The Maker of the AK-47 Is Entering the Electric Car Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/kalashnikov-takes-aim-at-electric-cars-with-retro-prototype <comment><USER2> There's so much wrong with this car there's absolutely no way it goes to market.

It's a publicity stunt or a one off modified car for brand awareness. Not a production model.

It's an old car with some cheap eBay headlights stick on (I had those lights on a modified motorcycle I built up), cheap aftermarket wheels, dumped suspension so low the front wheels won't turn. It has the original mechanical door handles, front end fab work is atrocious and nothing lines up right.

Just like SEMA cars, this was just made to provide some pretty photos and spread some PR.

<comment><USER3> If the car is affordable and reliable, why wouldn't it go to market? Mechanical door handles, sure they aren't pretty, but they can be maintained by anyone with basic tools.

Not every electric car needs to be shiny and expensive.

<comment><USER4> Soviet cars were "reliable" in the sense that yes, they broke down very often and in predictable ways, so that most people could fix them.

<comment><USER3> In a, perhaps hypocritical, way I would find this preferable to some of the Tesla stories where a buyer can't use their car for months on end while parts are sourced and the car is repaired by a "certified" shop.

I find it far preferable to the car manufacturer shutting you out of your car entirely via a remote call.

<comment><USER5> What about something in between like a Toyota Camry? Very reliable and easy to get repaired if needed?

<comment><USER6> That's not in between though, it's on the opposite end of 2 different axes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think a cursory investigation will show this is more likely just the company trying to show _something_ to correspond to the large capital injection it is about to receive from "investors" / cronies. (speculation, but _look_ at that thing ...)

<comment><USER8> This is the only plausible explanation to me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They also make a next-gen tank that doesn't go under its own power[1], a next- gen fighter that nobody wants[2] and a nuclear-powered missile with a reactor that never starts[3]. Not to mention conventional cars that people are happy to ditch as soon as they save enough money for a used foreign one.

I wouldn't worry if I were Tesla.

[1][https://www.smh.com.au/world/russias-t14-armata-tank- breaks-...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/russias-t14-armata-tank-breaks-down- before-its-parade-debut-20150508-ggwt18.html)

[2][http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20347/its-no- surprise-i...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20347/its-no-surprise- india-finally-ditched-its-stealth-fighter-program-with-russia)

[3][https://taskandpurpose.com/russia-lost-nuclear-cruise- missil...](https://taskandpurpose.com/russia-lost-nuclear-cruise-missile/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Following the fine tradition of such companies as British Small Arms, or as your granddad knew them, BSA: maker of fine British motorcycles.

Er, wait. BSA went out of business. Not a great precedent for those wishing to transition from firearms to motor vehicles. And from the looks of that thing, they'll follow BSA's trail right to the end.

<comment><USER11> Husqvarna and Saab are two good examples of weapons companies making motor vehicles. I'm not saying Kalashnikov Concern will or won't follow that path though.

<comment><USER10> Well, Saab still at least makes military equipment.

Husqvarna? TIL that their logo is a gun sight. :-)

<comment><USER12> One of the treadle sewing machines here in the house comes from 'Husqvarna Vapenfabriks (armament factory) Aktiebolag (incorporated company)'. Armament factories often entered other fine-mechanical fields, most likely because they could use the skills learned in designing and producing weapons elsewhere as well as to provide a steady stream of income which was not as dependent on the winds of war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nothing screams quality like designing your car along the lines of some of the worst cars ever produced.

<comment><USER14> Maybe the goal, just like with AK-47, is to kill a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love it, finish aside. Contemporary car design leaves me cold. I'd much prefer a return to the boxy style of the 80s, or this slightly curved box style of the 70s (yes yes I know, safety regs etc prevent it...)

<comment><USER16> Agreed. Personally, I think car design peaked with the Volvo 240.

It's just so majestic. Especially in bright colors like orange.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/19...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/1975_Volvo_245_DL_wagon_ --_09-05-2011_front.jpg/1024px-1975_Volvo_245_DL_wagon_-- _09-05-2011_front.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Taste is very subjective. I'm glad they don't make cars like that Volvo anymore, it's probably the ugliest looking thing I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not particularly hard to make an electric car (there are plenty of DIY projects).

It is, however, extremely hard to make an electric car that's safe, ergonomic, attractive - and also performs well.

As much as I admire the original AK-47 design, I don't believe the firm is capable of making electric cars. Or robots.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs- trending-45282805](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-45282805)

</comment><comment><USER19> >The Maker of the AK-47

Should be "A" maker of the AK-47. The AK-47 is an open design and anyone can make it. I know there was an attempt to trademark the name a few years ago, but there's still lots of companies using the name.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, though, Kalashnikov Concern, formerly IzhMash, is the canonical descendant of the AK heritage.

<comment><USER21> Other factories in ex-Soviet Union have technical documentation and the right to produce AK of different modifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No doubt you'll be able to buy cheap knock-offs in certain 3rd world street markets and bazaars within a month.

<comment><USER23> Mass production of electric car components wouldn't be such a bad thing..

<comment><USER24> Agreed, if they do it right. The big risk is that many knock-off electronics use questionable components and methodologies that can lead to fires when you mix that with the level of current needed for an electric car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-i-l My first thought was - why not go one step further and put a modern battery in an original electric vehicle from the 1970s like the Enfield 800 [0]? Then on reading the Enfield 800 wikipedia page I find there's a hobbyist doing just that [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_8000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_8000)

[1] [http://www.flux-capacitor.co.uk](http://www.flux-capacitor.co.uk)

<comment><USER25> After being profiled about this car on Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged (YouTube show) [0][1], Johnny Smith eventually joined Fully Charged as a regular co-host, and his enthusiasm for both classic electric and modern electric cars is infectious, and fun to watch.

[0] [http://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/](http://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/) [1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/fullychargedshow](https://www.youtube.com/user/fullychargedshow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I expect it to be reliable electric car with plenty clearance between any kind of moving parts, and that the electric motor never jams. But if it does jam (which it will), it must be easy to take a part with a 10mm wrench.

<comment><USER27> It'll be half the price of the fancy American version, it'll be repairable in a cave with nothing more than basic welding equipment and every single country will make their own slightly modified version of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My uncle in the 80s had the same car, with all the same craftsmanship, including door handles etc. The only thing new in this design are the front lights, and you can see they are of pretty low quality, crooked lines etc. This would be one of the state funded projects, where most of money will be stolen, again.

<comment><USER29> In this article: "...CV-1 on a 1970s Soviet hatchback, the IZh 2125 "Kombi"..." I would say, it's bigger challenge for them to create modern car, than an electric one.

<comment><USER30> I don't know.. that chassis is the best looking thing on this car... can I just get that with a regular combustion engine and without the shitty headlight kit?

<comment><USER29> I know the guy who knows the guy that sells Cold War era vehicles to the western countries. Personally I wouldn't buy it. And it might be expensive, because it's old and rare.

<comment><USER30> Was just reading about this "retro-mod" of a GAZ Volga that cost $500,000

[https://www.caranddriver.com/features/volga-v-12-coupe](https://www.caranddriver.com/features/volga-v-12-coupe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love the front of this thing but the back is absolutely hideous [1]. I'd be vying for one if it was a flat hatchback.

1\. [https://images.carscoops.com/2018/08/cbfacc26-kalashnikov- cv...](https://images.carscoops.com/2018/08/cbfacc26-kalashnikov-cv-1-8.jpg)

<comment><USER16> I like it. I'm a big fan of cars that look very unique, even if they are also hideous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here is a non-amp link... it loads much faster for me: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/kalashnik...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/kalashnikov- takes-aim-at-electric-cars-with-retro-prototype)

</comment><comment><USER33> This seems like a ploy to confuse people who like to filter their investment decisions through a political lens.

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks like the good old Lada 2105

<comment><USER35> It's Izh Kombi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izh_2125](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izh_2125)

Lada 2105 is a derivative of Fiat 124. This Izh is a pure Soviet creation (based on Moskvitch model).

<comment><USER36> Izh based on Moskvich 412. Which is derivative of Opel Kadett B.

<comment><USER35> Moskvitch 400 was based on Opel Kadett. Moskvitch 408, and then 412, were not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just because they make the AK-47, doesn't mean they know anything about mechanical innovation or even vehicular engineering. They definitely don't know anything about marketing from the look of the car.

<comment><USER38> They're trying to tap into the Soviet nostalgia that's surprisingly prevalent in Russia.

<comment><USER21> It is just Russian propaganda for internal use as with Russian Operating System, Russian smartphone and Russian tablet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The car doesn't particularly aerodynamic. Why would someone waste that much energy nowadays?

<comment><USER40> If you're driving mostly city streets with heavy traffic, I don't think aerodynamics is a big concern. But mostly I'm sure it's just a non-functional design meant to grab headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Do I get to be a Bond villain if I buy one?

</comment><comment><USER42> Builds smartphone from Adafruit parts.

This baby's gonna give Apple a run for their money!

</comment><comment><USER43> Non-AMP version: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/kalashnik...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-24/kalashnikov- takes-aim-at-electric-cars-with-retro-prototype)

<comment><USER44> Thanks, updated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's a gag car. Bloomberg should know better.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have never seen anything with "Made in Russia" on it. What happens when nobody wants their oil?

<comment><USER8> They lease you land.

But I really can't think of anything produced in Russia besides weapons, rockets, and nuclear powerplants.

<comment><USER47> where do you live? obviously you wouldn't see any russian things in US for many reasons...

<comment><USER8> Why not? You see US and Chinese products in Russia and Ukraine, why not vice- versa? "But the dollar is so expensive", etc is not a legitimate argument.

Russians buy American cars, tools, etc.

<comment><USER47> What does this have to do with anything? My point is if you don't have russian products in the US (for whatever reasons) this doesn't mean other people don't have russian products</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Godot Engine Was Approved for an Epic MegaGrant - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/godot-engine-was-approved-for-an-epic-megagrant.15913 <comment><USER2> It'll be interesting to how this affects the direction of development given Epic's attitude toward Linux gaming...

<comment><USER3> I bet it is more like _" enemy of my enemies, are my friends"_ kind of support.

<comment><USER4> Yeah this feels like a shot at Unity since godot's target is more overlapping with Unity than Unreal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty cool.

I'm not sure what the reasons for funding this are since it's a direct competitor to an Epic product but I'm not gonna complain as long as there's no strings attached. Haha, maybe It's Tim apologizing for never opening up Unreal 1.

</comment><comment><USER6> Whatever their reasons this is great for Godot. It's already pretty nice to use.</comment>


Fitbit Takes on the Apple Watch with the Blaze - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-05/fitbit-blaze-wearables-giant-takes-on-apple-watch <comment><USER2> Fitbit lost me as a customer a while ago with how locked down their data is. Why buy this instead of a Pebble, an Android Wear device, or an Apple Watch, all of which have a comparable feature set and price, longer track record, and better data portability?

<comment><USER3> Data portability is a non-issue: [https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Web-API/How- can-I-get-minute...](https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Web-API/How-can-I-get- minute-and-second-level-data/m-p/324362#U324362)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The metal version looks like Casio watch I wore in the 80s.

I think it's fine for a fitness device to look like a fitness device. But once it starts looking like a watch, you'd better make sure it looks device as a fashion accessory.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't code my own software on it and it doesn't sync to HealthKit.

More than satisfied with the Apple Watch.

<comment><USER6> I use the Sync Solver app to push my FitBit data into HealthKit.

[http://syncsolver.com/](http://syncsolver.com/)

I have both an Apple Watch and a FitBit Surge. The Apple Watch is the better smart watch, but the Surge is a much better fitness device and you can actually see workout data in a meaningful way. At this point, I definitely need both.</comment></comment>


Why Go Is Not Good - <AUTHOR> http://yager.io/programming/go.html?

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7962345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7962345)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's this feeling sometimes expressed that C actually held programming language design and everyday programming back (with null, buffer overflows, no string type, arbitrary memory access at will and aliasing issues, crappy basic library, etc). See also "Worse is better", etc.

Maybe Go does the same thing for the 2010's, but with fewer of the redeeming qualities that made C actually worthwhile then, and more competent contenders available as alternative.</comment>


An elegant mathematical solution against fluff on News.YC - <AUTHOR> Make user's voting power a function of their submission karma, or their account age, or post length and score. How about a formula like:
voting power = log_a(submit karma) + log_b(account age) + log_c(avg[log_d(length)*score])
With bases a, b, c, and d picked appropriately. It would seem a > b > c would make sense.
The first term rewards those with good judgment as to what others find interesting, the second stops one group of think-alikes from dominating opinion, the third rewards long+insightful posts and "punishes" shorter posts (but not too much, with appropriate d). And by rewards, I mean trusts to know what is fluff and what is not.
This also gives a clear incentive for people to write thought-out posts, which is important - this is, at heart, a psychological problem more than a sorting problem.
Of course, the real hacker spirited solution would be to let people make/share their own such formulas to make their own front pages, but I'm not sure if Paul has the time to implement that. <comment><USER2> A few notes:

1) Users with an old account do not necessarily write better comments or post better stories than recent arrivals.

2) Length doesn't equal insightfulness. There might be some correlation, but not a lot. This comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110034> is three characters and has a vote of 57.

I like the idea of people being able to write their own formulas and share them. Especially in a forum like this :-)

<comment><USER3> _I like the idea of people being able to write their own formulas and share them._

I don't know how flexible YC News is but it would be great if each user could express their own individual ordering preference relations in their profile.

<comment><USER2> maybe even a modding system for the modding systems...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The MetaForum messageboard software has been doing this for years. Everyone gets to vote, but people's voting power is determined in turn by how valuable to the community they are. It removes the need for moderators entirely, and completely eliminates the ability for spammers to thrive.

Their formula bases a large amount of worth simply on how their posts have been modded in the past, but then also include things like post count and a decaying value on length of time.

</comment><comment><USER5> News.YC is a community. Our individual behaviour taken as a collective is what constitutes the dynamics that emerge. There are benefits to both maintaining an organic element of letting the community choose for themselves and to having some mathematical/code-based governance.

At the same time, there are a number of assumptions in both the formula above (as well as the title mind you) and its description that are more in favor of eliminating the diversity. This could detract from the whole user experience. While I personally don't like the fluff, the diversity it affords us all more valuable than having our contributions be governed by an equation...

</comment><comment><USER6> > Of course, the real hacker spirited solution would be to let people > make/share their own such formulas to make their own front pages, but I'm > not sure if Paul has the time to implement that.

I have this in my roadmap for Vortices, see <http://vortices.appjet.net/node/obj-LBlNDy7Ow>

</comment><comment><USER7> A simple weighting equation? Where's the "elegance"?

<comment><USER8> Elegant in the sense that you apply one general formula instead of hacks (managing things manually is a hack, yes?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think ideally, karma should just be there for feedback for the poster and the reader. Paradoxically, the only reason karma is meaningful is that it is useless - there is no incentive to game the system. If more karma means more power, there is an incentive to post to get karma instead of posting to help the community.

If you don't believe that incentivising karma is a bad thing, try this thought experiment: if you gave away $1.00 for each karma point earned, would the quality of the content go up or down? You can add some conditions if you think the experiment is unfair, but I think you would still find that the quality would be reduced with incentives.

Ultimately, 99% of the users are just like you and I and do not want to see news.yc turn into another digg/reddit. Why not take advantage of that, instead of treating it like a technical problem when it is really a community issue.

<comment><USER10> > If more karma means more power, there is an incentive to post to get karma > instead of posting to help the community.

One could argue that in the current community, posting to get karma and posting to help the community are one and the same. Reddit's downfall came more because of a change in the composition of the community than because of karma incentives. At the same time, you're right about the problems of people trying to get karma for karma's sake. I think the best way to reduce this problem is to make it harder to gain karma than just by posting popular links.

> Ultimately, 99% of the users are just like you and I and do not want to see > news.yc turn into another digg/reddit. Why not take advantage of that, > instead of treating it like a technical problem when it is really a > community issue.

You're right. It is a community issue. But as soon as the "hordes of 14-year- olds" invade, the 99% you cite will drop. The current technical solution doesn't prevent that from happening. We're trying to find one that does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No. But, weigh comment karma a lot more than submit karma and it might be alright.

<comment><USER12> Is comment karma tracked differently than submit karma?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about forcing new users who want to contribute to go through a bit of a logic test? Perhaps answer some simple questions before signing up, to ensure they're at least a little alive where it counts?

</comment><comment><USER14> It'd be interesting if the weighting algorithm was somehow exposed to your account so you could mess with it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another thought: I think the karma score should also represent rate, instead of just weight. Otherwise the first people here become entrenched in the leader board. A static hierarchy seems pretty unhackerish.

<comment><USER15> PG responded to this thought previously, saying that karma inflation takes care of it.

<comment><USER14> What is karma inflation?

<comment><USER15> Over time karma is worth less, because a popular story will get 20 or 50 or 100 points when it might have only gotten 7 points when this site was just getting started

<comment><USER14> The problem with this is that Hacker News isn't supposed to grow very big.

<comment><USER10> Bingo. I think that's the key. And therein lies the problem. How does one keep a community small and high-quality without losing diversity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good idea. There is a 'conflict of interests' when you give the length of the comment a value. It will give people incentive to write longer comments for unnecessary reasons, which is the definition of fluff.

</comment><comment><USER17> c.disagree : concise > ramble

</comment><comment><USER18> Where's the MathML? =P

</comment><comment><USER19> The everybody will put: date of birth = 1800</comment>


NASA unveils sweeping new programs - manned rockets, deep space exploration - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-20002088-239.html

<comment><USER2> An interesting comment on this story, about NASA:

"They have been one of the big fuelers of my dreams for most of my life. I grew up in the Apollo years where we broke through one boundary after another and celebrated the early years of the Shuttle program where we created a system that is still unrivaled after 3 decades for it's ability to deliver _and_ return payload to Earth.

Then Challenger blew up and along with it the spirit that was NASA. Instead, it was replaced by bureaucrats and risk managers. Everything involving manned exploration became so risk adverse that it amazing we have even managed to keep the program running today. If you have any doubt, look at Constellation, where we were going to basically replicate the accomplishments of Apollo, and take twice as long to do it and burn huge sums of money in the process. We can dream bigger and I am glad the current administration killed the program."

</comment><comment><USER3> If we weren't constantly waging war on multiple fronts, we could give NASA a massive budget.

But when you are gushing $4+ billion a month, everything else has to be cut.

What they are giving NASA over the next five years, will be spent in just April+May in Afghanistan and Iraq.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's too bad we had to abandon those lunar bases we built in all those years we didn't fight war.

<comment><USER5> It's more like those bases were never built because the money went to Vietnam.

<comment><USER6> We went to the moon at the same time that we were in Vietnam.

We stopped going to the moon at the same time that we withdrew from Vietnam.

The only thing that correlates with the end of any interesting manned space program is the growth of government entitlements.

Social Security and Medicaid suck up FAR more of the federal budget than the Department of Defense does.

<comment><USER7> _"Social Security and Medicaid suck up FAR more of the federal budget than the Department of Defense does."_

This is false. Actually, it's the other way around. See here:

<http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm>

<comment><USER4> That chart specifically says it excludes social security and other "trust funds".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Administration has also given NASA the go ahead to start reorganizing and reprioritizing Earth science missions in a sane manner. I happen to work on one, and the proposed changes we're seeing at the program level are like a breath of fresh air. They might actually _decrease_ the amount of bureaucracy. Here's hoping Congress doesn't put the kibosh on them.

<comment><USER6> > They might actually decrease the amount of bureaucracy.

Bureacracy grows, inexhorably.

Care to formulate some sort of bet on how much delta you see in bureaucracy over the next few years?</comment></comment>


Recreating the Hooli Box - <AUTHOR> http://benhoad.net/hooli-signature-edition-box-3-mod <comment><USER2> This is far more impressive than the time I spent three full work days recreating the scrum board from season 1... Then again if I was an engineer and not a product manager, I probably would have chosen something else.

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/qP9Kobt147kNo2vt5](https://photos.app.goo.gl/qP9Kobt147kNo2vt5)

<comment><USER3> _Three_ full work days?!

<comment><USER2> It wasn't just me, you see. If it was, I probably could have gotten this done in one or two. But, because we are a team, we had planning sessions where I needed my team to commit. There, the team had long heated debates about some of the cards. You see, several had a great deal of uncertainty surrounding them. No matter how far you'd zoom in, some of the requirements were not fine- grain enough to be understood. Ultimately, we came up with a few prototypes and a/b tested to get at the best solution.

<comment><USER2> I just realized that the most important card from the emergency column was missing from that photo. I've added that to the album.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is tangential to the core topic at hand but how did you/other readers get into CAD? It seems like such a useful skill to be able to design physical enclosures among other things, especially with the cost of additive manufacturing with 3D printers being so low. Any useful guides/communities worth mentioning? I am a little familiar with Blender but found it to be a little overwhelming to use, and I assume that most professionals use the Autodesk suite of tools but that seems really pricey to just get started using as a trial/for non commercial applications to start with.

<comment><USER5> Fusion 360, which looks like is what is being used in the article, has a free license as long as you're a hobbyist or your business makes less than $100000. Fusion 360 has its quirks, but it remains my favourite tool for this type of work, and it's relatively simple to learn (though like any powerful tool it can also get pretty complex).

<comment><USER6> yup, it's Fusion 360, I've got a background with SolidEdge and Autocad but Fusion is the best for quickly making decent parts with a 3d printer that need to be made-to-measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone else curious about the breadboard shield, here is a similar one on eBay: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/UNO-Arduino-Prototyping- Prototype-S...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/UNO-Arduino-Prototyping-Prototype- Shield-ProtoShield-Module-Mini-Breadboard-C/192009182236)

</comment><comment><USER6> Creator here, if you want to know more about it the best place is to hit me up on twitter: @benhoad.

<comment><USER6> Also I've been alerted to the fact that Thomas Middleditch (Richard Hendricks) has even shared it :D

[https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqu0D2VAI8W/](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqu0D2VAI8W/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not complete until it has a 24 core processor with ECC DDR4 SDRAM LRDIMMS ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> signature looks like penis, is this intentional?

<comment><USER10> That was the joke from the TV show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found it annoying that, in the show, I was supposed to root _against_ the Box. It's obviously a better project than what the "heroes" wanted to build.</comment>


Is HTML Too Big To Fail? - robin-berjon http://berjon.com/blog/2014/05/is-html-too-big-to-fail.html

<comment><AUTHOR> quoting Alan Kay "HTML on the Internet has gone back to the dark ages because it presupposes that there should be a browser that should understand its formats."

video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY)

transcription: [http://blog.moryton.net/2007_12_01_archive.html](http://blog.moryton.net/2007_12_01_archive.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What will Arm Macs mean? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get a sense of how significant the transition to Arm will be. The spectrum of possibilities seems extremely wide. Some say it will be a massive performance gain, others say just an incremental jump.
The benchmarks of the DTK Mac Minis that leaked this week reveal relatively unimpressive numbers, but of course don't reveal any of the true story — it's a limited machine, it's not the machine that will actually ship in a year's time, it's not even the chip that will ship with that machine etc etc etc. It tells us something, but not much it seems.
I'm just trying to get a sense of what the Arm Mac future might look like. When I watch Youtube videos on my current Mini and the fan spins up almost immediately vs on my 3-4 year old iPad where there isn't even a fan, I feel like the performance gain has to be massive, not just incremental.
Most people think the transition will mean faster, cooler Macs. But are we thinking like 10% faster? 25%? 50%?  Think actual battery life in laptops will jump from ~4hrs to 8? 10?
I keep hearing that this is a big deal. But just how big? <comment><USER2> You are thinking much too conservatively, in terms of performance. I think 50% faster wouldn't even be worth the effort of making the transition.

If we start from the position that the A12Z is, roughly speaking, on par with Intel's most-powerful mobile processors (per CPU core), then work from there:

The first ARM Macs will not be using that processor. Apple have said publicly that the processor cores in Macs will have features that aren't supported by the DTK's processors. That means they're at least equivalent to the A13, but more-likely a generation newer than that, so A14 (or whatever) equivalent. That's probably a 50% boost in and of itself.

The rumor mill says the Mac chips will have 12 cores, instead of 8. Presumably those are 4 more "performance" cores, so that's another 50% boost.

And if they double the TDP, which should be feasible with forced-air cooling, that's another 50%.

So, that's a 237% performance improvement, under some fairly realistic estimates.

Maybe the first portable Macs with the new chips will "only" be twice as fast as the current MacBookPro line, but they might very well be much faster than that.

<comment><USER3> Faster at all things, or faster only at certain things that have already been optimized for the iphones?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I'm really understanding the question, but "faster at most things" is what I'm getting at. Any time you compare two different processor families, there are going to be some benchmarks that look better on one, and some that look better on others.

For Mac applications (which are obviously what Apple cares about in this context), the new processors will be faster than the previous processors.

For tasks which can be accelerated by Apple's custom silicon (video encoding/decoding, object classification), the ARM Macs will be _much_ faster than the Intel Macs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope this will have bigger impact on the industry with faster Windows and Linux adoption of ARM.

</comment><comment> rooam-dev Personally I will believe it when I see it, at least for Pro line. Apple has the resources to pull it off (although they will be remembered by their keyboard issues for some time), the question is what is Apple's ultimate goal?

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think we'll see massive performance improvements, but the focus from Apple seems to be power per watt.

If you get similar performance to what you have today, and that looks feasible for _most_ workflows if you poke around through benchmarks that have been posted, but you get that for 25% of the power draw, now Apple has the ability to make the battery smaller, the machine lighter, etc. I've never been a fan of the overarching focus on thin, but it is what it is. Or maybe, like you say, they leave everything the way it is and you have a MBP that runs for 16 hours instead of 8. Nobody really knows outside of Apple and they're not talking yet.

I think that's the focus, but what the actual numbers work out to won't be available for a little while.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you accept an easier hiring process for an easier firing process? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to come up with a suggestion for the company where we relax our ridiculous coding and systems design requirements for a more lax, faster hiring process. Instead of hiring for algorithms, we would hire after talking with the team for a couple of hours, going in depth on the projects they've worked on, maybe a single onsite coding project with follow up questions just to see how she codes and her thought process.
In exchange, we would have a high bar post-hiring, and give them 2 months to come up to our expectations. The expectations for each level would be well-defined, and would be very concretely communicated so that the candidate would know exactly what we are expecting.
If she meets the bar post hire, then everything is fine but if she doesn't, we would give her a 2 month severance package and fire her within 2 months. This quick firing would only be applicable within the first 2 months, and afterwards it would be a normal process of performance feedbacks, pips, etc.
Is this more acceptable than the current industry hiring practice? <comment><USER2> In the US (I should say in MA, which is what I know best) the firing process is already trivial. The only real deterrent for firing someone is that it is an emotionally difficult task. I've been on both sides of that table, fwiw.

I absolutely love what you're after, though. I'm sick of companies that hire people to create trivial web or phone apps based on their skill at solving deep graph or search problems. (This, frankly, is part blind emulation of Google (& its peers), and part an effort by recent CS grads to ensure that they only have to work with people exactly like themselves. That is to say, it's a form of standardized prejudice.)

For nearly every dev positions, craft, tenacity, and people skills are vastly more important than algorithm chops.

I have yet to come across a company where the interviewers are better at interviewing than all but the most abysmal programming candidates are at programming. This kind of questioning of the status quo is much needed.

<comment><USER3> I hate such problems as a job seeker but you can't deny their effectiveness in finding viable candidates. We typically don't whiteboard and it's easy to find candidates who can pass the basic build/consume an API test. But once you throw a different type of problem, they fall apart. I hope someone can counter that whiteboarding also has the same fallacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something that's worked for me. Relax the hiring process but ratchet up the referral bonus and let teams hire their own devs.

People work better when they work with people they like. And they hire people like themselves. And they generally won't refer shitty devs if they are the ones that have to work with them down the road. Even with a 3 day gauntlet interview you won't have enough information to determine if somebody is any good. Compare that to a referral that one of your team members has known for years.

With this strategy getting good devs is easy but maintaining non discrimination is harder due to human nature so it's best to find a middle ground. Blinding name/sex/age/ethnicity until as far as possible in the process is a good start.

And have a coding challenge early in the process. Make sure your most skilled engineers are the ones reviewing submissions. Most teams will flatly tell you who that person is if you ask individually. If your best and most productive programmers are reviewing submissions they will select for the same.

The biggest hiring danger for small companies is regression to the mean. Eventually, once you get big enough, the law of large numbers nearly promises you will have average engineers. Since you have so much control over hiring I'll assume you're a smaller player.

This is a good place to be when looking for talent. You can have your best engineers hire more great engineers by interviewing them personally.

Firing is usually stupidly easy in the US at least so I wouldn't even worry about that.

</comment><comment><USER5> As someone going through the shit gauntlet of coding interviews for junior dev positions, I would love this. I'm hardworking, tenacious, self motivated, etc. None of this is communicated by having me implement binary search

<comment><USER6> Yes it is.

I'm a hiring manager. It's not like we don't know that interviews are game- able. A candidate willing to put in the effort to game them is generally a good signal.

We hire people out of code schools: 4 last year, and one of them is about to be promoted basically because she's good at everything. And for the record, we ask zero algorithms questions.

Unfortunately, some graduates of code schools you've hard of _can not code_. Like at all. Hence I understand companies that resort to algo questions.

<comment><USER7> > Unfortunately, some graduates of code schools you've hard of can not code. > Like at all. Hence I understand companies that resort to algo questions.

I'll agree with this. The issue, I think, is that too much emphasis is placed on the algo questions in relation to the other portions of an interview. I think the root cause of this is bad/lazy hiring practices.

There's a difference between using an algo question to see if a person can code, versus using an algo question to stroke the interviewers ego and/or confirm biases.

It's also an issue of companies not truly wanting to invest in junior talent. A lot of companies want to pay junior wages for experienced talent, and don't encourage a mentor/mentee/learning environment.

Yes, I understand the fear that companies will invest time and money in junior talent just to have them jump ship for a pay raise in 8 months, but that cuts both ways. I'm willing to bet that companies that are willing to spend more on training/mentoring/yearly compensation bumps would retain talent for longer.

To answer the OP question - I personally would not accept an easier hiring process for an easier firing process. I believe that would just exaggerate the problem above.

At the end of the day, it comes down to ROI for both parties. Job seekers don't want to spend countless hours cramming for algo questions and being subjected to multiple-round interviews. Companies don't want to spend the time and money on hiring + onboarding to get to a point where a new hire produces value.

You could argue that an apprenticeship model would help circumvent the problem, but that could mean significantly lowered entry-level salaries, and probably less interest from "top talent" in the junior market.

Software is a strange case though. It's becoming just as ingrained in society as say, plumping or electricity, but the potential for revenue is much greater than traditional trade skills.

<comment><USER6> the reason not to hire junior employees isn't the money. It's they're net negative productivity for at least 6 months if you include the senior eng time spent helping them. It's a hard calculus, and I 100% understand why a company would choose never to do that.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue that if a junior is net negative productivity for 6 months, either the onboarding process is not well enough defined and too drawn out, or the junior position being filled should really be for a senior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe a probationary period is fairly standard in the U.S., even if the candidate doesn't know it. Generally it's a 30/60/90 day plan, feedback from managers, etc. If they don't live up then you start reevaluating fit.

If I got a 2 month severance package after being fired for working for 2 months then I would be ecstatic.

Now does reframing it solve your problem? I'm not sure -- that's a question of how to influence.

</comment><comment><USER9> First of all, it depends on the company and the role itself. If the company is using an algorithms interview to hire someone to maintain a shitty CRUD app, I would nope out of that interview almost immediately. Hiring is a reflection of a companies values as a whole, and if an algorithms interview isn't reflective of the work I'd actually be doing, it's a poor impression.

To answer the actual question - have you considered offering people the choice?

Different people have different needs. Some people would rather have a quick interview process and feel their way through a role in its first few months for either side to bail. These people usually have more experience, and value both their ability and their time. Others would accept a tougher interview process as a prerequisite for job security at a good company.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is similar to how my current position started.

I was initially given a contract for 3 months. Not a probation period -- a contract that could be cancelled at any time by my employer.

I left a very stable job to take this new role (cite: much more money and 100% remote).

After 3 months, I was given a full-time role. I rolled the dice. I would do this again.

</comment><comment><USER11> What? You think having strangers in your own home commanding you to do what they tell you over video conference is unacceptable!? Sarcasm aside, gig-to- hire arrangements would go to the top of the heap when it comes to prioritizing opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER12> In Australia where I am, it's becoming normal for a 6 month probation period and you can terminate or be terminated with 1 weeks notice. Outside of this the notice period is usually 1 or 3 months - the former being more common,

</comment><comment><USER13> What about people that must relocate for the new work?

<comment><USER14> As long as you let them know upfront it shouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER2> lol. It won't be an issue because no one will relocate for a two month job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, I think it makes sense. I even think internship shouldn't be a student only program.

</comment><comment><USER16> Totally. And it's called "hire fast, fire fast".

</comment><comment><USER17> Yes, that's why I worked at Netflix

<comment><USER18> work _ed_ as in got hired _and_ fired from?

<comment><USER17> Didn't get fired, left voluntarily (leaving the bay area)</comment></comment></comment>


Missing Google Exec's Last Tweet From Egypt: "We Are All Ready To Die" - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-exec-goes-missing-in-egypt-2011-1 <comment><USER2> Actually his most recent post was, "@SweetOwl proxy servers"

<http://twitter.com/ghonim></comment>


Bomb Threat Hoaxer Exposed by Hacked Gaming Site - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/02/bomb-threat-hoaxer-exposed-by-hacked-gaming-site/ <comment><AUTHOR> _In an ironic twist, the accused — who had fairly well separated his real life identity from his online personas — appears to have been caught after a gaming Web site he frequented got hacked._</comment>


Seen a font in use and want to know what it is? - <AUTHOR> https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/? <comment><USER2> WhatTheFont is a good resource. Identifont is another one that helps you narrow things down on your own, though the results can be spotty at times.

[http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/font...](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/font- identification)

I'm active on this part of the site, and I see most questions get answered in some way. If you like the Stack Overflow format, it's a great way to get help. The tag wiki has a lot of resources to check out apart from the SE site itself.

As an aside, it's interesting that the Sci-Fi Stack Exchange has a lot of questions pertaining to "Story Identification" \- a similar concept in a different genre of knowledge. Cool to see sites out there where experts hang out and beginners can get help.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Amazing service, they have a forum too[1] where I got my two requests handled immediately and very correctly [2] (both by the user Tectronic).

[1] [https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/](https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/) [2] Neutraface was one of them. Very interesting font: [http://www.houseind.com/fonts/neutraface](http://www.houseind.com/fonts/neutraface)

<comment> mark-r Tecnotronic only appeared on the site a couple of years ago, but now he seems to do about 80% of the forum IDs. I don't know how he finds time to sleep or earn a living.

Gotta agree with you on Neutraface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I emailed them to ask if their "K&R!" example was a reference to the authors of "The C Programming Language". They said their designer chose it, and it probably wasn't. I was disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're a Safari user and tired of inspecting to find text fonts... [https://github.com/phallstrom/SafariFontScope](https://github.com/phallstrom/SafariFontScope)

<comment><USER5> If you are a Firefox user:

Font Finder [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font- finder/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-finder/)

<comment><USER6> If you are a chrome user

What Font [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgcpjmedljpbcaablpmlmfcogm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://typophile.com/fontid](http://typophile.com/fontid)

MyFonts' contraption is nice in theory, but in practice the process tends to get cumbersome and it's prone to mis-detection. It also managed to loop on me once :)

In comparison, TypeID board is absolutely incredible if not for the answer but for the amazing depth of knowledge that people who hang around there have. It's not uncommon to get an ID in a matter of minutes for the most obscure sample.

</comment><comment><USER8> WhatTheFont is a pretty good tool but it only works well when there's high contrast. Black on white, or white on black is the only way to get it to work well.

If you geek out on fonts, then you'll find the iOS app pretty fun. It's not perfect, but you'll impress all your designer friends if they aren't familiar with it. [http://bit.ly/1vBCCsL](http://bit.ly/1vBCCsL)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's also this oldie-but-goodie: [http://www.identifont.com/](http://www.identifont.com/)

<comment> mark-r I haven't found it to be terribly useful - you answer your 20 questions and are given a long list of possible matches, and if you're extremely lucky the font might be somewhere in the list. The MyFonts approach is much nicer, working directly with an image of the characters with the forum as a backup.

<comment><USER10> I used it just the other day, with success. I had a font sample that was small, only two uppercase and six lowercase letters. I had to answer "don't know" to most of the questions but it kept going and found the exact font I was looikng for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work for Monotype, the owner of myFonts, and I can assure you we have more amazing things in store for WhatTheFont and beyond. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's another tip: If you want to know the fonts used in a PDF, you can use the pdffonts utility from poppler.

<comment><USER13> If you're using Adobe Reader: File > Properties > Fonts > Fonts Used in this Document

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once you know what font it is, find the closest google font with this:

[http://joelcrawfordsmith.com/new/](http://joelcrawfordsmith.com/new/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Your tool does not accept https URLs. WTF indeed.

Edit: I tried submitting the Google logo ([https://www.google.se/images/srpr/logo11w.png](https://www.google.se/images/srpr/logo11w.png) over http) and it could not find the font for it. Also, the logo ended up looking very weird, I guess it does not support transparency. Nice idea but not quite there yet.

<comment><USER16> _Nice idea but not quite there yet._

I've been using that site for at least 7-8 years, so if it's not there, I'm not sure it'll ever be unless they redevelop it ;-) I think a big part of the problem is the letters aren't separated enough, I've had to edit images to break letters apart more before for it to work. When it does work it's pretty cool though.

<comment><USER15> These two bugs are extremely basic stuff one would find in the most alpha of alphas. If it's been there for 7-8 years, something is either massively wrong with it or development on it is dead (which makes it kind of .. useless, imho)

<comment><USER17> I've been using it for just about a decade; if you recall, us designers basically didn't use transparency on the web except when _absolutely necessary_ because of IE, and even then it was often in GIFs (which you wouldn't use for type) to save the grief of a client seeing an improperly rendered PNG. Anyway, I always just uploaded a screengrab of what I wanted anyway.

I'd love to see it improved in every way, but calling it 'useless' because of such a silly bug is... silly.

<comment><USER18> I've also been using it for almost a decade. I usually have to: \+ find the largest source version of the font in question. common logos are frequently available in vector format (I'm assuming you're using the service because the font itself has been outlined; you'd have no use for it if the font is either embedded or referenced). if bitmap, use google image search to find the largest size. \+ create a high contrast version. if vector, simply open in a vector editing app and make the text black if it isn't already, and remove any background. if bitmap, open in bitmap editor and manipulate image via channel editing or using levels, curves, or other method. \+ edit in vector or bitmap app to remove any overlaps. \+ save to highest quality JPEG and upload to what the font. \+ use what the font's drag functionality to combine letterforms that it (ridiculously) doesn't automatically detect such as "i". \+ hope for the best.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Flowy: A workflowy clone that works offline and allows custom storage - <AUTHOR> https://suy.io/flowy/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see another project in the FOSS outliner space, hopefully this one can reach or surpass WorkFlowy's fairly minimal featureset.

If anyone hasn't tried this I'd definitely recommend you to, I've found outliners to be far superior for project planning and knowledge management than other tool formats like Evernote or Google Keep.</comment>


MacDown: Open-source Markdown editor for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://macdown.uranusjr.com/ <comment><USER2> Kinda surprised by the rise in markdown editors whose selling point is the live preview mode. I always felt that the best feature of markdown was that the raw text made it somewhat obvious how it should be rendered. If a preview mode is need I almost want to jump straight to a WYSIWYG editor

<comment><USER3> I think there are two kinds of users of Markdown. One is those who don't need or want WYSIWYG. The other still want WYSIWYG but don't want to shift+arrowing around or constantly leaving the keyboard to reach for the mouse. The number of Markdown editors with live preview probably says that the latter group is actually not small.

<comment><USER4> I find Markdown best for writing in but looking at the processed output best for proofreading.

<comment><USER5> This. I've been making my living as a writer for ~7 years and have used Markdown as my dominant syntax for about 6.5 of those years. When I proofread, especially a long post, a preview is great.

Of course, for that, I usually just use Marked, but I'm never opposed to seeing more Markdown tools. Ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fitem.taobao.com%2Fitem.htm%3Fid%3D39011463240&sandbox=1) and a quick Wolfram Alpha hit Mou's asking price is ~US$80,220

<comment><USER7> That's interesting; and way too much for such a rudimentary app -- which probably shouldn't even be a native mac app in the first place.

I wonder how he came up with that price.

<comment><USER8> It says in the translated description:

* first in Google for "markdown mac"

* domain name, logo, branding

* source code

* good reputation/press reviews

I don't think it's worth what he's asking (500,000 RMB, which is ~80,000 USD.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm conceptually a fan, but then I noticed its effect on my actual CPU fan. Whatever this is doing for rendering the Markdown is not cheap -- a single keystroke in the editor pane on the sample document triggers 5+ seconds of max-CPU usage.

Typing causing loud fan noises from my laptop is not the most restful experience.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/qy6szsbjs7cw3uv/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qy6szsbjs7cw3uv/Screenshot%202014-06-25%2020.17.17.png)

<comment><USER10> I've had the same experience with like all Markdown editors that have a preview function. It does indeed suck.

<comment><USER11> That's shameful. It's not like they're running LaTeX behind the scenes. I think it boils down to the implementation of the Markdown engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think I prefer Marked. It lets me bring my own editor (vim), and simply aut- updates when it detects the file has changed.

<comment><USER13> I use Marked and Sublime Text. Like peas and carrots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mou's live preview was neat for about a week, but eventually I just switched to Sublime Text with the MarkdownEditing, Markdown Preview, and Markdown TOC packages. Powerful stuff, and as-good-as-live preview in your browser.

[https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/MarkdownEditing](https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/MarkdownEditing) [https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown- preview](https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown-preview) [http://dotcypress.github.io/GitHubMarkdownPreview/](http://dotcypress.github.io/GitHubMarkdownPreview/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice work!

What about Atom's markdown preview though? I found myself switching over to that from Mou.

[https://github.com/atom/markdown-preview](https://github.com/atom/markdown- preview)

<comment><USER16> same!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I approve of the old school MacName.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome because I like Mou but it had some pretty big pain points:

\- Large files caused it to slow unbearably/crash

\- Scroll tracking was terrible (TexWorks is the only similar thing I've seen that does it well).

It looks like these aren't necessarily fixed in MacDown 0.1, but at least there's the opportunity to improve it with time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Two solutions that people might also appreciate checking out: LightPaper Marked

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome! Just miss a file navigation pane and I can say bye bye to Lightpaper!

</comment><comment><USER5> My only real issue with these is that there isn't an easy way to do a RegEX to remove certain types of formatting when copying the HTML. In an ideal world, I'd prefer to _not_ have <p> tags, for instance, because most of the time, the place I'm pasting the content inserts them at any line break automatically. I realize this isn't always the case but it's one of those "frustrating" aspects that makes me continue to use an old-as-hell TextMate bundle a friend customized for me 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome! Could use a better icon though :)

Any plans to implement the same shortcuts as Mou?

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually asked the author about this, and at the very least, he plans to add the H1-H6 key commands that made me a fan of Mou:

[https://twitter.com/uranusjr/status/481901582104006657](https://twitter.com/uranusjr/status/481901582104006657)

I'm impressed with the early results of this. Considering that Mou hasn't been updated in months, I'm glad to see a successor in active development.

I've tried a lot of Markdown editors, and Mou was the only one in my experience that got the keyboard commands down pat.

<comment><USER22> PS: On the homepage "This is how it looks like:" can be just "This is how it looks:"

<comment><AUTHOR> Not my app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anybody have any experience with this and LightPaper[0]? I'm curious if I should switch. There's so many markdown editors out there. How can I know that I'm using the best one for me? (joking) Markdown editors feel like it should be the example for the paradox of choice.

0 - [http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper- mac/](http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-mac/)

</comment><comment><USER24> There are lots of open source editors coming of late.

[Haroopad]([http://pad.haroopress.com/](http://pad.haroopress.com/)) is my favourite markdown editor of late. It is based on node-webkit and is also open source.

The main points I wish it could include is word completions similar to sublime and spelling corrections.

</comment><comment><USER4> One problem with Markdown is that every Markdown app uses a different version of it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I like Dillinger which is online. It has preview pane and links/saves with your Dropbox/Github/GoogleDrive or a local folder.

[http://dillinger.io](http://dillinger.io)

<comment><USER26> Dillinger is indeed nice, but I would like a native desktop program with the same functionality, as I'm not always connected to the internet.

Of course, I could just run it locally on my laptop, but for some reason I still prefer my web browser for web browsing, and native programs for other stuff.

Or if I could get the same functionality in Sublime Text 3 that'd be even better, but I don't know how to build a plugin to do that, or haven't found one that does.

<comment><USER27> Try Atom[0], start a new file or open a markdown file and toggle the preview pane.

I liked the feature so much that I made svg-preview: write SVG code on the left, live preview on the right.

[0]: [https://github.com/atom/markdown- preview](https://github.com/atom/markdown-preview)

[1]: [https://github.com/atom/svg-preview](https://github.com/atom/svg- preview)

<comment><USER28> your svg-preview url return 404, isn't it [https://github.com/lloeki/svg- preview](https://github.com/lloeki/svg-preview) ?

<comment><USER27> indeed, thanks. sorry for the stupid s/markdown/svg/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How do these mac markdown editors compare to in-browser editors like [https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/) ?

</comment><comment><USER30> Another Markdown editor for OS X!

Anyone besides me ever noticed how there are many options for markdown editors for Macs, but really few (decent) ones for Windows or Linux?

<comment><USER5> Well, historically I think it was because Markdown was created by a Mac user. And most of the early Markdown hackers were Mac users.

Obv. Markdown is now much broader, but I still think the market of people who actively care about a Markdown-based editor for desktop or mobile are more likely to be using a Mac and iOS than Windows/Linux/Android.

If you think about it, however, that's a huge market opportunity for Markdown devs on those platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This might be useful, but I'd prefer it if there was a way to turn the live preview off. I don't need a new preview with every letter I type.

</comment><comment><USER32> I like this, but I'm still waiting for something that has this kind of live preview but also has a folder/file project sidebar like Ulysses 3.

<comment><USER33> LightPaper (free, not open source) has a project sidebar: [http://cl.ly/WGSv](http://cl.ly/WGSv)

[http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper- mac/](http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-mac/)

<comment><USER34> First I'm ever seeing this. This looks awesome, thank you. I also love Texts: [http://texts.io/](http://texts.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is great. I like IA Writer but it lacks some features for me. I tried Atom and it is good too. This app feels like a one stop shop for me.

</comment><comment><USER36> MacDown requires OSX 10.8 or later.

<comment><USER37> Which one should be running anyway, seeing that 10.9 is the current version for a year, and we're on to 10.10 soon.

OS X releases are like minor Linux distro updates -- not in they have limited changes, but in that you don't want to fall far behind the latest version.

It's a different approach than Windows, where people can still run XP with no problem -- not that you couldn't run 10.4 or 10.3 (and some people do), but the Mac world changes and software is updated to reflect that (takes advantage of new APIs, integration, changes in style etc).

In Windows there is software available in new versions in 2014, even MS made, that still uses stuff like file open dialogs from 1998.</comment></comment>


In drought-stricken Chennai, water is now more expensive than petrol - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3019540/drought-stricken-chennai-water-now-more-expensive-petrol <comment><USER2> Okay. I live in Chennai. And this is so NOT TRUE. A water tanker with ~10,000 liters of water costs about ~3-5k INR which works out to INR 0.5 per litre of water. Petrol on the other hand costs INR 77 per litre. So no water is nowhere near as expensive.

<comment><USER3> I also live in Chennai and I concur, also with intermittent rains in last couple of weeks, ground water situation has improved and we see less water tankers on roads</comment></comment>


Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pigdog.org/auto/mr_bads_list/shortcolumn/1914.html

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of a quote by Erick Golnik, something that's often visible in successful people:

      Win as if you were used to it,
      lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Oh, my mistake. You're right. Thanks for pointing that out!"

That is, if you're humble enough to put your ego aside.

<comment><USER4> This is generally a good strategy even if it wasn't your mistake. Last week I wrote a short apology for something I'm sure I didn't do, which got my client in trouble with his business partner.

The business partner sent my client an angry email demanding to know how the mistake could have been made. It's very _likely_ that it was the business partner's mistake, very _unlikely_ that it was my clients mistake... but "oh, hey! our consultant was working near that issue, maybe he touched it?! We'll ask him right away, Mr. Angry Important Business Partner!"

Problem is: there's no possible way to know who did it. Shifting it back to the likely source (business partner's team) will only make him more angry, whether or not they are responsible. As a consultant, I can only loose.

So I write an email to him, CC my client, and apologize for the mistake, promising that it won't happen again. My client knows I didn't do it, and now knows that I willingly took the bullet for him.

Maybe SGaaS is a valid business model, where SG = scapegoat.

<comment><USER5> Saying sorry (even for something you didn't do) is always a good strategy.

Another one of my favourites: Phrasing a request like you're asking a favour even though you're just telling someone to do their job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also the generic "that's provably false".

<comment><USER7> "If that's true, it follows that P=NP"

"That would reduce to the halting problem"

Or my favorite,

"If you can solve that problem, there are much more lucrative applications for the technology than [what you're working on]"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of the markov-generated paper that was accepted for review (or publication) at a distinguished organisation!

I don't have a link, although I think it was on HN awhile back.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Your solution promotes gender stereotypes"

</comment><comment><USER10> I call #70 the Republican Option.</comment>


Progressive Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lojjic/PIE

<comment><USER2> I've used PIE on a handful of projects. Performance only suffers if you're attaching it to a ton of elements. Using it here and there doesn't cost too much.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to question if we should be supporting IE6 at all with these endeavours. I see it as encouraging people to continue using busted tools that are clear and present dangers to the web environment.

I _get_ the counter-argument, but on the whole, I'd rather see IE6,7 and 8 just die. If corporations are too risk-averse to get rid of a clearly-broken tool, why should we help them out?

<comment> hendrik-xdest You obviously haven't been working with companies in the financial sector. Those Fortran developers you always hear about, this is were they are working. Many companies in that sector use rather old systems that can't be replaced. Some of those systems rely on IE6 or IE7.

I do work for a company that targets that sector and we calculate with a user base of about 50% that still use one of those browsers. Yet, we want them to have all the bells and whistles that the web offers today as well. This will change (and is changing) but rather slowly. Some might even say it barely even moves.

<comment><USER4> This is also the case in the Pharmaceutical sector. The IE6 user base accounts for the majority of the users and therefor it was the primary development platform but still requiring the bells and whistles.

<comment><USER5> And for the utility sector in they Bay Area. Legacy systems were actually _built_ for IE6. It's so proprietary and ingrained into the work processes, that in order to use current versions of vendor products they have to install Firefox! Ha!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > But as we all know, due to Internet Explorer's lack of support for any of > these features, we must be patient and refrain from using them, and make do > with the same old tedious techniques for the foreseeable future.

Couldn't disagree with this more. Let your site have square corners, no shadows, and no animations in IE. The users won't know or care.

<comment><USER7> This. Your documents should use progressive enhancements that make them at least accessible (if not pretty) with _every_ browser that has ever existed. If you write something that only works on FF5 or IE9, you did something wrong, and someday we'll be cursing you just as you curse people who wrote stuff that only work on IE6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a branch of PIE that supports text-shadow which makes it even more useful.

I used it on my site re-design because we have multiple text-shadows creating a graphical effect on our logo without images.

It works really well and performance doesn't suffer noticeably. In fact with multiple box-shadows IE8 was faster to scroll than Safari 5.0!

</comment><comment><USER9> If the features of this library continue to expand I can see this being a very powerful tool. As lot of other commentators have pointed out despite having so many modern browser solutions a lot of large corporate environments are slow to update. Quite often this is because they have large line-of-business apps that are written to target certain browsers (especially if ActiveX is heavily used) as well as having a culture where even a version bump in what web browser is used takes a committee and months of approval.

I ran into this problem years ago when I was interning at one of the major auto manufactures. I needed to provide web-based charting but was unable to get approval to use an open source toolkit. I ended up having to write my own library and did so using SVG. It worked no problem on the Solaris workstations running old-school Mozilla (even still had the old Netscape icon) but for the PCs running IE6 I had to get approval to install the Adobe plugin.

</comment><comment> hendrik-xdest I use PIE for a charting software we created at my company. Here are some problems we had:

The latest release of PIE is used for IE7 and IE8 but we had some issues with it in IE6 where it would throw JavaScript errors. In addition, there is a problem with hidden elements (style="display: none") for example PNGs with transparent backgrounds or elements that have a linear background and rounded corners. If those become visible without reloading the page, the styles might not be applied correctly. You may find black images instead of the PNGs or missing element styles. This cannot be reproduced regularly, though. I found a beta version somewhere in the message boards that fixes the issues but does not work well with other versions of IE.

We never had any performance issues although we quite heavily use layout elements from CSS3.

BTW: The main website can be reached here <http://css3pie.com>

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have experience using things like this? I've just now heard about these behaviors and I worry about performance..

<comment><USER11> I used it on a recent website project. It worked great for small forms (3-5 fields), which needed rounded corners and drop-shadows on the fields. It did not work so well for our dropdown navigation menu, things just seemed to be complicated when combining all the show/hide/hover css for that with the PIE effects. (So we wound up using traditional non-semantic markup for rounded/shadowed background images on the menus, but kept PIE for the more straightforward form fields).

Others have reported problems of slowness when used on too many elements in a page, but we never experienced this (because we didn't have "too many" elements on the page).

If you're already familiar with how to make IE-compatible shadows/corners by faking it with background images, I'd probably just stick with that. But if you want to forge ahead with CSS3 but also have an easy drop-in solution that gets you 80% there on IE, PIE is a good choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> that is allot of code (== effort) for making things looks good (aesthetically) on IE 6-8.

I see there files created few days ago, and I wonder, why in July 2011 people and corporate will stilll choose to use IE6/7/8 when FF/Chrome/Safari available for Windows, for free, and support all or most advanced, neat HTML5 features

Should not corporate care most about information security? How can they let instances of those versions of IE in an organization's network?

<comment><USER13> The problem for corporate environments is that they tend to have a few really big legacy applications which only function correctly in older versions of IE.

The question then becomes whether to upgrade the application (with a massive price tag), or keep their old version of IE as the standard (which _appears_ to cost nothing). In fact, there are costs of maintenance and security, but those aren't readily apparent on the balance sheets.

<comment><USER14> That is the case at my company, over half of the web based applications that we have to use are built exclusively for IE. It is a massive pain, but I do not see it changing any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is the name a homage to PositionIsEverything.net? The quintessential IE6 CSS bug documenter since the first wave of web standards?

</comment><comment><USER16> You know what's a progressive Internet Explorer? IE 9 or 10.

Let's quit trying to duct tape the web for IE's sake.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just the tool I was looking for, but the current support for CSS3 rules is very limited, I hope they add more implementations for IE. Thanks Jason.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's working for me. There's about a 1 second delay before the CSS3 styles kick-in. But that's not a deal-breaker.

This is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER19> For what it's worth, we used PIE for IE7 support of some css3 features at my last job. Performance was _awful_ and buggy. I do not recommend trying to force non-essential graphical niceties onto browsers that can't support them. If you or your boss is insisting on some insane pixel-per-pixel matching between all browsers, either you or they are wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking to partner up with someone for my export business - <AUTHOR> I have been in IT for more than 12 years and had moderate success. Around 3 years back I started a small trading firm for exporting chemicals, Pharma API, etc. from India to the US and European countries.
In this export business, I have found some good success and now I wish to grow it. In the last 3 months, the business has seen a huge demand with all different kinds of companies approaching us for their various chemical and pharma needs.
I was thinking of partnering up with someone preferably in the USA and Europe to expand the business.
If you are interested, just drop me a message on how you can contribute and we will take it forward from thereon. <comment><USER2> PM me afriqfes at gmail</comment>


New Documentary Features Y Combinator-funded Wattvision - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1480255348/sourlands-stories-from-the-fight-for-sustainabilit?ref=live

<comment><USER2> Savraj is innovating on many fronts, from being a hardware based startup, to entering a field that hasn't seen much disruption in a long long time.

It's a great example of a startup that isn't just one more social-something- or-other, and it happens to hit right on #27 on y-combinators "Startup ideas we'd like to fund".

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> nice!</comment>


Ask HN: How does React hydration work? - <AUTHOR> I've been struggling to fully grasp how React hydration/rehydration works. When using something like Gatsby, is React fully sent to to the client AFTER the static content? Looking for someone to explain it in an easy to understand manner. <comment><USER2> This is a good explanation: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46516395/whats-the- diffe...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46516395/whats-the-difference- between-hydrate-and-render-in-react-16#46516869)

TL;DR: It is used to attack event listeners to server rendered apps.</comment>


Wuhan's Virus and Quarantine Will Hit the Poor Hardest - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/wuhan-coronavirus-quarantine-china-will-hit-poor-hardest/ <comment><USER2> I fell like the article is overthinking it. If it's contained to Wuhan it may affect the poor there more than any other group.

If it spreads beyond Wuhan it will affect the poor in Wuhan _and_ the poor in other cities.

One city's poor vs many city's poor. Gov. has to make a decision.

<comment><USER3> I wholeheartedly agree with this, the poor and weak are always hit the hardest. Furthermore, while quite serious, people shouldn't panick.

It is important to realize how well SARS turned out in the end. Back then the chinese government kind of dragged their feet, and they were lucky that the infection rate wasn't terrible. Due to pro-active measures by multiple governments the virus was still contained really quickly and less than 10k people were infected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Almost every change in policy direction will hit the poor hardest because they, by definition, have the fewest available resources to handle that change. That is not the argument to say a policy change should not be made, because without that policy, it will hit us all harder, and by then, the poor will only be left worse off.</comment>


Common Regular Expressions Made Simple - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/madisonmay/CommonRegex

<comment><USER2> I am reminded of VerbalExpressions [https://github.com/VerbalExpressions](https://github.com/VerbalExpressions) which hit HN in early August. Interested in learning more about regex's I did some work on a Racket port.

That project shows there are two tracks by which to tackle the problem that regex syntax is incoherent gobbledygook. The first is creating a regex version of pho with 5000 functions and mix and match names piece by piece. The second is to rename regex symbols to something that is easier for humans to parse.

<comment><USER3> Very good point! It's not the reasoning and logic behind regex that would turn a beginner away from it, its the syntax that is being used that often results into expressions turning into impenetrable goo!

(thanks for the verbal expressions link btw, seems really promising)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless I'm not understanding my way around the project, this seems to be a very small library of regular expressions. As one would expect, Perl's offerings blow anything else out of the water: [http://search.cpan.org/~abigail/Regexp- Common-2013031301/lib...](http://search.cpan.org/~abigail/Regexp- Common-2013031301/lib/Regexp/Common.pm).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm gonna be _That Guy_ and say that the e-mail regex isn't upto scratch and probably should not be included.

generally, very good.

<comment><USER6> I'm gonna be That Other Guy and say that the date and phone regex are respectively english-language and US specific. So it's common for a narrow definition of common.

<comment><USER7> The time regex is, too. In German you can expect to encounter the text fragment

> um 6:00 am 05.12. (at 6:00 on 12/05/..)

If i read it correctly, the time regex would extract "6:00 am" as time, but the "am" is wrong (German uses 24h format).

<comment><USER8> Haha that's excellent. Reminds me of a normalisation rule I wrote as part of a larger system to convert "Joe Bloggs Md." into "Dr. Joe Blogs MD" (where MD is Medical Doctor). TIL that "Md." is a common abbreviation for "Mohammed" in large parts of the world...

<comment><USER9> The text-to-speech system in use at my local GP's surgery (that announces to patients which which rooms they need to go to) pronounces 'Dr' as 'Drive', rather than 'Doctor'. I thought someone would have tested that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isnt there an i18n extension built on lib ICU in python , like Intl extension in PHP ?

[http://site.icu-project.org/](http://site.icu-project.org/)

I'm sure there are better alternatives than just regexp to validate numbers, emails ,etc ...

<comment><USER11> It's not validation in this case, it's finding them in a body of text. For validation you generally have it easier because you often only deal with a single datum in a field (and thus string).

<comment><USER12> The CLDR provides locale-specific formats for some datum types (IIRC numbers, dates, and durations). These formats can probably be reversed into the corresponding regular expression in order to perform locale-aware data detection.

Of course further complexity is added in people being able to provide partial and context-dependent information, which is much harder to detect e.g. "December 3rd"</comment></comment></comment>


What happens when 2 phones running a contact tracing app do when in proximity - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/qzervaas/status/1251001445563826177 <comment><USER2> Interesting that even here there is criticism over capturing the time and date of contact.

There are degrees of privacy, and therefore there are people who will always hold positions at the extreme ends of those degrees.</comment>


Twitter Blog: Twitter + Ping = Discovering More Music - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2010/11/twitter-ping-discovering-more-music.html <comment><USER2> This is an interesting development. Surely Twitter must know they were 2nd choice to Facebook...

But maybe they see this as a good thing?</comment>


Vecna launches an army of warehouse robots, seeks up to $50M - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2017/04/03/seeking-to-fill-kiva-void-vecna-launches-an-army.html <comment><USER2> If the product lines are named "Hand," "Skull," "Eye," etc. I really don't want to be anywhere near them.

"Vecna was founded on the idea that people matter, and that businesses can be profitable, ethical, and socially responsible." [...] "The name 'Vecna' is derived from the Czech word věčný, fem. věčná, meaning 'eternal'. Our company and products are built to last."

And they named it after the Lich from Dungeons & Dragons (pre-AD&D even).</comment>


There's Something New in the (MacBook) Air - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-the-macbook-air <comment><USER2> Since it's a slight link-bait title: It's the Magic keyboard, the same already introduced in the latest MacBook Pro models. It's .5mm higher than the previous butterfly keyboard.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not tax campaign donations? - <AUTHOR> I think we all agree that the amount of money in politics is a very serious problem and is essentially turning this country into a kleptocracy. But on the other hand, if you can spend tens of millions of dollars on ads saying "Taylor Swift is amazing, you should listen to her," why shouldn't you be able to do the same for someone like, idk, Elizabeth Warren.<p>My idea would be to give every person a tax credit of ~$100-300 that they can use to donate to a campaign or Super PAC. Any other donations those organizations receive gets taxed at ~70%. I think that should remove most of the special interest money in politics while preserving free speech. <comment><USER2> Obviously, a tax credit would amount to a government subsidy for organizations that don't need one. That's not going to do anything to reduce their influence. If you're going to publicly fund campaigns, why not just do it directly? You don't need to tax SuperPac donations separately if you just made it harder for them to get tax-exempt status in the first place (i.e., make them ineligible for 501c4 status, or eliminate that category altogether).</comment>


Show HN: SpotiMy ~ A menu bar controller for Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://getspotimy.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a small application a good friend (<https://twitter.com/mikellewellyn> \- who is a great iphone/mac freelance developer) and I made over the past few weeks.

Do I think this will take over the world? No. I do think its actually rather valuable to a reasonably large market of Hacker News users.

Particularly proud of how the landing page site came out. Will blog reactions/sales etc after a week or two.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sweet! Installing it now (disclaimer: I'm Pete's friend, sort of, kind of mad he's leaving Camb for YC but still.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and Apple approved our first submission of this application in under 48 hours, pretty awesome.</comment>