Front end Developers - <AUTHOR> https://signl.uk <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


The Purple Frog - <AUTHOR> http://www.edgeofexistence.org/edgeblog/?p=1378

<comment><USER2> WTF?

</comment><comment><USER3> This endangered creature is found only in the southern part of India.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_frog></comment>


A Mansion Filled with Hidden Worlds - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/wilo-evans-broad-band/ <comment><USER2> I count myself lucky to have discovered telnet enabled BBS's shortly after becoming interested in computers. It may not have had all the nostalgia of dialing in with a modem the way I have heard others mention but I was still fairly young and broadband was already replacing dial-up in the early-mid 2000's. Discovering these telnet BBS's felt like I as a young know-nothing had found some strange seedy underbelly to the internet and I was hooked. Then I was introduced to the Discworld MUD and I think I spent months lost in this imagination driven labyrinth of text. On the other hand it may have ruined, at least a little, much of modern gaming for me as it is hard to replace the fantastical places from ones own imagination with a spoon fed world of high resolution graphics. At least I still have Cataclysm:DDA in all of its ascii goodness to meet me in the middle. Good read, thanks for sharing.</comment>


Making our Hugo and Jekyll CMS more customizable - <AUTHOR> https://forestry.io/blog/post/front-matter-templates/ <comment><USER2> Would have given it a spin if it was FOSS. I wish SaaS companies (not just Forestry) would learn that developers will not adopt their products if they don't have source access. This product could have easily been FOSS and had it's pricing model based exclusively on support/hosting

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'd love some feedback on a feature we just added to our Jekyll/Hugo CMS.

In my WordPress days, I always hated how you couldn't easily customize the UI and everything felt like a hacky work-around.

With Front Matter Templates you can customize the presentation of your front matter fields in the UI of your CMS.</comment>


Polls Show Growing Resolve to Live With Terror Threat - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/polls-show-growing-resolve-to-live-with-terror-threat/ <comment><USER2> The question is very abstract, so it's a bit early to run around saying we've swung the balance of public opinion towards the side of personal freedom. Our answers will vary on the specifics. If you asked people, for example, "would you agree to more video surveillance to reduce the threat of an attack?" some people who said no might not see that as a sacrifice to personal freedom. Some who said yes might find it creepy. We'll see.

What we do have here is a trend that's very encouraging for those of us concerned about personal freedom.</comment>


How To Write Unmaintainable Code - <AUTHOR> http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html <comment><USER2> An old friend - and getting older:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=252615>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304039>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=637491> <\- 22 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=922369>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1573034>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988165>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340024>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2578765>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3025137> <\- 37 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3036042></comment>


Views about companies still took Coding Challenges Interview to Senior Devs? - <AUTHOR> Sr. Developers interview should be more about application design and architecture to make it scalable, available etc rather than coding. But i observe some tech firm still took coding challenges at first step to Sr. Developers (above ~5 Years). What you do think about mentality of such companies. <comment><USER2> They aren't putting enough effort into hiring and this practice is likely a signal for other bad habits.</comment>


The Apple Watch 'WOW' Moment - <AUTHOR> http://www.imore.com/apple-watch-wow-moment <comment><USER2> Totally agreed. The payment bit is the only thing that ever gets people talking about the Apple Watch.</comment>


Why OLPC Security Chief just resigned - <AUTHOR> http://radian.org/notebook/maintaining-clarity#respond

<comment><USER2> This doesn't really tell us anything, only that he liked an executive he was working with, and is no longer working with him. There's a bigger backstory here that we're not hearing about.

<comment><USER3> I found the OLPC Bitfrost[1] security scheme he worked on more interesting than the drama.

[1] - <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Bitfrost>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect this has something to do with OLPC switching from Linux to XP.

<comment><USER5> The OLPC is not switching from Linux to XP. Microsoft (and many other corporations and universities) were provided with prototype machines, and Microsoft decided to try porting Windows to it. OLPC did not discourage this, but all of OLPC's software to date runs solely on Linux.

[http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths#The_laptop_will_run_a_M...](http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_myths#The_laptop_will_run_a_Microsoft_Windows_operating_system)

<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Main_Page/Archive_2#Open_source.3F></comment></comment>


Snapchat beats Facebook among teens - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1204891/snapchat-is-beating-facebook-in-its-fight-for-the-future/ <comment><AUTHOR> My teenage daughters never use Facebook, which isn't to say they will never do so.</comment>


Ask HN: how did you decide upon a web application framework? - <AUTHOR>

I'm at a crossroads right now where I need to decide upon what web framework my project is going to be using for likely the rest of its existence.
Most of my professional experience relied on WinServer/IIS/.NET/ASP/WCF/SOAP/Silverlight technologies, but it was all software I didn't have to pay a dime for, as the licensing was taken care of by the powers that be. Now that I have to pay out of pocket for everything, I realize that I would much rather rely entirely on open source solutions. Also it's obviously quite good for me to get out of the MS ecosystem and explore other possibilities (mind was totally blown by NoSQL for example when I tried it for the first time!)
There are quite a few popular options out there, and the team originally started with Java (as a few developers were more or less green and that felt like the simplest route) but after a while I realized I didn't very much enjoy using that language, maven, Spring and a lot of the other technologies we were using.
I started playing around with Rails and I immediately loved the opinionated architecture, the expectation of using git, the ease (and rapidity of development) and the availability of great supporting services such as Heroku. I think I'd very much enjoy working with it long term, but I'm concerned it might be a bit rough for our less seasoned developers who might be scared by MVC and the Ruby syntax.
What are the options out there that are a solid alternative to RoR (I've read the wikipedia article, I swear :)) that have been getting as much support in the past years? I want to make sure that I don't take the choice of technology too lightly and that I think this step through from all the angles! What have you chosen for your project, and why? Why did you feel the alternatives weren't as good of a fit?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Python is another language not very different from Ruby. Check it out and if you like what you see, below are the python specific answers(IMO and far from complete) to your question.

      > What are the options out there that are a solid alternative to RoR?

First three frameworks that pop up in my head without thinking too much are:

 _Flask -<http://flask.pocoo.org/> _

Flask is a nice _micro-framework_ for quickly getting up and running with simple web applications. It is easy to understand. But do not get mislead by the word _"micro"_ ; it is an amazing piece of software and can be used to build real web applications. Great for building APIs.

Why Flask: Strong architecture design, easy to use, actively developed by amazingly smart people.

 _Django -<http://djangoproject.com/> _

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Development with Django is a breeze. Most common backend stuff in web development can be done with a few lines of code. Django is a full stack framework which comes bundled with its own ORM, template language, URL dispatching and lot of middlewares, libraries and utilities.

Why Django: Actually usable autogenerated admin interface, genric views(create stuff with zero code(sorta)) active development, insanely fast development cycles, good design, huge community of very smart and well respected people in python community.

 _Pyramid -<http://pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/about> _

Pyramid is a very general open source Python web framework. While Pyramid does not provide its own ORM, template languages, URL etc. It glues together already developed, high quality and functionally solid python packages for the those tasks. This comes at a cost though. You will actually need to do a bit more setup/coding. This is intentional and not accidental. People tend to choose Pyramid when they want very tight control of application architecture, which one has to trade-off in case of frameworks like Django and Flask.

Why Pyramid: Build the app the way you want and not the way framework wants, strong community, developed by incredibly smart and well respected people in the python community.

PS: Assuming your team members are not new to programming, your concerns about syntax etc. might most likely be misplaced. Most important question here is "Is the team willing to learn and experiment with new things?" If yes, then such concerns will vanish as soon as the your team implements a very simple app as a learning exercise. My favorite _code2learn_ app is a simple private messages system app as found on many social networks. It is simple and easy to understand so any moderately experienced web developer should be able to implement in a day or two.

\- God speed.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like the Rails approach, but you have a Java background, or are working with people who have done Java before, you could do worse than Groovy on Grails. Grails is an opinionated / convention-over-configuration framework that was inspired by Rails, and Groovy is a dynamic language that runs on the JVM, and has a syntax that is _almost_ a superset of Java. It's a very easy transition for Java folks to Groovy and Grails, but the environment is - in my experience - radically more productive than traditional Java web development environments.

<http://www.grails.org>

I'm using Groovy and Grails for the stuff I'm working on right now ,and really loving it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought Microsoft's BizSpark program was designed just for you.

<http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/About/Default.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER5> A good alternative to RoR is definitely Django. It's written in Python, witch, according to me, has a much cleaner syntax than Ruby. I switched from a ASP3.0/ASP.NET MVC background to Django 2 years ago when I got tired of the licensing cost for Windows machines. I Wanted to learn a new language, luckily we had a Python class at university and I'm stuck ever since.

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out various scala frameworks :) Also there are some pretty sophisticated PHP frameworks out there for less experienced developers.

<comment><USER2> I think, for theless experienced(read just starting out) developers, understanding a framework like Symfony2 will be the as complicated as any other framework in any other language.

Trust me, I have seen "senior developers" with years of experience doing HTML- PHP spaghetti style coding(and nothing else) going bonkers when asked to do something in a framework as simple as CodeIgniter - let alone more complex systems like Symfony2 or Drupal.</comment></comment>


Facial recognition tech is arsenic in the water of democracy, says Liberty - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/facial-recognition-technology-liberty-says-england-wales-police-use-should-be-banned <comment><USER2> > _Spurrier said: "It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see how > something like facial recognition eats into the fabric of society and > distorts relationships that are really human and really essential to a > thriving democracy...._

Low tech surveillance among East Germans [1] doesn't seem to have made the place any nicer to live in. At least the high tech version just causes mistrust of law enforcement, not one's actual neighbors.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germany)</comment>


Five easy pieces: the taxonomy of marketing - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/five-easy-piece.html

<comment><USER2> I would add: making things easy to read. Red on black gives me a headache.</comment>


How to Launch a Small Business on a Shoestring - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204456604574202171891667550.html <comment><USER2> not worth reading, everything is obvious stuff that comes to your mind.

<comment><USER3> I like how in one of the examples of an entrepreneur who was able to get a supplier to front some initial costs, the supplier happened to be her father. That must have taken some tough negotiating!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has Twitter given N his username back yet? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It's amazing how bad Twitter, Paypal and especially GoDaddy look throughout this whole thing.

Don't they have people who monitor this stuff?

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently not yet [0][1]. The new account holder is titling the account "Badal_NEWS" and has 189 followers with 0 tweets.

[0] [http://twitter.com/N_is_stolen](http://twitter.com/N_is_stolen) [1] [http://twitter.com/N](http://twitter.com/N)

<comment><USER4> Oddly enough N wasn't "Badal_NEWS" yesterday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused by this. Surely with all of the negative PR any use of @n by a company/person would point to the person who was responsible?</comment>


Show HN: Like Airbnb but for food - <AUTHOR> https://www.cookening.com <comment><USER2> Very interesting concept! How do food & restuarant laws apply in Europe? I know here in the US, restaurants need regular inspections by the local board of health. And restaurant is defined as "a facility that prepares and sells food directly to consumers for immediate consumption."

Presumably if people are paying the host, that host is now operating a restaurant. I can already see the food lobby going crazy over this one in the US.

<comment><USER3> I would think there would be a lot of trouble with this in the UK, because if you're serving food to people for money then you need hygiene certification for the folks preparing the food and hygiene assessments for the preparation areas, at the very least.

It's a nice idea, but like AirBnB it will probably fall foul of a lot of consumer protection laws, and a lot of consumer protection laws really are there for good reasons.

<comment><USER4> They _are_ there for good reasons, but they doesn't mean they are good. At least not in their current form.

If it's legal to have your neighbors over for dinner, but it becomes illegal if they pay you back, something's wrong.

<comment><USER3> That's not really what's going on here though is it? It's more like informal restaurant businesses, with the service acting as a directory and booking portal.

Not that I'm saying this shouldn't be allowed, but there are good reasons we have hygiene rules and it's at least worthwhile investigating how they ought to apply here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those who want to know the tech stack. We are running on heroku(the european datacenter)[1] and amazon S3, we use RoR with some pretty nice gems(active admin, devise, ...) and Jquery for the JS. For metric we use Mixpanel and Google Analytics. For our emails we use Amazon and Mailjet.

The are on the european DC because of the Safe Harbor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priva...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Privacy_Principles)

<comment><USER5> When the EU region was announced[1] last month they weren't Safe Harbor compliant (yet). Has that changed?

[1] <https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/24/europe-region> (near the bottom).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I did a bit of a mic mac there.

They are still not compliant with Safe Harbor in the US. Anyway since our company is located in France, the french privacy law allow us to use a hosting located in EU (instead of a US SafeHarbor one). Heroku did the EU launch just for this.

<comment><USER6> No. "It does not currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. You should assume that some portions of your app and its data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in the US."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hehehe, the "Airbnb for food" tagline reminded me of the <http://incubatorincubator.com>:

Specifically:

"AirBnBForY. AirBnBforY specializes in incubating companies that are the "AirBnB" for their respective industries (e.g. "The AirBnB for pantry space" and "The AirBnB for condiments" (A lot of people aren't making full use of their mustard, ketchup, and other condiments. AirDiments creates a marketplace by which people can use each others condiments)."

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I didn't know this parody of ycombinator.com

So, "AirBnBForY" is the punchline for the HN post but we obviously don't pitch it like this :)

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I love this idea and it seems like a great way to bring people together in real life through technology. Like others though I think this could have trouble with laws and probably to a greater extent than AirBnB. How liable is the host if there is an food poisoning incident for example? Is Cookening liable at all?

Anyway, good luck, it's a great idea.

<comment><USER8> Kinda sad that the first thing we have to worry about is how we could possibly be sued while having strangers over.

<comment><USER3> Having strangers over _for money_

This is not really some sort of altruistic dinner club.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very interesting idea, and great website!

A question: I'm curious whether you put a lot of consideration into the review system?

Asking hosts to invite strangers over and publicly rate their hospitality, cooking, and home is asking a lot. Yes, Airbnb does something similar, but renting a room feels like more of a business transaction. Having dinner guests share a meal is more personal and intimate - and it would be easier for hosts to take reviews personally.

Also, how will you deal with hyper-critical guests who leave mostly negative reviews? A few negative "foodies" like this could be a morale crusher for early hosts.

In any case, good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good remark. That's the reason why we have this three notes : food, place and hospitality. As you see, we're asking guests to review the hospitality, not the person.

As always, it is very important to us that guest expectations before any booking are the right ones: hosts do not commit on serving food like in a restaurant, they commit it is home made, they commit on a meal structure (number of courses) and they'll respect food specifics mentionned by their guests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing you guys should be worried about is the effort it takes for someone to host. Airbnb can be as much or little time and work intensive as the host likes. That makes it easy to host. With hosting a meal, it's always going to be time and work intensive, which limits the number of people that would be willing to do it on a continual basis.

Solve that, and you might have something interesting on hand.

<comment><USER11> Millions of people already cook and clean for themselves and their family. Is it that hard to add one or two extra plates?

<comment><USER10> Many more eat out or over the sink. Even families have been eating out more since fast food became more prevalent (at least in the US). Has the trend reversed?

I'm not saying it won't work. It's something that people miss when they think of this idea. Perhaps it works best in countries with a strong home cooking tradition, rather than the US, like the ones listed on their homepage.

<comment><USER12> Just talking about dinner, most people eat at home most of the time. Here is one study from 2005 on that:

RESTAURANT MEALS FOR DINNER LAST WEEK?

None: 47% 1 night: 27% 2-3 nights: 21% 4+ nights: 4%

<http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-1060315.html>

 _This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 936 adults, interviewed by telephone October 30-November 1, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool idea. I wouldn't really want to eat food prepared by someone I didn't know if that food/kitchen isn't subject to health inspections. The answer to the "What about the hygiene?" FAQ doesn't do enough to assuage my fears in this regard.

It says tables are "manually reviewed by the team". Reviewed with the stringent standards of the health dept?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It means we have to improve the FAQ on this part.

Hosts cook and eat with their guests, so it's a very good way to be sure about the quality: First because hosts eat it as well, second because they'll have a direct feedback, and it's not very pleasant to serve bad food to people when they're eating with you.

In fact, we think there's a fear of a risk more than a real risk. There's less risk to eat something that has been cooked at home, in smal quantities, than something in a big restaurant with food that has stayed in a fridge for several weeks...

Actually, have you often been sick when invited by friend or family?

Reviews we're doing are based on information provided by hosts (description, pictures), as well as email or phone contact if needed. And the review system will help. Risk averse foodies will eat with hosts with no reviews, less risk averse will go to hosts that already have a good reputation on the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is so weird that it has to work. My first reaction was that it was dumb and no-one would do it, but this is exactly the first reaction to most things that turned out to be success. I definitely wish you all the best. Plus I see you are focused on Europe, which is probably place where good cuisine is highly valued.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you !

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's very smart of Cookening to provide information about WHY users should connect with Facebook. As a privacy conscious user, I find that this is missing from many sites. I might be willing to share my information, but you have to explain what's in it for me in a straight-forward way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you !

This should definitively be a best practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very nice concept!

I hope this catches fire like Airbnb! At least here in Finland "Restaurant Day" [1] has already become somewhat of an institution, so I bet there's potential for Cookening too!

A minor detail: I'd appreciate the _full_ price to be displayed with a side note like "including Cookening service free 3€".

Or is the service fee per group? In that case it could be something like: "15€ per guest + 3€ Cookening service fee per group"

With the current layout the service fee feels almost hidden.

Best of luck with this!

[1] <http://www.visitfinland.com/article/restaurant-day/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ! I'll forward the feedback to our UI/UX guy !

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Super Marmite, based in France, pitched this in 2010. I think it's still going.

<http://www.super-marmite.com/>

<comment><USER18> I was a founder at <http://eatwithme.net> but have since left the team.

Feel free to shoot me questions, should you have any.

<comment><USER19> Why did you leave?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is a fantastic idea! I would definitely try it out if it were available in the areas I am planning to travel to.

Any plans to expand to Asia?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words !

We currently have hosts in Chile, Canada, ... so Asia should come soon. Basically as soon as someone open a table in Asia it's done. If you are asking about our marketing strategy, I don't know yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me a lot of the phenomenon of Pop-up Restaurants[1]; your site is very much like a booking interface for pop-ups. Good luck, I love the concept.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_restaurant>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you !

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've thought about launching an idea like this in the US. After doing some research, it proved to be too difficult to execute because of foodservice regulations and ensuring safety.

I like your concept, especially emphasizing the benefits of home cooking. Here are some things I think you should think carefully about: -how do you ensure safety on both ends (buyer and seller)? -why would someone want to use your platform instead of doing their own underground restaurant? -how do you vet hosts? Is there a vetting process for hosts? -how do you ensure a pleasant group meal dynamic?

Would love to chat more about this if would like. This is an idea I would really, really like to see succeed!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Michael !

I'll try to answer to you questions:

>-how do you ensure safety on both ends (buyer and seller)?

We do review the hosts manually. For the guests, they have to talk with the hosts in order to make a booking reservation so I guess if they don't get along nothing is going to happen. We also have a review/rating system.

>-why would someone want to use your platform instead of doing their own underground restaurant? Well, it's not only for money but also for the pleasure to share your food, culture, ... with someone else. And in order to start an underground restaurant you need to get known, it might be kind of hard if it's underground.

>-how do you vet hosts?

Sorry for my broken english, but I don't understand this question.

>-Is there a vetting process for hosts?

Yes

> -how do you ensure a pleasant group meal dynamic?

We have a blog[1] where we are trying to tell our hosts how to organize/... the event and how to deal with the culture difference.

My twitter handle and my email are in my HN profile, you're welcome to ping me !

[1] <http://theartof.cookening.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Underground food sharing (trust). Make it "karma points" (not cash) ... important to be unregulated, like the "volunteer" payments with SideCar.

Imagine tens of thousands of locations in each city, with most people's points netting to near-zero. In other words, you give as much as you take. Cooking vs eating - self-cancelling at nearly 50/50.

Open trade in points, reputation scores, and trust. People without time to cook may barter other reputations.

A vast cashless ecosystem.

Cuisine and location both, discovery via online maps.

Any home, any vehicle, anywhere that trust, reputation, and freedom may actually develop.

Personally, I believe "regulation" leads to the unsafe (thinks McDonalds) food ecosystem we have now.

<comment><USER24> Why is it that people who come up with these thought experiments can never resist talking about their beliefs?

Do you have a plan of implementation? A seed network to beat the cold start problem? An actual, non-exploitable prototype for aiding discovery? A way to demonstrate trustworthiness? Survey results to show enough people willing to cook in order to provide sufficient supply to meet demand?

Or is this just a pipe dream?

<comment><USER23> It's called future prototyping.

The Tommorow Project, by Intel. [http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/tomorrow- pro...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/research/tomorrow-project/the- tomorrow-project.html)

<comment><USER24> It's called refusing to face reality. Preaching sermons doesn't change the world.

Make. A. Prototype.

You know what's awesome about Bitcoin? I'm not a Bitcoin fan. I think it's silly, though I admittedly don't have the chops to properly evaluate it. But you know what I can't help but respect about it? _It exists_. It's _in the wild_. It's _real_. No matter what wankery I choose to criticize it with, I have to square that with the actual effects it's producing.

No plan survives contact with reality. You cannot anticipate everything. This is goddamn Hacker News.

Make a prototype.

<comment><USER23> I've built code and companies, and needn't a lecture from you on how to build, nor how to dream.

<comment><USER24> Then don't provoke one. I'm not telling you _how_ to build; I'm telling you to _build_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks pretty nice, I just miss a 'cursor:pointer' in the 'contact the host' button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feed back, I'll tell our UI/UX guy !

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love how no one (yet) on this thread took this as an opportunity to trash france and it's startups. A sign of a very successful launch! Congrats to the cookening team. Love the idea. Will use next time I'm in Paris!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you !

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love this idea but don't like the idea of paying. How about instead of paying money for the meal, have an option where you can host the hosts in return at your place.

May be this doesn't belong in this app or may be it does..

<comment><USER27> Moreover, if there is no money involved, there are no issues with the law, I would think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks good.

Actually, there are many players out there in this market such as: <http://eatfeastly.com/> <https://kitchen.ly/> <http://bigtable.co/> (Coming soon)

And some more here: [http://www.quora.com/Food-Tech-Startups/What-companies- are-d...](http://www.quora.com/Food-Tech-Startups/What-companies-are-doing-or- have-done-Airbnb-for-food)

It's a good idea this Airbnb for food. Winners will emerge. May the force be with you. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words.

You forgot to mention many other websites on the market :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is an exciting concept that has been tackled by many teams, few of which have yet been able to reach significant scale. But I believe it will happen. Feastly (<http://eatfeastly.com/>) is a similar approach that is active in the US. (I'm an advisor) The restaurant industry is massive (in the US, it's three times the size of the accommodations industry) so winning even a small slice is a win.

<comment><USER30> This is somewhat off-topic, but it seems kind of odd that they went with a "ly" name but didn't use that TLD, especially since "feastly" doesn't make a lot of sense except to associate with that trend.

It looks like a cool service though, I requested an invite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks like the same concept as <http://eatwith.com/>

I'm going to my first eatWith event tomorrow night...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is actually the same concept.

Let me know how it went with eatwith. My email and my twitter handle are in my HN profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Give this Quora post a quick read [http://www.quora.com/Will-Airbnb-for-food- be-a-successful-bu...](http://www.quora.com/Will-Airbnb-for-food-be-a- successful-business-model)

Dozens of ventures have failed in this niche space .. wondering if Cookening has found the secret sauce.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link !

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this what <http://eatfeastly.com/> does?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like eatfeastly.com is more oriented for local guests with local hosts and we try to focus more with international guest

<comment><USER34> Feastly is actually positioned for all demographics. There are lot of locals and a lot of tourists (both US and foreign) that come to meals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There was another company that tried this concept. I forget the name, but they are not hosting dinners in restaurants for a group of random people and turning a profit. I remember they said something along the lines of burden on the host was too much.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't like the name. It sounds all jumbled and gross, the opposite of a delicious meal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah yeah. In French we say: "les goûts et les couleurs, ça ne se discute pas". I let you think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's a new company in SF planning to do something similar called Bigtable. Planning to launch soon <http://bigtable.co>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. I will follow them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> You should look into Housefed, it was a startup that did a very similar thing, the person is now doing Tindie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks !

I will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I couldn't find my country on the list. I live in the US.

Maybe "all over the world" really means "all over Europe"

<comment><USER39> Well, welcome to the Internet most countries outside of the US experience every day.

(a little snarky I know, but the US is fantastically sheltered in this regard. I know plenty of people that have no idea that Hulu and various YouTube videos are unavailable to people outside of the US)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hannibal Lecter would love this

<comment><AUTHOR> Twist: I'm Hannibal Lecter !

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Like X but Y" might be the worst elevator pitch ever. Or the best. I can't decide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's punchline for HackerNews, not a pitch for YC

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> What is your Business model ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We take a 16,7% on every booking request. <https://www.cookening.com/en/faq/guests#answer2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is awesome ! What are your plans about expanding abroad ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, as soon as possible ! We still have a lot of work to do, especially to convert foodies into hosts and travelers into guests but we are working on it !

<comment><USER44> Warning: foodies != good hosts (or good cooks) in much the same way as book critiques != authors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Isn't this basically kitchensurfing.com?

<comment><USER46> This looks well executed ... if you're in NY, and want the chef to come to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> nice work

<comment><USER47> what's your tech stack btw?

<comment><USER48> Here ! <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5752057></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: BlackBerry just killed Windows? - <AUTHOR>

With the launch BlackBerry 10, it looks like BlackBerry is going to kill all hours of Windows to become the third largest mobile OS.
The emphasis on gestures: getting as much as done with one thumb
The content on BlackBerry World, Flow and Peek it seems perfect for a work chum personal phone.
Your thoughts? <comment><USER2> Title should be "Windows Phone" not "Windows", unless OP believes that windows fate is tied to that of Windows Phone.

My Opinion: Killed Windows Phone? I doubt this. I personally believe that if the iPhone and Android did have such a strong foot hold(everyone going to them because of established user base) that Windows Phone would be doing much better. Also note that Windows Phone experienced its greatest increase in userbase this last quarter, time will tell how this goes in the future.

The only people i ever see talking down WP are those who have never used it. I personally use Android, but i am much more of a PowerUser then the avg consumer. Windows Phone is a great OS that is fluid and powerful, the only thing it lacks is a great establishment of apps.

With that said i am very glad BB10 is coming out, it looks to be very good for an initial offering. It needs work, but that will come. Lots of usability testing needs to take place though, raw advertising "feature sets" wont cut it.

<comment><USER3> This. I am a windows phone user while my wife uses iphone. I am really happy with the way my windows phone works with the exception of "apps ecosystem" which is hard to beat compared to apples so far. I personally am not an apps guy and it works well for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could be grossly underestimating BB loyalty, but I just really don't see BB staying in business that much longer. I think BB10 looks nice and it really has some compelling features. But, I just don't see anything novel enough to persuade existing smartphone users to switch or a majority of new users to consider it over the iPhone or Android. As a result, I think WP8 will outlast BB10, simply because Microsoft has deeper pockets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Considering the only person I've seen using a Windows phone in the wild is a Microsoft employee, beating that platform out shouldn't be too hard.

That said, I work in DC which must have been the Blackberry capital of the world for several years running. Today, the only people who still use Blackberries are being forced to and they're surely looking for other options. Worse, even if the device software is amazing, RIM still seems to have problems keeping its network up.

It's hard for me to believe that RIM will succeed at anything without getting rid of their entire chain of management, including the board. I could not make up the kind of nonsensical denial that has continually emanated from that bunch while their stock price and market share tanked over the last 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I think it has a better chance as the 3rd platform because of the larger user base of Blackberry loyalists, and and interface that looks a lot more like previous Blackberries, iPhones and Android phones, than WP which is radically different.

</comment><comment><USER7> Two turkeys doesn't make an eagle.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have to agree with this.

The biggest reason is the separation of your "work" and "home" lives approach. BlackBerry is the only device on the market to do this in such a cohesive way. And it gives this impression that Blackberry is the only one who cares about business.

Have always been surprised that Microsoft never went after the business market harder with Windows Phone considering it should be their bread+butter.</comment>


Hipstergrammers - <AUTHOR> http://hipstergrammers.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> It can't be this bad. Is it this bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO, there's a pretty ludicrous amount of hype about NoSQL and various JS- related technologies on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It's the HN doppelgänger!

</comment><comment><USER4> <https://twitter.com/#!/hipsterhacker></comment>


Bandwidth needs halved by new compression written in Go - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/cloudflare-blows-hole-in-laws-of-web-physics-with-go-and-railgun/ <comment><USER2> The title suggests that there's something unique about Go, either the language or its standard library, that enables bandwidth savings. In fact, Cloudflare have written some software which they claim enables them to reduce their bandwidth, and this software happens to be written in Go. This might be an excellent choice (and I suspect it probably is), but it's not _Go per se_ that is reducing the bandwidth usage.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The benefit of using Go is that it's fast to write and has good concurrency features. To give you an idea of the size, there are 7,329 lines of Go code in Railgun (including comments) and a 6,602 line test suite.

In the process we've committed various things back to Go itself and at some point I'll write a blog on the whole experience, but one thing that made a big difference was to write a memory recycler so that for commonly created things (in our case []byte buffers) we don't force the garbage collector to keep reaping memory that we then go back and ask for.

The concurrency through communication is trivial to work with once you get the hang of it and being able to write completely sequential code means that it's easy to grok what your own program is doing.

We've hit some deficiencies in the standard library (around HTTP handling) but it's been fairly smooth. And, as the article says, we swapped native crypto for OpenSSL for speed.

The Go tool chain is very nice. Stuff like go fmt, go tool pprof, go vet, go build make working with it smooth.

PS We're hiring.

<comment><USER4> "write a memory recycler"

 _sigh_ This is by far go's biggest wart IMO, and one that frequently sends me back to a pauseless (hah! at least less pausy:) systems language. I sure do like it in almost every other meaningful regard. But I wish latency wasn't something the designers punted on.

<comment><USER5> I occasionally hear this kind of complaint, but I've yet to see any silver- bullet memory management system. AFAICT, the best we've been able to accomplish is to provide a easier path to correctness with decent overall performance. Also, GC latency isn't the only concern. As soon as the magic incantation "high performance" is uttered, all bets are off.

There's been decades of work on real-time garbage collection yet all of those approaches still have tradeoffs. Consider that object recycling is a ubiquitous iOS memory management pattern. This reduces both memory allocation latencies and object recreation overhead. Ever flick-scroll a long list view on an iPhone? Those list elements that fly off the top are virtually immediately recycled back to the bottom -- it's like a carousel with only about as many items as you can see on screen. The view objects are continually reused, just with new backing data. This approach to performance is more holistic than simply pushing responsibility onto the memory allocator.

Memory recycling here also reminds me of frame-based memory allocator techniques written up in the old Graphics Gems books, a technique likewise covered in real-time systems resources. Allocating memory from the operating system can be relatively expensive and inefficient, even using good ol' malloc. A frame-based allocator grabs a baseline number of pages and provides allocation for one or more common memory object sizes (aka "frames"). Pools for a given frame size are kept separate, which prevents memory fragmentation. Allocation performance is _much_ faster than straight malloc, while increasing memory efficiency for small object allocation and eliminating fragmentation. Again, this is a problem-specific approach that considers needs beyond latency.

<comment><USER6> I can't speak for the grandparent, but for my part I agree with your point that allocation patterns matter and that there is no silver bullet to memory management, which is exactly the reason that GC'd languages like Go are uninteresting as systems languages. Why use a language where you have to work around one of its main features when you care about performance?

I find Rust's approach much more interesting, because GC is entirely optional, but it provides abstractions that make it easier to write clear and correct manual memory management schemes.

<comment><USER5> Hm, Rust keeps hitting my radar with interesting attributes like this. Time to go have a look see. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go is used, sure, but the cool part about this is the binary Railgun protocol. Really smart. Send only file hashes and binary diffs back and forth, do a little extra computation to figure out the changes, but only send the absolute minimum data you need to the CDN. That's just smart, and frankly, I hope other CDNs have been doing this already, because at any high volume it seems to be an obvious solution.

So that brings up the question—is this just something CloudFlare is announcing for the PR, or is it actually innovative?

<comment><USER8> It sounds like they reinvented rsync to me?

<comment><USER3> No, because we have more information than rsync does. We own both ends of the connection and can keep versions synchronized.

<comment><USER8> That sounds interesting, could you elaborate on how it is different from rsync though? "Keep versions synchronized" is a bit vague

<comment><USER3> The piece in the CloudFlare network and the piece in the customer network are able to keep track of which page versions they each have and so the part in the CloudFlare network sends a request saying "Please do GET /foo and compress it against version X". That means that at request time there's no back-and- forth between the components deciding what compression dictionary to use.

<comment><USER8> A bit like rsync's --fuzzy or --compare-dest then?

<comment><USER3> Well, fuzzy tries to find something to use as a 'destination' file so it can send across some hashes. Railgun has more complete information because it is keeping synchronized and thus the part making a request can specify the dictionary to compress with in a single hash.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the explanation, that does sound useful! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The bandwidth reduction is due to use of a binary protocol, not Go. It just so happens the server code is written in Go and C.

From the article:

"Go is very light," he said, "and it has fundamental support for concurrent programming. And it's surprisingly stable for a young language. The experience has been extremely good—there have been no problems with deadlocks or pointer exceptions." But the code hit a bit of a performance bottleneck under CloudFlare's heavy loads, particularly because of its cryptographic modules—all of Railgun's traffic is encrypted from end to end. "We swapped some things out into C just from a performance perspective," Graham-Cumming said.

"We want Go to be as fast as C for these things," he explained, and in the long term he believes Go's cryptographic modules will mature and get better. But in the meantime, "we swapped out Go's native crypto for OpenSSL," he said, using assembly language versions of the C libraries.

<comment><USER10> On another note, it's always nice to see such an influential part of the HN community giving quotes for sites like this - not only does it make me a little proud to be associated with any of you, it makes me more hopeful for the chances of my future that I can call myself one of _us_.

<comment><USER11> Success by association seems about as valid as guilt by association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Question for jgrahamc: how much more efficient is your binary delta algorithm than cperciva's bsdiff [1]?

I assume since you've got the preimages of compression, as well as control over the compression format, that the diff and patch operations are much more efficient in space and time than they would be with arbitrary binary data. But...by how much?

[1] <http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/>

<comment><USER13> bsdiff is not a general purpose binary delta algorithm, it's targeted at executables. When you change a single line in the source code of a program and recompile it, bsdiff produces a small diff, even though a normal binary diff between the old and new executable would be huge due to how even a single extra instruction can cause many more addresses to shift. bsdiff wouldn't be particularly useful here.

<comment><USER12> This is true. Re-reading the bsdiff paper, it's pretty tailored to executable file formats.

<http://www.daemonology.net/papers/bsdiff.pdf>

<comment><USER14> It works fine on non-executables too. Executables are the hard case, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could be very cool. I couldn't get through the article because it read like a press release. Maybe if someone who hasn't been spoon-fed the story reports on it, I'll take notice.

<comment><USER16> I don't know why you're being downvoted, the article is written pretty shittily. The article is mostly just quotes from jgc and the CEO and some filler by the writer.

Also the assertion that "It has already cut the bandwidth used by 4Chan and Imgur by half" sounds disingenuous and possibly not backed up by moot's quote _"We've seen a ~50% reduction in backend transfer for our HTML pages (transfer between our servers and CloudFlare's),"_. Is backend transfer for HTML pages the only bandwidth they're using? Is the rest of it halved, and if so, how and why?

The title of the story also makes me gag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is just RFC 3229, with a binary protocol (?) <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3229.txt>

I've always thought there were some potential attacks there around cache disclosure (which Google avoided by going with SDCH instead).

CloudFlare controls the server and the client, so they don't need to worry about the attacks or about persuading everyone to adopt their RFC.

</comment><comment><USER18> How large is the per site cache? Are cookies part of the hash (and if so how do you strip meaningless cookies)?

Otherwise the this is more compelling for content sites like the referenced 4chan. But still very cool.

<comment><USER3> There isn't a per-site cache in Railgun because it's part of our large shared in-memory cache in our infrastructure.

Currently, cookies are not part of the hash.

We have customers of all types using Railgun. As an example, there's a British luggage manufacturer who launched a US e-commerce site last month. They are using it to help alleviate the cross-Atlantic latency. At the same time they see high compression levels as the site boilerplate does not change from person to person viewing the site.

What sort of sites do you think it doesn't apply to?

<comment><USER17> Surely there is a per-site cache on the origin server (in what you call the "Listener")?

<comment><USER3> Yes. That's up to the particular configuration of the site. It varies from site to site, but for optimal results you want it big enough to keep the content of the common pages of your site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious about the crypto part. Could anybody explain to me, if it's a HTTPS link, where does SSL encryption happen? Does Railgun listener talk with the origin server over HTTP or HTTPS?

If it's HTTP, then how does CDN handle certificates? Does it use CDN's certificates?

If it's HTTPS, then 1) Isn't hash gonna be a lot different if if the two versions are very alike? 2) Why does Railgun encrypt the encrypted data again?

<comment><USER3> The link between CloudFlare and the customer network (i.e. between the two bits of Railgun) is TLS. We have an automated way of provisioning and distributing the certificates necessary for that part.

For the connection from Railgun to the origin server it will depend on the protocol of the actual request being handled. If HTTPS Railgun makes an HTTPS connection to the origin.

<comment><USER19> Thanks! That makes sense now :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The change detection algorithm is clever. But this is a classic memory vs. processor problem. The real trick here is that the Railgun service instantly adds massive amounts of cache to your service; it just so happens - if their claims aren't inflated - adding these additional resources to your service is transparent. This has nothing to do with Railgun being developed on Go.

</comment><comment><USER21> Other than general traffic data compression, I've always been somewhat interested in html compression in particular.

I know lots of webservers zip their response data, but I was always curious about the things in html that show up very often and if there's a way to optimize around that.

For example, most web xml data contains a lot of common tags, like "div" and "span" and others that are specific to html. I think if you add them up, they might make up a considerable percent of traffic data. Is it possible for the web server to swap those out for a single character before it sends the data, and have the browser replace it when it arrives?

Or does zip compression already do that somehow?

<comment><USER22> Yeees, no.

Zip will replace the common tags (like "div") with a single "div" (in the compression dictionary), then a single character every time it appears (more or less - it might be less than a single byte if it's a _really_ common tag). So there'll be a wasted overhead of a dictionary of common tags (which is kind of wasted).

It would be more efficient if both the browsers and compression algorithms could agree (beforehand) had a dictionary of common terms which would be likely to appear in the document.

If you're compressing a lot of data which is likely to be similar, you can do this with a common dictionary. See - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/479218/how-to-compress- sm...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/479218/how-to-compress-small- strings)

Of course, my answer on Stackoverflow is pretty crude. You could create a dictionary used to compress the compression dictionary. Google is probably going to do this any time soon (if they haven't already) since they control the client (Chrome), server (google web server) and protocol (SPDY).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see that the article is tagged "open source." Is CloudFront going to open source Railgun? Publish any papers?

This isn't an announcement about companies supporting Railgun...it's about companies supporting CloudFlare by installing the Railgun Listener.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is the third time this week that I've read or heard about Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), the formal programming language devised by Sir Tony Hoare.

Third time's a charm. Definitely going to have to investigate.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Today, [cloud providers Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, and thirty of the > world's biggest Web hosting companies] announced that they will support > Railgun...

I can't find any such announcements; anybody have links? Based on comments further down, I wonder if the author is confused.

> CloudFlare will provide software images for Amazon and RackSpace customers > to install

That is very different from the claim in the first paragraph.

<comment><USER26> Amazon and Rackspace customers need to install the software themselves (for now). The other listed hosts have made it one-click simple without the customer having to install anything. A couple announcements from major hosts today:

Dreamhost: [http://dreamhost.com/dreamscape/2013/02/26/cloudflare- railgu...](http://dreamhost.com/dreamscape/2013/02/26/cloudflare-railgun/) Media Temple: [http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/02/26/the-web-just-got- fa...](http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/02/26/the-web-just-got-faster-with- railgun/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another Go PR story.

Same thing could be easily achieved using futures or any of the asynchronous libraries available to C++, Ada, JVM and .NET languages.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is WAN optimization, right? This is already being done but usually for (VPN) connections to other branches of a company.

<comment><USER16> No. This is basically binary diffing and compression.

Edit: err, you are correct, I didn't realize WAN optimization included binary diffing and compression. Should google before I comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Uho. Binary protocol. The problem being, it's actually bringing financial advantages over HTTP. HTTP has the advantage of being standard, simple, plain text and thus easy to work with.

Hopefully http2.0 will attempt solving this.. erm...

<comment><USER30> is your concern that the proprietary protocols will take over the web?

<comment><USER29> not in particular. complex binary protocols while slightly more efficient are much harder to use, understand, and design properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article mentions how this compression technique is similar to image compression. Would anyone care to explain, in detail if necessary, how this is so? Thanks.

<comment><USER30> I think its because a whole bitmap isnt streamed for every new frame, just a diff telling the player about the parts of the map that need updating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> FTA: "If it was written in C++, it would be threaded code"

Uh, why?

<comment><USER33> Because that's one approach to getting the most out of all of those multiple core CPU servers.

For Go that came for free because its Communicating Sequential Processes design does that for you.

<comment><USER34> Came for free? Go takes advantage of multiple cores by using threads. CSP doesn't magically multiplex your code onto your cores.

<comment><USER33> > CSP doesn't magically multiplex your code onto your cores

Take a look at this Rob Pike video: [http://blog.golang.org/2013/01/concurrency-is-not- parallelis...](http://blog.golang.org/2013/01/concurrency-is-not- parallelism.html)

Now that video might well be crap, I'll be the first to admit I'm not skill enough to know one way or the other.

But based on that video, it does appear to me that Go does offer some form of multi-core magic and it does appear to come at a minimal cost.

<comment><USER34> It's not magic. It's threads. Go multiplexes your goroutines onto N OS threads. There are also abstractions in C/C++ (though of course as libs, not part of the language, like in Go) which hide the usage of threads. But there is no magic. If your code is running in parallel, your code is using OS threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was just looking into what SDCH is (an accept-encoding option from Chrome) and it sounds very, very similar: It generates a dictionary and then uses VCDIFF between requests. Is this related somehow?

<comment><USER3> Vaguely. Both Railgun and SDHC work by compressing web pages against an external dictionary. In SDHC the dictionary must be generated (somehow), and it is intended for use between a web server and browser. Railgun is back-end for our network and automatically generates dictionaries.

[http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2012/efficiently- compressing-...](http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2012/efficiently-compressing- dynamically-generated-web-content/)

<comment><USER36> Is anyone aware of a performance analysis between SDCH and one of the dynamic compressions like deflate?

I google, but all I find is people complaining their proxy/filter/appliance/diagnostic is breaking because it doesn't understand SDCH.

It seems like SDCH has been around for 4 years, I presume the lack of data means it hasn't worked out.

(I imagine that you could drastically reduce the CPU load of compression by making simple hard coded state machines for each dictionary. For content like XML or json you could easily make your field names and surrounding punctuation minimal. For many very short messages sharing a dictionary that would beat deflate on compression ratio, and for long messages of non-repeating field values it wouldn't be much worse. CPU use of expansion is probably comparable, though you might get better memory access behavior out of SDCH.)

<comment><USER35> What you describe is exactly what I've been looking for. There are remarkably few resources on this.

We have users in Singapore who access various XML-heavy web services in our NY office. A dictionary-style over-multiple-requests compression technique would be brilliant for their case.

<comment><USER37> Take a look at the various WAN accelerator appliances (Cisco, Silverpeak, Riverbed). They do almost exactly what it sounds like you want (if I'm remembering back to my evaluations, Cisco at least uses a multi-request dictionary for their compression)

<comment><USER38> I was going to mention Riverbed, glad someone else did.

They've saved a huge amount for us (I think of 90%) of AJP (http<->tomcat) traffic. Not particularly difficult to set up.

<comment><USER35> Riverbed looks ideal but aren't they incredibly expensive? We looked at it years ago and I believe the necessary endpoints in our data center and in Singapore pushed past $140,000.

<comment><USER37> Riverbed (and all of the players in this space, really) are quite expensive, but this is where you get into the whole "Total ROI" argument for justifying the purchase.

Most companies depreciate hardware over 3 years. How much WAN/Internet bandwidth will you NOT use over the next 3 years, and how does that translate into upgrades you won't need to make?

There are also arguments for these boxes along the lines of "right now we use really expensive WAN links, but these boxes do end-to-end encryption too, so we can put the traffic on the Internet instead" but that opens up a few obvious cans of worms (and can of course be done without an accelerator with VPNs and whatnot).

Then you get into the more nebulous arguments that big bosses tend to like, such as "The average user makes Y XML requests per day to process X widgets. Each request takes Q seconds now. If we lower that to Q*0.5 with WAN acceleration, each user can now process N more widgets per day". Fluffy argument, but can have a big impact on business decision makers, especially if you can tie it to a dollar amount.

Note that WAN Accelerator salespeople are really, really good at coming up with arguments like this for/with you during the sales process.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo's method of making games [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ <comment><USER2> I just love Game Maker's Toolkit, if you haven't watched it and love videogames, you should.

Even if you don't like videogames, but you are creating experiences for other people, you should understand what's behind a videogame.

<comment><USER3> One of the great insights in the _Rules of Play_ [0] (which is a great book but has some frustratingly fundamental issues because it uses a very naive interpretation of semiotics as its first principles), is that games have their own sense "aesthetics" compared to film, photography, or other art-forms before it.

Like film and photography in the last century, we're still figuring those out. But what is clear is that the main aesthetic experience revolves around the _interactive loop_ a player has with a game. This is different from, say, the interaction with a painting.

In short: the aesthetics of games are fundamentally based on the aesthetics of interaction. And therefore much more broadly applicable than just a game- context.

This is why many interaction design studies have a game design course (I gave a few when was an adjunct IxD teacher at Malmo Uni). Other than being a bit of self-indulgence of the professors, that is.

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

<comment><USER4> I love the book and great summary about aeshetics of interaction. I like how they separated mechanics, interface & social context.

Curious what fundamental issues you had with the book?

<comment><USER3> Their interpretation of meaningful play and how they interpret the whole meaning-from-signs thing, which is a ridiculously banal interpretation of semiotics. I'm not even a philosopher proper but they're really out of their depth there; I suspect that they were trying to prove a point (that game design should be taken seriously) and cherry-picked philosophical interpretations for their needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Call me a fan boy or whatever. I was not able to pin point the reason I found Nintendo games more than any other developer, (the only other game that got me hooked like Mario did was God of War but that too had it's nuances but I was hooked). This video really brings out a lot of things that explains me why I ended up liking something stupid like Kirby more than Gears of War or Assassins Creed.

<comment><USER6> It's the attention to non graphical details and the density of the game. In modern games, you have huge spaces, and little density in the gameplay. In old games you are doing simple things in a small space, but very regularly with more steaks: it has way more density.

And old game has the charm and personality of the current indy games, but the professionalism of the greats. It has a soul, even with no story, few pixels. It has an identity.

It's very rare to find a game that has that today, and this is what nintendo is still good at.

Remember the first time you woke up in the kokiri forest ? It was amazing. I tried it again. It is still amazing. With very few things, it shines, it lives.

Now the first time I come out of the bunker in Fallout 4 ? The first time I spawn in Skyrim ? Meh. Not bad, it was fun. But it was not unforgettable.

Now I know it is possible to make a great game, with a lot of space, fantastic graphism, and density, and a soul. But it's very rare.

That and the fact we are getting older, and we are partial to games we loved when we were younger :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto, he stressed his emphasis on gameplay, to provide the environments for the player to be creative. He added that story, background, etc. came afterwards to justify the gameplay.

"Inside the Mind of "Mario" Creator Shigeru Miyamoto" [http://rickyreports.com/archives/miyamotoshigeru/](http://rickyreports.com/archives/miyamotoshigeru/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the key here is

 _Form follows function_

Many gamedevs don't get this. The underlying mechanics form the core gameplay. You can always make the story, looks and characters fit, but if your game mechanics are boring and broken, only major rework or starting over helps. In fact, the form being restricted by function may even be beneficial for the creative process and make the form more original.

<comment><USER9> But if most customers buy all those games anyways, why should they change their methods? I mean, I'm all for Nintendo, and I have their current gaming systems, but I only have like two other friends who have Wii U, and all the others have PS4 and mostly love shooters or FIFA. Nintendo has kept afloat because, most of the time, they keep the same prices through the life of their systems, so they sell enough to keep going. Anyways, I hope they never really go bankrupt, or go the other companies' way.

<comment><USER8> _But if most customers buy all those games anyways, why should they change their methods?_

If Windows sells, why should you make Linux?

If iPhones sell, why should you make Android phones?

If gasoline cars sell, why should you make electric cars?

Because we can do better. Because we should do better. And even if we do not - we force the orignal versions to be improved or lose their market share. We push boundaries by improving upon existing products. Frankly, I cannot enjoy games that put form before function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's another video that focuses on the mechanical side of a Donkey Kong Country level: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wIIwBL784](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wIIwBL784)

It combines well with this video because it answers the question in detail of 'What do you do' and 'How do you communicate it', once you have your character's actions and mechanics nailed down.

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite example of this sort of game mechanic innovation outside of Nintendo itself is Katamari Damacy. Maybe even outdoes Nintendo.

</comment><comment><USER12> There are tons of things to learn here for application developers of all sorts. I've found that working out the interaction model before polishing up the visuals usually results in a much better thought out and more usable application.

Too many designs start with how it looks and now how it works, but Nintendo's genius is to pick one interaction model, teach the user that model, and then just run with it.

<comment><USER13> Yes, Nintendo games and games from a few other developers are probably the most pleasant pieces of software that I've ever used: well-designed interfaces, low-latency interaction, very few bugs, and tons of attention to detail.

I wish there was more information out there about Nintendo's software development process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else got goose bumps? Not a fan boy but those are genius things that only come out of love and desire.

</comment><comment><USER15> If anyone is interested in the subtle background music, it's Resonance by HOME. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GW6sLrK40k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GW6sLrK40k)

</comment><comment><USER16> it's interesting to note how really good games take a simple concept and explore it to its ends rather than taking a bunch of loose fitting concepts and throwing them together. probably the best examples i can come up with, even better than the nintendo ones in my opinion, are the team ico games designed by fumito ueda.

ico: escape while escorting

shadow of the colossus: the boss battles are the levels

the last guardian: mix the previous two

</comment><comment><USER17> > _Nintendo is quite different_

> _Nintendo always starts with the same goal, coming up with a new way to > play_

As a game developer this comes across as quite the Nintendo propaganda video. Nintendo games are the least innovative things I have ever played, as they simply recreate their popular IPs over and over again (mario, zelda, pokemon etc) with somewhat better/different graphics. The only reason they are where they are today is the original games were released at the right time (timing + luck), and people continue to buy the sequels today out of nostalgia.

<comment><USER18> If they're trying to innovate on gameplay, it makes sense that they reuse existing characters as much as possible.

Super Mario 64 was an exploration of platform games in 3d: it doesn't require Mario, but he's a very good fit.

On the other hand, some of their games have new characters, Splatoon is pretty much new characters (except maybe the squid guy from Mario Brothers?)

<comment><USER19> _Splatoon_ was briefly considered as a Mario game:

[http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-considered- making-...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-considered-making- splatoon-a-mario-game/1100-6422026/)

<comment><USER20> Not too surprising. I mean if you think about it, Super Mario Sunshine was basically a single-player Splatoon prototype.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is PC gaming dying? Or thriving? - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23800152/

<comment><USER2> Depends on your definition of dying. Casual games are filling the void left by the migration of hardcore games to the console. Albeit a much smaller percentage of sales casual gamers represent roughly 50-60 million people world wide and is expected to grow. I expect independent developers to largely focus on the causal market since the barriers to entry are smaller.

Blizzard can make a game anywhere and so long as they don't compromise their standards it will be a hit.</comment>


Asperger's Syndrome and smoothies.  - <AUTHOR> http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/12696.html <comment><USER2> To me, the monetary aspects of the second scenario justify the 'neurotypical' interpretation.

We assume generally that dollars are valuable to people, and they prefer more to fewer. So this is always in someone's 'intent set' even if something else (satisfying thirst) is their primary intention.

We further assume that in a voluntary exchange, the buyer 'intended' to pay the agreed price (even if they are in practice simply a price taker). They could have chosen another purchase after seeing the price; some potential buyers do. Another 'bundled' feature about which the buyer credibly declares indifference ('commemorative cup') gives no information about 'intent', but willingness to pay a certain price always does.

It's fascinating that such a simple scenario is often interpreted differently by Aspergers-style thinkers.

</comment><comment><USER3> The comments he's referring to are hilarious:

[http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in- philoso...](http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in- philosophy/200811/intentional-action-and-asperger-syndrome/comments)

I can't imagine spending hours writing essays with elaborate 'rational' arguments to defend one interpretation. If somebody told me that my interpretation was abnormal I would just shrug my shoulders. It's clear to me that there's no _logical_ reason that one answer is correct.

<comment><USER4> " It's clear to me that there's no logical reason that one answer is correct."

Exactly. Can't count the number of times I have seen an endless comment thread to a yes/no question where the answer is that it depends.

In the linked case for instance, for some people being told that the price of an item has changed is just noise, while for others it is meaningful information. The percentage shift a price can take without a person caring at all is a function of that specific individual (their wealth, wealth history, family upbringing, etc).</comment></comment>


Show HN: GeekRations has launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekrations.com/

<comment><USER2> Your website doesn't really say what you do. You need to give some examples of what stuff people are going to be getting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok I updated it here: is this better? <http://www.geekrations.com>

<comment><USER2> Yep! Looks good.

btw I get a popup "here" when I go there with adblock enabled</comment></comment></comment>


Americans Are Dying with an Average of $62K of Debt - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-dying-average-62k-debt-110000416.html <comment><USER2> This is a very deceptive headline. The most common kind of debt is mortgage debt, which is by definition secured. At any moment I have lots of bills I am supposed to pay and lots of assets or incomes to pay them with. Debts I owe that are secured or I have resources to cover are not a problem for anyone.

<comment><USER3> And with secured you mean, they gonna take away your home if you can't pay?

<comment><USER4> Considering the fact that you have died, that's a nonissue.

If you want to leave something for your offspring, make it a priority to pay your house off first.

<comment><USER5> Your offspring still would get any equity left after paying the remainder of the note.

It's not like they confiscate the whole house because you still owe $100,000 on a $250,000 home. But the survivors _do_ have to keep the home out of foreclosure (as in, keeping the payments current)

<comment><USER6> I specifically invest in homes that have been foreclosed on when someone has passed away, because I can't stomach the thought of purchasing someone's home that they were evicted from because they couldn't afford it (ie vultures on the court house steps).

I can't tell you how often someone's heirs either didn't know or didn't care enough to take care of what was required to keep the mortgage in good standing to sell the property and get the equity out.

<comment><USER7> Do you think maybe grieving families have different priorities than selling off assets right away? Or maybe they're trying to sort out among themselves who is in charge of making payments? Or maybe they can't afford payments because the breadwinner passed away?

I'm not trying to judge what you do or what situations you're a part of, but it doesn't sound much different than the "vultures on the court house steps" to me.

<comment><USER6> Foreclosure takes 1+ year in my state. I consider myself an acquirer of abandoned property at that point, and again, I don't pursue acquiring the property if there is a family attempting to live there (as you say, after he breadwinner has passed).

<comment><USER7> Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good to me.

Better than dying with 60k in an account that you could have spent on having a better life.

<comment><USER8> If I have a happy fulfilled life and die with unspent money left to others I care about, that sounds great to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Exactly how the finance overlords want it. The last piece of the puzzle is when they complete the obligation by attaching recourse to future generations so there will be no escape. Indentured servitude in the new age.</comment>


How to start a sidehustle: Make thing. Add Buy button. Tell people - <AUTHOR> https://swizec.com/blog/start-sidehustle/swizec/7716 <comment><USER2> How to make a law: Elect Representatives. Write Bill. Take a Vote.

How to make a souffle: Mix ingredients. Pour in Pan. Put in Oven.

How to make a car: Design Engine. Assemble Parts. Paint.

How to remove a brain tumor: Take MRI. Open Cranium. Cut Out Tumor.

<comment><USER3> I downvoted you because your post is a flippant dismissal of Swizec's very good point.

Rather than spending your waking lives researching every aspect of starting a business, the fastest way forward is to simply try to sell something. Maybe you build it first, maybe you buy it, maybe you try to sell it, then build it. Whatever. But just try to sell it and you're in business. _Then_ figure out all that other stuff.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. I guess my point was that each step actually takes a lot of work to learn how to do well enough to make a viable business. You don't "just" try to sell something any more than you "just" build a video game or "just" convince 200-odd congresspeople to vote for something.

<comment><USER4> You do "just" do those things though.

Obama did "just" become president. He needed smoke breaks and his blackberry to do it all, but he did "just" do it. He subjected himself to his cause and reaped the benefits.

If I look at those three-step plans and feel offended, thats a problem with me. If I feel like I cant "just" say that succesful people are "just" successful, that speaks to a problem with my idea of what is "just", not what it actually is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take a look at [https://servicebot.io](https://servicebot.io) if you want an easy open-source way to manage all the different side gigs you may have going on.

Platform lets you list the services you provide and receive payments so all you need to worry about is the marketing aspect.

Disclaimer - I am one of the creators

<comment><USER6> It's like a meta side gig.</comment></comment>


Where are the startups disrupting the music industry? - <AUTHOR>

The music industry is often blamed for using the outdated business model in the new environment, lobbying the lawmakers and suing people instead of adapting. Then why don't we see the young internet-savvy startups taking the studios' work and doing it better? The startups that would not need to sue  or lobby, but would promote the artists and let them earn money. If the contracts that the big studios offer are so notoriously bad, than why are the new artists signing them? Why isn't there someone offering the better conditions and turning artists away from the old studios? <comment><USER2> First of all, the reasons artists are signing to labels are because of several reasons. For instance, if you (an artist) want to work with a well-known producer then you need to pay them immediately for their work which can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars – which is before often generally taking a cut from sales of records too. Additionally, they also have to pay for the use of recording studios (even if the producer owns it), backing singers, special amp/FX required during the recording as well as, paying for the entourage of the producer to get to the recording studio etc. Most artists don't have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to immediately for this hence, they sign to a record label that can 'front' the money for doing so.

Even if startups were disrupting this space - and there are some - the fact that artists have to pay producers up front etc is a challenge for them to overcome and record labels at the moment are a very good solution for this.

I mean even Jamal Edwards (the founder of SB:TV – <http://www.sbtv.com> – he's used as part of Google Chrome advertising in the UK - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cKpvwlSGOI> and even he has launched a Record Label albeit with Sony - [http://www.rwdmag.com/2011/02/sb-tv-founder-jamal- edwards-si...](http://www.rwdmag.com/2011/02/sb-tv-founder-jamal-edwards- signs-label-deal-with-sony-rca/) and he was kind of disrupting the music industry by promoting artists that you may previously never of heard of. (For instance, I first heard about Ed Sheeran - before he became famous and gone on to release numerous hits - through SB:TV's YouTube Channel)

Some music startups specifically covering what you said in the text area are the likes of:

<https://www.webceleb.com/>

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

<http://soundcloud.com/> \- Although Music Labels are often on there contacting users.

MegaUpload were planning on launching MegaBox/MegaKey before, all the stuff with them happened as well - which was to help unsigned artists/artists sell their music and keep 90% of earnings and to pay them for FREE downloads.

There are a few others as well but, I can't really remember them off the top of my head.

However, with regards to "disrupting the music industry" other interesting music startups to make a note of - _and I've probably missed a load out since I'm just recalling them from what I can remember_ \- as well as the obvious choices of Rdio, Grooveshark, MOG, Spotify, Pandora, Shazam and Last.fm (can they still be called a startup?!) etc and the ones listed above include:

<http://www.earbits.com>

<http://www.mixlr.com>

<http://www.like.fm>

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

<http://www.audiovroom.com>

<http://www.soundtrckr.com>

<http://www.songkick.com>

<http://www.thesixtyone.com>

<http://www.22tracks.com>

<http://www.watzatsong.com>

<http://www.macjams.com>

<http://www.stereomood.com>

<http://www.tunesbag.com>

<http://www.ex.fm>

<http://www.ejamming.com>

<http://www.mixcloud.com>

<http://www.thounds.com>

<http://www.gigjunkie.net>

<http://www.ujam.com>

<http://www.citysounds.fm>

<http://www.mugasha.com>

<http://www.mspot.com>

<http://www.bandzoogle.com>

<http://www.playgroundsessions.com>

<http://www.tastebuds.fm>

There are _tons_ more but these are just a few I can remember off the top of my head with regards to disrupting the music industry as a whole, and with regards to your specific question.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> @showpill.com we are looking to become the America's Got Talent of the web. What i notice with alot of hip hop artist most of them stay independent as long as possible which will give you a little more negotiating room when a label comes for you. An artist will always consider the big studios first they can provide the most resources to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://bopgig.com> "Connect with artists and venues to see the shows you want"</comment>


Org-roam: Rudimentary Roam replica with Org-mode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jethrokuan/org-roam <comment><USER2> I don't use emacs, but I love the concept of organizing your notes and knowledge in plain text, so much that I made my own thing. It's in private beta right now [1], and I've been dogfooding it for the past two months and really enjoying it.

The graph overview may seem like a gimmick, but it's surprisingly useful in reviewing stale notes. Tracing semantic connection is more fun than just browsing a folder.

It's also super nice to be able to embed local copies of PDFs, images, and voice notes, so I know as long as I back up my hard drive, I'll never lose them.

Next I want to add plugins to do periodic reviews of notes, and maybe space repetition for term/definition pairs. Honestly, these efforts only make sense when the data is available for the long haul.

[1]: [https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)

<comment><USER3> So this is interesting. I was ticked off when it says: "what platform do you use the most?"

I have been looking at a handful of projects in this space, including notion.so and Roam, but am seriously considering moving back to Markdown- folder backed by Dropbox, for which there are a variety of editors including The Archive, and mobile apps too.

I urge you to allow zero-friction bidirectional sync at the very least. For me, unless I have complete data portability, a note-taking app that might disappear in a year is a non-starter for me.

[edit: I read deeper and see you have it, thank you]

<comment><USER4> One insight when it comes to building note-taking apps with portability in mind is that when you want to build more rich features, like collaboration or backlinking, is that a database is more suitable to build upon than a basic filesystem. But that architectural choice is at conflicts with portability, because while bringing-your-own-file-system is possible with Google Drive and Dropbox, having your own personal database isn't as popular. Anyone share similar sentiments?

<comment><USER5> Yes and no. A database is just a layer. Using a dedicated database and storing your data in it is simple. But nothing prevents you from storing the data (including relevant metadata) outside of it, and use the database just as a caching-layer for it superior abilities in it's own realm.

Dividing layers is of course more work and has problems of it's own, but works well enough that AFAIK this org-roam here is doing under the hood too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a vim user, I am not an expert on org-mode. But on the zettlekasten forums, I read an interesting criticism even of Emacs org-mode as forcing a sort of lock-in

"[Apps like Roam and Notion] force you into a single-app interface with your data. Interestingly, even though it's a plain-text format, org-mode sort of fails here as well because Emacs is the only way to access most of the functionality of an org-formatted file."

-galen in [https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/404/moving-on](https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/404/moving-on)

Could someone more familiar with org-mode comment on this?

<comment> mickael-kerjean There's quite a few other org mode clients:

\- Filestash: [https://github.com/mickael- kerjean/filestash](https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash) => demo: [https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/Documents/gettin...](https://demo.filestash.app/login?next=/view/Documents/getting_started.org#type=webdav&url=http://server_webdav) (I made this one)

\- Orgzly: [https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly- android](https://github.com/orgzly/orgzly-android)

\- Organice: [https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice](https://github.com/200ok- ch/organice)

\- Org Web: [https://github.com/DanielDe/org- web](https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web)

Emacs is undoubtedly the rolls royce but the ecosystem is thriving

<comment><USER6> There are also several org-mode plugins for VS Code.

<comment><USER7> Which one does anyone use seriously. So far they all look like simple experiments.

<comment><USER6> True. For anything other than quick edits... it's back to emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The graph seems more like a gimmick, but the automatic backlinks are nice.

Org mode is a really good text-file based solution for notes, especially with tools like org-rifle: [https://github.com/alphapapa/org- rifle](https://github.com/alphapapa/org-rifle)

The other day people wrote in an other thread they use grep for their text notes. But what if you have notes with longer, multiline texts? With org-rifle the input words can be anywhere in the multiline note and they can be in any order.

<comment><USER9> I'll say that I've been using org-mode and it's agenda to manage todos and take notes for a long time, and Roam is whole other animal. The problem I've had with Rifle is that words can mean different things in different contexts. Rifle finds every time I used the word "depression" regardless of how I used it. Roam gives you any easy way to add just a little extra symantics to your notes that dramatically increases the signal in the backlinks, and astronomically improves the graph view.

<comment><USER8> Could you show an example of those "little extra symantics" which helps you with this?

<comment><USER9> For sure!

So if I'm reading an article about the fall of the Roman Empire, and I learn about how modern scholarship does not talk in terms like "fall" much anymore, but rather civilization transformation, I might make a new stub article titled `civilization` and then another one for `civilization transformation`

Now, if I read a story about Asoka's Empire in what is now India, and I read about how it underwent a collapse, I might tag it with `civilization transformation` as well.

Another story about the nature of modern civilization and the travails of people who treat their kids as a personal project to "build" as opposed to a living being to nurture and encourage, I would tag that with `civilization` but not `civilization transformation`

Ripgrep'ing my org files for "civilization" would turn up all three of these backlinks. Grepping does not understand context. But I understand context. While `civilization` is part of `civilization transformation`, I don't want `civilization transformation` surfaced for every search of `civilization`

This is a rather contrived example with some obvious issues, but I suppose a good analogy would be that you can drag fish for scallops and get every other living thing off the bottom in your net, increasing the work to clean it out. Or you can dive for individual scallops and take longer but have less work to do when you surface. Both methods have merit, but one provides a much cleaner signal.

Practically speaking, I USE my Roam note's backlinks. While I _could_ grep my previous notes, in practice I never did because it was too much work.

<comment><USER10> If you are using backlinks, why not just grep for `[civilization]]` or `[[file:civilization.org]`?

I actually have a binding in Emacs to run ripgrep on all files in the current directory, which have a link to the current file. It's very simple, and runs in a split second even with 1000s of files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Set up org-roam for evaluation, but when it came time to actually do research, the thought that has already gone into Roam UX won me over. Everything is theoretically replicable in elisp, and there are key bind related bugs in Roam that would be an instant fix in emacs, but "good enough and works right now" beats "could be perfect with weeks of fiddling".

Standout features: referencing ideas is zero friction, whether they exist or not. Universal search works. Editing note titles fixes all references. Days being a first class citizen, where daily prompts thread your notes together and you can reference future dates to have the backlinks show up on that day, is genius.

<comment><USER12> Same thing happened to me. I was using org-mode for GTD and note-taking for the past six months. I shifted all my notes to org-roam with links between them. But then I tried roam, it's UX really won over me.

One thing was accessing my notes with all roam features in all the devices. I don't have to setup dropbox/syncthing/whatever in every machine I own and install emacs with my settings every time. And mainly mobile, If I use orgzly, I don't get any benefit of org-roam in it. So I gave up and embraced roam cloud.

I think there is a huge gap to be filled for a device agnostic emacs that works well on mobile (touch), browser, native and is programmable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great - i started yesterday using org-roam and got many ideas out of my head. Found it by reading about zettelkasten (in the fabolous "Where good ideas come from - The History of innovation") and DevonThink (which i really miss, not avail for linux) and googled for alternatives

</comment><comment><USER14> Such kind of text base note wiki with graph showing links can be done use tiddlywiki and [http://tiddlymap.org/](http://tiddlymap.org/) addon.

Works like a charm, open source, self hosted

</comment><comment><USER15> There was some mention of using Org-roam as an editor in a wiki. What is the process to attach it to the Media-wiki software (used by Wikipedia, etc)

Sorry if it was on the github site and I missed it.

Thanks for the presentation, it looks interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does someone have a good tutorial to learn this and emacs? I'd like to try (I tried roam research online but couldn't connect, and I'd like to learn also about emacs).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say, first of all, use an existing Emacs setup, like Doom [0]. It's got lots of very reasonable defaults, so you will spend less time being mad at Elisp and more time doing something productive. In addition, if you are used to Vim, you won't have to relearn keybindings.

I personally haven't got to try org-roam yet (I use a somewhat similar workflow though). In terms of learing org-mode, I recommend trying org-capture to quickly write down your thoughts, tasks, etc, and then seeing where it goes from there. I started with just an org-mode file with pile of notes and I gradually discovered the features when I needed them.

[0] [https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs](https://github.com/hlissner/doom- emacs)

<comment><USER17> this doom-emac is wonderrful thank you for the reference!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it possible to link to a specific header? What if I change the header name?

<comment><USER19> AFAIK the org-roam main author has strong reasons for not allowing links to headers. There is another project that you can check out - org-sanpo [1].

1\. [https://github.com/kamoii/emacs-org- sanpo](https://github.com/kamoii/emacs-org-sanpo)</comment></comment>