Some Indian Twitter users are leaving for Mastodon - johnx123-up https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50343054 <comment><AUTHOR> I recently signed up on Twitter with a new account for a new project I'm working on. Like a few posts here (on HN) have highlighted, my account was disabled for security reasons (official work email, not a single tweet, email verified) and the only way to unlock is by adding my number.

I've been opening tickets for a week but they're all automatically closed. This gets me thinking, does it even matter if a SaaS product has a twitter handle for marketing and support?

<comment><USER2> Twitter reopened my service's account after two months when I refused to hand over my mobile number.

Pretty much every single service immediately bans me upon account creation if I don't hand over my mobile number. Instagram banned me for "violating terms of service" before I had even chosen a username - before I had posted even a single thing. Makes me wonder if signing up for a service was in their list of violations itself? I mean, c'mon. It's pretty much a ploy to gather mobile numbers under the garb of security or spam.

<comment><USER3> It's annoying, but what other accessible solutions are there to avoid mass creation of "fake" accounts?

<comment><USER4> Then let these companies guarantee that its one-time request and it will not be used for pushing anything else.

<comment><USER5> Just like FB promised phone numbers were only going to be used for 2FA?

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/03/05/facebook- critici...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/03/05/facebook-criticised- for-misuse-of-phone-numbers-provided-for-security/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tools like [1] [2] [3] make it easy to mirror your Mastodon posts to Twitter.

This can smooth the transition for your audience that's not ready to move yet.

[1] [https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/](https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/)

[2] [https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter- poster](https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster)

[3] [https://github.com/bitkeks/mastodon-to- twitter](https://github.com/bitkeks/mastodon-to-twitter)

</comment><comment><USER7> The BBC article itself is biased. Twitter has banned people from all sides. But BBC chose people only from one side.

Example handles from other side: check this tweet (this is a pro govt handle) - [https://twitter.com/modifiedvikas/status/1177099258534588416](https://twitter.com/modifiedvikas/status/1177099258534588416)

<comment><USER8> Most popular banned handle from RW is probably TrueIndology, and undoubtedly the selective reporting has its own agenda as well

<comment><USER9> If Twitter has banned as many right wing accounts as left leaning ones, why is it that the majority of disgruntled responses to Twitter India's clarification thread are blaming Twitter India's right wing bias ?

[https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1192384055884447744](https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1192384055884447744)

...or is there a claim somewhere in here that the unhappy right wing accounts just leave twitter for Mastodon without complaining and hence all that anyone, including the BBC, seems to highlight is the left leaning accounts making a noise ? Where are the unhappy right wingers in that thread ?

<comment><USER8> it is a coordinated trend which was orchestrated by the usual LW handles. This happens every day on twitter, LW or RW, bollywood celebrities or businesses, Baba Ram rahim singh or other godmans, every vested interest generates a coordinated hashtag and trends it.

Also the RW twitter is not given the required exposure by media outlets in India (forget about the Western outlets) when they have their protests as well. This happens with many cases - e.g. Happened after killing of Kamlesh Tiwari. Many people celebrated the murder and were rightly condemned by the RW twitter group but Indian media did not highlight that.

<comment><USER9> I am not talking about hash tags. Just the replies on that specific thread. Am I now to believe that twitter itself is working with the LW handles to show the replies of LW criticism of twitter while suppressing RW voices?!!

Come on, use Occam's razor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article talks about the Indian government requesting Twitter to ban accounts in the context of Kashmir:

 _The report said most of the blocked content was critical of the government 's recent move to strip Indian-administered Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status, and were made after requests by the government itself._

I believe that they've missed an important detail here. There was a massive misinformation campaign against India on Twitter in the aftermath of abrogating article 370. Many of these tweets originated from Pakistani handles[1][2]. They have even started impersonating top Indian military officials on Twitter[3]. And it seems that they are not just stopping with Kashmir. The propaganda campaign even covers Rafale and Tamil Nadu[4][5].

I do not condone banning accounts that are critical of the Government. However, propaganda over sensitive topics should be stopped by all means.

1\. [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/crpf-j-k-police- kashmi...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/crpf-j-k-police- kashmir-1580061-2019-08-12)

2\. [https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/a-third-of- mislea...](https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/a-third-of-misleading- posts-about-kashmir-come-from-pakistan-say-indian-fact-checkers/)

3\. [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pakistan-s-fake- news-p...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pakistan-s-fake-news-plot- busted-twitter-suspends-50-bogus-handles-for-top-army- officials-1600194-2019-09-17)

4\. [https://www.news18.com/news/india/as-rafale-adds-to- firepowe...](https://www.news18.com/news/india/as-rafale-adds-to-firepower-on- iaf-day-pak-uses-bot-armies-to-make-runawayforce_iaf-trend-on-indian- twitter-2338295.html)

5\. [https://qz.com/india/1727752/pakistan-bots-helped- gobackmodi...](https://qz.com/india/1727752/pakistan-bots-helped-gobackmodi- during-xi-jinpings-india-visit/)

<comment><USER4> Exactly! If Twitter banned Russian influencers of US elections, BBC wont be reporting it. BBC's articles are shallow and not "investigative" as it used to be.

<comment><USER11> This example would seem to directly contradict your statement [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-41766991](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41766991)

"Twitter bans RT and Sputnik ads amid election interference fears"

<comment><USER4> Your example doesn't picture Twitter in a negative way, what twitter did was the right thing. Blocking accounts owned by another nation trying to influence people in India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I stumbled on Indian Twitter a few months ago, and discovered hate at a level and volume, I've seldom encountered in the internet. It's probably a window into what's happening on closed forums like WhatsApp, but it is profoundly disturbing. If the hate does progress into real-life violence, social media networks like Twitter and WhatsApp are going to face a grim accounting.

<comment><USER13> If? No, this is already reality. People in India got lynched because of rumours spread via WhatsApp¹.

1: [https://www.cnet.com/news/whatsapp-rumors-reportedly-led- to-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/whatsapp-rumors-reportedly-led-to-lynchings- in-india/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Clickait headline without much substance

<comment><USER15> I've looked briefly at Mastadon, but hadn't been motivated to used it.

However, as a Twitter user for the last decade, the platform seems to be decaying. Either no on is really on it much any longer, or they've squelched my account severely.

The fun seemed to depart after late 2016, as though something happened which dismayed The Powers That Be.

<comment><USER16> Twitter's problem is that it won't do anything about users with handles like @magapatriot2130945785 who have turned the site into trash.

It's not that they CAN'T do anything about it, the problem is that they WON'T.

<comment><USER17> Why do think that users with usernames like that have turned the site into trash? In my experience, Twitteer's problems seem more systematic, and related to their attempts to maximize your time on site, and thus ads viewed.

<comment><USER16> Have you actually used Twitter since 2016?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anecdotally, it's not some. They are switching in droves to Mastodon. My local timeline on Mastodon for the past couple days has quite literally only been new users from India.

</comment><comment><USER19> On the bright side, it will reduce the number of most obnoxious pricks on Twitter. Indian twitter army is one of the worst "communities" on internet.

</comment><comment><USER20> Over the past couple of days there have been trending hashtags here in India accusing Twitter of caste and religious discrimination. I guess the irony is lost on these conspiracy pushing folks that Twitter censored their other hashtag but allowed this one to trend.

There have also been conspiracy theories that Twitter is purposely not verifying some people because of their caste.

I suspect that may be playing some role in this as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> Two Twitter one for left and other for Right all issues solved. Civil debate and agree to disagree is anyway lost

</comment><comment><USER22> The issue I have with Mastodon is that a pod admin can prevent me from following people from other pods they don't like. I understand blocking whole spamming pods, but when they start blocking whole pods because they're too right wing or left wing, one might wonder what's the point of switching from Twitter?

Now, you would say, I could run my own pod, but they could still block me from following anyone on their pods just because of the people I'm following or because they have white lists of pods allowed to follow people. This makes the whole experience even more restricting than twitter and creates insular bubbles of opinions where you are only allowed to follow people you already agree with (boring).

I guess, a truly decentralized solution would be something like a blockchain where they will not be able to prevent anyone from following anyone when using different clients. Haven't seen any working solution yet.

<comment><USER23> Are you looking to break your bubble, or other people's bubble? Your first paragraph is a complaint about the former and your second paragraph about the latter. I read this as goalpost shifting.

Fundamentally, the freedom-of-speech argument of "everyone must read what I have to say" is a tired one that cannot and will not ever happen: You can't force everyone else to read your post. Not on a blockchain, not on a federated system. Blockchain may mean they have to download your content, but their client filter will always be available to never have to see another person's content even if force-downloaded. Clockwork Orange type solution is the only way to be sure a human puts their eyeballs on specific content.

In general, most admins are not proactively blocking federated single instance users unless reports come in, in which case you probably did something to someone on that instance. Not everyone is there to burst their bubble, but craft it, and depending what they want, you or I might not make the cut. Oh well.

Finally, if an anti-censorship platform where everyone must download one's speech (under certain conditions) is truly what you want, go to FreeNet. Even there, no one is required to read another's content.

<comment><USER24> > what I have to say

The entire post is about who they are _allowed to follow_ , nothing to do with what they say. It's not about personal bubbles either.

 _Can_ download, not _must_ download.

<comment><USER22> Exactly, I want to be able to follow whoever I want and not have an admin decide for me.

<comment><USER23> You want a single-user instance, like was mentioned before. No one else decides for you. By default a person spinning up a new single-user instance is _free to follow-request anyone_ (most users have the software auto-accept follow requests).

Once that person begins opening their mouth, is when federated admins begin blacklisting (if required, at their discretion), preventing new follows and undo-ing existing follows. That's how they build, curate, and maintain _their_ communities much like any other BBS, forum, or sub-reddit.

Most people appreciate a baseline standard employed by their admin so they themselves don't have to wade through porn, gore, and hateful content.

Believe me, this debate isn't new, Gab moving to ActivityPub brought the same cries of "we're being censored by admins, let the people decide for themselves". The admins, of course, laughed and said "my community members can leave or create a second account elsewhere on this open platform if they want that content". To no one's surprise, the non-Gab part of the Fediverse did not shrink.

Edit: And I've always explained to folks... advocate for single-user instances if concerned about admin decisions! Then the digital literate group of self- policing admin-users, grows! But then again, understand not everyone is on the internet to have to wade through porn, gore, and hateful content and wants to make that decision for themselves.

Edit2: Admin decisions are also transparent on Mastodon. The instance I am on for example lists decisions here: [https://mastodon.technology/about/more](https://mastodon.technology/about/more)

<comment><USER22> > You want a single-user instance > Once that person begins opening their > mouth

That's the issue here, if you can't open your mouth then you might as well stay on twitter.

Also, your mastodon.technology rules clearly state it will not federate with instances it politically disagrees with but it will also not federate with instances that federate with instances it politically disagrees with. Meaning, if your pod X blocks me from following someone from pod Y, forcing me to run my own pod, then I won't be able to follow my friends back on your pod X. Sounds like a broken system to me. If person A consents to person B following them, no admin should be able to block them from doing so or forcing both of them to run their own instance (most people are not tech savvy enough and will have their voice muted, not super fair, specially for disadvantaged people).

I understand that only something like a truly decentralized and distributed system such as a blockchain would allow for something like that.

<comment><USER23> > Meaning, if your pod X blocks me from following someone from pod Y, forcing > me to run my own pod, then I won't be able to follow my friends back on your > pod X. Sounds like a broken system to me.

It sounds broken because that's not how it works.

When you spin up your own instance, no existing deny list anywhere on the Fediverse has your instance listed, unless you're buying a previously-used domain (which then has other, bigger problems, than this). So you can follow instance X, Y, Z, A, T, B, C, G, whoever your heart pleases. They aren't actively policing single-user instances, only larger ones, for the double- federation rule. A new clean slate, until you open your mouth and people begin curating their communities again. But this then moves the conversation from a _can follow_ to _can listen_ scenario. The latter of which, my first response to you was pretty thorough.

If I understand it right the only reason you are continuously infatuated with blockchain is because there is a belief that everyone downloading this "centralized" ledger of data equates to everyone having an equally discoverable voice and then an equitable chance of readers viewing a piece of content.

That's simply not true. Whatever client can be used to view this blockchain of "dialogue" can come with preset filters that ensures that, even if the data is downloaded on-chain, no human will ever see it. The chain could be lengthened with spam, burying your messages to the far past, or kilometers worth of up- scrolling. You've got the data on the machine but no eyeballs viewing it. There is no inherent value to content that is never viewed; if you believe otherwise, I have ad space on my blog to sell you!

Same outcome as the Fediverse, but way more wasteful, because there's way more unnecessary bandwidth on the network being used, as data that is never going to be read gets passed around. The protocol could be forked where your censorship-enemies agree up to a certain point on a chain is valid, and then only download the preceding merkle node content they care about, ensuring your previous content never gets propagated in the first place. In addition to the other kinds of blockchain attacks.

This is why I will keep bringing up FreeNet. If you're concerned about censorship and speech on the internet, blockchain is just a tool for a specific kind of problem (and you've yet to convince me this is that kind of problem); FreeNet is a multi-decade old network designed, and with the papers proving, to be robust against censorship attacks at multiple levels (adversarial content, network, node).

The Fediverse is a decentralized way to run communities like BBSs and Forums and SubReddits and PatreonPages that all natively interact with each other as if one data graph, but multiple different applications sharing and modifying that data graph.

Edit:

> That's the issue here, if you can't open your mouth then you might as well > stay on twitter.

Is it really though[0]? Why Twitter? To me, that's a really funny suggestion! They have the sole authority to kick you off _their_ entire network. No one can do that on the Fediverse. Rather than make a step towards a beneficial direction you see, you'd rather stick in an ugly quagmire? No offense intended, but after watching after some stubborn kids, this sounds exactly like one of their "I'd rather be stubborn and punish myself than have a middle compromise because I cannot get exactly what I want".

I do mean this sincerely: no matter where you go, I hope you feel safe to speak your mind.

[0] I ask because that means this is a _freedom of speech_ issue, AKA what my first reply was all about. And even more validates my concerns you have some goalpost shifting going on. But the middling responses were trying to convince me it _wasn 't_ this issue, but one merely about _following_ (aka receiving, not sending, content).

<comment><USER22> > Is it really though[0]? Why Twitter?

Because Twitter has a great network effect, everyone's on it and you can follow anyone you want, make new connections, advertise your projects or products, get your voice heard, follow people you like etc.

Nobody is on the fediverse, why would I get there? The only reason I would go there is to get complete freedom of speech, anything else, Twitter already does it and better thanks to network effects. If you are going to censor political speech you don't like just like twitter, then I see no point in switching.

With the blockchain, you could be banned from a client, but the distributed ledger would still allow you to follow people using other clients. Big difference. I agree that I haven't seen any working solution using a blockchain so far, which is what I said in my initial post. Whenever they manage to make a blockchain scale (if at all possible), then it might happen. Forking the ledger anytime there's a user you politically disagree with sounds very expensive not sustainable. Specially if the ledger is the main BTC or ETH, not gonna be effective.

<comment><USER23> I don't think everyone is on Twitter, and I'll readily admit your tone makes me think you don't care about the people that _are_ on the Fediverse.

> The only reason I would go there is to get complete freedom of speech, > anything else, Twitter already does it and better thanks to network effects. > If you are going to censor political speech you don't like just like > twitter, then I see no point in switching.

Twitter can ban a person _from the entire network /product_ versus no-one can boot a person off the Fediverse. Plus _native_ integration with blogs and music and videos and other forms of content produced from _other kinds of apps_. Try leaving a facebook comment from a Twitter account, let alone trying to view such a post cross-applications.

> With the blockchain, you could be banned from a client, but the distributed > ledger would still allow you to follow people using other clients. Big > difference.

You can always spin up a single-user instance that is receive-only to ensure you get the diverse content you want.

Blockchain or Fediverse, _replying_ would still be filtered out (by the popular blockchain client that filters your stuff, or by fediverse blocks on your send-and-receive account).

I'm going to step away from this conversation, I've pretty much said all I can on the matter, and have been talking in circles.

<comment><USER22> I used to be an ostatus user and enjoyed the concept, can't remember pods being banned at this rate back then, or at all. I care about the fediverse more than you think.

> Try leaving a facebook comment from a Twitter account

That's a feature no one really want, I hated when people mirrored their tweets to facebook for example. Different apps, different crowds, don't mix it.

> You can always spin up a single-user instance that is receive-only to ensure > you get the diverse content you want.

Well no, did you read your own mastodon.technology rules? I can get banned from following from one pod if I follow people from another pod it doesn't like. Even if I don't say anything. Even twitter isn't that extreme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd say it's more of Twitter India issue than main Twitter. Twitter banned many Pakistani and Indians accounts without any notice who were raising voice against 3 months+ Kashmir lockdown against Modi govt.

<comment><USER10> What do you expect Twitter when most of them were spreading fake news?

[https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/crpf-j-k-police- kashmi...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/crpf-j-k-police- kashmir-1580061-2019-08-12)

[https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/a-third-of- mislea...](https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2019/a-third-of-misleading- posts-about-kashmir-come-from-pakistan-say-indian-fact-checkers/)

<comment><USER25> Calm down, dude. You are doing over efforts to defend Modi regime on this forum. They are not going to pay more. And do not cite me Propaganda Indian media here. It does not matter to any other than Sanghis.

<comment><USER26> We've asked you before to stop doing nationalistic flamewar on HN. If you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER25> Apologies. I should not have responded to him on this forum in first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> An article with only anecdotes on a country of 1bn people... BBC is a shadow of it's former glory.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love people moving from Twitter to Mastodon, but this article doesn't have any substance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Unless you actually delete your Twitter account you're still complicit in Twitter.

Twitter only has clout because of the people who hold accounts there that make it appear like it's more than a glorified internet forum.

</comment><comment><USER29> I made a parody account of Trump (everyone was doing it, it's passe now) and then I had my main account suspended. I was willing to give us the Trump account, but it turns out there is no way of telling Twitter this and when I asked for a review, they did absolutely nothing.

Turns out, it was one of the best things Twitter every did for me. My life is way better without it. It's not actually sour grapes, after seeing what Twitter is doing and what people are using Twitter for - any good is definitely _way_ outweighed by the bad of the platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> Headline is trivial/weasely.

Some metrics would be interesting.

</comment><comment><USER9> For context, some high profile activist / journalist accounts have been suspended of late. There's been a noticeable right-wing leaning enforcement of twitter policies in India.

I think the trigger point was when Jay Shah's account[1] got a blue tick despite being a dormant account with a just 19 followers (at the time of being verified).

Twitter India then issued a statement, which further had the Streisand effect:

[https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1192384055884447744](https://twitter.com/TwitterIndia/status/1192384055884447744) (heh, just noticed the ratio on that ! :))

[1] [https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/with-zero- tweet19-...](https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/with-zero- tweet19-followers-jay-shah-gets-blue-tick-verification-netizens-cries-foul- twitter-goes-silent)

<comment><USER10> It's a bit more complicated than that. Twitter has been also banning right- wing leaning accounts as this comment mentioned.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21482041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21482041)

Also, there's the fact that Twitter was summoned by a Parliamentary panel when someone accused them of curbing _non-left leaning_ voices.

[https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/twitter-india- summoned...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/twitter-india-summoned-by- parliament-panel-over-citizens-social-media-rights-1448893-2019-02-05)

<comment><USER9> > It's a bit more complicated than that.

I really don't think it is. The replies on that twitter thread I posted there, from a couple of days ago clearly indicates (or at least implies) that the people leaving the platform are most likely the people unhappy with Twitter India's right wing bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> BBC always there to pick up any anti-India topic. It amazes me every time.

Source: I read the news on daily basis from various sources to avoid bias media.

EDIT: I'm not on any political party side. Actually have voted for NOTA.

<comment><USER32> What's anti-India about switching to an open platform? If anything, I'd consider it forward thinking on Indians part.

<comment><USER31> I have my profile in Mastodon and use it. Nothing backward about it. I suspect the timing of it with the recent allegation against the Indian government for suppressing anit-bjp solgan.</comment></comment></comment>


How Tesla's Disinformation Campaign Dupes New Customers and Lets Down Its Owners - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@edzitron/how-tesla-s-disinformation-campaign-dupes-new-customers-lets-down-its-owners-and-misses-the-target-f8806aa76634

<comment><USER2> There are two parallel tracks here: on one is all the awesome stuff that Tesla is doing as a company to make better batteries and electric cars. On the other is all the fluff that TSLA day traders do increase volatility of the stock / options trading spreads.

As a publicly-traded company, Tesla's probably overvalued right now. But it is news like this -- especially sales hype -- that's been keeping it active in the radar of the traders and why the "disinformation" and dupes perpetuate.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The Truckee supercharger is by a mall, which is nice, but you have to sneak > inside the employee bathroom.

I live in Truckee. This isn't true; the "employee bathroom" (I'm assuming you mean the one inside Safeway, where you have to walk through the warehouse entrance in the back of the store) is actually the one meant for customers (yay for Safeway being shitty about their stores), so no sneaking is actually necessary. Feel free to defecate with confidence :)

Plus, most of the restaurants and such in that mall have their own restrooms as well, so if you're in the mood for Chinese food (Panda Express), pizza (Round Table), coffee (Starbucks), bagels and smoothies (Truckee Bagel Co.), or sandwiches (Port of Subs) while you wait for your Tesla to charge, you also have bathroom access. _Plus_ , I'm pretty sure there's a restroom in the Rite- Aid over there, too (though I don't remember; I haven't been in there in awhile). There's also the Dairy Queen kiddie-corner from that particular shopping center. Point being, the Tesla chargers are in the midst of a veritable cornucopia of toilets.

It _is_ a bit inconvenient that the charging stations are in some weird corner behind the Safeway side of the shopping center, but whatever. Gives you an opportunity to stretch your legs a bit.</comment>


Two teens cold called Sam Altman and became the youngest founders to join YC - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/183384/these-2-teens-cold-called-sam-altman-and-became-the-youngest-founders-ever-accepted-to-y-combinator#.S2dmImRfT <comment><USER2> "But since they've gotten settled, Ghodsi and Stokic live pretty low-key lives. Their combined four parents rotate visits, and the two boys rarely leave the house. "We all live upstairs, then we go into the basement every day to work," Stokic said.

And their work schedule is punishing. "On a typical day, we wake up, get dressed, do email (my morning ritual is to get to inbox zero), answer work requests, eat, work, then go to bed," Ghodsi said. "Sometimes we might have dinner with someone or go to a YC event, but we're not in San Francisco to socialize. We want to take advantage of this time to focus everything on the business. We don't have a personal life."

We're not in San Francisco to socialize. We don't have a personal life."

The pair have made friends — mostly other YC founders 10 to 20 years their senior. They both said that there's a lot of camaraderie within their class and that it's helpful to talk to others who can relate to the stress of building a business, no matter what age they are.

Ghodsi said being so young has given them somewhat of a competitive edge.

"A lot of younger people reach out to us and want to work with us," Ghodsi said. "We have a whole network of young devs and designers [who] want to work with us and will do it for much cheaper than grown-ups doing that job. We had someone do our site that cost a 20th of what it would cost normally, for instance, because the guy was only 14 years old. A lot of teens feel like they're not being taken seriously, so when they see what we're doing they want to be part of it.""

This sounds exactly like peak YC. I'm going to short Paul Graham tonight.

Two 14-year-olds make themselves and other tweens subservient to Samuel Altman in pursuit of success by building a browser extension 24/7 that is supposed to supersede Salesforce? And they're not even adults, so they legally can't even own anything? Does anybody catch a whiff of, I don't know, child slavery?

Yeah, woo, kids! You managed to underpay someone 20x because they're just 14 and offered themselves right up to you! That's sustainable and will teach you about properly paying your workers.

What could realistically be next? Toddlers working grueling hours "hustling" in a factory assembling batteries for Elon?

Does nobody else see this as out of control?

Incidentally, I usually only see articles like this when there's a serious problem with what's being described.

<comment><USER3> > * Does anybody catch a whiff of, I don't know, child slavery?*

No more so than when other, equally-driven teens focus on, say, basketball or chess or music or figure-skating.

<comment><USER4> Difference is a driven teenager focusing on basketball doesn't have other teenagers stitching new basketballs and trainers for them on the cheap for 18 hours a day.

(Not saying I agree with the GP here, it's clearly not actual slavery, but it's got a bit of a bad smell to it. I'd want to be cautious about it, that it doesn't get out of control in the wrong way. There are probably child labour laws that apply, and that's not the kind of area I would want to see 'disrupted' in a typical startup style.)

<comment><USER5> "Difference is a driven teenager focusing on basketball doesn't have other teenagers stitching new basketballs and trainers for them on the cheap for 18 hours a day."

You sure about that? I have never been in a factory that makes basketballs but I have seen the workers who make basketball shoes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A new technique for making responsive, JavaScript-free charts - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/richharris/a-new-technique-for-making-responsive-javascript-free-charts-gmp <comment><USER2> At this point i'm starting to think that browsers should offer basic stylable charting as a default html element.

This way charts could be implemented correctly, natively and efficiently.</comment>


Mailgun: Announcing Strategic Growth Investment from Thoma Bravo - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailgun.com/blog/announcing-strategic-growth-investment-from-thoma-bravo <comment><USER2> Mailgun was a YC W11 company: [https://www.ycdb.co/company/mailgun](https://www.ycdb.co/company/mailgun)

The original founders have moved on and put a second company through YC S15 called Gravitational: [https://www.ycdb.co/company/gravitational](https://www.ycdb.co/company/gravitational)

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel this is April Fools. Perhaps this line gives it away: "As of today, we're changing our name to Meowgun and focusing entirely on streamlining communication between cats and their owners."

<comment><USER3> Actually, they clarify just below that while they are kidding on the guidance, the acquisition is of course real. Hard to announce new news on April 1, especially with humor included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> so... search for alternatives ?

<comment><USER5> Is there something about Thoma Bravo specifically that makes you say that?

Otherwise Mailgun managed to handle being acquired by Rackspace [1], and then spin back out of Rackspace [2] reasonably well...

[1] - [https://www.mailgun.com/blog/mailgun-is-being-acquired-by- ra...](https://www.mailgun.com/blog/mailgun-is-being-acquired-by-rackspace)

[2] - [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/22/mailgun-there-and-back- aga...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/22/mailgun-there-and-back-again/)

<comment><USER4> this part is in the email "Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity firm" but i don't see it in the blog post.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/idera-acquires-travis- ci/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/23/idera-acquires-travis-ci/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19218036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19218036)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b6l559/travisc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b6l559/travisci_has_been_down_for_over_24_hours/)

<comment><USER6> so just a blanket bias towards "private equity firms"?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Linux Benchmarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-1800x-linux <comment><USER2> I wonder if there will be some kernel/compiler optimizations coming down the pipeline that will increase the performance even more. With the big open source push that AMD's graphics division has been doing over the past few years I wouldn't be supposed if AMD made some contributions to the kernel themselves At the very least I'm glad to see that it performs well in Linux out of the box when compared to Intel. :D

<comment><USER3> I have heard that Kernel 4.10 is the one you want to take full advantage of the new chips.

<comment><USER3> edit: confirmed by Phoronix - [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD- Ryze...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Ryzen-Newer- Kernel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The site is getting hammered it seems.</comment>


Android Fans Are Laughing Over This Graphic - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/android-fans-laughing-over-graphic-120439555.html

<comment><USER2> these comparisons have become cliche. Android fans know well that iPhone doesn't sell for just it's capabilities. Apple has an aura. And actually Apple fans can't stop laughing over how Android fans are frustrated that Apple sells their under capable devices so well</comment>


Huawei CFO arrested in Vancouver, sought by U.S. for extradition - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-huawei-arrest-cfo-1.4934269 <comment><USER2> Big thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18613124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18613124)

</comment><comment><USER3> This really bad and may cause the US / China trade deal to fall apart. Also what if China starts arresting US executives visiting China?

<comment><USER4> > _Also what if China starts arresting US executives visiting China?..._

I think it's pretty safe to say that this will not be a "what if?". Probably more of a _" when"_.

<comment><USER5> I would love to see if China isn't going to play this card, and will the world change their view on China human right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmmm, I swear, there was a 500+ comment thread on the front page just a moment ago.

<comment><USER7> It's currently on the bottom of page 2.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Toc Messenger – A distributed messaging app that syncs - <AUTHOR> http://toc.im <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Toc is a project I've been working on for more than a year now. I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. =)

Toc is a proof-of-concept distributed messaging app designed from the ground up to support user data synchronization for use across multiple devices. It uses Telehash for its messaging stack, and is built on top of an Om-inspired architecture oriented around a central app state tree, that gets encrypted using a custom encryption layer for persistence locally, and then synchronized seamlessly between devices using remoteStorage.

Originally, Toc started as our group's fourth year Computer Engineering design project at the University of Waterloo. After we graduated in May, I wanted to polish it up a bit before releasing, but evidently went a bit overboard and ended up working on it for another six months (albeit with a healthy dose of procrastination sprinkled throughout that period).

There's a more thorough technical overview and project history on the GitHub page if you're interested in more details: [https://github.com/lewisl9029/toc](https://github.com/lewisl9029/toc)

Toc is only a proof-of-concept, and has a list of awful issues that makes it rather unsuitable for long term general use. However, I'm hoping that by releasing Toc, we can bring more attention to the awesome technologies for building great decentralized applications that Toc uses, and inspire more developers to take another serious look at building distributed apps, as I hope we have demonstrated with Toc that a decentralized app can in fact have great UX if you design your apps with UX in mind from the start.

With that said, I am now officially looking for work. If you have any openings for a ClojureScript frontend project, or a React project that makes heavy use of functional techniques and immutable data, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach me through the email on my GitHub profile[1], HN profile[2] or through my Toc account[3]. ;) (disclaimer: that last option might not be completely reliable)

[1] [https://github.com/lewisl9029](https://github.com/lewisl9029)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029)

[3] [http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24f...](http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24ffb0f2d88d44231d3747f655fb27a)</comment>


Free Usborne Computer Programming books from the early 80s - <AUTHOR> https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding-books/ <comment><AUTHOR> I spent a lot of time reading a number of these books when I was a kid and trying to get the programs to work on my Atari800XL</comment>


Ask HN: comments silently censored? - <AUTHOR>

Just noticed a comment i posted only shows up while i'm logged in. Does this mean i'm being "silently" censored, or is it some kind of bug?
The comment URL: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1376730
Which was in response to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1376304 <comment><USER2> I've seen this happen a few times in the last couple of days, once it was a duplicate comment that automatically got killed, the other time it persisted for a while and then the comment turned back to normal.

Odd!

You seem to be able to post normally and your comments are visible now so you're not banned or anything like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> actually, when i edited the comment which is now [dead] (to everyone else), the edit showed up as a new comment (instead of changing the intended comment). so i deleted the edit and then "really" edited to comment i wanted to change.

so yeah, sounds like a bug. thanks for mentioning you've seen this before.

<comment><USER2> Ah so that's how it happened, no then it is not a bug. The moment you submitted the duplicate comment it killed it.

The way to edit is to seek out the original, and edit it, not to use the back button and change it.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for explaining this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Put away the tinfoil hats...

Your comment was dead'd. If you're not logged in, it shows as dead. If you're logged in and have ShowDead ON in your profile (as you must), you will see your comment. If you're logged in and have ShowDead OFF, you will see [dead].

<comment><USER2> The comment was killed because it was a duplicate (see below).

<comment><USER3> Right, but that wasn't the point of _my_ comment, I'm just saying that he is not being censored in some devious way that makes it look one way to him and a different way to the rest of the users.

<comment><USER2> No, certainly not. It just looks weird, that's what prompted him to ask.

There are lots of people in the category you describe though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it was because it was marked [dead], at least that is what I see.

<comment><AUTHOR> but it's not what i see. i see the entire comment, but only when logged in as "exit". otherwise i see [dead].</comment></comment>


New productivity tool launches Friday.  Thoughts and feature requests? - <AUTHOR>

Hiya!  Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.
Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day."  Thinking of something?  Great!  Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!"  You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.
At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain.   After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop.  But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.
Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine.  But we've included a social aspect to it as well.  Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone.
On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users.  Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too.  You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.
The time interval is adjustable.  You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.
The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...

We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST.  Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend!  If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.
Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.
Thanks for your critique guys!
Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off.  If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
<comment><USER2> I use: <http://smarterfitter.com/chain> for the same purpose. I like the social aspect of your idea though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, another competitor :) Yeah, we hope you'll have fun exploring what everyone else is accomplishing. See you Friday!

<comment><USER3> Hey palish do you have any screen shots on how the app is going to look like?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mm.. Might as well just wait 'til we launch tomorrow. I'm at work right now so I don't have access to any, sorry. See you at 10!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure if I'm missing something entirely but to what URL would you like us to bring our friends and earn these karma points? Might be helpful to get that out there.

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea certainly works! Here's a competitor:

<http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for locating a competitor!

Wow. Thousands of posts on their bulletin board.

<comment><USER5> His seems to be a hack, you can do better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea aside, deleting my stuff would be incredibly annoying.

Say the default is a day, which I assume it is from the write up. There are a ton of valid reasons I might miss a day, or even a week, e.g. medical reasons. And to come back and have my stuff deleted! Man, I don't know what else to say about that except I don't like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for bringing this up. There will be a vacation switch you can flip on and off. When it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.

What other thoughts do you have on it? We'd really like to know!

<comment><USER7> What about not deleting the stuff at all, so you can do away with the vacation switch too? I wouldn't touch a site that stresses me at all about my data.

I'd lose the karma reward too. It's plain bribery, and it devaluates your site's karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, on both counts. Simpler's better. We wanted to help motivate people.. But treating it like a game is probably the wrong way to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Holy shit! I've been working on a site based on the exact same post. Though mine is a pretty basic take on Seinfeld's method.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Sorry. Wanna compare notes? Palish at gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ohh great idea! I'm excited to see this happen.</comment>


Genesis of a (mediocre) idea - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joewaltman/genesis-of-a-mediocre-idea-8bb0cf07d147 <comment><USER2> When say revenue do you mean Gross Merchandise Volume?

Because that would really be a small market if you stuck to SF. I've used infousa.com to get an idea of number of businesses in an SIC code. To help me get an idea of the size of a market.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I see it is revenue. $25-$75 per business. The problem to me is that puts you in difficult range at the unit level. Too cheap to sell in person or over the phone. So you would need to use some kind of self service system. And the concentration of users probably isn't dense enough to get word of mouth and/or viral effect.</comment></comment>


Drag and drop task list items on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2179-drag-and-drop-tasks-in-markdown-task-lists <comment><USER2> Now that GH has added all this stuff in, what's missing?

This feature is not as big as all the other ones, but it's a nice improvement.

<comment><USER3> A particular thing I'm missing is to share read access to private repos with a link. Could be useful to share work with people that doesn't have a GitHub account (managers, etc)

<comment><USER4> We had a similar issue – we wanted non-product people to be able to view milestones, issues, report issues, etc and the solution suggested was to create a separate repository for issues.

<comment><USER5> In our product GitLab we a the reporter role to view issues but not the code, see [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/perm...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/blob/master/doc/permissions/permissions.md)

Would that solve your issue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will this modify the underlying markdown?</comment>


What did you learn so far this year? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I started doing serious FPGA work (VHDL development) the last months and finally get a little knowledgeable on how to properly architect a design of medium complexity so that it properly works at non trivial clock speeds. (after mainly doing trivialities before)

So far the learning experience was great, and generally the best about learning new things for me isn't so much when I get something finished (the last steps often become a tedious chore). Rather I most enjoy working on a (for me, at this point) hard problem and finally get the flash of understanding when a initially misunderstood error or bug can be explained... Luckily the world of programmable logic seems to have no shortage of hard to comprehend things 😁.

But I think that should be everyone's motivation to learn new things, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> That if you understand yourself, who you are and why you do what you do you will be happier, sleep better and make decisions faster and truer to yourself.

I also learned that making decisions quickly and not ponder over them too long really makes a dfference!

</comment><comment><USER4> I started working on some side projects. I noticed something really interesting. I can get more done in 15 minutes of side project work than on a full day of regular work.

That's because, on my side projects, I'm not cleaning up after other people's poorly written code. My side project work is done in a clean style and also in my preferred style.

Hopefully, I can eventually get to the point where I can bootstrap something. I'm starting out with stuff for personal use.

\- an RSS reader, mostly done, I'm using it

\- a delicious clone (ironic, since Firefox is pushing Pocket)

\- a video poker practice program (75% done)

I also noticed, surprisingly, that switching projects helps when I feel less motivated.

</comment><comment><USER5> I did a MSc in computer science, got burned out. Learned where my limits were. I learned a bunch of academic things, sure, but also was filled with doubts about what I should do next...

<comment><USER6> Congrats on finishing. Your experience sounds a lot like mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm starting to realize that what I like about web development is creating visual experiences. Sadly, that job, at least around here, seems to be limited to web agencies with all the crazy deadlines and crazy hours that implies (I know because my last job was in an agency).

So, here I am, making admin panels and customizable charts. I have learned a lot though (ElasticSearch, Angular, etc), even if it's not fun stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> I picked up some Python to learn some web development initially, and then bought an ebook on computer vision with OpenCV. I never thought I would be able to do some of the things I've done with OpenCV!

<comment><USER9> Was it the PyImageSearch book ? I have heard it's really good. Followed some of his tutorials, But haven't bought the book yet.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, its pretty good for CV beginners. I would recommend getting the middle package though, as the virtual machine is pretty sluggish and not ideal, may as well install all the necessary dependencies yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 42</comment>


Homeless People Don't Need an App, They Need a Fucking House - <AUTHOR> https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/homeless-people-dont-need-an-app-they-need-a-fucking-house <comment><AUTHOR> > The founder of WeCount, a tech entrepreneur who has sold multiple companies > to Google, raves to the press about the "huge emotional ROI" (return on > investment) donors get from participating.

It sounds like these apps aren't designed to help the homeless in the first place. They're designed to help people with spare change feel a little better about themselves.

This seems even worse than trying to make a difference to the housing situation and failing. Along with the idea of requiring homeless people to wear a beacon around their neck to pick up scraps from the wealthy, it sounds dehumanizing. Almost like the romans and their coliseum?

I'd love to hear the perspective of any people who've used these apps from the receiving end though. Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds.

</comment><comment><USER2> > Users can then read the profile of the beacon-wearer, and donate money if > they're so moved. Donations can be redeemed at select stores and > restaurants. They cannot be used to buy alcohol. The beacon-wearer must > check in monthly at a participating nonprofit, or else their beacon is > disabled.

Soon there will be multiple agencies that helps homeless individuals build the most marketable profile and increase "Donation conversions".

I don't know much about homelessness and I don't have a solution to the problem but this whole process of only being able to redeem donations at selected locations feels inhuman. We can't trust the homeless so we'll donate this amount but we say what you can use it for because we know better.

Again, I admit my naivety but I can't help feeling there's something fundamentally wrong with this approach.

<comment><USER3> To play devil's advocate here, why don't you think we do in fact know better? They're homeless as a result of their life choices and we're in a position where we could help them as a result of choices we made in our lives. It may not be their fault, but do you think in their current state they can make the most rational, logical choices? Would it be better for us to enable these people's bad habits/mental illness and let them destroy themselves further with alcohol and/or other drugs? If we are going to make the case that we shouldn't blame them for their state of being, and that they're victims, then we need to accept that a lot of them need help from __themselves __. If on the other hand you want to respect their free will and self-determination or whatever, then hey, they made their bed. I 'm certainly not going to fund their lifestyles if they have agency and self-determination and this is what we get.

<comment><USER4> > They're homeless as a result of their life choices

that's just false. the same as people in privileged circumstances claiming to have gotten to where they are due to their 'hard work'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most people's ideas of how poverty works and how to get out of it are wrong.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/03/20/520587241/the-scarcity- trap-w...](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/20/520587241/the-scarcity-trap-why-we- keep-digging-when-were-stuck-in-a-hole)

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/magic-bureaucrat- rive...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/magic-bureaucrat-riverside- miracle/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Homeless people need a LOT more than a house. Every single one has their own story and circumstances. From what I have read about people who have made their way out of homelessness at my local Rescue Mission, it was a multistep, and long, road to get back to "normal". One man spent years at the Mission. Just giving them a house would not have saved them.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Without a education your new found asset will likely only lead to worse destruction, much like the process of how winning the lottery bankrupts most winners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I 100% (100,000%!) agree that we need to resolve our housing supply issues. It's a major contributing factor to homelessness.

The rest, I mostly disagree.

The primary reason for the limitations on after donation use is because that's how donations generally work. It isn't a homeless thing.

People will not give you money or other assets if you don't first tell them what will be done with it. If you don't give them some control, most people won't give you anything at all.

A lot of homeless people have complex issues. Yes, helping them really is more complicated than "just give them a house!"

</comment><comment><USER9> Some homeless need homes, others need medical care, drug rehab, jobs or education

Some just need a second chance and a hand to be able to climb out of the hole they're in

Others won't be able to ever help themselves

Saying they "need homes" because they're "home less" sounds so naive

Edit:

Everyone needs shelter and I hope a comprehensive solution could be implemented where anyone in need could find the type of shelter that is most helpful

</comment><comment><USER10> Give a bunch of homeless people homes they don't work for, and they will trash them in short order. People don't respect things they don't work for. I suggest the author give up _their_ house and show us how it goes! Instead of telling others how they want to take their money from them (that they worked for) to fund crazy liberal schemes.

</comment><comment><USER11> >And that's because it requires taxing the rich and redistributing our society's wealth.

The article is right. But of course... I work hard so that I can pay for my home. The homeless should, too. His proposal is theft through tax.

</comment><comment><USER12> "The unspoken notion is that homeless people need help, but they also need to get their acts together."

I'm glad the author pointed this out. Our lame Puritanical values are far- reaching.

</comment><comment><USER13> They don't need a house. They have shelters and its known many if not most choose not to use them. So its their own fault.

Its well known in Los Angeles where we keep burning taxpayer money and the government officials keep making their friends rich by building more shelters that aren't used. So its just a waste until we make it a crime for them to sleep on the street and loiter and harass people if there are shelters available. They just cause trouble and commit crimes, that's what they do best.

<comment><USER14> So much [citation needed] here.

While I can't speak to Los Angeles specifically, every shelter I've ever been to in the last ten years has been overwhelmed with more people than they can house.</comment></comment>


Do below average developers ever turn into average developers? - <AUTHOR>

Have you ever hired a developer and after a couple of months thought they were below average and perhaps they should be terminated but you kept them on and a year or two later they had really become a star developer?
I'm a software developer and I have been managing developers for 20 years.  There have been many cases where I hire someone and after a couple of months I think "this person isn't doing as well as I thought they would.  They aren't totally incompetent and they show an occasional flash of insight but over all, if I had it to do over I wouldn't hire this person."  Should I fire this person? HR and others say "you need to work with them and try harder to train them and get them up to speed".  I don't think mediocre and sub par developers grow up to become good or great developers.  They do get more experienced but mediocre interns turn into mediocre young programmers who turn into mediocre middle aged programmers.
Full disclosure.  I fully admit that I suck at hiring but it isn't from lack of effort.  I've read a lot and I've tried many different approaches and it is the single hardest professional task I've ever had. <comment><USER2> The first company I worked at hired a fairly poor developer, who eventually turned into a quite talented programmer.

When he joined his front-end knowledge was shocking, and he was entering a mainly .NET office with knowledge of PHP, so he spent most of his time on our smaller sites that run PHP. He struggled with many of the basics, and even though I was a good friend of his I was asked by the Managing Director if he was capable enough to stay with the company. I said yes, solely because I didn't want to see a friend sacked on the opinion of a dev with only a few years experience.

As a bit of back-story, the dev process when I first joined was shocking. The "Technical Manager" would help with phone lines and was my direct boss. As he didn't trust me with files I had to give any files I wanted FTPed to a server to him. There was no source control, and we were running from free versions of the Microsoft dev tools. When other people needed Photoshop for basic designs the company abused the 30 day trial across different VM's.

After the above conversation I had become Lead Developer after the Technical Manager left. With this new responsibility I had set up Continuous Integration, automated delivery to the servers, and had bought Visual Studio licenses for the devs. Amazingly, the Managing Director was fine with this, and had no idea that we didn't have the tools we needed. Now that the .NET side was sorted I had to move onto what we'd do with the PHP dev, who had basically spent six months modifying basic WordPress sites with forms.

Since we were looking to move some of our smaller PHP sites to larger sites, I decided to try and steer the development of his projects towards tools that would make him a better developer, and would ultimately force him to adapt. Instead of WordPress for these soon-to-be complex sites I suggested he find a framework (he chose CakePHP after we looked through them). From there, I decided to integrate him more with the .NET developers so that he would have to look at how we do things and then think about how he'd implement things for his tool set. We introduced weekly code reviews for all devs, and I think that helped him out the most.

It took a while, and carried on after I had left, but he moved from Windows to a Mac, managed to set up TeamCity for use with his PHP projects, moved some of the sites to PostgreSQL during the new build phases, and over time his code has improved significantly. It's been a number of years since we worked together now, but he's gone from someone that could barely work without WordPress to someone that writes good code and can deliver. Ultimately, it makes me believe that a bad developer is just a developer that needs direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since you say that code reviews helped him the most can you give some details on how that was done, who was involved, how much time was devoted to it, etc?

<comment><USER2> I tried to make it as casual as possible. We got some nice coffee from the coffee shop down the road, brought it into a meeting room and spent about 45-60 mins going through the commit history on some of our projects.

We kinda lucked out with the idea. Some of the managers were adamant that all teams have a team meeting, with one of the "managers" sitting in, mainly because our technical manager had left and we were kinda self-governing in what we needed as developers. The regular meetings were a waste of time so we turned it into a code review meeting. Since it was a small company it was just developers and one of these managers, and the second the code talk started they couldn't wait to get out of the room.

Initially, I tried to steep the code review, but it worked best when we'd just go through our commit history, pull down some code and run it there and then from our "QA server" (a VM running off of one of the company file servers). I was very keen to make sure that it was a light-hearted meeting, so we'd demo the code, explain our thinking behind our implementation and just generally talk about whether we'd do things differently. Having a PHP guy involved was actually quite fun, because we were keen to treat it as if we'd learn something new by how "the other half" do things. We'd pick up on the differences between the code structure and talk about how we'd apply SOLID principles to that PHP code. One of the big breakthroughs in that meeting was getting this guy to adhere to the Single Responsibility principle in his code. Once the structure started to break down he'd be working extremely hard to better his code.

It'll need adjusting for your environment, for sure. This office was really stuffy, and aside from the odd manager and the MD many of the managers tried their hardest to be assholes. The process worked quite well, but I think the best part about it was that for an hour you could talk about code, have a nice coffee, and not be bitched at by managers that weren't even responsible for your area.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a really great suggestion. I'm going to try that next time I find myself in this situation. Thanks for your time and input on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, using your logic shouldn't your boss fire you for being mediocre at hiring? Usually a team with all A players doesn't really work out anyway. They spend all their time pissing on each other and avoiding doing the boring grunt code. For every leader you need some followers that don't mind doing the crap code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting points. I do suck at hiring but I also think I'm better than average at it. Its just a really hard problem where if you are really bad at it in some absolute sense you are actually pretty good at it in a relative sense. But yes if I was significantly worse than the average of my peers then my boss should fire me. I'm not trying to get all A players and I agree with your comments regarding that. I also edited my question as I see "very mediocre" isn't what I meant. Have you ever seen a below average developer turn into a better than average developer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course, no one here started off as an average or expert developer, we were all beginners writing awful code at one point in our lives.

I think you need to consider two main attributes when hiring...

1\. Does this person have the right mindset and intelligence to excel as a programmer? Are they a good problem solver? If they run into an issue, do they get frustrated and toss their hands in the air asking for help, or do they start debugging their code, using logic to find their errors, search out answers online, etc. You can see this at any level of experience. If you're teaching someone to write their first few lines of code and they miss a semi- colon, or declare a variable wrong, how do they react, and how do they move forward? Anyone can learn the correct syntax, but can they grasp the concepts of programming?

2\. How much passion do they have for programming? Do they work on projects of their own? Are they learning more than you ask of them, for their own enjoyment? Does their day end at 5pm, or do they show up the next morning with a plan to tackle challenges they faced the previous afternoon?

If you're hiring more experienced staff, you need to look at things a little differently. However, when it comes to new talent, I think those are the two most important factors - do they have the mind of a programmer, and a passion for programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you on points one and two but how do you figure that out in a interview over a couple of hours? I can figure out how skilled they are technically, I can figure out if they have decent communication skills which are also important and then I get to the points you mention and these are softer, harder to quantify skills. How do you go about finding answers to these questions and do you make it quantitative in some way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Putting aside the fact you're considering firing perfectly competent devs because they're not solving the halting problem for you, hiring is in practice a random process and what you have is probably a better outcome than most, consider what skills your team missing and look to make a 'star' team rather wishing for single points of key failure, even to the extent of going out of a pure dev role to look at BAs and architecture hires.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that hiring is random and the focus should be on making a star team. That is what I have done and I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out. Have you ever seen a big change in the level of productivity of a given programmer that isn't related to longer term general experience ( an average programmer with 10 years of experience should be more productive than an average programmer with 1 year of experience ).

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure it scales like that for that long, sure there are benefits of familiarity with a language or system, the major changes in productivity I've seen come about through cross-skilling you can only expect the majority of devs or BAs or whatever to reach a certain level of competence when constrained to their core roles, encourage them to develop skills outside their usual BAU activities and the mutants you get back are an asset both in individual productivity and team redundancy.</comment></comment></comment>


Donald Knuth Does Not Use Email - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html#top

<comment><USER2> So Prof Knuth doesn't use email. Big deal. This has been known for many years and doesn't really count as news. I still have his books, dusty from years of being unused because google has made them largely unnecessary. Last time I looked at one was when I needed to do precise division of numbers represented in base 100.

<comment><USER3> Oh, Hacker News is for news?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone have any idea what the comment about "France, Germany, and the Netherlands" in the end alluded to?

<comment><USER5> Traditionally, _émail_ or _email(le)_ means enamel in those languages.</comment></comment>


Java:`char` type considered Harmful and should be retired - <AUTHOR> http://codeahoy.com/2016/05/08/the-char-type-in-java-is-broken/ <comment><USER2> You should use the original article title per the HN guidelines on submission, please.</comment>


Show HN: Glowing Bear, a self-hosted web IRC front end for WeeChat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! Glowing Bear has come up a few times in comment threads over the years, but with the Slack story on the front page, I thought now might be a good time to actually post a thread about it :)

Glowing Bear is a web frontend for WeeChat, a popular command-line IRC client (that also has Matrix support and lots of other nifty things). It's implemented in pure client-side javascript, so you can easily host it yourself or run it as an electron app (we provide build scripts for that, but no pre- built binaries). We also provide a hosted instance via GitHub Pages at [https://www.glowing-bear.org](https://www.glowing-bear.org). Since it's not an IRC client but rather a _front-end for an IRC client_ , WeeChat ([https://weechat.org/](https://weechat.org/)), you need to bring your own WeeChat instance.

</comment><comment><USER2> With wee-slack, your Weechat installation can connect you to multiple Slacks at the same time. I use Weechat to connect to 3 different Slacks, and Glowing Bear to connect to the Weechat when I'm afraid from the commandline or on my phone. Works really well.

<comment><USER3> I struggle with managing hundred of channel after connecting slack accounts. Is can you tell how you did it?

<comment><USER2> Glowing Bear has a preference to hide channels that don't have any activity.

As for using wee-slack in Weechat, go.py helps. I bind it to meta-g, it's a script that lets you jump to channels by typing the name. Also, /part any channels you're not interested in.

<comment><AUTHOR> In Glowing Bear, meta-g jumps to the search bar that filters buffers as you type. Now that I think about it, a fuzzy search with ranking would be a nice improvement to reduce the number of characters needed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netlify Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/products/analytics <comment><USER2> The funny thing for me is how much more intuitive this is when you run an actual server, or vps, and how fundamental it is in that context ("Oh crap, bunch of views, they are slowing this laptop down a bunch!") while being so much more involved here.

I'm hesitant to generalize past myself, but I really wish someone made me learn the basics on a web server in my own home, where I could reboot it by pulling out a power cord, and transfer files with a usb stick. I would have been so much more able to make thought out trade-offs or attempt grander things.

Its straight-forward and free (at the margin) to throw up a password protected site on a server, but daunting in SaaS world. Same story for having a bash script update some page with a gnuplot chart with data obtained via curl/wget, vs. CORS and an API, and a charting library, and json ...

I shudder to think of how much time I wasted as I was just learning web anything on solutions that were way too big and complex for my goals at the time - from docker, to lambdas, AWS orbit based nuclear powered whatever to run a clock widget or whatnot. I'm certainly glad I learned those things, and they are scalable and safer and all those good things, but hard to put into context without knowing how one stupid server doing it all by itself would do it.

This is all a drawn out way of saying that the cheapest lightsail vps is like 3 bucks a month, and you can implement all the fanciest netlify features right on it, and if you never have done that, you really should. If anything when you do move to netlify, you will really appreciate it on a different level.

<comment><USER3> > _lightsail vps is like 3 bucks a month, and you can implement all the > fanciest netlify features right on it, and if you never have done that, you > really should_

Can you expand what Netlify features you're talking about or provide any guides/links that would steer a newbie in the right direction? I appreciate the "back to basics" attitude, but don't know where to even get started...

<comment><USER2> Hackiest way - pick the wordpress VPS options for $3.50, then sub out the wordpress homepage with your static site

Poor Man's Netlify identity - Apache or nginx password rules.

Poor Man's Netlify Large Media Management - Upload some files over sftp.

Poor Man's Netlify Lambda functions - crontab -e, 0 * * * * LynxDumpWeatherToHomepage.sh.

Poor Man's Netlify Teams - Create a new user with access to that site.

Poor Man's Netlify Forms - A php form.

Poor Man's Netlify Analytics - Less +F (or tail -f) web.log file.

^^ This is isn't tax, legal, or sysadmin advice. SanchoPanda doesn't offer tax, legal, or sysadmin advice. Please consult your tax, legal, or sysadmin advisor before making any tax, legal, or web infrastructure related decisions.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious how a cronjob would be used as Lambda functions here? I'd have expected it to be CGI here instead.

Do note that I'm not encouraging people to use CGI for their serverless needs whatsoever but if we're going back to basic then CGI is the closest thing I can think of for serverless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a big miss on their part. I love Netlify and I use them for my personal site. When I got their newsletter email announcing this, the first thought that entered my head was: "Finally! I can take Google Analytics off my site. About time a serious contender took on GA."

Unfortunately this costs $108/year more than GA. And while there are a couple of GA alternatives out there, having the financial backing of someone like Netlify makes a big difference. I don't want to think about analytics, I just want to know roughly how much traffic my site is getting, not having to worry about an open source project dying in the next year and having to find yet another replacement.

<comment><USER6> GA is nice for client-side stuff, but Adblock has made the numbers completely unreliable, especially for tech-focused content. Instead I prefer to just use server-side logs. At my tiny scale it's easy to just assume each IP is a unique, and people are free to block GA without affecting my metrics.

<comment><USER7> What solutions do you recommend for server side logging? I've come to a similar conclusion as you as far as what's actually reasonably necessary.

<comment><USER6> Honestly I just wrote a small set of functions to log everything to Google Analytics via its measurement protocol[0]. I know I said I didn't use it client-side, but the dashboard is still top-notch for exploring analytics data and there's a ton of processing it does for free - IP to location is one.

I also stream all logs into text files so I can process them later too.

[0][https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...](https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes a ton of sense of for Netlify, and I hope they keep improving on it. If this existed 5 months ago I might not have rolled my own analytics using Netlify functions and Google Spreadsheets^. As it is, $9 per site, and an inability to log client-side routing make it not worth switching from my own, super customizable event-based solution (would have to come up with a new API schema for calling URLs to log specific events / goals).

^I wrote about it here: [https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own- analytics](https://www.pcmaffey.com/roll-your-own-analytics)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is excellent. The first thing I did was remove GA. It's also incredible that they backfill data.

Yes, it costs money. But this is exactly what I want, and Netlify now has a significant incentive not to do anything shady with the data (and by not using cookies or JavaScript, they hamstring any potential ability to sell the data anyway).

Good work, I'm glad to be a Netlify customer.

</comment><comment><USER10> The funny thing about this is tons of developers are using Netlify for SPA's and therefore only that first request will be caught by their edge nodes, all subsequent page views will be missed.

<comment><USER11> (i work there) lets just say this has not escaped our attention and we even discussed holding off launching until we had an easy way to log an incremental pageview from the clientside. ultimately we decided to ship first and iterate later. limiting the scope was definitely helpful running up to the launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Was hoping for free, but honestly? If I'm serious about having good data, I'll pay the $9/month to not be dependent on Google.

<comment><USER13> It's $9 per site though :(

Clicky, a freemium alternative to Google Analytics costs $10 per month for their Pro plan but that includes 10 websites.

Or Clicky's Pro Platinum plan costs $20 per month for 30 websites.

Kind of wish Netlify had gone with similar pricing

<comment><USER14> I wish the pricing scaled with traffic instead of being a flat rate per site.

<comment><USER15> Yes! I have a static personal page, hosted via github pages, where I just want barebones information about how many people visit the page, from which country etc. I get maybe 10 visits per week. I probably won't pay 9$ for this.

Currently using ticksel.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That landing page does not have a single screenshot of what you get for $9 per month. Do you pay the $9 and then find out what the analytics page you're getting is going to look like, and if it's suitable for your website?

<comment><USER17> This, At least some screenshots or Demo. And it is only for 250,000 view / month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> At $9/month I think I'll just keep doing what I've been doing so far - throwing Cloudflare in front of the Netlify app and using their free analytics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Congratulations Netlify on launching this! I'm all for simple, non-tracking analytics, and this perfect for that use.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd purchase this, not because I'm likely to look at it often, but because Netlify provides me a great deal of value that I don't even pay for. It may be more than the cost of Google Analytics, but they've earned my money I think.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been hoping that somebody would do this for quite some time. I previously experimented with using CloudFront logs in GoAccess for awhile for my personal blog in order to avoid invasive JavaScript-based tracking, but it was too much trouble to maintain.

I really like the idea of the CDN provider offering this as a service that requires no effort and provides a nice interactive dashboard.

The pricing on this is unfortunately too much for me to justify using it for my personal site, but I'd happily use it for anything more substantive.

<comment><USER22> I built Logflare for Cloudflare. A good example of what you're talking about I think. [https://logflare.app](https://logflare.app)

<comment><USER23> > I built Logflare for Cloudflare. A good example of what you're talking about > I think. [https://logflare.app](https://logflare.app)

Total aside, but I really love the feel of your site. Very polished and I love the way the tool is presented (not to mention that it seems like a useful service to boot!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Sessions are tracked anonymously without cookies or personally identifying information like IP addresses."

Very curious how they are able to do this

<comment><USER11> good catch! i believe this was a misstatement and have requested we change this wording. for the time being what's on the docs is what we have [https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/](https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/)

<comment><USER25> But the docs say the same thing?

[https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/#how-it- works](https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/#how-it-works)

> Because site activity is tracked anonymously without cookies or personally > identifying information, [...]

<comment><USER11> not quite the same - that statement is more accurate than saying "sessions". "sessions" has a contextual meaning in analytics and our marketing copy misused the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Really excited about this, I miss the days of static server-side logs!

Pricing is a bit high for my super-low-traffic hobby sites, unfortunately. But I'm glad they're doing this!

<comment><USER27> For hobby sites, I guess the owner might be fine with grepping logs or installing webalizer anyway. Those who really need this are developers at companies where the boss thinks they need it. I've tried to push for Statcounter just to stay away from Google, but bossman eventually wanted Google. This is yet another tool in the belt for being able to work without Google, and for a company (even a small business), 9 euros a month is very little.

<comment><USER26> But I don't think Netlify provides logs, so that's not an option, right?

<comment><USER27> But your web server does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the best server-side analytics package for Django?

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious about comparing my Netlify Analytics numbers to my Google Analytics numbers. I'm seeing a lot more users and page views on Netlify Analytics. I know that GA can be blocked client side, but does GA exclude bot/crawler traffic from stats as well? Or can I assume that the difference between GA and Netlify Analytics numbers are due to adblock / noscript / etc?

<comment><USER11> i cant speak to GA but just dropping by to point to the docs [https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/](https://www.netlify.com/docs/analytics/) for details on the numbers. it's IP based, and some filtering is done as described

"The Pageviews and Top pages charts include only responses with Content-Type: text/html and a status code of 200, 201, or 304. We filter the data by status code this way so that we don't count errors or double count redirects. This also applies to the Pageviews total for your site. Unique visitors counts different IP addresses engaging with your site within a single day. If someone loads pages of your site on multiple different days, they will be counted as a unique visitor for each day. The Unique visitors total for your site is a sum of the daily numbers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been a happy (free tier) customer of Netlify for the past few months. Their UI is really intuitive and they have great documentation.

</comment><comment><USER31> Their marketing on this is brilliant. They're capitalizing on the growing adblock/jsblock trend to point out that server side analytics are more accurate.

To be fair, back in the day when you had a single web server, analytics was easy. I to miss the days of being able to do a 'tail -f web.log' and watch as your page hit Slashdot...

<comment><USER32> > ... and watch as your page hit Slashdot...

And then fall over?

I miss the days of The Slashdot Effect[1]. Now it's the JS that makes my PC fall over.

[1] Come to think of it _The Slashdot Effect_ would have been a good band name back in the '90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is Netlify using for the underlying data storage and query engine?

</comment><comment><USER34> Do they give you a way to track conversions? e.g. if someone signed up to a newsletter or bought a product, and where that user came from?</comment>


Rate my startup: Invoice.ly - no bull* invoicing - <AUTHOR> https://www.invoice.ly <comment><USER2> Either say "no bullshit" properly or drop it. You can definitely get away with that line in many arenas now - if you are targeting the "indie"/liberal types it will hold sway (so long as you hold up to it!). However outside that it might put people off.

I'd work a little more on the app design; space it all out more and go for a "clean" look so that your screenshot can appear less busy (it draws the eye a little too much on the landing page).

The app itself is a little confusing (but looks a good start nonetheless).

First the colours are not to my personal taste; you have too many on the page for a start (stick with 3 colors and 5 shades if possible). More importantly they are all pastels - which becomes hard on the eye. I recommend spending some time on <http://www.colourlovers.com> and pick a palette with the proper ratio of bold/highlight/background colours

As to the app - it's a little difficult to navigate initially; it was a bit unintuitive adding "partners" especially as it is not clear what a partner is (this isn't typical terminology in most places - it sounds perhaps law centric?).

I quite like your landing page though; apart from the screenshot it is pretty solid. As pointed out you should clarify what mini means (possibly just scrap that terminology for the moment - I guess you plan to add paid-for plans later so you can always bring that in at a later stage). Maybe call it beta for now.

<comment><USER3> > Either say "no bullshit" properly or drop it.

Or, you know, say "BS Free invoicing".

<comment><AUTHOR> hehe :) haven't thought of that. I also like the form of the sentence better than what I used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of points of feedback:

1\. Your target market (small businesses) won't like (or understand) your tag line. Seriously, get rid of "no bull*". What does it mean anyway? It is not cool.

2\. Your page is confusing and saying too many things. Your screenshot with so many values is frightening.

3\. What is mini version? Is it a new terminology that I haven't heard of?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

1\. First. I agree with you and I intended to iterate to more serious/assuring tag-line with time. I am sort of testing love/hate vs. indifference with it in a sense "let's see what happens". I certainly like it more than some typical tag-lines but I understand it might be bad idea to general public. Your feedback about this is certainly appreciated.

2\. Huh. I tried to make a clear/minimal page, but I guess I didn't succeed that well. Do you have anything specific that is confusing. About screenshot, I like the (hopefully) "effective" looks of it in same way I like looks of gmail. I will further work on this. Thanks for bringing it out.

3\. mini as in minimal :). I will think about more appropriate terms. I talk about "mini" version because there will also be "not-mini".

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

<comment><USER5> 3\. Basic/Starter are for example much more clear than mini.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I will change it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Um - I can think of loads of "web 2" invoicing sites blinksale, zoho, freshbooks, less accounting... the web is full of them. (e.g. [http://freelanceswitch.com/money/7-online-invoicing-apps- for...](http://freelanceswitch.com/money/7-online-invoicing-apps-for- freelancers/)). You could probably find 15-20 in about half an hour.

I'm sure you've spent a lot of time on this but seriously you are dreaming if you think this is going to make any money.

<comment><USER7> It's no exaggeration to say that there are probably more invoicing apps than there are URL shorteners. Having run one for nearly two years, I can say that there are certain key differentiators that customers in this market are looking for. For starters, "simple" and "no bull*" do not have as strong a pull in invoicing as say in project management. When it comes to financial applications, users are going to expect some level of sophistication. I strongly advise the OP against leaning only in simplicity as a key differentiator, since TBH all 20+ competitors in the market could claim the same thing.

To the OP if you're seriously committed, shoot me an email and I can give you some pointers that I've learned over the last 2 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> For starters, "simple" and "no bull _" do not have as strong a pull in invoicing as say in project management.

Thanks for the info.

>> I strongly advise the OP against leaning only in simplicity as a key differentiator, since TBH all 20+ competitors in the market could claim the same thing.

Thanks again. Yes, I can see that you are right. Our _main* focus is "efficiency" (not claiming that it's a specially god focus, but it is our main) With this I mean speed & and focus on functionality/work-flow and less on decoration / packaging.

As for all webapps, simplicity is a very important factor to, but I can agree with you that it's not a good differentiator.

Invoice.ly doesn't have a goal to become a service accountant would use. But it has more in terms of what a SMB owner would use than invoicing. Invoice.ly is US adaptation of app I made for my (EU based) country. Besides "mini" that you can see there is also a "norm" which will offer a more rich set of features.

I'm definitely serious, where can I find your email? My is janko DOT itm AT gmail.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm, I have it in my profile, but I guess it's not displayed to the public. It's lwang at you-can-guess-the-rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just wanted to add, that I'm using the localised version for Slovenia, and that it is a great app!

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't take more than a cursory look, but do you handle other currencies?

<comment><AUTHOR> No in this version not. But it is coming since a noticeable part of beta testers already need it.

<comment><USER10> Nice work and all the very best. I had a question for you...How did you start distributing your application for "beta" testing? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I basically contacted any people I knew from US, or the ones I thought might know people from US. I am a part of few smaller programmer communities where we know each-other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hire or team up with a good graphic designer. If I had to choose between using this site and getballpark.com I think you know which one I would choose.

</comment><comment><USER12> I suggest fixing the jagged edges on your logo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) I didn't notice them but now I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What? No OpenID support?

OpenID should be the first login system you implement. I would not sign up "yet another account".

<comment><AUTHOR> I like OpenID but my fear is that only tech people use/know what OpenID is. I will think about this. Thanks for your feedback! :)

<comment><USER14> It's okay that you're not using OpenID. It's a pain in the ass to use. It's one of the reasons I don't like using StackOverflow, for instance.

<comment><USER15> I agree, even as a super technology addict, I find OpenID to be super annoying, and I even have a friend who use to be the OpenID advocate. Heaven forbid I should tell him that though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's too bad you're using a .ly domain. The mere association with Libya, and the fact that you're dealing with invoicing, makes me very uncomfortable.

<comment><USER16> Not to mention that it's a pretty lame trend that's bound to be over soon, and then it'll just look out of touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well. invoice.xy where xy is anything that makes the whole domain pronounceable is hard to find. So I thought it was a good catch. I am aware that something.ly is a trend that will be over yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whoa, the orange and blue clashes horribly on your sign up for free link.

You should also be spending your precious video time telling us why we should use your product rather than demonstrating the interface. Interface guides are for users who are already customers, not prospects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really execute not only generally like "release early" theories :).

Videos are simple and without music/speech for now since things are iterating and I will probably have to make new videos next week. So I want to keep this light and still there to demonstrate app to people without them signing in.

About the color-clash. I will change it and consult a designer here, although I must admit I don't see it :) must be my monitor, or my eyes :) Thanks!</comment></comment>


Microsoft Shows Why Big Tech Has Staying Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-shows-why-big-tech-has-staying-power-1543493877 <comment><USER2> Monopolies tend to have that. I mean let's face it, the antitrust "punishment" the U.S. and EU governments issued against Microsoft were not really that damaging by themselves. It was mainly Microsoft's fear of getting more such punishments that led to the decline from the absolute monopoly status to near- monopoly status.

But in the big picture, Microsoft still dominates.</comment>


The Year in Fungi - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-year-in-fungi-2015 <comment><USER2> Fungi are incredible.

Check out this post about how mycelial networks act as an organic internet for plant species to communicate.

[http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a- hidden...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden- internet)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not included, but interesting, is the fact that wild shiitake were found in New England for the first time:

[https://mycosymbiotics.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/wild- shiitak...](https://mycosymbiotics.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/wild-shiitake- found-in-new-england/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have to admit I was quite skeptical when I clicked on the link, but this was a pretty interesting read.

<comment><USER5> I started finding fungi fascinating after watching this, perhaps you'll like it too:

[http://youtu.be/XI5frPV58tY](http://youtu.be/XI5frPV58tY)

<comment><USER6> Same here. Its potential for both cleaning up waste and as an antibiotic is impressive!

For those who want to watch in better quality than 240p: [http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_ca...](http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the summer I was poking about Europe with my wife and daughter with the idea of potentially moving there. While in southern France we were struck with the rather poor selection, relative to both China and France's elevated status in global culinary circles[0], of readily commercially available fungi species. After encountering an abandoned sawmill outside of Toulouse I set out on a few day thought experiment to determine ballpark figures on setting up a commercial mushroom farm, which in turn caused me to email some leading robotics-related professors who had published recent papers on picking-type robots. I explained the relatively unique situation we were in with respect to capacity to select species (to some extent), facility site, process and layout to enable automation. Their answer? Nothing yet flying too well. Apparently, the simple task of snipping mushrooms off substrate blocks is too difficult for mainstream AI. While I am now back in China enjoying a much wider range of mushrooms (two _reishi_ on my bookshelf) and a new hobby of orchid- gardening[1], do get in touch if you're potentially interested in co- exploring/co-investing in research for this space. I also have an interest in developing automated offshore seaweed farming.

[0] For example a book I read yesterday espoused the view that there are really only three globally significant cuisines: Anatolian, Chinese and French.

[1] Commercially useful for fragrance industry plus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron) for example.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm so happy. My little sis is an o-chem major and OBSESSED with fungi, this will be a fun link to send her way, thanks for this completely oddball post!

</comment><comment><USER9> Is crispr actually used for fungal genome editing? It seems like TAR cloning would be much easier.</comment>


The Constant Consumer – Real Life - <AUTHOR> http://reallifemag.com/the-constant-consumer/ <comment><USER2> Might be better to set the title to the subtitle of the article: _" Amazon's mission is to make customer identity more primary than citizenship"_</comment>