Ghost Blogging Software ported to PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/php-based-blogging-software-inspired-by-ghost/x/6230841 Here is a working demo http://blog.ospari.org/ Please spread the news and support us to make this a reality. <comment><USER2> > Currently we are working on the admin interface

What? Why is there no mention of the live markdown preview. That's what ghost is.

Don't tell me how you've written a database layer, and I can have access to the stupid ghost themes marketplace. I really don't care remotely about that; wordpress has themes. And it talks to a database.

Tell me how you've got an amazing markdown php library with a websocket connection that streams live updates, or even better, how you've made that into a component you can drop into any php website.

-__-

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really a good point. I haven't written any markdown parser in PHP. There are several Markdown parsers written in JavaScript. I use one of them. Ospari don't need any web socket connection. The posts are parsed and auto saved as you type and you have a live preview like Ghost.

<comment><USER3> There are markdown parsers available for PHP ([http://michelf.ca/projects/php- markdown/](http://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/) as an example), but the websocket thing might be quite challenging. PHP's architecture doesn't lend itself well for many concurrent long-running connections.

Unless you want to run out of RAM very quickly, you are much better off to do everything involving long-running connections using node.js or any other environment that works in an event based fashion as threads (and in case of most safe PHP architectures, usually processes) are way too expensive for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right about the PHP architecture. As wrote there is no need for web socket. You can parse the markdown code in browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From PHP to Node and now back to PHP. The circle of code.

<comment><AUTHOR> No it is not a circle of product. Ghost and Ospari is by no wary comparable to Wordpress.

<comment><USER5>
        >Ghost and Ospari is by no wary comparable to Wordpress.

Regarding Ghost, it depends who you ask[1]. What the grand parent comment is probably referring to is the same thing Rob Conery refers to in that Ghost (in his estimation) was architected the way you would architect a large, modular PHP application.

[1][http://www.wekeroad.com/2013/11/19/hello- minty/](http://www.wekeroad.com/2013/11/19/hello-minty/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a solution looking for a problem. Same with Ghost, though. At least Ghost is ironic: a super simple blogging platform that requires fairly sophisticated skills to setup and manage.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is already there. Install Wordpress, buy a beautiful theme and try to configure it. You would be frustrated after 5 minutes…

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's actually already an open source blogging platform called Wardrobe: [http://wardrobecms.com](http://wardrobecms.com) using the Laravel PHP framework, it has support for plugins, and is actively under development.

[https://github.com/wardrobecms](https://github.com/wardrobecms)

[https://github.com/wardrobecms/wardrobe](https://github.com/wardrobecms/wardrobe)

<comment><USER8> "blogging platform" \- "wardrobeCMS". Uh, what now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be easier to port some of Ghost's themes over to WordPress instead of building a whole new blogging platform???

You could even raise funds for that! But I just don't see Ospari going anywhere - the concept is not novel in anyway and there's also a PHP based blogging platform that already dominates a lot of the internet.

Also, Ghost is open source no? I can't find any source files for Ospari...

Node.js + javascript is doing to PHP what PHP did to Pearl in some ways. I see more people pushing that in my circles now than PHP - granted there's a lot of selection bias happening.

Why not build this in Go? I'm sure plenty of people would get excited about that.

[EDIT] If the "key feature" is live previews of markdown, why not fork WordPress and build that feature into it? I'm sure a lot of people would love that - or maybe you can do it as a plugin (I don't know WordPress well enough)??

I just feel like there's a lot of "Not Invented Here" happening with your project, which can be typical of engineering minds. Please focus your talents on something truly novel!

<comment><AUTHOR> The key issue is the simplicity and the ease of use. Wordpress is not about blogging any more. It is complicated and has a terrible code base. Writing this in GO doesn't make any sense, because GO is not simpler than Nodejs in terms of setup and installation.

<comment><USER9> No, I'm pretty sure WordPress is still about blogging - it's got a lot of other features too. Whenever I've talked to a single "average" user they have never talked about "just the blog". Every single person wants to create pages, control the navigation, mess with their templates, install that favorite SEO plugin of theirs, integrate with MailChimp, have a login system, sell ecommerce products.

Even Ghost is acceding to those needs with their Pages features and I'm sure soon to exist plugins (if they don't have it already).

WordPress' codebase is not terrible. Kinda messy? Sure. Idiomatic? Not so much. Does it work? Yes. Does it power millions of websites and blogs? Yes.

My point with Go is that if you want to have a successful project you have to do something novel and there's nothing novel in what you're doing - you're an engineer experiencing "I can do this better" syndrome. I do that all the time, take a step back and _really think hard_ about what my value proposition is (even for OSS projects). If it's already being served by some other project or product and I want that thing to be "better" then it makes more sense to help improve the other thing.

Or in Ghost's case, build it on an entirely different platform (which is novelty), with novel features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just work on making Ghost better if you have a problem with it, why would we need yet another version of it? Because it's written in PHP?

<comment><USER11> I would imagine that being written in PHP is the main selling point for end users who don't have the knowledge to set up a Node.js based website.

<comment><USER12> Also taking in the global context, most hosting plans that are payed in the specific country currency run on PHP without any configuration, just put your PHP files there and puff...magic, a website is running

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess the problem is that many cheap hosting plans (such as Dreamhost) don't run Node but they do run PHP.

<comment><USER14> This is a huge issue. A good friend of mine runs a webshop that builds custom CMS', marketing websites, shopping portals, and occasionally pretty sophisticated apps for clients. I've talked to him a lot about his industry and PHP dominates because of hosting.

Not only are all the shared hosts really affordable and set up to support PHP, but many larger clients have already invested in their "own" hosting setups, either co-located or with local firms.

He's said there are agencies in his industry that have switched to RoR or Django but that from his perspective a part of their model is the built-in acceptance that the tech will cause friction because of hosting, offset by the offer to host it for a fee...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see how running a ghost instance isn't easy or cheap, there are a lot of options: [http://www.howtoinstallghost.com/](http://www.howtoinstallghost.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you easily install Ghost in sub directory like domain.tld/blog/?

<comment><USER15> haven't tried it, but a quick search shows that ghost doesn't support it natively but they are working on it. But is that a reason to do a complete rewrite?

[edit: 0.4.0 does have complete subdir support: [https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/wiki/Release- Notes:-0.4.0#...](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/wiki/Release- Notes:-0.4.0#wiki-subdirectory-support)]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting project but I'm a bit turned off by how this is all framed.

"We're building a new blogging platform that can use Ghost themes, check it out" comes across a lot more positive than "We're porting Ghost to PHP, please give us money to do this."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I was looking for catchy headline. This headline didn't come to my mind. On our actual campaign we don't use this title.

We would do it, even if no one gives us money. Some money would just accelerate the process.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is code example and how a controller works

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8805880](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8805880)

By no way comparable to Wordpress ;-)

<comment><USER17> is that Laravel?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. It is not. We have developed a light weight and easy to use Framework

<comment><USER18> Why not build on an existing framework?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a working demo [http://blog.ospari.org/](http://blog.ospari.org/) Please spread the news and support us to make this a reality.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure how I feel about this. I think we need to move away from the idea of "let's write this in PHP because it's easy." Best of luck to you though...

<comment><USER20> I think the sentiment is more "let's write this in PHP because it runs on every $7 shared web host on the planet". Sadly, no other language can claim this except maybe Perl.

<comment><USER21> Well then it's catch 22 isn't it? Unless we boycott PHP it will never go away and hosting providers won't have any incentive to change.

<comment><USER22> I think you'd have better luck in making ways of supporting drag-and-drop deployment for your preferred languages. I can't find it now but there was such a tool for Python that allowed you to run Python scripts in the same way as PHP (no app server as such).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It states it is open source but I struggle to find the source. Can someone point me to the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is open source and it is free for personal and for commercial use, but we have not released it yet.

<comment><USER23> Ok, but can one look at the quality of the code before decides to support the project? Is there a repo hosted somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have repo, but it is not public

Here a code example.

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8805880](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8805880)

<comment><USER24> This is a really weird approach to asking for support for an OSS project. Bad vibes with this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you are right. We would move at least some of our code to Github to a public repo soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: We just cleared the licensing issue. Ospari would be released under MIT License.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is going to end well.

<comment><USER9> I don't have enough karma to downvote you but I will say that I think your comment isn't adding to the conversation. He's someone with a project that he feels strongly about; misguided or not thought through? Sure.

Instead of sarcasm, help this guy realize his talent for building software could be directed in a more productive fashion than playing "copy cat".

<comment><USER25> To be fair I was going to explain why it was a bad idea but I find reasoning with PHP developers very hard. As a recovering PHP developer myself, it will just be ignored.

<comment><USER9> You'll find that with more than just PHP :( I'm seeing it with Ruby and JS / Node too. Some developers are reasonable and great people but there's a subsection that think {Ruby, Python, PHP, JS} are the bees knees. I use all of those languages...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm a WordPress user and haven't tried Ghost...but it seems the impetus of the OP is to port over the _" hundreds of beautifully designed themes for Ghost"_..I know themes consist of front-end logic and backend code...but isn't the "beauty" of these themes portable independent of scripting code?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ghost Theme do not use any scripst. They use handlebars ([http://handlebarsjs.com/](http://handlebarsjs.com/)) syntax. We can parse this syntax with PHP.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is working at a startup irrational? - <AUTHOR>

The opportunity cost of working at a startup makes me question the whole thing. I could make approx. $100k+bonus at a corporate job or $60k+options at a startup. After 5 years, I'll have an extra $200k+bonuses from a corporate job plus an opportunity to move up the ladder and make slightly more money. The startup requires many more hours and much uncertainty for the small chance that those options will pay off.
The missing variable is, what is the expected value for those startup options? I'd like to hear HNs guesses as to the odds of success and the amount of money you can hope to make if you're not the founder.
FYI: I've worked at a startup that flamed out. I'm looking for a job in NYC and am faced with this decision now. <comment><USER2> Betting on options is like betting on winning the lottery. Your chances are slim (you probably have a better shot at winning the lottery).

Startups are fun, dynamic, an adrenaline rush. It is not about the money. It is about working on something you are passionate about and know that you can, and most likely will, have a direct impact on the success of a company. A startup can open opportunities that only may have been a dream for you in the past.

Yes, the corporate career can provide stability and possibly long(er) term job security, but I can guarantee you will learn way more working in a startup than in a corporate career.

Making the decision really comes down to you though. If you are married, have kids, have significant financial responsibilities, etc... then the corporate world may have a different appeal to you. Your outside influencers (i.e. wife, family, etc...) may have a direct bearing on your choice. Not to say you can't do a startup being married, with kids, and other financial responsibilities, but you have to know your limits and what your life can handle. In these cases it is a decision that should not be taken lightly and should be discussed with your family.

</comment><comment><USER3> Basically, you should only take a significant options stake if you're in love with the team, the work and the business models for their own sakes. A good quantifier for "in love with", BTW, is if they're doing something that you would _almost_ do for free (if you you had your FY money already).

Either that, or you're working for one of those (very few) startups for which the outsize payout odds are deemed to be especially high, independent of all the other factors. (Advice from friends who happen to be veteran startup junkies can be very, very helpful in assessing this). _And_ provided you have some minimal savings buffer for the case that things go 'poof' -- which is always more likely than not, even given the best of circumstances.

But if it's just a paycheck you're after, then by all means, go for the (substantially bigger) paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally don't think options are usually a good deal unless you believe that you'll be working for the next Google, Facebook, etc. I worked for a company that was hot as pizza cheese on your gums straight from the oven, but I didn't take options because of past experience and advice from others, and in the end, I was glad that I didn't. Despite its growth, it mostly fizzled, and in the process of that growth, it took on a great deal of investment, and those options were diluted like nobody's business.

But, if you really like the opportunity and believe in it, and your family isn't sacrificed, then go for it. You only live once (well at least that's what I believe).

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, it is irrational. You do it because you love it, or because you can't imagine doing anything else, not because it's a better risk-adjusted pay-off than a corporate career.

If you want to make money, go work for a Wall Street bank. If you're good, you're practically guaranteed to make a very good living as long as the current financial system endures (which seems likely to be for quite a while). Compared to that, starting a startup is a small chance of a big pay-off and a large-ish chance of being fairly close to broke for a very long time.

Of course, the corporate career, for some people, has some extra costs built in that they don't want to take on, like your soul, your freedom, and other secondary paraphernalia. Those people typically make the financially irrational choice and start a startup.</comment>


Zuckerberg defends right of Holocaust deniers to be heard on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/zuckerberg-effectively-defends-right-of-holocaust-deniers-to-be-heard-on-facebook-2018-07-18 <comment><USER2> It's remarkable to me that people think this is a bad thing. I feel like everyone agreed freedom of speech is a good thing until one day I woke up and they didn't. I don't mean whether or not it would be unconstitutional to censor certain topics on facebook. But facebook is a one of the largest communication platforms today. It's bad enough that Zuckerberg actually has the power to decide what can and can't be communicated on that platform, at least he's deciding not to use that power (at least in this case).

<comment><USER3> I think the issue that we are all grappling with is the amount, speed of dissemination, reach, and substance of all the speech that Facebook allows is something humanity has never grappled with.

We generally agree that speech should be free, but obviously we put limits on it. For instance we do not allow yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. The reason is that people are directly harmed by that speech, and it has no upside.

It's perfectly reasonable to consider much of what goes on, on Facebook in the same vein. If holocaust denial, or other types of hate speech or misinformation are spread rapidly, and cause moral panic, possibly harm to others, should we not consider limiting it?

It's not a black and white issue of "speech should be free at all times".

Facebook and social media is fundamentally changing (has changed) how humanity communicates. Thinking though and questioning the ethics and moral obligations of those services is quite important.

<comment><USER4> Obviously we should -- particularly for people that advocate for abortion, whose voices need to be suppressed. The cost of their speech is too high.

<comment><USER5> Abortion is same as Holocaust denial ? One is a medical issue and the other one is literally denying facts that is used as propaganda to recruit extremists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people will say stupid things with their freedom of expression. They're still entitled to their freedoms, lest we become like them. This breaks my heart that we have to have these conversations.

<comment><USER7> What makes you think that freedom of expression means more than you can say what you want without going to jail?

It doesn't mean people have to give you a platform to spread propaganda, and it never has. Want to start a social network for holocaust deniers? Go right ahead.

<comment><USER6> Because... _that 's literally what it means_.

The internet is not a crowded theater. It's just text on a screen.

<comment><USER7> No. That's not what it means.

Facebook is a private enterprise. It's not the Internet. You want to spout hate on the internet, fine. Get a server and host your pages. Does Facebook have to let you do it on their site? No.

You may have to shout fire in a crowded theater to get arrested, but you can and probably will get kicked out for standing up and screaming about niggers and kikes. That's how civilization works.

<comment><USER6> Literally a straw man attack. Facebook is a private platform and they can do whatever they want with their business. I was speaking specifically about freedom of expression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts"

Especially, if the fact is real. Facebook wants to be a media company ([http://fortune.com/2016/12/23/zuckerberg-media- company/](http://fortune.com/2016/12/23/zuckerberg-media-company/)) except when they don't.

A media company has a responsibility to accuracy.

<comment><USER9> I feel like this is similar to the death penalty debate though, where in response to the concern about executing innocent people, you hear "we'll only use it when it's a clear cut case" but either it ends up being used more than that, or it'd be used so rarely that it's not worth carving out a special case for it. How many things are on the clear cut level of Holocaust denial? And who decides what's clear cut enough to be excluded from free speech?

<comment><USER10> >clear cut level of Holocaust denial

'Denial' isn't clear cut at all. You could deny it by saying it didn't happen at all, or that it happened in a different location, or by different people, or that the number of dead doesn't match the stated total(s). Is it denial to disbelieve a specific person was killed, or was killed in a specific manner? Is it denial to disbelieve some of the particulars of someones story? Free speech means exactly that; you're free to speak or you aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not his call, Facebook has to follow the law.

If I were him I would stop this freedom of expression stuff: nobody cares. Users don't actually want the crazies, religious nutjobs and political fighting. It almost killed Reddit and Twitter.

<comment><USER7> The extremists are what keep Reddit and Twitter in business. People find all the fighting entertaining. This has much more to do with money than with human rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook is disgusting. I really hope they fail somehow. They have truly made society so much worse off.</comment>


Film Reveals How Industrial Agriculture Destroys Soil - <AUTHOR> https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/02/08/how-industrial-agriculture-destroys-soil.aspx <comment><USER2> :( this is scary to me</comment>


In 1900, Los Angeles had a bike highway - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/6/30/8861327/bike-lanes-history <comment><USER2> Happy that my hometown of Louisville, KY is partially finished with building out a ~110 mile bike (and walking) loop that circles the city by connecting existing parks and creating new ones. I can't think of anywhere else in the US where a cyclist could a century ride without having to deal with automobiles.

It's called the Louisville Loop.

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

<comment><USER3> > I can't think of anywhere else in the US where a cyclist could a century > ride without having to deal with automobiles.

I assume you mean in or near cities. There are several long-distance bike-only trails (that I know of) in the US, but they tend to be in protected nature areas.

<comment><USER4> The 185 mile long Chesapeake & Ohio Canal bike path connects to the 150 Great Allegheny Passage bike path, giving a 335 mile long bike-only trail between D.C. and Pittsburgh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a related article on how highways and the auto industry gutted many American cities:

[http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate- cit...](http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities- history)

<comment><USER6> Wow. That seems like an utterly one-sided and simplified explanation of how we got our highway system.

The article is telling me that the auto industry hoodwinked the government into building a multi-trillion dollar highways system (in today's dollars) just to support the auto industry?

I think the situation might be a tad more complex than that.

<comment><USER7> The interstate highway system was basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities. Why are the highway overpass heights standardized?[1]

[1] [http://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/a-brief-history- of-...](http://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/a-brief-history-of-the- highway-transportation-system-in-the-u.s)

<comment><USER4> Your text here and the link you gave don't say the same thing.

As [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#quest...](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/interstatemyths.cfm#question3) comments, the interstate highway system was primarily civilian in naure. It was not "basically designed to facilitate the movement of nuclear bombs to SAC bases and missile facilities".

The link you gave says, "Besides the obvious economic reasons, one of Eisenhower's goals was to improve national security". That does not imply that Eisenhower's main goal was related to nuclear weapon transport, only that national security was one of multiple factors.

In any case, this sounds like an urban legend. Indeed, at Straight Dope's comment board, some people tried to investigate it, at [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-2955...](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-295584.html) . The military needs to transport many things, including tanks. What evidence is there that missile specifically drove the need, vs. more general military transport requirements?

I say "missiles" because the SAC connection doesn't make sense. The size of nuclear weapons or their transport systems can't be the deciding factor. The Mark 6 nuclear bomb, at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_6_nuclear_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_6_nuclear_bomb) , was the main nuclear weapon in the early-1950s. It was much smaller than a tank, and shorter than most people. The Mark 17 and Mark 24, which were thermonuclear, were a bit bigger, but still less than two meters tall. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb) . The next generation of nuclear weapons were smaller still. By 1960 we had the W47, which was 18 inches/460 mm in diameter and 47 inches / 1,200 mm long.

The first US nuclear ballistic missile was the Atlas, first launched in 1957 and planning started in 1954. Construction for the interstate system was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. It is possible, timing- wise, that the needs for the Atlas drove the size requirement for the US highway system. But it's tight, and it sounds unlikely.

To check, we see from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t1UWMiWQ2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t1UWMiWQ2E) that the Atlas was transported by truck. The best shot starts at 6:10. It does not look like it's especially large, or that the trailer was designed in order to fit into difficult space constraints. See also the images at [http://www.siloworld.net/CONST/Atlas/ATE/567th/Museum/page__...](http://www.siloworld.net/CONST/Atlas/ATE/567th/Museum/page__3.htm) .

For what it's worth, this image of a Minute Man II on transporter, [http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/mimi/images/fig1...](http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/mimi/images/fig13.jpg) , implies that it needs no more than 5 meters of clearance. The interstate system requires that a minimum of 4.9 m clearance (except in urban areas when there is an alternate interstate around the area), so it certainly seems like the Minute Man transporter was designed for the highway system. It's not clear that the highway system was designed for the needs of the missile system.

There are many urban legends about the US highway system, such as the false belief that it was designed as an alternative landing strip for SAC bombers. This means there's a higher evidentiary standard than normal for statements like yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It reminds me of the bike-only lanes in China before. There were also blocks between bike lanes and car lanes in the cities. So it was very safe for cyclists.

Once I biked 2.5 hours from the northwest corner of Beijing to Tong Qian, a small town at the east outskirt of Beijing, to visit a friend. She already left due to some urgent matter before I got there. She couldn't contact me because mobile phones were a rarity at that time. So I biked another 2.5 hour back. It was a good trip, though, biking under nice weather, with warm breeze.

<comment><USER9> There's still plenty of bike lanes in China. Except they are also scooter lanes, motorcycle lanes, pedestrian lanes, parking lanes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similar concept relating to how cars were normalized and displaced pedestrians: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797)

</comment><comment><USER11> Really simple way especially in Australia to solve the lack of bike friendly roads.

BUILD BIKE LANES NEXT TO RAIL ROADS!!!!

</comment><comment><USER12> I was cycling between Delft and The Hague in the Netherlands yesterday. I headed out without a route planned. The infrastructure even outside of major cities in the Netherlands are just so extensive that with the help of some occasional road signs, I was able to make it there.

<comment><USER13> It does help that the space between Delft and The Hague is literally the size of a golf course.

As a kid I used to bike from the South West of The Hague to the center of Rotterdam. It's basically just one big urban area with some big parks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the iron horse replaced the horse and the auto replaced the bike? I wonder how many miles of horse roads they had before bikes became to be the preferred toy of the rich in LA back at the turn of the xix century.

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminded me of the tour de france... [http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-%20225515122/mikaeellewis/pho...](http://ink361.com/app/users/ig-%20225515122/mikaeellewis/photos/ig-992240950698962287_225515122)

</comment><comment><USER16> That isn't snow in the picture is it? Just black and white photo making sand/light dirt look like snow?

<comment><USER17> It's crushed limestone, which was originally used instead of asphalt to line the bike path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a few years when all the cars are computer controlled it should be possible to ride your bicycle like a total madman and not get hit. Even if the computers have to slow down to 10mph while bikes are near it won't be too annoying for passengers lost in VR. Dynamic bicycle only highways would be easy, but even better is not needing them. Going to be fun!

<comment><USER19> Unless those cars will also come with inertial dampers, that would still be pretty dangerous.

<comment><USER18> Or fancy adult car seats :P

<comment><USER19> Still a danger for the biker. Autonomous highway traffic isn't likely to be allowed to travel ~10mph everywhere just in case a pedestrian or bicycle happens to be nearby, that just wouldn't be feasible. Creating unpredictable hazards for vehicles that can't stop on a dime isn't a good idea, be they human controlled or computer controlled.

<comment><USER18> All the cars are cooperating. Sensors everywhere. The position of every moving object on the road is tracked to within a meter. Any car that enters the bicycle's safety zone gradually slows down to 10mph long before there's any chance of contact. It would probably cause a very minor delay for cars, and none in cases where the cars can route around the bicycle. Or whatever... There are probably a thousand safe ways to make it so bicycles can go nuts in a world with 100% computer controlled cars.

<comment><USER19> That describes a perfect system in which visibility is always optimal, and there is never any such thing as inclement weather, network delays, mechanical failure, proprietary software, manufacturers cutting corners, blind spots or false echoes or any of the thousands of ways things can also go _wrong_ with a system as large, complex and interconnected as that might be.

Sort of like the way "cyberspace" was described in sci-fi as sort of like virtual reality or augmented reality or Project Xanadu, while in practice what we got is is a document layout format with a half-assed Scheme tacked on to spite Microsoft, what gets implemented is usually always the minimum viable product.

<comment><USER18> I don't think you're paying attention! Many millions of us have been interacting in 3d combat/flight/driving simulators for years. With < 20ms internet latency and high frame rates it's a pretty amazing experience. We call them 'video games' like they're similar to what NES games were like, but they're everything people dreamed of for VR. Now we have head mounted displays, completing the picture.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WeddingOffers.com.au - Australian wedding special offers community - <AUTHOR> http://www.weddingoffers.com.au My latest project a website for Australian couples to share and find wedding deals.
Please let me know what you think and any ideas on building a community.
I was thinking of maybe offering a $20 weekly prize (similar to OZbargain in early days) for the highest voted deal of the week. <comment><AUTHOR> My latest project a website for Australian couples to share and find wedding deals.

Please let me know what you think and any ideas on building a community.

I was thinking of maybe offering a $20 weekly prize (same concept used by australian wesbite OZbargain.com.au in early days) for the highest voted deal of the week.</comment>


Tesla Semi Truck Unveiling - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/semi <comment><USER2> I hope to be proven wrong, but a battery-only truck seems incomplete.

Trains use diesel engines to power the electric motors that spin the wheels. Electric motors rock compared to internal engines, but the batteries have terrible energy density compared to fossil fuels.

It'd be nice if they offered a truck with a smaller battery and a turbine that generated electricity. It'd be super efficient compared to diesel trucks, and it could go battery only in urban areas and avoid pollution while retaining the electrification advantages of acceleration and torque control. But it would give the trucks flexibility to cross Nebraska and Iowa without charging a few times.

<comment><USER3> I agree trucks like that are useful (and appear to be coming to market now~ish from other brands) but I think Tesla should stick to battery only.

There's enough short haul routes through stop-go traffic in pollution hotspots to keep Tesla busy for a while, and as they gain experience and reduce prices the range can expand.

The best thing about Tesla is that they're starting with battery only vehicles and throwing intelligence towards solving within that constraint.

Slow moving convoys of autonomous trucks that travel by night is one interesting possibility I'd like to see them explore.

<comment><USER4> Battery packs could be swapped out and charged out of the vehicle. This would make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER2> It would make a lot of sense, but Tesla already floated the idea and decided not to pursue it [0]. That seems like a lot of work just to make a bad technology 'good enough'. Swapping bad batteries for more charged bad batteries doesn't change the fact that batteries are a bad technology.

[0]: [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap- prog...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-program-for- superchargers/)

<comment><USER5> Personally, I would put most of the batteries on the flatbed. Have beds at either end that are charging while they are loaded/unloaded, and one truck autonomously juggling a 3rd bed between both locations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html?hn2016 <comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion last year here[0] but I had completely missed that, so thought it would be of interest again given the current events.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9401453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9401453)

</comment><comment><USER2> One of the biggest issues with thinking innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt only applies to courts is that courts are not divorced from public opinion. The whole 'tough on crime' stance happens because in public opinion, a guy is guilty with far less evidence than the court needs. If the court cannot also find them guilty, the public sees this as a problem. Nothing direct happens, but as this occurs time and time again people begin to vote for those who don't allow this 'miscarriage of justice' to continue to occur. So over time, the public selects for people who act in ways that do not support innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. DAs willing to ignore evidence. Judges willing to present cops as being more trustworthy a source (such as allowing them to show up in uniform). And even crime labs who are a little willing to help convict the guy who is 'obviously' guilty.

In short, because public opinion eventually impacts the courts through some path, if the people don't believe in innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in the case of public opinion, then the courts will eventually lose that focus as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not a lawyer and I don't know how federal court works so I'm genuinely curious:

FBI forensic "scientists" are essentially always lying on the stand -- not out of malice or intentionally, but because their techniques do not have nearly enough accuracy to honestly present the results that they present. There is plenty of evidence for this, this article and others. Anything except DNA is essentially a fortune teller reading a palm.

So why does every single defense attorney in the nation (including public defenders) not spend hours on this particular fact any time an FBI forensic scientist testifies in a case? And essentially make having forensic evidence from FBI crime labs a huge liability and unusable in court?

Do they try and people just believe the FBI anyway?

<comment><USER4> In the earlier days of DNA analysis, they routinely overstated the certainty of matches. They were testing too few loci for the kind of results they were claiming.

Matches that were called something like one in 8 billion were sometimes more like one in 2 million. In a city the size of New York, that's far less certain of match than they stated.

<comment><USER2> It is also bad statistics.

The expert points out that it is 1 in a million. The jury will think this means that there is a 99.9999% chance this guy is guilty.

But how it works (assuming the DNA is the only evidence to connect this guy to the crime) is that in a city of 100 million, there are 100 possible people who would match, so the actual chance this one guy who was found by DNA match is actually the guilty one is only 1%.

People are willing to convict if given 99.9999% certainty. But who would be willing to convict with only 1% certainty?</comment></comment></comment>


Parents Are Taking the Fun Out of Toys - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704171004576148803456172910.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

<comment><USER2> I do not understand the author's vehement opposition to marketing that encourages parents to take an interest in their children's development. (Actually, I do. Like Amy Chua, she is using the WSJ to promote her book, while she hypocritically condemns toymakers for promoting their work)

Sure, these claims are cheesy and not backed by scientific method; most advertising shares these flaws. But I would rather these toys be marketed by promoting actual meaningful developmental benefits and getting parents thinking, rather than relying on Mickey Mouse's or Dora's face. It is a step in the right direction.

Is the author similarly opposed to foodmakers promoting nutritional benefits? Would she argue that parents should just thoughtlessly feed their kids whatever seems like kid food?

About the stationary trike she resents, I think that is a great toy for a city family that doesn't want Junior triking into the street in front of the apartment. Live and let live.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not a new phenomenon. Any time there is a commercial interest to be had pushing one variety of thing over another, people will try to extend their value propisition by listing advantages inherent in their product (Or in the users!)

All To-do lists can help you get organized. All social networks can help you connect with friends, but being _connected_ is why people are friends in the first place.

It's sad that people need to deliberately emphasize these points, but if they don't, the more complex systems for which benefits NEED to be explained get more attention, deserved or not.

I don't see the need for use-cases for most products, but once you mix in other, competing products with the inherent fear people have of being a bad [Responsible Entity] (Be that parent, boss, developer), giving them becomes a more attractive option. As long as your own work advertises its use fairly, without fear, you're on sturdy moral ground AFAIC.

</comment><comment><USER4> Parents go through this phase when their kids are 0-5 where they are already aggravated and think complaining about toys/diapers/preschool/food is interesting and funny. Other parents in the same situation might find it interesting, I know I did. I also know my kids liked certain toys but not others when they were little but they always preferred pots and pans and cardboard boxes to their toys, which quickly got sent to Goodwill.

Then, when your kids start to think for themselves it's amazing how quickly they figure out whether something is lame or awesome. And it's not at all obvious to me where my daughters draw the line. They think Justin Bieber is lame and Lady Gaga is awesome (no big surprise there) but they also think Doc & Merle Watson playing "Twin Sisters" is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've heard a few people refer to this type of thing as 'gamification' these days. The term seems to be skewed in the same way in that achievements are the way people seem to think anything becomes a game.

</comment><comment><USER6> if the kids enjoy the toys who cares how they market them to parents.</comment>


Recent Code Search Outages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1397-recent-code-search-outages

<comment><USER2> For those looking for the tl;dr -- GitHub uses elastic search and upgraded the platform to a new version just before launching. Differences with the new version caused corruption in subsystems and cascaded to an outage.

On the whole, GitHub is doing an awesome job. While this may be embarrassing for the team responsible for the feature, I found the writeup to be honest and thorough. I've made plenty of mistakes in my career, and for me being honest about mistakes goes a lot further than the week or so of downtime.

<comment><USER3> For the record, it's unlikely that the outages were caused due to differences between the versions so much as they were caused by the changing load patterns on the cluster and the old Java version.

<comment><USER4> Yea that, and they were testing on production like a boss.

> We did not sufficiently test the 0.20.2 release of elasticsearch on our > infrastructure prior to rolling this upgrade out to our code search cluster, > nor had we tested it on any other clusters beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent post-mordem. As an elasticsearch user (without the scale) there is some helpful advice in there. I've already encountered the heapsize issue they mentioned, but the others are new.

Thanks GH.

</comment><comment><USER6> "During the initial recovery, some of our nodes ran out of disk space. It's unclear why this happened since our cluster was only operating at 67% utilization before the initial event, but it's believed this is related to the high load and old Java version. The elasticsearch team continues to investigate to understand the exact circumstances."

This doesn't pass the smell test for me. Not that I know tons about ElasticSearch, but couldn't disk space have been consumed by failed replication attempts?

</comment><comment><USER7> Elasticsearch is great and magical, but there are a bunch of defaults that you MUST set for it to be useful. I'm surprised github wasn't using these, actually (like allocating the min and max memory to be the same size).

Generally it takes a catastrophic failure under load for you to discover that 'everyone' (everyone else) uses these!

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know which JVM they're using? I've heard lots recommend Oracle over OpenJDK for performance reasons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oracle.</comment></comment>


Understanding the JavaScript API for Office - <AUTHOR> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/develop/understanding-the-javascript-api-for-office <comment><USER2> So according to this [0] it runs in Internet Explorer on Windows and WebKit on MacOS (which explains why there's so much JQuery in the examples), but here [1] it talks about writing plugins in Typescript with no transpilation step. So Office is shipping Typescript now? In any case I look forward to a bright, dreamy future where Typescript is Windows' default scripting language.

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add- ins/concepts...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add- ins/concepts/privacy-and-security)

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add- ins/develop/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add- ins/develop/convert-javascript-to-typescript)</comment>


Show HN: The Financial Status Template - <AUTHOR> https://jordivillar.com/financial-status/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! OP here. It's my first Show HN post so wan't quite sure about the title and the format. Hope it's good enough.

The content is simple, a spreadsheet to keep track of your personal finances. Including a general status view, expenses, investments, cryptos, and budgets. Of course the template's data is fake for illustrative purposes.

I have been using and improving the spreadsheet for a year, and would be great to receive some feedback and things to improve. Also, would be great to see if can be useful for other people!

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: If you were CTO of a new start-up, what would your stack be? - <AUTHOR> Just an exercise in curiosity. Nothing high-scale, website is your product, ~10,000 users. <comment><USER2> Rails, building a versioned API. Try to keep it incredibly light weight with just VERBS applied to resources. Trying to avoid that word that starts with R and ends with ESTful.

I might use RBX or JRuby depending on what kind of and the amount background processing. Basically if I need native threads.

For things that might be heavy and require both speed and massive concurrency I might switch that out to either Go or Erlang.

In fact, for some portion of the APIs I suspect not to use ruby and instead Go/Erland. Depends basically on the situation.

I will probably stick to SQL, PostgreSQL to be precise. For heavy relationships, I'd use Redis for associations. Keeping Model IDS in sets or orderedSets. That way I could just keep my SQL light weight and only need indexing the ids and avoid that whole mess of compound index.

Memcache with Rack-Cache.. I'd suspect I'd rely heavily on HTTP Cache. That way I don't need to cache data objects, and have to redo the json all over again. Basically tring to avoid layers of caches, when I could just do it at the user end point. Of course I understand edge cases will turn up. So I'll be prepared for that.

Then the client(s). iOS, just because I'm pretty certain whatever we offer, we can offer it better on the mobile platform as a native, also I can code OBJ-C & design for iPhone.

Web, I'm probably not going to be doing the web-frontend much so I leave it to whoever I deem fit for the web. Whoever this person is, hen will be in charge of both the design as well as the code base for the web front-end. Meaning whatever stack hen choses to work with.

Preferably Bourbon.io with SASS/SCSS and either Ember.js or Batman.js.

<comment><USER3> Verbs and resources ARE REST. By definition.

<comment><USER2> :) I was just being facetious.

<comment><USER4> For the whole response or just that part?

<comment><USER2> Just that part. I feel like people abuse the acronym too much.

I had a company call their api RESTful., it was XML being served in JSON through SOAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I'm looking at ~10,000 users, I will go with Ruby on Rails (ROR) because I have a few years of ROR experience and I can get things done faster. ROR handles many things for you (like security) and there are many gems out there to help you get things done that otherwise would have been complicated (devise for generating users database). When you are done, push it up on heroku and you will have a solid product.

If your site is very real time (chat, real-time data), I'd look into meteor. They are a framework built on top of NodeJS and its built from the ground up to be real time. Like ROR, they do many wonders for you app (security) and has built in user authentication system.

If you are looking to build the site for a learning experience and want to learn how the web works and build everything from the ground up, go with NodeJS. Install packages yourself, tinker around with security, etc. Its a great exercise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your stack should be whatever will allow you to test your assumptions the quickest.

For a lot of cases this will be whatever you are most familiar with. There will be some cases where a piece of tech you haven't used before simply offers enough benefits to make it worth climbing the learning curve. However you want to use the best tool for the job, for startups the job isn't to build an amazing, scalable and maintainable code base, or even a great product. It's to find a "repeatable and scalable business model" before you run out of money.

This means speed is of the essence, choose what ever technology you can launch your MVP and test your assumptions with in the shortest possible time. At the same time balancing medium term scalability and maintainability concerns.

</comment><comment><USER7> Scala with Akka, and RabbitMQ for scaling across multiple servers. This would be a bit more work up front than a web framework like Django but it would be more maintainable in the long run due to the fact that Akka encourages writing simple loosely coupled code that does one thing (Single Responsibility Principle). Even more important is to get the dev team working using TDD (Test First Development) and provide a proper vision to guide them. Things like Uncle Bob's Clean Code book, and the raw, original Agile manifesto before it got sucked into the Scrum and XP methodology machine. Even though the code is more functional than object-oriented, the SOLID principles still mostly apply.

Some alternate choices that could be OK if you can find at least one good developer to lead the team, are Clojure, or Erlang/Elixir. With the Erlang virtual machine, RabbitMQ would not be necessary, although I like it because it gives you a lot of points where you can measure/monitor the internals of your application. I would also seriously look at adding Apache Camel to the mix even though Akka does not require Camel to integrate actors. But Camel is a thin layer that makes it easier to reconfigure integration points.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is no way to answer this question without knowing more about what that product is.

If that product can be well-served with a customized wordpress template (or similar off-the-shelf CMS), that's probably what you should do.

If that website requires process tons of data in real-time, that pushes you to a different stack.

If that website requires storing and processing tons of data, but processing can be batched, different stack.

If that site is an interactive game, different stack.

Do you need to stream data? video? process large uploads? Should it work offline? Should it work on multiple devices that are offline at the same time and sync up later? Is it mainly mobile? Is it a big enterprise-y application? Mainly consumed by teenagers on mobile phones? Serving a population in rural Brazil / India / Bangladesh?

You could go on like this for quite some time.

I certainly have my preferences, like any dev, but the needs of the project are going to dictate what's needed.

<comment><USER9> No one like a non answer even though it is the right answer. That being said it is true that many will waste countless hours when a CMS is perfectly viable and could significantly reduce headache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sinatra for the API, Redis & PostgreSQL for data, Ember & SCSS on the front- end.

Redis should be able to handle the most common data for 10k users, with PG for the less commonly requested data.

No particular reason for choosing Ember other than I like it better than Angular/Knockout/Backbone, and same for SCSS as opposed to LESS/Stylus.

I feel like Node would be overkill in this scenario, Sinatra is so much faster to develop with (for me personally, I'm sure there are plenty of Noders out there who could swing it with their eyes closed).

PostgreSQL + Redis + Ember + SCSS + Sinatra; I call it "The PRESS Stack"

</comment><comment><USER11> Honestly? For a large project probably PHP/jQuery/Bootstrap, iOS, MySQL on AWS.

For something smaller and quick I'd try to use Parse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Front-end: Angular sounds like an awesome thing to bandwagon on to, but I've personally had more exprience with jQuery+KnockoutJS, and that's worked fine for me. But I hear that Angular has way better structure, once you get over the learning curve

Middle: I really like Flask -- essentially django lite, and very very quick to get to writing real code, plugins are pretty good also. BUT, if you want to handle websockets and stuff, you need to get something like tornado/gevent/etc involved... I liked the quickness with which I could work with websockets with NodeJS, but callback hell is no fun. Revel (Go) might be good, if you want to reap some speed benefits.

Database: I would suggest Postgres. Solid as a rock, has new features (9.3 is pretty spiffy). If you're going the non-relational route, I really like RethinkDB -- fantastic management console, really modern functionality (dumping is super easy, etc).

</comment><comment><USER13> Based on your requirement I would think about 2 options for backend (REST service):

1\. if I am a single backend developer for some period of time or have 1-2 people around I would go with what I am most familiar with and what can suit: in my case it is Scala, Playframework, MongoDb or Postgres.

2\. If I start with a team to hire and work on the whole stack I would start with something that is both rather hot/new to attract smart developers and keep them motivated and stable, with good stable choice of libraries to focus on the product not fixing issues in half-baked libraries. I believe Node.js MEAN stack or Rails would be my choice.

For front-end I would go with Javascript/Angular.js

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm old, but just starting the design phase of a new app for my company.

Frontend will be angular and bootstrap as it's working really well for other projects.

On the backend java, spring and jetty will be used. Netty will also be in there as we have non http networking needs as well.

PostgreSQL is our standby database, but we're also evaluating Cassandra and rethinkdb for our non-relational needs.

Why Java? We have in house java knowledge and deployment is much easier than Python, ruby and node.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nobody proposing very specific technologies here seems to be taking into consideration the cost of the resources who have competence with those technologies, and how easily these resources can be located and recruited.

A good CTO will _always_ look at non-technical considerations of this nature because, in most cases, your ability to deliver is not just about the technologies you select.

</comment><comment><USER16> We recently had this exercise at our mobile start up when we were deciding on stack. Like any other start-up we wanted to be nimble and fast, so we decided to use ready products with our start up. We chose Parse BaaS for our data, Dotcloud PaaS (PHP, CSS, HTML) for hosting. So the only major things that we needed to worry about involved HTML, Javascript, PHP, Objective-C.

</comment><comment><USER17> .NET and Node with Azure/Azure Mobile Services and progressively enhanced Backbone on the front-end of the website.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anything Cognitect - just because I've never met a Relevancer I didn't like.

</comment><comment><USER19> If I have to start a new project, the initial code and MVP would be rails, just to show off, but since I've been dealing with Erlang, I must say that baby is too sexy to say no. It would be between Earlang or either Go...

</comment><comment><USER20> Honestly, whatever the best tools for the job are.

My preference? Rails, Ember, Mongo, Haml/Sass

</comment><comment><USER21> Front-End: I'm used to jQuery + Jade, but possibly something fancier like angular/ember, or even meteor.

Middle: Node.js + Express (unless using meteor). If not node, then Sinatra.

Database: MongoDB, Redis if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER22> Angular for the front end work. Backend API built out in either Python with a minimal framework like flask or perhaps Go if I had the luxury of time to learn as I built it. Postgres for the DB.

</comment><comment><USER23> roostrap. A java and Spring based framework that runs beautifully on AppEngine along with Twitter Bootstrap 3 for the UI.

Ticks the following with ease.

[x] UI [x] API/Code generation [x] Scalability [x] Libraries and support [x] Free to host MVP

Project: [http://bhagyas.github.io/roostrap](http://bhagyas.github.io/roostrap) Sample/Demo : [http://roostrap.appspot.com/](http://roostrap.appspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Front-end: Angular, as it is great. Back-end: Rails, its what im familiar with. Db: postgresql Bootstrap 3.0 -This is a great and well designed library. sass

</comment><comment><USER25> Rails or Django on Heroku, most likely.

The frameworks (try to) help you keep from botching things so bad it's painful later, and heroku just because I hate server config.

</comment><comment><USER26> Scala/Play for any heavy lifting. Node for the web layer and Angular/SASS for the front end with grunt to handle node and front end builds.

</comment><comment><USER27> We used plain old Python/Flask with raw SQL, PostgreSQL, and HTML/JS/CSS on our webapp and I would do it again.

</comment><comment><USER28> Go, MongoDB, AngularJS.

Go for being modern, fast and fun. MongoDB or similar for its scalability and being quite good for modern applications. Plus I'm just tired of SQL DBs.

AngularJS for a rich client experience, plus I look at REST servers as serving any type of client and the thick web client is but one such potential user of the service. Expanding to mobile or god-knows-what is easier.

I have more details about architecture I'd prefer and could write a lot on that, but don't want to.

<comment><USER29> Pick MongoDB only if you know it well or it exactly fits your use case. Otherwise just use a relational DB since it will suffice, more flexible, more scalable, and higher performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Rails, devise, postgres, heroku, scss, backbone.js or angular.js. Stripe, Google Analytics, Xero, Dashing.

</comment><comment><USER31> AngularJS, SCSS, Python or PHP, Memcache, SQL database (MongoDB where needed).

</comment><comment><USER32> Flask, Mongo, Redis, Heroku

</comment><comment><USER33> Django, Nginx, mysql</comment>


Show HN: Share many links? We made it better with highlights - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kifi.com/do-you-share-lots-of-links-we-do-too-and-we-made-it-better/ <comment><USER2> Software engineer at Kifi here. We've been working on this product for a year now, and are all very excited about how it's taking shape. We're of course extremely interested in any feedback you may have!

[http://www.kifi.com](http://www.kifi.com)

and of course: [http://www.42go.com/join_us.html](http://www.42go.com/join_us.html) (FortyTwo is the company behind Kifi)

<comment><USER3> Sorry to use HN for this, but how in the hell does one delete a "Keep"? I've been trying for 5 minutes to delete the samples and can't figure it out.

<comment><USER2> On [http://www.kifi.com](http://www.kifi.com) you can select a Keep an on the right hand side you'll see a button to "Unkeep". [http://bit.ly/1kNnQpg](http://bit.ly/1kNnQpg)

Also if you are on a page that you want to unkeep, you can click to unkeep from the keeper tile.

You can also unkeep when you are on the page, by clicking on the keeper in the lower right hand corner.

<comment><USER3> Got it, thanks! I was confused as you couldn't unkeep after selecting a bunch of keeps at once. No one should ever design UX around me, as I'm weird, but something to perhaps keep in mind.

<comment><USER2> No you're right, that was a bit confusing - it should be fixed now :) Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really nice service, I'd like to use it. The support page says a few things about importing, but what about exporting? Not sure whether I overlooked it or not.

<comment><USER5> Yep, we're building that, it will be out with the site redesign coming out in the next couple weeks. Until then, if you'd like an export, contact support and we can send you a standard bookmark export file.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I'll keep an eye on it :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Think about it. In order to share a webpage, you've got to open an email, copy and paste the link, and write out some sort of explanation to the recipient letting them know what the link is about. And if you want to point them to a specific section of the article or page you have to copy and paste those sections."

Does anybody share links via email any more? Wouldn't 99.9% of the population use facebook, twitter or pintrest?

<comment><USER7> Using Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest usually means you are broadcasting content you want everyone to see and like.

When you want a more contextual and relevant conversation with an individual or group, or you want to annotate with highlights on a page, we believe Kifi is a great solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just signed up to this and tested it out, and I have to say, it's awesome.

I've used Dragdis for some of my bookmarking before, but the sharing ability coupled with the independent conversations linked to what I share makes this really neat.

I like the fact that it's linked to email because I see myself using this with colleagues or a few select friends at a time, not sharing blindly.

What are the limits for email sends on this? Is it managed by my provider?

<comment><USER5> (I work on Kifi)

Right now the email limits are very loose. Legitimate usage won't run into anything. We're sending the emails ourselves, from a custom address for each link. When they reply, you get the reply instantly inside Kifi. When you send a link on Kifi, you'll be able to preview exactly what was emailed.

<comment><USER8> So, right now I have to install the extension in order to use it, correct?

Is there a plan to create an embedded widget that I can use to share content without the full functionality of the extension?

I can see immediate applications as regards Pinterest, by the way. I just tested it out, and if you share a pin using Pinterest's system you get in your email a red button that you need to click to see whatever was shared.

Using your system, I can share whatever the hell I want and don't have to redirect people to Pinterest in order to see it. Plus, I can have a private email conversation with people about what I sent them without being redirected. Nice. There are a lot of content partner applications as well; I think you guys are on to something with this.

<comment><USER5> Yep, right now the extension is required. We're talking about future plans for people who like some of our features, but not everything — we want to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Our primary goal is to enable people to keep and collaborate content easier than before. In addition to discussions, we have a full-text search engine that incorporates into Google results, showing links you've kept if they're relevant to your search. From that standpoint, we're a "much better bookmarking platform". Over time, we'll be helping people discover interesting content, too.

This email-a-page feature is actually just our newest, and isn't the core of the product. However, it looks like many people really like this, stand alone. I'll bring this up with product, and see if we can come to something that will meet your needs. In a perfect world, would you like a more minimalistic extension that JUST did this, a bookmarklet, or something else? We want to be the easiest way to share and collaborate about content with others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I looked at the website but it's not clear to me what this looks like to the Kifi-non-user I email something to. I don't feel like signing up just to find that out.

Does it look like the picture on the right? If so, it'd be clearer if the Gmail framing were present there too. Does it just become a link to a kifi page?

<comment><USER7> Great point! Here is what the full email looks like [http://bit.ly/1l8XJOi](http://bit.ly/1l8XJOi)

And yes! If you send this to a Kifi-non user they will get the experience that you see in the picture on the right. The image, title, and source directly to the 3rd party site you shared - not to Kifi.com.

<comment><USER9> Awesome! Thanks for sharing this with me. Looks great.

<comment><USER7> Glad you like it! Thanks for replying and let us know what your friends think about it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very much what i've been looking/waiting for but how does it handle things when i share the link to a mailing list like a yahoo group for example?

<comment><USER11> As long as firstname.lastname@example.com is allowed to post to that group, it will work.</comment></comment>


A very weird/creepy interactive girl, but great rendering - <AUTHOR> http://www.cubo.cc/creepygirl/ <comment><USER2> It'd be great if she had a chameleon tongue that, at intervals, would whip out and try and catch the mouse pointer.

<comment><USER3> Somehow, no idea why, that seems really appropriate.

<comment><USER4> It is because of the lack of fluid motion between eye and neck transitions, she moves like a Chameleon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not a rendering, it's just some texture scaling and layering...

It's fairly well done, but it's made of photographs, not 3D. I'd expect a site-full of geeks to be able to tell... You can easily spot that the distortion of the hair and stuff involves scaling of textures, not rendering.

<comment><USER6> OP said "rendering", not "3D rendering".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is at least three years old: <http://www.whatheck.com/2008/04/creepy- girl.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> Uncanny how if you thrash the mouse, her eyes thrash at inhuman speed. Some kind of damping would help it be more natural?

</comment><comment><USER9> That's not just the uncanny valley, that's the uncanny canyon. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>

</comment><comment><USER10> The bloodshot red eyes really aren't helping. Amazing though.

</comment><comment><USER11> How was the rendering done? I guess that some facial features are made from blended texture mapped polygons (the hair and the neck). The face and the eyes might require some other tricks.

What amazes me is how efficient the rendering is. It uses flash for rendering and is running fast on my netbook. If this could be taken into 3D games, it would make the game characters much more realistic/scary.

<comment><USER12> Why this can't be used in games? First, you can't change the viewing angle because it's not full 3D. Secondly, the lighting is static (from photograph setting) and thus the shading remains static all the time. In addition, facial animations will be limited.

I have to say though that bad looking characters in games are usually fault of the artist, not the underlying technology.

<comment><USER13> There could be places you could use it (think of the unit portraits in RTS games like Starcraft).

Not to say it would be worth the effort, but there are niche use-cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The site <http://www.motionportrait.com/e/> seems to be the author it's down too. This I think is another implementation though <http://labs.mppark.jp/hige/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of that one Microsoft search site that was interactive with some lady at a desk, used to launch Bing or something. From 2008 I believe. it was <http://ms> (name of chick).com I remember.

Also, there were other swfs like this from way back on ol feanor's directory: <http://www.feanor.net/z0r/shock/>

<comment><USER16> msdewey.com, best search engine ever :-)

<comment><USER15> Someone get this man a medal. And apparently this was back in 2006, which is a little scary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This technology actually sees some use on Japanese TV <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDvIJtqQWwk#t=131s> I instantly thought of this when I saw the characteristic head-swaying

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of this version from years ago.

<http://b.bngi-channel.jp/psp-haruhi/sos_pop03.html>

<comment><USER19> Wow, that's actually so much more comfortable to look at than the original. Because this ones a cartoon, it doesn't fall into the uncanny valley.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seemed for a bit as if clicking around the mouth would make her smile ... or smile more often. Still hard to tell!

</comment><comment><USER20> Very creepy indeed.

<http://i55.tinypic.com/1zfo0fb.png>

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, very creepy. And here eyes are bloodshot. She looks like she's been toke'n some virtual weed.

<comment><USER22> Why do you think they call it a "token ring" network?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> She'd be far less creepy if her gaze remained stable while she moves her head.

</comment><comment><USER24> She looks stoned out of her mind!

</comment><comment><USER25> jump out from no where... scared the shit out of me... but really, pretty cool work...

</comment><comment><USER26> eyes all red....that girl is high !

</comment><comment><USER27> this should replace xeyes...

</comment><comment><USER28> OK, that was creepy...</comment>


Dart: Build HTML5 Apps Fast - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/dart-build-html5-apps-fast/240005631

<comment><USER2> This article is rubbish. I don't see how these examples will help me build HTML5 apps. Pardon the rage but I'm also tired of class-oriented language showing me a Point or Dog class as an example when I never encounter them in real-world code. This article is just a list of features that might or might not help you with building HTML5 apps and has no compelling argument. Also this: "The Dart project ships a lightweight editor". Since when is Eclipse lightweight ?

Instead, show me how you actually build an HTML5 app with dart. How do you layer your code to keep things manageable. Are you using MVC or something else. Is dart interoperable with existing libraries like Backbone, Modernizr or Google Closure or do I have to port these things. How do you actually support modern HTML features like CSS3 transitions, canvas, websockets, postMessage, localStorage, ... Am I back to "compile time" flow breaks or are you taking care of that in the background. These are the questions that if answered properly would have made a nice article.

<comment><USER3> Good summary, made me skip.

<comment><USER4> How can you tell if it's a good summary if you didn't read the article?</comment></comment></comment>


Did I just get hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://superuser.com/questions/1034137/did-i-just-get-hacked <comment><USER2> I'm currently configuring a personal Debian server and found out that I made all the mistakes the OP did : ssh is still on port 22, authentication with a password instead of keys, weak password for root, short user names (2 letters) etc ...

This is discouraging.</comment>


US officials: Kaspersky "Slingshot" report burned anti-terror operation - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/03/kaspersky-slingshot-report-apparently-exposed-us-military-cyber-ops/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what's particularly newsworthy about this - an anti-malware tool/outfit found malware. It's not as though Kaspersky could, or arguably should, know the source was the US military. It'd probably be a bigger story if Kaspersky was overlooking government sanctioned malware.

<comment><USER3> Yup, it sounds like Kaspersky was doing their job. It seems incredibly disingenuous to say that they endangered people by doing so.

<comment><USER4> > It seems incredibly disingenuous to say that they endangered people by doing > so.

Not really, it could be a fact based on knowledge. Although I'd agree it would be disingenuous to say it was intentional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The final paragraph of the article is weird.

 _" Kaspersky's exposure of the program will likely not win the company any points in its battle to get off a US federal government blacklist."_

Is that just rhetorical flourish? Or is Kaspersky actually going to be penalized for doing their jobs? Is there an implication that other security companies have been "recruited" by the government to turn a blind eye towards government-sponsored malware?

<comment><USER6> Six months ago I speculated ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15242367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15242367)) that Kaspersky was banned from US Govt use due to not playing ball with a political entity in the government. Now we know that simply by pursuing their normal business objectives, Kaspersky has hurt the government's counterterrorism efforts.

This could've happened by accident, but the way they were treated over several years by the intelligence services, military and Congress to me says Government knew this would eventually happen and tried (and failed) to get them to not flag this kind of malware. It's possible that by not agreeing to curtail research of certain malware, they were punished by having their contracts taken away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes you wonder if American antivirus companies are instructed not to reveal American military malware.

To guard against that you could theoretically scan using a wide range of international antivirus companies. But the problem with that is that the militaries are using the antivirus software themselves as an attack vector. Kaspersky was recently caught stealing American government secrets via its software. It's impossible to know who to trust.

<comment><USER8> The amercian government secrets Kapsersky was "stealing" turned out to be US sponsored malware. Which is exactly what a good anti-virus is supposed to do. But if you want something more NSA friendly, you can always use McAffee who announced a few years ago that they will happily turn a blind eye on NSA&FBI malware.

<comment><USER7> You don't know that. Nobody knows anything because this is all spy vs spy stuff so it's impossible to know what news reports are real or propaganda or disinformation. But fwiw:

\- WSJ: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-stole-nsa- data-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-stole-nsa-data-on-u-s- cyber-defense-1507222108)

\- NYT: Israelis hacked into Kapersky and caught them using their software as "a sort of Google search for sensitive information" [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/kaspersky- lab-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/kaspersky-lab-israel- russia-hacking.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story- heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that as the military themselves said, this is just their "cost of doing business".

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks This highlights the need for independent security organizations located in mutually unfriendly political jurisdictions.

</comment><comment><USER10> To use an analogy, this would be like blaming the developer of an antibiotic or anticholinergic for rendering your weaponized anthrax or nerve gas ineffective. Cyberweapons can easily fall into the hands of criminals (especially given their low-bar for deployment) and the marginal cost of using them is almost nothing. For an example, see WannaCry, which used the EternalBlue vector also developed by the US.

</comment><comment><USER11> When the FSB exposes NSA/CIA hacking, that's an NSA/CIA failure. Their (very technically difficult) job includes not allowing enemy agencies to expose their activities.

Cold War 2.0 rages on.

<comment><USER12> Kaspersky isn't even necessarily an FSB arm - they're just (seemingly) the most competent non-Five Eyes-compliant security company right now.

<comment><USER13> I mean they don't even try to hide that its FSB. Eugene Kaspersky literally went to KGB school that trains KGB officers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> An argument could be made that the US government should try to make nice with Kaspersky, instead of provoking them to be an enemy. Then maybe this would have played out differently, with a bit more sensitivity to US concerns.

<comment><USER15> I think the military simply needs to do a better job. After all plenty of covert operations have been exposed in the pass due to innocent civilian observation, thus the military does a better job of hiding things.

And indeed, if kaspersky could find something than various sophisticated adversaries certainly could too. So why bother to court that one private company?

<comment><USER14> Well I wasn't saying court them... there is a spectrum of ways to treat companies. Courting is at the far end, right now the US is at the opposite end of that spectrum with respect to its treatment of Kaspersky. Being more toward the middle of the spectrum would also be a possibility.

[Edit: ok, "make nice" (my words) does sound like courting, but I was thinking of it in a more neutral way.]

That being said, I really don't know whether Kaspersky deserves the treatment it's gotten... not having followed their behavior closely. It very well may, for all I know. But it's possible there is blowback from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good work by Kaspersky. This doesn't look good for their competitors. Either they didn't know about the attacks, or they permitted it to happen.

</comment><comment><USER17> If it is your goal to prevent your enemies from learning about your activities, and then someone stumbles upon those activities in the course of their normal work, but doesn't realize who is responsible for said activities, then your huffing and puffing about your absolute dire need to operate in secrecy is revealed to all as pure theater when you fill in those very details yourself to reporters you summoned.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have zero pity for the US anti-terror operation. Digital weapons are dangerous and must be rendered ineffective through security patches, no matter who made them and who used them.

<comment><USER17> But the last guys that made big bad weapons with unforeseen consequences weren't as smart as we are. Trust us, this time is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The US security establishment unfortunately is an unreliable source for such claims. For example, off the top of my head consider the original stories about Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, the people imprisoned in Guantanamo (who originally were identified as all serious threats, but turned out to be mostly otherwise), testimony on NSA activities, exaggerations of the consequences of Snowden's leaks (IIRC), and many more. They seem to claim what suits them until proven otherwise, and like to attack leakers and journalism.

That's a problem in a democracy, where we need to vote on these issues, because we rarely have other sources for secret information. But trusting an inaccurate source because you lack another, while tempting, is flawed reasoning. Better to say, 'I don't know'.

I wonder if some parts of the security establishment are more reliable than others. There are some individuals I trust more than others, at least.

<comment><USER17> I agree. You can't maintain credibility by telling everyone that you are the only legal source of information about a subject, even if that subject is yourself. Because in situations like these, the facts of the case look indistinguishable from an operation that was revealed by an unofficial, unauthorized source.

That tells me that there are in fact times they would like the general public to know about their operations, and separately, those unauthorized sources seem to match the official ones a lot of the time. With that established, we can move on to trying to discern their motivations when they decide it is important we know the details of their operations, and why they would seemingly go against the very advice that they so rabidly bark to everyone else.</comment></comment>