Paypal Cuts Off Mega Because It Actually Keeps Your Files Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150227/07165030161/paypal-cuts-off-mega-because-it-actually-keeps-your-files-secret.shtml

<comment><USER2> This is the best advertisement Mega could ever receive.

it's also a ringing endorsement that Mega can keep your data out of the hands of Five Eyes countries. that just earned them my business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anybody is still using Paypal?!

<comment><USER4> This sounds like a "No one goes there anymore; it's too crowded" comment said by insular people who pride themselves for being years ahead of others.

A huge number of people use it. To pick just one, 8 days ago here on HN was a link to how the US Treasury will now accept PayPal and Dwolla.</comment></comment>


200+ Windows 7 beta users surveyed: They like it. Quite a bit, actually. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2009/03/11/windows-7-the-state-of-the-beta/

<comment><USER2> I have to admit I like it. I've been using it as my main os for a couple days.

It's fast, and I haven't had problems with stability.

There's a few visual bugs, for instance every now and then a very blurry block will appear on top of the taskbar.

Also, it seems to run a little faster than windows vista did.

I did have one program that wasn't compatible. I tried to download Daemon Tools to mount a linux iso, but Daemon Tools isn't compatible with Windows 7 beta. Other than that, no problems with hardware or software compatibility.

And I installed it when I was putting in a clean hard drive in my laptop and was basically choosing between the iso's on my college's network, so it's not like I was really excited about it before the installation.

<comment><USER3> For Daemon Tools, you could try the following replacements:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2007/05/14/vi...](http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2007/05/14/virtual- cd-rom-control-panel-on-vista.aspx) MS Virtual CD Control Panel

<http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html> Virtual Clonedrive

I used to use Virtual Clonedrive, and prefer it to Daemon Tools anyways.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll check it out. I was really needing a replacement since my dvd drive currently isn't working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the main advantage of Windows 7 over Vista is just the passage of time. Most developers of mainstream software have finally made sure that their software works on Vista. A lot more old hardware (whose makers did not make Vista-compatible drivers) has been replaced, and other drivers fixed, so that the likelihood of running into a driver-related problem is much lower now. A lot more software has been fixed to work under a limited (non-Administrator) account, which means UAC is practical. I develop software under Windows Vista all day long, every day, using dozens of tools, and I almost never get a UAC prompt.

The focus of Windows 7 development has been on reducing end-user frustration. Windows itself is limited in how much it can reduce that frustration because a lot of it is caused by third-party applications and by Microsoft add-ons. So, while the Windows 7 UX has already improved over Vista, the _real_ UX benefits won't happen until applications adopt the Windows 7 style guidelines. For example, applications need to get rid of their "minimize to tray" options and they need to quit installing icons on the desktop. (Actually these were the guidelines even for Windows 95, but Windows 7 really makes it counterproductive to break the rules.) They need to integrate with the new task bar features. They need to integrate with the new restart infrastructure so that installers don't have to reboot your computer due to files being in use.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've heard and read a lot about people seeing Windows 7 as more of a service pack and one person I know who uses/likes Vista thought it was "ugly".

Myself, I missed Vista entirely and given the chance to easily try 7 for free (legally), I plopped it down alongside Ubuntu 8.10 on my aging ThinkPad T60p. And honestly it impressed me, seeming to be the right fixes in the right places from XP and giving me few problems to speak of. I used it as a development workstation on an in-house programming contract and joined the domain without a hitch. At the same time IE8 did irritate me often with poorly rendered pages, slow performance, and many a crash. I also had problems with suspend not UNsuspending, but then Ubuntu did that too which makes me think it was a hardware thing.

Now recently I got a T400 with Vista Business SP1 and have immediately felt the pain of usage and now I also see the UAC annoyances which I hadn't noticed in 7. It has had problems interacting with the domain, and just feels heavier. Admittedly it's a factory install whereas 7 was fresh, so I know part of my issues are going to be due to that. Still, I've been seriously considering replacing Vista with the beta so I don't have to figure out why this or that isn't doing what I want.

Um ... so, yeah, write me up as one of those beta users who liked it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately it's completely unusable on my machine (longest uptime: ~15 minutes), but it seems that I'm alone in that experience.

I also couldn't work out how to set up my home network the way it used to run (sharing Internet connection via my machine - I don't have a proper server or a router or anything like that). I'm sure it's possible, but it certainly wasn't at all difficult to do in XP, so I wasn't too impressed with that. Maybe if the machine stayed up longer I would have figured it out eventually.

Hopefully the next beta or RC will work for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's actually a first MS OS which I must say I like without any 'but's. And definitely it comes as a huge relief after Vista, which made me stop by Apple shop more and more often. Performance-wise it seems even better than XP and that's with all eye-candy on, which is rather impressive in itself.

I've read some articles on W7 architecture and there does not seem to be any single reason for this speedup, besides new profiling QA team. So kudos to them. Going in the right direction there, MS.

</comment><comment><USER8> So that was the strategy: generate lots of bad impressions with Vista and then improving the perception with a somewhat better OS a short time later.

Not that I dislike 7. It's really a better Vista, faster (less slower) and remarkably stable for a beta, but that is the major problem for me: It's still Windows Vista under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have the user metaphors changed at all from Vista? I find more and more that the reason I don't enjoy using Windows has little to do with speed or graphics gewgaws and more to do with the fact that I can't customize many commands or shortcuts, and that I am still expected to click to launch most applications.

<comment><USER4> You can launch any document or application in Vista by pressing the Windows key, typing any part of the name of the app/document, then pressing Enter. Even in Windows NT and later, many (but not all) applications could be run by hitting Windows-R, typing the name of the executable, and then hitting Enter. You've also been able to assign applications shortcut keys since Windows 3.1 (right click on the shortcut in the start menu, choose properties). Windows 7 automatically assigned your applications shortcuts like Windows-1, Windows-2, Windows-3 according to their position in the start menu.</comment></comment>


NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf?

<comment><USER2> That paper is awesome. I would rank it with Dawkin's The Selfish Gene as a transcendent perspective changer--insight through the written word that comes along a few times in a lifetime.</comment>


GitHub is moving to Rackspace - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/493-github-is-moving-to-rackspace <comment><USER2> > We're growing at a rate of over 400 new users and 1000 new repositories > every day and these rates are only increasing with time

Crazy. Interesting how the repo growth is faster than the new user growth. That's a lot of projects :)

The point-by-point listing of requirements in this post almost reads like an outline of what EY cannot do. I know that the split is supposedly amicable (on the surface), but this doesn't look so great for EY.

Also interesting is how the requirements of a given application gradually shatter through various ceilings of performance requirements, one notable one here being the following:

> The benefits of running bare metal are obvious and have been empirically > proven. We need to have the option to run bare metal when it is appropriate > to the task at hand

<comment><USER3> The split probably was amicable, frankly. No one disputes that Rackspace can do things that EY can't at this point. People outgrow things all the time. You start just accepting PayPal, and then you add credit cards when enough users want that. You start with an AIR app, but go to dedicated Windows/Mac/Linux apps when you have enough users on each that are worth it.

There's been nothing that I've read - anywhere - that would suggest that someone else shouldn't use EY for their Rails app.

<comment><USER4> Except for the incredible price of EY, of course.

It's probably coincidence, but I noticed that all of those other beginning technologies you mention are cheaper than the next step up. Not so with Engine Yard.

It's like buying a Porsche, realizing you need more seats, and then switching to a nice, reliable, high-end Civic.

<comment><USER3> Wait, Rackspace is more expensive than their EngineYard costs, which were _free_.

And, actually, processing credit cards yourself is cheaper than PayPal, but there's the setup step that takes time and up-front costs.

And your last analogy is really faulty, Dustin. If you need more seats, your _needs have changed_. Then you re-evaluate the options based on your new criteria. That's what Github did.

Man, I thought I got through to you during our train ride. :)

<comment><USER5> You're correct that Rackspace is more expensive than our current arrangement with Engine Yard, but it would have been quite the opposite had we elected to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _...we'll finally be leaving our shared file system behind. We've far exceeded the normal IO tolerances of GFS..._

Which GFS? Red Hat Global File System (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_File_System>)? GlusterFS ([http://www.gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/Glu...](http://www.gluster.com/community/documentation/index.php/GlusterFS))? Something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> RedHat GFS. It works great for low and medium IO situations, but can cause sporadic issues on high IO installations like ours, and we aren't able to attach any more servers to it without further impacting performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Github is hosted by 10 virtual machines. I expected this to be much more.

</comment><comment><USER8> "If you want something done right, do it yourself." still applies to deployment, apparently. I wonder if/when the "cloud" will grow up. Any bets on how many years until rolling your own deployment infrastructure seems silly?

<comment><USER9> It will ALWAYS be better to do it yourself.

<comment><USER10> That is far from true. There are lots of things to do to get a site up and running that don't require managing infrastructure.

If you spend time "doing it yourself," then you don't spend a lot of time _and money_ on other parts of the business or the site. There is a scalability path that includes cloud computing.

If you have a large complex site like GitHub with an architecture that isn't conveniently accommodated by your cloud host and you can do it yourself, then it may be better.

Never say never and never say always.

<comment><USER11> It's a lot cheaper to run on your own hardware, but maybe there's a scale issue here as well -- if you're big enough you might get a cheaper price per unit.

<comment><USER10> Still not always true. It's not _a lot_ cheaper to run on your own hardware. Have you factored in shipping costs, depreciation, infrastructure management time, distractions, opportunity costs, colocation costs, interest.

These things add up.

Imagine comparing a $10/mo hosting account with a colocated server for $100/mo.

There are a plethora of scenarios that don't warrant owning or running your own hardware.

<comment><USER12> I obviously don't have numbers for rackspace's dedicated servers, but their 15.5GiB slice is $800 a month. Are they going to charge less for dedicated than for virtual hosts? You can get a server with 8 cores and 16Gib ram for under $2K from places like serversdirect.com, or building from parts. I build from parts, and generally end up paying $1500 for a 32GiB ram box. co-location is another $150/month or so. (my costs are closer to $75/month for a dual- socket box, but I have two full racks)

Unless you screwed up assembling the thing, the chances of something other than a drive failing are pretty small. I mean, not zero; don't count on hardware... I'm just saying, even if you have to get a $150/hr guy in to fix your bad hardware, that just doesn't happen very often. way less than once per server. Way less than once per every 10 servers (assuming you didn't screw up the assembly, and that you rotate out the server after 3 years.)

So yeah, there are many situations where it makes sense to rent, especially if you can't use 8 cores/ 32GiB ram of capacity. but if you use a whole server (32GiB ram/8 core; go virtual until you need that capacity, I say.) the cost advantages of owning hardware yourself are overwhelming. Sure, there are reasons to rent... I'm just saying, owning ends up costing you a /lot/ less money.

<comment><USER11> Yep, my experience with EC2 is that it gets pricey fast, and that the slower instances aren't really that speedy. The sweet spot is probably where you don't need critical performance (like a database box with a really fast RAID array).

My solution is to run most stuff in a colo on dell boxes running the linux- vserver kernel patch, sort of a cheap mans cloud solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm very curious about the move to shared nothing storage. Could any future blog psots be made on that topic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry, I'll be making some technical blog posts down the road explaining in excruciating detail exactly how I've done the federated architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any comments from Engine Yard?

<comment><USER15> They have a blog post and have some comments in this HN thread as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817864></comment></comment>


Building a Better Custom Haskell Prelude - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/protolude.html <comment><USER2> Haskell desperately needs a thorough revamping of its Prelude, and it really has to become part of an updated language standard document. Too much of the burden of learning Haskell consists of figuring out how to dodge the pitfalls in the current Prelude. The arguments against revamping basically boil down to "but that would obsolete this old textbook!" and that just doesn't wash.

Getting this job done right is essential to Haskell becoming a "hundred-year language".

<comment><USER3> > The arguments against revamping basically boil down to "but that would > obsolete this old textbook!"

The biggest argument against revamping is breaking tons of existing code. Haskell has been trying to gain traction in industry and randomly breaking existing code is a good way to have people lose faith. Now they have locked themselves into roughly "no breaking changes for three years after initial release".

Luckily there has recently been some more progress caused by realizing that online repositories are a great way to validate how much of a breaking change would happen with hypothetical changes, for instance removing the pure/return duality.

<comment><USER4> People can (relatively) easily create a Haskell2016 standard with a new default Prelude, and keep the old Prelude by default on Haskell2010 code. Add a compiler switch to set it manually, and it's as trouble-free as it can be.

It is great that Cabal pushes people to declare what version of the language they are using.

I guess the reason it was still not done is because people do not agree on what the new Prelude should be, if should be a Prelude at all, or if it should be a single one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting how different people's preludes are. We have a custom prelude at work, and things that it has that this one doesn't:

* Time types and functions.

* Overloaded (.) and `id`, and some arrow functionality. * More from 'safe'.

* Semigroup.

* String conversions from 'string-conversions', type synonyms for both lazy and strict Text and ByteString types.

* Vector and UUID.

What we don't have:

* The monad transformers by default, although maybe we should.

* Generics. Again maybe we should.

* Bits, Complex.

* All the custom implemented improvements.

* Semiring, DeepSeq, the containers types, concurrency.

Basically our prelude is more conservative, I guess, although it identifies and solves a lot of the same problems. Perhaps that is some common ground to start doing small improvements to the "real" prelude.

</comment><comment><USER6> There have been numerous attempts at making a better Haskell prelude. Basically basic functions like getting the head of a list can have a runtime error (for example, the list is empty). That's unnecessary in Haskell (could return a `Maybe a`). Stephen Diehl is the guy to do this right. I've been incredulous of other replacement preludes in the past but I may use this one.

<comment><USER7> To my understanding Haskell prelude is unsafe because Haskell sometime sacrifices usability/friendliness for satisfying certain theorems.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6364409/why-does- haskells...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6364409/why-does-haskells- head-crash-on-an-empty-list-or-why-doesnt-it-return-an)

<comment><USER8> Partly. Tsuyoshi Ito's answer on that page is IMO better than the original: `head` mattered at a time when pattern matching didn't exist; but today the only reason to use `head` is to form some sort of pointfree expression operating on lists that you've already filtered to be not-null. That is, you're doing `map (transform . head) . takeWhile (not . null)` or something, or maybe `takeWhile` is replaced with `filter` or so. If you cannot assert that the list is non-null then you _have_ to handle two branches, and this code will generally look clearer if you pull it into a `where` clause and write it with pattern matching rather than with an adjusted `head` followed immediately by an appropriate `maybe` function.

<comment><USER9> With `[a] -> Maybe a`, it's not so bad if you use `catMaybes` from Data.Maybe.

map transform . catMaybes . map safeHead

<comment><USER10> Even better with mapMaybe:

        map transform . mapMaybe safeHead

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about classy-prelude? I was thinking about using that one.. (based on Stephen's advice in the other blog post [http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/production.html](http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/production.html))

Has anyone experience with it, pros, cons?

<comment><USER12> classy-prelude is a "Big Vehicle Prelude", that is, a Mahayana Prelude.

<comment><USER13> What does this mean?

<comment><USER12> Sorry, dumb joke. Mahayana Buddhism is also known as "big vehicle" or "great vehicle" Buddhism.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I got that from Wikipedia, I just don't know what you mean by describing it as "big vehicle". Like it's bloated, or too broad or something?

<comment><USER14> FTA:

 _" Big Vehicle Prelude - Fix most of the deficiencies in the Prelude by introducing new abstractions that replace large portions of the basic types and class, and generally redefine the way we write Haskell. See numeric- prelude.

Small Vehicle Prelude - Fix the broken parts of the Prelude by building on existing types and classes and masking broken bits. See basic-prelude."_

<comment><USER13> Oh oops, I guess I skimmed over the intro

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stephen Diehl is a good example of a content creator that a lot of people would love to send their money to :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> > The Haskell Prelude is the default import into all Haskell modules, it > provides an endless number of ways to shoot ourselves in the foot and > historical cruft that can't be removed.

As someone who's only recently started using Haskell seriously, what are some items from this "endless" list of things? Coming from a Standard ML background, one thing about Haskell that I prefer is that the Prelude is so powerful on it's own; SML's set of top-level functions is pretty limited.

<comment> nv-vn Yep, same here coming from OCaml. MLs seem a lot more conservative with their standard libraries. Actually, with OCaml there have been a ton of attempts at making the standard library larger (Extlib, Batteries, Containers, Core, etc.) which is pretty much the opposite of what people are doing with Haskell. I always end up midsing Prelude when I'm working in OCaml, so it feels weird to me that people would want to strip it down so much.

<comment><USER17> I think the prevalence of articles like this one, about what's wrong with the Prelude, are exactly the reason for the impulse not to have such a big stdlib. If Haskell's were more modularised, then there wouldn't be this perpetual dissatisfaction with it (although, of course, there might be different dissatisfactions); you could just slice'n'dice it into the shape you wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are people's thoughts about using constraint kinds in the prelude, so you can make things with class constraints monads? Like making a Set monad.

This stack overflow answer shows what I'm talking about [http://stackoverflow.com/a/22314189/1080531](http://stackoverflow.com/a/22314189/1080531)</comment>


Dispatches from the Rap Wars (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2016/Chicago-Gangs/ <comment><USER2> That was an incredible read. Such a commitment by the writer to spend this much of his life with them and to share a wider human experience. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love info pieces like this - journalists who really put themselves in a lot of potential danger to get the story. This was a fascinating and insightful look into how music is leveraged as a tool on the south side

</comment><comment><USER4> Really good read. Well written, and as a non-American, it's always fascinating to read the true stories and see how different it is to what we see in the media about the US.

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone digs deep enough to unearth some of the instagram pages, please post them.

<comment><USER6> I'd bet that if you searched for 'chiraq', you'd find some stuff.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia Bitcoin Statistics - <AUTHOR> http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/Bitcoin <comment><USER2> [http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin#q=bitcoin&dat...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin#q=bitcoin&date=today%201-m&cmpt=q&tz=)

Meh. Anomaly or scrapers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have followed this regularly (it used to follow price more closely). This does seem unusual.

Interestingly: MIT BitcoinExpo was March 07-08

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Article creator here: wow, I had no idea it was that popular!

<comment><USER4> I see that your website has a link to [http://stani.sh/pratyeka](http://stani.sh/pratyeka), which is the same username as "Pratyeka" who created this _529 byte stub_ for bitcoin on 8 March 2009:

      Bitcoin is an open source peer-to-peer electronic cash system developed by Satoshi Nakamoto that's completely P2P|decentralized, with no central server or trusted parties. Users hold the cryptography|crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of the network to check for double-spending.

But the stub article did not meet wikipedia's standards as it lacked references to 3rd party sources, so was marked for deletion July ~10, 2010 [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=342.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=342.0) and officially deleted July ~31, 2010 [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652.0) and was only restored after the bitcoin community rewrote it fully in a manner deemed sufficient by the wikipedia community.

And for the entire history, you are only responsible for 0.19% of edits to that page, according to [https://tools.wmflabs.org/usersearch/usersearch.py?name=Prat...](https://tools.wmflabs.org/usersearch/usersearch.py?name=Pratyeka&page=Bitcoin&server=enwiki&max=100)

Every little wikipedia stub and edit is important, but sorry I was off-put by you entrance displaying the mantle "Article creator here".

<comment><USER3> Yes! Creation in the context of Wikipedia clearly means creation. FYI your research missed the fact that I was a part of the argument for undeleting / saving it from deletion twice, IIRC.

<comment><USER4> Yes, so what? So were many others. But you don't see everybody who created a wikipedia article make ego-boosting comments on HN whenever their article is mentioned. Nor do you see everyone involved in nurturing bitcoin comment on HN whenever bitcoin is mentioned.

Honestly, the reason I did research was I was hoping you were one of the cool people I used to chat with on the early days of bitcoin forums. I was curious to read your early comments and eager to ask you about your experience or how you first came across bitcoin. But all I found by searching for you username on bitcointalk was someone else's post "Paying homage to Pratyeka of Wikipedia for Bitcoin's inclusion." [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99437.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99437.0) featuring this bravado quote from your wikipedia profile of "particular contributions that your proud of":

 _" I argued bitterly for the restoration of the Bitcoin article from the evil hands of the deletionists, and have since been vindicated in my judgement as Bitcoin's rise to prominence has continued."_

Your quote sounds like it is from a Middle Earth fantasy epic, and is just asking to be signed something like:

 _" -First Knight Pratyeka 'The Clairvoyant' of Wikipedia, The Creator of the Bitcoin Article, and The Protector of the defenseless Bitcoin community from the Void of Obscurity, The Hero entrusted with the Power of Wiki-Influence who rose during The Challenging Times and singlehandedly defeated the onslaught of The Deletionists."_

I'm exaggerating, deliberately to give you an idea of what impression your comment and wiki profile imparts on others. I know many of us all like to speak like that on the internet in good humor, but after I combined your wiki profile quote with your HN comment, the picture of you in my head was another internet personality with a little too much ego that needs to be dampened. I'm imagining that in real life when you overhear strangers in public talk about bitcoin, you approach them to tell them that you created the bitcoin article.

Your comment feels just like the cliché first comment phenomenon that typical on sites like youtube. It offers nothing of substance or insight itself. Yes, everyone knows about the butterfly effect and how little things do make a difference. But this means every little bitcoin transaction, every little bitcoin bug report, every little bitcoin commit, every time someone explained bitcoin to their friends, everybody who made a bitcoin for ______ service, and every little anonymous wiki edit deserves some bit of credit for bitcoin's rise. And the blunt reality is that the reason the wikipedia article was reinstated was because these little interactions gradually increased the market price, causing more news sites started taking notice, so there were more 3rd party sources which is precisely what the article needed to survive. That was due to everyone's little contributions. And regarding your initial "creation", had you not made the initial stub, someone else would have made it a couple weeks later.

The good feeling of advancing human knowledge and understanding by creating and editing Wikipedia articles should be the reward itself. Posting on internet forums that you were the "first" just seems like your seeking attention or praise. And even worse, as another commentator kiro said earlier, your comment sounds like you take credit for the whole Wikipedia Bitcoin article. Regardless of the truth that factually and technically you did indeed "create" the initial stub, did a few edits, and argued to keep the article up, a humbler comment that offered insight wouldn't have provoked such a strong negative reaction.

Regardless, I am appreciative of Wikipedians like you for contributing and defending against The Deletionists.

<comment><USER3> Yes. I stopped contributing to the article because it turned in to this sort of thing, and had achieved my immediate purpose of making it exist and stay existing. I suggest you also learn to manage your time, as your posts while impressive and reasonable do not represent a healthy degree of interest to display in a passing piece of minutiae. Sarcasm can be hard to pick up, but at least you got the RPG/fantasy reference. :)

<comment><USER4> :)

It is not minutiae when someone phrases their posts in a manner that may imply they're taking credit for other people's work.

I didn't mind spending a few minutes because I respect all wikipedians who created and maintained the bitcoin article.

I wanted to help you understand, but now see it is futile. I would hope that the Wikipedia personality whose name is the abbreviation of the enlightened Pratyekabuddha ("a lone buddha", "a buddha on their own" or "a private buddha" [1]) would understand, but apparently I am talking to the personality "contingencies".

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, those 'top' statistics are quite depressing. Mainly films, celebrities, conspiracies, war, death and missing airplanes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this implying that its popularity exploded on the 7th?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you have an inner monologue while programming? - <AUTHOR> Someone on a thread here the other day mentioned that loud music is good to listen to while programming as it drowns out the inner monologue. I found this odd, as this is the last thing I would want to do. I think constantly in words when I'm programming, coaching myself through what I'm doing. I prefer, then, silence, for working. If there is music on in the office it annoys the hell out of me and stops me focussing.<p>So I was wondering what other - much better - programmers do. Do you let the voice switch off and do it by feel? Is not doing this what is holding me back? <comment><USER2> I think its also the reason why alot of programmers prefer EDM or music that contains no lyrics to be able to listen to themselves more. But I do feel like there is also a connection with inner monologue and when making something.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have words and phrases I say at all stages of programming. I've never made a list of them, but I should. They repeat, a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Expletives?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I visualize the algorithm flow and system state, and manipulate them symbolically. I don't really notice my internal dialogue, neither positively nor negatively.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to have my ear buds in - listening to rock and typing to the beat of the drums.</comment>


Napoleon's "Englich" Lessons - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/napoleons-englich-lessons/ <comment><USER2> "Even in his own language, [he] had a way of garbling proper nouns; as for foreign words, he pronounced them just as he pleased. Once they left his mouth, whatever way he had pronounced them, they remained forever that, because he had, once and for all, lodged them in his head in that way." It sounds like my wife...

<comment><USER3> Actually sounds like someone I know who has been diagnosed as having SLI (although such diagnosis is often variable) [https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/specific-language- impairmen...](https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/specific-language-impairment)

once they've chosen a word or phrase for something it is a lot of work to undo that choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating to see such an obviously intelligent brain at work under such unusual circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER5> Secondary language learning is a frustration that spans the ages :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Napoleon's tomb in Paris is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is unreadable in mobile Firefox.

<comment><USER8> Opened to post this. The text is cut off and wont scroll, why do sites break such basic stuff in this day and age arghh</comment></comment>


Procter & Gamble Launches Widget To Convert Clicks into Water - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/10/25/pg-water-widget/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

<comment><USER2> Isn't Mashable just a bit embarrassed about acting as an unpaid arm of P&G's PR department?

Obviously, the widget is converting anything into water; what's really happening is that P&G has decided to donate some water, if and only if they can corral enough folks into generating publicity for them.

 _Because P &G is responsible for the actual "donations," bloggers can spend their time writing and producing great stories instead of sending out e-mails to ask for donations, which makes the contest more about helping the cause than promoting oneself._

No, the contest is more about promoting P&G. And it is embarrassing to see a press release taken at face value.</comment>


Pilots Strike at Cargo Carrier Serving DHL, Amazon.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/pilots-strike-at-cargo-carrier-serving-dhl-amazon-com-1479821378 <comment><USER3> WSJ has no details on why the strike happened, says an "unspecified" number of flights for Amazon (actually 35/day) and even seems out of date.. since the court order ABX attempted to get was already dismissed.

Each of the pilots has worked an average of 32 emergency days so far this year (days they would have had off). In just the first 3 months of this year, 40% of captains exceeded their emergency work days.. so it's possible there are no captains or first officers on ABXs payroll with emergency work days remaining. ABX says this is a minor contractual dispute, so they should be forced back to work (along with more emergency days) and it should be resolved through arbitration/mediation. The judge didn't agree. And the issue has been ongoing for a year and half.

This article has more detail: [http://aviationtribune.com/airlines/north- america/pilots-str...](http://aviationtribune.com/airlines/north- america/pilots-strike-abx-air/)

<comment><USER4> Apparently, the pilots' contract says that flight time scheduled on an emergency basis is supposed to be repaid with compensatory time off.

Clearly, from the sheer amount of emergency scheduling, the company simply does not employ enough pilots to honor all of its contract obligations. ABX needs to immediately expand its permanent pilot workforce by about 15%, and _still_ hire additional temporary contractors to get through the end-year holiday season.

<comment><USER5> But that'd cost money and eat into profits /s

EDIT: I don't care who you are, abusing labor for profits is not morally acceptable.

<comment><USER6> The airline industry seems particularly rough. I assume it's because of the high cost of just entering the business. I was on a United Express (ie - <USER2> carrier operating under United's name) flight once and sat next to a pilot. I was listening to him talk about their imminent strike and contract negotiations and it just seemed like a bummer. Basically, the minor carrier is only big enough to contract out to one major carrier, which is also all that's economically feasible since the crew need uniforms of the major airline and the plane can't be repainted with every flight to represent another carrier.

With their dependence on United established, United then failed to pay the minor carrier. This caused the minor carrier to go delinquent on bills, salaries, etc. United then agreed to immediately backpay everything if the minor carrier agreed to salary cuts across the board. If they didn't, then United would hold out paying until a court made them.

This is made all the more insulting because United, et al, ask these same pilots not to wear their uniforms when using their food stamps.

<comment><USER7> This tactic is common across businesses. Quite a few publishers in the game industry have pulled the same stunt and when the developer goes under re-hire everyone to work on the title at a lower rate.

Most publishing contracts have a clause the the publisher gets source/assets in the event of a developer bankruptcy.

<comment><USER8> Without statutory protection it's a race to the bottom. We can't expect everyone to just duke it out in the courts to sort everything out. Clearly that gives yet another advantage to big pocketed corporations. But it seems the US prefers it this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a way the title is almost misleading - not the fault of most articles though - because the carrier is attempting to use the US Court System to block the pilots going on strike. So, while yes they may "go on Strike" it's part of a longer process. Personally I know which entity I'm pulling for, so long-term I'll have to file away the result as educational no matter which side gets their way.

<comment><USER10> The text of the linked article seems to match the headline... the article says that the strike is in-progress and planes are grounded:

 _The pilots are picketing ABX Air, a subsidiary of Air Transport Services Group Inc., and aren't flying scheduled routes, the union said Tuesday. ATSG has 58 freighter aircraft in its fleet, including 50 widebody Boeing 767 planes._

 _Pilots aren't crossing the picket lines, which means planes are unable to leave an Amazon hub in Wilmington, Ohio, and a DHL hub in Cincinnati, said a person familiar with the matter._

The carrier said they are seeking a court order to end the work stoppage, but it hasn't been granted yet and it's not at all clear that it will be (at least, not according to the article):

 _Air Transport Services Group said it is trying to end what it calls an illegal work stoppage. ABX Air President John Starkovich said the airline is seeking a court order to force the pilots back to work._

<comment><USER11> > ABX Air President John Starkovich said the airline is seeking a court order > to force the pilots back to work.

How are these kinds of court orders possible in a free country, with largely at-will employment? Employees are not slaves.

<comment><USER3> Basically the idea is rail (and later airlines) are critical national infrastructure, and the country should not be brought to a standstill over minor contract disputes. Before the law, here's what would happen: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877)

So the law requires minor disputes to be resolved through arbitration or mediation, instead of with a strike. ABX is saying this is a minor dispute, the union says it's a major dispute. The judge agreed with the union.

Even if the employees were forced back to work, they can still quit. So there's no slavery here.

<comment><USER12> IMHO, if the courts are being used to break the strike they should also be used to arbitrate the dispute and make the resolution binding. Make it dangerous to try to use the government to prosecute your own labor relations problem because they could find in favor of the unions and force you to honor time off promises or raise pay or whatever it is the union is striking over. And of course if the union is the one being unreasonable then we have today's situation where the workers are told to get back to work and the Union is told to pound sand.

<comment><USER3> Right now, the NLRB does that. The board uses administrative law judges, and they can be appealed to the US court of appeals or the US supreme court.

It's so similar to what you're suggesting, I'm not quite sure what the advantage of changing it would be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I so misinterpreted that headline - for a moment I though military aircraft had attacked a cargo ship!

<comment><USER14> I had the same thought, and closed the article after realizing it. I suppose that still benefits the authoring website...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please stop posting paywalled articles. There are all kinds of arguments for paying for quality news and whatever, but I'll never pay for WSJ and I simply don't care enough to bother with circumvention. If people want to try the paywall thing let them build the wall. Lets stop peeking over the top though shall we?

<comment><USER16> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

I do wish that paywall articles could be tagged as such though.

<comment><USER17> Maybe if there was a little more encouragement of non-paywalled submissions, where possible?

Here's a Bloomberg article that seems to cover mostly the same ground as this WSJ piece, for example: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/pilot- str...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/pilot-strike-could- hurt-amazon-s-air-operation-during-holidays)

Sometimes the WSJ or NYT or whoever just has something to offer that others do not. In many cases, though, it seems like there's other paywall-free reporting that could work basically as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An Opinionated Project Template for Data Science in Python - <AUTHOR> http://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/ <comment><USER2> I like this conceptually. I am not knowledgeable enough on frameworks to speak to the technical aspects of the design.</comment>


How to Attend a Conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.trevormckendrick.com/how-to-attend-a-conference/ <comment><USER2> The 'listen first' approach is a good general rule for socialising too. Most people like talking about themselves and what they do, and they'll like you more if you ask them about themselves, even if you're not actually that interested.

<comment><USER3> But... I'm genuinely not interested!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good strategy.

I've also found that a lot of people fail to follow up after exchanging business cards-- so I make sure that I do the following up. Even if I don't have much to say, if someone gives me their business card I'll shoot them a short email saying it was good to meet them. You never know when that contact is going to become useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's amazing to me how few people follow up. What's the point of the conference if you don't actually create relationships?

</comment></comment><comment> alok-g 1\. The exhibitors come with the purpose of selling their stuff, not buying yours. So it naturally works best to hear what they have to sell first, while you genuinely try to figure how it may be useful to you. Whether or not you know if and how you may use their offering, ask them questions based on what you are trying to achieve, in the process making them also think about how their offering could be suited to help you. They are still trying to win a sale but by this time a rapport is well established and it is easy to get purely to your own work. Even if no potential deal is sensed, I have generally come out with some useful help or advice.

2\. You can take notes on the business card itself the moment you are out of the conversation. It is sometimes easy to loose track by the evening even given the number of people you may meet during the day. You should be aware of this [1] though.

3\. It is a lot easier for people to remember your face than your name when they first meet with you. So absolutely consider having your picture on your business card. If they understand the core of what you are trying to do, they'll also remember it clearly together with a memory of "some guy" who explained it to them. So include your tagline or pitch on the business card itself, on the rear if needed.

[1] <http://www.linguist.com/services-japanese-card.htm>

</comment><comment><USER5> If I get your business card, I usually write what we discussed on the back of the card. Then, when I enter your contact information into my contact list, I also enter the notes. This may seem obvious, or it may seem like a crutch, but it makes me look like I'm naturally "good with people," which is definitely not a a talent I was born with.

<comment><USER6> I like Evernote Hello for this as all the info/notes is digital and synced across my devices. No cards to lose, no ink to smudge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> interesting that you mention this topic (quite surprising actually...). Not long ago, Boris (founder of The Next Web) posted an article explaining why it makes sense to spend so much for conferences [http://thenextweb.com/voice/2013/03/19/want-a-free-ticket- fo...](http://thenextweb.com/voice/2013/03/19/want-a-free-ticket-for-tnw- conference-no-you-dont/)

I disagree and make my case <http://giacomoballi.com/the-value-of- conferences/>

</comment><comment><USER8> For those interested in the topic, here's a guest post on swombat.com by Kevin McDonagh, on the same topic:

[http://swombat.com/2011/2/25/kevin-mcdonagh-how-to- attend-a-...](http://swombat.com/2011/2/25/kevin-mcdonagh-how-to-attend-a- conference)

Very different approach, but Kevin does seem to be able to use it very successfully (and despite the machine-gun-like appearance of it, he's a very laid back, friendly, chilled out guy).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I love your stuff at swombat.com btw. Please keep it coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also, I've found that many of the best connections occur at the events/parties/meetups surrounding the days of a conference. I live in Portland and OSCON is pretty expensive, but you can get a free Expo pass, wander around and get some free beer, and accomplish quite a bit without registering. Same with SXSW interactive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. It was hard to get plugged into these events on my first trip at this conference. That's why I took a few people out to eat afterwords. It was easier to organize a 1 on 1 with less notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a skill that should be taught to everyone. I'm in neuroscience, and our meetings can be super awkward at times. Thank god for booze :) It's a shame that people don't speak about this as much though. We have a huge conference every year (~36k people) and yet many of them have no idea how to deal with a conference. Just an FYI, flying in to give a talk/poster/presentation and then flying out does not = a good conference. Gotta meet people, be persistent, organize your plan of attack, and meet people. Then meet some more people. If you have a hard time not being social awkward, drink. Then meet people:)

</comment><comment><USER11> I was all ready to be snarky about this (don't make sexist jokes, etc.), until I actually read the article; I have a lot of respect for your focus and success. Thanks for this article!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Arrive drunk

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's one way. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the idea of writing down the details you remember. Because, like you said, you know that they are not doing the tracking, they will thank you for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Trevor's blog posts are some of the best I've seen. I always walk away knowing something I didn't. Excellent signal to noise ratio.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you guys have advice for what to put on business cards?

</comment><comment><USER16> Don't forget to make snide jokes about the male member in the presence of a media hound.</comment>


Visual Model-Based Reinforcement Learning as a Path Towards Generalist Robots - <AUTHOR> https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/11/30/visual-rl/ <comment><USER2> Those videos of the computer's prediction of events that _haven't happened yet_ are fascinating.

<comment><USER3> You might like this talk by David Cox called Predictive Coding Models of Perception: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P0yVuoATjzs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P0yVuoATjzs)</comment></comment>


Offer HN: I'll build it, you design it - <AUTHOR>

If you're a designer with an idea but haven't been able to team up with a developer I may be able to help you out.
I have some time on my hands so I'm offering 24 hours of rails development (spread over a week or so) to help build your mvp.  Post your idea here and I'll choose one to work on from the top 3 most voted ideas.
- you'll need a git repo I can commit to
- you'll retain full ownership over everything
- you'll have to do the design, I'm offering rails development only
No charge. No catch.  I just thought it would be fun to collaborate with someone and hopefully build something people will use. <comment><USER2> IT for the Blind. (non-profit) Basically like Kickstarter, but applicants will be asking for (pooled) funding for always-too-expensive technology that helps overcome vision problems. Check out Humanware.com for example of this kind of gear.

The main problem with this kind of technology is that it remains very expensive, even as tech in general keeps getting cheaper. A CCTV that would help Grandma write checks and read Christmas cards may cost $1500 on the low end. The market-dominant screen reader applications have been around $800 since I was an accessibility program manager in the 90s. The main problem is that with such a small market they don't get good economies of scale. Some have estimated that we may currently reach as little as 5% of the affected population, and cost is a big factor.

Fundraising for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and their many clones, is ridiculously easy. It's a pitch everyone can understand. Well, guide dogs get many blind people outside their house, but technology lets them keep middle- class jobs, interact with the world via the internet, etc. In terms of fundraising, it's a fairly powerful pitch, but there is no equivalent central non-profit that just focuses on IT. Most of the non-profits out there focus on skills training or fighting the causes of blindness. IT for the Blind will first determine whether applicants can get funding from schools and employers (as required by law), then pass on the many requests that aren't addressed by existing sources.

I've got board members / founders and a UI spec, but haven't been focusing on this one because my consulting work has been keeping me busy. I'll be able to work on it full time in the summer, and having a MVP would make initial donor fundraising much easier.

By the way, you should assume that donated work would be tax deductible, if we get 501(c)(3) status this year. :) Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea and a worthy cause. What do you think about (eventually) releasing the code as open source?

I'm in the UK so US tax regulations aren't relevant.

<comment><USER2> I'm definitely open to sharing code. I also have friends in the UK who have deep experience in this area and can give advice on setting up a non-profit over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you have availability... probably more long term than short.. My buddy is looking for a good dev to work with the music industry. He's building fan sites with gaming elements. He has a few medium names signed up: Wale, Diggy and others at Rock Nation. He's seed FFF funded and raising cash. I'd work but I'm caught up with <http://UpOut.com>

Shoot me a PM martincshen [at] gmail.com if you're interested in it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's very kind of you. I'm just learning Rails so would appreciate the help with my mvp.

I designed and prototyped a text-to-speech service - <http://audiothink.com> \- and need help making it work.

It's on heroku. If you provide me your email address I will add you as a collaborator to firstname.lastname@example.com:seirt.git

Otherwise here is the identical repo on github: email@example.com:ryanm/audiothink.git

I was thinking of using Wufoo to handle payments. That may be out-of-scope for an mvp, but if it isn't I can add you as a collaborator on Wufoo as well.

My email address is firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to discuss. To anyone else reading this, I could sure use a co-founder with some Rails skills - please reach out to me if you're interested in partnering.

</comment><comment><USER5> Simple, inexpensive, drop.io-style assignment management for educators. E-mail me for more info if interested in the project - maxbrown at umich.edu.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where do we contact you? Possible on email? I have the idea ready, how it's gonna work out - ready.

I think I can learn rails enf to do the views and design part later - but core is what I need help in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd prefer if people post their ideas here.

<comment><USER6> Idea: Take reading material from your Instapaper & Twitter (more services later) and suggest you the best ones out of all to read.

I don't have time to read 1000 links that cross my way and most of them I miss out. So just gives me the best and improves suggestions based on reading habits.

I've the factors I decided to rank the articles. Can mail you the flow-chart or something?

<comment><USER2> Do you have an algorithm for this, or an app idea? Some folks at the MIT Media Lab worked on this concept in the early 90s. See for example [http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/Letizia/AIA/AIA.h...](http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/Letizia/AIA/AIA.html). I mention it only because it might be relevant intellectual property; I don't claim to be up to date in that area.

<comment><USER6> I have the parameters for it sorted out. So basically the concept for algo is in place but not implemented yet.

I am not sure about IP, that ways somebody might have concept of commenting IP'ed. =/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Which project did you choose?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't yet but I plan to tonight

<comment><USER7> Please keep us updated when you have time. I have been interested in doing something similar to this, possibly in exchange for some design work on one of my own projects.

Now I've just got to find the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Official Startup School '07 wiki - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php <comment><USER2> Nice. We were having some problems with our ISP, which has caused ~2 hrs of downtime on bluwiki :(

If someone wants to volunteer to condense everything onto one wiki, I'm sure that'd be appreciated. Otherwise, I guess we could link between the two wikis or something...

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of us have been using <http://startup_weekend.bluwiki.com/> to organize for the last couple weeks.

It's also seemingly down right now, which may actually be a sign to move our information to the official Wiki. Thanks Jessica.

(edit: Spoke too quickly. It's up again now.)</comment>


Creating a Pencil Effect in SVG - <AUTHOR> https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2020/02/creating-pencil-effect-in-svg.html <comment><USER2> Very cool. Game developers get all the fun problems :)

If anyone gets interested in the SVG format, I've also found this to be a very useful resource:

[https://svgpocketguide.com/book/](https://svgpocketguide.com/book/)

<comment><USER3> Personally I found the SVG specification very readable and understandable as well. It also has the benefit of accurately describing what the renderer should do (a lot of resources out there are outdated or inaccurate).

<comment><USER4> The problem is the spec is so massive that different renderers support different feature sets and don't always render content the same.

<comment><USER3> As long as you target web browsers, things generally work out fine, in my experience, with very few gaps in the feature set. Bugs, however ... Safari is seemingly constantly broken (as was Edge until a year ago or so, but then they scrapped EdgeHTML anyway), Chrome and Firefox sometimes seem to compete on who will break things the most in trying to make rendering faster (as long as rendering doesn't have to be correct it can be made nearly infinitely fast ...).

<comment><USER5> My gripe with browsers is that they don't implement the linearRGB interpolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> also gooey effects!

[https://css-tricks.com/gooey-effect/](https://css-tricks.com/gooey-effect/)

[https://tympanus.net/Development/CreativeGooeyEffects/player...](https://tympanus.net/Development/CreativeGooeyEffects/player.html)

<comment><USER7> Funny I discovered that effect last week in react-spring examples: [https://codesandbox.io/embed/8zx4ppk01l](https://codesandbox.io/embed/8zx4ppk01l)

<comment><USER8> Reminds me of fission/fusion of large (so like liquid drops) atomic nuclei[1]. But for the long-range force being attractive.

Perhaps one might reverse that, and chase it around the box, forcing fusion?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVKZDmYrTHo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVKZDmYrTHo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The other two posts he linked to here were real interesting as well:

* [https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2016/11/this-is-where...](https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2016/11/this-is-where-i-draw-line.html?m=1)

* [https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2018/12/hand-drawn-li...](https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2018/12/hand-drawn-lines-revisited.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER10> Neat, was just looking at this SVG filter powered watercolor effect earlier today again: [https://observablehq.com/@veltman/watercolor](https://observablehq.com/@veltman/watercolor)

<comment><USER11> Wow. Really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen several pencil-like textures, and this one looks great! Thank you for sharing this effect.

Also TIL SVG has displacement maps and noise.

</comment><comment><USER13> The series is amazing, I submitted a different article earlier and there is a comment of mine giving shortcuts to different aspects of the map generation. See here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406356)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish there was an SVG2 that was more like modern 3D graphics APIs. My druthers: vertex stores, index buffers, stroke & shapes paths, and then both "standard" (prebaked) and "user-defined" (shader) shaders for texturing the strokes & shapes.

<comment><USER15> There was some work on adding shaders to CSS filters, but I don't know if it went anywhere.

[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/03/Introducti...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2013/03/Introduction- to-Custom-Filters-aka-CSS-Shaders)

<comment><USER16> It went to CSS Paint API.

Just use render to texture from WebGL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's up with all the bitmap images. Was expecting to see at least one SVG image.

<comment><USER18> Click through to the codepen links at the end. They're rendering in Firefox and Chrome for me, though slightly differently, and with Safari I don't see the lines at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is both really cool and immediately useful.

I've been playing around making a HTML/CSS blackboard for TV displays etc. I used a black background, a semi-transparent PNG mask for the dust/old writing effect and used some handwriting fonts. I applied a slight blur to the text, but the effect isn't quite right.

I'm going to try using SVG text and applying similar filters to produce a chalk effect. I hadn't thought of that approach, so thanks for the great post!

</comment><comment><USER20> Reading an article this in-depth and pure on blogger brings me back to 2004, the good ol' days

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting.

Any ideas on how to achieve a pen or pencil like effect when applied to images of text, emulating ink properties? Kind of neural style for text.

</comment><comment><USER22> Side question: How do you create the "paper" texture? Or is it just an image here?</comment>


Edward Snowden's Privacy Tips: "Get Rid of Dropbox," Avoid Facebook and Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/11/edward-snowden-new-yorker-festival/ <comment><USER3> I use DropBox and Google Drive a lot, but I have scripts to encrypt data into ZIP files for anything that needs to be protected. It really is not much of a hassle.

I have a SpiderOak account, but don't use it as often.

Speaking of protecting data: I am surprised at how many companies seem to keep their software in private repositories on github and bitbucket. That seems like a security hole, if software if the core of your business.

<comment><USER4> When I started using DropBox, I made an encrypted directory (using EncFS) for the stuff I cared about keeping private. This keeps the real-time sync element of DropBox, and avoids needing to reupload all of the encrypted files whenever one changes (although it does prevent incremental updates on individual files).

As an added bonus, these files are now encrypted on my machine as well.

<comment><USER5> The problem with your solution is that you have the closed source drop box app on your machine, and it could be reading anything, including the contents of those files before they are encrypted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Once again, I would like to recommend Tahoe-LAFS [0] (which anyone can install on their own on their servers or use the paid service from the creators of Tahoe-LAFS [1]). One can even store "shares" securely on Google Drive and Dropbox though it is a bit involved.

[0] [http://tahoe-lafs.org/](http://tahoe-lafs.org/)

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

<comment><USER7> Premise: I'm not interested in setting up a server and maintaining it, but I am interested in storing my data on services that can promise, or even better, guarantee, privacy and security.

I have looked at Tahoe-LAFS for a few years now, along with the paid service. In my observations over the last few years, the paid service is getting almost zero attention from the creators. Initially they had it at an enormous cost (like $1 per GB per month) compared to other competitors. In the recent times it has moved to other schemes that are still expensive for many people ($25 per month).

Their products, or rather services, are rarely updated and remain in the TBA (to be announced) status for far too long while other competitors (the "privacy conscious" ones like SpiderOak that cannot truly guarantee it like Tahoe-LAFS can as well as the "what's privacy?" services like Dropbox, Crashplan, Box, Google, Microsoft and Apple, to name just a few) are moving ahead much faster and bringing down prices.

I'm willing to pay a decent enough premium to help privacy guaranteeing services survive and thrive, but this kind of pricing and sluggishness in introducing services from leastauthority.com makes it seem like they don't really want many users to sign up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I won't be getting rid of Dropbox, Google services, or Facebook anytime soon. I disagree with government spying, and would like to see major reform, but (disagreeing with Snowden) I actually have nothing to hide. I'm not excusing the companies that provide data to governments, but I like the services they provide. They solve problems I want solved, so I will continue to use them.

Edit: Why all the down votes? If you disagree, let's talk about it.

<comment><USER9> The downvotes are probably because "The nothing to hide" line is such a tired argument.

Do you have blinds on your windows? Do you mind if we place a camera in your bathroom? Why? You have nothing to hide.

<comment><USER10> I think there is a subtle distinction between the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear; ergo privacy invasion is good" meme, and what was said above ("privacy invasion is bad, but I am not concerned with invasion if _my_ privacy because I have nothing to hide"). Which is not to say there's nothing to object to in the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What should we use then? If someone tells me to change X program, please, give me alternatives, otherwise, I'll stick with that.

PS: Quite ironic to see him saying "get rid of Google", through an Hangouts session.

<comment><USER12> Did you read the article? They talk about an alternative at length.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.dbms2.com/2014/09/15/misconceptions-about- privacy...](http://www.dbms2.com/2014/09/15/misconceptions-about-privacy-and- surveillance/)

While I'm a huge Snowden fan, he's a bit wrong at times about encryption, in that it solves a smaller part of the problem than he sometimes suggests.

<comment><USER14> Dropbox was revealed as a participant of the PRISM program: anything you store there is searchable. The same is true of Facebook and Google and Yahoo, Apple, all cell phone carriers, all internet carriers and other cloud storage companies including Skydrive/Onedrive.

<comment><USER15> Dropbox is mentioned in the PRISM slide deck as being a desired participant, not an actual participant. I worked at Dropbox when those slides were released, and none of us on the operations team knew what it could possibly be talking about.

Every company that wants to continue to operate in the US has to comply with US government orders, that is just a fact of life. No one in the technology industry is super excited about going to jail or having their equipment seized. But the kind of compliance that PRISM implies is not something that you just sneak in without anyone noticing.

There was an internal accounting of every server and network connection -- it would have required a shadow ops team running shadow datacenters to sneak it by us.

<comment><USER16> > Every company that wants to continue to operate in the US has to comply with > US government orders, that is just a fact of life. No one in the technology > industry is super excited about going to jail or having their equipment > seized

I understand this and it is not contrary to my point. I'm actually trying to point out that the companies Snowden mentions have been specifically mentioned by NSA slides/documents and I think this has colored his suggestions. He suggests moving to others - but ultimately anything he suggests will get subverted if enough interesting material gets stored there. Not that that in itself is a reason not to adopt new technologies.

> To sneak it by us...

They aren't sneaking it by you as a company. They cooperate with the corporation and its internal organizational model to create a solution that fulfills the requirements. Most employees, however, can be blissfully ignorant.

I think you overestimate your ability to know such things. I know plenty of Google employees that had no idea about Google's involvement, Facebook employees with no idea about Facebook's involvement, Apple employees with no idea about Apple's involvement and Microsoft employees with no idea about Microsoft involvement.

I also work at a large company, and would have thought I would have seen clear indications of PRISM (& other) activity. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Condolezza Rice (of all people) joined the board of Dropbox.

This is their full time job and their professional expertise. I'm sure that PRISM infrastructure (or beta versions) were accounted for in full.

Edit: It's not condusive to conversation to downvote something merely because you disagree with it. The downvote button (and upvote respectively) are for designating whether you believe something is irrelevant to (/contributes to) the topic.

<comment><USER15> It's always hard to be absolutely certain about what goes on at a company, but I'm pretty confident about Dropbox not participating in PRISM (defined as a government system that automatically collects considerable data from within a company's private systems).

I haven't been at Dropbox for a year now, but for most of the time I was there I was one of only two SREs that ran the production infrastructure. I knew every piece of server hardware in every datacenter, and what services ran on them. It was my job to qualify and deploy hardware, do the systems level automation, and run the user facing frontends. There is literally no way that something like PRISM could be put in place without my knowledge except by what would amount to sabotage.

Keep in mind that while Dropbox is large for a startup, it only recently surpassed 1,000 employees (150 when I joined). The vast majority of those people are in customer service, and the number of people with access to production is likely still well under 100. For the first five years of the company's life there was one datacenter manager and network engineer (the same person), one SRE up until I was hired, and so on. In operations, we did more with less.

However, this shouldn't make you feel like your data in Dropbox is guaranteed to be safe from prying government eyes. Dropbox can and does comply with government requests -- every company operating in the US does so, or they would not be operating anymore.

I agree with your distaste towards Condoleezza Rice joining the board. It doesn't look good, but I also doubt that she has any day-to-day authority or responsibilities whatsoever.

<comment><USER16> I'm still not confident. Don't actually answer these questions (NDA and all), but how much traffic do you guys get? Could you possibly inspect it all? Have you inspected the hardware itself? Can you trust the switching equipment?It's reasonable to think that collection happens at the pipes between data centers (like some of the Google collections - which didn't involve any of the hardware present although that collection program wasn't a cooperative one).

Some of the lengths they go for these programs are really impressive. It was revealed that AT&T had secret rooms built that blend into the building infrastructure but MITM every packet that gets sent through (what looks like) normal infrastructure lines.

At some point it feels like you're being asked to prove a negative. That's the thing about discussing secret operations. And it is why the documents are so important.

I wonder now that the Snowden leaks are getting dated about a year old (and it being a few since you've left Dropbox) how much has changed.

Finally, the other companies on Snowden's list are certifiably on the list of already onboarded products, so it's hard to trust them.

> I also doubt that she has any day-to-day authority or responsibilities > whatsoever

For example she assigned a new CFO for Dropbox. I doubt she has day-to-day authority (she's a busy woman), but being on the board and selecting upper management is a lot of power.

<comment><USER15> You're right, there's no way to be completely certain. It's like the adage: "Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead." When someone else has access to your data, there always exists the possibility that it can be used in some way you don't like.

What I wanted to convey is that user data was not used (at that time) in an untoward fashion by Dropbox. Everyone that I worked with took privacy and security very seriously, and we knew that user trust is tough to earn and easy to lose. Handing data to the government automatically, without a warrant or confirmation of authority, would not have been something that anyone was interested in doing. But the government does have ways of making you do things that you don't want to do (see: Yahoo).

The biggest problem that I have with all of the Snowden revelation stuff is this: people seem quick to blame the companies who are complicit rather than the government who is the root of the problem. The government's efforts against security and privacy are the biggest threat the technology industry has ever faced, and if left unaddressed I believe it will inevitably lead to the US losing it's leadership position.

One last point, regarding Dropbox's CFO. Sujay had been at Dropbox for over three years (since 2010) and was involved in the CFO search for a long time. That they picked him for the role says a few things, but I don't see it as Condoleezza stacking the deck.

<comment><USER16> Not too sure about the quote based on it's other implications - and I don't think it's exactly the appropriate analogy here...

As an aside the NSA keeps secrets between tens of thousands of employees (although I hear it's Orwellian and depressing to work there). You can keep secrets between small and even large groups of people. You just have to have the right processes and leverages.

'Punishing' companies that collaborate with the government has a few parallel goals:

1.) Wanting to use something that has not yet been purposefully subverted.

2.) Give the companies a real argument for resisting programs.

3.) Speak out against the practices (since it isn't on a ballot anywhere).

Yes, ultimately it isn't the companies' faults (however the complicit few with blinders on for profit motive should be shunned for not putting up a fight).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If i do all of these how do i share documents or search for information on the web? What ever the alternative is going to have the same issues as Dropbox, Facebook or Google. I cannot build my own versions of these!

<comment><USER18> You could build your own dropbox. It's not that complex. A social network and a search engine would be a bit harder.

<comment><USER19> > You could build your own dropbox. It's not that complex.

It would be incredibly complex to build your own Dropbox. Maybe it wouldn't be "complex" to use rsync to automatically copy files over to some other drive if that's all you wanted, but Dropbox does way more than that and I don't plan on dropping Dropbox for some half baked solution that requires more effort to set up, maintenance and ends up in lost data because on the one in a million chance the FBI might want to look at pictures of my pets.

I don't know how I feel about government surveillance, but I sure as hell don't see it worth to trade some supposed imperceptible theoretical harm with tons of actual effort and inconvenience.

<comment><USER20> [http://owncloud.org/](http://owncloud.org/)

You don't have to _write_ your own Dropbox. You just have to _host_ one.

And even beside the question of government surveillance there is the advantage that it is under your control, not somebody else's. File sharing is so generic that the lockin opportunity is less than it is in other domains (like social networking) but there still can be advantage to being the owner and not merely a renter.

<comment><USER19> With owncloud if there's a fire in your house, or your cat knocks over a pitcher of water over your server, you lose your stuff. Plus it would be slow as dirt, since upload is limited by your ISP, and especially slow if you're traveling to some other continent. If you use a third party host you're basically as vulnerable as you would be on Dropbox, plus you have to maintain the thing and it's only a subset of the features. Again actual inconvenience for something (NSA snooping) you can't be sure affects you even in the least.

And beyond just being a subset of the features, it doesn't have Dropbox's ecosystem. Can you auto-sync your Oreilly Media books automatically with own cloud right from the Oreilly website? Does 1Password automatically sync with it? Is there a screen sharing app that automatically pushes to owncloud? Does it have a push API? IFTTT support? I, and others, use all these with Dropbox and it probably doesn't make sense to give them up because the NSA is the boogeyman FUD.

<comment><USER21> If you're specifically targeted by the state (especially extralegally), you're screwed. Personally, I just want to be in control of my data, and don't want others (government or otherwise) to be indexing or 2 clicks away from my data.

As you mention, hosting OwnCloud removes your cat/fire scenario. Even by hosting it at a US ISP, you are significantly reducing the likelihood that the government can index or be two clicks away from your data, and your host (unlike Google/Dropbox) isn't likely to be mining your data for future business models. Hosting it at an ISP in a country that respects individuals privacy (e.g. Iceland) means your data won't be in the government's hands unless you're directly targeted by a state actor.

A subset of the features is, for me, an advantage. Hosting my password database myself is a huge feature. My Mac's built in screen capture writes stuff to disk. I can set that to be the Owncloud folder. No third party app required! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does no one else see the irony in Snowden warning everyong to avoid Google.. via a Google+ Hangout?

<comment><USER23> If it was something intended to be public there is no harm in Google having it (they will scrape it off the web anyway) as the NSA are welcome to publicly access the content.

Most people don't treat Dropbox/Google/Facebook (non-public) usage as being equivalent to CCing the government but maybe they should.

<comment><USER24> Pro-tip: anything you put on any service can and probably will at some point scroll past the eyes of a random sysadmin who's debugging why the database keeps crashing under load.

Most people are worried about "disclosure" \- which is something Uber violated for a PR stunt at a party recently - i.e. we're usually okay wandering past the window naked, because we assume it's extraordinarily unlikely that someone will be pointing a camera at it right then, or that it wouldn't be more embarrassing for them to try and yell "hey that person is naked in the window I saw them!"

Conversely, we wouldn't be happy if someone did take photos, then uploaded them to the web, and showed them to all our friends etc.

In a practical sense, this is how people act. It's how you have to act - <USER2> would be practically neurotic to act any other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't agree with his logic here :

"When you say, 'I have nothing to hide,' you're saying, 'I don't care about this right.'"

How does he arrive at that conclusion? I have nothing to hide, but I still don't support the violation of these rights. Does he suggest that we instead support some other service or method under the illusion that we are immune from NSA spying?

<comment><USER26> I think it's pretty clear he means people who say "I have nothing to hide. They can look at whatever they want"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Even with that encryption, he said law enforcement officials can still ask for warrants that will give them complete access to a suspect's phone, which will include the key to the encrypted data."

What, pray tell, is the mechanism by which the key will be obtained? Snowden is bloviating here.

<comment><USER28> If a key is stored on your phone, it can be obtained the same way any other data is obtained. If the key is password protected, a key logger would yield the password.

Edit: I forgot to check to whom I replied; "lern_to_spel" shows up on all of the Snowden threads.

<comment><USER27> The key is not stored in the clear, and the device password is entered before a keylogger can run. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/even-golden-key- can-be...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/10/even-golden-key-can-be- stolen-thieves-simple-facts-apples-encryption-decision)

<comment><USER14> It's called "key escrow" and there are tons of ways to do it.

Look up US patents under 380/286 classification.

<comment><USER27> I know what key escrow is. Nitrogen didn't claim that Apple does that, and for good reason -- there is absolutely zero evidence that they do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Authorea: Write research papers inside your browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.authorea.com/

<comment><USER2> Landing page comment: "Write research papers, right inside your browser" As a researcher, I immediately ask "Why?" What is wrong with my Latek utils and fabulous MS Word that my research lab gave me for free. Then, where are some templates for the journals/conferences I could possible use with Authorea. You can reach far more people if you included templates from most journals/conferences. Then I can see this taking off.. Otherwise it is nothing but a fancy text-editor to me with Latek support and is trying to be like arXiv. As it is, arXiv has a lot of noisy publications.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. This is still work in progress, and we are planning to improve the export function to publication-ready format (as you suggest). This said, we want to bring the authoring process to the web principally for 2 reasons: 1) It makes collaboration easier 2) It expands dramatically the possibilities of sharing scientific content respect to a 'static' PDF format, ultimately impacting transparency and reproducibility of scientific results.

<comment><USER2> I just want templates for different journals/conferences for the same topic. All their formats are annoying, but at the end of the day, every PI/researchers wants to publish in something that is peer-reviewed. In a university setting, paying to read/download a publication is an after-thought. The entire transparency/reproducibility of scientific results is a good goal but is very long-term goal.

Some entities like ScholarOne/Cambridge Journals wants you to individually upload your images and your text separately. Since a user is just writing their paper on Authorea, maybe, you can keep track of what journals they are aiming for and reformat the publication for multiple journals in ONE SHOT. That'd be the biggest time saver ever.

At the end, doing research is fun but publishing is a painful process, and you are judged based on publications. Reduce the pain.

<comment><USER3> I totally hear you. And this is part of what we want to accomplish. As for the transparency/reproducibility I do not think this is too much long-term: already now if you prepare a paper on Authorea and publish it on a refereed journal, you can include a link to the Authorea repository. Which means even if the Journal version is static, it links to a 'dynamic' repository which contains the sources of your scientific work. So I believe Authorea is already pretty close to achieving that goal.

<comment><USER2> What if the Journal asks for a transfer of copyright? Does that violate some kind of law/thing for all the previous (including the final) version of the manuscript stored on Authorea? Would the author have to take down their final- manuscript from Authorea so they can transfer the copyright to the publisher/Journal.

<comment><USER4> hi there- by and large, authors are allowed to publish the pre-print and post- print versions of their published manuscripts (pre-print being the version right before editor proof-reading, and post-print any version following publication). Authorea articles are essentially "enriched" pre-prints so they do not interfere with the passing of the copyright to publishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something like this is sorely needed. Google Docs is the best compromise between simplicity and collaboration that my group has come up with, but of course it doesn't have reference support.

It is very visually appealing and has good features. However, for me, it seems very sluggish and unresponsive.

<comment><USER6> This is really neat, a good combination of Markdown & LaTeX.

As one of the founders of <https://www.writelatex.com>, one of the interesting differences is the fact you're editing the "output" file rather than the source - takes a bit of getting used to! Looking forward to seeing it develop :-)

<comment><USER4> Thanks John. Authorea founder here. First off, I have tried writelatex for the first time just a couple of weeks ago and it really works great to create beautiful documents. Great work.

Yes, we (and most scholars in general) are very used to editing a source (Latex mostly) and compiling it to something else (a PDF output, or similar). We are trying to streamline that process using the web as the canvas, and render directly to HTML5. In a way you are right, it feels like you are editing directly the HTML output. Which is fine! Our hope is that researchers, especially the ones who already work and write on the web will quickly get used to such a workflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Our goal is to reinvent the article online.

One thing that really needs to change is that figures need to come to life. While there are a few ways too accomplish this, one is by using javascript libraries such as d3.js to render dynamic images.

As an example of things to come, have a look at: <https://www.authorea.com/522>

Does not work in Firefox at the moment.

<comment><USER8> If it doesn't work in Firefox you're probably not following standards. Why?

<comment><USER7> It uses the sandbox feature for an iframe in html5. It doesn't seem to be supported yet in Firefox. Although if it is I'm sure someone will correct me.

<comment><USER9> <http://caniuse.com/iframe-sandbox>

Might want to update your browser detection script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a great idea and really good implementation. The only thing I'd miss from Google Docs are comments that are not part of a text (in Docs these are rendered on right side of document). You could implement it by come special syntax for comments, which wouldn't render when exported and on site, and in edit mode, it would show just a little icon. GUI option to click somewhere to add comment in this place would make it even easier. It allows further capabilities, like easy inline peer review.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great! One quick comment - the links on the left hand side of an article should only take up enough space to fit the text for the links, so more space can be dedicated to the article.

Ex: <https://www.authorea.com/users/1/articles/483/_show_article>

Otherwise, it looks great - I'm going to be starting to write my thesis soon, and I plan to try this out.

<comment><USER4> thanks for the tip! You are right indeed. Not the best use of whitespace there. We are still polishing up the front end a bit. It would be wonderful if you gave Authorea a try for your thesis. Feel free to get in touch for support as rendering a very long document in the browser may be more cumbersome than regular academic papers.

<comment><USER11> Will do!

I think some other people mentioned this too, but I'd love the ability to connect this to my own git repository so I can store / have access to all of my changes.

<comment><USER4> yep, git access and offline mode are two features that are coming real soon. thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious how easy it's going to be to (1) download the git repo from the backend, and (2) format the articles to meet specific journal requirements for submission.

<comment><USER7> Hi, Authorea co-founder here. A bit surprised to see us on the front page.

1\. Full access to the git repository will be added soon. It wasn't our main concern initially as we wanted it to be easy to work on articles for an academic researcher who wasn't familiar with git.

2\. This currently requires some post-authorea cleanup. We are also working on making this much easier. The main pain point that we are trying to solve currently is making collaboration on articles easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear that these things are planned. I think #2 is really quite important, because if there isn't a simple path to preparing a submission- ready document, then there is still a major point of friction in the process.

<comment><USER3> Hi, Authorea consultant here. I completely agree. It's important to provide a seamless way to export Authorea articles to submission-ready format, for example by including the relevant Journal style file (or even giving users the option to chose from a list). Work in progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Latex is free! Authorea is NOT. This is the main problem I see.

And the second problem, who will write papers in public before publication?

<comment><USER13> These two problems are related - I don't mind having the final product in public (it's bound to get there eventually) and thus not having to pay too much (or even use the free tier), but putting everything in public before publication is insane and I doubt it will be used for anything but blog posts for that reason.

<comment><USER4> hi jclos, I don't think that putting out research content out in the open is insane, as you say. While privacy is indeed a good and a safe idea in a number of contexts, for most research projects, sharing the full sources from the very beginning is only advantageous. For example, less secrecy encourages collaboration, rather than competition. Also, it is a way for authors to claim their ideas and work as soon as they have it. Why wait months before getting something published when we have a fast modern content publication system right in front of our eyes? I have a vision, and I may be wrong. But my vision is to use the web to publish and disseminate scientific content: science you can fork, clone, reproduce, and interact with, from the very first word you jot down in a paper, up to the last equation. My hope is that Authorea is a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER13> I understand, and I agree to some extent, but the truth is that it is too risky.

In my country at least, but I'm sure it is the same for most, researchers survive by putting their quota (fixed by the ministry of research) of publications in well renowned journals. The risk of having someone "steal" your idea (in the very loose definition) and beat you to the publication, for instance by having a bigger research team, thus putting you out of a job, is a real one.

In an ideal world your system would be perfect, putting the advancement of knowledge before everything else (as open source does with software), but researchers have to look out for themselves before all, considering how their performance is evaluated and how that affects their livelihood. Unlike open source software, there aren't a lot of ways to monetize scientific publications. I would enjoy seeing things change, but change is slow to come. Especially in an area as pachydermic and anchored in traditions as academia.

I really like Authorea and I will use it for non-published work, but I feel that limiting private publications so much is going to limit adoption. But then again what do I know, I guess we will see how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The LaTeX support seems very nice. Nice job! The concept of a paper as a DVCS repository is a very natural one, and it's exactly how I would write my papers back in the day.

I'm curious how the "host the data and the code" comes in. Perhaps you're supposed to clone the backing git repository and add the code to that, but I don't see how to do that yet. Early days.

<comment><USER7> Hey, thanks for the compliment! Much appreciated.

If you look at a figure in an article, for example <https://www.authorea.com/483>, you'll notice that the figure reference has been pulled out of the latex source. We did that so that in the online version of an article we can make figures cooler, like attaching data to them. Figures exist in their own folders, and we have big plans for those folders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great answer to all this "open up the papers" movement, and going forward a much better solution than those apps that cropped up for asking for a given research paper. If things remain open, that is. A github for papers sounds great, and an actual natural extension of the idea of github. Whereas github is pragmatic projects, authorea is the step before that.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! And at the same time we can exploit the power of the web, which unfolds into an easier approach to collaboration and a wider range of possibilities in terms of ways to show / plot / share the data and any other products of the scientific research. "Papers" haven't changed at all in the last few hundred years, but research and technology has dramatically. It's time to keep up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> ShareLaTeX is also worth checking out: <https://www.sharelatex.com/>

<comment><USER3> Notice though the big conceptual difference between any online (collaborative) LaTeX editor and Authorea. In Authorea articles are written in a browser and live in the browser (as HTML5 pages). There is a huge potential to be exploited by such a paradigm shift.

<comment><USER17> If I'm writing a paper, it's great for collaboration if it can be written in the browser. Being able to preview my paper in the browser sounds nice too, but to publish it I need to be able to compile it into a PDF.

<comment><USER4> yes, we (scientists and scholars) still rely on the exchange of PDFs to communicate research. This is a pity. The problem is that a scholarly paper in PDF, even when it is on the web, it is essentially a photograph of a (physical, analog) paper. As such, a PDF fails to expose the living, dynamic, interactive nature of research. The baseline motivation for Authorea is to expose such nature: to expose the data underlying plots and images, to allow articles to be forked and cloned, to enable web-native data visualizations, to get version control right, and so on. We are trying to move in this direction!

<comment><USER18> I hear what you are yearning for - I remember trying to convince my supervisor that researchers need to look towards github for progress.

His response stuck with me: While scientific research is continuous and never complete, the whole point of publication is that it is a record in a fixed point in time. The results and discussion cannot be altered, or reused: it is a milestone, a historical record of a novel contribution to knowledge. Sure, you might reanalyse your data, rework an image with new parameters what have you, but the nature of sharing your work with your scientific community requires it to be static.

<comment><USER4> I partly agree with your supervisor. While publications are indeed milestones and are great for obtaining recognition in the scholarly community, they can still exist and accomplish their function alongside their "rich" counterparts: online versions of those publications with live, dynamic, executable data and images, to allow forking, cloning, and interaction. We now produce research in a much more dynamic environment than even just a decade ago. My hope is that 10 years from now a scientific paper "locked" in a PDF format will look obsolete. I may be wrong, but I sincerely hope that.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. A snapshot could be a tag, and a reference contains that tag. Looking up a reference would let you see the paper in the state that is being referenced, but also allow you to easily move forward to later versions.

We are a long way from that now, but it is appealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Strange enough I had a very similar idea see [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/83588/latex-mark- up-a...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/83588/latex-mark-up-as-a- generic-mark-up-language) and made a prototype. Would be glad to share ideas if you want. Please contact via tex.sx chat.

</comment><comment><USER21> Thank god. I have been planning on writing a bunch of papers to publish on my website and all of the options have been awful.

So far, it looks great. Thanks for the service. Can't wait to try it out.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Please try and give us feedback. We are very happy to hear from users!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm on mobile, but does this have zotero integration?

<comment><USER7> not yet (sorry), but it's on the list.

<comment><USER22> Awesome. Thank you for making something cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Authorea is a great project. I love the idea of helping academics write their papers natively for the web. Good luck Nate and Alberto!

<comment><USER4> Thanks Richard! I am so glad you like Authorea. It was great chatting about Academia.edu last month at the Berkman. I look forward to meeting up soon. --Alberto

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> FUCK YHEAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I'M GOING TO USE THIS RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just like, update to the internet, man. I want my articles to look beautiful on the web, not just in antiquated print journals!!!!!

Why, in 2013 do references need to look like this (Johnson-Kines et al., 1533) when we have HYPERLINKS on the web??? And you can show a little snippet in a tooltip--or the actual quote or line of the document that you're referencing?

Where are my embedded videos?

<comment><USER24> ACK. I tried using it. Too many bugs! UI needs polish.

When you fix this, please announce it to me. I want to use a version that works!

<comment><USER4> hi toomim, yes we are still a bit rough around the edges. We are only a few months old. If you can let us know what bugs you found, it'd be great. And we will definitely announce it again as soon as we are ready for a more official launch. Thanks for checking us out</comment></comment></comment>