My essential django package list - <AUTHOR> https://spapas.github.io/2017/10/11/essential-django-packages/ <comment><USER3> Django packages are often awwwwwfully tempting but the more of them you use the more likely things are to start acting weird (they don't all play nicely together) and the more pain you're going to have upgrading Django versions. IRS really important to assess whether you _really need_ all the complexity any add-on brings.

This also leafs me to favour more stay-out-of-my-way add one like django-silk over django-debug-toolbar

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a different philosophy. If some functionality is offered by a good- quality (supported, good docs etc) django package then go on and use it. If you want to be DRY you shouldn't re-implement functionality that others have already implemented. Also, after you use a package you more or less learn it and it's easy to re-use it in your next project -- while if you implement your own solution you'll most probably need to resort to horrendous copy and paste from your old project to your new one to re-use it!

Also, as I already mention in my article, if you use a package and you use it for its intented purpose you have a quick reference for some of your project's functionality (f.e if you use django-waffle then you'll know that some parts of the project can be enabled or disabled at will) - if instead you had implemented everything yourself you (or the person that needs to understand your project) would need to read everything to know what's happening. So, for me, using a good django package does not add but actually _removes_ complexity from your project!

I can't remember any package incompatibilities - instead as I already mention in my article there are a lot of packages that work great together (django- tables with django-filter, django-rest-framework with django-filter, django- taggit with django-autocomplete-light etc).

Finally, I partially agree with your comment about more pain when upgrading django versions however considering that

\- supported projects are usually upgraded a little after a new version of django is out (most of them are already prepared before the new django version is out since they can be tested using the beta version)

\- django keeps supporting (non LTS) old versions for 8 months (and 16 months for securiy fixes) so in this time most probably all your dependecies will have updated so as to support the new django version

\- all packages are open source so you can contribute to help move to the next version

the upgrading pain should be very little... When I upgraded from django 1.10 to 1.11 I also upgraded all the packages I describe in the list and everything worked without problems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool.

My "always on" Django apps:

      * django-compressor
      * django-debug-toolbar
      * django-waffle
      * django-jenkins
      * django-statsd-mozilla
      * django-markwhat
      * django-storages (to put static assets on S3/Cloudfront)
      * django-smoketest

Frequent additions as needed:

      * django-bootstrap3
      * django-rest-framework
      * django-filter
      * celery
      * wagtail

I used to use django-extensions everywhere, but it pulls in ipython and all of ipython's dependencies, which gets pretty heavy.

<comment><USER5> Would love to know your thoughts on wagtail? I've been evaluating it (as against django cms mostly), but resources seem generally scarce - there's no big irc channel, the mailing list directs you to SO, and SO doesn't seem particularly active on the wagtail front either. So where do you go for help or if you need to bounce something off someone more experienced in Wagtail than yourself?

Streamfield looks great! It seems a perfect replacement to my rigid model-per- content-type approach.

Wagtail's deviation from standard Django patterns (no views!) are a little concerning too.

<comment><USER6> I'm one of the Wagtail core developers. We made the mistake of spreading our support across too many channels (Google Groups, Stack Overflow, IRC, semi- private Slack) but we've made a clear decision to focus on Stack Overflow for developer-related questions:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/wagtail](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/wagtail)

mainly as a result of this poll:

[https://twitter.com/WagtailCMS/status/801384753589080064](https://twitter.com/WagtailCMS/status/801384753589080064)

Please feel free to contact me directly (details in profile) if you're not getting the support you need on SO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great list! Thanks for sharing.

I'd like to recommend django-fsm[1], an essential package for anyone writing workflow-driven applications (pretty common w/ Django).

1\. [https://github.com/kmmbvnr/django-fsm](https://github.com/kmmbvnr/django- fsm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello thank you very much. I am aware of django-fsm (and it's sister project django-viewflow) but I haven't used it in my projects that's why I didn't include it in the list - all the other packages have been used and tested extensively in various projects so I can vote for them.

Some projects that I had implemented and used workflows were implemented with custom flows (by hand) using django-rules-light to keep a lid on who can do what on each state.

django-fsm is definitely one of the packages I am going to use in future projects that require extensive workflows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great list, and thanks for giving Wagtail a shout-out! Your work on it back in its early days is still very much appreciated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much! Both contributing and working (using it as a CMS in various projects) with Wagtail were an absolute joy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Number one missing package so far is django-haystack. With how important search is, having an easy django-like plugable search engine ready to go quickly is a god send.

Add in the fact that it abstracts over different engines, means you can develop locally with Whoosh (all pure python and virtualenv friendly) and deploy to ElasticSearch without changing your code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I am aware of django-haystack but haven't used it in any of my projects so I couldn't include it in my list.

Notice that the projects I worked on and needed full text searching were implemented with Wagtail (CMS) which uses elasticsearch directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great list. I use a few of these on all projects.

Interestingly, django-webpack-loader has completely replaced django-compressor and all the other static bundlers. I like how configurable webpack is and how much control it gives you.

Anyone else completely switched over? Every single static file runs through webpack for me now, and I couldn't imagine ever going back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I am aware of webpack but I haven't jumped in the webpack wagon - <USER2> tool I use from the node-js world for asset management is browserify which is much simpler (I've written a couple of articles about it: [https://spapas.github.io/2015/05/27/using-browserify- watchif...](https://spapas.github.io/2015/05/27/using-browserify-watchify/) and [https://spapas.github.io/2015/11/16/using-browserify- es6/](https://spapas.github.io/2015/11/16/using-browserify-es6/)).

However, as I mention in the post, I don't using node-js tools if you don't need em. If you have a couple of css / js files that don't do anything fancy (i.e no es6, no require etc) then I don't thenk that there's any need to add a huge dependency (node-js and friends) to your project. django-compressor (or django-pipeline [https://github.com/jazzband/django- pipeline](https://github.com/jazzband/django-pipeline) which is also good) should be more than enough for your needs. Also, notice that webpack / browserify don't understand javascript or css snipped that are inlined in your django templates (django-compressor understands them all right).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love this list, and I'm definitely tacking it on my hobby postboard at home. (Especially for django-reversion which is something I've always wanted and never knew existed!)

I would also like to thank OP for being really responsive to comments. I've been feeling around your blog seeing all this other great content, and I really appreciate the attention you give to people who comment and share :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great list! I noticed Tastypie wasn't included. I've really liked it, but are there reasons I shouldn't be using it?

<comment><USER13> In general Django REST Framework is a better package. Hooking in your own customization is less ad-hoc with DRF than with Tastypie, I've found. The DRF documentation is also absolutely stellar and the wider ecosystem around it is really good.

edit: And to my sibling commenter's point, DRF has a funding model, so it's being actively worked on full time.

<comment><USER14> Having used both, DRF is a lot more similar to standard Django. The views are similar, and the serializers work very similarly to forms so it feels a lot more consistent to use. I seem to remember a post a could of years back where they said they weren't going to be doing more active development in Tastypie, or something to that effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could someone please concisely describe if there is a use-case where Django offers utility above what Flask can provide?

<comment><USER16> Built in everything. Users, auth, admin, ORM.

Flask is the opposite: Bring Your Own Everything. It's not hard to replicate the functionality of Django but there is surely utility in having everything boxed up and ready to go.

<comment><USER17> Never use the built in user. Always start a project with a custom user extending abstract user.

At some point you'll want to customize the user in some way (like making the username case insensitive), and you don't want to be dealing with migration dependency conflicts when you do.

For some reason the Django team is really against any attempt to fix that. They're almost hostile in their discussion of it.

<comment><USER4> OK. Well, I've been building Django apps since around 2007/2008\. More than 50 deployed to production, many still running/maintained. Never once had a problem using the built-in user model. Do you work in some vertical that makes this a particularly common problem for you?

<comment><USER18> I don't think the parent comment is saying don't use the built-in user model. The comment is suggesting to sub-class/extend the built-in user model. So you can use much of the built-in functionality and add/change what you'd like, eg. to add a birthday field

There are obviously other ways to do this, perhaps by creating a Profile model that relates to a User.

<comment><USER17> Yes. Technically you should extend the abstract user model or things get real broken real fast, but that still gives you all the functionality of the built- in user model right out the gate.

The main reason is that if you ever want to change how the username works, it will be a major pain to do if you've been using the built-in user model and already run migrations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This list is impressive, but a lot of these packages are used to generate HTML which is then not usable for SPA.

Do any of you have a similar list for SPA oriented projects ?

<comment><USER20> honestly? use nodejs for that.

django can still give you the backend through DRF or django-graphene, but frontend for SPA is (in my opinion as a dabbler that hates js) way better with node.

take markojs as an example. creating an app with marko-cli gets you a simple demo application with 3 webpages and you're ready to go. you can use concise html syntax (way cleaner and i'm still astonished that there is no similie for django). the stateful components syntax is _way_ cleaner. this is especially true for for/if/whatever tags

like it or not js is the language of the web.

django is still wonderful if you're not focused on SPA applications though. And this includes websites with contents which update through ajax calls.

<comment><USER21> I believe it works like this:

1\. Django for the backend. Nothing but an API (DRF, GraphQL, some custom views or whatever one fancies) and - if server-side rendering is not necessary - a catch-all view that spits out HTML file with the JS bundle. It either doesn't know anything about the frontend, or, possibly, can read Webpack stats file (using django-webpack-loader) to figure out correct bundle filename.

It may also run Django Admin Interface, independently from the SPA - as an almost independent "back office" site.

2\. JS/TS/Elm/whatever and, probably, Webpack for the frontend/SPA itself. If server-side rendering is desirable, a Node-based server. All it knows about the backend is the API contract. Trying to somehow embed JS into Python/Django is not easy, error-prone, and I just don't see any benefits of doing so.

3\. A router that sends requests to the correct piece. I've always used a simplest-possible nginx setup with location /api/ { ... } and location / { ... }.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was a few years ago that I used it but I found django-autocomplete-light pretty unfriendly and not very light. It was far easier to roll my own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I agree that previous versions of django-autocomplete-light were cumbersome to use. However, since version 3 most of the magic has gone away:

1\. Add a class-based-view that returns the search data (inheriting from autocomplete.Select2QuerySetView)

2\. Register that view with your urls.py as normally (but be sure to give it a name)

3\. Add a form field by specifying its widget using the autocomplete.ModelSelect2 widgt, passing it a url='view-name' parameter (which is the view name you used in 2).

4\. Don't forget to include jquery and {{ form.media }} in the views that uses your autocomplete.

5\. Done!

Seems pretty easy and friendly to me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very nice list. Bookmarking this!

One nitpick on your blog layout. I was clicking the h3 for each library, and thought the links were broken. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, thank you very much!

Now that you mention it, I also find this behavior (clicking the header returns you to the TOC) and since it can be easily fixed (change .. contents:: to .. contents:: :backlinks: none) it should have been fixed by now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great resource! Perhaps make it easier to find on your site by adding it to your "Django" category?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Yes, I agree that the article fits better to the django category than the python one so I moved it, thanks for the heads-up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great reference. Thank you, spapas82. Bookmarked!

</comment><comment><USER25> Your site is full of juicy content, thanks!</comment>


Online Cesspool Got You Down? You Can Clean It Up, for a Price - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/13/magazine/internet-premium.html <comment><USER2> This piece reminds me strongly of a particularly pathetic 2005 item, also in the _Times_ , "Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster", the upshot of which was to the effect that if you were rich and ignorant, physically dumping a PC into the rubbish bin to fix software and configuration problems was a logical, effective, and sensible response. It's not.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/technology/17spy.html?page...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/technology/17spy.html?pagewanted=print)

Yes, there are services which will promise the skies in delivering an ad-free or curated experience. In some small and narrow niches, this may succeed. In large part, these services will fail, with numerous results.

One is that the promise of ad-free paid subscriptions will give way to advertising-included pay services. See the long history of cable and premium television channels.

Or that a subscription-based service will simply prove unsustainable. If it's merely a publication, you'll find it folding. If it's a community, you'll find your community and relevant connections and activities (social, professional, intellectual, commercial) terminated, often with little or no notice, and grossly insufficient migration options. "Saving your own data" fails to accomplish the frequently desired goal of "preserving your community".

If it's a hardware-integrated service, you find yourself with both a terminated service _and_ a closet- or garage-full of newly-useless kit.

If it's a hosted media access platform -- DRM-infested texts, video, or audio -- you'll find yourself cut off from access to content _you have bought and paid for._ This is _starting_ to be addressed in some small parts, but remains largely intractable for many.

The biggest flaw in this article, really a classic "submarine" in the Paul Graham sense, is that it presumes that the only solution, or even a _viable_ solution, to a market problem is to market-it-harder.

When broadcast technologies first emerged -- radio in the 1930s and later television in the 1950s, there was a large, and largely forgotten, very public debate over whether a private-ownership or public-provisioning model was appropriate.

In the US, the private approach was undertaken, and ABC, CBS, and NBC, among numerous other networks, now almost wholly consolidated, were born. In Europe, notably Britain, this was seen as a tremendous risk, opening the door to corporate and foreign interference in public discourse, information, and opinion (a fear which may have been well warranted), and instead a tax- supported Broadcast Service was created.

Each side relaxed somewhat. Public broadcasting didn't entirely vanish in the United States, and several independent stations joined forces in the 1960s. PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service (television) was formed in 1969, its radio sibling, NPR, National Public Radio, in 1971. C-SPAN, a paid- subscription, but public-service network, was created for cable by Brian Lamb in 1979. Its funding comes as a part of baseline cable subscriber fees.

There are other models in the online world.

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites support general informational content, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, news, data, educational content, and more, on a donor-supported basis:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation)

Several years ago when looking at detectable measures of signal/noise ratios for various online services, publications, and domains, I found that the venerable Metafilter ranked exceptionally high. Though small (scale of any limited-access platform will be hugely reduced), the presence of intellectual rather than pop-cultural references, as determined by Google results counts for the _Foreign Policy_ Top 100 Global Thinkers names as against the arbitrarily selected string "Kim Kardashian" was the highest of any social media site tested (FB, Twitter, G+, and others), indicated as the FP:KK ratio. Blogs, exemplfied by Wordpress domains, also did surprisingly well. See: [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/)

Metafilter's trick? A one-time $5 fee payed per account, forfeited in the event of abuse.

More generally, the problem of paid-vs-free, or even multi-tiered public- service provisioning, is that _unless the quality of the free or low-cost service is abysmally poor, few will avail themselves of the higher-cost levels._

I'd first encountered that observation in the context of multi-class rail- service provisioning by French polymath Jules Dupuit. Upshot: the reason third-class accomodations are so miserable isn't that it would cost to much to improve them, but that improving them would cannibalise higher-class service levels. Those who've flown coach class in recent years can likely understand.

See: [https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/why-does-air-travel- suck-...](https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/why-does-air-travel-suck-so-bad- this-19th-century-economist-explained-it-with-ju.html)

Tim Harford's addressed this in the specific context of digital media services at FT:

[http://archive.is/fHB9D](http://archive.is/fHB9D)

Applied to information services, a similar inevitable logic is self-evident.

Put another way, there's a tremendous deadweight loss to any such proposal. Marketing-it-harder will deny access to all but the wealthiest members of the public. Though as a market-segmentation technique for identifying high-spend- propensity individuals, this is ambrosia for advertisers, hence the inevitable encroachment of advertising to such services.</comment>


Linux EBPF Tracing Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/ebpf.html <comment><USER2> I've spent a little bit of time playing with some of the supplied tools, but when it comes to creating my own using eBPF, I'm almost completely at a blank. To some extent I just don't know a whole bunch about what there is in the kernel to hook in to.

I'd love to see some good tutorials, or websites that could help me get a handle on that side of things so that I can start to create useful tooling using it.

<comment><USER3> I did write a tutorial; it's terse (on purpose) but a start: [https://github.com/iovisor/bcc/blob/master/docs/tutorial_bcc...](https://github.com/iovisor/bcc/blob/master/docs/tutorial_bcc_python_developer.md)

I imagine we'll get more detailed tutorials over time, especially as the dust settles on the API/interface (it's still improving, plus people are working on alternate front-ends).

Lastly, I'm using bcc on a regular basis at Netflix, and usually find the tools that exist are sufficient (a couple of days ago I traced a resource leak using stackcount and trace). When there's something extra I need, I add a tool to bcc. So yes, we should make tooling easy, but I hope a lot of the time people find that a tool already exists for what they need.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link.

I've been using your tools on and off with our infrastructure. I work for part of Oracle, and we're using the Oracle UEK on our stuff, which tracks mainline a lot closer and gives good access to all these features. The product is still fairly young, so most of my focus has been elsewhere (crossing the Ts, dotting the Is), but I've been scribbling down thoughts of ways I can use eBFP to give me access to useful information across our fleets.</comment></comment></comment>


Will Humans Be Able to Control Computers That Are Smarter Than Us? (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/will-humans-be-able-to-control-computers-that-are-smarter-than-us <comment><USER2> No. ;-)</comment>


Worst Movie Year Ever? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393493956088352.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEFifthNews

<comment><USER3> A year with Toy Story 3 and Scott Pilgrim (directed by Edgar Wright) can't be bad.

Hollywood has always produced those movies that make me queasy – over the top visuals, artificial sound, mindless story. The solution to the problem is to just not watch them.

<comment><USER4> Hey, "Scott Pilgrim" isn't actually out yet; let's not herald it as a year- saving success yet, no matter how good the trailers look.

Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but whereas Toy Story 3 has broad appeal, Scott Pilgrim looks more like something destined to be a cult classic. A lot of "bad movie years" generate a fair crop of movies with cult appeal, we still call them bad movie years by most standards.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you are right. Got a bit too enthusiastic about Scott Pilgrim, there. Looks to be an awesome movie, though.

As far as I am concerned there are only four or five movies worth watching (in the cinema, anyway) any year, as far as I am concerned there aren't good movie years and bad movie years, rather just good movies and bad movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I beg to differ. Some really, really bad movies this year, but there are some real gems.

1) How to Train Your Dragon (it's just magical for some weird reason)

2) Inception (finally something new)

3) Toy Story 3 (don't need to explain)

<comment><USER6> I've to second that, although I haven't watched Toy Story 3 yet, how to Train Your Dragon was really good. I've actually the feeling that this year is better than last year. I really liked Kick Ass and I'm eager to watch despicable me. But yes, Grown Ups was absolutely terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the article's author's misuse of "installation" instead of "installment" bother anyone else?

I mean, I hate to be a Usage Nazi as much as the next guy, but an "installation" is just not the same as an "installment". Those two words just don't mean the same thing.

I do, however, agree with the author's sentiments about Shia LeBeouf, and what DiCaprio should do with his Inception Technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> Aren't they suppose to compare this year with some of the other years to show this is the "Worst Movie Year Ever"

The infographic shows what happens every year, some of the highly anticipated movies don't work (Sex and the city, Prince of Persia) , some of them work (Toy story) and then there are a few surprises(Inception, which released 2 weeks back so the $ figure will go up)

<comment><USER9> _Aren't they suppose to compare this year with some of the other years_

Of course not. That would be _mindful_. This is a mindless nostalgia piece, right out of central casting.

The fun thing to do when one of these articles arrives on the radar is to see which cherry-picked "classics" are being name-checked:

 _"The Godfather," "Jurassic Park," "Casablanca," "Gone with the Wind," "My Fair Lady" and "The Matrix,"_

These lists are always carefully constructed. In this case we have two extremely popular classics from the 1930s, generally regarded as among the best films _ever made_. That's to establish your street cred as someone who has actually _seen_ some great movies. Then one film each from the 60s, 70s, early 90s, and late 90s, to ensure that every one of your readers over the age of thirty has something to be nostalgic about, and that they believe that the author is sufficiently "hip". (No sense in listing too many films from the 2000s; twentysomethings don't read newspapers.)

Then I got as far as this line:

 _Where once there was "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," there is now "Robin Hood," prince of duds._

This line is a dead giveaway, because "Prince of Thieves" was not a good movie, let alone among the best Robin Hood movies; it was redeemed only by the presence of Alan Rickman. Why, then, is the movie praised here? Because the writer really needed to write a cute sentence, reality be damned.

That's about all you need to read. The rest just wrote itself. It can read itself as well.

<comment><USER10> > In this case we have two extremely popular classics from the 1930s, > generally regarded as among the best films ever made.

Just to beat a dead horse, the two films you reference were from the same year; 1939, the best year Hollywood ever had. Ever.

Other films of that year included Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, and Young Mr. Lincoln. It was the peak of the "studio system" and Hollywood never again came close to it in terms of the sheer quantity of quality that was produced that year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If not the 'worst evar', this _has_ been a summer when supposedly safe "pre- sold" properties like Robin Hood and Prince of Persia fell flat - <USER2> _and_ commercially. With so many licensed films coming down the pipe, that has to put the fear of god into a few movie executives.

</comment><comment><USER12> We'll be saved by Robert Rodriguez' Machete, perhaps the greatest C-movie ever made.

</comment><comment><USER13> The studios feel the need to constantly up production values to avoid small- fry competition and spend truckloads on marketing. While this effectively creates barriers to entry at least as fast as technology is tearing them down, it also forces the studios to go bigger. As you go bigger, you become more risk averse and lose creativity.

In fact, Hollywood movie studios have exactly the same problem as most large companies - how do scale agility and risk-willingness and creativity up to billion-dollar companies?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is the author so hung up on "Dinner For Schmucks"? It didn't seem like he's seen it yet and so far its RottenTomatoes score is a bad but not horrible 56% while Grown Ups is just at 10%. Unless he's seen it I don't think it's fair to call it the likely worst film of the year.

Is it just because no one is allowed to remake French movies?

<comment><USER15> As I understand it, his point isn't that these movies are bad, but that they're all thoroughly _mediocre_. I reckon he'd rather have a good movie and three bad movies than four mediocre movies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Get off my lawn you damn kid directors!"

Gimmie a break.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure about that, I did enjoy Inception as well as Iron Man 2, but it would be nice to see more original scripts being pumped out of hollywood.

<comment><USER15> Inception wasn't creative enough for you? Aside from general spy-action genre tropes, I haven't seen much else like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All Hollywood needs are some new writer-directors breaking into the scene. Imagine this decade producing new well known names like Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and the Wachowski brothers. They all got to be well known by doing something totally different, and that can only happen if everyone is doing the same thing. The time is nigh...</comment>


Selling Out and the Death of Hacker Culture - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@folz/selling-out-and-the-death-of-hacker-culture-fec1f101b138 <comment><USER4> I was in university when I first heard the word 'hackathon'. The CS club had reserved a student lounge on campus for 24 hours and donated a bunch of snacks and drinks. I don't think I made it through the whole 24 hours, but I sure loved the spirit and sense of community that event had. No prizes, no corporate sponsors. Just building cool stuff.

By the end of my time at university, they had already become a for-profit idea mill for big companies. Those things never felt quite right to me.

And then, a few years later, I was involved in planning and running a few of those corporate hackathons. Even helped run one at YC a few years ago.

I don't think I would ever go to a hackathon with a corporate sponsor again. After seeing it from the inside, I realize how true the old saying is: "If you're not paying for it you are the product."

I've thought about trying to run a hackathon that gets back to the roots of what I remember about hackathons. Just a bunch of people hacking away on a project for an unbearably long time, with whatever snacks and drinks I could afford to provide. I don't think hacker culture is dead. I think there are a lot of folks out there, like me, who remember the hackathons of 2008 - <USER2> and would like to re-live it. I guess I should stop thinking about it and just do it!

What about you? Is that something you'd go to?

</comment><comment><USER5> I've had a hard rule for a while: Don't go to Hackathons where the prizes are over $1000. This is why:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/victoria-walker- rod...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/victoria-walker-rode- dog_n_1897464.html)

I was at that Hackathon. The prize was pretty cool; certainly the largest I had seen at a Hackathon. I'd done other AT&T hackathons ("won" some, "lost" most) so I figured it wouldn't turn into a giant marketing/PR stunt - <USER3> me! Not only was AT&T's local head of marketing there but they had a professional artist there to help the kids with their slide show and a reporter was brought in for the presentation/judging phase. Their presentation was well choreographed and polished (professional artwork, animations, well written copy). For everyone else the judging went a bit different. I wrote an app using Twillio rather than the AT&T texting API and the marketing head was fairly overt in her distain for not touting their API. A few more instances of that happened with a couple other entries. Honeslty it was the least professionally run event I've seen out of that camp. Since then I've limited my parcipitation to events that have Amazon gift cards and EC2/Sponsor API credit as prizes.

The kids that won were very nice, well behaived, etc. I hope they actually got the prize money for being part of AT&T's stunt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Author here. This was written for Hackathon Hackers, a group of people who go to collegiate hackathons, to (1) critique what I perceive to be our community's focus on measuring success by $$$ and size instead of individual impact, and (2) express my displeasure with the way we've let corporations take over community events.

Especially re: @candu's and @detaro's comments, I agree that there are lots of community-supported meetups and spaces. However, I don't find that the collegiate community gives much, if any, weight to these sorts of events - there's a glorification of giant hackathon events that far outweighs anything else. I know where to look, but someone newer to the scene will only see the sort of event that I criticize. My hyperbolic title is a rhetorical device to counteract the marketing machine that MLH and hackathons have going :)

<comment><USER7> Then I can only hope that it takes a long time for that trend in student perception to get over to my side of the big pond... Yes, some people get more excited for the more business-oriented stuff, but it's an even distribution and different people like different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So don't go to hackathons, and maybe look a bit farther afield for this "hacker culture"?

There's so very many open-source projects, LUGs, meetups, civic open data hack nights, hackerspaces, mesh network initiatives, workshops run by community- minded coworking spaces, IRC (or equivalent) channels, etc. out there nowadays that I can't help but feel you're just not looking very hard.

<comment><USER9> I think IRC is slowly dying, unfortunately, going the way of the plaintext mailing list and moving to things like Slack.

Does anyone know if there's a site that espouses the benefits of text/plain? If it doesn't exist, I think I should build it (read: push on to the unfinished projects array)

<comment><USER10> >I think IRC is slowly dying, unfortunately, going the way of the plaintext mailing list and moving to things like Slack.

No way :D.

irc.freenode.org is booming and the live stream of conversations with strangers is far more interesting than the limits of 140 characters and Slack teams limited to company.

Here are some wonderful IRC channels on irc.freenode.org

##security - There are spooks in this channel! (800 people)

#RubyOnRails - People fixing each others rails code (500 people)

#DN - Community for UX (40 people)

and more!

I've been enjoying IRC as much as Meetup now.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the new channel recommendations!

Is there a way to stop myself being disconnected from Freenode so often? (~once a week on a DO shell)

<comment><USER10> I use Textual because of the nice UI.

Also, check out ##GRC. Its a spin-off from ##security involved with Governance, Risk, Compliance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I found the commercialization of hackathons quite amazing and a bit scary as well. Something I don't know if it has been tried however is having a hackathon where every team pays $100 to attend, and then they vote on the best hack at the end, the winner gets 1/2 the total gate, second place 1/4, third place 1/8, and the organizers get 1/8 to offset costs.

<comment><USER6> That could be interesting, but as a collegiate organizer I'm worried that a lot of students wouldn't have the means to participate. $100 is roughly double what's in my bank account right now :)

<comment><USER11> the $100 is only a place holder. You could have teams contribute $5 to be "in". The point is that everyone puts some "skin" in the game, and the winner gets a prize, and 3rd place gets probably more than their $5 back (everyone assumes they can _at least_ make it to 3rd place :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm also not fan of the fact that nowadays most hackathons are big competitions. And/or overly strict in what you should build, to be able to compare things better. Not every result should be an app or a potentially viable product!

Corporate sponsorship isn't necessarily bad, even limiting scope to products of the company can be fine (e.g. I participated in a very nice hackathon with a guideline of "build something fine using one of XCorps APIs"). Sadly many PR departments love turning things into "events" and do things bigger and more impressive than others.

But hacker culture isn't just hackathons. And of course, in university etc you still can just assemble a bunch of friends and hack on stuff together if you want. Not much needed.

</comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't believe this, had to look it up for myself: "This is why Walmart is MHacks' title sponsor, and why Comcast (lol) was PennApps' title sponsor"

Something has been bugging me about hackathons recently. I think this put it quite well.

I always liked the collaborative and learning environment of a bunch of nerds coming together – the current prototypical hackathon seems far, far from that.

</comment><comment><USER13> The death of hacker culture? Would most of these people otherwise would have been into what would be more traditionally considered hacker culture?

Most hackathons now are for PR and for recruiting. Fine. With all the preaching about how everyone needs to be able to program, and the number of jobs available, is this a surprise?

People who enjoy hacking for the sake of hacking will continue to do it outside of these sponsored events.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, late capitalism is a real downer.</comment>


On Using a Templating Language with PHP - <AUTHOR> http://omarabid.com/on-using-a-templating-language-with-php/

<comment><USER2> If you're going to use a templating language on top of PHP, IMHO, just use Twig. As already mentioned, it compiles templates back into PHP. But, you also get automatic escaping (with various contexts, such as escaping for html and escaping for js), hooks to the lexer to write your own tags, filters and extensions, a function sandbox, and if you're using an older version of PHP, you can use js-style array and object shorthand ( [] instead of array() and {key:value} ) in the templates themselves. It is almost a framework implemented in its own (arguably stricter and saner) language in and of itself.

Obviously, you _can_ get by without a templating framework. But I find that if you do, you're either going to have to reimplement features that already exist in them (in particular, an escaping strategy), or else suffer the consequences if you don't get it perfect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Big debate? Use what works for you. I prefer using Twig because it enforces not shoving random PHP into your templates, and there's no performance hit for using it (since it's compiled back to PHP).

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the twig template engine [0]. It will compile your template back to PHP code so it will run as fast as if you used PHP directly.

[0][http://twig.sensiolabs.org/](http://twig.sensiolabs.org/)</comment>


Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol See also https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324 in case you are returned a 418. <comment><AUTHOR> See also <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324> in case you are returned a 418.</comment>


You should never make it hard to cancel.  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chargebee.com/cancellations-hard-customers/

<comment><USER2> It has been a convenient excuse for me to not join the gym because my friend found it more convenient to close his bank account and all cards there rather than get Planet Fitness to cancel his subscription. Too bad for me as I could use the exercise. :/</comment>


A generation leaves the Valley - <AUTHOR> https://techlady.haus/blog/2017/7/18/a-generation-leaves-the-valley <comment><USER2> I do not think this is an event so much as a continual process. People have been coming to and leaving the Valley for as long as I can remember. Some even come back. So this is nothing new. It is quite expensive as the article points out and if you're not in the thick of it then there's not much of a reason to be here. It may seem exciting on the upswing but after you've spent your tour of duty, you're spent and staying will only spend more.</comment>


Obama says FCC should reclassify Internet as a utility - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/10/7185933/fcc-should-reclassify-internet-as-utility-obama-says

<comment><USER2> Talk is cheap.</comment>


Thin yet Repairable Devices: HP Proves They Exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.ifixit.com/News/hp-makes-the-modern-repairable-devices-you-might-have-forgotten-existed <comment><USER2> Thinkpads are in the same boat. I have a T470s, which at it's thickest point is 1.8cm when closed (it tapers down to 1.6cm) and weighs 1.3kg.

The other day I upgraded the NVMe drive, which involved unscrewing 5 screws on the back cover (they don't remove completely, so you can't lose them), pulling it off, then removing the screw securing the drive in place, pulling out the drive, then doing the same in reverse to put it back together. I didn't even need any fancy head, just a standard Philips screwdriver is fine.

If any parts break it's easy to get replacements and perform the work (Lenovo provide lists of part numbers and instructions). Oh and the modification I did will not affect my on-site warranty in any way.

I admire Apple for some of their work, but it just seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot with the lack of repairability and overpriced hardware. I used to be a die hard Apple fan, but the hardware they have released in the last few years has just put me off - now I don't own any Apple products.

<comment><USER3> The newer ThinkPads seem much less user-servicable than the older models though. I hope Lenovo returns to a user-servicability>thinness approach at some point.

<comment><USER4> It's not newer vs older. It's slick hipster-looking mac-like all-soldered X series vs thicker corporate all-serviceable bricks of T series. (I greatly prefer the latter, of course.)

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that the newer X- and T- are still less serviceable than earlier models in the same line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope this gets a lot of praise. Being able to repair isn't just a hobby. It saves people a lot of money and is really beneficial to the environment. It is something we should strive for. Computers have gotten fast enough where most consumers don't need all the latest and greatest hardware. Frankly most people just surf the internet and watch netflix. We should encourage repair-ability

<comment><USER6> And with somewhat standardized components, even the broken devices can get cannibalized for parts and used to upgrade or fix different devices.

(As long as companies don't try to solder it, you can always swap at least RAM and storage. Around friends and family, I had plenty of times where somebody fried their computer (e.g. water damage), and the drive and RAM from it found second or third life in someone else's laptop. My last laptop was a broken one I fixed and upgraded with components from two others. And even if you're not into this level of computer necromancy, you can always sell the parts to those who are.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hated my HP Envy, because it kept breaking, but...I guess I do have to give them credit for it being fixable. I replaced both fans (in separate incidents), the keyboard, and re-seated and taped the screen cable, in the nearly three years I used it as my primary laptop. It lasted a lot longer than the Dell that followed it, which broke in ways I couldn't fix. My stance on HP has softened, because I've sort of seen that they're not alone in making crappy stuff (and, no, Apple is not immune), it's kinda the norm these days. I'd kinda sworn off of them forever...but, they're cheap and I guess they're about par for the course in terms of today's laptop longevity. Being repairable goes a long way to making them likeable again.

</comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic, but do people prefer metal laptop cases as seen in this HP elitebook? Aluminum looks great, but I find it way more slippery than carbon or even matte plastic. Soft shells are so much more comfortable to hold than metal.

The disappointing thing is Apple managed to draw a lot of otherwise sensible designs from the practicality of the 90s to an aesthetics-first approach. As an old Thinkpad user, I am baffled by the design decisions in the Macbook-Pro line of products, from the shell to thinness and repairability.

<comment><USER9> I have an hp plastic elitebook laptop (made in 2017) and am baffled by the flexness and lack of confidence in the case compared to my MacBook. I've also tried using some of the well-regarded thinkpad models and dealt with plastic falling off side panels and snagging when trying to slide it into backpacks.

I think Apple makes an assumption that if you want something with more protection / grippyness, there's a whole world of 3rd party case vendors happy to solve that problem.

<comment><USER10> >using some of the well-regarded thinkpad models and dealt with plastic falling off side panels and snagging when trying to slide it into backpacks.

I've been a very longtime user of both Thinkpads and MacBooks. I've liked my various Thinkpads but my experience using them as daily drivers was that there were invariably various port covers and other parts that could be reliably counted on to break off or otherwise be lost in a matter of months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This comment is being written from the ThinkPad A485 that's been assigned to me from my employer. It too is amazingly serviceable, as many ThinkPads have built a reputation for upholding. I have grown accustom to only considering ThinkPads when eyeing a new laptop.

Another corporate laptop I have had the joy of using is the HP EliteBook 840 G3, which is a predecessor of these devices inspected by iFixit. Like the ThinkPad's TrackPoint, it has a PointStick which is nearly as usable. Opening the device up reminds me a lot of my personal ThinkPad T460S.

Going forward, it's exciting to know that reparable laptops are not exclusive to one vendor.

Also, props to Dell, who's recent Latitude laptops are still compatible with old docks sporting a serial port - don't know of any other vendors making those.

<comment><USER12> The new thinkpads are not very repairable at all, especially the thin ones like the X1 Carbon. Even the T490 is terrible in this aspect, and it's not a super thin ultrabook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone use one of these for work and care to share their opinion? I got burned real bad (figuratively, though it did get very hot) by a garbage HP laptop in like 2006, so I'm curious if the build and general quality have improved.

<comment><USER14> It would be a bit sad if they made them repairable because they fail so often.

Being more serious I'm not sure this is considered in the debate about repairability. If Apple soldering memory to the motherboard is more reliable than using a socket is that better or worse for the life of the product.

<comment><USER15> Except then upgrades are impossible so when software moves on the device is useless anyway. Why defend this practice?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that needs to go into the calculation as well.

Note I'm not defending this practice, just wondering if it's really the problem it's made out to be.

<comment><USER15> I was less charitable than I should have been by asserting that you were defending the practice, I apologize. I have a gut reaction to soldering RAM down that is not necessarily rational, akin to being grossed out by spiders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Whereas my sisters consumer hp 15" laptop requires removing the keyboard? to start opening it up. It required so much dismantling to replace the WiFi card I told her to buy a usb dongle. Lenovo equivalent you just unscrew a hatch and its there.

<comment><USER17> I replaced the WLAN card on my wife's Lenovo consumer laptop a few years ago and needed a hacked BIOS because the original one was the only one that was accepted for ... I don't know what reasons. Lenovo -- in that price bracket -- isn't really better in that respect.

<comment><USER16> Well that sucks. Bad luck. So much for that theory then.

<comment><USER17> Well, it _was_ easy to find and replace, though. The laptop just wouldn't boot afterwards ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think to get the extra mm of thinness of MacBooks, it takes away all space to squeeze that out. Although they are both thin one is much tougher to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a HP Zbook G3 for work that's pretty nice compared to some company Dells I've had. The only downside is it's massive. It's so big and heavy I could use it as a weapon.

My personal 15" mid-2017 MPB is way too thin and I've dropped it because of it. My 2011 13" MBP could've been thinner but not as thin as they are now. I dread the day something breaks.

How do the Dell XPSs compared to the newer MBPs or HP Zbooks size wise?

</comment><comment><USER20> After reading this and the raspberry pi post the other day, I am of the opinion that repairable and hackable are going to be the killer features.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yea, but does it come with a thinkpad keyboard and the "red dot"?

</comment><comment><USER22> I honestly had no idea HP still made laptops — or that they were still in the consumer hardware business at all.

<comment><USER23> The question is whether they are still complete garbage. I'm not the only one who absolutely refuses to buy anything branded HP.

<comment><USER24> The Spectre laptops are pretty dang nice and are Linux-friendly. The dark-and- copper one looks fantastic, too. I'd be using one right now, instead of a Thinkpad T480, if they didn't put Ctrl and Fn in the wrong places. (My hands just can't re-learn that one.)

<comment><USER25> You can easily swap the functionality of the two keyboard keys in the BIOS settings of your laptop (you must do something like this: [https://www.geek.com/chips/how-to-swap-the-fn-and-ctrl- keys-...](https://www.geek.com/chips/how-to-swap-the-fn-and-ctrl-keys-on-a- thinkpad-1117812/)). The funny thing is that I am the only one in our company that did this, meaning that when a colleague tries to use my keyboard, they fail in 95% of the case. It's always funny to see this happen, but my colleagues get often fustrated. You have been warned ;)

<comment><USER24> I tried this at the time. Mine lacked the option (the 2017 13" model). It was really frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But should they? I suspect a majority of the market would take a few extra mm of thickness for a durable laptop with a durable battery that would last a few more years.

But instead manufacturers of laptops, phones, and tablets are putting in substandard batteries to help ensure you come back in a few years for a new one. Especially evil is when there's no screws and they epoxy the battery.

<comment><USER27> I'd take a lot of extra thickness. I had a cleanout of old tech recently and found an 10" HP laptop I hadn't used for a few years and fighting the nostalgia to get rid of that one was hard. It was such a solid, thick and chunky little thing that I could put through hell and would just keep on working. It was just perfect for it's job of mostly coding during commute time. I don't feel remotely the same way about the thinner, faster dell I replaced it with.

<comment><USER28> Wrote my thesis on an Omnibook 800 (with 16 megs of ram, lol) running twm. Miss the form factor, the ruggedness and the amazeballs integrated mouse. Still can't understand why people haven't copied the mouse design. Then again, I still can't understand why manufacturers are incapable of producing a nice keyboard like the Omnibook 800 had.

[http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=233](http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=233)

HP of today ... it's just a brand. The engineers that designed sturdy and usable stuff like the Omnibook 800 have been all put out to pasture or went to Agilent.

<comment><USER29> What's the amazeballs integrated mouse?

<comment><USER28> Look at the photo I linked. You press a button and this mouse on gimbals shoots out the right hand side. It's amazing; best laptop mouse ever. Or, look at this helpful vidya:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-cGzmuKYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-cGzmuKYM)

<comment><USER29> So it's just a pop-out mouse attached to the side? Is there anything else special about it? Can you pull it away from the side of the laptop? It looks hard to use attached like that.

I was hoping to be amazeballed, but unless there's more to it, so far I'm not amazeballed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux on Mac Book Pro: Get paid for making it work - <AUTHOR> Are you able to hack on the Linux kernel to get the keyboard, touchpad and NVM SSD working?
And maybe other things that might turn up (i.e. power consumption, wifi support, ...)?
And can you also get your patches back into upstream so everyone can profit from your changes?
We might want to pay or hire you!
We, that is a small group forming on https://chat.ungleich.ch/ in the channel #foss. We like the apple hardware and want to move forward with Linux compatibility. For that reason we want to provide hackers with resources (aka money) to work on this matter and get Linux support on Apple to where it used to be in the early 2000s (awesome on PPC!).
If you are also an owner of one of the affected MacBook (12") or MacBook Pro (Late 2016) and want to contribute financially, just join our chat.
Note: this is a different approach from the bounty that is out there for fixing the keyboard. We are interested in long term Linux support on Apple.
Still reading? Want to support the project as a hacker or donor? Join us on  https://chat.ungleich.ch/ and let's get things working together! <comment><USER2> didn't even realize linux was broken o n apple

<comment><AUTHOR> Me neither, until I tried to install Linux on the new macbook pro...</comment></comment>


Sweden didn't shut down. Hospitals are not overwhelmed. Cases have plateaued - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866 <comment><USER2> Sweden banned international flights from outside of Europe.

Sweden banned gathering of more than 50 people.

Sweden closed down the universities.

Sweden permanently closed down 5 restraunts this weekend for flouting social distancing rules.

And, most importantly, their cases are not plataueing, their deaths are not plataueing.

[https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...](https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a plataue to me

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per- mi...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per- million-7-day-average?country=CAN+FRA+DEU+ITA+KOR+ESP+SWE+GBR+USA)

These both use the same data, but the rolling average shows the trend.

<comment><USER2> That chart is garbage for Sweden, it is in no way a 7 day average of the arcgis data I posted.

The official death total by day of death has a massive lag, if the out world in data chart was actually a 7 day average of it there would be a huge drop over the last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cases have not really plateaued.

The large graph in the article is very misleading because it's a type of 'epi curve', the reporting is late on the data points making it always 'seem like' it's tilting down, even if it never actually is.

With an epicure - you don't know until some time after the flattening that it has happened.

Daily cases are here [1]

It's inconsistent largely due to the cyclical nature of testing and reporting, but it's softly trending upwards.

Note of course that it's not exploding, however.

It'll be at least a couple of weeks before we see if it's plateauing.

[1] [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/)

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing I think is important to point out is that Sweden has the highest percentage of people living alone of any country in the world, and it is much less common than, say, Italy to have older people living with younger people.

Similar to how NYC, the densest place in the US, has been hit so much harder than elsewhere, I think it does at least make a good argument that approaches should be regionally based.

</comment><comment><USER6> 'In contrast with other countries where political leaders have fronted the national response to the crisis, Dr Tegnell has led the majority of news conferences'

'chief state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is broadly popular in Sweden. An experienced scientist with more than 30 years in medicine, he is known for his relaxed demeanour and preference for pullovers.

"He's a low-key person. I think people see him as a strong leader but not a very loud person, careful in what he's saying," reflects Emma Frans, a Swedish epidemiologist and science writer. "I think that's very comforting for many."

She argues that many national and international media have been "searching for conflict" within the scientific community, whereas she believes there is a consensus that Anders Tegnell's approach is "quite positive", or at least "not worse than other strategies"

~

This seems a much better non partisan approach than the endless two party C19 press conference and criticism political warfare the US & UK have to endure

</comment><comment><USER7> not sure they are a shining example, they are just over twice the population of NZ, they have had over 2000 deaths, we have had 19. Yesterday we had 1 new case.

Today in NZ is the first day out of our strictest level of lockdown and a large number of businesses are going back to work as long as they follow strict distancing, and safe interactions. Also public facing businesses can't open, if you are a shop, you need delivery options or contactless pickup / payment options.

<comment><USER8> There are some relevant differences between Sweden and New Zealand.

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/sweden-coronavirus- anti...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/sweden-coronavirus-anti- lockdown-immigrants/)

<comment><USER7> what do you think are the relevant differences?

<comment><USER9> Being part of the EU, Schengen where people can travel abroad much more frequently due to distances. Also, it's common in the end of February to go skiing during Sportlov week so traveling to the hotspots in Austria and Italy was a bit more frequent for Swedes than New Zealanders, I assume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title appears to break HN rules, as it doesn't match the title of the linked article. @dang?

</comment><comment><USER11> And all it took was a few thousand unnecessary deaths. Vietnam and Taiwan temporarily shutdown, and the former had 0 deaths while the latter has had less than 10.

<comment><USER12> Hmm? Plenty of countries that did shutdown did experience "a few thousand unnecessary deaths". What's your point?

OP's and/or TFA's point, as well as many people's who talk about this, seems to be that Sweden is faring as well as its neighbors that did shutdown. That's a _big_ deal.

And did Taiwan shutdown? IIRC they did not. They were able to get way ahead of everyone and stop the spread of covid-19. Since most other countries did not, it's not fair to compare Sweden to Taiwan.

Some people are bent on there being shutdowns no matter the cost, no matter the cost-benefit analysis, no matter if there is no real benefit.

<comment><USER13> > faring as well as its neighbors

It isn't though. Look at the number of deaths in Norway and Finland, and adjust based on population. Sweden is not doing very well. _Perhaps_ , long term, the other countries catch up if they go through a cycle of opening up some and shutting down, but we don't know that now.

<comment><USER9> Norway's method to count deaths due to CoViD-19 is very different than Sweden's.

<comment><USER14> How do they differ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congrats to Sweden for "only" having 2,000 dead. Tell that to the over 56,000 dead Americans despite lockdown.

Also, Sweden is under de facto lockdown even if they don't want to call it that.

<comment><USER16> That said, it is important to note that Sweden has one of the highest _death rates_ in the world. Almost 40% higher than the US and at least 200-300% that of its neighbors.

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per- mi...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per- million?tab=chart&time=2020-01-31..2020-04-10&country=CHN+DNK+FIN+DEU+NOR+SWE+USA)

If the US had the same death rate, the total deaths would be closer to 80,000

<comment><USER9> Population size is only an upper bound limit for disease spread, it doesn't tell anything else so using per capita inference to extrapolate is pretty flawed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that the population of Sweden is comparable to the population of London, England. Two ends of the population density factors.

Yet comparing the number of deaths, they do seem most comparable.

Not sure what to make from it though.

</comment><comment><USER18> How's their economy?

<comment><USER19> What are you attempting to say/equivocate?

<comment><USER13> Probably something along the lines of their economy suffering quite a bit just the same.</comment></comment></comment>


Your First $50K Is on Us – Chargebee - <AUTHOR> https://www.chargebee.com/blog/launch-plan-first-50k-on-us/ <comment><USER2> This is great!</comment>


U.S. Army Goes Agile; Gets 5 Winning iPhone/Android Apps - <AUTHOR> http://adtmag.com/articles/2010/08/05/agile-apps-for-army.aspx

<comment><USER2> It's an interesting idea, but what they're basically asking for is coding on spec. And with a $500B budget, I don't think the Pentagon needs to be jerking devs around like that.

Or maybe I'm missing some important point about the project?</comment>


Woman engineer at the centre of India's space mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25989262?ocid=socialflow_twitter <comment><USER2> TIL Europe is a nation.

<comment><USER3> To be fair they also listed the Soviet Union as a nation. "Nation" is an ambiguous concept (or we just lack a proper term for multi-national alliances that transcend "normal" international cooperation and become meta-nations).

<comment><USER4> How the heck could Europe the continent be considered a nation? All of these nations are on the same landmass that someone decided to call a continent, and now they're all magically multi-national alliances?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess for India its good news that this is news.

<comment><USER6> It would be good news if this wasn't news.

<comment><USER5> Sadly India isn't nowhere near a level where this is a problem worth worrying about. It's still okay for them to celebrate womans success stories there since they are so rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Woman engineer..." is an awkward title.

Would you say, "man engineer"?

Better: "Female engineer..." or "The woman at the centre..."

Best of all would be just use the BBC's original title: "India's Mars scientist and other working lives". (If that title doesn't elicit as many up- votes, too bad.)

Yeah I know I'm being the Politically Correct Police. And I realize"international English" might not have these nuances. But I think's worth pointing out, so I did.

EDIT: Great article and thanks for sharing it!

<comment><USER8> Just the other day another HN user was berating me for using the term "female", which he felt ought only to be used to specify sex and not refer to an actual person.

My point: there'll always be people who disagree on the appropriate word to use in this context :)</comment></comment>


Canadians on TN Visas: What's your plan when the US withdraws from NAFTA? - <AUTHOR> > President Trump is likely to sign an executive order formally withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to a senior administration official, a move that would set the stage for renegotiating the deal with Canada and Mexico and fulfill one of Mr. Trump's major campaign promises.<p>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/nafta-executive-order-trump.html <comment><USER2> Let's start with "if", instead of "when". As I read the article, this is at least as much of a negotiating ploy (to try to force renegotiation of the terms of NAFTA) as it is a serious intent to withdraw.

Then, if Trump does sign such an order, it's not "withdraw today". It's "withdraw in six months".

But if things do get that far, what is the _immediate_ effect of withdrawing the US from NAFTA? Do any rules change immediately? Or do they only become "open to renegotiation"?

My guess is that they only become open to renegotiation (unless the executive order also changes those specific rules, effective when the US withdraws). Then there's a period when all the things that were specified by NAFTA are subject to change. Some things will in fact change. Will TN Visas be one of them? Nobody can say at this time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trump has stated that he is no longer withdrawing.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-executive-order- nafta-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-executive-order-nafta- withdrawal-1.4086763?cmp=rss)

</comment><comment><USER4> OT: I really hope that we do an serious agreement(with immigration visas) between europe, canada and mexico.</comment>


Ask HN: What non-tech blogs do you read? - <AUTHOR> One of my recent favorites is farnamstreetblog.com <comment><USER2> Seth Godin's blog is consistently outstanding. [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I read the following blogs recently:

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/)

[http://www.okpckit.com/](http://www.okpckit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Jeremy Kunn has a great blog on distilling complex math ideas to primers anyone can understand. [https://jeremykun.com/](https://jeremykun.com/)

Analysis of current economic conditions and policy: [http://econbrowser.com/](http://econbrowser.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Art of Manliness</comment>


Show HN: React Keen - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iddan/react-keen <comment><USER2> Hate to say it, but I was hoping this would be a React reimplementation of the classic Commander Keen games from iD Software :(</comment>


Hyperloop One's co-founder is suing the company and other executives - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/7/12/12161258/hyperloopone-shervinpishevar-broganbambrogan-roblloyd-lawsuit <comment><USER2> Wow, those are some pretty outrageous allegations if true:

      > Defendant Shervin Pishevar, who was generally uninvolved in
      > day-to-day matters, began dating the company's PR vendor, and
      > increased her salary from $15,000 to $40,000 a month ...

      > When their subsequent wedding engagement fell through, he
      > finally heeded suggestions that her work was worth little,
      > and terminated the arrangement.

      > Similarly, Defendant Joseph Lonsdale insisted that the
      > company hire his little brother's two-person outfit, with
      > no notable experience with companies building hardware and
      > engaged in infrastructure development, and few independent
      > contacts with international and top-tier investor funds,
      > as the company's exclusive  investment bank

      > Meanwhile, Shervin installed his brother, a personal injury
      > and criminal defense attorney with his own small firm in
      > Rockville, Maryland, as Hyperloop One's General Counsel,
      > granting him salary and stock options far greater than even
      > the most talented engineers received.

      > Later that night, Afshin Pishevar, the lawyer and Shervin's
      > brother as mentioned in the letter, was seen placing a noose
      > on BamBrogan's chair on the security camera.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it interesting that it has 4.9/5 rating on Glassdoor with 31 reviews...

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Hyperloop-One- Reviews-E113...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Hyperloop-One- Reviews-E1137909.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> > We have chosen to keep this list short to provide an opportunity for a > discrete [sic] resolution

So much for that...</comment>


Should Farmers Give John Deere And Monsanto Their Data? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/21/264577744/should-farmers-give-john-deere-and-monsanto-their-data

<comment><USER2> This will be the second year where I've placed data ownership in my farm leases. Essentially, any data directly describing the farmland (geolocation, soil types, nutrient levels, etc) is my data, and may not be given away except as required by law or crop insurance.

Any data derived from or tied to farmland specific data (e.g., yield/acre) is a joint product with the tenant, and requires approval from both tenant and landlord/owner/agent.

Like Hell I'm going to let some 3rd party/parties mine data about my property and sell it for their bottom line, and not give me squat.

And there will be a lot of farmers thinking the same way. My 85 year old dad-- who's never touched a computer in his life--got it instantly when I explained what I wanted to do:

"This information thing you're talking about is a new commodity."

Bingo.</comment>


WolframAlpha: Computational knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://www.wolframalpha.com/

<comment><USER2> Slow news day? I like Wolfram Alpha, but fail to see the point of submitting a link to the home page...

<comment><USER3> I'm sure the submitter is somewhat new / inexperienced on the web and was quite excited by Wolfram Alpha, and wanted to share his joy with his fellow interwebbers. There is one problem though -- (almost) everyone else knows about it!</comment></comment>


James Cameron begins deepest dive - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17503395 <comment><USER3> Paul Allen's Twitter seems to be a good source of up-to-the-minute news on the dive: <https://twitter.com/#!/PaulGAllen>

He says he's on "Octopus," which I assume is one of the support vessels. Aparently Cameron's sub has just touched down on the seabed, Allen's latest tweet:

#deepseachallenge hit bottom at 0752 local time "All systems ok"

and a few minutes before that:

"Now on the bottom 35755 ft!! Plan is for #Deepseachallenge to spend 4-6 hours on the seabed- take samples....Huge Congrats what a relief!!!"

Very exciting!

<comment><USER4> Octopus is Paul's yacht: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_(yacht)>

<comment><USER5> Man, whenever I see Paul Allen whining about Gates or Ballmer, I think, it sure is curious way to screw someone over: turning them into a billionaire.

<comment><USER6> Does Paul Allen actually whine, or is it just that other people whine on his behalf? All the quotes I've read from him have been classy, or at least reserved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They mention the hull is made of "syntactic foam".

It seems this is a composite of (glass,ceramic,etc) microspheres in a resin matrix. They mention in the bbc video that they glue blocks together and machine them somehow - how does one machine such a composite?

More on syntactic foam: [http://www.crgrp.com/technology/materialsportfolio/syntactic...](http://www.crgrp.com/technology/materialsportfolio/syntactics.shtml)

[edit] yet more:

"Syntactic foam flotation products are available in formulations for shallow water foam to those capable of reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench."

<http://www.esyntactic.com/>

"The HZ Grade of syntactic has been formulated to survive the deepest depths of the ocean. This class of syntactic will survive crush pressures greater than 20,000 psi making for safe operation in the Hadal Zone.

<http://www.esyntactic.com/dwsfs.htm>

<comment><USER7> So they say the pilot sphere is thick steel. How do they run the control wiring to the outside? Or could the control signals sent through transducers (e.g. ultrasonic?)

<comment><USER8> They use electrical penetrators such as these: <http://seaconworldwide.com/products/penetrators/penetrators/>

They are listed as one of the main points of failure on the dive's website: [http://deepseachallenge.com/the-expedition/deepsea- challenge...](http://deepseachallenge.com/the-expedition/deepsea-challenge- expedition-risks-dangers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The official Twitter account: <https://twitter.com/#!/DeepChallenge>

According to tweets from @PaulGAllen and @PeterDiamandis, Deep Challenge should arrive at the bottom around 14:40 PST.

Edit (14:50 PST): No word from @PaulGAllen since 14:20 PST, when he noted Cameron was at 32160 feet and "not long to seabead now". I hope the people on the support crew are just really busy because Cameron is touching down on the bottom!

<comment><USER10> He's on the bottom right now. Latest @jimcameron tweet: "Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge"

<comment><USER9> Awesome! According to @PaulGAllen, they hit at 0752 local time, and "all systems ok"!

<comment><USER11> @PaulGAllen: Pressure at bottom is 16,285 Pounds per square inch at that depth. Design pressure was 16,500 ...Yikes/Amazing!

Amazing that it is working. The engineering must be interesting.

Edit: Apparently the DC weighs a tenth as much as the Trieste (the original bathyscaphe), including all the instruments. Less than a lifetime. . .

<comment><USER12> Just read that too. That's not much of a safety factor! Still, it's quite a feat and I hope it continues smoothly.

<comment><USER13> It's quite likely that the 16,500PSI rating is accounting for the safety factor.

<comment><USER14> 16,500 PSI was just what it was tested at, and it could apparently withstand significantly greater pressure than that. From the Deep Sea Challenge website:

"The hull, complete with its hatch and viewport, was tested twice in a pressure chamber at Pennsylvania State University to an equivalent full-ocean- depth pressure of 16,500 pounds per square inch (1,138 bars). It passed both tests. Twenty-two strain gauges attached to the sphere gave data that indicated the sphere could withstand up to 140 percent of the test pressure without buckling."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have deep respect for this guy. He really cares about these things and makes a living out of it. I share his fascination with the sea and exploration. He really has a message with his movies, but unfortunately not understood by everyone.

<comment><USER16> Um, I don't think "not understood" is correct. More like not wanting to be hammered over the head with his simplistic, fable-like, morals.

<comment><USER16> I should have been clearer. I still like his movies, but they're not terribly deep. Entertaining for sure.

What he's doing now is obviously pretty damn impressive.

<comment><USER15> What i meant was inspiring for exploration, deep sea, the space and so on.

The stories in his movie is often very mainstream, but look at the panorama scenes he makes. He really cares about impressive nature and unknown worlds. I really enjoyed Sanctum because of this, these deep caves are really impressive. The story is just something that makes is accessible for the masses. No theater would show a nature documentation and he wouldn't get the funds to make them.

<comment><USER17> Are you saying that what Cameron really wanted to do is documentaries?

also: "No theater would show a nature documentation" Remember Earth?

<comment><USER15> Maybe, probably both, but his approach to create popular movies around is the most intelligent way.

Earth was a failure and if something similar with that budget will be made soon is questionable.

Budget: €30,000,000 (estimated)

Gross: $32,001,863

Cameron can do anything he want's with any budget since decades and earned himself a fortune to do things on his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How awesome is it that he is tweeting from the deepest point on earth?

<comment><USER19> It's neat, but keep in mind that we had live video from the moon in the 60's.

<comment><USER20> And this is one of the few events since then that are capable of exciting as much wonder and curiosity. I wasn't alive during the Apollo program but this probably brings me close to the sheer jaw dropping awe I would've experienced had I enjoyed the opportunity to watch the moon landings on tv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Almost done with ascent:

#deepseachallenge sub now at 700M rising.

<https://twitter.com/#!/PaulGAllen/status/184095201709662208>

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know how they communicate with the sub?

My understanding is that radio waves can't penetrate water very far (if at all) and that it's impractical to drag a long cable down.

<comment><USER23> From Paul Allen:

"#deepseachallenge for the curious, using underwater audio coms UT2000/3000 at 8K freq to hear/talk to Jim five miles of water...30K ft now"

<comment><USER7> "The UT 3000 is the very first underwater communication system combining analogue and digital communication in one unit. In addition to the telephony and telegraphy mode, the UT 3000 offers unique features such as own noise measurement, horizontal distance measurement and transmission of SOS signals.

"The new digital mode for the first time allows fast and reliable transmission of digital data in water. The possibilities for digital data transfer are nearly unlimited. In the future, own position data, SMS, maneuver reports or target data can be exchanged between submarines in a more secure way.

<http://www.naval-technology.com/contractors/sonar/l-3_comm/>

[http://www.elac-nautik.de/products-naval_acoustics- underwate...](http://www.elac-nautik.de/products-naval_acoustics- underwater_communication/highlite- underwater_communication/0a9f51ec9b480fec01b01ddcb38c9515/)

Also: according to the UT 3000 MASQ brochure, it can transmit at up to 1000 bits/sec from 12km to 17km

Edit more: the brochure says the communication protocol overhead is typically 20%. Error correction is included - and features "excellent burst noise rejection". I would think underwater burst noise could be quite long. Would this require an interleaved code? Could someone comment on this?

<comment><USER24> It is probably 100x cheaper per byte than sending an SMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cameron hit the bottom at 14:52 PST, according to @PaulGAllen, and "all systems ok".

Here's Cameron's tweet announcing his arrival: "Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge"

<https://twitter.com/#!/JimCameron/status/184036733959143425>

<comment> excuse-me Am digging through black lifeless seabed mud and ooze - hope to find script for next movie.

<comment><USER16> Actually the phrase "teeming with life" has been used to describe where he is: [http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science- technology/Deep-...](http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science- technology/Deep-Ocean-is-Earths-Own-Outer-Space-144031706.html)

<comment><USER25> is it really ok to drop the word "maybe" from the front of that quote?

<comment><USER16> Since the entire article and the point of the whole enterprise is to document that life, I say yes. It's a reasonable rejoinder to "lifeless."

Plus I linked to the article, so it's not like I was being misleading. I was stating my point succinctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Guts.

<comment><USER26> Funny, because I originally wrote out a long-winded comment about how I can imagine doing everything he's done except doing the actually descent myself, because of the incredible bravery. Then I realized my entire train of thought could best be summarized in one word. But of course if it doesn't come packaged in longwinded, pseudoacademic gibberish, HN won't like it. Lesson learned.

<comment><USER11> Think more that as I am not inside your head, I do not have the slightest clue as to what your one-word post is intended to communicate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> DEEPSEA CHALLENGE Expedition Risks & Dangers document describes various possible failure modes of the mission, and answers a few questions below. E.g.: "penetrator failure" addresses electrical connectivity through the survival sphere.

I found the hyperthermia/hypothermia risk interesting. The survival sphere is not temperature controlled, and will adjust to ambient. With equipment heating, that's over 100F and 100% relative humidity at the surface in the tropics. At depth, ambient water temperatures are just above 0C (32F).

[http://www.scribd.com/document_downloads/86673244?extension=...](http://www.scribd.com/document_downloads/86673244?extension=pdf&from=embed)

</comment><comment><USER28> He just landed on the bottom at -10.9 km: <https://twitter.com/PaulGAllen/status/184037895819112448>

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand, has he left yet?

Either way, this is awesome! I can't wait to see what lies at those depths. I would love to know how the engineers who build the new vessel fixed the silt issue.

<comment><USER26> Looks like he's started descent.

And I read another article that had more diagrams (maybe Wired?) that showed the propulsion on the craft is at the top, and the pilot space is on the bottom. I guess that solves the silt problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Old media: <http://www.cnn.com/>

New media: <https://twitter.com/#!/i/discover>

Guess which one isn't covering this historic event.

<comment><USER16> <http://nytimes.com> has a story on their front page, top middle.

<comment><USER30> Underneath the all important Arnold Palmer Invitational results headline article.

<comment><USER16> Your comment basically suggests that the only difference between "new media" and "old media" is the editorial stance, which stories to emphasize and which to deemphasize. And "new media" essentially caters to the geek/science niche, while old media appeals to the mainstream.

So what exactly is new?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a hero

</comment><comment><USER32> he is back

</comment><comment><USER33> Creatures down there have been separated from life up here for ever, we need to get the DNA sequenced for some of them, we may find some shocking discoveries of our ancestors 500 million years ago. Are there plans to bring back animal samples?

<comment><USER34> It is very difficult to collect animal samples from such great depths - <USER2> pressure difference.

It is one of the reasons as to why giant squids are so mysterious.

<comment><USER35> He has pressurised containers for samples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't wait to see what he manages to film down there!

</comment><comment><USER37> I really hope he finds a UFO or some sea-dwelling people.</comment>


Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/app-stars-push-pop-press/ <comment><USER2> The internet is already full of self-published crap because self-publishing in digital form is already trivially easy. Making it easier to self-publish is not going to disrupt the publishing industry, because the publishing industry still serves a valuable service: they sift through all of that crap to find the few good stories. More importantly, they identify promising authors and mentor them into authors worth reading. If you want to disrupt the publishing industry, you need to develop an alternative solution for helping people figure out what is worth reading (probably not too difficult) _and_ and alternative solution for developing the skills of writers (much more challanging).

<comment><USER3> You can crowd source this by allowing people to rate the material. Sounds like a good idea for a startup. A "rottentomatoes.com" for self-published books? User rating and "pro" rating?

<comment><USER2> A rating can tell potential readers that a book is worth reading or not. It can't grow a talented but unskilled author into a great author. Most successful authors will tell you that they had to write hundreds of thousands of words worth of crap before they were able to produce anything worth reading, and then only because they were getting quality coaching while writing all of that crap.

<comment><USER4> Following your line of argument. Is there a career path for independent writing coaches? Would it be possible to create a service for that?

<comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, the closest things currently in existence are: 1: Writing workshops 2: Short-fiction magaziness

#1 is open to anyone who has the cash to get in the door, but isn't well set up for establishing long-term mentorship relationships.

#2 is good for long-term mentorship relationships, but you have to already be a pretty good writer to get your foot in the door and the price of entry is selling the rights to your work. Also, a "slow-starter" with the potential to become a world-class novelist might never get off the ground under this system.

I'd love to see someone establish independent coaching services for developing writers, but I think there are some significant difficulties. The biggest problem is: where do you get the coaches? Good traditional publishers and editors are good at mentoring authors because they have years of experience acquired by slowly working their ways up through the traditional publishing industry.

I'd like to believe that there are other ways to make great editors, but there's no substitute for experience. You would need a seed of experienced editors from the traditional industry and they would have to do double-duty mentoring both aspiring authors _and_ aspiring editors. Eventually you might be able to get to the point where you have a self-sustaining community where the authors have reputations based on their work and editors have reputations based on the quality of the authors and editors they have mentored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's great about Push Pop Press is that their interaction design doesn't suck. All iPad magazines I have tried suck. Big time. I feel lost, gestures don't work as expected, magazines take forever to download. They definitely did a great job with the software, I encountered none of those problems.

</comment><comment><USER6> WOW! This has the potential to be _really_ big. Just think about all the cookbooks, children's storybooks, and DIY guides you can create easily with such a tool, if it's done right.

<comment><USER7> I'm getting flashbacks from the heyday of CD-ROM publishing. I suspect the end story will be the same.

<comment><USER6> Maybe not. I've already spent $20-30 on iPad audio books for my son, they highlight the words as they are read, he loves them. iPad is his favorite toy, unfortunately, I've found out: I bought him a Stinky the Garbage Truck for $50that he's been talking about and he _still_ wants to play with the iPad. And he's 4!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be more excited about a really good self-publishing platform for non- interactive e-books.

A lot of the cost of e-books comes from publishers needing to support various paper-related overhead like binding, printing, etc. If it was possible for an author to self-publish I suspect it'd be very easy for them to equal the per- book profits (obviously, advertising would be a different story) that they'd get going through Harper-Collins or the like.

<comment><USER9> Can't you self-register and publish whatever you want via Kindle and iBooks?

Specifically to your second point, you may want to read this link: <http://www.novelr.com/2011/02/27/rich-indie-writer>

<comment><USER8> Oh, yes, you can. But I think its probably beyond the technical abilities of many authors.

If there was a cheap, e-book-only publisher around that could help with all of the traditional publisher duties (editing, typesetting, advertising, etc) without the overhead of actually printing anything (or at least with being able to print things on demand rather than buying a big batch and praying) I think there would definitely be money to be made.

The number of submissions that large publishers get every day has got to be staggering - what if a small company could dedicate their extra resources to actually reading through more of them than Random House can? The beauty of the novel that it is pure content, especially on an e-reader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The app is the richest form of storytelling"

What a bizarre claim.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like they're trying to recreate the web.

On a tiny platform, limited to the ebook market, mac only.

How is that in anyway pushing towards mainstream?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is interesting because this was what I was going to do mid-last year but decided to go work for Google instead. There were other issues involved. Another key one was the biz dev side.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is not self publishing, this is powerpoint.</comment>


Google stored password in plaintext in logs - <AUTHOR> Got this email a few minutes ago:
Google Customer Alert
Dear G Suite Administrator,
We are writing to inform you that between January 13, 2019 and May 9, 2019, an internal system that logged account signup information for diagnostic purposes, inadvertently stored one of your user account passwords in our encrypted systems in an unhashed format. This impacted the user account password provided during the initial account signup process. The log information was retained for 14 days following the signup process, and then was deleted according to our normal retention policies.
We have reviewed the login information for the account and have found no evidence that the unhashed password was misused.
The following is the user account impacted in your domain(s):
[redacted]
Google Planned Action: for your security, starting tomorrow Wednesday, May 22, 2019 PT we will force a password change unless it has already been changed prior to that time.
Our password update methodology is as follows:
We will terminate the impacted user's session and prompt the user to change their password at their next login.
In addition, starting Wednesday, May 29, 2019 PT we will reset the password for the user if they have not yet selected a new password or have not had a password reset. This user will need to follow your organization's password recovery process. However, Super Admins will not be impacted. For information on password recovery options please refer to the following Help Center Article.
For further questions please contact Google Support and reference issue number [redacted]
Sincerely,
The G Suite Team <comment><USER2> Yeah I got that as well. Password hashed / unhashed in logs?? I really do not understand why should passwords be stored in logs or other systems.

Also it does not say it was not misused, simply there is no evidence. we live in interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how common this is. Don't many places log usernames? And isn't it extremely common to paste/type a password into the username field?

</comment><comment><USER4> good</comment>


Ask HN: Keep the product free during the beta? - <AUTHOR>

I understand the rational of validating our business model and customers' willingness to pay for the product, however, I'm still leaning towards a free beta (while being clear about the cost of product post beta). I'm wondering what the consensus is on HN? <comment><USER2> Ask a lower price, at least you get feedback from people who care instead of people who want to add features all the time, you could give them a free trial for a month though.

(PS. Freemium users are more difficult then premium users in most cases, they want a lot for nothing :))

</comment><comment><USER3> Another option is to consider donation during beta phase. Ask users to pay whatever they want (don't mention minimum and maximum). This will provide you some idea about price customers willing to pay and what type of customers value your product.

I recently implemented this strategy for my web service. Only about 1% of registered users and 30% of active users donated but the average donor contribution was three times of what I was estimating the price of the service.

It also helped me prioritize which user requests should bubble up quickly. My plan is now to introduce donor exclusive features. Then I want to track changes in number of donors and contribution.

</comment><comment><USER4> You'd be amazed at how terrible something can be and yet still provide enough value to the user to make them feel it's worth paying for. Based on that I'd say charge as early as you possibly can - as soon as users are getting value.

<comment><USER5> If they're not willing to pay, you have users not customers.

Are you building this for users or customers? If customers, why would you want to test and develop it against people who aren't your customer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A beta version probably should be free due to it being a non-finished product.

On my current project ([https://report4me.com](https://report4me.com)) we're trying the free beta model not only to get beta testers but also to determine a price point.

We give away the product to beta users for the foreseeable future, with the intent to ask them outright what they feel the product would be worth. The idea is that since they can feel comfortable that they won't actually have to pay the price they mention they might actually be more honest about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Free and paid products frequently attract completely different audiences. If you go with a free beta, you may end up with the wrong product.

</comment><comment><USER8> It should be free. A beta is a beta - it's not finished. The reasons for your beta period is for YOUR sake. You are the one who wants to test your product, give it some marketing and get feedback before launching a final version. The users in that case are helping you achieve your goal - which means that they should get to try out that service for free.</comment>


The videogame timeline  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mauriciogiraldo.com/vgline/beta/#/14 <comment><USER2> I think the most interesting thing about this (honestly very nostalgia- inducing) site is that 90% of the games shown could easily be implemented in HTML5... especially with WebGL rapidly becoming more complete in webkit. [and when can we have some proper audio codecs please?] As I was suggesting to my dinosaur-system-loving bro this evening, we're almost ready to virtualize the whole lot. The recent <canvas> Win3.1 and AmigaOS toys are just the tip of the iceberg, man...</comment>