On a farm in Missouri, a radical experiment in self-sufficiency (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-civilization-kit <comment><USER2> I'm filled with awe and respect when I look at this guy. He's brilliant and clearly dedicated to human wellbeing and liberation, and I can only aspire to even approach what he's accomplished so far.

But now comes the but.

I can't help feeling like he's focusing on the wrong scale, in a way that seriously impedes the likelihood of success. Let's be clear: the material basis he's living on is pretty shitty. He shits in a bucket? Freezes at night? That's the norm only in rural areas in developing countries, and his current focus isn't even on improving those things: other priorities trump it.

And that's directly because of the scale, which is too small. A group of a couple dozen people, even brilliant and hard-working people, simply cannot generate even the basic amenities of modern life, given contemporary knowledge and technology. But a town or smaller city? Problems that now seem insurmountable with his approach become routine.

I totally get that it seems awesome to re-invent the world from scratch, with a group of buddies and passionate volunteers. But it's ultimately escapist. It seems to me like open sourcing cheap manufacturing methods with a target economic scale of the metropolitan area would do a lot more to build a genuinely liberatory society. Sure, you end up more alienated from the material basis you live on than with his approach. But it's a much smaller transition--dare I say, a more agile one--than from global hyper-economies to hyper-local economies. And advances there would easily lend themselves to the hyper-local economies he desires.

Then again, I'm here bloviating, while he's out there doing stuff. Godspeed.

<comment><USER3> I will defend shitting in a bucket (although I agree with you in general). With a nice seat, some sawdust, and some care, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and in fact after using it for a while normal toilets seem outrageous.

[http://theorganicsister.com/on-composting-toilets-and- humanu...](http://theorganicsister.com/on-composting-toilets-and-humanure/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I heard about this a few years ago. So this is how it came out.

Think of this as a startup. The basic concept is interesting. A decade on, it's clear that the execution was botched. The article indicates at least the following problems:

\- Trying to do too many things, and ending up doing them badly, rather than doing a few things well. Take a look at the list of machines being built, and the "percent completed". None have reached 100%, and only four are over 75%. This is after ten years. \- Employee retention problems. (A major problem with any volunteer effort.) \- Founder not into delegation.

This has been done before, better. There's a classic series, "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap" ([http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your- Metalworking-Shop-Scrap/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Metalworking- Shop-Scrap/dp/0960433082)) from 1982. You start with charcoal, sand, wood, and metal scrap, set up a forge, and cast parts. With the forge, you make parts for a lathe. That's book 2. Book 3, a metal shaper. Book 4, a milling machine. Book 5, a drill press. Book 6, precision tools so you can do accurate work. It's a lot of work, but people have successfully followed those directions and made machine tools.

Further back, there are the Foxfire books, from 1962 ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing- Moonshining/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Foxfire-Book-Dressing- Moonshining/dp/0385073534)). This was the bible of the hippie "back to the land" movement. A number of communes were set up using those books.

<comment><USER5> In the UK this book started a movement of people wanting to be more self- sufficient, using small gardens and allotments to grow food and sometimes livestock.

We had chickens when I was young (about four, five?) and goats when I was a bit older.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1405345101/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qi...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1405345101/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1412149937&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40)

(It would be nice if Amazon could offer cleaner URLs for sharing.)

<comment><USER6> They do exist, I don't know why they don't publish them more.

The following are valid on the UK store:

[http://amzn.co.uk/dp/1405345101](http://amzn.co.uk/dp/1405345101)

[http://amazon.co.uk/The-New-Complete-Book-Self- Sufficiency/d...](http://amazon.co.uk/The-New-Complete-Book-Self- Sufficiency/dp/1405345101)

and on the US store they have even shorter variants:

[http://amzn.com/1405345101](http://amzn.com/1405345101)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know some insanely talented mechanical engineers and none of them work remotely like this. The one characteristic I would say I've noticed in them that sets them apart is _precision._ They do all of the stress analysis on all the parts, up front, before they build _anything_. Then they prepare; testing, practicing, taking notes, and revising build plans. This way when they get to actual fabrication whether its a metal part, a complicated assembly, or a simple wooden box, things work. Period. Coupled with drive (which this guy apparently has in abundance) there is an unshakable, unflappable ability to concentrate. From the article and watching videos linked elsewhere here I simply do not get an impression of _skill_. (e.g. his welds are really really bad)

<comment><USER8> I am a mechanical engineer by training, and I think you are missing the point of this experiment.

This is the mechanical equivalent of a series of quick hacks. I don't think anyone expects these machines to last long or work without frequent maintenance. As I read it, the goal is only to enable a small community to be self sufficient; the machines should last long enough for them to accomplish their purpose. When they inevitably break down, the tools and materials will exist to repair or replace them, and the community will have the knowledge to do so.

The kind of up-front planning and precise design that you reference works when you have a large organization with a large pile of capital that is willing and able to spend the time and money to do something right the first time. This is optimal when that environment is present, but impossible for a small community of semi-skilled workers and farmers. The whole point is that the approach described in the article should work in the absence of professional skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _...the tractor developed a leaky transmission. Jakubowski took it to a repair shop, which charged him two thousand dollars. Two days later, the tractor broke down again..._

Transmissions can have a variety of problems that render them unusable without repair, but my first response to "it's leaking" would not be "spend $2000". Rather, it would be "spend $40 for another 5 gallons of hy-tran".

I think this guy just wanted to design and build some tractors. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

<comment><USER10> Most people would take it as an incentive to learn how to repair tractors but few would go in the direction of building their own tractor. For such an obviously smart guy it's not a very efficient use of either his time or capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I spent a few weeks in Joplin Mossouri. It's kind of boring compared to the Bay Area; but I am seriously thinking about living there, at least part time. There's a zen like charm to that area--and it's not just because it's hot. The people were genuine, honestly nice, and trustworthy. The people ate horrid compared to our standards, drank, and smoked, but I have never saw so many functional old people. I met guys who were pushing 90--still working, driving across the country to see their girlfriend, and genuinely active? It was like walking in an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was probally just my subjective observations, but family and friends seem to have stronger bonds than here, they believe in a higher power, there was definetly less pollution, and housing was dirt cheap. It was definetly different than what I was expecting.

<comment><USER12> I was raised in the midwest and this comment really resonated with me. Most of us make fun of these people as "backwards rednecks", but most every backwards redneck I have met has been genuinely happy and led a pretty care-free life. I left KY to seek out my fortune, but sometimes I think I might have left it there instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is unsatisfying.

It describes him as having a laser focus, but as other commenters have said many projects are not finished and they are not self sufficient for food.

If you want to make open source sustainable tech you ret a warehouse and buy parts and do it. If you want to live sustainably off the land you buy John Seymour's "Self Sufficiency" book and buy a cow and some chickens amd plant crops.

The article talks about making things "from scratch" \- but doesn't really define what that means. They're not smelting steel or winding their own motors. So, some things can be bought. The article doesn't mention what is bought. The tractor is a grwat example - farming is dangerous partly because of the machinery. A tractor is a tool and people tend to want their tools to be reliable and efficient. Learning how to repair older tractors is probably more useful than building a dangerous bad tractor.

The article doesn't explain whether he's learning from other people's experience.

Even the bit about living off rabits and chemical slop - he has to have the gloop-food because you can't live off rabbit (although they are tasty) but I'm not sure from the article whether he knows this.

Having said all that I freaking like the idea he has and I do wish him well. My criticism is mostly of the article than him.

<comment><USER13> I think your criticism of the article is really about the subject - this man has an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency, but the article is making a point that he has had to compromise that conceptual purity in order to get things done. Time and time again, the article points out Mr. Jabukowski's conflicted relationship with his farm's dependency on the outside world. For example:

      The HabLab had been connected to the local water system
      after a well ran dry, and in May it was hooked up to the
      electrical grid. "It was an emotional trauma," Jakubowski
      said, and, he insisted, a temporary measure. "When we have
      windmills and solar power up and running, that will end."

He's building a dangerous bad tractor rather than learning to repair older tractors because he sees the former as morally and ideologically superior. He's using his homemade brick compactor rather than the commercial alternative (which the mentioned DC contractor switches to) because, in his view, the means _are_ the ends. Unfortunately, because the means are so completely nuts, this collective has a hard time maintaining that level of ideological purity on the day-to-day level.

I wish them good luck in the future. I think the influx of veterans, who seem to have a more task-oriented approach, may save the GVCS as a practical project, but that will be by throwing out the insistence that it will be created by a society that practices the ideals of the GVCS project from the get-go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A link to the person's website: [http://opensourceecology.org/](http://opensourceecology.org/)

Also, I always want to remind folks of an immensely successful experiment in communal living, the Hutterites (who love technology, by the way, unlike the Ahmish):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite)

<comment><USER15> The Amish don't hate technology, they're just very careful and deliberate about what new technologies they adopt.

There's wide adoption of technologies which improve upon, but don't radically alter, a traditional technology. For instance, many communities accept the battery powered lantern in place of a gas lantern.

<comment><USER16> I believe they fully except modern medicine for instance?

I though they believed many technologies disrupted happiness, because it took away from peoples interactions with each other. Or something like that. Which quite frankly is a totally plausible theory. Other than medicine/health technology I don't think there's a lot of proof other tech makes us happier directly. (Obviously someone needs to use a computer to make drugs, grow enough food, but it doesn't have to be them)

<comment><USER17> > I believe they fully except [sic] modern medicine for instance?

Wait a second. "Except" in this context means to refuse. The word you want, "Accept", means to give consent. Normally a malaprop like this is benign, but this one reverses the meaning of the sentence in which it appears.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I had already parsed the phrase 3 or 4 times by the time I finally understood what had happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> His TED talk - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S63Cy64p2lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S63Cy64p2lQ)

His OSE - [https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/marcinose/videos)

Looks like the initial ambitions have been scaled back to what they use to be, at least in time frame.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here is a good video of the Compressed Earth Brick press, the workshop they built with the bricks and a brief shot of the interior of the dorm:

[http://vimeo.com/49864277](http://vimeo.com/49864277)

Also their FB Photo stream has lots of interesting work in process pics:

[https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology/photos_stream](https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology/photos_stream)

<comment><USER4> There are lots of brick presses available on Alibaba, starting at about $900. Some of them look very much like this one. Cheap ones are available from India and Zaire. China mostly uses larger, higher-volume machines. Also, most people put a little cement in earthen bricks, about 5%. They hold together better. It's common to put in holes for rebar, which is pretty much mandatory in earthquake country.

If you want to build from earth, there's rammed earth construction. It's even simpler than compressing earth into bricks. You set up wood forms, as if pouring concrete, put in about 4" of dirt, and pound it into sandstone. This can be done by hand, or with an air hammer.

All this works if the soil composition is reasonably suitable. There are simple tests. (Too much clay is bad.) It's usually possible to find nearby sources for suitable dirt.

This guy seems to be re-inventing the wheel.

<comment><USER13> The whole point is to reinvent the wheel. Which I think speaks to the practicality of this whole endeavor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "radical experiment in _self-sufficiency_ "

"It took him two months and seven thousand dollars, _most of it donated,_ to build the tractor."

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.

Also, if you find the topic interesting, I highly recommend the techno- thriller duo of books, "Daemon" and "Freedom(TM)" by Daniel Suarez. They end up touching on this topic, by the second book.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps your understanding of the word is a little extreme. Self-sufficiency doesn't imply everyone has to survive on their own from day zero, starting naked and fisting trees to build a crafting table...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One has to admire this man's grit, discipline and inventiveness. It's inspiring in a way, and makes you want to cheer him on.

OTOH, a part of me feels this effort more resembles idealism driven by a historical scarcity event. I suspect this emotional subroutine could be fueling his mission, rather than the logical post-apocalyptic rationalization he puts forth.

<comment><USER24> Why can't both be part of the reason? You experience a scarcity event, and driven by it you try to find a logical reason so you can have a better response next time. I think the response to his scarcity event is great!

<comment><USER23> They can both be, but there are two things to note. One is to make the distinction between being _logical_ and being _rational_. So in this man's context I think it's fair to he may have logically coherent reasons for doing what he's doing. (ie it's internally consistent within his own framework).

However, I'd question the overall rationality of this. I mean we're on a path of accelerating technologization, AI, robots etc, and this guy wants to head back to the bronze age. So while there's a certain charming appeal to his vision, one should consider being a simple land dweller has traditionally not worked out so well, for those less advanced cultures. [1]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)

<comment><USER22> > I mean we're on a path of accelerating technologization, AI, robots etc, and > this guy wants to head back to the bronze age.

I don't think he wants to head back to the bronze age. The reverse seems to be true; he wants a future where _everyone_ has vast knowledge and a wide set of skills, and _everyone_ has his own CNC multimachines, robots, all that. Why not AI?

But to achieve that, you need to take a few steps back from the technology that is currently operative in large corporations with the capacity to invest millions into it. If they can bring the price point down and simplify the machines enough that they're accessible to everyone, then the capability to produce more and more advanced technology is spread wide. Through open source design, people would share recipes, ideas and improvements into these homemade devices; technology would advance faster and it'd be easier to get machines that solve special problems for which the solution right now would be far too expensive because there's no mass market for it.

<comment><USER25> Your comment clarified exactly what is so willfully foolish about this whole enterprise.

"he wants a future where everyone has vast knowledge and a wide set of skills, and everyone has his own CNC multimachines, robots, all that"

It is a nice fantasy to imagine everyone everywhere being self sufficient, but unlike the movies, a single person does not have the time nor the mental capacity to become an expert at everything. Specialization begat the modern world (and vice versa).

Mao had a great idea to make everyone self sufficient by forging steel in their back yards to instantly industrialize. No one knew what they were doing properly, so you got massive quantities of nearly useless scrap, fueled by wasting previously productive inputs. The parallels are striking.

<comment><USER22> You missed the point about "open source", or information sharing. With the right machines and a library of shared knowledge, you don't have to be an expert at everything.

But if people actually strived for it, and their lives began in communities where building, maintaining and operating your own machinery is a part of life, most people could actually actually know heck of a lot about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >> apart from a small grocery in nearby Maysville (pop. 1,000), the closest supermarket is fifteen miles away.

This might sound insanely far to urbanites, but this is par for the course for anyone living outside of the suburbs. I grew up 2 hours outside of DC. Driving 30 minutes (which equals 30 miles) to do your shopping once a week was not uncommon.

Now, being in DC, I've had to adapt. Thirty miles is an hour, at least, probably closer to an hour and a half. It feels ludicrous. To not be able to travel wherever I want, whenever I want, in a predictable amount of time, is very disconcerting. And don't get me started on public transit. Travel is either long or short. Long is over 4 hours and involves me being a passenger and getting work done while I'm doing it. Short is anything else. Anything over half an hour for short travel is unacceptable for me. I can't make money during short travel.

I've been keeping track of--and secretly hoping my urban-born wife would volunteer for--the Global Village Construction Set project for years. It's had some progress issues, but ultimately the reasoning is sound. For the same reasons we love FOSS in the software development world, Jakubowski is pushing towards an earlier time when fixing your own truck was not outlandishly difficult.

But I do have to say this:

>> He likes things to be scheduled," his fiancée, Catarina Mota, a forty-year- old scholar of open-source technology, says. "I'll say, 'I want to go buy some bread.' He'll say, 'What time?' "

Is concerning. I've personally found that people who couldn't be flexible in one aspect of their life were unlikely to be flexible in most other aspects. In other words, the people I know who like strict schedules, or readily admit to "hating change", are the most likely to harbor rather deep-seated, irrational prejudices of some kind. And it just continues with stuff like this:

>> We foresee an equal playing field of competent, well-organized, small- scale, decentralized republics after the borders of empires dissolve."

No, I'm sorry, that's not how civilization works. If you read between the lines of the "big government" scare mongering, that's all it's talking about-- big versus little government. And the "little" that such people talk about is not one that is more just, free from corruption, it's the road back to feudalism. Large, federalist government has provided us a means towards equality and justice unlike any the world has witnessed prior. There is a reason developed countries don't expect their police to be "funded" through "voluntary donations" aka bribes.

Being able to service your own equipment is orthogonal to discarding 250 years of hard-learned facts about government.

<comment><USER27> > Large, federalist government has provided us a means towards equality and > justice unlike any the world has witnessed prior.

Those two concepts are fairly vague and subjective, but assuming they have increased, what makes you think that large federalist governments are the cause, rather than, say, the industrial revolution, medical breakthroughs, or population growth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Zero pictures. I guess we'll take the author's word on it.

<comment><USER28> It's the New Yorker. They spell "coordinate" different than the rest of the English-speaking world.

<comment><USER29> I find it endearing, alternating between slightly pretentious and iconoclastic. But in the words of Yoda, "no, there is another" \- MIT Technology Review.

See [http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=976](http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=976) \- "Rybalchenko is currently seeking ways to detect similar bugs that can appear when many processors work simultaneously on the same task but fail to coördinate properly and begin competing instead."

and [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428330/startup-has- lang...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428330/startup-has-language- learners-translating-the-web/) \- "In 2000, he helped develop the Captcha—the test that websites use to distinguish humans from spam-spewing robots by asking them to reënter blurred or distorted strings of letters and numbers.")</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Antd – A set of high-quality React components - <AUTHOR> https://ant.design/docs/react/introduce <comment><USER2> For those wondering who it comes from, [https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce#Who-are-using-Ant- Des...](https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce#Who-are-using-Ant-Design)

The first (and presumably namesake) company is Ant Financial [https://www.antgroup.com](https://www.antgroup.com), which is described as:

> Ant Financial Services Group ("Ant Financial"), was officially founded in > October 2014 and originated from Alipay which is the world's leading third- > party payment platform founded in 2004.

So basically if Bootstrap came out of Twitter, this came out of Alibaba and Co. Big name behind it.

<comment><USER3> Alibaba is also working on a ReactNative competitor for Vue, called Weex: [https://alibaba.github.io/weex/](https://alibaba.github.io/weex/)

<comment><USER4> we are using Weex for our app on production. Weex is pretty solid platform

<comment><USER5> Hey, can you tell us more? I'm very interested in Weex :) What make it solid ? what are the pros/cons ? Last time I checked I thought I need to know chinese as 95% of issues are in chinese for example. Is it still a prob ?

<comment><USER6> > Last time I checked I thought I need to know chinese

Fascinating. This is probably the first time I've seen a huge open source project where a majority of the contributions are in a language that's not English. I've seen plenty of projects from non-native English speakers, but everything was still done in English.

I'm sure there are tons of other big projects in Chinese and other languages, but programming has always been very English-centric. I had heard of programming languages that use other languages or alphabets, but they were all very esoteric.

I've also seen people using foreign languages for class and method names, while all of the framework APIs and programming language keywords were English.

So I guess it's only fair that I should learn some Chinese. Weex does look very good.

I just looked at this issue, for example: [https://github.com/alibaba/weex/issues/1746](https://github.com/alibaba/weex/issues/1746)

It's funny how all of the Java variables and keywords, HTML tags, and the CSS is all English (or at least, programming languages based on English words), while the issue details are written in Chinese. It's a really interesting mix.

I wonder if there are transpilers that let people write code in their native language, and then convert everything into English source code. It should be very easy, it's just a search/replace for keywords like "public", "protected", "length", "super", "return", etc. etc.

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia has a list of programming languages written in other "human languages"[0], but they are pretty obscure for the most part.

At the end of the day, english has "won" as the language of keywords in programming. And while i'm glad that most newer languages have the ability to code everything but keywords in your native language (i've worked with JS that has variables and function names in other scripts), translating the keywords seems like a pointless process that would do nothing but cause incompatibility.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English- based_programming_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English- based_programming_languages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This stuff is _horrible_ to use from the keyboard visually, because outlines have been removed without an adequate replacement. _Please_ fix the styles for :focus _et al._ Make it all obvious, like Microsoft have done in Windows 10 (they have what is pretty much just a 2px solid black outline).

<comment><USER9> a11y optimization is in progress, but it is not a high priority job.

<comment><USER8> I can certainly say that I'm flatly not going to use something that fails at keyboard usability like this, because I myself would hate to use it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah. I second this. Having non-obvious focus state is a deal-breaker. Obviously, it can be manually added in via CSS overrides on top of this library, but it would be nice for the library itself to have decent focus states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried using these components in Buttercup (our open source password vault [https://github.com/buttercup-pw/buttercup](https://github.com/buttercup- pw/buttercup)), but immediately regretted it. It's impossible to theme, the less/css files are dirty and not extensible, defaults mess with your current style, etc. At first look, it looks promising and great but not when you actually try to use it.

<comment><USER12> Antd is an official implementation of the ant design language. If you read their introduction ([https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce](https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce)) you'll see they target "middleware" products (or 中台应用, which actually should be translated to internal applications) which don't require customized UI and theming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone used this? [https://github.com/dvajs/dva](https://github.com/dvajs/dva)

<comment><USER9> `dva` is maintained by the same team as `antd`.

More than 50 system use this framework in Ant Financial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some really beautiful components like the TreeSelect in there, not trivial to build at all.

That said, the first time I loaded the page sure took a long time. Kind of sad to need Webpack to create chunks just to recreate the old effect of not loading all the content for your website all at once.

<comment><USER12> It's slow probably because the web server is hosted in China..

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The site looks pretty bad in a small browser window:

[http://i.imgur.com/0xVlHbI.png](http://i.imgur.com/0xVlHbI.png)

<comment><USER16> I concur. I run browser only in half of the wide-screen monitor (makes sense, doesn't it?), and it's surprising how many websites are broken in this configuration.

<comment><USER17> Not to mention the horrible things that happen when you switch from full- screen to half-screen and vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like it, there have been a couple projects where this would have cut time in half.

Some of the controls were hard to navigate on an iPad Pro. Time in particular was hard to use, not enough space. This is a fault of the resolution of the pro, but if the targets aren't big enough, I'm scrolling the page instead of the hours.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was playing with it, great toolkit. The overall design language is neatly done.

Is it possible to convert the remaining site pages [0] into english.

Also, the mobile friendly components [1] also look great.

[0] [https://ant.design/docs/pattern/navigation](https://ant.design/docs/pattern/navigation)

[1] [https://github.com/ant- design/1x.mobile.ant.design](https://github.com/ant- design/1x.mobile.ant.design)

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow! that's very detailed UI kit. You guys thought all the necessary details when building web apps. It will definitely be my next project's UI kit :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I was wondering if someone who is good at JS can compare this to BluePrint[1]?

[1] [https://github.com/palantir/blueprint](https://github.com/palantir/blueprint)

<comment><USER22> Blueprint is meant for desktop applications. For example, Electron apps. You'll notice Blueprint tries to give that desktop app feel, versus Antd, which does not.

<comment><USER23> It isn't, according to their own words[0], they've never used Blueprint in an Electron (or other desktop) app.

[0] [https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/202#issuecommen...](https://github.com/palantir/blueprint/issues/202#issuecomment-261617636)

<comment><USER24> I believe they meant desktop-feel as opposed to mobile first (mostly because some consider Material to be a mobile-first decision). Additional Note: Blueprint doesn't go out of it's way to degrade nicely for mobile screen sizes for most components and doesn't provide the grid layout or progressive embeds typically associated with mobile-friendly UI libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Man this site is unusable on mobile

</comment><comment><USER26> The actual components seem interesting. The odd part of this seems to be the building/requiring process. It seems that there are some implicit dependencies on webpack, which are not well spelled out.

It appears the team chose to make an oddly generically named babel plugin: `babel-plugin-import` which seems to do some manipulation of CSS/SASS/etc styles (which seems out of scope for babel). I assume the generic name was chosen hoping other libraries would embrace a similar pattern, however, I'm not seeing any spec defining how another library should implement this.

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-plugin- import](https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-plugin-import)

</comment><comment><USER27> The site has some really good components. The only stopping me from using it is its not designed with mobile in mind. You don't get bootstrap like classes 'col-md-6 col-sm-12'. The grid is percentage based.

</comment><comment><USER28> How's this compare to material-ui? I like material ui and it looks like you have some nice components, just curious what the x-factor is.

Always up to use a new tool!

<comment><AUTHOR> antd has more components, about 50+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For those looking for a cohesive ant design-centered library for Vue, this seems like the react project's counterpart : [http://okoala.github.io/vue- antd/#!/components](http://okoala.github.io/vue-antd/#!/components)

The project appears to have far fewer features than the react project at this time

</comment><comment><USER30> @__yesmeck Cool! broken link to [https://ant.design/docs/pattern/principle](https://ant.design/docs/pattern/principle) on [https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce](https://ant.design/docs/spec/introduce)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks promising! How does this compare to BlueprintJS [0]?

While I did like some components from Antd and intend to look into the source, from a basic overview, a lot of the documentation seems to be in Chinese.

[0] [http://blueprintjs.com/](http://blueprintjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> This is the nicest collection of web UX components I've ever seen (better than bootstrap). All of the look and feel (responsiveness and delays) are just right. Animations are not too heavy-handed and add to the experience.

Is this by Stripe? The components look just like their dashboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> See floatrock's comment :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another good stuff by Chinese team. For Vue components, we have support from Ele.me

</comment><comment><USER33> Great library, and very good to have an alternative to the react date/timepicker widgets out there.

Is someone already working on a bootstrap-themed version of this?

</comment><comment><USER34> The design is good. It look nice! But it is very heavy compared to native HTML and CSS. It's like taking a space ship, to go visit your neighbor.

<comment><USER35> It's actually super light, i don't know where you got the impression that it's heavy. This is not a monolith but a modular kit - you only load what you use which makes it different from many other UI kits which give you megabytes of CSS on first load.

Also, this is native HTML and CSS of course, with proper definition, types and handlers laying out what the component can do:

[https://github.com/ant-design/ant- design/blob/master/compone...](https://github.com/ant-design/ant- design/blob/master/components/button/button.tsx)

[https://github.com/ant-design/ant- design/blob/master/compone...](https://github.com/ant-design/ant- design/blob/master/components/button/style/index.less)

Resulting in: [https://ant.design/components/button/](https://ant.design/components/button/)

<comment><USER34> It's a weak abstraction with maybe hundreds of nested dependencies and many compile steps. A lot of things that can go wrong ... Just to do this:

      <button>Hello world</button>

<comment><USER35> "Just"

To "just" use self contained, configurable, property-defined components that can be shared, re-used, filled with state - that isn't trivial. Which is why they're React components. The components themselves are very lean, there's a bit of code, some markup, a piece of CSS and that's that. The code i have linked compiles down to a couple of bytes.

<comment><USER34> I do not understand the problem with vanilla HTML and JavaScript. I've been doing it for 18 years so I might be "blind".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone used these: [http://themes.getbootstrap.com/](http://themes.getbootstrap.com/)

How does it compare ?

</comment><comment><USER37> Large library, I particularly liked the @mention component, first time i see a library providing that.

<comment><USER38> There was react wyswyg editor with this function couple of weeks ago here at HN. Was looking for it too. ([https://github.com/jpuri/react-draft- wysiwyg](https://github.com/jpuri/react-draft-wysiwyg) [https://jpuri.github.io/react-draft- wysiwyg/#/demo?_k=fws8cj](https://jpuri.github.io/react-draft- wysiwyg/#/demo?_k=fws8cj) \- look for editor with mentions)

<comment><USER39> That editor doesn't allow editing on mobile Safari (iPad). All the examples are non-functional and some are visually broken as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's the filesize for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> The minified version is about 1MB, see [https://email@example.com/dist/](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/dist/) .

But you can import component individually by using this babel plugin [https://github.com/ant-design/babel-plugin-import](https://github.com/ant- design/babel-plugin-import), see [https://ant.design/docs/react/getting- started#Import-on-Dema...](https://ant.design/docs/react/getting- started#Import-on-Demand)

<comment><USER41> This is really well executed, well done. I noticed a link to data visualization and graphics pages, but unfortunately I don't read chinese. Are there plans to wrap that stuff up in React in a similar fashion?

<comment><USER9> You can try Google translator..

<comment><USER42> github:[https://github.com/antvis/g2](https://github.com/antvis/g2) guide: [https://github.com/antvis/g2/wiki/How-to-create-a-- chart](https://github.com/antvis/g2/wiki/How-to-create-a--chart) api: [https://github.com/antvis/g2/wiki/API](https://github.com/antvis/g2/wiki/API)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's so beautiful! Please please make something like this for react native too.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working hard on mobile version[1].

[1][https://mobile.ant.design](https://mobile.ant.design)

<comment><USER44> Will it be a separate library?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's a separate library but also follows Ant Design's guideline, provide both web (for mobile) and ReactNative version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> we use antd component to build our internal applications almost half a year. It improves our efficiency obviously. thanks antd team.

</comment><comment><USER46> Thanks for sharing! Amazing work!

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't want to be that guy, and probably will be downvoted for being negative, but why does everything load so slow?

People on this thread are saying it's the network speed thing, coming from china and all, but isn't this supposed to have downloaded all the js modules initially?

I just keep thinking "it would have been much faster and I wouldn't have to wait for these progress bars to finish if it were just a static page".

Why does a documentation need a progress bar anyway?

<comment><USER24> The minified version of this library is about 1MB but loading individual modules is possible. I haven't checked my own net tab but I presume the site uses chunking in order to avoid downloading the entire library on the initial load.

The data is static and it is probably a SPA, but it's not all loaded on the initial load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> These components look and work great, but unfortunately are a real headache to retheme unless you want to pull in a sass/less toolchain in addition to what you're currently using. This is a pain in the ass if you already have your theme variables set up in one compiles-to-CSS language.

There is a standard for CSS variables and a very functional subset of their functionality can be compiled for older browsers at build time: [http://cssnext.io](http://cssnext.io), yet as far as I can tell, all of these component frameworks impose some other nonstandard compiles-to-CSS language or one of many possible APIs for writing inline styles.

Inline styles seem to be a trend at the moment but I can only assume the people driving this movement haven't had the experience of working with 3rd party components (which you may or may not have the source for) and needing to alter something the designers didn't expose and simply having no simple options because the damn inline style can't be overridden even by !important. Now you've got to fork whole the f'ing component, possibly multiple, each of which potentially coming with yet another different compiles-to-CSS toolchain all because you wanted to add a single line of CSS.

Admittedly, antd doesn't use inline styles si the above doesn't apply here, but having to maintain a custom builder for antd in order to change some fonts and a few colors was a frustrating experience. Not sure what a good solution is until CSS variables get more browser adoption, but it'd be great if we could collectively start standardizing on standards.

<comment><USER49> Theming is on of the big reasons we saw the need to make styled-components[0] (new lib to style React apps and component libraries)

I'm one of the maintainers of ElementalUI, and Glen Maddern, the styled- components co-creator, one of the creators of CSS Modules. One of the biggest downsides of CSS Modules (and, by extension, every other styles in JavaScript library right now) is that theming is simply impossible. Building third-party component libraries is hard enough, but providing an easy-to-theme API wasn't a solved problem in the React world. Nobody has done it properly, and there is no agreed-upon way of doing this!

styled-components has built-in theming support[1] to solve this exact problem. (note: this is CSS-in-JS, not inline styles[2], so overriding is easy as pie too[3]) We're rebuilding ElementalUI with it right now and the next versions of react-toolbox and Belle will be built with it as well.

We also have ReactNative support, which nobody else has done before. Just because you're writing a universal React app with a third-party component library shouldn't mean switching between three or four different APIs to style your app. With styled-components, you can just use styled-components no matter what you're styling!

(If you're reading this, I'd love to have a chat with the Antd people about maybe moving to styled-components! You can reach me on Twitter at @mxstbr, just ping me there!)

      [0]: https://styled-components.com
      [1]: https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components#theming
      [2]: mxstbr.blog/2016/11/inline-styles-vs-css-in-js
      [3]: https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components#overriding-component-styles

<comment> just-boris Hello!

I've been using Antd components for the last year in some my project. All components are also available here[0] as single modules for better reusability and customization.

Currently, I have solved all my theming goals with Plain CSS. For each component, that I'd like to customize I created a wrapper

       import Slider from 'rc-slider';

       function StyledSlider(props) {
          return <Slider className="my-slider" {...props} />
       }

Then in CSS

       .my-slider .rc-slider-track {
          background: #FFDF66;
       }

(This is a very simplified example, just shows the way).

I have read about styled-components, but I don't understand how it would help me with theming. I don't think that rewriting every component from LESS to styled-components to make possible to use ThemeProvider will be an option because it doesn't give you any benefits comparing with customization guide[1], that also gives you good enough way to override defaults.

       [0]: https://github.com/react-component/

       [1]: https://ant.design/docs/react/customize-theme

<comment><USER49> We're currently writing some documentation specifically pertaining to theming third-party component libraries, which you can read the WIP of here: [https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components- exper...](https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components- experimentation/blob/master/component-libraries/shared-component-libraries.md)

The TL;DR is that this customization guide will suddenly become really easy. Antd can specify a default theme and users can override the parts of the default theme they want!

All the user has to do is pass a single prop to the ThemeProvier and override what they want:

        import { ThemeProvider } from 'antd';

        <ThemeProvider theme={{ primaryColor: '#1DA57A' }}>
          <App />
        </ThemeProvider>

On top of that different parts of your app can have different themes. Making your sidebar dark but your main component light is not an issue – just wrap them in two ThemeProviders with different themes:

        <ThemeProvider theme={darkTheme}>
          <Sidebar />
        </ThemeProvider>
        <ThemeProvider theme={lightTheme}>
          <Main />
        </ThemeProvider>

It's also all dynamic, meaning you can let the users of your app provide custom themes for your app and it'll automatically apply.

Compare that with the current customization guide, not only do users have to use webpack, they also have to use specific plugins just to make customization of third-party components work! It's also all global, which means styling the sidebar dark and the main area light is impossible since it's all just Less variables applied at build time. This also makes it very hard to have user supplied themes.

Does that make it clear enough how using styled-components would help with theming? :-)

<comment> just-boris The ability to apply different overrides for some branches in a component tree is powerful. Sure, I will come back to styled-components when I will get that issue.

Currently, I (as well as most users, I suppose) just need to apply some global color overrides to match with company's brand guidelines that I can solve it with old good plain CSS.

Also, for big projects, like Antd, transition to some other CSS-tooling almost impossible, because CSS/LESS code is spread across several repositories and will take a lot of efforts and time.

And finally, the current implementation is better because it doesn't mention styles in Javascript at all, so the library users are able to choose any way to style components without extra efforts from the side of library authors.

<comment><USER49> You can choose to style styled components any way you want too! You can pass in class names, inline styles, whatever you want just works. No need to be aware of styled-components from the user side at all.

Imagine Button being a styled component, all of the usual methods work perfectly fine:

        import Button from 'antd';

        <Button className="my-global-classname" />

        <Button style={{ color: 'red' }} />

You say "just" apply some global color overrides, but to "just" apply some global color overrides you need to use webpack (using another bundler? Sorry, antd is not for you) and use atool-build or have to configure webpack to work the way they need it to.

Or you create a custom less file, but that means you'll load all the styling for all components even though you really only wanted to use e.g. the Button.

That's not really "just" overriding a global color, is it? ;-)

I'm not saying this is a trivial change at all by the way, I understand the cost of it since I'm doing it for ElementalUI. I don't know if the antd maitainers will consider it worth it, that's another discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I want to speak generally about new UI components, since this is the 2nd post in a week (about a new library of UI components) that reached front page (that I've seen) which are not addressing what I see as a fundamental issue that future UI libraries should address.

For mobile platforms specifically. Now on the surface you can say that UI libraries these days, more or less, will work similarly if not exactly the same across platforms. I would say for most "types" of components this will be true. But form input field behavior is different enough between mobile platforms that I'm questioning why we aren't moving quickly away from native HTML form input fields.

I totally get the argument for accessibility (probably a lot of accessibility platforms depend on these fields), but even accessibility standards such as ARIA, because of some of these inconsistencies, should be pushing toward this goal (decoupling the form input UI components from native HTML form input fields) I think.

Does anyone else here have a strong opinion one way or another as far as their experience building PWA's on mobile where they've encountered the differences between platforms (I'm specifically familiar with Android vs. iOS)? Do you find the differences to be easy to work around? I'm especially interested in feedback from folks who have required some relatively detailed behaviors, such as consistency in how input fields behave when "tabbing" to the next / previous field, or how the "input type='time'" fields behave differently in terms of when DOM events fire while setting time. Or how native keyboard behaviors / layouts are sufficiently different that you'd prefer to have a way to make the experience within your app more consistent?

</comment><comment><USER51> I can only imagine. Nothing shows but a blank page when clicking a site link in my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER52> This looks great! Link doesn't work though...

<comment><AUTHOR> Which link?</comment></comment>


Theranos investors who pledge not to sue get Elizabeth Holmes' shares for free - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/theranos-investors-who-pledge-not-to-sue-get-elizabeth-holmes-shares-for-free/ <comment><USER2> She's giving out her shares to existing investors in exchange for immunity, so she will lose majority control in exchange for not going to jail, and the bits will be salvaged. Kind of like a settlement, I guess?

"she showed 'a level of selflessness and grace reflecting her commitment to the company's success.'"

Wow. Just wow. That is some masterful spin.

<comment><USER3> Yes wow! She is agreeing to give up some shares in a company that would probably be worthless after the lawsuit, in exchange for avoiding that lawsuit. Not all of them, some of them. Win win. A saint.

<comment><USER4> It might be worth it for wresting majority control from Holmes, which means that the company could be shut down and liquidated for whatever remaining cash is on hand (rather than continuing to operate some probably-worthless projects).</comment></comment></comment>


Encountering Strangers in Public Places: Goffman and Civil Inattention - <AUTHOR> http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2011/12/encountering-strangers-in-public-places-goffman-and-civil-inattention.html <comment><USER2> If you take the same route around the same time you begin to discern faces from past days and weeks. They become a part of the environment, a contextual wayfinder. And you begin to notice their unchanging ways, mannerisms and preferences, their stops, their clothes, bags, styles... It's not always an unending sea of "strangers". You may not know them, but they are not strangers. They are your incognito companions.

<comment><USER3> > incognito companions That's an excellent phrase, and describes them > perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to echo the first commentator. I lived a pedestrian lifestyle ^_^ (plus subway) in the Boston area for a dozen years ending in 1991, and the style of a little extra eye contact along with a general smile went a long way there. But evidently that's not universally applicable.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my node.js fun project: Selfdestructing email aliases. - <AUTHOR> http://tempalias.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also have a look at my blog where I link to a series of post about the creation of the service from the initial idea to the final push live:

<http://www.gnegg.ch/2010/04/announcing-tempalias-com/>

The project took 44 hours from start to finish and it's both a nice study in node.js and of actual use for the public (I hope)

<comment><USER2> Nice series of posts, would like to see more similar articles on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... I love to write, but I tend to be way too wordy.

I feared it was way too long all in all - which is why I bolded the IMHO more interesting posts in the announcement blog entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a very interesting system, and I can see myself using it frequently for things like throwaway email addresses for forums, required registrations, and other things.

However, I would want to know that security issues as mentioned elsewhere in the thread were addressed before hand. Especially using it for throwaways for websites, which will often involve a short term password, you don't wnat someone else to be able to create that alias and then reset my password and compromise my account.

<comment><AUTHOR> edit:

Update: The issue is now fixed. No ID will ever be given out twice any more while still keeping the garbage collection working correctly and deleting aliases.

SETNX is great :-)

This fixes issue #7 (<http://github.com/pilif/tempalias/issues/closed/#issue/7>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks pretty neat! Tried it out and took a quick look at the code. If I ever need a temp alias I will definitely use this. But, one thing I didn't find any info about anywhere.

Do you keep track of the deleted alias "keys". That is, if I create a mail and the key is m4m2 or whatever, I want to make sure that m4m2 will never ever lead to someone else (as well as not to me). If i register an account somewhere I obviously never want the mail going to the alias to end up at someone else either.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok. This issue is fixed now - a bit of thinking has shown me that it's way easier to implement than what I have first thought of.

Thanks for reporting this and happy tempaliasing :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great project! I'll be using it for sure.

I noticed that on the privacy page you use plural pronouns like "our" and "we", even though it seems from this post that it's just you. I used to do that too with my personal projects. I've tried to stop, but only been half successful. So now most of the stuff I write is about half and half; which just confusing really.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah. I might actually have made the same mistake. I'll be going over this during the weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a couple nitpics:

1\. Redbot doesn't like some of the http headers: <http://redbot.org/?uri=http://tempalias.com/> Content-type should be "text/html; charset=utf-8 ". Why the keep-alive connection?

2\. It feels like the home page is rendering slowly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Most of the problems are related to node-paperboy. I'll look into this and submit patches upstream.

edit: Fixed all the stuff that's not in node-paperboy (that will take a while) - mostly the compression related issues. I didn't know about redbot, otherwise I would have checked before submission. The remaining issues are reported as issue #8: <http://github.com/pilif/tempalias/issues/#issue/8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It reminds me of a similar service many years old, which eventually got shut down by the authorities because some very bad people was using he's service.

I can't remember the name of the guy or the service, but you should be careful such a service.

Other than that, it's really cool and useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> well... it's hosted in switzerland which usually has friendly authorities in such matters. Additionally, I'm not logging anything.

But it's a fun project after all - the second I get an official complaint, it's gone.

In the mean time, my next step would be to implement a bookmarklet that fills out any field on any form on any webpage so that you don't even have to manually go back to the tempalias.com site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 502 Bad Gateway. Too much selfdestruct?

<comment><AUTHOR> An invalid HTTP request it seems:

        Error: Parse Error
            at Stream.ondata (http:533:30)
            at IOWatcher.callback (net:357:31)
            at node.js:749:9

how the hell would I catch that one - somewhere deep inside node's HTTP library? It's restarted now.

edit: I've added an uncaughtException listener so it should at least keep going. Exception handling in asynchronous code is really hard. Above exception never even reaches my own code.

<comment><USER9> This error happend to me when I upgraded to 0.1.91. I didn't look into it, but I suspect the error is caused by/in node-memcache [<http://github.com/elbart/node-memcache>]

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not running node-memcache, but node-redis-client and this is an issue in the parser that parses incoming requests - probably malformed ones of people trying stuff out.

Incidentally, the first crash was the moment after I submitted this on reddit, but this might really be a coincidence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great. I've used a few temporary email address websites in the past but they all seemed to have very flaky web interfaces for actually reading the email messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly. They make you watch their ads.

Thankfully, I don't need the money I could suck out of such a service due to a very nice day-job, so I can actually provide the service I consider to be optimal without constantly thinking about a bottom-line.

This also means that I will be able to improve this even more by, say, providing a bookmarklet so that you don't even have to come back after creating your first alias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't have much time to actually check it out, but the "What is this good for?" link on the front page doesn't seem to be working for me (Chrome Dev Channel on Win7).

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah. it's the same link as about. I fixed it just now.

I had to change the ajax/hash based url schema to match Google's proposal here: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal- for-making-ajax-crawlable.html) and I seem to have overlooked that one link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Feels like a less anonymous version of mailinator.com. Forwarding to my own email is a very useful feature if I'm not so concerned with privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have a look at my privacy page (<http://tempalias.com/#!/privacy>). Do you find something that's not to your liking? Are there still concerns left? I'd gladly update the privacy page.

Also, the code is open. If you want, you can even register your own domain and run thing thing yourself.

<comment><USER13> The crux of the privacy concern is that it doesn't matter what you write on your privacy page as people have no way to make sure you live up to it. If I wanted an email address that couldn't be traced to me, then this sort of service will never suffice. Then again I don't imagine that is your target market or intended use.

edit: I just want to add that I think it looks really useful for all those cases when privacy is a lesser concern, and I've bookmarked the site for future use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... this is not as much about hiding your address as it is about making sure that you don't get spammed much later after registering for a site.

Still: I am not logging alias resolution. The SMTP-Server is not logging a thing. Insofar, if authorities would ask me to give them data, I plain couldn't if the alias has expired by then.

If the alias is still valid, then of course, I would have to comply, but see my first point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So now it's gone.

Why does it matter if someone reported you? Was your ISP threatening to shut you down?

<comment><AUTHOR> they were. But this was a bad coincidence - I just now got an email for a SPAMHAUS request from 2006 where I was not in fact even a customer from that ISP.

This was an overreaction of mine, but the machine is a VM my company has gladly provided for me, so I wanted to err on the safe side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> next project for you -> make this a firefox / chrome / IE extension that auto- generates fake email aliases into any sign-up / login email field, and some way to track what's been done to with the fake emails you used.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting "502 Bad Gateway"?</comment>


Weird water phase "ice-VII" can grow as fast as 1,000 miles per hour - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/weird-water-phase-ice-vii-can-grow-as-fast-as-1000-miles-per-hour/ <comment><USER2> could shock waves inducing freezing wipe out life on these exoplanets?</comment>


Log in or sign up with GitHub (but not with Facebook) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leahculver.com/2012/02/log-in-or-sign-up-with-github.html

<comment><USER2> Very faulty logic. 1 in 5 logged in with github, and 1 in 7 logged in with twitter, and this implies you don't need facebook? Measuring two other things does not have any meaning to another not-measured metric. One should add a fb button and then measure how many log in via fb to make such a statement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all! I think it's totally valid to use some gut instinct here.

My instinct is that there's a scale from Facebook -> Twitter -> GitHub in the services that our target audience uses (less nerdy -> more nerdy).

Since GitHub performed better than Twitter (by a significant amount, although that's debatable) then I feel that the Facebook end of that scale isn't worth even testing at all. Instead, it would be more useful to try services on the GitHub end of the scale, such as OpenID or maybe something more novel like BitBucket, Heroku, Dribbble etc.

<comment><USER3> I get what you mean and it's probably a fair assumption. But, the data you showed and the conclusion you draw "Won't be adding that FB button soon" is totally illogical. You have no idea how many ppl. that are coming to grove, want's to sign in but don't because they have neither a twitter or github account and/or don't want to sign up with it.

You need to add a FB signup button, test the increase (or non increase) of signups and then draw conclusions. Or measure bounce rates in some smart way. Your current method isn't very scientific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you consider BrowserId? I think this has a lot of advantages over OpenId or various proprietary accounts.

<https://browserid.org/></comment>


Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/14/in-man-vs-machine-challenge-ibms-watson-ties-for-first-on-jeopardy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat) <comment><USER2> After not being able to find a suitable online stream of this event (I don't have cable), I gave up and built a rudimentary antenna for my TV. Basically, I just wound a bunch of copper wire around a piece of cardboard and stuck it in the window. The other end of the wire went into the cable port on the back of my TV. Surprisingly, I was able to pick up the game in crystal clear, digital 1080p!

<comment><USER3> That's pretty impressive, mind sharing a photo with us? I just want to understand what this level of awesome looks like.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I just wrote it up and took some pictures:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2222827>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Watching Watson's avatar gave a little insight about what the software may have been doing. The results, based upon that avatar. The % is its confidence in its #1 response.

      Category    Clue         Watson#1Resp   % rsult otcm
      </comment><comment>----- </comment><comment></comment><comment> </comment><comment></comment><comment>  -- ----- ----
      Alt Meaning belief       view          70 right Brad
      Alt Meaning horse foot   shoe          68 right won
      Lit Chars   split person Hyde          71 right won
      Beatles     guy pain     Jude          98 right won
      Olympic Odd 2008 perfect Michael Phelp 93 right won
      Name Decade Disneyland   1950s         87 right Ken
      Final Front black hole   Event horizon 97 right won
      Lit Chars   Beowolf      Grendel       97 right won
      Final Front Michelango   Last Judgemnt 97 right won
      Beatles     title gal    Lady Madonna  90 right won
      Olympic Odd 1908 city    London        69 right won
      Name Decade Emp St Bldg  1930s         50 right Brad
      Beatles     Silver Hammr Maxwell       98 right won
      Lit Chars   his victims  Harry Potter  37 wrong Brad
      Alt Meaning piece wood   stick         96 right won
      Final Front Latin ending finis         97 wrong lost
      Beatles     John mother  Julia         97 right Ken
      Lit Chars   Les Miz      Jean Valjean  76 right won
      Olympic Odd 1976 epee    Pentathelon   85 right won
      Name Decade Klaus Barbie 2002          11 wrong Ken
      Olympic Odd George Eyser leg           61 wrong lost
      Alt Meaning bent arm     Knee          40 wrong Ken
      Name Decade Oreos        1920s         57 wrong lost
      Final Front paper limit  Envelope      61 right Brad
      Alt Meaning students     chic          82 wrong lost
      Final Front summit       peak          65 wrong Brad
      Name Decade Kitty Hawk   1900s         17 right Brad
      Olympic Odd sole member  Olympic Games 20 wrong Ken
      Beatles     died church  Eleanor Rigby 98 right won
      Lit Chars   evilness     Sauron        74 right won

<comment><USER5> I also put together the full game stats: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2220667>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I attended a talk by one of the designers. Some of Watson's 'wrong' answers he described were pretty funny. There was one where the clue (paraphrasing) was 'Punch below the beltline that rhymes' and the right answer was 'Low blow', but Watson came up with 'Wang bang'. In another one the clue was something like 'The end of this had an exclamation mark in headlines in 1919', with the right answer being 'World war I', whereas Watson answered 'Sentence'.

</comment><comment><USER7> Video:

Part 1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PSPvHcLnN0>

Part 2: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtHlxzOXgYs>

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the links. I love the bits when Trebek visits Watson in the lab - it's the sort of thing where kids in 20 years will giggle at the fact that their pocket computer is more powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't have wished for a more exciting opening to this game. Watson just shot right off into the lead like there was no tomorrow, jetting ahead by thousands! I was blown away. Then he slowly started to crumble a bit and his answers were faulty more and more. But his strategy is amazing! He hops from category to category, while most humans pick a category and stick with it. I wonder if IBM has him do that purely because it might throw the humans off a bit. Totally awesome. I can't wait for tonight's show!

<comment><USER10> _He hops from category to category, while most humans pick a category and stick with it._

I noticed the same thing, but I really hoped it was unintentional. It doesn't feel like it's a fair fight otherwise, since it means he's exploiting a weakness intrinsic to his competitors. The whole point of this competition is to show that a computer can compete and win at a human level. If it weren't, then why force him to physically push a button to ring in? If Watson is intentionally jumping categories to confuse humans, then it sort of feels like he's cheating a bit.

As I write this, I realize a lot of this comment is motivated by my bruised human ego, but it just doesn't feel quite right to me.

<comment><USER11> _It doesn't feel like it's a fair fight otherwise, since it means he's exploiting a weakness intrinsic to his competitors_

Late in the first round you can see Jennings change his strategy a bit -- he starts ringing in before he knows the answer. Jennings is exploiting the fact that Watson won't ring in until it has confidence in an answer.

<comment><USER12> That's awesome. He can make that strategy pay off because he's Ken freaking Jennings. Usually the money penalty for buzzing in but answering incorrectly (or not at all) would dissuade a contestant from buzzing in before actually knowing the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That Trebek gave Watsom credit for "Maxwell's silver hammer" when the clue was looking for the person – Maxwell – gave me a moment's pause.

Jeopardy does tend to be a little more forgiving of contestants during the first round – such as giving them a reminder to phrase-as-a-question, and letting them correct an initially wrong or incomplete utterance, if done almost instantly. Still, I'm not sure if such a interpretive error by a person would have been overlooked.

<comment><USER14> I noticed that, too; but a little later in the game, Trebek declared "leg" (instead of "he was missing a leg") wrong without hesitation.

So it's definitely being held to some standard.

<comment><USER15> Actually, according to arstechnica, that lack of hesitation was before the segment was reshot.

A human had answered "missing a hand," which created context that means "What is a leg" could be interpreted as "he was missing a leg". Initially Alex did give him credit, before realizing that Wattson couldn't have been using that context.

[http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson- tied-f...](http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson-tied-for-1st- in-jeopardy-almost-sneaks-wrong-answer-by-trebek.ars)

<comment><USER16> OK, so I have a question about this, how was it legitimate for Brad to answer at this point? Brad would have seen Alex initially credit Watson with the right answer and then reverse the judgement, rendering the answer incorrect. Brad would have been able to infer the correct answer at this point.

<comment><USER17> In fact, Brad didn't answer the question... I was wondering about that since the answer was obvious just from Ken's guess and Watson's response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Going the Sci-Fi route, I would love this technology to expand and become an interactive Wikipedia. How cool would it be to go to your local library, (you remember those?) and ask it a series of questions and get answers.

But thinking about how quickly archaic the library is turning into these days, I see it going this route: You call this service from your computer or phone and ask it anything. But by then Goggle will already have that feature. Google AI (Beta)

<comment><USER19> I too am inspired by all the possibilities this implies for human-computer interaction. I picture a portable device that records events from your surroundings and provides personalized reasoning similar to this. It could remind you of people's names, it would know all the details of your personal finances and could provide budget and stock tips, remind you of events if you have a pattern of forgetting to plan ahead, etc. Aside from the fact that Watson fills up a whole room and its knowledge is tailored to Jeopardy, it really doesn't seem that far off combined with a few other technologies like machine vision and translation that are already out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I could beat Watson. "I'll take quote semi-colon drop table categories for 200"

</comment><comment><USER21> You can watch it on YouTube:

Part 1: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PSPvHcLnN0>

Part 2: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtHlxzOXgYs>

</comment><comment><USER22> If you want to watch it but have no way of doing so, the game is (still?) available on YouTube and easily findable. It will also be available on the IBM Watson website (<http://ibmwatson.com/>) the day after tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2220667>

For those that missed the game, or can't remember every question, a nice spreadsheet/empty discussion made by ckwalsh.

</comment><comment><USER24> If Watson wins, it should have to keep coming back as defending champion until someone else beats it. It should also qualify to return in the Tournament of Champions if it gets that far.

Now that would be a true test.

<comment><USER17> It would be quite entertaining, but that would mean either more permanently moving Jeopardy! filming to IBM's campus (cost prohibitive) or rebuilding Watson on Jeopardy!'s set (also cost prohibitive) and you see why this is just a three day exhibition match.

<comment><USER24> Understood.

Does anyone know what these IBM supercomputers ultimately are used for after they're done winning Jeopardy or beating Gary Kasparov? I'd imagine something top-secret for the US government, but it would be nice to know exactly what Deep Blue is doing now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone want to create a community site for the contest? I am looking for another Django developer who can participate in an all-night code sprint. The site would:

1\. Show an online score board.

2\. Track Watson's performance (like shkb is doing on Google Docs)

3\. Aggregate pictures, videos, and written analysis of the event

<comment><USER25> I think you should've been doing this on Sunday...

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think of it until now. I assumed that the official IBM site would have a way of tracking Watson's progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Spoiler not appreciated by many, I'm guessing. Next time, please don't do that.

<comment><USER27> I'm confused. Where's the spoiler? I don't remember seeing anything in the article (and I'm glad I didn't I wouldn't appreciated the spoiler).

<comment><USER28> The title of the submission is the spoiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> T-hawk =====MILD SPOILERS FOR DAY 2 BELOW=====

(I posted this in another thread, but this one seems to have most of the action.)

I think it's become apparent that most of Watson's advantage is in signaling speed. Figure that a top human player like Jennings knows about 80% of the answers and Watson about 90%. Watson should be winning, but not by nearly that much.

Jeopardy signaling 101 for those that don't know: An offscreen operator presses a button to enable the buzzers when Alex is done speaking. If you buzz too early, there's a 300 ms lockout until you can buzz again. A light near the board lights up when the buzzers are open. Watson monitors that light (whether by electrical connection or optical sensor, they haven't said) and physically presses the signaling buzzer. Its reaction speed must be faster than the humans' and it will never miss and buzz too early.

Also, Watson's clue selection pattern shows that it definitely starts by searching for Daily Doubles. It picks the bottom 3 clues of each category before anything in the top 2 rows, where the DDs are statistically concentrated.

</comment><comment><USER29> The longer the question the longer Watson has to generate an answer. Isn't that an important advantage?

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure I understand your point. All of the contestants "see" the answer at the same time, and none of them are allowed to buzz in until the magic light goes on.

<comment><USER31> But if the question takes 20 seconds to read, Watson has 20 of his seconds to narrow down his confidence to a particular answer. If he only had 10 seconds, his calculations might not have gone far enough to bubble the correct answer on top. It would be interesting to see a chart of confidence of answers vs time for Watson..

<comment><USER32> But the same is true for the human contestants; at this level especially, I'm sure that they scan the whole question in a second and then have the rest of the spoken time (which, even for long questions, is nowhere near 20 seconds - probably more like 4) to think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to see the next version take the avatar concept further. They went half way by making it physically buzz in. Go the rest of the way, and make it only receive input from the avatar. Add a computer vision and speech recognition component, and make it read the board and listen to Trebek like the human players. Then, make it mobile, and put the avatar in the actual Jeopardy! studio.

EDIT: Clarified "human" players. Welcome to the future!

<comment><USER6> According the designers they considered it, but finally decided to concentrate on the question answering. OCR for this situation could probably be done in fast and reliable way, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. Speech recognition would be harder and less reliable, but redundant most of the time (though it presumably could have helped for the 1920s question).

<comment><USER33> Understandable, and I agree that they definitely tackled the meat of the problem. I think there could be some interesting problems in the computer vision aspect of it, though. Seeing and interpreting the board is subtly different than a straight OCR problem.

Maybe I'm overstating the difference, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone know why Watson was unable to buzz in immediately in some cases when he had 97% confidence in his answer? Seems odd that a computer would not be able to beat the human opponents at hitting the buzzer.

(It's possible that he didn't have the answer until after the human opponents, but that seems unlikely.)

<comment><USER22> Watson needs a few seconds to calculate the answer and will only hit the buzzer when it's finished calculating. Its opponents can buzz in even if they are not completely sure that they have an answer (or they simply might be faster than Watson). It's important to note that it is only possible to buzz in after the question has been read out. (Someone behind the stage flips a switch or something like that. Lights indicate that the buzzers are open for the humans, they are locked out for a few hundred milliseconds when they press the buzzer too early, Watson never buzzes in prematurely.)

I would like to know whether it is possible to beat Watson to the buzzer even if you and Watson both already know the answer. Watson has probably better reaction times but humans can anticipate when the host is finished reading. That probably depends highly on the consistency of the person behind the stage flipping the switch and opening the buzzers.

Here are some stats from the first round: Watson was the first to buzz in 16 times (with two wrong answers). It was above its buzzing threshold and didn't manage to buzz in seven times. (It would have been wrong three times if it had made it to the buzzer first.) It was below its buzzing threshold six times. (The remaining one is the daily double which Watson got correct.)

This needs to be in a table. Numbers in brackets indicate wrong or potentially wrong answers:

      Confident & first:  14+(2)
      Confident & beaten:  4+(3)
      Not confident:       6
      Daily Double:        1

Edit: Some think that Watson's (probably) superior reaction time gives it an unfair edge. I don't really agree because fast reactions are simply a part of the game but I can sort of see the point that it's not really about reaction times. We already know that computers can be better than humans when it comes to those.

I propose the following modification: One of the contestants who manages to buzz in in the first 100ms (the human reaction time) is randomly selected, buzzing in after those 100ms works as usual. Contestants are also no longer locked out for buzzing in too early.

<comment><USER35> I'm a bit lazy to look up for the source, but one article mentioned that the engineers were surprised that humans could get down to the 10 - 15 ms range by anticipating the light rather than reacting to it. They said this beats the mechanical buzzer, and it does happen, though not terribly often.

So yes, it is possible to beat Watson to the buzzer even if you both know the answer.

I suspect they could have improved the buzzer if they really wanted to, but it might have made things too lopsided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone considered building an open source Watson?

<comment><USER37> Not very many people have a state-of-the-art supercomputer in their basement, so it wouldn't be that useful.

<comment><USER38> IBM's using two racks of computers and a huge SAN. Maybe it couldn't compete with watson, but a decent setup could be cobbled together for 5,000. It wouldn't be as _fast_ , or as comprehensive, but it could be done.

The harder part is the tens of thousands of man hours with very smart people.

<comment><USER36> I think a little project called Linux got tens of thousands of man hours with very smart people ... Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Watson can't adjust its answers to what the other players say and so it simply answers with whatever comes up as its top answer."

This is false, in fact they specifically mentioned Watson learning from the answers of the other players.

In the game, Watson answers "The 1920s" after Jennings answers incorrectly with "the 20s". Basically, it didn't write off its own answer because it thought Jennings' was different enough that it might have been incorrect for the way it was phrased. The same way you might correctly answer "inner ear" after someone else incorrectly answers "ear".

<comment><USER40> I was at an event at MIT with one of Watson's designers as I watched the show. I asked him about the 20s thing, and he said they talked about it when they were designing Watson but they figured the scenario wouldn't happen where another contestant gave the wrong answer and Watson gave the same-but- different wrong answer. Edge case!

<comment><USER41> Capt. Ed Murphy was a smart man.

<comment><USER42> He was Major Ed Murphy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Its a baby god.

</comment><comment><USER44> Take note fellow hackers:

We're witnessing a truly monumental event in human history and technological development.

Computers competing with humans on gameshows as if they are intellectually equivalent...

We live in the freaking future now, man.</comment>