I tried Haskell for 5 years - <AUTHOR> https://metarabbit.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/i-tried-haskell-for-5-years-and-heres-how-it-was/ <comment><USER2> We have a code base of roughly 200,000 lines of Haskell code, dealing with high performance SQL query parsing, compilation and optimizations.

I only remember one situation over the past 5 years that we had a performance issue with Haskell, that was solved by using the profiling capabilities of GHC.

I disagree that performance is hard to figure out. It could be better, yes - but it's not that different than what you'd get with other programming languages.

<comment><USER3> _but it 's not that different than what you'd get with other programming languages._

Until you have to solve a (maddeningly common) space leak issue. That's a problem unique to lazily evaluated languages (basically Haskell) and is godawful to debug.

It reminds me of solving git problems... you suddenly find yourself having to tear back the abstraction layer that is the language and compiler and start thinking about thunks and so forth.

It's jarring and incredibly frustrating.

<comment><USER4> I find this response a little ironic because we don't really see complaints about knowing the C runtime and C compiler when performance becomes a problem, which is also jarring and frustrating. But, ultimately, sometimes languages have failings and we need to peek under the hood to figure out how to address it - we're just more comfortable with the relatively common and direct mapping of the C runtime.

I am not experienced enough with Haskell to know whether peeking under its hood involves a more complicated model or not. It might be more frustrating. But its certainly not a unique experience - it's costs are just less distributed over other runtimes.

<comment><USER5> When have you ever had the C runtime be the cause of a performance problem?

<comment><USER6> Writing a custom replacement for malloc is relatively common. Does that count?

<comment><USER3> _Writing a custom replacement for malloc is relatively common._

You... can't be serious. That's common to you?

<comment><USER6> Yes? From the Wikipedia:

"Because malloc and its relatives can have a strong impact on the performance of a program, it is not uncommon to override the functions for a specific application by custom implementations that are optimized for application's allocation patterns."

<comment><USER3> "not uncommon" is far far from "common". If you're writing your own malloc replacement you're pretty deep into the weeds of high performance computing. Heck even just deciding to replace the stock implementation with an off-the- shelf replacement puts you in fairly rarified company. I'd wager the vast majority of software written for Linux makes use of the standard glibc allocator.

I expect high performance games are the most common exception, but they represent a fraction of the C/C++ in the wild.

Space leaks in Haskell, on the other hand, are unfortunately relatively easy to introduce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone's curious to try out functional programming, I would highly recommend Elm. I haven't been so excited about a language since I went from C to Ruby ten years ago, and Pragmatic Studios has a great course on it (I have no affiliation): [https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/elm](https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/elm)

<comment><USER8> I spent some time working through various Haskell books with varying success, then decided to do a code challenge (adventofcode.com) using Elm. I didn't finish, but after writing Elm for many days on end, suddenly Haskell clicked a lot more. The Elm compiler is far more friendly than Haskell's and will walk you through a lot of rookie mistakes and oversights.

I find Elm exciting, and with the prevalence of React/Redux these days, a lot of front end developers would be wise to familiarize themselves with the origin of many of the concepts borrowed from Elm.

<comment><USER9> I bought a few Haskell books but could never really grok it. In the last couple years I started learning f# and have found it's an incredible "intro to Haskell" language. I opened one of my Haskell books the other day and realized I understood everything much more quickly.

<comment><USER10> F# is a beautiful, pragmatic, functional programming language. It's a shame some people dismiss it due its Microsoft origins.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, F# feels like Don Syme looked at ocaml and haskell and applied a bit of yagni and tossed in some other useful conventions (I'm sure many others were involved as well).

It drives me crazy that Microsoft doesn't push it harder from an investment perspective. They don't even write books about it :)

<comment><USER11> There are books out there. For new language adoption, F# do have new features like Type Providers. However, it's not the best language in X for X in ['data science', 'distributed system'] etc.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, my language was vague. There are many F# books, but I find it telling that Microsoft Press doesn't really write books about it. Look at C#, VB.Net, Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc. Almost everything has a new book (or 10) every new edition. F#? Nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Question to the Haskell experts here.

Is Haskell more academic in nature or used heavily in Production environments?

Is there an application sweet spot/domain (say Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, etc) where it shines over using other languages (I am not talking about software/language architectural issues like type systems or such)?

I have no experience with Haskell but do use functional languages such as Erlang/Elixir on and off.

<comment><USER13> > _Is there an application sweet spot /domain_

State of the Haskell ecosystem: [https://github.com/Gabriel439/post- rfc/blob/master/sotu.md](https://github.com/Gabriel439/post- rfc/blob/master/sotu.md)

        The topics are roughly sorted from greatest strengths to greatest weaknesses.
        Each programming area will also be summarized by a single rating of either:

        Best in class: the best experience in any language
        Mature: suitable for most programmers
        Immature: only acceptable for early-adopters
        Bad: pretty unusable

<comment><USER14> The state of the Haskell ecosystem is that it is amazing at encouraging people to write libraries, especially libraries to assist in writing haskell code but amazingly bad at encouraging people to write actual programs, especially actual programs useful for something that isn't writing code.

Take out the programs that are for writing code, ghc, shellcheck, darcs etc. And what are you actually left with? git-annexe, pandoc, xmonad is hledger worth knowing about if you don't care what language it was written in? (Maybe it's amazing, first I've heard of it).

Whenever I bring this up, people find it upsetting. The Haskell community might need to get past both of those things. 1.0 was 27 years ago. So many fabulous programmers have gone down the road for entertainment or enlightenment so where are your damn apps if you're a language that doesn't suck for writing them, no really, where are they?

<comment><USER13> I believe a similar dynamic exists with many of the expressive high-level languages; this is probably not an issue unique to the Haskell community.

For example, I think many would struggle to name many open source user application written in Clojure as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > 1\. There is a learning curve.

Time and experience can cover up anything. So this does not say much about Haskell other than it is all negative without time and experience.

> 2\. Haskell has some very nice libraries

So does NodeJS and (on an abstract level) Microsoft Word. Libraries are infrastructures and investments that (like time and experience) can cover up any shortcomings.

> 3\. Haskell libraries are sometimes hard to figure out

That is simply negative, right?

> 4\. Haskell sometimes feels like C++

That is also negative, right?

> 5\. Performance is hard to figure out

That is also negative, right?

> 6\. The easy is hard, the hard is easy

That is a general description of specialty -- unless he means _all hard_ are easy.

> 7\. Stack changed the game

Another infrastructure investment.

> 8\. Summary: Haskell is a great programming language.

... I am a bit lost ... But if I read it as an attitude, it explains a lot about the existence of infrastructure and investment. Will overcomes anything.

<comment><USER16> > The line that if it compiles, it's probably correct is often true.

That is the meat of why Haskell is so great. I've never so reckless refactored code as much as I do in Haskell, I just wait for the compiler to tell me what I missed and go back and fix it up. I'd _never_ do that in C, C++, Java, etc; it'd be suicide.

And while that's still not a great fleshed out explanation, it's a great oversimplification of the symptoms of a programming language with a great type system. And that type system is more or less the only reason to use Haskell.

As other people in this thread have commented, Haskell has fantastic abstract libraries, which let you do abstract things, the most useful of which that I'm aware of/understand is parsing. Parser combinators are a very natural fit for Haskell, and making DSLs with them becomes practically trivial to do.

Edit: I think the author takes for granted the general praise that Haskell gets, and was attempting to temper it with his practical experiences using the language.

<comment><USER17> > I've never so reckless refactored code as much as I do in Haskell, I just > wait for the compiler to tell me what I missed and go back and fix it up. > I'd never do that in C, C++, Java, etc; it'd be suicide.

That's precisely what I was doing at work today in a C# project. I was going particularly crazy today, doing some refactoring with project wide regex replaces rather than leaning on VS/Resharper for everything.

I think it depends a lot on how your project is structured. If you're passing around object everywhere and casting... you're gonna have a bad time, sure. But at that point you're practically using Python or something. If you're using generics and so on properly, then you can lean on the compiler and type system quite a lot.

<comment><USER18> Yup, C# codebases (especially w/ tools like Resharper) can be massively refactored and, in my experience, almost always work perfectly as long as there are no compilation errors. C# tooling is fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I will never, ever use Haskell in production because of its default evaluation strategy, the wrongness of which was tacitly conceded not long ago with the addition of the strictness pragma (which only works per-module) to GHC.

I think it's especially telling that its community skews so heavily towards this blogger/monad tutorial writer dilettante demographic rather than the D. Richard Hipp/Walter Bright 'actually gets real work done' demographic. I know which of the two I'd rather be in. Haskellers are even worse than Lispers in this regard. For the amount of noise about Haskell, you'd expect to see high- quality operating system kernels, IDEs, or RDMBSs written in it by now. Instead its killer apps are a tiling window manager, a document converter, and a DVCS so slow and corruption-prone even they avoid it in favor of Git.

<comment><USER20> Would you also feel that a strict-by-default language which adds support for lazyness is a tacit admission that strict-by-default is wrong?

<comment><USER19> How would you feel if Common Lisps suddenly started sporting infix operator notation?

Haskel's alien, counter-intuitive evaluation strategy was actually marketed (circa 2010) as a powerful performance-enhancer that facilitated optimizations that were difficult if not impossible to do in a strict language like C. Instead, it ironically tends to cause more performance problems than it solves, with hard-to-debug spaceleaks capable of taking down production systems.

The entire Miranda branch of the PL tree is likely going to prove to be an evolutionary dead end, and Haskell will eventually lose out to Idris or some other strict language. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the strictness pragma (which does not even give you a strict program) was added soon after Idris and the rest started getting traction.

<comment><USER21> > How would you feel if Common Lisps suddenly started sporting infix operator > notation?

You mean like this? (I linked it the other day.) [https://github.com/rigetticomputing/cmu- infix](https://github.com/rigetticomputing/cmu-infix) But one might argue that the prefix notation + macros being able to support such a library is just further testament to their use as default...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-j-fox > very hard to understand why a function could be useful in the first place

So true.

[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-18.104.22.168/docs/Contro...](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-188.8.131.52/docs/Control- Monad-Fix.html)

> mfix :: (a -> m a) -> m a

> The fixed point of a monadic computation. mfix f executes the action f only > once, with the eventual output fed back as the input. Hence f should not be > strict, for then mfix f would diverge.

But why tho?

<comment><USER22> Ubiquitous single-letter symbols mapping to who-knows-what possible things, pnflly abvted fncn nms, and unclear motivations for code are what I've bounced off of with Haskell every time I've tried to dig in. The community seems to have adopted all the worst parts of mathematics culture, along with whichever good parts they've brought in.

<comment><USER23> Serious question. In the following code, what would be better function / type names? (or you can pick another bit of Haskell code that you know and/or have particular trouble understanding).

        class Foldable t where
            foldl :: (b -> a -> b) -> b -> t a -> b

<comment><USER24> Maybe something like:

      class Foldable myFoldable where
        foldl :: (summary -> element -> summary)
              -> summary
              -> myFoldable element
              -> summary

This is the translation I do in my head when I read that type signature, at least.

<comment><USER22> Wow. That's much better.

Apparently-idiomatic Haskell reads (or, rather, doesn't) about like line- noise/code-golf style Perl to me.

<comment><USER25> The problem with this is that there are Foldables that do not behave in the way that is implied by the above re-write of the parameters.

I think this is kind of the problem when you are really high up in abstraction-land. The functions that you're using are so generic that it's hard to say that they operate on anything in particular, except that the arguments fulfill certain properties or laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Haskell: where difficult problems are trivial, and where trivial problems are the subject of ongoing academic research

<comment><USER27> > and where trivial problems are the subject of ongoing academic research

Like what?

<comment><USER15> I am not holding that (joke's) view, but monad came to mind as an ongoing academic research (to original Haskell at least) in order to solve a rather trivial stateful programming (trivial in an imperative style). To generalize that example, there are solutions that are trivial to express in an imperative style but seems convoluted in pure functional programming. How to retain the trivialness are subject of ongoing academic research.

EDIT: To be specific, I can think about the example of machine efficiency that can simply be specified literally in C but it is uncertain and opaque in Haskell.

<comment><USER27> This confuses me. You don't really need monads to perform io or specify sequencing in Haskell, although do notation is very convenient for sequencing sctions.

Ultimately, if you want imperative style, you can just write imperative code that's well typed in Haskell.

<comment><USER15> > You don't really need monads to perform io or specify sequencing in Haskell.

By implying certain logic dependence? It would be rather un-natural, which I assume is the reason for the invention of monad.

> Ultimately, if you want imperative style, you can just write imperative code > that's well typed in Haskell.

It is not just a style. There are logic implications. In imperative programming, the states are always assumed. That is, the operations are assumed to have different effect switching orders. Note this is a much stricter assumption than the alternative that some/all operations are stateless. The benefit of such stricter confinement provides certain convenience. For example, because the order of instruction is meaningful and can convey ideas, contexts can take place, and local ideas can be focused (rather than carrying the whole states). In the real world (compared to the mathematical world), most action affects vast states that are impossible to quantify, and we (as an adaptive species) are well adapted to stateful imperative thinking. How do you perform rigorous logic thinking when the inputs (states) are never complete?

In computer programming, the states can always be fully described. However, if you always want to fully describe your states, you'll either restrict your functions and programs with limited states (input/output) or you will be constantly writing cumbersome functions/programs with a long description of all its states. The solution is to share and imply some of those states in the types, monad, for example. So yes, monad is not strictly a necessity but a convenience. Since Haskell never makes assumptions of hidden states, merely imitating an imperative style is still not imperative programming. Because the states are still not assumed, but rigorously specified and carried. So even with a seemingly similar code style, the cognitive process in Haskell and a conventional imperative language is very different.

Which is better? It depends. If you are holding the view that everything computer solves are mathematical problems, or when you are solving mathematical problems, certainly you would think only Haskell's approach makes sense. On the other hand, if you understand that computers are merely a tool for solving real-world problems, then you are often not looking for mathematically correct answers but practically good enough solutions. Practically good enough solutions allow room for shortcuts or undefined behaviors. Embracing these uncertainties (shock to mathematicians) allows for efficient means. Under the latter context, a pure mathematical restriction can be a burden rather than help. The latter approach, in fact, carries much more complexity. For example, calculating pi to one millionth digit. In functional approach, it is solving a mathematical problem and a correct answer is what you looking for. In imperative approach, memory cost, speed efficiency, various shortcuts are all part of the consideration and part of solution. It is not always just the answer matters, how you get the answer also matters. But do they really matter? It depends.

Real programming is often a mixture of both -- in C or in Haskell. C defaults to imperative style with explicit stateless when needed. Haskell defaults to stateless with explicit stateful when necessary. Trivial in one is difficult in the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _The same is not true of Haskell. If you have never looked at Haskell code, > you may have difficulty following even simple functions._

Why is it that people talk about this almost as if it's done virtue of the language? As if the fact that's it's so inscrutable proves that it's valuable, different, and on a higher plane of computing.

<comment><USER29> The point is that it's not _inherently_ inscrutable—it's different. And being different _is_ a virtue: at the very least, you'll learn something from Haskell, and it's going to let you do things other languages won't. It's not just an Algol reskin.

<comment><USER30> If it had Algol syntax and Algol naming conventions it might actually have succeeded outside of academia. The decision not to go with an Algol-derived syntax was probably the biggest mistake ever done in Haskell's design.

<comment><USER31> Maybe... I'm not convinced the semantics would feel as good in that setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow, really good writeup. And on point regarding '5 days' vs '5 years' approach.

And it really confirms my biases against the language.

</comment><comment><USER33> > The easy is hard, the hard is easy

Probably the best single line description of Haskell.

The learning curve helps with the former (easy) part, the latter (hard) part contains some really brilliant ideas where you start to wonder why so many people still use other languages for everything, then you remember how hard the easy stuff can be...

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't think it takes 5 years to learn this stuff. Nothing stood out to me and I only used Haskell for 10 weeks for a single college course 2 years ago. It's all true though.

</comment><comment><USER35> > _Types / Type-driven development Rating: Best in class_

> _Haskell definitely does not have the most advanced type system (not even > close if you count research languages) but out of all languages that are > actually used in production Haskell is probably at the top._

What are these other research languages, that have such incredible type systems? Do they usually have implemented compilers, or would they only be described in an abstract form? Can I explore them for fun and curiosity?

<comment><USER36> The fact that he mentions type driven development probably means that he has dependent typing around, probably as seen in the language Idris, whose recently published book is called the same. Idris is very much not just an abstract language.

<comment><USER35> Yes, the author mentioned Idris shortly afterwards, but I get the impression that this is just the tip of an iceberg. Idris was presented as the one example that is most likely to evolve from a research-only language, to a production language.

<comment><USER31> There's also agda and coq, at various points on the spectrum between programming language and theorem prover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I strongly agree with most of this. I've been so pro-Purescript because I think we need a break from Haskell into something new but related. Haskell is great, but has so much baggage it's tough to enter into.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have tried to use Haskell a number of times in the past ~5 years for small- scale projects and witnessed others try to use it, and most of these projects (actually I think all) have resulted in failure / rewrites in more simple/plain-vanilla languages like Python/Go. I keep thinking Haskell is interesting, but at some point I had to force myself to stop investing time in it because I kept concluding it's not a good investment of time for a move- fast/practical person like me. I again had to remind myself when I read this post.

Some reasons I remember for the various failures, in no particular order:

\- steep learning curve = experienced (in other languages) programmers having a tough time not being productive for weeks/months in the new language, with no clear payoff for the kind of projects they're working on

\- sometimes/often side-effects/states/global vars/hackyness is what I want, because I'm experimenting with something in the code; and if I'm not sure if this code will be around in 3 months, I want to leave the mess in and not refactor it

\- in general, I think all-the-way pure no side effects is too much; I think J.Carmack said sth along the lines: Haskell has good ideas which should be imported into more generally useful languages like C++/etc, eg. the gamestate in an FPS game should be write-once, it makes the engine/architecture easier to understand (but in general the language should support side-effect)

\- I found the type system to be cumbersome: I kept not being able to model things the way I wanted to and running into annoyances; I find classes/objects/templates etc from the C++/Java/Python/whatever world to be more useful for modeling applications

\- when the spec of the system keeps changing (=the norm in lean/cont.delivery environments), it's cumbersome/not practical to keep updating the types and deal with the cascading effects

\- weird "bugs" due to how the VM evaluates the program (usually around lazyness/lists) leading to memory leaks; when I was chasing these issues I always felt like I'm wasting my time trying to convince the ghc runtime to do X, which would be trivial in an imperative language where I just write the program to do X and I'm done

\- cryptic ghc compile errors regarding types (granted, this is similar in C++ with templates and STL..)

\- if it compiles it's good => fallacy we kept running into

\- type system seemed not a good fit for certain common use-cases, like parsing dynamic/messy things like json

Working at Facebook for the last year and seeing the PHP/Hack codebase which powers this incredibly successful product/company has further eroded my interest in Haskell: Facebook's slow transition from PHP to Hack (=win) shows that some level of strictness/typing/etc is important, but it's pointless to overdo the purity. Just pick sth which is good enough, make sure it has outstanding all-around tooling, have good code-review, and then focus on the product you're building, not the language.

I'm not saying Haskell is shit, I just don't care about it anymore. I'm happy if people get good use out of it, clearly there are problem spaces that are compact, well-defined and correctness is super-important (like parsing).

<comment><USER31> > \- when the spec of the system keeps changing (=the norm in > lean/cont.delivery environments), it's cumbersome/not practical to keep > updating the types and deal with the cascading effects

Interesting. I find that one of the best parts of Haskell. If I expose the assumptions I've relied on in the types, then when those assumptions break I have tremendous help knowing what code must change to deal with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Performance is hard to figure out

1000x changes in performance is not a problem if:

1\. Performance of one module is not overly dependent on the code that uses it.

2\. Performance never degrades order of magnitude with new compilers.

</comment><comment><USER40> The thing with enlightenment level ideas isn't that they aren't enlightening but that they attract hype. Individuals pretending to be enlightened if you will.

A scientific mindset as well as liberalism are also ideas where new proponents often want to draw a line in the sand to stratify people into superior and inferior. The original proponents were chasing a higher level of quality for all, but the need for social stratification weaponizes and gates ideas.

<comment><USER41> I'm confused. Can you tell me how your comment relates to the article?

The author of the article is sharing his experience with Haskell, explaining ups and downs. He concludes by

> Haskell is a great programming language. It requires some effort at the > beginning, but you get to learn a very different way of thinking about your > problems.

Are you interpreting the word "different" as "better"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > If you read an article from 10 years ago about the best way to do something > in the language, that article is probably outdated by two generations.

Thank you, that is all I need to know about Haskell. I won't be learning Haskell then, in the same way that I won't have anything to do with C++. I don't have enough time to use these fashion-dominated and fad-obsessed programming languages.

<comment><USER43> Holy cow! Don't ever _dream_ about getting into node.js then!

<comment><USER42> Anything to do with Javascript is prey to churn. Many modern web pages consist of a blank page which loads various bits of Javascript from various servers which then process other Javascript via Javascript templates into the final page. There might be a small minority of web sites which actually are updated so often that these actions are justified, but the bulk of the websites clearly are those where some Javascript-fixated person has decided that "there is no such thing as too much Javascript".

Considering that the language was not very well designed in the first place, putting it on both the web browser and the server, and then insisting on regenerating what could easily have been supplied as static HTML pages by running dozens of Javascripts on both the server and the browser should be enough to convince an average observer that Javascript is being abused in this way due to nothing more than faddism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This has been the most disappointing blog post I have read in quite some time.

<comment><USER45> Why? The author didn't crap nor fawn all over the language. He highlighted what he thought were important quirks of the Haskell ecosystem/community/whatever, in a measured manner, while noting that if you invest time and effort you can indeed produce relevant output.

Should one dive in given those quirks? The decision is up to the reader.

Curious, what did you expect/wish for?

EDITED for better phrasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> we should forbid click bait titles on HN, it's an insult to the audience's intelligence

Clickbait title are so common we think they're normal titles.... Here's how he did it: you create a craving for an answer then you offer a solution for that craving. "here's how it was" ==> that's the trick Also "here's how" should never be used in a title, we all know that the title's subject IS what you're going to talk about. a pre-click bait era title would have sounded like: Learnings after using Haskell for 5 years

<comment><USER47> While this title follows a particular style it actually tells you what the article will be about (5 years of Haskell). What bothers you about it?

<comment><USER48> It's clickbaity because you have to click to find out if their opinion is highly positive or negative. It _sounds_ like it's going to be answered by "... terrible" or "... great!", and that it's phrased that way to make you click and find out.

Granted, once you click you find out that's not why it's titled that, but you still feel baited into clicking to find out. A better title would be something like "I tried Haskell for 5 years and here's the good and the bad", or something like that.

<comment><USER49> It's hardly clickbait. Clickbait would be a purposely inflammatory or exaggerated title to get you to click the link. This is the complete opposite of that.

> It's clickbaity because you have to click to find out if their opinion is > highly positive or negative.

I think you just stated the purpose of a title. Wiki says clickbait is:

> "... relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures > "

There's nothing sensationalist about. "I tried Haskell for 5 years". It's rather banal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android 3.1 Platform Highlights - <AUTHOR> http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.1-highlights.html

<comment><USER2> Just got the 3.1 update for my Xoom. Few observations :

* Flash acceleration seems to be both enabled and making a positive difference in smoothness.

* UI is noticeably smoother and we got a brighter text selection caret.

* New scrollable multitasking is welcome as I was frequently hitting the older limitation of handful apps listed there

* No crashes or force closes yet

* SD card STILL does not work which is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its some really positive improvements. It will be interesting to see if the UI evolves more rapidly to a better place than the iPad UI.

Support for USB devices is an interesting thing from a number of perspectives. I don't think it puts ChromeOS in jeopardy but I do think it means some great differentiation from the iPad. Looking at the Cellbots [1] stuff that has been done with Android I can imagine some cool things with a tablet and the even better capabilities.

It will be interesting to see what they do to replace Skype now that Microsoft has a plan to own it. Without the equivalent of 'facetime' (and yes I fully expect Microsoft to limit your rights to run a Skype client on any 'mobile device' that isn't running Windows Phone) they will need a replacement. Fortunately they have the video engine in GTalk.

[1] www.cellbots.com

</comment><comment><USER4> The "input from mice, keyboard, and joysticks" sounds like Android might just supplant ChromeOS.

GoogleTV+Android3.1+joysticks = console play... considering GoogleTV hasn't really been popular, this might be what it needs to make a splash in the living room.

<comment><USER5> This and the picture of a laptop in a slide during the Ice Cream announcement made me wonder if this means Android is coming to the laptop form factor, and/or other 'PC' form factors. Certainly would be interesting.

<comment><USER6> There have been android laptops, like the Toshiba AC100 and many tablets are coming into the laptop form, like the ASUS Transformer series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And still no source Luke. Not even for 3.0 ...

<comment><USER8> They said in the Fire Chat with the Android team that they will push the icecream source to git. This will include all the previous commits including the Honeycomb ones. They are not sure yet if they will tag what exact commit exactly corresponds to 3.0 and 3.1 but the commit will be there (this is how git works).

Anyway, it doesn't really matter as long as the icecream release is tagged (and it will be), why would we care about a year old commit when the latest can be used instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm hoping the browser control shortcuts improve tab switching. That's my only complaint about the current browser, but it's a big one.

</comment><comment><USER10> 2 factor auth support?</comment>


JQuery Blend Modes plugin - A new mouse hover idea .. - <AUTHOR> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/45557606/Envato/CodeCanyon/jQuery-Blend-Modes/index.html

<comment><USER2> Aside from the fact that there exist _many_ other canvas blend mode plugins, I'm just going to say that it wouldn't hurt to add to your fancy demo page:

        a) browser support? (this still matters to lots of people)
        b) _some_ notion of its exposed api. (what am i getting myself into?)
        c) what happens when i buy this (can i get support, what's the licensing?)

I _could_ go to caniuse.com but because the fancy demo page doesn't explain that this uses canvas to blend an image on itself, i'm sort of at a loss.

isotope.js makes a pretty good case for charging for a jquery plugin, but it not only has a good demo, it also has docs and makes it abundantly clear that you're paying to use this on a client's website (go nuts on your own stuff). I don't know how successfully it works, but it makes as much sense as charging for fonts, so I suspect a fair number of people actually pay up even though the majority of jQuery plugins are free.

Good luck, but don't forget the humble web-portfolio developer out there that is legitimately wondering if they can justify this purchase (i.e. is it easy to use, can i extend it to use two images, will it work on the browsers my client wants, etc.)

 _edit, typo fix_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your questions, and this is the answers :)

When you click on the 'codecanyon' URL, you found on the right sidebar, more information, like Compatible Browsers .. Also on the description I say how to use it .. This plugin come with a nice documentation contain a simple implementation that explain how to make this awesome hover effect, and much more .. I try to do my best for the support .. For the question of use 2 images, unfortunately, this plugin is designed for just one image, but it's easy to develop it, it's commented too :)

<comment><USER3> I think the GP was offering advice to you, not just wanting to know the answers to the questions. I also had the same questions when I visited the page, and didn't notice any other links. You might want to think about changing your page to make this information more obvious. Or don't -- but at least run some A/B tests to find out for sure.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I add a note :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These TLD previews (dropbox.com) are great, but one day, someone's going to host a phishing page or a fake news post on their dropbox and link it here, and someone's going to fall for it.

On topic, i think this is the first time i've seen someone actually try to sell a jQuery plugin.. i wish you the best of luck, especially when the source is right there.

The plugin itself is obviously going to work out best for people when the desired effect is easier to generate in javascript than it is to precompute, which is almost never the case - well, maybe for some classes of dynamically generated content (cloning instagram client-side?)

<comment><USER5> Are you saying you trust it more if it just comes from a random TLD? That... seems very naive.

As for the plugin, it seems... not terribly difficult or expensive (computationally). Chrome on my phone handled it fine.

<comment><USER4> I mean, i could host a form that looks like the dropbox login page, put it on my dropbox account, link it here, and the submission would show up with a (dropbox.com) suffix. Sure, the URL wouldn't be accurate, but i'm sure i'd catch a few people.

The solution isn't to trust random TLDs, it's exposing the subdomain in the domain preview. u.dropbox.com isn't going to be hosting an important login box or news post.

The same goes for google.com/plus.google.com, although it'd be very difficult to build a phishing page out of G+. Google Pages perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't really see why I would use something like this. Just eye candy?

With the exception of the 4th picture, they all come out worse. The last image (of the boat) suffers in particular. If you're considering using this plugin, I'd first consider precomputing it with an application like Photoshop. Seems a lot easier (no fiddling with jQuery settings) and I think you would end up with a picture of higher quality.

*I didn't mean to sound so negative. It's a good attempt; it obviously works.

<comment><USER7> Can you clarify what you mean by 'worse'? The clipping, over-saturation and other 'defects' are all intentional aspects of this kind of process.

Or do you mean something else?

<comment><USER6> I'm familiar with the processes. I get what the writer of the plugin is going for. I just think it would look better if the effects were applied with an image editor like Photoshop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly it is hosted on Dropbox and asks me to buy it. I think you should take this more seriously and seem like one. I'd consider using this on my social network where picture is an important component. Bookmarked, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> Do these effects require two images to begin with, or does it work with only one image to begin with, and the script generates the 2nd image?

<comment><USER10> Normally (in Photoshop or GIMP), you would start with a base image, and then apply a second image to the base image with one of these overlay modes; usually a specially-constructed image designed to apply the effect to different degrees in different parts of the base image.

This plugin seems to be using the same image as the base and as the overlay, which... seems to be missing the point a little.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is the idea of this plugin, it doesn't use two different images, just one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> what this plugin got me thinking about is an augmented reality for images. what if the hover indication was a modification of the content of the image - a dinner table that adds an extra person at the table on hover.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice example, this is what I mean by "I make the contents of an image change for really!!" ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I noticed that you have to purchase this plugin.. This might be a naive question, but what's to stop me from just downloading the source off this page directly and using it?

<comment><USER13> Your personal ethics? The distribution license for the code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is cool, but what is it for? Webstagram?

<comment><AUTHOR> For a new interactive experience on the web :)</comment></comment>


UI and UX Experiment That Increased Goal Conversions +372.91% - <AUTHOR> https://threeventures.com/the-universal-navigation-component-a-ui-and-ux-experiment/

<comment><USER2> I can't trust UX advice from a company whose website screws with native browser scrolling. I'm using a computer, not an iPhone.</comment>


Bend It, Charge It, Dunk It: Graphene, the Material of Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/bend-it-charge-it-dunk-it-graphene-the-material-of-tomorrow/ The material has the potential to change the electronics industry, and recently researchers have focused on how to produce it commercially. <comment><USER2> Congratulations NYT!

You've published the 1000th hype article on graphene.

I wonder which lobby is desperately trying to get their graphene products approved.</comment>


How to Incent Good User Behavior: Use Real Identity (ala LinkedIn, FB) - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2010/02/21/key-to-trust-is-real-identity/

<comment><USER2> Public identification discourages dishonesty and rude behavior, but it also discourages unpopular views, political dissent, whistle-blowing and other valuable speech. On the balance, the positives of public ID outweigh the negatives on some sorts of sites, such as LinkedIn, but it would be a grave mistake to assume the same would be true on every sort of forum.

<comment><USER3> In fact, you might take LinkedIn and Facebook as good counterexamples: do we want an internet where the only discussion is the kind of conscious-of-being- public pablum you get at Facebook and LinkedIn?

There's plenty of things that go into discussions working versus not working, but I don't think real names have much to do with it. If anything, my impression is that real names are usually a net negative, outside a very narrow range of sites intended to foster IRL activity. It doesn't even require being particularly politically controversial to stifle participation if real names were attached--- the threshold at which it has a chilling effect is far lower than "gay-rights activist in Saudi Arabia"; people quickly start dropping out of discussions if their name would be associated with them at a much lower threshold of, basically, anything they wouldn't want their mother or boss to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will not use any service that requires me to use LinkedIn or Facebook. I don't care about my anonymity (it's easy to guess who I am), but I don't use those services and don't want to.

And for what it's worth, I will still be excessively disagreeable even if I have to use my real name. It doesn't matter to me what people on the Internet think of me. I don't know them, they don't know me, so who cares what name I use?

<comment><USER5> As long as you're not an asshole, you can call yourself Shamu T. Whale for all I care. The more anonymous you feel online, the less you think about the ramifications of your actions. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case for you, but it's true for a lot of people (and the internet is full of examples of this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems pretty obvious. I think most people realize that "bad behavior" comes from being anonymous. This is why people who seem nice in person can be total a-holes online behind a cloak of anonymity. I'd like to see some solutions that could work without requiring people to give up their personal information.

<comment><USER7> It's not about people being anonymous or not that causes the good behavior, it's that when people use their real name, they have risked something of value - their reputation. The way to ensure good behavior is to require that people take some sort of risk with something they value when they participate in your site. This might be in the form of a deposit, using their real name, or the loss of a potential reward.

<comment><USER3> I agree _some_ stake is useful, but reputation is one with poor properties. For one thing, it's not clear to me that the damage suffered is actually well correlated with behaving well versus poorly in the forum; rather, a dominating effect is simply what kinds of forums you choose. You will suffer a negative effect to your reputation if you participate in a hentai forum; whether you participate there as a troll or a valued user will not cause much additional effect either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The inverse of the assertion made in this article (i.e. anonymity leads to bad behavior) has already been theoretically predicted in "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory": <http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pat070381.html>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very relevant article just went up on TechCrunch as well: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/why-you-should-confess- ever...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/21/why-you-should-confess-everything- before-you-get-caught/)</comment>


Show HN: "How do I know it's the right time to ask for a raise?" (free course) - <AUTHOR> https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/raise-course/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=hackernews.com <comment><AUTHOR> Employee performance reviews are coming up early next year, so I wrote this free course to answer common questions people have about how to know the right time to ask for a raise.

I'm happy to answer any questions about getting a raise or about the course. Ask away!

<comment><USER2> People struggle with this stuff a lot. This course looks really helpful.

Something a friend was battling with recently: how long after joining a company could/should someone start thinking about a raise?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's reasonable to look for a decent raise around 1 year in. But that means you should start planning—setting your goal and building your case—about six months before that so you know what you're aiming for and so you can consciously accomplish things to justify that goal.

So I recommend that you start planning for your first raise about 6 months after you start at a new company, and ask for your first raise about 1 year after you start.

Good question!</comment></comment></comment>


Kubernetes 3rd Party Security Audit Findings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/81146 <comment><USER2> This was covered a couple months ago... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20655017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20655017)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Show HN: RemoteBase Public API for Remote Companies - <AUTHOR> http://stories.remotebase.io/post/introducing-remotebase-api/ <comment><USER2> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11890991)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I opened the data of 430+ remote companies in remotebase.io to public.</comment>


Ask HN: PG drew this at the Startup School Reception. What does it mean? - <AUTHOR> https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-DxPdKfoXwCM/UIW5qvp47aI/AAAAAAAAO5g/T-XBm9UCn5s/s512/IMG_20121019_214711.jpg

<comment><USER2> Initially you have to choose between building something lots of people like a little bit, or something a few people like a lot. Choose the latter.

<comment><USER3> Or, if you stick your "stick" far enough down the toilet you will rain on someone in china. (Er, as interpreted by an American Kindergartner's perspective...)</comment></comment>


Hacker Monthly Presents: Hacker Bundle - <AUTHOR> http://hackerbundle.com/ <comment><USER3> I would buy this but - like the hours on an AOL Free Trial CD - I would never have the time to extract value from each of the offered services.

These services have confusing end times (3 month, 6 month, 12 month, transactional?) At a bare minimum I'd have to keep a calendar of what expires when and that's just an extra hassle. Next time, please work out a deal where ALL offered products end on the same date so there's less complexity buyers have to keep in mind.

Another concern: this bundle seems to have a mish-mash of offerings with little rhyme or reason. It's like someone said "let's throw as many vaguely web development related SaaS products together and hope there'll be something for everyone!".

Finally, why SaaS? Sure, it's a great business model for a company, but as a consumer each time I sign up for a SaaS I have to make a calculated risk:

* Does the service have a good data export option?

* How likely this service will be around for a year or longer if I'm to sink my time learning it?

* Does this company have any exposure and does it look like it knows what it's doing?

If you decide to stick with SaaS, I hope you curate better and streamline the deal, but frankly I'm looking forward to a Bundle of installed apps instead.

<comment><USER4> The deal is curated. All the mentioned apps were either from my personal experience using it or recommendation from HN.

Great guidelines on choosing SaaS (noted for future deal curation). And you are right about the end times. I'll keep an eye on that for the next bundle.

Thanks for the feedback! It's my first time doing this, and rest assured I'm listening with all ears.

<comment><USER5> Like lobo had mentioned, I would like to see a program-based bundle. If you were to able to follow the HumbleBundle's pricing scheme for programs like Sublime Text (and even f.lux which is free), coupled with other utility packages, I would be inclined to pitch in some cash.

<comment><USER6> From a marketing standpoint, a smaller group of closely related / themed items may be a better attention receiver than 15 misc items.

The downside is the incentives for the sellers may not be as clear being they may end up as just a bunch of competitors doing the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm so uncool! I have no idea what any of the included services are. From what I can gather, it's SaaS stuff. If it had included a free monthly neck beard shave, I might have purchased. I'm sure this package is useful to some of you out there, but honestly, I don't know one person that I consider a "hacker" that this would appeal to. Nice marketing use of the term "hacker" though.

Excuse me, I have to get back to yelling at the teenagers to get off my lawn.

<comment><USER8> I would imagine the "Hacker" bit is because this is affiliated with "HackerMonthly", a monthly print compilation of Hacker News. The actual services seem mostly aimed at early stage startup projects.

<comment><USER9> it says it's a "Print magazine of Hacker News", but then what does this mean "Digital subscription for 12 months*" Do they mail you an actual magazine, or do they email you a PDF/e-book of the articles?

<comment><USER4> It's PDF/ebook :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> FYI all of the things in the bundle are for new users only. I just tried to use the Twilio credit but they said trial accounts only. Refresh the page and notice that under every company it now says new users only. I was just hoping for a steep discount on many of the services I use. Teaches me to read the fine print I guess.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would love to see this same thing but for box software tools, like sublime text and such. It worries me becoming dependent on external services like this.

<comment><USER4> Noted. Any particular apps you'd like to see? (please send an email to me email@example.com)

<comment><USER12> Maybe you can make a setup of FOSS tools that hackers uses (OpenSSH, vim, tmux, Ubuntu, etc.) and make a big donation to them as a way to say "thank you".

<comment><USER13> +1 for that. I would rather donate to debian than ubuntu though

<comment><USER14> Indeed, ubuntu seems to be going a bad direction IMO. The other issue is that I frequently have issues with Ubuntu. I try to submit bug reports, but the bug report submitter crashes.

I would do it manually, but hey... I'm busy... and I'm just trying ubuntu out to give it another chance. Of course going back to debian+xfce I _never_ have any problems.

/endrant

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Earned my upvote because this is indeed a nice deal and probably tons of effort went into creating this kind of relationship with that many companies.

However, am I the only one who enjoys setting up Graphite and CI and similar software? (No email, though. Did it once, and don't want to give up sleeping time for a week to do it again.)

<comment><USER16> [disclaimer: I work at CircleCI, which is in the Bundle].

Good question! I think a lot of devs get therapeutic enjoyment from setting up CI. It starts out as fun for the first few hours, while everything is new and exciting. However, it turns to disdain very quickly when:

\- you need to remember how to set up postgres/rvm/lucene again

\- you need to add a 2nd server and realize you now need to manage a cluster (and you didn't automate the first one!)

\- you're away on vacation with your family, and someone calls you because the company CI server is down

\- you realize the tests run too slowly and now need to figure out how to make them faster

\- you get a bad performance review because of all the valuable engineer time you're wasting managing the CI server, which you could have outsourced for a fraction of the price

\- you wonder how you turned into "the build guy" when you actually signed on to make great products.

These are the sort of problems that hosted CI like [https://circleci.com](https://circleci.com) solve for you :)

<comment><USER17> > you're away on vacation with your family, and someone calls you because > company the CI server is down

This is a general problem with any kind of maintenance or setup that you might do. Did you write a diary of how you went about setting it up ? Did you communicate to the rest of your team how it's supposed to work / how you suspect it might break ?

If not, don't be _too_ surprised to be The One Person who gets called about that thing.

<comment><USER16> This is one of the reason we favour hosted services as much as possible. If the rest of the team has account on the service, you can likely solve your problems without relying on a single person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only one that looks useful to me is the Geckoboard @ 50% lifetime off. But I'm confused, it also says, "50% lifetime discount off any plans* (usually $294)". Which of their plans is usually $294 ([http://www.geckoboard.com/plans-and- pricing/](http://www.geckoboard.com/plans-and-pricing/))? And is it lifetime for the initially selected plan, or can I maintain the 50% off when I upgrade?

<comment><USER4> I kinda forgot how I came up with the figure $294. I remembered (vaguely) it was taking one of the plan with the assumption that customer would stay for 3 years or so.

I think the 50% discount applies even when you upgrade. Let me shoot an email to Geckoboard to confirm this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome and inspirational. My sincere respect to Lim Cheng Soon. Doing this with 12 companies must have been tough. VERY tough considering he lives in Malaysia. Lesson for those outside of the US and complaining about it. It really doesn't matter where you live as long as you are hustling. Lim Cheng Soon, take my bow!

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

Actually it's not tough. You could get a lot done using email ALONE. And, living in Malaysia gives me unlimited runway to keep shipping and experimenting. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure the Humble Bundle model works well for SaaS.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like a nice place to test out what happens when you type 'sudo rm -rf / \--no-preserve-root' on an ec2 instance :)

<comment><USER22> What does this mean?

<comment><USER23> Recursively deleting everything.

<comment><USER24> Sure, but what does that have to do with the Hacker Bundle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > A portion of proceeds goes to Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I'm interested in knowing what the "size" of the portion is.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty awesome. For someone that's starting out it offers basic things like version control hosting for cheaper than it already is. Also the fact that it comes with Growth Hacker is pretty cool too, along with a 90 day money back, you honestly can't go wrong here. Big thanks to HM for this.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is great. I was planning to purchase a few of those services at full price anyways.

</comment><comment><USER28> Most of the bundled offers provide savings for a limited time. After purchasing, does one have control over when each of the services start or do they all start immediately?

<comment><USER4> You'll get a redemption key page after purchasing. You can then redeem the services (selectively).

<comment><USER29> Do the redemption keys expire?

<comment><USER4> Some of them do. I'll add in the expiry date to the redemption key page today/tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's a great idea. What's missing though, is additional payment options. That is a major reason why HIB is so successful.

<comment><USER4> Will probably add PayPal and Bitcoins in the next few days. Couldn't use Amazon Payments or Google Wallet though (outside US).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is this credit card info input secure? The credit card form comes up, but i'm not seeing any https listed in the browser url.

<comment><USER4> The overlay is in a secure iframe (much like a Facebook "Like"). All transaction information never touches hackerbundle.com.

p.s: You can use [https://hackerbundle.com](https://hackerbundle.com) if it still concerns you. I just set it up last night.

<comment><USER32> It isn't secure, even if it is in an iframe, as the href of the iframe could easily be changed with a man in the middle attack. You should force https for the whole site.

<comment><USER24> Exactly right -- please do redirect to https at a minimum for any payment pages.

The actual risk of a MitM attack is low, but it's certainly feasible; your page would look exactly the same if it were tweaked en-route to use a completely different source for the overlay iframe, and tweaking your page en- route is possible because you're sending it unencrypted.

There's also a _web-standards_ rationale -- all payment pages should be over SSL, because it's one of the few security precautions that non-technical users can reliably verify. Any unencrypted-but-legit payment pages undermine the lesson that payment pages should be SSL-only, when we should be encouraging it.

<comment><USER33> Why would you do _that_ at minimum.

At minimum, redirect the entire site to https. Why bother with anything less? Https is easy.

[http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ssl/ssl_howto.html](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ssl/ssl_howto.html)

<comment><USER24> There are valid reasons why a site might find switching to full SSL harder than just fixing payment pages. Use your imagination.

What if they rely on free CloudFlare support for site content? Going full SSL will mean another $20/month of hosting cost.

What if the site in question comprises a thousand HTML pages written on MS Frontpage over 15 years, and most of those pages (if flipped to https) will start showing "insecure content" warnings until they're edited?

By all means, doing more than the minimum will be trivial for some sites, and a good idea for them, but that's not true for everyone.

<comment><USER33> And this site in question? Yea, thats what I thought. There are exceptions to every rule but this is certainly not one of them.

And really, those aren't exceptions I would call worthy.

CDN / cheap ass issues: you're selling something and running a business, businesses have costs, 20/month aint nothin to secure you're shit.

15 years worth of legacy frontpage you call content: the "insecure content" warnings are probably right regardless of ssl. Further to the point, nobody cares about 15 years worth of shit nobody reads, move it to a different subdomain if its static junk that can't be secured, or I don't know delete it? We'd all be better off without it clogging up the interwebs anyway.

SSL Isn't new, its been around almost two decades, you're making bad excuses for bad people. Stop it. Site wide HTTPS is a good idea for everyone and it is trivial, if its not (in your case), that is your fault and your problem - <USER2> mine, and certainly not your users.

<comment><USER24> I had moved on to talking about sites in general; the site in question would be just fine with site-wide SSL.

For the rest of it -- at some point you're going to have to get used to the idea that the people putting content on the web are a lot more diverse than you'd prefer, and their motivations are also a lot more diverse than you might imagine or think "worthy".

If you want to tell them all "do it right or go die in a fire" that's your prerogative, but it's not the most effective approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No matter what browser I am in, I can't purchase this. It just says it can't verify my card information. Chrome and Safari on Mac. I checked the card 3 times and just used it a few minutes ago.

Edit: Lim instantly reached out to rectify the issue. Turns out my bank (Chase) flagged it for fraud. Cleared it with them and now I own the hacker bundle :)

<comment><USER4> Just dropped you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is great! Are you thinking of making the list of offers available via RSS or an API? We would love to link to them from our web app directory at [https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com)

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice. This is what AppSumo used to be. They used to offer package deals on SaaS products. Unfortunately they haven't done so in a long time. Glad to see someone else is stepping up.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just noticed the order is random. Is that some kind of A/B test?

<comment><USER4> Not A/B test. I just use jQuery to shuffle the order. Inspired by Stripe's team page I guess: [https://stripe.com/about](https://stripe.com/about)

<comment><USER36> I only get about half the offers above the fold and some obviously look more interesting than others. I'm wondering if it _would_ be valuable to know which offers are correlated with higher purchase rates?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Slight nitpick, if you have limited quantities of something list the total remaining instead of just saying "limited quantities".

</comment><comment><USER38> Seems like a pretty good deal! Do the memberships automatically renew?

<comment><USER4> It depends. But good point, I'll add this to the redemption key page on which providers automatically renew and which did not.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


OKCupid: The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/07/07/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/ <comment><USER2> The interesting thing is that if taller and more well-to-do men are more attractive to their mates, would it stand to reason that the average OkCupid user might actually trend lower than the national average, thus making the exaggerations more pronounced?

Or would it be that the taller and more well-to-do are more confident in their abilities to date and thus trend above average?

</comment><comment><USER3> ...so if I ever set up a profile on OKCupid, I should list myself as _four_ inches taller than my actual height, since everyone who reads my profile will assume I have overestimated my height by two inches.

<comment><USER4> Presumably this is like tilting a pinball game, and people are willing to exaggerate just enough not to have people call it out the moment they see you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if there's a similar effect in populations of men where metric heights are commonly used.

6 ft ~ 183 cm, which isn't a particularly round number. Maybe that psychological benchmark occurs at 180 cm, which suggests Europeans and Asians aspire to be approx. 5'11.

<comment><USER6> That's true, in Germany 180cm and 185cm are certainly such marks men like rounding to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> OKCupid's usually pretty good about data, but they blew it on a couple of these. For example:

Their method of controlling for income only takes into account zip code. There's another obvious source of bias: the fact that these people are on an online dating site probably indicates that they are time-poor, have decent computer skills, and are in professions that value introverts. Many of these jobs are in high-paying fields, eg. software. People who work 9-5 in blue collar jobs often go out to bars to pick up women instead. It's no big surprise that the average OKCupid user makes more money than the average person in general.

Side note: there're a couple interesting things in the raw data for income. One is the big dip in response rates for 23-24 year olds that say they make $100K+. The other is the same dip in response rates for 29 year olds. I wonder if those are people _assuming_ that the other person is lying.

The bisexual angle is also easily explained by looking at the profiles of the people you're aggregating. Many girls say, as the top line of their profile "NO MEN! I'm married, but looking for a bi or lesbian girl to have fun with on the side." They are bisexual, but they found the partner they want for one gender already, and are only looking for someone of the opposite gender.

The height stuff was interesting though, particularly since I listed myself as 5'11" despite thinking that I'm only 5'9". I finally revised my estimation of my own height upwards last year, when I found out I was at least an inch taller than my sister's boyfriend, who she swears is 5'10".

</comment><comment><USER8> for income, I'd be interested to see what it's like for those who don't report their income...so that you have a baseline to compare against

<comment><USER7> It'd be biased. My guess is that the "Rather not say" distribution has fat tails. It includes people whose income is abnormally low, because they don't want women to know and hence be scared off, and it also includes people whose income is abnormally high, because they don't want to attract gold-diggers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And they should be telling these lies: [http://www.onlinedatingmatchmaker.com/lie-online-dating- prof...](http://www.onlinedatingmatchmaker.com/lie-online-dating-profile/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Apart from the actual content, the sharing panel that drops down only when you reach the end of the article is a pretty interesting feature.

</comment><comment><USER11> their height data makes me wonder about their conclusion. if the average height data includes all ages, i think the differential could be more readily explained by the fact that okcupid tends to skew much younger than the average population sample, and young people are simply growing taller now on average due to a higher quality average standard of living.

<comment><USER12> Your theory doesn't explain the sudden jerk around 6'. Your theory doesn't explain why women self-report as shorter than the overall population. And also, anecdotally, I've known women to complain about men lying about their height on online dating sites. If it is common enough for women to complain, then it should show up in their statistics.

<comment><USER11> i have no doubt that lying does happen. i also have no doubt that i have no data to back up my theory. but it seems somewhat unlikely that lying about your height is so uniformly prevalent that it affects the curves as uniformly as it does.

also, the article doesn't say that women self-report shorter. they also self- report taller. almost exactly the same as men. which again makes me feel like its just a growth thing.

just throwing out an alternative theory, though. i could be wrong, of course. i'd just rather see the data pulled out better -- self-reported height by age, vs national average by age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why the (putatively) tall users exaggerate their height in the same direction as the shorter users. Wouldn't the tall men (or women) have a tendency to present themselves as closer to the mean? Or if not that, to simply report their actual height?

Does additional height confer an advantage even for the already tall?

</comment><comment><USER14> So I've got approximately ten months to get my income up to $100k in order to be attractive to women.</comment>


Authority and Merit - Jack Dorsey - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jack/80ad140f990b

<comment><USER2> There's a larger discussion here: the erosion of parts of the hacker ethos (ideas over identity) in the face of an increasingly corporatized Internet.</comment>


How I launched a productized consulting service that brought $15,450 in a month - <AUTHOR> http://studiofellow.com/articles/productized/ <comment><AUTHOR> First I just have to say this was titled "How I launched a productized consulting service in 2 days that brought $15,450 worth of work in the first month" but that was a little long for HN :)

There are just a ton of things to learn from this article. I'm not sure if I can cover them all but I'll try

> freelancing service with a fixed length, scope, and price

This negates a ton of the pains of freelancing. You wouldn't have to go through a ton of contract negotiating on price and work delivered because everything is fixed a clearly define. You shouldn't have to worry about going past the end date of the engagement since you're offering a productized consulting engagement which you're an expert at.

What if anything falls out beyond what's defined in the scope and end date? Just define a traditional MSA and SOW. The process should be a lot easier since you've already established trust with the client which is usually what 99% of contract agreements are all about (not a real statistic).

> Announce LPIAD like a product

This is what I found particularly fascinating. This service can be launched. And by launching you outreach to thousands of potential customers you couldn't reach before. That's the ultimate cold call!

</comment><comment><USER2> This comment from the author seems to be a (very rough) summary of the ebook [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471730)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually this isn't my article. It's just something I encountered while doing research for my guide.</comment></comment>


Reddit's IAmA Moderator Shuts Down Subreddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ju5cf/goodbye_iama_it_was_fun_while_it_lasted/

<comment><USER2> The interesting thing here is that the single mod/creator of that subreddit can kill it off, despite there being many thousands of users subscribed and using it daily.

Seems like you should be able to give subreddits (or similar constructs on other social sites) up for adoption rather than abandon or kill them off.

Back in 2004 on audioscrobbler.com we had groups, with a "group politics" system where users could vote in new moderators and boot the old ones if they were dormant / abusive. It was far from perfect, but at least groups could survive the original mod going AWOL or just going plain nuts. Not seen anything like that since in social software.

<comment><USER3> > Seems like you should be able to give subreddits (or similar constructs on > other social sites) up for adoption rather than abandon or kill them off.

According to the comments, you can.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Nuage – Domain names with no hassle - <AUTHOR> http://nuageapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Really like the light touch to the website design and copy. But it may be too light as I've clicked on two links to find out how it adds value to my life and I still don't know.

Some first impressions:

* I want to enter something where it says 'your domain name' under features. My domain name what? This looks like an input box but it's not. I'm left confused.

* Under pricing, "All our domains including" should read "All our domains include".

* "Download the domain prices". Are you joking? Make this a searchable list. Jets will make implementing this a breeze - [https://github.com/NeXTs/Jets.js/](https://github.com/NeXTs/Jets.js/)

* As I scroll down the homepage my eyes move from 'buy' to 'A-Z' to 'Day-30'. This block layout feels odd as I associate items at the top with higher priority but they all seem like equally important features and the 'A-Z' is just kind of hanging out solo on the right - something like display: flex with justify-content set to 'space-between' may be worth trying.

My feedback mostly cover aesthetics, sorry. I would comment on the service if I knew what it was! ;)

<comment><USER3> > This looks like an input box but it's not.

Looking at the element, is _is_ an input box, but disabled. Enabling it by modifying it lets me type in it, but not do anything. I'm guessing it's something that works when you sign in, but that's not remotely clear.

And I'm not creating an account just to search domain names, when there are a million sites that let me do that without registering.

<comment><USER4> > And I'm not creating an account just to search domain names, when there are > a million sites that let me do that without registering.

And one of its selling points is:

        No need to fill out a zillion forms, just
        enter your contact details and credit card.

I'm not sure which registrars need a zillion forms to _pay_ (once registered), but every one I've used has Paypal as an option, where even entering contact details and credit card isn't necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Copy and design is pretty swish, but it's too over the top for me. I don't want buying domains to "have never been this cool" or to "blow my mind". I want it to be simple and easy. Which it already is elsewhere. Input box looks like I can use it to search for domains, but I can't. That was frustrating. I do think there's a lot of room for improvement in spite of the competition, but this isn't it.

1) Give me a modern search interface like namecheap - I want to be able to search for keywords and see suggestions for TLDs in a sensible way.

2) Don't use "cheap" in your name (probably main problem with namecheap).

3) Show me a demo of your DNS control -- this is really badly done in all the registrars I've tried, and that would be a big drawcard if I could see it without signing up

4) Show me all the prices for different TLDs -- not just the five stylistically but impractically arranged ones on the pricing page

</comment><comment><USER6> So, basically this appears to be an agent model.

I assume they make their money by selling domains and taking a cut of the price. Based on my current registrar's prices, even comparing a single domain (i.e. no bulk discount), this service would be more expensive by:

.org US$7.45 .com US$2.99 .co US$11.63 .net US$6.61 .biz US$7.53

The lack of details (they don't specifically detail _which_ registrars they work with) makes me wonder who would ever sign up for this.

<comment><USER7> There's a notice that they're a Gandi reseller.

<comment><USER6> On their site? I've looked through every page I can find and don't see that information.

<comment><USER7> It's when you go to check out ... there's a footer.

<comment><USER8> I left the site before reaching this point because they withhold that information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site looks nice, responsive, and useful. It is missing an "About" though. Who are you, where are you located? If I register a domain through you, who is on the administrative, technical, and billing information for the domain? Thanks!

<comment><USER10> We are french guys between Paris and SF. We have a strong partnership with Gandi registrar to register your domains. Nuage Inc. is the technical and billing contact, you are the owner and administrative contact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not entirely sure what problem is being solved here. Domain registration and renewal is already pretty simple and easy, with a plethora of registrars, many with lower prices.

<comment><USER12> The key feature seems to be "Manage domains from different registrars in a single app"

<comment><USER11> Do that many people maintain domains on multiple registrars? Seems to me like the kind of person for whom this is a problem would have already simplified their own life by picking a single registrar.

<comment><USER13> I mean, i have yet to find a registrar that has all the TLDs i want. However, most of the TLDs i want i already find too expensive.

If this type of service minimizes "their cut" to the bare minimum, and made it very transparent who it was coming from so i could price check, i would likely use this service because they're bound to have more TLDs _(due to aggregation)_ than typical registrars.

Unfortunately, currently i feel like i'd just be paying a significant premium for something i already find too expensive. And if this isn't true, i see no information to indicate otherwise _(at a quick glance, at least)_.

<comment><USER14> We do not earn money when you use the site. There is no subscription fee, no premium stuff. We take our cut when you buy a domain from Nuage and/or renew your domains. It is transparent, and just to make sure it is clear, we do buy our domains from Gandi which is accredited by ICANN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What am I missing here? This looks like a lot of domain registrars in 2016.

<comment><USER14> It's actually not a registrar, but a platform that aggregate registrars in a single UI. You basically sync your accounts from registrars (GoDaddy, Gandi, ...) and it let's you manage them from the same place.

<comment><USER16> and what's my 10x here?

<comment><USER17> ...and it let's you manage them from the same place.

<comment><USER18> Why would I want to use different services? I (personally) use godaddy, my company uses namecheap.

Both seem to be doing fine and we check in on them once a year.

<comment><USER19> One irritation that has popped up for me is that I was unable to combine my domain names into one registrar. I managed to move most of them over to Namecheap, but they won't accept transfers with a .ws TLD, so that one remains at register.com. I suppose in theory I could move to Nuages and manage everything from one account, but something tells me I'd just end up using all 3 and my situation would be slightly worse off than it is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On the pricing page: "545 domains available, yes sir."

What does that mean? TLDs?

Looks very nice in presentation/style. I'm not seeing what value the service provides over using a registrar directly. I've never had to enter my details multiple times after I've registered for one domain at a registrar - I can just select the details that are on file for any subsequent domains.

"We find you good domain prices on the internet" tells me that I should go elsewhere for the _best_ prices. From common english usage, "best" is so often paired with "prices" that to see the word "good" coupled with pricing in marketing speak, one immediately wonders why it isn't "best".

<comment><USER21>
        > On the pricing page: "545 domains available, yes sir."

Right, I read that and thought "TLDs? Or they're parking?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Firefox doesn't seem to support this on Debian (Linux?) or Android (or more?):

Debian/Firefox:

Tried typing in the animated 'Hello!' at the top of the screen on the home page, in order to enter a domain name, but nothing happened. Reason for trying clicking and entering something was because the animation seemed like indication of input functionality to search for names and domains, but no input happened.

For something to happen, could be nice, especially as the comments here suggest you make revenue only from domains managed through Nuage - get signups early by getting people on the front page.

Checking further, the [https://www.nuageapp.com/features](https://www.nuageapp.com/features) page suggests checking domains is possible, without needing to log in first, but the text box is not selectable.

For fun, tried on mobile: Android/Firefox

The 'Hello' on '/' is unclickable as when trying with desktop - not sure if it is supposed to be or not... The burger menu is also unclickable; when going to /features the input box was also unclickable like on desktop.

</comment><comment><USER23> No word on private registration, which is essential these days if you don't want your address and phone number posted online for anyone to use in a social engineering attack.

Since this seems to be a Gandi reseller, I should mention that I really like the way Gandi handles whois privacy, with my name in the clear but my contact details hidden, so there's no uncertainty about ownership if there's ever a dispute. I keep my most important domains with Gandi for this reason. The problem is that they only support whois privacy with some TLDs and not others. They cite registry restrictions, but the same TLDs are often available with whois privacy from other registrars. If a reseller could fix this situation, that would be very helpful.

<comment><USER19> "All our domains including domain WhoisGuard, Free DNS server, Anti Cache poisoning, Transfer security" (from the Pricing page)

WhoisGuard is what you're looking for and apparently it's available for "all domains".

<comment><USER23> WhoisGuard is a service from NameCheap. Unless otherwise specified, I wouldn't assume that it would be available to domains registered through other registrars.

It also replaces the owner's name with WhoisGuard, which is IMO inferior to the way Gandi does whois privacy.

<comment><USER14> The WhoIS we are talking about in the pricing page is the Gandi one. It is not available for every TLDs has some registries don't support it. Majors one does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks nifty, I just signed up!

Lots of naysayers in this thread, but this looks super useful to me. I have domains with a few registrars, and I manage them via a Google spreadsheet today.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks cute, but (just take this as feedback for your "onboarding" process) I don't like to sign up for things without being able to test them. Like GoDaddy, you should allow a user to search for a domain name, see the price, and _then_ sign up. At least, that's what you'd have to do to get business from a curmudgeon like me.

</comment><comment><USER26> The lead feature here seems to be "buy domains with no hassle", but that already exists: Hover.com and Google Domains, to name two major ones.

Perhaps your lead should be the unified domain management. Because I will be honest, at these prices I would NEVER use your service over the two I mentioned above.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are dozens of sites that let me buy these kind of domain names... I'd like to see a service that will reach out to an existing site and broker a price for me, without a commitment to buy it. I just want to know how much they'll sell for.

</comment><comment><USER28> Definitely falls under the kind of tool I would use if my friend wrote it, but otherwise doesn't really do anything for me. I'm a namecheap user and they do a perfectly good job.

</comment><comment><USER29> Amazing webdesign, congrats to your designer.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible to purchase with an API.. because that would be a gamechanger (if you can support your 500+ tlds).

<comment><USER14> API is on it's way but not ready yet. We are basically trying to create a standard for domain names. Also a lot ore is coming like instant landing pages, service integration ...

<comment><USER30> FWIW, API is probably what'll set you apart and make you money for the other stuff, else you've no big differentiation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One blocker for OVH is 2FA enabled. Also I'd like to see internetbs.net

<comment><USER32> +1. Also, uniregistry as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are you affiliated with OVH?

<comment><USER10> No we are not ! We are working with a lot of registrars to connect all your domains through their APIs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Practices for Bringing Devices Through US Customs? - <AUTHOR> Apparently a lot of folks entering the United States are being asked by Customs and Border Protection officials for the passwords to unlock their phones and laptops.
If you say yes, and you have the usual apps on your device, then CBP can suck down all your encrypted data in a matter of minutes - search history, contacts, photos, purchases, documents, social media posts, etc. - and store it in their U.S. government database, where they can keep it forever, and inspect it at their leisure.
If you say no, your devices can be seized, and you can be detained. Legal or not, this outcome will, at minimum, ruin your day.
Various workarounds have been proposed to keep the data on your devices private when entering the United States. These include traveling with -
No devices. Temporary devices. Wiped-clean devices (keep data in cloud). Dead-battery devices.
Privacy experts argue in favor of doing this, and security experts argue against it, saying it looks more suspicious.
Arguments for workarounds: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/ill-never-bring-my-phone-on-an-international-flight-again-neither-should-you-e9289cde0e5f#.wgurjewri
Arguments against workarounds: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/stop-fabricating-travel-security-advice-35259bf0e869#.o43h5lbiz
What's HN's opinion on the best practices in this situation? <comment><USER2> I just got back from a trip and each time I went through a checkpoint I had the factory reset menu on screen so if asked to unlock I would have just stalled by asking why they needed to see my device while the wipe was in progress.

<comment><USER3> This is brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My friend just wrote a blog post on the topic:

[https://honeypot.net/search-proof-your-devices-when- travelin...](https://honeypot.net/search-proof-your-devices-when-traveling/)</comment>


Ask HN: Could we improve passwords this way? - <AUTHOR> I hate having to remember passwords, especially if they are complex/secure and I'm sure others feel the same way.
So I had an idea, what if instead of having to remember a long, secure password, I just need to remember where to find it? As an example, I could use a permalink of a YouTube video as my password, this way I don't need to remember what to type in, just where that video is located and copy paste the URL whenever I need to login.
Sure, such a approach has drawbacks such as how to make sure the video/url doesn't disappear, but otherwise I don't see how an approach like this can't be viable.
But I'm not an expert so can anyone tell me if this is a good idea or a bad one?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Hopefully I'm not derailling the discussion too much but, while on the subject of alternatives to passwords, I've long wondered why ssh public/private key pairs are not used for logging into websites?

I use ssh with public/private keys to log in to various servers I host websites on, to connect to git repos, as well as to connect to 'things'on my local network, such as RaspberryPis, etc. It's about as painless as you can get and is very secure. So why is this method not used more widely on the web in general?

I realise that currently it's not very user-friendly to create and upload ssh keys, as we have to do it from the command line. But I wouldn't have thought it beyond the wit of software developers to put an idiot-proof GUI on top of the procedure. Then, whenever we need to create a login for somewhere, we'd just upload our public key and we'd have passwordless login.

It seems so obvious, there must be a practical reason it isn't done. So, what is it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's start with something similar: instead of YouTube URLs (which may change), you turn the domain name into a number. That number is a page of a specific translation of the Bible, and you pick the first verse. Same idea, but the format won't change.

Will this work for you? Yes. Will it scale? No. Here's why:

Once I know the system, I can easily use it to impersonate you. You could add a secret, in which case all I have to do is run all verses, one by one, until I find the correct one. You could add requirements for a "safe" secret, in which case we just re-invented passwords. Keeping the book secret won't work either, because if I know your scheme I just have to observe which books you check more often.

There's also the issue of password reuse, with many people using the same password. Running the scheme with the top most popular books is likely to work well.

At the end of the day, if you keep the whole scheme in your head then you'll be fine, and you'll have a reasonably safe password. But a system that gets more insecure the more people knows about it is unfortunately not a good scheme.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting approach. I can see it been useful if you need to log in from somewhere new and you don't have any of your gear with you, but relying on an external site to not change their links is dodgy.

You could put a page on your website with a key like mysite.com/mypasswords.php?key=1234 but that's not really that secure either. I agree with the others, you're better off just sticking with long random passwords and a password manager.

</comment><comment><USER5> Facebook does some jazz for my friends where they can log in by selecting a few faces. So that's kind of similar.

I'm with imaginenore on this one, just use long randomly generated passwords.

</comment><comment><USER6> So you will have one password for everything?

Just stop inventing nonsese schemes, and use a password manager and long randomly generated passwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not suggesting that.

But the password managers I have used so far also require a password. Basically you need to know a least one secure password.

<comment><USER3> I replied in general above, but to answer this in particular:

It has been told that printing your master password and putting it in your wallet is actually very safe: no online attack will reveal it, and losing the paper would not be an issue without extra information, the same way losing a physical key is not the end of the world without its address. You are doing something similar.

What you suggest is perfectly fine for one password - you are just moving the entropy from one place to the other. However, you shouldn't use it as a general method (see my other comment), and you should be aware that a determined attacker can find it by looking at your browser history.

<comment><USER4> Security is a mindset. Carrying your master password around with you isn't safe, it's only perceived to be safe because you're not a target, like waking down a dark alley is 'safe' only because you're not carrying any cash.

If someone wants access to your stuff and you're carrying your master password then you may as well just not bother using a password in the first place!

<comment><USER3> I'm sure someone could one-up us by saying "your password could be extracted from you under torture, you need a behavioral pattern password that cannot be replicated under stress", and so on.

I agree that Snowden should not carry his password in his wallet, but at the same time, I think that we'd see a drastic improvement in security if all regular users did precisely that (and Bruce Schneier agrees [1]). Those that think they can be targets and/or deeply care about the issue can always do it the better (but more expensive) way.

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exchange iOS contacts using sound - <AUTHOR> http://nibble.io/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> John a very interesting approach. Could you describe how you went about this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

A small amount of data is encoded into sound (DTMF) and this is used as a key to retrieve more data that is passed in the background. This provides some interesting opportunities to initiate data exchange in a broadcast fashion.

<comment><USER3> Yes it certainly does. I assume that you need a pretty robust error correcting code to ensure good data transmission. What sort of bit rate can you achieve in a noisy environment?

I have had a play with your app and one thing I could suggest is to allow a user to play with the system without requiring access to all contacts. I am always reluctant to allow an unknown app access to my contacts list - I know it is required at some point, but it could be pushed off to when the user feels more comfortable about the app.

Anyway congratulations on doing something new.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

By using DTMF I was able to get away without using error correction. Instead I add checkdigits to verify the data. I am interested to explore different ways to send about 1 second of data robustly. Data rates are very low but good enough to transmit an audio key. I would expect it would be difficult to build something higher than say 10 bytes/seconds over air that was robust but I am interested in this problem. I have some work to do on the signal processing but first want to get out the Watch version and OSX version. Of course, each hardware has different properties in terms of speaker/microphone so it is fun challenge!

Yeh, I understand some people won't feel comfortable granting access to Contacts. You can say no to that dialog and still test the signal processing aspects of the app. It will just throw an error when it tries to add the contact.

So there are some other apps in this field using different techniques to transmit data over sound. I mostly see blog/video posts but chirp.io is really cool.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: White-paper, Investing in Data [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.actiontwelve.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ActionTwelve-Whitepaper-InvestingInData.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Many non-tech sector organisations are spending incredible amounts of money on data investments. While working as a consultant and employee of global organisations, I felt those investments are going nowhere. Management invests in sleek presentations full of buzzwords and without substance. I have recently started a new management consulting company focused on rebooting the practice of management for the digital age. We decided to tackle data investment as a first topic. This whitepaper is written for non-tech sector audience but we would love feedback from the HN community.</comment>


New Hyperlocal Weather App with Funny GIF - <AUTHOR> http://gifnweather.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Do you like this app?</comment>


A Trail of FBI Abuse - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-trail-of-fbi-abuse-11575938300 <comment><USER2> All the ex-employees of three letter agencies who now have nice jobs in the news media are downplaying this because it is probably standard procedure to lie to the FISA court. We get to find out because they went after the President instead of Joe Bloggs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paywalled ... and also this is an op-ed by the WSJ Editorial Board ([https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/924810328747204608](https://twitter.com/BGrueskin/status/924810328747204608))

</comment><comment><USER4> Could we link a non-paywalled article on this topic instead?

<comment><USER5> Here's the actual report [https://oig.justice.gov/press/2019/2019-12-09.pdf](https://oig.justice.gov/press/2019/2019-12-09.pdf)</comment></comment>