Fastmail – 20 Years Old - <AUTHOR> https://fastmail.blog/2019/11/21/fastmail-20-years/ <comment><USER2> I've been using Fastmail for a little while (I'm still migrating from Gmail), and I love their service.

I've talked to support before and asked questions that got replies from a real person, which was refreshing coming out of Google's ecosystem. Their web UI is fast. Their support for custom domains is great, I can be receiving emails from a new domain in minutes.

One of their most underrated features is aliases. You have up to 500 email addresses on each account, which means all of your subscriptions can be a different email account, and those accounts can't be correlated by 3rd- parties.

With Gmail you can only use `+` and `.`, which makes it easy to derive the base email. With Fastmail, my main email can be something like `firstname.lastname@example.com` and my Walmart account can be `firstname.lastname@example.com`. I didn't realize how useful that would be until I started using it, but it's quickly morphed into a killer feature.

<comment><USER3> The problem with aliases is that it's effectively a way to ensure vendor lock- in even for people with custom email domains. If one of the reasons to use a custom email domain is to preserve flexibility in choosing an email provider, good luck switching providers when you have hundreds of aliases set up in the hands of hundreds if not thousands of third-parties and your strategy for managing your inbox depends on these aliases continuing to function.

It may not be nearly as strong of a lock-in as a @gmail.com address, but I'd be curious to hear how many heavy alias users are paying Fastmail on a month- to-month basis.

<comment><USER4> It's not an issue if your email is primarily for newsletters, bills and other one way updates (where you are not frequently conversing back). You'll rarely have to create an actual functioning alias in those cases because a catch-all would do reasonably well.

If you are conversing with people it's unlikely you are going to create an alias for each person specifically, that'll come across as super shady TBH.

So it's not a major issue for most people because most services support 30-50 aliases easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fastmail is fantastic, no complaints at all.... besides the mobile app.

I don't care about the speed or glitches or whatever others may complain about, but I travel way too much to have no offline email access on my phone.

So this turns into me having 2 email apps on my phone (Android); one to do stuff in (Fastmail) and another (K-9 which is not great to write/do stuff in) that just sits there, likely hogging battery life, receiving emails and storing them so that I can read them / access them while in an airplane/foreign country/bad connection spot.

If they fix this I would be overjoyed.

<comment><USER6> Just wondering: why don't you use your phone's native email app and IMAP?

<comment><USER7> Android 10 (at least on my Pixel 2) doesn't have a native email app (other than Gmail), though of course there are lots of options.

<comment><USER8> last time i checked, gmail supports generic IMAP accounts as well.

<comment><USER9> But then you're using gmail.

<comment><USER8> we were talking about the android app, not the web service.

said android app supports generic IMAP accounts and doesnt need to be paired to a google account to work with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used fastmail for 19 years now. Way back in 2000 I was travelig India for 6 months. At that time I was reading email on my university through a telnet connection with the pine client. Quite a hardcore experience! So I decided to get with the program and get a webmail. Hotmail was the hottest those days, but I never liked it. So I picked up a computer magazine on the street in Delhi and came across a review of web based email providers. Guess what. The ranked fastmail as #1! Above all the others. Never looked back since then :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Fastmail, but they are ultimately based in Australia. I really thought they would have moved their operations by now.

<comment><USER12> Why would they move? The A&A bill doesn't affect them:

> Fastmail won't be making changes to our technology or policies in response > to this bill. Law enforcement has always been able to request information > from us through the Telecommunications Act with a lawful warrant. Because we > have the ability to decrypt all data, there is no need to make changes that > circumvent encryption.

Source: [https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy- aabi...](https://fastmail.blog/2018/12/21/advocating-for-privacy-aabill- australia/)

I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws.

[0] [https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738...](https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738?hl=en)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate- responsibility/law...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate- responsibility/law-enforcement-requests-report)

<comment><USER13> > The A&A bill doesn't affect them

You can basically sum that up as "we weren't able to protect your privacy in the first place, so you don't have to worry about this bill compromising it".

The quote also misses that Australia has silent and warrantless access to data and that Fastmail's servers are in the US, so subject to America's three- letter agencies as well.

> I'm just some boob on the internet that doesn't speak legalese but a quick > Google suggests that Gmail [0] and Outlook [1] are subject to similar laws.

The competition isn't American megacorps, it's small European companies like ProtonMail (Switzerland, as far as I can see usually requires a court order and Swiss law requires notifying the subject) or Mailbox.org (Germany, only allows disclosure with a warrant or imminent danger to life). Even if your email is left unencrypted, these countries have much stronger data protection and privacy laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people probably don't know that Fastmail was started by Jeremy Howard, one of the creators of [https://www.fast.ai](https://www.fast.ai) which is by far the best way to learn deep learning IMHO :)

<comment><USER15> Thanks! I haven't been involved involved with Fastmail for the last 10 years, so I can take no credit for how amazing they've been throughout that time - but I'm thrilled to see that they're still doing well. I'm still a very happy Fastmail user :)

So many little things are done right, and all with open standards.

<comment><USER16> Thanks Jeremy! Glad to hear you're still enjoying the service.

I still have fond memories of learning my way around the Fastmail infrastructure while sitting on the couch in your Port Melbourne loungeroom back in 2004. Such a long time ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been thinking about moving to Fastmail from Gmail for a long time, as I'm worried that someday an algorithm will suddenly decide that my account should be closed, and as you can't get in contact with a human at Google, this is game over.

To others that have changed provider from Gmail, did you enable forwarding to your new E-mail address? I can't decide if it's a good idea to give Google the new address, or you should just cut the ties even though it makes the shift more troublesome.

<comment><USER18> 1\. Start now. But don't use @fastmail.com as your email address. Get a personal domain and email address (i.e. firstname.lastname@example.com), and forward it to fastmail.

2\. Setup fastmail as the host for firstname.lastname@example.com

3\. Have your gmail account forward to firstname.lastname@example.com. When people ask for your email, or you setup a new account, start using firstname.lastname@example.com

That way if you later switch away from fastmail (like I did), your email address stays the same, firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just left gmail for Fastmail this past month, and I have to say I've been really pleased with it. Their web interface has less frills but somehow feels a lot easier to get organized than gmails bloat of features. I use the Mail app on my phone for mobile support, and all the syncing is really seamless.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a customer since 2011. I love all the features they added during these years (new UI, 2-step auth, mobile App, etc.) and the fact they actively develop their product is reassuring. The two or three times I contacted the customer support the assistance was excellent, once I even got a response from one of the founders.

Since they switched to the new interface a few years ago they gradually turned off features from the classic interface and then they completely switched it off. I rarely used it since the new UI was introduced, but I liked to have the option for slow connections while traveling abroad.

I enjoy reading their blog and I appreciate the open source contributions.

Offline access to e-mails and calendars with official app would be nice, but I understand it's developed as a "mobile GUI" for the webmail.

The only complain I have is that they stopped offering family plans. Once a second account was +5$ [1], now I have to pay 50$ + VAT for a second e-mail address.

[1] [https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing- legacy.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing-legacy.html)

</comment><comment> j-me Fun seeing Fastmail on the front page of HN the day after I started trying it out. I setup a free trial with a domain I manage through Route53, had some hickups setting the correct DNS records and reached out to their support. They were quick to respond and provided awesome, detailed technical support/hand- holding and ultimately got me up and running. The experience convinced me the love I keep reading about on here is real -- highly recommend em!

<comment><USER21> If you decide to use Fastmail officially, here is the referal link you can grab to get 10% off for the 1st year: [https://ref.fm/u12211285](https://ref.fm/u12211285)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> While Fastmail will not save us from the slow, declining viability of self- hosted individual and small business mail servers, their positive effect on the e-mail ecosystem is wonderful. My decision to use their service (even though it is quite pricey, and a cheaper host would do the job for my meager needs) is because of that societally beneficial work.

A hearty thank you to all the Fastmail devs who read this; thank you for your good work!

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome. You get what you pay for. And with FastMail you get an awesome email experience. Worth paying money for something we all depend on everyday.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yay very cool! Been using them for 5+ years now and I love it. Happy to pay. Their web interface has stayed very fast and well organized I think. Love the fact that you get a huge list of domains to choose for your email(s)! imap.cc is one of my favorites. ^_^

</comment><comment><USER25> I love Fastmail for email, but moving all my contacts there was also awesome. I can now easily sync a subset of my contacts to my work phone without having to log in to my personal Google or Apple accounts. Feels like as soon as you add a Google connection somewhere you never know what else will be synced.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's true that the email service is fast. You might think the price is steep for email service that you can get for free elsewhere, but that's not all you get. I use their webdav storage to sync my Joplin notes. It's very easy to set it up and works without any problems. (My plan comes with 5 GB of storage, which is more than I'll ever use. No limits on devices either.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone have opinions comparing Fastmail with Protonmail? I know they're not going for the exact same market, but in the more generic market of "email services for people who don't want to use Gmail" I'd be interested in someone's comparison.

<comment><USER28> Fastmail is a direct competitor to Gmail. That is Fastmail is Gmail but different. Fastmail is opposed to E2E e-mail encryption as this makes some of their features impossible (e.g. full text e-mail search).

Protonmail on the other hand has OpenPGP encryption that can be used even cross providers (on [https://beta.protonmail.com](https://beta.protonmail.com) composing an e-mail to Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> will enable encryption). But they don't support all usual e-mail features like IMAP and SMTP (there are bridges but...).

<comment><USER29> Wow I'm a fulltime user of protonmail for the past 12 months, but hadn't heard about the beta version. Thanks for linking that.

<comment><USER28> That's really surprising as the beta link is on the login page: [https://mail.protonmail.com/login](https://mail.protonmail.com/login) :)

<comment><USER29> Holy. I just missed it completely for the last 12 months then :(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Been with Fastmail for a half year now and loving it.

I can send emails from 10+ different domains and host files there super easily.

Although I'd like to see some algorithm place important emails at the top (somewhat like Gmail) and have scheduled send, Fastmail is a pretty bare-bones service!

<comment><USER31> >Fastmail is a pretty bare-bones service

This is a benefit, IMO. However, I do agree with the features you suggested sounding nice.

<comment><USER30> I go to gmail once a while because my gmail spam doesn't forward to fastmail (there's some important emails that still go to gmail so I have to check) and I see a lot more useful emails at the top than with Fastmail where I completely forget about certain emails because they're buried down. This is partially my fault, but it'd be beneficial to add this as a opt-in feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wanted to give a genuine praise for Fastmail in this post but upon looking up my signup year at Fastmail service (2014), I have noticed that they have increased the yearly price of my old (not available anymore) Family plan from $25 to $30. I guess it was not sustainable but I would have liked an notification about it ...

Now that I think about it, I have kind of rolled my eye when they announced that their new "snooze" feature was only available to their latest plans or big legacy account [1]. Not a move I was expecting for Fastmail.

[1] [https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/snooze.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/snooze.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> In a very slow migration process off as many Google properties as possible, including Gmail- and Fastmail is where I've landed for email. Will be using it with a custom domain to permanently avoid any kind of "lock in".

I have a free-tier protonmail account for any instance where I think a higher level of privacy is necessary (or any email/registration that I just want to separate into its own special zone).

But for regular standard daily email, Fastmail seems to be the sweet spot for me.

Once you've had an email address for so, so long, you realize how "locked-in" you become. I once had a hotmail address as a main email, and I closed it too early, without migrating some online accounts that still used it. As a result, I completely lost access to those accounts because the companies involved said that I _had to_ use that no-longer-existing account to confirm account deletion (or email change). I'm avoiding that mistake this time around.

</comment><comment><USER34> If only they could implement labels in the same way that ProtonMail and Gmail have! I want incoming emails to show in my inbox while being tagged with a certain label or category; this ins't possible in FastMail, only the ability to move the message to another folder entirely which raises the chance of missing messages altogether.

</comment><comment><USER35> Happy Fastmail user for 3.5 years so far. I particularly like (and am happy to support with my subscription fee) that they have active engineering staff building new technology and contributing it back -- in particular, their JMAP protocol work, which is an open standard [1], and behind the scenes their work to improve and contribute back to the Cyrus mail server [2]. Thanks and keep it up!

[1] [https://fastmail.blog/2019/08/16/jmap-new-email-open- standar...](https://fastmail.blog/2019/08/16/jmap-new-email-open-standard/) [2] [https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/12/why-we- contribute/](https://fastmail.blog/2016/12/12/why-we-contribute/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't think the Fastmail UI tells me but I believe I joined Fastmail in 2002 and have been using them since then. (Before that I was using Spamcop's hosted mail.)

There have been some minor annoyances over the years, but in general, no major complaints.

Still sad about the loss of the XMPP service a few years ago though.

<comment><USER37> This will show you when you were first invoiced:

Settings -> Billing & Plan -> View payment history and printable invoices

2002 as well and have been extremely happy with the service.

<comment> james-skemp Thanks for detailing where to find this. Looks like 2002 (August) as well.

Use my Gmail far more, but my Fastmail is primary for accounts that matter.

<comment><USER38> Yay 2002 Club! (December for me.)

I'd heard good things so recommended them to a quite non-technical client, and was impressed by how much simpler life got afterwards!

Still no complaints. Thanks Fastmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Everyone who is happy with Fastmail, what is your "mobile strategy"? As a Fastmail customer, I find Web app wonderful but mobile app on Android severely lacking UX. Switched to Aquamail for client over IMAP but search is unusable/slow. Suggestions/success stories?

<comment><USER40> I've been using BlueMail for a while, but search is poor and it's quite slow. I imagine my frustrations will be similar to yours with Aquamail.

I honestly haven't been able to find an e-mail client for Android that's any good yet. I paid for TouchDown ([https://support.symantec.com/us/en/article.doc7488.html](https://support.symantec.com/us/en/article.doc7488.html)) but, they were bought out by Symantec. TouchDown wasn't cheap either it was like $30 if I recall and it had the same problems. Terrible indexing, poor search, sluggish.

I'm thinking I should remove them all and just go with the web UI but. Yeah. I don't know. E-mail clients on mobile phones suck. :(

<comment><USER41> I've been using Edison on Android for a while now. It is pretty clean and basic. I had been using BlueMail before and agree with your complaints. Edison seems to have solved most of my problems, it's a good basic client without much nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been using fastmail for a few years now and their reliability has been great, prices reasonable, and their web client is fast and convenient.

But there is one thing I cannot figure out. I have my own domain, say email@example.com. The host for mydomain.com really is just a mail reflection service which sends to firstname.lastname@example.com. When I send an email from the fastmail web interface, my identity is firstname.lastname@example.com, and I cannot figure out how to make it accept email@example.com.

There is a help page on setting up identities, but it doesn't work for me. :-( Other than than I'm 100% happy with fastmail.

<comment><USER43> Honest question: Why set up a mail reflection service rather than point your MX records at fastmail and actually use firstname.lastname@example.com?

<comment><USER42> My domain host allows setting up multiple reflectors at my domain, eg

firstname.lastname@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com

Each redirects to a different real email account. The idea is that everyone knows us by our mydomain.com address, but reality we can change different mail accounts. Eg, my daughter has one with her university, but in a couple years after graduation, she can use a gmail account but all of the people using firstname.lastname@example.com will never know she switched.

As I understand it, if I change my mx record, all of them will go to fastmail, but really I want only firstname.lastname@example.com to go to fastmail.

<comment><USER44> You can set up aliases in your Fastmail account to forward mail for these addresses elsewhere: [https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/aliases.html#target](https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/aliases.html#target)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I just switched to Fastmail from GSuite this year and also have no complaints.

</comment><comment><USER46> I personally would like to see more efforts going into open source self-host alternatives, and cloud providers enabling one-click distributed mail server deployments that enable all the functionality you'd expect from like Gmail. Such as virtual folders (labels), better mobile apps, and reliable email service. Too much effort lately has been going into cloud hosted solutions, when I know many users would gladly pay $5+ per month for quality self-hosted email service.

</comment><comment><USER47> The best thing I like about Fastmail is the keyboard shortcuts. Super fast to go through a bunch of emails and move them into their folders. Gmail has them too but for some reason I feel more comfortable with Fastmail's shortcuts.

One feature I would like from their Android apps is to be able to "Mark as read" in addition to Reply/Archive/Delete from the notification drawer.

<comment><USER48> For some reason every once in a while Fastmail decides to interpret the shortcut for paste, Ctrl + V, as 'Send Mail' which has led to some curious exchanges (particularly early-on before i clicked what was happening (if not why)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Congratulation! And thanks for a stellar service!

</comment><comment><USER50> Their Android app has no option to logout automatically after a set amount of time. You're logged in indefinitely. I consider that a security risk. Everyone who manages to unlock my phone can completely take over my digital identity.

I contacted their support and made a feature request for auto-logout. Their answer was basically: Just lock your phones screen.

Not good!

</comment><comment><USER51> Sincere question - why is JavaScript required to sign up for Fastmail? Is it for browser fingerprinting? If so, what data is collected, how is it used and how long is it retained? No specific mention of it in the privacy policy. If I sign up in a virtual machine, can I later use Fastmail without running scripts?

<comment><USER16> You can use IMAP to access Fastmail without running Javascript (or I guess your own JMAP client if you wanted to write one - there isn't one that doesn't use Javascript yet) - but no, you can't use our interface without running Javascript - the client is written entirely in Javascript.

<comment><USER51> That's too bad, looks like I'll have to stick with GSuite Gmail to have browser-based, non-Javascript access to my email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I use Gmail. Don't love it, don't hate it. What's the pitch for switching to Fastmail?

<comment><USER53> Gmail takes about 30 seconds to load for me, FastMail takes about 4 seconds. The name doesn't lie. (Similarly, rather than loading page by page through big folders, I can near-instantly scroll through 10,000 email folders on the FastMail web UI.)

No ads or tracking in FastMail, it's spam protection is (IMHO, YMMV) better than Gmail's with an extremely low false positive rate.

And I get customer support from real live humans when I need help.

<comment><USER52> Right, just in a few minutes of playing around with FM, I can see it is true to its name - it's fast! How does one go about transitioning from gmail to FM when you have a lot of stuff going to gmail?

<comment><USER53> So, I knew I wanted to use my own email domain going forwards to prevent this problem in the future. I got email@example.com set up, and forwarded it to Gmail. Then for about a year and a half, anytime I looked at account settings anywhere I'd change it from my Gmail address to my own address. (But it all still ended up in the same inbox.)

When I decided to switch to FastMail in 2016, I repointed that address at FastMail and the vast majority of stuff moved with me... instantly. FastMail also has tools to import your mail archive using IMAP for what's already in your Gmail account.

Now that all of my mail uses my own domain name, if I ever needed to leave FastMail, it'd be painless... none of my mail is going to a FastMail address to begin with.

My strong recommendation is that people do this even if they intend to stick with Gmail for the time being, just to give themselves the future option.

<comment><USER52> Good idea, thanks for sharing. So I set up an MX record (on Route 53) to point to Fastmail and also set up DKIM by adding several CNAME records for fm1._domainkey.mydomain.com. FM confirmed pretty quick that those changes were made. The last bit is SPF config. I added a TXT record as per the instructions, but I keep rechecking with FM and it's not verified. Emails from FM currently show up as being sent "via messagingengine.com". Any ideas - do I just need to wait?

<comment><USER52> Scratch that, seems to be working now. Not showing up as "via messagingengine.com" anymore in spite of the fact that it still hasn't verified SPF. Looking forward to cleaning up my email by switching to FM!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Congratulations!!!

</comment><comment><USER55> @brongondwana

Great service. I use all features to their potential And appreciate the work and thought you and your team give.

<comment><USER16> Thanks! Pleased to hear you've enjoying it.</comment></comment>


Designing New Cryptography for Non-Standard Threat Models - <AUTHOR> https://soatok.blog/2020/09/09/designing-new-cryptography-for-non-standard-threat-models/ <comment><USER2> This is way to smart for me to even pretend to understand. What I do take away from the article is this quote:

> The first thing that you should do is clearly document your requirements and > what attacks your system must protect against. Any undefined attack vector > in your model should be assumed to be a vulnerability in your design.

Which I will borrow and use to wake up the (e-voting) audience later this week :)

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1301607703706566658](https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1301607703706566658)</comment></comment>


Facebook launches App Center - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.fb.com/News/App-Center-A-New-Place-to-Find-Social-Apps-175.aspx

<comment><USER2> For some reason, I am revulsed by the idea of installing anything related to Facebook, yet will happily install something from Apple ...

I think I might need to get my consumerism rotated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook has lost it... they seem to have completely lost focus on what they are trying to do. They just made their user experience even worse by adding more crap.

<comment><USER4> So, Facebook is going to fail because they only have Ads.

And Facebook is going to fail when they release products other than ads?

<comment><USER5> It's to the point that there's probably a small handful of people who comment on Facebook that are worth listening to.

The saturation point has been reached and there's very little original thought left, just endless regurgitation of shallow "analysis".

FB will do what FB does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I reasonable in finding it incredibly amusing that the example in half the screen shots of this announcement are of pinterest?

<comment><USER7> You are reasonable. It's even more interesting considering the nosedive Facebook's taking that they'd purposefully abuse the presence of another for marketing purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The App Center will begin rolling out to people in the U.S. today"

What is up with Facebook and US-only products? Their Camera app is not available in most countries. Even their app for managing Pages isn't available in my app store (they still keep showing me the annoying message to download it). And it takes them literally order of magnitude of months (if ever) to get their products worldwide, like with Facebook check-ins.

<comment><USER9> You need to translate things for an international rollout which takes time. Plus US is a known devil and easier to rollout and look at numbers to fix the glitches.

<comment><USER8> Sure. But that shouldn't be a reason to not launch it in India, for example. I have never seen a non-english keyboard in my life here.

Very few countries have internationalization as a necessity. For most places, having the app in native language is a plus, but most people still frequently use the web in English.

I mean, Instagram could figure all the rollout challenges with a single digit amount of people. One would expect a post-IPO company to do so too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of FB's products look cheap, and ad-oriented made for naive users. There is a lack of design, and perfectionism.

Compare the FB page with <http://www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/>

<comment><USER11> Like Zuckerberg said: Move fast, fix later. Design is important (hell, I'm a designer) but not the most important thing when launching. They'll improve it later. They didn't go around buying up talented designers like SOFA for nothing: <http://www.madebysofa.com/>

<comment><USER12> " Like Zuckerberg said: Move fast, fix later."

And you will have a good enough product but never an awesome one, as "later" never comes, and when it comes the person that created the feature is not in the company or is not available or does not remember why he did it the way he did it or they are cascade bugs....

This approach was used by American cars and was very good for testing different things while the industry evolved, but when industry matured the Japanese(and German) with the "stop the assembly line until the bug is fixed" won.

Sometimes good enough wins, some time perfectionism does.

<comment><USER11> The car-analogy is false. Or did you get your car for free and will it be replaced with a better car next month?

From his video: "Actually one of the core values of Facebook is is "Move fast." And we used to write this down by saying, "Move fast and break things." And the idea was, unless you are breaking some stuff you are not moving fast enough. I think that's still basically true. I mean, right now, we've optimized so much of our culture around just making it so that people can come and build things quickly. Right, whether it's everything from having the right tools in the right development environment to build things quickly, to nightly code pushes, hiring the best people who have a bias towards just pushing things very quickly, very entrepreneurial. The whole culture is tuned around that. And I think there's probably something in that for other entrepreneurs to learn which is that making mistakes is okay. At the end of the day, the goal of building something is to build something not to not make mistakes." [http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/1889-mark-zuckerberg- moving-f...](http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/1889-mark-zuckerberg-moving-fast- and-breaking-things)

I didn't think anyone would argue against it as it's how most startups build. Besides software is never 'done' correct?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "lets you browse the apps your friends use" & "If a mobile app requires a download, you'll be sent to install it from the Apple App Store or Google Play."

Are they anything more than a filter on the existing app stores based on my friends usage? What is my motivation as a user to install their app store?

Also, I checked the Privacy settings on my Facebook account and it is not clear how to ensure my app usage is not shared with others. Features first, respect of users' privacy last.

<comment><USER14> Seems like a trojan horse disruption tactic to me. Playing nice at first, then when they get some real traction, they'll reveal their true intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Near the end of the screencast they show "send to mobile".

It then appears they show you the Apple App Store.

This could lead to easier app discovery.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe this will be MySpace 2.0 after all.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just realized that bar at the top of the page design meme has gotten really popular after facebook.

<comment><USER18> It's not a meme, people copy stuff that works.

<comment><USER19> Isn't that the definition of a meme?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a nice idea to have a common app store for all platforms. I imagine the flow is supposed to be:

1) You friend uses Pinterest or Spotify and has a wall post from it.

2) You are interested so you follow the link to that app.

3) You follow a link to the new app store.

4) The app store provides downloads for iOS / Android / desktop / etc.

The point from Facebook's end is that step (3) would currently be a link outside of Facebook. If they can keep that inside, better for them.

</comment><comment><USER21> i think the app center could change everything for startups like YOU. facebook gets millions of eyeballs a day. with these eyeballs fb has the power to pick winners and losers for what appears before your eyes.

just like the itunes did for apple.

just imagine if your startup is fb's "promoted website of the week for travel", the possibilities are endless for you.

all of this is of course moot, if fb doesn't promote their app center. as long as they promote it, offer discounts (the way amazon does for their appstore with their "free paid app a day", i think fb could change the way startups are promoted on the web. (itunes already does some of this for the pure mobile play.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't get it... What is this for and why would I want to use it?

</comment><comment><USER23> introducing: an app store inside an app you got from an app store!

<comment><USER24> As silly as it seems, I think there's tremendous power in that concept. For a lot of people Facebook is one of the few apps in use. Providing apps inside Facebook sounds like a great way to capture the audience Apple is missing out on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> <http://www.thinkezy.com/blog/?p=144>

</comment><comment><USER26> Facebook phone coming in 3...2...1...

<comment><USER3> I hope Facebook builds a phone, than we can really start to watch them fall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wish Facebook would just go away.

</comment><comment><USER28> How do you get apps listed here?

<comment><USER29> From developers.facebook.com/apps, click on one of your apps, then click Edit Settings on the right, then click App Center on the left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't get the point of this.

</comment><comment><USER11> This could become bigger than Android if they curate and check the apps beforehand. Trust is required to install apps. With Apple you know the apps are authentic. Facebook could deliver the same 'sender ID guaranteed' function. (And of course Facebook captures all the data as well). I expect they'll copy Apple's GateKeeper: <http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain- lion/security.html></comment>


Ask HN: How do you come up with new project ideas? - <AUTHOR> I mostly target web-related projects. But, with any project, how do you all come up with ideas for them?
Back when I mostly did desktop applications, I would write applications for simple things that I enjoyed - countless IRC clients, IM clients, etc. With my web projects I find it harder to do that because I always apply to "could this potentially become popular" or "this has been done before" mentalities to them. So, as a result I just find myself scouring the internet every day, reading as many blogs and staying as up to date on bleeding edge things as I can. I keep my eyes peeled for potential statements made in blogs or on websites that might make me think something could be a great idea. I feel like I do this because when I end up making things that solely benefit me, I just end up making countless pastebins or blogs or IRC channel loggers.
So, how do you all decide what your next project will be? Do you do what I do and read the entire internet looking for a sign? Do you just make things you truly enjoy and hope maybe one day if it gets exposure it can gain traction and grow? <comment><USER2> 1\. Pick a broad industry (say law/attorneys)

2\. Go to craigslist for your nearest city

3\. Post a job for the category that best fits the industry you chose in #1 above. The post should be along the lines of: "Local software startup is seeking experienced attorneys and legal professionals to consult with. We need help testing our software and validating our new product ideas. We can offer free use of products after launch."

4\. You will absolutely get emails back from professionals and business owners who simply want to help and think it's "cool" to be part of such a process.

Have coffee/lunch with them, pick their brain, find their pain points and make a project out of it.

I've got 2 in the works that started this way.

<comment><USER3> From a freelancer's perspective, I would be the only one working on a project for a industry I choose [as you had suggested].

Wouldn't this require some form of prior experience in that industry?

Just wanted to know whether we do need prior experience in a specific industry.

<comment><USER2> I don't think so—that's why you're out looking for someone with domain knowledge. For me, I really want to work in the food/restaurant space but I've never owned/managed one. So I found people who do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A good place to start isn't by solving someone else's problem, its solving your own.

For example, I've noticed over the years that if a crowd of people is going in or out of an entrance that has a set of doors, for some reason most people all crowd towards one door. To me, this is insane and a clear example of herd mentality. I solve my own problem by being cognizant of this fact and always look for other unused doors to go through.

In another example, early this year I was working on optimizing the css for one of the sites at my company. I wanted a tool that would scan my site and give me a report of unused css selectors that were not being used anywhere.

I look around for a while and the only tool I found that came close to what I wanted was a Firefox extension called Dust-me Selectors. Except that I found it didn't work well for shit. Also, it only ran in Firefox. Not very useful to me.

So I spent a couple of days and wrote a pure javascript-based tool called Helium to do this. <https://github.com/geuis/helium-css>

I can load this in my dev deployment of my site, pass it a list of urls I want to test, and let it run. Additionally, I can run this in multiple browsers. I solved my own problem, and in the process created something that other people can use to solve the same problem.

<comment><USER5> > A good place to start isn't by solving someone else's problem, its solving > your own.

This is exactly what I've done for my HN November Launch App (<http://www.minklinks.com/>). I repeatedly send links to my wife from various computers and became cognizant of how awkward it was. We're both avid Instapaper users so a bookmarklet seemed like an obvious way to share links without leaving a page. The beta should kick in next week, but I'm still accepting signups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A vague mental checklist I've been accumulating:

* Why didn't I stick with my last idea?

* Could I make that idea simpler?

* Could I reuse that idea elsewhere?

* Why am I not motivated to work on this idea (any more)?

* Could I change it around so that I am?

* What are people looking for?

* What are people NOT looking for?

* What ideas are already floating out there, that haven't been popularized, but could be done better?

* What ideas are getting too much hype and attention, so that I can filter them out?

And more recently:

* Is my idea trivial enough not to scare me?

Because it often happens that I'll end up with ideas that take serious ambition(learning, funding, research, what-have-you) to reach any kind of "viable product" - minimal or not. They involve too many sexy technical challenges, or difficult dealmaking, or time-consuming/expensive content creation. That in itself is a warning sign that I need to take what I'm doing, slice up the ideas again, and reassemble them at smaller scope, because if I try to get too ambitious too quickly, the risks go way up.

The worst part is that the more skilled you are at any one thing, the more comfortable you are with overscoping that thing and going well beyond what is necessary to ship, to the detriment of everything else. It's a good reason to get some form of collaboration going, since it will average out your perceptions and automatically bring them "closer to the market."

(And, ironically, collaborations online have an incestuous undercurrent: talent will hide within their preferred watering hole and wish and whinge about what they could do, when they need to venture elsewhere to find the diversity of skills and ideas to achieve something bigger.)

</comment><comment><USER7> "I keep my eyes peeled for potential statements made in blogs or on websites that might make me think something could be a great idea."

You asked for 'new' ideas, and now you're looking for 'great' ideas.

Stop.

I'd suggest going after neither. This presumes you're looking to potentially make money at something.

Find an idea that a few other people are already executing, and copy that idea, and make improvements. It may be a boring project/topic/idea, but if others are doing it, it's _probably_ worth doing, or at least investigating further.

If you're _not_ looking to make money, and simply looking to play with new tech - not sure what to tell you. Just go play with new tech... ?

</comment><comment><USER8> Project or business? These are very different. I'm not sure why you'd be having a hard time picking up a project, but having a hard time committing to a business idea is more understandable.

HN is very male-dominant so I'll throw out something different: stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking about your demographic even. In fact, start thinking about the about the opposite sex.

The average social gamer is 43 years and female. Zynga is making plenty of money from these people, not 20-something techie males.

Another example: Etsy is making a killing by targeting arts & crafts.

Personally I think it's more interesting to pick a project from outside your comfort zone. Think of it as learning in two dimensions: While you're building it, you're honing your development skills, but you're also learning about a set of users or customers that live very different lives from your own.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Every time I notice something annoys me I daydream about what I can do to make it better - I think up a new one handed keyboard every time I reach for my mouse.

2\. Joke with friends about outlandish ideas - solar powered bicycles, 128 team college football playoff system, whatever... You never know what might turn up.

3\. Let people know what you do. I have people come to me all the time with ideas they want to try out. If different people come with the same idea or problem that's a good sign there is something to do.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly what I do. Figure out what annoys you, personally. Then think about how to make it not annoying. Then build it.

If you want to make money, go ask your parents what they really dislike about using computers. Then, follow the same process as above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do something that sounds like fun to you. Seriously, if keep wondering about novelty, you already lost before you started. Almost every idea has already been done in some way. And if it hasn't been done, chances are your innovative project will live in obscurity while others come to the game later with the same functionality will and suddenly really take off. Given those mechanics, it also makes no sense to plan for popularity. Life (and the web) is unfair that way.

But having said all that, the upside is, once you freed yourself from these pressures and expectations, you can devote your energy to projects that really motivate you with their intrinsic qualities. Doing them can be a great reward in of itself, and it can push you to make something stunning, bold, and truly beautiful. And sometimes, though very rarely, from these qualities there comes popularity and the trappings of success that we all secretly hope for.

</comment><comment><USER12> Right now, I have a list of 12-15 ideas that I eventually want to implement, and these are just the ones that I think have serious potential. To generate ideas I have never once looked through blogs or tech articles about what's hot or where the money is. Why? Because if I work on something that I'm not passionate about, I will quit. It's inevitable.

To be honest, I don't actively seek projects to work on at all. Every single one of my ideas has come from a problem, large or small, that has affected me personally. The idea in the front of my mind right now is so vivid that it has kept me awake at least 2-3 nights a week for the past 8 months. And it's not even complicated or revolutionary, per se. I'll even share - it's a note- taking app, like Evernote. I am learning how to code for the sole purpose of realizing this project. If that's not passion, then I don't know what is. Sure, plenty of my ideas have already been implemented in some shape or form, but there's always room for improvement. That's how the world works. Google didn't invent search. They made it better. Apple certainly wasn't the first to build a smartphone. They just made it better.

"Our entrepreneurial motivation is not confidence, it's an insatiable desire to improve. It's not about thinking your ideas are better than everyone else's, it's about never accepting any idea as being best." <http://blog.asmartbear.com/self-doubt-fraud.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> I've not launched anything yet, but these have been my efforts so far:

1st project) My friend and I thought there was a market for a website, but it turned out to be complicated and in a competitive space. Eventually we abandoned it.

2nd project) I had a cool idea for something highly technical that I sort of wanted. In truth, it was more complicated than I could handle and overly ambitious. Abandoned. (It also turned out that it had been attempted in the 70s and 80s, and turned out to not be that great :P)

3rd project) Got pissed off at a big real world problem. Found a vastly smaller chunk of the problem. This way I can help in a small way and actually finish it.

The pattern I've been noticed is that I'm trying to get more ambitious in solving a real problem while vastly scaling down the effort required in my solutions and targeting less competitive markets. I'm amazed at how similar business is to research in that regard. Tackle a reasonably sized problem that has the potential to grow. Declare victory, rinse, repeat. As you gain experience, your perception of tiny will enlarge. :-)

Another thing I've noticed within myself, I've started to amaze myself in not seeing any contradiction between helping and asking for money. It's a difference between understanding something rationally and viscerally.

I hope that you find this helpful in some way!

</comment><comment><USER14> after a half-eighth of mushrooms, Gerald tells me what to do next with my life (he is my spirit frog)

</comment><comment><USER15> To come up with ideas I take all of my experiences in my life and think about things that normally would affect me on a daily basis.

Once I think of the idea I then apply the following set of rules.

1\. Does this exist and if so can it be done better? 2\. Would I use this? 3\. Will this be valuable to another person or persons? 4\. Can a business model be applied?

If I answer yes to all then I feel I have something viable to bounce off a few family members and friends. After hearing their feedback I think about the idea for some time so as to let it stew. If I keep coming back to it and start to like it I make the decision to go forward or not. Even when I move forward it is always a battle to stay on track so be strong.

</comment><comment><USER16> Try training yourself to notice any time you or people around you get frustrated or confused, and write it down. Also write down whenever some process or artifact wastes time. Do that for a month and you'll have lots of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER17> Mandelbrot (roughly): _do not look at what you see, but at the process that created it_.

Great ideas have infinite applications and all ideas are interconnected. The trouble is knowing how far downstream you are from the source and if it is untapped. In this sense, I couldn't say I _come up_ with any ideas, but recognize the underlining pattern reoccurring. Let your reason guide you; great minds find each other this way quite spectacularly.

edit: there are also those times where you just say, "I wish I could just do ____", and often you can.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Note problems people have, like the Techcrunch post yesterday with Sarah Lacy complaining about OpenTable: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/can-and- should-opentable-be...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/can-and-should- opentable-be-disrupted/)

2\. Write a blog post about it

3\. See how many people react to my post when it's pushed to Facebook

4\. Keep developing the ideas that get a lot of attention (for me that's been reviews/Yelp, and annoyance with paper business cards. The latter is turning into a Japan focused startup)

</comment><comment><USER19> My problem is typically how to pick between all the insanely good ideas I have floating around.

I would say my number one rule is to pick something that is a deeply personal itch that I can scratch. It is hard to have as much motivation to tackle something because I think there might be a market for it as something that I really just want to have exist so I can use it.

<comment><USER19> Re-reading that, I realize it could be read as my thinking that I believe all my ideas are "insanely good." What I meant is that I have many ideas that are compelling to me and seem insanely good... more than I could possibly execute on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. If you're a great developer, just pick an idea that you love so much that you'll weather the inevitable storms that come. It can seem mundane or 'solved', you'll make it interesting. The 'killer idea' is usually a label applied afterwards to a kick-ass execution of a normal idea.

2\. Screw business books and tech blogs, read science fiction. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> >So, how do you all decide what your next project will be?

I got the idea for my startup from this list: <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> (seriously)

Also, PG's take on this topic: <http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> for me project ideas come from either problems I've experienced myself that I want to solve, or some app that I know I want.

In the case of <http://tweetsaver.com>, there was no other solution at the time it launched (over a year ago) that offered a decent way to back up my tweets, as well as search all my old tweets. I knew that, had there been another service at the time that offered this, I would have paid to use it.

Most of the ideas that I have that have come from speculating on what might be theoretically useful or super successful/popular are still just domain names :-)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't run around looking for ideas.

 _I try to solve real problems._

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this may be insanely obvious, but how do you locate real problems?

I realize there's an easy opportunity to make fun of me for asking that, but I'm just curious. Do you solve problems that you yourself face? Do you look around for signs of problems online? Ask people you know? All of this, I'm guessing, would be worth while.

<comment><USER7> "Try to solve real problems" is, imo, almost a cop out. It's too vague to be a useful answer to to the question. As for people 'solving real problems'... well... I've known _plenty_ of people who think they're doing just that. It's _often_ identified as a problem they have themselves, or close friends. They spend time working on it (often too long) without knowing there's already 50 solutions out there.

Which leads to 'research your audience before building'. Well... _how_ do you do that? You need to make sure the people you're asking A) actually have a clue and B) actually give a damn about having a clue.

My other answer, which may be more helpful (but probably not) is

1\. I find things that have been problematic for me from a tech standpoint, or 2\. I look for interesting tech I'd like to learn more about, and look at industries friends/relatives are in.

With #1, for example, I learned SOLR a few years ago. It's not _that_ hard to set up, but not everyone _can_ due to hosting restrictions. I'd played with the idea of dedicated SOLR hosting, but dilly dallied too long - there's multiple players there now. That's in some ways good - it was not a crazy idea, if they're doing it too.

With #2, for example, I'd like to learn more about Twilio. I'm looking for options to test out Twilio in the context of some current customers by learning more about their business operations. It seems there's a couple places where some custom Twilio integration makes sense, and we'll look to do something early next year. Based on what's done for them, and how that works, there might be a spin-off 'web business' from that.

I hope that helps a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Many great tips, all. I appreciate all of the insight! I think this has turned in to a very informative thread.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you find yourself thinking something more than once, write it down.</comment>


The Geal test, extending the Joel test - <AUTHOR> http://unhandledexpression.com/2011/02/18/the-geal-test-extending-the-joel-test/

<comment><USER2> I heartfully agree, revising the joel test, but the first 3 questions smell a bit too much like an agilist guide . Hey I said smell ;). I'm not against agility, actually the point that I had the more difficulty to bare with of the joel test was : 'do you have a spec ?'.

"Do developers trains at office or on their spare time ?" : split this one in two, in the first case you have a proactive company, in the second case you have proactive employees. That's not the same thing.

"Do developers talk with the client is a good one ?" : there might be company where it is appropriate and others not.

I like question 8 though : "Do developers retains the copyright of work they do on their spare time ?" I'd like that companies had a little more clarity on this.</comment>


Show HN: Komiser – Detect potential AWS cost savings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mlabouardy/komiser <comment><USER2> The best way to reduce costs as a startup is to not use it in the first place. I know its not popular to say, but both aws and GCS are too expensive for most startups. Better just use a local decent cloud provider. You can always move to GCS/aws when the time is right.

<comment><AUTHOR> its expensive if you misuse it, those cloud providers provides services and computing models that cannot be found on low cost providers such Serverless and Containers.

<comment><USER3> If you are a startup with a none-Facebook growth (aka most of the startups), what you want to spend money on is functionalities, not spending effort on additional technical constraints because of restricted infrastructure.

Basically, AWS (or any cloud provider) is great for young startup with 0 money, medium sized companies who can optimize to some degree and big sized companies too big to organize efficiently the logistic of buying servers and the instrumentation of infrastructure. It leaves the mid sized startups which have an interest of buying their own infra, but migrating away from a cloud provider also have a cost of itself.

It's not as clear cut as I am stating, you also have cheaper alternatives than AWS, Azure and GCE. You can go for OVH or DigitalOcean, less possibilities and technical offering, but cheaper prices which can compute with hosting things yourself mid-term.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, most young startup goes with PaaS (Platform as a Service) like Heroku, OVH or even Elasticbeanstalk, even us we started with that and then migrated to IaaS and FaaS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about the savings of moving regular anticipated loads to traditionally colo or managed infrastructure? That type of usage much, much cheaper (CapEx+OpEx) than shoving it all on AWS for million$ per month like Apple or Netflix (who can afford it).

Cloud *aaS is best suited to several major use-cases:

0\. Experimental projects of limited duration

1\. "Peaking" overflow capacity for burst of transactions or daily sinus maximum load (/.-resistance)

2\. Batch jobs (ephemeral computing)

3\. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity (DR/BCP)

4\. Informal IT to bypass bureaucracy

Source: Hi, I'm a former client-facing Fortune 200 AWS consultant from back in the day. I don't own Amazon stock or have any current conflicts-of-interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> I found PaaS model a great fit for young startup, however when you want to scale your business, you will have trouble scaling your app with the traditional PaaS (no monitoring, lake of flexibility...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another way to cut the cloud cost is to get the cheapest resources to begin with. I've been working on [https://cloudoptimizer.io](https://cloudoptimizer.io) which is a free service to find the cheapest CPU/GPU/Memory resources in the cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, however, there's more things to do to reduce the cost like deleting snapshots, unused disks, unassigned elastic ips... that's the purpose of this tool :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be good to put a few examples of recommendations the tool makes in Readme. Right now it looks like a cost explorer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on it, I will write some posts on Medium and blog to describe how to use the tool to reduce the cost

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to hear some feedback on how to improve Komiser.

<comment><USER7> Have you been in touch with Amazon? When I worked at a company that used AWS, they had a couple support engineers come out to our office for a day or two to help us cut costs. They said their whole job was going around and helping people spend less on AWS. They might like a tool like this, and have some good ideas for you, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didnt try to contact them yet, I'm working on some upcoming cool features, also I will release the support of GCP this week. Once done, I will do more effort on the marketing part :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are running Kubernetes [http://valence.net](http://valence.net) might be interesting

<comment><USER9> Autoscaling is both simpler than this and more complex than this.

For predictive autoscaling, boring old-fashioned forecasting techniques appear to work fine and are very fast and very cheap.

For reactive autoscaling, boring old-fashioned control loops appear to work fine and are very fast and very cheap.

There's still no substitute for understanding your application's design.

If you tried to design and build a factory the way folks propose to rely on autoscalers and ML ("we'll ignore what's in the building and rely on a thin, unintelligible gas of floats!!"), you would be fired.

<comment><USER4> Yeap. Autoscaling strategies are often traditionally hand-coded to depend on the costs associated of not completing transactions or site going down from a business impact analysis (BIA). To add AI/ML would need a number of business rules, metrics, automation parameter limitation and (a) fitness function(s) in order to use it.

Examples of hard-coded autoscaling strategies:

Shopping cart or ad delivery network -> anticipate load with extra capacity by scaling up instances before they're needed and kept until they aren't beneficial.

Neighborhood social network:

\- scale +1 instances after avg latency > X0 ms for Y0 minutes

\- scale -1 after avg latency < X1 ms for Y1 minutes

<comment><USER9> > _Autoscaling strategies are often traditionally hand-coded to depend on the > costs associated of not completing transactions or site going down from a > business impact analysis (BIA)._

Adding on this, my current thinking is that it would be possible to better surface this tradeoff by modeling autoscaling as an inventory problem. There's a stockout cost and a holding cost; for a given probability of hitting a cold start and for a given cold start lag, it should be possible to compute the optimal instances on-hand.

Then there are, as you point out, many special business rules. Where I work we have a pool system for testing environments. It works reasonably well until a particular team, sitting upstream of approximately half the company, makes a release. Then suddenly everyone's pipelines kick off simultaneously. So now they have a system which watches for signs of impending release and pre- emptively scales up.

Autoscaling should not be your first line or final line of defence. It is a powerful tool, not a magic wand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm pleased to announce the new release of Komiser:2.1.0 with beta support of GCP. You can now detect potential cost savings of both AWS and GCP in one tool. [https://github.com/mlabouardy/komiser](https://github.com/mlabouardy/komiser)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys for the feedback, the support of GCP (Google Cloud Platform) will be released this week, so with one tool you can reduce your cost and optimize your cloud environment security :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Hey, this looks really cool! I've been working on a very similar product: [https://cloudcosts.io/](https://cloudcosts.io/). It's only hosted, no open source versions of the software and much simpler.

It has a few users and I haven't figured out yet if it could be monetized. The basic thing that I wanted was a daily email of my cost changes from AWS.

How have you found trying to integrate Google Cloud and AWS billing? That's where the real value in this type of product is to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, yes I will be release the GCP support this week :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice - we just got a demo/beta from [https://www.prosperops.com](https://www.prosperops.com) (disclaimer i worked with the prosperops folks in a previous company). They're focused on helping you save $ by managing your RI's. Its pretty slick setup. Best way for me to describe it is that they're basically a wealthfront style roboadviser for RI's.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, Komiser is about optimizing the cost of all AWS services not only Reserved instances :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It depends on how well/dynamic your application is deigned, but if some parts are a bit static (let say, the DB side), conciser reserved instances you can get 20 to 40% reduction in cost for it.

True, it requires a plan for 1 to 3 years, but it can reduce your bill by a significant amount.

</comment><comment><USER12> The README links to this dead link:

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/komiser/aws/policy.json](https://s3.amazonaws.com/komiser/aws/policy.json)

Also, wasn't AWS deprecating links like this?

<comment><USER13> It's at the top of the repo itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for pointing this out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Youtube video linked to in your GitHub readme doesn't seem to exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, are you sure ? I just try it and its working, anyway here is the link : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDWf2KnvgE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDWf2KnvgE8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Need this but for Eth smart contracts

</comment><comment><USER16> The readme contains path-style S3 links, which need to be changed [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19821406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19821406)

<comment><USER17> Supported until September 2020, I don't think they _need_ to be changed now.

<comment><USER18> Some engineers in Mozilla said the same thing about their certs that expired yesterday

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that's why I updated url</comment></comment></comment></comment>


State of Text Rendering (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://behdad.org/text/ <comment><USER2> Slightly related, for arch linux users (and probably others but I can't say for sure) the infinality fonts bundle can GREATLY improve font rendering, and is also highly configurable to taste: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Infinality- bundle+fonts](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Infinality-bundle+fonts)

</comment><comment><USER3> _What we need is the GNOME3 of text rendering_

That is scary to imagine :)

<comment><USER4> Indeed it is. A lot of wonderful work has went into FreeType and Pango. Linux font rendering went from the worst to (arguably, and when well-configured) one of the best.

I do hope that they don't go a few steps back in a case of "rewrite everything". Example of who did: Metro apps in Windows 8 no longer use ClearType (RGB subpixel rendering), but plain greyscale antialiasing. I believe many Desktop apps are falling back to it, too. It looks like pre- windows XP. It's easy to miss the correct flags as a developer, and many people don't care enough or don't have the eyes to see the difference, but it's annoying for those who do care.

Lets just hope that they get everything right with fonts with the switch from X to Wayland...

<comment><USER5> > Example of who did: Metro apps in Windows 8 no longer use ClearType (RGB > subpixel rendering), but plain greyscale antialiasing.

That's a victim of mobile-optimized toolkits. RGB subpixel rendering doesn't work on GPU-accelerated UIs that are on devices that are rotated. As in, it's expected to have the subpixel ordering change semi-frequently, and that change needs to happen as fast as possible. Since all the text is cached in GPU textures, that would require tearing down the font caches and re-building them every time the user rotates. That's prohibitively expensive, which means no RGB-subpixel rendering.

On mobile devices this hasn't been an issue because raw density saves the day. Your average phone's pixels are smaller than your typical desktop/laptop's subpixels. Maybe some day desktop/laptop will get a density boost, maybe...

<comment><USER6> Or, you could render to greyscale texture at 3x resolution and then scale down the texture with subpixel precision when rendering on screen?

<comment><USER7> Subpixel smoothing requires vector outlines to get good results, so scaling a bitmap won't work in practice. More importantly, font rendering is optimised to a specific size, i.e. the bitmap for 32x32 isn't just a scaled version of the 16x16 bitmap. The usual mechanism for this is hinting, but some engines use their own heuristics (e.g. CoreText, and maybe Metro?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > CJK users want the Latin to be rendered using the same font used for CJK.

Not true. Latin characters in CJK fonts are ugly beyond belief. I think most CJK users either just don't know what they're missing, or don't care enough to make a lot of noise.

If you're leading a text rendering project, please, for the love of humanity, allow CJK users to use a Latin font for Latin characters!

</comment><comment><USER9> As one of the few terminal users of Arabic in this site (emphasis on the terminal part), I want to thank Behdad and others for harfbuzz and other great libraries. His contributions have been significant, and BiCon Arabeyes project was one of the first and only ways to show Arabic in the terminal. This was even before SIGWINCH was a signal you could use IIRC, so that I cannot even run it in tmux, screen, and other dynamically-sized terminal emulators without a massive, massive headache. But before that, there was not much of anything. And things have come a LONG, LONG way since then, even if there is plenty more road ahead.

I started using Linux almost ten years ago, and the winter for RTL languages were just starting to thaw.

Since I have come to using Arabic more often in the terminal, you would be suprised how often this causes problems as text rendering is done at many different layers and there is no harmony between them. Not only does it mean a special terminal emulator (mlterm for the win; esoteric but the only one that handles Arabic properly and handles Chinese, many Indic languages, and Hebrew unlike anyone else) but has all minaskinds of edge cases. Text rendering happens at so many layers and with different libraries, you have to make runtime changes to get certain programs to behave with each other. As a heavy Emacs user, Emacs will conflict with its own (default on) bidi implementation using m17n-lib (as mentioned in the article). So what happens? Arabic and other RTL languages go back to the original order, English-style, which is not what you want, as the operation happens twice since mlterm also uses this library (m17n-lib), but is not aware the bidi reordering happened before at the application layer. I finally got so sick of this my most important Emacs keyboard macro is to toggle off the Emacs internal bidi ordering on and off. Why you ask? Because despite mlterm and Emacs using m17n-lib on my computer, I need GUI emacs to use its own internal Bidi scheme, and the terminal run Emacs (emacsclient -nw) to run without out, and let mlterm pick up from there. I have tried other terminal emulators (someone wrote Perl scripts using, IIRC Text::FriBidi based one of the aforementioned library, GNU FriBidi) for urxvt to handle this), but it does not work as well: you get the correct ordering, but Arabic letters do not connect (this is really glyphs, not letters, but I digress). So if I do not toggle the Emacs macro I made, I cannot have a terminal that will show Arabic file names properly at the same time outside of Emacs, and a simple `ls` is all borked up.

GUI programs are not so much better. I run i3 with my own customizations, including heavy use of the wonderful dmenu utility for searching files indexed with Recoll, connection to my password manager, and running programs on the fly. Probably is dmenu specifically does not support Unicode at all, let alone RTL languages like Arabic, so you get a mess. I love suckless tools; and they avoided Unicode for a reaosn, but suckless, a very common group of power user tools ignoring Unicode for their own good and embracing their mantra of well manicured C code tells you to pity developers who do take the time and bear lots of whining about this crap being inconsistent and having crazy edge cases.

These edge cases will not stop me from using free software, because I had no idea how complicated Arabic rendering was until using Linux, and a lot of this crap flat out is not possible in Windows anyway (try listing Arabic file names in Command Prompt), and is still terrible when you get around to it working. Do we need a "GNOME3 of text rendering" as others quoted in the threads here? I am not sure we do. What we need is standardization of libraries or generalizing backends to choose what you need, a la Freedesktop initiatives in other spheres. Ironically: every terminal emulator and app developer/maintainer retorts when present RTL Arabic problems: this is an application layer concern and out of my hands. And what they ignore app developers with their application layer concerns apply with different layers of libraries unevenly, hence the aforementioned hacks. To resolve this means removing a lot of what makes Open Source with forced standardization, and contributions like that of Behdad wonderful: choice. So I prefer to stick with more choice, or promoting/encouraging different text rendering applications to support different backends and more importantly properly detect the existence of each other when used. I am not a C programmer, but I think that is already where we are in the FOSS world. It is more a matter of awareness and interest: like other software markets (commerical or not), FOSS software with any significant user base will catch up. Find me Bengali Windows and I will laugh at you, but I have seen real impressive work with regionalized Linux distros, with full documentation for Indian communities that nothing proprietary comes close to because there is no interest.

Behdad, thanks again for your work. This is the second time your stuff up on HN in recent memory. I remember emailing you about BiCon years ago and you are still one of my open source heros with HarfBuzz and FriBidi and all that stuff. Keep up the good work and thank you for making FOSS software international.

<comment><USER10> Hi,

Thanks for the nice words. I wrote BiCon over ten years ago and never touched it again. It definitely wasn't before SIGWINCH was introduced as I was barely four years old then :).

I checked the code, looks like code for SIGWINCH was there, but not working. I believe this got broken during the pty rewrite we did back then. At any rate. I just fixed that, and fixed initial window size. Enjoy, and in the future, feel free to shoot me an email if something I maintain bothers you!

      https://github.com/behdad/bicon/commits/master

Cheers, behdad

<comment><USER9> Ah. Well then correction, you told me SIGWINCH was not implemented in BICON and you did not have the time to work on it, which is definitely understable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was originally from 2009, although it received a minor update in 2012. According to the author:

Overdue for an update, still a good read to understand the pieces of the Free Software text rendering stack.

</comment><comment><USER12> An article like this deserves an image.</comment>


Mux – A lightweight, fast HTTP request router for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/donutloop/mux <comment><USER2> Does it use a trie? If not, it probably should. Here's a wonderful talk on using that datastructure (with go) for the gov uk url router:

[https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2013/12/05/building-a- new-...](https://gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk/2013/12/05/building-a-new-router- for-gov-uk/)

The Vulcan proxy from Mailgun does the same thing:

[http://vulcand.github.io/proxy.html#route](http://vulcand.github.io/proxy.html#route)

It looks like it doesn't, so existing open source golang url routers will perform much better, contrary to this post. The one in vuland is interesting in that it supports both regex AND tries, so you get the best of both.

Additionally, httprouter (golang) uses a trie and is fast as hell:

[https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter](https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter)

Edit: Adding another one (thanks buro9!) that is used in production by CloudFlare:

[https://github.com/pressly/chi](https://github.com/pressly/chi)

<comment><USER3> Why is a trie obviously better then a hash map?

<comment><USER4> They allow you to match the URL in a series of steps. Where each step can be static (ie "/foo") or dynamic (ie /images/).

You can then easily add features to this structure, like route middlewares at every level in the tree; just apply them while doing the routing.

This also allows you to match route variants easily, ie "foo" and "foo/" are the same, so are "/" and "/index.html". In the same way you can extract query parameters for middleware/handler use.

<comment><USER5> Also, tries means it's trivial to do detect routing ambiguities, so your routing table doesn't necessarily have to be built up front, or in any particular order. This is particularly powerful when you're developing an application with a team distributed both over space and time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't usually say this but - isn't this a poor choice of name? Gorilla framework's Mux [0] has been around awhile and is quite popular for routing in Go.

[0] [https://github.com/gorilla/mux](https://github.com/gorilla/mux)

<comment><USER7> I typically read the HN comments before clicking on a link, and I actually thought this _was_ a post about gorilla/mux until I got to your comment.

<comment><USER8> Same here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favourite current HTTP request router is [https://github.com/pressly/chi](https://github.com/pressly/chi)

The list of those using it in production includes:

\- Pressly

\- Cloudflare

\- Heroku

\- 99designs

\- Origami

\- IT Jobs Watch

\- CrowdRiff

At Cloudflare it's our default router for internal APIs, which are all written in Go.

(and yes it uses a trie)

<comment><USER10> Do you know how it stacks up to httprouter for example? We can run benchmarks all day but it would be cool if you happened to have some real production statistics, by any change?

<comment><USER11> httprouter is unforgiving with routes. IIRC, having both of these routes are not allowed

        /users/:id
        /users/create

Seems like a common use case.

<comment><USER12> Interesting.. and btw, pressly/chi supports those routes easily, among many other combinations. Chi was designed to be very composeable with middlewares, subrouters and handlers. The idea is to consider the request passing through a "flow" of layers, handling and building the response along the way. This makes it easier to reason and organize each piece separately and then connect it all together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the README: "mux is a lightweight fast HTTP request router [...] It also scales better."

Where can I find the benchmarks?

</comment><comment><USER14> Parts of the readme are copied from [0] julienschmidt/httprouter...

"In contrast to the default mux of Go's net/http package, this router supports variables in the routing pattern and matches against the request method. It also scales better."

[0] [https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter](https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter)

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're not going to explain in your readme or docs why anyone should use this over the Gorilla library you're kind of wasting everyone's time. Gorilla/Mux is very widely used and well-supported.

</comment><comment><USER16> +1 for the confusion with Gorilla's mux library. Have you benchmarked this against Gorilla's lib to show why we would want to use this (relatively unproven) library instead?

</comment><comment><USER17> _It also scales better._

In what sense? Can it support many, many more routes? Or does it scale better in the sense that it causes zero or near zero GC pressure? Better than what?

</comment><comment><USER18> What's the use case for all these routing libraries? Why not write a few lines of procedural code? It's a natural encoding of the routes "trie".

         @methods('POST')
         def set_int(request):
             x = pop_int_component(request)
             no_more_components(request)
             do_set_the_int(x)
             return Ok

         def myapp(request):
             x = pop_id_component(request)
             if x == 'set_int':
                 return set_int(request)
             else:
                 return NotFound

No type system hacks, extremely modular and simple to understand. Exceptions can replace basically all the boilerplate. The only drawback being there's no URL generation, but it's not like most sites have so many URLs that writing this by hand (directly in HTML templates or as "inverse functions") would be unmaintainable.

<comment><USER19> All these routing libraries are just wrong level of abstraction. In HTTP you have resources, and resources are not flat, they are hierarchical.

And hierarchy of resources defines some connection between then, and some common properties (data, access level etc). So any resource can respond to some HTTP method or can delegate to another, nested resource (if any) for any method.

So (in PHP, from our still proprietary framework):

        // Index resource, just routing, no HTTP method handling.
        class IndexResource extends Resource {
          public function __construct(Application $app) {
            // ...
          }
          // Route nested resources for any request
          public function any(Request $request) {
            // Static path:
            $this->path(
               CollectionResource::Path, new CollectionResource($this)
            );
          }
        }

        class CollectionResource extends Resource {

            const Path = 'items';

            // Parent resource type constraint, you can access
            // parent data using IndexResource API:
            public function __construct(IndexResource $parent) {
              //...
            }

            // Route nested resources for any HTTP method:
            public function any(Request $request) {
               // Regexp pattern for URI segment:
               $this->match(ItemResource::Pattern, new ItemResource($this));
            }

            // Or handle GET
            public function GET(Request $request) {
              // ...
            }
            // Or POST maybe
            public function POST(Request $request) {
              // ...
            }
        }

        class ItemResource extends Resource {
           const Pattern = '(\d+)';

           public function __construct(CollectionResource $parent) {
              // ...
           }
           public function any(Request $request, $prefix, $id) {
              $this->item = Item::find($id);
           }

           public function GET(Request $request) {
              return JSON::string($this->item);
           }
        }

It's not about routers + controllers etc, it's just resources + delegation to nested resources:

\- recursive routes are trivial, so no problems with CMS-like applications; \- looks good with type systems; \- no long routing tables (in fact, no routing tables at all), so true modular apps; \- you can use anything (e.g. database) for resources lookup, good for CMSes again; \- it's absolutely RESTful.

Yes, automatic URI building is not so easy, but it's kinda possible, in some semi-automatic way.

I wonder why frameworks built this way are so uncommon (ours were inspired by Bullet BTW).

<comment><USER20> > In HTTP you have resources, and resources are not flat, they are > hierarchical.

That isn't really true. There is nothing about HTTP, or even REST, that requires resources to be hierarchical. That said, it is quite common, and helpful for human beings, if they are hierarchical, so ...

> I wonder why frameworks built this way are so uncommon

Good question! The only one that springs to mind is Stapler:

[http://stapler.kohsuke.org/what-is.html](http://stapler.kohsuke.org/what- is.html)

<comment><USER19> There is Bullet [http://bulletphp.com](http://bulletphp.com), that inspired us, but it is too simple and lacks some important (for us) features, e.g. recursion.

There are nested routes in Express and some Golang libraries (see gongular near on HN), but they are not resource oriented. And yes, there are resources in Rails, but it's sooo complex and heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why does routing get so complicated? I use Web2py which doesn't even have a router and it's _so_ much easier. Are regxes, variables, http methods all that necessary in the router? Just pass the info to a controller.

<comment><USER22> If you don't need a router for web2py it's because WSGI is doing all the hard work for you.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Server_Gateway_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Server_Gateway_Interface)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Top notch engineers behind this one!!</comment>


Philip Glass Half-Full - <AUTHOR> https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/philip-glass-half-full/

<comment><USER2> _the fact that Glass's music contains no fully developed melodies_

I had to look up the date on this piece because taking into account Glass's post 1995 (at the very latest) works, I couldn't disagree more with the conclusion and perhaps misunderstand the author's concept of melody.

Glass's distant history with melody is not particularly strong (although _Façades_ is a good example of early melodic work), but his work has become more (and to choose a rather tricky term) "human" over the years. Reviews of _Naqoyqatsi_ (both the movie soundtrack and the concerto it turned into) frequently cite its "melodic" nature and "lyrical melodic lines" (BBC Music) and it is far from the only modern Glass piece to adopt a melodic approach (his epic first _Violin Concerto_ comes to mind). Heck, I'm sure I even saw Glass and Yo Yo Ma being interviewed about Naqoyqatsi and how it was _designed_ for the cello to drive a powerful melody to counteract the technological nature of the movie (note that _Koyaanisqatsi_ was the other way around - more 'mechnical' electronic music set to scenes of the natural world).

One problem some new to Glass can encounter is Glass's melodies frequently occur in lower registers on instruments that don't generally play melodies, particularly in his operas, leaving the traditionally melodic instruments to instead provide the rhythm. Appomattox provides modern examples of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J14flyMOQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J14flyMOQo)

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. However I even find earlier pieces such as "Music in 12 Parts" hauntingly beautiful and melodic in the way that trance/ambient can be. True it doesn't have the same purpose, or effect, of a narrative song, but it isn't intended to.

I see a strong analogy between Glass's early works and Brian Eno's period starting with "Music For Elevators". They are both asking a fundamental question -- what is music "supposed to do?" \-- and attempting to break down centuries of expectation, to build up a new way of communicating from the ground up.

Interestingly, both artists evolved from their early radical roots, re- introducing more approachable narrative tropes, to create a new hybrid style that melds hard-core minimalism with the desire for a storytelling arc. Often, they did so in collaboration.

Examples: Passages (Glass / Shankar), Achtung Baby (U2 / Eno)

<comment><USER4> Eno's recording of _Music for Airports_ (not "elevators", that is something of a howler) had an interesting compositional method which was based on overlapping tape loops, with the loops having different periods.

You can hear the notes coming into and out of phase (over very long time periods) sometimes playing almost over the top of one another, and sometimes with silent spaces. Because of this, it has a _sub rosa_ mathematical side.

Eno was influenced by Glass, but Glass is about a decade older.

I'm sure I've listened to that one record 200 times. I've found all of his music to be very rewarding over many years.

Incidentally, the article mentions John Adams in passing. I've found Adams' music to be more engaging and adventurous than Glass'. Adams is more of a West coast character, he's the composer in residence at the LA Phil and, earlier, at the SF Symphony. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER5> This may be obvious to most, but the loops in question were literal tape loops, it being 1978. ("...running around a series of tubular aluminum chairs in Conny Plank's studio.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article seems reasonably objective at first, until it suddenly turns on you and becomes extremely opinionated:

" _The problem is that Glass's music fails to do what I believe all great music does, which is to structure time in a profoundly meaningful way_ "

Not really. When I'm composing something, and I find myself forced to backtrack and rewrite my work, lest it sound "too glassy", which I know everyone would complain about, then that's a rather clear sign that Glass is now settled as a great composer. It's not an understatement to say that he changed the history of music, and that his style is likely to influence most, if not all future composers.

<comment><USER7> I found your music very interesting!

I 'm not sure if the criterion you 're suggesting is good though. For example i may have found some slight influence from stravinsky in your track, and i thought well of it. The fact that you try to _exclude_ the Glass influence is kind of telling about how influential he is going to be in the future. Having a distinct style doesn't make one a great composer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Philip Glass's music is great to code to.

I don't care much about musical critiques of his work, he is one of the few artists whose music is consistently great to program with.

I can't recommend it enough.

<comment><USER9> Very much agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first time I knew of Philip's Glass work was from Battlestar Galactica. There was a beautiful composition that Starbuck listened to in her apartment, and I was driven to find it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hMw1C6fPt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hMw1C6fPt8)

<comment><USER11> That exact piece has been the soundtrack to finishing my dissertation these last couple months. Probably played it 100 times in the past few weeks and I'm still not sick of it. I first listened to it in the back of a darkened and nearly empty 737 being sprayed with de-icing fluid during a heavy snowstorm on the day after New Years Eve - not sure if I've ever encountered a better "life soundtrack" moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One 20th century composer I've enjoyed is Górecki, especially his Third Symphony. It is "monotonous" but still interesting and powerful. I don't really know a lot about music, but I love Dvořák and Brahms and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I've always been uninterested in Glass because of his reputation, but reading this article and the other comments makes me want to listen to something from him. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER13> I share your love of Gorecki. I heard him on the radio once and it was some of the most beautiful music I ever heard, so I ran out to buy the CD.

I like some of Glass's music. Also his more monotonous pieces, but like almost every composer with a large body of produced works there's quite a number of pieces that I do not like at all. So yeah, check him out!

As for the suggestions: I'll add them tomorrow morning.

<comment><USER13> Right, since I was on my phone last night I didn't really want to look things up.

Two albums to are on opposite ends of the Glass spectrum for me are: "Glassworks" (which I like a lot) and "Songs from Liquid Days" (which I am not so enthusiastic about).

<comment><USER12> Thanks to you and @mandelbrot for the suggestions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Curiously, the author expounds on why he does not like Glass's work (fair enough) and how Glass is not a great composer (certainly up for debate); he spends no time (and appears to have no insights) explaining why, exactly, so many people have been duped into enjoying it. He proposes a few theories, but seems rather dismissive in the face some pretty convincing evidence re: Glass's greatness. I actually looked for a "next page" button.

<comment><USER15> Does that case have to be made? Are there people who listen to Glass' music in and of itself, or in a concert-hall setting? The author claims that Glass' music has been successful for people to get high to and as background for films and stage performances, but not adopted for the concert hall, and the explanations are in line with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the mistake of the last section of the article is to present its conclusions as absolutes rather than personal experience. I have the exact same problem with Glass in a concert setting. On the other hand, I adore Steve Reich who 100% embraces narrative from It's Gonna Rain onwards.

I've heard very complimentary things about Akhnaten by people I respect, but have never been to see it myself.

<comment><USER17> I've always found Akhnaten a bit bombastic but I love Satyagraha (composed a few years before Akhnaten) and I saw it live last year. It absolutely works.

Interestingly I saw Einstein on the Beach the year before. Beforehand I was worried whether the near-4 hours would be tortuous (I love the work but tend to have it on while doing other stuff - I've never say and listened to it like one would a shorter or more narrative piece)

In the event it was actually a really lovely experience and if anything it went much quicker than expected. You do have to listen differently but it's still music and does all the things that 'normal' music does. Create anticipation, build up tension then release it, evoke emotion.

Just on a different scale and over a different timespan. It's no different to learning to appreciate classical when you're used to pop, Early Music when you're used to the Romantics or Be-bop when you're used to Swing ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 2200 words to explain how glass' music is empty? hah, stfu

<comment><USER18> to be clear, part of what makes glass the genius that he is comes from how he is able to do so much with so little.. so to come across a supposed criticism of his work sprawled across thousands of words just made me chuckle a little</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideas to solve big problems, without getting into politics? - <AUTHOR> Without running for office, without getting into politics, without organizing mass rallies etc (nothing against these, they have their place), what can an ordinary person with no money/clout like me do to help chip away at huge problems like climate change, housing etc? <comment><USER2> Maybe providing tools for the people who want solving big problems?

That sounds a tautology, but for any group of people that want to tackle a problem, there is a set of problems to solve: How to find the people who are relevant/who might become go-between/who knows are references in this domain. How to find out the best relevant events and demonstrations given some context, how to communicate. Tools helping to provide content, newsletters, dashboards, summaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> Get into developing web technology. The web is the crucial "space of freedom" within which all other modes of freedom (political or otherwise) currently depend.

I want to start tackling these big issues, too...

That's why I created a new kind of operating system, which runs in web browsers, called _Linux on the Web_! Online desktop here: [https://lotw.xyz/desk.os](https://lotw.xyz/desk.os)</comment>