> If you look at the job offers on linkedin, most of them have more than 50-60 candidates. That's my main problem with remote job interviews. How do you reach the actual interview stage when there are more than 100 candidates applying for the same position?

<comment><USER14> I think the problem with making it easy to apply for a job is that it encourages low effort applications, in essence a lot of people that don't meet the stated requirements will apply thus inflating the totals.

I used to have hiring responsibilities and I think the highest number of applications we got for a role was 57 and the company was completely unknown in a small city in the English midlands, so not exactly a tech hotstop.

A lot of the applications were not suitable at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Recently featured here: NoiceJobs.com

</comment><comment><USER25> remoteok.io</comment>


Trump administration sues California over cap-and-trade deal with Quebec - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-california-cap-and-trade-1.5331865 <comment><USER2> I think the Trump administration is right about this -- the states are not allowed to make agreements with other countries without Congressional approval, according to [https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries- thesauruse...](https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses- pictures-and-press-releases/treaties-foreign-nations) : "States can make an "Agreement or Compact" with other states or with foreign powers but only with consent of the Congress (Article I, section 10)."</comment>


Women Are Sort Of More Tentative Than Men, Aren't They? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825090749.htm

<comment><USER2> It's a poor title for the article since the conclusion of the article is that both men and women are tentative about subjects that are considered the domain of the opposite gender while having the same level of tentativeness within gender-neutral topics. It's interesting research and I hope the follow it up with how it affects things that have great social impact (like job interviews, how people work in an office, etc).

<comment><USER3> The title is brilliant. Not only is it self-referrential humor, but it sets up an expectancy violation as well. While this doesn't help people who only read the headline to understand the conclusion, it helps people who did read the article to remember it better. (C.f. Made to Stick)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> God, I can't believing that changing a tire is still considered a masculine topic. No self-respecting American woman under forty would hesitate to pull out the jack and take care of a flat herself. Feminine helplessness went out with crew cuts, Jello molds, and green bean casseroles. Men may be generally more interested in cars, but nobody changes a tire for fun -- they change a tire when and only when they need to. Men don't have more flat tires than women, and even the nutty car enthusiasts I know don't rotate their own tires -- it's really boring, and it's much easier and quicker for a pro.

So I ask again, why is it a masculine topic? (Yeah, I know the answer, but it depresses me.)

<comment><USER5> Why are you upset that more men than women can change a tire? Does it upset you that more women than men can knit? Further, why do women over 40 get a pass on changing tires?

I feel that eliminating gender-based barriers is almost universally a good thing. But why be bothered when the majority of a gender expresses its preference _not_ to do something?

EDIT: My aunt Sue makes a damn fine green bean casserole. I look forward to it every Thanksgiving. She also does a lot of needlepoint embroidery, often pictures of cats. She is vice president of a bank. Let people do what _they_ want.

<comment><USER6> Why to be bothered:

Because by strongly gendering arbitrary actions, you effectively do constrain people. You make it difficult for anyone to perform the action and still be considered masculine/feminine, when that action should have nothing to do with it.

Not sure I think the gendering of changing car tires is really a terrible offense (or in need of change at all), but that would be the justification for why you should be bothered.

<comment><USER5> _Because by strongly gendering arbitrary actions, you effectively do constrain people._

But what if it isn't me that's "gendering arbitrary actions" -- what if a majority of the gender itself is doing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a generally meaningless article. It says that people are tentative when they are unsure of a subject regardless of gender. Plenty of weasles words in the article that confirm my point words such as e.g. stereotype, typical. Making the content of the article a bit vague and woolly.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to imagine the contrary being true, that women would be more tentative in all situations, so it's a real finding. It would be even more interesting to compare results across class and geography.

However, one thing bothers me: Palomares is _so_ smug about knocking down stereotypical differences between the sexes, but his analysis _depends_ on stereotypical differences between the sexes. He's just shuffling the stereotypes around, discarding one by depending on another. It's hardly something to be self-righteous about.

<comment><USER8> In fact, some psychology textbooks(at least in high school) affirmatively claim that females are more tentative than males in all situations. This research seems to disprove that. It's useful to disprove untrue things that were formerly believed to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is interesting, but I question the broadness of the conclusion. For example British people are stereotypically reserved, while Americans are stereotypically brash and direct (of course, numerous counterexamples exist and may be exploited for comic effect).

I hedge a great deal although I'm male; I'm more assertive and direct online than in person. This is learned behavior often a handicap, though not without its uses. It would be interesting to see how this conversational behavior correlates with something like a Myers-Briggs, or in pairings with different power levels (eg an undergraduate being told another experimental particiapant holds a PhD, with both assigned to solve some problem outside of their academic expertise). Or maybe it wouldn't :-|

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't see why there would be much of a difference. I mean...you either know something or you aren't sure/don't know it. If I know something I'll talk without hedging...if I'm not sure then I'll hedge.

Women are going to know more about stereotypically female tasks and men are going to know more about male stereotyped tasks...otherwise those tasks wouldn't be stereotyped to begin with.

And it makes sense someone would hedge more when they are talking to the opposite gender about something they think that gender knows well. If I don't know something and I think someone else does, I'm not going to talk about it like I know it.</comment>


Free Face Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://faceplusplus.com/en/demo

<comment><USER2> Can anyone offer some context or comparison as far as how facefaceplus measures against (the now shuttered) face.com or lamda labs api in terms or accuracy, performance API design? Thanks!</comment>


Why do we have allergies? - <AUTHOR> http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-do-we-have-allergies <comment><USER2> > Suddenly the misery of allergies took on a new look. Allergies weren't the > body going haywire; they were the body's strategy for getting rid of the > allergens.

Well of course. I'm just a layman when it comes to allergies, but I thought it was well understood that allergies were the body's inflammatory reaction to an allergen, i.e., an attempt to eliminate (or otherwise neutralize) the allergen. The problem is that, according to the conventional wisdom, the body's reaction to allergen is _mistaken_. Presumably the body is attempting to target and eliminate something that is actually harmful, but it winds up responding to something harmless, or by triggering a response so severe that it does more harm than good. That's, broadly speaking, the difference between an allergen and a pathogen/poison. A poison/pathogen will actually harm you if it is not eliminated. An allergen will not (or, at least, not in proportion to the severity of the reaction. But I don't see why the observation above has anything to say about the real question, which is why does the body sometimes mistakes one for the other, and freaks out in the presence of harmless substances?

<comment><USER3> I have theorized that allergies, such as cat allergies, may, in some cases, be your body's way of warning you that there are Big Cats in the vicinity and you should GTFO.

<comment><USER4> Loudly sneezing, blurring your vision, and ruining your sense of smell are really not conducive to surviving an encounter with a big cat.

I mean, you might piss it off if you sneeze on it, I guess. Yay?

<comment><USER5> It's an environmental allergy, not an emergency one. If you notice you feel like crap in a certain place (because cats like to lurk there), and subsequently avoid it, that's a win.

Not that I necessarily believe that's a good explanation for allergies, but it's plausible enough to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I spent my early childhood in a third world country, and I never heard of anybody having an allergy. It was one of the surprising things I learned about when I moved to the first world.

<comment><USER7> In my case it seems I only got what seems to be allergies when I moved to the city some 5 years ago. In my rural area I don't remember ever sneeazing so much as if I was gonna die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The structure of this article makes it difficult to read. It's a news article written as a story; endless lead-up and back story where there should have been thesis and defense of that thesis. Or at least summary and then summary with more detail and then full details.

<comment><USER9> Billy was just a regular ol' schmuck in Anytown, USA who wouldn't read anything technical unless there was a human element in the story that he could relate to.

Not sure if there's a name for that literary mechanism, but pretty much every NYT article and every other TED talk starts out with that kind of human element. A thesis and a technical defense of the thesis is what journal submissions do... other mediums find their engagement through the human struggle (eg the immigrant who escaped the crumbling soviet university system and became the nobel-slighted yale academic with a promising rogue theory).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _"You're sneezing to protect yourself. The fact that you don't like the > sneezing, that's tough luck," he said, with a slight shrug. "Evolution > doesn't care how you feel."_

Well, as somebody that has allergic asthma, I've had episodes so severe that I thought I was going to die and I ended up in ER about 3 times. Then due to a 1 year treatment with Symbicort, my asthma is now in control and I haven't had episodes or felt the need for treatment in years. However asthma can always come back and it is something you leave with.

Allergic asthma is also correlated with heart problems, like for example I suffer from supraventricular tachycardia from time to time and treatment for one has a negative impact on the other - broncho-dilators or corticosteroids are known to produce tachycardia episodes as side-effects.

Therefore I have a hard time not thinking about my asthma as being a disease and the only reason I can have a normal life right now is due to modern medication that wasn't available 15 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is the cleanliness theory completely discounted now? It's not mentioned in the article. The idea is that there are so few pathogens in the environment during childhood so the immune system can't tune itself. So then it reacts out of proportion to some trigger substances which then form the basis of the allergy.

<comment><USER12> This study supports what you are mentioning: [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/children-eat-peanuts- earl...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/children-eat-peanuts-early-age- may-prevent-peanut-allergies-201502237751)

However, I'm not sure it would be called a cleanliness theory..

<comment><USER13> It's called the hygiene hypothesis:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis)

<comment><USER12> Seems like a misnomer then, eating allergies wouldn't be considered hygiene related, would they?

Even pollen isn't really hygiene related.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting, and it makes sense. To summarize:

1964 theory: Allergies are caused by a misfiring reaction to generally harmless compounds that have a similar structure to proteins presented by parasitic worms.

Medzhitov's theory: Allergies are caused by the body mounting an intense immune response to compounds that are actually harmful and need to be eliminated.

..or so the article says. I don't know how true that is.

What I find much more probable is that the answer is somewhere in between. It's ridiculous to suggest that ALL allergens must look like worm proteins to the body. Why just worms? Why have such a specific restriction?

However, I also don't agree entirely with Medzhitov. In order for his theory (as presented in the article) to be correct, he has to prove that every single allergen is actually harmful. How does this explain food allergies? Why do peanuts harm one person but not another? It's possible, but it's a big task to prove.

So while I don't agree entirely with him, I think his theory is very close. I believe it more probable that some allergens are actually harmful, but that there are also harmless ones that are interpreted as harmful by the body and thus elicit an allergic response.

The biggest question to answer is why different people have different reactions to allergens. We're all exposed to pollen, after all. But.. what if there's an (unknown) compound that looks like pollen to the body, but is actually harmful? It would rightfully train the immune system to react to a specific molecular signature to eliminate the threat, but simultaneously train it to wrongfully respond to a harmless element.

No idea! I look forward to seeing the outcome of his research.

<comment><USER15> Oh! rediscovering basic science: allergies are violent reactions to toxins!

My physic teachers used to say science is not about why but about how.

Why is religion, how is science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, is there a compound in say, peanuts, that "rips apart cells"? I can see the logic as applied to bee venom (though bee stings might in themselves be enough of an incentive to leave the area) but not so much the many other seemingly harmless allergens.

<comment><USER17> I think the article is implying that heightened defenses equals heightened false positives. Peanuts would be a false positive to something else that is actually harmful.

So if you have an allergy to peanuts it means your body is primed to defend against something in which peanuts are only a side effect. The author implies that if you have allergies, you have better defenses against other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I always puzzled over was the following: if our main goal in life is, in fact, to survive/live (and insure the existence of our species through procreation), why would our body, in the case of an allergenic reaction, mount a defense mechanism that could kill us? If your body swelled up to the extent of restricting your ability to breath, why wouldn't your body recognize this as a threat to your existence and counteract the measure? Even if your system made a mistake reacting to the allergen, wouldn't the act of killing itself (your body) trigger another prioritized reaction to take measures to save itself?

<comment><USER19> Why would the body include congenital defects of any kind? Bugs and duplication errors that didn't produce useful results. One mutation or genetic development might lead your body to be predisposed to overreact to otherwise harmless allergens; a similar mutation might ramp up your immune system so that you're less vulnerable to fatal diseases.

Don't anthropomorphize evolution; it has no intent, and does not actively "select" beneficial traits. Over time, whatever traits happened to propagate will propagate. Some of those will be beneficial; others just didn't happen to kill people.

Notice that there's no widespread anaphylactic-level allergy to, for instance, water, or some standard component of atmosphere. But an allergy to peanuts does not systematically kill everyone who has it before they can reproduce.

<comment><USER18> I'm not referring to evolution or defects here unless you're implying that it is a defect that our body would willingly choke itself to death in reaction to an allergen (I agree that it's probably a defect that we react to the allergen in the first place)

<comment><USER20> Exactly that. Your body has a defect that causes it to choke itself to death in certain circumstances.

And thanks to the evolution, if not for science, the defect might be eliminated in a few generations. Or not - perhaps this is an optimal variant of immune the immune system. That is - 90% of organisms will have an excellent immunity, but it will go haywire in 10% of cases, whereas an alternative would be a system with 99% organisms having just an average immune system, but 1% being haywired.

Finally, evolution has no "target" or "goal" really. Some features will be broken, and some will be useless. Some may serve a purpose that's beyond our understanding or extremely complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Allergies are awful. Throughout my twenties I "suffered" what I thought was chronic fatigue syndrome, only to discover later this year it was actually just an Allium allergy (Onions, Garlic etc). I'd estimate that this was at least a 50% drop in my overall productivity during what could have been some of my most productive years. If anyone is suffering from allergies I highly suggest experimenting with your diet.

<comment><USER20> How did you find out that you had this allergy? Do the standard tests pick it out?

<comment><USER21> The standard tests didn't get it. I actually discovered it when I just totally gave up (at this point I'd been to doctor for numerous blood tests - especially for mono). I cook a lot, and have always eaten fairly well. I just got tired of it... so I ate a lot of terrible food for a month, mostly fried, and I felt awesome. Then i started to get fat. So, i started cooking again. The first meal was beef stew. I ate it, then felt terrible. So I eliminated everything in it, and reintroduced them one-by-one to my diet. The onions were obvious, garlic less so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The fact that you don't like the sneezing, that's tough luck

I had a teacher in high school who would call out any student who suppressed a sneeze. He used to say "It's one of the best natural highs you can get! Don't fight it, just cover your mouth!"

I tend to agree, but they do get annoying when they are incessant.

</comment><comment><USER23> For some reason, reading all this makes me feel like I am having an allergic reaction. I wonder if there are some psychosomatic triggers as well. Not saying it's all that, or anything, but worrying about it seems to make it worse.

</comment><comment><USER24> Allergies are really weird things. They run from the mild, like a slight itch some people get when they eat peaches, to deadly.

I have a neighbor who's daughter is basically deadly allergic to just about everything anybody would consider normal. It's so bad that they struggle combining foods she can eat to get her complete nutrition...it's so bad that she's gone to the hospital with respiratory issues from accidentally coming in contact with somebody who had come in contact with one of her allergy triggers...

Her mother fought (and lost) a campaign to keep eggs out of school meals because they're one of the guaranteed-to-kill-her-daughter triggers. I had no idea how many foods have egg in them, but it appears to be just about all of them.

So you sit down and think about this, there is no way evolution could have possibly produced a person who's immune response to fairly normal environmental factors would be to send her into immediate shock, stop her breathing and kill her...it's just not possible, unless she's a random mutation, her entire genetic line would have been killed off the first time they encountered a wild grass or tried to eat a wild egg or whatever of the other couple dozen triggers she has. (I'm not ruling out that there may be some genetic predisposition to a wildly out of control immune system). So my conclusion is that it either has to be environmental (which genetics could make her predisposed to some combination of genes and environment that's gotten her here) or behavioral, the clean house theory (which I suppose also ends up being environmental in a way).

I think it's also possible, knowing her mother, that once she found out she was allergic to one thing, helicopter parenting stepped in and her exposure to other normative immune triggers was stopped, perhaps making things worse.

This year her mother finally started taking her to some kind exposure therapy where she's training her system to be able to handle eggs. Apparently so far successfully. So my guess is that she probably just needed to grow up getting dirty and eating all kinds of stuff to train her system.

Another story, my wife and I were out at he seashore some time ago for vacation. Of course we ate a bunch of seafood there, something my wife grew up with (growing up in South Korea) and I didn't (growing up a normal picky American). One night, her eyes and mouth swelled up and we determined she must have an allergy to something she ate (she has no other allergies we know of). When we got back we took her to an allergy specialist and they did a whole bunch of tests and she came back with some kind of alarmingly high measure in some blood test. They told her to stop eating some class of foods and a bunch of other stuff and to start carrying around an Epinephrine injector.

The thing is, _that was it_. They had no information at all for why she was suddenly "deathly" allergic to food she'd literally been eating weekly for her entire life (whatever the measure was in her blood, it was so high they sent it off to another senior specialist for further comments since they had never seen it that high in their office...an allergy specialist clinic).

They also had no information later on why, when she ate the same foods they warned her against (she's stubborn) she had absolutely zero reaction and continues to have no reaction to this day. The whole testing process looked reasonably scientific, with the grid of pin pricks and before and after blood draws and tables full of numbers from this or that blood factor. But in the end it seemed like the specialists knew no more about the subject than either of us, and we didn't know anything at all!

Very little has done more to shake my belief in modern medicine than the series of interactions with her doctors.

<comment><USER25> I am definately no expert, but reading abouy allergic load is fascinating. I _think_ the general idea is you have a pitcher of allergies, when it gets full you see a reaction. So while in many cases you may never see a response, with enough allergies in play, you might have a more severe reaction to an item than normal if you are overloaded, this doesnt only apply to food and or pollens, but also potentially airborne chemicals (i mean we probably are pumping a variety of new things in the atmosphere i would guess) i find allergies and why we have them fascinating(i Am also allergic to tons of stuff, but hardly notice a _reaction_ except to peanuts and other nuts. Out of 80 items i wasnt allergic to lobster, chicken,and bananas, random i know). I also wonder if your allergic load is high, you might show a reaction for something that you normally dont have a reaction to in a skin test... i would love to experiment.... hahahaha

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why aren't the people who work in restaurants concerned about food allergies? It's not so much that they could kill a diner as that they could get sued. :-/

"We'd both like the chef's choice please. But no tuna for her, she's allergic to tuna."

"No substitutions!"

"But she's allergic to tuna!"

"NO SUBSTITUTIONS!"

"Tuna could kill her. Anaphilaptic shock would lead her trachea to swell shut so she would suffocate."

"NO! SUBSTITUTIONS!"

"Ok look I'll just trade some of my sushi for her tuna."

My concern though was that her allergy might be so bad that just having a little tuna juice on her plate, or for her other sushi to be cut on the same chopping board or with the same knife as the sushi could kill her.

At least my father explained to me how to do a tracheotomy with a pocketknife and a ball-point pen.

Much less than a single peanut can kill someone, yet I see peanuts served at restaurants all the time.

<comment><USER22> If you're allergic to tuna, you shouldn't eat at a sushi restaurant.

<comment><USER26> That was the very first time in her entire life she had eaten sushi.

She was depending on me to ensure she wasn't killed by her supper.</comment></comment></comment>


Android-x86 4.4-RC1 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.android-x86.org/releases/releasenote-4-4-rc1

<comment><USER2> just curious, how far away are we from 4.5 and what will be the flagship features for it?</comment>


Dumb Cuneiform - <AUTHOR> http://dumbcuneiform.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious as to how the cuneiform is translated. Are they (or have access to) linguists who specialised in old Mesopotamian languages? Or do they use some freely available tools like this: [http://www.paleoaliens.com/event/babylonian/](http://www.paleoaliens.com/event/babylonian/) ?

Or in other words - is the translation legit? If I show it to the Sumerian god Gozer, will he laugh at me? I realise the translation is probably phonetic (i.e., written in cuneiform but would sound like English if Gozer read it).

<comment><USER3> It looks like a transliteration. Seems like they are using Cuneiform syllables to represent English. Quote from the webiste:

"We take the letters from your message and transliterate by syllable, as nearly as we can, into cuneiform."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an archeology nerd, I appreciate this.

However it feels like you're lying when you say "Just tweet or text us", when you actually need to manually type out the message on a field in a Gumroad checkout widget... I think you should add better tech integration, or drop the tweet/ text part.

<comment><USER5> Their choice of 'Old Persian cuneiform' is also ... weird. I don't know how to phrase it, but seems doubly misleading. The time period they're preferring by that choice is ~500-300 BCE, whereas my appeal of cuneiform is that it's one of the earliest systems of writing, going back as 35 centuries BCE.

</comment></comment><comment> kuro-kuris I love the idea, I think it would be sweet if you get a dictionary with your cuneiform so you can actually decode it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ugh, Old Persian? Lame

They should pay me the big bucks to translate tweets into Akkadian or Sumerian.

</comment><comment><USER7> Weren't most cuneiform tablets receipts anyways?

</comment><comment><USER8> Babylonian business cards?

</comment><comment><USER9> One of their two examples is cat calling? Classy.

<comment><USER10> What's your age and gender? I'm geniunely curious what kind of person could possibly be "triggered" by this.

<comment><USER11> Nobody used the word "trigger". It's interesting to me that you're conflating pointing out a potential issue (their sarcastic "classy") with being personally upset ("triggered") - what's going on there? Also, why are age and gender the two attributes you want to learn about them as a result?

<comment><USER10> Just curious if this is a case of an actual female being offended at an innocuous "bad pickup line," or (what is more likely) a male SJW.

<comment><USER12> "actual female" "SJW"

redditcombinator.com</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Control music playback within Chrome using native keyboard keys - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/swayfm-unified-music-medi/icckhjgjjompfgoiidainoapgjepncej

<comment> j-s-f (Founder, here. Hi)

Mr.Maddog just wrote in to email@example.com to tell us he liked our app so much that he posted this link to HN.

The Sway.fm team is working on a new Mac app that will provide better integration with native apps, and a whole lot more.

Details to come, if you're interested, get the chrome extension for now. We'll push a notification through that once the mac and phone apps are launched and live.

Thanks for any feedback: email@example.com or <http://twitter.com/swayfm></comment>


Introversion is not the opposite of extroversion, part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://joshuaspodek.com/introversion-opposite-extroversion-part-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the discussion on Part 1 at HN

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800676)</comment>


A man who fought a duel in his sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.thomas-morris.uk/the-man-who-fought-a-duel-in-his-sleep/ <comment><USER2> When I used to train martial arts seriously, I often would wake up finding myself executing a joint lock on my pillow or something similar. I had to move my bed away from the wall to stop me from punching holes in it. I was always terrified that I would injure my girlfriend at the time, but somehow I seemed to limit myself to inanimate objects. I stopped training about 10 years ago and haven't had a problem since. Other people have told me it is actually quite common.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I have the same experience, and the very same misgivings! Good to know it's common, and probably not dangerous! Thanks for the information! :)

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Homicidal sleepwalking is a similar rare and not entirely substantiated phenomenon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking)

At least one person (Kenneth James Parks) has been successfully acquitted of murder, and the acquittal later upheld by a Supreme Court, based on such a defense.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've got sexsomnia. Unlike sleepwalking I'm not at much risk for injuring myself, but interactions with bed partners are less than ideal. It's led to some uncomfortable situations, particularly when I was younger and didn't know it was an issue. Thankfully low dose benzodiazepines knock it down.

</comment><comment><USER5> how do you know if he was asleep!</comment>


Is it legal for a landlord to invite the media into a killer's home? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/media/216959-cnn-landlord-san-bernardino-shooter-killer-shooter <comment><AUTHOR> Only one lawyer seemed to understand the question or take it seriously(answer: not legal under California tenant law but the deceased lack rights).</comment>


Psychohistory - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory <comment><USER2> I wasn't aware this was an actual field of study. I fully expected to be directed to the article in the disambiguation at the top, about Asimov's Foundation series.

They make an interesting pair, with this real life version focused on the motivations of an individual and how they shaped our world, and the fictional version focused on the motivations of large groups, and how they will shape the world to come.

</comment><comment><USER3> Psychohistory is _also_ one of the most interesting theories of science fiction. Here's a recent thread on _The Foundation_ : _will psychohistory ever become reality?_[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052538)

</comment><comment><USER4> It should be said that psychohistory is not taken very seriously by most historians.

</comment><comment><USER5> > On the other hand, the end of swaddling and wet-nursing made possible the > explosive modern takeoff in scientific advance.

I don't see a citation for this one and I'm not sure why it would be true

</comment><comment><USER6> I recently re-read Asimov's Foundation series after having read it long long time ago as a 12 year old. I was kind of disappointed.

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate, while keeping it spoiler-free?

<comment><USER8> I read it as an adult and was disappointed by the flatness of the characters and the almost-total absence of any female characters.

To clarify: I'm not saying that people should shoehorn women into stories to satisfy a quota, I'm saying that stories that include women are _simply more interesting, because they display a wider range of humanity and of the human experience_.

Or, to put it another way, it's just boring to read a story where all the characters fit within a very narrow range of personality.

<comment><USER9> I donno, Plato's Dialouges are pretty interesting.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but 2500 years passed since and you'd expect writing to get a bit better. And yet Homer's characters are way more nuanced than Asimov's. Also, in Plato's Dialogs characters are completely irrelevant and are merely instruments that directly represent philosophical standpoints.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


X86 mov is turing complete: mov-only compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator <comment><USER2> Who needs instructions? Page faults are Turing complete: [https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc](https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc)

</comment><comment><USER3> HN discussion of the paper that this is based on: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6309631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6309631)

<comment><USER4> That paper is so funny:

        Finding Turing-completeness in unlikely places has long been a
        pastime of bored computer scientists.

And

        Removing all but the mov instruction from future iterations of the
        x86 architecture would have many advantages: the instruction
        format would be greatly simplified, the expensive decode unit
        would become much cheaper, and silicon currently used for complex
        functional units could be repurposed as even more cache. As long
        as someone else implements the compiler.

Well, I guess someone has implemented it now!

<comment><USER5> Also:

> Thus, while it has been known for quite some time that x86 has far too many > instructions, we can now contribute the novel result that it also has far > too many registers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a fun program. Similar techniques to this are used to create "ROP" (return-oriented programming) exploits. You get enough building blocks to get general purpose programming, and it's "just" matter of mapping to those building blocks.

X86 "mov" is a bit of a cheat, though. It's a single mnemonic for what's really dozens of quite different instructions. For example, ARM has "mov" for register-register operations, but "ldr/str" for register-memory, while X86 just uses mov for everything. Even ARM mov optionally puts a barrel shifter into the path, so it's not that pure either.

<comment><USER7> Even if they weren't a single mnemonic, if you read the paper you'll find that reg = mem[reg + C], mem[reg + C] = reg, and reg = C appear to be the only 3 instruction types that are actually needed; these are only register-memory and register-constant data transfers. Even register-register isn't needed.

<comment><USER8> register-register movs are needed because compilers are not the world's smartest code generators, and we don't have an infinite number of registers. The biggest problem arises when some calling convention expects certain things to be in certain registers - unless you do some pretty extreme long term planning in your register allocation code in the compiler, you're pretty likely to eventually wind up with some piece of information in a register that you need to move to another register before making or returning from a call.

Of course, modern processors don't really care about register-register moves because they have hundreds of hidden intermediate registers and register renaming which makes those types of moves "free." (e.g. Haswell has 168 GP registers, only 16 of which are exposed through the AMD64 ISA.)

<comment><USER9> Do you have a citation for the 168GP registers, just wondering if Intel have "offically" stated the number they use in a given microarch.

<comment><USER10> You can find an official Intel source for Haswell in here (page 15): [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rajwar/papers/ieee_micro_haswell.p...](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rajwar/papers/ieee_micro_haswell.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a way to estimate how many time slower would be a program compiled to use only "mov" instead of standard instructions ? 3x, 10x, 100x, more ?

<comment><USER12> It depends. In this case, I would say it would be _at least_ 100x, probably much more. But, that's because this only compiles BF (It is basically a POC after-all), and thus you have to use that as an intermediate language. BF is extremely un-optimal, and the compiler here spits out a completely unoptimized one-to-one conversion of the BF source to assembly that uses only `mov` instructions. Thus, the size of the assembly will balloon extremely quickly simply because it takes a lot of BF to express fairly simple things. Branching using only `mov` is also impossible, so the code instead uses a flag to control where the assembly writes it's results. Because of this, even when you hit the condition of a loop, if your condition check is before the loop's code, then it results in you running the entire loop's code another time, and just throwing out the results. It's extremely wasteful.

Based on this POC alone, it's pretty much impossible to guess how much slower a real `mov` only compiler would be vs. a regular compiler. It depends a lot on how much of this can be optimized. Directly compiling C to this via clang or gcc would be a good start. I have no idea how much work that would take though, and compiling anything more complex then BF is a real challenge in itself because of the branching problem.

<comment> 0xe2-0x9a-0x9b "compiling anything more complex then BF is a real challenge in itself because of the branching problem."

That's not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like if we make a JS to BF transpiler, then we can complete this with any language that can be transpiled to JS.

Just imagine the applications of this!

The next step would be to make this into an eventual Quine.

<comment><USER14> [http://copy.sh/v86/](http://copy.sh/v86/)

It's turtles all the way down.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure if I'm more amazed by how slow that is or how fast it is.

Oh the world we live in: playing minesweeper in a graphical OS running in a javascript x86 emulator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Github description is misleading:

> The single instruction C compiler

I was seriously impressed until I got further down.

<comment><USER17> Well, if it reaches a point where it can compile itself, you'll get your compiler written with just one instruction (assuming that's what you were hoping for).

<comment><USER16> I meant that this software compiles brainfuck, rather than C. I was expecting a C compiler from the description.

<comment><USER18> From README.md:

        M/o/Vfuscator 2.0 is a complete C compiler, and will be available soon.

Just be patient, or submit patches :-)

<comment><USER19> Would be an interesting LLVM code generator too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Forgive my ignorance but I thought being Turing complete was important because a Turing complete machine can in principle perform any arbitrary computation. As far as I know the program counter cannot be a destination for an X86 MOV. So you can't branch with only MOVs. How can you do an arbitrary computation if you can't branch?

Maybe you have to reorganize if(a) { b; } else { c; } as a kind of permuted b; followed by c; such that either the permuted b; or the permuted c; are effectively no-ops depending on the value of a.

<comment><USER12> You're right, they never actually do any jumping. From what I can tell, they use a variable called `on` to control where every set of commands write their results too. They do some funky `mov` stuff to do a comparison, and then set `on` with that comparison. They use a stack of `on` variables and then pop off the value of `on` from that stack when you exit a loop.

They cheat to get a jump without using anything but `mov`'s by executing an illegal set of `cs` using `mov`, and then use the sigill generated to execute a signal handler, which is just the same spot that the code starts at. IMO, it doesn't really count, so a `mov`-only program requires at least one jmp instruction to work.

I think loops are achieved by simply running the code to the end without saving any of the results, and then hitting the singal and going back to the beginning - ignoring all the code until you hit the loop you're executing. But, the `mov` code is fairly hard to understand so I could be wrong on that.

<comment><USER21> Could one use self-modifying code (such as rewriting the SIGILL handler) to simplify this a bit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a superset of the One Instruction Computer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer)

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be good to defeat RF snooping attacks.

</comment><comment><USER24> "-O" enables optimizations

Replaces movs with less movs??

<comment><USER25> Fewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is almost surely a dumb question, but what would happen if someone made a processor that only executed mov instructions, which would be extremely simple, and presumably would be really goddamn fast. Would that be competitive with today's fastest CPUs? If it were, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of this design?

<comment><USER27> Well, Turing machines do not have random access memory (which changes the big- theta complexity of algorithms), and that operations such as multiplications would be complicated and multi-cycle, whereas conventional CPUs can easily parralize them.

If you were comparing the performs of mov-only programs, a specialized cpu would likely be faster. Otherwise, there is a good reason we do not actually use Turing machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Extremely Reduced Instruction Set Computer.

Or is it a Ridiculous Instruction Set ?

<comment><USER29> One instruction set computer.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When I read the title I thought "ah of course cmov is turing complete", but no, it's only mov apparently.

Which is quite amazing (and probably dog slow)</comment>


An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/08/20/qft/

<comment><USER2> Obligatory link for those that want to go a bit deeper into the rabbit hole - The Theoretical Minimum, a collection of physics lecture by Leonard Susskind.

[http://theoreticalminimum.com/](http://theoreticalminimum.com/)

<comment><USER3> Into the rapid hole??

<comment><USER2> Fixed.

<comment><USER3> OK, I thought maybe I was missing a physics pun or something... :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty good introduction. I highly recommend Feynman's book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" as an excellent in-depth work that does not sacrifice accuracy for the sake of making difficult ideas understandable. It is both very clear to the layperson and accurate to the physics.

<comment><USER5> Wholeheartedly seconded. This book occupies a nearly unique position in the physics literature: it is neither a textbook nor a popularization. It assumes little more knowledge (of math or physics) than the typical popularization, but it explains what is very nearly the true, complete structure of its subject matter (quantum electrodymanics). Now, the methods that it teaches are absolutely unwieldy: it would be hopeless to do any real, meaningful calculation by drawing countless little arrows! But (as I think Feynman says) you can go to grad school to learn the _efficient_ tricks. The underlying concepts will carry through essentially unchanged.

I wish I could write like that.

<comment><USER6> An interesting and surprising fact about Feynman's books is that he never _wrote_ any of them, as such; he famously disliked writing. QED is essentially a transcript of a lecture (although I don't know how much polishing and editing was done by Feynman himself; probably some). Same with his collection of physics lectures. His most popular book, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", was transcribed from a series of interviews, pretty much verbatim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great article. One thing I don't understand: the author says:

> If you want to create something heavy like the Higgs boson, you have to hit > the > Higgs field with a sufficiently large (and sufficiently concentrated) > burst of > energy to give the field the necessary one quantum of energy.)

So when the LHC creates a spike of energy at a point large enough to create a Higgs boson, why does that energy interact with the Higgs field and get "used up" by other fields? In other words, if Higgs requires 100 units of energy and electrons require 1, why do we get 1 Higgs boson and not 100 electrons?

<comment><USER2> Not a physicist, but that actually happens. Depending on the coupling strengths between the various kinds of particles respectively fields and the amount of energy they have, different particles get created with different probabilities. That is why the Higgs is so hard to detect - for every Higgs you produce billions and billions of other particles that are easy to create and you have to look for the one Higgs in all this mess. Physicists calculate the expected amounts of other particles with incredible precision, subtract that from the experimental results and if they are successful they end up with a tiny amount of unexplained stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Are quantum fields actual elements of reality or just a convenient mathematical tool to deal with many particle systems?

One of the questions I am struggling to find a satisfying answer for for quite some time. Depends on whom you ask? We can't tell because both ways of thinking are completely equivalent? Fields are real! No, they are just a tool! Are there issues with real fields forming a preferred reference frame? Does somebody know? (My current understanding seems to suggest that fields are just a tool.)

<comment><USER8> The way I've understood it is, particles are localized excitations of fields. You know of the Higgs boson. It is the excitation of the Higgs field, which exists through all space. Similarly, an electron is an excitation of the electron field (not electromagnetic field), which exists through all space. Every single electron is a localized excitation of the same, single field.

I don't know how to answer the relativistic questions of fields yet. For that one would need to learn a lot of Quantum Field Theory.

For the layman, however, these two links are very informative:

[http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2013/real- talk-...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2013/real-talk- everything-is-made-of-fields) [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2013/08/the- good-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2013/08/the-good- vibrations-of-quantum-field-theories/)

<comment><USER2> I understand that, but is it just a neat mathematical model to treat particles as excitations of fields because it makes calculations especially easy or is there really a field out there?

<comment><USER9> Fields are real because perturbation theory (Feynmann diagrams) is unable to describe solitons, vorticies, monopoles and bound states.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like the best argument I've heard on this thread yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ether is back!

Well, somewhat. Now it's in the form of Higgs field. Unlike ether, Higgs field does not interact with uniformly moving particles, only those that are accelerating.

Here's a great book I just recently listened: [http://www.amazon.com/The- Black-Hole-War-Mechanics/dp/031601...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Hole- War-Mechanics/dp/0316016411)

It's by Leonard Susskind from Stanford. The thoughts experiments in the book are just terrific. Loved it.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't call it Ether, since that would imply some absolute reference frame.</comment></comment>


The Internet Turned Kratom, a Medical Plant, into an Oxy-Adderall Lovechild - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-the-internet-turned-kratom-a-medical-plant-into-an-oxy-adderall-lovechild

<comment><USER2> I know the owner of a sizable Kratom vendor. I've tried it many times and haven't found it harmful or addictive. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to order it at any coffee shop.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotal evidence, but I saw a man violently detox from Kratom after a spinal surgery. He required full sedation/ventilation for about a week before he could be woken up without thrashing around.</comment>


Python IDE with Django support : JetBrains PyCharm - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Lots of features (including intellisense style completion, TextMate style tabbing through placeholders), sensible menus and shortcuts, integration with GAE and Django and VCS etc. Seemed to go through some slowdown at first but I think it's because I opened a project directory that was, well, my entire DropBox. My only complaint is the interface could be more Mac-like, but for a cross-platform effort it's decent. Impressed (could be a godsend actually, since the education licence is free, and I can't affort TextMate, and hate Eclipse).

</comment><comment><USER3> Back in the day, I was a huge fan of IntelliJ (when I was still writing Java). I'm so tired of slow and buggy IDEs built on top of Eclipse ( _cough_ Zend _cough_ ) so I'm hoping that this makes my life easier.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love intelliJ products.

I use RubyMine for ruby, phpStorm for php, and pyCharm for python.</comment>