The Anti-Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/18/6030393/nextdoor-private-social-network-40000-neighborhoods <comment><USER2> I am part of a Nextdoor neighbourhood in a Bay Area suburb with 302 neighbours (216 of 423 households). It's very handy.

The thing that surprised me most is how publicly abrasive people can be when they're using their Real Names with real photos and real descriptions of their children and pets just a click away, talking to people who live just down the street.

There's a big hubbub in my 'hood about some homeowners who want to rebuild our community pool, a multi-million dollar project. Vast majority of the neighbourhood doesn't care one way or the other, but they don't want their HOA fees to increase.

Had it not been for Nextdoor, the loud minority would have quietly passed the bill and started construction because nobody attends the community meetings or bothered to vote. Except, Nextdoor started taking off in our area just at the right time and a bunch of people flipped out when they found out about this through various threads on Nextdoor.

There was namecalling, sarcasm, pedantry, even classic trolling (people taking positions that they clearly don't care about just to upset the original poster). Almost Youtube-comment level stuff. Even weirder, most of our neighbours are middle-aged or older. They didn't grow up with this kind of online behaviour and had trouble recognizing it.

Clearly the behaviour of these people is not Nextdoor's fault. I am grateful that Nextdoor is there partly for passively observing the drama in my community and partly for actually feeling like I'm getting to know the people I run into when I walk my dog.

Coming away from working at Google during the peak of the Real Name controversy, it's weird to see the benefit premise explicitly shaken, if not refuted.

<comment><USER3> I signed up, and invited all the neighbors I knew, in large part because I have an out-of-control HOA. They purposely schedule meetings on short notice, typically when they know everyone's at work (2pm on a Tuesday, for example). Then they pass all sorts of pet projects, spending resolutions, "house rules" (don't even get me started on that nonsense), and so forth. Time will tell if peer pressure and transparency are effective antidotes to the petty tyranny of my HOA. But I'm all for anything that can theoretically check their influence.

So far my neighborhood is pretty quiet. About 50-odd users. It's entertaining, though. There's this one guy who posts weird survivalist rants and doomsday scenarios about The Big One, and how we're not sufficiently prepared for it. (Probably true, I hate to say.) There's a woman breeding puppies in her apartment and offering them for sale. There's a guy using the site to promote his political blog. There's a guy playing True Detective, tracking all of the car break-ins in the neighborhood, and looking for a "pattern" and "the perp's signature" in the items left on the scenes. I kind of dig it all. Seeing the eccentricity on display adds a smidgeon of big-city atmosphere that I've always felt SF was lacking in comparison to other cities I've lived in.

I hope the network comes into its own, and that we get more people in my neighborhood on board. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the strangeness of my early adopter cohort.

<comment><USER4> Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services.

Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?

<comment><USER3> The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection, building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area" (chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board happens to dislike.

The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.

<comment><USER5> So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if you're renting from them.

<comment><USER3> They can screw you around pretty easily and legally, even if you are an owner. They levy fines for noncompliance, and if you don't pay the fines and comply, they can put liens on your property -- even if you own the property outright. It's all part of the contract you enter into upon purchasing the property. Membership in the HOA is compulsory in many cases, and your purchase of the property comes with the obligation to join the HOA and be subject to its Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs).

So why in the hell would you sign that sort of deal in the first place? Well, if you don't have to, you shouldn't. But in some cities, such as SF, it's extremely hard to buy a condo that doesn't come with an HOA.

HOAs are as prevalent as they are because in most cases they are highly beneficial, both legally and financially, to building or subdivision developers. So more and more developers are using them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To really be an anti-Facebook, this service would need to be decentralized. And it's a perfect example of a service that _should_ be decentralized by design. There's no earthly reason to have this live on one server somewhere, except if you want to track people and show them ads.

<comment><USER8> You mean "federated" (each node has its set of data and controls what to share with the others upon request) more than "decentralized" (there is single set of data that is replicated and handled by multiple nodes, each of which may have all the data or part of it).

<comment><USER9> I've never heard of that term before... is there a good resource for reading up on federated servers/networks/design (I'm not even sure which of those three terms is the most appropriate here).

<comment><USER10> The StackExchange network is an example of federation. All of the various sites have unique userbases and data sets, with a system for authorizing and trusting a user's identity between the lot of them.

Otherwise, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_%28information_techn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_%28information_technology%29) for a general discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Slack is killing emails.

Nextdoor is killing Facebook.

Verge is killing journalism or what's left of it.

In reality Slack had only 150K users. Nextdoor is barely known outside of few neighbourhoods (sure, they can claim 1 in every 4 neighbourhood has "adopted" Nextdoor). Lot of articles from Verge getting posted here recently smells a lot like just paid PR stuff for startups. They are almost like informatials on late night TV. Take everything from them with huge pinch of salt.

<comment><USER12> that is how it begins.. early signs of FB was _killing_ MySpace was back when it was a thing that kids in a handful of colleges used. These early signs are important to recognize and highlight for incumbents as well as participants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a nice submarine ad.

This would be great if people were more active on NextDoor. I haven't seen too many neighborhoods in the Bay Area where it works beyond 4-5 active people.

<comment><USER14> This is what I thought too. There is nothing described in the article that can't be accomplished with a closed group on Facebook, which we use for our apartment building in San Francisco.

The main feature I wouldn't mind having, if NextDoor has it, is a way to share tools and other things that I have with my neighbors. For example, I have some power tools, excellent specialized cooking gear, commercial juice press, bike repair stand, etc. and plan on buy a commercial vacuum sealer. All of these things are capital goods that are extremely useful but might spend a lot of their time used infrequently. Since these are going to be available to use a lot of the time I'm happy to lend them to a neighbor so long as I know they are going to come back to me in the same condition as they were lent. I just want a system where I can write down my expectations insofar as how I expect my things to be cared for and cleaned before returned, and how I can remedy issues and leave feedback like "3-stars b/c my stock pot came back dirty" or "5 stars b/c my stock pot came back cleaner than it was when I leant it".

<comment><USER13> To be fair Next door shows where people live in relation to you, which is a little better than just a disembodied bunch of facebook contacts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sorry but NextDoor sucks in terms of being an Anti-Facebook. EveryBlock was killing it so hard and NextDoor just kind of filled the void once EveryBlock was acquired by MSNBC. I know EveryBlock is coming back though which is awesome.

Any Anti-Facebook service needs at least a good "News Feed" like Facebook does. EveryBlock had a really awesome and useful news feed. You'd see all the new permits(film locations, building, zoning, etc.) issued, crime reports, comments about community issues, events, etc. in your neighborhood. It was exactly what I thought of in terms of "hyperlocal" news. It was extremely useful even as a passive user.

NextDoor just isn't any of that. They don't have the same News Feed quality that EveryBlock had. NextDoor posts are like "I have a new Ikea desk I'm trying to get rid of" or "What's happening at 20th and Mission"-style Twitter posts. Not very informative or useful.

<comment><USER16> Have you used the service? Nextdoor absolutely has a configurable newsfeed built from scratch to be highly scalable...it seems like you're forming your opinion based on outdated information.

There's also a feed of "Nearby Neighborhoods" and a City Platform that feeds in alerts and information from police and local government.

It's literally everything you described and more.

<comment><USER15> I still use NextDoor, but they somehow(even though EveryBlock is much older) don't have nearly as much data as EveryBlock seemed to have access too. Or maybe EveryBlock had a much better design that seemed to communicate the data they had more effectively than NextDoor.

EveryBlock had solved a good-"News Feed"-for-the-neighborhood problem. NextDoor has yet do that as effectively.

<comment><USER17> Everyblock tried to pull in public data about the neighborhood and post it automatically. I've never seen a NextDoor post that wasn't human generated. That's the main difference.

<comment><USER18> That's incredibly useful.. Imagine if people got involved in something like that which also piped in local, county, and State political news.. Like proposed bills and upcoming votes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> FFS. Their site says "Login with Facebook" so I try. Apparently all this does is give them access to your Facebook profile, it doesn't actually give you an account on Nextdoor. You still have to provide your email address and establish a password.

In other words, even their signup page contains a scam, designed to steal your friends list. And I'm supposed to trust this site with anything? Fuck no.

<comment><USER16> The FB access is just for authentication and easy login as well as profile picture. In no way does the website have access to your friends list....

I think your definition of scam is a bit off...because every app in the app store would be qualified as a "scam".

<comment><USER19> When a Facebook connected app or site has access to "your profile" that includes your friends list.

Anyway as I can see that you failed to read for comprehension I must reiterate that allowing next-door to read your Facebook profile in no way authenticates you to the site, nor does it provide them with your profile picture.

<comment><USER20> Slight correction - it has access to your friends who have also used the facebook login for that site.

If you're the first person to login, the site will get an empty list. Only the set of your friends who have previously used the service, will show up if the service queries fb for your friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am the "neighborhood lead" for Nextdoor in my neighborhood and I have found it incredibly useful, for a number of reasons: meeting neighbors, unloading free/cheap stuff I don't want to put on Craigslist or Freecycle, learning about neighborhood problems & news (vandalism, construction, permits, etc), finding and vetting service providers (plumbers, landscapers, electricians, etc), and generally staying in touch with people I live near. This is hugely more valuable than the crap I see on Facebook. Nobody posts ice bucket challenge videos on Nextdoor, or kid pics, or game invites. :)

<comment><USER22> > Nobody posts ice bucket challenge videos on Nextdoor, or kid pics, or game > invites. :)

I'm sure this is an exception, but I turned off email notifications when people started discussing how to insulate their apartments to protect themselves from wifi radiation.

<comment><USER23> I can get behind that. Not to protect _myself_ from wifi radiation, but to cut down on the amount of wifi traffic interfering with my signal. There are only 13 usable channels in 2.4Ghz, and I don't feel like replacing my router for 5Ghz right away.

<comment> steve-howard In the US, there are 11 channels, and either 3 or (with cooperation and planning between neighbors) 4 non-overlapping channels. Investing in 5ghz was the only way I could get a decent signal in my high-rise apartment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be cool if someone in the neighborhood could purchase a device that would setup a local nextdoor type of service. It would show up as a wireless connection, once connected when they try to visit a website it would give them an explanation what this service offers and allow them to setup a profile. Only people within a certain distance would be able to connect, the network could be expanded with multiple devices. It would allow, decentralized networking based on geographic location. Users would also be allowed to create a backup of their profile and interactions for record keeping if they wish.

It could be very helpful for local discussion, community awareness, emergency communication (if the access points are kept off the main grid) and possibly even direct democratic voting for small local issues.

Sort of like a PirateBox, but more sophisticated non-anonymous local private social network. Not entirely sure if the technology exists to allow this to scale affordably to at least a block or two.

<comment><USER25> You're basically describing [http://tidepools.co](http://tidepools.co)

which was created as a localized discussion and mapping platform that runs on wireless mesh networks (or any server setup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a cool and much needed social network however it appears signup is broken at the moment. I tried 2-3 times to make it through the signup page and couldn't do it with either Facebook or Email signup.

Having your user registration broken when you get a positive article published about your service must really suck.

EDIT: Seems to be a chrome issue. Submitted a request to their support time. Safari seems to work just fine.

<comment><USER27> So, first of all, my neighbourhood name in their map is kinda offensive (a local colloquialism). Second, to complete the registration process, I have to either supply a debit/credit card, the will call a phone number and somehow compare that against phone records to verify my identity, or send me a postcard.

This seems incredibly intrusive and a big privacy ingress. No thanks.

<comment><USER16> > Second, to complete the registration process, I have to either supply a > debit/credit card, the will call a phone number and somehow compare that > against phone records to verify my identity, or send me a postcard.

This is actually a HUGE piece of what makes the social network special. This builds inherent trust into the network so you actually know that the people that you're talking to are actually who they say they are and actually live in your neighborhood.

This means that, if you're selling your couch, or buying something from a neighbor, you can be sure that it's trusted neighbor that you're interacting with.

This actually HELPS privacy rather than impeding it.

Nextdoor also cross references with sex offender databases as well as "some" criminal databases so that they are banned from joining. It's also a safety feature.

<comment><USER28> > Nextdoor also cross references with sex offender databases as well as "some" > criminal databases so that they are banned from joining. It's also a safety > feature.

Ugh. Those things increase recidivism and violate fundamental concepts of justice by not allowing people to ever 'serve their debt to society'. If I can pass someone by on the sidewalk or walk by their house, I don't see why they should be banned from talking to me on such a network.

<comment><USER29> Assuming those people are actual, proven, and unanimously agreed upon sex offenders, such as a 50 year old man who did time for making 10 year year old boys perform fellatio on him, I don't see what is wrong with making them pariahs. If anything, they should have been executed rather than reintroduced into society.

<comment><USER30> Hmm, except that the sex offender registry is also absurdly broad. Should public urination result in you being a life-long pariah? What about being an underage teen sexting?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that- could-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-make- you-a-sex-offender-2013-10)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For folks in the UK theres [http://streetlife.com](http://streetlife.com) which also is a local social network.

You can verify your address to prove you are local and subscribe to local area conversations and news etc... Just like in life the communities are mixed - some more involved than others but I've found it a great resource so far.

</comment><comment><USER32> Being in Europe I wished I could have a peek at what's inside. I wished I could set up an account and see what happens and if my neighbors would sign- up. I suppose it's not possible (yet) because of i18n, targeted/local ads and public announcements particularities ?

Any open-source alternative I could set up ? A small diaspora/facebook clone ?

<comment><USER33> If you're interested, Peerby is something similar which is open in many parts of Europe right now.

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

<comment><USER32> Thank you. Don't know why you're being downvoted so I refilled your karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I had this idea a while back and I'm glad that Nextdoor is dominating it. Growing up on a double cul-de-sac, I'd say I was fortunate enough to have a close neighborhood just by virtue of the shape of the street, but for people that didn't have that this seems like a really awesome service.

<comment><USER35> What's a double cul-de-sac?

<comment><USER36> I would guess it's a 'street' whose only outlet is halfway point, while both ends are cul-de-sacs (more or less the shape of a letter T, with the ends of the top part being the cul-de-sacs and the lower part giving access to other streets, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What happens if somebody wants to join, but the Leads refuse?

If a small minority of Leads can prevent people they don't like from joining, it seems like it risks reinforcing bigotry and intolerance.

<comment><USER38> Leads don't get that power. They can only flag members to our support team who will investigate; they can't stop someone from joining. [disclaimer: I work at Nextdoor]

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> They talk at the end of the article about monetisation. This kind of network really has the possibility of disrupting Craig Craigslist. Proof of identity and local neighbours would hopefully reduce the kind of scams you see on craigslist.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Serious question: is this something that would be popular in the US? I could never see anyone in my neighbourhood using a private/local social network. Interested to hear from people who think this would be popular in their country.

<comment><USER33> I think so! I work for [https://peerby.com](https://peerby.com) , which does something similar (but more narrow, only for borrowing things from neighbors), which started in the Netherlands but it's picking up rather quickly in the US now as well - I think we have many more members in the US now than in some countries where we tried much harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm really confused why someone would _want_ to know their neighbours. I don't know my neighbours but even if I did, I wouldn't want to be sharing with them on an online network. I like my anonymity and privacy.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm glad to see Nextdoor getting this kind of recognition. I've moved around the Bay Area several times in the last few years, and every new Nextdoor community I've joined has been very active and helpful (I bought furniture, found out about a block party, and much more). Highly recommend joining.

<comment><USER42> I just moved to the bay area, but unfortunately there is no life in my NextDoor community. I actually found it by coming up with the concept and googling to see if anything like it actually existed. I was hoping to make some new friends, but oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I loved using Nextdoor in my last neighborhood. I found a dog walker, got some free yarn, and had a better sense of who my neighbors were. I don't have the time to dedicate to being a neighborhood leader, though, so I haven't set one up in my new neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite nextdoor story is when it helped neighbors find _chicken poop_ [https://twitter.com/kabragovind/status/483721368710963200](https://twitter.com/kabragovind/status/483721368710963200)

</comment><comment><USER44> Can someone provide me an inside look at Nextdoor? I'm not an American but want to use the website as inspiration for a personal project, but as you know, I can't get passed the sign up process.

I'm curious about features and UI implementation. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER45> ¼ "American neighborhoods"? That seems like a bit of a reach.

</comment><comment><USER30> Oh wow could this be any more transparently a PR fluff piece? This doesn't reflect well on The Verge at all as far as any sort of journalistic integrity goes.

</comment><comment><USER46> Wasn't there a similar service that shut down because it couldn't get traction a few years ago? I remember seeing it here in HN.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems a bit difficult to be the anti-Facebook when the very first screen presents a login with Facebook button.

</comment><comment><USER33> We're trying to do something similar but a bit more narrow at [https://peerby.com/](https://peerby.com/) . It's specifically for items you want to borrow. We're based in Europe but the SF community is picking up pretty well right now.

</comment><comment><USER48> Finally, I was thinking about this too: only allowing to show neighbors who are in your area instead. Maybe you need some mechanism to forbid users to quickly change area, or make it hard to create multiple account to watch several areas. That would be quite a big bump for privacy.

</comment><comment><USER49> Wonder if any thoughts on Spiral (sprlr.com) as an alternative based on location instead of proof of residence - so you could always connect to the community around you, even if you move around. Can work for work settings, colleges, events, etc.

FD: I'm involved with Spiral.

</comment><comment><USER50> "40,000 neighborhoods, or roughly one in four American communities, with 10 or more active users"

Found it funny as hell.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't know about other neighborhoods, but Nextdoor in SOMA is pretty piss poor in terms of content.

<comment><USER38> you mean nothing that interests you? or there isn't much? or? [disclaimer: I work for Nextdoor]

<comment><USER51> Hardly any posts. Nothing that interests me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> From the looks of it, Nextdoor is very similar to Front Porch Forum, except FPM has been around for almost a decade but exists only in Vermont. While occasionally useful, it inevitably reminds me that there's a reason the Internet took off in the first place: I have very little in common with my neighbors besides geographical proximity.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't use Facebook, and I use Nextdoor all the time and it seems very useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER54> How are neighbourhoods defined? What are the areas based on?

</comment><comment><USER55> OT: I'd like to take a moment to appreciate The Verge for making the first mention of Nextdoor in the article a link, and for making that link actually go to the Nextdoor web site instead of a silly "here's what The Verge has to say about the company Nextdoor" page.</comment>


Magic Pony Technology – Claimed 50% better video compression - <AUTHOR> http://www.magicpony.technology/

<comment><USER2> neat headline and demo, are there any docs or additional info available?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only additional info I have is their AngelList:

[https://angel.co/magic-pony-technology/jobs/53654-product- de...](https://angel.co/magic-pony-technology/jobs/53654-product-development- lead)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good app to rip html of (my own) website. - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I am looking for an app on Mac OSX (or Web Based) that can rip a my own ROR site to use to experiment on CSS and layout. Can't seem to find a good, free tool, any suggestions? <comment><USER2>
        wget

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.httrack.com/>

Note this will rewrite links to be local -- matters what you're trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER4> You want something that goes beyond 'view source'? I have no idea what you're asking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, just instead of doing view source on 30 pages, do all of them at once.

<comment><USER4> yeah, as everyone else said: wget -r <http://url>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> wget?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to be ignorant, but how can I get the site if it requires a username and password to access? I read the wget documentation, but am unclear about this one. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER3> Matters what scheme is in use, but see two things in the man pages.

      --user / --password

And

      --load-cookies

The latter allows you to log in via web browser and then let wget take over.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> wget -r

:-\</comment>


Why most smart people are better at solving other people's problems… - <AUTHOR> http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2010/08/10/why-most-smart-people-are-better-at-solving-other-peoples-problems%E2%80%A6/ <comment><USER2> I hate to make a meta comment and I'm not trying to slander the author at all, but dang dude, we got it all here: newsletter signup on site entry, press relations button, request for speaking, ebooks. I almost expected a free chance to win an iPod somewhere while I was reading.

I found the material lacking in quality, but it had its moments. My biggest impression was just being overwhelmed with the way the blog was integrated. Hats off.

<comment><USER3> Point noted. None of the items you mentioned ( newsletter sign up, eBooks ) are required to access the content on the blog. In fact, none of the eBooks require you to enter an email address.

I am sad to see that you focused on these things rather than 1500 other articles on the blog.

C'est la vie :)

<comment><USER2> Trying to stay positive, I think you should use the newsletter popup on something like the 3rd or 4th visit. By that time, users have read some of your material and could form an opinion about subscribing to a newsletter.

From my personal perspective, if you punch me in the nose with a sign-up form the first time I visit, not only am I going to dismiss it without any consideration at all, I am going to be suspicious of the subsequent material you present. Changing the timing of this popup could help you a bunch, I think.

<comment><USER4> Exactly my thoughts. This post will generate a decent amount of visitors from HN. The vast majority of these visitors including myself will be first-timers to your site and unable to tell whether they are interested in subscribing to your newsletter in the first place.

If I have not seen your site, I will not subscribe to your newsletter. If I have read through _n items_ on your website, chances are good I might be interested in your newsletter offer, though.

<comment><USER3> Point noted and thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The headline is a nice use of language to make an almost-truism seem like an insight. Good fodder for the cold reader: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading>

IE; Everyone is "better at solving other people's problems", since everyone is bad at solving their own problems. And they're bad at solving their own problems ... because they have them. Neither the observer nor the person himself/herself is likely to notice the problems _they don't have_ , because they're good at solving. Uh, plus its easy to _think_ your solution to someone else's problem is good since you don't have to put it into practice. And the headline mentions smart people, so I'm sure they're talk about _you_.

<comment><USER3> The problems referred in the article are those problems that people should have or could have solved but have not solved them. I thought it was obvious but it looks like I have to explicitly state it. Will make a note for next time.

<comment><USER5> Even so, the same logic applies, see Xenophanes comment.

<comment><USER3> I read the comment by Xenophanes and we are talking about different things. So we can agree to disagree here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's an odd format - the results of author pontification presented as "mini- research".

I found little to no hard data, little to no justification for the conclusions reached, and as a bonus, this was one of those rare cases when you can correctly say that the author was begging the question.

<comment><USER7> You don't always need hard data to prove a point. I could relate to this article from my personal experience. Smart people tend to be harsh on themselves and on their solutions.

The "most smart people" part could be revised to something else so it doesn't seem like the conclusion was from hard data.

<comment><USER6> Actually, you _do_ need either hard data or some kind of logical argument to prove a point.

The author of this post makes an assertion (smart people can't solve their own problems), but never _proves_ that assertion, nor does he give any reasoned argument as to why it may be true.

A better title for the post (though the author probably likes the current link-bait title) would be:

       "Why other people's problems may be easier to solve than your own"

<comment><USER8> According to your title, you are trying to say that, Every person can solve every other person's problem. But not his own problem. That may not be true and that is not what author is trying to say.

He is talking about the (smart) people who can solve other's problem. But not about all the people.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the clarification. Looking at the discussion here itself is a validation for the article at some level. It is a simple article presenting conclusions from a series of interviews with reasonably smart people.

The conclusions are being over-analyzed which is the characteristic of very smart people. HN is a community of such smart people and I am not at all surprised that it is being over-analyzed here :)

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suppose someone is good at solving a category of problems.

He will solve all his own problems in that category, and fewer outside it.

So of course, after he's spent a long time trying to solve his own problems, the remainder will be ones he's bad at.

But for other people, lots of their problems will be the kinds he's good at.

<comment><USER10> Another factor is that people literally aren't aware of their personal problems, only of some of distant consequences. If anything, smartness acts to cover up the evidence via rationalization.

Friends know about some of them, but they tend to discuss these only in one's absence ("the problem with X is that he is always [blank]", etc.)

<comment><USER3> Amen to that. Friends sometimes try to bring that up only to be shot down instantly with some smart rationalization. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He started off well but he didn't take his analysis far enough. It's not just a matter of being ignorant of constraints so that a problem appears easier to an outside smart observer. Many smart people I know are just better at restructuring themselves so that some problems no longer appear as problems or impinge enough on their thoughts to distract them from other tasks, i.e. they are in essence fooling themselves into believing the problem doesn't exist or they put enough stopgaps into place so that the problem doesn't interfere with their day to day activities enough to require a total solution. Another reason I think is that most smart people are better able to tolerate stress and general mental drain so to totally invest themselves into solving some problem they require a higher threshold of mental anguish or whatever it is that drives people to solve problems.

<comment><USER3> The article was written based on a series of interviews. Smart people don't fool themselves by ignoring the problem or acting as if the problem does not exist. Most people know that the problem exists but they also know all the other things around those problems ( constraints ) and it can get overwhelming to them. For instance, they will come up with a solution and at the same instant also see all the problems associated with that solution - the loop continues.

<comment><USER11> Then that's not being very smart is it? If your awareness is what causes distress then you are definitely doing it wrong and should switch up your mental model of what is an acceptable solution to some problem. Plus, I don't think I have ever heard of awareness among smart people leading to mental paralysis.

<comment><USER3> You could try that yourself by simply discussing a problem someone is facing. If they are stuck, ask them for a potential solution and see how quickly they will tear up that solution by over-analyzing the problems with the suggested solution.

My $.02 of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My theory: Ideas are easy, implementing is hard.

Being the sort of smart that can "solve" other people's problems only helps with the former. The latter is a totally different skillset, so when we actually have to do that part of the job, all of a sudden it seems much harder than it was just a second ago.

<comment><USER3> Yes "implementation" is hard work and that part adds to the complexity of solving one's problems. You cannot stop at advice but have to follow through with following that advice :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, same with doctors being not allowed to treat their own relatives. Solving other people's ailments are easier.</comment>


WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT? - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_index.html

<comment><USER2> SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly a duplicate, but related (somehow, I can't quite figure out how) to the submission made by the same poster right before this one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2106853>

I couldn't decide whether or not to flag it.

<comment><USER4> This post is a link to the original EDGE Magazine article that the first post, a Guardian article summarises. Not sure that's reason enough for flagging because of duplication but I would understand if the all caps title persuaded you. :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, but all I am seeing is photos and apparently the list of 151 contributors....or some such. Where is the body of said article?

<comment><USER5> <http://www.edge.org></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bertrand Russell – Message to Future Generations (1959) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihaB8AFOhZo <comment><USER2> What a marvellously British pontification.</comment>


Goldieblox and the Three MCs - <AUTHOR> http://waxy.org/2013/11/goldieblox_and_the_three_mcs/

<comment><USER2> For your consideration...

[http://boingboing.net/2013/11/24/before-goldieblox- beasties-...](http://boingboing.net/2013/11/24/before-goldieblox-beasties- pl.html)</comment>


Detroit selected as fourth city for Backstage Incubator - <AUTHOR> https://backstagecapital.com/accelerator/cities/detroit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Backstage Capital, a VC firm for underrepresented founders announced incubators for London, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. They announced a contest for the fourth city and Detroit was just announced as the winner.</comment>


Bizarre office gadgets from the past - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170518-curious-contraptions-of-yesterdays-workplaces <comment><AUTHOR> >Consider, for instance, Microsoft's decision to enter the mobile phone business long after Apple and others cornered the market.

Uhg. That's not what happened. Microsoft had mobile phones way before Apple. I guess the victors really do get to write history.</comment>


4.7 trillion reasons for well-designed copyright - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/04/47-trillion-reasons-for-well-designed.html

<comment><USER2> And of course there is one reason against - it will never make it through any legislature.</comment>


Six steps to a successful virtualization deployment - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/04/five-steps-to-a-successful-virtualization-deployment.ars

<comment><USER3> Blah-blah-blah. =)

I have one very simple test for all those virtualization over-hyped guys - <USER2> many 64-bit Oracle instances you can run on typical, 2-U HP Proliant Server?

For example, 7 Xen systems for developers including two 64-bit Oracle instances (10g and 9) on Proliant and 7 Xen Guests on 8-core Dual Xeon 1U server at datapipe.

The real cat is better than paper tiger.

<comment><USER4> Oracle is a _very_ bad test for virtualization. First, Oracle is very disk- intensive, to the point that they recommended their own file system for many years and still recommend that the database is separate from the application itself. Second, Oracle has an excellent cluster management system as it is and as such, really should be left to do its own virtualization.

The real benefit is:

1\. Bunching up low resource systems. We've all seen those applications that are only used lightly, but take up their own server.

2\. Failover. A server dies? Get those processes moved to other machines to spread the load in minutes while the server is fixed.

<comment><USER3> The idea is much simply - they cannot run 64-bit installation in production, because it is just an emulation, not virtualization as it should be.

And for developers this kind of setup is good enough. Test and production runs on bare hardware.

It is the same stupidity as to put jvm-based stuff under emulation and wait for performance and profit.</comment></comment></comment>


How does one value a company? - <AUTHOR> A recent HN post caused me to wonder how companies are valued [1].
Many people argue that tech companies are overvalued. I would like to try to value companies based on information I read. I'm wondering how you value startups/VC funded companies? I have no experience in this domain but I want to learn your secrets.
* Do you recommend any books? * What are the most common valuation strategies? * Does the value calculation depend on the type of company? (Logistics vs Tech vs Biotech vs Construction)
1. http://blog.eladgil.com/2016/07/end-of-cycle.html <comment><USER2> Just like anything else, the value is what you think others are willing to pay. It's just that for companies, the market is highly illiquid so you don't know exactly how much a company is worth until someone bought it, be it an acquirer or a stock exchange market.

Of course, this won't help you on a practical way, but it helps explain why it's not something with a simple formula.

To value a company, you need to consider what stage they are in. Early on, you are valuing the team more than anything else and there are simplistic formuals like the Scorecard[1] method. For SaaS companies, valuation is sometimes expressed as a multiple (typically 5x) of ARR, but again that depends on the stage and the domain.

But overall, it's what you _feel_ comfortable it is worth.

[1] [http://worthworm.com/valuation-methods-spotlight-on-the- scor...](http://worthworm.com/valuation-methods-spotlight-on-the-scorecard- method/)</comment>


What is wrong with Comic Sans? - <AUTHOR> https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/38226/what-is-wrong-with-comic-sans <comment> loup-vaillant This looks like a status issue _again_.

Comic Sans is an informal-looking font, which means low status. Seeing a high- status researcher using it in front of a relatively high-status audience speaking about a serious, high-status topic… is jarring for many people. On a similar note, I know of a guy who often illustrates his very serious philosophical points with Japanese anime references.

Many people don't like such status dissonance. They literally cringe. I don't, and I suspect Simon P.J. doesn't either. And I don't see why we should: we're the kind of people who care more about the structure of an argument than the clothes the speaker is wearing. This is also apparent in His talk, "How to Write a Great Research Paper"[1, 2]. His counsel is all about readability and engagement, never about sounding serious or important.

[1]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dkRsTqdDA)

[2]: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/writing-a-paper-slides.pdf)

\---

As a last note, I have seen suggested here, and in the Stack Overflow thread, that there are much better fonts out there (Comic Neue seems to be the most popular alternative). But let's imagine for a second that SPJ used Comic Neue instead of Comic Sans. Would that make people stop asking why he's using this font?

I don't think so.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's a matter of status so much as an issue of "typeface credibility" \-- Comic Sans says "what's written in this font shouldn't be taken seriously." Serif fonts are on the "serious" end of the credibility spectrum, sans fonts are in the centre, and then "fun" fonts like CS occupy the "not serious" end.

This isn't a bad thing -- the pre-association people have for different classes of fonts make it easier to convey messages in branding and marketing. It makes us distinguish between stories in newspapers and magazines (which we should remember) from frivolity that we could easily forget. With fonts, the medium is a significant part of the message.

<comment><USER3> Serif fonts aren't more credible than San serif fonts. Serif fonts are great for lots of paragraph based text, san serif fonts are better for titles and shorter passages...and also code.

Fun fonts can be serif or sans, and are generally more artistic and ad oriented.

<comment><USER4> On screens you are right.

But on paper, with much higher resolution, serif looks more serious.

<comment><USER3> Sans often appears on signage, especially in Europe, where it works very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is that fonts are used to signify tone.

When I see Comic Sans, the tone I read the text in is "cartoon dog." Although this particular interpretation may be just me, I believe many people have similarly toned readings (it comes down to cultural interpretation of symbols...). So, it is jarring and inappropriate for many people to see Comic Sans, in certain contexts.

There are many equally legible fonts out there which do not signal "cartoon dog" or similar. So, yes, you can _can_ present your research in the voice of a cartoon dog. But, it is pretty tone deaf.

<comment><USER6> I think tone is the correct argument against it.

It is essentially kitsch, in font form, and because of that it's going to devalue the information it presents in many contexts, and is thus only likely to go unregarded in contexts where kitsch is basically expected.

I recently received a letter from the Finnish employment department demanding more documentation of an alleged business interest. This is a government official making a request that potentially threatens my livelihood.

In Comic Sans.

As an emotive impact, it was very much like your "cartoon dog". Imagine getting a Garfield condolence card as a layoff notice, or seeing a :) smilie at the end of a foreclosure notice. It seems to immediately impart a lack of respect for the gravity of the situation.

<comment><USER7> Its entirely subjective. I for instance can't recognize comic sans or any other font than Courier by sight. So for me it carries no insult.

So again, what's wrong with that font? Nothing, intrinsically. Its all in the 'internet meme' part that says its passé. Quit subscribing to that (or like me, never emotionally invest in any silly meme) and the issue disappears.

<comment><USER6> All aesthetics are subjective, because they are based primarily on associative memory.

That's not an argument against their value, that's merely a refusal to acknowledge it.

<comment><USER7> Those that assert 'Comic Sans is objectionable' are arguable the ones refusing to acknowledge how subjective it is, right?

Clearly its understood that aesthetics are based on associations. I'm here to assert: a significant fraction of the population (non-designers?) have no associations one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nearly all of the answers give the same answer: that Comic Sans is a fine typeface that is only inappropriate (sometimes) because it sets an inappropriate tone.

I don't believe that's the main problem at all. The problem is aesthetic[1]. Some letterforms are inherently unbalanced and create tension, notably the wild angles in the m, the serif in the s, and the tipping-over T. The wobbles in the I, n, and h distract as well. Beyond that, there are the subtler issues of different inclination on the verticals (j, t, l, h) and bad kerning for various character pairs.

If Comic Sans were truly convincing as handwritten font, it would probably be better; on the plus side it is sufficiently far from that that it avoids falling in the very bottom of a handwriting uncanny valley.

Now aesthetics doesn't necessarily impede legibility per se, but beauty and visual harmony are generally enjoyable, and use of Comic Sans eschews it. Compare it to the much better Comic Neue[2].

[1] example: [http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-S...](http://kinkeaddesigns.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Comic-Sans-Probs.jpg)

[2] [http://comicneue.com/](http://comicneue.com/)

<comment><USER9> Let's pretend for a minute that beauty isn't inherently subjective. Is beauty and visual harmony always a desired property?

<comment><USER10> When it comes to the process of getting information into someone's brain through the use of written language, yes, it's _generally_ quite desirable not to make the brain work too hard to process the writing, or to otherwise distract it. (There are of course a few special-purpose exceptional cases.)

<comment><USER9> I am glad that someone agrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

> John Tukey almost always dressed very casually. He would go into an > important office and it would take a long time before the other fellow > realized that this is a first-class man and he had better listen. For a long > time John has had to overcome this kind of hostility. It's wasted effort! I > didn't say you should conform; I said ``The appearance of conforming gets > you a long way.'' If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I > am going to do it my way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the > whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up > to an enormous amount of needless trouble.

<comment> loup-vaillant On the other hand, thanks to people like John Tukey, technical folks can now spare the suit and still be taken seriously. The price he paid may have been worth the benefit we now have.

<comment><USER11> The day when the entire arXiv is re-typeset in Comic Sans cannot come soon enough. Rebels like Peyton-Jones are truly fighting the good fight.

<comment><USER12> That's not the same thing. The argument is for choice, not replacement. A more appropriate example would be a single arXiv article written in Comic Sans without detracting from the message.

As for the wider debate, people have pointed out that it's a matter of form vs. function, but there's another aspect, which is intention. If you do not intend to convey any extra information by using Comic Sans, then discussing the font choice is irrelevant. It's only when Comic Sans is used to signify something that the whole form vs. function argument comes into play.

I, for one, am glad that there is a popular font that pisses experts off, Comic Sans is the punk rock of the font world, I hope others will make an impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Funny quip at the boxed wine, since good winemakers have started selling their stuff in BIB in the last 15 years in France. It shows a bit the lack of perspective of some people.

They complain about comic sans to show membership to a group. Like cracking a Star Trek joke.

<comment><USER14> If fonts were rock bands then Comic Sans would be something like one of those 'X-factor' talent show boy-bands, i.e. popular with the masses yet utterly despised by 'proper musicians' for not making 'real music'.

To fit into the 'I am a designer that cannot use anything other than Photoshop club' you have to mock comic sans in all of its uses and show utter disgust at what is a truly popular font. It is as easy to do as mocking the talent show boy bands. On the 'designer' learning curve it is up there with replacing all text with lorem ipsum.

Despite what people say in general Comic Sans is used quite appropriately, particularly by those that are not designers. If you want people to go to the village fete then a 'designed' flyer is not what you want, something banged out in Word with Comic Sans actually conveys the message pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Without knowing anything about this guy, it seems like he 'd be the kind of person who'd wear socks under his Crocs because it's comfortable and he doesn't care._

Hahaha. When I knew Simon Peyton Jones he didn't wear shoes at all—just bare feet—in Glasgow—one of the coldest, wettest cities in the UK.

<comment><USER16> Maybe he got more hardcore over time. I was (one of) his undergrads at UCL when he was a newly minted professor and I think he was one of the socks-with- sandals crew (vs sandals without, and those who wore regular shoes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd say the problem is that Comic Sans is already an established meme. Everyone who knows what Comic Sans is already knows that it's bad, and a design smell, and you absolutely positively should never ever use it for anything. Of course, the little know secret that was just brought up here is that no one really knows why. It doesn't matter to them. There are some good reasons to restrain yourself from using that font in some situations, but current attitude towards Comic Sans is pure fashion.

It's the exact same situation as programmers have with goto - there's this widely established meme of "goto considered harmful" that most have heard somewhere, but have no clue why it's so except that it is. Only few of us know _why_ using goto leads to bad consequences (and what those consequences are); even fewer could name situations where goto _is_ a right tool for the job. For the rest, it's fashion.

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone who has read up on typography specifically to pick better fonts for the worksheets I give to my students (teaching English in a foreign country), Comic Sans is actually a very good font to use. As a handwritten style font, it was designed specifically for legibility. The characters and easy to distinguish and it's actually a good font choice for dyslexic people.

Since the topic of the presentation is in the field of education, I think that Comic Sans (and other similar readable fonts - Comic Neue, Open Dyslexic) is a very appropriate choice. It shows that the presenter is cognizant of getting information across efficiently. And for all those detractors, I'd like to ask them, "Do you ever use Comic Sans (or similar fonts) in your classes? If not, why not?"

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems to me that the real/only reason for SPJ not to use Comic Sans is that using it distracts people (in general, since he notes that he gets lots of comments about it, I'm not personally distracted by it) from what he's saying.

So it might make sense to use a font that goes pretty much unnoticed, to put the focus on the content of the talk. Then again, maybe he is thinking more along the lines of "if my font choice is the most important thing to you, feel free to leave/not watch this talk."

I feel like, if I were advocating something (FP, Haskell, new ways of teaching computer science, or whatever), I would want to do everything I could to keep the discussion on-topic.

</comment><comment><USER20> >I frequently see remarks like 'Simon Peyton-Jones, great talk about Haskell but why did he use Comic Sans?' but nobody's ever been able to tell me what is wrong with it. It's a nice legible font, I like it. So until somebody explains to me ...

Of all the little things that annoy me about Comic Sans, this is by far the worst.

Suppose I showed some of my Haskell code to a group of people and they all told me that every Haskell expert says I should keep my IO functions as minimal and separate as I can. I ask them why, and they assure me again that Simon Peyton-Jones himself is adamant about this, but none of them seem to be able to put an explanation into words.

I wouldn't just dismiss them with "it works fine for me" and not even bother to Google something like "haskell separate impure code". So why do so many people do that when the advice is coming from designers instead of engineers?

<comment><USER19> I think your logic is flawed a bit here. A _lot_ of people absolutely will dismiss suggestions like "keep your IO functions minimal/separate" and "you should test your code" and etc essentially saying "it works fine for me."

But in general I agree with you. "Until somebody explains to me... a rational reason..." \- I will explain it: It is detracting (however unfortunate that may be) from your message/content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> SPJ isn't a developer, or at least not mainly a developer. He's a computer science researcher, one of the top researchers of his generation in his field. Among his peers, what counts are the contributions you make, not what shoes you wear or what font you use. Some researchers will make their presentations look nice because they care about aesthetics, but as long as the meat is there and the slides are readable, nobody really minds odd-looking fonts.

In a way, this is a bit like the encounter of a Canadian and a Scottish officer on South Beveland (Netherlands) in October 1944.

> In the early hours of the 29th I was out with a unit of carriers, > maintaining a standing patrol on the left flank of the battalion. In order > to complete our patrol, we utilized some Dutch bicycles to patrol down a > dyke to the bank of of the West Scheldt. All our men were desperately tired > and in a filthy, wet, muddy condition. On our way we were terribly surprised > to find a party of what were obviously Allied troops landing in a small > boat. Then forth from one of the boat onto the shore stepped what seemed to > me to be the finest soldier I had ever seen in my life, a fine figure of a > Scottish gentleman, carrying the shepherd's crook affected by some senior > Scottish officers in place of a cane or a swagger stick. He had a small pack > neatly adjusted on his back. (I had absolutely no idea where mine was and > couldn't care less.) His gas cape was neatly rolled. (I had last sen mine > somewhere around Eterville.) He had his pistol in a neatly blancoed web > holster. (I had mine in my hip pocket.) He had a neatly kept map case. (I > had mine stuck in my breast pocket.) He was a Colonel and I was a Captain. > His boots were neatly polished and I was wearing turned-down rubber boots. I > did manage to salute, although I think it must have been haphazard. He > politely enquired if we were Canadians. (Although who else could have looked > as we did?) I assured his we were. He asked if I could direct him to > battalion headquarters. I did better than that. I escorted him to battalion > headquarters. I was taking no chances on losing such a beautiful specimen to > the German Army. *

*: D. G. Godspeed, Battle Royal (Toronto 1962), 509. (cited in Terry Copp, The Brigade (Mechanicsburg, PA 2007), 160.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to use Comic Sans all over the place, even though I knew it was frowned upon. I did it mostly to piss off my designer friends and colleagues, although probably initially just because I liked it when back then when there was not much choice.

I don't use it anymore as I can't be bothered to annoy people on purpose anymore, and nowadays there is not much effort needed to find a nice google font etc.

Although I do still like to argue about tabs-spaces, curly brackets, pragmatic-mathematic etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> 38 comments and no McSweeny's link?

[http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans- asshole](http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole)

 _Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg..._

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with comic sans is the associations it has, not the font itself.

Comic sans is the preferred font of passive-aggressive clip-art smattered notes that use "quotes" for "emphasis" to explain that men of the dorm "must" rinse their shavings down the drain or that this is America and we speak "English".</comment>


Android Ported to C# - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xamarin.com/2012/05/01/android-in-c-sharp/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating, especially in the light of the Google Java issues right now- the performance graphs are just the icing on the cake.

Mono has traditionally had a reputation as being a lot slower than .NET- perhaps that isn't the case any more either? It would be great to see some independent third party figures on this.

It's funny that the MS created C# is one of very few languages that lets you make native apps in iOS, Android and WP.

<comment><USER3> Forgive my ignorance. Which application lets you write native iOS apps in C#? Thanks.

<comment><USER2> The guys who made this blog post make some software called MonoTouch.

<http://xamarin.com/>

It costs $400 for a license, though. But boy I am tempted... I know, I know- you need to go with the native languages for the best experience. But keeping a huge chunk of my codebase between platforms is a very, very interesting idea to me.

<comment><USER4> A very interesting idea to you, but one your users couldn't care less about.

Never forget about the users.

<comment><USER2> It would be an interesting idea to them if they have an Android phone and I wouldn't have the time to code for two platforms otherwise.

I get that there is a tradeoff involved, but the Mono-x products are in an interesting space. They aren't webviews (like PhoneGap), they aren't a weird JS hybrid (like Titanium)- they're full native experiences. You'll get some newly released features later (I imagine), but the user experience really shouldn't be affected that much.

<comment><USER5> The Mono guys have been very quick to support new iOS features so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We matured Sharpen a lot, and the result is a much-improved Java-to-C# > translation tool for everyone. We are releasing this new version of Sharpen > today along with the code for XobotOS and we hope that many more people will > benefit from it and contribute to it.

That should be bolded.

<comment><USER7> Totally! If Google would actually dump Java in favor of C#, there would be the huge problem of all the apps that need to be ported. With a tool that has already proven to be capable of doing that, the required efforts are already massively reduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, but there's not a single mention of memory usage impact. Dalvik in particular makes some fairly severe tradeoffs to reduce memory usage.

OTOH, I've often wondered if those tradeoffs are actually worth it in the end. This may just be demonstrating how weak/slow the Dalvik VM actually is.

<comment><USER9> I find it interesting that there was such an effort to reduce memory usage because I've always had severe memory issues on the two Android phones I've had.

The first, the myTouch 3G had about 100MB of RAM, with only about 25MB free from a cold boot, meaning the phone is really really slow due to memory pressure.

My current phone, a G2, has about 350MB of RAM total and about 70MB free on a cold boot (ICS).

A full Ubuntu Desktop install can use only about 250MB of RAM on cold boot and even Windows XP would run in 256MB of RAM.

So with so much emphasis on saving RAM, why is 350MB of RAM insufficient to run basically one app at a time on a phone (plus the various background processes the system is running)?

<comment><USER10> "Free memory" in a garbage-collected managed language is difficult to measure. If you don't have to GC, the performance-minded choice would to not GC. Every computation costs battery life, so I would suppose Android's GC is tuned to not run if it doesn't have to.

If you look at the specifications of system.gc(), it can be implemented as a placebo, like the "push to walk" button at the street corner. So even explicitly GC'ing isn't guaranteed to do anything.

Android also has a strategy for "swapping" components within a process, and whole processes. This is, effectively, Android's GC strategy across processes. An Android system's memory, especially on small-memory devices, should always look full-ish, but you can almost always launch a new task, since GC and components and process "swapping" (the "destroy" phase of component lifecycle) and GC can almost always make room for more.

<comment><USER11> I think the biggest problem with embedded GC is that you generally don't want to do pay the memory overhead that comes with generational algorithms. It's a pity that most Java systems are layered on top of some C-based OS, so that each process effectively has to have its own heap, with all the memory overprovisioning that entails.

<comment><USER12> Can you tell what you meant by "most Java systems"? Which are the Java systems that are NOT running on top of some C-based OS?

<comment><USER11> Managed operating systems such as JNode (Java based) or Singularity (.NET based) have managed kernels - everything is written in a memory-safe language. The OS can verify the memory-safety of a program in the loader (bytecode verification), so that there is no need for an MMU to implement process isolation; different processes can share the same heap. There is also a big performance advantage as process switching is essentially as fast as thread switching. IPC is typically done using message passing, but Singularity for example also allows processes to set up a shared memory space.

edit: relevant paper: [https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/download/attachments/28320883/...](https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/download/attachments/28320883/singularity- sigops07.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for this information. I am curious to see in which domain such Operating Systems will be used first. I am wondering actually why Google did not use such an OS architecture for Android (or Apple for their phones).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow! Congrats.

Isn't this like huge, though? If you can actually make it run faster, I am guessing it would be possible to spin it off and get serious funding.

I merely watch from the sidelines, but what the Mono/Xamarin guys accomplish year after year could be a good lesson for any founder. Having spent enough time in the .Net world, I can tell that any attempt at creating a compatible .Net framework is a daunting, enormous undertaking. I guess the key thing is, FOCUS.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess Google did make the wrong choice back then. I certainly prefer C# over Java any day, even by the most basic test like "language features". Using Mono would've certainly resulted in _less_ fragmentation than they have with Dalvik today.

<comment><USER15> > Using Mono would've certainly resulted in _less_ fragmentation than they > have with Dalvik today

Why would using Mono result in less fragmentation? Most of their "fragmentation problem" comes from having developers having to develop for multiple devices (screen size, performance, GPU, android versions, etc.), and changing the language won't magically fix it.

<comment><USER14> Not that kind of fragmentation; sorry, given that the phenomena runs rampart in Android world, I should have been clearer.

SUN and Google have both expressed concerns over fragmenting the Java ecosystem. And with Dalvik, that has certainly happened.

<comment><USER15> Ah, that makes much more sense. Having said that, where do you see fragmentation in the Java ecosystem? I don't use Java to write anything but Android apps, but I've used a few pure Java libs with Android and they all seem to work great.

That isn't to say it isn't happening, I just don't experience and would be interested in knowing where it _does_ occur.

<comment><USER16> Blackberry OS and Android are both Java-based, but try writing an app that runs on both.

<comment><USER17> Blackberry is more J2ME-ish and Android is more J2SE-ish. It's possible to share engine code (I've done it) -- you'd still have to do custom UI code for each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am curious about Sharpen, the automated translation tool used to convert from Java to C#. It seems like every project that uses it winds up with its own tweaks that have no centralized location to be upstreamed to.

For example, Sharpen was also used to translate JGit to C#: <https://github.com/mono/ngit>

<comment><USER19> The history right now is:

Original Sharpen -> mono/ngit sharpen -> XobotOS sharpen

So the XobotOS one is the most complete, but also requires more setup than the NGit one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is really interesting project, and after taking a little bit of time to look it over, there are a couple of things that I have noticed:

1\. It's not entirely clear how to use this. Is XobotOS a replacement for Android, or is it something that can be shipped as a standard application? In my limited time reading the documentation on the GitHub page, this was not clear to me.

2\. It looks like a it is a terminated research project, to quote the README:

 _This code is provided as-is, and we do not offer support for any bits of code here, nor does Xamarin plan on continuing evolving XobotOS at this point._

From the blog post, it sounds like they are integrating some of this technology in their products, but XobotOS is otherwise just a code dump. As such, unless someone is really interested in this, it doesn't seem like it's going to go anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER21> Do those benchmarks suggest that XobotOS is faster for those metrics than vanilla Android? That seems like a very large performance gain, and I already wonder what the performance on a device would be like.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but this was 1 synthetic benchmark, which heavily uses 2 features they made a point about being significantly faster. The real question is what is the difference between dalvik and mono on more balanced applications. I expect we are talking closer to 10% difference then the order of magnitude their benchmark shows.

<comment><USER19> It really depends on the program load. In general, Mono is just a more mature VM than Dalvik is, so it is rare for Dalvik to match Mono (although there are a couple of cases where it matches it).

The other problem is that Dalvik uses a model that limits the amount of memory your app can use, so most of the heavy duty tests could not be ran to compare the apps, since Dalvik would crash with an out of memory condition while Mono does not impose this limit.

Dalvik has also other ugly limitations, like their GC being suspended whenever a JNI invocation is taking place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The other thing that's holding me back on Mono for mobile is that it really only addresses the non-UI parts of an app and in most apps the UI code is 80-90% of the entire codebase. So rewriting some core logic and network code in a portable language isn't really enough of a win to justify using working with an unsupported (by Apple) and niche tool.

<comment><USER23> > in most apps the UI code is 80-90% of the entire codebase

Not in my experience. I write software for large enterprises, mostly .NET glue between systems like SAP, e-commerce engines, search engines, databases, etc. The UI is a thin little layer on top of complex systems integrations. I'd say the UI code is 10 to 20% in most systems I've worked on.

<comment><USER5> I'm talking specifically about mobile apps here. Most don't involve sophisticated processing or logic but need a very slick, polished UI.

<comment><USER24> I think both of you are right. To each his own. I have a few applications that are algorithmically complicated and it is impossible (or very expensive) to implement multiple versions of the same thing on different platforms. Even though the core stuff is say 60% of the codebase (vs 40% in UI), say measuring in number of lines, the benefit of doing the 60% in a single _productive_ platform is very very important. I'm talking about correctness, maintainability, consistency between different versions, etc. The remaining 40% UI code can be ugly, platform-dependent, inconsistent, etc, and it won't bother me as much. After all, an error in the _presentation_ is far less lethal than an error in the core logic. In this case, a common platform is strongly favored.

That said, indeed many apps are not like that. Going forward though, I would conjecture that there will be more and more sophisticated apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> not sure that C# is the answer either, given that microsoft is trying to build a nest in the mobile space. that said, nice work.

poses an interesting question though: if google had to or wanted to switch platforms/languages, which might they choose?

<comment><USER2> The article covers that, to some extent:

 _Unlike Sun with Java, Microsoft submitted C# and the .NET VM for standardization to ECMA and saw those standards graduated all the way to ISO strong patent commitments. The .NET framework is also covered by Microsoft's legally binding community promise._

It's strange- with the work Xamarind has been doing, C# is one of the few language choices you have to go cross-platform and native- MonoTouch does iOS, MonoDroid does Android, and MS themselves do Windows Phone. I've not used any of these extensively so can't vouch for them, but it's an interesting development.

<comment><USER26> I was reading the wikipedia entry about C# a few days ago and was surprised to see the following bits:

"As of December 2010, no ECMA and ISO/IEC specifications exist for C# 3.0 4.0, and 5.0."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language)>

Does this mean newer syntax updates won't make it to Mono? or not as open as it used to be in terms of patent and copyright?

<comment><USER19> Standards take time, the ISO spec is typically 2-3 years behind the current product.

But cheer up, the ECMA team just updated the VM spec a couple of months ago and the committee is resuming work on new features.

We are all pretty psyched about the next steps for the ECMA standards.

As for Mono, we already have C# 5 and many of the new class library features. Having two independent implementations helps coming up with a better standard.

<comment><USER27> Can I use async/await on Monotouch right now? If yes, I think you have a new customer!

<comment><USER19> Some assembly is required for that.

MonoTouch is currently based on Mono 2.10, while C# 5.0 is based on the new codebase on Mono 2.11.

We are waiting for Microsoft to officially bless C# 5.0 as complete before we can ship it, otherwise we will break people's code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like .NET and I like Mono, but I was disappointed that the article showed no hard evidence of overall performance improvement for XobotOS vs Android. I understand that they probably have more important things to work on, but I hoped that if they could show concrete benefits even at this early stage then their work might pick up more traction. It was a fun idea to read about, at least.

</comment><comment><USER29> How long till Google buys Xamarin?

</comment><comment><USER30> They should wrap up the whole working build environment in a VM, and distribute that, so people can start contributing immediately.

</comment><comment><USER31> C# created because Sun didn't like Microsoft. Not at all surprising if Google drops Java.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would really love for Mono to take off in a big way, I like the language features and syntax of C# more than Java, but when I have to work with other developers it is nice not to have to worry about major memory leaks across the system.

And the patent wars regarding Java just make me not want to support that development ecosystem anymore.

</comment><comment><USER33> Do I need to install Windows to do MonoTouch development for Android?

<comment><USER34> no, you can use monodevelop on osx to develop mono for android applications.

<comment><USER32> Or use monodevelop on anything, it is cross platform and open source from Xaramin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why would anybody be interested in a MS-only language in this day and age (when MS is in decline)?

<comment><USER36> Microsoft's sales and profits continue to grow. How is that a company in decline?

<comment><USER37> Microsoft's relative power over the computing industry has been in decline for several years now.

<comment><USER36> I suppose one could make the argument that any company that grows more slowly than the rest of the industry is becoming less relavent.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Name Your Company  - <AUTHOR> http://startup.partnerup.com/2008/04/01/company-naming-tips-how-to-name-a-business/

<comment><USER2> Finding the right name is overrated.

The classic story is Apple - After a lot of discussing what the name of their new company should should be Steve Jobs said that if there wasn't agreement the next day he would just call it apple and be done with it. And they seem to have done OK.

Often names of companies sound ingenious because they just seem to fit so well to the company, but what people tend to forget is that the reason the name fits the company is because your association of the two are linked. Google is an example - there are probably thousands of names that are just as good, but they don't sound it because they have no mindshare. Google sounds like a great name because you recognise it instantly and associate it with a great company - nothing more.

As long as you can get the .com domain (or be creative like del.icio.us) and make sure you don't infringe on trademarks you'll be fine.

And you should also google your proposed name just to see what else it means. There is a classic story of an upscale bathroom factory that called their new line of showers for goldenshower. Bad idea.

<comment><USER3> Getting the .com name is right - but don't try to just on the "creative" bandwagon (<http://www.cederman.com/?p=30>).

It's interesting that people do go for such similar patterns, when easily memorable stuff is still available (eg, I named my blog before I registered the domain, and the domain was still available - <http://www.ofallandsundry.com/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
       Starting a business with a weak company name is kind of like driving a car — without an engine, it probably isn't going to go anywher.

I humbly disagree. Starting a business with a weak company name is kind of like driving a car with a weak company name--it'll run just fine either way.

Also, the A-Z thing is cute on motivational posters in grade school. Fitting business advice in such a manner to make it follow a fluffy pattern (and hence invariably involve a lot of repetition and bullshit) is not. "K is for Kleenex"? Please, just get to your point.

Edit: After careful thought, I have concluded this is a bad article.

<comment><USER2> Exactly - Haagen dazs is one of the worlds leading ice cream companies and I had to look it up to get their name right. Google suggest tells me I'm not the only one who has no idea how to spell it.

And they're doing just fine.

<comment><USER5> Interestingly enough Haagen Dazs is not a European company, but the founder(s) wanted a European-sounding name.

Naming is definitely important. Perhaps just not to the level that the writer puts it.

<comment><USER2> Interesting - I thought they were Dutch, the crazy name sounds like it.

Maybe there's a method in their naming madness after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's like famous first sentences of classic novels - the sentence is famous because the novel was classic; a classic first sentence did not make the novel famous.

</comment><comment><USER7> you can't polish a turd. Just make sure your name isn't a turd and you'll be fine</comment>


Show HN: AutoBits – Monitoring and Automation Software - <AUTHOR> https://autobits.org <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Founder here. To explore all features of AutoBits, use this Login Code (paste it in AutoBits UI):

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

This code will work until Wednesday, 17 July 2019 10:30 UTC and gives you full access to all AutoBits features.

Let me know what you think.

-Artem

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting work. It seems that this project could be useful for many applications. :)

I was considering to give it a shot at an agriculture automation project. Do you have any resources/tutorials where I can get an idea of how to start?

Thanks, Marios

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest!

Absolutely, AutoBits with the right sensors can help you keep your plants happy:)

Monitoring environment conditions: air, soil, etc, and alerting a person, or taking some automated actions(e.g watering) is one of the use-cases.

At this point we don't have "A Start Guide", but directions that are built-in directly into the User Interface, can help get you started. The best way to get to know AutoBits it to simply install it and wonder around:)

We are considering making a few demo cases/tutorials (probably blog posts or videos), stay tuned. Let us know if you prefer one format over the other.

<comment><USER2> Personally, I prefer reading blog posts, but either is fine.</comment></comment></comment>


What does one trillion dollars look like? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

<comment><USER2> One of the things contributing to our continued economic illiteracy is our insistence on stupid abstractions like this. When you distribute huge sums of money it doesn't actually wind up being all that much in individual terms. "hose the rich, they can afford it!" yeah, but after you hose the rich (and they start leaving/not investing) you only have like...a grand per person. A trillion dollars is less than 3 grand per person in the US. Say we hosed the rich to the tune of a trillion EVERY YEAR. We still wouldnt have enough for our socialist schemes. Meanwhile, investment plummets and the productive leave the country...

<comment><USER3> I wholeheartedly agree with your point. But is it a matter of economic illiteracy? Isn't it a matter of plain innumeracy? $1 trillion = 1E12 dollars, 300 million Americans = 3E8 persons, and hence that is only approx. 3 grand per person, like you mentioned. This is basic arithmetic. It's not even a problem of economic illiteracy, though economic illiteracy is a serious problem which allows demagogues to manipulate the masses easily. Cheap sentimentalism is defeating rationality. Even if the rich were heavily taxed, there's simply not enough money to pay for the benefits this generation of Americans seems to feel entitled to.

<comment><USER4> I find it more helpful to divide these huge numbers by the number of US households (aprox. 100,000,000)

Doing that we get $10,000/household instead of $3,000 for every man, woman, child, prisoner, etc.

I think budget numbers ought to be reported this way. The recent $410 billion spending bill would be reported as $4100/household spending bill. Suddenly people start to think differently - Do I really want to borrow $4100 to spend on this?

<comment><USER3> You're quite right. My analysis was simplistic and naive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this would be more meaningful if it was preceded by a visualization of what 300 million people looked like.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~dbl/cfdsdisk/cfdsdisk/Space%20view...](http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~dbl/cfdsdisk/cfdsdisk/Space%20views%20of%20countries/USA%20from%20space%20%28DMSP,%20W%20Sullivan%20-%20Hansen%20Planetarium%20%29.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does one terabyte look like? Well, imagine we printed each byte on a slip of paper and...

<comment><USER8> IF you are going along the lines of the article, then shouldn't it be 100 bytes on each piece of paper ?!

<comment><USER9> I had always heard that 1 page (one side) of plain text was about 1KB. Unfortunately I can't find any resources to back that up. The closest I could find was this article which indicates 2KB per "typewritten page": [http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci9...](http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci944596,00.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also the MegaPenny Project:

<http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I sort of half-expected a giant pile of money with the Joker sitting on top of it, gasoline nearby.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not really sure But I would like to have that amount someday ! May be my website <http://www.cashsolutionssite.com> might get me there someday

Thanks

Wishful Thinking

</comment><comment><USER13> That's really not a lot of paper. We should have no problem printing that out.

<comment><USER14> Banks, OTOH, would have lots of trouble storing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks like a lot of stuff, but try to do a pile of overestimated assets costing 1 trillion dollars, it wont fill your pocket, and today won't buy anithing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Everybody who is voting this up, I dislike you personally.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad the stimulus money injection is wired to the companies' bank accounts. Imagine a $10 billion bail out delivered in cash to the door of AIG's headquarters, for instance. Imagine 18-wheelers carrying truckloads of $100 bills. That would be impressive indeed :-)

<comment><USER17> Reportedly pallets full of cash was shipped to Iraq in cargo planes to finance the war effort.

<comment><USER3> And some of those pallets full of cash were reported missing. Is anyone surprised?

<comment><USER18> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1>

Wow.

<comment><USER3> It looks like some people did retire young, LOL. Seriously, this is more than just _some_ pallets. This must have been one the biggest frauds ever. Unless, of course, the whole point was simply to inject liquidity in the crippled Iraqi economy. This would be a great story for a John Grisham book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This question - for some reason, reminds me with the stimulus plan. [EDIT: I did not really know that this is about the stimulus plan!!]

Maybe a trillion dollars look like a 20 racks of servers - but cash instead? :)</comment>