Borderlands Books is Closing - <AUTHOR> http://www.borderlands-books.com/ <comment><USER2> I understand lots of people will want to paint this as a sweeping indictment of minimum wage hikes overall but all of us here should know better than to generalize from one sample, especially one as skewed as this.

Here, we have a business that:

1\. Is in a market that's been declining for _decades_.

2\. Is in one of the most expensive cities in the United States.

3\. Has a product with an essentially fixed price.

4\. Sells a "commodity" product: the book you get from there is indistiguishable from the same book bought elsewhere. (Of course, the overall book buying _experience_ is unique.)

5\. Sells a product that has a digital alternative rapidly rising in popularity.

6\. Is in the number #1 city in the entire world for people predisposed to prefer digital alternatives to things.

They may as well have been a cash-only store for horse-drawn carriage accessories. I'm sad they're closing, but it's amazing they lasted as long as they did and says next to nothing about large-scale economic policy.

<comment><USER3> And trapped between the commodity supplier fixing the price, and the state bringing up the costs, its a solid recipe for killing off a business. Which it has done in this case.

So the more interesting question from an economics perspective is whether or not capturing the marginal GDP of this business is a better or worse for the people. Sure the bookstore goes poof, and folks can't get cheap used books any more. The business will be replaced by something that can afford both the higher labor rate, like an upscale coffee shop or maybe a designer boutique.

But the number of bookstores goes down by one, and the volumes available are not available in the library. So the community has lost something too.

Nominally the markets are there to express what is a good application of capital by meeting demand. Should it go to running a bookstore or running a coffee roaster or a blog aggregator Etc. But the artificial floor of minimum wage creates artificial barriers to applying capital. You can see in this post that the floor of $10 allows the bookstore to exist, the floor of $15 does not. So here is a fiscal policy which is going limit choices.

And a really interesting effect is that everyone is going to raise prices to cover that expense, they have too, and so all of those folks who were complaining that they can't afford to eat at the 'upscale' bars and bistros in California its just going to get worse for them, and it won't be the Googlers or Twitterers or Pinsters causing that upswing, it will be the very government they elected to serve them doing it to them.

I find the economics of such things very interesting in the side effects as much as the intended effects.

<comment><USER4> Bookstores in SF have been closing for a while; blaming this closure on the minimum wage hike is specious, to say the least. Yeah, I read the blog; but closing the bookstore today, because wages will go up in 2018 (3 years from today), is ridiculous.

Let me offer an alternate explanation, based on speculation (but grounded in the realities of the booming SF realestate market): someone offered to buy out Borderlands lease for a ridiculous amount, and it was an offer they just couldn't refuse. So basically it was a choice between (a) struggling along paycheck-to-paycheck for the next 3 years, or (b) getting a nice fat check to close the doors and do something else. They chose (b). The Valencia corridor between 16th and 24th has exploded, with a large number of hipster restaurants and boutiques, and money is flowing in like crazy. Might as well tap into that while the going's good.

Expect to see some hipster cafe, restaurant or boutique opening in their place in the next few months.

<comment><USER3> I note that the author of the blog post says:

 _" The change in minimum wage will mean our payroll will increase roughly 39%. That increase will in turn bring up our total operating expenses by 18%. To make up for that expense, we would need to increase our sales by a minimum of 20%. We do not believe that is a realistic possibility for a bookstore in San Francisco at this time."_

<comment><USER5> They weren't paying their people much, were they?

<comment><USER6> No, they weren't paying their very limited staff much; it's a marginal business that's been on the decline for years, and even one of the managers is stated as having a salary of only $28k. All of this is in the article.

<comment><USER7> >managers is stated as having a salary of only $28k.

Which isn't a livable wage in SF, right? At some point businesses that can't survive cost inflation, either due to worker costs, government regulation, or energy cost must give up their space for those that can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Minimum wage increases directly affect the purchasing power of all through price inflation. Here we have a real world example of this laid out by a business owner. The company recognizes that the minimum wage employment costs will be equal for all cafes in the area, as they will pass costs onto customers; the customers see their existing wages worth less through this increase and drives them to seek salary increases from their employer. The minimum wage increase does not make more things attainable as the entire system has raised the cost of goods throughout it to compensate for the employee cost increase.

The employees who are most hurt by this minimum wage increase are small businesses, borderlands books, and those trying to make a start in a business

<comment><USER9> > Minimum wage increases directly affect the purchasing power of all through > price inflation

You're economically savvy enough to realize that increased purchasing power causes inflated costs with more money chasing goods/services, and you're zeroing in on a _minimum wage increase from $11 = > $15/hr_ instead of, I don't know, tech worker salaries?

Maybe you know something I don't, because I'd guess the effect from the former isn't even close to keeping the class of people it benefits at purchasing parity.

<comment><USER8> It is always an incremental straw until the camel's back breaks. If you increase the minimum wage for the worker, all prices across a system will increase as the business must remain a going concern to compensate the increase. The price increase affects end-users purchasing power.

The median household income in the United States is $51,000, tech worker salaries are are not the norm, they are 6% of the population ($100,000 for a single individual). Their effect on society is negligent in the purchase of everyday goods as they are only 6% of the population and purchase affluent goods and upward.

Assuming direct elasticity, if a place increases costs by 30%, 30% less will shop.

If a median income family has a 10% increase in food prices, they have to absorb it. Try getting a 10% wage increase across an entire operating company, let alone a single employee.

<comment><USER9> > The median household income in the United States is $51,000, tech worker > salaries are are not the norm, they are 6% of the population ($100,000 for a > single individual). Their effect on society is negligent in the purchase of > everyday goods as they are only 6% of the population and purchase affluent > goods and upward.

I think it's fairly safe to say the the effects are considerably more pronounced in San Francisco than they are nationally:

[http://www.spur.org/blog/2014-02-27/forecasting-san- francisc...](http://www.spur.org/blog/2014-02-27/forecasting-san-francisco-s- economic-fortunes)

But since you brought up the median income, let's use that to talk about my point: $51k is about $25/hr. The hike under discussion moves minimum wage up to... well, from just under $10 a few years ago to $11 as of this year (so, less than half that). But wait, that's national median. San Francisco median is closer to $70k ($35+/hr), so we're really talking about a motion that's all below _1 /3_ median.

Again... this is a primary driver of inflation? We're talking about a roughly $2000 _year_ ly boost in the bottom quartile that almost doesn't even keep pace with average _month_ ly rent increases over the last 5 years.

If minimum wage hikes aren't even successfully chasing cost of living increases, it's pretty hard to argue they're driving inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The management was making $28k a year salary. I don't know how viable a business it was even without the minimum wage increase.

<comment><USER11> Most businesses survive on slim profit margins. Most businesses are barely viable. This is why minor changes in the availability of credit, for example, can cause a recession.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I think the profit margins on software have really spoiled most people on HN. $28k a year from a bookstore is not bad. It could actually be a livable wage in many other parts of the US.

<comment><USER13> But given that it was in San Francisco, is that remotely viable? Can you rent a cardboard box in the gutter for $28k/year in SF?

<comment><USER14> San Francisco has strong rent control rules. You can pay $1000/month for an entire floor of a Victorian if you've lived there long enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like a lot of people aren't mentioning the fact that a minimum wage increase cuts both ways. Small businesses must pay more, but low end consumers should now have more money to spend. Raising the minimum from $11 to $15 is a roughly 30% increase that will affect roughly 5% of Americans. The question is, what will those people spend that extra money on? I'm guessing it won't be books, or at least not vintage or trendy books. It will most likely being low end food, clothing and entertainment (mcdonalds, walmart, dvds) and childrens' needs of all varieties.

If stores have to raise their prices to cover higher employment costs, then the worst case will be a push for the lowest income Americans. They make 30% more and pay 30% more for most goods. But every walmart/mcdonalds/redbox employee doesn't earn minimum wage and their labor costs don't scale linearly, so the most likely outcome is that those earning minimum wage will get a small effective price break, the middle class will pay slightly more for things and the wealthy will also pay more but not really notice it. Bookstores and other middle class oriented businesses will be forced to close, while businesses that cater to minimum wage workers will see slight profit increases.

I'm not sure if this is an ideal situation not, or if it represents an intended or unintended consequence. But under a certain set of assumptions it could be viewed as this particular bookstore closing so that someone who is barely getting by has a few extra dollars to live on each month. It's a shame when any marginal business is forced to meet its fate, but it might be the best thing for the economy over all, or at least for the people who have benefited least from the recent recovery.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an anticipated side-effect of raising the minimum wage: it raises the "table stakes" a small business needs to compete. Sad, but not in the large surprising.

(One could argue that it's also an anticipated side-effect of being a bookstore in a world moving away from bound print media, but I don't think that's the larger factor here; it's not like anyone expects Barnes & Noble to go under any time soon).

<comment><USER17> > it's not like anyone expects Barnes & Noble to go under any time soon

Well actually... On 2014 revenue of $6.4bn they lost $1.6bn. Their total assets are $3.8bn and liabilities are $2.6bn, which means another yearly loss of $1.6bn will sink them.

They are expected to spin off the Nook business and make some money (and reduce losses) from that, but I doubt it will be enough to save them in the long term.

<comment><USER18> That is all pretty much completely incorrect - I think you must be misreading a 1.6b expense line as a loss? FY 2014 for BKS was pretty much even.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ABKS&fstype=ii&ei=Kz_...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ABKS&fstype=ii&ei=Kz_RVIHoB8eZ8wa6nIDgBA)

You'll also see the 2.6b you're calling liabilities is maybe accumulated depreciation? Actual FY2014 debt is 127.5M. Barnes & Noble is relatively debt- free for a large retailer.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ABKS&fstype=ii&ei=Kz_...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ABKS&fstype=ii&ei=Kz_RVIHoB8eZ8wa6nIDgBA)

<comment><USER17> You're correct, I miscalculated their annual loss (but not from their expense line). The assets and liabilities are literally from these lines on their balance sheet:

Total Assets 3,835.75 Total Liabilities 2,627.98

Per:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.asp?ticker=BKS)

"2014 revenues at Barnes & Noble, Inc. totaled $6.4B USD, while annual losses equaled $1.12 per share."

B&N has 60.24M shares outstanding. That makes their annual loss $67 million. They do indeed have a longer runway than I anticipated, but I still feel that they run a business in decline. Their saving grace from a few years ago (Nook) is now an albatross. What is their next move?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think their small size and specificity (and given the fact that a large majority of what they have is low-margin paperback fiction) is probably what makes it really hard to be viable, since there's no real way to ratchet up volume. The counter example is Green Apple Books, which seems to be doing well across two geographical locations in less populated areas of the city.

</comment><comment><USER20> This makes me sad. I nearly always pick up a book or two from Borderlands when I go to San Francisco (every other month). They're a great shop and community. It's shocking, but not entirely unexpected, to learn how little they make :(

<comment><USER21> This was one of the stores I checked out when visited S.F., as my wife and I were plotting a move from the east coast to S.F. And while we ended up going in the other direction, I still think fondly of the S.F. culture, and Borderlands books was one of those places I visited that I felt would be a home. Shame to hear it's going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And in Seattle there's bookstore owners/managers who attribute their success specifically to the high-wage earners who come to the local independent bookstores to shop[1]. Think of highly paid Amazon workers (or perhaps even folks with higher minimum wages) having extra money to spend... on local bookstores.

But then the same bookstore mentioned in the NY Times article[1] goes on to say a higher minimum wage could be fatal.[2]

Either theres some hypocrisy going on or the people with the newer, higher minimum wages are not spending their money on bookstores. I'd guess the latter. But at what point are wages too high or too low so we can have local bookstores and support them? Should we even be encouraging that in the first place?

Or look at it another way: How and why are successful bookstores being successful?

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/us/bookstores-in- seattle-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/us/bookstores-in-seattle-soar- and-embrace-an-old-nemesis-amazoncom.html) [2][http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/03/03/elliott-...](http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/03/03/elliott- bay-books-owner-says-15-minimum-wage-could-be-possibly-fatal)

</comment><comment><USER23> Borderlands surprises me - I thought any business made unprofitable by San Francisco's minimum wage hikes would close up shop quietly, or just blame the evil landlord. After all, they've still got inventory to sell before they close, and there's no percentage in pissing people off.

It'll be interesting to see what replaces the business, when the retail space eventually becomes available. It'll have to be something high-margin enough to afford the labor costs, so I believe there's now an increased likelihood that it'll be a chain store catering to the well-off - something like a Lululemon. There's now a decreased likelihood that it'll be one of the quirky new businesses that make a city unique, since start-up costs have increased and businesses with unknown economics are therefore riskier.

If things in San Francisco work out like I suspect, this'll be a pretty good example of the law of unintended consequences - the 77% of voters who wanted to increase the pay of the lowest-paid workers didn't realize they were also voting for increased chain-ificiation and homogenization of their city. (If they _did_ realize that, would they have still voted for the measure?)

<comment><USER24> (I don't live in San Francisco, and I don't know Borderlands from Borders.)

> _Borderlands surprises me - I thought any business made unprofitable by San > Francisco 's minimum wage hikes would close up shop quietly, or just blame > the evil landlord. After all, they've still got inventory to sell before > they close, and there's no percentage in pissing people off._

Who in their right mind would be "pissed off" by Borderlands' conduct here? Are you suggesting that their customers are going to be offended that they are placing the blame on the minimum wage law? Are people in San Francisco so politically insular?

<comment><USER23> Oh, I'm not merely suggesting it.

San Francisco is an extremely unfriendly place to people known to have the wrong politics.

<comment><USER24> Thank you; that is illuminating. I live in Los Angeles, and we have our share of people who live sheltered political lives, but I've not known people to punish a business for doing something akin to what we're seeing in this story. Most people in LA just don't care enough to make a political stand of that magnitude when it comes down to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is complete spit-balling here, but:

Does anyone know whether bookstores like Borderlands sell their inventory on consignment, similar to newspaper/magazine stands? Or does the business purchase books at a wholesale price and hold that inventory on the balance sheet?

If it's the latter, it would seem like a wise move to reduce inventory by x% and re-allocate the space/funds towards the more profitable cafe, where prices have a better elasticity.

Another thought would be to re-orient the inventory towards self-published works (where there's no publisher setting a price), rare edition classics (where there's higher markup due to low supply), and pop-culture best sellers (which have high turnover). I think that a brick and mortar bookstore is as good as the people working there: if you can find one with an employee that's engaging, extremely well-read, and can recommend books, you could conceivably make a bookstore geared towards self-publishers work. Bonus points if you could provide services to self-published authors to print their works in a beautiful, professional, yet economical package.

<comment><USER18> Books (from major publishers at least) are generally purchased at wholesale and held - but (and this is a big but) they're generally returnable to the publisher. Individual store and publisher terms may and will vary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am surprised. I always thought that increasing low salaries was good for the economy because those people generally put 100% of their take home pay back into the economy. On the other hand I put a large percentage of my pay into savings (including 100% of the differenc when I get a raise) which has a much smaller benefit to the local economy.

<comment><USER27> But in this case, if they buy books, they will buy from Amazon, which won't have to increase its prices when San Francisco raises minimum wage, as that will have 0 effect on their costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are there any economists reading this who can comment on the state of research and theory on this matter? (This question also raises the issue of posting a story about minimum wage on HN.)

Many here are applying a few concepts from Econ 101, often with surprising confidence in their own analysis. I expect economists have studied these questions extensively.

<comment><USER29> [http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Neumark%26Wascher.pdf](http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Neumark%26Wascher.pdf) might be a good place to start, perhaps search for citations of that, to get info. They concluded that for every 10% increase in the min wage the primary effect was -1% to -2% drop in teenage employment rates (in USA).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I much prefer dead trees to e books myself, and if I were nearby would love to visit. It looks great in the pictures.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What drew me to this article is the general trend of the marginal, but loved, businesses being forced out of business. It's amazing how many small businesses that allow folks to do what they love, provide part-time work for people needing the experience, and contribute to the general "happiness / uniqueness" of an area are basically one storm away from disappearing.

I'm sure they'll be replaced by a Starbucks or other big company place that knows the tax system and can bring their scale to bear. Might even employee more people, or maybe one of those companies doing some automation since the cost of the worker is higher than the profit they generate.

Regardless, your cool area looks more and more like a strip mall. The strange and unique mostly lives at the margins.

<comment><USER7> Live by the margin, die by the margin. You do realize by changing the margins, you've only moved them somewhere else, not killed them off. Also, it's a strange metric to say business serviced by mostly middle income earners generates more happiness than a few hundred/thousands low end employees being able to pay their bills or afford slightly more.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Live by the margin, die by the margin."

I'm not sure what to say to this one. Uncaring seems to be the word.

"You do realize by changing the margins, you've only moved them somewhere else, not killed them off."

Looks like it killed a bookstore. Probably killed a few more businesses in the area.

"Also, it's a strange metric to say business serviced by mostly middle income earners generates more happiness than a few hundred/thousands low end employees being able to pay their bills or afford slightly more."

Your statement of the choices. One which I don't believe are the only choices. Seems like these folks are going to be out of work now, so they might have some problem paying their bills.

The whole thought process that people should be "minimum wage workers" as a continuing, long term condition is misguided and foolish. Its more platform building just above the water instead of building a way farther up. It also kills off entry level jobs and part-time jobs for teenagers. Its the wrong policy and just ignores the real problems.

<comment><USER7> >It also kills off entry level jobs and part-time jobs for teenagers.

If we disregard wages, those are being killed off already. Health care, insurance, and automation and off-shoring have reduced the pool of low paying jobs greatly. If we raise wages, more jobs will be automated sooner. If we do not raise wages we have a subset of people that do not make enough to live, or live off government subsidies.

Most of the rest of your argument is "Oh look at the poor buggy whip manufactures, they should be protected".

<comment><AUTHOR> No, they really aren't. Most entry level jobs cannot be done "over the wire".

"If we raise wages, more jobs will be automated sooner."

So, lets artificially force automation to put more people out of work quicker. That doesn't sound like a good idea.

"If we do not raise wages we have a subset of people that do not make enough to live, or live off government subsidies."

Once again, this is the broken logic that I cannot understand. Teenagers aren't making a living from the job, they are gaining experience and getting some pocket money. The desire to have people remain in entry-level jobs to make a living is some of the poorest use of people and most foolish ideas. If people spent the effort on providing paths to actual careers that they put into advocating for higher minimum wages, we probably could get somewhere. This is just building a platform right above the water, and not building the paths up.

"Oh look at the poor buggy whip manufactures, they should be protected".

Nope, never even thought something like that. If technology kills the job, then that's how it goes, but governments doing it is another thing.

<comment><USER7> >Teenagers aren't making a living from the job, they are gaining experience and getting some pocket money.

Teenagers aren't making anything from the jobs _now_ , they have been replaced by low skill older people who have been replaced by technology already.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-14/how-to- fix-t...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-03-14/how-to-fix-the- shockingly-high-teen-unemployment-rate)

>This is just building a platform right above the water, and not building the paths up.

Correct, Minimum income is one solution to this issue.

How to fix the teenage employment problem is lower education costs or start apprenticeship programs to get them in to high tech jobs. We don't need 100 million toilet washers any more.

>If technology kills the job, then that's how it goes, but governments doing it is another thing.

Ah, so you're one of those. I see logic is already out the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Ah, so you're one of those. I see logic is already out the window."

Please explain this line, I tend to think ill of anyone who uses the line "one of those" on another person. I feel disinclined to spend time gathering the youth stats versus minimum wage increases if ad hominem are your preference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Honest question:

Do the cafe workers get paid the same hourly wage as the bookstore employees, or are they classified as restaurant personnel and make $2.13/hour + tips like I did when working in a restaurant / cafe setting? Does SF/CA have different rules in place? I'm genuinely curious and some brief searching alludes to the $2.13 going up to $7.07.

That's not $15/hour. It's interesting to use the "prices go up everywhere" argument when not directly addressing the economics. IMO the $2.13 isn't really a viable discussion point for business owners. Tips are the accounting and tax responsibility of the employee / earner...hmmm...

<comment><USER32> CA does not allow tips to count towards minimum wage.

[http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_tipsandgratuities.htm](http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_tipsandgratuities.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Thought #1: bookstores go under all the time, specialty bookstores even more so.

Thought #2: google maps has a 'see inside' feature, and that store looks like a little tiny place, I don't work in SF any more but if I did and made time out of my commute to go there, odds are I'd be disappointed.

I shopped at City Lights up on Kearny, and that always seemed to be doing a pretty good business, and after I quit that SF job I worked in Mountain View which has a pretty good used bookstore right downtown, and a decent new bookstore right next to it, both of which seem to be moving lots of product.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm terribly saddened by this. It's a great genre bookstore, and although I have a kindle, I still love having dead tree books, especially ones I read for pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm curious if they could just become 100% cafe. I've got to assume it would be successful. They're in a great location. There's plenty of other cafes in SF that are doing fine. I suppose maybe they don't want to run a cafe? Although they are already running a cafe. What about just making it a SciFi themed cafe? They could still put a few books out. They could still invite authors and have SciFi / Fantasy speakers.

Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER36> I hope they manage to keep the cafe open. The staff is awesome, and it's a wonderful environment to work out of from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sad to see another awesome bookstore go.

First Bogey's Books in Davis, then even Borders. :(

From what I heard at the time, Powell's (one of the bookstore others would sell their inventory to) was overwhelmed with shipments from closing bookstores and the market rate for used domestic books was quite low for a long time. Has this changed?

</comment><comment><USER38> How did the US publishing industry found itself in a situation that the book price is fixed and printed on the book?

<comment><USER39> Royalties are tied to list price.

This avoids accounting shenanigans of the kind observed in music and film, where creative properties with millions of dollars in revenue somehow make little profit, reducing payments to the talent.

A fixed list price means that royalties can be calculated based on unit sales, rather than unit sales times a variable price (even within one outlet) at thousands of retail outlets. Shenanigans are then limited to inventory accounting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you can't sustain a business paying people a living wage then the market will find someone who can.

If you argue that businesses can't function without the ability to pay people poverty wages then that's essentially saying capitalism can't function without a permanent underclass.

<comment><USER41> If by "underclass" you mean people that work on low value jobs - yes, these people exist and will always exist, unless you figure out how to make everyone be born with equal skills and immediately be ready to take any job and do it equally well. Then, of course, you could pay everybody the same and be content that nobody is paid below average. Fortunately, this particular nightmare society would never happen.

In real world, people have different skills, and they start with low to no skills and then develop them. In the process, they progress from low wages to high wages. When I was young and uneducated, I worked low-wage jobs like cleaning the floors in local supermarket or looking after the conveyor in local bakery. If these job were forced to have wage anywhere close to what I ask for now, these jobs wouldn't exist. And I, as a poor student, would not have a possibility to study, since I would literally have no money to buy food with, let alone pay other bills. Yes, that's how capitalism works and I'm not sure how could it work differently and remain capitalism. If you prefer the other option - taking the money to central authority and then let it provide for the food to the students, the education, the wages and so on - that's not capitalism and the experience shows that idea doesn't really work out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So the minimum wages will rise by 2018, and they are closing now (read, March 2015)? Why 2.75 years earlier? Why not wait?

<comment><USER43> They addressed this in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> In which San Franciscans discover economics.

Poor folks—I really mean it. It's terrible to have to end a dream, and it's worse to see a successful business destroyed.

<comment><USER45> They cleared $3k in profit for 2013 (read down a couple posts on the blog) while paying themselves next-to-nothing - and that out of the cafe profits and not the bookstore. I think the term "successful" is very questionable here.

<comment><USER46> This has nothing to do with minimum wage, and everything to do with running an unsuccessful business in the first place.

If you're clearing $3k in profit a year you have a very expensive hobby, not a viable business.

We can all be sad that a bookshop is closing, but the real culprit was a lack of sales and marketing savvy, and a lack of customer interest in the product/experience being offered.

Minimum wage may have thrown a few rocks onto the coffin, but it certainly didn't dig the grave.

There a lot of new booksellers making a living on Amazon. Some of them trade internationally. (I buy a steady stream of specialist titles from US sellers.)

If I wanted to buy from Borderlands, not only would I be paying far too much for every book in their list, I'd also be charged $25 for shipping.

Somehow everyone else in the world can ship me a book for less than half that. But Borderlands hasn't figured out how to.

 _That 's_ where the fail is. Not in hand-wringing about having to pay staff an amount that still isn't close to a fair wage.

<comment><USER47> Also, while this store sounds like a great place and one that I would visit... this article is the first time I have seen the name. I live in SF, I could have been going here, and yet I did not know it existed (and close enough that I could have combined it with Tartine visits to boot). Sure, it's partially my failure, but it's also a marketing failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The rent also doubled for their location. That would seem to be the bigger elephant in the room, no?

<comment><USER49> Rent doubled at their _old_ location. It's why they moved, back in 2000.

<comment><USER10> Valencia isn't exactly in the middle of nowhere, I'd be surprised if their rent hasn't been increasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The minimum wage is a cruel policy that makes it unprofitable to employ low skilled workers. It's great for Silicon Valley robotics engineers, and terrible for disadvantaged urban teenagers.

So, great job San Francisco voters; your ignorance of economics is exacerbating the inequality you complain about.

<comment><USER51> There are lots of profitable companies that hire low skilled workers at minimum wage. Given this fact it is not possible that your first sentence is true. Perhaps you meant something different.

<comment><USER50> If it makes it clearer, please insert a "sufficiently" before the low in that sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "In November, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage within the city to $15 per hour by 2018. Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal and we believe that it's possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco -- Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage. Consequently we will be closing our doors no later than March 31st."

I would love to know why Borderlands thinks "it's possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco" considering other employers like them will be closing down because of it. Low wages > no wages.

<comment><USER53> They had prime real estate that a more robust business will pick up. The jobs will be replaced.

Whether this is good social policy is a much more complicated question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Laravel localization with GetText - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/translation/laravel <comment><USER2> > We strongly suggest that you use GetText to translate your applications > since it allows a simpler and more maintainable syntax.

Care to elaborate on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have strong opinions about this, and we explained them here: [https://translation.io/blog/gettext-is-better-than- rails-i18...](https://translation.io/blog/gettext-is-better-than-rails-i18n)

Even if we compared GetText to YAML key/values (Ruby on Rails), the same reasoning applies also for PHP key/values of Laravel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did you plan symfony integration or is it the only one for PHP (for now)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Laravel is currently the only integration in the PHP-world. But most of the code could certainly be reused for a Symfony application, or any other PHP project.

We think that every framework must have a tailored solution to handle translations best, so we move forward in small steps to be sure our solution fits the pain (of maintaining translations up-to-date as the app evolves).

<comment><USER3> Ok good to know, do you have any roadmap to know the next integration (nodejs or Django ?) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, we think about the possibility to integrate with Wordpress or Symfony.

If you use React, one of our users also created a plugin for React-Intl: [https://github.com/deecewan/translation- io](https://github.com/deecewan/translation-io)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


H-P Sues Hurd After Oracle Appointment - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477870066918884.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNewsCollection <comment><USER3> To be expected. I love that hiring by Oracle, by the way. When someone gets a minor disgrace on their record, you have to expect they're going to be trying extra hard to show that they're deserving of playing in the highest echelons.

Fraud, embezzlement, things like that - no way. But c'mon, lots of CEO's do minor things wrong (hard drugs, affairs, escorts, saying not-PC things) - <USER2> mean, lots of _people_ have at least one or two things about their life that they'd get in trouble if it came out in the wrong context. Someone that had been recently shamed by something like this would be able to get hired below what they'd normally command and would be likely to work extra hard. Good hire by Oracle so long as they can handle the PR backlash, which is something Larry Ellison never seemed to care about anyways.

<comment><USER4> Hurd falsified expense reports for personal gain [1]. Not sure what your definition of fraud is, but that qualifies in my book. I'm not saying I disagree with Oracle hiring Hurd, but HP's problem with Hurd had nothing to do with his personal life.

[1] [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870330970457541...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413663370670900.html)

"[Hurd] submitted inaccurate expense reports that were intended to conceal... a 'close personal relationship'".

<comment><USER3> > Hurd falsified expense reports for personal gain [1]. ... "[Hurd] submitted > inaccurate expense reports that were intended to conceal... a 'close > personal relationship'".

Without knowing the details, this sounds to me like a minor indiscretion and being on the wrong side of politics. The article says - "The amount of money in question wasn't disclosed." Sounds to me like we're talking about a rounding error in HP's expenses - a wrong-doing, to be sure, but one that only makes the ax fall on you when combined with politics.

If I was Oracle I'd do a thorough interview, ask some tough questions about the event, and ask how he feels about behaving squeaky clean at Oracle. Or even having him agree to expense auditing - you could break that in a diplomatic way by saying, "Hey, I want to recruit you, but the board has misgivings. Would you be comfortable having your expense account audited?" If he says yes, I'd be cool with having him onboard.

But again, we don't have the numbers, so I'm just guessing about the nature of it here. I could be dead wrong, in which case I'd change my mind.

<comment><USER5> > [... ] how he feels about behaving squeaky clean at Oracle

Alternatively, perhaps Oracle doesn't care about this sort of thing at all. The money he misappropriated at HP was probably a drop in the ocean compared to a normal CEO's expense account. Oracle might treat it as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope Hurd wins. Not because I like the guy, but because I think non-compete agreements, like patents, must go down in flames.

<comment><USER7> It sounds HP's suit is based not on a non-compete agreement, but a provision of his $35M severance package in which he agreed not to disclose trade secrets or confidential info.

That's the impression I got from the article, anyway. I suppose it wouldn't be hard to argue that he can work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets.

<comment><USER8> >argue that he can work for Oracle without disclosing HP trade secrets.

Depends, is "treat engineers like crap until they leave - thus reducing costs" an HP trade secret?

<comment><USER9> No, at least not according to James Gosling (<http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/escaped_from_reality>) and many others who have left Sun after the acquisition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article lacks any kind of interesting content and is badly edited at that.</comment>


Dashboard Design For Metrics-Savvy Software Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/09/dashboard-design-for-metrics-savvy-software-companies/

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned earlier today that somebody could track the number of postage stamps they issued on a dashboard if they were worried about it. (See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1111711> )Someone asked "What do you mean by 'dashboard'?" Well, not that it is the canonical example by any means, but here's mine. It makes me more efficient at customer support, surfaces my metrics faster, and saves me time.

I'm sincerely interested in seeing yours if you want to show off (or even hearing what you have on it, if you don't want to show the numbers/graphs). This stuff is _fun_ to me.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great post, thank you. I have a similar problem to you with a constant urge to check my sales page, web stats (clicky AND ga) and adWord campaign stats. I'm really trying to get it all into one place so I can just glance at it and see. It's good to see someone who has already done that :)

</comment><comment><USER3> this has inspired me to build a dashboard of my own (of sorts). i remember sitting at the hacker dojo down in mountain view with a guy working on starting a cloud services company. he was reading a book on dashboard design but i can't remember what it was called. assuming he doesn't manage to find this post, can anyone recommend a good dashboard design book?

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank you.</comment>


Send SMS to any US carrier without Twilio - <AUTHOR> https://muhammadraza.me/2018/sending-sms-using-python/ <comment><USER2> This is from 2018.

Useful if you happen to know the carrier (like, if you're sending sms alerts to your own phone). Not as interesting though, if all you have is a given user's phone number, if I understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed you can try it on others too if you know there carrier and you can even find out</comment></comment>


Show HN: HN Mail – Hacker News Tailored for You - <AUTHOR> https://hnmail.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

HN is a wonderful source of information which continues to inspire me to explore and learn. Given tons of posts are created everyday, sometimes it could be difficult to keep up with stories that I'm interested in, wouldn't it be great to be able to collect and digest stories regularly based on my own interests? To solve this problem, I built a "smart" weekly newsletter service which delivers HN content based on topics/keywords. I find it pretty useful to me, so I want to share it with you guys who might have the same need.

Cheers, Desmond</comment>


Teaching a 3-Year-Old to Program Without a Computer Screen - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/geek-life/tools-toys/teaching-a-3yearold-to-programwithout-a-computer-screen <comment><USER2> Not only. In Italy there is a toy that explain the BCD (Binary coded decimal) with colored tiny balls. [http://www.quercettistore.com/prodotti/rami](http://www.quercettistore.com/prodotti/rami) About 30 years ago.. Sorry but this not happen only in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is coming out of Silicon Valley:

email@example.com

+44 (0) 740 0549 759

Unit T, Reliance Wharf

London

N1 5ET

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > My main objection to pushing STEM down to the diaper set is that it all > seems to involve screen-based learning tools, and I am sure that little ones > don't need more screen time.

This thing seems pretty cool. On the whole, we probably need to have more of an awareness of how important tactile and spatial factors are in child development. But the top selling point, according to this reviewer, is that it protects your child from the "screen time" bogeyman? Spare me.

<comment><USER5> Scientific research quite strongly links excessive screen time to psychological problems in children. You can be spared from science, if you'd like, but it does no good to ignore real problems just because you want to stick your head in the sand.

Edit: And for the bogeyman's sake, if you'd like the "proof", that's what Google is for. This isn't some fringe view. It's about the same as asking me for proof that smoking is damaging.

<comment><USER6> Correlation != causation. Is screen time per se that would create some issues with kids, or is it the lack of real communication between parent and kid?

I love to sit down and actively watch (i.e. point, name, discuss) a show with my 3 y/o son. When not excessive, I feel this is good for both of us.

<comment><USER3> > When not excessive, I feel this is good for both of us.

While I also agree that it doesn't feel wrong to experience something on a screen as a family, we should always be wary of "it feels good/right" as a reason for believing that something isn't bad for you in the long run. That's a slippery slope that has led to plenty of negative trends recently. It's far too easy for people to latch onto things that are good in moderation and let those things slip into over-saturation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This write-up doesn't explain how to program the device, but this page does [http://docs.primotoys.com/docs/cubetto- manual.html#introduct...](http://docs.primotoys.com/docs/cubetto- manual.html#introduction)

Basically, you program a sequence of commands FORWARD, LEFT, RIGHT. There is also a special command FUNCTION that executes a user-specified sequence of up to four commands.

Does it allow the FUNCTION command within the definition of the function? If it does, there's a lot of non-trivial stuff with recursion to do

For instance, a stack overflow

commands = [FUNCTION]

function = [FUNCTION, FUNCTION]

<comment><USER8> So, basically a Big Trak, which had the same features.

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

Big Trak also could fire it's "laser" programmatically.

My kids love it today - age 3 and 7. (Ok, I bought it used, since my parents had long ago donated mine to goodwill. Still, 35 year old toy works great.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> $180 on a toy for a 3 year old? No. We would absolutely play with this at our local library if they had one though. I love the screenless programming idea, embedding those concepts early.

<comment><USER10> it's a robot for urban tech-focused dual-income families with probably 1 young child, their first (which means everything they buy is top of the line). honestly they probably could have priced it at $199 or more.

witness:

[http://www.toysrus.com/products/luxury- strollers.jsp](http://www.toysrus.com/products/luxury-strollers.jsp)

[http://www.thebump.com/a/25-hottest-baby- products](http://www.thebump.com/a/25-hottest-baby-products)

do you know how much these kinds of people spend on their babies? it's astronomical.

<comment><USER11> stupid people will be stupid. news at 11.

<comment><USER12> yes how dare they spend their money on their first born!

<comment><USER11> If they want to spend money on their first born, there are far better, more rational ways to do it. $199 in a 529 plan turns into $2k by college time. $199 in used clothes or legos will go a lot further at that age.

<comment><USER10> at some point you need to come to grips with the fact that some people are just wealthier than you, and don't really care about that $2k in 18 years because they or their parents, or grand-parents, or great great great grand- parents already solved that pesky 'lack of money for the kids' issue.

you're projecting your own financial situation onto others in the demographic buying disposable $180 doo-dads for their kids.

it's like getting mad at the rain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So it's Robot Turtles IRL? My kids dig Robot Turtles and would have fun with this.

<comment><USER14> For those who don't know, Robot Turtles is a board game that teaches programming concepts aimed at young children that you can pick up at Target or Amazon for like $25, for those of you who are balking at the high price of these robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.primotoys.com/](http://www.primotoys.com/) looks like the direct site.

I thought $180 seemed like a lot but it does look like you get a lot of stuff (including a simple robot).

A toy lawn mower, a wooden toy train set, a toy truck, and maybe another one or two toys is already pushing $100, most of which end up in a bin to be barely played with after the first day.

<comment><USER15> Hrrm, I misread. Looks like the $ doesn't go as far as I thought (for $180 you get the playset, not the world kit). Interesting concept but on second pass this is a little steep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To everyone complaining about the price: It's pretty difficult to build a robot that does much of anything for under ~$40. And this isn't just a robot, it has All these pieces that communicate with each other.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure if it's suitable for children 3 year old (mine are older already), but CS Unplugged, [http://csunplugged.org/](http://csunplugged.org/), is an inspiring collection of free (!) learning activities teaching Computer Science topics through games and puzzles using cards, strings and pencils and some paper. CS concepts like binary number representation, different types of algorithms, data compression and error detection are taught without programming code or the use of a computer.

There's a nice write up on this in an article in the Communications of the ACM: [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/3/183598-reaching-a- broad...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/3/183598-reaching-a-broader- population-of-students-through-unplugged-activities/abstract).

</comment><comment><USER18> Kinderlab Robotics' Kibo Robot ([http://kinderlabrobotics.com/kibo/](http://kinderlabrobotics.com/kibo/)) also features a tangible, screen-free programming language where the instructions are wooden blocks that kids put together in a sequence. They are a funded startup shipping mostly to schools and museums, and the whole thing is backed up by a long line of research first at the MIT Media Lab, and now at Tufts. Previously, the founders created ScratchJr. Worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the concept of building more hands-on toys to teach STEM concepts without requiring use of a screen, especially when dealing with kids. If nothing else, screens are expensive; blocks of wood, less so.

I'd really like to see where this goes, some videos of kids playing with it, some studies done to determine if the kids get out of it what the founder (Filippo Yacob) thinks they will.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is hilarious! Are they actually targetting 3 year olds? This device would be destroyed in moments of my 3 year old getting hold of it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Are they alternative methods of teaching logic? I myself find code drab and cant stand it

</comment><comment><USER22> Love the idea but way too expensive. Why? I would get this for £30 maybe £40.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds great except the price. $179? Ouch.</comment>


Benford's law, Zipf's law, and the Pareto distribution (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-law-and-the-pareto-distribution/ <comment><USER2> >>Being empirically observed phenomena rather than abstract mathematical facts, Benford's law, Zipf's law, and the Pareto distribution cannot be "proved" the same way a mathematical theorem can be proved. However, one can still support these laws mathematically in a number of ways, for instance showing how these laws are compatible with each other, and with other plausible hypotheses on the source of the data.

Interesting that some the most reliable and interconnected observed emergent behaviors in mathematics do not have an actual hard-and-fast proof, but merely a lot of "evidence".

Is there such a proof? If so, would it be enormous like "Classification Theorem of Finite Groups" or "Erdos discrepancy problem"?

Or are such things purely outside the range of mathematical language, but can only be talked about in terms of observational data?

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure someone could (and has) proven Benford's law as an outgrowth of (A) random probability and (B) the design of our number systems.

I mean, it's basically like throwing darts at logarithmic graph paper: You're more likely to hit a "ones" box than a "nines" box.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. A reasonable uninformative prior for scale parameters is Jeffrey's prior 1/x equivalent to log(x) being flat. These patterns arise from this fundamental prior.

The same way the lack of knowledge of some phenomenons can be described as a flat probability distribution making every point as likely as the other, some other phenomenons are better described as log(x) being flat.

For the first case of flat x, it means that adding or subtracting a constant to the variable doesn't affect the probability.

For the flat log(x), it means multiplying or dividing by a constant always has the same effect. For example, something twice as big is always twice as unlikely, half as big twice as likely no matter your starting point.

For "scale" parameters that can't go into the negatives (you can't have a negative size) the flat log(x) probability distribution is very natural to represent lack of knowledge. I think it is the maximum entropy distribution under reasonable assumptions. For "location" parameters that go from -∞ to ∞, a flat x "Uniform distribution" is more natural. Few people question the flat x prior. It seems somehow much more intuitive.

Note that these are "improper" distributions that don't integrate to 1 but to infinity.</comment></comment></comment>


This is Tesla's first battery swap station - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2015/01/29/this-is-teslas-first-battery-swap-station-photos/

<comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see how much this gets used -- I normally run in for cappuccino while I'm supercharging, so the value of a 2-minute swap is less than you might think.</comment>


Why understanding batting averages is important - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201006/why-understanding-batting-averages-is-important <comment><USER2> Or you could look at it from the pitcher stand point and see it as winning 7 out of 10 times (although you would never look at it like that via stats), making 3 out of 10 seem pretty bad.</comment>


Why OWASP's Threat Dragon will change the game on threat modeling - <AUTHOR> https://techbeacon.com/why-owasps-threat-dragon-will-change-game-threat-modeling <comment><USER2> Link that does not require you to provide GitHub access: [http://docs.threatdragon.org](http://docs.threatdragon.org)</comment>


Senator changes tune, now is "totally opposed" to foreign leader surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/senator-changes-tune-now-is-totally-opposed-to-foreign-leader-surveillance/

<comment><AUTHOR> While I generally consider Feinstein a rubber stamp for the surveillance state, that she now supports any sort of reform is a major shift in the conversation.

If Chambliss (the other co-chair on the Senate Intel Committee saluting the Statsi) will support meaningful change as well, the issue will be decided.</comment>


Godot 3.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://godotengine.org/article/godot-3-1-released <comment><USER2> This is sick! It's eating into my Blender territory, where I may just use Godot for a whole lot more than games. CSG, animation tools, shading tools, etc.

Blender is still great for modeling, animation and rendering. Godot is what I had hoped the Blender Game Engine (BGE) was going to become.

<comment><USER3> Exactly this! I'm using it for demo(scene) stuff. Demos, interactive presentations, learning (and make fun) shaders.

<comment><USER4> Very interested in getting more info about that.

Do you have a demo made with Godot we could check out or a sample "shader" project?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading through the OpenGL support mini-saga, I was left wondering if this can target a Metal/Vulcan/etc., since graphics stacks seem to be fragmenting again.

But the new visual editors look great, and MIDI input is intriguing to me. The only downside (in terms of learning curve) for me, personally, is the proprietary scripting, since I have been put off Unity time and again because of C# (I have been writing more of it over the years, but it feels too convoluted at times) and I would rather do Lua or Python or something else both dynamic and straightforward enough...

<comment><USER6> They seem to plan more support for optional typing, though, which I would count as a bonus vs Python et al.

For Godot 3.1, optional typing is a parser-only feature. The plan is, afterwards, to include typed instructions in the state machine to greatly optimize performance.

<comment><USER5> Yes, and typing will help towards AOT compiling and performance, etc., but I would really like to just dive in and write code in a language I already use or that can be shared among engines (there is a lot of Lua code out there in the game dev universe, for instance).

Having to learn another language (no matter how simple) for a specific runtime is the sort of time investment one should ponder carefully (I've written code in dozens of languages, and the learning curve until being productive matters a lot when you move across environments, frameworks and runtimes).

<comment><USER2> Use C# with Godot. I am personally looking forward to F# with Godot. GDScript is close enough to Python for me, I had no problem with if from the start, and it integrates really well with Godot.

<comment><USER7> Issue is C# is desktop only right now.

<comment><USER5> That is an additional point I wasn't fully aware of. I've tinkered with Unity and they address every platform with every supported language.

Whereas I can do some desktop animation stuff with Godot without caring much (that's one of the reasons I'm interested in MIDI support), if I were to go beyond the hobby phase I'd definitely target iOS first...

<comment><USER2> It's on their list, and at the rate that they are moving, it will be there soon. It is based on Mono, so there shouldn't be too much friction there. Unity is good, but for Android and iOS I play with Raylib in C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone identify the isometric game in the screenshot at the top of this blog post... [https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot- godot-3-1-beta-...](https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot- godot-3-1-beta-8)

<comment><USER9> I googled "Godot isometric strategy game" and found this. I think it's right.

[https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/tanks-of-freedom-a- tu...](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/tanks-of-freedom-a-turnbased- isometric-classic-strategy-game-built-with-godot.5064)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was waiting for this.

<comment><USER11> lot of people won't get this :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Using Godot 3.0 right now, Godot has been great and amazing considering its open source game engine. I'm amazed at what the developers have been able to do. Great job guys!

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it worth learning godot for mobile game development?

<comment><USER14> This is really a very complex question. For what kind of game? For which mobile platforms? What is your past experience? Have you made a game before? What languages have you worked with? etc etc etc.

Godot uses it's own scripting language, or C# as a second class option. Are those languages you want to work with? Would you rather make the game from scratch? Would Unity or Unreal be better? Would a framework like monogame be better? If you are just targeting IOS maybe using Swift or Objective C would be easier and perform better.

<comment><USER15> *Worth noting that GDScript (Godot's scripting language) is almost identical to python

<comment><USER16> It's true that GDScript is inspired by python, but I think it's a big stretch to say it's almost identical to python. You have to squint VERY hard to make such a claim, or not know anything about python. No generators, no context managers, classes are fundamentally different. The clearest similarities are also the most superficial, such as continuing to use whitespace for scope, or the 'pass' keyword for empty blocks. I like that gdscript is duck typed, but that's hardly a distinctive python feature.

Overall, it's more pleasant than using C++ or C#, but it is very different from python. However, what you can do is use godot-python, a native python binding extension made after GDNative was added in 3.0. Doing this gives you the most important feature of python: access to the package ecosystem. It's not like python if I can't use libraries like scipy or tensorflow for advanced math operations.

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree with you. I meant in the context that someone with a passing familiarity with Python can generally jump right into GDScript and get acquainted very quickly, which reduces the learning curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ah, so that's why Google Cloud was down yesterday!

</comment><comment><USER18> Lots of nice goodies, congratulations on the release.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great job:)</comment>


Ask HN: What software does your employer/you use, that sucks? - <AUTHOR> In lieu of Idea Sundays, I'd like to experiment around asking HN for problems, rather than ideas. <comment><USER2> Two years ago I was working at a bigco that used Lotus Notes still. It was the cause of quite possibly the most confrontational experiences I have had with an inanimate object.

They also had all this shit custom software that made lotus seem alright.

Ironically the single best piece of software they had was a relic of an intranet site from what must have been the late 90s. It looked like shit, had about 2 lines of Javascript, every click was a page refresh, but it did exactly what it said it would do, what I expected it to do, and it did it without getting in my way in a reasonable amount of time. Bad software apparently makes us remember what is actually good about good software.

</comment><comment><USER3> SharePoint. Our entire Intranet and project management processes are rooted to SharePoint. It may work great in a homogenous Microsoft environment, but Linux and Mac users are screwed.

<comment><USER4> OMG came here to post it. Not only the fact that I find so much unfinished/broken/hard, but anything short of a simple spreadsheet displayed on the web seems intensely difficult and just unusable.

This is made worse by the fact that my MS-loving boss has bought into it completely and I was given the impossible task to make it work as a CMS for our websites. I felt so bad for every group we made sites for when asking if we could change how something looked/worked, because without lots of programming (outside my skill level), nope not really possible.

Pretty sure I will be leaving this job within the year despite how nice everyone is partly due to me being the one who gets stuck supporting this POS and I'm not a developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blackboard. Universities use it for managing courses, assignments, grades. It's hideous. You click a link and it takes 30 seconds for the javascript to spin up and render the page. So much feature bloat! And yet they can't even make simple tasks like data entry or file uploads easy.

<comment><USER4> We use Desire 2 Learn's product. No experience with Blackboard, but I don't really have anything particularly negative to say as a USER of D2L. It seemed fine as a student and they even had a mobile interface up before I graduated (2012).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notes. Lotus Notes. (plus lots of java and eclipse)

<comment><USER7> Lotus Notes is the only mail client I used that's WORSE than Outlook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Windows XP, IE8 (at least I have chrome because I'm the webmaster, but not for the rest of the mortals, because of "security issues").

Also the main business software is a Java webapp that is less than 10 years old but looks, feels and works like it is from the 90s.

EDIT: I wanted to add a desktop flash app for editing web content. This is what sucks the most, it is mostly unusable (for example, you have to create a image object -db record- before you can load a picture) and you have to do a remote desktop session to use it (yes in prod).

</comment><comment><USER9> BMC BBCA - this was used at my previous company and trust me it sucked big time... It looked like an unfinished product, shipped in an hurry..

I am still confused why they took a decision to change well set MS SCCM into an product that doesn't satisfy half the need...

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to see the next Gmail.

Gmail to me now is only 10% to 20% better than what using my ISP for mail with Thunderbird used to be before Gmail's invention. (As opposed to when it first came out and it was "Oh wow!" better than any competitor.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Concur. Worst UI ever. (Well, probably not ever, I've heard terrible things about the Halliburton/Schlumberger stuff used in the oil industry, but worst I've come across.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've yet to see a usable alternative to Thunderbird on the desktop. (I also don't care about OSX-only products.)

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with Thunderbird, though?

<comment><USER12> It is a chore to make the view consistent across folders, I never seem to find the option I'm looking for, and the UI is generally very outdated.

Too bad it's merely a second-class citizen at Mozilla (though I completely understand the reasons.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eagle PCB Designer - terrible UI, feels like twice the work to do anything

</comment><comment><USER15> IBM Rational DOORS

</comment><comment><USER16> SharePoint, ugh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Louts Notes</comment>


Log in or sign up? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leahculver.com/2009/11/log-in-or-sign-up.html <comment><USER2> Leah's asking the right questions, but I don't think the direction she took is the right one. Users rely on the UI to be familiar, and I've always found Amazon's UI strange in that I have to pause, analyze, and think when logging in/signing up. While Amazon might be able to get away with it, removing the familiarity from the UI is probably a bad decision for most. If an extra field is a barrier to sign-up, the user actually having to actively analyze and parse your sign-up form is a huge mental hoop to jump through.

We (Weebly) thought of this problem early on, and we tried to simplify things by just requiring an email/password when signing up. What we found was that our users _were extremely confused_ , because the sign-up form didn't look like a sign-up form. When doing usability testing, we found that users would stare at the page for minutes. "us: Just sign up..." "user: I can't see where to sign up", even when it was right in front of them. They saw two fields and assumed it was a log-in form, even when it said in really big letters "Create a new account".

Users don't read your page, they scan it. People expect the log-in form to be in the upper right and the sign-up form to be towards the center of the page. You should absolutely make your site scan-friendly.

Users do, though, get confused and try to use the sign-up form to login. Our solution? If the user enters credentials into the sign-up form that already exist (like the correct username/password combo), we'll just log them in instead of creating a new user. You can try it out on weebly.com.

<comment><USER3> Seems like you might not want to do it if they enter a correct existing username/password, otherwise there is the slim (but non-zero) chance that they'll fluke into an account that isn't theirs. I figure email would be a better "username" since they aren't likely to enter the same one.

I don't know if you've encountered that problem (rare, I know).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even if you're not going to go the full monty and change the user-visible interaction, you can file off some of the sharp edges. For example, I have the traditional sign in and register forms, and (predictably, given that my customers are not too tech savvy and the forms look similar if you read none of the words on them which, after all, is the default behavior on the Internet) many people use the wrong one.

Since user intent is clear if they try to register a user name and password that are already in your database, rather than giving them a "that account already exists" error I just log them in straight away.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's an interesting point made, but I'm not sure that I really like the direction Leah went in. To me, the fields stand out far more than the radio buttons, I stop reading the header after "Log in..." (what more do I need to know, it's a login form) and I really wouldn't notice that it's a sign-up form unless I look carefully - I had to look twice before I realized there was even a difference between the two screenshots.

I'd probably ditch the radio buttons and make the header more eyecatching, with "Join Now?" clearly a link. Clicking it changes the form in the way Leah shows, probably with a quick Javascript fade so the user notices.

<comment><USER6> I like the way justigining.com is using here: [https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising- page/Creation/?pcid=5...](https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising- page/Creation/?pcid=557138e8-f6b9-4903-a488-845d1e57ecd6). They made a clear distinction while still using only one page for registration and sign in (they have a "normal" log-in page too).

<comment><USER7> This is great. Thanks for the link. I'll probably do a similar flow in a project I'm working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Especially in this case, when you don't ask for an email, it seems like a mistake to only get the password once. If someone mistypes it, there's no way to get them access to their account again.

And yes, I'm aware HN has this problem, unless you go in and put your email in your profile.

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, this was one thing PG pushed us to take _out_ of Posterous registration. And he was right. You want to lower barriers. Since we already were getting the user's email address, it really wasn't painful at all to let the 'forgot password' flow handle the case where the user mis-typed their initial pw.

<comment><USER7> That's a great point. The convenience to most users justifies the inconvenience to the few who miss-type their password.

<comment><USER2> You have to both mistype your password AND mistype your email for it to be a problem. The percent of users who do that is minimal, and if it happens, it's not the end of the world: create a new account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish Amazon would preselect the "existing user" option, or at least have a JavaScript that selects it as soon as I type the password.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I think all Amazon log in systems favor new users and not returning ones. For example, here is the first result when googling "amazon ec2": <http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/>

The way you would go about logging in from that page is less clear than most websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that there are two problems with approach taken on hurl's homepage: 1) New user may be confused and not discover sign up functionality behind log in link. 2) Two buttons in the dialog require thinking each time when existing user logs in (i.e. common scenario).

When I was designing Memengo's homepage (<http://www.memengo.com>), I was trying to provide streamlined execution path for 3 different scenarios: see demo, register, log in.

I hate web sites that have tiny log in link in the top-right corner. After all, I usually visit home page to log in immediately, so I expect email and password fields to be provided right there.

To streamline sign up there is a need to ask as few things as possible, preferably on home page as well.

Potential users should be aware that there is a no-strings-attached functional demo one click away, so this area requires some screen estate as well.

The final design: 3 equally sized boxes on the bottom of the page: 1 click demo, Sign up (with all required fields), Log in (with all required fields).

</comment><comment><USER13> We independently conceived of Hurl's approach. It looked like this: <http://imgur.com/Th9yi>

Maybe it was just a function of our design, but the feedback was that people didn't read and thought it was a login-only form. People are just conditioned to seeing long sign-up forms. A username/password pair just screams "login"!

There is enough innovation in the rest of our app to worry about, we didn't also need to be re-inventing authentication. Our login and sign-up forms are now on two separate pages and we added "Remember me" and "Confirm password" to the respective pages. Both pages have a link to the other.

We're trying to funnel users through the workflow such that we can present the correct page the vast majority of the time. For example, many features can be tried before making an account, but you get to them by clicking "try it now". Once you have an account, you get to them from your dashboard. This way, we can reasonably assume a user is new if they aren't authenticated already when they go to use such a feature.

</comment><comment><USER14> _"Sometimes I put my log in information into the register fields." "Me too! I hate that not only do I feel stupid, I have to retype everything again."_

I hate the page LinkedIn shows when you're not logged in, it asks you to signup, and the login page is actually a different one. I find the call to action to register stands out, but they seem to hide the link to the login page. I never feel stupid when I encounter this, I feel like the site doesn't want repeat users, they want new user signups, and don't care if you end up recreating your account (this may explain why I've seen so many duplicate and inactive accounts on LinkedIn).

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with the direction one of the comments takes - if you're going to this trouble, why differentiate, if the username isn't taken, take the user straight to a 'confirm your password to create account'. One dialog box, two functions. Having to notice and choose the radiobutton is just another barrier to both types of users.

<comment><USER16> This sort of approach will leak information about what usernames exist in the system, which has security implications.

Depending on the nature of the application you may or may not need to worry about this (e.g., obviously irrelevant if the site has a user list that shows the login names).

<comment><USER17> Most sign up forms give away that information anyway--try putting in a name or email that's already taken and you'll get a form validation error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some Google research comes to the same conclusion Leah does, with slightly different behavior.

<http://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/UXFedLogin>

</comment><comment><USER19> Mathjobs.org uses something along those lines, though in my opinion better than this implementation.

<https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?info-ja>

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't rely on Javascript for things this important.</comment>


AT&T To Curb Smartphone Data Use - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222001355&subSection=News

<comment><USER2> Changing their ridiculous per-month pricing on femtocells would be a great start:

      • $20 For customers who only have AT&T Wireless

      • $10 For customers who have AT&T Wireless and either AT&T Internet or a landline.

      • Nothing if you've got AT&T Wireless, AT&T Internet, and a landline.

      From http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Femtocell-Website-Comes-Online-104559

Why would I have to pay for your bandwidth again if only Comcast is available in my area?

</comment><comment><USER3> The information super highway is every bit as important to the future of our nation as vehicle highways were in the 1950's.

For the most part, you don't have to pay to drive on Interstates. There are exceptions in and around some major cities like Chicago, but imagine where we would be today if it cost money to drive on every road.

We couldn't leave a project like the highway system in the hands of a private corporation. Imagine what we could build with investment from an organization with a vision of decades rather than months.

<comment><USER4> >>We couldn't leave a project like the highway system in the hands of a private corporation.

I have to completely disagree with you, I believe you take too much on faith. We don't know what would've happened, but it's very possible that a better alternative could exist.

1\. How much richer would everyone be if they were able to keep there tax dollars. 2\. Without subsidizing cars, perhaps trains would still be a viable option. 3\. Traffic may not be as much of a problem; maximum speeds would not be so ridiculously low. 4\. We might see less urban sprawl.

<comment><USER5> Imagine if we had multiple companies building separate highways alongside each other, competing for traffic.

<comment><USER6> We don't have to imagine too hard - see NYC and the building the of the subway system. Three companies (IRT, BRT, IND) building lines somewhat independently, leaving some areas covered by multiple lines and some areas underserved.

<comment><USER5> New York has multiple subway lines? What a waste. Sorry, I've never been to New York City.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _De la Vega said that 3% of smartphone users are using 40% of data traffic._

<comment><AUTHOR> It's akin to the argument Comcast trotted out when they claimed a similar disparity where a few (bittorrenting) users were consuming most of the bandwidth.

I guess AT&T can always start traffic shaping, but I'm wondering what exactly those 3% of people are doing since there's no real need to download massive files to the iphone and there's only so much streaming media you can watch / websites you want to refresh.

<comment><USER8> Keep in mind that some people use their iphone as a wireless tether for their computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So "AT&T To Curb AT&T Use" then?

<comment><USER10> Not really news. The biggest concern for me to go from Verizon to the iPhone was AT&T. And I was _right_.

AT&T is its own worst enemy. I think Droid is as much psychological pressure as anything else. If Verizon plays it crafty, they can just watch while AT&T self destructs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> AT&T's cellular data plans are already capped at 5GB. Are they actually purposing to punish users who consume less than 5GB/month? Personally I have no problems with reasonable caps but I have a _major_ problem with a previously established cap being lowered mid-contract. I can't see how it's even legally possible for AT&T to do this. It's straight out fraud, breach of contract, bait & switch advertising.

If they absolutely need to change the terms they will probably have to offer all currently contracted AT&T cellular data customers a penalty free contract opt out or at least grandfather in anyone who signed up for a 2 year contract with the terms of $30/month @ 5GB cap.

<comment><USER12> Usually if they change terms mid-contract you can cancel without penalty... now if only you could use your phone on another network without having to hack it then a lot of people would do that.

As it stands if you leave AT&T your iPhone becomes an iPod...

<comment><USER13> As far as I can tell it's pretty straight forward to unlock your iPhone to use it on T-Mobile.

<comment><USER11> You lose 3G though. T-Mobile uses different radio frequencies for 3G. iPhone + Mifi is really viable though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My own kneejerk reaction is to fear a $/MB system, but that's _only_ because I trust AT&T about as far as I can throw them, and it would be reasonable to predict extortionate pricing for whatever plan they come up with. (Side note: why does it have to be that you never hear someone say, "I love my cable/phone/internet company, you should sign up with them."?)

If the bandwidth market resembled those of pretty much everything else we buy, most of us paying the requisite $30/month for unlimited data on the iPhone would save money under a $/MB plan.

<comment><USER15> > _(Side note: why does it have to be that you never hear someone say, "I love > my cable/phone/internet company, you should sign up with them."?)_

I've heard that about TekSavvy DSL in Canada, but they are reliant on Bell which controls the last-mile copper and started throttling even 3rd-party providers 1.5+ years ago. I never got to try them because I moved away around the time that I was considering moving over.

<comment><USER16> TekSavvy is amazing. Set-up is fast, they deal with Bell's screwups when they happen (this is a when, not an if), and when you call them, a person answers, with no music-on-hold.

They will also set up a workaround for Bell's throttling if you ask them (it involves a fake multilink PPP login, without the second line).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think a future where bandwidth is capped is going to work. We need more bandwidth in our homes. We will eventually need more bandwidth to our phones.

It smells of a limited-vision knee-jerk reaction. And my reaction is to bail on AT&T, jailbreak my phone and find a carrier that is wise enough not to play the bandwidth game.

<comment><USER18> Because the magical broadband fairy is going to put up all of those towers and lay all of those cables for free?

<comment><USER19> You'd bail from ATT because ATT did not lay in the network capacity for the devices which they were/are selling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They just have to block access to porn sites. Done, network congestion solved.</comment>


Reactide – dedicated IDE for React web application development - <AUTHOR> http://reactide.io/ <comment><USER2> Haven't used React myself, but would be curious if anyone who uses React has used this and if this would make it easier to learn.

Also, curious as to why this isn't a plugin for all the other IDEs and is a standalone.</comment>


Show HN: EzInvoice 6 beta/demo app - <AUTHOR> http://ezinvoice.com/ez6/demo.html <comment><AUTHOR> ezInvoice 6 is the latest version of our "ezInvoice" web app.

This version is a single page, offline first, app that runs on most any platform.

Our focus for this version has been to keep it simple, fast, and reliable. You can check out the demo version here:

[https://ezinvoice.com/ez6/demo.html](https://ezinvoice.com/ez6/demo.html)

The demo allows you to create, save, edit, delete, and print invoices. It includes a fully featured "Contacts" app and a "Products/Services" manager that "fast-fills" your invoices to make it faster and easier than ever to get your billing done.

The full version uses CouchDB on the backend so you can use it on as many desktop PCs and mobile devices as you want and "Live Sync" to keep them all synced up with your latest data.

And you can install CouchDB on your desktop PC and create backups and snapshots of all your data in-house and/or offsite.</comment>


Ask HN: Resource time allocation / overview tools? - <AUTHOR> Is there a tool / service that can be used to track development capacity?<p>Something along the lines of Developers A,B,C each have ~30hrs of week available; A has taken up tasks X,Y,Z (already time estimated) for this sprint thus leaving free only 5 hrs, plus the addition ~60hrs still available from devs B & C? Most boards I've come across allow estimates for "cards" and a sprint capacity, but I can't see to find any that allow [at a quick glance] to see if someone has available time. <comment><USER2> You could possibly use [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com) for that.</comment>


Java is Faster than C++ and C++ Sucks Unbiased Benchmark - <AUTHOR> http://kano.net/javabench/

<comment><USER2> _sigh_.

The amount of work it takes to produce a really good benchmark is something more than what this guy did.

Exhibit A: his analysis of optimization impact.

 _I've been accused of biasing the results by using the -O2 option for GCC, supposedly because -O2 optimizes for space, thus slowing down the benchmark. This is not what -O2 does. According to the GCC -O documentation..._

-O2: Optimize even more. GCC performs nearly all supported optimizations that do not involve a space-speed tradeoff. The compiler does not perform loop unrolling or function inlining when you specify -O2. As compared to -O, this option increases both compilation time and the performance of the generated code.

 _On the other hand, -O3 performs space-speed tradeoffs, and -O performs fewer optimizations. Thus, for these tests, I think -O2 was the best choice._

Uh...what about optimizations performed in the JVM (or, more specifically, the JIT)? How do they compare? How do you know that -O2 is the right choice, other than "it's kinda in the middle between lots of optimizations and not many, so that sounds good."? He could have started with this: <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/1.4.2_whitepaper.html>

Exhibit B: he may have introduced a ton of bias through test selection and doesn't even know it

 _Some of the C++ tests would not compile. I've never been very good at decoding GCC's error messages, so if I couldn't fix a test with a trivial modification, I didn't include it in my benchmarks._

What?? If you can't read GCC's error messages, I don't get any warm fuzzies about your ability to decide which tests compare the things you want to compare or not.

There's plenty more to be critical of here, but the above two really were the sore thumbs in this article.

/me gets back to _real_ work and plans to dissect this more tonight

</comment><comment><USER3> The testing decisions feel very arbitrary. If he really wants to show that Java is better than C++, he must give C++ every opportunity to do better, then show that Java does even better despite this. The correct optimization flag to use is the one that gives C++ the best performance, not whichever he felt like using. Likewise for the choice of benchmarks: he should use the version of the C++ benchmark that runs the fastest, and he should have a C++ expert fix the broken benchmarks. Otherwise the only conclusion that can be drawn is: "Java experts are better at tuning Java programs than C++ programs".

While he's at it, he can try the new Shootout benchmarks, which clearly show C++ in the lead, even when using his vaunted "-server" flag:

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=gpp)

...How old is this, anyway? There's no date in the article, but he's running gcc 3.3.1 and Java 1.4.2 on Fedora Test1, on a Pentium 4 laptop. The version of gcc places it in 2003, so I'd place more confidence the newer Shootout results.</comment>


Shiny:  Easy web applications in R - <AUTHOR> http://www.rstudio.com/shiny/ <comment><USER3> This is _very_ interesting technology. The only concern is that it seems very slow. (justifiable, as it's generating a full plot each time which takes a bit even on my local machine)

See the full web page example [1]. It might be hard to scale a full website using the tech but it is useful in a pinch, especially if you already have a script to generate plots. (of which I personally have many)

[1]: [http://glimmer.rstudio.com/pioneer/pensions/](http://glimmer.rstudio.com/pioneer/pensions/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback!

It's true that Shiny isn't designed for blazing performance (it's built on R, after all) but the pensions app is particularly slow--I believe it's actually the calculations, not the plotting, that's so slow. It is also running on one of our free hosting accounts, that only allocates a single, single-threaded R process to service it; so you're competing with all the other visitors to that app for the attention of a single thread.

I'd encourage you and anyone else who might find Shiny useful to try it with your own data and your own scripts. You might be surprised at how decent the performance can be, especially once you've gotten your head around reactive programming and learn how to structure your code to take advantage of it.

That said, Shiny is definitely not designed to be a general purpose web development framework. It is specifically designed for R users to build single-page apps for analyzing and/or visualizing data. Rather than replacing Rails, it is aimed at replacing PDFs and LaTeX documents, which is the usual way R users pass their results around.

<comment><USER5> Is there any way to cache, or memorize calculations in Shiny?

<comment><USER6> Yes, the whole paradigm is to use 'reactive' functions - i.e. functions whose output is cached.

<comment><USER5> I guess I'm wondering it cache across requests?

<comment><USER4> In the Shiny framework we think less about short-lived HTTP requests, and more about long-lived (websocket) sessions. Reactive expressions cache their results within or across sessions, depending on where they are declared (this is just a natural result of R's lexical scoping).

[http://rstudio.github.io/shiny/tutorial/#scoping](http://rstudio.github.io/shiny/tutorial/#scoping)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joe Cheng and the rest of the team at RStudio have done an excellent job with this. It allows a statistician to spend their time on scripting the analysis instead of web development. Combine this with knitr/pandoc and you have a great toolkit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Shiny is truly awesome and makes building web apps that involve statistical processing really easy.

Shameless Plug: Here is an app that I built using Shiny to display availability in bike sharing systems across the world.

[http://glimmer.rstudio.com/ramnathv/BikeShare/](http://glimmer.rstudio.com/ramnathv/BikeShare/)

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks fantastic. Kudos!

Projects like this give me hope that the holy grail will soon be within reach: an iPython-like notebook that allows me to host both Python code, R-code, and possibly JavaScript in one complete package (maybe including Sage analysis, too).

And, when the data sets are small enough, I should be able to compile all of the interactivity features of the notebook into straight JavaScript with embedded data, so that it may be run on any generic web server, such as an internal corporate intranet server.

Am I too greedy?

<comment><USER10> The IPython notebook can already mix Python and R code, and we're working on communications with Javascript running in the frontend, which would allow interactive widgets embedded in the notebook. Compiling the whole lot to Javascript isn't in our plans, though.

<comment><USER11> I didn't know this - pretty cool [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/github.com/ipython/ipython/r...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/github.com/ipython/ipython/raw/master/examples/notebooks/R%20Magics.ipynb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rook is also a good option. I've built several apps with it. It reminds me of sinatra. [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AT8nQo6jrZ9SwPgdwqkH...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AT8nQo6jrZ9SwPgdwqkHZI_2SeqGQormy- EWWmm_rlk/edit) and [http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rook/Rook.pdf](http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rook/Rook.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> On a related note: is there a chance in hell of re-licensing RStudio such that it is not AGPLv3?

<comment><USER4> We'll happily sell you a commercial license if you'd prefer that. Email us at email@example.com for details.

If you mean a different open-source license, sorry, we don't plan to relicense.

<comment><USER9> The issue is one of evaluation: I am prohibited from using the software _at all_ , even on toy problems, to determine whether I'd like to buy a commercial license. Crazy, perhaps, but that's how hostile the AGPLv3 is to businesses.

<comment><USER13> This seems incorrect, unless you are prohibited purely by fiat (in which case it's a demonstration of how hostile your particular business is to the AGPLv3, not vice-versa). Requirements of GPL or AGPL licenses don't encumber you if you're not interacting with others (distributing software to them, or - <USER2> AGPL - providing a service).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those interested in utilising the R language on the JVM (and thus relevant to web applications and thus to this post) there is the renjin [[http://www.renjin.org](http://www.renjin.org)] project which has been making steady progress implementing the complete functionality of R. For example they now claim that 'most' packages work with it, including many with C/Fortran dependencies.

<comment><USER15> I tried the online demo. A simple x <\- rnorm(1000) was VERY slow (it took a couple of seconds). Any idea why? It did not seem to be initial-class-loading one-time issues; the slowness persisted upon retrying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shiny is really outstanding - I use it internally in our department to quickly make apps for biologists to explore their data while the downstream analysis is queued. It's also promising for its ability to very easily create a front- end to command-line R scripts and workflows.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shiny is definitely a cool project! I wish I would've known about its existence before I started my own project along similar lines. Our requirements were slightly different, since most of the stuff we want to do is pretty long running (Monte Carlo Markov Chain, shameless plug: [http://mcda.clinici.co](http://mcda.clinici.co) / [https://github.com/joelkuiper/patavi](https://github.com/joelkuiper/patavi)). But for a quick interactive system, it's really cool! And once matured a bit more we'll probably end up using it in production.

</comment><comment><USER17> On a somewhat related note: Here is a f# type provider for R: [https://github.com/BlueMountainCapital/FSharpRProvider](https://github.com/BlueMountainCapital/FSharpRProvider)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how to debug a web app in R. Rscript has the habit to tell you that there is an error, but not to tell you what file or line number. So debugging Rscript requires print statements to circle the problem. No something I enjoy to do, and certainly not something I want to for webdev.

<comment><USER19> It generally tells you the line number of the error, either in the web browser itself or in the R session that you're serving it from. I've never had a real problem with debugging the web app itself.

As for debugging the R code itself, options(error=traceback) is useful (though honestly usually unnecessary) as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> GPL3, good

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anything like this exist for python/numpy/matplotlib?

<comment><USER22> Sorry for the shameless bump, but I thought some might find it interesting. I have had this idea in mind for over a year, and as a matter of fact myself and a couple of folks from Stanford have just started implementing it and we would certainly welcome any Python/JS devs who would like to contribute. It's a gevent/websocket-based Python backend with a shiny-like reactive computing engine with planned support for pandas as the primary data format; and an AngularJS-based frontend which allows for some crazy reactive/lazy evaluation not only on server side, but in the browser as well. Graphics-wise, we intend to create wrappers for matplotlib (which is pretty straightforward) along with some cool JS libraries like NVD3, Vega, sigma.js and other. The public repo will be on github in the next few weeks or so, please ping me on twitter @aldanor if interested.

<comment><USER21> I'm interested. Have been looking for an OSS project to work on and have been wanting to pick up some more JS experience. I will keep an eye out for that repo.

<comment><USER22> Yea, cool, ping me on twitter @aldanor? Don't feel like sharing my e-mail here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm kind of sad I can't deploy Shiny app like that on Heroku.

Otherwise, Shiny is a really good name, because the product actually makes me go "ooooh, shiny!"

<comment><USER24> We at RStudio are actually working on a hosted version of Shiny which may be of interest. We have modeled it after the Heroku model, but obviously very much tailored towards hosting R sessions. If you would like to be part of the early alpha please sign up here: [http://shinyapps.io/](http://shinyapps.io/) and we will reach out as soon as it is ready for some people to bang on it and give us feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Down =(</comment>