Cracking BurgerTime, a 1982 game on a floppy disk - <AUTHOR> https://ia801505.us.archive.org/33/items/BurgerTime4amCrack/BurgerTime%20(4am%20crack).txt <comment><USER2> Interesting exploration and impressive persistence. This approach definitely provides more detailed information about how the process worked. This seems like the only approach that would have worked back in 1982.

Reading the description of the archive.org project at [https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about](https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am&tab=about) makes it clear that this effort intentionally deconstructs and documents the original copy protection.

Other than as an exploration of copy protection, though, I can't help but wonder if the simplest approach to preserve and run the same software today would involve an appropriate emulator, more accurate floppy drive emulation, and the unmodified original disk image. The crazy amount of self-decryption and obfuscated code wouldn't matter as long as it found what it expected on the disk; the modifications just let it run on real hardware using a copied disk.

Apart from allowing the use of the original unmodified disk, emulation would also avoid the possibility of missing more subtle copy protection schemes. This particular disk made things easier by just stopping the game at the start. Some of the worse copy protection mechanisms developed later would detect a copied game, leave it somewhat playable, but make it either exceptionally difficult or intentionally broken near the end. Sometimes they would include a more obvious copy protection scheme to defeat that prevented playing the game at all, so that a prospective cracker would think themselves successful once the game starts. See [http://media.earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds- copy-...](http://media.earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy- protection/index.html) for an example.

<comment><USER3> Some copy protection systems relied on using subtle timing errors to create disks that would read as "corrupt" by standard system software. Replicating this behavior in an emulator would be a major undertaking as well as being hard to reproduce in an image format.

<comment><USER4> I think the ultimate problem with emulation is the disk image: how do you image a disk with these subtle timing errors? The default behavior of the software operating the drive isn't aware of half tracks; every vendor uses different tricks so you don't know which 'timing errors' to activate; etc.

<comment> david-given Go look into Kryoflux:

[http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=kf_features](http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=kf_features)

It's a USB floppy controller which allows you to image the raw magnetic state of the disk (subject to head step and width). It allows you to record the disk and _then_ try to figure out what the format is. It's good enough to allow you to read CLV disks, such as Mac floppies, from an image taken from a CAV drive, such as a PC one. I don't know whether it supports half tracks --- probably --- but it will certainly support all the weird timing error tricks.

It's not what I would call user friendly but once you've figured it out the results are magical. I was able to image an ancient BBC Micro floppy disk once and then spend ages figuring out how to parse the sector layout and encoding density working with just the image. Not only does this avoid having to keep working with the fragile disk, but it's way faster!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote some 6502 protection code for Atari game cartridges. The problem was that a cartridge could be copied (trivially), then loaded into RAM at the same address, then run. There were many disks running around with cracks of cartridges that you could just load and run. The goal of the protection code was to detect whether the code was running in RAM or ROM, usually by hiding writes that would cause crashes or be detected by the game logic.

Once I had about two weeks to spare on a protection system; it used a couple levels of decryption and some delaying tactics so that the title would crash minutes after starting.

A prolific Atari pirate lived in my apartment complex. After the cartridge shipped, I asked him about it. "Oh, that was a hard one. It took me and my friends three days to crack."

Time and numbers are not on the side of DRM. (I'm also unconvinced that Atari lost much money to copying).

<comment><USER6> Cart protection on 6502 was tough to hide. I personally never reversed one, but a friend and I did a couple for the 6809. That thing was tough! Lots of options, addressing modes, etc... Took weeks, and it was on cassette.

I've often wondered about your last bit there.

The way it was in my little home town is a lot of people copied stuff. But, they barely could afford the computers too. Those who did have the bucks bought most of the stuff that ended up copied. You might be right, at least early on.

Later in the 80's, disk copying was massive. The C64 scene seemed to have buyers, but nearly everyone was on copied media in the Atari scene. Fewer machines, more copies, and it seemed like easier copies too... Some schemes were bad sector ones, and frankly, one could just count the beeps, open the door, wait for the error and continue. Not everyone checked the nature of the error, it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm both impressed and terrified that most of this article makes sense to me, even thirty years later.

It feels like writing the protection must have taken longer than developing the game itself.

If you're curious, here is the actual game:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wEWftbwSm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wEWftbwSm4)

Hard to imagine they went to that amount of trouble to protect it, but those were different days.

<comment><USER8> This was written just a couple days ago, it's just in the formatting of files written 30 years ago. The writing and explanation style is definitely a lot more modern and detailed.

<comment><USER7> Oh, wow... now my mind is blown for real.

May I ask how you know that?

Does this mean that the person actually cracked this game recently just to post such a write up?

<comment><USER9> see [https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am](https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am) A collection of historical software for Apple II computers from the 1980s and early 1990s. Each item was originally copy protected (i.e. the original floppy disk could not be copied to another floppy disk), but the copy protection has been removed and documented. Most items also include a "work disk" comprising the intermediate files created during the deprotection.

To send feedback, ask questions, or get notified of new releases, follow @a2_4am on Twitter.

<comment><USER7> Fascinating.

Do you know how they do it? I mean, in order to crack these games, they need to have the original physical floppy, don't they? Or do they have a digital version of the protected floppy with all its weird sectoring and data on it?.

<comment><USER10> Well you'd have to start with an original floppy or cassette, wouldn't you? Some still enjoy cracking on the real hardware, but most make a low level floppy or tape image and work from that.

I've only cracked relatively simple stuff, but working in an emulator is a LOT easier than working on real hardware. In an emulator you can freeze the system and inspect both the computer and the disk drive, set breakpoints, modify memory, and so on, and it's totally undetectable to the protection code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fantastic article as to how cracking was done back in the day. Plus, I've gotta give style points for it being formatted as 40 column, even if it isn't in all upper case, like files from back in the day would be. Though I was surprised he didn't check to see what that solitary bad sector was near the beginning of his explorations, because that was a pretty common way of keeping raw disk copy software from duplicating programs. All in all fascinating article.

<comment><USER11> 3 days ago, not back in the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hehe, lots of dusty neurons firing while reading this. Wonder how many old school hackers cut their teeth on cracking games.

      > In Which I'd Like To Add You
      > To My Professional Network Of
      > Linked Catalog Sectors

Priceless...

How much wall clock time went into this?

      > I'm beginning to suspect that this disk
      > is nothing more than an infinite series
      > of decryption routines with a game
      > bolted on as an afterthought.

<comment><USER13> I would guess that to the guy who did the copy protection it _was_ his master work in decryption routines, funded by the sad necessity of putting a game written by some talentless hacks into it as the ultimate payload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love reading the deconstruction.

Those apple copy protection schemes. Pirated software always had a "cracked by" load screen.

The most interesting thing to me were the hardware copy cards. Since most software fit in RAM, and the whole software would load at once, these cards let you push a button and make a bootable disk of whatever your computer was running.

When a disk failure meant trying to find another copy somewhere there was a legit fear of loosing your software.

central point software made some of these cards. A little info is available online. (Being before the internet took off, the names aren't search engine friendly.). Alaska Card Advert (why settle for copying the lower 48K.. Before they called it backup..)

[https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e2/70/cd/e270cdd90...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e2/70/cd/e270cdd9028e17de61c0fd204b056884.jpg)

Bottom of this page has some interesting pictures and history of these card: [http://retro.icequake.net/dob/](http://retro.icequake.net/dob/)

<comment><USER15> I was twelve or thirteen, had a ][e and with a copy of Beneath Apple DOS and the reference manual, and cracked a lot of software for the challenge. I wrote my own nibble copier but me and my friends pooled our money and bought Copy ][+ and Locksmith, which worked better.

My favorite, and easiest, trick was to use the 64k extended memory of the 80-column card to overlay the regular memory, copy the ROM and a few low pages into it, then jump to the boot routine. Then when the disk stopped spinning, I'd hit the reset button which left me with a copy of the system at that point. Sometimes I just had to dump the program from the memory, other times I would use it to disassemble how it loaded. I had a Applied Engineering RAMWorks card (Dad heavily used AppleWorks) and I recall there being tricks around that but can't remember (rigged a couple of buttons for page swapping, I think).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> this one is also pretty crazy:

Super Mario World Credits Warp Explained

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAHXK2wut_I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAHXK2wut_I)

<comment><USER6> This is crazy! And I second _too interesting..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I added some copy-protection to a Nintendo 64 game once. If the anti-piracy checks ever triggered, the game would do nothing at first - but after a few minutes, the frame-rate would ever-so-slowly start to get progressively worse and worse until it was unplayable. I'd like to think that I pissed at least a few people off.

<comment><USER18> If you're going to do that sort of piracy check, you have to be absolutely certain that it'll never trigger on a genuine copy. Red Alert 2 had a similar idea - about 60 seconds in to a game, all of your units will explode and the game ends - but it will sometimes trigger on legitimate copies of the game (usually due to mods, but I've had it happen on a clean install as well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice work! Kind of hard to believe someone would go to all that trouble now, but fun is fun, right? I remember at least one game that was less fun to play than it was to remove the copy protection. Some of my old articles about removing Apple II copy protection are also posted on archive.com, like this one: [http://archive.org/stream/computist- scan-14/issue14#page/n9/...](http://archive.org/stream/computist- scan-14/issue14#page/n9/mode/1up)

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember cracking A2FS1 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWIuTP_A6IQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWIuTP_A6IQ) This was before floppy disks, the game came on a cassette, but it had the same style of boot0/boot1 encryption. Starting the game from a copied cassette, it just printed "STOLEN AIRCRAFT! STOLEN AIRCRAFT!" all over the display.

<comment><USER21> Wow .. It looks like it would have been more fun to crack the encryption than actually play that game!

<comment><USER22> Very much so. I remember spending many months cracking game protection, not because I wanted the game, but because I wanted to pit my wits against the guy who wrote the protection. I learned more about disk controllers and hidden opcodes on the Z80 (TRS-80) doing that that any other way. I didn't always beat the guy, but always learned something.

Kudos to 4am, who has more patience than me. I'd probably have given up well before the third level of encryption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me tangentially of the Prince of Persia bootloader/disk format[0] used for the original Apple II release. Whenever I start to think I am clever or am feeling frustrated, I have a list of articles/code to read through to remind me I'm not; this is on there, and I'll be adding this to the list.

[0]: [http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/pop_boot.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/pop_boot.php)</comment>


Arguing science with a passionate non-scientist? - <AUTHOR> https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/q/2883 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR

1\. keep emotions out of the exchange

2\. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum)

3\. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately

4\. show respect

5\. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion

6\. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews.</comment>


YouTube asked to pay taxes in Turkey despite being banned - <AUTHOR> http://newstilt.com/istanbulcorrespondent/news/being-banned-doesnt-mean-your-dont-have-to-pay-taxes-turkey-tells-youttube

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, this is an opportunistic money grab by the Turkish government (legitimate or not, I can't say). Turkey has historically had a serious problem collecting taxes and has been trying to clamp down recently. This is based on my own anecdotal evidence as a first-generation Turk living in the US - I wish I could provide statistics, but a quick search did not bring anything up for me.

There is a large 'informal' economy consisting of shopkeepers, street vendors and other small businesses that are not registered and avoid paying taxes completely. In the last few years, Turkey has been trying to cut down on this by requiring all businesses (including street vendors) to produce a receipt that shows they charged tax. They regularly send 'undercover' government officials to make purchases from these vendors to test if the business offers a receipt and give heavy fines if they do not.

One time, after I tried to purchase a bottle of water and declined a receipt, the shopkeeper grabbed my arm, shoved the receipt into my palm, and demanded I take it. After that, I got into a conversation with him about taxes (he said less than 10% of citizens pay, although that seems low) and, when I described the IRS and how it was a crime in the US not to pay taxes, he was shocked and wished Turkey had a similar system. He laughed out loud when I said you could go to jail for not paying taxes.

<comment><USER3> This has nothing to do with taxes and everything to do with power games. The telecommunications board has been flexing their ban-muscle all over the place in anything that might be objectionable. The moronic part is that the ban is carried out instantly, and _then_ the owner can contest the ban afterward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, Turkey. The country that gets really, really mad at you if you do nasty things like insult their founder, or point out unpleasant historical facts such as the Armenian genocide.

I wonder how many generations it will take before they loosen up and learn to take justified criticism?

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me, or does the phrase _a Western style democracy_ (used in the article) seem just a little ironic given the context?

<comment><USER6> Australia is a "western style democracy" currently rushing headlong into building its own great internet firewall.

<comment><USER7> There's currently a pretty good chance Rudd will be out at the next election. Somebody needs to shanghai Tony Abbott into committing his party to abolishing the great firewall if it wins.

update: Looks like Abbott is maintaining strategic ambiguity on the issue as recently as yesterday: [http://www.zdnet.com.au/abbott-drawn-into-filter- debate-3393...](http://www.zdnet.com.au/abbott-drawn-into-filter- debate-339300089.htm)

" _I just don't know enough about it at this stage to have an opinion on that_ ," he said, which decodes as "I don't know whether it's an election-winning or election-losing issue for me yet". People need to start agitating now to convince him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are some points I need to make clearer.

Afaik Turkish government didn't make anything to block google services. But google carried some of its services to already banned IP block. That's why we have been having difficulties to access some services.

Secondly, it is google that is asked to pay taxes, not youtube. Government wants google to be a taxpayer and pay tax for its ad revenue.

<comment><USER9> > Secondly, it is google that is asked to pay taxes, not youtube.

No, the linked Turkish article says that they _informed_ Google Turkey about the taxes Youtube owes since Google is the parent company. And I don't think you can tax the parent company if the subsidiary fails to pay taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to find out why they're being asked to pay taxes, don't bother reading the article. It doesn't say.

<comment><USER9> According to the article linked in the first paragraph (in Turkish) they are required to pay taxes for the ads of Turkish companies YouTube shows to its Turkish visitors.

EDIT: It is stated in the original article as well:

> As a consequence of YouTube's popularity despite the ban, the video portal > has been attracting advertisement from Turkish companies, a development that > triggered the tax probe that Transportation Minister Yildirim was referring > to.</comment></comment>


An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY <comment><USER2> 3blue1brown's videos are excellent. They build intuition in a calm and friendly way with an appropriate amount of useful animation. This is how we make mathematics accessible.

I'm currently considering moving back into academia and there are a lot of topics in my field that I know students often struggle with that would be greatly helped by some simple animations. Fortunately I'm pretty competent with blender and I relish the idea of developing something worthwhile.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any links showing how to do that with blender?

<comment><USER2> Anything in particular? I was thinking of things like viscosity and stress analysis for fluid mechanics. It would be easy enough to animate a stress tensor and show how each term behaves when prodded. Similarity the basic concepts behind laminar boundary layers would be equally straight forward.

Mimicking 3b1b's style would be trickier since he uses a lot of 2D plots. Of course you can run python directly from blender so you never know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Source code of the video: [https://github.com/3b1b/manim/blob/master/active_projects/fo...](https://github.com/3b1b/manim/blob/master/active_projects/fourier.py)

</comment><comment><USER5> He touches on it - but I'd love to see an intuitive explanation of why the response of each frequency to the input function is linearly independent. i.e the fact that Fourier transform of the sum is equal to the sum of the Fourier transforms. This is "why it works" - it's what makes the frequency space an orthonormal basis - but it's never been intuitively obvious to me. Otherwise, there would be more than one way of decomposing a function into a superposition. e.g. what would be useful is to give an example of a set of functions which are not linearly independent.

<comment><USER6> The orthogonality is essentially follows from (1) integer frequency complex sinusoids have an average value of zero over [0,2π], and (2) if you multiply two distinct integer frequency complex sinusoids, you get another integer frequency complex sinusoid. I'm not sure that this is any more intuitive.

> what would be useful is to give an example of a set of functions which are > not linearly independent.

See [1,2] for example, which (I believe) has applications in compressed sensing and dictionary learning.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(linear_algebra)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_\(linear_algebra\))

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

<comment><USER7> >The orthogonality is essentially follows from (1) integer frequency complex sinusoids have an average value of zero over [0,2π], and (2) if you multiply two distinct integer frequency complex sinusoids, you get another integer frequency complex sinusoid. I'm not sure that this is any more intuitive.

i think these kinds of explanations are hilariously pointless. and i don't mean to disparage because you're just trying to answer op's question but all you've done is restated the proof in english - i.e. of course it follows from that because what you've just said is the inner product of basis functions is 0. well yes of course that's definition of orthogonal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BetterExplained (Kalid Azad) has a good written article that covers the Fourier transform in a similar manner to the 3Blue1Brown video: [https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive-guide- to...](https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-the- fourier-transform/)

I have an article explaining step by step how to implement code for the discrete version of the Fourier transform: [https://www.nayuki.io/page/how-to- implement-the-discrete-fou...](https://www.nayuki.io/page/how-to-implement- the-discrete-fourier-transform)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll just leave this here

[http://tomlr.free.fr/Math%E9matiques/Math%20Complete/Analysi...](http://tomlr.free.fr/Math%E9matiques/Math%20Complete/Analysis/Mathematics%20of%20the%20Discrete%20Fourier%20Transform.pdf)

Mathematics of the discrete Fourier Transform by Julius O. Smith. (O stands for Orange I hope)

<comment><USER10> Poking around the web turns up [https://amzn.com/097456074X/](https://amzn.com/097456074X/) [https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pubs.html](https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pubs.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really wish this stuff existed when I was learning about FFTs - this video describes the theory far better and in far less time than my broken-english college professors ever could.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sound waves don't add up linearly. However, it is a good enough idealization for many uses.

Fourier analysis is also approachable from the discrete setting of finite vectors instead of functions, where the fourier analysis is just an orthogonal (orthonomal when sanely defined) linear function, i.e. it acts by matrix multiplication and is represented as that matrix.

This appropriately extended to the continous setting leads to the fourier transform on functions, and also gives intuition why the fourier transform uses integrals.

</comment><comment><USER13> This one is related and (I think) quite good:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r18Gi8lSkfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r18Gi8lSkfM)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it's much easier and more direct to visualize the time-domain as superposition of helical components and the transform as an exploration of what happens when you twist the "cylinder" with varying "intensities". You avoid the vague center-of-mass spike depicted here and start from the get-go with the terms of the transform.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps you can explain what you mean by "exploration of what happens" and "terms of the transformation"? That's pretty vague as a description of a visualization.

Maybe you're talking about a visualizing a discrete Fourier transform?

<comment><USER14> Yep, it's vague, sorry, I'll need to try my hand at a video.

<comment><USER15> the source code brown brown blue uses for animations is open source

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In fMRI data, we refer to frequency space of volumetric image data as K-Space.

I would like a general term for frequency space of a signal, without the use of the word `frequency` . This is because `frequency` is also used when describing histograms in general image processing, and is in general an overloaded term.

Any established words or phrases in the corpus? any tips?

<comment><USER16> K-Space is sufficiently general, because "k" is defined as the wavenumber (2pi over wavelength). That's simply related to frequency in nearly every case unless your medium is interstellar hydrogen or shockwaves in air or something. If you need to talk about frequency specifically you could talk about the period (inversely proportional) or the angular frequency (factor of 2pi).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This fourier transform simulation example from shadertoy is good. [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltKSWD](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltKSWD)

</comment><comment><USER17> This fourier transform simulation example from shadertoy is good.

[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltKSWD](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltKSWD)

<comment><USER18> The link kills my MacBook Pro. Makes the system unresponsive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do you animate something like this?

<comment><USER20> He wrote his own tools in Python to achieve this (repo: [https://github.com/3b1b/manim](https://github.com/3b1b/manim)).

FAQ: [http://www.3blue1brown.com/about/](http://www.3blue1brown.com/about/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16244908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16244908)</comment>


Startup CEOs: Screw Your Strengths - <AUTHOR> http://greatcompanies.io/startup-ceos-screw-your-strengths/

<comment><USER2> I like the point being made here: building a product is hard. But once you've built it, you have a new mountain to climb: building a business.

In our startup culture, "building the business" is usually delegated to a new CEO, brought in from the outside. I don't think it has to be that way. Managing a business is hard, but it's just a new challenge. Founders don't have to give their business to someone else to manage.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny, I see so many crash courses offered on how to code, hack your way to a startup, etc., yet not a lot directed at actual startup owners/CEO's on exactly this: Now that you have a startup, what now?

<comment><USER4> Well, the only ones qualified to teach such a course are probably too busy to teach it. Although, no better way to learn than to dive in head first.

<comment><USER3> Some things like management principles, accounting, and others could be better learned in a short course instead of learning the hard way. In a struggling startup, a mistake like that could mean success or failure.

<comment><USER4> i've done all of those, and I can tell you first hand ... learning is best by doing ... it's not comfortable .. but you figure it out .... pass the accounting to an accountant ... or theres tons of 101 courses on youtube ... management itself is learnt by doing ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, yes you have to learn some new skills but it's still important to focus on your strengths - just learn to delegate the other things. Steve Jobs is a great example of this in practice, by all accounts not so good at management but he made damn good products!

<comment><AUTHOR> What if delegation is your weakness (as it is for most of us)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If you're a great programmer and you love programming, do you really need to actively try focus on being a better programmer? Not really."

-> Yes, I think you do. B.B. King practiced blues scales every day of his life.</comment>


Ask HN: Favourite macOS apps that have no good Windows alternative? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I hope I'm not being offbeat by self promoting but I currently am working on v2 of Unreplied, a Mac app I released two years ago that uses a status bar menu to show you iMessages/SMS from people you haven't replied to yet (including messages you've already read). The elevator pitch is imagine someone asking you if you want to hang out sometime. Depending on how busy you are at the moment you may not have time to check your calendar or reply with a confident answer, so you push it off till later. Inevitably you forget entirely and end up accidentally ghosting whoever asked you.

Slack and some email clients seem to do a good job of avoiding this by offering "remind me in X..." options, but those are solutions that users actively have to seek. Unreplied works passively in the background so there's no input required to generate the list.

Obviously there's no iMessage on Windows, but the concept behind the app remains unexplored on all platforms IMO. I think it would be very useful if all chat clients implemented some sort of "left on read" filter.</comment>


Boston Buzzing with HQ2 Rumors - <AUTHOR> https://www.necn.com/news/business/Amazon-Eyes-Office-Space-in-Bostons-Seaport-District-468794773.html <comment><USER2> This conflates two things.

1\. Amazon is (already) leasing a big building in Seaport. It's mostly Alexa, ~500-1k staff.

2\. Amazon is shopping cities for a 50k-person second headquarters; one candidate site is the old Suffolk Downs in revere.

For many reasons, i hope (2) does not come to pass.

<comment><USER3> > Amazon is (already) leasing a big building in Seaport. It's mostly Alexa, > ~500-1k staff.

There's a building in Fort Point, but apparently they're looking to lease yet another one. [1]

[1] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/01/10/amazon- seeks...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/01/10/amazon-seeks-big- new-office-space-city/kMktDIWuDCg8ibG4Accc9H/story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If one of the motivators for Boston is proximity to top tier universities, as a data point of one I had zero desire to stay in Boston after school and didn't think to get a job in the area. I doubt I would have stayed for Amazon.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what made you want to leave?

<comment> gm-conspiracy I would guess traffic and cost-of-living.

And the winter.

<comment><USER6> I spent a week in Rhode Island for work and spent one day sightseeing in Boston in the summer ~1998, it felt a lot like Houston in terms of heat and humidity which really surprised me (long time Texan at that point.)

<comment> gm-conspiracy Funny enough, I too spent some time in Boston during the summer of 1997. Reminded me of Florida summer weather.

I went back last year in October. 20 years is a long time, but the traffic now reminds me of Manhattan (apparently the bad drivers are called Mass-holes), with screaming cabbies and bumper cars.

I did have the best clam chowder of my entire life there, so there is that.

<comment><USER7> The traffic isn't as bad as NY except for certain times of the day and once you become a regular it's not difficult. The weather in the winter really only means the snow. The cold isn't terrible, but the snow just mucks everything up. It makes sense that you'd have the best seafood since Massachusetts has the largest fishing port in the entire United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the other positives Boston has in its favor outweigh the downsides, but you'd think Amazon would use this opportunity to pick a city with lower cost of living. Boston is one of only a few places _more_ expensive than Seattle, which raises the question of what is the point of doing this at all.

<comment><USER9> I'm really hoping they'll choose southern NH, where I live. You get most of the advantages of Boston, somewhat lower cost of living, and an opposite commute from what typically happens now. I'm not interested in working for Amazon and would like to leave the area, so it would make it easier to sell my house...

<comment><USER7> Southern New Hampshire realistically wouldn't be a terrible spot. Manchester has phenomenal infrastructure, an airport, and the space to support the growth. I hope that they take your suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who works just outside Boston, I'm really hoping they choose somewhere other than MA. Usually this comes with massive corporate welfare paid for by the taxpayers, higher traffic, and increase property costs. Massachusetts doesn't have the infrastructure in place to support a large influx of workers into a single place. The highways are a mess at the best times of the year, turning into figurative parking lots during peak commuting times, housing costs are astronomical because so many people want to live in the same spots inside the 495 belt or on RT 2 or 190. My city put in a bid which I would dread if we got. I haven't honestly seen many people who _want_ Amazon in their hometown.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have always thought Boston was the most likely choice. The thing most big tech cos want most is more good programmers, and by moving to Boston they can get at the supply upstream of most other big tech cos. Plus it's a nice place. (I lived there for many years.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Wikipedia[1] lists 52 colleges and universities in the boston metro area. The anecdotal number I've heard is 65-ish, which must go out into the suburbs a bit beyond wikipedia's bounds.

Amazon is a polarizing force, for sure. Some locals are concerned that their presence will drive up the cost of living further. Others want the broader economic impacts introduced by more tech jobs.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_metropolitan_Boston)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and this

[http://www.kxl.com/boston-site-amazons-north-american- headqu...](http://www.kxl.com/boston-site-amazons-north-american- headquarters/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Glad it's not coming to my city!

<comment><USER13> You've been posting lots of unsubstantive comments to HN. We ban accounts that do that, so would you please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and not do that? The idea here is as follows: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.</comment></comment>


With no acceptable offers on the table, Atari is going to auction - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/192858/With_no_acceptable_offers_on_the_table_Atari_is_going_to_auction.php?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+(Gamasutra+News) <comment><USER2> Atari hasn't been Atari for a long-ass time now. Most recently it was a French EA-style conglomerate called Infogrames that changed its name to Atari after acquiring the brand for better PR.

The Atari name and assets will end up with some other high roller who'll run it into the ground then sell it, not knowing what to do with it.

Nothing more to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> All the coin-op IP was held by Midway, which then went bankrupt and sold off to Warner. Is that still the case or did the Atari stuff land elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER4> What happens to the assets if nobody buys them? Do they have another auction with a lower minimum bid? Or do the debtors take possession?</comment>


Ask HN: How to learn relational database - <AUTHOR> I'm a application developer using django, since most of the stuff learn happens behind Django'ORM.
So i'm looking to learn relational database, so that i can design better database system.
Can anybody guide what approach should be taken ? <comment><USER2> My favorite introductory book is _Database Systems: The Complete Book_ , by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman, and Jennifer Widom. The first edition is probably good enough and usable used copies are often available for less than $10 online.

In terms of interacting with relational databases directly, I've found SQLite's command line interface [the command sqlite3] very lightweight. A potential bonus of 'sqlite3' is running it against SQLite databases for applications already on your machine...be careful though.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can get started using [https://pgexercises.com/](https://pgexercises.com/) , which focus on Postgres

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One more thing , what could be the important concepts which should be covered ?</comment>


Bitcoin won't last in world of finance, warns Nobel-winning economist - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/bitcoin-wont-last-in-world-of-finance-warns-nobel-winning-economist <comment><USER2> Economists rarely agree, so by definition are rarely correct.

As economics is the study of human behaviour primarily, it is very hard to predict what will and will not happen.

You have to think that any economist that actually knew with any certainty what was going to happen would be rich and sunning on the beach with a cocktail.

<comment><USER3> Historically scientists rarely agree either but you can't say that by definition they are rarely correct. Most economists probably agree on more core concepts than they disagree on.

I have no horse in this race, just thought it's a funny reason to dismiss an entire field.

<comment><USER4> I think you can say they are rarely correct. Scientific Papers that truly advance our understanding are rare indeed. The rest are either failed hypothesis or of little predictive value.

Note that this is not at all a value judgement. Incorrect hypothesis are important steps in the way of learning new things, and papers of little predictive value can in volume lead us to new solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The explanations they give as to why it won't succeed are like 12 years old reading anything about bitcoin for the first time. Duh!!

</comment><comment><USER6> He might be right, but if he said anything different would he be allowed in Davos at the table with the lords of the world?</comment>


Recap of Hacker News NOVA/DC Meetup (2009-05-31) - <AUTHOR>

Quick recap of the first Hacker News Readers NOVA/DC meetup (http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-NOVA-DC):
We had 17 people come out. Not bad for a group that didn't exist before last Wednesday. Started at 8pm, ended after 11pm. The beer flowed like wine, and consequently, so did the conversation. Almost everyone had some sort of side project in progress, at least one person had recently launched, and another is launching in just a few days. Quick poll early in the evening indicated a contingent of Rubyists, Groovyists, Lispers, and Erlangers among us. Probably more, should have taken another poll later on in the evening.
Sincere thanks to everyone for how well the bill was handled. Everyone paid their own share, which made it nice and easy for the group and for the waiter.
Any suggestions for the next meetup?
Some ideas are Iota (http://www.iotaclubandcafe.com/), Continental (http://www.modernpoollounge.com), East Potomac Driving Range (http://www.golfdc.com/sites/courses/layout11.asp?id=691&page=38684), QuarterDeck (http://qdrest.com, crack and eat crabs), or bowling. <comment><USER2> Heavy hacking swords were wielded and no bystanders suffered any severe LARTing. It has been a meeting of utmost awesomeness: gentlemen, you rock!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for putting this together Rusty. I had a good time.

For the next one, I think crabs at Quarter Deck would be great.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey, guys. The meetup was a good time: lots of interesting people and conversations. It was good seeing people.

</comment><comment><USER5> It was great meeting you folks. Really learned a lot and helped get the creativity flowing a bit.

I would suggest something on the Maryland side of DC in the hopes of attracting more people from Baltimore, but I might not be in the area for the next meetup anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out the Science Club in DC. That's where the last Reddit-sponsored Drankkit event was held.

<comment><USER7> haha, that was fun times

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Busboys and Poets (either location) might work nicely: beer, wi-fi, no loud music.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for the recap. I'm not close by any HN meetups right now, so these kind of recaps will definitely interest me.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your personal plans around coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> I have been following the news about how technology companies are restricting travel and encouraging people to work from home, but I'm curious what your personal plans are.<p>If you're comfortable doing so - please post what country you're in. <comment><USER2> I'm in the US. At this time, I haven't felt the need to make any special plans regarding coronavirus.</comment>


Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-buys-german-to-do-list-startup-6wunderkinder-1433177558?mod=yahoo_hs&ref=yfp <comment><USER2> Congrats to the Wunderlist team.

And oh crap, one of my favorite startup quotes was "Nobody got rich making a Todo list App." That is in danger of being falsified :-)

It is interesting to consider Microsoft's putative strategy here which is that the mobile "OS" is still searching for the right mix of capabilities to completely replace laptops.

<comment><USER3> > And oh crap, one of my favorite startup quotes was "Nobody got rich making a > Todo list App." That is in danger of being falsified :-)

Ehh, Yahoo bought Astrid a while ago and closed it. The price wasn't announced, but I imagine they did well. My heart still pangs for the long-dead Astrid app, and I'm just that much less likely to use any Yahoo service because of that murder.

<comment><USER4> You may be interested in "Tasks", an open source replacement for Astrid. I don't believe it does everything Astrid did, but it has worked wonderfully for my needs.

[https://github.com/tasks/tasks](https://github.com/tasks/tasks) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks)

<comment><USER3> Hey, neat! Sadly I'm on iOS these days so I've just gone to using todoist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I don't see mentioned here that might be of interest to some people.

James Duncan Davidson had left SF to work in Berlin for Wunderlist a year or so ago, so is part of the team that was acquired.

For those not familiar with the name, he was quite famous for us working in Java land back in the day. He worked at SUN and created the first versions of Tomcat and Ant.

He was also an O'Reilly author, with books such as Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, Cocoa in a Nutshell (and also wrote the Agile Web Development with Rails book for the the Pragmatic Programmers editions).

He's also quite famous as a photographer (his other job), covering many O'Reilly conferences, Apple events, TED and such. Some very iconic tech related pictures from such events are his.

[EDIT] Another thing I don't see mentioned. This is not just a TODO list app. It's more of like MS buying their own "Slack".

<comment><USER6> I believe Chad Fowler of the Passionate Programmer is the CTO at Wunderlist as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're a user of DuckDuckGo, here's a quick way to get to the full-text of the WSJ article:

!gn "Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder"

(!gn is the Google News !bang)

<comment><USER8> For everyone not using DDG, click trough here: [https://news.google.com/news/search?q=%22Microsoft%20Buys%20...](https://news.google.com/news/search?q=%22Microsoft%20Buys%20German%20To- Do%20List%20Startup%206Wunderkinder%22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The actual price is $100M - 200M.

[https://twitter.com/Amirmizroch/status/605428008611160064](https://twitter.com/Amirmizroch/status/605428008611160064)

</comment><comment><USER10> How do big companies make the initial approach? Do you get a phone call out of the blue from someone at Microsoft saying "We are interesting in acquiring you - how does x million sound?" (I know I've grossly over simplified!).

<comment><USER11> Recently went through this.

They first reach out for some kind of "we're looking to do something in this space and wanted to discuss working with you". Our first conversation was along the lines of "We're not sure whether we're going to build this, partner with someone or buy something. Keen to find out more about what you guys are doing and see if we can work together".

Next meeting it went to "We're clearly not going to build this ourselves, and it doesn't make sense to partner but let's talk about what it would look like if we acquired you. How do you think your tech/team would work inside our company".

Took maybe 6 meetings in total to get to a price though we probably could have forced that sooner.

<comment><USER12> What kind of details do they ask before giving an offer? Anything that might be considered proprietary or were they eager from the go?

<comment><USER11> We ran them through the front end of our product and how it works from top to tail, discussing why we made certain product decisions.

Almost everything they could have seen as a user of our app but a few things that were admin functions.

A bunch of it they could have used to build their own app but we figured that was pretty unlikely.

They asked for a few things we did disclose like: \- team size / locations / education \- revenue (we didn't need to disclose but we did)

They also asked for a few things we didn't disclose like: \- cap table \- how much we had raised \- what our last valuation was.

We kept it on a need to know basis - the above is irrelevant to them pricing the company.

<comment><USER12> Were there any NDA put in place or did you just hope for the best?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The apps that Microsoft has been buying recently are just incredibly top notch. Sunrise, Accompli, and now Wunderlist?!? Crazy good best-in-class products.

<comment><USER14> I have to disagree on best in class. Wunderlist was a pig on desktop, and they killed the desktop app entirely for Windows7. I far prefer todoist.

I also think Tempo is head and shoulders above Sunrise after spending significant time with both. I can't find the value in a calendar app that lacks the ability to dial a conference call number in 2015.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately you'll only be able to use Tempo until June 30th. They've been acquired by Salesforce and are discontinuing Tempo (at least in its current form…)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft backing Cyanogenmod, bringing Cortana to Android, and now acquiring productivity apps...

Looks like they are making a strong play to compete with Siri/Google Now which will be critical to the future of these big tech corps. Once AI gets better, everyone will want a 'smart assistant' helping them organize their day.

That will likely heavily influence which OS customers choose in the future as the data sensors need to sync across platforms to be really effective (desktop->mobile->watch->car etc).

<comment><USER17> As a Windows user with an iPhone I am very happy that they are bringing Cortana to iOS. I like unifying my environment, but I don't want to buy a new device to do that.

<comment><USER18> Given the shitty experience I've been having with OneCloud on OS X, or with Office on Android, I kind of doubt that the experience will be any good.

<comment><USER19> Do you actually use OneCloud on OSX and the mini office on Android?

I find OneCloud to be very smooth: I only have a 128GB SSD drive on my old MacBook Air and the selective sync lets me keep most of my videos, pictures, backups, etc. offline.

I don't use Office on the Android too much, but it seems OK enough.

BTW, I went with Office 365 as a price/cost decision. For $99/year my wife and I both get 1 TB of cloud storage, and if we want them the latest office suite. We both just use the web versions of the Office 365 apps on out MacBook Airs though.

EDIT: a bonus: the web based Office 365 apps are very useful on my Linux laptop - I stopped using Libre Office.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I went through a one mongth trial of Office 365 because the price seemed good and I really wanted to like it.

On OS X the OneDrive client had problems synchronizing my 80 GB archive - refused to synchronize files containing characters not accepted on Windows (like ":"), crashed several times and it was also saturating my network bandwidth. To make matters worse, OneDrive doesn't have basic functionality, like a log of what happened (files added, removed), let alone a 30 days version history. So I have to trust that their shitty client is doing the right thing.

The way I see it - yes, the Family pack is cost effective, but I'll never store 1 TB of my data on OneDrive without having logs, versioning and a client that does not suck for both OS X and Linux. I also think people get to be irrational about pricing - the price of 1 TB on Dropbox or Google Drive is as much as 2 Starbucks coffees.

On Android, Office wasn't available for my Nexus 6 (Android L) until 2 or 3 weeks ago when it was finally released. Gave it a try and it's too bare-bones, plus it had problems displaying documents from work. I expected it to work well as a viewer, but it doesn't.

<comment><USER19> I agree that it is annoying to occasionally have to remove special characters from file names. BTW, I also back up locally so a OneDrive error would be a real nuisance, but no real damage. I mainly like cloud storage for devices with small SSD drives, like my old MacBook Air.

I used to be a very happy Dropbox paying customer but I did not like their hiring of C. Rice to their board of directors.

edit: thanks for the good reply to my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When they integrate it into OneNote, they can rename it OneDerlist. <ba-da- ching>

<comment><USER21> Wundernote for Microsoft Phone 10 for Business

<comment><USER22> Windows Mobile 10*

(Which is completely different than the old Windows Mobile brand, obviously)

<comment><USER23> Windows 10 Mobile

<comment><USER24> Windows 10 mobile

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In case this news makes you feel like it's time to move on, here's a link describing how to delete your Wunderlist account: [https://support.wunderlist.com/customer/portal/articles/1641...](https://support.wunderlist.com/customer/portal/articles/1641120-how- can-i-delete-my-wunderlist-account-)

</comment><comment><USER26> Microsoft also bought Sunrise calendar recently, who a few weeks ago announced compatibility features with Wunderlist.

An interesting play from Microsoft. I wonder if it's one individual within the company who is pushing in this space. I also wonder if they will shutter both companies and integrate, or do what Facebook did with Instagram etc.

<comment><USER27> Microsoft rebranded Acompli, because they already had a strong brand in Outlook, but has left Sunrise alone, presumably because they don't have a strong calendar brand of their own (unless they just plan on making Sunrise into Outlook Calendar). I suspect that Wunderlist will either stay Wunderlist or become Outlook Tasks or somesuch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For the record, 6Wunderkinder (Wunderlist) is one of the the poster boys of (over hyped?) Berlin as startup hub [http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best- tech-startups-in-germ...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-best-tech- startups-in-germany-2015-5#6-6wunderkinder-12).

<comment><USER29> Overhyped as compared to what, _Silicon Valley?_

<comment><USER30> Every startup hub is overhyped compared to Silicon Valley, but a $100-$200 million exit for a todo list app maker certainly makes it slightly less over- hyped.

<comment><USER31> $100-$200 million!?

I'm dumbfounded with this.

How many users did the app have?

Granted it's a more than a TODO list. But it looks like an exorbitant amount of money for it.

<comment><USER28> They have 10 million users, so it's fair price to pay I guess [https://www.wunderlist.com/world-productivity- report/](https://www.wunderlist.com/world-productivity-report/)

<comment><USER32> > They have 10 million users

10 Million active users? Or like me, installed it, abandoned it; like most todo apps.

<comment><USER33> Same here, I'm back to using a text file. I can access it from all my devices with DroidEdit. For todos, any UI is a distraction, but that's just me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There should really have to be a (paywall) warning added to the titles of posts like this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Here's how you can get your data out of Wunderlist, in case you're thinking on migrating:

[http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/03/export-list- from-w...](http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/03/export-list-from- wunderlist-even-if.html)

<comment><USER36> Wanderlust did recently release an API, looks like you can now access lists in a more formal way: [http://developer.wunderlist.com/documentation/endpoints/list](http://developer.wunderlist.com/documentation/endpoints/list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can we please stop posting paywalled content?

[http://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-tipped-to- buy-6wunderkind...](http://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-tipped-to- buy-6wunderkinder-for-to-do-lists-galore-01386160/)

<comment><USER37> A happy medium might be to post a link to the Google search for the title. Clicking on the WSJ link from the result will bypass the paywall. Also I'm not necessarily trying to knock the poster or suggest spamming on the part of WSJ, but he or she has an awful lot of WSJ paywalled posts here [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abetaha](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abetaha)

<comment><USER38> Looks an awful lot like spam to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wunderlist is integral to our companies business processes and it was a fight to get everyone moved onto it, I can only hope Microsoft has a hands off approach to the app and continues to let them create a best in class application.

<comment><USER40> This is sadly the cost of using non open source technology. Once it sells to a larger company, the fate is uncertain and your data is locked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Everytime I run into the WSJ paywall I want to throw things. Yes it is easy to get around but no we shouldn't have to. Because advertising.

Anyway does anyone know approximately how many users this app had? Seems like a pretty rich valuation for a to-do list app.

<comment><USER41> If you're often running in to the WSJ paywall that means their content is often good, and they fund that content through subscriptions. Their competitors, who you're not running in to very often are not funded through subscriptions.

Maybe subscriptions lead to higher quality content?

<comment><USER42> > If you're often running in to the WSJ paywall that means their content is > often good,

Doesn't follow. It does mean its often get linked in places that I read, but that doesn't mean its good.

> Their competitors, who you're not running in to very often

That was never stated and is an unreasonable assumption.

Just because one isn't running into competitors paywalls (because other sources often don't have such a thing) doesn't mean one is not running into the competitors far more often than the WSJ.

<comment><USER41> I'm assuming there is a filtering function occurring at HN which means that high quality sources are being linked to more often than low quality sources. I think that's a reasonable assumption, and is why WSJ is getting linked to a lot here.

It's also pretty reasonable to believe that they make more money from subscriptions than they would from advertising, and that they're more likely to be able to afford to produce high quality articles with more money than with less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> They were bought for <2M while they received 24M in funding? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER44> There must be a typo in the article. Maybe it should be $100-$200 million?

EDIT: I just emailed the author and it was a mistake. I'm still seeing the old numbers on the site though.

<comment><USER45> Yup, this seems to align with earlier speculation - [http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/21/microsoft-is-almost- certai...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/21/microsoft-is-almost-certainly- buying-6wunderkinder-the-company-behind-wunderlist-source-says/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> By far my favorite To-Do List app. Microsoft purchased my favorite Calendar app a few months ago. What will be next?

<comment><USER47> They also bought Acompli and then released Outlook for iOS. They're on a roll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "The idea is to get users hooked on great apps and services made by Microsoft, with the hope those people will eventually make the jump to Windows computers, phones, and tablets."

Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER49> Dang, I really love Wunderlist. Hope MSFT only makes it better! I wish I could drop a list in it more easily. I use it as a shopping list.

</comment><comment><USER50> When I started using Sunrise I saw all these things you could connect to it one of which was Todoist. I really love what Todoist has done for to-do lists. I am less of a fan of Wunderlist because it doesn't have quite the features of Todoist that I'm looking for and fear that they're going to be doing better integration with Wunderlist.

</comment><comment><USER51> While I could understand buying Sunrise calendar for the userbase, this acquisition is surprising in that matter.

<comment><USER52> You got it wrong. This is for the userbase. Sunrise was for the team and functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Honest question : I thought there are many ToDO list startups Why is this still an unsolved problem?

<comment><USER42> Because a 'todo list' isn't a problem, its a piece (but only a piece) of a solution to a variety of problems, which don't all have the same solution (even for any given user that has multiple of the problems that todo lists are a component of a solution for.)

<comment><USER54> Agreed. And it's why, even though it's another play in a crowded space, a friend and I built yet-another-to-do-app. I've tried loads of them, but go back to pen and paper every time.

However, for one subset of the to-do world (regular habits), I think an app can consistently help. I've been using our beta for a couple of months and have stuck with it. (Link in profile if you're interested.)

I think us pen-and-paper types might finally be swayed when AR/VR is stronger and we can interact with our to-do items quickly in a more organic way - moving them around, easily prioritising, associating sketches, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I love Wunderlist especially because it works on my work Linux desktop, home Macbook, iPhone and what not.

I wonder what does this entail for users like me? Is MS going to leave the app as it is or is it going to be integrated into something else?

</comment><comment><USER56> I use Wunderlist on daily basis, hope they will maintain its simplicity.

<comment><USER57> Likewise. I tried a lot of different todo list and organiser apps out over the years and finally Wunderlist was the one that really stuck.

I love it and recommend it frequently. Losing it would be a bummer.

On the flip-side: maybe they'll make a tile for my Microsoft Band now! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I actually really liked their user interface. I wonder if the app will continue to exist or if it's time to migrate...

</comment><comment><USER59> I hope that MS treats these acquisitions seriously.

Sunrise is lagging a bit on the Mac dekstop - it still cannot connect to Exchange - and the mobile first craze is starting to look like desktop becoming a never reached second.

Desktop and mobile integration is where I believe success lies, and hope that Wunderlist (and Sunrise) continue to be universally usable.

</comment><comment><USER60> Can anybody enlighten me on the technical difficulties of writing a todo list manager?

<comment><USER61> Adoption rates. Not everything is a technical problem.

<comment><USER60> More adoption => more sales => more money => more resources. So, frankly, I don't see the problem there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Microsoft is quickly acquiring an impressive suite of apps.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm so happy for the guys at 6Wunderkinder! I have seen them struggle with Wunderkit, which was eventually dropped as a product. Time for payback!

</comment><comment><USER64> I really liked this app. One of my fav. RIP Wunderlist.

</comment><comment><USER65> "Cortana, tell me my wunderlist"

</comment><comment><USER66> It would be nice if this results in the Pro features becoming free.

<comment><USER67> How would it be run as a sustainable business then? Sorry, but I really fail to understand how we can expect quality for free. Free means that it's either run as a hobby (you shouldn't make it part of your workflow as it might disappear one day) or run on ads (lower quality by implication).

Why not support your favourite apps by paying a little so the good folk can continue working on it!

<comment><USER68> Or option 3, be a goliath sized company (eg Microsoft) and run the app as a loss leader to consolidate/establish a position as a market leader in mobile.

<comment><USER69> That's actually the worst option for the consumer long-term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Okay. I'm migrating my Wunderlist lists to plain text now.

</comment><comment><USER71> Congrats wunderkinder. You guys are awesome. gg ms.

</comment><comment><USER60> How much revenue did they generate last year?

</comment><comment><USER72> US based headquarters cannot transfer money from foreign sister companies back to US without paying tax, so they buy foreign companies.

Wunderlist seems like one of many todo list apps: [https://www.wunderlist.com/](https://www.wunderlist.com/)

<comment><USER72> Offtopic: Speaking about Microsoft, I just noticed a "Windows 10" advertisement in my Windows 7 taskbar next to the clock. Windows update silently installs and launches new applications (two executable) and one of them comes with enabled Telemetry. 23MB big ad-program is located in C:\Windows\System32\GWX\\. Check your Windows 7/8 taskbar.

Source: [http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/31/microsoft-starts- prompting...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/31/microsoft-starts-prompting- windows-7-and-windows-8-users-to-reserve-their-free-windows-10-upgrade/)

[https://support.microsoft.com/de-at/kb/3035583/en- us](https://support.microsoft.com/de-at/kb/3035583/en-us)

@downvoters: even if it's offtopic, see at least the source

<comment><USER73> Also offtopic, but everybody really should be brushing twice a day, for a full 2 minutes each time. And flossing.

<comment><USER74> Flossing is actually less important than most people think. It's far more important to thoroughly brush your teeth, to the extent that most of the time that people spend flossing would be better off used for brushing.

Flossing doesn't protect against caries, but can provide some benefits for gum health.

<comment><USER73> as a child, I was told that my teeth were fairly well protected against cavities on the open surfaces by cursory brushing, by virtue of my sealants- but that flossing was equally if not more important since those inter-tooth pockets were the only places where food could hang out, firmly pressed against the enamel.

<comment><USER74> There actually hadn't been much research done on it until relatively recently (and probably still not enough), so your dentist was just following the common knowledge of the time.

Here's a link: [http://www.cochrane.org/CD008829/ORAL_flossing-to-reduce- gum...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD008829/ORAL_flossing-to-reduce-gum-disease- and-tooth-decay#sthash.NDg6RK7U.dpuf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> If you're reading this post, and you work with Microsoft ... contact me.</comment>


Only as happy as the least happy child (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/67B/2/184/539899 <comment><USER2> It seems like it would be hard to control for the obvious feedback loop: Are children less successful when their parents are predisposed to lower moods; or do parents' moods reflect their children's achievements?

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't have much commentary on this as I don't have children, but this video is very relevant.

Jordan Peterson - Why not just be Child-free and Happy? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in4sDT9__0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in4sDT9__0I)

<comment><USER4> I have children. That video gives quite a good perspective on life, using having kids as an example.

But then who is he to judge? If someone want's to bum around all their life, not do or achieve much. Enjoy having lots of rest time. Watch Netflix, etc. Why not?</comment></comment>


Sustainable Python Scripts - <AUTHOR> https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2019-sustainable-python-script <comment><USER2> So basically, if you need to write a quick script, the way to make it sustainable is to not write a quick script by doing extensive documentation/unit testing etcetera? I think that's kind of missing the point of a quick script.</comment>


Blame the Elites for the Trump Phenomenon – IQ2US Debates - <AUTHOR> http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/blame-elites-trump-phenomenon <comment><USER2> The parties don't get it. Most people aren't really R or D. They find a couple hot button issues like the skyrocketing cost of health care and use it to justify their "mandate" for things like:

\- vouchers for schools and medicare

\- killing planned parenthood funding

The Ds are just as bad.</comment>


ISRG (Let's Encrypt) Root X1 Inclusion in NSS - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1289889 <comment><AUTHOR> Let's Encrypt currently uses a cross-signature provided by Identrust that expires in 2021. This inclusion is the first step toward making Let's Encrypt completely autonomous.</comment>


Google AppEngine for Personal Web Presence? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ldodds.com/blog/archives/000330.html <comment><USER2> I pondered whether GAE was the right place for me to build my own personal feed hub. Basically, an inverted approach to FriendFeed-style aggregation in which I build my web lifestream and therefore have creative direction over how the content is packaged, sequenced and related. HTTPS restrictions would be fine, and the lack of SQL wouldn't be too bothersome for my feeble brain.

I'm still pondering. Maybe if/when they support Javascript. I'm salivating over the thought of TrimPath, CouchDB, Prototype and AIR as a stack, haha.</comment>


The Massive Potential of Verizon Mapquest - <AUTHOR> http://mapbrief.com/2015/05/19/the-massive-potential-of-verizon-mapquest/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know I submitted this, but the author is hilarious:

"We all love cool tech. The blocking and tackling of everyday sales relationships? Probably less so. But having the sales infrastructure to go big? Safe to say we can check that box. What made the deal such a target of the Mocking Class was that AOL and Mapquest are so strongly associated with Web 1.0 (Mapquest is almost 50 years old, actually). But you know who doesn't mind so much dealing with recognizable entities that have been around for decades? Other companies that have been around for decades and are not immediately stoked to cut huge checks to three year old companies missing syllables from their names."</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use budgeting software? - <AUTHOR> Besides an excel spreadsheet, do you use any software for calculating your household budget?  I find it hard to trust any cloud solution that is allowed access to my bank account info (e.g., Mint), but it's hard to deny the convenience and reporting capability. <comment><USER3> Built an ad-hoc system using flask, Google Spreadsheets, and Twilio (where I work) that my wife and I have been using for 18 months now -- far longer than any other system has stuck.

\- budget tab: tracks category + allocated budget for the month

\- expenses tab: tracks date, amount, category, description

\- when we spend money, my wife and I text, eg, "13.31 restaurants lunch at chipotle" to a Twilio number. A flask app splits the body of the SMS expecting "X.XX category description", and uses the Google spreadsheets API to add the row to the expenses tab. (Yes, we manually enter every expense, either via SMS or via the spreadsheet. This was a habit we picked up the old YNAB. We could automate this to some extent, but the discipline of having to _do something_ when we spend money has been beneficial).

\- I get a confirmation text. My wife gets a text saying "Greg spent $13 on Chipotle. We have $132 left in the lunch category this month."

\- Texting "report" to the number kicks back a text with each category and the amount remaining this month.

It's an imperfect system. Some small dollar stuff gets missed. But it's super flexible for reporting since its just a spreadsheet. Because I built it, I actually use it. The confirmation texts have instilled a bit of accountability between the two of us and also serve as a nice reminder during the day of what the other person is doing. ("Hey! Thanks for logging your lunch. How was it?")

Been meaning to write a blog post about it for a while. Will do so if there's interest.

<comment><USER4> Cool. Would you say the SMS plays an important part? Or would e.g. a Telegram bot work as well for those of us who do not work at Twilio?

<comment><USER3> Yes, you should be able to recreate the experience on any platform where you can deploy a chatbot (which really overstates the complexity of the logic that's happening here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, YNAB, it rocks: [https://www.youneedabudget.com/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/)

They have an opinionated, cult following that seems a bit weird at first, but if you approach the situation with humility and the real need to budget you'll realize YNAB is really good. You _want_ opinionated software when it comes to something like budgeting. You want a system you buy into and has been proven to work, not a system that lets you do anything how you want.

If you tried YNAB before and didn't jive with it, try it again. The new version they released about 6 months ago was a really good update.

It's $5/mo. The software is simple but works. The mobile app is good. The bank syncing is as good as it can be. Realizing how using a credit card for most payments affects your budgeting process is tricky at first, but that's because it's a tricky thing to account for. YNAB make it pretty easy to make credit card payments mesh with your actual budget.

The founder wrote a decent book: [https://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Budget- Paycheck-Paycheck-ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Budget-Paycheck- Paycheck-ebook/dp/B071Y2XSFN)

Re: cloud solutions accessing your bank account—the benefits outweigh the risks. Living without a budget is very expensive because it's so easy to spend money on things you don't actually care about instead of things you do care about.

\- The benefit of having a budget long-term is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, and getting the things you want out of having money vs. haphazardly blowing money. \- The risks of a budgeting company screwing up with your cloud data is real, but doesn't outweigh the great benefits.

I've also been tracking this company which is building a pretty slick looking desktop app: [https://medium.com/actualbudget](https://medium.com/actualbudget) [http://actualbudget.com/](http://actualbudget.com/) [https://twitter.com/actualbudget](https://twitter.com/actualbudget)

<comment><USER6> This makes me want to retry YNAB. I tried it about 2 years ago and I couldn't get in the habit of pre-allocating everything and I don't think they had account syncing to managing where my money was going was more work than something like Personal Capital or Empower.

I will definitely give it a try now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use a combination of Personal Capital to get a high level overview of income and expenses by category, along with a custom Google Sheet I made that breaks out projected and actual spend by category. I started out using Mint and was largely happy with it, but found the PC interface much cleaner and faster, along with a better mobile app. That, along with my own personal dislike of Intuit as a company, was enough for me to switch to Personal Capital.

Each weekend I'll take a bit of time over coffee and breakfast to review, mostly to keep tabs of how much money is flowing towards certain categories and how I am doing towards my own personal financial goals.

It's a great habit to get into, and once you get the hang of it, its truly eye opening, but I'd caution not to become too obsessive over it. Life happens, some times you will go over in some categories, and thats OK. Learn to roll with the punches.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm the founder of Actual, a budget system that I want to be easy to pick up but also informative: [https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/actual](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/actual)

It's a completely local and free app. Sign up and I'll be sending the beta out in the next couple weeks.

It embraces the envelope-style of budgeting, and does it in a way that makes it easy. I think this style of budget makes it really easy to see what's going on with your money without much work.

In addition to that, reports are important and we'll provide the ability to write any custom reports to tailor the system to your lifestyle. Everybody's life is different so we all have different needs, so it's important to allow flexibility.

Let me know if you're interested, or have any questions!

</comment><comment><USER9> I use EveryDollar; it ticks most of our boxes, but it's not a ledger (it doesn't give me any confidence that I didn't make an error in my allocations). Still, it's good for planning and trcking. They also have a $10/month premium plan (which I use) that automatically pulls in transactions (a la Mint) but I don't get the spammy adverts and they had a much better privacy policy last I checked. Still, it's SaaS...

<comment><USER10> I second EveryDollar. It allows your budget to be flexible month-to-month because spending in different categories will always ebb and flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use Mint to track my habits retroactively. I wouldn't have guessed otherwise that I spent $20k on Amazon alone last year, and $12,000 on Seamless! It really adds up. It also makes adding up business expenses at the end of the year a breeze.

<comment><USER12> I second Mint.

It also allows for CSV export so data can be imported into other apps. Although, I'm not sure if it would work as great if I had to track joint accounts shared with a partner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm using YNAB while manually inputting each transaction, rather than having it linked with my accounts. It might sound like a hassle at first but it's just a reflex now, whenever I buy something I just enter it in there. At the end of each week I'll open up my bank app and compare what is in there against what I have in YNAB and this flow has been fine for me. I had tried a few other apps before but I couldn't stick to any of them, the idea of budgeting upfront and then adjusting as purchases are done, moving money from one category to another, really clicks for me.

It works great and has drastically changed the way I spend money since I've started using it, I'm much more aware of what I can actually spend and less stressed. The reporting features are also great to see how much I spend on average on a given month etc.

Pricing has gotten a bit steep for new members but I still think it's really worth it, it's the most useful service I'm subscribed to. Some of Android app recent UI changes were a bit questionable but I got used to them.

<comment><USER14> I'm trying YNAB as well. Support was superb giving me a longer period for trying it, since its kinda expensive for me. The web version is great - <USER2> Android is meh but ok for saving transactions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> YNAB is pretty great. I allow it sync transactions from my bank accounts, but its budgeting system works fine if you're willing to enter transactions in manually.

It is a refined form of envelope budgeting, and allowed me to go from an engineer that made a lot of money, but spent willy-nilly to an engineer that knows what's up, and with a rising net worth.

I like that it encourages you to look at the money you actually have and allocate it to what it needs to do ("Rent", "Savings for christmas gifts", "Car replacement", "Efund"...), as opposed to forward looking budgets that are just guesses about what you want to spend going forward.

<comment><USER5> +1, I use the syncing but originally YNAB didn't have that feature and you entered things by hand. Either works.

<comment><USER16> I personally think entering transactions by hand is better, because it makes your spending habits more visceral.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We use Ledger CLI[1], and once I got over the learning curve I really liked it. We keep individual files for each card or account and have a set of scripts to tie them all together and give us the output we want. Toss it all in a self-hosted git repo and update every week or so. While I do wish we could make use of ofxclient and ledger-autosync (just isn't gonna happen with some of our accounts), the discipline of going through each line item is really valuable in tracking spending and kinda the State of the Household.

[1] - [https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I use my own. Lacking a better name, Financial App [1] is a single page application installable on smartphone homescreens and tablets, and of course usable on the computer. It allows setting budgets, tagging expenses to keep seperate track of them, monthly digest of expenses, reporting etc. We use it at home with multiple accounts (to also keep track of our private expenses).

The application is built using ASP.NET Core, webpack, Typescript, knockout.

[1]: [https://github.com/Sebazzz/financial- app](https://github.com/Sebazzz/financial-app)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think you can do a lot with a simple spreadsheet. I have a sheet that I copy from month to month, where I record my wages in one sheet, then reference that total in my budget sheet, where I decide what categories to allocate, and I carry over any left over from last month that wasn't used. I have a percentage column, a recurring amount column and a actual amount column. Any one of those three will be a hard coded amount, the others will be calculated, depending on the case. For example, you only want to spend so much for heat/electricity each month, so that is hard coded in the actual amount column, whereas I'd want to carry over leftovers that I didn't spend in my donation budget, so that goes in the recurring amount. Savings then is a calculated amount. It shows a nice pie graph too, to visualize what you're editing.

Then I have a spending sheet where I record the category, amount and description.

Finally I have a spending info sheet that adds up all spending for each category and compares it to the budget throughout the month. That way I can calculate the leftovers, or if I didn't allocate enough that month so I can adjust next month.

It's worked great for the past year for my wife and I

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm just trying this (free and open source): [https://github.com/firefly- iii/firefly-iii](https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii)

I dislike giving all my data to (cloud)services like Ynab, who sell all your data/profile to others...

<comment><USER5> FWIW [https://www.youneedabudget.com/privacy- policy/](https://www.youneedabudget.com/privacy-policy/)

"We do not sell users' data. (And we never have!)"

They make money by charging $5/mo and having a large cult following.

<comment><USER20> It's worth nothing... especially if you know that payment information is worth A LOT of money.

There is no way at all to verify they are not selling your data. Also, there is no law that forbids them to do so.

<comment><USER21> There are most definitely laws that forbid them from stating "we do not sell your data" and selling it anyway.

Also, why would they sell your data? The bank accounts you connect to YNAB already have your data and sell it. Do you also not use banks?

<comment><USER20> I seriously doubt that. Facebook says they don't sell your data, do you believe them also? ( [https://www.fastcompany.com/40554491/zuckerberg-keeps- insist...](https://www.fastcompany.com/40554491/zuckerberg-keeps-insisting- facebook-doesnt-sell-our-data-what-it-does-is-even-worse) )

Where i live (Netherlands, Europe) _banks_ are not allowed to sell our data.

<comment><USER21> Facebook doesn't sell your data. They use it for advertising, but that is done internally.

I also don't use Facebook, and try not to associate myself with their drama

<comment><USER20> > Facebook doesn't sell your data

That's what they _say_ (just as Ynab says.) But that's not what really happens:

"How to Check If Your Facebook Data Was Sold Off": [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/check-facebook-data-sold- off/](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/check-facebook-data-sold-off/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to use Mint. I'm not an impulsive spender so there was minimal benefit. It doesn't require software to figure out most of my disposable income goes towards housing, health insurance, and car expenses.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use YNAB (You Need A Budget). I don't really keep a strict budget. Just a loose idea of how much I want to spend and use i to track my spending more than anything else.

I like the software a lot, but the subscription model really turns me off. I am grandfathered in to the $40/yr plan from last year so I'm going to keep using it.

I don't link any of my bank accounts, because I feel like it defeats the purpose of budgeting. I love manually inputing my transactions. It makes me feel more connected to my finances and makes me more mindful of my spending.

</comment><comment><USER24> The biggest problem that I find with programs like mint is that they aren't real time. Even my bank accounts aren't current. They often lag 24 hours, so when I look it may seem like I have more than what I do ... so I guess (often wrong, or forget something) what I spent the day before and try to mentally assign that amount to different categories (like groceries, Transportation, restaurants, etc).

Does anyone know software that can keep real time accounting of my personal expenses?

<comment><USER5> YNAB gets around this in an interesting way with their "age your money" concept.

When you spend money, you aren't looking at your account to see how much actual money you have. You're looking at your budget to see how much money you previously allocated for a specific purpose.

The idea is that you are spending your "oldest" money, i.e. money that you earned 6 months ago. Any money that came in yesterday is just gravy and you'll budget that later.

In practice, transactions hit YNAB same day or next day for me. If you're wondering if you have money for something, you just pull up the mobile app and check the budget category. Unless you go on a crazy instant buying spree in a single category, there shouldn't be a problem deciding if you have money budgeted for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bought YNAB for a year ($50) -- heard great things but then couldn't get it to work. It massively helps if you can get your bank to sync transactions with your budget but at the time YNAB didn't have a script for my bank (N26) so made the whole endevour somewhat 'manual'.

So anyone thinking of going for that software my recommendation is to check for such a script is available/easy to use/maintain with your bank first -- then proceed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes. I use old school Quicken. I manually enter transactions to categorize them (most are split -- so anything automatic based on retailer doesn't work well) and then I use automatic reconciliation against the banks' online stuff. I've been doing this since 2001 or so and it's been quite useful. YNAB seems interesting, but switching to a new platform would be... complicated.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you want to budget in a spreadsheet, check out TillerHQ.com. It uses Yodlee to automatically import financial transactions into Google Sheets. It's popular with people who want to use spreadsheets to budget and manage their money, but don't want to deal with manual CSV files. Just enough automation. Excel will be out this summer. Optional templates to get started.

</comment><comment><USER28> Quicken, but trying to migrate to beancount. It's hard due to the 20+ years of history/transactions I have in Quicken. If I were starting from scratch, I'd never consider Quicken now. On current versions, if their cloud is down, you can't do jack even if everything else (MY internet, the banks' servers) is up.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sometimes I use mint. My bank (simple) has simple goal saving that I'll use for toys. Otherwise I 'pay myself first' into savings/investment. It's been working so far. I can use mint to identify problem areas, cut those back, and add the difference to an automatic deposit.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was using long time Speendee ([https://www.spendee.com/](https://www.spendee.com/)), but changed to Toshl ([https://toshl.com/](https://toshl.com/)).

I would recommend both. Somehow like the Toshl more.

2c

<comment><USER31> Do you trust these sites to store your banking credentials?

<comment><USER32> You don't need to store them, in my country you can't even do it has been a great tool to maintain an overview of your money I/O. I tried several apps but only stuck with Toshl, I think its great UX made the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I use Personal Capital and really think it's a great piece of software. If you're worried about a cloud solution that has access to your financials, you might as well use a spreadsheet.

I'm pretty sure YNAB (You Need a Budget) does not require cloud storage of personal information.

<comment><USER34> They discontinued YNAB4 so unless you already have a license then you're out of luck. Their new system is SAAS.

<comment><USER5> Their new system is SAAS but still doesn't require that you sync your accounts. You can still enter transactions manually.

I thought the new version was a great update compared to the older version (including the desktop software non-SAAS one).

<comment><USER34> You could read OP two ways. One, that OP is trying to avoid having login credentials for his financial institutions saved in the cloud. Two, that OP is trying to avoid storing a detailed log of their purchase and financial history in the cloud. YNAB4 satisfies both of those concerns (despite what the other comment says, Dropbox is not required, any cloud sync will work, as long as you don't use the mobile app), their new SAAS app only satisfies concern one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I use NeoBudget (virtual envelope web app with a mobile app) - you need to manually import your transactions, but it has been rock solid for years: [https://neobudget.com/](https://neobudget.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Yes I do. I use Wallet by Budget Bakers. budgetbakers.com. I use the manual option on the pro plan(no bank account link or anything). Love that it allows me sets budgets for several categories and the expense reports are great too

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been using YNAB for about 6 or 7 years I think. I really enjoy the software and the ideology behind it. It's helped me quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER38> YNAB is pretty good, i bought a year's license, but I didn't stick with it because it started to chug running in my browser :/

</comment><comment><USER39> Gnucash, but I haven't gotten the hang of it's budget features yet.

Most budgeting is done in a spreadsheet. Cash in --> Cash out, line by line.

<comment><USER40> I found Gnucash to be difficult to use.

<comment><USER41> It has a higher learning curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would feel better with a paid solution.

</comment><comment><USER43> I built my own, using daily since 2010. Finally getting serious about offering it up as a product.

</comment><comment><USER44> Mint for budgeting, Personal Capital for overview of finances and investments.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wave Apps. It's free with some helpful paid tools for businesses.

</comment><comment><USER46> I use Mint to track my spending. I don't budget.

<comment><USER47> Same, except with Personal Capital (I prefer the interface).

I believe the security tradeoff of granting access to my accounts is worth the financial visibility; without it, it would be a lot harder to review my spending, find any unusual transactions and think about future goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> ledger [https://ledger-cli.org](https://ledger-cli.org)

</comment><comment><USER49> YNAB (You Need a Budget) is fantastic

</comment><comment><USER50> ugh, any spreadsheet will do.</comment>


Scientists discover a hangover cure that works - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/474607/scientists-discover-an-unexpected-natural-hangover-cure-that-actually-works/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me a lot of a previous article: "I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss" [http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking- chocolate-hel...](http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate- helps-weight-1707251800) . HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9714985) (205 points, 56 days ago, 60 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not drinking?</comment>


Ask HN: Developers-without-much-budget, how did you make your site look great? - <AUTHOR>

So you're a great developer, you developed an impressive web app.
But you're a one man band, or a small company bootstrapping, without alot of cash to blow on expensive designers. Maybe you've got a few hundred or a few grand to spend on design.
How the heck did you get from something that LOOKS like a programmer designed it, to something that looks sexy and modern?
What's your story of how you did it? Did you somehow find a designer, if yes from where and how much did they cost? Or did you take some other path?
How does a developer without resources get a site/web app to look great? <comment><USER2> Well, some people do both design and development. But you could also just buy a canned theme.</comment>


Funding, and Distributing Software to Activists Against Authoritarian Regimes - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/on-software-for-dissidents <comment><USER2> This article doesn't go far enough. It's an optimistic take written by an academic with a background studying P2P and privacy-preserving communications. I respect Eckersley's view and the dues he's paid to have that view, but I strongly disagree.

The economics of circumvention tools do not work.

One of the smallest regimes online activists target (the Islamic Republic of Iran) spends many, many tens of millions of dollars a year to fund militant groups in other countries. A safe estimate of the amount of money they would be capable of spending "without blinking" to defeat a newly-popular circumvention tool is 7 figures.

To put that rough figure in perspective, 7 figures may be more than any company has spent to assess the security of any release of any piece of software or hardware ever. Those assessments _always_ find terrible things. So you have to start one of these projects assuming the responsibility for withstanding a 7 figure analytical assault by your adversary.

I think --- but can't support the thought with evidence --- that many advocates of circumvention tools are laboring under the idea that their adversaries aren't savvy enough to defeat these tools. For instance, ask anti- censorship advocates about the "great firewalls" or DPI systems; or don't, because they're bound to snicker about them to you anyways. We're talking about people dumb enough to think they can censor the Internet! How smart can they be?

Unfortunately, a million dollars demonstrably buys a _lot_ of smart. Look to any major credit card exfiltration ring or botnet operator or pay-per-install site for evidence that there are many hundreds of people who can find vulnerabilities in software and are willing to do so for the highest bidder.

Into this environment, inject the fact that a vulnerability in circumvention software "turns" the tool, allowing it to be used as a dragnet to conduct sweeping arrests (or simply to create files on people for later use). We're talking about regimes that hang people from construction cranes for writing blog posts.

This isn't a technology problem. If you don't speak Farsi, you probably shouldn't be thinking about what you can do from your office chair in North America to help overthrow goverments.</comment>


50_Years_Space_Exploration1.jpg - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/50_Years_Space_Exploration1.jpg <comment><USER2> This is just amazing. It's an elegant visualisation, something I hadn't seen before.</comment>