Ask HN: Native vs. React Native vs. Flutter - <AUTHOR> I am planning the plunge into app development. I have a startup idea and wish to prototype it (Mobile app is the biggest part) and i thought it would better not to outsource it.
I was planning to go with React Native as i have some Javascript experience and for the fast development, cross-platform aspect. But since app is a major part of my idea (Think something like Coursera targeted for mobile), I'm skeptical on compromising on performance issues from what I've heard people blaming React Native for (Not so butter smooth transitions, e.t.c).
What platform would you suggest and any advice? <comment><USER2> I strongly suggest you trying RN. Many of the issues related sloppy transitions is using modules that runs UI-driven changes on the JS-thread rather than utilising the power of doing it natively.

For example, rather than using [https://reactnavigation.org](https://reactnavigation.org) for navigation, consider using something like [https://wix.github.io/react-native- navigation](https://wix.github.io/react-native-navigation) since all screen transitions are native.

Combine this with the power of Firebase, you can use [https://rnfirebase.io](https://rnfirebase.io) and you'll have an app up and running in no-time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't pick flutter since it's so new and you're wanting to get to production. I assume you will end up having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do simple things. You also won't have the benefit of community established best practices to save you from making costly mistakes.

To choose between native and react-native, list the functionality that your app will have, and see if react-native has good support for it. If it doesn't, you will have to write native code for both platforms and add it yourself.

This adds a ton of learning to the equation and makes the choice less clear, since now you have to learn react-native, plus some swift and Java. If more than a small part of your app ends up requiring to write native code, you might be better off making the whole apps in Swift and Java.

React native is very efficient for apps that show simple widgets like images, texts, lists, buttons, etc. You also have good support for playing video (I assume you'll need it since you mention coursera-like content).

Some advice if you pick that route: \- Don't be fooled by it's simplicity. You can make an app in hours, but if it's non trivial you will require more time to really polish it \- React code can get messy fast, it's easy to lose track of where state changes happen. Choosing a well known architecture and sticking with it (ex: redux) is super helpful as complexity grows \- to get to 60fps, you need to be very precise on how and when to make state/U.I updates, so the optimization phase can take a while. I often end up going through all components in a tree to manually disable un-necessary re-renders, or delay re- rendering after some animation has completed. \- don't use react-router, it's not suited for native needs (it keeps all previous views from the stack active which creates all sorts of problems)

Compared to learning two languages for making an iOS and Android app, react native is incredibly fast and efficient, especially when you come from the web. If your app doesn't require native modules, go for it.

Source: spent the past year leading development of a react native app with 2M monthly users.

<comment><USER4> What's the app?

<comment><USER3> I can't say. It's an app that already existed, using separate code bases for iOS and android. The client wanted to streamline it using react native. The app mostly consists of lists of news, with lots of video content too.</comment></comment></comment>


Australian government plans to force tech giants to decrypt messages - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/turnbull-plans-law-to-force-tech-giants-to-decrypt-messages/news-story/8d94646950f179b7064d60af5e2493fa <comment><AUTHOR> Either the Australian government is incredibly incompetent or they are outright lying to the public. From the article -

 _He (Senetor Brandis) said he met the British government's chief cryptographer last week and believed it was technically possible to decode encrypted messages in a timeframe that police needed to act._

And -

 _This could be achieved without so-called back doors — built-in weaknesses that allowed a tech company access to a communication but could also leave it vulnerable to hackers, Senator Brandis said._

You really can't make this up. What is their true motive here? They can't force Apple, Google, Facebook etc to comply. We have seen the only option which China took is to block services which fail to comply (ie Google). Such moves would be deeply unpopular in the land down under.</comment>


Half of lonely people think no one will notice if something bad happens to them - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.ie/fabulous/3439832/half-of-lonely-people-think-no-one-will-notice-if-something-bad-happens-to-them-experts-say/ <comment><USER2> Sometimes I feel that it can be a lucrative trap to become invested in a single person, and then accumulate expectations that far outweigh the responsible obligations of any friendship.

As I have gotten older, a pattern that is working much better for me is the campfire model - I just try to keep a metaphorical campfire going, for people traveling through this life to stop and warm themselves upon while I tend it. I cannot know which direction people are traveling from, or to, or how long their journey has been or will be. But all people need to warm their calloused hands and feet, and I can keep this fire with a bed of rosy coals.

Sometimes someone will stop at my fire and warm themselves without my ever having paid attention, but to them it may have meant all the difference in the world. By keeping this obligation in mind, to simply expect people to need a place to sit a spell, I can at least believe I am helping.

The campfire is a nice way for me to remember we're all suffering, that not a one of us is unique to loneliness. Because sometimes that person who sits down at your fire is the person you have been waiting for, and only by making a seat for them were you able to ever meet.

<comment><USER3> Could you elaborate more concretely about this campfire model?

edit: Asking because I'm having a hard time visualizing the metaphor applied to reality. Do you find/make friends ("campers"?) differently? Would they consider you a friend, or are these relationships more broad with less depth? How does maintaining the fire relate to maintaining friendships? Are you just a support person handing out favors with little expectation of reciprocity? If so does that feel fulfilling compared to deeply investing in a smaller number of people?

<comment><USER4> I had a good friend who just had open "hang out" time every day after work in his garage. There was a group of about 30 friends who might stop by any time between 5 and 8 PM, have a beer, hang out and BS. Sometimes it was just Paul and 1 or 2 others, sometimes 15 people showed up, sometimes Paul wasn't even there, but the garage was always open (if you had the code). I used to go almost every day between work and home, it's how i made about half the friends I have now. It was also where weekend plans got made and many a hunting/fishing/camping trip got planned there.

That's over now and I really miss it. Buddy had some health problems and ended up with an overwhelming opiate addiction and just stopped hanging out with anyone. Some of the friends still get together for a weekend poker game but it's not the same. It was so cool to have a place you could go hang out after work where you knew everyone was fun to be around and they liked having you around. You never know who would be there or what the conversation would be but it was always a good time.

I've tried to get the same thing going myself, but have never been successful. I'm not sure how you get that started. Once it's going, it's self-sustaining, but you have to reach a critical mass of participants and has to occur really regularly, even daily. I think maybe it takes a very specific kind of person to be the host.

Anyway, that's what the OP's campfire analogy made me think of. I really miss it...

<comment><USER5> > I've tried to get the same thing going myself, but have never been > successful. I'm not sure how you get that started. Once it's going, it's > self-sustaining, but you have to reach a critical mass of participants and > has to occur really regularly, even daily. I think maybe it takes a very > specific kind of person to be the host.

You don't need to be the host. Indeed, the host can be some organization. A place of worship, if that appeals. Or a Unitarian "Church", if you're not religious. Or a hackerspace. Or really, any sort of interest group. Even the neighborhood bar, if it's a good one.

And maybe, once you get to know enough people, you can host parties, and people will show up.

<comment><USER6> As an atheist, I do envy the religious people their weekly meetups!

<comment><USER7> Trivia works. I go to two trivias (M/W) almost every week. I have a group of about 6 people that show up (random which subset) to each (not the same people) to play on my team, sometimes more (used to be a lot more but some people moved). And the other teams are people I knew before going there or have come to know since starting. Pleasant way to spend a couple hours a couple times a week. A bit of hanging out, a bit of competitive fun, and more hanging out.

<comment><USER8> Can you just randomly drop in solo or with another person to a trivia night? I've been to a few, but only ever as a sub on an "established" team.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty welcoming and gregarious, I have had random people join my team before when they asked (my teammates were less comfortable at first, but relaxed and welcomed them later). This will definitely depend on the crowd. It may be easier to start your own team (or playing solo at the bar) and just start getting to know the other teams for a while first before asking to join them.

It also depends on the location. One is a restaurant, people are generally less welcoming to random folks sitting at their dining table (unfortunately). The other location is a bar. It's _much_ easier to just join a random team. Find 3 people sitting at the bar and ask if you can join them. Or, like the last folks that joined us, find a table with several empty seats and ask to join them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My mom (who lives alone and is approaching 80) and I have an agreement: she emails me every morning with "hey" in the subject and no body if she doesn't feel like it. If I don't get an email, I call.

Since we started doing this (years), I feel more connected to her, and we often have conversations that last a while. I can't remember the last time I got a blank email.

<comment><USER10> I make it a point to call my mom on my 15 minute drive home instead of popping on another podcast. After my father passed, it took me a few years to reflect on the loneliness that she could be feeling. She looks forwards to these calls and I know that they provide a good connection for both of us.

I am considering getting her an apple watch in the next year or two for the emergency call features and fall detection.

<comment><USER11> Apple Watch has fall detection?

<comment><USER10> Series 4 does. If a fall is detected and the watch is not interacted with, it will SMS your emergency contact and call emergency services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think it's the "notice" part here. It's the "caring" part. To know that if something happens to you all your relatives and friends won't care or feel anything for losing you is the part that hurts, as for noticing. For sure they'll notice.

<comment><USER13> The question isn't whether people will notice if you die. It's whether people will notice if something bad happens. It's not a euphemism:

> One in nine didn't feel like they had anyone in their lives who they could > rely on in a crisis.

It's entirely unsurprising that lonely people think other people won't notice if they're in a crisis -- that's what being lonely is.

There's a song called "How Do You Get That Lonely?", about a boy who committed suicide, in which the last lines of the chorus are:

        How do you feel so empty
        you want to let it all go
        How do you get that lonely
        and nobody know

But this has never made any sense to me -- surely, if the problem is that you're so lonely that the best option available to you is killing yourself, it's to be expected that other people weren't familiar with your situation.

<comment><USER14> > _you 're so lonely that the best option available to you is killing > yourself_

The best option available would always be to meet a random person on the street because ending up with a bad person would not be as bad as dying.

<comment><USER15> People who agree would obviously do that instead of killing themselves, so you're just preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER14> My point is that suicide isn't usually a rational decision.

<comment><USER13> That depends entirely on your evaluation criteria. Your point is only that you don't want to commit suicide. Other people may.

<comment><USER14> Most people who commit suicide are not accurately judging their situation, due to a long term mental illness like depression, or often due to a momentary emotional upset. Just because someone "wants" to do something doesn't mean that it would actually serve their interests, and it doesn't even mean that they would want it one hour in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm positive if I died no one would notice for at least 2-3 months, maybe more

I live abroad. I have no truly close friends. The closest friend has 2 kids so I see him maybe once every 2 months. My family is 7000+ miles away. I talk to them about once every 3-8 months. The biggest issue is the time difference. Those times when I think "I feel like calling" it's always the wrong time so it's usually only when I'm up at 3am and instead of going to sleep I tell myself "Ok, I guess I should stay up another hour to call".

I'm self employed. 80% of my expenses are automated. (should be 100% really)

So, if I died a couple of friends might think I was rude for not answering their messages on slack or fb messenger but it would be quite a while before someone came and checked. Unless there was a smell or something coming from the apartment there really is no one I can think of that would check up on me.

Yes, I want to fix this situation. Stupidly I don't know how. I'm > 50yrs old. When I go out most people are < 40yrs old. Of course we get along but being in different places in your life can make it hard to relate the same way that people in the same place in life relate. I go to meetups and know a few people's names but haven't made any "friends".

<comment><USER17> _Stupidly I don 't know how_

If you like, we can become email friends, just to keep in touch. I may or may be able to relate to you, but I promise to try sincerely. I see myself going the same route, so...

On a meta level:

Do you have any ideas on how to think about situations like this? Surely, there must be millions of people who feel the same?

<comment><USER16> I actually don't have any ideas but I do think there are at least 2 opportunities.

1\. A better meetup.com

I have no idea if there is a way to make a better one so maybe there is no solution. What I find though is few meetups are actually that good. I have no idea how to make them better. Sponsor them? Hire organizers?

I know this is a hard problem. For example there was that "dinewithus.com" service and I guess the biggest issue is odds are low that the people you end up dinning with are actually people you want to be around.

2\. A better dating service

I see 2 problems with dating services today. (a) too many women get scared away from too many DTF messages which reduces the pool greatly (b) too many people not trying hard enough or not putting in the effort or unsure how to get the fire started. Examples are profiles with no info. Profiles with no pictures. Profiles with generic info "I like dining and travel". When matching bad messages "Hi!" etc..

I think there are creative ideas that might help with both a and b issues. It might be impossible but I think it would be interesting to try.

<comment><USER17> Hmmm. With dating services, there is a higher level of expectation than just a site for friends. I kinda wish there is a way to just meet people and talk - no other high expectations to begin with at least. After all, the first step in dating is becoming a friend, isn't it?

<comment><USER18> Bumble Friends/BFF is that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Loneliness is usually presented as a matching or communication problem: if only all the lonely people could find each other, and had the social skills to initiate contact, all would be well.

But what if it's deeper than that? Could we be losing the life/personality traits that make people interested in us? Overstimulated by other sources so that friendships with ordinary people are not interesting uses of time?

For example, just because you yourself are overweight, does not mean you will be attracted to other overweight people. So we should expect a decline in sexual relationships as the prevalence of obesity rises.

<comment><USER20> > _if only all the lonely people could find each other, and had the social > skills to initiate contact, all would be well._

I'd say I have very good social skills, never have a problem getting to know people when I take the time. The problem is I'm simultaneously a bit lonely (not a desperation level though) - but also not interested (in meeting people). It's really weird. Note that the "not interested" does not come from a(ny) level of depression, there is none (I know because I used to have a noticeable level of it many years ago, so I know how it feels to be incapacitated by even a small bit of that affliction). I just don't find most people interesting enough. That's not a "looking down" kind of feeling, but merely a mismatch.

A big part of it is the way we all live our lives though, I think. I want (a larger) _community_ and cannot find or even see it, no so much "the one" friendship, or even "just friends". Having superficial talks now and then just isn't enough for me, I'm looking for a larger purpose.

<comment><USER21> I think you are just a guy who is at wrong place, at wrong time.

Maybe you should try changing your circle of friends and meet different people, that can instantly change your mood.

For example, at the place that I'm working, I felt the same way, then I found a nerdy group of people playing DnD. Instantly I felt better and I have people that I can call friends that I can just hang out with.

My 2 cents :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sure. I mean maybe a few people actually care.. your parents, siblings and family, maybe your colleagues if you are lucky. All real estate is local as is anything that happens to you. Look at how we as a society treat the least able, the poor and the homeless. It's no wonder that the lonely don't expect any help because we as a society expect someone to reach out by definition. We are too busy doing nothing to help anyone else outside of our small circle.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there anyone that suffered a sort of midlife crisis after university? I fortunately have a job as a developer doing what I set out, but find I'm lacking the social connections I once had, especially since moving to a new city with few connections, the ones which I have already I'm fortunate to have, but still the feeling of loneliness creeps into me when I feel like I have no excuse to me. I think I'm lacking the deep relationship where I can open up to someone about how I really feel, rather than the usual conversation of what I _think_. (overthinking infact being a reoccurring problem)

</comment><comment><USER24> In my opinion, Loneliness & Global Warming are the most immediate existential threats facing humanity.

<comment><USER25> I don't think loneliness is an "existential threat", it's just a crisis. I have a hard time imagining the human species being wiped out because we're lonely. I would think that would fix itself long before it got to that point.

Climate change on the other hand...

<comment><USER11> Loneliness, or alienation, can certainly be exploited by politicians & the malevolent. Not as grave as climate change but possibly impactful at scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not especially a lonely person, I have a job, I have hobbies almost every day of the week, but I live alone and sometimes wonder how long it would take for people to notice "hey, this is really strange, anybody got news?" if I had an accident.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's so sad! If anyone wants a pen pal or someone to talk to I'm game!

<comment><USER28> me

<comment><USER29> how can i reach you, email me at my username @testimonly.com and i will be happy to talk to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> we are living in a time that without noticing it we are focusing on the quantity, not the quality of our connections. how can we shift our thoughts and senses to the latter?

</comment><comment><USER31> As I read the article, I was most puzzled as to how people could possibly be _afraid_ of such a trifle as loneliness.

The answer is in the buried-lead at the end:

>According to the Campaign To End Loneliness, loneliness has been found to speed up cognitive decline in older people, with one study concluding that it can increase your risk of developing clinical dementia by 64 per cent.

>Increasing the risk of high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and stroke, as well as disability, loneliness has also been found to increase your risk of dying early by 26 per cent - that's as much as obesity and smoking.

> So this isn't just a social problem - it's a potential health crisis.

This results in the question: how can we re-engineer humanity so that our 22nd-century cousins' physical health isn't dependent on, well, _dealing with people_?

(On second thought, it maybe doesn't result in that question after all: because nobody alive today could actually benefit from such an effort.)

</comment><comment><USER32> To all those that identify with feeling this way... Remember that it's statistically impossible that no one will notice. For better or worse, at least the mailperson will notice eventually.

<comment><USER33> "For years, the payments went out of the woman's bank account. Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan. Neighbors didn't notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy. At some point, her bank account ran dry."

[https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/michigan-mummified-body- fo...](https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/us/michigan-mummified-body- found/index.html)

<comment><USER34> > The woman's mummified body was sitting in the back seat of her car, parked > in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Truly macabre.

<comment><USER35> Roald Dahl couldn't have done it better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is opensource and why do I feel so guilty? - <AUTHOR> http://byfat.xxx/what-is-opensource-and-why-do-i-feel-so-guilty

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also have a look at the photos (<http://svay.com/photos/2012-11-30_dotjs/>) and other videos (<http://www.youtube.com/user/dotconferences>) from dotJS 2012.

It will happen again in Nov 2013!

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd wager that a lot of people are not going to click on a link labeled [video] hosted on a .xxx domain from work.</comment>


Help "Streamline" Startup School 2011 -- summarize while watching - <AUTHOR>

Our product, Streamliner, aims to make content more accessible via navigable summaries. You can help!
The following talks from SS2011 need Streamlines. Making one is easy, dare we say fun. Just take notes while you watch... why not, right?
Click a link (first comment below) to get started. Completed Streamlines are (and will be) viewable at http://tech.streamliner.co. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Ron Conway: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/952d6d4fcf0e218190373c8c31b30ff9...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/952d6d4fcf0e218190373c8c31b30ff9b5581258/)

Stephen Cohen: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/b845b9e9dda3306524f1d9512825fd7f...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/b845b9e9dda3306524f1d9512825fd7f61f41b31/)

Matt Mullenweg: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/c52b8e9dd300389e53ac35f5b5d1f64d...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/c52b8e9dd300389e53ac35f5b5d1f64d107cc65e/)

Ashton Kutcher: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/5af9eb4e89f528925108a6e508e7a072...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/5af9eb4e89f528925108a6e508e7a0726ed77953/)

Max Levchin: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/95a87911bfd4728209304758a1d0a4dc...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/95a87911bfd4728209304758a1d0a4dcaa1df3ca/)

Jim Goetz: [http://www.streamliner.co/c/ca033c454d64fc31bd6425b1b3b0f9a0...](http://www.streamliner.co/c/ca033c454d64fc31bd6425b1b3b0f9a08cfcb0a5/)

Completed Streamlines are (and will be) viewable at <http://tech.streamliner.co>.</comment>


Pointers in Rust: a guide - <AUTHOR> http://words.steveklabnik.com/pointers-in-rust-a-guide <comment><USER2> I'm glad that this guide emphasizes avoiding pointers by default. One of the emerging trends that we've noticed for new users is to allocate on the heap far too often when they could be allocating on the stack instead. I'm also glad that this emphasizes the return-value optimization that Rust uses to make returning a pointer unnecessary.

However, Steve, I wish you hadn't mentioned managed pointers at all. :P Overuse of managed pointers is another one of those trends that we've noticed in new users, and it's our own fault for making them so deceptively easy to use (at first, anyway... you pay the cost later by making nearly everything else in your code more difficult). We're moving managed pointers out of the language and into the stdlib specifically to discourage this overuse (which will hopefully also embolden users to consider our reference-counted stdlib pointer as an alternative to the GC'd pointer).

Likewise, I don't think that it's important to mention traits in the discussion on owned pointers. Using trait objects is almost always less preferable than just using generics, as trait objects are less efficient than generics and are much more restricted. Not that they don't have their uses, but those uses are few.

In general this is great! We need more articles like this to combat the "oh rust is so complicated it has 200 DIFFERENT TYPES OF POINTERS" propaganda. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I wish you hadn't mentioned managed pointers at all

I originally wrote this as an official guide, so I needed to talk about them, and then I got lazy, and just posted it after the PR got closed. But yes, discouragement is the right approach.

> We need more articles like this to combat the "oh rust is so complicated it > has 200 DIFFERENT TYPES OF POINTERS" propaganda.

Exactly. The problem is that pointers are one of the more neat features of Rust, and most people who are new to programming languages like unique[1] features, so it got talked about a lot, so people assumed you needed to know about all these details, when that's not actually true.

I know we all over-used `~str` for a long time...

1: ;)

<comment><USER2> ~str used to be the only string type we had! And vectors were all on the heap and dynamically-sized!!

Kids these days, with your fixed-size arrays and your static strings and your global variables and your hoity-toity _region analyses_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been learning Rust officially for about a week. I wish this had made it on hacker news last Friday!

I'm learning by making a little MVC framework with cgi-bin (eventually it'll be portable to rust-http and elsewhere..). The best part about Rust is that in 99% of cases, if your "logic" is right, and your code compiles, everything will just work and run properly. Unlike in C where your logic may be right, but your pointers wrong, or in C# where your logic is right, but that threw a null reference exception, etc.

The hard part was that I tried writing Rust like I do C#. Using garbage collection elsewhere. The biggest hurdle is that when you're designing your structures you must not think just about what they need to access. You must also think about the ownership of what they access, and the ownership of what will be using it.

After finally refactoring and figuring out my ownership model, turns out I didn't even need garbage collection or reference counting. Everything could go onto the stack save for some vectors and mutable strings

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully future new learners will have it easier. :)

If there's anything else that's confusing that could use elaborating, let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These guidelines pretty much apply to C++, although pointers in Rust are more akin to smart pointers than raw pointers, and there are indeed a bunch of use cases for those. Sticking to values and references works pretty well most of the time though.

But pointers in Rust seem pretty well thought out and more sophisticated than what's possible in C++. I'm particularly excited about the compiler error when a borrowed pointer goes out of scope.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! If you use C++, this wiki page can help: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Rust-for-CXX- programmer...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Rust-for-CXX-programmers)

Basically, imagine boost's pointer types being in the language, so that the compiler can reason about them.

<comment><USER4> I love it. I'm staring to look for reasons to try Rust in a project, luckily they're piling up :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Supposedly 1.0 is "around the corner," so maybe you'll find a good reason by then...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's also a discussion on the (very active) /r/rust : [http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1opo36/pointers_in_rus...](http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1opo36/pointers_in_rust_a_guide/)

There's some good pointers about pointers there. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> I evaluated Rust a couple of months ago and had to reject it because it's pointy nature makes it difficult to write high order functions.

<comment><AUTHOR> What made it so hard? I'd be interested in hearing more.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately I don't still have the code I was writing to tell you exactly, but the main issue is that you can't write generic functions because some times your usage will need to pass in a reference, some times not. The map and filter functions are examples of this.

My hello world for evaluating a language is this: write a program that sums its arguments. It's arguments might be numbers or strings so you have to filter and cast. It's a simple program but I find it a good indicator of how elegant (in terms of what I consider elegant of course) a language is to use on a daily basis. Lisps obviously do best in this type of test but Haskell also does very well despite it's type system. So the issue isn't types, it's pointers.

<comment><USER6> > Unfortunately I don't still have the code I was writing to tell you exactly, > but the main issue is that you can't write generic functions because some > times your usage will need to pass in a reference, some times not. The map > and filter functions are examples of this.

Usually you pass references, because that's the most generic option. I wouldn't say "you can't write generic functions", but you sometimes have to add wrappers that convert between levels of indirection.

> My hello world for evaluating a language is this: write a program that sums > its arguments. It's arguments might be numbers or strings so you have to > filter and cast. It's a simple program but I find it a good indicator of how > elegant (in terms of what I consider elegant of course) a language is to use > on a daily basis. Lisps obviously do best in this type of test but Haskell > also does very well despite it's type system. So the issue isn't types, it's > pointers.

Certainly a language can be easier to use and you can write more elegant- looking code if most everything is a reference. No argument there.

It basically sounds like you weren't using the low-level features of Rust, which are important for our use cases but not important for everyone's. So Rust might well not be for you. That's totally fine, as I don't intend for Rust to be the one language to rule them all.

<comment><USER7> "It basically sounds like you weren't using the low-level features of Rust, which are important for our use cases but not important for everyone's."

But even in a system level program, how often do you need low level features of the language. I think the answer is "very seldomly", and hence, these low level features should be tucked in behind the higher level abstractions. They should be available only when required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I don't speak Rust, but if succ takes a pointer then yes you do need to pass it a pointer, and that's what referencing is doing, right? Not that referencing a stack variable is hard...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> off-topic : please pardon me, does rust support multi-parameter typeclasses? a link with example would be nice. docs don't go into typeclasses much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you give me an example in another language?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you solve social issues easily? - <AUTHOR>

Why is it so difficult to solve social issues?
It seems so much easier to find ways to grow large prize winning watermelons in the middle of the Sahara Desert then it is to get people to actually solve a real social problem.
I've seen hacks (e.g. guilt for donations) to solve problems but these hacks rarely change the way people and most of them don't seem to be very permanent solutions.
Has anyone here thought of any way to solve real social problems easily? <comment><USER2> Although things that rarely work..

* any solution that makes people feel like they are giving something up

* any solution that doesn't provide some sort of status symbol (especially initial exclusiveness)

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't think all social issues can be solved the same way.

Can you be more specific about one (or more) social issues?</comment>


Happily upgrading Ruby on Rails at production scale - <AUTHOR> http://webuild.envato.com/blog/upgrading-ruby-on-rails-at-production-scale/?q

<comment><USER2> "8000 requests per minute" sounds quite a lot for a RoR system.

Would you mind to elaborate on

\- how many of those requests are responded from cache

\- the underlaying deployment architecture (type & number of servers and/or VMs)

\- and you average server response time (uncached)

Thanks

EDIT: Why the downvote?

<comment><USER3> Because he talks about a system, not a single app instance (you cannot upgrade that incrementally). And 8000 req/m isn't _that_ fancy for 2 app servers for ordinary loads - thats 133 req/s which would be ~65 req/s per server.

So: the downvotes are for calling ~65 req/s "quite a lot for a RoR system".</comment></comment>


Developer transitioning to data science – best resources - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/if-youre-a-developer-transitioning-into-data-science-here-are-your-best-resources-c31928b53cd1 <comment><USER2> Take a look here: [https://reddit.com/r/LearnMachineLearning/](https://reddit.com/r/LearnMachineLearning/)

and here: [https://reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/](https://reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/)

Your question comes up from time to time.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your go-to checklists? - <AUTHOR> People use checklists all the time. What are some examples of checklists that you find extremely helpful/useful? <comment><USER2> I've tried to checklist my life for years after reading The Checklist Manifesto. I later learned that the best checklists are not in the form of checklists.

Development checklists are often in the form of templates. E.g. [https://html5boilerplate.com/](https://html5boilerplate.com/)

Life checklists are in the form of routines and rituals. For example, brush teeth, shower, put on clothes, comb hair every morning. These should actually be sorted out and optimized. I have a basket for "smart casual" clothes, a basket for simply "casual" clothes, a place to dump dirty clothes, and things like toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo go into the exact same location every day. Instead of boxes you tick off, you optimize a route. I'd recommend doing one for all the major things in life - shopping for food, locking up the office, laundry, taking care of the cats, exercise, and so on. If you tend to forget something, label things. Like sometimes the comb is not enough reminder to comb my hair, so I put capital letter "COMB" at eye level.

I teach classes too. I used to keep a checklist of what to teach, but it's easier to have PowerPoint slides instead. This is obvious to most people, but took me months to figure out.

For my checklist apps I keep only two lists: Things to do ASAP ("today") and things to do later/backlog. This is the technique Marc Andreessen recommends.

<comment><USER3> This! I call this following a "sequence" of tasks, and whenever I get distracted -which happens a lot as I have ADHD-, the phrase "follow the sequence" pops up in my head (sometimes also using alarms on the phone), then I do whatever task/ritual I usually do at that time of the day. I have this list in the Notes app, so whenever I'm lost or overwhelmed on what to do next, I just check the phone. It works to clear my anxiety too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I made [http://pcbchecklist.com](http://pcbchecklist.com)

For electronics there are a lot of small things which should be considered in each design. The must-haves are covered by standards and regulation, but there are many many other considerations which makes life easier or catches errors: checklists are an obvious choice.

So to make it easy for myself I bought [http://pcbchecklist.com](http://pcbchecklist.com)

It is mostly focused on being comprehensive, but every now and then I have some free time to expand on it.

<comment><USER5> Love it! Glad you listed the various sources as well. I had been looking for something similar a few years back when I was writing about this topic, but it was pretty scattered. Seems like a good idea to have it all in one place (esp with the community contribution possible)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. The idea started since my co-workers each had their own private lists and it sure worked, but I figured that it would be much easier if I could just go to one website and have one solid list.

A bit challenge, I think, is that the current list is overwhelmingly big and it would really benefit from being more digestible/navigable. But there is only so much time in the world...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In personal life, I find checklist useful to:

* not forget small tasks that if piled up, eventually become too big or annoying to tackle (daily budget update, email zero-inbox, browser bookmarks cleanup). I group such repeating tasks in daily routines (morning routine, evening routine) or periodical reviews (weekly, monthly etc.)

* keep up the habits (flossing, weighing myself)

* keep up with events rare enough to forget some pieces of it (weedings - tie a tie, give the shirt to the laundry)

Similarly, in software development. I've realized recently that things get less cluttered if you have a process (a checklist, basically) with steps to cover in particular activities.

Examples:

* work shutdown routine (put a work log to Jira, reply all remaining emails, git push everything).

* Definition of Done (DoD): code delivered, tests written, docs updated, etc. That is useful if you (or your team) want up-to-date README but keep forgetting to update it.

* topics to cover on project kick-off, here's mine if anyone's interested: [http://bartoszkrajka.com/2018/12/28/kick-off-dev-related-top...](http://bartoszkrajka.com/2018/12/28/kick-off-dev-related-topics-to-cover/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Much like @muzani below, I've tried to apply checklists at much as possible after reading The Checklist Manifesto. It's a solid book with actionable advice and examples.

For business, I have multiple SOPs, which are all effectively checklists:

* My daily marketing routine, with what to do and links directly to where I need to go.

* Monthly invoicing procedures.

* How to perform my roadmapping service (send this, update that, schedule this, etc.)

* Every README I write for dev projects will include a checklist of deployment procedures and how to update critical things.

I'll also occasionally write down a physical "ToDo" list, which ends up being a checklist that I just go down. This is more for reducing executive function in the mornings, and making sure I don't forget anything.

For my personal life, I don't operate off of a specific checklist day to day. Instead, I have an alarm app with absolutely everything I need to do each day, and when it needs to be done. I also rely on my Google Calendar for reminders.

Ultimately, knowing what to do is important, but knowing _when_ to do it is also important.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wrote up a checklist for the release procedure of the app I work on at my company. I cannot stress how much it made my life easier.

There were a few (too many) manual steps, like updating websites XYZ with release notes, and using this checklist made it all so much simpler to keep track of what I had done / need to do. I also added direct links, removing much friction.

Other than that I don't really use checklists.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use this in my suicide prevention work.

10 ways to improve safety: [https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/](https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/)

[https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=40697](https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=40697)

</comment><comment><USER10> Wallet, keys, card, coins, hanky, phone, glasses. (my version of "spectacles testicles wallet and watch")

<comment><USER11> Not a native English speaker here, what is hanky?

<comment><USER12> Handkerchief

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am also interested in the same. Also, any suggestions for good checklist apps?

<comment><USER2> Rule of thumb IMO is as simple as possible.

GTasks works fine for me for Android. They upgraded it but I still prefer the older one.

For web, I use plaintext or a plugin for Sublime Text (PlainTasks).

Asana was awesome at one point, but they added too many features and it became cumbersome.

Workflowy is good too but doesn't click with me for some reason.

<comment><USER14> Would love to hear more of your thoughts on WorkFlowy. I'm a current user but there are some things that are just subconsciously bothering me yet I can't find better alternatives.</comment></comment></comment>


NumPy another Iverson Ghost - <AUTHOR> https://analyzethedatanotthedrivel.org/2018/03/31/numpy-another-iverson-ghost/ <comment><USER2> I decided to follow up on the "infamous APL". I thought that the early matrix- sig participant might have acknowledged the APL influence more directly.

That doesn't appear to be the case. That is, Jim Hugunin's paper "Extending Python for Numerical Computation", from the December 1995 Python Workshop, at [https://legacy.python.org/workshops/1995-12/papers/hugunin.h...](https://legacy.python.org/workshops/1995-12/papers/hugunin.html) makes no mention of APL.

It starts:

> There are a huge collection of existing numeric programming languages, both > commercial (Matlab, S-PLUS, IDL) and free ( Octave, RLaB, Yorick , BASIS , > Gnudl , ...). Why on earth would I want to go out and create a new one?

> I've used almost all of the available numerical languages at one time or > another over the past 8 years.

APL and its descendants like J and K aren't mentioned.</comment>


More Than 750M Worldwide Would Migrate If They Could - <AUTHOR> https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx <comment><USER2> I'd add some background to what fehyjn says below.

The entire world was relatively borderess prior to 20th century, and it was completely outside of humanly possible for the state anywhere to keep tap on every individual.

If you talk about the period from medieval, to early renaissance. It was very natural for every polity to want to get more subjects. Feudal lords couldn't have been more happy to see more people migrating to their domains.

Things started changed with appearance of early nation state model in late renaissance. The more central the role of the nation state got, the further right was the centre of power.

All of the above culminated with introduction of the visa system in Europe, shortly prior to WWII, which was later adopted by nearly all nations around the world.

<comment><USER3> Wasn't travel across great distances commensurately difficult, making such restrictions unnecessary even if they weren't desired?

<comment><USER4> It was also common for people to randomly get killed, barbarically, when crossing/migrating to another place uninvited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still don't understand why I can't just move to another country... I have a degree, no criminal records. But I need visas, permits, etc. Why all this difficulties?

<comment><USER6> I think the poll answers your question. It would be a little bit disruptive if 140M people suddenly moved to the US.

<comment><USER7> If we just threw open the flood gates sure, but that's far from the only option. Simply increasing the immigration quotas gradually year-over-year would eventually allow an equilibrium to be reached without creating a large shock to the economy.

<comment><USER8> And I bet the imported values would be exactly the same as the ones held by the current citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And they will. I think the current migration crisis in Europe is nothing compared to when the Sahel will be finally total uninhabitable all those people will move to Europe. And with the current speed of the global warming I don't think it's that far away.

<comment><USER10> This seems inevitable at this point.

Africa is headed for a population crisis. Places like Somalia and Niger have around 6 or 7 children per woman. These are countries that already import a lot of food to feed rapidly growing populations. If we have another energy shock, it's unclear to me who is going to feed all of these babies.

<comment><USER11> This is what I am waiting for, anxiously too I will ad. How long before we see the first heat wave kill a million people? Or drought kill several hundred thousand people in a weeks time. Last year South Africa almost ran out of water. I really think it will only be then that we realize the extent of our dire situation and start really acting. What would our government do if there were 5 million people lined up at the border? Would they shoot them down? I don't like to fear monger but the world is a rough place. It is also unclear to me how we will handle this as it happens.

Edit: right after writing this the very next HN article I come across is massive locust swarms threatening crops in Africa. Scary

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've worked in this industry for a while, helping people immigrate to Canada, and one interesting thing I've experienced are newcomers that don't want their former peers following them. They left for a different way of life and don't want the past recreated in their new home.

For myself I tend to agree - I want to help those that believe moving to my home country will improve their lives, while at the same time want them to leave some baggage behind. Multiculturalism is great, until it isn't.

<comment><USER13> "I've worked in this industry for a while, helping people immigrate to Canada"

You still working in this? Would like to have a chat if possible.

<comment><USER14> Canadian immigration is rather straightforward and all avenues are well described on the IRCC website. If you still have questions I'd recommend the ImmigrationCanada and/or IWantOut subreddits. You can get excellent advice there. If you do your homework and work out the possible avenues applicable to your personal situation they are more than happy to help.

<comment><USER12> You can keep your costs down by doing a lot of your own research, but there are still shortcuts and pitfalls that you can be made aware of by getting some professional advice. My recommendation is having a paid consult at the beginning of your research, and then near the end before submitting an application. The people of forums can typically only talk about their own experience based on their own profile / program / timing, which will not be exactly like yours. I've cleaned up many people's application messes, (I'm not trying to solicit any business for myself.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> First World Problem, I know, but:

I don't understand why I should not be allowed to take a 2 year vacation in another country without having to leave every 6 months and pray the border agent doesn't find it suspicious that I keep coming back.

I don't want to take someone's job, or milk the welfare system, and I would be a net positive to anywhere I decided to vacation (sales tax/VAT, property tax, hotel tax, income tax from the profits off all the crap I bought to live, etc).

I'd be happy if I still had to apply for a visa, but the typical 6 month visa prevents me from easily signing a lease.

<comment><USER16> Because other people that seemed to be like you based on easily measurable characteristics tried to stay after all.

That said, apart from the US, I wouldn't know any country where a rich German citizen couldn't get a long-term business or investment visa.

<comment><USER17> > Because other people that seemed to be like you based on easily measurable > characteristics tried to stay after all.

Exactly. Like all things, a few bad actors spoil it for the rest of us.

<comment><USER18> Seems to be the exception to the rule, it's not a few bad apples. The vast majority looking to move are not looking for an extended vacation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this correlates to the resolution and frequency of social media use globally. I might be completely happy with my apartment and job in the EU, but seeing 'ads' for the US on social media every day may begin to chip away at my contentment through the introduction of a comparison.

<comment><USER20> > seeing 'ads' for the US on social media every day

What ads are you talking about?

<comment><USER21> What some call "American cultural imperialism" is what he/she is likely talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 21% of people in the EU would migrate? Wish they broke this down by country and where they would go

</comment><comment><USER23> \- Desire to migrate in Northern America up for the first time

\- U.S. still No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants

\- 18 countries attract two-thirds of all potential migrants worldwide

<comment><USER24> I'm ok with it as long as you come here and integrate, don't take welfare, and understand our Bill of Rights isn't a suggestion. We're done making "accommodations" on that stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you ever want proof HN is not Libertarian, they way it downvotes open borders shows it is not.

Libertarians don't have to believe open borders work fully but should be open to talking about it.

It's also something in the future people will judge us for. They will live in a world where richness is less border based though, so get rose colored glasses. Like slavery, easy to judge when you don't get to do it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Looking at those numbers, isn't the EU the most desired place to migrate to? Feels odd to not split the USA into its member states while splitting Europe up.

How many of those potential migrants want to move to Texas vs Spain?

<comment><USER27> An American citizen can freely move to any state in the United States. A citizen of European countries may or may not be able to freely move to other European countries without citizenship related changes, visas or other sponsorship.

<comment><USER28> Within the EU movement if fairly unrestricted and does not require anything that you listed. Go check [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/147/free-m...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/147/free- movement-of-persons)

<comment><USER29> Schengen includes some non-EU countries and still excludes a bunch of European countries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Schengen_Agreement_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Schengen_Agreement_Labelled_Map_2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd migrate if I could, but given that I'm not extremely wealthy, there aren't many countries that I'd want to live in that would also take me.

Canada, maybe. I'm looking into that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bucketing all North America together made this less interesting. I can't help but think the reasons of migrating from Mexico would not be the same as US or Canadian citizens.

<comment><USER32> There's an entry for Latin America & Caribbean which Mexico is a part of

An instead of North America it says 'Northern America' which makes me believe this refers to just the US & Canada

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why welcome people who run from problems rather than fixing them--especially when many are of considerable wealth, and are disproportionately responsible for the unsatisfactory condition of their own countries?

If we shut the door on wealthy Chinese/Indians/Saudis/Nigerians/etc, I'd bet big money that the condition of those countries would improve rapidly and substantially.

</comment><comment><USER34> Old, from 2018

</comment><comment><USER21> Lots of people would move into other people's nicer homes if they could too, but the owners of the homes might take issue with that. Nations are a form of collective property.

</comment><comment><USER35> Good. World cultures need more diversity and exposure to each other. I am Russian who lived in Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, US and Italy. I've got tons of experience and emotions from each of these countries, and I am thankful that they welcomed me.

<comment><USER16> You might be the exception here because you can read, write, communicate in English, and handle computers.

A farmer from rural Malawi who cannot write and doesn't speak English would not be able to integrate into a European countries' economy and, accordingly, would be a lot less welcome.

<comment><USER36> People act in their own selfish interest.

This farmer from rural Malawi who can't communicate in English may not want to move to Europe, because he would have a bad time there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would have a 1,000,000,000.00 USD a year salary if I could. Just saying.</comment>


Competition Doesn't Matter. Look at Dropbox. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.waxman.me/competition-doesnt-matter-look-at-dropbox

<comment><USER2> I disagree slightly, I don't think this can be simplified to all competition doesn't matter at all.

Here's a few cases which I've found that competition doesn't matter:

* Competition is ugly.

* Competition is hard-to-use.

* Competition is broken to some extent.

* Competition is not solving the pain.

In these cases, ignore the competition, it doesn't matter. But some cases, I think competition does matter. If the competition really is doing a great job at solving the pain, has reached a significant scale, and isn't doing any of the above, then it does matter.

I think Mint.com is a beautiful product, easy-to-use, works well, and solves the pain. Competing against Mint as a new, better financial service would be very hard, because its hard to be an order of magnitude better. Some would argue that it is broken to some extent.

Dropbox is beautiful, easy-to-use, definitely not broken, and solves the pain. All others before it were hard to setup, or didn't work well, or didn't solve the real pain (e.g. Microsoft's 6GB filesize limit). I bet Receivd will be good because Dropbox doesn't solve the exact same pain that Receivd is, at least for how I understand it.

<comment><USER3> Don't take "Doesn't Matter" out of context. This is using this in the context of someone else say "But someone is already doing this" and your reply being "Doesn't matter."

Of course any competition will effect your business, but this can actually be something great. Having competition is like hiring a team of people (for free) to do the same thing you are doing but in a different way and then having them present the results to you.

Competition is not your enemy. It's an important part of a system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "It reminded me of when, in 2007, Drew Houston stormed onto the scene with his "GDrive killer," which was, of course, Dropbox."

So wait, Drew Houston specifically made and positioned his product in response to perceived competition, and the moral of the blog post is "Focus on your product instead of looking over your shoulder at the competition." Does not follow. The moral I got out of it was that perceived stiff competition can drive you to make something really, really good, even if the competition never actually materializes.

<comment><USER5> I don't recall Drew ever calling it a GDrive killer, in the couple conversations I had with him about Dropbox. And, GDrive was a hypothetical product at the time, and still mostly a hypothetical product today. I'm guessing they were probably considering the impact a Google competitor would have on their product, just like they probably considered the impact Apple, Microsoft, and others would have. But, I don't think they were designing based on what they thought the big guys would make.

<comment><USER6> The OP does not precisely attribute "GDrive killer" to Drew, but simply puts the expression in quotes (of _someone's_ \- or of public chatter?):

>>Drew Houston stormed onto the scene with his "GDrive killer," which was, of course, Dropbox

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A possibly more precise way of expressing this thought is: "Competition from big players doesn't necessarily equate to a death sentence to small players".

Had a similar thought yesterday: "Google Code and Launchpad are run by big players, yet Github is the real leader. Yet another argument against "XYZ big corp might smash us"." - <http://twitter.com/clemesha/status/55400961652441088>

<comment><USER8> I think the "XYZ Big Corp might smash us" fear is a corollary to the "winner- take-all, and first-to-market wins" fear, which itself is a corollary to the "ideas are everything" paradigm. Needless to say, history does not bear this thinking out in the tech space.

More than in almost any other industry, in technology, the best implementation for the right segment at the right time usually wins. That "right time" might mean first-to-market, but often it doesn't. Sometimes the market _needs_ a first-mover to familiarize people with the concept and establish the pain points with that concept, which the second- or third-mover then perfects.

As for XYZ Big Corp, it's true that they'll always have resource advantages. But they've also got resource _disadvantages_ in the form of corporate politics, bureaucracy, prioritizations and allocations of capital and talent, and so forth. Plus, one should not underestimate the advantage that a handful of uberpassionate-bordering-on-obsessive, working-all-hours hackers will have over an equivalent handful of corporate clock-punchers assigned to a project.

<comment><USER9> I think fear of big players is sort of orthogonal to the thoroughly debunked "ideas are everything" notion. Even if you are the first mover in a given market, you might afraid that Google could release a competing product tomorrow and eat your lunch.

<comment><USER10> In terms of Google, those fears are pretty unfounded. Google releases new products all the time that fail to gain traction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always thought soda is the ultimate example. Tons of players, big and small, even though Coke "owns it" by practically every metric. 100% market share is extremely rare.

<comment><USER12> "Richard Revell had hoped to launch his cola and lemonade milk soda at the National Fieldays in Hamilton in New Zealand, which attracts about 140,000 farmers." "But instead of being on show, he has been banned from selling his drink because it constitutes competition for Coca-Cola."

[Fizzy milk maker takes on Coca- Cola](<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/13/2925765.htm>)

They 'own' small players more than you realise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ummmm...Dropbox has had competition from the start. Skydrive, Box.net, Syncplicity and so on. So the article's premise really doesn't stand (though I don't disagree with him on the quality of Dropbox)

<comment><USER14> Dropbox has had competition from the start, but their specific focus was entirely different. Skydrive gave an enourmous amount of space for free. Dropbox made it easy to insure that your files are available anywhere. Even with Windows Live Mesh and 25gb of space, Dropbox is still far superior because of it's focus on "just works" file syncing and access.

<comment><USER15> This is so true. I have yet to find another competitor that even compares to dropbox. All the other competitors have their own client to move/view files (Receivd looks like it does too). dropbox works right away and the learning curve is nill. All you have to do is login and use your computer like normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure the different companies that Dropbox may ultimately kill would agree that competition doesn't matter.

In a large complex market with enough differentiation there can be many new varied startups all of whom thrive. When several companies go after the same well defined space and one is better then most of the rest will suffocate e.g. Google v. other search engines.

What this article really says is "competition doesn't matter if you're the winner" which is sort of true but not very informative.

</comment><comment><USER17> The premise of this article is flawed at best. Once it's established that one firm in an industry has a clear advantage, it doesn't make sense to say "Competition doesn't matter. Look at X" because that's selection bias. Of course at that point that firm X has succeeded, but not because there was no competition, but because, for some reason, X beat its competition either on the product, marketing/positioning, or otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER18> Certainly competition Did matter: Dropbox is competing with other solutions and killling Them.

</comment><comment><USER19> "And who knows why Google hasn't launched a cloud storage locker yet. But this is four years later."

They did. It's called Google Storage for Developers and it's similar to Amazon S3: <https://code.google.com/apis/storage/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I am not familiar with inner mechanism of Dropbox, so the following comment only comes from my daily use:

Is Dropbox a storage service or sync service? I more felt like the latter. Dropbox aggressively cache everything in your Dropbox folder into local, which would eat up the local storage space. In that sense, it doesn't provides extra storage space, rather, it provides a way to sync files between different devices, includes a S3 storage backend. Well, that maybe different from its mobile client, but on PC client, I really don't see why Dropbox will help you save your local disk storage cost (though arguably why you should save local disk storage cost since it is so cheap).

</comment><comment><USER21> Would have to disagree with competition being bad, its not the cure all, thats for sure, but its not pointless by any means. AT&T proved this quite well when they had a monopoly of the telephone system. Innovation was on its door step, but it had no motivation to let it in, because they were the only gig in town. Competition in the business world also keeps you on your toes. The initial idea, the building of the business, might motivate to start, but a threat of competition keeps you trying to improve for the long haul. Perhaps there is a distinction in there, competition is great for the end users, it gives them better products, for business it makes a sporting event out of it, where you can win or loose. Competition is good of course when, the people competing play nice, and strive to be the best at what they do, and actually make a better product. Instead of doing what ever it takes, no matter how dirty to win. Where then its not about a competition of skill in the chosen market, its about cutting down the competition so you look better. Sort of like patent squatters, nothing to do with the skill of creating a great product, and everything to do with profiting off someone else taking it from idea to product.

</comment><comment><USER22> Competition doesn't matter, if your competitor...

...has a flawed vision. Then it is just market validation.

...has entrenched interests inside the company. Then it is subject to the innovator's dilemma. The bigger the company, the more likely they will drop the ball.

...is human (or Microsoft :-) ). Then they are prone to missteps.

</comment><comment><USER23> A market without competitors is not necessarily a blessing! There might be a good reason.

Despite the colorful name, "Marketing Warfare" (Al Ries and Jack Trout, 1986) is a classic (and concise!) book about product positioning: defining your product in relation to your competition. They describe the unique strategies that smaller competitors can use to "own" a position in your customers' mind. Dropbox vs GDrive/Skydrive would be a perfect case study.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Marketing_war...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Marketing_warfare_strategies)

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is the focus on GDrive in an article written today? Sure, 4 years ago it was a reasonable fear to believe that Google would crush the competition in any space they entered. Since then Facebook has revealed significant weaknesses in Google's ability to compete in social and brought them down to earth considerably. An analysis of DropBox's success needs to consider the numerous competitors at the time they started rather than a years-old Google specter.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps a better way of articulating this is: "Focus on your own game." Be Tiger Woods (before the hookers, etc). Focus on being the best at what you do. Let the competition follow you.

The reason I rephrased is that the competition always matters. You may be able to make a better product, but if the competition is so strong and differentiation so lacking in the market that you will never be able to make any money, then you are in trouble regardless.

</comment><comment><USER26> Next big thing in the "cloud storage" market: cloud storage aggregator.

I don't want to keep track of where all my stuff is between Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, SkyDrive, Zumodrive, MobileMe, etc. - or at least do want a tool to manage them and move files between without hassle and from any interface (browser, PC, iPad, etc).

Get busy guys.

</comment><comment><USER27> How can it be competition if there is no competition? I'd rather call it the expectation of upcoming competition. Or the fear of future contenders; but isn't that universal? Whatever innovative product we craft, whatever niché we delve into, there's always the danger that competition will come.

</comment><comment><USER28> If someone wants to inch in on dropbox's territory they could allow users to store their data where they choose - eg. their own server, friend code, or another computer with the same account anywhere on the net.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think min.us may be the real dropbox killer. Dropbox is actually hard to understand for non-techies. Easier than ftp and stuff but still hard. There's a lot more innovation possible in this area.

</comment><comment><USER30> You all missed the point.

>> Solve a problem. Build something that people want. Make it good. Focus on your product instead of looking over your shoulder at the competition.

<comment><USER30> subpoint (for you seth godin people out there) - don't let competition keep you from shipping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Competition sometimes does matter. Proof: what if your competition were Dropbox?

</comment><comment><USER32> I just started using Skydrive. 25GB of space for free. Competition does matter.

<comment><USER33> I had to lookup skydrive to find out what it was. DropBox is known, skydrive isn't. Even though it is a Microsoft product that doesn't guarantee success. What's the user experience? How is it growing? Are people recommending it?

You're right, competition does matter. It matters because it pushes people to constantly create improvements and better products.

However, the point of the article is to not fear competition to the point where you don't take action.

<comment><USER32> I should explain further. I started out with Dropbox and am almost at the limit. I don't have disposable income (startup founder). So I started looking for alternatives - that's when I discovered Skydrive.

PS. Have you tried Zumodrive - it's almost exactly like Dropbox.

<comment><USER34> Is $10/month disposable income? I spend more than that on coffee.

<comment><USER32> "I spend more than that on coffee."

LOL. Every web service is pitched to me at "less than the price of a cup of coffee a day"

Here are a few - 1) LinkedIn Business account 2) Emusic subscription 3) Adobe PDF writer 4) Freshbooks and the list goes on...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Competition does matter, but unadulterated awesomeness can trump it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Competition doesn't matter. Look at Alta Vista.

</comment><comment><USER37> why do you think google never launched a gdrive?

</comment><comment><USER38> The moment you start focusing on protecting market share instead of improving your product or giving your customers more for their $$$ you're doomed.

</comment><comment><USER39> OK. Vaporware does not matter.

I think we all know that :)</comment>


Google Delivers New Java-like Language, Noop - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Google-Delivers-New-Javalike-Language-Noop-473613/?kc=rss <comment><USER2> Wait it's by Google? I thought it was just hosted on Google code, as per this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=826945>

<comment><USER3> It's made by googlers, but I don't think it's officially endorsed by Google.

<comment><USER4> "It's made by googlers"

Yes it is. One of the authors seems to be an "internal software development coach" (source: [http://www.geekinasuit.com/2009/03/hiatus-should-be- over.htm...](http://www.geekinasuit.com/2009/03/hiatus-should-be-over.html)) at Google. The other author's blog seems to be down atm (<http://jakeherringbone.com/>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was at the JVM Language Summit yesterday and went to the session by the developers of Noop. Indeed, it has not been "delivered" - though they have a working "Hello World", the syntax of the language has not yet been finalized, nor have they begun work on a compiler that emits JVM bytecode.

The developers work at Google on their internal tools team, focusing particularly on unit testing. Hence, the inspiration for a language that's like Java but with Guice (Google's DI framework) and without the ability to shoot yourself in the foot in the ways that Java makes it particularly easy to.

Noop is a 20% time project for the developers. So, there's a tacit endorsement by Google, but it's not as if Google has staffed up a full-time team to deliver a new language that will be used throughout their organization any time soon. The developers don't expect to get much adoption for Noop, and hope that it will mainly influence people's thinking and other tools.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for clarifying, Alex!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article fail. It's not "delivered" -- it's a language in the process of being designed.

<comment><USER8> Dear lord, that article fails in too many ways to comprehend. Do yourselves a favor and jump straight to the goods:

<http://code.google.com/p/noop/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am confused.

They say, this is made by google, and up to now, the google announcements I saw were very solid projects. Did I miss a lot of google announcements which are not solid projects?

On the other hand, the state of this language looks... early? I am not sure. I don't see much code (yes, those 40 lines linked to on this page really show the new and innovative powers of this language), and I do see a lot of 'we propose this and we want that' (+ the usual language buzzwords), which feels much more like a language brainstorm, or maybe the state where the results of the brainstorming are settling down... but nowhere near a solid project...

So, sorry to sound very unexcited, but at this point.. who cares about yet another language in a very, very early state?

<comment><USER10> "Did I miss a lot of google announcements which are not solid projects?"

You mean like Wave?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone point us to some code examples? I had a hard time finding any.

<comment><USER12> [http://code.google.com/p/noop/source/browse/#hg/examples/noo...](http://code.google.com/p/noop/source/browse/#hg/examples/noop)

but there's scarcely anything there. Which is all rather weird; I'd have thought that (1) one of the first things you do when designing a language is to mock up a load of example code to see how your ideas work together, and (2) you want to make that available to anyone looking at your language so that they can get a feel for what it's meant to be like. Oh well.

<comment><USER13> Vaporlang?

<comment><USER14> That's my first impression--I see a bunch of pages on the project wiki with _proposed_ features for the language, but no documentation along the lines of "if you actually want to use this language to accomplish something useful, here's what you do".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Alex Eagle from Google presented Noop at the 2009 JVM summit. Slides at <http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/Image:Noop_at_JVM_Summit.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER16> It's written in Scala, 1500 LOC but failed to build either with buildr or with maven. Looks like a premature project.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't much care for the Bay Area, but I really wish I could have gone to the JVM Language Summit. Looks like a lot of fun.

<comment><USER18> Me too. I'm so busy with my head down in the code that I forget about these things. I wrote Sleep several years ago and am not as active on it because it's stable for my needs.

<comment><USER4> " I wrote Sleep several years ago and am not as active on it because it's stable for my needs."

Too bad you couldn't make the JVM summit. I would have been interested in a session on the language powering "After the Deadline" than this piece of almost-vapourware.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, to better inform my judgment, any topics in particular you'd like to know about? I'm always looking for blog topics and I'll probably approach some local groups in DC to see if anyone is looking for a speaker.

<comment><USER4> How Sleep made your coding go faster or enabled you to write expressive code as compared to coding in Java (with code samples drawn from ATD where possible :) - I like real world code comparisons vs toy examples)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A cursory look leads me to conclude that Noop has no primitive types. This results in Int (capital I) typed variables all over. While this follows the naming convention to which I adhere -- CamelCased classes -- there is still some cognitive dissonance. This might be a silly point, but I have not yet had coffee.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they've said that everything is an object. But, the whole question of interop with Java is still in flux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What do they mean by a language that supports dependency injection? What would be an example for a language that doesn't support it - stateless languages, I suppose? Because if there is no state, how to remember the dependencies?

Edit: Just checked if it is April 1st, but nope, it isn't. They must be serious.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure they mean that the language itself supports declaring and injecting dependencies rather than needing to use an external tool to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Every time I see a new programming language come out, I can't help but think of the Tower of Babel.

<comment><USER23> Because we are trying to build a tower from the machine to the abstract?

<comment><USER24> (Probably because there are now nearly too many languages to count.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does the world need another java-like language I wonder, even if its blessed by the google Gods?

</comment><comment><USER26> It appears to an effort, written in Scala, to be Scala but with Java syntax.

</comment><comment><USER27> That article is practically unreadable without Adblock.

<comment><USER28> Printer friendly: [http://www.eweek.com/index2.php?option=content&task=view...](http://www.eweek.com/index2.php?option=content&task=view&id=56132&pop=1&hide_ads=1&page=0&hide_js=1)</comment></comment>


Google Drops Compute Engine Prices by 10 Percent - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/01/google-drops-all-compute-engine-prices-by-10-percent/ <comment><USER2> This is expected. At the original price cut last year, I remember them saying that they will continue to cut prices as storage and CPU prices continue to drop. This is just proof of that commitment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet still, Amazon is the only one with spot pricing. Nothing else comes close in on-demand cost to the ~$0.14 for an hour on a c3.4xlarge (16 vCPU, 30GiB RAM, 2x160GB SSD).

<comment><USER4> How about reserved instances? Does GCE offer equivalent of it? To us, reserved instances is giving us significant saving, well, some of eaten by the 10% surcharge from the support plan, unfortunately.

<comment><USER5> Google Compute Engine has sustained use discounts: the longer you run an instance, the lower the price per minute that you pay. If you run an instance for a full month, you end up being charged only 70% of that instance's price. Essentially, it's like AWS's reserved instances except you don't have to plan for it ahead of time.

[https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#sustained_use](https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing#sustained_use)

<comment><USER4> That's actually a good idea and something that removes the need to create a marketplace for reserved instances you no longer need. Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to see such direct evidence of competition and markets driving prices lower.

<comment><USER7> It's more Moore's law than competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting to note but bandwidth is going to be expensive for me compared to Linode's no charge for the first 2 TB. With Google this would come to $240 if I'm calculating it right.

<comment><USER9> Linode likely over-sells their bandwidth. They also have a "fair use clause" in the terms of service that covers network consumption.

Try to use the full 2 TB every single month on the $10/month tier and see how long before you get a polite email asking you to stop.

Which isn't to say the $240 price tag isn't high, because it is. But they're likely matching Amazon AWS/Azure which charges a similar amount for outgoing data (2 TB is $235-255).

<comment><USER10> No, Linode just uses HE.net, Cogent, etc..

[http://he.net/](http://he.net/) "Get BGP+IPv6+IPv4 for $0.45/Mbps!"

Hurricane Electric is pretty cheap. You can hit 2TB a month on 10mbps. That is only ~$4.50 a month.

There are a couple tricks with it:

1) On a $10 Linode, you aren't going to upload 2TB a month unless you are acting as a file server. Any kind of application [say, wordpress] isn't going to do it.

2) The majority of people won't max out their bandwidth usage because they are running app/database servers on Linode.

They probably take a small loss on the people maxing out their 2TB a month _but on average_ they aren't. It isn't worth the bad PR to kick a small percentage of small net loss customers.

[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1292091](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1292091)

fyi, back in 2013 Cogent was doing sub $1/Mbps as well.

Bandwidth from the cheap providers _is_ cheap. The difference is AWS & Google are making their margins on what they charge for bandwidth is my guess.

<comment><USER11> I've seen Hurricane Electric before but I didn't understand what they were.

Can you explain how they are different from a traditional ISP like Comcast?

<comment><USER12> They're an ISP that provides service to data centres, not offices/residences. (And some of those client data centres are run by other ISPs—thus making them a "transit provider" for those ISPs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> does anyone know if Google Compute Engine also had to do unplanned reboots to patch the recent xen vulnerability, like AWS and Rackspace etc did? I did not hear anything about it. Does google use Xen or something homegrown?

I my mind, googles' infrastructure being so different from all the others in its internal functioning is one of their primary differentiators.

<comment><USER14> Google uses KVM instead of Xen. Google also has live migration which makes certain kinds of maintenance non-disruptive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And how long before we see price drops from both EC2 and Azure I wonder?

<comment><USER16> Loving this price war.

EC2 and Azure would be silly to think that's all it is, however. Managed VMs (w/push to deploy) cloud debugging of mobile apps.. it's not just prices but a full-on feature assault.

<comment><USER17> Yep. Google Cloud Platform has some really great things in the pipeline, as previewed at I/O and elsewhere. Managed VMs in particular will be great, especially with support for custom Docker runtimes.</comment></comment></comment>


GvR's Blog - <AUTHOR> http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> _Someone jokingly asked me how I would sort a million 32-bit integers in 2 megabytes of RAM, using Python [...] obviously this is a joke question -- the data alone would take up 4 megabytes, assuming binary encoding_

This question seems to come up a lot at Google - didn't their CEO ask it of Obama and McCain when they visited?

I like that instead of going into a complicated solution to a tricky problem, GvR shows the very simple and general way to solve a slightly easier version more people are likely to encounter. Unfortunately I was sort of hoping he would take the Programming Pearls approach instead of treating it as a joke. Bently showed several ways to do this kind of constrained memory sorting given differing assumptions, but perhaps that kind of thing just isn't interesting for the places Python is used.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote this algorithm to solve a problem for myself one night about 10 years ago (agree - not a very tough problem, but very useful if you don't have enough memory). I told a client about it and he tried to patent it! I never checked to see if it went through...

<comment><USER4> You didn't need to; unix sort has been able to do this for way more than 10 years =).

<comment><USER3> Well, it was a complicated data format for many 10s of GB of seismic data on machines that probably had 32MB or 64MB of memory. The partial sort and merge did the trick for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, what did ya'll think of Anathem?

<comment><USER6> Stephenson came to do a reading in Cambridge, MA a few weeks ago, of a couple amusing conversations. I haven't read the rest of it yet, but he writes fantastic dialog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not a terribly hard exercise, I'd expect that almost any programmer could do the math and figure out that a solution requires files. After that I'd expect a candidate to at least sketch out a logical solution.

It's cool that it's Guido, though. And that it's a complete solution.

<comment><USER6> The point here is to show off (among other things) the buffered I/O in Py3k. It's much easier (i.e. shorter, more readable) in Py3k to implement an efficient solution than in earlier Python versions. If it were a really hard problem, it would be harder to see the benefits of the new language features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Rss at <http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/rss.xml></comment>


What It Means to Design for Growth at The New York Times - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/what-it-means-to-design-for-growth-at-the-new-york-times-2041e0f5e64a <comment><USER2> Probably doesn't have anything with axing the political cartoon department. [1]

1\. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/13/political-cartoons- ne...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/13/political-cartoons-new-york- times-cancels-editorial-cartoons/)</comment>


What is the optimum amount to invest in a Google Ad words campaign? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.buzzpronto.com/post/73200029853/what-is-the-optimum-amount-to-invest-in-a-google-ad

<comment><AUTHOR> Please give me feedback on this blog post so that I can improve content on my site.</comment>


Show HN: Bitcoin voting on CoinSmack news site. - <AUTHOR> http://coinsmack.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I created a site where you can post links, videos, images, and blobs of text (html allowed).

It works much like most social news sites where visitors can vote up stories they like to the home page in various different categories. The difference is that the voting is in bitcoins in increments of 0.001 units. 80% of the bitcoins received go to the poster of the article.

Posting and voting up articles is an anonymous process, and no login is needed (also IP addresses & sessions are not recorded). For those that are into Tor, onion links are welcome and are marked with an onion icon. Hopefully this will help with the discovery of content on the onion network.

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

Hard to think what it would be like if it got traction, though; you don't have a reliable way of telling if a single user has voted multiple times - <USER2> anyone with enough bitcoins could buy the front page, right?

To keep advertisements/spam away, users would have to be willing to outspend spammers - is that really going to work? Surely, at that point, its just an advertising space, like a billboard, rather than a news site?

Another point is that, as posters get 80% of the bitcoins spent on their post, the poster (lets say they are a spammer) has more than a 5 to 1 natural advantage over legit users - because they get 80% of what they spend upvoting themselves.

Its interesting, but have you thought about these issues?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a decay effect on the home page (the "hot" section) where posts will fall off as they get older.

The current calculation is bitcoins/sqrt(time)

The spammer is still just a single person, and if no one is sending coins to lets say his "viagra" post, then even if he has an advantage, it only takes a few people to like something else to outgun him. How many people vote up something on the home page of reddit. If they all put in for that, it would be very uneconomical to compete with.

Keep in mind, I don't really have a huge amount of faith that the system will work out. It is an experiment in micro-transactions and psychology.

Time will be the best judge.

<comment><USER4> Have you considered letting users also spend bitcoins to downvote posts, but at a high ratio (e.g. remove 10 by spending 1)? That could clear up the advertising.

What to do with the leftover bitcoins? Maybe hold on to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had code in there to do just that (at a 2x ratio) but commented it out before launch.

I am going optimism that it will not just turn into an ad site. If I end up wrong, then I will do something like this.

So far it seems to be a site where people that love dinosaurs come. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see this more as a feature on an already established link sharing site such as hacker news or reddit than as a standalone website. Good concept, though. Please prove me wrong.

EDIT: Also, I dislike the design. It's not very pretty. I'm not much of a designer myself, else I'd try to help you with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am far from a designer myself, and no designer was involved in creating this (it was really just a weekend project).

I don't see how it is just a feature. It is fundamentally different regarding what makes up a vote, and how things get popular.

<comment><USER6> Try Twitter Bootstrap, it's perfect for circumstances like this.

[http://www.markdotto.com/2012/01/24/bootstrap-2-ready-for- te...](http://www.markdotto.com/2012/01/24/bootstrap-2-ready-for-testing-and- feedback/)

Here's another bitcoin site made with bootstrap, fwiw:

<http://bitcoinica.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting concept.

Could you somehow allow for sharing revenue with content creators (where possible)? That way, people might be more incentivized to vote, since it would also be a donation to the creator.

Maybe you allow the submitter to specify the artist's email address, to which coins are sent. It would be an honor system, for sure, but it seems better than nothing.

Edit: in case it's unclear, I know that bitcoins can't be sent to an email address directly, but a link to a wallet can.

<comment><USER8> A way that wouldn't rely on the honor system is by having the content creator prove he controls that URL.

Let's say I post a link to Coding Horror. The system accumulates bitcoins as people upvote it, and then Jeff Atwood wants to claim them. He would simply register and a small piece of HTML with an unique value would be generated, which he would copy to that blog post.

The system can now verify the post is his and charge his address.

It's somewhat complicated (although not difficult to actually do), but on the other hand, we're talking about Bitcoin users ;)

<comment><USER7> The problem is that the content creator might not control the URL; their video might be posted by someone else to YouTube, or their image to Imgur etc.

I was thinking that if the submitter knows who the creator is, they can include that person's email address (which is usually not too hard to find).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but I think you need to allow tags or at least "categories" - otherwise it will have too much noise for just about everyone. Obviously a redesign would help but this can be done further down the road.

I'd definitely participate if I could see some traction or be allowed to create a "community" on something concrete I'm interested about. I think tags+categories are the way to go.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Something awful user did a hack on the site where they injected a close tag into the category selector, preventing other users from posting for a while.

It isn't a meaningful site until something awful hacks it.

Either way, it is fixed now and you can continue to post.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those that don't have any bitcoins, you can get some for free: [http://coinsmack.com/posts/Help/Help,-I-want-to-use- CoinSmac...](http://coinsmack.com/posts/Help/Help,-I-want-to-use-CoinSmack- but-I-dont-have-any-Bitcoins)!

</comment><comment><USER10> Why should I give people my bitcoins?

Why don't I just make a submission where the first people to upvote my story gets more of the profits while I collect a 10% service fee?

<comment><AUTHOR> The typical vote is 0.001 bitcoins ~= 1/2 a penny.

This means that a vote up is very affordable, and it doesn't require attaining reputation on a site to push something you feel is worth while to the top of the stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> simplified remake of <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Witcoin>

witcoin.com seems to be down, so probably right time. good luck! :)

</comment><comment><USER12> What incentive do users have to deposit/upvote?

<comment><USER7> I think the incentive to vote is to say 'thanks' for a good submission (the votes are extremely cheap).

There will be definitely be many freeloaders though, if the site's successful.

<comment><USER12> Forget freeloaders, think traction. I can't imagine why I'd send bitcoins to this site versus just using Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bitcoins will die off soon...

<comment><USER7> Anyone can make pointless, unjustified comments.

If you're not going to contribute anything, please don't comment.

<comment><USER13> ditto</comment></comment></comment>