Are These The Most Ridiculous/Awesome Startup Perks Ever? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/job-search/free-food-free-travel-10-corporate-perks-we-love/ <comment><USER2> My last job offered each employee two "Sunday fundays" a month... Basically we could pick up to two Sundays each month to go have fun on the company's dime, up to $250 (each sunday). You couldn't buy any goods with it, but you could go do whatever you wanted: nice restaurant, skydiving, kayaking, take friends out for drinks, etc. You just had to take pictures and were expected to write a few paragraphs about what you did.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a brilliant idea and I now want to do this for my company when we get bigger. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> It was a great perk. Essentially nobody really made full use of it (the full $500/mo per employee), but it was always great to have the ability to do so... Sometimes you'd just be out with friends for a big brunch and realize, "oh, hey, it's sunday" and pick up the tab for everyone or list all your meals on a Sunday while out hiking the Bay Area with friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A few of these would be big turnoffs for me:

\- everything at the office (both nine and ten): how about reasonable work hours so I can do things outside the office?

\- $500 if I live nearby: if this is just out of respect for the deleterious effects of a long commute, it strikes me as weirdly paternalistic, and actually kind of backwards; people who for whatever reason (spouse's employment, family, whatever) can't live within five miles and thus have a longer commute have _both_ a long commute _and_ $500/month less. Why not just subsidize transit for everyone? Or (and this is a bit tinfoil-hat-like, I admit) it's a way to get people to live near the office ... so it's less burdensome to spend a lot of time at the office.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, when you look at these in reverse, they really take on a different meaning. Essentially: you salary _would_ be X, except it's less because we're spending it on perks, except that you might not want some of them or qualify for them...

What business is it of the employer's, where I live? Viewed in this light, it's actually _discrimination_ against employees who don't live nearby, a salary cut in fact. It's almost amazing that it's even legal to do something like that.

Imagine if a company said, an extra $500/mo for everyone who doesn't own a car, or everyone who is vegan, or everyone who volunteers 10 hrs/mo, or everyone who votes Republican.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My all time favorite work perk after doing the corporate drone gig + pager/oncall, followed by fast paced SV type gig + pager/oncall and the pluses/minuses that come with those companies?

Nights and weekends off, and a respect for my downtime + work/life balance.

<comment><USER6> Yet another perk we live by at ZeroCater. Email jim at zerocater dot com or the address in my profile to learn more.

<comment><USER7> I'm skeptical. If someone comes in at 9 and leaves at 5 sharp M-F, there's no way they'd fit in at most SV startups. You're saying they'd fit in at ZeroCater?

<comment><USER6> If you're getting shit done, I'm cool with that.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure you're being genuine, but this seems naive. Startups are small teams, building relatively unproven products. There are a lot of lean times and challenges that test everyone's mettle. I don't think it's very likely someone can do their 9-5, even if they're massively productive in that timespan, and not be looked at funny if the cultural norm is for everyone to work crazy hours. I think the way for reasonable hours to actually work at a startup is for the founders to actively make that the culture.

 _Unless_ the company works asynchronously/remotely which has an awesome side- effect of making it feasible to value output over effort.

<comment><USER6> For one, I agree with lsc's response. Our employees are definitely in the office more than 40 hours a week, but that includes hanging around after work for dinner or a couple of beers.

That said, I generally work eight hour days, and I don't feel like I'm being judged when I walk out of the office at the end of the day. It's a solid part of our culture - that's why I said it's one of the perks we live by.

edited for spelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The commute stipend (#6, imo) is genius. 500$ (monthly, presumably) if you work w/in 5 miles of the office. People pathologically underestimate the negative affects their commutes have on their lives. When mine disappeared I got massively happier immediately, and the time I would have spent commuting shifted mostly to work.

<comment><USER9> This is actually quite a common perk offered by Japanese companies in Tokyo (GREE, CyberAgent, etc).

<comment><USER10> Interestingly, my former employers had what I believe to be a more common system in Japan: they paid you more to live farther away from the office, by subsidizing your monthly train pass. (One could actually turn this into an untaxed wage increase by buying the 6 month pass at the standard discount, rather than six 1 month passes, and pocketing the 6th month's subsidy. Eventually HR realized this, cut the subsidy, and directed everyone to buy the 6 month pass. HR was surprised that this decision was unpopular.)

One of the reasons for subsidizing commute expenses in Japan is that they're typically both high relative to employee salaries and the benefits are not taxable as earned income, whereas giving equivalent sums of money for other purposes does make that money taxable. For example, my read of the relevant regulations suggests that paying somebody to live close to the office constitutes taxable income but subsidizing their commute is not.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm none of Japanese, a tax lawyer, a Japanese tax lawyer, or your Japanese tax lawyer, but the regs are fairly straightforward if interested parties want to look them up:

[http://www.nta.go.jp/taxanswer/gensen/2508.htm](http://www.nta.go.jp/taxanswer/gensen/2508.htm)

[Funny anecdote: My boss attempted to sell me once on moving next door to the office, on the grounds that this would save the company money on my train pass _and_ let me continue working without that pesky hard stop at 30 minutes past midnight when the last train to Ogaki left. I think he was genuinely confused when I told him "I consider that less a bug and more a feature." The joke was on me, though, after crunch time happened and I had to buy hotel stays at my own expense after staying until 3 to 4 AM.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing I never fully understood is putting monitors/hardware/computers under perks.

How the heck did they imagine you would work?

<comment><USER10> It's marketing.

If you've never been treated as an adult before, "We will treat you like an adult. You'll even be able to _spend money without asking for permission._ " sounds like an outrageous perk. Many, many decisions about compensation and working style at startups are optimized for an audience which has never been treated as an adult before.

This is similar to how Google recruiters deploy their free food perk, incidentally. Google has over-the-top food benefits and has since forever. This is so widely publicized that people who are not in the tech industry know about it. Everybody who would take a job at Google is aware of it. Nonetheless, if you were to today ask a Google recruiter for a salary bump, they would _as a matter of policy_ ask for a little time to think it over, then come back with "Well, we give you all the free food you can eat. A meal in Mountain View runs about $15 to $20 or so, and you could easily get 10 of them a week from us, so that's worth something like $10k a year right there, right? Boom, I just got you the extra $10k."

And this is standard policy because _it routinely works_ on _people who are smart enough to work at Google_.

<comment><USER12> The food _is_ a bit of a actual perk. That's why it's common to be taxed (benefit-in-kind). The tax man knows that employees/employers would be able to pay money to employees without paying tax by giving many non-money benefits.

<comment><USER10> _That 's why it's common to be taxed (benefit-in-kind)_

It is not the practice of the United States to tax certain types of food benefits, including (almost certainly) the way in which tech companies customarily deliver food to their workers. You can read the test here:

[http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html)

Search for: [Meals on Your Business Premises]

I am not a tax accountant, I am not your tax accountant, etc, but I'm 99%+ sure that I'm right on this with regards to the IRS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For startups, it can be challenging to compete with Facebook and Google when it comes to perks. Startup money needs to be invested wisely, at the same time, we need to attract the best talent possible.

I'd be interested to hear what reasonable/not-out-of-this-world-crazy perks motivate you to work for a startup.

<comment><USER14> How about _no_ perks, or close-to-no-perks?

I like money, and I like spending my money on my own time. So I'd rather be paid well, and no matter how good the company's financials look, I'd prefer to work at a company that isn't spending money on catered lunches I probably won't eat, ping pong tables I won't use and group events I'm not inclined to attend.

There are plenty of talented people out there who don't need their jobs to provide a social experience, lifestyle or free stuff. Startups that go crazy on perks should consider that these can be just as much a turn-off as a turn- on to prospective employees.

<comment><USER4> I actually agree completely. These kinds of perks are a big turn-off for me, they almost feel like I'm still in school instead of at a job.

I'd much rather just have the higher salary, and not feel like the company was trying to be anything except the place I work at. I can provide my own social life and activities, and would rather work at work, than play ping-ping or pool there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SeatGeek started giving everyone $100 a month to spend on live event tickets. It doesn't accrue -- use it or lose it. I think concert attendance in the office has increased 5x since the new policy was started. Not quite a beach vacation, but fun!

</comment><comment><USER16> At Thumbtack, we brew our own beer. Currently making a Witbier and a Tripel ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> #5 is awesome! team build anywhere tropical :)

<comment><USER18> Interestingly, that struck me as one of the worst ones.

Anyone with a family at SendGrid, or other responsibilities (like the need to care for an elderly parent)? And can they actually leave them behind when they go on vacation, or are they forced to forgo this benefit?

Mind you, skipping the trip means more than just "didn't get to play in the exotic locale", it also means the team-building has solidified a team that no longer includes you.

<comment><USER4> I agree completely. I think it can be a real problem, when the office basically sends the strong signal that everything is basically geared towards unmarried 20-somethings.

<comment><USER12> That might be the point... </cynical>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My personal favorite is the travel perk (#4)... though I wouldn't say no to having a company boat!

<comment><USER19> My personal fave is where thedailymuse has a _edit_ quartet, not trio, of HN accounts, only one of whom discloses his role, dumping links and shill commenting in each other's submissions including yourself, acav, nlow, and elliotbell.

Plus 7 or 8 accounts created just to dump a few of your links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Company boat? Would be a better perk if everyone got a boat

<comment><USER21> That would be bad compensation rather than a great perk. It would just be compensating people in a way they wouldn't spend the money given the choice. The company boat takes advantage of it being easier to get value out of a group "owned" boat than an individual boat, since a lot of overhead is shared and the amount of time the boat sits there unused is minimized.</comment></comment>


Introducing Ignite for React Native - <AUTHOR> https://shift.infinite.red/ignite-your-mobile-development-32417590ed3e#.550hb5veo <comment><USER2> As a beginner of RN, this looks really helpful. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER2> You should probably add the _Ask HN:_ tag...

<comment><USER2> i meant Show HN:

..and now im talking to myself...</comment></comment>


A simple test of whether the Universe is a hologram (or a computer) - <AUTHOR>

assume the speed of light (and the uncertainty principle, or the product of the Planck constant and the speed of light) is the processing speed limit of the computer which simulates the universe.
Also assume that the universe has finite computational resources. Therefore resources have to be diminished in one location when they are in in demand another location.
The simulation of a complex event, such as some highly involved, very low redundancy, fast moving and extensive event (like some kind of very large very fast collision between two highly involved structures, there are better examples) will result in significant local load on the universe computer.
Given our two assumptions above then we have a measurable result:
Ether the speed of light (or Planck constants)  will be diminished in that local region, or they or their product will be diminished in another region.
If the diminishment is local (or within a testable neighbourhood) this can be tested.
If the diminishment is not in a testable neighbourhood, perhaps other experimental constructions will work. <comment><USER2> "Assume the speed of light (or ...) is the processing speed limit for the computer which simulates the universe."

Wholly unfounded assumption. If the universe is a simulation, there's no reason why any particular constant would be the processing speed limit.

Indeed, even talking about _processing speed limit_ is probably an incoherent concept when considering the question of whether the universe is a simulation. If our universe is a simulation, then some other entity is simulating our universe. We know absolutely nothing about the world of that entity, and have no grounds to conclude or assume anything whatsoever about the machinery of the simulator.

The egregious mistake in this "test" is the implicit assumption that the machinery some entity (in a universe we know nothing about) would use to simulate our universe would be a computer of the same basic architecture as the one sitting in your bedroom.

<comment><USER3> Moreover, the simulation speed would not be related with any "speed" inside the simulation. If the processing speed decrease, the simulation will be slowed, but inside nobody would possibly notice it. If you stop the simulation, everything is stopped, anybody would be "frozen", and there's no way to detect something like that inside the simulation.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Maybe to calculate one iteration of our universe normally would take a second for the "outside computer", but because of very heavy load it now takes a year. We'd be none the wiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are so many wrong assumptions in this OP, most of which the OP didn't state explicitly, that for once I don't even feel like breaking it down into chunks:

> [quote of the whole thing]

No. When you run Dwarf Fortress on a slower computer, or do something in it that taxes your computer resources more, the dwarves don't suddenly sit up and take notice that something went faster in-game than it was supposed to. Everything just takes longer to calculate, at once, _including_ the dwarves' perceptions and any (in-simulation) tools they might use to measure this.

QED.

<comment><USER6> The Dwarf Fortress analogy is assuming a single threaded implementation. In other possible architectures, dwarfs might experience latency and among the other things a dwarf might do with all that free time is measure the latency.

Disproving idealism by assuming a god's eye view doesn't warrant a QED. Reality is a black box abstraction.

<comment><USER5> Only if the architecture itself is unsafe and does not enforce timeline consistency.

It's relatively easy and simple (on the scale of programming a black-box automaton that runs our universe) to code a completely asymmetrical n-threaded system where some threads are millions of in-simulation years ahead of the others and yet the "final" timeline as would be output in a timestamp-sorted log would be identical to that produced by a single-threaded frame-synched system.

It's not even all that hard by our modern standards; some software scientists do it all the time.

So no, the analogy wasn't assuming a single-threaded implementation. It was merely assuming that the system was designed for a self-consistent (and probably loopless) timeline, which has strong evidence for being a property of the kind of spacetime we live in. One such piece of evidence is the ever- mounting empirical evidence reinforcing the c limit on information transfer.

In an unsafe, approximation-riddled system where causality graphs are only searched for modifications up to a bounded depth or item count, yes, some discrepancies could be noticed. However, it's empirically evident that this bound, if it exists, is far greater than everything we've ever been able to calculate.

The Universe, whatever it runs on, routinely calculates graphs to perfect accuracy that would take us millenia of the sum total computing power on earth to solve accurately enough that we couldn't tell the difference in the result with our current instrumentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would assume the frames per second would drop, and for us being simulated we wouldn't notice. Our clocks would still read the same, no matter how 'fast' or 'slow' the simulation is running. Weather terms like fast and slow even make sense to the machine simulating us, a linear single direction timeline could be a construct they are simulating. Maybe the live in a universe with 3D time or something equally different.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ooh, I wanna play too!

And as more and more classical information in one region of space has to be simulated (Allude to wave-function collapse), less and less information is possible to know about distant matter and events, which looks like universal expansion to our mortal eyes, but it's actually our instance scaling down.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a linguistic problem. Assume there are real-computers [or real- holograms]. Inside the simulation the word "computers" refers to simulated- computers. Even if we invent the term "real-computer" inside the simulation it's fully qualified referent is simulated/real-computer. Global variables aren't global to the extent their referent persists across system boundaries.

Sysadmin privileges are required to configure the same name to the same value across systems. Once a proof assumes there is a sysadmin, we have to rely on faith along with our reason.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think this would testable because in the region of diminished resources, time would also be diminished (slow down but not necessarily stop).

Slowing time in the diminished resource region would also slow any local observer, making his observations seem normal. If other resources are diminished that will also interfere with observation.

Einstein's work on simultaneity also prohibits a single observer from observing locally and in another region (i.e., there is no God-like view).

It appears that physics has built-in mechanism for keeping 'observers' and 'the observed' in check.

</comment><comment><USER10> When you reach for your phone, there's always a time when your hand is only halfway there, so theoretically, it'll never get there (Zeno's paradox). Since we know from practice that it is possible to grab your phone, the Great Computational Machine that runs the universe must be using floating-point numbers with a finite precision that round to the nearest whole integer when your hand is about to arrive.

Clearly, proof that we live inside a computer simulation ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> As these measurements and observations are done inside the system, they're completely unreliable. Every time the computer clock ticks, a second goes by. It doesn't matter how fast it's ticking to an observer watching the screen, for code on the inside a tick means a second. The outside observer would notice the processor struggle to render all those details, slowing everything down to a crawl, but inside the code every tick will still signal a second.

</comment><comment><USER12> Since we are making assumptions I will make the assumption that each point in the universe is capable of calculating all possible events taking place at that point. As such there need not be a drawing of resources from once place to another. As each cell contains the DNA for our bodies so each point in the universe shall be capable of calculating all possible events ocurring in that particular point.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Also assume that the universe has finite computational resources. Therefore resources have to be diminished in one location when they are in in demand another location."

The "universe computer" could easily be many times larger than our universe and have enough resources to simulate everything, everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> > "Also assume that the universe has finite computational resources. Therefore > resources have to be diminished in one location when they are in in demand > another location."

With all due respect, it's much more likely the universe is multi-core, highly parallel and enforces proper resource allocation.

</comment><comment><USER15> You are mistaking internal time with external time in simulation.

Even if universe runs on Turing machine doing one instruction per external year, for one external year, and 1000 instructions per second for the next external year - you won't notice the difference from inside.

Only observators from outside will notice.

</comment><comment><USER16> The real universe might have a higher speed of light and thus better CPU power than we can imagine. Our speed of light might be just a define in a header file so the simulation can be run in reasonable speeds for that super computer.

</comment><comment><USER17> It is as if you're trying to run a benchmark on a system: pushing the limits until frames start dropping.

</comment><comment><USER18> That seems perfectly reasonable. Let me just crash a few galaxies together and see what happens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Unfounded assumption" that's why they're called assumptions, so we don't have to found them. We don't have to and we also can, so let's found some of them.

"No reason speed of light would be processing speed." No reason it isn't, and actually there are some reasons it is. SOL limits rate of information propagation (ignoring quantum entanglement, which may be like two or more particles being initialized with a shared key to Universe memcache). Planck Constant limits amount of information. These two things provide clear limits on how fast and how much information can propagate, which is a reason which can contribute to a choice to assume that SOL or PC or their product tracks inherent or imposed computation limits of the Universe computer.

"The simulation speed (from POV of observers in simulation) and the simulator speed (from POV of observers outside the simulation) are unrelated, because even if the computer was suspended, we would not notice, because time also would have stopped." If the effect is global this would be correct. If I pause the Universe computer, then no one notices they've stopped, because their noticing has also stopped. If I rewind and refresh from a backup, then no one notices they've gone back Groundhog day style, except if observer memories are stored separately to the main Universe state, then someone's information can persist between refreshes (as happens in Groundhog day and Edge of Tomorrow). So if the Universe computer has one processing loop, one core and that slows down, then everything slows down, and no one notices.

However, what if different regions each do their own processing and then update each other by exchanging photons (and maybe operating on shared memcache if you want to get quantum)? In this case a local slowdown will not be observed globally, meaning that it can be observed in a simple manner the same way that relativistic time dilation is observed. Synchronize two watches, send one observer to the event region with one watch and keep the other watch here. When the other observer returns, measure the time difference (correcting for any effects induced by velocity or gravity) -- is there some left over? Is there some slow down as a result of the observer having been present in a region where computation had to slow to maintain precision (Planck constant) because there was so much going on? Or was precision sacrificed (Planck constant) for speed? What optimizaion choices were made in that part of the simulation? If time slows we can measure, if SOL slows we can measure (with a watch whose movement is bouncing laser between mirrors), if Planck changes we can also measure it. So the result of this is that if there are local optimization choices being made, these can be measured, and the experimental construction proposed remains a workable one. There is evidence that constants have changed over time, (perhaps as the creators made optimizations?), and change over regions (perhaps due to run-time optimization choices as we are proposing to test here). One untestable (because it can't separate matter interaction from computation) intuitive hypothesis for why the SOL varies per medium is that there's far less computation to be done as photons go through a vacuum, and interact with nothing, than when they go through a dense material and interact with many things.

"Any measurements of time distortion done inside the system would be unobservable" Actually this seems to not be the case even with past experiments. Time dilation can be measured when it results from local effects (such as SOL travel, gravity), and these experiments have validated the theory of relativistic time dilation. Watches going out of sync because of time dilation is a testable phenomenon. Evaluation the theory of time dilation due to localized resource constraints will be similarly testable.

"External time is not internal time, any slowdown will be unobservable." Not if the effects are local, with different regions making their own optimization choices. We can send a watch to the region of the high-load event, and when it returns we can see if it slowed down relative to its twin here.

"The real universe may be more than capable of simulating without slow down, the constraints may be artificial to keep the simulation in check." Exactly, it might. Whether they are inherent or imposed limits of the Universe computer, if the effects occur locally we can test them.

"Benchmarking the universe." Yes.

"Crash a few galaxies together." Well, yes. Just observe when this happens and figure out a way to use the data we already have for those event to test theory of Planck constant or SOL being diminished due to these effects.

Taking it Further

What if the gravity effects from which we hypothesised the existence of dark matter were really just local resource constraints on the SOL or processing speed, resulting from optimization choices when large objects like galaxies are doing something load-heavy?

What if gravity itself is an optimization? The more gravity you have the less things you have to calculate because the more you restrict the movement leading to less possible system microstates. Broadly, infinite gravity is a black hole with 0 observable microstates, while 0 gravity is open space, with infinite possible microstates. Gravity could then change from place to place based on optimization choices, explaining the anomalous dark matter by assuming the effects observed resulted from changes in gravitation rather than extra matter.

However all these consequences is just theorizing. What we have is a theory that is testable.

So should we despair that "nothing is real?" Hold your horses. Even if such an effect was validated by experiment, it's possible that Universe computer and simulation is simply an analogy for some physical principle at work. If that's true it's still a neat analogy. After all, all our theories are really just analogies to help us think about and model things about the real world.</comment>


Why Do Expensive Hotels Charge for Wifi? - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/why-do-expensive-hotels-charge-for-wifi/

<comment><USER2> As a rule I never book a hotel that charges for Wifi. It's not just premium brands but a good litmus test for hotels in general. I've found those that charge for Wifi try to profit from you at more points, be that charging directly or cutting corners and generally offer a poorer experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a rather nonsensical reason devised by hotels that charge for wifi. In fact, the quotes they give are actually from companies that do paid hotel wifi. The argument is very similar to arguments about pricing, monopoly- protection and net non-neutrality regulations for ISPs: that somehow, high prices and abusive regulations are _necessary_ to provide decent bandwidth.

It would be very interesting to see an analysis of internet connection quality at hotels with paid vs. free wifi. In my anecdotal experience, the paid wifi has often been _worse_. To be fair, paid wifi seems most often to be present at hotels hosting conferences, and the conferences do bring quite a few users... but if we listen to this argument, isn't that the situation that we are paying to prevent?

</comment><comment><USER4> Business travel is booked at particular price points, $150, $300, etc. based on the employee's rank in the company. On top of that there's a daily allowance for incidentals like room service, parking, and wifi, so the hotels overcharge to extract as much of it as possible. You're much less likely to see wifi charges at boutique hotels or at resorts where there are fewer business travelers.

There's also a budgeting issue. A hotel spending hundreds of thousands of dollars installing wifi is going to want to recoup that cost directly instead of assigning it to overhead, and once they start collecting fees the revenue is hard to give up. A hostel can just add a $50 consumer router to their existing internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER5> They missed the largest reason completely.

It is because their main customer is there on business, and their company, not themselves is picking up the tab. And if the company is picking up the tab, there is absolutely no reluctance to get the wifi.

And the companies don't care, because the employee needs the wifi to work, so $15 or whatever it is, is a small price to pay for being able to have the employee work remotely, which a decade ago was all but impossible.

<comment><USER6> No they didn't:

"The most common explanation for why fancy hotels charge for wifi is that their customers are not sensitive to price: rich customers, especially business travelers who charge everything to the company, don't care about a $10 surcharge..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This same reasoning can be used for why those same expensive hotels don't have free continental breakfast.

When I was a kid, I went with my dad to union conventions, where the union would always put us in the nicest hotel. I'm sure it broke my parents' cheapskate hearts that there was never free breakfast, so we always went to a McDonald's or something nearby every morning.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the analysis of the article is not really well worked.

For example, failure to provise to benchmark. For example, no real statistics or survey. For example, not everyone cares about internet. For example, paid internet is usually not really good...

</comment><comment><USER9> What? A quick google tells me that ritz-carlton, intercontinental and other luxury hotels like kempinski all provide free wifi. I seriously doubt other luxurious hotels would charge you for wifi.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very US-centric. Article fails to explain why expensive hotels elsewhere in the world manage to provide free wifi.

<comment><USER11> I'd be interested in knowing where expensive hotels tend to provide free wifi? In China almost none of the hotels provided it for free or as an included service. That being said, many times I'd get it included in my rate if I pre- payed or booked ahead depending on the time of year and the promotions they were offering. But it wasn't just "free wifi" like many of the discount chains tend to offer here in the US and elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because they can.</comment>


Is it legal for scientists to publish reviews they receive on papers? - <AUTHOR> https://thewinnower.com/papers/peer-review-of-nicholson-j-2013-will-we-cure-cancer-by-sequencing-thousands-of-genomes-molecular-cytogenetics-6-57

<comment><USER2> The quotes on that page look like they fall under fair use. They are minimized quotes, they doesn't affect the market for the reviewer's comments, and the reviewer is part of a professional system where it's expected that people will make copies of the review, if only to pass it between editor and other reviewers).

So, legal? Sure looks like it to this non-lawyer.

Had it been a complete copy of the reviewers' comments, then you would need to consult someone with more knowledge of the copyright system.</comment>


Tell HN: Why the iPad may be invulnerable - <AUTHOR>

First off, yes, I'm an Apple fan, but now they're the over dog, so I'm no longer interested in them for that reason.
I think all this discussion about iPad competition misses one huge point that no one has noticed: just watch the keynote and the whole GarageBank application demo in particular.
Is anyone ever going to build an application like this (think about its depth--probably man-years of work, partly based on existing Mac code, but clearly with a huge effort to make all the virtual instruments with their life-like controls and more) for Android? I really doubt it. Google wouldn't and probably can't. The hardware manufacturers are a joke. Somem third-party could, but would anyone invest the time required on a risky venture like this?
Couple this serious play tool, which every teenager with a shred of curiosity about music would want, with the serious work tools like Pages, Keynote and Numbers, and you begin to see that Apple's main advantage in the tablet wars (at least in the volume business) isn't hardware but their own software apps.
Yes, at some level, if you just want to browse the web and check your email, all tablets are equal. But what really fires people up are these serious work/play apps. Once you see them in person, you're hooked.
I seriously wonder if any iPad competitor really has a chance, no matter what their hardware offering. I'm not trolling, honestly, and it'd clearly be a bad thing if other pads can't compete. I just think people are missing the forest for the trees. <comment><USER2> > _"Couple this serious play tool, which every teenager with a shred of > curiosity about music would want, with the serious work tools like Pages, > Keynote and Number"_

The first part correctly identifies the conceptual basis for the iPad's appeal to consumers. The latter part [mis]identifies the reason the iPad has less appeal to enterprise. Apple's productivity apps don't scale well, and the iPad versions of iWorks alter permanently documents.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll see your 'GarageBand' and raise you a 'SketchUp' and 'GoogleEarth'.

Now I don't mean to get in a tit-for-tat because that's not the point. They just concentrate on different things.</comment>


Verizon Math Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.viralvideochart.com/youtube/verizon_math_fail?id=lCJ3Oz5JVKs $0.002 = 0.002 cents <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the time the electric company claimed I owed in excess of $3000 for one month. The meter had rolled over, and they thought it was a 5 digit meter when it was only a 4 digit meter. I finally got them to relent with a little E&M reasoning: If I had used as much electricity as they claimed I had, I would have melted the transmission line into my house!</comment>


Google traffic hijacked via tiny Nigerian ISP - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-traffic-hijacked-via-tiny-nigerian-isp/ <comment><USER2> With how much money China has dumped into Africa and Nigeria it seems awfully suspicious that this would happen. From my understanding not only would the Nigerian ISP need to make a mistake, but the China and Russian ISPs would also have had to overlook the same mistake.

</comment><comment><USER3> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439924)</comment>


r/ChangeMyView Is Graduating Reddit: Introducing ChangeAView.com - <AUTHOR> https://changeaview.org/2019/04/06/r-changemyview-is-graduating-reddit-introducing-changeaview-com/ <comment><USER2> When I first saw the subreddit, I thought it was a neat idea. I like the idea of digging into a tough subject and challenging our beliefs.

I couldn't put my finger on it for the longest time, but what I eventually realized was that I didn't like how inauthentic the whole thing felt. Changing a deeply held belief just isn't that easy, yet almost every thread has the OP giving a delta.

How it appears to me is that people have beliefs that they realize are either unpopular or controversial, and so they use the subreddit to learn what they "should" believe or at least a rationalization for ignoring their true beliefs.

<comment><USER3> > How it appears to me is that people have beliefs that they realize are > either unpopular or controversial, and so they use the subreddit to learn > what they "should" believe or at least a rationalization for ignoring their > true beliefs.

A large portion of Reddit in general (especially the front page and popular subreddits) is people making up stories/opinions/content created specifically to illicit as many replies and argument as possible, as that's what gets more votes and attention. It's a popularity contest, not a place for genuine discussion.

You see it here too, to a lesser extent. You see it everywhere there's likes/upvotes tied to accounts. People compete for the high score.

I still personally think forums were/are a better format for discussion. Just a flowing conversation where general activity in a thread bumps it up and not votes.

<comment><USER4> Even the traditional PHP forum has all kinds of senseless 'flare' on each post. Post counts, signup dates, eye catching signatures, etc. A large portion of the screen space on your typical forum is still dedicated to attention seeking behavior.

IRC is better. There is very little on screen besides the discussion itself. IRC nicks can be used to grab attention, but there are only a few characters to work with so usually it's just a bit quirky but not really distracting.

<comment><USER5> And 4chan theoretically is better still, because the anonymity means posters are not rewarded at all for their contributions. Even the same poster, posting twice in the thread is not identifiable on most boards, allowing the discussion to be the primary focus. On the other hand, the culture of most *chans is to be abusive and confrontational, so who knows if it is any better.

<comment><USER4> In my experience 4chan has more attention seeking behavior than IRC (inline images facilitate it moreso than nicks), and on IRC users tend to be more friendly and aware of each other's humanity.

<comment><USER6> > and on IRC users tend to be more friendly and aware of each other's > humanity.

I have been on IRC since 1993 but this is news to me.

<comment><USER7> 'Friendlier than 4chan' is a pretty low bar.

<comment><USER6> For sure but "aware of each other's humanity" is ... not something I'd call your typical IRC dweller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are two problems that you will have to deal with:

\- auto-discovery and growth through r/all - no longer will you have people popping in because you made it to Reddit's front page

\- loss of the great number of current subscribers who (before) can go to their reddit homepage and see your top posts automatically, but (now) would have to go to a totally new website to see your posts. I subscribe to about 40 subreddits but only visit deliberately about 3 of those.

Good luck (sincerely), but I would not be surprised if r/CMV stays larger than your new independent website.

<comment><USER9> It'd be not-that-difficult, technology wise, to integrate with Reddit, with submissions instead going to changeaview.com instead of reddit.com's comment section.

<comment><USER10> But legally that's a huge can of worms. Reddit would shut them down instantly.

And not necessarily by suing, Reddit could save itself some trouble and simply delete the subreddit.

<comment><USER9> Reddit has never shut down any other company or group doing anything related to that, and honestly why would they?

<comment><USER10> Have others integrated Reddit submissions into third-party web sites?

I'd be surprised if Reddit liked that.

<comment><USER9> [https://np.reddit.com/r/hackernews/](https://np.reddit.com/r/hackernews/)

Reddit offers an extensive API to do just that: [https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/](https://www.reddit.com/dev/api/)

It makes tons of business sense to let things like that happen. It is in no way a legal can of worms or in fact any trouble at all.

<comment><USER10> Good to know. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It'll be interesting to see if this works. If it does, it means that Reddit mods can gain full ownership of their communities and do something more than just run a volunteer subreddit. If you run a popular sub, I think it's reasonable to ask why you are spending countless unpaid hours tending to a community when someone else reaps all the profit. It's natural to say: "Okay, I have hundreds of thousands of users here on Reddit. That's gotta be worth something."

This does open the Pandora's box of monetizing a group of people that really dislike getting monetized. (Reddit users, that is.) And if it does work, maybe Reddit communities will start to be seen as a way to start community-based businesses/organizations.

<comment><USER12> I mod a large-ish subreddit and I disagree with moderators "gaining full ownership of their communities". Not every mod was around since the very beginning or did most of these mods spend considerable effort marketing their communities like one would do in an actual company. Even for communities with a clear theme and set of behavioural rules (e.g. r/CMV), a lot of that is enforceable via AutoMod. Most of what moderators do are barely more than Internet janitors.

A volunteer position is voluntary. There is no contract or minimum time commitment (though some subs have minimum mod action requirements). If a moderator no longer likes to commit their time, they can either go on a hiatus or leave.

Monetizing individual Reddit communities or paying moderators will create a whole plethora of financial and ethical issues which Reddit HQ is obviously unwilling to address at the moment. I'm pretty sure they've thought about this and decided keeping the status quo is the best choice for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This won't work. Here is why: I tried the same thing with /r/lifeprotips.

I created that subreddit YEARS ago and initially wanted to build the website for it.

I populated all the good life hacks that I found throughout the internet initially to the subreddit and the community naturally grew — but I also invested time and money into it (by giving gold to top members).

Then when I launched the website, I had an auto moderator rule that removed a post from anyone who submitted a link-based post and PM'd them telling them to submit to the new website (@lifeprotips.com).

Well, guess what happened? Someone got upset and reported me. Because I had Adsense on it, that went to "justify" their case saying I was monetizing the subreddit.

It resulted in a subsequent shadow ban which eventually led to the removal of my reddit account (pretty old account with lots of history).

The mod who did this is /u/krispykrackers.

Good luck, though. I'm rooting for you, because Reddit doesn't reward or appreciate creators, and without them, they'd be nothing.

<comment><USER9> The mistake you made was allowing posts at all on Reddit. You should have changed the CSS to point people at lifeprotips.com, and just created submissions for posts on lifeprotips.com.

<comment><USER14> The mistake was thinking they owned a community. They may have started it, but once grown, the community is its own thing. A successful migration to an external website would require a wide buy-in from the prominent community members, and cannot be done by fiat by whoever technically controls the means of discussion.

<comment><USER9> Reddit communities aren't the same as in person social communities, they don't have any real structure beyond the moderation class. The "buy in" you're talking about _is_ the fact that this site was built.

I don't think this will "succeed", but not because of anything related to migration; it's just not that good of an idea, from a business standpoint. If they redefine success as something other than growth and user retention, maybe they can create a fake kind of success, but this site will not grow users or any of the things a normal startup looks for when launching a product, and the monetization will never be worth anything of value, but simply because the idea isn't that great.

<comment><USER14> Disagree thoroughly.

WRT. communities - no, there really is more to it than "moderation class", just like there's more to HN than pg, dang and sctb. Regular submitters, regular commenters and people voting are what creates a community, what makes visitors go there, what makes one subreddit better than another on the same topic. They're the soul of a subreddit. Despite what the subreddit creator or moderators want, nothing can prevent those regulars from deciding to stay, or to move elsewhere. 'fourstar built a site and wanted to migrate the community by fiat, but people didn't move, and instead reported him.

> _it 's just not that good of an idea, from a business standpoint. If they > redefine success as something other than growth and user retention, maybe > they can create a fake kind of success, but this site will not grow users or > any of the things a normal startup looks for when launching a product (...)_

Here is a thing: nobody in the community cares. The regular posters, commenters and voters don't care about "growth and user retention" beyond "people like it in here". Lurkers and irregular visitors don't care about it either, they're interested in actual content the community curates. Communities like subreddits exist so that people with like interest can exchange thoughts and media about those interests together. That somebody monetizes them indirectly through ads is an artifact of hosted platforms, but nobody will be willing to abandon a perfectly good one just because someone related to the community wants to take this money for themselves instead.

Imagine this: a guy got together some people and started organizing regular open poetry evenings in a coffee shop in the center of a city. The event became successful, grew quite an audience; the coffee shop wanted it there (as it drove foot traffic), so it kind of kept organizing itself. Fast forward couple years, the original organizer suddenly announces that from now on, the meetings will take place in a coffee shop he just opened on the outskirts. How do you think the regular guests and performers would react? I imagine they'd laugh the guy out of a room - it's ridiculous to leave a perfectly good meeting place and move to the middle of nowhere just because one person _really really_ wants to make money off them. I imagine if the guy was telling the guests to go elsewhere next time, the coffee shop itself would step in and kick the guy out.

<comment><USER9> Reddit and HN are entirely unrelated, and any sense of community that you think exists in a subreddit is your own perception, not reality. Sorry, it just isn't there, because the platform doesn't allow for it.

<comment><USER14> My personal experience strongly disagree with yours. Not every subreddit develops a community where people recognize each other, but many do. Or, as you say, I'm imagining it.

Regardless, my argument still holds. Whatever semblance of community there is, it's obvious it won't appreciate someone disrupting it in order to make a buck.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, you're completely imagining it, and no your argument doesn't hold.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but _Reddit_ is making more than a buck on your little "community". Nothing whatsoever is different or special about Reddit vs. this website.

You're not part of anything, you're not building anything, the people you think of as "friends" on Reddit aren't, and you need to realize that. That site isn't for what you think it's for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The idea that people's important opinions can be changed by some sort of silver bullet mega-argument is naive and immature, and frankly a great example of what's wrong with discourse on the internet.

In this light, the fact that CMV has the hubris to think their 'experiment' is significant outside reddit is not surprising, but no less laughable.

<comment><USER16> > The idea that people's important opinions can be changed by some sort of > silver bullet mega-argument is naive and immature, and frankly a great > example of what's wrong with discourse on the internet.

Even more naive and immature is the idea that conversations either lead to epiphany or do nothing. Comments are read several orders of magnitude more than they're responded to. You might not change that person's mind right now, but that kind of discourse is a part of how other people form or reinforce their opinions, and the OP might be more willing to change their mind in the future upon having other interactions and experiences that challenge their views, especially if someone has shown them a good-faith argument in the past.

<comment><USER15> > Even more naive and immature is the idea that conversations either lead to > epiphany or do nothing.

Ah yes, where ever did I get that idea when forming my opinion about a site titled change my view, where you literally get a whole separate level of fake internet points for giving people deltas, cough, epiphanies?

<comment><USER17> Except CMV itself doesn't claim that that "whole separate level of fake internet points" are epiphanies, or even full changes of position

>The definition of 'change' (verb) is "make or become different."

>Following on from the previous segment, we therefore believe that a change in view simply means a new perspective. Perhaps, in the example of literally looking at something, you've taken a step to the side; or a few steps; or you've moved around and now stand behind it. Maybe you haven't 'moved', but it looks slightly different to you now; in a new light.

>A change in view need not be a reversal. It can be tangential, or takes place on a new axis altogether.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/index#wiki_what_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/index#wiki_what_is_a_.27change.27.3F)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To paraphrase : "We have been looking to find a way to monetise community involvement and we think that moving it to somewhere that we control will let us do that."

I myself am keen on big houses, fun parties and fast cars, so I can see the attraction for the founders, I'm not sure what's in it for anyone else though.

<comment><USER19> This seem fair, why should community moderators not get paid for their work? Reddit gets everyone else to do the work and then scoops up the ad views at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They will rapidly find that 90% of their traffic continues to exist within the subreddit, therefore anyone wanting a good thread will post it there rather than on the website, and the website will rapidly atrophy and be abandoned.

<comment><USER21> While this may be true ( some currently successful sites are spin-offs from other sites ), often there is an orbiting behavior.

If the option is to successfully monetize a portion of the flow vs nothing, it may turn out to be a net positive for the subreddit admins.

<comment><USER22> ...but originating from Reddit? There's, ah, voat...

<comment><USER23> Imgur comes to mind.

<comment><USER24> What's funniest to me about this is how reddit spent a bunch of money creating their own image hosting service, but somehow imgur is still often the better choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A friend built [https://arguman.org/](https://arguman.org/) a few years ago. It's a platform for structured discussions ("argument analysis") which uses a different (IMHO better) approach to discussions than unstructured text.

<comment><USER14> Woah, it looks great! Reminds me of Kialo ([https://www.kialo.com/](https://www.kialo.com/)), but there are only two ways to recursively split an argument there ("agree" / "disagree") vs. three here, and I also like Arguman's layout more. Pass my thanks to your friend, as I've wanted for a long time to see discussions represented in this kind of tree layout.

(Another thing I'd really love to see would be an extension of this: a DAG of arguments, not a tree. This would most likely make sense only when arguments solidified, and could be rearranged and deduplicated to form a graph.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This feels wrong. I created a niche sub that currently has ~10k users, but I consider the members of the community to be as much the "owners" of it as I am.

Just as I work to keep spammers and self-promoters at bay, I'd find it pretty scummy to form a startup around the sub and make money out of the contributions of thousands of community members.

Separately, I like that at Reddit I know what I get now and very likely to get in the future. But what if ChangeAView pulls a Quora and starts making it harder to view content, like requiring login, etc.

<comment><USER14> Yup. Were I a member of that community, I'd feel wronged too.

> _Just as I work to keep spammers and self-promoters at bay, I 'd find it > pretty scummy to form a startup around the sub and make money out of the > contributions of thousands of community members._

Exactly. As you said, you may have created a community and technically own the forum, but you're not _the_ community. The community is its own thing, and the founder demanding it move somewhere else so they can monetize it would be no different than an invasion of spammers - just another attempt at profiting off the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Change my view: Verb forms of "graduate" which have a direct object _should_ be followed by "from" unless they're referring to the act of calibration.

"Jimmy graduated from college." Not "Jimmy graduated college."

Alternately acceptable exception that proves the rule: "State College graduated 1500 students this year."

<comment><USER28> _" Jimmy graduated from college." Not "Jimmy graduated college."_

See also: "Oil needs to be changed." Not "Oil needs changed."

People are afraid of "to be" these days.

<comment><USER14> > _See also: "Oil needs to be changed." Not "Oil needs changed."_

Correct (I think) alternatives: "Oil needs change", "Oil needs changing".

<comment><USER29> The oil needs a change

The oil needs to be changed

The oil needs changing

<comment><USER28> _The oil needs changing_

Not great. It's very common, but it's gerund abuse. In a lot of places it's considered hillbilly talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love this subreddit but wouldn't visit a separate website.

<comment><USER31> I don't like the subreddit but if I did, I would be interested in participating in their community on a separate website. To each their own, I guess.

Why I don't like it: a big part of it is people taking troll posts seriously. The third post down on changeaview.com when I visited it is "To be transgender or to condone it is nothing short of a lie". Then the author goes through a bunch of talking points. They're not there to give people a fair chance to change their view but to get people to read their garbage. Still, people argue posts like these and get to feel good about it, when they're really just helping to provide attention to trolls.

<comment><USER32> I'm interested in how this taxonomy of discussion works... can you define the lines between what is "fair" discussion, "talking points" "trolling" and "garbage"? Like, where does criticism of Israeli military aggression against Palestinians fall? If that's an easy one, what about Ilhan Omar's views on the government's influence in geopolitical affairs? Whatever your answers, would many people not disagree?

<comment><USER21> It's mainly diagnosed on repetition of talking points.

If it sounds like astroturfed content then it's likely to be so, whether intentional or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how much more this will happen with the current controversy surrounding Reddit's funding and uncertain future. They are doing surprisingly well after a horrid redesign and everything else that's happened over there.

<comment><USER34> Reddit is transitioning to a Facebook model to suck up all the users that are hemorrhaging from over there. There's a new concentration on posting to personal profiles, integrating commercial entities (ie, u/washingtonpost) as "users" to blend in their ads seemlessly, and gentrifying to appease these new adertisers that don't want to be next to potentially controversial content.

These are all things that don't bother the new users at all and the loss of the founding population of redditors isn't causing any tears at corporate.

Of course they go after the scoundrels first in this quest but as the frog slowly boils more and more mainstream 'controversial' subreddits like changemyview will get pushed out.

<comment><USER35> I think that was inevitable the moment they started taking big VC money. There's most proven way to become massively profitable is trading your user's attention for ad money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >CMV: Asking peopel to stop using the "OK Hand" gesture because racists use it, just gives power to that hand sign and legitimizes the white power movement.

Holy crap, some people actually discuss something like this?

<comment><USER24> Honestly, I don't see what's wrong with that discussion topic. I personally haven't come to a conclusion myself.

On one hand, knowing it's associated with racists makes me hesitate to ever use it. On the other hand, why should I let them change my behavior when a minuscule bit of research would show that I'm clearly not a racist? Like with many such things, it mostly depends on the context, but would be interested in the conversation and not so quick to dismiss it as pointless.

<comment><USER36> Really? For me it sounds like this - "Should we castrate men because some men are rapists?".

>On one hand, knowing it's associated with racists

I'm pretty sure this is just west's or even a certain number of countries problem. This topic is the second time I've personally ever heard\read that somebody uses this sign as something other than an "ok" sign. The first time I've read about it in someone's tweet - I even decided to call out to my friends\readers\etc and one guy from Canada new about this.

Anyhow - no, nobody should stop using some sign just because a small, even if very vocal group of people started using in for whatever reason they have. Next time they will start to wear some color and what? We should stop wearing it? Last time I checked people are pretty damn good with wearing brown coats from Hugo Boss despite the obvious history facts.

This is like building a cage around yourself just because there are a few stray dogs with rabies in the town.

>dismiss

I'm not saying it should be dismissed, if someone have questions or doubts - one should feel free to voice them, sure. I'm just amazed by the topic, or rather by the fact that some people haven't found an answer to this after so many years. If this helps them to find one - I'm glad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good for them. I honestly and truly hope they succeed.

I have a small sub (30-40k =/\- subscribers)and thought about doing this. I have the infrastructure for my personal projects but don't know if I wanna deal with the upkeep and some of the few mods we have.

We're not political, we just wanna help people learn something and tell someone to bugger off when it's needed. Would open up a lot of possibilities and we would just use the Reddit sub as a link farm back to our site. It's horrible UI and other inabilities aren't the experiences we want for our users.

<comment><USER38> What's the sub?

<comment><USER37> I'm being somewhat vague about it now but hope to have news in the next 90 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps this should be combined with a debate platform such as [https://www.kialo.com/](https://www.kialo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER40> CMV: every single post in this subreddit and others like it (unpopular opinions, am I the asshole, etc) are all 99% fake and useless wastes of space.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is it better to be it's own site? People need to seek out a website, subreddits can be stumbled upon much more easily.

</comment><comment><USER42> This event changed my view on how difficult it's to make a separate website.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there a decentralized version of Reddit that allows you to own your subreddit? I recently got burned where a sub I created was taken from me without explanation or warning and when I reached out to the admins, it fell on deaf ears. The idea that you have no ownership over your subreddit is bearable until you get burned and realize how crazy it is. Same thing goes for YouTube.

<comment><USER44> Can you explain how and why a subreddit gets taken away?

<comment><USER45> reddit.com/r/redditrequest lets people request control of a subreddit that has inactive moderators

<comment><USER43> I created the subreddit and brought on moderators I watched over for years, then about 8 months ago I was removed suddenly without any warning or reason. When I reached out to the admins they replied with an automated response. It truly pisses me off because this was a good will project for me and I was an archangel of the sub. It only started to bother me that they did this when the usurper mods started supporting a third party platform in an effort to potentially move people off the sub, which I found to be suspicious and now I can do nothing about it. It really left a terrible taste in my mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> FROM

</comment><comment><USER47> I've been following this community and it's what inspired me over the last year to build Dinnertable.chat, live matchmaking conversation platform that we released just a few weeks ago: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dinnertable- chat-3](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dinnertable-chat-3)

</comment><comment><USER48> Let's be honest about a different factor here - even if ChangeAView doesn't take off, I doubt CMR has much of a future. There are few places on Reddit where any sort of divergent view is accepted by the board, by the mods, and the community in general. Maybe CMV continues to stick around, but given how polarized it reddit has become, it's doubtful that there is room for a subreddit that encourages open, critical thought..

(I say this, after finally throwing in the towel and unsubscribing from /politics today. Even as a nevertrumper, the daily drumbeat of vitriol against anyone who doesn't exhibit perfect ideological conformance is staggering)..</comment>


Researchers find a "consciousness switch" deep in the brain - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/science/consciousness-switch-brain-region/ <comment><USER2> #inmonkeys</comment>


What I don't like about JSON Web Tokens - <AUTHOR> https://www.timmclean.net/2015/02/25/jwt-alg-none.html

<comment><USER2> If there are libraries that silently accept an unsigned JWT with alg:none, even when they are provided a secret key to verify, that's a serious CVE right there...

If a secret or public key is passed to the verify function, the function MUST fail if no signature is actually present in the token. E.g. on node-jwt; [1]

      if (parts[2].trim() === '' && secretOrPublicKey){
        return done(new JsonWebTokenError('jwt signature is required'));
      }

As another example, in the C# library, as long as 'RequireSignedTokens' is true, it will ensure the signature can't be stripped. [2] I'd say that's poor design to allow specifying a key and then ignoring it silently if 'RequireSignedTokens' is false, even if it is true by default, because the combination of 'RequireSignedTokens' = false, and a non-null key, is invalid.

[1] - [https://github.com/auth0/node- jsonwebtoken/blob/master/index...](https://github.com/auth0/node- jsonwebtoken/blob/master/index.js#L85)

[2] - [https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory- identitymod...](https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory- identitymodel-extensions-for- dotnet/blob/master/src/System.IdentityModel.Tokens.Jwt/JwtSecurityTokenHandler.cs#L910)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Unfortunately, some implementations missed that:

[https://github.com/namshi/jose/commit/127b4415e66d89b1fcfb5a...](https://github.com/namshi/jose/commit/127b4415e66d89b1fcfb5a07933db0b5ff5cd636)

[https://github.com/davedoesdev/python- jwt/commit/5ddb71b2ed5...](https://github.com/davedoesdev/python- jwt/commit/5ddb71b2ed5785c329b761e45a246996a1dd9cab)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for spotting this Tim, I appreciate it. I've patched python-jwt and linked to your article. Please let me know if you file a CVE so I can link to it too.

The docs did say:

      returns: ``(header, claims)`` if the token was verified successfully. The token must pass the following tests:
      - Its signature must verify using the public key or its algorithm must be ``none``.

but passing the responsibility for checking header['alg'] to the caller was the wrong way round so thanks again!</comment></comment></comment>


Go engine with no human-provided knowledge, modeled after the AlphaGo Zero paper - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gcp/leela-zero#i-want-to-help <comment><AUTHOR> Status: [http://zero.sjeng.org/](http://zero.sjeng.org/)</comment>


The RFC 5114 saga - <AUTHOR> http://blog.intothesymmetry.com/2016/10/the-rfc-5114-saga.html <comment><USER2> If I read this right, it seems to have been created to be propagated for use in IP-SEC at the request of someone who is not clearly identified (according to the original source of the RFC).

I had a job circa-2000 where the info-security officer was ex-military and we were told never to use IP-SEC because it was not considered secure. I got no other explanation of why or how she knew about it, but was told it was a non- starter and not up for discussion. We had to install physical lines between offices instead. It could have been bluster, of course. I don't know enough to say.

There have been multiple discoveries of crypto weakening discovered over the past couple of years and this has the hallmarks of another one.

Every time, I wonder how far behind we are on crypto, especially when you consider things like GCHQ had public key crypto (and kept quiet about it) long before DH & RSA.

There is a lot of work required before we have any level of assurance that current crypto is up to required levels. I'm glad capable people are doing this sort of work and investigating and pushing improvements.</comment>


jQuery Calendar Plugins - <AUTHOR> http://www.devcurry.com/2010/06/5-jquery-calendar-plugins-that-can-be.html

<comment><USER2> Where is the list of jQuery plugins that _can't_ be used on websites?</comment>


The Practical vs. Idealistic Scenarios for the Near-Term Future of Online Video - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic

<comment><USER2> It's hard to disagree with his analysis of what the practical outcome will be.

Google's not stupid though, so there's either another piece of the puzzle still to be revealed or Google's aim with this is to throw a spanner in the works for Apple's various iOS projects. AirPlay comes to mind in particular as a major feature that would neutralised by reversing the trend towards standardising on h264.

This is ok. Google can do this if it wants. Just don't dress it up like it's some selfless contribution to the good of mankind.

</comment><comment><USER3> So let me get this straight.

Apple supporting only h.264 and deliberately not supporting flash in order to force uptake is a good thing.

Google supporting only WebM and deliberately not supporting h.264 in order to force uptake is a bad thing.

This doesn't seem to be particularly logically compatible to me. Gruber seems to imply the first was ok because Apple got their first and it's already happened, but I'm sure that a lot of people with flash video delivery systems did not particularly enjoy converting to h.264, but they did it.

Considering Chrome's growing market share, plus Firefox and Opera, content providers /will/ be forced to offer a compatible video delivery system. If that has to be flash, so be it.

<comment><USER4> > I'm sure that a lot of people with flash video delivery systems did not > particularly enjoy converting to h.264

Flash is a wrapper, not a codec, and has in fact supported H.264 encoded video for some time. A "switch" from Flash to (likely MP4 wrapped) H.264 entails only removing the Flash wrapper, not a re-encode of the content. Apple not supporting Flash is not the same thing as Google not supporting H.264 (codec != container).

<comment><USER3> I know full well that Flash is not a codec; I never implied as such. The point is, many people served a non-h.264 codec through flash, and so they would not have just been able to supply the same source video through a <video> tag rather than through flash.

<comment><USER5> I don't think Theora and VP8 were widely used before the first browsers gained support for the <video> tag. Does Chrome support other codecs than those two?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only way I can see Google exercising _any_ leverage here is by using the nuclear option and requiring WebM to view YouTube (via <video> or a newer version of Flash). YouTube is enough of a draw that WebM support would become more or less universal, via Flash upgrades and (presumably) native support on Android.

At which point, Apple would find itself pretty lonely on the H264 ice-flow.

Of course, every single mobile device currently in existence would become collateral damage, since WebM hardware acceleration support doesn't exist yet. (And hey, who knows how successful, cheap, or easy it will end up being.)

Seems kind of crazy to me, though, just like most of the "we've got to restrict your freedom to save your freedom" arguments (e.g., the recent GPL takedown of VLC from the App Store).

But I'm a pragmatist and tend the believe the future plays out in shades of grey rather than black-and-white, and am to be suspicious of causing certain harm now to increase the odds of avoiding some Dystopian future (and it's not like patents last forever!).

<comment><USER7> They don't have to go nuclear, they just have to serve youtube content in higher resolutions in WebM than in H.264.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting idea. I wonder if people care enough about video quality on YouTube(!) for it to have much of an effect, tho...

<comment><USER7> They would when YouTube adds paid for content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm an end-user, not a content provider. I don't give a rat's ass _how_ my video is served, so long as it's pretty and fast. I want my video served in ≥720p with no buffering, as YouTube does currently. To this end, H.264 and WebM both work fine. In fact, so does flash. The only problem I have with flash is my laptop gets really hot and my battery drains rapidly every time I use it for extended periods.

Now, as the average end-user, I don't care about which browser supports which format. I either use IE or Safari because that's what came with my system, or Chrome/Firefox because that's what my friend who's good with computers recommended. I'm not likely to switch browsers because of video issues unless one just plain doesn't work.

So what does Google's dropping H.264 mean for the consumer and, by extension, adoption? Not much. The consumer will have to suffer through hot laptops and short battery life, and most won't know why. As Gruber points out, this will not encourage providers to support WebM, rather they'll simply keep serving up flash.

I don't see a winning path, here. From a consumer standpoint, I'm perfectly happy with H.264. From a web standpoint, I wish we had been having this discussion 3 years ago. H.264 seems to have won.

<comment><USER9> _The consumer will have to suffer through hot laptops and short battery life, and most won't know why._

I'll give you this for Safari, but I don't think IE9 will have enough of an adoption rate to make this a noticeable effect. Average people are unlikely to switch browsers, and they're also unlikely to upgrade (though I wish I had some statistics here). They're likely to be using IE6/7/8, without HMTL5 anyway, especially with IE9 not supporting XP.

 _From a web standpoint, I wish we had been having this discussion 3 years ago. H.264 seems to have won._

Wholeheartedly agreed.

<comment><USER8> Unless I'm missing something, IE9 will be shipping on new laptops, so it should have pretty wide usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Grubers apple loving fanboyism aside, he does make a valid point. But I think he is missing the strategy Google may have in this case.

1) Video sites are not going to re-encode all their video to WebM when the video still plays on Chrome (through flash). (grubers point)

2) Google will drop Flash video on YouTube if your browser supports WebM. Both Apple and Adobe are targeted by this move, obviously Apple because they are H.264 supporters and Adobe because.. well.. Flash.

3) As Flash becomes even less relevant (see previous point) Chrome will stop shipping with Adobe Flash, instead will require users to download the plugin like any other browser.

4) Major websites will start embracing HTML5, and with it, re-encode video to WebM, since it will work by default in most modern browsers (Firefox 4 supports WebM and Microsoft have stated they will support it in IE9 too).

I'm sure Google is thinking something along those lines. Apple is a smart company so they might have a trick or two themselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with Apple supporting WebM, except that Apple are probably sick of having Google products scattered throughout iOS (youtube, gmail and maps) and this would be another Google (VP8) product they would need to integrate.

</comment><comment><USER11> Frankly, of all the stuff I've read about this, Gruber's stuff actually makes the most compelling points.

Now it seems popular amongst some here to dismiss Gruber as an Apple fanboy or simply to disagree with him simply because he likes Apple and they don't but that's a ludicrous position. The only question should be: do his questions have _merit_?

IMHO they clearly do.

The thing that absolutely _floors_ me about this is that it prolongs the reliance on Flash, which as Gruber correctly points out, was one of the major factors behind the <video> tag in HTML5 (to get away from _requiring_ proprietary plugins).

For the foreseeable future, the smart (and IMHO the only) thing for sites to do is support H.264. To not do so is to potentially alienate hundreds of millions of users, being those using the iDevices (not the least of which is the iPod Touch). Sites may choose to dual-encode in WebM but why would you? Double the processing time and double the storage, for what? A video you can play without using a Flash wrapper?

People keep pointing to the GIF precedent. That is tantalizingly similar but it suffers from the same kind of fallacies as comparisons of iOS vs Android to Apple vs Microsoft (Windows) do: it ignores the fact that the times they have a-changed.

Consider: I watch an awful lot of video on my iPad. Hardly any of it is in H.264 format. The solution? A $3-4 app called Air Video that transcodes to H.264 on the fly.

With the cheapness and abundance of computing power now, let alone 10+ years from now (which is when the tail end of the H.264 patents are and thus when the GIF-like profiteering scenario would presumably come to fruition), why do I care what format _anything_ is in?

If MPEG-LA decided to increase the cost of an H.264 license by 10x for a site like Youtube I _guarantee_ you that Google could re-encode every video on Youtube in somewhat reasonable time. And that's _today_.

H.264 is already (perpetually) free for the end user so the it's only the content providers who really matter in this equation.

Now I'm not arguing we should go completely in with H.264 and to hell with everything else. I'm all for providing users and sites with choice and for that reason, I fully support WebM.

What I don't support is removing the choice of H.264 from users or forcing them to keep using a closed and proprietary plugin (Flash obviously) to watch them.

The fact that Chrome bundles Flash is _already_ almost enough reason for me to stop using it. Flash blocker extensions are suboptimal (eg tricks like Flash overlays on sites that kick off all the Flash). Completely uninstalling it is not an option (every page asks you "You are missing plugins, would you like to install them?").

For me this move may just mean I switch back to Firefox.

Lastly, I don't read this as an anti-Apple move at all. It's certainly political but (IMHO) not aimed at Apple specifically. It's more about the philosophy of an open Web. I fully support that. I simply question the wisdom of forcing subpar choices on end users to that end.

Also, some here like to point at Apple and ask "how is this different to Apple not supporting Flash?"

That one's easy: It was 3 years after the iPhone's release before Adobe had a full version of Flash that ran on ANY mobile platform (being Android ultimately). If you accept the assertion that Android Flash is sufficient (and that is debatable) why exactly is Apple being blamed for Adobe failing to deliver any kind of sufficient technical solution?

If you want to point the finger at anyone point it at Adobe. If they'd been serious they would've jailbroken various iDevices and demoed an iOS version of Flash years ago to make their point, had they had such a thing. The fact that either they didn't or they chose not to demonstrate it, whichever way it goes, means they dropped the ball.

Does Apple want Flash? Now? Clearly not and at this point it probably doesn't matter what Adobe does but years ago? Who knows? But criticizing someone for not shipping a nonexistent product is crazy.

<comment><USER12> you seem to be arguing that we should just keep using h264 unless things go bad, at which point we can always switch; do you not see the problem with that? even if MPEG-LA licensing fees never change, I'm with Mozilla (and google) on the fact that ensuring every video producer and provider will be paying license fees to put their content on the web for the next 17 years is suboptimal. codec choice is good, but until a royalty-free option is everywhere, I'd rather them play hardball.

speaking of mozilla, unless you run windows 7 and like microsoft firefox plugins, switching back to firefox won't do you much good on the h264 front.

<comment><USER13> You seem to be arguing that dropping H.264 <video> from Chrome will spur adoption of WebM. As many have pointed out, including the parent, a more likely scenario is it will spur adoption of Flash+H.264. Path of least resistance and all that.

Playing hardball is fine, but you've got to be sure you are actually _playing_ and not merely whacking random spectators in the nuts.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure this will happen. The only users who are unable to watch WebM are iPhone/iPad/Safari users. You can use WebM in IE9 (when you install the codec).

So as a webdeveloper the path of the least resistance for me will be WebM. You'll get support in Chrome, Firefox, Opera and IE9.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Googles's motivation is money. also control.

H.264 is not free. and youtube could be reclassified in 2016 to pay a further royalty increase than the maximum 10%. YouTube is the largest video service provider in the world.

On the other hand google owns WebM (spent 100M on it)

Also youtube is spending a pretty penny on flash "premium" codec support. Also not free, and could also potentially save money there pushing WebM.

it is really googles's only way to go

regarding Apple, a simple solution is to add webM support to IOS. they have some time to do it. will also save them money.

<comment><USER16> Moving to WebM may not save money for Apple. They gain money everytime someone pays MPEG LA for H.264 as they are one of the licensors. If H.264 loses widespread adoption Apple loses its share of the fees too.

<comment><USER17> Apple is on both the list of licensors and the list of licensees. In other words, they own some of the patents in the pool, and they pay to use those patents in the pool that they do not own. In order for Apple to make a profit on patent licenses, they would have to either own a majority of patents in the pool (if all of the patents are of equal weight) or those patents that they do own would have to have greater weight than all of the patents that are owned by others.

It's hard to say whether Apple actually gains anything. For all we know, they might be happy to break even.

<comment><USER16> While I do not know the exact figures, there still is a good possibility for Apple to gain

They pay for H.264 license to distribute their decoder, but collect royalty for their patents from every other codec vendor, device maker and commercial video distributor in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, basically, promoting WebM is actually promoting Flash. Sure. Well put.

And then: so... what?

Am I the only one unsurprised that Google would fight Apple? (in convoluted ways sometimes)

<comment><USER4> The "what" being that, assuming the ideal is a move away from proprietary technologies like Flash, supporting WebM alone in the current environment is likely to have the opposite effect (and thus hurt web open standards, at least in the short to medium term).

I too liked Chrome's support of both WebM and H.264. Theirs is a disappointing move.

<comment><USER19> When the world gets into H.264 there's no way back but waiting for 20 years for patents to expire.

This was the last chance to at least try to keep the web video both open and free. It's a far shot, but it's at least a try. Before this move, the game seemed beyond lost, now it is only probably lost.

Flash will support WebM too, Skype is using it, so there are some chances. It's a very long way off, but now WebM has a fighting chance.

<comment><USER20> Too late. Seriously. The world got into H.264. We're here. It's it. What is WebM's fighting chance? Did you read the article? Do you have any counter points to Gruber's thesis? The web will continue to use H.264 and all Google is doing is ensuring that Chrome users (myself included) just get H.264 video in a flash wrapper. If we get WebM through Google/YouTube then great, but nobody else is going to bother serving it to us... why would they?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Usually Google brings the big guns to their IO conference. Last year, the WebM project was announced. This year, some other surprise that will probably make this discussion irrelevant.

I'd rather spend time guessing on what the big surprise will be this year regarding web video than debating the effects of Chrome dropping h.264.

The ONLY thing I take from this move by Google is they have intention to take down h.264, and that in itself is enough to prepare myself for the possibility of serving 2 formats.

It's just one move in a series of moves Google has been and will be making.</comment>


Ask: job is a single point of failure - <AUTHOR> tl;dr how to diversify sources of income so that one (bad) job doesn't hold you hostage.<p>Having worked in Europe on freelance / contractor assignments I can observe that quite often the job is not as advertised / expected. Often I am considering going back to the previous client but this isn't possible due to contracts already being broken, new contracts already signed etc. Essentially you're stuck with new client for at least 6 months otherwise you're being stigmatized as a jumper. <comment><USER2> digital assets like small projects, build a small consultingcompany to share your knowledge, repair computers or get into investing in stocks.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using a non-systemd desktop Linux distro? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking at running Linux again on my laptop and have been researching some of the non-systemd distros that are out there. It seems like the only viable options are the stable distros that require a lot of manual compilation (gentoo, slackware, etc), or distros that have forked from other popular distros but are still in an early phase (devuan, Arch OpenRC).
I'm hesitant to go with one of the forks just because I don't want to end up with a distro that is dead/unsupported in a year. The distros like gentoo and slackware are more stable in the sense that I see them being around for awhile but the idea of having to spend my time compiling everything seems a bit painful. Slackware was my original distro 15+ years ago but I'm not sure I'm up for the maintenance work on my primary laptop.
Is anyone out there using one of these options on a daily basis (graphical desktop, large package repo, good hardware support)? What's your impression so far? Should I just give in and learn to live with systemd? <comment><USER2> Yes, Slackware.

As for Slackware, it is not a "compile everything" distro. The install disk comes with most stuff you might want for a fairly typical desktop. For the rest, much of that can be had by using Slackbuild scripts from [https://slackbuilds.org/](https://slackbuilds.org/) which handle all the compiling and packaging for you, leaving you with a ready Slackware package to install.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I'll dig around a bit and see what life might be like with slackware again :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FreeBSD isn't going anywhere and has binary packages. I've been using it on my desktops for years with Xfce, and I'm very happy. OpenBSD is supposed to have better laptop support, though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unless you have a compelling reason to avoid systemd, I think just adopting it would be easier in the long run because most common distributions are headed that direction.

I didn't experience any stability issues with Ubuntu when it transitioned to systemd from Upstart (14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS). I've written simple Upstart services and what systemd offers with its units is comparable. There is a learning curve though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope I'm not too late to the party: you might like Void Linux. It's an independent distro, maintained by a bunch of very sane people, with a very sane approach to most things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yep, Gobolinux.</comment>


Web Clipper Browser Extension with Automatic Content Extraction, Now Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jhlyeung/rumin-web-clipper <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, a few months ago I started building a suite of knowledge management tools to for my own needs. It's been a long iterative process of noticing patterns (and inefficiencies) in my workflow, building simple tools to improve it, and evolving the UX over time.

One of the tools I have been using daily is a web clipper that captures not just the current page, but can automatically extract key information from it. You can also do a quick lookup of your existing notes regardless which web page you are on.

Prior to this, I had been using web clipper extensions by Evernote, OneNote, and Notion, and all of them had something missing that would significantly slow me down. Wanted to share what I have built to address this. The code is integrated with the [Rumin]([https://getrumin.com](https://getrumin.com)) backend (the other tools I built), but you can easily swap out the API calls to point to local storage or some other endpoint.

Check it out. Would love to hear feedback from the community :)

<comment><USER2> Great project! Rumin looks very interesting as well. I was a long-time Evernote Web Clipper user, but switched to Notion a few months ago. I'm much happier with Notion's web clipping workflow and table storage approach, but it's not perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks neovive! Yeah Notion's web clipping and table storage approach is quite elegant. It only gets a bit clumsy when we get to the "power user" (not very common) use cases

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good work! For extracting meta information -- a set of community maintained information scrapers (html, or intercepting ajax) for different websites could be cool. It's hard to maintain all the sites on your own (especially the ones you don't use), and by sharing we could perhaps avoid redoing the same thing twice.

Your extension, of course, Wildcard ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439141](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22439141)), youtube-dl, and possibly many other could benefit from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! and yeah that's a very good point, and one of the main reasons why I'm open sourcing this.

Community maintained information scrapers/extractors is definitely a direction I want to build towards, collaborating with any existing efforts. Though the exact form will take some iterations (e.g. a marketplace for scripts/"recipes", built-in scripts for common sites, allowing individual users to save their own scrapers etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, this looks extremely useful.

Years ago, I spent a couple of months building a simple EverNote clone in Clojure. The weakest part of my "for my own use only" project was a FireFox extension I wrote to capture selected web page data and send it to the backend of my system.

This Web Clipper project would have really helped me. I hope the author of this gets the satisfaction of wide adoption in many cool projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> author here, this comment already made my day :) feel free to take the code and run with it, and let me know if you have any suggestions/questions

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks great! I use Evernote Web Clipper but spend a lot of time adding context/information/screenshots manually, this would save me a ton of time. I requested access to Rumin and will definitely try swapping this into my workflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, kapnobatairza! working on cleaning up the product before opening up, will reach out to ask you more about your use cases :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks pretty slick, though custom metadata for just 7 sites seems pretty low for launch. Perhaps the default metadata capture is good enough for sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, etc, that aren't covered?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for checking it out! yeah the coverage for the metadata capture definitely needs to be improved. At this point, this just includes the top sites for my own use cases (and some early users).

I was hoping by sharing it I can get a better sense of what sites other people would like to have supported, and keep adding to it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Built to assist a proprietary locked down thing, but heck yes

<comment><AUTHOR> haha for now...the main reason being it's just me working on it at the moment, and I'm fixing/cleaning things up before releasing more of the code base. the rest of the product is pretty clunky (with a beyond shitty code base)

in the meantime, it should be easy to swap out the API hostname to something else (or even local storage)

<comment><USER8> Please pick a license. By not doing so, you retain full ownership of the code, preventing other people from modifying it for their own needs. See here for more details: [https://choosealicense.com/no- permission/](https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/)

<comment><AUTHOR> ohh thanks for the heads up! will look into this. Sorry, this is my first time sharing an open source project.

EDIT: I've added an MIT license to the code. Thanks again for pointing out

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was a huge fan of the old "Scrapbook" plugin. That one died as FireFox switched their API's.

Looks like there's a new version WebScrapBook [1] based on that old code base which is now available.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Hi there; congrats on supporting OSS and Rumin .

I'm a active notion web cliper user. I trust Notion because they have plenty o money to not lose my data.

Why should i use rumin ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Lucas! I was a Notion web clipper user as well. For me it worked for the most basic use case of saving a page into a table. But for me these use cases kept coming up: \- An idea belongs to multiple collections, as opposed to a single "table" \- There are usually properties/metadata I want to save (e.g. YouTube channel information), which would take multiple copy-and-pastes back and forth each time \- Bi-directional linking of captured content \- I wanted full-control over the captured data, for more advanced queries/filtering and it's sad that web clippers tend to be one of these "table stakes" features that companies build a basic version for, and not invest further in.

Quick answer for "Why should I use Rumin?" is: "Perhaps you shouldn't yet, but let's stay in touch and I'd love to hear about your use cases and other ideas."

The current version of Rumin is very rough, and there's an overwhelming list of improvements to make. This is one reason why I closed it for sign ups for now. But in the meantime, I feel there's a lot the community can do even with just the web capture component being open source.

Regarding your concern about data loss. I intend to open source more and more parts of the platform, and somehow figure out a model to make the development sustainable.

Thanks again for checking it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, web clipping. I haven't heard that phrase used since PDAs were running on the Mobitex network and had to use web clipping to usefully browse the internet at all.</comment>


Watch notch (Minecraft creator) write a game in a live stream NOW - <AUTHOR> http://livestream.com/mojang

<comment><USER2> It's like all 3d programming I've ever done...

"Hmmm something isn't right... uggghhh... now that stopped working... ughhh"

I love it; using eclipses live debugging feature makes this incredibly entertaining. Also, excellent taste in music.

<comment><USER3> The music is <http://somafm.com/cliqhop/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is for Notch's Ludum Dare entry. Apparently he spent like $300 so that everyone could get a HD stream to read what he's writing. But then 11,000 people (by far the most popular on livestream.com right now) watched a screen that said "brb, getting a cheeseburger" for about an hour before he started. I bet someone at livestream.com analytics was really confused :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can someone shed some light on his development environment? I realize that he's writing Java in Eclipse, but it seems that the changes he's making are showing up in the rendering in real-time. How is this possible?

<comment><USER5> Eclipse will automatically update the running classes with the latest code that compiled. If you aren't changing method or class signatures then it will work like that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posted somewhat earlier, with a bit of discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906473>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> He moved to <http://www.twitch.tv/realnotch#>

</comment><comment><USER7> TDD zealots should not watch this - it can hurt deep inside. err... now that I think about it: Waterfall zealots may feel similar discomfort

<comment><USER8> You have 48 hours to make a game following a category that's decided at time 0.

No-one cares how you develop it, it's a "just get it done" thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, "channel permanently deleted"? That's some overload...

</comment><comment><USER10> He just stopped because it got too expensive 14k people.</comment>


How a refugee's son from a small Indian town became Deloitte Global's CEO - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/346154/how-a-refugees-son-from-a-small-indian-town-became-deloitte-globals-ceo/

<comment><USER2> See calling him a refugee's son doesn't make any difference. His father was running a factory at then (1948) that's a big deal in India and if you are an Indian you know it very well. Second thing is that his father was still running a factory in Haryana even after funds became low. Moreover, he was living in Haryana hence I can assume that they were having lots of land under their possession. Still he has done a great job. I am not saying that he is not a great man. But what I am saying is that calling him refugee's son and giving it a different tone won't work. There are people who have risen from very low point to a pinnacle and he is not among them. He was having an advantage and writer of the post has tried his best to put him in that category however, unsuccessfully.</comment>