Things I would build if I worked at GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://kevin.is/committed-to-github/ <comment><USER2> These are great, but they're bugfixes. You'd finish them in the first few months. Then what are you going to do? Stare at an aquarium all day? Here's what I would build if I worked at github:

* Github CI - simple CI for every language, integrating with:

* Github Artifacts - repository for versioned deployable build packages (binaries, tar.gz files, ios builds, android builds...), integrating with:

* Github Deploy - deploy tooling for deploying runnable artifacts or artifact combinations to either your own infrastructure, or to aws/azure/google, or:

* Github Cloud - instances/containers as a service

and the 'fork' button would be a pulldown that would include the options 'fork', 'fork and test', 'fork, test and deploy'. Now that's a nice little 3-4 year career.

<comment><USER3> What is CI and why do people want it? I looked up the acronym on wikipedia but couldn't figure it out.

<comment><USER4> Continuous Integration. A good example of that service would be something like [http://travis-ci.org](http://travis-ci.org) or [https://jenkins- ci.org](https://jenkins-ci.org). Basically it's a service that runs some predefined task (usually your test suites) at important points: when something is pushed to or merged into master, when a Pull Request is opened, etc...

<comment><USER5> It also, um, builds your code. Some of us still use compiled languages :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've gotta say, I strongly disagree with this:

> GitHub already has a great code search

At some point in the last year or so Github rolled out a new search engine which drastically reduced it's usefulness. Any moderately complex search query now has all of the modifiers and key bits stripped out making your search results unnecessarily cluttered and somewhat useless. I consider it to be one of the worst parts of the site these days.

<comment><USER7> Git grep is really fantastic, if github search came close I'd be delighted

<comment><USER8> Could you please elaborate on what parts of git-grep you find most useful?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just see the top requested features: [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aop...](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Acomments- desc)

* Change the target branch of a pull request pull-requests

* Delete / remove an issue completely.

* Gist comments and mentions don't trigger notifications

* Add HTTPS support to Github Pages

* Add ability to follow organizations like a user

* Insert automatically generated table of contents TOC on rendered markdown files like README.md.

* pre { tab-size: 4 }

<comment><USER10> > _Add HTTPS support to Github Pages_

This is technically already available, though not officially documented anywhere [1]. Example [2]

[1] [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/156#issuecomment-377...](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/156#issuecomment-37747957)

[2] [https://beltex.github.io](https://beltex.github.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> While that's true, I think the discussion in that issue has gone more towards HTTPS support for custom domains.

<comment><USER11> You could always use CloudFlare directly for that... I would presume that their underlying connection to Github is very close and reliable in terms of risk for MITM.

<comment><USER12> Even better, you could CNAME your custom domain into the *.github.io domain, which is protected by a wildcard https.

So you traffic between CloudFlare and GitHub will also be secured.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last I checked, this doesn't actually work with the way *.github.io is set up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems like some of these (perhaps all of them other than fixing the "+1" problem) can be done via API clients instead of via GitHub itself implementing it. A third-party website can do wiki searches. A separate service can send you email notifications, and you can turn off built-in emails.

Even the +1 thing might be solvable with a bot that edits each bug report to add a clickable +1 badge (a la the CI build-passing badges) at the top; all you need is to give the bot ownership of your repository. The badge can display the current +n count, and the service can give you a sorted list of open issues by +n. For bonus points, have the bot also harvest and remove comments that consist of just "+1" or ":+1".

This is _Git_ Hub after all; why don't we build stuff ourselves instead of waiting for a centralized closed-source company to decide they care about our features?

<comment><USER14> The +1 thing is solved by ZenHub - which I'm _amazed_ they've been unable to gather a large amount of traction!

[https://www.zenhub.io/](https://www.zenhub.io/)

Not affiliated, used it, but without _others_ using it it's largely...well.. useless. :)

E:

Hmm... seems it has become $5/mo to use. I remember it being free. Wonder when that happened?

E2:

 _> ZenHub is free for the open source community._

Oh.

<comment><USER13> ZenHub was the name I was trying to think of, thanks, but it seems like a thing everyone needs to opt into to make good use of (I think? in that it's a browser extension?). The idea I had is more along the lines of the CI badges, which don't require any action on the end-user's part. It's just an image inside a link, so it works in every browser already.

If ZenHub supports making its features available to OSS projects without needing every contributor to install the extension, that's much more compelling, and also totally not obvious from their website.

<comment><USER14> _> it seems like a thing everyone needs to opt into to make good use of_

Yep! Which is why I gave up on trying to use it. I thought it would gain major traction given how useful it is - but I felt like the _only_ person using it. So I eventually removed the extension.

 _> Not affiliated, used it, but without others using it it's largely...well.. useless. :)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only thing I really, really want is paginated diffs for pull requests. C'mon. If I have 300 files, don't show me the first 15 and then say "well, this is too big, you'll just have to imagine what the rest of the diff looks like." Does Google return the first page and then say "the rest of the internet isn't available to you because we don't want to paginate things"? No, of course not. Just freaking paginate long diffs.

Gah.

</comment><comment><USER16> A better way to browse forks.

If today you see that a major repository has a fork with a lot of commits, you cannot know without looking through THEM ALL if they are just typo fixes or if the fork is really changing/improving things over the main repo.

<comment><USER17> This. The amount of time I have wasted looking in forks is staggering.

<comment><USER18> 100% agree. I wish there was some way to also promote a fork, other than changing the readme to point to the new fork, which also means mucking up the history of the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The biggest thing I want from GitHub is the ability to search commits. GitHub are pretty good at search (their issue search is fantastic, and their code search is decent enough) - but the data I most want to search are the commit messages in my repo.

I understand this will be a huge amount of data (they must have hundreds of millions if not billions of commits by now). I'd be perfectly happy if this was only available for paid repositories.

The ability to then further facet and filter searches by author, file, directory etc would be unbelievably useful.

<comment><USER19> Oh, and while we're talking pony requests... I'd dearly love to be able to use gists within the scope of an organization. It would be fantastic to be able to share code snippets that were only visible to other organization members (and searchable and so on).

<comment><USER20> I know this isn't exactly what you want, but GitHub Enterprise comes with Gist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> By far the biggest thing I wish github would do is change the text entry beside the file names. Right now, it shows the comment of the last push of edits to that file. That's great for members of the project.

However, for non-members it would be far more useful to know what the file is. Here, enabling a one-line description would be hugely helpful.

Since GH knows if you're a member of the project it can show you the right text--description or latest update. And presumably, a button would allow you to see the other text if you needed it.

<comment><USER22> If you don't know where to look it can take a surprisingly long time to find things like: [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/HOWTO). It is obvious once you know, but unless you know are in the habit of checking all the 'likely places' such a doc would be you are going to be lost. While one could allow annotations on top of files in github it would completely fragment real and important documentation efforts and leave information scattered in 10 different locations that no one could pull back together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> They'll need another $100 million to get these done!

(Yes, by which I am saying their website has not improved much given their massive funding)

<comment><USER24> It's actually very surprising how little visible improvement GitHub has had in the past few years.

What are they working on?

<comment><USER17> Marketing by the looks of it. I have to say I like what Gitlab is doing these days much more than GitHub.

<comment><USER25> Glad to hear that, our company and community tries to keep shipping!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I see people here posting issues of their own, but I'm amazed nobody has yet mentioned the lack of IPv6.

I've setup a few machines with IPv6-only network connections, and it makes pulling my dotfiles from github a pain since I need an IPv4-proxy/tunnel to access github.com

<comment><USER27> Given up complaining for now. They just don't seem to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great list, we're working on making something that makes +1's less noisey. If you want the possibility to contribute to the tools you use daily consider using our GitLab. It is open source and more than 800 people have contributed already.

<comment><USER28> Why is there no IPv6 support?

<comment><USER25> I think GitLab supports it [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus- gitlab/issues/412](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/omnibus-gitlab/issues/412) but we have not had the time to set it up for GitLab.com yet. We'll be moving our infrastructure to Azure soon so it is not a priority for us now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> git hubs worst problem: FIXED WIDTH CODE READING

code is read way more often than written. and on github website all you can do is read it. why the viewports don't take up the entire screen width i will never understand.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, that's a puzzling one. I've been using a browser script for a long time now to make the code view full width.

<comment><USER31> I don't use it often, but I have a Javascript bookmark [0] that I use in Chrome when the 100-character width is excessively abused. Over time, I found I dislike using it enough that I now try to limit my lines to 100 characters in my editor, so that my github diff presentation is easier to read.

I'm sure there's an easier way to do this. I'm pretty certain I cribbed the method of setting a style from a StackOverflow article or other thing found online, but that was three years ago so I do not recall where it was. (Sorry.) I think all I did was poke around the Chrome debugger until I found the styles I needed.

0: [https://gist.github.com/gknoy/0cc03a6401103bf41daf](https://gist.github.com/gknoy/0cc03a6401103bf41daf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My biggest pet-peeve about GitHub is its issue tracker system. It's great for one-off issues or tracking a pull-request, but beyond that its design is super unwieldy. Such a missed opportunity to crush JIRA, et. al.

<comment><USER33> What do you miss the most or find cumbersome or unusable?

<comment><USER24> \- Issues that span multiple projects

\- Searching all issues for an organization

\- Voting on issues (not just :+1:)

\- Public issues for private repos

\- Attaching files (repros, necessary files, etc.)

\- Dependencies/links

\- Priority (you can label priority but not sort by it)

\- Metrics of any kind

<comment><USER34> Check out ZenHub -

[https://www.zenhub.io/](https://www.zenhub.io/)

It adds these features to improve the GitHub Issue tracker directly into GitHub.com, allowing you to:

\- Display issues on a task board by priority and progress \- Attach any file type to an issue \- Add estimates and view burndown charts / metrics attached to them \- +1 issues to avoid excess comments \- Improved search functionality \- Link repos together to view issues that span multiple projects

Without having to context switch out to a separate issue tracker or UI

\----

Disclosure - I work at ZenHub, and use it with GitHub all day :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Absolutely fix the pull request interface. It currently reads like a ransom note. Go over to bitbucket.org and copy theirs. It's 100x better.

<comment><USER33> What don't you like in current PRs?

<comment><USER35> Generally the UI is just poorly designed and unfocused. One specific thing: You can't mark them as _approved_ in any way and doing something like +1 in a comment somewhere doesn't count.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Personally, I'd like a nice GUI to pick and squash commits with new commit messages against them on creating a pull request. I don't enjoy using the CLI for this, and it would be nice to thread thoughts on the solution into the commits themselves rather than explaining solely in the PR description.

<comment><USER37> I second this, also I'd like to see an overview of the (files with) merge conflicts if any instead of a message saying the PR can't be merged. Fixing the merge conflicts might be another thing in the web interface would be cool but I guess I'll stick to the CLI for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> An unordered list of missing features from me:

\- No ability to store the tab size setting. While appending '?ts=2' to the url is ok, it's not convenient and usable on a daily basis. The same for omitting whitespace changes in a diff / pr ('?ws=1').

\- No ability to step through history on a single file while in blob view, or blame view. In blame view, the commit link goes to the commit, not the blame of the file at that commit.

\- Agree with OP that notifications need to be grouped / summarized better. Perhaps expandable summary items per repo per type. This is mostly useful for private, work-related repos. Pulse and notifications are basically the same thing.

\- Stars cannot be tagged. This makes managing hundreds of stars difficult. There's apps like Astral, but even those are lacking.

</comment><comment><USER39> Those are interesting suggestions, but my guess is that they are probably focusing on features to make github more enterprise friendly. If a16z invests $100 million in github, it doesn't seem like streamlining emails will have the ROI that investors expect.

Maybe github is focusing on creating a full software development lifecycle management (ALM) in the cloud. (Like Microsoft Team Foundation Server and JIRA.) A dashboard for sprints, defect fixes, issues tracking, etc. That's the type of "enterprisey" thing that attracts more business subscriptions. They use the storage of sourcecode repositories to open doors to other sw development related business.

These are just my guesses. I haven't seen any explicit roadmap from github.

<comment><USER11> I'm actually hoping they bring something into GH for business/enterprise that is better, or as good as TFS or JIRA... I like TFS, but non-VS projects are a pain... and JIRA is just well, not pleasant at all.

Once they have some sort of better issue tracking system, then migration tooling will become another big issue in that space.. getting from SVN+JIRA or TFS itself would be really useful to a lot of orgs, willing to pay. Something between TFS and Axosoft's OnTime would be pretty nice as an addition to GH.

Another area with a lot of potential would be a CI/CD toolset that uses your own cloud.. EX: you use api keys for Azure, GCE, AWS, DO etc, and then you can setup testing/limits and Github could just manage the provisioning of the test servers, and ease setup/deployment of test/stage/prod classes of servers for multiple languages.

GH wouldn't have to manage a huge infrastructure itself, just build/sell tooling that extends it's current product line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wiki search is #1 on my wish list for Github. I see others talking about cloning the wiki repo locally and searching it but for big projects this would be the equivalent of downloading something like the Python docs and searching them. It could be done but it would be a massive pain in the ass.

I have written most of the documentation for the project I contribute to the most and I organized the wiki like a two level tree where a top level page has links to category pages and each page on the wiki is linked to from one of those category pages. Then there are links interspersed among the pages like a normal wiki. This structure works okay but I know it can be better because sometimes I cannot even find information that I produced!

<comment><USER41> If you use Chrome you have an option here: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-wiki- search...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-wiki- search/gdifdhnjmjaidbajhapmbcbnoocoeooc?hl=en)

<comment><USER40> Awesome, already used this twice. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> One thing that has bitten me is the code review submitting each line of feedback instantly, before you have finished reviewing the whole pull request.

<comment><USER43> Check out [https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io) to fix this (disclosure: I built it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I feel one could have more ambitious goals. E.g. Could Github build a powerful developers careers site based on all the data they have? Could they provide more tools to help people program? (Could they automatically create programs? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973088))

</comment><comment><USER45> Things I would build:

* Push conflicted branches so developers in a distributed team can work together to resolve conflicts.

* A git-powered version of Rake, which runs only those tests that need to be run based on the git history since the last run.

* A tool to identify what code changes caused a particular test to fail, based on the above.

* Language syntax detection for smarter diffs, improving the display when blocks of code are moved around or indented/outdented.

* Language linters built in, to detect when a change is introducing a syntax error. Same for coding style.

I'd also move the "Close Pull Request" button a little farther away from the "Comment" button, and make it possible to add comments to a diff when you've hidden whitespace differences (with `&w=1`... I'd also make it a bit more obvious that you could do that).

<comment><USER46> > * A git-powered version of Rake, which runs only those tests that need to be > run based on the git history since the last run.

I think you mean "magic".

That is, this is not possible :) Not that I wouldn't like it to be.

<comment><USER45> Well, it is kind-of possible for Ruby/Rails. I half-built such a system once. Here's what you do:

* Gather coverage information when running tests or compiling assets.

* Use that to generate Rakefiles for running tests / compiling assets that have dependencies on the source files they would touch.

* Run the tests once, recording information about the git status of each dependency.

* When the git status of a file changes (i.e. you've just fetched some changes), mark the dependency as dirty

Even better, it you're gathering coverage data and know the test status for each commit, then not only can you show the commit that broke the build, you can show the particular part of the diff that broke the build.

Here's a guy who was trying to do some of this: [https://github.com/Genki-S/ttnt](https://github.com/Genki-S/ttnt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > The suggested alternative is to "Subscribe" to an issue for updates, which > is what I've started doing to issues that I want to show my support for. My > support, however, isn't visible to anyone else.

Though following the resolution of an issue usually means I'd like for it to be resolved, the converse isn't true: I've hit thousands of issues over the years but most of the time I've been able to work around them and haven't hit it since, resolving the issue would be nice for people coming after me, but I don't really care to be spammed by its status updates.

So yes, "subscribe" could count as a +1, but no "subscribe" should not be the only way to "+1" an issue.

</comment><comment><USER48> I started this as well: [https://github.com/kevinSuttle/github/issues](https://github.com/kevinSuttle/github/issues) (not the same Kevin as link author)

</comment><comment><USER49> I always wished GitHub had a chat room per repo. Fully integrated with github features, like mentions, issues, pull requests. Maybe even hubot builtin.

<comment><USER22> gitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the "voting on issues" feature I'd really just love to see them clone Slack's recent "Emoji Reactions" feature.

</comment><comment><USER50> How about making pull requests less centralized? Right now, if I file a PR, only the project admins or I can modify/rebase it. I'd like to give other (non-admin) collaborators permission to work on it too.

Or, maybe it could use a forking model? Let anyone fork their own PR from mine, make those forks prominently visible in my base PR, and make it easy for me to merge their edits back in.

<comment><USER51> If you want anything _less_ centralized, then why are you using Github, a centralized interface to and storage of a previously inherently _de_ -centralized system, git?

Github is for people who accept centralization.

<comment><USER50> That's not true. Why do you think github promotes forking and pull requests?

Some centralization is necessary, true, but you seem to be confusing GitHub with Google Code and SourceForge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Getting notifications/emails when a new release is released of a repo I'm watching or have starred would be awesome!

<comment><USER53> For the time being you could use Sibbell: [https://sibbell.com/](https://sibbell.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I reported this a while back, so it's in their backlog somewhere but obviously not super-important:

I'd like to see an option to turn off fork notifications for org projects without turning off all org notifications. As-is, I get an email for every dev forking every project, sometimes more than once due to lack of git knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER55> * Search code in a branch other than master. * Advanced code search inside a repo(match searches with symbols, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER56> Search can be easily worked around by using Google with the site: parameter, e.g., search on Google with this query:

wireless site:[https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki](https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great tip, but unfortunately that doesn't work for private repos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I would make the search results deduplicated. It happens to me a lot that I search for something and the first 10 pages of search results are from the same 5 projects, but from different locations within the single projects. I usually lose patience sometime around page 5.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would also like to see GitHub Chat. Complete Slack killer with the same heart and spirit of Atom.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is a really good list.

As for sorting things by file, here's a pretty cool project to do that using GitHub API - [https://github.com/sivel/pr-triage](https://github.com/sivel/pr- triage)

</comment><comment><USER49> It's very common, at least on my team, to create pull requests for the wrong target branch. I don't see why GitHub doesn't allow you to fix it before any comments are posted. This would save some useful time.

</comment><comment><USER60> Better filters for emails. Would love to subscribe to only new issues on a repo or random issues on a repo. Basically [http://codetriage.com](http://codetriage.com)

<comment><USER11> For that matter, on the issues page, and labels/markers for new issues vs. old ones with a "me too" comment. or for that matter issues that you've commented on.

I follow a couple dozen projects and after a couple days, my GH notifications page gets insane. Making issues more usable would be a big win imho.

Also, a "priority" follows would be nice too.. so your org/project issues can be viewed separately from your follows. Seeing adoption of something closer to ontime/tfs/jira would be nice too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Things @teabass would build if he quit GitHub: [https://libraries.io](https://libraries.io)

Really useful to get updates on new releases of libraries you use.

</comment><comment><USER62> To be frank, it is pretty much ok for the +1 to be annoying: it's often what they are meant to. Thus, if a vote button were to be implemented, it would not be used all the time.

</comment><comment><USER63> I would really like to have the ability to Edit commit messages using the web interface. I'm often stuck with a poorly crafted message and an edit function would help that.

</comment><comment><USER64> Better blame history navigation, functionally the same as how Textmate does it.

1\. git blame file 2\. click on a hash for the change 3\. show the file for that change

Right now, (3) shows you the diff for the hash

</comment><comment><USER65> [https://github.com/isaacs/github](https://github.com/isaacs/github) has a ton of these missing features

</comment><comment><USER66> > These are great, but they're bugfixes.

I agree with every you said but that first sentence. How are these bugs? They are features that never existed.

</comment><comment><USER67> +1

I would also implement a button for reverting pull requests already merged in master. Reverting merges may be not trivial for less experienced users

</comment><comment><USER68> I'd also love for commit messages to be parsed as markdown. I can't really think of a downside to it.

<comment><USER13> Ugh, that should be an opt-in thing. I've had trouble with Trac parsing commit messages as trac-wiki syntax, which is generally a great idea. The problem is occasionally you'll use markup characters in a semantically meaningful way, e.g. "Switch from `foo` to $(foo)", and rendering the markup will make the commit message confusing to read.

I'd be much more enthusiastic if there was some magical way for the local git command line to also support Markdown rendering/preview.

<comment><USER11> You could set something like markdownpad as your git editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> GitHub wiki is a repo and can be cloned locally. Searching through a local files is trivial.

<comment><USER70> I'd argue that's still a bit of a pain compared to a fulltext search in the browser. I can already search the rest of the repo and issues that way, so why not the wiki?

Good tip though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I would build a Slack alternative + Jira alternative that is deeply integrated into Github.

QED.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'd kill for merge conflict resolution in the web UI.

</comment><comment><USER73> Github Firehose if it was me.

Something to build tools on top of.

</comment><comment><USER74> +1

;-)

</comment><comment><USER75> The ability to search your own gists!

</comment><comment><USER76> I hope all of his post on this blog are like this one ([https://kevin.is/committed-to-github/](https://kevin.is/committed-to- github/), Kevin is committed to GitHub)</comment>


Are you really anonymous online? (Take the test) - <AUTHOR> https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2016/09/28/are-you-really-anonymous-online/ <comment><USER2> > Sorry, we can't run this test because you do not have enough Twitter history > on this browser. The Footprints Research extension was uninstalled and no > data was sent to our server.

Gonna assume that means that the answer to that question is "Yes"</comment>


Ask HN: what to do before find a co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the early stages of a start-up and while it would be great to have a co-founder, no one good in my immediate network was available/interested. I'm wondering how to best prioritize my time given that. My current thinking is to go full steam ahead with the normal start-up playbook...prototype as fast as possible, find customers to test with, iterate...and just use creative avenues to find leverage, like outsourced work. If I can get some traction, I figure the co-founder search may be much easier than it is now. But maybe i'm entirely misguided and should be spending more time looking now. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> just do it.</comment>


A World Without Mad Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-world-without-mad-magazine <comment><AUTHOR> Al Jaffee's fold-ins were always a highlight of Mad Magazine [0][1][2]. Even now, many years after having been a Mad reader, it's hard to fathom how he put them together.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Fold- in](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Fold-in)

[1] [https://13thdimension.com/13-mad-fold-ins-an-al-jaffee- celeb...](https://13thdimension.com/13-mad-fold-ins-an-al-jaffee-celebration/)

[2] [https://www.madmagazine.com/books/the-mad-fold-in- collection](https://www.madmagazine.com/books/the-mad-fold-in-collection)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm going to miss the clever back folding page.</comment>


Computers without clocks (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Computing_Without_Clocks.pdf <comment><USER2> Heyo, I'm a PhD student in the field. I figured I can talk about its current status.

First, here are various search terms: clockless, self-timed, delay- insensitive, latency-insensitive, quasi delay-insensitive (QDI), speed independent, asynchronous, bundled-data

There are a wide variety of clockless circuits that each make their own timing assumptions. QDI is the most paranoid, making the fewest timing assumptions. Bundled-data is the least paranoid (its effectively clock-gating).

A clockless pipeline is always going to be slower than a clocked one and requires about 2x the area. However, clockless logic is way more flexible, letting you avoid unnecessary computation. Overall, this can mean significantly higher throughput and lower energy, but getting those benefits requires _very_ careful design and completely different computer architectures.

Most of the VLSI industry is woefully uneducated in clockless circuit design and the tools are terribly lacking. I've seen many projects go by that make a synchronous architecture clockless, and they have always resulted in worse performance.

What this means is that it would take billions of dollars for current VLSI companies to retool, and doing so would only give them a one-time benefit. So, you probably won't see clockless processors from any of the big-name companies any time soon. What they seem to be doing right now is buying asynchronous start-ups and shutting them down.

As of the 90nm technology node, its not possible to be switching all of the transistors on chip without lighting a fire. This mean that the 2x area requirement is not much of a problem since a well-designed clockless circuit only needs to switch 25-50% of them at any given time. Also since 90nm, switching frequencies seem to have plateaued with a max of around 10 GHz and typical at around 3 GHz. When minimally sized, simple clockless pipelines (WCHB) can get at most 4 GHz and more complex logic tends to get around 2 GHz (for 28nm technology). Leakage current has become more of a problem, but it's a problem for everyone.

There is a horribly dense wikipedia page on QDI, but it has links to a bunch of other resources if you are curious.

<comment><USER3> > A clockless pipeline is always going to be slower than a clocked one

How come? In a clocked design, you have to have clocks slow enough so all possible logic paths would finish. In a clockless one the propagation only takes as much as needed, and in a case of shorter path can take less time, doesn't it?

<comment><USER2> Synchronous design tools are very good at making all of the pipeline stages have about the same logic depth, which is generally 6-8 transitions/cycle but can be much less. The fastest possible QDI circuit is a very simple, very small WCHB buffer which has 6 transitions/cycle. Most QDI logic will have 10-14 transitions/cycle.

Also, the speed of a linear pipeline is limited to the slowest stage in the pipeline whether or not you use clockless. Clockless only helps pipeline speed when you have a complex network.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's really fair to condemn all of asynchronous due to the slowness of QDI. There are faster ways of doing things like GaSP, dual rail domino done detection, bundled data, one sided handshaking, etc.

<comment><USER2> I think there's been a misunderstanding.

You're right, and I don't intend to condemn all of async, or even QDI for that matter :) I am doing my PhD on it, so I do think there is promise. I just think that arithmetic is better handled by Bundled-data specifically. Let QDI do the control leg-work and tack high-performance arithmetic to it.

Also, Gasp is certainly faster, but is limited to simple pipelines. That's why I like QDI, it lets me make weird circuits.

EDIT: Sorry, I got mixed up between the conversation threads... dislexia is a thing.

I'm not saying condemn async or QDI, but we must recognize what it is good at and what it is not. A QDI pipeline stage may be slower, yes. So don't use it if you just want to implement a linear pipeline. But do use it if you have a complex network because of the previously mentioned benefits. Gasp and other async pipeline topologies don't have the flexibility of QDI, and there isn't really a good framework to mix them with QDI techniques at the moment (maybe relative timing?). The power of async comes from this flexibility and the ability to avoid unnecessary computation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been designing semiconductors for 23 years. This article is 17 years old and I haven't seen any clockless designs in my professional experience in all of that time.

About 1/3 to 1/2 the power usage is leakage and I don't see how a clockless design will help that. We dynamically lower the voltage and have power islands for unused or lesser used portions.

nbingham makes a great point about the tools. We have invested billions of dollars in tool flows. We are not going to throw that away until we see some proof that clockless designs are better in some measurable ways.

<comment><USER2> > This article is 17 years old and I haven't seen any clockless designs in my > professional experience in all of that time.

Yeah, async design takes a while, and async chips don't tend to be well advertised, but they are there.

Async FPGA has 60% less power, 70% increased throughput [http://csl.yale.edu/~rajit/ps/fpga2p.pdf](http://csl.yale.edu/~rajit/ps/fpga2p.pdf)

High speed routing (from Fulcrum, one of the startups bought by Intel and shut down) [https://www.hotchips.org/wp- content/uploads/hc_archives/hc15...](https://www.hotchips.org/wp- content/uploads/hc_archives/hc15/3_Tue/2.fulcrum.pdf)

Ultra low power processor [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1402056/](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1402056/)

Ultra low power neural network accelerator from IBM [https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/44529.wss](https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/44529.wss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The GA144, a 144-processor stack machine that's insanely energy efficient, is clockless: [http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#arc...](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.html#architecture)

I haven't seen any legitimate uses for it yet, but it's very cool.

<comment><USER7> I watched a presentation on this chip at Strange Loop 2013. Unfortunately, the whole presentation was a sequence of "look at this cool cryptic programming trick I can do on this chip" by Chuck Moore, without a single legitimate use case outlined. It made the design look needlessly complicated to use and really didn't answer the question of why the chip is actually useful or in any way better than existing low-power microcontrollers. That says more about Chuck Moore's lack of marketing abilities than about clockless designs, however.

Strange Loop 2013 presentation: [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion from almost exactly three years ago [1]. From my comment that time [2] here is the link to archive.org's copy of Sutherland's FLEET project [3]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11425533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11425533)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11426825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11426825)

[3] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/)

<comment><USER9> There's also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966).</comment></comment>


Braid (video game) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game)

<comment><USER2> Braid was one of the best games of the last ten years for me. I thought of it immediately when Ebert was saying 'games can't be art.'

I would guess that Braid is less evocative for those who didn't grow up with 2d platformers, though. The game persistently pulled out all the skills I honed playing Super Mario Brothers on the nintendo, crumpled them up, and gave them back to me as pterodactyl origami. I loved it. I imagine if you had little 2d platforming experience, you'd be missing something from the experience.</comment>


Sins of the innovator - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2009/ca20091020_948077.htm

<comment><USER2> Ugh, I so didn't want to revisit this article yet again, especially after promising I was done ranting on this, but I believe many can take issue with the seventh deadly sin of innovators of Pride "You won't give up on your favorite idea - even when the numbers prove you are wrong."

Numbers cannot always quantify and predict outcome. Again, Twitter -- while the plans I have heard of to generate revenue sound exactly like what I would be focusing on, there was no real business model or revenue model early on. Facebook was in a similar situation.

To really drive home the point, look at the history of toilet paper. YES, toilet paper. Did you know originally no one wanted to buy it because of the taboos around it in society at the time? The "numbers" would have told you that no one wants to wipe with a roll of tissue paper and to close up shop. Well, we know how that turned out.

</comment><comment><USER2> I completely disagree with the first sin of lust for innovators. Maybe it wasn't explained the way it was intended?

You should ABSOLUTELY be innovating "in a space you have no business being in." Who's to tell you to not be there? Did Apple have no business to get into cellular phones? Did Odeo have no business dabbling in social networks, thus the creation of Twitter?

I say you should look to innovate in spaces that you have no business being in. Your unapologetic curiosity and potentially oblivious depth of understanding in that "space" is a fundamental element to many innovations.

Silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, but I also agree that major changes in a companies focus can really hurt morale (if the employees aren't sold on the idea they'll push back).

Also, I think the author would agree with you to an extent. Apple really did push into a market where they didn't have any prior business, but their experiences and expertise really paved their way to success.

<comment><USER2> Yes, major changes in a companies focus can hurt morale. BUT, when you have a clear vision and mission, changes should be an expected constant. No one really handles change well, hence the reason so many biz books are written on how to manage it. And, morale goes down when the employees don't buy into the vision and mission, but if the company shows the correlation and it holds true to their vision and mission, morale shouldn't be hurt for that reason. I'm over simplifying a bit and opening up another can of worms, but I'm sure you get where I'm going.

Thank you my friend for engaging in debate. I love people like you in communities like HN. Makes participation that much more enjoyable.</comment></comment></comment>


China's Crowded Smartphone Market Heads for an Epic Shakeout - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-18/china-s-crowded-smartphone-market-heads-for-an-epic-shakeout <comment><USER2> Looks like Bloomberg is getting desperate.</comment>


Binary search redux (part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/binary-search-redux-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Previous post at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277459>

Reddit comments on this one at [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/btzkp/more_on_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/btzkp/more_on_the_90_of_us_who_cant_write_a_binary/) \- More on the 90% of us who can't write a binary search (with a comparison of Hacker News and Reddit!)</comment>


Am I still a Junior Developer? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/clickclickonsal/am-i-still-a-junior-developer <comment><USER2> Being able to read and write code (even in multiple languages!) is one thing, but I'd argue that the real tipping point between a junior developer and any of the multitude of roles past that point is their understanding of the processes behind software development. Being able to establish testable requirements, architect and argue for/against possible designs for a solution, collaborate and help others do their jobs effectively in a team, and effectively design test cases are way bigger tells with regard to how far you've come than whatever it means to deeply understand languages. I'd even argue that hitting the books for long enough and writing enough purely hobbyist code would allow one to reach that point of deep understanding for nigh /any/ language. The same just cannot be said for those process-oriented skills, despite the fact that they're arguable of greater importance than the ability to write code itself as a professional software developer.

<comment><USER3> I am only 2.5 years into my career, and have written almost all of my teams shared libraries, security toolchain and deploy tools. I also am the sole person to maintain and develop our CI and artifact repos, do most of training of new hires in writing production code, as well as some architecture decisions.

I also recently quit because I felt I wasn't being compensated enough for my efforts, in either freedom to learn/explore further, nor money.

I agree with you about deep understanding and hobby code. At some point in my education, something just 'clicked' and I could see clearly that software contains no magic, only careful thought about data and trade-offs.

Another part I would like to emphasize is reading (other peoples) code. Related is learning different languages and their paradigms. It is very hard and time consuming to come up with well designed techniques and patterns, and reading code let you explore this knowledge in a much more efficient manner.

Also, full stack is a lie.

<comment> 52-6F-62 A lie, maybe... I think it's conditional.

For the most part, one should specialize for performance reasons. If the project requires it, do it all -- put the whole stack together yourself -- it's not so hard to find the nuances to architecture as it once was.

I prefer the pursuit of possibility. I like the adventure, but I'm a dreamer by default. And I really enjoy building something out from the first, smallest grain and seeing it grow and eventually bloom.

To the parent thread: I have no idea. I run into counter opinions and situations regularly. So I just turned on the live stream from the ISS. He's (Fischer I think) outside right now and he takes turns leaving the camera on the horizon and pointing it straight down to the surface. A lot of feature on the Canadarm -- unintentionally probably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My personal take on it is that junior/mid-level/senior/etc. are driven less by pure technical knowledge (someone can have encyclopedic knowledge of a piece of technology and still not be "senior"!) and more by how you think about things and affect others around you.

A rough breakdown would be:

* Junior: your focus and what you think about stays mostly on the piece of code you're currently working on. You should be able to answer questions about what you're doing, and explain how the code works.

* Mid-level: your focus is a bit broader. Now you're thinking more about a bigger chunk of a project, and several developers' efforts on it. This is where you should start being able to talk not just about _what_ is being done or _how_ , but also a bit about _why_. You may start being expected to pair with others of your level, or junior to you.

* Senior: again your focus is broader. Now you're thinking about entire projects/teams, and while you still do and must write code for those projects, you also spend an increased amount of time identifying things that slow or block everyone else, and putting in effort to speed up or un-block (for example, you might develop reusable libraries or solutions for common problems the team is running into, allowing everyone else to get work done faster).

</comment><comment><USER5> "Mid-Level: Understands one or more languages more deeply"

I would change that up and require that a mid level have some proficiency with a second language. Preferably one with some notable differences as compared to the one they know. Like static vs dynamic or functional vs imperative.

<comment><USER6> I'd take it a few steps further. Change "Junior" to "Bootcamp graduate" and "Mid-level" to "Junior."

If there is anything even close to linearity between the "levels" of software development proficiency, then "Will understand code found on the Web before even thinking about copying & pasting code." is not equidistant from senior engineer as it is to "Might copy & paste code from the web (such as Stack Overflow) without understand it, if it just works"

Being a Junior developer should be a proud accomplishment, not a title for what you can buy for $10k and sitting in a classroom for a few weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was a very good read, thank you. To expand I'm an intern and some of the regular Software Engineers ask me for help, or I will show them how to do things. This helps me not get locked in my head that I'm just a "intern".

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a nice competency matrix for that: [http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/)

<comment> yoz-y Level 2^n web programming: cannot make a large table viewable on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _I started to learn how to code in August 2014_

Just a sec, let me glance at the date in the corner of the screen ...

The answer is a resounding "Yup!"

Ask me again in, oh, 2027.</comment>


Ex-Autonomy Boss Mike Lynch Denies New US Charges - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47685095 <comment><USER2> I admit to not knowing the details of the case, but I remember following this in the news when HP apparently grossly overpaid. I briefly used Autonomy's software in 2001, thus my interest.

It seems to me that it was HP's management at fault for not better doing due diligence, but I am not a lawyer and I am not sure my opinion is right.</comment>


Ask HN: Linux vs. Mac for Developer - <AUTHOR> So I'm planning on picking up a new laptop reasonably soon since I'm on a 2014 MBA which is showing its age.
I really like my Mac and I'm somewhat tied into the ecosystem as I have an iPhone as well. I enjoy the availability of software, and the good screen quality.
On the other hand, I'm concerned about the build quality issues which seem to be plaguing Apple's products. I'm a full-time dev who works from home and don't have a company provided machine so reliability is a big deal to me.
I've used linux in the past and primarily used Ubuntu before moving on to Elementary OS as a distro.
So what's your opinion? Should I pick up a regular laptop and just install linux on it? Or take a chance on a macbook?
Budget is probably £2000 GBP - enough to buy a well-specced MBP 13" or with a stretch, a regular 15". <comment><USER3> As someone who has tried various Linux distros, switched to Mac, switched back to Linux, and finally settled on OpenBSD, I will weigh in.

I moved away from Mac due to issues with hardware quality, and also the poor quality of recent macOS release.

That said, I would rate macOS highly on it's usability for office tasks -- managing emails and calendar events, coordinating across different messaging platforms (iMessage is very useful), and so on. It's also best among all the platforms, in my view, with respect to consistency of UI across different applications.

If you're expecting tight integration and consistent UI design across a variety of (GUI) applications, you will likely find Linux (and BSD, for that matter) to be disappointing.

On the other hand, Linux is generally more pleasant to develop code on in my experience. This somewhat depends on your language of choice, but lots of tools are written for Linux first and ported to other platforms like macOS later (case in point: Docker).

Linux hardware support is much better than it once was. With a careful choice of laptop, you can get a fairly recent machine that will have working 3d acceleration, wifi, and suspend/resume out of the box under modern Linux. In many cases, I have found the hardware support of Linux to be better than that of macOS (I had a lot of trouble with suspend and resume on my last Mac, as an example).

I would suggest running Linux in some capacity (VM, dual boot, etc.) for a while to see if you like it and if you can make it work for your use case before dropping a lot of money on it.

I will say, having once owned (and now sold) a touchbar MBP, I would not recommend any of the models in that family at any price point.

<comment><USER4> "What's OpenBSD" you say? [https://sivers.org/openbsd](https://sivers.org/openbsd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> New MBP user here, I won't recommend it!

The OS for development is really less powerful than Linux (like Docker consuming a lot of resources/battery, brew feels far from secure...).

A friend of mine use a Dell xps13 woth ubuntu fo development and it's far more enjoyable.

The only + for a MBP is the touchpad

<comment><USER6> Well docker runs in a vm on macos (it requires a Linux kernel) so that's hardly surprising. It says more about the cool kid nature of peoples tech choices than anything else.

Brew isn't secure but that's hardly the fault of "the OS" - it's a third party tool written by people who actively embrace the insecure design of the tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dont get a macbook, apple is increasingly locking the OS down and bringing it closer to iOS. For a comparable laptop get a thinkpad X1 extreme, lenovo x1, dell xps 13 or dell precision 5530.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been on a 2012 MacBook Pro for ~7 years.

The build quality is fantastic. The keyboard is punchy. The display is pre- retina, so not great, but I'm used to it. It's only noticeable when I see someone else's newer laptop display. Battery life is only ~1.5-2 hours, but I'm plugged in mostly.

First 5.5 years, I had macOS installed. However, with OS updates, starting around Sierra (10.12), the machine became unusably slow.

Last 1.5 years, I've been running a mostly vanilla Lubuntu 16.04, upgraded to 18.04 recently. Most things worked out of the box, it was still an adjustment. A few notes:

\- Drag-and-drop isn't as nice. So I use an external mouse now.

\- External displays have to be manually added after plugging in.

\- It was hard to do without Spotlight for a while. Linux alternatives were too heavy for my machine.

\- Mostly I deploy Python to Ubuntu Server, so keeping a similar dev environment is a breeze.

\- Have not gotten bluetooth to work yet, but haven't tried very hard either.

\- At the moment, I wouldn't go back to macOS or Windows. I'd keep making small dives into the linux ecosystem to solve my problems.

If I needed to buy a new laptop and didn't need any heavy-lifting, I'd look for one of these older, linux-tested, macbooks and install a lightweight linux distro.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've used all 3 for development. Using macOS right now, but want to try switching back to Windows when I have some free time. The reason I want to switch is because I've been having a lot of trouble with my 2018 MBP. Aside from keyboard issues, since updating to Mojave it no longer works well with my external monitors which is really annoying. On top of that, the kernal_task keeps slowing it down because it's too hot. I haven't been able to find the source of that issue, but it affects productivity quite a bit.

Linux is really great when it works, but as a general use computer, it is no match for Mac or Windows. If it's just for work, sure. If it's also your main computer it can be a bit of a bummer as far as software support.

That leaves Windows. My Windows desktop has been really solid, it's cheaper, more powerful, tons of software, and it has the Linux subsystem. I generally prefer the tools for development on the Mac, and would prefer if I didn't feel the need to switch. Not that you would want this feature either, but Windows supports MST no problem. I don't know that my Mac ever will.

<comment><USER10> I got to admit that linux subsystem is actually pretty good. However using git in the subsystem on a repo you have outside is slow, we are talking 10 seconds to do a git log...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally like Linux a lot. It is worth it for the first-class docker support.

James Turnbull had an article reviewing the XPS 13 last year. It is what I would recommend: [https://www.kartar.net/2018/03/dell-xps-13-aka-2018-is- the-y...](https://www.kartar.net/2018/03/dell-xps-13-aka-2018-is-the-year-of- linux-on-the-desktop/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Was a linux user for ~5years, moved to OSX for 2years, then switched back to linux for some time. Now I work on Windows with WSL (bash on windows) - <USER2> time ever initial setup can be a little (really little!) pain, but then it just works like on linux, but with all Windows apps available as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> I absolutely love my MacBook Pro and highly recommend it. It's the best machine for mixing both development and personal use.

The hardware quality is also among the best.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm working on Linux every day but also wishing I could use Windows or a Macbook since I hate everything about Linux as a desktop. But HN seems quite anti-Apple...

<comment><USER15> Windows subsystem for linux is awesome. I have debian open in a terminal in windows, and can use it to launch apps with a GUI as well, that intermingle with my msft windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really happy with my 2018 MBP. The keyboard quality lottery is real though, so there's a chance you get a bad one. Mine has been fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some context would help; what sort of projects/languages/"stack" do you develop for/using?

What is your current developer environment on macOS?

</comment><comment><USER17> at the current state, i would suggest avoiding macbook because of the keyboard.

things may change in macbook 2019 though

</comment><comment><USER18> The only reason I use macOS is battery life. I pine for Linux, it made development a breeze.</comment>


The Texas Method and the Small Group Discovery Method - <AUTHOR> http://legacyrlmoore.org/reference/dancis_davidson.html <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://youtu.be/f6t6WiWYdgY](https://youtu.be/f6t6WiWYdgY)</comment>


Ask HN: Could we make a dns system that steals back domains from squatters? - <AUTHOR>

HN, could we create a DNS system that steals back domains that have been determined to be held by squatter/large domain registrar networks that clearly have no intent to use them? Is this morally ok? <comment><USER2> No, you can't do that. That said, there is absolutely nothing from preventing you from creating a parallel DNS infrastructure which copies the part of DNS you like, and doesn't copy the part you don't like. Running a root server is not a whole lot different (except in scale) than running a regular DNS server. Distribute your own root cache to your 'clients' put a copy of the root servers for the domains you care about into your machines and recursively resolve the rest with the regular system.

At one time this would have been prohibitively expensive but with Amazon's EC-2 service you could run a separate namespace for about a million customers easily for $600/month maybe less.

</comment><comment><USER3> What happens when someone buys one in the real dns and someone else is using it in your parallel dns? Who really owns it?

</comment><comment><USER4> What would then stop the squatters running their own pro-squatter DNS system in parallel?

<comment><USER5> Presumably nobody would use the name servers that they knew were on a shadow DNS being run by "squatters", so there would be no value to the names and no point squatting them in the first place.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Page.REST – An API to fetch details from a web page as JSON - <AUTHOR> http://www.page.rest <comment><USER2> For absolutely 0-cost you can use [http://proc.link](http://proc.link) which will return oembed info for ANY url.

General example: [http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpage.rest](http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpage.rest)

Youtube: [http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.co...](http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdA5qYrboTUE)

Facebook: [http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.c...](http://api.proc.link/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fbritneyspears%2Fposts%2F10155665586428234)

<comment><USER3> Very neat. But the question is, how they pay the cost of the server? I mean, do you think a web service without any API keys, subscriptions, etc. is reliable?

<comment><USER2> It's my own server and I'm the developer of the service ;) I pay $3/mo for hosting and $10/y for domain so it doesnt cost me much.

Regarding reliability: all the code is opensourced and if you want to use the service in production - you can run this on your own server.

<comment><USER3> Cool and just being curious, why did you run the server yourself? Just to have a playground or a demo for the project?

<comment><USER2> Idea was to make a profitable service out of this. But I'm bad interpreneur :)

I wanted to make an analog of [http://embed.ly/code](http://embed.ly/code) but lost interest in the middle.

I can code difficult logic and all the highload server stuff but when it comes to front end, billing, images etc.. I'm getting bored too quickly.

If someone wants to help me make a business out of this: mdxytop at gmail.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I have to know the elements' selectors, why should I prefer this service over using a HTML parser?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on the use case. Say you want to get all images on a page you'd just use `img`. If you are going to find JSON-LD blocks defined in a set of pages, you can use - `script[type='application/ld+json']`.

For MVP, I wanted to give the option of free-form selectors and then offer more targeted queries based on what people use.

<comment><USER5> Consider offering responses other formats, possibly protobuf. Then you can sell it as a solution for limited IoT devices where a full HTML parser is too much. If your service avoids having to host a custom server, it could be very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would make the 5$ price and token validity much larger, like "4rem" or something, I was looking at the CC input field and thinking "seriously? how much will you charge?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I bolded it for now. Need to rethink the presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not unlike YQL - [https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/](https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Uhm this is interesting. Reminds me of: [https://wrapapi.com](https://wrapapi.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks interesting. I wonder what kind of market this app might serve. For larger apps, I would worry about support. 5 dollars per year tells me that the developer is doing this as a hobby. For small side projects, I can see tinkerers building this themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's actually a utility I built for my own use (I bootstrap Pragma full-time). I thought there might be an interest among other developers for a similar utility. That's why I thought to put it out (wanted to charge $5 so I can reduce abuse).

If you are interested in using it for a larger app and concerned about support, please drop me an email (see profile). I can set you up an instance with better rate limits and service gurantees.

<comment><USER9> Good to know! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did something similar a loooong time ago. Granted not as sexy.

[https://github.com/keyle/json-anything](https://github.com/keyle/json- anything)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a follow up blog post about what I learnt from shipping Page.REST [http://www.laktek.com/what-i-learned-from-building- pagerest/](http://www.laktek.com/what-i-learned-from-building-pagerest/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Added support for OpenGraph extraction [https://www.page.rest/#open- graph](https://www.page.rest/#open-graph)

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there a await for JS Frontends to initialise before the scrape via a selector (i.e. Angular/Ember etc)?

<comment><AUTHOR> It runs page scripts and wait after DOMContentLoaded. But may not be accurate in some cases. Do you have any examples to try?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone could really abuse this service, I don't see any mention of API limits.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea of charging $5 was a stop gap measure to prevent abuse.

There are limits set for access token too. I actually rushed to ship before putting out a TOS which mentions limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Zapier it.

<comment><USER14> If you are interested the same is possible with [https://link.fish/hn-early- access/](https://link.fish/hn-early-access/) which has a Zapier integration. It allows to send an URL and it then returns its data. However, you would have to send me an email to email@example.com because the integration is still in beta mode and so only available after invitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do you handle sites that have scraper prevention? Such as captcha, IP throttling, etc.

I'd pay $100-$500 per-month for a service that could reliably scrape some particularly difficult sites. With that being said, I'd need the service to be able to handle ~100 req/s in bursts and 2-4 req/s on average.

<comment><USER14> I can maybe help you with that. If interested you can contact me via firstname.lastname@example.com .</comment></comment>


Time Warner Views Netflix as a Fading Star - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.html?_r=1&src=twr

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one who actually thinks they are scared and worried if they find the need to downplay Netflix and condescendingly compare it to the Albanian army taking over the world?

If it isn't a threat, why bother even talking about it...

Do the corporate PR types and CxOs really think they are being smart and sly when they all of the sudden, out of the blue start telling everyone "we are doing very well, we are not afraid of anyone, everything is fine" and not arouse suspicion?

Last time this kind of excessive chest pounding and excessive boasting happened in a company I worked for, a week later we read from CNN financial news that we have been sold to some no-name equity holding company... and it wasn't because we were great, it was because things were going South.

Now what I am interested in, does the management actually brainwash themselves to believe their own lies or do they know things are bad and just try to lie and talk their way out of the problem with pure "leadership" and "decisive" chest pounding...

<comment><USER3> I tend to think the smartest among them realize that the world is changing and big budget entertainment will increasingly have to compete with more and more free and low-cost entertainment options on the internet, but what are they supposed to do about that? The only rational thing is to extract as much value from their content as they can while they can. Freezing out NetFlix may well help profits in the short-term, which is the best they can hope for with the way the market is going. Eventually they will have to take less for streaming deals, but we are still a ways from that point.

<comment><USER4> "big budget entertainment will increasingly have to compete with more and more free and low-cost entertainment options on the internet"

By "free and low-cost entertainment options" do you mean pirated content? I do not see non-pirated content competing effectively with big-budget movies and television the way that non-pirated textual content (blogs, sites like HN) competes effectively with newspapers and magazines.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't specifically talking about pirated content, although piracy will continue to hurt them as well. As for non-pirated content, I agree, it doesn't compete _effectively_ , but attention is a finite resource, and it's being stretched very thin. It's a far cry from the days when people _had_ to go to the movies just to get in an air-conditioned building during the summer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"It's a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world?" said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, in an interview last week. "I don't think so."_

Someone please throw a dozen copies of The Innovator's Dilemma[1] at this guy. Maybe the TW board will wake up and fire him before he runs their company into the ground.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology>

<comment><USER6> I don't think you're giving Bewkes due credit. It seems like the point wasn't lost on him at all; the industry seems to have realized that the wave is going by, and they got caught flat-footed. See:

" _Time Warner's HBO is in the process of introducing a new online service, HBO GO, which will be available to authenticated HBO subscribers. Mr. Bewkes has also led an industry initiative he has called TV Everywhere, whose idea is to offer cable network programming online for anyone who is a verified cable subscriber._ "

They're trying to take advantage of the economies and at least some of the capabilities of the digital distribution platform without losing a huge chunk of profits (subscribers). It makes sense to try and diminish their digital- distribution competition (including Netflix) for business reasons. Netflix jumped the gun on them by hopping on the digital platform first, and at very subsidized prices, so the conglomerates have to play catch-up. Don't forget, though, that this kitty got claws: big media can still price Netflix out of the game, or at least out of this ridiculous growth phase, since they do own/create the content that Netflix thrives on, and can raise prices.

<comment><USER5> Nah, that seems like a classic textbook late response of a company caught empty-handed by a disruption. The very pressures you cite to preserve their existing business will ultimately kill them without some IBM-style creative thinking.

Yes, it's theoretically possible that the TV industry is inefficient enough that the oligopoly can keep out new entrants, but Netflix already has way too much market share for that to work out in the cartel's favor.

<comment><USER7> No, Netflix doesn't. If the studios don't sell netflix a streaming license, then Netflix has no streaming business. I am aware of no law that requires the studios to sell such a license; even if there is, I doubt that it requires the studios to sell such a license on more generous terms than it sells license to cable companies, who pay lots more than netflix.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Moreover, even if they choose to continue to do business with Netflix, any businessperson would see the potential for raising prices, and Netflix may make a big bruhaha now, but in the end, they'll pay it because they'll still make money.

Netflix' ridiculous profits and growth rate represents a demand unanticipated by the content providers that serve it. The only reason they didn't capitalize on this potential and raise prices is because of the length of the contract. As soon as it lapses, expect Netflix' profit margins to get a whole lot skinnier, and their growth to slow down. This looks like a classic case of a binding contract slowing down delaying the market response to unanticipated innovation. It's not the conglomerates shutting Netflix down with extreme malice and prejudice; it's the market adjusting and redistributing the newfound pie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Time Warner's HBO is in the process of introducing a new online service, HBO > GO, which will be available to authenticated HBO subscribers. Mr. Bewkes has > also led an industry initiative he has called TV Everywhere, whose idea is > to offer cable network programming online for anyone who is a verified cable > subscriber.

And that's what you're doing wrong Mr. Bewkes. As I don't have cable anymore, I'll never be able to access HBO GO or TV Everywhere. I will not re-signup for cable at $75/month now that I have Netflix for $8/month, even if you add tons of tertiary services to your cable offerings. With these tactics, the most you can do is slow down customer defection to Netflix. And even then, you will never get back a single customer you already lost to Netflix. They get their users better than you get your viewers.

Get your content on Netflix and/or make your content available to any Roku/XBox/Wii/PS3/iPad/iPhone/PC/Mac like Netflix for a fair price and I'll sign up. I am no fan of DRM but I will use Silverlight if I must.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cable is on its way out. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, maybe not in five years. But it is surpassed and supplanted by the Internet.

Movies, news and TV shows will continue, and online pricing will, in the course of time, adjust to reflect a profit margin that doesn't involve existing cable TV.

That doesn't mean Netflix is going to rule - it's much more reasonable in my opinion to assume a cabal of motion picture industry will form and cut out the middle-men.

My 0.02c.

<comment><USER10> _That doesn't mean Netflix is going to rule - it's much more reasonable in my opinion to assume a cabal of motion picture industry will form and cut out the middle-men._

And it's a pity that you're almost certainly right, since Netflix actually does what it does well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Blockbuster didn't think they were gonna be a challenge either.

</comment><comment><USER12> Several times in this article, they make it sound like Netflix is competing with cable. But in reality, Netflix only streams TV shows that are already out on DVD. iTunes is the service competing with cable, both on the PC and Apple TV.

<comment><USER13> Netflix isn't competing with cable in terms of getting eyeballs for the same content, but it is competing with cable in terms of time spent on entertainment. I know several people who have canceled their cable subscription because they found they had plenty of things to watch with a $10/month Netflix subscription and no longer found a $50-100/month cable subscription to be a good value.

<comment><USER14> I'm such a person. If you can live without sports (or only the sports available locally via over-the-air) and you don't need to see the latest/greatest shows, cable TV isn't a great value proposition. I don't mind waiting a year or two to watch something; there are plenty of alternatives in the meantime.

That's the essential problem that the industry has to deal with: there is way more content than most of us have time for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It isn't so far fetched. Time Warner is a producer of content and has a large library. It doesn't seem unreasonable for content producers to cut out the middle man and have a streaming service of their own. Disney in particular could very well build a Netflix clone of their content. Aggregated services like Netflix allow for more content and smaller library owner participation, but one wonders at what size of library could $5 a month be justified? How about $10?

<comment><USER16> The thing is that 1 service with 5x content >> 5 services with x content each. Being able to find everything in one place is a very large benefit from a consumer perspective.

<comment><USER15> The thing is they don't all have same size libraries. If Disney took all content off Netflix and created its own service, then it probably could do it itself. Time Warner might be close to that size. Other need to be part of an aggregation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Killing Netflix is not going to push customers back in the fold of cable TV. It will push them toward piracy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the right word for TWC's view is 'delusional.'

</comment><comment><USER19> Speaking of fading stars: <http://grab.by/grabs/47f61f006c2121a23c90dd80cb633255.png>

</comment><comment><USER20> I had the same thought as some have expressed here, Time Warner taking a shot at Netflix,,really? Time Warner ??

But the article makes some valid points. When Netflix started it wasn't viewed as a direct threat to the content owners. Nflix served as the physical distribution arm (and a very very efficient one at that) for media houses. But now with streaming the game is changing.

Each of the players can now setup their own web based distribution base, why would they need Netflix anymore?

Plus there's more competition now. When Netflix launched it was the only one that did what it did (true bb tried, but they were poorly run). With streaming in addition to each Media conglomerates own websites there's also Hulu and lets not forget big dog Google (Youtube and Google TV).

In short content owners have options now, that didn't before. I trust Netflix will come out of this strong, they're a great company with some really smart people, but its not going to be easy

</comment><comment><USER21> "Who in the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Harry Warner

<comment><USER22> Yeah, that guys company sure didn't last very long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would have paid attention to this article but I'm too busy streaming "Robin Hood: Men in Tights".

</comment><comment><USER24> On a related note, Netflix will be joining the S&P 500 next year when they re- index.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do too, unfortunately. I got bored of their streamable selection a little while back.

If they updated it or got more of the main library in there, I'd be all about it again though.

</comment><comment><USER26> Netflix responds, "Who?"

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe fade slightly, but cable companies are ready to supernova.

</comment><comment><USER28> Netflix's greatest coup to date has been integration with so many hardware manufacturers - the bulk of net-connected TVs & consoles have Netflix on there as a gimmie.

But Amazon is catching up - found them on my most recent Sony TV purchase, they're on ROKU (originally a Netflix device), etc.

With that option I find myself using Netflix less and less because the streaming content just ain't that great and Amazon's streaming on-demand service, while more expensive today, gives better content.

The recent rumor of Amazon considering bundling a FREE streaming service with Amazon Prime is very compelling and, unlike Blockbuster & the studios, they can compete in online commerce and have the pockets to play with the studios.

ref - [http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/07/5605985-amaz...](http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/07/5605985-amazon- primed-for-subscription-streaming-video)</comment>


Financial Times Proves HTML5 Can Beat Native Mobile Apps  - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/financial_times_proves_html5_can_beat_native_mobil.php

<comment><USER2> though I think and hope the future of apps will be html5, and it is great to see that big media companies are believing in it, from the screenshot provided, it doesn't look like a very compelling experience.</comment>


What Should Reddit Do? We Asked Kevin Rose and Other Community Founders - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/16/reddit-policy/

<comment><USER2> Reading that article it seems that Kevin Rose really had the most interesting & useful tips.</comment>


Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.econ.upf.edu/docs/papers/downloads/1498.pdf <comment><USER2> Wow. Now that is an example of a good study. No "take an existing dataset and do some basic statistics" here.

Extensive research had to go into finding the right questions to ask, research to get the data, cleaning and organizing the data, and then finding the right analysis to answer the questions. As a non-expert in this field, I'm impressed by the readability of the paper.

To be honest, I'd be surprised if similar results were not found in other fields.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't this sort of thing present a problem for the idea of life extension? Death serves important roles.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, particularly for tenured positions that are for-life, you are creating a constipation effect where the old, much less active researchers are just hanging out occupying space that could be used for a new, more productive faculty. Our university just cleared room for one more faculty after the emeritus died at the age of 92.

<comment><USER3> Personally I don't think life extension is a good or even a meaningful thing unless we're also extending the quality and vitality of life. Any kind of extreme life extension must also include measures for restoring neural plasticity, etc.

As it stands you sort of die before you die. Your brain stops forming new connections and settles into its present state, which basically means you can't learn. Some kind of neural "reset button" would be a requirement.

One of my darker fears about aging is that we basically become "philosophical zombies" at some point before we die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even if true, it's progress, considering for how many centuries Aristotle's ghost impeded science.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do wonder if number of papers published is an accurate measure of scientific progress, just as when talking about the tech industry I would disagree with saying that the most innovative company is defined by the one with the most patents granted.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately the study is limited to life scientists. Generalizing the findings to all of science is a bold statement that needs more evidence than this study can provide.</comment>


The prisoners trying to code their way to a better life - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31359126 <comment><USER3> I'm self taught, and had 2-3 years of a career before being incarcerated. I was incarcerated for 6 years. During that time, I had a few books. Other than a couple of basic computer courses, no access to computers. Just did my best to keep my mind in it.

EDIT: I guess a new account can't comment more than once (makes sense) so I'd like to address the background check issue: I've had numerous jobs, where I disclosed honestly. My felony was a _very_ serious one.

Now I'm quite successful (making well over market; a regular poster on HN; throwaway account is obvious). I recently hired a released inmate who I knew could code though he hadn't ever really done it (he showed me some code he wrote down in TI-BASIC). This guy was locked up 15 years, but within a few months, he's learning as fast or faster than any random person.

<comment><USER4> Honest question: why were you hired?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually think this is a great idea. While it is true they likely wouldn't be able to find a job in the industry with this training, I am sure some of them will come out with enough skill to do things like bid on freelance projects on elance.com.

It really doesn't take a lot of projects to make equivalent and greater money then the type of minimum wage or manual labor jobs many ex-cons would end up working instead (or even petty crime).

<comment><USER6> I think it's a great idea too. If the programme was good enough, they might be able to find jobs in the industry. Consider if:

\- They have 10,000 hours experience

\- They have StackOverflow and Kahn Academy and MIT access

\- They speak English as a first language (likely in the US)

I'd pay someone like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, finally. I mean, prisoners are kept without computers in their jail cells usually, bored out of their minds. Instead, they could be reformed by giving them useful work!

<comment><USER8> My brother is in prison until 2018 on drug related charges. He was transferred to a for profit prison that has a reputation for gang violence, but fortunately all the non violent offenders from the state he was transferred from are kept in a separate wing. He has an Xbox One and gets to play games all day. He also reads a lot and works out. He works 40 hours a week and that pays him about $9/wk. They won't let them have computers, let alone internet access. I wish they would. It's strange what they can and can't have. They can buy a Nintendo 3DS but can't buy any games for it. I wonder who came up with that one.

<comment><USER7> It's truly ridiculous. Finland has much less recidivism: [http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why- scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, learning to code without being able to refer to stackoverflow or anything on the internet... does that count as cruel and unusual punishment?

<comment><USER10> It's how I learned to code. You depend on good documentation much more - though offline documentation used to be better, these days you're lucky if you get more than the source.

It also makes you more independent when debugging issues no-one else online has seen. You become unafraid of digging into the next level down to find out what's going on.

<comment><USER11> Same. I learned from library books w/o Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anyone has information on how to help with or reach out to this or similar programs, please post what you've got!

[Edit] Here's an article with more comprehensive information, including the program's origins and the organizations behind it: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-18-inmates- at...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-18-inmates-at- californias-notorious-san-quentin-prison-learn-to-code/)

</comment><comment><USER13> > San Quentin state prison in California has begun a ground-breaking programme > to teach prisoners how to code.

What is so ground-breaking on that? Any normal country will some sort of education to their prisoners.

<comment><USER14> In most U.S. prisons, prisoners are denied access to computers at all, and especially to the internet, as a general principle.

As of a couple years ago, there is a program that offers monitored email to some prisoners in U.S. prisons. Email only.

Not only are there no educational programs involving computers, but prisoners are specifically disallowed from using computers for purposes like learning to code.

Now, I'm not saying the U.S. is a "normal country".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great, but there is a much greater need, simple literacy. [http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/11/18/75-of-inmates- ar...](http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/11/18/75-of-inmates-are- illiterate-19-are-completely-illiterate-ruben-rosario/#sthash.lbNiWXt6.dpbs)

</comment><comment><USER16> There is one path for HackReactor to make money on this, they can act as recruiters between prisoners and companies.

I know as an employer of developers, that I would hire someone with a felony because I know their introductory salary will be lower but their skill set should be the same. Which may sound over opportunistic, but it's just economics, fewer offers mean lower initial pay. The downside is if they become excellent developers it'll be hard to keep them at the lower salary, even if they do have a felony.

<comment><USER17> Probably true, but I don't think the motivation on this is for Hack Reactor to make money... there would be much easier ways to make money that don't involve prisoners if that's what they were after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Except that - if I understand how US justice system works correctly - <USER2> won't be hired by anyone because they have a sentence in their books. Which is awful.

<comment><USER19> Are you talking about the social stigma or is there something in the law that makes it difficult for ex-convicts to find jobs?

<comment><USER5> Felons are required to disclose on their job applications that they have a prior felony, and what it was they did. This has the effect of making it _extremely_ difficult for them to find work, especially in white collar industries.

Edit: Apparently I am wrong, they aren't technically required to disclose it. However, in practice, every job application I have ever seen has had the question.

<comment><USER20> That is incorrect. There is nothing in the law requiring felons to disclose this. Some employers might ask, and perform their own background checks based on public information.

<comment><USER21> In fact it's actually illegal in several states (MN is one) to ask about it on job applications.

<comment><USER22> I'm from MN and every job application I've ever filled out in my life asked if I was a convicted felon. Including the job I'm at now.

<comment><USER21> It is a new law that just passed last year, and I'm not sure if it has taken effect yet.

<comment><USER22> I just read up on that, and looks like they did just pass a law that they can't ask you on the initial application, but then can weed you out later. IMO that's a horrible law that will end up costing businesses a lot of money, and not help felons get a job at all. If I run a business and I have a policy of not hiring felons, I should be able to weed them out in the initial application phase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had the idea of wanting to teach programming in a prison, but it seemed to have the same requirements as teaching anywhere else: a degree, preferably in education, preferably a master's. I'm self taught and don't have a degree, so it sounds like it's not really an option for me. Does anyone have more information about how one would go about doing this, perhaps on a volunteer basis?

</comment><comment><USER24> one of the best programmers i've ever worked with spent his time teaching himself php. he was a bright kid who made a stupid decision, but didnt let that stop him. we worked together for about 2 years and he ended up getting a couple great offers and now balls way, way harder than me. i have so much respect for him.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe The Mafia, or some other criminal organization could sponsor this training. This way they could create a nice, steady pool of applicants for the White Collar Crime Division :)</comment>


Ask HN: Why Apple ask me for a documentary evidence? - <AUTHOR>

I create a free HackerNews Reader for iPhone/iPod touch. But was rejected twice. I'm really confused. Why i need a documentary evidence? All news contents are from HN. What should i do?
from Apple: " Specifically, we noticed your app utilizes articles from The New York Times and Fox news.
Please provide documentary evidence that you have the rights to use this content to ensure compliance with the iOS Developer Program License Agreement. Once Legal has reviewed your documentation and confirms its validity, we will proceed with your app review.
" <comment><USER2> Does your app take people to the stories inside your app, or does it open a link in Safari? If everything happens inside your app, Apple probably views it as if you were claiming you owned those stories, or at least were not allowing the original websites to display their ads and everything. If you provide an outside link to Safari, then that's weird, because the current HN App I use does that and it obviously got approved.</comment>


Pint.me - Purchase Beer for your friends. Built in 48hrs for the Rails Rumble.  - <AUTHOR> http://pint.me

<comment><USER2> Wow, a few months back my co-workers and I actually came up with the same idea. Pretty cool. We never figured out a good solution to actually redeeming your beer though. Getting local bars onboard just seems a bit too difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> We also make an assumption that the person is on an mobile phone with recent webkit browser for redemption. We're going to work on an iPhone and Android app once the rumble is finished.</comment></comment>