I've been building a Markdown note-taking app for 3 years - <AUTHOR> https://blog.inkdrop.info/introducing-inkdrop-4-9d0c63de16d2 <comment><USER3> It looks good, and I like your pricing model more than the Standard Notes one (I don't want to drop $149 at once on a web app, but the 75% discount for doing so makes the monthly price seem way too expensive). Two things that stop me pulling the trigger:

1\. I need a web app. I want to be able to call up my notes from a computer, anywhere, without installing anything.

2\. A 60 day trial seems like the wrong way to test a note taking app - <USER2> makes me feel like you're going to hold my data hostage unless I migrate away within that timescale. A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit would allow me to test it properly, and it's already a part of my workflow by the time I hit the limitations of the free account, so I'm more likely to actually upgrade.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author here.

> A much smaller (5-10MB) quota with no time limit

That's interesting and I basically agree with your opinion. You will be more comfortable to try it. But I suspect that many free riders will come eat the server resources. This is not a startup. I would rather like to be small.

<comment><USER4> > free riders will come eat the server resources

that's not the way to address a user whether paid or "free rider" as you call them.

<comment><USER5> Actually, "free riders" is an excellent thinking model, and the likely most useful way to analyze it.

He needs to create a sustainable app/service, and does not have a lot of external VC resources to burn while doing so. Thus, it must be sustainable in real time.

Server loads are apparently one of his biggest expenses, so he must optimize to minimize those resources.

OTOH, allowing people to take substantial 'free rides' to test the product in their situation is an excellent way to get new paying users, and often an essential gateway to conversion. I'll hardly sign up for anything without a real test drive.

So, letting potential customers get some 'free riding' is good, but too much will sink the ship.

It looks like he has a limited time 60-day demo and also a no server unlimited time demo. Both seem like good ways to limit the resources given away for free, while providing enough 'free rides' to entice them to pay for the journey.

I'm already heading over check it out after just browsing the main page & comments.

Now, if you are trying to say that mentioning the "free rider" term in public is somehow insulting to the potential users. I don't think so. He's not calling them "freeloaders" which has a more derogatory connotation. the "free rider" term carries a connotation a little bit like I've won a free ride, but it isn't a permanet free pass. I wouldn't find "hey, you get a free ride for two months" at all insulting.

<comment><USER4> What do you think his user conversion will be if he uses "Free rider who eats resources" verbiage in his pricing page as opposed to "free"

<comment><USER5> HaHa! The "eats resources" would not be the most friendly approach . . . although framed in the right context, the A/B test might come out different than we expect!

Overall I agree, if all you are saying is that the "free rider who eats resources" phrasing isn't the most customer friendly possible usage, all other things being equal

<comment><USER4> All I was saying is if he calls trial users "free riders eating resources" on a tech site which we all understand the verbiage and where this comes from.

How will he treat paying customers ? I smell double standards. That's all I am saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Running a project for three years alone on the side takes a lot of discipline. So often we become 'passionate' about some projects and quickly abandon them once the initial excitement wears off. Congratulations to the author!

Eerily, I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years [0]. It is also e2e encrypted, but compared to Inkdrop, needs more work on the UI. But it works perfectly as a CLI.

\- [0] [https://github.com/dnote/dnote](https://github.com/dnote/dnote)

<comment><USER7> > I have also been building a Markdown note-taking app alone for 2 years

So have I: [https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki](https://github.com/cabalamat/catwiki)

> quickly abandon them once the initial excitement wears off

I use CatWiki for all my notes so keep tweaking it.

<comment><USER8> We're proud of you too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi Tayuka,

Congratulations on the launch! Great to see end-to-end encryption made the cut. It seems hard to put the burden on users never to lose their login password though — they lose all their data when they do. Have you looked at the Tanker SDK? It's an open-source, cross-platform SDK for end-to-end encryption (with a zero-knowledge key distribution service), that's very user friendly when it comes to recovery.

Website: [https://tanker.io/product](https://tanker.io/product)

JS SDK: [https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk-js](https://github.com/TankerHQ/sdk- js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been a happy user of this product for about half of its lifetime (in the middle of my 2nd yearly subscription).

If I were to build one, it would be quite similar: intuitive design, some GTD support, Markdown support. It has all the features that I need, and the developer is easy to reach when there's a problem (I've been mentioned in a few changelogs). I appreciate the openness of the developer about the features he's gonna build next. I'd prefer it to be open source, but I understand that financing an open source project wouldn't be as easy from the business perspective. $50/year (IIRC) is really, really worth it for me.

EDIT: Here's a link to a note that I've made when I was looking for a new note-taking solution: [https://community.inkdrop.app/note/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5be...](https://community.inkdrop.app/note/f607a6970af9e4b40795ec5bea7b852c/note:SylrWAak3Z)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Aleksandar, Great to know that you are continuing to use my app! high five

<comment><USER11> Hey Takuya, the above says that you can only export as HTML, does that mean that you can't export all your notes as Markdown?

It also says relative links between notes are not supported — is that still the case?

Thanks for your hard work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should I be as impressed as I am that one guy has an app that works on 5 different operating systems even if he is using a cross platform framework or has cross platform front end development become that easy?

Whichever it is, great job! I don't need something like this right now, but I am favoriting it just in case I do later.

<comment> nathan-io I certainly am.

The only thing I disagree with is the lack of a web client.

It just seems like you could save a ton of work by starting with the web client, then create desktop versions via something like todesktop.com.

Then you're spending less time on updates - it's just one desktop version, and the iOS + Android versions are just consuming data from your API anyway.

Love the BYO CouchDB feature - very interesting!

<comment><USER13> A high quality note taking app is all about sleek UI. "Just consuming data from an API" is going to be 5% of the development effort.

<comment> nathan-io You're right there, not sure what I was thinking there.

Regardless, my original point is still valid. You could serve web/MacOS/Windows/Linux users with a single UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just switched to the Joplin markdown note app (from DS Note, and Evernote before that). It's free, works on desktop and mobile, etc etc. Frankly I love it and wish I switched earlier.

Anyone have a good comparison vs Inkdrop?

<comment><USER15> Joplin kicks ass. The only area it might need improvement is regarding showing the tags associated with a note without having to click a button.

The mobile app, web-clipper and desktop apps are all wonderfully done.

<comment><USER16> Is this the only other note taking app besides Evernote that has a web clipper? That has been the killer feature for me. Will have to check it out.

<comment><USER17> OneNote, Bear and Notion all have web clippers.

<comment><USER18> Quiver recently added one as well, works decently and actually fetches images to store locally unlike Evernote web clipper

Some javascript-heavy segmented pages don't clip correctly, but firing up the browsers reader-mode usually clears all the js crap and allows page content to be cleanly clipped

[http://happenapps.com/#quiver](http://happenapps.com/#quiver)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Basically all the comments here are just critiques. My 2 cents: excellent work, its extremely hard to stick with something for 3 years, especially with people's constant criticism and worries it isn't "big enough". The attitude of the developer seems quite wise and seasoned. Hearing things like "I'm making tools I use" and "I'd rather be small and opinionated" or "I'll take paying customers over droves of free users" makes my heart warm. Congratulations and good work -- ignore haters and people with "suggestions" after their cursory 30-second glance at your work you've been eating / breathing for 3 straight years. My go-to response to such things has become "wow in X years I didn't think to google 'note taking app', thanks for that amazing suggestion!" :P (end salty solo-dev rant)

<comment><USER20> Your note made me confront my own self-doubt. Time to dust off that old code- base

<comment><USER21> You don't need to get all the customers, you just have to find _your_ customers.

As long as you find enough of them, you'll be ok.

You are wise to avoid trying to make an everything for everyone app. No one will want to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like these apps because I've been trying note taking for 30 years and have had many false starts of solo projects over the years. So when someone releases it makes me a little happy.

I like markdown because the interoperability is high. I'd like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets stuck somewhere that can be added on or moved around later (eg, "note Inkdrop should be investigated and forked later on #notes #hn #app").

My problem is that phones are just too slow for me to fire up and start a note so I tend to wait and forget before I can write down. I've seen a lot of approaches to digital zettelkasten [0], but the UX requires a lot of familiarity that lead me back to eventually (not) writing my own.

[0] [https://zettelkasten.de/](https://zettelkasten.de/)

<comment><USER23> > I'd like a command line way to just create a new note in one line that gets > stuck somewhere

5 min hackjob that saves my day every day:

        # `note foobar` opens vim on a timestamped foobar file within a folder
        # `note` just opens the same folder in netrw
        # also, using tpope/vim-vinegar and liberal use of `-` to go back and forth
        function note() (
          local title="$1"
          local timestamp="$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)"
          local dir="${HOME}/Dropbox/Notes"

          mkdir -p "${dir}"
          cd "${dir}"
          if [[ -n $1 ]]; then
            exec vim "$timestamp-$title.md"
          else
            exec vim .
          fi
        )

<comment><USER24> Thumbs up. I would just add the encryption filter, like gpg to yourself or within the editor automatic decryption and encryption.

You can also add your own file type if necessary.

<comment><USER23> Good point and easy enough to add, although it does not fit my use case: I want the files to be readable on mobile, plus I only put non-confidential, to- be-public, or already public data in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Electron Markdown editor with monthly subscription to boot.

Beautiful as it is, you're competing with Bear using the sub model, and my common sense to use buy-once native apps (like Sublime Text). This is a non- starter for me.

<comment><USER26> But Bear is also subscription based? Which buy-once app are you using.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, but Bear has this huge following around it already and is OSX native, although it is missing e2e encryption support so Inkdrop has this going for it.

As for me I'm just using sublime text with a bunch of plugins and Markor on my phone. Resilio to sync between the devices.

<comment><USER27> I also use Bear and really like it, but I don't think the fact that something already has a huge following around it should be an argument. By that rationale we'd never switch to anything new.

<comment><USER25> My point is that it's a big competition for him.

Bear has a development team and it's $1.49 monthly, even cheaper if you buy annually (I know that that it leverages iCloud, but even then - you can spend 1$ and get 50 gigs of storage to use for anything you want).

Not to even mention that there are so many alternatives. Markdown editor is the new todo app. Everybody is doing one, just look at this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really like the project but I struggle with the fact that almost all Markdown editors, even note-taking applications, only offer you a rendered view separately from the file you edit. When I am taking notes, they should be rendered where I type them down in order to be easily digestible. Even later on, I will probably make a few smaller edits, so I can't solely rely on the rendered review.

So far, I've only discovered Typora, which is an application unfortunately plagued with performance and interopability issues - and I even had some data loss bugs. So, are there any alternative, "rich" (i.e. pictures, tables, math, code) WYSIWYM note-taking applications?

<comment><USER29> What are the "interoperability" issues you're referring to? I'm a very happy user of Typora and I've, thankfully, not experienced any data losses. The only thing that keeps me from using it more is that it's not the most smooth experience. When I take notes in Notepad++, for example, it's instantaneous. Which makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

<comment><USER28> Agreed on the lack of a smooth experience. Re interopabiltiy: This mainly relates to the usual fact of markdown flavors/extensions and there, for example, being no mobile app with the same exact flavor of markdown

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This definitely looks great. But I feel like 5 USD a month is a bit much for _"just a note taking app"_. Like I pay 5 USD a month for Spotify and the value it gives is substantially higher than a note-taking app, and I do not mean to offend you with that. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm still studying, maybe it will different coming September when I'm working and got an income. I don't know.

<comment><USER31> The notes are markdown and in the FAQs he mentions the location of the local data cache. I imagine you can simply copy all your notes from the cache, clean up any incompatible metadata, and import them to your next note app.

Don't let paying for software stop you if you can afford it. This looks like quality software and we should support it, if able. If you're looking for free note software that's tied to a company, Firefox has a note taking app that syncs between phones/web browser (it's a bit buggy and logs out at times), and Google has Keep that also has apps and available on the web.

<comment><USER30> I'm all for supporting the things that are good. But at what point do we say "enough!"? All of these subscription services start to add up, going from free to 5 USD a month is a bigger jump than I'm willing to take. Why aren't there any services out there that offer 1 USD/EUR plans?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks very nice, I just signed up.

Ignore the people muttering about the subscription. If your tool scratches an itch, the price and how you pay is irrelevant.

One thing, the email sent to verify my account got marked as spam by google. Not sure why, SPF and DKIM both marked as PASS. Maybe they just hate Amazon SES.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author here. Thanks! Yeah this app is basically for professional use. I'm providing it to only those who got more productivity with it and who would think that is worth more than the price. I don't know why emails got marked as spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nobody's mentioned notable yet: [https://github.com/notable/notable](https://github.com/notable/notable)

<comment><USER34> Notable is amazing. I spent weeks trying to find a good note taking app until I stumbled upon Notable. It works really well.

Before that, I was using a bunch of .md files stored in a Github repo. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Many of us speak about adverts that inform as being ethical. I consider this post one of them. I wish all ads were like this one, a story.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author here. I think so. I don't like ads, too. People started visiting my webpage after I started talking about my stories, instead of pitching my product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> a) Joplin is free and seems to do the exact same thing? (+actual working todo- lists)

b) Having md-notes and a dual view seems redundant... In general I either work with the notes, then the "nice view" helps nothing and on the rare occasion, I print/share it, I'm more than fine with an export button. Inline math would be great though

c) all of these apps seem to think that you'r really needing yet another sh __*y webapp on your desktop. Why not store files on your android-sd-card in a flat file structure, which you can easily sync (syncthing, termux...) and edit with your texteditor of choice on the desktop.

<comment><USER37> I agree 100% and like the way you think. I'm under the impression that a lot of these additional services are just trying to skim a few dollars for people that are too naive to do a quick Google Search, or that just search in the iTunes App Store. I wouldn't be surprised to find a bunch of Joplin or Laverna source code in this app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would love, love, love if I could self-host this and would happily pay a fee if it meant I got the source for the backend and could do that. Product looks great, but I will hold off until I find such an option.

I have been looking for years for a viable self-hosted Evernote/OneNote replacement I can sync between devices.

Takuya; You can differentiate from your competitors on business model!

<comment><USER39> If I may make a suggestion: I develop Joplin [0] a similar note-taking app, and it can sync with Nextcloud or WebDAV (some have made it works with the Nginx WebDAV module for instance), allowing you to control all your data.

It may or may not have all the features of Takuya's app though.

[0] [https://joplinapp.org](https://joplinapp.org)

<comment><USER40> Just to say I'm using Joplin on a daily basis. Thank you for building that piece of software and keep up the excellent work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm of the "organize everything in random .md files spread throughout my filesystem" type, but my friends would find this handy, and the design is beautiful.

<comment><USER42> I think people are underestimating the value of design in this space.

This is competing with every single idiosyncratic note taking activity that we all go through, and find probably at least marginally functional. Lots of people were taking notes before this app, it's not like this is opening a _new_ door into how to live. What it's doing is taking the pains the half- solutions of the past were providing, and trying to offer a "better way".

I dunno if it actually _is_ a "better way" yet, but for $0 bucks over 60 days, I'm willing to find out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> oh lord I've become "that guy". My first instinct was to say something along the lines of "well _emacs_ and _deft_ will do blah blah blah blah blah".

This looks really slick, and actually fills a need I identified about a couple of years ago. Namely a OneNote style app but with Markdown.

Nice job, I hope you get a lot of paying users!

</comment><comment><USER44> Why all that effort to have synced Side-by-side View instead of implementing an editable WYSIWYG view, like Typora?

(Typora is nice, and popular, but it has some serious performance and usability issues. Some competition would be good.)

<comment><AUTHOR> The author here. That's a personal preference. I don't like WYSIWYG but do prefer plain Markdown.

<comment><USER44> Sure, I get that, totally. When you are in the Markdown view. But when you need to view the rendered rich text form, isn't it much more efficient and far more user-friendly to show just that, and allow it to be edited?

In other words, Inkdrop's two views could be Markdown and WYSIWYG (both editable), rather than Markdown and Side-by-side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The market for markdown editors and note-takers is already saturated. Joplin appears to have all the features yours does and probably more, plus it is open source. There are a handful of other open source Markdown editors as well for note-taking that have most (if not more) of the features you are including. I don't know why anyone would pick a subscription service when they can get the same thing for free and have access to the source code to help implement their own features. Plus syncing with Joplin can be accomplished on multiple providers like Google Drive.

<comment><USER45> If it is saturated (and by inference, unwanted), why do note taking apps consistently front-page? I can think of two possible reasons. One, there is no clear winner, and nobody has made the note taking app everyone _really_ wants. Or two, note apps are a bit like IDE's, where people use them all the time and subtle preferences mean a variety of apps doing the same thing is preferred.

<comment><USER37> It really comes down to the subscription-based model being profitable for people that think paying for something means they'll get a better product. People will find an open source solution and rebrand it for a $5 or $10/mo and have it sync to a server somewhere, and then move on to rebranding another solution. You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this.

<comment><USER45> > You can find a ton of apps in the app store where they do this.

But those do not consistently front-page as well, do they?

<comment><USER37> Yes, HN is a PR site. People pay to get content frontpaged here.

<comment><USER45> That doesn't explain that they also get a lot of discussion (relative to other posts). To me the story is a bit different. I've talked to a lot of people that take notes daily, and the only consistent theme I've found is that none of them are satisfied with their experience thus far. Until that changes, I'd expect every reasonably good notes application to front-page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just signed up for a Standard Notes subscription today. How does this compare? Seems they are both e2e encrypted with Markdown and code highlighting. Standard notes also has rich text and todo list plugins.

<comment><USER47> I'm a happy StandardNotes user and IMO it looks like it's very similar but StandardNotes is more mature and has more functionality. If anything this might be slightly prettier.

This is also double the cost over 5 years.

</comment></comment><comment> frosted-flakes If you're targeting your service to developers, you shouldn't set irritating password requirements like "alphanumerics and symbols". Whatever that means, because my password is still being rejected even though it satisfies both requirements (it has both letters and symbols).

Yet, you allow 4 character passwords ("4-100 characters"). What's the logic in that?

Edit: it looks like the password requirement is actually "any characters except whitespace". You should fix the error message.

</comment><comment><USER48> Nice to see a product using CouchDB. From a quick glance, the revision utility seems to use CouchDB's revisions. Just a note to the dev: The _rev is not intended as a revision tool in CouchDB. Data will eventually be erased. See: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28354346/couchdb-view- th...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28354346/couchdb-view-that- includes-revision-history)

</comment><comment><USER49> Great work man, this is one of the few tools/use cases where I think mark down is really the right choice. Limited set of keywords means you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about formatting. In the end it's easy enough to convert to HTML/PDF as an export to share.

On top of that, the tool looks slick af.

I don't think I want the cloud sync feature, have you considered an option to license the software with out that for a prorated cost?

</comment><comment><USER50> Maybe a dumb question - but how did you create apps on so many different platforms? Did you have to separately code everything? Or did you use some framework?

<comment><USER51> Definitely not a dumb question, I was wondering that too. My first guess for cross-platform desktop apps these days is Electron, and Inkdrop's UI looks a little Electron-y. But it would be really interesting to hear if it's something else.

For the mobile apps, afaik React Native is the most capable cross-platform mobile framework right now. Again, would be really interesting if it's something else (or hardcore if they're both native apps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I worked on a markdown flash card app briefly because so many accounting terms referenced other terms in their definitions. By linking flash cards together I could quickly jump between flashcards to review unfamiliar terms.

Rather than wikipedia where everything about a subject is recorded, flash cards were meant to be a distilled set of facts for a single term from a single course or textbook you were studying.

I overhauled my models when I realized that the same field or subject (which I organized into Decks) used the same term in two different contexts to mean different things. That also meant I could not reference cards simply by name in the markdown. So I updated all links to reference by id rather than name. So I had to build some UI to select cards by name and generate links.

Then I hit a wall when I realized I would need a good way to encode and render math formulas and that's when my hobby project died.

Also, in the end, I found that having such quick linked access to knowledge I was studying made me less likely to remember the material, not more. I relied too heavily on the cards and the ability to just click on a term I didn't remember.

</comment><comment><USER53> So I think this is a really cool idea, some feedback:

1\. would love to be able to toggle whether the markdown syntax is shown vs a polished/rendered view of the markdown without the # symbols showing etc. For me the whole point of writing markdown is that moment when you get to see it rendered all nicely on github, and this hybrid mode doesn't quite do it for me

2\. tags are cool, but a folder hierarchy would be more appropriate for notes imo. I immediately wanted to right click on the side bar and create folders, but that's not a thing.

3\. Accessibility via web browser, as other people have mentioned, would be nice

4\. ability to export any note to PDF or a single HTML file with inline styling

5\. option to use github's exact markdown stylesheet

6\. The whole note "status" thing I think is a bit niche. I wouldn't use it at all as I have project management software for that sort of thing. I would use this for storing random bits of knowledge, how-to-type stuff, research/project ideas, that sort of thing. It's a cool feature, I just wish it was optional and there were more options for how to organize the notes.

</comment><comment><USER54> It looks nice but it being Electron and subscription-based means I won't buy it. I'm pretty happy with Quiver.

<comment><USER55> I get the sentiment against Electron, there are horribly bloated applications out there which are a direct consequence of how (badly) Electron was built and designed.

However, this particular application appears to work exactly as intended and uses all of 150MB of RAM and 0.1% CPU on my (admittedly quite beefy) laptop. Maybe, just maybe, this is actually a pretty well-built application? I understand if someone won't use this program because it doesn't scratch their particular itch. But, not using something solely because of the techniques used to build it, seems a bit elitist to me.

<comment><USER56> Your comment snapped me out of the RAM-obliviousness in which I usually live and work. I know memory is plentiful on modern PCs, but 150 MB of RAM for a _note-taking app!?_

<comment><USER57> Its a note taking app that renders HTML. Arguably, this is an ideal case for an electron app. 150 MB for a internet connected, syncing, HTML rendering note app doesn't seem unreasonable to me

<comment><USER58> Markdown generates extremely basic HTML. Browsers twenty years old render Markdown output satisfactorily. This sort of application is the ideal place to use a webview provided by the host operating system.

<comment><USER59> Anyone can be an armchair quarterback, but this _solo_ developer has made seemingly a great product that people really like.

I don't think it matters very much what underlying frameworks are being used, especially to the end user.

If it's so easy to implement this natively on five platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android), please send us your link to your native cloud- syncing markdown note taking app, I'd really like to see it.

<comment><USER58> > I don't think it matters very much what underlying frameworks are being > used, especially to the end user.

Every Electron text editing app I've used has noticeable input latency and hitching compared to native on my system.

> If it's so easy...

It's practically part of the human experience to have opinions about technology you haven't personally developed. The author can build their software however they want. I just won't use it.

<comment><USER59> If you have no plans to try this product I wonder why you claim it has performance issues or should have been architected in a different way, and why you're wasting all of our time by vocalising assumptions about an application based on its underlying technology.

I haven't been able to find _any_ other five-platform markdown based note taking app with plugin support and cloud sync, so I'm still awaiting your link to a superior native alternative. It seems like Electron itself specifically enabled this application to exist.

If you can detect the input lag in Visual Studio Code I should commend your superior reflexes and genetic makeup.

<comment><USER58> > I wonder why you claim it has performance issues

It's true, I haven't tried it. Perhaps this solo dev has succeeded where large teams with more resources have failed.

> I'm still awaiting your link to a superior native alternative

Sorry; I thought you wanted one that I'd written. I've used SimpleNote for years. It's got dozens of clients, many of them native; I use NValt, Resoph Notes, and the official iOS client. It supports markdown. It doesn't support plugins, but you didn't want that until just now.

> If you can detect the input lag in Visual Studio Code

I use VSCode extensively for a large Angular project on a Macbook Pro with a 4K screen. I get trivially reproducible hitching, often when autocomplete kicks in. It doesn't require superhuman senses to see. The console is also easy see lag on; just use it to edit a commit message with vim during a rebase. Character input speed is easier to notice if you've been using Sublime or Vim immediately beforehand. It's not a deal-breaker; VSC is unparalleled for Angular development. I wish it was snappier, though.

<comment><USER59> Interesting choice: Simplenote's Windows and Linux clients are written in Electron.

[https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote- electron](https://github.com/Automattic/simplenote-electron)

> simplenote-electron is the official Simplenote desktop app for Windows and > Linux.

I'm only being annoying and flame-war-ish to you about this because I'm somewhat tired of "framework hate." Case in point, you still use VSCode because no better alternative exists for Angular development. So, I still criticize your initial comment where you chose to proclaim that this app that you haven't tried should be written differently, even though it's written the same way as an application you rely on.

It might be interesting to read one Electron developer's take on the issue:

[https://medium.com/@felixrieseberg/defeating- electron-e1464d...](https://medium.com/@felixrieseberg/defeating- electron-e1464d075528)

<comment><USER58> My "framework hate" directly stems from experience with applications written in the framework. "Rely on," is different from "enjoy."

Electron is a trade-off that prioritizes developer productivity over end-user experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> A good looking Markdown app with syncing and clients for macOS, Linux, iPhone and iPad? I have been looking for this for years.

<comment><USER37> Look at Joplin

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Hi Takuya,

Congratulations on the success! Your business is very inspirational to me. Thank you for all the great posts.

</comment><comment><USER62> As a user of just slightly less than a year now - thank you! Ever since I gave up Evernote, I had been on the hunt for a clean note taking replacement and Inkdrop has been that for me. The new v4 looks great and works great!

</comment><comment><USER63> Also end-to-end encrypted without a central server and using rich text instead of markdown [https://collect-app.com/](https://collect-app.com/)

<comment><USER64> The 40+MB download tells me this is Electron(?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Honnestly, my congratulations! I am in the same boat as you and 3 years is a long time especially when doing big/risky refactoring. I did my refactoring mainly to manage my application state, I really thought I would never gonna make it (and I was working in Swift, in Javascript it would have been nearly impossible to do the same thing...). But it was worth every second I spent on it: code is the main value of independant developers, so we should take great care of it!

I wish you good luck with your project and hope it will work.

</comment><comment><USER66> For a code-snippet focused alternative with plugins for major editors and support for team libraries: [https://www.cacher.io](https://www.cacher.io)

</comment><comment><USER67> I love markdown. It's been my primary way of taking notes for many years.

A key benefit of the format to me is that text files will never be deprecated and are infinitely portable.

I saw mentioned a local cache. Would you add a pitch or squeeze page on this topic to help convince users like me? I want to love your product. The scrolling alone; beautiful.

Example user stories:

* can always see all notes as simple, well named, plainly organized, easy to read text files.

* Can output/sync certain folders of notes to plain text files. (To, for example, a Dropbox folder target)

</comment><comment><USER68> Do you or do you plan to add any kind of sharing/collaborative editing to notes at all? Is the plugin system versatile enough to allow e.g. syncing notes to Jekyll blog posts?

</comment><comment><USER69> Can anybody comment on the vim-keybindings plugin for Inkdrop. I've tried Notion, but I would really love a markdown/note-taking app with good vi- keybindings.

<comment><USER70> Long time Notion and vim user here. Just set up Inkdrop and tried the vim- plugin and all basic features work great. For things like switching files or navigation in general it seems like you'll need to use the software's standard bindings. But it looks like you can edit them.

If you plan to switch from Notion I recommend using the paste-as-markdown plugin. With this you can just copy a whole document from Notion and paste it into Inkdrop. Works flawlessly!

</comment></comment><comment> crooked-v I like the design of this app a lot, but as with others like this, it feels like it wants me to double-pay for sync/storage I already have with iCloud or Dropbox.

<comment><USER71> Yea I would like it if the author offered a one-time purchase for the app without sync functionality at say $60.

I mean if you are having trouble with server space for hosting text files, then maybe you shouldn't be building your own cloud storage service.

There are lots of existing sync solutions without server space limitations, and you can still have end-to-end encryption by just saving the encrypted text file to local storage and decrypting it only in memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Do people actually use all these "note taking" apps? I just use Google Docs for longer notes, and Apple Notes for ephemeral stuff, like dimensions of stuff I need to buy at Home Depot. The benefit of Docs is I can work with them anywhere and search is quite good. I've tried a few of such apps but for the life of me I can't see why I'd want to use them.

The app looks great. The dev is clearly talented.

</comment><comment><USER73> Dang it I was hoping this would be like a Sublime Text style individual license and no cloud stuff. I can't upload work documents outside our network and I hate monthly fees for software.

If I was working anywhere else though I would totally consider this, even though $5 a month is pretty steep for a markdown application with cloud sync. I would probably spring for their yearly pricing of $49.90.

<comment><USER67> +1 for A local only version of this that stores plain text somewhere on my hard drive. Optionally as an encrypted zip archive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool! Does it support inter-note linking so that it can act like a kind of personal wiki? That would be a killer feature for me.

</comment><comment><USER74> I've been using Typora which is a similar or even a better tool and it's free for now. I hope typora doesn't go the subscription/saas route. Everything is a subscription these days and you probably would be better off going with a different revenue model since the competition is heavy in the note taking market.

<comment><USER75> Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of [https://typora.io](https://typora.io) before. The extremely minimalist web site on mobile made it seem like the page hadn't loaded.

Subscriptions are the best way to support products with a smaller user base. Plus it has ongoing cloud storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I really like gollum for this:

[https://github.com/gollum/gollum](https://github.com/gollum/gollum)

It's just markdown files in a git repository when you're in your full environment. But you get a read-write web wiki interface to use from anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER77> I am looking to transition away from OneNote. Any tools to automate the transition to a new app like this?

</comment><comment><USER78> In the spirit of tiny SaaS companies that offer great products, fman is a cross platform dual pane file manager I like.

(No affiliation, I just love that people can make a living making things like this)

[https://fman.io/](https://fman.io/)

</comment><comment><USER79> I love this idea. I am more than a little jealous as I have wanted to build something like this since college. I just save my .md note files to a cloud drive and load them as a project w/ sublime text. It's not as beautiful as this but it works.

</comment><comment><USER80> Is there a way to not have the cloud features and use dropbox/icloud for syncing instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, because I don't like file-based sync. It's slow, unstable and hard to implement. People will say "how about Google Drive/OneDrive/Box support?" Hell awaits you.

<comment><USER80> > Hell awaits you.

From a developer point of view, maybe. From a user point of view it's a quite reliable and well known mechanism to sync between platforms. Dropbox is already what I personally use to manage my documents between all my devices, it's part of my various workflows. I personally don't want to add other syncing mechanisms if I can avoid as that forces me to create/manage an additional account and give my trust to an additional platform.

Of course I may be an outlier but I don't think that's the case, Dropbox is well established. Inkdrop looks really, really nice and I might be a user of such a tool, but only for the editing and categorizing part but if I cannot disable the syncing using your backend that's a blocker for me.

Anyway, congrats for the work that you've done, I hope you will change your mind at some point :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> If this is aimed at developers, why would they want to use it over their existing editor? I use VSCode and I write markdown in it all the time. A lot of other common editors also have support for it. Why would I want to use a seperate tool?

<comment><USER82> Good question. My answer is I see this tool as a note taking app that uses Markdown. Not a general Markdown editing tool, though it may also handle that functionality. Does that make sense?

I write code all day in VSCode/Intellij, yet I write all my notes in the Apple Notes app. While not perfect (I would prefer to write them in MD), it currently has the fewest trade offs for me. The most important feature being that I can easily view/write notes anywhere on any of my devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Awesome job releasing! That's really difficult to do - and few people can say they have.

</comment><comment><USER84> Imho, notetaking Apps are solving problems that shouldn't be solved by them. Encryption / sync should be done by the system via git, Nextcloud, Dropbox, ... Most of the rest is provided by a decent text editor.

<comment><USER85> Not really. There must be a small(big?) subset of people who don't want to setup git,nextcloud,dropbox etc. to get encryption/sync working. As a hacker it might offend your sensibilities of "one thing well" but not everyone is a hacker :-)

<comment><USER86> This is a _markdown_ notes app though, who realistically is the target market besides hackers? The only people I have met who like markdown are programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rc-1140 > I built it because I wanted it.

I loved reading this line in Takuya's post. It felt a lot more real than all of those "made with " and "we open source" taglines that other projects throw around.

</comment><comment><USER87> Thanks for posting this as I was looking for the exact same info as I will be designing-developing a productivity suite based on my ADHD experience of using productivity structure to control my ADHD.

very useful story

</comment><comment><USER88> I love this! I've been using Notion for notes because I don't like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep. This may replace Notion for me. I'll give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER89> Boostnote is a similar open source project.

Even they look similar.

<comment><USER90> Plus you don't pay out the ass for someone to hold your data.

I tried InkDrop and couldn't justify the steep price point for something so trivial.

I backup everything on my own and watch Boostnote grow as a competitor, but free...

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> This supports what I've always wanted in a markdown note taking app...

being able to directly copy and paste an image from the clipboard.

</comment><comment><USER92> Keep up your good work! I read your article about v3, about a year ago. It's damn interesting to follow your journey.

</comment><comment><USER39> The smart scroll on the editor is pretty nice. I don't know of any other Markdown app with dual view that does this.

<comment><USER93> Joplin also does this.

<comment><USER39> I'm the Joplin dev and was impressed by his smart scrolling, because currently we don't have this :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Does it have code/text block collapse support? I've been looking for an app that can do this for years.

</comment><comment><USER95> Still looking for something similar where I can also simply add links from Dropbox and other directories.

<comment><USER96> Can you clarify what you mean with a use case?

<comment><USER97> file:// :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> App looks promising, but is there a way for it to not convert tabs into spaces automatically?

</comment><comment><USER99> Thanks for sharing! :-)

Inspiration for the rest of us to keep at it with our side-projects.

</comment><comment><USER100> I love it! I have been waiting for something like this to replace Bear.

<comment><USER101> Why is it that you want to replace Bear?

<comment><USER100> I need to run it on a Windows machine as well. It's the only reason really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> ehm, sorry, isn't markdown in itself editable with any text editor and thus no further "application" is necessary. The point of markdown is that every text editor can edit it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I suggest you remove the misplaced apostrophe after "fox".

</comment><comment><USER102> i am the only one that keeps using sticky notes on windows and google keep? do people take that many notes that they need to invest in such a fancy tool?

<comment><USER103> I see some reasons to do so.

You can write a blog in Markdown and generate your own static website with it, you could write a diary in Markdown, which I do, or you could take notes of code implementation, which could require LaTEX for nice mathematics and code fences to organize small chunks of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I was one of your volunteer beta testers years ago and provided some feedback. I still get a little salty when I see this app since you still terminated my account and made me pay :) hope you've been well

</comment><comment><USER105> This has been on my to do list for three years. :)

</comment><comment><USER106> Man, I want this, but I was burned by Collate.

</comment><comment><USER107> Electron. As if I need another app taking up more RAM than needed

</comment><comment><USER108> any single pane note taker with latex support?

</comment><comment><USER109> sounds very agile

</comment><comment><USER110> Nice, will give it a try. Advice, loose the uppercase on every word in

"End-to-end Encryption Support, Smart Scroll Sync for Side-by-side View, New Logo, and More."

</comment><comment><USER111> FYI, a notetaker without inline images is a nogo for me. I need illustrations and screenshots with my notes. i'm happy to host the images externally.

<comment><USER112> So when you look at an article like this and there's this paragraph explaining how image support has been improved with a GIF demonstrating inline images scrolling in both the editor and the preview window, what is it exactly that prompts you to write a comment like this.

<comment><USER113> OT, but I believe that is the most diplomatic means of asking, "did you even read the article?" I've read. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The recent trend of terrible introductions is very annoying.

The first sentence on any new app should be...

App is a (what it can do) for (Windows/Mac/Linux) written in/with (languages/libraries/frameworks)

And FFS if it's an Electron app, SAY SO!!!!! Some people do avoid those on principal.

</comment><comment><USER114> Why, so have I, and so has every other programmer on Earth.

[https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/](https://mdhughes.tech/thoughtpy/)

This has been mostly used as my engineering notebook, in lieu of stacks of Moleskines.

Simple command-line tool for editing and searching, a pipeline to any Markdown app for display, and DropBox for syncing, that's all I needed.

I could also use it on mobile with Pythonista, with some changes to get a DropBox path and open it in Editorial or Drafts, but so far just having the files is good enough.

My point is, every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages.

<comment><USER115> > every programmer should be capable of making certain basic tools of their > own, such as note-taking, blogging, a calculator, and scripting languages.

I'd counter that by adding "...and wise enough to know better than to actually do it."

<comment><USER114> Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never acquire wisdom, or many useful skills.

Thought.py is maybe my 4th note-taking system, simpler and more precisely what I needed than any previous. Practice makes perfect. Doing nothing makes nothing.

<comment><USER58> > Without the experience of making and supporting such tools, you'll never > acquire wisdom, or many useful skills.

There's nothing special about those specific tools. Instead, you'll acquire the wisdom and skills from the experience of making and supporting different tools. Ideally tools that don't already exist thousands of times over.

<comment><USER114> Go ahead and invent some totally unique tool nobody's ever seen before. I'll wait. You, uh, you got one yet? No?

The point is to make your _own_ version of a thing; it doesn't have to be one of those few I listed. To see that some other design or implementation doesn't satisfy you, and analyze why, and do it "right". You can only get that by writing something you can compare to something else.

If you do invent a thing for the first time—which you won't—it would be terrible. It'll take many iterations, your own or more likely someone else's. That's how Human tool-making works, from the first half-assed rubbing-sticks- together fire to nuclear weapons (the first Atomic Bomb was not the best…)

And to a certain extent, I don't consider people incapable/unwilling to do this "programmers". Merely typists.

<comment><USER115> > Go ahead and invent some totally unique tool nobody's ever seen before.

I think people invent totally unique tools[1] all the time but, crucially, they'll be commercially sensitive or rarely of interest or use to anyone else.

[1] Of course, it depends how you define this. Decades ago I wrote something to blank out (not strip) comments in C++ source for someone. Is that a 'totally unique tool'?

> And to a certain extent, I don't consider people incapable/unwilling to do > this "programmers". Merely typists.

Yeah, this is elitist nonsense.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fzf: A command-line fuzzy finder - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/junegunn/fzf <comment><USER2> Combining fzf with ripgrep[1] as a search tool has absolutely changed file search on my computer. ripgrep is much faster than your typical "find", but it eats up CPU. That being said, the preview window in combination with being able to browse large directories a breeze.

1 = [https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep)

<comment><USER3> On that note, skim is an alternative to fzf written in Rust -- [https://github.com/lotabout/skim](https://github.com/lotabout/skim)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a perfect addition for the fish shell, to fill the incremental reverse search gap. Highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER5> One of the most useful shell plugins IMO.</comment>


Battery breakthrough could change everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery/?mbid=synd_digg <comment><USER3> Okay, this is a little more information than we had a couple of weeks ago [0].

Sounds like these could beat lithium batteries on cost, even if their energy density and power density aren't at the same levels. (Not saying they won't be, but we haven't seen any numbers yet.)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14941624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14941624)

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally think that, for electric cars at least, there are two main things in battery tech holding them back:

Capacity and charging time

Basically, if we could get a battery cell that was no bigger than say, the lithium cells used by Tesla (sub-C size? I can't recall what they used), and with about the same mass, but had double the capacity - in theory, Tesla could swap out one for the other and instantly double the range of their vehicles. That would instantly put them in line with the range of a gasoline powered vehicle (to be honest, though, they are already there or close enough - provided you aren't too aggressive with the pedal).

But extra range is just one component. The battery also needs to be able to be charged in a reasonable amount of time. I would personally like to see 5 minutes tops to a full 100% charge. I want to be able to travel cross country, and if I don't want to do an extended stop, I'd like to get out, charge the car to 100% in 5 minutes, and then drive on. I don't want to have to wait, I want to be able to do the same as I can do today with a gasoline powered vehicle.

I honestly don't know if such a scheme is even possible within the laws of physics, while still being safe for the consumer. It might be a case where a different form of infrastructure needs to be created to handle charging, due to likely high currents and/or higher voltages involved. It doesn't seem possible to offer this as a "plug in" style recharging system, but perhaps something you drive into, and large contacts or something from the bottom rise up and "plug in" to ports on the underside of the vehicle could work? There are also the "battery swap" schemes, but this seems like something that could take longer than 5 minutes. Regardless, just about anything will ultimately require some kind of standards for car manufacturers to adhere to so it all works (imagine if there were different size nozzles for each manufactured vehicle for gasoline).

Note that I don't expect for "overnight charging" to happen quickly; existing charger designs (or similar) could likely handle this for home or on-the-road use (when there isn't another option, or for perhaps plugging in while staying at a hotel or something).

Until these two items are solved, though, I don't see electric cars being as widespread among consumers as many think they will be.

<comment><USER5> To charge an 85 kWh in 5 minutes would be ~1MW which seems beyond home charging capacity.

Even more out of reach if you want to double the capacity

<comment><USER6> If, let's say 95% of energy goes into the battery, and 5% becomes heat - <USER2> would the cooling system need to look like?

<comment><USER7> 5% of 1MW is obviously 20kW. That's rougly comparable to the "large" 68000BTU/hour space heaters.

On the other hand, it's well within the range of a conventional car engine cooling system: [http://what-when-how.com/automobile/forced-circulation- water...](http://what-when-how.com/automobile/forced-circulation-water- cooling-system-automobile/)

It depends somewhat on how hot the hot side can afford to get. The "weak link" will be getting the heat out of the cells themselves - it's no good if you can cool the exterior to 20C if the interior exceeds the safe limit of the cell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Summary of tech: But in this battery, you have no liquid. You have just a plastic, a polymer, that replaces the liquid, so it's solid. To be solid instead of liquid is something people have been striving for for 100 years. Michael Zimmerman was the expert on a certain class of polymers. He invented a new ionic conduction mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER9> My main concern with the electric vehicle hockey stick growth curve is sourcing the cobalt required in Li-ion battery chemistry (although there are non cobalt versions LiFePo with worse metrics). One of the basic problems is how does a cobalt miner know whether or not something like this article's battery doesn't pop into existence just as soon as they put in billions of dollars to get a cobalt mine going. I have a suspicion that Tesla is waiting to be more clearly stable financially and then they will do something to derisk cobalt miners (like promise the purchase of a boatload of cobalt at a certain price).

</comment><comment><USER10> Aside from a little bit of mainstream tech journalist misinformation (Bill Joy being co-inventor of Java? News to me, and presumably the inventors of Java listed on Wikipedia), glad to see this article, the development being described is very promising. I have a bit more hope in this than in most battery breakthroughs, the fundamental idea seems sound, will be interested to see how it develops.

<comment><USER11> Together with James Gosling and Guy Steele, he wrote the first Java spec: [http://titanium.cs.berkeley.edu/doc/java- langspec-1.0/](http://titanium.cs.berkeley.edu/doc/java-langspec-1.0/)</comment></comment>


European Credit Card Terminals Are Plagued with Serious Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/european-card-terminals-are-plagued-with-serious-vulnerabilities <comment><AUTHOR> "Hacking" bank and credit cards with this is still pretty hard and a bit theoretical (fake PIN entry form on the terminal...), but printing prepaid cards (= virtual money) like Paysafecard c/should be pretty easy. And that's a biiiig problem.</comment>


For Sale 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2014/bitcoins/

<comment><USER2> It bothers me that they're selling off his assets when, last I heard at least (and please correct me if I'm wrong), he hadn't even gone to trial yet.

As these assets would otherwise be used to fund his legal defense, and he is, as I understand it, only 'allegedly' guilty, he's being unfairly deprived of a lawful defense.

Beyond that, y'know, there _is_ the possibility that they'll find him innocent, and I don't even know what happens then.

<comment><USER3> > It bothers me that they're selling off his assets when, last I heard at > least (and please correct me if I'm wrong), he hadn't even gone to trial > yet.

AFAIK, the bitcoins at issue were those forfeited in a default judgement because no one, including Ulbricht, claimed ownership of them. The coins that Ulbricht did claim ownership of (that were on computer hardware traced to him separate from the Silk Road servers) were not forfeited at that time (and have not been yet, AFAIK.)

See the January partial judgement by default and forfeiture order: [http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/Silk...](http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/SilkRoadForfeiture/Silk%20Road%20Partial%20Default%20Judgment%20and%20Order%20of%20Forfeiture.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Thank you. That dramatically elucidates the issue for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Street value of approx: $17,330,000 USD

<comment><USER5> Is the market liquid enough to support that valuation?

<comment><USER6> coinmarketcap.com indicates that about $36m in btc have been moved around in the last 24h

<comment><USER7> So slowly liquid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7886014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7886014)

<comment><USER9> Yes. Burying now.

<comment><AUTHOR> My mistake. I'm not sure how or why this got through the filter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what the optimal bid would be if the winner was going to sell off all of it.

</comment><comment><USER11> BTC/USD down >10% in a few minutes.</comment>


Why do programmers hate Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://adtmag.com/articles/2010/10/19/developers-rip-microsoft.aspx Why do programmers hate Microsoft so much? A search finds hundreds of anti-Microsoft rants in source code comments, ranging from personal attacks on Bill Gates to frustration with supposedly not following standards and putting out buggy, insecure code. <comment><USER2> Almost every person I have ever met who _hates_ Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole.

Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who set out to destroy Netscape. It is funny how history chooses the more salacious of headlines, easy to forget that IE4 was a breakthrough browser that ate Navigator's lunch heads up. Certainly the OS integration made a big difference but this picture of an evil lurking monster hoisting terrible code and practices upon us is and never was true.

The other thing I think which happens is group opinions get formed. Microsoft is strongest in the enterprise, which is more apt to say - big businesses. Big business and the entreprenuerial hacker/dev dont get along, bigbiz in large part wants and fosters a need for programmers. Their hierarchical and red tape laden structure destroys creative spirit so what you get is lots of people who accept this, learn within that framework and dont really develop beyond the skills needed for their job. They latch onto Access and VB and do it badly because no one with great skills taught them any better and their bosses just need X to work and performance or elegance dont matter at all. This mindset gets associated with Microsoft people and the non-MSFT crowd begins to think anyone who does Microsoft work is some mindless noob with no skills.

It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that.

<comment><USER3> > It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in > the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont > understand that.

Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their decisions, they allow them to choose their own tools and their own way of doing things. Oh sure, there are plenty of people working on exciting little development projects that never see the light of day beyond a tech demo, but geting so much as a single feature into a major product has become an ordeal.

For me, the obvious anecdote is the taboo that surrounded the iPhone at Redmond, with numerous reports saying that Microsoft staff felt the need to hide their iPhone from senior execs[1]. To me, that's the sign of a company in deep trouble.

The obvious inference to draw is that Microsoft as a company would rather remain in denial than really confront the inadequacies of their products. Any company that I'd want to work at would have responded to the iPhone by obsessively studying it rather than ignoring it. The really pernicious issue is the obvious distrust and lack of communication between the footsoldiers and their leaders. When staff feel like they aren't allowed to voice an obvious truth - that they prefer the iPhone to any WinMob device - that strikes me as a frightening place to be. It's the stuff of Orwell, the kind of madness you'd expect from a failed state.

I don't care how good Microsoft's IDEs are. I hate Microsoft, I loathe Microsoft, I despise Microsoft because they run contrary to everything I feel software should be. Microsoft seems to crush any sense of wonder and joy out of their employees, something which seems self-evident from their products. They favour micromanagement and process over autonomy and craft. They see software as just some crap that they can package up and sell, rather than something beautiful in itself, something intrinsically interesting and wonderful and beautiful.

You might say "Why should a corporation care about these things?". If you do, you miss the point entirely. Microsoft are stagnant. They're a zombie company, absolutely incapable of regeneration and growth. They are currently trading at below their post-bubble value and have failed to achieve any meaningful growth in several years. Their market cap has been exceeded by Apple; Google are well on their way to overtaking them too. You can't even make the argument that the Microsoft way is about business, because they're failing dismally at that.

Beauty and joy and excitement isn't just good for developers and users, it's good for the bottom line. Microsoft represents the rotten old way of doing things, a way that just doesn't work anymore. Good developers, developers that make stuff that really matters, they don't really care if there is free coke in the fridge, they don't care whether they sit on a Herman Miller or a shipping crate, what matters to them is creating things that matter. As far as I can tell, nobody at Microsoft has done that in a long time; Not many developers on the Microsoft platform have either. It doesn't matter how nice your offices are - if your workplace culture, if the ecosystem of your software feels stifling and ugly and just generally stupid, all the smart developers are going to leave.

Think about this - would Microsoft ever have hired a designer like Ive? Would they have ever have given him free reign? How would a developer like Buchheit be treated at Microsoft? That's why we hate Microsoft.

[1] [http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/16/microsoft-workers-hiding- thei...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/16/microsoft-workers-hiding-their-love- for-the-iphone/)

<comment><USER4> I don't know who Buchheit is, but Microsoft Research has employed three Turing Award winners (Tony Hoare, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker) for a decade or so. I doubt they'd have stayed if they felt mistreated.

In general I wouldn't put much stock in media anecdotes, as the media (or maybe just humanity in general, sadly) seems to love reinforcing preconceived narratives.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft Research != Microsoft in general. It's not even 1% of Microsoft, and everywhere there is different. Some of the research there has practical use, but a lot of it is just PR for Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> true, but that just shows how useless "would my mental caricature of celebrity figure x have been able to survive in my mental caricature of vast heterogeneous institution y?" is as an aid for anyone's understanding of the world.

I could've pointed to Erik Meijer as an innovative rock star developer who appears to have done well in the MSFT environment, being largely responsible for the major additions to a shipping version of their flagship application framework. How much does that tell me about the internal MSFT culture as a whole? Not much, any more than this WSJ anecdote does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Programmers generally don't hate Microsoft. They have one of the biggest (if not, THE) developer communities in existence. Developers have great access to outstanding developer documentation, engineers (channel9.msdn.com), and Microsoft lets its engineers blog candidly (blogs,msdn.com).

The same complaints the article cited could be levied against gcc, autoconf, and so on. And you could levy the same trollbaiting against Linux, *BSD, and Mac OS X. Because for any given thing, there is somebody out in the world who feels the need to hate it.

I do a lot of .NET development and I love it, but I prefer developing on a UNIX environment because I started there and ended up on DOS/Windows later on.

<comment><USER7> Depends on lot on which community you're looking at. Being primarily in the IRC/slashdot/web dev/scripting language/sysadmin areas (as well as a student of a rather Linux-centric university), I was amazed at all of the Windows- centric stuff when I found StackOverflow. I honestly didn't realize that there were good programmers who preferred to work on the Microsoft stack.

Now, of course, I realize there are, but I'm still a bit confused when I talk to one... our worlds are just so different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Microsoft executives are losing sleep over "Microsoft Hatred" as much as they are losing sleep over "Microsoft Irrelevance". How many college students know how to program on Win32? How many even know what Win32 is? In 10 years, these college students will be the senior developers at their respective companies.

Certainly, any good engineer will choose the best tool for the job. But I find it unlikely that those that know little of MS technology will promote those tools later in their careers.

/* What is Microsoft? */

<comment><USER9> Luckily, college students know Java, and C# is close enough to pick up.

<comment><USER10> Not really, the latest C# is closer to Scala than it is to Java...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a big reason why people don't like Microsoft, is the anti-competitive behavior they used to get to the size they are today. A lot of people dream of starting a business one day (especially around here), and when a company was built by crushing start-ups/small businesses in illegitimate ways, people aren't going to be too happy about that.

Plus, they have that little paperclip thing that pops up whenever you ask for help...

<comment><USER12> "I think a big reason why people don't like Microsoft, is the anti-competitive behavior they used to get to the size they are today."

That's completely nonsensical. Microsoft didn't act anti-competitively to become big, they did it AFTER becoming big. You can't abuse power you don't have, and when Microsoft won the OS contract with IBM, it was a tiny company, and Apple was by comparison huge.

Microsoft got big by taking advantage of the fact that the guy that wrote DOS didn't think it was worth anything, so he was happy with the $50k (or whatever) that Bill gave him for it, and IBM didn't think that the PC market would go anywhere, so they didn't think anything of giving MS money for every PC sold.

When Bill started licensing DOS to every company that wanted to make a PC, Microsoft became big.

THAT is how Microsoft acquired the power to abuse that they then proceeded to abuse.

<comment><USER11> "That's completely nonsensical. Microsoft didn't act anti-competitively to become big, they did it AFTER becoming big"

I didn't say that's how they got started, but rather one of the ways that allowed them to reach the size they are today. Even if you know nothing of the antitrust case, you'd have to admit some shady stuff was going on when you see a browser like IE6 last so long :p

<comment><USER12> The shady stuff they did with IE6 mattered because MS was already so big when they did it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a programmer. Going back a few years, I hate Microsoft because:

* 8.3

* 16-bit address space

* Insanely complicated and needlessly POSIX-incompatible access control lists

* Registry

* Path separator: \ vs /

* Very expensive dev tools

* MSC++ isn't C++

* Handling of Java

* Management via GUI instead of text files

* Absence of usable shell

Yes, this list is way out of date. But these are the issues chased me out of the Microsoft world into Unix, Linux and open source. The few times I've had to deal with Microsoft software more recently (e.g. ACLs), the experience has served only to renew my loathing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Linux comes with Apache, Python, C/C++, Perl, AWK, sed, vi, emacs, and more.

Windows comes with Minesweeper.

When I was starting out there was no Microsoft or Linux. I got a machine that had a programming lanuage built in to it, and I could write programs.

Pretty much the first large program I wrote was a compiler to convert a subset of BASIC into Z80. It was written in its own subset, and could compile itself. I hacked into the cassette save routines, smashed the stack, bootstrapped into a machine code monitor (not even assembler) that I wrote, and I was writing games for people to play.

It's always seemed to me that Microsoft almost actively prevented me from using my own machine. I couldn't get into it without buying more. And more. I wrote my own OS that sat on top of DOS, then write a compiler for that, and suddenly I could write games again. And finance applications. And mathematical explorations.

I found some of the first Perrin pseudo-primes that way, bypassing Microsoft's systems because they prevented me from doind what I wanted with the resources I had access to.

I don't hate Microsoft, but every time I use a Windows box it fails in interesting ways, costing me time, effort, patience and occasionally yet more money.

I'll use Linux.

ADDED IN EDIT AFTER RE-READING: And I'll continue to contribute to various open-source projects.

<comment><USER10> So what? If you want developer tools, they're a free download on microsoft.com <http://www.microsoft.com/express/>

Microsoft can't win here, if they shipped all that with the base OS there'd be haters hatin' on them for "bloat".

<comment><USER14> I wish I'd never answered. It's a religious war - no one will win. Lots of people will end up bloodied. I should've known better.

Still, I did reply, so let me tell you of my personal experience, and then I'll leave.

My experience is that working in a Microsoft environment as I have in the past, everything seemed bloody awkward and more annoying. Working in a Linux environment I've had far fewer hassles, and the system just doesn't get in the way.

My experience, my circumstances. I don't hate Microsoft, I've just found I'm more productive in other systems.

And I'll say nothing more on the subject. I can't care enough to do so. In fact, I couldn't really care less.

<comment><USER10> Nah, I use both platforms, I have no axe to grind. Just correcting a factual error. If you are on Windows and want to (learn to) code, the tools are readily available (and barely more hassle to install than apt-get).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anti-competitive, design-by-committee, aversion towards open source, corporate culture, bureaucratic, etc.

I don't _hate_ Microsoft but I avoid targeting their platforms.

EDIT: Oh, and there's the malware thing.

<comment><USER9> You have described every company.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but _this_ one was the 800 pound gorilla. Most of those companies don't have the power to really screw us over. Microsoft did. To some extent, they still do.

<comment><USER17> We have a new 800 pound gorilla intent on screwing us over. [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?d=v1&s=AAPL,MSFT](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?d=v1&s=AAPL,MSFT)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft has done a lot of harm in the last 20 years. They succeeded through a strategy of continually expanding into new areas (operating systems, office software, web browsers, email, programming languages, etc) and producing products that often worked poorly and only with the rest of their platform. They succeeded at this for a time, creating a monstrous shambling behemoth of software that was powered entirely by its own momentum. But it wasn't very good, and everyone knew it.

I assume that others, like me, were very frustrated during that time. We knew this wasn't the right way. Software folks tend to see the world through software eyes, and we know that an incompatible proprietary mess only comes back to haunt you. But what could we do? They had the money and the influence. To misquote PG, we bought it with misgivings. We made our sites work with IE, we made our code compile under VC++, we gave our servers and clients special_microsoft_spec_exception flags. And we bitched on Slashdot and spelled Microsoft with a dollar sign and dreamed of a day when we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore.

Well, now we don't. Apple's eating Microsoft's lunch from the hardware up, while Google chows on it from the web down. They have way too much money to fail fast, or maybe to even fail at all. But they have to play ball now. Why do programmers hate Microsoft? Justice, I suppose. They certainly didn't treat us well when they were in charge. Programmers have long memories.

</comment><comment><USER19> This claim is absurd. In the last few years Microsoft has done more to advance the state-of-the-art in programming languages for practicing developers than any other organization.

In terms of industrial languages, C# and the .NET framework are a huge advance for client-side programmers developing Windows GUI applications compared to C++. They sponsor the open source development of IronPython and IronRuby and make a genuine effort to maintain compatibility w/ the reference C implementations.

As for functional languages, they largely sponsor the development of Haskell by paying Simon Peyton-Jones who works for Microsoft Research (<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/simonpj/>), and have released F# which is by far the best commercially supported functional language.

Of course the trade off is that their languages work best, or only, with Windows, but if you are stuck programming on Windows, Microsoft is going out of its way to give developers a lot of options in languages.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are lots of programmers who like Microsoft, mostly those whose primary (and often only) target is Windows. Most of the comments are about cross- platform issues and kinda boil down to "…because it's not Unix". Which is the "The whole world's a VAX" of our times.

</comment><comment><USER21> 1) Internet Explorer 6

2) Internet Explorer 7

3) Price/quality of Visual Studio compared to other offerings - we can talk about memory footprint, MSDN subscriptions, odd versioning conflicts when trying to develop for SharePoint - oh wait.

4) SharePoint

5) <http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/fake-steve-ballmer.jpg> Honestly, this man disgusts me. His attitude and public reactions as the figurehead of Microsoft make me want to have nothing to do with Microsoft

6) Lack of POSIX compliant shell.

7) In small companies (and most families), programmers end up being IT staff. When was the last time any of you had to reformat or spend hours of your life cleaning a Mac or Linux machine because of malware? I'm not ignorant enough to think the gilded age of Mac and Linux being virtually malware free will last forever, but hey, enjoy it while it lasts.

8) <http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare> Which one is right for you? Fuck you! It's a desktop or a server. The consumer should have one choice, appropriately priced that lets them do everything they can.

9) The ridiculous price of MS Office Suite.

10) Webforms, VIEWSTATE. Seriously, fuck you VIEWSTATE, whoever designed this dumb ass approach should have their computing license revoked.

</comment><comment><USER22> Generally I think programmers hate Microsoft because programmers hate Microsoft. It's a self-perpetuating meme, and let's be honest, if your goal is to hate Microsoft (or any extremely large corporation) it's pretty easy to come up with reasons. Especially IE6, which is the Exxon Valdez of the programming world.

<comment><USER20> I think there's some truth in that. Besides factual reasons why one might dislike a particular company or piece of software, there's also the old tribal system. Back in the days, it was Amigas vs. Ataris vs PCs, or SGI vs HP vs IBM vs Apollo vs Sun…

Now, we all run the same hardware, so the operating system seems to be the only _pièce de résistance_ left. Even the arguments between vi and Emacs lost their fervor, considering the size of both RAM and vim nowadays.

At least one item where your average geek ain't that different from a football fan…

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Because I lived through the 90s and early 2000s

</comment><comment><USER12> I suspect that it's related to history, because there is a reason that the term "Microserf" exists. Microsoft used to operate like amazon does today -- burn the developers out and who gives a _$#_ about turnout, because EVERYONE wants to work here...

... which was true, but it was for the money; Microsoft stock options were making people rich.

The proof?

The year that MS stock values dropped for the first time, MS started having trouble hiring people.

They treat their own developers a LOT better than they used to, in fact almost as well as Google does.

But it's hard to live that Microserf thing down... partly because that sweatshop method, replacing process with extra hours, leads to terrible, bug- ridden code.

What irks me more than people irrationally disliking Microsoft is people who spout about how bad Microsoft's code is, and how asinine their processes are, while making exactly the same mistakes that even Microsoft learned from and has been fixing.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you want an eye-opening education, go read Mini-Microsoft (including the comments). Some groups are better than others but...

The performance review system causes corporate politics and backstabbing that beggar the imagination. MS has Darwinian competitions of very similar products that result in massive waste (see Kin that should have rolled in to Windows Phone). They do not manage dependencies well, leading to excruciating effort just to check in code. And they are basically headless.

</comment><comment><USER9> Because the only programmers who post on the various forums are all web programmers.

<comment><USER25> No, application programmers dislike Windows, too. For example, see the hell one of my friends went through for me recently: [http://github.com/shoes/shoes/commit/95fed5e6310cb0174ba80b8...](http://github.com/shoes/shoes/commit/95fed5e6310cb0174ba80b8d4a5225a16e27c14b)

And it's still not totally fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because they spit into everyone's well all the time. e.g.

\- OOXML and the related perversion of the ISO process

\- Wilful violation of standards (web, others)

\- Hurting users for hollywood (Protected media path etc.)

\- Broken security (by design) that has enabled all the botnets and spam you could ever think of, and then some.

</comment><comment><USER26> My main beefs with MS

1) Bloating Office products with each successive release and discontinuing the old menu structure. I finally did something about this and switched from Outlook to Thunderbird.

2) MS has alienated small and independent developers by making Visual Studio in a bewildering number of versions and charging too much for it. They're completely focused on enterprise computing, but the enterprise has been off- shoring development for the last 15 years, so bright young developers have no interest in MS technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> Programmers don't hate Microsoft.

Many hackers do. (No, not that kind of hacker. Those guys love Microsoft: plenty of vulnerabilities to exploit!)

But programmers, in general? They love Microsoft. Microsoft keeps food on their tables by providing Visual Basic, C#, and other tools that they can use to shovel out PoS or ERP code or whatever.

Most of the fun and innovation is in the realm of the hacker elite, though, to whom a Microsoft monoculture is both stifling and suffering from a chronic case of doing-it-wrong.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate a lot of the tools/libraries/frameworks/software I am forced to use on a daily basis, because a lot of it is complete crap, or has some very annoying misfeature that I run into constantly and there is no way around.

I'd wager that this is part of the reason many people hate Microsoft. They are or were forced to use windows at work, programming apps for windows using Microsoft tools or languages, etc. And many of them probably found it a pain in the butt.

</comment><comment><USER29> I hated Microsoft because their OS would always crash, but now I don't mind them since the MS Dev job market is so good.

</comment><comment><USER30> it's actually a very small vocal minority who hates microsoft. They hate microsoft because microsoft means ubiquitous standardized flatten programming environments the way managers like, with sheeple programmers properly strapped and assembling programs from paid frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cross browser compatibility.</comment>


The Internet without all the pesky graphics - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFF0oQySsh4

<comment><AUTHOR> internet yellowpages...lol...you'll be forgiven if you thought it was a parody</comment>


Your Coronavirus Check Is Coming. Your Bank Can Grab It - <AUTHOR> https://prospect.org/api/coronavirus/banks-can-grab-stimulus-check-pay-debts/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the correct url is [https://prospect.org/coronavirus/banks-can- grab-stimulus-che...](https://prospect.org/coronavirus/banks-can-grab- stimulus-check-pay-debts/)</comment>


Idiomatic Redux: The Tao of Redux, Part 1 – Implementation and Intent - <AUTHOR> http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/05/idiomatic-redux-tao-of-redux-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Heh. Already submitted my post yesterday, and it didn't get much traction, but thanks for the vote of interest :)

Also put up Part 2 earlier today: [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/05/idiomatic-redux- tao...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/05/idiomatic-redux-tao-of-redux- part-2/)</comment>


Glenn Gould talks about the Art of Bach's fugue - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAsP8tBlU9k

<comment><AUTHOR> This would be interesting especially for those of you that read Godel Escher Bach by Hofstadter

<comment><AUTHOR> And of course Bach and Gould fans.

Could there be any better music than Bach to listen to while programming? I think not :)</comment></comment>


Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Data center porn - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/08/data_center_por.php <comment><USER2> Hmm, pics of the outside? I was hoping for something a little more hardcore.

</comment><comment><USER3> The high fences and floodlights make the place look like a prison camp.</comment>


Do Australian startups actually have a problem hiring talent? - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsmart.com.au/advice/business-planning/hiring-talent-for-australian-startups/ <comment><USER2> This article reeks of the 'innovation boom' solution.

I think bragging about the low cost of Australian developers you can begin to see why the best devs leave for greener countries.</comment>


The Un-celebrity President - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/08/17/feature/the-un-celebrity-president-jimmy-carter-shuns-riches-lives-modestly-in-his-georgia-hometown <comment><USER2> Like Cincinnatus, returning home after the war and taking up his plow.

Two things have always struck me about Jimmy Carter.

1 - He was willing to nominate Volker to Fed chair even though he knew Volker's plan of raising interest rates massively would cost him (Carter) re- election. I believe he would have survived even the Iran crisis but for that, but it was the right thing to do. Reagan got all the credit for it since it started under Carter's watch and finished under Reagan's.

2 - he has such a reputation for Polite gentility and self sacrifice (see above) yet his maneuvering through the primary season and at the democratic convention was masterful -- he was dispassionate but brutal in putting the (political) knife into rivals, and was happy to do so publicly. That genteel/man of the people schtick extended to his use of the pronunciation "nukular" even though he had worked for Rickover and attended to the navy's nuclear school!

A complex guy whether you like him or not.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we please try pending comments? - <AUTHOR>

Look through the "comments" in this thread:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7472699<p>...and explain to me how this site hasn't devolved into Reddit. Would it really be so awful to try pending comments as a two or four week experiment? <comment><USER2> I seem to have missed the part where pending comments was nixed. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Turns out the plan was changed. I didn't know either, so I searched pg's comment history until I found something definitive. Pending comments are now per thread, and off by default: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7475834)

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much. Really glad to see they decided to make this a mod tool on an as needed basis rather than site-wide.

Have a great day.</comment></comment></comment>


Timaeus by Plato - <AUTHOR> http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html <comment><AUTHOR> Found this via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19311544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19311544), which quotes this:

> _" There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising > out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of > fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is > a story, which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the > son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he > was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was > upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the > form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in > the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the > earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who live upon > the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction > than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity > the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, > on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the > survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the > mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers > into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other time, does > the water come down from above on the fields, having always a tendency to > come up from below; for which reason the traditions preserved here are the > most ancient."_</comment>


Ask HN: Tools for deploying combined/minifed js/css - <AUTHOR>

What are your favorite tools to automate incorporating combined and minified css and js into your html when you deploy projects? <comment><USER2> <http://requirejs.org/>

It's not the easiest thing to learn but AMD is a very progressive javascript development strategy that I would not classify as a fad. i.e. good to know!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3418468>

I ended up writing that

</comment><comment><USER3> I use juicer, works pretty well!

</comment><comment><USER4> If I'm using Django, I really like django-compressor[1].

If I'm using Flask, I really like Flask Assets[2].

[1] - [http://django_compressor.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.htm...](http://django_compressor.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html)

[2] - <http://flask-assets.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html></comment>


Vote up the submitter, not the story - <AUTHOR> http://www.votetheuser.com/ I thought I would give a go at learning arc and was looking for a project to start on.  There have been a lot of comments lately about the quality of the submitted stories and it sounded like an opportunity.  I thought it would be interesting if stories were scored based on the karma of the submitter.  Not the global karma, but a new karma for each submitter, unique to each user.  Instead of voting on the story you are voting on the submitter.
voteTheUser.com is the result.
Basically each user gets a personalized front page of stories based on previous votes.  The more stories you vote on the better it will work for you.
If you like dogs, vote up stories about dogs and you will get more stories on your front page from people who submit dog stories.  If you don't, vote them down and you will see less.  If you love polls vote them up.  It won't matter to me because I will probably have voted them down.  You'll see more of them and I'll see less.
Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.  Mind you, this is my first arc attempt and is really just a cheap knock off of Hacker News.  I'm just copying what I like. <comment><AUTHOR> I thought I would give a go at learning arc and was looking for a project to start on. There have been a lot of comments lately about the quality of the submitted stories and it sounded like an opportunity. I thought it would be interesting if stories were scored based on the karma of the submitter. Not the global karma, but a new karma for each submitter, unique to each user. Instead of voting on the story you are voting on the submitter.

voteTheUser.com is the result.

Basically each user gets a personalized front page of stories based on previous votes. The more stories you vote on the better it will work for you.

If you like dogs, vote up stories about dogs and you will get more stories on your front page from people who submit dog stories. If you don't, vote them down and you will see less. If you love polls vote them up. It won't matter to me because I will probably have voted them down. You'll see more of them and I'll see less.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you. Mind you, this is my first arc attempt and is really just a cheap knock off of Hacker News. I'm just copying what I like.

<comment><USER2> Just want to warn you.. I think you'll get flack from quite a few people on the design. I don't care personally, but some people get pretty excited about stuff like this :) Even changing the color might help deflect some of it ;-)

Very interesting you've used Arc, by the way. Will you ever release the source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure if I thought anyone was interested. I think anyone half way proficient in arc could redo what I did easier than trying to figure out what I did by reading the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting.

You may want to change the color scheme, to avoid confusion with News.YC.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you know that with a proper recommendation system you can vote both the user AND the story at the same time?

<comment><USER5> Lemme guess, jaanix?

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you should say that. A link to jaanix was one of the first stories submitted to voteTheUser. At first I thought jaanix was too complicated but I really should give it a good look.</comment></comment></comment>


Warning: Malware Based on Chrome is Real - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/warning-malware-based-on-chrome-is-real/ <comment><USER2> So what are they supposed to do about this? Even if you move legit security warnings out of the browser window and into the chrome, I don't think it does much to stop this sort of attack.

<comment><USER3> What about making the address bar red when there is a bad site, similar to how the address bar is green for ssl sites?

<comment><USER2> Sure, but how many of the people who fell for the current scam would have noticed that the address bar was it's normal color?

<comment><USER3> You could put a notice on the bottom of real ones telling the user to look at the address bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is phishing after all and a clever one also. People need to be more paranoid while browsing the internet.

</comment><comment><USER5> What the hell kind of headline is this?

It's a webpage that looks like a legitimate warning. It's basically a play on traditional phishing. Saying that it's "malware based on chrome" is fear mongering and by implication is inaccurate.</comment>


Search Flickr images by color - <AUTHOR> http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/

<comment><USER2> Forgive me for asking, but hasn't this been done before for years? What makes this implementation unique?</comment>


Deep dive into MONARC security objects with MOSP thanks to JSON schemas - <AUTHOR> https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/relations/21 <comment><AUTHOR> The corresponding schema is here: [https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/view/21](https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/view/21)

Everything is managed by MOSP: [https://github.com/CASES- LU/MOSP](https://github.com/CASES-LU/MOSP)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And an example with GDPR records of processing activities:

[https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/relations/19](https://objects.monarc.lu/schema/relations/19)</comment>