Travelling to work 'is work', European court rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34210002 <comment><USER2> In the US, I worked for a consulting group in the bay area (Fremont). There was a big discussion about whether or not we were on the clock while driving to client sites, because some people wanted to live in Tracy and other people closer to the office, and the client sites were all over the place. So how to calculate this?

One way to do it was just to say you have to show up to the the Fremont office before going anywhere ('fixed office'), but this can be wasteful for everyone, since the client site can be in the opposite direction of the office. The final agreement was that the time it would have taken you to get to/from the office was your own time, and from then on you're on the clock and paid.

So if you live next to the office and get sent somewhere, your whole commute time to that place is paid. If you want to live in Tracy and drive an hour into work, that's ok, but your commute to the client site is only paid if it's longer than an hour or so. If you had to go to two client sites in a single day, the time between the client sites was always paid.

Nobody really had any idea if this was legal or not, but all of the consultants agreed it was very fair.

<comment><USER3> My wife's current employer handles it this way. And it does seem like a fair compromise for cases of occasional semi-local travel (in her case, a remote office that's 50 miles from home and visited monthly, vs. her usual 12 mile commute).

Her previous employer didn't count any commuting to client sites as "on the clock". One of many reasons she left. Granted, this was a Beltway Bandit and all work was at client sites, but as contracts changed, her commute changed dramatically (not just within the city, but as much as 2 hours on the Interstate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article's headline is not in line with the ruling of course, but it's not even what most people in this thread are assuming. The ECJ's rulings are to be interpreted very narrowly. In this specific circumstance, the company _closed an office_ after which people had longer commutes. So this ruling in no shape or form means that people who took a job with a certain commute now all of a sudden will be paid for that commute! It's only the people where, through the choice of the employer, the commute has become longer, who can use this as a precedent. Precedent case facts matter a lot!

<comment><USER5> Doesn't this apply to eg care workers who visit clients in the client's home where the care worker's employer doesn't have a central office?

The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case.

I haven't seen anything else that interprets this case as narrowly as you do.

<comment><USER4> "The closing of the office is an unimportant detail of this particular case."

Says who? _All_ precedent is to be interpreted narrowly in scope wrt to the facts, and that's not even taking into account that judge-made law as a concept is, in general, foreign to most EU jurisdictions (with the UK being the most notable exception). While there is not much dispute over the primacy of the ECJ over national law (although de jure this is not even a given!), there is no reason to assume that broad, general doctrines laid out by the ECJ all of a sudden constitute new law in the members of the Treaty (I mean, I'm not even talking about the ECJ-equivalent of a 'van Gend en Loos' ruling, I'm just talking about de factor interpretation by member state judiciaries and administrations).

Furthermore I'm a bit perplexed at how easily you seem to dismiss the closing of the office, which is absolutely material to this case. It's quite different when a unilateral decision of a party affects the counter party, or if both parties knew what they got into from the start! Also, or maybe 'especially', in employment cases. Please tell what you base your assertion on, because it's in direct contradiction with all literature and practice.

(and yes, I do have a law degree, although it's been a few years since I last studied any EU law, so I'm not claiming to be an expert here).

<comment><USER6> Where is your law degree from? The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law.

That being said, the closing of the office was definitely the important fact in this case, but this doesn't narrow the scope of the law. The law says that companies cannot require work weeks of more than 48 hours. Excluding commutes can lead to preposterous results, so there are a variety of circumstances where commute time must be considered as part of the work. This case just happened to be about one such set of circumstances. Where to draw the line is determined by the individual judges.

<comment><USER4> "The vast majority of EU coutries follow civil law (as opposed to common law) and courts are supposed to interpret law, not interpret precedents. Basically the only holdout to this is the UK, which leads to civil law sometimes being referred to as Continental law."

Right, which is what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Time spent travelling to and from first and last appointments by workers > without a _fixed office_ should be regarded as working time, the European > Court of Justice has ruled

Oh well.

<comment><USER8> Thankfully, because I wouldn't want to be discriminated against if I chose to live further away from work so I could afford a nicer, bigger place.

<comment><USER9> Fun fact: In Japan most companies will pay for your public transport ticket.

Never heard any suggestion of discrimination based on this though.

Although time cost > public transport cost.

<comment><USER10> _Fun fact: In Japan most companies will pay for your public transport ticket._

This is primarily a tax optimization, FWIW. If I pay you 10万 in cash, I owe the government ~1万 and you owe the government maybe 3万 or so (depends heavily on bracket). If I pay you 10万 for your train ticket, neither of use owes the government additional taxes.

Thus, if we come to the agreement that your labor is worth 35万 a month to the company, it is in our mutual interest to characterize that as 25万 of salary and 10万 of "reasonable travel expenses."

There exists a spectrum of how aggressive companies are on this one. Some play things very safe and use the actual cost of the shortest public transportation between your house and the office, going to _elaborate_ lengths to calculate that. Some say "We assume, unless you tell us differently, that transportation costs you more than 10万 a month, and will accordingly compensate you for the first 10万 of it." (The reimbursement is only non-taxable up to 10万.)

(Edit to add: 1万円 = 10k yen = ~ $100. Much like our Indian friends count things in lahks and crores, Japanese breaks numbers lower than a hundred million into a count of 10^4 rather than a count of 10^3.)

<comment><USER11> This is also why we get 600 RMB every month on a card in China for lunch. So Microsoft does offer free lunches to some employees, just not in the states.

The 万 is used in China as well, confusing as heck when talking about home prices.

<comment><USER12> Funny how using 円 for both Yen and Yuan carried over to the dollar-style currency symbol, ¥, which is also shared.

<comment><USER11> I rarely see the yen symbol used, I don't even know how to type it, instead we have 人民币, 块, 元。

<comment><USER12> Oh, I know it's not used in actual Chinese or Japanese text. It's more used in other languages in place of the hanzi/kanji.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best thing about being a consultant and running your own business is that every expense or spent time around work is considered WORK. As a basic employee in the US, you never get these sort of benefits and write-offs. When I hear people commuting 1 hour to work, that means they work 50 hours a week (assuming a 40 hours at the office). Their hourly rate is effectively much lower.

<comment><USER14> This, for sure.

I have a 1 hour commute now. When I go looking for another job, the commute time will be factored into the salary number I'm willing to accept. Every 5 minutes I add to my commute on average constitutes 3.33 hours a month doing things I don't want to and wouldn't normally do (commuting). The way an employer gets me to do things I wouldn't normally be doing for them is to pay me more. It's simple.

I don't like to drive and hate sitting in traffic, so if I can't reasonably take public transportation, they have to pay me more to drive, too.

This has resulted in me flat out turning down interviews with companies I'd otherwise consider, and I'm ok with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess this should also apply to work trips then? I knew one guy who would only book a flight from 9am on Monday mornings, rather than being pressured into Sunday night or sillyAM Monday morning.

When I told other people who travel for work abot this the response was pretty much that he should be fired.

<comment><USER16> Sad, but this seems to be hardwired in to human nature. See also 6am-3pm, 10am-7pm, "four tens", telecommuting, unpaid leave to supplement vacation, and other things employees do to improve their own quality of life without harming anybody else.

There's a dominant personality type that, when it sees somebody getting something nice seeks to tear them back down. The concept of "what a great idea. _I could do that too_ " never breaks into conscious thought. Only rage and the desire to bring the offender back to the status quo. Ideally with punishment.

<comment><USER15> \-- Ideally with punishment

Yes, or shame. "It will look like you aren't a hard worker."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Makes sense; nobody is going to tell you it's not your job to get somewhere you are being payed to be.

<comment><USER18> But...is it the employers issue if you choose to work 4 hours away from where you live? Are they allowed to not employ people based on where they live as it is going to impact their costs?

I like the idea, but i get the feeling the implementation will result in no major benefit for anyone.

Edit: I'm an idiot and i understand now :-)

<comment><USER19> "The ruling came about because of [...] a company which [...] installs security systems. The company shut its regional offices down in 2011, resulting in employees travelling varying distances before arriving at their first appointment."

(Using US examples in the following, because probably the majority of the readers understand it better than European cities, even though it does not apply to the US).

Say you are living in NYC where your company is based. Every day you get an email telling you where you have to install a new security system. One day it might be Brooklyn, one day it might be Washinton D.C, because everything is being managed from the central NYC office.

Why exactly should traveling to and between the appointment (say Newark in the morning, Bronx in the evening) not be considered work? The employee is not living 4 hours away from the first appointment because he wants to own a bigger house, but because his employer has told him to work there.

<comment><USER20> That example makes sense, but if you want to impose a rule you have to worry about the cases where it doesn't make sense. What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours a day of commuting.

The net result of this could easily be workers being required to travel to and from a central location as a workaround, when they could have better outcomes travelling straight from home - hurting the people you are supposedly want to help.

<comment><USER21> > What about a plumbing business which dispatches jobs within a 5 mile radius. > If the employee moves 2 hours away, suddenly the company has to pay 4 hours > a day of commuting.

As you say, if the company has a fixed office at the centre of that radius, they can still tell the worker that their days begin when they arrive at the office, and then the 'worktime' begins once they get there, ready to travel out to the first customer. That's how many businesses operate anyway — and how the business at the centre of this case used to work. The case was brought once they closed that office down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tangential, but related to the headline:

In China, if an employee has an accident on the way to work, the employer is required to provide care and compensation (not liability compensation, just regular employee compensation) just as if the accident had happened in the workplace.

This ruling was made in 2013.

<comment><USER23> Same thing in Brazil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit confused how they claim this has no effect on UK minimum wage workers.

If that travel time counts towards my 48 hours max working hours why doesn't it also count as time I should be paid for?

<comment><USER24> In programming terms: namespacing.

You have a set of activities which people do. You have validations on those activities. To determine whether a working arrangement is legal, all validations must pass. The UK has one set of validations. The EU has another. Some of them check the same things.

Both the EU and UK validations make use of abstractions. One of these abstractions they reference is a particular symbol named 'work'. However, the symbol for 'work' is not defined in a common namespace or dictionary, but is instead private to each ruleset. Therefore if the EU court rules that 'work' must be defined a certain way for the purposes of EU regulations, it does not affect the UK regulations.

If you think that's at all confusing wait until you hear about the government of the city of London. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c)

<comment><USER25> that video kinda reminded me of the enclaves exclaves one.

BTW, The City even has its own police force afaik. It really is a strange place...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Start the autonomous car, let it send a "punch the clock" event to work.

Status: 1) Remote 2) in office 3) working, in route?

Additionally, only accept meetings when status is 3).

<comment><USER27> I'm convinced way down the road (ahem...pun) that autonomous vehicles are going to become our work spaces. We already see it with some people getting work done on their company buses. But those are limited in terms of letting you work fully.

In our future, you'll have your own personal space on a self-driving car. Room for proper placement of your laptop + keyboard. Ability to loudly participate in conference calls. Dual screens.

And this opens up home ownership possibilities. Bay Area home prices are going through the roof. If companies want to hire people, they need to account for housing prices. Well, why not hire people who live 2 hours away? For example, the job may be in San Francisco (median home price $1.063 million), but the employee lives in Roseville (media home price $372,200).

The work day starts with the 8 am commute. Our employee lets the vehicle drive and starts working. Emails, documents, conference calls, etc. He then shows up in the office at 10 am. Gets that key face time and benefits from those serendipitous moments that only occur in person. Exits the office at 4:30 pm to return home, working on the commute. Has dinner with the kids and helps them with the homework.

One can see real possibilities for positive change once we have autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER28> I've been thinking about this a lot.

I think that ultimately, a lot of offices are going to be replaced by virtual reality offices. This would cut our dependance on commuting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is for people without fixed offices eg travelling salespeople etc. This is not saying your daily commute is work. The title of this submission is very misleading

</comment><comment><USER30> Does this apply to consultants going to a customer (where they may be for a longer period of time)?

<comment><USER31> I've been wondering that, since I'm in the same situation. But, in my personal situation, our contracts are generally for longer terms, so I guess it is a fixed office - and we have a fixed HQ too. Which we don't generally visit during our workdays though.

Even if it would apply to consultants though, I doubt anything would change. Right now there's already laws in place here (NL), or just a company agreement, about longer commutes, iirc any commute longer than an hour can be written down as working hours.

<comment><USER30> _But, in my personal situation, our contracts are generally for longer terms, so I guess it is a fixed office - and we have a fixed HQ too._

The issue is that you have no control over the location of these changing "fixed" offices, so your employer is free to assign you to a customer halfway across the country. Sounds exactly like the kind of situation this ruling is supposed to protect against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My place of work is fixed, but it's not an office. So, does this apply to me? :)

</comment><comment><USER33> No, travelling to a work today is just stupid, work from home!

<comment><USER34> How does that work for a plumber? You fix your own plumbing?

<comment><USER13> For a lot of people on Hacker News, traveling to work is stupid. Of course electricians and plumbers must go on-site, but let's consider the general audience here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Clickbait title.

</comment><comment><USER36> Would love to see this implemented in Bangalore! With the traffic jams, one could get paid for just leaving home to get to work

<comment><USER37> Haha yeah, then you would see how fast would corporations allow working remotely (if the nature of the work makes it possible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So... for _some_ people, the work day now starts as soon as they leave the house. Now those with a "fixed office" can feel they are being hard done by... I have a feeling we started sliding down a slippery slope here.

<comment><USER39> Your own life has not gotten worse just become someone else's life has become better.

There are other comments explaining why this is a needed law. I'll let you read them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Hopefully this puts more interest among executives and managers towards distributed/remote teams.

<comment><USER41> Know how I know you didn't read the article?

<comment><USER40> I read some of the article. Did you know that? I guess you signaled that you did not know that with your contentless comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if Europeans see the vicious circle they are in.

Step 1: More job regulations.

Step 2: Employees cost more and are harder to get rid of; Businesses less inclined to hire.

Step 3: Jobs are hard to get, so employees ask for more security from the government.

Repeat.

<comment><USER43> Like Germany, unemployment rate 4.7% and strong job protections?

<comment><USER42> No, more like all the countries that aren't Germany.

Or do you think it's a breeze seeking a job in France (unemployment ~10%), Italy (unemployment ~13%), Spain (unemployment ~20%), Greece (unemployment ~25%)...

There's many others if you want to take a look. [http://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment- rate-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemployment-rate-in-eu- countries/)

<comment><USER44> Please take a look at the following graph: [https://sturdyblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece- workin...](https://sturdyblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/greece-working- hours.jpg)

 _All_ your listed countries have higher working hours than Germany. In fact, the working hours in Greece are _50% higher_ than in Germany.

Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm not saying that a _causes_ b, but the correlation is obvious.

On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but that doesn't make it true.

<comment><USER42> > Annual working hours are highly correlated with unemployment rate. Note I'm > not saying that a causes b, but the correlation is obvious.

Interesting... but like you said, it's just a correlation. Could as much be that people are less likely to work many hours when there's full employment, or when a country is richer.

> On the other hand, there is no empirical evidence of workers' rights > protection causing unemployment. That narrative often gets repeated, but > that doesn't make it true.

As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is increasing my cost. (And it doesn't matter if I would have agreed anyway with what the law says; I still have to waste time learning it, more paperwork, less flexibility.) So I know that the more regulation there is in this field, the less _I_ 'm inclined to hire. It's not a narrative, that's _my_ reality.

<comment><USER44> _> As a business owner, every additional regulation regarding employees is increasing my cost._

My point was that it doesn't matter if every other business in your industry bears the same burden, too. Your competitive position stays the same. No profit opportunities are lost.

<comment><USER45> This. There is an American mindset which needs to change. We have a lot of businesses complaining about regulations, yet other countries with more regulation seem to conduct business in a profitable manner. In fact, it could be argued that the businesses operating in a more regulated environment, are probably more robust than their American counterparts because the regulations add stability and reduced uncertainty.

A lot of American business owners complain that their business is "hanging on by a thread". This is because they are operating at the lowest energy state which provides little safety margin for failure. If there were stronger regulations in America, then fragile business models would not be able to attract investment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Must Revive Gopherspace (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://box.matto.nl/revivegopher.html <comment><USER2> HTML ain't the problem; you can build websites without tracking. If you somehow managed to pull enough users to Gopher, they'd just write Gopher Chrome and start adding new features that conveniently allow tracking into it, and gradually kill off the original protocol (see EEE). The problem is economic, and the solution must be too.

<comment><USER3> I'm old enough to have used gopher on vt100 terminals as an undergrad in college to try and do some 'work'. And when http/www arrived, it didn't take long to switch to a better mousetrap. And this wasn't just because you could now render a gif in NCSA Mosaic on indigo workstation. Everything was just better in this new http world.

Let's fast forward to today, yes, we've gone overboard all over, but then again, Gopher [i think] doesn't come standard with TLS, it hasn't gone through the evolution that http[s] has that makes it a robust and scalable backbone it is today.

What I'm trying to say is that we should not casually float around pipe dreams about switching to ancient tech that wasn't that good to begin with. Yes, electric cars were a thing already in early 1900s, and we maybe took a wrong turn with combustion engine, but with Gopher, I think we should let the sleeping dogs lie, and focus on improving next version of QUIC, or even inventing something entirely new that would address many of the concerns in the article without sacrificing years of innovation since we abandoned Gopher. Heck, this new thing might as well run on TCP/70, never mind UDP appears to be the thing now[0].

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/3](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/3)

<comment><USER4> Well said. The article conflates a content / rendering problem with a protocol solution.

A lightweight HTTP/TLS subset that severely limits client-side execution expectations would seem to accomplish the same goals.

While repurposing all the amazing tech we've built since the 1990s.

Essentially, "just pass me the bare minimum of response to make Firefox Reader View work."

... but then we wouldn't be able to serve high-value targeted ads, would we?

<comment><USER5> If the desire is to make online content more readable, it might be worth starting with the assumption that all content downloaded from the network will be read on a black-and-white ereader device with no persistent internet connection.

This assumption might require substantially reworking the hyperlink model of the internet, so that external references to content delivered by third- parties is sharply distinguished from internal references to other pages within the same work.

<comment><USER6> Your idea of hypermedia with an offline browsing assumption is very good! Imagine an "offline archive" format that contains a document D + a pre- downloaded copy of all referred documents R1, R2, ..., Rn, along with necessary assets to render R1,R2..Rn in some useful manner (e.g. save html + main-narrative images from each page Ri, but skip everything else).

This "offline archive format" has numerous benefits: (A) Cognitive benefits of a limited/standard UI for information (e.g. "read on a black-and-white ereader device"), (B) Accessibility: standardizing on text would make life easier for people using screen readers, (C) Performance (since accessing everything on localhost), (D) async access (reaching the "edge" of the subgraph of the internet you have pre-downloaded on your localnet could be recorded and queued up for async retrieval by "opportunistic means", e.g., next time you connect to free wifi somewhere you retrieve the content and resolve those queued "HTTP promises", (E) cognitive benefits of staying on task when doing research (read the actual paper you wanted to read, instead of getting lost reading the references, and the references's references).

I'm not sure what "standard" for offline media (A) would should target... Do we allow video or not? On the one hand video has great usefulness as communication medium on the other it's very passive medium, often associated with entertainment rather than information. Hard choice if you ask me.

I'm sure such "pre-fetched HTTP" exists already of some sort, no? Or is it just not that useful if you only have "one hop" in the graph? How hard would it be to crawl/scrape 2 hops? 3 hops? I think we could have pretty good offline internet experience with a few hops. For me personally, I think async interactions with the internet limited to 3 hops would improve my focus—I'm thinking of hckrnews crawled + 3 hops of web content linked, a clone of any github repo encountered (if <10MB), and maybe doi links resolved to actual paper from sci-hub. Having access to this would be 80%+ of the daily "internet value" delivered for me, and more importantly allow me to cutoff from the useless information like news and youtube entertainment.

update: found WARC [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_ARChive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_ARChive) [http://archive- access.sourceforge.net/warc/warc_file_format-...](http://archive- access.sourceforge.net/warc/warc_file_format-0.16.html#anchor49)

<comment><USER4> The issue is this thrashes caching at both the local and network levels, decreases overall hit rate, and doesn't scale as links-per-page increase.

How many links from any given page are ever taken? And is it worth network capacity and storage to cache any given one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y How about reviving the "blogosphere" instead? Does it even need reviving? Most of the personal or tech blogs I visit do not have heavy ads or tracking on them, still offer full RSS articles and so on. People who care still have a lot of nice web sites to go to.

Maybe what we need is a search engine that penalises JS and tracker use.

<comment><USER7> The web of the 90s is alive on tor. On tor the idea of running third party executable code in the age of spectre is (properly) seen as absurd. We just need to bring back webrings and we'll be set.

Since it's on tor there's no need for evil centralization for DoS protection since it's baked into the protocol. Additionally your onion vanity name you brute forced cannot simply be taken away from you if there's political or social pressure on your registrar or above.

No, we don't need gopher. We need people to stop running third party code like it's some normal thing. We need devs to stop making websites that don't render unless you run their code.

It's really not that hard to run a hidden service. No harder than running a webserver. And everyone's home connections are fast enough now.

<comment><USER8> Color me intrigued. How do I get started? (I have the Tor browser but can never find anything worthwhile, reddit just talks about illegal stuff)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not just serve static text over HTTP? At least then you'd have the ability to inline images. This--the use of Javascript and other technology for tracking purposes--isn't a problem for Gopher to solve. It's a problem for web content creators.

<comment><USER10> Correct, here are some tips for content creators how a website can look like without all the bloat:

[https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

[https://perfectmotherfuckingwebsite.com/](https://perfectmotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

[https://thebestmotherfucking.website/](https://thebestmotherfucking.website/)

<comment><USER11> Hadn't seen the last two. There's a slippery slope effect going on.

<comment><USER12> Really, I feel like its showing 0.01% of the process that got us to where we are today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gopher is a really fun (and constrained) protocol. I've experimented a bit with interactive gopher servers in the past.

A cool thing is that you can build a server in an afternoon starting with nothing more than your favorite programming language, some TCP server docs, and the wikipedia page.

I'd love to see people build some gopher sites to do stupid and crazy things. Interactive fiction over gopher? Sure! SQL to gopher gateway with ascii viz? Awesome!

Everyone should have a gopher hole... probably firewalled off of any production networks.

</comment><comment><USER14> I always like to refer to Ian Hickson's Requirements for Replacing the Web [0] when this topic comes up. They seems to encapsulate well the social, technological and economic dynamics required when discussing replacing the Web. However, few attempts (Crockford's Seif Project [2], MS's Project Atlantis and Project Gazelle [2][3][4][5]) seemed have to heed this wisdom.

[0] [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zGGJQ...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zGGJQ5VxwEJ:https://plus.google.com/%2BIanHickson/posts/SiLdNL9MsFw+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

[1] [http://seif.place/](http://seif.place/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/1uflg7LDmzI](https://youtu.be/1uflg7LDmzI)

[3] [https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/publications/atlantis- robus...](https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/publications/atlantis-robust- extensible-execution-environments-forweb-applications)

[4] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/gazelle.pdf)

[5] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/browser-not- br...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/browser-not-browser/)

<comment><USER15> > I always like to refer to Ian Hickson's Requirements for Replacing the Web > [0] when this topic comes up.

It's not that hard. Just iterate on any idea old that's even slightly more appealing to hack on than a full-blown browser. That includes... let's see... nearly anything!

Then just be smart and dedicated about specifying the behavior of the new thing and figuring out workarounds for the awful parts.

Ian Hickson did it[0].

[0] [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zGGJQ...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zGGJQ5VxwEJ:https://plus.google.com/%2BIanHickson/posts/SiLdNL9MsFw+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've half seriously evangelized a few times here for a .text TLD.

It wouldn't solve everything, but would make a nice playground that might be taken interesting places.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article discusses reviving gopher, but doesn't mention how to access it (sure, I could invest a bit of time and effort googling how to do that, but that seems beside point for an article evangelising its revival).

<comment> Joe-Z Yes, I was a little disappointed by that too. It even has a "gopher://..." link at the end and when I click on it I can't even open it. Just tell me how I can open the one example you provide man!

<comment><USER18> There was a time when gopher: scheme URLs would _just work_ , because GOPHER support was built in to popular WWW browsers. Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer both had it, for example.

It's not that gopher: is some novelty that no-one has ever adopted. It's that a WWW browser _nowadays lacks quite a lot_ of things that used to be commonly built-in to WWW browsers. gopher: scheme support has gone completely, as has news: support. ftp: support has been reimplemented several times, and is significantly poorer now than it used to be.

* [http://jdebp.eu./FGA/web-browser-ftp-hall-of-shame.html](http://jdebp.eu./FGA/web-browser-ftp-hall-of-shame.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was toying with an idea a while back of making sites just for non visual browsers. There was basically just a piece of css, blocking the visualization of content and letting users know this "this is a web 0.5 website. This site is best viewed in a terminal". The enforced rules where kind of a gentleman's (gentleperson) code of no css no js.

Conclusions I got is that the thing had crazy fast loading (it even weird when you can no longer distinguish local for server), that it would be actually quite enjoyable coding experience has it's suddently is just 50% of the work and that the rendering of web pages in terminal browsers is actually really nice.

<comment><USER20> It called txt files.

Good example: [http://textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/lod-1](http://textfiles.com/magazines/LOD/lod-1)

<comment><USER21> GP is talking about text that is hidden in a normal web browser and only visible in something that ignores CSS.

<comment><USER22> Like putting the entire website in the noscript tag?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Gopher is not HTML

Gopher can easily serve HTML content (and any other content type, too)

I made a Gopher HackerNews proxy a few years ago, you can see it in action by running

        lynx gopher://hn.irth.pl

and check out the source at [https://github.com/irth/gophernews](https://github.com/irth/gophernews)

<comment><USER24> There's also gopher://hngopher.com/

<comment><USER23> Oh, this one's pretty cool. Makes me wanna do a similar thing for another website that's as nice looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Gopher is a much feature-less protocol than html

HTML is not a protocol, that's HTTP.

</comment><comment><USER26> We need a new mode for Fırefox an extremely restricted form of html5 without javascript, call it html0.

<doctype html0>

No JS, no thirparty content, only html5+, css3+, text, images, videos, audio and other stuff.

<comment><USER27> If you have the ability to set the doctype of a page, don't you also already have the ability to not load thirdparty content?

<comment><USER28> The point is to allow the User Agent to display an icon meaning "This page says it dosnt need third party media so will be prevented from loading any"

<comment><USER29> That seems like a silly reason to have a restricted subset of HTML. Just show that icon on existing HTML pages which don't include third party content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How about not developing sites that break when JS is turned off? Why has it become a standard to make websites completely in JavaScript when it brings nothing positive to the table whatsoever? Who came up with this idiocy?

</comment><comment><USER31> As someone who grew up with a 1200 baud modem and never used gopher: why would I start using gopher? What even is it? Can I use it to host webpages? It sounds like if "tracking is impossible" it probably can't use html+javascript? Why would I want to use that?

<comment><USER32> There is no good reason to use gopher other than for nostalgic reasons.

<comment><USER33> Gopher menus are quick to parse and interact with even on very constrained systems, and the protocol is very simple. Given some of the other responses in this thread, I don't think those things are simply "nostalgia."

I think you could argue that gopher has _few practical uses,_ and while (as a Gopher user) I don't personally agree, I think the position is defensible depending on what your use cases are. But Gopher is a good example of how a minimal protocol can still offer services of some reasonable basic functionality, and I think that's worth something more than reminiscence.

<comment><USER34> I love the Gopher protocol but there is no practical difference between a gopher service and a web server serving directory listings and files.

<comment><USER33> You're excluding gopher menus themselves, which can be customized and act as miniature documents, and search servers, which can take queries and offer basic interactivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I did a hackday project where I wrote a script that converted our intranet at work into a gopher site. Before I started, I was really enthused about it, but once I started, it just became evident how much a kludge these early protocols were.

Its the COBOL of page description languages. Its truly horrible, its not like HTML was just this minor improvement, its a complete conceptual shift. GOPHER is just a tab delimitated file, so excel is the best editor for it.

The first character is the type of thing, it can be a submenu (1), a text doc(0), a gif (g), an image (I), a binary file (b), a bin-hex file (4) or it can tell you the name of a mirror server so you can load balance?? (+).

How do you take form input like a a street address? You can't, its one way data transfer.

<comment><USER33> Item type 7 is how you handle queries, and how things like Veronica were implemented, so it's not one way. It's definitely constrained, but not impossible. There was also item type 2 for CSO, though that is much less common.

Gopher+ had ASK forms which were much like HTML form controls but were, like much of Gopher+, complex to implement and not widely adopted. Some recent clients and servers support arguments over stdin like POST requests, but this too is not widely implemented.

<comment><USER35> Most of these tools like Archie and Veronica seemed like magical services when I started cruzing the internet. I recently learned that Archie when it started was nothing more than a collection of `ls -lR`s of various ftp servers that would be searched with grep. Which, in hindsite, was the obvious unixy way of doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> amiga-workbench I'd rather have a conservative version of our current web standards, strip things back to a sensible subset of what we have now, possibly consider putting some kind of heavy rate-limiting or quotas on any client-side code that's ran.

The web is no longer open if you need the funds and backing of a megacorp in order to implement a renderer that covers the whole standard.

<comment><USER36> Let's dial things back to before we entered the darkest timeline: the fork in the road where HTML5 happened instead of XHTML2 development being continued. A stricter, saner markup standard with less overhead to developing a rendering engine, and shitcan scripts as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Blast from the past. If anyone wants to download NCSA Mosaic and load the author's gopher site with it, here ya go:

[https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa- mosaic](https://github.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic) (binaries in Ubuntu's Snap Store, probably in other distros too)

Find out more at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_\(web_browser\))

</comment><comment><USER38> For those looking in the comments for places to explore in gopherspace, I would recommend starting here (use lynx):

      gopher://sdf.org # large community
      gopher://floodgap.com # a venerable gopher presence
      gopher://bitreich.org # small but very active community
      gopher://gopher.black/1/moku-pona  # my phlog listing aggregator

</comment><comment><USER39> One tangent from this consideration would be:

What would it take to make Content-Type: text/markdown a reality for web publishers?

<comment><USER40> To start with, deciding what constitutes markdown, i.e., a spec. There are a bunch of incompatible "flavours" out there.

<comment><USER41> [https://commonmark.org/](https://commonmark.org/) is a good start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There are around 281 Gopher servers active on the Internet at the moment:

[https://www.shodan.io/report/jhkXWTvL](https://www.shodan.io/report/jhkXWTvL)

Will be interesting to see whether that number shifts in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER43> My memory is getting kind of blurry on this, but wasn't Gopher heading in a direction where someone wanted to extract licensing fees from it?

I do remember discovering how WWW had made some leaps forward and promptly abandoning my project to write a Gopher+ server and instead turning what I was working on into an HTTP server. Sadly I never bothered publishing the code since interesting things were happening with the NCSA httpd code at the time (something which eventually turned into Apache)

<comment><USER33> Back in the day, yes, UMN tried this and it probably did indeed kill the ecosystem. They backpedaled later but the damage was done.

[http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher- sof...](http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-software- licensing-policy.ancient)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The nature of this problem (that companies are able to track you) is not so much a technological problem, but an economical one. Even if gopher were the only alternative back then, it would have evolved just as HTML/HTTP did to support ads and tracking.

All a content provider that doesn't want to serve ads and tracking has to do is not implement it. While content creators are still bound to whatever their publishing platform chooses to do (e.g. any content on Medium is subject to Medium's tracking practices), using an inferior technology is simply not a realistic solution. This is essentially a human issue, technology has little to do with it.

You want to enable ad-free, tracking-free mass publishing? Provide a free publishing platform. The catch? Someone has to pay for it.

You don't want to be tracked? Disable javascript. Some sites stopped working? Oh yeah, tracking you is how they pay the cost (nominal or economical) for serving you content.

I would see merit however, in a search engine that allowed filtering for non- javascript friendly content.

</comment><comment><USER45> There is a public gopher proxy you can use e.g. [http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://box.matto.nl:7...](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://box.matto.nl:70/0/revivegopher.txt)

</comment><comment> rc-1140 Once again, an internet user decides that in order to solve a social problem, we must move people to an ancient internet protocol for serving web pages rather than _actually address_ the social problem by dealing with the real world entities performing the tracking.

</comment><comment><USER46> As others are saying, HTML isn't the problem and Gopher isn't the solution: any bidirectional request-response protocol can be used to track clients, because there's a record of interactions the server can save. Client-side scripting as now commonly used on the Web increases the likelihood that some of these events occur despite the user's intent, but hosts can track and profile you by IP just fine, and if this hypothetical Gopher revival came to pass, it would also revive an interest in server-side ad serving and log mining that dynamic ads have long made obsolete.

The two solutions are to: (a) not interact with hosts who track you -- which is hard to know ahead of time -- or (b) use a one-way broadcast protocol that leaves no ability for hosts to collect an interaction stream. And this exists too, from over-the-air television and radio, to teletext [1] and datacasting [2]. Compare the business models: unencrypted broadcast streams are full of ads too, but you don't get tracked. Or, the services are encrypted and the key exchange is moved out of band; you trade a bit of your privacy to establish an ongoing customer relationship to access gated content.

Of course, broadcast on public airwaves is heavily regulated, and broadcast on unlicensed spectrum is sufficiently intertwined with and streamlined into wireless internet to be hidden in plain sight. Despite its technical merits, a broadcast 'renaissance' of sorts isn't likely to attract a discretionary audience without a real integrated commercial offering raising awareness -- amateur radio and tech demos don't have universal appeal, but a sleek device that accesses compelling first-party content in a privacy-preserving way might. But it's also a technical gamble when more proven solutions are less risky, and the kinds of players who deliver integrated offerings can deliver their service over IP with less fuss.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datacasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datacasting)

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't know if I necessarily want Gopher back, but I often dream of returning to the days when "the Internet" was primarily Usenet, IRC, Telnet, and email.

<comment><USER48> Don't forget FTP. So much FTP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The article makes the incorrect assumption that tracking depends on HTML and/or JS/images. If we managed to revive Gopher, browser makes would soon build tracking into browsers and publishers would simply track on the server side like Cloudflare does already ([https://www.cloudflare.com/analytics/](https://www.cloudflare.com/analytics/)).

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember during my undergrad days, my university (McGill) used to have its classified ads accessible via gopher. It was pretty popular and fairly easy to use. Surprisingly, there were quite a few non-technical people on there, e.g., posting apartments to sublet. This was in the days of Windows 2k/ME, so people had lower expectations for user interfaces back then.

</comment><comment><USER50> Should at least have a small guide on how to get started, like server software, client software, how to make a "page" ?

You could block all ip-ranges for known trackers via firewall. And also disable JavaScript, cookies and media content. Or just surf the web using an old browser. Serious webmasters still make sure their web pages work in more then just Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER51> My biggest issue with "gopher" is that I don't know how secure it is, how do I know the connection I'm using is secure and hasn't been intercepted, the current clients don't show that at all if it's even possible. I couldn't care less about tracking when the content isn't trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER52> What do Gopher pages look like, are they mostly ascii or is the format weird? Why did HTML/HTTP become the standard over Gopher? It seems like Gopher could be capable of doing similar things to the web, just nobody bothered to expand on it or the standard is frozen in time.

<comment><USER53> With the risk of sounding patronizing, the wikipedia page provides answers to all your questions [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_\(protocol\))

<comment><USER52> Thank you, I appreciate the link. It's been a while since I've looked at that page, so I probably forgot about some of what is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> When they talk about "putting content on gopher", what do they mean? Gopher is basically FTP with the ability to link to other sites. Other than text blogs or videos, what sort of content would we out on there?

</comment><comment><USER55> If Github was still independent, a Gopher service for Github would make sense. Gopher is basically a file server, and Github is a file repository.

</comment><comment><USER56> I was wondering if Net News / NNTP / Usenet could address some of the distributed use cases people are trying to throw at blockchain?

<comment><USER57> Blockchain wasn't really on my mind, but NNTP is something I think we should consider reviving.

Reddit and Facebook has taken over the old forums and mailing lists, but I feel that those markets would be served equally well, or better by NNTP.

The Reddit redesign makes it clear what direction they are moving in, and I fear that it will kill of all the interesting subreddits, where people have real discussions. In it's place will be an endless stream of memes, pictures and angry anti-Trump posts. All these subreddits will scatter and their uses left without a "home".

The village I live in has a Facebook group, it's a closed group, so no browsing without a Facebook account. I'm relying on my wife to inform me, if anything interesting is posted. It's sad, because it's pretty much the only source you can turn to if it smells like the entire village is burning or the local power plant is making a funny sound. All the stuff that's to small for even local news, or is happing right now.

Usenet would, in my mind, be a create place to host the communities currently on Facebook and Reddit. They will be safe from corporate control, or shifts in focus from they "hosting partner", and everyone will have equal and open access. Spam might be the unsolved problem, but I feel like that is something we can manage.

I know that a Usenet comeback, with all the hope and dream I have for it, isn't coming. People don't like NNTP, they like Facebook.

<comment><USER56> Anyone know the easiest way to get a server up and running? I google "open source nntp " with not great results.

<comment><USER58> I wouldn't really classify it as a "good" nntp server (nor would I recommend it as it's probably not fully compliant) but nntpchan is one possible route if you don't mind the imageboard aftertaste. it's not meant for mainline usenet. I made it out of frustration with INN's feed syntax and because another daemon that I used at the time was abandoned written in python (it was an abomination but it worked).

[https://github.com/majestrate/nntpchan](https://github.com/majestrate/nntpchan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Disable JS and this problem fixes itself.

</comment><comment><USER60> WTF is gopher space? Asking for a friend.

</comment><comment><USER61> How am I going to get my grandma to use gopher? Solve that, then you'll have my support.

</comment><comment><USER62> Pleroma, the alternative ActivityPub server to Mastodon, has a built in Gopher service. :)

</comment><comment><USER63> Ironically, I cannot go to the link he provides. Gopher: are not supported by Safari. :D

</comment><comment><USER64> why?

</comment><comment><USER65> > If you build it, they will come.

People already built it. And not even talking about old gopher. Adblockers are that now.

People who are technical enough see the benefit and swear by it. We just need to make it easier to use. Maybe an adblocker add-on with live support and constant monitoring (and tweaking of the rules) is a produt that you can sell by the millions?

Canvas fingerprinting? gone. Third party cookies? gone. Auto play media? gone. etc. Everyone say that privacy is most expensive luxury nowadays. Maybe we need to commoditize it?

<comment><USER66> Ad blocker with constant monitoring looks like a fun absurdist art project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> _Every step you take on the web, every site you visit, every page you view, is used to create and enhance a profile about you. Everything you do is carefully tracked and monitored._

Bold of the author to openly admit this.

<comment><USER68> How is that bold? It's common knowledge.

<comment><USER29> It's bold of the author to admit that they are carefully tracking and monitoring everyone using this site to create and enhance profiles on them, particularly given the context of the article.

<comment><USER30> This particular site has no external trackers or analytics scripts.

<comment><USER29> But the claim made in the article is that " _every step_ you take on the web, _every site_ you visit, _every page_ you view, is used to create and enhance a profile about you. _Everything you do_ is carefully tracked and monitored."

Obviously, if this is true, then it must be true for that site as well. Otherwise that assertion is just FUD and hyperbole, and it undermines the credibility of the argument being made about the scale of the evil of the modern web, and the necessity of a simpler, non-HTML based protocol to avoid those evils.

<comment><USER30> All traffic is monitored by the countless agencies around the world, the datacenters, the isps, spyware, malicious browser extensions, companies "helping" you by making a backup of your bookmarks and history, and so on, so it is definitely true for this site aswell.

<comment><USER29> In that sense, it would be true for gopher as well.

But the article is clearly describing javascript, analytics and tracking within HTML, with the solution being Gopher's "featurelessness." But it's possible to build an HTML page without analytics and tracking, or even with non-malicious javascript, so the premise that the only way to escape that is to leave the web entirely for simpler and more restrictive pastures is untrue.

Not that the point needs to be belabored but it's worth pointing out that the article opens with a patent falsehood.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New planet hints we're very lucky—or our models are wrong - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/new-planet-hints-were-very-luckyor-our-models-are-wrong.ars

<comment><USER2> The planet is sentient. It constantly swings its tides out to create momentum that prevents it from falling into the star.

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_brain>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the star is <1.5 billion years old, and the planet is expected to fall into that star in <1 million years, how did that planet have both time to form (which would have occurred far away) and to have its orbit decay?

<comment><USER5> The idea is that it formed farther away, and has been "falling" the whole time, and it's just about to hit the star. Which is dismissed as an unlikely coincidence, but maybe.

We should be able to find out soon.

If it's really that close, and the existing estimate for Q is correct, the orbital period should change measurably within the next year or two.</comment></comment>


Real-time world air quality index - <AUTHOR> https://waqi.info/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://aqicn.org/contact/](https://aqicn.org/contact/)</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Sublime Text so expensive and who pays for licenses? - <AUTHOR> Sublime Text is great, so I suspect many users would happily pay (or donate, if given the choice) $5-20 for the privilege of such a tool. Sublime's asking price is $80, however, and as a result no one seems to pay (even large corporates).<p>I'm curious 1) why Sublime doesn't allow smaller payments from devs who want to support the project and 2) what entities are actually paying for licenses (government, companies with strict procurement rules, &c.) <comment><USER2> $80 USD for a lifetime license on as many machines as you like doesn't seem that expensive, especially considering their market: most entry-level devs in the US earn 60K/year. Granted, there are users in other markets and countries earning less (such as myself), but taking into account it's capabilities, how customizable it is and how I haven't found any products with the same or similar capabilities that are as lightweight at it is, makes it a very impressive product that IMHO is well worth the price.

As far as who buys it, I will as soon as I get a better paying job, I've been using it for years and I can't imagine my life without it. What demographics buy it seems more like a question you would ask the ST team themselves.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you use Sublime Text instead of the countless quite usable - if perhaps not as good - text editors out there chances are you use it professionally.

For someone using such a tool professionally and earning good money while doing so $80 already is a ridiculously low price.

There are professionals though who for reasons I never quite seemed to understand aren't willing to pay for the tools they use. Absurdly enough this habit is particularly common with developers and companies making money by selling software.

To them 60 USD less wouldn't make a difference. They would never buy the product anyway. So, lowering the price doesn't make any sense at all.

This particular example is just one instance of a more general, widespread fallacy in the software industry: Because software can essentially be copied and reproduced for free people seem to think that the tools used for creating that software have to be available for free as well (many open source tools indeed coming for free doesn't exactly help in this case either).

Many organisations have no qualms with wasting a huge amount of employee time on meetings or on engineers being less productive because they use inadequate or sub-par tools. Yet at the same time the same organisations often tend to make a huge fuss about buying tools that cost a tiny fraction of that waste of time while helping with eliminating that waste.

<comment> Kepler-431c It's basically force-of-habit. Many of us grew up in the "windows era" where piracy was just the thing that was done.

It takes posts such as yours to get people to snap out of it.

<comment><USER4> [https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-dont-use-software-that- cost...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-dont-use-software-that-costs-money- here/)

In the Windows culture there is also the MSDN factor where once you get an MSDN subscription you have licenses for an insane number of Microsoft product so your SQL Server and Visual Studio and ... are all covered under one price. You are paying for it, but not for an application at a time, so why go with some vendor that wants more money?

<comment><USER5> And for students, MSDNAA covers it all (except Office) for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A) If you're a developer who is even halfway worth his salt, $80 is chump change.

B) Sublime Text is one of the few things I encounter on a daily basis that gives me any hope whatsoever for the fate of humanity. They earned every penny of that $80 and then some.

C) Adobe is $20 a month, and I throw up in my mouth a little every time I see it on my statement. Not because it's $20, but because it's Adobe.

</comment><comment><USER7> From all accounts Jon Skinner (the developer) makes a living, and has taken on at least one employee, so clearly enough users do pay for his purposes. Perhaps paying his bills by working on an extremely high quality product completely on his own terms is precisely what he wants from the venture? ST has been around for long enough to conclude that it's probably working for him.

I personally can't see how $80 could be considered 'expensive' for a professional tool. My tradie friends would love to be able to buy their most significant tools for so little. I'm not an ST user, and am at (or below) the bottom end of developer income, but wouldn't hesitate to pay that for such a well-crafted piece of software.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Sublime every day and have for the last year. Before that, I was using free editors that were ok but had some annoying weaknesses. $80 doesn't seem like all that much for a professional tool that I use to help make my living every single day. Compare this to my neighbor, a professional mechanic who has $150k invested in SnapOn tools - and makes less money than I do.

</comment><comment><USER9> First off Sublime Text is a great tool and has saved me so many hours of time over the years.

I was happy to purchase a license. I did use it for free initially but after a while you're like this is a valuable time saving tool so it's easily worth the price.

The free/nag version covers students and those who can't or don't feel they can afford it.

I think the price is fair considering most developers are billing out at $100/hr+/-.

If you're a developer and think $80 is too expensive, look at raising your rates.

Leveling up is something I learned from Patio11, we are all leaving money on the table. Read everything from Patio11 it will help you level up and make more money.

I'm also a fan of Rob at StartUpsForTheRestofUs.com he has some great info too and if you start at the beginning of the podcasts you can follow him along from beach towel drop shipping, to a $XXM exit with Drip.

So try raising your rates on your next project and that will pay for sublime text and other things you need to work more efficient.

<comment><USER7> > try raising your rates on your next project

That should hardly be necessary! I live on probably 1/10 of the average (OECD) developer salary as I intensely dislike working so minimise it. Yet I'd have no problem paying for ST. For people living on truly minimal salaries in developing countries, I'd say just use it unlicensed and make a genuine mental promise to buy a license if/when you can afford it. It's hard to imagine the ST developer would object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure what the data behind your conclusion that "no one seems to pay" for Sublime is. At $80, for me it's a steal. This is one of the most important tools that a professional developer uses every day and a lifetime license on all of their machines costs less than 1 hour of their time.

Sublime is worth so much more than it costs. They could triple the price and it'd still pay for itself quickly. If they really really focused on making the most money they could sell it on a subscription model like JetBrains. Apple gets $100/year from an app dev for Xcode which is a nice round approachable number. Sublime could do the same if they wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER10> I work for a division/business unit of a large corporate. Majority of us use sublime with license.

We're (the business unit) roughly about 300-400 developers (and growing) writing mostly Javascript every day.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this a circuitous way of conveying that the _zJayv entity_ is annoyed with the prospect of paying $80?

Where's the data that Sublime HQ's individual and corporate revenue is hurting?

</comment><comment><USER12> "no one seems to pay" \- how did you get that conclusion? There are loads of Sublime zealots on here, I don't think it's possible that zero of them have paid.

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq](https://www.sublimetext.com/sales_faq)

The Expiration Date bullet answers your question basically.

So it seems they have wanted to let as many people use it as possible so they realize how awesome it is then start charging people. If they try to charge $80 I think a lot of people won't upgrade to Sublime Text 4. I know I won't because 3 does everything I need it to.

</comment><comment><USER14> After using it throughout college and now at work, I decided 4+ years of using it for free seemed to be worth the $80 for a lifetime license.

<comment><USER2> I believe this might be one of the reasons they let users use it for free instead of charging outright: Long-term users value the product because they got to use it for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> No, the price needs to be high enough that sales support the developer. $50-100 is appropriate for a tool like Sublime. (I paid when it was $70 and previously paid $50 for Textmate.)

Lowering the cost to $5-20 would convert hardly any of the tire kickers and make people who would have paid $80 nervous about the longevity of the company supporting the product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clarifications

question based on premises:

\- many people use Sublime for free

\- many people don't pay bc the asking price is $80 and bc VS Code and <insertEditorHere> are free

\- many people would pay if price was lower

what I'm curious to know:

\- for people that do pay, are they paying for personal use or bc their company pays? --> this is what I'm really getting at, whether Sublime's revenue stream comes from corporate or fans of the project

what I'm _not_ assuming

\- that $80 is expensive is an absolute sense [as Toast_25 points out, bargin for product value * usage] but rather comparatively expensive (vs. other v good and completely free editors out there)

\- that Sublime is making an incorrect business decision (I suspect they'd have _more_ people paying if contributions via Paypal or Patreon were available but also suspect this would have minimal revenue impact, esp. if they maintained the current sales price)

\- that Sublime owes a cheaper price to its user based (esp. given that it's providing an awesome product for, again, free)

<comment><USER16> My employer pays for my tools. Sublime is however one of the few paid tools that I use also on my spare time so I actually paid the price from my own pocket to ensure the license isn't tied to my employer in case I switch jobs. I consider it well worth the price and feel I have actually "bought" something that I can have forever instead of shelling out money to some subscription sinkhole.

IMO if you want to get paid for building an editor it's an excellent business decision to set the price above "peanuts" level - it's still good value for money as a professional tool that you have had months to evaluate for free. Recurring subscription fees might make both corporate users and hobbyists hesitate. For corporate users the problem is wasted money for underutilized subscriptions and license management hell, for hobbyists it's the fact that some people (like me) might go several months without hacking on a side project and when an user suspends a subscription it's always a risk the user won't come back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't use sublime but your editor is your main tool. I don't see many general contractors pulling out Ryobi tools to do their job. Those are for the weekend DIYer. The pros invest in their tools to get their job done. $80 is really a small ask for a lifetime license for an app you spend most of your time in.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's good! I paid for it because I use it constantly every day. It's a great tool and the price is reasonable imo. My company has also bought a license for a couple dozen seats.</comment>


Games of Coding – A curated list of games that teach you a programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michelpereira/gamesofcoding <comment><USER2> I see you already have a pull request for TIS-100. That's the first that came to mind.

Does it make sense to break down the list by categories? For example:

\- New to programming: Lightbot, Spritebox

\- Reverse engineering: [https://microcorruption.com](https://microcorruption.com), many of the Zachtronics games

And so on...

Also, here are a couple of other lists of games I've been going through:

\- [http://steamcommunity.com/app/375820/discussions/0/481115363...](http://steamcommunity.com/app/375820/discussions/0/481115363863361128/)

\- [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/09/best- programming...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/09/best-programming- games/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't recomend enough Human Resource Machine! by World of Goo creator [http://2dboy.com/](http://2dboy.com/) it's Android/iOS game teaching some basic programing concepts. Fun and good looking.

<comment><USER4> It really sucks that this game doesn't have the ability to make custom levels. I thought this game was really cute and well made.

<comment><USER5> A sandbox mode would have been great fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A similar post on Halite.io listing some interesting games:

[https://halite.io/](https://halite.io/) [http://vindinium.org/](http://vindinium.org/) [http://theaigames.com/](http://theaigames.com/) [http://www.rpscontest.com/](http://www.rpscontest.com/) [https://www.codingame.com/home](https://www.codingame.com/home) [https://leekwars.com/](https://leekwars.com/) [http://russianaicup.ru/](http://russianaicup.ru/) [http://dev.generals.io/](http://dev.generals.io/)

Link to the post: [http://forums.halite.io/t/other-ai- contests/925](http://forums.halite.io/t/other-ai-contests/925)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if such games can help to learn programming. For example, Robocode is very dynamics-based and requires knowledge of control theory (which involves partial differential equations) and decision making under uncertainty. I'm doing software development for almost 10 years and yet such games are too hard for me. These games can help you to learn "AI" but not programming. It's simpler to create your own Robocode game from scratch than to master creating bots for it.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about that one but I've recently become pretty active the in the Screeps community ([https://screeps.com/](https://screeps.com/)) and many of the players are first-time JavaScript programmers. In fact, one of the players in the top 20 for the game told me he had only been programming for ~40 hours before starting the game.

Control systems are very important in the game (the high-level is almost as much a logistics game as it is a tactics game), but you don't get to think about those until you can successfully walk your units around and complete basic tasks.

<comment><USER7> Looks interesting. At least it's not competition-based and more sandbox-like. In global competition you are required to use state of the art techniques, and there's no other ways to just having fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While it isn't technically a game about programming, I'd add an honorable mention for Factorio - a game that, at its core, is about software engineering. In it, you build an ever-growing and ever-more-complex factory. You can choose to throw something together quickly because you need steel NOW (and pay for the technical debt later) or take your time to orchestrate the perfect layout only to discover that's not what you wanted in the first place.

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

Great game, highly recommended for anyone in software.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does it count if the games use languages or systems that are unavailable outside of the game? (Shenzhen I/O for instance)

<comment><USER11> I don't think the corewars assembly is available outside of the game.

<comment><USER12> Corewars even write in their Page: "Special assembly".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprised Code Combat [1] isn't on the list. I think it's also completely free/open source [2].

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

[2] [https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat](https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat)

</comment><comment><USER14> I just picked up WarioWare DIY for my Nintendo (3)DS. It's got a pretty rudimentary rules engine to script the microgames, but some of the tricks you can pull using some clever triggers and stage setup reminded me of the best programming puzzles.

In my mind, it's the closest we'll get to a mainstream Piet programming environment :)

</comment><comment><USER15> There used to be this game called Colobot, pretty fun:

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

Now it's open source: [https://github.com/colobot/colobot](https://github.com/colobot/colobot)

</comment><comment><USER16> I find that list to be missing Elevator Saga [http://play.elevatorsaga.com/](http://play.elevatorsaga.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I actually stopped playing games when I learnt how to code... coding is more fun!

</comment><comment><USER18> Do not forget codingame.com.

<comment><USER19> I had never heard of codingame.com. This looks really interesting. Thanks for mentioning!

<comment><USER20> Sadly, they have zero marketing in the USA/HN sector. But their platform is terrific, better than anything else that's already out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem with games to teach coding is coding is not a game. Almost 95% of the time its exactly opposite to games. Uninteresting, boring and a test for grit.

<comment><USER22> I find that writing mods for games is much more interesting. It's more like "real" programming in the sense that you solve real problems with real constrains and you get a rewarding result. I feel like OP should include games with mod systems, such as Oolite (Javascript) or Battle for Wesnoth (Lua).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was hoping for a list of games which teach programming. These are more games or competitions that use programming (which is still pretty fun, but different).

</comment><comment><USER24> If this is mostly looking for "real-world languages", I'd recommend Ruby Warrior ([https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior/#/](https://www.bloc.io/ruby- warrior/#/))

For in-game-only languages, pretty much everything from Zachtronics.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have a list I have been keeping here. [https://github.com/dakaraphi/development- resources/blob/mast...](https://github.com/dakaraphi/development- resources/blob/master/README.md#game-based-learning)

</comment><comment><USER26> Screeps - an MMO where you program resource-gatherers with Javascript or other languages. I haven't actually played it, but it sounds like a cool idea.

[https://screeps.com/](https://screeps.com/)

</comment><comment> david-given What, no Else Heart.Break()?

It's a game set in a world where you can hack pretty much any object and fiddle with its source code. Yes, just as weird as it sounds. Want to get into a locked room? You can either hack a key to try all possible combinations at once, so it'll open any door. Or it might be easier to just hack a door somewhere else to point at the locked room...

[http://elseheartbreak.com/](http://elseheartbreak.com/)

Also, it has a great soundtrack.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I get a chance, I'll write up a PR for Crobots:

[http://tpoindex.github.io/crobots/](http://tpoindex.github.io/crobots/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10331849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10331849)

</comment><comment><USER4> By far the most interesting game in this genre (somewhat broadly interpreted) is Robozzle. Some of the puzzles made by contributors there are just pure genius.

</comment><comment><USER28> Popping in here to mention Spacechem as one of the best.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Corewars section is duplicated.

</comment><comment><USER30> robocode taught me javascript way back in elementary school!

</comment><comment><USER31> sad that stockfighter is not on this list anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's still an active project, please do a pull request with the information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice</comment>


The Best-Paying Companies For Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-highest-paid-software-engineers-work-for-these-25-companies-2013-4

<comment><USER2> I wonder how this works out for take-home pay. Many of the companies listed have offices in Austin as well as the bay area (Cisco, Paypal, Oracle, VMWare, Intel). Even ignoring housing costs, the california vs texas state income tax means a 10% difference in take-home.

Are facebook and bloomberg engineers really coming out ahead, or are all their developers just living in palo alto and manhattan?</comment>


What UK startups make of the shocking Brexit vote - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/24/what-uk-startups-make-of-the-shock-brexit-vote/ <comment><USER2> Quote from article, "Not having easy access to strong talent from Europe will be a big bottleneck for us."

I would like to throw my hat in the ring and say that I believe there is no barrier to working with people remotely in Tech, let alone FinTech.

If anything access to talent is down to computer and internet access rather than EU market access.</comment>


Have your say on a segregated East-West Cycle highway through central London - <AUTHOR> https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/eastwest

<comment><AUTHOR> Also North-South: [https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/northsouth](https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/northsouth)</comment>


Interview with quantum computer architecture researcher Rod Van Meter - <AUTHOR> http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20141207/GZ05/141209603/1419 <comment><USER2> How close are we to seeing a functioning quantum computer? "People ask me that a lot. My answer to that is, five to 10 years from the time Intel decides to put a billion dollars into this"

Till someone can make money i can't see any companies investing in it.

<comment><USER3> Google is. Google will make a whole lot if they can make an AQC work for optimization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm anxious to see what Van Meter and Jungsang Kim come up with after a year at Duke building quantum computer(s).

</comment><comment><USER5> Url changed from [http://quantumweekly.com/rod-van- meter](http://quantumweekly.com/rod-van-meter), which points to this.</comment>


A Guy with No Experience Had a Crazy Idea. And the Result Is Simply BRILLIANT - <AUTHOR> http://onemorepost.com/brilliant-idea/

<comment><USER2> The original article is [http://imgur.com/a/HJ9ej](http://imgur.com/a/HJ9ej) with more photos, author's submission and discussion to reddit in [http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1nziyc/i_decided_build...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1nziyc/i_decided_build_a_tiny_camping_trailer_i_had_no/)</comment>


Economic deja vu hitting tech startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/22/BUU610261L.DTL <comment><USER2> Web 2.0 is becoming convoluted with me-too-variants, it's the same thing that happened toward the end of 1.0. Early-adopters and technocrats see past the distortion, but your mass-consumer does not. Growth for middle-to-late comers does not match that of the early 2.0ers for which they've structured their model around...

In many cases, these socially focused applications/sites are caught in a whirl-pool... interest trickles-in and trickles-out, making it difficult to self-sustain the business, particularly when it relies on the end-user for content. While Twitter is doing well now, I believe they suffered a full year paddling against this traffic current.

In addition, I feel there are too many startups trying to encompass everything-social shooting for that big valuation; focus on low-commitment reward for the end user and get the data later. Rolling out with with a stage set for 10,000,000 makes adoption intimidating, and makes your infrastructure costs a significant burden.

3.0 will see an increase in service-oriented applications and hopefully a rise in XMPP whereby data of interest comes to you, you don't go to it... With all the major communication networks moving over to Jabber, it's shaping to be the next secondary telecom-market. I believe Facebook is poised early to make a move here, as they are mirroring GTalks success integrating with GMail. The beauty of Jabber is that it's essentially universal and real-time, so services can be network-agnostic (ie: AIM, MSN, Gtalk, etc..). Think communication-bot on steroids.

A tech recession is normal and welcoming TBH. It filters out some of the pollution and with a globalized market, there's an abundance of it..

</comment><comment><USER3> This is over analysis to the point of paranoia. I've written about the counterview here: <http://blog.snaptalent.com/?p=9></comment>


Startup Vidoop Has A Plan To Monetize User Logins - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/10/04/startup-vidoop-has-a-plan-to-monetize-user-logins/ <comment><USER2> Some nitpicking:

"Data security is just hard to provide, and thanks to hackers, even harder to protect." Wait, the 'hackers' are the reason it's hard to provide, right? So why the "even harder to protect" part?

Later there's the typical focus on stock price instead of market cap. This is the "ooh, shiny!" school of business writing.

"This curbs the riskiest kind of hacking" Please reduce hacking risk; wear a helmet.

You know what this reminds me of? A local newspaper article. This writer isn't smart enough to be on the web; Om should fire him.

I'm sorry, everyone. Just had to get this off my chest.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is similar to CAPTCHAs being used to scan books. Smart idea. Wouldn't be surprised if that's where it got its inspiration.

<comment><USER4> or hotcaptcha or petcaptcha...

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

<http://research.microsoft.com/asirra/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this secure? There are only 15 choose 3 different possible logins for each screenful of pictures. That's 455. So you have a 1/455 chance of just guessing the right one? Or does order matter? Maybe that's what's happening. 15 permute 3 is 479,001,600.

<comment><USER6> Had you actually read through or watched the video, you'd notice that you can't just take someone's username and start guessing. They have a second layer that requires "out of band" authentication.

<http://www.vidoop.com/vidoop_how.php>

Also, it's more like 12 choose 2 but you cannot enter those two easily since: they change all the time and they're embeded in pictures.

<comment><USER5> I misread 12 as 15. But the blog post says you pick three images. So 12 choose 3, or 220.

OK, if you were willing to sit through their video, why don't you tell us about this second layer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that is really really really stupid idea. There are just so many things wrong with it.

<comment><USER8> It's good because instead of tracking your keystrokes, spyware will have to take screen shots of your web browser whenever it notices a login form in the web browser.

What it might do is solve a lot of security issues as a side effect-- by forcing users to stop using their single password on every web site, which is what many or most users do right now. Although, now they'll just use the same three image categories, unless they really want to memorize many sets of them for different sites, and competing visual authentication systems.

What it really does is allow companies to pay money for showing pictures. This isn't to help consumers, since this forces users to take the additional step of thinking every time they login. It's to make deals with ad agencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> hey that's pretty cool

The beauty is, you have to remember your passwords... so you'll have an image of a grande frappuchino permanently embedded in your head, the next time you drive by a Starbucks. Consumerists, rejoice.</comment>


A collection of post-mortems - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/danluu/post-mortems/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> Most of the config errors seem related to networking.

Why haven't we been able to simplify networking, reduce the impact of any errors or even increase security? Why do we still put up with 40-year old protocols and even concepts?

Anyone working on disrupting networking?

<comment><USER3> A lot of changes in networking have been happening recently; in particular, software defined networking is (slowly) replacing dedicated routers and hardware devices.

The downside of this is that it's much easier to change configuration than it was before, and so the pace of such changes is increasing. Given that most errors can be traced back to a human error at the start of the chain, he problem isn't really in the networking stack but the meat at the end of the buttons.

Realistically you need to address that end of the problem, not the networking protocols themselves.

<comment><USER2> Those were my thoughts at first, but then again why? Why any innovation is just automating the same cmdlets and concepts we had for decades?

Why can't we just make something that requires less changes, less human intervention, ... ?

I guess other HNer is right when she/he says the problem is to get everyone on-board (IPv6 I'm looking at you), but is there anyone at least trying?</comment></comment></comment>


3 reasons why the US might finally be ready for real patent reform - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/10/28/3-reasons-why-the-us-might-finally-be-ready-for-real-patent-reform/ <comment><USER2> Let's hope it happens this time around.</comment>


ASK/LF YC: Paying for Code Reviews? - <AUTHOR>

So I've gotten approval to work on some code outside of work, and I'm looking at getting back into writing some scheme code. That being said its been pretty long since I've written scheme code, and I'd like to improve my style. Does anyone have experience with hiring people for code reviews? Where do you find them? How much do they cost? How do you judge a good code reviewer? etc. <comment><USER2> You'd probably get better results for free just by hanging out in the right communities and asking for feedback on your work. I don't know what those are for Schemes but they shouldn't be hard to find (and don't forget IRC). That also solves the problem of how to judge the reviewer - your reviewer is the community as a whole. If someone gives you bad advice, someone else is likely to correct it.</comment>


OpenStreetMap and mathematics reveal there are only 4 unique city topologies - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2014-10-openstreetmap-mathematics-reveals-unique-city.html

<comment><USER2> Title of the linked page is incorrect, the article is about _typologies_, not topologies.

</comment><comment><USER3> any way to access the article? it says free and then where is a login page

<comment><AUTHOR> The full text is not free, only the abstract.

However I uploaded the full text [pdf] for you: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzvou6dbjtosyu1/J.%20R.%20Soc.%20I...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzvou6dbjtosyu1/J.%20R.%20Soc.%20Interface-2014-Louf-.pdf?dl=0)</comment></comment>


Decaf coffee's terrible reputation is outdated. So why does it persist? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/7/18253668/decaf-coffee-caffeine-stigma <comment><USER2> This might be the most rambling, substance-free article I've read in my life.

</comment><comment><USER3> When did it become outdated?

It's still a coffee beverage without the substance people drink coffee for.

<comment><USER4> Some people enjoy the taste of coffee. My parents love their espresso/cappuccino machine and they pretty much exclusively drink decaf. My younger brother also loves it, he's only allowed to drink decaf due to his age.

I can't stand the coffee taste but there are those who don't.</comment></comment>


Is Computer Science Too Big For One Degree  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2010/04/09/is-computer-science-too-big-for-one-degree.aspx

<comment><USER2> As opposed to such paltry fields as literature, mathematics, physics, history, etc.?

As the (16th C?) Scottish poet Dunbar wrote, The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a great idea. Maybe this will wake employers or even non technical people up that graduating with a computer science degree doesn't always (and usually they shouldn't have to) know everything from computer graphics, database management, system administration, application programming, and fixing your broken computer.</comment>


What happened to PersistIQ? - <AUTHOR> http://persistiq.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Seems a lot of sites have trouble today! [https://www.google.com/search?q=dns#q=dns&tbm=nws](https://www.google.com/search?q=dns#q=dns&tbm=nws)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Redirect [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12759697)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a technical error or another shutdown?</comment>


You can't JavaScript under pressure - <AUTHOR> http://games.usvsth3m.com/javascript-under-pressure/

<comment><USER2> This is cool!.

3:57 for me. I implemented the last one so it would parse integers as well and was like stuck for a moment because I was getting 12 when it should've been 3.

</comment><comment><USER3> 6 minutes, 54 seconds for all 5 levels.

Nica game. I liked the syntax highlithing and the whole editing experience - for a web editor it was great.

</comment><comment><USER4> 12 minutes and 45 seconds.

Trying to remember how you find a regex match in Javascript slowed me up.

<comment><USER3> I never needed regexes there? I wonder if the questions are the same for everybody?

<comment><USER2> I can only imagine it was used for maybe extracting the filename extensions but the alternative is to simply use indexOf and substr.

<comment><USER3> I did split(".")

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really fun. Especially the last one.

</comment><comment><USER6> 6:20 for me. Kind of fun!</comment>


Working Copy – how to do UX for app updates - <AUTHOR> https://workingcopyapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> So this is a link just to have something to hang this comment on.

I have been using this ios git tool to write a book - the text is on github, and i just wanted to pull, edit and push while on a commute.

Today I logged in and got presented with a "sorry : you bought the pro version, but (unclear rationale probably moving to subscription model) and you need to transfer your data to the free version with in-app purchases.

Now most devs would have left it at that - we are end of lifing this app, move on.

However I got treated to a decent example of how to use coding to improve UX - nothing fancy, just workmanlike.

Link to app store for sibling app, then when opening that, the app knows it is mid-merge and verifies my purchase, triggers the other app to begin a data swap, transfers some files and marks it self to be deleted with a new icon.

It was far less painful than i suspected. And I guess the developer put in a week or mores work to get it right.

Most would not have bothered, and it was good to see a decent attempt being made.

I would have done the awkward path anyway, but As you can tell, the time i saved has been lost writing this.

in short, someone (and I think he is a one man band) took the time to develop something that took some pain away from his users, and it was noticed. as I am more stuck in the belly of corporate beasts, such things seemmimportant to remember

NB I am in no way affiliated with Working Copy - in fact I pay them. Just to be clear.</comment>


React Hook for Redux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ianobermiller/redux-react-hook <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. I'm already trying to think of ways to make use of hooks with React-Redux. We've been working on React-Redux v6, and have a couple WIP PRs that we've been comparing. Yesterday, I took my PR at [https://github.com/reduxjs/react- redux/pull/995](https://github.com/reduxjs/react-redux/pull/995), and updated it locally to use hooks instead of class components. Looks great so far, and I hope to push that up in the next day or two.

Based on that, I'm also starting to think about how we might have a `useRedux` hook as part of v6. Tim already filed an issue at [https://github.com/reduxjs/react- redux/issues/1063](https://github.com/reduxjs/react-redux/issues/1063) for discussion.

However, in v6, we're switching from putting the _store_ into legacy context, to putting the _store state_ into new context. This actually brings up an issue with hooks - see the thread at [https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1055694323847651335](https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1055694323847651335) for discussion with the React team. So, hopefully we'll be able to do that performantly by the time that React 16.7 comes out.</comment>