NoDesign.dev – Tools and resources for non-artistic developers - <AUTHOR> https://nodesign.dev/ <comment><USER2> If I could give one piece of advice for technical developers it's that design isn't all about the way it looks, it's about the way it works.

To expand on that, it's how the pieces fit together within your set of constraints. There's a LOT in common with what makes code beautiful or not. You get to the essential; nothing more, nothing less. This doesn't mean "minimalist" , per se — just be wary of ornamentation that doesn't add value.

A design can be award-winning without much "flash". A readable font. A thoughtful, consistent, grid, that gives the content some air. Color choices based on accessibility, constrained to a palette that has some meaning for the project, etc.

Don't be afraid to learn about design! Look to resources like IDEO, who take a principled approach to design that's not superficial. Think about the field of Architecture, where engineering and aesthetics have been combined for centuries — and where the same concerns of "essential" vs "ornamental" remain an active area of debate to this day.

<comment><USER3> > "...that gives the content some air."

lots of whitespace and "air" has become especially fashionable in the past many years. it makes design easier in some ways without necessarily pushing it forward. yes, it forces more conscientiousness of essentiality and contribution of each element (a good thing), but it's also used as an _ipso facto_ justification to resist change and meeting needs (a bad thing).

i love seeing designs that are intricate yet coherent. that seems to push boundaries more than "air". that approach seems more challenging than "cut as many elements as necessary to achieve a desired white space ratio".

<comment><USER4> Design is more complicated than just 'give content some air'. Here[0] doing that would be a recipe to disaster. I'm a user of this tool and it really works like it is. I doubt that making it look more trandy would make it more functional.

[0] [https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/assets/img- bru/mainscr.p...](https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/assets/img- bru/mainscr.png)

<comment><USER5> Just because you got used to this tool, does not mean it is good UX. To me this looks really cluttered, and I would be overwhelmed, if I looked at all those options for the first time.

And I don't even see a reason that all these different modes need to be visible at the same time. It also takes up alot of space.

There are probably many ways to make this more user friendly, but if it works for you, thats great

<comment><USER6> Airplane cockpit design is also "cluttered", but the people who will be using the cockpit interface (trained pilots) want that. The cockpit is designed for the pilot, and in every case design should be catered to the needs of the user. I work in UX specifically and try to oppose designing same-y interfaces at every turn. Different apps have different users with different needs. Unfortunately, this is an uphill battle as we've established some mystical need for "branded" interfaces that all look and act the same, regardless of the function or user need.

<comment><USER7> Airplanes are driven by people who are trained specifically for this purpose, Software tools don't have this requirement.

<comment><USER8> That's not really true. Every custom built tool receives some form of training. Easily accessible designs lend themselves more for getting right into and learning by doing as a lot is self-explanatory and the user isn't overwhelmed. On the other hand, nice designs with lots of space, often also end up with slow response times and lots of scrolling of clicking, making certain work quite tedious.

As the parent comment said, software should really be built for the user and not just so everyone and their children can use it (unless that's your target group).

Financial terminals don't have the super nice designs to it, but they are highly functional, customizable and fast. A lot of cashier terminals are still running on old hardware with bad designs, yet they are highly functional.

I think there's always room for improvement and with every change you'll see a certain amount of push back, but I think it's important to consider the user and not write "simplified" software, when you have power users in front of you.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you. The UX/UI patterns should be functional first with a focus on primary userbase. In many startup scenarios, however, the users are not identified yet, so this UX pattern works only when you are well aware of the business case and user capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nick-garfield I've got to recommend refactoringui.com.

They sell a (rather expensive) book on web/mobile app design that explains how to build your design system and use it to create great looking apps. They cover all the bases you would expect like fonts, line-heights, colors, shadows, borders, sizing, working with images, visual hierarchy, using white space, etc. etc.

I'm a developer by trade and I work primarily with one other developer, so we end up doing all of our design work. This book really helped us step up our game and gave us some very simple tactics to use to improve our designs. Imho, it was well worth the price.

[https://refactoringui.com](https://refactoringui.com)

<comment><USER9> I don't know. Just looking at one of the things that they've posted: [https://twitter.com/steveschoger/status/981606881255976961](https://twitter.com/steveschoger/status/981606881255976961)

> Overlapping images is a great way to add depth to an interface and make it > look more "designed".

I don't know if this is sarcasm. No one is asking _why_ do we need to add "depth"? What problem is "depth" of overlapping icons solving?

I would stay away from this.

<comment><USER10> I feel like you could ask similar "why" questions about everything design- related. "Why is no one asking why good-looking, modern designs are necessary?"

Many people interpret quality of design as an indicator of content or product quality.

To address your particular question, depth creates a more realistic and visually interesting representation of information on a screen. It can also serve to indicate the priority of information on a page. If depth draws your eye to or away from a particular element, it can help to achieve the designer's goals.

<comment><USER9> This is how you get more "trendy" designs than something timeless when fundamentals are thought through.

<comment><USER11> Depth is a fundamental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Alternatively, just work with a designer. There are thousands of them out there who want to build tech stuff but don't have the skills. They want developers to collaborate with. Reach out to some on social media and you might be surprised how receptive they are.

You don't have to do everything on your own, and you definitely shouldn't compromise on design if you want your project to succeed.

<comment><USER13> Isn't this for people who cannot afford to have a graphic designer?

Unless it is an open source project I feel it would be rude to ask someone to work for free on it.

<comment><USER12> _Unless it is an open source project I feel it would be rude to ask someone to work for free on it._

I said work _with_ a designer, as in a collaboration. As in bring them onboard as a co-founder, give them equity, have an agreement to share profits. Pay them if you can. Share skills by getting them to do design work on your side project in return for coding their side project. There are lots of ways to work with people.

I am absolutely not suggesting anyone asks someone to work for free. That's exploiting people. Don't do that.

<comment><USER14> Are designers usually co-founders?

<comment><USER12> Two of YouTube's founders, Chad Hurley and Christina Brodbeck, were designers. Charles Adler who started KickStarter is a designer. It does happen.

<comment><USER14> I think probably how it sounded to me was "Need a designer, get a designer as a co-founder." and I was thinking of random designer drone and not sure how that plays out as a skillet works out as a founder (I consider myself a programmer drone equally likely or not likely to be qualified to be a founder).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, Nodesign.dev is a collection of tools and resources for developers who want to make their site look "respectable" without using any design tools...It includes everything from favicon generator , illustrations to CSS frameworks.

<comment><USER15> Loosk very useful! Will definitely use this for my next design needs.

I can search trough it now via CMD+F, but it would be nice to add a search function showing a list of results. It can be very basic keywords search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay I will look into it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a heads up, the site loads with a horrible amount of pop-in. I suggest loading the items in the order you want to display them, so that after the first 6 load, the pop-in is finished, so that the screen will stop flashing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought of the same thing....I just made it with next.js and bootstrap ....I will look into it..

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How will these tools in fact enable a developer to ship a better design? As a developer with limited design skills, I find that the problem is not finding tools, but rather knowing how to use them, eg what font to choose, what color palette to pick etc.

<comment><USER18> > what font to choose, what color palette to pick etc.

I don't think anyone but you will be able to give an exact response to this. After all, it depends on your product and how you want it to look.

Remember, when it comes to design there are no universal right answers.

<comment><USER19> Are you aware of colour theory, and how to effectively use the colour wheel?

<comment> tech-historian The color wheel is great, but there are enough counter-examples that the original point stands -- design is inherently personal.

<comment><USER19> So is what programming language or framework to choose. Just because people have preference doesn't mean you can't learn the basics

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Design is a "talent" the same way software development is a "talent". Some people may have natural abilities, but overall it is something to be practiced and studied if you want to get better at it.

CSS is just a programming language.

I am as talentless a designer as any of you but I stopped reaching to libraries and frameworks to solve my design issues, and started learning modern CSS and some basic design skills.

Lots of good books and web sites, and my personal preference is video courses through Lynda.com, which I get for free through my public library.

<comment><USER20> Which Lynda courses would you recommend taking for starters?

<comment><USER19> The key thing is to look for courses released, like, 2018 or later.

I started with Essential CSS as a refresher. If you don't know much about CSS it's a good start. [https://www.lynda.com/CSS-tutorials/CSS-Essential- Training/5...](https://www.lynda.com/CSS-tutorials/CSS-Essential- Training/5038219-2.html)

Now I'm watching Design Aesthetics for the Web [https://www.lynda.com/Design- Techniques-tutorials/Design-Aes...](https://www.lynda.com/Design-Techniques- tutorials/Design-Aesthetics-Web/506078-2.html)

On the same topic as "you don't need frameworks to get jobs done", the next one I'm going to take is learning ES6, because modern browser-supported javascript isn't completely terrible anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I went from software engineer to founder. As part of that journey I had to learn something about design since my co-founder didn't have that skill or interest.

My advice for founders: copy.

Find a design you like, brand colors you like, and just copy it exactly. Colors, shadows, spacing, layout. As long as it is an established brand/company, the UX will be good enough that it won't harm your startup. And that's all you are going for initially: a design that doesn't turn customers away.

<comment><USER22> When you can afford it, I would hire a UX designer with a strong portfolio of usable/accessible design projects that knows how to interpret behavioral analytics into improving the UX over time as the company adds new features.

If you can spend money on marketing, you cannot afford to not spend money on ensuring the UX is working for your users and to get insight into if poor design is the reason behind not performing as expected for your bottom line.

Pro-tip: UX is NOT UI (there are a lot of off the shelf design systems that make designing UI trivial e.g. Salesforce lightning design system, material design, etc. - hire someone who is a UX design generalist until you can afford specialists - UX designers/researchers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Most of my side projects just lay somewhere because I think a good design can make a difference. So this is really great resources.

Does anybody have experience with [https://tailwindui.com/](https://tailwindui.com/). As dev I like the tailwindcss and the founder released this some time ago and I am wondering if it's worth the price.

<comment><USER24> I'm just in the process from migrating from UIKit to tailwind. So take this with a grain of salt:

Before you get into tailwind-ui, I would start out with the basics of tailwind, which can already take you quite far. I would even say, that using simply tailwind will make your design unique in a way that tailwind-ui won't. That way, while you are in the process of designing your website, you always have the option, to extract your own components and don't fall back to templates which restrict your design.

One video, which was eye opening for me, was watching Adam Wathan rebuild Netlifly from scratch [1]. My takeaway: You don't need fancy ui-components to build something great.

[1] [https://youtu.be/_JhTaENzfZQ?t=382](https://youtu.be/_JhTaENzfZQ?t=382)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome. I have been using unDraw and unsplash as well as some other things for my startup (shameless plug: [https://makely.me](https://makely.me))

Some feedback for the site: make the titles of each product a little more clear. For instance, "Free Stock Photos: High-Res Images for Websites & Commercial Use" doesn't tell me what the website is until I hover over it.

EDIT: Another thing, I was expecting the filters to be additive (i.e.: if I select "Art" and "Fonts", I would expect to see results from each category, instead I get nothing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's great you like your site...Thank you...I had perviously made the filters to be additive but later chose against it....as the the user needed to find the specific thing he is looking for like Favicon && Generators....

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Craig Newmark proved that the graphic part of design isn't strictly necessary. But I wonder if that's as true now as it was when he began craigslist in 1995.

<comment><USER26> The design of craigslist shouts "cheap and generic" at you, which is probably best for craigslist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Now that we've got no-code and no-design, I think we're just missing no-idea.

</comment><comment><USER28> See also: [https://github.com/LisaDziuba/Awesome-Design- Tools](https://github.com/LisaDziuba/Awesome-Design-Tools)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great but I think the point of this is to use the least amount of tools as possible...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the most useful design-related tools I've found is this color picker which generates complimentary colors for you based on model of your choice (triadic, analogous, etc.):

[https://www.sessions.edu/color-calculator/](https://www.sessions.edu/color- calculator/)

I always struggled with picking complimentary colors and found this worked a lot better than most of the pre-defined color palette suggestions out there.

</comment><comment><USER30> I see plenty of websites claiming to redistribute CC0 images. That can be a legal liability.

I mean there's nothing to stop someone from downloading photos from Flickr and uploading them in their own name to one of those CC0 websites, especially because the latter will usually do no contributor verification at all. But no matter what the website says, you - the person using the image - will be held legally responsible in case it was wrongly promoted as CC0.

</comment><comment><USER31> I actually find that design by programmers is usually much more elegant and user friendly than design by designers.

</comment><comment><USER32> FWIW, and since it's a design-oriented site (but maybe it's a pun on the site's name?), the masonry/grid flashes badly on first load on a desktop. I guess it's because of frequent CSS re-layouting as the individual grid cell's content graphics get loaded.

Edit: what winkeltripel said

</comment><comment><USER33> I've recently created a free tool to create good-looking CSS color gradients that might fit your audience:

[https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient- generator](https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient-generator)

<comment><USER34> Your website is really cool and useful, and I already used it for several times in the past 1 year, I think I knew it from a Show HN post.

Btw, I hope you can add more combine elements of LOGO, yeah, current combos are already amazing!

<comment><USER33> Glad you found it helpful. Enough ideas on the roadmap!

<comment><USER34> Glad to hear that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is fantastic, thank you. I bookmarked it to use when I start my next side project. At work we have a graphic design team to develop assets, but on my own I have no such resource. And I'm beyond terrible at it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Submitting a new tool:

For how long have you been using this tool? (Enter a number)

What does this number mean? Number of years/months/projects/...? I entered 2 and 1 and have no idea what you meant.

<comment><USER37> How long? 2

What? Years

So 2 years.

Or 2 write "months" if 2 months, or "projects" if 2 projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Brilliant. Bookmarked.

Of course some of the choices are personal opinion as to how good they are - especially items like UI Designers, but still good to have the choices in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thanks for sharing this! As a dev who would like to improve my awareness of design, this collection of resources will definitely help me learn.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is very helpful indeed! It's difficult to find aspiration sometimes if you're not in the "flow" for quite a while.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love it. This is what I needed. I am not a designer but I design and build stuff. So I am going to use this very often.

</comment><comment><USER42> Building startups with no design boringtech:

Server-side rendering

ORM (Ruby/Django)

Bootstrap (jQuery one)

FontAwesome

Google Fonts

Template from a store $50 - takes you from 0 to 1

Hetzner $40/mo single real hardware server

</comment><comment><USER43> I like the submission form.

CPU: How long have you been using this framework?

Me Type: 1 YEAR

CPU: Must be a number greater than 0

Me Think: Mmm ok

Me Type: 525600

CPU: Thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL....

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great resource, congrats! Thanks for featuring UI Design Daily:)

</comment><comment><USER45> it would also be nice to just be able to click the tile for the listing and being taken to the site rather than having to click the title which is not apparent at first.

</comment><comment><USER46> Thanks, that's how you develop a bookmark

</comment><comment> kernel-dump Very cool collection of tools, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER45> very nice!!!

you have color twice as choice btw ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks, I will fix it....

<comment> Ash-k Hey great resource. Any chance adding more categories like for the architecture diagrams.. visualparadigm sort of?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is pretty handy, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER48> I thought I was the only one...

</comment><comment><USER49> design is not making things pretty. it's about solving problems</comment>


The Web Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://thewebahead.net/

<comment><USER2> Only recently listened to an ep or two, I've enjoyed it!</comment>


Buy a Mech - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/B00H6V3BWA/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/375-0028159-6523855

<comment><USER2> I've just become a fan of the Japanese amazon! that is amazing</comment>


Schneier on Security : Privacy and Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_con.html

<comment><USER2> This seems like a fundamental flaw in the client-server model when hosting social/personal information. The server host must pay the electric bill (3rd party) leading to a natural conflict with the interests of the user.

I'd like to think that there is a market rather than regulatory solution. But the story of Zero Knowledge Systems (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radialpoint#History>) shows that retail privacy did not find a market during the DotCom boom. Perhaps highly sensitive social network content will change that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to see some privacy laws that effectively stated that:

1) All privacy settings must be easy to find, and govern the level of privacy of all aspects of communication.

2) All use of your data on a given service must be disclosed in plain English on an easy to find part of the site.

3) All sites are required to have a "scrub" feature that a user can use to delete all data associated with him from the service.

I am often concerned by how much of my info is out there, even though I try to control it as much as possible. I don't want to slide to the side of being the equivalent of an internet hermit, however. But sometimes you really don't have a choice, it's either be a hermit or let advertisers have your information.

Wish that would change.

<comment><USER4> Regarding your point #3: how would "scrub" work with interconnected user data? Comment threads like this one are a good example; my comment is dependent on yours for context. Should you be able to delete your data and leave my comment dangling? If so, should your deletion cascade to my related data? Shouldn't I have a say in that?

<comment><USER3> Certainly that's a grey area, but I don't see why such posts couldn't just replace the user with "Unknown User" and leave the actual data there. Definitely there'd be a problem with conversations when some posts disappear. But I should still be able to detach myself from those things.

<comment><USER5> This becomes a bigger problem when you're dealing with quoting.

Suppose I wrote something like: "As MrCharles said above, it's a grey area, but...".

So then what? Do we scrub all mentions of your username down the thread? What about typos?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for a scrubbing mechanism -- but it's a complicated problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I don't want you using anything I might have done here to make money," said the guy who just got a bunch of not-free-to-create, not-free-to-serve content for nothing.

We can bemoan the current state of things all we like, but people still need to be paid for their time. The only real effect of the type of privacy legislation Schneier advocates would be to make explicit and thorough opt-in mandatory in order to access most content - the average individual would effectively have less privacy than they did before the legislation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is it that this Schneier guy is mentioned on HN all the time? If it's not Schneier it's this Paul Graham, both of which I have never heard of and that I suspect don't even exist.

<comment><USER8> You hear about them on here "all the time", and yet you've never heard of them? How does that work?

<comment><USER7> Well except for here. This Paul Graham persona must be some kind of inside joke here.</comment></comment></comment>


Gamma rays from the Milky Way's core look ever more like signs of dark matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21678126-powerful-gamma-rays-centre-milky-way-look-ever-more-signs? <comment><USER2> Treat this article with skepticism. I think the journalist has badly misjudged the current consensus in the field when they say:

"There are still a few die-hards who do not believe in hooperons. They suggest that if an ensemble of millisecond pulsars (dead stars that rotate hundreds of times a second) were buried in the Milky Way's middle, that might do the trick."

The way I hear it, a population of new point sources is a better match for the Fermi data than dark matter --- the excess is "clumpy", indicating point sources, when you would expect a dark matter signal to be diffuse.

</comment><comment><USER3> My high school physics professor had a motto: "Good enough is not good enough." This was generally in response to the imprecision of lazy students who would say to themselves or their lab partners, "Good enough." It's something I've carried with me in life in a lot of contexts.

So it was fun seeing Dr. Goodenough's name in the article.

<comment><USER4> Alas, her name is pronounced ~Good-en-know, not Good-en-nuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know this betrays my ignorance but it just seems that dark matter is a rather implausible explanation for the apparent evidence of additional gravitational force being exerted.

"must outweigh familiar, atomic, matter by about six to one" but despite our best efforts it cannot be detected but there's vast amounts of it.

It seems to me there must be a better explanation because so far this one (i.e. it's there but we just can't detect it at all) just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER6> We have good reason to believe that when we talk about dark matter, we really are referring to some kind of "stuff" that has mass and momentum, but doesn't interact electromagnetically with normal matter.

The most visually striking evidence comes from the Bullet Cluster. We can _see_ two galaxy clusters that have recently collided at ~1% of the speed of light, causing the gas to be slowed and heated. And we can map the mass distribution via gravitational lensing, and see that a large amount of the clusters' mass has passed right through each other without being slowed. This is more or less what you would predict if "dark matter" is made of weakly- interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and is pretty hard to explain by appealing to a modified law of gravity.

[http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/index.html](http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/index.html)

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

<comment><USER7> Could it be that dark matter is stretched out along an axis that's invisible to us and gravity? Maybe the particles don't interact with each other or anything else because they're not actually that close to each other except when projected onto the dimensions familiar to us, and on which gravity acts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also see [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter- explos...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter-explosions- at-milky-way-core/)

Edit: I find this 2011 paper, but nothing newer: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.2752v3.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.2752v3.pdf)

Maybe someone can point to their latest stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> "and particle physicists will have six times more stuff to study than they had before."

Can anyone out there explain this statement for us non-physicists?

<comment><USER10> They're echoing a statement made in the third paragraph: "Everything from the motions of galaxies to calculations about what sort of universe came out of the Big Bang says it [dark matter] must exist—and must outweigh familiar, atomic, matter by about six to one."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dark Matter is apparently 84.54% of our Universe. If this is so abandoned, why did the millions we spend looking for it did not yield anything ?

Lets see:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612201.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612201.pdf) [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0716v3.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0716v3.pdf)

If you go through the list of papers on the Michelson-Morley experiment, you will see that it is not that clear. In fact, they did a lot of things wrong then. Averaged values that should have not been, missing information about the movement of the solar system around the galaxy core (~360 km/s), gas mode instead of vacuum,...

There are many critical papers published over the years:

[http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+michelson+morley/0/1/0/...](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+michelson+morley/0/1/0/all/0/1?skip=0&query_id=d6e27eb164d5921a)

This is a very nice list of better experiments, looking into those is very interesting:

[http://www.helical-structures.org/new_evidences/modern- ether...](http://www.helical-structures.org/new_evidences/modern-ether-drift- exp/ether-drift-exp.pdf)

Einstein only later understood, that general Relativity without aether is unthinkable (Sidelights on Relativity): """ Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it. """

He did not need aether for SR, but GR without aether, simply does not make sense. Also radial waves as predicted by Lord Kelvin and discovered by Tesla are not really understandable without. You can explain many virtual particles by creating a zoo like the standard model did, but radial waves you can't.

Dark Matter is the aether, without it's mass, spiral galaxies and many other cosmological phenomena are not explainable - or at least not classical.

The problem with most aether theories is, that they assume it as some sort of superfluid, or some special substance, which both do not make so much sense, as the complexity of the vacuum is simply to great. It must at least implement all virtual particles (β+/β-/photons/...), electric and magnet fields (Hertz & Tesla waves, as both exist),...

The BSM-SG model has a completely different aether model, instead of some special substance, it is made of the same building materials as protons/electrons, just in a much smaller and different geometric structure.

It has only one fundamental force and 2 very simple fundamental particles (balls). It becomes clear, that already quite large crystals, that look like prisms, under this one law of attraction, build a grid that looks like a 3d honey web.

In this grid, you can find all the physical properties we can measure. Electric and Magnet Fields, Speed of Light, Photons, Vacuum Fluctuations, Gravity, Coulomb Barrier, Quantum Entanglement, Virtual Particles (without rest-mass)....

Of course, many of those are iterations between the extremely complex geometrical structure of electrons/protons/neutrons and the Cosmic Lattice as its called in BSM-SG.

Best physics book I read and most sensible unified theory I have encountered so far:

[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter- Supergravitati...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Structures-Matter- Supergravitation-Unified/dp/1412083877)

Needs an open mind tho and some months of heavy thinking for really getting into this theory, but once you grasp the basic interactions, geometric structures etc the universe starts to make so much sense. So far, every phenomena I encountered was explainable after some minutes-days of thinking and I always came to the same conclusion as Stoyan Sarg.

The universe is classic logical :)

<comment> stargazer-3 To put it in perspective for those who actually read through it: the aether that Einstein was talking about has nothing to do with a classical definition of aether from Michelson-Morley times and, of course, connection to dark matter is solely grammatical.

Since when did HN become an "alternative science" magnet?

<comment><USER11> I'm absolutely sure, that Einstein would have gone with the BSM-SG model. Unfortunately traveling back in time is impossible (from the BSM perspective).

Because the BSM model is the hacker approach to physics. If you can't unify a theory in 100 years, you most likely made some mistakes and a rewrite makes much more sense. Start from scratch with newest measurements and the simplest assumptions build it from ground up. Of course you must describe the different constants/forces of the standard model, but as long as you derive them logically, its absolutely valid.

Sorry, but we run out of time to wait 100 years for general physics to catch up. Paradima changes are slow, and we run out of time. Most people do not understand the great danger we are in:

arctic methane is just one of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pFDu7lLV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pFDu7lLV4)

If somebody gives me a classical theory of physics with the absolute minimal set of basic assumptions possible; that fits measurements very well, uses a more strict form of logic and provides one with a physical understanding of something that could save humanity:

I fucking taking it. I learn the crap out of it and I give my best to save this wonderful planet that we trashed. I studied physics long enough that I know how most, not all of course, tick. I understand the close mindedness of many scientists.

That's why I'm promoting it, that's why I think it deserves a chance to be investigated. Quite often, when I talk with people about this model, hackers have a much more open attitude to new ideas and very often, after answering many of their questions, I often here: ohh, this actually makes sense. Especially chemists are very fast interested, because it explains, of course, chemical bindings and the interaction between particles very well and understandable.</comment></comment></comment>


Email encryption for everyone via fsf - <AUTHOR> https://u.fsf.org/zb <comment><USER2> Or let someone else ([https://github.com/andreas-gone- wild/snackis](https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis)) do it for you.</comment>


Show HN: Nametiles – Your digital identity, embedded in your blog - <AUTHOR> https://nametiles.co

<comment><USER2> Been following Nametiles / Passcard development for a bit. One gap I think NameTiles could really help fill is Authorship.

For instance, in a WordPress post, you have the author (ie "This post was written by +larry"), so it'd be cool if the WP plugin used a Nametile on the author link.

Then, somewhere, I should be able to see _everything_ +larry has written on any site, so that I can keep tabs on stuff he writes on his various properties.

I know Google dumped showing Authorship in the search results (I'm not sure if they're using it at all in their algorithm), but I think this is the best use case.

I like certain authors but don't want to follow their social media. I just want to see the stuff they've _written_.

And _that_ , IMHO, was the actual purpose of Authorship anyway! Google lost their direction with it and made it far too complicated (as they often do)...

Anyway, just one of several cool use cases for this. Congrats on the cool idea and launch Larry!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think part of the vision for this technology is that since primary key for people's identity (or identities!) to tie to together parts of their identity across different platforms and services.

Google, Facebook, etc have tried to do this before, but it never works because their business concerns always get in the way of the technology.

Imagine Facebook agreeing to make Google Accounts their primary key for their userbase. It wouldnt even happen over Zuck's cold dead body - would be a horrible business decision.

Passcard is in the blockchain and the only ownership is people owning their identities, so anyone can build on it...just like I built Nametiles!</comment></comment>


Storyboarding in UX Design - <AUTHOR> https://uxplanet.org/storyboarding-in-ux-design-b9d2e18e5fab <comment><USER2> I saw this concept with Airbnb in Design Disruptors, an hour long film about various designers at top companies like Julie Zhou of Facebook. Airbnb hired a Disney storyboard artist to walk through not just what the app would look like but what the consumer would feel and experience as they went through the app. Because Airbnb's appeal is not within the app but outside, in someone's home, the storyboard talked about the interactions between the in app world and the real world, and how to connect them. An app is just as much about emotion, how the experience makes people feel, as it is about the raw functionality, so storyboarding through an emotional experience is a very good way to achieve UX design.

<comment><USER3> I can't seem to find the documentary you're referring to, any pointers?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.designdisruptors.com/](https://www.designdisruptors.com/)

Do note that it is sponsored by InVision, but I didn't think that detracted from the message because there was no product placement. It is also in limited showings, not online anywhere as far as I know.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty interested in this, but wasn't able to find it online. Was it released publicly?

<comment><USER2> It has limited release I think. I was able to watch it through a design group that I am in local to our area that hosted a screening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If someone is looking for resources/art work for creating nice storyboard, you can find some great templates with characters, backgrounds and objects at

[https://experience.sap.com/designservices/approach/scenes](https://experience.sap.com/designservices/approach/scenes)

All released under CC4.0

<comment><USER6> Wish I can give you +100

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would you say it's overkill to be using these processes to design a Qliksense dashboard?

<comment><USER8> Do you mean make a story of the emotions/steps someone goes through when engaging with an awesome dashboard? I wouldn't storyboard that. First, what is the Qliksense dashboard monitoring? What is the key metric you're trying to move? What is the core reason your product can move that metric? Storyboard how users use your product to enable them to solve problems, not the dashboard that measures that impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmmm... storyboarding in software design, this is definitely a new idea for me. Going to try it out in my hobby projects and see where it takes me.</comment>


Facebook uses 2FA phone number for status updates - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Gabriel__Lewis/status/963121814166630400 <comment><USER2> I've always been suspicious of services that use SMS as the primary 2FA mechanism. TOTP is more secure and convenient, but it doesn't allow the service to collect and extra datapoint. Using a communication channel intended for security as a method to boost falling engagement is as shady as it gets.

Matthew Green's twitter thread[0] on this is an interesting read.

0: [https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/96376666146678784...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/963766661466787840)</comment>


Fault in Hong Kong Air Traffic system caused by exceeding 5500 user settings - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2087944/hong-kong-air-traffic-system-fix-come-two-weeks-after-latest <comment><USER2> This just doesn't add up to me.

5500 is an odd number (not power of two) which rules out some kind of overflow issue.

Was this some kind of fixed size database? Why would it have crashed when storing 5500 rows?

Maybe storing that many hit a timeout, and maybe they were stored outside a transaction, hence leaving the system in an inconsistent state? But that wouldn't explain the database shutting down.

Maybe they were trying to store 5500 but hit a limit at 4096 before getting there?

I feel something is lost in translation (between nerds and non nerds) in the explanation for this outage.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I had the same feeling; how could anyone writing something like an air traffic control system design it in such a way that some failure/exception in loading user settings causes the system to die?

This is probably a horrible mess of ancient java crap and the 5500 is just an arbitrary number that the store couldn't respond to in time before the app timed the con out; but having lived in mordor, a horrific data model which would enable this sort of thing to be a problem isn't too big of a stretch of the imagination.

My bigger question was what the hell kind of application needs 5k settings per user.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems to be this one here... Auto Track III

[http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/autotrac/](http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/autotrac/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB4Qy6mNYWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB4Qy6mNYWY)

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of junior (and sometimes not so junior) developers not protecting against the full range of possibilities in conditions, and how hard it's for some to understand that there's glitches that make the counter go +2 instead of +1 before arriving at the condition check.

</comment><comment><USER6> Atrocious site. Popups before seeing site. Then difficult to scroll. Randomly navigates to a new story when scrolling.</comment>


Maximal Unviable Products - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leanstart.ch/post/31119923524/maximal-unviable-products

<comment><USER2> Stereo8 or "8track" in the vernacular of the time allowed for the selection between four stereo programs, not eight (there were two tracks per program).

One problem from a content standpoint was aligning songs within the fixed time provided by the loop. It was not uncommon for a song to span programs creating a break in the piece and a mechanical thunking sound. Compact cassette allowed more graceful handling of differences in the length of its programs (though not as graceful a handling as the LP format).

On the other hand, Stereo8 had an excellent functional interface. Loading and playing a tape was simpler than the LP which preceded it and the cassettes which followed.

<comment><USER3> I think another big reason for the success of the cassette was that you could record your own. I remember 8 track, and while I'm sure you could buy decks that did recording, I don't remember anyone I knew having one, and I don't ever recall seeing blank 8-track cartridges for sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it would have been more illustrative to pick something that wasn't actually a commercial success? :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape#Commercial_success>

</comment><comment><USER5> > _I don't know how Philips designed Compact Cassette, but if they were not > purposedly user-centered, at least they had better luck._

If it wasn't luck, then Philips lost something along the way. In Dutch tech circles, Philips is infamous for continuously making exactly the fault that the RCA made in this article: too much invention, too little market research.

<comment><USER6> I would really like to read about the compact cassette design history. It's a really remarkable product in which you can appreciate a long list of trade- offs made by the designer(s).</comment></comment>


Show HN: NLP analysis of Trump's Inaugural - <AUTHOR> http://trumpdata.org/# <comment><USER2> I think some day in the future we might get to a point where political speech writing, or maybe just the writing industry in general, develops a dichotomy a bit like hacking where you have white hats on the one side using speech analysis tools and generators to create works and test them against mock audiences, and black hats on the other side using similar tools to figure out the audiences they were targeting and the parameters involved.

Take this to the extreme and you get neural nets analysing your live speech, finishing your sentences with viable suggestions, each suggestion optimised for sentiment and meaning towards personal goals and relationships with your audience. A little guy in your ear to tell you how you're statistically doing in your job interview or date and suggest some things to say to steer you toward your goal. Of course the person you're taking to also has the same little guy and they are both trying to outplay each other by predicting the other's next move.

Also, this is cool, nice work! Feature request: hover over the data points to see the year and name of the president.

<comment><USER3> Marking this idea down for a short science fiction story !</comment></comment>


Yelp Co-Founder: 'No amount of money will get us to manipulate reviews' - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229884 <comment><USER2> Good One & hope it stays true. Hotel owners have started hating Tripadvisor precisely for the very reason of manipulative reviews and hate posts.

Yet, in a large crowdsourced model, you really cannot control such things from competitors, paid agents etc. A challenge to be solved.</comment>


Kevin McDonagh on: How to attend a conference - tomh- http://swombat.com/2011/2/25/kevin-mcdonagh-how-to-attend-a-conference

<comment><AUTHOR> The advice is really good for someone who wants to sell stuff. I kind of do comparable things without wanting to sell anything. I just like to hear what people are working on and what there plans are so I can stay in the loop of new developments. My goal for a conference is 20 business cards, not 200 to 400.

The talking to new people thing is pretty important. I am terrible at this. When I attended my first conference in 2008 a continent away I stood there in a room of 400 people literally not knowing anybody. That moment it dawned me that my boss just paid thousands of dollars to get me here so I better use this opportunity. Three years later, one of the first five people I talked to at that conference got me an H1-B visa and a six figures job.

There are related mistakes to make. I've been to so many conferences by now that I know a lot of people I want to hang out with at any given conference. It's easy to just keep talking to these people because that means I do not have to leave my comfort zone again. This is obviously bad because I will not meet new people that way. The same happens when you go to a conference with other people of your company and just stick together the whole time. Do not do this.

About this demoing thing. I used to demo our software a lot at conferences. However, our software was so popular in our niche market that people always asked me to see it. I don't think I ever pushed it on anybody. Demoing works perfectly fine if you just leave the main room and sit somewhere around the corner. Most of the conferences I attend are in hotels, so they have plenty of chairs everywhere.

What is not mentioned in the article is that you should try to be a speaker at conferences. It is not very hard to become a speaker and it puts you into the spotlight. This makes it much easier to make new contacts. Additionally, many conferences pay travel and hotel costs of their speakers which is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an insanely annoying behavior being on the receiving end and in fact will be decremental to your efforts if you do it to me. I go to conferences to talk to people in the community not to have to listen to pitches. This reminds me how the new york tech meetup turned from being a small venue cool place to present a project you are working on into a huge deal with vc's, service providers etc.

<comment><USER3> I guess it really depends on why you go to conferences, and which event you go to. I wouldn't pay the $1000+ price tag of some conferences just to "talk to people in the community". Free meetups achieve that just fine.

<comment><USER4> The nice thing about big conferences is that everybody makes an effort to show up. People aren't going to fly in from all around the world to attend a free meetup, whereas they might for a big conference. So the big conferences are really the best chance you're likely to get a large part of the community together for a chat. At the free meetups you'll mostly just be running into the same few people who happen to live less than a 45 minute drive away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regardless of whether you are trying to sell someone on your services, I feel that this is a very good piece of advice:

 _The majority will thank your asserted approach, and are looking forward to your conversation._

At a professional conference, oftentimes people are very happy to learn about what you do and to tell you about their own work and interests, but are too shy to initiate a conversation. Being proactive in this regard can be a very good way to make new contacts and to learn about what is going on in the field, even if you are not trying to eventually profit by signing them up as customers.

<comment><USER6> Although I am a normally shy person, I find that at academic gatherings such as conferences and workshops, I can very easily talk to people. "What do you work on? / What is your topic area?" is such an easy question and they are guaranteed to have a long interesting answer. Its rare to be in a spot to have so many people around you with common interests, it should be easy to get people talking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I appreciate some greeting the behaviour of pragmatic conference attendance as suspicious. I'm not advocating talk as any substitute for credibility but if you have a good product and want attention you will have to get out there and in front of people.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate that. What is annoying is the sales pitch that you don't want to hear and have a hard time escaping from. If somebody has a good product that you have interest in, an in-person demo and opportunity to ask questions is great! Or a business that you're interested in working with -

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone got any good tips for attending a technical conference as a regular developer rather than someone looking for business networking?

<comment><USER10> Just look at the conference as a few days of hanging out with like minded people. Just have fun.

My conference knowledge is limited to three years of PyCon, the annual Python conference, but maybe it's helpful...

* Sit in the front row. You paid to be there, you probably traveled to be there, and you probably came because you wanted to learn something. Sitting in the back posting on HN is easy, but get up front and suck the brains out of the speaker. I like to write notes with pen/paper and save my laptop for later.

* If you liked a talk, go up and thank the speaker. Introduce yourself, maybe ask a quick question, then let them get on their way. You might have just found an interesting person to have dinner with when there's 500 random people in the hotel lobby trying to figure out where to eat.

* If no talks interest you in the given time slot, go roam around the hallways, the expo room, or grab a cup of coffee. See what people are up to -- everyone's there with a common set of knowledge/problems. I've learned a ton just from introducing myself to the other guy getting a cup of coffee and end up finding out he also works in the same field, doing the same stuff, we both know each other's companies, but we're solving our problems in totally different ways. Rather than killing time on the web for 30 minutes until the next talk, I just made another acquaintance to grab a beer with, and he made me think about what I'm doing at work.

* If there are development sprints, stick around and hack with people. At PyCon I believe we had 400 people the first day, and it was some of the most fun of the whole conference.

<comment><USER9> Thanks - really useful advice :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _1-minute demo / tablet pdf presentation_

Huh? Do people really do this?

The last thing I want to do is demo _anything_ about myself to a bunch of people hunching over a tiny screen in a crowded room. Even Hacker News would look like shit, no matter how well you tried to pull it off.

The next-to-last-thing I want to do is watch your demo, hunching with a bunch of other people over your tiny screen.

I have enough technology back at the office. I came here to meet people and get get to know them. So just shake my hand, share some cool stuff with me, and meet me for a drink later. I'll remember you much better that way.

[EDIT: Replaced "the Mona Lisa" with "Hacker News". Thanks, JshWright.]

<comment><USER3> Actually, I'd argue that almost anything on an iPad looks pretty gorgeous. I do believe Kevin means demoing one-on-one. Novoda builds Android apps, so I guess he keeps screenshots and demos of those apps handy to show prospective clients.

<comment><USER7> Thats exactly what I do. Mind you, not usually within a crowded tiny room. Sometimes talk is just not enough to earn trust, people want to see evidence. A phone with the apps and shortcuts pre-installed is live demo hazard ridden but generally a tablet is a nice backdrop to conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I prefer to have fun, learn things, then get very drunk afterwards. If I meet people along the way that's cool too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Slightly related, where are these conferences and meetups in Europe? Are there just much less and are they smaller, or am I looking in the wrong places? Where _should_ I look?

<comment><USER7> I find conferences through others in the same industry: <http://plancast.com> <http://lanyrd.com> Mostly it is just through the grapevine <http://twitter.com> and <http://meetup.com>, knowing lots of people within the industry helps.

<comment><USER13> "knowing lots of people within the industry helps."

Yeah but that's Catch-22, of course :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Analytics Zoo – Distributed TensorFlow and Keras on Apache Spark - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/intel-analytics/analytics-zoo <comment><AUTHOR> \- Data wrangling and analysis using PySpark

\- Deep learning model development using TensorFlow or Keras

\- Distributed training/inference on Spark and BigDL

\- All within a single unified pipeline and in a user-transparent fashion!</comment>


The 'Sent from my iPhone' Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.alearningaday.com/2011/08/sent-from-my-iphone-thing.html

<comment><USER2> See also "Sent from my high horse": <http://foocorp.net/horse/>

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you spend $100 a month for a year on professional development? - <AUTHOR> If you have a budget of $1,200 for a year, how would you spend it to get the most out of it? <comment><USER2> Health hacks. Supplements, nootropics, MCT oil, sleep aids, HRV training equipment, meditation software--whatever I find works. $1200 USD more than covers my annual health needs for regular upkeep beyond food and exercise, but I would spend four times as much for the same without hesitation.

From a purely monetary perspective, I know I can reliably turn $1200 USD invested in my health into many tens of thousands more, but only if _I_ am reliable.

Having the right tools helps me avoid illness, depression, inessential idleness, "brain fog," anxiety, and other, similar maladies. Not fighting myself means I have more energy to focus on my goals, which results in more time for essential idleness, which provides me more energy to focus on my goals, and so on.

With the right tools, I can work at peak performance every day, and $1200 is, to me, a worthwhile price to achieve this. Regardless, I wish you well in whatever you choose to invest your $1200 in.

<comment><USER3> > Supplements, nootropics, MCT oil, sleep aids, HRV training equipment, > meditation software

Is there any reliable, legitimate evidence that any of these things are actually useful? Or is it all just hand-wavey nonsense?

From a quick Google, I'm seeing lots of results from the Bulletproof(tm) coffee guy which isn't doing a lot for my faith in this.

Mostly curious because after pricing out the things that you listed, it feels like you could get a lot more placebo-bang for your buck.

<comment><USER2> Yes, there appears to be good evidence that Vitamin C and Zinc aid immune function. Yes, Iodine deficiency is real, and you should ensure you have enough. Yes, 5-HTP, Tryptophan, Melatonin, and Magnesium are excellent sleep aids. Yes, Caprylic acid oxidizes in the gut to produce ketones. Optimizing bodily function starts with diet, continues with exercise, and finishes with topping off whatever is missing, or reducing whatever is in excess. Knowing what's in your food, how your body interacts with it, and how to supplement it doesn't seem like hand-waving to me. The hand-waving comes when people make extraordinary claims far exceeding the known effects of any one of these tools, and with time and effort, it is possible to cut the wheat from the chaff.

There really is nowhere near enough epidemiological study on the effects of nootropics or performance enhancing drugs, in general. Much of the science surrounding the recent wave of biohacking is bleeding edge and, often, a study on some particular use also represents the entire corpus on its effects. In service of biohacking, this makes it difficult to weed out the hacks. As ever, _caveat emptor_.

That said, when it comes to making personal decisions about what helps you or hinders you, I don't believe you necessarily need to be a neurologist or an organic chemist. You can collect stories from other people, and take them on balance with what studies you can find. Going over something like [http://www.jbc.org/content/89/2/547.full.pdf](http://www.jbc.org/content/89/2/547.full.pdf) won't make for exciting reading, but it can help you make informed decisions. You can, with a cautious and self-critical attitude, guinea pig yourself, taking logs and noting your overall health and performance, preferably with the help of your doctor. You can ask others near you if they notice any changes in your performance or mood. And at all times, you can ask yourself how you feel.

There are a lot of people cashing in on "brain drugs" of late. You mention Bulletproof (Dave Asprey), and while Dave surely is making good money, he does sell decent products. To be considered separately, Dave openly advocates for sourcing food and supplements from wherever they may be cheapest and of good quality, but I happen to like his coffee, so I fork over the cash.

I don't know how placebo effect for one supplement could amount to much if you're already taking 30-40 vitamins, powders, and capsules a day (as I am). If I take one more white gel cap, I barely notice. What matters to me are my notes over the last few weeks, whether I've observed any positive or negative impact in that time, and whether that impact was sustained without any obvious confounding factors. This is hardly a multi-year, double-blind trial, but it is enough for me to confidently decide whether I find a drug's results favorable enough to continue using it.

As a freelance contractor, falling into even short bouts of illness, depression, indecision, immobility, or myopia represents a real and ever- present threat to my quality of life. For me, $1200 is completely worth the price of finding new ways to increase my total productive time. For others, that money is better spent elsewhere. Yet I would argue that even webmaven's purchase of a good chair and keyboard is right up there in my original list, under "whatever I find works." Any investment in one's health, I believe, is sure to be repaid in full, for what use is the rest if we do not have our health?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Safari books online subscription is one thing I personally find the most useful. Potential cost could be $0, though, if your local library has access.

<comment><USER5> If you get ACM membership you can get a good subset of Safari books and some other online book selections as part of the deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would hire a career coach. One idea I have been kicking around is bi-weekly scrums for those who want to go up the ladder. You will go to the scrum, explain what you have done in last two weeks and explain what you will do in next two weeks. The scrum master/coach plus others will give you suggestions based on what your career goals are.

<comment><USER7> +1 to this. Most of us are terrible at understanding our own bad behaviors and are friends are too nice to tell us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> #1 is a good chair. It's a cliche, but my Aeron has lasted for the entire 12 years of it's warranty (and they've shipped replacement parts out whenever needed), and has been worth every penny I spent on it.

The newly redesigned version[1] looks attractive as a replacement (probably in 2018).

After that, I would say #2 is a good keyboard, but specific recommendations are very personal. Suffice it to say that you probably want to spend at least $150 (and possibly 2-3x that) for the right keyboard for you. I am very likely to purchase a Keyboardio Model 01[2] next to replace my venerable Unicomp buckling spring keyboard[3].

Once you have the ergonomics of your work environment adjusted to your physique, you can commit to an extra hour or more every day of studying (by using) new tools, libraries, languages, etc. without unnecessary stress on your body.

[1] [http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/performance- wor...](http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/performance-work- chairs/aeron-remastered.html)

[2] [https://shop.keyboard.io](https://shop.keyboard.io)

[3] [http://www.pckeyboard.com/](http://www.pckeyboard.com/)

<comment><USER9> Man, with a keyboard from keyboard.io, it might actually make vanilla Emacs easier to use!

I wonder why previous designs of keyboards, including typewriters, didn't make greater use of your thumbs. It's a good half of the functionality of your hand that most input devices blithely ignore, in favor of our pinky fingers?! On the surface that seems like an ergonomic catastrophe.

Does anyone have a good reason why keyboards are designed they way they are now?

<comment><USER10> I just looked at keyboard.io. There is only space on the right hand?!?! I could never make that sacrifice.

<comment><USER8> The Model 01 is reprogrammable. Add a space key for the left hand if you like.

<comment><USER10> I don't know why they wouldn't make the space for both fingers. I used to use logitech software for programming keyboards and mouses but the software was so ram intensive for what it did (few keyboard binds). I'm sure this is not the case with a simple key re-binding but not for me unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Read more. Buy books when you hear someone online make a recommendation. The cost per book is inexpensive.

Books force you to disconnect and take time to think about your day's work and what to do next. I think that's my favorite part.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pluralsight subscription [https://www.pluralsight.com/](https://www.pluralsight.com/) .

</comment><comment><USER13> A threadmill desk and books, pretty much.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd gamble it all on games of skill to improve my risk management abilities.

</comment><comment><USER15> udemy courses</comment>


Sorry about that - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/bhlao/sorry_about_that/

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: Reddit dropped offline due to a known bug in a down-revision Ubuntu kernel, and the Reddit pinger dropped offline due to the same known bug in a different instance of the same down-revision Ubuntu kernel, and they're now implementing an outboard pinger.

<comment><USER3> And here's the bug: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/276476>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> in the words of one of the redditers on that thread: "I need a shower"

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr: Who cares ?

<comment><USER6> I did this morning when I was trying to read some funny FFFFFFFFUUUUUUU comics and drink some coffee.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get freelancing projects? - <AUTHOR> Hey there,
I recently decided to leave a startup after my vision differ from that of the founders and now I want to freelance to pay the bills while I'm trying to build something myself.
Do you have any tips and tricks from your own experience that could help me get some gigs? Any answer is highly appreciated!
Also, I've mostly done websites and themes in Wordpress, so I guess this area could be lucrative for me now.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Start building a client base by doing small jobs. Personally I went around looking at forums for people who needed bugs to be fixed on their website. Set your price as low as possible to higher the change of you actually securing these jobs, and then perform excellently.

If you perform well enough, you'll find these clients getting back to you with bigger jobs. Two years after doing exactly this for a period of only a month, I am still working for a large percentage of these clients, and their contacts to whom I was recommended.

Getting the engine started is the hard part here. As soon as that's done you simply have to focus on keeping the quality of what you're doing high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great insight. Thanks a lot! Could you tell me please what forums did you use? Something like reddit?

<comment><USER2> Reddit might work, although I have never tried that. Depending on where you are from, different sites might give you different results. I suggested that being a Dutchman myself, I would build a better relation with Dutch clients, so only went on looking for those.

That "location filter" might have reduced the competition, something which enlarges the change of you getting the job. Finding a job at a place where thousands of others are trying the same might be hard as a starter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull Freelancing has died out for me and everyone else I used to freelance with (this was circa 2004-2008). Here are the reasons I've seen that played a role in the climate (and it's not this virtuous market force here, the people who hire/fire are cargo-culting each other and narrowing their potential and access to talent as well):

1\. A great deal of the work has turned to agencies. The kind of people who liked freelance worked ended up seeking employment with them. The agencies finds juicy longer term projects that span 3 months to a year that can bill out a whole team.

2\. The general attitude toward working with a dev without locking them in is now frowned upon. Startups want a person on site and full time. (Even if a lot of startups putter out in < 3 years, they still have the impression they're hiring for the "long haul").

3\. Further saturation by upwork and other services. The kind of people offering gigs are miserly micromanagers who want very cheap labor from out of the country. The kind of people who count every penny and are not trying to attract talent with snacks and pool tables anyway (Despite them being often atrocious at nailing down specifications, often ends up getting lower quality work and building a lower quality product. You don't hear about there success stories).

4\. Freelancing isn't seen as a thing a seasoned developer fits in, in the current economy. I know I see threads here on HN about consulting, but really, there's a sampling bias and a lot of wishful thinking.

What I write above isn't iron rules. Just part of a cultural shift in hiring I've witnessed. Maybe I've been hanging out in the wrong places. I see good remote work as a unicorn.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a matter of specialization. If you're going to develop software, you're right, it's very unlikely a large project will be handed off to one freelance developer or even consultant. That's ideal for a team, billed out by an agency.

On the other hand, expertise in specific domains, like database optimization, security, architecture, agile methodology, etc where the work is more advisory and results are more report than hands on code - that is still going intensely strong, even for individual consultants.

<comment> git-pull Again, maybe I've just been hanging out in the wrong places.

> On the other hand, expertise in specific domains, like database > optimization, security, architecture, agile methodology, etc where the work > is more advisory and results are more report than hands on code - that is > still going intensely strong, even for individual consultants.

If it's that strong, where are all the job board postings? Where are all the linkedin profiles of these consultants and freelancers?

Maybe a couple exist. I've yet to be convinced there's _any_ market that someone could sink their teeth into for freelancing in tech. I'm not trying to push my perception. I'm hoping to see some sign; evidence.

I think employers are pushing back on outside, individual opinions and gigs and putting up more barriers, more tests while resumes flood in. Recruiters and HR's perception is they can be slow to hire and fast to fire anyway. That in itself, the fact you can just press a button on StackOverflow or LinkedIn and be one of hundreds of applicants is a reason why snapping up a freelance gig is hard.

Employers are drowning in applicants. It's known they can afford to skip over a potentially good candidate due to the numbers. Even _Cracking the Code Interview_ mentions it. Freelancing is a fast hire, relative to the battery of tests a full time, salaried position has.

One more time, I'm not trying to be right or push a perception. I'm a good coder. I have a hearty, hearty portfolio. I get calls back sometimes hours after I sent resumes in. Still, no one wants to snap me up fast even if its obvious I can produce results. I get a number and told to wait in line. Again and again. Even startups that aren't de-risked that have <2 years of runway are just looking for django developers are arrogantly flipping through candidates like they're large corporations that'd have job security. Based on what I've seen, they are resolutely filling solely fulltime positions.

But lets say I did score a gig or had a network developed, I'd still perceive it as an exception to the norm. I'd be happy to see proof of a tech area that has a distinguished pattern of snapping up people at an hourly rate that's realistic for a person with no established network, but adequate ability, to pursue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you don't have any personal connections related to your current job, I'm guessing that you'd need to do some cold calling/emailing(with examples of your work) to any potential clients and agencies.

And then there's also those business connections meetups. You could attend a few of those and see if you can find anyone who needs help.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a bit long, as it is my story, which I tried to keep short, but it might help guide you in the right direction. Lets get started.

The very first website I did was for an organization that helped Ethiopian children and I did it for free to gain experience. That experience would lead me into a career of web design. This website was done in WordPress.

The next project I charged a little bit more because I knew more. My boss called me into his office one day and told me he had a friend that needed a website because my boss had heard I was interested in expanding my practices of web design. He said, "Don't be afraid to charge."

So I figured I didn't know a crazy amount but whatever this guy requested of me, I could learn it. I ended up charging him $250 for like 10 pages. I remember spending more hours than I would've liked on it, so if we were to average out the price, I probably made next to nothing, but again: it was experience. The fact taht I could charge someone and someone paid me money to make them a website was the most amazing thing ever! This website was done in WordPress.

I then would revamp the entire website for the company I was working for at the time with the help of a coworker, who also become my fiancee. For obvious reasons, since we were learning and working somewhat on company time, we weren't paid for the project, other than being at work. This website probably boosted sales and helped increase company exposure. Before this website, the boss was using Flash and thought his website was amazing. It really wasn't. The website was done using HTML5, CSS, and Javascript.

Then I had this crazy idea that I wanted a popular website for myself and I had always wanted to create a website, but never had any idea for what I wanted. I was fascinated with jobs, careers, and the workplace. So I created the website and kept working at it. Hours and hours spent on it and many hours are still spent on it. The website is [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com) and this would teach me everything I needed to know about WordPress to be comfortable and confident enough to actually do business with any company I came across, no matter what.

I began to freelance by looking on Craigslist for people who needed websites. I figured I would go cheaper than the "average web developer". If you read, most are charging like $50 an hour or more. Me? I began charging $12 an hour at first, rising to $15, and now I'm between $20-$30 an hour 8 years later. Why is my pricing cheaper? Because I target individuals and small businesses who really can't afford to pay thousands of dollars for a website. In the beginning, my average price was around $350 - $500, but as my clients got more demanding, I had to raise the price of how much I charged for websites because they are requesting customization and it was constant back and forth in emails -- in other words: after all the emails were done, that was hours already gone there, and I hadn't even started on the website! It took me years to figure out a pricing system I was comfortable with: In the beginning, you lose more money. But as you begin to become comfortable, you learn to charge a certain amount that is fair for both you and your client. Trying to "become a millionaire" off your client is not possible. Most likely, they don't have millions of dollars, so drop the greed and just be fair. They are trying to make a living, you are helping them do that, and in return, they are helping you out.

For every client I meet, I always say these words: "When it comes to pricing, I will always be fair with you and I expect you to be fair with me." I've never had issues with clients paying ever. They don't question me. They don't ask for explanation. I do provide an invoice of work performed. But I don't question their professions and I don't expect them to question mine.

I also tend to be that web guy who picks up the pieces because other "web guys" will just disappear or they keep putting a bandaid on it rather than fixing the actual problem. I can only imagine they did this to keep getting paid. Me? I don't care.. I like to get paid by doing additional genuine work. Not charging the client to pretend I'm fixing their website just to get paid every month. I aim to alleviate my clients from having to spend so much money on a web guy.

Believe me, when they need it, they will turn to you for all the professional advice and help they need and they will pay for it. I have one client who I've built 5+ websites for -- I usually charge her about $850 - $1000 per website. But I mainly make my money through customization: "Hey I want this, I need it to do that." Working on those projects warrants more money because those requests are often beyond what WordPress plugins do. I also charge a minimum of one hour so I've always been the one to clean up and get rid of the problem.

So just a short brief summary of my client list:

1) found through Craigslist: some lady needed a web guy to run her multi- WordPress website -- she ran a franchise and had about 30 franchisees. So I got extra work on the side from those 30 clients.

2) found through Craigslist: I then met a guy whose web guy went off to college and he is an engineer who made a golf training aid that helps people. I've since redesigned his website, which I charged him about $1000 for and about $400 or $500 for yearly maintenance costs. (WordPress updates, adding pages, changing a few things here and there -- nothing major-no SEO, no marketing, no advertising, etc., but I do offer him advice on any of that stuff - I just won't do it for him, unless he needs it and it comes as a separate invoice)

3) found through word of mouth: I moved across the country and my fiancee was working a side job and a guy she worked with was the web developer for this woman who ran a "Paint and Wine" business (the most popular in my town), and he was just tired of keeping up with her website, as he was moving out of state, and needed to find her a web guy. That's where I come in -- he had actually designed the software, so in the beginning, I was charging her a fortune to try and fix his product that he designed in PHP. I knew PHP somewhat, but it kept breaking no matter what I did. I said to my new client: "Listen, I can keep charging you hundreds to thousands of dollars, or we can fix this one-time. I will charge you for my labor and the product, and we can be done with it. And you'll save a lot more money this way." I ended up charging her like $1500 to install an amazing calendar plugin, which did everything she needed, though she had a ton of requests, and with that, I made at least an additional thousand or two with her. If it was any company charging her, it would've been a lot more, but it helped me out, and I charged what I thought was fair. Nowadays, I just update her website every few months and send her an invoice with at least an hour minimum of work.

These are just a few of my clients.. I have a few more, but not worth mentioning in this story. As I have acquired clients, I also built myself a portfolio which I display on my "freelance business website" just to show off the work I've done and show potential clients that I am an actual web developer with a ton of websites under his belt. I also have everything on my LinkedIn page as well. It surely helps build trust and seeing that many websites, they are less likely to question your expertise.

I still get a few clients here and there through word of mouth mostly, but to be honest, I'm exhausted from managing clients, so I no longer seek them out or solicit on Craigslist anymore. You are not your own boss. They are your boss and when they email you, they expect an answer within a few hours. And they expect you to fix any problems they have immediately. Its wonderful and great for extra money in the beginning, but it gets old. So over the years, I've grown tired of maintaining a freelance client base and prefer to just focus on my primary job and my side projects.

Definitely not trying to deter you! It is a great start and I encourage you to do it: start small and learn as you go. As you get more experience, you can certainly warrant charging more for your services. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, really useful answer there. Would you like to keep the conversation going on email and ask you other questions? My email is email@example.com. Thanks!

<comment><USER5> Email sent.</comment></comment></comment>


Writing a MySQL storage engine from scratch (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.codeproject.com/articles/1107279/writing-a-mysql-storage-engine-from-scratch <comment><USER2> Somewhat related, I recently started trying to reverse-engineer the MySQL wire protocol. My idea is that if this is better documented then it will be easier for people to make databases that interoperate with MySQL clients but aren't MySQL that much easier (personally I want a custom Shard-Query-ish thing).

This is obstinately documented ([http://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/latest/PAGE_PROTOC...](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/latest/PAGE_PROTOCOL.html)), but I can't find a nice cheat-sheet saying "to send a query, you send this packet and you receive these packets" etc. I've taken to looking at e.g. the pure-Python PyMySQL package source-code [https://github.com/PyMySQL/PyMySQL/blob/master/pymysql/conne...](https://github.com/PyMySQL/PyMySQL/blob/master/pymysql/connections.py#L226)

Here's my progress so far: [https://gist.github.com/williame/ebf003dd85d5949f551a72331ae...](https://gist.github.com/williame/ebf003dd85d5949f551a72331aefec11)

Anyone know what commands you can send, and what the expected responses are?

<comment><USER3> Take a closer look at the MySQL documentation. You dont have to reverse engineer anything - it's all there and documented (source: wrote a client impl based on the docs)

[http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/client-server- protoc...](http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/client-server- protocol.html)

[http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/connection- phase.htm...](http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/connection-phase.html)

[http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/com- query.html](http://imysql.com/mysql-internal-manual/com-query.html)

etc

<comment><USER4> This is not the MySQL manual (dev.mysql.com) but a third party copy that is at least a few years old.

We're working on moving the internals documentation into the server code with Doxygen: [http://mysqlserverteam.com/mysql-8-0-now-documented-with- dox...](http://mysqlserverteam.com/mysql-8-0-now-documented-with-doxygen/)

<comment><USER3> I can see what parents issue was now :) I had a look at the doxygen and all the goold old protocol documentation seems to be deleted/missing from the "official" documentation website. How come -- I found it really useful?

\- [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/8.0.0/page_protoc...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/8.0.0/page_protocol_connection_phase.html)

\- [https://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/8.0.0/page_protoc...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/dev/mysql- server/8.0.0/page_protocol_command_phase.html)

<comment><USER3> Actually I remembered now that the last time I worked with the MySQL protocol (~2014) I had a similar problem: Some of our servers were still running an old version of MySQL so the client had to be backwards compatible. However, this old version of MySQL also used the "old mysql password" authentication which was found to be unsafe/broken at some point. So the MySQL guys deleted the documentation on how the old scheme worked and replaced it with a notice saying that it is insecure. Tough luck if you still had to support/implement it. The same thing has apparently happened here. Not only is the documentation gone, it's actually gone without a trace on the official website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one who likes the "C with classes" approach over C++?

<comment><USER6> Depends on what you mean by C++. C++11, C++14, C++17 have features that are must have to me.

<comment><USER7> Well thank goodness we live in 2017.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article, makes it very clear what parts of the database are- and are not- provided by the storage engine. I wrote a C wrapper for BoltDB recently, i wonder how MySQL would perform linked to that?

I have some memories of looking at VB6 code on codeproject.com over a decade ago, interesting to see that the site is still around and useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sqlite has a fairly straightforward way to implement your own storage engine as well, see the VFS documentation: [https://sqlite.org/vfs.html](https://sqlite.org/vfs.html)

Virtual tables are also interesting, but higher level, somewhat like a fuse filesystem. [https://sqlite.org/vtab.html](https://sqlite.org/vtab.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting article. Not many people work on low-level storage engines nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh, and it becomes painfully obvious why MySQL cannot use more than one index while executing the query.

<comment><USER12> Can PostgreSQL use more than one index per table while executing a query?

<comment><USER11> Absolutely: [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/indexes-bitmap- sc...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/indexes-bitmap-scans.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons learned from my time at Pulse - <AUTHOR> http://gbayer.com/observations/lessons-learned-in-engineering-management/

<comment><USER2> I really like the "I like, I wish, I wonder" style of communication. Gives everyone a framework and helps the quieter employees have a voice.</comment>