The Market Opportunity to Undercut Sonos - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2010/03/the-market-opportunity-to-undercut-sonos.html

<comment><USER2> What's the distinction between what you're proposing and Squeezebox (formerly slimp3)?

<http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/>

Their low-end product is a table radio at $150 street price.

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought - also note that the software powering the Squeezebox server AND the devices is open source! In fact they just flipped the player software (written in LUA) over to BSD, here's the commit:

[http://svn.slimdevices.com/jive?view=revision&revision=8...](http://svn.slimdevices.com/jive?view=revision&revision=8348)

You can download nightly builds here: <http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=7.5>

Backend is perl, and is GPL: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_Server>

The player software is written in LUA and runs well on OSX and OK on Linux (I am running the nightlies).

I have found the hardware players to be quite nice, and with iPeng on my iPhone I can control everything from anywhere: [http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-the-iphone-skin-for- squeez...](http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ipeng-the-iphone-skin-for- squeezecenter/)

<comment><USER2> I've also had an excellent experience with 3 versions of their hardware (slimp3, squeezebox2, radio).

Another pointer with a HN resonance is (note the beer bottle):

[http://gigaom.com/2006/09/07/portrait-of-a-startup-slim- devi...](http://gigaom.com/2006/09/07/portrait-of-a-startup-slim-devices/)

Of course they sold to Logitech some time ago:

<http://gigaom.com/2006/10/18/slim-devices/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a great opportunity:

1) There are tools to let you stream to airport extremes, e.g. Airfoil.

2) Competing on price is fail. Competing on a fundamental COST differential is sometimes win, assuming the incumbents aren't willing to lower prices to force you out. There is a difference. You surely won't be buying DACs and such cheaper than Sonos, so your only way to be cheaper is to accept lower margins. You could maybe carve out a tiny niche at a lower price such that it is not worth it for Sonos to lower their own prices (for fear of lowering their total profits), but I know I would rather be Sonos selling at $800 than a competitor selling a smaller volume at $250.

3) A $50 BOM is probably a $250 product. Also, in hardware, going from $50 BOM to $150 BOM (or, going to ipod-level volumes) lets you buy MUCH better DACs and such. Plus, industrial design.

The only opportunity I see is for an "embeddable sonos standard" where you actually eliminate the device entirely, and are built into AVR or TV. However, that is a lot easier for a big CES vendor than a startup. Or, something Sonos themselves could do.

Competing just on price (within a fairly narrow window, like less than 10x) seems like a fail. $100 BOM turns into a $200-300 product. If a $300 product came out, Sonos could easily come out with a feature-reduced version of their product.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bet is that you could build it for $40, sell it for $80, and capture enough volume to make it meaningful.

This could be a dumb bet. I'm treading on thin ice because I don't have experience with selling hardware. It seems like your biggest disagreement is the sale price needed to be profitable. So let's see -- if you make $40 on each purchase and want to make $4M per year you'd need to sell 100,000 units per year.

That's probably about what Sonos is doing now, six years into the company.

So it's a huge challenge, yes.

(Am I missing anything else?)

<comment><USER4> The product would need to be sold in retail to actually reach most customers, so your $40 BOM is going to be a $100 product (with your per unit costs like assembly, test, packaging, shippng) and then a $200+ product at retail.

The challenge is the squeeze from airfoil, roll your own, or just moving your ipod into the other room on the low end, and Sonos on the high end.

Sonos can always drop their pricing and produce a Sonos Lite for $250 if you become a threat.

Unless you come up with a fundamentally cheaper way to do something, it's hard to justify doing a startup. A fundamentally cheaper way in this case is selling Airfoil -- their marginal cost is $0. They can be more profitable selling Airfoil for $10 than you would be selling AlmostSonosLite for $200.

The other problem is user adoption and marketing -- the set of potential users for this is pretty small, relative to the overall consumer electronics market. Convincing people they actually need this is going to be very hard. The main use cases I see for wireless speakers are wireless rears in an HT system to avoid running cable, and temporary setups in large spaces (like at a party outdoors).

The core Sonos use case, listening to a central repository of music or HT audio in multiple rooms, seems rather specialized, and a lot of the potential customers would value the higher audio quality and polish of the sonos system enough to pay for it. If you're not going to put good speakers + amp in each room, having a good quality portable system (like a dock for an ipod) seems like the standard solution.

The biggest indicator that this is a soft market is that Sonos hasn't sold a huge volume in 6 years, even adjusting huge volume for their pricing being kind of high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Contact me offline if you want to pursue this (BTW, I've been using Airfoil for years).

I've got a good background in hardware AND home automation/home audio gear. In the 90's I had an online and brick/mortar business that dabbled in home theater (among other things).</comment>


Viruses Have No Color - <AUTHOR> http://www.coffeeshopphysics.com/articles/2013-02/01_viruses_have_no_color/ <comment><USER2> I'm a biologist and I use viruses (adenovirus to be specific) to insert genes into mammalian cells in vitro. I do this to study the function of said genes. To make a usable stock of virus, I infect a small number of viruses into particular cell line, wherein the viruses replicate and give me an 'amplified' stock.

When I harvest the amplified viruses, I use a centrifuge to separate them from the rest of the cellular crud. The viruses separate into a distinct, narrow, blue-white band in the centrifuge tube. It seems that concentrated virus has a distinct color, despite being made up of colorless viral particles.

How can this be so?

<comment><USER3> The title is a little confusing, but the article just describes how _one virus particle_ can't have any visible color because it's too small. A substance made of lots of virus particles is like a substance made of lots of atoms; of course it's possible for that to have a color.

<comment><USER4> I think that was alluded to with the example of the staples in the microwave. It's reasonable to extrapolate that the same principle applies to viruses in aggregate when dealing with visible light.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a great article. Thanks for posting.</comment>


Android is from Mars, iPhone is from Venus - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawntosimplicity.com/2010/01/19/android-is-from-mars-iphone-is-from-venus/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the author realizes he's parroting Verizon marketing. Since Verizon realized the iPhone was more aesthetically polished, they decided to make the Droid's rough edges part of the brand.

They portrayed the Droid as androgynous and the iPhone feminine, and by extension, effeminate. Therefor, if you buy an iPhone, you're a sissy.

It was genius marketing, but let's not think its reflective of reality. 99% of the time chunky hard plastic with sharp corners is a sign of poor design rather than virulent masculinity.

<comment><USER3> Genius marketing, but risky, because there is a fine line between marketing the device as a tool for men, and a toy for boys. Once it's seen as a geeky toy - the GI-Joe action figure boy-doll phone - most normal (non-geek) people won't touch it, even though geeks will love it.

<comment><USER2> I agree, and you also risk alienating 50% of the population by tacking a big "no girls allowed" sign on the Android clubhouse.

Also, yes, while Android and Droid are not synonymous, I think for most American consumers the brands share quite a bit of overlap.

<comment><USER4> Actually the risk is a "geeks only" sign.

<comment><USER2> I think you're right, but I think it's both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it ironic that his blog is called "drawn to simplicity."

</comment><comment><USER6> "For starters, the iPhone is flat-out sexier than the Android. Let's face it, everything about the iPhone is polished, sleek, and ultra modern."

And eventually you get sick of the ultra-sleekness. Also, you look around you and you notice that everybody has the same ultra-sleek phone, and you feel like a drone.

<comment><USER7> If everyone else having one bothers you then maybe you'd be interested in a $5000 Vertu. For me it's a tool with 100,000 interchangeable bits.</comment></comment>


Apple Yanks The Cord On GV Mobile, other Google Voice integration apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/27/apple-yanks-the-cord-on-gv-mobile-is-it-trying-to-kill-google-voice-on-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> In other news, Google yanks Apple iPhone from search results, claiming the built in Safari browser "duplicates functionality" of the Google search engine.

</comment><comment><USER3> This makes me want to return the 3G I bought on Saturday, cancel my new AT&T contract and buy a G1. Between this and their growing shitty service (3g reception in SF is for ass), are they now _actively_ trying to turn customers away?

<comment><USER4> Wait for the G2 ("myTouch 3G"), out in a few days. I have been using Android installed onto my AT&T Tilt, and it's amazingly good. It compares well to the iPhone experience; email, chat, Google Voice, and the browser all work very well. The added benefit is that there is no restriction on what apps can do; if you want an app that runs in the background and sucks your battery dry, that's totally up to you.

(Also interesting; the touchscreen works horribly under the Windows Mobile install that the Tilt ships with, but it works great under Android. I can actually use the software keyboard with 100% accuracy, and I don't need to use the stylus. Amazing.)

Anyway, I am on AT&T, but I am jumping ship to whichever US carrier gets the HTC Hero. (Hopefully Sprint, as they will also be releasing their 4G network soon.)

<comment><USER5> The better touchscreen may actually just be a better corrective dictionary... It seems reasonable to me that some Googler got to write a mapreduce for thumb-type correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what happens when you let a platform control the software that's released on it. Absolutely crazy, short-sighted anti-competitive practices.

I don't mind Apple having an official AppStore where only the products they sanction show up, but at least provide a method for installing applications outside of the app store.

I'm on my second iPhone (first 2g, now 3gs), and there's a lot to like about it. Specifically, if it weren't for the iPhone, I don't think we'd have an Android or a Palm Pre right now. The carriers exerted so much control over their phones that nothing innovative could really happen.

However, now that Apple has opened up the playing field, I hope Android or Pre wins the market.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple should be careful here. This could be one of those game changer moments. The vast majority of the previous removals/denials were legitimate but Apple has already allowed VOIP applications and already allowed apps that duplicate functionality of the Dialer. There is no possible way Apple can walk this one back and make it look like anything other than anti-competitive behavior. Apple has enough leverage with carriers that they can dictate the rules now. What's AT&T going to do? Stop selling iPhones? Apple needs to flex their muscle on this.

<comment><USER8> _"Apple has enough leverage with carriers that they can dictate the rules now. What's AT &T going to do? Stop selling iPhones?"_

Agreed - the article insinuates that AT&T had the app blocked, I wholeheartedly disagree. Apple has been dictating terms to AT&T since the beginning of their deal. In addition, I'm using AT&T w/ a BB in California and the GVoice app is working perfectly fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"Yet another possibility is that Google's official application is imminent, and the GV Mobile app was pulled to reduce confusion once that's out (though this seems less likely)."_

My initial thought was, OK, Google is probably prepping their own native app for release...likely or not, I hope its the case. I use the blackberry app almost exclusively for all my calls now and dont see going back to my BB's dialer.

Apple's recent actions at the app store are disconcerting to say the least...What about the skype app? Is that going to be (or has it been) yanked too?

I suppose its another reason to be happy I stuck with my BB ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Makes it see like Apple wants to make Jail-breaking your phone more appetizing then it already was...

*<http://appulo.us/appdb/> \- if your tired of apps being pulled that you really liked....

<comment><USER10> Pointing to a piracy site on a site chock-full of entrepreneurs? Really? And you got upmodded. WTF.

<comment><USER11> Piracy ain't always equal to bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have GV Movile on my iPodTouch and I use it for a lot of my calls. AT&T shouldn't be able to make Apple remove apps solely because of feature redundancy on one of the two platforms.

What about the skype app(s)?

<comment><USER13> the ipod touch has a mic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everyone always muses over whether Apple would be worse than Microsoft if they controlled the platform. I suppose now you can see your answer.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm hoping this means that Apple is planning on adding native Google Voice functionality in the 3.1 release.

A man can dream, right?

</comment><comment><USER16> As an iPhone developer, this makes me really pissed. I was working on a (non- GV) app I was modeling off of GV mobile, and quite frankly I'm scared to submit it now. WTF Apple. The really scary thing is these rumors I keep hearing about the secret ninja app reviewers that call you instead of giving you something in writing because they're afraid it will get press.

<comment><USER17> At least if they call your GV number you can easily record and publish the call online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anybody know what the rules are regarding ad-hoc distribution?

I believe that you can install your apps without going through the App Store if you have a developer license (either for debugging or through the ad-hoc process), right? So, now, could there be a network of people with developer licenses to deliver some open-source apps in that manner?

</comment><comment><USER19> I just sort of realized how sick apple makes me after I "synced" and deleted a bunch of my apps off my iPhone from iTunes. Stuff like this doesn't help. I don't really think I'll be staying with them after the contact.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's great news. The beginning of the end of the App store.</comment>


'Inevitable', Eh? - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/12/03/inevitable

<comment><USER2> Weakening a little is completely different as to what reporting was coming out about the iphone 4 (full bars to 0) when it first came out.

It should be understandable why this happens with phones without an external antenna, and this kind of attitude is what puts me off of daringfireball.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please edit the title to make it informative.

</comment><comment><USER4> Summary: HTC refers to body induced handset signal loss as _inevitable_ with respect to their own device after previously calling it shoddy design in the iPhone 4.

<comment><USER5> I think they were taking issue with making a handle out of an aerial (or vice versa), no-one was denying basic physics and the only people I see confusing them appear to be intentionally doing so to muddy the water.

Off-topic but while at Daring Fireball I notice he hasn't updated his story about Android customer loyalty to reflect the real figures:

<http://blog.yafla.com/Lazy_Surveys_Enable_A_Lazy_Press/>

That's becoming something of a pattern for him, as he jumps on every negative Android story that comes up even if they later turn out to be misunderstandings.</comment></comment>


Complex automation won't make fleshbags obsolete - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/25/a_big_fat_cup_of_automation_fail/ <comment><AUTHOR> Seems like all the automation, in fact computer systems in general, works because humans are still smarter than the automation and systems.</comment>


Version control for Photoshop and Sketch files - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/trunk-4 <comment><AUTHOR> Trunk is re-inventing the way designers collaborate by automating Git branching, pull requests and merging for design files. Trunk currently supports both Sketch and Photoshop files.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best Linux Laptop in 2014? - <AUTHOR>

Is there anyone who's worth giving a try against the Mac onslaught and mindshare? I believe that Apple's hardware is simply superb. Is there any vendor that I can spend ~ USD 600 on a laptop and get a decent value for money? (Had pretty bad experience with Asus, Sony Vaio :-( ) <comment><USER2> I replaced my Macbook Pro with a System 76 Pangolin, which has since been replaced by the Gazelle but is roughly in your price range ($750 or so).

Pros:

Nice CPU stats - I could mine dogecoin effectively on the Pangolin, not so much on the (albeit 5 year old) MBP. It seems to be roughly equivalent to an AWS m3.xlarge instance. Trackpad is flush with the case, which prevents food crumbs & dirt from getting stuck in it like it did with the MBP. Pretty rugged construction. Haven't had any reliability issues and I've had it a year or so. Good display. Has a numeric keypad and the cursor navigation keys, unlike the Mac. Linux "just works", since Ubuntu comes pre-installed with auto updates. Often a lot easier to get many UNIX programming packages working on Ubuntu/apt-get than on MacPorts, and you don't face deployment issues because of the OS being different from other UNIX systems

Cons:

Wireless sucks - it won't work with 5GHz at all and often has reception issues with 2.4GHz in my crowded apartment complex. Keyboard and trackpad takes some getting used to, because of the keypad your hands are over the left side a lot. I miss the MagSafe power adaptor, I used to trip over my cord all the time. Battery life isn't as good as on the Macs. Can't do iOS development, and can't use Mac-only software like many games.

On the whole I'd say the Mac had slightly better quality, but the Pangolin (at half the price) gave better value. If you're on a budget I'd definitely give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot speak to the $600 range, but I have had good luck with a Lenovo x201 – I have been using one exclusively with linux for the past ~4 years. Things pretty much worked right out of the box (using both Ubuntu and Arch Linux).

<comment><USER4> I second that. I had troubles when running Linux on a HP and on a Toshiba laptop, but on a Lenovo one things have been working fine for 2+ years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is not a high-end notebook construction-wise, but I have had very good luck with a Toshiba S70 with a full-hd screen. $499 on woot and it has a 17.3" screen, i7, a second sata bay and 2 open DIMM sockets. Battery life is good and it uses a common power adapter. It has reasonable internal speakers (better than average, not a gamer machine). Mint 17 runs like a clock and all hardware is supported by a standard install.

I wouldn't want to drop it though...

</comment><comment><USER6> Love my ThinkPad W530. It's not in your price range though.

I'd see if one of the ThinkPads is in your range, and look the model number up, so you can see what experiences others have had with that model.

I know on my W530, everything works. But it's $$$$$$.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have an Asus ux31a zenbook prime (i5/4g/256g), running Ubuntu 13.10 currently, everything works fine except for the ambient light sensor. I had to have the keyboard fixed under warranty about 4 months in, otherwise it has been great. You can pick up a refurbished model in your price range.

</comment><comment><USER8> I bought my wife an ASUS laptop earlier this year for less than that. She gave it back to me, largely because of not liking windows 8.1.

Good physical construction, but the touchpad is quite oversensitive. I use it only occasionally, but it seems pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER9> recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260733)

I'm a Thinkpad fan myself (T61/X230), although that comment by 'zanny isn't wrong. If you're going to go the Thinkpad route, make sure you read reviews of the screen options for the specific model you're interested in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> which Asus did you have a bad experience with?

(I'm currently using Fedora20 on a 2009 MacBookPro amd ot feels like a real kludge.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was ASUS U56E-BAL7 (i5/8g/750g). The Wireless card is weird. Every time I install Ubuntu/Linux on it, it works for a while and then it stops working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some more update on my struggle to fix the wireless card on asus: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/524088/is-this-a-bad- wireless...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/524088/is-this-a-bad-wireless- card)</comment></comment></comment>


Angular Architecture Patterns and Best Practices (That Help to Scale) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/angular/angular-architecture-patterns-and-best-practices-that-help-to-scale-507m <comment><USER2> The article seems to be offline for me, but after googling the title I could find it on the angular-academy site[0].

[0] [https://angular-academy.com/angular-architecture-best- practi...](https://angular-academy.com/angular-architecture-best-practices)</comment>


We Need to Retire the Phrase 'I Need a Vacation from My Vacation' - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/i-need-a-vacation-from-my-vacation-phrase <comment><USER2> That is why I always try to pad my vacation length to get a couple "down days" while on vacation, and then a couple when I get home (especially if there was a significant time change like US <-> UK).</comment>


BlackBerry outage causes 40% decrease in traffic accidents - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/blackberry-cuts-made-roads-safer-police-say?pageCount=0

<comment><USER2> Interesting. This ought to be really easy to correlate with market penetration data/cellular base station data.</comment>


Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52752172 <comment><USER2> Before say anything too stupid, let me say that I'm very worried about the short to middle term economic impact of Coronavirus. However, I live in Japan having moved here in 2007 -- nearly a decade after the bubble burst. We've had pretty much flat growth the entire time. It's often held up as the example of "You don't want your economy to do that!" I can get a 25 year closed mortgage with not rate changes at something like 1.6% and I've been able to do that for the last 10 years! We've been basically deflationary the whole time I've been here.

And it's not that bad. In fact, there are a fair number of good things about it. The crazy inflation in real estate prices in other places in the world worried me _far_ more than the completely stagnant growth of Japan. The fact that farmers are getting squeezed with real prices for their good not changing for decades while distributors pull in every increasing profits is... unnerving to say the least. While the last 30 years in the west has mostly been economic party time, there have also been a lot of casualties. A U shape or even L shape economy may not actually be the worst thing in the world (although there will obviously be a lot of people who will be hurt by it).

Just my uneducated impression. Likely I'm totally wrong, but I can't shake the feeling that we're missing something fundamental about how a healthy economy should operate.

<comment><USER3> You won't get a mortgage at any interest rate if you don't have a job. Nations will be forced to spend far less on health services and infrastructure, and that will have a direct impact on mortality rates and quality of life. A depression economy will be responsible for death, misery, untreated mental illness, child poverty, increased inequality, and other unpleasantries.</comment></comment>


Entertaining legal opinions - <AUTHOR> http://googlescholar.blogspot.com/2010/07/entertaining-legal-opinions.html

<comment><USER2> My personal favorite is Kirchoff v. Flynn, both for the hilarious recitation of the facts and the thoughtful discussion which follows: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1026610171128348...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10266101711283481060)

Incidentally, I've become helplessly dependent on Google Scholar for looking up legal opinions. Despite the very simple interface and relative lack of advanced functionality, it just works so speedily and consistently. San Francisco has a fantastic free law library where I can use Lexis & Westlaw, but the experience is unpleasant, to say the least.

One nitpick I do have with Scholar, though, is that there's no easy way to correct errors - for example, there's a case I've looked at several times where the first party's name is misspelled in the title, so if I'm inspired to look it up again for some reason my first attempt fails until I remember to use multiple search terms.

</comment><comment><USER3> It isnt that entertaining if at all. The Times of London has a much better article on interesting and really entertaining judgements.</comment>


Use Bootstrap, Nobody will Notice - <AUTHOR> http://strapfork.com/ <comment><USER2> Title is wrong. Now you cannot use the advertised product. This is fairly deceptive. My first thought was "Oh great, people are starting to spam HN."

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry about the misunderstanding. About the spam... I'm the creator of the app and don't know the person who submitted. I'm not running an affiliate program either.

I thank the submitter, tho :)

<comment><USER4> Aside, could you answer this: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21436380/how-to-create- pa...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21436380/how-to-create-partial- circle-arcs) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would it be unfair to describe this as a GUI for the LESS variables associated with Bootstrap? Nice and simple idea, but if the cost really is $50, that might be a little steep - any designer worth their pencil should be able to work with a big list of variables just as easily (if not more easily) than a point-and-click interface.

Obviously just conjecture at the moment, though...

<comment><USER6> A designer worth their pencil might need longer than worth 50$ to get to an initial mix of good look.

If it's somehow wysiwyg it might also speed up things a bit.

<comment><USER5> True, but you're going to need that designer to work on that initial mix whether it's with this software or something they're much more experienced with (probably Adobe CS) - unless the UI for this is radically better than the mockup tools that pro designers use, the marginal utility of outputting LESS variables probably won't add value, and might make things more complicated by introducing an additional tool into the pipeline.

<comment><USER3> I have different use cases in mind:

\- A designer that don't know/don't want to write css. She can keep her design process and use Strapfork to create the css components.

\- A designer that likes the workflow that Strapfork proposes (UI is part of the brand -> design components | design UI with mockups. Mix both in directly inHTML and have the final design in the browser, no need of photoshop).

\- A backender that just want to customise bootstrap easy and fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do products that don't actually exist hit the front page?

<comment><USER8> On the off-chance this is a serious question;

As a developer, I want to know if my ideas are going to fly, so when a post for a non-existent product hits HN front page I know there's at least some interest.

As a prospective user I want a chance to influence development. When a post hits front-page I get a chance to check out the idea before it is set in stone.

As a HN reader I want to see what others are thinking about and doing. It's inspiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested in this you might also want to consider [http://pixelkit.com/](http://pixelkit.com/)

<comment><USER10> Beautiful UI!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it really worth $50 to avoid assholes here to criticize your site because they use bootstrap?

<comment><USER12> I guess it depends on your needs. I think $50 is reasonable for the advantage of appearing unique and/or simulating the presence of an actual designer within your team.

<comment><USER13> Among the sites the average person uses every day, are the odds really that high that they'll encounter more than one with bootstrap?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the issue with people noticing that you use bootstrap?

<comment><USER15> When I see a website using default bootstrap styles I think it's fleeting and not worth of my time and money.

<comment><USER16> When I see a website using default bootstrap styles, I give the service/product a test run and see why the reason I came to the site originally was a viable thing for me to continue. If not I don't waste anymore time or money.

But hey, you're choice to spend your time and money on anything you want, and if something is usable but not exactly custom pretty, your choice to not use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With the number of free "theme" sites around, I think $50 is a bit steep. However, the idea is awesome and I'd love to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this differ from Jetstrap? [0]

[0] [https://jetstrap.com/](https://jetstrap.com/)

<comment><USER3> Jetstrap is much more like a layout/markup creator, with drag and drop interface. Strapfork is a customiser for the Bootstrap components, meaning that you can add styles to them. It generates css and documentation, but you still have to write your markup.

I should make that more easy to understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually wouldn't mind a 'bookmarklet' type app that lets you change bootstrap's less variables and updates your own actual pages in real time. Similar to what FontFriend or SubtlePatterns have. It'd be useful for coming up with an initial theme before tweaking it later.

<comment><USER20> Our desktop app Pinegrow Web Designer ([http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com)) lets you open a webpage and play with its layout and styling, among other things (main use is to compose the layout like you would in Jetstrap for example and then to also style the page). At the moment Less variables work only in site stylesheet. Giving you the access to Less variables for Bootstrap is in development pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Was hoping to actually see how this works - is there any way to get into the private beta?

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks interesting, I wanted to put my email in but then got a popup for captcha which was almost impossible to get right, I gave up after the 4th time. Good luck though.

<comment><USER3> Ouch, that's bad news... I used the dafult setup for tinyletter. Didn't expect that to happen. Anywaay, you can send me an email to jackjackbach at gmail, if you are still interested.

Thanks you for reporting :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks interesting. Hope to get early access. Disagree with not wanting to let on that you use the greatest and most popular front-end framework in the world. Be proud!

</comment><comment><USER23> "Style your very own User Interface with Strapfork's easy-to-use Visual Editor."

Definitely interested in exploring. Is there a demo/video to check out ?

</comment><comment><USER24> This could easily just be a Javascrip app, built in a weekend, using a more complete toolset of CSS generators and button creators, for free.

</comment><comment><USER25> intrigued to see what you come up with..as we speak I am building a visual UI builder for our dev product and bootstrap is the basis...your screenshots look pretty so far :)

</comment><comment><USER26> How much will it cost?

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm not sure yet. I was thinking about something around $50. Maybe more maybe less. What do you think?

<comment><USER27> $50 is reasonable only in relation to how awesome the app is. Only have the fluff on your page to determine that now.

That said, I am interested in learning more and signed up. I don't always have access to a "designer" and this seems like a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks fantastic, hope to see this soon</comment>


Write powerful web applications in Qt/C++ - <AUTHOR> http://gitorious.org/fastcgiqt/fastcgiqt/trees/master

<comment><USER2> Next time try to post the link to the project home page instead: <http://gitorious.org/fastcgiqt/>

Clicking the link and landing inside a repository browser is confusing, disorienting and definitely not helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> The desktop has been lacking the powerful omnipresence, the web offers. I think we should try to port the web applications down to the desktop. With the processing power of the desktop, and the scalability ideas of the web, the merger would be a really interesting one. Sun's Sun Ray was a step in this direction: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray>

</comment><comment><USER4> I kind of like the idea of using C++ for web apps. I even wrote a web app that was pure C++ in 1995/1996 before anyone really knew what web apps were. :)

But this sort of thing:

out << "<h1>" << tr("hello, world") << "</h1>";

isn't really scalable... no templates at all? There's a reason why most web apps are written in scripting languages. I think if you want a high performance service, why not write an apache module or something like G-WAN, which lets you write servlet apps in C...

<comment><USER5> Mind you that you can write your own template engine

<comment><USER6> And Google even has one, <http://code.google.com/p/google-ctemplate/>, which does just that (I realize that this was not an option for the OP in 95 ;) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suppose this is a much better reason to have a C++ web framework than some of the others I've seen. It would probably make it pretty easy to port a Qt desktop app to the web.

<comment><USER8> Yes, provided that you were strict on separating logic from display in your app, and that the logic part of the code accounts for enough work to justify the effort...

Otherwise, good luck trying to port your QWidget-based app to something that even remotely resembles a web app.

<comment><USER9> However, a QML-based app might not be _too_ dificult to port. It would be pretty interesting if somebody were to write something so that Qt Quick/QML based applications could run in a browser - perhaps a canvas frontend or soemthing.

<comment><USER8> As someone who is writting a Qt/QML desktop app, I can only vouch for that :)

<comment><USER9> I recently ported my Qt desktop app to use QML, where possible (I still use C++ and QWidgets for some things, or to extend QML, eg drag and drop support) and I think it was a very worthwhile task. QML is really pleasant to work with and much more productive than C++/Qt or HTML+CSS+JS.

Actually, IMHO, QML is what HTML should have been - easy and clear, yet also flexible and powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> is there a readme that has intro, summarizes current features, why we need another cgi lib and the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Is My Senior Software Salary Low in Seattle? - <AUTHOR> I've been reading bunch of articles on HN. Especially, this https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft and I just had sad feeling that I'm being under-compensated:
Base: $145K RSU: $100K (split over four years) Signing-Bonus: $40K (split over two years) Software Engineer Experience: 8+ years (this is my 9th year since I graduated with BSc in CS)
Company was a Seattle startup and IPO'ed about 8 years ago (keeping it vague so if company reads this cannot pinpoint who I am) <comment><USER2> Well I'm in Miami with 10 years of professional experience after BS in CS and I'm making 130k. So from my perspective no; however, I'm sure some disagree.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my iPhone App for Traveling with Friends - <AUTHOR>

I've created an app called TripSplit that's meant to solve a simple problem: keeping track of who owes who money when you're traveling with your friends. As a frequent traveler, I've experienced this problem first hand many times. The design of this app is based off that experience, and I've used development versions on trips to great success. Now I'd like to see what other people think.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tripsplit/id349850196?mt=8
Here are some promo codes that will let you download it for free (I'll add more if needed):

  X66YTMF339JM
  PM7L4K4JRWRN
  APAEA4RNPL9P
  FKF4NTL6XAKA
  LMJY67XK4XRT
  HPFFWXFNR777
  9XX3J7THTXMR
  94LJK3TM7JAH
  R3RRHFPMRNYL
  WM77KAWN4TJA
 Below are a few ideas planned for future releases, but please feel free to suggest others. - Detect proper currency based on location
- Record Location data for Events - Allow a picture or video to be attached to an Event - Allow pictures to be attached to Travelers - Address Book integration - Automatically perform currency conversions - Export Trip data via email <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tripsplit/id349850196?mt=8></comment>


Lego Turing Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/21/turing_machine_incarnated_with_lego/

<comment><USER2> Here's a moving head Lego Turing machine: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYw2ewoO6c4>

I'd be more interested in a Lego Turing machine that isn't using a microprocessor to run the motors and sensors. I believe I saw a link to such once, but can't find it now.</comment>


Importance of Having Emergency Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.401ksource.info/blog/624326-the-crucial-importance-of-having-emergency-fund/ These days, anyone can't make sure that they won't lose their work, obtain robbed, or perhaps have to change their roof? Because of this, it's so vital that you have an emergency fund put aside. That is funds you may get your hands on instantly. <comment><USER2> _These days, anyone can't make sure that they won't lose their work, obtain robbed, or perhaps have to change their roof?_

Obtain robbed? Seriously?</comment>


Best of Vim Tips - <AUTHOR> http://rayninfo.co.uk/vimtips.html

<comment><USER3> Man, that's intimidating. I found 2 new tricks on the top screen and I still don't want to scroll through the rest.

<comment><USER4> My exact thoughts. I think I am going to print it out and study it for a while. I am sure there are tons of productivity things I can learn..and things I should probably already know.

<comment><USER5> For intimidation, try browsing all the help pages of vim! :-)

I've concluded that vim has every feature I can imagine - and then some. But I can't appreciate it until I've imagined it. The problem is that it is impossible to _find_ that feature in the help, since I don't know its name. Google helps here, by searching for a description of it in my own words.

Every tutorial I've ever seen on vim is mind-bogglingly boring. I've learnt the most by just hearing one tip at a time - and searching for one when I need it.

Some people can absorb massive quantities of raw information, but I need to integrate new information into my other knowledge in order to be able to use it. Then there's practicing the habit of using it, and learning in what situations it is appropriate. For a tool, it's not knowledge _per se_ , but the application of knowledge that is useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh man, the very first one was something I'd been wishing for!

I need it for appending to text I've searched for, especially if I need to do it a few times. e.g. for adding an argument to a few method calls. I usually go `n` (repeat the search), then `e` (go to the end).

That's enough. One tip at a time maxes out my absorption rate.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the best list of vim tips online I believe, and the author is always updating it. Last update: 22-DEC-09

One of my favorites that has saved me a ton of time more than once:

" rename a string with an incrementing number

:let i=10 | 'a,'bg/Abc/s/yy/\=i/ |let i=i+1 # convert yy to 10,11,12 etc

<comment><USER6> "This is the best list of vim tips online "

When does a collection of items go from a list of tips to a lengthy compendium of details?

Like others, I started looking over the page and got discouraged; there's too damn much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So after griping that the page is a case of data overload, I though there should be another way to get this much information parceled out in more digestible portions.

In order to help myself (and others so interested) to improve my German vocabulary I set up a Twitter account that shoots off random German - <USER2> word definitions: @TeachMeGerman. Every hour you can learn a new word (modulo the data set size, though the repetition is actually handy).

I bet such a thing, if it does not already exist, would be good way to pick up new vim tips.

Thoughts?

Volunteers? :)

<comment><USER7> I tried registering @vimtips, but turns out it's already been done: <http://twitter.com/vimtips> Hasn't tweeted in while though.

<comment><USER8> Oops, that's me. I'll get that app tweeting again. Sorry.

<comment><USER6> Sweet. I don't knok if this is a practical approach for you, but for @TeachMeGerman I set up a large text file (one I had created for a "flash card" app) and a small Ruby script to grab a random entry and post it to Twitter, driven via cron.

This way I didn't have to remember to do anything. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article suffers from a bad case of TL;DR. There's great information buried in there, but it's presentation is poor. Typography should be taught in primary school to stave this off.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it's better to just know how/why all these tricks and tips work instead of having a huge list that's hard to read. It's much easier to apply that way.

</comment><comment><USER11> A lot of these (at least in the beginning) appear to be regexp tricks rather than vim ones

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok, now I'm totally sure I will never in my life try Vim - I'm not Rainman.

</comment><comment><USER13> hey guys this page is fantastic and the author responds in a very friendly way. You don't have to read it in one shot. Its more like a cheat sheet, than an extensive manual.

I love it as it is.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I'd like to second that- it's a great reference list that gave me exactly what I needed already quite a few times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is pure gold. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER16> What does this do?

'a,'bg/fred/s/dick/joe/igc : VERY USEFUL

<comment><USER17> between (book)mark a and b find fred then search the line and replace any occurrence of dick with joe with a confirmation. there a couple of modifiers on there I don't know but I think that's pretty much it.</comment></comment>


Five common mistakes with React Hooks - <AUTHOR> https://www.lorenzweiss.de/common_mistakes_react_hooks/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found this online and thought it was a good summary!</comment>


The Doers Club - <AUTHOR> http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10707 <comment><AUTHOR> _"... In 2002, I built my first of several windmills to provide my family with electricity and irrigation. This was in Malawi, where a terrible drought and famine had destroyed our maize crops and killed thousands of people. The famine also forced me to drop out of secondary school because my father could no longer afford my fees. Determined to continue my education, I began visiting a local library, funded by the Americans, where I quickly fell in love with science. As the hunger clawed its way across our country, the library was where I escaped and became lost in discussions of electromagnetism, simple motors and electricity — my favorite topic ..."_

William has a blog here ~ <http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/williamkamkwamba/> & twit account ~ <http://twitter.com/wkamkwamba> and a couple of Ted talks here ~ [http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/moving_wi...](http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/moving_windmills_and_paying_it_forward)

</comment><comment><USER2> I donated $250 US through PayPal.

Donations Coordinator Contact Information Moving Windmills Project, inc. email@example.com 2127905914

<http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/>

Edit: I encourage you to do the same.

<comment><USER3> These are the people OLPC was supposed to empower. The man has his own electric source, I wanna get him a laptop full of ebooks.

<comment><USER4> I concur, but it isn't going to do much good if he doesn't read English.

<comment><USER3> I very much doubt that he is _unable_ to learn to read English :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> William said he couldn't speak English. If anybody is interested in teaching others like him English while learning their language and culture, drop by one of the many language-exchange websites. Here is one for Malawi:

[http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Search.asp?selX3=95&se...](http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Search.asp?selX3=95&selX6=1&selCountry=134)

</comment><comment><USER5> William's talk at TED - [http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_t...](http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This guy put me to shame.

I got an Arduino Duemilanove, the internet as my library, and lot of electronics to scavenge. I only produced something as insignificant as a working CD-ROM motor and some LEDs light.

He produced a windmill power generator!

<comment><USER7> It's not often I get to say something positive, so I'm jumping on the chance here. I'm going to guess that you live in a first-world nation where plentiful electricity is an afterthought. A working CD-ROM motor is awesome! I presume that this is a brushless design? And the feeling of control you get from lighting those LEDs is awesome, too!

William Kamkwambe did not put you to shame. With any luck, he will have inspired you! You and I live in an environment saturated with information and technology. Maybe you'll be inspired to accept a slightly less extravagant lifestyle in exchange for some charitable donations? Maybe you'll be inspired to use your skills to do some work overseas where it could alleviate real suffering?

The beauty of this story is that it makes both the plight of many people and the prospect of manifold solutions seem more real. What you do or do not do with William's contribution will be your source of pride or shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy is a true hacker.

<comment><USER9> He is, you're right. And I'm sure that it's individuals making incremental improvements in life quality that moves a place forward. But ... (and I'm trying to say this right) ... some part of me feels really depressed that a Malawi kid building a scrapyard generator is hailed as being so inspirational.

Is our view of Africa _so_ pessimistic, then, _so_ jaded, that what appears to be routine on Scrapheap Challenge is an inspirational act, just because it happened in Africa? Does it mean we normally operate on the underlying assumption that it is _preposterous_ for the average African kid to work to improve his life, but perfectly normal for a kid in Texas or Utrecht to do so?

Does it mean we view the normal functioning of the good human spirit, of generosity and inventiveness, as somehow nonexistent in typical African children and therefore worthy of immense celebration in this one child? Do these views permeate our governments? Do we send aid not as the favor a good- natured neighbor would perform in times of duress, but rather as we might offer a beer to a man we have beggared, knowing his condition to be permanent but wishing nonetheless to lend him a moment's joy in a world of suffering?

Maybe our celebration of this kid (and it's true, what he did is awesome and helps his village and family out tremendously) is just about being genuinely warmed by the overcoming of a supremely difficult environment. Or maybe celebrating a minor victory assuages our guilt, pervasive hopelessness, and ultimate indifference regarding Africa.

I'm honestly not certain - but every time I see one of these stories, this same feeling of uneasiness comes up, and I'm not sure which way is the truth. Probably, like everything in the world, it's some of each.

<comment><USER3> _Does it mean we normally operate on the underlying assumption that it is preposterous for the average African kid to work to improve his life, but perfectly normal for a kid in Texas or Utrecht to do so?_

Don't over think it.

American culture is littered with celebrations of child academic/scientific achievements; spelling bees, science competitions, mathematics Olympiads, appearances in late-night shows, "Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader", etc. Science and Mathematics magazines are full of the achievements of the youth, and the greatest of them all, SAT scores and college-admission epeens! Graduate students of every field live under the shadow of some little cockblock child prodigy or another; how many times have you been told "Gauss did this when he was 9", etc.

Every once in a while, we're allowed to have one such story .. from Africa. Fair enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much easier it would have been if there were a book with step-by-step instructions. How many more people would have been able to create something like that.

If you really want to help, how about taking some useful knowledge that you have, make a step-by-step instruction on how to achieve that, and publish this somewhere? This is more useful than donating $250 to some black hole.

<comment><USER11> And if you really _really_ want to help, you can catch the next plane with some supplies, and if you really _really really_ want to help you can move there for a few years and work for free - but meanwhile I think a $250 donation is not to be sniffed at!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Impressive.

The world needs more people like this guy.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sometimes I feel like living in a modern society that we have little need to "hack" solutions cause its far cheaper to buy a current solution. And regardless it appears that all low hanging fruit are taken and it appears that it takes more climbing to reach even a little achievement.

I love what he is doing, regardless.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seriously, some body should nominate him to Nobel Prize <http://nobelprize.org/contact/faq/index.html#nominate>

</comment><comment><USER15> At first glance I was expecting an article about <http://www.kpcb.com/team/doerr></comment>


Show HN: Humancrypto – obviously up-to-date Python crypto library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iffy/humancrypto#tldr <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea. I appreciate the alternate perspective.

I want to note that modern cryptography tools are not going to expire quickly, thus you might want to reconsider the "out of date" indicator.</comment>


Visual UI Regression Testing with WebAssembly and the Kantu Selenium IDE - <AUTHOR> https://a9t9.com/kantu/docs/visual-ui-testing <comment><USER2> A nice way to do a quick visual regression test on the command line:

        cmp -s <( cutycapt devserver.com/somepage  ) \
               <( cutycapt liveserver.com/somepage )

At Product Chart, we use this in a small bash script that reads a config file with a list of pages and tests them all for regressions:

[https://www.productchart.com/blog/2015-07-19-urldiff](https://www.productchart.com/blog/2015-07-19-urldiff)

<comment><USER3> Nice link, this is an interesting blog post. But note that Kantu does much more than just binary screenshot comparisons:

Kantu allows you to select specific areas of the website to test, and - especially important - the image comparison is error-tolerant. That means that (smaller) changes in image and font rendering do _not_ break the test. So a test case created on the Mac works on Linux and Windows as well. In this respect it is similar to Sikuli ([http://www.sikuli.org/](http://www.sikuli.org/) ) - but all inside a Chrome and Firefox browser extension, with no external installations required.

Edit: More info about the choice of WASM for image search here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17574862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17574862)</comment></comment>


My 7drl submission (a wilderness survival game) in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://humbit.com/rogue/

<comment><USER2> I only played it a bit, but it seems interesting enough that I may return to it this weekend. Even with the "hint" in the other comment about the movement, it was still confusing the first time i saw it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, cool. I'd appreciate any feedback. Almost everyone has commented (mostly negatively) on the movement, but I do think people get it after a few seconds. If I _hadn't_ used this movement, you would always know which way is which easily. Hard to simulate getting lost/going in circles in the freezing cold without that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great movement mechanic, don't think I've ever seen that in a rl before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's funny because all my friends said it was extremely jarring and they didn't like it. The reason it's there is to make it easier to disorient yourself and get lost.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's it like being a "digital nomad"? - <AUTHOR> Is it all it's cracked up to be? Seems to be the dream career for millenials...I'm wondering if its overhyped. <comment><USER2> I can't imagine many people are 'nomadic' as the amount of hassle with moving location every few months would likely eat into productivity. Time zones are also a large factor as you might end up sleeping during the day and working at night (Bangkok has a 11-hour time difference with EST).

What a lot of people are doing is simply taking advantage of the visa free status a western passport provides to remotely work in a low-cost location. Usually Central or South America or South East Asia.

I honestly think that a more worthwhile pursuit is become a remote worker in a cheaper area of your own country or a country you can easily locate _legally_.

For example contracting for London-based companies whilst living in rural NI or North East England.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out the forums on Nomad List ([https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/)) for real inside discussions.

The mainstream media and social networks, especially Instagram persist cliche images like drinking a coconut with a laptop on the beach in Costa Rica living on the cheap. Reality might not be that far off, but there are tons of unique challenges with travel and taxes and no one is really doing that every day.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is and it isn't.

I moved around a little and ended up settling in a rural area of my own country. It's where I want to be.

And I think that's what being a digital nomad is about: living where you want to live.

Traveling is fun, but for me, and probably most people, it gets old and I just want to be home. I can fulfill my mind's "travel requirements" with a trip or two per year, as it turns out. No need to live on the road.

I'm more productive with a steady routine, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a medium length piece on this you might be interested in.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/46o7ws/my_exp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/46o7ws/my_experience_working_remotely_and_traveling_in/)

The part that might be most relevant to your question:

"There's a decent chance you'll get sick and tired of the negative aspects of being a DN sooner than you'd think. Before you've ever been a DN it's easy to understand what the good parts of being a DN will be: who the heck doesn't want to know what it's like to live in Scandinavia or Japan or on a beach in the Caribbean or to learn to dance salsa in Colombia! But you really can't understand the negative social or psychological aspects of long-term nomadism without having experienced them. I hope this part of my post doesn't get me downvotes because this place [reddit.com/r/digitalnomads] seems to only really want to talk about feel-good stuff, but there really are drawbacks to being a DN.

In the initial months of being a DN I was meeting new people, learning the basics of a new language, dating some interesting people that seemed very different than any I'd met before and had accents like James Bond girls, etc. It was amazing. But what you start to get worn down by is the fact that every month, or every three months, or whatever your period ends up being, you've got to start over socially or romantically or whatever and climb that mountain all over again. Moving to a new place and knowing no one can be exhilarating, but it's also a lot of work and takes a bit of psychological fortitude to push yourself to go out there to an event or a bar or anything and go up to new people with the possibility of rejection. Even if you're a natural born extrovert (I'm pretty extroverted actually) it just gets tiring to have to keep losing people when you leave and restart. Even if you don't consciously change, you may find that one year in you can't force yourself to be as enthusiastic when meeting new people because in the back of your mind you're subconsciously aware that you probably won't have them in your life in 6 months. If you're dating while traveling it can be a whole 'nother level, for a multitude of reasons. You start being intimate with someone then a week later you're lying in bed alone again and asking yourself if you'd been better off just staying there. You'd certainly have been less lonely. You may find yourself starting to treat people as replaceable even if you are a more traditional person before you became a DN.

Something I noticed after some time was that in some ways you could tell who'd been a traveler or a DN for a long, long time. The people I met who'd been doing it for years didn't have as much enthusiasm when meeting new people. Ask yourself what kind of person is able to stay emotionally healthy when they're not maintaing any long-term friendships or relationships for years and years at a time - only making surface level friends that they throw out every few months. That person is either very introverted / self-reliant emotionally and friendship-wise or they're crazy (the exception is a DN who has travels with someone else or goes back and forth between places they already have friends or loved ones). There's a joke that goes around in traveling circles (didn't invent it myself): "what do you call a 5-year nomad? a sociopath." Hopefully I don't ruffle the feathers of any 5-year DN readers here, I'll be the first to admit that towards the end of my DN-hood I was seeing some of these changes in myself. I'm not saying that long-term DNs are all emotionally unhealthy or crazy heartless bastards, but I am saying that it's a struggle that you may not think about before you've experienced it. And it's the main reason I think so many people eventually stop and settle somewhere. I think there are definitely people who can stay emotionally healthy, who can keep the twinkle in their eye, but I'm just saying not everyone can.

Which leads to me my last point - I did drop out of the DN rat race. I got some useful data for my life about what cultures and languages I'd like to learn about and engage with more in my future. I have a short list of 2-3 places I'd go if I ever decide to leave where I currently am. And now that I've seen a lot I know exactly why I love the place that I'm living (and also what it lacks :( wah, wah, wah). There's a handful of places that I lived that I absolutely loved. None of them were places I expected to love. One of them is actually - shame on me - the United States.

If you want to be a digital nomad, I'd suggest having an idea of why you want to, considering what you want to discover or find out while being one, and plan your time around that. You may get tired of the constant travel after a year or two or three, and that's OK. Just keep that in mind when planning so you can accomplish what you want in that timeframe."</comment>


'We are moving into a new, controlled society worse than old totalitarianism' - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/news/466738-zizek-google-internet-censorship/ <comment><USER2> Capitalism is the source of PC culture not leftism.</comment>


Ask HN: How to pick team at my new job? - <AUTHOR> I just accepted a senior / staff level IC role at one of the smaller public tech companies. There are two teams that are interested in me and I can pick between them. I'm meeting with the hiring managers for both and I'm not even entirely sure what to ask them. Any advice? <comment><USER2> You could try a few relevant questions from reverse interview [1] even though you are past interview stage.

[1] [https://github.com/viraptor/reverse- interview](https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I'm meeting with the hiring managers...

1) What are the top 2-3 things we should discuss or that you would most like to learn about me?

2) Challenges: Where is your team struggling?

3) GOALS/VISION: What does success look like?

Any and all info at this stage is relevant.

Broadly, you're looking for clarity/openness/tonality.

Can you live with this guy? Importantly, can you _help_ this guy?

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask if you can sit in (stand in?) on the daily standups (if they have those) for each team before you pick.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea! I think they do them on slack though...but maybe I could read a few days worth to get a feel?

<comment><USER5> Definitely. Look for signs of the standup being a pure status update. That might give you some hints about the type of management.</comment></comment></comment>


The controversial Bubble video has yet more controversy! Stolen! - <AUTHOR> http://www.myplaylist.biz/music/watch-now.php?ref=2920 More controversy the bubble video was remade from the ground up in less than 2 minutes flat! Beat that! Those guys who made version 1.0 and 1.1 are so Web1.0
Lane Hartwell eat your heart out.
The Richter Scales bloggers also eat your heart out. controversial
LOL <comment><AUTHOR> The controversial Bubble video called 1.0 took months to make only to fall foul of controversy and a takedown as Lane Hartwell complained via her attorney that her photo (that she was already paid for) had not been credited. The Richter Scales bloggers then remixed into version web1.1 and this time went to great lengths to credit all the photos and remove that crappy Lane Hartwell photo with all its baggage.

But now to top the lot the new boys on the block have stolen the soundtrack and have recompiled the entire thing, in a web 2.0 application called Myplaylist that took them less than 2 minutes to make 'don't laugh' (you gotta just love Web2.0 gadgets) and are now being sued by every one under the planet for copyleft infringement, plagiarism, blasphemy, and sodomy.</comment>


Silicon Valley's ultimate exit - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A <comment><USER2> This is an important video.

I believe Washington and the Valley are inextricably oppositional. I don't mean because of a Trump presidency. I mean I think in a foundational way Washington is in a zero sum game with the Valley and most of us are loathe to admit it. In 100 years, one has to subsume the other.</comment>


Greylock Invests $2.5 Million in 1000Memories - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/greylock-invests-2-5-million-in-1000memories-tctv

<comment><USER2> Ideas on how it will make money?

<comment><USER3> I guess YC companies have upfront equity.</comment></comment>


The sad fate of The Printed Blog, a hybrid loaded with optimism - <AUTHOR> http://shortformblog.com/tech/the-sad-fate-of-the-printed-blog-an-idea-loaded-with-optimism <comment><USER2> So, this company was one of BusinessWeeks's most promising startups, or something along those lines, last week. I laughed loudly the moment I understood the concept, and just shook my head that _anyone_ could possibly be that big of an idiot. When they went on to explain that the founder was nearly out of money, was losing tens of thousands on every printing, _and_ was planning to expand into other cities at a rapid pace, I knew this one was heading for the dead pool. I didn't realize it would be dead before the issue even left the news stands.

I can't believe anyone would believe "the economy" is responsible for this business failure. Failure is responsible for this failure. A perfect storm of failure.</comment>


Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2015/09/conlang-book/ <comment><USER3> An interesting anecdote is when the producers couldn't contact the language creator and had to make up a line on the spot.

The language creator then back-fitted the made up gibberish into the language.

[http://www.dothraki.com/2012/06/hash-yer-ast- fin/](http://www.dothraki.com/2012/06/hash-yer-ast-fin/)

<comment><USER4> Er, wrong link?

<comment><USER3> Thanks - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish they'd use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

<comment><USER6> By that logic, movies should just use existing props or set designs rather than creating any new artifacts.

Conlanging isn't just gibberish, it's a legitimate artform like anything else.

However, I don't have any issue with using real-world languages to give the desired exotic flair for certain settings. I actually think that was one of the things that was great about, for example, the _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ cartoon, because it took the time to use real Chinese calligraphy as part of the worldbuilding (one of the many flaws with the film adaptation was that it tried to deemphasize the explicitly Chinese influences and ended up with pretty uninspired chicken-scratch fake-ideograms for the writing).

Similarly, the video game _Riven: The Sequel to Myst_ had some cutscenes where the fantasy native population were actually speaking Tok Pisin, which is a creole language from Papua New Guinea. This was only fragmentary, though, and much of the Myst games have a quite well constructed language "D'ni."

<comment><USER7> Can you provide a source for this? I'm very curious, as I grew up speaking Tok Pisin, and played some Riven, and looking up cutscenes online I can't make sense of any of the Rivenese (well, the foreign language bits, I don't know if it's Rivenese or not), at least not in [https://youtu.be/-rjfyfuijrc](https://youtu.be/-rjfyfuijrc) or [https://youtu.be/smOzKs1hauM](https://youtu.be/smOzKs1hauM).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am writing a book that also has its own language called Erksar, the language was once a simple modified caesar crypto where I map vocal with another vocal (as a software engineer, it was pretty easy to create translator for it). "I love you" would become "E rufa tu" (it should be "E rufa tui" but I modified the result and tried to remove unnecessary letter). Now that I lost the original character map, some new words is not generated via the translator, but adapted from existing language. E.g "Versila" is adaptation of "Universe", it also has this unique words connector to refer to: of, on, in, at, from, to, the. E.g "vi Avaga vi Posphora" which means "from Avaga to Posphora", how we know which one is from and which one is to is the grammar rule. From always used at the beginning, it is impossible to say "to Posphora from Avaga" because the grammar rule says so. The language keeps evolving as I continue writing the book.

<comment><USER9> As I understand things (not a linguist), that's not actually a different language than English, though it's a neat exercise. The English language has undergone all sorts of pronunciation shifts over time, it seems like you've imposed a new pronunciation map on an existing language, but the grammatical structure should be preserved.

<comment><USER8> I am not a linguist too, I would really be interested on hearing feedback from a linguist.

Yes, most words were inspired form existing English words. The caesar transformation words were mostly transformed from English words, some using Indonesian, some Arabic, some Latin.

I tried not to create a whole new word, instead the idea of adopting some words from existing language were a common practice on any language that we have now, so I tried to adopt whenever possible and change the pronounciation.

Here's an example of some words that was not adopted from an existing language (or if there was similarities, it wasn't my intention): \- Vragel (soul) \- Serentia (eternal) \- Rus, Erus, Berus (the suffix used to implicate negativity, rus is least negative, erus is mid, berus is the most negative; e.g Vragelberus (to indicate a highly damaged, wicked, dangerous, or corrupted soul).

There's also some rule I used to create/adapt words, words that indicates greatness or something big always ends with the letter "A". E.g. Versila (universe), Elia (god), Alua (sky), Titania (giants), Manara (tower).

Name of places in the book also follows this rule. E.g Riddorana (place of huge waterfall), Zodiarchia (capital city), Altand (small ponds, note it doesn't end with an "A").

This rule allowed me to write poets that easily ended with the letter "A".

It is always interesting to learn words from existing language, then adopt it and learn how to make it fit with the existing language design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For another famous conlang, there's a cool video where Mark Okrand discusses the process of inventing Klingon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Did- eVQDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Did-eVQDc)

(He also briefly talks about the Vulcan language at the beginning.) What's interesting here is that he was brought in for the third Star Trek movie. But there was already a small amount of spoken Klingon in the first movie, created by James Doohan. So Okrand, while he was tasked with actually inventing the language, felt constrained by continuity. He discusses trying to rationalize the preexisting bits and then extend the language coherently.

(And his enthusiasm is really clear. It's fun to listen to someone smart talk about something they're really excited by.)

<comment><USER6> The question of continuity is an interesting one. There was a similar issue for the recent Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, where some of Tolkien's languages are very fragmentary but there was a desire to have more invented speech.

David Salo is a Tolkien scholar who was brought onto the film team to help expand some of Tolkien's conlangs for use in the film. While his work isn't strictly "canonical," he did do a lot of serious work to make his additions fit into what fragments we have. His blog is a good read: [https://midgardsmal.com/](https://midgardsmal.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess this partially explains why making a movie or TV episode can cost millions / hundreds of millions of dollars :-/

Yes, Dothraki being an actual language is probably "better" than Leia speaking gibberish to Jabba, but to me it feels like it's _way_ past the point of diminishing returns.

<comment><USER12> See also the articles about the level of detail in the costumes in Game of Thrones.

There is a _lot_ of attention to detail, probably including a fair bit that doesn't make it on camera, in big budget video/film productions. You could probably cut a lot of it and still have a "pretty good" final product. But being obsessive about detail rather than being content with good enough in all sorts of aspects of production, including the acting, is one of the things that separate competent shows from really good ones.

<comment><USER11> I get that. But spending a lot of money on things that don't make it to the final cut always felt like a waste to me. I'm very _very_ marginally into filmmaking (see bio), and I've always had the impression that costs and time could be cut drastically just with better planning.

I often wonder what would happen if you applied startup principles to making a movie. Thinking in terms of MVP, customer value, efficiency, on top of the artistic vision. This is not just talk, I'm putting my ideas to practice by producing _two_ zero-budget feature films with an extremely lean mentality. Let's see how they turn out :)

<comment><USER13> Reminds me of "The Matrix" with detailed sketches of how exactly should it look.

<comment><USER14> That's called a story board. As far as I'm aware all movies and a fair few TV shows do this because it's cheaper to sketch your idea out before you hire expensive camera crew, lighting, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're ever interested in doing this yourself, I recommend /r/Conlangs at Reddit[1]. Lots of good tips with a friendly community.

1: [[https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/)]

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't read a lot of books with invented languages, but a number that I've seen seem somewhat European. I don't remember very many Sinitic constructed languages. I think that would be nice, but the nature of the language conveys information about the culture and the society that speaks it. a reader would naturally see a Sinitic language and picture a culture that is Sinitic, even if the author did not intend it that way. so the style of the constructed language is restricted to history as it has evolved in our world, and not the fictional world the author builds.

to push even further, how would one imagine an alien language where the organisms do not speak through mouth-like organs? what if they made noises through all their pores in their skin? or non-auditory communication like colour coded messages in their eyes? what if aliens had no mouth or eyes in the first place? or skin? what if aliens spoke in methods that did not require passage of time... i.e. the entire message flash out in a single packet of information? I guess these methods of communication wouldn't allow a story to be told in a way that is familiar to typical human story telling and would thus be uninteresting. but would be nice to imagine regardless.

<comment><USER17> "to push even further, how would one imagine an alien language where the organisms do not speak through mouth-like organs?"

That's the basic plot of Arrival.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is also a 2 hour long podcast interview with this guy: [http://omegataupodcast.net/276-linguistics-conlangers-and- ga...](http://omegataupodcast.net/276-linguistics-conlangers-and-game-of- thrones-dothraki/)

</comment><comment><USER19> See Also: The Expanse's Lang Belta, or "Belter Creole"

Created for the book by Nick Farmer with the authors, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, he then coached the actors and extended the language for the TV show.

Here's something from wired on that creation process: [https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-expanse-belter- language/](https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-expanse-belter-language/)

This is also fun, Belter Creole words and their origins: [http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Belter_Creole_(Books)](http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Belter_Creole_\(Books\))

pretty cool, sa-sa ke?

</comment><comment><USER20> I've found Mark Rosenfelder's books "the language construction kit" and "the advanced LCK" fascinating to see how much thought needs to go into a language. I felt I learnt more about existing languages from those books than actual language books. He deals with everything - from syntax to phonology to script. LoTR was the book that drew me to conlangs in the first place though.

The community is also fascinating, with folks spending passionate decades on making languages - ex: ithkuil.

</comment><comment><USER21> I always theorised there was some extra-auditory or human-inaudible cues in Ubese (Boushh) that filled in the gaps. After all, the only individuals responding directly were non-human: Jabba (who probably could understand, but choose to use C-3PO for egomaniacal and/or ceremonial reasons) and of course old Goldenrod himself.

Hey, my linguistics degree had to be good for something.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article is not about How To Invent a Language, but rather about the book that guy wrote.

</comment><comment><USER23> An analysis about the Star Wars Ubese language : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bnBqXQ1DE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bnBqXQ1DE8)

</comment><comment><USER24> another great read abouth Ikthuil:

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for- be...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beginners)

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for posting</comment>


A few random thoughts on building communities - <AUTHOR> http://kylewritescode.com/post/1065654202/a-few-random-thoughts-on-building-communities <comment><USER3> "Be ready to follow the community; that is, the community might end up in a slightly/vastly different place than you intended. That's okay; embrace it."

Spot on with this one. If you fail to embrace where the community is pulling you, you might miss out on a bigger business opportunity than the one you originally envisioned.

<comment><USER4> Thanks so much. If I had to pick one "top" point, it'd probably be this one.

<comment><USER5> I totally agree. I joined Forrst about a month ago, and this is one of the things I like the most about it. I can see that you are listening to the community. I have seen other examples (no need to get into names) when the people who built the community think that they OWN it. That they can dictate exactly what's gonna happen there and that the community members are in a way puppets in their own great show.

It doesn't work like this, of course. As a community builder you can - <USER2> should - set the rules and the guidelines. You can - and should - be proud of it. But you don't own it. You should leave your members enough space to be themselves, and you should listen to them and be ready to adjust your system if you think their input makes sense.

One other thing I like about Forrst is the diversity. There are experienced people next to high-school students. From many paradigms of web development and design and many corners of the planet. I learned about Forrst from an NYC tweep who asked "how can I get invited?". In the few days when my invitation was pending (and I still didn't know anything about the community), I was afraid that it will turn out to be a Silicon-Valley closed clique. I am very happy to see that I was absolutely wrong!

Keep up the good work, Kyle, you and the others who work on Forrst. Many thanks. Any my excuses for the lengthy reply :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing for sure is that the first people on forrst steered the creation of the posting guidelines tremendously. There was a time when we enthusiastically had posts showing off users workspaces but it started to get old and show that was not the type of content people were coming to see. Very organic growth with the community being in charge of content but you still need someone like Kyle to put his foot down here and there.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have two, possibly three questions:

How many users are there in that "community" right now and how much time do you exactly, roughly, spend on the "community"?

How does the time you spend now compare to the time you spent right at the beginning?

The third optional question is, how did you actually build the community? Did you use those techniques, like, posting through different accounts and starting discussions with your own self and other techniques?

<comment><USER4> > How many users are there in that "community" right now and how much time do > you exactly, roughly, spend on the "community"?

roughly 12,000, with ~5,000 active in the last 30 days (this only counts users whose accounts are more than 30 days old). still very young but seeing very healthy growth.

> How does the time you spend now compare to the time you spent right at the > beginning?

I'd say I actually spend _more_ time on it now (~6 days a week) than I did at the beginning; the site is almost profitable now and is my full time job, vs. the first few months where it was only a side project.

> The third optional question is, how did you actually build the community? > Did you use those techniques, like, posting through different accounts and > starting discussions with your own self and other techniques?

I got friends and colleagues to join up and pestered the heck out of most of them until the site became sticky enough that they came back (to my delight) on their own volition. I only have ever had one account :)

<comment><USER8> _I got friends and colleagues to join up and pestered the heck out of most of them until the site became sticky enough that they came back (to my delight) on their own volition. I only have ever had one account :)_

This sounds like the bowling pin technique (or whatever it's called) that was described on HN a few weeks ago. Where you start with a very small community that will talk to each other anyway and then grow at a trickle to keep the overall velocity up. In this way, your invite only tactic seems to have paid dividends vs having 10,000 people hit on day one and finding nothing going on.

 _Update: Thanks for find it where that "bowling pin" thing was, a clicky link:<http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/> _

<comment><USER4> Haven't heard of that one, I'll check it out though. Catchy name, too. And yes -- I think you're spot on here. It's gotten a lot of flak for being invite only but I really believe in the model (as long as you can stay on the right side of the elitism line).

[edit] Just checked it out; was a post from Chris Dixon. totally spot on. Thank you sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you have plans to open forrst up at any point? I don't have a portfolio and doubt I will have a good one for quite a while (in engineering school) but I really do enjoy looking around the design community at what people are building and how they are doing it.

<comment><USER4> No plans to allow open signups, but the invites are purely meant to help throttle the growth of the userbase & community. If you are a developer and/or designer and are passionate about what you do, no matter how experienced or not, that's more than enough.

<comment><USER10> not sure if this is the right place to ask, but can I get an invite ?

<comment><USER4> Shoot me an email: kyle at forrst dot com.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Indirect Licensing - <AUTHOR> https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/10/01/Indirect-Licensing.html <comment><USER2> I don't think we need a new word for this -- this is just regular proprietary software. Renaming it only confuses matters, and does not eliminate any of the downsides.

</comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h > This is a post in a series, Killjoy, in which I examine unorthodox, > unwelcome solutions to nagging open source problems.

... and as is traditional when offering to solve a problem with open source, the solution is not open source. A distribution of code without an actual license is one that you can't copy in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, this only economically makes sense when the time you spend direct- licensing everyone over email is much less than the money you make from the licenses. Anything under $100 or even $500 is just too cheap to spend time dealing with all your licensees. (e.g. if your desired salary is $100k, could you see yourself write 1000 contracts in a year or is that too much work?) And if the software is that expensive, why not have a professional marketing website instead of a hidden unprofessional LICENSE file in your distribution?</comment>


Stanford team locates nearly all US solar panels in satellite images with ML - <AUTHOR> https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-12/su-stl121718.php <comment><USER2> who has the "truth set" that compares the results ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same question and was happy to see an ML article that actually answered this :)

FTA "The team trained the machine learning program...by providing it about 370,000 images... labelled as either having or not having a solar panel present"

So it seems like the Stanford team that did the work built a large ground truth dataset</comment></comment>