fekberg

Good question. How much larger/smaller would it become? I just figured doing 3D requires more code and that would end up making it larger.

Without watching the video and just looking over the images, it took a while to notice the difference between getting this and just getting a Raspberry Pi with a keyboard. So the package includes more stuff that makes it interesting for kids and techies to play around with the hardware and the components that come with it; pretty cool, if I had kids I'd definitely want to get something like that.

I'm getting 15 FPS in Chrome on my Surface Pro.

It uses OpenGL ES it seems, doesn't work in IE 11.

Edit: It would be interesting to know if this would perform better using WebGL and running it in IE 11, anyone has any thoughts on that?

Out of curiosity, How much larger would this likely become if you converted this to something 3D using WebGL?

Thank you for that!

I think this is awesome, however, I think it would be even more awesome to get a walk through of the code and the thought process behind minifying it in a blog post, the past days with all the jsfiddles are nice so don't get me wrong on that part. I just think it adds more value if the code is somewhat explained (I know ray tracing is explained on tons of places). Just my two cents.

Neat! I'm finishing up a course for Pluralsight on "Game programming with Python and PyGame" that will be released soon and the goal of the course is to create a basic 2D game and I choose to do Breakout as it's fun creating when learning a new programming language!

I ran Gentoo as my main/desktop OS for a year or so. Have multiple machines that run ArchLinux and Ubuntu. I don't think Windows is fundamentally broken.

"This isn't a native feature for Windows"

That line makes no sense at all.

It's "the way that they do it" in most places at least where I have been, that is giving the waiter the card and wait for them to come back.

In Sweden restaurants have started to come out with portable devices and you even have to put in the amount you want to pay (because they want tip which is already included in the price..). I find this really good but at the same time less convenient because I don't want to fiddle with their device.

I would feel much better if I had my cards stored "securely" in my phone and could do "Tap to Pay" over NFC instead and have the waiter bring over an NFC device to tap against my phone.

This is very neat and a super cool idea. However, there's no chip? I try to avoid non-chip cards as much as I can for security reasons.

One more thing that crossed my mind is, what happens if you give this to the waiter, the waiter goes away to handle your payment and it happens to be outside of reach of your bluetooth ping; then you will most likely become worried that the waiter ran away with your card, or you will start ignoring it when it notifies you that it is outside of reach.

While talking about the waiter, what happens when the waiter accidentally clicks the "change card" button and takes the personal lunch on your business card? You might not notice until it's too late and people start asking questions..

> Even now Windows don't have basic feature like..

Hyper-V? Powershell? Search has been in Windows since forever.

Yeah that was fun until I got an alert box in my face.

Congratulations on publishing such huge books, I can't imagine how much work it is.

I self-published a programming book on C#, it's a bit less than 300 pages and that took a long time to finish.

1 EUR per copy sounds like a really bad deal though? I imagine the book is selling for at least 30 EUR so if you have a normal author royalty of ~16% that would at least give you 5 EUR.

If you self-publish through Amazon(CreateSpace) you get about 50% royalties and you don't have to pay any upfront fees to get it printed since the cost for printing is take out of the other 50%.

Thank you.. I read it yesterday on my phone and when I got back today to comment I couldn't find it.

Who said it only works in IE? Works in Chrome for me.

So just because other tools have this feature it is bad that Office gets it too? I use Microsoft Office and this is certainly a welcomed feature.

Courses are being merged to Pluralsight and you will get access to them all, first course is already merged: http://pluralsight.com/training/courses/TableOfContents?cour...

The Pluralsight blog has more information about it: http://blog.pluralsight.com/2013/10/30/pluralsight-acquires-...

I got my Surface RT before I was an MVP. I bought the Surface Pro after I became an MVP. I'm going to buy the Surface 2 now.

You're saying I can't be enthusiastic about the Surface because I am an MVP?

Considering what you can actually do with the different devices, I think the prices are a good selling point. I had an iPad before but after I got my Surface (both RT and Pro) I found myself using the tablet for more stuff and I found myself having it with me much more and enjoying it. I've used Surface Pro for work (Visual Studio, Office) and it's been working good.

Regarding the keyboard and not having a desk, with Surface 2 it is supposedly better as you have one more angle with the kickstand. I love the TypeCover when I am by a desk, never really found TouchCover that enjoyable to write on.

Here's some of the prices:

Surface 2 with 32GB is $449

Surface 2 with 64GB is $549

Surface 2 pro with 64GB is $899

Surface 2 pro with 128GB is $999

Surface 2 pro with 256GB is $1,299

Surface 2 pro with 512GB is $1,799

iPad 2 with 16GB is $399

iPad Air with 16GB is $499

iPad Air with 32GB is $599

iPad Air with 64GB is $699

iPad Air with 128GB is $799

Sure, I'll ask my 70+ year old relatives that have been using PC with Windows since they first got their computer to download an Ubuntu ISO, burn that and re-install their system.

Joking aside. I'd love for everyone to just jump on a virus free OS, but as soon as that OS is mainstream there will be viruses.

The problem isn't the OS, the problem is that people trust everything that is for instance sent to them via e-mail. Users need to be educated on security, no matter the OS.

I've been trying to raise awareness in my social medias, since my family, friends and co-workers might not spend time on HackerNews.

If you want, copy my message and share with your family, friends and co-workers:

"Hi folks,

There's a new virus out there that I want to raise awareness of, it's called CryptoLocker. Basically what this virus does is that it tracks all your files - hard drives, flash drives, usb sticks, network drives/shares - then it encrypts the files it finds.

The only way to unlock the files again is to pay $300 to get the key used for the encryption. The encryption used is RSA with a 2048 bit key which makes it extremely hard to crack, I'd say impossible with the time span and todays computers.

You have 72 hours before they trash the key making it impossible for you to get your data back.

This can be extremely devastating if you are running a business and all your files are gone. If you sync your files to the cloud, you're still not safe, it syncs the encrypted files as well. If you are able to restore to previous versions of your files in the cloud - great.

Let your friends, family and co-workers know about this.

Here are some simple ways to avoid getting a virus in general:

1. Don't open e-mails from people you don't know

2. Don't open attachments in e-mails unless you were waiting for the attachment

3. Don't go to websites/click links that you don't fully trust

4. Don't download and execute files that you don't fully trust

It might seem obvious to the most of us to don't do the above, but to a lot of friends, family and co-workers it might not be.

Imagine waking up and having to pay $300 to get your data back. However, the police tracked down one of the servers that serves the keys and shut them down which means the keys were not delivered and the data was lost, this means even if you do pay the $300, there is no guarantee that you will get the data back.

Raise awareness of this and avoid having your files lost."

Here's a command you can run to find out what executables exist in AppData:

    dir /S /P "%userprofile%\AppData\*.exe" > %userprofile%\Desktop\FoundFiles.txt

Update: Normal work drained the battery to 10% in a little over 2 hours. This included having Visual Studio running, 10+ browser tabs, some chat Windows, PowerPoint, PowerShell, Steam downloading stuff, LINQPad

> "Just bought a laptop"

That's not really true, when I started looking I had no idea I could configure the hardware in a laptop like this. For some reason I imagined touch and 10 hour battery life being the most important thing and when I couldn't get that I decided to let go of the touch requirement - that is when I got the MacBook Air. It was suppose to be really good as it had the newer Haswell i7, sure it runs Windows OK but the drivers are crap. I was unhappy with the purchase and decided that I wanted to look outside the scope of ultrabooks but still not get a 4KG beast as that had been my previous device and it was just a hassle to take anywhere at all.

I did consider other laptops, like AlienWare but when I went to try one out I felt it was too heavy and bulky.

> "runs Windows well"

All laptops should. Why even bother having that in the requirements?

It was a requirement from the start, but then I decided to not care about battery life at all as it opened up for lots of more alternatives like this one, Alienware, etc.

But you are right, I should test that before I actually rely on it having lots of battery. Will do tomorrow and update the article with my results. Thanks for reading

What's fishy about it?

I've only used it connected to the wall so far, my co-worker had his running for 3.5 hours and the forum thread linked in the bottom of the article has lots of people running it for 3.5 to 4 hours. I just haven't had a change to test the battery that well yet.

Also, "I was imagining myself taking 10 hour+ flights" was a joke as I figured I wouldn't need that much battery so I let go of that requirement.

Yes, you can do that. If you login to your outlook.com account, go into settings then "Your email accounts". Here you can add send only accounts with custom SMTP just as with gmail this removes on behalf of. I've setup my desktop outlook client to use my Outlook.com address but when the message is sent by Outlook.com it uses my own domain and no "On Behalf Of".

Hope that helps..

Congratulations Dave! About a year ago I self-published my first book and it ended up being the best thing I ever did (so far). How did you write the book? I used LaTeX for mine, less mess with the tools! Another thing, have you considered going Print-On-Demand as well? I've got my book on Amazon using CreateSpace, they don't take a lot of the money and the book gets good exposure; while I also have a DRM free PDF, ePub and Mobi. As well as on Kindle.

Good luck with the sales and again, congratulations on becoming an author!

How would you really know it's Coca-Cola by just looking at it? Could just as well be something else.

I think you should re-read what he said.