Show HN: IOU – Split shared expenses - <AUTHOR> https://www.iou.ch <comment><USER2> I know it's been mentioned but Splitwise is an AMAZING app/webapp. I've used it with friends on vacation (uber rides, hotel/airbnb, dinners, etc), I've used it with roommates (electric bill, rent, etc), and now I use it with my boyfriend (rent, groceries, utilities, furniture, tools, etc).

I find it really helps me as I HATE talking about money and asking for it (even when I'm owed it). This way I never feel like I'm paying in more than he is and he doesn't feel like he is paying in more than me. Some months he "pays" his portion of the rent by just buying all the groceries or buying something else we both agreed on getting and it all evens out. Because of this we rarely have to actually settle up but when the balance gets out of wack by like $500 one of us will just venmo the other one and record it in splitwise.

<comment><USER3> I've used splitwise a few times for large group activities and really struggled with the UX every time.

The most frequent problem happens when people are slow to add their expenses. It's too easy to pay up before everything has been added, which means having to remember to log back in when that last straggler finally adds their items

The UI and integration with Venmo feel pretty clunky too

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For small apps like these, sign up is really a pain. That is why a friend and I have been working on a simplified version, which is mostly based on links so you can also easy share a tab: [https://grouptabs.net](https://grouptabs.net)

We also try to keep the interface very simple, and it works offline.

<comment><USER5> Wow, this looks great. Self-hostable but with an easy to use public instance, no app and a decent UI.

A few things I would really like to see added seem to already be in discussion, such as an "add to homescreen" option ([https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/146](https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/146), [https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/pull/143](https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/pull/143)) and a delete option ([https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/152](https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/152)).

I look forward to playing with!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Splitwise user here. Interface is clear and easy to use with most of the required functionality.

Personally I find the per-bill itemised expense part of Splitwise essential, being able to split a receipt into it's items and then charge particular participants for only certain items. Uploading images of receipts to each bill is also essential imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! We will be adding more features soon. The image upload of receipts will be coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feature wise Splitwise offers more, I also never thought Splitwise to be complicated at all.

<comment><USER8> Does Splitwise (or any app) support OCRing the receipt to visually split the bill?

Edit: I found [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astepanov....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astepanov.mobile.splitcheck) which works offline and does OCR from a photo

<comment><USER9> There's an app called Tab which does a pretty good job of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another great app for tracking expenses is Splid [1] – IMO much better than Splitwise, no accounts required, clean and beautiful UI. (I'm not affiliated with this app)

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=splid.teamturt...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=splid.teamturtle.com.splid)

<comment><USER11> iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splid-split-group- bills/id99...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splid-split-group- bills/id991473495?mt=8)

and the website (no web app ATM): splid.app

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it an actual problem without solution though, to be "simpler than Splitwise"? And is it actually perceptibly simpler? I find Splitwise rather easy to use and just functional enough to cover all usecases. From the first look this site does about the same stuff, no? The only significant difference I see is app vs website.

</comment><comment><USER13> Niche that you might want to target: splitting grocery delivery.

Why?

In the UK, it is common for grocers like Tesco, ASDA, or Sainsburys which offer grocery delivery to require a £40 minimum for an order. It is quite hard to hit that minimum with a week's worth of groceries and ordering groceries for longer than a week is less useful because meat & veg expires. Therefore, it would be nice to be able to split a grocery delivery with flatmates or with the flat across the hall. There is a coordination challenge here.

It would be nice if I could sign up for an account, my flatmate could sign up for an account, we could link our accounts and then we could add stuff to the same Tesco cart--with a record of who had ordered which groceries and who owes whom when someone hits the "thats enough groceries in the cart. please deliver" button.

<comment><USER14> In our office we use a shared takeaway system called Seamless. We each submit our order ahead of a cutoff time, pay, then when it arrives each container is individually named so you know what belongs to each person.

Something like this could be really good for shared grocery orders for flat shares, but ideally you'd have buy-in from the grocers, so that the bags are separated and there's no quibbling about who ordered what.

<comment><USER15> I always wondered why Instacart never took their Group Carts feature and made it more holistic.

Right now, Instacart lets you create shared "Group Carts" for their grocery delivery, which I use with my girlfriend. But, there's no payment splitting, ability for other people in the shared cart to add items after-the-fact, Instacart Express benefit sharing, or any sort of shared order management abilities.

If Instacart extended the "Group Carts" feature to actual "Group Orders", this would make situations like mine (and also those who use Instacart with roommates) much more convenient and would be similar to how you describe Seamless

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was actually looking for something simple like this for dividing expenses.

I suggest adding "Note" field on a "Item" that could be used for an extended description. The current "Description" field seems to be a single line, and is truncated on some of the views - it is really more of a "Title" than "Description".

<comment><USER17> I agree. A longer text field for describing expenses would be appreciated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok thanks I will add this to the backlog of features

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice... look slick... got some issues trying to add a item... it didn't want that i type in the amount

i also like [https://github.com/spiral- project/ihatemoney](https://github.com/spiral-project/ihatemoney) which is opensource and goes with a mobile app.

<comment><AUTHOR> what exactly did you try to type in for the amount? or what was the error?

<comment><USER18> No errors ...didnt type anything funky... Numbers ....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is a usefull functionality, as I have used splid several times.

My two recommendations: Don't forget the more seniors in terms uf usability. I think the flow should focus on adding expenses quickly on the first screen as you want to do this on the fly.

Secondly: as you are from Switzerland I proposed exactly that idea while I was working for post to postfinance to get 50k startcapital, but did not get it. I guess if you come with this UI and say youll build a interface to their payment system (twint 2Dbarcode) you might get some funding. Cheers

</comment><comment><USER20> I used SettleUp for a while, for writing down food expenses (small amounts, frequent, and different amounts per person)

It was such a hasslr that I decided to set up a transaction log (person A paid X for Person B for item Y) in Google sheets instead, which automatically tracks debts per combination of persons.

It's so much easier since I can parse and note down a receipt within one minute, compared to doing calculations in my head and writing the debts down in an App.

Edit: After giving splitwise a quick look, it also doesn't solve my grocery debts problem.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting solution. My coworker created a similar app that aims to reduce debt complexity over time for a group.

Ex. 1: Alice owes Bob $10. Bob owes Alice $5. So Alice really just owes Bob $5

Ex. 2: Alice owes Bob $10, Bob owes Charlie $5, and Charlie owes Alice $5. This can also be reduced such that Alice just owes Bob $5.

We use it to track who owes who and who is up next to buy lunch. [https://github.com/famish99/cuenta](https://github.com/famish99/cuenta)

</comment><comment><USER22> I implemented this feature in a shared flat context. The problem gets simplified as the users are all part of a group already and even the settlement happens without exchanging any money. Your share gets added to the monthly rent. Full write-up: [https://blog.simplyguest.com/flatmate- expenses.html](https://blog.simplyguest.com/flatmate-expenses.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Great work, I like the simplicity!

So far I have two issues with your solution:

1\. It doesn't accept my email address. Looks like the pattern is way too strict and doesn't allow any new TLDs.

2\. The use-case I most often see Splitwise used for is trips abroad with friends. In this situation, expenses are often recorded while no internet connection is available and synced later. I'm not sure if IOU supports this, I haven't tried it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

1\. Can you send an email to email@example.com so I can check you address and fix the bug? 2\. We will be building mobile apps as soon as possible with this functionality.

<comment><USER24> Please read up on present day email address validation. If you have a regex that is doing more than ^.+@.+$, then you are doing it wrong.

Don't validate the address beyond looking for an '@' in the string; just send an email with a confirmation link to see if it actually works.

<comment><USER25> I prefer the _true_ email validation regex: [https://regex101.com/r/iE0rF5/1](https://regex101.com/r/iE0rF5/1)

<comment><USER24> I feel bad for the developers who run into that monstrosity and actually implement it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is brilliant! I find Splitwise annoying...need yet another account, need to use an app or clunky web interface, etc.

This is perfect. Breath of fresh air. I will use it the next time I need it!

Lately I've been using a local app on my phone, which I find more reliable (no need for data or reliance on a website) but of course it doesn't allow for collaboration with others.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is pretty neat, I always create fairly complicated spreadsheets for trips with friends, however this covers most of the edge case.

One is does not though is adding and removing people. IE, you rent a house but you might squeeze two more people in at the last minute. Then you need to edit all previous ledger items to make their split even.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is exactly the functionality I have been looking for, in a minimal implementation. I love it!

When creating a participant, why require an email, though, instead of making it optional?

I'd wager that most people will use this on mobile, and therefore share this via WhatsApp or some other IM client. Adding an email then becomes a pointless burden.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! The email is optional when creating a participant. Try it!

<comment><USER28> Indeed, thanks. I saw that it was required on the pot creation page, and then assumed it was necessary for adding users, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Your home view is throwing a "No entry is registered for key user_country" on iOS webview, it's also spitting out a partial stack trace, you might want to consider not showing this to users in production environments, not sure how you do that with Zend but i would think it's trivial to configure

</comment><comment><USER30> I created an even simpler version of this optimized for mobile usage ("add to homescreen") for personal use a couple of years ago. Never dared to advertise it though. Initially used it to look into fancy front end tech, but quickly resorted to PHP, SQL and a bit of jQuery.

</comment><comment><USER20> Checking this app out I was immediately frustrated. Just switching between the tabs of a pot always takes like 500ms. The FAB immediately glitches because it's not sticking to the bottom of the screen immediately.

Also, clicking on the same tab again also causes annoying friction.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great tool! Love that it works without creating an account. Will keep this in my bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER31> Alternative to this is KittySplit. Similar concept, no registration required and web-based. [https://www.kittysplit.com/en/](https://www.kittysplit.com/en/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes KittySplit is similar but in my opinion the UI is too confusing to use.

<comment><USER32> Kittysplit founder here. Can you be more specific about what's confusing?

Would be great to get some feedback!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! To be honest Kittysplit is the best tool in terms of simplicity and accessibility...besides IOU ;) I believe the overview page of a kitty could be cleaned up much more. Using it the first time was not at all intuitive for me. We tried to cut it down to the most important features and hope that even my mom would understand to use it. But lets talk more...contact me on email@example.com if you want to!

<comment><USER32> OK :-D

Have you used Kittysplit recently? We updated the overview page 2 months ago.

Congrats on your mention on HN. I'll be in touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nice to use. Is it Open Source/Libre? If not, do you plan to do it?

</comment><comment><USER34> Funny! Made almost the exact same website a while ago: [http://moneter.pythonanywhere.com/](http://moneter.pythonanywhere.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> My goto for this has been shortreckonings.com, I also find splitwise overcomplicated. Will try this one out as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> It says "create a new pot". What is a pot?

Disclaimer: I have not had my morning caffeine yet.

</comment><comment><USER37> Some questions:

What is a pot?

When should I create multiple pots?

<comment><AUTHOR> A pot holds all expenses of a group. You create one pot for a trip with friends and another pot with your roommates. You can (but don't have to) create an account if you want to manage and access many different pots. Or you can just bookmark the url of the pot to access it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nice how you handle exchange rates. This is way too complicated on Splitwise.

</comment><comment><USER39> Very simple and easy to use. I like that I don't need a login.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice work

</comment><comment><USER41> I still prefer Splittr ([https://splittr.io/](https://splittr.io/))

\- Works offline \- Syncs with friends \- No registration needed \- All currencies supported \- PDF and CSV export \- It's FREE to download!</comment>


Firefox for Android no longer automatically downloads OpenH264 - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-openh264 <comment><USER2> >this plugin will no longer be available for new installations of Firefox on Android.

Saying something will no longer be automatically installed and saying it will no longer be available are two radically different things. Is this related to Mozilla's decision to slowly strip mobile Firefox of its ability to install extensions?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > If Firefox was installed on a device prior to version 68, OpenH264 will > continue to work.

Currently I am in this situation (ff for android already installed) but support for h264 it's missing nonetheless. Test here: [https://mozilla.github.io/webrtc- landing/pc_test_no_h264.htm...](https://mozilla.github.io/webrtc- landing/pc_test_no_h264.html)

Edit: typo</comment>


Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science (MIT Course 6.893) - <AUTHOR> http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/fa11/6.893/index.html

<comment><USER2> Looks really interesting, but seems limited (maybe wisely) to analytic philosophy.

There is a whole strain of work from the 80s that was partly inspired by Heidegger and phenomenology AND the realization that some classical AI problems were computationally intractable. This work was controversial, to say the least, but influential in its way. I'd suggest that any course on this topic ought to at least touch on this work.

[http://mit.dspace.org/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6947/AITR-802....](http://mit.dspace.org/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6947/AITR-802.pdf)

<http://leidlmair.at/doc/WhyHeideggerianAIFailed.pdf>

<comment><USER3> I can see why the Dreyfus article would be controversial, but so far (first ten pages or so) I found it very enlightening.

This really struck a chord with me:

> What the learner acquires through experience is not _represented_ at all but > is _presented_ to the learner as more and more finely discriminated > situations, and, if the situation does not clearly solicit a single response > or if the response does not produce a satisfactory result, the learner is > led to further refine his discriminations, which, in turn, solicit more > refined responses.

Comparing that to the meaning of "learn" commonly used in ML to mean "finding optimal weights for some features" and you can see the gulf pretty starkly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also mentioned here: <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=755>

</comment><comment><USER5> It's days like these I wish I went to MIT. Here's to hoping this shows up on OpenCourseWare.

<comment><USER6> Looks like a no on that front: The professor has said in comments to his blog that he will not.

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=755#comment-27693>.

> Regarding recording, the main concern was that I didn't want to inhibit > open-ended discussion by recording everyone's umms, uhhs, and half-baked > thoughts for posterity. In addition, there didn't seem like a pressing need > for recording, since I've already essentially written a "course textbook" in > the form of my essay (<http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf>). But > as I said, we will have student reaction essays for each class session and > they will go up on the website.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: University business idea competitions? - <AUTHOR>

There's a "business idea competition" sponsored by my university's business school.  Are these things worth participating in?<p>I'm a PhD student in another department and it seems like it wouldn't take that much effor for a chance to try and grab the big prize of $10,000. <comment><USER2> Can't hurt to participate, have entered something similar last two years. Hint though, find out who the Judges are, in our case they were mid-level managers at PWC, IBM other sponsors etc, really need to target their tastes if all you want is the money.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a friend/associate who judges those and he's sharp as hell w/ lots of experience. He also likes to be an introducer... May you have the same luck.

The only _possible_ negative would be that you are working on a business plan instead of a product.</comment>


ACTA (Secret Copyright) Negotiations, Day Two: What's On Tap - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4511/125/ <comment><USER2> (Sorry to be US-centric in this post)

I think one thing that people could already start doing is pushing their state legislatures to pass law or even amend state constitutions such that "3 strikes" provisions, lacking due process, are both unenforceable and prohibited in telecom service contract language.

The states that would actually do this are very much a minority, but given their strong states rights bent, I'm sure such places as Montana and New Hampshire would take up the banner with the right person leading the charge.

Who knows whether such legal defense in depth will actually work. Even if it doesn't, the ensuing debate would help expand mindshare on the issue.

<comment><USER3> The way to sell that is to say "The Japanese (i.e. Sony, so it's even true) want the power to imprison you for sharing music with your friends" and similar language. Tie it into American xenophobia and it'll fly like a lead balloon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> already written to complain to london's Members of the European Parliament. not sure what good it'll do - most of them are completely useless, the EP has been ignored on this very issue (ACTA) in the past, and they're only writing back to me to ask me for my mail address 'so they can write back to me' I don't want to hear back from them. I want to read about them standing up for my goddamn rights, in the papers or in the minutes of the EP if needs be. I don't care what they have to say to me on this issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> The more sunlight this kind of thing gets, the better.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't need sunlight, it needs to be dissolved in what the person was on this when he taught about that treaty: acid.

<comment><USER7> You are missing the point: this is not the brainchild of a "sick" mind. This is an ongoing (well, History...) collective push from a select few in position of power‹o›. Unless this gang is broken up (which is not even under discussion), there will be other incarnations this idea (and other similar ideas).

By criminalizing personal, non-commercial replication, they are in effect monopolizing the achievements of our culture to this day for their own profit to the detriment of the advancement of knowledge/culture. This is intentionally premeditated by the board members (real, physical persons without accountability and responsibility) of the Corporations behind ACTA, not just a random (fishing) trip.

<http://www.free-culture.cc/> (see Disney story)

‹o› Chomsky: Understanding Power</comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Gaming grew its streamer base by 343% in 2017, Twitch by 197% - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/25/youtube-gaming-grew-its-streamer-base-by-343-in-2017-twitch-by-197/ <comment><USER2> YouTube's gaming vertical is 3x bigger than Twitch by audience size, and 4-5x bigger by # of creators. That's primarily driven by on-demand viewing and the demographic differences between people who watch live (older, grew up w TV, watch passively) and people who watch VOD (younger, prefer to watch what and when they want, prefer personality-driven content, etc).

Twitch is big and buzzy because it was VC-backed and acquired, but YouTube dominates gaming media.</comment>


Blogs are harmful and we are learning wrongly - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/giongto35/blogs-are-harmful-and-we-are-learning-wrongly-19hl <comment><USER2> I couldn't agree more.

The author also (wittingly or unwittingly) gets in a worthwhile criticism of the totally rote titles and topics that feature prominently on most of the blogs I come across.

Personally I'm far more partial to reading some published texts on any given topic before I wade into the jargon-laden shop-talk between bragging or propagandists.

And once I do... to be perfectly frank, I wish I hadn't. The hypertext-based topic-entered websites and forums of Web 1.0 were a far superior medium for disseminating and discussing any kind of topic, to be perfectly honest.

</comment><comment><USER3> hard to take this seriously with all the spelling/grammar errors

also it's a blog post advising against reading blog posts

<comment><USER2> I'm a grammar nazi and a stickler for form, but it's pretty obvious the author deserves a pass for being a not being a native English speaker.

As for making a blog post decrying blog posts, I'd say the message is not the medium and ask you how you suggest he divulge is (noteworthy) message.</comment></comment>


System76's Lemur Pro: A powerful, ultralight OEM Linux laptop - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/system76s-lemur-pro-a-powerful-ultralight-oem-linux-laptop/ <comment><USER2> Is this hw capable of dual booting to macos too?</comment>


Excel-Based Automated Web Testing Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.webtesting.io

<comment><USER2> We are currently using and enhancing testx. This does use the advantage of Excel and protractor. It's open source and available on github : [https://github.com/greyarch/testx](https://github.com/greyarch/testx)

A library for executing MS Excel based, keyword driven tests with Protractor.

</comment><comment><USER3> Authoring JSON in Excel does not sound like a productivity booster. That's painful and defeats the purpose of using Excel because of its familiarity.

<comment><USER4> I think we underestimate the pervasive use of Excel in Fortune enterprise environment. I've seen people use Excel for the most ridiculous things. Excel is religion for some people.

This would be fantastic for automatic canned-testing that is run on regular basis, akin to quick diagnostic.

<comment><USER5> > I think we underestimate the pervasive use of Excel in Fortune enterprise > environment.

I'll vouch for that. However, I really wonder whether automated testing is something that needs to be in the hands of people who are more comfortable with Excel and less comfortable with, say, YAML?

Also, I'm not sure if it's the responsiveness of the website being tested that makes this so slow, but it takes a very long time for the tests to complete. Line up a couple hundred tests and you're looking at very long run times. That's going to inhibit adoption for anyone who knows how quickly headless browsers can complete integration tests.</comment></comment></comment>


Cognitive Biases - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

<comment><USER2> In case you're interested in reading previous discussion of this, here is a list of (some of) the previous submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7400532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7400532)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6851475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6851475) <\- 62 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6821326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6821326)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754697) <\- 17 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3121508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3121508)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2234878)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739868)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499925)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1106502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1106502)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312827) <\- 25 comments

There may be more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot. I have to say I didn't search first, I never thought (and never saw) it was discuss here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> how about Mind-body problem</comment>


Stop using Ajax! - <AUTHOR> http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/stop-using-ajax/

<comment><USER2> Every new technology will most likely break SOMETHING someplace. If it doesn't, it's probably not innovative enough. I agree with 95% of what you are saying, but at the same time, there has to be some way to move forward.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ajax often gets used when a page is so complex (possibly due to lots of ads) that reloading the whole thing would be too much work. In those cases, I wonder if maybe the problem could be solved instead by just making the page simpler...

<comment><USER4> Heresy!</comment></comment>


Update on Heml.is - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml-is/ <comment><USER2> So this pisses me off more than a little. I've had multiple ideas that would be good for crowdfunding projects but never executed on them because I never mapped out enough of what I would do with said money. It felt wrong to ask for money without a solid plan of how to move forward. Just saying "this sucks give me money to fix it, and oh yeah, I have no plan but money + no plan = success right?" felt wrong (and I think it IS wrong). Also losing 30K is not small amount of money and the fact it got a single sentence is really weird.

People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else, they played on emotions to raise a significant amount of money (whether or not that amount was enough to complete the project at hand does not matter) and have nothing to show for it. Sure "We have apps but they are bad so we don't want to release them" is "something" but by not OS'ing them or releasing them as-is they have effectively nothing that they delivered on.

If they realised they were in over their head at the start then they should have sat down and planned it out instead of throwing money at the problem till it is all gone. They should have turned around and refunded at least a partial amount of each pledge (sans fees/processing) once they realized this was beyond what they could do.

This "Give me money" and then "Yeah... about that money, it's all gone..." is akin to theft in my mind. If I pay into a crowdfunding campaign I am buying into the idea you sold me. If you didn't think through your idea all the way then that's your fault. It's little better than ponzi scheme with the difference being intent to defraud customers in my opinion...

Lastly I've seen some comments about how crowdfunding is not a certain thing and some things fail. I don't disagree but if a project goes silent then that's theft in my eyes, not just failing. If a refund is not possible then at a very least donate what is left to the EFF (publically) or similar because to keep that money is just dead wrong in my book.

<comment><USER3>
      People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else [..]

People like this will cause crowdfunding to mature. It would be good if we got to the point where you will only get funded if you first demonstrate you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. There's currently a lot of money going to doomed projects, initiated by people with only an idea. That money would be better spent on similar projects by people with a concrete plan and relevant skills and experience in addition to ideas.

It's not that people are malicious: they are just unprepared. Which is why many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into. At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning through free money hurts a lot less.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't you have a kickstarter where you only get part of a lump sum in the beginning for investments, and then minimum-wage for each employee each month? Keep the start-up lean and hungry and perhaps intrinsically motivated. I guess there's many problems and ideas that couldn't be funded this way but for those that can maybe they'd stand a higher chance of succeeding.

Even better was if you had a startup mentor that approved expenses.

<comment><USER5> I presume that the kind of people needed to do most of these things won't work for minimum wage. And, make no mistake, Kickstarter is mostly about _hiring_ people to do the things promised using the money, not about the people pitching the idea doing it themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Snowden, kickstarter, bitcoins within the first few paragraphs. I see where this is going...

 _scrolls to the bottom_

Yeah, thought so. It's amazing how you can raise more than $100k with this bullshit without having even basic qualifications to accomplish your plans. It's amazing how people fall for this kind of crap again and again. See also: Ritot watch, Arist coffeemaker and so on.

<comment><USER7> It is almost as if not every single project is a success.

<comment><USER6> It's almost as if you have project masterminded by "idea guys" without any regard for its technical, or even physical feasibility, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator to attract people with little experience in investing, it is likely to end up being either a scam or a total failure.

<comment><USER8> Which frankly is the same thing that many Silicon Valley startups do, except the investors have far more experience, yet still put money in.

Frankly investing is a risk, and if you aren't willing to take that risk then you shouldn't do it. Not every Silicon Valley startup is a success, not every Kickstarter is a success.

It's just how the game works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ow:( This may be the saddest thing I read in a long time. I'm a very active person online (more than 10 hours/day) and have many friends in many countries that I communicate with on daily basis. Aside from Email, due to privacy concerns, I avoided any messaging platform (whether on FB, TW, Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, and any other platform) since 2003. I was eagerly waiting for the moment to introduce Hemlis to all my friends who have been complaining about my presence in online messaging platforms for more than a decade! Some of the issues you raised for the closure are very valid while I believe this project was more than just a secure messaging app. Its about an extremely respectable group of people (with spectacular track record on creating a better, open and free internet for everybody on this planet) start to work another project for the same better internet for all idea. I'm absolutely sure you all have thought about these points for a long time and all I want to say is even though I'm extremely disappointed, I will be the first one to support you on any other project that you guys are a part of (I really hope there is one soon) and I'm sure you did your best to prevent this from happening. Good luck to all of you:) Amir

<comment><USER10> Why are you not using Signal / Textsecure or any other of these new apps which have privacy in mind. IIRC they even said Hemlis won't be open source according to their FAQ so I don't think these 3 guys would've pulled this off any better than Telegram even with their dubious encryption.

<comment><USER9> I can use these apps but in order to be able to recommend it to my friends as an app that can replace Whatsapp or Viber, it should have a comparable UI/UX. I too was concerned about their source availability approach. What will you suggest that meets these criteria?

<comment><USER10> I'd suggest WhisperSystem's Signal [0], it's currently available on iOS and Android [1] and open source [2].

[0] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/signal- iphones...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/02/signal-iphones- encrypted-messaging-app-now-supports-text/)

[1] [https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/)

[2] [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal- iOS](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually forgot I contributed to this.

Pretty disappointing, but it sounds like a totally reasonable series of events so I don't have hard feelings.

Signal / Textsecure are great apps, so I'd look to that if you're looking for security.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Just think – verification by SMS for all of the potential users would be millions of dollars even at a few cents per SMS."

What? They received $147,210 from 10074 backers, even if every SMS sent costs you $0.04 (pricing from twilio for my country) you can send 50 millon before it's costing you "millions of dollars".

Do you really think that 10k backers is going to translate into whatsapp-scale from launch?

Maybe try blaming it on server prices next, because the thousands of servers you will surely need are going to cost you millions too.

</comment><comment><USER13> "I personally had other issues as I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with another project – The Pirate Bay. In the middle of the kidnapping, my father died."

Ouch... sincere condolences.

P.S.: I contributed and i understand your reasons to let it go. Fine with me. At least you tried, which is someting most of "us" don't even do.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bitcoin wallet stolen. Isn't this gambling with the money of the people that funded?

<comment><USER15> I wonder how the heck it happened... How can we expect someone to build a secure messaging system if they can't even secure their bitcoins?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i feel like a secure messaging app should be OS in the first place though ?! textsecture / smssecure has been walking a slow and steady pace forward for years now, to me it seems like a project with vision/smart people that is worth putting resources into in wake of this one dying, if the product is something you are interested and believe in.

<comment><USER17> There's no excuse not to open source an app if it's privacy oriented. It's not enough to open source the part that does the crypto either, because how do you know it isn't accidentally logging plaintext data to a file somewhere before the crypto happens?

There are other ways to do lock-in besides closed-source clients. If it has "private" or "crypto" anywhere in the title, it _needs_ to be open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope they at least open whatever source code exists.

<comment><USER19> They will according to the comments section [http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment-1957)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those asking/wishing for open source, according to the comments section[1] they will.

"We'll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] [http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment-1957)

[Sorry for the multiple comment replies, I realized a top-comment might be better]

</comment><comment><USER20> They could at least open source the code that has been made as part of the project.

<comment><USER19> They will according to the comment section[1]

"We'll release the usable parts of the code as free software with the most free license we can. It belongs to the community (and the community paid for it)."

[1] [http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment...](http://blog.brokep.com/2015/04/22/update-on-heml- is/#comment-1957)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a similar project I'm working on, and have thought about going after crowdfunding, but decided not to. It came down to a) not having any mentionable competitors in the space and b) not wanting to be one of those people who takes other people's money and ends up wasting it. So I am still working on it, as a side project, a few years later. Sometimes I wish I could devote myself full-time, but providing an open-source privacy app for the fun of it and for its own utility without thinking about paying the bills has made the project a lot more inspiring for me. I don't have to think about the bottom line, just "what would be useful to build next?"

This is what people did before crowdfunding. Maybe we all don't need $100K just to start and publish something useful.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I got kidnapped by the swedish government and locked up for my work with > another project – The Pirate Bay.

That's called "being arrested for breaking the law."

</comment><comment><USER22> So, whats to say that they didn't take the 100 000 USD and gave to themselves the first day and barely haven't cared about Hemlis since then?

<comment><USER23> It seems like it would be better if crowdfunding sites didn't give you the entire lump-sum up front but instead gave it to you incrementally as you completed pre-defined milestones.

So if you have 8 milestones you get 1/8 of the money up-front and then each time you achieve a milestone. If you take twice as long to achieve that first milestone and run out of your initial payment.... welp then you have to go back to the community and ask to renegotiate the arrangement.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a solid plan. The backers could be given the option to vote if a certain milestone is met or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a very sad news, I was checking their website on a regular basis for updates...oh well at least they are honest instead of delivering an incomplete product with missing features. Hopefully someone else will take over or create something new with the same vision.</comment>


Binance has been hacked for 7k Bitcoin ($40m) - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/6930/binance-hack-security-breach <comment><USER2> Interesting. Binance has been putting a lot of focus on building a platform, with their Labs and Binance Coin. Hopefully those haven't become distractions away from their core offering as an exchange.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like I just heard about this company a week or two ago. Did it seem to appear out of nowhere to people more tuned in to the e-currency world?

<comment><USER2> No, Binance has been the leading BTC exchange in China for quite a while! Maybe you heard of them because of their Binance Coin announcement. It went pretty far, pretty fast in terms of volume.

<comment><USER4> They were in HK and now in Malta.</comment></comment></comment>


Spreadsheet Programming with User Defined Types and Functions (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/dts/students/williams/report.pdf <comment><USER2> I read the whole thesis, because on Saturdays I read papers, thats just how I roll. He does a great job identifying the problems (especially in finance) but his only source referencing Prior Work is Endnote #7 and that's an Excel resource.

This is why learning the history of your field is so important. Lotus Improv(1) was the "power-users" 1-2-3 (god I'm dating myself, aren't I). Lotus Improv essentially what this gentleman mentioned (it semantically separated the segment UDTs&UDF's) except in a cleaner fashion.

Let's examine that screenshot Lotus Improv screenshot briefly and allow me to espose its structural advantages over a traditional spreadsheet-

RE: Share - Worksheet - Untitled 2 - You have your traditional values of the cells in the primary pane. The selected cell is in grey. The derived value is in the cell. The expression evaluated to generate that value is in the bottom pane.

\- An important thing to note is that there is an inherent hierarchy to your data (is-a, not has-a, sadly), which makes aggregate analysis easy right out of the box. No need to move into a OLAP star-or-snowflake schema BI platform. (This structure is displayed in the 3 rows of the bottom pane of the [Right Window])

\- In "Untitled 2" to the [Left-bottom], you have annotations so you're somewhat self-documenting.

Joel Spolsky had an hour long talk on Excel to more or less use excel "right" (2) which is worth a watch, certainly, as the world is stuck in Excel. But for the most part it's constructing hacks around fundamental problems that exist in the platform. (I.e., according to his best practice methodology, you have to leave a r+1,r-1,c+1,c-1 border around all of your data. That should never, ever be required.)

It's been years since I've used Lotus Improv, so forgive me if I'm forgetting the terminology. Laudable work for an undergraduate, but it always reminds me of the old adage - those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. ;)

(1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lotus_Improv_screenshot,_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lotus_Improv_screenshot,_NeXTSTEP_version.jpg)

(2) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

<comment><USER3> > This is why learning the history of your field is so important.

Alan Kay keeps stressing this point and how many regard computing as pop culture.

I agree, when one delves into the history of computing, programming language research and OS design, there are dozen of pearls waiting to be brought to life again.

We could be so much more advanced, if many startups took the time to research our history instead of poorly reinventing the wheel.

<comment><USER4> Findability and access is also an issue. The _old_ papers are still locked up behind an ACM and IEEE paywall. Only those lucky enough to have a campus wide access policy can search and even then, the search interfaces are slow and or horribly broken.

Maybe with virtualization, containerization, etc we can archive executable environments that people can still play with in 20 years. The sands of time are brutal to papers, code, executables and people.

<comment><USER3> I used to pay for ACM Membership, why does everything need to available for free?

Also anyone that goes paper hunting and doesn't want to pay, can with some effort, also find drafts of most papers.

That is the biggest problem and it wouldn't change if ACM and IEEE were free.

People need to be _willing to search_ for them.

<comment><USER4> I also used to pay for ACM Membership and I would often get banned for "excessive search activity". Semantic scholar, arxiv and citeseer are 10x better than the ACM. The ACM archive is total mess, bad search, slow access, no annotation. Looks like the same broken cold fusion site from the 90s. It is a chicken and the egg problem, making search better will encourage and enable more people to find untapped knowledge. The ACM could open up every paper older than 1990 and not have it effect their bottom line. So many other income streams than the library of old papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on iheartmemchache's post I read the paper too. I wasn't as excited about the project. There are similar things out there. One is Pyspread (which is referenced) that allows the functions to be written in Python (vs Basic). One of the engineers used this to do some pretty amazing analysis that would have well exceeded the capabilities.

The issue with the paper is it tries to shoehorn in functional programing into the spreadsheet paradigm. Being able to break out is pretty important to make the user experience worthwhile.

I also remember Improv, it was a great application and I used it a great deal. Borland did some extensions of their ideas in Quattro and I preferred their improved interface.

All of this is a long way too get around to iheartmemchache's point, there is a lot of history out there and doing some more indepth research may get you to a better solution.

<comment><USER6> > There are similar things out there. One is Pyspread (which is referenced) > that allows the functions to be written in Python (vs Basic). One of the > engineers used this to do some pretty amazing analysis that would have well > exceeded the capabilities.

A little known feature of LibreOffice is that the whole suite, including Calc, is scriptable with Python. It is not super convenient or user-friendly now, but with some love from developers it could become quite powerful tool.

<comment><USER5> Didn't know that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found the repo: [https://github.com/jackhmwilliams/jeksy](https://github.com/jackhmwilliams/jeksy)

Sadly, it looks abandoned...

</comment><comment><USER8> Related: [http://www.alphasheets.com](http://www.alphasheets.com)

<comment><USER5> Very, very spiffy.</comment></comment>


Crash Test: 1959 vs 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/7fYQaOc

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's fantastic. That is true, measurable technical progress. Go engineers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see this with a car vs. a tree (models from the same years).</comment>


Perkins Loan program used by 1,000 area college students lapses - <AUTHOR> http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/new-york/2015/10/12/loan-program-used-area-college-students-lapses/73846122/ <comment> bro-stick University education in the US is overpriced and over-commoditized.

The inane mantra of education always equivocates to "better," when it doesn't consider skills employers need nor fostering critical thinking or curiosity, cramming rote memorization and inaccurate Pearson slides down students' throats... It's too commercial.

Granted the good, small universities (i.e., Amherst) are still overpriced compared to other countries which greatly subsidize their students, but at least there is value compared to large, anonymous campuses which are primarily focused on churning out sheepskins as cheaply as possible.

See also: the math lecturer at UCB (a large campus) whom seemed to be fired by teaching too well, when the dept wanted low-quality, high-volume "McTeaching."</comment>


Show HN: School for Me – Find the best education for your child - <AUTHOR> https://projects.jamonek.com/ios/school-for-me <comment><AUTHOR> An update is already in progress to fix bugs we've noticed.</comment>


You're free to go home - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnon.com/744/try-or-stay-home.html

<comment><USER2> I miss racquetball. Good post!</comment>


Ask HN: Building an "event" site / vertical social network - <AUTHOR> I am an Artist first and then an Entrepreneur.  I can do a lot of stuff on Wordpress and some on Drupal, but that's just about it.
I have secured a good domain name for Art Openings and I want to put together a site where gallery owners and Museums could post their own events and openings.  At first I might have to see it myself and I am OK with it.
Is there a WP theme that I can use? Premium is fine.
Or a plugin? Premium is fine.
Or Drupal?
Or . . a wiki?
Or maybe I could do a vertical social network using  NING or Discourse?
Needs not to be perfect, just needs to validate MVP.
Thank you for any and all suggestions. <comment><USER2> Anything but Drupal. A good start, if your not a developer, and don't plan on building a custom solution from the ground up, start with: [https://theeventscalendar.com/](https://theeventscalendar.com/)</comment>


Paperclip - <AUTHOR> http://ninjasandrobots.com/paperclip <comment><USER2> +1 Awesome Story. Best wishes to Chris for his endeavors.

I'm also wondering - are there any platform where people expose their ideas and solicit help from tech community?</comment>


"I Exist" - <AUTHOR> https://secondbreakfast.co/i-exist <comment><USER2> and other people write blogs. you exist, secondbreakfast. you exist. i read your post, therefore i exist too.

<comment><AUTHOR> The validation I needed</comment></comment>


Random Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.skrenta.com/hn/

<comment><AUTHOR> The other day I "ran out" of stuff to read on Hacker News. I had looked at everything that interested me, and had even checked out page 2 (I was getting desperate).

I realized that there were thousands of great HN threads that I hadn't seen because I hadn't been paying attention to the site when they were ranking.

So I pulled together a little db of the top 10,000 HN threads (loosely defined; a thread with >1 points, 1> comments, and some web link rank).

I put these into a random shuffle so that reload would give me 30 fresh threads that I (probably) hadn't seen before.

I'm pretty happy with this. Lets me scratch my HN itch when I've exhausted the main page, and it's often interesting to see the old material again.</comment>


Google and Burning Man: Talent hunting in the counterculture - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/31/technology/BurningManTalent_futureboy.biz2/index.htm <comment><USER2> Well hell, why not just hire from UC Santa Cruz? Then you're tapping into the source.</comment>


What Today's Magic Pony Acquisition Means for Entrepreneur First and for London - <AUTHOR> http://peternixey.com/post/146210478753/what-todays-magic-pony-acquisition-means-for <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11938819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11938819)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I was suprised my submission didn't just add a vote to an existing one!

<comment><USER2> My understanding is that the dupe detector doesn't work all the time.</comment></comment></comment>


The FCC's Plan to Reboot Net Neutrality Might Transform Municipal Broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/20/fcc_s_plan_to_reboot_net_neutrality_might_transform_municipal_broadband.html

<comment><USER2> Missing sentence fragment ".... in the US."

<comment><USER3> Was there confusion over what the FCC has jurisdiction over? I'm sure other countries have FCC equivalents, but there's been a lot of articles on HN and elsewhere recently specifically about Net Neutrality and the United States' Federal Communications Commission.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately the whole states rights issue gets in the way of having sensible national regulation in the USA.

And devolving telecoms regulation down in some cases individual towns is just silly and is just asking for corruption.

<comment><USER5> You'll just get a different kind of competition. If some states choose to suck, people who want good internet may move to different states, and the sucky states will suck even more.

<comment><USER6> People won't move for better broadband. They shouldn't have to either.

Access to the internet should be a utility much like access to water or electricity.

Telecoms want things both ways - unregulated, but free to keep/establish monopolies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Underappreciated NPM Commands Developers Should Know About - <AUTHOR> http://mechanics.flite.com/blog/2012/12/11/underappreciated-npm-commands/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also includes holiday bonus easter egg from npm.</comment>


Twitter now allows anyone to send you a direct message - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2015/easier-than-ever-to-have-private-conversations

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you can now opt to be able to receive Direct Messages from anyone.

I can see how this would be useful to companies who would like to make Twitter their primary customer support channel, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is it useful to anyone? Popular people (or one with lot of followers) will get swarmed with messages(mostly spam).

<comment><USER4> ...and unpopular people will get private nastygrams.

Thankfully, the setting is disabled by default.

<comment><USER5> Hooray for sane defaults!</comment></comment></comment>


The problems with piping curl to a shell are system management ones - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/CurlToShellManagementProblem <comment><USER2> The difference is, I can quite easily do `make install DESTDIR=foo` or even `make -n install` to see what it's going to do without needing to decipher a thousand lines of usually barely readable shell.</comment>


Would you rent a same-day theatrical release for $50? Napster founder says yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/would-you-rent-a-same-day-theatrical-release-for-50-napster-founder-is-betting-yes/ <comment><USER2> "Interestingly, Screening Room would cut in movie theater chains as much as 40 percent for each rental. This is an attempt to avoid a severe backlash from theatrical chains that are vehemently against any technology that keeps moviegoers at home."

That's a fascinating move. Theater chains have been very aggressive at avoiding this exact sort of disruption... but this is like paying the taxi companies to operate Uber.</comment>


Beautiful Windows 8 concept - <AUTHOR> http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-Concept/attachments/44311

<comment><USER4> Beautiful design, horrible UX. (I know, I know. Suddenly everyone on HN is a UX designer. But hear me out.)

I count eight distinct types of system font in there, all denoting different data/functionality. Semiotically there are no signifiers other than the size, weight and position of the text. It's the closest thing you can get to mystery meat navigation whilst still providing words.

Look at current incarnations of Windows Explorer that people are familiar with. There is a very clearly delineated sidebar and "address bar" at the top. (The web changed the way that people interact with computers. Many people's first and only experience with computer applications is a web browser, and unfortunately for many of them it will have been Internet Explorer.)

By removing the lines of demarkation between UI elements, instead of downgrading the system interface it's been _upgraded_. Everything in the Windows Explorer pane is on equal footing.

The out of focus windows would get old pretty quickly too. If you're working on two things side by side your eyes have to switch between one in-focus and one out-of-focus window. Unless there's a way to dynamically switch focus to "on" for multiple windows, but then that would get messy quite quickly when you can't tell whether something is in the background or foreground, active or inactive. Yuck.

The dock at the bottom looks nice, but the challenge is that you're reliant on icon designers adhering to very specific standards or the whole thing will look crazy.

<comment><USER5> I think you're reading too much into your acquired knowledge.

I count two typefaces, at varying sizes & emphasis, according to their importance. The header hierarchy and sizing is quite nice actually.

Separating lines are not the only way to achieve grouping or separation, whitespace can be just as (usually more) effective. You can see in the Skype window that a slightly darker background helps isolate the action area and give focus to the chat area. The gestalt principles are also in effect here.

My main criticism would be the unnecessary whitespace at the top of the Explorer and Skype windows, which is also inconsistent with the browser window behind, and causes the window controls (max/min/close) to be too far from the edge and consequently less easy targets. In Skype it's even worse since they are shunned onto the middle of the window. _That_ is an usability nightmare.

I agree with the out-of-focus effect. Maybe the effect could only apply to overlapping windows, if windows are not touching then both are in focus - <USER2> solves the multi-app workspace case. OSX uses very broad shadows to basically achieve the same.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, not typefaces: it was meant to be typefaces/different spins on typefaces.

Separating lines aren't the only way, but there isn't enough whitespace here to be good: it just looks like a regular Windows Explorer window _without_ the lines; there's not a lot of increased space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Subtract the nice wallpaper and the problems here become much more obvious. It's wrong in exactly the same way that the new Gmail UI is wrong. Too much white space, too little colour, tiny grey abstract buttons without obvious hit boxes. Screen elements are too similar in colour to tell where one ends and another begins, white spacing is inconsistent, the scrollbars are too small to grab and lack up/down buttons, the mouse pointer is almost invisible even when placed over one of the darkest areas of the screen. It looks like there's an assumption that third-party programs (Skype) will create icons and front-ends which use the exact same widgets and icons as the new UI, which most of them obviously will not. There's a similar assumption about third-party web sites: what does it look like when you load up Facebook?

How do I launch Office from this interface? What do the tick marks next to "Homegroup" and "SkyDrive" indicate? What about the 3x3 grid of tiny squares next to "Max" in the Skype window, which is almost impossible to see? Why is the "minimise" icon in the top right of all windows still a thin horizontal bar? Why say "thumbs only" when that's self-evident? What do the red and green squares in the IE tab bar indicate? How do I see which taskbar icon is highlighted if my wallpaper is white? How do I see them at all if my wallpaper is bright orange?

</comment><comment><USER7> Really nice, though it begs the question; seeing as you can't meaningfully affect Windows 8's design without joining Microsoft on the relevant team(s), why not apply your design skills to the Linux desktop, either Gnome or KDE (I don't know which is more popular as I'm not really a Linux user). Improving the Linux GUI's presentation is always a good thing in terms of improving end- user adoption.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be a great theme for Ubuntu or something similar, indeed. Ps, I'm not the designer - just thought of this when I saw the Windows 8 logo concept on HN

<comment><USER8> Elegant Brit is the most similar, and is my favorite set of themes. <http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=74553>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is one of those situations where the UI is gorgeous but the UX is awful for a certain demographic. And that's nothing against the designer - <USER3> created a UI design, not a UX model, and I think he did a good job on it. From a UX perspective, however, this is just going to be awful for anyone who is a power user or who is concerned with productivity. I'm both and, if I was forced into using something like that for my main work, I'd end up scrolling and clicking my way to insanity trying to accomplish a task. There's so much white space that it would drive everyone who already knows computers well crazy. The low information density - it's just maddening to someone like me (and probably you as well, since you're on HN).

<comment><USER10> I was going to say almost the same thing.

This is what a designer thinks looks good but there is no solution to any problems here, just more problems that aren't obvious in a single screen-shot. It's the same problem as when as web developer gets the signed off design and realises that the whole design falls apart when any number of variable elements go in because the designer narrowed in on making a flat image look good rather than exploring every possible outcome of that UI.

The biggest initial problem is exploration and sign-posting (making discovery of user objectives easier either explicitly or subtly). The is no room for sign-posting because everything is flat and white.

Also the contrast looks good in a flat image, but would drive people nuts after a while (and would break most contrast requirements for accessibility).

Don't get me wrong, it's lovely... but no one will ever produce a commercial OS UI like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Previous discussion (~3 months ago): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3633526>

edit: nevermind, they're the same person.

edit2: on second viewing... I still hate it. So far towards artsy-minimalism, so far from function.

</comment><comment><USER12> I saw this a few months ago (i cant remember where) and i'm sure there were a whole load more screenshots to go with it.

While i'd love to see this and it is undeniably beautiful, its not really what i'd call a practical solution. This makes me wonder, is it only beautiful because its a concept? It only looks so good because its free from practical restriction, what would it look like if it was made into a real world application?

This also makes me ask, is the only way to radically change UI to come up with a completely new from scratch paradigm, and if so, is this why we have metro?

<comment><USER13> [http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop- ui...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-concept)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is where I saw it first too, thanks for posting the link - couldn't remember where, just knew it was on Dribbble too. A lot more other screenshots on The Verge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a good reason why the Zune "design" (which this "concept" is copying) is not used more often. It's a usability nightmare.

<comment><USER9> My problem is that, since I've never used a Zune, I have no frame of reference with which to understand your comment. Can you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why doesn't Desktop Mode look like this already?. Everyone else seems to understand that this is the logical look to achieve. Even Git for windows and Zune have this skin already.

edit: github not git, my bad.

<comment><USER16> Nitpicky, I know, but that's Github for Windows. Git is _not_ the same as Github, folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like ChromeOS Aura:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Chrome_OS_21.0...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/66/Chrome_OS_21.0.1172_Aura_Dev.png)

I still like my 90's plinth buttons - at least I know which is a button and which is a piece of headline text.

</comment><comment><USER18> Elegant (and I love the volume slider) but :

\- too much screen estate lost on a window title bar ?

\- on date/time as well

\- how does the "invisible" taskbar look when a window is maximized ?

\- vertical scrollbar too narrow ?

And where is my beloved quick-launch bar ? ;)

<comment><USER19> Title bar has quite a lot empty space but doesn't that contributes to the whole UI looking clean and beautiful...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really stunning visuals, clean and usable. But one thing bothers me and that is that it will never in reality be as clean, crisp and visually consistent as in the screenshots.

Take <http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6697/explorer2.jpg> for example, the problem there is that in the screenshot it's all aligned and nicely ordered but i can't help noticing he only displays landscape pictures. Same goes for several other concept screens.

I don't want to break down his work but it's just that there are many great concepts that I would love to see come to reality but once they have it isn't all that like I thought it would be.

UI/UX really is hard :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Yawn, this was featured on the verge ages ago [http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop- ui...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-concept)

<comment><USER21> Your unit of measurement (an "age") must be no more than 9 weeks, since you used the plural and it has only been 18. Yet it sounds like an impressive duration. Must be like dog-years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are more screenshots from this redesign, including app-specific screenshots for Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Media Center & Skype:

[http://theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui- con...](http://theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-concept)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is very nice. Also a bit retro? Reminds me about a linux GTK theme I was using a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why do the computer and skype windows have so thick title bars?

<comment><USER25> Pretty much a design staple of Metro.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I thought Metro means a huge title in super thin font, and you can scroll either vertical or horizontal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice concept but it's too similar to Google's design feel

<comment><USER27> I agree. I looks very much like Android ICS on a different color scheme... very much like Google's web-apps

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks too bland but definitely better than what Microsoft decided for Windows 8. The metro UI is just not usable for a normal desktop configuration.

<comment><USER29> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can revert to Windows 7 style for normal desktop use, as Windows 8 is designed for touch screens. Although I heard you can't make the reversion permanent; you have to manually revert after each boot. But that would seem kind of silly to not be able to set the default style, so my sources could be misinformed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This looks like a website, even resembles new Google theme.

</comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me a lot of the gorgeous Zune Player UI.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of LiteStep.

<comment><USER33> I used to love Litestep. You know if there was an OS that took the lead in making customization and skinning accessible, it would be quite a great step forward. Instead we have third party programs and customizations that don't quite cut it.

<comment><USER34> KDE is famous for making everything customisable. But the market for skinning software isn't that big - most people will never go looking for that feature. So it's much more important that it looks good by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It really is beautiful. If I didnt know it was going to annoy me to no end like all windows apps do, I would try it. Very good effort.

</comment><comment><USER36> In what way is this any beautiful? I just see a blurry, meaningless kind-of- window where I have no idea what to click or drag or what.</comment>


When Beethoven Met Goethe - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/when-beethoven-met-goethe/#.WXqDcIWcHBV <comment><USER3> If anyone is curious about Beethoven's life, I can recommend and excellent and relatively recently published biography: 'Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph', by Jan Swafford.

We see figures like Beethoven and Goethe as geniuses themselves, but the 18th century conception of 'genius' was not of a person, but of a sort of holy spirit that blessed an individual with great abilities, while remaining separate from that person.

So prior to Romantics of the 19th century taking hold of the concept of genius and re-purposing it into the one we're familiar with today, one would not speak of someone being a genius, but being graced with genius. Genius was not who they were, but something external to them that they possessed.

It's a subtle but interesting difference.

<comment><USER4> Note also that "genius" and "genie" are etymologically related, both descending from Latin "genius". [1]

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin)

<comment><USER5> I think _genie_ is an anglicization of _djinn_

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

<comment><USER4> Djinn comes directly from Arabic, genie from Latin via French and Arabic influence. [1]

[1] [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genie#Etymology](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genie#Etymology)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was arguably the golden age of German culture. Even if Kant just passed away, you had philosophers such as Hegel in Berlin, Fichte, Schelling living at the same time and the younger Schopenhauer actually meeting with Goethe, although that did not turn out well. At that time, Romanticism was taking off in Germany, after the Weimarer Klassik around Goethe, Schiller and people such as Herder and Wieland was coming to an end. Goethe had a reputation of protecting his status and suppressing other talented artists. It should also be said that Beethoven's ninth uses text from the Ode to Joy, from Schiller, who was a friend of Goethe and one of the few he might have seen as equals. Overall, a giant, intricate network of historical figures.

<comment><USER7> German culture was going strong until the purges under Fascism began - <USER2> philosophy, art, mathematics, physics & other sciences. One of the shocking aspects of the rising of Fascism was that it happened in an intellectually fertile environment with many reasonable people. It is tempting to try to spot a gradual decline in German culture, but that was not the case. It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia.

<comment><USER8> > It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia.

That's not true. Hitler didn't liquidate the intelligentsia. The first programmable computer ( by konrad zuse ) was created during that time. The first rockets were developed during that time. Hitler didn't wipe out all the nobel prize winners in germany.

Germany was still a major intellectual center before, during and AFTER ww2.

Germany is still the 3rd largest producer of nobel prize winners with 106.

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

Germany didn't go anywhere. Hitler isn't germany. Hitler is just a blip in german history.

<comment><USER9> Why the downvotes? He is right.

The reason Germany, England, and France (Spain didn't catch up because they had no reason to as a negative consequence of their enormous wealth at the time) excelled to such extent that this particular period appears like a very special and wonderful intellectual age, is that the rest of the world was for the most part severely under-developed. Germany didn't become less "wise".

Today the contrast is much smaller, but Germany continues to be a scientific powerhouse even if it isn't as evident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "No doubt Beethoven chided Goethe along these lines, and the most revered writer in the land would not have taken kindly to any sort of dressing down, friendly or otherwise."

No doubt? I'd say no evidence.

</comment><comment><USER11> The population then was about 1 billion.

With 7.6 billion people, greater access to education, and more travel, how many meetings of comparable people happen today?

<comment><USER12> Maybe the amount of geniuses grew proportionately, maybe there are more geniuses per billion capita today.

My guess is that there are vastly more geniuses today but that they are spread out more geographically and to many more types of art.

Today, maybe Beethoven would be making techno in Rotterdam. Goethe might be making movies in Hollywood or computer games in Copenhagen. Who knows.

<comment><USER13> Still, culture operates on a "hubs and authorities" basis -- there are people whose job it is to be hubs (curators, publishers, music programmers and promoters) and people who become known for their genius ("authorities").

The interdisciplinary issue is interesting. There's probably enough of it happening to offset fragmentation of culture into specialisations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love the description Goethe provides of Beethoven's personality. We've all met that guy, extremely talented, contempt for the world which you kind of admire but seriously dude could you give it a rest? I'm trying to enjoy myself...people are always the same. only the technology changes

</comment><comment><USER15>
       Beethoven would be making techno

Why? Given that making techno, or modern pop music in general, is basically trivial. Just spin up Ableton, press a few buttons ... boom, 10 minutes later you've got a competitive techno-track that doesn't sound all that different (apart from mastering maybe) from what's being played in the clubs. There is no art left in pop-music -- trivial and generic.

A genius would be horrified by the trivial repitition of the same that is modern pop-music.

<comment><USER16> Aphex Twin.

<comment><USER15> I wish you had elaborated this comment into something substantial that readers could learn from.

Here is an interesting comment that a classical composer -- possibly the most influential one in the 20th century through his students -- on Aphex Twin and similar artists:

[http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz- stock...](http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-stockhausens- electronic-music-tips-for-aphex-twin-plastikman-others/)

<comment> xkcd-sucks Influential though he may be, Stockhausen still comes across as a self- aggrandizing asshole:

> I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work Song Of The Youth, > which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. > Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African > repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and > he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it were varied to some extent and > if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.

Reich, Glass et al. might disagree.

And course the reply:

> "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: 'Didgeridoo,' > then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".

For what it's worth, any student of "classical" (highbrow, not limited to Classical period) music will have concepts such as ostinato, fugue, motif, theme/variation, Don't Rush, etc. drilled into them. Periodicity is what differentiates music from noise and a tension between periodicity and aperiodicity is one criterion that separates good music from bad.

<comment><USER15>
       And course the reply:

I found Aphex Twin's reply disappointing.

Like a petulant child he essentially negated Stockhausen's points, without engaging with them. It seems to me that Stockhausen was trying to be helpful -- after all he had been a music teacher for nearly 1/2 century with academic offspring like Kraftwerk and Can. Aphex Twin seemingly was unable/unwilling to see that there are other approaches to music than the orthodoxy of 1990s dance music. Aphex Twin's main musical criterion seems to be dancablility:

        you can't dance to. Do you
        reckon he can dance? You could
        dance to   Song of the Youth, but
        it hasn't got a groove in it,
       there's no bassline."

I would argue to the contrary: dance music -- whatever its merits for dancing -- cannot be interesting as art music. Why? Because dancing, specially dancing well, is itself demanding: most brain capacity is used for moving the body along to the music in the right way, and that capacity is missing for listening to and analysind the fine points of the music.

       Reich, Glass et al. might disagree.

Of course the art music tradition of American mimimalism that you refer to, does change tempi and changing rhythms quite a great deal. It does so in novel ways that had not been explored in previous classical traditions. That's the main novelty that American mimimalism gave to the world.

       Periodicity is what ...

I agree with that, and add that modern pop-music errs on the side of too much periodicity, which renders it uninteresting as art-music, but useful as aural background and for dancing.

<comment><USER17> What is art?

IMHO:

Dance(able) music, like all music/noise, is about altered states of awareness.

There's sometimes something wonderful about reggae, house music, chanting, work songs that can change your frame of mind.

But then again all music (genres) do that for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help bootstrap our startup by giving us work. - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrap.getblimp.com/

<comment><USER2> I have been told over and over, "The thing you are ACTUALLY making money on IS the startup." Everything else is a side project. Good luck to you guys, and hopefully the startup you WANT to pay the bills starts to do that.

<comment><USER3> Side projects doing what you are best at can be a great way to fund your startup, but I understand what you are saying - It is easy to lose focus.

On the other hand, we can't all make Obama O's.</comment></comment>


Self-driving cars now legal in California - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-car-california/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 <comment><USER2> Already in active discussion on the front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4572886></comment>


Ask HN: Is data science and ML a bubble / scam - <AUTHOR> before you tell me about chat bots, voice traslations, machine vision and reinforcement learning. I would like to clarify , i am not an expert in ML or AI i have no production code with AI or ML. My question is how does ML/data science fit in as a normal part of SDLC.
i would imagine the test scope is essentially infinite since we handle probabilistic states instead of deterministic states.  And how would you identify a bug and reproduce it or an even more significant problem of how would you even identify the scope of values which are not allowed in a NxN dimensional vector matrix, and as i understand it the tolerance of error is marginal in customer facing applications as recomendation systems, voice translation, etc even a 95% accuracy is good enough to ship but how about medical applications and self driving where something like 3~4 sigma is needed.
i dont subscribe to the adversarial argument that the solution to a black box is another black box or that we achived 3 sigma because the adversary we designed says so. How many business's are aware of the fact that ML/AI  SDLC has these fundamental difference's from reqular old web,system and embeded SDLC and the supposed ROI from being a replacement to manual work can be lost by just a few false positives in a business setting.
TLDR what is the SDLC to handle state explosion in ML / AI systems design . I dont see many compeling arguments as of yet. <comment><USER2> If you can write code to do a job, you probably should. ML makes sense for places where you can't write the code. We know many applications where this is the case: people tried for decades to write good natural language translation and image recognition, but ML does much better.

A good overview of how to build real systems with ML is at [https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35](https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35)

<comment><AUTHOR> i read the article you mentioned and found this tit bit quite interesting.

" In the 2.0 stack, the programming is done by accumulating, massaging and cleaning datasets. "

there is large scope for error/issues/politics in each of the mentioned steps. but i think it helped me frame my argument more succinctly AI/ML is not software 2.0 because it is not software. all software needs a ietf RFC :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is not a bubble, in the sense that once it is bound to abruptly "pop". It is also not a scam, in the sense that there is no value.

It _IS_, however, on the Gartner hype cycle (look it up in Google Images if you don't know it), and way to the left of the "plateau of productivity" where technologies like Java and python and smartphones and solar panels are. It is probably near the "Peak of Inflated Expectations", headed for the "Trough of Disillusionment".

Which does not make it a bubble or a scam. Just overhyped. Part of the learning curve is figuring out where it is useful and appropriate, and that is mostly in areas where decades of conventional, non-ML efforts have not paid off.

<comment><AUTHOR> its an interesting argument you are proposing. but i feel AI/ML is not a normal tech trend because they are non deterministic systems. A normal tech trend would hit "plateau" after the "magic" or mystery fades away .

But non deterministic systems there is a good chance your walking of a on a misty mountaintop with a very high chance of irreparable damage where the cornerstone of agile quick fix build patch is not possible. or you stumble upon the a stairway to heaven where the possibilities and potential for growth seem limit less.

<comment><USER3> One of the most fundamental lessons one has to learn with AI/ML, is that it will never be 100%. Of course, that is true with conventional programming as well, but when a failure is found that particular bug is fixed, and one has the illusion that the problem which was just fixed was the last one, and _now_ it is 100% reliable.

But, with ML, it will never, ever be 100%. In some potential applications, this is ok, or in any case the alternatives are 100% _not_ working so it's the best there is. But in other potential applications, this is a deal-breaker, actually or politically.

Part of finding the "plateau of productivity", is that organizations learn lessons like this, about where you can and cannot use it effectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thinking about data science/ML in the scope of the software development lifecycle isn't the right way to think about the industry. For non-AI products, data sci is a _complement_ to the traditional processes, providing more-informed decisions.

Even for AI-products, the development is still iterative, e.g. improving the product after real world testing/feedback.</comment>


On no we broke something – Why Ello is the best social network - <AUTHOR> https://ello.co/elloblog/post/P6HYwA8Cuj5ttYJNTW_z-Q <comment><AUTHOR> While Twitter consistently makes product decisions these days that sum up with SMH, Ello keeps proving to me why it's the best social network around! What other social platform would be so open and detailed in communicating the results of its postmortem?

I'm telling you guys, the team at Ello never ceases to amaze me. They are responsive and transparent from community managers and devs right up to the CEO. I know some knock Ello's design (I think it matches its marching to a different drummer ttude), but look beyond that to the bigger picture. Read their manifesto. Ello stands against ad tech and selling user data. The platform supports Markdown. The team is transparent and quick to respond. Although it can't replace Twitter's in-the-moment value, I think it certainly deserves our support.

<comment><USER2> I don't care about any of that because my friends don't use it. Ello, like others, is in a catch-22.

<comment><AUTHOR> Make some new friends on Ello? The big picture stuff like ad tech and tracking is becoming a touchstone for measuring companies in my opinion. Ello earns respect for their stand and I use it regardless of whether people I know use it or not. I've met some cool people on Ello using their Search and looking for similar topics of interest.</comment></comment></comment>


C# is the Next Python: Duck Typing and C# 4.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/11/08/CIsTheNextPythonDuckTypingAndC40.aspx <comment><USER2> C# has adopted a lot from dynamic languages like python: "lazy" genexp ("yield return" in C#), lambda, map/filter/reduce (LInQ) and now Duck Typing. The nice thing is that now you can program dynamically or statically and inter-operate between the two styles and the framework.

There are still couple of problems that it would need to overcome to become my favorite language of all times:

1\. Windows Tax.

2\. Brevity. C# is just more verbose than python even with LINQ et al.

<comment><USER3> Amen on #2. Since brevity isn't just aesthetics, this has always been a problem for me. The last thing I built in C# was the last thing I built in C# because it became hard/annoying to maintain and debug, even with VS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this different from declaring a variable as "Object" in either VB.Net or VB5/6?</comment>


(X)HTML/CSS Coding-Services  - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/23/xhtmlcss-coding-services/ <comment><USER2> Top tip, it's a great table comparing the services side by side with links to their sites. I'll bookmark that one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Their prices are quite reasonable too</comment></comment>