How to work remotely as a software developer - <AUTHOR> http://markcampbell.me/tutorial/2013/05/23/how-to-work-remotely.html <comment><USER2> I have to laugh at this. Not because he's wrong, but because it's so indicative of the programmer's mind. Structured, orderly, formulaic. Laying down rules and procedures. Which is fine--nothing wrong with that, however...

Let me offer a counter-example, for what it's worth, which perhaps isn't a whole lot. I've been working at home for almost a year, after being in the office for six. It's very simple. In the morning, I start working, sitting on my couch, using my laptop. Eight hours later, I sign out. Obviously eating some time in the middle there. That's it. Nothing to it, really.

<comment><USER3> I worked from home for 4 years straight and never gave it more thought than "work when I feel like working or when the situation requires it." Look at that, my method fits in a tweet!

<comment><USER4> I'm glad that you found a tweet-sized strategy that works for you. I can say from experience that it doesn't work for everyone.

<comment><USER5> as if working from Starbucks did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never tried working from a coffee shop but it seems people do.

How does that work out financially? I imagine they aren't too pleased if you just buy a coffee and then occupy space for 5 hours.

But I don't really want to spend a fortune on excessive caffeine consumption and $5 bagels.

<comment><USER7> I did it for a few months while moving to a new city before I had my own place. It wasn't too bad. I'd buy a basic coffee (and sometimes a cheap bagel) and find a corner to setup in. At lunch, I'd pack up and find something to eat, then head to a different place and buy a coffee. Sometimes I'd go to the library instead. It wasn't any more expensive than going out with coworkers for lunch every day...

Most businesses did't seem to mind people hanging out, makes the place look busier I guess. I figure as long as there are other empty seats I'm not in anyone's way. That said, if I did it again I'd probably tip a lot more than I had been tipping.

<comment><USER8> This is pretty much exactly the way I do it. Best places are usually the big chains with low wage workers who do not care the slightest how many hours you are hanging around there. I have about 4-5 shops within walking distance and rotate them around. In half of them they already discount my drinks and greet me like an old friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked alone from a home office for 20 years in my consulting practice until, in the last year, as my company has grown, I've moved to commercial office space for the first time. I found working at home a delight, and enjoyed many years of jokes about my short commute (18 feet.) However, in the end, I found the repeated advice of friends to be correct: I'm more productive with an outside office. The extra focus more than offsets the cost of rent. Being in commercial office space has also made it easier to meet with clients. It's also more social as there are other people at the office that I can talk to (or ignore) as needed.

My commute is still short (I often do it on a Segway), and our company is still virtual (with both staff and contractors working from their own spaces -- which we don't plan to change), but don't underestimate the value of a separate, outside, workspace.

<comment><USER10> If you can commute on a Segway then we're not talking what other people are experiencing with "commute". Try spending two hours a day standing on a train.

Such a time sink.

Commuting on a Segway... doesn't qualify.

<comment><USER11> Commuting simply means travelling between your home and your workplace. The fact that many people impose a painful commute on themselves does not make a less painful commute any less a commute.

<comment><USER12> I think if you look at the origin of the word commute you will find that it did actually emerge from the trip between suburbs and the city and hence a walk to work in the morning is not in the 'traditional' sense.

<comment><USER13> Do you by any chance have details on that? I'm genuinely curious but with a brief search all I could find was a reference to Latin commuto which implies a "to change, to transform" meaning, I'm guessing applied to a change of environment or mindset from home to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I went back to remote last year after not doing it for quite a while and it turned into a bit of a disaster. I won't deny that my being out of practice with it and not doing some of the things this guy and others talk about contributed massively to it not working out, but I want to add one piece of advice since I don't think this talked enough about external factors:

Be careful who you do it for. When he talks about all the communication tools you need to use in order to be successful at it, make sure they already have a bunch of those already set up, unless you're in a position to make sure they set them up and use them.

In particular, the company I was working for had no company-wide chat system at all, and clearly didn't feel they needed it since most of their employees were in-office or only temporarily remote. Various attempts at getting one going were hampered by lack of support from above. They'd get maybe 5 random people using them off the bat and it'd dwindle from there. At various times there were competing solutions active.

In the end I gave up, they gave up, and it just didn't work out and was frustrating for everyone involved.

<comment> benji-york Agreed. I have been working 100% remote for three years and it has been great. However, I was very careful to choose a company that has had several 100% remote teams for many years over a company where I would be the first. I did not want to be both the person pushing for change and the only person that would be out of luck if the change didn't take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only thing that I have grown to despise a bit is timeboxing. Coding is a job and a hobby to me, and sometimes setting those hard limits kills my ability to improve code by forcing me into a rigid schedule. It turns what I view as play into unpleasant work, and that's how burnout starts.

Sometimes its faster to come up with a solution without setting hard time limits, and just let your mind churn passively on a concept. I've always found a certain amount of anxiety associated with feeling like I have to complete a task in a predetermined amount of time.

You should always have (and try to meet) deadlines, but the micromanagement of 25 mins per hour (example from the article) is just stressful.

<comment><USER16> I think you've misunderstood the Pomodoro technique if you think it's 25mins _per hour_. It's simply 25mins blocks of time, 5mins non-work, rinse-and- repeat.

When I timebox, I use Vitamin-R which let's me extend the time slice to finish a task. Probably the hardest part is breaking tasks down into 25min chunks

<comment><USER15> I just used that as an example from the article. Honestly I think the idea of timeboxing may be useful if a person can't keep on track, but I don't have an issue with getting stuff done on time. One of the arguments from the article was that timeboxing can prevent "perfectionism", which I think should be prioritized and not restricted by a time constraint. Finish the important MVP features first, then, if you have time left, make it sexy and perfect.

The thought of using a program to timebox, then asking that _program_ to extend your time just seems bizarre to me.

No judgments on your end here, I just do what works for me, and you do what works for you. I think that people should try to feel it out first, and if that fails, move to a structured technique.

edit: just read my typo. mean 25mins/block perviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote something pretty similar almost 8 years ago[0], and for the most part I've found the advice holds up.

My current job is a lot more flexible for remote working than any other I've had before. I don't work remotely all of the time, but at least 33%. For me, I found a bit of self-discipline is essential, as is being able to "train" others. I'm living with my parents at the moment and had to get my mum to realise she couldn't just pop into the room at any moment to chat - I could be in a call with my boss/a client, or trying to focus on a task... anything really.

Another anecdotal observation I've had - once you've trained yourself to work from home, you'll often find you're at your most productive there. I know I do. Partly it's the more comfortable/relaxed setting, and partly it's guilt of being caught "goofing off". Scott Hanselman mentions the guilt aspect in his reaction to the Yahoo! ban on remote working[1].

If I ever lost the ability to work remotely I don't know what I'd do. Nowadays I can't go more than a few days at the office without feeling completely drained, demotivated and demoralised. The flip-side is working from home for an extended period can leave you wanting to go into the office to see real people again, not just a Office Communicator window.

[0][http://chrismcleod.me/2005/06/15/six-tips-for-working- from-h...](http://chrismcleod.me/2005/06/15/six-tips-for-working-from-home/) [1][http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLiv...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLiveTheRemoteWorker.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been remote for 10 years. The secret not to get nuts is to interact online with colleagues as often as possible.

"From the employer's perspective, you're risking burning yourself out if you work 50-60 hours a week"

mmm... 50 hours is pretty common in the software industry, and being remote makes it easier not to burn out in fact because you're not losing time in commutes and in loud open spaces where you can't hear yourself coding.

In any case it's quite hard to define a number of hours per weeks. Building software is done by waves. You can spend a 70h week because of a production push that goes wrong, then a very calm week. So don't take those numbers/week too seriously imo.

<comment><USER19> 50 hours is common in _startups_, not the industry as a whole.

<comment><USER20> 50 hours a week is pretty common for companies that produce commercial software, startup or no. Some segments (games, for example) are more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really enjoyed this article, and I'd like to add that software developers working remotely could probably learn a lot from the wisdom of writers, which has been collected in hundreds of articles on the web. (search for "advice from best authors" or "daily routines of great writers", etc, and you're bound to find many such articles. Some are good, most are puffery, but so it goes with anything).

Not all of the advice applies, of course, but there's a lot of good advice on making a good workspace and keeping yourself motivated. I've certainly noticed after working alone that there's a lot of implicit encouragement merely from working near other people, and this makes working at home harder than the same work might otherwise be. That's part of the reason why many prefer to work from cafes or worker/hacker-spaces, I think. Motivation is contagious.

(The positive flip side is that working from home removes a certain set of distractions that might otherwise be bothersome, and gives you more fine- grained control over the distractions you have in general).

Lots of authors use funny setups to transition from home-mode to work-mode. Some people build extra doors in their house so they can "leave" their house and "enter" an office that is sealed off from their house, but is otherwise the same building. One author (Roald Dahl?) worked from a bunker.

That being said, its probably a bad idea to get hung up on the idea of perfect working-from-home conditions. Per E. B. White:

 _"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."_

Some similar important words from Tchaikovsky, which I found especially relevant to working from home:

 _Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer's soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination._

I think motivation is under-stated in its importance when it comes to working from home. Even if our work demands little distraction, we're social creatures, and we've probably all had days where its hard to even open up the editor.

It's important to stay positive and stay at it. As Joel said, "We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor."[1]

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>

<comment><USER22> A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing. for example. or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two.

\--Frank Herbert

<comment><USER23> Some of my best code was written after basically abandoning the problem for a day.

Of course, the problem wasn't really abandoned -- I was thinking about how to solve it the whole time. But I wasn't writing any code.

Forcing yourself to write isn't necessarily best.

<comment><USER24> One of the most effective things you can do is become a virtual smoker. Smokers get an urge and step out for a cigarette every hour - or every time they get stuck.

I don't smoke (never have) but I am trying to emulate that; the most effective way to solve a problem is to step out and do nothing for about 5 minutes. Take a walk. Look at the trees. Anything. Then when I come back I have either solved the problem or decided to leave it with a hacked together patch and work on something else; Ill probably still resolve the hack sometime later.

The opposite is to seek out some distraction, click around on facebook or HN or something - you solve nothing but spend lots of time....

<comment><USER25> I honestly wish I could do something like that at work. I already do it all the time at home.

<comment><USER26> I do this by going to the water cooler for a refill. I use a small cup, so I go every hour or so. I usually take the slow way there, and think about my work on the way.

<comment><USER27> Before I started working from home I would sometimes get up and pace. Fortunately we had an empty part of the building where I didn't disturb people. I felt a little self-conscious about it at first, but being eccentric is sort of fun. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've had a bit of a revelation recently.

I absolutely need some kind of human voice in the background for at least a few hours per day. If I don't get it then my mind just shuts down and refuses to work on anything.

My favourite radio presenter went off the air about 8 months ago and I've not really found anything I really liked since. But since then my ability to actually get anything done has gone down drastically.

Anyway on a whim I re-listened to one of his old episodes for a few hours while working, suddenly I'm tearing through my work again.

I can't explain it but it makes all the difference in the world.

<comment><USER29> I never felt what you're describing but I do enjoy listening to RBMA Radio Fireside Chats[0] while while I'm working. You may like it.

[0]: [http://www.rbmaradio.com/categories/interviews- features/form...](http://www.rbmaradio.com/categories/interviews- features/formats/fireside-chat)

<comment><USER28> Thanks, I'll take a look.

I think the best way to explain it, is there's part of my mind, perhaps the really creative bit that needs to be distracted in order to actually get anything done. As in, if I've got a problem I need to solve and actually it's just a case of iterating/implementing to get it done, if that bit of my mind isn't being occupied by something I'll immediately try to "think the problem to death" which ends in procrastination and getting nothing done.

But If I have some kind of conversation going on in the background then that part of my brain is occupied and I seem quite capable of getting on with things.

I wish I could describe it better but it has really made a noticeable difference in the past few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No surprises there, but good solid advice that a lot of people need to hear. Well done.

The one thing I'd add is that working remotely means working away from machines as well as people - test machines, internal websites, etc. Even companies that are generally supportive of remote workers (like mine) often scatter essential information and resources across an annoying variety of machines that are not accessible from outside. Then they give you a VPN that's utter crap (usually because it's overloaded) or ssh to a bastion host so you have to tunnel/forward anywhere else. It's really worth the effort to make sure you use every trick in the book to get networking on your home machines and/or laptops set up in a way that actually allows you to get work done. I'm pretty darn good at that kind of stuff, but even so it took me several experiments over a period of weeks to get something I was happy with - and BTW it bears no resemblance at all to what the IT group thought would suffice. Similarly, it pays to make sure that using test machines is as friction-free as possible, and that common tasks are automated as much as possible so that you don't have to keep watching/tweaking things from afar. All good sense even if you're not remote, but even more important when you are.

</comment><comment><USER31> As some one who does this every day. This is all good advice.

I would add that it is really really important to occasionally do something different. If you you usually work from home, go to a coffee shop, sit in a restaurant for a few hours on a laptop.

You will be amazed how much of a difference that one day outside your office will make you excited about the same work that the day before seemed like a boring slog.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good advice. I'd like to add something that has helped me in the last year or so of working from home: have a dedicated work device (in my case a laptop + monitor) that is exclusively for work. All other browsing, personal side projects, etc that I do in the morning before I begin work or in the evening is done on my "personal" devices (second laptop or ipad). This way my workstation is in the state I left it in the next day and there aren't any distracting tabs I have to prune before I get to work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Been working remotely for a bit more than a year now and it's definitely largely about pace for me too. I generally start relatively early to try and catch up with my colleagues (I'm on PST and they on GMT) then head to a coffee shop later in the morning. Just having the walk in itself is quite an important motivator.

As far as coffee shops go, I think the criteria for a good place to work from are as follow:

\- how is the coffee, and do they have refills

\- how good is the wifi: speed, quality of signal, ... also whether they use tickets. I find tickets irritating, I keep forgetting about the limit and having remote shells disconnecting and whatnot.

\- how good are the seats: comfortable as well as good for your back

\- how good are the tables: I tend to prefer individual tables to large, collective tables, possibly because it feels more like a desk. You also want the height of the table to be good in relation to your seat

\- do they have a lot of power outlets throughout the place

\- what's the atmosphere like: I've been to places that turn into pubs half- way through the afternoon, even with headphones it's really not conducive to work, particularly when lots of people walk right around you.

\- how good is their food: if I find a good coffee shop with bad food, that's not a deal-breaker and I just won't eat there, but good food does help

Surprisingly, I haven't found that many places ticking all the boxes. I actually wonder why there aren't more places dedicating themselves to providing this sort of environment (at least in SF and Vancouver).

<comment><USER34> Your ideal coffee shop does not sound like a very profitable enterprise as opposed to catering to people ordering takeout and large groups who drink alcohol.

Have you considered co-working spaces?

<comment><USER33> The few places I have found which more or less matched my points seemed to be rather profitable and I know have been around for a while. I've tried co- working spaces and didn't particularly like them. I know it's really subjective but most of them felt pretty sterile (like so many open-space offices). I find I'm more productive in a (good) coffee shop, but that's of course pure personal preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought this article would give tips on how to find a job where you can work from home.

</comment><comment><USER36> Allow me to add:

Time Zone issues: If you work in a different time zone, then adjust to it to lessen the difference. This only works if you are from 1-4 hours away. Your team will appreciate the effort.

Try splitting the work day into shifts. One of the issues I had was working non-stop (as in an office job) for 8 hours. Reason was that I felt jailed into my house. So I splitastwer my work day into two shifts. One during the daylight, and one during the night (once my family has gone to sleep). I work better, and faster.

Get a hobby. When you work in an office, you have little hobbies that you do without ever noticing. Maybe its talking with another employee, or cleaning your desk, or anything. When you are home, you feel like you are in the office 24 hours a day. So get a hobby (preferably outside the house), so you feel like your life is not all about work.

</comment><comment><USER37> Working remotely was tough for me as I was working with an all non-remote team. One thing that I took away from that was that communication is really key in that situation. It also helps if the local team members know that as well. Everything seems to take longer unless communication is preserved.

</comment><comment><USER38> This works when you're a remote worker, but what about when you're a freelancer with multiple clients, using time tracking software? Where do you bill the "going for a walk to clear your head", the "restroom break" or that all-too-common one, "popping on Hacker News to see if anything exciting's happened in the last 5 minutes"?

Joking aside, I've reached burnout by driving myself hard to get 8 billable hours each day (plus communication, writing proposals etc on top), and apart from lunch don't step away from the computer even when tired and procrastinating. Because if I'm sat there working on a problem I can bill the client, if I step away (even though I'll be more productive when I come back) I can't.

I know it's a matter of perspective on how I define 'honest' and 'billable', but I cannot make the mental leap needed!

<comment><USER39> I suggest you alter your assumptions of how many hours you can get in a day. If your monthly budget depends on you billing 8 hours a day, 20 days a month you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.

I know that, by in large, I can bill a 30 hour week, assuming I have a full time project. Between not billing for restroom or mental health breaks, random trips to Fry's for a new hard drive, etc... those tasks can eat up your calendar.

When I have little client work on the radar I assume I'll be able to get 20 billable hours a week in- the rest of the week is eaten up with Buisness development, meeting with new clients, estimating projects etc.

<comment><USER38> It's not my monthly budget, so much as my guilt complex that people in full- time employment are paid to do 8 hours work each day. I don't quite 'get' how they can be employed in that and have a clean conscience if they then procrastinate or use it for restroom breaks - and I do know that office workers waste a lot of time.

You're right though about the hours; 30 seems sensible to aim for, especially being newly-married where working late every evening isn't a Good Idea (TM).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's strange, there is nothing I hate more than routine. But everything is this world seem made around routine and the expectation that tomorrow will be the same as today. Did anybody have the same aversion as me and try to tackle that?

How do you work without common everyday routine in the team etc.?

</comment><comment><USER41> A lot of this article applies just as much to working at the office. Managing time, distractions and communicating clearly are important no matter where you are.

Does anyone have any links to articles that talk more about the tool for collaborating and developing remotely? With existing tools I find it pretty easy to get code written and coordinate remotely, but it it still seems very difficult to actively collaborate in real time remotely. I'm a little surprised at how hard it is still to do some white boarding with someone else remotely or just share my desktop with them so they can see a prototype easily. Gotomeeting and Webex are ok but cost money and are more geared to showing presentations than anything else.

<comment> benji-york It sounds like you're doing Windows development, so this may not help you much, but it helps me. :)

I have a little open source project that lets two Linux users share a console session remotely. It is much like sharing a screen or tmux session but without all the setup. If you're interested you can check it out at termbeamer.com

I'm actively improving it and hope to release a version soon that will let the "client" connect using an SSH client and not need Termbeamer installed at all.

<comment><USER42> > I have a little open source project that lets two Linux users share a > console session remotely.

Me too: <https://syme.herokuapp.com>

SSH is really handy for this kind of thing as long as you don't need a browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I have found opposite regarding using email.

In 6 months, I have been using IM mainly first half, email mainly the second.

While using IM, I tended to talk more about doing than rather doing. It used to take hours to discuss things and chats which were supposed to be 15mins long happened to be an hour or more.

When switched to email, I became way more efficient. I spent more time on thinking about questions I'm asking, and questions to potential answers. This lead to 1) well thought designs 2) efficient communication 3) no distracting IM.

IM is still good for the times when you need to discuss something quickly. And I mean really quickly.

I guess it largely depends on the stakeholders/managers communication habits.

P.S. I am working solo with my boss

</comment><comment><USER44> Is that kind of job viable when constantly moving? I want to travel in the next two years, and I was thinking about keeping only stuff that fits in a bag and just going away with my wife, but doing that without a decent amount of cash or a job you can have on the road would be hard. Is it viable to have a remote job while travelling, in the event that I might stay for several days in each city and do most of the travelling on weekends?

I believe that not having a place would help in keeping the blood pumping and staying proactive, yet it would probably be hard during crunch times if the correct workspace cannot be found. Would it be worth giving a shot?

<comment><USER45> I have a full-time, remote, software development job that I started while travelling. It is doable. You may find that it is hard to be motivated to do work when you'd rather be out seeing the place that you are visiting though. I also find that it usually takes me a week or two to get into a daily routine in a new place. So when I plan to go places I generally make it fit into a (long) weekend or I plan to stay for 2 weeks or more.

My working space is pretty much always just wherever I'm living at the time. Which means that checking ahead to make sure I'll have a decent internet connection is part of picking a place to live. I especially like when I can find a place that has at least a separate office nook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> From my discussions with other people working remotely and my own personal experience (not quite a decade), it is the eating-exercise-social parts that are extremely difficult.

If you already are strong in these areas and continue your current behavioral patterns you should be fine.

If you live somewhere outside a densely populated area, or if your eating- exercise-social patterns revolve around work you can be in for a very difficult time. The first weeks, months, may be fun, years in you can end up with real medical problems.

Figure those three things out, and then wrap your work patterns around that. It is much more sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER47> "it's not things, techniques, or even programming languages that get you rich, it's people (no one got rich on their own!)."

The best line in this post for me. If only we could all print this and stick on on our walls!!

</comment><comment><USER48> This article makes no mention of spouse or kids, both of which can be major distractions. For adults, it's very hard to not see someone as "here" even though they are just down the hall; for kids - it's impossible. The compromise my wife and I have is that I take time during the day to help out around the house or run errands, but I make up the time at night.

Also, I pretty much have my headphones on all the time, which is not so different from when I worked in a real office.

<comment><USER49> "Having a space to work that you can ignore people is key to getting work done. Constantly being interrupted by people you live with or other people will kill your productivity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Also, in some work place like mine. There are set of pseudo rules implied by managers who ask people to quote a valid reason when you work from home. Most of the times, There is no reason when I feel like working from home. Actually thats also i have come across few people who kind of misuse the option of working from home and employ it when they have some other stuff to do, in which case they would be spending lot less time working.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think everyone has their own cup of tea. I have been working remotely for about a year now in different places around the world and what I find most appealing to is to find a co-working place where I can get stuff done and have that busy/creative feeling all around without the constraints for work hours.

I have met some of the smartest and most amazing people in these places. It's also nice because doesn't make you such a loner :-)

</comment><comment><USER52> Can you recommend some companies where you can work remotely? Maybe even abroad? (I'm living in Germany.)

I'm searching for a part-time job somewhen in the future.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm a huge fan of coworking spaces. Depending on your budget and needs, sometimes you can even rent a desk to call your own. It's been great for me to work around other developers, bump into people and have interesting discussions, and just get out of the house.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've worked remotely for over a year on multiple occasions. The article sounds right to me. You absolutely need your own desk and office, with a door that closes. There is no substitute.

</comment><comment><USER55> _> Work the amount of hours you agreed to with your employer_

I was wondering: are there any firms that don't set strict number of hours one have to work? How many of them is like that?

</comment><comment><USER56> This whole bed is for sleep is anecdotal nonsense. My back isn't great so switching from standing to sitting to laying is what I do throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER57> I work from bed, that's the worst part of working from home.

</comment><comment><USER58> thanks for writing this - i'm about to be a 'work from home' contractor so all the advice I can get helps!

</comment><comment><USER59> Next thing people will be telling me how to look out the window. Maybe there is a book in that?</comment>


How learning Smalltalk can make you a better developer - <AUTHOR> http://techbeacon.com/how-learning-smalltalk-can-make-you-better-developer <comment><USER2> I tried out Smalltalk for a day and I was completely amazed by the some of the features that still haven't made it into other languages. One of the features that I remember in particular was the ability to search for functions by examples. I don't remember the exact syntax for it, but you could search by something like:

        "hi" => "HI"

and Smalltalk would tell you "toUpperCase". Immediately after seeing this, I wanted the languages that I use everyday to be able to do it.

<comment><USER3> Haskell has this through hoogle.

[http://www.haskell.org/hoogle](http://www.haskell.org/hoogle)

<comment><USER4> Haskell has something even cooler. Automatic program synthesis through examples: [http://nautilus.cs.miyazaki-u.ac.jp/~skata/MagicHaskeller.ht...](http://nautilus.cs.miyazaki-u.ac.jp/~skata/MagicHaskeller.html)

For example:

        f "hi" == "HI"

Gives:

        f = (map toUpper)

<comment><USER2> From the abstract:

> The synthesis algorithm takes a generate-and-test approach: it generates an > infinite stream of all the expressions having the same type as f; then, they > are tested against the given predicate.

I'm really impressed that such a simple approach works. Initially I thought it was something similar to FOIL[0]. FOIL was a program that could learn function definitions by examples. One version of FOIL was able to solve exercises from a Prolog book. For one of the exercises, it was able to come up with a solution that was shorter than what humans had previously come up with. I don't remember exactly how FOIL worked, but if I recall correctly, it would repeatedly add predicates to it's currently best solution while trying to maximize the number of test cases which it had solved correctly.

[0] [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=4AD...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=4AD32A0EB7A8DB42D651EB951F50B128?doi=10.1.1.34.4926&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER5> The Smalltalk mechanism (Squeak/Pharo) also uses generate and test, just FYI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article highlights several contributions of Smalltalk to CS, but here's a few more:

David Ungar and Randall Smith, originally at Xerox PARC, then Stanford, designed Self, a prototype-based dynamic JITted Smalltalk dialect. In 1991 they joined Sun Microsystems, where Self kept being developed.

In 1994, Urs Hölzle at Stanford wrote a better compiler for Self. He was approached by Dave Griswold, who wrote a paper in 1993 with Gilad Bracha titled 'Strongtalk: Typechecking Smalltalk in a Production Environment', and together with Lars Bak the four of them started a company to commercialize Strongtalk. They were acquihired by Sun in 1997.

Together, the Self and Strongtalk teams' work resulted in the HotSpot VM for Java in 1999.

\- David Ungar went on to be a member of the 'Dynamic Optimization Group' at IBM Research.

\- Randall Smith now works at the 'Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization Group' at Oracle Labs.

\- Urs Hölzle was one of Google's first hires and its first VP of Engineering and significantly shaped the company.

\- Lars Bak joined Google in 2004 and went on to design the V8 runtime and Dart.

\- Gilad Bracha went on to co-author much of the Java Language Specification and the Java VM Specification, then started a company to design the language Newspeak, and now works at Google on Dart.

\- Dave Griswold continued to develop Strongtalk well into the 2000s, but I can't find any current info on him. If you know what he's up to these days, let me know!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this! I learned something today. I shall have to post this in the Comment section of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not really an ST fan myself. I'm not averse to it, or anything, but it has a steep learning curve, because you have to learn the class library, the IDE, and the language, and the poor tutorials and documentation make it even worse. Lisp had way better docs, and could be written in any text editor, so that's what I learned.

However, if you want to learn Smalltalk, might I reccomend GNU smalltalk? it's got the excellent docs you'd expect from a GNU project, unix integration, and while it does have a class browser and an image, it supports plain old text files for code, so you don't have to master an IDE if you don't want to, plus it's good for scripting. However, it has (mostly) the same class library as Squeak and other smalltalks, so it lessens the learning curve somewhat.

<comment><USER8> That you're so unwilling to leave your text editor makes you unsuitable for Smalltalk, because Smalltalk without its image and IDE stuffed into text files that work with all your normal tools _isn 't_ Smalltalk. It's missing _everything_ Smalltalk'ers love about developing in Smalltalk. Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason.

<comment><USER9> > Someone who wants to learn Smalltalk should try Pharo or Squeak, not GNU, > GNU will just leave them with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason.

As someone who has tried Pharo and Squeak, I was left with a bad taste of weirdness for no good reason. The colorful Playskool environment, while neat at first, was not only ugly and alien, but also quite minimal compared to Vim or Emacs. I still don't understand how anyone could possibly be productive in such an environment. What is it that's so attractive about it to Smalltalkers?

<comment><USER10> > The colorful Playskool environment

That was likely Squeak, not Pharo. Pharo has muted a lot of the UI colours to be more appropriate for a business environment.

> How anyone could possibly be productive in such an environment. What is it > that's so attractive about it to Smalltalkers?

Perhaps its useful to get some outsiders perspectives....

Avdi Grimm has written a few books about Ruby. He records his experience trying Pharo in "I make you hate Ruby in 7 minutes"

[http://www.virtuouscode.com/2015/05/11/in-which-i-make- you-h...](http://www.virtuouscode.com/2015/05/11/in-which-i-make-you-hate- ruby-in-7-minutes/)

Noel Rappin has written a few books about Ruby & Javascript. He provides an introduction to Smalltalk in "MountainWest RubyConf 2014 - But Really, You Should Learn Smalltalk"

[http://youtu.be/eGaKZBr0ga4](http://youtu.be/eGaKZBr0ga4)

<comment><USER9> > That was likely Squeak, not Pharo. Pharo has muted a lot of the UI colours > to be more appropriate for a business environment.

I've used both. Yes, Pharo is considerably more professional-looking, but it's still rather ugly and alien (as in, it looks very odd when juxtaposed with the other applications running on the host system).

> Avdi Grimm has written a few books about Ruby. He records his experience > trying Pharo in "I make you hate Ruby in 7 minutes"

Does it normally take 7 minutes to write "hello world" in Pharo? If so, that doesn't sound productive to me at all. Really, the only thing I saw in that video that made me feel envious in the least was the exemplary method search. But you don't need an environment like that to have exemplary search; I've been told Hoogle offers something like it for Haskell, for example.

Apart from that, I was pretty unimpressed with most of what I saw in that video, to be honest. The class browsing didn't seem particularly different from what Eclipse has to offer (which should be unsurprising given Eclipse's heritage in IBM VisualAge Smalltalk). The debugger didn't seem to be anything special -- it looks like a debugger. Going further, the heavy reliance on the mouse and the floating/stacking model of window management seriously cramp my style and slow me down.

Even as a language, I don't see what Smalltalk has to offer the programmer when compared to other languages. Yes, it's nice- and clean-looking. Yes, it was hugely influential. But it forces you to build your entire application out of nothing but objects and methods belonging to them, and cannot offer the flexibility of a multiparadigm language. Even as a strictly-OO language, it limits you to single inheritance and single dispatch. What other tools does it offer for creating and composing abstractions beyond its degenerate notions of objects and methods? Perhaps in 1980 it was an excellent choice, but we've had better choices since the 90s rolled in.

I've got enormous respect for the likes of Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, L Peter Deutsche, and their whole crew at PARC. They certainly made history and have had a great deal of influence on our field. Notwithstanding, they were not alone in their innovation, and their product was not and is not perfect. Perhaps nothing will ever be perfect, but I feel as though Smalltalk has been surpassed at this point in time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Smalltalk doesn't only rely on OOP. It has lambdas and closures so that you have functional capabilities, too. Not strictly multi-paradigm, but close enough. This is why Smalltalk is so powerful.

Multiple inheritance has its problems, too. I prefer the greater simplicity of single inheritance.

<comment><USER9> Most "problems" with multiple inheritance stem from languages that don't provide a well-defined method resolution scheme. Languages that _do_ have a well-defined hierarchy linearization tend to avoid most of the problems with multiple inheritance.

See, for example: Common Lisp, Dylan, Python (since 2.3), Perl 6, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I learned to program in Dolphin SmallTalk at a small business run out of barn next to a bunch of soybean farms. While probably not the best language to run a production application with (because of the tininess of the community), I agree that it's a great language to learn on. I think the SmallTalk development environment is one of the closest things available to what Bret Victor was talking about in this article: [http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/). The IDE integration and live coding experience is fantastic. I really miss this feature in other languages/IDEs. It's also amazing how the refactoring engine in Dolphin is as good/better for a dynamically typed language than many IDEs for statically typed languages.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd love to see a dance-off between pg and a smalltalk advocate.

<comment><USER13> This thread between Alan Kay and Rich Hickey was pretty close: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722)

<comment><USER14> That was painful. Two smart people talking around each other.

<comment><USER13> I thought it was really interesting to hear what they had to say, even if they weren't conversing well with each other.

This IS HN, after all :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember learning smalltalk years ago and would have loved to use it commercially, it always had many problems though. Platform support, databases connectivity, performance, you couldn't make a shrink wrapped distributable. It was always stuck as an academic language imho, which is a shame. Even now lets say I wanted to use it to develop my mobile app, I don't think this is possible? Learn it by all means it has some great ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use Amber Smalltalk to write cross-platform mobile apps for Android and iOS: [https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/amber-alert-we-can-do- mobi...](https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/amber-alert-we-can-do-mobile- apps-34b2d4d32731)

Smalltalk is not stuck as an academic language. Cincom and GemTalk would be very surprised to hear that. It is, and has been, used all around the world for commercial purposes for over three decades: [https://medium.com/smalltalk- talk/who-uses-smalltalk-c6fdaa6...](https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/who- uses-smalltalk-c6fdaa6319a)

It is possible to create shrink-wrapped distributables, but these days there really isn't much call for it. Most of the action is in the web and mobile space and IoT and so on.

Regarding performance, it was an issue prior to circa 1995, but today's hardware is more than fast enough. That's why Python and Ruby and Perl and Erlang are so popular, being no faster than Smalltalk.

<comment><USER15> Do you know of a native version of smalltalk for mobile and desktop (produces native executables that is)? Not a web browser version - too slow for my purposes. I haven't been able to find one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Article very briefly mentions Squeak[0], which I think would be worth looking into if you wish to pursue Smalltalk as a modern language instead of simply a historical footnote. Alan Kay, Smalltalk's creator, continues to contribute to Squeak, which he considers closer to his original ideal of what the language should be than Smalltalk-80.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak)

<comment><USER5> Hmmm, I find this slightly misleading. It was a long time ago that the original Smalltalk creators were involved in Squeak (Dan Ingalls is the main developer, Alan Kay the visionary).

It should also be mentioned that Squeak (and Pharo too) was and still is VERY close to Smalltalk-80.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that's vacuously true in that learning any language that's dissimilar enough from the ones you already know can make you a better developer. (Smalltalk's nowhere close to the top of the "learn next" stack for me tho)

</comment><comment><USER18> Unstoppable pop-ups

<comment><USER19> I almost can't read anything more than a page long without Print Friendly[1] or Readability[2]. Not because of ads, but getting rid of all the distraction makes it so much more pleasurable.

No wonder why Medium has grown so much.

[1] [https://www.printfriendly.com/](https://www.printfriendly.com/)

[2] [https://www.readability.com](https://www.readability.com)

<comment><USER20> If browsers showed stats, I wouldn't be surprised printfriendly being on the first spot.

printfriendly will lower your blood pressure.

When I feel anarchist enough I use dillo.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ___.sh - a static markdown blog 'engine' in 42 lines of shell commands - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nicolasH/frankensteins <comment><USER2> Cool! We use something similar for our "shared" blog at dev.aboutus.org. We generate HTML from markdown files via jekyll and it scales really well.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) this one goes to great length to be as short as possible. No need to install ruby or python, only Multimarkdown. There is no configuration, it mostly cat bits and pieces of files into an html file for each post and an index file. You can modify these bits and pieces and that's it.</comment></comment>


Battleships: a ridiculous but awesome idea - <AUTHOR> http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/battleships-a-ridiculous-but-awesome-idea/ <comment><USER2> This is not exactly convincing. Battleships, far from being a ridiculous idea, were a logical and necessary step for any navy wishing to project power at sea. They were so heavily armoured and gunned that for a long time, from the late 19th Century to just before WWII, the only realistic defence against a battleship was another battleship.

While the Battle of Jutland may seem silly, the alternative would have been a bunch of smaller ships duking it out (probably for a similar result) or only one side possessing battleships and annihilating the other side.

Manoeuvre warfare with a lighter fleet was not an option, as smaller vessels had smaller guns that frequently could not even penetrate a battleship's armour. So a battleship would've been able to pick off opponents at ease while they struggled to cause any damage. It's no good getting inside your opponent's OODA loop if you can't cause any damage.

And the technology that would have permitted another nation to bypass the idea of a battleship altogether and attack it from a different angle just did not exist at the time. It was only decades after Jutland that naval aircraft and aircraft carriers became fast and advanced enough to make the aerial bombing and torpedoing of enemy vessels a real possibility. These days missiles are the great equalisers.

Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence.

With reference to the hacker context, the lesson is that simply moving quickly isn't enough. You also need to understand what a competitor's real weaknesses are as well as understand which parts of their strengths you're incapable of attacking. If your enemy has battleships and all you have are frigates, then maybe you shouldn't be fighting them at sea.

<comment><USER3> "Manoeuvre warfare is fantastically effective when the circumstances allow for it, but the available conditions, technology and personnel can sometimes make it ineffective. For instance, the German Blitzkrieg was extraordinarily effective against the static French defences in 1940, but the same forces and tactics came unstuck in 1941 when faced with a vicious winter and the Russian scorched earth style of defence."

Nah, the reason it came unstuck is because the Germans ran out of fuel and because overrunning Stalingrad became a point of pride with Hitler and the Wermacht...there were not tactical/strategic reasons to occupy the city when they could have encircled and passed.

Encirclement and passage was one of the lessons the American military learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. Rather than invading every island, they just bypassed those without strategic value, cut the shipping lanes, and let the occupying forces starve.

<comment><USER4> > Encirclement and passage was one of the lessons the American military > learned (sort of) from Stalingard that they later executed in the island > hopping campaigns of the Pacific.

I was just reading Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy>) last night, more exactly a chapter called "Fortresses are generally more injurious than useful":

> But when the prince has not a good army, then fortresses whether within his > territory or upon the frontiers are either injurious or useless to him; > injurious, because they are easily lost, and when lost are turned against > him; and even if they are so strong that the enemy cannot take them, he will > march by with his army and leave them in the rear; and thus they are of no > benefit, for good armies, unless opposed by equally powerful ones, march > into the enemy's country regardless of cities or fortresses, which they > leave in their rear. We have many instances of this in ancient history; and > Francesco Maria did the same thing quite recently, when, marching to attack > Urbino, he left ten hostile cities behind him without paying the least > attention to them.

You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the same.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book, and you're mentioning somth about the US Army learning from the Germans' mistakes. Well, I can tell you that they certainly did not learn anything from reading Machiavelli, otherwise they wouldn't have trusted Karzai in Afghanistan (there's a chapter called "How dangerous it is to trust to the representations of exiles"), not to mention trying to conquer peace by bribing everyone involved in ruling present Afghanistan (there's also a chapter for it: "Republics and princes that are really powerful do not purchase alliances by money, but by their valor and the reputation of their armies") or not doing anything about Abu Ghraib ("How dangerous it is for a republic or a prince not to avenge a public or a private injury").

Here's the English translation of this great book: <http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775>

<comment> Tuna-Fish > You can very well replace "fortress" with "battleship" and the idea is the > same.

No, you can't, because the battleship can move and attack your supply lines.

Battleships won the first world war. Not because of any engagement they participated in, but because the Royal Navy stopped German merchant shipping entirely, while the Kriegsmarine only managed to harass British shipping. You cannot go around a battleship when one of the primary points in it's design is to be fast enough to interdict anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "in their heyday of displacement speed vessels, [battleships] were the fastest things on the high seas"

Cruisers and destroyers were always faster than battleships (they had to be), displacement hull and all. It gives no confidence when you start the article with a glaring factual error.

"The idea of battleships duking it out in the high seas is pretty ridiculous when you stop to think about it. It never really happened unless you count the Battle of Jutland."

If you write such an article, you should do a bit of research and be at least dimly aware of the battles of Tsushima, Heligoland Bight, Moon Sound etc. etc. etc. Battleships were indeed a bit slower, but when they showed up they instantly dominated the field with their range and firepower. Even in WW2, when the carrier greatly reduced their importance, battleships fought a few very important engagements, e.g. Denmark Strait and second battle of Guadalcanal.

It's easy to deride things you don't understand as "tumescent penii". But the historical fact is, for about half a century after 1890, battleships were indeed the most effective (and also expensive) naval weapons system in existence.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually a pretty good article, despite the inaccuracies noted here in other comments. The author uses some hyperbole and makes some errors, but still an interesting discussion regarding phalanx vs. maneuver warfare.

While we're picking on individual parts, though -

> For missile silos, just target the enemy's silos with lots of missiles and > you can duke it out and win (just like the phalanx). If he puts his missiles > on rail cars, you haven't got a chance of hitting them all.

Technically that's true, but I think the reason countries use missile silos and stationary bases is actually for ability to protect key installations and arms during domestic unrest and rioting, which is a statistically much more likely problem for a world power than getting hit with a first strike from another major world power without any warning or preparation time.

Still, even with some errors and exaggerations, it was quite an interesting read.

<comment><USER7> He misses the point entirely with missile silos. The backbone of the modern nuclear arsenal is the ballistic missile submarine. Far more mobile and far harder a target than any railborn missile.

<comment><USER8> An intermediate solution are land mobile launch platforms:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-2UTTKh_Topol_M>

They have randomized patrol routes, so it is hard to track them, but they can launch thermonuclear MIRV warheads.

Yeah subs are a lot better but also a lot more expensive...

<comment><USER7> Subs aren't necessarily such a hugely expensive option though. A single typhoon or ohio class missile boat can carry up to about 200 total warheads. That's on the order of the entire nuclear arsenal for the average nuclear power (e.g. France, China, Israel, India). Considering the massive survivability boost of a submarine, it's one of the better bets as a nuclear deterrent backbone, provided you have the technology to build such things.

<comment><USER8> It sort of depends on the latest and greatest technology to be stealthy. For example, China, by putting all of its warheads in 2 or 3 subs would be putting all of its eggs in one basket. Those subs becomes the weakest link.

US probably has the capability to track other countries' subs, but it is a little harder to do that with hundreds of always moving launch platorms. Those are much cheaper to build and if they carry MIRV warheads, they can be very dangerous. It is of course possible to see them from a satellite but because they are always moving targetting them like one target a stationary silo is very different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Big warships could accomodate bigger cannons. Bigger cannons could deliver bigger shells further, enabling your warships to hit the enemy while keeping out of their range.

These capital ships aren't being built today because missiles and fighter planes suddenly negated their advantage, not because they weren't a good idea to begin with.

IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real world experience fighting wars and stuff.

<comment><USER10> > IMHO it's an overwhelming act of condescension pretending to be smarter than > thousands of admirals and military advisors, many of them with lots of real > world experience fighting wars and stuff.

I thought the same thing, but then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare). For some reason it seems like it's surprisingly common for wide varieties of armies to repeat history.

<comment><USER11> _then I remembered that the military leadership and tactics during The Great War were pretty damn lousy (e.g. trench warfare)_

What's so lousy about trench warfare? I mean, yes, it sucks, but it's a Nash equilibrium given the technology at the time (very good machine guns, lousy tanks and aircraft). If your enemy has trenches, you need trenches too. What else would you have done?

<comment><USER12> Oh, you could have stayed in the trenches---but don't order any attacks. Just wait for your enemies to be dumb enough to attack first. Just bleed them dry with defence.

(I heard that the Belgian king was held in high esteem by the normal Belgians for not ordering those suicidal attacks.)

<comment><USER13> But then when they don't attack you have 2 armies sitting and waiting until the supplies run out (assuming the other learns you are not going to attack back). So when one realizes they will run out first, or another army is coming to cut their lines, or the city behind them is starving, or one side drops mustard gas into the other trench ... what do you do?

<comment><USER12> If the other guys are attacking, you wait them out. Defence was cheaper than attack in those days.

IF the other guys are also defending, you can think about, maybe, peace?

<comment><USER13> Yes, peace would be the best outcome, but there is probably some overarching reason for the war that won't be solved by two armies deciding not to fight for tactical reasons.

<comment><USER12> The Germans could have chosen to fight in the east, where they actually won historically, and decide to sit it out in the west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The relevant part (to us hackers) is the use of maneuver warfare vs "phalanx" fighting.

Think of Msft, Oracle, IBM, Apple as the phalanx fighters. They lock shields and charge, spending millions (billions) of dollars (instead of soldiers).

The problem is their tactics are clumsy. Imagine all the Microsoft VP's circling the wagons around really bad _implementations_ (the ideas aren't bad) - I'm sure you can thing of some.

If you are lean agile Mongol (hacker) you can easily run around them and attack them from the back.

Your OODA loop is much tighter. You can maneuver and decide much better than a big hierarchical organization.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop>

See: The Smartphone Wars: Tightening the OODA Loop <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2975>

<comment><USER5> The phalanx was a really bright idea for its day. The Greeks were able to defeat much larger Persian armies (Marathon, Plataea) with their phalanxes. And the phalanx was a crucial part of Philip II and Alexander's combined arms system and their maneuver warfare. "Phalanx" vs. "maneuver warfare" is, at best, a false dichotomy.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, this was my main issue with the article. As technology has developed, the advantage has switched back and forth from attackers to defenders, and from big heavy stuff to rapid manueverable stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've observed a principle that militaries build to win the last total war they fought. This is why guys like Billy Mitchell (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell>) were ignored about the importance of air power leading up to WWII. The status quo was to gear up for another WWI, complete with entrenched and barely mobile front lines.

But of course the German Blitzkreig, a brilliant archetype of maneuver warfare, overran these emplacements, the fixed system of defense built by the French being the best example (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line>).

The US military has been developed for the last 60 years to re-win World War II; even the Cold War was really just the US and Russia building to re-win WWII until Russia ran out of cash.

As one can see given the issues that the US military has had in Iraq and Afghanistan the WWII methods of battle, which have devolved back to phalanx warfare, are struggling (again) to defeat maneuver warfare.

<comment><USER15> But it was the Siegfried Line[1] in WWII that let the Germans concentrate their whole army against the Poles and defeat them before turning west, and that let them attack where the French weren't rather than have to defend the current border. So German tactics in WWII were dependant on the same static defenses that the French used, but they took that and added a maneuver component instead of replacing it entirely.

Manuever warfare often relies on a static force to pin the enemy in place while the mobile elements do their thing. Saying "Maneuver good, static bad" is just as silly as the reverse, whats needed for success is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the various tools available and intelligently choose the right tool or combination of tools for the task at hand.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line>

<comment><USER16> The Siegfried Line was made enormously more effective by general malaise in the Western armies (then under French command) though; in spite of being relatively weak and unfinished it went largely untroubled. There were some small incursions into western Germany but they weren't substantial.

What makes this particularly galling is relative strengths of the two armies at the time; the Allied forces in northeastern France had significantly more tanks (for example) available there than the Germany army had in total, let alone defending the western front. It's far from impossible that a serious, concerted attack on western Germany in the 1939-1940 'phoney war' period could have had enough success to significantly alter the course of the war and turn it significantly into a land war in western Germany for much of the period.

<comment><USER15> Its very true that it wasn't yet as strong as it was designed to be nor was it as strong as the Maginot line. It only had to be enough, though. If Germany's western border had been completely unfortified there would have been no way that the Allies wouldn't have attacked. And even the unfinished wall represented a huge investment for Nazi Germany. If you haven't already I'd recommend reading "The Wages of Destruction" on the economy of Nazi Germany, its a fascinating book for a number of reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe the article misses the point that America, through it's complete dominance of the air and seas, has made naval warfare largely irrelevant for 99% of countries - hence their lack of will or desire to build them. The world saw centuries of naval proliferation up to WW2.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had an interesting conversation with Martin van Creveld not long ago about fighter jets. Since he is one of the more famous military historians out there, he often gets asked for advice by senior defense personnel. Lots of European governments asked him if they should purchase F22s, etc. from the US. His advice, get UAVs, fighters don't matter any more (He just wrote the definitive book on the history of Air Power, btw).

Anyways, no one actually takes his advice. Acquisitions are always busy buying supplies for the last war. Surprise, surprise.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like The Battle of Jutland actually had 78 torpedo boats on the German side - didn't they get the maneuver memo?

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland>

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think anyone has pointed this out in a comment yet...

What is better with very expensive but obsolete machinery than to people use their machinery to duke it out. Will things explode and sink "at great cost" ? Well yes, that's sort of the point. It is even more costly to keep them afloat and maintained.

To those who think this is cruel, European powers periodically fought wars with each other for thousands of years before 1914, they just never were quite as catastrophic (enter chemical weapons and, later, nukes). Hell, the Catholic church tried to ban jousting many times since... you guessed it, people frequently died trying to poke each other with sticks for the sake of scarves from pretty ladies.

Hooah!

</comment><comment><USER20> Having a large battleship collection does allow you to line them up nicely for review:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Fleet>

<comment><USER21> I don't think that postcard picture is giving a wholly realistic view of the Grand Fleet at the time. It seems like there's twice as many capital ships in the picture as there should be according to the text.

EDIT: Actually, if you click on the picture, the description does mention it's "likely an artist's vision".

<comment><USER22> Photoshopped, I knew it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Mongols could defeat regular armies because they had many thousands of men who lived their lives on horseback, with bow in hand. It's not that they were smarter, it's that they had the option.

<comment><USER24> It's also worth noting that the Mongols were turned back by the Germanic tribes because, well, compound bows simply don't work in damp European forests whereas francesca _do_. Phallanx tactics versus maneuver, as the author has it, is meaningless in the face of the inability or unwillingness to adapt to your environment.

<comment><USER25> Reference?

The Mongols easily won the Battle of Legnica in Poland: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Legnica>

That's really the most Western of their major battles, and they were turned back by choice, not by losses in battle.

Were there any cases where they had anything other than skirmishes with Germanic tribes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my admittedly ignorant opinion, he uses the terms "maneuver warfare" and "phalanx warfare" so broadly as to make them almost meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing > important has developed since 1919; we're still reeling from the shock.

Information theory? Software? Modern quantum mechanics?

Yeah, I know there's been no important stuff except that important stuff.

</comment><comment><USER25> Some guy called Napoleon seemed to know a little bit about maneuver warfare, and he was around before battleships. There was this little thing called the Battle of Austerlitz[1] that the author may be interested to read about.

Napoleon kind of knew what he was doing. His use of position and movement is actually mentioned in the Wikipeda's article on maneuver warfare [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz> [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_u...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare#Napoleon.27s_use_of_manoeuvre)

</comment><comment><USER28> He seems to have forgotten about the Bismarck <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck>

true fact: my wife's great uncle, Tuck Smith, is the US pilot who spotted the Bismarck, back when the US (supposedly) wasn't involved in WWII.

<http://www.navytimes.com/legacy/new/0-NAVYPAPER-1642064.php>

(Interesting fact, he was flying over Wake island on 12/7/41)

</comment><comment><USER29> He also misrepresents the view of Victor Davis Hanson-- I think he's referring to "Carnage and Culture", which has a much more nuanced (and thus far different) argument.

</comment><comment><USER30> Any battle tech that's an order-of-magnitude cheaper to kill than to produce is destined for obsolescence. You can see this happening now with main battle tanks, which are easily knocked out by IEDs and increasingly sophisticated man-portable missiles. It will be interesting to see what happens to the manned air superiority fighter over the next couple of decades now that unmanned drones are being deployed on a wide scale.

<comment><USER31> Few M1s have been destroyed or badly damaged by insurgents in Iraq. Their use has declined since the invasion not because they are too vulnerable, but because they are less useful without enemy tanks to engage and using them against infantry in urban environments risks heavy civilian casualties.

<comment><USER32> Also, they're harder to fit on the streets.

<comment><USER33> And they ruin streets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting article but the grammar and the typos... ouch. Especially when he's trying to use some uncommon words.

</comment><comment><USER35> In the same category, half a century later: aircraft carriers.

Although I'm not sure this qualifies as "hacker", let alone "news".

<comment><USER36> Aircraft carriers are somewhere in between. The aircraft they carry are part of maneuver warfare.

<comment><USER37> except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority.

Ever see Independence Day or, more recently, Battle LA? Didn't you find it stupid that once the command ship are destroyed, the enemy essentially dies? This is what aircraft carriers represent.

Take the $23 billion dollars it takes to build the first Gerald R. Ford Carrier and invest that into various decentralized, independent, small technologies, and your army is considerably better for it when it comes to any serious threat.

It's like our military planners never read Ender's Game.

<comment><USER11> _except they are extremely expensive and hard to defend. They are great for projecting power against countries that can't defend against them, but extremely ineffective against a remotely comparable force. They are an obvious high priority_

There are 190-odd countries in the world. The US Navy's aircraft carriers are _extremely_ effective against at least 185 of 'em.

All the countries with a "remotely comparable force" also have nuclear weapons, so if the US ever winds up in a full-on shooting war with one of them then it's all over for both sides anyway.

No aircraft carrier has actually been sunk since World War 2. So they can't be _that_ vulnerable.

<comment><USER32> 1000 anti-ship missiles cost far less than an aircraft carrier with crew and aircraft aboard. There are a number of non-nuclear powers with the ability to launch 1000 anti-ship missiles against an American task force.

<comment><USER11> How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles? And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft carrier?

Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours of the war.

<comment><USER35> > How would you launch a thousand anti-ship missiles?

With a hundred small boats

> And how would you get that launch platform within range of a US aircraft > carrier?

With civilians on board

> Bear in mind that anything capable of launching a thouand anti-ship missiles > will be one of the things the USAF will destroy within the first few hours > of the war.

Yep, nothing better to start a war on the right foot than civilian massacre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >nobody wanted to risk their big expensive battleships in such an engagement again

This is his only proof that they're useless? Sorry, I need a lot more than that. Anybody who's played Civilization will know that you keep your battleships safe due to their cost, but they're supremely powerful nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER38> I had a very hard time taking the article seriously after reading "penii". I hate when people try to sound smart by incorrectly pluralizing this word.

</comment><comment><USER39> a ridiculous and not especially awesome post....

</comment><comment><USER40> "Just as Western Civilization staggered and faded after the fall of Rome, Western Civilization has never really recovered from the shock of the Great War. Cultures which endured and developed over a thousand years were wiped out, never to return again. Western culture, abstract thought and artistic development: nothing important has developed since 1919; we're still reeling from the shock."

What a load of bollocks. The author hasnt heard of the situationism, dada-ism, Zerzan or Sartre but for sure the western civilization has.

Further on "The Mongols never had the societal organization the West did, so they could never take advantage of their successes, and their various empires only served to make the Russians and Chinese paranoid, and Eastern European women more exotic looking.".

This is also bollocks, the mongols successfully ruled a vast area from China to Europe, the silk road was again revived, you could travel from Poland to Peking and not get robbed. The mongols collected all the taxes from such a vast region, even after Djenghis Khan died, thats some hell of organization right there.

On manuvre warfare, Alexander The Graeat (or as persions like to call him Alexander the Gay) certanly knew about this.

<comment><USER41> Or maybe he heard of situationism, dada, etc., and classifies them under "nothing important".

<comment><USER32> Frankly, I would too--but in terms of culture and philosophy there were certainly significant advances post-1919.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't find this article applicable to hacking at all. Maybe running a business, but I don't follow the necessary relationship between hacking and business.

<comment><USER43> What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> _If he puts his missiles on rail cars, you haven't got a chance of hitting them all. So it was, metaphorically, with the actual battlewagon; when it was at the peak of its capabilities, it was overcome by the manoeuvre warfare tactics of the aircraft carrier (which is itself probably made obsolete in real modern warfare by the cruise missile, the internet and the satellite)._

Don't forget robots! Man, you think the guided missiles in the first Gulf War were cool? Now we can kill people entirely by electromechanical proxy, staying out of the line of fire and incurring little to no risk ourselves! Man, we're living in the future! What a bunch of pussies we are.

Like Bill Hicks said, why can't we use this technology to shoot food into the mouths of hungry people instead?</comment>


YouTube terminates exploitive 'kids' channel ToyFreaks - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/17/youtube-terminates-exploitive-kids-channel-toyfreaks-among-broader-tightening-of-its-endangerment-policies/ <comment><USER2> I feel like any channel where parents are getting kids to do things, and the videos are getting high enough view counts that the owner is probably making a serious profit from them, should be under extreme scrutiny.

There is simply too much room for emotional manipulation as the parent pushes the boundaries on what they're making the kids do -- or even, at its most benign, simply pushing the kids to keep being in front of the camera, long after the kid wishes the channel would stop.

Parents should not be earning money off their kids. The balance of power simply isn't right for that to work in many cases.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but time and again we get examples from YouTube showing why this can be terrible for the kids.

<comment><USER3> _Parents should not be earning money off their kids. The balance of power simply isn 't right for that to work in many cases._

For thousands of years parents did intend to benefit from their childrens' labor - this notion together with high child mortality rates was impetus for agricultural families to have lots of kids. They could be put to work in the fields.

While I agree with this statement in 2017, and I find the Youtube channel in question a bit freaky (no pun intended), your statement made me think about the exploitation of child labor throughout human history. I think those of us in the developed world today are happy to live in a society that doesn't exploit child labor. However, in today's free market, the internet, and social media particularly, sometimes creates incentive systems that may reward exploitation directory (ToyFreaks; putting your kids to work on the farm) or indirectly (Facebook might find that they have the power to influence the incidence of depression in their users, and that depressed users bring in greater ad revenue; YouTube might find that videos which educate children bring in less ad revenue than videos which appeal to base desires and offer little enrichment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google should be ashamed of how they handled their YouTube for kids app.

I highly encourage all parents to delete this app from their devices. I spent a whole lot of time trying to go through "blocking" the episodes and the channels their algorithm was throwing at my child. I ended up deleting the app altogether because there was literally no end of these fake, mysterious and exploitative videos. Even the ones which seem harmless, are there only to make money, and there's no point to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> A normal company would have implemented YouTube Kids as a white-listed video area, but YouTube / Google went with an algorithm. It was irresponsible and worse, predictable that child predators would use this to get to the children. Pay a damn human to watch the video and either white-list it or maybe ban it. Computers are not that good and volume is not an excuse.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you. Google has really let parents down.

I downloaded YT for Kids app during its initial release days. It started out fairly well with popular and known TV show episodes. I did not think that Google would let its algorithm rule the wild west of the Internet world.

I sat down to look at the app after this controversy and was aghast to discover what exactly Google has done here. I kept on hitting the "block" on the episodes and channels it was throwing at my kid, and it would continuously show the next bad one. After going through this routine for 20 plus minutes, I gave up and deleted the damn app.

It is really ridiculous how Google has handled this product. Never again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope there's some real-life followup with this dad and his daughter. This content is just simply too creepy. And he's obviously been profiting from it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully they can can all those me too daddy finger films and fake paw patrol videos.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some thread(s) on reddit/conspiracy about comment section used for cp-stuff but too lazy to find it. Based on reason that dark-web is controlled.

They DID/DO have weird comments.

<comment><USER9> I believe the weird comments are the result of toddlers randomly tapping predictive keyboard suggestions on their parent's iPads as they watch the videos. The fact that they hit "post" after typing their nonsense markovian comments is a statistical inevitability given the millions of views of each video.

Though, if one wanted to hide secret messages on YouTube comments, that'd be the place to put them.

<comment><USER10> Probably not, it was in Thai I believe, and was discovered to decode into strange messages when passed through certain translators and keyboards.

(Maybe there are different types of comments though)

<comment><USER11> You can decode anything as anything if you are convinced there's a message there and have never heard of a null hypothesis.

I saw some of those threads. The methods of "decoding" they were using were worse than the ones the "Half-Life 3 confirmed" joke is based on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Another startup blatantly copied us - <AUTHOR> I'm the founder of Arc (https://arc.dev).
Earlier today we noticed another startup with 3200+ upvotes on Product Hunt actually copied us completely:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cloud-devs-1
1) They copied our ENTIRE intro video that we published back in 2017 (when we were still called CodementorX).
Original Arc (CodementorX) video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkOp0Oz7ux8
vs Cloud Devs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naVBBZUkavg
Frame by frame. They even forgot to remove our X part of the logo at timestamp :17. We never gave permission to use this, and we're sad to see such a blatant theft of our content that they are now marketing as their own.
2) We've also noticed they copied our website almost verbatim
Ours: https://arc.dev/become-a-remote-developer/get-started
> Become an Arc Developer > Let us know more about yourself by filling out this short application. It'll take you less time to finish this form than your cup of joe!
vs Cloud Devs: https://clouddevs.io/apply-as-a-developer/
> Apply as a developer > Let us know more about yourself by filling out this short application. It'll take you less time to finish this form than your cup of coffee!
What would you do in this situation? <comment><USER2> > What would you do in this situation?

Chuckle and move on. You cannot build a business on non-defensible stuff like website copy and introduction videos. Time spent worrying about this, or worse, fighting back, is wasted time and will only make things worse. As a startup you have more important things to worry about than this.

What makes you better than the competition? I assume it's the network you have built already? If it's your landing page copy, then you may be in trouble.

Though it's understandable that the people who created the content in the first place are upset about their work being stolen. I guess what they did was so good that others just wanted to use it :)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be possible to just annoy them a lot by sending lots of DMCA takedowns to their hosting platforms?

<comment><USER4> If you can outsource the work -- if you can pay someone else to keep spamming them -- it is a nice revenge.

But if you send the takedowns yourself, you are wasting both their and your time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with some posters asking you to move on and focus on something more important. Someone literally stole your work. It is not just an "inspiration". You should absolutely contact them and ask them to take it down. Send them a DMCA notice if needed. We should never condone theft saying "Move on because it is a waste of your time". Sometimes, you have to fight for what is right. You won't gain anything monetarily out of this but you have to let them know that this is NOT ok.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems you have done what you could. It's clear plagiarism and it should be called out.

But I don't think you should get too emotionally invested in it. Just keep doing what you're doing and use it to drive you into moving faster than them. I'd even try to be friends or proper rivals with them, as it means you can poach some of their staff (not the copywriters) if they fail.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know it can be upsetting because it's something you and others have poured their hearts into.

This happens occasionally. I've had material copied and have seen other people's entire websites copied. Recently, someone stole one of my colleague's startup app idea and posted their own knockoff with the same name in the app store.

Occasionally, I've contacted people who have copied my work and they've taken it down, which is the least expensive way to handle the problem. Other times, they just ignore my communication. You might contact an attorney to find out what your options are, which could vary for any given situation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could you report them to Product Hunt? Seems like you have a pretty clear cut case

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

We later realized that although they've gotten a good amount of upvotes & comments, actually many of them came from possible fake accounts / bots ... (fake photos, no past PH/twitter activities, etc)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. It looks like you can buy PH votes online if you search for relevant terms. I guess this is common tactic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Public post on Medium congrats to the Cofounders that copied and point out that they copied the best and mix your pitch in and in addition get their mailing address and send them a white wreath of roses with a note saying we are watching you(for those who are not old enough the first president of Apple did this)

</comment><comment><USER11> Take it as further validation!

You can also be a bit cheeky and call them out and then use it for marketing!

[https://medium.com/@zreitano/on-behalf-of-hims-patients- than...](https://medium.com/@zreitano/on-behalf-of-hims-patients-thank-you- for-copying-ro-aba99193d231)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While I'm amused, some of my colleagues were quite offended by this.

Our product manager, who wrote the original copy on Arc, had this comment upon seeing this:

"They actually copied our entire developer application form, I realized that because I was thinking, man they really wrote these like how I would talk in real life, it's because I came up with all the wording and they just copied them verbatim…….well, they swapped out "cup of joe" for "cup of coffee". This is highly upsetting"

<comment><USER12> You have IP rights around your video and copy but you're not in the business of selling videos and copy. You have X amount of dollars, Y amount of time- how much of that do you want to spend on pursuing the outrageous behavior of psychopaths, which itself is an unlimited resource?

You have to deliver a level of excellence which distinguishes you from all other entrants, including these unworthies. Supposedly you know how you're going to do that in a way which is defensible or at least very hard to duplicate. That implies there's something like a wicked problem at the heart of your business model which you know how to solve or you can deal with better than anyone else.

Failing that you're a commodity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Always great to know someone thought it was worth trying to copy. Take it as a form of flattery and move on.

Focus on things they can't copy, like revenue and customer satisfaction

</comment><comment><USER14> Just treat it as more validation of your idea. Don't get too involved and focus on your own business.</comment>


Releasing jsfunfuzz and DOMFuzz - <AUTHOR> https://www.squarefree.com/2015/07/28/releasing-jsfunfuzz-and-domfuzz/

<comment><USER2> I was fascinated by the link[1] in this line "As a result, instead of being hostile to fuzzing, Firefox developers actively help me fuzz their code."

It almost reads like a parody, but it's clearly quite serious; a detailed, thoughtful discussion of how you can ensure your continued ability to ship buggy products. (I know, that's not how the authors see it. But I know which philosophy I hope the people developing the software I have to use have, and it looks a lot more like Firefox than RIM.)

[1]: [https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and- events/b...](https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/about-us/newsroom-and- events/blogs/2014/january/introduction-to-anti-fuzzing-a-defence-in-depth- aid/)

<comment><USER3> And in the meantime:

        Over the last 11 years, these fuzzers have found 6450 Firefox bugs,
        including 790 bugs that were rated as security-critical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jesse's fuzzers are wonderful. When Mozilla developers make a big change to SpiderMonkey they'll often ask the QA folks to run the change through jsfunfuzz for a few hours, and very often it'll uncover real bugs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. Does anyone know if V8 and derived products are regularly tested with similar tools?

<comment><USER6> V8 gets tested on clusterfuzz

<comment><USER7> Best name ever!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked with Jesse a few years ago doing penetration testing on Firefox. He always amazed me with his brilliance. I learned a lot from his work, and he's a really nice person as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jesse's "stir DOM" fuzzer, which fits in a tweet & a bookmarklet:

        pick = a => a[a.length * Math.random() | 0];
        elts = document.all;
        stir = () => pick(elts).appendChild(pick(elts));
        setInterval(stir, 1);

Fun background information: [https://twitter.com/jruderman/status/626381997850632192](https://twitter.com/jruderman/status/626381997850632192)

</comment><comment><USER10> Honest q: what is meant by "modern Firefox"?

<comment><USER11> FF 39-42, as opposed to say, FF 4.

<comment><USER10> OK, thanks. And is that because of a large architectural difference starting around v39, compared to earlier versions?

<comment><USER12> Yes. Over the years we have worked on projects that would reduce the impact of bugs found by this fuzzer. For example we have prevented whole classes of security bugs that this fuzzer would find, which would reduce the priority of fixing them compared to a benign crash.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Some ideas for undertenner.com? - <AUTHOR>

I've had the domain undertenner.com for a while and it's been a search site for products under ten pounds or dollars
I'm now thinking about using the domain for something else but I am not sure what the best alternative is, so some ideas would be appreciated
I've been thinking about showing daily deals that are under $10, or showing products from major sites that under $10, or maybe just clearance items that are now under $10
Does anyone have any other suggestions? What do you think is the best approach? <comment><USER2> Twitter could be called under140.com

My point you don't have to restrict yourself to money as the scale.

-site for videos under 10 minutes. -site for pitches under 10 seconds (this has HUGE potential). -site exclusively for shoes under size 10. -github for music/ringtones (all under 10 seconds). allow editing/merging/mashing -groupon type site where 9 people buy something and tenth one gets it for free.

</comment><comment><USER3> a dating site that only accepts people if they are less than a perfect 10. The opposite of beautifulpeople.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion - it sounds interesting, but will people be embarrassed to be on it? Also there is the chicken and egg problem with dating sites which will be difficult to overcome

<comment><USER3> I didn't think anyone'd like it but I threw it out there anyways. Because it's a kind of a young person's name when it refers to money (who else says "tenner"), I'd maybe consider a directory/search engine of restaurants/bars that offer meals under ten bucks. Aim for students. They're always broke and hungry

<comment><AUTHOR> The student directory idea is really good, I am going to look into this

<comment><USER3> Hey, if you need a help in the future send me an email. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A dating site for people under the age of ten? Seriously, I think that's a great idea. A dating site for t(w)eens. Very unorthodox but let's be honest, that has potential.</comment>


Dear Apple, Please Make Up Your Mind - <AUTHOR>

Dear Apple,<p>Please make up your mind on whether applications quit or remain open after all their windows are closed. Preview, QuickTime and Keynote all quit if I close all their windows and switch to another application. Safari, iTunes and Activity Monitor -- not to mention almost every other third party application -- do not.  Why? Please pick one, and develop an interaction architecture that supports it. <comment><USER2> I've got running copies of both preview and keynote open right now with no active or open documents in either.

I think what you're seeing is not a closing-windows behavior but a memory- saving one. MacOS can and will close or suspend applications that are not actively doing anything to free up memory and CPU cycles. This is enabled by 2 features/APIs Automatic and Sudden Termination. See [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac- os-x-10-7/8/](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/8/) for the Full Siracusa.

For obvious reasons, applications that properly tell the OS they are in such a state are the ones you'll most often see this behavior in, and Apple's first- party applications are written that way.

<comment><USER3> I can't think of a time when using my Mac that this has been an issue. I frequently have Preview and Quicktime open but without documents as well. Same goes for Firefox being there, but not with a current window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> on OS X, any application that you would normally open as a side effect (opening a document, for example) will close if there is no reason for them to be open anymore. This includes pages, textedit, keynote, preview, etc. They do this because there is no reason for them to remain running if the document is closed. Typically, if you launch the application by itself and it asks you to open a document - these applications will close themselves.

On the other hand, applications that don't need to open a document to run, or don't open as a side effect of opening a file, will remain running if the active window is closed. This includes mail, messages, finder. The user benefits from these applications running after the user has closed the active window, since the user might want to launch them again quickly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amen</comment>


Windows Mobile 6.5 shows clever burst of originality. Haha no. - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/02/17/windows-mobile-65-shows-clever-burst-of-originality-haha-no/ <comment><USER2> I think the author drank a bit too much off Apples marketing kool-aid.

<comment><USER3> Is roughlydrafted.com, so no surprises about it. I avoid their articles because of it. Is impossible for them to be slightly balanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awful article.

However, I'll say this - Microsoft really needs to step up vendor support for WM. Every awful thing you think about Microsoft seems to be 10 times worse when you are dealing with WM support in Asia :(</comment>


Show HN: Unodx – Redux Undo/Redo Based on an Action History - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JannicBeck/undox <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I just released my first library ever. It originated from my work, were I had to solve a very specific problem: Adding unlimited Undo/Redo functionality to a Redux Application with a fat state and thin actions. (see more in the Readme Motivation Chapter)

Since It really performed well in production, I figured I would wrap the code in a small library and publish it for others to use.

Its use cases are: Editors, Boardgames or any other Redux Application with a fat state and thin actions.</comment>


A comparison of books for learning assembly language - <AUTHOR> http://allthatiswrong.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-comparison-of-books-for-learning-assembly-language/ <comment><USER2> The HLA version of Randall Hyde's book is OK, but you can still get the original version of his books in PDF that don't use HLA at all.</comment>