Show HN: DronesBench an innovative testing machine for drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.dronesbench.net/homeeng <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I act here as a business dev and technical advisor. Any feedback or questions welcome. Thanks. (please ref. Hacker News if writing directly to the firm)

\---

DronesBench is an innovative testing machine (patents pending) that summarizes the health status of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, up to 2 meters long, by using a single measure called IDB (DronesBench Index). The IDB indicates the grams heaved by one watt of electric power used. It is a number that sums up the optimal performance of the whole propulsion system of the drone. Therefore, significant decreases reveal hidden defects, levelled by the control-board. The IDB measurement is a very fast and preventive tool to check the safety of any UAV's mission: once the UAV is fixed to our machine, it takes just a few seconds for the bench to get the measure. The IDB is also a good candidate for future legislation that will norm and certificate the efficiency of UAVs worldwide: we are in fact working with Politecnico di Bari, a well-reputed university in Italy, to disseminate our work and validate the IDB internationally against a large number of cases.

From a commercial perspective, DronesBench is suited to UAVs workshops for fast checks and efficiency certifications in order to save time and money. Therefore, we are going to sell it from 15 Jan 2017 and are collecting expressions of interest, pre-orders and orders from players employing fleet of drones worldwide.

May this be of your interest? Specifications, details, a brochure and some videos are on the website. Thanks again for your attention.

<comment><USER2> Is it for sale?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is, the testing machine I mean. The entire business with patents and team I think not, we have a 3-5 years plan relying upon the booming UAVs market, our r&d capabilities, the new IDB index as a possible universal efficiency standard and the legislation / certification aspects to come worldwide. Feel free to send in an email, just in case, ref. Hacker News. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> I didn't see any call to action around buying one or much technical detail on the website, that's why I asked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken, thanks: website and communication need work before going fully public on 15 Jan 2017. As for the machines, we have produced and tested a beta batch against the relevant legislation and a number of cases. We have now the capabilities to build 2 machines per day. I can surely take note of your expression of interest and come back to you at a later stage? Thanks again.

<comment><USER2> The spirit of "Show HN" is for people to share things that the community can try out or play with. Mostly for the purposes of obtaining feedback without having to formally launch.

My responses were due to appearance of the link as a "Show HN" and in its spirit. Unfortunately, I'm not currently in the drone manufacturing business and have few plans to enter it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Modeling Science as a Directed Graph - <AUTHOR> https://benchling.engineering/modeling-science-as-a-directed-graph-bfc149d4502b <comment><USER2> There's actually a subfield called 'scientific workflow systems' (SWS). An example of such a system is Kepler [1]. What the author(s) ask at the end of the article seems to me basically that they want process provenance. This is a fairly well studied problem.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_scientific_workflow_sys...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_scientific_workflow_system)

<comment><USER3> +1 to this comment. It is a reasonably sized body of research, too. On top of this, scientific workflow scheduling maps to the classic scheduling problem, which is known to be NP-hard - the fact that the authors infer that automating the traversal is all that is necessary suggests that they have an incomplete understanding of the problem at hand.

For those interested, a nice list of workflow managers, engines, and even languages can be found at [https://github.com/pditommaso/awesome- pipeline](https://github.com/pditommaso/awesome-pipeline).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of ologs: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1889v2)

The category on top of a given graph just adds path equivalences. While that might not seem like a big addition, it's crucial for restricting the structure's internal state.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. In a similar vein, there's a recent _Knowledge Representation in Bicategories of Relations_ [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.00526.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.00526.pdf) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems planning of "opportunistic" software projects faces related challenges? Though more like research direction exploration/planning, than research production-process management.

Gantt is ok when simple time and resource constraints dominate, and there's a simple path. But not all "project-design spaces" collapse that simply.

Even small opportunistic projects can have painfully large dependency graphs. "If/when browser bug X is ever fixed", "if I find a better algorithm", "if we get hardware X", "if/when these conditions are ever met, budget this amount of work along these vectors", "we could go this way or that", "here are some associated risks", "possible risk mitigations/explorations", "X is a candidate goal state", "with some path dependencies", "and can pay for this pattern of costs". "Y is an alternative candidate goal state", "this area of project space has a bunch of scattered payoffs", "sweeping this way is sparse on payoffs until the risky big one", ... and on, and on.

I've never seen tooling which wasn't ghastly painful for sketching out stuff like this, editing it, and keeping it up to date. I've hope for building something in VR. But perhaps I missed something?

</comment><comment><USER6> One problem with modeling workflows as dags is how to come up with reasonable ways to express common control flow elements. That said, for the parts of processes that are dependency trees they are the right fit.

<comment><USER7> (I work on the Benchling workflows product.)

What kinds of control flow elements do you have in mind?

I know one we've run into a few times is "repeat this step as many time as is necessary", like the repeated stirring example in the article. There's some nuance here because there are actually two graphs backing a workflow: the "configuration" graph that describes the experimental design, and the "execution" graph that describes what actually happened. In this case, the configuration graph would have a single node with a self-loop for stirring, and the execution graph would have a variable number nodes, one after the other, based on how many times the stirring needed to happen.

The configuration graph might have cycles or more abstract control flow mechanisms, but I think the execution graph is always a DAG because it's describing what happened in the real world. Configuration graphs are useful at the design step, but the execution graph is probably more useful for coordinating the experiment and analyzing how it went, and we've found that in practice, scientists might need to make unexpected ad-hoc changes a week into a month-long experiment, so trying to capture everything up-front in the configuration graph can sometimes not really be reasonable in the first place.

One aspect around control flow that makes it a little easier for us at the moment is that it's not DAGs all the way down. Each graph node corresponds to a lab notebook entry of instructions performed by a scientist, so any complex details around operating instruments and collecting results are just represented as human-readable instructions in a reusable template. For higher- level handoffs between scientists and teams, though, we've found that the DAG model works out pretty well.

<comment><USER8> I'm a bit confused about what the nodes are. You're saying they are the individual lab notebook entries, but then I wonder where the results of the experiments are in this graph?

I would have put the instructions on what was done on the edges of the graph, and the results or measurements on the vertices. But I'm not sure I'm correctly understanding your model.

<comment><USER7> Heh, there are a lot of ways to model it, and we've iterated on the details quite a bit and I imagine we'll iterate more in the future, but here's a quick explanation:

In our model, a node is a "run", which is an experimental procedure performed on a sample (or sometimes multiple samples). Each run has input samples, output samples, and structured data results. A notebook entry can have multiple runs associated with it, since a scientist will likely be processing many runs at once, and every run lives in exactly one notebook entry.

A common use case is to take some input sample, perform some transformation on it, and produce a new output sample that will be used downstream. Another common use case is a "screening" step where you take a collection of samples (one run each), run some analyses on those samples, and discard the ones that don't meet certain criteria. So sometimes the output is a new sample, sometimes it's the same as the input, and sometimes there's no output.

An edge indicates that the output of one run will be automatically fed into the input of the next run, and generally shows the flow of physical samples through the different stages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What kind of (open source) tools already exist to read through papers/excel files, etc. and extract meaning, in the form of a graph?</comment>


Ask HN: What are questions you should ask your future manager in an interview? - <AUTHOR> For context, I am a mid-level Software Engineer. <comment><USER2> Off the top of my head:

How do you evaluate performance of your direct reports? How often is compensation reviewed and who make the final decision on any compensation adjustments? What criteria are used in promotion decisions? How and how often do you provide feedback to your direct reports? How often do you have 1:1s with your direct reports and what do you discuss? If there is fundamental disagreement with the team on a technical/design question, how is the issue resolved? When was the last time that happened? Do you still do hands on technical work? What was the last thing you worked on? In your view, what is the primary role of an engineering manager? Do you have hiring/firing authority for the team? How many people on the team were you directly responsible for hiring? What is the attrition rate for the team, the engineering organisation and the company? Have you had to fire anyone? What are the biggest challenges facing your team/the engineering organisation/the company? What have you done to encourage diversity within your team and the company?

The answers to these questions are important, but just having answers indicates that the manager has at least thought about this stuff. Managers who get defensive when you ask any of these questions should generally be avoided.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try to get a sense of transparency and communication from the candidate, which are generally good traits. There's nothing worse than a manager who things you're an idiot. How? How many promotions in your team lately? Have you ever had a problem with one of your direct report, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> What am I expected to do in this role? Why has this job position opened up?

What is the long term focus of the company? Figure out whether they are champion players, trying to survive, or comfortable and making money. And whether their plans to meet those ambitions are sensible.

Try to get a feel of the culture. Are they more of a family? Are they strictly work/life separate? Are they serious or playful? Does everyone go home at 5? Is everyone on time? Does the company try to bite off more than it can chew? Is overtime common? Do employees own a part of the company (shares/equity)? How many core members are on a part time basis?

</comment><comment><USER5> Only you can answer this. What is important to you in a workplace? For example, one question I ask is this: How often are new features being developed into the software, and what group / person implements them?</comment>


Reuters killed their RSS feeds? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/tools/rss <comment><USER2> 99% of times it's just an error on their end and they eventually come back.

Why: I've created popurls fame back in the days (now hvper.com) and I can tell you that this would be the first prominent case that a major outlet would eventually give up on offering a feed. RSS is alive and kicking and its death is just something the tech community loves to agonize over and over again.

<comment><AUTHOR> My experience diverges from yours. Reuters feeds have been highly reliable over the last 3 years for me, with near zero downtime. There were at least one new entry per hour, almost 24h/24, but it can go up to 5 new entries per hour.

This is not a small "hiccup", this is a total blackout for almost a day now

Meta : HN doesn't let me downvote your comment, that doesn't seem very fair.

Edit : I invite everyone to look at webarchive : [https://web.archive.org/web/20191029165306/https://www.reute...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191029165306/https://www.reuters.com/tools/rss)

The tools/rss page went offline October 29th 2019, which seems to indicate a planned shutdown of the RSS prepared months ago. Possibly, they delayed the shutdown with covid19 to now

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Still showing up on RSS apps and populating new entries. [https://imgur.com/a/GiE37KC](https://imgur.com/a/GiE37KC)

<comment><USER4> Ok, I'm going to downweight this thread for now. We can revisit the story if it turns out to be true.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi dang. The feeds are _not_ populating for about 24h now, but any rss readers that fetched the last news from 24h ago will still show the last news from 24h ago (like in the imgur picture). With all my respect, I would agree to change the title to add a question mark, but not to downweight the fact that, intentionally or not, reuters killed their rss feeds for 24h now, and some of us are impacted, and they would like to share their experiences and opinions.

<comment><USER4> Ok, but the problem is that then this becomes an "is down" story, as in "Reuters' RSS feed is down". Those tend not to be a very high quality category of submission, and it's unlikely that a story with that title would have shot to the front page.

Rather it's the sensational they-killed-RSS! aspect of the story that attracted attention, because it ties in with the generic topics of RSS- lamentation and web-nostalgia which are perennially popular here (plus the word 'killed' evokes indignation, which invariably attracts upvotes).

I'm not mocking those feelings—I share them! I just think there's a binary outcome here: either Reuters is truly killing their RSS, in which case we can discuss that once we know it; or (more likely) this was just a bug somewhere, and that is not SNI (significant new information) which could support a substantially different discussion. For more on SNI, see [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment).

Actually, the 'bug' interpretation does relate to the RSS-lamentation topic in a more subtle way. Software that's low-priority never gets as much maintenance attention. Perhaps someone made a change that broke the RSS feed, but no one noticed because they didn't test that.

<comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598724)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sent an online support request pointing out the problem (as though they're not aware) and politely asking when it would be fixed. Assuming the reply window for this thread is still open by then, I'll post any response here.

<comment><USER7> Surely there is a better approach than a passive aggressive support request?

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's passive aggressive. It could actually just be a mistake. I've emailed (admittedly much smaller) news organizations before when their RSS feeds went down, and received a response and a reinstated feed.

I wouldn't bet money on it coming back, but if this was an intentional move I might have expected them to replace the page with "Sorry, no more RSS, try our app!" or something. They are also still linking to the feeds at the bottom of many pages, like this one: [https://www.reuters.com/tools/mobile/us](https://www.reuters.com/tools/mobile/us)

<comment><USER9> If nobody complains, then they'll know nobody really cares about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Confirmed: Reuters closed their RSS down. Not a good look, imho.

Leo, Jun 23, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC: Hello,

Thank you for reaching out and we apologize for the inconvenience. We are shutting down the current iteration of the Reuters.com global editions RSS feeds as part of our larger strategy and as part of better experiences we have in store for Reuters.com.

However, if you require the service, we suggest that you contact our Sales Team on the link provided below:

[https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact- us.html](https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-us.html)

Kind regards,

The Reuters.com Team

</comment><comment><USER11> The death of RSS is the death of the federated web model where users view and consume the content they want to. Modern alternatives like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram do not serve users in the same way. Users happily consume the content the platform feeds to them, without much say in it. It's an eerie return to the pre-Internet days, where the only choices a consumer had were to change the TV channel / radio dial / newspaper. An illusion of choice in which users are disempowered.

<comment><USER12> I think this is only a short-term effect. In response to things becoming more locked down, more and more "info liberation" projects will take root, and in the end the information will just gradually all leak out and end up outside the prison wall, in compatible, accessible formats. Then, eventually, even the sources of the information will switch to publishing it in the libresphere, because at that point the best audiences will be there too.

<comment><USER13> I hope you're right, but this is an extremely optimistic view that does not have much historical precedent.

<comment><USER14> Looking at all of history, I'm very optimistic. Going way back to Cuneiform and the printing press, and the internet itself, they all point to a general principle of the breaking up of monolithic information sources over time. It might take a while, but it'll happen with the internet too.

<comment><USER15> What you describe in the digital age will be an illusion of freedom. Delivery of the bits will still be locked down tighter than ever. Delivery allows filtering. The future is very bleak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I submitted a support ticket on Jun 20, and received a reply this morning:

'Hello,

Thank you for reaching out. Please be informed that we've already discontinued RSS Feed on Reuters.com. If you require the service, we suggest that you contact our Sales Team on the link provided below:

[https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact- us.html](https://agency.reuters.com/en/contact-us.html)

Kind regards,

The Reuters.com Team'

<comment><USER17> I got the same reply, word for word, for a similar inquiry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There should be a way to integrate RSS with a payment model. People should be free to get content they want in any app of their choice based and still be able to pay for it.

<comment><USER2> Hidden RSS Urls already exist. Publishers are just lazy to implement it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting that their FeedBurner CNAME[0] is still set.

[0] [http://feeds.reuters.com/](http://feeds.reuters.com/)

<comment><USER20> For sure whomever is in charge of their DNS found out about this the same time we did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there an alternate source for this? It's how I got my news up until it shut down.

<comment><USER22> _Is there an alternate source for this? It 's how I got my news up until it shut down._

You could always pay for the news you consume.

<comment><USER23> I'm a huge proponent for paid news, but that's a bit of a strawman argument. Reuters hasn't made their rss paid, or removed all of their free news content.

It is sad that we're losing a uniquely powerful mechanism for consuming news because we can't find a business model that supports it. People Who consumed RSS news can't just pay and get an equivalent experience. RSS allows filtering and combining news sources in ways that make them much more valuable, and can't be reproduced just by paying for a single subscription to a publisher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just noticed today that City Lab as part of their move to Bloomberg also doesn't appear to have a working Atom or RSS feed anymore :( I contacted customer support and told them it worked on the old site but now appears to be gone. I've had a surprising amount of success with this on news sites and magazines in the past, so hopefully they respond positively.

<comment><USER24> Reuters support responded and told me I'd have to pay them if I wanted RSS feeds back, apparently this is some sort of subscription feature now? I dunno, it made no sense. No response from City Lab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The relelnless push to apps aka blocking ads & tracking marches on

</comment><comment><USER26> That stinks. I was subscribed for my Kodi ticker feed. I've found that Reuters does the best job at putting actual information in the headline and not just using it as an opportunity for clickbait.

Fictional Example:

\- CNN: Trump said what? Democrats outraged by latest tweet.

\- Reuters: Trump tweets 'looting leads to shooting' in response to BLM Protests

</comment><comment><USER27> That is moving in the opposite direction of the recent trend...

People are getting sick of silos and algorithmic timelines. Lot's my friends are moving back to RSS and feed aggregators, heck I'm building a RSS add-on.

</comment><comment><USER28> AP also did this, I use their app but wish I could pay to get rid of the ads.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was sad the day the RSS feed on Jordan Mechner's site stopped working. I think it was around the time Stripe published the PoP book.

We need more RSS feeds!

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish there was an OAuth for RSS, so I could subscribe to private/paid feeds through reader apps I only partially trusted.

<comment><USER31> There actually is, kind of.

The IndieWeb[0] community has come up with a protocol called AutoAuth[1] that solves this exact problem.

It's only a rough draft at the moment and it is built upon the IndieAuth[2] protocol (which, in turn, is based on OAuth 2), but I think the way it works is highly fascinating.

Here[3] is a an overview of how it works.

[0]: [https://indieweb.org/](https://indieweb.org/) [1]: [https://indieweb.org/AutoAuth](https://indieweb.org/AutoAuth) [2]: [https://indieauth.spec.indieweb.org/](https://indieauth.spec.indieweb.org/) [3]: [https://www.svenknebel.de/temp/autoauth.html](https://www.svenknebel.de/temp/autoauth.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> why though?

<comment><USER33> Ask average Joe what's an RSS feed and you'll know. Supporting effectively dead technology doesn't make financial sense for any company.

<comment><USER34> RSS isn't dead, it's just not popular (never has been). Teletype wasn't popular either, still it was essential to some. And while teletype clearly requires costly specialized hardware, RSS doesn't.

<comment><USER35> If you'd asked me a half hour ago I would definitely have said RSS' lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long squawk, but then this Reuters thing happened and I can categorically assure any one who would like to know that RSS is not dead, it's just pining for the fjords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I used to include their RSS feeds on radfi.com and now I have to find a replacement for them.

</comment><comment><USER37> That's a pity, I use RSS to forward feeds from many news sites to my telegram.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wouldn't it be possible to create a third-party site scraper that could generate custom RSS feeds independently of the company?

About the only barrier would be paywalls, IMO.

<comment><USER39> They tweet all their articles, right? No need to scrape their site, if you're only looking for headlines. This tool will generate an RSS feed from their Twitter account [http://fetchrss.com/twitter](http://fetchrss.com/twitter)

You won't get the article content but it'll give you enough information to find out if you're interested in the article and then read it on their site.

[https://twitter.com/Reuters](https://twitter.com/Reuters)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Page Not Found

<comment><USER41> Yeah, that's the problem.</comment></comment>


Loopt Sneaks Background Multitasking Into Its iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/loopt-iphone-app-sneaks-background-multitasking-mode

<comment><USER2> That title is very misleading. Finding a way to get location from sources other than the phone when the app isn't running is far from "Sneaking Background Multitasking."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's partially my bad. I copied the title of the article rather than re- naming it. I considered it, but for whatever reason decided against it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "and the iPhone takes no hit to its battery life as it's all running in the cloud."

Um, what does that even mean? Does "cloud" just mean "a network" now?

<comment><USER4> It means the author/editor or some combination is a bit muddle-headed about how this works.

Here's my guess. There's software in the cell towers that now forwards ping times to a server somewhere that does the triangulation, as opposed to your handset. This way, the iPhone doesn't have to do anything it's not already doing, hence no drain on battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that, right now, location polling is really the major reason people request background processing. If Apple would put a feature into the settings that let the user regularly push their location to _Apple_ , and then a section in the Notifications settings for whether each app could access that location once pushed, a large swath of complaints would be eliminated at once, and the battery life would only have to be spent in one place, instead of being hacked in by each app that you want to track you.

<comment><USER6> Isn't there another smartphone that lets you use background processing?

<comment><USER7> Almost everyone except the iPhone: Android, WinMo, WebOS, Blackberry, Symbian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a few questions:

* How the F does this work?

* Is AT&T involved?

* Is any of this data admissible in a court of law?

* Why would you want to broadcast your location to a list of people constantly 24x7 - outside of some kind of job requirement?

<comment><USER8> Yes, AT&T is involved. Go into your account on wireless.att.com and under the My Profile section is a location privacy tab. Just saw this today when looking for my contract expiration date. Pure coincidence, I swear...</comment></comment>


How this Japanese founder created smart LED shoes and is planning to scale it - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/talk/japanese-founder-smart-led-shoes <comment><USER2> I thought the ending paragraph was flawed. Betamax showed the weakness of the 'go-it-alone' strategy.

FTA: Morita insisted that Sony products only be sold under the Sony brand. And this may come as a surprise to millennials, but at the time of Morita's death in 1999, Sony had the best consumer brand in the US, far ahead of icons like Coca Cola, GE, or Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7DiwUlnBt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7DiwUlnBt4)</comment>


Why I went from Python to Go (and not node.js) - grey-area http://jordanorelli.tumblr.com/post/31533769172/why-i-went-from-python-to-go-and-not-node-js

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523611></comment>


Interview with a link spammer - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/

<comment><USER2> I wrote scripts for my blog and still receive spam, so it's not only standard software that's vulnerable - they definitely use some heuristics or otherwise analyze blogs manually, one by one. Also, I see poor English (I mean, very poor English, not like mine) in spam posts, which means it's been outsourced already.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can see how the spamming part gets done, but how is he able to get payed without getting caught? If I see a spam link, and follow it until I get to a viagra selling website, I should be able to find either the spammer himself or someone who pays the spammer. How can he remain anonymous?</comment>


Real-World JavaScript Anti-Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://blog.javascripting.com/2014/11/06/real-world-javascript-anti-patterns/ <comment><USER3> I disagree on

        items.forEach(function(item) {
            doSomething(item);
        });

being an anti pattern. Many of these looping functions actually pass more than one argument to the callback, so writing

        items.forEach(doSomething);

will break if doSomething is a function with optional arguments.

<comment><USER4> Yeah - not being aware of this will screw you up!

        ['10','10','10','10','10'].map(parseInt)
        // [10, NaN, 2, 3, 4]

<comment><USER5> Several "wat!"s on that line... I didn't know "10" was a number in base 0.

<comment><USER6> It gets even weirder:

        parseInt('10', {test: 'test'})
        10

        parseInt('10', 'test')
        10

        parseInt('10', '2')
        2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not a Javascript developer, but I sort of disagree with the point about forEach and thisArg. Using a closure like that is clearer than relying on some custom magic done by a certain function.

Function.prototype.bind() makes sense, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anti patterns? To what specific style of development? Imperative programming? functional? Class based / MVC / object oriented? Prototypical? This article lacks clarity and draws no useful conclusions.

"so one obvious improvement would be to use selectors instead of the execrable DOM API"

Additionally, DOM API is slow. Wrapping your access to the DOM in additional layers of abstraction isn't a win or "anti pattern". It's a maintenance trade off.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just realized how I learned to put to good use many of the above stuff when using React. When I used to use Angular a common theme when I was writing my code was "How do I accomplish my goal by using Angular's API (as opposed to jQuery)?".

With React, since my "markup" and code is all just Javascript the common theme has become "How do I accomplish my goal in plain old Javascript?". The skills I've been picking up are definitely transferable to projects that don't use React or any other JS library.

Though I do keep forgetting to add `.bind(this)` all the time that it makes me miss using `var self = this;`.

<comment><USER10> Forgetting to use bind can be a good thing. See my comment above.

As for writing things "the Angular way", it's about truly separating your MVC layers using two way databinding. I don't care how you do it as long as you keep V as declarative as possible. It sounds like "the javascript way" for you might just involve a lot of storing data in the DOM.

I think a much more robust pattern involves:

A Model - This is Javascript data stored outside the DOM, for easy manipulation. It is usually accessible via the window object

A ViewModel - This is Javascript data that is stored outsidd the DOM but is referenced directly by a data-bound component. It can involve view transformations such as time/date localization.

A View - This is the actual DOM component, in Angular it is a "directive". It reacts to changes in the ViewModel and can also change the Model (which in turn changes the ViewModel).

That way, for example, if you want to implement optimistic visual feedback you can do it in the Model and have the model try to sync or revert.

All this becomes even more complex when you have to build multi user apps. You can use Firebass or Parse etc. or you can check out [http://platform.qbix.com](http://platform.qbix.com) \-- open sourced but still a work in progress until 1.0

<comment><USER9> > It sounds like "the javascript way" for you might just involve a lot of > storing data in the DOM.

I don't think I've ever modified the DOM directly when using React. Try it out, it's a really refreshing take on building client-side apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I agree with most of the points he listed, I have an issue with the style on which he presented them: In almost all cases, he presented the wrong solution, followed by an alternative which is "obviously" better - <USER2> explaining _why_ it is better. The map-with-side-effects example is even worse, performance-wise than the original. Of course, performance tradeoffs of this kind are usually acceptable, but you usually want to know what you get in return. Especially in the for-each examples, this is not clear at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> His second bind example is incorrect.

      function handleClick(i) {
        this.innerHTML = i;
      }

      for (i = 0; i < elems.length; i++) {
        elems[i].addEventListener("click", handleClick.bind(this, i));
      }

In the for loop, the _this_ value refers to the global object. To get the desired effect, it should be changed to elems[i] (this piece of code is trying to bind a handler to an element).

</comment><comment><USER13> I was wondering why the author mentioned _.partial after a sections about Function.prototype.bind. Wouldn't : _.partial(_.merge, {}).apply(this, confs); Be the same as: _.merge.bind(_, {}).apply(_, confs);

That being said, I'm glad this forced me to look up _.partial - seems like you can pass '_' as a parameter and that position in the arguments will not be bound in the partial function!

</comment><comment><USER14> They should mention that most of the functions they use and recommend using don't exist in IE8 and crappier.

<comment><USER15> That's becoming less of an issue these days in general. But many of the examples use underscore/lodash, which do in fact support old IEs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of these are good. Others, such as using .bind() just to create a handler for the click() event, are terrible. Not only are you creating a NEW closure every time the code runs (via executing .bind) but also you lose th ability to use the actual _this_ inside the handler! Much better to use closures as they were intended, and have that extra _this var to refer to the previous context if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER16> I disagree with the MyButton.prototype.new example - it isn't difficult to see that it is an api, and usage of new to do something like button.new() makes for very readable code.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is good stuff here, but "anti-pattern" doesn't mean "you typed more than you really needed to". Rather simple tools can fix that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Using "this" is already an anti-pattern.

<comment><USER19> Only if you don't properly know JavaScript. Which is basically what this entire article is about.

<comment><USER18> Well JS is all about context, literally and figuratively I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Number Script - A Little Language that compiles to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/substack/number-script

<comment><USER2> I wonder, if you wrote a program, that generates all valid javascript programs, given enough time, do you automatically have copyright on all these programs? Or do you need to actually run the program and save the results somewhere?

<comment><USER3> Well in the number-script compiler, it verifies code by running it (I'm not sure if that qualifies).

Also, you would get stuck on code with infinite loops.

<comment><USER4> The verify phase was just defining an inline function but not running it. However, I just noticed that a program with carefully placed braces could jump out of the function box and actually run. I replaced the checker with just Function(src) which shouldn't have that problem and is much faster.

<comment><USER3> Oh, right, it didn't execute it. I need more caffeine (except not really, it's 2:30).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I sent a pull request that allows users to specify the base. <https://github.com/substack/number-script/pull/2>

Real men code in binary.

<comment><USER5> pull request #2 -- appropriate

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really fun, you should introduce it on April 1.

</comment><comment><USER2> I want to see fractal made from the numbers that are valid. I'll try to do this, but I don't know how to best cast 1d numbers onto 2d plane. Only way I can think of, that doesn't depend on arbitrary constraints like how many pixels in a row, is to make spiral starting from the middle of the screen. Anybody has better idea?

<comment><USER7> Make it 1D or use the mapping from this xkcd <http://xkcd.com/195/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure this actually qualifies as a compiler. All it does is (Python): return int(code.encode('hex'))

</comment><comment><USER9> reminds me of Malbolge somehow... (<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge>)

</comment><comment><USER10> I save even more loads of scripting time by encoding in Base 1. Documentation is a snap, and no danger of creeping featuritis.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this supposed to be a knock on CoffeScript?

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the purpose? I don't get it.

<comment><USER13> It's a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone write a quine?

<comment><USER15>
      5278827227337076170449567737552050301648746541307090261949087452005923485275315474841135167346502310847459286951086056344961803751459109212515926887194626082177012120350623103576444178029679178692303904162181758870755165218374331731985435437211712470113418677388286391584240429269097406210073414223015915570360596450972343414303025097210394142649144691637350017001727477713336405614635714291836737681181600586279616997175126243498394778635680522

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Integers only? Fail.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well done substack.

</comment><comment><USER18> hahahahaha

</comment><comment><USER19> JavaScript: Programming's funniest joke.

<comment><USER20> I think the joke here is actually on CoffeeScript, not Javascript.

And really the joke is on CoffeeScript evangelists, not CoffeeScript.</comment></comment>


Can we trust Wikipedia? Evgeny Morozov on why we've stopped asking this question - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/edit-page-wikipedia-evgeny-morozov <comment><USER2> FYI, this appears to be from 2009.

</comment><comment><USER3> > November 05, 2009</comment>


Google Employees Strongly Support Creating Censored Search Tool for China-Survey - <AUTHOR> http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2018/08/google-china-censor-survey-blind.html <comment><USER2>
      There was once a case to be made that it would be better overall for the Chinese populace to have improved access to most information, even if that meant accepting censorship over some information. But given the country's growing authoritarianism, that argument gets harder and harder to make

I don't quite understand such argument.

Besides, the Chinese government might not want Google to get back neither. I wonder if the author is going to change his mind once he realizes this. hehe</comment>


Show HN: Hyper Sync – The Simplest Way to Sync JSON to Core Data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hyperoslo/Sync

<comment><USER2> Somehow off topic: I've been looking for something similar but implemented in Swift. Does anyone knows about an alternative?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi jlhonora,

Sync is been rewritten to Swift => [https://github.com/hyperoslo/Sync/pull/50](https://github.com/hyperoslo/Sync/pull/50)

We also have an example on how to use Sync in Swift.

[https://github.com/hyperoslo/Sync/tree/master/Examples/AppNe...](https://github.com/hyperoslo/Sync/tree/master/Examples/AppNet)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, here one of the creators of Sync, let me know if you have any questions :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why iOS 7 minimum? There's no UI so I'm curious what apis were needed that iOS 6 didn't support.

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason behind, just to put a minimum in order to move faster in the future.

When iOS 9 gets released we probably would go iOS 8 only and use all the new features.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to choose between Stripe and Amazon Payments? - <AUTHOR> Debating between these two for subscription payments for a site I'm working on.  They both cost the same, no setup fees, obviously both are very established companies so I'm having trouble picking between the two.
- Why did you pick one over the other?
- How has your developer experience been with each if you've used both?
- What else should I be asking myself before I decide?
I suspect that using an Amazon login and Amazon Payments would lead to a higher conversion rate, but I don't know by how much and can't prove that.  Perhaps the chance of higher conversion alone is worth some extra dev time to do the setup (I'm assuming AMZN is slightly less easy to setup because of the general increased complexity of AWS services over others like Digital Ocean) but I could be totally wrong.
And this leads to another question: why don't I see more sites using Amazon logins?  I almost always see Google, Twitter and FB only. <comment><USER2> _why don 't I see more sites using Amazon logins? I almost always see Google, Twitter and FB only._

It could be that Google, Twitter, and Facebook are truly international, while Amazon is not available in many countries. Unless your app is US or UK centered, you'd be missing out on quite a big population.

EDIT: the list of Amazon countries appears to be United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does either require an exclusive? Why can't you use both?

You can then do some tests (e.g. show both, but in random order; or show only one, randomly picked) to validate (or invalidate) your suspicioin that Amazon would have a higher conversion rate.</comment>


HTTPS is broken on Elinks: it doesn't perform server certificate verification - <AUTHOR> http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/elinks-dev/2017-March/002119.html <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone care about this anymore? Or has this project beed abandoned?</comment>


Show HN: HandmadeGooods – handmade passport covers with custom prints - s-stude http://handmadegooods.com/?ref=from_hn

<comment> s-stude Hi HN! I made this. Here's some info on how I came up with this.

Firstly, it's an online store where you can buy leather covers for your passport. All covers have beautiful and unique prints. They are long durable and nice.

I've submitted only 30 different designs right now, so if you have any comments - you are welcome.

I plan to add a feature in the future where user can upload a custom image that then will be manufactured as a cover. What do you think about this?

I'd like to monetize this by selling these goods. And I included 25% discount for this launch.

Hope this helps!</comment>


Kim Dotcom reveals Mega will offer 50GB of free storage - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/17/kim-dotcom-reveals-mega-will-offer-50gb-of-free-storage-hopes-to-offer-megaupload-data-transfer/?fromcat=all

<comment><USER2> The encryption is more interesting

</comment><comment><USER3> jumbofiles.com has offered 50GB of free storage for years, what's the news?</comment>


ITunes 8 Genius Feature Thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://andrewmachado.com/blog/2008/09/09/my-thoughts-on-apple-itunes-8s-genius-feature/

<comment><USER2> It seems like Apple rebranded their old recommendation engine with something that has less "pushy" language.</comment>


Some iPhone X displays plagued by mysterious 'Green Line of Death' - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/apple/2017/11/10/iphone-x-displays-plagued-mysterious-green-line-death/ <comment><USER2> Yet another obscuring pop-up window.</comment>


Apple Announces Beatles Availability on iTunes - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/the-beatles/

<comment><USER2> Haven't we had enough of Beatles-on-iTunes posts?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1910177>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1910211>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1910185>

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, that wasn't cool at all Apple. And you're right, I will always remember this day. I remember the day you pulled that terrible PR stunt.

</comment><comment><USER4> I will always remember the day that I finally started to question Apple's practices. I know I may be late to the game but this announcement just makes me very disappointed. What happened to the blue box era Steve Jobs?

</comment><comment><USER5> What has then now become the biggest name that is "not (yet) on iTunes"?

</comment><comment><USER6> Beat that, Google.</comment>


chrome.declarativeNetRequest - <AUTHOR> https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetRequest <comment><AUTHOR> This API seems reasonable iff chrome.declarativeNetRequest.MAX_NUMBER_OF_RULES (currently 30,000) and chrome.declarativeNetRequest.MAX_NUMBER_OF_DYNAMIC_RULES (currently 5,000) could be expanded significantly.

Other than performance, is there a design limitation that would require Chrome to limit these arbitrarily?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you plan for your vacation? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,<p>We're looking to understand more about how people plan for their vacations (i.e. well thought out? last minute? etc.) and thought HN-ers might have great insight. <comment><USER2> My general sequence for an overseas trip is to use a slew of tools:

1\. Choose the dates based on compatibility with my work schedule or particular events I want to visit (e.g. festivals)

2\. Use Google Flights and matrix.itasoftware.com to get a idea of prices

3\. i. Use a shared Google Sheet to list out options and my schedule (e.g. plotting out a row for each day of the trip, to allocate out days to each destination)

3\. ii. Check Google / Wikipedia / TripAdvisor to see the top attractions - add these to the Sheet for reference while I'm on the trip, and also use this to make sure I've allocated the right amount of time to each place.

4\. Use booking.com or Expedia to find the best deals for accommodation (usually I use hotels)

5\. Book directly on the airline's website, since that often has the best price.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. For any of these destinations, do have to do a lot of pre-planning around how to get the top attractions? Print maps, etc.?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh brother... For our summer holidays we always pack up our caravan. A couple of years ago I started to make a list of campsites that friends/family recommend or that I stumbled upon on the internet. They're all on a Google Map, and the list is sortable by country, region, stars and amenities.

Also a couple of years ago I made another document with possible routes (we always make it a road trip, with anywhere between 3 to 6 stops in 3 weeks). I currently have a list of about 80 destinations, so we have a couple of hundreds possible routes to choose from. I make a general plan before we go (for instance this route from our last holiday to France):

Route Kilometers Nachten Datum

Ede – Le Crotoy 463 km 5 do 16/7 – di 21/7

Le Crotoy – Seillac 372 km 2 di 21/7 – do 23/7

Seillac – Brantome 319 km 6 do 23/7 – wo 29/7

Brantome – Aydat 267 km 6 wo 29/7 – di 4/8

Aydat – Melun 403 km 3 di 4/8 – vr 7/8

Melun – Ede 544 km

The beauty of this seemingly rigid planning is that I can adjust it on the fly. The weather sucks? We move on to our next stop. Campsite isn't what we expected? I can find another campsite close by that we'll probably like in seconds. And because my route file I have a myriad of options to choose from.

You might think that a planning like this takes away the adventure, but it doesn't. A couple of years ago we liked our first campsite so much that we stayed the full 3 weeks there. I'm not bound by my planning, but it's more like a guideline that we can divert from.

For citytrips I book months in advance. I make a list of all the things I want to see and do, and plan them in advance. So our citytrips tend to be more rigid, but we like that. I would hate to waste time on finding out what's cool when you're at your destination, only to find out smart people booked in advance and you're too late. (This got us in the crown of the Statue of Liberty, for instance. And I prepared a bicycle trip around the island of Manhattan on forehand, since it wasn't a marked route there would have been no way to do it without preparation).

I get that some people book last minute, but for me the preparation is just as much fun as the vacation itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this. I'd love to somehow find the balance between planning and spontaneity. Thanks for the insight especially for the value of booking way in advance.

May I ask how did you start gathering the list of all the things you want to see and do? Or even how did you decide on the destination in the first place?

<comment><USER3> Sometimes I stumble upon things on the internet, sometimes I search specific things in the surroundings. I'm a history buff and I love exploring old bunkers, so I search online for bunkers in the vincinity of, let's say, Avranches.

Some destinations are chosen because of their convenient location. I can't travel to the south of France in one long drive, so I need two stops that are approximately 1/3 and 2/3 on the way. I check Google Maps for interesting geography, and do some research about towns/cities in the vincinity. This applies to other road trips as well: I found one of my favorite hotels ever this way (Kasbah Tebi in Aït Behaddou, Morocco: a UNESCO-protected kasbah without electricity or running water.)

For the city trips I browse forums (TripAdvisor, Zoover) and 'things to do in...'-lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean in terms of actually planning the vacation? Or in terms of dealing with being out of work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one. I mean actually planning a vacation.

<comment><USER4> I'm an obsessive planner. But I mix some spontaneity in, as well. Basically, I plan out the trip (including places to stay, etc...). But any particular day, if something strikes me, I allow myself to do something completely different. However, I always have a framework in place.

In terms of picking places to go, what are you interested in? I like food. So, I do Google searches for best food destinations. I read chowhound to get ideas on where foodie travelers like to go.

If you have an interest, just do targeted searches for places to go for people with those interests. Might sound too simple, but it works quite well for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm building a mobile travel assistant but also wanted to learn how different people plan their trips.

I was planning a massive trip for my family and it took a lot of great effort but also left me feeling that I needed to have the Internet with me in case of an emergency.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Zergo Freedom is the latest contender for the best ergonomic keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.zergotech.com <comment><AUTHOR> Saw a link to this keyboard in a previous post... I think it deserves a post of its own. Keen to hear if others know more about this? Seems to do well in reviews</comment>


Understanding Navigability of Social Tagging Systems (alt.chi 2007 paper with reviews, pdf) - <AUTHOR> http://www.viktoria.se/altchi/index.php?action=showsubmission&id=39 <comment><USER2> Useful for people evaluating whether to use a tag cloud as navigation

"We analyzed a popular social tagging site, del.icio.us, using information theory. By analyzing various kinds of entropy, which is a traditional information theory metric, we found that, over time, del.icio.us is becoming harder to navigate. Moreover, the collective of users (the crowd) is having a harder time in tagging documents as the collection of bookmarks grows unabated. This is somewhat intuitive, since the amount of information being bookmarked is growing extremely fast, and the usage and growth of the Indeed, design changes and tools for social tagging are tagging vocabulary become much more saturated. Entropy, as a metric, can also be used to drive system design choices. We discussed several social tagging tools or modifications to social tagging that could benefit from using entropy to evaluate the effects. It is our hope that HCI researchers will utilize this methodology to characterize future social and collaborative information systems."</comment>


May 6th – the day for DRM-free world - <AUTHOR> https://defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm/

<comment><AUTHOR> Related: [http://fixthedmca.org](http://fixthedmca.org)</comment>


Ask HN: Why would you want to make your site work without JS? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A few devs on HN hang on to a bygone web where everything is a plain document. Your non-technical clients, who greatly outnumber them, want apps with rich interaction. Which one of them pays you?

</comment><comment><USER3> You are probably looking at the issue in the wrong order, why do you need JS to view your website in the first place:

\- Not Static content

\- You don't care about accessibility ( Disclaimer : I don't know much about the evolution of the lastest browser accesibility technologies )

\- You don't care about robots indexing your website ( although google, and headless browser are an effort toward looking at javascript content, they are an effort from the search engine when they could allocate the time for websites that do provide proper fallback )

</comment><comment> tony-allan 1\. Speed 2\. Compatibility</comment>


Debian Maintainer Dmitry Bogatov Arrested in Moscow - <AUTHOR> https://meduza.io/en/feature/2017/04/10/mathematics-teacher-accused-of-inciting-mass-riots-now-also-accused-of-supporting-terrorism-and-once-again-detained <comment><USER2> It seems as if Debian insiders are put in difficult circumstances by government officials. Maybe it's just a convenient coincidence.</comment>


The Cloud is not a silver bullet. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kevburnsjr.com/the-cloud-is-not-a-silver-bullet

<comment><USER2> I've actually seen the tipping point between more value in `the cloud' and in our own data-center. The article is leaving out some of the massive overheads in managing your own metal, but even with that factored in, the cloud often comes out to be significantly more expensive.

Finding that tipping point requires that you have a very clear understanding of your company's use-case, which is unlikely to be true when starting out. I often recommend that startups go down the cloud route while still exploring, while keeping a close eye on the costs, and having a clear set of migration criteria and plans.</comment>


Learn Distributed - Distributed Systems Workshop in Providence, RI - <AUTHOR> http://signup.learndistributed.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those interested, here's the rough curriculum that I've outlined so far. Feedback welcome!

[https://gist.github.com/cmeiklejohn/8346377](https://gist.github.com/cmeiklejohn/8346377)

</comment><comment><USER2> No mention of cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aiming to be free, but once we figure out interest and sort out the venue we will know for sure. I'm bootstrapping this entirely myself, so it will be dependent on that.</comment></comment>


Chamath Palihapitiya says he's taught himself how to be happy again - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/podcasts/2019/3/4/18247010/chamath-palihapitiya-social-capital-happiness-identity-crisis-kara-swisher-teddy-schleifer-podcast <comment><USER2> I heard the interview earlier today, it was quite interesting.

I have to say I quite like how he doesn't really care about what anyone thinks of a decision he makes and he stands by his points.</comment>


Elsevier Has Bought Mendeley - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/08/confirmed-elsevier-has-bought-mendeley-for-69m-100m-to-expand-open-social-education-data-efforts/ <comment><USER2> Quoting one of the comments from Techcrunch which I think should be upvoted:

"disgraceful that they spent their whole life as a company arguing that they were the next big thing in open publishing only to sell out to the most unethical monolith in closed publishing out there. no doubt el$evier will enjoy slowly ripping apart what's left of mendeley and continuing with its centuries-old business model of making money off the back of researchers' freely provided knowledge.

nice to see your true colours team mendeley!"

<comment><USER3> I don't want to comment on a comment, so I'd prefer to point you to Mendeley's official blog post on this topic here: [http://blog.mendeley.com/start-up- life/team-mendeley-is-join...](http://blog.mendeley.com/start-up-life/team- mendeley-is-joining-elsevier/)

If there are more questions, we have put together a couple questions and answers here: [http://blog.mendeley.com/press-release/qa-team-mendeley- join...](http://blog.mendeley.com/press-release/qa-team-mendeley-joins- elsevier/)

Finally, if there are still lingering questions, we're more than happy to answer them here or directly with us on twitter @rvidal / @mendeley_com / @mendeleysupport And there's always email: email@example.com :)

<comment><USER4> Do you really not understand how fundamentally anti-open-access Elsevier is? Have you not seen what happens to the other companies they absorb? Many of us have experience in this particular field and it's not a pleasant one.

Your official blog post is inane marketing-speak that has no basis in the reality of the damage Elsevier has done and continues to do to the fabric of science publishing. Mendeley should be ashamed, and you personally should be ashamed for perpetuating this nonsense. Within a year your company will be effectively dismantled and anyone left over who actually cares about open access can start over from scratch. I wish them luck.

<comment><USER5> I have a feeling people aren't going to wait a year to start on an open replacement given the cartoonishly awful reputation Elsevier has.

<comment><USER6> Cartoonish is right.

Not only are they horribly exploitative towards the academics and librarians who by and large both write and purchase what Elsevier publishes, they also ... sponsor arms fairs! whee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> God damn it. After the recent MySQL/OpenOffice/Java and Google Reader fiascos, my lab had a huge internal debate about whether to continue using Mendeley or choose a FLOSS alternative that wouldn't bite us later. Obviously we miscalculated.

I don't blame the Mendeley team -- too much -- since $100M is a lot of money. Although they shouldn't try to pretend that this isn't a complete sellout.

The fault really lies in the community's willingness to fall over and over for these shiny but not-quite-free alternatives. Two years ago, I would have said that Stallman is a nut; now, I think he's quite right.

<comment><USER8> "Two years ago"? Everyone's complete inability to remember anything is why Stallman hasn't gotten his point across in the past 30 years.

<comment><USER7> It isn't quite so simple -- usually you pay for the flexibility and freedom of FOSS with a significantly less polished UX.

In an ideal world, everyone would pool their resources toward free software and all would benefit. In reality, it is like a multiplayer Prisoners' Dilemma: people who "defect" by using proprietary software are rewarded (in the short term) with a nicer UX, at the expense of those who "cooperate", and at their own long-term expense.

There are other problems: FOSS (especially Linux) suffers from severe fragmentation, and I also question to what extent people are willing to develop software that is not fun for free.

Anyway, I never "forgot" the excesses of, say, Y2K-era Microsoft. I have just been skeptical of the workability of FOSS. But I do think it is the ethical way to go.

<comment><USER9> > I also question to what extent people are willing to develop software that > is not fun for free.

Pay them to develop the features you want rather than pay the cost of using proprietary software or closed systems.

Everyone wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While Mendeley certainly has me hooked on their desktop client, I'm not sure I've ever understood their social aspects...

I'm very, very, very skeptical, but this could wind up being a good thing. Elsevier can't entirely make it a "walled garden" just due to the nature of research. Mendeley may not have been able to make their business model work alone. Finally, some of Elsevier's search tools are actually quite nice. Seeing them integrated into Mendeley could be very useful.

I just hope they don't smother/abandon the desktop side of it. Currently, Mendeley is the best cross-platform research paper manager, i.m.o. I'd really, really hate to see them drop linux support, but I'm worried that it's somewhat likely.

<comment><USER3> Integration of Mendeley with Elsevier's Scopus and ScienceDirect is very much on the roadmap. The desktop app is going to continue to see more attention. Some great features coming to our next release. We've totally rewritten the iOS app and will be working on an official Android client soon too. Support for win/linux/mac is to continue too. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a lot of mixed emotions with the confirmation of the rumors that have been floating around for a while now. On the one hand, it's a huge positive sign of just how desperate the dying giants are to protect their business. On the other hand, it's Elsevier.

Regardless, huge congrats to the Mendeley team.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious, since I was just starting research and was going to need a tool like this, what options are there? I've already used Mendeley a bit, but that was before I really needed a serious bibliography, so I didn't use most of the features. What else is out there in a similar vein?

<comment><USER13> For Linux, OS X, and Windows:

<http://www.zotero.org/>

<http://www.colwiz.com/>

For OS X and Windows:

<http://endnote.com/>

<http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/>

<http://pdfstacks.com/>

For OS X:

<http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/>

<http://www.sonnysoftware.com/bookends/bookends.html>

<http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/site/SenteForMac.html>

<http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/>

For Windows:

<http://www.biblioscape.com/>

<http://www.citavi.com/>

<http://www.qiqqa.com/>

<comment><USER14> +1 for Zotero, its the bees knees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Mendeley desktop client is a great cross platform way to manage research papers. I really hope Elsevier doesn't screw it up.

<comment><USER16> Is Zotero [1] a competitor in that space? If so, any idea how they compare?

[1]: <http://www.zotero.org/>

<comment><USER17> Zotero has a desktop app in addition to their original Firefox extension. Personally, I've been very happy with it. I have my articles stored in JungleDisk, and everything syncs between mac laptop, windows desktop, and ipad (with ZotPad on the ipad).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Desperately praying that an Oracle-style slow, suffocating death of the product doesn't ensue.

<comment><USER3> We certainly don't hope that this is the case. We are very much excited at the opportunity this is providing us to focus on our userbase. We have an action packed roadmap set ahead of us and the resources now available to us will allow us to work faster on implementing the many features we have planned.

<comment><USER19> I hate to sound rude but.."Hope"?!

Surely you have some ironclad clauses saying that the product cannot be killed or something along those lines?

Otherwise your roadmap is pointless since you do not control it anymore.

<comment><USER3> Ok, you are reading too strongly into my words. I was trying to keep a light tone. I apologize if that wasn't what came across. Anyhow, we do control our roadmap and we have plenty of exciting work ahead of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can I use it offline? My wife installed it a long time ago and never signed up for an account. Back then offline usage seemed to be possible. I copied her profile to her new laptop and it never required signing up which is great (why on earth would she put her literature database in the internet??? The tool shall just index the papers on her harddrive).

When I wanted to install Mendeley desktop for my brother, it was impossible to start it without an account. Is that on purpose? Can it be skipped?

I just backuped a fresh download before Mendeley gets modified more, but I wonder whether I have to take her profile to seed a new computer so that it gets running without internet access.

Of course it's quite obvious that Mendeley or Elsevier have no interest in supporting anybody who wants to just USE the programm, instead this social stuff shall be pushed...

</comment><comment><USER21> The most interesting part of this disucssion is to see Mendeley "staff" doing their damage control over the backslash of the sale. I don't think the scientific community will continue use the tool, they will just migrate.

</comment><comment><USER22> and... a great reason to switch to Zotero if you haven't already. Elsevier has rightly earned the mire of academics around the world, and I'm sure they'll continue that path with their acquisition of Mendeley.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, this is what you get when you rely on non-free software.

But hopefully Elsevier can at least put some decent software engineers on it to make it somewhat less excruciating to use, e.g. [http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-12-13-Damn-It- Mendeley....](http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-12-13-Damn-It- Mendeley.html)

<comment><USER3> Sorry to read that you had issues with Mendeley. A quick look at that link and I can see that many of the issues you highlight are related to citation styles. We have made some good progress there with our citation style editor. We have also made plenty of improvements since that post. If you felt that some of the problems were limiting your research, we have a support team (email@example.com) and also points of contact on twitter (if that's your thing). As for software engineers, we have a very talented and expert team but we are proud to say that we will be adding to the team soon so that we can improve and iterate more rapidly and solidly.

<comment><USER23> It's not really about citation styles, it's more about metadata.

That being said, it looks a bit better after testing for 2 minutes. Journal names seem more consistent when importing from Pubmed (although they are all in sentence case still..). Still seeing publisher cities stuck in the Journal field in some cases. Still seeing some hilariously botched names like "Smith, J Q John Q" instead of "Smith, John Q", though. All these issues make it infeasible for me to use for citations in my papers.

And can I ask one question... whose idea was it to put journal names in sentence case rather than title case? I have never seen it done anywhere else, and it just seems bizarre.

And I am sure you do have good software engineers, but at the same time, I and others have been using it for years and the consistency in references has just been so laughable for so long that it almost boggles the mind. Best of luck towards figuring it out. I still do use Mendeley for PDF reading and note taking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone who has been a longtime longtime Zotero user is there any good reason for me to check out Mendeley? I played with it once awhile back, but not enough to get a good feel for it. Zotero worked well, and continues to work well for me. Are there different use cases for one vs. the other that I might be missing?

<comment><USER10> If you have lots of pdf's on your hard drive that you want to automatically extract metadata from (or organize), it's quite nice. It's easy to go from nested folders of pdf's --> Mendeley --> bibtex file, with a reasonably minimal amount of quality control.

I may be misremembering, but I don't think zotero is geared towards that?

<comment><USER14> FWIW I prefer Zotero because I find downloading the pdf to actually be rather annoying. I just save the citation and double click on it to open the article in my browser whenever I need it. No metadata extraction necessary b/c Zotero pulls metadata from a doi or PMID (which is a quick copy and paste from the web) and unsurprisingly does it much better than Mendely pulls metadata from pdfs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Awful.

<comment><USER3> No, it isn't. We're still committed as ever to producing a great research tool and resource for our users. We will keep pushing for that and will certainly accelerate the pace with more resources.

<comment><USER26> You may have commitment, but do you have any actual authority?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dear rsvidal,

Congratulations and I wish you the best of luck.

As you can infer from the comments here, please keep in mind (as you no doubt already understand) that Elsevier is widely mistrusted and nobody is willing to take them at their word. Indeed, with 13,385 of my colleagues I am a proud signatory to the Elsevier boycott.

Regardless of whether Elsevier is an "evil" company or not, they are mostly engaged in rent seeking rather than wealth creation, and I am convinced that academia will be better off without them than with them.

However, organizations can and do change, as you acknowledge in your blog post. You have a difficult road ahead of you. I wish you the best of luck. I have never used Mendeley, but it sounds like you have enormous power to do good if you succeed.

</comment><comment><USER28> "While not all of its moves or business models have been universally embraced, it is also a hugely relevant, dynamic force in global publishing and research."

That's great.

But I'm still not going to hand over copyrights to my work for zero compensation so they can be "published" behind a paywall that benefits only Elsevier.

<comment><USER29> Elsevier does have open access journals and does allow you to pay to have your article be open access in some/many of its journals: [http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access- option...](http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-options).

Yes, it isn't as easy as the BSD or GPL licenses, and I bet there are some warts, but it definitely is not true that "publish with Elsevier" implies "lock behind paywall".

Also, lots of 'old' content appears to be freely available: <http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-archives>

<comment><USER28> _Elsevier does have open access journals and does allow you to pay to have your article be open access in some/many of its journals_

Ok that's good, I wasn't aware of that. I don't mind paying (reasonable) publication fees to cover their costs - my main priority is maintaining copyright over my work and having the ability to make it publicly available under a creative commons license or similar (and freely redistributable, not just available from my personal homepage).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fingers crossed Mendeley keeps existing for the duration of my degree. It's a lifesaver.

<comment><USER3> We're in it for the long run. So no worries. I also need it to finish my degree, so there's that too! :) (Btw, notice that you now have double storage!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's hoping they take that $100 million and build a better product to replace Mendelay.

That's how you stick it to The Man. With his own money.

</comment><comment><USER31> What has done what to what? Neither of these names have any meaning to me. This is literally the first I am hearing of either.

<comment><USER32> I was almost going to feel bad that I'd never heard of either of them until I found a kindred spirit.

<comment><USER31> I finally came to terms with this about a year ago. On HN, you're going to see the soap opera version of silicon valley. Necessarily, most elements are going to be blown way out of proportion just to justify a narrative. Without the narrative, what hope do the rest of these poor slobs have of catching the huge attention their VCs want to make them feel fuzzy and warm about their fuggly valuations?

<comment><USER32> As someone who a) doesn't live in SV, and b) doesn't work for a startup, I miss a lot of the inner plot that happens in the HN narrative.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some great books for programmers that StackOverflow cannot replace - <AUTHOR> https://www.tlbx.app/blog/some-great-books-for-programmers-that-stackoverflow-cannot-replace <comment><USER2> Book links are shrouded Amazon affiliate links (tag mickaelriga-20).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello Masonic. Thank you very much for your comment. First time I think.

I am not familiar with the concept of "shrouded". Do you have any advice on how you un-shroud" (de-shroud)links ?

Apologies, english is not my mother tongue.

Thank you for reaching out.

Mickael

<comment><USER3> I think he/she means by using amzn.to you are hiding the fact that the links are affiliate links.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok I see. I thought it was standard. I did not create this. These are shortened links from amazon. I will replace them anyway and use the long link. I want the ad blockers to work on these.

Also I will make extra clear the links go to amazon.

Thank you for your reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zachtronics' New Game "Opus Magnum" Now Available in Early Access on Steam - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/ <comment><USER2> I love Zachtronics and eagerly purchase every game they are involved in. Even though I haven't really clicked with spacechem, TIS-100 and SHENZHEN I/O, I still purchased them. Infinifactory however truly clicked with me, and I played it endlessly.

I enjoy supporting the company because of the openness and history, as well as things like free DLC, and an obvious desire to provide good content for users instead of making a quick buck. I feel that when I purchase a Zachtronics game, I am not padding the pocket of some CEO who views me as a money printer, I feel as if I am contributing to a group who truly want me to enjoy their art.

This game seems to be a reimagining of [http://www.zachtronics.com/the-codex- of-alchemical-engineeri...](http://www.zachtronics.com/the-codex-of- alchemical-engineering/)</comment>


Fish skin helped bears burned in the Thomas Fire get back on their feet - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article196736809.html <comment><USER2> A short video of doctors treating burned people with fish skin: [http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin- america-40054374/can-...](http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin- america-40054374/can-fish-skin-help-treat-burns)

And an article about the same team: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us- health-brazil-burns/brazi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health- brazil-burns/brazilian-doctors-use-fish-skin-to-treat-burn-victims- idUSKBN18L1WH)

</comment><comment><USER3> I also was amazed to read of durable clothing made from fish skin: "The Secret Language of Salmon Skin Coats" ... [https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article- short/secret-language-...](https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/secret- language-salmon-skin-coats/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The doctor in the video said fish skin is good for healing burns because it's very similar to human skin. Is the mechanism leaching nutrients or entire layers of tissue from the fish skin to your skin? As in, replacing your skin with fish skin?

<comment><USER2> It uses fish skin as a source of nutrients, not as a replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> acupuncture? it's quite interesting that even animals suffer from placebo, despite us not believing they have cognitive ability to understand someone is doing a "medical procedure" to fix their ailment.

<comment><USER6> There's debate in the medical community whether acupuncture actually works or is a placebo...

But yea, it does seem weird to do it on bears

<comment><USER7> Is there a debate informed by decent evidence, though? As far as I know, no high-quality study has ever shown acupuncture to significantly outperform sham acupuncture, let alone outperform usual care. In my experience, studies cited by lay acupuncture advocates are usually either preliminary types of studies (uncontrolled or unsuitable control intervention, non-randomized, small N) or actually involve doing something other than acupuncture, such as running an electrical current through the needles.

<comment><USER5> There have been cases where acupuncture combined with some "proven" treatment does better than that proven treatment. IMO, that just puts doubt into the efficacy of that proven treatment.

Any serious disease, like cancer, skin burns, severe pain, there is no evidence it's better than placebo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Update to Our Customers on ADP - mr-ron http://blog.zenefits.com/adp/

<comment><AUTHOR> Other side of the story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686175)

It sounds like Zenefits didn't do their due diligence in building ADP integration through official channels (according to the pdf they didn't even attempt to contact ADP for official integration options) and decided to just scrape information off the ADP portal by asking their customers for admin access (a security nightmare waiting to happen)...

I find it especially distasteful that they're now playing victim and trying to spin things around in their favor by using marketing and social media to gain support for their questionable practices.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think I'm glad I don't have to deal with either of these organizations.

<comment><USER3> another zenefits incident not too long ago [http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job- off...](http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-offer-on- quora-2015-5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone actually believe the disingenuous surprise of startups when larger companies don't want to help the startups take their business? Viz every company who wants to scrape craiglist.

<comment><USER5> scraping content off websites, and automating a data entry process are two very different things.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but at the end of the day, you're leveraging someone else's product in both cases. Perhaps a better example would be if someone automated the submission of Craigslist ads and CL blocked it.

<comment><USER5> I still think there's a distinct difference between providing automated services on behalf of an already registered customer to make their experience more seamless and prevent errors. And posting automated Ads to CL.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shopify Overtakes eBay as Second Biggest Shopping Site After Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://observer.com/2019/09/shopify-ebay-amazon-ecommerce-growth/ <comment><USER2> Note that they are not the second biggest shopping site by any reasonable metric (sales, visitors, unique shoppers, orders, SKUs, really anything). This article is using market cap:

> The company has quickly become the most popular online shopping destination, > second only to Amazon, thanks to an astronomical increase of its shares in > the past year. So far this year, stock has soared 160% with revenue coming > in at $362 million during its last quarter.

Shopify has a high stock price is the only take away from this article. It's not an ecommerce destination and is not comparable to Amazon or Ebay.

<comment><USER3> No, the article goes on to explicitly state:

 _Data also shows the platform recently overtook competitor eBay, once a powerhouse in this space, in terms of quarterly sales._

<comment><USER2> But the link doesn't actually say that. It is also talking about market cap. From the Financial Times article:

> The stock has climbed more than 150 per cent since the beginning of 2019, > making Shopify more valuable than well-known internet companies including > Twitter, Square and Spotify. Its market capitalisation — now more than $40bn > — surpassed that of ecommerce pioneer eBay earlier this year.

It's all rather silly, it's sort of like saying Square is the second largest seller of coffee because a lot of coffee shops transact with it. AWS also hosts a ton of other eCommerce infrastructure, we have to include all sales made using AWS if you want this sort of comparison. It's a bunch of nonsense.

tl;dr If you sell shovels you can't claim you're one of the world's biggest miners.

<comment><USER4> Amazon and eBay are also selling shovels.

<comment><USER5> Amazon and eBay are selling shovels and claiming to be shovel merchants. Shopify is selling shovels and claiming to be a miner (as presented in this article).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shopify isn't a homogeneous marketplace that is comparable to Amazon.com. It's a SaaS ecommerce platform. I've seen these comparisons made lately and I don't understand it. What am I missing?

<comment><USER7> Well, Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/Etsy all are platforms that let other people sell things. I get your point (and might even agree with you), however if you look at it from the perspective of "I want to sell something... where do I go?", they're competition.

They do discovery, checkout, inventory, fulfillment, etc. It just happens to have a slightly different approach than the others.

<comment><USER8> Not really the same thing though, Amazon/eBay/Etsy you can browse multiple "stores". Shopify is just a platform so it really isn't that fair. It'd be like including every single Magento powered site to say Magento is the X largest platform.

<comment><USER9> Yeah but that's from the perspective of buyers, so OP's point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An article put forward by marketing. Not sure why many HNr's like this kind of article.

By no stretch Shopify is bigger than eBay, market cap is a game played by investors and this kind of article are used to boost it. If someone is holding Shopify stocks it will be the best time to sale.

Funny enough by this ridiculous metrics SAP's commerce cloud and Adobe's Magento will become the largest shopping site miles and miles ahead of shopify.

This kind of articles I believe are paid for to affect the stock prices to move market, I am sure it will result in large stock sales after increase in prices.

Shopify has consistently been loss making so it's very hard to see light at the end of tunnel given it is similar to many open source platform and commerce platform. It's just trying to outspend it's way to take over SAP, Adobe and Salesforce commerce offerings, let's see how long it continues.

Someone from shopify's marketing might be working to contain critical comments.

<comment><USER11> We really don't think these are good articles to be written about Shopify.

Shopify is a company that got big by totally being in the background and making other brands look good instead of itself. I fear what happened in the last little while is that we became too big to be ignored and the Shopify vs Amazon vs Ebay angle seems to be the most accessible angle for writing. It seems to be working though, for whatever reason this made it on Hacker news even though in the same week as this article was written we also bought a robotics company for $450m to automated warehouses and announced a $5m carbon sequestration fund which should really be appreciated on hacker news. Alas we talk about GMV number comparisons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> But Shopify has no central search platform that I know of. The sites aren't connected to each other.

<comment><USER13> I feel that is likely coming at some point - but who knows... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20411992)

Also with the recent postal changes in the US I think that will hurt AliExpress, Banggood and help Shopify and Amazon.

<comment><USER14> Aren't most drop ship sites on shopify? I feel like every few articles and blog is "be a drop shipper" with those three simple services..

<comment><USER15> Drop shippers are on all e-commerce platforms, from the shopify 1-pagers to merchants on ebay and Amazon. It's saturated the entire market at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having not checked in on Shopify for a good few years, kudos to Tobias and his team for all they've achieved in growing to the level they have.

I still remember using liquid templates back in the early days of Rails as it was a problem no-one else in the space was really running at.

I had absolutely no idea they were making that kind of revenue these days. It's nice to see that hard work can still pay off.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've built some stores for clients with Shopify's Slate[1] tool, which was a better dev experience than I had expected. I was pretty surprised and disappointed to see that they put it in "low maintenance" mode while still in beta. Hope they'll pick it up again soon.

[1] [https://github.com/Shopify/slate](https://github.com/Shopify/slate)

</comment><comment><USER18> Does it really mean that Shopify is selling more than eBay? There are lots of indie entrepreneurs who open a site with shopify and pay for the Shopify subscription only to discover that they don't have nowhere near the the number of sales or even visitors they hoped.

<comment><USER2> No, this just means that Shopify has a high stock market valuation. This isn't looking at sales figures at all.

And since they just rent software to people who sell things I'm not sure it makes sense to compare them to more traditional eCommerce plays (if you started selling homes through Shopify somehow it would hugely increase "sold goods", but not in a way that impacts anything).

<comment><USER11> This article isn't clear about it but yes - its about the amount people sell on both platforms, not stock price.

Now, is that a useful basis of comparison? It's fun fact but not much more given the difference of the platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a bunch of old camera gear that I'd like to sell. I've been led to believe that on eBay, I'll very likely get scammed, and the customer support always sides with the scammer.

This doesn't concern the massive drop shippers operating 10k transactions per month, as they can easily eat the cost of the occasional scammer. It is very effective deterrent against casual sellers like me, though.

Ebay started out as "Yard sales, except on the internet", and nowadays it's more like Ali Express.

<comment><USER20> The only time I ever tried to sell some stuff on Ebay, I had a very weird experience. I put it up for auction with a minimum, and a week later someone won the auction at what I thought was a decent price. Then... they deleted their account instead of paying for the item. I raised the issue with Ebay, and they gave me a credit in the amount I had paid for the listing. So I listed it again, and someone won the auction once again ... and the same thing happened! They deleted their entire Ebay account instead of paying for the item they presumably had wanted to purchase.

At that point I gave up. I think I have $14 in Ebay seller credit still in my account from 10 years ago. My guess is that there was some kind of malfunction or someone was using a bot to bid on particular products. Weird experience. I've moved to selling stuff on Craigslist, and never had a problem with a sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They appear to take the environment seriously too, much like Stripe and some others.

[https://www.shopify.com/about/environment](https://www.shopify.com/about/environment)

[https://news.shopify.com/we-need-to-talk-about- carbon](https://news.shopify.com/we-need-to-talk-about-carbon)

</comment><comment><USER22> eBay Q2 2019 GMV is $22.6 billion whereas Shopify's is $13.8 billion.

eBay also owns a classifieds business with around $250 million quarterly revenue which does not originate from GMV due to the nature of classifieds business.

</comment><comment><USER23> Shopify is not enterprise ready. It's designed for smaller self-managed stores. We recently looked into the platform to run a few large E-commerce stores. Two of the biggest issues are:

1\. Payment processing. You're forced to use their Shopify Payments. There's no flexibility for managing that via API. Once something goes in there it's stuck. Our particular requirement entails tokenized card info. And we needed to access the tokenized card for recurring orders. Shopify told us that was impossible. And want us to use one of the handful subscriptions app, which btw, also have no flexibility. We then hired a 3rd party to see if they can extend the cart...nada. So, if you already have an internal recurring/subscription system - trust me, Shopify will not work for your e-commerce platform. Dont waste your time.

2\. Most of the apps are shady. We spoke with two regarding upsells and cross- sells, they couldn't give us a clear answer if our customer data they collect will never be shared or sold.

The platform is for small self managed stores.

It definitely has an A+ front end, but the backend needs to be more flexibility for the enterprise.

<comment><USER24> Can I ask what sort of apps you were looking into?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So weird. Literally cannot remember if I've ever bought something from Shopify.

<comment><USER26> This is the first I've heard of it. Is this a thing with people under 21 or something?

<comment><USER27> It's an e-commerce platform. It's completely white label so you could buy from a Shopify website without ever knowing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Without a doubt, Shopify is an incredible platform for other's to build upon. It has generated commerce and contributed to Global GDP in so many ways

1) It is an E-comm platform for selling Goods & Services

2) It is an app development platform that allows other businesses to be built on top of it with sites and apps (ie- the apps are integrated to manage distribution, inventory, warehousing, invoicing, marketing, CRM, etc)

As an example, Bold Commerce has become a significant company because of the Shopify platform. They are the largest developer of custom Shopify apps and sites in the world – they recently raised $16.5M (USD) to scale further

Overall, Shopify processes a huge amount of GMV through the platform and, of that, its Net Revenue is still in the Billions each quarter. The article may be misleading to some, given the headline, but Shopify has a significant impact on the economy globally.

</comment><comment><USER28> Note: Ruby on Rails cannot scale /sarcasm

<comment><USER29> Well, you are assuming that the platform doesn't have any technology challenges or significant issues and/or drawbacks that might stem from the technology and current architecture.

Hint: There is plenty of stuff like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What about chinese websites like tmall or taobao? They seems to have more visitors than Amazon, do they have less sales?

</comment><comment><USER31> Really? and what about Aliexpress? I think it could be on the top 5...

</comment><comment><USER32> This had to happen as they are one of the mordern providers for shopping. Ebay is old, still one of the top sites but OLD!!!

</comment><comment><USER33> Shopify's stock has been on an incredible tear. I think it's 3x'd since the beginning of the year? And 10x'd in maybe 2.

<comment><USER34> You could've quickly and easily checked. Not 3x with the price drop in past month or two. And 10x would be over 3 years ago. 2 years ago is close to 3x to 4x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Shopify seems like something that should have been done 15 years ago. It is just a website that allows anyone to set up a digital storefront for a monthly fee. The fee part is the most lucrative. Most people set up the store and sell little or nothing and forget to cancel , so Shopify keeps printing $ from the recurring subs, much like AOL does.

<comment><USER2> This very website exists because this very thing was done 25 years ago!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb)</comment></comment>


Relief for wireless airwaves, iphone users rejoice - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/fcc-votes-to-open-vacant-tv-airwaves-for-4-billion-wireless-market-by-u-s.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Notably, ATT opposed this move.

Hoping this is a positive for access and speed but there is a lot of ambiguity here...

Curious what everyone thinks?</comment>


Ask HN: Pure Math Problem - <AUTHOR>

I'm reading A Course of Pure Mathematics, by G. H. (Godfrey Harold) Hardy – available free on Gutenberg. In the first chapter he presents the following problem (on rational numbers):
If λ, m, and n are positive rational numbers, and m > n, then λ(m^2 − n^2), 2λmn, and λ(m^2 + n^2) are positive rational numbers. Hence show how to determine any number of right-angled triangles the lengths of all of whose sides are rational.
I'm not asking the solution, but I'm not sure what he means by "any number of right-angled triangles" <comment><USER2> "any number" means that you must be able to produce two triangles if asked for two, three if asked for three, four if asked for four, 7 trillion if asked for 7 trillion, etc. Effectively, you have to be able to generate infinitely many (technically: aleph-0) Pythagorean triangles.

Aside: I do not think that is a the nice problem, as there are way easier ways to generate aleph-0 such triangles (I think most mathematicians would agree the simplest is 3x,4x,5x for x in {1,2,...}) But that is not what this question is hinting at.

</comment><comment><USER3> It probably means that you need to use the given postulates and known theorems about right-angled triangles to come up with a way or formula for generating such triangles.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing it means you have to come up with a generative process that produces k such shapes for any k.

</comment><comment><USER5> should probably ask in Art of Problem Solving.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did a Google search, but I'm not able to come up with anything but a non- profit that doesn't seem like a QnA site. Please advise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> think Pythagorean triples</comment>


Ask HN: What do you miss about the web in the '90s? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The lack of relentless corporate eavesdropping, and a sense of limitless possibility. The adventure of it, while still a shadow of earlier years, was still real too. The lack of a social media "culture", the dominance of irc and forums. Fewer people with less to offer and more to say, because even though it wasn't hard to get online, it wasn't just mashing a thumb on a phone either. The lack of techies claiming to be "saving the world."

Above all? The weirdness, yet to be "toned down" in the name of profit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good thread ;) That deep psychedelic flavor. That Mondo 2000 ethos. Will it make a comeback in 2020s?

Josh Harris tours his company Pseudo.com in Soho NYC circa 1999.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Webrings. Inline links to other people's related content. The sense of exploration and discovery.

</comment><comment><USER5> "I miss that kind of clarity" \-- Wabash

</comment><comment><USER6> Benign advertising models.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yahoo Messenger :'(</comment>