The machine's view of time, if nanoseconds were seconds - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/112493031290529814667/posts/LvhVwngPqSC <comment><USER2> I liked this better:

L1 - You've already started eating the sandwich, and only need to move your mouth and take another bite. (2 seconds)

L2 - There is a sandwich on the counter, so you need only find it, pick it up, and begin eating. (10 seconds)

RAM - You're near the fridge, but you need to open it and quickly throw together a sandwich. (3 minutes)

HD - Drive to store, purchase seeds, grow seeds, harvest etc. (1 year)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/90tge/hey_rprog...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/90tge/hey_rprogramming_i_made_a_visualization_of_the/c0b1t0v)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702713>

<comment><USER3> Actually, this sandwich analogy is not as good as the library/book one.

In this analogy, you are busy while you are making your sandwich (because you are putting it together from stuff you got from your fridge).

In the library-with-free-delivery-service analogy, you can do other work while you wait for data from the library/RAM to be delivered.

Modern superscalar processors can re-order non-dependent instructions while waiting on a memory lookup, and that is what the free-delivery-service aspect of the analogy illustrates.

<comment><USER4> Very much agree. The analogy I'm used to (and use) is:

CPU = person (researcher at library) RAM = bounded physical space on desk Swap = cart for stacks Disk = the stacks (requiring scheduling of the elevator)

In my mind, the discussion of second/nanosecond is unimportant and makes this seem more technical than it needs to be to illustrate the point that "fetches from (non-SSD) disk are very slow and waste a lot of time." But this doesn't seem to be quite as focused as "A complete idiot's guide to the main components in a computer and what they do." (though I'm not sure that it's either time scales or components or SSD)

<comment><USER5> No! That version of the library analogy makes the ratios much too small.

CPU to main RAM: actually about 150:1; more like 30:1 in your analogy.

Main RAM to HD: actually about 200,000:1; more like 120:1 in your analogy.

The reason why "the discussion of second/nanosecond" is worth having is precisely that if you just say "very slow" and "a lot of time" then you're likely to think about ratios of the sort in your analogy, when the reality is _much much much worse_. (Extreme case: HD to CPU registers. Actual ratio: about 30 million to 1. Ratio in your analogy: about 4000 to 1.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      And yet, if you can wait three years for the first wooden
      boat, it can often be at the head of a convoy which will
      keep you busy for many thousands of years, sometimes even
      orders of magnitude more if you take a minute to request
      that another convoy sets out.
      -  James Gray

I was going to make a point about random access of one bit vs. sequential access of large portions of data, but the comment from google+ above summed it up perfectly.

Thanks for posting. A very insightful analogy, really putting things into perspective.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool analogy. Makes a great reference point.

As an ASIC guy, I like to occasionally casually mention to software guys that at 3GHz, light travels about four inches in one clock cycle, and it frequently really blows their minds.

<comment><USER8> Worked on me. I had to do the math.

180,000mi/sec * 5280 * 12 = 11404800000 / 3,000,000,000 = 3.8inches.

Extending that a little further... on a 45mm i7 chip going from one end to the other and back would be ~3.5inches of travel. Gives me an idea of how much of a constraint packaging is.

<comment><USER9> Didn't get any of that so had to redo in metric.

speed of light = 3 x 10^8 m/s

3 GHZ = 3 x 10^9 /s

So 3 x 10^8 / 3 x 10^9 = 0.1 metre = 10 centimetre = okay, 3.9 inches

But then metric always saves your ass. Back in physics class, they'd ask you how deep the well was if you dropped a stone & heard the water splash in 10 seconds. Before the American students could even begin their work, all the Indians would yell "500 metres!" And that's cause the gravitation constant is 10, so one half 10 times 10 times 10 is 500.

<comment><USER10> Maybe the Americans were busy incorporating the delay due to the finite speed of sound.

<comment><USER11> Is it just me that finds this suggestion offensive. Maybe the Indians had already thought about that and since they were already taking g as 10 m/sec^2, they thought that the difference because of sound delay would be insignificant. As would be the variability in speed of sound near the water surface due to moisture.

<comment><USER10> My response was designed to highlight the equally offensive suggestion that "all the Indians" were metric geniuses, while American students were all slow and ignorant of the metric system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really liked this. This is the first instance of a time scale for computing that really made sense for me. It's a really good mental metaphor that cleared up how computers work in a way to this script kiddie.

Extending that thought to multiple cores/threads. Comparable to a small business in a way? You have one guy who can go tell other people to do certain tasks. They take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. You can set it up so that there is a task list of things for people to do so that you don't have to continually reassign each one, just tell them to pick up the next thing to do. It's much harder and requires more organization, but ultimately, like the division between a small business and a one man show, you get more shit done with multiple people/threads/cores working in parallel than one single unit working by themselves.

Thanks for posting this.

<comment><USER13> >Extending that thought to multiple cores/threads. Comparable to a small business in a way? You have one guy who can go tell other people to do certain tasks.

Depends on the architecture, actually. What you're describing is a lot like the Cell processor design. For x86-based processors, it's much less organized than that, because each core is, for all intents and purposes, effectively an independent processor.

The best analogy for multithreaded programming I've come up with is a(take a drink) car factory. Each core is a generalized assembly line that is capable of producing any part, but it takes time to switch to a different task. The end goal is a car, which means that you can have one core working on the transmission, one core working on the interior parts, one on the exhaust, and one working on the motor. If you can balance them out, you can have all of them finish around the same time. But if you're trying to actually make a car, you're going to end up with some overhead to finish the entire thing. There is some overhead where the body is made, and all the parts that were produced by the other lines are actually put into the car.

Compared to a single-assembly line factory, it's possible to make cars much faster with multiple lines. But there will always be some percentage of time that you cannot split across multiple cores.

<comment><USER12> Ahhhh. There is a nonzero cost for going about organizing all the tasks. No matter how many ways you can divide the task, even if you don't actually divide it up, there is always a nonzero time at the end that you have to everything on hand to make the final product. Is that a good way of thinking about it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've done used this analogy in reverse. My roommate was also a CS PhD student, and I explained that when it comes to toilet paper, _we can't afford to let cache misses go to disk_.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow. I've been doing low-level work where I have to intimately understand computer architecture and optimization work where every nanosecond counts for as long as I can remember, but I've never put it into perspective. This is awesome.

</comment><comment> buff-a OCZ Vertex 3's have been pounded for reliability problems[4], so much so that they've just started a special deal on Newegg [2]. And coincidentally, I'm sure, a jolly story about "a machine's view of time" replete with olde-worlde charm, shows up on the front page of a major tech site, and oh, by the way, let me end by saying "I use OCZ Vertex 3's"...

Tom's Hardware suggests that Crucial's m4 series are faster than OCZ Vertex 3's, and don't come with a horrendous approval rating. A 256Gb m4 is $319 on newegg [1].

Intel's new 520 SSDs appear to have given them a proper SSD instead of the floppy-disc-like performance of the 510.[3] Though its $499 for 240gb. [5]

All drives have failures, and while it sucks to be the one that gets the dodgy drive, there will always be someone who can post "it didn't work for me". However, the OCZ Vertex have an unusually high number of "It didn't work for me" reviews. Is it a stitch-up? It'd be easy for "a motivated third party" to buy 27 drives off newegg and post negative reviews. It'd also be in OCZ's interest to fan the flames of doubt on the SF2281 as they are releasing new SSDs based on their own, newly-purchased, Indilinx controllers. But taking off the tin-foil hat, it does look like Vertex 3's have problems.

[1] [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148526)

[2] [http://promotions.newegg.com/OCZ/022912/index.html?cm_sp=Cat...](http://promotions.newegg.com/OCZ/022912/index.html?cm_sp=Cat_SSD- _- OCZ/022912-_-http%3a%2f%2fpromotions.newegg.com%2fOCZ%2f022912%2f696x288.jpg)

[3] [http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-520-sandforce-review- bench...](http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-520-sandforce-review- benchmark,review-32373-4.html)

[4] [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-227-707&#...
[5] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167...

<comment><AUTHOR> I have exactly 0 hardware manufacture connections. I give you my word that this was just a fun post that I've been thinking about off and on for a long time. No one influenced me to write the post at all, in any way.

Why did I recommend the OCZ? AnandTech writes about OCZ products a lot, and I trust them. I wrote the post a few days ago thinking that mostly my friends would read it. It only occurred to me today to post it on hacker news, when I saw that I got like 7 +1s from friends.

<comment> buff-a This AnandTech?

"Back in October SandForce announced that it had discovered a firmware issue that resulted in unexpected BSODs on SF-2281 drives on certain platforms. Why it took SandForce several months to discover the bug that its customers had been reporting for a while is a separate issue entirely. SandForce quickly pushed out the firmware to OCZ and other partners. Our own internal testing revealed that the updated firmware seemed to have cured the infamous BSOD."

Yay!

"As luck would have it, our own Brian Klug happened to come across an unexpected crash with his 240GB non-Intel SF-2281 based SSD two weeks ago when he migrated it to another machine. The crash was an F4 BSOD, similar in nature to the infamous BSOD issue from last year."

Oh. This was written 2/6/12.

...

"Whatever Intel has done with the 520's firmware seems to have fixed problems that _still remain_ in the general SF-2281 firmware."

...

"While it's nearly impossible to prove most of this, the fact that we're still able to reproduce a BSOD on the latest publicly available SF-2281 firmware but not on the SF-2281 based Intel SSD 520 does say a lot about what you're paying for with this drive."

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-review- cher...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-review-cherryville- brings-reliability-to-sandforce)

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken; recommendation withdrawn. For the record I ordered my drive on the 4th, before that article was posted and after, I'd believed, those issues were resolved.

I don't expect that I'll receive an apology for being called an unethical shill.

I'd still love to see some statistics on failure rates. All this anecdata is obnoxious for a buyer to wade through.

<comment> buff-a I apologize for calling you an unethical shill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice analogy. From a technical standpoint, however, access patterns often make a bigger difference than the type of your storage device. The difference between sequential access on disk and sequential access on SSD isn't nearly as big as random access on disk compared to sequential access on disk.

<comment><USER17> But the order of magnitude between disk and ram is so large that sequential versus random access on hard drives doesn't matter that much in comparison.

<comment><USER16> Well, it depends on the hard drives you're using, and the exact access pattern, but sequential access to disk can be even faster than random access to RAM.[0] This of course doesn't really matter to average Joe, since he has little influence on how data is read from his disk. But if you're say, a database developer, it does matter quite a bit.

[0] <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1536616.1536632>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me this evoked the image of a monk doing work in a monastery with a huge library. If you picture this monk as your CPU, and assume he works 12 hours every day, over a lifespan of 60 years, thats about the work a 1GHz CPU is capable of doing every second.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice analogy :-). If only SSD's had the storage capacity of a typical hard drive...

By the way, get an Intel or a Samsung when your Vertex fails...

<comment><USER20> 3.2TB is reasonably big... <http://bit.ly/yisUYo>

<comment><USER21> also reasonably priced!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You can get a 200+GB SSD for a reasonable price. And while it might not sound like it 200+GB is a LOT of data. Chances are it's going to hold everything except some media files (Music / Movies). But you can cheaply store them on a HDD or a remote file server. And once you have that file server you can cheaply play those movies at any computer or any PS3/XBOX/iPad/Boxee (etc) in your house which is really nice. So, while it might cost a little extra and take a little more work there is a lot to be said for going down the SSD path. Of course you can also get a smaller SSD and or use it as your only disk drive, but they do really make that old file server idea really appealing especially if you have more than one computer.

</comment><comment><USER23> And about 5000 years for the great user in the sky to notice something you produce/do.

<comment><USER24> Actually 30 years or so for one human-second. (Rule of thumb for that: pi seconds is a nanocentury.)

<comment><USER23> Hey, yeah, how did I get an extra block of "000" on my number with just a copy and paste? Sorry everyone.

Anyway, I was going for human reaction time of about 0.15sec real world. So about 4.75 years in the analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it be great if I could just click on a file system object (like a drive in the file browser) and view a diagram of concentric circles for registers, cache, ram, io layer (disk buffers/caches), and finally the actual physical device.

The size of each circle would be relative to the avg. amount of time needed to move data to the CPU. To me this would be more intuitive than charting system data.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this is in error. The delivery times for SSDs are correct, if you only consider the periods when the SSD is working. When the SSD fails, the delivery time comparison is the AGE OF THE SUN. Ok, I kid. You never get your data. So, lets call "Age of the sun" an average between really fast and infinity.

I've owned 3 SSDs and have had 2 failures, so far, over 2 years[1]. In the past 20 years, I've owned around 100 hard drives and have had only 4 failures.

This is the achilles heel of the SSD for me. I've gone back to spinning rust because I need the reliability more than I need the performance.

The performance was nice, very nice. But having to restore from backup is something that I do not like doing every year. I'd like to do it once a decade or less.

Until then, I'm no longer using SSDs.

I did a bunch of research into why SSDs fail and inevitably it seems to be software bugs due to the SSDs being clever. I suspect the Samsung SSDs that Apple uses are not clever and thus do not fail. I will use an SSD if it comes with an Apple warranty. But I had an intel SSD fail, and I had a Sandforce based SSD fail. Both catastrophically with zero data recovery (fortunately I had backed up, though in both cases I lost a couple hours of work for various reasons.) In both cases, near as I can tell, the SSD had painted itself into a corner-- it actually hadn't been used enough to have flash failures sufficient to be a problem, let alone in excess of the extra capacity set aside. Nope, it was a management problem for the controller that caused the failures. These kinds of problems can be worked out by the industry, but give that the market has existed for 3-4 years now and we're still having these kinds of problems, I'm going to wait before trying something clever again.

[1] The one that is still working is in my cofounders machine, and I'm dreading the day that it too fails. I am afraid it is just a matter of time, and as soon as we can reshuffle things they'll be using spinning rust again as well.

<comment><USER27> HP sell SSDs with guaranteed numbers of write cycles that will tell you when they're going to fail, but they aren't cheap. It's one of those cases where there are _markedly_ better options available in the server space than for consumers.

<comment><USER28> I've also had both SandForce and Intel (310, 320, 520, and 710!) SSDs fail -- the issue is not running out of cycles (which could be predicted, or mitigated by buying more Enterprise style SSDs), but rather weird controller errors.

One (milli-)second the drive is totally fine, then the next it is just gone. Magnetic disks usually give some warning, and usually fail for mechanical vs. controller reasons.

I still use SSDs, but am constantly wary, especially in the first month of a new drive's service.</comment></comment></comment>


Stop developing for the 90% use case - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/5561992

<comment><USER2> It seems there's a bit of a fad of people using humanist serifs on minimal websites about technical topics. I find this an interesting and somewhat strange thing to do. The style of these typefaces dates to the early Renaissance and emulates the script used in illuminated manuscripts. These faces were also revived around the time of the Bauhaus and used in a similar sort of minimal layout by people like Jan Tschichold, but in the context of books and literature, which benefit from the association to the early history of the printed word and the authoritative aesthetic of early Christianity.

Using such a typeface on such a technical website is for one totally anachronistic, but also without any logic that I can discern. Moreover, that particular font is somewhat hard to read and looks like it's wiggling its serifs around as you eyes pass over the letters. Try something like Sabon if you're going for that aesthetic.

<comment><USER3> Typefaces affect how people perceive content. Content presented in a serif font appears to the reader to be more credible. [1]

It used to be the case that serif fonts were a no-no on VDUs because their low resolution made serif fonts difficult to display and less readable. This really hasn't been a problem for a long time, especially when the font size is larger, as in this case.

I tend to find that dark text on a high contrast background "jumps" around making it somewhat difficult to read for long stretches when I'm reading on my computer or phone. You might want to play with the accessibility settings in your browser to make plain white backgrounds a light gray and text a dark gray. (I have my PDF reader set to display content like this and it's infinitely more readable when I'm reading something that's several hundred pages long!) Apparently impaired contrast sensitivity is common in dyslexics [2], although I'm almost certain I'm not dyslexic! Dyslexics also have issues with serif fonts, although this isn't an issue for me.

[1] [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670556/are-some-fonts-more- beli...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670556/are-some-fonts-more-believable- than-others)

[2] [http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices- tha...](http://uxmovement.com/content/6-surprising-bad-practices-that-hurt- dyslexic-users/)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is meant as a refutation or an orthogonal comment, but yes, the typeface selected affects how people perceive content. Each typeface has a history and certain associations. It is the job of a graphic designer to align the history and associations of the typeface with the content.

This is not really an empirical matter. Serif type might make something appear more credible, but this is only by association to other things that seem credible. In this particular case, the association is to the early Renaissance, and to some extent the early 20th century, which I think now both have a somewhat mixed reputation when it comes to credibility.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not sure if this is meant as a refutation or an orthogonal comment

Neither. It was proffered as an explanation for the choice of typeface.

> Using such a typeface on such a technical website is for one totally > anachronistic, _but also without any logic that I can discern._

<comment><USER2> That would be a refutation then, to which I would reply that I can see why one would choose a serif generally for this site – though I would not – but this particular serif does not make much sense.

<comment><USER3> But I haven't refuted anything you've said! The typeface's anachronism in part likely supports its air of credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't quite get his message, it contains things which I see as contradictions.

He uses "Square" as an example of doing it right. I have no idea what square is, but quoting the article:

> Square processes payments. They don't handle group payments, they won't auto > pay your bills, and they have no presence online to compete with PayPal.

A payment service that doesn't handle all the use cases of payment? Isn't this exactly what he's saying you shouldn't do? Yet he quotes it as an example of doing things right?

I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Square is not trying to handle every use case for payments. They said "Hey, it is a pain in the ass to pay people with credit cards in person." So they solved that. And they solved every part of it – the merchant relations, the design and functionality of their app, the pricing, the backend architecture, the card reader, security – extremely well.

They are not trying to handle "all the use cases of payment", and I'm saying that they should not move into any other type of payments until their product is as good as they can make it. And they don't, on purpose, because they don't want to solve 90% of 10 different aspects of payment. They solve 1, 100%.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a certain irony in requiring Javascript to view a post about not ignoring the 10% of the use cases.

<comment><USER6> According to Yahoo 99% of visitors have JavaScript enabled.

[http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users- javascript-d...](http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/many-users-javascript- disabled-14121.html)

<comment><USER7> Yahoo's audience: general public

This article's audience: software developers

Given that the article is in English as well, and English countries have higher levels of disabled javascript than other countries from that report, and that the target audience is a very specific type of technical focus rather than the general public, I'd hazard that the original point stands.

Not to mention that if some crawlers don't access javascript, you'll serve up nothing to the relevant search index.

<comment><USER8> You'll hazard that 1 out of 10 people accessing this webpage have Javascript disabled?

<comment><USER9> I disable it for sites that abuse javascript. I'm guessing I am not the only one that does. Probably quite a few people would do that outside of us developers if they knew they could (or knew the a site's major problem was derived from it). Not inferring anything about this particular site, just that there's good reasons to turn it off at times.

I normally browse with it on by default though, but I'll blacklist it for sites that cause my browser to slow down or do other things that are detrimental to the user experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He TLDRed when he should have BLUFed:

"As a user, I complain about things that don't exist (sorry), but I almost never leave a service that is solving one of my needs – no matter how small – well."

In other words, customers don't want features, they have problems, and a product that wholly solves more than zero problems gets sales.

<comment><USER11> Agree - came to post that last paragraph too.

Succinct and clear - unlike the rest if the article which I guess he had to write before understanding enough to write the last para

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me or does it seem like half this article is missing? Maybe I'm just having a stupid day.

</comment><comment><USER13> Working link:

<https://gist.github.com/tyre/5561992>

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree with the central message in this article. Think of the pleasure and certainty associated with the small, well written UNIX tools. Apply that to products.

<comment><USER15> Corollary: think of the pain of looking up all of the flags get some UNIX tools to do what you want. Apply that to products too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wheres the pgbot when you need him? Oh well, I'll take his place: "It's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy."

<comment><USER17> "A little bit for everybody is a lot for nobody"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Things initially developed for a particular small group of people usually have the potential to affect non-targeted users. The dilemma here seems to be whether you want such group of people to give you financial incentives for building something.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well said.

I'd also like to add that often developing for the 99% will end up benefiting the 90% also in ways that weren't immediately apparent when you were only going for that 90%.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article in a twitter size synopsis:

      0.90 ** 4 => 0.6561

</comment><comment><USER21> Some real wisdom in this article. Not really.</comment>


Send tweets as images without character restriction - <AUTHOR> http://imitter.s5t.me/

<comment><USER2> ... and also make your tweets undiscoverable via search!

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily, depends on how Twitter indexes images and if they OCR them to attach meta data. But I guess this would be a good reason for them not to.</comment></comment>


Automated Visual Testing and Pixel Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://webtesting.io/

<comment><USER2> What value does Excel add here? I find JSON in Excel hard to read and further it feels like a kind of gimmicky feature (you use Excel, so you can use this!). Maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER3> nontechnical buisness users like excel because it's familiar.

though i do not think having test data for automation scripts in a binary format is good. first excel is harder to work with than csv or json. second excel does not lend itself to version control.</comment></comment>


Just installed GoogleChrome on a Mac, suddenly 4 other Google apps are installed - <AUTHOR> I just installed Google Chrome on my Mac and suddenly Google Drive, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Search apps are installed automatically it seems..
Can Google actually do that? Install a ton of unrelated apps without my permission? Or maybe, such a clause is now being snuck into the ToS?
UPDATE: Even worse, as I just discovered, they can't be deleted from the Launchpad! Neither do they show up in the Applications directory! WTF! How do I get rid of the damned things?? <comment><USER2> I suppose you mean the "Chrome Apps". they are just shortcuts to the web version of these tools, not the actual tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. They are indeed web shortcuts.

But that doesn't change the fact that they show up as apps in the Launchpad.

Even worse, as I just discovered, they can't be deleted from the Launchpad! Neither do they show up in the Applications directory! WTF!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of the time I was silly enough to install iTunes on a Windows PC ;-)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the downvote, whoever you are. Visiting from Reddit? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually upvoted, for sharing your experience..

Not "from" Reddit, no; but I'm usually a silent participant here..

<comment><USER3> Funny old world....

I can't be the only person who looked at his processes and wondered what Bonjour was and where qttask.exe came from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or the fact that the cookies folder in Windows 7+ comes under "protected OS files". It basically has dozens of textfiles from all the ad/tracking companies..

The Cookies folder in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local(or Roaming)\Microsoft\Windows doesn't show when you enable show hidden files but shows when you enter the full path or enable showing protected files.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do computers use a fixed word size? - <AUTHOR> Also, are there any advantages to implementing arbitrary-precision arithmetic at a hardware level? <comment><USER2> When you look at the design of the hardware, the various busses and registers are of a fixed maximum size. For example, small micro-controllers might have 8 bit registers and data busses and 16 bit address busses. This in turn means that the arithmetic unit processes information at that chunk size. There have been attempts at variable word size architectures (especially in the early days) but the amount of circuitry required to marshall variable sized information in and out of fixed sized hardware resources became excessive. Similar concerns apply to arbitrary-precision FPUs. These architectural concerns then propagate to the cache designs, memory and and I/O channels.

Of course, these concerns only apply at the hardware level. There are virtual machines, e.g. Lisp systems, that implement variable sized operations.

</comment><comment><USER3> as far as the "arbitrary precision" arithmetic, no.</comment>


Carmack: Next-gen games will still target 30 fps - <AUTHOR> http://www.develop-online.net/news/42817/Carmack-Next-gen-games-will-still-target-30-fps <comment><USER2> Insomniac Games (the developers of Ratchet and Clank, and the Resistance series) wrote a blog post some time ago about their decision to focus on using a lower framerate (all their previous games were 60 fps).

[http://www.insomniacgames.com/how-much-does-framerate- matter...](http://www.insomniacgames.com/how-much-does-framerate-matter/)

The summary is that prettier games get better reviews and sell off more copies.

<comment><USER3> Turn 10, of Forza Motorsport fame, refuses to compromise render rate in the series. Forza 2 to 4 (no idea for the 1st one, which ran on the original Xbox) are running at a steady 60fps (physics loops at 360ips), even in split screen (at the cost of a few effects, notably cockpit mirror reflections). Technically this really matters when getting the braking point at 400kph down Old Mulsanne. In terms of enjoyment, sure there's only reduced antialiasing, but driving down Bernese Alps close to the guard rail in Forza 4, especially with Kinect head tracking (not enough cash nor room for a triple-head+seat setup), is incredibly immersive.

Forza Horizon though, developed by an all-star team[0] distinct from Turn 10, chose to drop to 30fps, notably for full AA, effects such as motion blur, and features like continuous day/night cycle and realistic car headlights (old bulbs look deliciously warm, and the chromatic effect on the crisp edge of xenon headlights is awesome). As realistic and gorgeous as Forza Horizon is, at speed it feels buttery smooth but not exactly crisp as Forza 4 is. It's like you'd take a low-resolution image and try to make it look nicer by using a blur filter, only this applies to time instead of space, and thus movement.

[0]: [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the- making-...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of- forza-horizon)

<comment><USER2> Well a better example would be Ground Turismo 5 which runs in 1080p @ 60fps, but that's besides the point. Games that look good in screenshots will always sell better.

<comment><USER4> GT5 is definitely _not_ a better example, because it suffers huge framerate drops in some situations, which completely defeats the immersion effect. Try a race in cockpit view and multiple cars in front of you, when one goes off track creating some sand clouds, the framerate often dips far below 30 fps.

What makes Forza 2 and 3 so impressive is that it keeps up 60 fps _all the time_. If you a game can't keep up with that, I'd much rather have a constant 30 fps than an erratic 60 fps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thirty frames per second is depressing. I don't know how some people can stand it. I get annoyed when I notice the frames drop below forty five.

<comment><USER6> I suspect it matters less on consoles where you are trying to move/look around by pushing a tiny little joystick with your thumb. With a mouse though it is absolutely crippling. Even minecraft is painful at 30Hz with a mouse.

<comment><USER7> "Crippling" seems a bit hyperbolic. I'd reckon most PC gamers probably don't even notice, though once you start noticing it's hard to "unsee" it, but that doesn't make the game unplayable.

<comment><USER8> If any of you have Dark Souls on PC, with a decent graphics card, use the 'dsfix' mod to toggle between 30fps (the default) and an unlocked 60fps mode.

It's night and day - suddenly the game becomes that much more fluid, and when toggling between the two, 30fps feels amazingly 'shuttered'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Frankly I would be happy if next-gen games would actually achieve _steady_ 30 fps. Doubly so if the games would achieve that with some reasonable resolution. That would already be a massive improvement to the current state of affairs, where games dip to 20 fps or so with sub-hd resolutions.

<comment><USER10> I am not a gamer, but aren't high FPS tiring to the eyes because of the lack of natural motion blur which gives the sense of unnatural movement? Isn't that more important than increasing FPS?

<comment><USER11> You may be confusing film with game rendering? If you shoot a movie with a camera that keeps the shutter open for a little while, you will get some motion blur. This lets the motion in the film look smooth. But if you render a game at only 24 fps, each frame will have no motion blur and it will look choppy. (Some games try to add motion blur as well, which helps a little.) In film, if you increase the frame rate, you will get less motion blur and I guess it might look less smooth. But if you increase the fps of a game, it will look smoother. (If the game adds motion blur separately, you could still have huge amounts of motion blur even with a high frame rate, because it's a fake effect.)

<comment><USER8> Good examples of frame interlacing here: <http://www.100fps.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Carmack's comment:

 _For the record, just in case it wasn't clear, we continue to target 60fps, and 120fps will be an option on PC. 120fps stereo VR, even. Eventually we will get displays with gaze tracked foveal insets, which will be rendered as a separate view. 120fps_ stereo _foveal=480vps_

<https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/281409030369472512>

</comment><comment><USER13> 30fps? I remember the mid - late 90s "3d accelerator" boom and the games that came out of that. Unless you dumped serious $ into your PC you were lucky to get 15fps.

<comment><USER14> Bought a Dell for just under $2K in 1999 (remember prices were much different then) with some serious gaming power for an off the shelf PC. 30 FPS was generally a minimum for this rig when playing games like Q3, UT and HL. If that's costly to you, the TNT2 and other cards were cheaper than my voodoo3 3000 AGP and still delivered good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem are the consoles. Both the PS3 and the Xbox360 are absolutely ancient. Let's not even talk about the Wii.

I think I might prefer something like a Steambox, where upgrades would be more frequent. I generally prefer PC gaming, but I like being able to play from the couch with a controller.

<comment><USER16> Anyone can play in the PC from the couch with the right controller.

Even old games, just use Logitech controller mapper to convert the gamepad input to simulated mouse + keyboard.

Honesty that old complaint is very tired now.

<comment><USER15> Not really. The setup is complicated and fragile, the hardware is bulky and annoying. Some games can't really work with mouse mapped to analogs. Not everything can be done with just a controller (OS updates, etc.)

It's not great, but a Linux machine with Steam on it could be.

<comment><USER16> You are only giving your opinions.

I on the other hand, have done it. As expected, I use the computer more for movies than games (girlfriend demands). The gamepad is actually a very good Media Center controller.

The only real issue is passwords. But you don't have to enter them all the time.

My point is: having to get up and use a keyboard from time to time doesn't kill the experience of gaming in a computer and a big TV.

I want the Steam box because of the possibility of better games and a general MS distrust, not because the actual experience is something totally unmanageable, as some people here try to assume.

<comment><USER15> But I never have to get up to use a keyboard with my PS3. That's the experience I want.

Customizability and linux are just very, very nice perks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >"We always do 30 frames per second on consoles, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to fit in vehicles, effects, scale and all players."

I'm with Carmack on this one. I'd rather have a good game with a solid 60fps than 20+ vehicles and hundreds of effects. That's all filler anyway. A solid 60fps game is a much more immersive experience than the choppy 20-30fps most developers achieve.

</comment><comment><USER18> I concur. I played through Skyrim originally on PS3, then got a powerful PC and tried it on there.

I thought the game looked uglier. Now I realize that it might be that the FPS is too high.

<comment><USER19> If you pull up a Nintendo 64 emulator or a Playstation 1 emulator and run it at 1080P, it will look far worse than you remember it, because where the low resolution of the old CRT screens used to cover over a lot of flaws, the high fidelity will stick them in your face.

Likewise with a lot of console/PC hybrids. What looks pretty decent on your TV at what is actually 720P or even 640P upscaled and blurry is revealed to be somewhat lower detail than you thought on a crisp 2560x1440 screen.

On the other hand, if you get something _meant_ to be played there... wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Then what the next generation consoles need is low-latency motion interpolation hardware.

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes me sad and angry. Carmack of all people should be pushing for more performance, but I guess he outgrew that after iD lost most of the market.

<comment><USER22> You didn't actually read the article, did you. Christ:

Games developed for the next-generation of consoles will still target a performance of 30 frames per second, claims id Software co-founder John Carmack. Taking to Twitter, the industry veteran said he could "pretty much guarantee" developers would target the standard, rather than aiming for anything as high as 60 fps. ID Software games such as Rage and the Call of Duty series both hit up to 60 fps, but many titles in the current generation fall short such as the likes of Battlefield 3, which runs at 30 fps on consoles. "Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that a lot of next gen games will still target 30 fps," said Carmack.

<comment><USER21> ...

Carmack, is that you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And it makes perfect sense for them to do so! They are optimizing for gameplay.

<comment><USER24> I think you have that backwards.

If they were optimizing for gameplay they would sacrifice graphical fidelity until they hit 60fps. Targeting 30fps means they want to sacrifice gameplay for graphical effects.

<comment><USER25> Not just graphical effects: more NPCs and gameplay entities on screen, better AI, better physics, etc.

In terms of trade-offs, 60fps is pretty much always the first thing to be sacrificed unless it's REALLY important, like in a twitch shooter or racing game.

The truth is that for most games 30fps is not a deal-breaker for the majority of people. If even a significant minority of players cared, the intensely focus-test-led games industry would follow.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's New Policies Make Harassment Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_new_policies_make_harrassment_easy.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 <comment><USER2> I live in Tunisia and I'm ... pretty unorthodox. That's why I keep my profile page as private as possible. I really hate those fanatics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just as Facebook can be an important vehicle for positive change, they are, like most technologies/services, a double-edged sword. One can argue that Facebook is just contributing to further awareness that such harassment takes place. But in reality this draws attention away from such issues because the central theme then becomes "Facebook is evil... Facebook makes it easier to harass", etc. Such conclusions are unfair--these things will happen with or without Facebook. That is, the key take-away from this article is that they're making themselves a bigger target with their senseless privacy policies and their unreasonable comments about privacy.

They're playing with fire and they _will_ get burned.

</comment><comment><USER4> [Disclaimer: I work for Facebook, but obviously I don't speak for it].

It is unclear to me which "new" policies they are referring to in this article: (a) Pages you fanned have always been public. (b) The "Religious Views" and "Political Views" fields on your profile were not included in the conversion to Page connections, explicitly to avoid this sort of thing. (c) I'm also not sure how they decided that profiles were being _automatically_ deactivated based on reports. (d) The article doesn't really clarify how these "targets" are being identified -- that seems somewhat important to decide whether Facebook's "new" policies are making harassment easy...

<comment><USER5> Do you really not understand it?

You've created publicly accessible aggregations of members expressing interest in a potentially limitless set of categories (whatever you may choose to call them). You've taken previously private profile information and pre-emptively linked it to these public categories. Even where some of this information was previously publicly visible, it wasn't so conveniently publicly indexed; someone would have to visit individual profiles in order to turn it up.

By the way, religious and political views do not only express themselves in the fields you mention. What disrespectful soul there decided to take my "Favorite Quotes", with access previously restricted to "Only Friends", and plaster them -- without so much as a warning -- all over my public profile?

I've been pretty cautious, and there was nothing very incendiary or damaging in them, but it still caught me out.

For me, it was the last straw. I hope FB, or at least its current Management and, ahem, "policies", follows MySpace into a death spiral, taking their accumulated financial equity with them before they have a chance to cash out.

I hope HN will pardon a bit of unusual vehemence from me, but Facebook has come to be, simply stated, slimy. I guess I write this comment in the vague hope some fraction of the message might get through whatever reality distortion field they're currently running in-house.

Finally, as a few commentors have started to point out, as Facebook continues to publicize their members' data, those members more and more tightly control their expression. The result is that the site continues to become blander and blander, less and less "personal". There's only so long people will continue to find novelty and interest in generic updates.

Control over privacy. Personal expression. What brand-building feature are you going to kill off, next?

I remember when "everyone" was on AIM. Even if you preferred another platform, you used AIM because that's where the bulk of the general (U.S.) population was, for IM; they'd "won" the IM platform war. I don't think I've even signed on to the thing in a year or more.

A lesson for any "winner".

P.S. As for fanning being public, it used to be someone would have to seek your ID out on those different fan pages. Then, around the end of the year, Facebook decided to (pre-emptively, again) display that information in aggregate for each user on their public profile. Maybe googling might have exposed some or all of it previously, but you sure made it a lot more convenient. (E.g. for that HR staffer looking for a quick means to winnow a stack of resumes.) And I'm not even addressing the publication of everyone's friends, etc.

If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to consider my response. It's not meant to be personal. (Well, except against those setting these policies at Facebook. Even then, it's the policies that elicit the response; the people I don't know personally.) It's strongly phrased to emphasize the points, and the frustration they cause.

<comment><USER4> " Even where some of this information was previously publicly visible, it wasn't so conveniently publicly indexed; someone would have to visit individual profiles in order to turn it up."

Previously, the text in these boxes was a link to a search result for users who mentioned this text. Now it is a link to a Page where a small, random set of the users who mentioned the text are displayed. You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile. You'd still have to either visit a lot of users' profiles (and they'd have to have set their interests to be visible), or you'd have to reload a Page a lot of times.

(As for "Favorite Quotes", I will look into what is going on with it).

Thank you for your detailed feedback, btw.

<comment><USER6> "You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile."

Is the following definition of "visibility" accurate in your context?

[http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook- english-...](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english- translator#visibility)

"As Facebook explains, "Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to." Likewise, "While you do have the option to hide your Friend List from being visible on your profile, it will be available to applications you use and websites you connect with using Facebook." Because Facebook deems this information "public," it reserves the right to share that information with its business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings. "

      "regardless of your visibility settings."

So, we can "hides these links on your profile" from our friends, but we can't hide them from Facebook's "business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings?"

Isn't that completely backwards from what people would want from a social site? If my understanding of this issue is correct (and I confess, I haven't been able to hold FB's privacy policy and settings regime in my head for some time), then this would be like hiding my street address from my friends but broadcasting my address to junk mail companies with a hearty "Catalogs? Send 'em here!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someday, someone will be killed by a crazy person who takes advantage of an online service's lax privacy controls. That will prompt legal changes like those that followed the 1989 death of actress Rebecca Schaeffer at the hands of a stalker. He used California DMV records to find her home address:

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

</comment><comment><USER8> It's time for distributed trust.</comment>


RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady: Why I Am Against Software Patents - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/03/19/software-patents/

<comment><USER2> While reading all the examples of arguments he _wasn't_ going to make, I was really expecting something new to be added to the debate, instead, he recycles this argument:

      it is not reasonable to expect that the current patent
      system, nor even one designed to improve or replace it,
      will ever be able to accurately determine what might be
      considered legitimately patentable from the overwhelming
      volume of innovations in software.

Unfortunately, he's wrong -- again -- and has failed to convince me that discrimination against software engineers is the solution to the software patent problems.

The simple solution would be to charge more for software patents and use the money to hire more people. Patents, if you aren't aware are under $1,000. That's ridiculously cheap compared to the attorneys, writers, and engineers who invent the code. As a comparison, attorney's in California charge about $20,000 to write a software patent.

For $850 (the basic filing fee) how can anyone expect the office to afford to review such patents? Someone capable of understanding them would easily cost $100,000 a year outside the USPTO. If it takes 10 hours to read one of the patents, then each patent would cost the USPTO $500 to review and that's not counting all the bureaucrats involved.

The answer is, the USPTO cannot afford to review software patents. Plain and simple. Instead, they just stamp "Approved" on them and let the litigators argue it out in the courts -- adding more millions to the cost, which of course go straight into the attorneys' pockets. If there is anything stifling innovation, it's the _attorneys_ , not the patents.

My suggestion: Raise the basic filing fee from $850 to $8,500 or $85,000 Or 0.01% of filer revenue for the previous year.

Obviously we have a supply and demand problem. The price is simply too low. Solution: raise the price. Use the additional revenue to hire more software engineers who can better judge the validity of the claims.

<comment><USER3> We'll have to agree to disagree, I think.

Proposed remedies to the existing patent system - from the economic to the temporal - fail to recognize the basic issue: the inability to scale the grant process. Your solution, for example, merely injects more capital. Besides massively significantly disadvantaging individual inventors (developers in this context) vs larger entities, itself a potentially fatal limitation, it is guaranteed to do little to solve that problem. Even an $85K filing fee would be insufficient to throttle the process such that it would become workable.

Of the types of inventions likely to be patented under your revamped system, there will still be - even throttled by a higher patent fee - an extremely small number of individuals worldwide capable of accurately determining whether a given invention is legitimately innovative or merely derivative.

The problem is not merely, as implied, supply and demand. It is a multi- dimensional problem that involves, yes, a deficit in talent that is not practically solvable, but also real issues in terms of the vetting process for individual patents themselves.

Many "solutions" to the patent system have been proposed over the years; none have found widespread traction. As is to be expected, because the system is fundamentally misaligned with the rate and pace of innovation in this industry.

<comment><USER2> The patent system now accepts different filing fees for the size of the organization. That's why the percent revenue. And to say that raising the price will do nothing is not true. Raising the price always does something. We won't know what will happen until they are raised. It can be a progressive fee system to protect individual developers who don't have the money of the big corps.

<comment><USER3> My argument was not that raising the price will do nothing. "Even throttled by a higher patent fee" implies that the elevated costs would have a negative impact on patent volume. My point is that merely lowering the volume of submitted patents is insufficient to effect the necessary change, because the elements that cause the system to scale poorly are not purely volume based. And that's without even getting into the reality that dramatically higher patent submission costs would heavily advantage larger players at the expense of small innovators, which is likely to make the situation worse, not better given that it is the former who cause most o the problems with software patents at the present time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's not an arsenic-based life form - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php

<comment><USER2> This whole thing is yet another symptom of the science reporting ecosystem. Continual attempts at big bang news stories by institutions and their PR companies as well as a science media that goes for attention grabbing headlines.

Is this interesting and significant news? Absolutely, but the way it has been reported devalues the actual science done and misrepresents the science (and science as a whole) to the wider public.

Science is rarely about big bang eureka moments, it is long hard years in a lab building on someone else's work with a team of brilliant coworkers.

<comment><USER3> To be completely fair, the link downplays the news more than it really deserves imo. That a bacterium (even an extremophile) can even be coaxed into substituting arsenic for phosphorus in some of its basic biochemical processes is quite mind-boggling. I mean, how, by what mechanism is this achieved?

The paper would have been stronger with some attempt at elucidating such a mechanism, but I can understand wanting to rush something like that out (particularly when it will certainly garner interest from a big name journal) before getting scooped.

<comment><USER2> I think PZ provided a decent grain of salt, pointing out what about the research is important, what needs more work and most importantly what it isn't telling us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the best article I've read on the subject so far, short of the actual scientific publication.

I like how the author dives deep enough to give a you a good understanding of what actually took place while not making it sound like a scientific journal.

<comment><USER2> PZ is a reliable place to get the truth on biology/medicine based stories.

For space stuff Bad Astronomy usually provides the lowdown on the latest space story flooding the main stream press. (<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone think that the self-promotion done by Felisa Wolfe-Simon is a little strange?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQkOs9_GE0>

<http://www.ironlisa.com/>

<comment><USER6> It was a little off-putting to me when I was watching the press conference, but it's pretty understandable given where she is in her career. If you look at her CV, she just finished her post-doc work last year. This is most likely her first year on the job driving her own research agenda and getting your work published in Science and widely discussed in the mainstream press can only help your tenure prospects.

<comment><USER5> Is she looking for another job?

<comment><USER6> No clue, I don't know her personally. But speculating from what she writes about on her website regarding her interest in teaching, I would assume she is interested in a faculty position at some point in the future.

I really can't blame her for the self-promotion. I think this in some ways is the academic equivalent of the acquisition: she got the scoop on a really novel idea, she's well positioned to do future work in the area and be recognized as the global expert (catch the "more to come in the next 15-30 years!" in the press conference), and she's really excited about the work. I can only assume biogeochemistry is not having loads of money thrown at it these days so she's smart to take advantage of this opportunity to really make a name for herself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I'm curious if these cells can survive if reintroduced back in to the wild?

"Next, what they did was culture the bacteria in the lab, and artificially jacked up the arsenic concentration, replacing all the phosphate (PO43-) with arsenate (AsO43-). The cells weren't happy, growing at a much slower rate on arsenate than phosphate, but they still lived and they still grew. These are tough critters."

That seems to indicate that they wouldn't be able to compete with their cousins outside of a controlled environment.

<comment><USER8> So even if there weren't arsenate based to begin with, now we do have artificial arsenate life forms?

<comment><USER2> Depends on what you mean with the term artificial. We have artificial arsenate life forms in the same way we have artificial tame wolves.

<comment><USER8> Yes. What I meant: Even if we didn't have arsenate life forms, now we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where in that article does it say that it's not an arsenic-based life form?

In fact, it says exactly the opposite. It goes into detail about why it shouldn't be the much of a surprise. (Not that I agree with him.)

<comment><USER10> > Where in that article does it say that it's not an arsenic-based life form?

Life on Earth is carbon-based. There are no phosphorous-based lifeforms that we're aware of, so replacing phosphorous with arsenic doesn't make a carbon- based bacterial species into an arsenic-based one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Favorite line: _biochemistry is all about CHNOPS._

Pronounce the "CH" like "SH".</comment>


Cantor Set - <AUTHOR> https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/20004.3.shtml <comment><USER2> For anyone wondering how we know the Cantor set is uncountable, here is one way:

        Take any real in the interval [0,1)
        Express as a binary expansion
        Convert all the 1's to 2's
        Reinterpret as a ternary number

That forms a bijection between [0,1) and the Cantor set.</comment>


The Art and Science of Small Exits - <AUTHOR> http://www.instigatorblog.com/the-art-and-science-of-the-small-exit/2009/02/04/

<comment><USER2> Small exits are interesting, and overlooked. I see the following reasons for this:

\- acquisition price for companies probably follow a power law curve, meaning lots of small acquisitions and far fewer large acquisitions or IPO's. Size of companies follow a powerlaw, so there's a good chance acquisition size does too. I haven't seen any research on the subject though. This distribution means that your chance of a small exit is significantly better.

\- VC's invest too much money. If they invest $10 mill. in a company and expect a 1000% rate of return on successful exits they (and therefore you) have no choice but to go for the scarce big acquisition or IPO's.

\- your life will improve if you make $ 1 million, but you won't get much more happiness from $100 million. So why gamble?

<comment><USER3> I definitely benefited from the article though - seeing as how this is the endgame for so many startups it is somewhat surprising that we see so little about this part. I guess its a little like the wedding night - everyone knows you got married, but that bit is held very close. Is it b/c of non-disclosure agreements? Tons of companies have gotten acquired and aside from the reddit's story a few years back I don't remember seeing or reading alot of those tales, though I wish I could. It would make great bedtime reading or anytime reading really, something to help keep hope and keep going.

And I agree, $1 million would make my life better, but really, I thought the first $20 million was supposed to be the hardest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those of us who want to target a small exit, it would be great to hear about small exits made in the last year and who made the acquisition. This article mentions a few. Does anyone on here know of more?

<comment><USER5> This is a good place to start:

<http://www.crunchbase.com/acquisitions>

The left sidebar has a list of Top Acquirers. Of course most of the prices are not disclosed. Off the top of my head, these YC startups had exits that are unknown, but are probably under $20 million:

Anywhere.fm: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/imeem-gobbles-up-a- youn...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/imeem-gobbles-up-a-young- startup-anywherefm/)

Clickpass: [http://blog.clickpass.com/2008/12/19/clickpass-is-being- acqu...](http://blog.clickpass.com/2008/12/19/clickpass-is-being-acquired/)

Omnisio: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/30/google-acquires- omnisio...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/30/google-acquires-omnisio-to- spice-up-youtube/)

<comment><USER4> Very useful - thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Eric Schmidt: If You Don't Want To Use Your Real Name, Don't Use Google+ - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/08/28/google-plus-identity-service/

<comment><AUTHOR> > "It begs the question of whom Google built this service for? You or them," > Wilson wrote in a blog post. "And the answer to why you need to use your > real name in the service is because they need you to."

This was a really telling quote.

<comment><USER2> They definitely built it for you and them.</comment></comment>


Monty - In Defense of Ogg's Good Name - <AUTHOR> http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/lj-pseudocut/o-response-1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought it was worth posting Monty's response, since the original anti-Ogg piece got a lot of discussion here a few months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1164161>

<comment><USER2> Monty's response is well-thought-out and well-supported. I was hoping to see the other side of the argument when this came out before, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He does a very good job of bringing the nerd rage but unfortunately reality doesn't back him up — even his own implementation doesn't support his design choices very well and the ones in larger systems basically ignore them.

<comment><USER4> How so?

<comment><USER3> Seeking is frequently broken, especially wherever OGG support has been added to a larger system as a plugin like with Quicktime or ffdshow. FLAC is much worse on this.

You can't actually use any non-Xiph codecs in an OGG container in the real world (except through the OGM hack that they repudiate), because they don't document any of it and nobody tests against it. You won't even get sensible errors. It's worse if they implement OGG support by just linking with liboggplay (the path of least resistance), so the container is implemented separately bundled with only its own codecs.

<comment><USER5> _You can't actually use any non-Xiph codecs in an Ogg container in the real world [...] because they don't document any of it_

He covers this in the article. If you want to say the the documentation is lacking, just say that, and they'll explain that they don't want to encourage mixing of open and non-open codecs. If you want to focus on the _can't actually use non-Xiph codecs in an OGG container_ side, then you'd have to explain how Dirac and Flac managed to be put in the container without any change to Ogg.

One is a (unfounded?) criticism of the technology or API of Ogg, the other is criticism of a Xiph policy decision to promote open codecs. Don't just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

Also, if seeking is broken in Quicktime for both Ogg and Flac, two containers with very different approaches, maybe blaming Ogg is illogical? There's no obvious reason to even mention Flac as, despite coming under the Xiph umbrella once it was a popular free codec, it was developed independently.

<comment><USER3> My point was not that using alternate codecs was technically impossible, but that it was _de facto_ infeasible — nobody does it (because you'd only want to use it if you already wanted to use a free codec for it's freedom), as such nobody tests against it, so it won't be well supported by implementations, not even to necessarily give you a 'codec not found' error message.

You're right that OGG and native Flac are different containers, with differently stupid approaches (aiming too high and too low, respectively). The later Flac formats do specify OGG's broken metadata system, one of several reasons that nobody ever distributes Flac files with any internal metadata. I've never seen a Flac-in-OGG file in the wild, but I imagine that seeking is at least as broken there.

Seeking in Quicktime works just fine for all manner of esoteric codecs and containers — the problem is with the FOSS stuff where they decided that they'd do something inventive, and ended up with something pointlessly different — enough to make it annoying to integrate into any existing system — and no better than what everyone else does.

Sometimes what scratches your own itch and is fun to implement is no good for anyone else to actually use.

<comment><USER5> _Quicktime works just fine for all manner of esoteric codecs and containers — the problem is with the FOSS stuff where they decided that they'd do something inventive, and ended up with something pointlessly different_

So it works with _all manner of esoteric_ stuff as long as it's not _inventive_ , or _different_? That's a very limited definition of _esoteric_. And I've heard enough complaining about Quicktime over the years to not automatically give it the benefit of the doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sentence-by-sentence rebuttals are not very effective. And they're _never_ the best you can do. Why are you wasting my time nitpicking on 'legend tells us'? It's silly to tell me I needn't bother with the original - and then take me in excruciating detail through it.

<comment><USER5> It's not explicit in the original or explained well in this rebuttal but the "legend tells us" is basically a way for the original author to call the current author a liar without actually coming out and saying so.

The line after that phrase is about Ogg being designed for Video codecs, something he clearly doesn't believe as later in the same document he suggests it was originally only intended for Vorbis audio.

See footnote 26 and the section that references it in the Monty document for a counter to this popular misconception.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for replying amidst the downvotes.

You're right that those points are valid (as are the rest). Nits don't happen because some people like to dawdle. They happen because there's a lot of valid points to make. Which makes it particularly important to spend time finding the right ordering for them!

(and to prune the ones that don't flow. Which would you prefer, that 10% read everything or that 75% read the 10 most important points you want to make?)</comment></comment></comment>


In China, an electric car lifestyle - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-china-an-electric-car-lifestyle-60-minutes/ <comment><USER4> Just a bit of anecdotal side-data: I've recently switched to a full electric transportation lifestyle, having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu Motoros electric moped .. and nothing will ever make me go back to a combustion engine ever again.

Electric transportation is just so, so good.

Sure, the Unu is under-powered by comparison with its gas-guzzling ancestors, but this is regulatory not technical (Unu's are soft-limited to 45km/h here in Europe, alas) but electric is really the wave of the future. I get home and back again on my Unu with just as much comfort as I did with the Vespa - <USER2> I'm completely silent, and not woofing fumes at every stop. Plus, its incredibly cheap to charge the batteries.

I think, once a few more people experience life on electric wheels, there is going to be a turning point where the archaic gas-guzzlers _rapidly_ get replaced with green alternatives. We already see this here in middle-Europe (Vienna) - electric vehicles are becoming more and more common, and in a very eco-/green- centric market such as Vienna, not a week goes by without seeing more and more of these vehicles on the road.

If anyone is on the fence about it, consider switching. It may not quite have the revs and torque of the gas-guzzlers, but the benefits - clean and efficient travel - are worth the effort by far.

I'll ride my Unu another year or two, and then upgrade to something with a bit more speed, maybe a Čezeta if I can get one in a year or two. Electric is just so much fun, even at the lower-grade Unu level .. and even though it was _cheaper_ to go from gas-Vespa to Unu, I still get a bump on the lifestyle credentials. My friends and family are envious of the electric aspect, even though the thing is nowhere near as performant as the old Vespa GTS was. (Yes, I know Vespa have an electric variant now too - I'm gonna upgrade to Čezeta though .. nicer style!)

<comment><USER5> _having replaced my much-loved Vespa with an Unu Motoros electric moped_

These only appear to be available in Germany, it seems: [https://unumotors.com/en/product](https://unumotors.com/en/product).

I wonder what the U.S. equivalent is.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious why they're described as "mopeds" when no pedals are visible. Maybe they pop out or something but with that seating position, they can't be useful for any serious transportation. I'd call it an electric scooter or step-through e-bike. The equivalent would just be an e-bike.

<comment><USER7> The language varies internationally. In the UK I would call a small step through scooter a moped. We don't really have the pedalled equivalent. I only know this because i read this [http://www.mopedtrip.com/more/worldrecord.html](http://www.mopedtrip.com/more/worldrecord.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm most excited not about the cars, but about all of the battery factories (hopefully) being spun up to meet the demand. 18650s are still relatively pricy and challenging to get cheaply without risk of a scam. Once the price- per-cell drops we can see all kinds of great innovations with batteries.

There's some really cool easyEDA projects being designed that will let anyone build a power wall for their home. The biggest cost factor is always the batteries.

<comment><USER9> As a low quantity benchmark, for building small to mid size UAV battery packs, I am seeing the Panasonic NCR18650GA in small quantities for between $4.50 to $5.00 per cell. From battery vendors I can trust to not be shipping counterfeits. It's a 3500mAh 10A discharge rated cell.

[https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo- Pana...](https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Panasonic- NCR18650GA-3500mah.pdf)

I have seen unsubstantiated claims that Tesla now has the cost for the Model 3 battery pack below $100 per kWh. The details of which they're obviously not going to give out for competitive reasons, though some rough estimates might find their way into quarterly and yearly SEC reports, earnings phone calls with investors, etc.

The interesting thing for me about electric cars is that a lot of the "car" part is sort of a solved problem. A Tesla Model 3 or a Bolt or equivalent are a totally acceptable small to mid size car. The manufacturers of these don't need to do a lot of further development of the car to make it a good product. What they need, and are counting on, is global economies of scale to bring down the cost of building the battery pack of the car, so that they can incorporate those lower costs (and greater mAh stored per cell) advancements into their product, and then sell it to the consumer.

I have no doubt that in ten years from now 21700 format cells will be significantly less costly in $ per kWh stored, and will have a greater Wh per kilogram and Wh per cubic cm/volume ratio.

<comment><USER10> On that front no small cylindrical cells can beat "brick" prismatic cells, they are the only ones which can be realistically expected to beat $100 without material costs going down, in fact, they do so already.

Though... manufacturing of big prismatic cells never took off anywhere except for China.

<comment><USER8> I haven't seen a hobbyist with a large project use anything other than cylindrical cells. Packs seem more geared towards RC etc. at least from my perspective we're a long ways away from packs being a better value.

<comment><USER9> lipo are pretty much all prismatic/pouch type cells, and used for RC/UAV applications that need high amperage draw.

nissan leaf batteries are prismatic flat type. not sure who actually makes them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You could increase adoption drastically with the restrictions for example of Beijing. You aren't allowed to enter the city unless the car is registered in Beijing. You aren't allowed to drive on certain days depending on your license plate. You can't just register a car, but it enters a lottery and you wait until you are one of the chosen ones. Though a lot of people buy two cars to be able to drive on any day of the week, an electric car is probably cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER12> This might really catch-up. From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position.

This, in turn, is partly caused by the imbalance between man and woman in China strongly in favor of man (so woman can be more choosy - times has changed and it seems a baby girl is no longer a burden).

Plus, the market is huge and probably Chinese government will make sure that Tesla or whatever foreign Nio's competitor will be in a much weaker position.

Social network restricted only to Nio's owner strangely resembles Facebook in the early days - a social network for students from top universities - <USER3> able to join was also a marker of "high social status".

<comment><USER13> >From what I've read (could be obviously wrong, as many reports we get from the "wild" east) that for people in China it is important to be able to show their position in the society - that's one of the reason of housing bubble; having a flat/home is a marker of being someone with rather high position.

As far as homes go, it's more like homeownership is culturally considered a prerequisite to marriage. Maybe the closest equivalent in the west would be having a job, you wouldn't want your daughter to get married to a guy without a job or the means to get one, because working is part of growing up.

Many well-to-do parents buy second properties to gift their children for when they are ready to get married.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been meeting William on all kinds of industry events for a very very long time. For 2 or 3 years, the guy was running around every car expo, begging for money, claiming to have a "production ready car" on podium, despite it being visible that it was just a poorly done fibreglass mockup. When I took a look underneath it, I saw that it had a live axle and a motor similar to one in Chinese electric tricycles.

When he was challenged on that once, he allowed the guy to have a "test drive," for which he had him sign a few pages long NDA, but everybody can hear the fibreglass squeaking.

For the few, "fake it until you make it" actually works.

Some people with Nios around say that it is "not as bad as they originally expected it."

Though, how he markets Nio is cheap...

<comment><USER6> They seem to have pulled it together recently... the Niu EP9 holds the Nurburgring lap record for an EV at 6:45.9 which is a ridiculous pace for any vehicle.

<comment><USER10> NIO had more than half of its engineering staffed by unpaid interns at one point (sounds unreal, but just google it.)

People should expect more from somebody who wants to have that "serious man" image.

Yes, they _barely_ made it after burning through 150m cash and years of "almost happened" launches, trying to manufacture it themselves or third tier garbage OEMs, all thanks to that shocking naivety of their CEO (a yet another Steve Jobs wannabe type)

It only happened when they got enough money to show to JAC for a joint venture making ES6 and ES8. Before that, they had no chances really

P.S. NIO and Niu are different companies fyi

<comment><USER6> Wow, that sounds pretty sketchy. I guess it just goes to show how important persistence is. The game's not over til you admit it's over! (Or get thrown in jail or kicked out onto the street, I guess.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article and the accompanying video are embarassingly bereft of important details. Has reporting falling so far to having a pretty blonde face present bland, undetailed content on what is an essential electrification movement in a massive economy? In that 4 minute video, what percentage of the time features the reporter's face vs. an actual electric car?

<comment><USER15> 60 minutes has become worse over time, I'm not surprised. Articles/videos like this are good for putting topics on our radars, to investigate further on our own.

The Wikipedia article isn't bad:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_(car_company)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIO_\(car_company\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish I can test drive one of these in the US. Competition is always good for capitalism but I fear for Tesla and the implications for manufacturing their cars in China soon with many of these Chinese government backed EV companies. That being said, I find it interesting how there's a couple Chinese companies that are on the US stock exchange. A couple of my friends was raving about the NIO IPO a couple months back about how a Chinese government funded "Tesla" cannot fail. It's weird how it's acceptable to buy a "stock" of a company without really owning part of it, similar to Alibaba. The stocks on the exchange is just a subsidy of the company that contracts to share the profit among the holders.

<comment><USER17> I mean stock literally gives you a fraction of shareholder equity, which in total, is Assets - Liabilities.

So maybe you don't own the assets before the liabilities, but stock is very literally giving you ownership in the company.

<comment><USER16> Not most (if not all) Chinese owned companies on the US stock exchange. Chinese laws prevents the ownership of foreign entities on companies. To circumvent this, most of the "stocks" on the exchange is for a subsidiary and the stock holders has zero ownership over the company, similar to a C stock for Alphabet. Alibaba for example, you are owning a subsidiary that shares the profit in the Cayman Islands. You are not owning any part of the company.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Impact Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://impactchallenge.withgoogle.com/uk2014

<comment><AUTHOR> I was tangentially involved with the Kew Gardens mosquito project - <USER2> they're all exciting and worth a read!</comment>


A Complete Guide to Pricing Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/163986/A-Complete-Guide-to-Pricing-Strategy

<comment><USER2> awesome post! always tricky to define your pricing strategy--this is super helpful.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I think it's the process that's the most important.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it, I'm glad you liked it.

<comment><USER4> The dart board analogy was a great idea. We've been gradually moving through each of the pricing strategies; I wish I'd seen this when I first started my business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Warehouse Workers Want to Be Paid for Waiting in Line - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-02/security-checks-paid-as-work-supreme-court-will-decide

<comment><USER2> Imagine your employer wants to pay you only for the time you spend coding. Then, you have to attend a status meeting every day, where everybody reports their progress. You can report your progress in a couple of minutes, but have to wait for everybody else in the room does so as well, and the room is a big one.

Now, your employer claims that since you are not coding there (no laptops allowed in, sorry), you will not receive compensation, because you are paid to code, not to attend meetings. When you claim that it is part of your position duties to attend the meeting, the boss subtly changes the subject and says that it is normal in every industry for people to have to provide status reports when requested by their superiors, and that you should not demand to be paid extra money for that.

Then you sue... and businessweek.com writes an article with precisely the title line that makes you look the most like an entitled asshole.

Now you know what it feels like to be a warehose worker at Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll bet the average wait time for the line shrinks dramatically if the court rules in the worker's favor. As it stands now, Integrity/Amazon have no incentive to adequately staff the line with security personnel since the workers being checked are off the clock.

</comment><comment><USER4> This story reminds me about trying to choose the companies I buy products from more carefully. I'm doing much better this year. My rule of thumb is happy employees are a pretty good sign the company isn't evil. Like costco, or whole foods.

Amazon is tough because I don't actually interact with any employees, but if half the stuff I read online is even partially true, they have a lot of progress to make.

One of their recruiters contacted me a few weeks ago, and a quick search about what it's like to be a web developer there helped me decide not to respond.

I should really find a replacement for amazon prime... not the best feeling knowing I'm supporting the lawyers on imo the wrong side of this article.

</comment><comment><USER5> Comments from any Amazon employees out there would be especially welcome.</comment>


Google doesn't want you to limit its ability to follow you around the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/26/google-ability-follow-users-internet-advertisements <comment><USER2> In principle, I have no problem with web companies tracking my movements and habits online. The problem with the current system is that they are doing it without my consent. I have no problem disclosing my Amazon shopping history (or current shopping cart) to Overstock - maybe Overstock will offer me a better deal.

You know what would be awesome? A global, secure, private and auditable web session and personal information management system. I want to be the arbiter of who has access to my metadata. (Given the huge amounts of metadata I product in a given year we might as well just call it "data"). If the contents of my hard drive are sacrosanct why should the data I provide to Comcast, Verizon, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. (which dwarfs the capacity of my hard drive) be any different?</comment>


Prisma's next AI project is a fun selfie sticker maker called Sticky - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/prismas-next-ai-project-is-a-fun-selfie-sticker-maker-called-sticky <comment><USER2> For those who didn't know what Prisma is I found an overview video on Youtube from some months ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey1lkwYGSC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey1lkwYGSC0)

It's basically an advanced image filtering app ala Instagram but using "AI neural networks" to convert your images to artwork style themes.

Also TechCrunch is linking to www.sticky-ai.com but their web server isn't redirecting www properly, it just 404s, the actually working URL is: [https://sticky-ai.com/](https://sticky-ai.com/)

This similarly claims to use neural networks to convert images you take into stickers. For example: cropping out the background to only include the subject of the photo, making the surround background transparent, and lets you add text next to it in bubbles.

<comment><USER3> Slightly off-topic, but there's some pretty fascinating work that's been done recently on using neural networks for style transfer:

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.08155v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.08155v1.pdf)

[http://www.anishathalye.com/2015/12/19/an-ai-that-can- mimic-...](http://www.anishathalye.com/2015/12/19/an-ai-that-can-mimic-any- artist/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a privacy nut, I cringed when I tried the Prisma app without reading up on how it works - the image is transmitted to the Prisma servers, where the AI does its job and sends the results back. That was the first and last time! The proliferation of all the server based centralized AI services is a concern for me in different ways.

</comment><comment><USER5> Typo in "Artificial Intelegence", or was that intended? Also, does anyone know when this comes out on Android?

</comment><comment><USER6> FFS can we stop with the ridiculous selfies, stickers and MP3-sorting tools?

Who throws money away on these things??

<comment><USER7> i mean it's a big reason why snapchat is worth what it is today.

edit: by that i mean, it's a big reason why they got a lot of their users.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Books like AOSA's 500 Lines or Less? - <AUTHOR> I'm referring to this work specifically: https://www.aosabook.org/en/500L/introduction.html. In general, what other programming books are there that focus on small, mostly self-contained yet interesting projects, and also go into more detail than the average 'X by Example' or 'X Cookbook' books? <comment><USER2> A classic example would be SICP, _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ , by Abelson and Sussman. It is often discussed here.

It does present a series of case studies that (I recall) are around 500 lines, but it's not so easy to count because the code is interleaved with explanation.

Although the code in each study is mostly self contained, the presentation is not -- the later studies depend on ideas and techniques introduced in the earlier ones, so it works best of you go through the book from beginning to end.

The code is very bare bones - it's all in the Scheme language, with no user interface except the Scheme REPL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks. I hadn't realized SICP was structured that way.</comment></comment>


Deloitte no longer wants to know which university its job applicants attended - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/513028/deloitte-no-longer-wants-to-know-which-university-its-job-applicants-attended/ <comment><USER2> First EY removing degree classification from hiring decisions, now Deloitte promising to overlook the university the candidate went. Both developments from the UK, I wonder why the US firms of EY and Deloitte did not take the lead in going for transformations such as this?</comment>


The unlikely tale of how ARM came to rule the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-24/the-unlikely-tale-of-how-arm-came-to-rule-the-world

<comment><USER2> Sadly this article doesn't mention the early ARM-based desktop computers Acorn produced: the Archimedes series (ARM 2, 3, StrongARM) and the RISC PC (ARM 600/700). They were instrumental in shaping me to be the developer I am today.

</comment><comment><USER3> ARM processors try to find the sweet spot between small size, low power and high speed. By picking which pieces to include, which to leave out and which to optimize for size/power/speed the big licensees such as Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung can each choose there own sweet spots for the products they want to make.</comment>