Bountysource terms of service updated to include a "Bounty Time-Out" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bountysource/core/commit/d1c769621bfae7c49881581cb237c3bf2bea984e <comment><USER2> Longer discussion, which seems been picked up by crowd due to more striking title: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551098)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For context, Bountysource is a site that lets people put bounties on feature requests for open-source software. A developer who implements the request can then claim the bounty.

Anyway, this change adds a "bounty time-out", so after 2 years, bounties go away and Bountysource keeps all the money. Worse, this change is retroactive: it doesn't just apply to new bounties, but to any posted since June 30, 2018.

</comment><comment><USER3> They also send email to people who placed bounties in the past. Here's the interesting bit:

> What do I need to do?

> If you agree to the new terms, you don't have to do anything.

> If you have a bounty posted prior to June 30, 2018 that is not currently > being solved, email us at firstname.lastname@example.com to redeploy your bounty. > Or, if you do not agree with the new terms, please discontinue using > Bountysource.

However I do not wish to redeploy my bounty, nor I am willing to give BountySource my money. I've email them asking for a refund, but I'm not optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Or, if you do not agree with the new terms, please discontinue using > Bountysource.

... and we will keep your money anyway. nice.</comment>


School Recess Improves Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/school-recess-improves-behavior/

<comment><USER2> We seem to be both infantilizing children and simultaneously expecting them to work and behave like adults.

Though I don't know the effects (no one does), it can't be anything good for them or for society.

<comment><USER3> How can you say "I don't know the effects (no one does)" and "it can't be anything good" at the same time?

 _Compared with children who receive regular recess, the children who were cooped up during the school day were more likely to be from public schools... from low-income and less-educated families and live in large cities._

Perhaps there is zero direct correlation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just want to point out that while I haven't had a recess since middle school, I recently found out that the middle school I went to has eliminated its recess on fridays. I remember loving fridays because we had an extended recess. I am unsure how the current students are managing.

<comment><USER5> I thought all schools stopped doing recess after about 5th grade? You just move on to hour classes and get the 5/10 minute break between each one.

Now, in college, 2 hour classes means that the prof. better give us a break at the half-way point or we'll be dozing off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a 20 minute break and a 40 minute break every day throughout my entire 13 years of school. This was in Australia.

I can't believe that in other countries you don't get to run around regularly at school.

</comment><comment><USER7> i had recess through high school. it was called lunch, but we weren't confined to the lunch room. instead, we'd hang out by the picnic tables outside near some woody trees and then go down to the soccer field to play ultimate frisbee. i knew i was lucky and i loved it.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the license for Windows header files? - <AUTHOR> I understand that Windows.h et al are licensed for use in building Windows applications, etc. However I'm less clear on what the license is for the text of the headers.
Are you free to distribute them? What about distribute and modify? The copyright notice in Windows.h merely says "all rights reserved" which sounds meaningless in the context, as that's the default anyway and surely they allow some rights to the user.
I believe WINE and mingw have their own version of Windows headers but I'm unsure how those came to be. <comment><USER2> The headers are a part of the Windows SDK, its license is typically located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Licenses\<version>\sdk_license.rtf

>Are you free to distribute them?

No.

>What about distribute and modify?

No.

>I believe WINE and mingw have their own version of Windows headers but I'm unsure how those came to be.

Yes, MinGW headers were developed independently and most of them are either in the public domain or were released under some permissive license.

<comment><USER3> The theory is that copyright applies to expressive content and not to the functionality. So if you take Microsofts header files and strip the comments and formatting, the resulting file would not be covered by copyright.

<comment><AUTHOR> Has this theory been tested in similar cases at all or is it entirely untested ground? Is this perhaps what mingw and WINE did?

<comment><USER4> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression this was exactly what the Oracle vs Google copyright lawsuit was about.

<comment><USER5> No, that one is about reimplementing an api

<comment><USER4> Isn't that basically the same thing? Whether an API itself is expressive enough to be copyrighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The headers themselves are under copyright, of course, but the definitions inside them can be copied/reused for interoperability reasons (something that is especially protected in EU but i think also in US). So while you cannot distribute the header files, you can write your own parser that generates new header files (for C or any other language) that are compatible with the Microsoft header files as long as they aren't the same.

Of course IANAL but AFAIK this is what several projects (especially compilers and interpreters) that need to hook with other APIs are already doing.</comment>


How Spotify's Discover Weekly cracked human curation at internet scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9416579/spotify-discover-weekly-online-music-curation-interview <comment><USER2> For me, Discover Weekly is awesome, but misses about 50-90% of the time. It feels like every other playlist sucks, but could be just me (or the algorithm...). Thankfully, there's a skip button so I can find new artists/bands that I really do enjoy from the playlist (and I have found about a dozen new ones that I really love now).

Years ago when I used Pandora, their radio was amazing and really kept up with the seed well, I felt. I'm not sure how it holds up now since I rather listen to music I choose instead of the radio, though. I feel like they did a better job in terms of hit/misses.

So, while I really like the opportunity Discover Weekly opens up, it's far, far from perfect, but definitely better than nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a pretty pretentious article about a collaborative filtering list that's not even in real-time. It's generated every week and they often miss a week because the service is down.

It constantly recommends me stuff I've already listened to as well. Not really that great based on my experience.</comment>


Microsoft reboots war on sleep - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/microsoft-reboots-war-on-sleep-a90da0396fb5#.u5leefz6f <comment><USER2> I think the worst thing about this is that it tricks you into thinking that dipping into emails at the park or piddling around in a spreadsheet while you're piddling is actually working.

It's not. It's an addiction. It's shovelling snow, it's a quest for feeling accomplishment without effort. It's more fuel for being constantly connected, for constantly thinking you're progressing and accomplishing by hitting that email archive button, or scrolling through reams of meaningless text, or fiddling with your spreadsheet layout. It's no better than scrolling through reddit, then closing it to scroll through twitter, then opening up reddit again.

It's really hard honestly, but these days I open up email and slack, clear them, then close them. Both my phone and my computer are permanently on DND, so no notifications bother me. When I'm done with the work day I make sure that nothing work related stays open and that no one can contact me unless it's an emergency. I'm considering splitting my one login on my laptop into two, a work and a personal, and hard-blocking HN etc on the work one, and hard blocking work on the personal. Or using Bootcamp and moving all my personal computer use to Windows.

My Dad always told me that you should have an hour a day and a day a week to yourself. When I was younger I laughed that off. These days I struggle to make it my minimum ideal.

<comment><USER3> Your dad's a smart man. I have an hour or so to myself every morning, and some days, I'm fairly certain that's the only thing that keeps me sane.

<comment><USER4> Could you (also GP) elaborate on what do you do in this "you" hour? Genuinely curious if it involves primarily things away from screens or not.

<comment><USER5> Go for a run/hike or play the guitar, depending on weather and mood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Way back nearly two decades ago, I set up an early version of ActiveSync on my Palm Treo device. I noticed there was an option in the Treo email settings to disable real time syncing between certain times (after office hours), but I was SO excited about getting and responding to real time emails on my little phone device that I thought "Who the HECK would want to stop this wonderful flow of emails".

Later when I upgraded to the first gen iPhones, I noticed that they didn't have the option to turn off ActiveSync at all. I thought it was odd, but I still didn't mind.

Nowadays, I often leave my phone on DND or Airplane mode for large chunks of the day. I am totally sick of the deluge of mail from what is now 6 separate email addresses. I note that iOS 10 still hasn't got the ability to turn off syncing between certain hours that I know of. On top of that, I have alerts constantly popping up from Twitter, Slack, HelpScout, Intercom et al.

I think the whole "Work can wait" movement is a good one that needs to be front and center at a lot of workplaces (and a lot of apps).

EDIT: Thanks to the responses below, I now realise that iOS 10 DOES indeed have the capability to turn on DND during certain hours only! Winning.

<comment><USER7> There's actually a nice feature regarding that in Google Inbox. It has adopted the approach first featured in Opera 12's mail client:

Have _all_ mail pre-filtered into categories with a bayesian (or similar) filter trained by the user themselves.

What this means in practice is that you have a bunch of categories for emails that are not urgent, like purchase receipts, ads, mailing lists, etc. and you _teach_ inbox which of the mails you receive belong in there, just through the simple act of moving emails in and out.

Emails in those categories don't trigger notifications.

And for the _kinds_ of emails you consider urgent, you move them out of the category they're in, let Inbox know "don't categorize this type of mail".

Only those trigger notifications.

The result of this is that your phone acts like a secretary on your emails. It sorts them into various inboxes for you so you can review them later on, or lets you know if something came in you might want to look at immediately. It's not perfect, sure, it's more akin to a 12 year old playing secretary. However it certainly stems the "tide" without forcing you to cut yourself off entirely, providing a nice medium you can use for normal work time, leaving DND mode for when you actually need exactly that.

<comment><USER6> Good tip - Yes, I do have this filtering turned on in my two main email accounts, so that sales emails, newsletters, family emails etc. (even some system related alerts) all get filtered into separate folders so I don't get the constant 'dings' and don't see the app notification counter climbing like an F1 car odometer! Google Mail/Inbox is very good at this, and I have never missed any important client emails this way.

However, it would be nice if the dings completely stopped of their own accord, say, after 6pm and didn't resume again until about 8am. (I know I can do this manually as other have suggested, but I would really like to 'baby' my phone less and have it figure out these things itself, or let me set it.)

After all, if the Google App can work out when I start my car and connect my phone to my car Bluetooth on a Wednesday evening, that I am going to my mom's place for dinner, and it tells me how long it will take to get there, surely it can extend itself to holding off all emails for the evening so I can enjoy a nice family dinner? :-)

<comment><USER7> You have an iPhone, so i can't help there. Android already has quiet hours/weekend/calendar event rules/automation. Maybe iOS will follow suit soon.

But before that, iirc, people used automation/tasking apps. I.e. primitive scripting interfaces in which you could say "when beyond this time, set to DND" or "when near this GPS location, allow only phone calls". Maybe the itunes app store has such automation apps?

<comment><USER8> It's called "do not disturb" on iOS. Use it, it makes your life better.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204321](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204321)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's what Microsoft should learn: People _say_ they worked in the bathroom, or had meetings on lunchtime, when in fact they shouldn't. Keep your work at bay, keep your work at work. Otherwise it puts you in the grave. Now, Microsoft thinks that's what workers _want_ by totally misinterpreting their usage studies. Hello?

Is anybody there, Microsoft? Are you endorsing burnout?! In case that you've missed, people want to have their work done _before_ they go home. With your crappy office software it was never possible, now it should invade our spare time? Fuck you Microsoft, and get it done!

</comment><comment><USER10> A little hyperbolic, based on a single line from an exec at a different company in a single ad.

I get this is a great way to promote their brand, but it seems pretty close to your standard in-group clickbait marketing:

1) pick a big target everyone can hate on

2) blow something minor out of proportion so you can claim outrage / assert your values

3) profit

<comment><USER11> i agree. i also think Microsoft isn't encouraging people to lose sleep and work in soccer games, at bed, etc. People already are doing it and Microsoft is simply putting out an ad that speaks and resonates with those people.

<comment><USER12> A big company should aspire to make life better, not worse. People don't need to work more than they already do (unless they really want to, which is fine, but most of the time they are expected to be always available).

<comment><USER11> Tell that to McDonalds, Marlboro and hundreds of others.

A big, capitalistic company's only goal is to satisfy their stakeholders, nothing more.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and by creating such a public resentment they won't satisfy their stakeholders.

So it's our job to write articles like DHH wrote and make them as visible as possible. No company is able to foresee all the negative consequences they can cause (they should try, however, because it will and should hurt them).

It's up to the society to create strong negative signals that will counteract and negate positive economic signals coming from any activities harmful to the society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have conflicting feelings about this article.

Firstly, I don't by choice use any Microsoft products, so this is not a defence of that company.

Secondly, I also fully agree that work can wait and my employer should not be intruding on my personal time, outside of office hours.

However, I have a passion for something and I have a young family. Between my paid work commitments and the fabulous time I spend with my family, I have only a limited amount of time to dedicate to my passion. I would like to hope that one day, my passion can generate enough income that I can give up "work." (I know that's a whole other conversation about whether that is a good thing).

What I really want are tools which assist in enabling me to make as much progress with my passion, in the limited time available to me. If that means doing something while on holiday, from work, so be it. Does it make me one of the 47%?

There are of course lines which should be in place and a correct balance found, especially when it comes to family activities. However, I do want tools to keep me informed about the latest events regarding my passion and effective ways to react to that news while away from a desktop/laptop computer.

<comment><USER15> I agree. The critical question isn't "should I be attending a meeting when I'm walking in the countryside?". It's "what's the alternative?"

If it's that you can be walking in the countryside when you would previously have had to come into the office for a meeting, then that's great.

If, on the other hand, it's that you've now got no excuse for not working in times you would previously have been resting, then that's pretty bad.

I work in a company that offers pretty good flexibility. You aren't expected to be answering your emails when you're on holiday, but you are often able to work from home if that helps with your particular situation.

I've got my kid's school play in a few weeks, and I could not do a full day in the office and get back to watch it. But I can stay at home, work in the morning and the evening, and then go to the play in the afternoon. I could also choose to take the entire day off as holiday of course, but then I'd be losing a day's holiday. I appreciate this kind of flexibility.

Of course, there's plenty of companies who take the opposite tack - if you've got a work phone, you're now available to be working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The advert at the bottom is pretty poor, because it seems to be very much pushing that message.

But most of the original ones could be read either way.

<comment><USER14> I must admit I didn't watch the new advert video due to the "do not track" warning.

"This embedded content is from a site that does not comply with the Do Not Track (DNT) setting now enabled on your browser.

Please note, if you click through and view it anyway, you may be tracked by the website hosting the embed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nintendo is kind of following the same product positioning for their new Switch console: it's not "work anywhere, all the time", it's "play anywhere, all the time": game while you are going for a walk with your dog. Game when you are in public transports. Game when you meet your friends. Game at night. Game during the day. Game all the time. This kind of fight for attention is getting really tiring.

<comment><USER16> There is no Balance and no Art.

Consider part of the reason work takes so long is the constant stream of updates. Updates have killed more than one conference presentation.

Yet, when companies are faced with evidence that people don't like updates, they force more, bigger, faster. Why don't they invest in fewer, more meaningful, careful updates?

Treasure the customer's device as you would their home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised by the amount of comments denying even the sense of such critique as DHH presented in the article.

The problem comes from a very narrow understanding of how 'capitalism/free market economy/society' should work. In the original theoretical framework that laid the ground for the modern economical system, David Hume (and Adam Smith) talked about 'spontaneous order' that comprised _multiple_ social signals, not just prices! Society and economy are complex adaptive system with multiple inputs and any public indignation like this one are perfect examples of signals that should act like 'invisible hand'.

The more such signals we'll allow, the better the optimisation will be, not just in terms of economical efficiency, but also environmental friendliness, quality of life impact etc.

Unfortunately neoclassical economy (including some Nobel price winners) seem to be blissfully unaware of where they are coming from and they tend to ditch social 'messiness' so characteristic for any complex system in favour of simplified mathematical models.

For anyone interested, I really recommend the below:

1) This talk about the missing forgotten part of Adam Smith thought ("The Theory of Moral Sentiment"), that significantly changes the understanding of his perspective: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/04/vernon_smith_an.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/04/vernon_smith_an.html)

2) This article by Yannis Varoufakis on the idea of Spotaneous Order and how it got oversimplified over the last 3 centuries: [https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/02/25/on-spontaneous- order-v...](https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/02/25/on-spontaneous-order-valve- the-future-of-corporations-hume-smith-marx-and-hayek-a-one-hour-chat-with- russ-roberts-on-econtalk/)

</comment><comment><USER17> This. Work work work.

Work is the process of mapping nature into products and (then) waste.

If nobody needs the 'fruits' of your work, there's always marketing and advertising which can make people want them.

This my friends is the reason our planet is fast becoming uninhabitable.

People doing too much work.

I think we've achieved a lot, now it's time to take a look around and take a look inside.

Is it possible to build a society which is not built around the concept of 'work'?

Are there any other human values which could replace it ?

<comment><USER18> Work is fine. Bullshit work isn't.

> _Is it possible to build a society which is not built around the concept of > 'work'?_

I hope so. I suppose it will happen, as more and more people realize there isn't much to be proud about working anymore. We're not making food for our community, we're not making sheets for someone else to make swords to protect our community. We're making pointless websites that are meant to trick people into buying some shit they don't need, all to make our boss richer.

Of course pop psychology is already on it, reminding us that what matters is that we're working - our professionalism, our dedication, our skill. But at some point I guess the society at large will get disillusioned about it and realize there's nothing honourable in working, because most work is no longer doing anything honourable. The pride of work is an outdated value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That Surface Pro commercial struck me similarly. Working 14-hour days is a sign of something terribly wrong, far from being an accomplishment to boast about or to promote.

Several months ago I started leaving my laptop charger at work, so that the time I spend on the computer at home is limited to the battery life. As a result, I stopped staying up late (2am-), which has been a life-long habit until then.

Two weeks ago, I stopped bringing _my laptop_ home. As a result, I've been reading a lot more, going to sleep early, waking up early, and being more productive at work despite spending less time working.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really don't like this post.

The article is shoehorning an agenda and viewpoint in to an ad that is essentially a profile of an unusual person.

I don't like the tone, I don't like the language, and I don't like the judgemental assumptions.

It is obviously written by someone who doesn't know many working creatives, and why some people approach work that way.

And it is assuming that the author knows what is best, and what makes everyone happy, as if there are no variations in people in this world. I I find it a shame a person could think they know better what someone else needs than they do. Condescending. Insulting.

<comment><USER21> The author is well known for taking this kind of strongly-opinionated, incendiary stance with his writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are two aspects to this imho:

1) The glorification of a lifestyle completely dominated by work.

2) Microsoft offering products that you can use from anywhere, at any time.

The article is mostly about 1). But I do think that 2) is to be applauded.

</comment><comment><USER23> What really scares me is the fact that MS would present itself as a company that now focus on enabling people, and then decides that by enabling they only move towards getting work done, thus depriving people of the very life they should be allowed to enjoy.

With all the current privacy discussion going on, it's kinda lame to work somewhere you're supposed to take corporate phones and so on back home - EDIT: considering the future might look like 1984 when it comes to surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER24> To those who complain: are you the person who is responsible for a potential purchase of Office 365 license pack for your entire company? If not, then the message in this advertising campaign is not targeted to you. It is targeted to this person. Now, who they might be, and what _they_ will think of the message?

(As a software engineer, I, of course, agree that this is terrible).

</comment><comment><USER25> First one I'd seen that campaign, absolutely atrocious.

I've been working like that for the last couple of months the and it's really not healthy. It has been at the expense of every other part of my life, I had my own reasons but will be returning to a more balanced approach.

</comment><comment><USER26> Article mashes up a valid grievance with an irrelevant attack on the quality of Marvel films. Anger is a powerful tool, but it can really weaken your argument if not used with precision.

I also think the message of this particular advert doesn't justify the strength of this attack.

<comment><USER27> At the very least, it's ridiculous to call it a 'sweatshop'. The kid making DHH's shoes would probably love to work for Marvel.

Yes, I am fighting hyperbole with hyperbole.

<comment><USER28> I get your hyperbole but simply as a matter of course I'm gonna have to throw a flag: that's the fallacy of relative privation.

<comment><USER29> It's not the fallacy of relative privation if the article _already_ made the comparison to sweatshops. It's just pointing out an inaccurate (and arguably tasteless) analogy.

<comment><USER27> Vindication!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's not about working 24/7\. It's about the ease and convenience of getting something done during off hours in the occasional times you want to or need to.

I don't work during off-hours because I have to or feel pressured to. I also don't do it excessively. I do it because I like my work and care about the uptime of my systems and sometimes I want to get ahead. This has paid off for me in tangible ways, and I still enjoy a stress-free home life.

If you want to work 9-5 and then be done, that's fine. But don't act like the alternative is morally wrong or that others can't exercise their own choice.

</comment><comment><USER31> The culture you keep, determines your sleep.

#SamIAm

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems like hyperbole. That's a single line in a single video of an executive at a different company.

DHH on that self-promotion game

<comment><USER13> Have you seen these ads with guy sleeping with tablet etc? They are conveying the same message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Pretending like the need for sleep can be ignored, given our current physiology, is absolutely absurd. But I would be very much interested in any work towards fundamentally reconfiguring our biology. I was hoping this was the topic of the article, and was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't get the point of this article. The ads show an activity that a large part of the population is already doing, and that Microsoft has a product targeted to those people. What does the author have a problem with? Is someone forcing him to work at home?

</comment><comment><USER35> I think that the culture of working all the time is stupid, but so is blaming it on a single company.

Why not blame Android for making this possible with all the useful mobile devices. Or how about blaming the web for making access to information at all hours of the day possible.

</comment><comment><USER36> DHH is coming from the "10 hour work week" perspective, which I'm sure many people would be envious of, but it's not a reality most people live in.

That said, I do think mobile device usage outside of the office is more likely to supplement rather than replace time in the office.

</comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps this campaign reflects the bubble the marketing team is in.

<comment><USER19> Having spent a year at a marketing agency, I can imagine this being the case. People took pride in how long they stayed in the office. It was common to see people still there at 10pm (myself included, I'm ashamed to say).

</comment></comment><comment> blubb-fish is that #getitdone sheet really original Microsoft advertisement?

i have trouble believing that.

</comment><comment><USER38> Chill down.

</comment><comment><USER39> Article is a rant with no substance

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's why it's called a rant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's easy: turn off your device when at home.

<comment><USER41> "It's easy to give up smoking - just don't buy cigarettes".

<comment><USER42> You joke, but this IS how I quit cigarettes. The impulse to smoke was momentary and I'd reach into my pocket. Not having cigs there, I'd be slightly miffed.

But as I was not buying any, a separate action on which I had taken a clear stance for myself, I ended up not smoking unless in a group setting.

Over time I cut out on that too.

<comment><USER41> Despite never being a smoker, I know that my willpower is much too weak for that to work.

<comment><USER42> I suggest training your agency. Read some Nietzsche :3</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do I find an iOS dev with core audio expertise? - <AUTHOR>

I have hired from Elance and ODesk before and in my opinion, it seems that the really good devs stay away from it. I have a specific need for an iOS dev with good knowledge of the real time (low latency) Core Audio libraries. It is a very basic app otherwise. Any thoughts how I can go about finding a person like that? <comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for any confusion, but I thought I posted to Ask HN. Could the mods please move this thread there?

</comment><comment><USER2> Go to Meet ups and you will get an introduction.</comment>


HackerNews Grid - <AUTHOR> http://hackernewsgrid.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting experiment. My observation: With the thumbnails, the title of each post becomes a less-important-caption. In the case of HN, I think the text- only approach is far better. Product Hunt used to be text only, and frankly, it was a better experience. The moment you introduce images to these types of communities, people will start using that real estate to create flashy- attention-grabbing visuals. Over time, it'll be more about how good a thumbnail looks, rather than the curiosity of a title that lures you into the content.

<comment><USER3> On a similar note, I consider the moment reddit abandoned text only their first large mistake. (Many more since then)

<comment><USER4> What was stopping people from taking the same click-bait approach to the text titles? Titles on reddit are still pretty damn nondescript, and rarely have actual relevant information in them.

<comment><USER3> Honestly it was a difference in the userbase and how they interacted. There's some unknown threshold of users where once a platform becomes too popular it begins to degrade. I'd say pre-2010 reddit is a vastly different beast than today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm hoping that this makes HN's front page just to see the fun recursion of the site displaying a screenshot of itself. (And I do appreciate the experiment in user experience design, too.)

<comment><USER5> P.S. I just Googled "recursion," and got this very witty reply:

        Did you mean: recursion

<comment><USER6> At least one dictionary used to end their entry on recursion with "see also: recursion"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A huge part of the appeal of the standard HN page for me is the simple, straightforward, sensible headline without the discration of images. The title guidelines and the insistence on adhering to them are a big plus in this regard.

<comment><USER8> I really like that HN is so low bandwidth. I often check the fp on shitty mobile connection and while I can't read most stories until my rss reader catches up, at least I know what people are talking about.

<comment><USER9> I enjoy this as well. Plus the raw site is faster than any app reader I've tried before and while I have somewhat fat fingers I typically don't have too much of a problem clicking links on the mobile site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever I see something like this, I sigh and wonder, "Why should it be so hard for the average internet user to create a live 'grid of thumbnails' for 'a list of links to webpages'? Why should it take a whole developer to code and deploy an entire website, just for this one use-case?"

Software today is not as "soft" as one would've hoped, fifty years ago. It's not malleable. It's not composable. It's barely reactive.

This is not how it was meant to be.

<comment><USER11> Every time someone says "Why should it be so hard to.." with software it's because they've not thought about the requirements. If you break down "a live grid of thumbnails" it's actually a relatively complex app even if you're just making an MVP. Even if you're prescriptive about things like the number of links in the list, the size of thumbnails, the layout of the thumbnails, the way the user manages what links they see, the regularity of updates, you're still left with an application that needs a basic list CRUD UI, a grid of thumbnails, something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail, code to handle the site being unavailable or un-rendererable, a backend to store the list data and thumbnail images, maybe something to check to see if the site has actually changed (which can be tricky if it loads content with JS). And that's before the user's ask for features like drag and drop grid reordering, update scheduling, etc.

That's not to suggest it'd take more than half a day to knock something together, but that's more down to the awesome ecosystem of software libraries than it being a simple project. To write an app from scratch in, say, C++ would be a _huge_ project.

<comment><USER10> I would disagree. All of the problems that you mentioned, such as "the layout of the thumbnails", "the regularity of updates" and "something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail" can already be solved and parameterized to such genericness to be sufficiently usable for this use-case and, I'd surmise, most others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have done something similar for the hn search at Algolia but flagged it under style -> experimental in the settings panel. It's not a grid layout, but more a refresher to the current design. [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com)

<comment><USER13> Somehow clicking on the thumbnails keep appending `%7B%20%7B%20hit.url%7D%7D` to the URL. Bug?

<comment><USER12> Could be, we haven't nurtured this much as the "experimental" layout didn't seem to get much traction

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area You really, really need to update the screenshot for hackernewsgrid.com for infinite recursion, now that you're on the HN home page the screenshot should include a picture of itself.

<comment><USER14> Hah! I've been refreshing the site all day just to see the recursion happen, but it looks like the screenshot won't update :(

<comment><USER15> Clear your browser cache (just for news.ycombinator.com)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice example of the Droste Effect.

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

<comment><USER17> To lessen the clickbaity nature of your post:

> The Droste effect (Dutch pronunciation: [drɔstə]), known in art as mise en > abyme, is the effect of a picture appearing within itself, in a place where > a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. The appearance > is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the > picture, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The internal HN links are going with a double slash.

E.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com//item?id=15080693](https://news.ycombinator.com//item?id=15080693)

Resulting in Unknown page.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for posting this - I quite enjoy browsing hacker news using thumbnails from mobile after trying it. On my laptop, I think I prefer the original homepage. I like to check the news once a day, but some days I'm short of time and use an alternative that cuts down results shown [1].

Overall I'm very happy to have now three good options for checking out what I consider to be a very good source of fuss free tech news and discourse.

[1] hckrnews.com - hopefully it isn't a faux pas to mention a potential competitor to your site in this thread.

<comment><USER20> I use hckrnews too. You can set it to show everything, but its more of a nice CSS skin for the main site.

This one seems to do a bit more, and changes things more dramatically. I don't think the subgroups of HN that like hckrnews would overlap much with the one that would like this site. Its much more visual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I definitely clicked a couple more just by looking at the screenshots than reading the plain text index. I wonder if there's psychological lure in graphics. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER22> That's nice. I thought about using thumbnails to linked sites before, but I wonder about the legal dimension.

What if someone puts something illegal, or copyrighted on one of the linked pages? Does anybody have advice (internationally / US / Germany)?

I'm based in Germany, and here there is strong legal protection for "quoting" excerpts. However, it is often debatable what counts as a quote. German news sites often take a photograph of a screen, instead of a screenshot. There seems to be protection for search engines (e.g. Google Photo Search), but the situation is not clear. There is also no "fair use" or safe harbor like in the US.

I'm especially afraid of cease and desist letters (Abmahnungen) - there is an entire industry of people who crawl the web and find copyrighted images with image recognition. The mean thing is that they don't let you use their tool to check for compliance - I would gladly buy a license for images I accidentially use, or remove them - but it is more profitable for them to send you a letter.

(Rant: I once had a case where someone accidentially printed a copyrighted image on a document and put a scaled down picture of that document on a domain managed by me. The copyrighted image was about 50x50 pixels, mirrored, and black and white, but they had me pay ~800 Euros for it. Funny thing is that they never ever contacted us via the contact email. They didn't care about their client's rights or about selling an image, they wanted to milk us. They sent physical letters to people they thought related to the site, until they grabbed me (the Admin-C of the domain).

Now I heard they are going after people rewteeting or liking copyrighted images - IMHO that is ridiculous, there should be a difference between "including" and "linking to" an image.)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't really see the point since most thumbnails are just a screenshot of illegible text. It doesn't help at all.

I think a better thumbnail system would be to use an actual image of the article (for example, the thumbnail for the page [https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/1-3-americans-0-sa...](https://www.gobankingrates.com/retirement/1-3-americans-0-saved- retirement/) would be a crop of [https://cdn.gobankingrates.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/sh...](https://cdn.gobankingrates.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/shutterstock_160438778-1420x595.jpg)), or simply a favicon in case there's no image available. Hell, you're experimenting so why not even a carousel of all the images in the article? (moving on mouse hover ideally)

Also the title should not be secondary, below the thumbnail. Maybe it should be over the image in some way?

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a "preview" feature on [https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews](https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews) that uses OG tags, but I'd much rather use these images. Any way we can work something out?

<comment><USER25> Have you thought about using something like urlbox ([https://urlbox.io](https://urlbox.io)) to quickly add website preview thumbnails?

<comment><USER24> Something like that, or a headless browser, would be great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ugh. No.

I keep seeing sites shifting to high-graphics, low-text content. HN is an interesting exception in that it's zero-graphics, low-text -- the only indication of content is a <80 char subject, the originating site, user, and current votes.

What I'd prefer is deeper _textual_ context, a'la Jacob Nielsen's long- standing microcontent guidelines. A 140 - 500 character introduction a strong title, and _maybe_ an accompanying thumbnail or avatar.

</comment><comment><USER27> What API did you use for the screenshots?

<comment><USER28> Not the author, but taking screenshots is nowadays rather simple with headless Chrome: [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-c...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless- chrome)

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If I were to add another feature to HN I would add color coding of how content dense a link is. Sometimes a link is a big long essay, and I might not want to click on it just yet.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome, but I would really appreciate if it would use all of my screen estate (i am using a 1920x1200 screen) instead of using only three columns.

<comment><USER31> What browser are you using? The site seems to be responsive in Chrome (1440 width shows four columns, 1920 shows five, not sure where the breakpoints are exactly).

EDIT: It's using a flexbox grid layout so it shouldn't actually need any breakpoints. Maybe the layout changed since you checked it or your browser is triggering a fallback?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just notice some thumbnails are showing pop up dialog instead of the site itself.

If Puppeteer[1] is used to screenshot the site, probably need to use the page.click API to close it.

But, one problem with that is you need to know the exact selector name which maybe is not a generic one.

[1] [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer)

<comment><USER24> You could try pressing 'escape' maybe? Works for some sites

<comment><USER32> I think that will work too as there is an API for generating keypress event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 Also [https://hnews.xyz/new](https://hnews.xyz/new)

<comment><USER33> Thank you for mentioning this. There are couple of similar patterns between the projects, but feels that hnews.xyz it's faster and has more features. Congratulations to the creator for having fun building this and please share the code!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Personally, I don't find the thumbnails add anything and also detract a little from reading the headlines. Not to knock on it as an experiment.

My main UX issue with HN is the comment nesting. Would much prefer less nesting and something akin to 4chan's backlink post referencing.

<comment><USER35> What's the advantage of that comment style? 4chan's comment threading is effectively non-existent

<comment> unkown-unknowns 4chan style makes it easier to see which comments are new. However it does so at the cost of separation of subtopics. IMO 4chan style is not a good fit for HN because we often have many different conversations going on at the same time within the discussion of a story. If HN switched to 4chan style comments I believe that it would dramatically change the nature of the discourse for the worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> looks great, but needs meta info... like post time/comment numbers/points etc...

<comment><USER37> and the URL domain, I thought "Shop Walmart and more of your favorite stores, faster" was an inserted ad till I noticed it was on blog.google on the real front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> When I clicked on a link it added an additional slash to the URL, I.e [https://news.ycombinator.com//item?id=15074526](https://news.ycombinator.com//item?id=15074526)

</comment><comment><USER39> There is one more similar site [http://richhn.herokuapp.com/](http://richhn.herokuapp.com/) which fetches meta tags of hackernews links and shows it's rich preview.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice. There's a bug, self posts have an extra slash in the url (for example "Show HN: How to discuss with opinionated people using the Socratic method[video]" which is currently on the front page for me).

</comment><comment><USER41> Would love to know what are you using for the screenshots? Is it urlbox?

</comment><comment><USER42> Usability question.

Is it easier to read, or just otherwise better, if the picture came after the link/heading?

I find it hard to visually read/parse the way they have it now with picture first then title.

</comment><comment><USER43> Several people here are asking how you automatically screenshot websites. Look up PhantomJS -- you don't need to use someone else's API when you can make your own! =)

<comment><USER44> PhantomJS is kind of deprecated (and the maintainer said he's stepping down [1]) since Chrome finally got a headless mode several weeks ago. There's even a tool from Chrome team [2] that allows making screenshots from nodejs:

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/phantomjs/9aI5d-LDuNE/...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/phantomjs/9aI5d-LDuNE/5Z3SMZrqAQAJ)

[2] [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer#usage](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer#usage)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is this a side effect of Puppeteer lib?

[https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer)

</comment><comment><USER46> Opportunity for infinite recursion.

[http://i.imgur.com/9PGlGOG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/9PGlGOG.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER47> Sort of off-topic, but uh, how to generate thumbnails of websites? Is there a service?

Apologies for the laziness.

</comment><comment><USER48> Awesome, just found my new go-to HN site.

</comment><comment><USER49> check out [https://hckrnews.com/](https://hckrnews.com/) the "top 10", "top 20", "top 50%" links are great features for me.

</comment><comment><USER50> Wow, looks and works perfectly without JS enabled! Really appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER51> For the love of God please upvote the this (the OP) so that it will be in the top 9 posts. Then we can all watch a feedback loop in all its pixel glory!

edited to clarify that I'm not in any way asking anyone to update my comment - just the original post

</comment><comment><USER52> Cool, is that thing made by using React?

</comment><comment><USER53> How'd you get the thumbnails?

</comment><comment><USER54> This is the wrong kind of presentation for the typical HN content. And somebody did the same thing already before.

</comment><comment><USER55> That site loaded so fast!

</comment><comment><USER56> a bit higher and we can make a hackernews grid inception

</comment><comment><USER57> Try pinterest style

</comment><comment><USER58> Nice! I like it :)

</comment><comment><USER59> I frankly prefer the original, it's more efficient to me.

</comment><comment><USER60> How are you getting the thumbnail images?

</comment><comment><USER61> Fantastic one!</comment>


MIT OCW: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience (Summer 2008) - <AUTHOR> http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/icn/icn/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Anyone here has a few suggestions on groups who do Computational Neuro- Science/ Cognitive Neuroscience and use Machine Learning extensively in it?</comment>


DIY Email Referrals with MailChimp, Zapier, and Mailgun - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/diy-email-referrals/

<comment><USER2> This is one of those really cool use cases we (Zapier) couldn't have predicted. In fact, given the final behavior of Sacha's setup I still have a hard time reversing out the Zaps he used to make it! One of my favorite thing is seeing the new unique use cases folks come up with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if there are some parts of my write-up that aren't clear. And thanks for putting together such a great service!

By the way, speaking of incentives Zapier's own referral program is very well done. It's quite fun trying to earn all the extra tasks, and I'm almost there!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: I posted this once previously but it seems like it got flagged, because it very suddenly dropped off the front page.

I'm reposting under the assumption that the flagging was a false positive, because I can't see anything wrong with the link itself.

Of course if I _did_ do something wrong, I would love to know what it is so I can avoid doing it again.

</comment><comment><USER3> A 2.3 conversion rate is very good. You shouldn't be disappointed. This is a very nice DIY system that anyone can replicate. Note that this type of marketing is very effective because it motivates both parties to green light whatever proposition they are facing.

</comment><comment><USER4> You definitely want to watch the spam rate complaints of these emails vs. your normal sends. Companies like SailThru won't let you (or strongly discourage) using their mail server and IPs to send friend referral emails because they get dunned by ISPs from spam complaints on referral emails all the time.

You can always run this through a separate account or service on a different IP so that your marketing comms don't take any hits over complaints on your referral emails.

I'm not saying you will get them, but just a heads up that it's a common problem as you scale it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I didn't get any complaints and my unsubscribe rate wasn't any higher than usual, but that might be because I sent the referral link as part of the regular Sidebar newsletter.

On the other hand, if I had sent out those links on their own, I can see how people would perceive it as spam and complain a lot more. Then again, I might also have had a higher conversion rate, who knows… (but I'm not taking the risk of potentially alienating my subscribers to find out!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been a happy Sidebar subscriber from day one and I always browse through the weekly links. Thanks Sacha!

A quick anecdote: While reading this article I noticed that I don't remember getting my referral link from Sidebar. I searched my Gmail for "in:spam sidebar" and there it was - the only Sidebar email which Gmail has ever flagged as spam.

I know MailChimp has tools for testing the spamminess of a campaign and this message probably passed all of them since there's nothing particularly spammy about it. Maybe it was random or maybe the referral link was just enough to trigger the spam filter in (my) Gmail.

If the open rate for the MailChimp campaign wasn't particularly low spam filtering wasn't probably a significant factor in the overall conversion rate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear you like Sidebar!

And you're right, the open rate is much lower than usual (19% vs 63% for the one before). I didn't noticed it before because the daily edition containing the same referral link that I sent on the same day went through fine.

This happens from time to time and I'm not sure what I can do about it.

I honestly don't understand how Gmail's spam filter can be so "dumb" (at least from a human point of view). You'd think that if someone open, reads, and clicks emails from a particular address regularly, the filter would be smart enough to know that there's a very high probability it's not spam.

<comment><USER5> Gmail's spam filter definitely seems to be erring on the aggressive side nowadays. I honestly can't remember when any real spam last reached my inbox. On the other hand, I did find many other false positives while going through the spam folder, mainly from newsletters and social notifications I really have subscribed to.

I guess the least we can do is help Google tune their filters and periodically mark all false positives as "not spam".

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

Additionally one might go as far to suggest false positives are more problematic than the occasional spam mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really want to try this now. Also, I don't think your results were that bad, especially if the referees are more targeted and provide higher value than normal users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I don't know if the referees are more targeted, but now that I think of it the referr _ers_ are certainly a high-quality segment.

For example, one Sidebar subscriber ended up referring 8 new people! So it can be a good way to identify your biggest fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a quick aside, does anyone know the best/easiest way to implement "subscribe by email" for a blog/WP site?

Feedburner has very simple implementation but it seems like there's a good chance it will be retired soon so I was hoping for another option.

<comment><USER9> You could have a look at MailChimp. They have a free plan and there's a few WordPress plugins floating around for it. I'm using one called MailChimp widget. Simple and it works.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mail Chimp had a transactional email service <http://mandrill.com/>

They offer free blocks of messages if you're a Mail Chimp customer.</comment>


IPad: the perfect computing device for children? - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/general/ipadbaby.html

<comment><USER2> I guess I should create an app that plays a Chopin piece when you touch the screen. Then parents can buy it and imagine their kids are genii.

Just saying... But of course it is interesting how kids can interact with computers, no question.

<comment><USER3> Don't you mean "genios"? If you're going to do the Latin inflection for the plural, you might as well do it for the accusative case too.

<comment><USER2> Geniuseseses??? I don't know :-( Plural of Genius.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Things like this make me so sad. Why not give that kid fingercolours? Or a xylophone? Make him experience the real world instead of simulation of something hidden behind a screen.

<comment><USER5> You probably don't have kids, but I'll respond anyways. What if your kid already has real finger paints, musical instruments and all manor of "real world" toys and objects?

I recognized that my two children could use a touchscreen almost a year ago when they were 1 and 3 years old. When the iPad came out it was a no-brainer. Unlike a mouse, touchpad or keyboard, the touchscreen on my iPad is very usable (apps are a diff story) for my now 2 and 4 year olds and makes discovering computers a joy for them.

Yes they still go outside, get dirty and explore like any other kid. They just have this in addition to all that "real" stuff.

<comment><USER6> The thing is... these devices are quite hypnotic and addictive for fully grown adults, let alone infants.

As a father of two young children, I kept them away from computers and screens as much as possible until they were 3 years old.

Babies are wired to be learning about and interacting with their physical environment and the lifeforms around them. Exposing them to highly artificial and abstract phenomena before they have developed the abstract thought processes to assign relevance and meaning to them seems to be at best at waste of hard earned neural circuitry, at worst developmentally damaging.

We need to be gently nurturing our children's imaginations not flattening it and rendering it obsolete via technology. There's plenty of time for kids to discover computers, but once they do other all the other things they love doing will have some serious competition for their attention.

<comment><USER7> "Exposing them to highly artificial and abstract phenomena"

...you mean stuff like stuff human speech, maths and other modern inventions?

<comment><USER8> Sorry but I'm with the other luddites here. I don't encourage iDevice usage with my small (2 and 4) kids. I prefer them using old-fashioned machinery (books, sticks, rocks, dirt, toy trains)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is part of the reason I bought an iPad. My daughter has speech issues and playing some of the games has helped her a lot.

<comment><USER10> Which apps/games helped her?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the iPad had LOGO on it, that 10 week old baby could be learning how to program and understand the real power of computing devices.

<comment><USER12> Damn you, Poe!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> iPad should come out with Disney specific version (in pink for girls and in red/blue for boys). Consider the opportunities, an inbuilt iTunes store with all superhero / Cinderella type cartoons [they will learn to pay for the content from the childhood itself no need for RIAA / MPAA lawsuits], there is so much opportunity in this field, I can totally see kids harrowing their parents for one. Wonder how Steve jobs hasn't already began producing one.</comment>


Ask YC: Shared hosting providers that don't suck? - <AUTHOR>

Looking for something under $10/month:<p>Can this get me shared hosting with decent latency and reasonable uptime? <comment><USER2> I use WebFaction and am very pleased with them. They support hosting multiple sites on one account, PHP, Rails, and Django while having extremely fast and helpful customer service. The latency is good, although not blazing, and I've had perfect uptime so far since I signed up six months ago. My plan is $9.50/month and allows shell access (the clincher for me), 80 MB RAM, 10 GB HD, and 600 GB bandwidth. I definitely recommend them.

<http://www.webfaction.com/?affiliate=pillarofeden>

* Disclaimer - this is an affiliate link.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do they define application memory? This sounds like a partially managed VPS, or at least is metered similary. Does Apache count as memory use?

<comment><USER2> I don't think so, I think it's for Rails and Django pretty much. I've never had an issue although I only run Rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dreamhost seems popular and cheap, but people also like complaining about them.

<comment><USER3> On DreamHost right now. Went down a few times, but not a big deal - uptime for my server has been crystal the past few months.

You'll hear that "DreamHost sucks" all the time. Keep in mind that they host around 700,000 domains, and operate thousands of servers, so there will be an inevidably huge amount of people complaining. (Of course, people don't usually rant about how great the service is, so that gets lost in the noise.)

The fact that they're a lot more transparent (<http://www.dreamhoststatus.com>) than a lot of providers is good, but only makes people complain more (The thinking is: 'It went down! I must complain about the service being terrible.' rather than with traditional hosting providers, where you probably weren't aware of the downtime, unless if you personally experienced it.)

My suggestion: if it's not mission-critical, DreamHost is a good, very reasonably priced choice.

<comment><USER4> A recent gem from [http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/05/21/blingy- problems/al...](http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2008/05/21/blingy-problems/all- comments/#comments)

<comment><USER5> Holy crap, that's been over a week. I pity the fool who put something mission- critical on there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NearlyFreeSpeech has been pretty kickass so far--no downtime that I've noticed. I don't exactly move any traffic, but since you only pay for the bandwidth you use, it's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER7> I highly recommend LunarPages. Best thing is their low latency and modern systems. They're one of the few with a lot of clients yet almost universally positive reviews.

</comment><comment><USER8> he.net is wonderful, and has very, very low latency connectivity. No fancy GUI control panel (at least not that I've noticed), just plain ssh access to a good shell and you're on your way. They answer the phone on the second or third ring, a real human, maybe because most of their users are good enough not to need any support. That being said, I'm now looking for a new provider too, because they host only one domain for the cheap accounts.

</comment><comment><USER9> What type of hosting are you looking for? PHP, ASP.NET, Python, it really depends.

I've had different experiences with each. For plain old php, bluehost seems alright.

However, may I suggest that if this hosting provides your sole source of income you look at a virtual host. I've used <http://www.servint.net/> for a ton of wordpress blogs and it's pretty good.

I've also "moved up" from plain jain asp.net hosting to dedicated hosting.

If you're depending on this as a source of income I recommend you get a dedicated host. In the long run it will pay for itself.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Lypha for my PHP/Perl hosting. They have the most featured, spaceous, and bandwidth-plenty service I've ever seen for a price like $4/month, and I haven't seen a downtime in months (not to mention the support is great). Get Dreamhost if you want Python/Ruby. Otherwise, get Lypha.

<http://lypha.com/hosting_plans.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been using <http://www.websitesource.com> for several years now. Uptime is good for a shared host. I would actually recommend hosting your mail elsewhere though. I use the free version of Google Apps which works perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been using hostmonster.com - $6.95/month (2y contract)

They offer "unlimited" hosting and bandwidth now, which means until it's not worth hosting you anymore.

I have about 7 domains with them and they've been pretty reliable.

<comment><USER13> Agree. I was with hostmonster for a year and was pretty satisfied with their support and services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> JaguarPC.com for PHP/MySQL ... been with them for over 7 years

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using 1and1.com for a while now and am still happy.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think <http://www.hostgator.com> has a reasonable service and good customer service.

</comment><comment><USER17> you get what you pay for generally. I'm not sure what you mean by "suck". Most hosts I've used had very little downtime, but you aren't going to get a lot of cpu/memory resources for under $10.

I personally would never get a host that doesn't give me shell access, not sure if you care about such things. I can only guess what you mean by "suck".

<comment><AUTHOR> Low latency is what I am looking for mainly, since it seems like most places have acceptable downtime.

I was on Media Temple grid host at one point and it was just slow. I don't want that in a host.

<comment><USER17> I use slicehost. I haven't payed attention to the latency, but I've never noticed my site loading slowly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> GeekIsp has been very solid for me. Reasonably priced, communicative, and modern.

</comment><comment><USER4> asmallorange.com

<comment><USER2> Asmallorange is also extremely good, I used to use them but I couldn't find a way to host multiple sites, which was crucial for me.

<comment><USER4> You must have been with them a long time ago. <http://asmallorange.com/services/hosting/features.php>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Webfaction.com</comment>


What Snow Storms Do to the Economy [Infographic] - <AUTHOR> http://www.mint.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/mint-blizzard-infographic.jpg

<comment><USER2> S.b. "Effects". See <http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html></comment>


Twimlbin - Host & share Twilio Markup Language without a webserver - <AUTHOR> http://twimlbin.com/

<comment><USER2> I like that it combines the "postbin" with logging more specifically tuned to Twilio connectivity in the style of the twilio debugger.

</comment><comment><USER3> ooh nice feature on Twilio blog too! [http://www.twilio.com/blog/2011/12/doers-in-action- twimlbin-...](http://www.twilio.com/blog/2011/12/doers-in-action-twimlbin- hosting-solution.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great. No more hosting twiml out of my public dropbox!

</comment><comment><USER5> This will things much easier for me. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> great product!

</comment><comment><USER7> thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> useful!

</comment><comment><USER8> nice</comment>


Facebook isn't just fighting adblocker,but also the underlying cause of blocking - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/10/facebook-isnt-just-fighting-ad-blockers-its-fighting-the-underlying-causes-of-blocking/ <comment><USER2> At this point I'm completely done with ads. They are disruptive to my experience, invade my privacy and pose a serious security risk. And even if none of that is true, ads are still inherently manipualitve and I therefore consider them to be unethical. I'm going to continue to block as many ads as I can. Businesses dependant on ads will have to adapt or die. I won't shed a tear for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Facebook is signaling to the broader advertising and publishing world that > the future lies in fewer ads, more respect for consumer privacy and more > deference to a user's preferences.

Facebook has no respect for consumer privacy and little deference to user's preferences. They still collect every iota of data, they still store this data, they still share this data.

They also still track you across multiple domains, whether you're logged in or not.

The only change is the presentation of ads and the eradication of tools used to fight surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER4> The fact that whether they understand it consciously or not people object at a fundamental level to being a product?</comment>


Node-http-proxy hits 0.5.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejitsu.com/updating-node-http-proxy

<comment><USER2> The number of Node.js related posts with few or no comments is growing. Are people just blindly upvoting Node.js posts regardless of how interesting they are?

(evidence: (a) this post is currently 2nd from the top, no comments before mine. (b) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2455893> reached 62 upvotes, zero comments. (c) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2457672> 8 from the top, one comment)

<comment><USER3> This phenomenon isn't specific to only Node.js submissions, it happens pretty often in tech- or programming-heavy submissions. I save mostly these types of submissions, and looking through my most recent saved history, Compiling With Continuations [1] received 94 upvotes with only 3 comments, and the Programming Language Zoo [2] reached 65 upvotes with the same number of comments. The trend continues (with some exceptions) throughout my saved history. There is definitely an demand for these types of posts on HN, but the lack of comments is open to interpretation.

[1] <http://matt.might.net/articles/cps-conversion/> [2] <http://www.andrej.com/plzoo/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice library, but I don't think it's newsworthy enough to be listed on HN. I hope we don't see another listing when the library hits version 0.5.1.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the compliments about node-http-proxy. Definitely won't see another update on this until 1.0.0 (full RFC2616 compliance).

I have to disagree with you about it's notoriety. With the v0.5.0 release we have some really interesting features (HTTPS, Websockets) that you simply won't find in other battle-hardened production-ready HTTP proxies. For example, HAProxy has neither of these features and is the library of choice for a lot of developers / sysadmins</comment></comment>


Supreme Court shields prosecutors in wrongful convictions (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/03/nation/la-na-court-innocence-20110403

<comment><USER2> Let's be clear here that the majority opinion was far more nuanced than this article gives credit. The argument made in the original lawsuit against the DA's office was that the DA's office was failing to train its attorneys on the requirement to report exculpatory evidence (established by Brady v Maryland). However, they did not show that there was a pattern of failing to report such evidence at the DA's office, they just used the one instance and claimed, more or less, that it was obvious that the training was necessary. The Supreme Court case in question specifically addressed whether or not that was true—whether or not it was obvious that the training was necessary, and therefore whether it was a systemic problem that it was being left out.

Scalia's opinion, which gets flak for citing Arizona v Youngblood, makes quite a few arguments, of which that is only one. It also brings it up solely to indicate that you can't train people in something that isn't actually true, something that was made untrue by that decision. The main thrust of his argument is that even if you could establish a pattern with a single violation in this case, there wasn't actually a violation at all, because the withholding of evidence was willful. Scalia also points out that the failure to train argument has to be applied carefully, lest it become something that every prosecuted individual can use to attack the municipality.

These are all important distinctions because the Supreme Court generally decides the matter at hand. The case was about something very specific, and the justifications for awarding damages were also specific. The Court's task was to decide whether those justifications were valid, according to the law, not whether Thompson was morally wronged. If those things do not square with each other, then we have ways of revising the law or the Constitution to deal with it. But keep in mind that the verdict in the original trial was vacated after the evidence was discovered, and that the evidence was originally withheld intentionally by an attorney who died before the case was brought, and that the attorney who knew about it but didn't disclose it after the original attorney's death was sanctioned by the prosecutor's office. So this is all about what, if anything, Thompson deserved in compensation for the DA's office's errors, and there's a line to be tread there between compensation for mistakes and the acknowledgement that mistakes will be made by all human beings, and that burdening a municipality with dealing with all of them (particularly to the tune of several million dollars per case) might be unrealistic.

<comment><USER3> We put humans into the legal system because of the assumption that some common sense goes into their decisions. So now every time some legal decision here is questioned on that level, the recourse is always "according to the law, not [..] moral". (on a supreme court case, of all things!)

The brilliant thing then is to go back to "mistakes will be made by all human beings" and deny all legal recourse in the end.

<comment><USER4> We put humans into the legal system to exercise legal judgment, not to substitute the law with their personal moral sentiments. The place for moral sentiments is the legislature.

It should be noted that legislatures _have_ weighed the moral issues, and in most states have set out the recourse for the wrongfully convicted to be statutory restitution, not civil suits against prosecutors. Arizona, one of the two states mentioned in the article, has declined to implement any such statutory restitution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The justice system is a system, in the engineering sense of the word. Like any system in real life, its design involves balancing. The negative impact of false convictions is weighed against the cost and practicality of measures to avoid false convictions. Prosecutors have broad immunity from suit because otherwise the system would be unworkable. Every aggrieved convict would sue his prosecutor for anything he could think of.

The context of this case is a suit for money damages against prosecutors for "concealing" exculpatory evidence. You can't take the word "concealing" at face value. Prosecutors make judgment calls every day about whether evidence is important or not. This case took place long before DNA testing was either effective or common. Prosecutors could have legitimately known about it and considered it "not potentially exculpatory." Scalia's quote from Youngblood simply says that prosecutors can't be sued for such judgment calls unless it can be shown they were not acting in good faith.

One of my big beefs with articles like this one is that they paint everything in hindsight. But if you create a duty on the part of prosecutors to not be negligent, you can't just hear the cases that are neatly wrapped in a package by some wrongful convictions organization. Negligence is a factual determination, and in criminal cases the defendant is entitled to have such facts tried in front of a jury. Convicts will sue saying the police should have swabbed beneath the carpet or whatever, and you have to give them full process.

As an aside, I came across a case yesterday. It's only salience is that it it's close to home and quite recent. It involves a couple who goes on vacation, leaving their three youngest children with a neighbor (husband and wife). When they return, two of the children, girls, tell them that they were sexually assaulted by the husband, Joe. The police work with the father, Michael, and talk Joe into coming over to Michael's house on the premise that he just wants to talk. Joe makes incriminating statements about the sexual assault to Michael, in the presence of the Chief of Police. When Michael decides to press charges, Joe goes ballistic. He stalks the police chief, and the day before his trial goes to Michael's place of work and shoots him in the head. See: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1915239094303815...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1915239094303815276&q=stacey+walters&hl=en&as_sdt=4,108,123).

Nobody is going to write an LA Times Article about Joe Stacey and Michael Walter, about the wife left without a husband, the ten children left without a father, or the two girls who will carry the scars of sexual assault at the hands of someone they trusted.

</comment><comment><USER5> Protecting prosecutors is just like protecting police officers that plant evidence.

The power relationship between the government and the people is horribly skewed towards the government.

This is just another piece of the puzzle. As soon as the government (police, prosecutors, homeland security, NSA) have their eye on you, you are screwed.

It doesn't matter if you are right or innocent.

It's sad how far it has come and how much are rights have disappeared.

The government is for the government.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about holding lawsuits against private companies and corporations to the same standard: they should take no legal liability for actions that are not approved by the corporation undertaken by employees working for them under contract. They should have a limited burden to train people to avoid those incidents. For instance, in order to file fraud claims against Enron we should have to beyond a reasonable doubt identify the specific people responsible and charge them. Investors damaged civilly should have any cases for damages against the company itself thrown out unless they are suing the specific individual or individuals involved. I didn't do it, it was my employees shouldn't be a special case exemption for the government, and if we want to make it a standard of law I think it goes badly.

<comment><USER4> If we're holding everyone to the same standard, then let's require corporations to run business decisions by a judge first, on the public record, with counsel arguing the other side. Then let's make each and every decision of the judge subject to an as-of-right level of appellate review, then make those decisions subject to a third level of discretionary appellate review. Then also open up those decisions to collateral review and the ongoing possibility of revisiting the case, potentially decades later. In the background of all that, we can require business executives to be members of associations that can take away their licenses and their livelihoods for ethical failures.

Do you see how you're comparing apples and oranges?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I totally get it now. With vast majority of HN users being Americans, there is just one comment on this post about trampling the innocent and that is a quote! No wonder the rights and freedoms of the common men of west are being subjugated more and more day after day.

<comment><USER8> Frankly, _what are you talking about_? This was posted an hour ago and, right now, it is between ~2 and ~5 AM in most of the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no more justice in America.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Land of free: _" We have decided a case that appears to say just the opposite," he wrote. "In Arizona v. Youngblood, we held that unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police," the defendant does not have a right to obtain all "potentially useful evidence."

There is no duty under the Constitution for prosecutors to turn over test results "which might have exonerated the defendant," Scalia said, quoting the Youngblood decision._</comment>


If you find yourself in need of a customizable animated atomic model...wellps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ACollectionOfAtoms/atomic-bohr-model <comment><AUTHOR> An example be here: [https://acollectionofatoms.github.io/atomic-bohr-model- examp...](https://acollectionofatoms.github.io/atomic-bohr-model- examples/index.html)</comment>


Cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud - <AUTHOR> http://sigkill.dk/hacks/scripts/cloud

<comment><USER2> This was just submitted under "CLOUD POWER," have you checked that out?</comment>


Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like such terrible, terrible advice. And yet when I hear stories on HN and other places, I kinda wonder if this is a sarcastic take at the way things work in software.

I would love to know the context of this. Was this seriously a talk that was given somewhere? Do people actually accept this as actionable advice?

It's a little unnerving to me.

<comment><USER2> > Was this seriously a talk that was given somewhere?

Looks like it: [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants- pr...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-presentation- tomorrow/)

> Do people actually accept this as actionable advice?

Hopefully not, it's actually a bit shocking anyone in 2016 would write/present things like "RULE 1: You don't recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends" or "Real engineers don't burn out until their wives or GF's do."

<comment><USER3> "Then slot in a new kid."

I hope the kids today have better offers and don't fall for this kind of rot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, maybe there aren't many female engineers because they have to encounter misogynist garbage like this on a daily basis. Maybe that's why they keep leaving the industry and not because you can't identify them.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen on Hacker News. And I still remember the guy who made an app to measure his heart rate while dunking his head in ice water.

You're making our industry a terrible place to live and giving decent people a bad name. Please stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope this isn't directed at me -I posted the article cos I couldn't believe someone would actually think this is advice. It's so horrible I wasn't even sure it wasn't just really poorly done sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a lot of stereotyping in this article.

Lots of assumptions about how developers date, marry, number of kids and what their wife income is. Wives work too, this is not 1800.

The open source world is not a world of autism. I've attended many presentations by successful open source project members and in most cases they're excellent and effective communicators. Many open source organizations are heavily social and cohesive in nature.

In my case the traits I see in mediocre people are:

\- heavily materialistic

\- focused solely on some getting promoted and compensated (e.g: being liked by managers, shipping incomplete features, taking credit for everything, repeating buzzwords) instead actually pursuing quality

\- stopped learning after college. can do programming puzzles perfectly but keep reinventing the wheel and coming up with bizarre solutions

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish this were a joke.

</comment><comment><USER7> He forgot the last slide - find new job working minimum wage at Starbucks when the tech bubble collapses and parasites like me are no longer needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are days when the end of Office Space seems like a good idea....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I closed this at the girlfriend slide. Flag this crap ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER9> You lost me at rule #1 - "You don't recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends".

</comment><comment><USER7> Hot, I give this fantasy 10/10</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Skype native worse than Skype WebApp? - <AUTHOR> I'm on OSX. I never cared for Skype at all. Recently I checked out the webapp version. It actually uses quite a bit of less ram (chrome is telling me the tab is using 230MB vs ~500MB that Skype native uses). It also is missing an attachment bug that the native has (why I decided to try it out). <comment><USER2> To my understanding microsoft does not care about skype and the webapp is basically the same they deploy to phones which they most likely think is thw most relevant market.

Source: Skype on linux is a complete mess ever since microsoft bought it</comment>


He was wearing AirPods and shouting. Then a woman complained - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/he-was-wearing-airpods-and-shouting-then-a-woman-complained/ <comment><USER2> Is this a link to someone's blog? I'm not sure why this belongs here</comment>


Memtest86+ probably kills system controller on Lenovo Thinkpad T500 laptop - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/900399 <comment><USER2> The conclusion is that it's probably just a random fault, possibly triggered by the memtest running the laptop hot:

 _" So, we have to seriously consider the possibility that two laptops died at the same time just by a coincidence."_

<comment><USER3> There's a thorough update and report of troubleshooting at the bottom which strongly indicates it's not just a random fault. Did you read it?

<comment><USER2> I read the whole content on the page. There are three emails, all from the same person. I quoted his latest conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sleuthing done in the big report is amazing.

<comment><USER5> Never underestimate the power of competent and interested people with free time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Title needs to be updated. It sounds like the load was likely the cause of triggering faulty hardware. Nothing specific about memtest.

<comment><USER7> I think it's more damning of the hardware with memtest in the title. It's literally a test program - by definition your hardware should pass it. If you fall to pass the test, and fail catastrophically, that's on you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even the person submitting the report conceded that it was more to do with faulty hardware (VCC3SW malfunction) than anything wrong with memtest86. This needs to be flagged.

<comment><USER9> Why should it be flagged? The faulty hardware is the interesting part!

<comment><USER10> lm_sensors when misused can also kill hardware by "probing" registers the wrong way when looking for sensors.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/lm_sensors](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/lm_sensors)

Probing is different than testing, though, and people don't expect a general system memory testing tool to kill hardware (whereas lm_sensors has all sorts of warnings and takes the safest route possible by default).

A tool that is designed to test general system RAM should not be touching memory-mapped I/O devices, and it's up to that tool to avoid them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the submitter was right, the problem was that the area of memory where a power controller's registers were mapped was not marked as "reserved", so it is entirely reasonable for memtest to poke at that memory.

In other words, the failure is actually in the laptop's BIOS that provides the memory map.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had a T420 which mysteriously died when running memtest and would never power on again.

Disassembly showed that the power button itself had no power, and I suspect it might have suffered the same fate.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this bug is worthy of HN attention.

While unverified, the failure mode is something that I had not considered before.

I did not get far with electrical engineering, way too deep into software as a career. I am getting back into simple things with Arduino and my hardware hobby is leading me to apply systems-level thinking in a different domain.

If someone sends me a working T500 I will be happy to try memtest86+ on it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Note the T500 is ten years old.

<comment><USER15> yeah, but no one could run memtest in a young laptop.

<comment><USER16> > yeah, but no one could run memtest in a young laptop.

Would you explain this a little bit more?

<comment><USER15> Failure rate is usually high early in the time, low in middle, and high again at long term. In the context of hardware, this mean that at start laptops will fail soon (caught in factory), or it will fail later in the time. A 10 years old laptop have a high probability to fail, so the probability that someone wanted to run a memtest is very high too.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, that doesn't explain what you said earlier. It's probably what you meant, but it isn't what you said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Update the title please</comment>


Sublime Web Inspector: Debug JavaScript in Sublime - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sokolovstas/SublimeWebInspector

<comment><USER2> If you're on a Mac and don't need to interact with the DOM, you always use Safari's SquirrelFish:

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/18751978](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18751978)

I mention it in case someone finds it useful, I'm not implying that it provides the same feature set as this GitHub project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like something like this would be a really good fit inside of Atom.io (Github's webkit based editor), it could be done probably a lot more seamless as well. This looks like they got very lucky with some of the features they were able to cram in :P, clickable buttons for instance.

<comment><USER4> I finally installed atom last week expecting that it'd be able to render the site you were working on in-line, and react to save events. I was somewhat disappointed. There's an inbuilt markdown renderer - I don't think it'll take too long for someone to build it (unless it's already there and I missed it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks rather useful. It even seems to be working with a remote server! However from the issues it seems like this plugin is not being actively maintained :/

</comment><comment><USER6> Definitely going to be giving this a shot immediately.

This looks incredible.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does this work when you concat and minify your stuff on save?

<comment><USER8> I haven't tried, but life is better if you don't minify on save. I assume you're using Grunt or Gulp; make a "build" task and use that for minifying. Your preprocessing time will go down, and that means getting your changes into the browser faster. Feels better than having to pause before hitting refresh, or worse, having to refresh twice.

<comment><USER7> Yes, using Gulp. Do you have a release script which does the final build on deployment? How does that work exactly? Don't you need to have a specific markup just for production then?

<comment><USER8> Yep, "gulp" watches and recompiles my stylesheets, and "gulp build" minifies stylesheets and scripts. I don't need to use different markup[0] since my stylesheets are all one file by default (Sass/LESS imports vs manual concatenation), and I use wreq for script loading.

[0] Actually, that's not 100% true - I read from an environment variable server-side and if it's in dev mode, I render the LiveReload script tag. Actual assets remain the same though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great stuff</comment>