Microsoft and Google collaborate to make PWAs better - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/pwabuilder/microsoft-and-google-team-up-to-make-pwas-better-in-the-play-store-b59710e487 <comment><USER2> Nice, I like the way Microsoft chose to ignore the bad blood with Google regarding its apps for Windows Phone and has embraced Android.

PWA collaboration seems to be a step in the right direction, especially since Edge is using chromium and Microsoft seems to be building great PWA apps[1].

Although I'm not entirely sure about Google's end game with PWA[2], I hope these kind of collaboration motivates industries to build more PWA apps and put pressure on Apple to properly support PWA APIs in Safari; then may be, just may be one day we'll have fair grounds for new mobile operating systems to compete without this Playstore/Appstore duopoly.

[1][https://www.bing.com/covid/](https://www.bing.com/covid/)

[2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23574697)

<comment><USER3> I agree. Apple is stifling innovation by not supporting certain APIs.

They need to stop doing this, or they will hurt themselves in the long run. As it is, most people use Safari on iOS because they are forced to - all other browsers on iOS are forced to use WKWebView, which basically means they are wrappers around Safari's view.

To this day, I can't understand why their users stand for this. In this regard, Apple reminds me of a cult leader brainwashing their followers into believing the cult's way is the best way. Makes me a little sick actually.

<comment><USER4> _In this regard, Apple reminds me of a cult leader brainwashing their followers into believing the cult 's way is the best way. Makes me a little sick actually._

Are you sure you aren't the one being brainwashed?

Why should anyone trust Google, since they make virtually all of their revenue from ad tech, which means tracking users across the web, even when they don't want to be. Advertisers are Google's customers, not the users of their browsers or operating systems.

And since Apple makes virtually all of their revenue from selling devices and services, who's more credible on the issue of privacy?

If we are to believe Apple cares about its users, then it makes perfect sense why they don't allow slower, less power efficient, less secure and less private web engines available on iOS.

"But shouldn't this be up to the user?" some will say ask. Yes, but to a point. There are already so many ways on the web to shoot yourself in the foot. Apple is making it clear that if you want a platform where there are no safeguards, then this isn't the platform for you.

There are certainly a tiny, vocal minority of iOS users who complain a lot about wanting the ability to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. But Apple knows those aren't their core users and their revenue show that.

 _They need to stop doing this, or they will hurt themselves in the long run._

People have been saying this for many years and now they're valued at over $1.5 trillion during an _economic collapse and global pandemic_. Please tell me when the lack of web APIs that would make it easier for their users to be tracked on the web is going to have any material effect on them.

<comment><USER3> Oh man, not sure where to begin with responding to this.

I'm not saying Google is incredible (my opinion is quite the contrary actually). However, I am saying Apple is holding the web back, in a fairly annoying way, for developers.

The fact that they are a rich corporate does not mean they always will be, or that they're conducting their business in the best way possible. There are plenty of examples of rich tech businesses that lost their market share very quickly. We don't even need to look that far into the past for an example: BlackBerry sticks out in my mind. I believe their stubbornness and resistance to change caused their downfall. I feel it may be a similar fate for Apple, and for similar reasons, unless they change their attitude towards the web.

<comment><USER5> "Apple is holding the web back"

Nope, Apple is taking care of it's customers and protecting them from Google's ad exploitation.

"I feel it may be a similar fate for Apple, and for similar reasons, unless they change their attitude towards the web"

On the contrary, if Apple allowed this web Wild West that Google is advocating, then the users would have incentive to switch. This move from Apple actually ensures that things run smoothly on Apple devices.

It is not about "power for web developers", it is web developers being lazy to self-educate and learn other stacks.

There is skill called "desktop development" and it does not entail Electron.

Luckily Apple is not gonna let that happen with the mobile apps and the PWA.

<comment><USER3> But Apple's app store is full of junk too - it is a veritable wild west in its own right.

You have the likes of Tiktok on there, collecting way more data than a PWA ever could. Do Apple not care about that?

Feels like a bit of a double standard on privacy, explicitly aimed at stifling the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish that firefox and ubuntu would hop on board with this. It seems like they both should be at the forefront of this, but for some reason it's still impossible to make a PWA show up in my app list on ubuntu without installing chrome.

Firefox on android does a great job of notifying and offering to install PWAs, but on desktop seems to pretend they don't exist. The bug report for adding any PWA support on desktop has been languishing for years. And as far as i can tell, the ubuntu software center team doesn't believe that PWAs exist at all.

it seems crazy to me that there's no functionality built into ubuntu that allows me to add youtube to the app list.

<comment><USER7> Yes, would be cool.

Firefox is currently unusable on mobile :/

<comment><USER8> I'm going to guess you're on iOS where you don't actually have Firefox (or any other actual browsers besides Safari). Firefox on iOS (like all iOS browsers) is required by App store rules to basically just skin Safari.

On Android, Firefox is the MOST usable browser.

<comment><USER9> Then why doesn't anyone use it? Honest question - Mobile Firefox stands at less than half a percentage point marketshare.

<comment><USER10> Just speculation on my part but... On Android, the default (Chrome) is good enough that most people won't think of trying something else, and on iOS Safari is really your only choice anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am very excited about the idea of both of these monsters actually getting behind PWA. One can only wonder about their motivations (i.e. anti-trust heating up), but I will take whatever I can get at this point.

To me, full support for PWA across all vendors' app stores would represent a revolution in the ability for hobbyists and small development shops to publish incredible applications.

Has HN not been published as a PWA to the various app stores yet? This seems like an obvious use case and could serve as a great example for other applications.

</comment><comment><USER12> PWA = Progressive Web Apps

A progressive web application is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

<comment><USER13> So it's a new name for a website?

<comment><USER14> Yes and no. That's a website that need to check some requirements to be called PWA.

\- Fast (cache with service worker)

\- Reponsive (no explanation needed)

\- Offline page (so if the user lost connection or the web site is cached and he visite when he's no connection the app should work or at least display a custom offline page)

\- Engaging (fancy word, to say it's need to behave like an app + push notifications)

\- Installable (if the browser is compatible and you visite the website more than once it'll ask you if you want to install the app. This will create a shortcut and when you click on it it'll open like an app (no address bar))

But Apple is very late and don't support all of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Admittedly it might be my fault for living under a rock, but I don't know what PWA stands for. The fact that the linked article uses the acronym without ever writing out its long form even once rubs me the wrong way. For those like me who are in the dark: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application)

<comment><USER16> It stands for Poor-experience Web Applications. It's basically website + more JavaScript to get some features somewhat working without network. It's marketed as the next generation tech for mobile web application but the truth is that without access to the underlying API it's hard to even get close to native capabilities. And as the web is already super bloated I don't think it would be a good idea to add more.

<comment><USER17> Finally, someone who puts it, a website must be a website, an app must be an app. I don't understand why people go crazy for an abomination of dead service workers for something that runs on APIs almost all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember when the microsoft app store on windows 8 were a bunch of websites wrapped into an app. It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows app store.

That being said, how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a website wrapped into an app?

<comment><AUTHOR> > "It really lowered the quality of apps and the overall appeal of the windows > app store...how will PWAs get around the apple and google requirements that > apps downloadable from their stores where they mention apps can't just be a > website wrapped into an app"

Fair question. Google is implementing a new quality bar for PWAs in their store. See this post[0] for details.

Microsoft also is doing work in this area. We're not ready to share details, but will likely in the coming months.

With PWABuilder, our goal is to help devs build _quality_ PWAs: ones with rich offline experiences, measurably great performance, and apps that are functionally rich. This implies something more than e.g. your resume packaged as a PWA. Towards that end, PWABuilder analyzes your PWA and gives you feedback on capabilities: encourages use of our rich web components[1], helps you build a great offline experience[2], and more. Whether your app is functionally useful (i.e. not just a brochure) is a quality bar left to app stores themselves.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/1276223634550353920](https://twitter.com/ChromiumDev/status/1276223634550353920)

[1]: [https://components.pwabuilder.com](https://components.pwabuilder.com)

[2]: [https://www.pwabuilder.com/serviceworker](https://www.pwabuilder.com/serviceworker)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The main problem I see in PWAs these days is that they cannot permanently store data on the device. As soon as the user deletes their "browser data", all the data of the PWAs on the device is lost too.

If PWAs would get their own permanent storage like other apps, it would be a huge step forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly it's true PWAs are subject to the user's desires about browser data. I think that's a good thing for users.

PWAs usually store client-side data as a kind of cache: cookies, local storage, service worker cache. Caches are not meant to be permanent.

There may be room for improvement here, however. One might imagine that clearing browser data shouldn't clear data for installed PWAs. That's an argument worth further evaluation.

<comment><USER19> Can you elaborate why it could be a good thing for users?

Not being able to reliably store data on the device means that PWAs have to send the users data over the internet and store it on an external server. I would think users rather do not like that.

I am only talking about installed PWAs here. Of course not every website should be able to avoid having its cookies deleted.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Good for users" was in the context of PWAs, not installed PWAs. Clearly the user's expectation is that clearing browsing data will clear data for web apps they navigate to in the browser.

Installed PWAs is another question. I suspect users will be surprised if they clear their browsing data only to discover they have to login again to Twitter, for example.

I may raise this question to the Edge Chromium team. I'm certain it's been raised before, but with Microsoft making PWAs first-class on Windows[0], this becomes a more prominent issue.

[0]: [https://www.windowscentral.com/heres-how-microsoft-making- ed...](https://www.windowscentral.com/heres-how-microsoft-making-edge-pwas- feel-more-native-apps)

<comment><USER19> Keeping the user logged in is not the issue. A PWA can inject a unique ID into the installation in various ways.

The problem is the data. Imagine a text editor where all your text documents are gone after you cleared the data of a different app, the browser.

I wrote a fitness app as a PWA some time ago and its pretty annoying to download all the instruction videos again every time you clear your "browser data". Plus all infos about which exercises you did and when is gone for good of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "Imagine a text editor where all your text documents are gone after you > cleared the browser data"

One way to address that issue is the native file system access APIs[0] coming soon, available today in Chrome Canary and Edge Canary. There, you'd be able to save your documents to the user's file system, just like a native app would. Those files will be exempt from any browser data clearing.

> all infos about which exercises you did and when is gone for good of course.

Might be good to store that data on the server. I realize not all PWAs have a proper backend server, but that sounds like a good candidate.

[0]: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=853326](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=853326)

<comment><USER19> > Native File System API

Great, so there is light at the end of the tunnel!

> store that data on the server

Well, we talked about that already:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793541)

<comment><USER20> I wonder how Mozilla will handle this, given that so far they deemed file system access as too dangerous even for extensions, nevermind random web pages…

<comment><USER21> They will kill it as they did the same to the two previous versions of the same thing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I feel, is a fundamental problem.

Perhaps the solution instead is that we need a way to distribute natively compilable apps via other means, maybe through a website but also through other app stores not subject to the Google / Apple duopoly; so basically PWA level access and downloadability, but not made with web technologies.

<comment><USER23> > With PWAs, you have to write apps in HTML, CSS, and JS, which seems worse > than natively compiled languages like Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, etc. This, I > feel, is a fundamental problem.

Flutter supports compiling to PWAs

[https://flutter.dev/web](https://flutter.dev/web)

<comment><USER22> It does, but Flutter web performance is worse than when compiled to apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the sense in publishing your PWA in the Play Store? Chrome already prompts the user if they'd like to install a PWA shortcut when you visit the site. I ask because it costs $25 and while I have a lot of time on my hands I'm a cheap ass.

<comment><USER25> Discoverability. Users browsing Play Store might see your app in related apps list or in search results. And you will get a way to gather user feedback without hosting and moderating forum or discussion board. Also, we are still at the point when you tell user to download an app, one usually goes to Play/App Store, not searches the web.

<comment><USER26> > Discoverability. Users browsing Play Store might see your app in related > apps list or in search results.

Since when anything in Play Store (or Apple's App Store, for that matter) was discoverable? I can't find anything even remotely relevant to anything i want using these stores, i always have to use 3rd party sites (or just google something like "<something i want> for android", sometimes even adding a site:reddit.com at the side if there are too many results, just to see what others are suggesting) and then if there isn't a Play Store link, i have to write the app's name _exactly_ in the store's search, otherwise it will never appear on the results.

Discoverability has been a joke on these stores ever since they got more than about 1000 apps - and they still are designed as if they only have about 1000 apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Awesome! I hope this will put some pressure on Apple to add support for critical PWA features (e.g. push notifications) to iOS.

<comment><USER28> +100

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Firefox needs to catch up on PWA support for desktop, Safari too.

<comment><USER29> It's catching up slowly. I can save a website and open it in its own window (at least on Firefox Beta).

What's missing is the ability to integrate it with my OS app launcher, though I can get around that by adding my own launcher. Something like:

        firefox --ssb="https://news.ycombinator.com"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You seem to be heavily involved in the PWABuilder website. Can you explain why the PWA needs to register a pushManager? I'd like to publish my app without setting up push notifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't need to register a push manager; only if you want to send push notifications.

If you're referring to the PWABuilder analysis page, yeah, we hear your feedback. We're going to be revamping that page in the coming months. We'll deal with push notification score when we do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was disappointed to learn that [https://pwabuilder.com](https://pwabuilder.com) can't process the PWAs that are produced by our app builder Calcapp, erroneously claiming that our PWAs have no manifest.

I dug into pwabuilder-lib and found the culprit: our manifest URLs use search parameters, which are silently stripped by pwabuilder-lib. Here's the GitHub issue I filed, including a proposed fix:

[https://github.com/pwa-builder/PWABuilder/issues/949](https://github.com/pwa- builder/PWABuilder/issues/949)

Obviously, this wouldn't have been possible if PWABuilder hadn't been open source, so kudos for that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pwa's are not a replacement for electron, and can't be. Either you sandbox for security, or you don't.

Pwas are for apps wherein their functionality is entirely web based, and people just want an icon for it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hey! I see a lot of confusions on PWA on what they can or can't do in the comments. I've written an article trying to address that in a fun way: [https://www.davrous.com/2019/10/18/myth-busting-pwas-the- new...](https://www.davrous.com/2019/10/18/myth-busting-pwas-the-new-edge- edition/) by busting 9 common myths on Progressive Web Apps. For instance, they can use WASM which is production ready for years in all browsers!

<comment><USER33> My eli5 is, a PWA is just a web app that:

* is installed

* may run offline

* may use extra system resources

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> One issue with add to shelf / add to desktop is that it will be just another modal like Notifications that users has to click cancel. All Apple has to do is to show a little cloud if the web app has a webmanifest, the functionality is already there

</comment><comment><USER35> I have a feeling that Microsoft is going to launch an "Edgebook" competitor to Chromebook in the the future using Windows 10X. This obviously is good for the ecosystem all around, for tablets, phones, desktop, etc.

<comment><USER9> Isn't this Windows RT?

<comment><USER36> Windows RT is long gone, I guess you mean Windows on ARM.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface- pro-x/8vdnrp2m6hhc...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface- pro-x/8vdnrp2m6hhc?activetab=overview)

[https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows- laptops/galaxy-...](https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/windows- laptops/galaxy-book-s/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This article used the term "PWA" 24 times without defining it once. I assume the WA part means Web App but it's the "P" for "portable" , "Pocket" or something else?

<comment><USER38> Progressive Web App: [https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps- escaping-t...](https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping- tabs-without-losing-our-soul/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Microsoft is now using Medium as their official blogging service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Some teams use it, including ours (PWABuilder).

<comment><USER39> That is like a team at Microsoft using Gmail as their email provider.

<comment><USER40> What is the name of that blogging software Microsoft is providing in competition with Medium?

<comment><USER41> I don't think there's a public blogging software unless you count Sharepoint but I doubt that would scale well. Still Microsoft has a number of web products that could be used instead of Medium. A lot of the smaller Microsoft weblogs use Azure websites with Wordpress and the bigger ones are part of Micrsoft's in-house multisite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> PWAs are worthless for me until full networking access is provideded(i.e no CORS, set custom headers etc). Until then PWAs are just bookmarks of websites.

</comment><comment><USER43> As the author seems to be here, the links in the "Add features to my PWA" section on pwabuilder website, don't seem to work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. We just changed the URLs to that yesterday. Fixing! In the meantime, you can access those components here[0].

[0]: [https://components.pwabuilder.com/](https://components.pwabuilder.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I miss Chrome apps. What was wrong with them? Genuine question.

<comment><USER45> They were proprietary; only worked in chrome. Progressive webapps are built out of open standards, and will ideally eventually work everywhere.

<comment><USER36> Guess what browser implements all stuff from [http://web.dev](http://web.dev) and has the biggest coverage for WebAssembly?

Open standards are meaningless when only one cares about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if they're doing this for the Surface Duo launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair question. Certainly Microsoft wants Duo to succeed. But PWABuilder been pushing for PWAs in App Stores for years -- we also support MacOS, Samsung Galaxy Store, Microsoft Store, and others. (We're talking with Apple now to enable PWAs in iOS app store as well.)

This collaboration with Google took place because Google revamped their "PWAs in the Store" story. It used to be a very basic story: a native app wrapping a web view that loads your PWA. Those worked, but didn't support some modern APIs (e.g. service worker, IIRC), didn't share cookies and login information with the browser, and other problems.

Google revamped the story here to a more first-class approach for PWAs in their Store. It's called "Trusted Web Activities."

And earlier this year, Google created Bubblewrap, a command line tool to generate a proper Trusted Web Activity for publishing in their Store. So we wanted to take advantage of that new and better approach. That's really our reason for collaboration here.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py what's that other company? starts with an A?</comment>


The Unknown Blogger Who Changed WikiLeaks Coverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/the-unknown-blogger-who-changed-the-wikileaks-conversation/67936 <comment><USER2> Thanks for the good read; now have Bady's blog in my GReader.</comment>


Feature Flag Debt - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ph1/status/1263186192951939072 <comment><AUTHOR> The discussion thread is related to a tool created by UBER: Piranha - [https://eng.uber.com/piranha/](https://eng.uber.com/piranha/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why did blogger.com and how did WordPress.org compete with Google? - <AUTHOR> WordPress.org powers 30% of the sites today. It clearly won the CMS race. How did it compete with heavily funded blogger.com? <comment><USER2> Wordpress long predates Google's acquisition of Blogger. In fact, I think hosted Wordpress.com predates the acquisition, too. And even if it didn't, Wordpress already had enough market share and mind share by then thatit didn't have to scrabble to get a foothold against the giant. Plus Google doesn't seem to care much at all about Blogger and hasn't thrown any weight behind it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be because most of the initial bloggers were developers or at least had fair bit of technical knowledge. They wanted more control of both, data and UI.

Personally, and I know several people who choose to self host various blogging softwares mainly because they didn't trust 3rd party with their data. Who knows if they will vanish overnight or hold your data hostage.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like one reason I moved from using Blogger to WordPress was because I wanted to use my own domain name as opposed to *.blogspot.com.

Not totally sure I'm remember correctly, but I don't believe Blogger offered that at the time (~2005-2006).

</comment><comment><USER5> Remember that you're competing with a team that implemented a feature that redirects you to the domain with the tld of the country of ip !!!

</comment><comment><USER6> wordpress gained huge popularity especially when people were building websites using PHP. Wordpress sites were not just restricted to blogs but it gave you an ability to put up a ecommerce store. it also had plugin marketplace which made it successful.</comment>


DARPA Network Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

<comment><USER2> They has as well have called this "facebook vs. twitter".

For the former, start a group, and build awareness. Direct the money to a cause. Use the iphone app to post and get updates.

For twitter, post to and follow a hashtag. At least 50% of your human labor will need to be dedicated to filtering spam if the tag starts to trend.

Definitely search on either to get random people on board [http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp=&q=red...](http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp=&q=red+balloon&gl=1&lo=en_US&sp=7)

</comment><comment><USER3> How big a fleet of drone aircraft would you need search the US in a couple hours? It'd be tens of thousands, but it might be doable for a few million bucks. I think you could fly pretty high and use large telephoto lenses and high-speed video cameras to see red dots while scanning quickly. That'd be a more interesting project than trying to enlist a lot of volunteer spotters with iPhone apps.

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds tailor-made for an iPhone app. Perhaps Foursquare could award a badge for finding one of the balloons.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking the best approach might be an intelligent system to scape from Twitter/Facebook and correlate location words with "What the heck is that big balloon"-type phrases...would be difficult, but such a system could be really useful for the next major disaster.

<comment><USER5> Id just take the risk and watch for the relevant hash tags rather than filtering other keywords :)

Besides sounds like they want pretty specific lat/long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably the best way to win is to deploy a couple dozen red balloons of your own...

<comment><USER7> That certainly wouldn't be ethical (as it would cause havoc for the other contestants) and it would be ludicrous (as DARPA would obviously know that your balloons were fake).

<comment><USER8> Putting up another 89 red balloons would be nice anti-war protest. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons> :)

Also, making the contest more hostile would arguably be very ethical given that DARPA are funding it. It would presumably provide a better research outcome if the winning method had to deal with bad actors.

It wouldn't be ludicrous, because it would force your competitors to deal with the problem of fake balloon, presumably increasing your chances of winning (assuming you have some method for determining what is a real balloon and what is a fake one)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are a variety of different ways to try to win this competition but I'm sure most of them leverage, in one way or another, having as many people as possible know about the competition. Everyone should help spread the word!

We're trying to do that on Facebook and on our website:

<http://www.redballoonrace.com>

Check us out and shoot me an email! Tell me what you think!

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a good interview question: The required accuracy is 1 arc minute, which is approximately 1.86 kms. The area of the continental United States is approximately 8080464 sq. km.

How many entries do you need to submit to guarantee one will contain the correct answer?

Supplementary question for extra credit: Let the correct answer above be X. Suggest a solution for finding the earliest correct answer from 10X entries.

:)

</comment><comment><USER10> a.k.a. the biggest prisoner's dilemma competition yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> We've got a strong team that's going to give all the money to charity (Red Cross). If you'd like to help, report your balloon sightings to <http://www.ispyaredballoon.com/> or at facebook <http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372>

</comment><comment><USER12> From the rules.

Eligibility: The DARPA Network Challenge is open to individuals of all ages irrespective of nationality or residency.

Prizes: The winner must provide a U.S. taxpayer identification number (e.g. a social security number) to receive the cash prize.

So you can participate no matter who or where you are, but you can only win the prize if you live(d) in the US?

<comment><USER13> Given that the balloons are in the US, I'm not sure that's much of a restriction.

<comment><USER14> Not necessary. If you assume that people is going to spread the news in twitter (or blogs, facebook, etc.) when they find a balloon, the locations is not a restriction. You just need a smart enough engine to search and find those tweets. Now, the "smart engine technology" is the difficult task (and for sure what DARPA is looking for).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My team, DeciNena, will win because we have the best technology, the coolest name, and are cupcake-free.

We are even offering to share some of the prize money with participating team members who don't find a balloon themselves!

<http://decinena.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> An HN team anyone? I'd be interested to see how far our skills could take us.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, if it is known someone will pay $X per photo with embedded GPS coordinates taken from under the ballon, then aren't we talking about how close to $4,000 a central gatherer is willing to go?

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't get it. Do you submit results once, or you can resubmit? Makes a lot of difference!

</comment><comment><USER19> now THAT is a cool competition

</comment><comment><USER20> Help the best-funded and least accountable military on the globe with some free intelligence work. How exciting.</comment>


Single opt-in will become the default setting for all MailChimp signup forms - <AUTHOR> http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=f7b9ee22124ff6454424dc10c&id=1cbbfa1c28 <comment><USER2> I feel this is a huge change for MailChimp and needs more explaining considering how much noise they've made about double opt-in over the years.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Isn't DOI a legal requirement in many countries?</comment>


How to stop Firefox from making automatic connections - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections <comment><USER2> Congrats on making this public and clear. Is there such a precise (&exhaustive ) document for google chrome/ edge ?

<comment><USER3> [http://superuser.com/questions/633648/how-can-i-change- the-d...](http://superuser.com/questions/633648/how-can-i-change-the-default- website-connection-timeout-in-chrome)

<comment><USER4> What question does this answer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The OpenH264 codec is not distributed with Firefox but gets downloaded at the first start of Firefox. In case you want to prohibit that, you will have to preconfigure the browser and set the media.gmp- gmpopenh264.autoupdatemedia.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled preference to false. "

I have to disable it before I START firefox?? How?

<comment><USER6> In your Firefox profile directory, there's a file called "prefs.js". Of course, that (obviously) requires you have a FF profile, so I'm not sure how much use it would be.

I guess the "easier" way would be to just disconnect your internet, and then install and start Firefox.

<comment><USER7> Alternately, before starting Firefox:

        echo 'user_pref("media.gmp-gmpopenh264.autoupdatemedia.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled", false);' >> user.js

Preferences set in the user.js file are applied after those in prefs.js, but are persistent - while the current prefs settings are saved to prefs.js when Firefox exits, the prefs in user.js are re-applied on every restart of Firefox - so you would have to edit user.js to persistently change Firefox' behavior.

Thus user.js is handy for knowledgeable users, but could be a bit of a trap for less capable users. ("I can't make it change!")

While I'm on about:config stuff, a handy way to search for config variables is a shortcut:

[ac] about:config filter

invoked by putting, say,

        ac media.gmp

in the address bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like a disable-all button for web development.

Also to have the old behavior back for soooo many things... like hitting enter in the URL bar actually load the URL even if it didn't change.

<comment><USER8> Not sure if this is what you need, but you can try:

browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete = false

This should bring back the old search bar behaviour so you don't need two keypresses to load a webpage.

<comment><USER9> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To me this is poor design. I prefer to have everything turned off by default. Then I have to learn how to turn things on.

In the end, this teaches me much more about controlling the program's behaviour than having developers make decisions for me. But that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER11> Not sure of the exact figures, but a large portion of computer users never change the options for their programs (nor are they particularly able to).

For these users, sub-optimal settings are permanent, so you want to turn everything on.

This is one of the problems with a single program being shared by several demographics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be great if non-technical end-users could control their enviroment and disable these things; this page, while a great step forward, still is much too long and complex - it's too long for me to read the whole thing.

Firefox needs a button in preferences that says 'enable only connections specifically initiated by the user' \- worded better and with appropriate warnings of functionality loss. Or an add-on would be great.

<comment><USER13> I disagree, there is a lot of functionality aimed to keep users safe, if "non- technical end-users" can't understand and go through them; they may be better leaving them alone. On the other hand also prevents those users from changing something and find non expected behavior.

<comment><USER12> > if "non-technical end-users" can't understand and go through them; they may > be better leaving them alone.

I understand this reasoning, but I think the pendulum has swung too far from _end-user control_ to a patronizing attitude where we tell users what is good for them - in fact, we decide for them without even telling them.

For example, in this case perhaps some users value confidentiality over system integrity or over performance; Mozilla doesn't empower them to make that decision; the users don't even know that a decision has been made. Mozilla could facillitate end-user control by making the options safe and by explaining them clearly.

There is a balance of course, and I'm just using this issue as a example - it's hardly the most critical.

<comment><USER14> Turning Firefox into Config Simulator 2016 would just alienate nontechnical users, not empower them.

I don't see how it's patronizing to say, "You can set this the way you want if you care, and people who don't care aren't faced with a bunch of choices they don't want."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They should put these settings in the setup.</comment>


Apple is launching a project to map the inside of every large building - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-indoor-mapping-project-and-ibeacon-2014-6

<comment><USER2> "It was intended to compete against or replace Google Maps for iPhone users, but it turned out to be filled with errors and distortions, some of them hilarious — the Brooklyn Bridge imagery was so twisted it looked like it was collapsing into the East River."

It bothers me that the genuine usability issues stemming from some incorrect landmark data at the launch of Apple maps are still confused with eye candy hiccups due to the fact that pixel-perfect automated city reconstruction is a hard computer vision problem. The distortion of the Brooklyn Bridge's imagery when projected onto noisy height-map data had no effect on routing people to their destinations correctly. You'll find countless examples of funny-looking projections, weird shadows, etc. on Google Earth as well simply due to the nature of projecting imagery captured from one viewpoint onto incomplete proxy geometry and viewing from another viewpoint.

<comment><USER3> That's true, but it's also _the Brooklyn Bridge_. It's a testament to the fact that they launched their Maps app well before it was ready.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article says that Apple "has the jump" on Google when it comes to indoor maps, but Google already has indoor maps in a lot of places. What gives?

<comment><USER5> The media will say almost anything to stir up controversy and get page views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how happy Apple is about a CEO from a partner company effectively pre-announcing their efforts here. Sure, it wasn't secret, but it was also not covered by the press before.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what I thought after Dr. Dre appeared in a video pretty much announcing Beats acquisition before it was official.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Apple appears to be hoping to persuade building owners to upload a map of their space, and then iBeacons could in theory be used to automatically validate the map's accuracy...currently, Google is validating its indoor maps by hand"

It's interesting that the innovation here is apparently going to be in the verification, with humans manually building the maps. I wonder if Google's 'Project Tango' is supposed to be merging these steps so the map doesn't have to be built manually and is automatically verified - that certainly seems like a possible use of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> They acquired WiFiSLAM a while back, which was an indoor location company.

[http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/03/26/what-exactly- wifislam...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/03/26/what-exactly-wifislam-is- and-why-apple-acquired-it/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure how important this feature is to actual users. Seems like a waste of resources. But it's Apple so I'm sure they have a good reason

</comment><comment><USER11> Blueprint Roomba instead of DJ Roomba?

</comment><comment><USER12> Now Apple will know exactly when you're taking a shit.

edit: I wonder what type of algorithms they'll be able to run over world poop production to extract maximum shareholder value? Will they be able to maximize network efficiency by pinpointing world shit cycles? iMessage usage probably shoots straight up. When people aren't shitting, that capacity could be shifted. Do people buy more when they're shitting? Good place for analytics. Glad you volunteered the information.

<comment><USER13> Don't buy an iPhone. Don't use a smartphone. Use a smartphone from another vendor that doesn't track you. Turn off your smartphone. Take the battery out of your smartphone. Block or don't reveal location data to the extent you can.

Take your pick, you've got plenty of options if you don't like the way Apple does business.

<comment><USER12> Should I leave America if I don't like the NSA? Or when Google follows suit (as they already seem to be doing) do I have no other choice than to drop out of the culture? What about when all phones are smart, and there's no payphones left? Should I get all of my family to just move closer to me?

>you've got plenty of options if you don't like the way Apple does business.

This is a lie by oversimplification.

edit: this is the dystopia of months in the future, not years. You're announcing when you shit, and announcing when you sleep, and announcing who you sleep with, to the vendor of your phone.

edit2: I'm honestly shocked that this is a minority opinion. It's not going to be X is on 509 Main Street, it's going eventually going to be X is in the bathroom at 509 Main Street. What possible consumer benefit could that have? Is it to help you find local businesses that appeal to your interests?

I have to assume that I'm just out of touch and people love the attention. I don't.

<comment><USER14> "Should I leave America if I don't like the NSA?"

Yes. That would probably be the easiest thing. It's not like the NSA are going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe move out of the Area 51 tin-foil campgrounds worrying about who knows when you're in the bathroom. Nobody is forcing you to buy Apple products or any other smartphone for that matter. The world managed just fine before them, and if it makes you happier, I'm sure you'll manage just fine without one too.

<comment><USER12> I don't buy Apple products, your reply is utterly vacuous, and you should be ashamed. Use iPads for plates for all I care.

edit: and as a programmer, I'm largely going to be the watcher, not the watchee. I'll program for it, but I'll never use a product that is openly user hostile.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


25 Years Later, 'Crossing the Chasm' Has Withstood the Test of Time - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/inside-the-salesforce-ecosystem/25-years-later-crossing-the-chasm-has-withstood-the-test-of-time-628b85d3cfaf#.dt7kythc7 <comment><USER2> An insightful book, though like most business books (and especially the best business books) it's really a short paper (one excellent picture with a brief explanation) padded out so it will work on an airport bookshelf.

This is why there are businesses which simply summarize business books, yet not the same for most other books.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a pity that this book has deserved so much attention over the years when the real research that made it possible is beautifully covered at Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers first published in 1962 and updated periodically</comment>


How Else Heart.Break() turns players into coders - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/view/news/254555/How_else_HeartBreak_turns_players_into_coders.php <comment><USER2> I've been working on a programming game of my own along similar lines: [http://technomancy.itch.io/bussard](http://technomancy.itch.io/bussard)

The setting is interstellar rather than urban, and it's still in the early stages of development, but the idea of everything around you being made out of code is central in both. The idea is that your ship behaves less like an arcade game and more like a mashup between Emacs and orbital mechanics--the config file for your ship binds keystrokes to various systems on your ship, and you're never more than a keystroke away from a REPL. But the functions that control your ship are available as an API you can call from your own functions as well.

I'm hoping that at some point it can become polished enough that it could be the means by which beginners could learn to code. There's something about having a "real-world" purpose behind your coding that can really catch the imagination of kids especially.

A good example of this is how earlier today we were testing the game and flying around, and we noticed that an asteroid had fallen into a very close orbit around a particular star. Normally matching velocity with an asteroid in order to mine it is rather tricky when the velocity is steady, but when it's careening in low orbit around a star it's virtually impossible. But by writing a 6-line function that checked the distance between the ship and the asteroid and only activated the laser when it was in range, eventually the wild gyrating around and firing made contact, and the asteroid was destroyed.

I don't think I've seen my kids as excited about a single function worth of code as when that asteroid blew up.

<comment><USER3> I love live coding environments, and yours looks really fun.

Being so easy to embed, Lua is perfect for basing a live coding environment on. Here is one I made that is also based on Lua, as well as an assortment of other embeddable languages: [https://github.com/createuniverses/praxis](https://github.com/createuniverses/praxis)

Being able to change the universe/game while its running is why I made this.

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is very cool. It shares a lot of the underlying motivation I had in making my own game, but it's much more abstract--I wanted to make it a game specifically in order to get my kids interested, but the same underlying sense of fluidity and hackability is what I'm trying to convey in my game.

That feeling is what can make programming particularly exhilirating and rewarding, and I'm hoping to capture it in the medium of a space game whereas your project seems to be more about exploring programming for the sake of programming and seeing where it takes you.

FWIW my future plans do include embedding other languages in the game. Right now it's just Lua (and Unix, to a degree), but I'm hoping to make it so that you can discover other civilizations built on wildly different technology--at least Scheme and Forth; possibly a DOS-like system thrown in there for giggles depending on how much work it turns out to be. At first you interact with these OSes as they are installed in space stations you encounter, but eventually you learn how to load them into your own ship (virtualization) so you can take advantage of certain in-game technologies built around them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Game site - [http://elseheartbreak.com/](http://elseheartbreak.com/)

"A game about friendship, love and technology in a place where bits have replaced atoms."

"The game is out now for Windows, Mac & Linux on Steam, GOG & Humble."

normally will be $25.00 currently on sale for $17.50; Sale ends in 4 days

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks interesting enough that I feel like everyone else must already know all about it. This is the first I've heard of it though.

<comment><USER4> It looks like it was just released on the 24th.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gameplay: [http://www.twitch.tv/the_spu/v/17605911](http://www.twitch.tv/the_spu/v/17605911)</comment>


Is learning a framework harder than to learn programming? - <AUTHOR>

I learned C/C++, Java, SQL and know how most common patterns work.
But I've never really used a framework before and a few months ago I wanted to work with rails. But for me it was harder than learning about 4 star pointers or something like that.
Especially if you programmed nearly everything before by yourself it's hard to get comfort with the "magic" behind rails.
I tried to create some small webapps with rails to get in touch with it, but to be honest: without Ryan Bates awesome railscasts I can't write a single line of code!
How did you learn to work with frameworks like rails or django? Is learning a framework harder than learning programming? <comment><USER2> It depends on context. If you have never built a web application, it can be very difficult task grasping what exactly Rails does for you (even it your are experienced in programming languages). For someone who has been building web applications for years, the it may be easier for that person to understand the pain points that Rails solves. Since Rails is domain specific to web development, you're not necessarily learning programming, but really how to apply programming to web development based on the framework's conventions. The bottom line is that you're learning something new. How hard the learning is depends on the foundation you're currently have that you can build upon. Having a foundation in a programming language doesn't necessarily mean that you're poised get up and running quickly with a web framework if you've never done web development.

The art of building web applications today, in itself, is much more complex than it was 10 years ago - mostly due to the every growing selection of tools that make it easier for experienced developers to build web applications. This in turn can make web development seem daunting.

Personally, when I started learning Rails, I had a foundation of working with rudimentary frameworks in other languages. When I discovered Rails, it did quiet a bit of what those other frameworks accomplished and then some. Then it took it further and pushed the envelope (i.e. REST support for urls and routing, more recently including CoffeeScript and the Asset Pipeline).

While there's a ton of learning resources out there for learning Rails, it can be really hard to put them together and figure out what in what order you need to learn new concepts.

That being said, I think The Flatiron School did an excellent job getting together a list of learning resources: <http://prework.flatironschool.com/> \- Just a heads up that it recommends CodeSchool and Tree house which are subscription services. If you're serious about learning, I'd consider the subscription cost to be a small investment.

The one resource that Flatiron Prework didn't mention is the Rails Tuturial: <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book>

If you really want to dive into ruby, I'd recommend The Well Ground Rubyist by David Black.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the links. I know Michael Hartl's ruby on rails tutorial, and it's nice written, but when I read programming books and come to parts like data-structures, then I think - "Oh no, I already know that stuff" and skip this part. But in this section you really learn about string handling… I probably should just read everything and keep on learning..

<comment><USER2> Very true. While you may know about strings, integers, floats, and arrays, it's always good to read about them in the context of a new language you're learning. The Well Grounded Rubyist is riddled with useful tidbits. The predecessor to that book was Ruby for Rails (also by David Black). Each time I read the book, I picked up new information, even the third time around.

When we learn, we learn by applying new material to what we already know. Hence foundations and context. When you read, especially something like a book on programming, you're not going to absorb it all. Also, programming books shouldn't be treated as one and done reading. Each time you read, I guarantee something will pop out based on previously acquired knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is Rails really all you're learning? From your post, it sounds like you're also learning Ruby, which is a very different language from the ones you list: the syntax and common idioms differ, of course, but in some ways the paradigm also differs. Django wouldn't be any easier, because and the things I said about Ruby apply to Python as well.

End result: in your particular case, "learning the framework" and "learning to program" amount to basically the same thing. What makes it harder this time, as opposed to the first time you learned to program, is that last time you had no preconceived notions. Now you do -that's inevitable- but only some of those notions will apply in this new way of programming. This would be just as true if you went in the other direction; you haven't learned things in the "wrong" order or anything like that. A "wrong" order probably doesn't even exist.

The good news is that you're not alone. This happens to everyone when they first hit something wildly different from the way they first learned to program. As you do more of them, it gets easier, but the first big wall is always a shock. Good luck getting over the wall.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I always thought that learning frameworks shouldn't be hard for programmers and was uncertain about my skills. But it's good to see, that I'm not the only one, so I have hope ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you studied the documentation for rails and how/why it does things the way it does. Have you become proficient with Ruby?

Trying to learn an MVC framework without understanding the underlying architecture is definitely a large task. Trying to do that without a firm understanding of the nuances of the programming language used is even harder.

</comment><comment><USER5> It really depends on the frameworks documentation.

It does not matter if you want to learn framework a language or how to use a products API.

What really matters is if there is a good a documentation and some tutorials to get you started.

I often settle for the sollution with less features but a better usabilty.

</comment><comment><USER6> yes indeed.No where and nobody explains magic behind frameworks.I agree that it is very difficult to learn framework.I think many develops their apps without many things without any understanding.</comment>


Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102270.html <comment><USER2> By "some" they probably mean all.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for an office phone number? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious: there are services like ringcentral.com and onebox.com - does anyone use those?
Do you even have an "office" phone number? If you don't, why not? Not useful? Too expensive? <comment><USER2> You could just use GrandCentral and always use 1 phone number. Route that number to wherever you may be (home, office, cell).

<comment><USER3> Doesn't that assume you can get an invite?

<comment><USER2> Of course. Anyone want to send me one??:)

Edit: to be more helpful, you could always put your name on the inviteshare.com list and wait it out. I've received several invitations to closed apps from inviteshare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> skype.

<comment><USER5> ^^ seconded. Cheap and easy.

Pay for a landline # and get a Skype enabled Wifi phone and your made :D</comment></comment>


Famed impulse control 'marshmallow test' fails in new research - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impulse-control-marshmallow-test-fails-in-new-research <comment><USER2> Taking parents and education into account erased most of the results. So the real test was, "Parent's who enroll their children into sociology tests tend to attend to their children more in other arenas too"?

</comment><comment><USER3> The research was covered in a recent thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218250)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I delete my HN account? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to delete my HN account, is that possible? I mean a way to delete the user in such a way that the link with  user?id=me display not found or deleted. <comment><USER2> Have you tried the support link in the footer? There is no such feature and thus still a manual process.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand that deleting posts is not nice for the people who posted an for the integrity of the information and context, but the link I am referring to is of a different nature, that is the /user?id=me could be deleted without breaking any thread. To add that feature seems a reasonable and sensible compromise between privacity and integrity of information.

<comment><USER2> For a feature request or a question to the admin it's also good to use the support link. [I'm not an admin]

<comment><USER3> Why is there no longer a link to the github account for posting bugs and complaining about the UI, I wonder?

<comment><AUTHOR> In Europe we have the right to be forgotten (wikipedia for a reference).

<comment><USER3> Hacker News is an American site run by an American company, probably hosted on an American server.

It might be nice, as a courtesy, for them to add this for their considerable European userbase, but the web is global, and not everyone has to care about what Europeans consider to be their rights.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NoRAM DB = "If It Does Not Fit in RAM, I Will Quietly Die For You" - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotkam.com/2011/07/06/noram-db-if-it-does-not-fit-in-ram-i-will-quietly-die-for-you/

<comment><USER2> Did anyone else read that at go _huh_?

I'm not quite sure what made it so difficult to follow - perhaps the run on sentences and unconventional punctuation? eg: _The point of no schema is NOT that it changes ALL the time = > then you have just a BLOB, content of which you cannot predict, hence index. The point is, the schema ( and rather some part of it ) may/will change, so WHY the heck do I have to carry those key names (that are VARCHARs and take space) around?_

To address his point, though: NoSQL is important because it breaks down the self-imposed limits that SQL databases have. Yes, this means they have difference performance characteristics, and yes it is important to understand them.

Does that really mean there are only 4 worthwhile NoSQL databases? I don't think it does, but perhaps for his use-case...

<comment><USER3> the point is there are only several. and there is a huge difference between a "loud mouth marketing engines" and "true tech".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 471? Where can we see the full list? :)

I wish Riak was more widely adopted. I started implementing geohashing in it but went to MongoDB for the native geospatial indexing, since time was short. Haven't heard of anyone doing it. The nodejs interface is so sexy (<http://riakjs.org/>).

Also, Redis. Is anyone using it as a persistent store? How's it going?

<comment><USER5> There was a story here a couple of weeks ago about how PornHub has switched completely to Redis. So there you go :)

<comment><USER6> I think it was YouPorn, but yea, same idea :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really liked the CRACS theorem, and agree on Redis and Riak.

One thing I found lacking is the explanation on why Redis, and Hazelcast are in the list. I don't disagree they should be, but, at least Redis deserves a better explanation.</comment>


Simple and fast file sharing with ge.tt - <AUTHOR> http://ge.tt/

<comment><USER2> Very convenient service. Just works!

Curious about business model. I'm sure that services like rapidshare could be profitable (bad interface, worsen service for free users etc), but it not so clear how to get profitable such service with so strait forward interface.

Other file-sharing service with simple interface that I've tried to use was filesavr.com but after some time it became very unstable.

<comment><USER3> We have some secrets hidden up our sleeves when it comes to the business model ;) In two weeks we'll have more info for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They make a big deal about saving you time because you have "better things to do", but then their "Tell me more" presentation wastes loads of your time making you click multiple times without actually telling you anything of substance!

<comment><USER3> (co-founder here)

Yeah, we could do SO much with that presentation. It was put together very fast because people didn't understand what we do. And you know what? They still don't :) We're working on it as we speak, and sometime next week we're presenting a completely different front page.

As a test to what we do, try sharing 30 random audio and video files. Then immediately open the Ge.tt link in another browser (or another computer). You can choose any file you want and start streaming or downloading the file. It does not need to be uploaded first. Also, does not need flash or java.

<comment><USER5> You guys should absolutely explain that. It would help, as well, to explain that you can share multiple files in a single URL. I'm writing up ge.tt on The Next Web right now. Any chance you guys have a monetization plan? If you don't want to share it here, email me quickly please - firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> I'll send you an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice!

One little thing: On the right sidebar, before your first upload, it says:

      Free account
      Shares live longer
      Live statistics
      create account

I'm pretty sure that is supposed to mean that shares live longer and you get live statistics if you have an account, but I think it reads the other way around: Free account means that your shares lives longer.

<comment><USER3> You mean that people don't associate the "live longer, live sta..." with creating an account or how do you mean?

<comment><USER6> Yes. To be precise - I didn't visually connect them. The following text layout:

      Free account
      X
      Y
      create account

(especially with the design on ge.tt) looks to me like: "Free account has feature X and Y - create an account to remove these". Looking at the values for X and Y, that couldn't be what you meant, but it took a second for me to realize. Maybe it's just me...

(I like the text better once you've uploaded something. Then there is a header with "Create an account and get access to:")

<comment><USER3> Ahh, hehe, never thought about it like that :) I see what you mean.

We'll update the front page in a not so long time, and then we'll think more about it. To be honest we think that we need to work on being more to the point. Which is what we're doing now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mac users, it seems to me, wouldn't get any use out of this. Cloud App does the same thing but is on my local machine so I don't have to go to a website. Could be handy for Windows and Linux users I suppose. Am I missing a bigger picture?

<comment><USER7> I believe you are. Its not backup, its sharing. One stop file sharing versus having to choose sharing sites by file type e.g.[picture:twitpic,video:twitvid,vid- pic:flickr,pdf:scribid,slide:slideshare,...]

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Completely fair. I wrote that comment at a first blush. After digging in for a minute, ge.tt is slick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used drop.io on occasion - although their free size limit was a little too small. Having unlimited, or as the terms of service say 2gb makes this way more useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well done!

How about adding drag/drop mechanism for browsers that supports it? That will be really convenient because I can just drag the files and move on.

<comment><USER3> We actually have that already :)

At one we had it announced on the page, but then people complained that they couldn't do it in their browser - because they used one that didn't support it. We'll probably put it back in somehow. We'll think about it.

<comment><USER10> I've used script.aculo.us and had it work in Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome; christopherwoodall.com/youtube.

JQuery also has a Drag-and-Drop feature.

<comment><USER3> Only one missing... Those were the users complaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any chance we could have this through https? Encrypting the download link is always a good idea.

<comment><USER3> The security is being reworked and rethought and https would most likely be implemented soon. We've looked into it already so it's not entirely new to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> everything is shared under the ge.tt (domain's root name can't be a CNAME). you obviously think you won't need a content delivery network at scale, do you?

<comment><USER3> We've been working a lot with the scaling technique, and even though we are doing ok for now, we're reworking a lot of the backend. Not sure when, but it'll be rolled out.</comment></comment>


22M pounds of plastics enter the Great Lakes each year - <AUTHOR> https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-met-lake-michigan-plastic-pollution-20190904-2xf3qogqv5bpfco2plndapak2q-story.html <comment><USER2> "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

How about just disabling the third-party ads along with their invasive tracking until you've figured out a way to monetize the long tail of traffic from EU?

<comment><USER3> Why would anyone accept an unbounded liability for no benefit?

<comment><USER2> There wouldn't be any supposedly unbounded liability if they disabled the ads for that region they aren't really targetting anyway.

Also: GDPR hygiene works in the US as well. You've got some way to catch up though; you even allow a lot of really bad food substances that are banned in the EU (and most of the civilized world), just because... profits. It's all kind of a sad states of affairs for a supposedly first world country.

<comment><USER2> I kinda feel like organizing a program blocking journalists at these american newspapers that are blocking europeans.. from accessing european newspapers/sites. Just because. I'm sure there's a way of figuring out the public IPs for their NATs etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Progress spacecraft launch timelapse seen from space - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouBfzCgXHgk <comment><USER2> Previous comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18518302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18518302)

</comment><comment><USER3> I swear that looked like movie FX. All it needed was some sort of display with a circle around the target and ranging, etc. information constantly updating.

Very cool!</comment>


Stealthy Banking Trojan Likely Created By The U.S. Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/09/researchers-discover-gauss-a-stealthy-banking-trojan-likely-created-by-the-u-s-government/

<comment><USER2> Is this why they need all those new cybersecurity laws and bigger budgets for the cyber divisions? To "protect" US? Or to attack other countries they aren't even in war with? Because the latter seems a lot more likely.</comment>


Binary Marble Adding Machine - <AUTHOR> http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/index.html

<comment><USER2> wow... while you're at that site have a look at this:

<http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/organ/organ.html>

An organ built almost completely out of wood.

<comment><USER3> Be careful, it's so easy to get lost looking around in that site. My roommate from last term and I spent many precious hours the night before finals on it, instead of studying :P

I'm proud that such a talented person graduated from the school I attend.</comment></comment>