The Rise and Fall of Pixel QI - <AUTHOR> https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and-fall-of-pixel-qi-how-it-shaped-the-e-reader-revolution <comment><USER3> Damnit.

This was one technology that just kills me never acheived any market success. I had bought an OLPC through the buy/give program and sent the OLPC to my neice (after I poked around at the device—I was VERY curious about the device).

The part that was truly flooring to me was the screen. It was much faster than e-ink and, for the time, quite high resolution in its grayscale mode.

As I read through this article, it's like a graveyard of dreams past. Mirasol is another I'd forgotten about that I remember thinking would be ubiquitous.

<comment><USER4> I also hoped it would bring screens readable in solar light to the market. I still miss it regularly and am always surprised not more people want this!

<comment><USER5> It looks like it is already solved with just very high brightness on regular screens. Using a flagman phone, I can't remember a single time using it in the past when the sunlight was a problem.

<comment><USER6> Even in the highest brightness on a recent AMOLED phone, if the sun is shining on it directly (i.e. sun is over your shoulder), you can't see the contents of the screen, in large part due to the reflection on the very shiny screen (which needs to be shiny for maximum brightness). In these circumstances you need to position your phone into your shadow (maybe you do this instinctively and don't notice)

And that says nothing of the battery consumption (pixel qi tech switches off the backlight in 'outdoor' mode so power draw is even less)

<comment><USER5> I guess it sure seems like there are different usage patterns and some people are really experiencing this still being an issue? I can see how some people might need to be using it really in direct sunlight where reflection can't be tweaked away by rotating the phone just a couple of degrees (which I think I do without even thinking about it).

So you're right, the current screen tech has not completely solved sunlight problem.

<comment><USER7> I'm more concerned about always having to have a backlight. I guess people just don't care enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem is that Amazon has a virtual monopoly on the e-reader market.

If Kindle doesn't adopt a given technology, it won't be commercially viable in the US.

With no competitive market place for e-reader products, consumers buy whatever good enough technology Amazon sells.

There might very well be a high end screen tech that people would pay for, much as how Apple discovered people are willing to pay for higher resolution LCDs on their laptops and smartphones

But without hardware diversity in the e-reader market, that higher price point may never be found, and as such many promising technologies will never have a chance to be further developed and come down in price.

<comment><USER9> >If Kindle doesn't adopt a given technology, it won't be commercially viable in the US.

For the people who don't buy their e-books from amazon, I think the market is quite competitive. I mean, if you are reading PDFs, unless you like really small type or spending a lot of effort converting, you are going to buy one of the myriad A4 sized e-readers from various vendors. Most of the gutenberg readers I know use an off-brand e-reader if they buy new.

>With no competitive market place for e-reader products, consumers buy whatever good enough technology Amazon sells.

I own a handful of high-end e-readers, many of which run android. How come none of those android devices, for instance, my A4 sized Sony e-reader, run the amazon app available in the play store?

I suspect that it's mostly that the Sony, in spite of being a much better reader for PDFs than my oasis, is simply not a better device for reading books that are formatted for the kindle.

(I'm not saying that there isn't a problem... I'm just saying that the monopoly is almost entirely in the convenience of the kindle book store. Agreements with publishers. And I _am_ claiming that there is much competition for the (much smaller) market for e-readers for content outside the amazon kindle e-book ecosystem)

<comment><USER8> > For the people who don't buy their e-books from amazon, I think the market > is quite competitive.

And tiny. Amazon has by far the largest in the US market, from numbers I just googled and haven't verified, Amazon is 83% of ebook sales in the US, and probably and even larger % if your consider "ebooks read on a digital paper device".

Hardware technologies cost hundreds of millions to develop, and years of active sales to refine and bring prices down. Amazon has a "good enough" tech in their Kindles, so the market is stagnating, outside of some cool stuff like Remarkable, which isn't a new display tech stack, nor are their sales numbers going to support development of new techs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Curious what people's views are on e-readers here at HN? Personally, I've tried to adopt an e-reader over many years. The convenience of having 100s of books without the weight is great. Being able to read in a dark room as well. However, the feel of a real book I think still wins out over any advantages of an e-reader.

Also my informal and anecdotal survey of how people use technology - mainly on the NYC subway - doesn't really bring to mind many people reading on e-readers. It usually a real book.

<comment><USER11> I think it's the price for eBooks. A good example is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

Kindle - $15

Paperback (new) - $10

Paperback (used) - $6

Paperback (library) - <USER2>

The Kindle version is a significant premium and I don't think there is a matching convenience factor. It's unfortunate that is the case because I'm sure it'd be a lot more eco-friendly and efficient to distribute ebooks.

<comment><USER12> I don't know how common this is, but some libraries[1] allow people to check out ebooks (including Kindle ones). I do most of my reading on my Kindle, and it has almost all been free because of it.

[1]: [https://nypl.overdrive.com/](https://nypl.overdrive.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this is the first I heard of DPL as a GPL equivalent for hardware but it doesn't appear any commercial manufacturers want to get behind it. How feasible is the usage of this technology from a non-commercial/ hobbyist perspective ? It would seem that manufacturing the displays would obviously require an advanced factory so it is probably not realistically something that people without capital and advanced knowledge could iterate on or improve. On a semi-related note does anyone know how one could retrofit a laptop or even raspberry pi to work with one of the still available pixel qi screens. I figure they are missing the interface to HDMI etc and so I've always been curious how one goes about building that sort of interface. I assume it involves a fair amount of electronics engineering and thus not something that could be easily learned by someone with a background mainly in software but perhaps I just don't know or haven't spent enough time researching this.

<comment><USER14> This reminds me of the questions "back in the day" (2005 and earlier?) before LCD screens becames affordable. Lots of people wanted to know how to repurpose laptop screens as generic monitors when the laptop died.

Unfortunately I think the answer was always "it's complicated, non-standard and not worth it"

Things may have changed since then, I just wanted to share...

<comment><USER15> These days you can buy the adapters on eBay: [https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=hdmi+lcd+controller+boa...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=hdmi+lcd+controller+board&_sacat=0)

<comment><USER14> Oh wow, well that's a bit of a change :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My biggest dream is a big epaper or pixel qi screen to do development on. The bazillion nits is killing my eyes...

<comment><USER17> Your dreams might have come true, then, with the Dasung Paperlike[1], a 13-inch e-ink monitor. The first generation connected to the PC via USB and special display drivers, but the current generation uses HDMI like a normal monitor.

My girlfriend is quite happy with her second-generation Paperlike Pro. There is apparently now a third generation[2] with higher resolution.

There are some disadvantages (of e-ink in general). It's not fast – the mouse cursor feels laggy, but typing is OK. You might have to tweak various appearance settings to make things look better in black and white – they have software to help with this for Windows, but not for Mac. Lastly, it's not particularly cheap.

[1] [http://www.dasungtech.com/](http://www.dasungtech.com/)

[2] [http://dasungtech.com/english/detail/id/223](http://dasungtech.com/english/detail/id/223)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the link! Based on your experience, would it be a good fit for hacking? How does a Emacs/Vi session comes across?

<comment><USER17> She uses it at work, so I can't check now, but I think it should be OK. It's mainly smooth-scrolling web pages and the mouse cursor that look laggy – things that move continuously pixel by pixel.

Dasung do mention programming as one use case and demonstrate it here: [http://www.dasungtech.com/sta/en/type.gif](http://www.dasungtech.com/sta/en/type.gif)

They say it's "nearly as fast as LCD". It has different modes to choose from, with different trade-offs between speed and image quality. And the new generation might be faster that the one I used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it was a mistake for them to market it as e-paper because it's clearly not as good as e-ink for the purpose "e-paper" evokes - reading books.

As a daylight-readable LCD it looks like it was great, but I guess not that many people need that.

</comment><comment><USER20> I bought a Notion Ink Adam back when it came out and while other complained about the faint colors, I was pretty happy when I had no problem reading at the beach :-D

I wish they would have developed a Pixel Qi version with a AMOLED (not sure if that is possible), as that way we could have nice colors combined with a readable screen in bright sunlight. I still want to have a Pixel Qi screen for my smartphone every single time the sun is so bright that I have trouble reading anything on it.

Until now, I was wondering what happen to the technology. It is just sad, that they weren't able to make the whole thing an economical success.

</comment><comment> amiga-workbench I would kill for a Pixel QI panel for my ThinkPad, I could program outdoors and escape the open plan office for a bit.

</comment><comment><USER21> >If you look at your average paratrooper or ranger they are constantly receiving revised mission parameters and in harsh conditions like a dessert

Delicious!</comment>


Fake Boarding Pass App Gets Hacker into Fancy Airline Lounges - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/08/fake-boarding-pass-app-gets-hacker-fancy-airline-lounges/ <comment><USER2> Dear Wired, it's not QR, it's Aztec Code ([http://www.howtobarcode.net/howtobarcode/barcode- types/image...](http://www.howtobarcode.net/howtobarcode/barcode- types/images/2d-barcd-image.png)) Call it a 2d barcode if you want to generalize it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of when skiplagged[1] became available, exploiting pricing differences for long flights of unpopular trips but hopping out half-way through. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more such simple hacks available to exploit in the airline industry.

[1] [https://skiplagged.com/](https://skiplagged.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't know how well this would work with British Airways or Aer Lingus. No matter what your boarding pass says, if your name isn't on their pre-printed list you wont be getting in.</comment>


Peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05/peaceful-protest-is-much-more-effective-than-violence-in-toppling-dictators/

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this interesting in light of recent discussions about non-violent civil disobedience and protest here at HN in response to the Eric Garner killing, the events in Ferguson, etc. No one would likely argue that we have a dictatorship to overthrow (or, at least, most would not argue that), but there is a long history of cultural and political shifts in the US due to non- violent resistance.

<comment><USER2> In the US at least, the successful non-violent resistances were often backed by the threat of violence.</comment></comment>


Forest, a multi-syntax functional language that compiles to WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/forest-lang/forest-compiler <comment><USER2> Well, this seems like an interesting project. Although very ambitious, the author seems to know what he's talking about, and has been going at it for a while, so kudos for that.

I find the design principles interesting. We might talk a lot about syntax abstraction, but I feel like that's not even the most interesting idea (it's very likely that many people who thought about making languages thought about it).

There are a few trends I find interesting, though. Programming languages are pretty tricky. You need to think about style and readability, performance and optimization, scalability and maintainability, data types and abstractions, algorithms and data transformations, parallelism and concurrency, etc. It seems to me like we have been introducing systems that progressively try to modularize and isolate those issues, sometimes completely hidding them from us. Syntax abstraction shouldn't be so surprising if we follow this idea. We got garbage collection, most optimization is done by compilers, we got dynamic typing, endless discussion about models for data representation, even visual languages, etc. The idea that programming languages shouldn't be limited to text in a single source file is very important in my opinion. I often envision future programming as "powerful IDEs" (and I never use IDEs nowadays) that can represent different properties/aspects of programs/code in different ways/views, isolating them or showing relationships/interaction between them. The complete opposite of what we see in movies, as always happens in reality, hahaha. Well, went a bit off-topic so I'll stop here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone already mentioned Luna Lang. Another similar project that is further along is isomorf. You get projections into 6 or so syntaxes, and deployment to AWS Lambda.

[https://isomorf.io/#!/syntax-picker/tours- ideas](https://isomorf.io/#!/syntax-picker/tours-ideas)

<comment><USER4> Just a quick update on isomorf.io, we are bootstrapping the projections on the platform itself and so soon you will be able to design and implement your own. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The multi-syntax support is really interesting. [https://www.luna- lang.org/](https://www.luna-lang.org/) is another language with a similar concept, with both a visual and a textual representation of the same code.

Would love to read more about the immutable data structures it supports. Rich Hickey has some great talks on efficient immutability in Clojure.

I really believe we're going to see a lot more new languages targeting web assembly. I wish it supported a standard, pluggable garbage collection system that could be easily adopted.

<comment><USER6> also GraalVM

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been trying to get some feedback on a related idea for making 'view- independent program models', which could be rendered with alternate syntaxes (or even richer visual augmentation than strictly text).

The main idea is to represent languages as a graph of 'language constructs' and individual programs as paths through some language graph. That path is the 'model' which an editor or compiler/interpreter would operate on—but in the case of the editor, since the program model has no connection to syntax, you can configure how it's rendered on a per-user basis (or use it to experiment with new language UI concepts, etc.).

Here's a write-up with illustrations: [http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-make-view- indepe...](http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-to-make-view-independent- program.html)

I've had this on the back burner for a while now, waiting for the write moment to try building out a proof-of-concept version—but if someone could point out some kind of critical flaw in it and prevent me from wasting so much time, that'd be awesome :)

<comment><USER8> Hi, I am working on something similar, it's nowhere near usable but I hope that a proof of concept version could be ready this year. My variant is focused on visual programming with various representations. I will definitely read your docs. I am very interested in the models you have come up with.

<comment><USER7> That's great, definitely send me a message if you want to talk about it more at some point. You can find my website with contact info on my profile here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know if I buy the justification for supporting multiple syntaxes. It's a slippery slope towards appeasing a million people's particular syntactic pet peeves, and it's not worth the effort of supporting them all.

With the exception of s-expressions (too many parentheses) and mandatory/significant whitespace, most people don't seem to care too much about syntax, IME. Semantics are much more important.

<comment><USER10> > most people don't seem to care too much about syntax

Speaking as an Erlang enthusiast, I must disagree. I love the syntax, but most people see "different" and think "bad".

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I generally agree. But I think our understanding of like, language popularity is a little colored by "the era of language fads". C++ is probably first, then Java, PHP, Ruby, and now JavaScript. If a language doesn't build a huge mainstream base (Ruby maybe failed at this but maybe only for lack of a big corporate backer) or 100% occupy the dev zeitgeist for an extended period of time, we think it hasn't caught on. But like, Erlang powers a lot of web infrastructure. Whatsapp is most famous, but there are a lot of services I'm personally aware of that are written in Erlang, and often these were situations where a mature dev team wanted to see if Erlang solved the problems they'd experienced writing backend services in Java or Python.

So yeah while syntax probably prevents you from achieving rockstar status or world domination, I think those days might be over, and I think the true measure of success is whether or not experienced dev teams are using the tech to solve real problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Syntax is polarizing, so we'll move the decision to the team level where they can argue endlessly about which to prefer."

Interesting project, I like the emphasis on immutable data and pattern matching.

<comment><USER12> It does raise a question of cross-team communication. If one team proposes a change in their dialect, can another team review it in a different dialect?

At that point, developing semantic diff capabilities seems to become vastly more important. At the same time, syntax abstraction might already give you the tools to start from as well.

<comment><USER13> > How do I edit the code in my preferred syntax? Do I need an editor plugin?

> When working on the project, each developer runs forest dev, which mounts a > virtual filesystem in the local directory using FUSE, called dev/.

> dev/ contains all of the source files, projected into the developer's syntax > of choice.

<comment><USER12> Right, the projection part is clear. The question was one of diffs, reviews, etc. What does a diff look like when projected between languages? Can you still feasibly use a line-based diff format, or do you have to account for transforming syntax structure? Do you just try to diff the projections instead? Lots of interesting things to try out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Holy shit they use FUSE, that's pretty bananas.

2\. We're definitely getting closer to the era of language swappability, where language X transpiles to language Y, language Y compiles to language X, and strict code formatters clamp down on corner cases. I think it's great and welcome, but I would expect a side effect of this to be that more "free" languages pop up that allow programmers to be a little looser in their implementations.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why does anyone think multi-syntax is a good idea?

They think it will help adoption? But surely it also hinders it by fragmenting code examples in the wild (Stack Overflow, docs, blogs etc) into different syntax populations?

</comment><comment><USER15> Lots of nice ideas which I don't think will work together. Nevertheless, it's always a good idea to give it a go, and the next time around maybe it will work out. For example, I don't think there is any sense whatsoever to have different syntaxes for exactly the same structures and semantics. You want different syntaxes to make different semantics more accessible. Also, reference counting and functional programming doesn't seem like a good fit, as much as I get the performance aspect.

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't Reason leverage syntax abstraction in a similar way?

[https://reasonml.github.io/](https://reasonml.github.io/)

<comment><USER17> Yep, though we don't put much emphasis on it for now: [https://twitter.com/jaredforsyth/status/1026706210043490304](https://twitter.com/jaredforsyth/status/1026706210043490304)

This is a lisp syntax for Reason, that works already with our language-server integration, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the idea of abstracting the syntax so that if you want to program in something Haskell like you can or program in a JavaScript like language. (I had a similar idea). I hope that the developer ergonomics that this provides is enough to balance the trouble of multiple people reading different syntax .

</comment><comment><USER19> > For the sake of collaboration, we agree on structure and semantics, and > agree to disagree on syntax.

`FooError on line 111` suddenly becomes a lot less meaningful... I suppose that's what the canonical representation is for, but having to map between the two seems like it would be at least somewhat annoying.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Projectional Editing" is coming to my mind, in case you are looking for more input on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Loyc project has similar goals: [http://loyc.net/](http://loyc.net/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is There an Alternative to Facebook? - <AUTHOR> With Facebook having an iron-grip over personal social networking. I wonder if folks out there have considered using other alternatives? <comment><USER2> If you want to share your every-day events and pictures why not just host a blog? Then see how many people are actually so interested that they'll visit the site :D

RSS feeds would help aggregating updates from several people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I quit Facebook a few years ago and never looked back.

Before leaving Facebook, FOMO was a thing for me. But after I had left for a few month, I realized that life on Facebook had hardly anything to do with offline life.

The alternative for me is to ask people for their phone number, and keep contact via WhatsApp or Telegram with them, if I feel it was worth staying in touch. Definitely harder than just "be friends" on Facebook, but way more real.

</comment><comment><USER4> minds, mastodon, diaspora. that is about it. as for twitter, there is gab and parler. i think minds has the best potential but they lack development. they haven't changed over the years. beside new UI that was put to action few months ago and made it look like twitter for some reason, it's the same site, functionality-wise, it has always been. i left because of low interaction and the groups are a joke. gab is very "twitterey", some people think parler is no the sh... but i doubt it. anyway, i am no longer on any of them. it always boils down to interaction. or the lack of. that is where you need solid backend for recommendations and things like that.

</comment><comment><USER5> A few are coming out. The company I'm in focuses more on communities (neighborhoods, gaming groups), with increasing focus on privacy and monetization via selling neighborhood related features.

WT.Social focuses more on the media part of social media.

I used to really dislike LinkedIn, but with a lot of social marketing/personal branding moving to Facebook, it might be time to give it a shot.

There's another one I can't recall the name of, but it focused on close and personal friends, rather than the 200 friends we tend to have on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://privacytoolslist.com/#decentralized-and-social- netwo...](https://privacytoolslist.com/#decentralized-and-social-networks)

facebook alternative with a bias towards privacy

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, it's called "No Facebook"

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't use facebook, while I still have a facebook account, I haven't made updates in years.

With that said, I don't really have social networking at all, but there's not much to be missed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slack; email; IRC.

I use all of these. Plus Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to organize my friends within a private slack. It has been With mixed success. I end up being in multiple slack orgs.

<comment><USER9> Yeah that's probably very hard to avoid in the Slack world

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discord has the potential to be the alternative to Facebook that many developers and people in tech and product have been wanting for a long time!

<comment><USER11> the potential would be greatly increased with self hosting rather than FB of a different flavor. discord needs a login to off premises services

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somehow people made friends, kept in contact with their families, and got news before Facebook. No one needs Facebook or online "social networking." This question is the same as asking how people survive without eating at McDonalds.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the down vote for this. If you're geographically away from your family and friends and need to stay in touch, there are other media for that and you don't need a whole solution like Facebook.</comment></comment>


Introducing Design System Utils, a tiny lib to help enforce your design system - <AUTHOR> Design System Utils is a tiny (<1kb) JavaScript library that I built to help developers keep consistent brand and design system styling. It works with any CSS-in-JS solution, like styled-components, Emotion, Glamorous etc
Read the intro article here: https://medium.com/@mrmartineau/introducing-design-system-utils-fb7363310974
Or have a look at the code here: https://github.com/mrmartineau/design-system-utils
I'd love to know what you think.
Cheers <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

It might help to post the github as the primary link and the Medium post as a link in a comment.</comment>


Building a server-less Telegram bot over a weekend - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/how-to-build-a-server-less-telegram-bot-227f842f4706 <comment><USER2> This is especially confusing to use 'server-less' buzzword (meaning 'on the bunch of servers in The Cloud') wrt messengers and p2p things where things could be _actually_ serverless.

<comment><USER3> The word "server" is totally meaningless in 2017... it can mean "program that interfaces with other programs" (like X server), it can mean "computer on a rack", "dedicated VPS", "program listening on an external TCP port"... we really need better terminology.

<comment><USER2> It's not that total actually. Of course we cannot always clearly and formally distinguish bare metal server from virtual server, and both of them from just a server program coexisting on workstation or laptop with other programs.

But when I say 'a bunch of server racks', you know what I mean, don't you?

BTW AFAIK a server in X Window System is called 'server' because it does 'listen', so formally it is, and so it wasn't a question back then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic write up. I'm really looking forward to part 2 now!

I recently used the telegram bot API for a raspberry pi motion detection setup. If I'm away from the house and there's movement, I get a photo uploaded into the chatroom. Super simple to get started with the API :)

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a very cool use case. i like thinking about these cases where an app might be over-featured :)

you're welcome, I'm glad you found it useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice post! Especially adding ngrok for speeding up development.

I've written a couple of similar tutorials about Telegram bots, so shameless self plug:

Building a Telegram Bot with Python [0] is a beginner-focused basic ToDo bot in a few parts

Building a Serverless Chatbot with AWS, Zappa, Telegram, and api.ai [1] is a slightly more advanced one that shows how to integrate an off-the-shelf "AI" into the bot.

Some of the code snippets looked pretty similar. Would love to hear if you saw my posts before writing this one.

In response to people being confused by "serverless" \-- I think GCE + AWS have successfully established the term to mean "running code in the cloud without having to worry about maintaining updates etc". I've never heard this term used in regards to a P2P system of bots.

[0] [https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/building-a-telegram- bo...](https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/building-a-telegram-bot-using- python-part-1-goi5fncay)

[1] [http://www.developintelligence.com/blog/2017/08/building- ser...](http://www.developintelligence.com/blog/2017/08/building-serverless- chatbot-aws-zappa-telegram-api-ai/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't! These are exactly what I had in mind - ngrok really sped up development, but the production stack and tools were the same as yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A question about ngrok: If ngrok is exposing a local server to the internet, does it also open an attack surface to vulnerabilities on my machine?

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely wouldn't start sharing the URL around. But this isn't the end goal. The end goal is to host your server code on AWS Lambda and use the endpoint that provides.

ngrok's exposing of a local server just makes it easier for you to develop more quickly. Otherwise, you'd have to deploy any changes to Lambda, hit your bot's endpoint, and then check the cloud logs for any bugs. I was doing this for awhile - it really slows down development. I'm writing another post on AWS Lambda and Zappa next - hope that's useful!</comment></comment>


Air India Express 737 Hits ILS, Damages Wall on Departure, Flies for 4 Hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/air-india-express-737-hits-ils-damages-wall-on-departure-flies-for-4-hours-before-diverting/ <comment><USER2> Just saw the pics of the damage on the twitter thread linked-to in the article. See below.

[https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050595274869993474](https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050595274869993474)

Looks quite severe.

I'm impressed the plane flew for 3 hours without getting destablized and crashing....

Air India has the worst safety reputation in India, and several accidents / incidents. I flew Spice Jet a few times over the last few weeks when I was there visiting. Spice Jet is like India's Virgin America. Service was excellent and I did not experience any issues while flying.

<comment><USER3> The most surprising part is, trichy to mumbai takes hardly 1hr flight time. What caused them to take 4hrs?

In 4hrs, they could have landed in Dubai itself easily

Being Indian, I agree with statement about AirIndia. I would never fly in AirIndia even if the ticket price is too low, laughably they usually cost way above than any other competitors.

<comment><USER4> "Being Indian, I agree with statement about AirIndia. I would never fly in AirIndia even if the ticket price is too low, laughably they usually cost way above than any other competitors."

Since I have flown with Air India, would you mind being more specific? Are the statistics? My flights were okay. Okay, zero status miles credited at Star Alliance and a bit stingy with alcohol on board. But food and service was good, plane looked well maintained.

Please tell me more.

<comment><USER5> I used to be a government employee and was required to fly Air India so I flew it a fair bit. Personally, the flying bit was not that different from others. Their website was a nightmare to book on, usually I found them generous with alcohol on international flights, but sample size is small here. Their miles were hard to use, too many conditions. Staff was a bit low on professionalism. Saw a couple of fights between flight attendants.

<comment><USER6> > Saw a couple of fights between flight attendants.

In flight entertainment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate articles introducing three-letter-mysteries and leaving the readers in confusion. To add insult to injury, none of the comments seem to acknowledge that the topic is impentrable.

What is the mysterious ILS that was hit?

Even after reading the Wikipedia article, I only have a vague idea - seems to be a radar system, both on ground and in the air. Did the plane hit a radar tower?

<comment><USER8> Others have noted that ILS stands for Instrument Landing System. It's a system used for landing airplanes when you can't see the runway, typically getting you down to 200 feet, but with special training and equipment you can get down to 100 or even zero (autoland). ILS is the world standard for getting airplanes onto runways in bad weather.

The ground portion of an ILS consists of two antenna arrays, one at the end of the runway called the localizer, and one just off to the side called the glideslope. These arrays produce two fan-shaped signals that vary left-to- right and up-and-down in such a way that an aircraft can determine its location relative to the runway with remarkable precision. The localizer signal provides lateral guidance to the runway centerline, while the glideslope provides vertical guidance down to the touchdown zone, usually on a 3° glidepath. One or both of these arrays is what this airplane ran into.

The system is passive, in that the signals are simply broadcast from the ground continuously, aren't unique to a particular aircraft, and there is no return or response from aircraft. The ground antennas simply "shout into the void" as it were, and aircraft receivers determine their location based purely on the shape of the signals at the aircraft's location in space.

For illustration here is a localizer antenna (though note that the airplane in this picture is "backwards," i.e. the localizer for a given runway is at the far end of the runway, though it is possible to "fly the backcourse" and land with one at the near end): [https://image.slidesharecdn.com/instrumentlandingsystemils-1...](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/instrumentlandingsystemils-140507064050-phpapp01/95/instrument- landing-system-ils-6-638.jpg?cb=1399444891)

And here is a glideslope antenna: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8f/56/b3/8f56b3b52fb9b81c84f7...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8f/56/b3/8f56b3b52fb9b81c84f7f883cbc3d301.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Another one of these comments that make this forum always a joy to read. Thanks for the detailed walkthrough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been trying to go over how this could happen. The damage to the wall seems so severe that I would image even over the sound of the engine the pilot would hear and notice that they had hit a wall. Flying the plane at this point would be risking their life. The first thing that came to my mind was the only reason a pilot would risk his life is if his life was already at risk and if he had been drinking when he hit the wall he would face many year in jail I assume for putting lives at risk. In a panic says to himself the plane is damaged but I know it can still fly and takes off without a plan really but perhaps just to let the alcohol he had leave his system. I hate to speculate here on HN. This is just crazy to me and I really look forward to hearing more details as to how his happened.

<comment><USER11> After V1, the accelerate-stop distance, the pilot is committed to continue flying.

The cargo area of most airliners is not pressurized, so the gash is not an immediate problem.

In a case like this, the pilots would want to climb to several thousand feet and evaluate the situation before landing.

Looks like the pilot did a great job once it was realized the airplane was damaged of remaining calm and flying the airplane.

<comment><USER12> Cargo is definitely pressurized. Not heated/aced, but pressurezed the same as the rest of the cabin. Everying from the skin inwards is under 5000ish feet of pressure.

<comment><USER13> It's heated above freezing too as far as I know, I've never had anything in my luggage freeze.

<comment><USER12> Heated in that the air becomes warmer as it is compressed. But not the additionally-heated air provided the main cabin. Even so, at low air density even -30 would take a while to cool the large mass of bags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who wants to wager that the pilots did an aviation version of the five stages of grief, with some help from passenger / flight attendant reports?

FO: Tower said we hit something, may have damage. Capt: Just close, we'll be okay. FA: We heard a thump, and so did the passengers. CA: Just a noise, we'll be okay. Dispatch on ACARS: You hit the localizer and wall past the far end, you morons. Descend, lower your cabin diff pressure, and GTF to Mumbai. CA: How do we explain this? FO: Ask the passengers for newspapes, we must find new jobs..

<comment><USER15> Not inconceivable that they decided to keep flying to overwrite the CVR (assuming it was the old 120 minute type).

Given the apparent structural damage, that was a risky decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unless I'm misinterpreting the satellite image its ~150m from the end of the runway to that wall[0] and it also looks a bit downhill from the runway to the wall[1].

I don't see how this could happen without the pilots noticing; they would have been skimming the ground well past the end of the runway.

[0] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tiruchirapalli+Internation...](https://email@example.com,78.705696,232m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x3baa8b30609d9727:0xa2f4f10a6d8add6c!8m2!3d10.7603678!4d78.7088693)

[1] [https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050581391828836352](https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050581391828836352)

<comment><USER17> Perhaps they were slightly airborne, like 0.5m above the ground, but ground- based instruments recorded the plane as still being "on the ground" (i.e. same altitude as the runway) because of the downhill slope? If they really were on the ground, the pilots would have continued to feel the vibration of the wheels against the ground, a very clear indication that they aren't flying.

I'm even more surprised that the plane could land on its own wheels despite the huge gash in the fuselage. Do landing gears retract so quickly, or was the wall simply not wide enough?

<comment><USER18> I have no first-hand information, but I think this is going to turn out to be a reduced thrust takeoff with the crew being unaware of that (meaning they screwed up).

Airliners have enough power to lose an engine at a decision speed (V1) while still on the runway and _on the one remaining engine_ continue to accelerate on the runway to rotation and eventually liftoff speed and still clear obstacles. There is no mention of an engine loss causing this issue (and surely the airplane wouldn't launch for FL360 with one engine INOP), so this almost has to be a mis-set takeoff thrust accident as, with both engines set for proper takeoff thrust, it's rare to use more than 2/3 of the runway and the initial climb is brisk due to the large excess of power a turbojet engine has at sea level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Question for professional pilots here: does this feel like normal behaviour for a pilot?

From my limited experience of pilots, this seems entirely unlike the kind of behaviour you'd expect - they're usually conservative when it comes to safety or is that just the projected image to reassure the public?!

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately don't have time for a long post at the moment, but as an airline pilot and instructor/check pilot, I can say that extreme incompetence exists in the airline world, especially in Africa, India, SE Asia. There could be some very good reasons that they chose to continue, and often I learn those reasons when the facts are released, discovering that a good decision was made. I'll be following the investigation, but this one seems somewhat alarming to me. Here's another of mind-blowing incompetence, also from India - [https://www.ajc.com/news/national/airliner-forced-land- after...](https://www.ajc.com/news/national/airliner-forced-land-after-pilots- accidentally-leave-landing-gear-down-for-entire- flight/YCu3nXWUl3367aYfQHffMJ/).

Also, more automated, single-pilot/ground operated or pilotless aircraft can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER21> \--I can say that extreme incompetence exists in the airline world, especially in Africa, India, SE Asia

including Hong Kong?

<comment><USER15> Cathay has a pretty good reputation, I believe. The HK civil aviation authorities, so-so, but all right. Struggling to get the expensive new ATC center to work.

(Note that HK is considered part of East Asia.)

<comment><USER15> Self-reply to add:

See here for some news articles on the ATC centre:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HK+atc+site%3Ascmp.com](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=HK+atc+site%3Ascmp.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The AVherald article: [http://avherald.com/h?article=4bedd321&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4bedd321&opt=0)

As some of the others have mentioned, the reason the plane survived is likely because that was not a pressurised area. If it had breached the pressure vessel they would've noticed it very quickly (lack of pressurisation).

<comment><USER23> Not really - If there had a been a gash in pressurization, they would have caught it on the way up. The 737 is a _tank_. It has more or less the same wing load as a F-16. It takes a lot to shake around - it's every bit the 1950s build 707 chassis, and like the old 50s lathe - it can take a hit and keep going.

<comment><USER24> Plenty of 737's have had explosive depressurization with injuries or fatalities, most recently this year

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-43818752](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43818752)

and one of the most famous incidents (in the U.S.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243)

Both were from fatigue, but fatigue doesn't have to be a gradual thing; it could come from a single hit that causes the pressure vessel to fail at altitude.

See the whole list here

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression#Not...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression#Notable_decompression_accidents_and_incidents)

<comment><USER25> The difference is that happens _at altitude_. When the plane has just taken off there is no pressure differential. There's no energy TO explode.

<comment><USER24> Damage can be less severe than an actual puncture of the pressure vessel. Damage can _weaken_ the pressure vessel such that it only fails (possibly explosively) once under pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Impressive resilience by the airframe. Good job Boeing.

<comment><USER27> Yes, I'd say this incident makes for a good Boeing ad - "Even a brick wall can't stop a 737 from flying a route!"

<comment><USER28> That seems mildly irresponsible. "Eh, I don't need to pull up, it's a Boeing."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Lets hope they scrap that aircraft..

i could not find a reference but i remember an incident where an aircraft only scraped its backend on take off and repairs were made, but years later the aircraft was lost with everyone on board after cracks propagated up and around and the aircraft lost its whole tale section

<comment><USER30> Those incidents (CAL611, JAL123) only happened because the repair was completed _improperly_ to begin with and subsequently _missed_ by every inspection.

There's no reason the aircraft can't be properly repaired, and be as strong as it was when it was delivered. The Boeing Structural Repair Manual is very precise. It was just ignored.

<comment><USER31> The problem here is that the plane climbed risking catastrophic depressurization - you cannot repair in flight, you need to land first for that.

<comment><USER32> GP was proposing scrapping the aircraft, which is _not_ necessary for ground repairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yet another reason not to fly Air India, just in case you needed another beyond price, on-time performance, service, and cleanliness.

</comment><comment><USER14> It wouldn't be the first time a crew errs in calculating their takeoff performance and uses too low a thrust or flap setting. Everyone on that plane is lucky to be alive, as others have died after similar takeoffs.

<comment><USER34> Too low a thrust?

I thought that on airliners pilots input runway length, altitude and wind strength and direction, and the computer optimized the thrust accordingly?

<comment><USER35> Yes, the autothrottle commands the thrust as calculated for a Flex take-off. But it's only correct if the input parameters are correct. There was a Sunwing 737 which bent the runway lights at Belfast in 2017 because the pilots had entered the wrong temperature variable:

[https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/temperature- error...](https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/temperature-error-behind- sunwing-737s-near-overrun-441346/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can we take a moment and reflect on the fact that all of this data is freely available to anyone? I can sit in front of my computer, or anywhere with my phone, and follow planes around the world with an accuracy of a few meters, and replay the data at a later date.

The various flight trackers all use thousands of receivers around the world, and most of them probably use the same kind of SDR chip that was originally designed for USB TV and radio receivers.

[http://rtlsdr.org/#history_and_discovery_of_rtlsdr](http://rtlsdr.org/#history_and_discovery_of_rtlsdr)

</comment><comment><USER37> If anything this is great free advertisement for Boeing's quality.

<comment><USER38> As a pilot once told me: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going"

<comment><USER39> Brand loyalty is an amazingly powerful thing.

I wonder if anyone says, "I won't be there Gus if it isn't an Airbus".

<comment><USER40> Time's a plenty in an a320

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The obvious mystery is why you would keep flying for so long after an incident like this...

<comment><USER42> A good reason would be fuel weight on possibly damaged landing gear.

Also, the airport wasn't good anymore. They had just destroyed the Instrument Landing System at the end of the runway. Nobody should land there.

<comment><USER43> A lot of pilots don't use ILS and use a visual approach. That was one of the issues with the SF airport, as the left runway was closed, the lights were off and the pilot lined up with the taxi way.

<comment><USER44> > _the lights were off_

While it is true that the normal lighting was off (because it wasn't a valid runway at the time), there was a lighted, flashing X to indicate that fact. Along with the fact that the taxiway was not illuminated as a runway, _and_ the pilots were notified about the runway closure…

[https://ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA17IA148.aspx](https://ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA17IA148.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I thought they track things like small vibrations in plane body due to such incidents. How would they detect Bird strike([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike)) if hitting wall go unnoticed? Don't airports have sensors and cameras for such situations to alert Air traffic control immediately?

</comment><comment><USER46> It wasn't clear from the article. What kind of wall did they hit?

<comment><USER47> It's in the linked Twitter thread. It was a brick wall.

[https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050581391828836352](https://twitter.com/shukla_tarun/status/1050581391828836352)

<comment><USER48> Well a single layer, unreinforced brick wall isn't really that strong, especially near the top edge. It's perhaps plausible they didn't feel anything or at least nothing very alarming. I mean, the gear presumably still retracted properly and deployed later for landing, so it wasn't damaged too badly.

<comment><USER43> Yea I'm interested in seeing what the passengers say. If they just heard a bump or didn't suspect a thing, the plane may have just graised it and the pilots didn't notice. If the passengers heard a noticeable sound or reported concerns and were dismissed, that's grounds for negligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Honest question: why aren't pilots forced to take alcohol tests before flights? There was some JetBlue incident about 10 years ago, IIRC.

<comment><USER50> Are forced alcohol tests given anywhere?

<comment><USER49> Not that I know of. Mandatory drug testing in sports is now common. When operating heavy machinery, and when a lot of lives are at stake, I feel some safety procedures are called for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its mystery how plane survived such a huge impact

Airport perimeter damage: [https://mobile.twitter.com/ANI/status/1050582092688629760](https://mobile.twitter.com/ANI/status/1050582092688629760)

<comment><USER51> The landing gear is built to withstand hitting a concrete runway with a 737, whereas a thin brick wall can be brought down with just a hammer. It's like rock-paper-scissors: wheels beat wall, ILS antenna beats fuselage skin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> A similar incident that happened with a bigger plane that completed a 13h flight: [http://avherald.com/h?article=48c78b3a](http://avherald.com/h?article=48c78b3a)

</comment><comment><USER53> It looks like the plane couldn't properly take off(likely overloaded), and it's not just an overrun. See the speed graph in the post, and the fact that the gears were retracted that low.

<comment><USER15> I don't think we have enough information to make that statement yet. Could be they forgot to set flaps, could be they miscalculated TO speeds, could be they misconfigured auto throttle... As usual, need to wait for investigation and report.

<comment><USER53> Now we have that: [http://www.ptinews.com/news/10109087_Air-India-Express- plane...](http://www.ptinews.com/news/10109087_Air-India-Express-plane- possibly-overloaded--officials.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why is there a brick wall so close to runaway?

<comment><USER55> Because most pilots can fly professionally enough not to hit it.

<comment><USER56> There are failures modes a pilot has no chance of resolving.

<comment><USER57> There are worse places to take off/land. Midway (MDW) has very little distance from the runway to houses and highway. Princess Juliana International Airport on Sint Maarten (SXM) has very little distance from the end of the runway to the ocean. Gibraltar International Airport (GIB) is also basically on the water.

Overrunning the runway is often considered avoidable from my limited understanding. Planes are flight worthy under _a lot_ of issues. Even single engine failure or engine fire after V1 (the speed at which you can't abort/reject takeoff without overrunning the runway) isn't cause to abort/reject takeoff.

With landing, the plane needs to touch down early enough and at the correct speed to stay on the runway.

Overrunning the runway is never considered a "good" thing. Rejected takeoffs that shouldn't have been and bad landings are often causes of death. They're expected to not happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Air India, an old antiquated government subsidized airline that should die.

<comment><USER59> The government has actually been trying to kill it for years but no one wants it: [https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/31/investing/air-india- privati...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/31/investing/air-india- privatization-fails/index.html)

<comment><USER60> This might provide the government the opportunity to shutter it for good.</comment></comment></comment>


What the hell happened to Gizmodo.com? - <AUTHOR>

It feels like they just turned it into slickdeals.com, no? <comment><USER2> Nick Denton wrote an interesting piece about it late last year: [http://lifehacker.com/#!5701749/why-gawker-is-moving- beyond-...](http://lifehacker.com/#!5701749/why-gawker-is-moving-beyond-the- blog)

I agree with a lot of the thoughts behind it, but in execution I don't enjoy using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like site redesigns always just make things worse... this might be a slight improvements over the last one though, which looked to me like a parked spam page.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I don't like it either. Much harder to open multiple articles for later and it loads ones that I don't want to read while i scroll towards ones I do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems like its designed for a tablet to me... I think we'll start to see more content displayed like this (not that it is blowing my socks off now though)

<comment><USER6> Exactly how I feel. This is beautiful! For tablets only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the ign.com redesign was very well welcomed. slightly irrelevant, but an example of accepted redesign. this actually works on a tablet but feels like an app. in the browser, the experience is quite horrendous and slow. i have to mouse wheel to scroll articles and clicking on the link refreshes the page when it should be ajaxy. it makes me not want to come back.

</comment><comment><USER8> Gawker. Gawker happened.</comment>


California lets self-driving startup Zoox offer autonomous rides - T-A https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoox-selfdriving/california-lets-self-driving-startup-zoox-offer-autonomous-rides-idUSKCN1OK2AK <comment><AUTHOR> "the robot cars will not be unleashed without human oversight. Regulators are requiring that a backup test driver remain in the driver's seat to take over if necessary. Zoox is also not allowed to charge passengers, keeping the prospect of a profitable business model elusive."

<comment><USER2> There is another permit for fully driverless operations, which California introduced in April this year. Waymo got their fully driverless operators permit in late October, and to my knowledge they're the only company to even apply for it.

<comment><USER3> Waymo is the only driverless car company that I even remotely trust.

I went to a conference where Uber was presenting, two months before the incident where they killed a pedestrian. Their entire presentation focused on providing a public service to improve safety. It was so over the top on feel- good-make-the-world-a-better-safe-place, you couldn't believe a word of it. If they really cared about safety, they would be adding safety features to cars already operated by humans (e.g., automatic breaking, warnings when you veer out of your lane, cameras, etc). They wouldn't try to take the giant step of removing the human.

Their presentation was such BS, that it was clear they couldn't be trusted. Then two months later, it was confirmed.

<comment><USER4> Zoox presentation in the NeurIPS Intelligent Transportation Systems workshop was similarly cringeworthy. First half was them going over the numbers of auto fatalities worldwide and how they should be eliminated, followed by very little information on how they would even come close to human level performance on the task.

<comment><USER2> That describes everybody's safety talks and voluntary safety reports, including Waymo's. They all spout the same platitudes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite way to figure out if I'm looking at a driverless car is to look and see if there's a driver in it.

<comment><USER6> but hasn't it been shown that other drivers are more comfortable if they see a driver? I keep remembering back to Total Recall's Johnny Cab. Surely it will be legislated that other than not having an obvious driver autonomous cars should have some visible identification that they are indeed autonomous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> article points out that 62 companies are licensed to test self-driving cars in California currently. (testing is not the same as offering autonomous rides.)

so, if i judge by analogy to what's happened in the human-driven space (e.g. Uber, Lyft, and ? i don't even know who else), i'll go out on a limb and say that roughly 60 of these 62 will eventually just go away.

<comment><USER2> The list includes most of the world's major automakers, a bunch of tier 1s, several major chipmakers, and Apple. Things would have to get pretty bad for all but 2 to go away.

[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/permi...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/permit)

<comment><USER8> They will all license from the winner of the autonomous race. Regulation will come at them fast as failure modes get discovered. Wouldn't surprise me if they'd get faa level of certification required within the following two decade. That will strangle newcomers and stragglers, cementing the working solution in the market

<comment><USER9> >faa level of certification required within the following two decade

If that's the case (and I'm not saying it isn't), you then probably need maintenance and update processes on par with commercial aviation. And that probably implies certified organizations renting/leasing vehicles only. And, at that point, you're probably cheaper just to have a minimum wage human driver.

Mainstream self-driving implies that people can buy cars at a similar price point that they can today and maintain them in the same loosey goosey way that many people also do today.

<comment><USER8> Well yes, it is certainly going to be a retirement, a even just a dirty sensor is going to be a showstopper issue or a security risk, so I imagine those vehicles are going to need significant maintenance</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How hard is it to build a platform like Netlify? - <AUTHOR> I'm fascinated by Netlify, by its speed and neat developer experience. I want to learn more about the inner workings of such platforms and thought that the best way to do it is to build something like Netlify myself. Nothing stellar, just a simple proof of concept clone. Any suggestions on where to start and where to learn about the architecture of platforms like Netlify? I'm a moderately experienced frontend developer, I have some backend and DevOps skills, but it's mostly "street knowledge," and I don't have a CS degree. <comment><USER2> If I were to do this, I think I would start somewhere along the lines of:

1 - $5 linode/digital ocean machines at different locations (CA, TX, NJ, London, wherever you want the things)

These machines would run probably Nginx serving static up static content. They'd get this data pushed to them over something like rsync/scp from a central place.

It would answer for the same domains, with the same content at each location.

2 - DNS Route53 / GeoDNS / Round-Robin

Servers in all those locations are cool, but we want to get users close to them. I think Route53 does GeoIP DNS - routing users to the geographically closer machine.

3 - $10/$20 Linode at a central location for build/deploy.

I'd probably look at Drone.io as the thing to take gitrepos and then build the website. This could handle JAM stack stuff pretty easily. Once it has the artifacts created, you ship them off to the linodes in step one to be served.

This is kind of the broad view of where I would start for technologies to help with that kind of thing. Then comes a lot of glue and programs to make it easier to use.

The form submission stuff they made seems pretty cool. You could make something that scans the artifacts looking for forms with a given data attribute, and when you find them build a data model to match and stuff in a POST address. Making that would be really fun.

I hope this helps, I also dig this kind of stuff =)

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess it depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go and what you want to learn?

For example, we recently built something to the same effect to deploy our single page applications to AWS. It creates a new Cloudformation Stacks for each site, sets up CodePipeline for continous deployment, build artifacts are placed in a public S3 bucket, and then it's served through CloudFront as the CDN. Beyond that you just need to set up Route53 for your domain and use the Certificate Manger to handle SSL.

I know that's pretty specific to AWS but hopefully it gives you an idea of where you'd start.

Basically to build it from scratch you'd need: \- A service that can respond to GitHub webhooks, build projects in an isolated environment based on a config, and push build artifacts out.

\- A content distribution network that you can deploy those artifacts to.

\- A DNS server to route traffic.

\- An SSL service like Let's Encrypt CertBot to issue certificates periodically.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please do it. It is reasonably simple to build something like that, I've done it many times for over a decade now - its so much fun and truly rewarding. From the beginning you need to focus on the developer experience that means you need to make sure your execution of all the components is done in a way that allows a developer to develop and not have to click buttons or fill in any forms.

To me the interface is the IDE and important changes in source code happen when I merge branches to master. From there the ingredients are a well developed cicd pipeline plus some integrated infrastructure as code (i.e cloudformation, teraform, ansible). The infrastructure as code can get a little complex and you need to know the the underlying components quite well or it might cost you more than you think. You could achieve this with a vps too if you had one. One of the reasons I use Jekyll is I can host in on s3 which allows us to focus our operational capabilities on our main business, Servana does devops and cloud services.

I use Jenkins with a declarative pipeline plus cloudformation which configures all the infra like s3 bucket and cloudfront distribution etc. I kept it simple but still pro with the main goal that a developer does not have to log into anything to trigger updates. The pipelines creates a release and tags master merges.

When I build these workflows the developer experience is very important so I always make the process completely automated with no interrupts if it can be helped. My focus is on one thing, the code and the development experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> In my view, it'a a rather lot of work. The hard parts are probably less visible: combatting abuse of the free build system, sysadmin/scaling stuff, et c. Getting build scripts running and static pages on a webserver, their main function, is relatively straightforward.

If you want to build one just for yourself, that is probably a weekend project. Doing multitenant safely is likely where it gets a lot more complex.

</comment><comment><USER6> I built something similar with the same basic functionality although lacking all the polish. Basically I had a cheap vps with docker installed and a small control panel where a user could log into github and pick a repo and add domain names. There was then a number of glue scripts to pull and build the sites and deploy them as Caddy server containers, this handled all the automatic TLS and static file serving. I had all these load balanced with nginx listening to the docker deamon and restarting. In hindsight the whole thing could have been a good opportunity to learn and use k8s, maybe would have been simpler to piece together but I learned a lot.

</comment><comment><USER7> It depends on how much of it you want to recreate. Like, do you want to create the servers, or are you happy letting a CDN do the heavy lifting? If it's the latter, you can deploy to GitHub pages, and then use CloudFlare's CDN. I don't think I need to post it here since it's HN, but I documented this technique in a comprehensive article once[0].

On the other end, though, you can buy small storage units and put Raspberry Pi 4s all around the world, and to mimic the CDN-ness of it. You'd need a central build server, which doesn't matter where it physically is, but it'd push JAM builds to your CDN network, and then a DNS server that routes requests to the right CDN node depending on the Geolookup of the IP address.

[0]: [https://www.toptal.com/github/unlimited-scale-web-hosting- gi...](https://www.toptal.com/github/unlimited-scale-web-hosting-github-pages- cloudflare#contract-just-respected-software-architects)

</comment><comment><USER8> Have fun :) [https://staticdeploy.io/](https://staticdeploy.io/)

</comment><comment> o-__-o I use an execution system to run scripts on remote hosts. I create dns via api calls, configure a web server to accept that domain, which points to a parked landing page. When ready I run another script that pulls the latest tag from git and drops it onto the web server . These pages are served until I make a change to git and push deploy. I would like to make a ui to this but my JS skills suck donkey butt.

</comment><comment><USER9> Basically I did exactly this :) I created a tool that helps you deploy your static (and hybrid!) app, with a few more features like creating environments, specifying remote configuration and staged rollouts. It took me a year part time, all by myself. Check it out here: [https://www.stormkit.io](https://www.stormkit.io). Basically, you gotta have a nice understanding of the cloud providers, some network knowledge, a lot of backend knowledge and a descent frontend knowledge if you want to compete with their awesome UX :) - Obviously, Netlify has a team behind it, but despite that I believe I did a good job.

</comment><comment><USER10> Recently I've discovered commonshost and it seems like a great way to host a content. It's a free global CDN with < 30ms for most of the regions I've tested. If you want to startup a node in your region it only costs around 200$ for the equipment to run a node

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but I would also love to learn more about it's inner working!

Especially the certificate fetching and distribution across the edge servers part.

</comment><comment><USER12> I recently used Netlify to deploy a Gatsby site, the experience of deployment is so easy: just link a GitHub repo or drop in the project directory. The Netlify community forums are really helpful too. If you've any questions please ask!

<comment><USER13> Wow savage downvoting on that. I wonder why? Was the comment edited?

<comment><USER12> I'm surprised that a pretty vanilla comment got so much hate, it's hard to please everyone!

<comment><USER14> It has absolutely nothing to do with the question, why wouldn't it be downvoted?

<comment><USER13> The shade of grey was unreadable that implies a lot of downvotes. This is usually reserved for pure trolling style comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Million dollar baby: Making millions selling open source hardware. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/million_dollar_baby_-_businesses_de.html

<comment><USER2> If anyone is interested in producing a kit or finished project to put for sale like this, I'm struggling through that right now and lightly blogging it. My first PCB prototypes just came in.

A good post to land on: [http://projectexcitebike.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to- build-y...](http://projectexcitebike.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-build-your- own-exercise-bike.html)

<comment><USER3> A kit seems hard because of all the different models of bikes out there, no? What other obstacles are you finding?

I love the idea BTW!

<comment><USER2> It will actually work on all the bikes I've seen, it just requires a flexible mount like double sticky tape vs something that clips or literally bolts on. I'm sure as I encounter more bikes I'll start to throw in little mounting tricks like Velcro straps or spacers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How do the open source medical equiptment projects jibe with all of the FDA regulations?

I've always wanted to start an open source ultrasound project but I figured there would be too many hurdles.

<comment><USER4> Don't target medical markets. Target weld inspection.

<comment><USER3> But those projects listed OpenEEG, the one for anesthesia, etc are targeted as medical devices (I think). Are they just operating under the radar?

<comment><USER4> They are targeted towards hobbyists...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Westeros is poorly designed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/migration-issues/westeros-is-poorly-designed-3b01cf5cdcaf#.ekopzqyt0 <comment><USER3> Super interesting data points! Just thinking about the world population being 250-400million in AD1000 is a huge change to most people's mental models.

However, the basic premise of the article is a bit in question - <USER2> GRRM/readers indicate that the world itself is realistic - SOCIAL realism is the more abject term here. Lots of numbers are thrown about in the books - even on a relativistic scale these are (as the post stated) incredibly improbable. But its not particularly important to the enjoyment of the story or the "realism" that people claim to attach to.

</comment><comment><USER4> The population of Westeros should be zero, as the books assert there have been winters that lasted a lifetime. Unless maybe the living dead count?

The books are "realistic" only in comparison to other fantasy. It'd be more valid to call it "less fantastic".

</comment><comment><USER5> The world is there to build a story on and Westeros is fine for that. I only got through part of the article because the authors complaints about realism fell very flat to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> World building is not GMMR's forte. I like his character development though.</comment>


How to Survive a Ground-Up Rewrite Without Losing Your Sanity - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/97052/How-To-Survive-a-Ground-Up-Rewrite-Without-Losing-Your-Sanity.aspx

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised nothing about functional tests were explicitly mentioned in the article. There were some hints about "engineering the heck out of your migration scripts" (paraphrased) which could be taken as setting up functional tests.

If there is a good tests infrastructure re-writes can be done with a heck of a lot of confidence. Plus there is the benefit of breaking the re-write project up along test lines which helps in not creating the pressure for a, "huge one- time switchover".</comment>


Treatment of obesity with calorically unrestricted diets (1953) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/1/5/343.full.pdf <comment><USER2> Having quite a few years of experience treating obesity it's interesting how often this topic comes up here. As several posters say, the "paleo" diet in some form is not a recent idea. Despite paleo's apparent merit, the "standard" high-CHO diet continues to predominate. But why?

I can only speculate. Much has been written about "carbohydrate addiction", an idea that remains controversial, yet there's some evidence for it. We know about the huge amounts of sugars in processed convenience foods, disrupting the body's energy-handling mechanisms, shunting calories into fat deposition.

Industrialization plays a role, it's cheaper to produce and distribute pleasing sugar-rich items vs. fresh farm-grown vegetables. Healthful food is expensive and less available, especially for economically stressed populations. For others, the problem is exacerbated by a demanding, tech- driven lifestyle. Under pressure, taking time to consider what's truly beneficial for health is less likely. Just grab the Starbucks and let's go.

While obesity is in part a behavioral issue, it's a fallacy to assume it's _only_ a subset of the "mental health" domain. I assert obesity is the most complex medical condition we face. All body systems, down to each and every cell has a stake in the intake and distribution of energy, and plays some role in these processes.

Metabolic illness is among the most prevalent and costly to our economy, and also among the most intertwined with psychiatric, medical, cultural, and political phenomena. As pointed out, Banting's fish diet of 1863 worked, but also roundly criticized. The insight keeps reemerging, which seems to mean it's a pointer to solutions, not itself a solution.

<comment><USER3> The real problem with diet and obesity research is that they are trying to identify "universal truths". Unfortunately, an individual's response to nutrient intake is highly specific, and depends on genetics, activity level, adiposity and gut flora. This is why controlled studies don't show a significant difference between low carb and high carb diets. Researchers tend to view the intra-group differences are just random variation, when in actuality different diets are better for different people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keto's been around for a long, long time.

In my own experience with keto, the biggest reason why it works is that it's very difficult to eat at a surplus. I can eat a pound of pasta in one sitting. In contrast, eating that same amount of calories in meat and vegetables is much more difficult. You can get fat very easily by eating pizza and drinking beer. It is significantly harder to do so by drinking water and eating lentils and chicken.

<comment><USER5> Don't lentils contain too many carbs for keto? One friend of mine started doing it a few months ago, he has lost a lot of weight. He eats less than 25g of carbs a day, and lentil servings usually surpass that.

<comment><USER6> Lentils are popular in the "slow carb" diets, as they are a _moderately_ low- carb legume. People doing full-on keto would probably avoid them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see how it makes sense to focus on a single study in 1953. Most of the comments here imply that this study found the truth, which has been ignored or forgotten since then. On the other hand, the mainstream claims to have come to a different conclusion on diet based on a huge number of other studies [0][1]. If you're going to use this study as evidence for low carb diets, you have to explain why this particular study is so important, why it was better designed or otherwise more conclusive that studies that came before/after it, etc. Otherwise this is just cherry picking.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- carbohydrate_diet#Opinions...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- carbohydrate_diet#Opinions_from_major_governmental_and_medical_organizations)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_lo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low- carbohydrate_diets)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's fun reading papers from the 1950s because this would never be published today.

I had an interesting thought reading this. It's well-known that caloric restriction extends lifespan. People who are obese but lose weight have metabolic changes similar to those induced by caloric restriction (lower BMR among others). I wonder if those who were formerly obese but are able to keep off weight have longer lifespans.

<comment><USER9> this is very well known in the scientific community (which is one of the reasons it's unlikely to be published today). one of the key challenges in diet science is that what works for individuals may not be an ideal public health or clinical recommendation.

re your hypothesis, i don't know of any studies on your specific question (there aren't many people who keep the weight off -- the national weight control registry is following several thousand), but there are studies showing that people who weight cycle minimally (1-4 times) have lower all-cause mortality: [http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/02/01/aje.k...](http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/02/01/aje.kwr378.full.pdf)

<comment><USER10> My model of the obesity crisis is that it's fundamentally a mental-health issue, not a nutritional one. Food and eating is connected to your motivational and emotional centers on a deep and fundamental level. The actual mechanics of losing weight is fairly straightforward, but turning an over- eater into a healthy-eater isn't.

<comment><USER11> The problem is do you consider the minds reactions to hormones mental or nutritional? You can have plenty of 'willpower' but if your chemistry craves balance then you have blurred boundaries into saying its both, neither and that they are broken abstractions.

<comment><USER10> "Willpower" isn't the answer, either. Like, long-term expenditure of willpower isn't a good solution to any problem. I hope I didn't imply that that was my proposed solution.

Like, what I'm saying is that if you replaced the decision-making process for eating with an algorithm designed to bring someone to a specific body weight, that would basically solve the obesity problem.

To answer your question more directly, there may be nutritional solutions to the mental problems that lead to over-eating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like the discovered the effects of low-carb diets sixty years ago?

How did you find this paper, out of curiosity? Makes you wonder how many other discoveries were made and ignored.

<comment><USER13> Not just 60. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting)

Actually this made me wonder how far back you could go, and a little searching turned up a vaguely-decent match from antiquity: "Obese people and those desiring to lose weight should perform hard work before food . . . Their meals should be of a fatty nature as people get thus satiated with little food. They should, moreover, eat only once a day and take no baths and sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible. —Hippocrates (Hippocrates on Diet and Hygiene, Zeno, London, 1952)" at [http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html](http://forum.lowcarber.org/archive/index.php/t-464645.html) which was ironically hard to find among all the hits for a vegetarian Hippocrates Diet.

<comment><USER14> >sleep on a hard bed and walk naked as long as possible

That's the problem , huh. I'll have to let my co-workers know that they're in for a few weeks of naked walking around the office.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if the walking naked "as long as possible" is about the seasons? That is, subjecting yourself to colder temperatures -- which is also a modern recommendation (cold showers) in some of the same circles as recommend a high- fat diet with intermittent fasting ("eat only once a day", "hard work before food").

If so, the hard bed's the only part that been dropped.

<comment><USER3> Almost definitely not. Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common today, even with good food sources like fortified dairy products and eggs. The ancient Greeks didn't have fortified dairy and the chicken hadn't been domesticated yet, so the only readily available food source of vitamin D was liver. Luckily, the body can produce vitamin D; half an hour of naked sun exposure is more than sufficient to meet your daily requirements.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like a better idea. I've seen a couple claims that higher vitamin-D levels go with lower weight, e.g. [https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin-d...](https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/releases/2014/04/vitamin- d-effect-on-weight-loss.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here are some videos that convinced me to try low-carbs a few years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM) Sugar: The Bitter Truth

1h29 - One of the best information (as in biology) video around about sugar.

\----

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDneyrETR2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDneyrETR2o) Why We Get Fat

1h10 - A little less technical (IIRC), but still a great insight on what's going on.

\----

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vfK5U9qKaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vfK5U9qKaI) TWiT Live Specials 124: The Sugar Hill

55min - Steve Gibson on his discovery of low-carbs, how and why it works.

\----

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLf4bzAyOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLf4bzAyOM) \- Dr Eric Westman - Duke University New Atkins Ketogenic Diet for Weight Loss and Health

38min - Dr Eric Westman guide patients through what they can eat and what will be transition 'symptoms'.

</comment><comment><USER16> Eat what you can shows the ancestors [https://youtu.be/BMOjVYgYaG8](https://youtu.be/BMOjVYgYaG8)</comment>


Ask HN: How much would you charge to mentor me in C++? - <AUTHOR> I'm rather novice in C++. I know the basics. Where I lack is in design, design patterns and a higher level understanding.<p>How much would you charge for this? Per hour? Please be realistic. <comment><USER2> Do you really need a mentor? Or just a list of good books and path to take? What is your experience with other programming languages?

On the mentor charge, I think trying to get a mentor and pay a per hour thing maybe wrong. I mean, I can charge you for an hour for a skype 'lesson' but what about all the other work a mentor/teacher would have to do (checking code you wrote, writing notes, writing assignments or doing 'lesson plans')?

If you are interested, you can email me (info on profile) and we can discuss it further (for reference, I've wrote a book about C++ and having using it for more than 10 years as a developer).

<comment><USER3> i coudn't see any info on your profile

<comment><USER2> Weird, email is there, anyway: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER4> The email address field can only be viewed by you and Y Combinator. Put it in 'about' if you want it to be publicly visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not a direct answer to your question but ...

You should probably find someone in the Open Source world who is willing to mentor you for free and you could contribute code to their project (thus building a profile for yourself).

I myself am not very good in C++, but the more you program, the better you become. You may need to read Exceptional C++ by Herb Sutter and some other style guides and other books including Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu and C++ Templates : The Complete Guide by Josuttis and Vandevoorde. The Stanley Lippman book mentioned in another comment is also very good.

I work on an Open source project in C++ (but it's also got yacc and it's a compiler (so it may be a high barrier for you, but if you'd like to give it a try I would be happy to help for free) ), and I dont think I am good enough to mentor someone, but you should be able to find an Open Source dev who will mentor you, if you agree to contribute back. This way you can save yourself some money and build a profile at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting. Do you have a github and email?

<comment><USER5> Sorry about the late reply, I have no-procrast on, am going to disable it.

email: email@example.com, github neilxdsouza (same as my HN username).

the compiler is not yet pushed to github - I will do so and update you (but I dont have your email id either)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I write C++ for a living. I don't have time for Internet mentoring but I will suggest a few resources and general ways you can improve your code.

Are you a C++ novice or a programming novice? If you're a programming novice you should take some time and learn some standard algorithms and data structures. Introduction to Algorihms is fairly standard for university algorithm course. Make sure you understand complexity and big O notation. Understand typical container classes and their trade offs (lists, queues, stacks, deques, various types of trees, etc).

The best way to improve your code is to write code. Reading good code also helps but when you start out you can't tell good from bad. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you write: Is what I'm doing clear? Will I be able to understand what I did and why I did it if I read this a year from now? What could go wrong? What inputs do I expect and what happens if I get something unexpected? How hard will this be to update? How hard will this be to debug if things go wrong?

For a novice I'd suggest reading Effective C++ and More Effective C++ by Scott Meyers. Read a point or two a week and really focus on using them in your coding that week. This will help you build up good habits. A lot of good coding is good habits accumulated over time. Herb Sutter is another author with excellent books for beginning to intermediate coders. He's also got a really good blog.

Once you've read and used techniques from Meyers and Sutter get a copy of Code Complete by Steve McConnel This book is a great resource. Once you've read it all the way through you can read Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu. Anytime you find yourself thinking you should use a technique from Alexandrescu stop. You've probably gone too far and over thought something. Maybe ten percent of the time this happens you'll be right and template craziness is the right approach. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches the other ninety percent of the time by thinking more about what you're doing.

I know that some of these books are expensive but you really don't need to get them all at once. You can take a long time reading through each of them and learning to apply their content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this answer. I will look into all these things but in particular the algorithms.

Do you think it's worth learning esoteric algorithms or just the fundamental ones in order to get a job?

Also, what do you think about design patterns? Do you use it in practice (often)?

<comment><USER6> To start with it would probably be best to focus on fairly standard data structures and algorithms. Here are some you should learn about: stack, queue, dequeue, linked list, doubly linked list, binary tree, heap, B tree. You should be able to identify some times when you'd want to use one vs another from this list and what tradeoffs they have.

Esoteric algorithms aren't necessary but can be nice to know. If there's an area you want to specialize in or learn about you should learn the basic algorithms for that area. There are lots of things I've learned that I don't use regularly. For these things it's enough to know about them and have a rough idea. That's what books and the internet are for.

Design patterns can be useful if the people you work with know them. Their biggest benefit is giving you a common set of terminology that you can use to describe something. If I tell someone I'm using a factory they'll usually know what I'm talking about without needing more explanation. However, I wouldn't worry about them for now if I was you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was once contacted out of the blue by a local student who wanted some programming lessons. I met him at a coffee shop and worked with him for about an hour for free. We only did it once, but I was glad to help out.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am sure if you went to any big CS university in your area you could find some grad student who well versed in the requisite knowledge in being a good C++ programmer (Like Algorithm design, linear algebra, discrete math), and have them tutor you, generally the going rate is about $20-40 an hour. I would also make it a point to make sure they are proficient in what they say they are, a good set of questions or something of that sort. Find someone who enjoys reciting what they know, and will let you pick their brain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also what would be a great resource to learn c++ ?

My goal is to contribute to open-source database (like create a data-type extension(ex:hll) for postgres (iknow it's in c))

<comment><AUTHOR> "C++ Primer" by Lippman et al. is the best book in my opinion [http://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Primer-Stanley-B- Lippman/dp/032171...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/C-Primer-Stanley-B- Lippman/dp/0321714113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393070675&sr=8-1&keywords=c%2B%2B+primer)

<comment><USER3> thanks

you probably should have posted the thread on a weekday

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, probably :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is old.ycombinator.com written in arc? - <AUTHOR> Is the Old YC site written in arc? Was the old application system written in arc? What prompted the switch away from arc? <comment><USER2> That's just a static site, which was almost certainly served from the same server as HN, but just HTML. The old application system was written in Arc, and it was rewritten for all the familiar reasons (but you won't convince dang or me to use anything else!).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised that arc didn't win that battle. Has the old application system ever been open sourced?

If arc can't win at YC where can it win? What hope does it have? If one of you leaves, HN will be rewritten on rails or something, no?</comment></comment>