1K ZX Chess - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess <comment><USER2> Source code

[http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/](http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/)

Actually it's the 3rd part of the full series, makes more sense with the previous articles

1st [https://archive.org/stream/your-computer- magazine-1982-12/Yo...](https://archive.org/stream/your-computer- magazine-1982-12/YourComputer_1982_12#page/n67/mode/2up)

2nd [https://archive.org/stream/your-computer- magazine-1983-01/Yo...](https://archive.org/stream/your-computer- magazine-1983-01/YourComputer_1983_01#page/n79/mode/2up)

3rd [https://archive.org/stream/YourComputer_198302/YourComputer8...](https://archive.org/stream/YourComputer_198302/YourComputer8302#page/n99/mode/2up)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to reconcile this:

> It was the smallest implementation of chess on any computer until its record > was broken in January 2015 by the PC-compatible BootChess.

with this:

> 1K ZX Chess uses only 672 bytes of RAM,[2] but implements chess rules except > for castling, promotion, and en passant, including a computer opponent.

If you don't include castling, promotion, and en passant, the game isn't chess anymore, or at least it hasn't been for a couple hundred years.

<comment><USER4> I believe boot chess also does not implement two of those three, which makes it a fine comparison. Promotion is something I expect most people know, castling is something they might know, but en passant is hardly common. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the number of people who play chess without knowing that rule exceed those who play by FIDE rules.

Whatever the case, it is still a variant of chess, so I see no problem calling it chess.

<comment><USER5> Promotion shouldn't be compared to castling/en-passant here.

A game without castling or en passant would be similar enough in spirit that we could call it a "chess variant". Removing promotion, on the other hand, would result in a wildly different game.

I actually suspect it'd be impossible to win against any non-beginners, making it more similar to tic-tac-toe than to chess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also [http://nanochess.org/chess4.html](http://nanochess.org/chess4.html) (discussions and links to 2K and 1K Javascript implementations).

"Take note that the 1018 octets of my Javascript code include an artificial intelligence and also the user's interface and chessboard visualization"

</comment><comment><USER7> There was Psion Chess for the expanded ZX81 (16 KB RAM.) I still have the cassette. The instructions on the cover explain how to castle and state that it recognize en passant. No mention about promotions but they should be supported.

Load time "3.5 mins approx." I remember that I lost every signore game against it but it wasn't very fun because it used fast mode and I couldn't see the screen when it was thinking.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's also an implementation of chess in 1K of JS:

[https://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750](https://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/750)

</comment><comment><USER9> Microchess on the KIM-1 says hi. ZX Chess is still smaller, and actually has a display, but this wasn't a lot bigger and appeared on other 6502-based systems.

[https://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/microchess.htm...](https://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/microchess.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> > It was the smallest implementation of chess on any computer until its record > was broken in January 2015 by the PC-compatible BootChess.[4]

It would be interesting to compare x86 and Z80 code density, that is, how much you can do per bit of machine code.

<comment><USER11> Not a 'scientific' comparison, but handwritten 8-bit machine code compresses much less than x86/64 machine code (using gzip --best):

\- a compiled C executable for x86/64 compresses to about 38% of its original size (199 KB down to 77 KB)

\- a WASM blob of the same code compresses to about 32% (171 KB down to 56 KByte)

In comparison some 8-bit ROMs:

\- ZX Spectrum 128 ROM (Z80): 16384 bytes compresses to 12189 (74.3%)

\- C64 Kernel ROM (6502): 8192 bytes compresses to 6735 (82.2%)

So 8-bit code seems to be a lot 'denser' than today's machine code, and 6502 is denser than Z80 :)

<comment><USER6> That's interesting! Do you think this is because 64-bit code simply doesn't use a lot of its instruction set space (where more opcodes and instruction modes and variants are undefined and therefore not routinely used in executables), or because some of the people hand-writing 8-bit assembly actively use more opcodes than a typical compiler would, or some other factors?

Or are there are a lot of pointers in 64-bit code that contain a huge number of zeroes? :-)

<comment><USER11> I guess it's a combination of compiled vs handwritten code (maybe certain patterns show up more often in compiled code, while handwritten 8-bit code tries hard to remove any redundancies because of the limited available space), and bigger data types (especially 64-bit pointers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A chess program without castling, promotion, and en passant is incomplete. It is not chess, it is a work in process.

<comment><USER13> Let's see you do better ;)

<comment><USER14> I mean he is right, and it's even said in the article. It is an amazing piece of software, nobody's arguing against that, but it's not chess.</comment></comment></comment>


20 years of Impulse Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://roartindon.blogspot.sg/2014/02/20-years-of-impulse-tracker.html

<comment><USER2> Great story! I remember first time I listened to these .IT tracks on my PC I was truly impressed by the quality of the samplers, awesome stereo effects. There was a song "love to Julua" or "dedication to Juliette" or something like this, it was an absolutely amazing masterpiece. I never mastered IT though, FT2 felt a bit more easier to use...

Thanks for the story!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I've been wondering what happened to Jeffrey Lim, and here he is with a blog and everything.

By the way, it's exciting that Lim plans to open the original assembler source to IT, but anyone interested in an open source, fully-featured-and-more IT remake for more current OSes should check out Schism Tracker: [http://schismtracker.org/](http://schismtracker.org/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anybody interested in this kind of music might enjoy [https://www.scenemusic.net/](https://www.scenemusic.net/)</comment>


D 2.093.0 - <AUTHOR> https://dlang.org/changelog/2.093.0.html <comment><AUTHOR> See D 2.092.0 for D's preview support for Ownership and Borrowing. [https://dlang.org/changelog/2.092.0.html](https://dlang.org/changelog/2.092.0.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I really need to do a basic D -betterC project, just using it as a basic low level language, maybe with a dash of DbC. Probably with embracing some Oberon concepts (static imports, single return etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use D with GC but manually deallocate memory. This let's one use the GC as a backup.

<comment><USER3> The D compiler has a switch where you can select the compiler implementation itself to use the GC or manual. This gives options when compiling very large projects (the compiler allows an entire project to be compiled at once, giving the benefits of total program optimization without needing involvement from the linker, this of course uses prodigious amounts of memory).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > With this release it is now possible to install and activate compilers from > the Windows command prompt directly.

> Assuming an MSYS2 installation is present in C:\msys64, necessary > decompression tools can be installed from the Windows command prompt

Huh? I would think the whole point of running from command prompt would be that MSYS2 is __not __needed. And the reality is its probably not. Someone would just need to reimplement the Bash script as a PowerShell script.

<comment><USER5> > Someone would just need to reimplement the Bash script as a PowerShell > script.

... and then maintain it.

<comment><USER6> Installing MSYS2 to run a bash script is like deploying an A-10 Warthog to light the fuse for one of those fountain fireworks.

<comment><USER7> There are much better ways to install things in windows. Such as MSI files if you need to change paths and registry entries. Chocolatey if you want a 'aptget' like usage, there are several of these types. Using bash to install something is unique. I personally am a fan of in place portable install, unzip, run exe, done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Noice! Reading through the release notes leaves a feeling of D being a mature language long enough.

If you're looking for magnitutes faster scripting alternative to Python like once me, take a peek!

<comment><USER9> > D being a mature language long enough.

I do not follow D closely, but i get the impression that the language breaks backwards compatibility every now and then - i remember some posts here or Reddit some months ago by someone complaining that Walter Bright introduced some changes to the language that broke existing code.

IMO a mature language is a language that you can depend on for your existing code to keep working in a timespan of decades - like C and C++ for example. A language that willingly breaks backwards compatibility is a toy, not something to be taken seriously for long term work.

<comment><USER10> The Wikipedia page history section [0] talks about stability. The most relevant part is this:

> The release of Andrei Alexandrescu's book The D Programming Language on June > 12, 2010, marked the stabilization of D2, which today is commonly referred > to as just "D".

In other words, D is backwards compatible for 10 years now. At least, I don't know any breaks and the little code I have in D never broke.

The transition from D1 to D2 did break backwards compatibility in 2007. The change is comparable to the Python2 to Python3 transition but in a much smaller community. Outdated news from that time still pop up sometimes. Maybe you heard something related to that?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)#Histo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_\(programming_language\)#History)

<comment><USER9> So basically if i write some D code now it'll keep working (assuming no OS ABI changes) and compiling in 20 years from today? I'm ok with very minor changes due to compiler bugs or whatever.

I wonder what that complain was about then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making Python 3 more attractive - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/640179/06c2868dffb2aec3/

<comment><USER2> Duplicate, see earlier discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378898)</comment>


An app can be a home-cooked meal - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/ <comment><USER2> _Now, some of you may not ever write computer programs, but perhaps you cook. And if you cook, unless you 're really great, you probably use recipes. And, if you use recipes, you've probably had the experience of getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who's sharing it. And you've probably also had the experience — unless you're a total neophyte — of changing a recipe. You know, it says certain things, but you don't have to do exactly that. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some mushrooms, 'cause you like mushrooms. Put in less salt because your doctor said you should cut down on salt — whatever. You can even make bigger changes according to your skill. And if you've made changes in a recipe, and you cook it for your friends, and they like it, one of your friends might say, "Hey, could I have the recipe?" And then, what do you do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with functionally useful recipes of any kind._

 _Now a recipe is a lot like a computer program. A computer program 's a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it's just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes in it because the job it was written to do isn't exactly what you want. It did a great job for somebody else, but your job is a different job. And after you've changed it, that's likely to be useful for other people. Maybe they have a job to do that's like the job you do. So they ask, "Hey, can I have a copy?" Of course, if you're a nice person, you're going to give a copy. That's the way to be a decent person._

— Richard Stallman, 2001 ([https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms- nyu-2001-transcript.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms- nyu-2001-transcript.html))

<comment> Joe-Z Sounds nice, except programming is difficult and akin to magic for most people. Achieving what's proposed here, namely wanting to get a job done, but your requirements for it are different from how your friend uses it, is usually achieved by having a program that takes a lot of configuration parameters and then does the job according to them. IMO that's the more fitting analogy.

<comment><USER3> > _except programming is difficult and akin to magic for most people._

So is cooking to quite many of them, myself included. I find programming easier than cooking - because although it takes much longer to achieve anything, it also doesn't cost anything on the margin, you can pause the process at any time, and you don't risk hurting or killing yourself.

> _is usually achieved by having a program that takes a lot of configuration > parameters and then does the job according to them_

The ultimate form of "configuration parameters" is the code itself. Phrased alternatively, configuration is just code in a non-turing-complete language. Code is data is code.

There is a gap in tooling, there are currently no good Hypercard-like tools that would allow to make "personal software" and share it as recipes. That's perhaps because computing is still in its inflation phase and there's too much platform diversity; hopefully that will change in some way in the future. But lack of necessary tooling doesn't mean the vision is wrong, especially a vision that was true in the past.

<comment><USER4> > There is a gap in tooling

Understatement of the century.

 _Professional software engineers_ often struggle to get their development environment up and running quickly. My wife is a historian and does a lot of work with R. The process of getting the development environment working and keeping it working was a _nightmare_. "What the fuck does that error message mean? When I Google it nothing comes up. What do you mean I have the wrong version of python? What the fuck is a PATH variable?"

With cooking there are entire stores dedicated to selling you things that you can use. Almost every home comes with a working "cooking environment". Even just making it so you _could_ recompile some software if you wanted to is way way way way beyond the expected capabilities for a typical person, especially since a tremendous amount of OSS code is not portable and built for linux while most people have windows boxes.

<comment><USER5> Philip Guo wrote a great post several years ago under the title "Helping my students overcome command-line bullshittery"[1] that seemed to get somewhat mixed but mostly positive reception. Much of the negative reception seemed to be chained to sophomoric arguments originating from folks stuck in the second panel of the glowing brain meme who wrongly thought of Guo being stuck in the first.

The real truth behind the mess we're in[2] is that there _is_ a ubiquitous, universal runtime that almost every computer comes equipped with, and the problem lies with the folks responsible for those ecosystems who either don't see these things as problems, or somehow believe that what the future somehow holds is native support for R/Python/what-have-you in the browser.

Tooling is a massive problem, though, and one that the browser vendors themselves don't seem to care to get right. (Although there is the Iodide project, in part supported by Mozilla.) And it really doesn't help that the browser realm has come to be conflated with the NodeJS community because they share a common language.

I've written a fairly thoughtful post[3] before, tying these two topics together:

> _After finding out where to download the SDK and then doing exactly that, > you might then spend anywhere from a few seconds or minutes to what might > turn out to be a few days wrestling with it before it 's set up for your > use._ [...]

> _the question is whether it 's possible to contrive a system (a term I'll > use to loosely refer to something involving a language, an environment, and > a set of practices) built around the core value that zero-cost setup is > important_

1\. [http://pgbovine.net/command-line- bullshittery.htm](http://pgbovine.net/command-line-bullshittery.htm)

2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4)

3\. [https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace- java...](https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace- javascript.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recently I wanted to make a few simple apps that would make api requests and control a few things around my house set up with raspberry pis.

A friend recommended me the drag and drop app builder Thunkable[1] and I was blown away by just how easy it was to make something. In a couple of hours I had all the apps I needed. No complicated build process, just download the apk from the site. Some people might turn their noses up at it because it uses scratch for writing the code but I feel this is what people's first experience of coding should be like. Write a simple recipe, get a simple program that they can use straightaway. These that must be an app or a web app to have any relevance to people.

[1] [https://thunkable.com/](https://thunkable.com/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the recommendation! This is very much what I've been looking for. Easy GUI, super simple to use, but can go deep and get it to do most things I'd want. After several false starts looking at the different app options, this is so refreshing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've done something very similar for my wife: She likes reading otome visual novel games on Android and the game design/monetization strategy means that it's difficult to "go back" to a story line.

I noticed her repeatedly screenshotting her phone and asked what she was doing - she said she likes to re-read the stories and so she swipes through her gallery to satisfy this need.

So I built a simple wrapper around adb, built a plain C# WPF front end for the wrapper and passed through clicks and automated screenshot calls for her. So she plugs in her phone, fires up the app, and she can read her VNs on her PC and have screenshots saved on the PC for her.

I built a variety of other processing apps to solve other needs for managing these files.

There were some free-to-download apps that solved a lot of these problems but none in quite the right way, and a lot of them looked fairly sketchy.

I don't really have any intention of distributing the software I wrote because it's so specific to her needs, and at best I might throw it up somewhere so I have the source backed up, as every once in awhile she asks for something new to add to this program.

<comment><USER9> Wow this is awesome. Who said programmers aren't romantic?

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the QueryStorm story; apparently the project started because the author wanted to help his girlfriend with her work (which involved lots of data and Excel files).

[http://blog.querystorm.com/index.php/2018/04/04/whynow/](http://blog.querystorm.com/index.php/2018/04/04/whynow/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Home-cooked" software is such a lovely analogy. I've used the same comparison to explain my unease about ad-hoc spreadsheets being replaced by domain- specific software [1]. Often the new software is "better" just like restaurant food is "better" than a home-cooked meal, but it's also great when people can build small-scale, super flexible software that works perfectly for just their own needs.

1: [https://twitter.com/geoffreylitt/status/1177607448682582016](https://twitter.com/geoffreylitt/status/1177607448682582016)

<comment><USER11> I loved TFA's callout to HyperCard, like your own argument about spreadsheets being "flexible generic tools".

I feel like IFTTT is approaching the same level of utility, though it exists in a space where it's incredibly vulnerable to change against its users' interests.

A few more tools like spreadsheets and HyperCard, and a whole lot of people with home-kitchen level of software competence, could free us from a lot of expensive restaurant dining. And we'd be more self-sufficient, to boot.

What's it take to get HyperCard back? Or something like it? Not just functionality, but ubiquity -- being a tool that every kid is one click away from, nothing to install, no permission to ask, just start learning...

<comment> vertex-four The problem is that the tasks we ask of our software are harder - we now expect them to talk to other computers, not all of which really want to be talked to by random people writing one-off bits of software.

<comment><USER3> > _not all of which really want to be talked to by random people writing one- > off bits of software._

That's a bigger problem than it sounds.

There are two main reasons software doesn't want to talk to each other. One, preventing vandalism and general abuse. Two, rent seeking. The software is wrapped around something you need, and it'll only allow access on its own terms, and after an appropriate fee.

I dream of an Internet where this isn't the case. In particular, I dream of an Internet where I don't have to choose between either writing scrappers, or entering separate _relationships_ with companies for every little bit of information I want to fetch via an API. Those relationships are a problem and a liability, even if they don't incur any actual monetary costs.

Beyond just being annoying noise that you have to keep track of, relationships make software non-shareable; they force you to centralize. If I make my "home- cooked" app that needs to know the weather, currency rates and be able to derive geographic coordinates from addresses, that's three separate APIs, three separate relationships. I'm not going to ask any of my users (whether five or five million) to get their own API keys, get their own relationships with the API providers. I'm forced to put a server in front of the app, introducing a single point of failure, shackling the app - and more importantly, I'm forced to force the users to enter a relationship with _me_. Their copy of the app is now dependent on my server not going down, and me managing my relationships with API providers.

Cooking recipes people share never force you to use a particular ingredients supplier. They don't even care where you get the ingredients - whether you grow them, buy them, or receive them as gifts. I wish software was more like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I absolutely love this comparison. Making computers do what you want using a core set of skills, personal taste, some equipment, and a set of reference works is absolutely analogous to cooking at home for the family.

I feel a bit like this touches on operating systems as well. After a decade with macOS — away from Debian, ion3, evince, Firefox, and to some extent the command line — I get that same feeling of overexposure one might feel after eating out for every meal. Restaurant food is polished and diverse but it's overly tasty and the options for customization are coarse (no pun intended.) You can choose a dish but not how it's made.

The analogy with home cooking makes me want to go back to a computing environment where I get to put the ingredients together that work best for me even if it isn't something that's perfect enough to sell to other people. Hackable window managers aren't the be all and end all but they are a good example of what I'm talking about. Time to buy that $100 Thinkpad, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember the fantasy that more and more people would be able to develop simple basic apps for their own very personal customized needs. It was a vision of a more accessible and democratic compute infrastructure, where we'd all be 'makers' creating the compute environment we lived in. Things like hypercard were part of this vision.

Those days are gone. The article doesn't explicitly mention the fact we all know: Very few people have the capacity to create a 'home-cooked meal' like the OP, for their own use.

In fact much fewer than could create a little hypercard app. It's a world where there are pretty large barriers to most people being software 'makers', and instead we are just consumers who can choose from what is offered to us by various companies trying to figure out how to monetize our needs and desires.

Part of it is the increased complexity of app development. Part of it is the walled gardens of our suppliers.

> I distributed the app to my family using TestFlight, and in TestFlight it > shall remain forever: a cozy, eternal beta.

Indeed. Because the very infrastruture ignores the needs of one-off "home cooked meal" apps, it assumes they don't exist, you have to pretend it is some kind of "beta" of a mass market commodified product instead (and be glad our suppliers still let you do that for 'free'). Our computers (increasingly the phone/device is people's primary computer) are no longer ours to do with as we will.

It is sad. If those who created the computing revolution 30 years ago (including prior versions of us) could see where it wound up.... the level of technological sophisitication of our pocket audio-video-geolocated-self- surveilling-communicating devices is astounding; the lack of 'empowerment' or control we have over them is utterly depressing.

<comment><USER14> This is so pessimistic! What is the basis for thinking there are _large_ barriers to most people becoming software makers?

I was in high school 12 years ago, when iphones just hit the market at like 800 bucks each and there was no firebase or react native or Medium articles or youtube tutorials covering 1st step code generation commands to deployment for every tech stack. The language of the day was Java. There was no npm and not a trillion python libraries that you can do anything imaginable with.

Is there any specific reason a 16 year old today couldn't make the app this guy did?

As a software engineer I _like_ the idea that I do a black magic that nobody could ever understand, but I genuinely don't think it's true.

<comment><USER3> > _What is the basis for thinking there are large barriers to most people > becoming software makers?_

You have an idea for an app. How do you build it? Your options generally are:

1) Do it the hard way: get Xcode/Android Studio, spend years learning to a) program, b) deal with the bloated and overly complicated frameworks, c) deal with the bloated and overly complicated build and deployment infrastructure. Also pay the platform owner for the ability to make it work / distribute it to someone.

2) Do it the easy way: pay some service so that you can make the app in a simplified/low-code way. Now your app is tied to someone else's service.

3) Do it the expensive way: pay someone else a lot of money to do 1) or 2) for you.

What's missing is the option 4): build it in some free, low-code tool, distribute it for free to whoever you want, _without entering a relationship_ with any company whatsoever. That would be "the HyperCard for mobile".

On top of that, these days you're likely to want to have capabilities that are available only either through option 1), or through an API, requiring entering _another_ relationship with some other third party.

Closest thing to 4) I've seen on Android is Tasker, with its ability to dump an .apk containing whatever UIs and if-this-then-that rulesets you created. But it's not exactly ergonomic, it's Android-only, and doesn't solve the distribution problem.

<comment><USER14> I don't see why it would take years to learn to write an app in Swift or Kotlin (or React Native or Flutter), even starting from zero. I'm not trying to be cute here.

There are probably 50 high quality end to end tutorial for building a video streaming app. I guess using Firebase is tying you in to a service, but so what? If it's for 4 friends it doesn't have to be infinitely scalable. Just by writing an iOS app you're tied to Apple, right? And surely an app isnt a failure just because it has dependencies?

<comment><USER3> If I were a non-programmer, I'd not have time to learn the basics of Swift or Kotlin even if it took only a month, if all I wanted was to build a small app for friends. With Apple I already have to deal with by virtue of owning an iPhone, but I would be reluctant to enter a relationship with another party just for the sake of my small app. On top of that, careful observation of the space tells you that an app is likely to outlive its service dependencies.

Dependencies you don't own are a liability. The less you have of them, the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Imagine a world where the ability to make a personal app like this is actually as easy as making a home-cooked meal; a skill passed from parent to child in the natural course of growing up.

<comment><USER16> Cooking is orders of magnitude harder for me than making an app, so I'd think we're already there…

<comment><USER17> I've cooked _lots_ of tasty, nutritious food in half an hour, and I rarely spend more than an hour cooking. I can only dream of a world where I could write an app in an hour that would be as enjoyable to use as the food I can cook in an hour is enjoyable to eat!

<comment><USER18> I think game jams probably get closest to this proportion of work:enjoyment in software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really identify with his home cook metaphor. I love cooking for folks and often get compliments that I could be a chef. Mostly because I've been cooking since I was a child. Ironically I've become a "software engineer" in a similar manner, 10 years of just trying things out and making things for friends and family. I do agree we're getting to a space in software development that's making it a bit easier to play and experiment with ideas. I think it would amazing if folks could get a BlueApron like expenience and make an app that would be useful

<comment><USER20> Making 1 app is fine. Web or Android, no problem. Both? Double your dev time.

React native you say? Double your dev time to learn a weird language.

Want to service 100% of people? Spend 1000$+ on apple products and beg Apple to let you publish.

<comment><USER19> I still think all these details could be solved for with a friendly IDE for beginners. In most cases folks just want to build a thing for themselves or a small group. Right now the tooling is still unfriendly to most but it feels like it's moving towards something better

Here's an example, I built a simple app to keep a schedule for watering my various plants that all have different needs. Originally it was just a google sheet but I saw an opportunity to play with ReactNative and expand my knowledge

A lot of everyday people, have spreadsheets like this that could be friendlier. They're not trying to ship it to thousands just themselves and maybe a friend. Like sharing a meal and then the recipe :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something about the personality of a programmer draws us towards that ever- fleeting siren of The Infinite. Infinite scalability, infinite reusability, infinite growth. It's this lust for the Bigness that our code _could theoretically reach_ that causes most of us to pass right by the myriad of opportunities for small, more meaningful, more human software.

<comment><USER22> Maybe, if you read a lot of Paul Graham essays and are seduced by the siren call of startups and VCbux. But I'm more captivated by the infinite _possibilities_ of the thing sitting right in front of me. And I bristle at machines thousands of times more powerful than my old Commodore actively preventing me from exploring those possibilities without identity management, app signing, hooking up an even bigger computer to my small computer, et weary cetera.

But what do I know, I'm just a lizard person. My small computer is really a phone, an inherently social tool. Its manufacturer didn't intend for me to easily hack it, therefore I've really no right to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Robin is a fascinating and wonderful human.

He's the author of "Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore" and "Sourdough", a champion of small-press publishing and married to a woman who is an olive expert.

[https://fat.gold/](https://fat.gold/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I like thinking about coding with these type of metaphors. Coding, imo, is more like a puzzle. I get cooking but it's a bit too abstract for something as deterministic as most coding is. I do see it applying to the experimental side.

Relating to puzzle...

      - Design: you "know" what you want your outcomes to look like
      - Software: you "know" the type of pieces you're dealing with (there can be variants)
      - Compile: pieces can only fit to exact tab/blank structure(per piece variant)
      - Iterate: your entire design is systematic. In complex puzzles, your early decisions can greatly alter future state. How you progress and build in later states is important to.
        - Can be good, eg like puzzle-solving strategies that are very specific in the beginning, but enable rapid/seamless building in the future.
        - Can be bad, eg it may seem like you're mostly complete in the later states, however, there are holes and holes left ignored are a liability for the acceptable state. You might find that you've incorrectly placed pieces that seemed viable in the past, but leave you in conflicted situations in the future.

<comment><USER25> Coding is often seen as technical/deterministic as the makers are often technical, and so the mediun is typically used in a fashion that affords scaling and regularity.

There is nothing inherently deterministic about coding as a medium of expression; the fact that the basis is binary doesn't decrease the power of expression we can wield vis-a-vis analog media.

Of course there are constraints of the tooling; but whether you are inherently building something that it makes sense to compare to a puzzle is entirely up to you as a creator.

<comment><USER24> I respect this.

> There is nothing inherently deterministic about coding as a medium of > expression

I don't disagree with this and realize I failed to recognize this perspective... even myself, generally, I internalize & embrace expression through coding.

I metaphorize coding as a puzzle mostly when debugging or designing complex software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This resonated with my own personal experience building a messaging app for my closest friends and family. It's been a steady 8-12 daily active users for the past few months.

I'll probably write a blog post in the future about what it does and why we use it. I'm also considering open sourcing the entire project!

[https://get.thread-app.com/](https://get.thread-app.com/)

<comment><USER27> I've been wanting an app like that for awhile now. I started messing around prototyping something like that around planning events with others. I'm excited to see what more of this!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been wondering lately if there is any business opportunity in personal IT... More and more technology is entering our homes... We hire people to do plumbing and electrical installations, maybe we should also hire people to do the software...

<comment> jon-wood Its nowhere near the level of everyone hiring plumbers and electricians, but if you're really interested hunt down some home automation companies (or start your own). If you can find the right clients you can easily make five digits a job setting up Home Assistant to run someone's new house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I exchanged a couple of tweets with Robin about this. I think this app is really cool, and I didn't want to get nerdsniped, but it seems to me that this could be built using webapis today. So you could have a cross-platform compatible version that doesn't require code signing, etc. That would be really nice.

Got me thinking how cool it would be if there was then an easy way for anyone to instantiate a copy for their own family. They own the data, they just pay for what little they use of S3 and lambda.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's a great metaphor, I make apps just for myself or a few friends sometimes and this is exactly how I feel about it.

For instance I made an app called "YourSquare" that's just like FourSquare but 100% private and local to my phone. No real point to it, I could make Google Maps do what it does, but it's a home cooked meal.

</comment><comment><USER31> I really appreciate the approach of building something simple (in user experience but also in implementation). These days it's so easy to get sucked in and end up spending months setting up Kubernetes clusters and the "that won't scale"-type thinking.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Home-cooked" software is such a perfect analogy to indie game development.

It resonates with me much more that other terms like "full stack", "Dev ops", and so on. It nicely removes the guilt of not writing the perfect codebase, as we often have to sacrifice that in order to ship a game.

For me indie games might not be the michelin star earners some of the time, but they warm the stomach. With imperfect charm they offer the delightful experiences just like home cooked patisserie. (edit formatting)

</comment><comment><USER33> Putting the 'personal' back in computing, this is great!

</comment><comment><USER34> My brother and I built an app together that is only used by the two of us. It's a simple way to keep a shared ledger between the two of us because we split a lot of expenses as roommates. We've been using it almost every day for about 10 months now.

In a way it's different from the author's app because our app is over- engineered in some pointless but extremely fun ways. It's also similar in that it will:

\- Never break unexpectedly due to an unwanted app update

\- Never spy on us and steal our personal information

\- Look and behave exactly the way we want it to, and no other way

I highly recommend building an app in this way. For me it reminded me what I love about programming, and allows me to work on a project unhindered by meetings, project managers, or deadlines. Just like cooking something for yourself, it can be as perfect or as imperfect as you want it to be, as well as an exercise in self-expression.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone interested in creating a "home cooked meal" for Android using scratch- like drag and drop components? Check out [https://appinventor.mit.edu/](https://appinventor.mit.edu/) It builds an .apk for you and all. It's primarily intended for teaching kids how to code, but seems like it's a good fit for simple apps like the one described by the OP.

</comment><comment><USER36> Now, this is wholesome.

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe dumb question: How does he specify whom the message is sent to? Or is it broadcast?

<comment><USER21> I assume it's hardcoded to broadcast to all users

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I do miss the haphazard personal website of yore. That said, it's probably quite a bit less secure to run this stuff yourself.

<comment><USER39> Maybe he's using static hosting, like Hugo ([https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/))?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> A while back I came to realize that not every app I produce (I'm an Indie Mac/iOS dev) has to be polished and App Store-ready. I can write an app for an audience of one - me. Getting an app ready for an App Store easily adds 50% of development time.

A home-cooked app can have hard coded values (oh yeah!), doesn't have to be pretty (although it's more fun), doesn't have to support all platforms (no, I won't add Apple Watch support!), it just has to work for me.

My latest project: a little iOS app that I can use at a bookstore to scan the book's barcode and then checks if that book is available at my local public library.

When I showed that to my SO she was amazed and said: "And you just made THAT?". Well, yes. My secret superpower is that I can make these little computers that we all keep in our pockets these days make anything I want them to.

A few other projects that I made for myself over the years:

\- App that generates PDF invoices from my App Store financial reports (I simply paste in the plain text from the website)

\- A break timer app (old one was 32bit-only, I didn't bother to download a new one)

\- Text snippet app: it scans an email for the senders name and pre-populates possible answers. I turned this into a tiny CRM that keeps track of feature requests and whom I sent an update. This is actually in the App Store, but was a huge commercial failure, but I use this myself e v e r y day.

\- Quick click: it's like a command line for my Mac. I type something I see on the screen (e.g. the title of a button), the app highlights possible matches, I press Return and the app sends a simulated mouse click. I can also use this as a window manager to resize the active app, because, why not?

For personal use:

\- Portfolio simulator app that calculates every possible IRR for a given number of years (once I was done I discovered portfoliocharts.com, well...)

\- Portfolio tracker app to track my retirement savings: this is like a tiny spreadsheet app only that it's fed by 3 csv files (orders.csv, transactions.csv, asses prices.csv). "editing" is done in VIM. The app generates various reports that I use to check if I'm on track with my savings.

\- Simple stock checker app (fetches the prices of a, yes, hard-coded list of ticker symbols).

\- App to categorize my spendings. Input is a csv file (I like plain text). I wanted to learn now Naive Bayes filtering works and have to say, seeing the app do its thing is as close to magic as I ever got.

\- Time lapse screen recorder: creates a screenshot every x seconds. I used this once to record a video of how I'm developing an app.

\- Custom implementation of Unshaky (with more stats and settings) to fix the double-space keypress issue of my new MacBook Air

\- Alarm clock app that uses the accelerometer to wake me when I'm not in a deep sleep phase.

And a few more that I don't use anymore...

</comment><comment><USER41> So an internal tool?

</comment><comment><USER42> _roughly half of that time was spent wrestling with different kinds of code- signing and identity provisioning and I don't even know what._

It's worth noting that in the early era of personal computing, companies did not view users as idiots to be herded and restricted by their technology, and computer magazines contained source code listings.

<comment><USER43> It's not necessary about considering users idiots. As with anything, once a critical mass of users was reached people started creating malicious software, and code signing is a way to help prevent that.

Of course you can run your own self-signed APK on your own phone, nobody is preventing you. But use the Apple App Store as a delivery medium? Come on. Code signing is a bare, completely responsible minimum.

<comment><USER44> > Of course you can run your own self-signed APK on your own phone, nobody is > preventing you.

Unless you have an iPhone - it's becoming a bit more difficult then.

<comment><USER43> Took me about 5 minutes after installing Xcode on my Mac. What's so difficult?

<comment><USER23> 5 minutes!? It should only have taken you 1.5 minutes.

At the very most.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why experts are overwhelmingly skeptical of online voting - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/why-experts-are-overwhelmingly-skeptical-of-online-voting/ <comment><USER2> The vulnerabilities they found are laughable. Even with all of them fixed, what about infected disk firmware, compromised Intel Management Engine (or the AMD equivalent), or a subverted compiler [1]? On the system itself, or on a developer's machine.

And suppose you somehow fix all of that, and run it on a mathematically verified secure chip. How do you know vulnerabilities weren't inserted into the silicon, or perhaps the whole chip was swapped with a compromised one when you weren't looking. There's already been reports of factory compromised hardware for credit card readers.

With control of the entire USA as the prize, you can bet that's the level of attack you'll be dealing with.

[1] [https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html](https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html)

<comment><USER3> The demand for electronic and online voting is so high that I fear it will be implemented in a compromised way, before the problem is actually solved. As I understand it, all known descriptions of electronic voting are worse than paper ballots in terms of security and anonymity.

This is just what a former CS professor told me years ago, but it seems to be supported by what experts are saying.

Edit: clarity and addl thought

<comment><USER2> I think the key is, you can't tell if the system's been compromised by looking at it. And not even by taking it apart and examining it, bit by bit. Not without an electron microscope. And unlike with banking, you can't tell by the results either.

We need a clear way to communicate why it's so dangerous that computer illiterate people will understand, and that's as clear as I can put it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Germany online voting is forbidden by the constitutional court since 2009:

\- [https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2009/wahlcomputer-urteil- bverf...](https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2009/wahlcomputer-urteil-bverfg)

"In its decision today regarding the constitutional vote of the German Federal parliament in 2005, the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court made clear that comprehensible and secret votes are the core of our democratic system. This system is eroded by the use of voting machines. It must be possible for people without technical knowledge to trace and understand the complete voting process. Therefore, votes shall not be saved solely in electronic memory at any time."

</comment><comment><USER5> Quote from the the TrailofBits audit report [0]

> Anyone with administrative access to the Voatz backend servers will have > enough information to fully reconstruct the entire election, deanonymize > votes, deny votes, alter votes, and invalidate audit trails

That's...sub-optimal

[0] [https://github.com/trailofbits/publications/blob/master/revi...](https://github.com/trailofbits/publications/blob/master/reviews/voatz- securityreview.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Leaving aside technological security, one HUGE problem with online voting is that there is no way to ensure the vote was not coerced.

Scenario: A particular community/religious institution/school, etc., lets their members know (not in writing) that they will be required to have their vote witnessed by two other members, on pain of expulsion.

This is not far-fetched, even in some places in America, and certainly in other countries. Even if we can be 100% certain that the vote is secure and not tampered with _online_. I don't see any realistic technological solution for this. Giving the option of in-person or online voting won't solve it - those wishing to coerce will simply require members to pick the online option.

Yes, this is already possible with mail-in voting (and there are reports of it happening.) But if online voting becomes mainstream it will become a much bigger problem.

Disappointed that the article didn't mention this at all. Reminds me of [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)</comment>


Ariane is a 6-stage RISC-V CPU capable of booting Linux - <AUTHOR> https://pulp-platform.github.io/ariane/docs/home/ <comment><USER2> I love that the instruction decode unit's ability to command a flush on branch mispredicts is represented in the diagram as a toilet.

</comment><comment><USER3> A related thread, from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16399759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16399759). Others?

</comment><comment><USER4> That's cool.

When can I buy an SBC with one, that's within one base-10 order of magnitude of the Raspberry Pi's price?

<comment><USER5> This is only a cpu core. It lacks the memory controller and peripherals that make a SoC work. It will probably never make its way into a chip tapeout.

<comment><USER6> > Ariane has been taped-out December 2017 in Globalfoundries 22nm FDX

[https://content.riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/14.15-1...](https://content.riscv.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/14.15-14.40-FlorianZaruba_riscv_workshop-1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like maybe an inauspicious name for a CPU...

[http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold//disasters/ariane.html](http://www- users.math.umn.edu/~arnold//disasters/ariane.html)

<comment><USER8> Ariane is the name of an entire family of rockets that are still being launched today and are not generally known for being unreliable.

<comment><USER9> Last I heard they were also having a lot of trouble competing with the industry leaders...

<comment><USER10> > Last I heard they were also having a lot of trouble competing with the > industry leaders...

Ariane was the most competitive / succeful private launcher for 20 years even in face of American companies.

SpaceX is however currently disruptive them, like every other actor of the industry.

<comment><USER9> Ya, that's what I heard. After spaceX started doing better than them, they were having trouble because they didn't want to start using reusable rockets.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: keto.fm – curated, quality articles for low carb enthusiasts, weekly - <AUTHOR> https://keto.fm <comment><USER2> Are there any real studies on the impact Keto and potential dangers?

The way people talk about it often feels like woo. (Not looking for anecdotal "it worked for me" responses)

<comment><AUTHOR> Petter Attia writes about the ketogenic diet in depth [0]. He's an MD, and references studies throughout his writing. They're not always "keto" studies per se, but they are often studies on parts of the keto process. I highly recommend his blog for in-depth keto reading.

[0]: [http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/ketosis-advantaged-or- mis...](http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/ketosis-advantaged-or- misunderstood-state-part-i)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks nice! I've not yet received an email, so we'll see how good they are - but I would also appreciate purchase links and difficulty ranking if they're not already included.

Thanks for this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Those are definitely on our roadmap, but may not be included in the first couple newsletters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the simplicity of this. It's not exactly groundbreaking, but some things, like a simple mailing list, don't need to be improved upon.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! we think so to.

until we understand more of the core issues faced by low-carber/keto-ers, we'll be keeping the site as a one-pager.</comment></comment>


Damien Katz: CouchDB Catchup - <AUTHOR> http://damienkatz.net/2008/01/couchdb_catchup_1.html <comment><USER2> I found the Jaql link in his article interesting

<http://www.jaql.org/jaql-overview.html>

It looks a lot like FLWOR for JSON.

It's too bad the JSON examples they cite there don't conform to <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt> which requires member names to be strings with quotation marks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder where CouchDB would be if he would have gotten into YC...

<comment><USER4> has yc funded any open source projects?

<comment><USER3> I don't remember if CouchDB was open source when Damien Katz got a YC interview. He posted about his experience further back on his blog, if you want to read. PG told him he was a Woz and he needed a Jobs.

But to my knowledge, no, they have funded any open source projects.</comment></comment></comment>


Lost Sleep Can't Be Made Up, Study Suggests - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/health/lost-sleep-catch-up-100113.html

<comment><USER2> The study examined a sleep schedule equivalent to 5.6 hours per day. That's not studying if sleep deprivation can be made up, that's simply studying sleep deprivation.

My own experience with sleep deprivation is that the sleep it takes to make it up is longer than the amount of sleep I was missing, especially if I put off the recovery.

<comment><USER3> I've got a different experience; ~14 hours is the maximum sleep needed to completely recover.

I get by on 2 hours of sleep a night all week and just have an extended 14 hour sleep on Sunday.

I've been doing this for about 3 years now so maybe I'm just used to it.

<comment><USER4> I think this is interesting, I've never heard nothing similar. Do you feel tired during the week? Can you concentrate on difficult tasks that requires attention?

<comment><USER3> I feel tired as the day ends, but never that _I'm too tired to think_ stage until just before I'm ready to sleep.

<comment><USER5> There are several study's which suggest you are shortening your lifespan.

<comment><USER3> I am awake 30 hours more a week than on the regular 8 hour sleep. By the time I'm 50, I've have been conscious 5 years longer than most people.

I don't think you'd meet any older person who won't trade 20 of their older years to be 5 years young again.

So while my absolute life span may become lower, I'm living more of it _now_ rather than later; Besides, who knows when you are going to die anyway, could even get hit by a bus tomorrow.

Also the abuse my body is going through, I doubt it will live to a ripe old age, I both smoke and drink and have cancer in my family history. I doubt I'll make it past 50 anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The study didn't actually demonstrate that it can't be made up.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's how I read it as well. It just showed the deleterious effects of one particular sleep regime ... which surprised no one I expect. It was clearly for the whole "how do we work residents" issue.

I was impressed by the reaction time loss. 2 seconds _very_ long.

<comment><USER8> I find myself wondering just how many of these "the resident sleep schedule is fucking insane and kills patients" studies we'll have to get through before someone, anyone, finally takes the oh-so-radical step of actually changing the schedule.

BREAKING NEWS: Medical residents are in fact _not_ superhumans invulnerable to sleep deprivation. That the medical community doesn't understand this actually offends me; it's my life and yours they're dicking around with. (Yes, I know they intellectual understand it, but until their actions reflect it I will not say they "understand it".)

<comment><USER9> The other day, I was speaking to a doctor friend who's in the middle of sleep- deprived training, and she defended the practice.

She said that even as a senior doctor, you _are_ going to have to pull insanely long shifts at times. Under those conditions, you're clearly not going to be working at your best. So you're going to have to develop good instincts; more importantly, you're going to have develop trust in your own instincts, that will allow you to operate effectively despite ridiculous levels of sleep deprivation.

And the only way to do that is to go through that in a semi-controlled environment in your training.

Says my friend the doctor anyway.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I've wondered if this was akin to military Basic Training and the like, where one of the objectives is exactly that, to learn how to preform when sleep deprived and stressed out.

Another factor is being on call, getting woken up at a bad time and nonetheless having to make the best possible decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Either way, I'm still going to take a nap when I get home.

</comment><comment><USER11> "If you think ... think again."

Why do so many journalists write in such cliched ways?</comment>


Show HN: Jsonbox.io V2 – Free HTTP-based JSON storage with private box - <AUTHOR> https://jsonbox.io <comment><USER2> I really like this. Minimalistic. I'll try to make an adapter for my .net core cms to connect here, this evening.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. :) You are welcome to add it to the wrappers section of the readme.

<comment><USER2> Went well, will need some small bugfixes before it can be added.

[https://github.com/cloudy-cms/cloudy-cms-addon- jsonbox](https://github.com/cloudy-cms/cloudy-cms-addon-jsonbox)</comment></comment></comment>


LG's impressive 4K HDR Monitor will be available on March 28th for $999 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/17/14961720/lg-32ud99-price-release-date <comment><USER2> Still waiting for OLED monitors. They have 4K OLED televisions, 4K AMOLED mobile screens, yet no OLED monitors.. Why?</comment>


U.S. to force out foreign students taking classes fully online - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-visas-students-idUSKBN2472TT <comment><USER2> I'd like to know the names of the people behind this policy. They should be held responsible for this and other cruel policies.</comment>


The rise of Silicon Dad - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/885e1d28-a7c0-11e2-9fbe-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2RFeSPVFJ <comment><USER2> Nugget of truth buried in the [fun but not-too-novel] article:

"real progress in the workplace, for women and men, will come when more men forge flexible work schedules and wash dishes in front of their children, then turn those experiences into corporate policies."

Sure, in many industries and many parts of country/world, there are still lots of battles to fight to eliminate discrimination and bias against women in the workplace. But here in the SF startup circuit, I find this to be the most relevant issue facing working parents. Because I'm a mom (and a valuable, contributing member of my company), people don't hold it against me if I need to take an afternoon off, pick up my sick kid from daycare, and then get back online at 10pm. Pattern matching tells them that it's necessary "for a mom." But if a male co-worker does the same, I don't think there's as much leniency. Pattern matching kicks in yet again, and instead of being compared to me, he's compared to other dads (many of whom might have a stay-at-home wife, allowing them to put work first).

Still, we are lucky to be here on the bleeding edge of this issue. I almost feel like this complaint is the femninist equivalent to a #firstworldproblem, while women elsewhere being denied real opportunities.

<comment><USER3> Are you kidding me? This is not a first world problem. I'm a female entrepreneur in India. I've lived long enough in Silicon Valley for my husband (and co-founder) and me to be acutely aware of how we handle gender issues at home and work. But I face sexism on an everyday basis in society and in the tech circles here. That in itself, is the reason the "real opportunities" are denied for so many women in tech.

<comment><USER2> I totally agree - my point was that in many places outside of SV/tech, there are much bigger discrimination issues than the "men's work policies" issue. Sadly, it sounds like you've found the same to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started working primarily at home a few years ago and now work exclusively from home. I can't express how much it means to me to be able to hear the "post-school" info dump that my kids bring home, especially as my wife has started to pursue her nursing career.

I screwed up and put too much time in the office and traveling when my kids were younger. Sure, I got to see the world, but I think it came at too great of a cost. If I could do it again, I'd do it very differently.

And now, as my kids are starting to leave the home, I'm beginning to find time and attention to work on my own things in those extra hours instead of building someone else's coffers. But I will still trade an evening at a MLS game with my son over finishing another user story any day (such as tonight :)!

<comment><USER5> Good for you, you got out in time.

<comment><USER6> You managed to echo my sentiment quite precisely. It's like, while you are young, you had better figure out a hit startup that lets you exit with a large pile of cash. Only then can you have the buffer to take it easy and enjoy your time with family. If you fail to make said exit, then you end up tied to your job, and will have to watch the world and your life go past you.

This thinking has filled me with an urgency and i really feel the need to get the hell out of academia, and go on a "hunting spree" to make money...

<comment><USER7> My experience is quite contrary. I've worked from home the entire time I've had kids (10 years now). Wouldn't have it any other way. No, I didn't have a big exit, just made a commitment to a daily life optimized for happiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have found that it's somewhat easier as a man to take on domestic duties without people at work worrying about your commitment. I took paternity leave a month after I started working, in the middle of a very busy case. Nobody blinked, and the only response I got was: "why didn't you take the full four weeks?" This is a decision women agonize about--when and how to take parental leave, committing to be available during the time, etc. Me, I just peaced out --I think I checked my Blackberry twice in as many weeks (this is at a place where people check their Blackberry last thing before bed).

As a man, I had nothing to prove. I had no inferences or presumptions to head off at the pass. "Of course my having a kid doesn't mean I'm not going to be available to work late nights from here on out, or that I'm going to leave in a couple of years just after you're done training me. What a ridiculous thought--I'm a man after all!"

</comment><comment><USER9> I quit my full-time and started consulting literally the day my first was born. My wife went back to part time as well. It did require a bit of downsizing. Worth it.

 _Living_ a good life is better than " _having_ the good life".

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra The real WTF is that we "require" parents to be with their children for 12 hours per day. Why is that? Children should play with themselves and use gadgets and play games and learn. They don't need to be watched by an adult for 4/5 of their waking day. And parents should have time for their grownup business. Four hours, in my opinion, should be more than enough. We should structure our society around that assumption.

<comment><USER10> The time that children _need_ adults does not come in a convenient block. A few minutes here, 20 minutes there. It likely adds up to _less_ than 4 hours in total (once they're old enough to tie their own shoes or so) but it will be spread out and unpredictable.

<comment> guard-of-terra This is true. We should be working on children being able to be autonomous in longer streaks; on children being able to resolve part of their needs via telecommunications (cellphone is already a huge saver); on children being able to use help of "an adult" (as opposed to "the adult", that is parent) - like a slightly supervised playground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This makes more sense every year:

It gets easier to run a business from home. Your website is your front door for customers, so you need not have a real receptionist & office, and cloud services just keep improving.

And, when you work at home, at something you love (your own business), you have no problem motivating yourself to work nights, after the kids are tucked in. And, mixing work time with kid time gives you good, rewarding breaks.

And, explaining my business issues to my kids gives me great practice in better communication, & better clarity on my own goals, and smarter, more aware kids.

That said, this works much easier with school-age kids. When they are under 4, it's much much harder to work while taking care, as they need so much more care.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, that's really sad lead-in: A mom who is "famous", so her daughter introduces her to her friends via Google Search, instead of meeting them.

Hooray for egalitarianism, but it's still sad that any parent leaves their child's life behind.

<comment><USER13> If it was the dad who was "famous", would you have made the same comment? Many families are like that, for decades (centuries?) the fathers would be bringing home the bread, the mothers staying at home, and nobody ever really called those fathers out, as bad role-models or even just bad fathers. Sure there are some that truly detach themselves from the family, but they are a small minority.

In this case the mum's a rather busy person, as she's never seen around school. But to say she's leaving her child's life behind? That's a bit harsh IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a dupe; I posted the same story 18 hours ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588737>

<comment><USER13> This isn't Digg.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps you should try using that line on someone who hasn't been on HN since Week One, and doesn't have over 237 times your karma.

<comment><USER13> I don't see the relation between my criticism and your being on HN for ages, but you make a fair point. Sorry about that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why is there no upvote or comment option on this front page HN post? - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/NgdiGg1 <comment><USER2> _Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down, then fall steadily, and only one should be on the front page at a time._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks and sorry to have you look something up that I could have easily done myself.</comment></comment>


Forget poll widgets - Prediction markets right in your website - <AUTHOR> http://blog.askmarkets.com/2009/07/17/the-widget/

<comment><USER2> The reason why polls are so popular is because they're easy to understand. You have one vote, you select the option you think is the correct answer to the question and the result show the spread of people's opinions.

Adding a layer of complexity to this by "investing" makes it harder for the user to understand. It took me a good two minutes and a read of the blog post to understand how eaxctly to vote (or invest). If this was a widget on another website, I wouldn't know what it was or to do with it. There's no obvious way to select an option and it's not particularly clear that you have to click on the row then select the amount to invest.

There needs to be a better explanation of what exactly the widget does within the widget itself, otherwise users will get confused and not use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Riklomas, thank you for your time and comment, I think you're right. We believe that an answer to a poll is the binary truncation of one's belief, and what we're trying to grasp is the full answer. Still, it's harder to extract it indeed, and the main reason is that we are used in submitting our views in polls, not markets. However, given that simplicity and directness is our main target with producing the widget, do you think that a different terminology (like betting or playing instead of investing, or what?) will make things more straightforward for the busy user?

<comment><USER3> Just an UI improvement: How about using sliders to control the invested amounts?

Use some Javascript to ensure that all sliders add up to 100% (or so). If you need an inspiration for the finer points, look at how the game `Master of Orion' (the original, not the sequel) does resource allocation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I still believe that entering a number is a more straightforward way to introduce/implement the concept, than having 'n' sliders etc. Also, the step of extra thinking before "you put the -exact amount- money where your mouth is" results into the added value of the service, a more insightful representation of users' belief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting concept.

I would refine it as a gambling widget (that's what it is) and offer a percentage to the host.

Grow it and sell the service to bookies, they'll love it.</comment>


Have you ever smoked weed? Answer this question and you could be banned from US - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pot-border-banned-waiver-1.3752278 <comment><USER2> Summary: Don't confess to a federal crime when being interrogated by border patrol and expect zero consequences. This applies to all nations.

<comment><USER3> Aaaand this is why I don't even want to try visiting US, despite being offered to talk at conferences about my product. I'm using a false name on Facebook and HN, which makes me afraid of any agent asking "Have you ever impersonated someone" or "Have you ever committed a crime against US interest". I just dread the TSA. Plus I carry nudes on my laptop, which despite the male models probably being above 24, I can't prove aren't below 18, and even though I could clear my HDDs, I might as well do business with a freeer country.

The only limitation is, given I'm French and we've just had our "9/11"-type terrorist attacks, I'm afraid we might progressively set up the same extreme police system. If we do so, I'd like to apologize in advance in the name of the people of my country...

<comment><USER4> While I'm no fan of the TSA, this seems quite extreme. The chance they would look at your hard drives is nearly 0% and most countries have some insane policies that outsiders could harp on as a reason to not visit and to "do business with a freer country." To each their own, but avoiding a major country because their border agents hassle someone every now and then seems way too limiting to me.

Keep in mind that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has condemned France over their use of torture in pursuing marijuana convictions. France will also somewhat arbitrarily define cases as "drug use" vs "trafficking" since possession for use is ill-defined. Many consumers get tried under trafficking laws because they get caught purchasing, for example, and under trafficking laws they will get much more serious penalties including being banned from the country in many cases. Don't forget you can also be detained for four days without a lawyer while they investigate.

Some more info at [http://www.drugtext.org/European-Drug- Laws/chapter-4-france-...](http://www.drugtext.org/European-Drug- Laws/chapter-4-france-drug-use-and-supply-illegal-possession-undefined- situation-unsatisfactory.html) if you're interested.

France has a lot of great things going for it so I try not to let bad laws, border agents, etc. spoil my time there.

<comment><USER5> This is a bit of a false equivalence.

As he's French he broadly has no choice but to live within the laws of his state - he can campaign against them but for as long as he's there he's under them, and moving to another jurisdiction is not that easy. Whereas, he chooses to go to the USA and fall under their border controls - he's making the statement that he won't choose to do so.

While he's likely to be unnoticed by his existing state, border controls have a much higher chance of capturing interest and the outcomes are uncertain (at least in part because you're not a citizen and the way of working will feel 'foreign')

While it does sound a bit extreme, I can personally say I don't like visiting the USA any more because of the border controls. I'd probably try ad put business in Canada because of the extreme way in which the USA now treats foreigners. It can be very uncomfortable, difficult and aloof. Unless you've actually come under the purview of the TSA as a 'foreigner' it's hard to have a sense of how poorly they treat people and the general arbitrary nature of control [0].

[0] That is not to say that other countries are much better. As a UK citizen I'm pretty clear that we treat external people coming in completely differently to our citizens - and having been involved in visa applications for employees have found some of the ways in which "my government" treated people totally embarrassing.

<comment><USER3> You've both captured my situation properly, and I didn't know what mrgordon mentione. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember a friend asking me if I could check the visa application process to the U.S. because he didn't really understand. The form was DS 160, if I recall.

Here is a sample:

[http://photos.state.gov/libraries/jamaica/231771/PDFs/DS-160...](http://photos.state.gov/libraries/jamaica/231771/PDFs/DS-160%20Instructions.pdf)

Some questions from page 38:

"Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring prostitutes within the last 10 years?"

"Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, or any other illegal activity while in the United States?"

"Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?"

I mean, I'm sure there's a rationale behind these questions.. maybe in a "plausible deniability" way.. but they're funny.

The problem is that sometimes, one cannot know if they violated a law. There was a video of a lawyer asking people not to talk to the cops where he addressed this point.

<comment><USER7> Lying on DS-160 was the reason the Feds managed to initially arrest 9/11 attacker Zacarias Moussaoui [1]. It is _significantly_ easier for cops to prove you lied to the US Government and detain/deport/ban you from entry if you're an alien than to try to prove criminal intent, etc. and that's why DS-160 has all those seemingly weird questions.

[1] <[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui#Capture>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui#Capture>)

<comment><USER8> >Lying on DS-160 was the reason the Feds managed to initially arrest 9/11 attacker Zacarias Moussaoui.

"Because it was clear at that point that Moussaoui was in the country illegally, the INS agents arrested him."[1]

[1] <[https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0606/chapter4.htm>](https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0606/chapter4.htm>)

Yes lying on the DS-160 is probably a reason to arrest Zacarias, but that is not what happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The headline is click-baity, he can still come to USA but has to apply in advance to a costly permit. Canada throws similar hissy-fit when dealing with Americans or Green card holders with DUI record.

<comment><USER10> DUI record isn't the same to me admitting that at some point after the age of 18 I was riding a bike with a non zero blood alcohol level

<comment><USER9> They are not the same but the situations are similar. Both are actually insane at different levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When dealing with CBP/ICE don't even acknowledge that you are aware of the _existence_ of something called weed. Seriously, they have no sense of humor.

<comment><USER12> You should just say, "How should I know? Am I a botanist? I've smoked a lot of stuff."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet another reason I believe it is not unethical to lie to bureaucracies.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

<comment><USER13> Bureaucracies do not have feelings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Welcome to the court-based country which is the US. You are expected to be serious when answering on the visa waiver whether you will kill people when in the US, and some more ridiculous questions like this one. Why? The only reason I can imagine is that when you are arrested after blowing up a bomb you cannot say that you did not expect this to be illegal. I am missing a question on my plans to run naked on the street or publicly pee.

</comment><comment><USER16> Who maked the call for the ban? Is it the border agent or did it go through a process?

<comment><USER17> AFAIK, any border agent can place a five-year ban on you for any reason, including no reason whatsoever.

The moral of the story is that you should always follow the unwritten rules of interacting with border agents (Which you always should, when interacting with any people who have absolute power over you, and no accountability.) And hope that you don't run into this guy.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ex-u-s- office...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ex-u-s-officer-s- border-bans-to-be-reviewed-1.997985)

<comment><USER18> And what are these "rules?" Don't do or say anything stupid?

<comment><USER17> Answer the question they asked, not the question you think they asked. Don't volunteer any extra information. Don't admit to any criminal activity. Know the exact address that you are travelling to. Take off your hat, and your sunglasses. If it's dark, and you are travelling by car, turn on all of your cabin lights.

If you have anything interesting in your passport, or in the luggage they searched, you may be asked questions that will try to catch you in a lie. "So, how do you like working at Facebook?" "I work for Microsoft, Sir, it's pretty good."

Be polite and deferential, but not friendly. Keep your answers short and to the point. Be white. Don't look nervous.

Follow these simple steps, and the overwhelming majority of the time, you'll be just fine [1].

[1] If you are traveling as a speaker to a conference, or for a work function, my understanding is there is a separate set of incantations that you should invoke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not that he can't enter the US. It's just that he has to file an extra form and pay a fee.

The legal situation around marijuana in the US sucks. It may be legal at the state level where you live, but it's still very much illegal at the federal level and in theory you can spend a year in federal prison on the first offense for any amount.

</comment><comment><USER20> On a side, and just out of curiosity: has there been any thought in the US so far about prosecuting the doctors that liberally hand out certificates for the use of medical cannabis? Because it is clear that anybody can get one, so the doctors must be making a false declaration.

</comment><comment><USER21> "I will neither confirm nor deny any prior illegal activity."

<comment><USER18> And then they can just send you on the first flight back home.

<comment> Const-me How about "No, I don't remember doing anything like that, ever" ?

<comment><USER22> The form only has check boxes for yes or no. And the right answer for all questions is: no If you want to get into the country.

<comment> Const-me If a person lies to a US government, that's a felony: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001)

If I were that Canadian, I probably wouldn't lie either.

<comment><USER22> If you need to lie on that form, maybe you should not try to enter the US. I never tried, but I'd be curious to know what happens if you say yes on any of these questions. Are you still allowed into the US? Which questions are ok to answer with yes?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google News shuts down in Spain after new law - <AUTHOR> http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2014/12/an-update-on-google-news-in-spain.html

<comment><USER2> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8732859)</comment>


'To hell and back': my three weeks suffering from coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/to-hell-and-back-my-three-weeks-suffering-from-coronavirus <comment><USER2> .. that sounds almost like a regular seasonal flu infection.

<comment><USER3> It makes sense, given that the news continually mentions that the virus is, for the most part, milder than the regular flues we know and love, but spreads faster and easier, and kills more of its victims.

For the ones it doesn't kill, it's a milder flu and nothing more.

Incidentally, when H1N1 went around, both I and my partner caught it. It was seriously miserable and by far the most sick I ever felt in my life. But even then, the risk of mortality was substantially lower. The experience leaves a lasting impression regardless.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I solve the chicken-and-egg problem of starting an AI startup? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on creating a statistical model to test the feasibility of my idea. But it's tough. I only have around 550$ a month to spend on training a model on the latest GPU's, which is barely worth a few days of training, and since I'm not an expert in the field (not even remotely, I come from a programming background), it takes a lot more trial and error to test things and make things work.
So I need an expert in the field and money to train a model on my data, in order to start up. But an expert in the field wouldn't join me without some credibility, which could mean having some breakthrough technology, or funds from an investment backing me up. But an investor would not invest in me without a team proficient in the technology and knowing the idea is feasible.
How can I go about solving this chicken-and-egg problem? <comment><USER2> I think that you should consult with an AI engineer to give you an insight that your idea is technically feasible. I suggest finding an AI researcher that will believe in your idea and join you as a partner, someone who can see the potential in your data.

I have some experience in AI, maybe I can help you. Feel free to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you look at the potential customers your looking at solving a problem for and solve an easier problem for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> if you have exclusive access to the data then maybe you can partner with an existing firm.

<comment><AUTHOR> I rather create my own company that is completely focused on this one thing, so I don't want to give another company access to my proprietary data.</comment></comment>


How to Solve the OLED Sticking Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.makerfabs.cc/article/makerfabs-daily-solving-the-oled-sticking-problem.html <comment><USER2> If 0.1mm error is too big to assemble enclosure, that design may not survive handling by users or temperature changes. Screen will crack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right, I agree with you. To bring a design to a real final product is more complex than thought. And we need to make the design more suitable for manufacturing and the most important, with good quality for users.</comment></comment>


It's time to say goodbye - <AUTHOR> https://blog.do.com/ <comment><USER2> So, I'll take the domain if you don't want it anymore...

<comment><USER3> I was just wondering how much less time a website owner will be willing to stick it out on a sinking business for each additional dollar of domain name value. It's got to be a lot more tempting to bail on a site when it means you can sell "do.com" than if the site is "PeanutsForUglyDonkeys.com".

<comment><USER4> I daresay I'm not all that surprised your domain suggestion was registered today.

<comment><USER3> Ha! I was secretly hoping that I'd cost the owner of some bot a wasted registration fee. Now let's all go visit so that they project a profit before the refund grace period ends.

<comment><USER5> No it was manually registered. I'd had a few beers while lurking on HN and the name seemed hilarious. I've sobered up now. It's still hilarious. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> You're the culprit?

My hope that I'll see a really ugly donkey being fed peanuts as a large background image suddenly grows brighter!

<comment><USER5> This is one of those moments where I'm _almost_ tempted to spend the 10K hours I need to learn to draw. Almost. But then I invariably head to Google image search.

<comment><USER4> Google image search is a superior solution in this case!

I could've sworn I had saved or bookmarked the perfect donkey picture, too. It's a pity I can't seem to find it right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do is Done.

Thanks, Salesforce! Your purchase of Manymoon and subsequent shutdown of it instills Google-like levels of confidence in your product offerings!

<comment><USER7> Salesforce is under zero pressure to care what anybody outside of it's extremely profitable walled garden thinks.

<comment><USER8> Is Salesforce extremely profitable?

[http://beta.fool.com/boriskabinov/2012/08/13/will- salesforce...](http://beta.fool.com/boriskabinov/2012/08/13/will-salesforce- ever-make-profit/8950/)

[http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise- applicati...](http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise- applications/salesforcecom-revenues-surge-but-should/240142626)

Looks like the answer is... not yet. (maybe never?)

<comment><USER7> Hah, good point. I forgot about reality! Can we say "lucrative?" There are certainly some houses being bought with SF dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To DO:

You don't need to _do_ anything. Your domain name will pull seven figures+ without you .... doing anything :)

<comment><USER10> Salesforce (the company behind do.com) is notorious for buying 2-4 letter domains. I'm sure they'll find another way to use it a few years from now.

<comment><USER11> Data.com comes to mind.

<comment><USER10> Do.com, Desk.com, Social.com, Work.com, Force.com, Data.com

Quite the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thats an odd bit of news. I'm in the CRM market ([http://www.radiumcrm.com](http://www.radiumcrm.com)) and as a competitor I always admired the product. It was a very clean UI, had some nice features and was a good complement to the behemoth that is Salesforce. I can't imagine why they would shut it down.

<comment><USER13> I can only agree. Do had a really clean, intuitive design. I didn't used it on a daily basis, but - just like latraveler - I was checking out the competition for my company's product a couple of years ago. Out of all the todo list apps I signed up for (and hell, there sure is a lot to choose from), Do was actually the easiest one to use, basically everything was where I expected it to be. It had the perfect balance between the Basecamp feature-rich but complex UI and the glamorous but over-simplified Wunderlist.

Also they must have payed a fortune for their domain, Salesforce probably intends to reuse it soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Their introduction video has the right context... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pN2OYy0_ok&feature=player_e...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pN2OYy0_ok&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER15> But you can still get hired there :) [https://do.com/jobs](https://do.com/jobs)

</comment><comment><USER16> What does Do do?

<comment><USER17> You can do anything you want at do.com.

The impossible is not a barrier at do.com.

Welcome to do.com.

<comment><USER18> I thought that was zombo.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shutdown stories are a braggart form of "fuck you." Early adopters just have to be careful not to rely on ventures by founders that have a history of creating a little value only to throw it all away later.

For the Nth time, for unsold ventures, don't just shutdown if you get bored of something, find a buyer! Not only might this make you some money, it may also salvage your rep for not being someone that abandons their base mercurially.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a Salesforce admin and I never understood why Salesforce didn't do more to integrate Do into their platform. The only thing they did was a half-assed AppExchange app which was nearly useless and had no direct integration with the core functionality (why have a collaboration platform if you can't feed it into your organization's data?). Then again, they probably just bought it mainly for the domain name.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you have a good idea about what to do with the do.com name, maybe they will give it to you if you partecipate to their $1M first price hackathon ;-) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614973)

</comment><comment><USER21> The video they used for launch was great! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7myUgmtFPkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7myUgmtFPkc)

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're looking for an alternative check out Paymo 3.0 (shameless plug) - we've just entered public beta: [http://www.paymo.biz/blog/paymo-3-0-beta-is- here/](http://www.paymo.biz/blog/paymo-3-0-beta-is-here/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry, a bit off topic, but am I the only one that finds that webpage really horrible to look at? The background makes me think I have a dirty screen. I find it quite unpleasant to look at.

<comment><USER24> Lucky for you, you won't have to look at it ever again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not do.com, it's doh.com.

</comment><comment><USER26> You can always switch to getblimp.com. (Shameless plug by a cofounder).

</comment><comment><USER27> Asana is poised to own the task management space.

<comment><USER28> We've had to use asana for a particular customer project recently and it's really not that great. For me trello is a far better implementation of task management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Opensource source code??

</comment><comment><USER30> Was this Any.do or not?

<comment><USER31> No, Any.do is a different company

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> do NOT

<comment><USER32> downvoting?!?!? no one likes Yoda? [http://listdose.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/Yoda.jpg](http://listdose.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/Yoda.jpg)

<comment><USER33> Pun and joke threads are discouraged on HN.

<comment><USER34> Can we give the guy a break on a Friday night? Just letting his post die without upvotes is enough for him to get the idea

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've never been to saleforce.toobig, but they are already irritating? Buying up this, and that, and closing them down.</comment>


Lego Build with Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.buildwithchrome.com

<comment><USER2> This is really awesome. Currently Lego is high into buzz. After Lego the Movie.

I couldn't watch the movie. But will surely rejoice using this app!</comment>


Tale of Two Economies Will Determine Post-Lockdown Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-26/tale-of-two-economies-will-determine-post-lockdown-growth <comment><USER2> I think the real two economies actually are tech vs. everything else.</comment>


Fedora 21 To Have DNSSEC Validation Enabled By Default - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2014/05/fedora-21-to-have-dnssec-validation-enabled-by-default/ <comment><USER2> DNSSEC. Take everything you don't like about the CA system. Sign it over to the government, because everyone knows they'll never manipulate the DNS to accomplish a policy goal. Then bake it, along with 1990s-era RSA cryptography, into the core of the Internet.

Thanks, Fedora.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I follow your comment. How do you see DNSSEC as signing anything over to the government? The point of DNSSEC was/is solely to prevent cache poisoning by "chaining" answers from root to auth with signatures. It only proves the answer provided is correct by DNS means. It does not attempt to guarantee authenticity of a destination. Also, DNSSEC supports multiple algorithms, including ECDSA, though RSA is the most widely used at the moment. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's out there now, and it works for what it was designed for.

<comment><USER2> The roots of the DNS tree are controlled by world governments. The roots of the DNSSEC PKI are the roots of the DNS tree. And, no, the point of DNSSEC isn't solely to prevent cache poisoning; in fact, the motivating use case for DNSSEC in 2014 is DANE, which replaces the CA hierarchy with DNSSEC.

<comment><USER4> It would be useful to put forward a single credible scenario where "world" governments can use the DNS root private key in any fashion without detection. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate about DNSSEC with straw men like this.

<comment><USER2> Are you familiar with the CAP theorem, or do you believe that it's impossible for one query to a globally distributed database to get a different answer for the same question than every other query?

Every time someone tells me that DNSSEC tampering would be "detectible", it always seems premised on the idea that everyone sees the same data. Of course, attackers will isolate their targets and attack them surgically.

What's worse, none of what you're talking about is cryptographic. This is protection by dint of being lucky enough to be on the right part of the network to be hard to attack. No sound cryptosystem works like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FreeBSD 10 ships with Unbound in the base system too... Sadly, it's not enabled by default, but a lot of people enable it for performance (caching) and they get security for free.

# sysrc local_unbound_enable=YES # service local_unbound start

</comment><comment><USER6> CeroWrt picked up the DNSSEC-enabled version of dnsmasq as soon as it was released, and it's been a huge hassle even among that small and technically capable userbase. Fedora has done more to try to make it usable (detecting captive portals, etc.), but there are simply too many broken networks and DNS servers out there for DNSSEC to be used to do anything more strict than putting a red flag in the browser's URL bar.</comment>


Realtime web analytics service UserLook - <AUTHOR> http://userlook.com

<comment><USER3> All of these new-fangled analytics sites seem to be stuck in the same dumb page-views-are-everything model as GA — just watching bird patterns, basically. Things haven't changed much since the bad old days of WebTrends and Analog.

There's no profiling based on facts known to the app (user's age, gender, ethnicity, occupation) or behaviour (posts a lot of long texts, posts a lot of photos, is mostly reading/lurking, etc.), or Bayesian probabilistic analysis of new users. There is so much we want to know about our users, but no real turnkey tools to anlyaze the data with. Instead, everyone seems to be cobbling together their own toolchain with Hadoop and what not.

Seems like an important piece of the analytics stack, yet I don't see anyone doing it. Is this something that anyone has started offering? (I'm thinking SaaS here, not enterprise stuff.)

Analytics tools such as GA are also as terrible at tracking people across domains as these tools have ever been. We have a site which has single sign-on across many, many sites with different domains; we could have used the GA stuff to rewrite links in order to transfer the GA session ID across the domains -- but it's extremely awkward and gets very complicated when you need to implement it consistently both in the server logic (eg., redirects and emails) and the client logic (links, iframes, AJAX, etc.). It seems really silly when the app _already knows the identity of the user_ and can track it consistently across domains.

</comment><comment><USER4> I definitely see how this functionality is superior to Google Analytics (at least in GA's current format), but it seems like there is little edge over Piwik (<http://piwik.org/>) or OWA (<http://www.openwebanalytics.com/>) - <USER2> least in functionality. If that's a reasonable assessment, you are simply offering a hosted version for a fee.

Don't get me wrong, web analytics is growing and there is a lot of room for competition. However, it's everyone vs google at the moment. I think it would be good for a small team to strap themselves to one of the existing open source projects (which have far more functionality already, at least compared to your live demo and screenshots) and simply offer a hosted version. Then a group could actively commit updates and enhancements to the existing product (there are a lot of these business models out there, EnterpriseDB being a good, high-profile commercial example).

</comment><comment><USER5> Any different from chartbeat?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's has monitor sites with Subdomains functionality, cheaper service plans. Also UserLook team is fast to implement new user requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does your service differentiate from Google Analytics now they are introducing real-time?

Google announcement: [http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening- on-you...](http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site- right-now.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> We trying to provide consolidated data on dashboard not separated reports. Also we provide performance timing data and soon will be ready event notification system where you can setup alerts as (max on site records, site availability, response time, e.t.c.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First thought they were location in Ukraine / Russia, because of these cheap prices. Apparently they are located in Torrance, CA. With these prices, you won't survive... (8.95 USD for the most popular plan).

<comment><AUTHOR> We expect a large number of registrations. And we will change the cost of service plans with the growth opportunities of service. For current users the cost will be remain as set at registration or decrease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Add please support for Https sites.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have that feature in plans, vote for it on our support forum to increase priority. <http://userecho.com/FLzq>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> it supports ipad?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it utilizes javascript and no flash. Supports iPad!

<comment><USER10> Please don't astroturf questions and answers like this. It's completely transparent, and leaves a negative impression.</comment></comment></comment>