Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/10/google-is-handing-the-future-of-the-internet-to-china/ <comment><USER2> «In May, Google quietly removed "Don't be evil" from the text of its corporate code of conduct, deleting a catchphrase that had been associated with the company since 2000.»

So it is now official, Google can not longer be considered as "not Evil". And we know this thanks to this sentence that has finally served as a warrant canary.

<comment><USER3> "And remember… don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!

Last updated July 31, 2018"

[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

<comment><USER2> Yes, the article linked [1] also mentions it. But it also shows what have been removed, such as:

«"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.»

The fact they removed this (e.g. "providing our users unbiased access to information") and that they are now setting up a censored version of their search engine shows that everything that they have removed in there should now be considered as deprecated.

[1] [https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of- do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil- from-1826153393)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once a company becomes comfortable with censorship, search manipulation in the name of their own politically motivated agenda... censorship and search manipulation can be repackaged if the price is right.

There are many here (as well as those 1,400 Googlers who signed the letter) who turned a blind-eye toward censorship and public manipulation when they agreed with the politics. This is the end result. Sadly... it's just the tip of the iceberg as the future looks much more bleak.

<comment><USER5> What are you referring to? Your reference to politics seem to come out of nowhere, is there context for it that we're missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting title. What future would Google have, regarding China, if it doesn't even exist in that country?

By exiting China, except pleasing the those moral puritans, I fail to see what exactly Google achieves. China now has a self-contained internet ecosystem, which is moderated and censored by the party's will, yet vibrant and providing countless business potential and shaping the society at breakneck speed. The only one holds China's internet's future is apparently, China.

<comment><USER7> > By exiting China, except pleasing the those moral puritans, I fail to see > what exactly Google achieves.

You don't even have to have much imagination to realize that by exiting China, Google removed the leverage the Chinese government had over it. If Google has operations in China that it values, the Communist Party can use those operations as a hostage to manipulate Google, just like it did with the airlines.

Do you want an authoritarian government to have leverage over _the_ service that you use to search for the answers to your questions? It's not inconceivable that that the CCP might use that leverage to get Google to change the rankings of its search results to be more to its liking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google's sure looking more and more like the Oracle of this generation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if Google having a stronger presence and relationships in China, even if censored, would in fact be a better alternative than not having a presence in China. Another way the west can influence China and its direction is from the inside. It seems pretty clear that just avoiding the market due to morality isn't really achieving anything. It just leaves a bigger void for local Chinese companies to fill. I'm in China now and I can tell you most people don't really know or care about Google. Also, for the most part, your average person doesn't even perceive the fact that their internet is restricted, and those that do, use VPNs anyways and have probably traveled abroad at some point. I'm beginning to think we should be injecting as much influence INTO China as possible if we want to have any ground later.

</comment><comment><USER10> We've seen this before. AOL was a monster on a ledge, and it fell. Google is a monster on a ledge, and it will fall. Funny enough, it's the ledge(r) that will bury it. All hail Internet 3.0 :P

<comment><USER11> I tend to feel the same way (in principle though not convinced it will be because of "Dweb" tech). I've been using searx.me for a year or so. This is a metasearch engine based on open source software, anyone can run an instance of it. I get a mix of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. It tells me which results come from which engine and I don't think it would be a big deal if Google started censoring stuff, or if it was removed altogether.

If Google starts censoring results in the US or EU with clear political motives, a Searx instance will be clearly superior (probably Bing and DDG standalone will be too). Many people will switch and search will become a more competitive market all of a sudden.

I'm not pro-censorship and I think Google censoring results for China would be disgusting. But if they migrate the practice to Western democracies I think they'll basically commit suicide. (Therefore they probably won't do it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent, an Internet that is heavily censored by Google. I guess thats the ultimate agenda of most governments, which means its the end goal of Google's greed.

<comment><USER13> To be honest, I don't see this censorship as such a big deal, it's an annoying speed bump, but not much more. Media has censored things forever, and as long as the internet remains open, it's not like censoring search results will prevent information from existing on the internet. It just means that we might need to build some new channels to share it. To me, the scary thing is the centralization of power with respect to networking (DNS/BGP/switching/etc. - see net neutrality). If internet infrastructure remains open, we'll continue to have the opportunity to build mastodon, duckduckgo, OSM, etc. And eventually those things will overtake the walled gardens that "Megacorp"s are cornering themselves into. Linux is the shining example of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And there's no way to stop it, yet there's no escape for it.

If Google is going to be more cooperative, there are more than just censorship that Google and Alphabet can provide.

Personally I would flee China but the relocation would require a higher-than- medium paying job which is difficult to get as a foreigner in most of the Countries, and I believe the status also applies many others.

</comment><comment><USER7> It feels like this story was suppressed from HN. Here's a story that's older but has a similar number of points that's still on the front page ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17964942;](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17964942;) 64 pts, 13 hours ago), while this story is on page 4 (63 pts, 8 hours ago). Seems to be happening a lot for stories on topics like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Money bypass morals I guess.

</comment><comment><USER16> > decisions over what content to algorithmically uplift or suppress can > involve agonizing questions of interpretation, intent, and cultural context.

Or you know, why not bring back chronological feeds... I'm convinced part of the polarisation in previous years can be put down to "algorithms" boosting particular posts.

</comment><comment><USER17> The censor ship has long sailed and its first passengers were American copyright shills, followed by European criminals who wanted their crimes to be removed from Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> Since this censored version of the search engine will only work in China, I don't see how they are "handing the future of the Internet" to them.

<comment><USER19> I presume that is on the premissis that every other state / regime will be able to leverage that deal between Google & China to black out whatever they think is not PC in their country.

<comment><USER20> Most of them already do this the slippery slope was started with Europe with it's right to be forgotten US with its Dmca. It's funny how many people have forgotten this if those things can be censored by Google because of these countries laws why is results cencsoring for China under Chinese laws is any different.

<comment><USER21> Because Chinese laws are intended to stifle debate and oppress human rights, where the EU laws protect privacy, and the US ones protect intellectual property?

<comment><USER22> "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All this blaming Google for being evil, when they suffer due to political implications, why we just watch and do nothing about it ? Because it's private company ? So why now ? It's still private company.</comment>


Ask HN: Sydney or Melbourne for Australian tech/startups? - <AUTHOR>

As a former resident of Melbourne (I'm American), I'm inclined to view Melbourne as the city with more of a hacker/creative/startup feel to it, but Sydney has the money, and it seems like the new crop of angel programs are in Sydney. In addition, Australia's  recent tech success stories (Atlassian, Freelancer) are based in Sydney. In my eyes, Sydney does not seem like the place I'd want to do a startup (high costs, logistics, climate).
In the past I have been a critic of the Australian entrepreneurial and tech culture, or lack thereof, and the government policies that discourage entrepreneurship and encourage working for a salary at a large corporation and investing in housing. However, I sense the tides are changing quickly, and that young people will perhaps pursue more tech entrepreneurship.
What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> Sydneysider (who happens to love Melbourne damn a lot) here. I think Sydney has a fantastic startup ecosystem, even though they may be a bit out-of-the- norm compared to SV or SF. The really high tech guys are clustered around NICTA, and they're pretty old fashioned. The uber hip ones are clustered around accelerators like Pollenizer, but in my opinion, are not as high valued/disruptive as the high tech ones (that's my personal bias though)

There is a new accelerator out from Melbourne, MURU-D, which may tip the favour for Melb, but right now, I'd stay in Sydney.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sydney does not seem like the place I'd want to do a startup (high costs, logistics, climate)

Climate? I think its much better in Sydney than in Melbourne and I agree with the costs and logistics. I think you will find a better peer startup community in Sydney compared to Melbourne. If I were to pick any other city other than Sydney or Melbourne, I think Perth is not a bad option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, yeah, Sydney's climate is nicer, that's the problem. I feel like colder climates are better for sitting at a desk working a lot. Also, many people find humidity stifles thought and productivity, and I have to agree.

Maybe it's just that Melbourne reminds me a lot more of the SF Bay Area while Sydney reminds me of LA.

Perth would be interesting if you could network amongst the rich mining types there. Could be a nice alternative source of funding. But I'm not sure how much software talent there would be there.

<comment><USER4> I'd say Melbourne, being from Perth myself (just a graduate though)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not from Australia, but looking at Australia as a customer base. I came across this study recently and found it quite interesting. You may find this useful.

[http://google-au.blogspot.in/2013/04/the-startup-economy- roa...](http://google-au.blogspot.in/2013/04/the-startup-economy-roadmap- to.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I am in OZ,(I'm English). From the media I see, Sydney has more "startup" things going on, that Melbourne. But from the people I talk to, Melbourne gets the thumbs up as an easy and fun place to live.

</comment><comment><USER7> The DevOps culture in Melbourne is amazing, very modern and inclusive. Check out infrastructurecoders.com</comment>


Show HN: I built a music app for iOS to learn how to build iOS apps - <AUTHOR> http://ffwdapp.com/ Some history: I was hired to work as a probational employee for an upcoming iPad app that was starting out. Since I hadn't written a single line of native iOS production code at that time, I had to scramble. I read Big Nerd Ranch's iOS Programming book front to back over a two week period on the bus and realized I could probably learn a lot better by building an app that I wanted to use.
I started tinkering last October, on and off the bus, never expecting to get very far and ended up polishing it and getting it fully ready last month. The rest of the time was spent building the website and ironing out other visual bugs.
Take a look if you'd like. There's a video showing off how it works on the website so you don't need to buy it :) <comment><AUTHOR> BTW, I am really chicken so I used this to decide whether or not to post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053427></comment>


NASA Eyes Mission To Icy Jupiter Moon Europa To Gauge Habitability - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/18901-nasa-mission-jupiter-moon-europa.html

<comment><USER2> NASA had planned a joint mission[1] to Jupiter's moons (including Europa) with the European Space Agency, until NASA pulled out of the mission in 2011.

Now it seems NASA wants to go to Europa again. I wonder what changed.

[1] - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Jupiter_System_Mission>

<comment><USER3> Tempted to say they found an obelisk in orbit :-) but more seriously NASA says a lot of stuff around budget time, and in times of imminent fiscal cliffs where they don't see a lot of other targets standing on the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else think Nasa should be figuring out how to setup colonies on new worlds.. I mean the question of life on Mars (or anywhere else) is a good one, but we'll be able to figure all that out a lot easier if we're there in person. It's no going anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like NASA does not read Fitch and Moody's reports...

</comment><comment><USER6> Jokes about 2010: Odissey Two in three, two ... screw it! I'll be first!

ALL THESE WORLDS

ARE YOURS EXCEPT

EUROPA

ATTEMPT NO

LANDING THERE</comment>


Cities spent millions on gigabit networks. No one is sure what they're good for - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/17/13230500/gigabit-networks-chattanooga-google <comment><USER2> Chattanoogan here.

Our fiber network has been a huge asset for the local economy.

It helped give birth to our own little tech startup ecosystem.

It made way for the build out of city wide wifi.

It's run by our local power company, EPB, who remains committed to net neutrality, and refuses to enact data caps.

It's forced ATT/Comcast to offer gigabit+ services to remain relevant.

I could go on and on.

Yes, its true that no 'killer gigabit app' has emerged, but give it time. IoT, decentralized services, etc. are all still in their infancy. Its too early to dismiss the internet of the future as a boondogle because 'it doesnt make money' yet.

<comment><USER3> Seems like you've listed a bunch of things that together might well be considered a killer app. Sure it's not an app you put on your phone and print money with just because it's got access to gigabit. But quantitative differences eventually become qualitative ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had gigabit internet (symmetrical) in my apartment in London for the past ~3years.

Some things I've found:

Even 802.11ac WiFi is really lacking. Despite link speed being 900mbit, it really struggles to push more than 200mbit/sec. On 802.11n it was more like 90mbit/sec.

Torrents are often IO (or even CPU) bound at high speed. I use a transcend drive on my MBP for more space and that seems to max out at 100mbit/sec (yes, bits) with very random read/write like bittorrent.

You end up not noticing internet faster than 100/100\. I have 0.3ms pings to the local Cloudflare CDN, so latency is not a problem. You do notice slower than that. Especially low upload connections, you are so used to git push taking no time at all, you forget on slow upstream how slow that can feel.

While it's nice to have gigabit internet, I would rather 100/100 with low latency (eg: GFast) over 300/30 with variable latency (eg: DOCSIS3).

The highest non-4K (I don't have a 4K TV) bitrate I have seen is netflix at around 8mbit/sec, which looks great.

I honestly do think BT in the UK is making the right option in choosing a faster/larger deployment of FTTC and GFast over FTTH. Gigabit really isn't that useful, and I can't see this changing for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fiber in the ground is a long term investment. The old copper might have been there for decades, and it is getting pretty much a dead end as far as tech goes. Sure, gigabit now seems overkill for average consumer, but how about in ten years time? How about twenty years?

Of course those decade old copper networks do not just magically maintain themselves in perfect order. I believe that in many fiber deployment cases the local network was already due for some sort of major operation, due just general flakiness, low speed, or poor availability. Fixing that is expensive no matter how you do it, and it really wouldn't make sense to lay down new copper anymore these days if you can avoid it.

There is one major consumer application for gigabit-scale internet: self- hosting. Gigabit internet is one key factor in enabling people to move away from massive clouds to personal services. Combine this with the common NAS boxes, device whose popularity is already being fueled by light ssd-powered laptops, and it is not that farfetched to see something like sandstorm to really take off.

<comment><USER6> I think the point of the article is questioning when to make that investment. If you're Verizon and Sandy destroyed your copper, sure, go ahead and replace it with fiber. If you're a cable company with a network that currently works fine, fiber mania is a waste of money today. There's some benefit in delaying since the routers needed to light that fiber will be somewhat cheaper in the future.

Also, Sandstorm runs much better in a datacenter than in your home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with people not knowing how to utilize gigabit networks is that it's sort of a "cart before the horse" type of problem.

Until enough people actually HAVE symmetrical (both up and down) gigabit speeds, you will be limited by the transmission speed of whichever provider you are downloading from.

A lot of web servers are sitting in racks in data centers, and you will only ever be able to download a file from that web server at the speed that that web server is able to send. Assuming the web server has a single gigabit connection, and ten other people are downloading from that server at the same time, you might only be getting 50-100 megabits tops.

Where gigabit networks for consumers would REALLY start to shine is when thousands of people are on gigabit, and are all doing peer-to-peer transactions, or hosting their own servers.

Imagine if there were 100,000 people with decent computers (at least a terabyte of drive space apiece), with every computer connected via fully bi- directional gigabit speed connections.

Now imagine if you were to build a fully encrypted peer to peer file storage cloud network on top of that, with each client having their own key (which only they had access to). Encrypted data would be stored in pieces across the cloud, with redundancy and parity correction stored across nodes.

If you built something like that properly, you would have a giant, disaster resistant cloud drive, where you could store tons of private data and access it from _anywhere_ at gigabit speeds. If you had a large file that was striped in redundancy across a thousand nodes, you could even achieve terabit speeds by downloading the pieces in parallel and assembling them on your end.

You could even tie a pricing model into it (perhaps powered by a blockchain methodology), where you had to pay monthly to store your data in the peer to peer cloud, and people who contributed storage and machine resources would receive payments in return for their contribution.

You could even take it a step FURTHER and add a cloud processing layer on top of it all, where people could dedicate a couple of their CPU cores for usage by the cloud (when their machine wasn't in use), and they would be compensated.

If you had that, you would have the ability to not only store data in the cloud, but also process the data (and even do things like run distributed web servers).

The possibilities are endless!

But it will never happen until it makes sense, and for it to make sense, there needs to be a critical mass of people who actually HAVE symmetrical gigabit connections.

<comment><USER6> Between Europe, Japan, and South Korea, doesn't that critical mass already exist? Where are the apps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gigabit is backward compatible to any slower speed. The unused bandwidth is not wasted somehow. The current copper network is going to have to be replaced anyway. It doesn't make a lot of sense to run fibre past buildings just to connect more and more VDSL2 and DOCSIS 3.1 boxes sitting on the boulevard in a desperate attempt to squeeze another decade of life out of shorter and shorter lengths of existing copper.

</comment><comment><USER9> The killer app is fiber reliability as compared to copper and coax where line errors are the norm, particularly every time it rains and water gets into a compromised circuit.

The speed is just a bonus.

<comment><USER10> The speed isn't just a bonus, it means you can _do things_ that weren't possible before, or were painfully slow.

Just as dial-up held us back, but the benefits of broadband weren't realized until we finally perfected things like streaming audio and video, the impact of gigabit connected networks will take time and may come in an unexpected form.

The more immediate effects will be that distributed computing becomes no big deal, and accessing your files from the cloud or from a home device while remote becomes frictionless. Instead of necessarily lugging around a laptop you might travel lighter, confident that you can get access to what you need anyway.

It also makes apps like Dropcam possible where you stream endless hours of video to a remote server on the off chance you might need it. The cost of maintaining multiple streams becomes so low you don't even worry about it. No longer do you need to fret over the equivalent of popping a breaker when trying to watch Netflix as well.

The funny thing about these applications is they don't seem like a big deal when you have them, but when you suddenly lose them it's a huge problem. This is much the same way we take electricity and running water for granted, never thinking much of it, but when it cuts out we're in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The empty promises of fibre-to-the-premises feel a bit like the internet analog of "trickle down".

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I think the killer app for gigabit symmetrical internet service will be the ability to host your own apps (from social networking to video streaming) either on the router or another appliance. It's just hard to see how that will ever become a common practice until someone builds such appliances that are friendly with each other beyond their primary manufacturer because the natural inclination of any corporation making such appliances is to make them locked in. So it'll be interesting to see if that pattern keeps up or softens.

</comment><comment><USER12> The main problem with gigabit is that the person on the other end of the line doesn't have gigabit. If someone with 10MBps upload sends me a file, it's still coming in at 10MBps, even if I've got a terabit connection.

Likewise, you can't build an application that requires such tremendous bandwidth unless you know there are enough customers out there who have it. A few small towns here and there aren't going to cut it.

Light up the wires in New York City, and then you'll see some action.

<comment><USER5> > Likewise, you can't build an application that requires such tremendous > bandwidth unless you know there are enough customers out there who have it. > A few small towns here and there aren't going to cut it.

From the article

> about 14 percent of Americans have access to gigabit speeds today.

That is quite a bit more than "few small towns here and there", and frankly nearly 50M people (just in US, globally much much more) should be more than enough for building user base.

<comment><USER13> Those numbers probably vastly inflated (The FCC defines access only by zip- code, and there were many zipcodes with just a few homes given access to broadband to game the numbers for many years), and "Access" is not the same as "having" to many, especially as services that take advantage of gigabit have not yet become available, in a chicken->egg problem.

There's an interesting condundrum - I want my parents to have instant access to a variety of photos and videos that I produce, and for a while it looked like fiber networks were going to be the way - I'd host a home fileserver, and they'd be able to stream whatever they wanted to me from there. But my home internet speeds have actually gone down over the years - Was on a 100mbit connection, and now the plan is '50/50' that rarely achieves more than 10 up.

The cloud has become the distribution network, and it makes a lot of sense in many ways - It also works as a handy backup mechanism, and I trust 'cloud' services to keep good copies of my data more than I trust the second hard- drive I used to keep around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know, if you are going to lay the cable, surely gigabit makes more sense than say 100mbit

<comment><USER6> Yes, this is why telcos are interested in fiber but cable companies are not. DSL is limited to ~48 Mbps yet in many cities the standard cable plan is 100 Mbps and 300 Mbps plans are available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Almost sounds like this story I heard once about this guy selling monorails to cities.</comment>


Zepton – a Pico-8 voxel shoot'em up [game] - <AUTHOR> http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?uid=556 <comment><USER2> I just got the Voxatron and PICO-8 bundle. This is how my kids will learn to program! I love everything about these projects. I just started working on a Robotron: 2084/Smash TV style game idea with LÖVE but I think using Voxatron is going to be way more fun for me. The first cartridge in the list is a Robotron: 2084 style game.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php](http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saw big pixels. Expected something 2600-esque. Was very pleasantly surprised - smooth and fun!

If I may be lazy and ask instead of reading all the docs right now - how much processing power would it take to implement PICO-8? I know you say there's RasPI support but this feels like it deserves to run on a proper 8-bit micro, not just a small Linux SoC.

<comment><USER5> It use lua for the logic so i thing it will need a bit more processing power than that. Maybe it will run on something supported by elua: [http://www.eluaproject.net/overview/status](http://www.eluaproject.net/overview/status)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Available on itch.io as well! [https://chiptune.itch.io/zepton](https://chiptune.itch.io/zepton)

<comment><AUTHOR> so much <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good job. Just for the clarification, it is well a voxel engine, but not a "2D" one as it makes no sense (voxel means VOlume piXEL, which is a 3D unit box, compared to a 2d unit-rectangle for the pixel), but a real 3d voxel engine. The good old method to make a voxel like that (specifically, a terrain) is to iterate over the screen column then to iterate over the 'z' coordinate in (3d) world-space. Those loops, for screen space, for world space, is quite an interesting hack of early graphics programming. However, in the case of this game, it seems the renderer works more like a for x-world for z-world, draw square.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's actually a full 2d voxel made only of rectangles, using the classic position_(x|y) / position_z * focale method, and drawing them from farthest to nearest z :)

<comment><USER7> Oh yeah, of course you prefer to render the rectangles like that, my mistake. I insist on the 3d terminology though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It feels reminiscent of AMOS [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER9> Worked somewhat well on mobile, now that impresses.

</comment><comment><USER10> The gravity mechanic is cool. When you take-out an enemy it falls out of the sky and you can still crash into it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool! Reminds me of SEGA's Thunderblade: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhRzhbXAPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhRzhbXAPc)

</comment><comment><USER12> Amazing feat for the PICO-8 :)

I wonder why sometimes the view is blurred, and sometimes it's sharp (looks like some post-processing on the image)?

<comment><AUTHOR> on the image? wich one? :)

<comment><USER12> The actual game canvas. It seems to switch between bilinear filtering or nearest-neighbor scaling. FF 52 on linux here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this kind of games with retro design but slightly new capabilities (instead of completely new engine/rendering).

<comment><USER14> Also PICO8 cartridges are PNG images with the image in the style of an old cartridge (Example: [http://www.lexaloffle.com/gfx/jelpi.p8.png](http://www.lexaloffle.com/gfx/jelpi.p8.png)). That almost make them feel like something physical and perfectly fits into the theme. I think that's the smartest design choice I have seen in recent years.

<comment><USER13> Heh, having just found an Atari Lynx with games, it does fit the style of the era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A pain for me to control with bad hand-eye but a really neat game. You did a great job with it. Cool stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> i added mouse control for the next update!

give it a try here -> lol.pm/zepton.html (beta version)

to enable the mouse, you have to press "p" or enter key to access the "pause menu" and select "mouse / button" option :)

<comment><USER15> MUUUUUCH BETTER!! I was blastin them fools so good on that one! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> good! I'm totally happy of that :D

also, I added a new weapon, try to press z and x at same time :)

<comment><USER15> Oh, scheming up ways to get me back in the game, eh? At first, I thought it was a glitch or something that can't be what it appears. Then, I find you actually added God Mode to the game. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of a smoother Zaxxon. Great job!

<comment><USER17> Kind of the FPS version of Zaxxon for the Atari 2600 (which was woefully underpowered to do it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> point voxels! :D

I've always wanted to try point voxels out. Ace of Spades uses them for models.

awesome work!

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! it's more like "rectangle" voxel than point voxel :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome work. oO

<comment><AUTHOR> AMOUR <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> omg, I love the colors!

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! btw it's a bit hard to manage since PICO-8 is 16-colors fixed- palette engine :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> nice :)</comment>


CIA is quite interested in Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=6652.0

<comment><USER2> No, they're not.

<comment><USER3> I'd say they are interested, if they're paying to bring someone in to talk about it. There are all kinds of reasons that they might be interested, and I'm curious to know which ones apply here :)

<comment><USER2> All the ludicrous claims about transforming commerce, toppling governments, etc. are starting to grate a little, and I thought this headline deliberately suggested a much more serious scenario than somebody going to speak at a tech conference in the Summer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not think it a highly serious matter, I assure you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS variables land in WebKit (again) - <AUTHOR> http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/LayoutTests/fast/css/variables/colors-test.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The previous implementation, with this syntax:

        @variables {
          foreground: green;
        }
        body {
          background: var(foreground);
        }

was discontinued in 2008 [1] and we now have a new spec [2]

        var-foreground: green;
        body {
          background: var(foreground);
        }

1: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2008Sep/0194.h...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www- style/2008Sep/0194.html)

2: <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-variables/>

<comment><USER2> Although it's nice that they're being thoughtful about maintainability, it's a bit frustrating that they solved this issue four years ago, but shelved it. What's wrong with having a variable declaration block?

There's a lot of CSS that's been written in the last four years that would have been much easier to read/maintain with proper variable support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really don't understand why it's that difficult to incorporate something like SCSS, or a portion of it (e.g. no mixins) directly to browsers?

<comment><USER4> My understanding from reading about this on the CSS working group boards is as follow - the biggest issue is users assume CSS is instantaneous. If you ever see an interaction (other than animations), or a flash of unstyled content, it looks like a broken website. That means the W3C want to ensure any candidate they are using can be calculated on poor performance machines in a matter of a couple milliseconds. For one off variables this is not hard at all, but the the cascading effect of css means that a lot more calculations have to be made</comment></comment>


Introduction to making HTML5/JavaScript games with Coquette.js - <AUTHOR> http://superbigtree.tumblr.com/post/57993562778/introduction-to-making-html5-javascript-games-with

<comment><USER2> > The ticker updates the game loop at 60 frames per second. From the project > readme: "If the main game object or a game entity has an update() function, > it will get called on each tick. If the main game object or a game entity > has adraw() function, it will get called on each tick."

I'm not much of a game dev, but doesn't this imply a faulty game loop? Maybe this quote is just hand waving the minute details. This is my reference: [http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your- timestep/](http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/) The final implementation of the game loop in that article doesn't always update and render at the same rate.

<comment><USER3> Modern browsers can use requestAnimationFrame to allow the browser to handle render loops differently from update loops. How this works between browsers isn't always the same, but the description tends to be along the lines of allowing the browser to use another thread for those calls, use GPU acceleration, pause rendering if the page isn't visible etc. In an engine I've been building, I've been using setInterval(1000/60) for the update loop with a delta time calculation, and requestAnimationFrame for the renderer calls, seems to work very well.

<comment><USER2> I'm making a JS game right now and I'm using requestAnimationFrame in one loop that both updates and renders. I basically implemented that "fix your timestep" article with requestAnimationFrame as the call that does the looping for me. Is that a bad idea?

Do you have any sample code showing your two separate loops or did you get this from some webpage you could show me? My first reaction to what you said is, "won't that cause threading issues because your update could be half done while you're rendering?" Then I remembered JS is single threaded.

<comment><USER3> I think that will work fine for the most part, but the problem is you can't be sure of what optimizations the browser is making (or will make in future builds of the browser) when using requestAnimationFrame - it's designed to allow browsers to do weird stuff to keep the loop in sync with the monitor, which isn't really what you want when processing game logic.

JS is of course single threaded but requestAnimationFrame can give browsers the option to batch stuff up and do it outside of the regular javascript execution - I don't know if any browsers actually do this but it's possible. The main thing is that if your rendering FPS is low due to a lot of elements/sprites/whatever on the screen, your game logic loop could potentially still be run at full speed while requestAnimationFrame stumbles along at a lower rate. End result being that you could actually increase your FPS, because the game logic isn't sitting around waiting as long between render frames to update.

Of course, setInterval doesn't guarantee a constant speed loop either, but it's at least designed to be as consistent as possible.

Here's a relevant article: [http://www.chandlerprall.com/2012/06/requestanimationframe-i...](http://www.chandlerprall.com/2012/06/requestanimationframe- is-not-your-logics-friend/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's very simple and lightweight, however collision code is very naive:

      if (obj1BoundingBox === this.RECTANGLE &&
                obj2BoundingBox === this.RECTANGLE)
              return Maths.rectanglesIntersecting(obj1, obj2);

which means it will not work for moving objects

<comment> adam-a It means it won't work for very fast moving objects.

For most purposes this type of collision is fine. It's a lot quicker too - doing line intersections for every potential collision is quite intensive. Often it's best to reserve more thorough checks for objects like bullets which you know will be moving fast.

<comment><USER4> It is not like you can implement collision resolving system ad hoc as a plugin or extension if base code does not offer you some proper foundation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was just thinking about what to do for the upcoming Ludum Dare, and was looking at various js game frameworks so that my games could be played regardless of OS and libraries. This one looks like a real winner, thanks for posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Yeah, I think it'll be a good choice for Ludum Dare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks! I'm always looking around for js game libraries/frameworks, adding another one to the list :) Anyone know of any other good ones ? So far I know of:

ImpactJS

LimeJS

CraftyJS

Cocos2D

<comment><USER7> GameClosure ([http://www.gameclosure.com/](http://www.gameclosure.com/)) looks really good.

<comment><USER8> It looks good, I started writing a game in it (and it was fine, though I have no comparison with other frameworks), but it seems that no-one uses it. Or am I mistaken?

<comment><USER9> Judging from the Google group, it doesn't seem to be very active but not dead at all. The main difference with Game Closure seems to be that parts of it are native code and must be compiled and deployed to the phone, which makes it particulary interesting for speed requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this support sound effects? I think they're a critical part of any successful game but so often overlooked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. It doesn't. You could pair it with whichever sound library works best for you. I might use it with something like buzz.js ([http://buzz.jaysalvat.com/](http://buzz.jaysalvat.com/)), but there are quite a few others that would work well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> OT but: why not capitalizing "html5" and "javascript"?

<comment><AUTHOR> style / laziness?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you host the demo for us to check out?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you mean the demos in the coquette github repo, check out: [http://coquette.maryrosecook.com/](http://coquette.maryrosecook.com/)

and: [http://coquette.maryrosecook.com/demos/advanced/](http://coquette.maryrosecook.com/demos/advanced/)

And you can see a demo of the game I made with coquette here: [http://sethvincent.github.io/BlockSnot/](http://sethvincent.github.io/BlockSnot/)

<comment><USER12> great stuff, Thanks! I'll buy your book now.</comment></comment></comment>


Asian Lyft and Uber Riders Being Discriminated Against in Wake of Corona Virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/uber-and-lyft-riders-of-asian-descent-face-coronavirus-panic.html <comment><USER2> It seems like it's getting intense everywhere - I'm in Armenia which just had their visa free travel regime open up with China in Jan and they're talking about restricting it already. I just flew in this AM from a trip and they made you fill out a card stating where you're coming from, seat, where you're staying, etc. (I assume to trace back any outbreak more easily) and have some sort of setup near immigration that looks like it's scanning passenger temps. I vaguely remember the same setup during SARS days too</comment>


HBO says no, for now, to fans who want a web-only option - <AUTHOR> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/hbo-says-no-for-now-to-fans-who-want-a-web-only-option/

<comment><USER2> This is a textbook case of innovator's dilemma, I think.

"... and there's no way that HBO could make up in online volume the number of subscribers it would lose from cable"

This assumes two things:

1\. That all cable companies immediately will cut HBO from their lineups as soon as it offers web only deals. This is _insane_! What else will keep up the $100+ cable offerings? They have nothing else other than sports.

2\. Where does this "no way" argument come from. HBO's cut from each cable subscriber is, I think ~$10. If it offers, say, a $40 all you can eat online option, how much of that revenue will go down to infrastructure, etc?

With Netflix and Amazon rising on one side and more and more of the younger demographic watching web-streamed shows, HBO will change, the questions is: will it take five years or two?

<comment><USER3> What web-streamed shows come even close to the quality of HBO produced shows? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm curious. Yahoo produces a lot of their own 'shows' but it all seems amateurishly directed that I can't bother to watch a second of it.

Edit: I think funnyordie videos are actually really well produced.

<comment><USER4> I watch full episodes of How I Met Your Mother for free on cbs.com. No need for Pirate Bay. Unless, of course, you're talking about web-exclusive shows.

<comment><USER3> Web exclusive shows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HBO's risk now it two-fold:

#1 Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or (gasp) Google start outspending HBO on serial shows. The next show of the caliber of "Game of Thrones" or "Sopranos" is not offered through HBO.

#2 Consumers fail to see why they should be paying for HBO, or even want it. You could say a #1 3-4 times, combined with a failure to produce a notable show for a while, would kill HBO's desirability as a brand.

What HBO's management is doing is managing for death. This is what you do when you have a company with a passing business model to keep it as profitable as possible for as long as possible. In some ways you could imagine HBO as a porn company 8 years ago that primarily produced DVDs. Their business is still profitable and glamorous, they are mostly ignoring the pirates, but their real enemy is right around the corner.

HBO still has the possibility of transitioning. People care about HBO, thus all these stories about it. What they've done is tell their competitors "come get us." (alternatively HBO could just be calling their bluff and has full plans ready to switch to a web/mobile version)

<comment><USER6> HBO is already facing down that risk from FX and AMC, two rival channels owned by different companies offering comparably high-quality shows on basic cable.

My point isn't that this moots HBO's sensitivity to (say) Netflix doing the next Game of Thrones, but rather that it's unlikely HBO is going to move to _preempt_ that. HBO does not appear to have reacted to Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Justified, or Sons of Anarchy as existential threats to their business.

If Netflix is the threat that is going to motivate HBO to go direct to consumer, they're going to have to put their money and their execution where their mouth is first. I have my doubts that they're equipped to pull that off, because I think they have an adverse selection problem: for prestige reasons, the best content is going to hit HBO, then Showtime, then AMC, and so on down the line.

<comment><USER7> HBO turned-down Mad Men. In the recent past _Thrones_ , _Veep_ and _Girls_ have all debuted to critical acclaim and ratings success.

Anecdotally, from what I've read, show runners love HBO.

Anybody who thinks HBO is at risk either isn't paying attention to it, or just has tastes outside the mainstream. They have among best original content -- scripted shows, comedy specials, 'reality' shows, documentaries, and movies -- on television today. And have. For the last 15 years.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't that same argument work for any major record label in 1999?

<comment><USER7> No? Did you love what the major labels were producing in 1999? I didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dear Mr. Stelter: Please link to the actual tweets. This is not 1972. I don't need you to read pieces of them back to me.

<comment><USER9> I had to dig to find it, but it seems to be this one: <https://twitter.com/HBO/status/210390531623227392>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know it probably won't happen this way, but I hope Netflix and Amazon pull together awesome original content and smoke these guys.

<comment><USER11> They may but what is the guarantee they will watch? Take a look at the top rated shows, music and films. Most are garbage.

The illusion that quality will reign supreme is just that. Since the 90s crap TV shows have got the ratings.

<comment><USER10> Hm, I see your point except that ratings-based (i.e. ad-sponsored) content is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about paid, premium content. Ratings don't matter, only the bottom line does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think they're failing to appreciate the forces of habit and culture. The longer they wait to offer a legitimate option, the more people will already be habituated to piracy and embedded in communities that exist for piracy.

Or to put it another way, they're doing an excellent job of helping sell the idea of piracy to people who probably otherwise wouldn't bother. Once those people get used to it, it will be that much harder to sell them a pay service.

</comment><comment><USER13> And thousands now feel completely justified in pirating their shows. I can't help but think that HBO is losing out here by not listening to their customers.

<comment><USER14> The "completely" part seems a bit excessive. You could always pay for cable and buy a DVR.

(Full disclosure, I download content, so my horse is not particularly high, and I'm not even on it right now.)

<comment><USER3> Or not watch it all. Crazy idea.

<comment> guard-of-terra Why not? It's good!

<comment><USER3> Because it's not zero-sum. There are plenty of incredible sources of leisure, entertainment, or culture outside of what HBO produces.

Not to mention one can wait for the shows to be on Blu-Ray.

<comment> guard-of-terra But why ignore this incredible source of culture?

No blu-ray releases where I live, I don't know anyone who owns blu-ray and don't have one.

So there is no reason to not torrent them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As long as HBO is owned by Time Warner, and the money left on the table from not offering an online option is less than the amount they're making from their own cable offerings, they won't change.

<comment><USER16> Time Warner Cable is not owned by Time Warner. They are an entirely independent company that continues to license the name. I just found this out recently, so thought I'd share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This will all crumble when live sports are on iTunes (or whatever service you care to use).

</comment><comment><USER18> Typical entertainment industry arrogance. They won't offer it until it's very obvious that they're losing out by not having it as an option.

Why lead when you can follow and still stay rich?

<comment><USER19> Follow? its more like standing in the same place and not moving. And still getting rich. And once they decide to move forward they will a) fail at it b) throw fits because they realize that they are at the end of the rope at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's cool, they don't want my money so they won't get it. I'll keep getting their stuff from Usenet for free.

<comment><USER21> The issue is, to get the few hundred you would offer, they would have to give up the millions that the cable companies offer. The last time I looked, if every single person who pirated HBO shows were to pay per episode (wouldn't happen, many would still pirate) it still wouldn't be as much as what they get from cable now.

<comment> guard-of-terra But why it should be my (or parent) problem?

If they can't do their job by figuring it out, why do they feel entitled to anything?

<comment><USER21> Uh, what? They don't feel entitled. They're doing what they want and making money. It's those who say "well I'm just taking it then" that are being "entitled".

<comment> guard-of-terra No, they aren't entitled. They just take. They are doing what they want and having entertainment.

Don't you think it is symmetric? HBO is doing what they want and making money. Torrenters are doing what they want and having entertainment.

So why blame people for stealing even if the owner doesn't? Who are you to blame anyone if the "victim" doesn't feel affected by "crime"? Who are you?

<comment><USER21> What exactly would HBO need to do to prove to you they care about copyright infringement?

<comment> guard-of-terra Accept my money. And money of other countless beings who watch Game of Thrones outside of USA.

<comment><USER21> I don't like how things have worked out with HBO but they apparently feel that the money they could make selling direct is dwarfed by what they make via channel partners. They are taking steps to try and protect their IP, just not the ones who want them to take. Claiming that this means they don't care about IP at all is, frankly, childish.

<comment> guard-of-terra What they are doing is childish. They want to sit on their rights and have those protected at the same time. It's like eating an apple and still having it.

Not only that - they actively harm the whole market by doing so. People outside USA are forced to torrent their shows, and when they learned torrent they proceed to download other media, too, that they could have paid for.

You do not "take steps". "Taking steps" isn't the same as caring about something. The way they "take steps" is inherently peristaltic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the future of this market. If they're not willing to move there, someone else will and eat their lunch. I like HBO, and they still have plenty of time to make the move, but if they fail to do so I won't mourn them.

<comment><USER23> How? Its not as simple as building a website, we're talking about spending millions of dollars to create quality content that people actually want to watch.

Netflix is going to try, and they succeed then I'm sure that HBO will think a bit harder about it, but right now there isn't much to be gained from them being the one to take the leap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Then they should expect piracy to continue.

</comment><comment><USER25> Am I misreading Mr. Lawler's statements, or is the pay-TV industry colluding to prevent HBO from selling to other markets? I feel like an antitrust investigation is in order. (Overdue, in fact.)

<comment><USER26> It's not collusion. Its a carriage deal. HBO wants distribution on the cable operators lines. The Cable Operators want HBO. So they do a contract which precludes streaming via the internet. These contracts are standard across the industry and in fact standard across almost all industries with products and distribution (see liquor distributors).

HBO is free to distribute via the internet if they so choose and the cable operators are free to stop distributing their content.

<comment><USER27> However, the cable operators are beneficiaries of monopolies, so there may be anti-trust issues at hand (using their monopoly to control distribution of the 3rd party service).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wrote some brief thoughts on this: [http://interchangeproject.org/2012/06/06/hbo-doesnt-want- you...](http://interchangeproject.org/2012/06/06/hbo-doesnt-want-your-money/)

Essentially, HBO will eventually fall and start offering content available for streaming. It's just a question of when. This is where the market is headed and even cable companies are getting into the streaming game.

In the meantime, I'd settle for an HBO Go app that wasn't junk.

<comment><USER29> I don't use the HBO Go application too often, but what problems did you encounter or what would you add?

<comment><USER28> The biggest problem is the lack of caching of shows for offline use. You have to have an active Internet connection for the app to even work, making it worthless for most traveling. Beyond that, to get good video, you need a very robust connection, ruling out hotel wifi, coffee shop wifi, plane wifi, train wifi, etc.

Basically, the only place I can use HBO Go and get a good experience is my own house.

Why it's called HBO Go is anyone's guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Who needs HBO? Let's create incentives for the writers/directors to disseminate their work via alternative channels. Why the hell should HBO have a strangle-hold on that market?

</comment><comment><USER31> Hulu has some great originals such as Spy and Battleground. Reward them!

This is HBO's loss. They could be making money by partnering with the likes of Roku, Microsoft and Sony. Instead they are going to let dinasaurs like Comcast and TWC drag them down. I tried writing to HBO a while ago. They did not bother responding. I cannot help but feel quiet satisfaction knowing that they are losing so much money.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hey, who can blame HBO, they like their business model. It works, it's made them millions.

Except if they don't get ahead of the curve they'll find that most people have gone down the routes of waiting for it to get to NetFlix, pirating it, or not giving a damn at all. Bye bye millions.

</comment><comment><USER33> HBO is the only reason I've ever signed up for cable. This is probably partly contractual and partly demographic. In a few more years it will probably start to make financial sense for HBO to offer its shows w/o requiring a cable subscription.

</comment><comment><USER34> I recently downgraded my Comcast service because our monthly bill had reached ridiculous heights, and in the process had to let HBO go. Losing HBO was the hardest pill to swallow, but I'll now just wait for the DVDs or streams to hit Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ironically, this is probably making HBO more money as it gives them stronger bargaining power with the cable companies.

</comment><comment><USER36> Didn't the VP of HBO also think the Internet was a "fad"? Memory is a bit fuzzy there.

</comment><comment><USER37> What if it was an add on to Netflix, any chance those numbers would be sufficient?

<comment><USER38> Given Netflix (and to a lesser extent, Hulu and AmazonVOD) explicitly has HBO in their sights, this sort of arrangement is highly unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So this is how they want to play this?

Ok.

UNLEASH THE TORRENTS!

<comment><USER40> Pirating an HBO show is one way of showing your displeasure: I think a better way is to vote with your wallet and actually give the money you would have paid HBO to another provider who's investing in original content for web-only distribution (like Netflix).

I'm not saying don't torrent HBO shows: go ahead - but reward companies who are trying to come up with creative ways to get content distributed online. Torrenting a HBO show rather than subscribing deprives HBO of revenue: giving your money to a competitor not only deprives HBO of revenue, but provide a competitor with the finances to take them on.</comment></comment>


No, All-Remote Work Is Not a Mother's Dream Come True - <AUTHOR> https://hightouch.co/remote-work-for-women/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a sentiment many working mothers now doing double-time at home don't want to say out loud: we hate this. Not because we are stuck in a pandemic but because we need our own lives. Many of us keep our sanity because we have the opportunity to be away from our children and create professional achievements independent of our domestic lives.

</comment><comment><USER2> The author is conflating child care and work from home. While it might be the case that the pandemic has made children omnipresent in many homes thanks to remote schooling and the closing of childcare opportunities, this is clearly not the same thing at all as "working from home". I speak as a parent who has "worked from home" for more than 10 years.</comment>


HashiCorp Vault 0.9 - <AUTHOR> https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/vault-0-9 <comment><USER2> Seems like with every new release a larger share of changes is Enterprise only. I wonder at which point one if the 300+ contributors would want to fork Vault and add e.g a UI and cloud auto unseal themselves, merging the rest of changes from upstream? Would they be allowed to do so?

I know that I'm hesitant to jump on the Vault ship now with the trend of putting more features behind closed doors. At least if they had a pricing page I wouldn't be dependant on whatever their sales department would want me to cough up at every new term. Assuming Vault becomes a center piece of my infra, to me that's a scary thing to be building a business on.

<comment><USER3> It seems it's under the MPL, so the contributors could certainly do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh sweet, lots of new enterprise features, along with "give us your contact info so we can figure out how much you can afford" pricing.

fuck that.

</comment><comment><USER5> TL;DNR: virtually all of the features are for the enterprise version.

Edited for clarity.

<comment><USER6> Not quite: the new Identity system is available in the non-enterprise version.

<comment><USER5> Updated, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I need key management for a system I'm building. I need to encrypt documents per-role, and also sensitive fields in the DB per-role. I'm planning on using Amazon KMS for both these tasks (the document encryption is straightforward with KMS + S3, and for the row level security I'll probably implement something similar to [0])

Does anyone have any insight how Vault would compare for these tasks? Or if I'm going down the totally wrong road?

[0] [https://blog.koan.co/securing-customer-data-with-kms-and- env...](https://blog.koan.co/securing-customer-data-with-kms-and-envelope- encryption-in-node-js-b61983ddaa98)

<comment><USER8> What you have is fine, all the major clouds have KMS systems that can be accessed securely using the built-in IAM roles which work great for encrypting data.

Vault is overkill for what you need and would create more maintenance and operations overhead.

<comment><USER7> Cheers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I talked to their Enterprise sales team back in June about two missing features: Kubernetes auth and KMS-based auto unseal. They mentioned that nothing was in the works at the time, and it's nice to see this feedback (assuming this is not a pure coincidence) incorporated so quickly in v0.8.3 and v0.9. Now I just need to be able to afford the Enterprise plan!

One interrogation I have is that if I ever want to integrate cloud auto unseal into Vault and make a pull request, what is the incentive for Hashicorp to allow the merge? Wouldn't it only remove value from their paid product?

<comment><USER10> Did you talk about pricing as well? Care to share details? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm one of the co-founders of HashiCorp, and I wanted to just chime in on the release. We may have done a disservice in the blog post by highlighting the new features landing in the Enterprise versions, because it obscures all the new functionality and work that has gone into the open source. We call out some of these at the bottom of the post, but just for the sake of clarity:

* Identity / Group Management. This sounds like a minor bullet point, but an incredible amount of work went into supporting a unified identity system that could span multiple external identity brokers. Our goal was to allow Vault to act as a broker between many Identity Providers and apply a consistent access control and group management scheme to all of theme. This was something we originally landed in Enterprise with 0.8 so that we could bake it with a smaller number of customers and have since brought to open source as we feel more confident in the implementation and APIs.

* GCE integration. This is part of our ongoing partnership with Google and our goal of natively integrating Vault with all the common platforms our users want to use.

* K8S integration. Again, this is about the last mile integration into the platforms users want and is in the open source.

* Oracle database integration. The database backend provides dynamic secret functionality across a number of RDBMS and NoSQL systems, and we are continuing to broaden the supported systems.

* RSA support for transit encryption. The transit backend allows Vault to do key management and cryptographic offload, and we are continuing to extend the algorithms and operation types that are supported.

* Lazy loading of leases. Common feedback from our large scale users was that failover could take many minutes. We've improved the loading of leases and other metadata to be asynchronous resulting in a dramatically faster failovers for large scale deployments.

* Lots of other bug fixes and minor improvements.

This is only a small sample of what has been added in the Vault 0.8.3 and 0.9 releases as open source. In the last 6 months, we've added more to the OSS than ever before, because Vault Enterprise has allowed us to grow the team. By adding a small subset of features to our Pro and Premium Enterprise offerings we are able to continue developing Vault, and we take a similar approach for our other tools. I totally understand the frustration about our opaque pricing, and this is because we are still making pricing adjustments as we refine our fit and better understand the many different use cases customers have.

Mitchell has publically stated and I'll repeat, that our goal is to publish both our framework of determining what is open source versus commercial (largely a focus on compliance, governance, and collaboration) as well as our public pricing. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible, while still accommodating the need to understand product/market fit, refine pricing, and be a solvent business.

<comment><USER4> Does HashiCorp have a _single_ product with published pricing? How long have folks been waiting on you to get around to figure this out?

I'd almost certainly have personally pushed for purchasing your software a number of times, but simply refuse to play the "how much can you pay" game.

<comment><USER12> First, thank you for asking. I understand that most people ask this question because they _want_ to help the company and adopt our Enterprise tools. I understand that there is a large group of buyers out there that do NOT want to call to find price. I'm one of those people!

I'll answer your question directly at the end because I think context is everything. We're not trying to hide anything so I think being transparent will help here. If you want to just read direct answers to your questions you can scroll to the bottom but I think the context is extremely important.

We actually haven't dramatically changed pricing in the past 12 to 18 months (except for one product in particular, but its not Vault). And importantly we don't change pricing per deal: of the many deals we've closed with Vault in the past year, the price variance is extremely low. What we have done is dramatically changed the number and the quality of features. This is important.

18 months ago the only Vault Enterprise feature was HSM integration. At the time, the price of Vault Enterprise would've sounded outrageous. Part of getting on the phone with people is us educating them what they're getting today, as well as making sure they understand why its priced so high: features that are coming. Today, Vault Enterprise has a dozen or more major differentiating features and its clear what the value is that you're getting.

We of course have a long roadmap of big features and improvements to continue making to Vault. But we're now selling Vault successfully at a price that will sustain the company and as we build more features we can put them in at the same price point and/or (both) successfully move features back into open source.

There is a 2nd aspect to this: reseller ecosystems. We're now building an ecosystem of reseller partners around the world. If we have resellers, we absolutely have to a fixed price list and it is also difficult to change that (up or down). We announced our reseller program in the early fall this year and as part of that we are now distributing price lists to resellers, but the program is growing at a controlled pace currently to continue testing the waters.

And finally there is a 3rd aspect to this: quickly calling us and buying. For our "Pro" tier (and sometimes but more rarely our "Enterprise" too), we close those deals on the phone in less than an hour and we do a LOT of these. For deals happening that fast, you can be assured there is no negotiation play going on. Our inside sales folks on those calls are reading from a fixed price sheet.

Publishing pricing is a bit of a lose-lose scenario early on: if you price too low, you can almost never raise prices (especially significantly) without a big backslash. If you price too high, you get a lot of immediate backlash and complaints. We probably would've fallen into this latter tier initially.

We also made an important split earlier this year by splitting into both a Pro and an Enterprise tier. We recognized two distinct use cases and we wanted to appeal to the former (Pro) without the extra cost of the latter, since the value wasn't there for them since they'd be paying for features that really were under a completely different use case.

Of course, pricing is different for anyone and we'll always have people that balk at various price points so I definitely won't claim we'll please everyone.

To answer your question directly, finally: we only have public pricing for our Vagrant products (the plugin and Vagrant Cloud). We're close to publishing pricing for Vault. But I hope you can see from the above the challenges we've been working through and that we have been working towards that. And finally, again, I appreciate the question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I get why some people are upset about a lot of the features being for enterprise. Vault gets a lot of love from the community, and their GitHub boasts 369 contributors currently, so it can be disappointing to see bits siloed off.

But, in the end, they're a company and need to make some money. I think it's fine to do this with certain features to encourage companies to support software that can be integral to their infrastructure.

A little breakdown of free vs beyond-average-developer-reach here (this is an assumption from the 'Enterprise' moniker for a security product, lack of pricing page, and no mid-level tier; I do not know their pricing):

A breakdown * Identity (included) - Free; useful for non-enterprise. Agree here.

* Seal Wrap (enterprise) - FIPS-2 from HSM and FIPS-compliant cloud, with evaluation to meet regulatory compliance. Much more useful for enterprise. I consider this safe to be considered an Enterprise feature.

* Control Groups (enterprise) - Allows use of approval workflow in access policies, requiring multiple party consent for access to individual secrets. This classification is somewhat dicey, in that it seems fairly core to what gave it a lot early attention (sharded seal/unseal keys - require x of n pieces of a key to unlock). And yet.. if you have an organization which requires 'bob' to ask both 'alice' and 'jane' whether they can see the database password for 10 minutes, you probably run a business or at least have a budget. Workflow customization is usually a great spot to put that pesky Enterprise label. In the end I agree its worth siloing.

* Sentinel integration (enterprise) - Integration with other Enterprise product. Agree here.

* Vault UI (enterprise) - Web interface to manage vault clusters. I disagree here. If we need to tier it, that's fine. Maybe even make it closed-source if that reduces the development overhead (though, I dunno, with 369 contributors I think they would benefit from it being partially open). Require enterprise license to enable enterprise feature. Hide them from users unless they are enterprise. Let anyone use it for non-enterprise features. You throw away one of the benefits of open source by making this closed, namely that if it's open then you make it more accessible to people. People who use the open source version are a lot more likely to advocate for the enterprise version.

* Cloud Auto-Unseal (enterprise) - On the fence on this one. Plenty of people would use this if it was available, I think, because cloud HSM are a lot more accessible than your hardware HSM. But I don't know that anyone would legitimately pay money for this if they weren't a business. It's kind of a 'nice to have' as non-enterprise user. Meanwhile business will definitely pay for this. I am willing to side on 'enterprise' here a little.

So, that's it for the headlines. Only one non-enterprise headliner, but in the end I only really disagree with one decision, and have a couple ambivalents.

Some of the other, more interesting (because people can actually use it) stuff, that is mostly free, is in the 'Other features' item at the end. Kubernetes Auth backend, RSA for transit backend (though I'm not sure of the benefit of this over other types of keys), Google IAM auth backend, etc.

All that said, I don't know if they will really see a lot more traffic for their blogs on social media if we keep seeing see a bunch of enterprise- focused release announcements with most of the regular work pushed to a changelog linked at the end.</comment>


The Turds Who Voted to Sell Out Your Online Privacy Get Their Faces Plastered - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/the-turds-that-voted-to-sell-out-your-online-privacy-ge-1794899911 <comment><USER2> Off topic, but such a crass title makes me instantly disinterested in whatever the article has to say, even if I'm likely to agree with its content.

Is this really the new normal for websites ?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Immaturity isn't something to strive for, or be proud of. It's something I've seen far too much of in recent years of politics.

<comment><USER4> I'm British and I think that swearing enriches language when used judiciously.

Also - expressing emotion and anger is valuable when the situation calls for it. Personally I would have considered something stronger than 'turd' in this case.

Oh. Here's Hitchens saying "Fuck" a lot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO129-RfhVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO129-RfhVE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1fmWVECUI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1fmWVECUI4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_dgqy6l4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_dgqy6l4k)

<comment><USER5> Hitchens was inexhaustibly eloquent and grandiloquent; his skill at using expletives for emphasis in service to his message reflected his mastery of the language.

Gawker (and all of its puerile clickbait spawn) is no Chris Hitchens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title from the people who actually did the campaign is a little more morning coffee friendly[1]. If you get as upset as I do every time you see a story like this why not head over and donate today?

[1][https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2017-05-03-crowdfunde...](https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2017-05-03-crowdfunded- billboards-appear-in-districts-of/)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are two sides to the 'value' equation here. The telecoms can now sell your data, but that also means that somebody needs to be buying it on the other end.

This campaign does a great job of calling out Senators who sold out their voters.

I'd like to see us also call out the companies that buy the data from the telecoms. Just because it is legal, doesn't mean it is right. I'm not sure how one would track down who purchased the data, but if a billboard said "X bought your data without your consent", would shaming the purchaser also be a possibility?

<comment><USER8> No they can't. It Has been illegal for nearly a century and it id still is illegal to sell telecommunication customers' data. Congress just reversed the FCC rules from October. It has to do with an government agency overstepping their authority and nothing to do with privacy.

Anybody who says otherwise is lying or ignorant of the law regarding CPNI.

[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2015-title47-vol3/pdf/CFR-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2015-title47-vol3/pdf/CFR-2015-title47-vol3-part64-subpartU.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Either you're misunderstanding the impact of the change, or the ACLU, the EFF, and a number of reputable news organizations are misunderstanding it.

ACLU: [https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-congressional-move- al...](https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-congressional-move-allow- internet-providers-sell-consumer-data-without-permission)

EFF: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/five-creepy-things- you...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/five-creepy-things-your-isp- could-do-if-congress-repeals-fccs-privacy-protections)

The Guardian: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/28/internet-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/28/internet- service-providers-sell-browsing-history-house-vote)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain what "selling web browsing and app usage data" really means?

I don't imagine they literally package sensitive information and distribute it to anyone who pays. In which case, "they sell your data" is completely misleading.

<comment><USER11> > * I don't imagine they literally package sensitive information and > distribute it to anyone who pays.*

Why on earth don't you imagine that? On this website alone, there are quite literally stories every week about various companies doing that exact thing.

E.g.: [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/04/23/heartbreaking](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/04/23/heartbreaking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it possible to organise something like this in the UK? I would donate readily.

</comment><comment><USER13> And nothing changes.

They were unrecognizable nobodies before, and now they are unrecognizable nobodies with more money. They will become unrecognizable nobodies again, next week, or next month, or next year, and move right along with the rest of their lives.

Conceptually, this is how legislation works. You start with politicians no one cares about, and you end with politicians no one cares about selling you out, because most of what they do is boring.

<comment><USER14> Here is the full list:

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc- isp...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web- browsing-privacy-fire-sale)

If you see your Congress people on the list you should help replace them with moderates in their primaries and call them more during the year.

Everyone needs to get to know their Congress. Even if they aren't on the list, find out who they are and how to contact them. You only have 3 of them! 2 statewide senators and your house rep. Just 3!

<comment><USER15> My state does not have open primaries, and my rep tore his fax machine out of the wall to keep ResistBot from using it. Some of these people are like cockroaches. They scuttle into the closest hiding spot whenever the lights come on. Then they're back to crawling all over your food the instant the public gets distracted again.

And they can get away with it, thanks to safe districts.

What we need to focus on is purely algorithmic redistricting for 2020, and approval voting for all ballots. Gerrymandering and FPTP voting are deliberate impediments to political competition that must be removed if meaningful change is to occur.

Your voice will not be heard on net neutrality if your rep doesn't have to listen to you. Your voice will not be heard on data privacy if your rep does not have to listen to you. Your voice will not be heard on allowing local municipal broadband systems if your rep does not have to listen to you. Your voice will not be heard on _anything_ so long as your rep can safely ignore you term after term after term.

So you really need to worry about your state legislature now, so you can abolish gerrymandering before 2020, and possibly also get rid of first-past- the-post voting.</comment></comment></comment>


Turn 10 micro sd cards into a sata ssd drive - <AUTHOR> https://the-gadgeteer.com/2016/03/17/turn-10-micro-sd-cards-into-a-sata-ssd-drive/ <comment><USER2> I (and I am sure others) have implemented RAID on top of multiple USB sticks on a USB hub. But the documents online which describe how to do this all seem to say _" don't do this"_ For the same reason: when it breaks, its horrid. unlike devices designed to be ganged up, removables have pretty bad failure modes. I would hope the micro-SD has better ones, but I am unsure.

The device looks like its maybe designed for fast parallel programming/writing to cards.

<comment><USER3> Surely seek times on this are atrocious though? (Even considering that the reads/writes are being striped).

That they're both flash storage does not mean they're interchangeable at like capacities, and I'd expect this to be slow and prone to constant errors. I don't think it's a fun if impractical hack, though.

<comment><USER3> *do think.

Too late for me to edit the above.</comment></comment></comment>


Gene-Test Fraud Billed $2.1B to U.S. Medicare Program - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-27/gene-test-fraud-billed-2-1-billion-to-u-s-medicare-program <comment><USER2> I wish there was more info such as what specifically the tests for. I know a lot of genomic tests do a crazy high number of reads for specific regions, and that's quite specific to a disease and/or prognosis.</comment>


Alfred 2 Workflows - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zenorocha/alfred-workflows <comment><USER2> I really wish that this could be ported to Windows or Linux. I haven't heard much from the developer about that when asked; but it seems like a far fetched goal right now.

Does anyone have suggestions for Windows that aren't Launchy (or, Launchy addons/improvements to use)?

<comment><USER3> You can try mine [http://emmanuelcaradec.com/qatapult](http://emmanuelcaradec.com/qatapult) which is more of a replacement for Quicksilver than for Alfred.

It's a bit on hold for the moment but you can extend it in javascript and build new skins as well.

It's definitively not as polished as Alfred and there are a few things that are broken like catalogs.

Before that I used FARR which I like better than Launchy and is more like Alfred ihmo, it has a ton of options and can trigger some plugins on regex matchs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've just realised something, although I love Alfred and bought a licence and cant work without it, I neglect almost all of its features. My main use for Alfred? App switching. I find it faster and more reliable that cmd+tab.

<comment><USER5> I love Alfred and use it all the time, often for app-switching, but I also use Witch [1]. Big time-saver, especially for referring for documentation. Killer feature is switching between windows in the same application, something that is woefully impossible using the native OS X app switcher (something vanilla Windows has over vanilla OS X, hands-down).

[1]:[http://manytricks.com/witch/](http://manytricks.com/witch/)

<comment><USER6> You can use Cmd+~ to switch between application windows if they're in the same desktop.

<comment><USER7> Technically that cycles through the windows, meaning they all get active and visible at some point. something you can avoid with Witch...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having originally been a Quicksilver user back in the day (ah.... Quicksilver) I jumped to Launchbar when QS started to become more and more unreliable (I'm aware that it has recently rearisen, like a phoenix, from the ashes).

But the workflow aspect of Alfred 2 is quite appealing, I should probably give it a shot for a while.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is a nice bundle indeed. One workflow I found is missing, though, is Dev Doctor: [http://wemakeawesomesh.it/alfred-dev- doctor](http://wemakeawesomesh.it/alfred-dev-doctor)

Easy to use, quick access to several languages (python, ruby, js, clojure) base documentation.

<comment><USER10> Agreed I love dev doctor, it's indispensably useful! I use it all the time.

Disclosure: personal friend wrote dev doctor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you use Alfred, go to Alfred Preferences and click Usage, you'll see:

"Since 26 Mar, 2013, @alfredapp has been used 72,034 times. Average 393.6 times per day."

[http://cl.ly/image/1L1S1a2B1R3M](http://cl.ly/image/1L1S1a2B1R3M)

<comment><USER12> Hot damn, you blew me away:

        Since 30 Oct, 2012, @alfredapp has been used 3,492 times. Average 10.5 times per day

<comment><USER11> I don't know what happened to my earlier stats, maybe v1's stats was lost. But I think I was consistently 200+ or 300+ a day once I gotten used to using it. Works incredibly well as a task switcher once you map a few key single characters to apps (like v/vMacVim, x/Xcode, i/iTerm, s/Safari, c/Chrome etc).

<comment><USER13> How are you doing this? A simple hotkey, or … ?

<comment><USER11> Just the hotkey for Alfred. I use Cmd-space. No app-specific shortcut. But after you press a key in the search bar, you can press alt-1 etc to make your selection. Repeat it a few times for the same key and the order of the results will be updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool! I've been a long time Alfred user but hadn't upgraded to the power pack before. This finally convinced me. I just put together my first workflow (ip details - info at [http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/3157-ipinfo-workflow- ip-add...](http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/3157-ipinfo-workflow-ip-address- geolocation-hostname-network-provider/)). It's really simple to do and very flexible. I can see myself building more and more of these and them becoming a regular part of my "workflow".

</comment><comment><USER15> Plenty more workflows at the actual site [http://www.alfredforum.com/forum/3-share-your- workflows/](http://www.alfredforum.com/forum/3-share-your-workflows/)

</comment><comment><USER16> There seem to be a lot of workflows made by @willfarrell

Developer Workflows: [https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred- workflows](https://github.com/willfarrell/alfred-workflows)

</comment><comment><USER17> Alfred is awesome. I often use it for opening browser workflows and launching quick scripts to do things like open specific JIRA tickets.

<comment><USER18> Mind sharing the JIRA one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think Alfred has good design, but which of these couldn't be done with a properly configured terminal?

<comment><USER20> Not many, but the point is you don't need to call up a terminal window. There are various 'visor' implementations of terminals, but they annoy the crap out of me. I much prefer being able to invoke Alfred and doing short one-liners from it

<comment><USER21> I am the exact opposite, I prefer to do all these sorts of tasks in a 'visor' terminal and leave Alfred as little more than a pretty app launcher. Different strokes etc...

<comment><USER22> Same here. I love Alfred but I often forget it's even around because of my visor terminal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> i couldn't live without the dash workflow.

<comment><USER24> Why is that more useful than having a shortcut for Dash?

I've always just used the shortcut and searched in Dash. Although, I do tend to stick to mostly one set of documentation.

<comment><USER23> usually just seeing the autocomplete on the alfred input answers my question :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> is there anything similar for ubuntu?

<comment><USER26> [http://cooperteam.net/](http://cooperteam.net/)

<comment><USER27> GNOME Do has not had a release since 2009.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Also the most comprehensive collection of Alfred Workflow:

[http://www.AlfredWorkflow.com/](http://www.AlfredWorkflow.com/)

You can find any exist workflows by input keyword like `wf google`.

Github repo:(New workflow can be submitted & shared)

[https://github.com/hzlzh/AlfredWorkflow.com](https://github.com/hzlzh/AlfredWorkflow.com)</comment>


The best pieces of advice for successful startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.aleydasolis.com/blog/resource-list/the-best-pieces-of-advice-for-successful-startups/ <comment><USER2> Mirror?

<http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.aleydasolis.com> :(</comment>


Dota2 Test is available on steam for linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.dota2.com/thebetaisover/ Dota2, the game that has the most user on steam now available from linux. The page says it will be out for mac and linux clients soon but the beta version can be accessible from steam on linux. <comment><USER2> It is awesome that it is for Linux but I had at the gameplay on YouTube and I really don't care for such (boring) games.

<comment><USER3> Different strokes for different folks, but the gameplay always seems exciting to me because it's always human teams vs human teams. The number of hero combinations and play style variance keep things interesting, IMO.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I build apps with APIs? - <AUTHOR>

This is the one part of Web Development so far that has me completely stumped me.
For example I go to the API section of a site. I see the url that I need to use and the parameters. I play around with it a bit in my address bar and I get the data I want. Great! But how do I take this information and build something out of it then render in html/css?
I have tried looking up tutorials and things but there seems to many different ways to go about this and it confuses me even more. <comment><USER2> You use whatever language you want to send an HTTP request with the parameters you want, get the data back, parse it, fiddle with it into the format you want and output the HTML. Or put it in a database for retrieval later. Or whatever you want.

There are two distinct processes for you to implement. One is retrieving the info. Another is outputting it to your users. The simple case, albeit the slowest, is where you combine the two so that retrieving the data is done at the same time as outputting it. Or you can keep them separate by using a timer or something like cron to retrieve the info and storing it.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Tips on Learning to Code? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Studies of college students learning CS showed that students who built a consistent mental model of what the code was doing did considerably better in classes.

To that end when I was teaching students I would print out snippets of code and have them evaluate the code in their head/on paper and then have them run the code to see if there was anything wrong. Repeat this process until your mental model matches what the computer does.

<comment><USER3> Totally, 100% agree with this. I would even take it one step further, and say that there are really good tools for developing this mental model nowadays. I didn't really feel like I understood what code was doing until I used tools like chrome devtools, pythontutor.com, or algodaily.com to visualize and step through iteration. It's helpful to know what's happening at each line with the call stack, variables, references, etc. -- but it can be intimidating to start. Drawing it out on paper first might be a better way to begin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you had all the skills you needed, what program would you write? What problem would it solve?

Now start writing that program and pick up the skills to solve little pieces of the big problem you want to solve.

Does your program need to fetch something from the Internet? Learn to do that. Does it need to read a file? Learn to do that.

Break up the problem into small manageable pieces.

Learn git to version your code. Invest one day to learn how to commit and push your changes into GitHub or GitLab. It will save you a lot of time and will avoid breaking your heart by not losing your code.

If you have a language in mind, learn the syntax quickly and to do the most basic stuff, then get a cookbook that shows you how to do useful things, like reading or writing to a file, or sending something to a server. These will help you solve the little pieces of your problem.

Software can be useful to people. What do you want your program to help you with? Imagine you can do anything in a computer, find a problem you're passionate about, and set out to solve it. You'll be way ahead.

You can also do that when you pick an nth language. When I wanted to learn Python, I started to write a program that would allow you to send airtime (mobile money) from one SIM card to other SIM cards of different operators. You can't do that, but I essentially did impedance matching.

The service would expose n mobile numbers corresponding to n operators. You send money to the number from your same operator, and then send an SMS specifying the amounts and the recipients. The service then would use its own SIM cards for the target networks and send money.

Learning can be accelerated doing a real project.

 _Then_ you can refine your programming.

</comment><comment><USER5> Rule #1 of All Coding: Keep it simple. If it's not simple, simplify it.

Once you've got that rule down, pick a popular language (Python's good because you can ask questions and get answers), pick a simple program that'd be useful to you, and then figure out what you need to make it work. Then make it work, applying rule #1. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is hard to answer without any information on your motivation and prior knowledge.

You will sure have noticed that there are tons of free tutorials on the internet for all kinds of programming languages. If you're just curious about coding, pick one and go with it. If it doesn't suit your style of learning, pick another one.

This is the one that got me started: [http://aelinik.free.fr/c/](http://aelinik.free.fr/c/)

The setup part is a bit dated. For programming basic little C programs just visit: [https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compile_c99_online.php](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compile_c99_online.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sorry I was a little vague, but my only previous experience is from getting a couple coding apps and playing around with those for like an hour and a half...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm working on a set of basic projects with step by step walkthrough guides for beginners. I expect most people to do this alongside a more traditional course but some people do it first to get a "feel" for coding. It doesn't cover a lot of theory but you get to make a variety of things that show the potential of learning to code (and are hopefully fun).

If you take a look I'd be very interested to hear feedback.

[https://codewithrepl.it/python-projects-for- beginners.html](https://codewithrepl.it/python-projects-for-beginners.html) (still WIP website and not mobile resposive yet)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay when I finish, I'll try to get back to you lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CS50 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjqgP9dpD1k&list=PLhQjrBD2T3...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjqgP9dpD1k&list=PLhQjrBD2T381L3iZyDTxRwOBuUt6m1FnW&index=1)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've written an article for people who aren't developers, but are looking to pick up coding skills to apply to their domain.

It covers super practical stuff step-by-step, and links to the resources you need.

Making Coding Skills Useful as a Non-Developer: [https://code.likeagirl.io/making-coding-skills-useful-as- a-n...](https://code.likeagirl.io/making-coding-skills-useful-as-a-non- developer-1aa5649e175)

</comment><comment><USER10> Write code every day. Ive been programming for decades and I still write code every day.

</comment><comment><USER11> Think of something you want for yourself or to exist, and then build a simple version of it by researching each objective in simple terms, and you will learn by doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> keep the code simple. Writing code without thinking of its architecture is useless in the same way as dreaming about your desires without a plan of achieving them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Consider picking up a copy of Grokking Algorithms. It assumes no prior knowledge of programming and has lots of illustrations. Read it and implement the algorithms yourself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So I'm just kinda wondering if y'all have any tips, or if y'all want to recommend any websites, apps, or books.

<comment><USER14> I highly recommend FreeCodeCamp [https://www.freecodecamp.org/](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) Feel free to DM me on Twitter @_shakeel, I'm happy to give a more exhaustive list if you're interested!</comment></comment>


GitLab 7.3 released with performance improvements - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/22/gitlab-7-dot-3-released-with-performance-improvements/

<comment><USER2> Also see our WANdisco partnership announcement today, run git master-master and use GitLab. [https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/22/wandisco-integrates- gitl...](https://about.gitlab.com/2014/09/22/wandisco-integrates-gitlab- enterprise-edition-in-their-git-multisite-offering/)</comment>


From PHP to JavaScript with Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://blog.matters.tech/migrating-from-php-to-javascript-with-node-js-155534498b58 <comment><AUTHOR> Excellent article for anyone thinking of using Node.js to replace PHP. Does not address the staggeringly huge advantage PHP has for libraries.</comment>