Do We Still Need Prisons? - <AUTHOR> http://volteface.me/features/do-we-still-need-prisons/ <comment><USER2> There's a very interesting thought experiment devised by the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smitg and outlined at the end of the excellent book "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" by Jon Ronson.

Quoting from the book;

 _"Let me ask you three questions," he said. "And then you'll see it my way. Question One: What's the worst thing that you have ever done to someone? It's okay. You don't have to confess it out loud. Question Two: What's the worst criminal act that has ever been committed against you? Question Three: Which of the two was the most damaging for the victim?"

The worst criminal act that has ever been committed against me was burglary. How damaging was it? Hardly damaging at all. I felt theoretically violated at the idea of a stranger wandering through my house. But I got the insurance money. I was mugged one time. I was eighteen. The man who mugged me was an alcoholic. He saw me coming out of a supermarket. "Give me your alcohol," he yelled. He punched me in the face, grabbed my groceries, and ran away. There wasn't any alcohol in my bag. I was upset for a few weeks, but it passed.

And what was the worst thing I had ever done to someone? It was a terrible thing. It was devastating for them. It wasn't against the law.

Clive's point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners — young, black — have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time — bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers."_

The point of it is that we punitively punish people for many crimes while doing things far worse at the same time. Should we really be putting someone in prison for burglary when there are people who rip millions of people off with legal price gouging or break up a family by cheating?

We should think and question the legal system, and what effect it has on people unfortunate enough to become embroiled in it. If the legal system is there to punish behaviour that isn't in the interest of society or to protect communities from those who'd harm them, are we actually punishing the right people?

It's a very deep question. Not something that HN will answer in a thread. I think it's worthwhile spending some time on though.

<comment><USER3> One of the most damaging things Clive Stafford Smith has done is to give public support for Moazzem Begg, who was almost certainly a high-ranking member of al Qaeda ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moazzam_Begg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moazzam_Begg)). (Sure, Begg should have gotten a fair trial -- he would have gone to court had the charges not been dropped, probably because the intelligence services didn't want to reveal all the intel they had gathered on him and his associates).

In every human society in history, there have been people who choose to rob, rape and kill. There's no pleasant way to deal with such people, but it _is_ the role of the state to deal with them, or you have anarchy. It isn't the role of the state to prevent "emotional damage", "bad wives" or "bankers".

Stafford Smith's position seems to be a twisted version of Christian morality where all problems are caused by meanness. Since the justice system is an institutionalised form of meanness, it must be wicked -- indeed, it's probably responsible for crime and terrorism.

This is a really evil worldview.

<comment><USER2> _In every human society in history, there have been people who choose to rob, rape and kill. There 's no pleasant way to deal with such people, but it is the role of the state to deal with them, or you have anarchy. It isn't the role of the state to prevent "emotional damage", "bad wives" or "bankers"._

The point of the question (which is an interesting question regardless of who asked it) is that we should challenge what the role of the state is. We definitely shouldn't _blindly_ or _unquestioningly_ accept that the state is there to do one thing or the other, to deal with robbers and not bankers, because "that's the way it's always been" or something. That is how states attain power over citizens and we end up with things like the scandalous overreaching surveillance revealed by Snowden et al.

<comment><USER3> Who said that we should?

States have justified their actions by many different codes of ethics. I know my answer to the legitimate role of the state: to protect individual rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before Napoleon there was such a thing as "restorative justice": "Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the involved community. This contrasts to more punitive approaches where the main aim is to punish the offender, or satisfy abstract legal principles.

Victims take an active role in the process. Meanwhile, offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done – by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service".[1] In addition, the restorative justice approach aims to help the offender to avoid future offenses. The approach is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offence against an individual or community, rather than the State."

Of course this is not for the mentally ill and/or murders, rapists etc. Surprised the author didn't mention it! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice)

<comment><USER5> How about sociopaths? They can become serial offenders, learning all the while how to apologize more effectively each time they are apprehended. If a crime has little downside, then crime will grow.

<comment><USER6> Go re-read his post. Apologizing might be acceptable for some crimes and with some victims, but not all. Others may demand compensation or more punitive measures. There's nothing there about crime having little downside; if the community requires you to repay a victim for everything you stole from him, and wants you to do a bunch of hard labor (community service) in addition, that sounds like a pretty big downside to me. The main idea isn't going soft on crime, it's letting the victims decide on the punishment. It makes a lot of sense: if someone steals my TV, gets caught, and the punishment is for him to buy me a new TV and fix my door that he broke and another 100 hours of lawn care on top of that, that's a lot cheaper and better for society than sticking him a prison for several years. The system we have now is entirely punitive, doesn't give victims much say in the process, and doesn't restore the victims at all (they have to sue the criminal separately in civil court).

<comment><USER7> "if someone steals my TV, gets caught, and the punishment is for him to buy me a new TV and fix my door that he broke and another 100 hours of lawn care on top of that, that's a lot cheaper and better for society than sticking him a prison for several years."

If the the criminal is stealing your TV, do you actually think they will have the money to pay it back? There are plenty of cases where a judge forces a person to pay money back and the person just doesn't pay it back or doesn't have the money.

Even the guy from "The Wolf of Wallstreet" hasn't paid the millions he owes. I just don't think this will deter petty crime.

"The main idea isn't going soft on crime, it's letting the victims decide on the punishment"

What if, as a victim, I decided that the person that stole my TV needed to have his hands chopped off?

Your method seems to be more based on emotion and retribution than our current system.

It may be more expensive, but I don't see a problem with our current system in terms of deterring crime. I don't mind paying more for something that will help society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We're always going to need some prisons. Because as much as many people are possible to rehabilitate, there's always going to be a (rather small) percentage that are simply dangerous to just about everyone and everything around them. See, some of the worst examples of serial killers. You don't really want to risk the possibility of letting them near anyone else, and house arrest (or a traditional psychiatric ward) might not be secure enough in a few cases...

But we should be sending a far lower percentage of criminals to prison, yes.

On another note, could virtual reality potentially be an interesting punishment here? There are a few articles online about the possibility of having someone experience what feels like 10,000 years in 8 hours, and the concept could potentially be used for literal imprisonment too (like say, in The Matrix). You could give someone who's simply impossible to rehabitate a virtual life that fits their own worldview...

<comment><USER9> That sounds more like we need insane asylums not prisons.

Politically we find it easier to deal with people that can't function in society as criminal than sick and historically Insane Asylums have been really nasty places. However, I don't see the advantage of keeping criminals in the same place as the insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think author forget that prison ALSO means that we are isolating someone dangerous, someone that is dangerous for society, that's why we lock him up. There will be no other solution/place for murderers etc. Period.

I really would like that authors of that kind of articles go to areas where there is a lot of gang activities and live there for couple of months. I am sure they would change their mind.

<comment><USER11> Are most of people locked up murderous maniacs or other constant danger to rest of us?

<comment><USER12> Most? No.

Enough that we still need prisons? Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Spoken like a truly out of touch academic.

Here's an incident that took place last week in a town near me:

A man with a beer and a condom approached a random couple on the sidewalk and declared his intention to have sex with the woman. When she declined, two of his brothers and a fourth man appeared from behind a bush, beat the man into submission and dragged the woman back to their apartment. They barricaded the door and raped her. The criminals had multiple previous charges including DUI and were illegal immigrants AND they had sneaked into the U.S. a 2nd time.

But I suppose letting them "live with and be closely supervised by a family" will straighten them out. /s

What the author doesn't acknowledge is that prison is the best thing we have come up with so far. We all want something better, but we don't have it. And his touchy-feely concepts are perhaps adequate for shoplifters and soft-drug offenders, but not a family of gang rapists.

The true problems with the prison system are the overwhelming numbers of non- violent offenders who are disproportionately ethnic minorities. It would also be a good idea to improve rehabilitation efforts.

<comment><USER14> Not sure why you got downvoted, I'm pretty left wing but people who pull the kind of shit in that story really do belong in prison, it doesn't have to be a harsh american-style prison but it has to be secure, some people just shouldn't be in society because of the threat they pose to the rights of others.

It's not just about punishment it's about protecting law-abiding members of society.

<comment><USER15> There are still crimes where the punishment should be a short rope and a tall tree. Forty years of a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, and three squares a day is insane.

<comment><USER14> Yes and No, I'd sooner my taxes pay to keep someone away from society who needs to be than pay to execute them even if it costs more, I'd sooner living _that_ society even if it costs more.

Fortunately where I am the death penalty is a settled issue.

<comment><USER16> Honest question, why is putting someone in a box for the rest of their life more morally acceptable than killing them? I personally find life imprisonment to be far more horrifying than death.

I understand the concerns around the death penalty, namely the possibility of a wrongful conviction with the inability to appeal once the sentence is carried out. But just comparing the punishments, why is one morally better than the other?

<comment><USER17> My price-sensitive futurist perspective would rather we pay the one time $30k price for a basic cryonics suspension than outright kill them _or_ keep them locked up for life. (Caveats that it would then be seen as cruel not to suspend terminally ill patients, old people, and so on, so the sudden increase in cryonics demand would surely improve the methods and decrease the cost...) But in the Current Year and Current World locking them up for life is strictly better than just killing them, because I think that sometime within the next 50 years we have at bare minimum a decent shot at finding out how to drastically expand lifetimes (perhaps de facto immortality) and additionally alter a person's self in subtle ways that still constitutes a continuation of identity, and then we can directly rehabilitate. (Somewhat like _Demolition Man_ , except done right. ;)) I also think the major powers can squeeze by and last that long, specifically no entering of a new dark age even if say the US split up or even if the several social order crises currently underway made some big dents. Without the possibility of living forever with a non-dangerous mind, I actually don't see much reason to prefer life in prison over death, I see a big reason (cost) to prefer death, and if I was sentenced any time prior to the early 1900s I'd ask for the guillotine instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like the cost-benefit analysis of caning looks pretty positive

</comment><comment><USER19> Are you kidding? Think of all the prison guards with no skills who would be unemployed if we closed prisons!

<comment><USER20> As tongue-in-cheek as this is, it raises a valid point. Corrections industry unions are large and powerful.

<comment><USER21> Not in England, where this article is from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sure. The US needs to prolong their racist and anti-communist policies, that's why they came with their current prison system afterall.

Nixon improved the system to ensure better voter turnout for his kind (20% less democrates votes and get blacks from the streets), Clinton improved the system for more cheap slave labour (which worked great for centuries to make the US the greatest country of all) and helped private prison incentives. Mandatory sentencing, war on drugs, reducing accountability on law enforcement and justice.

Actually helping improving the crime rate is not the goal, the goal is entirely business and political. The crime rate went down due to Roe v. Wade btw, getting poor people access to birth control. That's why the right-wing states are fighting that. It would diminish their advantages of the current imprisonment system.

<comment><USER23> The right-wing states want higher crime?

<comment><USER22> They do profit from these policies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think only the individuals that pose a real and significant physical safety threat should be put behind bars (i.e those that are likely to physically attack others).

For everyone else (incl. white-collar criminals, non-violent drug offenders, etc.), we need to figure out a more cost-efficient, recidivism-minimizing corrections system.

<comment><USER25> White collar crime can be so much worse than violent crimes. If some desperate person punches you in the face that should be punished, but someone who destroys the lives of so many by engaging in fraud in the financial sector leading to billions in public money spent to bail out companies, lives destroyed has done far worse than punch a single person in the face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We actually don't send people to prison (impost sanction) to make them stop. 0.1% of any population will break laws no matter what.

The real reason for imposing sanctions is that 80% of law abiding people would break any and all laws if there was not a threat of sanction.

</comment><comment><USER27> "...the Dutch are housing Belgian and Norwegian prisoners to fill their prisons"

Exporting prison space! Wow!

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes. Prisons should be first to rehabilitate the offender if it's possible, if there is no punishment of being away from society people will be more willing to commit crimes.

The main problem with prisons is that they seem like a waste of tax payer funds.

Why should I sentence someone for pre-meditated murder for 20 years? Wouldn't it be better to just off him? Same with rapists. If the crime was done to intentionally harm another person that person is a danger to society. The economics are also not in favor of keeping criminals like that.

For all other crimes the prison should help rehabilitate that person and if possible pay for his incarceration to offload the burden on the tax payer.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure I believe punishment is even possible.

My personal view is that if someone needs to be separated from society for the good of society or for themselves, it should be done in the most humane and least restrictive way possible.

</comment><comment><USER30> My question is why do we still punish people with computer or financial or corruption crimes in prison for long terms? Yes, I understand some price should be paid, but extremely long prison terms for non-violent crimes such as hacking computer systems seem strange.

In fact, some of these wrongdoers actually are very intelligent, and having them make amends with their intellect could be a just way to perform community service. Anyone able to chime in? I'm not well informed on the different views, so I'd like to gain some insight to this view.

<comment><USER31> If you remove the risk of prison for nonviolent offenders, you're creating a world where large businesses and their owners will no longer care whether they do something illegal, they will only care about the risks of getting caught versus the potential profit to be made. You turn the criminal justice system into a risk analysis that happens in some board room. There will be no real detriment to rich people for breaking the law - worse case scenario they lose some money, the equivalent of you ruining the financial security of thousands of people or causing billions in irreversible environmental damage and getting a speeding ticket for it.

<comment><USER30> I understand there has to be some price to be paid. My question is the length. Is the term deterministic or is it arbitrary? I have never really understood why some non-violent crimes are sentenced with 10 years in prison versus 200 years in prison. For example, a self-victim crime of consuming drugs is punished harshly in Singapore.

<comment><USER31> At some point the length was arbitrary. As precedence is created, it becomes more deterministic but only somewhat more so. Often times there are minimum sentencing laws, the length of which is mostly arbitrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> All the talk about home incarceration type programs seems like it wouldn't work out all that well with a population that (I assume) mostly rents and (I assume) often has trouble keeping their finances in the black without any punitive measures.</comment>


Why Are Machine Learning Projects So Hard to Manage? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@l2k/why-are-machine-learning-projects-so-hard-to-manage-8e9b9cf49641 <comment><USER2> Cynefin helps answer these 'why' questions:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework)</comment>


Doc; 3yr HN reader, Navy's sending me to Japan. Please post your recs. - <AUTHOR>

Just got the word. Need to go home and get the go bag, but may not fly until tomorrow morning. Would appreciate your recommendations on things to bring, especially anyone who's been to Japan. <comment><USER2> Deodorant. Japanese deodorant sucks. I've heard of people bringing toothpaste, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with Japanese toothpaste.

Enough shoes and clothes to last you until you come back - they don't really carry American sizes. Even if you are rather skinny for an American you can have trouble fitting into Japanese sizes.

Otherwise it depends on where you're going... if you're going to somewhere outside of the Tokyo or Osaka areas where most everything non-Japanese can be purchased, you might want to bring reading material.

If you are unusually big, you might want to bring condoms. Japanese condoms are a little on the small side (but I think 90% of American guys will be fine with them).

</comment><comment><USER3> Just bring the basics. Japan has its own ways, but is very consumer friendly and everything we have in the States they have, and more. If you're headed to Yokosuka, I'd just ask someone already there.</comment>


why was my comment deleted? (how did you answer final question on YC application) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> replying to user 'rms',

"all things" == Universe

I see that the entire thread has been deleted. why??????

<comment><USER2> At worst a bug. Can you at least give me the parent url?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not see the thread any more in my comments list. The entire thread has been deleted. Perhaps the programmer has also decided to become a censor?

"jawad?" had said that galaxies make him sad, then there was a conversation between randallsquared, rms and myself.

I last replied yesterday. I see it is deleted today.

<comment><USER2> Can you tell me _something_ that will help me find some parent of this? Just give me the url of the nearest thing up the tree that isn't "deleted."

No one can delete a comment thread except me, and I never have. Possibly this is a bug, but probably not.

<comment><USER3> To help out, this is the comment in question:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13191>

on this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=8123>

However, everything looks fine. All the comments are right there from my view. I'm guessing EBKAC ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the purpose of this type of mailform spam? - <AUTHOR>

So I recently changed up my mailform handling for my website and I'm now noticing a steady stream of incredibly detailed and well formed mailform spam. A good one just came in that looks like this:

  <comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
  Name:  Lilla Dobbs
  Email: email@example.com
  Phone: 06-91009165

  Comment:

  My partner and I absolutely love your blog and find the
  majority of your post's to be what precisely I'm looking
  for. can you offer guest writers to write content to suit
  your needs? I wouldn't mind publishing a post or
  elaborating on many of the subjects you write concerning
  here. Again, awesome web site!
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
 * I've changed last name slightly (which still wouldn't match the name of the email) and the domain of the email address in case of the incredibly unlikely event that this email isn't spam.
So, the submits come from an IP, and a seemingly legitimate User Agent:

  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
  IP: 188.8.131.52
  User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0)
  AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.112
  Safari/535.1
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
 I guess the question is: what's the end-game here? Are they expecting a reply to the email address and then things kick off from there? Is this seeding to get through a couple legitimate emails to start conditioning spam detection algorithms?
These emails don't contain the most basic of spammy info:

  1. no obvious keywords
  2. no urls
  3. no selling of a scam
 It just really seems to me that it's crafted to get a reply. I just don't know why. There is obviously a purpose to this relatively new breed of spam (at least to my eyes), and I'd really be interested to know if anyone has the answer.
For some breadth on the messages, here's a sampling of others:

  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
  Hello there! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a
  team of volunteers and starting a new project in a
  community in the same niche. Your blog provided us
  valuable information to work on. You have done a
  wonderful job!
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
  Superb post however I was wondering if you could write a
  litte more on this topic? I'd be very thankful if you
  could elaborate a little bit further. Cheers!
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
  Awesome issues here. I am very satisfied to look your
  article. Thank you a lot and I am taking a look forward
  to contact you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail?
  </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
 </comment><comment><USER2> A guess: they want you to let them contribute 'content' on your blog, which will in turn link to their payload (scam, malware, whatever).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering that too, but I was thinking that at some point that would take human interation:

      1. i reply back and say thank you
      2. they register for an account
      3. i approve them and then they start spamming

Maybe a Mechanical Turk type thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> May it is a SEM gimmick? Get you to link to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's probably it and is in line with good old fashioned comment spam. I'm just not collecting a URL, so I'm not seeing them come through. I might just add one, hide it from my users and see how many of these comments come through accompanied with a URL.

Without seeing the URL to tip it off as comment spam I may have just been overthinking it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Got acquired now have some problems - <AUTHOR> Hello,
Im one of first employees and still working in the company. We was acquired by one of NASDAQ companies for quite good money 2 years ago with kind of standart scheme like: Some money right now on the table and for the rest you have an option.
I own less then 1% of the company and never seen any papers except some documents regards first money trance and some SEC fillings regards our deal where was some notes regards that: company A acquired 80% of the company B, remaining 20% we have in option.
1 year ago i executed half of my stocks with option rights and got a money everything was just fine.
Now im trying to leave the company and sell my remaining stocks but the company offering me 3 times less the money and telling me sell or keep this stocks to yourself.
What can i do? <comment><USER2> First of all, you should ask yourself why have they changed the game that was being played before? In other words, why are they playing hardball now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Was trying to get the info, but unfortunately no clue. M&A team which one was responsible in time the deal was made - already gone.(</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which browser versions would you target for a consumer facing SAAS? - <AUTHOR> I'm wondering what the current thinking is.... if you're building a consumer facing SAAS, which browser versions would you target? <comment><USER2> For initial launch, the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, on Windows and Mac, Android, and iOS (or only desktop if your service doesn't make sense to use on mobile). Support or accept reduced functionality on the last Internet Explorer (a LOT of consumers are still on older Windows at home).

Adjust this after launch after watching your traffic - you can drop support for browsers that provide little to no traffic; then add it back later when you have enough traffic to warrant it.

Watch how many visitors you get from other browsers and older versions; add support when visitor volume * conversion rate / cost to support suggests higher ROI than other potential uses of that time.

Finally, you may want to support more browsers on your sales page than the app itself. You want to be able to sell your app even to people who find you using Opera Mobile on Windows Phone; but if they want the service enough, you can probably persuade them to fire up Chrome or Firefox to actually run it.

</comment><comment><USER3> .... all of them? Isn't that the entire point of the web?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which versions I mean.

Surely people aren't support IE6 for example?</comment></comment>


The Most Audacious Real Estate Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2016/03/23/inside-the-most-audacious-real-estate-project-in-the-world/ <comment><USER2> Reading this, all I could think of was that they had a once-per-century chance to do this [0], but they blew it.

From the photos it looks like they built the usual gross car-centric suburban quasi city, with a few apartment buildings thrown in. Though the article did mention a metro.

[0] [http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20131204.php](http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20131204.php)</comment>


Early life experience changes neural genomes in mice - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6382/1395 <comment><AUTHOR> This kind of blew my mind. The maternal care received significantly altered the genomes (transposable elements) of the neurons in the hippocampus - <USER2> for learning & memory.

This seems like more evidence that the Central Dogma of molecular biology is extremely simplistic compared to reality & that genomes are far more flexible during life than assumed.

Also a nice summary in this podcast: [http://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/possible-cause-severe- morn...](http://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/possible-cause-severe-morning- sickness-and-linking-mouse-moms-caretaking-brain-changes-baby)</comment>


Parsing a DICOM file for fun and profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.alsonkemp.com/turbinado/parsing-a-dicom-file-for-fun-and-profit/

<comment><USER2> And the profit?

Very cool though.</comment>


Surface-Only Liquids - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/surfaceliquids/ <comment><USER2> Wow, the demo in the YouTube video looks impressive. I would like to understand the technique they propose and what's unique in their thinking. Can someone with expertise on this topic explain the abstract in layman's terms?

Abstract: We propose a novel surface-only technique for simulating incompressible, inviscid and uniform-density liquids with surface tension in three dimensions. The liquid surface is captured by a triangle mesh on which a Lagrangian velocity field is stored. Because advection of the velocity field may violate the incompressibility condition, we devise an orthogonal projection technique to remove the divergence while requiring the evaluation of only two boundary integrals. The forces of surface tension, gravity, and solid contact are all treated by a boundary element solve, allowing us to perform detailed simulations of a wide range of liquid phenomena, including waterbells, droplet and jet collisions, fluid chains, and crown splashes.

<comment><USER3> Roughly, usually when simulating a fluid you have to consider the interior. Think of this as roughly scaling cubically in three dimensions. In this paper, they make some simplifying assumptions about the internal dynamics of a fluid that allows them to simulate with only a representation of the surface, which is lower dimensional and which will perform better (quadratic scaling under mesh refinement).

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that makes sense. So, by describing a fluid as a surface instead of a volume you'll need less calculations to simulate the fluid and you'll gain performance.

Let's dive into the details of the abstract. Please correct where wrong!

'... for simulating incompressible, inviscid and uniform-density liquids with surface tension in three dimensions.'

So it only works when you can't compress the fluid, the fluid is not sticky like honey or oil, had as uniform-density, and is an enclosed body (bubbles, not seas).

'The liquid surface is captured by a triangle mesh on which a Lagrangian velocity field is stored.'

There seems to be two ways of looking at fluid motion. The Lagrangian way is following an individual parcel through time and space. The Eulerian way is looking at a specific location and watch fluid flow through that location.

'Because advection of the velocity field may violate the incompressibility condition,'

Advection is the transport of a property by the fluid due to the fluids bulk motion. So the speed of fluid might compress the fluid, and that should be prevented.

'... we devise an orthogonal projection technique to remove the divergence while requiring the evaluation of only two boundary integrals.'

Orthogonal projection is representing a 3D object in two dimensions. In two dimensions there can be no divergence if I understand it correctly.

'The forces of surface tension, gravity, and solid contact are all treated by a boundary element solve, allowing us to perform detailed simulations of a wide range of liquid phenomena, including waterbells, droplet and jet collisions, fluid chains, and crown splashes.'

The mathematics of surface tension, gravity and solid contact are much easier in two dimensions than in three. The boundary element solve is an efficient method to solve equations with boundery integrals. So liquid behavior can be modelled in more detail and visualized in a realistic way.

<comment><USER3> > So it only works when you can't compress the fluid, the fluid is not sticky > like honey or oil, had as uniform-density, and is an enclosed body (bubbles, > not seas).

Right, most (non-gaseous) fluids are just about incompressible. This is a pretty safe approximation for tons of applications, although if you were simulating sound wave propagation through water or something you would need compressibility. The lack of viscosity is a bit more limiting and more of an approximation, as even water is fairly viscous. I'm not sure about the enclosed body part, I'd have to read the paper in detail.

> There seems to be two ways of looking at fluid motion. The Lagrangian way is > following an individual parcel through time and space. The Eulerian way is > looking at a specific location and watch fluid flow through that location.

Exactly, although the Lagrangian/Eulerian views aren't just limited to fluid dynamics, they are common throughout continuum mechanics. Both approaches have tradeoffs, and hybrid techniques do exist.

> Advection is the transport of a property by the fluid due to the fluids bulk > motion. So the speed of fluid might compress the fluid, and that should be > prevented.

An incompressible velocity field is one that is 'divergence free,' as divergence roughly maps to how much material is entering or leaving an infinitesimal volume element. For an incompressible fluid simulation, you thus need to maintain a divergence free velocity field. This leads to the next point...

> Orthogonal projection is representing a 3D object in two dimensions. In two > dimensions there can be no divergence if I understand it correctly.

I think here they are referring to a projection from a general velocity field to a velocity field that is divergence free. See for example [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_method_(fluid_dynam...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_method_\(fluid_dynamics\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That looks pretty @%(*ing compelling. Does anyone know how novel this is, and whether it would be computationally feasible to implement in real time (e.g. video games?)

I could already see it being very useful in for offline 3D animation, such as animated movies.

<comment><USER5> Reminds of the work Ken Brakke has done with his Surface Evolver [0]. It's ancient, and it parses files written in it's own weird ini-like language [1] (seriously!?). If only it exposed a decent API (which would lend itself to e.g a python wrapper), it'd be the easiest thing on earth to use.

[0] [http://facstaff.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/evolver.html](http://facstaff.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/evolver.html) [1] [http://facstaff.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/html/datafile.htm](http://facstaff.susqu.edu/brakke/evolver/html/datafile.htm)

<comment><USER6> Yes, there is a fair amount of similarly and connection in the underlying mesh data structure. In fact, we published a paper on that aspect of the framework at SIGGRAPH a couple years back, which heavily cites the Surface Evolver work. [http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/multitracker/](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/multitracker/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow. Some years ago, I spent significant time on simulating 2d fluid for games. Here is one version of it: [http://jsexperiments.herokuapp.com/sph/](http://jsexperiments.herokuapp.com/sph/)

Ofcourse, this is completely different beast.

</comment><comment><USER8> I definitely have no expertise and don't know how this fits into the larger field of research but the video's really fun to watch :).

<comment><USER9> SIGGRAPH videos are always a lot of fun. Two of my favorites:

Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs [https://vimeo.com/28962540](https://vimeo.com/28962540)

Disney's Frozen A Material Point Method For Snow Simulation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kyDKu8K-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kyDKu8K-k)</comment></comment>


Introducing Google Helpouts - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/introducing-helpouts-help-when-you-need.html <comment><USER2> Reader derangement syndrome strikes again. Summarizing the thread, if you're are an early adopter of anything, you run the risk it won't be here in a year. That's what we tolerate in the tech arena, start ups throwing lots of good and dumb ideas at the wall to see what sticks, evolution in action. How many people who built their business on Facebook's F8 platform went belly up due to changes?

Google is a company that is constantly experimenting with new products and services. Yes, some of them will fail. That's the cost of innovation. It's really sad we've forgotten that. Failure is an acceptable risk to move forward. If you're risk averse, leave the opportunity to others to jump in and place their bets if Helpouts is a winning platform for them.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not a history of killing failed product, it's a history of killing products that everyone is actually using, without giving it as much of a chance as a company of Google's resources might be expected to, for political reasons rather than practical reasons.

As a couple of good examples: Google Wave was created to give the Rasmussen brothers (creators of Google Maps) something high-profile to do. Then it was launched in a disastrously bad way (closed beta? for a new communication tool meant to replace email?). Then as adoption started to build (but not quick enough to satisfy the political needs of the project), Wave was yanked after just a year.

Google Reader became a cornerstone of the web's infrastructure, a public utility service that cost comparatively little, returned perhaps little other than good will, but ultimately served a purpose for millions of users. But that wasn't enough for Google, so they yanked it.

In both cases, there was no real alternative path offered. Google just made an internal political decision to yank a project, and that's that. The public never even got the option to try and support the project.

Based on the above and other less high-profile examples, I'm not willing to invest my time as an early adopter in a company that has the deep pockets to fund long-shot projects, but doesn't have the balls to follow them through to their exciting conclusions.

Google Wave was a very exciting development with a lot of promise. Google Reader could have been evolved further and become an even more important piece of infrastructure, with all the good will associated with that. Instead, both are now black splotches on Google's reputation, in my view at least.

<comment><USER4> Did anyone continue to run with the Google Wave idea? I'd be interested in using a tool like that, it showed a lot of promise.

<comment><USER5> Apache Wave (I believe the intial code was contributed by Google): [http://incubator.apache.org/wave/source- code.html](http://incubator.apache.org/wave/source-code.html)

I don't think it has gained much traction, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This would help with the times I've just wanted to ask someone "so, does this shirt actually go with these pants, or am I totally crazy?"

All joking aside, this could be interesting. It makes me think of that service that existed for a while where you could ask a question of a topic area, and it would send an IM to people and ask them to answer it. I forget what it was called, but I used it for a little while.

The payment/HIPAA compliance aspect are pretty interesting, too. I would easily throw $50 at a 10 minute consult with a doctor instead of having to make an appointment and haul myself in to the local clinic. Particularly if said doctor could then fax a prescription for something completely boring but still not OTC to my local pharmacy.

<comment><USER7> Are you thinking of Aardvark? I think Google bought that a while back and then discontinued it.

<comment><USER8> Aardvark was great at the time. I especially loved the integration with gmail, it made it very seamless to think about something and just drop a question in a couple of seconds. It's a shame they stopped it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An interesting new avenue for Google, where the results and satisfaction are entirely subjective, according to perception of the customer.

With search results or Gmail they can hand-wave away dis-satisfaction my saying the 99th percentile are happy, but this is one-on-one. I can see the Money Back Guarantee being quite a support burden.

But _why_ are Google doing this? It's not really "organizing the World's information" because it keeps knowledge compartmentalised in the 'experts'.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. It may be useful but I don't see how it fits Google's overall mission; Google Answers were more relevant and they killed it (a long time ago).

Maybe the strategy is to eventually make sessions public? which would actually add value for the community.

Or it's a cheap ploy to get people to use Google+ (and if so, good luck with that).

<comment><USER11> This is the core concept of organizing the world's information. If you think otherwise, you don't realize that the majority of the world's information is held by individuals for brief periods of time and specific to its application. The generalized consensus has already been archived, but insights into emergent things that come up in life have not. Connecting people with each other to give advice about situations that can't be predicted but can be categorized is the next step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Today, we're announcing Helpouts—a new way to get and give help over live video.

I'm confused, hasn't this existed for months? Here is an earlier HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771)

<comment><USER13> This is the public release.

<comment><USER14> It still asks for invitation code. I think its not fully open yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun Am I the only one that doesn't understand all the google hate? (about discontinuing a few of their products)

<comment><USER15> Many people were of the belief that Google was primarily motivated to be good[1] and bring benefits to the internet and if they made some money for shareholders that would be nice too[2]. They were (and still are) massively trusted.

Closing down services and increasing the ad prominence in search, turning into the big bureaucratic bully rather than the small snappy startup has come as a nasty shock to a number of people and they then feel betrayed and angry at Google. It is precisely those who trusted them most who are most angry.

The irrational love has now flipped (for many not all) into irrational hate (to use your word).

Those on the sidelines who never trusted Google enough to look after their mail might find both the love and the hatred overblown but many people feel heavily dependent on Google with Android phones, Gmail accounts and using Google Docs heavily. They worry not just about the current situation but what might come next.

[1] "don't be evil"

[2] I seem to recall the IPO prospectus didn't make shareholder returns seem a very high priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This could be a great way to monetize skills.

Youtube channel with tutorials, how-to's etc. to build up your credibility.

Google Helpouts to help people directly when they want to go beyond the tutorials or get that little extra.

</comment><comment><USER17> Remarkably similar to sites like [https://clarity.fm/home](https://clarity.fm/home) and [https://www.popexpert.com/](https://www.popexpert.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This feels like "online tutoring to me". And as far as tutoring goes, I feel like most of the time it's better to automate it. Like using treehouse instead of getting a programming tutor.

I could see some situations where it'd be useful though.

\- If you have a quick question and are really frustrated and are willing to pay.

\- Sometimes you care a lot or have a lot of money, and are willing to get a tutor.

\- Some things (like doctor appointments) might be better served online than in person.

<comment><USER19> Yep, they're targeting tutors. They contacted me (SAT Tutor) and got me to signup. I haven't completed the registration yet as they want me to schedule a phone interview with them and I don't see how it can help me yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone interested in a tech specific version of this there is a site [http://anyfu.com/](http://anyfu.com/) (I'm a fan but not associated).

I believe this model for connecting people for very brief engagements over the internet is an interesting one. With the educational model being pushed by companies like Coursera I could see something like this becoming popular for access to tutors or even peers studying the same subject. For quick help solving a problem there is obviously a problem of getting to sufficient scale in a 2-sided market place. Perhaps google will achieve that. I suppose the risk is becoming the yahoo answers or the expersexchange of the space.

</comment><comment><USER21> My initial reaction is "cool, but I won't use it as it'll be shutdown soon enough". I wonder if enough people avoid new Google products due to shutdown fears so it leads to a product ultimately being shutdown due to neglect.

A bit of a vicious cycle.

<comment><USER22> > I wonder if enough people avoid new Google products due to shutdown fears > [...]

I doubt it. That attitude is mostly a HN/geek thing. I like that they're willing to try things and test for viability in the real world. I'd rather have something and for it go away than to never have it at all. (And yes, I do understand the frustrations with Reader but I wouldn't go back in time and never use it from the start)

<comment><USER21> This wasn't about Reader specifically. Google has shutdown a lot of products. The latest being Google Checkout, which makes people nervous of building their business on Google's software. Since this service is paid, I could be netting a lot of money through it, only for it to fizzle out.

<comment><USER22> > Since this service is paid, I could be netting a lot of money through it, > only for it to fizzle out.

But that's true of _any_ service from any company. If I'm a stay-at-home mom making some extra cash on Helpouts, I have a very different risk profile than a doctor who closes down his practice to see patients exclusively through Helpouts. The stay-at-home mom might not be happy about a shutdown but she still "[netted] a lot of money" whereas the doctor might have destroyed his/her career. Every individual/company needs to assess their own risk and take the appropriate risk-mitigating actions.

The point I'm making is that the damages from a Google service shutdown are typically very low or easily mitigated (Google Checkout being no exception) and every service should be evaluated on an individual basis with your risk profile. If the value you are getting from any service is lower than the damages that would result from a shutdown, don't put all of your eggs in that basket; if you do anyway, get some contractual guarantees and be confident that they will be fulfilled.

<comment><USER23> > get some contractual guarantees and be confident that they fill be > fulfilled.

In that case, no services that Google offers should be used. They don't give any guarantees, not even to their paying customers.

<comment><USER22> They have deprecation policies in at least some cases. They may not be unconditional guarantees but they're still just risk factors to be evaluated individually. I have no problem with the risk averse avoiding any services for their own reasons but it's gone beyond that in many cases here on HN to pure FUD. In any case, you've taken that clause out of context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The idea of a marketplace for experts is intriguing. I can't imagine this will ever work well, though.

\- Google is presently curating this list, approving everyone who would be a provider. This is fine for launch, but this obviously needs to scale.

\- From a functional standpoint, this is the Human App Store. How do I, the provider, promote myself among thousands of search results for underwater- basket-weaving experts?

\- Race to the bottom: I don't associate Google with any sort of premium pricing model. If I think my services are worth more than the low-cost providers, but I'm one of a thousand providers, am I going to have to go the only other route Google tends to provide -- paid advertising placement?

The idea is interesting, but I don't think Google will ever position it to be helpful to anyone but users and themselves.

</comment><comment><USER25> So this is a solution to the "problem" of people looking up how to do something on youtube, now you can ask an expert and get detailed two-way feedback.

<comment><USER26> This will fail. Why? Because the financial incentives of the helper are set up wrong, "paid by the minute" will reward slow talkers and slow help. This will make customers unhappy and customers will choose help from cheaper, faster sources.

The DYI video success will be better the shorter and better the video is, and I'd rather pay-per-video. If I wanted to talk to a human, there are millions nearby in the city. A DYI video can explain in 2-3 minutes what will take a human 60 minutes in a meeting including greetings and other social fluff.

<comment><USER27> > Because the financial incentives of the helper are set up wrong, "paid by > the minute" will reward slow talkers and slow help.

Most of the listings are listed with either the form "$X per Helpout" or "$X per Helpout _or_ $Y per minute". So, it doesn't look like paid by the minute is either the only supported or even the dominant model. So this objection seems misplaced.

> The DYI video success will be better the shorter and better the video is, > and I'd rather pay-per-video.

Canned DIY videos are widely available, and serve a different need that person-to-person consultation.

> If I wanted to talk to a human, there are millions nearby in the city.

Not everyone lives in or near a city with millions of people. And not all those millions in the city are experts in the field that you are concerned about.

> A DYI video can explain in 2-3 minutes what will take a human 60 minutes in > a meeting including greetings and other social fluff.

Sure, if there is a specific enough DIY video, that may be the case. OTOH, finding a specific-enough DIY video for a particular need can be a hassle, and in many cases of not particularly common specific needs may not be practical.

(Plus, its quite possible for the experts that do Helpouts to do DIY videos, and to identify good opportunities for DIY videos from what questions they get through Helpouts. Its not a one-way communication.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks good but just not something that fits Google's DNA. A smaller & hungrier startup could have been a better place for this kind of marketplace

<comment><USER29> The first thing I thought when I read that was "they launch this after they shut down stuff like Google Reader".

I guess it's all about making money now for google. If something is profitable it has to go :(

<comment><USER30> You meant _not_ profitable, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's interesting that Google seems to be moving into the freelance space. I wonder if they're going to stay in the limited fashion, or expand to go after Odesk etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> Personally I really love this idea, but isn't anyone else seriously concerned that Google is taking over the whole `World's Information Economy`?

I think BuyOuts should be regulated, this could help the whole industry and econmy. Google should probably be fined with multi billion penalties for using their monopoly power.

         • ISP's with Google Fiber
         • PayPal and Banking Industry → Google Wallet + Google Checkout
         • Automobile Industry → Google Car
         • TelCo's → Android+Nexus (a google plan soon?)
         • Small Businesses in "successfull niche sectors" → BuyOuts
         • RIAA, Music and Video Industry → Google Play
         • Energy Industry → "Energy startup" BuyOuts
         • Spy Agencies → =sumOf(Google Products)
         • …And even more that I've not listed, or that is to come…

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products)

\-- IMHO: (Services stealing the market of businesses, who lost their job or company should be paid their loss. Services not focusing on their main product should be forced to get closed, or get opened up to the public. I know this is very harsh and I don't think that all of this is necessary or should really be done, but someone has to stop Google from acting so dominantly and strategically. They're aiming for world leadership, nothing less and are killing every enemy sector, one by one. This is not a paranoid act of me to boycott Google. I use their services every day. But I don't want them to kill every other sector, just because they're not innovating as fast as Google can (by forcing innovators to a BuyOut with millon/billion dollor offers).)

</comment><comment><USER33> Shameless plug, but if you want to try out a Helpout, or learn a little Android development, you can check out my listing here:

[https://helpouts.google.com/114052868601022948953/ls/a65184a...](https://helpouts.google.com/114052868601022948953/ls/a65184ab017ae8b0)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if there's something in this that could be used to provide extra income to open source contributors.

I'd be interested to see GitHub experiment with providing their own service like this for the open source projects it hosts.

A project could designate certain contributors as experts and say you're having a problem with that project, you could talk with an expert via GitHub, for a per-minute fee, with an optional minimum of 15 minutes (for example).

I'd guess it'd be more likely to succeed by being right there integrated in GitHub's UI, rather than shoehorning just a link to Google Helpouts or another service into a project's README.

</comment><comment><USER35> At this point I don't even know what will convince me that stuff like this that Google releases isn't yet another dead-in-a-year product. We've seen a number of great service being killed just in the past few months alone. What makes this any different?

My only advice to kids is: don't make this something you depend on. Remember if you aren't paying for it, you're the product, and Google could care less about you and your silly needs when it comes time for some Spring Cleaning™.

<comment><USER36> You may think that you're blowing peoples' minds with that "you're the product" line - but if you're literally selling your skills then that is the whole point - it's a positive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The comments here show an interesting legacy that Google is developing. The lack of durability in its products.

I think the helpout concept is great, although only a small step up from the fact that for many things there is a youtube video it seems explaining how to do something. But it could be killer in education, specifically is MOOCs are the new college, what is the new TA? This could work there.

</comment><comment><USER38> I signed up in the beta, mainly to learn how Google is approaching this. Observations:

\+ High degree of curation and investment in quality \+ High investment of people to achieve the above

For example, I did a live video interview with a knowledgeable Google rep and she had several recommendations. About a week later, my submission was reviewed again, with even more (good) recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER39> Anybody looked at the pricing of some of the services offered - e.g. end user:

help with your printer - $45 per help - $2 per minute (guess that will always be more than the printer was actually retailing for)

General computer help $10 (per incident) $2 per minute

maybe contact your printer / computer support team first - many today have online / real-time chat features now for free.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting product. As others have pointed out, there are a number of similar services, many of them vertically-focused.

Google says it's starting small, but Helpouts is already quite broad. Covering lots of subjects won't be such a problem if Google leverages search and YouTube to promote relevant providers, but I'm not sure it will.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can someone explain to me what's the difference between this and a skype/FaceTime session? Because I am confused.

<comment><USER42> It is a 3rd party arranged video chat between strangers intended to fulfill a specified purpose, involving a payment and reputation system.

How is that different than a skype/FaceTime session? The video interaction part is likely similar. But a mere video chat session is a much more general idea than this specific use of video chat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My take on this is that Google is using Helpouts to figure out - what are the queries people cannot use Google for.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's almost as if Google answers has been somewhat resurrected. Definitely keeping an eye on this.

</comment><comment><USER45> wonder if this will get integrated into google search results as a way to help users with subjective questions not well addressed by google search ... e.g., search for "best way to bake a cake" and see as an option the ability to chat with an expert live.

</comment><comment><USER46> Google's biggest enemy will continue to be themselves. If they are unable to promote and market this save for a few blog postings (as is their want to so often do) then it will die on the vine...just like so many other projects of theirs they can.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if this uses WebRTC. Or regardless maybe I should make a clone using WebRTC.

</comment><comment><USER48> Makes perfect sense to piggyback on the success of DIY/how-to guides on YouTube, but that said, I have idea whether it's going to catch on.

Clearly Google should try this out either way.

</comment><comment><USER49> So what technologies is this using for streaming etc..

<comment><USER16> My guess would be WebRTC or whatever it is google hangouts use at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Skype used to have something like this in 2006-ish...

</comment><comment><USER51> The only way I would consider using this service is if Google started advertising paid support of their own products on it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Feels less Odesk, more Clarity.fm to me

</comment><comment><USER53> interesting, we'll see if consumers pick this up. I personally just think it is somehow another way to funnel people into G+.

Sidenote: 71 indexed pages site:helpouts.google.com thusfar.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is obviously a Google's version of Mechanical Turk

</comment><comment><USER55> Is this some way of popularizing hangouts?

</comment><comment><USER56> Congratulations Google, you just re-invented IRC.

<comment><USER57> Yeah, pay-per-assist interactive 1:1 video.

Basically IRC.

<comment><USER56> Clue: you don't need the video part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> My kneejerk reaction is to wonder when this will go the way of Google Wave and Google Reader.

<comment><USER59> How original. A comment mentioning reader and wave on a new Google product announcement thread. Can we move on already? Innovating companies try and fail a lot, like any startups.

<comment><USER58> Who said Reader and Wave "tried and failed?" I _liked_ those products.</comment></comment></comment>


IE9 Outperforms Other Browsers for HTML5 Compliance - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ie9_outperforms_other_browsers_for_html5_complianc.php

<comment><USER2> IE team has been donating test cases to W3C, and of course they have 100% compliance with test cases they've published.

Historically nobody wanted to write test cases. I think Microsoft/W3C now discovered incentive to do so…

<comment><USER3> Funny how chrome gets 100 on the acid3 and ie9 gets a 95.

[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/Acid3/Default.h...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/Acid3/Default.html)

<comment><USER4> Funny indeed. I mean look, IE9 is definitely a BIG and most excellent step in the right direction. If only it was supported on Win XP. If we can get rid of IE8 and have the few top-notch browsers start going head-to-head with features and getting updated regularly, it would be a good day indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this so called test/benchmark has everything that is under the HTML5 umbrella. It lacks WebSQLDatabase, Geolocation, offline storage, CSS3(debatable) and many more.

So since this test is not complete, I call this article: false advertising.

<comment><USER2> WebSQL has been dropped in favour of IndexedDB (both are separate specs).

Geolocation has been removed from the main HTML5 spec.

CSS3 is not HTML5 and that fact is not debatable at W3C.

<comment><USER5> > CSS3 is not HTML5 and that fact is not debatable at W3C.

HTML5 is like AJAX, it's just an umbrella term in reality. When you hear "AJAX library" you probably think of a library that does a __lot more __than just HTTP requests. Same goes for HTML, it's _almost_ useless without some CSS.

> Geolocation has been removed from the main HTML5 spec.

InnerHTML wasn't in the spec originally, but everyone used/had it anyway because it was a good idea.

> WebSQL has been dropped in favour of IndexedDB (both are separate specs).

It was dropped only from Firefox, just like h.264, but that didn't stop anybody from using it. Some browsers have IndexedDB, some have WebSQL. IndexedDB was just a work in progress last time I checked, WebSQL already had existing implementations.

<comment><USER2> > HTML5 is like AJAX

Yes, but we're talking about W3C documents using W3C terminology, not colloquial misnomers.

> InnerHTML wasn't in the spec originally, but everyone used/had it anyway > because it was a good idea.

I was mistaken about Geolocation. It hasn't been removed (as many other similar features were), this one been developed as separate spec from the beginning.

Separation of HTML5 and other HTML5-ish specs is decided by way W3C works, internal politics, HTML group charter, and inter-dependencies between the feature and rest of HTML. It doesn't mean that something was or wasn't a good idea.

> It was dropped only from Firefox, just like h.264, but that didn't stop > anybody from using it.

That's not related. W3C test suite covers W3C HTML5, not Firefox (and H.264 vs Firefox is a completely different problem).

WebSQL suffers from very real problem — it has only one DB implementation, which is SQLite. This means that sites will end up denending on that particular SQL dialect with all its quirks (e.g. sqlite storage is weakly, dynamically typed) and in long-term will require to be bug-compatible with SQLite.

I encourage everyone not to use it, even if it's available now, because we'll miss last chance to remove it.

(I love SQLite in my apps, but API for the web needs to be much smaller and tighter than that to withstand decades of people copying & pasting code they don't understand).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two important notes: current stable version of Chrome 7 so beta of IE9 should be compared with Chrome 8. Say it takes 6 months for IE9 to go gold, in that time Chrome stable will have had two more releases bringing it up to 9 which will probably contain a number of enhancements to close the gape if not over take IE9.

<comment><USER4> Yea every time I look at MS's site, they compare apples to rotting discarded oranges. "Look, our apples are quite superior!"

The charts are showing only the tests IE9 excel at, which is a fraction of the picture.

The tests also compare IE9 vs current stable releases. I want to see that comparison against beta releases.

Oh wait lets also write down what operating systems IE9 is compatible with:

Google Chrome: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OSX, Linux

Firefox: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OSX, *nix

Opera: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OSX, Linux

IE9: Windows Vista, Windows 7

Oh look IE9 runs on only the latest MS operating system. They don't even support their own older OSes.

Lets not even get into the security aspects.

<comment><USER7> OS support is a little more nuanced than that.

The latest version of Firefox for OS X requires at least version 10.4 (released 2005). Ditto for Opera.

Google Chrome requires at least 10.5 (released 2007), and doesn't support PPC (the transition to Intel was `completed' in 2007).

Windows Vista went to retail in 2007.

Firefox, Opera and Chrome all still work on Windows XP though.

<comment><USER8> What fraction of the market is underserved by Firefox not working on OSX 10.3 and earlier?

Meanwhile what fraction is underserved by IE9 not working on Windows XP?

I have no objection to your numbers as long as we also compare apples to apples and quantify the impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why did ReadWriteWeb omit the needed subtitle:

"IE CSS3 compliance continues to bring up the rear"

</comment><comment><USER10> How come they didn't test a WebKit nightly as well? All other browsers are either latest betas or alpha(!).

</comment><comment><USER11> That sure is an enterprise test runner they've got there, couldn't they come up with something more like <http://html5test.com/> ?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is very good, I'm glad the team have done such a good job - but I don't think the IE team will manager to 'win back' developers unless IE9 can replace IE6/7 and 8.

Ideally IE9 needs to fix the problems that the older legacy browsers created. Because it can't be run on Windows XP, IE9 can only complement the mistakes that were previously made.

<comment><USER13> My suspicion is that part of the motivation for IE9 is encourage upgrades from XP. Otherwise, there isn't much of an economic basis for its development because unlike Chrome, IE doesn't send every keystroke in the address bar to a server for analysis.

<comment><USER12> I agree - that's the main motivation .. but realistically, a lot of people will stick with Windows XP.

Microsoft rarely seems to think that altruism can align with good business sense, and I think it suffers because of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> HTML5 compliance is fine and good, but I'm mostly concerned with how often I'll have to fix a broken layout grid etc.

If I hadn't checked myself into Compulsive Domain Buyers Anonymous already, I would grab ie9hacks.com and ie9bugs.com

</comment><comment><USER15> If you want to see how browsers stack up on _finalized_ web specifications, I find <http://www.webdevout.net/> is the single best place to go.

</comment><comment><USER16> What is IE9 score on <http://html5test.com/> ?

<comment><USER17> Not that this test is official or anything, but IE9 beta gets 96. Preview 6 gets 106.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The chart shows: "Internet Explorer Preview 6".

<comment><USER18> That's right, IE9 Platform Preview 6 is the release that was rolled out at the PDC last week,

[http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft-launches- Internet-...](http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft-launches-Internet- Explorer-9-Platform-Preview-6/1288284973)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Get back to me when IE passes a significant battery of Firefox-submitted tests. W3C is owned by Microsoft at a time when Microsoft has lost all right to call themselves a browser vendor for any purpose other than to harm the browser market.

Get back to me when IE 9 runs on any of the thousands of machines in my company, where Windows Vista/7 is a non-starter at least for the next two years. Get back to me when it is able to run on any machine I have at home. It never will. With the possible exception of Safari, every other browser tested runs everywhere required, I think.

<comment><USER20> > W3C is owned by Microsoft

It is?

<comment><USER21> Microsoft has an interest and is a member of the W3C. They do not own them though: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W3c>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In other news, record low temperatures were recorded in hell.</comment>


.app was applied by 13 companies - <AUTHOR> http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus

<comment><USER2> Top 10 by Number of Applicants:

      APP	   13
      INC	   11
      HOME	   11
      ART	   10
      SHOP	   9
      BOOK	   9
      BLOG	   9
      LLC	   9
      DESIGN   8
      MOVIE	   8
      MUSIC	   8</comment>


Qualcomm enables instant streaming of Netflix on Android phones - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/13/qualcomm-enables-instant-streaming-of-netflix-movies-on-android/

<comment><AUTHOR> This would be a huge differentiator between Android and other phones/tablets that have Netflix on them already. Regardless of this tech, I am just glad that Android will be getting Netflix soon.</comment>


Show HN: Real-time notes app built with Vue.js, inspired by Notational Velocity - <AUTHOR> https://notational.co/ <comment><USER2> I'm a tad confused by a few things.

Is this meant to be a cool tech demo, or a real product? I noticed the author mentioned adding new features and a premium version in another comment. This leads me to believe it's intended to be a real product.

With that in mind, I have a few questions:

1\. If this is inspired by Notational Velocity, a very popular and real product, why is this also named Notational? I understand if you're doing a cool tech demo that it's not a big deal, but if you plan to charge money for this you probably shouldn't copy their name.

2\. Was "Notational Velocity but real-time" your hypothesis of what would make this something people want to use/buy? If so, what about all the other very standard features that note-taking and thought storage apps have? Do you plan to hit baseline with those?

3\. How do you compete with the larger companies who offer these apps for free to their users? Google Keep, Apple Notes, etc.

4\. Is the real-time feature the only way you plan to make this different/better than the others?

I'm not trying to be a downer here, but I feel like I see "X app but real- time" posted to HN on a weekly basis now, like it being real-time is going to be the differentiator that makes it wildly popular. Those products then go on to ignore half the reasons why the others have users. Even if they reach feature parity, their one differentiator is "well, it's real-time". I'm not sure that's enough.

If this is just meant to be a cool demo of Vue.js (with an awesome homepage), well done, ignore my comments =)

<comment><USER3> > Is the real-time feature the only way you plan to make this different/better > than the others?

If so, Simplenote already does this and has apps for almost all platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it's not the main feature. The main feature is to keep it simple so you can create/retrieve notes really quickly.

This is the site you go to when you need to get something out quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vue.js is awesome! I am glad to see so many more people adopting it for serious projects.

<comment><USER5> I have been required to use Vue.js in a current project (a semi complex app with lots of forms). It's the perfect way for clueless js fanboys to write unmaintainable spaghetti code. It's nothing less than a poorly designed view layer with no kind of architecture or tooling. It's naive and harmful (because of the way it is being marketed). It's a hobby project by someone that think they know what they are doing, but are really just mindlessly copying features that sound cool from real projects without understanding the underlying complexities or real world challanges. I've worked on large code bases on many different projects, both front-end and backend, with many different frameworks and architectures (including most of the popular js frameworks). Vue.js is the single most stupid and pointless "application framework" I have ever used.

<comment><USER6> Every framework enables spaghetti code, why should Vue be any different? Heck, any beginner programmer is bound to make spaghetti code.

I'm not going to go into details why Vue is awesome (see all the other comments for that.), but I don't see you bringing any valid arguments for your statements. Sounds like a new framework has been pushed down your throat, and that hurts. I get it :)

<comment><USER5> Vue.js is basically just a js object wrapping a DOM node. It's claiming to be the equivalent to a full fledged MVC framework (or similar). But it only supplies the V and completely ignores the C and M. Leaving it up to you to invent your own framework on top of it. The parts that Vue.js do supply are not well thought out (Vuex is a nightmare). The parts that do work and are nice are simply straight out copied from other frameworks like Angular. When you give an average developer Vue.js as the only tool you end up with the same kind of code you get when trying to write a complex SPA with jquery: a Single- Pile-of-shit-App.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious about where you saw claims of Vue.js being a fully fledged MVC framework. Asking because I've always thought that Vue did a decent job of being forward about exactly what it is. Just reading the first paragraph of the guide ([https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/](https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/)):

"The core library is focused on the view layer only"

It seems to be pretty clear that it's meant to be a simple, easy to deploy, view layer only. I think it accomplishes that purpose pretty well. There are additional libraries (Vuex, VueRouter) which extend this core library into something coming close to a full MVVM framework, but those libraries are all maintained separately and not part of the core.

<comment><USER8> I agree. It's just an uninformed comment. Literally "Vue" means "view" in French.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The landing page is great: it shows exactly what the product does/is and all of this without having to scroll down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The goal was:

1\. Show the product

2\. Show the product

3\. Let someone sign up

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Firebase DB has reached maximum connections. Keep an eye on your usage: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409)

<comment><USER11> I work on an Open Source alternative, which isn't capped (and has an easy 1 click deploy to Heroku), hopefully this will be helpful for people maxing out connections: [https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never used Notational Velocity, but this seems like an awesome UI to use for Notes. As long as you have powerful search you can always find your notes by their content and create new ones when the ones you find aren't relevant.

How many times I've created a new note related to something I wrote about before, but didn't want to search for. Now I'd basically be forced to search for it when I tried to create the new note and I'd assume this would help keep all those thoughts and ideas at least somewhat related to each other.

<comment><USER13> It really is great, I've been using it for years -- and all my notes are stored as plain-text (markdown) files. Only downside is images really. If you want to try it, check out this more-recently-updated fork. The creator of the fork is apparently working on a replacement that I'm rather looking forward to trying.

[http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/)

<comment><USER14> Any recommendation for a companion iOS app to sync with NValt?

<comment><USER15> 1Writer[1] is the best I've tried, assuming you're using Dropbox for sync.

[1]: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1writer-note-taking- writing-...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1writer-note-taking-writing- app/id680469088?mt=8)

<comment><USER16> And Brett Terpstra -- the programmer of nvAlt -- uses 1Writer as well. He reviewed 1Writer in 2015 and continues to recommend it.

[http://brettterpstra.com/2015/01/28/my-pick-for-best-ios- nva...](http://brettterpstra.com/2015/01/28/my-pick-for-best-ios-nvalt- companion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Semi-related: I've been using Vue along with Phoenix on the server, and the stack is simply incredible in terms of productivity and ease-of-use. I'm tentatively planning on writing a book that teaches how to use the two together (I call the stack "Vuenix"). Would people here be interested in that?

<comment><USER18> I love Vue and I'm interested in learning Phoenix. What's particularly compelling about the stack?

<comment><USER17> Phoenix is great because it gives you the same productivity benefits that Rails does, but it doesn't have any of the crazy "magic", which makes it both fast and also easy to understand. When you want to learn about how something works you can pop the hood and read the source code, and it's both well- documented and easy to understand. Elixir is also functional as opposed to object-oriented, which means no leaky abstractions!

I like Vue because it's easy to pick up and it gets out of your way. It's not as complex as React, but still very powerful and extensible. Vue's browser extension is also top-notch.

I like working with them as a stack because they are both very transparent, which makes it easy to reason about when you're passing data back and forth between the server and the client. The only way I can describe it is that it feels very "natural".

<comment> atom-morgan How much time would you recommend spending with Elixir before moving into a Phoenix app?

<comment><USER17> Time-wise, it's hard to say. I went through Saša Jurić's _Elixir in Action_ [1] before diving into Phoenix. But that's because I was coming from an object-oriented background (Ruby, some C#) and wanted a bit more exposure to functional programming.

Elixir is a fairly deep language, but you don't need to know it inside out to become productive with Phoenix. Obviously it depends on what type of app you want to develop, but you can probably piece together a simple CRUD app just by reading the official Phoenix guides. Everyone has a different style of learning though so it's hard to say beyond that. Ultimately, just like with Rails, knowing the language itself (i.e. Ruby) will be very helpful once you get beyond the basics.

Specifically, there were a few things that took a while for me to fully wrap my mind around. For example, data is immutable, so loops are written differently. Instead of a traditional for loop to loop over a collection, you would instead use recursion. So if you're like me and are used to reaching for a for loop or a while loop to iterate over collections, you'll need a bit of time to get used to some of Elixir's mechanisms.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/Elixir-Action-scaron-Juri- cacute/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Elixir-Action-scaron-Juri- cacute/dp/161729201X)

<comment> atom-morgan Awesome. Thanks for the reply. I'm comfortable with full-stack development when I'm on MEAN but I've definitely been looking to branch out. I think you convinced me to try Phoenix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice! Vue is <3.

I am actually also working on notes editor in my spare time. Using vue.js and codemirror, keeping notes in local storage.

[http://notes.yev.io](http://notes.yev.io)

Was thinking of making the project public but not sure if anyone will be interested.

<comment><USER20> I've been making my own too! Used it for notes in class for the past two years.

[https://nanote.co](https://nanote.co)

I really love the look of yours, by the way. It's super clean.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The app looks really well put together. I went as far as creating an account until I realized it unusable on mobile--I need to hit control + enter to create a note.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, open to suggestions! The point is to use the keyboard for everything so mobile is tricky.

Also, all the code is on GitHub ([https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational)).

<comment><USER22> You could add a + button on the left of the "search or create" field. No risk of accidentally touching the search icon that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! That will definitely make it's way in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also recommend checking out Standard Notes if you're looking for a cross platform encrypted notes app. It's built with Angular and open-source.

[https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)

</comment><comment><USER24> Very quick, nice work. I'm assuming more information and features are coming. Do you have a place to follow along? (Twitter, blog, Github, etc.)

I'm interested in things like a feature road map, privacy policy, business model.

Edit: OP posted below ([https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, more features coming (and a pro version). Feel free to request features or dig into the code ([https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational)).

You can follow along on GitHub, Twitter ([https://twitter.com/tomfme](https://twitter.com/tomfme)), and I'll send email updates out to signed up users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nitpick: pressing up and down on the preview page scrolls the page _as well_ as stepping through the results in the top pane.

</comment><comment><USER26> The only reason I'm not using vue yet is because of react-native. Is the vue equivalent of that going to finish soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't tried it out yet, but Weex ([https://weex.apache.org/](https://weex.apache.org/)) looks really promising. I think this will be table stakes for most frameworks moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Love seeing examples like this. If anyone is interested in more in-depth Vue examples and back and forth, check out the VueJS subreddit here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/vuejs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vuejs/).

</comment><comment><USER28> NV is an awesome app, glad to see it now as a webapp too. The only thing I'd ask for is the short key for creating a new note to be cmd + enter for us mac people.

<comment><USER29> I don't think this comment should be dead - adamcccc's confusion illustrates the interesting naming used for this product and how it can cause confusion. Looks like NV[0] has seen and approved of it, but it still seems like an odd choice.

[0] [https://github.com/tmm/notational/issues/2](https://github.com/tmm/notational/issues/2)

<comment><USER30> Author's response to the Issue you linked:

"Also, will add the same text to the top of the README.md and the footer of the home page, along with a link to notational.net."

He hasn't done those things yet, which is probably why people are confused about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's awesome ! Would you be able to explain what frameworks, etc you used to create it. I'm just learning to program. As in front end, back end etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> High-level details: Notational runs on Firebase (serverless) and uses Vue.js (along with Vuex and vue-router).

For more details, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com. I'm happy to help anyone learning to code/build apps.

<comment><USER32> Did you use some kind of UI framework? Is it just bootstrap? This design is awesome. I _love_ the minimal direction we're heading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! No UI framework just custom SCSS. Thinking about turning it into a micro-framework if I have time.

<comment><USER33> Your `palette` function is super dope. I'm gonna use that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I picked that up after reading a lot of SCSS on GitHub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Off topic, since this site uses firebase:

For firebase one has to include the API keys and other info in the JS itself.

I think that this is just another mongo DB like hack waiting to happen. Becuase a lot of developers might not know how to configure firebase read, write access rules properly. So as far as I understand anybody determined enough should be able to read the JS and read and write(!!) to other people's data.

Is there something I am missing here?

<comment><USER35> I've used firebase before, the default settings have proper read and write settings per user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Forgive me for asking, but I can't find a clear answer anywhere. What is the business benefit to using Vuejs and what is the closest alternative?

<comment><USER37> If you are moving onto an old jquery style codebase (via inheriting/changing job) Vue.js can be used as a straight drop in library via a script tag and you can start unsouping that jquery mess.

It also reminds me a lot of a spiritual successor to KnockoutJS (which was/is my favourite JS clientside tool still).

<comment><USER38> Interesting. That's a nice feature that sounds boring on paper but very practical.

<comment><USER39> I'm using it with nuxtjs to achieve server side rendering, the benefits of that being faster pageloads on first arrival and faster pageloads for SEO ranking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >keep your hands on the keyboard

It is probably a question of generation, but young people do not want to use the keyboard and do not value the agility that can be achieved. Not so long ago, I spent some time adding keyboard shortcuts to an ERP written in Angular, just to realize that only ~ 30% of users (those who had used the old DOS-based ERP) saw value in that requirement.

<comment><USER41> While I get you on the under-appreciation of keyboard shortcuts, I think in this case there is some overlap as a selling feature with both user types since the actual application itself (vs navigation) is a text note-taking application...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not working for me, I'm guessing it's due to this?

        FIREBASE WARNING: The Firebase database you are trying to
        use has reached its peak connections limit. If you are the
        Firebase owner, consider upgrading. (https://notational-
        velocity.firebaseio.com)

FF 53.0.2 on macOS, uBlock Origin isn't showing anything as blocked

<comment><USER43> why does it say notational-velocity in the URL if OP claims it's inspired by it? Is it used its database for backend?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Really Nice!

Small nitpick: Displays really well on mobile, however, creating a note requires user to hit ctrl+enter, which is not easy to do on a phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Someone mentioned this earlier and I am going to add something to make it easier.

<comment><USER44> Great. Loving the clean design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Quick question - How are you using firebase for search ? I am building a forum app using vuejs and firebase, and I dont have a elegant solution for search.

Btw - the codebase looks neat and very well-maintained !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Search is currently client-side only ([https://github.com/joshaven/string_score](https://github.com/joshaven/string_score)). This will need to change and I might move everything to Elasticsearch.

<comment><USER45> So are you downloading everything from firebase and then doing the search ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, which is why it needs to eventually change. For the first version, I was okay with the trade-off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Hey just wanted to say I really like the UI work. I thought "dang, what CSS framework is this dude using". Check the github and its just all you, so kudos :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I appreciate it. CSS is my favorite!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Looking great! Thanks for sharing.

I assume it's not open-sourced, but I wanted to ask about the code nonetheless. I would have loved to see it to appreciate Vue.js better.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is ([https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational))! Star, fork, watch it!

<comment><USER48> I could try to understand from the source, but since you're here: how are you handling application state and non-parent child communication?

Also, is your search feature client side only?

Also, Ctrl+enter isn't working for me (Chrome, Linux)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, using Vuex (thanks @kylestlb)!

Search is currently client-side only (using string_score [https://github.com/joshaven/string_score](https://github.com/joshaven/string_score)). Eventually it could move to the server. Thinking about something like Elasticsearch.

Ctrl + Enter not working is strange. I tested on a variety of browsers and OSs. Can you message me at email@example.com?

<comment><USER48> Oops - it only fails when I use my "Caps lock mapped to control" on Linux mint. With the proper physical Left Ctrl it worked.

No idea why those two combinations are different for the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> As a daily—more like every minute—user of NV (actually nvAlt), and a proto-fan attracted to Vue.js, I love this. Great work.

</comment><comment><USER50> Great UI. Nice work :) Love the keyboard flow between creating notes and searching for existing ones. Works really well.

</comment><comment><USER51> I would love to have this kind of interface for the notes that I currently keep in my Pinboard instance.

</comment><comment><USER52> Have trolls taken over the comment forums here? This example is hardly anything more than any other TODO example provided by React, Ember, Angular or anything else for that matter. I must be missing something clearly an app such as this couldn't cause such excitement among the HackerNews community?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I made the thing and am just as surprised as you!

It is simple, but contains more than just your average TODO example (also it's for notes). There are share-able links, auto-save, dark/light modes, and almost everything can be done with the keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Shortcuts do not work at all for me on OSX, I'd try this once that is fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was built using macOS so not sure what the problem is. If you want to message me more specifics at firstname.lastname@example.com, I can start looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It would be really cool if you can make it a progressive web app.

<comment><USER45> IKR !

I am making a pwa built with vuejs and material design. Its a forum software inspired from flarum and google inbox.

Its only 30% done, but its getting there ! - [https://github.com/agnivade/adda](https://github.com/agnivade/adda)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is website only? That kinda defeats the purpose of a Notational velocity clone doesn't it?

<comment><USER47> The title says "inspired by" it, so I don't think it was meant to be a clone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, not meant to be a clone. I use a Mac at home and Windows at work so I needed something I could use anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> pretty cool, but isnt this pretty much Google Keep? Or is it more just to display uses of vue.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Never used Google Keep, but I'll check it out.

The goal was to build a product I could use every day. (Showcasing Vue is a nice side effect.)</comment></comment>


Happy Birthday nnn – a fast and minimal terminal file manager - <AUTHOR> 3 years ago I started looking for an efficient and reasonably featured terminal file manager for a Pi model B. I forked noice and started developing nnn on my desktop. It turned out the tool works well on the desktop too! That's how nnn https://github.com/jarun/nnn became a generic file manager.
Before nnn there were 3 popular and established file managers ranging from 25 to 10 yrs in age. All of them are great but didn't suit my preferences for visual/feature minimalism. While nnn is just 3 years in age, it is widely available and there are at least 4 nice terminal file managers which got influenced by it. And after 2 years of lone development now we have a small and efficient team!
We try to keep the tool bug-free. We have closed 317 issues so far with 0 outstanding!
The best way to celebrate the day was to make a release and we already had several features implemented.
Find v3.1 at https://github.com/jarun/nnn/releases/tag/v3.1 <comment><USER2> Happy Birthday! Great job! Keep developing!</comment>


How to improve the performance of your new HP TouchPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/how-to-improve-the-performance-of-your-new-hp-touchpad/3866 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the article doesn't talk at all about overclocking. It simply disables logging across the OS - and I _want_ verbose logs for my unsupported hardware. Disabling logging does not mean you're going faster, you're just doing less at the same speed.

Of much more interest and utility to me is the fact that the Snapdragon APQ8060, running at 1.2 GHz in the Touchpad, is rated to 1.5 GHz and seems to be stable at 1.7 GHz. Here are a few threads on overclocking:

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=16908501> [http://www.webosbuzz.com/hp-touchpad/694-how-overclock-hp- to...](http://www.webosbuzz.com/hp-touchpad/694-how-overclock-hp- touchpad-1-5ghz.html)</comment>