Palm - chrisdroukas
https://www.palm.com
======
aarpmcgee
I feel like the only one who thinks this is kind of awesome. I want a small
phone. As small as possible, that can still text and act as an LTE hotspot,
with very basic browsing, and Spotify. I want that. The iPhone SE was perfect
for me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Phones are my go-to real example of different people expecting mutually
exclusive things from the same type of product. You want a phone as small as
possible. I want it as _large_ as possible.

~~~
anfilt
I don't understand the need for a large phone. If I need a large screen, I
just use my laptop or desktop. Moreover, without a proper keyboard I mostly
just read a tad bit of text. You don't need a massive screen for that.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Photos look better on a larger screen. Especially when you want to show them
to other people. Say, you meet some friends in a café, and want to show them
your vacation photos.

You can fit more text on a larger screen, which makes it better for reading.
You can fit more icons, widgets, etc. It's easier to do precise taps.

Basically, I want a phone as large as it's possible without losing ability to
operate it with one hand (that's when you get a tablet).

------
drewm1980
How about a smartphone brand that promises to never change the UI again after
version 1.0? Users can move their buttons around or change their appearance,
but their investment in muscle memory is sacred. Before javascript hit the
internet everyone used (and frequently declined to update) native apps, and
largely controlled their UI, but as a society we just gave that control to web
designers. Many Vim and Emacs users never let go, but it used to be GUI users
as well; I remember tech savvy mac using university professors with 1000 icons
on their desktop that are all there for a reason. They didn't search; they
just reached.

~~~
TeMPOraL
One thing I miss from the pre-touchscreen era: never-changing UI with _soft-
realtime guarantees_. When e.g. using my old K800i, I had memorized sequences
of actions and delays (eg: "down, 3, ok, wait ~1 second, down, down, ok"). The
_delays_ were consistent. This meant I could operate my phone without looking
at it, without even pulling it out of my pocket. This is impossible in the
smartphone era, not just because UIs change, but because delays are completely
unpredictable.

------
pcurve
I love seeing new product ideas, but I'm baffled at how this one made it all
the way to production.

Basic premise is.. "Hey, we're going to make our smartphone so undesirable
that you won't want to use it except when you absolutely need it. However,
we'll make sure it looks well-built so people know that you've made a
deliberate lifestyle choice and that this isn't your primary phone."

~~~
leetbulb
Seriously. Plus you can buy these things on AliExpress for 1/5th the cost. And
if you don't want to give up your smart phone completely, you can buy slick
looking "bluetooth dialers" on AliExpress for even cheaper.

~~~
joecool1029
The general cheap small smartphone on aliexpress are MTK chipset phones
running android gingerbread (or some other ancient version). You get what you
pay for, unless I’m wrong and you actually have some decent products to link.

~~~
leetbulb
Yeah good call on the MTK chipset, looks like that's the case. :(

------
anfilt
Yay a small phone. Oh it's tied to only Verizon, and costs 350 dollars...

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-
the-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/palm-rises-from-the-dead-as-
a-zombie-brand-launches-tiny-smartphone/)

~~~
bubblethink
Yeah, I misread it originally as $34.99, which may make some sense as a
kitschy novelty thing, even if only marginally.

------
Waterluvian
What an irritating webpage. Just a bunch of pretentious photos with text that
loads way too late.

~~~
JdeBP
It's actually a zero-content WWW site if one has not turned on Javascript.
Aside from the script and <meta>, it comprises just a <title> and some empty
<div>s and appears as entirely blank.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225645)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a zero-content WWW even with JavaScript enabled. Just load of lifestyle
marketing crap, and you have to dig in a bit to get an actual product
description.

------
bunnycorn
This thing has to have a massively crappy battery life (in the real, real
world)...

Seriously, 800mah?

The only reason that smartphones "work" is because they have big screens,
while big screens obviously consume a lot of power and therefore require big
batteries, there's more space for the battery inside as the PCB doesn't need
to be big like the screen.

------
mikestew
OMG, you can almost hear the giant props of the B-52 required to drop this
bomb. As other commenters have pointed out, it can't decide if it wants to be
an iPhone SE or an Apple Watch. It _could_ succeed, but it is going to have to
be cheeaaaap. Which it won't be, 'cuz you know, lifestyle.

------
bengotow
This is a device with a unique approach to mobile user experience, but there
are literally no photos of the UI on the site.

Maybe the idea is that it feels like a phone, so you pull it from your pocket
thanks to extreme smartphone muscle memory. You find your hands have selected
a black glass slab that says "PA LM" in the middle, which is quite
uninteresting, So you put it away. Distraction crisis averted.

(Kidding obviously, but nothing on the site says otherwise! Honestly I wrote
my first mobile app for the Palm V and I would love for this to be a killer
rebirth of the Palm brand. Guess we'll have to wait and see though!)

~~~
skeoh
Not sure if this is what you're referring to but there's pictures of the UI on
the product page: [https://www.palm.com/product](https://www.palm.com/product)

~~~
TeMPOraL
And it turns out it's _just a small Android phone_. There's no unique approach
to any kind of experience.

------
nathan_long
Not
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.),
maker of the Palm Pilot. :(

~~~
esdott
FYI: [https://www.palm.com/about](https://www.palm.com/about)

They reference/sort of say they are the original Palm.

Also, you don’t need another phone line/connection. It will use your same
phone number. I’m sure Verizon will figure out a way to charge for it but it
looks like it won’t be a whole new line.

We’ll see I guess.

------
lostgame
I was deeply disappointed to see this is not a return of the original Palm, in
kind of perhaps a return to a ‘non-internet’ ‘traditional’ PDA or something.

Or...I don’t know. _Anything_ remotely interesting. And yeah, someone else
mentioned the payload of the header of the site, it’s no wonder it behaves so
poorly on my iPhone SE.

If this does have anything to do with the makers of the original Palm, that’s
a damn shame.

P.S. WebOS was freaking awesome. Even if it never had good hardware to back it
up.

------
parliament32
It seems this device works even when it's nowhere near your "full" phone. Too
bad it'll basically require a second data plan.

~~~
peatmoss
To be fair, so do the untethered watches.

------
torbjorn
Yes buy a second phone. What better way to be more present in your daily life?

------
Nicksil
That website is something else. This is _only_ the JavaScript payload fetched
when you visit. (A favorite is the 2 versions of the "lodash" library):

      cdn.trackjs.com/releases/current/tracker.js
      connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js
      ding.wix.com/asdk/dispatcher.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/js-sdk/1.96.0/js/wix-private.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/promote-analytics-adapter/2.62.0/analytics-event-adapter.bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/app/main-r.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/components/components.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/core/core.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/coreUtils/coreUtils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/dataFixer/dataFixer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/first-load/first-load.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/layout/layout.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/linkBar/linkBar.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/mediaContainer/mediaContainer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/platformInit/platformInit.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/santaProps/santaProps.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/skins/skins.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/stripColumnsContainer/stripColumnsContainer.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/tpa/tpa.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/utils/utils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/viewerCompsService/viewerCompsService.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmup/warmup.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/warmupUtils/warmupUtils.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/santa/1.5140.9/packages-bin/wixCode/wixCode.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/services/third-party/requirejs/2.1.15/require.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/@shimil/remote-dom@5.0.6/dist/local.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/data-capsule@1.0.83/dist/statics/frame-listener.bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/fedops-logger@3.0.10/dist/statics/fedops-logger-module.bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/focus-visible@4.1.1/dist/focus-visible.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/gsap@1.19.0/src/minified/plugins/ScrollToPlugin.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/gsap@1.19.0/src/minified/TweenMax.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/hls.js@0.8.9/dist/hls.light.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/image-client-api@1.1151.0/dist/imageClientApi.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/lodash@4.17.10/lodash.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/lodash@4.17.11/lodash.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/mobx-react@4.2.2/index.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/mousetrap@1.4.6/mousetrap.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/pm-rpc@1.0.11/build/pm-rpc.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react-dom-factories@1.0.2/index.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react-dom@16.3.3/umd/react-dom.production.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/react@16.4.2/umd/react.production.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-bundle@1.273.0/dist/bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-components@1.572.0/dist/santa-components.prod.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-core-utils@1.914.0/dist/coreUtils.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-core-utils@1.914.0/dist/warmupUtils.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-data-fixer@1.249.0/dist/santa-data-fixer.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-external-modules@1.66.0/color-convert/0.2.0/color.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-host-platform-services@1.77.0/dist/host-platform-api.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-host-platform-services@1.77.0/dist/host-worker-init.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-mobile-core@1.550.0/dist/mobileLayoutUtils.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-multilingual@1.398.0/dist/languages.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-platform-utils@1.568.0/dist/platformUtils-bundle.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-renderer@1.169.0/dist/santa-renderer.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/santa-skin-utils@1.379.0/dist/skin-utils.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/compsToPackages.bundle.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/dataRefs.bundle.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/wix-ui-santa@1.0.537/dist/statics/viewerComponentService.bundle.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/xss@0.2.12/dist/xss.min.js
      static.parastorage.com/unpkg/zepto@1.2.0/dist/zepto.min.js
      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js
      www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js

This doesn't include the CSS, images, fonts, video, etc.

Remarkable.

~~~
kennydude
Part of that seem's to be Wix's React components ([https://github.com/wix/wix-
ui#readme](https://github.com/wix/wix-ui#readme)) which means they didn't even
build it themselves

------
Apocryphon
How many of these zombie branded products are there? Remember the vaporware
Commodore PET phone?

[https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-
smartphone/](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/)

[https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone-
vaporware](https://pocketnow.com/commodore-smartphone-vaporware)

And how many bonafide spiritual successor products exist? The Gemini PDA
springs to mind.

------
akoster
I wonder how much they paid to acquire that Instagram @palm account (unless
someone who works for them registered it early... Let alone the palm.com
domain)

~~~
r0fl
Does anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is also
the name of a company? I have a 4 letter (with the same repeating vowel)
Instagram account from 2010. There are multiple companies that have that name
in different fields. Can I approach those companies to see if they want to buy
my account or will they sue me to oblivion ?

It’s alwyas been a personal account and is my nickname since I was a child.

On a side note, someone has tried to reset my account dozens of times
throughout the years.

~~~
joecool1029
>Does anyone here know the legality of selling an Instagram handle that is
also the name of a company?

My guess would be it would depend on what the original use was. If you had a
brand in a different sector and offered it I’m sure they could complain but
they likely wouldn’t win. (see nissan.com)

------
hit8run
The idea was chased by the original palm with a phone called Veer. After the
HP acquisition of Palm it was released as HP Veer and I really really liked
the Pre and Veer. Too bad that stupid Leo Apotheker killed of the Phones
before they even had a chance.

------
damm
We've been here before with Palm; is there a reason we should try again or are
they going to pull these devices from the market after a few weeks of selling
them?

P.S. If it's cheap it's going to break a lot... you know palm the cheaper it
is the worse it is

------
anta40
3.3" display. Hmmm a bit smaller than iPhone 4?

Being used to big phones like those Galaxy Note series (yes I use them a lot
for taking notes and reading ebooks), I guess this won't be my main phone.

And too bad it's locked to Verizon, yes? I live in Southeast Asia...

------
forkLding
This is likely going to go the way of the Essential phones

------
zwaps
Palm Pre was easily thr best phone i ever used

This.. Not so much

------
arountheworld
Why not just buy a second smartphone?

------
asprouse
Isn't this just an iPhone SE?

~~~
fetus8
I think you meant to say "Apple Watch".

~~~
calypso
It’s trying to be a phone companion, like a smart watch but in your pocket.
Phones are getting bigger and bigger so this is a way to get a second screen
experience without constraining that experience to a 1” screen on your wrist.

I think that’s what they are trying to do. It instantly reminds me of the
memory cards of the Dreamcast.

------
unixhero
I am bullish!

------
microcolonel
A phone with... a piece of string!

In all seriousness though, a reasonably-sized smartphone is a good idea,
hopefully they don't ruin it somehow.


Building Filtron, a new photo editing platform for Mac and iOS - bootload
http://blog.drewwilson.com/building-filtron
======
michaelbuckbee
TL;DR (though you should read the whole thing) - they've spend $100k+ dollars
and just launched a free app with some IAP filter upgrades.

The article starts with saying how hard and crazy it is to build and an app
and then runs through the empirical experiences as just why that's the case.

However, I think there's a flaw in the initial idea here where the level of
difficulty in pulling something like this off nowdays is just astronomical.

I've been using the 3Axes framework [1] for evaluating ideas like this and
this just seems incredibly difficult to execute on profitably.

Very consumer focused, more a tool than a done-for-you service and really no
pain that it's solving.

1 - [https://medium.com/@mbuckbee/the-3-axes-of-startup-
difficult...](https://medium.com/@mbuckbee/the-3-axes-of-startup-difficulty-
cad7c1ff6950#.5fbswu6ew)

------
danpalmer
This development process seems to exemplify Apple and the old-school third
party ecosystem Mac ecosystem (that in part transitioned to iOS).

Where is the constant iteration to find exactly what users want?

That said, if the aim is to become a sustainable small business, rather than a
billion-dollar VC funded company with no profits, maybe you don't have to get
it right, maybe you can afford to be a way off the mark and still do ok?

I'm not saying that Filtron is way off the mark, but what are the chances they
made exactly what users want, straight off?

------
coryl
Curious about the rationalization behind creating yet another photo filters
app. There are quite a few of them on iOS, its very competitive and they are
all quite polished.

~~~
earlyriser
For months I've been waiting for something like Priime for Mac, I know iOS is
inundated with this kind of apps, but I couldn't find something enjoyable to
use as Priime and ready to work with the thousands of pics living in my
computer (faster, bigger screen, all my pics live there). I even wrote the
team with the suggestion and I'm fine with paying a fair amount for it. I
still haven't used Filtron but it looks promising, congrats to the team.

EDIT: What could be a greta addition is to suggest filters based on the
picture. Or at least indicate in what's the best use of each filter... the
nenufar demo doesn't make it evident.


16 lenses on one camera - XioNoX
http://www.light.co/
======
jay-saint
This camera is not only doing bracketing, it is simultaneously capturing
multiple images at multiple focal lengths and exposures. It is then stitching
this data in software to make composite images that can be re-focused, re-
zoomed and change depth of field after an image is composed.

They are calling it the first multi-aperture computational camera.

edit: Just discussed this some around the coffee pot, that the real value of
this tech will be in new cell phones 2-3 generations down the road. I then saw
this press release about light.co and Foxconn. they have already licensed this
tech. [http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-
foxconn/](http://spot.light.co/light-partners-with-foxconn/)

------
an_ko
To skip to the content:
[https://vimeo.com/141273968](https://vimeo.com/141273968)

This is a great product, but the landing page needs work.

The first video on light.co shows people taking photos with what looks like a
smartphone, with no further explanation. I almost left at that point.

The rest of the page's text is very general, never explaining to me why having
multiple cameras is a good idea, other than wishy-washy "this is amazing
technology" self-praise. It sounds gimmicky.

The /camera page is much better. It explains your value propositions; great
UX, great low-light performance, great DOF control. Make that your landing,
with that vid above the fold.

------
ksmithbaylor
This is a really cool idea! I'd love to see more specs on the 16 individual
cameras, but the theory seems solid. The only image I didn't like in the
gallery was the macro shot of the chessboard. If you look at the pieces in the
background, you can sort of make out different layers (which I presume come
from the multiple lenses), and it looks a little unnatural. But for anything
besides macro photography, this looks awesome!

------
Paul_S
I can't see the point beyond simultaneous (rather than consecutive)
bracketing. If all you want is quality - get a bigger lens and sensor.

~~~
notacoward
You don't think simultaneous rather than consecutive bracketing matters? I
guess it wouldn't, if subjects were all perfectly still and cooperative, but
that's hardly what real life is like. Giving a greater effective depth of
field for a single shot is pretty cool IMO. It would be even cooler if they'd
address over/under exposure to do single-shot HDR at the same time, but maybe
they're saving that for v2.


Team USA Giant Robot Duel - cjm
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megabots/support-team-usa-in-the-giant-robot-duel?new=yes

======
JoeAltmaier
Cool; but what are Suidobashi Heavy Industry up to in the mean time? This will
be epic.


Are Web Apps An Insult To Users? - nephics
http://www.stateofcode.com/2011/06/are-web-apps-an-insult-to-users/

======
pgroves
In a free market, the needs/wants of the consumer eventually overrides the
desires of the producers. Sometimes it takes a long time, but it always
happens eventually. Walmart is an excellent case study in why it's great to be
a consumer in today's economy but sucks to be a worker.

When the consensus is "yeah, thick apps are better for users but web apps are
cheaper to build and deliver," we can safely say thick apps will eventually
win out.

------
Sakes
For some reason this article rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because I feel
like the author is using a link bait title to "teach me" something that
already seems pretty obvious. The whole question answer setup is annoying.

The title suggests that this article is about user experience when it really
feels more like a rehash of pick 2: fast/cheap/quality.

1) Reasonable Time To Market (fast)

2) Flawless user experience (quality)

3) Big Reach (Cheap: big payoff for time/money invested)

------
neovive
What happens when desktop App Stores (e.g. Mac App Store) start taking hold as
the primary delivery platform for the desktop? Will they erode some of the
benefits of web apps on the desktop?

When development and deployment are easier, the end user will benefit from
more frequent updates, fixes and new features.

------
jbwyme
I agree that native apps are the way to go in a perfect world. And yes, we are
developing for the users. However, you are over simplifying the issue.
Depending on the type of development you are doing you may also be doing it
for the money. So when you are determining HOW to deploy your product you must
take into consideration the costs of developing specialized native apps vs
browser-wrapped apps. You should also consider the impact it'll have on your
user base. Are they going to still use your product if it's non-native?
Sometimes the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

*edit: grammar

~~~
ChrisLTD
Exactly.

Not many organizations are going to have the time, money or expertise to make
native apps for all the platforms popping up. With some CSS media queries you
can have one web app that works on PCs/laptops, iPhones, android phones,
iPads, Blackberrys, Palms, Windows phones, etc. Or you can try to build and
maintain native apps for 10+ platforms to serve the same audience.

------
jinushaun
I have to agree with the article. Native apps "feel" better. I think some
users feel uncomfortable with going to a web browser on their phone to use an
app. Feels fragile and brittle. Like they might accidently close a tab or hit
refresh and lose all their data or something. How do I get to it? Where is it
in my bookmarks? How many people know about and use Home Screen Web Apps?

I think solutions like PhoneGap is the best of both worlds. Users get their
"native" app. Developers get to keep their web app.

~~~
flyosity
Except PhoneGap is not really the best of both worlds. Users prefer native
apps because of the quality and consistency of the user interface frameworks
available to developers. If you're building your app with HTML/CSS and
deploying it within a PhoneGap container, you don't have access to UIKit to
build your interfaces, you're still rolling your own which leads to huge
inconsistency, not to mention it's within a UIWebView which is much slower
than native components.

Just because the app is in an executable and not a URL doesn't mean it's a
"native" experience for the end-user.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Why isn't this the case on the desktop?

~~~
glhaynes
Isn't it? What do you mean?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I was referring to this comment:

> Users prefer native apps

Why don't they on the desktop?

~~~
glhaynes
I think they do, for a lot of things at least. There certainly are _some_
things that desktop users prefer in a browser (I see way more desktop users
using Facebook in a browser than via a native app, even though native apps
exist), but if I think of the apps that I see people using day-to-day, there's
a _huge_ swath that aren't in a browser and it's not clear to me will be in
the foreseeable future.

I mean, browser-based email has gotten _really_ good... yet there are still a
ton of people that use native email clients. Hell, I and lots of other people
even use a native Twitter app on our computers - if there's anything that
seems replaceable with an in-browser app, it's Twitter.

Replacement of many native office/productivity/image/media apps with in-
browser apps seems a long way off to me. And it's not just because HTML
doesn't yet fully provide rich/"native-feeling" capabilities, it's also that
people don't want to run all their apps in rectangular browser tabs — maybe
OSes will evolve to not be as app centric so that all of a user's in-browser
apps won't be organized under a single icon in their dock/taskbar (though I
wouldn't bet on it), but I don't see a lot of movement toward that. I wouldn't
be shocked if _20 years_ from now everything's HTML, but it sure doesn't seem
like it'll happen in the next 5.

------
cgranade
If it's easier for a developer to make interesting things, that can translate
into a better user experience as it means more interesting things will get
done. That (mobile) webapps sacrifice a bit of usabilty for ease of
development and portability doesn't mean that users don't derive real value
from their existence.

------
tweekgeek
Developing with a cross-platform kit like PhoneGap solves most of the issues
here. You'll develop for multiple platforms simultaneously, and can tie into
the native capabilities of the platform when necessary.

~~~
Turing_Machine
PhoneGap is pretty sweet, but I found it a little too sluggish for my needs. I
switched to Appcelerator Titanium. Like PhoneGap, it's a FOSS package that
lets you write cross-platform code in Javascript, except that it compiles the
JS to native code. It feels much snappier to me.

------
pspeter3
I agree with the sentiment of this but sometimes it seems like webapps are
faster than native apps. Also, I wonder if Facebook's Project Spartan will
change this paradigm

------
calloc
Does anyone have the text of the page? It is not loading for me here.

~~~
Zef
It's back up now.


Apache Pulsar (Incubating) - mmerli
https://pulsar.incubator.apache.org/
======
nurettin
ActiveMQ, Apollo, Camel, Pulsar. Apache foundation has a lot of redundancy.
And what's with all the Java?

~~~
bdibs
Most projects are from large enterprises, and large enterprises use Java.

------
rsrsrs86
How much overlap does this have with Kafka?

------
zhaijia
seems a great pub/sub messaging system


Design principle: IKEA effect - jodooshi
https://uxplanet.org/design-principle-ikea-effect-2d908b2de81
======
bambax
> _People had the need to be emotionally invested and get rewards from the
> process of making the cake not just the end result._

Yes! Not sure it really works with Ikea, but it works in other contexts. See
this (excellent) video from Ooshma Garg of Gobble telling the story of her
startup:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A21qyXsAfME)

Gobble was at first a marketplace where local people could sell their ready-
made food to other people who don't have time to cook but don't want to order
ordinary take-out.

In order to grow her startup she asked customers what they wanted; they said
they wanted instant orders and it failed.

Then she produced excellent food, and all you had to do was heat it up in the
microwave. People loved the food but sales were sluggish.

The main insight was gained by watching customers use the product inside their
homes; they discovered that although the food was good, people were ashamed to
serve microwaved food to their loved ones.

So Gobble offered ready-to-cook elements that you can prepare in a pan, and
the startup really took off then.

Maybe she would have saved some time by reading this post! ;-)

~~~
vosper
It's sad that the stigma persists of microwaved food being somehow lesser than
"real" cooked food. A microwave is just another tool in the kitchen. People
shouldn't be embarrassed to use it.

~~~
nom
No, what's sad is that so many people can't cook anymore. It's especially bad
in the United States.

It's impossible to prepare a good tasty meal with a microwave. And oven-ready
food is garbage. You can't even re-heat most of your left overs properly. Ever
tried to re-heat a slice of pizza in a microwave? Use a skillet or a grill,
and it's as good as new.

Cooking real tasty food requires many many tools (most of which have been used
for many centuries), a lot of ingredients and skill. It's an art form,
essentially. And a couple decades ago, everybody knew how to do it.

~~~
fragmede
> It's impossible to prepare a good tasty meal with a microwave.

That's bullshit. That's so bullshit that France (they might know a thing or
two about good food) has discussed passing laws to require restaurants to
denote which food on their menu is heated up in a microwave.

eg.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/business/international/in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/business/international/in-
france-a-battle-to-keep-menus-fresh.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-
restauran...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-restaurants-
acknowledge-serving-factory-frozen-
food/2013/07/09/9857b69a-dda2-11e2-b797-cbd4cb13f9c6_story.html)

It was a huge scandal when it came out, because most people didn't even
realize their food was being microwaved!

Yes, the microwave does a terrible job of reheating the slice of pizza that
was left out overnight, but using the wrong tool for the job doesn't mean the
tool is bad. A really good, properly seasoned cast-iron skillet is _terrible_
for making coffee with, but that's no reason to throw it out.

Don't microwave pizza that's been left out overnight. Instead try food from
Picards ( [http://www.picard.fr/](http://www.picard.fr/) ). They don't exist
in the US but they sell exclusively microwave food, and it's just not on the
same level as the sad microwave TV dinners for one that they sell at Safeway.

The microwave's just another tool in a modern kitchen, next to the sous vide
machine, the Thermomix, and the Tnstant Pot. The way the microwave cooks food
makes for healthier steamed vegetables, though regardless of how you steamed
the veggies, slathering them with butter negates some of their health
benefits.

~~~
nom
> That's so bullshit that France (they might know a thing or two about good
> food) has discussed passing laws to require restaurants to denote which food
> on their menu is heated up in a microwave.

Doesn't that proof my point? How do you think that food was cooked? With real
tools, that's how. Not in a microwave. You can't cook food in a microwave.

But yes, I should clarify that I've meant 'store bought oven-ready food'. It's
awful and probably the main cause for the stigma.

And yeah I agree that the microwave is just another tool in the kitchen and
awesome for some things, but you can't cook most meals with it, just prepare
parts of it quickly.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You can't cook food in a microwave.

If you can heat food with it, you can cook food with it. Obviously, microwave
cooking has different behavior than, say, baking in a conventional oven, but
so does braising, pan-frying, cooking in a convection oven, or, well, any
other cooking method.

------
Springtime
I vaguely remember reading about this effect before but honestly, I've never
met someone who expressed this feeling about Ikea products. Whether it's my
own set-ups, friends, or the dozens of people I've bought and sold Ikea
furniture from/to. If anything some have expressed frustration at the
difficultly they had in putting together some builds.

It's also said to cause sellers to place a higher value on the second-hand
sale price due to the bias of assembling something of their own effect,
however those I've bought from rather price their items substantially lower as
they're looking to see them gone for various reasons. Perhaps this bias holds
more true for things like home renovations as described elsewhere in articles
on the effect.

The application of this concept in tech for the examples I've read seems to be
mostly in allowing customer customization which I do think helps give a
feeling of creating something a little unique but personally I'd call it by
some other name.

~~~
wongarsu
I have yet to experience (in person) anybody expressing frustration about
putting together IKEA furniture. The closest thing are some friends who have
expressed bewilderment at "the internet's" view that IKEA furniture might be
difficult to assemble.

~~~
weaksauce
IKEA furniture is not "hard" to assemble per say. It's annoying and
frustrating because the qc on hole alignment and how well they tap the holes
is lacking. Coupled with cheap veneered particle board lowering the overall
build quality.

I am pretty handy and have a ton of nice tools and have worked with my hands
building things for a living for about 6 years or so and a software developer
otherwise.

I actually just had to "fix" a crappy ikea chest of drawers because the
particle board popped out of the dado in the rear piece so the drawer would
rub on the next drawer down. Some cheap brackets were installed as a temp fix
but a real fix would be to install a better bottom board that flexes less and
to glue it in place rigidly.

~~~
Springtime
Agreed about the build quality. Something to consider about assembly is also
the circumstances of the installation. Was talking with a person recently who
together with an engineer assembled one of the Pax systems with the large
sliding rail doors in a space that had literally about a half an inch gap
between the top and the ceiling. Because of this it ended up mostly being
assembled upright, not to mention the task of affixing the upper clips in the
narrow space at the top to hold the slider for the rather hefty dual doors. So
at times there can more factors involved with the frustration than something
like the instructions themselves.

------
mxfh
With IKEA, at least I, don't value my efforts, but the savings compared to
having to pay someone for a perceived(!) zero-skill job, while still getting
the same product.

For me it's the over-embellishment of the general trend of transitioning
things over from the production and retail to the consumer, charging only
marginally less to beat the competition, while reaping in the profit, while
marketing the whole thing as _empowerment_.

The build and material quality of an IKEA furniture is almost never anywhere
near a well made furniture, it's only big plus is in being affordable due to
economies of scale and low transport and storage costs.

Recently IKEA seems to get just outright greedy. Their material quality and
thickness went from solid to barely tolerable in the last 10 years. For me
they are at a borderline point of becoming disposable furniture, where it
makes no sense to disassemble to move furniture even in your own house due to
the one-time only quality of the connections.

Peddling in an urban or more relevantly marketing myth, doesn't even help
either:

«The key marketing innovation that Dichter’s analysis spurred was not the
fresh-egg cake mix, but rather the repositioning of cakes as merely one
element of a larger product, an overall creation that entailed a much greater
degree of participation and creativity from homemakers and emphasized
appearance[!] over taste»[1]

It's a trick! You get a less tasty product, a mere product transitioned into
an outlet of ego. I you're not only into marketing, but also want a good
product it's important to be aware of that deceptive effect.

[1]
[http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp)

------
DubiousPusher
Maybe I'm a snob but I begrudgingly buy IKEA products, view assembling them as
tedium in which I gain 0 improvement in a translatable skill and despise the
sight of their borderline cardboard junkiness until the day I can replace them
and send them off with some stranger.

edit: On the flip side, IKEA actually sells some really nice pulls and handles
for a price far below what I've seen anywhere else.

------
appleflaxen
that plot of "the sweet spot of getting to the ikea effect" is a mediocre
visualazation... it implicitly puts "contribution" and "value" on the same
axis with no way to decouple them.

my biggest question that isn't answered is "how do you define contribution?".
It's not a lot of work (because that's effort), and it's not how much it's
worth in the end (because that's value). So... what quantity are we talking
about, exactly.

 _edit: remove extra words_

~~~
CodeWriter23
I found the plot a bit odd also. But I don't consult designers for
mathematical problems. The text communicated to me that contribution and value
are not directly proportional.

The "quantity" of contribution is measured on an emotional scale. It's how the
individual feels about the impact of their effort. This is different than the
value of their effort. For example, someone telling a joke, the value stays
the same, x% laugh at it. But if the joke were to go viral and tens of
thousands of people laugh, the contribution is increased (making more people
laugh). But the value is the same. The audience had x% chance of laughing.

A different example is the original Star Trek. The value of showing fictional
technologies like videoconferencing and cell phones was very low. It was part
entertainment value and mostly expedited storytelling. But the contribution to
human society is hugely significant, just by prompting people to action, to
pursue the development of such tech, and also by helping people visualize how
such tech would simplify things and make time spent more productive.

------
amelius
If this were true, then an unnecessarily difficult user-onboarding-procedure
would make them like the product better.

~~~
FiveDegrees
Vim or Emacs?

~~~
splicer
and most Linux distros

------
rdlecler1
This feels dubious. People go to ikea because it is cheap but stylish, and
flat back saves shipping costs.

~~~
ouid
The cake mix example was much more compelling to me.

------
tetrep
> The solution was to get out the egg of the dry mixture and allow people to
> add it themselves.

I'm no foodie, but wouldn't dehyrdated/dried eggs be far less appealing taste
and/or texture-wise? If not, why don't we see them around grocery stores? It
seems like it'd be great to have non- or even just less perishable eggs.

~~~
luhn
Dried eggs are definitely less desirable, but in cake batter they are there
for neither taste nor texture, but rather for their chemical properties as a
binding agent. Swapping out traditional egg for dried eggs wouldn't make a
difference as long as the chemical effects are the same.

Also, I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the "egg" previously in the cake mix
was not actual dried egg, but some alternative binding agent.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_eggs)

~~~
luhn
I'm not sure why you're linking to that. Care to elaborate?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
The history of the powdered egg is based on a cake manufacturer that was
sourcing liquid egg from china. By dehydrating the egg, they were able to save
weight/space. So, I think it is likely that the powdered egg in cake mix was
also the powdered egg variety.

------
kleiba
"People tend to place high value on products they partially have created.
Hence, the name IKEA effect." \- Frankly, I've never met anyone who thought
that IKEA products are of particularly high value. They're great because they
offer modern-looking furniture that even students can afford, but at least
where I live, the middle class stops considering IKEA once they leave student
status behind, unless it's for book shelves or stuff like that in the study or
the basement, i.e, not for rooms you actually live in.

~~~
andai
Where do you live? I guess I've only lived in poor and/or stingy countries,
where frugality has a high status.

------
H_Romeu_Pinto
> The article is inspired by the book “Universal Design principles” by William
> Lidwell.

The book doesn't talk about this specific design principle. But the same
author has a course at Lynda.com where he explains exactly that, giving the
same name and using the cake mix as an example, too.

But Dan Ariely is probably the first guy that came with the idea:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaWYKlnli0)
also with the cake example.

------
real-hacker
That's why there are tens of thousands of toy web frameworks out there. It's
quite a simple task (basically assembling routing/template engine/ORM, etc),
but programmers just cannot resist the sense of accomplishment from such a
project. Because the end product looks so valuable, people just ignore how
little value was added in that process.

BTW, I am not talking about full-featured production-level web frameworks.

------
hdhzy
Very interesting principle. Now when I think about this games utilize this
design heavily. For example in Final Fantasy X you can select which statistics
to improve or skills to learn on a Sphere Grid. The Grid is designed so that
its effect is mostly predictable and similar to previous games (in terms of
skills learned and stats increased) but the player has a feeling like he was
in control here.

------
dennyis
I just recently bought my first piece of nicer furniture, not Ikea, but a bed
from Crate and Barrel.

Not only did I love the style of the bed, but they scheduled delivery to my
house.

I assumed I still had to put it together, but the delivery guys assembled the
bed in my room and put the mattress on top.

IMO This is way better than spending 2 hours driving to Ikea, wandering
around, buying, loading, unloading, and assembling the item.

------
zzalpha
For further coverage, this is also discussed in the (kinda disturbing) book
Hooked as the Investment part of their cycle.

------
Rexxar
If the effect applies to programming languages, it could explain why some
people love lisp so much.

~~~
andrewflnr
It kind of shades into post-purchase rationalization, which is (in my
experience), the standard theory of why programmers get attached to all kinds
of tools, notably text editors with high learning curves.

Bear in mind that I am a bit of a Rust enthusiast myself, but I wonder if this
effect is a contributor to Rust hype.

~~~
hueving
Post purchase rationalization doesn't apply in the rust example because you've
received gains that no other language offers.

I learned it knowing well up front that it had a difficult learning curve and
that was the price to pay for safe/performant code.

~~~
andrewflnr
Humans being what they are, the _actual_ benefits don't necessarily come into
the equation. :) Sure, Rust's manifold qualities contribute to its popularity,
but post-purchase rationalization could still be one of the reasons that
people get excited about it.

------
gallerdude
In my experience, if someone has a vague interest in something, then any new
information (in an easy and digestible fashion) goes a long way in making them
care a lot more about what you do.

------
emanreus
Also known as Stockholm syndrome :)

------
eternalban
Golang for furniture.

------
williamle8300
The only problem is that IKEA furniture smells like formaldehyde (more often
than not).

------
obstinate
Holy shit. This really does describe my relationship with my IKEA furniture.
This is amazingly insightful.

------
logicallee
This is very interesting and new to me. Not mentioned in the article, but it
also explains these yogurts you mix a dry side into (
[https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping](https://www.google.com/search?q=yogurt+with+separate+topping)
)

However, I am concerned with the description I just read. I see many classes
of products where the IKEA effect could be done very easily, yet is not. Does
it really apply across the board?

I wonder if anyone has done a very strict AB test against user satisfaction:
for example, shipping boxes of hardware product that are fully assembled, or
where the user must snap one thing together (that is easy and obvious).

Do they observe a difference in user satisfaction?

I am not certain I believe the effect is as described in this article, or as
strong as described in this article, and wonder if anyone has done blinded AB
tests.

~~~
hammock
The two part yogurts are just so the granola doesn't get soggy...

Edit: The greatest example of IKEA Effect in food is the story of how all-
included cake mix (vs from scratch) didn't sell, until they removed the egg
powder and required the addition of your own eggs. Which apparently is an old
wives' tale
[http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp)

~~~
logicallee
Says you. :) I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated
part mixed in. (They're not just with Granola.)

At least we can agree that if there is an Ikea effect, then it is present in
mixing your own Yogurt.

However I am not convinced about the presence of the Ikea effect, as there are
many classes of product it could apply to but, I don't see such product
packaging. don't.

If you go into an electronics store (a demographic that you would think
responds stronger than average to the Ikea effect) most items are absolutely
fully assembled. There is nothing to snap on, pull off, a sticker to apply, a
thumb screw to screw in or unscrew, nothing.

So if the Ikea effect is real (across a variety of product types), I am sure
someone has done a test like to see it demonstrated by someone doing a blind
AB test using two shipped versions and comparing customer satisfaction.

I'm not going to blindly believe it because someone says it's real. It would
be one thing if this explained an aspect of all the products of every category
that I see everywhere - but it's just not the case. Companies aren't in the
business of turning down free money, so if the Ikea effect were real then
you'd see it in products everywhere. More likely, the theory is just false:
that an AB test shows no increased customer satisfaction from token user-
assembly, or even decreased satisfaction.

This is why I asked if anyone has, in fact, done such a strictly controlled AB
test.

~~~
smacktoward
_> I've seen versions that would do just fine with the separated part mixed
in. (They're not just with Granola.)_

My guess is that, if you're going to be offering a version with granola,
you're going to be designing/fabricating packaging with a separate mix-in
container anyway; and since you have to have that package, it's just
easier/cheaper to re-use it for other mix-ins that don't technically need to
be separate than it would be to come up with another package just for them.


Ask YC: How Big Is the HN Team? - Kinnard
How big is the HN team @ Y-Combinator?
======
mtmail
Best way to reach the moderators is to email hn@ycombinator.com. They've been
quiet responsive in the past. Personally I think it's one person only.

~~~
Mz
No, it is not one person. There is one paid moderator who is the face of HN.
But, I know there are others who do moderation work.

I am not clear on the details. My impression is they have no plans to divulge
all the details.


Nvidia GEFORCE RTX 20 SERIES - rshm
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/20-series/?nvid=nv-int-gcxxpn-56595
======
zymhan
This is barely even a release announcement, it's literally just the product
page. It doesn't explain any about what is new here.

~~~
dang
We moved the comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17802237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17802237),
which has a bit more background.

~~~
zymhan
Thanks Dang!


All Apple stores could close for 30 days in Italy over warranty case - imaginator
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/apple_italy_closure_warranty/
======
raquo
Apple's disregard for local laws is not specific to Italy. A warranty repair
from Apple in Russia would have taken "a few months", way more than the
allowed maximum of 21 days. I had to send my laptop to US with a friend for
repairs.

------
rmc
_Italian law states that consumer electronics devices must be sold with a two-
year free warranty_

For the record, this isn't just Italian law, but it EU law. All half a billion
(or so) people in the EU can benefit from this sort of protection.

~~~
mkaltenecker
Nope, they can’t. Local implementations differ wildly.

In Germany, the burden of proof reverses after six months (i.e. after six
months the buyer has to proof that a defect was present when they bought the
product – I have not idea how you can do that short of hiring some sort of
expert), making the two year warranty basically useless. No company will do
anything for you after six months.

Also, I can very much understand why Apple found itself in the situation it is
in Italy. In Germany there is a very clear difference between a „Garantie“
(lit. “guarantee”) and a „Gewährleistung“ (≈ “defects liability”).

A „Garantie“ is a contract between seller (or a company which made the
product) and buyer with certain guarantees and conditions the seller provides.
That’s exactly what Apple does with their one year warranty. The conditions
are very different from those of the law.

A „Gewährleistung“ is what the law requires the seller to do if there is any
defect in the product that was there when it was sold. How that is implemented
in detail differs from country to country. Also note that I’m talking about
the seller here. Apple provides their warranty no matter where you buy your
Apple product. You can go directly to them if you have a problem, no matter
where you bought it. That’s not so in the case of the „Gewährleistung“. To
make it easy for buyers, they can always go to their sellers with problems
that are covered by the law.

They probably were too broad in their EU policy and ignored that Italy is so
damn finicky about this.

~~~
mrich
There are quite a few companies who will replace a broken product after the
initial six months warranty without asking questions. That Apple does not even
tell customers about their rights reflects rather badly on them, especially
considering the already high price of most of their products.

~~~
mkaltenecker
Apple will do so, too, in many cases. They are, in fact, pretty generous when
it comes to replacing something they don’t have to. It’s, however,
inconsistent and if there is any dispute the company always wins. That’s the
case with any company.

Again, in Germany there is no confusion because we have two different words
for it. Well, there is some confusion but the two words is how all companies
do it. I don’t think companies are even allowed to advertise something that is
your right anyway (like the mandated warranty), that’s probably the reason why
they don’t say anything.

------
duiker101
As an Italian Apple behaviour really makes me rage. They believe to be above
everyone, even governments. And this is the proof that Apple only cares about
the money and not really about the customer.

~~~
beedogs
Agreeing from here in Australia, where the iPad can no longer be called "4G
compatible".

~~~
vacri
Apple is extraordinarily US-centric, it's just convenient for them that people
in other countries like their stuff enough to buy it too.

------
danmaz74
Ironically, one of my friends just yesterday contacted Apple about his iPad
not recognizing the SIM card anymore. His iPad is 18 months old, and we live
in Italy.

From customer care they said "er... wait ten minutes please... I have to
contact my boss over this, I'm not sure if the product is covered". Two
minutes later my friend was recalled and the Apple guy confirmed that they
will handle the problem as if it was still in the first year of the guarantee.

------
Luc
As far as I know, Apple DOES acknowledge the two year guarantee under European
law, it just ADDITIONALLY has its own 1 year guarantee with different
conditions.

Here, for example, is the Apple page for the Dutch market detailing the
different guarantees (in Dutch): <http://www.apple.com/nl/legal/statutory-
warranty/>

It seems then that the issue is about communication, not about actually
offering a lesser guarantee and ignoring EU law.

~~~
fesja
Not really, Apple is not obeying European law.

Looking at the UK warranty page: <http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-
warranty/>

They are clearly saying that they are only going to fix problems within the
first year (Apple One-Year Limited Warranty). They say that the EU law says:
"Defects present when customer takes delivery". But that's very open and
misleading. If I hard drive breaks on the 15th month, is my fault or Apple's?
If the battery drains too quickly? If the screen starts doing faulty things?

The European law is very clear, if something breaks within the first 2 years
because of a factory/design problem, it's Apple fault. They have enough margin
not to be cheap about that and making European customers angry.

~~~
Luc
> They are clearly saying that they are only going to fix problems within the
> first year (Apple One-Year Limited Warranty).

That's simply not true.

> They say that the EU law says: "Defects present when customer takes
> delivery".

And that's what EU law says, although several countries have gone further in
their local implementation of it.

> If I hard drive breaks on the 15th month, is my fault or Apple's? If the
> battery drains too quickly? If the screen starts doing faulty things?

Apple's if it breaks during normal use, yours if it's due to abnormal use.

> They have enough margin not to be cheap about that and making European
> customers angry.

What you mean is that some wrongly informed people are angry after reading
some biased press articles and are taking sides in a supposed 'Apple VS EU'
battle - the big mean corporation against the little consumer.

If you ever have this problem, take it to small claims court and it will get
sorted in no time. Caveat emptor.

~~~
thatjoshguy
> take it to small claims court and it will get sorted in no time

Hope you're not under the impression that Apple will just 'cave in' and fix it
out of court to minimise hassel.

Check out [http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-
verdict-i...](http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-verdict-is-
in/)

> If Apple could have replaced my logic board at no cost to themselves, then
> why in the hell did they drag this out for so long, and why did they send
> two people to court to try and make sure that I got absolutely nothing?
> Friends, this is a question I have been asking myself for three months, and
> it is a question that I do not have the answer to.

~~~
Luc
That's apples versus oranges. We're talking about the 2 year EU consumer
protection law, in which case they will cave in or get a judgement against. No
need to count on them settling out of court.

------
fesja
The same happens in Spain. They don't (initially) respect the 2 years
warranty. I believe Spanish authorities should do the same: fine them as much
as they can until they start obeying local laws like everyone else.

However if you protest you get the 2 year warranty, but not everyone knows how
to protest and what do say to convince Apple employees ;)

------
d3r42
Italy isn't the only place suffering from poor Apple service.

I experienced the worst service of my life from Apple South Africa. My iPad
USB cable frayed, and I was first told that it was not under warranty. Then I
found it was, from the call centre who asked me to take it in to the nearest
iStore. When I took it in, the salesperson refused to help until I made an
appoinment. I phoned their local call centre which instructed him to help me,
and the he still refused to help. I had to get the manager involved. Three
weeks later -after they lost my serial number twice- I finally got a
replacement cable.

You can't use the local App Store to buy games (since they haven't bothered to
arrange for self-rating like other app stores). This is never mentioned by
Apple South Africa in their marketing material.

My theory is that their overseas branches/distributors were set up for an
older era, and they can't keep up with Apple's sudden rise.

~~~
glhaynes
_You can't use the local App Store to buy games (since they haven't bothered
to arrange for self-rating like other app stores)._

Can you say a bit more about this? I don't follow.

~~~
d3r42
Games in South Africa have to be individually rated by the Films and
Publications Board. Mobile App Stores can apply for an exemption from this
rating process and self rate (Nokia and others have done so). Apple hasn't
bothered:

[http://www.thyon.com/blog-entry/items/apples-lack-of-
games-m...](http://www.thyon.com/blog-entry/items/apples-lack-of-games-music-
movies-tv-in-south-africa.html)

There are workarounds for South Africans, some easier than others, but it is
very annoying, and Apple never mentions that you can't buy games with a South
African App Store account in their advertising.

~~~
glhaynes
Oh, I see. Wow, that seems crazy for that not to have been done. Thanks for
the info.

------
kmfrk
I wrote an explanation of this, the last time this was discussed on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783687>.

For those who are confused by the European concept of guaranteed two-year
warranty.

------
sjaakkkkk
I won't be surprised if there are only a few official Apple stores in Italy.
Here in the Netherlands there is only one, and Italy is only a couple of times
larger than the Netherlands. Any Italians that can confirm this?

~~~
coob
Italy is an order of magnitude larger than the Netherlands:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size+of+italy+vs+nether...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size+of+italy+vs+netherlands)

~~~
vacri
17 million vs 60 million is not an order of magnitude.

~~~
batista
Well, it has an order of magnitude more Applestores, anyway.

------
gianpaj
In 2013 Italy will be one of the first countries to have more Android users
than iPhone ! Awesome


Police Post Racist and Violent Messages on Facebook, a Review Shows - boapnuaput
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilyhoerner/police-facebook-racist-violent-posts-comments-philadelphia
======
pizza
> "Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families
> experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general
> population," the National Center for Women & Policing says. "A third study
> of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24%, indicating that
> domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than
> American families in general."

[http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp#notes](http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp#notes)

~~~
throwaway1492
Surely there's a segment of the population with similar personality traits
predominant to police officers that don't become police officers. One would
think they'd also have similar incident of domestic violence if this were a
personality trait?

Personally, I would have no interest in dealing with the horrible things
people do to one another, on a regular basis, as part of my job. No thanks.
Reading the news is bad enough, I wouldn't want to live it.

~~~
daeken
No one is claiming it's a personality trait, though that absolutely could be a
part of it. More likely, it's because police officers can act with impunity in
pretty much every scenario. Add in a high-pressure job, and you've got a
recipe for abuse.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Nevermind the fact that steroid abuse is common in the police. The BMJ has a
lovely factsheet on anabolic steroid abuse:
[https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-
us/987](https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/987)

Risk factors: "employment as nightclub bouncer, professional male dancer,
professional wrestler, or law enforcement officer"

------
JumpCrisscross
Do we have evidence around whether this is a selection effect or a
transformation effect?

That is, do racist assholes disproportionately gravitate towards the police
force? Or does the police force disproportionately turn ordinary people into
racist assholes?

~~~
squarefoot
"do racist assholes disproportionately gravitate towards the police force?"

This one, probably, as usually racist+fascist assholes are the ones who dream
of wearing an uniform and carry weapons so they can "feel the power" over
other people. It's a selection problem, which I'm sure those responsible are
very aware of and have no intention to change. A violent cop is a perfect
weapon for corrupt governments and politicians: he does nasty things for you
and when he retires he becomes part of your private "police" as eternal
gratitude for having saved his ass multiple times for those nasty things. That
is also very likely the reason why there are many accounts of cops abusing
steroids (side effects very similar to cocaine) but so far it seems no serious
investigation has been started.

~~~
0815test
The pattern with "the racist+fascist assholes" typically is that the craving
for power (and sometimes for brutal violence) comes _first_ , and then ideas
are sought in a bid to normalize it. A position of authority, or purposely
fanning widespread hate towards some socially marginalized or despised group
that few people will bother to counter, are two things that are _very_ often
used to get away with all sorts of brutality and inhumane behavior. It's
essentially a smaller-scale version of what the Nazis did, and the sort of
thing that should _actually_ be decried as such, in the strongest possible
terms.

~~~
cannonedhamster
The police shouldn't be associated with the Nazis here. There's no wide scale
organised plan to wipe out an entire race. The number of truly rotten officers
is in the minority or there would be more bright line evidence of horribles.
Most actions caught by police aren't outright actions of intentional
corruption or malice, they are improper or bad policing that goes unpunished,
which is the real problem.

You can't be expected to punish the police when you need them to do your job,
which is the position DAs are in. If they were to lose the trust if the police
then they wouldn't have the super they need to go their job. A statewide role
of internal enforcement that's separate from the DA and is an unelected role
appointed by the governor or legislative body would likely be the best one
could do for this role and provide the freedom to do the job effectively.

Add to that punishments should come out of the insurance funds for the force
meaning police organizations that are truly terrible would get shut down when
they could not afford their insurance. Also a national police database with
all punitive actions against officers that is permanent and not removable
unless ordered by a judge would go a long way to prevent officers who get
punished in multiple locations from just moving to a new job.

------
some-guy
Direct link to The Plain View Project itself:
[https://www.plainviewproject.org/](https://www.plainviewproject.org/)

~~~
mindgam3
Which is itself part of Injustice Watch:
[https://www.injusticewatch.org](https://www.injusticewatch.org)

"a non-partisan, not-for-profit, multimedia journalism organization that
conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct
justice and equality"

------
threwnaboot7656
Now can you imagine what they say in perceived safe spaces, like WhatsApp or
the local, cop-friendly dive bar?

I can, because I've been in their midst in both of these places and it's as
bad, and likely worse, than you'd imagine. It's happened more times than I can
count, but it still never ceases to amaze me what some of these people will
say to someone who they don't know, but could pass for one of them.

------
dahfizz
As it turns out, when you have a position in society that allows people to get
away with hateful violent actions, it will attract hateful and violent people.

------
malvosenior
Having grown up in a poor community I got to know a lot of police officers and
their children. Racism and thuggish behavior was definitely a huge problem.
These posts sadly don't surprise me.

That being said, Buzzfeed and their ilk routinely make excuses for people on
the left posting the same type of racism and thugish messages. "Ironically"
calling for old white men to be punished, routinely calling for violence
against Trump and Trump supporters (not ironically), sexist comments against
men and so on.

I feel the need for freedom of speech is so great that we shouldn't censor any
of this stuff but neither should we endorse or support it in the media
regardless of what side of the political spectrum it's being perpetrated on.

~~~
phxrsg
I don't think its a hard distinction to make that the bar is higher when you
are issued weapons and authority by the state.

Leftist asshole talking about "old white men" online = bad

Cop who has the power to use force against you or arrest you talking about how
"thugs deserve slugs" = worse

This isn't hard.

~~~
malvosenior
The media is extremely powerful and has amplifying effects on violence. Both
they and the police are strong and dangerous.

------
hoophoop
Despite all the sentiment analysis algorithms those posts are not routinely
spotted and taken down...

------
sorokod
> "A Facebook page called Chicago Code Blue attracted attention for
> inflammatory comments — such as “Every Thug Deserves a Slug” — after an
> officer was found guilty in the death of Laquan McDonald."

Oh dear, speaking of "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"

~~~
masonic
... because one comment on social media becomes a just characterization of all
members of a class?

~~~
sorokod
Depends on the number of likes I guess.

------
vbuwivbiu
what is wrong with these people

------
militaryguy-63
Most of these comments aren't racist but "just" inhuman and they show how
astonishingly incompetent some cops are in social situations.

>“I would of pulled the trigger.” This sentence on its own does not show any
racism.

~~~
microwavecamera
That was covered in the headline...

"Police Post Racist _and Violent_ Messages on Facebook, a Review Shows"

------
dsfyu404ed
People who face little to no consequences from being violent endorse violence.
Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.

~~~
noir_lord
Lots of things are 'obvious' but we do the research to both confirm them and
to exclude our biases.

When you have enough evidence one way or the other then you can begin
addressing the problem properly.

Evidence lead policies are the most rational way to addresses things.

~~~
projektfu
Exactly, I've seen for a long time that cops have the most toxic online
forums. I mean, I've felt that they're often as bad or worse than the Neo-Nazi
ones I've come across. But how do you know that these are real cops, and how
representative are they of the force? Proper study shows that they are real
cops, many of them are of higher rank in their departments, they make it hard
for their coworkers to be treated with respect, they disproportionately harm
civilians, and they cost their municipalities tons of money.

------
adolph
Given a lack of per capita numbers and comparison to the general population
this seems like concern trolling by an advocacy organization.

~~~
some-guy
From the article:

      Of the pages of officers whom the Plain View researchers could positively identify, about 1 in 5 of the current officers, and 2 in 5 of the retired officers, made public posts or comments that met that threshold — typically by displaying bias, applauding violence, scoffing at due process, or using dehumanizing language. The officers mocked Mexicans, women, and black people, celebrated the Confederate flag, and showed a man wearing a kaffiyeh scarf in the crosshairs of a gun.

~~~
deogeo
That's an incredibly broad range of subjective infractions. Looking at the
examples from the article, one is the "I would of pulled the trigger." \-
that's in response to an _armed_ robber, a clear case of hypothetical self-
defense. The other is "Execute all involved," \- is it wrong to believe the
death penalty is appropriate punishment for the murder of a _six year old
child_?

I wouldn't characterize using lethal force when someone pulls a gun on you, or
advocating for the death penalty for child murderers, as unreasonable
positions.


Exclusive Interview: Hacking The iPhone Through SMS  - edw519
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hacking-iphone-security,2384.html

======
tptacek
_Charlie: The iPhone bug has to do with telling the phone there is a certain
amount of data, and then not sending it as much as you said you would. The
function that reads the data starts returning -1 to indicate an error, but the
other parts of the program don't check for this error and actually think the
-1 is data from the message. This shows how complex it can be to write secure
code, as separately, each part of the program looks correct, but the way they
interact is dangerous!_

OUCH.

If there's an industry contest I'd like to referee now, it's fuzzers vs.
static analysis. Industry spends a cubic shit-ton on static analysis (for
instance, find an F-500 that doesn't have a couple copies of Fortify gathering
dust). But fuzzers appear to be kicking ass in terms of actual findings, and
vendors don't invest nearly as much into them.

(Static analyzers parse and symbolically analyze source code or binaries
against rules, like taint propagation and API blacklists; fuzzers mimic actual
inputs to real running systems and vary those inputs maliciously over minutes,
hours, or days).

~~~
ajross
I continue to find it amazing that people don't routinely fuzz their protocol
handlers. It's a test that you can literally write in 10 minutes.

~~~
tptacek
Especially if you're the actual developer. 80% of the time it takes to write a
third-party fuzzer goes into reconstructing the target's protocol or API from
scratch.

------
euroclydon
The SMS handling process runs as root. The protocol is used for all kinds of
device <\--> network traffic. Developers have the ability to make these SMS
messages look however they want them to. Users have no indication when a
malicious SMS is received.

I think we may see some real exploits happen soon.


Ask HN: Is there an algorithm to generate coherent color palettes? - shivekkhurana
Designers come up with a collection of colors that are aesthetically pleasing.
Colors on electronic screens are just numbers. So by first principles, designers are in fact picking some numbers from an infinite set.
This selection process is certainly not random. It's common knowledge that blue works well with red on flags.
My question is: can a computer come up with a color palette (ie hex codes) that will work well together?
Is there any literature around this topic?
PS: I'm working on a side project that needs to generate color palettes and I have no clue about it.
Thanks
======
muzani
There's the standard color theory.

You look at a color wheel. Colors on the opposite side of the wheel look good.
It's just opposite (complementary), but also tertiary, and so on.

You can also cut out a block from a color wheel. There's some nice examples
here:
[https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0](https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25396.0)

Hex code might seem tough, better to look at it from HSL (Hue, Saturation,
Lightness) and focus on only Hue.

------
thedevindevops
I'm a fan of [https://paletton.com/](https://paletton.com/) but someone has
tried to apply AI to the problem: [http://colormind.io/](http://colormind.io/)
though beauty as ever remains in the eye of the beholder...

------
tlb
Although there are general principles, there's no accurate theory for what
looks good. But I think you could train a ML model on data, such as from
[https://www.colourlovers.com/palettes](https://www.colourlovers.com/palettes).

------
cborenstein
I like [https://coolors.co/](https://coolors.co/) for color palette
generation. Not sure what their algorithm is.


There Are 13 Quotations in a U.S. Passport. Guess How Many Are from Men? - cbhl
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/travel/american-passport-quotes-women.html
======
downerending
Given that nobody even looks at these, it doesn't seem very important.
Personally, I'd prefer a raise instead.


Hire: Equity for talented developer - mikmo

Hello,
I'm looking to find an equity partner to help develop an exciting idea for a site. It will be all about community participation with the community choosing and ranking the best ideas/users.
We want a partner with serious enterprise, initiative, creativity and coding skills. I don't know much about hacking but don't think it's a simple job, at least not to do it right. We'll talk in detail about features but community participation, voting and live community activity updates to keep it fresh are a given.
The aim of this project is to help start ups with great ideas, like a lot of the guys on here, to get in front of serious VCs.
I'm in Corporate Finance and have the relationship with VCs, the other partner is a Strategy Consultant at a big firm and now we need a skilled hacker. I think we have the pedigree to make this happen!
Sorry if this is a bad job spec, I'm no expert in hacking.
======
owkaye
Please post your email address here, or at least put it in your profile, so
people can contact you privately instead of posting their own email addresses.
I'm more than qualified, my email is in my profile (just click on my name) and
I might be interested in working with you on a reciprocal basis if you're
willing to consider such an arrangement.

Please email me because this forum doesn't alert me via email to new posts, so
I seldom visit a thread more than once. Thanks.

------
mikmo
We're based in London, there's a well documented funding gap in Europe. No
Y-Combinator, etc. The money exists we just want to create a mechanism to get
the best ideas to the money.

This idea fills a gap in the US too, it's a different approach to helping
people get start up funding.

I'm not sure about the location thing. I can see how it would be really
helpful to be able to sit down together, is it essential in the experience of
you guys?

------
brand
Here's hoping News.YC doesn't become "Job board for suits looking for
hackers"...

------
eprijer
Hi this is rather vague , but I'm intrigued to find out more. 15+ years
experience in IT, creative, founded & ran company in gaming sector for several
years etc. etc. Get in touch at eprijer@gmail.com

------
collint
Where are you located? Do you need a local hacker?

I'd like to know more send me a message: collintmiller@gmail.com


Why Web APIs Won - johns
https://blog.apigee.com/detail/why_web_apis_won
======
angersock
_Requests and responses are encrypted using TLS and secured using OAuth_

Erm, at least in the case of OAuth 2.0, no?


Einstein's travel diaries reveal attitudes towards people he met in Asia - Sjenk
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia
======
liveoneggs
After your death all of your life's browser history, every
facebook/youtube/reddit/HN/myspace/etc comment and submission you ever wrote,
every photo you ever took, every off-hand remark you ever made in the presence
of a smartphone with facebook installed .. will be published for all of the
world to read and judge.

Better get that road rage under wraps!

~~~
coldtea
> _Better get that road rage under wraps!_

After my death I could not care less...

~~~
loblollyboy
After my death nobody else will care either

------
poster123
Why is it so "shocking"? Discussing racial differences was more common in his
time, and being a great scientist does not necessarily coincide with general
wisdom.

I hope this story will help people realize that we should not ban the work of
people who have said problematic things.

~~~
SZJX
This is also addressed in the original article:

> Rosenkranz told the Guardian that although views like Einstein’s were
> prevalent at the time, they were not universal. “That’s usually the reaction
> I get – ‘we have to understand, he was of the zeitgeist, part of the time’ –
> but I think I tried here and there to give a broader context. There were
> other views out there, more tolerant views,” he said.

~~~
mikeash
Einstein was a great physicist, but I’m not looking to him for moral guidance.
If he was awful for his time that would be sad, but if he’s merely average, I
don’t see why we’d care.

~~~
Bartweiss
> _I’m not looking to him for moral guidance_

I suppose this is the question. Einstein is certainly more known for his moral
legacy than most scientists.

He was a WWII refugee and a pacifist, he authored (and later regretted) the
letter sparking US nuclear ambitions, he joined the NAACP and his offer of
testimony in W.E.B. DuBois' trial led to the charges against him being
dropped. To me, this isn't merely the halo effect around his academic work -
Einstein was at least a modest player in morality and social politics in his
time, and his work fighting racism in the US does add particular relevance to
the story.

I agree, though, that the story is already being overblown; we're getting news
stories with Einstein's picture edited to look demonic. This is a scientist's
diary from the 1920s containing views less racist than ones openly stated by
US politicians from the last 50 years.

------
stanfordkid
I don't see what the big deal is ... everyone thinks stuff like this in their
head, and it's a personal diary. Only recently do we live in a globalized &
diverse economy which makes it less _polite_ to say stuff like this. It is a
big stretch to equate _lack of politeness_ with _racism_.

~~~
zimzim
not everyone

~~~
YouAreGreat
... is an Einstein

------
classicsnoot
Without taking any sides in this particular case, i highly recommend everyone
read Intellectuals and Race[1] by Thomas Sowell. It is a concise, well
researched, and largely damning look at how the same intellectual class that
is leading the charge of globalized western morality (particularly in regards
to enforced diversity, ethnic erasure, race based policies, and
identity/victimhood politics) is cut from the very same cloth of their
predecessors in the early 20th century (the Progressives) who championed
Social Darwinism, racial segregation, and eugenics. He draws many parallels
between the two groups, including but not limited to the perceived unanimity
of thought amongst the "greatest, leading minds," the utter
incomprehensibility by the status quo to even consider dissenting ideas, the
ostensible moral superiority, and the faith based reliance upon unproven
assertions. It is a brief and powerful read. Regardless of one's politics,
Sowell forces the reader to honestly confront preconceived notions not with
emotional exhortation, but rather hard facts and verifiable data.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-
Sowell/dp/0465058728)

------
xutopia
I think if Einstein were alive today he would see his words and repent to
them. Especially in light of other things he has said like: "Nationalism is an
infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.". Though this had nothing to
do with race he understood something in those times that many others didn't in
regards to human nature.

------
Angostura
These comments, particularly those about toilet habits don't really look too
different from the comments I was reading 5 years about about the behaviour of
Chinese tourists, so I'm not sure what to think about this.

If you took a contemporary Chinese sophisticate and transported him or her
back to 1920s China, what would his or her comments be like?

~~~
the_af
Shock at different toilet habits is actually the least racist and more
understandable reaction. But some of his assertions are indefensible:

> _“I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t
> understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which
> enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of
> defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”_

and

> _“It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the
> likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”_

White supremacists could easily hold these views as well.

~~~
mooseburger
Those statements boil down to "I think Chinese people are ugly". Do men have a
moral obligation to find women of all races beautiful?

~~~
the_af
I can say "I don't find most Chinese women attractive". Or I can say "Chinese
women are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce in
China". Do you see the difference? One statement is not racist and the other
is.

~~~
coldtea
Actually both are not racist. Both are subjective statements.

One needs not explicitly add "I, personally" to his personal correspondence.

"Chinese women are so ugly, I cannot understand how people manage to reproduce
in China" should be read as: "I find Chinese women so ugly, that I cannot
understand how people manage to reproduce in China".

~~~
the_af
I don't understand your point.

It's understood that in personal correspondence everything stated is the
opinion of the author. Both my fictional examples were written from a personal
point of view.

The actual difference was that one expressed a personal preference without
being offensive; the other called a vast group of people "ugly", which is
offensive, and expressed incredulity that they even managed to find each other
sexually attractive enough to reproduce (which is naive as well as offensive).

Racism is _primarily_ subjective, so that's no excuse either. Rational
justifications for racism are more often than not _a posteriori_
justifications.

~~~
true_religion
If racism were subjective, we wouldn't ban it in the public scope as there
would be no clear standard for anyone to follow in their self-censorship.

Racism should reflect an attribute that can be factually proven---
intelligence, strength, moral character at birth, etc.

It should not reflect a totally subjective physical attribute like beauty.

~~~
the_af
I've never heard your definition of racism ("attributes that can be factually
proven"?). In my experience, racism is subjective and every rationalization is
done afterwards. How often have you heard of someone convincing an avowed
racist of anything based on arguments?

"I've always thought <class of people> were dumb, weak, morally bankrupt, and
have brought decadence to our country, but now that I look at this scientific
study I'm convinced otherwise".

~~~
true_religion
Every racist position I have ever heard of has been defanged by the truth, and
proof. Racism is not bad because it makes you feel bad, it is bad because it
is demonstrably untrue and basing your society on the bedrock of racist lies
is simply shooting yourself in the foot.

I don't know why you disagree.

Do you think racist views are true, but we should ignore them out of political
correctness?

------
the_gastropod
This is one of those examples of holding a man born in the 19th century to the
standards of the 21st. I'm pretty sure lots of the things we think, say, and
do will be seen as very problematic in the 22nd century.

~~~
devnonymous
Indeed. I hope someday people would hold as much disdain and shock as this for
statements justifying/rationalising things like gun ownership, immense private
wealth when others around you suffer and need for private transport.

------
yaseer
This is more click-bait journalism; I'm not sure why Einstein should be
singled out for sharing the same beliefs as others in the society in which he
was raised. "Europeans in 1922 were Xenophobic" is not worthy of an editorial.

The writer claims that Xenophobia was not Universal, and therefore this is
interesting. No view is universal; there are people alive today who believe
the earth is flat, although they are a minority. In 1922 Europe, only a very
small minority of people would not have been Xenophobic.

------
simonh
I think people in those days had a very exaggerated idea of the scale of
genetic differences between people of different ethic groups. Nowadays we know
such differences are a rounding error and that looking at differences in
genomes between individuals, those attributable to ethnicity are generally a
minority. Back then, this wasn't known.

EDIT - I had a bit of a laugh at the quote about the Chinese supplanting other
races. I'm a WASP, but my wife is Chinese and our kids are pretty obviously
half Chinese.

~~~
uniformlyrandom
Does knowledge of genome proximity help you to find women of other races more
attractive?

~~~
simonh
I've always found Chinese girls attractive, long before I knew anything at all
about population genetics. Not that I know a whole lot about it now, but
still. I was lucky enough to go to a school in the UK, but with a large
proportion of foreign students from all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia
so maybe that had an influence.

------
true_religion
It strikes me as odd that anytime a person references a characteristic of some
people from _some particular_ country, it is generalized into racism against
all people who even vaguely look like them so long as the people in question
are not white.

If one says "the French are cowards", no one takes it to mean that you believe
that all white people are cowards.

This is true even if the speaker is not white themselves, but merely living in
a 'white' country.

To me, this means that no statement really stands on its own, but we
constantly filter it through our lens of expectations, and current context.
Given that, it's hard to look at someone from the past---a fundamentally alien
context---then damn them using modern morals.

\---

As a personal example of how we see racism within an implicit context, this
poster[1], mentions "negroes" and my immediate feeling is to damn him for
racism as in the modern era using that terminology is a sign of racism.

This is despite the fact that my CV could list me as a beneficiary of the
_Negro_ College Fund.

20 years ago, the term "coloured" was considered racist to some segments of
the USA. Any variations of it, would be simiarly damned. Now, we are all
people "of colour" as an accepted truth, and using 'black' is seen as vulgar,
and 'african american' is seen inaccurate. Context matters immensely in these
topics.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17303571)

------
teilo
The more they pull this historical muckracking crap, the less people are going
to care when real racism is happening right in front of them.

------
Bartweiss
It goes unnoted in the article, but you could probably get an entire second
piece out of the phrase " _...defending themselves against the formidable
blessing of offspring._ "

At the time it was written, Einstein had three children (though his first
child's story is basically unknown, and she was either adopted or died in
infancy). He was also divorced from their mother, with whom both his sons
lived, but corresponded with them throughout their lives. I'd be rather
interested to see an ambivalent comment like "formidable blessing" put in the
context of these relationships.

------
belorn
The quotes are translated from german into very specific english word that
carries connotation. Going by the translation however, I find the
interpretation made by Rosenkranz to be with odds of my own. I see a comment
about too high population growth, while Rosenkranz claim it is about "how
Chinese men can find their women sufficiently attractive to have offspring
with them". A question about why there is a too high population growth is not
the same as a question about why there is any population growth.

------
AcidRambler
And where is the relevancy of looking at someone's thoughts that he never
communicated publicly or acted upon whatsoever? Are we doing a psychoanalysis
or something?

------
empath75
It’s hard to visit a different culture for the first time and not notice their
differences as a group. It’s only with extended interaction with people from a
different culture that their individuality stands out.

I’ve always thought that the cure for xenophobia is travel, but it’s more than
just travel that’s required. You can’t just breeze through as a tourist, you
have to spend an extended length of time and get to know people as people.

------
osazuwa
When a white person in historic America encountered the negro slave trade for
the first time, becoming aware of the harsh living conditions of millions of
people, he have to either conclude that their values regarding justice and the
human condition were either in obvious conflict with their own society and
culture, or accept the narrative of white supremacy, i.e. blacks were less
human and so suffering was OK because it was their natural state. Most chose
the latter, as it had the least cognitive dissonance.

A Westerner observing a typical 1920's Chinese person's life for the first
time would have experienced the same assault on their fundamental values,
especially more humanist values. It was a feudal society, where quiet
tolerance in the face of extreme hardship is a cultural value, as is producing
as many (male) offspring as possible. Moreover, given harsh standard of living
and the large population, human life (especially those of children) was cheap
and easily discarded. Finally, post-Qing China would have seemed extremely
unsanitary to Western eyes -- even today Chinese authorities struggle with
promulgating basic 20th century standards of hygiene (since hygiene is a norm,
not a trait).

The foreigner would have been aware that 100's of millions of people lived
this way (no one knew China's population was a billion plus until the CCP did
the first modern census).

It would have been all to easy to take a dim view on the Chinese as people.

------
diehunde
Sounds more like "Chinese culture" phobia to me. He said good things about
Japanese people.

------
coldtea
Indiscriminate application of BS modern fad notions like "xenophobia" reveal
shallow journalism.

------
rawTruthHurts
Newsflash: Einstein was as human as anybody else.

------
hellbanner
How is this relevant to HN?

~~~
loblollyboy
Because Einstein

------
uniformlyrandom
This is disgusting. I mean, publication of private diaries is disgusting.

Fuck you, Rosenkranz. I see why Hamlet did not like you that much.


   Flash Exploit Shows the Dark Side of Web 2.0  - nickb
http://gigaom.com/2008/05/28/flash-exploit-shows-the-dark-side-of-web-20/
======
pmjordan
The real beef here is:

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1189>

and the update

<http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1198>

The submitted article is just a "we're doomed" post.

What I find bizarre about some of these exploits is the amount of effort these
people go to in order to _steal World of Warcraft passwords_. I mean,
seriously. Wouldn't you think they'd go after something a little more
valuable? "I risked being hunted down by Interpol, but the level 70 paladin
was totally worth it".

EDIT: I'm aware that they're probably hijacking accounts so they can run
bots/goldfarmers on those accounts without paying for them. (or having their
credit cards blacklisted) That doesn't really make it any less bizarre or
amazing to me.


Inc. Magazine: Is it crap? - ambition

Inc. Magazine brands itself "The Handbook of the American Entrepreneur." I'm curious to know what the Hacker News collective intelligence thinks of it.
I recently picked up a cheap subscription to see if there was anything to learn. Topics vary month-to-month, but there are usually case studies on successful entrepreneurs, tactical articles on subjects like marketing or management, and general interest essays.
I wonder, though, whether I ought to ignore everything inside and spend that monthly hour elsewhere. There are ads for shady companies. They have annoying 'special advertising features' that pose as articles. The back pages swell with MLM-type scams. It seems like the sort of advertising that would target dreamers and fools instead of busy entrepreneurs looking for tips during downtime. This leads me to question the reputability of the editors and thus any advice inside. Hence this post.
What do you think?
And if not Inc. etc., where's the high signal-to-noise entrepreneurial reading?
======
Shooter
I've had a subscription to Inc. for 10-12 years. I can attribute a great deal
of time/money savings to things I've learned or found out about in Inc.,
especially regarding general management and HR issues. I consider it a solid
investment. Granted, quite a bit of what they publish is common-sense type
stuff, and their slant is definitely NOT towards the small tech
startup...although I've bought a few companies I've read about in Inc. and
I've discovered new business trends by reading it over the years. It's a great
way to get a feel for the small business market, which is my primary customer
base in many ways...it also helps me figure out when niche products/services
I'm already following are likely to break out into more mainstream popularity.
Many internet startup guys tend to have 'Silicon Valley goggles' on and they
would laugh at the technical expertise of the average Inc. reader, yet the
Inc. readers are often slightly ahead of the tech curve when compared to the
broader small business market. Anything that helps you to get into the
shoes/mindset of your potential small business customers is worth the time.
Even if you don't market DIRECTLY to small businesses, you would be a moron
not to be aware of their purchasing power.

You can also learn a great deal from the less 'glamorous' industries featured
in Inc. - lessons that you can transfer to software startups in sometimes
surprising ways.

Regarding the ads/advertorials: that is their business. The advertorials are
marked as such. They are not going to turn away ad dollars unless the ad is
clearly illegal. I wouldn't either if I were in such a competitive industry. I
wouldn't judge, say, 37Signals based on the customers they accept money
from...so I feel it would be unfair to do so to a magazine. You just have to
think for yourself and view everything with a critical eye. Just like anything
else. I don't think their ads unduly influence their actual editorial content.

I also read Entrepreneur magazine, which is even sleazier ad-wise (and I must
say I lost respect for them when they started publishing the lies/idiocy of
Robert Kiyosaki in an actual monthly column) but the occasional gems I learn
more than make up for the time spent reading magazines like that and the
sleaziness/crap factor.

I read almost every business magazine I can get my hands on (Fast Company,
Fortune, Forbes, Business 2.0 before it was killed, FSB, etc. - as well as
about 30 industry-specific business magazines.) I think the more you read, the
more likely you are to understand business and to see new opportunities before
others do.

I almost bid on Inc/Fast Company when they sold to Mansueto, but I knew I
didn't have the time to follow-through on it. I now regret the decision not to
at least bid.

------
pg
Curiously enough, they were the first print publication ever to write about
YC, the very first summer. But the editors killed the story, presumably
because at the time we were so obscure. They could have scooped the NYT.

------
jakewolf
Coffee at barnes and noble while reading through their magazines for free. Can
get everything in worthwhile during a single cup.

------
dcurtis
Inc. is the only magazine I regularly read. If I don't have time to skim
through the entire thing, I always read the section that documents an
entrepreneur's story. Many of those stories are informative and inspirational.
One of them a few years ago about the Xerox CEO's humble beginnings kick-
started my entrepreneurial spirit, I guess you could say.

In my opinion: definitely worth subscribing, if only for that section.

------
run4yourlives
What do you think? It's your hour afterall.


The Mindful Programmer - vfc1
http://victorsavkin.com/post/128785099226/mindful-programmer
======
vfc1
This is some great stuff on how to build code, from one of the core team
members of Angular 2


Fighting to Save the Real-Life Pharmacy from ‘Ulysses’ - pseudolus
https://lithub.com/fighting-to-save-the-real-life-pharmacy-from-james-joyces-ulysses/
======
maw
_[...] exclusivity is antithetical to the spirit of the place, of the
community, and of the idea that Joyce wrote for everybody, especially the
ordinary person._

Let us say that that is not how I would have phrased that sentence.

~~~
dang
" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)


Meslo Font – great monospaced font for development work - krawchyk
https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font

======
kps

      > The LG in Meslo LG stands for Line Gap. The idea behind it is to allow
      > the user to have some control over vertical spacing by choosing one
      > of three line gap variants

OS X provides for user-specified leading in the font selection panel.

Many X11 terminals have a ‘--lsp’ or similar option for that purpose.

------
augustl
No screenshots in the readme is a bit of a bummer for adoption, at least for
this particular picky individual :)