Show HN: Universal Pause Button
github.com
github.com
kill -STOP 1234
kill -CONT 1234
killall -STOP -c "Pandora"
killall -CONT -c "Pandora"
If I'm running a CPU-intensive calculation and don't want to bog down the rest of my system I will use it to give me enough cycles for Sublime Text to work smoothly.
It's easy to call:
sudo cputhrottle PID cpuUsage% sudo cputhrottle 12345 400
It works pretty good, but I have had flash games crash if you limit them too low for a while.
The bizarre part, when it comes to Flash, is that I've yet to see an actual difference in the application behavior when I throttle down it's CPU usage. I would think that if it normally maxes out 7 of my 8 logical cores, being limited to 40% of one core would make introduce slowness. But I guess that's just an indication of how poorly written the OS X flash client it.
I use cpulimit to force a CPU bound program to slow down. I also use it for programs that always max out the CPU for no good reason, and work fine with less CPU.
Nice won't help with either of those.
Where it gets more interesting is using elaborate checkpoint/restore [1] mechanisms for processes to serialize their state (open fds, watches, IPC, etc.) into an image that can then be overlayed, remotely executed, debugged and so forth.
I mean, of course, we have these apps that splay themselves all over global system resources in complex ways, and so we need to track down how they've done that, record it, and then replay it later to restore them. It's necessary.
But imagine a well-behaved classical X11 app, running in something like a VM or Docker container. You execute its launcher, the VM spins up in the background, the app launches in the VM, and the app's X11 client connects to the X11 server you're staring at and displays things.
If we truly want to sandbox apps, wouldn't it make more sense to move more toward a model like that—one where you have a discrete "application backend process" running in a sandbox, and you can just chuck around the sandbox itself willy-nilly (freezing it, thawing it, copying it, etc.) because it has well-defined connection-points to the host?
C/R enables complete persistence by duplicating a process from its image, which can cut initialization and startup times by orders of magnitude, and resume service from an exact position with zero downtime, and not just basic mechanisms like socket superservers.
It lets you back up process state at any arbitrary moment, send it over the network, recalculate and reexec immediately and then thaw again for debugging it from that particular point.
It just helps enable live migrations and zero downtime recoordinations with far less complicated redundancy schemes. This includes containers. On top of it being a universal save/pause button.
Depending on the robustness of the image format, it can be made space efficient through deduplication.
C/R is quite invaluable for any scenario that involves fault tolerance, high response times, tracking down difficult bugs, low startup overhead and so on. I'm surprised why it's still such an obscure technique.
Besides, I don't think the primary use case here is even graphical apps (not that they don't work just fine). What you really want is a local indexed copy of all the execution environment details, like pipes, sockets, timers, ttys, timers, sigmasks, *fds, etc. for infrastructure.
Every once in a while I am reminded how wonderful, and perhaps unlikely, it is that I have a nice, slick, mass market consumer device (apple computer running OS X) that is honest to god UNIX underneath.
And then sad, knowing that this is a brief golden age that will probably pass.
We have also seen an incremental approach in the gradual replacement of open APIs/components with closed ones.
tl;dr a more powerful operating system with worse UI, which is the obvious trade. A less powerful system with a fantastic UI.
Never found a good replacement in OSX.
On Unix you have a lot of choice on the (graphical) interface you chose to interact with. So while to one you're currently using might be OK, there's bound to be one that's even better suited to your needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment
(Also, it's usually trivial to change your keybindings.)
It is like switching from JS to Ruby for me.
How does the overlappingness make anything faster? If anything it becomes slower, because you need to move windows out of the way, or select them before you can get to the covered part.
> Not everybody wants to use keyboard all the time
In no way necessary. I don't think the WWDC splitscreen demo used keyboard shortcuts at all?
> it is useful to have more than two windows on screen at a time.
Having more than one window on the screen is also not helped by the windows overlapping. I regularly have 2-4 windows side-by-side on the same screen at once without overlapping, and multiple such screens and fullscreen windows on virtual desktops.
It's mainly focused on modifications for the OS X dock which I don't use, but it also does alt drag window movement, and alt + num pad for tiling windows. It costs a a bit of money after a trial period, but it's the most reliable replacement for alt drag I've found so far.
You mean like with the keyboard? Like SHIFT+TAB? That's on OS X.
Eh. I've used focus-follows-mouse and tend instead to strongly prefer the OS X method of allowing scroll events to percolate to the window under the cursor but retaining keyboard focus on the window it's currently in. This allows me to scroll, say, a web browser on my right-hand monitor, while continuing to type in the left.
Also, don't forget that OS X lets you scroll whatever window your mouse is over, even if it is "blurred" (not in focus). This is the one feature that I miss most whenever I need to use Windows.
The only people here who really seem to like it are the ones using drawing-tablets as their main input.
As for the cmd button replacing the ctrl button. Never going back to ctrl+<key> for shortcuts. The command button is so much nicer to use, it's your thumb vs you pinky. You don't need to stretch you pinky/move you hand slightly to have access to shortcuts and that's so nice. VERY desturbing at first (I hated it), but never going back. Or maybe I've just gotten used to using my thumb. Ultimately, I think it makes a lot more sense though. No more alt-F4 to close windows, its cmd+Q, no more ctrl+B to bold a text, it's cmd+b, cmd+h minimizes/hides your window etc etc.
Also, what i found infinitely annoying at first and that I really like now on Mac, is the window switching with the keyboard. On Windows, alt+tab switches between all windows (including different instances of same program). on Mac, alt+tab switches between applications and alt+` switches between different instances of a said program. I find that more elegant when you have a lot of windows opened, which i always have.
But all these are tiny little things that add up to something really nice to use, but each individually don't and will never justify OS X being the best OS in the world blah blah. You can probably achieve a similar behavior on windows/Linux/whatever. What's nice about it though is that it's the default setup, no third party app needed/config files. You install it and it makes sense. That's why I'm not switching from OS X anytime soon, it's ergonomic, the UI is sick, power user features everywhere, and a real unix. I see it as a linux that works perfectly out of the box. I remember the first month I spent on OS X (coming from 4 years of linux, 2 yr Ubuntu and 2 yr Arch, using both full desktop env (KDE mostly) and lightweigth window managers), everything works and works well and everything is ergonomic and makes sense. Put simply, a Mac never (or very rarely) gets in the way of your work. And that makes a big difference.
But then, I just like Macs because of how I use my computer. I get it that some might prefer a Linux or Windows, and I respect that. I'm just extremely thankful OS X answers exactly what I expect from a computer.
Chances are you're going to think that the thing you've been using for years is "good UI", and anything different is "bad UI". I don't doubt that Apple have spent a lot of time designing their UI/UX to work well for most people, but it feels bad to me because it's not what I'm used to.
Either way, you get used to it. I've found programs that make OS X work in a way that's more familar to me, and learned to work with the things I can't change.
> How can operating systems research be relevant when the resulting operating systems are all indistinguishable?
> There was a claim in the late 1970s and early 1980s that Unix had killed operating systems research because no one would try anything else. At the time, I didn’t believe it. Today, I grudgingly accept that the claim may be true (Microsoft notwithstanding).
> A victim of its own success: portability led to ubiquity. That meant architecture didn’t matter, so now there’s only one. Linux is the hot new thing... but it’s just another Unix.
calc
$a = Get-Process calc
$a.ProcessorAffinity = 1
$a.PriorityClass = "Idle"
$b = [Diagnostics.Process]::Start("PowerShell", "-c while (1) {}")
$b.ProcessorAffinity = 1
#!/bin/bash
currentProcess=$(xprop -id $(xprop -root | grep -F '_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW(WINDOW)' | awk '{print $5}') | grep -F '_NET_WM_PID(CARDINAL)' | awk '{print $3}')
state=$(grep 'State:' /proc/$currentProcess/status | awk '{print $2}')
if [[ "$state" == "T" ]]
then
kill -CONT $currentProcess
else
kill -STOP $currentProcess
fiThese days of MMOs and other coordinated time-sinks make me miss the simplicity of pausable single-player and turn-based multiplayer sometimes.
Hell, even the single player games are getting to be unpausable. How many cut scenes are there in GTAV? And if other duties are at hand, the only option is to skip the story line so you can pause.
These days I can at least hit the Home button on a Wii U game and expect it to work. Emulators are still hogging save-states all to themselves, though.
Now, I only need a similar tool that kills the process with the highest CPU and MEMORY load with a short cut. Reasons: Sometimes a process leaks memory and fills up 16GB RAM and opening a new process like taskmgr is impossible to severe paging-IO. Sometimes a full screen application crash and spawns a modal crash dialog behind the full screen window so only taskmgr and keyboard usage works (as the mouse is hidden by the crashed full screen app).
Edit: Not working as expected :(
Run python script that allocated a couple of gigabytes of RAM effectively causing my machine to freeze. And OOM killer figured out the best thing it can do is this:
[2889118.406439] Out of memory: Kill process 11878 (SpotifyHelper) score 302 or sacrifice child
[2889118.406442] Killed process 11878 (SpotifyHelper)Did you try it on Wine yet?
The Witcher 3 pauses cutscenes when the window is not in focus. So the example is probably not the greatest.
450000 words * 5.1 bytes ≈ 2.2 MiB
I like to read novels on my phone in plaintext format. 2001 by Clarke is 368 kiB. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is 1.1 MiB.
1984 would be 423 kiB, which I consider pretty normal, not "large". But that's subjective, I guess.
I will always have a soft spot for small, lean single function applications. I guess it takes me back to my UNIX days. Some of my favourite more modern programs are SumatraPDF, uTorrent (the older 2.x versions) and Notepad2, lovely single exe programs that are self-contained. No installers and messy configs all over the place or in the registry.
Or run `perfmon /res`.
delay = currentFrameTime - lastFrameTime
playerPosition += direction * delay
Some time ago I had an application crash on a development machine while I was playing a game. On my dev machine crashes go straight to ollydbg. Next thing I know I'm kicked from the game, and it tells me to stop 'using cheat programs'. Go figure :p
https://tuts4you.com/download.php?list.3 https://tuts4you.com/download.php?view.2425
Although they did, there were some item duplication bugs. And even that was irrelevant, since there were quickly popping up small armies of item / gold farmers; every once in a while they'd get banned, but by then they would've earned enough money to buy another fifty copies of the game and continue.
Then give back the time later (if you need the clock to match the real clock) when it's waiting for input.
e.g http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Remember_Me#Skip_intro_videos
if (ForegroundWindow)
{
...
}
else
{
MessageBox(NULL, L"Unable to detect foreground window!", L"UniversalPauseButton Error", MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR);
}
if (!ForegroundWindow)
{
MessageBox(NULL, L"Unable to detect foreground window!", L"UniversalPauseButton Error", MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR);
break;
}
...I've added this to the scoop-extras bucket for Scoop[0]. So users with the extras bucket can install it using:
scoop install universalpausebutton
[0]: http://scoop.sh
If you want to actually pause the linux kernel you'll have to use something like the magic SysRq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
Alternatively you can run the operating system in an emulator like qemu.
An interesting startup idea would be a bluetooth thingy (kinda vague, maybe a necklace?) that when pushed becomes a TRUE universal pause button. Pauses my DVR, my car audio, my linux mythtv box, everything, silences my phone ringer, mutes the TV, shuts off the alarm clock, temp-mutes the smoke alarm if its currently going off, silence the oven timer, car alarm off if its currently sounding, you name it.
Sounds technologically possible although a huge PITA, which sounds like a great startup idea.
You might need to ram thru a whole new bluetooth LE broadcast protocol, maybe. Or just a blind beacon of "anything" thats sniffable (edited: whoops that wouldn't work so well with silenced burglar alarm systems).
I suspect this would sell pretty well once it gets universal...
The security implications and UX involved in managing settings in a non-infuriating fashion rapidly sunk it though, and I daresay it would never have been practically deployable unless business/landowners/whatever could enforce its use as a condition of entry.
Also, you forgot the hollow tooth + airbag components + RF magic => remote operated ball-gag :P
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/media-keys-by-sway...
In that case, after unpausing, the animation would just skip ahead.
As a remedy, the pause button could also stop the system clock as seen by the process.
That is a lot of work, but I wonder if there are no debugging or reverse-engineering tools that work in that way.
Looks like the real solution would be to pause your SO ;)
My solution was the DS/3DS line of consoles... snap 'em shut, bam, paused. I've called them the consoles of choice for the discriminating father.
(If you've never had kids and find yourself wondering what horrible father would be playing video games while taking care of his children, well, you see, it turns out that sometimes your child wants to sleep on somebody, and will not sleep any other way... and there's only so many things you can do with a baby that cries if you move sleeping on you. Both of my kids went through that phase for different reasons.)
I'm a fan of this as well - works for PSP and Vita too, just quickly press power and it's in sleep mode. However, I have run into one game that didn't properly pause itself when closed. I think it was Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Its cutscenes didn't pause when I closed my DS. Otherwise, yeah, this is the greatest.
uh and you'd need to find that pause key the dimension above...