Foundations of Data Science [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cornell.edu/jeh/book%20no%20so;utions%20March%202019.pdf <comment><USER2> Looks like a mess. Use this instead:

[https://d2l.ai/](https://d2l.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER3> this is a weird collection of ML/computer vision/data processing topics

wavelets as it's own chapter, deep learning only has GANs as a single subsection, graphical models several chapters after the ML chapter...just weird arrangement choices

<comment><USER4> it's a theory heavy intro to a wide variety of analytical techniques. it's a common refrain that deep learning has very little in the way of theory. and in fact gans with their optimization scheme framed as a game that plays until equilibrium is one of the few pieces, that's also interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I read and master most of the stuff in this book, am I qualified to do data science?

<comment><USER6> It depends what you mean by "do data science". If you've read and mastered what's in the book, you'll have a good chance at writing a nice PhD in machine learning. But there's a lot of academic fluff in there that isn't too useful outside of university.

Most data scientists are _consumers_ of algorithms, not _producers_ of algorithms. The rules are a bit different if you're at a bigco, but most data scientists don't do active research. It's nice to have a solid theoretical understanding machine learning, but most data data scientists' day-to-day consists of chaining together libraries and building nice dashboards.

<comment><USER5> By do data science, I mean the day to day stuff. So actually it's not that hard then if all they are doing is chaining together libraries.

Is there anything that this book would be missing the day to day stuff?

<comment><USER7> > By do data science, I mean the day to day stuff. So actually it's not that > hard then if all they are doing is chaining together libraries.

Anyone who believes this is dangerous and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a data science project. The programming is easy, but working with data and making good inferences is very hard.

<comment><USER8> Sounds a bit of gate keeping to me. I mean it isn't magic, it's still 0s and 1s which yield results that are of some use to someone. Sure, it would be nice if everything were masters of DS but in reality, people make mistakes and sadly, or luckily depending how you look at it, you still can get useful results even when some of your assumptions about the data are wrong.

But I understand what you mean, and completely agree that poseur amateurs who treat DS as just easy "number fluff" and expect fancy ML frameworks to solve all their problems are cancerous and ruin the reputation of DS as a field.

Yet the more I have worked with regular people at work, the more I have moved from the camp of always doing the "right thing" to hoping that people would just "do something". I can't fix every problem so maybe I'll just deal with the reality as it is and try to make best out of it. I won't start quizzing people at work about DS know-how but maybe then silently guide them towards understanding what they are doing instead of driving them out of the room and keeping them located somewhere far away from the data science team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping there would be a section/mention on data privacy, but a CTRL+F revealed no mention of the word.</comment>


A "Hello World" virtual machine running the Hurd - <AUTHOR> https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/a-hello-world-virtual-machine-running-the-hurd/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the Hurd has become a very bad recurring April fools joke at this point. Interesting concepts though, but really if you must learn about microkernels you should definitely be looking at Fuchsia/Zircon.</comment>


Show HN: BuyerBingo, A simple app to chat with stores in your neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://buyerbingo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HNers,

We are launching the app soon and would like to know your inputs on everything around it. Throw everything you know at us.

Thanks!</comment>


Mars Has More Room For Life Than Earth - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/12/12/mars-more-life-earth/

<comment><USER2> I tried to find more information about this. The press reports mix "terrestrial" and "microbial" life, and talk about how 3% of volume of Mars "can support life" while only 1% of the volume of the Earth is the same.

The surface area of Mars is about equal to the land area of the Earth. Earth has microbes, or algae, or lichens even, just about everywhere, including the Antarctic Dry Valleys. There's life in the volume of the sea, down to the sea floor. We've found microbial life down to about 2km (if not more?) underground, in deep mines and borings, and high in the atmosphere. Have we found a place on Earth where there isn't life?

Therefore, they must be assuming that Mars, which has no molten core, has a larger depth where life might potentially exist.

The actual article looks like it will be published in the journal "Astrobiology", at <http://www.liebertpub.com/products/product.aspx?pid=99> . It's a monthly, and only November's edition is out. I'll bet that the embargo on the issue just finished, but that publication won't happen for another day or so. In any case, I'm not paying the ~ $51.00 it costs to get access to their site for a day.</comment>


Five Common Myths of Angel Investing - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/10/23/five-common-myths-of-angel-investing/

<comment><USER2> I'd add a number 6.

Angel Investors are competent negotiators.

I just lived through a startup where the board, led by the Angel Investors representative turned down a multi-million dollar offer because they thought they could get a better one. (They were wrong.)

So instead of getting their money back plus a bit, they are losing it all and trying to recover it by trashing what's left of the business.

Eventually I will write my blog post on "More tales of greed and incompetence on the electronic frontier."; right now I'm too busy picking up the pieces and making sure that our customers aren't going to be left stranded when we fold up the circus and put it away.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that this post along with similar ones I've seen (eg Guy Kawasaki) are misleading in a sense that they define the Universe of discourse more widely then the 'Myths.'

I imaging the majority of Angels described here just would not meet normal definitions.

Median investment $10,000, 92% friends & family, fewer than 5% go on to get VC money.

These are statistics about a (seemingly) very wide category of investors. Since most of these are not relevant to those that take these 'Myths' into consideration, these stats aren't really worth that much.

What would be interesting is to hear about the 10, 5 or 1% of those that are 'angels' in the sense that they do conform to the 'stereotype.' How many of them are in groups? How many of them are around? ...

</comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like they're defining _angels_ differently than is typically meant around here. This sounds more like a write-up of asking your rich uncle for a push. That said, it's nice to see it as a counterpoint to some of the conventional wisdom.

<comment><USER5> Yes. There two senses of the word "angel:" people who invest in private companies, and a narrower sense meaning people who invest in startups. A study of the former will yield a portrait of an investor very different from the latter, who are a tiny minority of the total.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article's definition of "angel investor" includes "friends and family" (which they claim make up 92%, in myth #5). Whereas I think of investors as: founders, friends/family, angel, VC rounds, IPO.

I think the other myths are more true of angels, if friends and family were excluded from the definition.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article, but some numbers would be really great.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stock Markets = Zero-Sum

Angel Investing = Not Zero-Sum</comment>


Nexus S receives MeeGo and Ubuntu ports - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/11/nexus-s-receives-meego-and-ubuntu-ports-makes-our-nerd-senses-t/ <comment><USER2> The folks on xda-developers.com are incredibly resourceful. From the information there, I'm now able to run FroYo on my HD2 (which shipped with WM6.5).

</comment><comment><USER3> I am a little slow on the mobile devices front and do not own one. So never knew that android 2.3 can run native code. Now that is something I find exciting.

<http://d.android.com/sdk/ndk/overview.html>

Not sure about the android 1.5 reference

<comment><USER4> Android's been able to run native code since v1.5. The updates in 2.3 are significant, as you can now use C to hook into Android's APIs, whereas before you were given the screen and told to go wild (for example, the Firefox Mobile port needed its own gui widgets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean you can emulate the functionality of the Motorola Atrix which becomes a netbook, webtop or htpc when you connect it to a screen and keyboard/mouse via HDMI and USB?</comment>


Let's draw Feynman diagrams! - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=3712 <comment><USER2> I'm not really sure why anyone would want to bother drawing Feynman diagrams if they didn't need to calculate the amplitudes associated with them. There are very few physical effects that can be explained through Feynman diagrams without understanding a lot more than this article offers about the math that these diagrams involve.

Typically Feynman diagrams are offered as a way to simplify the accounting involved in doing quantum field theory calculations. To treat them as a view of what is "really happening" is a bit misleading, especially to an audience that is not intimately familiar with the oddities of quantum mechanics. I'm not saying everyone needs to understand path integrals to "get" the basics of QFT, but it would be a real mistake to think that you could understand anything nontrivial about the theory by looking at mere Feynman diagrams - QFT's magic is in how you calculate the amplitudes from diagrams, not in the construction of the diagrams themselves.

And at the _very_ least, some justification for ignoring the higher level Feynman diagrams needs to be offered, especially since in certain quantum field theories we can't pull the same kind of crap that we can get away with in QED, and it doesn't make any sense to ignore the more complicated diagrams.

<comment><USER3> I can't tell if you're joking, but in case you aren't:

 _To treat them as a view of what is "really happening" is a bit misleading, especially to an audience that is not intimately familiar with the oddities of quantum mechanics._

There is no simplified layman's view of any complex subject which is not at least a bit misleading.

 _And at the very least, some justification for ignoring the higher level Feynman diagrams needs to be offered_

Audience. The post starts out by mentioning that he's talking only about stuff that could be done by school children, or the whole family. It's a bit tongue- in-cheek, but I didn't get the impression that he was completely unserious about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It worries me when people attach too much Physics to Feynman diagrams. Feynman diagrams arise when you try to compute perturbatively the correlation functions in a field theory. They appears both in quantum field theory and in statistical field theory and in general in any theory which can be expressed via a functional integral. I see them more as a property of the perturbative expansion than a description of the "true" Physics going on.

<comment><USER5> What's "true" physics and what's just a computational technique is a distinction which seems rather philosophical, and I don't mean it as a positive thing.

In any case, there's more to Feynman diagrams than your comment implies. For example, think of the optical theorem. You can take a diagram with a loop in the middle and cut it in half, and get two diagrams of a lower order, say originally you had A + B -> C + D and you get A + B -> X and X -> C + D (where X can be any number of particles), and the amplitude for the former is the integral over all momenta of the amplitudes for the sequence of the latter. What it means is you can think of a "true" physical sequence of events, A + B -> X followed by X -> C + D, which contributes to the cross-section for A + B -> C + D and the math behind it is the same as used for the A + B -> C + D scattering with a not-"true" X (i.e., X with non-physical momenta) in the middle of the Feynman diagram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in how these really work, a good place to start is _Introduction to Elementary Particles_ by David Griffiths. For the full- strength stuff, go with _An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory_ by Peskin and Schroeder.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real deal:

[http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Electrodynamics-Advanced- Book-...](http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Electrodynamics-Advanced-Book- Classics/dp/0201360756/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267097328&sr=8-26)

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://lesswrong.com/lw/pk/feynman_paths/>

</comment><comment><USER9> "Make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler!"</comment>


Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever found on seabed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/06/wreck-spanish-galleon-treasure-haul <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am a Spaniard

This is going to be a long fight because traditionally those ships and its content belong to the owner. There are some international rules that some countries have agreed on (UNESCO): [http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=13520&URL_DO=DO_TO...](http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=13520&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). Colombia hasn't signed that, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't obbey.

I don't know about this topic, so I won't add much more. However I wouldn't be so ingenous to think that the full treasure belongs to Colombia or to Spain. I suppose they will end up in international legal figths and they will end up agreeing on sharing the treasure. In any case, they CAN'T sell it (I believe) so it'd be as worthy as the tickets of the museum. It's more of a patriotic fight than a practical fight.

<comment><USER2> Bonus point: Peru could get into the fight too because some of the gold, silver and emeralds could have come from there. Back to the old books!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For your information, another similar case (Fragata Mercedes) was ruled in favor of Spain by a US Federal Court: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/54441...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/5444134/Treasure- hunters-ordered-to-pay-Spain-350m-for-gold-coins.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you like this, I highly recommend reading Pirate Hunters. Its a quick read and tells a very interesting story.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23164968-pirate- hunters](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23164968-pirate-hunters)

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems so odd that it takes so long to find these sunken vessels with so much tech at our disposal?? I reckon one good robbery deserves another.

<comment><USER6> I wondered that too but then they cover how it's been embroiled in a legal battle for 30 years now. So apparently its location more or less _was_ discovered a long time ago, it's only now that the legal battle has ended that more detailed investigation can take place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Huh. How can gold, silver and emeralds taken from South America, be "national cultural patrimony" of Spain? Aren't they a treasure of the South American natives they were taken from?

<comment><USER3> It is Spanish cultural patrimony in the same way Rosseta Stone is British patrimony. Legally it is owned by Spain.

<comment><USER8> Legally? Going by whose laws? The legitimate owners of all that wealth are the indigenous inhabitants of the territory it was extracted from by invaders. According to indigenous law, it is definitively NOT legally owned by Spain.

<comment><USER9> > indigenous law

Are you referring to some particular legal entity here, or just an overall concept?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the fact that Spain first robbed their colonies Peru and Bolivia of their gold and silver, and then was able to rob the company who found and rescued the treasure.

<comment><USER3> There were no colonies, there were part of the "Virreinato de Nueva Granada" learn some history before spreading anti-Spanish bullshit.</comment></comment>


The next wave of ecommerce is decentralized - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shoplocket.com/2012/04/12/the-next-wave-of-ecommerce-is-decentralized/

<comment><USER2> but eBay _is_ a de-centralized model, that's why it worked, no? Or am i missing something? I love the idea that the product can be embedded anywhere, and that's certainly going to help, but i'm not sure specifically if that helps me enough regards finding the right exposure for my product? What if my online presence is limited?

Also, i noticed there was no option to embed in an email? Or would i not even need that?

<comment><AUTHOR> By decentralized I'm referring not to marketplaces, but the idea that products can be shared and put up for sale anywhere. Its about not always needing to go to a central url, whether that be a marketplace (ebay) or a storefront. Its the idea that you want to put your product in front of the people that matter, and make it easy for others to do the same. If your online presence is very limited you'll face a lot of the same challenges of anyone starting a store on another platform like magento, or Bigcommerce, but you'll have the advantage of being able to share your product easily...not to mention try it out without spending time and money.

There isn't an embed in email option yet. You could easily share a link via, but at this point we haven't built out a system for exporting the image version of your product widget into an email, seeing as our iFrames of course wouldn't work for emails.

Hope this helps, would love to hear more of your feedback!

<comment><USER2> It's a interesting concept. I do see your reasoning behind this. What has your adoption rate been like so far?

I'm thinking about people who struggle with eBay accounts or worry about having to deal with something like Magento. As a user experience, it would make life much easier for them, but what if they have a limited online presence? If they dont have many FB friends or twitter followers, will it not limit their exposure? and if so, how could they increase their exposure?

I know a few sellers who love amazon and eBay because of the amount of eyes it puts their products infront of. How does your product solve that problem?

I'd love to hear back from you.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CSS Gardener – For just $59 I will fix your CSS code within 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.cssgardener.com/ <comment><USER2> "Your time is worth more than 50 an hour" ... Uh ... Is that really something you can say so confidently. And if 50 dollars for one hour, can you really say that "fixing yoyr problem" is 50? Which is it, project or time based?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello! I created CSS Gardener.

No, I can not say that confidently about everybody. But for the target audience, developers and founders of small businesses, I can confidently say their time is worth a lot.

It is project based, not time based. It is a flat fee!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great idea. I definitely think you can find an audience for it. You might have to play with pricing a little bite but the core idea def. holds value.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN.

This is a quick and dirty MVP I put together. I would appreciate any feedback. Would you use it? Do you think there is a market for it? What is your biggest concern?

<comment><USER4> I like this. I would use it. I can remember situations in the past in which I would have loved to use it.

The "I'll solve your problem" market is one to be explored, I think. I don't want people doing everything for me for a huge price, but sometimes it would be better to pay to get a small problem solved instead of navigating for many hours through documentation, chats and help threads around the internet to get that solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like a plumber for CSS. Good value as many people hate dealing with CSS.

</comment><comment><USER5> Typo: responsable should be split with I.

</comment><comment><USER6> Vaya boricua! Metele melaza papi.</comment>


Duckduckgo: I want to use but things like this put me off - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/?q=vim+users A search for "vim users" results in a lot of unrelated stuff "coalition of energy users" ??? "my neighbours use too much energy"??? Compare that to google on the same search <comment><USER2> What puts you off? Append !g to search it on Google. The google search is pretty bad though, including a top 10 list in the first page of results. If you're looking for the man page, simple append !man. DuckDuckGo is awesome, and I'm not sure what you're getting at. If you don't like the look, the advertisements, anything really you can change it in the settings. You can also sync this between computers. What's not to love about DDG?

This is how I see your search: <http://i.imgur.com/crfmO.png>

</comment><comment><USER3> What? The advertising?</comment>


New Look, New Apps at Hall.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hall.com/post/13161047623/new-look-new-apps-at-hall-com

<comment><USER2> Congrats Brett! I hope you also write a blog post about your amazing pivot from a b2b company to hall.com (awesome domain, btw).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Thomas, if people want to hear about the pivot, I'm ready to write a post. Let me know!

<comment><USER3> Please do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's really nice to see online community evolving out of threaded discussion boards. The paradigm from Invision et al seems so stale lately.

That being said, I wish all these great new tools and systems had a white label option.

</comment><comment><USER5> The collaboration features are a great idea. Looking forward to using them. Thanks for the tools.

<comment><USER6> Thanks Brett Hardin (I'm a co-founder). Would love to hear what other types of productivity tools you would imagine us having.....

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'd appreciate feedback on the apps. What do you think of our two new apps To-Dos & Notepad?

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on that domain name!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks bastian, we have a blog post coming in a few days talking about how we made that happen.</comment></comment>


Bugfreak a free opensource bug tracker for .net and android - <AUTHOR> https://www.bugfreak.co/ While we where working on our latest startup (omnipasteapp.com) we needed a way to get reports on application crushes from our early adopter. Existing solutions where either to expensive for a startup or did not had support for all the platforms we needed.
So we created bugfreak used a couple of weeks and then opensourced it:
https://github.com/agilefreaks/apibugfreak - the api and web app, same app as www.bugfreak.co so you can fork it and deploy it on your own server
https://github.com/Agilefreaks/winbugfreak - the .net clients (wpf, silverlight, aps mvc)
https://github.com/Agilefreaks/droidbugfreak - the android client
All packages are available in nuget and maven
As always PR are more than welcomed. Let us know what platform you want to have support for next (rails is already on the roadmap) <comment><AUTHOR> While we where working on our latest startup (omnipasteapp.com) we needed a way to get reports on application crushes from our early adopter. Existing solutions where either to expensive for a startup or did not had support for all the platforms we needed.

So we created bugfreak used a couple of weeks and then opensourced it:

[https://github.com/agilefreaks/apibugfreak](https://github.com/agilefreaks/apibugfreak) \- the api and web app, same app as www.bugfreak.co so you can fork it and deploy it on your own server

[https://github.com/Agilefreaks/winbugfreak](https://github.com/Agilefreaks/winbugfreak) \- the .net clients (wpf, silverlight, aps mvc)

[https://github.com/Agilefreaks/droidbugfreak](https://github.com/Agilefreaks/droidbugfreak) \- the android client

All packages are available in nuget and maven

As always PR are more than welcomed. Let us know what platform you want to have support for next (rails is already on the roadmap)</comment>


Reed Timmer, Storm Chaser, Uses Twitter Bootstrap, Devise & Stripe - <AUTHOR> http://tvnweather.com/ondemand <comment><AUTHOR> I was rather surprised, but glad, to see this.</comment>


Trojita: an IMAP mail client - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.polipo.user/3071 <comment><USER2> Gut reaction: Trojita isn't far off Trojan. I think people will have issues with that.

<comment><USER3> I really hope people are not that close-minded, seriously...

By the way, from the wiki:

It's a cool name. What does it mean and how should I pronounce that word?

It's a Czech word which means "triple". The meaning is an inside joke related to a Czech pseudo-word, blésmrt. The whole story is inspired by Mutt's "all e-mail clients suck, this one just sucks less". The real pronounciation is rather hard for English speakers, so you can stick with a Spanish-like style.

<comment><USER4> In Italian, "troia" means "whore", as well as the ancient city of Troy. Italian uses "ina" or "etta" as diminuitive suffixes, rather than the Spanish "ita", but still... I don't know that I'd want to be discussing it at work.

<comment><USER5> I live in Penistone. After a few giggles when I first moved there, you just stop noticing after a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see GPG/PGP integration. I have been looking for a lightweight, multi- platform offline capable IMAP client with good GPG/PGP encryption for awhile now, and nothing seems to quite fit the bill.

<comment><USER7> I'm also looking for something similar for OSX/Linux. I'd love to move my "life" away from services like gmail (not that I have anything against it, just don't like having all my data that far away from me).

<comment><USER8> Have you tried Claws mail? :<http://www.claws-mail.org/> It has support for gpg (inline and mime) and is multiplatform, maybe you have done and you don't like it

<comment><USER9> Last time I tried Claws mail (which was years ago) the interface left something to be desired. It was too cluttered, and difficult to use on a small (1024x768) screen.

<comment><USER6> +1 I've had the same experience.

<comment><USER10> And that didn't change when I opened Claws today

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> about 4 months ago, when the creator of IMAP passed away, I was fascinated to read about the quality of his RFCs and far-reaching vision for IMAP [1]

IMAP has apparently always been misimplemented protocol.

While I agree that Trojita isn't yet a replacement for more featureful clients, I'm glad it's finally blazing a path of showing how to do IMAP well.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4825893>

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the advantage over thunderbird besides being written in Qt.

<comment><USER13> I can imagine there are many, in day-to-day use I find Thunderbird to be one of the worst e-mail clients I've ever used. Slow, unstable, makes simple things hard (try to configure an LDAP address book) and many basic features simply don't work (IMAP search for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope it stands out it's promisses. My Gmail account is not usable on any gnu/linux IMAP client.

<comment><USER15> It does stay responsive while scanning a large (200k) [Gmail]/All mail folder, but apparently it has a single connection to Gmail because no other folders or messages can be obtained during the download. After about five minutes it has a basic list of headers (but not the subjects) and there seems to be more concurrency. It would be better if it chunked the large scan and allowed other operations to complete (assuming progressive scanning is possible).

<comment><USER16> Interesting, because the only slow action when opening mailboxes is fetching and applying the thread index, and gmail does not support that particular feature. Which means I don't really know how it can take a "few minutes" on GMail -- all it does it simply fetching the UIDs...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good IMAP clients is something I always look out for. Be they command line, web based, or GUI clients. Most of the ones I have tried have had performance problems so I like they have it as one of their core goals.

Anyone know of any other good IMAP clients?

<comment><USER18> Mulberry [1] used to be my gold standard of IMAP clients. It has one of the most complete IMAP implementations I've ever seen. Unfortunately the company that made it went out of business in 2005, but a little while later it came back and then was open sourced.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on the open source project and I eventually switched to Thunderbird (which only gets better, it seems). But I do miss many parts of Mulberry. It was stable, fast, and detailed.

[1] <http://www.mulberrymail.com/>

<comment><USER19> Mulberry was my mail app of choice back circa 1998. At the time, it was verifiably the most complete implementation of IMAP available. It supported server-side searching, server-side copying, shared mailboxes, and I believe partial fetch. All features that no other IMAP client supported at the time. Some of these feature were even difficult to find in server implementations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I took a quick look and still prefer Thunderbird. Over the years tb has matured enough that it's solid and reliable. All I want from my work email client. For personal stuff, I'd never consider a client, other than the browser.

<comment><USER21> In the past decade or so (basically since it came out) I've tried Thunderbird 3 times. Each time it lost some of my data. Granted only the first 2 times was I using POP; with IMAP having an e-mail client that completely corrupts and is unable to recover the local mailbox isn't nearly as big a deal, but it still makes me not want to use it.

Even Evolution, which had a history of crashing if I looked at it funny, and seemed to be implemented as a loosely associated group of processes, any one of which could decide to monopolize the CPU and/or disk IO at any point never lost e-mail messages for me.

<comment><USER18> Interesting. I've been using Thunderbird for years and years and have never had it lose any data... What IMAP server are you using?

<comment><USER21> It was the local data that got corrupted, which with POP and deleting from the server was a big deal; not so big a problem with IMAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Off topic: Can anyone recommend a good command-line mail client. I'm used mutt quite a bit. Wondering if there are any more out there that are at least as good as mutt.

<comment><USER23> I always go back to mutt. It does one thing, read email, and it does it well.

The key is to set it up appropriately. Don't use mutt for downloading your email, especially if you wanna deal with IMAP. Use isync (mbsync) for that purpose (I used to use offlineimap, but it's buggy and not very fast).

There's also notmuch, which I use for indexing my email. It also contains a pretty good email reader.

<comment><USER24> Mutt's IMAP support is working fine for me. And enabling the header cache makes opening mailboxes fast.

<comment><USER23> If your connection drops often it's a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How does it handle Gmail (labels, conversations..) ?

<comment><USER3> About labels, I believe they are sort of in the IMAP spec as keywords or something like that, so if Gmail is being nice, they should work.

About conversations, I read that Gmail does some client-side sorcery with In- Reply-To headers for that, so if this client does the same, it should work.

<comment><USER26> Gmail exports labels as IMAP folders, so it should be fine?

<comment><USER17> Actually this is what creates the mess. If gmail had exported labels as flags an IMAP client should be able to re-implement the gmail folders.

EDIT: The mess I refer to is that your emails will be duplicated if they have multiple labels.

EDIT2: Hmm, actually I am not sure how good the support for custom IMAP flags is.

<comment><USER27> (Side note: It's been a few years since I looked through the specs and maybe I missed something)

IMAP flags are sadly severely lacking in what they can represent. The character set isn't even enough for unmodified UTF-7 (Punycode could work, but only for one-word tags) which renders them useless for user-chosen labels so few mail clients actually bother supporting them in that way. Thunderbird uses \label1 through \label5 but the names that are displayed in the UI are stored on each computer separately so you'd have to set up the labels you use on each machine (which kinda defies the purpose of storing that on the server). And short of using a »label configuration mail« on the server I don't see an easy way of supporting them completely server-side.

I'd love to completely forego folders and use tags/labels/flags/whatever they're called exclusively but last I looked IMAP wasn't able to support that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not a single word about Windows support on the website. Since its only requirement is Qt > 4.8 it shouldn't be a problem though.

<comment><USER16> Nobody builds the Windows binaries regularly. Last time I did so, it worked without any problem. If you'd like to help maintain the Windows port, I'll be happy to have you on board.

<comment><USER28> I will take a look and see if I can compile it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me a lot of Althea</comment>


4th Century AD Roman Slave Collar "I have fled, hold me..." - <AUTHOR> http://museum-of-artifacts.tumblr.com/post/111575225562/roman-slave-collar-with-inscription-i-have-fled

<comment><AUTHOR> Full inscription from site:

FVGITENEME CVMREVOLV VERISME D.M. ZONINOACCIPIS SOLIDVM

 _"I have fled, hold me; when you bring me back to my master Zoninus you receive a solidus [gold coin]"_</comment>


Wasted time with development/test environments. What are your experiences? - <AUTHOR> I feel like I spend too much time struggling with setting up, configuring or fixing my development environments and also my test environments. Is this a common experience among developers?<p>What steps can I take or what tools can I take to help with this? <comment><USER2> You can make reproducible environments with tools like [http://www.vagrantup.com](http://www.vagrantup.com) or [http://www.docker.com](http://www.docker.com), you can create online workspaces using sites like [https://www.c9.io](https://www.c9.io) and any other online IDE.

I've found vagrant to be particularly satisfying because it assigns a virtual machine to a directory and you can easily jump in to the vm to manually get it to the state you want.

</comment><comment><USER3> normal problem to have, the solution depends on your stack.

vagrant, docker, puppet/chef, packer and aws are what i use to create repeatable environments that don't need much attending to... once you get it set up the first time.</comment>


Oracle Solaris 11 released - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/

<comment><USER2> Oracle will be able to keep Solaris alive for a long time. The hardware supportability and start/stop/start on Intel platforms really hurt them, but it will survive in niche markets and still has advantages (ZFS, dtrace to start, I'm sure you'll find more if you dig).

If you have "regular" hardware (1-4 sockets), you pay 1k/server/year. No "I know what I am doing" with this OS, but meh. 5+ sockets is 2k/server/year.

This is really, really too much if they want to re-kindle Solaris as mainstream thing. FreeBSD seems like a safer bet then OpenSolaris.</comment>


Big Sur is both 10.16 and 11.0 - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2020/07/21/big-sur-is-both-10-16-and-11-0-its-official/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand why -- and do educate me on why I'm wrong -- software don't just use an internal and external version number. Version numbers may have started as a technical label with precise meanings, but they've been a part of branding and marketing for a while now. It's futile to fight it[0].

Let the former be a monotonically increasing (say 64-bt) integer, and the latter be a free-form string. This way, marketing folks are free to call one version "macOS 10.16 Big Sur", followed by "macOS 11.0 Big Sur Pro Max", "macOS 10.32 Pro SE", etc. w/o developers pondering over whether "Pro SE" > "Pro Max". As for API, maybe something like getProductVersion() for the internal version, and getProductName() for the external version. Heck, be facetious and let the latter return a string like "!!! DO NOT USE FOR VERSION COMPARISON USE getProductVersion() INSTEAD !!!\07\07\07macOS 10.16 Big Sur".

Yes, lazy developers will get it wrong, similar to how they use gettimeofday()[1] instead of clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, ...)[2]. In their defense, often software switch between versioning conventions such that what's the "right" thing to do is unclear.

[0] Such appropriation is everywhere. Don't get me started on how Porsche Taycan, an electric car, has a "Turbo" model. It probably doesn't even come with blinker fluid standard.

[1] [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/g...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/gettimeofday.html)

[2] [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/c...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/clock_gettime.html)

<comment><USER3> macOS/iOS have this concept already:

CFBundleVersion: The version of the build that identifies an iteration of the bundle. This key is a machine-readable string composed of one to three period- separated integers, such as 10.14.1. The string can only contain numeric characters (0-9) and periods.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/in...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/cfbundleversion)

CFBundleShortVersionString: The release or version number of the bundle. This key is a user-visible string for the version of the bundle. The required format is three period-separated integers, such as 10.14.1. The string can only contain numeric characters (0-9) and periods.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/in...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/cfbundleshortversionstring)

Android similarly has versionName and versionCode.

The problem is that no matter what, someone somewhere is going to parse something that was never intended for non-human consumption. Or code ends up making assumptions that it shouldn't about a machine-readable version.

I have code which parses CFBundleVersion. It assumes the version follows Apple's docs. But guess what? CFBundleVersion is just a string and nothing enforces Apple's guidance so I was surprised (I shouldn't have been) to have to deal with an internally distributed iOS app that had the word "debug" tacked on to the end of its CFBundleVersion.

<comment><USER4> Small side note:

Android's "versionCode" is an ever-increasing number, you must submit a higher versionCode than your previous build.

CFBundleVersion can be set back to 0 with each CFBundleShortVersionString change.

Normally I just set both to a build number on whatever CI I use (for something like a cordova cross-platform app) and then increase CFBundleShortVersionString & versionName using the tag name (or a custom version name I give a release).

<comment><USER5> CFBundleShortVersionString must increment too though. So if you join "${CFBundleShortVersionString}.${CFBundleVersion}" the whole thing must increment, and this explains why CFBundleVersion can revert when CFBundleShortVersionString increments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note that this is how Windows has worked since 2013.

If you ask what version of Windows you are running, for example with GetVersionEx, Windows will report Windows 8.0. This is true _unless_ your application marks compatibility with a newer version in its manifest, at which point Windows will report whatever the newest version in your manifest is, or whatever version Windows actually is, whichever of the two is older.

<comment><USER7> It's kind of annoying from an analytics perspective, because you need to upgrade the manifest (and thus the compatibility) to find out how widely adopted a version is, so you can find out if how much effort it's worth putting into validating it as a platform.

<comment><USER8> > so you can find out if how much effort it's worth putting into validating it > as a platform.

I don't understand the logic here. We're talking about the new version of your target OS. You will presumably always need to support it eventually.

IMO if you're large enough to have a testing and validation process at all, you should be including at least the public beta builds in those tests.. By the time it hits RTM if you don't at least know if your software works you're doing it wrong.

Also, if your software is regularly breaking with OS releases and you're not doing something that requires you to be deep in the internals, you're almost certainly doing something significantly wrong and should figure out what that is. The only software I consistently experience breakage with on updates is also the one where their tech support insists that we're being paranoid for refusing to give their users local admin privileges just to run it. I don't think for a second that's a coincidence.

<comment><USER9> > I don't understand the logic here. We're talking about the new version of > your target OS. You will presumably always need to support it eventually.

Maybe not, you might be able to skip a version that had poor adoption. Windows ME, Windows Vista, IE7 and TLS 1.1 never had a very high market share, because people put off updating so long that better things came along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The User-Agent string for Big Sur's Safari running on Apple Silicon (ARM) still says "Mac OS X 10_16" and, curiously, claims to be "Intel":

"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_16) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0 Safari/605.1.15"

<comment><USER11> This makes sense since it should avoid two issues:

\- Sites that try to detect mobile by looking at "ARM" in user-agent string

\- Sites that try to parse the macOS minor version for some reason and would be confused to see something like "11_0"

BTW, user-agent is a hell anyway. Just looking at this user-agent that OP posted, macOS still identifies itself as "Mac OS X", still is based on Mozilla/5.0(!), still identifies itself as KHTML enginee (compatible with Gecko), and so on...

<comment><USER12> Oh my god can we please kill the user agent string already? Every time any new combination of browser/os/platform is created it claims that it's as some other user agent from an established browser because sites are lazy and abuse user agent string to determine capability. Meaning they have long lost all meaning and we should just dump them.

<comment><USER13> > Oh my god can we please kill the user agent string already?

Browser makers tried to do that by providing feature detection, but the weight of legacy code and developers already used to using the user agent strings has made killing it impossible.

Edit: As pointed out in another comment here, it seems like Google is killing it (or planning to). [1]

[1]: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user- agent...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent- strings-in-chrome/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Got to admit - that's a simple yet clever solution.

<comment><USER15> Quite the opposite, it is a complex mess.

<comment><USER16> I agree, this is not good. I manage Macs in MDM and I already saw that in some actions they show up as 11 and in others as 10.16. sw_vers tends to report 10.16 but UIviews tend to report 11.0. MDMs are complex machines and they don't always do every operation the same way.

Why is this bad? Well for one example, because sometimes you use version numbers not exactly. Consider the statement: "Applies to 11.0 and higher". Depending on how the OS identifies itself this will be valid or not. On the _same_ OS.

Or consider reporting, if under some conditions the Mac identifies itself as 10.16 and in others as 11, you're going to have them in 2 different buckets even though they're the same thing.

Really, they should have made a choice, one or the other. If software wasn't compatible because of this it should just be updated. Apple never said it would always be 10.x.

I don't really understand why they're doing this as Apple normally has no issue telling developers to fix it or stuff it. They never cared about backwards compatibility before. If having 11.x was not that important to them to upset a lot of stuff, they should have just stuck with 10.16.

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't "10.16 and higher" work for both 10.16 and 11?

<comment><USER18> What if next year is 12.0 and 10.17?

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is a plausible scenario. You might also ask, "What if next year Apple releases Mac OS 9.3?"

<comment><USER19> Don't get me excited now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Makes sense, 16 is 1 in Base 16, so 10.16 = 11.0 :)

<comment><USER21> So, there was A.F, then it incremented bu 0.1 to B.0. Checks out, except for their weird insistence to use a decimal representation for what is now _obviously_ a hexadecimal scheme. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why did they even go with 11 instead of just dropping the 10, making Big Sur macOS 16?

<comment><USER22> To the people downvoting this comment: By saying that 11 is what 10 was to Mac OS 9 implies the same substantial changes made to the whole system which is not the case here, at all. Mac OS 10 / OS X / macOS was a completely new system based on NeXTSTEP (or at least, completely different from Mac OS 9). It is still the same operating system, just in the usual upgraded fashion (although this time with more visual changes). By dropping the 10, Apple would have stated that macOS is just considered the successor to Mac OS (9) and the previous major "10" is already implied by the name. The 11 just makes no sense considering there has already been an 11th OS X.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand, MacOS 7.6 to MacOS 8 was not much more than a rebadging and a few bundled widgets. 9->X was a once-in-a-lifetime architectural change and not historically typical of Mac system software major versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh, Linux can do this too!

      $ uname -a
      Linux h0nk 4.19.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2 (2020-04-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux
      $ setarch --uname-2.6
      $ uname -a
      Linux h0nk 2.6.79-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2 (2020-04-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux
      $ _

Of course, I shudder to think about the situations this would actually be used in.

<comment><USER25> The difference here is that the default behavior is to report the actual version and it is up to the user to enable the compatibility hack for broken software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Big Sur will identify itself as both version 10.16 and 11.0 according to > context. This should put the minds of many at rest

Not mine. It's an extra piece of cognitive burden and another opportunity for misconfiguration.

<comment><USER27> Welcome to all technical migrations ever.

The ease of mind of the current developer is far less important than software not breakly widely for users because previous developers made bad assumptions about version strings.

<comment><USER26> Making policy to avoid the consequences of prior bad practices does not sound like a recipe for encouraging good practices moving forward. In terms of technical debt, it's like taking out a loan to pay off a credit card. I worry this will just lead to baking in more bad assumptions as developers hurry to get this off their plate.

I wonder why they don't announce a deprecation of the old versioning schema, and give developers time before switching, instead of just doing both at the same time with little to no warning. They've done that with lots of other technical migrations and even then, there is still plenty of controversy–see Catalina 32-bit support. Is there any reason to believe that doing a migration outright is safer, when the stepped approach has already proven difficult?

The least charitable guess I can come up with is that this was a mistake that they can't walk back for technical reasons, so are just fixing forward.

If it were up to me, I'd announce that a future version of macOS will increment the major version and that  will be moving to semver/calver/whatever-other-protocol, and do it when the current place name marketing strategy runs its course, as did the cat name marketing strategy. That would also give a few more years to get any major UI/system changes ready to drop for macOS 11. Just my 2¢.

<comment><USER27> The issue is old software continuing to work without having to be updated.

Giving more "time" solves nothing for all the programs out there that cannot or will not be updated for whatever reason.

This wasn't a mistake on Apple's part, it's just working around bad programming practice by developers. But there's no reason why users should suffer for it.

<comment><USER26> If they instead didn't move to 11 at all, what would stop working? What is the thing they are rushing to solve before things stop working? I think I'm missing something there.

I agree with users not needing to suffer, I'm not advocating for a hard break here.

Edit to add: is it necessarily a bad thing for unmaintained software to die? Keeping them around sounds like a great way to accumulate security vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER28> Damned if they do, damned if they don't…if Apple broke all the old software here, people would be up in arms about how they should have added a "legacy mode" for these applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is not correct. It is being reported as 10.16 only on x86 and only temporarily. It is noted as such in the release notes. Final build will be 11.0.

<comment><USER28> It is reported as 10.16 on Intel, and the final build will present itself as 11.0 unless the application is linked with an older SDK or you set the right environment variable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't really understand why they add this complexity. Supposedly it's to avoid breaking backwards compatibility, but they break all kinds of backwards compatibility on every release anyway.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there context for this? Are apps breaking when the major version of the OS changes?

<comment><USER32> It's the first time in the 20 year history of Mac OS X that the major version number has changed. They're simply protecting against the likely possibility that some apps don't bother to check the major version.

Going forward, expect the major version number to change each year, like iOS. But for apps built against older versions of the SDK, the major version will always be 10.

<comment> jon-wood How is Mac OS X two decades old? It feels like just yesterday I started my first real job, developing websites on a computer running Mac OS 10.1.

<comment><USER33> It's because the fundamentals of the macOS user-experience haven't changed much since OS X's introduction of the dock and their fancy GUI effects: the "genie" window minimise is still there! And generally speaking, macOS's aesthetics have been consistent too - we only saw Dark Mode added very recently, for example. Apple has also been very conservative about adding major user-visible features to macOS lately - but that's more attributable to them devoting their resources to iOS instead of macOS.

Windows, on the other hand, updates its appearance (and adds (or removes) gimmicks) with each major release - even completely upending the UX fundamentals in Windows 8.

Also consider that we used to have to reformat/reinstall computer OSs more regularly in the past - and having to do reinstalls makes you think about your computer UX as you spend time changing the settings from the defaults to your custom preferences. I remember having to reinstall Windows 95-98 every 6-9 months, and Windows XP once every year or so. Since Windows 7 things have been a lot more stable - my current Windows 10 install would have been ~4 years old now if it weren't for me losing all my documents in the October 2018 update... (all I got was $400 from MS, ugh)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> (Minor site feedback, if the authors/owners are here: please consider adding pointer-events: none to the "drop cap" decorative first letter so it doesnt obscure text selection of the actual article.)

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there any confirmation if next year we should see macOS 12 or 11.1?

I hope it's the former, as that will make yearly updates to macOS more consistent with iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

<comment><USER28> It's likely that it will be macOS 12: [https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/commit/805c4f790d01d8579a2a...](https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/commit/805c4f790d01d8579a2a14b8c11a26f241a61a13)

<comment><USER36> Ew, I do _not_ like that!

I couldn't tell you why but it greatly bothers me.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps it'll improve the security patch situation we have now where they differ by just build numbers, though.

<comment><USER36> They could fix that if they wanted by just adding another decimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if the real reason that Windows skipped version 9 was to "catch up" to Mac OS "Ten", and whether Microsoft will jump to 11 too now.

<comment><USER38> AFAIK Windows skipped 9 to avoid issues with bad version testing mistaking it for 9x (95, 98).

<comment><USER33> I don't believe that for one moment.

If you ask Win32 for its version number you get a VERSION structure with Major/Minor/Build fields - not a string.

Windows faked its reported version information to software for compatibility purposes since Windows XP (opt-in) and since Windows 8 (opt-out, using application manifests) - so any program that doesn't claim support for Windows 8, 10, etc is stuck in "Windows Vista mode" - so _even if_ software was doing an osMarketingName.StartsWith("Windows 9") check it would be straightforward to make it work.

<comment><USER39> Reading [https://www.gaijin.at/en/infos/windows-version- numbers](https://www.gaijin.at/en/infos/windows-version-numbers), major.minor.build doesn't uniquely identify a Windows version.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 both are 6.1 build 7600, for example.

Also, suppose you check the version for compatibility checking, what do you do if you get a version that you don't know about, say "6.4, build 7709"? You can give up and declare your program doesn't work with this version, but that may lead to lots of support calls when Microsoft rolls out a service pack. So, instead, programs try to guess from the version string what OS they run on.

And yes, ideally, programs check for features ([https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/sysinfo/opera...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/sysinfo/operating-system-version)). Unfortunately the world isn't perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That is kind of crafty. I wonder if they intend to continue this with macOS 12 or to return to single version numbers?

</comment><comment><USER41> I found that my iPad PRO lies about its user agent and will pretend to be MacOS by default. They don't even provide you with a hint to detect that it's a lie.

<comment><USER42> Yes, user agents are a mess (see this comment for non-Apple examples: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910637)). They're not a good way to detect features as a web developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Im on the beta and it takes a lot to boot it gets semi-stuck on like 80% for almost a minute..

Need to backup and do a clean install I guess

what can it be?

<comment><USER44> Do you have full drive encryption on? On my MacBook 12 2016 that seems like it gets stuck on initially.

<comment><USER43> If it's filevault. i've it disabled. didn't happen before big sur fwiw</comment></comment></comment>


It Was Never About Ops - <AUTHOR> http://biven.org/it-was-never-about-ops <comment><USER2> It's fun to watch people learn the systems administration trade, but it's a little disheartening to watch them conclude -- incorrectly -- that proper systems administration is some kind of software engineering job.

Is this why Silicon Valley is allergic to the phrase 'systems administrator'? Ops, Devops, SRE... so many phrases to describe various jobs which all, when executed successfully, converge upon the same set of tasks, and the same approaches to them, that has been labeled 'systems administration' for thirty years or more.

What is the motivation behind this trend?

<comment><USER3> > Is this why Silicon Valley is allergic to the phrase 'systems administrator'

There is no need for 'systems administrator' in the Silicon Valley.

The systems administrators are the guys who buy the desktop computers, setup windows, and kinda manage the active directory.

DevOps/SRE names exist because the tech scene had to stop the confusion between the hardcore linux admins who can code and the dude who can setup your desktop computer. The first is needed in dev companies mostly located in the tech hubs, the second is needed in most companies all around the world. The two have very little in common.

<comment><USER2> > DevOps/SRE names exist because the tech scene had to stop the confusion > between the hardcore linux admins who can code and the dude who can setup > your desktop computer.

If that confusion existed in any otherwise-competent organization, it was only in the valley. I was a systems administrator before any of "SRE," "DevOps," or "linux" came to be, and I don't think anyone has ever confused me for tech support.

<comment><USER4> Most of the working Windows system administrators I have met could not code their way out of a wet paper bag (but a majority could code their way into one). If you've been unlucky enough to work on a "managed" workstation, their near-total unawareness of optimization, state, and exception handling is why your Windows login script takes 10 minutes to crunch away.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, windows scripting is pretty limited. Then you have powershell which is way to bloated for quick and dirty things.

<comment><USER4> Most of the nasty Windows scripts I've seen were VBScript, used to bludgeon about various WMI providers and to launch unfortunate executables. I don't think the language was much of a hindrance on its own, but it did nothing to repel stupidity.

Several years on, I still don't know what to think about Powershell, it's basically .NET + pipelines + some discoverability aids, not terrible in concept but I will probably go on ignoring it for the rest of its life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In short you can …

> 1\. Expect services to grow at a non-linear rate.

Why would you expect this?

<comment><USER7> My reading was not that you can expect to be a unicorn and grow to Facebook proportions, but that your Growth Model is non-linear. What I mean by that is when your growth occurs, it occurs sharply.

<comment><USER6> Yeah no, the online banking site for e.g. chase.com isn't going to get non- linear or "sharp" growth. Nor is their internal project time reporting system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py > Scale your people by giving them the time and space to focus on scaling your > products.

This rings true.

</comment><comment><USER8> Couldn't agree more. If you have a monolith, you can probably get away doing dev ops as long as you don't grow too much. We have a handful of microservices and trying to keep up with the ops work has been hell, though part of that is due to AWS's tools. And this is without even a growing user base, just a growing app base. Burn out is definitely a problem in either case.

<comment><USER9> This is interesting. I've had a lot of people on the internet tell me that a monolith must become unmaintainable at some point, and the only way to keep it serviceable is to break it up into microservices.</comment></comment>


4 reasons why Ethereum is better than Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/09/03/4-reasons-ethereum-better-bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> Surprised to see Paris Hilton promoting it wasn't one reason

[https://twitter.com/ParisHilton/status/904456098035286016](https://twitter.com/ParisHilton/status/904456098035286016)</comment>


Are We Having Too Much Fun? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/are-we-having-too-much-fun/523143/ <comment><USER2> I'm coming more to the conclusion that to be "successful" (i.e. achieving your goal), one must have a substantial layer of good marketing behind it. No longer can a scientist say "take this vaccine so you won't die," now they must also have a witty sign that infotains people. While I'd like to see a more facts-based approach to civic life, this is the world we live in. All the better that people who are historically bad communicators (scientist, engineers, doctors, etc) are realizing that they too need to apply a marketing "layer" to their speech, otherwise their message will be totally ignored.

<comment><USER3> > No longer can a scientist say "take this vaccine so you won't die," now they > must also have a witty sign that infotains people.

Implying that this wasn't the case before?

From what I remember, the guy who said "wash your hands so your patients don't die" basically got ostracized [1], and even Leonardo Da Vinci had to sell himself in his resume's cover letter [2].

I think Dan Ariely has the right attitude towards all of this [3]. When we design things like buildings and bridges, we take physics into account. We know that we can't build a bridge a certain way because it'll collapse. Similarly, when we're designing for people, we have to take human nature (behavioral psychology, whatever you want to call it) into account.

Facts are important, but so is a sensitivity to the person you're trying to convince of those facts. That's just the reality of communication, I'm afraid.

_

[1] [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/12/37566392...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved- women-s-lives)

[2] [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/skills-of-da- vinci.html](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/skills-of-da-vinci.html)

[3] [https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions/transcript?language=en)

<comment><USER4> > I think Dan Ariely has the right attitude towards all of this [3]. When we > design things like buildings and bridges, we take physics into account. We > know that we can't build a bridge a certain way because it'll collapse. > Similarly, when we're designing for people, we have to take human nature > (behavioral psychology, whatever you want to call it) into account.

The difference, of course, is that the laws of physics are, so far as we know, immutable. "Human nature", informed by the culture of the moment, is not. When we accept the strategy of "tailor your behavior to human nature" en masse, we create a feedback loop, without a clear picture of where it leads.

<comment><USER5> I think you're agreeing with visakanv's point while misunderstanding his words. What he's referring to as behavioral psychology can't be changed by changing society - it's only changed by changing the genome.

<comment><USER4> This is patently false. There are no fixed constants at the level of social behavior. Nothing about society is "purely genetic", and even if it were, the human genome changes all the time.

<comment><USER5> There are probably _trivially few_ fixed constants of social behavior. The animal's feedback loop of encoding stimulus and producing response in environment _is_ , though, determined by genetics. For example, you how would respond to me stroking your shoulder is extremely contextual. The given nervous system's training which produces the response to said shoulder stroking is a complicated and chaotic system born from fixed genes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't like spinach? No worries, I'll put a bunch of sugar on it.

Wait, that's even nastier!

How about we just realize spinach actually tastes pretty good and we feel better when we eat it instead of sugar? Still, some people just won't like spinach and that's ok. But it's not a good idea to teach kids to hate spinach and love junk or assume that's just how it is naturally. Because pooping our pants is natural. But a little training and habit sure makes us feel better and get by with less problems.

If presented properly and as a matter of custom, preferring nutritious food over empty calories comes naturally and is overall better for the person and their society.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had noticed this trend, but interestingly came at it from the other direction: the only people we permit to speak the truth to us are comedians. The likes of Dave Chappelle & Louis CK for example. Can anybody else get away with talking honestly about race? If it's not a joke, we can't even handle it. Or in politics it's been Jon Stewart & Colbert. In that realm the cognitive dissonance is so high, you'd rather just shoot yourself. Unless it's a joke, then it's bearable. Humor is how we deal with traumatic contradictions. It's just sad that these areas (race & politics) are still about traumatic contradiction rather than solved problems we can move on from.

</comment><comment><USER8> I once told a friend about Mike Duncan's History of Rome Podcast. The friend asked "is it funny?" I didn't get it, but my girlfriend told me, "oh, yeah, everything has to be funny these days."

This over and over again.

<comment><USER9> Mike Duncan is funny.

<comment><USER8> I never said he wasn't :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It struck me that the last point was the strongest. Entertainment is a fantastic way to humanize politicians and demystify complex systems from their state of worship, but the real danger is the marrying of entertainment to politics, rather than the other way around.

Is there a way to strike a boundary? We can't fault celebrities for using their influence for political effect, and I doubt we can fault them for not doing so either - but does that make entertainers qualified political movers? One joke that often circulates in leftist circles is "J.K. Rowling explains why Harry Potter would support the state of Israel", but it has a ring of truth to it as well. If entertainment becomes the primary way of thinking about politics, it will need to lose a lot of freedom to bring it up to a standard we deserve.

<comment><USER11> >One joke that often circulates in leftist circles is "J.K. Rowling explains why Harry Potter would support the state of Israel", but it has a ring of truth to it as well.

Given that this actually happened, what exactly do you mean?

<comment><USER10> >Given that this actually happened

Did it? It's my understanding that Rowling casts Potter as a strongly pro- Palestine type, which is slightly absurd unto itself. [0]

[0] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/harry-potter- would-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/harry-potter-would-be- disappointed-with-my-stance-on-israel-boycott-jk-rowling-says-a6710916.html)

<comment><USER11> Yes, I was referring to that reference. Sorry for mixing up the pro- and anti- positions. But now I'm even more confused - what's the joke, and the ring of truth?

<comment><USER10> The ring of truth is that, since many consider Rowling a big neoliberal type, and exactly the kind of person who would argue against the boycott of Israel, _and_ she is well known for using her characters after the books have been written to make political points in a "relatable" way, that it might well happen (and in some way, has happened). The absurdity of combining a children's character with a major political view (which leftists tend to disagree with anyways) to try and defend her viewpoint forms the comedy.

<comment><USER12> > many consider Rowling a big neoliberal type

These people are either wrong or have a very strange definition of "neoliberal". It seems to have become, like "socialist", an all-purpose swear word to apply to people whose politics you don't like.

Rowling is an old-school Labourite, solidly pro-welfare state, Unionist and Remainer.

<comment><USER13> While I understand that language changes over time, this new usage of neoliberalism is weird for anyone with a traditional understanding of the term.

I hold the view that neoliberalism is basically GOP-style capitalism where markets are deregulated and everything is privatized.

I've encountered a number of times recently where people appeared to be using neoliberalism as a stand-in for liberalism, which to me is exactly backwards.

Edit for clarification: I agree with your understanding of neoliberalism, and your assessment that Rowling's left-wing politics are basically the opposite of neoliberalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For most people in the first world the primary needs (water, food, health) are adequately satisfied, but the dopamine system doesn't stop there and requires further stimulation. That's why we have things like coffee, nicotine, alcohol and other drugs, theme parks, consumerism etc.. Most are never satisfied with what they've got, it's just human nature.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps what the first world needs is a little simulated conflict. Something a little more high stakes than video games and a little less than The Game starring Michael Douglas. Not sure what form it should take.

<comment><USER12> I believe what you're looking for is called "sports".

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. How else can an activity like Riding dirt bikes, with a near 100% injury rate for even casual riders wearing full safety gear, be popular?

So many things in our society are overly sanitized to the point that we have an almost complete mental aversion to the idea that some things can be unavoidably dangerous and will still be beneficial (or at least that we should be allowed to do them because we want to, because we are free human beings).

Back on topic, after riding a dirt bike I just feel... Alive? For days afterwards I feel like a complete human. It makes the injuries worth it.

A good book on the subject is Foolproof: how safety can be dangerous and danger makes us safe -- Greg IP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this pieces core thesis, that context collapse causes us to focus on irrelevant but entertaining information, is less true in the modern era. Google actually created a world where your results and advertising is MORE contextual to your real life, not less. And for what it's worth, Facebook also made feeds information also more about you. Apple made computing more about doing real things outside. And so on.

So I don't think we are entertaining ourselves to death, we're just doing the thing we've done best forever: procrastinating work we don't want to do. We just have better options for filling that time now.

<comment><USER18> I think the ability to be entertained constantly is a problem in and of itself, though. There's a serious case for the usefulness of boredom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> on the article: I like to wrap up these sorts of treatments into my own simplified cultural causal models, if you will (hopefully my syntax is intuitive).

Invention of telegraph := ~immediacy of information, minimal context -> incredible boon for society! Essentially the beginning of modern technology, dare i say. The ability to CREATE networks as technology! ooo the power of (high bandwidth) networks!

Invention of Television := immediacy of visual information, lots more context, modern entertainment -> oh the theories abound for what this caused. I like to consider televisions pacifying effect on modern society. This subtle lie about what it claims to be: a window in a room. Oh but of course we know much of it is fictitious! But do we? All the more confusing with "reality TV" and, as discussed here, modern news-tainment.

Just some of my thoughts!

meta, on this comment section: I'm a little surprised this article is getting so easily dismissed. Its simply an attempted synthesis and application of media/normative/critical theorists' work. That is, this is philosophical at heart and I appreciate the author's attempt (it brings to mind David Foster Wallace's constant questioning of entertainment and the effect of entertainment's reflexivity). I think many hackernews readers (like myself) are scientifically minded and so this sort of thesis, i.e. not empirically verifiable, can lack the thrust that we want. But that said, I think it provides a valuable ontology for thinking about modern society and provokes some questions that actually may inform my behavior.

Much more difficult to parse out the noise with these types of articles, I grant you.

(Edit: grammar/spacing)

</comment><comment><USER20> The author sorta takes us through Postman's arguments, but then turns on him in the end. I guess that's inevitable (given Postman's own arguments about trivializing things), but why not let them stand on their own?

</comment><comment> d--b > he couldn't have known how comedians would come to double, in a culture > saturated with information, as journalists

Er... Wasn't Nixon interviewed by David Frost?

Hell, was Diogenes having too much fun?

<comment><USER3> > he couldn't have known how comedians would come to double, in a culture > saturated with information, as journalists

Also – comedians have been truth-tellers since the days of court jesters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it just me or do most Atlantic articles seem like pointless tirades?

<comment><USER22> Nope, not just you. They do some really good journalism at times, but even their best articles have a sensationalist bent that gets old after a while.

<comment><USER23> Is it just me or has it gotten a lot worse over the last 5-6 years?

<comment> qwert-e They've changed their business model in the last 7-8 years to be online friendly and it's been largely a success. Might have something to do with it, might not. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic....](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13atlantic.html) If you're looking for the old Atlantic, a lot of their archived material is right alongside current stuff, in "Also see...". For example, "Sex and the College Girl" (1957) was recommended after I read Kate Bolick's famous "All the Single Ladies" piece (2011). Kind of interesting to have that juxtaposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "It looks like your browser is unable to display ads". I guess not.

<comment><USER25> Just install anti-adblock blocker:

[https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/](https://reek.github.io/anti- adblock-killer/)

This arms race if so much fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> are we running out of clickbaity headlines?

<comment><USER3> Excuse me sir, but it appears that you're trying to have fun. This is Hacker News. Fun is strictly prohibited.

<comment><USER26> we are very serious software ENGINEERS. very serious people. like lawyers, but not as attractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We?

</comment><comment><USER28> how is this even on hacker news? this is a crappy repeat of: are you not doing/believing something we all used to believe? _gasp_ you must be doing it wrong.

did the atlantic hire bill orielly or something?

<comment><USER29> I imagined a Principle Skinner writing this article "Are we out of touch with the wants and needs of the American people? No, it's the children (voters) who are wrong..."</comment></comment>


Tiny computer or huge Palm III PDA: $25 - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2012/03/24/tiny-computer-or-huge-pda-25/ <comment><USER2> I remember those from elementary school! They were a huge fad and all the cool kids had em. They quickly got replaced by the palm pilot (in coolness). Funny how middle school fads and tech seem to have so much in common...

</comment><comment><USER3> If the keyboard is good, it seems like it would make a great distraction-free writing device.

</comment><comment><USER4> How are these relevant with the dawn of tablets and ultraportable, cheap laptops? Is it just price, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> 1) Extremely long battery life -- the newer Neo model can be used for months on a pair of AA batteries (see [http://www.williamlanday.com/2009/05/29/things-i-love-the- al...](http://www.williamlanday.com/2009/05/29/things-i-love-the-alphasmart- neo/#.T24Ok9l5JxQ))

2) Can run on commodity batteries -- AAs are cheap, user replaceable, and supplies are easily available worldwide

3) More rugged -- can be dropped without fear, no need for aftermarket cases/screen protectors

4) Keyboard included -- no need for aftermarket add-on, unlike most tablets

5) Cheap -- you can buy one for an order of magnitude less than the cost of a tablet, or even more less than the cost of a notebook

Which isn't to say devices like these are better _for everyone_ than a tablet or a laptop would be, just that those devices don't automatically make these irrelevant for their niche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of an Apple Newton eMate, a little.

<comment><USER7> I think I prefer my eMate 300, to be honest. The touchscreen is bigger. It's got good handwriting and drawing recognition. My keyboard is a bit too small though. And to be honest, I have no idea how to transfer data to or from it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Modernized version could be interesting. A writing device with good keyboard, designed to work together with smartphone - but not just an external keyboard. Priced at 50 bucks, maybe bluetooth for connectivity, small display and great battery life.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking RasberryPI duct-taped on a small keyboard (eg happyhacking) and some transreflexive display. Although I'm not sure if RPI would be exactly fitting for this kind of usage. Something which could drive the display directly would be more useful.

<comment><USER10> fingers crossed somebody releases a case with a lcd screen, battery and keyboard that will accept the raspberry pi. even a build your own kit could be interesting considering the cost of the raspberry pi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Dana, was a great machine. I feel bad I forgot about it. I will probably buy one. Then eventually sell it when I remember I outgrew it.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a few retro computers that are a lot like this. The Amstrad NC-200 and the Cambridge Z88 come to mind.

<comment><USER5> And the TRS-80 Model 100 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100>), which arguably pioneered the concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It annoys me to no end that the mess that is Bluetooth killed the much more robust, useful, and foolproof IrDA.

<comment><USER10> this. beaming between palms and psions with irda was childs play compared to swapping via bluetooth on later devices. searching, pairing, authorising. and that's assuming the other recipient knows how to use bluetooth. these days i swap more info with qr codes than with bluetooth. convert info to qr code, have their barcode app read qr code. line of sight was so simple.

<comment><USER9> NFC seems promising for temporary connections such as sharing vcards etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Why one Egyptian ISP is still online - <AUTHOR> http://newsgrange.com/why-one-egyptian-isp-is-still-online/

<comment><USER2> I find this "it's up to keep the stock market running" meme completely ridiculous. As far as I'm aware, the entire theory was based on the fact that it was the first website in Egypt people found that was still up, and the exchange had 4 different providers.

Also, the stock market in Egypt is (obviously) indefinitely closed because of the protests, and probably also because all of the companies listed are completely off-line.

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd question, but couldn't someone simply email their press contact and ask them about it? Or call them?

I tried calling Telecom Egypt and they aren't picking up _any_ phones currently, and they don't even have a computer picking up the phone. Yet, their fax line is still answering like a fax does, so their lines haven't been cut off completely.

I'm kinda shocked that there isn't mass outrage from the private companies that are having their uptime destroyed and who will have to deal with massive customer lashback. I'd not want to be that customer service rep that has to explain their actions, or the PR person.

I have to wonder if they are trying to find a way to get their service back up, all in the streets, or just staying at home? I can't imagine all of Comcast for example saying, "screw it, downtime across the entire US is ok for a week" if suddenly Obama freaked out and told them to shut down because of civil unrest.

<comment><USER4> _I'd not want to be that customer service rep that has to explain their actions, or the PR person._

That sounds like it would be the easiest thing in the world for a good CSR: "I'm so sorry, but I preferred obeying a government order to shut down rather than get tortured to death in an Interior Ministry dungeon -- so sorry again that I prioritized your computer uptime below the prospect of having a car battery strapped to my genitals."

Sorry to be blunt, but you need to realize that the current Egyptian regime is not exactly focused on the rule of law and is widely believed to use torture and extrajudicial killings. In fact, Sulemain, the newly appointed VP, was so skilled at torturing people to death that the US government actually outsourced torture and interrogations to him, according to Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals" [http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Inside-Terror- American/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Inside-Terror- American/dp/0385526393)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I could flag, I would. This article isn't even a complete thought.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can somebody explain this pricelist to me:

www.nooradsl.com/pricing.htm

What does "L.E" mean? Is it Egyptian Pounds?

And what is the speed? 512Mb cannot be 512 mega bit per second, right?

<comment><USER7> L.E is Egyptian Pounds[0].

Mb is indeed 512 megabits per second[1].

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Egyptian_poun...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Egyptian_pound)

[1]<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Megabit>

1,000 Egyptian Pound = 171.940 US Dollar 1,000 US Dollar (USD) = 5,815.97 Egyptian Pound (EGP) 1,000 Egyptian Pound = 173.114 Australian Dollar 1,000 Australian Dollar (AUD) = 5,776.54 Egyptian Pound (EGP)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I assume most data coming out of Egypt are via the few who had satellite based internet in the first place?</comment>


Immobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2012/01/immobile-apps.html

<comment><USER2> This is soooo true. I was in a bad coverage area recently as well, and just to add insult to injury, the Android app provided by my own mobile carrier timed out and told me there is no network connection.</comment>