What do you do when you get stuck? - <AUTHOR>

when you are working on a problem by yourself and get stuck... what do you do?  at work, i ask another programmer, but i'm working at home on a side project... all i know to do is google and put question on stack overflow. any ideas? <comment><USER3> Lifted from one of my old blog posts:

\- Pros and Cons: when I have too many answers, I try to make it objective by drawing up the pros and cons and seeing where that takes me.

\- Simplify: like a lot of developers, I can be prone to over-analyse when I am stuck on an issue for a while. So I remind myself to try simplifying the problem. Often by dropping a layer of flexibility the problem is a lot easier to solve. If I really need the flexibility, I can add it later when I have greater understanding.

\- Take a Break: sometimes I'm just trying too hard, and need to step back. I work from home, so a short walk outside is a welcome break. Actually getting away from the computer relaxes the grey matter. The vitamin D doesn't hurt either.

\- Explain the Problem: very often I find that while I'm explaining the problem, I see it in a different way. If not, the input of another person usually throws a different perspective on the issue. If there's nobody to bother immediately, just writing down an explanation can help.

\- Switch Gears: this works when I'm getting frustrated by a lack of progress. By switching to a small, unrelated task, I can Get Something Done and develop some new momentum. This also serves as a break from the original problem.

\- Write Some Tests: I don't practice TDD all the time, but when I'm stuck trying to understand how things work, writing some tests first can be very illuminating. Having tests in place also gives gratifying feedback as I finally start to crack the underlying problem. I find this works best for really tough technical issues, where good test coverage is even more important than normal.

\- Write Some Code: if I have a partial solution, even if I know it is ugly or inadequate, sometimes I'll just plow ahead anyway. Actually working through a throwaway implementation is better than standing still, as it turns up all the little details. I'm happy to throw that code away since I know the alternative was not getting anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> Small stuck, go for a walk or suchlike. You'll come back with 2 or 3 new ideas.

Really tricky ones - write off a day to 'troubleshooting' and try out some radically different ideas including ones you may have rejected earlier, hacking or scribbling down the bare minimum to see if it makes sense. Often they won't, but every now and again your struggles will have led you in the meantime to some new insight which allows you to escape the 'local minimum'.

Still no luck? Decompose the problem into smaller pieces and put them under the microscope one at a time.

<comment><AUTHOR> taking a break is definitely a good idea... what do you mean by local minimum?

<comment><USER4> A concept from statistics: when your variables converge on a solution that is less than optimal, and you make the mistake of thinking that's as far as you can go because because other starting values seem to put you farther away.

Abstractions like this can often give you a new perspective on a tricky problem. <http://www.graphpad.com/curvefit/local_minimum.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depends on what I get stuck on, and how bad it is.

Taking a break to clear one's head can help a lot. I also found that postponing the problem, and doing something completely unrelated allows my subconciousness to dream up an idea.

If the situation permits, seeking help from fellow team members (possibly combined with one or more of the above) should also be a routine.

There's also the sitting down, rephrasing the problem, the current status - preferably to someone who has no clue about it, but can listen well. A plush toy works wonders: by systematically going over the whole thing, to an audience who doesn't have a clue, one might just see the problem from a different angle, which in turn has a good chance of giving one a new good idea.

</comment><comment><USER6> few times when the days were very long and I kept banging my head without a solution, getting a bit of rest helped - was surprised how easy I got the solutions the next day ( I think fatigue was a factor there).

Another thing I have learnt to do and found to be very helpful - <USER2> myself with a lot of good and relevant books.

Around 70% of my programming solutions, I get from the net, the other 30% from books. Quite often (at least for me), the books also help me to figure out what to ask on the net.

These, just in addition to the other very good suggestions in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it helpful to work out some very specific test cases, trivial examples, or counter-examples.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and as a side note... amazon aws web support is totally worthless. all they do is give you the most general link possible about a topic.

</comment><comment><USER8> goto bed, let dream to help me out.

<comment><AUTHOR> so true... i literally woke up with and thought of different approaches immediately. thanks for feedback.</comment></comment>


Mastodon's 2 Year Anniversary - <AUTHOR> https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/10/mastodons-2-year-anniversary/ <comment><USER2> ActivityPub the protocol is quite promising and there are other implementations besides Mastodon:

[https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome- activitypub](https://github.com/BasixKOR/awesome-activitypub)

What will really get the ball rolling will be organizations such as governments, educational institutions, public libraries, or news agencies that create federated social infrastructure for their own membership.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aren't these all vanity metrics? [1] Features are swell, and registered users are nice, in that it indicates somebody was at least curious. But how many of those 1,627,557 registered users are, say, active at least once a week for the last 3 months? What's the NPS of Mastodon users after 7, 30, and 90 days?

I'd love to see them succeed. But I think it's dangerous for programmers to focus on building a thing rather than serving their users.

[1] This isn't a slam; it's a technical term from Eric Ries: [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/12/why-vanity- metr...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/12/why-vanity-metrics-are- dangerous.html)

<comment><USER4> > I think it's dangerous for programmers to focus on building a thing rather > than serving their users.

It seems Mastodon is an example of programmers actually building something with real ambitions rather than just trying to make big money by trying to form an addiction for their users.

<comment><USER3> Sure, and that influences the choice of metrics. I think chasing things like user active minutes (UAM) can lead to pathological development. But for a social product, "real ambitions" must include people a) using it, and b) being happy they are using it. But my point is that features and signups can't be ends in themselves, as those are not real ambitions.

<comment><USER5> I understand what you're saying. The only counter point I'd put forward is it's purposefully playing to the ego mind for attention - arguably deserved or otherwise - to draw more people to trying it out. Likewise, you have to start somewhere. Hopefully over time they can start measuring and reporting on metrics with more meaning to them, which will require them also explaining that meaning to educate people - which will give us all an understanding as to what their understanding is. I still don't feel I understand the ecosystem well enough to say if I like it or not, I do like observing different models though to see how and if they work, what problems they solve or don't - so I am enjoying Mastodon seemingly gaining traction; it at minimum leads to discussion on HN.

<comment><USER3> Sure. Vanity metrics can be great for marketing or generating reasons to celebrate. There's nothing wrong with saying, "Wow, we have a million registered users!" as long as they also recognize that registration is only the first step. In a retrospective like this, I want to see them doing both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I made a toot with 100 boosts the other day on a new account. The average is closer to 10-20. Tweets barely register on accounts with 10x the following. Mastodon might _look_ small, but it's big where it counts.

I'm glad Eugen started it, and I'm glad it's thriving. It's like Twitter was before they went impression-obsessed after the 2013/2014 Situation showed them what was possible. And it's all funded by Patreons for the most part.

</comment><comment><USER7> I personally find Twitter's centralization, despite the obvious inherent downsides, to be its defining feature. To be able to have a real-time feed of everything that is being tweeted by anyone in the world on a given keyword or topic is really amazing, as well as the (reasonable) certainty that I'm following/tweeting at the "real" @celebrityaccount. Otherwise, I'd be happy to stick to blogging and Google searches. That said, it's great to see a community-driven open source social media project and watch its ongoing development. Really loved the reflection from the developer here:

> _I'm very happy with Mastodon's accomplishments. Overseeing such a large > project has its ups and downs, as it's impossible to keep everyone happy all > the time when people have conflicting desires. Irregardless, I consider > these to be the two best years of my life, as work on Mastodon is incredibly > fulfilling and interacting with all the interesting people on the platform > is very fun._

<comment><USER8> Even though Mastodon is decentralized, the interface has a federated timeline that shows toots from all instances that the server federates with. I have found this to feel similar to a centralized, real-time stream of posts like Twitter.

The user can still follow hashtags/keywords from most of the users out there. Many of the more popular instances do not federate with a few of the more toxic, anything-goes servers, so the federated timeline won't be completely universal. While that might be true much of the stuff posted on those instances being censored wouldn't be tolerated on a platform like Twitter anyway.

<comment><USER9> > the interface has a federated timeline that shows toots from all instances > that the server federates with

This is the issue; many servers are picky about who they federate with and this creates a real bubble.

<comment><USER10> Mastodon instances are not public spaces. Users can pick how much they want to engage in political discussions by picking their instance or, if they can, hosting their own. (The second part of the argument is flawed because most people can't just throw up a rails app and maintain it, be it cost or lack of knowledge)

What most people don't get about "bubbles", mostly because it doesn't affect them, is that sometimes, if your mere existence is political, getting some rest from it can be quite hard.

<comment><USER9> I'm not only thinking about political bubbles here, but linguistic or cultural ones. For example, when I joined a server here, it was federated only with a few other small Japanese servers, resulting in a fairly miserable experience. Another set had multiple languages but was just devoted to art. It's incredibly difficult (or was a year ago) to find servers that are general purpose and federated with both Japanese and English servers.

It's actually kind of interesting that me mentioning bubbles resulted in an immediately political assumption; I guess it shows how out of touch I am with mainstream Twitter.

<comment><USER11> I think you use "federated with" in a different sense than most people do in these discussions.

A newly created Mastodon instance by default federates with everyone in that allows messages and following from and to every other instance.

But it's federated timeline has no posts from other instances, because that view only shows posts that the instance actually sees. It only shows what people on the same instance actually follow, because otherwise there is no reason for the posts to be sent to it.

<comment><USER9> That would explain a lot of things and also clears up a lot of things for me, too! Thank you. I guess a better phrase for what I'm trying to describe is a lack of discoverability, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm finding Mastodon (I'm at [https://nerdculture.de/@kragen](https://nerdculture.de/@kragen) at the moment) to be much more pleasant than Twitter, and much richer than IRC. The vicious culture war stuff on Twitter almost doesn't show up in my Mastodon timeline at all.

<comment><USER13> Your anecdote is valid but so is wil Wheaton's [http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible- place-...](http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right- now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/)

<comment><USER10> Wil is inside a reality distortion field. Someone got him with a low blow joke and he started reporting everyone from that instance (which was named after another joke of the type, bofa.lol)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What Mastadon servers do folks here frequent? Which ones are worth your time?

<comment><USER15> [https://mastodon.technology](https://mastodon.technology) is chock full of geeks, so the local timeline is all people's hacks and bugs and side projects. It's one of the older instances, and it's maintained by this guy: [https://ashfurrow.com/](https://ashfurrow.com/)

<comment><USER16> They block too many instances for weird reasons like libertarian ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I currently run my own Mastodon server, and wrote some scripts if you want to run your own on Vultr:

[https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/](https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/)

I'm really glad I set this up. Mastodon is an interesting platform; like one big lopsided chatroom. You do have to follow a lot of strangers to get started (unless you can convince a bunch of your friends to join).

People also go pretty ban crazy on there. I've been called a "Nazi stooge" and been flagged and reported once ... which went to my instance admin .. which is me. A lot of instances ban entire instances (instances like sealion.club tend to get banned and bofa.lol recently imploded). So running your own ensures you control what you see and not be censored by an instance admin.

I'd be interested in following more HN users. I suggest putting your ActivityPub address in your HN profile.

<comment><USER18> On bans, there are frequent waves of new users who migrate away from Twitter to mastodon because they're told that mastodon has instances that are more suited to their personal (typically) political inclinations, and that the other side isn't permitted here and that discussion is more reasoned.

It's not really true. What really happens is that people are told that mastodon is the land of milk and honey, and people of all stripes migrate over, and continue to clash. Mastodon brings better tools to deal with it, but the same people import the same negative behaviours but end up on instances that typically reinforce their beliefs.

I really hoped that mastodon would be better, but it's really the same noise as twitter but worse - people end up on hyper-polarised instances where war is waged with blocks, bans, and federation filters. At least on twitter you have to share a home with people you don't agree with, here you can build all the walls you want to isolate yourself from anyone who doesn't completely agree with you.

<comment><USER19> > people end up on hyper-polarised instances where war is waged with blocks, > bans, and federation filters

> here you can build all the walls you want to isolate yourself from anyone > who doesn't completely agree with you

Shouldn't isolation of opposing viewpoints lead to less war overall? If everyone is interacting in the same space, every controversial post can potentially provoke an aggressive reply, and each response draws in more followers to participate in the battle. On HN, that is counteracted by having too many comments weigh down a submission (the famed flamewar detector), but on engagement-based platforms like Twitter, the fighting never ends.

If everyone chooses an instance with people that think alike and that filters content they strongly disagree with, it's not going to lead to more people changing their minds; but at least they won't constantly see things that make them mad and draw them into useless fights.

<comment><USER5> No, it can lead to a protected bubble of indoctrination and propaganda spreading efficiently without any countering - which then spreads into the real-world, where real clashes and violence is materialized. Even if the populations were on both or could both move to their own isolated islands, eventually a bad actor is likely to try to take control for their own benefit (and then perpetuated, whether by something like a military-industrial complex, or other); and when land isn't an issue then populations can stay separate enough, however yeah, someone always seems to want more and invade, and so at minimum you have to plan to protect against such potential threats - and without using fear tactics to control or manipulate a population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I run deadinsi.de. I wrote some kubernetes definitions and they work, but in the end there was too much overhead, uncertainty about storage stability and cost to keep it running on k8s.

But if you have access to a cluster and want to try it, here you go: [https://github.com/SerenityLaboratories/cluster](https://github.com/SerenityLaboratories/cluster)

It includes a storage provider I wouldn't trust all too much yet and the docs are sparse, but you should be able to get it running if you know Kubernetes.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been enjoying the use of Mastodon, though it's not fully replaced Twitter for me. There's a few TV/Movie & Video game related things I enjoy Twitter for.

While I've settled into two instances on Mastodon the one problem I'm finding is that you do kind of need multiple instances. Some instances, even with decent user bases, just don't have the correlating activity. That or the user base skews to a time zone which can shift the discussion time.

The upside is being able to mute/block from the get go. This helps keep the federated timeline much more quiet. There's a ton of bots & hashtag heavy people posting reblog kind of stuff. Things that aren't really much value to a discussion so being able to just declutter that out has been helpful.

</comment><comment><USER21> My only issue with Mastodon is that it does not solve the issue of authenticity - you can't verify that a post sent by a user was not forged or modified by one of the servers in the federation. This is where public key crypto could help.

<comment><USER22> This is untrue, Actors have a keypair and inbox POSTs are signed with that key to ensure authenticity. For boosts (Announce), mastodon uses a complex signing algorithm based on JSON-LD, and pleroma just re-requests the post from the original instance and uses that, discarding the relayed object.

<comment><USER23> It also (now) can verify that the @email@example.com is the same person/group as runs my_cool_web.site, by using a rel=me link on my_cool_web.site. So it ties verification to DNS, which is centralized enough to serve for that kind of verification. You can also prove that you hold both a mastodon identity and an identity on another social network, if the other social network lets you post rel=me links in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Should I leave Twitter for this? Looks so good.

<comment><USER25> That sort of depends on what you use Twitter for. I used both for a while, but eventually found myself checking Twitter less and less and discovered I didn't really care. Basically just Mastodon and Reddit for me now

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does Mastodon suffer from the same problems as Reddit in terms of censorship? I've been part of a few communities that have been banned or quarantined. I'm looking for a platform where freedom of speech is something everyone can have, regardless of opinion.

<comment><USER27> Reddit is a centralized proprietary product, Mastodon is not. The worst that can happen to a user in terms of censorship is:

* Your instance banning you, which means you can just join another instance. The hardest thing about Mastodon is chosing an instance whose administration you can trust. The reason the service is valuable and important is that barring any instance being trustable to you you can always start your own.

* Another instance banning you (or your entire instance) which just means users on that instance don't see you in the fediverse. This can lead to complications where swarms of instances cooperate their ban lists and thus getting banned from one of them can see you cut out of a swathe of the network, but in practice those using mastodon pride themselves on not centralizing and thus there is limited interest in centralizing moderation like this in the first place.

Of note there are degrees of that second kind of ban. The lightest form is that you or your instance just doesn't show up in timelines - users can still find you by other means and follow you. The most severe is the total noop communication with that instance server which means its users don't exist to the instance doing the banning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It doesn't seem like a lot has been accomplished since launch.

<comment><USER29> I mean, it successfully created a social network I find enjoyable enough to be my primary social network, and which is sufficiently active + growing that I don't see it dying out the way Diaspora did, so regardless of whether they accomplished a _lot_ , they certainly have accomplished _enough_

<comment><USER28> Oh yeah. I think Gargron accomplished a lot when he launched the initial version. Just wondering what this list is supposed to communicate. I'd hope for more active development on the critical issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Confirmed: Apple's A6 uses triple-core GPU  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/confirmed-apples-a6-uses-triple-core-gpu/

<comment><USER2> I like John Siracusa's perspective on his "Hypercritical" Podcast (He has somewhat of a gaming background) - when he heard Apple claiming to have a Dual Core Processor on one of their iDevices because they had Dual Core GPUs:

"That's not how we measure a GPU"

I.E. The number of cores in GPU is mostly irrelevant compared to its performance, which is much more relevant.

It's like counting the Output pins on the CPU - Let's say you have a 722 Pin micro-PGA package. I guess it's interesting trivia, but isn't anything that tells you much about the processor's power/utility in and of itself.</comment>


Russian Roulette with multiple chambered rounds - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/february22016/index.html <comment><USER2> It doesn't affect the math, but the artist is showing the wrong chamber position as being the next to fire (the next is at the 10 o'clock position, not 12 o'clock).

<comment><AUTHOR> No indication is given about the next to fire (at least that was never implied, or explicitly mentioned), it's about the probability. The shaded red disks simply show which chambers might have rounds in, and which might be blank. Rather that enumerate all possible combination of the "6 choose n", I showed the canonical form of "two together" (of which there are 6 cases), "one chamber inbetween" (ditto) ... etc

I tried to make that clear with the phrase "without loss of generality"</comment></comment>


Idea: PayPal for Identity Management - <AUTHOR>

Someone might have thought this up already, but if they haven't, this might be an interesting project for someone to do. Basically, the idea is to make the equivalent of PayPal, but for identity management.
For most sites, authentication consists of an e-mail / password combo. Some require you to create a user-name as well, but it's basically a proxy for an e-mail address. The problem is -- a lot of people don't really want to give out their e-mail address. (1) Spam. (2) Linking multiple accounts to the same e-mail provides lots of info for data-miners.
To deal with 1, many users already create junk-mail accounts that exist for the sole purpose of signing up for stuff. The problem is that sometimes you want to see SOME of the newsletters those sites send. Leaving them all in the junk account ensures they're buried under all the other stuff. Use your non-junk-mail account and you may not be able to undo the damage later (ever try opting-out of some of the spam messages? PITA sometimes). It also doesn't solve 2.
So .. why not create different e-mail addresses for each site you create an account with? Have them all forward to your real e-mail address. When you no longer want spam from a certain source, simply terminate one of the fake e-mail addresses. This would be a pain for a user to do for every single account they created, but an entrepreneurial hacker could create a service that automatically generated fake e-mail addresses, strong passwords, set up any forwarding, and allowed users to track and manage their login info on multiple sites. You would also have to write a browser plugin or something that looked for user-name/e-mail form fields and filled in the proper login info (it'd be unreasonable to expect users to keep track of all the fake e-mail addresses on their own).
Just as PayPal allows you to pay without exposing your actual financial information, this would allow you to login without exposing your actual e-mail address. Even better, unlike PayPal or services like OpenID and Windows CardSpace, it requires no change on the part of the actual sites themselves. It's all done on the client-side.
For the truly paranoid, you could potentially extend the idea by creating full-blown fake identities (with names, addresses, etc.) for each site you visited, but I suspect you would run afoul of the law here.
There's a lot of room of abuse, but I don't see any absolute deal-breakers so far. I'm busy with my own project right now, so if someone's looking for something to do, go for it. <comment><USER2> <http://mailexpire.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, so much for that one =P</comment></comment>


Patent on apparatus for giving birth by centrifugal force - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents?id=qtFaAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=delivery+centrifugal+force&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=delivery%20centrifugal%20force&f=false

<comment><USER2> Note: It is a very bad idea for any engineer to look at patent filings. If you are involved in a patent dispute and the other party can show that you have a history of looking at patents, it can make matters much worse for you.

I would recommend that moderators remove this link to prevent accidental clicking!

<comment><USER3> The patent was filed in 1963 and granted in 1965. I don't think there's much concern over it being still in force.

And yes, the patent is for spinning a pregnant woman around rather quickly, with her head on the axis, causing the baby to pop out due to extra force. It's crazy. Although I'd contend, more valid than many software or business process patents granted in the last few years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction- News.asp?NewsN...](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction- News.asp?NewsNum=2987)</comment>


This is what happens when bicyclists obey traffic laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/07/30/this-is-what-happened-when-bicyclists-obeyed-traffic-laws-along-the-wiggle-yesterday

<comment><USER2> There should be a law that requires motorists to salute bicyclists as they blow through stop signs. They're heroes for braving the dangerous roads every day and saving the planet from more choking carbon emissions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has the world gotten this childish?

"The protest, flanked by an army of TV cameras and amused onlookers, was in response to a directive from SFPD Park Station Captain John Sanford, who ordered his officers to punish cyclists for "zipping past" cars and supposedly endangering people"

It is endangering people: yourself. You can zip past a car, but if you hit my car, you can't sue me for medical expenses or blame me, the driver, for not being able to get out of the way in time.

</comment><comment><USER4> > There's been a growing call for the city and California to adopt what is > known as the "Idaho Stop" law. Since 1982, Idaho has permitted cyclists to > treat stop signs as yields and red lights as stop signs, which allows bikers > to conserve energy, clear intersections faster, and become more visible (and > thus safer) by getting in front of traffic.

Err .... maybe they should look at what push bike friendly countries are doing on the old world? I don't know like Denmark or the Netherlands ....</comment>


Manifesto: WordPress developers are developers too - <AUTHOR> https://www.branchci.com/manifesto <comment><USER2> If you're going to make the case that people in technology tribe X are worthy of the title Y shouldn't you at least define what a Y is and how the essential aspects of being a Y apply to people in tribe X?

Without doing that, the only logical response to the title is "maybe."

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's not so much about the developer title but more about having a good ecosystem to work in.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Amazon Deprecated 1-Click? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN (esp Amazonions),
This morning across all my devices 1-click is gone and replaced with a Buy Now button which doesn't place order on click.
I chatted with Amazon support and this is the official line given:
"1 Click has been depreciated now, it is just Buy Now for now.
This change took place due to recurring issues and feedback reported by majority of customers and we're trying to work around with it to get some better feature. it is just like 2 click now"
Can any of the fellow Amazonians confirm this? this is a huge step backwards and certainly not customer obsession. <comment><USER2> I've been noticing the same thing on Amazon a lot lately, although it hasn't been 100% consistent. Sometimes there is a "1 click" button, other times there is a "buy now" button which requires a second click. Maybe some A/B testing thing, or gradual rollout of the new mechanism.

This annoys me, but it's not my biggest complaint about what they've changed recently. A while back, it seems like they quit putting any kind of "buy now" or "1 click" button on _used_ book listings. They make you add them to your cart first. Sadly, in my case, my cart is used as a staging area and is always jam full of stuff, so I'm _never_ going to buy anything from Amazon by adding it to my cart and then going through the normal checkout flow. Now, when I want a used book, I copy the ISBN from the Amazon listing page, jump over to bn.com, and buy it there (where I never have items lingering in my cart).

I suppose Amazon would say I'm using their system wrong, but from my point of view it doesn't matter. No "1 click" or "buy now" means "no purchase" (from Amazon). _shrug_

</comment><comment> core-questions Wasn't this a massive software patent thing? Didn't we talk about it incessantly on Slashdot like 15 years ago, complaining about them patenting something so obvious and arguably useless?

Good to see they agree with the latter now...</comment>


Negative Ion Products Are Radioactive - ben-schaaf https://youtu.be/C7TwBUxxIC0 <comment><AUTHOR> saw a report in Chinese recently about these products' radioactivity [https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rIa5bFkSt4tffYDWuNyB1w](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rIa5bFkSt4tffYDWuNyB1w)

Should really let amazon remove them</comment>


A dead simple approach to a Vagrant stack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MiniCodeMonkey/Vagrant-LAMP-Stack

<comment><USER2> Vagrant is awesome, and if anyone is interested, I've put several screencasts together about Vagrant [1], and creating a Vagrant box with Veewee [2]. These will hopefully help you understand what Vagrant is about.

[1] [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant)

[2] [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/5-create-a-vagrant-box- wit...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/5-create-a-vagrant-box-with-veewee)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet! I really love the format of your screencasts! Good job!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It appears to be based on Ubuntu 12.04 i386, uses Chef and dotdeb packages (meant for Debian). I don't know why anyone would bother with this, but it probably has an odd use case somewhere. It's still easier to use libvirt and kickstart, no VirtualBox needed. You can simply pastebin the kickstart file if you don't have a webserver yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using dotdeb for easier compatibility between Debian and Ubuntu guests (dotdeb is used to get a newer, backported version of PHP 5.4) which works absolutely fine.

Please elaborate about libvirt and kickstart, would love to hear more!</comment></comment>


Tinder fires its head of comms following participation in a $2B lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/18/18146668/tinder-lawsuit-match-rosette-pambakian-fired <comment><USER2> The email exchange between Rosette Pambakian and Mandy Ginsberg makes for a fascinating read. I'm curious as to how anyone can claim with a straight face that the emails were leaked. It's pretty apparent they're both fighting in the court of public opinion and these leaks are in fact little more than PR exercises.</comment>


Python tricks 101 - <AUTHOR> I wrote a blog on python tricks, https://hackernoon.com/python-tricks-101-2836251922e0<p>Please give me some suggestions on things to add. <comment><USER2> The trick to reverse a number is probably awfully slow.

      print(int(str(num)[::-1]))

Unless the Python compiler has a huge bigger amount of magic than what I imagine is possible, this code is very slow.

It's not so bad if you run it once, but if you put it inside a thigh loop, the performance would be awful. Never ever use a string to transform a number into another number in any language.

Perhaps you can try to make a post with a benchmark comparing this method and another method that only use integer division (and perhaps other that use floating point division).

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to go with simple one-liners. But you are right.

Yes, I will try that. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please read the guidelines on how to submit on this site.

You should have filled the URL field, not the text field. Like you did three days ago, that was good.</comment>


Even Ph.D.s Who Got "Full Funding" Have Huge Amounts of Debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/01/15/phd_debt_project_google_doc_survey_collects_figures_of_graduate_school_debt.html

<comment><USER2> Why are people still pursuing degrees which they will likely NEVER be able to use? This is not a problem that universities need to fix, but it is ultimately a self-correcting problem. If people can't get paid for studying X for 7+ years then post-grad X programs will dry up and disappear. As they should. If you're planning to go into one of these dead-end academic fields you should be required to take a full year course in Economics first.

<comment><USER3> Because getting a Ph.D. is more than getting a degree. You're actively doing research, and contribute to the world. Some people value this higher than simply getting a degree.

<comment><USER4> For some people, buying a BMW is more than procuring a means of transportation, and they value it much higher than just buying a car. But I have never seen anyone come to defend those of them who got into unsustainable debt because of that (of which there are many, but not really a big part of the BMW owners in general).

Some Ph.Ds are actively doing research, very few of them are contributing to the world. Most Ph.Ds do not.(Many tenured professors with long publication lists do not either, for that matter).

I'm not against doing a Ph.D - far from it. But it's important to face reality - most academic work (Ph.D included) does not actually advance humanity, not even small sections of it. Only a very small part of academic research does.

The same goes for art. Some artists inspire millions. Most people who do art do not - many do it because they enjoy it, even if they suck horribly at it (and are often willfully ignorant of how bad they suck at it). Most people would consider it foolish for someone to go into huge debt to practice art, especially if there's no indication it would be able to support them. Yet, somehow, even though academic studies are roughly equivalent in that sense, they enjoy some halo of "nonfoolishness".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the Excel chart, it seems like most people in debt got that from undergrad, not grad school. The data doesn't seem to support their conclusion (that people rack up debt in grad school).

<comment><USER2> So they went into debt for a Yugo instead of a BMW. It's the same problem. People aren't able to separate wants from needs and do the basic math that would tell them they'll end up with a crushing debt after a 4 year degree program that will (in most cases) provide them with no advantage at all in the workforce because of the glut of other "educated" applicants.

Desire and aptitude don't always go hand-in-hand. The people who always do well (you know the ones) will get the jobs and everyone else will whine about not being able to find a job that pays $100K right out of school. If you're going to end up flipping burgers anyway, why not save 100K and just go directly to the golden arches?</comment></comment>


Asking for feedback for my project Feedo.xyz - <AUTHOR> https://feedo.xyz <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, friends,

My name is Vlad Zaev and I'm a sole developer of Feedo.xyz. It is a simple tool to get feedbacks from your customers.

In a day when my friend and I had a small pizza delivery service, I always wanted to know what my customers thought about my pizza. Was it good or not? Were they satisfied with a delivery speed? Did they need anything else, like new flavors or new drinks?

I wanted to know my customers' thoughts before they go to other web sites or apps to leave their feedback. No worries if it was a good feedback, but what about it was not?

How soon you can find out that some negative feedback is crushing your reputation?

No, I didn't want to wait. So I built Feedo.

The main purpose of Feedo is to let you to get feedbacks from customers as soon as possible. Feedo is a clear and easy tool. Nothing disturbs your customer from a quiz and your questions. No necessary logos or images, no long polls, no other buttons.

3 questions and a promo code for the next purchase. And if your customer happy and satisfied with your service, he or she will be shown links to your social networks or maps to leave a feedback there as well.

All new feedbacks go to a 'Received Box' on the main page. After all you can move them to other boxes as a Positive, Negative or Neutral box in a Trello like dashboard. Also you can add tags to each feedback to work it out later.

At Feedo you can find out your NPS score, number of clicks to your social networks and you can add Google Analytics to the quiz page.

Small business owners who tried Feedo for the last two month told me that it gave them a good push for changes. One of them fired his administrator for rude talks with customers, other found out new products to sell based on buyers wishes, third increased her clients loyalty, fourth got back a lot of visitors with Feedo promo code system.

I hope you'll like my first sole project. I'd love to hear your thoughts about Feedo.

<comment><USER2> The first thing I notice is the poor English and many grammar errors which make the site look very amateurish and leads me to instantly close the tab. I would suggest using a grammar-checking tool.

For example, even the hero text has mistakes: "Get feedbacks from your customers" , feedback is uncountable or not commonly used in its plural form, it should be "Get feedback from your customers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey feedoxy, you should add "Show HN" to the title: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Why Socialism Failed - <AUTHOR> http://fee.org/articles/why-socialism-failed/ <comment><USER2> pure capitalism fails, too. news flash, textbook theories don't work in real life.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Capitalism is not an ideology or theory; it's just people freely changing goods and services together - so it cannot fail. I, of course, agree some markets can fail, but this is, imo, a different story.

<comment><USER2> Property ownership is an ideology. it's the most innate version where as intellectual property is a forced concept for people. I can explain "mine" and "yours" to a two year old doesn't mean it's the only way to do things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something other than property ownership doesn't make sense, if you have one, please explain....</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New YNAB Is Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/post/the-new-ynab-is-here <comment><USER2> The new YNAB is a $50/year subscription vs $60 to buy a copy of YNAB 4 (now called classic).

YNAB 4 has been out for at least three years with no major updates. If find it hard to fathom how they can charge that much. $20/year I could understand...but $60?

I'll check out the new YNAB because I'm curious, but I plan to keep using YNAB 4.

<comment><USER3> > If find it hard to fathom how they can charge that much. $20/year I could > understand...but $60?

I look at it the other way. Products don't usually charge enough to survive. Charge more, and survive, or die quickly from freeloaders. Shut up and take my money!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> here's some context from the founder at a self-funded startups microconference: [https://vimeo.com/95653848](https://vimeo.com/95653848)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do they no longer do the desktop client?

<comment><USER6> The page answers that:

> _Will there be a desktop app for the new YNAB?_

> _Yes. It's on our roadmap as one of our first major initiatives._

<comment><USER7> But it's a subscription desktop app that accesses their cloud offering.

Why? Because Jesse says files are too hard; despite that being how YNAB classic works.

So... probably not what you've expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is a good replacement for YNAB?</comment>


Mac OS X privilege escalation with CVE-2014-6271 (Shellshock) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cnbrkbolat/status/514889775724363776

<comment><USER2> Maybe the title should be "VMWare Fusion (for Mac OSX) local privilege escalation." Since, unlike Linux, the ways to exploit it on OS X seem significantly more limited.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it works with any setuid binary (which VMWare Fusion is) that also calls bash internally.</comment></comment>


Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ <comment><USER2> You think names are a pain to deal with? Try phone numbers.</comment>


FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ <comment><USER2> They are willing to manufacture terrorist plots, so it's not that surprising they are willing to help create more child porn, too.</comment>


Ask HN: are there laws around employees knowing if/why a coworker has time off? - <AUTHOR>

If an employee takes a vacation (in the U.S.), their coworkers generally are aware or have access to the information that someone is out for such a reason.  That's generally the case for sick days too.  If an employer keeps a calendar for other employees to see history around days off (sick time, vacation, or any other reason), is this allowable?  Or are there HIPAA concerns around this?<p>I'm not quite sure what search term to use to find info regarding the topic, and whether there are federal or state laws around this. <comment><USER2> Try "employee health privacy". Regardless of legality, I don't know why an employer would even want to have a common/shared calendar that includes a history of sick days off. Of course, a manager would maintain that or have access to a system that maintains that, but I don't know why everyone else in the workgroup needs access to a history - even an unofficial one - of someone else's sick days off. I'm sure some will keep unofficial track, especially if the co-worker's absence impacts them - or they perceive that it does - but for the manager to purposely do that. . .I don't see the point.

<comment><USER3> _I 'm sure some will keep unofficial track, especially if the co-worker's absence impacts them - or they perceive that it does_

Funny you mention that...I had a coworker who used to write funny emails to the team when he was sick. While searching my inbox to show one to my wife, I saw that there were 22 of them in a 2 year period (we only officially got 3 sick days per year). After that, I kept an unofficial tally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It appears that there are no laws at all in the US about vacation or sick day privacy, but your state may have some. A search for vacation privacy law and similar terms yielded the articles below. There appears to be some evidence that employees have no right to ask you what specifically you are doing on your PTO days, but I didn't find any evidence that prohibited employers from disclosing that you took a sick or vacation day to other employees. HIPAA might apply if for example you provided a doctor's note to HR that explained that you were getting a particular procedure done, and they put that info on the shared calendar. If that is a concern, you should just not share specifics. Just say "I'm requesting a sick day" or "I'm requesting a vacation day" and refuse to elaborate.

[http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices- careers/2...](http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices- careers/2010/05/27/why-you-dont-have-to-your-vacation-days)

[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/monitoring- employees-...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/monitoring-employees- off-duty-conduct-29994.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> [IANAL]

The bigger can of worms for employers in regard to employee health status is ADA. It often encourages sophisticated employers to avoid the concept of sick days altogether and just lump everything into one type of leave.</comment>


37signals lists web designer directory Sortfolio on Flippa - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/10/37signals-lists-web-designer-directory-sortfolio-on-flippa-buy-it-now-for-480000/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the worst listings on Flippa. There's no information at all. No breakdown of traffic over time or by source. Nothing about how the transition to a new owner will be handled. No information about how billing is done and what information, if any, will be transferred to the new owner -- if everyone had to re-subscribe under new ownership most of that revenue is going to disappear. No information about the site architecture and what kind of resources are required to run it. No information about the customer service load generated.

It's like listing a house for sale with no photos, no description, and a fence around the property so you can't go check it out in person either. Just a lot number and a price tag. And we really are talking about the price of a house here...

<comment><USER3> But... it's from 37Signals!!

How can you possibly need any more information than that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sortfolio without the 37signals brand is not the same asset.

<comment><USER5> That would be my concern as well. Without their brand and following behind the service, it would be hard to sustain it at that level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has 37s indicated how the billings will transfer? If by default, after the sale, users have to opt-in and provide their billing information again, there will be a substantial loss of customers, well beyond typical churn.

Additionally, if I were interested in purchasing Sortfolio, I'd want a clear picture of their customer acquisition practices. If most customers are being acquired through the 37s website and/or branding, you cannot count on continued revenue streams. If customers are being acquired by channels that don't rely on 37s, I'd be much more comfortable with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I must be missing something because I don't understand why they are so desperate to get rid of it. If it's really making $200,000+ per year just hire someone for 1/4 to 1/3 that to handle it.

<comment><USER8> It's not a core service for them. It might be running on its own now but at some point it's going to need some attention which means distraction.

<comment><USER3> It seems you missed the part where he said "hire someone to handle it".

That someone doesn't need to be in the same office.

I personally would happily take that role - I'm on a different continent and won't ask for their phone number.

<comment><USER9> Hiring and managing a person is not a zero-cost effort, even after you account for direct compensation costs. If you value giving employees great jobs, and a chance to do excellent work, then hiring someone on a different continent and not letting them contact you is not aligned with your values. Further, management bandwidth is one of the most expensive resources at any company, and spending it on a non-core product is not smart.

Focus matters. It's one reason why most successful businesses aren't do- everything conglomerates.

<comment><USER3> _management bandwidth_

There is no management.

After the handover (which would be needed for a sale as well) there is no need to ever talk again. Just put the guy on auto-pay and have the contract automatically terminate when the revenue falls below a defined threshold (i.e. the site has fizzled out) or when the SLA is not met. Not rocket science really, should take all of 15 minutes to write a shell-script to send out the notification when it happens.

Of course if you pick the wrong person you might have to do it again, but I'd hope 37s would be able to gauge the competency of a candidate for that role. It doesn't take a genius to keep a trivial rails-site running, and motivation shouldn't be an issue with that kind of compensation.

But sure, if throwing away $100k/year in _passive income_ better "aligns with your values" then you have bigger problems anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't have 500K, are there any other good deals on Flippa? I'd love to buy an autopilot business for that rate of return.

Any advice? Has anyone bought a site on Flippa?

<comment><USER11> flippa is a cesspool of worthless sites, scams, and con-men.

But, there are some occasional transactions that are worth looking at, if only to get ideas of things to build.

Here's a recent sale of thecupcakeblog.com: [https://flippa.com/2736282-over-1000-ad- rev-199k-visits-475k...](https://flippa.com/2736282-over-1000-ad- rev-199k-visits-475k-pageviews-a-month-large-social-following)

Those come along about once or twice a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm obviously biased but this sold list shows that we regularly sell awesome websites: <http://bit.ly/JDV1hg>

Try out our advanced search and you can very easily drill into sites that meet your quality definition: <https://flippa.com/search>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> lost-theory There's an article on the 37signals blog as well:

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once- goi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice)

</comment><comment><USER12> A friend of mine with lots of experience angel investing and running profitable B2B companies told me he looked at Sortfolio last Fall and passed. He didn't go into detail, but he said they're asking too much.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd lease it. 50% split until the 480k is paid off, or the site dies.</comment>


Ask HN: Managing a global team - <AUTHOR>

Anyone with experience managing a 10+ person global application support team?<p>I'd appreciate some tips and pointers specific to working across timezones. <comment><USER2> A few months ago, I heard a couple people talk about this topic at the Office Optional conference. [http://officeoptional.co/program/](http://officeoptional.co/program/) As you will see in the link, the people I'm referring to are a) Cass Phillipps @webwallflower b) Christina Lucey @christinaluce

It would be worth reaching out to them to get specific advice as they've dealt with the specific issue of working across timezones. You can even tell them that you found out about them via the Office Optional program.

Hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info!</comment></comment>


Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far - <AUTHOR> https://boilingsteam.com/proton-brought-about-6000-games-to-linux-so-far/ <comment><USER2> Amazing, you can buy a triple A title and have it just work out of the box. I'm so happy with Valve's support for linux. And of course the thousands of hours of work that have gone into Wine. It's becoming a more reliable experience to play old windows games using wine than trying to run them on windows 10.

<comment> m-p-3 Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single- player games.

With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sense) makes it logical to go with a single-player game, as I can simply pause the game and pick it right up when I can, on my own schedule.

I'm glad that Valve is doing that kind of work, it benefits everyone.

<comment><USER3> One of my biggest frustrations with modern gaming is the lack of single payer games, everyone focuses on Multiplayer, I have zero interest in playing with others,

I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games

<comment><USER4> Conversely, I can't fathom how people can enjoy long stretches of singleplayer.

I occasionally play a bit of Cities Skylines every few months, but if there isn't another human involved, games just can't hold my interest.

Where's the satisfaction/fun come from if you're just beating some silly algorithm?

<comment><USER5> Not all games are about "beating" something.

<comment><USER4> Can you name one game, electronic or otherwise, that doesn't involve "beating" something, whether it's the other player, the rules, or even just random chance (dice rolls)?

I honestly can't think of any. If there are no goals (and goals imply obstacles to be overcome in pursuit of them) then you've got a toy, not a game.

<comment><USER6> They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games, they aren't about "beating" something, and they aren't simply toys either.

<comment><USER4> >They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games

They may not be games, but they're still games? I think whether or not Gone Home can be considered a game is highly debatable. I haven't tried it, but it seems that the elements that make a game a game are missing.

That it's available on Steam is completely orthogonal to whether or not it's a game.

<comment><USER7> I'd strongly recommend looking into the Aesthetics of Play[1][2]. It's a framework that talks about eight primary reasons why people play video games, and only one of those reasons is "Challenge" (i.e., beating a goal). Games like Gone Home, Animal Crossing, The Sims, Minecraft, etc all reflect different play aesthetics, and are intended for people who enjoy different things than pure Challenge.

[1] [https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA](https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA)

[2] [https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds- of-...](https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Proton has been fantastic for me, it finally gave me what I needed to reclaim my Windows partition and go full-on Arch! In some cases, running the Windows version inside Proton has actually worked out better for me than the native port (Dead Cells, for example. The native port crashes the Steam overlay and lacks Steam Controller support, but running the Windows version in Proton is seamless)

I highly encourage you guys to check out the tech making this possible: DXVK. It's incredible what you can do with these lower level APIs. I'm not sure if this is the right word, but "meta shader pipelines" like this are absolutely the way of the future in emulation. See also: Dolphin Ubershaders.

Ubershaders: [https://dolphin- emu.org/blog/2017/07/30/ubershaders/](https://dolphin- emu.org/blog/2017/07/30/ubershaders/)

<comment><USER9> > In some cases, running the Windows version inside Proton has actually worked > out better for me than the native port

I, for one, am not surprised. Windows userland APIs are more stable, consistent, and well documented than their Linux equivalents.

<comment><USER10> The implication from the comment was that Wine is better at running old Windows games than Windows itself. I'm not sure where this Linux vs. Windows comparison is coming from.

<comment><USER11> No, you mis-read. chaorace said that Windows EXEs running in Proton gives them better results than running the Linux binary that the game developer ships ("native"). AnIdiotOnTheNet stated that Windows APIs are more stable and better documented than Linux APIs.

As a long-time Linux dev (see my profile), I have also found this to be true. Linux userland APIs are unstable and change all the time. Some transitions that come to mind that have affected me personally: ALSA->pulse; libudev->libudev2->systemd; gstreamer 0.10->1.0. All of those changes required modifications to my software, and the backwards-compat tools that are provided are buggy and insufficient. Meanwhile, you can still write and run winmm[1] applications on Windows 10, and they will work in almost all cases. It's simply the case that the win32 API is more stable than Linux userland APIs, so it's entirely plausible that games will run better in Wine, which shares that stable ABI, than they will on Linux, especially as time goes on and Linux userland shifts yet again.

[1] winmm dates to the Windows 3.x days!

<comment><USER12> I've been suspicious of user-led development (e.g. open source), expecially Linux. Its popular to put in new features; less so to test, endure backward compatibility, control user experience. So it doesn't get done (much) in Linux.

My cohort have a phrase they attribute to me: Linux is not ready until they get the 'Have Disk' dialog.

<comment><USER11> Eh, I don't agree. Linux has been "ready" for my usecase for more than a decade. There's pros and cons to each certainly, but I find Linux much more pleasant to use than Windows, and I like actually being in control of and able to modify the software I run. Until I can do that, _Windows_ is not ready for _me_ :)

<comment><USER12> Right. But the point is the vast, vast (non-HNer) use case is not in favor of Linux. For every 1 Linux-on-the-desktop person, there are what, 1M others?

<comment><USER13> I hope that I never see the "Have disk" button again. The Linux way of distributing hardware drivers is so much easier.

As for usage, linux on the desktop is between .5% and 2% market share. And there reason to suspect that Linux usage is undercounted.

[https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share...](https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx)

[https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/)

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market- sha...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market-share-held- by-operating-systems-since-2009/)

[https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/operating-systems-market- sh...](https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/operating-systems-market-share/)

<comment><USER9> > The Linux way of distributing hardware drivers is so much easier.

You mean having to recompile them whenever there's a new kernel because the developers consider a stable driver ABI to be abhorrent?

<comment><USER11> I don't think I've ever compiled a driver. So no, I don't think that's what they meant.

<comment><USER9> Only because the disto does it for you. If they mean because the driver is distributed from a centralized repository over the internet... that's how it works in Windows too, only Windows also has the option to use alternate media and a stable enough driver ABI to have that make some kind of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yesterday I played civ6 with 4 people on 3 operating systems.

The Mac user couldn't fullscreen the game and had weird rendering artifacts.

One of the windows users had the game take 10x as long to load as it should have (commparing to mac/Linux/windows on vaguely similar hardware)

The other windows user kept dropping. Note that we were all sitting at the same kitchen table, with reasonably good wifi.

Linux worked flawlessly.

I'm sure there was some luck involved, but Linux gaming has truly come a long way from being the most finicky platform.

<comment><USER15> And yet, I still have trouble running normal software that was built for Linux, on Linux.

Every set of updates might cause a problem that I've never seen on Windows or a Mac. I had an Ubuntu machine that only lasted 2 weeks before it wouldn't boot one day after an update. Never figured that one out - it was an experiment to see how much easier Manjaro was to setup and add software to than Ubuntu. (The answer: it's much, much easier.)

<comment><USER16> I run Manjaro too. Having up to date versions of software is nice instead of having to wait until ppa's are updated.

Also there is a community version that includes just i3 the tiling window manager out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Proton has been a game changer for me: after many years on Linux only I ended up building a gaming rig a few years ago as I wanted to get back into gaming.The plan was to dual boot and only use Windows for gaming, but in practice rebooting all the time is just too much of a pain so I was using Windows almost exclusively there, with all the related frustrations. About 6 months ago I got myself a new SSD and made a fresh install of Linux with steam and Proton and I've been amazed a the performance and game support. Of course not all games work out of the box (and some not at all), but I haven't had to boot to Windows in months. And for the games I play the frame rate is at least as good as what I used to have on Windows (on a couple of games I do get occasional drops, but nothing too distracting). I play a lot of Assetto Corsa Competizione and my G27 steering wheel even worked out of the box!

<comment> augusto-moura In other discussion someone pointed out about passing a gpu to a windows kvm[1] and getting the output back to linux[2]. I never tried but seems really promising, might try it someday

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22905390#22906984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22905390#22906984)

[2] [https://looking-glass.hostfission.com](https://looking- glass.hostfission.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now, the kickers behind the headlines (that nobody told me up front):

1\. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software.

2\. Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Linux. So, expect a crash or two at critical gameplay moments.

That said, Proton is a great effort and it's great they're pushing Linux forward.

<comment> blaser-waffle > 1\. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to > dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software.

Not even anti-cheat, just different implementations of things in the Linux and Windows versions. IIRC Paradox games don't have any strong anti-cheat, but Linux and Windows users can't play due to how their systems handle network time synchronization.

> 2\. Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Linux. So, > expect a crash or two at critical gameplay moments.

Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Windows, either. Bethesda games (Fallout, Skyrim) come to mind -- desktop Skyrim had all sorts of bugs and crashes on Windows.

And why would it crash _only_ at critical gameplay moments? Sounds like FUD.

<comment><USER19> > And why would it crash only at critical gameplay moments? Sounds like FUD.

hah! at least back when I played nonstop twitch games there were no moments that were non-critical gameplay moments ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only things these things teach me is that "Platinum - It runs perfectly" is that ProtonDB creators clearly have a different view on perfect.

"Doom Eternal runs perfectly - it just have some pink flickering every minute!"

"runs perfectly - it just closes when you try to start it."

"runs perfectly - multiplayer doesn't work though."

Microsoft can change DirectX whenever they want, that goalpost is always going to change to suit them, so why even play them at their game?

Create a standard, ask Unity and Unreal Engine to support it, take a smaller cut when buying the Linux version on Steam.

<comment><USER21> Linux server is so perfect, I don't understand why desktop has so many problems.

I suppose that's a different topic.

<comment><USER22> Linux server is perfect because there is huge commercial demand for it. Linux desktop has problems because there is almost no commercial demand for it. Good things require money because effort isn't free.

<comment><USER23> ChromeOS is a great demonstration of this. A polished, solid, very good desktop experience based on Linux because a large company has a vested interest in its success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hadn't heard of Proton before and the article doesn't explain. Here's what the GitHub repo for it says [1]:

> Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are > exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to > facilitate this.

My question is, what's the "secret sauce"? If this is in fact that much more successful than Wine, what's different? Is Valve putting lots of dev time into it? Or is it just pre-configured for ease of use?

[1] [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton)

<comment><USER25> In addition to the what others have said (DXVK, pre-configured WINE, D9VK), the Steam client integration is also a MASSIVE quality of life boost and a serious lowering of the barrier to entry.

With Proton, the Windows versions of games appear in your library [1] and you just click to download and install [2]. And then that's it! No faff, no managing wine versions. If someone is intending to play a whitelisted game then for all intents and purposes their UX is exactly the same as playing the game on Windows - which is to say "very straightforward".

[1] By default only whitelisted games appear. While this whitelist is expanding, it's also possible to enable Proton to automatically run for all non-native games.

[2] A warning window will pop up to inform the user that a compatibility layer is being used, but otherwise it's identical.

<comment><USER26> >[1] By default only whitelisted games appear. While this whitelist is expanding, it's also possible to enable Proton to automatically run for all non-native games.

Or better, enable it for the game you want to try. Properties -> use compatibility tool.

<comment><USER25> This also allows you to use different version of Proton for different games (e.g. it's fixed in a beta build or broken in the latest build) and to enable Proton for games which have a native version!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is anyone using Linux + Proton for in-home streaming?

I'm seriously considering to completely ditch Windows 10 and move my gaming to PS4/5 + Linux/Proton, but I still want to be able to stream games from the game PC to the steam link in the living room. Does this work just as well with Linux/Proton as Windows?

<comment><USER28> Yeah I've had it running and streaming! Have run a few games this was - ARMA3, GTAV, South Park: Stick of Truth. All worked well. Have also tried running the windows steam client in WINE and had a few more issues, but as ever YMMV.

The performance isn't _quite_ as good (very close to windows perf levels), but quite a few anti-cheat systems will not work in Proton (even less so in WINE).

<comment><USER29> > quite a few anti-cheat systems will not work in Proton

A lot of interesting "hacks" (sorry for calling gaming on Linux a hack) are made impractical by this.

Another is that you can buy a miner's GPU (no video output, but much cheaper) and modify the drivers to route video through integrated graphics VO. Or, modify drivers to support SLI on any nvidia card. These driver modifications require running Windows in a special mode, which triggers anti-cheats. Maybe there's a way around that. Haven't heard of it being attempted on Linux. By the way, these driver modifications are just removing artificial restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hate to be that guy but nobody mentioned it - Lets not forget Proton is a wrapper for Wine, and we're here today thanks to many many years of community effort.

<comment><USER31> Not just Wine. Mainly DXVK and related projects are what enabled the latest boom.

<comment><USER30> Yes, Vulkan is awesome, but its biggest benefit apart for performance is DX11+ support. Wine had DX9/10 for ages now, and many Proton games don't depend on Vulkan to run.

<comment><USER31> D3D10 and D3D11 are very similar (I remember DXVK claiming that, which is why the supported both at once).

I don't think we had usable D3D10 support before DXVK, but I may be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems superfluous when we already have the greatest game ever made available right in your package manager: TuxRacer.

</comment><comment><USER33> While proton works wonderfully, I've found that most of the time the anticheat systems do not run at all. So multi-player is usually disabled, even if the game runs flawlessly as a port. The Halo collection let me log into Xbox live, but then fails to run anticheat, so you are left with campaign. Same with PUBG.

So many games run extremely well that it's not a deal breaker for me. My last gaming rig was on Zorin Ultimate.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't know what rock I was living under, but I finally tried it yesterday after a misadventure forced me to upgrade to Windows 10 to support a new nvme drive.

Tabletop Simulator, The Witcher 3, Endless Legend, all play perfectly. Haven't had the chance to try more.

Definitely a fantastic effort by Valve and Wine.

<comment><USER35> [https://www.protondb.com/](https://www.protondb.com/) is a crucial companion, letting you generally know whether stuff runs.

Mentally-downgrade ratings by one, as a rule of thumb.

Also, tfw the native Linux port runs worse than the Proton version PepeHands

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me it worked better than Windows for the Bioshock remastered series. On Win 10 the games would crash every few times during saving. I tried every workaround I could find but nothing helped. On Ubuntu the games worked fine.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sadly, a lot of the games I want to play have anti-cheat crap

<comment><USER38> You may feel it's crap only because you aren't able to run it. Players whose games cheaters are being excluded from are more likely to be glad for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> IMHO "emulating" the (fairly small) subset of the traditional Win32 and DirectX APIs required for typical games might even make sense on Windows itself, should Microsoft one day decide to deprecate Win32 in favour of something more "modern" (heavy air-quotes).

The window creation and input event handling of Win32, together with D3D9 and D3D11 (the really popular versions of D3D), and whatever is the current audio API on Windows (this seems to be the least stable area) have proven to be quite fantastic for games, maybe the best set of low-level APIs needed by games outside of actual gaming console.

Porting those APIs to other platforms, instead of porting the games doesn't seem such a bad idea at all in hindsight.

<comment><USER40> >"emulating" the (fairly small) subset of the traditional Win32 and DirectX APIs required for typical games might even make sense on Windows itself, should Microsoft one day decide to deprecate

I recently tried to run some WinXP-era games on modern hardware, and had absolutely no luck on Windows 10.

However some of the games ran fine on Wine (and 64-bit Linux).

The only downside I see to emulation is latency, but for many games this doesn't matter, and it's worthy to keep them runnable like this.

<comment><USER41> > The only downside I see to emulation is latency

There shouldn't be significant latency issues, unless there is large amounts of (CPU) work that's required to make large data structures compatible(for a silly example, imagine that the texture formats are different and you need to convert between them). Or if you need to simulate a single function call in a tight loop with several calls.

But the overhead is usually not much more significant than what you get when you import a library to call OS functions on your behalf, versus calling them yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't have a lot of of super current AAA titles, so most of my games that didn't already work on Linux(most of what I buy) already worked on Wine. But with the Proton integration, I do appreciate that I don't have to run a separate Wine instance of steam and instead running my Windows games is far more transparent. I guess the only minor downside is that since the whole process is so transparent it makes it a bit more jarring when I do come across a game that doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, of course all of that would not have been possible, without the long hard work and experiences of all the people involved with creating WINE in the first place.

That said, I think it's great that Valve contributes. It might be naive though, to believe, that they'd do any such thing, if the license did not force them to. I am quite sure, that they'd see some kind of advantage to take, if those contributions could be limited to only their own platform.

</comment><comment><USER30> Honorable mentions: WineTricks, and its successor - Lutris. If you can't get it to run on Proton (or not a Steam game), try those.

</comment><comment><USER44> Adding to the anecdata, but steam Proton has been great for me under Debian. I've been gaming on linux on and off for about a decade (mostly with wine before or the few games that did support linux).

Proton has been a perfect experience for me.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've had a great experience with Proton. Glad it's getting some exposure.

</comment><comment><USER46> If Cyberpunk 2077 runs on linux, I'll remove windows today itself..

</comment><comment><USER47> Porting games seems pretty hard IMO. Why isn't there an intensive to port the latest Adobe CC software [1] too?

I know a few designers & video editors who use passthrough to run Adobe software on their beefy workstations, which I would also prefer as I'd rather not use multiarch on my linux system.

[1] [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=38516)

<comment><USER11> To be blunt, funding. No one is paying to improve Adobe CC in Wine.

<comment><USER48> Exactly. And to be fair, I doubt Valve is making a lot of money off of Proton on Linux. I consider it more of a philantropy project from Gabe Newell.

<comment><USER49> While I do appreciate Valve's support of Linux, it's hardly altruism: it gives them some room to negotiate with/pressure Microsoft. (i.e. while it would be painful to push even a fraction of their users over to it, it is an option Valve has) Compare that to the situation app developers on mobile platforms find themselves in these days. So it's smart strategically even if it doesn't translate into big $$$ currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I was a ubuntu only user for the last 3 or 4 years. Even though part of what I did on my computer was gaming, there was a side of 3d design which I was put in a bad position when I started to get more hardcore. I decided to buy windows and try it. No regrets W10 is good and universal. I would consider going back if Linux has more cad programs compatibily. In the time being I'm just gonna miss Ubuntu remembering to mute if my earphones are plugged in.

</comment><comment><USER51> I've only discovered Proton recently and I'm very impressed. I'm no stranger to using Wine to get games running in Linux, but Proton makes the whole process so easy. And Wine itself has come a long way even in the past few years. GTA V was the reason I kept a Windows partition when I played it a few years ago, and now it works amazingly with the latest version of Wine/Proton.

</comment><comment><USER52> Is Microsoft Flight Simulator running on Linux? It used to be the gold standard for "PC compatibility" early in the PC era.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm confused.

Is steam selling linux games with proton as Linux games? Or do you have to buy the windows version and run it with proton.

I got black Mesa on Linux from steam (works great), but is that a proton game? Last time I browsed Linux games on steam most seemed like they were indie with very few aaa titles..

I do feel Linux has arrived.

<comment><USER54> No, games marked as Linux on the Steam store do not use Proton (by default) but are native (either ported or in some cases wrapped with Wine/whatever by the developer).

Black Mesa uses the Source engine for which Valve created their own ToGL wrapper but it's compile-time and much smaller than Wine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Annoyingly, games that use Valve's own DRM/encryption scheme CEG don't work: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/753](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/753)

</comment><comment><USER56> Proton worked decently for VR last I tried 6 months ago. But I started it up again recently and everything is broken now, partially due to steam updates and partially due to updates to Unity. The entire reason I moved to Linux was because I loathe forced updates >:(

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly if you are into VR the only real viable OS right now is Windows...

<comment><USER56> I only need a working VR videoplayer and a couple of experiences for demoing to people. Which 6 months ago was what was available and now nothing works, not even valves own VR tutorial

<comment><AUTHOR> Out of curiosity on which distro are you?

<comment><USER56> Linux Mint

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> One just can't thank enought the contributors for ther incredible work and effort.

</comment><comment><USER58> How can I tell if a game is playable via Proton versus being natively supported?

<comment><USER25> You can check for individual games or run a check against your whole steam library (by authenticating with Steam) at ProtonDB [1].

[1] www.protondb.com

<comment><USER58> That's very useful, thank you.

EDIT: Clickable: [https://www.protondb.com](https://www.protondb.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I remember when proton was literally a pipe dream, and that was only only a few years ago. The improvement across linux drivers for GPUs as well as these technologies is great.

</comment><comment><USER60> ProtonDB is a good place to check for compatibility. I still have trouble trying to get Elite Dangerous to work on my Linux machine at home.

</comment><comment><USER61> I have been playing exclusively on Wine + Mac for a long time now. It takes some minor fiddling, but works for the most part.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think the main problem with playing games on linux is that the anticheats for the games can't run properly on linux

</comment><comment><USER41> I was actually pleasantly surprised by the number of games that my steam library listed as linux-compatible.

VR games are a large omission.

<comment><USER11> VR is supported by Proton. Not all games work, of course, but it's not in itself a blocker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Yep! I'm running Final Fantasy III without a single issue which is just astounding.

</comment><comment><USER64> Oh thank god. The more I use windows the more I just want to pull my hair out.

</comment><comment><USER65> Do nvidia profile inspector and reshade work in Linux?

</comment><comment><USER66> I love games and linux. But never play one in linux.

</comment><comment><USER67> The day Adobe apps get ported to Linux is the day I fully switch to Linux. Sorry GIMP, but you kinda suck.

<comment><USER68> I would say that what is already available for linux is far better than what adobe has for image editing and video editing. Nuke and Houdini are much better for editing images than photoshop. Davinci Resolve is a much better video editor than premiere. Painting and vector illustrations are where Linux doesn't have good alternatives as far as I know. At this point there are multiple web based image editors that are far better than the low bar that Gimp sets. Gimp is a relic that most people would be better off forgetting about.

<comment><USER69> I think Krita is a pretty nice digital painting product; it's good enough to where I'd consider paying for it honestly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Any issue with nvidia cards?

<comment><USER71> I never had any issues with my nvidia card when i was using it

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> What about macOS?

</comment><comment><USER73> Valve should ship the Steam Client native for ARM/Raspberry Pi Linux users.

It's a fairly large underserved community when it comes to gaming, and they're practically all Linux boxes, and the latest gens are perfectly capable of modern 3D gaming, if not all the AAA titles.

<comment><USER74> How many Steam games work on ARM?

<comment><USER73> Fewer than there would be if Steam actually shipped ARM support to those who wanted it.

It's a classic chicken-egg problem.

I have a game on Steam, it builds and runs on ARM/RPi just fine, but there's no ARM in the list of architectures on Steamworks because the client doesn't support it. So I don't bother shipping the ARM build despite having one here and one of my artists using an RPi4 as their primary desktop with a functioning build of the game for testing.

We're talking about commercial interests here. If a game has been ported to native linux/SteamOS, it's likely just a recompile away from having ARM support. If the Steam client were made available to Pi users the demand would appear on the store for more ARM-compatible games and we'd all immediately jump on the opportunity for more sales from practically zero effort.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is an enterprise software that sucks, but you still use? - <AUTHOR> Most of the enterprise software is bad. What is something that you use, hate to use it, but use it just because of no other better alternative? <comment><USER2> JIRA. And Slack.

Not because there's no alternative, but because there's some kind of misplaced cult about it in the industry.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you gain reputation on Hacker News?  - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I've been lingering around the site for a few months now, and I've submitted a few articles / blog posts that I have found interesting. However, they seem to get few views. It is mostly chance which posts become popular and get a lot of views? Is it a function of timing? Do you gain reputation by commenting on posts?
Just trying to get a better idea for how to engage well with the community here. Any ideas are appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm going to go a bit against the grain. The way to gain karma is to entertain your audience.

Like any performance, timing plays a role, quality plays a role, and luck should not be discounted.

However, one should not mistake what passes for entertainment on other websites for what people want from HN and are likely to reward. In general, HN expects accuracy and rewards insight and good writing. It definitely punishes trying to create inside jokes and exclusionary cliques (see PG's essay about high school).

So long as it is of high caliber, wit may be rewarded. The same is true to a lesser extent of sarcasm and even snark. My personal rules of thumb are: snark only if what I have to say is emotionally important enough to take the downvotes and karma hit in stride; avoid sarcasm in general; and if I am not sure something is really witty to forgo posting it.

With any type of comment, I am willing to delete it if it isn't going to accomplish my goal or add to the community...and yes, sometimes my ego is at odds with what adds to the community. Hopefully, that is less and less the case.

As far as submissions, I have had my most success with more technical articles and blogs, less with opinion pieces. Largely, getting a good article to the front page is a matter of luck for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was active on GameFAQs forums when I was a lot younger and I remember being turned off from all the trolling and flame wars people insist on promoting. As I finish my graduate studies, I'm looking for a mature community to share my interests and find new ways to be motivated.

Entertaining writing is hard. It's difficult to conveys my thoughts correctly through text, especially when humor is involved; timing translates awkwardly in prose.

I will take your suggestion to heart and shoot for quality over quantity in my activity here. I think once I finish with school I'll have more time to work on things I care about, and I'll want to share them with others. I really look forward to that point.

<comment><USER2> I don't suggest taking "entertaining" as synonymous with "humorous." Non- fiction books, sad films, and football matches are all entertaining for some people. Entertain the HN audience by delivering the sort of thing they like - well considered insights and technical information.

Nor is the reference to timing implying comedic timing...except in a general sense of delivering your ideas when the audience is likely to be prepared in the right way to appreciate them. This fleshes out to when and where one comments - before HN became kinder, gentler, and larger, early snark on a rising thread was often worth a few points. Well considered comments on a recent popular thread will often do better than those delivered otherwise.

Timing requires understanding the audience or perhaps having a model of that portion you wish to reach. Writing for someone is a good first step toward being entertaining.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi brudgers,

I looked at your profile and wanted to ask you about your architecture career. Throughout high school I wanted to be an architect and my initial major in college was architecture. I switched to computer science because I liked the concept of building and felt the hierarchical nature of the field would involve lots of ladder climbing before I designed anything. What has your experience been like?

If you would rather e-mail, that works for me too. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't address submissions, but I can however address posts:

The unfortunate problem with this is that often, there is no direct link between comment quality and the amount of karma you receive for posting it as several walls must first be breached before your comment is even seen.

Firstly, the quality of the article in question is the most important outside factor, if it is a fluff piece, apart from several posts about it being a fluff piece there will rarely be a fair amount of visitors to the comments section, whereas well written, high quality articles tend to drag a crowd, curious to know what their peers have to say of the subject in question.

Secondly, the position of your comment in the comments section can be a massive boundary, you will find that often, the comment at the top has the most replies, this has a direct correlation to it's position of course, people tend to read what the see first (and to reach the top, it must have been up- voted, leading you to believe it will add value to the thread) although, the more cynical side in me wants to believe that some people post on high placed comments simply to farm karma with their yes-man comments.

After being seen, there is the length of your comment, people bore easily and if your comment isn't interesting (to the person reading in particular) from the first instance then they will move on without properly absorbing your opinion.

After gaining the initial traction to be read, then and only then is the quality of your comment going to become a variable in the equation of how much karma you will receive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the nice response. I am still looking for my creative niche and I'm not sure if writing / blogging is what best captures my interests. I appreciate the dynamics of timing, and the serendipity of Internet forums, but that doesn't stop me from getting depressed when one of my favorite posts don't get viewed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hacker News is broken into many sub-segments. Everything you submit will catch the attention of a given demographic here. If you want to become popular, then address a common issue among demographics. Though "popularity" is not what you should seek. Be a valuable member of the community. Online _and_ offline. Be a friend, a collegue, or just a hacker. Praise their successes, ignore their failures, help them cure their pain. Only then will you be, not only a valuable and reputable member of hacker news, but a valuable and reputable member of society. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't try to gain karma. Your phrasing in this title is going to ill serve you.

Repost this as what you seem to have intended, asking how to engage with the community.

Now, for anyone who is here to learn how to game karma, I'd like to convey the following:

Karma is an abstract way to show quality, a way to organize discussion on HN to prioritize valuable information and people with insight. It is not an end to itself, except maybe as an ego boost. Oh, I guess at some point you can down vote posts, but seriously, karma is a tool intended to benefit the community, not a measure of your value as a person, or your skills as a developer or entrepreneur.

Try to add to the community; Add your insight and knowledge, up vote good quality comments and posts that are interesting, and trust the community. Attempting to game karma detracts value from the community. You are better than that. We are all better than that. And if you do that, the karma will come.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope I don't convey any selfish motivations for posting this topic. Honestly, I'm trying to find a venue for me to discuss my interests.

One of the dimensions of my work I want to expand is my mastery over specific subject matter. It's tough to find a colloquial yet masterful community forum for discussing new ideas, and especially so when I'm not sure which area I want to specialize in for my career.

I like HN because it's simple and isn't overwhelming.

<comment><USER5> You didn't convey anything but earnest interest in contributing. I intended to address you, then any people trying to game karma. On reflection, I'd have split the comment; in my defense I was posting from my phone.

FYI, In terms of communities related to specific subjects, a surprising amount happens on mailing lists, not web forums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've looked through old comments a few times, and my opinion of my comment quality had only a very weak correlation to the number of upvotes my comments receive.

Specifically, comments that I thought made only small contributions to the conversation received the same number of votes on average as those that I thought were much better comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good comments (thoughtful, insightful etc) will generally attract good reputation. Adding posts is a tricky one, and is a combination of timing, quality and luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why are you trying to gain reputation? I don't know who has 5k karma and who has 50, but I do know which posters tend to make thought-provoking comments worth paying attention to.

If you want to engage with the community, then just do so. Ask questions, respond to posts intelligently and politely and you'll find people responding in kind.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Okay, so I have a question: When submitting a url, is there any reason to comment about the content? Is it all about using an appropriate title, or should there be some explanation/summary given?

</comment><comment><USER9> Why does it matter?

<comment><USER10> The cynical answer would be to stroke his ego.

The other possibility would be that he wants to improve the quality of his comments and/or be a more valuable contributor to this community.

<comment><USER9> I think it is an ego thing, but I wouldn't be too harsh on the OP. I think the whole karma/likes/followers thing is based on a basic human need for recognition and acceptance. People basically like to be liked.

For some reason I'm one of the few people who doesn't feel the need to have 1000 followers listening to what I ate for breakfast (or the HN/SO equivalent :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn An endless stream of plausible nonsense. Making sense can help.</comment>


Revisiting the Rendering Tier - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/info/2019/apr/04/revisiting-the-rendering-tier <comment><USER2> I understand the struggles and problems this article lists, particularly the "re-use or duplicate" quandary, but then I'm not sure how "CSS in JS" solves all of them. Seems to me like the question becomes, do I re-use this React component, or duplicate it?

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER3> Here's the canonical slide deck that kicked off the "CSS in JS" trend. [https://speakerdeck.com/vjeux/react-css-in- js](https://speakerdeck.com/vjeux/react-css-in-js)

The core idea isn't strictly to generate CSS from _JavaScript_ per se, but to generate CSS in whatever code is generating your HTML. In React, that's JS, but if you're generating HTML server-side in PHP or Ruby, the argument calls for generating CSS in PHP or Ruby.

vjeux's talk identifies seven problems:

1) global namespace: CSS has a page-global namespace for classes

2) dependency management: if you forget to include CSS, but another module/component on the page includes the CSS you need, your code will seem to work, until they remove their dependency and your code will magically break

3) dead code elimination: you can't know whether a CSS rule can be removed unless/until you can prove that the HTML generator won't generate any HTML that matches its selector, which can be impossible in the general case

4) minification: you can't minify class names without coordinating with the HTML generator

5) sharing constants: "padding: 5px" has to be kept in sync with the HTML generator "buttonPadding = 5"

6) non-deterministic resolution: loading CSS files in a different order results in different rules with the same specificity winning ties

7) isolation: component clients can use CSS to style the internals of an element, making the HTML structure implicitly part of a component's API

vjeux calls for applying generated styles as inline styles with the "style" attribute, primarily because it's straightforward to implement. You may be able to get better performance by generating a <style> tag on the server side, or extracting a CSS file from the HTML generator instead.

Beware that if you're generating your HTML only in client-side JS, that can be bad for performance, and CSS-in-JS is likely to make that worse. At least run your JS on the server side, so you can send HTML + CSS to the client on first load.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised this is still something people talk about. I have been using generated inline CSS for several years now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This page looks like you could delete most of the style stuff...

<comment><USER6> Ha yes definitely. One of our motivations in this work is to be able to identify and serve only the CSS that is needed for the specific page/components being requested.</comment></comment>


Reddit CEO Yishan Wong has resigned from the company - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/13/ex-reddit-ceo-wanted-to-move-the-company-to-daly-city-instead-of-sf/

<comment><USER2> Yishan Wong's response on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Yishan-Wong-resign-as-Reddit- CE...](http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Yishan-Wong-resign-as-Reddit- CEO/answer/Yishan-Wong)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit should be run like a self sustaining charity, not a profit machine. No good will come of it.</comment>