Octotree: the missing GitHub tree view (Chrome extension) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/octotree/bkhaagjahfmjljalopjnoealnfndnagc <comment><AUTHOR> I built this to scratch my own itch, as somebody who frequently reads GitHub code and feels annoyed having to click countless of links to navigate through a large project. Hope it is useful for other people too.

<comment><USER2> Mad props. Any chance of a Safari port? Its extension system is not very different from Chrome's. EDIT: and you shouldn't be shy to plug your gittip page: [https://www.gittip.com/buunguyen/](https://www.gittip.com/buunguyen/)

<comment><USER3> Here's a Safari version: [https://github.com/xdissent/octotree/releases/tag/v1.0.0-saf...](https://github.com/xdissent/octotree/releases/tag/v1.0.0-safari)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find both Firefox and Safari prebuilt packages here: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/tree/master/dist](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/tree/master/dist).

<comment><USER2> Lovely, it works great :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, the lack a fast tree browser has been one of the biggest weakness of the Github interface. This plugin solves that problem exceeding well. Github should hire the author, and officially fund his efforts to make it a first class feature that does not require a plugin.

<comment><USER5> Honest question: What is this good for? I guess I don't use github (or any other visual vcs) enough.. but I really can't see any point in browsing file structure of the repo in a web browser.

<comment><USER6> I browse repos on github pretty frequently. Some use cases:

\- It's someone else's repo (eg, a gem I'm using), and I just want to see one line real quick, rather than cloning the whole project locally and finding it there.

\- It's my repo, but I my local working copy is on a different branch or has uncommitted changes, so I don't want to bother stashing + changing branches just to look up one line

\- I'm poking around several repos that I have no intention of using- eg, looking at an interview candidate's public repos

<comment><USER7> For the "my repo, wrong branch" use case, you have some options:

      git show other-branch:path/to/file

or:

      git grep -e pattern other-branch

<comment><USER8> git-grep is indescribably awesome. To be fair though, I search github pretty frequently because it means I can search issues also. If issues were git repos themselves it would be a different ballgame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, giving it a quick try I can't believe how fast it is. This is one of those things that I've always desperately needed, and I never knew until now.

Be sure to tweet it at some of the github engineers– Thy should bring this into their core product.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's an idea: Automatically expand all the tree until there are more than 1 items in the level

e.g. src->com->twitter->scalding->scala->test (in this example, these are all folders in hierarchy and they are the only one until the 'test' so expanding them automatically all the way through makes sense).

<comment><USER11> That's a good idea, those 'fake' Java directories can be displayed collapsed inline as a single node of the hierarchy, thus saving all their indent space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome. Much better than my similar project! : [http://gitray.com](http://gitray.com).

</comment><comment><USER13> Great work but i want to point out one small feature that Github has but not known to everyone.

Press 't' when you go to a repository, it will activate the file finder. From there you can just start typing for the file/folder name you want to see and it will filter the repo instantly.

I wonder why this feature is not popular yet.

<comment><USER14> Because you have to know the name of the file you are looking for. It's good if you are looking at your own code base, but not for exploratory work.

<comment><USER13> Reasonable point you got there. Since I am mostly working on the repos that i am involved, it becomes very handy for me. I agree that it may not be so useful for unknown repos to explore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can also press `t` on any repo on github to find files/filetypes quickly.

<comment><USER16> I use 't' all the time to look up files as well.

I guess this extension makes it easier to get an overview of the directory structure, but that's something I rarely need.

I'm sceptical of browser plugins in general. There are so many browser plugins that change under the hood and do malicious things. It would be easy for the author of this plugin to scrape all your source code and phone it home.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand the concern. This extension is open-source/MIT [1], hope that brings a little peace of mind. If not, you can just pack the extension from its source instead of installing from Chrome Store.

[1] [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic! You planning to add Bitbucket support? That would be really nice. :)

<comment><USER18> +1 I'd also use bitbucket supported version of this

<comment><USER19> I would probably pay for one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to see a setting that makes the tree view collapsed by default. If I have some time later I might whip up a pull req.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tree should already be collapsed by the default (or it's a bug). However, the extension remembers the selection state, so if you expand some folders, you will see them remained expanded the next time you visit the same repository. Is there any chance you talked about this scenario?

<comment><USER20> I meant the entire left pane collapsed by default. Right now on page load it automatically pops out.

edit: looks like I'm insane. working as you described it. nice job!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you toggle it off (by clicking the small hamburger icon at the bottom-left corner), it should remained hidden even if you navigate to other repositories. The only exception is when it needs to prompt for the personal access token (to access private repositories or deal with GitHub API limit). Is it not the behavior you're observing or expecting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a fantastic extension! Browsing is fast and efficient, and creating the token for my private repos was painless.

A "search for files/folders named ..." feature would be a nice bonus, too, so that you can quickly get to the right spot in a big hierarchy.

To the author ([https://twitter.com/buunguyen](https://twitter.com/buunguyen)): please add a donation link somewhere so I can send you a thank-you (or you can just e-mail me with your PayPal/other address; my e-mail's in my profile).

<comment><USER22> Adding a private token took a few seconds - just a little irritating. It links to a Readme, which then links to the page to get your token

Instead, why doesn't the plugin just link directly to the page which generates the token if it detects that the repo is private?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually there are 2 links, the one named "Create token" goes directly to the token generation page. The "Help" link goes to Readme just in case people wonder why they have to enter the token. I guess you clicked on the "Help" link instead of "Create Token" link?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is great. It would be even better if you could resize the tree. Some projects have really deep trees and at a certain point you can't seem the names of the files.

<comment><USER14> I second that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Github repo: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there an easy way to extend this so that it can also be used when accessing Enterprise Github installations, e.g. `github.mycompany.com`?

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of people have asked for this in comments (and someone reported it on GitHub as well). I don't have a deployment handy so it's hard to build out. I hope someone can submit a PR. (Or wait until I can get a deployment to build/test.)

<comment><USER25> I've started poking around at it, in hopes of making a PR, but feel like I am making poor progress. It was trivial to change some things (like linking to /settings/tokens/new instead of including the hostname), but then my API key won't work.

I suspect that our enterprise installation uses a different API version than the live Github site, as I am having a hard time figuring out what an error 406 (vs the ones you catch) means. (And, the tree that I get is undefined.)

I'm surely doing something wrong. (I had hacked up the github.js library to use `github.ourcompany.com` for its API domain, which is probably wrong.) I will have to look for more info on API access to enterprise instances, because this is a feature which would make reading our various codebases __much__ more convenient.

Thank you for such an inspiring plugin!

<comment><USER26> should be something like: http(s)://github.ourcompany.com/api/v3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> @creationix's Tedit mounts git repos directly; it will melt your brain. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4eJTBXJ54I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4eJTBXJ54I) [https://github.com/creationix/tedit-app](https://github.com/creationix/tedit- app)

</comment><comment><USER27> Github also has a file finder similar to the Command-T plugin for vim - [https://github.com/blog/793-introducing-the-file- finder](https://github.com/blog/793-introducing-the-file-finder)

This extension is great for exploring but if you know what you're looking for, cmd+t will save you more time.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did you get API rate limited, by any chance?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. But personal access token to rescue (GitHub API is great). See here: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate- limit](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate-limit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd love to see something like this being on the site by default. Maybe just a button next to the repository title where you'd be able to toggle between the current view and the tree view. Both of these options have their advantages for different use cases.

In the meantime that's a great solution. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER30> I had the same idea a couple weeks ago but never finished it: [https://github.com/Gowiem/GitHubTree](https://github.com/Gowiem/GitHubTree). Crazy to see this. Glad somebody got around to it. Thanks man!

</comment><comment><USER31> Press 't' and search the filenames in repo instantly. Very useful.

<comment><USER14> Useful, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for. It's not always the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't really find the tree view useful. But I wish there was a way to see the code weight by individual files and whole repos: as KLOCS, size, anything. Is there such an extension?

</comment><comment><USER33> Brilliant - it's often quite slow to change between directories in the web view, this is blazingly fast. Especially useful for deeply nested (templated) projects.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is seriously excellent.

I bet Github have had this feature on their issue tracker for years - and I suspect it probably just got bumped a good few places up the list.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there a way to use this for Github Enterprise repos?

<comment><USER36> You would just have to switch out [https://api.github.com/](https://api.github.com/) with [https://{Your](https://{Your) company's Github Enterprise location}/api/v3/

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know if GitHub Enterprise imposes an API limit for unauthenticated requests? If it does, does it support personal access token? (See [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate- limit.](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate-limit.))

Depending on the answers, it could be very simple change, i.e. allow users to configure API subdomain. Unfortunately, I don't have any GitHub Enterprise deployment in handy at this moment to find out.

<comment><USER37> > If it does, does it support personal access token?

Yes, it does support tokens.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for confirming. Then it should be straightforward to support. I'll hope to have access to a Enterprise deployment to test out.

<comment><USER38> I believe the Github developer program [1] gives you access to a github enterprise instance for exactly this purpose.

[1] [https://developer.github.com/program/](https://developer.github.com/program/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've been using Firefox almost exclusively for months. This may very well make me go back to Chrome. Looks amazing!

<comment><USER40> Would love to see a Firefox port.

<comment><USER41> It doesn't seems to be using any Chrome api, so porting it to the Firefox SDK should be a trivial matter.

See [https://gist.github.com/Spittie/93adf218040d470abd40](https://gist.github.com/Spittie/93adf218040d470abd40) ([http://220.127.116.11/i/1400019350.png](http://220.127.116.11/i/1400019350.png)), probably the hardest part is "fixing" the css if it's using some only webkit- feature. Also I'm not sure if it's possible to load local images withing the page-mod api, but embedding them as base64 images is easy enough.

EDIT: oh well, Enjoy: [https://github.com/Spittie/octotree](https://github.com/Spittie/octotree) No pull-requests because I've moved pretty much everything to make it working. The right way would probably be to use some build system, but who has time for that? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's fast, thanks a lot. Let me see if I can roll out a build script and merge your code (as well as the Safari fork made by another person).

<comment><USER41> If you do, that would be awesome, considering that I'm too lazy to maintain the firefox version for a lot of time :)

Not that I did change a lot of stuff, but with everything in a different folder I can't just git pull from your repository.

And thanks for the great extension!

<comment><AUTHOR> Done. I've added a build script to generate structures for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The prebuilt packages for Firefox and Safari are here: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/tree/master/dist](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/tree/master/dist). Thanks again for the direction.

<comment><USER41> That was fast! I can't edit my old comment, but I've changed the readme to point to your repository. When this thread die, I'll delete it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hacker News will never cease to amaze me everyday. You guys are the best. Is this going to be open sourced?

<comment><USER43> It is open source: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great extension, except in private repos, every time I click on a file (from github proper) the extension animates outward while telling me that it doesn't work with private repos. Extremely annoying and resulted in uninstall :(

edit: i'm not willing to give extension access to private repos, that would defeat the point of being private

<comment><AUTHOR> Private repos require your authorization. I guess you'll be more frustrated if I could code up something to access your private repos without your authorization, won't you? The instructions to create and set the token is here: [https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate- limit](https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree#github-api-rate-limit).

<comment><USER44> Hi there, a better idea is to not animate and to just show a link at the bottom corner. So I get the goodies when everything works, and if it doesn't work, it stays out of my way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that is a good idea. I'll think more about it. The UI certainly needs work to address this annoying behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Good idea. Having nicer icons and align the icon with the text would even more awesome.

</comment><comment><USER45> Brilliant work. This will be a huge timesaver for me. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER46> that wasn't a lacking feature for me but still, good job! also would be nice if author uses github like design instead of windows-ish one

</comment><comment><USER47> What about enterprise GitHub support?

</comment><comment><USER48> This is incredible. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER49> Epic. So fucking cool.

</comment><comment><USER50> Thank you for this!

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow, great work!

</comment><comment><USER52> Wow, you rock.

</comment><comment><USER53> soooooo good!! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER54> Niiice.</comment>


SF things - <AUTHOR> http://www.christinacacioppo.com/blog/2013/04/03/sf-things/

<comment><USER2> The piece that caught my eye is the notion that the soul of Silicon Valley is moving north. I heard it working in Cupertino and I'm hearing it in the bay area. The question is will the old guard (and I'm including Facebook here) be enough to keep the valley...in the valley?

<comment><USER3> I mostly see stay-at-home moms when I go to lunch on Castro in Mountain View. I feel out of place out here but I am _not_ dealing with SF.

(I consult and am starting my own thing, I don't need to be in SF.)

<comment><USER4> I think this is more a consequence of Google glomming up every available sizable office building that comes on the market in Mountain View since they, as well as other large employers like LinkedIn and MSFT--and some smaller companies, like Sumo Logic where I work--offer free lunch.

<comment><USER3> I've been running and getting lunch with a LinkedIn employee lately, I definitely know what you're talking about. The thing is, those people are all out on Shoreline and more or less isolated. What bothers me is that most of the younger startup people like me are usually in PA or head up to the city first chance they get.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Farewell to Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

<comment><USER2> "Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism, and taking such an act in the physical world would, at most, have a meant he faced light penalties akin to trespassing as part of a political protest. Because he used a computer, he instead faced long-term incarceration. This is a disparity that EFF has fought against for years."

This is very related to the founding of the EFF, check out Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown" for a great account of it and one of the early cases (Steve Jackson Games).

<comment><USER3> For those interested, _The Hacker Crackdown_ from Bruce Sterling is available online for free at _gutenberg.org_ (html, epub, mobi, ...):

<http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101>

<comment><USER4> Awesome thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Store arbitrary files with Flickr's new 1TB storage limit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/meltingice/flickr-store

<comment><USER2> This is kind of a dick move to use IMHO. Clearly they are not giving you the space to store arbitrary stuff. It's a neat hack and props to the author but if enough people use this it will not only cause Yahoo! to have to build countermeasures but will also set an ugly precedent for Yahoo! product managers to consider before doing nice things like they did today.

<comment><USER3> This _is_ hacker news isn't it? Re-purposing things in ways that the original designers did not envision is one of the cornerstones of hacking.

<comment><USER4> Please don't try to imply that the rest of us here agree with you in any way just because we're on this site. Hanging out on a site called HackerNews and having a basic sense of right and wrong are things that plenty of us can do simultaneously.

<comment><USER3> There hasn't been a storage facility labeled get 'x' bytes,Kilobytes,Megabytes,Gigabytes or even Terabytes free that did not result in people wondering about if they could use it for general purpose storage.

What surprises me is that a service like this isn't hardened from day one against the most obvious of flaws.

Of course it's wrong, but it is only really wrong when a billion or so people adopt it, and chances are that this will never see widespread adoption, it's just a guy saying 'see what I could do', not an army of people overrunning Flickr.

The cognitive dissonance of seeing a single person perform a neat little trick versus an army of people performing that same trick bringing down a service sits well in my head, I don't feel this is in any way destroying Flickr, nor do I think that it potentially will destroy Flickr.

It didn't happen with Gmail or any of the other services that were 'exploited' in this fashion before. In fact, those are now trying to get me to put as many files on their storage devices as possible (which I really don't want to, the cost of storage is so low I don't need an external service to host my files for me).

Lighten up.

<comment><USER5> Worth noting that the original comment said:

> _This is kind of a dick move to use IMHO._

Didn't say anything about creating the script, just about using it. Possibly, using it at scale was even implied.

Creating this is a hacker move. Using it to store your server backups is a dick move (and also potentially a poor backup policy).

<comment><USER6> Also: setting up a webserver with over 1TB of storage is probably simpler, faster and more reliable.

I also think in this case the hack is a little useless. But I've seen examples where they use it to transfer a lot of 3D data for use in WebGL. And the author of this script is also linking to a nice usecase where is is used for game data: [http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/05/compression-using-canvas- an...](http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/05/compression-using-canvas-and-png.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ... bonus points for whomever gets an HTTP server running on flickr. Maybe I can store my music there too and stream from a webapp that plays these PNG files.

edit: sorry I must be on the wrong message board. Thought this would interest people. Guess I'll take my idea elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> That ruins the service for the rest of us. The phrase "this is why we can't have anything nice" applies perfectly to this post and comment.

<comment><USER3> Maybe we should re-brand the service we're posting this on to 'ConsumerNews' then?

<comment><USER8> Hacking does not have to equal abusing. I could advocate for fair use of a service and still hack it.

<comment><USER3> What's your position on Daeken's hack of the hotel room locks then?

<comment><USER8> IIRC, he was responsible about the hole by telling the company first and trying to work with them to get it fixed. He released the info after they were unresponsive. I think that's proper way to handle that.

But this thing with Yahoo isn't really the same. One is a security breach while the other is trying to abuse a service.

I like hacks and fun experiments. The idea of putting extra content in pictures is interesting but OP was talking about setting up a system around it to put it into wide spread use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember something similar popping up within days of gmail offering 1GB free :) Good times.

</comment><comment><USER10> It looks like we'll have a FlickrFS Fuse implementation shortly.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flickr aside, I am surprised nobody (AFAIK) has come up with a way of sanitizing uploaded image files yet.

I wonder if there's a way for GD/ImageMagick to detect the image data and strip everything else. (And if EXIF data is needed for photographs, import all non-binary EXIF data into the system first.)

<comment><USER12> mogrify -strip imagename.jpg

But it won't help. You could just make your data a real image.

<comment><USER13> You might as well change a single byte. A tiny modification and BANG! nobody notices and the service is pretty useless as a general back-up solution.

They could even implement that in their TOS: "whenever you upload a photo you agree to a random byte being modified on one of the pixels on the border."

<comment><USER14> It would be pretty easy to stick in some redundancy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't this already exist? Multiple times?

Oh well, obvious 'exploit'. Wondering how Y! will react. They must've forseen this, right?

<comment><USER16> Probably poorly.

Question though, how large of a file can you hide with steganography in a 300mb picture?

Would that be big enough to hide an MP3?

On a side note, can you upload files to Flickr that have data appended after the end of the image data? Like people were doing on 4chan until moot removed that capability.

<comment><USER17> I have a wee bit of Stego experience as I've written a couple of implementations. Generally for it to be "undetectable", you shouldn't go with more than 25% of an image file, assuming 24-bit color, being data, as it quickly becomes apparent that there is something fishy going on. Your best bet is to create a kind of "keyed stegonagraphy" where you generate a series of keyed nodes, creating a cycle (in the graph theoretic sense) of nodes, each node corresponding to a pixel, and the entire cycle determined entirely deterministically from the key.

This is akin to key schedulers used in various cryptography schemes, I suppose. The idea is that you REALLY don't want to just shove your data all at the beginning of the file in order, as it becomes really easy to tease out the data with some cursory frequency analysis/bruteforcing. "Oh the first 20 pixels encode the first X bytes of <insert well known file type here>, BALEETED!"

Then you simply have each user pick their own key, stored locally, and have the cycle generated on the fly when encoding and retrieving data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was wondering just how long it would take for this to pop up...

</comment><comment><USER19> Couldn't help but plug this on The Changelog: <http://thechangelog.com/flickr- store/></comment>


Ask HN: SMS deal alerts? - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone, how's it going? My name is Vitaliy and I'm a dealaholic.
A problem I've been running into lately is missing opportunities to purchase good deals because I'm not aware of them quickly enough. Currently, I seek out the category that I'm interested in across several bargain sites and add the RSS feeds to my feed reader (Google Reader <http://www.google.com/reader>). On a daily basis, I'll check Google Reader to see if any of the deals match the criteria of what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, by the time I actually check my Reader and see something I'd like to buy, it's usually already sold out or unavailable.
If I'm having this problem, I figured some of you might be as well.
Anyway, we're participating in an event called Startup Weeekend <http://la.startupweekend.org/> in Los Angeles. The idea is to build a small business with a team of entrepreneurs in one weekend. Out of 45 pitched ideas, only 6 were selected. The entire audience broke up into 6 teams to work this weekend. Our's was one of the six chosen.
Here's how we're thinking of solving this problem: A website that aggregates all the deals across many bargain websites (slickdeals, fatwallet, dealnews, etc). You can create "alerts" for certain keywords that you would receive via text message as soon as a deal that matches your criteria is posted. For example, you are looking to purchase a LCD TV, but you have specific criteria that you're looking for. You would create an account and set up an alert for any deal that contains the keywords "1080" AND "lcd" AND "lg" OR "toshiba". You would receive a text message notification as soon as a Toshiba or LG 1080p LCD TV is available.
I know I would use a service like this, but the important question is, would you?
Here are a few of the unknowns we're facing and could really use the community's help ironing out:
1. Is this in fact a problem? Like I mentioned, I know I could definitely use a tool like this, but what about you? 2. Would you like text message notifications? Or maybe email notifications instead? 3. Is keyword filtering sufficient? What type of criteria do you guys use to search for deals? 4. We need some way to support this service. Could you envision paying some nominal fee to use this tool? If instant notifications could potentially save you $$$ on what you're looking to purchase, how much would this service be worth to you? 5. Expanding on 4, would a subscription based service be acceptable? Only pay if you actually purchase something? Maybe charge per alert? As much as I'd like to only charge if you buy something, each message costs us money to send and we can't necessarily allow people to receive messages indefinitely. Any thoughts?
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated, because ultimately, we're building this to solve a problem you have.
Overview --
Problem: missing out on deals because I don't check website often enough Solution: send me text message alerts for products that match my specific criteria
BONUS: in exchange for your input, we'll provide you with a free account once this thing is up and running.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I don't know if I would use it because I don't think that I run into the "problem" more than 2-3x a year. Maybe it's more often - I don't know - but it isn't a problem that I want solved.

If this was craigslist related, then I would be interested though. This is just my personal shopping habit but I find this problem more with auction- based sites like ebay/craigslist than other online system. If I could specify specifics - model, price - then it would be awesome!</comment>


KLEE LLVM Execution Engine - <AUTHOR> https://klee.github.io <comment><USER2> One of the contributors wrote a memoir of his time spent working on this project as a PhD student and gives an interesting perspective on the challenges encountered:

[http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm](http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> You can also run KLEE on x86(-64) or AArch64 binaries using McSema to lift the binary to LLVM bitcode. An example is here: [https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema/tree/master/examples/M...](https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema/tree/master/examples/Maze)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone using this in practice?

<comment><USER5> I use it - I am writing a subset-of-yaml parser, and I've littered the code with a bunch of abort()/assert() statements for things I don't think should be possible. Running klee over my code spits out ~100K test cases (I let it use any 10 byte YAML input), and so while I don't inspect the output of any of the cases - I do make sure that none of them crash.

Similarly, if I make a change which I don't expect to change the output of the parser, then I can use this test suite to be quite sure that my change hasn't changed behaviour.

One thing I am unclear about is what it means for klee to be "done" on my binary. When it has generated all the test cases, if none of them crash my binary, then does that mean it is impossible to crash my binary in 10 bytes of input?

<comment><USER6> Have you checked out DeepState ([https://github.com/trailofbits/deepstate](https://github.com/trailofbits/deepstate)), it's a symbolic unit testing framework that has an interface similar to google test.

<comment><USER5> I haven't - thanks.

Writing test harnesses specific to the different tools (so far, just AFL and KLEE) has not been particularly difficult - all of them fit easily on one screen. So I'm not sure that deepstate really brings much to the table for what I'm doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Problem of KLEE is lagging behind the latest LLVM version , which changed and improved a lot meanwhile.

<comment><USER8> There is support up to atleast llvm 3.8 now. See: [http://klee.github.io/build-llvm38/](http://klee.github.io/build-llvm38/)

<comment><USER7> 3.8 is super old already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if we could somehow use the work done in prepack to generate similar tests for javascript.

BTW: I don't want to oversimplify it, but it basically just looks at each branch and generates data which would pass the branch, right?

</comment><comment><USER10> What is CS 101 explanation for this project?

<comment><USER11> I found a blog post with a succinct explanation.

> KLEE [runs] a program considering its input(or some other variables) to be > symbols instead of concrete values like 100 or "cacho". In very few words, a > symbolic execution runs through the code propagating symbols and conditions; > forking execution at symbol dependant branches and asking the companion SMT > solver for path feasibility or counter-examples.

[https://feliam.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/the-symbolic- maze/](https://feliam.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/the-symbolic-maze/)

<comment><USER12> Finally, a succint, pithy explanation.

This is great. Makes me want to use it.</comment></comment></comment>


Why aren't you using Aliases in webpack config? - <AUTHOR> https://time2hack.com/why-are-you-not-using-aliases-in-webpack-config/ <comment><AUTHOR> What other tricks do you use to make your code refactor-ready or new-team- mate-friendly?</comment>


Posterous now has a fresh new homepage design, highlights shift from just email - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/08/22/posterous-now-has-a-fresh-new-homepage-design/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Why not just link to Posterous, you know, the subject of the story, instead of a blog?

<comment><USER3> Has some minor, quiet obvious observations. Saying that though your average techcrunch article serves up about the same.</comment></comment>


Fix Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> https://fixubuntu.com/ <comment><USER3> Solution: stop using Ubuntu.

There are lots of other very able distributions out there, many of which not only have better privacy features but also are technologically superior in one way or another.

In no particular order, these are all very capable operating systems for a variety of needs:

* [https://fedoraproject.org/](https://fedoraproject.org/)

* [http://www.centos.org/](http://www.centos.org/)

* [http://www.opensuse.org/](http://www.opensuse.org/)

* [http://www.mageia.org/](http://www.mageia.org/)

* [https://www.archlinux.org/](https://www.archlinux.org/)

* [http://www.gentoo.org/](http://www.gentoo.org/)

* [http://www.sabayon.org/](http://www.sabayon.org/)

* [http://www.debian.org/](http://www.debian.org/)

* [http://www.linuxmint.com/](http://www.linuxmint.com/)

This list is non exhaustive. They are all free. They all work well in different places. There are others too.

We've all had ample indication that Ubuntu was headed for the pits. It's time to move on.

      -- a proud gentoo dev

<comment><USER4> The problem with other distros is the lack of a design. Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I used that did not look like a donkey's ass (back in 2008~). Even today's Gnome Shell does not look as good as Unity... it also does not scale well for my display's 1600x900 resolution (top bar icons are way too small).

The other distros might work well technically, but imho they don't look as good and they require more tweaking, which is a hassle for me.

<comment><USER5> That is completely subjective. A lot of people hate Unity, the same way people hate every DE that exists. So much so that some do not even use a DE. Using a DE as an argument for Ubuntu's advantage is weak as they're usually ambiguous. I say usually because it tends to be that Unity, like Mir, isn't really adopted into any other distribution in official repositories. Even more so after Mir's release, since it'll be dependent on it.

<comment><USER6> Reporting in from the "I hate Unity" department. If I wanted to use something that looks like a mac, I would just get a mac.

<comment><USER7> Favorite "bonus" feature: annoying semi-transparent blurs you can tweak but not turn off. Gratuitous fades. Choppy animations on an underpowered GFX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I (still) don't think online searches are a privacy violation.

1) It's a search box. Stuff not typed in the search box never leaves the machine (unless you count things that do by design, such as web browsers and email, obviously).

2) It's plainly obvious the first time you use it that results are coming back from the Internet. No real user is going to be misled into believing that searches are local. This makes it no more a privacy violation than the default Google search box in Firefox.

2b) There is a prominent notice saying so. If you don't think it's prominent enough, see point 2.

3) It's a search box that didn't exist previously. Canonical invented it. I think it's reasonable for Canonical to create a "search the universe" mechanism on the desktop. Fair enough if you don't like it, or don't want to use it. It's trivial to turn it off (there's even a global Privacy Settings dialog) or to use other searches. But that doesn't suddenly make it a privacy violation; nor the results of your search "ads".

Edit: I should have expected the downvotes. I notice, though, that the downvoters are unable to actually respond to my argument.

<comment><USER9> I'll respond, though I'm sure the reason nobody's responded is they're as tired of this conversation as I am.

1) Yet. When boiling frogs it's best to turn the heat up slowly. Canonical isn't providing a service for free here, they make money mining your searches and sending them to 3rd parties like Amazon. Compare this with its parent distribution's Social Contract. [0] Especially the phrase "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities." Note the lack of a profit motive as compared to Canonical's continuous search for monetization schemes.

2) Real users may not realize they have a choice, or that sending searches to 3rd parties is NOT normal in the GNU/Linux world. Ubuntu has intentionally made itself a "My First Linux" distro so many of its users are new to the idea of software freedom and are in need of guidance.

2b) EULA's are no excuse. Did you know that using Adobe Flash prevents you from working on GNU Gnash? It was in the EULA you agreed to. [1] Everything's confusing during your first *nix experience, the average person probably has a mental list of a dozen things that don't make sense, that's a questionable time to get people to sign off on privacy compromises.

3) Blurring the lines between local and global is interesting. Blurring the lines between Open Source and spyware is not. [2]

[0] - [http://www.debian.org/social_contract](http://www.debian.org/social_contract) [1] - [http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/25#eula](http://www.gnashdev.org/?q=node/25#eula) [2] - [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to- do](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do)

<comment><USER8> I said that there is no privacy violation. None of your arguments demonstrate otherwise.

> 1) [profit motive]

The Mozilla Foundation's main source of income is making money through Google searches. If you accept Mozilla in the GNU/Linux world, then you accept this motive on your own terms.

> 2) Real users may not realize they have a choice, or that sending searches > to 3rd parties is NOT normal in the GNU/Linux world.

This is a philosophical argument about foisting your own beliefs onto new Ubuntu users. Ubuntu has always been the pragmatic distribution. It gained popularity by making non-free codecs and proprietary drivers easily available. This pragmatism has not changed.

And this still doesn't have anything to do with a claimed privacy violation.

> 2b) EULA's are no excuse.

Which is why I had my point 2: that it is plainly obvious that the search is a global search, and that the query was sent out to the Internet. You don't need to read any notice to see this.

> [spyware]

You have not shown that there is any spyware present. That would require some kind of privacy violation.

<comment><USER10> There is a big difference between typing "calendar" in Firefox's search box and typing it in the local desktop's search bar. You seem to imply that they're equivalent.

If Apple felt the need to monetize me every time I typed "Terminal" into Spotlight I'd switch platforms fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ubuntu provides by default an on/off slider in its privacy settings for disabling _the display_ of online search results in the dash[1], BUT I'm not sure if changing that slider to 'off' will also disable _the sharing of searches_ with Canonical's servers. (The language used by the settings app is ambiguous: "When searching on the dash, include online search results - ON/OFF.")

Moreover, I don't particularly feel like spending time & effort examining Unity Dash source code to figure out if and how my information might be shared with Canonical and/or other third parties. Canonical should make an _unambiguous promise_ not to transmit any data to anyone, right there on the privacy settings screen, whenever that slider is set to the 'off' position. I would trust such an unambiguous promise.

So thank you for submitting this website here -- I've bookmarked it for when I upgrade my desktops from 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS next year.

\--

[1] [http://b2b.cbsimg.net/blogs/screenshot- from-2013-03-24-09342...](http://b2b.cbsimg.net/blogs/screenshot- from-2013-03-24-093428.png)

\--

Edit: Added second paragraph.

<comment><USER8> It's open source. Since it sounds like you won't trust Canonical's claim on this anyway, why don't you take a look, or ask somebody who can, instead of creating fear about it?

If it turns out that searches leak out despite the setting, I'm sure you'll hit the front page of HN. Since this hasn't happened, and Canonical have been under considerable scrutiny about it, I think it's safe to say that your conspiracy theory doesn't hold up.

<comment><USER12> If the searches leak out despite the settings, I would like to know about it so I can promptly issue a security update.

<comment><USER10> Shouldn't you explicitly ask the user's permission before letting the searches leak out?

<comment><USER12> When someone uses a box marked "search online sources", they probably don't need to be asked "Are you sure you want to search online sources?"

<comment><USER13> The default is to leak information. There's no opt-out in the installer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My personal fix Ubuntu:

Be careful, this is pretty rude and may break stuff - it is also not complete but some dependencies are too entangled. Only geoclue and indicator-datetime still annoy me. The idea to poll the internet regulary to check for the timezone of the machine is beyond me.

       apt-get purge ubuntuone* # I don't use it
       apt-get purge unity-lens-music unity-lens-video unity-lens-photos # I don't need the integration
       apt-get purge friends* # I don't use this either
       apt-get purge telepathy-logger telepathy-indicator telepathy-salut # pidgin is enough for me
       apt-get purge unity-scope-musicstores unity-scope-openclipart # No need for that in Unity
       apt-get purge oneconf # I don't want to sync my settings
       apt-get purge empathy # pidgin works fine
       apt-get purge software-center* # synaptic is enough
       apt-get purge evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-goa evolution-calendar-factory # thunderbird and lightning for me
       apt-get purge unity-scopes-runner unity-webapps-common xul-ext-unity xul-ext-websites-integration # my browser is enough - no integration for me

       apt-get --purge autoremove
       apt-get install pidgin synaptic

Shrinks RSS from 622MB to ~400MB on my system.

<comment><USER15> here's mine - [http://www.lambdacurry.com/super-fast-lean-ubuntu- setup/](http://www.lambdacurry.com/super-fast-lean-ubuntu-setup/)

It removes Unity and switches to gnome-shell, removes nautilus and other stuff and replaces it with nemo, geany, etc.

I do have some additional tweaks to improve wifi, etc. but the base install brings my RSS with firefox (I consider that a minimum) to about 500 mb on 12.04

<comment><USER16> Why even use Ubuntu at this point? Why not Debian? Or even something totally different?

<comment><USER17> Why switch to Debian? It's not like his customization does transform it into a radically different distro. For one thing, he keeps the Ubuntu repos (which I personally find better on a Desktop).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All Linux distros should be free charities and their developers should eat catfood and ramen.

<comment><USER19> While I see why people are unhappy with the sale of their data and ads, I have to agree with you on this. While obviously I don't enjoy having my information collected and sold without me really knowing by default, they do need to get money somehow.

I feel like we're in a weird transitional period where the "free internet" in which all major apps and services we used were VC funded and growing, completely free with no ads and nothing you have to pay for, and are suddenly starting to realize that they have to make money. So they start selling data, serving tons of ads, etc and then people get angry that their data is stolen, they are being showed ads, posts from people they don't follow are getting injected into their streams, etc.

There's nothing to be angry about here, it's just this now gigantic company putting in work on something you love and use all the time trying to get the funds to _continue working on it_.

I understand that a lot of people just won't pay for things no matter what, and you know what, that's fine - they can use the versions that are packed full of ads and sell your data. But what I would really love to see is when you use a service for them to give you an option between the two. You can either use this for free and we'll sell your data and show you ads, or you can pay us and we won't do any of the above. At least that way it's clear, and if you choose to use it for free then you are conscious that they are making money off you somehow.

I think the closest model I've seen to this honestly is in the app store - <USER2> lot of apps release 2 versions, a free and a paid version. The free version is somewhat limited and has ads all over the place, and the paid one has none of the aforementioned flaws.

We are just so accustomed to not paying for anything, and I feel like when reality comes crushing down that oh wait, now that the VC funds have dried up and the company needs to actually be profitable, the money has to come from somewhere.

 _tl;dr_ pay for the things you use, because they are worth it. and if not, stop using them.

<comment><USER20> Somehow, _every other publicly available Linux distro_ doesn't need to include spyware in order to do their job.

<comment><USER21> And is every other publicly available Linux distro working on the same scale and trying to accomplish the same goals Ubuntu is trying to?

Also, is it just me or do most HN users now do not know what spyware means? Openly conducting a search that is clearly sending that data over the internet is not a covert way of collecting data, quite the opposite it's very much in your face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This whining about Ubuntu is ridiculous. Removing the shopping features is easy enough anyway, without devoting a site to it, never mind posting it to HN.

Furthermore, there's plenty of choices out there. The best of which (IMO) are openSUSE, Fedora, and Arch/Manjaro. Mint is terrible - like a buggier version of Ubuntu or unstable Debian...

Furthermore, Canonical puts alot of work into Ubuntu. They deserve to get paid. Maybe consider actually using Amazon through their app as a way of contributing?

<comment><USER23> is it possible to pay them and get an "ad free" version?

<comment><USER24> Since it is basically possible to get an "ad free" version by disabling that feature, and it is possible to donate to them. Yes?

<comment><USER25> That isn't the same thing as you clearly know... Paying to have things privacy infringing settings disabled and donating _and_ then having to disable said privacy infringing settings are very different things.

<comment><USER24> I am somewhat sympathetic to your point, but do feel it is overstated in this case. It would be one thing if there was some indication of ill intent. From all I've seen, I just don't see it as an attempt at being deceptive. Marginally useful? Sure. Trying to trick people into thinking their computer isn't sending data back? This is akin to hating cell phone providers for creating tracking data on you. It is rather obvious that the data has to have been sent across the wire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If people did 30 seconds of searching they'd realize this information is available on the official Stack Exchange site AskUbuntu.com which is directly supported by Canonical's paid staff:

[http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove- amazo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon- search-results-from-the-dash-or-disable-the-feature)

<comment><USER27> True but this site also acts as criticism to the approach in the first place, and also guarantees that this information will remain available and findable in the future, should Canonical change its mind about making this information easy to find.

<comment><USER26> I'm just trying to point out that the people who say Canonical is trying to silence the guy are just talking out their ass. They are freely providing this information in the number one place people go to ask questions about Ubuntu. All they did was say (incredibly nicely and politely) "Hey, umm... so, that's our copyrighted name and logo, and you know, you're really supposed to ask permission before using them".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [http://www.debian.org](http://www.debian.org)

There, fixed.

<comment><USER29> I love Debian. But I wish they had a stable version released more often.

<comment><USER30> You could try getting on the testing release which (as far as I can tell) is still ten times as stable as Ubuntu while still getting frequent updates. Testing is the best of both worlds IMO (stability <-> freshness)

<comment><USER25> My only problem is compiling nvidia drivers on the testing default kernel right now. At least there was a bug keeping it from compiling with dkms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why you shouldn't paste code from websites directly into terminal: [http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy- paste](http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy-paste)

<comment><USER32> Did you read the part explaining what each of the commands does...?

<comment><USER33> Did you read the linked article? It doesn't matter what it _looks_ like you're copying/pasting, or how it's explained in the site you're copying/pasting it from.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for posting that - I came in here to do the same thing but you beat me to it. Please read the linked article before ever copying and pasting from the web!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Alternative method: click the big on/off switch for online search results.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not defending Ubuntu. I think it's gross that they include this at all, and extra-gross that it's on by default. But let's not get _too_ carried away with the hyperbole and conspiracy theories.

Just read the source! Or if you don't trust the source, just examine your network traffic. Pretty easy to verify whether the button does what it claims...

 _EDIT /PSA_: Don't copy/paste things from a website directly into your terminal. See [http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy- paste](http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy-paste), for example.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "In case you are either 1) a complete idiot; or 2) a lawyer; or 3) both, please be aware that this site is not affiliated with or approved by Canonical Limited."

"This site criticizes Canonical for certain privacy-invading features of Ubuntu and teaches users how to fix them. So, obviously, the site is not approved by Canonical."

"And our use of the trademarked term Ubuntu is plainly descriptive—it helps the public find this site and understand its message."

<comment><USER8> > "And our use of the trademarked term Ubuntu is plainly descriptive—it helps > the public find this site and understand its message."

I disagree. askubuntu.com already exists and is officially sanctioned. From domain name alone, I think it's reasonable to assume that users will believe that fixubuntu.com is also officially sanctioned. Traffic generated by users being misled into going there is not legitimate in terms of the trademark.

OTOH, ubuntusucks.com is obviously critical commentary. I don't think that would (or should) be a trademark violation.

<comment><USER35> " Traffic generated by users being misled into going there is not legitimate in terms of the trademark."

FixUbuntu is a very very very very clear case of nominative fair use.

I can't think of a less close case in recent memory. They are using the trademark as it should be used - to describe the product they are talking about.

The fact that Ubuntu may not like what they are saying makes no difference. The disclaimer makes clear it's not associated, and they don't pretend, anywhere, that they are associated.

<comment><USER36> Then how was Facebook able to force the extension FacebookFixer to rename itself to FFixer?

<comment><USER37> They were also using the Facebook name to describe their own product. Fix Ubuntu is not (yet) the name of a separate product. When they start hosting a downloadable UbuntuFixer package, expect more trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin I use XMonad, and don't have these problems to fix (in a sense, because XMonad 'fixes' them). For those who are on Linux who've never used XMonad, I suggest you give it a try. It's awesome. I'm on Ubuntu 13.04 and have never been bothered by ads. Also, I find the instantaneous desktop switching and fullscreen windows, resizable tiling invaluable.

<comment><USER38> For people that love Emacs and Lisp, I would suggest to also take a look at StumpWM. It's implemented in Common Lisp, and you can customize and develop extension on the fly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I started using Ubuntu in 2005, and fell in love with it almost instantly. It was great for a long time before the slide began. It's sad that this site exists.

<comment><USER40> Sad that it exists or sad that it needs to exist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Regarding that "disclaimer" in the corner, here's why it was added:

[https://micahflee.com/2013/11/canonical-shouldnt-abuse- trade...](https://micahflee.com/2013/11/canonical-shouldnt-abuse-trademark- law-to-silence-critics-of-its-privacy-decisions/)

<comment><USER42> US Trademark law is kind of sticky. If you don't actively defend your trademark, you can lose it.

<comment><USER43> But isn't there a 'fair use' clause? At least there used to be one at one time before we lost our liberties, rights, and freedoms with the DMCA and Patriot Act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I fixed it by switching to Mint. I'm liking it so far.

<comment><USER45> It's so depressing that I need to keep on devoting mental energy to Linux environments. When I use Windows or OSX I don't have to keep on guessing on what-the-what is going on.

Then I go back to Linux for something and everything I used to know is now completely useless.

<comment><USER46> I'm pretty openly not a Linux desktop user, but come on: if Windows hasn't rearranged core functionality in the XP to Vista/7 transition, and again in the 7 to 8 transition, and _again_ (less so, but noticeably) in the 8 to 8.1 transition, then I don't know what your standard is. (Apple's been better about it following the initial iOS-esque feature landings, but that, too, was disruptive.) Conversely, Ubuntu's operated roughly the same way since Unity initially landed, and if anything, has become more coherent. I can't speak to other distros, but I doubt it's been a radically different story there.

<comment><USER45> I really haven't noticed a big difference between XP to 7. The control panel things moved around a bit, but the settings were all still in the Control Panel (and you could get the classic view back easily), and I had to figure out how to right-click on things "run as Admin". My son just hopped from XP to 7 and he's been having zero issues.

I admit I haven't gone to Windows 8. I owe myself a new laptop and I just have this feeling of dread about that.

<comment><USER47> As someone who recently had little choice but to start using 7, I can say that the differences between XP and 7 are vast, many, and annoying. Some can be fixed with Classic Shell, some by a few choice changes to settings and appearance, but some are just features that were removed.

<comment><USER45> As I get more experience in 7, I am finding it more painful. It might be one particular implementation where any attempt to bring up network settings resulted in nothing happening, not even an error message.

Also, clicking on the "volume" icon should not bring up a spinning blue circle, not even for a millisecond.

I just might get chased into a MacBook or whatever they are called these days. And I don't like Apple very much right now so that's something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm not whining here, I'm a long-time Ubuntu user and want it to do well and become more popular, but if the 'year of the Linux desktop' is ever to happen, there are greater fixes that Ubuntu needs (Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro that, at this time, has a chance of becoming mainstream i.e. reach at least 5% usage share).

For starters, it needs to work out of the box with the average user in mind. I don't think I've ever had a smooth install that didn't require searching the Ubuntu forums to get basic stuff running. If Ubuntu wants to compete with Windows, it can't ship an operating system that can't wake from a suspend on most laptops and requires using a terminal (which most people don't even know what it's for) to perform basic tasks and configuration. The experience for a novice computer user, however terrible you think Microsoft is, has always been excellent on Windows in that it suits their needs of requiring only little knowledge of how software works.

<comment><USER49> Interesting; I mostly agree, except for the "no smooth installs" \- from my data points, where I was struggling with Windows drivers, Ubuntu had been mostly plug-and-play (since about 10.04 onward). Then again, my userbase is mostly using office PCs and laptops, without too specialized peripherals.

<comment><USER50> Agreed. Most of the time, I have no problem getting my laptop upgraded to the newest version, and all of my drivers are already there; no need to search online for any of them.

However, I also have the problem with small, minor things either only partially working or being completely broken (e.g. when I updated to 13.04, it started hiding applications on me, but it 'fixed' itself some time ago).

I think it would be a double-edged sword if the 'year of the Linux desktop' did occur. On one hand, more people would be using a great set of OS's and we would probably get more updates and flashier new features. However, with more people understanding the Linux kernel and how it operates, more 'black hats' and 'script kiddies' would have the tools to damage Linux systems, create Linux-based viruses, etc. In my opinion? I'm OK with where Linux is right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> People use default Ubuntu with Unity? From what I see, most people use a variant (X/L/K) of it and those are really well put together without (most) of the Canonical crap.

<comment><USER52> I like very much ubuntu-gnome. They need some help [http://ubuntugnome.org/](http://ubuntugnome.org/)

<comment><USER51> I tried it with, I think, 13.04 and you could see they need people testing it. For a raw Gnome distro Fedora is the better choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ahhh... Unity.

Shortly after upgrading, I needed to burn a CD. So I go to fire up Gnome's Brasero. I start typing it in, and before I've finished, Unity helpfully provides me with advertisements of bras for women. At work. Yeah, that's helpful.

</comment><comment><USER54> If you're looking for a simpler OS, you should try Xubuntu:

[http://xubuntu.org/](http://xubuntu.org/)

<comment><USER55> Does Xubuntu have any of the privacy concerns / "features" built in that Ubuntu does?

<comment><USER56> Nope, all the "features" are built into desktop environment (unity) rather than ubuntu itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Proud user of Trisquel[1] since 2010. It's a fork of Ubuntu that adheres to GNU's Guidelines for Free System Distributions[2].

While I'm aware that the general opinion of the free software movement ranges from "extreme" to "considered harmful," it is a nice feeling knowing that the creators of the distro have some ethical guidelines in place to prevent things like this - as it turns out, the free software types also tend to be some of the louder privacy advocate types as well.

Mint is probably a better option unless you know your system does not require proprietary drivers, as GNU/FSF kosher distros use a version of the kernel that lacks those proprietary drivers.

[1] [http://trisquel.info/](http://trisquel.info/)

[2] [https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution- guideli...](https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution- guidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Canonical is using people and organizations who use Ubuntu: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/11/canoni...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/11/canonical-abused-trademark-law-to-target-a-site-critical- of-ubuntu-privacy/)

I had recently made Blastarix: [http://blastar.in/linux/](http://blastar.in/linux/)

I am now scared that I'll get sued, just because I modified Ubuntu, renamed it to Blastarix, and removed the Amazon search and ads feature with some other tweaks. I do not know how to remove the Ubuntu logo and startup screens and I used uck to make the distro. I also added the 32 bit Steam for Linux client so gamers had it pre-installed and most developers play games on Steam anyway.

</comment><comment><USER58> " I wanted to update/install my nvidia drivers, so I opened the dash and typed "drivers". IT DISPLAYED GOLF CLUBS on sale at Amazon!"

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/bikeshed/vtXkVdALoJ8/N...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/bikeshed/vtXkVdALoJ8/Nh-R5UuhHyUJ)

Of course, 14.04 will increase the usability level by automatically charging your credit card, with _next day delivery_ of the golf clubs _guaranteed_.

<comment><USER59> Ha, check out the petty retorts to the sentiment as well. One guy even stoops to nitpicking the other's (perfectly cromulent) grammar. And of course the requisite brandishing of the dreaded "FUD".

This whole thing is pathetic, why defend it? Why is it so hard to admit that your precious free software has problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> You misspelled "Fix Unity".

Yes, of course average desktop users don't get the difference between OS and desktop manager, but a) wasn't that one of the issues we were supposed to solve with Linux on the desktop?, and b) those users are never, ever going to follow those instruction.

I'm all in favor of spreading awareness, encouraging people to turn this crap off and putting pressure on Canonical to at the very least make this explicit opt-in.

But this is just jerking off in the dark.

</comment><comment><USER61> As a Gnome user all this Unity madness just went over my head - I never had to deal with it. But there are things that keep breaking from one release to the other (for which I blame myself for having twitchy update-trigger fingers). But as a whole I'm a happy user in particular that now Steam is on Linux. My question is - how does Steam work on the Ubuntu derivatives like Xubuntu and Mint? Will it work on Debian?

<comment><USER62> Steam works fine on both Xubuntu and Mint. Haven't tried it on Debian yet

<comment><USER63> I use Steam on Debian stable and it works absolutely fine, I've never had an issue with it. The games run great too.

<comment><USER25> How did you install it? Also what games work great? For instance team fortress 2 had some weird shader problems on stable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> He should have added the code to install a compiz plugin to move that damn Unity Bar from the left to the bottom of the screen like 90% of normal human beings have wanted it since the beginning.

Let's just be honest, Mark Shuttleworth has Steve Jobs envy, as many creative types do. They want to be the "creative arrogant leader that everyone has to listen to".

</comment><comment><USER65> if you are worried because what you type at the dash is being sent to third parties for advertising then you should stop using google to search anything (yeah including maps), this is the last reason I wouldn't use Unity, I actually don't use it, but I don't use it because of the friggin vertical toolbar and the sluggish performance.

</comment><comment><USER66> Pasting code from a website, even with explanations, worries me far more than someone recording my Internet search history.

</comment><comment><USER67> frankly is canonical is getting money from me typing "gedit" or virtualbox a couple of times them thats ok for me, its not like their scanning every document on your pc and sending information around.

on a side not i would like to know how much people complaining about ubuntu practices still google services.

</comment><comment><USER68> This becomes more relevant every day: [http://magnatecha.com/moving-from- ubuntu-to-debian/](http://magnatecha.com/moving-from-ubuntu-to-debian/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I really like the disclaimer in the bottom right. Except for the "idiot" part at the beginning which I feel cheapens the message, it is very well written in clear language.

<comment><USER69> The use of idiot is necessary as no sane person will learn anything from reading that that they didn't already know.

<comment><USER27> Spoken like someone who lives in a tech bubble and has no concept of tact.

Are you a developer by chance?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I get:

        No such schema 'com.canonical.Unity.Lenses'

when running the script, and a few lines below:

       E: Unable to locate package unity-lens-shopping

</comment><comment><USER71> Been using lubuntu on my laptop ever since I got it

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm surprised there isn't an offshoot distro that is exactly identical except has all of these features disabled by default.

</comment><comment><USER73> why yes, let's encourage people to copy and paste random code snippets from the internet into their terminal.

</comment><comment><USER74> If only this also replaced Mir with Wayland, upstart with systemd, and Unity with Gnome.

</comment><comment><USER75> I am just using Elementary Os.

<comment><USER76> How do you like it so far? Any issues,bugs?

<comment><USER75> Been using for the past 4 months and i can say that is fast, easy, out of the way, no bugs so far, boots in a blink, and the design although is a rip off of OSX, is very pleasant to the eye.

On the "bad" side, several packages are outdated (since is base in Ubuntu 12.04) and not too many tools for customization. Is almost perfect. If just want something that just works and not to worry about in the future, use eOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> this should give a nice boost to fixubuntu.com page hits. nice work canonical - I knew you secretly wanted people to disable the default security problems... cheers...

</comment><comment><USER78> Use Arch. Problem solved. Yes, it takes a bit more work, but you get a much better understanding of your system and learn how to block or eliminate things (like this ad-serving search crap) you don't like.

<comment><USER79> Or: CentOS with EPEL and Nux repos for slightly older but solid packages,and just get work done...

Conservative VS leading edge I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Wow, this made the search a _lot_ faster. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER81> I see a Streisand Effect in the making here.

</comment><comment><USER82> s/fix ubuntu/fork ubuntu/g

</comment><comment><USER83> I just installed 13.10 today, perfect!

</comment><comment><USER84> Choose Debian, Mint or Xubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER85> Better option >> [http://www.crunchbang.org](http://www.crunchbang.org)

</comment><comment><USER86> Fine but I simply use KUbuntu.

</comment><comment><USER87> I just don't use Unity

</comment><comment><USER88> 1) Install ratpoison...

</comment><comment><USER89> fyi, Arch has the best wiki. that is all.

</comment><comment><USER90> Just use Xubuntu!</comment>


Russia Is Reportedly Banning LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://globalvoices.org/2016/10/25/russia-is-reportedly-banning-linkedin/ <comment><USER2> > A judge found that LinkedIn illegally shares non-users' personal data > without their permission. In what could have even more far-reaching > consequences, the Moscow court also ruled that LinkedIn collects personal > information from users in Russia without storing the data on servers located > in Russia — a legal requirement introduced last year that few foreign > Internet companies respect.

I might move to Russia one day if this sort of thing continues.</comment>


Why we distribute C++ Libraries as source code - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/6-reasons-why-we-distribute-c-libraries-as-source-code-2dc614d5ef1e <comment><AUTHOR> reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6pi2bs/6_reaso...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6pi2bs/6_reasons_why_we_distribute_c_libraries_as/)</comment>


Show HN: Macro – Keyboard Shortcuts for the web - <AUTHOR> https://usemacro.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Not to be that guy, but it seems like you should disclose you're using Google Analytics[0]. It seems like every extension/cli tool that isn't upfront about these sort of things always get called out for it and the negative attention that brings.

0: [https://github.com/UseMacro/macro-chrome- extension/blob/mast...](https://github.com/UseMacro/macro-chrome- extension/blob/master/chrome-extension/js/analytics.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the data policy we just made: [https://github.com/UseMacro/macro- chrome-extension/blob/mast...](https://github.com/UseMacro/macro-chrome- extension/blob/master/data-policy.md)

<comment><USER3> why does a keyboard shortcuts extension need to collect any data in the first place?

<comment><USER4> If you're developing a keyboard shortcuts extension, would you rather have an idea about how the product is being used or stay completely in the dark? Which do you think would help you more in developing new features?

<comment><USER3> If you care about having users at all, it would be wiser not to antagonize them by send their information to third parties.

<comment><USER4> So you would rather know nothing about how users are using your product, rather than risk offending the subset of users that are vehemently against telemetry?

<comment><USER3> There's a simple and polite way to learn that - just ask some of them.

I don't think very many users would go out of their way to be vehemently pro- telemetry either. It's indistinguishable from spying. Most people just shrug off their own inability to counter it and carry on with their lives, that's why marketers and other scum are able to get away with it. But it's certainly not in the users' best interest - I sincerely hope you have that interest at heart.

<comment><USER4> I do, and telemetry definitely has a place in my mind to help achieve that. I'm sure you will call me scum or something worse, but I sincerely hope that you can see that maybe it's not as black and white as you see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone compare this to using vimium. I've been using that for a while and an mostly pretty happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. Vimium provides mostly generic shortcuts for all websites. We find that there's a huge potential for better shortcuts on popular websites like Messenger and Google that are tailored towards the app.

For example, Cmd+Enter sends an emoji, whereas there's no alternative on Vimium iirc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Try Macro now for free." makes me think that at some point you'll be charging for the Macro. Are there any plans to monetize in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning that. I'm going to remove "for free", no plans to monetize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work! I made something similar sometime back: [http://shortkits.com](http://shortkits.com)

Although, people weren't interested enough or I couldn't get people to use it enough.

Goodluck with Macro!

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks awesome! Really similar to what we want to build for our users. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using vimium for years now, the biggest problem I find is it only works 90% of the time. Will try this out for a bit to see if it bridges that gap

<comment><USER9> Having `d` (close tab) work on all pages except special ones puts you in a place where you might as well just use `cmd-w` (browser default) to close tabs because it actually works all the time.

That experience repeating with a few more critical vimium features and I ended up uninstalling it. Firefox's vimperator, on the other hand, was just great. Though I haven't found a replacement since Quantum.

<comment><USER10> There's Vim-Vixen [1] and Tridactyl [2] for Firefox Quantum. Both suffer from "you can't use the extension on all pages"-itis, and Tridactyl even manages to break a handful of web pages, but for me it was good enough to stop using Firefox ESR and Vimperator.

Disclaimer: a lot of Tridactyl's jank is due to me.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim- vixen/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl- vim...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tridactyl-vim/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Macro is a Chrome extension that makes users more productive on the web through keyboard shortcuts.

Macro offers powerful website-specific shortcuts and instant keyboard shortcut discovery across many websites. Think Vimium and Reddit Enhancement Suite in one. Learning one website's shortcuts means you won't have to learn it again for a new website.

Let me know your thoughts or comments!

<comment><USER11> Does this play well with the likes of Vimium? It seems to steal some of Vimium's most common bindings.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've implemented this with inputs and other Chrome extensions in mind, so it should work with Vimium. Our shortcuts mostly use modifier keys so that it doesn't interfere with anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Have you considered Firefox support? Since there are only minor differences in the underlying API nowadays, it isn't hard to build an extension for both browsers from the same source!

Source: currently maintaining a production extension for both Chrome and Firefox out of the same codebase

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, since we're first focused on an MVP. It's something we do have in mind for our roadmap!

How difficult is it to maintain both browsers compared to only one?

<comment><USER12> Not particularly challenging. There's a couple small things you have to add to the manifest usually, but no big deal.

I might actually submit a PR for Firefox support in a day or two if I get around to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> that would be awesome! Let us know if you have any questions, happy to help you get onboarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can't open "alt + /" on german QWERTZ keyboard.

<comment><USER14> Literally have this problem all the time with Mac + German Keyboard...50% of shortcuts in menus (e.g. Atom editor) don't work...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I believe that focusing on individual pages will slow down the pace at which you can advance. Every user may have tens of pages which he/she visits every day. I reckon that supporting thousands of different pages would be a burden and it would be nearly impossible to please every user.

Instead, I would recommend aiming to develop a rock solid swiss knife for online keyboard shortcuts in the long term as an alternative to vimium with some fine tuning for the most visited 100 websites for instance.

I would probably not feel the need to have an extra layer on top of vimium otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, we're aiming to optimize for the most popular websites first. No plans for supporting ALL websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use other keyboard extensions why isn't there a full list of available shortcuts provided on the page? Just so I can see without installing the extension.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like this. Plans to make it work with [https://eddtor.com/editor](https://eddtor.com/editor) ? :D

</comment><comment><USER18> I would love if this would be like greasemonkey but for shortcuts where I could create custom ones for my favorite sites and share the scripts.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it only works on google.com, I feel the other Google TLDs don't differ enough to not enable it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed!</comment></comment>


Why I Like Math [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.southparkwillie.com/SPinfo/mathessayfinal1.pdf <comment><USER2> I like the way this is framed in terms of the comparison to a religious experience. A few years ago I had one of those "unified model revelation" experiences in a non-mathematical field, and based on that experience I think I would ask the author how the follow-on learning or application went. In my experience, the intuitive "experience of the knowledge" was much more striking than the eventual unfolding and application of the logic in that case. However in other cases, the intuitive experience of the revelation/knowledge was weak, yet the model turned out to be somewhat randomly selected by others as interesting or applicable.

I thought this was interesting--that the revelatory experience can end up being so subjective and limited in the goes-nowhere-from-here sense, yet it feels so darn amazing at the time. I wondered if it was similar to seeing a Tetris happen for the first time. An emotional reward in the sense of rewarding an organizational triumph of the mind. And seeing it with the intuition is one of those things our mind loves to count as actually seeing it in real life.

(I've also experienced this as a practicing religious person; in religion though, the subjectivity can quickly become a bummer because the question of one's worthiness or lack of discipline is nearly always up for discussion, especially when you ask why the results were disappointing or something like that)

<comment><USER3> > In my experience, the intuitive "experience of the knowledge" was much more > striking than the eventual unfolding and application of the logic in that > case.

In math applications doesn't matter, just the beauty of the revelation. Understanding how everything in math is connected is the main goal of the field, so understanding more of it is never pointless.

But if we talk about applications then it is that if A and B are the same then all theorems derived for A also works for B and vice versa. This is very important since it automatically multiplies our productivity and learning rate! One such epiphany which many falters on is that x and y doesn't matter, they could be z or µ or whatever. Another which many struggles with but usually overcomes is that 10 + 30 is just as easy to compute as 1 + 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Islam was out because that's not for white people."

For someone who espouses an expertise in mathematics his perspective on religion is quite reductive if not completely wrong in some cases. I guess in addition to math the author is fond of strawman arguments.

<comment><USER5> I think you might be taking this line too seriously. In this piece I don't think the author is trying to lay out a well-thought-out, validated, and rhetorically-correct argument for his point of view -- if he were trying to do that, you'd be totally right and that line would have no place in it.

But in this case I think the article is pretty clearly more stream of consciousness, just what the author believed at the time, legitimate or not -- and even though it's reductive and just genuinely a pretty bad reason, it's also easy to see how his subconscious might be thinking along the lines of "islam? Nah can't do islam, I'm not brown". Our minds generate totally faulty lines of reasoning like that all the time.

(especially if he came into this with a predisposition towards Buddhism, which I wouldn't be surprised about, since Buddhism tends to be viewed as very "cool" to westerners but Islam not as much)

Edit: ok or it was a joke :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was this written by _the_ Matt Stone? I only realized that at the very end, which gives this whole thing another dimension.

Good read.

<comment><USER7> > Was this written by _the_ Matt Stone?

Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The easiest way to experience a sensation of quasi-religious vastness from math might be pondering large numbers.

> Weirdly, thinking about Graham's number has actually made me feel a little > bit calmer about death, because it's a reminder that I don't actually want > to live forever—I do want to die at some point, because remaining conscious > for eternity is even scarier. Yes, death comes way, way too quickly, but the > thought "I do want to die at some point" is a very novel concept to me and > actually makes me more relaxed than usual about our mortality.

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams- number.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams-number.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to consider that people who look for a feeling of one-ness with the world can find it through Mathematics or through religion, even though they are considered almost diametrically opposite approaches to understand the Universe.

<comment><USER10> That's not how I see it. Mathematics is not science, even though science has found practical uses for certain types of math. Pure math does not require observation of the real world for proof, only consistency with itself. As a system of symbols independent of the messy real world I see it closer to mysticism than hard science. I am not saying this as a bad thing, only something we need to be honest about.

<comment><USER11> Well, one can think of, say, natural numbers as a mystical "system of symbols" but I find them extremely close to the real world when I count change in my pocket.

<comment><USER10> But that's what they they were designed for. The first "numbers" were arguably clay tokens meant to represent goods in storage [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_sys...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_systems#Clay_token) Numbers were and are primarily used for accounting purposes. If they didn't accurately represent the change in your pocket then the system would be improved until it did. There's nothing magical about it.

<comment><USER11> Yet, there are people who see magic in numbers, as others tend to do in other mathematical constructs.

<comment><USER10> Exactly my point - that viewing magic in math is more akin to religion than science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can we state that math is something like religion? The search for The One Truth? I feel oddly connected with the author and his thoughts mirror mine almost completely, I was just not able to word them...

<comment><USER11> Not really. Religion is based on belief, and math is based on knowledge and logic. (As to the arousal and other "experiences" \- that's just a psychological side effect that has nothing to do with anything.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Conway's Game of Life on a universal scale. Entertainment for Olympus, or a simulation to find an answer / stave off an inevitability?

The laws of physics and mathematics as the author sees them provide the substrate that seems to imply hard determinism; chaos theoreticians revel as the chaos of the now is reduced to causal determinism predicated on initial conditions and the base laws of the system, all interconnected.

But why quantum uncertainty? Why does observed light exhibit particle behavior while unobserved light exhibits wave behavior? Why does observation collapse the waveform? Are the quantum and classical reconcilable into a theory of everything? Einstein would hope so, but who knows what's really going on. In the end, it seems human knowledge is still, ultimately limited, with a vague sense of having experienced an indescribable "oneness" as the big kahuna of the panaceas.

What if it were fractal? What if there was no "end" but just an infinite regression with deeper and deeper questions with ever-escaping answers? An infinite game, consuming disorder, systematizing into local order - life's eternal war waged against entropy, helplessness, meaninglessness until ending and recurring. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; pure comedy, where the only thing that seems to make us feel alive is the struggle to survive - whether through religion, philosophy, or mathematics. Still makes for some great art along the way; life as a beauty- generator in the void. /rant

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not religious, I'm not against atheism, but I think it's unfortunate that math and science have become so strongly associated with atheism. We tend to forget that many of the most influential scientists and mathematicians were mystics who had experiences similar to Matt's (Pythagoras and Newton being two prominent examples).

Some people need these transcendent experiences or else their lives feel empty. Nothing wrong with finding it through math or science instead of organized religion.

</comment><comment><USER15> ". . . these Magic-Eye moments single-handedly define faith for me."

A Unix fortune today gave me this great quote by German philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich:

"Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."

The broader paragraph, on what kinds of certitude we seek in life and the judgments we must make upon them, is striking:

"The affirmation that Jesus is the Christ is an act of faith and consequently of daring courage. It is not an arbitrary leap into darkness but a decision in which elements of immediate participation and therefore certitude are mixed with elements of strangeness and therefore incertitude and doubt. But doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. Therefore, there is no faith without risk. The risk of faith is that it could affirm a wrong symbol of ultimate concern, a symbol which does not really express ultimacy (as, e.g., Dionysus or one's nation). But this risk lies in quite a different dimension from the risk of accepting uncertain historical facts. It is wrong, therefore, to consider the risk concerning uncertain historical facts as part of the risk of faith. The risk of faith is existential; it concerns the totaliy of our being, while the risk of historical judgments is theoretical and open to permanent scientific correction. Here are two different dimensions which should never be confused. A wrong faith can destroy the meaning of one's life; a wrong historical judgment cannot. It is misleading, therefore, to use the word 'risk' for both dimensions in the same sense."

Matt Stone's essay resonates here I think . . . mathematics goes beyond historical judgments and gets to existential concerns too.

</comment><comment><USER16> That is an enviable feeling to get from Math. It's true that enlightenment may come in many forms. Also, purpose and meaning is desperately needed even from the most sane and rational of us. For the lucky, religion is enough source for meaning and happiness. For others it may take a little more than that.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Mathematics for Human Flourishing" [1] is a beautiful, inspiring book on deeply human perspective on mathematics.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Human-Flourishing- Francis...](https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Human-Flourishing- Francis/dp/0300237138)

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of this, [https://www.businessinsider.com/steven-strogatz- interview-on...](https://www.businessinsider.com/steven-strogatz-interview-on- math-education-2016-6?r=US&IR=T), interview with Steven Strogatz, when he gets onto the idea (and dangers) of what beauty means in maths.

Also, this [https://plus.maths.org/content/andrew-wiles-what-does-if- fee...](https://plus.maths.org/content/andrew-wiles-what-does-if-feel-do- maths) from Andrew Wiles, when he mentions that maths, the actual doing of it at least, isn't so much the cold hard logic of formal equations, that's just how it's communicated. It's the sitting down and trying to grapple with some mathematical ideas when it becomes more akin to musical experience.

iirc, there's a passage in Godel, Escher, Bach where Hofstadter actually works through a mathematical calculation and compares its cadences with musical experience. And there's the poems of Rebecca Elson (Theories of Everything, Explaining Relativity) that do the best job, for me, of describing what is actually appealing about maths.

Like this article, they all emphasise the joy of just sitting down and playing with mathematical ideas. That that is where the understanding and fun really is, though difficult to communicate directly. It's not so much the technical bits of learning formulae and grinding results out of them that, at least when I was at school, was all we ever really did.

</comment><comment><USER19> Lovely! Here's a different take, by a 5th grader :-)

       https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/i-like-math-a-poem/

</comment><comment><USER20> This reads 95% like a personal statement for some university program - I was very surprised to see Matt Stone's name at the end.

</comment><comment><USER21> This essay made me think a lot of Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"

</comment><comment><USER22> I can see by the way you write, you have read enough Buddhist texts.

One thing I would clarify is that Buddhism, as taught by Buddha, doesn't have beliefs. It has hypotheses that are proved causally and tasted experiential you during deep attention and awareness. The word used by Buddha is "Ehipassiko", translated as come and see for yourself.

Carry on with your journey of mathematics and I wish you all the success!</comment>


Q: Why Did Quora Join Y Combinator? A: It Was Almost Free - <AUTHOR>

The content of this article is missing (from Techcrunch). Anyone knows more about this?<p>http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/10/quora-y-combinator/ <comment><USER2> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechc...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F05%2F10%2Fquora- y-combinator%2F&oq=cache%3Atechcrunch.com%2F2014%2F05%2F10%2Fquora-y- combinator%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1186j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8)

You can get it from Google cache.</comment>


NeoAxis Game Engine 2020.5 - <AUTHOR> https://www.neoaxis.com/news/neoaxis_engine_2020_5_released <comment><USER2> It seems it was recently transitioned to a royalty-free open source license with the only condition being to credit the engine[1]. I guess the business plan is now selling support? The most important issue I see is the engine only supports Windows. Is it planned to support other platforms?

[1]: [https://github.com/NeoAxis/NeoAxisEngine#license](https://github.com/NeoAxis/NeoAxisEngine#license)

<comment><AUTHOR> This release is a big step towards multi-platform, thanks to the transition to .NET Core. Support for Mac, Linux is planned. Support for mobile devices, in particular Android, I think will be available this month. You can find technical details in the comments below.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember when NeoAxis was announced about 10 years ago, iirc on Ogre3D forums. It seemed like one guy's labor of love. I am pleasantly surprised to see it's still going strong after a decade. Kudos to the author(s) for sticking with it!

<comment><USER2> Was originally meant to be Ogre-based?

<comment><USER4> It appears to still be based on OGRE. The native wrappers in the repo seem to bind all the key OGRE types into .NET.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are switched from OGRE to BGFX. Now as low-level rendering library BGFX is used. Part of OGRE is used for image loading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this sounds like how I always hoped Unity would turn out :)

Pragmatic editor + C# + Full source code, including the renderer + no royalties + ability to use double precision mathematics = no more flickering bugs + Rider IDE

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there any documentation as to what the underlying component/framework pattern is?

Godot for example is very opinionated on how the game logic must be structured and built (in the graphical UI, specifically). How is it here?

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks really great! Very keen to give it a try. I love the approach of building the interface as a VSCode plugin.

</comment><comment><USER8> What platforms can it build for? I only saw mention of "windows application"

<comment><USER9> .Net Core runs natively on linux and mac as well. Not sure about the mobile platforms.

<comment><USER10> .NET Core the framework does, but there are other major considerations for game engines, such as the render pipeline. For instance, supporting Mac means you need to be able to render to Metal. This engine appears to support Windows only right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The name probably suggests a new take on some piece of software called Axis, a geometrical term that makes perfect sense for a game engine.

It can't possibly have anything to do with Neo-nazism and the World War II Axis powers.

I still can't shake off the connotation.

<comment><USER12> At some point, context needs to be taken into consideration.

Just because you can find a face in any image with 3 holes doesn't mean a face is actually there, or that it's sensible to assume anything of its presence.</comment></comment>


Star Trek and its revolutionary debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/opinion/make-it-so-star-trek-and-its-debt-to-revolutionary-socialism.html?ribbon-ad-idx=10&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> No mention of Iain M. Banks and his money-less Culture where the Minds take care of the humans every whim?

[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/iain-m-banks- culture-...](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/iain-m-banks-culture- novels/)</comment>


The Jail Inferno - <AUTHOR> http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35710 <comment><USER2>
      > [...] than two-thirds of the nation's approximately 780,000 jail inmates.

That's a lot of people to be holding for processing one way or another. Some Googling gave me this informative wikipedia link on the matter if you want to read up on related statistics : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States) .

</comment><comment><USER3> If we ever succeed in creating sentient AI, I wonder if it will be employed in prisons to replace guards?

There are a couple reasons this might be attractive to some:

-Not subject to the same psychological pressures that have been demonstrated to corrupt even well-meaning people when they are put in absolute authority over inmates.

-A prison is a closed system so gathering telemetry and controlling doors, lights and other factors would be easily automated in a manner that does not require a mobile robotic platform. (The facility 'is' the robot).

-The population of a prison is understood to have given up certain rights so the implementation of AI governship may be deemed more socially acceptable, especially if the case is made that it will lead to more humane treatment of inmates.

-

<comment><USER4> "If we ever succeed in creating sentient AI, I wonder if it will be employed in prisons to replace guards?"

Maybe. But it probably wouldn't be a good place to house convicted hackers.

<comment><USER3> No, but I'm sure we'd get a decent sci-fi flick out of it.</comment></comment></comment>