"A Windows 7 deployment image was accidently sent to all Windows machines" - <AUTHOR> http://it.emory.edu/windows7-incident/ <comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/41587168870797312](https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/41587168870797312)

"To make error is human. To propagate error to all server in automatic way is #devops."

Frankly, I'm surprised things like this don't happen more often. Kudos for the incident management. Also a big plus for having working backups, it seems.

<comment><USER3> @DEVOPS_BORAT is actually very insightful in about 1/5 tweets. Snide for sure, but there are quite a few good points in there if you read carefully:

"In devops we have best minds of generation are deal with flaky VPN client."

"Single point of failure in private cloud is of usually Unix guy with neckbeard."

These are gold.

Edit: based on the above advice I once grew out a neckbeard while going through a multi-month rollout of a large product. It itched like crazy, but I did work much faster to get rid of it.

<comment><USER4> >best minds of generation are deal with flaky VPN client

So true. I'm on the receiving side of this..."No you can't work on that multi million deadline project of yours...the only way to fix the VPN is to re-image the machine back at head office [an international flight away]". Me..."Could you repeat that?" And thats a Cisco Enterprise VPN...(turns out IT was right...re-image & avoid conflicting software is the only solution). So much for Cisco...

<comment><USER5> Are you calling yourself one of the best minds of our generation?

<comment><USER4> Hardly. No I meant on the receiving side of techs trying to fix VPNs.

<comment><USER6> Professionally I deal with much of the fallout from problems such as yours, and leading techs doing this kind of work. It really sucks, but for many problems like this the choice becomes spend-four-hours-reimaging-the-machine or spend-unknown-period-of-time-trying-to-fix-new-problem. The latter would be great if it was less than four hours, but it's often not, and until that time you / the user are without a machine.

After an hour or so of troubleshooting it's usually better to go with the reimaging, since all you / the user wants is to get back to working.

Ideally I try to get the entire broken machine captured and the user issued a new, fixed machine because then a fix can be developed and documented, but for those who end up in a new failure mode, it sucks. And with something like the Cisco VPN Agent? That's not uncommon at all...

<comment><USER4> >spend-four-hours-reimaging-the-machine or spend-unknown-period-of-time- trying-to-fix-new-problem

Definitely. In our case its 8 hours minimum though for a re-image. Somehow the FDE makes pulling the old data off the machine slow.

You've got my sympathies though - I'd not like to be the one doing the IT in these cases. Can't be fun troubleshooting IT with that kind of time pressure.

<comment><USER6> Thank you. It really, honestly is hard on our tech because they feel the pressure from all sides. Eight hours sounds rough for a reimage. I think ours are... maybe two or three? We've done a lot of work to get the reimage time down, and Win7 (WIMs) have made this really nice.

If this is something that smells of a bigger problem (or has been seen elsewhere) then I push for them to get the user a wholly new machine, capturing the old one for analysis. If the user is given an upgraded machine, then there is usually little resistance, even with the downtime that'll be incurred.

On the upside, if the issue can be reproduced readily, from this we can almost always get root cause and put a systemic fix in place. If it's sporadic... Well... I'm sure you understand how it goes trying to fix something that you can't yet reproduce. ;)

(I'd love to troubleshoot your slow data backup issue... That's the stuff I rather enjoy.)

<comment><USER4> >I'd love to troubleshoot your slow data backup issue... That's the stuff I rather enjoy.

I'm not directly involved with the tech side so I don't know the details. I gather they pull the old data off the disk using some offline low-level tool though (like you would for harddrive damage recovery). Between that and the encryption its somehow very slow. No idea why its like that though.

>get the user a wholly new machine

I wish it was the same here. They just give loan machines :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Snark and sarcasm aside, I am impressed with the level of detail that the IT department is sharing; it is refreshing to see such a disaster being discussed so openly and honestly, while at the same time treating customers like adults.

<comment><USER8> It is impressive. I can't imagine dealing with that kind of nightmare.

I once worked as an admin on Solaris boxes at a big pharma company. There were ~77,000 users in their LDAP directory. I was very careful.

<comment><USER9> That sounds terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of my undergrad CPSC days. The CPSC department had their own *nix-based mainframe system that was separate from the rest of the University. The sysadmin was a pretty smart guy who was making less than a third of what he could get in industry. Eventually he got fed up and left. About a week or two later the servers had a whole cascade of failures that resulted in everyone losing every last bit of work they'd done over the weekend (This was a weekend near the end of the semester when everyone was in crunch mode).

Long story short, the sysadmin was hired back and paid more than most of the profs. Academia may tend to skimp on salaries for certain positions, but sysadmins probably shouldn't be one of them.

<comment><USER11> The BOFH sabotaged his systems before departing? Didn't build a backup plan? And they hired him back?

<comment><USER12> You know what? Fuck them. Fuck higher education completely. Undervalued and underpaid is the name of the game for any important IT roles in that shit hole of an industry.

Disclaimer: dev at a university.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, a lot of the people working in support roles in academia are pretty much unemployable in the real world. They show up at 10 am, take constant smoke breaks all day, and leave at 3 pm. When I was in physics (which used the main university servers for most things) we had a sysadmin who was in charge of some printers and a couple of server boxes. He had inherited those boxes from a former student who set them up, but he was functionally illiterate in managing them. At one point I needed a package installed. Not only could he not figure out how to install a package on a ubuntu server on his own, he couldn't do it with emailed instructions either. I had to go up and physically stand over him telling him what to click on and what to type. To make matters worse, he was so hard to actually catch "in the office", that I had to have the department secretary (whose office he was next to) alert me when he showed up. Not surprisingly, the functions of those servers were soon moved to desktop machines in various offices. As far as I know he's still working there though. He's a union employee and it would be a ride through deepest, hottest, hell to get rid of him.

Note: I am not saying all university support staff are like this. Some definitely are though, and they're probably the reason why good people sometimes find it hard to be properly remunerated in academia.

<comment><USER13> > Note: I am not saying all university support staff are like this. Some > definitely are though, and they're probably the reason why good people > sometimes find it hard to be properly remunerated in academia.

Certainly not everyone is like him - but I'd wager every university has at least a couple of people like him (we definitely had one, again, in physics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of some emails that went out at my old university during a cluster outage, and got progressively more informal as the night went on, detailing people leaving dinners with extended families, a growing sense of desperation, etc. The last email might as well have ended with "Tell my wife I love her."

It was both direct and funny enough that I was only mildly annoyed that the cluster was down.

</comment><comment><USER15> > A Windows 7 deployment image was accidently sent to all Windows machines, > including laptops, desktops, and even servers. This image started with a > repartition / reformat set of tasks.

Wow. That is very unfortunate, to say the least...

<comment><USER16> > As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – > however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and > reformatted.

<comment><USER17> I feel bad, but I laughed at this for few seconds...

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't feel bad. I guffawed at most of this story.

Not in a "haha, what a bunch of morons. Serves those jerks right!" kind of way, but more in a "oh dear, that's the worst thing that can possibly happen! Oh no it gets worse??". I've been through IT catastrophes (and caused a couple myself) and I could easily see this happening to me. Still, it's funny as anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've just been hired to run a project using SCCM to upgrade ~5000 PCs from XP to Win7.

This was amazing reading. Reading such a detailed wrap up of an IT team going through my worst possible nightmare was enlightening.

<comment><USER20> It must be reassuring that your new employer is so proactive in getting that XP upgrade project running.

<comment><USER21> Sometimes these products get bogged down because of three important problems outside of the control of IT. First off, you need to get in touch with all the upstream vendors to get updates to any sort of custom software that has compatibility problems with newer versions of windows; Vista/7 got a lot more strict about giving admin access, for example, which may cause problems in the updates. Second, you've got to keep in mind the training costs. There are a lot of users who may be brilliant financial minds that can make numbers dance and bow to their whims, but get terribly locked up if an icon changes. Doesn't make them horrible people by any means, but you've got to keep it in consideration when planning a rollout. Finally, you have to keep in mind the petty turf wars. If Joe in Accounting gets the upgrade to 7 before Bob in Legal, Bob in Legal may feel slighted and start raising a holy shitstorm, even if he's scheduled to be upgraded a week later. Upgrades are ugly, no matter when they happen. Sometimes that proactive upgrade project takes many years just because of all the moving parts involved.

<comment><USER22> I think you missed the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There was a similar catastrophe at Jewel osco stores many years ago. Nightly, items added to the store pos were merged back with the main item file at each store location. The format of the merged data was exactly the same as loading a new file, except the first statement would be /EDIT instead of /LOAD.

One of the programmers decided to eliminate some code by combining the two functions, with a switch to control whether /LOAD or /EDIT was used for the first statement.

There was a bug in the program, and the edits were sent down as loads.

A guy I knew, Barry, was the main operator that night. He started getting calls from the stores after around 10 of them had been reloaded with 5 or 6 items.

Barry said it was the first time he got to meet the president of the company that day.

<comment><USER24> Failure should never be the only time you get to meet upper management :(

<comment><USER25> A night IT operator for an organization with 176 locations is pretty unlikely to ever meet the company president.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Forgive my beginner question:

Since a reformat was done to the affected machines, does this mean that researchers' datasets, drafts of papers, and other IP were lost? Or were researchers' machines not affected?

<comment><USER27> In my experience with campus networks, home directories are never stored locally on any remotely-administered machines. Any specially-configured researcher's machine that stored data locally would not have been subscribed to get the automatically deployed OS images.

<comment><USER28> >" _As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted._ " //

If the SCCM server was pushed the "update" then there doesn't seem much hope for other machines? Surely no rule should be able to format the server running the ruleset; seems like a failsafe failure there at least.

<comment><USER27> None of the storage servers should have been storing the user data on the same volume as the OS the way a client machine would. So the network-mounted home directories should be intact and ready to use once the server OS is reinstalled. And while I don't know how SCCM works, I'd be surprised if this image push was affecting anything other than the primary physical drive (a wipe-all, populate-one recipe would be too obviously wrong and dangerous, right?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Mistakes are made. In related news...

Lawn care error kills most of Ohio college's grass

[http://www.wral.com/lawn-care-error-kills-most-of-ohio- colle...](http://www.wral.com/lawn-care-error-kills-most-of-ohio-college-s- grass/13650157/)

<comment><USER30> I can understand the Embry problem a lot more simply because the distance between the decision and implementation of the decision is not that far.

How on earth do you "accidentally" load up enough weed killer to treat 54 acres of grass and never realize its the wrong stuff?

<comment><USER31> How do you click/not-click the button in SCCM...? How are these two events any different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not quite as disastrous but when I was at university the resident administrators configured the entire site's tftp server (everything was netbooted Suns) to boot from the network. This was fine until there was a site-wide power blip and it was shut down. When it came back it couldn't tftp to itself to boot because it wasn't booted yet (feel the paradox!). Cue 300 angry workstation users descend on the computer centre with pitchforks and torches because their workstations couldn't boot either...

Bad stuff doesn't just happen to Windows networks.

</comment><comment><USER33> On the bright side they are no longer running XP!

</comment><comment><USER34> My nomination of the top bullet point of 2014:

* As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted.

</comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of The Website Is Down, episode 4: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mwT3DkG4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mwT3DkG4w)

</comment><comment><USER19> I was just watching the "What's New with OS Deployment in Configuration Manager and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit" session from TechED and hit the section on "check readiness" option which MS have added to SCCM 2012 in R2. It sounds like having this in part of the task sequence at Emory would have (at the very least) stopped this OS push from at least hosing all the servers.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/PCI...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/PCIT-B340)

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading that just made me feel sick to my stomach and my heart goes out to the poor gal/guy that pushed "Go" on that one. Shit happens, but a screw up that big can be devastating to ones psyche.

</comment><comment><USER37> I _very_ nearly did this whilst working for a University back in the early noughties. Luckily I managed to get to the server before the "advert" activated and wiped out everything. It was so easy to do I am surprised that it is stil possible. I feel for their pain, but it does sound like they are doing a good job of mopping up. I did allow myself a snort of laughter when I read the bit about the server being re imaged as well. That is pretty darn impressive carpet bombing the entire campus.

</comment><comment><USER38> _As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted._

I guess that's how robot apocalypse is gonna look like.

</comment><comment><USER39> Automation can also mean automated disaster.

<comment><USER40> Bigger tools have bigger sharper edges. It's important the message is stressed as the developers to operators worlds merge in the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Isn't this more the fault of the system architect than the guy who accidentally fired the bad deploys?

It's similar to a database firehose: If you accidentally start deleting all data you should have a quick working backup ready to quickly bring the dead box up to production.

<comment><USER42> I don't know. This could very well be a case of not much more than a bad drag and drop in SCCM. Its not quite that simple, but I'm not sure this is some custom process they setup.

<comment><USER43> Any tool that allows you to easily perform the antithesis of its function without making it abundantly clear what clicking the OK button will do is fundamentally broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've built a few systems for deploying Windows... and the last thing that every one of them did before writing a new partition table and laying down an image was to check for existing partitions and require manual intervention if any were found.

</comment><comment><USER45>
      > As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted.

That made me laugh. Poor SCCM server :)

</comment><comment><USER46> With great power comes great responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER47> "As soon as the accident was discovered, the SCCM server was powered off – however, by that time, the SCCM server itself had been repartitioned and reformatted."

Unicast fail.

</comment><comment><USER48> I asked my friend attending Emory right now, and he didn't even realize anything was going on. He says that the Emory IT department has a notorious distinction on campus as being regularly terrible, mostly with an unreliable internet connection.

However, it looks like they handled this accident the best they could! Perhaps this accident would not have happened at a more reliable IT department.

</comment><comment><USER49> Disasters as well as mistakes are unavoidable, such is life. A hallmark of a competent organization is how they handle the situation and recover from disasters or mistakes.

So far all the signs have indicated they are doing great in recovering. I just hope there won't be onerous processes and restriction afterward due to desire on "make sure it won't happen again" stance.

</comment><comment><USER50> hah! delighted to see this here.

my roommate works at the emory library and has had a fun slow week there of coming home early many days because no one could do work. they were apparently also given laptops as an interim solution, but those somehow also wiped themselves eventually (?).

poor IT people...just as they're starting to get a handle on the actual sitation it starts blowing up on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER51> I thought this "accident" may have been on purpose... until they mentioned the servers.

In my days of university tech support.

</comment><comment><USER52> This happened at one a former workplace too. Only the Solaris and Linux servers was untouched.

It "mildly" amused the *nix operations guys to see all the "point and click" colleagues panic.

</comment><comment><USER53> Funny how they mention iTunes as one of the "key components" that are restored first, whereas Visio, Project, Adobe application are relegated to a second round.

<comment><USER54> Presumably iTunes is part of their base system image for all workstations, along with Office, Firefox, Adobe Reader, and the like. In other words, a basic set of software to handle standard officework tasks. iTunes is free and IT would probably rather distribute it everywhere than have people trying to install it themselves (or calling the helpdesk to get someone with administrator rights to do it). They then offer additional applications on an as-needed basis to individuals and departments with specific tasks. So the designers who do print publications and the faculty who teach digital art might get the Adobe suite, while people in Facilities who plan construction will get Project. This keeps licensing costs down and simplifies systems according to their uses.

<comment><USER55> Generally you're going to keep your base images in SCCM limited to software that's only infrequently updated. Otherwise somebody has to update the entire image every time an update gets pushed out. Instead, you package them up and deploy the apps on top of the base image at install time. It takes a little longer to deploy, but it takes less admin time to manage since the actual installs are automated anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> "... to the cloud!"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR6xbulUmsg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR6xbulUmsg)

"Yay, cloud!"

</comment><comment><USER57> Next time I'm about to complain about a bad day at the office, I will read this story again.

</comment><comment><USER58> reads like a short dystopian novel

</comment><comment><USER59> stark3, you seem to be hellbanned.

<comment><USER60> What gives you that idea?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7758203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7758203) is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7758193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7758193)

<comment><USER59> (Sorry, didn't see the dupe.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> You know how in movies you need at least two people to bring their special secret keys, plug them in, and turn them at once to enable a self-destruct sequence?

That is a real principle in interface design - if something would be _really, really bad_ to activate unintentionally, make it _really, really hard_ to activate.

If you design a nuclear missile facility, you don't put the "launch nukes" button right next to "check email" and "open facebook".

Same way it shouldn't be easy for users to delete or corrupt their data by accident due to some omnipotent action innocently shoved right in between other trivial actions.

I wouldn't blame the person who triggered this re-imaging process. I'd blame those who designed the re-imaging interface, to allow it to happen so easily by accident.

<comment><USER62> In my experience, the key is that the UI makes it clear exactly what you're doing. What I mean is, instead of a button that says "Start Imaging", it should be "Start Imaging of the 12,600 computers this rule applies to". Of course, that's a lot more work for the programmer, so it's never done.

<comment><USER63> But then that leads to people automatically clicking "Yes" to the "Are you sure..." dialog. Though even I would pause at "Are you sure you want to reformat 12,500 machines including this one?" ;-)

<comment><USER64> Having people type in some sort of auto-generated confirmation key might give them pause, seeing as the technique is seldom used.

<comment><USER62> Or in my original example, have them enter in the # of computers it's going to apply to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> We accidentally re-imaged all of the Windows servers with Linux the other day. Nobody noticed though...

<comment><USER66> That probably means nobody is using the servers you maintain and your department should be eliminated completely.

<comment><USER65> Or somebody was just joking... Who knows...

<comment><USER66> maybe I was joking too!

<comment><USER67> I've found that jokes tend to get downvoted on HN. Your post seems to be still in the black.

<comment><USER65> No sense of humor is bad for you. But on HN it is normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I've never been prouder of my alma mater. /s

<comment><USER69> You should be. Emory is the 2nd best school in Georgia! :)</comment></comment>


Geany – A flyweight IDE - <AUTHOR> https://www.geany.org/ <comment><USER2> I remember using Geany throughout high school for our Java/AP Computer Science classes, where it was the editor you were required to use. While I had it customized as much as the system would allow me, calling it an "IDE" is being a bit generous: my Sublime Text can do much, much more than Geany possibly could, and I'm not sure I would call even that an IDE. Geany is basically just a simple, slightly mediocre GUI text editor-which might be what you're looking for in some cases-but do note that most people's command-line text editor setups are generally more advanced than it. (If I could compare it to an editor, I'd say it's just slightly more advanced than nano.)

<comment><USER3> It can write, build and debug code. It's an IDE.

<comment><USER4> And just like Sublime, Geany also have an API that third-parties can use for developing their own plugins/extensions. Since Geany is open source, might have even more plugins than Sublime, although I doubt that, Sublime has been way more popular than Geany for as long as I can remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quick lesson about tone and documentation.

I'm always on the lookout for a good lightweight code editor to try out. I looked into Geany once and was excited to see that it had a Vim plugin. Unfortunately, reading the docs for it turned me away from it very quickly.

The first thing the author of the Vim plugin for Geany says in the FAQ is that plugin is written by a guy who doesn't use Vim. Which sounds a little strange but I kept reading. Later in the FAQ, he implies that the plugin sucks, Vim sucks, and that he only wrote it to quell the "constant whining of Vim users."

Needless to say, I will not be trying (let alone using) Geany as long as the prevailing attitude of the author of one of the plugins I _would_ use the most holds users in this level of sheer disdain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but that's no fault of the Geany devs, only of one plugin author. Seems unfair to judge an IDE based on the documentation for a volunteer-written plugin that you haven't even tried.

Edit: Also, while the dev admits that they don't use vim, they also say that they enjoy working on the plugin and repeatedly ask users to submit bug reports so that they can patch the plugin.

They're also really open to patches and contributions. IMO, this is a perfect example of the true FOSS spirit.

I think you're being unjustly harsh: [https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode- suck-s...](https://plugins.geany.org/vimode.html#why-does-vimode-suck-so-much)

<comment><USER6> Counterintuitively, a dev supporting a feature about which they care, but without any particular zealous dedication may well produce a more universally appealing product for its audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use it as an advanced text editor on any Linux or BSD workstation I use. I'm not a developer so most of the IDE type stuff goes unused, but I do like having something as powerful as Notepad++ on Windows without resorting to cumbersome editors like Atom or VSCode.

An alternative for people like me is SciTE.

[https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html](https://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html)

<comment><USER8> It's a matter of perspective I guess. Where I'm from, VSCode is considered lightweight. Cumbersome would describe NetBeans and Eclipse in my mind.

<comment><USER7> If it takes more than a second to load a text editor (or even a light IDE) I have no use for it. It's not just slow to load, it's also cumbersome to use compared to my preferred tools. Even on my old Core 2 Quad with a spinning hard drive, Geany loads in a split second with several tabs already queued up.

As you said, perhaps it's perspective, but even on my latest build (Ryzen 3600/RX5600XT/NVMe SSD) VSCode is agonizing compared to Notepad++ on Windows and Geany on Linux.

<comment> g-b-r > VSCode is agonizing compared to Notepad++ on Windows

you're clearly not keeping 2793 files in your session.xml

<comment><USER7> No, generally no more than two dozen or so, and honestly that's pushing the limits of my sanity with a tabbed interface. Any more than that, and I'm switching to Geany and turning on the sidebar. I've tried the "Folder as Workspace" feature and the Explorer plugin in N++ and they aren't as user- friendly.

<comment> g-b-r N++ has had for a few years its own internal sidebar (Setting -> General -> Document List Panel), but I've always used the Window Manager plugin, that for some reason I don't recall (probably the Path column and its handling of the two views that I always keep open) I always found more comfortable.

That said, my usage is not sane and is just a reflection of my organization capabilities and the constant postponement of switching to a better editor (one with good multi-sessions management, for example). A large part of the files are RFCs by the way, that I need from time to time (or just don't care about closing).

I wouldn't be surprised if Geany were much better by the way, there's a lot I dislike in N++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Geany for very long time as my go to casual editor for any type of text. I can install on all my platforms, all my OS, it's fast and doesn't gag on huge log files. Same experience in all platforms which is why it's one of first installed tools. I'm not a prof dev but at home on macOS, pi, beagle, arduino, Win10 the sheer time saving of having something work same across platforms for projects I get to only when work, family, time allows makes it a winner.

When in full on coding mode I prefer vi, rest of the time use Geany. Have tried regularly most other IDEs and text editors and none as fast, reliable, easy to install and use as Geany.

It's perfect for me. YMMV.

<comment><USER10> The lib it's based on is called Scintilla. It is a gem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure how important it is to emphasize IDE part, but it is lightweight for sure.

It's a capable editor. GTK based, which means on Windows the UX is not native. Still, it can be installed stand alone, GTK is packaged in.

It's not wise that they omitted including most of the plugins on Windows, as it kills its main selling point. Noone is going to bother to build plugins while on Windows. I hope it was just a recent packaging glitch, as MacOS version comes with all plugins built along, which you can enable on demand.

It's a nice altenative for quick exploratory work on some unknown codebases, as Geany extracts/indexes tags and allows one to jump to function defs, vars and such. However you need to have the relevant files already opened, otherwise you need to resort to Find in files to locate where function/ symbol is defined. This may be tedious in heavily structured projects. That's where an actual IDE excells.

But it works! It's a nice tool to have in a portable toolbox... However, looking through its GitHub pages looks like the developers are tired.

By the way, on Windows a nice lightweight alternative is `notepad2-mod`, also Scintilla based, needs no installation, native UI (a little bit too verbose menus).

<comment><USER12> Ctrl+click is a shortcut to find defs although they need to be opened. Setting up a project with the file sidebar available makes it easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use Geany as a code editor on my rpi hobby projects. The editor has been around long enough that it is reasonably fast on under powered hardware. I really appreciate having the option.

<comment><USER14> The RPi is the only place I still use it, but on that platform it works great. For Python programming on the RPi, Thonny is actually a bit better though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Geany is probably the lightest IDE that works well with Rust. If you just basically want an editor with shortcuts to run terminal commands, it's a great solution.

<comment><USER16> I didn't realize it would integrate with Rust

Back to geany!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> still, I always preferred kate[0] (I still use it everyday, even on windows 10) and kdevelop[1] (it had type guessing for python since 2011![2])

[0] [https://kate-editor.org/](https://kate-editor.org/)

[1] [https://www.kdevelop.org/](https://www.kdevelop.org/)

[2] [http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument- ty...](http://blog.svenbrauch.de/2011/09/09/kdev-python-argument-type- guessing/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish I could use Geany, but I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy. For example, there is no way to just open a directory in Geany (the same way as in VS Code and Sublime Text) without creating a project file.

<comment><USER19> > _I find the tree view plugin substantially lacking and buggy_

Could you report issues to Geany devs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember Geany, it was the first "IDE" I ever used :) . I really like that the "build system" was pretty much just scripts that you could do yourself, it made it pretty much usable for any workflow easily. Granted, you could not customize it and integrate everything as much as VS Code, Atom and the likes, but it is doing its job and run extremely good on very old computer.

</comment><comment><USER21> My editor and IDE of choice for the last 15 years or so.

I keep rushing out and trying newfangled wonderware for the alleged features it will offer me and without which I cannot be supposed to live. And I keep, regular as clockwork, coming back to sane and solid Geany with its speed, straightforwardness, sanity, discoverability, and allround just-so convenience.

<comment><USER22> Agree, for the last couple of years Geany has been my primary dev environment on Linux after migrating off Windows and Notepad++, and I'm super productive on it, very stable and fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are looking for a lighter than flyweight editor check out [https://github.com/rxi/lite](https://github.com/rxi/lite)

<comment><USER19> Cute! Is it possible to use on Android in companion with Termux app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> errichto [0] recommends this IDE/editor for competitive programming.

Cross-platform and lightweight (as in memory) is a nice feature to have, especially if you want to get going really fast. Great for beginners too!

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBr_Fu6q9iHYQCh13jmpbrg)

</comment><comment><USER25> Geany is my favourite editor for many years. Blazingly fast and resource friendly. Has most features I need but not bloated... Only thing I'm missing is support for some newer languages (hcl/terraform comes do mind).

</comment><comment><USER26> I have used it as IDE on Linux for Python development along with vi before moving to emacs.

It was my choice as it was small lightweight and could open large csv and xml.

After that did not follow it, good to see it's been constantly updated and developed.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been using Geany since I moved to Linux, is the fastest loading editor I've found. Great editor!

</comment><comment><USER12> Love geany, it does everything I want and nothing I don't, fast. FLOSS, low system requirements, and respects your privacy. Has project, terminal, and vcs support, rectangular selections as well.

Lots of functionality is in plugins, such as highlight word and close brackets/quotes, xml formatters I need for work, etc.

I often pair it with micro for consistent key bindings in the terminal if not geany itself over sshfs.

</comment><comment><USER28> So we have: Vim, Emacs, BBEdit, textmate, notepad++, SublimeText, Atom, Visual Code, Geany... am I missing any?

<comment><USER29> micro [https://micro-editor.github.io/](https://micro-editor.github.io/)

<comment><USER30> micro is really good! It installs quickly and provides for just the minimal set of features to be used as a goto editor for small tasks at the terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What are ya'lls thoughts on jucipp vs kdevelop vs vscode vs sublime text for c++ development?

I've been using VSCode (& Codium on my linux machine) for c++ dev. I have the debugger and build tasks all set up and feel happy about that. Wouldn't mind having something a bit more reliable. I get this weird bug in VSCode where CTRL+P doesnt index all the files in the project. I have to manually navigate to the file, open it, and then CTRL+P can find it. I usually end up working with both Sublime Text and VS Code open. Sublime for code reading, VS Code for code writing.

I still feel like Sublime just dropped the ball with poor plugin support and thats what gave VS Code its edge...

<comment><USER32> C++ is hard to do well from a plugin because of its complexity. For example, jump-to-definition requires resolving complex overloading rules. I have had better luck with IDEs that treat C++ as first class: CLion, VC++, Xcode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One of the first thing I install every time I install a OS. I've been using it as default light notepad since I saw the light, I think. Split screen plugin is probably my favourite.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thread from two years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557128)

</comment><comment><USER34> Geany is great. Never crashes when editing files mounted over ssh. Ive has stability problems with other programs when the connection gets flaky, but geany never needs a restart and immediately pops up a notification when the mount is lost. One click in nemo to reconnect, one click in geany to reload the file, and everything is back as it was. It certainly beats running vi in a remote terminal and dealing with disconnects.

</comment><comment><USER35> Used to be good, I used a lot in the past, nowadays I use vim for everything(even after I purchased jetbrain whole bundle for years).

Geany is not improved fast enough these days, e.g. debugger was broken, markdown support is not as good, etc. In the core, geany uses scintilla(which is what is used by Notepad++), its capability is restricted by whatever scintilla provides.

</comment><comment><USER36> Geany was a useful tool a while back, but no longer is packaged for centos and lost its key selling point for me which was a decent GDB plugin debugger at a time where there weren't too many other UIs for GDB.

I'm not so bothered about lightweight as I need horsepower to build my projects anyway.

The world has moved on from hand scripted build commands. (for better or worse).

</comment><comment><USER37> I use Geany every day, I like how fast it is and that it has highlight of all occurrences of the current variable. I'm a bit disappointed that it hasn't implemented any of the language server protocol (LSP). I think that would be a fast way to improve the intelligence of it's autocomplete for many languages.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just tried it on Windows; unfortunately the lack of native GUI is a huge turn- off for me.

Software-drawn GUIs always stick out like a sore thumb and look/feel clunky; it's the same reason I hate using anything built with Java as everything always feels so emulated.

Also resizing Geany's window was incredibly laggy as the interface was re- drawn.

<comment><USER39> I don't agree on the "Everything written in Java feels emulated" part. Have you tried IntelliJ? It is completely written in Java and looks and feels as if it is using native GUI (alhough it indeed isn't).

<comment><USER40> It's better than some older Java GUIs but still really doesn't feel native.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've had Geany on my Mac since I found it while looking for an editor for the Raspberry Pi. They include in their disk image now. I still use BBEdit but Geany is the closest thing I've found to it that will run on a RPi. It's been a long time since I've reviewed what's out there now though.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Build system to compile and execute your code

How does a text editor also act as a build system? Do they mean dependencies are automatically discovered and compiled? Or do they mean it integrates with a makefile where you still need to specify the dependencies and the text editor will automatically run it when files change?

<comment><USER43> You create a Project in Geany. It will then integrate with `make`, so when you click `build` it will run make for you.

Myself I don't use this feature, I mostly use PHP code. I am very happy with Geany as a lightweight IDE or texteditor and have been using it for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "Flyweight"?

<comment><USER45> It's a boxing term.

<comment><USER46> More specifically it's the lightest weight class in boxing. Lightweight is actually about bang in the middle of typical weight classes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> [https://codelite.org/](https://codelite.org/) is another powerful IDE with low memory footprint compared to modern IDEs and with more features like workspace support.

</comment><comment><USER48> I used this over a decade ago, and it was wonderful, a lot like VSCode or Atom, but without debug support and fewer plugins.

</comment><comment><USER49> Red Hat 5, Gnome 2.6 and Geany was the standard at my uni for C/C++ firmware dev. Good times :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I use vscode for programming, but I went back to sublime for jotting down notes.

</comment><comment><USER51> Whenever I am in Linux, I use Geany mostly as text-editor.

</comment><comment><USER52> Didn't development stop on this?

<comment><USER53> Last commit was 11 days ago. That's probably a dead project in the Javascript world, but I'd say it's still active.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Last time I used Geany, the laptop fan spun up like crazy and my battery drained like it's nobody's business. I quickly stopped using it.</comment>


When Men Were Men and HTML Was Static - <AUTHOR> http://www.softinstigate.com/blog/2014/11/07/when-men-where-men/

<comment><USER2> I converted my site to static HTML about two years ago, using Octopress. It was a combination of getting sick of Wordpress breaking, and being able to handle huge traffic rushes. (My first time hitting the front page of HN, it crashed my site a couple times with WP).

Here's the thing though. You're trading one headache for another. Ruby is a fast moving, but fragile ecosystem. Octopress (which uses Jekyll) is easy to set up, and easy to customize. But long term... it's a PITA.

1\. If you want to develop your site on more than one machine, you'll find yourself installing a bunch of bundles, then porting over your source files and finding it doesn't work. This has happened several times.

2\. If you want to go cross platform - good luck with that as well. If you want to generate your site on Linux it's super easy. OSX or Windows - a small nightmare most of the time. I haven't really figured out why this is.

3\. If you try to pull down the most recent version of Octopress or Jekyll and merge it... yeah you're going to break stuff a lot. Get ready to install a bunch of gems, and roll back versions of stuff sometimes.

4\. Get ready for some random breaking. It happens, especially if you're updating packages. Jekyll will just break.

5\. Every time you Google something, you usually find a bunch of Jekyll users asking the exact same question as you, and many times it just leads to a bug report on the Jekyll GitHub page.

All in all I would say it's still less hassle and bloat than WordPress, but you really do trade one annoyance for another. Because static HTML is so much faster I decide to stick with these hassles.

Jekyll is fairly good, but Ruby is an unstable ecosystem for real work. I think Jekyll would be a lot better if it were pure Python, or something similar.

<comment><USER3> We're solving some of these issue with Netlify ([https://www.netlify.com](https://www.netlify.com)), since we'll run your Octopress (or Grunt, Middleman, Jekyll, Docpad, etc) builds on our servers when you push to Github.

You'll still want a local Octopress install running when you're really developing, but at least with this setup you don't need anything installed to add new blog posts or edit content.

You can even fix a quick typo from your phone through the Github web UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to have something like Jekyll that just makes my existing setup static, and I can just regenerate it when I want. So my Wordpress site becomes static, sure I'll have to fix a couple of things, comments going to a different URL, searching would be broken, but I love that WP interface, and I've got several sites in it. I'd love to take my PHPBB forum static, that thing is horrible, but also nice to have, or my Wiki, both of those sites attract all sorts of evil people, it would be nice to have them all be read only. The longer I keep the PHPBB and this particular Wiki going the more attack vectors are being found, I'd love to just have a bunch of HTML docs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand the title or what it's supposed to mean. Aren't men men now? Also, what is the relation between men and static HTML?

<comment><USER6> It alludes to a famous message of Linus Torvalds.

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily; it is a common English idiom going back to the 19th century.

[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=when+men+were+...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=when+men+were+men)

<comment><USER8> Great resource. This quote from 1841 is fun:

> When men were men of manly mould, ere faith was bought, and friendship sold, > and honour but a name for gold.

There are older quotes but I liked that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it hard to believe how people in our industry today can be so ignorant of the issues around the use of machismo terms like that used in the title of the post. I believe that the author was just trying to be witty and was probably not intending to offend anyone. But his offhand use of the "when men were men' phrase is terribly offensive to many people.

Just to be clear: this isn't about simple 'political correctness' \- trying not to offend anyone. This is about fixing a broken culture in our industry.

This industry has the potential to be completely egalitarian - silicon can't determine the gender of the people who wrote the code, and keyboards aren't particularly better suited to men's hands. Yet we've managed to build an industry that is completely dominated by men. That's a travesty and a waste, and deserves explicit effort to undo the damage. That means using inclusive language at _all_ times, even if it doesn't seem 'natural'. The fact that language like that seems 'natural' or 'innocent' to some people is a horribly broken and heartbreakingly wrong state that needs fixing.

<comment><USER10> Who would be offended by this? It seems to me the only thing that could be offensive is the implication that modern men aren't as tough as in the past. Is that what you mean?

<comment><USER9> The phrase uses maleness as a reference to something better or great. 'real men' are used as example of 'great'. It has the same effect as 'throw like a girl'.

I'll admit to being sensitive to the topic. I'm mostly surprised that given all of the attention that the barriers to women in the industry has been given over the last number of months, people still use language like this. My point is that we _should_ be sensitive to this issue. We should think about the women engineers that are on the margins, perhaps experiencing harassment at work or online, and consider how they would feel reading yet another 'manly man' reference to being a great developer.

<comment><USER10> I think the phrase actually is comparing modern men to men of the past. My interpretation is that it's teasing softer men that their grandfathers were tougher than them.

Doesn't seem to me like it says anything about women. I'm forced to conclude that this is a hot button topic for you, and isn't something relevant to the article or discussion at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good way to tell how much contact someone has with non-technical people is whether or not they say things like "it's simple, it's just a text file formatted in Markdown."

<comment><USER7> I once wrote some code to let my company's staff post job openings on our site themselves, instead of asking me to convert their word processor files to html. Markdown was the natural choice. I never heard any complaints.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, and with some simple "helper" text at the bottom, with a split-screen, editor on one side, and live-preview on the other it gets pretty good.

I use MarkdownPad when I'm doing larger readme or documentation files for github.. I can imagine it would be easy enough for others to pick up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Imagine being a woman and coming to HN and seeing this. Clearly a place for her?

We need to drop sexist article titles like this from HN.

<comment><USER14> Men refers to humanity imo.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't and you're a cunt.

<comment><USER8> Wait did you just unironically use a sexist slur to insult someone for what you view as sexism..? That's special.

<comment><USER15> I was about to address you seriously, but you either have no idea what sexism is or you are not interested in an honest discussion.

<comment><USER8> I noticed a lot of words but none of them tried to justify why you used a gendered sexist slur to defend supposed sexism.

If you are unable to justify yourself, maybe you should consider how you behave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's ironic that his permalink doesn't handle a dynamic title field very well.</comment>


"t-" : A less-than-minimal task list "manager" - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/t-/t-.html?HN1

<comment><AUTHOR> To answer some of the comments made already, and to preempt others, I largely hacked "t-" together because I wanted to see if "t" would be worth bothering with. It seemed little better than just having a text file and so I didn't really see the point. But equally (I thought) I could be wrong.

But "t" didn't run on my very old, stick-it-in-the-corner-and-occasionally- play machine (which only has Python 2.2.1) so I spent a happy hour putting this together, more-or-less at random.

I'm finding it's helping, but maybe that will only be till the novelty wears off.

<comment><USER2> I think this would suit a Nanonote (Qi Hardware's pocket computer), to use for task management. I use emacs' org mode in it, but the time it takes to boot (15 seconds)+opening emacs (I didn't check, but probably as long) make it too cumbersome. When I have it connected for downloading things I'll try t- (I have debian in it).

Thanks for sharing it, these one-hour happy projects are the most fun to read and hack

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - let me know how you get on, and whether I can help.

<comment><USER2> Got it working without any problems after adding the "warnings" suggestion above. It is slightly slow (well, it is python and the Nanonote only has 32Mb RAM, taskwarrior is snappier, though, but that's what you get with C, I guess).

I found an odd thing: I added twice a task with the same name, and the random number is the same, i.e. t- test -> 098f test, doing it again results in 098f test twice. I guess the "random" number is just some hash applied to the string, but this means that let's say, if I put three "do the laundry" (3 washmachines, for example), when I remove them all three will be deleted at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the "random" string is a hash of the string, but no, removing one does not remove all. It only deletes one instance of the item. A subsequent "-f" will remove the next, and so on. I specifically had this usage case in mind, and I do that myself.

<comment><USER2> Great then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My task management solution is similarly minimal, consisting of just 2 bash functions that operate on a text file. The twist with mine is that I embed the list on my desktop to increase awareness of things left to do.

More here: <http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2010/12/minimally-awesome-todos/>

<comment><USER4> I like it. The following todone definition will add a strikethrough to lines marked as done rather than deleting them (your terminal emulator must support the relevant control code to display it properly).

        function todone() { sed -i -e "/$*/s/.*/\o033[9m&\o033[0m/" $TODO; }

edit: gnome-terminal supports this, but it seems xterm and putty do not

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's no point in telling people to make it executable in your instructions, given that it needs all the extra arguments in the alias.

Also, putting these two lines before your import will make it run without complaint on Python 2.6.x:

        import warnings
        warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', 'the md5 module is deprecated')

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - done both of those. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see a difference between that and t, aside from -e and --delete-if- empty. Am I missing something? Or does t not have sort-friendly output? (if so, t- all the way, that's a big bonus)

<http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/>

<comment><USER7> I don't see a difference between that and a plain textfile..

<comment><USER6> Plain text files you have to select an editor to open it in, modify it, and save it. More steps than necessary, a command line interface really is ideal for something super-simple like this. Though it could be made as / might just be a handful of bash scripts wrapping around `cat`, not everyone has the know- how or desire to make such a thing, but many can _use_ it.

<comment><USER7> But i have to open a terminal to use t. I argue that using vim is more efficient then t:

      - delete a task 'dd' -> two keystrokes, no need to remember some arbitrary id
      - select a task 'gg' -> go to line number
      - add new task 'o' -> one keystroke
      - add a bash alias 't' for "vim ~/.tasks" and you have the power of vim and still need fewer keystrokes to manage tasks ;)

Still, why i would use such a tool is far beyond me, honestly. I can understand using some advanced taskmanagers with GUI or a textfile, but i don't understand the benefits of t ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't always have a terminal open? I find that odd. Personally I _always_ have a terminal open - it's where I do most of my work - so to add a task it's just typing it in, preceeded by "t-". I don't have to remember arbitrary IDs, they are listed.

But you're convinced it's of no value to you, and that's cool. Don't use it.

But if you haven't tried it, can you _really_ be sure?

<comment><USER7> Actually i always have several terminals and several desktops open. I think my workflow would be to open a terminal on the "PIM" desktop and have vim running there.

Anyway, you are right, i haven't tried it, and i probably won't because my workflow and taskmanagement works different (and already works for me).

Everyone should use what suits him best.

<comment><AUTHOR>
        my workflow and taskmanagement works different
        (and already works for me).  Everyone should
        use what suits him best.

Absolutely. This is just another option for those that aren't yet happy with what they do or have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Something I wrote recently: a repl that keeps track of things I'd like to spend five minutes a day on. sqlite3 behind it. When I type 'run' it lists the tasks in random order. For each, I can say yes or no, and if yes, leave a note. At some time in the future I'll be able to write a tool to see the log being kept in sqlite3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to make it available? Don't even bother to clean it up or make it run on other platforms, just show us what it does, and make a copy available for download. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see it.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for your interest.

My home internet is down, so I don't have the latest version handy. This shows I should keep things in github.

I'll post an older version from my laptop here now, and follow up later with the latest if I remember.

<http://pastebin.com/bxt7RLX5>

This is missing key functionality:

\- 'run' command which spoon feeds you a random selection of the tasks

However, you can start it, and see the schema, and that direction it's headed in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that - an interesting take on the task/problem/idea. I hadn't thought of a REPL ... you've made me think again. I don't think I'll do it, but I've got another idea in mind.

<comment><USER8> Here's the most recent version, which supports 'run'.

<http://pastebin.com/PbDZesWp>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I modified slightly the suggestion for bash prompt, to read as follows (the 'git' stuff is pretty standard):

        function count_tasks {
        ~/bin/t | wc -l | sed -e's/ *//' 2> /dev/null | sed -e s/0//'
        }
        export PS1="\h:\W\$(parse_git_branch)\$(count_tasks) $ "

</comment><comment><USER10> For my task management I used a perl script which appends comments to the bottom of the script as to do items.

i.e script and to do list are one and the same.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here is yet another solution for this kind of problem.

Dev-Todo <http://swapoff.org/DevTodo>

If you use e.g. zsh then maybe you also like this for your rc file.

<http://pastie.org/1585888>

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://taskwarrior.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> You seem to have missed the point. As it says in the documentation for t:

        If you need anything beyond the basics
        you might want to look at todo.txt or
        TaskWarrior instead. They're great tools
        with lots of bells and whistles.

In contrast, t (and therefore t-) does almost nothing. Instead, to make your task list prettier, do some work!

[http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/#it-does-the-simplest- thing-...](http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/#it-does-the-simplest-thing-that- could-possibly-work)

<comment><USER12> Not at all. Those "bells and whistles" you decry have negligible impact its ease of use, as it's been designed such that the extras (due dates, priorities, projects, etc) are only there if/when you actually want to use them.

Otherwise it's just "task add something", "task list", "task done something".

And if you do find yourself wanting to use those "bells and whistles", they're just a man page away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Having tried, I can't make it build and run on SuSE 8.1. Having read the page, yes, if all I want is a list of tasks, no doubt TaskWarrior and do it. I don't think it's a bad tool, not at all.

It just doesn't look like what I want. I like being able to just go in and edit the task list. I like being able to use the Unix philosophy and have sorting, prioritising, selecting, and counting in a pipeline.

I don't want much, and t- gives me what I want.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How MySpace Blew It - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-22/myspaces-dizzying-fall/?cid=hp:mainpromo6

<comment><USER2> Myspace needs to focus on what they are winning in. That is local bands and promotion for them. Almost every band has a Myspace and uses it for updates and music samples, etc... If they could rework their music section. They are already the leader in it and seem to be oblivious to it. Give indie bands a way to sell/distribute their music and promote it better on a hyperlocal scale and you win.

<comment><USER3> I don't think they're THAT oblivious to it, they have their own record label (<http://www.myspace.com/myspacerecords>). I do agree that they should try to capitalize on it more though. The only thing I use myspace for is to listen to new bands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must have missed it because I didn't see much to explain _why_ Myspace is having problems. My .02 (why I moved to facebook): 1. it took forever for pages to load. 2. I hated the "web circa 1999" look of many user's pages. 3. Allowing songs onload of pages. 4. Lot's of spam friendings.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the author should have named it "How Rupert Blew it" or something- I got to the end thinking the same thing - uh, he didn't even try to start answering how Myspace blew it.

5\. Allowed itself to be branded as the Urinal of the Internet. Made it so all the tech early adopters that everyone else takes the lead from avoided it like crazy in favor of cleaner, better structured sites like Facebook.

I spent many hours convincing friends and family to close their MySpace accounts.

<comment><USER6> So _that's_ how the digerati operate!</comment></comment></comment>


Hack the Olympics - <AUTHOR> http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2008/08/hack-olympics.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is similar to the article "how I stole someone else's identity."

It is disappointing that neither Google or Baidu could act and retain a cache of the page. That would be history err.. or legally nothing can be done.</comment>


Financial Times Confirms September Launch for Apple Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5323446/financial-times-confirms-apple-tablet-features-september-launch <comment><USER3> I doubt Apple is coming out with a tablet for one reason: Apple not only creates products, but experiences. They consider both the style and function of a product, along with the way the user interacts with it. The iPhone can be gripped with one hand, and navigated with the other, and when entering text, the user can grip it with two while still comfortably typing with his/her thumbs. With a tablet, I see no comfortable way a user can interact with the device, let alone hold it comfortably for viewing. Tablets are too big for thumb typing, and seeing as how Apple usually stays away from moving pieces ruling out any swing out arm, typing with two hands will be a pain as the tablet itself will most likely be flat.

I don't see where the tablet fits in between my laptop and my iPhone - <USER2> products that have been developed pretty well to accommodate the way we interact with them. If Apple has indeed decided to release a tablet, I'd be very very interested to see how they dealt with all the ergonomic and inputting issues that come with a tablet - issues they always seem to take into consideration quite heavily.

<comment><USER4> The iPhone excels at anywhere/anytime. But for a session of any appreciable length or complexity, the screen is a limitation.

Laptops are great for sessions of length and complexity, but the ergonomics _require_ a traditional desk and the overhead required isn't justified for many tasks.

A tablet would land between them. Essentially, every place you're still using a legal pad (for meeting/conference notes), dead tree reference (for reading/reference consumption in a comfy chair) or fixed-function device (portable video player) because phones and laptops just aren't the right tool for the job.

If you don't find yourself doing any of that, maybe a tablet just _doesn't_ make sense for you. But that's no different than conventional laptops not really working _for me_. (Clearly, there are plenty of people for whom they _do_ work)

As for the ergonomics of a tablet - it's not going to be much larger than a kindle. You'd be able to comfortably one-hand it, like a book, legal pad or kindle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really know what to think anymore about that kind of rumors because, on one hand, I feel like they don't really know what they're talking about and are mostly writing what people want to read; on the other, some persistent rumors ended up being real (or at least not far off) in recent years: iPhone, Google's own browser, Google's own OS, the "Google phone" to cite a few.

So, I'm tired of reading the "Apple Tablet" rumors but I can't help but thinking that it might just be coming.

<comment><USER6> Three days before the announcement of the iPhone, amid persistent rumors I posted on Digg that I "seriously doubted" that Apple was making a phone. Someone responded to my comment saying that Apple would not have been smart to let the rumor get out of control as it did as it could cause their stock to drop when they don't deliver. Since Apple (obviously) did deliver, I'm cautiously optimistic that the same reasoning can be applied to these persistent iTablet rumors.

<comment><USER7> Past performance is no guarantee for the future... That goes for failed as well as successful predictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To the people saying they don't see the value or market in an Apple tablet, Apple may simply be hoping for a greater acceptance rate among Windows users.

The iPhone has been a great product for breaking down barriers between Windows users and Apple hardware. If the tablet can integrate both OSX and iPhone UI aspects then this will hopefully break down most usability and interface barriers, meaning people are less reluctant to buy a Mac.

It's just one theory...

</comment><comment><USER9> Financial Times have confirmed what, exactly?

Much as I think an Apple Tablet would be cool, I'm struggling to think of many uses cases for it, beyond it 'being cool' (and I mean cool in the tech sense of the word, not in the slave to fashion sense)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure that amazon has much to worry about from this. I don't think a tablet will end up competing directly with other ereaders.

I'm thinking about getting an some kind of ereader this summer. While color might be nice, and I'm sure a touch screen would be nice, I don't think I would get one to use as an ereader. I'm sure it is going to be a lot more expensive than popular ereaders. I don't think I would pay 600 for a device to read books, and I don't really want a tablet pc. I have concerns about battery life. E-ink does not require a charge when the screen is not changing, and so I've heard the battery life on e-ink devices is amazing. I do not think the battery life on this would be very good.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, a tablet and an e-reader have so little in common today that they are in different spaces.

Tablets and laptops are probably closer.

\- price

\- battery life

\- applications running on it

\- networking options

\- audience

Such a tablet would have to be very cheap and have an e-ink screen in order to have any chance to compete with an reader and I don't think either of those will be the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wondering what Techcrunch will do now if that confirmation is true. Do you think there will still be a market if the early adopters might buy an Apple tablet?

<comment><USER12> I don't know how many TechCrunch lovers there are, but it is common knowledge that Apple fans are willing to spend more on a first gen product (just look at what happened with the iPhone). My guess is that if Apple delivers, TechCrunch will not see as many sales as it would have.

<comment><USER4> My guess is that if Apple delivers, the CrunchPad winds up with a _better_ chance at success.

Just as with the iPhone, Apple's going to be selling the _concept_ as heavily as the product itself. If the CrunchPad materializes, it stands to pick up quite a bit of business that is convinced by Apple's larger argument, but put off by the price or some Apple-ish limitation/restriction.

(could be as simple as: Apple's tablet not supporting Flash either.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see the market for this but more power to them if they release one and it's a success. I don't underestimate Apple's ability to "create a need".

</comment><comment><USER14> If Apple were ever to release a tablet they would probably do so when it makes strategic sense. The iPhone is still a work in progress. Copy and paste was just added and the app store is still being refined.

When iPhone sales start to curb like iPod sales did after 5/6 years then you will see a new "pardigm shifting" gadget. The iPhone has been out for what, 2 years now?

<comment><USER4> The one thing Apple would need for a tablet, that it can't provide itself, is developer interest.

There will never be a better time than the present to hook developers on another platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apple engineer: Gee, boss, what are we going to do with all of these "air" parts we spent so much time developing?

Boss (Scanning macrumors to issue the days takedown notices): Well, I guess we'll just have to.... waa-hay-hayta minute! I've got a brilliant idea!</comment>


Julian Assange Reddit AMA on Thursday Morning (1/5/17 9am EST) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/iama <comment><USER2> It is now revised to be on the 10th of January at 9am according to the sidebar of [http://reddit.com/r/iama](http://reddit.com/r/iama)

and

[https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/8169761115319132...](https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/816976111531913216)

</comment><comment><USER3> The link is to the subreddit. How do you know there will be an AMA?

<comment><USER4> look at the table on the right margin of the page. it has a list of upcoming AMA's

<comment><AUTHOR> On the mobile view, it's harder to see; click main navigation link then desktop view, or just load the AMA Google Calendar here:

[https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=amaverify@gma...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com)</comment></comment></comment>


The F-word's hidden superpower: repeating it can increase your pain threshold - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/the-f-words-hidden-superpower-repeating-it-can-increase-your-pain-threshold/ <comment><USER2> Profanity gets its power from us. We are taught from childhood that there are words that are so strong that they can never be said. Every time we hear them they bring up the mental thunder they are supposed to evoke. The interesting thing is that the less they are used the more powerful they get. So the antidote is to use them as much as possible so that they lose their power. The problem is that the people that use them become social outcasts to those that feel insulted by profanity. It's a bit of a catch 22.

The word bitch has begun to lose its power but other words are beginning to gain power by being used less and being labeled as tabooed.</comment>


AMD GPU Supply Exhausted by Crypto Miners, AIBs Now Directly Advertising to Them - <AUTHOR> http://wccftech.com/amd-gpu-supply-exhausted-by-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> The article doesn't really touch on it, but this seems to be related to the "altcoin" boom of the past month or so, most of which are GPU mineable. The rise in Bitcoin prices seems to have made altcoins rise in price in lockstep, for reasons I don't quite understand. Many have even increased in value 10-20x in a matter of a couple months. There are even 8 cryptocoin "unicorns" now, according to [https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/).

If you are thinking about gambling in crypto-speculation, my advice would be: dont do it with any money you cant afford to lose. There are way too many stories of people losing substantial portions of their life savings buying in at the top of these market booms.

<comment><USER3> > The rise in Bitcoin prices seems to have made altcoins rise in price in > lockstep, for reasons I don't quite understand.

The Dutch Tulip Mania was not limited to Tulips of a single color.

<comment><USER4> Nor did tulips represent 0.025% of the global financial market cap already (~ 80bn / 300 tn) ;)

[1] [http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/](http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/)

[2] [https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/global-stock-market- cap...](https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/global-stock-market-cap-has- doubled-since-qes-start-2015-02-12)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember the story of Samuel Brannan who made lots of money selling picks, shovels and pans to gold miners during gold rush in 1848.

Quote from Wiki:

"Brannan moved to New Helvetia, where he opened a store at John Sutter's Fort. When gold was discovered, Brannan owned the only store between San Francisco and the gold fields -- a fact he capitalized on by buying up all the picks, shovels and pans he could find, and then running up and down the streets of San Francisco, shouting "Gold! Gold on the American River!" He paid 20 cents each for the pans, then sold them for $15 apiece. In nine weeks, he made $36,000."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan#California_Gold...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan#California_Gold_Rush)

</comment><comment><USER6> Oh great. In a time when we struggle with environmental issues on this planet let's create virtual currencies, that require shitload of electricity to run. And let's use all these advanced gpus and cpus that require tremendous amount of time, energy and money to "mine" these currencies so we can make few bucks. Let's advertise them as decentralized and private when they are neither.

It's not like we could have people dedicate all these resources to develop better medicines to save lives, or better materials to create greener and healthier society.

No, let's just spend money and time to fuel our ponzi scheme.

</comment><comment><USER7> So is it possible for Nvidia to covertly launch and promote an altcoin designed so it's more profitable to mine it on Nvidia GPUs?

<comment><USER8> Of course it's possible. (In fact, you can mine Ethereum on Nvidia and it's not too bad. GTX 1070 has the same performance as RX 480/580\. The 1070 is more expensive but it also consumes less power. So you can achieve the same profit, just with a bit more time.)

But that wouldn't make any sense for Nvidia. They're enjoying their dominance over the gaming market. They have a lot of fanboy^Wmindshare and now even gamers who wanted an RX 580 can't even buy it because of miners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> LTC is not the silver of crypto, and Ethereum is not spelled "Etherium"

<comment><USER10> I've definitely seen LTC referred to as the "silver" to BTCs "gold".

Don't know what an AIB is though.

<comment><USER11> AMD Add-In-Board partners

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Criminal waste of energy

</comment><comment><USER13> When did this new trend of referring to cryptocurrencies as "crypto" begin? This is very irritating, as it is a major namespace collision with actual cryptography.

</comment><comment><USER14> How long is mining actual viable by the masses at the moment? I assume this can't continue to happen unless other altcoins also use GPUs for mining. Won't the difficulty of mining eventually become unprofitable? I assume this is like bitcoin. However I don't know much about all this.

</comment><comment><USER15> All these altcoins seems to be speculation, does anybody actually use them as currency?

</comment><comment><USER16> What does the author mean by ASIC resistence here?

<comment><USER17> Some hash functions (eg. scrypt) are designed to make ASIC implementations cost-prohibitive, such as by requiring enough memory that off-chip DRAM working memory is needed. When the memory interface is the bottleneck, an ASIC is not going to offer substantial advantages over GPUs.

<comment><USER18> But in the end, we got scrypt ASIC miners anyway. And then a coin called Vertcoin (VTC) came along and replaced scrypt with X11, to fight ASICs

<comment><USER19> Does anyone know why they fight ASICs?

<comment><USER18> Yeah. Officially it's to avoid centralization. The idea is that anyone can mine the coins, not just rich people with ASIC mining farms.

They also wanted to avoid GPUs originally, and some new altcoins (also known as shitcoins) try to do this as well from time to time. I've been known to either cloud-mine or what I call "Indian-data-center" mine such coins.

I personally like it when a new CPU-only or GPU-only coin comes out because I can mine with my own hardware. My ASIC miner never made ROI before the Bitcoin difficulty got to high that it would never pay back the power bill costs.

<comment><USER16> It would be cool if such "GPU resistant" coins became popular, because it would encourage people to figure out new ways to program GPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does mining shorten the life of a GPU? If I am in the market for a second hand GPU for gaming, should I avoid those?

<comment><USER21> I read a comment on reddit the other day the gist of which was (sorry, I don't remember the specifics and doubt I'll be able to find the comment again):

Generally, yes, as miners tend to tweak GPU settings to maximise their hashrate and it can cause issues when they are run like that long term.

<comment><USER8> Miners tweak settings to minimize power usage, i.e. undervolt and maybe even underclock the card.

That's much better for the GPU than, say, pushing the card to the limit for benchmark scores :D

But generally, GPUs become obsolete before they die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What do you guys thing, this will make AMD shares rise after the next profitability report?

</comment><comment><USER22> So what am I supposed to buy instead of rx570? For, like, gaming?

nvidia 1060 or what?

</comment><comment><USER23> GTX 1050 ti now is more performant than RX 5xx series.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh god, not this again.</comment>


Show HN: GitHub trash, Quickly remove your GitHub repo - <AUTHOR> http://kureikain.github.io/git-trash/

<comment><AUTHOR> I had way too many fork Github repositories. Go through them and delete one by one is painful.

So I created this to remove them in bunch. To make OAuth without a server, I used Oauth.IO. It works great and make process smothly.

For front-end, I used ReactJS.

</comment><comment><USER2> I thought it was a command line utility, so you could run `git trash origin` from inside a git repo and it would work.</comment>


Chinese Developers Can Now Offer Paid Applications to Google Play Users - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2014/11/chinese-developers-can-now-offer-paid.html

<comment><USER2> You mean Chinese developers couldn't do this all these years? I'm really surprised, even shocked, given how much Android hardware and firmware come out of China...

<comment><USER3> For mainland China, yes. The most feasible way for mainland China developers to bypass this limitation is using Hongkong bank account and address.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you go about naming a business? - <AUTHOR>

I'm hell bent on going into business for myself. I'm going to do it even if it leaves me broke and homeless. I say I'm going to succeed in a very real way! I've been stuck without motion regarding this for years, and now I'm sick of it. Since I quit my job in November, I'm using this time as an opportunity/blessing to get started.
This now brings up the question of naming the LLC I plan to form.
Any tips for doing so? I'm not sure if I will be doing consulting through the business, or if I will create online apps, etc through the company. Does this matter?
Thanks for the help! <comment><USER2> Jason Calacanis had written about this subject in his newsletter: [http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/3/how-to-name-your-startup- and...](http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/3/how-to-name-your-startup-and-land-the- perfect-domain.html)

I hope this helps.</comment>


Why we switched exclusively to GitHub Issues - <AUTHOR> http://8020.co/Blog/why-we-switched-exclusively-to-github-issues

<comment><USER2> Hell yeah.

The key to GitHub issues is that they are fast. I can make a ticket in seconds, which means I will make a ticket. Loading time is close to imperceptible on slow phone company DSL or slow phone company wireless.

Compare that to JIRA where making an issue involves looking at a few screens that look like the Space Shuttle cockpit controls, having to fill out a bunch of mandatory options that involve a huge cognitive load because they are incorrectly ontologized so that none of them really apply to the ticket you're putting in. Then you're waiting 20 seconds for pages to load even over a "business class" 50 Mbit/s connection.

Now maybe some of that is the fault of the customers and not Altassian because maybe they run it on premise and are running it on a ten year old "server"; yes, once in my life I saw somebody load a JIRA page in under two seconds. Similarly, it's the customer who added a bunch of screwy categories and made the manually. And it's not just JIRA, all the others ones are just as bad maybe worse.

I remember one product that made a big deal that it supported the agile thing and allegedly you could put an estimate in and then say you worked 4 hours on it, except that if you tried to do that it seemed anything would happen like maybe the estimate would be extended by 4 hours or the estimate would be set to 4 hours.

All of those features are "nice to have", but speed and simplicity is a "must have"</comment>


Gmail's New Loading Screen  - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.in/2012/03/gmails-new-loading-screen.html

<comment><USER2> I swear I was just thinking to myself 2 days before this happened that that clunky old loading bar that was clearly just pumped out by some engineer looks so out of place with Google's new design.

Maybe you like the new design and maybe you hate it, but the fact that Google is clearly now THINKING about design but forgot their loading screen was egregious.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm using the cozy theme/setting and the padding keeps jumping from small to the cozy mode which is annoying. Anyone experiencing this?

</comment><comment><USER4> How news worthy!</comment>


Show HN: navigator.hardwareConcurrency polyfill that helps you scale parallel JS - <AUTHOR> http://wg.oftn.org/projects/core-estimator/demo/

<comment><AUTHOR> An example of integrating this API with a loading UI is at [http://danielsadventure.info/html5fractal/](http://danielsadventure.info/html5fractal/)</comment>


Threads, processes and concurrency in Python: some thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=299551 <comment><AUTHOR> And some of Guido's thoughts coming out of Europython:

[http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- dev/2010-July/102306...](http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- dev/2010-July/102306.html)</comment>


I Used DuckDuckGo for a Week and Had to Switch Back. Here's why. - <AUTHOR> http://notes.brianmayer.com/i-used-duckduckgo-for-a-week-and-had-to-switch-back/ <comment><USER2> I use ddg because of their hacker-centric features like a nice python api, !bang search, and their "goodies". Plus their plugin allows you to add their 0-click results to google searches. I agree, google is a better product, but I've found that I only have to use them supplement my searches. ddg makes it easy to do that. I just add "!g" in front of my query and my search is sent to google. They are definitely a work in progress, and I cannot wait for their product to mature.

<comment><USER3> Are there instances you've found where bang search isn't covered by Chrome's built in site search?

<comment><USER2> Yes. For instance, if i wanted to search for ways to compute a cross product in python, i could just type in "!numpy cross product" and directly search the numpy project page for an answer, without having to first navigate to numpy (I could also search stackexchange by "!sx"). I'm not saying this replaces the features of chrome entirely, but I have found it helpful for my needs. YMMV...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > google is faster

I wonder if DDG slowness is due to its sudden popularity in the light or PRISM. I have tried to use DDG several times in the past, I went back to google because I found the results to be more relevant, but speed seemed to be an issue in pre-PRISM days.

</comment><comment><USER5> As far as I know, I could be wrong, DDG is a Bing proxy.

For that matter, there are also Google proxies, I like to use Ixquick in https mode.

<comment><USER2> This is partially true. I read that ddg does get a lot of its content from bing and other providers, but also indexes some content on its own. Ixquick is its own search engine but ixquick's "startpage" is essentially a google proxy (this is probably what you meant) but also includes their own content in search results.</comment></comment>