What Japanese toilets taught me about the auto industry - <AUTHOR> http://thehopkinsonreport.com/2008/12/18/episode-35-what-japanese-toilets-taught-me-about-the-auto-industry/

<comment><USER2> The whole auto-industry thing is a huge stretch. People here buy simple toilets, so if his analogy fit, that would mean Detroit would be doing well. Err...

So, I am choosing to ignore that and focus on the neat toilets.

I grew up in a cold climate and the bathroom was a nice 55 degrees on a warm day... what a great way to start the morning! So how come we never got heated toilet seats, rugs, and towel racks? I've never seen them advertised so probably nobody thought of it.

And the other reason is price. A replacement plunger/valve unit is $5.45 for my toilet. How much do those expensive toilets cost to repair?

Finally, the bidet sounds tempting. Do people actually like those things?

<comment><USER3> I spent a week in Tokyo in 2005 and "must buy Japanese toilet in my eventual house" was a key takeaway message.

It does take a few days to turn your opinion around on the warm seat issue. On a legacy toilet, a warm toilet seat feels gross because you can't help but think about how it got warm and how recently that must have been. The reptilian part of my brain took a few days to get over that; afterwards it was the second-best feature ever.

The best? Those sprays. At the risk of taking it to the gutter, which I'll try to avoid: think about a time when you might have been ill or otherwise had intestinal troubles. You may have, as I have, just stepped right off the john and into the shower to tidy up rather than deforest all of Washington state for TP. With the spray, your normal hygeine regimen steps up to "almost freshly showered" and it requires almost no paper as you're simply drying with the paper. (I never had the patience to wait for the heated fans to dry my bottom, as they work about as quickly as the old-style ones in US bathrooms, and there too I'd have to wipe my hand/bottom on my pants.)

The heated seat is good, but the spray is the business!

<comment><USER4> The first toilet I had in Japan was just a plain toilet but one thing about it was that it had a little wash basin over the tank where you could wash your hands as the tank was re-filling. Logically I could see it as being efficient and environmentally friendly but I just never could get over the idea of using toilet water to wash my hands so I never used it (i did wash my hands, just not with the toilet water).

Another takeaway - the bath that fills itself up at the exact temperature you specify and calls out to you when it is ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you driven a "Japanese" vehicle? On my parents Honda minivan, the controls are absolutely horrible. The User Interface is a disgrace. They didn't read their Design of Everyday Things (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman>).

It is a cluttered, clunky mess.

As far as toilets go. I just installed an Eljer (<http://www.eljer.com/>) this summer. While it doesn't heat your butt, it does NOT clog. It was a consumer's report pick and for good reason. It's simple, it's quiet and it works every time. And the UI is impeccable.

So before we go off half-cocked about the Japanese superiority of products, let's examine the facts. Complicated doesn't mean better.

<comment><USER6> I don't know what the dash of the particular vehicle in question looks like, but every manufacturer has a "design language" that drives their choices in external and internal appearance. Lately it seems that Honda/Acura have been embracing a very modern, technical, feature-dense design. In contrast, early/mid 2000s Toyotas favored simplicity and parts sharing, with little regard for the fact the trunk release button is a different shape, color, and texture than the radio/heat controls on the same console surface.

The domestics have really worked to bring their controls up to par in the 90s. The Honda design language is moving forward, as well, but they're optimizing for the Japanese preference for many neat features executed well, as opposed to minimalism and key features implemented flawlessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, all of my friends who have lived long enough in japan and particularly had such a toiled in their rented appartment (rather rare usually the owners don't spend money on this when they just want to rent you the appartment), decided that they'd buy some of those toilets for themselves eventually... It's a thing to try... Heck even my parents who came to visit now want a japaneses toilet....</comment>


Ask HN: What's the three most important decisions you ever made? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 1\. Having cats instead of kids 2\. Going for the startup and equity promise 3\. Burying my law practice to return to the more pleasant world of embedded RF product dev

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Deciding to follow Jesus Christ.

2\. Deciding who to marry.

I'm not sure there really is a third. Nothing comes close to those two.</comment>


Ask HN: How long to wait between SEO tweaks? - <AUTHOR>

I've been trying a bunch of things on a side project of mine (NotaryCRM.com) to have it rank higher for specific terms -- I've basically followed all the tactical advice that others have given about keyword placement, title tags, etc.<p>I know this is something that takes time, but how long do you guys usually wait between "tweaks" to decide if something worked or not? <comment><USER2> Generally for me I wait at least one "turn" of the PageRank and possibly two. Closely monitor when Google does a PageRank update and check your PR then to see if what you wanted occurred.

<comment><USER3> Google recalculates most things that matter in close to real time these days. Toolbar PageRank is not something which matters. Updating toolbar PageRank on a once-in-several-months schedule is largely for historical reasons, does nothing for your website, and is kept around virtually entirely to placate people who know just enough about SEO to hurt themselves.

<comment><USER4> Toolbar PageRank updates are done on a rolling basis too now, they stopped doing massive updates every few months some time ago.

Patrick is right, PageRank is basically a completely worthless indicator. Monitoring your position in the SERPS for lots of keywords(including long tails) is the best way to see if SEO is paying off quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any recommended tools for monitoring keyword positions?

<comment><USER4> There was a startup posted on HN recently that did this, I can't recall the name.

Honestly, it's super easy to roll your own and run it yourself. That way you're not giving up (potentially very valuable) keywords to anyone in the cloud.

Insider Tip: If you're only interested in the top 10 results, use the Ajax API to get around query limits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> if anyone is waiting for the visible toolbar PageRank to increase or decrease, i seriously doubt their high level knowledge of SEO. Toolbar PageRank is simply a historical indicator. Many times it is weeks, if not months old. And if you do any kind of research, you'll see that PageRank does NOT equal rankings. It can help as a strength indicator of your site, but correlation does NOT equal causation.</comment>


Finding Great Developers (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/06/finding-great-developers-2/ <comment><USER2> 11 years ago...I'd generally agree with Joel

I rarely do now</comment>


Show HN: Visualization of Longevity and Mortality - <AUTHOR> https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap <comment><AUTHOR> Click on the various plots to filter the dataset.

Made with dc.js, an awesome library that combines D3 and crossfilter for making interactive displays of highly-dimensional datasets. Data from the CDC Wonder database.

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks good. Please email email@example.com so we can send you a repost invite, if you like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dang! Id love that.</comment></comment>


Dupuyer Montana wool shop finds success in cyberspace - <AUTHOR> http://www.theindependentobserver.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1215&Itemid=2

<comment><AUTHOR> The site url is <http://beaverslide.com/></comment>


A woman who doesn't feel pain - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-47719718 <comment><USER2> Duplicate post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19512668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19512668)</comment>


Why getting acquired sucks by Steve Gedikian of Nullsoft - <AUTHOR> http://gedikian.com/2004/10/i-havent-forgotten-and-we-will-never.html <comment><USER2> Why is acquisition integration such a hard problem? How come no big company has figured out how to buy a startup and not drive it into the ground?

</comment><comment><USER3> For the founders getting acquired is a jackpot. For workaday drones getting acquired means update your resume because you'll be out in a year.</comment>


Winner of the Loebner Prize 2008. Just push the red button. - <AUTHOR> http://www.elbot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> the bot is just awesome, just try spending some time chatting</comment>


Ask HN: Some Job-Seeking advice - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR: How can I get a job at a Ruby/Node/Python/etc shop if I haven't worked in one already?
Hello HN,
I see all thee job postings for these really interesting companies that I'd love to work for. I even have some domain experience regarding their products, but I have only had one job before and that was a Java shop. So I have no professional experience in the stacks being used in most of these companies. I consider myself a fairly good programmer and I know I can pick up technologies fast enough. So do you think I am still eligible for these jobs? Advice on how I should approach these opportunities?
Full disclosure: I am nearly 23, have over an year of professional experience working on Enterprise level software for insurance companies in the middle east. <comment><USER2> Focus on conveying your strengths as an engineer and less on the languages you have hands-on experience with. I've always hired developers based upon their strengths as a problem solver - not necessarily their experience with a specific technology.

Passion for the product goes a long way - make sure you convey it in cover letters and interviews. Put together some blog posts discussing enhancements you'd recommend to their products and see if you can attract their attention using social media. You'd be surprised how effective that is :)

</comment><comment><USER3> The typical advice is to go and build your Github repo to show your potential employers. If you are really good, you won't have issues landing a job.

Good luck!</comment>


Google Trends suggests Covid-19 already peaked between March 15-21 - <AUTHOR> https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=cough,fever <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying it necessarily proves it, but I'd like to hear people's takes on this, and how much panic searching might have had an impact.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting, looking back further it seems searches for these symptoms are associated with flu seasonality.

<comment><USER3> I came to that conclusion. I'm trying different searches that might be more unique to covid-19, like labored breathing. I'm trying to think of other proxies, maybe things like "coronavirus home remedy", etc.</comment></comment>


Chromebooks outsell Macs for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/23/chromebook-mac-google-pc-sales <comment><USER2> Good on them. In my observation, Macs have two markets:

1) Developers and power-users (graphic designers, video editors, etc.) who need a high-performance machine.

2) People who are self-professed "not very good with computers" and don't do much other than email, browse the web, and occasionally process word documents.

The latter have traditionally gone to Macs because they're considered easier to use and have a nicer form factor than most Windows laptops. Unfortunately, they pay a pretty penny for it. I remember my undergrad university advertising their "great" discount on a Macbook for incoming students, and it was still north of $1500.

Chromebooks are great for that group, and they cost a fraction of the price of a Mac. They can cover the needs of your average student/senior citizen without breaking the bank. And they won't last as long, but even if you get four years out of a $300 Chromebook, I'd say it served its purpose. Migrating from one Chromebook to the next is pretty seamless, having done it myself.

<comment><USER3> I think this is very apt judgement of Mac consumers. Unfortunately, with their delayed release of new chips in their laptops and lagging software support (why doesn't mac formally support a package manager like Darwin when a large part of their audience use macs for development), their focus seems to be on the non-professional market. And chrome does seem to be a much better OS for them since there is nothing to install or maintain.

<comment><USER4> Without reading too much into it, I think they just recognise (like everyone else) that mobile devices are far more pervasive and profitable in 2016.

It's also way easier to sell someone a new smartphone or tablet with gimmicky bullshit features (notice how all these shitty laptop-tablet devices are in vogue?) than new computers, at least at the rate hardware is advancing past mainstream software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When non-tech friends need a new computer I always try to talk them into getting either a Chromebook or an iPad. Easy to use and fairly secure. I use each myself a lot.

I don't know what is up with Apple as far as their laptops go. They make money from laptops, so I doubt they consciously are transitioning to an iPhone + iPad company. Although both of my MacBook Airs are very old (and currently running Ubuntu), in the last 5 years I have had three customers loan me nicely tricked out new MacBook Pros while I did work for them, and I am unimpressed.

Apple, I am going to help you out here: build a 13" MacBook Air with a 1080p screen, and make it a little thicker for awesome battery life, and sell it for $1000. You are welcome.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just like with Android, when you flood the market with bargain basement devices (they're showing up at Walmart for $179) this kind of stuff happens.

Initial sales are one thing, though. Retention is another. Most everyone I know that has purchased a Chromebook has hated it for a variety of reasons. The one that loves it is a friend that is firmly wrapped up in the Googlesphere.

I almost think it's scary how well Google is doing in the education market. They've done a frighteningly good job at getting younger kids to equate "the internet" with Google products. Kids don't know about email - they know Gmail. They know YouTube. They know a little about Google Docs and Google Drive, since that's what their schools are using. And more so, they know that they need a Google account to get into some apps. Like Pokemon Go. (although you can make a trainer club account, kids just want to click and have it work.)

The next few years should be interesting.

<comment><USER5> I didn't know that retention for Chromebooks was poor. Surprising. I suppose that it depends strongly for what Chromebooks are used for. As a developer, I work largely on a large memory, multi-core remote server so if I like the SSH shell support, then I am happy. I really like my 1080p screen Chromebook, and my iPad Pro - so much so that I don't need to reach for a Linux laptop very often.

I agree with you about Google's grip on the education market. I would like to see kids using Raspberry Pis, learning to code, doing electronics experiments, etc.

<comment><USER6> At least among the group I know, it's mostly the one guy that's a huge Google product fan that loves his Chromebook. The rest of them have felt that the novelty has worn off. They're great if you're wrapped up in Google-everything.

The others have also realized that they can pick up a fairly recent refurb MacBook Air for just a little bit more than they'd find a decent PC laptop for.

I still have an old 13" 2011 macbook pro that feels almost like a new machine now that I threw an SSD in the thing. add Xcode and maybe macports I have all of the command line love that I can shake a stick at. I'm still a hobby sysadmin and have always been happy with Terminal in OS X. Add Transmit for when I'm lazy and need to move files, and I'm happy too. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised this wasn't always the case. Good Chromebooks can be had for $200. They should be everywhere by now. I can't imagine very good margins for anyone in that price range.

Meanwhile macs are expensive and currently stale, however they make Apple a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not surprising since both Macbook Pro and Air lines have gone >15 months without a hardware upgrade.

The current mac owners have no real reason to buy newer versions.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the Ford Fiesta is also outselling the 911.

<comment><USER9> The 911 gets you pretty good performance per dollar, unlike a mac.

<comment><USER4> Try to put a price on UX.

macOS is the choice * nix desktop operating system as far as I'm concerned. All the * nix utilities, POSIX compliance, all of the proprietary software, none of the virtualization bullshit.

I'm a hackintosh guy so I can't say I 100% disagree, but there's also something to be said for build quality and look-and-feel(TM).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Basic laptops that cost as little as $150 outsell $1700 laptop" was less sexy a headline I guess.

Nothing to see here folks.

<comment><USER11> > Basic laptops

Hey now, I went through two years of college on an Acer C720 that I ripped ChromeOS off of and ran Arch on. It was a great fucking laptop; even after putting a 250 gig SSD int it, the little thing flew far higher and faster than anything else in its price bracket (all told, around 300 bucks). And the battery life was honestly obscene, I managed to get 10 hours of a bus ride into a combination of reading papers for school, playing nethack, and doing homework before it finally crapped out on me.

<comment><USER10> Not saying it's a bad thing - cheap computers are great.

It's just a silly comparison: different market segments

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most Chromebooks don't cost the same price as macs.</comment>


Design: the key to writing and advising a one-draft thesis (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/john-carlis/one-draft.pdf <comment><USER2> This really strikes me as the sort of advice where one may say: It worked for me, and if it doesn't work for you it's your fault.

Very broadly speaking, there are two kinds of writers: those who just start writing and go where the writing takes you, and those who develop an outline first. In the case of the first set, it is vital to do a heavy editing pass or re-write iteration.

I don't think anyone tackles a thesis without some kind of outline, but I also doubt the universality of this advice. Some people need to explore their ideas before structuring them.

All that being said, this is full of good advice, such as:

"When you write for them (the audience), you put forth effort to make your product good: neat, complete, proffed (sic), unified, cogent, etc. That is, you craft and polish a well designed product for them to read. However, if you [yourself] are the audience such effort is a waste."

<comment><USER3> Is it a waste? I find my confidence and satisfaction levels in my understanding increase after I craft and polish a well-designed product for reading. It confirms that my logic isn't garbage.

<comment><USER4> I kind of see good writing as a form of artisan-ry. Sure, any old chair will do, but an artisan-crafted chair can be truly comfortable instead of just helping you not-stand.

The purpose of writing is to communicate. If "communicating your idea" is _all_ you wanted to do, you could just release an outline or slide deck. Good writing makes your communication more effective, while also being more enjoyable (read: ergonomic, tailor-made, whatever your goal is) for the reader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm writing a master thesis in the humanities right now after having worked many years as a software engineer.

After some false starts, I have come up with a system of designing my thesis very closely to what the author is describing here. I call sketching "free writing," and while I often design down to the topic sentence, I don't do this for every single paragraph. But other than that my method is uncannily similar to what is described here.

I also tend to think of paragraphs as "functions." What are the parameters? I.e, what does the reader need to know for this paragraph to make sense, and how do I trigger those concepts. And secondly, what is the output? I.e., what is the _one_ thing I want the reader to take from this paragraph? (...well some of my paragraphs return tuples, but that's not ideal)</comment>


Cryptocurrencies: They Will All Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.kowabit.de/cryptos-they-will-all-die/ <comment><USER2> Nothing new here, same complaints as in 2011. I know people think there is a time limit for cryptocurrency to establish itself, but there is literally nothing else happening in finance.

<comment><USER3> Actually there's a lot happening in finance:

* Massive corporate debts

* Stock markets bubble fed by QE1-QE3 and now the "no-QE"

* Debt orgy circulated between pension funds, crap stocks, central banks, rating agencies, banks and governments

* Yet another housing market bubble

* and the list goes on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More of the same arguments that have been going around for 10 years. Meanwhile adoption and price continues to increase over time.

[https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/](https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin- obituaries/)

<comment><USER5> > adoption [...] continues to increase over time.

Is it? Outside of the crypto bubble I still don't see a reason to hold cryptocurrency, and in fact, even as a tech guy I don't hold any.

I still can't use it anywhere, especially not in the physical world. The best I can do is sell it for fiat (with a hefty commission) using some of those Bitcoin ATMs and most of them have complicated ID verification procedures (so you need to carry a form of ID and it isn't as fast as a normal ATM) and then use _that_ fiat to buy my morning coffee or breakfast. I could just use my normal payment card directly and bypass the whole process.

The community is plagued by fragmentation about minor technicalities (Bitcoin Cash being the "one true Bitcoin" and then Bitcoin Cash _itself_ splitting into yet another variant called Bitcoin SV (Satoshi Vision) that _again_ claims to be the One True Bitcoin) instead of solving the main blockers behind cryptocurrency adoption which is the user experience for the masses (the common arguments in favour of crypto like decentralisation, trust-less-ness, etc aren't actually compelling for the majority of people, so it has to be _better_ than their day to day bank account for them to use it, and from a UX perspective it's definitely not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > An alternative would be the creation of a stable crypto-currency, with which > the basic needs of the people can be paid. Worldwide.

First, the author has not studied the field enough to make these bold claims. Stable coins do exist, there are many of them, some of them are clearly regulated in some jurisdictions (e.g. USDC) and many central banks are working on "digital money" that is not purely a cryptocurrency. Stable coins are not either since they are somehow centralized.

Returning to the general topic, I think they worst case is not that they will all die but they will be marginal and successful for some niches. In the same way BitTorrent is a successful protocol, but not as convenient as Netflix and other players.

<comment><USER7> There's also Dai on Ethereum, which is largely decentralized. Instead of being backed by off-chain collateral, it's backed by ETH and other tokens in a derivatives contract, and uses the median of a bunch of price feeds. Basically, you get stability by selling volatility to speculators.

The author also ignores Ethereum's scaling. ZK rollups on today's Ethereum can get it to several thousand transactions per second without usability compromises or centralization, and if the ETH2 plans work out then that'll be multiplied by the number of shards in a year or two.

<comment><USER6> Dai is centralized in the sense that it relies on oracles to work.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I mentioned the price feeds. That's why I called it "largely decentralized" rather than decentralized full stop. But the price feeds aren't run by any one organization, but by about a dozen different ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some readers seem not to have understood the article.

The author thinks the technology is good. So do I.

The author wants to use it to pay for his coffee, his donut (if that exists in Germany) or his car. Or to fill up his car.

Unfortunately this is not possible because the Crypto Community is a subculture.

And I agree 100% on that.

Everyone wants to get rich on crypto currency. So gamble. But no instance wants to give it universal validity and distribution.

That's too bad, actually.

The last sentence of the article would have been a nice utopia.

</comment><comment><USER9> Title should have been : in the next years to come crypto will either take the place or burst. I would be has pessimistic as the author, but if China forbid crypto selling and try to create its own, also if Benoît Cœuré want ECB to create a crypto, for me it is a good smoke for: there is something here to deal with ...

For the last point, telling that bitcoin should avoided because it can't handle more than 5 tr/s is not understanding that blockchain is all about create A TRUSTED MEDIUM TO EXCHANGE. Dev will always prefer uncorruption of data over speed when their choose a database that should scale, it is the same for money...

<comment><USER10> We already have trust. We already have good ways to prevent corruption.

Blockchain only adds trust in a situation where the government has failed, and when that happens, you can find your secret keys extracted by the well-known and currently unpatchable wetware exploit known as "rubber hose".

Given all that as a precondition, the limited transaction rate is a meaningful limitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They've died many times now :)

[https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/](https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin- obituaries/)

<comment><USER12> I dont know why that made me laugh

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We're one massive financial disaster from crypto currencies being the the main currency.

</comment><comment><USER14> Everyone has regular currency wallet, the super majority of people don't have a crypto wallet. Until there is an incentive for the super majority to learn what crypto is and start using it, it's doomed to being a niche.

</comment><comment><USER15> One observation I will make about cryptocurrencies is that it is a field that does have a lot of technical excellence.

Binance is a _dramatically_ better platform than Questrade, for instance. It just blows my mind how superior the former is than the latter, despite the former dealing in imaginary money.

Tried my hand at cryptocurrency trading for a bit -- had $300 USD worth of free stellar coins that I got for filling out a form years ago and had completely forgotten about until recently. So zero of my own dollars, might as well have some fun.

Did deep analysis, trading strategies, used a DNN to analyze every possible trading input.

But it's all bullshit. The crypto trading market has zero correlation with any logic or rational behavior. To the point that the bizarre fluctuations seem like nothing more than manipulation.

Lost those stellar freebies. Ah well.</comment>


Show HN: We've built a procedural advertising banner generation platform - <AUTHOR> https://abyssale.com/ <comment><USER2> What do you mean by procedural? What are the advantages of procedural generation in this context?

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of editing templates with your content like most of the editing tools available out there, we have built an algorithm that generates truly unique banners for your brand.

The main advantages are: speed, you don't need to fill templates. Uniqueness, As it's not based on a static template, banners won't look the same.No design skills required as opposed to banner maker platform like Canva.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is the generation instant? Behind the scene to generate its banners? I'm curious

<comment><AUTHOR> It takes between 400 to 500ms to generate a banner</comment></comment>


A powerful code search engine with a sleek web user interface - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/boyter/searchcode-server <comment><USER2> Sleak? Pronounced like leak, or like steak? If you want to be taken seriously, learn to spell.</comment>


Gg – Git Shortcuts, Colored Outputs, and More - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/qw3rtman/gg

<comment><USER2> Using node to wrap a few shell aliases seems preverse to me.

EDIT: I partially retract my previous judgement, the prettified and colorized output does look nice.

<comment><USER3> Why exactly? How would this differ from using python?

<comment><USER2> It differs from python in that node is being used in this project, not python.

If the project used python it would be equally perverse.

As for why? Much of the functionality of this project is aliasing git commands to shorter names, which could be done easily as a git alias, or even a plain old shell alias or function.

Instead, node is invoked, which then uses the child_process module to... shell out to git. It's a pretty convoluted way of doing either `alias ggs='git status` or `git config --global alias.s status` .

Using node, or any other scripting language to transform `foo s` into `git status` seems a bit heavy to me, but then I'm not the target audience for this tool, so there is that.

Having said all that, gg does actually provide a bit more than simple aliases, it seems to do a decent job of prettifying the output from git commands and improving the user experience. I don't wish to discourage the author of this tool. I personally wouldn't use it, but they should feel proud of what they've made and continue hacking and making things.

<comment><USER4> > Having said all that, gg does actually provide a bit more than simple > aliases, it seems to do a decent job of prettifying the output from git > commands and improving the user experience.

I wish you had included this in your initial comment, which otherwise seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a misinterpretation of the project's scope.

Personally, I would like to see it include significantly more robust functionality than aliases and prettified output in order to offset the cost of loading up the node runtime. There isn't much to be improved upon with the typical init/clone, pull, commit-all, push loop. Beyond those typical tasks, there's a lot of room for improvement, and that's where something like gg could excel. I would love to see something that helps with merge conflicts, rebasing, history modification, partial/interactive staging, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such negativity here. I wonder why it still surprises me.

@qw3rtman: This is a great idea for a project. Making Git's UI more accessible and attractive is a worthy goal. Keep at it, I'm sure many people will use this.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see anything here that you can't do with git alias, what am I missing?

<comment><USER7> well, if you've always wanted to lose the ability to work with branches you're in luck

<comment><USER8> You can easily bash add autocompletion to bash aliases, if you meant that.

For instance, this is my git dotfile doing that to display branches for a cherry-pick alias:

[https://github.com/jakub-g/dotfiles/blob/master/git.profile#...](https://github.com/jakub-g/dotfiles/blob/master/git.profile#L262-263)

(_gitbranches() is defined at the beginning)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anything, this looks very pretty.

I'm concerned with the lack of feedback about _which_ changes are staged + commited. It should be considered best practice to review what you are committing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, thanks for the feedback. That sounds like a great idea, although it may be painful to implement.

I'll definitely add this to the TODO. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks nice although personally I'm a happy user of scm_breeze[0]. My favourite is the shortcuts which allow you to interactively enter a commit message in the shell without needing to open an editor.

[0] [https://github.com/ndbroadbent/scm_breeze](https://github.com/ndbroadbent/scm_breeze)

</comment><comment><USER11> I felt very jumpy looking at the output of `gg s` -- what's staged? What are the changes? What am i going to commit? Maybe it's for people who routinely do `git commit -am $MSG` but sometimes it's best to be a little more nuanced. But i'm a complainy geezer who likes magit.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think one of the problems with git command-line from an ease of use perspective, is that it emulates the underlying structure.

Therefore until one acquires an understanding of that, even simple things (that have easy plain english expressions) can be rather obscure.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's important to know the basics of git from the command line but git's output can be so rich that it's pretty futile to try and capture this from the command line.

Even if you ssh a lot, the odds of having these extra layers installed are pretty low so you might as well get as comfortable as you can with the basic commands.

But for local usage, do yourself a favor and install a graphical client. Color terminals will never give you as much information as a graphical tool will.

</comment><comment><USER14> What does this do that can't be done with git aliases?

<comment><USER15> I suppose it takes the work of writing them away from you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use oh-my-zsh ([http://ohmyz.sh/](http://ohmyz.sh/)) and the git plugin ([https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh/wiki/Plugin:git](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh/wiki/Plugin:git))

<comment><USER17> OMZ is a nice tool for new zsh users to get a sense of the shell's capabilities, but it also comes with a lot of excess that doesn't really seem fit for regular use. The idea of a plugin system is great for desktop environments, browsers, and even editors, but it seems strange to me to use one for your shell.

Personally, I prefer a more minimal shell setup, so I decided to develop my own customization from the ground up based on the ZSH User Guide ([http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide.html](http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide.html)) rather than installing a large chunk of additional code and plugins that I'm unlikely to be able to carefully evaluate, in addition to memorizing others' mnemonics.

For those who prefer to evaluate something just from the end-user perspective and don't really care about how it works as long as it does work, I could understand the appeal of OMZ because it offers a lot and asks little in return.

Here are some other discussions from reddit about OMZ along this same general theme, which I would encourage prospective OMZ users to read as well:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/2qdjky/using_zsh_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/2qdjky/using_zsh_ohmyzsh/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/pvbfp/zsh_a_bas...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/pvbfp/zsh_a_bash_alternative_thats_easily_customizable/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2pxv1w/ive_always_use...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2pxv1w/ive_always_used_bash._is_there_a_good_reason_to_explore_other_shells/cn10h0y?context=3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Git alias favorites of ours: [https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_git_gitconfig/blob/master/g...](https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_git_gitconfig/blob/master/gitconfig.d/alias.txt)

Suggestions and pull requests welcome!

</comment><comment><USER19> It would be nice to have something that makes the hard-to-remember stuff in git more accessible. @qw3rtman, how often do you plan to work on this? I wouldn't use it yet, but I might if it were more built out (and had support for branches).

<comment><AUTHOR> I am currently working on support for branches, which I hope to release in the near future.

Thanks for the feedback! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did you consider building on top of Hub , [https://github.com/github/hub/](https://github.com/github/hub/) ?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm glad these make your life easier, but I'm not sure why anyone else who already knows how to use git and can make their own aliases would bother learning yours.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        ⇒ npm  ~@cluster-linux-xeon
        zsh: command not found: npm

Portability?

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do node people feel like they have to re-invent everything UNIX?

</comment><comment><USER24> It can be improved but not bad.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems like an excellent idea, being able to type

gg c message

rather than:

git add -A

git commit -m "message"

when you're doing that 50 times a day, is particularly nice.

<comment><USER26> git add -A && git commit -m "message" is equivalent to git commit -a -m "message"

<comment><USER27> which reduces to `git commit -am "message"`

with alias, i have `gc -am "message"`

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yet another testimonial that something is wrong with Git UX :)

<comment><USER29> > Yet another testimonial that something is wrong with Git UX :)

I'm not going to debate whether git's UX is good or bad, but I don't feel like this is much of a testimonial to that. Bearing in mind that git and bash's aliasing capabilities implement the short-aliasing side of this project, (as just about every other comment in this post mentions), such that "git" can be aliased to "g" and "status" to "s", most of his examples seem to either output needless output ("Fetched!"), or output less than the original command (gg status), or are otherwise quite similar. An alias for clone seems like an odd example — the original command is 4 keystrokes longer; what's gg add here?

It might be good to show in the README how each example is materially better than git's default output, because I'm just not seeing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey look: It's GPL3. Thanks dude.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good place to ask this -- Whose gitconfigs do you look at for stealing ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> The only output I didn't fully design on my own was the log command (`gg l`). I used information found on this Gist ([https://gist.github.com/textarcana/1306223](https://gist.github.com/textarcana/1306223)) to retrieve the log information in JSON. From there, I designed an output style on my own.

Hope that answers your question. :)</comment></comment>


GDBundle – GDB and LLDB's Missing Plugin Manager - <AUTHOR> https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/gdbundle-plugin-manager <comment><AUTHOR> Excited to finally get this out after sitting on it for a year. Might seem hacky at first but it works similarly to plugin managers like oh-my-zsh or vim-plug where they require edits to the users dotfiles. However, the beautiful thing is we can take advantage of PyPi and Python to handle the heavy lifting of the plugins.</comment>


This Entrepreneur Made $2.5MM By Age 21, Then Blew It All By 22 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-typical-a-teen-entrepreneur-makes-25mm-by-age-21-and-blows-it-all-by-22-2010-10 <comment><USER2> He missed a golden opportunity...they put a link to his new website, <http://bemodel.com/>, but the page doesn't load. He could have gotten a lot of traffic from that mention. Incidentally, when he mentions his number one competitor for the model site, he's probably talking about ModelMayhem.com. When I worked at Internet Brands, this site was being run on a few dozen servers and had several hundred dollars per month in Akamai fees. The site is hard to monetize because most of that traffic is there to look at pictures of seminude women, not to click on ads. I hope this guy has some money saved up to pay for a site like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did he lose $2.5 million?

<comment><USER2> It was explained in a blog post linked to in the article:

[http://www.310andrewfashion.com/2009/11/30/young-stupid- how-...](http://www.310andrewfashion.com/2009/11/30/young-stupid-how-i-lost- my-millions/)</comment></comment>


GitHub Jobs gets new site, iPhone app, and API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/836-github-jobs-update

<comment><USER2> Wow, these guys produce a ridiculous amount of output for the size of their team...

<comment><USER3> How big is their team?</comment></comment>


John Carmack on setting deadlines - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUmG-PCDsgM&t=2125s <comment><USER2> it's more about working in the knowledge that time is limited and valuable, and therefore to restrain one's perfectionism

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If the timestamp doesn't work, he covers this topic at the 0:35:25 mark.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The whole talk is interesting. Here's a timestamp of the different topics covered (courtesy of u/1wd on r/programming):

00:27 Introduction by Prof. Keith Robinson

03:32 Start talk "Innovation and Invention"

04:51 "why did you think that you could solve all of these problems?"

06:48 Moore's law -> new opportunities (semiconductors)

07:39 solution space is vast

08:22 very few things are at theoretical peak

09:57 it's like an infinite to-do list

10:36 be open to multiple innovations at the same time

11:24 Nassim Taleb's book "Anti-fragile": strong upsides but minimal downsides (asymmetric)

13:52 ideas don't come from staring into space and waiting. mechanical process to farm ideas

15:25 work-life balance is fine but there are benefits to obsession

15:55 I critique ideas for free

17:18 Robert Heinlein: "good idea is worth one bottle of scotch"

18:23 process of turning ideas into reality

\- ability to experiment: where smart kid can experiment, interesting things happen (Armadillo aerospace)

\- ability to to score: random ideas to serious impacts when datasets available for public testing and scoring, competitions. that which you measure improves.

22:37 worst case: takes decades to run experiments (tokamak fusion research)

23:04 few innovations without a lot of people (cryptocurrency, solar cells and batteries)

25:00 vast majority of industries are under engineered -> Elon Musk the boring company

27:07 best person in entire world for particular task -> telepresence dream teams, hopes for virtual reality

27:49 capital is important, engineers are expensive

28:39 scapegoats: regulatory, investors

29:48 pockets of stability and risk aversion (US rocket launches. )

33:51 XPrize

35:25 time does really matter: too early to succeed or too late to matter. I have walked away from "when it's done". games started taking longer and longer to write, entire tastes in gaming can change, cannot expect a design to survive that long. healthiest startups know their runway is limited, limited amount of time.

38:15 Questions

39:03 Q1: How may emerging technologies like virtual reality change industries that are slow to adopt technology, like the legal industry?

40:16 Q2: How do you go about prioritizing and choosing your projects. Skill acquisition: How long do you give yourself to acquire a skill?

44:02 Q3: The theme in your in your talk was failure and sort of the ability to fail which leads to innovation. If that's part of the process how do you know when to give up on an idea and move on?

45:23 Q4: What are your views on blockchain and innovations in this industry that we might not expect or might not be thinking about right now?

47:15 Q5: With respect to the aerospace industry, what are some of the largest legal and regulatory challenges involved with starting a space travel company?

51:05 Q6: personal questions about how you work. "There's nothing wrong with a little obsession, especially to get things done. work-life balance. you do have a family, a wife and kids. how do you manage being a husband, being a father with the work that you do?

55:27 Q7: What is your favorite game that you've that you've worked on? What was the most challenging game?

56:58 Q8: For the students out there that are aspiring developers or aspiring lawyers that might have an idea that they think is innovative, do you have any last words of advice for them?

Source:-

[https://www.reddit.com/comments/86hs0x/-/dw6fsms/](https://www.reddit.com/comments/86hs0x/-/dw6fsms/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you introduce new technology? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Build something useful with it, if not remarkable, and show _that_. Take the top down approach. Don't leave it to the readers to figure out a use case because not only it shows the technology in bad light, since it appears that it was created without any purpose in mind, most people are also too busy/lazy to do it themselves.

<comment> github-cat Really agree with you. Usually I tried to do some side projects/weekend projects if I want to try out something new. For example, when I learned PHP, I build a website with it. Later when I learned AngularJS, I build another website with it([https://pxlet.com](https://pxlet.com)). Now I am interested in VueJS, maybe I will start to build a new one with it. This really helps you understand something in deep.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Removes 260-Character Path Length Limit in Windows 10 Redstone - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-removes-260-characters-path-length-limit-in-windows-10-redstone-504596.shtml <comment><USER2> Seriously, that limit was still there? Must have been baked in pretty deep; I would love to hear @rchen's explanation of that quirk. (To be fair, I have run into this limit about 3 times in total, between Windows 2000 and Windows 10 - which could mean it's annoying but rare)</comment>


Building a JIT compiler for PHP in 2 days - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/devmtg/2008-08/Lopes_PHP-JIT-InTwoDays.pdf

<comment><USER2> There is a video that goes with this too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 1:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F970UlRsTBY></comment></comment>


The Trouble with Public Sector Unions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions <comment><AUTHOR> _When it comes to advancing their interests, public-sector unions have significant advantages over traditional unions. For one thing, using the political process, they can exert far greater influence over their members ' employers — that is, government — than private-sector unions can. Through their extensive political activity, these government-workers' unions help elect the very politicians who will act as "management" in their contract negotiations — in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them, in a way that workers in a private corporation (like, say, American Airlines or the Washington Post Company) cannot. Such power led Victor Gotbaum, the leader of District Council 37 of the AFSCME in New York City, to brag in 1975: "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."_</comment>


Ask HN: How to minimize recommendations - <AUTHOR> I vehemently dislike all types of recommendations on the Internet, as I feel they narrow my point of view, and actively hinder me in discovering new areas of interest. I have been thinking I'm not the only one.<p>If you feel like me, which plugins, other software and/or tactics would you recommend to minimize recommendations? <comment><USER2> Very droll.</comment>


Blockchain Can Wrest the Internet from Corporations' Grasp - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/how-blockchain-can-wrest-the-internet-from-corporations/ <comment><USER2> "There has been a lot of talk in the past few years about blockchains, which are heavily hyped but poorly understood."

Like this article and author?</comment>


Seattle drinking den bans Google Glass geeks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/09/seattle_bar_bans_google_glass/ <comment><USER2> I say good. And I am stunned by the reaction to it here. So, I must have a Sunday ranty thing....

Seems to me that people get all angry when websites violate privacy, but when the public are encouraged to violate privacy with cool gadgets, suddenly its defence-able. OK, so this is a bar. What about a playground? Nursery? School? Changing rooms? Tell me, how to I protect my privacy from google glass wearing people? How do I protect my kid's privacy, or stop my kids violation other's privacy?

Put it this way, if I'm taking a leak in a bar's wash room, and I see some bloke wearing google glasses looking down at "me", he's gonna get very hurt. No joke. No irony. Hurt.

It is simple: I dont want my urinating penis on the internet.

Sorry, call me prude, but I don't want that. Condemn me all you like, but remember I'm a geek hacker like you reading this, and that is how I feel about it. Now imagine a possible reaction of some non geek. OK, I don't do violence, frankly in reality I'm way more likely to be on the receiving end as I am physically pathetic, weak and useless, but this has great potential for a lot of people suffering real harm, either physically or virtually.

"Publicity stunt"? I despise this accusation. It is a pathetic cowardly throw away dismissal, which is designed to belittle those taking some action, in this case, to protect privacy. The message here is: Oh ignore them, its just a publicity stunt, nothing real or worth bothering with here. Move on.

Really? The great HN community suddenly belittles those who want to protect privacy? Really people? Thought this through or is this a knee jerk defence of cool technology? Dismissal as a publicity stunt implies attention seeking. Ok, fair enough. So in future, when we get a subject where people reply saying they have disabled java, flash, cookies, etc, due to privacy concerns, we will condemn them as publicity seeking attention seekers, right? Paranoid ignorant fool, yes?

People need to start thinking the implications of this through. Sure, for years we have been able to buy head mounted camera's, CCTV, spy drones, etc, but a google pushed product like this will hit mass market, and change the game radically and for good. Its not so much the technology, but how mass market it could and will become.

Let the timer begin now. How long until the first google glass wearer gets assaulted or worse for merely wearing google glasses in the wrong place?

Tell me, is the only privacy that concerns hackers the privacy expected while hidden behind a keyboard? Is no other privacy valid? Is the attempt to protect other privacy really merely a publicity stunt?

I don't like this one little bit. Yeah, very very cool technology. Hell, on that level I want one too. But lets have a long hard think about this. It really is a huge game changer with some serious implications.

Ranty done.

<comment><USER3> > Seems to me that people get all angry when websites violate privacy, but > when the public are encouraged to violate privacy with cool gadgets, > suddenly its defence-able. OK, so this is a bar.

People already have eyes and memories. Head-mounted cameras like Glass and the Looxie are a way to preserve your own memory of what you were _already seeing_. Do you really feel that you have the right to wipe or degrade other people's memories? If you don't want someone to remember something, _don't invite them at all_.

> What about a playground? Nursery? School?

In general, all of these already have cameras everywhere, don't they? For safety?

> Changing rooms?

Changing rooms? Seriously? How many strangers do you let crowd into a changing room with you? Zero, am I right? So how could that possibly be a problem. As for similar situations like locker rooms, they _already_ have the problem that strangers might be in there with you, with their eyes. I predict that as cameras go everywhere people go (and they will), we'll see a sharp uptick in single-person stalls in locker rooms. I would be far happier with that (at the gym, say) already; cameras aren't different from eyes in principle.

Edited as I got farther in:

> Put it this way, if I'm taking a leak in a bar's wash room, and I see some > bloke wearing google glasses looking down at "me", he's gonna get very hurt. > No joke. No irony. Hurt.

This is true whether he's wearing a camera or not, though, isn't it?

> It is simple: I dont want my urinating penis on the internet.

...or for people to see it at all, I'd expect. Once random strangers (like the guy in the wash room) are staring at you, the number of random strangers seems like a mere detail, no?

<comment><USER4> >People already have eyes and memories.

It's not about seeing, it's about recording and sharing it in the internet. There is a big difference.

<comment><USER3> Smartphones were the beginning of the end of that difference. This is the obvious next step.

What about when this kind of tech is so small that it's embedded in contacts? Even if you think that's twenty years off, still, surely it's obvious that it's coming? It's possible not to notice that someone is video recording you at the moment, but soon it will be essentially impossible to know if they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work in a school. These devices will inevitably be banned in such places. It's already a bit risky to take photos of children - it has been suggested (albeit by an especially neurotic, paedophile-obsessed parent) that one of my colleagues is a paedophile for taking photos of school events. For a member of staff to wear these glasses at school would be risky, to take them into a sensitive area such as a boarding house or changing room, a career-ending move.

I can foresee that other places, like the bar in OA and hospitals, medical waiting rooms, lawyers' offices, etc, have an implicit assumption of privacy which would be infringed by these devices. Many conversations and meetings have similar unspoken requirements - if you might be recording or photographing me, I'm not talking to you. Wearing these to a blind date or job interview could be an immediate deal-breaker for many people. "You're recording this? How dare you!"

It doesn't seem unreasonable for people to ban these devices. The assumption of many potential users that I am happy to be photographed, recorded, uploaded and discussed is what needs to be challenged.

<comment><USER6> > _I work in a school. These devices will inevitably be banned in such > places._

I don't think that will be a problem, because there will never be such devices.

They are vapourware, solving a problem people don't have, won't have, and don't want to have.

Sure, Google might release them commercially at some point. Still, they will go the way of the yo-yo, the Sony dog robot, the MiniDisk and other novelties.

Only geeks (in the unpopular, nerdy meaning of the term) lust after a thing such as Google Glasses. They are a 100% guarantee that you won't even get laid, and for something that you wear on your head, that's the kiss of death.

<comment><USER7> > solving a problem people don't have

See this is what I don't get about Google.

There are thousands of problems that Google Glasses could solve. But life recording and answering how long a bridge is are terrible use cases. For me it makes far more sense to position it in firmly in the business and education sectors. And then provide the necessary back end services to support developers.

It ties in so much better with other Google services and works to their strength which is in solving big data problems. Leave the gimmicks to the others.

<comment><USER4> >There are thousands of problems that Google Glasses could solve.

Can you give some examples?

<comment><USER5> Police officers could wear them to ensure good behaviour from the police and public alike.

You could modify them to include a range-finder so surveyors could look at a building or room and measure it, just by being there.

You could use them for virtual reality applications -- "weak" VR since not fully immersive but nice to check out the proposed make-over for your living room.

Sports-people could wear them to give first-person views of the action.

They could be worn to workplace disciplinary hearings (or any other low-level legal proceedings) with your representative/legal counsel listening in and offering feedback. You could record everything, so could your counsel.

There probably are thousands of applications, but compulsively recording public spaces and the people in them is probably not the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of the advance-buzz based roll out of the Segway. One of the effects was that various municipalities enacted unfavorable legislation with regard to them. I really think that the high profile was the issue. Glass is going to have the same problem.

I think there's a law here:

 _Disruptive technology receives backlash in proportion to its advance press. The best bet for any radically new technology is to become useful and ubiquitous below the radar._

If you asked people 20 years ago how they felt about everyone walking around with palm sized video recorders, pointing them and taking video at whim, they would've been upset and prone to legislate against it, but because the technology advanced in quality slowly and had a free ride on cell phones, it became accepted.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I thought of the smart phone angle of this too. The other day I was part of an airplane evacuation drill and I noticed someone filming me with his smart phone after all was said in done.

On one hand, I knew his intent was to film the activity and not me personally. On the other hand, I still felt a little annoyed about it. I might have said something if not for the fact that this technology is everywhere anyways.

<comment><USER7> The technology is everywhere. The act is not.

You don't see people walking around with their phone held high constantly recording everything as they walk around. If you did then most people would be suspicious or concerned about what they were doing. And more than likely at some point they would be asked to stop.

People record video using smartphones of people they know. Not random strangers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relevant article ("The Google Glass feature no one is talking about"): [http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no- one...](http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is- talking-about/)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for that. Always wise finding the source from a TheRegister article. They sadly do tend to reduce a decent story to pulp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For people that read past the headline (probably not many judging by the comments):

"We don't let people film other people or take photos unwanted of other people in the bar because it's kind of a private place people go."

So filming / taking pictures is already not allowed. It feels like publicity stunt, but nothing particularly weird, imho.

<comment><USER12> There are things HMDs are useful for besides recording/storing sense data. In fact, I would say, so many of them (and growing further with each new development), that a policy like this will eventually just become impossible to enforce--it would be like asking people to leave their phones at the door, or perhaps even their prescription glasses.

But, of course, this _is_ still a problem that needs to be solved; never before have the barriers to recording everyone around you, unbeknownst to them, been so low. (Whereas before, only professionals--spies, reporters, hostage-negotiators, etc.--really bothered to go through all the schlep required.)

So, perhaps, in the future, a law will be passed requiring HMDs (and phones, actually--there's no reason they don't also count) to get a "privacy-zone" feature. Within range of any wi-fi AP emitting a "privacy-zone beacon", the HMD would be legally required to disable its recording features. This brings the barrier-of-entry back up to "have to jailbreak your HMD and override the restriction", which is similar to "buy a gizmo from a spy-store" in terms of difficulty, so I would say it's equitable.

Of course, then you could get police walking around emitting privacy-zone beacons, and other totalitarian effects.

The real underlying problem, causing things like that, is that completely _technological_ systems are prone to _social_ exploitation, because our own _social mores_ aren't carried over into the technological domain. So, instead, we would want to rely partially on the technology, and partially on social enforcement.

A good balance might be: entering a privacy zone prompts you to disable your recording--a single "click" will do so, but you can ignore/cancel the request. Once you've complied, you can't re-enable recording until you leave the privacy zone. Also, the privacy-zone beacon will be aware of whether you've complied with the request. Thus, as the owner of a private establishment (e.g. a bar), you can simply activate your privacy-zone beacon and attenuate its range out to some distance beyond the perimeter of your building--and then have a bouncer who won't let people in until they see, among whatever other conditions--that they have assented to disabling recording.

<comment><USER6> > _There are things HMDs are useful for besides recording/storing sense data. > In fact, I would say, so many of them (and growing further with each new > development), that a policy like this will eventually just become impossible > to enforce--it would be like asking people to leave their phones at the > door, or perhaps even their prescription glasses._

Really? I would like to read a list of those "uses".

Except if you talk about some kind of accessibility accessories, there's nothing that makes those glasses even remotely a necessity.

Even something like your glucose levels you can watch them from a device that's not a glass with a camera attached. Like your smartphone or a watch.

<comment><USER12> Three that immediately jump to mind:

* Putting a "minimap" in your field of vision as you walk down the street.

* Letting you read a book--or consume an ordinary chatroom/news feed/other auto-updating thing--while standing in a packed subway car, or while laying in bed (no more weird-sideways-phone-holding-time), and never having to "put it down" when something needs your attention; you just look away, and then look back.

* Giving you to-do lists that you'll finally always check, because they can actually get "in your face." For that matter, spaced-repetition flash cards that come up exactly when you need them to optimally memorize things.

Also, a few more that _involve_ sensory data input, but only to process it into something else (these could be high-level APIs that can safely be accessed whether or not "real recording" is enabled):

* Identify your contacts with visual recognition [can be just stored on your device--not some Panopticon database], and automatically pull up their contact cards/Facebook profiles. Everyone you've met gets a nametag hovering over them like in an MMO.

* Finally make QR codes useful: look at one and immediately see the thing it links to overlaid--and then bookmark it with a glance. This extends to other kinds of barcodes--for example, being able to see the lowest price for an item in a store by just looking at the UPC.

* Identify images, songs, movies, TV shows, etc., through passive submission to something like Tineye, Shazam, etc., or just by a "backing track" laced into the audio/video, that the HMD can detect. Never "lose" something you liked just because you didn't get to find out its name.

* Pair the HMD to a TV, then pause the stream whenever you look away from it. Pair the HMD to a computer, then lock it whenever you aren't interacting with it.

<comment><USER6> I think all of the above are of really marginal utility. I mean, todo's, maps, QR codes and media identification. Compared to the "you'll never get laid wearing these" it's a no brainer.

The most interesting parts (book, video) are not really applicable to the current (and next 10 years) capabilities of the display. And given the technology, maybe never.

We'd sooner have in-retina imaging that glass displays with the appropriate qualities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> """"The 5 Point is the first Seattle business to ban in advance Google Glasses," the bar wrote. "And ass kickings will be encouraged for violators.""""

Nice. So a good way to make money is to go to the bar with Google Glasses, get your ass kicked (literally), and sue them.

<comment><USER13> Indeed this does seem like a good way to recover the initial financial outlay.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing the threats are "Internet toughguy" threats rather than actual toughguy threats, so it may take a while to cash out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was going to happen, and I think it's right to try and limit the scope of people filming everything.

You need to pull out a phone and aim it to take pictures or videos, and in some jurisdictions it is compulsory for digital cameras to emit an audible noise when shooting.

I guess in the end these head mounted cameras will have a small led so that you know when someone is filming you, and we'll be forbidden in places where privacy is expected or where recording is forbidden (cinemas, concerts, theaters…).

<comment><USER15> If we were to legally require a visible indicator when recording, would it be any worse than a cell phone?

<comment><USER14> Yes because you could still put some black tape on it or possibly circumvent the led in software via jailbraking.

I guess that when the phone is in your pocket or aimed at your feet, I'm pretty sure you're not filming me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also why google glass is a privacy nightmare: <http://www.slashgeek.net/2013/02/26/google-glass-privacy/>

I too don't understand the love for Glass by the same group people who generally are anal about privacy. Talk about double standard. Would you be ok if I held a camera to your face, probably recording, while I am talking to you?

<comment><USER17> Pretty much the same possibility of being recorded has existed for decades. Does no remember Nixon's presidency?

The only difference is Google Glass makes it more noticeable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The irony of all this is that the bar probably has a security camera system that's recording everyone all the time anyway.

<comment><USER2> Is the CCTV content available from google search? Am I tagged? Are my words recorded? Can that be linked on cross referenced? Can a future employer or pervert see the footage? If I slip up and expose myself, can a google search reveal that too?

<comment><USER13> It depends on whether or not you annoy Reddit or 4chan. If yes, then yes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me this feels like a publicity stunt.

<comment><USER19> Me too. Kudos to him. It's a good PR stunt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The fun part is going to be when people start remotely hacking people wearing google glass.

It's going to be like a very early version of ghost-in-the-shell with external memory interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't want to sound negative but I can't hold it back.

Anyone who wears this spy gadget for no specific reason (eg. recording jumping out of a plane or something), but because it is "cool", is seriously delusional, and a poor fellow who can NOT make decisions about his or anyone else's wellbeing.

Why?

I understand that recording every move of your life is an interesting idea, at least it would be, in an utopian world. Unfortunately, we live in a world where approx 99% of people is being ripped off and oppressed by their government and co. Encouraging the behaviour of wearing this CIA sponsored hoax is just...

I seriously can't find words.

<comment><USER22> "CIA sponsored hoax"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like a classy joint, where the owner incites their clientele to violence:

"And ass kickings will be encouraged for violators."

</comment><comment><USER24> Waiting for the hats with infra red lights to hit the market.

</comment><comment><USER25> The 5-point cafe has had a history of publicity attempts - they used to have bikini clad women pay your parking meters if you bought food. They generally latch on to current events and try to leverage them to get people to come in more.

<comment><USER25> yeah - confirmed. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/03/10/seattle- bar...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/03/10/seattle-bar-that- banned-google-glasses-admits-it-was-a-pr-stunt/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Probable source of the sign - the 'stop the cyborgs blog' ...

<http://stopthecyborgs.org/google-glass-ban-signs/>

</comment><comment><USER27> so how does one establishment that just honestly want to ban GG to protect their customer's privacy release a pre-emptive statement like this without having it looking like a privacy stunt?

<comment><USER28> What's a privacy stunt?

<comment><USER29> It's like a publicity stunt, only that no one knows about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Guy in the comments there allegedly willing to spray black Google glasses caught recording him.

What's the legality of doing that? What's the min-max punishment?

</comment><comment><USER31> After reading Amped from Daniel H. Wilson, this post seems to strike the same chord as the book. Almost freaky.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't think this is (purely) a publicity stunt, I expect all bars will ban these stupid things because it's asking to be punched in the face. It's a safety thing.</comment>


Ask HN: Coders, how do you find small work? - <AUTHOR> Are there any sites that pay at least $500 USD for small jobs here and there? I don't want to be commited to a long contract job, but looking to build angular.js MVP apps.<p>freelancer,gun.io, guru are awful rarely do you hear back and people posting their don't understand just how much work is required and are unwilling to pay money for it.... <comment><USER2> One way is to develop a relationship with another consultant who's having to turn down jobs that are too small for them. They can hand those off to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION OF COURSE

well send me an email (in profile) if you need any python, javascript, php, scraping done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have lots of small jobs, but I generally just hire a single person for the full contract. The reason is that, with ramp-up and debugging time, there's nothing that $500 can efficiently buy me.</comment>


Greetings from the Safari team at Apple Computer (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://lists.kde.org/?m=104197092318639

<comment><USER2> I still remember watching the Keynote and expecting Gecko and then they had KHTML. I'd played around with Konqueror before, on various Linux distributions, and wasn't overwhelmed by its standards support (or quirks mode support, after all this was 2003). But Safari really enhanced it, and was so damn fast.

<comment><USER3> As an early user of Chimera/Camino, Phoenix/Firefox and Safari, the way I recall it was that KHTML was _too good_ at standards, hence causing practical problems with actual web content which was built for IE. (A big part of Mozilla's energy at that time was in evangelizing websites to actually use standards and not block them for no reason, but they'd also done a lot of reverse engineering)

I also vaguely remember David Hyatt saying that they (edit: and by they I mean the Safari team that he'd moved from Mozilla to join) had taken some component from Gecko though I can't remember the details and his old Surfin Safari blog at <http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt> seems to have been superceded by the Webkit team's Surfin' Safari blog and it now just gives a broken redirect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, the original submission which linked to this article (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041354>, [http://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the- wo...](http://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the-world/)) is #1 and this submission is #4

<comment><AUTHOR> There were quite a few links in that article. I found this email of particular interest and importance.

<comment><USER5> +1 There's still far too many people in the tech community who seem to think that WebKit was created from scratch by Apple who just felt like being generous by making it Open Source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what the safari webpage looked like at the time if anyone is interested.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20030108173656/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030108173656/http://www.apple.com/safari/)

<comment><USER7> Wow, Apple actually praising Google? 2003 seems like a _long_ time ago.

<comment><USER8> The CEO of Google was on Apple's Board of Directors till 2009. I'm guessing 2008 was the year which relationship soured.

<comment><USER9> After Android changed from being Blackberry-like to being iPhone-like, Eric Schmidt stopped attending Apple board meetings where the iPhone was discussed due to conflicts of interest.

I'm sure that this is where Steve Jobs' "Android is stolen" idea comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Also, we'll be sending you another email soon which details our changes and additions to KHTML and KJS. I hope the detailed list in that email will help you understand what we've done a little better."

Interesting, anyone have a handle on this list?

</comment><comment><USER11> Watching the keynote video, I see "CCS 1 and CCS 2" as two of the supported standards. Is this meant to be CSS, or am I missing a standard somewhere?

<comment><USER12> Do you have a link to that video ? I didn't see that on the video I watched (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZNXQujgXw>).

<comment><USER11> It's just after the end of that video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13n98rSaYp4&t=66m47s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13n98rSaYp4&t=66m47s)

<comment><USER12> Oh, thanks !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am surprised at how heavily the number of lines of code factored into the decision to choose KHTML. It makes sense that a smaller codebase is much easier to jump into, and usually means cleaner architecture, but I didn't expect to see it addressed as such an important factor.

<comment><USER14> At the time the minimum RAM requirement for Mac OS X was only 128 MB. WebKit was to be a system component, so it would be active in memory much of the time. Under these circumstances every MB of code counts, so it's easy to see why the leaner codebase of KHTML was found appealing.

However, I think there was also the psychological factor of Mozilla's reputation at the time as an open-source quagmire. The Netscape 4 code they had inherited was deemed unmaintainable, and so Mozilla started over with a rewrite that many thought was too complex and tried to reinvent everything under the sun (e.g. it contained a version of Microsoft's COM). Mozilla turned out fine eventually, but back in 2002 this wasn't quite so obvious.

<comment><USER15> > _Mozilla turned out fine_

Not exactly. There's a reason WebKit saw wild adoption by all sorts of projects, while Gecko adoption stagnated. The Mozilla codebase is still too complicated for most people.

<comment><USER16> Arguably, though, even if Gecko's code base were taken down to be smaller and easier to use than WebKit (and I have no idea how it actually compares today), it would be at a tremendous disadvantage because so many projects _have_ incorporated WebKit.

If I want to use WebKit in a new project today, I can find a ton of people online who have done so in the past and use their experience to get me through it. If I want to use Gecko in a new project, I will have a considerably smaller amount of outside experience to lean on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So when did KHTML become WebKit?

<comment><USER18> It didn't. KHTML and Konqueror are being developed independently from WebKit. WebKit itself has very little KHTML code left, anyways.

<http://khtml-konqueror.blogspot.com>

[https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde- baseapps/repositor...](https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde- baseapps/repository/revisions/master/show/konqueror)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apple willingly releasing open source stuff feels rather counter to some of their other philosophy. (still)

<comment><USER9> Back in those days, Apple was all about open-source - I still have an OSX 10.2 (Jaguar) box somewhere where the main headline is about Apple and open-source.

(Just found this: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenf/5393674266/>)

I guess there's still a lot of open-source in OSX, but they don't need to shout about it now that they are no longer the underdogs.

<comment><USER20> I think they were just trying to piggy-back on BSD reputation as stable and mature system, so they played the buddy-buddy card. Once OS X settled in its place, this was no longer needed, so the open source love faded.

<comment><USER21> It's not like the open source itself or the open source love thrived anywhere else in the Desktop anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> OK I get it, a lot of work went into safari. Do we need weekly top posts evangelizing this?

Two next to each other at that?

<comment><USER23> If you know of better content that the community would like to read about instead, please submit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please don't turn HN into Reddit and start karma whoring. This post belongs on the other one that made you go looking for this email.

<comment><USER25> It was posted as a comment in the other link also.</comment></comment>


Instapundit suspended on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2016/09/22/whoohoo-censorship-free-speech-advocate-and-well-known-conservative-instapundit-suspended-on-twitter/ <comment><AUTHOR> Glenn Reynolds, aka "Instapundit" commented on the ban here: [https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/244534/](https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/244534/)

Here's a transcript where he discusses what he thinks is the offending tweet with Hugh Hewitt: [http://www.hughhewitt.com/glenn-reynolds-instapundit- reacts-...](http://www.hughhewitt.com/glenn-reynolds-instapundit-reacts- suspension-twitter/)</comment>


Vessel launches its "command center" at Google IO to help mobile developers - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/15/vessel-launches-its-command-center-to-help-mobile-developers-kill-faulty-software/

<comment><USER2> Awesome UI</comment>


Ask HN: What do you call someone who has 20 apps released but can't code? - <AUTHOR>

I wrote my first 3 Android apps and they sucked plus took a long time.  So I switched gears to mockups, photoshop and outsourcing code.  I have about 20 apps now, but I am not sure what yo call myself.<p>Is this a marketable skill within a company?  What further training/degrees/etc. should I pursue? <comment><USER2> Seems like you're playing a few roles, but the chief ones would probably be:

Product Manager: You take business goals and turn them into technical requirements, then ensure the product gets built.

Project Manager: You take technical requirements and ensure that your team delivers on those requirements.

User Experience Designer: You create mockups for products which can be implemented by the technical team.

I'd put together a portfolio of your work and send it off to a few companies, as that might be good enough to land you a job.

<comment><USER3> While "product manager" has different meanings at various companies, I'd expand the description of PM to include all the wrangling of sales, marketing, and customer service that goes into shipping a product as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mockups w/photoshop = information architecture / user interface designer

Managing workers and segmenting tasks = project management

both are available as fields of study and are defined roles in most businesses -

</comment><comment><USER5> Entrepreneur. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Where do you outsource typically? How hard was it to go from idea/mockups to app and what was the typical cost?

<comment><AUTHOR> I typically outsource through oDesk, It was very hard the first time but each time gets easier. The hard part is keeping decent developers. Even the good ones, you become a side project after the first one, despite increased budgets. Typically, they don't turn down work and you suffer instead of them telling you to wait a month and risk losing you. I have had a simple crappy app made for $75 all they way up to a few grand. Typical release ready non- game app can be had around $750. Games apps can be all over the place as far as development costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Product guy.</comment>