How to annotate everything - <AUTHOR> https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html <comment><USER2> One thing I hate about annotation in general is everything is siloed.

For example, I have an app on my iPad called PDF Viewer (I think) which is pretty good and has lots of annotating features. I've often used it to highlight pieces of text I'm interested in, or references I might want to follow up on

The follow ups never happen though because the annotations are locked in this app, I can't say, look on my mac to see what I've 'clipped' recently from the app on my ipad, or most other apps for that matter.

Ideally what I'd like is some sort of central place where all my 'clippings' go in a seamless manner, be it from PDFs, photos, websites, whatever.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this siloing stops me from using annotation features "native" to each app and format as such as well.

Instead, I prefer to exfiltrate information from the silos(apps, formats, etc) and put them into my note taking system. Then I can do highlights, annotations, etc. on my own terms and also get the benefits of centralization such as searching and linking(the OP has another post describing their own system, which is pretty cool[1]). Currently I'm using Notion, which is also a silo of its own, but it's one that gives me a lot of control over how I lay my information out(and an escape plan from).

There are a lot of perspectives on this issue with data silos and walled gardens. But I'm of the opinion that it's a fairly bad state for all of us "end users". Computers to me are about infinite flexibility and malleability, but ironically the tools we have for annotation and remixing are in practice worse than what we have in the physical world. Reading a book in the physical world, I can converse with the author simply by jotting marginalia with my pencil. It's fluid, intuitive, and the medium of paper encourages it(in fact it can't help but be mutated by my use!: pages get bended, stained, torn, etc.). If I want to go further I can add post-it notes to mark interesting passages, I can xerox some pages and create subsections, if it's a magazine I can just tear them all out! That kind of flexibility just isn't available on a computer.

I think it's worth thinking really hard why we're in this state, especially since computing pioneers were actually very optimistic that data and computing would be way more personally malleable than it is now(I've been working on a small comic on this theme myself[2]). For example, check out this short demo[3] of Smalltalk where Alan Kay hooks up a single frame from an animation of a bouncing ball to a painting program, to modify that one frame while also monitoring the loop. Smarter than paper, but way more flexible.

My own thinking lately has been that developers need to think more about how their apps, like your PDF viewer, could cooperate with other apps to achieve our goals. All sorts of deep questions spring forth from here: "what is the best inter-communication system for them to cooperate with?", "how do you design them to intuitive?", "how can you make the UX as good as 'packaged apps'?". And looking at the history of personal computing, these are fairly old questions. The Unix Philosophy provides us with some clues, and its success, even in the smaller world of developer-oriented computing, gives us some hope.

Personally, I'm excited to one day live in a world where my desktop and smartphone and other devices -my computing spaces- feel less like a collection of walled gardens that refuse to intermingle, and more like one big beautiful garden, an ecosystem: lots of small, useful programs, chatting and cooperating, data freely flowing between them, each new program multiplying their collective potential and creating a new ecology, that I can adapt to my psyche and my needs, helping me be a better human.

[1] [https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html](https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html)

[2] [https://twitter.com/yoshikischmitz/status/118845556004515840...](https://twitter.com/yoshikischmitz/status/1188455560045158400)

[3] [https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=607](https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=607)

<comment><USER4> Hey, author here! That's exciting, you basically mirror my thoughts here :)

I agree with what you're saying about siloes, that's especially sad considering that having all this stuff unified and interacting is not some sort of mad science fiction, it's totally possible with technology that we have. It's just tedious for various reasons (one of which is that demand from users isn't high in the first place).

I'm working on a browser extension that unifies annotations and highlights from different sources like pocket, instapaper, hypothesis, or even plaintext notes: [https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia) . I've been using it for more than a year, hope to release it soon (few things are specific to my setup, so I need to make them simpler/clearer for other people to use).

<comment><USER3> Hey that tool looks awesome, I'm excited to see where it goes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft OneNote should be somewhere on that list. You can annotate PDF, Powerpoint or images easily. There is an extension that lets you annotate a complete webpage or a portion as well. You can annotate with your keyboard and your pen. You can also share to have collaboration with many people as well as use it across devices (Android, Mac, Windows).

<comment><USER6> Can you save your notebook in a portable format for import/export now?

I think that is a basic feature of a notebook and always felt that it was intentionally missing to suck people into the MS cloud.

Not saying a lot of other apps don't make the same mistake.

<comment><USER7> Yep, this 100%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How to annotate code? I've once in a while wanted some tool to annotate code as I explain it to new developers, or as I explore code I'm unfamiliar with, without having to write comments directly in the source code. The closest I've found to do this is bookmarks in IntelliJ using the name of the bookmark as the annotation.

<comment><USER9> Why not just actually use comments? If it's worth explaining to new developers it'll likely be useful later when you've simply forgotten why something is the way it is.

<comment><USER10> Seriously. Especially when something seems like a bizarre choice in the code, I'll provide a link if there is a corresponding GitHub issue or code regarding it.

I've never had an issue with GitHub issues regarding linkrot, but it happens quite frequently when linking actual source code, especially code not in your control. Not sure what a better solution is for that, unfortunately.

I generally justify it by the anecdotal observation that the code is generally not being used anymore by the time the link dies out, but that is far from an ideal justification.

<comment><USER11> Assuming you use GitHub for source control:

\- Go to GitHub.com repo and find the file (You can use 't' keyboard shortcut to find it)

\- Press 'y' on keyboard to replace 'master' with its SHA1 in the URL

\- Click on the interesting line of code

\- You have a forever-valid link (assuming no push --force) to the exact line of code

<comment><USER12> I thought a push --force would change the hash, anyway.

<comment><USER11> I meant that push --force may make the given commit disappear if it's not referenced by any branch and the repo gets garbage collected on the backend, then the URL will 404.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are there tools good for aggregating and querying annotations across services for less technical users? Is there a market for better usage of annotations?

I've been avid about annotating key tools I use that offer that functionality, and inevitably creating a separate spreadsheet log across things. I'd love something that could be a hub for all my annotations.

<comment><USER4> I'm actually working on a tool that aggregates annotations across different services [https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia) (screenshot is a bit old, e.g. currently it's capable of displaying inline highlights as well). I've been using it for almost a year now, but it needs few final touches before I can release it.

The 'less technical users' bit is tricky one. I am trying to make it as effortless as possible, but there is some inevitable overhead for running export scripts, configuring etc. I'm also working on a post exploring this overhead and thinking of ways to make it better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the main issue I have with native PDF annotation is that it mutates the file, which changes the hash. I've been thinking about building a collaborative PDF reader (using native PDF toolkits, not pdf.js) that fingerprints the file locally and pulls/pushes annotations to a central repository (either self hosted by individuals, research teams) or globally. Would love to see annotations on popular research papers or textbooks.

<comment><USER15> What you're suggesting would be amazing.

For what it's worth, the popular "Skim" PDF reader on OS X stores annotations in filesystem extended attributes, so the hash of the raw file data doesn't change (but of course this comes with the drawback of more limited interoperability with other tools).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd like you to consider doodledocs.com, which is my side project. I recently submitted it as a show HN [1].

It has a web annotation feature in which you can draw over a website with your stylus. I haven't seen the combination of a pressure sensitive stylus web annotation collaborative doodle app.

It's still very much an MVP though, so the collaborative aspect doesn't always work. The annotation aspect should work a lot better.

I wish I could pursue this project as a small company (I have quite a lot of ideas in this area), but I'm having a hard time finding the audience who might enjoy this (currently that says more about my marketing skills than anything else). So side project it is.

Edit: Bluebeam, Good Notes and Apple Books are missing [2]. It seems that there is no consideration for stylus-based annotation.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21399910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21399910)

[2] As an aside, I recommend Good Notes over Apple Books, but it's close. Bluebeam is a good application if you have a Microsoft Surface.

</comment><comment><USER17> My company, Gold Fig([https://goldfiglabs.com](https://goldfiglabs.com)), is working on something just adjacent to annotating webpages: we enable you to annotate changes you make on the web. Since so much of our work is powered by online platforms, we wanted a way to keep track of changes we were making in the tools we were using. Similar to how you would annotate a code change with a commit message, you should be able to annotate a CMS change, a platform settings change, or anything else you might be tweaking as you go about your work.

We'd love feedback from anyone who is interested in adding annotations, and especially those working on teams who could benefit from being able to share annotations.

We definitely understand that a lot of data is currently siloed, so to that end we're also interested in the annotation formats that we should be looking at. We currently export our own json format, but we would love to work well with existing tools.

<comment><USER18> Will your system work with Netflix in the browser?

<comment><USER17> Hmm, maybe. Can you provide more details about what specifically you are trying to accomplish?

<comment><USER18> Annotate movies. The introduction of the protagonist, the end of act I, document great lighting or an exceptional score.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've created Quoter[0] to address this point in particular. I read a fair amount of materials on daily basis (books, blogs, discussions) and some times I want a to save a sentence. With Quoter it's just one click away.

To get reminded about the quotes (or annotations) that I've saved: I've configure it to show a random quote every 3 hours.

This quote was shown when I was writing this comment :)

>Every time you create something – whether it's a website, a client app, a blog post, a powerpoint presentation, or an email – ask yourself, "so what?" If you can't answer that question convincingly, reformulate and try again.

It also have the ability to export saved quotes, I a script to process the output to a page on my website[1].

[0] [https://getquoter.app/](https://getquoter.app/) [1] [https://mhasbini.com/highlights.html](https://mhasbini.com/highlights.html)

<comment><USER8> Cool. It would be nice if it could also show a link to the source of the quote in the export.

<comment><USER19> Thanks, I'm working on adding this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think you could add the browser add-on SingleFile [1] to the list which allows you to annotate archive of webpages saved in HTML and is 100% free.

[1] [https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile](https://github.com/gildas- lormeau/SingleFile)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been pleased with Memex WorldBrain, which was recently demonstrated here on HN: you can annotate or star your pages, and every page starred/bookmarked, or visited for some seconds is searchable.

If you do a web search on DDG, your Memex results also pop up at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER22> For videos, I have found this: [https://ant.umn.edu/](https://ant.umn.edu/) , but haven't used it yet. It seems a bit limited in its annotation abilities, but nevertheless something that could be useful

</comment><comment><USER23> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642289)

</comment><comment><USER24> Seems kind of funny and sad given how much fanfare and money was associated with them, that in both TFA and this entire discussion, no one has mentioned genius.com ([http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/genius-minus- th...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/genius-minus-the- rap.html)).

<comment><USER25> any word on what a16z has this investment marked at?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Windows applications are conspicuously missing from the list.

Others mentioned OneNote. For PDF annotations, Edge browser isn't all that bad. Foxit had some features too, AFAIR (and is cross-platform). Personally, I currently use Drawboard PDF - it's UWP, but a very nice and stylus-friendly viewer with a lot of annotation capabilities and a circular menu that's extra convenient when using a stylus.

<comment><USER4> Hey, author here! Reason is I don't have any windows computers, so have no idea what's going on in windows world! (should have mentioned that) Thanks for tools listed in your comment, I'll mention these in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One of the first features I built for [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) is annotating websites. I find tagging, grouping and sharing those notes to be incredibly useful. My girlfriend was trying to shortlist Airbnbs and places to visit for a recent trip and it was satisfying to see how Histre make that really easy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Coincidentally we're about to embark on adding annotations & workflow management to our automated visual sitemaps platform: [https://visualsitemaps.com/annotations/](https://visualsitemaps.com/annotations/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know of a good guide or reference of what to write in annotations or notes? Every notetaking guide I've seen seems to talk exclusively about mechanics and not content, which seems like the harder part to me.

<comment><USER30> How about trying to "explain like I'm five", or writing an explanation of what you just t read from memory until you hit a wall. The wall signifies something you should go back and try to understand better.

<comment><USER29> I was hoping for something more along the lines of a book, blog, or academic paper that goes into the subject in some detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One thing that seems to be missing from the list is org-capture, which is lightly documented bit can duplicate quite a bit of the hypothes.is functionality, though the tweaking required is quite high.

</comment><comment><USER32> Okular was my favorite PDF annotator until I got my Surface Pro a couple of days ago. I still haven't figured out what's the best PDF reader with pen input, any recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER33> Could have used this list while doing research for my Masters! However, I don't think I was as well-versed in emacs back then either, ha ha.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you're interested in annotation, you may also enjoy these standards/communities, which aren't referenced in the article:

\- Open Annotation Data Model[1]

\- Web Annotation Vocabulary[2]: I built a thing to convert kindle highlights/notes into web annotation vocabulary jsonld[3]

\- Web Annotation Protocol[4]

Great to see [https://hypothes.is](https://hypothes.is) mentioned. Great people on that team, and a great example of a dedicated tech nonprofit.

Just this week I have been fulfilling our first customer order to provide hosting for hypothesis annotation server on permanent.cloud[5].

One area of needed development, however, is being able to use the browser extension[6], which is great, with your own installation and not just the main https:/hypothes.is domain. I'll probably contribute that sooner or later, or else continue work on this other simpler browser extension I started[7]

Lastly, there are some interesting tricky CS/NLP problems of 'annotating everything', e.g. how to render annotations on the right 'target' of what was annotated, especially if that target has changed a little bit, e.g. fixing a typo or something, which is common in web publishing / news. In 2014 I worked for a company that made an annotation-as-a-service product, and I wrote a bit about how Locality-sensitive Hashing can be applied[8]

[1]: [http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/](http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/)

[2]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation- vocab/](https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-vocab/)

[3]: [https://github.com/gobengo/kindle-web- annotations](https://github.com/gobengo/kindle-web-annotations)

[4]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation- protocol/](https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-protocol/)

[5]: [https://permanent.cloud/apps/hypothesis](https://permanent.cloud/apps/hypothesis)

[5]: [https://github.com/hypothesis/browser- extension](https://github.com/hypothesis/browser-extension)

[6]: [https://github.com/gobengo/kindle-web- annotations](https://github.com/gobengo/kindle-web-annotations)

[7]: [https://github.com/gobengo/web-annotation- extension](https://github.com/gobengo/web-annotation-extension)

[8]: [https://gobengo.tumblr.com/day/2014/04/22](https://gobengo.tumblr.com/day/2014/04/22)

<comment><USER35> Are there any active projects building around Web Annotation? It seemed interesting, but when it was released it also seemed like a lot of talk with not even experimental implementations (to the point where it seemed not enough to actually be released as a standard). Hypothesis was loudly praising it, all the while keeping their product on their own protocols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What about annotating e-mails? Any tools that can aggregate such annotations with other types (e.g. web)?

<comment><USER37> I suggest looking into org-mode in emacs to take notes on emails. However, I have not yet figured out an annotation method that works. Would be good to have one, but given that the emails are not long, may be a little unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would suggest "Article Reader" on Android. I have been using it for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER39> Helpful list, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER40> I really appreciate this resource, though it largely underlines the fact that there really aren't any good comprehensive solutions.

Zotero appears conspicuously missing. It's an articles / references management tool. I've not found it especially useful myself, though it has its fans.

My own previous explorations, somewhat disorganised:

"Sources and tools for references, particularly document scanning and conversion"

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6tr7za/sources...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6tr7za/sources_and_tools_for_references_particularly/)

"Organising and planning research activities"

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/fj5rzi8zmouyrmvg8yzzva](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/fj5rzi8zmouyrmvg8yzzva)

Regarding digital formats generally:

\- Most formats are themelves opaque / resistant to annotations, in some way, shape, or form.

\- Tools that enable annotations of _one_ type of reference ... often don't support others. As several comments note, this results in various application or service-based silos of notes.

\- Index cards remain remarkably useful. I use a modified POIC / Zettelkasten method:

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/u4dgr0tkxk4tk9npuvex5a](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/u4dgr0tkxk4tk9npuvex5a)

Mostly, I've been looking to a generalised system for organising and working with materials under the working titles of KFC (Krell Functional/Fine Context), docFS (as in "Document Filesystem"), and webFS (as in Web filesystem, see: "What if the Web was fileystem accessible" [https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if_the_web_was_filesystemaccessible/)).

The idea of creating not an application, but an OS-level (and ultimately, hopefully, OS-agnostic) system for integrating metadata and relationships amongst documents, is at its heart.

This does seem like a surprisingly common problem, and one with numerous partial solutions, but no generally-available, general-purpose system seems to exist. Given that this notion dates back to (or before!) Vannevar Bush's Memex discussion, this is ... both surprising and disappointing.

I'm about 98.2331% certain that copyright has a major share of the blame, as an effective system for dealing with digitised documents would all but certainly have to involve duplicating and reverse-engineering them in multiple regards. My solution to the HTML / PDF / ePub, etc., document formats is to recompose them as some minimally sufficient document format (often Markdown, occasionally more advanced formats, with LaTeX being nearly always sufficient). This has resulted in a significant detour through questions concerning typography and just what a document _is_ , though in a huge fraction of cases, there's little reason to go beyond paragraphs, the occasional italic/bold emphasis, and section or chapter markings.

In trying to decompose Web content, it's almost always simplest to simply dump the document to plain ASCII, then re-introduce any needed markup. Parsing HTML itself to a normalised form is a fool's errand. (As a fool, I've been on that errand many times.)

It's possible to start from raw ASCII text for a book-length work and re- introduce Markdown sufficient to create HTML, PDF, and ePub endpoints in an hour or so, for a fictional work with no significant typographic concerns. I've even resorted to hand-typing works on occasion. Excessive of itself, but with the added bonus of being an effective active-reading technique.

That said: none of my methods, nor those listed here, satisfy me.

Though Wallabag deserves a closer look.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you cultivate discipline? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> First let's define discipline. I will define it as 1. Choosing to take a desired action despite feeling like doing otherwise and 2. Refraining from taking an undesired action despite feeling like doing otherwise.

Having a goal around your actions is somewhat implied here.

So what can help us cultivate discipline? Well, each time you practice discipline you are cultivating it. So what can help us practice it?

1\. Mindfulness; whether through meditation or other practices, practicing mindfulness can help you gain some distance from your thoughts and feelings and make a more reasoned choice to act towards your goals.

2\. Environment; setting things up to make taking action easier (e.g. putting you shoes by your bed if you want to go running), or making things harder to do (throwing out all your junk food, not shopping when hungry)

3\. Having compassion for yourself. You will never achieve perfect discipline. Realizing that you will screw up, especially in the beginning, and having compassion for yourself when you do (as you might have towards a friend who is struggling) makes it more likely that you will continue to cultivate discipline.

There is a good podcast that covers a lot of this that I think is well worth a listen. Don't let the title of it dissuade you; it is much more than just about depression and procrastination:[http://www.myownworstenemy.org/podcast/why- procrastination-m...](http://www.myownworstenemy.org/podcast/why- procrastination-makes-you-depressed-tim-pychyl/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Make it a habit, ignore your emotional responses, and do the hardest things first.

Example: I've been going to the gym for a few years now. I don't have the best consistency for going, since I normally go after work hours. I found that by the time I was done with work I was tired and feeling burnt out from the day, and it was easy to skip going. I started making myself go first thing in the morning by waking up an hour early than normal and so far its working.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is bizarre, but a simple algorithm works for me. Whenever I am exhausted and don't feel up to tackling another task, or whenever I'm afraid to approach a daunting project, I remember the inspiring words of my high school baseball coach. He'd say this partially in jest but partially seriously:

"Hey! Stop being a lazy piece of ...!"

When I tell myself that a task has world-class difficulty, and that accomplishing it would be an amazing feat, the task becomes highly daunting, and I procrastinate more. However, when I tell myself that the task should be done as a matter of course but that I'm being too stupidly lazy to accomplish it, the task becomes less daunting, and I procrastinate less. Expectations of normalcy change.

A similar effect occurs when you join a world class team and suddenly learn that they're doing ten tasks in a day that you once considered remarkable to finish in a week. Expectations of normalcy change, and big tasks seem far less daunting, so you procrastinate less.

</comment><comment><USER5> Discipline is cultivated over time, and for me it is all about consistency. When I want to develop a new habit, I commit to doing it every day. The hardest part is just getting started The amount of time I spend on that task doesn't matter as much as starting the task does. One minute is better than zero. Over time, the time spent increases, and it becomes second nature for me to perform it.

gcheong's comment about environment is also spot on. Make it easier for yourself to stay disciplined. Reduce the amount of willpower/effort that it will take to start a task.

</comment><comment><USER6> Inspiring podcast on Cultivating Disciple by Jocko:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tE8kE8IfiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tE8kE8IfiY)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/5tln7k/meth...](https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/5tln7k/method_how_to_be_as_disciplined_and_tough_as/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ask of others what you expect from yourself and be transparent about it. If your not a hypocrite, people will see the sincerity and either rise to the occasion or get out of your way.

</comment><comment><USER6> An interesting animated video on disciple:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPn3UOt1lxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPn3UOt1lxw)

</comment><comment><USER8> You might find this book interesting, it covers some of the research. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance: Angela Duckworth

</comment><comment><USER9> 3 (or so) big concerted attempts. So try fuck up try again etc.

That's what got me in the habit of budgeting/expense tracking and quitting caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's like becoming good at anything. A lot of practice, reminders, knowledge, coaching, feedback, patience, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> cultivate where, if you want to cultivate discipline in your team, you should start by cultivating trust first, which goes both ways, your employees need to know you'll always have their back... next step is lead by example...</comment>


Samsung flexible display demo (CES) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CckFd79KDPg

<comment><AUTHOR> oh man, i really want one. not sure for what yet, but please :)</comment>


Washboard.co (Quarters for Laundry) shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://washboard.co/?hn=1

<comment><USER2> Doesn't really mention what it was specifically that was against the terms of service for the different providers. I can venture a guess and say that you are providing people cash from a purchase on credit card (sort of like an ATM but, allowing people to use their credit cards instead of debit cards).

<comment><USER3> You used to be able to buy bags of coins from the US Mint at cost using a credit card. Some clever folk would continuously buy coins on their credit card then turn around and deposit them in their bank to immediately pay off the credit card bill. They did this to rack up airline miles or something like that. That is why you can't buy money at cost with a credit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In retrospect this might literally be money laundering.

</comment><comment><USER5> We'd be happy to help at knoxpayments.com - plus your margin would go way up at $0.18 per payment - email@example.com if anyone wants to reach out.

Edit: I realize that they don't want to do the work of integrating a new gateway. I'm not sure the headline "due to payment processor problems" holds up if simply switching processors was somehow off the table.

<comment><USER6> Sent you an email, but a bit of advice for you - in a space requiring _trust_ , you should have an About Us page, and a Contact page!

Show who you are more!

<comment><USER5> I agree - being worked on now. We really didn't have a moment since launch to touch up the website until we brought on some summer interns. I 100% agree with you though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised there was a big demand for this service. Most (all?) laundromats, car washes, other "coin-op" services already have change machines. Many that I've used also take credit cards. Heck even the Coke machine in my office takes credit cards.

<comment><USER8> I have coin laundry in my apartment building. Once every month or two I go down to the closest laundromat with 2 twenties and walk back with forty dollars of quarters jangling around my pockets. I may be abusing the laundromat for their coin machine, but it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > On June 19th 2014 I decided I was just going to launch it and see what > happened.

11 total days in business - that defines 'fail fast'.

</comment><comment><USER10> FWIW, I didn't think it was ridiculous.

However, I'm a little surprised that switching payment processors would be ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> It wasn't ridiculous, we found a processor that was happy to work with us but we just decided to go ahead and work on some other stuff. Washboard was a ton of fun, no regrets at all!</comment></comment>


Mobile operators plan to block online advertising - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7010ae7a-f4c6-11e4-8a42-00144feab7de.html <comment><USER2> Why would anyone want to block ads? /s

[http://imgur.com/xxq9RjU](http://imgur.com/xxq9RjU) which then redirects to FT front page.

I mean, they have the data so they think it works. I just don't know who it works on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dear mobile operators - yuck fou.

Love https

This will be awesome for the worldwide enforcement of encryption.</comment>


NASA Graphics Standards Manual - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/nasa-graphics-standards-manual <comment><USER2> It's super retro, but part of me kind of likes the NASA "worm" logo over the "meatball".

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

<comment><USER3> Its not retro at all. To me it's timeless modernism/futurism. They should switch back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're interested in a hard copy, these guys did a beautiful print run of it:

[https://standardsmanual.com/products/nasa-graphics- standards...](https://standardsmanual.com/products/nasa-graphics-standards- manual)

</comment><comment><USER5> Vaguely related, the technical writing style manual from NASA: [http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19900017394](http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19900017394)

It's of course opinionated, but for anyone who is not an opinionated pro themselves, it's a great resource to learn concise, precise, and readable technical communication. (imho, of course)

<comment><USER6> As a non-native speaker, definitely a ressource I should read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And to think this would have been put together in the pre-PC/desktop publishing era. Total gem.

</comment><comment><USER8> (1976)</comment>


Google Earth Pro is now free - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/desktop.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure why the change (used to be $399/year) but I'm looking forward to hacking on some ideas.

Just use your email address and the license code "GEPFREE"</comment>


Beacon – cloud infrastructure services geared towards finance - <AUTHOR> https://www.beacon.io/beacon-core <comment><AUTHOR> From their website it says "cloud infrastructure services and all the tools developers need to create, collaborate, test, and deploy solutions to production".

Basically, a python cloud-based IDE that includes a batch scheduler and object persistence backed by some no-sql database. Also has a tightly coupled DAG (think pyungo). Built on top of docker it seems.

They're geared towards insurance companies, hedge funds and banks. The system has similarities to systems used in other banks eg SecDB at GS, Athena at JPM and Quartz at BAML.

Any one have any experience with Beacon or have any views? Are there any open source alternatives out there that do something similar? Just curious.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice needed re: adsense vs. adbrite - <AUTHOR>

I built a site with a few friends over the weekend and it's getting some significant traffic.  I'd like to maximize as much as possible, and I'd heard that Adbrite was a better choice than adsense, so I went with that.
2 days later, I've made 2.75 from 20 clicks in adbrite.  a friend with a blog using adsense has 3 clicks and has the same profit we do.
am i doing something wrong? or does adbrite really suck?  i heard that you need to somehow optimize and select ads in adbrite, but I wanted confirmation from someone on HN with solid experience.
btw the website is http://www.thathigh.com
thanks <comment><USER2> Well, you're going to see drastically different numbers depending on content. The CPC ranges from pennies to around $50 for specific ads. So you can't make any sort of comparison between your site and your friend's.

I recommend that you just run a/b tests. Is there a reason why you don't want to switch to adsense for a week? Then just compare your numbers and go with whatever is better.</comment>


I used search for hn on Google, no longer 1st on search engine - <AUTHOR>

As a quick way to look up hacker news, I used to just type "hn" on google and it would always be the first result in the list, now it's not even on the first page anymore :( <comment><USER2> I am at a slight loss why you wouldn't use your address bar to get here, but it is still first at DuckDuckGo[0].

[0] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn&kj=b2&kl=wt- wt&ko=f...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn&kj=b2&kl=wt- wt&ko=f&kp=-1&kx=b&kad=en_GB)</comment>


Ten modern layouts in one line of CSS - <AUTHOR> https://web.dev/one-line-layouts/ <comment><USER2> I recently had to code an HTML email signature for the first time and naive me used standard HTML/CSS features. It exploded in all kinds of wonderful ways.

Long story short it took me a week (try something, test it a bit, send it to a larger group of people and fix what broke) and email clients are stuck in the distant past. You have to use fixed-width tables to embed images (but also define the image width in the image tag ! Some clients ignore one or the other), you also have to use tables for layout and style inheritance doesn't really work because clients override styles. The only way to get consistent layout is to embed text in <span> and repeat the styling everywhere.

I also coded something to auto-generate the signature using data from the company intranet and I discovered that when you copy paste HTML code the browser will only copy HTML/CSS code that's actually rendered (you can fix that using draft APIs) but you still have the same problem when pasting the signature in the signature form (roundcube in our case) some duplicates attributes that the browser skip are actually useful for broken mail clients.

I finally got it working but I'd really wish mail clients would use modern web engines. All major mail clients come from organization that also make browsers. I doesn't have to be that painful

Edit: thanks to those who suggested tools to help with that ! It took so long because I was just telling myself, it can't be that broken. Just try that and it should work. I'll definitely try them if I ever have to write email HTML again

<comment><USER3> I guess one way to "solve" this is to skip the signature in the email and do what every person working in my kids school do: Write your message in MS Word and make sure it's propperly decorated with clipart. Then mail the wordfile.

<comment><USER4> This 1000x! I damn near fell off my chair when i saw my daughter's school do this...then noticed that it was done with ever, single, official memo from the school and asociated school district.

Which makes me feel like here's how things really went down back in the day...(with much respect and admiration to TBL)...

Tim Berners-Lee: Look everyone, there's this thing called the web, where a worldwide network of authors can publish content, and the audience/visitors/recipients accessing said content have plenty of liberty to adjust the style/look of said content to suit their display needs (e.g. increase text size, expand window/width of content, etc.)...So, no one needs to all have/use the same software/application, plus this all helps with accessibility concerns, plus everyone can use different "reading/viewing" as well as authoring software/apps, etc...Cool, right!!

(Almost) Everyone: Nah, we're good.

Tim Berners-Lee: But, wouldn't you want to reap the benefits of the flexibility that the world wide web can afford to everyone?

(Almost) Everyone: We don't understand the flexibility being offered here...We just want the content to behave like books have ever since the late 1500s...nothing should change, every pixel should remain fixed/static, and the control should always exist within the hands of the author, and not the audience/readers. Besides, we will all just use some silly application like MS Word, insert our content and signatures exactly how we want it to display in the Word document (cheesy or not), and add some useless clipart, and control it 100%. That's what we want, and that's what we understand.

Tim Berners Lee: But, don't you see that html docs (or something like that) as published via this world wide web can also help people who struggle financial, or don't have the means of affording tech, etc. since they need not have to purchase all the premium applications to view and edit content?? There can be no-cost or low-cost options for the software that poor folks can use, and even just this can at least slightly help to level things out for inequality, and so much more. Much like the original print press, this - and other aspects of the web - can give many more people access to knowledge and wonderful, essential content!

(Almost) Everyone: Meh. For poor folks who can not afford MS Word, I'm sure Microsoft (and other big companies) will "solve" this by donating "freemium" versions of Word, and de facto establish Word docs as a standard format. Or, people can just borrow more than they can afford, and go into debt to afford the latest, premium technology. Who cares about MS' nefarious business practices. By the way, Mr. Berners-Lee, you should really call your "web thing", something better like "world wide Word docs (wwds)"...plus allow for way more emoji usage, because that would help me avoid having to think and write expressive prose...icons are easier for us to convey meaning, and its not due to our collective laziness, not at all. Just look for instance, how advanced our culture would become if we could, say, deliver cat photos (without much text/content added) as fast as possible to other rich people around the affluent world!?!

Tim Berners-Lee: (Throws his hands up in frustration, focuses the remainder of his career on speech-making, academia, and a few start-ups, and leaves the flock to fend for themselves, which of course get taken over and controlled by for-profit companies.)

;-)

<comment><USER5> Well, at that time it would have maybe more likely to be "Word Perfect", because Word wasn't the total industry dominator that it later came to be.

<comment><USER4> You're right! Or, maybe WordStar too! lol :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are someone (like me) who's done CSS/Frontend 'a few years ago' do take a look at this video to see the progression. A lot of things (CENTERING!) which were much harder in the past are now _complex_ but possible. The newer style stanzas will look alien to you.

<comment><USER7> I'm with you.

First real forays into FE that didn't involve slicing PSDs to tables were in Bootstrap and Foundation in ~2013. The responsive grid those frameworks delivered seemed magical at the time, but you got the sense that the benefits came on the back of some serious CSS wizardry and framework overhead.

The newer CSS features (grid, flexbox) seem so light and magical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even after a decade of working with CSS, I'm amused when I see someone center an element inside its container.

<comment><USER9> I find myself wondering exactly how many different ways there are to center things in CSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is so great. I don't really make website anymore, but we used to struggle to create layouts like these, it awesome to see how much easier it has become.

</comment><comment><USER11> It should be mentioned that modern layout solutions have much better performance. Have you ever seen how complicated float layouts are struggling during window resize? When using grid or flexbox redraws are almost instant.

<comment><USER12> of course float layouts are often misuses of float so it's no surprise it struggles.

</comment></comment><comment> noman-land These are pretty amazing. Not quite one line but very concise nonetheless. I never mess with grid. I use flex regularly though.

<comment><USER13> Until you actually try them yourself in various browsers (and versions) with dynamically sized content of the elements inside those layouts and see that it is still buggy and not that much has changed and it still needs insane amount of hacks to make the layout work reliable across browsers.

EDIT: The common example when grid and flexbox layouts break is when a child of a child element in the layout overflows.

<comment><USER14> Could you set up a little example and submit a bug or two?

<comment><USER13> [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/alg8az/anyone_exper...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/alg8az/anyone_experiencing_issues_with_flexbox_and/) [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=927066](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=927066) ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Grid and FlexBox have made my life so much easier these days

and fallback is easier with @supports

</comment><comment><USER16> For the vertical/horizontal centering, this author uses display: grid on the parent and place-items: center. But there is an older way to do just the same, give parent a display of flex and put margin: auto on the child

</comment><comment><USER16> The thing I want to see in css is a way to define blocks where the height is a percentage of the width. There is a well know hack to do this with padding- bottom but.. yea its a non-intuitive hack.

<comment><USER17> The post mentions `aspect-ratio`, which isn't available in most browsers yet – will that work for you once it's ready?

<comment><USER16> ah, shame on me for not reading further. Yea that sounds like just what I'd like, assuming that the aspect ratio block can also contain children (which I'm guessing it will)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm still looking for subgrid though. [https://caniuse.com/#feat=css- subgrid](https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-subgrid)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow appreciated. Am now seriously considering stripping bootstrap out of my app and replacing with grid and flex. Stuck in 2015 as a front end developer apparently.

<comment><USER20> I use tailwind now and yeah, is much better (if wanna do your own style).

And is much less overall inline-class (I was worried that tailwind mean bigger .html but nope, in fact is less overall)

<comment><USER21> I used to hate the very idea of Tailwind until I tried it.

<comment><USER22> I thought about trying tailwind and then saw "Step 1: install via npm"

I am so goddamn sick of having to download a giant mess of JavaScript modules just to use a tool to generate something that has nothing to do with nodejs or it's ecosystem.

It's at the point where I'm in full "crotchety old man" mode and forcing myself to build the entirety of my frontends in pure HTML5/ES6/CSS3.

It's quite liberating, actually.

<comment><USER20> I hate that too. What sold me the idea is the fact I can use it to heavily reduce the CSS to be exactly what I have used.

I wish instead of npm it have a Go or Rust binary. What it need it for is to generate the .css clases and to prune it for size reduction.

<comment><USER21> Purgecss is a godsend when you use a third-party CSS library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> wow this website made firefox 38 (corporate lts ..) lose it entirely :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Just glad to not have to ensure this is compatible with ie6

</comment><comment><USER25> What is a "modern" layout?

<comment><USER26> "Works in chrome"</comment></comment>


IPad Doesn't Charge from Windows PC USB Port? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2010/04/charging-the-ipad-hit-or-miss.html

<comment><USER2> To put real numbers to this:

The iPad battery stores 25 watthours of energy.

USB 1.0,1.1, and 2.0 devices may draw a maximum of 500mA from the 5v lines of the connector, this is 2.5 watts.

USB 3.0 will up this to 900mA for 4.5 watts, but it isn't here yet.

Actual current available at a port depends on topology. If I plug my keyboard in to my USB 2.0 computer, then plug my iPad into the keyboard it will only be authorized for 400mA, because the keyboard claimed 100mA. 2 watts.

So, best case, charging an iPad from USB 2.0 will take 10 hours, if it is off. Notice this is suspiciously close to the runtime on battery, i.e. a running iPad consumes ~2.5 watts, your whole USB power allotment. Hence you can't charge while running on a stock USB port.

So, what is with the 10 watt charger? Apple, and probably others, got tired of how long it took to charge and have deviated from the USB spec to allow larger charging currents. 1A chargers are common for iPhones, and at least some Macintosh models have higher current USB ports on board.

I don't know how they negotiate the higher current, but a 10 watt charger could theoretically charge your iPad in under 3 hours.

<comment><USER3> USB 3.0 is here. Lots of motherboards are shipping with it already: [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128434&cm_re=USB_3.0_motherboard-_-13-128-434-_-Product)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It'll only work on USB ports that support 10 watt charging.

It's explained pretty well here: [http://www.macworld.com/article/150356/2010/04/ipadcharging....](http://www.macworld.com/article/150356/2010/04/ipadcharging.html)

<comment><USER5> The article states that it will charge from lower power ports if it is asleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> High power mode was added to the 2.0 spec as an addendum only about a year ago as an optional feature. As more devices require high power for charging it's going to be a very confusing situation for consumers. They could have at least bumped the spec to 2.1 to identify high power capable ports.

<comment><USER7> If it becomes a big deal (pretty likely, now), they'll probably start slapping "High Power!" on systems that pump out more juice. Simple spec or not, if it's a selling point, it _will_ be made known.

<comment><USER8> Someone should make a little dongle/tester. (A quick search of newegg and monoprice did not suggest one yet exists.)

<comment><USER9> I think the port reports it to the computer, so you should be able to find some sort of USB utility that will tell you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is merely an issue of not enough power available from certain ports, not a Mac vs. PC thing. You'll notice one of the ports they tested was on a Mac keyboard. The keyboard is self-powered and has a built-in USB hub for the mouse.

Those ports have less current available because the keyboard, mouse, and hub consume power in addition to whatever the iPad uses. The host machine has to supply power to all of those.

This is why some USB hubs have a power injection connector. It allows them to supply the same current to downstream devices as the host PC.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few points to clarify. In USB 2.0 and earlier, there are two kinds of hubs: self-powered and bus-powered. Self-powered hubs must provide 500 ma at each downstream port. Bus-powered hubs must provide 100 ma at each downstream port.

There are also two kinds of devices: high-power and low-power devices, meaning that they consume from their upstream port more than 100 ma or 100 ma or less, respectively.

A bus-powered hub is a high-powered device, as from a port point of view, 500 ma can go down the cable to it (and devices connected to it).

The maximum number of ports that a bus-powered hub can provide is 4 as 400 ma are required for each downstream port and the hub functionality uses some power.

You cannot plug a bus-powered hub (a high power device as it can consume 500 ma from its upstream port) to a bus-powered hub. You can of course alternate between self- and bus-powered hubs.

If the iPad can operate on 100 ma, then it can be connected to a bus-powered hub. If it requires more power, then it must be connected to a self-powered hub.

Hope this helps.

On a historical note, Apple has built systems that provide more than 500 ma from the root (the ports in the system itself). I am not an expert on if they still do. I'd hazard a guess the answer is yes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not all USB ports are powered. It is often necessary to connect certain peripherals directly to a USB 2.0 port on the computer (as opposed to, say, a USB jack on the keyboard itself).

<comment><USER10> That is incorrect. All USB ports are powered, it's just the amount of power available varies. The USB spec says all ports must provide 5V. The second part of your comment is correct.

<comment><USER12> My mistake. There are USB _hubs_ that are classified as "powered" or "unpowered", but I guess in the unpowered case it's relying on the computer's supply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It charged fine on my MBP 2009. But only after it was activated through iTunes. (9.1 is crap by the way consistently crashes when trying to play music.)</comment>


CouchDB naked - <AUTHOR> http://blog.poundbang.in/post/132952897/couchdb-naked <comment><USER2> I wasn't going to make assumptions about the word "naked" or a domain named "poundbang", but because it was about CouchDB I expected porn on that site.

edit: Oh mod me down some more guys, sheesh, it was funny. Give me the invisible minus eight treatment; I can take it.

<comment><USER3> Naked, Couch, Pound, Bang... all in one small phrase. I, for one, think you jumped to a valid assumption.

Aside from that, it's actually a great little breakdown of the OTP setup that backs CouchDB. Great article Harish.

<comment><USER2> I guess the infamous CouchDB presentation wasn't discussed on here very much?

[http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a- pr...](http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr0n-star)

Edit: borderline NSFW

<comment><USER4> Oh, it was discussed quite a bit.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=583025>

<comment><USER2> Well, what can I say? If you're promoting your product with pornography, someone has to just eat the down-votes and subtly poke fun at it. It's going to be me in this case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub.com down in the UK? - <AUTHOR>

Is GitHub.com down in the UK? <comment><USER2> I'm struggling to connect to certain websites, mainly GitHub and Slack. It's been like this for at least 2 hours.

Connecting via my phones internet is fine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be back up!</comment>


Imba – Create complex web apps with ease - <AUTHOR> http://imba.io/ <comment><USER2> A 2016 thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10901054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10901054)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10091454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10091454)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm unclear about what this is, other than a new flavor of syntax for JavaScript.

The tagline of "Create complex web apps..." also turns me off. If there is one perspective that needs to change in modern app development it is to stop making "complex apps." Simple is good. KISS, and all that. I'd respond far better to "Simplify your app."

<comment><USER4> It's more than a new flavor of JS, it also supports e.g. routing and components.

Some web apps ARE inherently complex. You might dislike that, but it seems unfair to criticize Imba for that fact.

<comment><USER5> In defence of the person you're replying to, can we not assume that web apps are inherently complex to the degree that complexity is table stakes? I feel like you're being reductive because the actual comment is that "complex web apps" should not be the aspiration. Telling someone that they shouldn't simplify something that is by definition hard is totally missing the point. Removing pain from a difficult process is legit; complex is not a status badge.

<comment><USER6> I think people tend to talk past each other on this issue. The real problem with deciding upfront that something must be complex, is that it switches off that part of your brain which searches for simple, but hard-to-find, solutions. It encourages "greedy development" where you dive in before scoping out the best architecture, because who cares about the difference between complex and slightly more complex?

Actively searching for simple solutions to hard problems encourages high quality design and architecture. Moreover there is no one way to do simple things; simplicity requires a wider toolset than complexity. If your marketing explains how your tool helps people to make a complex thing, it's either incorrect or it's a bad solution.

<comment><USER7> So, let's say you take the simple solution. Then, the application keeps getting more and more complex due to the functionality requirements. Gradually, you've poorly and inconsistently implemented versions of the complex patterns in the first place, and the end result suffers for it.

I've dreamed of creating a multi-phase approach to software where simple and complex can co-exist and methodically transition along the way, but I've yet to be able to crack the problem.

<comment><USER6> You might have misread the thing I was proposing. If your application "keeps getting more and more complex due to the functionality requirements" then by definition there's no off-the-shelf library or service that can help. If your complexities are known in advance, you can choose a pattern which builds good, simple, composable code.

Honestly even if you're complexities _aren 't_ known in advance, it's still easier to build composable solutions out of off-the-shelf parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My only issue about creating web apps is in the UI/UX side so I don't get why nobody is succesful in this front. This will be really revolutionary. With successful I mean a UI builder hiding the details (think Windows Forms or XCode) and with a good set of sample apps.

<comment><USER9> The main difficulty is that networked apps have a network to deal with and generating those bindings coupled with today's demands for interactivity etc. makes things tricky. RPC frameworks like gRPC tend to be quite rigid in this aspect too (requires setting up exact specifications), despite making things easier for the client. Also, the threat vectors are completely different. If all browser apps run on a iOS device (i.e. locked down tightly with secure elements, can be used as Point of Sale machines, very difficult to temper) with data piped over TLS then it might be another story. But we don't live in that world. Browser apps have to deal with the fact that they can be tempered with easily. That a lot of things requires securing on both the client side and the server side (just think about how many times you have had to write two validations for form input). Servers have to be designed not to be easily compronised. It forces data and state to be clearly specified and mapped out. You can't just hold everything in-memory when you have to pipe things down the wire.

Potentially soon we will be seeing more of such things. MSFT WebForms didn't work out for all sort of reasons, but with stuff like front end Flutter, WebAssembly, the whole server-control GUI over WebSockets thing with Phoenix LiveView, Plotly Dash, .NET server side Blazor we are seeing a resurgence of this idea. Building rich UI and having to manage state both ends is a pain in the butt and makes stuff like authentication/authorization tremendously difficult to implement properly and correctly. We have come a full circle.

What's almost ridiculous is all the manpower and engineering effort that was put in over the years just so we can have a better UI and UX. You can build a shiny GUI in React and use the same COBOL accounting software code running in a DOS simulator that once powered a TUI software and the end user would not know the difference and would be more than happy to hand over money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a way to do this with just plain ol' javascript? Or do I have to use the "language?"

Things like this scare me because it's like a more tightly coupled coffeescript that's gonna be hell to maintain in 10 years, will become awkward with new (JavaScript) language features, or will just omit those features until its untimely demise...

</comment><comment><USER11> I experimented with Imba for a bit a few years ago. Ultimately there was way too little documentation at the time for me to get past some of my initial confusion.

Scrimba.com is extremely impressive, however. It's written in Imba, and also has a couple of Imba courses [1]. Looks like a good place to start!

1: [https://scrimba.com/search?q=imba](https://scrimba.com/search?q=imba)

<comment><USER12> Seriously, I glanced at the webpage and was a bit whatever but that caught my attention. It's very very nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another JS framework. This time around... Ruby-flavored Vue.

On one hand, people should absolutely go where their passion projects take them. Building languages and compilers is often a critical step on the path of deeper understanding.

However, there's no way to get past the fact that there are too many front-end frameworks that offer same-but-different syntaxes. Most of these have no chance of achieving a large enough ecosystem, but every framework demands reinvention of everything all over again.

It pains me to consider how much smart person energy is currently channeled into creating flavor of the day JS instead of building stuff with whatever tech they are already proficient with.

Case in point: I am MUCH more excited by the Scrimba screencasting platform than I am by the prospect of spending an open-ended amount of time learning another, not-obviously-better framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It pains me to consider how much smart person energy is currently channeled > into creating flavor of the day JS instead of building stuff with whatever > tech they are already proficient with.

I always thought `diversity is good`, but maybe in certain instances it's not. Perhaps a certain saturation level is reached and diversity just adds noise to the system and causes enormous overlap and your "smart person energy" is mostly spent re-inventing the wheel

<comment><USER5> Are we allowed to make thinly veiled gestures towards the 2020 Democratic candidate lineup? I don't want to get hell-banned.

Honestly, after React, Vue, Angular, Ember, Stimulus, Meteor and Backbone, how does anyone truly have time to learn learn about Svelte, Marko, Knockout, Aurelia, Riot, Omi, Foundation, Catberry, Composer, Yo-Yo, Vomit, Mithril, Polymer, Sencha... I'm not making a single one of these up. I know that I'm forgetting at least a half-dozen.

Note: try Stimulus!

Seriously though, if you're following every development on more than two JS frameworks, you are procrastinating, lying to yourself and not achieving your full human potential.

<comment><USER13> The very situation you are describing explains why many of us have avoided working in the web ecosystem entirely for the last 20+ years or so, and don't miss it at all.

Many people thrive in these kind of frenetic, fast changing environments. Others (myself included) don't.

<comment><USER5> Punchline: my top-level comment was downvoted with an angry passion. My interpretation is that there is a silent mob of people here that are so threatened by the idea that the only thing they know might not be God's Ultimate Solution that anyone who suggests that things were a lot better a decade ago is to be punished.

All I know is that after I help my friend with her React stuff, I go back to Rails and thank my lucky stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing I am struggling to find is an example of calling a REST api, or graphql

<comment><USER4> There's an example at the bottom of this page: [http://imba.io/guides/essentials/state-management#state- mana...](http://imba.io/guides/essentials/state-management#state-management)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks pretty fascinating! Think I'll try it out in a small app.

</comment><comment><USER16> Out of curiosity - if a memoized DOM is faster than virtual, why doesnt the React team to move that?

I wonder if its technical complexity and what it would be under the hood. I know Fiber was redone recently-ish.

<comment><USER17> If you're "reacting" to a lot of changes, I suspect memorizing might end up ballooning your memory usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first glance Imba reminds me of Coffescript, in a good way. A language that replaces JS' unfortunate Java-like syntax and helps reveal its simple and elegant semantics.

<comment><USER18> > helps reveal its simple and elegant semantics

JS semantics are neither simple nor elegant. There's a reason there are whole books dedicated to avoiding certain parts of the language, and it's not the syntax.

For example, the syntax of the == operator is trivial. Its semantics however is complex and inelegant (it looks like an equality operator, but it doesn't express an equality relationship).

<comment><USER4> I'm familiar with JS' warts, which can be avoided. At the same time JS has e.g. functions as first class objects, few and simple types, object and array literals, and a prototype based OO.

This makes its semantic more elegant and simple than some other mainstream languages, like e.g. C++, Java or C#, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Imba <3

<comment><USER20> Sounds like you know it well and like it a lot. Could you share some commentary on what you like so much?</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Is the coming monday a good launch date? - <AUTHOR>

I was planning to launch a preview of my app last monday. But attention of everyone was a bit focused on the DEMO and TC50 startups, so I decided to shift the launch to a somewhat later date. It's just a tiny launch, a mini preview of the site, that's all.<p>But I question, are mondays good launch days? Are there better days? When does one reach the widest audience? <comment><USER2> Launch on HN over the weekend,get some feedback, make all the changes you want. Then announce it to the world on Tuesday.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it matters when you launch. If it's a mini-preview you might not want a big fanfare, but rather a small launch so that you can get users on board, get feedback and continually improve until you reach a stage where you're ready to really pump up the PR machine.

</comment><comment><USER4> launch over the weekend, you'll probably get more blog buzz since people don't tend to launch over the weekend.

<comment><USER5> Actually no. Most blogs hibernate on weekends. Best to do it on weekdays.

<comment><USER4> if the only reasoning as to why is because the blogs are hibernating, point me to a large-ish blog that doesn't post on the weekend. many of them post less, but many of them post less because there's less to say.</comment></comment></comment>


Explore Crime Statistics UK with Proper Open Data Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.opendatamanager.com/ <comment><USER2> Dear Christ don't visit this. The scrolling experience and constant history re-writing as you scroll is head-bangingly awful.

For the sake of anyone visiting your site, fix this please!</comment>


The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-07-08/how-to-be-a-professional-dungeons-dragons-master-hosting-games <comment> blaser-waffle Makes perfects sense to me. Building a solid campaign takes a lot of thought.

You've gotta have a mix of storytelling, refereeing, and logistical skills to run an immersive game -- and that takes effort to learn. If you're going to spend a few hours prepping for a game, using specialist skills, why not charge for it? Add-in expensive models, scenery, etc. and there is a cost to recoup

Likewise, if I'm a busy player, why not drop some cash for a fun, immersive with a pro, rather then a random friend-of-a-friend-DM game, aka Neckbeard Larry's Elf Fetish Campaign?</comment>


Commit messages are not titles (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/news/90 <comment><USER2> Commit messages are whatever an individual, community, or organization decides they should be. Debating beyond that is like debating tabs vs spaces. It doesn't matter as long as everyone you're working with is on the same page.

<comment><USER3> The "rule" I like when it comes to commit messages it that they should be clear enough that someone who gets woken up for a production issue at 3am can quickly parse what was in the commit and how dangerous it is.

Nothings worse than digging through a ton of diffs to find the breaking change.

<comment><USER4> I find that requiring "nice" commit messages tends to mean digging through bigger diffs to find the breaking change. If you're fine with commit messages like "fix" or "derp", then people are more willing to make each tiny change a separate commit, and then a git bisect takes you right to the specific diff that caused the problem.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not! Submitting "derp" to code review is just disrespectful of the reviewer's time.

There's a rationale for every change. The submitter knows it. The reviewer needs to know it. They can try reconstructing it from the diff, which is potentially error prone .. or you could just tell them.

I'll accept "Fix ticket #1234", since that's moved the rationale elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> A PR needs a review and a written rationale, agreed, but that doesn't mean each individual commit does (indeed one usually reviews the diff as a whole, not the individual commits). Commit everything that compiles, make the PRs at a coarser granularity, then you get the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > If the first line of a commit message is a title, it changes the way you > write it. It becomes just some text to introduce some more text, _without > any stress on the information density_.

I agree with the author that commit messages should optimize for information density. However the example they provide does a poor job of this:

> This is a smart synopsis, as information dense as possible.

"This is a" is the type of thing that should never appear in a commit message as it could apply to EVERY commit message. Synopsizing is the action, but doesn't indicate what is being synopsized; one of the most important facts for someone to understand what is happening here. Finally "as information dense as possible", again should also be cut as this is telling us HOW not WHAT (and ironically hurts information density).

Were I writing this example it would be:

      Synopsize how to write a commit message

\---

I led an initiative at my current company to enforce all commit messages start with an imperative verb and be less than 72 characters. Some people hate it, some people love it.

Aside from standardization, the primary reason to do this is the imperative mood leads to the most concise sentence possible. By leading with the action, the most natural thing to do next is to talk about what is being acted upon. Unnecessary words are dropped and the most important facts are emphasized. In short it forces the author to get to the point.

      [Act] upon [some aspect of the code]

e.g.

      Add user login link on home screen
      Refactor authentication into separate classes
      Lint PR titles conform to standard format

<comment><USER7> > I led an initiative at my current company to enforce all commit messages > start with an imperative verb and be less than 72 characters.

You are truly doing god's work :). I've led a similar initiative and same outcome, some love, but those who don't, really hate it.

<comment><USER8> Why do they hate it? Are those the creative ones that can't conform?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is probably no reasonable, generic guide on how to write commit messages, since different communities use git in different ways. So IMO this article is comparable to a discussion about indentation styles or text editors.

> Commit messages are not titles

> Nor subjects, for what matters.

> ...

> however many times there is _no_ body, there is just the first line.

In Linux (the Kernel) development (where git actually came from), commits are sent as patches via e-mail to mailing list for review and for maintainers to pick them up.

The first line from the commit message becomes the subject line, the rest of the commit message and the diff becomes the body of the mail. The commit message should briefly explain _why_ you are doing this, the _what_ should be mostly in the diff itself. Having no body text after the first line for a non- trivial patch would be rather bad practice. Obviously the author of this article comes from a different background.

But then again, in different communities, a concise single line description with a ticket number may be enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> Capturing the _reason why_ something was changed, why this approach was chosen, and possibly enumerating other approaches not taken (and why they weren't picked), are all gold to the Engineers of Tomorrow spelunking into some codebase.

Summarizing a diff frequently doesn't add information that the diff itself already includes. Title or no title.

I'm surprised we don't think about how to shout into the future more effectively. It might be ourselves that we're helping the most.

<comment><USER11> I think capTuring the "why" of a commit is often overlooked but highly valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trying to impose "one way" to write commit messages is silly at best.

At work I follow whatever convention the team I'm on agrees with.

For my projects I use commit messages as a way to "tag" changes, more than to explain the changes using prose. That way it's very easy for me to search for changes in the codebase.

eg. #event-loop #fix #multiple-dispatch #repeated-message (remove the # and you get the idea)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most commit messages look like this:

        #1234 fixed the fucking fooinater that wouldn't frobulate.

Thank god for the hash ticket number linking standard. Unless you are working on the kernel, your context and discussions and notes are in the bugtracker, so there's no very good reason to write an essay in the commit log.

<comment><USER14> Until you switch bug trackers and the import process subtly mangles that link, and then you switch trackers a few years later and all hope is lost, and then five years after that you hire someone to fix all the bugs that you've been accumulating and they can't tell any of the reasoning behind anything you've done.

Are you always going to be on Jira? On Github? When people fork your project are they expected to clone your issues as well? When you migrate to another system are all your issue references still going to line up correctly? Did you even think to check?

Please continue to include the ticket reference. But also put some context in your commit message because that's what it's there for.

This is the same reason that even if you use a fancy documentation site, it should be generated from files in the repo.

<comment><USER15> Broadly speaking, so much documentation is on the issue tracker, that yes, I expect efforts to be made to preserve that content in perpetuity in one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The first comment:

" _Every source control management system has its own rules. So what I say here for Git might not be valid for Mercurial, SVN, Bazaar, ..._

" _Git has a wonderful tool named format-patch,[http://git- scm.com/docs/git...](http://git-scm.com/docs/git...), that takes a commit and converts it to an email, to put it in a nutshell. Why is there a tool for that? Because Git was created to manage Linux kernel development, and that is done in most parts in or around the Linux Kernel Mailing List. So, the entanglement between commits and emails is deep rooted in Git. And yes, the first line of the commit message _is_ used as the subject._

" _This explains, why you can google "git commit message" and find the same advice over and over again:_

" _[http://git-scm.com/docs/git...*](http://git-scm.com/docs/git...*) "_[https://github.com/erlang/o...*](https://github.com/erlang/o...*) " _[http://tbaggery.com/2008/04...*](http://tbaggery.com/2008/04...*)

"_"No dot at the end, because it might end up as email subject, also use 50 chars or less."*

" _I agree, that interpreting it as title for a longer commit message is a bad idea. The conciseness of this line is something important to be retained. A well-crafted email subject on the other hand makes in some cases reading the whole email unnecessary or only complimentary. (Yes, such things exist.) And that are the types of commit messages that we should strive for, ending with a dot or not._ "

</comment><comment><USER17> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9763463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9763463)

</comment><comment><USER18> Best practice advice used to be "dont leave your commit message empty" and now it seems headed in a direction of some kind of storytelling guide. Up next: the role of character development in your commit messages

<comment><USER19> Show, don't tell!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Commit messages are not titles, or subjects, they are COMMANDS, written in the present tense, that describe exactly what will be done to the codebase if you merge in the commit. That's pretty much all there is to say about it.

<comment><USER21> Well, I'll say more...

They are a summary of what will happen if the commit (which is a bunch of commands) is applied.

They also can elaborate on the context around the commit. It's thoughtful of the commiter if your coworkers don't need to dive into the detailed changes to get a broad picture of why the commit exists.

<comment><USER22> This.

Also, commit messages are sometimes the "documentation of last resort".

In my organization, putting comments in the code is frowned upon. "Comments are lies! The documentation is in the tests!"

But the tests don't lend themselves to _reasons_ behind why the code was written a certain way, why a given approach was taken (for example, we needed to re-write a Rails database migration in a somewhat contorted manner to avoid a deadlock that was occurring in production).

In such organizations, the git commit message are often the best place to warn future programmers of pitfalls: "don't even think of parallelizing these table updates—you'll get deadlocks!"

[edited for brevity]

<comment><USER23> The _why_ is the thing most often missing from documentation of any sort. I often find myself looking at the README for a library I've not heard of and wondering what it will do for me because it only states the _what_ , the _why_ often tells me the/a problem the library solves.

> Foobar packs JSON into binary

vs

> Our Rest API was slow and bandwidth heavy, so we wrote a library (Foobar) > that packs JSON into a binary format. Now our messages are 50% smaller and > 30% faster.

Git commit messages are worse offenders but there's plenty of criminals about!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just use {JIRA Reference} - {JIRA title} and get on with your life.

<comment><USER25> The irony of this comment being that managing JIRA tickets is probably the absolute biggest time-sink of any organization that uses it.

<comment><USER24> I find JIRA light weight. The trick is not to follow too many processes. Drag on tickets to your board when you start them and move then through the swim lanes. The worst cases are when people set up too much security and complex transition rules so that people are blocked by JIRA.

JIRA ain't perfect though. The constant UX changes drive me nuts. At least HN still works the same way as 10 years ago, but JIRA keeps changing like a shapeshifter.

<comment><USER25> The fact that larger companies that use JIRA have to employ full time "JIRA Administrators", or worse, _teams_ of JIRA admins, suggests that the tool is anything but lightweight.

<comment><USER24> Larger companies need meta-roles. That is never going away. If that "PMO" person isn't using JIRA, they are using something else, or there are even more people wasting time dealing with all this via email and shared Excel sheets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why should a message subject not end with a period?</comment>


Ask: Good phone number service providers for startups? - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I are looking for a convenient phone number service. We don't mind using our own cell phones to answer calls, in fact it'd be easiest at the moment since we don't have a good logical spot for a land-line. However, we don't want people calling our business number to hear our personal voice mail messages. Ideally, what I'm looking for would be a single phone number that would load balance or ring on whatever cell phone numbers we need it to. If the call is not answered it would not go to our voice mail, but instead to the company's voice mail. I just imagine this service would be cheaper than a full blown PBX or something.
Are there any services like this, or services that have worked well for other small start ups?
Thanks <comment><USER2> You might be able to use a Google Voice account for basic call distribution and a voice mailbox or something like onebox.com or grasshopper.com for something more advanced

</comment><comment><USER3> Use Google voice - free, simple to setup and it has all the features you need: i.e. ring cellphones and voicemail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also check out Twilio.com and their OpenVBX.</comment>


What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544556/what-will-it-take-to-build-a-virtuous-ai/ <comment><USER2> I'd strongly recommend Bostrom's book 'Superintelligence' for a good overview of the problem-space. My favourite high-level solution to the virtuous AI problem is Yudkowsky's 'Friendly AI' approach[1]. The best part of this strategy is 'Coherent Extrapolated Volition' [2] which would have an AI want _what we would want an AI to want_. By doing this, we can offload the problem of working out how to locate and implement our values over to the AI.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence) [2] [https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf](https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf)</comment>


Tesla Tells New Taxi, Uber Drivers Not to Use Its Superchargers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-15/tesla-tells-new-taxi-uber-drivers-not-to-use-its-superchargers <comment><USER2> I must say, the drivers who use their Tesla as an Uber do a hell of a job of representing the company and making the brand accessible.

I am not fully ready to purchase a car and don't want to deal with a sales pitch, but got a great overview of the S and X from two different drivers on trips. I got to touch and play with the car. I got real feedback from people who spend far more time in the car than I ever will. Both left me with a positive impression and, as a result, I'll likely seriously consider a Tesla when I am ready to buy a vehicle.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that the case with any car though?

<comment><USER4> Anecdotal but the only Uber/taxi driver who has ever started giving me an unsolicited tour of their car was a Tesla S owner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The wording in the article's first paragraph can almost be read as if the policy applied to all Tesla cars used commercially, but the actual announcement is more clear:

> This Policy applies to all Superchargers worldwide and all Tesla vehicles > purchased, either new or used, whether from Tesla or a third party, after > December 15, 2017.

[https://www.tesla.com/about/legal?#supercharger-fair- use](https://www.tesla.com/about/legal?#supercharger-fair-use)

I updated the title accordingly.

<comment><USER5> I understand changing the policy for new sales going forward, but changing it unilaterally from used sales seems wrong.

<comment><USER6> Some Tesla features are written into contracts and some are not. For example, Tesla is not charging anyone for cellphone service for the car. That's not written into the contract, but they kinda have to provide it for free: they need access to vehicle logs for roadside service, and the car needs software updates for safety reasons.

As an owner, I have absolutely no idea what the contract ever said about supercharging. I also know that this change doesn't affect me, other than making it more likely that I can supercharge without waiting.

<comment><USER7> Until 2016, Tesla vehicles were marketed and sold with "unlimited, free for life" supercharging, with "life" meaning the lifetime of the car.

Obviously Tesla can change change their terms however they like on new vehicles that they sell.

However, to now go and retroactively remove/restrict this benefit when pre-2016 vehicles are resold seems wrong.

<comment><USER8> The people doing this are abusing the system and trying to take their benefit and sell it for profit.

<comment><USER9> This is something nearly every entrepreneur does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm reminded of the Tesloop episode of 'The Pitch' podcast. "Haydn Sonnad pitches his plan to revolutionize regional transit on the back of Tesla's electric charging network." [https://gimletmedia.com/episode/11-tesloop/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/11-tesloop/)

<comment><USER11> They called him on this potentially happening too during the pitch.

I hope they bought all the Teslas they need!

<comment><USER6> I think the average owner hopes that they didn't.

Although there's a new 40-stall supercharger between Vegas and LA, so Tesloop probably isn't significantly harming the system at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you still mine BTC from the trunk, so long as you do it solely for your own purposes?

<comment><USER13> Yes [https://electrek.co/2017/11/29/tesla-mining-bitcoin- model-s-...](https://electrek.co/2017/11/29/tesla-mining-bitcoin-model-s- supercharger-power/)

<comment><USER6> Note that an unmodified Tesla allows you to draw 120 watts from the cigarette lighter, not 2,800 like the claim in the article. Which likely false. Fun article, I see you clicked on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really hope Tesla is successful at beefing up its supercharger network. If the proper phrase is "I have no dog in this hunt," I extend the analogy to "because I have a cat."

As an occasional driver of a Nissan Leaf in Puget Sound, the (in my observation) massive uptick in Tesla cars up here has really put a strain on the relatively tiny DC quick-charge network. Where that car can be in and out of a CHAdeMO station in 25-35 minutes, Tesla cars seem to occupy it for two hours. Presumably, and I'm just guessing, this is because a CHAdeMO station is to a Tesla what a 240V level 2 charger is to a Leaf. If I drive to a particular Eastside shopping center, I'd better hope I plan to be there for at least two hours because there's no chance of ever seeing an unoccupied one of the quick chargers there.

Either way, that's why I hope that either Tesla gets its superchargers more widely deployed or that some company takes the hint and builds more DC quick chargers. (Preferably more reliable ones, too, while I'm wishing for ponies. The one at the Lake City Fred Meyer seems to only have two states, occupied or broken.)

<comment><USER15> Leaf battery is 30kWh and even the smallest Teslas are double that (60kWh), most are triple (90kWh until recently was the largest).

Assuming they can all draw the same current it makes sense that teslas are lingering for 2-3 times longer.

The new 40kWh Leaf 2.0 offers similar range to the 60kWh Tesla, for comparison. Presumably this is due to weight etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How will Tesla enforce this policy? Tracking vehicle usage data, looking for lots of short trip patterns? Looking for rideshare decals (drivers would be wise to use removable decals)? Asking Uber/Lyft to share VIN numbers of registered cars?

<comment><USER17> Looking for cars with Uber placards parked at superchargers?

<comment><USER18> Why bother if you have access to vehicle and supercharging data?

<comment><USER17> Just saying, there are simple ways that don't involve deep statistical analysis of driving data.

Incidentally this is a reason I'll probably never buy a Tesla. I don't care for the manufacturer of my car to be logging every trip I take and every location I visit.

<comment><USER19> As if it's not already via your cell phone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not just charge commercial users more instead?

<comment><USER21> Just my speculation, but from the article and Tesla's announcement, it looks like this is an availability thing given Tesla's current scale, not a cost thing per se. Ie., they're not worried that commercial users are consuming too much electricity or anything like that, rather the limited resource in question is the actual number of physical spots at a supercharger area, which is a hard thing to scale quickly. Eventually we can expect that electrical car infrastructure will become sufficiently ubiquitous that it won't be an issue, but for now in a still relatively early bootstrapping stage of things I presume that Tesla is concerned that their customers feel as little anxiety or charging irritation as possible. Tesla is most interested in raw numbers of customers (necessary for efficiencies of scale) rather then how hard each customer is using the car, so they want superchargers build out optimized for serving the maximum number of customers regardless of price.

You're right that maybe long term they could set up more to serve commercial capacity on the back of higher commercial prices, but particularly in metro areas acquiring land, permits, and so forth and building physical infrastructure isn't quick.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the great analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How will they enforce this for rideshare drivers?

</comment><comment><USER24> How do they know whether you use it commercially or personally? I think I know the answer and it's disconcerting.

<comment><USER25> Send you a friendly letter if miles per week exceed a treshold?

<comment><USER24> What if I don't want them to track me.

<comment><USER25> It's really hard to fill up your battery, without learning how much juice you have used. They don't have to track you, they can just follow the amount of power spent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> And the reality is back, teaching the maths

</comment><comment><USER27> "We may also take additional action to protect the availability of Superchargers for their intended purpose, such as limiting or blocking your vehicle's ability to use Supercharger stations."

say what. is it well known that tesla can brick your car whenever they feel like it?

<comment><USER28> They have root and a comm line, they can.

Same with Amazon taking back Kindle books a few years ago.

Also your smartphone. Not yours.

Nowadays "buy" means "rent". Pick a landlord.

<comment><USER27> somehow it feels way bigger deal if my car is bricked.

<comment><USER29> The car will be alright, you just can't charge it for free.

<comment><USER27> Yeah but the fact that they have the ability to block this means they can block other things too.

<comment><USER29> They would block the output of the charger, not the input of your car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My hope: Tesla succeeds at making real things and has a stock valuation that accurately reflects their intrinsic value while providing sufficient support to fund new ventures.

Is that too much to ask?

</comment><comment><USER31> An Uber driver can afford a Tesla??

<comment><USER32> They can and they do. I talked to an Uber driver with a model s in Amsterdam. Leases it with his brother for about €1600 per month and still makes profit.

<comment><USER33> There are Tesla Ubers/taxis all over Amsterdam. It's a tax thing, a typical Mercedes taxi would also cost 1200 / month and then much more in fuel than the Tesla.

<comment><USER34> which only works until the govement notices the tax loss ad changes the tax laws basing a business on a tax loop hole is a high risk stratergy

<comment><USER32> Apparently right now environmentalism is a quite good justification for such lowered taxes. After all taxis are some of the most actively driven vehicles in the streets of any country.

<comment><USER34> Well in the UK it was a tax break for rich middle class people - not going to help a single parent who buys her electricity on a key system.

<comment><USER6> The single parent doesn't get any benefit from less pollution and less global warming?

<comment><USER34> No She just pays even more on an already more expensive tariff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Oh no Bjorn, what is he going to do?

</comment><comment><USER36> this kind of retroactive changes to their policies with regards to supercharges can end up biting them in the butt. it demonstrates that they consider nearly all promises changeable.

though when the III becomes widely available I fully expect a whole host of other issues come about and some segments of their user base to demand exclusions for those they think make unfair use of the chargers.

having been disconnected from a public charger by another EV owner who flat out told me i did not drive a real EV (its a Volt) I have found there are some real entitled thinking people driving these days</comment>


Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube over Bitcoin Giveaway Scams - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-sues-youtube-over-bitcoin-giveaway-scams <comment><USER2> I forgot he fell for one of these... I wonder how the legal fees will compare to the lost value...</comment>


Revision 2018 results - <AUTHOR> http://www.pouet.net/party_results.php?which=1550&when=2018 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75803](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75803) Block One by Fairlight & cocoon

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0t2jCMGZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0t2jCMGZE) One Of Those Days - <USER2>

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZrAYdzUzNE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZrAYdzUzNE) fr-090: Let there be light by Farbrausch 2018 (PC 64k intro)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52mQzN439W4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52mQzN439W4) We Come in Peace by Fairlight - Censor Design - Offence 2018 (C64 Demo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXzXFbtOON8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXzXFbtOON8) When Silence Dims The Stars Above by Conspiracy 2018 (PC 64k Intro)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgDMkwGk56Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgDMkwGk56Q) Aurora by Excess

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuXDB3H2mY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuXDB3H2mY) Revision 2018 - Sunday: PC Demo</comment>


Tesla CEO Predicts More Than Half of New Cars to be Electric in 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/cars/tesla-ceo-ready-bet-half-cars-will-be-electric-20-years.html

<comment><USER2> It's pretty obvious that they won't be gas.

Most of the new cars in 2030 will probably be sold in China, India, etc. Density makes EV with even 10kwh battery packs work well there, and they don't have a lot of gasoline culture or infrastructure, so ev from the start makes sense. They use a lot of CNG now.

This might even be true in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is useless. It doesn't even explain why he thinks this will happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be more impressed if the CEO of Chevy or Nissan said this.

<comment><USER5> IIRC the CEO of Nissan already is betting on this - [http://www.bloomberg.com/video/57007678-nissan-s-ghosn- bets-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/video/57007678-nissan-s-ghosn-bets-on- electric-cars-higher-oil-prices.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course he does. His company depends on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would have been sooner if Teslas engineers wouldn't have died in that plane crash.

Life is dangerous when you try to free the slaves with technology.</comment>


MySpace Says Zero Tolerance For App Scams, Changes Terms Of Use - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/03/myspace-says-zero-tolerance-for-app-scams-changes-terms-of-use/ <comment><USER2> I wonder when Facebook is going to follow suit. They probably won't, considering that they have too much to lose if they did implement such as strict policy. Money vs Morals, which one will Facebook choose?</comment>


South Korea response to Coronavirus appears effective - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3074469/coronavirus-south-korea-cuts-infection-rate-without <comment><AUTHOR> I suggest Biden needs to start presidenting now instead of waiting possibly until January; he can show leadership by announcing he will no longer actively campaign against Sanders, and coordinating with Bloomberg to get information and resources where they're most needed now. He can start by trying to bring the South Korean model to the US.</comment>