Mistakes teams new to Chaos Engineering make - <AUTHOR> http://dadontherunblog.com/2018/06/05/the-five-mistakes-i-see-teams-new-to-chaos-engineering-make/ <comment><USER2> For those not previously familiar with the concept: [https://principlesofchaos.org/](https://principlesofchaos.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not going to take over the world.

What this is a form of testing, and applying boring old requirements to operations. The whole idea of "chaos" is just a really sad tell about the state of planning for some places.

You should be able to articulate your reliability requirements in certain situations and the verify your stack meets them before a release. And if it's cost prohibitive to do that in a non-prod environment then planning around testing in production in your pre-release planning.

It's silly, it's like classifying a test engineer as an "exploratory tester", which would clearly be a mistake. That is just a type of activity of an engineer, not an engineer role. This is just exploratory load and scalability testing, and falls under the responsibility of a test or devops team.

<comment><USER4> _Chaos experiments are costly to implement relative to unit and integration tests and so are a poor choice for detecting issues unit or integration tests could. Instead, Chaos experiments should be designed to find the truly hidden flaws which only surface in real world usage with real user traffic and production environment configuration._

This is in case you didn't quite articulate or verify your real requirements. The more confident you are that your test environment matches your prod environment, the less you need this.

<comment><USER3> I'm not unrealistic - functional requirements are hardly ever complete, and they're almost always better than scalability and capacity planning.

Call me old fashioned, but I don't like messing around with production. I think you can reasonably scale down production environments and simulated wan networks packet loss/latency. I can't imagine a platform moderate importance not having some sort of benchmarking and scalability as part of their pre-prod pipeline automated acceptance criteria. It feels like this work would fall under that engineering role (again, performance test engineer or devops/sre).

Anyway, I think I chafe at the name more than anything. I know nonlinear dymanics, stress testing, queuing theory, et al and it just feels overly glib for what should be the most serious sort of activity a company considers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most interesting chaos experiments are the ones that show you gaps in your observability, when you know you've broken something and know you can't see it. The teams I've been on have learned that there are different sorts of observability that you need for different kinds of failure. Also, with complex systems, you need to learn how to operate your observability. Designing or testing resilience without being able to measure effectiveness is a time sink. Know that you can see failure first.

</comment><comment> pure-awesome I struggled to parse that title. A more verbose, paraphrased version:

"A list of the mistakes that teams make if they are new to the concept of Chaos Engineering"</comment>


Apache Usergrid – Multi-Tenant Back End-As-a-Service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apache/incubator-usergrid

<comment><AUTHOR> Just some cool things I've noticed tinkering with it:

1.) New "apps" come out of out-of-the-box APIs with APIs for analytics (devices, counters).

2.) It's pretty easy to setup and only took a few minutes.

3.) It provides APIs to create relationships between data sets (collections/entities).

4.) It's schemaless from what I can tell (I could be wrong)... Which is great for rapid development of the client, but probably _not_ great if care about consistency.</comment>


Artifact: What Went Wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/10/08/artifact-what-went-wrong/ <comment><USER2> Some things that weren't covered in this article.

The beta players said that Valve largely ignored their feedback, and only made trivial changes. Richard Garfield said in an interview that people consistently didn't like some aspects of Artifact, but that him and his team knew what was best for the game, so they mostly disregarded complaints about RNG and some cards being frustrating to play against.

There were unrealistic expectations about Artifact. Some of the people in the beta couldn't stop singing its praises, calling it the best game ever made. After launch, one of the other beta testers said that a lot of the people publicly praising the game had privately said that they were trying to use the hype around a new Valve game to launch a twitch/youtube career, and they didn't actually like the game. There were also features present in the beta that had been silently cut before release, and some game breaking bugs that were present in the beta, and never got fixed.

<comment><USER3> A while ago, while talking to a friend about game design, I had the realization:

Players will quit over issues they see in a game, even when in actuality those are non -issues.

<comment><USER2> That's the thing, you can't ignore how a game feels to the players. In Artifact's case, it has a lot of very up front RNG, but on paper, it's balanced. It just feels unbalanced because people mainly remember when they lost because of bad RNG, not when they won because of it. One of the designers for MtG talked about it, and said that trying to fight human nature in game never works. It doesn't matter how many stats and formulas the designers have that shows that the game is balanced, if it makes players feel bad, they overwhelmingly won't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a huge CCG buff (top 10-100 finishes in YGO, Hearthstone, MTGA), I tried to get into Artifact for ~80hrs. There are some really great things buried in the game:

1\. The heroes add a bit of consistency to draw RNG. The equipment to upgrade them was also pretty cool.

2\. The three lanes set up can create some crazy mind gaming / outplay comebacks.

3\. The draft experience was fantastic. The color restrictions of the heroes was a bit less punishing than MTG but still required some thought.

\---

Unfortunately there were WAY too many issues for the game to survive:

1\. Expense was way too high to play constructed. No one is going to pay ~$60 for a single deck in an unproven game.

2\. The RNG was too obvious. It doesn't matter how skill based the game actually was when a significant portion of games were decided by coin flip attacks. The frustration will drive people away.

3\. Game length. 20 minutes is just too long to spend with Artifacts simple mechanics and RNG losses.

4\. Progression. There was no meaningful rewards for playing. Keeper drafts were prohibitively expensive. Getting packs naturally was just too slow to feel like you'd ever be able to make a decent deck. Competitive ranking was non-existent at release.

I actually think an Artifact re-launch could be successful.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's something missing here. The insiders club created by the closed beta. Only famous personalities were allowed access.

Enormous hype leading up to the launch was wasted by gating the majority of players into watching streams.

This led to the creation and widespread awareness of a meta game before non- casual players could even touch the game. Arguably, one of the most fun times to play a game is during launch, before spikes know what to netdeck and most are clowning around.

<comment><USER6> > before spikes know what to netdeck and most are clowning around

What does this mean?

<comment><USER7> Spikes = players who are highly competitive and keep up with the current meta- gaming ideas

Netdecking = pejorative term for creating a deck based on meta-game archetypes researched online/from more experienced players instead of solely through personal trial and error.

<comment><USER8> why is it considered pejorative? Learning off better players is a smart strategy imho.

<comment><USER9> It's more of a "You're not good enough to do anything but copy others" sort of thing. Tracing a Picasso will give you a pretty piece of art, but it doesn't make you a legendary artist.

Most people don't care that much, but you can also see issues if the community is mostly all copying the same 3-5 people's strategy, since that makes the game feel samey and boring.

<comment><USER10> In chess the beginning of the game is called opening. Its a set of pre- calculated/analyzed moves that lead game into different type of positions (styles of play).

It would be madness to call people who use 'openings' lazy etc.

It's literally how the skill levels of given game are improved. If something works, use it, then improve it/evolve it and lift the skill cap of the game up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The common comparison with Artifact is with Dota 2, as it's the IP that Artifact was based off of.

They're also both 'complex' games. Complex in the sense of having lots of intricate mechanics that make up the game state. Dota 2 has its reliable vs. unreliable gold mechanics, while Artifact has its nuanced system of keywords and three lanes.

However, I would argue that having high complexity in a game is fine. What's more important in games like these is feedback on every individual decision.

In Dota 2, there are clear mini-success and mini-fail states that build up over the course of a game. Destroy a tower, kill a hero, eliminate a Rax. These are clear moments of feedback that unequivocally gives Players an advantage.

But in Artifact, these same decisions all had to be interpreted. Only the language between the games was the same. For instance, killing a Hero or a Tower wouldn't necessarily be the correct decision. Even typically simple decisions like 'buffing a Hero' or 'winning a combat trade' had to be weighed against everything else happening in the game. Every board state resisted simple answers.

This ambiguity was both Artifact's greatest strength and its greatest downfall. At its best, Artifact was a game in its own class. No easy answers and a high volume of meaningful decision making made for a really unique card game. It was the game that ruined Hearthstone and MTG for me, as they started to feel too 'slow' in comparison.

But, good luck introducing anyone to the game. Good luck trying to get better at it either. If every decision has to be interpreted (especially when the results of decisions can be delayed for multiple turns), how is any player realistically going to get better at the game? It's no wonder that so many people bounced off the game.

</comment><comment><USER12> I enjoyed the point about tutorials. As far as tutorials go, it was maybe the best I've seen. At some point though, no matter if I know I can take 1 of 10 actions, I still have to make a decision and I had no idea which one to make or how to model my thinking to help me.

I think if you look at a comparison like Dota or League, whenever a new player is being given an explanation of the game, they are told to just "last-hit" the minions for gold. This is sort of mini-game within the game and allows players to feel like they are achieving something while also improving their skills. It creates simple gameplay in a complex game. Without simple actions or choices to improve at the game starts complex and remains that way throughout. This creates a high barrier to an intuitive understanding of the game, and I think intuitively people understand whether a game is fun or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently started playing Mythgard - it seems a bit like artifact _done right_. It has the same ups artifact: grid-like play, satisfying combinations and outcomes, clever sacrifices and distractions, but doesn't rid the player of control: you can select what to attack and when to attack, most cards don't have any delays and the whole game feels like "you are playing" it.

The biggest issue with Artifact was that it wasn't an enjoyable game for big majority - it felt that you're sitting in the back seat while the game unrolls and often you don't get any useful feedback. The absurd amount of RNG, eventhough managable, made people feel bad and unsatisfied.

At the end of the day no one wants to play a game which isn't satisfying and Artifact was exactly that.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems like the common wisdom in Artifact is that the economic model was bad. I think Zvi is correct in saying, Artifact was just not a good enough game.

Personally, I enjoy fairly complex games, and I'm willing to spend money to try games out. But I just found that Artifact was way too complicated to be enjoyable. It is hard to follow what's going on while watching a stream on Twitch.

If Artifact was fun but expensive, it could have found a core that loved playing it. But no, there are more people streaming and watching the indie card game Slay the Spire (which isn't free to play) nowadays on Twitch, than there are people watching Artifact.

So I don't think the biggest problem was the price; the biggest problem was the gameplay.

<comment><USER15> Worth noting that Slay the Spire is one of the best deck builder games and arguably the one that started the recent craze.

<comment><USER16> It's also a rogue-lite, which are the most streamable types of games.

Games where you're winning up until the point of losing (Slay the spire, Fortnite) are easy for a person watching to answer, "Is this person winning?" because they answer is always yes.

Tuning into someone playing Dota, CSGO or a cardgame that is harder to answer, because they have to know enough about the current game-state (often both visible and hidden) including past states to make that judgement.

Slay the spire has fun amounts of randomness with a seriously challenging top- end difficulty. (The world's best have a ~30% win rate against A20 hearts).

But STS is also single player, and it's not really a card game in the pure sense. The player is playing cards but critically, and this is key to the balance and fun of STS, the opponent is not.

The computer never tries to play cards, which means it never tries and fails to be good at playing cards. The enemies movesets have almost nothing to do with card playing which has leant the developers the freedom to explore some really unique and fun enemies such as the reptomancer which spawns more and more minions or the spaghetti monster which can add curses (negative cards) to the player deck permanently, or the transient smoke monster where you're not supposed to kill it's 999hp because it runs away after a few turns anyway.

That wouldn't be possible in a game where the enemies were designed to use the actual cards, because it would risk that power creeping into the player, which would inevitably eventually win.

This form of deck-builder where it's only the player playing a card game is the real breakthrough that STS made, it breaks all the rules of deck builders but still works.

That combined with the streambility means that it supports a few streamers who stream almost uniquely slay the spire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article captures a lot of the issues that I had with Artifact. I ~really~ wanted to like it; I've very fond of other Garfield games like Magic, Android Netrunner, and Keyforge and had a friend that was very excited about the game. But in the end, it didn't hook me.

The issues that stuck out to me:

1\. The complexity, particularly when watching a stream/game where you're not intimately familiar with the decks in use.

2\. Lack of a budget format.

3\. Valve failed to move in the right direction when there were problems. Games have recovered from much worse launches, but Valve responded too little, too late to the issues.

<comment><USER18> Valve habitually ignored needed update on dota2

There were bugs affecting game play in the 30mm TI9

Just a symbol of their lack of attention to basic staff.

<comment><USER19> Dota 2 has hundreds if not thousands of bugs.

But the they (and this particular one you listed) are not as critical as you make it sound.

<comment><USER18> Well it's 30MM on stake, and 3X more already in valves pocket. I don't think it's tolerable to see bugs in this event.

<comment><USER19> Any software has bugs, more so for games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Artifact had in effect a perfectly reasonable economic model, but players > did not see it that way.

CCG player stockholm syndrome is why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER21> >> Artifact had in effect a perfectly reasonable economic model, but players did not see it that way.

I don't think it really did though. Artifact took Magic the Gathering's payment model verbatim (pay for a starter set, pay for booster packs, pay for entrance any activities where you might win more cards) but removed the thing that makes that work for Magic the Gathering: face to face interaction with other human beings at your Local Game Store. If we compare it vs. it's more direct competition (digital CCGs) it's a worse proposition for the average non/low spending player, but even if we do the kindest thing and compare it against what it's directly copying it's still a strictly worse deal.

<comment><USER22> It's easier to pay for a physical product, especially one where you can employ the doctrine of first sale and reuse them in any way you choose.

With Artifact you couldn't even sell your deck without paying Valve again. Fuck. That. Card games are already expensive, you didn't need to make it worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think Reason 2 really hits the nail on the head. Very few multiplayer get away with properly rewarding player skill. The new Quake seems to have the same problem. Most of the population consists of veterans, which makes it so that new players have a hard time getting opponents at their level, thus creating a nasty feedback loop. Getting into Artifact today would probably be a similar experience. I think it is a peculiar trend, as single player games seems to be going in the opposite direction with titles like Dark Souls, the plethoras of insanely difficult indie titles and speedrunning like practices growing more popular by the day.

The most efficient way to adress this "problem", while still keeping the qualities of a high skill ceiling, seems to be scale and strict matchmaking. With that in mind, it is sad that Artifact never got off. The evenly matched games that I had during the first week of release where some of the most exciting experiences I have had.

<comment><USER24> The world is full of games that properly reward skill and some people really enjoy them. But the mass market (including me) prefer entertainment to challenge. This is why gambling is much more popular than chess. The alchemy is to create a game with enough luck that a casual / unskilled player is occasionally rewarded, but skill ultimately dominates. Like poker for example. Pure skill games tend to have small audiences.

<comment><USER25> I would say in general I agree with your point, but there are many pure skill games that have large audiences. Like most sports have incredibly low RNG compared to something like poker, but have giant audiences.

<comment><USER26> Conflating audience with participant? There are a miniscule number of sports participants compared to the sports audience.

<comment><USER25> Professional players maybe, but how many millions and millions of recreational players?

Most gamers aren't pros either.

<comment><USER26> I'd bet civilian/recreational players are also a tiny minority. Depends upon where you are of course. But hard to reconcile the 'obese American' with the image of a nation of sportspeople, for instance.

<comment><USER25> They probably are a minority, but how does that relate? There are still millions of people participating in the game, having more spectators doesn't negate the participants. If anything I think that would reinforce it being a good game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Dota 2 takes dozens of hours before one is able to play the game as anything > other than a training exercise

Hundreds even before it is consistently fun. But people have been playing Dota for well over a decade and it's pretty common for newbies to have fun because they have someone good on their team that carries to the point where the new player gets to feel the magic of being OP in Dota. I think that's a big part of the complexity problem with Artifact - everyone I've ever seen get into Dota 2 without having played Dota 1 had a friend who was good enough to make the games fun.

<comment><USER28> Personally I could never get into dota until it freed itself from the UX restrictions of being a custom map for another game. With matchmaking you get even games even at low skill levels, I certainly didn't find that I had to sink 100s of hours into it before it got fun (I don't think I've played more than 100 yet).

<comment><USER27> That's good. Maybe matchmaking has improved because when I was starting out I had a ton of games where I was against a duo-queue and the high skill player just dominated the game.

<comment><USER28> Oh it's definitely not perfect, you still get plenty of games where you're poorly matched. But it's good enough to be fun if you're willing to take a beating sometimes, and make judicious use of the ignore function.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I personally found the disparity between my individual opinion and the crowd consensus was really interesting. It seemed to be a great game that fixed all of my gripes with hearthstone and magic. There was just this tidal wave of negative opinion that seemed to come in large part from people that didn't understand or in some cases never played the game themselves.

<comment><USER30> I'm a magic and hearthstone player and it just didn't look appealing to me at all. I watched a couple of game play demos even Richard Garfield playing it, and I struggled to find where the 'fun' was supposed to be. It just looked so complicated and serious.

<comment><USER2> I liked Artifact quite a bit, but I'll admit that it wasn't "fun" at all to me. I played it for the challenge, similar to how people will go to the gym, do puzzles, or do difficult hikes. They marketed it as a fun game for everyone, but in reality it was designed for people who wanted to play competitively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For me it was the economic model.

I play Magic the Gathering (Arena) regularly and own and enjoy Slay the Spire as well. I was really interested in Artifact, but it seemed cost-prohibitive to play it casually so I never tried it.

<comment><USER32> I played roughly 150 hours of Artifact, almost entirely the free draft mode. Gameplay is more interactive and interesting than MTG or Netrunner, which are in turn better than Hearthstone. Artifact automates the small stuff for you leaving you to play this lovely resource-balancing bluffing game. For a metaphor, playing MTG feels like writing code to spec, while playing Artifact feels like architecturing a complex system. Same decisions but more abstracted, with greater chances for failure or brilliance.

I'm sad the game died. I agree with this article's post-mortem, it's largely Valve's failure to test the "outer loop". I hope we get a worthy successor eventually. (STS is great but single-player only)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For me the business model was the biggest turn-off.

If I wanted some big CCG company to take my lunch money, I could always invest in an established platform already, like Hearthstone.

What I'd consider an interesting alternative, would be a less greedy game with an initial AAA entry fee ($60), and then nothing else. Just, nothing else. It's financially viable, if a giant production like The Witcher 3 can profit this way, any card game can.

If they really wanted, they could introduce maybe some cosmetic card back covers, announcers, avatars etc. in a silly gem shop I'll never visit anyway, but the game loop and the outer loop of getting new cards and deck building should be free. In fact, for such competitive games, it should offer no pay2win option at all. Let me play the game, win and get stuff after every match, feel that I'm progressing through the game without ever having to worry about my IRL wallet. If I win, I win, if I lose, I know that I lost fair and square and I must improve.

There are enough venues in this world for pissing contests over money already, why would I ever want to concern myself over real money in a virtual world. For most genres of games paywalling the progression is pretty much unheard of (except for maybe (bi-)yearly expansion packs), yet for CCGs this is considered normal, and no company ever tries to flip the table.

Maybe there was no demand for yet another money-grabbing CCG.

<comment><USER24> >> if a giant production like The Witcher 3 can profit this way, any card game can.

In theory yes, but in practice a CCG needs to be updated a lot and for years to be viable, while a game like Witcher doesn't. Would you pay $60 for the CCG game where you can't add new cards? Charging as you go seems to fit the model of player activity and developer activity.

<comment><USER34> You can charge for expansions directly, though. Just pay and get all the new cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What went wrong? Valve released a soulless cash-in trying to capitalize on the card-game-with-kid-friendly-aesthetics trend, a day late and a dollar short. The market responded accordingly.

<comment><USER36> _Valve released a soulless cash-in_

I haven't played it, but this what the author of the article wrote in his review:

"Artifact is an amazing game. Artifact is gorgeous, immersive and flavorful, hilarious, innovative, exciting, suspenseful, skill testing, strategically complex and rewarding. The execution is bug-free and flawless. It is the most fun I have had playing a game in a long time."

That certainly doesn't sound like soulless cash-in. It sounds more like the designed a very lovingly crafted, very niche, game and then had no idea what to do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The fundamental big mistake was having 3 boards at once.

I have no idea how they thought that would be an acceptable design given that nowadays it's well known that mainstream people are unwilling to learn any interface that is even slightly complex.

</comment><comment><USER22> IMHO there are some parallels to the MMO Wildstar here. Both are products aimed directly at the most hardcore fans, but architected such that you need a reasonably large playerbase to sustain the game. The developers refused to water down the game mechanics for the filthy casuals, and as a result made a game that was absolutely perfect for a niche of game players too tiny to maintain multiplayer critical mass. Shortly after release the game implodes.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's a very long article without even a single sentence about what Artifact is.

<comment><USER39> What is it?

<comment><USER2> A card game designed by Richard Garfield (creator of Magic: The Gathering) and Valve. It was super hyped up pre-release, then became a massive failure due to Valve ignoring tons of negative feedback and thinking that they know better than the people playing. They say they are still working on it, but the last time it got an update was January 28th, 2 months after release.

<comment><USER40> That was the last actual update, but I think the last time they said _anything_ about the game was this "Towards a Better Artifact" post on March 29: [https://playartifact.com/news/1819924505115920089](https://playartifact.com/news/1819924505115920089)

It says they were going to focus on addressing the larger issues instead of continuing to update it, but it's just been complete silence for over 6 months since then. Like Zvi says at the end of the article, at this point there's no longer any significant time pressure, because everyone's already given up on it. If they do plan to try and re-launch it (and I don't think that's a certainty), they might as well take as long as they need to make sure it's done right the second time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Randy Buehler reported it took him about two weeks to start understanding things well enough to begin having fun."

When someone like him has such trouble understanding and enjoying the game, reaching and captivating a broad enough audience for profitability is a tall order.

<comment><USER22> Especially when you have a fairly steep up-front cost discouraging new players from trying it out, plus the promise of a lot more cash sinks if you want to keep playing.

IMHO Valve priced itself right out of the market. Multiplayer games require a critical mass of players to stay alive but Valve was running it like a niche hobby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope that Artifact isn't abandoned by Valve and they spend time to update (refactor?) the game to make it more enjoyable. I never even had the chance to play because the narrative surrounding the game was so murky and then everything fell apart.

I was and still am excited to play it but not until it's ready. On the other hand Valve's team making Underlords is doing a very good job. Valve still has passion and talent.

</comment><comment><USER43> almost off topic - i think every card game fan should take at least 15 minutes to look at prismata: [https://prismata.net/](https://prismata.net/)

</comment><comment><USER44> An interesting perspective would have been to compare it with the relative success of autochess, even though to my eye it looks also complex and confusing.

</comment><comment><USER45> TBH I saw this coming at the reveal premiere when everyone was boo'ing at it.

<comment><USER46> They didn't know how to present and to what people.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, but does it really matter? Blizzard in contrast knows very well how to present their stuff and they (should at least) know their audience well. Well, and then they presented Diablo Immortal ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm convinced that the problem is the economic model. F2P is just such an overwhelmingly positive and casual friendly model that any other failures may be attributed to that. It may be that the other points have some merit, but there is no way to know if they do until the paywall is removed.</comment>


Just b/c of a submit on HN 1 year ago, 2000+ people use this tool every month. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mytextarea.com <comment><AUTHOR> 1 year ago, I made a simple online text editor and only shared it on HN.

Now, over 2000 folks use myTextarea every month :)

Last months analytics: 2,078 visitors 34.3% returning visitors 65.7% new visitors 61.9% search traffic 31.2% direct traffic 6.8% referral traffic

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, congratulations!

First of all, I have a question: how do you store the users' text? Do you store it on your server (a db) or is is local storage/cookies or something like that?

And some feedback: I would make the little save icon slightly bigger (probably have the size in %).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. The the users' text is saved with HTML5's local storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I need to be able to use a monospaced font.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might make that possible, soon.

<comment><USER3> And an even better feature would be monospaced font + code coloring. I bet there is some open-source lib that could do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm too stupid but I don't really get an use case for that 'tool'.

<comment><USER5> I know one: When I have some text from a website or a document with markup, I always paste it to Notepad++ and copy it again before I put it in a document. This way Word or Powerpoint or something isn't messing with existing formatting or anything(I know there are many options to paste without markup and so on but to me, this is just easiest :-) )

It keeping track of number of words / characters is not bad either ^_^.

I'll remember this if I'm ever on a machine without the option to install Notepad++ or something :)

<comment><USER6> Personally, I just paste it either to the URL bar or with ctrl+shift+v (Chrome, Chromium) into a text field (thinking browser, writing an email)

ctrl+shift+v doesn't work with Google Hangouts, thought.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do You Like Your Coding Style? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
Many of you work for companies that have their own mandated Code Style Guidelines. I wan't to ask - do you like them? Or do you have your own style you would prefer?
I ask this because I've worked on (but since stopped) a product which converts company style to your style, for you to edit. When you are done, it converts it back before you commit.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Ce here to say yesterdays or todays as it changes all the time but now i see you were talking about the other 'style'.

Code reviews would be fun...

Seems pointless / useless to me but not unsellable imo.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like our style guidelines pretty well. The bigger problem I have is that some of my co-workers ignore them. Maybe I should get _them_ to use your product :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I ask - do you use Git or SVN? (or something else)</comment></comment>


Our universe within a larger universe? So suggests wormhole research (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/13995.html

<comment><USER2> A red flag: the paper is using isotropic coordinates, which don't cover the region inside the horizon (which would be the region including the wormhole if it's present); they only cover the exterior region. That makes me suspicious that whatever result the paper claims to be deriving is a mathematical artifact of the coordinates being used, and does not reflect the actual physics.

Looking at the figures on the ScienceDirect page...

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269310...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269310003370)

...the second figure bears this out; it shows the worldline of an object going through the wormhole (A-B-C-D) as disconnected, which is physically invalid; it violates local energy conservation. So I've got to conclude that the paper's claimed result is not physically valid.

Note: The ScienceDirect page claims that "B and C are the same event", but you can't just claim that arbitrarily; you have to show that it's physically valid. I strongly doubt that the paper can do that, for reasons which are too long to fit in the margin of this post. :-)

<comment><USER3> I see comments like this all the time - where people with a strong background find faults in scientific articles and such written online. Why do these articles get things wrong so often? In this case I think you're saying the paper itself should not have been using isotropic coordinates. Is this because of different schools of thought in this higher realm of physics? Or... what?

<comment><USER2> _Why do these articles get things wrong so often?_

Different journals have different standards of rigor. I believe Physics Letters B, where this paper was published, is one of the less rigorous ones. They might also be more inclined to publish speculative papers, figuring that it's better to publish it and let someone else publish a refutation if it's wrong, as opposed to refusing to publish it in the first place.

 _In this case I think you're saying the paper itself should not have been using isotropic coordinates._

I suspect that the use of isotropic coordinates misled the paper's author, yes. I can't know for sure since I can't read the paper itself (it's behind a paywall). [Edit: someone downthread posted a link to an arxiv preprint; I'll take a look and respond further there.]

 _Is this because of different schools of thought in this higher realm of physics?_

This could be a factor--it certainly is in some cases--but I'm inclined to think that in this case it's more a matter of a less rigorous journal being willing to publish a speculative paper, as above.

<comment><USER4> I think you might be doing Physics Letters B a bit of a disservice there. I'm not saying it's the best, but it's certainly reputable and there are a lot worse...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (This is from April 2010.)

As usual, phys.org have simply reproduced someone else's press release and made a bunch of the words in it link to other phys.org pages. The original press release is at <http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/13995.html> and differs from the phys.org version only in not being blogspam.

An arXiv preprint of the paper in question is at <http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.1994>; I think it's actually identical to the version published in Phys. Lett. B.

There's a bit more information on Popławski's Wikipedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikodem_Pop%C5%82awski>.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am frequently bothered by the misuse of the word "universe". It is defined as the totality of all that exists -- that we can observe. So if there is anything out there, which we didn't think existed before, but we now suspect does exist, well... it's just part of our same old universe.

<comment><USER7> I'm not an astrophysicist, so hopefully one can chime in, but my understanding is that 'universe' == the x,y,z,t continuum. Anything outside of that is a different 'universe'.

If you can imagine a place that requires alternate dimensions in order to access (e.g. klein bottle), you would be traveling through a different 'universe' (though it is possible that a passage through other universes could lead back to our own). If, however, the other place has a different x,y,z,t continuum, even if there is a passage between the two (wormhole), it's still a different universe.

EDIT: (Appending this) Also, if you think of the word universe, it means one totality (uni=one, verse=totality). So, if you want to refer to all that can exist, you probably want to say 'omniverse'.

<comment><USER8> I think the concept of outside the universe or inside of it are not developed in a sufficiently rigorous way to really define what a universe is. However in some theories objects appear were it is actually quite natural to speak of an universe and something else. For example there is a unique way to extend the Schwartzschild space time [1] such that all geodesics either terminate in the singularity or go to infinity. But if you do this, then a region of the spacetime appears, that is 'on the other side' of the black hole. And there is no way to communicate with this region of spacetime, since all geodesics leading to it are space like, that is they would require (local) superluminal travel. It is therefore sometimes called a parallel universe.

It is similar in certain string theories, that patches of spacetime with different physical laws appear, this is then called the landscape. Or the multiverse in some cosmological models, where a far away region may appear, which is vastly different from or 'local' universe, that is in this case everything we can possibly observe.

So I think that it is quite possible that a theory of quantum gravity will have some object which we will call a universe, but until we have such a theory the appearance of anything outside of the universe marks highly speculative physics.

[1] That is the spacetime describing a black hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could you not prove this (or at least go a long way to do it) just by finding a "white hole"?

<comment><USER10> I am probably totally misunderstanding all this, but it sounds like the big bang is the white hole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And that larger universe is yet within another larger universe! We must go deeper.

<comment><USER12> <http://inception.davepedu.com/></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am looking for sw to increase the user engagement of a saas app - <AUTHOR> I want to increase the user engagement of a saas app, new features proposal, bug reporting, vote for new features etc. Is there any free or paid software that can help me? <comment><USER2> Check out [https://canny.io](https://canny.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice one</comment></comment>


A little less privacy is worth a little more security, says Internet founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/a-little-less-privacy-is-worth-a-little-more-security-says-internet-founder-1178398?src=rss&attr=all <comment><USER2> "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin</comment>


Show HN: C++ Http-Live-Streaming Server built with Oat++ framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp-examples/tree/master/Media-Stream <comment><AUTHOR> C++ HLS streaming server built with oat++ zero-dependency framework. (about oat++ see: [https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp](https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp))

Features:

\- Serve embedded video

\- Serve HLS stream

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks great! Also, nice to see some modern Cmake in the wild ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually pretty cool, very little boilerplate it seems. Nicely done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I appreciate your feedback!

<comment><USER4> will you be able to use OBS to point it to the server in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the question,

As far as I can see - it should be possible. In any case additional tweaks should be made to this example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did something similar as a proof-of-concept in Rust. Might be of interest to some people.

[https://gitlab.com/Herbstein/restreamer](https://gitlab.com/Herbstein/restreamer)

</comment><comment><USER6> With C++ metaprogramming as powerful as it is, why are macros (or what I presume to be macros) in the class body still necessary? It reminds me a bit of 1990s MFC, and not in a good way.

<comment><USER7> > why are macros (or what I presume to be macros) in the class body still > necessary

there is one thing that templates cannot do, and that is transform an identifier into a string.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some kind of c++ conference happening today? Lots of c++ submissions!</comment>


Why StackOverflow's questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/5670321 <comment><USER2> the beginning of the end.</comment>


Nothing But A Bunch of Boobs - <AUTHOR> http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/02/nothing-but-bunch-of-boobs.html

<comment><USER2> This will invite a lot of controversy for sure.

And it seems a lot of people haven't even read the whole thing and turned away in disgust after the first couple of paragraphs.

A lot of people fail to realize how hidden assumptions, stereotypes and beliefs affect their judgement.

Let's discount those who are openly misogynistic and are consciously aware of it. She calls some of those people "creeps". Let's assume they formed their wrong opinions and positions and are unwilling to change.

I think the article references a very large group of people who will consciously never admit even to themselves at being discriminatory, not liking women, not respecting, holding them to a different standard. This is most people in general, in a jury room, most bosses, most families and so on. It is probably very very hard to not be in this category. These attitudes and modes of thinking are baked in early in the childhood, they are reinforced by media, society and so on. One would have to grow up in a country that actively discourages it and has been doing it for a long time. Our society is not like that yet.

She is saying how these people will mean well but because of their existing and unconscious stereotypes they will make decisions. That lower salary or jury verdict will probably not come from a creep but from well meaning people.

It could take decades more before that is eradicated completely. In the meantime she offers a practical advice -- what one can do today, working in a broken society so to speak.

Anyway that is who I understand her point.

However another way to look at it, could it be this hidden brainwashing also affected her and maybe she has been brought up to believe that women should dress modestly or society will judge them? Maybe she is unconsciously promoting these stereotypes without realizing it, too. Kind of like talking about suicides even with a message of hope and encouragement, or just publishing a news item about has an effect of triggering suicides.

</comment><comment><USER3> This whole thing is nuts.

      > Maybe in the future I can figure out how to keep my big
      > mouth shut and let women continue to wear their Daisy
      > Dukes with ass cleavage hanging out the bottom etc.
      > while they loudly proclaim themselves helpless victims
      > and pawns in a world where only men have power and
      > while they equally loudly proclaim that all men are
      > unrestrained asshats who can't keep their eyes, words,
      > or hands to themselves.

Good thing it's light on the hyperbole.

The author seems to think herself the arbiter of sexual appropriateness. Cross the line, show an ankle, and you have what's coming to you. Men and women should have the same dress code.

      > One of the things I get strongly criticized for saying
      > is that if you are the target of unwanted male
      > attention, it is in your best interest to dress
      > conservatively and make sure no one can construe your
      > manner of dress or demeanor as provocative or inviting
      > such attention.

So, be powerless?

<comment><USER4> That's a pretty colossal misinterpretation of what was written, and the reason why she put so many caveats and explanations in there (which were conveniently ignored).

<comment><USER5> What she is saying, is that women should dress conservatively (presumably for their entire life, or at least for the entire time that they do not want to have sex with any man who feels like it) so that when the time comes that they get raped, people are more likely to look favourably upon them, rather than on the rapist. That is absolutely nuts.

Not to mention the fact that studies show that there is no correlation between what a woman is wearing and her likelihood of being sexually assaulted. So dressing conservatively won't even help avoid bring raped, but it means that people might side with you afterwards?

<comment><USER6> I think you are missing the point entirely. There is a reason why she brought up the Rosa Parks example. You should study the reasons why the African American civil rights movement chose to focus on Rosa Parks rather than Claudette Colvin.

This has nothing to do with statistics and correlations for sexual assault and everything to do with the fact that the people who judge you, despite the fact they are well meaning, may have subconscious prejudices based on the way you act or dress. Fact of the matter is, gender equality won't come in a single sweeping wave, and you will have to deal with people who are well intentioned but "don't get it".

Looking at the Claudette Colvin example, it would have been easy for 1950's America to dismiss the whole case just because she was pregnant teenager - despite the fact there is no correlation between pregnancy/relationship status and where you can sit on a bus. You don't want to give your opponents the chance to dissuade people who can ultimately help you just because of your outfit choice.

At the end of the day humans aren't machines. Despite the fact there airplane travel is far safer than car travel more people are still afraid of air travel. Despite what our "correlations" tell us, we are still, and will continue to be superstitious creatures. It would be wise for those us trying to change things to not play into those superstitions.

<comment><USER5> I did get that point, I just feel that what she's asking of women is crazy for the net gain. If I had a child who was being bullied at school, I could stop that by forcing him to stay at home for the rest of his life. But that would be a crazy solution to a problem. Asking women to dress conservatively so that _if_ they get raped, society will be more likely to side with them, is crazy. Sure, it will probably help change perceptions in the long term, but it is just not a reasonable solution. Asking women to change their behaviour to accommodate those who are victim blamers (whether they are concious of what they are doing or not) is not fair.

<comment><USER6> First, I'd hope in America that any rape serious rape trial will look into the facts and the evidence and throwaway any personal bias. From the author's article I got the sense she was talking about workplace sexual harassment.

Secondly, I don't think "dressing conservatively" and "being denied one's education" are anywhere near on the same levels on sacrifice. I just can't see how being forced to a particular style of dress in the work place is an unimaginable thing. Consider a different group of people. Imagine you owned a business that hired black men. Now you know these men are all respectable men, however they dressed in oversized tees, baggy jeans and jordans, and because of this they were accused of being thugs.

Now any rational person can see that your style of dress most likely has no correlation with your likelihood of committing a crime. Despite this however the NBA requires players to hold a certain dress code. The last thing you want in any situation is for a potential judge or employer to think "wow this guy looks like a thug." Is it racist? Maybe. However, again, humans are superstitious and it may take lifetimes to reverse this behavior and I don't think this was "too big of a change."

In a minority position, you generally don't want to look the part. It sucks, it might be racist or sexist, but you don't want to further disadvantage yourself. I'm still sort of shocked that having to change one's style of dress is difficult, "crazy solution" for women, but I am not a woman so there maybe somethings I still don't understand (also, I'm not advocating for all women to wear burqa).

<comment> jack-r-abbit It doesn't even have to involve race or gender. Think about how many nice, hard working people feel the need to cover up their tattoos at work because some people seem to think that an "arm sleeve" is some how going to effect their ability to do their job. I decided early on that I would always make sure I could cover my tattoos and piercings with a normal, collared shirt for that very reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The word "creep" or "creepy" occurs 8 times in this article. Every time its aimed at men.

Its important to make a distinction. Not every guy that is attracted to you is a creep (even if his attempts at winning you over are awkward or creepy, that does not mean his intentions are - case in point when I first entered the world of dating all of my moves, were, in retrospect, very awkward or even accidentally creepy and I just did not know any better). Its not necessarily an age thing - I have seen cringe-worthy attempts at hitting by males in their mid-thirties.

<comment> __--__ When women use the word "creepy" what they mean is they are not attracted to them and any attention received by them is unwanted. As a guy, there are two ways to avoid being labeled as creepy:

1) be attractive 2) don't be unattractive

<comment><USER8> or 3) develop some social empathy and learn to infer when someone is not attracted to you, and then act accordingly by not showing them any interest beyond a cordial one that meets the demands of your profession.

<comment><USER9> It's nice to see others consider that option too :)

<comment><USER10> the first two points still have to apply for a successful execution of the third point however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really thoughtful article with some practical advice. I hope people read it thoroughly and really think about it before commenting on it, because it would be very easy to skim it and have a knee jerk reaction against the very broad strokes of what she's talking about.

It's not a "blame the victim" article at all, just an analysis of how current social norms might be making things harder than they have to be for women in the tech world.

</comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn There's a healthy balance between "OMG, I was dressed like a prostitute at a trashy bar in the bad part of town, what happened?" and "Welp, better dress in a niqab the rest of my life lest I attract any male sexual attention and and be responsible for it".

I don't think this article achieves that balance.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like this. It's pragmatic, not idealistic.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The reality is that since the social norm is that men are supposed to ask > and women are supposed to say "yes" or "no", it is a social norm that > willing women typically signal invitation to pursuit passively, primarily by > dressing provocatively, getting all dolled up (in terms of hair and makeup), > and being warm and friendly. Please don't pretend you didn't know this.

I think a bigger reason why people wear "attractive" clothes is because their peers judge them. e.g. women getting dolled-up even when they're not looking for a man.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some of the comments on this article are really pathetic. Look, people, there's a difference between condoning bad behavior and pointing out what victims can do to help themselves. If you're talking to a victim of sexual abuse, there's very little to be gained by telling them what the abuser should or shouldn't have done, but there is something to gain by telling the victim how to help themselves.

This article is about tactics for dealing with the current screwed-up situation, and the crappiness of humanity in general. If there's going to be debate, let's have it be about the effectiveness of those tactics, not attacking absurd caricatures of the article's arguments.

Somehow, when you warn people about thieves and try to help them avoid being targetted, no one gets confused and accuses you of justifying theft and blaming the victim. While the stakes are higher here, the logic is the same.

</comment><comment><USER13> Much better than one would guess from the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous title was "Some women are nothing but boobs (of the intellectual variety)". Care to try to improve on the title? (I thought I did, but maybe not?)

Thanks.

<comment><USER13> I can't think of anything simultaneously sober, mature, and attention- catching. I just wanted to help prevent anyone who looked at the comments first to dismiss the article on its title alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone please dowvote this flame bait.

Failure to adhere to your clothing norms doesn't make it okay to sexually assault anyone, ever. The solution to sexism is not mandatory burkas; that much should be obvious.

<comment><USER15> I hope you weren't seated at a desk when you wrote this out; it's a pretty horrific knee-jerk reaction.

Nowhere in the article does it suggest that sexual assault based on clothing is ok. It's actually a well-reasoned article which draws some good parallels between the way you act, and the way people react to you (not just sexually, but professionally and socially).

For my part, I think it's unfortunate that the advice given in the article is good, but at this point it's fairly true. I've worked in professional office environments for the better part of my life (in engineering), and dressing provocatively as a woman IS a sure way to make people treat you less seriously.

The author's points about women sending signals, and their typically passive role in engaging with the opposite sex is spot on. We just need men to come to the table and work on their social graces a bit more I think (and some women to stop playing the 'flaunting it but upset by attention' game).</comment></comment>


Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14316 Released - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/04/06/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-14316/ <comment><USER2> Do you think Microsoft will listen to us privacy-aware people and add a permanent kill-switch for all cortana/telemetry related traffic? Serious question, because somehow I doubt they will backpedal on this sweet sweet data source.

I won't be installing Windows 10 before this happens, but I also realize that at some point they will stop providing Windows 8 security updates.

<comment><USER3> Whilst it's not as easy as it should be, you can disable some/all of that data gathering via Group policy /setup settings.

It's a bit of a pain to do but once done should make it quite a lot better...

<comment><USER4> Don't some of the group policy settings explicitly say that the "everything off" option is only functional on Enterprise editions of Windows?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect X servers that worked for the Windows Subsystem for UNIX Applications could be used here too. I will not be surprised to read a report of an old Windows application that is incompatible with Windows 10 running in Wine in Ubuntu on Windows 10. There are bound to be at least a few in this category.

Presumably, audio could be implemented by using a named pipe or network socket talk to an audio daemon too. The work on the Linux side should have already been done by PulseAudio while there seems to be some sort of port for older versions of Windows that might be a starting point for the Windows side:

[http://downloads.tomsguide.com/pulseaudio-pulse- audio,0301-1...](http://downloads.tomsguide.com/pulseaudio-pulse- audio,0301-10662.html)

If the X server supports GLX (which I read XMing and Cygwin/X support), we might even see 3D Linux games running on Ubuntu on Windows and presumably, people would publish benchmarks for the Linux versions of things like Unigine Oilrush against the Windows versions. I would expect the Linux versions to be at a disadvantage, but a surprise there would be hilarious.

<comment><USER6> X over TCP works (to something like Cygwin's X server, or an X server on a remote Linux box), but it's of somewhat limited utility right now since terminal emulators don't work (broken pty support). No idea on GLX, though, although I'd be surprised if it works well; IME XMing and Cygwin/X are both on the slow side, which wouldn't be great for performance in 3D games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Global dark theme? Bash? Windows 10 is starting to look really awesome.

<comment><USER8> I am not sure it's actually global. Seems to apply to the basically-useless Metro apps. (For instance, the calc app in W10 is missing key functionality from Win8.)

If it could modify actual W32 apps then it'd be cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Cortana Cross-Device Features: Starting today, we will be releasing new features to Insiders on an ongoing basis that keeps you in perfect sync across all the devices where you use Cortana to stay connected and never miss a beat throughout your day. "

So much data. And users will want this in droves (specially since Pushbullet went premium).

<comment><USER10> > And users will want this in droves

Of course. What can possibly go wrong always having copied all the work the user does to some servers?

> keeps you in perfect sync

Actually keeps the company servers "in perfect sync" with the work of the user. And some of us worry about the telemetry and copying what user types -- it's actually presented/accepted as a big feature?

I understand that I'm probably a minority, for me, it's scary.

<comment><USER11> What I don't understand is why these same complaints are cheerfully accepted at every Microsoft thread, but never uttered in Android threads, iOS threads, or OSX threads.

Researchers have shown the same sort of key mirroring is at play there. Especially for OSX, where it is just ridiculous how eager it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I vowed to never "upgrade" to Windows 10, but this really makes it tempting. Damn you, Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> There are other things to consider, like losing all your unsaved work when Windows decides to run updates and reboot without your consent (I'm assuming they haven't reversed course on this, it's happened to me numerous times although I'm not on the Insider preview program. )

<comment><USER14> You can specify the time when the computer will reboot. Like the middle of the night.

<comment><USER15> You can defer the reboot for a few days but after a while, it will prevent you from putting it off and will finally force a reboot.

<comment><USER11> Honest question: what sort of work are you doing on a desktop workstation that cannot be safely checkpointed once or twice a month?

A small Azure instance is probably cheaper than the electricity you pay for your beastly desktop machine.

<comment> david-given For me, it's because I hardly ever use my Windows partition. What happens is that I boot it up once every few months, and then Windows Update immediately has a panic attack and starts downloading vast amounts of stuff behind the scenes and harassing me about reboots --- while I'm trying (and frequently failing) to get work done.

I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).

At this point I no longer trust Windows Update to do its job properly. The idea of it even _thinking_ about forcing a reboot terrifies me.

<comment><USER11> > I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively > counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, > but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually > trying to use the computer).

I sort of get this, but I also sort of think that it's unreasonable. On the one hand: yeah it's annoying. On the other, you're using outdated software, yo. Security is seriously business and just being in a VM is not actually great protection.

> I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks > (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).

I don't mean to be cheeky but, if you were actually going to do that then you probably wouldn't be 2 months behind on the update schedule?

I have this constant internal conflict between, "This is my computer it should do what I tell it to do" and "Wow as a user I am acting unreasonably and recklessly by expecting that thing to work the way I want it to." Maybe I'm just projecting that at you right now. If so, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Throw tomatoes, but I am liking what I see from Microsoft these days. Ubuntu on Windows is a big deal to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Remember when Apple said hell had frozen over when they launched iTunes for Windows?

This is that moment for Microsoft.

<comment><USER10> Isn't it "give them bash, take them their privacy away"?

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/13/windows-1...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/13/windows-10-sends- identifiable-data-microsoft-despite-privacy-settings)

Isn't it still unknown what is sent to Microsoft even if the user says "don't" in the settings? What was with "everything the user types is copied to MSFT" servers?

<comment><USER18> [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/mt577208%28v=vs....](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/mt577208%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#BKMK_MoreUTC)

As far as I'm aware this is as much as they've publicly released regarding telemetry, as for the "keylogger" thing I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER10> From your link:

> you must use Windows 10 Enterprise, version 1511 or Windows 10 Education, > version 1511 to manage them all.

Note that the Enterprise versions seem to be effectively unreachable for most (as far as I understand, you must be a company and license for at least 5 computers for two years in advance). Windows 7 is the last generation where a "normal user" was able to get the so called "ultimate" edition which included the functionality from the "enterprise" version for approximately double the price of the Pro version.

What can everybody else do?

<comment><USER19> I mean, you can buy an Enterprise license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Multi-desktop window pinning is a nice addition. I've usually got YouTube or Netflix running on a second monitor, and switching desktops always meant those windows would disappear. Now that I can pin them, virtual desktops will be usable for me again.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. This has been my main complaint with virtual desktops so far.

I've had to resort to dirty hacks with cmd'er and screen to get the same cmd sessions across virtual desktops. This should definitely make things smoother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some fixes are just too small to ever be mentioned:

\- "We polished the Wi-Fi flyout UI and fixed an issue where text entry into a Wi-Fi password field was noticeably top-aligned rather than centered."

<comment><USER23> I love reading stuff like this. I disagree!

<comment><USER24> Is this implemented in xaml? Oh how I wish more of Windows was free and open source.

<comment><USER25> A lot of the Windows 10 UI is built with UWP XAML.

Source: I work on it.

<comment><USER13> Ah good so I can ask a question: is there a way to turn off forced updates and reboots (reverting back to how it used to be when it would just nag you but never actually invoke the update automatically)?

<comment><USER24> Just curious: why do you want that? What is the use case for you?

<comment><USER22> I have a computer with hardware that is a couple of years old. The new and improved drivers for Windows 10, which should be compatible with my hardware, work horribly, so I manually installed some older drivers, which work perfectly. However, every once in a while, Windows 10 decides to update my drivers to the new crap drivers, so I have to waste my precious time uninstalling new crap drivers and manually reinstalling good old drivers.

As of yet, I have found no good solution to this problem, if I still want to be able to receive updates for other drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No news about the status of the desktop bridge for UWP, a.k.a. Centennial. I wonder when more of us will get to play with it. But in the meantime, we can at least watch a video about it from this year's BUILD conference here:

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/bridges/deskto...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/bridges/desktop)

</comment><comment><USER27> Actually I enabled Insider (Fast) on the 4th I'm still on the normal Build is there something else I need to get a Insider Build?

<comment><USER28> If you go to "check for updates" in the control panel, and poke around the advanced settings, I remember there being a button to check for new builds.

<comment><USER27> Actually that says I'm up to date (Build 10586 which isn't a Insider Build)

<comment><USER18> If you upgraded recently Windows keeps files that allow it to downgrade to the old version, you can check by going to Disk Clean-up then select the UAC protected option in there and it might have some upgrade files you can delete.

Aside from that I think you just have to give it some time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My personal crazy theory is that Microsoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft is finding that moving forwards on their original platform is untenable in the long run, and that a Unix like system will improve their product and also be cheaper to develope and maintain. I might be overly optimistic though.

<comment><USER30> I think that's wishful thinking, at this time they are translating Linux syscalls to the Windows equivalent. This adds maintenance burden, it doesn't remove it. Now if they were to have a dual kernel I could see the argument that they are sunsetting the Windows kernel.

<comment><USER31> Microsoft's ongoing, massive internal investment in the NT kernel speaks for itself. They already ship multiple kernels. And they ship software that runs on multiple kernels. SQL Server on Linux is announced. Most of the chatter here does not relate to where the puck is headed.

<comment><USER32> Considering a lot of Windows says admin types can't even program in Powershell (IME) I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to learn BASH (and probably Perl, Pyrhon, etc)

<comment><USER31> The success of GitHub's shell, native versions of Python and Perl, plus MSYS and warty Cygwin prove that there's demand. This is a better solution for many of those cases.

Giving more people access to common code and frequently-updated, open-source utilities -- how can you find fault with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How do you write extensions for Edge? I haven't seen any documentation about that.

<comment><USER34> Microsoft's still curating extensions so I don't think the documentation is generally available yet. Some of these early extensions are ports of Chrome extensions (like the Reddit Enhancement Suite mentioned in the article), so it's clear Chrome-like HTML/JS extensions are the main, probably sole, option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> And control panel is still a mess.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nothing here about privacy or visibility into where my data is going. ("Situational awareness" in security parlance.)

</comment><comment><USER37> but i want zsh

<comment><USER21> It's just Ubuntu. Apt-get zsh and then install oh-my-zsh (because I know you want that too).</comment></comment>


When income grows, who gains? - <AUTHOR> http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/

<comment><USER2> The question people should be asking is not whose income grows and who gains the most. To me, the only relevant question is: did this person stole the money or made it honestly? If he stole it, then he should be in jail. If he didn't, then it's none of anyone else's business how much he has and what he spends it for. And by honestly I mean he didn't force people to pay him and he didn't coerce anyone to pay him. If one can't convince a rich person who made his money honestly to share or help the poor or invest in a project that would supposedly create more jobs, then maybe it's that person's problem that he can't convince.

<comment><USER3> Most people reject this Libertarian framing of the issue. The progressive point of view is that income redistribution is justified if it leads to a "better" or "more just" society; it's not about punishing successful people. They also don't think the world is anywhere close to a meritocracy, therefore the wealth people create is at least to a very large part a function of good fortune so there is no moral issue with wealth redistribution.

The US busted unions and fought organised labor in general since the 1970s, and deregulated industry enormously. Also taxation is at a historic low. Those are the causes of the massive wealth presently accumulating at the top -- wealthy people today are not more meritocratic or harder working than wealthy people from the 1950s. But they're much, much wealthier. The reduction in real wages since the 70s has pushed regular people into debt (in an attempt to live a middle class lifestyle) with all the predictable negative consequences.

This is even terrible from a libertarian point of view. Because a country without a middle class is a country without consumers.

<comment><USER2> Most people rejected the idea that slavery is a bad thing for the most of human history. The problem with the idea that one's success somehow lies on the shoulders of the rest of the society (and therefore one is forever in debt to it, some may say) is that you can't prove it. You can say it, but you can't prove it. Some people got successful despite the hurdles society put in front of them.

When you say taxation is at historic low you have to remember that it is those who are at the top and are in bed with politicians who can afford to pay low taxes. Starting entrepreneurs and mom and pop businesses pay a lot. That's not even mentioning the fact that they have a lot less options to protect their savings from inflation (which is also a tax). If you look at the US govt share in the economy it grew from about 8-10% in the 1930s to more than 50% now. Those who get enormously rich these days are mostly those who are in bed with the government.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand what you are trying to say in the first paragraph.

You can easily say that no one would be successful without roads or electricity, so there is always some percentage of a person's success derived from society.

Society lowers the cost of innovation far more than any perceived hurdles it may place in front of people, in all but the most extreme cases (like Syria maybe?).

So, what do you mean?

<comment><USER2> _> You can easily say that no one would be successful without roads or electricity_

You can? A lot of people became successful without roads or electricity in the past. Actually, I'm pretty sure those who built roads or invented electricity became successful without those things. Then others paid them to use their invention and that paved way to their success.

Of course everyone's success depends on many things that were built before. But to claim that only a government can build those things and therefore you are forever indebted to the society as a whole is just plain wrong.

Are you willing to pay Apple for the rest of your life because it invented the modern smartphone?

<comment><USER4> What?

I'm willing to pay Apple for a smartphone. Why would I pay them for life? Even if I did pay them for life, what would that have to do with anything?

Nowadays, everyone uses roads. If you claim today that you are a self-made person that doesn't owe anything to anyone, I could just point out that roads exist and without them you would not be successful. I guess Genghis Khan was pretty successful without roads, but what does that have to do with anything?

Right now, other people make things that allow individuals to succeed. Right now, if you succeed and claim other people did not have anything to do with it, you are lying to yourself and everyone else.

Edit: And therefore, the idea of a rich man who made his money 'honestly' is too simple to be useful in any framework that manages a modern society. The definition of 'honest' is missing.

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to say here that government is not the only possible provider of things it currently monopolistically provides. If you claim everyone uses roads therefore everyone should pay taxes to keep those roads well maintained I'd say you're only partially right. Government, for the most part, keeps private companies away from owning roads. If there was no government, do you think there would be no roads? Of course there would! And people would be willing to pay for using them. Except that those who use roads once a week wouldn't subsidize those who use them every day.

 _> if you succeed and claim other people did not have anything to do with it, you are lying to yourself and everyone else_

No, I don't claim that. What I claim is that I would like to know exactly who those people are. If I use a road to deliver what my company produces, I would like to pay for this road before I actually use it. Now my business may fail, or it may succeed, but the owner of the road gets paid. I don't owe anyone more than they asked me to pay at that moment in time. Nor do they. I think that's fair. Don't you?

<comment><USER4> Infrastructure is very complicated.

Typically if you have a guy build a road and you let that guy control the pricing, he charges a lot because he has a monopoly. That transfers wealth to the road builder at the expense of all the would-be businessmen who would build institutions that use the road.

So societies use governments to control a relationship between the manager of the road and the people that use the road. The price to use the road dips because of the enhanced bargaining power of the people that use the road through the institution of government. Typically governments even subsidize the unit cost of using the road by paying the road manager directly up front, because the corresponding increase in business is worth it across a society.

I think that if you have a system that focuses on individuals and their relationships to roads and road builders without regulation by a large third party that represents all members of the society, you'll get a situation where the road builder uses the monopoly power to price road usage so highly that business investment is hampered. Usually people use government institutions to manage this sort of thing, and usually it works pretty good.

I think this is pretty basic stuff, no?

<comment><USER2> So why do you believe a company which manages the road is a monopolist? Where did you get this? Why is it impossible to build another road? Or go by train? Or by air? By no means road companies would be monopolies.

A government, on the other hand, is a monopoly. Furthermore, if for some reason I dislike the quality of the services that are provided or I dislike the way they are provided (for example, I ride a motorcycle and government requires me to wear a helmet, even though it is only my life I risk by not wearing it) then I still have to pay. If I don't pay, I get fined and may go to jail. It's not just a monopoly, it's extortion.

Imagine your ISP knocks on your door and says: "Hello sir. You are going to pay us this amount a month, we will provide you with internet access. The quality is going to be completely up to us, you can't unsubscribe and if you stop paying, you'll be fined and may go to jail. Oh, and there are practically no competitors, only very expensive ones. And if you use them, you would still have to pay us." How would you like that? Why roads are different? Nearly everyone uses Internet these days, just like they use roads.

Finally, you made this point _" Typically governments even subsidize the unit cost of using the road"_. Actually, taxpayers subsidize it, not government. Government doesn't have any money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honest question:

Almost no one here will question the effect of the 80/20 principle has on their business[1].

So why are people surprised when it rears its head in income statistics?

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

<comment><USER6> Because it's different in different countries and hints that USA is extraction economics like all the world before XIX century and modern dictatorships where elite is more interested in redistribution of existing wealth than creating new.

<comment><USER7> Wait. So we're not in a country that is purposefully moving backwards when it comes to distribution of wealth? /s.

I think the more interesting part of these graphs is that economic mobility can regress in society and the USA has not hit a point in its development where that is not true. It's like the price of freedom being eternally vigilant thing except most of society is unaware or powerless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the title of this link should be "When Value is Created, Who Captures it?" That is the more relevant question. When someone invents something new that creates more value for society, it can go to 5 different parties - customers, the business founder, shareholders, employees, and the government. Right now, most value creation is shared between customers, founders, shareholders, and the government, with very little going to the employees. If the innovation that created more value was invented by an employee within a firm, why is it that the other four parties are the ones to receive the majority of the wealth created by the innovation?

The Facebook 'like' button has arguably created billions of dollars in wealth for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's early shareholders. What percentage of that wealth went to the employees who came up with the idea? This is the question we should be asking.

</comment><comment><USER9> At least over the past 25 years, the picture is fairly different for other developed countries; in the UK, over that time period, there have been significant inflation-adjusted pay increases across all wage categories:

[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/earnings-in-the-uk- over-t...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/earnings-in-the-uk-over-the- past-25-years/2012/rpt-earnings-in-the-uk-over-the-past-25-years.html#tab- Real-wages-up-62--on-average-over-the-past-25-years)

Inequality has increased, but the poor and the middle-income have also seen significant increases in their prosperity.

</comment><comment><USER10> For me the chart loaded at a point the average income shrunk, and the richest actually got most of that shrinkage. Since that point there seems to have been no point at which the average income had shrunk. But, the graph goes until 2008, which was the start of the recession. Isn't the period after 2008 not the most interesting period? Didn't the average income drop? Who took the heaviest blow there?

Not that the rich would feel much if they would lose 50% of their income, but it would at least mean that some of the theory is true, and the rich really do carry more risk, and in that way protect the stability of the overall economy.

</comment><comment><USER11> The graph is pretty consistent up until the 1970s (the last 40 years).

What the graph does not tell you is that US dollar was no longer pegged to gold after 1971 (Bretton Woods). The currency devalued over time and the wealthy were in diverse asset classes that retained or grew in value over time (such as equities, forex, real estate, etc). The rest of society kept most of their money in cash.

<comment><USER3> > The rest of society kept most of their money in cash.

Not true. Regular people have most of their wealth in their house and cars. That's if they have net wealth in the first place. (And 401ks and other mutual funds, which is also not cash money).

According to the census bureau households(depending on income or asset quintile) have between $200 and $1800 in their checking account. ([http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/](http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/))

<comment><USER11> Sorry, I did generalize quite a bit. But your right, they did not keep their money in cash. Much worse, they converted their excess cash to illiquid and/or depreciating assets.

Also, many people do not have access to a 401k: 50.6% of Americans work for an employer that sponsors a retirement savings plan. 40.4% of employees utilized a 401(k) or pension in 2008.

[http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_11-2009_No336_Ret-...](http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_11-2009_No336_Ret- Part.pdf)

If they do have a 401k plan, it really depends what assets you can buy. If the plan offered only allows you to purchase mutual funds with high load and yearly fees, your wealth is being transferred to others. Over time, you will lose money vs the index. There are also penalties for early withdrawals.

Also, people are not forced to put money in a 401k or to buy a house or car. They could save that money and do something productive with it. On that link you posted, the wealthy DID NOT have most of their wealth in a 401k, it was in equities, equity in their business, rental properties, and other assets.

So, the point I was making was - the wealthy put the money to work for them rather than other way around. Imagine if you had excess money during the 2008 recession, you could have had many opportunities to make money. Most had their money (as you mentioned) tied up in their house or car. So, really it is about the wealthy being in a position to advantage of all available opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know why this must be so? I.e., is there any fundamental reason that, provided no-one breaks any laws, in an increasingly globalized, interconnected, technology-centric world, the majority of economic gains must _always_ go to those who own more capital than others in a free market?

<comment><USER13> Yes it's called capitalism. Or how my parents say it: "money makes money".

To fix this you need to remove money makes money.

Examples of money makes money that would need fixing:

To save money (i.e. by insulating your house) you need money

To get a better job, you need time/education, this also requires money up front.

To create a new big profitable company, you need money.

If your a bank you need money (unless your local law doesn't require this) to get money by the interest.

If you wish to get interest of money you need money.

To buy a house, you need money, after a 30 years, you get more money back then you invested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the more interesting question is what changed around the 1980 time frame that caused such a dramatic increase in the share of wealth for the top 1 percent? There appears to be a slight ramp up from the early 1900's to 1970's but in 1980 the slope jumps up.

<comment><USER15> It starts in the 1910's and 20's with Henry Ford: mass production of goods while paying your workers a high enough wage to buy your own products. This gets further codified in the 1930s with the New Deal: tax supported social safety nets, government support for unions and corporate regulation. The upshot of this is a new social consensus: the rich cannot get richer by taking a bigger slice of the pie, only by growing the pie.

Then World War II has two more effects: it finally kicks the U.S. economy into gear through massive government spending but maybe more important the rest of the first world (Europe and Japan) has most of it's infrastructure heavily damaged. The only other potential competitor, the Soviet Union, disengages from the capitalist economies of the 1st world and builds it own 2nd world of communist countries. This leads to spectacular growth in 1950s and 1960s for the U.S. and with the New Deal consensus it mostly goes to the working class and the middle class.

In the 1970s, the consensus starts to break down primarily due to two factors: automation and globalization. The rest of the world begins to recover and compete. And because thy haven't had the same sort of growth the U.S. did, their workers are much cheaper. Additional automation begins to create an ever-lowering ceiling on how much a low skill job is worth. Once the machinery to automate a job becomes cheaper than the worker, that worker is out of a job.

In the 1980s, the business owners (who never really like the New Deal) use their newfound leverage to create a coalition with libertarians and social conservatives to essentially dismember the government portion of the New Deal. Once this is done, the pie continues to grow, but the rich have start to grow their portion of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm fascinated by the period between 1945 and 1970. People have such a rosy view of that time period. The graphs shows that is really the only time that the middle class made gains at around the same rate as the richest 10%

</comment><comment><USER17> one problem with this graph is it based on gross income before transfers. it is quite possibly that if we take the actions to make a more 'just' society by increasing taxes on the rich and making greater transfers to the poor that this graph will look even worse. i think after tax and after transfer income is what really matters so I think it would be better if the graph showed this. but possibly it doesn't because the story would not be as bad.

</comment><comment><USER18> The richest and most leveraged always gain and lose the most. Pretty obvious but nice graph. And you can link to any period, like the dotcom bubble bursting

[http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/who- gains/#/?start=2000...](http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/who- gains/#/?start=2000&end=2002)

</comment><comment><USER19> Clever infographic, however, in the words of Leonard Cohen:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows that the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied

Everybody got this broken feeling

Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets

Everybody wants a box of chocolates

And a long stem rose

Everybody knows</comment>


Ask HN: Bank says it fixed openSSL/HB, can those claims be tested? - <AUTHOR>

I can find the exile date, but not the purchase or activation date.  I believe they updates SSL as heartbeats are now off, but the SSK cert nobly has 114 days left on it.
If they did a re-issue and revoke, that would be minimum a year would it not?
I can get the serial number of the cert, but how would I get the old certs serial number to compare it to?
I worry a lot pf people patched openSSL and called it a day, but our data was already compromised, so this open SSL patch does no good other than for new users.  I can change my password, but if they have all the other data they need, I am still in trouble until that revocation of the old cert happens, correct?
Thank you. <comment><AUTHOR> I just found a tester and it states this: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/340087/drops/04.27.14/Screen%20Shot%...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/340087/drops/04.27.14/Screen%20Shot%202014-04-27%20at%208.43.05%20PM-29-204426.jpg)

'Regenerated 2 years ago', does that mean they in fact did not revoke, regenerate, and re-issue?</comment>


Are you MachineLearning guy and want to find somebody nearby to hang out with? - <AUTHOR> Are you a #MachineLearning or #BigData enthusiastic? Want to find somebody nearby to hang out or to discuss your problem or to get a potential recruiter to get hired?  Signup to @xoolooloo -> https://www.xoolooloo.com/#/signup and see if you can find someone nearby. <comment><USER2> I entered my details and when I Clicked sign up nothing happened, no validation errors so I clicked it again and it said my account. Already exists (ok so maybe the first click did work)

No confirmation email, not in spam.

Try to login, enter my email and password, pressing the login button has no visual feedback so I'm tapping login several times with my finger, nothing happening.

Give up, quit

<comment><AUTHOR> malux85, We are sorry to hear that. We have Fixed the signup issues. You can try now. It's a relatively a new startup so that it might have some bugs. Thanks for pointing out the problem. We appreciate your help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Only men?

<comment><AUTHOR> Anybody can join</comment></comment>


Python optparse example - <AUTHOR> http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2009/09/python-optparse-example/ <comment><USER2> Nothing new under the sun. The library documentation has almost the same stuff <http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html></comment>