Ask HN: What are your predictions in technology for 2016? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 1) Gigafactory comes on line and the price of batteries hits a new low.

2) The first re-use of a rocket booster to launch a payload into orbit.

3) A commercially exploitable use for Graphene is found.

4) Some genetic condition is completely cured in mice using CRISPr techniques.

5) VR/AR actually ships in underwhelming quantities.

6) Power companies sue to block people from installing whole house batteries.

7) Biometric firearms see widespread adoption.

8) Drone "mortar" shells (single use drone carrying a shrapnel grenade) see use in the battle fields of the middle east.

9) Google has its first wide spread layoff not associated with an acquisition.

10) Nintendo ships a fun to use game console.

<comment><USER3> I was wondering why 8 isn't more wide-spread. We tend to see all these fun applications in tech news but the unfortunately obvious route for UAVs is for war/terror purposes (beyond the predator drones). On a smaller scale, these will be used as a replacement for suicide bombers and even targeted kills.

<comment><USER4> 2016 Anti-drone defenses will boom.

I am surprised too that NATO troops don't use smaller drones to check for snipers and ambushes.

<comment><USER5> I see tiny surveillance drones on every helmet, with HUD controls. Look into every room before entering; see what's coming up around every bend. And land back on the helmet to recharge! Like the SAW, need one on every team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The ad blocking war is going to go hot.

1) Ad blocker usage doubles on the desktop in Western Europe and the US by the end of the year.

2) Websites locking out users of ad blockers becomes routine, rather than exceptional.

3) There will be at least one successful legislative attempt to outlaw ad blocking, in Europe.

4) Long shot: Apple ships a minor (+0.1) update to iOS with ad blocking enabled by default. (Blackberry might do the same, but it would not be as consequential as Apple doing it.)

Bookmark so you can all laugh at how wrong I was!

<comment><USER7> As an addendum to this, things caught in the cross-fire will be hurt.

1) Analytics will move back to the server, either with proxies providing log processing or new tools to provide log processing.

2) Google Analytics will react to this by providing/supporting plug-ins for most major CMS and web app software for server-side reporting

<comment><USER8> Google will buy a hot server side analytics software providing ease of installation on most of the web servers.

<comment><USER9> New Relic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1) Super bleeding edge technologies like Virtual reality / augmented reality doesn't take off or become popular, still viewed as 'super high tech'

2) The majority of the population still does not know / appreciate what it takes to make a website

3) Computer science grads are pissed because they can't find jobs despite constantly reading news about how there is a shortage of programmer jobs

4) Native iOS / Android is still dominant, Javascript hybrid apps are only used by technically advanced companies

5) JavaScript loses popularity, MEAN stack loses popularity but alternatives aren't appearing, just more criticism of the javascript frameworks

<comment><USER11> > 5) JavaScript loses popularity, MEAN stack loses popularity but alternatives > aren't appearing, just more criticism of the javascript frameworks

I think, there will be alternatives. WebAssembly will let developers write client-side frameworks in C/C++, C#, Go, etc. Very likely, JS will start losing its popularity as the selling point "works both on client and server" will work for any language. However, I don't believe we can say goodbye to JS. At least, not in 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My 2016 JavaScript predictions:

1) React.js starts to lose popularity due to it's ultra complex tooling ecosystem. People want to feel like what they learn will be still be useful at their next job. The React ecosystem doesn't provide that; the React ecosystem tends to burn people out.

2) Smaller frameworks like Vue or Riot takes the spotlight.

3) Angular 2 is a hit thanks to its "batteries included" design, which will appeal to React burnouts.

4) A new JavaScript rendering-based framework will come out and become a hit. Something like Turbolinks or Glimmer, except it doesn't break jQuery or sandboxes you to an ecosystem.

<comment><USER13> 3.1) Angular team announces Angular 3, which is a complete re-design and not backwards-compatible with Angular 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1) Deep Learning-based techniques outperform hand engineered natural language processing stacks in every measurable way.

2) There will be considerable progress made on the Winograd Schema challenge.

3) The (unconstrained) Turing test won't be "officially" passed until October 2017 though (it will actually be passed in July or August, but the news won't leak until October)[1].

4) Some people will continue to insist that Deep Learning is nothing different to what was being done in the 1990s. At some point someone will get frustrated enough with this to blog everything that is different now.

[1] Specific enough prediction?

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by hand engineered? Is a part-of-speech tagger trained on a manually annotated corpus hand engineered? If not, then which "stacks" are hand-engineered and still popular today?

<comment><USER14> Yes this is true. Perhaps I should better express it as a hand engineered feature pipeline, ie the way people these days will POS tag, then lemmatize, then do something with WordNet, then maybe some Semantic Frame thing and finally have an application they can benchmark. Writing that pipeline is manual, and it has hand engineered features in it too, though some may be trained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. Battery powered automotive devices, both small(hoverboards, drones) and large(cars), continue picking up steam; articles circulate about the potential danger and disruption of the new devices

2\. Multiple new operating system projects announced, targeted for unikernel VM deployment

3\. Emerging AI techniques commercialized for creative applications, e.g. a new wave of selfie apps, professional art or music tools

4\. Distributed apps using blockchain protocols start making small ripples

5\. Software and devices that successfully bridge the mobile/desktop gap are demonstrated

6\. VR/AR devices ship, but demand remains modest and mostly in professional niches

I would have said something about the economy and finance too, but this is a tech predictions thread. So I'll go for a tech-economic one:

7\. Trends turn against one or more of the current leading social networks, as a bold newcomer finds an opening

8\. Bubble mania in the Valley peaks and shifts towards panic as key macro indicators start sagging

<comment><USER17> Regarding #8, has a situation ever occurred where a large majority of people assumed there was a bubble, reacted accordingly, and created negative outcomes, despite there not being a bubble?

And I hope (7) Twitter's death will be quick, and not painfully slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1) Autonomous farm machinery (more than just auto steer) becomes more commonplace.

1a) Release of the first non major brand (JD, Case etc) autonomous machine.

2) Drone see uptake in precision spraying applications. Although this will be on small farms. Broad acre will still be too hard for a while yet.

3) NDVI becomes one of the most commonly used inputs pre seeding and for nutrient applications.

<comment><USER19> Can you please point me to communities / sources around these topics? Super interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _> Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2015?_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723)

</comment><comment><USER21> 1) 2-4 Unicorns die

2) VR successful on a small scale, no successful AR products

3) 2016 is the year of drones

4) Marijuana startups heavily funded

5) More JS frameworks come in and out of vogue

5) Neither native apps nor web are going anywhere

6) YC's average founder age increases to slightly over 30

7) Apple releases a tablet/laptop hybrid which flops

8) Property values decline in the Valley yet relentlessly surge in SF

</comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Linux Founder Linus Torvalds: "2016 Will Be The Year of ARM Laptops"

[http://fossbytes.com/linux-founder-linus- torvals-2016-will-b...](http://fossbytes.com/linux-founder-linus- torvals-2016-will-be-the-year-of-arm-laptops/)

Soon thereafter, fully free software ARM handhelds could take foot if common tooling accelerates both innovation and stability. So..

2\. Base-level (free) software [and possibly hardware] (frameworks, languages, and developer tools) will coalesce and clear winners will emerge, while side- level interests will continue within ongoing and offshoot communities whose work then funnels back for mainline user adoption.

Bonus (re: emergent winners). Communities will pick targets and sets their aims based on principle more so than popularity.

</comment><comment><USER23> Firefox decides to incorporate Tor Browser in private browsing mode.

Digital Ocean gets acquired.

Google Fiber buys Cincinnati Bell.

IoT still hasn't gained much traction.

Bitcoin suffers 51% attack.

Archaeological evidence of human life found on Mars/Moon from some time > 12K years ago.

4G meshnets become popular in developing countries.

<comment><USER24> Most of these make plenty of sense, but where does this come from?

>> Archaeological evidence of human life found on Mars/Moon from some time > 12K years ago.

<comment><USER23> Ha, definitely a long shot. I was watching a Joe Rogan podcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDejwCGdUV8). In summary, there's evidence for a cataclysmic asteroid strike 12K years ago that nearly wiped out humanity. If true that upends traditional archaeological theories and suggests that humanity rebooted 12K years ago instead of a gradual move from hunter-gatherer to society. What the world was like before the reboot is unknown, but maybe we were advanced enough for space travel?

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I've heard quite a few interviews with Graham Hancock. I don't know if I can make the leap from a lost history to a lost space-faring history. I also can't make the further leap to "we will discover that space-faring history in the next year".

I guess if it happens then we heard it from you first!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just two big predictions from me:

1) FinTech will start to shine through, the first consumer banks built using modern tech will open to customers in Europe (London FinTech scene is strong, Zurich has ex-Googlers and strong finance, or Frankfurt but they are currently trailing - my bet is on London). These banks will experience very strong growth, the question really is: Will they go with it or go for acquisition

2) The "Family Plan" will emerge as a new sales market in most of the established consumer products, with Dropbox, Google, and others all building strong offerings for managing the product use and sharing of a group of users. This is ground-work for centralising both "family" and "home", and lays the foundation for the command and control of IoT over the next few years - it is how the big established players stay in the game.

Neither of those predictions is quite there, the leading new bank is Mondo [https://getmondo.co.uk/](https://getmondo.co.uk/) but it's in beta, is currently iPhone only which limits adoption in the UK, and the benefits of the new tech hasn't yet been fully realised.

And I'm not yet seeing the "family plan" head this way but I'd be surprised if the penny doesn't drop somewhere and this be the path taken. Control of the home is control of the family, and vice versa... the family want tools for this better than the ones they have today.

An entirely different thing I'd like to see exist but do not know of anyone working on at all:

3) A dating app that acknowledges the hook-up culture that seems to be growing in the millenial generation of users, and instead of hiding that under the carpet uses it's data to encourage responsible tracking of STDs and other risks.

That one is inspired by news this morning on Gonorrhoea becoming immune to antibiotics [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35153794](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35153794) . The app should function similar to whatever the core function of Tinder is, but allow tracking of whom you've done what with for the sole purpose of allowing notifications of STDs to be quickly disseminated to people who may be exposed.

It may be infeasible, I don't know what the willingness of those who do hook- ups is to track risk-related activity and test results is. The core idea is "disease tracking in social networking and dating apps".

<comment><USER25> On the banking thing. In NL we have Bunq which is a virtual bank with banking license. It combines social with banking. The idea is nice but I'm not sure if the world is ready yet. [https://www.bunq.com/en/](https://www.bunq.com/en/)

<comment><USER7> Nice.

I like that they have one of the things I anticipate will emerge "Instantly switch your debit card between accounts".

I hope to see features that allow the management of accounts by splitting an account into virtual buckets, allowing transactions from frequent providers to be tagged/labelled in some way.

Or even to map retailers/companies such that "transactions from them are bills and are always associated with this account", even though you only carry the one debit card it will act intelligently as simply a payment card and you would have control over where the money actually comes from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 1\. Windows 10 usage ratio explodes. Linux distributions might see a small increase on the desktop market (up to something like 2%).

2\. Major browsers will start experimenting with warning the users that they are visiting a site that does not support HTTPS (although I think that they won't be adding that to stable versions until 2017).

3\. Google+ is going away for good.

4\. European Union makes the progress in uniting as a single market to fight against geo-blocking.

5\. Self-driving cars are still not ready to be commercially available.

</comment><comment><USER27> Random predictions from the top of my head: 1\. Funding for start ups is lower than 2015 2\. Genomics and anything related to autonomous vehices (including drones) will be the hottest sectors 3\. Google's revenue from non ad based products will double

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my predictions (rather, hopes) is the same as every year: that we find more ways, socially, to get us offline through the use of technology.

\- A Tinder not for hookups (perhaps even for friends - see below)

\- A small-scale Meetup.com for exchanging knowledge

\- Time banks take off

<comment><USER28> Could you tell me more about the meetup for knowledge exchange, what exactly do you imagine? Sounds interesting.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I hadn't seen your comment til now. Well, it'd work just like Meetup.com, except it'd probably be an app, or at least have a mobile component. Everyone would have a profile with their interests and when two people in the same geographic area with the same interest(s) sign up, the system would alert them both so they could set up a one-on-one meetup. There'd also be an optional GPS function where if you're free (w/ nothing to do) and wouldn't mind having a good conversation with someone regarding your interests, the app could ping you when two similar users are near each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 1\. Windows Phone/Mobile will probably die. Its market share will fall under 1% and so Microsoft will make only one model (Surface Phone?) just for those who want to have the "continuum" experience, but they will not invest a lot on it.

2\. Windows 10 Store will remain totally unused. Microsoft won't say it is a fail but well, everyone will still prefer to use old x86 applications

3\. Self-driving Cars not ready

4\. Still a very low number of electric cars sold, but their price will drop making them probably a good investment in 2017/2018\. In europe the situation will remain the same as today (almost no one use them)

5\. Some move by apple in the low-price smartphone market. This time really low-price, they won't go for a 5C like before but for something else more simple

6\. Touch screen laptop still ignored by most

7\. Arm laptops hit the consumer market with linux or android on them

8\. VirtualReality devices are a flop because of their costs (both for the devices and for the pc you need to use them). Almost no AAA game will support them

9\. Vulkan will be a great revolution in gaming

10\. All companies going back to native development on mobile instead of hybrid solutions.

11\. React will slowly fall losing against Angular2

</comment><comment><USER30> 1) Hillary will become (or even more so than now) the dominate contender between both parties for next presidential election

2) Trump will die in popularity after taking a controversial stance too far

3) We will see scare pieces on local news stations about Oculus technology being for perverts and losers and it is destroying the fabric of society

4) Expansion of TSA pre-check program, including more options that cost more money and require some new hardware, like retina scanning, at the cost of billions of dollars in new machines

5) New NSA privileges are granted by congress by silently slipping into some entirely unrelated bill

6) Obama will make some sort of grand, popular gesture (ala taking credit for Bin Laden kill) in an attempt to make Democrats as a whole look better to improve Hillary's chances (edit: actually, this is more likely in 2017)

7) Standard of living will continue to decline for Americans as compared to other first world countries

8) Police corruption/tyranny will continue to be a hot button issue and we will continue to see a push for body cams throughout the country (thank god)

9) Some scandal will be unveiled or manufactured around Elon Musk

<comment><USER31> I am intrigued in this one:

      9) Some scandal will be unveiled or manufactured around Elon Musk

Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER30> He's too much of a golden child who's pissing off large, politically connected American companies (either in the automotive, energy, aerospace, or defense industries). There is a lot of potential damage that can be done to his personal brand and the brand of his companies (and therefore money to be made) by a smear campaign. It just seems like a ripe opportunity against someone who has reason to have many enemies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 1\. Incremental improvements all around.

2\. Digital rights weakened all around.

3\. Analog media makes a comeback (books, art, film, letters, photos, vinyl, etc.)

4\. Phones become uncool.

5\. Donald Trump wins the election. (Democracy is a technology, or at least it is in Civilization.)

</comment><comment><USER33> <script type="application/swift">

<comment><USER22> <script type="application/lua">

<comment><USER34> Please not, Lua would be easy to implement but if we can only pick _one_ language then it's too similar to JS. We need more diversity, static types+AOT+noGC would be a good start.

Also if we do get Swift it will be for the same reason we got <canvas>. Apple wanted to make dashboard, so they put an extension in webkit, people started using it on the open web and...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> One year is not really that long - but here is what I am seeing in the foreseeable future:

1\. Development for proprietary mobile platforms (such as iOS/ObjectiveC/Swift and Android/Java) will drop in popularity.

2\. Continuing increase in client-side JavaScript/HTML5 popularity. The dominant platform will be ES6/React not TypeScript/Angular2.

3\. The "App Store" will start to loose its relevancy.

4\. Mobile (vs. web) usage continues to grow.

And for business:

5\. Social networks coming out of Asia (China, Japan, Korea, SEA - such as WeChat or Line) becoming globally popular.

6\. Crash/collapse/accounting fraud scandal in a major internet company. (No idea for specifics but look at the ride subsidies of uber for an example of something that can go wrong).

7\. Xiaomi starts selling in USA and Europe with considerable success.

<comment><USER11> > 2\. Continuing increase in client-side JavaScript/HTML5 popularity. The > dominant platform will be ES6/React not TypeScript/Angular2.

My prediction is a better alternative to JS for client-side development. WebAssembly, I'm pointing at you. And as a result, a lot of new client-side frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hate these kinds of questions, because I have such a hard time divorcing the things I _think_ will happen, from the things I _want_ to happen. That and I am probably too enamored with the belief that "making predictions is hard, especially about the future".

There's another saying as well, which I think _might_ be a billg thing (but don't quote me on that) which goes something like this (paraphrased a bit probably) "People tend to overestimate the magnitude of technological change in the short-term (2-3 years out) and under-estimate the magnitude of technological change in the long-term (say, 10+ years)".

I find that's largely true. Next year, most things will be mostly like they were this year, just incrementally different. 2017 will be mostly like 2016, and so on. But somehow these amazing things tend to sneak in there just the same...

I guess I still didn't actually make any predictions, did I? OK, find, you twisted my arm. I'll take a stab at some:

1\. Wikidata will continue to grow in maturity and scope and will be a terrifically import piece of the Semantic Web as it continues to grow.

2\. People will continue to insist that the Semantic Web is dead, and you'll see a continuation of something like an analog to the old saying "once it works, people stop calling it AI". Nobody will ever say that the Semantic Web has arrived, but we'll be using Linked Data and related technologies (although perhaps not the RDF/SPARQL stack)

3\. I'll predict that at least one new (or new'ish) probabilistic programming language will gain some major traction in 2016.

4\. Hadoop / Spark / etc. will continue to grow in the enterprise and start to move beyond POC's and demos.

4.5 - but most businesses are still just spitting in the wind, stumbling in the dark, etc. when it comes to _actually_ becoming more scientific / data- driven. But you'll see more "stuff" (tools, technology, methodologies) etc. promoting the use of scientific thinking, analysis, etc. in business decision making.

5\. Zeppelin will grow in popularity as people write additional integrations / interpreters for it.

6\. MOOCs will continue to eat the foundation out from underneath traditional education. It's arguably already the case for programmers and people like us that a traditional university degree isn't all that important for many jobs; and more employers will start really looking at certificates from things like Coursera classes and hiring people without those traditional degrees.

<comment><USER37> The best part is that you can read others' predictions and they're not necessarily what you want to happen. In that case you can be surprised and actually think about the "can it happen" part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> 1\. iPhone7 will finish the android dominance finally. Apple Pay become prevalent. 2\. Google will re-license android so only Google can make android phone. Chinese and Samsung will either stuck with the last android OS or pushing into a fork. 3\. Driver assistance AI will become standard in 2017 model car, we will see car industry the most active AI research and acquisition market. 4\. AMD and nVidia competition heat up and will drive deep learning into deeper and ever increasing number layers, and hit a breaking point when the next Google emerges to replace search and Wikipedia, at finger tip. 5\. Microsoft Hololens will be a hit, it actually revives Microsoft from doom. But we will find Amazon enter into VR market. 6\. Amazon drone delivery will start in a limit number of area, suburban mostly. 7\. Elon Musk will bankrupt as the oil price continue in downward trend, and solar panel adoption slowdown as punished by power company. 8\. We will see the first Bitcoin/blockchain based crowdfunding, may even be equity based. Meanwhile Bitcoin price will double as bankers busy push their own blockchain based banking infrastructure, while ignorant to Apple Pay is eating them alive. 9\. Facebook enter China market, and increases its size of user by another quarter, while Facebook breakthrough in online translation for the first time makes choice language irrelevant. 10\. Trump wins presidential election, WWIII becomes the predominant theme of the computer games released in the years followed.

</comment><comment><USER39> 1\. E-bikes will take off. Before the end of the year I suspect almost everyone will have one because Chinese manufacturers will flood the market. A bike with a 500-750w engine is an amazing way to ride to work. You save money, are environmentally friendly and get exercise. Even an untrained fatty can easily handle a 15 km commute on one. Awesome.

2\. Mozilla and MS will abandon their own html rendering engines and start using WebKit.

3\. The eye-balls as revenue model will fail. Ad-supported magazines, video sites and many more will become subscription-based instead.

3.5. As a sad consequence, Google will lay of A LOT of personnel. Facebook too I guess.

4\. HiDpi 3200x1800 screens will become the norm. Tablets will make specialized devices like Kindle obsolete.

5\. Bitcoin will not take of. Visa, Mastercard or a European bank organization will launch a crypto-currency that might take off. Critics will complain that it won't guarantee any anonymity.

6\. Multi-threading and multi-processing won't go anywhere because it is to hard. A new language might be created by any of the big companies promising to make parallel processing easy, but it won't, and the language won't be adopted.

7\. I predict a lot of health and self-improvement tech being marketed. Like do it yourself genome sequencing, apps to monitor your stats and help you live more healthy.

8\. GPU:s will be equipped with chips to support raytracing and raytracing- based games will be released and they will look completely mind-blowing.

<comment><USER40> Why WebKit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A company stands up that people will refer to as 'the Apple of smart textiles'.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1\. Privacy becomes more important to social networks

2\. Social networks withdraw more APIs to protect not only privacy but their own business interests

3\. Privacy becomes more annoying to lawmakers

4\. Lawmakers in the US vote in more surveillance powers to force social networks to comply with their information demands

5\. Lawmakers in the EU create new laws to constrain their citizens' data to EU countries

6\. Distributed social networks pick up traction in both the EU and US in response to #3 and #4. One will be promoted by a major player, probably Google as a play against Facebook.

<comment><USER42> Organizations start taking Security Compliance seriously (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2, FEDRAMP, NIST 800-53)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Marijuana Unicorns

<comment><USER44> Yessss. Warren Buffet is already all over this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> 1\. Troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan increase, but more use of drones in army this year and going forward.

2\. First use of railgun in Navy in active campaign

3\. More car companies go the battery powered route with newer models

4\. It becomes even easier to make an app on the phone, but the landscape continues to fracture on the phone OS front

5\. someone comes up with something interesting using a small computer like raspberry pi zero and 3d printing

6\. Encryption for general population gets better with some really great app.

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Several unicorn IPOs

2\. Google becomes highest valued tech conpany before Apple

</comment><comment><USER46> Social Networking Sites and Apps are in a lot of trouble when we realize that once again they aren't producing profit (Snapchat, Twitter, Etc.).

</comment><comment><USER47> I hope more things are voice enabled, here's a small demo I've been working on using Arduino and VeeaR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFRUFZU4FHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFRUFZU4FHE)

The tools make it really easy to put together cool projects for 2016.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anonymity and privacy apps are going to see an increase in users.

<comment><USER49> Not a particularly surprising prediction, given that the world's population is increasing ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Will mixmax finally deliver?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025709)

</comment><comment><USER51> Aerial corridors and traffic systems for drones ...

</comment><comment><USER52> Facebook acquires Snapchat by force after IPO

</comment><comment><USER53> To add to what already has been said: Vulkan.

</comment><comment><USER54> D R O N E S

</comment><comment><USER55> Robots must be anywhere</comment>


Amazon turns Kindle into a platform - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/01/20/amazon-turns-kindle-into-a-platform/

<comment><USER2> Meh, OpenInkpot is available for many of the lower end Chinese made eReaders. I'm getting my wife a Hanvan N516 for our aniversary soon, it's just a basic 5' reader but it costs 1,250 R&B which is about US. 183

OK Amazons got the library & the platform, but it's never going to make it in the Chinese market that's for sure.

<comment><USER3> Remember the iPod: it doesn't really matter if something already exists: thye first company that gets it right gets the prize.

Right now, I suspect something Android-derived will play an important role on e-reader devices, specially if animation-capable OLED or PixelQi-style LCDs take a hold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see Hangman, 20 questions, and crosswords in the future.

<comment><USER3> E-mail, contacts, calendar...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> already on the homepage, much discussion there:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1066667></comment>


What Vehicle Should Startups Use For Seed Stage Fundraising? - <AUTHOR> http://slant.co/topics/what-vehicle-should-startups-use-for-seed-stage-fundraising/opinions/convertible-note

<comment><USER2> Hey guys one of the founders of Slant here.

We are just getting started and a lot of the functionality we want is missing, but I'd love to hear your feedback on the direction we are taking with the site.

We eventually want to be the home of information StackOverflow is closing for being too subjective for their Q/A format.

<comment><USER3> The UX is slightly confusing. The Viewpoints toggles are easy to miss.

<comment><USER2> Ah you're right. That is one of the main things I'm worried about as the Viewpoint toggle are pretty much the most important UI control on that page. I'll work on making it more clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Equity. Everybody knows what they get.

<comment><USER5> Just curious, what about smaller rounds? Let's say 100k, how do you balance out legal costs that approach the size of the round?

<comment><USER6> Your legal costs shouldn't approach 100k in a seed round! 3-5k ...find a different attorney.

<comment><USER2> Yep. Series seed can be done for under 5k, and so can convertible equity/notes. It's less about the type of tool you're using, and more to do with how much modification to the standards you want to do. Thats the beauty of standardized documentation, minimal negotiation and cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UBHacking: hubot-malta is a plugin for Slack teams and Hack-a-thons - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/hubot-malta <comment><AUTHOR> We made this Slack bot because we found, as a team at a hackathon, that 500 people (mostly freshmen) forming teams at a hackathon were unlikely to self- organize productively when just put into a room together.

Our team did not have any CoffeeScript background, but Hubot came with most of the features we needed as CoffeeScript plugins. The four members of our team did not have any preferred language in common. We figured Hack-a-Thon participants would have an easier time if they could find other coders that preferred the same languages they did.</comment>


Ask HN: language choice for an iOS SDK in 2018 - <AUTHOR> During last year, after long and controversial discussions, our iOS team finally agreed to do a full rewrite of our main library.
One of our managers got in touch with a freelance iOS architect to do some consulting on the side while the SDK project gets in initial design and development stages.
Said architect has quite some experience with objC (+10 years) so his language of choice for every discussion. However, the whole team (~3 devs.) is still skeptic on whether to use Swift or its predecessor to start from scratch. The implications of keeping objC. as our library's main language could mean longer development times and less adoption (being an OSS project we also want users to get on board and contribute).
Which language would HN choose? Which reasons would you guys give to some experienced architect to try out Apple's newer language? Would you say, in 2018 Swift is mature enough for this task? <comment><USER2> If your SDK is meant to be used as a binary framework or in any sort of compiled form (which is probably unlikely because you say it's going to be open source), I'd recommend Obj-C, because Swift's ABI is not stable yet.

If your SDK is meant to be used from source, I'd recommend Swift. I'd even say you should prioritize providing a good Swift API over providing any Obj-C API at all (so if the API would work best if it uses enums with associated values or protocols with associated types, so be it, even if that means it can't be used from Obj-C).

You have mentioned the downsides of picking Obj-C, and they are both valid. There are no upsides to picking Obj-C though - Swift is more popular, and can do anything Obj-C can do (because it can piggyback on the Obj-C runtime when required), and do lots more that Obj-C can't do.

The biggest problems with Swift earlier were (1) Xcode crashing or being too slow and (2) the language changing every year. Both are pretty much fixed now.

At this point, the only reason an Obj-C expert would stick to Obj-C is familiarity - it's faster to code in a language you got to know well over many years. That's however not a reason for _your_ SDK to be in Obj-C.

</comment><comment><USER3> In 2017 also you should choose Swift. Swift 4 ABI is very stable(hopefully, I know they are messing some core things with Swift 5 but... ah)

Swift is great language. Apple is also moving their inbuilt apps and frameworks to Swift. No doubt objective-c is compatible but you should choose Swift for sure in 2018.

Reasons:

1) Preferred by apple.

2) Great Community.

3) You will find lots off tutorials and help (after iOS8 etc) in swift.

4) Great language adopted many modern language semantics.

5) It's Swift era.

No doubt, Objc is great language and I have worked many years in it. But when you write the code in Swift language it feels really great and you will find your code less buggy because of many feature provided by Swift (Swift compiler assume you are dumb).

Go for Swift.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not an iOS developer, so please excuse any incorrect details, but:

My understanding is that Swift and Objective-C can each be compiled together with libraries that use the other language. So writing in one language doesn't preclude use by users writing in the other language.

BUT you need to include header files for both. My company actually has to ditch a third party SaaS last year because they'd written a new SDK and header files were available only for Obj-C.</comment>


JavaScript Developer Survey - <AUTHOR> http://dailyjs.com/2010/11/29/javascript-survey/

<comment><USER2> > Unit Testing - Do you unit test your JavaScript?

IMHO the simple boolean answer doesn't really tell you that much. There is a big difference between someone having only a few unit-tests for a huge codebase, v/s someone having most of the code covered by unit tests.

Additionally JavaScript is used a lot for user interface related stuff, where unit tests can often be more trouble than they're worth; instead full-scale functionality testing (like with Selenium) could be more useful thing to do.

<comment><USER3> That's always been my gripe with client-side JS tests as well. For large frameworks or libraries (like jQuery), I'd definitely unit test in a heartbeat, but for end-developer code which is mostly code fired after the DOM is ready, calling plugins verbatim, and binding user input to actions, Selenium is really a much better use of my testing time than adding in unit tests for those particular use cases.</comment></comment>


Sunday Night Is the New Monday Morning, and Workers Are Miserable - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/sunday-night-is-the-new-monday-morning-and-workers-are-miserable-11562497212?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> My goal, since I started working, has been to have a position where I didn't dread Monday morning. I've only been able to achieve this by running my own company. Remote consulting is a close second.</comment>


Ask HN: Which book would you recommend for learning database internals? - <AUTHOR> In the realm of RDBMSs I've so far come across this book from 2007: 'Understanding MySQL Internals'.<p>Have you read this book? Or is there another book (or maybe even a lengthy tutorial-like blog post) which you would recommend reading? <comment><USER2> Haven't the read anything about MySQL but [http://www.interdb.jp/pg/](http://www.interdb.jp/pg/) is a good read about Postgres.

A few things to get you interested:

* Postgres is a process-per-connection/ shared-memory model vs MySQL that's multi-threaded-per-connection

* Postgres has more than one index-types (bit-index, generalized-inverted-index, partial-index, btree-index).

* AFAIK (might be wrong), because of the way Postgres implements Consistency and Isolation (as in ACID) via MVCC (Multi-version Concurrency Control), it is at the mercy of the notorious VACCUM (think: Garbage Collection in Java).

* Postgres does Streaming Replication (typical of NoSQL and distributed databases in general) which is superior to what MySQL had prior to them introducing Group Replication in MySQL 7.

* Postgres is known to have an advanced query-processor engine as well and AFAIK driven by academia as much as engineers orgs.

Apart from that, to know about what's latest in the DB field, pick up the Red Book (can't say I've read it myself, but it does get recommended a lot).

\----

People famous in the Distributed and RDBMS space include:

* Martin Kleppmann of Apache Kafka and Samza fame.

* Peter Bailis, Researcher

* Michael Stonebreaker, creator of Postgres, Ingres, VoltDB

* Murat Buffalo, Researcher

* Curt Monash, Researcher

* Matei Zaharia, Researcher

And a bunch of other folks, the list is big, but these are the one's I keep an eye on.

You might want to look at the winners of VLDB, SIGMOD, and SIGKDD conferences, too, for cutting edge research in the area (and the Red Book, too).

You might want to follow developments on the new-age databases:

* RAM-only DBs: VoltDB, MemSQL

* GPU-accelerated DBs: mapd, SQream, alenka

* NVMe-only DBs: Onur Multu et al wrote a seminal paper on the subject.

* OLAPs: Not familiar with this field per se, but it is huge in itself. Think: RedShift, Spark, and so on.

Best!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very detailed answer. Thanks for sparing your time.

I found the interdb.jp resource shortly after posting this question, it looks like a good resource however it doesn't have the chapter on query optimizations translated as yet. I will definitely read the rest as on quick glance it looks very well written!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is not a book but a site really. Sqlite3 is an amazing database and the site has great documentation.

[https://www.sqlite.org/docs.html](https://www.sqlite.org/docs.html)</comment>


AWS Goes All in on Arm-Based Graviton2 Processors with EC2 6th Gen Instances - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/12/03/aws-goes-all-in-on-arm-based-graviton2-processors-with-ec2-6th-gen-instances/ <comment><USER2> Follow up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21814725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21814725)</comment>


Why I Stick with the Linux Desktop - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/10/26/why-linux-desktop/

<comment><USER2>
      Virtual desktops ....
      I always thought this would be useful for switching
      between different contexts, like work vs. personal,
      but I've rarely used it in practice.

I'm a virtual desktop addict. If I may, I'd like to share how I use mine, so that you might perhaps find them more useful in your own work. I have dual monitors, and four virtual desktops (in XFCE, but that doesn't matter).

Originally, I used only two workspaces (email/reading, development), and this has evolved a bit over time into 4. What I like about using virtual desktops is that I have a spatial mental model of where each thing is, which helps me ensure I don't mix up dev/production, and helps me avoid alt-tabbing to find what I want. I make extensive use of my window manager's ability to maximize on the left or right half of a screen. (This would probably not work well for me with a single monitor, unless it were a large one.)

1: E-mail/calendar on the left monitor, automated build system output on the right. This is for things that are semi-important but which I don't want to regularly have interrupting me.

2: Web browser with the app I currently am developing, and my console window on the left monitor, full-screen IDE (PyCharm) on the right. (I also put emacs or a terminal on the right as well when writing extensively in those.) This workspace is where I spend more than 80% of my time.

3: Github on the right screen, for pull requests, code review, issue tracking. I use this for a context-switch from _developing_ code to _reviewing_ it. I'll also use this workspace when babysitting a code release, to help ensure that I don't mix up local stuff with remote stuff.

4: music player. I stream music, so I rarely need to look at this except to change channels.

<comment><USER3> Things I miss on OSX do include third-button paste from the highlight buffer and, of course, the superior virtual desktops (though OSX had them until Apple decided to cancel 'em), and the window list in the top bar.

But none of those is as important as focus-follows-mouse. I really miss ffm.

On the other hand, I like having working power management and long battery life. And I like never spending a day figuring out driver regressions.

<comment><USER4> The single biggest thing I miss when I use OS X is alt+click to move windows.

<comment><USER5> Since I switched to a window tiler, I never need to move windows unless I'm doing something complex in GIMP. I'm using pytyle2 (you can probably find something better) and mostly all I use is alt-c to rotate the windows, alt-h for "higher" and alt-l for "lower" and that's it. Now I rarely, rarely ever resize or click-drag a window.

This works so well I totally stopped using window decoration. Having the extra pixels on my laptop is nice! Install the "Classic Compact" add-on for Firefox to free up even more pixels.

<comment><USER4> I've always loved tiling WMs on big screens, since it's a really efficient way to use all of that screen real estate. i3 really comes into its own on my multimonitor desktop setup. I've just never felt any real gain on anything smaller than 17". On my 13" macbook air, however, I find that as soon as I split the screen 50-50 neither window really has enough space to be comfortable. (I've tried using Amethyst[1], but that's all)

[1]: [https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)

<comment><USER5> That's true. My next laptop will be bigger! For now I have good eyes to see the 7px fonts. And it was some real work to remove all the window decorations, editing config files to get a slim profile on everything. Usually I have my code on one side and a browser on the other side. When it gets tight I have 3 options: 1. zoom out the browser (not always an option for detail work) 2. flip the important activity to the bigger window 3. use the higher/lower hotkeys to give one side or the other more/less room. Typically I do not like to write code in the left panel because then my eyes are way off to the side. Took me years to get to this point with Linux but I feel very productive now when I sit down to work. I had to ditch Fedora/Gnome, figure out Crunchbang, pytyle2 was a pain to install, etc. But it was all worth it, at least in my opinion ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's way too nice to Apple to call their piss-poor Spaces "Virtual Desktops". Call me when I can finally arrange them how _I_ want (i.e. 2 rows, 2 columns) and not have them in line, which is stupid and inefficient. I'd also like a call when Apple finally implements maximize for windows.

And don't get me wrong, I am a Mac user, just a highly frustrated one when I see people praising them as the second coming of the prophet even though a lot of extremely useful features are just missing because some dude at Cupertino decided that Mac users didn't need them.

PS: Negative post, I know, but it feels good.

<comment><USER7> They're not "stupid" and "piss-poor". Linear desktops are a huge usability win for a multitude of reasons:

* It's spatially an easier mental model.

* This mental model is consistent with iOS multitasking and iOS home screen.

* It allows for simple gestures to switch between desktops.

* In western society, we read from left to right. New is to the right. Fullscreen a new desktops are added to the right.

* This also sets up a linear "Forward/back" model similar to web pages.

* You can easily add ONE desktop on the fly. No need to make it a grid for no reason.

* The biggest reason: Spaces and expose are unified into Mission Control. One action to see EVERYTHING. This is a huge plus, as people don't have to check two different locations for a window. A grid of desktops wouldn't fit up above in mission control.

* There's nothing below the dock and there's nothing above the menubar. Simple mental model.

Regarding "maximize for windows":

* It's a "fit window to content" button. A window shouldn't take up more space than is necessary in a multi-tasking environment. Regardless, there is a fullscreen mode and windows also remember their position and dimensions if you drag them.

<comment><USER6> About all those nice bullet points: That's cool, but I'd like to be able to use a grid layout. I'm not looking for an argument or a lesson about the awesomeness of the Apple Way™. I just see people trying to accomodate their 9 Spaces and moving tediously from 9 to 1 and back, while pondering the "huge usability win" that is the linear desktop layout and that's when it hits me: "It'd be nice to have the _option_ of using a grid layout, Linux has that, it's pretty nice".

Then I mention maximize and you tell me "it's not maximize, it's fit to content". Then again, that's all nice and dandy but if I wanted "fit to content" I guess I'd be already be satisfied and I wouldn't be complaining about it now, would I? Same for fullscreen, I'm sure you actually do understand the difference between maximize and fullscreen. I don't want fullscreen, I want maximize, a feature Mac OS X does not offer (except for a few apps like Terminal.app, which makes it not only an idiotic choice, but also inconsistent across the OS).

<comment><USER8> That's exactly why I haven't been able to bring myself to buy nice Apple hardware: there are too many things where I say, "I want it," and the answer is "You shouldn't." With my LXDE desktop, I can make it act however I want, and I'm pleased and productive, even though I shouldn't be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> \- Package management

\- Everything can be done via CL in case of emergency

\- Switch terminals via F1, F2, F3... if the GUI terminal (F7) messes up

\- Use whatever window manager I want with no hassle

\- Most distros recognize hw and install drivers automatically (versus needing a rescue disk to install Windows)

\- Develop apps locally using exact same environment used on server

\- No worries about losing support for my hw (try installing Windows 8 or the latest OSX on an old machine)

\- Option to show WiFi password (why the f can't you do this in windows?)

\- Fingers crossed for more Steam games coming soon

</comment><comment><USER10> What I enjoy the most on my Linux desktop is how it handles installing/upgrading software. It's just easy, and it works. When I'm on Windows I can't stand the google-download-execute-untick boxes-next-next cycles. This post is more about UI features though.

<comment><USER11> You should try out "chocolatey" on windows. It enough people adopt it, more packages will get on to it.

<comment><USER12> Or Scoop at [http://scoop.sh](http://scoop.sh) (I made it).

<comment><USER11> Looks interesting! Will look into it more closely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Linux "on the desktop" since '96\. I stuck with it because, _it 's Unix_. It's not BSD pretending to be Windows. It's not Android, running around with a Java dress on, pretending to be something it's not.

X11 sucks and so does Unix. But they suck less than every other system out there. I can make X11 act however I want it to act. It can act like Windows, or it can act in some new way that was not blessed by the high priests, Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

If I want my system to do something, Unix provides the toolset. It's an amazing ecosystem for learning, exploration, and creation. If you know a bit about Perl, Python, or Bash then you can pretty much make data _do what you want_. A file is not just an opaque blackbox, requiring a single expensive proprietary application to interact with it. Fitting together disparate tools in a way that was never envisioned by the authors of said tools is not a "hack." It's just good design.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love the linux desktop, especially Gnome2. For me it's a godsend.

I make heavy use of workspaces (got 6 of them atm), very handy to organise work/tasks, even on dual monitor setups. It's very easy to move applications on another workspace or monitor, even without the use of a mouse.

"Always on top" and "Always on the visible workspace" are great features that I use even right now (mplayer running in my upper-right corner while I type this).

I use a distro based on RHEL6 that's super stable and don't have to put up with annoyances like rolling-release specific breakages and so on.

All my laptop's hardware is well supported and just works.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Libreoffice are excellent applications that more than meet my requirements. Virt-manager & kvm rock and Gnome-terminal is pretty damn awesome.

I use Windows rarely and it feels like having my hands tied at the back.

I know it's not for everyone, but for me, it has been the decade of the linux dextop. :-)

<comment><USER15> Chromium, Thunderbird and Apache Openoffice for me ... but otherwise I could have written the rest of your post! :D

(Yes, the newer versions of Openoffice are actually really good, and their UI is really comfy for someone coming in from MS Office on Windows/Mac.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Arch Linux for a little more than two years, and it's probably one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Once you get used to the terminal, you will never want to touch a Windows computer (unfortunately). I have i3wm (tiling wm) + (rxvt + tmux + vim) + luakit (browser with vim keybindings), and some other stuff, and my productivity went straight up. Of course you might not want to go to that extreme, especially if you are not used to the terminal, but it's worth giving it a try.

<comment><USER17> I'd have to agree with your decisions. I'm on Slack, but almost the same setup: i3, tmux, urxvt, vim. The setup is unstoppable. I've found that I no longer need quick launch links (just define/use shortcuts for whatever you need). Switching desktops is really fast and easy (you don't drown in ridiculous animations just by switching to the "browser" desktop), and floating/hidden windows make opening a quick shell really simple. Doing everything via keyboard saves so much time...however I do come from the vim world, so I may be biased =]. On top of all that, i3's config is really, really easy.

Admittedly, I haven't used any other tiling window managers. I did a bunch of research after deciding to try one out, landed on i3, and haven't really looked back. Would definitely recommend it to an efficiency-minded person.

Also the simplicity of i3 is beautiful. Combine its minimal interface with a few shell windows with opacity=.85 and you've got an incredible looking desktop that's easy to navigate, responsive, and efficient. Even my not-very- tech-savvy girlfriend saw me working in it and said "Wow, that's pretty!"

<comment><USER16> I've tried some other tiling wm's, and i3wm is the one I've liked the most. It just has the right balance. dwm is pretty nice, too, but didn't like it as much. I'm glad to hear some other people enjoying a similar configuration of his linux :D. The only problem I've found is when I go to public places; people just look too much. They are not used to such a lightweight and non- windows/non-mac system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All of these are nice, and contribute to my enjoyment of Linux.

But, there's one thing that always makes me reboot from Windows into Linux (if I was gaming or watching Netflix; I usually run Linux): Having to do any work involving the command line, whether local work such as development, or remote work such as building and deploying packages or website updates.

PuTTY isn't a bad ssh client...but, it's not the same as always having a bunch of gnome terminals open in tabs and being able to "ssh myserver" or "vim myprogram" or whatever I need to do. The mental friction of having to click through menus to open a new ssh session for every server I need to work on (I've usually got two servers open when working: staging and production; and I've often got three or for sessions per server). Sure, I could use screen or tmux, but I can't remember the key combinations. And with gnome terminal tabs I don't have to. Worse, PuTTY doesn't seem to support the keepalive functions that OpenSSH does. I can keep my ssh sessions open all damned day under Linux. Under Windows, if I walk away for lunch or a nap, I have to relog everything when I get back.

Not having them in tabs, and not being able to manage windows under Windows in any reasonable fashion is also frustrating. It's an exercise in frustration finding the right terminal (there will always be two or three with the same label, unless I explicitly make an effort to change it; with tabs I can put them in the order I always use and know exactly where everything is without reading; windows get moved around all the time).

Lack of middle mouse button paste _was_ always a nuisance until I got an awful HP Envy 15 lappy without a middle mouse button...it has the Mac style single mouse button with click areas, which never work right, in Windows or Linux--I often get a right click when I wanted left and vice versa...I've had to retrain myself to use three finger click, which is error prone and I end up getting a double paste....basically I'm realizing that I've been living in misery ever since I got this awful laptop. I need to order a bloody mouse, so I can stop punishing myself with this clickforsaken thing.

Actually, there's a ton of things that are coming to mind now that are just an awful nuisance. Lack of a good command line is the biggest. I use locate and find all the time; the analogs on Windows are a joke. grep! sed/awk/perl for munging things quickly! cygwin is a second class citizen and I'm always trying to figure out where I need to go to do what I need; the paths are so weird and long. That can be said of Mac OS X, as well, to some degree...while it has an actual UNIX underneath, it still has all the clunky Mac baggage that makes it ornery.

<comment><USER19> >> Worse, PuTTY doesn't seem to support the keepalive functions that OpenSSH does. I can keep my ssh sessions open all damned day under Linux. Under Windows, if I walk away for lunch or a nap, I have to relog everything when I get back.

Sure it does.

[http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/sshfwd/tunnel-putty- keepalive...](http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/sshfwd/tunnel-putty- keepalive.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is in no way a bashing of Linux. I love linux, I use it daily, but it's the desktop that I have issues with..

I've used Linux as a Desktop exclusively from 1999 to circa 2008. When I finally gave up. I think it was Ubuntu releasing buggy PulseAudio which broke the sound for me that was the last straw.

I still use Linux as a desktop occasionally but I just don't have the patience to deal with the weird quirks anymore. And there were plenty of quirks over the years.

I never understood why Linux went with Windows inspired ctr-c and ctr-v. For me especially since I do most of my work in a terminal window it was always counter intuitive. Shift-Ins is problematic on laptop keyboards and even on full size keyboards it requires both hands.

Each year (or so it seems) Bryan Lunduke does a "Why Linux Sucks <year>"([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSxX8a_TC7I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSxX8a_TC7I)) and I love it.

<comment><USER21> Audio is one of those things they've never figured out. There's a good "truth in graphs" about that:

[http://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/files/penguinswf/linuxaudi...](http://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/files/penguinswf/linuxaudio.png)

<comment><USER22> For Ubuntu it's been figured out for years. I use Google Voice, play music, do audio in multiple accounts, it all just works.

<comment><USER23> Those are all very basic functions. Let me know when I can produce Pro level audio work on a Linux machine without hiccups.

<comment><USER24> JACK is the sound system of choice for that. For everything else plain ALSA works just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The thing that keeps me on Linux (mostly), is the ability to use alt+drag (I actually re-bind this to Win+drag) to move and resize windows without having to move my mouse to the title bar, or to the thin edges of the windows.

I can just use alt+left drag to move my window, a large target, anywhere I want it to, and likewise to resize it.

It's really annoying for me when I have to use a Windows VM (for example), and not be able to do this.

<comment><USER26> If you use VMware Player (and/or presumably Workstation) in "Unity" mode, you can alt-left drag to move and resize the virtualized-Windows-windows. Sometimes it gets a little wonky, but it works great 95% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I use Awesome as my WM of choice on both my laptop and on my workstation. It just works, and I can get stuff done _fast_.

Besides tiling windows as the major win, I really love the plethora of virtual desktops. I use these with ease. I have a triple monitor setup on my workstation, and have at least 3 virtual desktops in use on each monitor, and sometimes using 5-6 on each when really digging into work.

Middle-click is a must have on a GNU/Linux system also. I've seen people bitch about it on laptops, saying it should be removed, but Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows don't take full advantage of it. Pasting with middle-click is an epic win for the GNU/Linux desktop, IMO.

The largest win, however, is proper package management with Debian. This alone keeps me using GNU/Linux on the desktop, and it's nice to see Apple following suit with their App Store. Cloud package management is vastly superior to "hunt and download".

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be nice if pasting with the middle click ignored the newline character.

I use always-on-top.exe[1] on windows

One feature I would really like is the ability to lock a window to a region of the screen and allow other windows to be snapped around it.

Firstly you should be able to snap a window into the four corners by pushing the mouse into the corner for x seconds. (like ctrl+alt+numpad 1, 3, 7, 9)

If you had a window locked to the right side of the screen you could still snap another window to 50% of what's left. And if you manually re sized it to be small be able to snap another window to be 50% of the screen space that is left after two windows have been locked.

If this is possible please let me know.

1: [http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/keep-window- always-...](http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/keep-window-always-on- top/)

</comment><comment><USER29> a)Tiling window managers are another nicety that is under represented on windows and osx.

b) In the past when I wasnt using tiling window managers - devilspie was really nice since it allowed me to specify where different windows would popup, allowing me to step away from physically arranging windows.

c) Be able to remove features you dont like / use. I currently have my system boot into a dwm session with a minimal set of services started at bootup. Most visual experiences / fonts are all configured via config scripts. Which means that I just need to scp two directories on any new machine and turns into the same flavor visually and behaviorally that I am used to. It is relaxing being able to upgrade machines / move to new machines knowing down to the pixel what environment and keyboard shortcuts you are going to get.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice. Not all that compelling because the bigger problems for Linux as a daily driver aren't covered (for me anyway) but highlights some features I did not previously know where fairly ubiquitous across window managers.

<comment><USER31> Out of curiosity, what sort of issues do you have using Linux as a 'daily driver'? I ask because I've been running Linux-only on a daily basis since '99, and (obviously) haven't had any major issues to cause me to change that decision.

<comment><USER32> For me personally it's image editing software. I need to be able to collaborate easily with graphic designers and manage my personal photography. Adobe's tools are the industry standard and what I need to collaborate with others.

That's the single thing holding me back. If I could have photoshop and lightroom on linux I'd switch in a heartbeat. Until then OS X will probably remain my main desktop.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a heavy GIMP user but it imports/exports PSD pretty well, right? I was a heavy Photoshop user from 1.x to 3.x and all the basic features are there ;-) Color curves, hue-saturation, feathered selections, 99% of what you need to get shit done is the same as Photoshop. Granted, digital art is not my day job. So I don't know what newfangled tools Photoshop has now. I hate layers in GIMP as much as I hated them in Photoshop, I'm oldschool ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm such a noob. I learned way too many things from this post.

</comment><comment><USER34> Personally, I have no real love for the "desktop" paradigm. Give me Xorg, Evilwm, and some Xterms.

</comment><comment><USER35> When I was about ten years old, virtual desktops were the most proximate cause of my switch to Unix (addiction to using Solaris-based UltraSPARC workstations in the university lab nearby). I just thought they were so cool.

Have only run Linux on the desktop ever since. I'm 27.

</comment><comment><USER36> The middle click paste really hit home for me. I recently started working at a mostly Apple Big Co. And the middle click paste is sorely missed. Maybe I can find some equivalent but I always just took it for granted.

</comment><comment><USER37> As a Linux user, what I miss most when I use Windows is focus-follows-mouse.

<comment><USER38> For me, also related to focus is the amazing, best feature ever of having two windows open and write on one and, scroll on another without losing the focus from where I'm writing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I also run Linux on my laptop at home. Window snapping and auto tiling is a must-have nowadays.

Also, didn't know about #2 (setting window z-positions). Going to play with that later!

</comment><comment><USER40> I stick with GNU/Linux (Desktop or not) because it is the most widespread OS designed and maintained by hackers for hackers. Enough said.

</comment><comment><USER41> For window lists I usually use scroll + click (openbox) if I need to view the complete list before making a selection, alt + tab otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER42> beware of hidden characters in commands while pasting them in terminal from random sites.

</comment><comment><USER43> When I saw that millisecond-faster copy/paste was item #1 I kinda lost interest in the rest of the article.</comment>


How gun control was solved elsewhere - <AUTHOR> http://jakewins.com/p/guns <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: A summary of the Swedish model for gun control. AFAIK this is pretty similar to the Norwegian model which the people around here seems to be pretty content with.

I always think of this whenever I see Americans discussing weapons.

Background: Shooting is some kind of unofficial national sport here and there is also many hunters here. Until recently a lot of people also stored their service assault rifles (G3) with ammo at home.</comment>


Intermittent Fasting (Alternate Day Fasting) in Healthy, Non-Obese Adults - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6096974/ <comment><USER2> Followers of Jainism have been doing this for hundreds of years. There are multiple variations of intermittent fasting. For example, you can fast one day, feed once the next day or fast one day and feed twice the next day.

During the fasting days, people only consume boiled water between sunrise and sunset. No foods or drinks of any other kind are consumed. On feeding days, there are restrictions on the types of foods you can consume as well.

As a Jain, it's interesting to see research and studies being done around religious practices we've been following for years and more importantly, what the data and outcome shows.

For a bit more info, I recommend taking a look at this study: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5240069/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5240069/)

<comment><USER3> > Followers of Jainism have been doing this for hundreds of years.

Then we should have conclusive evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Due to the pilot nature of the study, no formal power calculation was performed._

Only 60 participants. Take results from this with a grain of salt - it isn't a systematic review - which aggregates the results of multiple trials such as this one.

Here is a systematic review:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128599/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128599/)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Potential disadvantage of ADF is that it is not appropriate for individuals > who are required to eat meals at regular intervals such as type 1 diabetes, > pregnant and breastfeeding women, elderly, individuals with eating disorders > and those in need of regular food intake to take medications. Weight loss > generally plateau in six months, thus focus on weight maintenance after the > initial period of weight loss is important by adherence to low-calorie diet > and regular physical activity for a longer period of time

From: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128599/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6128599/)

This is really important for people to recognize. As we're all looking for a magic pill, or that one simple rule to follow that will make you healthy, lean and strong, it is easy to forget life is complex, and you need to be aware of those complexities if you want true results.

</comment><comment><USER6> >Alternate day fasting (ADF) is a subtype of intermittent fasting and is defined as a continuous sequence of a fast day (100% energy restriction, zero calories) and a feed day (ad libitum food consumption), resulting in roughly 36-h fasting periods.

I'm interested. So on fasting days you consume water and absolutely nothing else? Or maybe tea or black coffee? I suppose there are some other zero calorie things that can be consumed, but I am betting that zero calorie sugar substitutes could be problematic because they can still cause an insulin response.

[Edit] here it is, I guessed right about the diet drinks.

>ADF group: Subjects are asked to refrain from eating on the fast days and to eat ad libitum on the days between the fast days. On fasting days, subjects are only allowed to consume water, flavoured carbonated water, unsweetened tea or coffee. Furthermore, diet sodas or so called "calorie-free" meals or beverages are restricted.

<comment><USER7> If you're just getting started with this, I would highly recommend starting with simply restricting the hours of the day when you eat. When you wake up in the morning, your body is already in sort of a fasting state. Most people find it's not that hard to extend that period of time a few more hours... particularly with the help of caffeine. If that goes well, you can try to eat dinner earlier, fight off the urge for late-night snacks and continue to push breakfast later and perhaps even skip it altogether.

<comment><USER8> > Most people find it's not that hard to extend that period of time a few more > hours

This is what I do.

Breakfast (technically lunch) around 2pm. Dinner around 8-9pm.

Around 8 hours feeding state, 16 hours fasted.

My body doesn't get hungry until 2pm - and the hunger is just the signal that it's my normal meal time rather than actually being hungry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ya'll should go to [https://reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting](https://reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting) to see why this works and the success stories

</comment><comment><USER10> Trial Status

The first patient was included on 8 April 2015. The study is ongoing; close out is scheduled for April 2019. Participants are no longer being recruited.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a fact sheet on it. [https://www.cell.com/cell- metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(...](https://www.cell.com/cell- metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131\(19\)30429-2)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wasn't able to find the results or summary, did I miss it in my skim? Somehow one day a week fasting sounds more manageable than daily intermittent fasting to me. Could be an interesting way to kick off the week on Monday :)

</comment><comment><USER12> How does one possibly get near enough calories by only eating every other day?

<comment><USER13> You don't get enough calories to maintain a stable weight. The only reason I can think of why a 21st century human would deliberately starve themselves is weightloss.

<comment><USER14> I'm literally stunned that you couldn't think of religion.

<comment><USER15> If you were literally stunned you wouldn't be able to type.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interview with James Pearce of Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/life/14/9/interview-james-pearce-facebook

<comment><USER2> After attending a session with James Pearce at DevNation earlier this year (April), I was really impressed with the open source efforts Facebook is pursuing. It's pretty cool to see how far they've come so fast and the ToDo initiative looks exciting.</comment>


IT'S TIME TO STOP SENDING MONEY ON VENMO - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/venmo-alternatives/ <comment><USER2> because if you don't set your privacy settings everyone can see your transactions?</comment>


Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber for COVID19 Patients - <AUTHOR> https://thefedupdemocrat.home.blog/2020/04/10/hyperbaric-oxygen-chamber-for-covid19-patients/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the article _[Note the last sentence especially]_ :

>"Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell has stated that the COVID-19 patients he has treated are suffering from an odd lack of oxygen, not an inability to breathe. This leads Dr. Kyle-Sidell to conclude we need to get high amounts of oxygen to these patients as quickly and safely as possible, without dangerous high- pressures often utilized in ventilators.

Every hospital has a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. _It is possible a COVID-19 patient can spend a short amount of time in the chamber and have their body heavily oxygenated with low-to-no risk._

However hyperbaric oxygen chambers are currently not a part of the approved COVID-19 "protocols" that every hospital in the world is following. _Instead, the hospitals are assuming COVID-19 is the same as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and are following the ARDSnet protocols even though it is killing 70 to 90% of all patients once placed on a ventilator. "_<

<comment><USER2> I saw Sidell before this on his YT channel and on Medscape/WebMD.

There's two things to consider:

1\. It is likely that 100% of patients withheld ventilation would die when they were crashing, hence why they were started on them; so to suggest that ventilators are "killing patients" is an ignorant stretch when 10-30% are saved, which is better than 0%.

2\. Given that he mentioned patients were exuding pink, frothy sputum, it's worth looking into, as he mentioned, that the COVID critical syndrome isn't ARDS but something uniquely novel. It maybe similar to high-altitude pulmonary edema, secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, anemia and/or hemorrhagic shock + pulmonary edema.

It could also be that alveoli are so entirely damaged by the virus due to surface expression of ACE2 and grossly, temporarily repaired that they become incompatible with life. In this avenue, it's worth looking at prophylaxis against major organ damage such as down-regulators of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 pathways such as protease inhibitors like camostat mesylate and E-64d.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When i saw this i immediately wondered about fire risk. Here is an article about that: [https://www.uhms.org/images/Safety- Articles/hyperbaric_and_h...](https://www.uhms.org/images/Safety- Articles/hyperbaric_and_hypobaric_cha.pdf)</comment>


Your Startup has to Crawl Before it can Walk, Run, Sprint... and be a Platform - <AUTHOR> http://reecepacheco.com/post/9291225029/your-startup-has-to-crawl-before-it-can-walk-run

<comment><USER2> Many companies conflate having an API with being a "true platform."

Additionally, we are all witnessing the pussification of the word platform. It used describe something that was more fundamental, more plumbing and infrastructure that others used to build separate and often wholly distinct businesses (i.e. Farmville on the Facebook Platform). But the new watered down platform is any web app with an API that allows mixing Nyan Cats with Foursquare and raising $42MM.

Most web apps should provide an API. Almost none of those will become platforms. So be it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The whole point of being a "startup" is to find a business strategy and not be a startup! I agree with this post and think more startups should point out HOW they "could be a platform" rather than focussing on how they are one, which they most likely are not (which as the point of this post, i think, and the original citing article that got so much buzz yesterday)</comment>


Twitter vs. Facebook: How to manage a downtime - <AUTHOR> http://giorgiosironi.blogspot.com/2009/08/twitter-vs-facebook-how-to-manage.html

<comment><USER2> "Facebook is all php, while Twitter is built on Ruby on Rails."

Actually, Twitter's backend is Scala now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone get anything from this "article"?</comment>


Never make classes final - <AUTHOR> https://pragmaticobjects.com/chapters/002_never_make_class_final.html <comment><USER2> Articles that don't care to clearly mention what language they're about are annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it's Java, isn't it?</comment></comment>


Deep Learning GPU Benchmarks: GTX 1080 vs. Titan X Pascal - <AUTHOR> http://add-for.com/deep-learning-benchmarks/ <comment><USER2> This website requires many clicks. For intelligable graphs, click here

[http://add-for.com/topics/benchmarks/caffe-vs-neon-vs-nvcaff...](http://add- for.com/topics/benchmarks/caffe-vs-neon-vs-nvcaffe-vs-tensorflow)

Then make sure to change from stacked to grouped.

<comment><USER3> It makes me sad that stacked bar graphs are even an option here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are using different CPUs for these tests. It seems that the CPU used for Pascal has a higher GHz speed. I hope that isn't confounding on the results.

<comment><USER5> The test setup for the 1080 also had half the RAM of the others, and used an older ubuntu.

Not a great test of GPUs in isolation.

<comment><USER6> I guess that sometimes you have to work with what you have and I prefer these results to no results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Baidu Research also recently announced DeepBench: [https://svail.github.io/DeepBench/](https://svail.github.io/DeepBench/)

</comment><comment><USER8> From eyeball perf/pricing, it looks roughly like the Pascal is 50% faster for twice the price. Which isn't surprising from the mass-market to specialized transition.

<comment><USER9> You're also paying for the Titan XPs 12GB of VRAM, which is overlooked by the common canned benchmarks that easily fit in the 1080s 8GB.

<comment><USER8> 50% more RAM for 2x more. Same formula!

<comment><USER10> so ... 50% more RAM and 50% more speed for 100% more money?

honestly, this doesn't seem like a big issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just bought a GTX 1070 mostly for reasons other than Deep Learning but it will be interesting to see how it stacks up compared to a 1080. Just hard to justify a 55% price increase for a 25% performance gain. Maybe SLI will get better in the future?

<comment><USER12> SLI is not for compute. SLI scaling has nothing to do with compute performance, unless you are hitting a PCIe bandwidth bottleneck or have to jump over QPI you can have 1:1 scaling with multiple GPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a shitty way to display the numbers. Combined Bar charts are not made for this.

<comment><USER14> You can switch to "grouped" above the charts to change it.

...and you could argue that it does make sense for showing how X fares across categories Y,Z,T... The height of the bar is proportional to the average performance across the different frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Double speed 16bit inference on the Titan X too

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anybody know what is being used at big companies like Facebook and Google?

<comment><USER17> Treating big companies as monoliths never works well. Different teams will inevitably choose to use different hardware, but the nVidia Tesla Kxx is popular among a lot of these "big four" types.</comment></comment>


I'm So Relieved, The Atlas Shrugged Movie is Fantastic - hustlebear-judd http://hustlebear.com/2011/02/28/im-so-relieved-the-atlas-shrugged-movie-was-fantastic/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently some clips now available, here's one <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PK5Sq3bIHY>

Release date 4/15/11...isn't that tax day?

<comment><USER2> Based on that clip, it appears to be headed straight for DVD.

To the actors' credit, they do not seem to be as grotesquely stilted as in the book. It must have been the acting challenge of a lifetime!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll admit that I expected it to be terrible, but watching the clips I'm starting to feel a glimmer of hope.

<comment> hustlebear-judd Man, after I saw that Rearden scene I felt SO much better. It is representative of the rest of the movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this must mean that objectivism is true!</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I learn how to build APIs for developers? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to learn how to build APIs for developers, what are the best practices around organizing them and exposing them through API keys.
Any courses, guides, blogs, or books that people found helpful?
I code mostly in Python and Javascript. <comment><USER2> For theory, check out [http://slides.com/jamesgibson-4/deck#/](http://slides.com/jamesgibson-4/deck#/). For practice, check out [https://testdriven.io/](https://testdriven.io/).</comment>


Best place to find engineering talent? - <AUTHOR> I am hiring for a Hot tech start-up in Dubai. Where can I find the right engineering and infrastructure talent for an employer that supports relocation? <comment><USER2> Hi there. I think it depends on what you are building and what skills you need. I'd check out Insight and connect if this matches what you need and you are interested. [https://www.insightfellows.com/partner](https://www.insightfellows.com/partner)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Linux Kernel - Structure Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://ernstsson.net/post/25837804958/the-linux-kernel-challenge

<comment><USER2> I remember the early runs of Coverity on the Symbian kernel and user-space.

Because Symbian's C++ is not very conventional, and is very careful in its own conventions, Coverity found basically nothing except false alarms.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, Coverity needs to be configured correctly for the target system to get it working for you (I assume that especially Symbian C++ can be tricky). Similar here, the tolerance values for complexity might be set wrong giving us a lower score than we should have. The image itself is valid though.

<comment><USER2> Isn't the very low quality score setting off alarm bells and making you question if you're measuring the right things?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, definitely. I think (or hope?) the main reason for the score is that the directory structure and the actual architecture of Linux isn't fully in sync. Most of the score comes from the top directory tangles and complexity. When I compare it to the commonly used kernel map (<http://makelinux.homelinux.com/kernel_map/LKM3_512.png>) I really don't see it matching as well as Arqua requires for a good score. Note also that the score doesn't say that the software doesn't work, just that the structure of the source in relation to the call graph of the functions is complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found it took a bit of digging to find Arqua (Google turned up nothing), but if you look through the other blog posts you can find the link which is here <https://github.com/ernstsson/Arqua>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, added the link in the post as well.</comment>


Would you build a pure client-side JavaScript App using Pageforest? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pageforest.com

<comment><USER2> Possibly using the open source platform, fairly unlikely on a hosted version. Why? I think it's almost certain that at some point I'm going to need some configuration or tweaks to the server side code that are application specific and cannot be done in client side code (validation, heavy lifting or secret sauce things). As nice as it would be to not worry about the service side code, once you get past the basics of a CRUD app, the server side become rather important.

Off the top of my head the biggest early concern I'd have would be how are you going to handle server side validation, since relying solely on client side validation is pretty much just as good an no validation at all. Especially complex validation involving multiple fields. The next would be interacting with things like third party APIs that have access keys that need to be protected or just can't be accessed from the client (because they don't offer a JSONP interface).

<comment><USER3> Google App Engine (and other cloud providers) also places limits on how much you can tweak the server side code. Clearly, there will always be apps that require some crazy server-side C code or whatever, but for 99% of apps all that matters is whether pageforest has exposed enough in the API to take care of the important stuff (validation, etc.)

I'm not saying their API is good enough for this, since they just launched, but from a theoretical standpoint I think the concept is sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the concept, reminds me of CouchApps (<http://couchapp.org/>).

That being said, I agree with andrewjshults that sooner or later you will need to write server side code, even if it is to proxy client side requests to another domain.

mckoss, would it be worth making a server side implementation of your service for <http://www.akshell.com> \- a server side JavaScript platform with syncrhonous I/O and a browser based IDE. We're open sourcing the whole stack, so there would be a lot less lock in than with AppEngine. Drop me a line on our mailing list if you're interested: <http://groups.google.com/group/akshell>

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think so. Also, since we're at it (I took some time to read the whole frontpage) "(GET, PUT, and POST)" are standard HTTP (not HTML) methods.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. Thanks - I'll correct that. Any elaboration on why this service would or would not appeal to you?

<comment><USER5> I don't see any obvious benefit in using it.

Relying on the the platform to handle the user authentication and document storage is something I wouldn't be comfortable with, though I'd use it as an option (as facebook connect, google or any other authentication service out there).

In general, I think this would have been a hit 5 years ago. Now, with services like heroku, phpfog, app engine, even github having free plans, the "hosting" part seems to be solved, and something pretty similar can be done these days with some sparkle from FB Connect and a bit of rails/php for the client side storage.

Don't get me wrong, I like this kind of services because [I think] they push innovation in different directions. It's just that I think there are a few pretty well stablished and provide similar (or equivalent) functionality and I just don't see any obvious advantage between this service and the others, though I see a few drawbacks.

<comment><USER3> Sure, all those services let you write server code for free, but why write server code at all if you don't have to?

<comment><USER5> Because I can. No, seriously, I didn't mean that server code _should_ be written. You can use those services to serve static pages as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see any mention of database. If you can't save or retrieve records that's kind of limiting, no?

<comment><USER7> quoting:

What Services does Pageforest Provide? <snip> Cloud-based Document Storage - Each Pageforest user is given storage for their own document collection in the Cloud. When a user authorizes your application, your App can create and store documents to the user's collection.

<comment><USER6> Document storage? Saving an html page to a directory could be document storage.

They asked for comment and I think they need to be more specific that's all. If they're using the GAE db imho they should say so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. The back end is implemented on App Engine. But we provide an abstracted storage interface. Application can created "documents" (up to 1 MB of JSON, and saved using a HTTP PUT or POST). Our permissions model is based on the document - you can keep a document private to a user, or make it read/write able by others.

In addition, each document can have as many child "blobs" as you want (each blob is up to 1 MB using any format - can be text, png, json, xml, etc.).

Interestingly, each "App" is very similar to a "Document". E.g., you index.html file is a "blob" in the application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just want to say I have been wanting this forever and can't believe no one has provided this before- I'm annoyed you guys beat me to this type of product.

This is exactly how a web app should be created- All the apps I've been creating lately are 95% client-side javascript and 5% of annoying server code that could obviously have been implemented using a generic REST-based data store.

I will be using pageforest extensively (Assuming it's not buggy, etc :-) Hats off to you guys for being first to market on this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't be hater ... come work with us! ;-)

Seriously, thanks for giving it a try - I'd love to get your feedback on problems you have using the platform...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the key similarities or differences between this and <http://unhosted.org/> ? Considered collaborating?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer to unhosted - I've not seen this before. Sounds like a standard protocol to separate application from data storage - pretty similar to the Pageforest model - except federated!

<comment><USER8> You're welcome! Glad to see you've already pinged the mailing list (I lurk).

Friday night networking! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No; no I wouldn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please? ;-)</comment></comment>


A Chat with a Google Street View Driver - <AUTHOR> http://ekstreme.com/thingsofsorts/fun-web/chatting-with-a-google-street-view-driver

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting that the driver had been stopped by "10 people" concerned about the privacy of Google Street View in the same country that has thousands of CCTV cameras lining the streets.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing, the CCTV camera concentration in the UK is the highest in the world.

<comment><USER4> The difference is, CCTV are pretty much used to solve crimes... They do a very very good job at it as well. You don't see the footage from CCTV cameras ending up on the internet in general.

With the google thing, you _know_ it's going to be published.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are the laws concerning taking pictures that much different in the UK than the US, or just the attitude?

In the US, if you take a picture on the street and there are people in the background, my understanding is that you don't need permission - they're in a public place and you're taking a picture. Is that not the case in the UK?

<comment><USER6> I believe the general mindset in most places is: "Public place, public property" meaning that if you are out "in public," you have no right to complain about others being able to see you, or take pictures that might have you in them. You are out in a public area and have no right to remove the freedom of others to take pictures of public areas. If you don't want to be in them, avoid the cameras, stay inside, or wear a veil (or mask, hoodie, etc.).

The issue is in deciding when the others (Google, in this case) abuse their freedom to take pictures. Where should we draw the line? Obviously cameras should be allowed in public places. Should pictures of others only be permitted for private use? Google wants to use the pictures with you in it to make them money. The paparazzi have a lot of freedom in taking and publishing pictures of others. Is this the same as what Google is doing? Is what the paparazzi doing crossing the line also?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The white things are LIDAR units. It's a laser range finder often used for robotics car competitions. It's the most accurate way to measure distance.

If you wonder how it works: the unit has a spinning mirror. It sends out pulses of laser light as the mirror spins and measures how quickly the light takes to return after it hits an object to return to a sensor on the unit. If you know how fast light moves and have a fast processor, you can measure distance.)

Because they are being used sideways, they sweep from sky to ground measuring distance. They are probably being used to "map" buildings as they drive by, so that the data could be used to create better 3D maps.

(They aren't perfect: reliability includes a variety of factors including environment [how do bushes and trees affect laser measurement] and distance [range may only be 50ft for instance])

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, I didn't realize they had LIDAR as well.

I bet they also record WiFi and cell tower location data for geolocation (i.e. Android). If you're going to drive thousands of miles, you might as well record as much data as you can the first time...

<comment><USER9> Search up "skyhook" for information on the program that's indexed wifi hotspots for a rather ominous hybrid geolocation system; and zoom in on cities in google map view for the general contours of large buildings, which is pretty useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm suprised that no one mentioned the irony of the google street view driver not wanting to have his picture taken in a public place . . .

</comment><comment> cypress-hill wtf is there to talk about???

"do you drive all over the city taking pictures??"

"yes"</comment>


How I named my startup - <AUTHOR> http://theagileplanner.com/blog/building-agile-planner/how-to-name-your-startup

<comment><USER2> I generally agree with most of the points made by the author, except he neglects a very basic requirement - usability and memorability.

Whether we like it or not, these products often end up needing a website which need a domain. theagileplanner.com is a substandard name because someone else owns agile planner.com - most users will not remember the "the" and leave it off the domain when they type it in or write it down. It is okay to refer to the "the" in a product or company name in your copy, but generally fatal when it comes to domain names - unless you own the corresponding version of the domain with the "the".

</comment><comment><USER3> There are all sorts of reasons to put some effort into your name. But that is primarily if you are expecting to get a lot of your traffic from google.

In most cases though. It simply doesn't matter as long as your aren't being completely retarded about it.

No name is going to save your company.

So instead go with something you like. That way even if your company goes bad you don't start blaming your name for the misery.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot to be said for that. For small businesses that will be predominantly marketed online it makes sense to choose something that communicates what you do. If you've got a massive PR budget, I think the rules are slightly different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think, more than anything, the name has to follow the two-syllable rule. Tumblr. Twitter. Facebook. Olark. Reddit. Slashdot. Google.

If a company does have a longer name, users will end up coming up with a two- syllable nickname. For example, Huffington Post -> Huff Po.

Lots of folks try to name their company after what it does, following the FreeCreditReport.com model, but it's kinda lame and not very memorable, especially if you're getting started.

</comment><comment><USER5> IMO it would have been better to create a unique name and then use "The agile planner" as the title attribute for your homepage.

Creating a unique name & domain would help you in the long run for search engines and brand recognition.

Searching for "the agile planner" on google has 1,950,000 results.</comment>


PC-BSD 10.1.2-RC1 Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pcbsd.org/2015/05/pc-bsd-10-1-2-rc1-now-available/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am mainly mentioning this, because this release is going to bring a load of privacy and security enhancements:

New PersonaCrypt Utility allows moving all of users $HOME directory to an encrypted USB Drive. This drive can be connected at login, and used across different systems

Stealth Mode allows login to a blank $HOME directory, which is encrypted with a one-time GELI key. This $HOME directory is then discarded at logout, or rendered unreadable after a reboot

Tor mode switches the firewall to running transparent proxy, blocking all traffic except what is routed through Tor

Migrated to IPFW firewall for enabling VIMAGE in 10.2

<comment><USER2> _New PersonaCrypt Utility allows moving all of users $HOME directory to an encrypted USB Drive._

This is really a terrific idea with large/fast USB 3.0 drives becoming the norm.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure. If your goal of carrying your data with you is that you don't trust it to stay secure on a system, then plugging in your USB stick to the computer seems like a security risk right there. Once you decrypt it, another person could have some kernel stuff running that grabs all your home data at that time. If you trust the box, you may as well leave your data there with regular encrypted home folders.

For the general idea of you having multiple computers and wanting to use the same home folder on each of them, then the encrypted USB stick would be a nice safeguard against accidentally losing said stick (prevents the finder from reading it. As if even 1:1,000 random people would even be _able_ to read a UFS or ZFS stick :P - of course, you should still encrypt anyway for that case.)

Still a cool feature though.

<comment><USER4> I think your second use case is probably the intended one. E.g I have several computers at home and work that are all "trusted" and I want to conveniently plug in my home directory on whichever one I'm using.</comment></comment></comment></comment>