Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/29-google-sponsors-grants-for-female-programmers <comment><USER2> What about men who have financial need?

This isn't an academic question. The tech industry is one of the very few left where large numbers of men from diverse backgrounds are doing well. For many who are struggling, it's the best shot they have. Men receive less financial aid for college and graduate with more debt... if they graduate. Women now outnumber men 3 to 2 in current graduating classes in the US. Far more men than women suffer poverty and homelessness. Amazingly, it's common for shelters to refuse single men.

Does Hacker School and its sponsor's "need based" help truly discriminate against the very group—poor, non-degreed men—that society treats so callously?

The last thing I want to see is women being dismissed or shut out of opportunities purely out of chauvinist ignorance, but when it comes to poverty and need it's almost like our society has empathy only for women and children. Recognizing this doesn't mean becoming blind to the glass ceiling that women often hit at the high-end of the career ladder. Both are problems. This really is an issue where two wrongs don't make a right.

Disclaimer: I earned well under $10k living in SF last year and faced some of this pain personally. I overcame the obstacles in my path and am now in a great situation... but I can't help but feel for those I know who aren't.

<comment><USER3> Given that this is for an institution called `Hacker School`, and I have a feeling that your stats aren't P(x | studying CS), I don't really see how this is particularly relevant. The grant isn't give as part of a `help women in financial need` project, it's given as part of a `help increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women`.

<comment><USER4> If you want to increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women, do out reach, eliminate glass ceilings in management, and sponsor research into industry causes of gender bias.

Doing gender discriminations to "counter" gender discriminations is neither a good or effective way. It's lazy, and only causes more harm.

<comment><USER5> What do you think this is if not outreach? Any sort of outreach will be targeted. I can only imagine you would be in those threads complaining about "gender discrimination" because Company X created women-focused programming classes or the like.

There's plenty of research into "industry causes of gender bias." _This is one of the solutions._ You're basically claiming that because this doesn't completely solve the gender divide, it's lazy and worthless. Well, sorry, but that's not how the world works. This is one of many small steps into getting more women interested in programming, which then eliminates the glass ceilings and discrimination.

How you and the others in this thread don't see this is just baffling.

<comment><USER4> Are you defining preferential treatment as outreach? Thats not only a very odd definition, but also creates the idea that glass ceilings is some form of outreach for male leaders.

The definition of "Outreach", is an method that are used to fill in the gap in the services provided by mainstream means, to the purpose of reaching groups who otherwise would not be aware of existing services (In this case, education). This doesn't do that. Mozilla mentor program for example is one that does. Compare and see the difference.

women- _exclusive_ classes do not work, and are indeed counter-productive. Any research of this has proven this point. When the Sweden government body tried it, it was found to be ineffective, counter-productive (created more separation between sexes), and declared illegal in the last years. Sadly, given the current gender politics, little money has been spent to answer why it failed, as it is easier to simply ignore the fact that it failed.

So to reiterate, _This is not one of the solutions, its a illusion of an solution that do harm rather than good_. It is worthless, because it do not work and causes harm. It is lazy, because other groups has shown (like Mozilla) how to do it right. In the real world, thats how progress work. You discard what is a step backward, and only use what is a step forward. Small step backwards are still backward steps.

What is baffling is how people keep disregarding any sense of scientific method. Just because a previous theory is thought to be working, one should not be ignorant to new information.

<comment><USER5> _> Outreach is used fill in the gap in the services provided by mainstream means_

Check.

 _> to reach groups who otherwise would not be aware of existing services (In this case, education)._

Check.

It does both things. It fills the gap of an affordable, welcoming resource for women who have an interest in programming, and it reaches women who would otherwise not be aware of a resource that is friendly toward them. You just don't like that it's reaching out to a specific group that you happen to not belong to.

 _> women-exclusive classes do not work, and are indeed counter-productive._

Hacker School isn't excluding men. It's merely saying they will help women with _expenses_ while attending the school. It's not giving women an express lane through the application process.

 _> You discard what is a step backward, and only use what is a step forward. Small step backwards are still backward steps._

Do you have any source to prove this is a step backwards? Because one of the largest and most resourceful tech companies in the _world_ happens to disagree with you, so you're going to need a little more to back yourself up than, "Nuh uh!"

And please don't throw around "scientific method" as though it applies here. You're not bringing in any new information. You're just stating your own opinion and then acting as though it's fact.

<comment><USER4> A appeal to authority fallacy will get you nowhere. I will counter your appeal to Google with my appeal to Mozilla. Mozilla believes in a mentor program and non-exclusive aid, which is exactly the right way to approach imbalance. It also helps that it has been proven to work in eliminating gender bias.

If you want sources, do you own research. like I said, Sweden education system tried and failed and that fact is not hard to find for yourself. Others has published articles such as [http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n2/affirmative....](http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n2/affirmative.html) which paints the discussion as an debate with two sides. I do however like to point out that the only side that actually do research on the efficiency of preferential treatment programs are those who are against them. I have yet to see any study that show preferential treatments to be beneficially.

Can you provide _any_ source what so ever that preferential treatments has ever worked to eliminate gender bias? Ever? Surely such sources should be all over the web?

<comment><USER5> _> It also helps that it has been proven to work in eliminating gender bias._

 _Another_ unsubstantiated claim. It's like you don't understand how claims work. Saying whatever you believe as though it's fact doesn't make it so.

 _> like I said, Sweden education system tried and failed and that fact is not hard to find for yourself._

First: It's not my job to prove your argument for you. Second: According to you, Sweden apparently tried gender- _exclusive_ classes. Hacker School isn't excluding men from its program. It's just providing a way for women to pay for expenses. Those are two very different things.

 _> Others has published articles such as_

That article actually proves you wrong...

 _> > These programs have brought or accompanied significant gains for women and minorities. In the past 25 years, black participation in the work force has increased 50 percent and the percentage of blacks holding managerial positions has jumped fivefold. In 1970, women comprised only 5 percent of lawyers compared to 20 percent today. Twenty-five years ago, the student population at University of California, Berkeley, was 80 percent white compared to 45 percent today._

So, they _are_ beneficial, and they _do_ work.

<comment><USER4> > It also helps that it has been proven to work in eliminating gender bias. > > Another unsubstantiated claim.

Sorry, I thought you could your own searches. If you can't be bothered to do your own research, and can provide any sources of your own, why should anyone care what you got to say?

any, for the incurrable lazy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6NvCH7A8Vs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6NvCH7A8Vs) and [https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeLove/Mentors](https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeLove/Mentors)

> Sweden apparently tried gender-exclusive classes

No, they did not. They added a simple rule that said: If a person enrolling in a class would become a minority in that class, then that person deserve some preferential treatment. The end resulted was that over 80% of the time this rule triggered, it was a white male, trying to enter a white female dominated class room.

> That article actually proves you wrong...

Apprently a lack of reading skills...

The article ends on:

 _> > Few people question the need to eliminate racial and sexist barriers that exclude minorities' and women from full participation in society. Preferential treatment programs may be one means toward this goal. But these programs also raise ethical issues that direct us to consider their potential benefits and harms, the justice of compensating groups for past harms and present disadvantages, and the fairest way to distribute the burdens of compensation. _

And it talks about what those temporary measures where designed for:

 _> > First instituted in the 1960s and 1970s by employers and educational institutions in response to pressures from civil rights groups, federal legislation, and court rulings, preferential treatment programs seek to rectify the effects of past and ongoing discrimination against women and racial minorities._

And last:

 _> > Nor is it clear that even those minorities and women qualifying for preferential treatment benefit from such special consideration. Recent studies reveal a high dropout rate among minority college students admitted under affirmative action programs. At U. C. Berkeley, for example, only 45 percent of black students admitted in 1984 had graduated by 1989 compared to 73 percent of Anglos. The high rate of failure that follows the award of employment and educational opportunities to minority individuals unprepared to meet the challenges of higher education reinforces feelings of inferiority among members of these groups. _

they _are not_ beneficial, and they _do not_ work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see a simple story of encouragement. My peer group is fortunately pretty diverse in terms of culture and country of origin, but it misses out on a realistic distribution of sex, which I think is important as well.

As a "white male programmer", I've always been uncomfortable with an imbalanced group; now, being in a relationship with a female programmer, I'm exposed to a lot more of the actual iniquities.

We should consider this as a high-priority bug in our industry.

<comment><USER7> As a "<insert ethnicity here> <insert gender here> <insert sexual orientation here> programmer", I've always been uncomfortable with race based or gender based or orientation based policies. Google would have been better off taking the time evaluating each participant and then making a judgement on whether that person would benefit from additional help. That would be better for everyone rather than blindly assuming every female needs assistance or every "insert ethnicity here" needs assistance.

<comment><USER8> It's perplexing that to avoid gender discriminations, the solution is to discriminate against genders. I don't like these, I think they further the stigmatism that is native to our industry about gender discrimination.

Specifically I'm bothered by direct benefits due to gender, I have no issue with educational programs as long as they remain open to all.

I don't want to end up in a workforce where people are working because it was a good financial decision from yesteryear. I want to work with people who are truly excited about what they do. And choose it for no other reason then it was: fun, interesting, and exciting. Those would be awesome people to work with. Welcome!

<comment><USER5> If I have ten apples, and you have five apples, giving us both five apples doesn't make us equal. Likewise, giving both men and women grants (which are readily available anyway for both genders) doesn't suddenly fix the imbalance of women. It requires a targeted solution.

 _> I don't want to end up in a workforce where people are working because it was a good financial decision from yesteryear._

Well then you're barking up the wrong tree, because there are _plenty_ of men who got into computer science because it's lucrative. On the other hand, if you told a woman, "Hey! Want to earn an upper-middle class income? All you have to do is spend every work day of your life dealing with crude jokes at your expense, boys' club mentalities, and an industry that has little more than contempt for you!" I doubt many would jump at the opportunity.

The problem with sorting by how "truly excited" they are is that some women might not know how interesting programming is to them. They were never given the opportunity, and every time they got close, they were shunned or pushed back because of their gender.

If you truly, honestly cannot see these grants as anything more than "reverse gender discrimination", I'd have to say you're part of the problem.

<comment><USER9> This comment would be OK if we were talking about the profession of lawyers, or doctors, or investment bankers, but programmers?!

Programming is an ideal career for the introverted and "socially awkward". You don't need formal education, you don't need to talk to people, all you need is a computer and a book or internet connection, and most importantly, curiosity and desire to explore and learn about computers. You can't blame the lack of any of those on "boys' club" or "glass ceiling"; the best programmers are self-made, and nothing is stopping women from becoming top-notch hackers.

I think you are focusing on the wrong problem. Yes, it's true that men outnumber women in the field of programming, but guess what: non-programmers outnumber programmers much much more! Less than 5% of the people I know are programmers, and I work as a programmer. Why don't we try to make this profession more interesting to _everybody_ , instead of focusing on just 50% of the people?

<comment><USER5> _> nothing is stopping women from becoming top-notch hackers._

A lot is. Contrary to your comment, programmers have to interact with other people in order to participate in the industry, whether they're in college learning or have just taught themselves and are looking for a job. I've had quite a few female friends tell me about high school teachers and college professors who told them, straight to their faces, that programming was "for men" and they don't belong. There are still plenty of _male_ employers who pass over perfectly qualified candidates just because they're women; plenty of _male_ classmates who harass women with "get back in the kitchen" jokes. One of my friends even dropped out of the program all together because of it.

 _> Why don't we try to make this profession more interesting to everybody, instead of focusing on just 50% of the people?_

Because in order to make it more interesting to _everybody_ , we need to _even out our numbers_. Otherwise, when we open up the field to everyone, all we're going to do is inflate the numbers without changing the ratio.

The _total number_ isn't the problem; it's the _ratio_.

<comment><USER9> > high school teachers and college professors who told them, straight to their > faces, that programming was "for men" and they don't belong. There are still > plenty of male employers who pass over perfectly qualified candidates just > because they're women; plenty of male classmates who harass women with "get > back in the kitchen" jokes.

And what is this kind of announcements/programs doing to change that?

<comment><USER10> I believe the idea is counterbalancing negative with positive discrimination until the culture starts to change (which is more likely to happen if there are more women in the profession).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We need more women in the industry but I am not sure this is the way to do it. It is specifically for those "who cannot afford to live without an income during Hacker School." What does this mean exactly?

To me it sounds like getting those who are poor or not well off into programming. I like that idea as much as getting more women into programming. What I don't understand is why this would be limited to women only.

I have never been a fan of positive discrimination. Wouldn't it be better to advertise more to women to try to get more applicants this way? Perhaps go into local schools to rustle up a more diverse selection of people to be the next generation of programmers. Perhaps use the money to give away raspberry pi systems to the underprilliaged kids to inspire them to get going young?

It is nice of Google and it seems like a decent inititive. I do feel though that the money could be used in a far more effective way.

</comment><comment><USER12> Consider this, what if the title was "Google sponsors over $150k of grants for male programmers" ?

<comment><USER13> Then it would've been sexist. Did no one tell you being a white straight healthy male is a crime?

<comment><USER14> Life isn't fair. People are born into random circumstances outside of their control that vastly affect the quality and direction of their life. Sociey has developed in an imperfect fashion, and has many issues. These problems are complex, and there is no silver bullet. Some people are trying to create a positive impact, and hopefully make things a little better. Meanwhile, you sit here bitching about "reverse discrimination". What is your better solution?

<comment><USER13> How about "Google sponsors over $150k of grants for programmers with most open source contributions" or "Google sponsors over $150k of grants for programmers that win an online hackaton for newbies" or "Google sponsors over $150k of grants for programmers with best school grades or most impressive hobby projects"?

<comment><USER14> Don't they do many of these types of things? I highly doubt this is is their only grant. Also, how do you determine what is too much and too little to put towards a certain issue? Seems a little presumptuous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google also give significantly more (+$2000) to female winners in Google Cloud Developer Challange 2013. [https://www.google.com/events/gcdc2013/about.html](https://www.google.com/events/gcdc2013/about.html)

<comment><USER16> I'm very surprised about this. If Google would say that teams that only consist of men, or white people would get $2K extra everyone would explode.

<comment><USER17> > If Google would say that teams that only consist of men, or white people > would get $2K extra everyone would explode.

Surely you can understand why? The industry is already dominated by white men. They (we, in fact) don't need extra support to enter and get accepted by the industry. We don't suffer lots of subtle forms of harassment and discrimination, simply for being different from the norm.

I don't think money by itself is the solution, but in order to make the industry more accepting of women, it helps if people get used to women in the industry, which means there need to be more women in the industry, which means some additional encouragement is probably necessary. Addressing the sexism in the industry in the absense of women doesn't seem to work very well. We need more women in order to become more accessible to women.

That said, I do think it's odd to do this through larger prizes for women in a contest. Encouragement programs and networking events seem like a better way to do this. Then again, in sports, it's generally male competitions who tend to have far more prize money.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Yeah. I'm sure women will "get accepted in the industry" much more if every man who looks at them is thinking "she's being given $2K extra for winning the same prize as me" or "I wonder if she's working here for her merits or because she took advantage of one of those positive discrimination programs". Brilliant idea.

<comment><USER18> I'm a man and I would judge a woman just as I judge a man: by their actions.

<comment><USER4> While a noble view, its is obviously not shared by Google. They would rather judge a woman on the basis that she is a woman.

<comment><USER5> They aren't just letting any and all women in while telling the droves of men to shove it. They're saying that if you are a woman who _already qualifies_ for Hacker School who _cannot pay for expenses while attending_ , then they will give you some money to help out. They aren't some bouncer at a club pulling the velvet rope back for everyone who checks the "I am a woman" box on the application.

<comment><USER4> Why would that matter? Surely, only those with expenses for attending hacker school can ask for a grant that repays expenses for attending hacker school.

Those with expenses for attending a chocolate factory visit can not ask for this grant. That should not be considered when judging who should be granted money regarding expenses for attending hacker school. The chocolate factory has nothing to do with this grant.

<comment><USER5> _> Surely, only those with expenses for attending hacker school can ask for a grant that repays expenses for attending hacker school._

They aren't repaying. They're paying. The grant is given so that they don't have to pay.

Do you understand exactly what the grant is doing? It's giving money to women who already qualify for the school but can't afford the expenses of living in NYC during their time there. This has nothing to do with chocolate factories or whatever you're talking about.

<comment><USER4> Out of the people who is attending the school, they give a grant to those who qualify the requirement of being a woman. That it. No other qualification or requirements made.

Its true they don't care about chocolate factories. They also don't care about the qualification for attending the school. The way Google will judge the people attending the school is on the single aspect of gender. This is what I said in my first post. Rather than judging people based on their actions, they would rather judge a woman on the basis that she is a woman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks like a great program that hits the right audience - people who know how to code, and will surely end up programming professionally when they're done. Unlike the many bootcamps popping up that make minority kids write toy apps and hope they'll take up computer science later. A good use of Google's money.

Also, that guy has a very strange last name.

<comment><USER20> those bootcamps at least focused on real, contemporary, problem. by focusing on socio economic classifications... though it ended up being the regular anything-is-good-for-the-poor crap of content.

this is just cheap advertisement for the sake of holier than thou.

if anything it creates the "women need handicap" mentality where it didn't existed before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a chick thinking about a career change towards programming, I find this very interesting...

<comment><USER22> Go for it. In the worst case, you have a secret weapon in whatever other non- coding career you are pursuing.

<comment><USER23> Not according to a majority of commenters in the Obama coding thread.

<comment><USER21> Well, I'm in the gaming industry right now, so at the very least learning how to code could just fill out my skill set. I think there is a difference between pushing something like coding vs teaching or nursing. Yes, in many cases pushing people to enter those fields where there was a deficit at the time will flood them with applicants later on. However, we aren't really building many more schools or hospitals. But more and more companies need people who can code. And more and professions rely on, or at least benefit from knowing how to code. Years ago animation had nothing to do with coding, but now knowing python or action script is almost required.

<comment><USER22> Any profession that teaches computing can benefit from some coding skills. (And similarly, any profession where you ever produce some written words can benefit from learning how to write well.)

<comment><USER22> 'teaches' -> 'touches'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow. Congrats! This is huge.

</comment><comment><USER25> Keep it classy guys.

<comment><USER26> Articles like these always remind just how rampant sexism is on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars could pay a female programmer's salary for an entire year!

This sends a strong signal to the rest of Silicon Valley: there's no such thing as a Google Glass ceiling.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds pretty sexist to me

</comment><comment><USER29> Come on guys. Google is doing the right thing here which is funding what they think is right.

Will they achieve the result they seek? Not likely.

Will they feel good doing this? Definitely.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find this sexist, it discriminates against men. If it would be the other way around we would see an endless stream of blogposts on HN complaining about how sexist Google is. This right here is a good example of the damage the hypocrite feminists are doing to the industry.

Programming should not be about how you were born, it should be about skills and merit.

</comment><comment><USER31> And since lady engineers usually get paid less, that money will go a long way!

<comment><USER32> You are misunderstanding what the money is for.</comment></comment>


After 5 Years there's a new 7zip non-beta release - <AUTHOR> http://www.7-zip.org/history.txt <comment><USER2> To anyone reading this: please don't use "alpha" and "beta" status as an excuse for not releasing source code, not updating documentation, and not making clear distinction between stable-beta, beta-beta, and soon-to-be- reverted-beta features for _months_. Thank you.

For some time, it was a bit of pain in the ass to figure out 7zip status as it required collecting pieces of knowledge from multiple SourceForge forum threads.

</comment><comment><USER3> 7zip has strong encryption built in. I found it to be the only very useful x-platform (using Keka on OSX) option when you non-power-users to encrypt some files with a passphrase (symmetric encryption).

And it's opensource.

<comment><USER4> Is <archiver of choice> \+ GPG really a big deal?

<comment><USER5> I find that only helps if you know anyone who uses gpg.

<comment><USER6> there are literally dozens of us. dozens!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The changelog is sparse, but Igor has some comments on the release on Sourceforge.

[http://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/6c...](http://sourceforge.net/p/sevenzip/discussion/45797/thread/6cc0d82c/)

<comment><USER5> Why are they still using sourceforge?

<comment><USER8> Probably because it works, they have been using it in the past, and there is no reason to move off of it.

<comment><USER9> Until "sf-editor" comes around and hijacks their project... [http://www.itworld.com/article/2927973/linux/is- sourceforge-...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2927973/linux/is-sourceforge- hijacking-project-accounts.html)

SF is on life-support, it survives only thanks to shady tactics like this and "repackaging" popular installers with adware. If you have a project on SF and don't like github, move to Bitbucket or some other provider but please please move off SF for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > 7-Zip now can extract ext3 and ext4 (Linux file system) images.

> 7-Zip now can extract ext2 and multivolume VMDK images.

> 7-Zip now can extract GPT images and single file QCOW2, VMDK, VDI images.

These are seriously impressive features! I hope someone will build on top of them to improve ext4 support in Windows.

The ability to extract files from VM images without actually firing up a VM or using other convoluted tools is also going to be very useful to me.

<comment><USER11> > I hope someone will build on top of them to improve ext4 support in Windows.

Is not better to just improve this already working Windows driver: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the changelog, I was amazed at how many disk-image formats 7zip supported and I newer knew. Especially the amount added recent months seemed impressive.

So I checked my current version... And Ubuntu 16.10 ships version 9.20, which is from 2010.

Yay.

Edit: On further inspection, downloading the source from sourceforge and building it locally was a matter of minutes though. But that feels so utterly un-Ubuntu-ish.

<comment><USER13> You mean "Ubuntu 15.10", I guess? I'm really tired of having to add dozens of PPAs in order to have a sane up-to-date Ubuntu environment. I can understand core packages, which are mostly on the server side to be conservative, but packages like 7zip and others should be updated more frequently.

<comment><USER14> On the one hand I feel Arch is trying to redefine some kind of OS X-inspired "chic 1337" and is throwing UNIX history out the window to do so, and on the other hand the feedback cycle with Gentoo is slow enough I fear I'll constantly vacillate between "gah, just let it rebuild overnight" and "GAH THIS TIME MY FINGERS DON'T LEAVE ^C".

What else is there that's sanely up-to-date out-of-the-box, doesn't have bizarre redistribution issues ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10613518)), and would appeal to someone who uses Slackware but wouldn't mind dependency resolution?

I was already recommended FreeBSD and that's on the todo list.

<comment><USER15> Have you tried NixOS?

I run the unstable channel, which is updated quite often.

Don't be scared of the name "unstable", because it's really quite stable since the channel only updates when all tests pass. Also, it's trivial to go back to a previous configuration if the current one is broken (which is something that has practically never happened to me).

<comment><USER14> I've observed NixOS from a distance with a modicum of curiosity and promptly filed it away as an awesome server OS (due to the networking infrastructure, coming with a remote management system OOB, the perfect reproducibility, etc), but it looks like I'll need to take a proper look at it as a desktop OS too.

<comment><USER12> The biggest hurdle I've had with NixOS in practice, on real iron, on a real machine (not just in a VM) is that there's just no way to "cheat".

NixOS _is_ different, everything is based on the Nix language, and if you discover that something you need isn't in the package-store, the only way to get it onto your system is by leveraging Nix to build the package for you.

Basically the only way to get software to work on NixOS is by learning the Nix language and becoming a NixOS packager.

That is: With NixOS you cannot just wget a tarball, ./configure and make if something you need is missing.

This is probably a very intended "viral" design to boost the package-store, but it's also a hindrance for those who cannot put in the time and investment required to fully learn Nix.

For me, it meant getting my laptop on NixOS was something I wouldn't be able to accomplish over a full weekend, and because of that it became a non-option.

If those constraints don't apply to you, more power to you :)

<comment><USER15> Actually, that is not true at all, I don't know why you're saying that.

It's quite easy to set up a development environment with the build tools / dependencies you need: [https://nixos.org/wiki/Development_Environments](https://nixos.org/wiki/Development_Environments)

Then you can run ./configure; make; etc; at will.

Or if you prefer, you can install build tools / dependencies in your profile with "nix-env", like in any normal distribution (but I don't think this is recommended).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am always amazed 7zip hasn't supplanted WinRar and the Rar format.

<comment><USER17> You know people who use WinRAR?

<comment><USER18> Have you ever downloaded a scene release?

<comment><USER17> You do realise you can decompress .rar using 7zip right?

<comment><USER19> But the scene releases are not using 7zip to create the rars, are they?

<comment><USER20> Among the movers and shakers in the scene, isn't there generally a predilection to use free software over non-free software? E.g. the only time I run across matroska contained movies is when it's released from the scene.

<comment><USER21> Not really. There's a general predilection for the best software available, especially since they're unconstrained by purchase costs. Often the free program is the best, but not always.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a pity they don't have a native OSX version. I'm aware that options exist like Keka, but I prefer the interface of 7zip.</comment>


Brexit Day? EU says UK left long ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-day-eu-says-uk-left-long-ago/ <comment><USER2> Like a lot of other political relationships today, the whole EU/UK Brexit situation reminds me of co-dependent, toxic, manipulative, and abusive relationships.

So now after berating and abusing and insulting and sabotaging the UK, and various stints of unhinged begging interspersed with threats; the depraved, abusive ego of the technocratic authoritarians of EU Brussels has to rationalize itself with "well, leave, you whore, you were dead to me a long time ago."

It's really rather sad, how toxic and evil the EU has become under that shiny veneer of fake gallantry and suave confidence. It is a shame that the EU was form the start imbued with an existential and systematic flaw that turned it into the authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-self-governance body that loathes actual diversity that inherently requires separation.

The EU could have been such a great thing if it had just followed and adopted the original US Constitution, roughly pre-Civil War; a social compact reliant on mutual understanding and willing and voluntary participation, rather than on coercive authoritarianism.</comment>


U.S. attorney: Criticism of Aaron Swartz prosecution is 'unfair' - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57570635-38/u.s-attorney-criticism-of-aaron-swartz-prosecution-is-unfair/

<comment><USER2> Those who are doing the oppressing always find it "unfair" when the persecuted speak out against them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfair.

Do you hear that? It's the world's smallest violin, smuggled in to prison in a body cavity.</comment>


Detecting command failures in bash - <AUTHOR> http://almirkaric.com/2010/01/31/detecting-command-failures-in-bash/

<comment><USER2> Much better approach (assuming all your terminals use the same colors codes, you could of course use tput if not):

      RED="\[\033[31;1m\]"
      NORMAL="\[\033[0m\]"
      PS1_INSIDE='\u@\h:\w$bad\$ '
      PS1="\`
      	retcode=\$? ;
      	if [ 0 -ne \$retcode ]; then
      		bad=\" [\\\\\\\$?=\$retcode]\"
      		echo \"$RED$PS1_INSIDE$NORMAL\"
      	else
      		bad='';
      		echo \"$PS1_INSIDE\";
      	fi;
      \`"
      unset RED NORMAL PS1_INSIDE

Examples:

      anthony@Tao:~$ true
      anthony@Tao:~$ false
      anthony@Tao:~ [$?=1]$  # actually in bold red

</comment><comment><USER3> This article describes any easy way to do this incorrectly.

It also has simple spelling errors, such as 'weather' for 'whether'.

It is NOT what I've come to expect from HN. Downvotes for everyone involved.

 __Oh. Right. I can't downvote. Damn.

</comment><comment><USER4> so un-unix.

<comment><USER5> Well, it has _bash_ in the title, so surprise surprise.

If it were about detecting failed commands in Unix shells, all it would need to say is "$?", though. That's hardly worth a blog post.

<http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=sh></comment></comment>


Too Many Deer on the Road? Let Cougars Return, Study Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/science/too-many-deer-on-the-road-let-cougars-return-study-says.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> We've had a panther spotted several times in our rural western Kansas community. Coincidentally, our feral cat population has disappeared.</comment>


"Quantum Water" Discovered in Carbon Nanotubes - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26319/ <comment><USER2> "A new quantum state of water found in carbon nanotubes ... could have important implications for life"

Important implications for life... I guess that's an understatement of what would happen to life if our water molecules were replaced by all trendy Quantum Water :)

<comment><USER3> That is a fantastic brand name. Water marketed to geeks and techs

"Quantum Water now with 10% more Radicals, Free!"

"Quantum Water, if you're low on Gluons - give us a try!"

"Quantum Water - put a little Strange in your diet!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this part interesting:

"Biologists have long known that flow through these channels is orders of magnitude greater than conventional fluid dynamics predicts."

It sounds like they're talking about a fluid dynamics equivalent of superconductivity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed: that's exactly the part that caught my eye too, although I didn't think of the analogy to superconductivity. Good call!</comment></comment>


Windows 10 upgrade nags become more aggressive, offer no opt-out - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-upgrade-nags-become-more-aggressive-offer-no-opt-out/ <comment><USER2> I've removed the update reminder from two win7 machines. It wasn't difficult.

Instructions are here: [http://www.myce.com/news/how-to-uninstall- kb3035583-the-wind...](http://www.myce.com/news/how-to-uninstall- kb3035583-the-windows-10-downloader-for-windows-7-and-8-1-75681/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I'll hold off upgrading to 10 until it's closer to being finished. Right now, it shouldn't have left beta.

Still, on the plus side, it'll probably be lucrative for IT techs when non- contract clients brick their machines with failed updates, or when machines with unsupported graphics cards get updated.

</comment><comment><USER4> why? Because Microsoft wants to monetize plebs

[http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses- windows-10...](http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses- windows-10s-start-menu-to-display-ads/)

</comment><comment><USER5> GWX notification can be easily disabled by uninstalling and hiding KB3035583, editing registry, enabling Group Policy, etc. When a user cannot do this, it only means they need OS managed and updated for them automatically, it's just better for everyone involved.

<comment><USER6> I noticed a couple of days ago that KB3035583 (plus another annoying Win10-related update), which I had hidden a while back, got unhidden and presented to me again for installation. You need to constantly review the list of updates in each batch of updates to keep Microsoft from tricking you into re-installing it! They just won't take "no" for an answer. (I'm on Windows 7 and have no intention of ever "upgrading" to Win10. My upgrade path will probably be Linux.)

<comment><USER7> I saw a comment elsewhere that stated in the win/sys32/gwx path to create a 0 byte gwx.exe which I believe has helped with disabling the notification as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is really bothering. I want to stay on win 7 as I don't want to give my email to get further updates or to use cortana. I don't know of a way to avoid the nagging reminder... sucks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Never been a better time to install (Antergos) Linux.

</comment><comment><USER10> Have there been other instances of a company retroactively turning a product the consumer has bought and paid for into borderline malware?</comment>


Ask HN: What project are you currently working on? - <AUTHOR> It's that time of the month again to share what HN'ers are working on! Have you taken on new side projects that you'd like to share with the community? How is your current side project going?
I'm currently re-designing one of my side projects - sideprojectors (http://sideprojectors.com) - yeah really. What can I say, I love side projects.
FYI, here's the previous month's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9696274 <comment><USER2> Today I walked through the forest and picked some mushrooms. I walked by the hen house and picked up two eggs. I dug up a few potatoes and picked some spinach. I walked by the neighbour's root cellar to get some of his home brew beer, and fried the mushrooms (chanterelles) and the spinach, boiled the potatoes and scrambled the eggs.

It was good.

<comment><USER3> Hacker News 1898 edition

<comment><USER4> That would involve moats and drawbridges. With gears & swords and sprockets on show-hn and how to avoid overheating and chafing in armor in ask-hn.

<comment><USER5> You're off by about 200 years

<comment><USER2> Yeah, no, this was actually yesterday. Today I'm thinking about fungi porcini with eggs, fresh potatoes and lardo me and my wife made from the family pig.

<comment><USER6> Glad to hear you ate food and browsed the internet. Welcome to the modern human condition!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "google docs" of handwriting / freehand with real-time collaboration. A bit like if google docs had a child with OneNote...

\- vector graphics/drawings created by freehand / writing [http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934](http://write- live.com/d/dba21681-8d3f-4fbe-8b4b-e5c1983df934)

[http://write-live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e](http://write- live.com/d/8f9b7846-a7b9-4e5c-b704-dad9aa87d14e)

\- unlimited* levels of zoom [http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=34...](http://docs.write- live.com/WriteliveServer/webview.html?d=3483c3de-b329-4af1-97d7-2d7f27d96ad1)

\- draw on a tablet, view on tablet / web [http://write- live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab](http://write- live.com/d/538254c5-7d31-41f2-83bb-bcd0a7cee7ab)

<comment><USER8> That sounds awesome! That's one of those problems that I've had in the "Someday Maybe" bin for a long time, but I've been perpetually hoping that someone else comes up with a solution so that I can just pay them money instead of having to do it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm working on a molecular sensor. Basically it's a novel sensor (hardware) that uses machine learning techniques (in software) to identify single molecules. I just finished a doctorate were I showed that the technology could compete with mass spec and has applications in high accuracy bio-molecule characterization.

<comment><USER10> What's the interface like for testing samples? If there is any chance to do it at-range, such a tool would be amazing coupled with a camera and built into an augmented reality system.

<comment><USER9> Ha, that would be cool. Unfortunately, to get molecular and sub-molecular resolution on single molecules you have be pretty close to the target (nanometers/Angstroms). You basically load a liquid containing the analyte into the device and push go.

<comment><USER10> Maybe one just needs to put it on a drone!

EDIT: I wasn't trying to be snarky. I get excited by certain ideas and was just riffing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm working on my Date Range Picker component for Bootstrap:

[http://www.daterangepicker.com](http://www.daterangepicker.com)

Over 3 years of piling on new features and pull requests haphazardly, it's gained a bunch of unnecessary code complexity and odd little bugs when settings are set in just the right combination. I've spent the past few afternoons rewriting it from scratch, returning to sane code organization, and an updated UI that'll work for more sites. Feels good.

Now I'm working on redoing the documentation and demos so I can publish. Should be ready by tomorrow.

I also just finished redoing a 16-year-old website of mine, which I mostly maintain for nostalgia's sake, Website Goodies:

[http://www.websitegoodies.com](http://www.websitegoodies.com)

It was initially a collection of HTML tutorials and Perl scripts, now with just tools, no tutorials, in modern languages. Somehow real people are still posting to guestbooks created there in the 1990s, so why not keep it going? Makes a bit of AdSense money on the side too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am currently experimenting with sentiment analysis using Python scikit-learn and NLTK. Working on a project that tries to predict if a user rated a business positively or negatively based on his review comment. I have access to only the 160 characters of the review (not the full text) along with the rating given by the user. With 10K samples of reviews and their ratings, I am currently at 70% accuracy in predicting if a review is positive or negative.

</comment><comment><USER13> One week ago I've launched my first project as a developer.

[https://magicalpush.com/](https://magicalpush.com/) (no English language yet)

Magical Push is a social project which helps people to develop new positive behaviors.

Every day participants of a 30-days challenge should do 4 simple things:

\- to learn something new

\- to exercise

\- to do an act of kindness

\- to meditate

I've curated a lot of content from edx and coursera online courses, a collection of online fitness classes, guided meditations, random acts of kindness ideas, etc.

Nothing super special, but I feel good by spreading positive ideas and lifestyle.

<comment><USER14> Alright, that's fun. Went checking and it was in russian. So lucky to be Russian myself :D but seriously, translate first before posting here. Upd: noticed your note, so I guess my bad.

<comment><USER13> I'm actually Ukrainian ^_^

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Working on something called Diamonds - a math worksheet generator for Teachers and Tutors. The google docs of math sheets, if you will.

Also just made off-the-rip, a command line & JS soundcloud audio downloader that embeds metadata like artist, title, and artwork. [https://github.com/jakiestfu/off-the-rip](https://github.com/jakiestfu/off- the-rip)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm working on a mobile app built with the Ionic framework. It's called Tripfix ([http://www.tripfixapp.com](http://www.tripfixapp.com)) and is a tool to help you plan things to see and visit on a trip away.

The Ionic framework is great, and I found it really easy to get going with. So far it also hasn't yet hampered me by being a hybrid framework, so it's been a lot of fun :) ([http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/))

</comment><comment><USER17> Mine helps travelers find hostels where there are lots of other people staying ([https://hostelhawk.com](https://hostelhawk.com)). It's been a side project since I started working as a digital nomad over 1.5 years ago and has helped me find sociable hostels to stay in so I never get lonely. Uses Ionic framework + Angular.js. Still very much a work in progress, so any feedback is appreciated!

<comment><USER18> How does this work? The about button isn't working for me.

<comment><USER17> Right now the About button just shows the same Hostel Hawk popup from when the site loads; clicking it while it's already displayed does nothing. But I'll add more info about the site soon and fix that.

Basically you can explore the map and see what cities are most popular with travelers right now. You can zoom in and check out how many travelers are staying (approximately) at the tops hostels. The app also displays ratings weighed by number of reviews, so a hostel with only one review and a high rating won't outrank another one with thousands of reviews but a slightly lower rating.

My ultimate goal is to make finding popular sociable hostels super easy and ultra quick.

<comment><USER18> >You can zoom in and check out how many travelers are staying (approximately) at the tops hostels.

I understand the gist and it sounds useful, but how are you determining (approximately) how many travelers are staying at the top hostels?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm working on [http://rationalfiction.io](http://rationalfiction.io) \- an awesome place for people to post and discuss rationalist fiction/fanfiction stories.

(You can read about what rationalist stories are over here: [http://rationalfiction.io/wiki/rational- fiction](http://rationalfiction.io/wiki/rational-fiction))

<comment><USER20> Wow, this looks great! What did you use to build?

<comment><USER19> Thanks! =)

It is built with Django. By the way, the project is open source:

[https://github.com/raymestalez/fictionhub](https://github.com/raymestalez/fictionhub)

(code is a bit messy right now, I have just finished building the basic functionality and now refactoring and cleaning everything up)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My perpetual side project is Antimony: a open-source CAD package that mixes Python scripting, dataflow graphs, and click-and-draggable UI features.

[http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony](http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony)

I'm currently rewriting the dataflow graph engine. The existing engine is held together with Qt signals/slots and duct tape; I'm switching to a C++11 design that tracks dependencies explicitly (which should be faster and nicely decoupled from the rest of the application).

Previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9623609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9623609)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm a student pharmacist trying to increase my background in programming. Right now I'm just doing experiments in finding useful cases for the openFDA API.

Overdose Info (Released): [http://overdose.rxv2.com](http://overdose.rxv2.com)

Drug Label (In Apple Review Process): [http://druglabel.rxv2.com](http://druglabel.rxv2.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> Working on adding team notes to my contextual app [https://www.Ghostnoteapp.com](https://www.Ghostnoteapp.com) so you can share notes on files, folders etc with others using ex. Dropbox or Box or some other cloud service.

And I am working on finding a better way to formulate whats unique about Ghostnote. Its easy to see when you show the video. But my attempts at explaining it in words falls short somehow I think mostly because the concept is so new.

Right after Evernote integration that was one of the most popular requests.

Privious discusison on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9145007)

</comment><comment><USER24> Currently picking back up a side project I started a few months back called The Daily Drop ([http://www.thedailydrop.co](http://www.thedailydrop.co)). It aggregates EDM songs from around the web into a single location with the usual playback/music controls.

Originally created it because I just wanted a way to not have to manually go to different sites, forums, and blogs looking for new stuff, so I automated it. I 'launched' it thinking others might find it useful. Pending an approval from Apple, a native iOS app should be out in the next few days or so.

<comment><USER25> Have you heard of Hype Machine ([http://hypem.com](http://hypem.com))? It sounds like you're trying to do something similar, but possibly drawing on more sources.

Either way, good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm working on a small visualization article about the different methods of generating normally-distributed random numbers, given only a stream of bytes. It's been somewhat hampered by the fact that one small aspect of the Box- Mueller Transform still eludes me. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm working on an app that enables people to send unlimited content over cellular, organized into stories. In the moment is when network and context is lost for created content. It's how we should preserve moments: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keepsake-send-tons- photos/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keepsake-send-tons- photos/id718810692?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER28> I am working on a habit building app in Meteor. It's really an excuse to get my hands dirty with Meteor, which I am loving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this the other day - might come in handy, if you haven't seen it already.

[http://themeteorchef.com/](http://themeteorchef.com/)

<comment><USER28> That's really cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Highly customizable craft kits. We started with some design and stitch yourself thin wallets: [http://fabnik.com//products/bookbinder-bifold-wallet- kit/](http://fabnik.com//products/bookbinder-bifold-wallet-kit/). Working on a leather watch strap now.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm working on www.homesquad.co, it's a HomeJoy for Mexico and Colombia. I started this as an excuse to get in the deeper sands of marketing and customer acquisition, and surprisingly, we're making some extra bucks. It's been very fun, and I hope that eventually, we build a real business out of this.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm working on a real-time browser-based game engine. The world will be editable from the browser as well, to allow collaborative editing.

Early demo: [http://lumakey.net/labs/battleground/demo1/](http://lumakey.net/labs/battleground/demo1/)

</comment><comment><USER32> My main "side project" lately has been trying to get a job in the engineering side of biotech in the Bay Area. Meeting people is exciting! And part of this has been augmenting my blog [0] with some biology writing.

Other than that I've been helping my Google Summer of Code student with IHaskell [1] – soon we're going to have full widget support, supporting all the same widgets as IPython. Although I don't do most of the coding (the student is quite skilled and incredibly productive) I get the satisfaction of seeing something awesome being implemented for IHaskell!

[0] [http://andrew.gibiansky.com](http://andrew.gibiansky.com) [1] [http://www.github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell](http://www.github.com/gibiansky/IHaskell)

</comment><comment><USER33> One ongoing project I have is [http://simplesharingbuttons.com](http://simplesharingbuttons.com).

I've been meaning to do a complete rewrite, but I was at least able to do the most important, functional updates incrementally.

Lately I've been playing with (chat) bots. One fun experiment I made is [https://twitter.com/bartleby_scrvnr/](https://twitter.com/bartleby_scrvnr/) .

I don't particularly care for many of the Twitter bots that are out there, but I found some interesting projects, like @congressedits, @YesYoureRacist or even @TheRiddlerBot or @mothgenerator. I'd like to explore more ideas in this area.

My next big project (in a very early stage) though is a forum -- with a _twist_ :-)

</comment><comment><USER34> Been working for a couple of months on a League of Legends stats site ([http://carry.gg](http://carry.gg)). Development is going well, and I've got a dedicated userbase. But I'm still exploring ways to grow.

</comment><comment><USER35> Modding one of these bebs for that sweet sound of tubey goodness: [http://www.head-fi.org/t/671688/bravo-v2-review-tube- rolling...](http://www.head-fi.org/t/671688/bravo-v2-review-tube-rolling-mods- coming-soon) Super good headphone amp even before mods, keeps me nice and distracted from this thing [http://engertlab.fas.harvard.edu/Z-Brain/](http://engertlab.fas.harvard.edu/Z-Brain/), a website you can look through the spiffiest images of zebrafish brains, you know.. for whenever you're bored beyond human understanding.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.primroseeditor.com/](https://www.primroseeditor.com/)

RAD programming framework for WebVR. It will soon have a huge set of features above and beyond the basic text-editor that I've demoed here on HN before. I never really intended to make a framework, but I have ideas on some products I want to build, am trying to make iterating on those ideas very productive, and I figure I might as well let everyone have the core stuff in the mean time:

BTW, I'm always available to talk about projects, if you need a freelance developer or just an ear off which to bounce ideas. Find my contact info in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER36> Working on a Bluetooth-enabled, 8 button, one-hand chording keyboard. It appears as a keyboard for typing and a wireless serial port for updating the mappings between chords and keys. Apps for Android and Windows make it easier to update the settings. I'm just planning to use it with my tablet (stuck onto the back) to make typing easier. I also love using it for EagleCAD shortcuts when making PCBs on my Surface (the pen input is nice enough when making pcbs to not opt for a laptop). Here's a picture of it: [http://i.imgur.com/91nsGba.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/91nsGba.jpg)

<comment><USER10> That's very cool. I think I would love to have something like that to go on to the back of a gamepad sort of deal. Working in VR is difficult when you have to change input devices. The gamepad is best for navigation, the keyboard is best for text input, the mouse is overall bad.

<comment><USER36> Thanks. I agree that handling multiple types of input in VR is difficult. That's actually the problem I wanted to solve with this project when I started it (details: [https://hackaday.io/project/1321-keychange](https://hackaday.io/project/1321-keychange)). But life intervened and the project scope shrunk.

<comment><USER10> I do some hardware hacking myself sometimes. Been meaning to sew this xbox controller joystick module onto a glove I've built that provides haptic feedback when sensed with the Leap Motion. Hit me up on my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I launched Your World of Text six years ago right here on HN. It's an art site where people can write anonymously on an infinite field of text. In the intervening years, without any active development from me, site traffic grew to about 500k visits/month, then shrank back down to about 100k. A lot of that decline is due to scripters flooding the site. This month, I'm giving the site some overdue attention: fixing bugs, fighting the scripters, and some other improvements. The first iteration of the rate-limiter is launching soon, and I'll then clear the frontpage content for a fresh start.

</comment><comment><USER38> Open source Hearthstone-like game, except it's real-time (no turns), and it's space-themed: [https://github.com/lacker/cardkit](https://github.com/lacker/cardkit)

It's an effort to learn more about react.js, Webpack, babel, and ES6. Contributors welcome. It should be easy to build and run. We have a Slack channel for people who have contributed.

You can play the basic game (if you have an opponent) at [http://spacetime.tv](http://spacetime.tv) (very much a work in progress)

<comment><USER39> Not working for me.

\- Uncaught InvalidStateError: Failed to execute 'send' on 'WebSocket': Still in CONNECTING state.

\- WebSocket connection to 'ws://spacetime.tv:9090/' failed: Error in connection establishment: net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

<comment><USER38> Hmmm... Spacetime.tv works for me when I connect two browser windows to make a game.

a) What browser/OS are you running?

b) Maybe your firewall is blocking sockets?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just released my first live-action short film, using a combination of motion capture and conventional shooting.

It's the story of a disgruntled startup founder who summons a demon to take revenge on his co-founders - following a YouTube tutorial...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoiva3DfI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoiva3DfI8)

I'm just in the middle of the publicity for it (film: one of the few venues where it's harder to stand out from the crowd than starting a startup), and after that, it's onto the next film in the series.

</comment><comment><USER41> My model based development tool is currently on hold. The intent is to make something better than Simulink for developing embedded control code. It's actually time to scrap it and start again using the lessons from the first go at it - some fundamentals need to be changed. An old screenshot is in this SO question: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4821102/font- differences-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4821102/font-differences- using-wxpython-on-windows-linux)

</comment><comment> the-dude I am working on my meCoffee espresso 1kW+ boiler controller with Bluetooth, pressure control and so much more ( [https://mecoffee.nl](https://mecoffee.nl) )

<comment><USER8> Awesome! Reading through this thread, I'm so happy to see that other people are working on things that I've had in my "Someday Maybe" list for a while. Too many cool things I'd like to have exist, and it's just wonderful that someone else is going to do it first!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Trying to get a learning project off the ground that revolves around providing Dev Ops for Front End Developers. Goal is to create a solution for product teams that integrates Front End Dev Ops services into a product with minimal infrastructure integration. Overview: [https://gist.github.com/joshblack/64e7c31aa47e19cfb3e5](https://gist.github.com/joshblack/64e7c31aa47e19cfb3e5) , if anyone is interested in helping out feel free to reply or leave a comment on the gist.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've got three!

A _highly_ opinionated project management saas: [http://kati.burakkanber.com/](http://kati.burakkanber.com/)

A long term HTML5 RPG project: [http://thebotanistgame.com/](http://thebotanistgame.com/)

And I'm working on a really interesting giga-scale chatroom UX, intended for live chat in a room with hundreds or thousands of active participants. Mostly as a UX experiment.

</comment><comment><USER44> Powargrid, a turn based strategy, for 4+ years now... Gonna be done Real Soon Now (TM)!

[http://www.powargrid.com](http://www.powargrid.com)

<comment><USER45> I played a skirmish and it was fun!

<comment><USER44> Awesome! Do try the campaign if you find the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm working on a dual pane note taking website/app, the right pane is a text editor for markdown markup and the left pane shows the renderer html. It looks like this currently:

[http://i.imgur.com/9iUucc7.png](http://i.imgur.com/9iUucc7.png)

The HTML is rendered on the client side, changes in the editor instantly show up in the rendered html and are automatically saved on the server.

Tech stack: React, Material-UI, Python+Flask, Redis

<comment><USER47> Might just be me, but I immediately thought the order should be switched. I'll be reading in the editor 90% (left to right) of the time so the editor should come first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Continuing to move forward my ES6 React application generator [1] along with complementary client-side reactive message bus [2] that can be used as a Dispatcher.

[1] [https://github.com/turrisjs/generator- turris](https://github.com/turrisjs/generator-turris) [2] [https://github.com/rxmqjs/rxmq.js](https://github.com/rxmqjs/rxmq.js)

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I'm working on several site redesigns so putting my design hat back on after being neck deep in JS is always refreshing.

Also working on building a community site with Telescope on Heroku.

Starting to learn React. As a non-application developer, I'm looking to use this along with Ampersand to create an easy way to create static websites with it. I know, I know, this is not what its meant for, but I like to think outside the box sometimes with these frameworks.

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of creating a community, have you tried Postatic?

[http://www.postatic.com](http://www.postatic.com)

<comment> at-fates-hands I have not, but I will certainly check out. It seems really flexible, which is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm working on private hosted Wordpress plugin and theme updates. My goal is to do for Wordpress updates what Github did for Git.

Its currently in a private alpha, but I've already got 26 users signed up! I have lots of ideas for doing automated builds, webhooks, and third party integrations, but the going is slow because I lack a lot of time to work on it.

Check it out at [https://kernl.us](https://kernl.us)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm working on a webapp that lets people advertise any arbitrary event going on with google maps integration, and with an eye towards making communication between users easy (commenting, forums, private messaging). I'm not confident that many people would find such an app to be at all useful, but it is simple enough to get my hands dirty in webdev. Will hopefully make my first release by the end of the week.

</comment><comment><USER51> I am working on using google spreadsheet / excel as the backed for e-commerce.

I have built the features for magento for managing products, categories, images, mapping from simple to configurable products, configurable attributes etc. It works well for up to 10K skus.

Looking to expand it to shopify and other ecommerce backends. It would be great to run the ecommerce right out of the spreadsheet (cahced of course) instead of having another copy.

<comment><USER52> Excel as a back end sound like a terrible idea to me. Any reason why?

<comment><USER51> Most of the clients are very used to an "Excel" like interact for their backend. I am not using excel per se, but using excel to manipulate data and seamlessly push the changes to e-commerce.

So the user uses google docs and all its rich UI to manipulate data very quickly and with the click of a button (inside google spreadsheet) the data gets pushed to the ecommerce (after validation). The status of each update is then pushed back to the spreadshet.

The goal here is to let users use their familiar UI for managing their e-commerce backend.

It was my mistake to say that I am using excel as the backend. The correct phrase is that I am using the google spreadsheet as the data manipulation UI for ecommerce and then sync-ing it to the ecommerce backend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm working in a project called Codenizer ([http://codenizer.co](http://codenizer.co)) that aims to help Python developers to maintain and keep their projects up-to-date. Basically, it verifies whether a new version of a certain library is compatible with your project, checking all imports you do to that library. Many other things are to come!

</comment><comment><USER54> I am working on an educational project designed to help developers to learn more about customers, marketing, monetization and business strategy.

The end goal of the project is to increase their chances of bootstrapping a tech company, launching a successful side project or a "lifestyle business" while minimizing risks.

My strong belief is that most developers are stuck in a local optima. Depth- first search of professional decisions space is usually limited to software engineering/CS/coding. However there may be many better algorithms to achieve desired personal profits and professional satisfaction. I am trying to uncover such algorithms and communicate required business/marketing/entrepreneurship concepts using language and metaphors from CS/programming.

I have also started writing a book about ethical (minimal negative externalities) marketing for independent open source projects.

If anyone is interested in this and would like some free consulting in exchange for feedback and insights, drop me a note email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm working on a site that shows you only the free, downloadable music from your SoundCloud feed.

It's not finished, but all the important bits are there (fair warning: following doesn't work yet). I'm extremely open to feedback.

[http://salem.io/sketchbook/downspout](http://salem.io/sketchbook/downspout)

<comment><USER56> Awesome. I nearly built something similar a while back. Glad someone's finally doing it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Currently working on an open-source phishing framework called gophish [1]. It will let businesses and pen testers conduct phishing simulations/engagements easily. And it's a full web app sitting on a go backend.

[1] [http://github.com/jordan-wright/gophish](http://github.com/jordan- wright/gophish)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on a web app that helps biologists perform common tasks on DNA and protein sequences ([http://genewarrior.com](http://genewarrior.com)).

It's a side project since more than a year, I started it to learn more about Javascript and Java Servlets. It's grown into a quite useful tool.

</comment><comment><USER58> I am working on a site to monitor performance changes in popular frameworks like React, Ember, Bootstrap, Ionic etc. - [http://web- perf.github.io](http://web-perf.github.io).

Have seen some interesting trends with these frameworks, like how Ember's new rendering engine is 25% faster, etc.

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://numbers.today](https://numbers.today)

A quantified-self platform that allows you to track your daily routine and change your behaviour based on data. There's an API available.

At the moment, trying to push some features and get more traction. Is getting worse and I'm feeling quite lost.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm teaching a course on data visualization, which is something of a side project for me.

Check it out here: [http://nsrivast.github.io/data-viz- nairobi/](http://nsrivast.github.io/data-viz-nairobi/)

I'll be posting the student projects tomorrow after the presentations!

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm working on a single page wiki that uses a notecard metaphor: [https://github.com/monknomo/CardWiki](https://github.com/monknomo/CardWiki)

I'm also working on a bunch of batch scripts to manage installing and switching between different versions of python in windows, as well as virtual environment management: [https://github.com/monknomo/pywin](https://github.com/monknomo/pywin)

I need a new name for that one, because something else is already called pywin...

I have most of a game from a game jam; I just need to add fun. Manage a crop of potatoes: [https://github.com/monknomo/POTATO_MANAGEMENT_SYSTEM](https://github.com/monknomo/POTATO_MANAGEMENT_SYSTEM)

</comment><comment><USER62> (1) I'm working on simple programming language, like forth, but in Chinese. It may also control a tortoise like logo. Just for fun. [http://qinmishu.org/static/wangbalang/repl.html](http://qinmishu.org/static/wangbalang/repl.html)

(2) I also created an illustrator software called Suosuoban. It is an illustrating tool that allows you to express your ideas by drawing pictures quickly on computer screen. I think the most important feature that discriminate it from others is "bubble clusters". It is an opensource software, find it in [https://github.com/henryscala/suosuoban](https://github.com/henryscala/suosuoban).

</comment><comment><USER63> I just started working on a project to continue the work of Carl Munck. Haven't gotten very far yet but I have a lot of ideas.

[https://github.com/bluestix/pyramidcode](https://github.com/bluestix/pyramidcode)

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm working on TimeBlock, a new agile work method that helps managers become leaders and help Makers to be more in flow so they get stuff done.

The method is also focused on getting Makers to be transparent once a week thereby informing Managers, in exchange Managers leaves Makers alone during the day so they get more time in flow.

Since last month we have signed two paying customers up for the app, rebuild the frontend in mvc and added a kanban board for managers to collect ideas before they are transformed into TimeBlocks.

Read more here [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) and sign up on our launch list to learn more about the method and be the first to get access to the app.

</comment><comment><USER65> Lately I got involved in AlaSQL - a young project implementing a javascript SQL database [http://alasql.org](http://alasql.org) \- For the moment I focus on grooming the documentation and the test flow.

I really love the thrill of new projects where you are not afraid to dream and where the impossible does not scare the team. Ok - we meet limits, but it does not limit us from dreaming, trying, learning and doing.

I actually think the 'doing' part is what most attracts me to get involved with side projects. Maybe because people get involved on the level they feel right. You _take_ a task because you feel it's important / worth it.

That's my 2 cents...

</comment><comment><USER66> Working on Umbrella - a free open source mobile app to help journalists, activists and aid workers manage their physical and digital security on the go. [http://www.secfirst.org](http://www.secfirst.org)

</comment><comment><USER67> A gun shopping site. Currently for comparison shopping and subscribing to price and stock status changes. Hoping to expand it to do some more stuff later.

[https://staging.guncrawler.com](https://staging.guncrawler.com)

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm working on [http://getdrafter.com](http://getdrafter.com) \- Instant mobile application for e-commerce stores.

I am getting close to a first alpha, working hard to finish the last features to get out there.

</comment><comment><USER69> Trying to find a way to 3-D print a bubble level for a mouse's skull during surgery. It's tiny as all get out. Hopefully it will help our surgeons practice for better and more repeatable outcomes in our research.

<comment><USER10> Literal bubble level or just notional? Have you looked into using capacitive liquid levels? There are also MEMS levels that are a smaller, but they're also noisier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> [http://www.voyagic.com](http://www.voyagic.com) \- an app for generating trips/ vacations for over 100 cities around the world, hoping to get it finished soon :)

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm working on a browser based set of study design calculators (samples size and randomization lists). I'm using flask and scipy.

It is a lot of fun and keeps my theory sharp (I'm a statistician by trade).

</comment><comment><USER72> Working on fixing the directions in Bermuda. Finding out how to get from one place to another is cumbersome at the moment and Google Maps is horrendous as many streets are incorrectly identified.

</comment><comment><USER56> Currently working on a SaaS to help online furniture retailers (and eventually any retailer) increase customer engagement, conversions, and lower returns.

On the weekends, I'm working on a super easy photo-prints-on-demand service: [https://keepsakemail.com/](https://keepsakemail.com/)

Connect to Instagram - pick photos - enter payment and shipping details. One flat rate shipped anywhere. Reply to your email receipt and mention this HN comment and I'll refund half of your payment as a discount :)

</comment><comment><USER73> [http://musicinformationretrieval.com](http://musicinformationretrieval.com)

A collection of instructional IPython notebooks related to music information retrieval.

</comment><comment><USER74> I am working on Mapout. [http://www.mapout.in](http://www.mapout.in) \- An indoor map website for shopping malls, trade fairs and conferences with product search, mall & store/stall search. You can also get/write recommendation from your facebook friends for stores. Shoppers will get to know latest deals and new product launches. Launched this website few months back and currently working on improving the UI.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm building a job board and currently I'm finishing up the initial feature set.

[https://whoshiring.io/](https://whoshiring.io/)

<comment><USER76> I love the design -- looks beautiful =) Great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Working on a client-side robots.txt validator for a client (nothing public yet).

Still editing the final draft of the novel from my Kickstarter ([http://planetoz.net/kickstarter](http://planetoz.net/kickstarter)).

Finally created a new personal landing page ([http://www.jcholder.com](http://www.jcholder.com)). Still incomplete, but feedback appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER78> I have a project that is currently private/subscription only. In some sense, it goes back a lot of years. It is currently going well and I have hopes it will become something commercially successful at some point. I think I finally have the right idea/packaging for what I want to do.

In early June, I launched a food blog. That is also getting more notice than projects of mine have historically gotten.

</comment><comment><USER79> Beetle can be used to: a) execute SQL queries and save the results to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, TOML, TSV, Markdown or a SQL file (INSERT commands); and b) generate fake data (lots of types supported), saving to any of the same file formats already mentioned.

[https://github.com/argonium/beetle-cli](https://github.com/argonium/beetle- cli)

</comment><comment><USER80> 1\. [http://woodspotting.com](http://woodspotting.com) \-- hand tool woodworking blog aggregator; initially a site for myself, but slowly growing to others, get's about 100 uniques a day

2\. a lightweight knowledge base that's in beta and close to going "live"

3\. genetic programming inspired web crawler - using the project to pickup Clojure

</comment><comment><USER81> The Effing Weather ([http://www.theeffingweather.com](http://www.theeffingweather.com)). The theme of the app is accurate weather laced with a profane quote juxtaposed with a beautiful background. Currently working on the Android version (80% done) and after that fixing up the iOS version and also fixing up the website.

</comment><comment><USER82> First time I have worked on a project with a co-founder, everything else I have done solo - proving to be an very different experience.

[http://www.wearebeerd.com/](http://www.wearebeerd.com/)

We Are Beer'd will help you find a place to enjoy your favourite craft beers as well as discover new beers you haven't tried yet.

</comment><comment><USER83> Im woriking on a collection of links and resources, for people that want to get into Game Development.

Im agregating alot of links, with the objective of being a one stop shop for Gamedevs.

[http://gamedevr.com/](http://gamedevr.com/) \- Its my first website, and i would realy apreciate you guys feedback.

</comment><comment><USER84> Im working on preparing my Watch and iPhone game for watchOS 2 and iOS 9

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memory-game-maiden- voyage/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memory-game-maiden- voyage/id982915470)

</comment><comment><USER85> I've been working on a service to help with developer interviews called FizzBuzzer [http://fizzbuzzer.com/](http://fizzbuzzer.com/) Check it out and let me know what you think. It's Free!

</comment><comment><USER86> Working on a Material Design inspired site called Room4Debate ([http://room4debate.com](http://room4debate.com)) for people to debate pressing issues across a range of categories.

</comment><comment><USER87> Writing a subscription box book on leanpub [http://www.leanpub.com/subscription-box](http://www.leanpub.com/subscription- box) and learning how to take care of a newborn.

</comment><comment><USER88> I'm working on the CLI for TV shows tracking. [https://github.com/hiquest/tvcl](https://github.com/hiquest/tvcl). You can join me if you'd like to :)

</comment><comment><USER89> Working on Plastic - a structural code editor for ClojureScript (Atom package) [https://github.com/darwin/plastic](https://github.com/darwin/plastic)

</comment><comment><USER90> starve.de - one of many feed readers

cocktailiciousapp.com - something for cocktail lovers

</comment><comment><USER91> working on beekeeper: [https://github.com/mirceal/beekeeper](https://github.com/mirceal/beekeeper)

Still very early (will do a proper showHN once it has decent quality and I polish some of the rough edges) but would love some feedback on the idea

</comment><comment><USER92> working on a big idea social platform, can't reveal details but pretty excited. oh and we're building it with microservices from the get-go which so far has been awesome

</comment><comment><USER93> working on The Rebolder (rebolder.com) a social news site. So far no real activity, but it's cool having a site out on the net that others can use.</comment>


The Case of the Missing Tattoos - <AUTHOR> https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/08/the-case-of-the-missing-tattoos-altered-photo-lineup-by-portland-police-draws-objection.html <comment><USER2> This case should be dismissed and all officers involved should be fired and MR.ALLEN should be compensated for all the stress he has been thru for the past 29 months on house arrest over a year deprived of spending time with his kids,family,and friendslimited to the things he could do.i've known him over 30 years with and without the tatoos it clear as day that the thrid photo isn't him because he has always worn a ball head and his body is completely covered with bold tatoos that are vigorously noticable from his head to his arms and feet,I know him and I definitely know when he's telling the truth .he has been under a tremendous amount of stress dealing with this situation but from day one he has told me he was innocent and the truth will be revealed the question is when will he be exonerated of these false charges and what charges will the police who fabricated and assassinated his character for unknown reasons what charges will they face</comment>


Open Letter to the Mobile Developers - <AUTHOR> http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5479 <comment> gurpreet- This is an amazing post and one that every person who has released public works should read, including open-source maintainers.

The basic gist of it is that a game developer, Jason, released a game in the public domain for free. Some mobile developers from the company DualDecade released it on the App Store with the exact naming as the title and did not bother to highlight that it was an unofficial derivative work made by Jason. Game becomes very popular. Jason receives various emails wanting him to change the game. Jason requests that DualDecade change the name.

It draws attention to the fine lines between copyright, commercial communication, plagiarism, naming and more. I will be following this very closely. Will the creative commons licence that Jason chose hold weight, especially as it wasn't CC-BY? I guess we'll find out.</comment>


What does it mean to be local? Behavioral dissonance: local/global - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hashtag/VocalForLocal <comment><AUTHOR> I can't help myself but ponder deeply about the definition of being local after following few posts in this thread: [https://twitter.com/hashtag/VocalForLocal?src=hashtag_click](https://twitter.com/hashtag/VocalForLocal?src=hashtag_click)

While the pandemic has globally stoked a sentiment to support local products, the very voices supporting them seem to be using platforms built for a globalized world. I can't come to terms with this behavioral dissonance where global platforms like twitter are used to post harsh comments on multi national companies and their products. Where are we headed? What does this behavior mean? What is a healthy way to support local products?</comment>


Dart Will Kill Off HTML, Javascript and CSS. - <AUTHOR> http://rayracine.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-will-kill-off-javascript-html-and.html

<comment><USER2> _Dart applications will render on a full size Canvas using the browser 2D and 3D APIs. Beautiful UIs, via a top notch OO widget set library..._

Whenever this is suggested in JS (e.g. Bespin), massive flamage ensues. The phrase "it's no better than Flash" tends to get thrown around.

 _..."image" which is another Smalltalk / Lisp concept rarely seen these days..._

Because most programmers are deathly allergic to it. It may be irrational, but that doesn't matter. Images, we hates them. You can't even git 'em on GitHub.

The rest seems really optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER3> How will HTML/JS/CSS instantaneously disappear ?

<comment><AUTHOR> ... for new development.

Consider having to develop a new web site. You have two options.

1) You are a JQuery/YUI/Prototype/Sprout wiz and you pound it out with HTML, JS and CSS tweaking.

2) You fire up the browser, open the brower's integrated IDE, which is (will be) on par with Eclipse, and write dynamically typed code, using a solid OO widget set which includes tables, charts, and graphs as well as standard form widgets. As you develop your code, a beautiful UI using the browser's hardware accelerated 2d/3d apis comes together in real time as you are typing in and modifying the code.

Most will go with option #2. Just as most will opt for Android or iOS native apps over HTML5 apps on tablets, smart phones.

</comment></comment><comment> paul-woolcock such a pleasant fiction...</comment>