Ask HN: Anyone doing business using Estonian e-residency? - <AUTHOR> Do you think it's a viable solution for doing online business? How is that working out for you in general? <comment><USER2> Opening a UK limited company is at least as straightforward. Registering takes a couple of hours, it can be done entirely online and the fee is £12 ($15). You don't need to be a UK resident. You do need a registered office in the UK, but a company formation agent will provide one for about £20 ($26) per year. All your tax returns can be filed entirely online and HMRC provide a very helpful tax advice service. It really is fantastically simple.

The obvious advantage to registering in Estonia would be the certainty of continued access to the European Single Market. We're still not entirely sure how Brexit will pan out.

[https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation](https://www.gov.uk/limited- company-formation)

[https://www.gov.uk/corporation-tax](https://www.gov.uk/corporation-tax)

Another option well worth considering is Stripe Atlas. It's not the cheapest way to start a corporation, but Stripe provide a huge amount of added value.

[https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas)

<comment><USER3> Wow. That's a lot cheaper than opening a company in Estonia.

How about the banking system for companies opened by non-residents? Can one get a multi-currency bank account easily?

<comment><USER4> Multi currency in UK with regular banks is dead. Some time ago, you were able to have USD, EUR and GBP , now they don't open new ones easily.

Alternatives likes Transferwise or Revolut would be the norm for operating across different currencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After looking into it for a while, i decided not to do it. Context: I live in Germany for roughly 2/3 of the year, rest is traveling.

Not sure where you are located, but if you spend the majority of your time in a other EU country (e.g. Germany) you will have a very hard time explaining to the local tax authorities that the company entity is not effectively being managed from Germany. And when you fail to explain this, the company entity becomes a german tax resident and you have to deal with all sorts of paperwork and expensive tax consultants. This is especially true when you have no local employees in Estonia.

<comment><USER6> Through a US company, I employed a US citizen residing in Germany, as a contractor. It was terrible! Every German accountant we talked to acted like he was a unicorn and wanted to charge us tens of thousands of dollars to figure it out. We muddled through, no doubt doing it wrong... but it didn't seem like there'd be any way that'd be right.

<comment><USER7> While I'm not a tax expert, our startup is currently building a platform to help with payouts and tax rules. As I understand it, all you need is to get a W9 from the US resident and then file a 1099-MISC annually for him. He may be subject to tax withholding -- but that's all in the instructions on the IRS forms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seriously guys, consult an accountant, a tax lawyer or just someone who could have at least a clue what you are trying to do. There are reasons to incorporate companies that are not in your place of residence, for example: vat registration and to have a "front-door" in that country for selling to the public, for procurement, for legal reasons (e.g. if you sell products in the EU, you need to have an EU contact address listed on the product) etc. International taxation is not easy and nobody will explain to you the problems here but there will be for sure problems. If you want to do it right, you usually pay what you saved in registration to the accountant instead. And no, you won't save any tax. Let me be clear, you won't save any tax! If you do, it's either called tax avoidance (punishable in many countries!) or you are an international company that already has a tax accountant/lawyer to structure things properly, has substance in those countries and will for sure not ask questions here.

</comment><comment><USER9> I considered it for my SaaS business. But at the moment my business is based in Poland, so moving to Estonia doesn't change things much (I still can't economically sell to individuals within the EU because of idiotic VAT regulations). I chose to remain in Poland for the time being. On the plus side: low taxes, EU law, first patent troll doesn't bankrupt my business. On the minus side: Stripe continues to ignore Poland, so I have to deal with Braintree and this is a pain in oh so many ways, VAT MOSS is a disaster, and we have the Cult of the Invoice.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate on how does being in Poland protect you from patent trolls?

<comment><USER11> I'm not the OP, but a company I worked for once had reason to set up a US presence, but decided against it because once you have a US entity, patent trolls have someone to sue in their jurisdiction.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. This is also one of the big reasons why Stripe Atlas is not necessarily a good idea for companies from outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am an e-resident and I used it to establish a business entity for my startup. It works really well for my particular use case.

I am a Canadian resident, my co-founder is an Estonian resident (physical). Both of these may change in the future and the intended market for our startup is global. Estonia was chosen as a common ground with a minimal overhead - it's easy and costs almost nothing.

Using government services with an ID-card was a breeze. For banking we use a "physical" Estonian bank, once set up I have no problem accessing it online either.

We didn't have any revenue the previous year, so cannot say much about taxation story here. It gets more or less complicated depending on your country of residence, but I don't think that having a business entity in Estonia is fundamentally different from other EU countries here.

Slightly more personal and readable story, written by me: [https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/how-to-launch-an- estonia...](https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/how-to-launch-an-estonian- startup-from-the-canadian-mountains-7ae95f1ff11)

<comment><USER13> Corporate taxation is generally based on where the management and control of the business is, not where it is incorporated, although the incorporation jurisdiction is considered. If you had incorporated the Estonian company by yourself without a partner and had been running it from Canada, the Estonian company will be considered a Canadian company for tax purposes and required for file a T2 corporate income tax return.

If you are still a Canadian resident, do remember to file T1134. If you own 50/50 in the business, you can perhaps argue that this is a foreign affiliate only, and not a controlled foreign affiliate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my experience a lot of freelancers are using it (especially when they like to work in different countries). Personally I'm quite happy using it and it's a way better experience in comparison with the chamber of commerce in the Netherlands when you start freelancing (had some bad experiences unfortunately when they sold my data to shady companies which will target you with fake invoices/bad deals/spamming). Another great feature is that you are in full control how to pay yourself (salary/board member fee/dividends) which can have serious tax advantages depending on your country's tax system.

<comment><USER5> How do you avoid that the company becomes a dutch tax resident if you manage it from the Netherlands most of the time?

<comment><USER14> There are limitations like I cannot rent an office for longer than six months and my company is registered in Estonia with an Estonian address (I use leapin.eu which takes care of the accounting part). I get your point and when you are selling physical products I cannot see how that would be possible. However if you are doing location independent work like coding or designing it is almost effortless to not become a tax resident.

Also the Dutch tax laws don't care about the company as long as you pay the personal income tax plus some employee insurance tax.

<comment><USER13> In the Netherlands, a corporation is a resident for tax purposes if the management and control of that company is in the Netherlands, regardless of where that corporation is set up. There is no reference to address or office location. I'd be wary of casually dismissing Dutch tax residency of an "online" company--it is not as trivial as most think it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can register a company with it in 1 hour. Then open a bank account with Revolut Business and run it from anywhere in the world. It really depends on what you want to use it for.

<comment><USER16> How long did it take you figure out taxes/permits/liability for the Estonian entity in countries where you and your customers live?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Getting an Estonian bank account is nigh impossible. If you want to do anything AdSense related, go with an Armenian account instead. Less hype, same rules (~), totally worth it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Double taxation seems to be the main pain point looking at the comments. It will help to google and see if your country has a tax treaty with estonia.

<comment><USER5> Just "having" a treaty is not enough. Germany has a treaty with Estonia, but it doesn't protect you. The Estonian company WILL become a german tax resident if the company is being managed by a German citizen living in Germany 99% of the time.

<comment><USER13> This is correct, and this applies to many OECD countries. There's generally little reason to set up a company overseas if you live in an OECD or EU country; foreign affiliate tax rules will get you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would it be easier to convince EU customers that your US (SaaS?) business is trustworthy if you operated in Estonia?

<comment><USER20> I don't think it will make a difference - everyone is used to most internet businesses being from and registered in the US.

In my experience of trying to sell a SaaS to small businesses, their only location-based concern is about where the data is hosted and if we are GDPR compliant. If you can offer hosting in some EU AWS or Google Cloud region that will be much more useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got my E-residency last year & find it kind of useless.

<comment><USER22> What have you tried doing with it?

<comment><USER21> I registered my Software Developer company as an Estonian ÖU

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In most cases that setup does not absolve you from tax obligations where you live. I can see a benefit in setting up a business or branch in EU in general, if you have customers in EU. Otherwise why Estonia specifically?

<comment><USER24> > Otherwise why Estonia specifically?

Because the Estonian government is fairly unique in that it will issue an electronic identification card to anyone who requests it and passes a background check, permitting that person--regardless of nationality--to use most Estonian government services, like business registration and tax filing, from anywhere.

[https://e-resident.gov.ee/](https://e-resident.gov.ee/)

<comment><USER25> Sovereignty as a service.

<comment><USER24> I suppose, but only in the same sense as governments around the world tend to have mechanisms for non-residents and non-citizens to transact business or own property. An Estonian identity certificate doesn't, on its own, allow someone to enter Estonia or live or work there. That still requires citizenship of Estonia, the European Union, or meeting other requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I too have been curious, and I haven't seen anything beyond "nifty factor" to compel me to set it up.

In most cases it won't positively benefit people in terms of taxation.

However, it might perhaps be useful for people coming from countries that are looked down upon by some significant EU countries. In that case, having an Estonia registration might increase the credibility of the business from an initial (and sometimes important) external view.

</comment><comment><USER27> I set up a company and bank account a couple of months ago. It was very easy.

We are in development so don't have any customers yet, so I can't tell you how taxes etc will be but I can tell you the process of dealing with the .ee government so far is paradise compared to the US process.

<comment><USER28> Would you say it might work for a consulting and IT services business? did you experience any hidden costs, thanks

<comment><USER27> If you live in the EU it's not clear what benefit there might be, and if you're a consultant there might be even less.

This doesn't save any taxes, and isn't a strategy to do so. The costs themselves are't that great: a few hundred Euro.

The reasons we did were the following:

\- Ease of doing business with clients and vendors in other EU countries: we have an EU bank account in Euros, can generate all the right VAT paperwork etc. Not huge, but for some businesses critical. We also have a US subsidiary in Delaware and a couple of state registrations because that is how you employ people in the US. Ditto for a third country where one of the founders is moving.

\- VCs are increasingly comfortable with overseas-registered countries, at least ones not in tax havens. Ten years ago this would have been seen as weird. I've always previously incorporated in Delaware where I've never set foot so this isn't a big deal.

\- Our lawyer (!!!) in SV suggested we officially HQ the company overseas (I already had an e-residency so we used Estonia). He said as the founding team was all foreigners (though some in the Valley for decades), it was a good hedge against unforeseen changes in the federal government's attitude towards foreigners. TTTT I would have considered it wide-eyed raving except this lawyer has been working at a big law firm in the valley, for 30 years. But what the hell, it's so easy to do these days why not.

Not everything you need is in English but tbh I don't interact with Estonia any more than I interact with Delaware and this has never been a problem.

<comment><USER28> This would be more of a family business, nothing special really, would you recomend a place where to get the right info, if you were in touch with any of those companies, dont want to trouble you with the info :) thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It may not be important for your use case, but Stripe will not work with Estonian company. [https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)

</comment><comment><USER30> Would this work as a workaround for creating a Stripe account, if I'm living in a country not supported by Atlas?

<comment><USER31> Stripe does not seem to support Estonia.

[https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)</comment></comment>


Contribute to Open Souce: Transifex, translating content - <AUTHOR> https://www.transifex.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that a lot of HN'ers are looking for a way to contribute to open source projects, so here's an opportunity to do that without coding.

Transifex is about bringing open source projects and translators together. Developers submit content they need translated (source code, documentation, etc) and translators simply help out.

Some well-known projects are Fedora, Django and Bitbucket.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Is GitHub Pages Not Supporting IPv6? - <AUTHOR> Why is GitHub Pages not supporting IPv6?
This is a serious question, no ranting please. I never worked with such a big tech stack nor in such a big company.
Why doesn't a tech company where one could argue it being in a role-model position in the industry put a priority on this? I do understand companies put their priorities where the money is. Given that GH Pages is also a feature for paid customers (for private repos for example), one could argue this is the case here.
Probably one of the reasons is the involved complexity of a CDN. But I'm interested in the detailed reason(s). <comment><USER2> Guessing:

It's very much a "nice to have" feature with low priority, on a product that itself is likely low priority (Pages).

Even if an IPv4-only site is slower for some subset of users (that have IPv6-native internet connections and gateways to access IPv4), that's not something GitHub is likely to care about, especially not with Pages. Pages being a tiny bit faster doesn't make them money and few people ever notice. E.g. HTTPS support for custom domains was a lot more important.</comment>


Ask HN: Founder/Dev in London – fancy a drink (or a job)? - <AUTHOR> I'm the founder of a Swiss startup checking out the startup scene in London this week. Would love to get to know some startuppers there and, if you are on the jobhunt, we are hiring all over Europe (incl. London) as well...<p>Reach out via louis[at]gymhopper[dot]com <comment><USER2> The proper venue for this is the 'hiring' thread that will be automatically posted on the first of July.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - the hiring is secondary, I'm more interested in sharing experiences (of the SaaS, B2B market in Europe in particular) and making new friends, so the 'hiring' thread wouldn't be the proper venue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's your startup about?</comment>


Michael Pollan: 'I was a very reluctant psychonaut' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/12/michael-pollan-reluctant-psychonanaut-psychedelic-drugs-how-to-change-your-mind <comment><USER2> Me thinks you protest too much!</comment>


Printed books existed nearly 600 years before Gutenberg's Bible - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5910249/printed-books-existed-nearly-600-years-before-gutenbergs-bible <comment><USER2> Gutenberg didn't invent a machine for quickly producing books, he invented a machine for quickly producing machines for quickly producing books!

That is, his key innovation was a way to mass-produce the _characters_ (the movable type) which could then be arranged to mass-produce the printed pages.

First, individual characters were carved from steel (each taking about a day to make). This was the only part of the process done "by hand". Every other element of the process was produced through some form of (repeatable/arrangeable) _transfer_ of shape/information.

The master characters were hammered into brass to create a mold which could then be reused to cast multiple copies of a character. Each page had thousands of characters and Gutenberg's shop had multiple presses going at a time, so they needed lots of these characters on hand (50,000 is a conservative estimate).

The masters could also be easily transported to another city. These masters (plus raw materials of course) were all that was needed to set up a new print shop. This enabled the printing press technology to quickly spread throughout Europe.

I think it's a good analogy for the power of software :)

Source: [http://retinart.net/beautiful-things/gutenberg-book- changed-...](http://retinart.net/beautiful-things/gutenberg-book-changed- world/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's a good parallel. Copying is cheap and automation is applied not only to a task, but to the automation of the task.

<comment><USER4> this 2 fold demultiplication hits my mind regularly.

      instance / class / metaclass / ()
      instance / model / metamodel / ()   -- very redundant.
      value    / type  / kind      / ()
      machine  / vm    / utm       / ()

() denotes the closed loop where you don't need another layer.

anybody has a theory that explains this trait ?

<comment><USER3> It's just a linguistic phenomenon. In English, at least, the prefix _meta-_ denotes not only a single level of _metaness_ (if you will) but also two levels or more, e.g., _meta-metaclass_ → _metaclass_. So the "closed loop" is there only for convenience, like saying "and so on".

If we were being precise, we would explicitly denote the level at which we were working. However, we tend not to do so for two reasons: first, that we rarely work with _n_ -meta things for high _n_ ; and second, that being explicit is just plain unwieldy.

It's for the same reason that we follow _line_ , _square_ , and _cube_ with _4-cube_ , _5-cube_ , &c.

<comment><USER5> i think it's deeper than that. the progression is from object (every one hand- crafted) to template-based object-maker (hand-crafted per kind of object, but can produce a bunch of objects of that kind), to metatemplate-based template maker.

however, once you hit that second level of abstraction, you have almost invariably added enough flexibility that the range of templates your template- maker can make includes templates for other template makers. that is, it's not just a quirk of linguistics that a meta-meta-template-maker is called a meta- template-maker, they really do tend to be objects on the same level of abstraction and flexibility.

<comment><USER3> We seem to be saying the same thing; I just don't see any inherent meaning in it. A literal interpretation of _meta-_ would have us define it like this:

        Instance ::= 0
        Meta(X)  ::= Succ(X)

But it's much more convenient to define _meta-_ recursively:

        Instance ::= 0
        Meta(X)  ::= Succ(X)
                   | Meta(Succ(X))

In both cases, we have an arbitrary designation:

        Class    ::= Succ(Instance)

That kind of redundancy is a linguistic artifact, not a deeply meaningful one.

It's not the case that reaching the second level of abstraction necessarily results in enough flexibility to make the inductive step. As a counterexample, consider C macros, which only add one _meta-_ because they are only expanded once. Lisp macros, on the other hand, are expanded until a fixed point is found. That's why Lisp macros are Turing-complete while the C preprocessor is only a pushdown automaton.

<comment><USER6> A bit of disagreement with your last paragraph: The (Common) Lisp macro processor is Turing-complete trivially because it invokes a Turing-complete language along the way, not because of power inherent in its expansion strategy.

Common Lisp macro bodies are written in Common Lisp, i.e. written in a Turing- complete language — they would still be Turing-complete even if we wrote them in the subset Lisp-without-macros. The C preprocessor, on the other hand, does not invoke a Turing-complete language to compute a macro's expansion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting accident of history that Gutenberg was able to make the innovations he did, and thereby ignite the explosive popularity of movable type in the West. If the Roman empire hadn't brought the Latin alphabet in its various forms to so much of Europe, it's possible that a less modular script would have dominated—leading to the same problems that plagued Chinese printing.

Of course, abjads and syllabaries are as common (and about as modular) as alphabets, so it's likely that we would have been fine either way. Still, it's interesting to think of what Europe would be like if the predominant script were semantophonetic like Chinese. Oddly enough, the main reason that phonemic scripts exist is precisely because languages tend to be non-isolating—in other words, modularity in a language leads to non-modularity in its orthography, and vice versa.

<comment><USER7> Great post, but I'm not sure we should wholly credit the Romans with ensuring we have a 'modular script'.

Before the Romans, the Greek and Phonecian writing systems (and derivitives) were taking hold, and more complex scripts (like Chinese logograms) had never simply never been common near Europe, with the single notable exception of Egyptian heiroglyphs (which had complex logograms, but could equally be used with simpler phonetic characters).

<comment><USER8> Even before the Greeks and Phonecians we have evidence of such writing systems. SUch as the Linear A or Linear B (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B>). Word scripting using letters/glyphs goes a long way in the past of Europe. It's a long tradition in this part of the continent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gutenberg's real innovation was his type metal alloy. Most alloys shrink when cast in a mold, causing distortion. Depending on the alloy, type metal may even expand slightly. It gives a nice, sharply-defined character.

Gutenberg's type metal was also considerably harder than (say) pure lead, which made it possible to print thousands of impressions from one setup.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is much less well known is that, little more than 100 years later, Arab Muslims were also printing texts, including passages from the Qur'an. They had already embraced the Chinese craft of paper making, developed it and adopted it widely in the Muslim lands. This led to a major growth in the production of manuscript texts. But there was one kind of text which lent itself particularly to mass distribution: this was the private devotional collection of prayers, incantations, Qur'anic extracts and the "beautiful names" of God, for which there was a huge demand among Muslims, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. They were used especially as amulets, to be worn on the person, often rolled up and enclosed in a locket.

[http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=9...](http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=940)

</comment><comment><USER11> By the way, it seems that the author forgot to mention that one of the 'western' innovations was the adjustable mould. Basically it is a device where you can put matrices of different width, used to cast lead types; in that way you can cast letters like /i/ or /m/ or even ligatures etc. with the same mould. I must add that I don't know if Gutenberg actually invented the mould as we know it (according to James Mosley[ _] the mould was first described in the XVI century).

[_] [http://typefoundry.blogspot.it/2007/04/drawing- typefounders-...](http://typefoundry.blogspot.it/2007/04/drawing-typefounders- mould.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> There was a better way to present the generally unknown history of moveable type without twisting it into historical revisionism. Gutenberg invented the mechanical printing press that revolutionized literacy and the availability of information. This article does not dispute this, it just used a provocative title to get you to click.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article is superficially correct but omits enormous amounts of detail.

Woodblock printing is ancient, mostly used for religious texts but requires very little infrastructure. Obviously not suitable for small printing runs, as the entire block has to be carved at once.

Bi Sheng invented movable type using porcelain characters. But Chinese is fantastically ill suited to that sort of printing; it was viewed historically as a novelty and not used basically at all. He decamped to Korea where he found a more receptive audience, IIRC.

Gutenburg's type alloy and the casting process were the real core of the innovation; the rest of the technology existed, but wasn't compelling without the ability to mass produce characters and with a reliable type alloy.

Oddly enough and for reasons I don't fully understand, woodblock printing didn't take off in Europe until _after_ moveable type came in; mostly for illustrations, IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER14> And, actually, last week was the 1144th anniversary of the printing of the oldest book for which we have a precise date:

<http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0511/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Far more interesting to me (since I knew about the real history of the printing press) was the linked article[1] on the "tweets" scribes would put in the margins of books they were copying before the press came to Europe. Amazing how similar they sound to today's workplace griping!

1\. [http://io9.com/5896008/medieval-monks-complained-about- their...](http://io9.com/5896008/medieval-monks-complained-about-their-jobs- in-the-margins-of-ancient-manuscripts)

</comment><comment><USER16> Six pages doesn't seem to compare with the complexity of the Gutenberg Bible. Printing on a small scale,using wood... compared to large scale commercially viable printing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Actually, much sooner, in 593 A.D., the first printing press was invented in China.

However, Gutenberg's was far superior because the press could be altered, the chinese press was carved in wood and could not be modified.

</comment><comment><USER18> The limited-run exhibit "Passages" in Atlanta shows a portion of a Gutenberg Bible right next to an oriental printed text from 700-something. I just saw it yesterday. Fantastic exhibit, if you have the chance see it before ends.

</comment><comment><USER19> nice article.

but isn't it more work to hide the content from js-disabled-browsers? so why do it?

</comment><comment><USER20> There's many parallels between Gutenberg and most of the tech industry for the entire span of human industry.

It's not about getting there first, it's about doing it well. For many the same reasons everyone assumes Edison invented lightbulbs many assume Gutenberg invented printed books. Neither invented the core concept, they just refined it down into what it needed to be to be marketable. Gutenberg disrupted an entire industry not by printing the books but, as others have mentioned, by designing a system that was relatively cheap and more reliable compared to the previous systems.

Although if you want to talk about truly contentious tech. history and marketable success you'd have to head to photography.

</comment><comment><USER21> If it was obvious and easy, it would not have taken 600 years for Gutenberg to get it right.

<comment><USER22> Maybe it wasn't as necessary without the context of a wide spread literate culture and market economy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This book is pretty good if you're interested in this type of thing. It's a bit surprising what ancient civilisations had.

([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Inventions-Peter- James/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Inventions-Peter- James/dp/0345401026/))

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&l...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=PLF5BA848B6BA5650F&v=IUXIStZ3vSo)

</comment><comment><USER25> Ahh, this nice post could form the beginning of a great discussion for an evening between on the East and the West, spanning literature and technology, if the participants are enlightened (some people do tend to take things personally on these matters) and the wine is good.

One discussion topic could be why Gutenberg's press had the explosive effect it had in Europe and not in China? Tyndale smuggling his printed bibles to England may be mentioned.

Another, harder discussion, would be why such topics, i.e. "we invented X hundreds of years before you!" still entice people from the "East" and cause resentment.

Not able to do that on this board, let me give you the following lengthy quotation instead, from Orhan Pamuk's _The Black Book_ , (for me) his best work so far [I mostly used Maureen Freely's bad translation, made a few changes]. This is one of the best novels I know trying to analyze the "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet", which in a number of very few countries (Turkey foremost, but Russia, too, and some Balkan countries perhaps) has an indelible effect on daily life.

<quote>

Whenever I venture into the endless saga about what the West stole from the East and East from the West, I think this: If this realm of dreams we call the world is but a house we roam like sleepwalkers, then our literary traditions are like wall clocks, there to make us feel at home. So:

1\. To say that one of these wall clocks is right and another wrong is utter nonsense.

2\. To say that one is five hours ahead of the other is also nonsense; by using the same logic you could just as easily say that it's seven hours behind.

3\. For much the same reason, it is 9:35 according to one clock and it just so happens that another clock also says its 9:35, anyone who claims that second clock is imitating the first is spouting nonsense.

A year before he attended Averroes's funeral in Cordoba, Ibn Arabi, who would write two hundrend mystical texts before his own demise, found himself in Morocco; it was during his sojourn that he penned a text inspired by the Al- Isra sura of the Koran. [...] Now, anyone who reads Ibn Arabi's account of his travels with his guide through the seven heavens and concludes, after noting that he was thirty-five years old at the time of writing, that Nizam, the girl of his dreams was right, and Beatrice wrong, or that Ibn Arabi was right and Dante wrong, or that the Book of the Israelites and _Makan Al-Asra_ was correct while the _Divine Comedy_ is incorrect, is perpetuating the first sort of nonsense I was describing.

In the eleventh century, the Andalusian philisopher Ibn Tufeyl wrote a book about a child abandoned on a desert island; during his sojourn there he came to respect nature, the sea, the life-giving sustenance afforded to him by a doe, the certainty of death, the heavens above and the "divine truths"; but claiming that _Hayy Ibn Yakzan_ is six six hundred years ahead of _Robinson Crusoe_ or that, observing the latter describes the tools and objects in greater detail, that Ibn Tufeyl was six hundred years behind Daniel Defoe is an example of the second kind of nonsense.

</quote>

You can search Google Books to read Pamuk's interesting example for the third kind of fallacy.

<comment><USER26> There's a simple reason why Gutenberg's technology was explosive and these alleged Asian moveable type systems were not:

"Gutenberg's True Innovation", not present in the article despite that being a paragraph heading, wasn't any of the things mentioned in the article.

Gutenberg created a system to easily cast letters as interchangable parts (centuries before Eli Whitney, as it were) This meant that Gutenberg built a system to _mass produce printing presses_

Carving the letters for an entire typeface by hand could take over a year. However, Gutenberg created a system for taking a hand-sculpted typeface, turning each letter into a mold, and then quickly and cheaply casting each letter. The result: mass production of the most difficult part of the system to produce, the typeface itself, and thus a way to mass produce printing presses.

This article is about as poorly researched as The Oatmeal's ode to Tesla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Honest question. I'm not white ; do many white people in America really truly believe high school history as it is taught?

i.e that white people invented absolutely everything and Europe is the only old world with history worth studying? Then again maybe it's changed in the past 15 years?

<comment><USER28> The way we are taught in america is that nothing happens outside of america. I am a high school sophomore and so far I have had to site through 5 years of American History classes, and no World History classes. In these classes we learn about the contributions of blacks to society, and in more recent history, the contributions of other races, but hardly anything about other countries unless we were at war with them.

We're taught as if there is a concrete separation between American History and World History, when in fact, teaching America separately means artificially separating it from the rest of the world and having to constantly compensate for that.

<comment><USER29> You're telling me you've never learned about Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, China, Medieval Europe?

I find that very unlikely. If it is true please don't go around making statements like _we are taught in america is that nothing happens outside of america_.

You can't speak for America as a whole since we don't have a national curriculum.

More than likely you just feel the way you do because you just took US history and haven't gotten to any or the world history classes.

>We're taught as if there is a concrete separation between American History and World History,

There's nothing wrong with teaching a separate US history and world History class. When you get to college you'll find that history classes are even further subdivided by time and geography.

<comment><USER28> The only time I was ever taught about ancient greece, egypt, china, etc was in third grade, and I hardly think that counts. I've gone to school in three different states, so I have at least some reasonable sample of nation, and although there is no national curriculum, the curricula are generally similar enough.

And college history courses assume that you already have enough knowledge from high school history courses to understand the historical context of what they teach, but by teaching American history separate (and before) world history, we are not taught any global context for events in American History.

<comment><USER29> >The only time I was ever taught about ancient greece, egypt, china, etc was in third grade, and I hardly think that counts.

If that's true you are an _extremely_ rare case. I just took a look at the social studies standards for my state (Georgia, not exactly a top performer education wise) for middle schoool.

6th grade is the history and geography of Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe and Australia, 7th is Africa, Southwest Asia (Middle East), Southern and Eastern Asia, and 8th is US/Georgia History.

If you really haven't had _any_ world history since 3rd grade it looks like it may have been a consequence of moving between 3 states.

If each state had world history at a different year in their curriculum, you may have missed them entirely.

Please don't try to speak for America on a forum with an international audience. Your experience is not representative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Gutenberg's printing press was a novel technology. But to > say that he > invented the printing press is like saying > Steve Jobs or Bill Gates > invented the computer.

Well, Steve Jobs is a bad example here because he _did_ create the first personal computer, as opposed to traditional mainframes, that was more than an experimental computer programmed using a switchboard and outputting with pulses of lamps. Maybe this _is_ the point of the article, that Gutenberg's press was to the previous presses as PCs were to mainframes, but if it is then it's confusing.

Bill gates is a worse example because his company didn't make hardware until much later.

<comment><USER30> Jobs took existing concepts from the Xerox concept PC (with the GUI) and shrunk the price and hardware (in the Apple II). There were personal computers before Jobs, he brought together a lot of things which made it a commercial success. In many ways he's much like Gutenburg, he took a group of existing technologies and concepts and brought them together in a working mixture.

<comment><USER28> ah, nice to know. I thought the closest thing to a personal computer before the Apple I were the micro computers, the size of a room.

<comment><USER31> No.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_Data_Processor>

Expensive, but by no means did it take up a whole room.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine>

Still not exactly a "personal computer". And still expensive, but getting closer.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800>

The microcomputer that sparked the microcomputer revolution.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_computer_club>

The two Steve's were active members.

While there _were_ mainframes that took up whole rooms, systems that didn't were available in the 60's, but at prices only large organizations could afford.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Reasons Why I Want Digg for Girls - <AUTHOR> http://www.heartlessdoll.com/2008/10/5_reasons_why_i_want_digg_for_girls.php

<comment><USER2> I'm a guy, and I couldn't care less about the NBA, Howard Stern, or James Bond trivia without spraining something.

What exactly IS "girl stuff"? The article didn't mention a single example of what a "girl link" is, except jokingly mentioning a few sexist ideas.

<comment><USER3> I'll give you my opinion here: It's not so much about the content, as it is about the community that evolved around the content.

For me, Hacker News is a great example of this. Why do we need Hacker News when we've already got Proggit (i.e. the Programming sub-Reddit)? Truthfully, Reddit's social news technology is more advanced than HN, and there's a lot more people and stories there. Right?

As you'll probably agree...no, not exactly. What sets HN apart (for now) is that it's smaller, more serious, and arguably more intelligent than Reddit's. I see the same links posted here as I do on Reddit; the key difference is the conversations that ensue and in particular the tone of those discussions.

This is long-winded way of saying "girl stuff" isn't about having gossip and fashion articles, but more about a culture evolving around those stories. I do think that the male-dominated culture surrounding sites like Digg, Reddit, and even HN can be off-putting to women.

<comment> Frabjous-Dey I think you hit the nail on the head. Social news sites are only worthwhile insofar as your interests and participation align with the interests and participation of your peers on the site.

The author is really saying two things:

\- "I'm not interested in the articles that make the front page of Digg": a terrific reason not to use Digg.

\- "If women had a Digg of their own, the articles on it would be much more relevant to me." Probably somewhat true. But I know plenty of female geeks who wouldn't give a shit about anything on weheartgossip or kirtsy.

The real goal here is to find a quality community that appeals to you. Unfortunately, this is not all that easy: not only are most people morons, you need a lot of people to be active in the same place for a social website to be worth visiting.

<comment><USER3> I do think getting the communities to form is a challenge, and I think the challenge is even more difficult amongst non-nerd demographics.

I actually set up a slinkset site, <http://www.bababase.com>, a few months ago based on the very premise we're discussing, but I've had a tough time finding a way to get traction amongst a non-nerd crowd! (Moms, in this case.)

<comment><USER4> Moms are _incredibly_ active on the web. All you need to do is get in with the "Mommy Blogger" crowd, which is quite large and influential, and tends towards activism.

iVillage is filled with moms, as are wahm message boards, etc., etc. Your audience is there, and they want what you've got, I'm sure.

<comment><USER3> You're totally right, and I appreciate the encouragement actually.

I'm really not the world's most phenomenal marketer or community organizer. It takes a lot of those two competencies to be successful in a social application endeavor. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm. As a girl, I _am_ interested in stuff like the following. My issues have never been with links, but with idiotic commentary on links.

 _Instead, I'm stuck reading headlines like "Compressed Air Cars Coming To New Zealand" and "New maskless lithography trick may keep Moore's Law on track."_

<comment><USER5> Digg commentary is at times, physically painful for me to read. Like someone punched me in the gut. What stupidity and ignorance. What a cesspool.

What is it about certain internet places that make people so awful? Anonymity? Or are there people actually that bad all around me, in real life, and I simply don't notice?

<comment><USER4> I don't think these people really believe what they're saying, but it's very easy to let the Id take over when your name and reputation aren't on the line. All these young boys want to be the class clown, without the unfortunate ramifications, and Digg is the perfect outlet.

I think this is why HN tends to be more civil and worthwhile -- you have active editors, and most people use their real names as their usernames or in their bios.

ps - her crack about compressed air cars must have really hurt...

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it did. "Screw the environment. Those things are only interesting because of internet Male's bizarre fascination with them. Instead, let me write about whether Barack Obama is anorexic?! That's what _real_ girls want to hear about..."

Not going to let it keep me down, though. We just sent out a bunch of letters to investors. Low and behold, we now have a pitch.

<comment><USER6> Just who are these mythical girls that are only interesting in such tripe, anyway? I've never met one...

<comment><USER5> I don't know many either. My theory is that the interests of many were formed and set in cliques in high school, which I wasn't around to see. The few people I know now who are interested in such things _also_ enjoy science and technology and art.

You know the phrase 'six degrees of separation?' I feel like it must be at least three or four. I have little to no contact with these people, even though they're all around me. I felt similarly when I went to a baseball game, once. Wow.

<comment><USER6> I never went to high school, so I never really grokked that kind of clique behavior. I mean, cliques can be good as they help us organize vast social networks, but I've been told they go way overboard in that environment.

Even though I have never been to a sports game (excepting a Harlem Globetrotters show, but that wasn't really a game), I kind of feel the same way walking around my hometown of Fairbanks. The population is small enough that I likely have no more than two or three degrees between myself and any random stranger. It's a very odd feeling, and one that I've never gotten used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know how Slashdot did it, but "insightful / informative / interesting / funny" seem to be exactly the four qualities that can make a piece of text good. If you either added a bucket or took a bucket away, the signal to noise ratio would go down. At least from my perspective. But maybe women have different buckets, or have a different optimal blend of how much should fall into each bucket.

edit: My proposed mechanism for this is that the pattern matching in women's brains is less strict than the pattern matching in men's brains (i.e. women see patterns more easily), which for women blurs the line between interesting and insightful. But I don't actually have any credible evidence to support this, so take it for what it's worth.

<comment><USER8> Successful niche forums/boards have a social contract that the participants enforce on each other. The fact that you on HN need x1 points to vote comments down, and x2>>x1 points to kill stories (and on Slashdot, the karma-system), ensures that new members are accepted into the contract by peers based on contribution.

In older times, boards had moderators, and admins picked out active members as mods based on their performance.

But this model is susceptible to group-think, especially when a topic falls outside the contract. It just happened here during the presidential election that apparently the body of users are sufficiently politically diverse, that intelligent, respectful debate prevailed over mindless up-voting of anything adhering to one specific mindset. It could very well have went in the other direction. It's absolutely no guarantee that you because someone make insightful tech/startup comments, that he also is going to vote down a stupid comment, even if it's in favor of his political POV.

Solving this problem; making sure that a community like HN can stay intelligent, and not be diluted as it gains popularity, I think, is a very big opportunity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I, for one, miss the social contract. But then I was a CompuServe sysop by 1990, and ran several types of online discussion groups (including ZDNet/AT&T's InterChange, which nobody else remembers). There was incredible value in the people who owned a stake in the forum's success (particularly anything vendor- or company-related) in choosing moderators who knew how to create a balance between being both barkeep and bouncer\--not the least of which was a sincere welcome to the community.

Even when I haven't been involved in running an online community, I've always been a participant in several of them. And yes, some women need to feel "safe" before they will come out of lurkerMode. (Obviously I am not in that set, but I expect the woman who wrote the blog post to which I linked does count herself among them.) For instance, I'm a member of two women-in-IT tech groups (a general one and one specifically for web designers/developers, and believe me, you can't shut them up). The whole notion of women-in-IT and its reflection in online communities isn't going to go away just because some guys (and some women, too) say, "But really, you don't need a separate space."

(As you can probably tell, this is a topic very close to my heart.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Forget girls; Digg ostracizes anyone who isn't a Male-Liberal-American- ObamaSupporting-AppleLoving-WebDesigner.

<comment><USER10> They make an exception for Ron Paul fanatics, oddly enough.

<comment><USER11> The Ron Paul fanatics make an exception for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reddit had a spin-off called lipstick.com, which has now become <http://www.weheartgossip.com/>

There's the 'OMG' reddit alien, replete with blond hair and lipstick: [http://thumbs.reddit.com/t5_2qh3n_29.png?v=4v4n810ku3an8yqud...](http://thumbs.reddit.com/t5_2qh3n_29.png?v=4v4n810ku3an8yqud5egg2hzlsckf9jp0ztw)

Sadly, it falls into the category of 'what advertisers/editors think women want in a social networking site.' Based on my own at-work experience with somewhat/fairly geeky girls (not coders), tmz.com and perezhilton.com already accomplish what lipstick/weheartgossip seek to do.

</comment><comment><USER13> There IS a digg for girls: PrettySocial ;-)

<http://www.prettysocial.net/>

Seriously though, there are several such sites with different target groups:

PrettySocial (ours): for young women, focus is on fashion, beauty, health etc. with lots of pretty pictures!

Kirtsy: for mothers and older women, coverage is more general

Boudica: it's a new site, the stories are a little random, but looks promising

</comment><comment><USER14> _...the site has a core userbase of boys who spend hours each day posting stories and Digging stories posted by their friends._

The problem here is that a small core group of users is able to exert undue influence on the site. If the ranking system on Digg were better balanced, its featured stories would better represent the interests of its broader (and presumably more gender-balanced) user base.

</comment><comment><USER15> You can take the source code for hacker news, change the css around, and buy a fitting domain name.

</comment><comment><USER16> Top Headlines from Digg right now:

Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam First Look at Johnny Depp- Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland New honeycomb tire is 'bulletproof' If TV Shows Had Truthful Titles Phil Gramm Has No Remorse Over Destroying the US Economy Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM, sell pirated HD discs Top 10 Unfortunate Political One-Liners 30 Rare & Expensive Gamecube Games New MythTV Interface Preview Mark Cuban charged with insider trading.

Anyone see a male bias there? The Johnny Depp article would actually tip the scales to the female side in my opinion.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I'll bite.

\- "Oregon Woman Loses 400k to scam" \-- Although it's a story about a woman, I suspect that the vast majority of the 552 current comments are from men, making rude, arrogant, or demeaning comments. Men braying like jackasses and cracking puerile jokes about how dumb someone (a woman) is? What's not to love?

\- "First Look at Johnny Depp" \-- Skews female

\- "New honeycomb tire is 'bulletproof'" \-- A story about car/bike technology and guns/bullets. Not to feed any stereotypes here, fellas, but that positively reeks of testosterone.

\- "If TV Shows Had Truthful Titles" \-- Sophomoric snark on the Internet _can_ amuse both sexes, but tends to skew male. Perhaps because sophomoric snark in general skews male. No offense intended.

\- "Top 10 Unfortunate Political One-Liners" \-- Obsessing over political minutiae/sophomoric snark again, combined with a bit of political trivia? See above. Or do you think that the relentless Ron Paul stories were also being constantly up-voted by an enraptured female audience glued to whatever new tidbit was coming from his camp?

\- "Phil Gramm Has No Remorse Over Destroying the US Economy" \-- See above. This is a story that could be appealing to both men and women, but the puerile slant to it makes it slightly less interesting to women, or so I've tended to notice. Just like in Real Life, your hilarious political jokes just AREN'T THAT FUNNY to most girls, y'know?

\- "Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM, sell pirated HD discs" \-- DRM nerd porn. There's no reason why this wouldn't appeal to women, but by and large, the tone and thrust of the article greatly narrows its (male) audience.

\- "30 Rare & Expensive Gamecube Games" \-- Skews both older and to a more rarefied hardcore/distinguishing gamer audience. Which is largely male. If it said 'best Wii games' for instance, it wouldn't be so male-centric.

\- "New MythTV Interface Preview" \-- Nerd porn. See above.

\- "Mark Cuban charged with insider trading." \-- Nerd-slash-financial-slash- sports porn.

Cue the inevitable comments how you're a woman and those stories _totally_ appeal to you. :-)

<comment><USER17> so... what do you think women who want to use a digg-esque website ARE into?

Most women I know are far more into snarky commentary/comedy than I am, and are very interested in politics, the economy, and way more into tv than I am, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a web app (forget what it's called) that analyses the writing on a web page and decides whether a man or woman wrote it.

So something like this could be largely automated, start off with a collection of links then categorise them according to the text on the page and/or the writing of the person linking to them.

<comment><USER7> <http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php>

It doesn't work well enough for what you're proposing though. The accuracy (according to their blog) is roughly 50%, which is no better than chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There aren't even 5 points in the article. Just the same complaint "I don't like Digg content" 5 times. She gives examples of what she doesn't like, but at no point offers examples of the kinds of things she likes. Also, I'm honestly not sure if the core group of women who would power a site like digg would be very different than the guys on digg. There's roughly only 1% of digg users submitting content. Would the 1% of women submit Martha Stewart or Steve Jobs? I suspect the difference between the über geek girl isn't to far from über geek guy.

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://kirsty.com> (used to be called something else, I forget). They talked about that site when I took a tour of the Houston Technology Center.

</comment><comment><USER11> Of COURSE there is a digg for girls. In fact, of course there are 5. It's disheartening to realize how much has already been completely done to death.

</comment><comment><USER21> There _is_ Digg for girls:

boudica.com

<comment><USER16> Two 'Random' Headlines from Boudica:

Jennifer Lopez wants another baby The other side of Angelina Jolie

Granted those were 'cherry picked' to make my point, but this Girl-Digg site seems like the same stuff you'd see inside the popular glossy and rather crappy women's magazines that are sold in supermarkets and bookstores nationwide. All that's missing are the "10 Signs Your Husband is Cheating" and "47 Ways to Lose Weight Fast" articles.

<comment><USER21> I agree Jose, Boudica community seems to cater to the lowest common denominator. I posted the link not because I like it but because it is precisely what the poster asked, a Digg for girls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's another: <http://www.kirtsy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Try www.lipstick.com.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are a few -- try <http://www.kirtsy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER25> kirtsy.com</comment>


Show HN: Dark Mode Hacker News Reader That Shows Top Comment - <AUTHOR> https://hn-pwa-1.firebaseapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Killer features:

* It shows the top comment (It's a bad habit of mine - just reading the comments - so maybe I'll be more likely to click the story instead of the comments)

* Dark mode! Or light mode! Depending on your system settings.

* Easily switch between Top and New stories.

* No JS libraries! (Fast?)

If you're on an iPhone iOS 13, add it to your home screen. It will open in its own window, not in Safari, so it will maintain scroll state. It also works as a Windows 10 app. Haven't tested on Android...

It's just a 24-hour project I wanted to do over break but I will likely keep it as my main reader, so I might add more features over time.

<comment><USER2> Congrats on shipping! If possible, add an option filter out "is Hiring" posts.</comment></comment>


Australia was colonized by a single group 50,000 years ago - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/australia-was-colonized-by-a-single-group-50000-years-ago/ <comment><USER2> I've always been fascinated by this similar but broader image showing likely migration out of Africa over the (thousands of) years:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#/media/File:Map- of-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup#/media/File:Map-of-human- migrations.jpg)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you retain knowledge from books? - <AUTHOR> I sometimes wonder if reading all these books is worth it, given I seem to remember so little from them.<p>Other than rereading what do you do to retain knowledge from books you value? <comment><USER2> I think most reader have this problem. The problem is that most of us just read and hope the information sticks. The trick is to not just read but to immediately recall and reflect on what you read. You also need to write down a summary of what you read. Yes, this will slow down the amount of books you read but you will retain much more.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Read, write down, try to connect as much things as possible to make easier to retrieve it later

<comment><AUTHOR> This is probably the best (and most effortul) way to aquire the knowledge initialy. I did it a lot back in school, then few months upto a year later I would forget most of the material all the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spaced repetition[1], maybe?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm already rereading the most valuable books and it does help to retain their knowledge. I guess doing spaced repetition every x time would help even more. I feel that rereading and to a larger extent spaced repetition are very wasteful.

<comment><USER4> I think spaced repetition is not every constant set of time but rather every increasing set of time, like reviewing in a week, then a month, then a year, etc. basically reviewing when you're about to forget. I don't think it's even necessary to review it in the same manner, as long as it causes you to remember, it's probably fine.

<comment><USER4> As examples of reviewing in different manners, you can "review" by applying that knowledge or learning on top of it. Like you can read about an alphabet, then review by practice writing it, or review by learning words that use that alphabet. In that way, "reviewing" is not a waste, as you can gain new knowledge or experience. Spaced repetition is merely trying to improve retention by putting increasing spacing between the recollections of that knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You need to be genuinely interested in what you are reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am. About 70% are technical books related to my job (SWE) and the rest are combination of textbooks and popular science in fields that I find very interesting.

If for some reason I lose interest in a book then I just stop reading it and don't mind if I don't remember anything from it.</comment></comment>


Show OS X notification when long running cmd finishes and terminal not in focus - <AUTHOR> http://frantic.im/notify-on-completion <comment><USER2> My lightweight solution is to append `&& tput bel` to long-running commands, to ring the terminal bell upon completion :) Requires sound of course, but it's reasonably easy to remember and quick to type. eg. try `sleep 5 && tput bel`

I've also used a similar cheap hack to listen to web traffic... Just write a bell character to your server log when something interesting happens, then `tail -f` the log file for live data sonification!

<comment><USER3> also fun is to append `osascript -e 'say "all done!"'` or somesuch if you're within decent earshot. you can even pipe in context-specific info.

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't `say 'all done!'` just work without the osascript part?

<comment><USER3> oh, geez, yes of course. sorry, old habit from before the say command.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clever, but compiling and executing an AppleScript every single time any command finishes seems a bit overkill.

Does zsh have a way to see how long the last command took? You could at least have this only do the check if the command took more than one or two seconds. That would cut out a lot of the unnecessary checks.

<comment><USER6> You could pre compile the script with osacompile if you want, but I wouldn't bother.

I think checking the command runtime would be a mistake. If you expect the command to take a long time, and it finished in just a second or two, you probably want to be notified immediately rather than eventually wondering many minutes later why you weren't. And if you expect the command to take only a second or two, you are a lot less likely to be tabbing away, so you won't be notified anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This might be useful to me.

What is the app in the foreground, in the screenshot at the bottom? Looks like a multi-tabbed text editor?

</comment><comment><USER8> Gnome-terminal does this out of the box, but it doesn't work in tmux or over SSH connections.</comment>


Isolated Expression Scope in AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.ng-newsletter.com/advent2013/#!/day/22

<comment><USER2> I think showing how to call back parent controller's scope methods from a directive should really be shown in the angular documentation for directive. It's the only way to really make non-trivial directives reusable and properly isolated.</comment>


I'm a woman in tech, and this is what I want in a company - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/i-am-a-woman-in-tech-and-this-is-what-i-want-in-a-company-f6177569a287 <comment><USER2> I am currently co-developing a tech project with a woman. We have extremely disparate communication styles and we struggle at times. But because we both share common values, such as putting the customer's and team's interests over our own, it provides a foundation for mutual respect. We also both agreed to continuous improvement of our technical and communication abilities and now trust each other when providing constructive criticism.

It is absurd that it took decades before I had an opportunity to work this closely with a woman. I am now a better communicator, a better leader, happier, calmer, and a better follower. We need more women in tech.

I am rooting for this author and women in general, but you don't fight dysfunction with dysfunction. It's as if author wishes to replace "bro" culture with "me" culture. And beliefs like, "I don't care about your culture" can outright destroy a company. Perhaps I am taking that last statement it out of context. But I wouldn't hire Alan Turing if he said something like that and meant it literally.

Like it or not, culture is a top-down phenomena. Assuming the culture isn't totally broken, first learn it, then master it, then earn respect, then rise, then change it. There are no short cuts to influence regardless of gender.

<comment><USER3> can you explain why you relate your growth as a person to the fact that she is a woman?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The wishlist was a bit arrogant. If it is so difficult to get women to work in tech may be it's not worth the effort for the founders to make it happen. It's already difficult to get people to work together and then you get a list of demands like this, it's just too much to handle for 90% of companies.

<comment><USER5> Well, as a founder who has had some success hiring and retaining diverse teams, it was easily worth the effort.

BTW, why'd you choose use the word "demands" to describe this list? That's not the word I'd use.

<comment><USER6> The author uses herself says "... this is what I would expect and demand" in the article

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This person appears to have mediocre social skills.

I'm not sure it's wise to use quite so much "I want..." and "I demand.." without making it clear what's being offered in return.

The implied "But I'm a woman so _obviously_ you want me around" probably isn't going to impress many people.

</comment><comment><USER8> I mean... I hate to be such a realist in this regard, but you just wished yourself out of like 95% of the industry, right?

<comment><USER9> What part do you think is unrealistic in this?

<comment><USER8> I guess the part about not wanting to work for the demographic that currently dominates the industry...

"If it's plastered with pictures of white guys in flannel with beards, that's a red flag. If the exec team is all white men who look like they could be my father that's another one."

Granted, flannel shirted beardo's set off red flags for me too.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention that those descriptions don't judge people by their abilities or the content of their character. She's simply demonstrating prejudice, which is okay as long as she accepts others should be embraced for doing the same, like if a company full of men doesn't want to hire a woman, or gays, or lesbians, or trans because of their perception of them for things completely unrelated to their abilities or the content of their character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> She seems to think she's speaking on behalf of "women in tech", yet she's only speaking for herself... She's really just hiding behind "her" social group to be very demanding.

That was a cringy read.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm afraid you'll have to put up with the discussion of their "amazing culture", and what innovators they are. Even non-Tech companies give speils like that these days.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems more like as a women I can demand what I want?

What does imposter syndrome and hating amazing culture have to do with being a women?

I think they have confused 'me' culture with feminism.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, she wants to be at a company that makes her feel welcome, supports her, helps her grow her skills. Why is any of that arrogant, selfish, dysfunctional or unrealistic?

For years now, I've been reading about how people in IT are expecting more than just a salary out of the companies they choose to work for ... why is it arrogant when a woman does it?

<comment><USER15> > _So, she wants to be at a company that makes her feel welcome, supports her, > helps her grow her skills_

So does everyone else on the planet.

> _why is it arrogant when a woman does it?_

It's not arrogant when "a woman does it". I'm failing to understand what any of it has to do with being a woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You had me at "Help me fight my imposter syndrome".

What about the people that don't want that help? I sure don't. My own psychological issues and state are my business.

Will the author inform their manager specifically about this line item or will she hope they can read her mind (or wave around that blog article before they hire her?)</comment>


Introducing PacketZoom for Android - <AUTHOR> https://packetzoom.com/blog/introducing-packetzoom-for-android.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's an exciting day for us. Working on Android allows us to serve billions of user across the world. A very large number of these users share the frustrations of spotty network coverage, high latencies, intermittent dead spots and other such ailments. We've been working hard for over two years to try and help fix some of these problems with our network protocol built over UDP.</comment>


Twitter.app vs. Twitter.com - <AUTHOR> http://vikasvadlapatla.com/twitterapp-vs-twittercom

<comment><USER2> 1\. Web Apps can store data locally in a way you control, the data stored within the twitter app is as closed as it ever was.

2\. There are plenty of tools to let you use web apps as standalone apps / without the traditional browser chrome, fluid / prism / save as application in chrome, these are being introduced into browsers natively.

the web is not dying, that s a fairly ridiculous statement, and the linked article was widely discredited

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't disagree with you at all. You make a valid argument.

But I guess the point I was trying to make was: As an end user, if I don't have to log onto a website through my browser, I don't consider myself to be ON the web. Instead I'm using a much lightweight service which gives me the same information. I am sure more and more people will resort to apps and widgets to access information online. This will result in a reduction in "website" traffic.

If I'm not mistaken, the controversial Wired article tried to say that users are switching to mobile technology(read apps) because its much sleeker, convenient and less time consuming.

After the Twitter for Mac app, I don't see myself opening my browser and logging onto twitter.com. To me, it seems like an added step to access my twitter feed</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the coolest thing you have built - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, As I'm getting more involved in HN community. I would love to see the coolest side project you have built since this will inspire me others to start building side projects <comment><USER2> I created one of the most popular Elasticsearch plugins, Elasticsearch Learning to Rank[1], which uses machine learning to optimize search results.

HN helped make this happen - I built a 0.1 version for one client (Snagajob). I encountered someone from Wikimedia Foundation on Hacker News who was going to build something similar. We ended up partnering after meeting on Hacker News, and now work together on version 1.0 of Elasticsearch Learning to Rank which ultimately has been used on Wikipedia's search[2].

Wikimedia Foundation ultimately had super deep Elasticsearch internal knowledge which helped tremendously, whereas I mostly worked on building out the docs after the initial prototype[3]. I'm rather proud of the docs as it's a bit of a mini book on Learning to Rank :)

[1] - Plugin itself [http://github.com/o19s/elasticsearch-learning-to- rank](http://github.com/o19s/elasticsearch-learning-to-rank)

[2] - WMF article on the plugin [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/17/elasticsearch- learning...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/10/17/elasticsearch-learning-to- rank-plugin/)

[3] - Docs [http://elasticsearch-learning-to- rank.readthedocs.io](http://elasticsearch-learning-to-rank.readthedocs.io)

</comment><comment><USER3> SmartEdit Writer, a desktop app for creative writers. Not a commercial success, though the Microsoft Word add-in does sell a few copies a month. The editing functionality is unique.

[https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/](https://www.smart-edit.com/Writer/)

A lesson I've learned is that coolness and commercial success are not tightly connected. You can build something great that users still will not be prepared to pay for.

B2B is the way to go, not B2C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good project and looks very similar to word If its okay to share can I ask what technologies did you use

<comment><USER3> C#/.Net. I've outlined the tech stack in more detail here (aimed at a non- techie reader): [https://www.smart- edit.com/Blog/Post/TechOverview/](https://www.smart- edit.com/Blog/Post/TechOverview/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few years ago I built a virtual cycling platform connecting ANT+ to Google Streetview. It was before the current breed of indoor cycling platforms like trainerroad and zwift. I ended up using it for my own training

I regret not trying to market it more, or moving into the virtual cycling space -

[https://dzone.com/articles/virtually-cycling-the-alps- with-a...](https://dzone.com/articles/virtually-cycling-the-alps-with-arduino- and-streetview)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just released my first programming language called Berlin: [http://berlinlang.org](http://berlinlang.org)

I had no idea what I was doing but it was super fun. Hopefully it's useful to some.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow that's pretty cool. I'm pretty sure you learned alot while doing this project

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Xmysql, an instant REST API generator for MySQL was a side project which led to XgeneCloud[1]

XgeneCloud now generates REST & GraphQL APIs on any SQL Database. Plus there is much more! :)

Supported databases : MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, MariaDB & AWS Aurora

[1] : [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud)

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://artbuffer.com/](http://artbuffer.com/)

I made Artbuffer to create my own wall art without having to spend years learning to paint. I've successfully used it to create my own :-)

Some examples:

[https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=wslyHCoGjqoA3ZKgsQ_hNAlnshT...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=wslyHCoGjqoA3ZKgsQ_hNAlnshT- jt)

[https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=-9Wr6aLtgF383zsAWxchXJbt8CW...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=-9Wr6aLtgF383zsAWxchXJbt8CWjko)

[https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=OuIs3I6vHAyqV- PoMb6EFiRVAFw...](https://www.artbuffer.com/view?a=OuIs3I6vHAyqV- PoMb6EFiRVAFwRb5)

</comment><comment><USER8> I built three cigar box guitars for my son, my father, and myself make from repurposed wood from my son's', my father's and my baby cribs.

Coolest computer related thing? I used to run [http://uptime.openacs.org](http://uptime.openacs.org) (which I port from Oracle -> Postgres) and [http://myturl.com](http://myturl.com) (a tinyurl clone written in AOLserver). But as things tend to do, both projects are shutdown.

I still find the cigar box guitars the cooler thing.

<comment><USER9> Cigar box guitars are really fun and they sound neat! They look like toys but they actually do something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Six Degrees of Kanye West, a fun little website that lets you search for a muscical artist to see how closely they're connected to Kanye West through collabs.

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

I built it back in 2016 and haven't updated it since so newer artists don't show up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks really cool How did you do it since I love music

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I posted about it in my blog [1] at a very high level.

To summarise, I used a Python library called Spotipy to request track information from Spotify and then stored a big list of artists based on who has collaborated with Kanye and built that web outwards.

[1] [https://blog.sunnyamrat.com/six-degrees-of-kanye- west/](https://blog.sunnyamrat.com/six-degrees-of-kanye-west/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm happy with my work on Checkbot, a Chrome extension that checks multiple pages at a time for SEO, speed and security best practices:

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)

I also wrote up a concise guide on everything the extension checks for and why those checks are important: [https://www.checkbot.io/guide/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/)

I found working on the above solidified by existing knowledge I'd picked up as a web developer and filled in the gaps. It's satisfying to know the extension is helping people identify website problems every day and teaching them tips they didn't know before.

Also, I've been wary of what seems like SEO snake-oil advice in the past (like a lot of developers) so it was good to digest all the evidence-based SEO advice I could find and condense it into small actionable tips most developers would agree with.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's really helpful.Looking forward to use your extension

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Contextualise, a (personal and collaborative) knowledge management system: [https://contextualise.dev/](https://contextualise.dev/)

It's open source: [https://github.com/brettkromkamp/contextualise](https://github.com/brettkromkamp/contextualise)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really interesting project. Love your idea since managing knowledge is the best thing and I keep a small blog to keep things I learned

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been working on a fast typo tolerant search engine ([https://github.com/typesense/typesense](https://github.com/typesense/typesense)) for 4 years.

It initially started off with a question of "Why is ES so difficult to grok and manage?". Then I started researching around various data structures for efficiently storing text and numerical values and various algorithms for sorting the data in real time to surface relevant documents.

After 4 years of development, the project is pretty stable but I'm still adding features and has been getting some traction finally. I recently added a raft based replication aka clustering. I used a production ready Raft library for that, but it was still very nice to understand the nitty gritties of the Raft implementation.

I doubt I would build something more complicated ever, but who knows right :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I made a card game (www.intrapreneurs-game.com) to teach innovation to the corporate crowd (I teach MBA classes part time and do speaking engagements here and there). Building the mechanics of the rules and the game content was fun and I tried to balance actual gaming entertainment with actual learning and even built a companion app with supporting material for every concept in the game.

</comment><comment><USER15> My most recent is a keyboard layout (Qwickly) because Colemak/Tarmak was too slow to learn.

[https://github.com/qwickly-org/Qwickly](https://github.com/qwickly- org/Qwickly)

</comment><comment><USER16> A bench for bench-pressing. It's the single thing that I built and actually use. I built a lot of software and never cared to use it myself (it never solved my own problems, always a customer/user.. )

</comment><comment><USER17> A library (macOS, iOS) that converts the files supported by Assimp to Scene Kit scenes. [1]

[1] [https://github.com/dmsurti/AssimpKit](https://github.com/dmsurti/AssimpKit)

</comment><comment><USER18> futuretodo, a little software project management app. It can be useful especially if you want to keep your notes, tasks, and the project progress in order. [https://futuretodo.org](https://futuretodo.org)</comment>


The Jargon File - <AUTHOR> http://catb.org/jargon/html/ <comment><USER2> The Jargon File is so classy. When I used to be a Script Kiddie in the mid 2000s and hang around in IRC channels, the nicer guys pointed me to catb who explained all that nerdy humor you did not learn in the channel itself.

I wonder if the youth of today has similiar experiences about tech culture (I refrain to call it "hacker culture").</comment>


What's a Gallon? - <AUTHOR> http://grr.crankybill.com/2019/02/whats-a-gallon.html <comment><USER2> Aside from the occasional crashed Mars lander, technical people in the U.S. get along quite fine thinking in the units best suited to the task at hand. I develop film in my apartment, and I use metric units while developing black and white but conventional units while developing color slide film — because the processes are documented in those respective units.

I don't know what kind of car Cranky Bill is driving, but if it's new enough, chances are he could crack the manual and figure out how to switch it to display values in liters/100km. My motorcycle does that, and my last car did it. I set my motorcycle to display temperatures Celsius, speeds in whatever the local country's unit happens to be, and fuel efficiency in mph.

Also, he might just look up the stats for his car on the Internet.

Bill sure is cranky.

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked the people at Nissan and I was told it wasn't possible to switch it to miles-per-litre. Although I do suspect the person I spoke to had no idea what I was going on about.

<comment><USER3> But could you change it to km-per-litre?

<comment><USER4> Litre-per-100km is the European standard.

<comment><USER5> Dimensionally, that has units of area, and so could be expressed in hectares. My car is getting about 11.5 pico hectares.

<comment><USER4> The same way that torque has the dimensionality of energy and can be measured in joules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in the UK and have my car set to litres per 100km - it's so much easier, if I know my car uses 5L of fuel per 100km travelled and I need to drive 300 miles(500km) down to London I instantly know that I'll need about 25 litres of fuel to complete the journey. Knowing that petrol is about £1.30/litre also gives me an instant estimate of the cost of such journey.

The same thing with MPG: 5L/100km is about 56mpg, so for the same trip to London we'll need about 5.5 gallons. Which is great to know except that I have no idea how much is a gallon from the top of my head. I have to Google it, apparently it's about 3.7 litres? But....that's not right, the figure is now different. Ah. US vs UK Gallon, and of course Google shows me US Gallon as a result for gallon, despite knowing I'm in UK. Imperial gallon is 4.5L and now we arrive at the same number of 25L for the trip.

It's not impossible, I just find the first way much easier to work with.

<comment><USER7> It's easier if the pump sells in liters, which is not true in the US.

You have 20 gallons, and 20MPG gets you 400 miles, that is an easy calculation. All you have to do is to throw away all the metric unit.

<comment><USER8> 20MPG?! You must be driving an American car. ;)

<comment><USER9> I drove my parents farm truck for a couple of weeks to commute because my car had broken down and boy was that expensive. 12 mpg if I remember correctly. The gas pump at the station would stop at $100 and the tank wouldn't be full.

<comment><USER7> LOL, it sounds like you're driving a semi to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Serious question: why hasn't the UK switched to km yet? Everything else is metric/decimal now, it seems really weird to get stuck on this one last relic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I still meet people who argue that pre-decimal currency was better. (20 shillings in a pound. 12 pence in a shilling.)

<comment><USER11> 12 ist a fantastic number for doing maths in your head. 12 divides easily by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6.

<comment><USER10> Have you considered joining the Dozenal Society?

[http://www.dozenal.org/](http://www.dozenal.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the more important difference than miles or km is which is the denominator and which is the numerator. The rest is just some multiplication factors.

As another poster pointed out, using [fuel]/[distance] (like l/100km) means I can easily estimate how much gas I need given my decision on where I'm going. Using [distance]/[fuel] (like miles per gallon) is only useful in a situation where I've filled my tank up and ask "Now where could I get to with all this fuel?". I don't think that happens very often.

I suppose it might also be useful in a situation where you're low on fuel and asking "oh Jesus, can I make it to a gas station?", but most cars now have a "[distance] to empty" display on the dash anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here in Australia, we still talk about 44 gallon drums, which are equivalent to the 55 gallon drums of the USA variety. Both Miles per Gallon and Litres per 100 Kilometres are still used in various ways.

The gallon is approximated by 4.5 litres and the mile is approximated by 1600 metres as simple conversion factors. Often we use both centimetres and feet/inches for peoples height.

Over the years, there have been various discussion amongst friends as to why Americans have this penchant for speaking in feet, pounds and gallons? Sometimes, it has been concluded that Americans like big numbers, so the use pounds instead of tons (or tonnes), etc. We have discussed, at times, why Americans used a smaller grouping system that increased by factors of 1,000 instead of 1,000,000 when using billions, trillions, etc. So you get the discrepancy at times of trying to determine whether someone who is using billion is talking about 1 million million or 1 thousand million.

Much as metric can be difficult to get used to with its basic sizes, it is at least consistent in being based on the count of 10 and having a common set of prefixes for size changes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No but seriously, what _is_ a gallon?

<comment><USER14> I learned this when I was about five years old:

A cup is 8 ounces. Two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart, four quarts in a gallon. In other words, 128 ounces. This is of course for U.S. gallons.

A lot of things now measured in the metric system are still based on the standard U.S. system, just converted to metric. This is, for example, why whisky comes in 750 ml bottles instead of (say) one liter bottles. It was traditionally sold in fifths (of gallons); i.e., 25.6 ounces, which converts to 757.1 ml. It's also why there are track events of 100 meters, 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1600m. They are near the distance of the old races, and it seems especially noticeable to me for the half mile and mile, probably because I ran those races when I was a teenager.

Thankfully there's almost zero chance the U.S. will convert to metric in my lifetime. I can feel miles and gallons and Fahrenheit in my bones. Metric, not so much.

<comment><USER15> Or if you're a binary geek like me, 1 gallon = 2^7 ounces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An obsolete measurement of volume.

Only a few countries are too immersed in their self-centred past to use the world-wide metric system.

That refusal to progress has cost millions (billions?) when different units have been used without conversion.

[http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/](http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/)

<comment><USER17> Always remember: There are two types of countries in the world.

Those that use the metric system ...

And those that have gone to the Moon.

<comment><USER18> There are only two types of countries in the world. Those that lost the ability to launch people into space and those that adopted SI units.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Imperial system of units is useful in lots of scenarios, and it's worth giving a try. You shouldn't judge a person's choice of units until you've walked 1.6 kms in their shoes.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting that the widely used units gallon and barrel (as in oil measurement) are both of uncertain etymological origin.

</comment><comment><USER21> Almost more interesting that the article - this is the third time it has been submitted. The first two died at 2 and 1 points, but while I write, the third is at 17 points. I guess the third time is the charm.

What was different with this submission? Time of day? The other stores that were new at the same time?</comment>