Please review the new tarsnap website - <AUTHOR> I'm decided that the current tarsnap website (http://www.tarsnap.com/) is overly minimalist (this shouldn't come as a great surprise to anyone who has seen it!) so I'm replacing it with a new site which is both more informative and somewhat less ugly.
Before I "go live" with the new website, I'd like to hear if anyone has any constructive feedback; in particular, I'd like to know if there are any informational gaps (either because I haven't put something important onto the site, or if some information I've put onto the site needs to be more easily found) or if the site doesn't render sanely in some web browser(s).
The new site is currently at http://newwww.tarsnap.com/ and if there are no major problems I'll be moving it to www.tarsnap.com later this week. <comment><USER2> I have worked in Japan for a few years and am pretty good at sugar-coating things when required, but you presumably want my honest feedback, so here it is: your "minimalism" is more about what you want than what your customers want, and it is the most expensive fashion statement you have ever made in your life.

If you A/B test that against any improved design, for example one which replaces the subtle "get started with Tarsnap" link with an attractive 200x60 button, the graphical alternative will _annihilate_ the performance of your minimalist alternative.

If you don't have the time, skill, or desire to do this, there is an Internet full of starving web designers out there. I got my current website design from a nice young lady in India for $150. With the degree of improvement you'll see, that would probably pay itself back within a few days to a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> _it is the most expensive fashion statement you have ever made in your life_

Touche! To be fair, it's not _just_ a fashion statement, though -- it's also a matter of branding.

 _... improved design, for example one which replaces the subtle "get started with Tarsnap" link with an attractive 200x60 button..._

Good idea. One question comes to mind, though: Is increasing the attractiveness of signup links as effective for commercial services as it is for free account-creation? I don't dispute that it would help -- I just wonder if it would give me a large number of new accounts but only a far smaller number of new _paying users_. (Only one way to find out for certain, of course...)

 _If you don't have the time, skill, or desire to do this, there is an Internet full of starving web designers out there._

I have a few friends who are interested in graphics and web design, so I'll throw this in their direction and see what they can come up with -- at least now I have a basic structure for the content to get started with.

Thanks for the advice!

<comment><USER2> _Is increasing the attractiveness of signup links as effective for commercial services as it is for free account-creation?_

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Screams "one-person shop".

Still simply does not explain to a typical user why they're any better off with you than with Mozy. In fact, even for technical users, Mozy's security page might sound better than yours.

Lose "does not support Windows". Nobody in your target market cares, but it sends a "this is half-baked" message --- which is obviously not justified.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Screams "one-person shop"._

I'd rather be honest than rich. :-)

 _Still simply does not explain to a typical user why they're any better off with you than with Mozy._

True -- but I don't want _typical_ users. Let's face it: Tarsnap is a computer geek's backup system. The design principles are security, flexibility, efficiency, and utility -- not ease of use or eye candy.

A year or more from now, once tarsnap has a GUI and supports windows, and once I'm shipping precompiled binaries? That's when I'll want to compete with Mozy. Until then, there's no point trying to attract users who won't be happy with tarsnap.

 _even for technical users, Mozy's security page might sound better than yours_

This is probably a dumb question, but... Mozy has a security page? I can't find one.

 _Lose "does not support Windows"_

I'll think about it. I put that in mostly because I get too many emails already from people asking if tarsnap runs on Windows (it's nice to know people are interested, but replying to such emails is a time sink) -- but I see your point that it doesn't necessarily give a good first impression.

<comment><USER3> If your marketing strategy is, "keep this away from the general population, and minimize the number of inbound leads I get to something that I can possibly handle", then, provided you plan on relaunching this under a different name a year from now, OK.

Otherwise, I've read your code and watched you work on this for awhile now and you're just doing yourself a disservice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I gave it a shot and wrote down some criticism. I run a small design/interaction/software agency. Sorry that these things always sound so negative, I hope it will help you.

I see what you're going for and it might work well for a very specific audience. But I think it will be hard to reach people beyond those that "get" where this bare bones design stands for.

One thing that could be better in my opinion is answering some very obvious questions directly on the homepage like

\- How does it exactly differ from other backup services out there?

\- Who would use this and who wouldn't?

\- A nice example of cost breakdown for a common setup

\- Is there any one successfully using this?

\- It feels like a one-guy shop. Should I trust that for my backups?

Then, some random opinionated observations about your design choices:

\- It will most likely only attract a very specific audience, is that the goal?

\- All the information is very subdivided into lots of pages, lists and blocks. Some people may like it, from what I found out simpler one-page overviews work better. An example could be our versionsapp.com site, which obviously has a very different style going on.

\- It looks like an open source project page. I wouldn't expect to have to pay for something at a page like this.

\- The whole no-logo thing is a pretty bold statement, but could work against you.

\- The small serif font in the menu could be hard to read on some screens. I would make it bigger and/or non serif.

\- The design is very timeless, and therefore it's hard to see if this is something recent or not.

Koen

</comment><comment><USER5> It's great. Launch it now and fix it up later. ;)

Seriously: I was attempting to evangelize tarsnap to my company the other day (despite the fact that I have yet to actually use the service...) and was hindered by the fact that there was just _nothing_ to link to. This is exactly what I needed last week.

Let your first priority be: Launch this right now. A good second priority would probably be to listen to patio11 and tptacek, but I encourage you not to let this distract you from the first priority.

<comment><USER3> I need a reason to recommend this, Colin. If you give me one --- and it's not "paranoia" --- I will start recommending it.

(I already have, to people like H.D. Moore on Twitter. The HD's of the world is a really small target market).

<comment><AUTHOR> _I need a reason to recommend this, Colin._

Ok, I don't know why you, of all people, don't consider security to be a valid reason for using tarsnap; but if you don't like that, how about

* Tarsnap's snapshotting model of backups is very efficient (equal to or better than incremental backups) while providing the flexibility of having archives behave as if they're completely independent of each other.

* Tarsnap is priced based on actual usage, so if you don't have much data to store, it can be incredibly cheap.

* Tarsnap is written by someone with the expertise required, and who is willing to take the time necessary, to _get things right_.

That last, of course, is relevant to security; but it's also relevant to simple robustness, too.

<comment><USER3> Security could be a great reason to use tarsnap. But you still need to advocate for it in terms that your audience will understand. We still have to convince large financials to get critical, Internet-exposed code audited. What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy?

<comment><AUTHOR> _What hope do you have that I'll just automatically see how much better this is than Mozy?_

I don't have much hope that anyone will _automatically_ see anything. This is why I go out of my way to educate -- explaining things like why simple code is less likely to have security flaws, pointing out my expertise and experience, and demonstrating that I'm not afraid to have people look at the tarsnap source code.

<comment><USER3> Yeah you're screwed. Come up with another strategy. My clients are the top N% of security professionals (they're managing source code audits), and I'll bet you $5 they think Mozy security is comparable to yours.

There's a reason you designed tarsnap the way you did. It's not a little bit different from Mozy. It's a totally different model. Explain how in simple terms. And remember even if your beachhead market is sysadmins, most sysadmins don't code. Don't talk down to them, but don't make your value proposition be about code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like patio11, I'm just going to give you my thoughts unfiltered.

There are multiple levels on which this site is problematic.

1\. Marketing

Who are your customers? Who is landing on this webpage? What information do they have? What information do they need to make a decision about whether or not to use/purchase/whatever your product?

What is your product, anyhow? Why are your prices in crazy units? Picodollars? Just talk like a normal person: "$0.30 per gigabyte per month."

It's totally self-defeating from a marketing perspective. I have no idea what you're selling or who you're supposed to be selling it to.

The goal of a landing page is to either convince me I need something or, if I know I need something, convince me you can meet that need better than anyone else.

2\. Design

Nothing on this page catches my eye. I don't know where to look or click. There's too much text; don't make me think.

If you don't know how to design (I don't), pay someone to do it. You need to figure out what the first, second, third, etc. most important things are for your customers and then design the site in a way that directs them down that hierarchy.

Also: BIG. ASS. BUTTONS. See <http://getdropbox.com> for a nice example.

3\. Brand

It looks like the homepage for yet-another-open-source project (I know it isn't). Very academic.

If I were really concerned about the security of my online backups I don't think I'd trust this product.

If "backups for paranoids" is what customers really care about (did you go talk to customers about that, or did you just pick the tagline because you liked it?), I'd like to see evidence that people just as paranoid me are using it, too.

Tarsnap is an awesome product. I think this site doesn't do it justice.

</comment><comment><USER7> So I'm not exactly target market (I paid, yes paid, to upgrade to XP Pro), but I think the new version looks like a much more stylish minimalism that should serve you well.

And any service that lists its prices in picodollars has made me a fan for life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks much better. I would suggest some simple tweaks to make the box borders drop into the background slightly and stop competing with the text so much:

change the current css to something like this:

tarsnap.css line 107:

div.box h3 { border-color: #DDDDDD;

tarsnap.css line 91:

div.box { ... border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;

Maybe also change the 'Start using tarsnap now!' box header from pastel red (for stop) to pastel green (for go):

change tarsnap.css line 121:

div.box h3.cta { ... background: #A5F5A5 none repeat scroll 0 0;

I would also think about giving that boxes content div a background-color: #D5F4D5 or something, to make the call to action a tiny little bit stronger.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"At the present time, tarsnap does not support Windows... and does not have a graphical user interface."_ ... _"[Tarsnap] attained profitability in February 2009."_

This is really inspiring. Congratulations. Goes to show that if you make something genuinely useful, even non-paying computer users take out their wallets.

Now for a few comments on the look of the site (which I think is pretty good overall, considering your current target audience).

I suggest turning off the full justification in the text boxes. Ragged right lends itself to much cleaner inter-word spacing.

Try to make the text boxes have the same margins on all four sides. With large top-bottom and small left-right margins, they look unbalanced.

I personally would prefer a menu strip along the top of the page to the menu bar you have. Several reasons for this. One, there's a lot of wasted space below the menu box. Two, I am not a fan of the indented submenus. If you make a menu strip along the top with a secondary strip for the submenus, I think it would make the entire site look more balanced. You should even consider tweaking your content to eliminate the submenu altogether, although that may be easier said than done. If you can pull it off, though, perhaps by putting some pages together with others, you will make it easier to grasp the contents of the site at a glance.

Finally, what is the proper capitalization? Is it "tarsnap" or "Tarsnap"? Make up your mind and be consistent. If you settle on "tarsnap", do not hesitate to use the lowercase form as the first word of a sentence. It's a small thing, but I think it clarifies the branding.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I suggest turning off the full justification in the text boxes._

Maybe I've spent too long reading text typeset by TeX, but I find non- justified text to be very distracting.

 _Try to make the text boxes have the same margins on all four sides. With large top-bottom and small left-right margins, they look unbalanced._

Oops. Those were supposed to be the same.

 _...menus..._

Yeah, I spent a long time trying to decide between side and top menus -- in the end I decided on the side menu in part because I have not only submenus but also subsubmenus. Things like man pages deserve to be on the website... but they don't really deserve a prominent space in the menu structure.

 _Finally, what is the proper capitalization?_

That's a very good question. Can I dodge it by answering "sentence case", or is that likely to be too confusing to people?

I'd like to stick to referring to the client code as "tarsnap" (lower case) since the software is installed with a lower-case name and UNIX filesystems are often case-sensitive; is it possible to talk about the "Tarsnap backup service" (capitalized) but the "tarsnap software" (non-capitalized) without horribly confusing the matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a pretty perfect upgrade. It's still bare-metal minimalist and that's a nice association with something like tarsnap.

The only thing place I think might need improvement is that first 5 minutes while someone internalizes what exactly tarsnap is. I can't judge it myself since I already got over that hump, but something as simple as a transcript of a backup session with a hint toward the strong security features would go nicely on the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The only thing place I think might need improvement is that first 5 minutes while someone internalizes what exactly tarsnap is._

Yeah, that's always the hardest part -- my hope was that the words "Online backups for the truly paranoid", the pricing in picodollars, and the clean web design would at least start people off with the right idea...

 _... something as simple as a transcript of a backup session with a hint toward the strong security features..._

That would be fantastic... but I'm not sure how to do that. The security of tarsnap is built deep into its core -- there really isn't anything people can see while they use tarsnap which shows them how secure tarsnap is. (I suppose I COULD add some random "AAA blocks encrypted with SHA-256, BBB bytes authenticated with HMAC-SHA256, CCC RSA-2048 private-key operations performed" messages -- but that would run directly counter to the philosophy of cleanliness and minimalism.)

<comment><USER10> I do like "online backups for the truly paranoid" I think it gets the concept out nicely, but I remember the first time I looked at tarsnap being slightly confused about the mechanism. I don't feel like I'm much help because I can't tell what clicked when I suddenly felt comfortable with the idea.

The security part doesn't need to be anything more than a nod toward that core. Maybe something along the lines of:

      Bomb-proof backup in two commands:
      <generate a key as simply as possible>
      <backup some files>

Nothing terribly fancy but putting a glimpse of the exact product right on the front page seems good. A user can digest that there's (a) encryption (b) online backups (c) a nice pricing scheme in all of about 30 seconds.

<comment><USER3> This is the best advice I've ever seen you get on HN, Colin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's my humble opinion too. I'm not a designer, but I hope some points might help.

* Make the front page simpler in content, richer in design/graphics:

In the front page, I'd put WHAT exactly is tarsnap (few words, like "Tarsnap is an online backup service for UNIX operating systems with emphasis on security" and avoid the "probably will compile" stuff, and WHY should someone use it instead of other products/solutions, in a few words. Drop the "start now" box and make a nice button instead that says "Start now with $5" or something simple like that.

Make a simple logo in GIMP, there are hundreds of tutorials for this.

Avoid listing the pricing in the front page, but make sure it is accessible from a nice viewable button. Use normal units, not "picodollars".

* Use a sans font. Serifs are nice, but seem "oldish" and are not the best fonts to describe a new product.

* I'd use blue and shades of grey as the dominant colors. Grey speaks "solid". I'd use other colors such as yellow,red etc. to achieve contrast to the buttons that might interest the visitor (pricing,documentation,legal etc)

</comment><comment><USER12> Glad to see you replacing the site. I'm a satisfied tarsnap user but unless you greatly improve the site you won't get others except very early adopters like me.

That said, the new site is missing the mark. There is plenty of good advice here on how to improve the content. You best bet is to copy some ideas from your competitor's content. Even if you do that, it will still look like you did the web page and look ugly. There my be no way around you shelling out a few hundred bucks on a web designer. Every time I have tried to make my web sites look better, it was painful and I simply wished I had paid a designer to do it for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Minor suggestions mentioned elsewhere, let me reinforce them:

\- put this up right away and iterate from there.

\- no-one reads text. The best line you've got is "online backups for the truly paranoid". Put a graphic button somewhere so people can reflexively click on it and get taken to a payment page.

\- please don't tell us what it DOESN'T do on the front page (i.e. Windows support). My website doesn't make ice cream, but it is irrelevant. Also, you don't want negative sentiment anywhere near your payment process.

\- Improve the start area. \- 1. Download and Install (5 mins....) \- 2. Deposit $5 or more \- It's that easy!!!!

</comment><comment><USER14> (Most of the following consists of niggles. This will give the impression that I think worse of the site than I actually do. Sorry.)

The message sent by the design has changed from "Absolutely no effort has gone into designing this; I have other priorities" (see also, e.g., Craigslist, Drudge Report, useit.com) to "I thought this could do with a bit of thought about design, so I sat down for half an hour and hacked together a style sheet". This may or may not be an improvement.

Purely superficial visual-stylistic remarks (important note: I am not a graphic designer or anything; and I've looked at your pages using exactly one web browser on exactly one machine):

I think there are too many rules (mostly box borders), which are too prominent and too close to one another and to the text. And, generally, not enough whitespace.

I tried moving the boxes about 1em further apart, putting the text within the boxes a uniform 1em from the edges, and changing the borders from #000 to #999 (and #ccc for the rule between the box header and the main content) and I think it was a definite improvement. They still look, well, awfully _boxy_ , but changing that would mean a pile more work.

The hover highlighting for your navigation sidebar would be greatly improved, I think, by changing the background (e.g., to the same as for a.current -- that "doesn't work" for the link representing the current page, but that may be a feature rather than a bug) instead of adding a border.

The majority of commercial websites seem to use sans-serif faces for most of their text. I like serifs :-), but there _is_ something to the argument that they don't work well on the crappy low-resolution monitors we all have to put up with and you might find that, say, adding font-family: sans-serif and (something like) line-height: 140% to div.box gives a more "professional" look. You may or may not care about this. For some reason, I find that reducing the contrast just a bit (color: #333; you wouldn't want this for the headings) also has this effect. This may all just be because any change away from default settings produces the impression that more effort has gone into the design, or something.

Marginally less superficial comments:

On the About page, you should probably make "portsnap" and "FreeBSD Update" into links.

In addition to not being a graphic designer, I am also not a lawyer; but I wonder whether your legal page needs to say explicitly that the "Why?"s aren't part of the legal agreement.

Too many parentheses on the "Utility" page.

On the why-picodollars page, you probably mean 2^-40, not 2^(-30).

On the why-10^9 page, you claim that _nothing_ other than RAM is addressed in hardware. This is, of course, not true. You might consider replacing "RAM" with "memory", or something.

On the scrypt page, PBKDF2 and bcrypt should be links.

It's a pity that the Why? links bounce the user to a new page. (Especially on the accounts page, which has forms on it.) You might consider some AJAXy nonsense to avoid this, but it's probably about ten times more trouble than it's worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"I thought this could do with a bit of thought about design, so I sat down for half an hour and hacked together a style sheet". This may or may not be an improvement._

Ouch! Thanks for the honesty, though. :-)

 _I tried moving the boxes about 1em further apart_

I'll meet you half-way -- a 2em gap looks too big to my eye, but I like 1.5em more than the original 1em.

 _putting the text within the boxes a uniform 1em from the edges_

Oops! I didn't realize that this wasn't uniform.

 _changing the borders from #000 to #999 (and #ccc for the rule between the box header and the main content)_

That looks a bit too weak to my eye, but I agree on the principle -- I've dropped them to #555 and #aaa.

 _The hover highlighting [...]_

I spent an obscene amount of time trying to decide what I wanted to do there -- changing the background was the first idea I had, but I couldn't get it to look a way I liked. I think I'll have to come back to this once I've gotten away from looking at that menu for a while.

 _...sans-serif faces..._

Sigh. I hate the idea of specifying fonts in web pages... why can't web browsers just pick a reasonable default? But you're right, it does look much better with sans-serif -- consider it changed.

 _... reducing the contrast just a bit..._

Lowered contrast helps readability, but I hate the look of grey text (maybe this is just a personal thing -- but I'd like to be able to look at my website without wincing), so I've done this using an off-white background instead.

 _On the About page, you should probably make "portsnap" and "FreeBSD Update" into links._

I considered that, but there's nothing sensible to make them link to -- I have pages about portsnap and FreeBSD Update on my personal site, but they are several years out of date.

 _I wonder whether your legal page needs to say explicitly that the "Why?"s aren't part of the legal agreement._

My law student friends tell me that this isn't a problem; and it doesn't matter anyway since I really don't care if the explanations are somehow interpreted as part of the terms.

 _Too many parentheses on the "Utility" page._

Good point, I didn't realize how many parenthetical remarks I was making when I wrote that text.

 _On the why-picodollars page, you probably mean 2^-40, not 2^(-30)._

Oops!

 _On the why-10^9 page, you claim that nothing other than RAM is addressed in hardware. This is, of course, not true. You might consider replacing "RAM" with "memory", or something._

Is it not true? I can't think of any non-random access memory which is addressed in the same way as RAM is.

 _On the scrypt page, PBKDF2 and bcrypt should be links._

Good idea.

 _It's a pity that the Why? links bounce the user to a new page._

Those links should be opening up in a new window -- aren't they? That's what happens in my web browser, but it's entirely possible that I did something non-portable.

Thanks for all the excellent suggestions -- this is exactly the sort of comment I was hoping to get here. I'm not necessarily going to follow all of your suggestions, but even those I'm not following have provided very useful food for thought.

<comment><USER6> You probably already think I'm an asshole, but even though it's fun to tweak a design until it's "just right," none of these changes will have a big impact on your bottom line.

1em versus 1.5 vs 2em? That's premature optimization.

And statements like "[l]owered contrast helps readability, but I hate the look of grey text" tell me you're designing for yourself, not for your customer.

That's fine, if that's what you're doing, but I've been assuming the opposite, viz., that your goal is to increase the number of people who pay for tarsnap.

<comment><AUTHOR> _you're designing for yourself, not for your customer_

Not quite. In the absence of hard evidence either way (yes, I know, A/B testing -- but there isn't enough traffic on the tarsnap website right now to get any statistical significance for minor changes) website design is purely a matter of taste... and if it's going to be a matter of taste, why not go with mine?

<comment><USER6> Because you aren't your customer.

And what you said isn't true, although most engineers I know believe it. It's not A/B testing or bust, and design isn't series of arbitrary aesthetic decisions.

You can also gather (non-numerical) data by going out and talking to potential customers, figuring out exactly what they need, and then making design decisions with that as an input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Clickable Links: <http://newwww.tarsnap.com/> <http://www.tarsnap.com/>

I like it. It instills confidence. It's spartan, which to me communicates that you value performance over style (think road bikes vs. fixies). Very fitting for your target market.

I wish google understood your units so you could provide a link to the calculation. Perhaps you could provide your own calculator?

</comment><comment><USER16> You could take a look at nearlyfreespeech.net . It is a pre-paid service for technical users similarly to yours and it has quite usable interface.

</comment><comment><USER17> I dig the retro minimalist style of it!

Only problem I have is with the floating boxes. I'd rather have one box than two columns. Makes for easier read.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I'd rather have one box than two columns. Makes for easier read._

On most pages I use just a single box -- I ended up going with multiple boxes in two columns on the front page because I figured that (a) there wasn't a huge amount of text to read, and (b) separating 'what is tarsnap', 'start using tarsnap', 'tarsnap pricing', and 'tarsnap news' into individual boxes some much-needed organization.

Is your comment about prefering a single box a general comment (in which case I think you'll find that most of the site does what you want) or do you also think that the front page would benefit from that?

<comment><USER17> Great question. I think the front page will definitely benefit from having one column. To be clear, I don't mind multiple boxes. Just that they should be in one column for easier reading. What you have would serve a magazine better(because it adds a pinch of fun). But in your case, you've a product and people just wanna get the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's definitely an improvement, but still looks unprofessional. Good enough for now if you want to keep working on the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would make the site look more professional? More text? Less text? A logo? A picture of a house burning down along with a smiling man saying "I don't care if my house burns down, because I know all my data is safely stored with tarsnap"?

Ok, that last one is facetious -- but in all seriousness, I'd love to hear something more specific than "unprofessional".

<comment><USER18> \- At least choose a font for your title.

\- "can probably be compiled on many other UNIX-like operating systems" comes across well from one nerd to another, but probably not to managers. This gets into the question of who your target audience is.

\- In the intro, talk about _what tarsnap does_ instead of just saying it's a secure online backup service and talking about the "client code". What makes you different from the hundreds of other backup services?

\- The red yellow and blue color scheme isn't doing it for me. Looks better if you make the red yellow, but I know you want to draw attention to the call to action.

\- The gap between the left column and the news is ugly. Consider not having news on this page at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks good here. Looks like a snap to use (NPI).

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm probably late with comments, but here they go anyways.

First of all, I am an ideal target user of the service. I know my way around applied cryptography, I can appreciate properly designed system, and I am really protective of the privacy of my data when it leaves my immediate vicinity. Properly encrypted backups is my kind of thing.

Your existing website is not minimalistic. The lack of the design is not a minimalism, it's a manifestation of the visual presentation of the product not being a priority.

The site looks like a personal webpage from the early 90s, implying lots of things but none for those that I would want to see in the backup service provider. I have visited tarsnap website on multiple occasions before; primarily through the references on the cryptography maillist. And I have always assumed it was either a hobby or an academic project.

Since you have had the site redesigned, I am assuming that you realized the impression the existing site gave was wrong.

The new design is certainly a step in a new direction, but again there is a number of problems with it. First, know your audience - who are your target users ? Let's assume I was right that it's the people like myself - crypto- savvy techs in a need of encrypted backup. What would I like to know first if I stumble upon your site ?

      1. How it works
      2. How much it's going to run me

How it works - specifically, and most importantly, are you reliable ? It is quite obvious that tarsnap is a one-man show, so you _must_ convince me right there that you _are_ reliable. I.e. if you get hit by the bus, will I still have my data ?

Little digging on the site (that I did only because you asked to review the site, and would've not probably done otherwise) revealed that the data is stored on Amazon's servers. Good. Next question - does my data go directly to the Amazon or do you proxy it ? If it's former, then why do I need tarsnap as a _service_ rather than a simple client _product_ that handles data gathering, compression, encryption and uploading to Amazon ? If it's either, then, again, the issue at hand is tarsnap being an additional point of failure on route to my data (should, god forbid, anything happen to you or the company).

Assuming the data goes straight to Amazon, I will be happy to use your service just not to deal with the Amazon directly. What I need is a re-assurance that the data is recoverable, should tarsnap cease to exist.

To sum this part up - all of the above needs to be on the front page, or at the very least - one click away from it under an obviously labeled link.

Second point - how much is it - is equally important. The "picodollar" term as ingenious and geeky as it is needs to go. It is something that detracts the attention from other information on the page. I am reading the text, bam, picodollars, I keep reading, but I am actually trying to remember what power the pico is. So anything that I read after the picodollars doesn't really digest.

Additionally, the cost calculator is a must. Say I have 60GB of data to backup. Let me punch it in on the page and show me how much it would cost to run the initial upload and how much it's going to be monthly. Also an estimate of an initial upload time would be _very_ handy to have. If you are on Shaw like me, the 50 KBps upstream bandwidth is not exactly online backup friendly.

Lastly, design-wise. It is not bad, but it is pretty far from being great. You clearly have a preference for a clean looking site, and I think this is an absolutely correct (visual/brand) positioning of the product. However neither the existing nor the new site are _it_. The site can be clean and appealing to the tech crowd and not look like it was designed for the Lynx browser. Have a look www.minimalsites.com, lots and lots of great examples of truly minimalistic, clean and light looking sites.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a BSD user, I think it would be great if you spoke a bit on your site about your bona fides in that community.

And that you maintain a FreeBSD (only?) port.

<comment><AUTHOR> _As a BSD user, I think it would be great if you spoke a bit on your site about your bona fides in that community._

On the About page I talk about being a FreeBSD committer, security team member, and Security Officer, and about some of the code I've written in FreeBSD -- is this insufficient?

 _And that you maintain a FreeBSD (only?) port._

There's also a slackbuild (Slackware), an AUR (Arch Linux), and the tarsnap source code contains debian packaging bits -- so FreeBSD isn't unique in having packaging metadata available for tarsnap.

I plan on providing pre-built packages in the future too -- those will go onto the download page once they exist.

<comment><USER21> _is this insufficient?_

Nope. It sounds like exactly that for which I was looking. I couldn't (or rather, didn't) find it because I thought the indented bits under the Tarsnap label were telling me which things were included on the page I was on. I know, for example, that I saw News there.. and also News included just above the fold of the page I was on.

In fact, I suppose realized later that they were sub-menu items. When I went to the Design page and clicked on the Security link, I recognized that the menu on the left changed. I'm pretty sure it would not have occurred to me to click on them directly, however.

I spent maybe 90 seconds trying to find info about your work and the company, unsuccessfully. I don't know if this is, in any way, useful feedback. I mostly seem to be pointing out my inadequacies as a user, not providing any solutions to my so-called problems.

 _FreeBSD isn't unique in having packaging metadata_

I looked on the Download page and expected to be told (especially around the time you mention that BSD systems usually have the OpenSSL header files already installed) that I could also find it in sysutils/tarsnap.

I hope my comment proves more helpful than it appears from my end.

<comment><AUTHOR> _realized later that they were sub-menu items_

Aha, that explains it. I did the menus this way because I (a) wanted to avoid javascript, and (b) thought it looked good -- but if it's confusing people I'd better see if I can find a different way of presenting the menu structure.

 _I looked on the Download page and expected to be told that I could also find it in sysutils/tarsnap._

Good point. Yeah, I should look at revising this page to point people at OS- specific instructions first, with the full install-from-autoconfed-source instructions only as a fallback for systems where I don't have special instructions.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER6> You are extremely intelligent and an excellent engineer. But a designer or marketer you are not: focus on what you're good at, and convince people who are good at the other things to work with you (or teach you how to do it well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> bravo!

much better front page. not a tar snap user, but have followed the tarsnap story, and I think this is a good move.</comment>


Dominos tested delivering pizza by drone [video] - <AUTHOR> http://videos.digg.com/post/52072616644/dominos-tested-delivering-pizza-by-drone

<comment><USER2> This seems like a marketing stunt more than anything.

Drones would be cost effective if they were at least somehow semi-automated, otherwise there is an endless supply of teenagers and people willing to use scooters to do this at minimum wage. Drone pilots/operators are presumably more skilled and would have higher hourly wages.

It seems like 'self piloting drones' > 'self driving cars' in complexity. So we aren't quite there yet.

I would also imagine that once it becomes even remotely technologically viable it will be snuffed out by legislation. But perhaps one day.. :)

<comment><USER3> I'm really not that sure that drones like the one in the video are more complicated than self driving cars. Self driving cars have to handle a lot of external stimulus, like other cars, road regulations and thrust/steering balances on the road. This helicopter is quite free to move and can be "easily" tracked by gps or such. Only the remote landing can be tricky depending on the situation.

<comment><USER4> I agree that a self-driving car is much harder on the basis that it has to handle other cars alone.

With that being said, a small drone like this is harder than it looks for a couple reasons.

First, there's not enough payload capacity for a good, accurate IMU. You're stuck using lightweight but awfully noisy MEMS gyros and accelerometers along with drifty barometers.

Plus, there's not enough payload capacity for an off the shelf LIDAR or other long-range depth sensing. That means detecting obstacles needs to be delegated to 2D imagers plus CV algorithms, with some short-range depth sensing. IR ToF like a Kinect 2 or even a grid-based approach like a Kinect 1 might work in a favorable environment, but I wouldn't trust it outdoors even at close range.

If I had to build a pizza-delivery drone, I'd use a bottom-facing camera like the AR.Drone does to try to provide a position reference independent of the bad MEMS gear, and I'd use CV algorithms combined with a last-ditch short- range obstacle sensor (like IR or ultrasound) to attempt to avoid obstacles. Once I got to the destination, I'd delegate landing to a pilot, since "finding the front door" is a surprisingly hard problem.

<comment><USER5> Multicopters like the one in the video have no trouble reaching _much_ higher altitudes, where obstacles would likely be fewer and easier to detect. Given a specific delivery area, a reasonable cruising altitude could be preconfigured and the flight could probably be navigated by GPS with no CV whatsoever. Then, like you say, a human pilot could handle the landing and subsequent take-off.

The location of the pizzeria could even be chosen such that take-offs and landings at that end of the trip could be entirely automated, by GPS or perhaps with some much more basic CV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I was homeless in that area I'd start hunting pizza drones for food. I also thought they were automating it instead.

</comment><comment><USER7> The "drone" itself is a DJI S800 and not autonomous in any way. It is technically a Remotely Operated Aircraft (ROA), so a fancy RC helicopter.

It looks like this was filmed in the UK (from the .co.uk address on the side of the box). Had it been filmed in the US, they could run into serious legal problems for not having a Special Airworthiness Certificate from the FAA for commercial operation.

<comment><USER8> Generally "drone" refers to "unmanned aerial vehicle" (UAV), not necessarily autonomous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would have thought that the obvious advantage of this over scooter-kid is the time saving over someone in traffic. It would take potentially half the time to deliver to some areas by air. With the major side benefit that your pizza is less soggy when it arrives, which means a noticeable improvement in product quality.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a cool idea. I'm sure some would be tempted to capture and steal the drones as they made delivery—they can't be cheap. It will become the modern day equivalent of stealing a plastic milk cart—only you won't be building ugly book shelves with the drones. :)

<comment><USER11> It'd be cooler if someone launched their own drone with a grabbing arm and swiped the pizza mid-air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who cares if it is a commercial. People need to realize drones can be used for other stuff than military. Maybe this ad will serve as a good tool to democratize drones as that "Pizza for Bitcoin" website did for Bitcoin, even if it's just a small step.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am 100% sure that automatically landing a pizza in your front yard will be technically feasible long before the theft rate of these neat gadgets would drop to an acceptable rate. Maybe the first copters will parachute the pizzas :)

</comment><comment><USER14> How is the drone going to open the door of my apartment building and bring the pizza upstairs (the most important part of the delivery)?

<comment><USER15> Do you have a window? Problem solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm still holding out hope for Tacocopter.

<comment><USER17> Will the burrito bomber suffice? <http://www.darwinaerospace.com/burritobomber>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought drones were banned from commercial use?

</comment><comment><USER19> If this were an actual service how would they handle people interfering with the drone en route or during the delivery?

<comment><USER20> The same way you prevent people from interfering with pizza delivery people's cars. Legal repercussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to me - my local Dominos has mysteriously stopped taking online orders "for the time being".

</comment><comment><USER22> if i had any money, i'm quite sure i'd consider investing into something drone related (commercial). almost positive these things will become a huge part of our everyday life/society in the future. (hopefully for the better)

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks to be more of a viral video ad, but still pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a commercial.

</comment><comment><USER25> Digg is still alive?

<comment><USER26> I tried to sign in with my account from circa 2005 - it doesn't work. So Digg remains dead to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Woah... digg.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this for real?

<comment><USER29> To put my slightly cynical hat on (one of my favourite hats) - the viral marketing video space is a popular one at the moment, since everyone knows how quickly video content can spread - especially when it's entertaining and/or novel, and marketers would love to reach those kind of audience sizes with their brands.

There are also a great number of video producers out there - often relatively young folks who keep in tune with what's popular online, stay current on technology trends, and would love to earn their income by creating and selling videos which advertise brands (Dominos) and products.

So, these folks - their raison d'être is to produce videos which promote a brand and spread virally - and to achieve that, they need to 'feel' unique, but the catch is that they generally need to display the branding quite prominently in the content.

Here's a similar situation: <http://www.livescience.com/23150-seagull-video- hoax.html>

To me, I'd suspect both are viral marketing, if well disguised - and even if they're not, I'd suspect that viral video marketers are going to become more sophisticated at making videos 'appear' to be genuine / user-generated / found footage.

One question that springs to mind with this one is: if Dominos were beta- testing this, would they have the operator wear the Dominos delivery uniform?

Either way, they're fun to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> so do they get paid to run ads like that, or are they just stooges the same as reddit?

</comment><comment><USER31> I can imagine some idiot running right into the propellers on that drone. I can also see the million dollar settlement next.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can they get the drones to make a pizza that doesn't suck, too? Cuz that might be a better use of the tech.

<comment><USER32> Sheesh, downvotes! You guys must love their pizza.

<comment><USER33> it has nothing to do with their pizza, people just thought your comment wasn't constructive</comment></comment></comment>


Simpler Hacker News for Greasemonkey (and Greasekit) - <AUTHOR> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/70821

<comment><USER2> Interesting to know that there are people who don't want to get into the discussions.

I come here to learn something new from the discussions, not the news.

<comment><USER3> Same here. I am uninvolved with and uninterested in start ups, but I find there's far more intellect here than at other social news sites. The focus on discussion rather than humor really facilates deeper and more interesting analysis in my opinion. Higher standards for commenting discourage participants from chiming in with their opinion unless they really have something to say. At least, that's why I mostly lurk here.</comment></comment>


Close and tranquil solar system has astronomers excited - <AUTHOR> https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/close-and-tranquil-solar-system-has-astronomers-excited/ <comment><USER2> Just for context, there are 22 other solar systems within 12 light years of us.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs#List)

<comment><USER3> _" Mr. Data, report to the stellar cartography and prepare a view of sector 001 and all stars within a radius of a few parsec."_

Here is a map: [http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html](http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please just make JWST operational at last, please.

<comment><USER5> I've always been curious, when the design phase ends and construction begins, wouldn't new technologies have emerged by then? Do they try to keep up and incorporate improvements or are new breakthroughs rare?

<comment><USER4> After 25 years in the making and now waiting to be launched, technology of course has advanced enough for JWST to be "obsolete" in that sense by the time it's operational. However, new space telescopes take so long to be operational but they still give us amazing data... even if what they give us is peanuts from old dusty tech it's still worth it. Anyways, JWST is going to be incredible... heck, even after so many years Hubble still produce a ridiculous amount of good data and research and it was designed in the 70s! Can you imagine if launching was cheap and we had a constant flow of budget for space telescopes and we could launch a new improvement every year (after an initial ramp-up of, say, 10 years)? Unfortunately launch costs and cadence has been a major blocker so far to the things you asked about IMHO.

<comment><USER6> Just wait for Starship. It promises all that, and the possibility of an eight- meter aperture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We still don't know:

1\. If those planets have water. 2\. If their surface gravity is tolerable. 3\. What kind of atmosphere they have, if any. 4\. What's the mineral composition of those planets. 5\. How violent the surface weather is, provided an atmosphere does exist.

So, there's only cause for cautious optimism.

</comment><comment><USER8> Musk ever spoken about what he'd do to get outside of the solar?

Speed of light is a bastard of a limitation to have to beat...

<comment><USER9> Only for those left behind, time dilation is magic.

As per wikipedia: > a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime

So it's really only a challenge of propulsion. You're not making a return trip to any recognizable civilization though.

<comment><USER10> The amount of energy required to keep that 1g acceleration though...

<comment><USER11> Particles accelerate to light speed all the time though. So it is possible, we have not yet discovered a way to do it at larger scale.

<comment><USER12> Particles also don't care so much about how quickly they stop...

<comment><USER13> "Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you."

Jeremy Clarkson

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So realistically we have two ways of colonizing this. Either we cure aging so a few decades of space travel wouldn't make a dent in our life and our physical ability to colonize an uninhabited environment OR we invent real AI and leave space colonization to the machines as they have both don't age and can transport themselves at the speed of light.

I'd say machines will be cheaper.

<comment><USER15> Using AI seems pointless. Not to mention that what need would an AI have for a planet. Might as well put a solar sail in our system. Maybe make a few thousand clones...

How about sending a whole village for the voyage? Some will die, some will be born, culture will be thought and the next generation would colonise the new planet.

<comment><USER16> A fun book about this idea, Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

<comment><USER17> Similarly, Red Mars by the same author takes the much easier goal of colonizing mars!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we just accept habitable zone planets exists in every single star system around us? Thanks.

<comment><USER19> No, because there's no evidence that's true. We've found lots of stars with planets around them where none of them appear habitable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to learn best practices for front end development? - <AUTHOR> I know this question comes up from time to time but not with the particular angle of best practices.
I know the backend part of the system, but if I want to go about and implement HTML/CSS/JS from a Photoshop image, then I'm totally lost.
Any good resources? It seems to me that all good frontend devs just learn by experience/empirically -- there's little "formal training" (in some sense). <comment><USER2> What makes it hard is that the "frontend development" space is always rapidly changing.

For instance you can still make sites that are based on static HTML and CSS and that have no Javascript or you can put a few little bits of Javascript in, or you can use a large number of techniques and frameworks to build something that is more like a mobile app than a web page, be it AngularJS or GWT, Enscripten, etc.

First there were the libraries like prototype and JQuery that would smooth over browser incompatibilities, but then the browsers got more compatible. For a long time there was a consensus that a macro language and calculations in CSS would make things worse. Then Blueprint came out and people were excited about that. Then people got sick of all web pages looking the same, and then people realized that the grid was the bad part of Blueprint, it was the other stuff that was good, but then you need a macro languages like LESS, and...

Thus you really have to set some goals for which technologies you want to master, because if you want to master them all you are going to be doing nothing but front-end development for a few years and then you will continuously be scrambling to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER3> When writing HTML locally save the files with the extension ".xhtml". This forces XML conventions upon the document so that when you open it in the browser it will immediately fail on the first syntax violation. This will help you learn to write better HTML.

When writing HTML be as descriptive as possible in your use of tag names. If you only use "div" and "span" for everything you are failing your users and destroying accessibility. Go read this [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/](http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/) and the various supporting documents. You cannot claim to have mastered HTML if you have failed to understand accessibility.

CSS just takes practice. With the browsers being less divergent now and easier to code for its harder to learn a deep deep level of mastery. Back in the days of IE6 you had to become quite the badass to make CSS work cross-browser without a bunch of stupid hacks.

For JavaScript there are some key things to focus upon:

* The scope model (learn closures and nesting functions)

* events and callbacks

* xmlHttpRequest (AJAX)

* the DOM

* the Node.js methods

Don't dick around wasting time learning frameworks and JQuery. Just learn through the vanilla code and learn to solve problems as directly as possible. It will pay off in the long run. Pass your code through the [http://jslint.com/](http://jslint.com/) tool. JSLint is OCD crazy opinionated and extremely strict, but it is that on purpose. It is designed to teach defensive coding practices so that you can right code correctly the first time which has a significantly lower probably of failure and is easier to maintain.

<comment><USER2> The XHTML is very bad advice:

[http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of- xhtml](http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml)</comment></comment>


A student used GPT-3 to write fake blog posts ended up at the top of HN - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/16/21371049/gpt3-hacker-news-ai-blog <comment><USER2> I love the part where people on HN guess correctly that it was a post written by GPT-3 only to be downvoted and met with comments telling them that they needed to be more civil.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is what got it to the top. People responded to a very vanilla article in knee jerk replies.</comment>


Dependency - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2347/ <comment><USER3> A couple years ago I wrote a program to make dependency diagrams just like this! [https://github.com/kach/tower-of-power](https://github.com/kach/tower- of-power)

Here's `pdf-redact-tools` from Homebrew: [https://github.com/kach/tower-of- power/blob/master/gallery/p...](https://github.com/kach/tower-of- power/blob/master/gallery/pdf-redact-tools.box.svg)

Here's the CS core at Stanford (dependency = prereq): [https://github.com/kach/tower-of- power/blob/master/gallery/c...](https://github.com/kach/tower-of- power/blob/master/gallery/cs.box.svg)

<comment><USER4> Speaking of homebrew, its author definitely fits the tiny block in this cartoon.

<comment><USER5> The first thing I thought of was OpenSSL:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575210)

<comment><USER6> GnuPG and ffmpeg also come to mind.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I remember GPG being in the news for that:

[https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email- encrypti...](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption- software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke)

But I also remember the takedown about no one actually relying on email encryption for security:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22368888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22368888)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Author of one such library faced serious problems. He has opened up yesterday in this blog post.

[https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing- fro...](https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me- please-be- this-2262ec7b8af2?source=friends_link&sk=e29ac54d3fbed71de045ed6a5857280b)

His tweet: [https://twitter.com/behdadesfahbod/status/129532694517805465...](https://twitter.com/behdadesfahbod/status/1295326945178054659?s=20)

The library: [https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz](https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz)

<comment><USER8> Who attempted to force his employer to fire him for a code of conduct violation?

<comment><USER7> I don't know what part of his story you refer to, if its:

"It took me weeks to regain access to my accounts, which were disabled after my employer (Facebook) was notified and embarked on disabling them."

I guess they've disabled his account to prevent access of the intelligence services to any sensitive data.

<comment><USER8> It's there in the tweet he links: [https://twitter.com/behdadesfahbod/status/127513187003691417...](https://twitter.com/behdadesfahbod/status/1275131870036914177)

<comment><USER7> I think it's an unrelated issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Image title:

> Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period > of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.

EDIT: don't forget to always hover over the image. Half of XKCD's fun comes from those tidbits.

<comment><USER10> Honestly, yes, imagemagick is such a ridiculous dependency for everything.

<comment><USER11> Why is GraphicsMagick [1] not a more popular alternative?

[1] [http://www.graphicsmagick.org/](http://www.graphicsmagick.org/)

<comment><USER12> Same reason any legacy dependency remains; the cost of replacement is higher than the cost of maintenance.

<comment><USER11> It's meant to be a drop-in replacement, the cost of replacement should be negligible.

<comment><USER13> Both projects are moving fairly fast, and regularly adding new features that are not shared.

The last time I made heavy use of ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick, I was suprised how often I would find a feature present in one and not the other (often things like drawing gradients).

And it's not like one has a superset of the other's features: I once painted myself into a corner and created a project that depended on both ImageMagick _and_ GraphicsMagick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This trend towards huge dependency trees has started to turn me off getting serious about learning software development. It seems like unless you want to make a toy program, you end up with hundreds of dependencies, most of which are made by volunteers who could decide they don't feel like working on it any more. Even having someone paid to do the work doesn't seem like it matters anymore when you consider that Mozilla just laid off a bunch of technical employees to focus on whatever else.

Are there any other solo devs who get "dependency anxiety" and don't want to start working on a project because you worry that you'll have wasted your time if one of the hundreds of dependencies breaks something, and there is nobody to fix it (like a crypto library for example)?

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry to hear you feel afraid to learn more software development, but i think these concerns are largely unfounded. First of all, dependencies don't break just because they are unmaintained. If it worked ten years ago, it should still work now. For particularly complicated dependencies, there's a likelihood that they have bugs. But if they are popular, these bugs are often either things you probably won't ever come across or can work around if you do.

Finally, the beauty of open source software is that you can fix things yourself! Found a package from 10 years ago that works 99% of the time, but you just need to fix one thing or add one tiny feature? Not a problem, you fork the repo and add what you need.

<comment><USER14> Gotcha, thanks for the feedback. I've never done professional software development, it's just something I picked up to broaden my skillset, so it's good to know that the concerns aren't really an issue in practice. Regarding fixing bugs in the dependencies, I think that's like a chicken/egg problem for me. I use the dependencies because I don't have the time or skill yet to make the functionality on my own, which means I also don't have the time/skills to fix bugs in the dependencies. I think I probably have to buckle down and get over that hump to be confident enough to make bigger projects that need more dependencies.

<comment><USER16> Part of the skillset is evaluating dependencies on how well they fit with your goals both technical and strategic and what level of risk/benefit they pose, and how those dependencies are places in their respective ecosystem.

Usually any ecosystem has a core set of dependencies that are heavily relied on by most or a lot of projects as the go-to solution for a given problem. Then there are often sets of dependencies where there are several popular well maintained choices to pick from depending on your needs.

Where it gets a little trickier is things that are a bit more niche. That being said, most software development just wouldn't be possible without standing on the shoulders of giants so to speak cos it's just so time consuming.

They're far more of a benefit than a detriment but you have to learn to assess them and make choices based on your individual considerations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes, It's dependency system's weakness, but also that's what makes this system very strong:

If one of those base level things break, everyone who depend on it, will come together and replace/fix it instantly.

<comment><USER18> Or they won't.

<comment><USER19> This precedent suggests they will:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed#Root_causes,_possib...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed#Root_causes,_possible_lessons,_and_reactions)

The industry's collective response to the crisis was the Core Infrastructure Initiative, a multimillion-dollar project announced by the Linux Foundation on April 24, 2014 to provide funds to critical elements of the global information infrastructure.[192] The initiative intends to allow lead developers to work full-time on their projects and to pay for security audits, hardware and software infrastructure, travel, and other expenses.[193] OpenSSL is a candidate to become the first recipient of the initiative's funding.[192]

After the discovery Google established Project Zero which is tasked with finding zero-day vulnerabilities to help secure the Web and society.[194]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would anyone donate to a service that maps your dependency tree and breaks up your donation to support the projects in your entire tree (not only surface level) proportional to their usage or something like that?

<comment><USER21> It's been proposed and tried before, and I think generally deemed not worth it. a) Almost no one donates, b) the donations would be broken up to infinitesimal levels, helping no one, and c) there are people who devote their working lives to OSS without compensation, other people who write a few cute small libraries/tools but don't need the money, and then there are corporations who contribute to open-source for their own benefit. The proportion of money that would go to your favorite OSS heroes would be embarrassingly small; compounded by the low donation level and general dilution.

<comment><USER22> Also you end up with a handful of people making 1000s of one liner libraries that link to each other in an effort to game such systems.

<comment><USER23> At the same time other people will be more motivated not to include one-liner libraries to not further dilute donations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm constantly amazed by the quality and consistency of the open source community. Can you think of any other industry where massive companies are built on top of free infrastructure?

<comment><USER25> OpenSource software isn't free. It costs people's time to develop and maintain. Calling it 'free' devalues the projects and their maintainers by giving the impression their time isn't worth anything.

We as the OpenSource community need to start moving towards a more sustainable approach to OpenSource development. First step: Stop calling it free.

<comment><USER26> Oh god this is the same argument rolled out by opponents of socialised healthcare. If it's free then you are forcing the doctor to work for no pay! Stop splitting hairs over the meaning of 'free' in this context. It is free to the end user, it is not free to the developer or maintainer.

I make christmas hampers for the poor, I call them free hampers. Of course they are not free, but to the end user they are.

And no, people are not going to start using the word libre, it is not an English word and it is not used widely enough outside of computing and it will probably not catch on. /endrant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A big part of Go's success is due to the large and useful standard lib. This kind of ecosystem feature is much more valuable than any language feature.

If the Rust guys would understand this and put an async runtime, http server and client, crypto and some more essentials in the standard lib the adoption would be much higher. Than we would have a super robust language and a super robust ecosystem. I don't think the borrow checker is the issue with Rust slow adoption in the mainstream backend business.

<comment><USER6> I can't speak for the Rust devs, but as far as I'm aware, the longterm plan is to have more stuff in std, but only once they're fairly certain they have the right design. Async/await is a good example. The Rust community explored the design space for async runtimes for several years before they felt comfortable settling on a design for the initial pieces of std.

The process is definitely frustratingly slow, but going faster has burned the Rust devs already in the past (just look at how much stuff in std::error::Error is deprecated).

<comment><USER28> The main problem isn't just that, it's that also, Rust cannot decide that a one-size-fits-all executor is the only one. Different properties are needed for different projects, and blessing any one executor cuts off all of the rest of them.

Tokio is fantastic for web services, but is inappropriate for my microcontroller.

<comment><USER6> Do you have a notification daemon for every HN comment that mentions Rust? :)

<comment><USER28> Nope, just use the search bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> And when the Nebraskan sells the project to a scammer, we're all in trouble.

<comment><USER30> Can you do that? I'd be open to selling an open source project that gets over 1M monthly downloads. I can't seem to monetize it otherwise.

EDIT>> "Can you do that?" meaning, "Can you sell an open source project?" Not "Can I sell to a scammer?", for people accusing me of planning to commit a crime.

<comment><USER10> Please don't... we already had our scare in the past when someone handed over the JS project for something to a third party and broke the internet.

<comment><USER31> "please don't" doesn't pay the bills. You want those people to avoid transferring the reigns for cash? Find some sustainable way to pay them. No amount of feel good platitudes will do that.

<comment><USER18> Crime isn't supposed to pay the bills either. You have no right to give away a gift and the bulglarize anyone who accepts it. If you don't want to give your work away, put a protective license on it.

<comment><USER31> While the above case is (arguably) crime. In general crime is unrelated to this issue.

As for licensing: totally agreed. I would like to see more projects with protective licensing.

Too many projects are basically donations to Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is why you are supposed to choose whichever dependency you add to your project very very carefully.

Also, each dependency you add to project is a security risk in itself. I really can't believe how webdesigners casually add dependencies without a second thought especially with dependency management system like npm.

People give C++ lots of hate but thanks to not having an easy way of adding complex dependencies, it has less dependency driven bugs/security issues.

<comment><USER33> > People give C++ lots of hate but thanks to not having an easy way of adding > complex dependencies, it has less dependency driven bugs/security issues.

Oh, come on. The number of security issues to things like libssl alone is enormous.

<comment><USER34> Oh come one, you're describing a single dependency which being encryption is generally recommended against rolling your own.

Don't try and tell me C++ projects in general have more dependencies than high level languages.

<comment><USER35> Nope, but I'm happy to tell you that C/C++ projects in general have more security flaws than high level languages.

<comment><USER34> Don't shift the goal posts, we're talking specifically about dependencies and dependency driven bugs.

<comment><USER36> Languages like C++ that lack memory safety have the irritating property that a memory safety error anywhere in the dependency tree can be exploited to attack unrelated parts of the binary. In most languages you don't have to worry that some stateless pure-function log formatter is secretly the gap in your armor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't use a lot of dependencies in my software (some uses none except the standard library, or for software that runs on a VM, the VM it runs on (although any implementation can be used)). (Probably the only program I do maintain that has too many dependencies is TeXnicard, because it depends on Ghostscript (which has a lot of dependencies). It also uses PCRE and SQLite3 (which are not so bad, since they don't have other dependencies).)

In terms of ImageMagick, I used to use it but now maintain my own set of programs for dealing with picture files (almost entirely written in C, although the ones for converting to/from fax format are in PostScript; I may later write a version in C as well, so that you can use it if you do not have a PostScript interpreter). Like most software I write, I try to not use many dependencies if I can avoid it. (It doesn't use libpng either; it is using LodePNG, which is better in many ways, in my opinion.) (These set of programs I wrote also have many effects that I have not seen in other programs, such as automatic rearranging in a horizontal or vertical strip, removing duplicates from a vertical strip, and making the tensor product of two pictures. There are also file formats ImageMagick does not support.)

</comment><comment><USER38> What are some examples of this?

<comment><USER39> SQLite feels like this to me. It's more than one person, and it's not thankless work (at least, I hope). But still it is critical to a surprising amount of technology, and maintained by a very few people.

<comment><USER9> And, at the same time, it's a very underused piece of tech

Every time you think you need a custom file format for a given piece of software... you most likely don't. Just use SQLite. You can use the standard OS file Open/Save dialog box and users will never know the difference.

Yes, that means you now have to write SQL statements to manipulate your data. But that also means that you can get lots of complicated data structures on disk and can manipulate them easily, even outside your own software - <USER2> fire up the sqlite CLI and point to your file. There are GUIs as well.

Things like UNDO/REDO can also be had almost trivially (see [https://www.sqlite.org/undoredo.html](https://www.sqlite.org/undoredo.html))

Sometimes this also means you don't need an external RDBMS even for web apps. I've seen so many apps which co-locate a small database in the same box that might as well have been a single sqlite file. I'm actually maintaining one right now that, although relatively important, will only ever be a single box. But sqlite wasn't 'enterprisey' enough, had to use PG. For a couple of tables.

[https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

Subscribe for my next rant on another underused piece of tech... Lua :)

<comment><USER40> sqlite3 is now very heavily used in the Apple ecosystem - all of Core Data is built on it, and many of Apple's own apps use it to store all kinds of data. It's a godsend for tinkerers like me too - just point the SQLite CLI at one of the internal DBs (like the Photos database) and all sorts of cool stuff comes spilling out.

For on-disk document storage I think Apple mostly uses a mix of plain folders with magic extensions ("packages") and ZIP files nowadays, although there are definitely a lot of exceptions. SQLite isn't that great for binary blob storage (relatively speaking) so a folder structure is still more useful there, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what the most critical (and smallest, least maintained) npm package in the world is?

<comment><USER42> Bold of you to assume it's npm that's being spoken of :D

<comment><USER41> I was thinking of this:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/how-a-programmer-almost- broke-t...](https://www.sciencealert.com/how-a-programmer-almost-broke-the- internet-by-deleting-11-lines-of-code)

<comment><USER43> > The problem was promptly fixed, and for the vast majority of us users, there > was no down-time thanks to caching

I don't know much about npm management, but I'm assuming it actually had nothing to do with caching? More like most companies have pipelines and breaking dependency changes won't reach prod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well, the first impulse is naturally to just use what's out there for free and leave it to some other poor sap to shoulder the cost of maintenance. That puts you ahead in the short run, at the cost of higher risk.

It takes a strong open source advocacy effort to a reach out and a sophisticated organization to be reached, for such an organization to recognize when it's in their interest to participate in open source maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER45> There's a lot of different metrics to look at when determining if one should install a dependency or not.

One such metric I found to be missing for npm dependencies was the install size, which is why I created [https://packagephobia.com](https://packagephobia.com)

We need more tools to help make this decision because its easy to add a new dependency but its often hard to remove a dependency.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure size is a good metric here. For example, a really tiny npm library like left pad ([https://packagephobia.com/result?p=leftpad](https://packagephobia.com/result?p=leftpad)) is something you don't want to depend on (because you can implement it in a couple of lines), whereas date-fns ([https://packagephobia.com/result?p=date- fns](https://packagephobia.com/result?p=date-fns)), which is way bigger than left pad, is a library I definitely don't mind depending on.

<comment><USER45> That's a great example!

You looked at the size and determined that it might not be worth bringing on a small dependency when you can implement it yourself (or rather use String.prototype.padStart).

It's not just size alone but size of transitive dependencies.

Both examples you gave don't have any dependencies (the publish size matches the install size).

Take a look at some popular dependencies like request or jest and notice the number of transitive dependencies.

[https://packagephobia.com/result?p=request](https://packagephobia.com/result?p=request)

[https://packagephobia.com/result?p=jest](https://packagephobia.com/result?p=jest)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if you could write a program that scans javascript-dependencies for function-usage that could be replaced by suites like lodash, to find and replace "leftpad-style dependencies".

</comment><comment><USER48> Would you trust the stability of the dependency more if it was maintained by a large company, say, Oracle?

</comment><comment><USER49> This is describing cURL, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER50> ImageMagick is the ffmpeg of images.

</comment><comment><USER51> All I think of is Angry Birds when I see that picture...

</comment><comment><USER52> ffmpeg comes to mind

</comment><comment><USER53> Very well put. I suspect this is one of those xkcd's that will become a timeless classic, just like the one on standards: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/).</comment>


Intel at ISSCC 2015: Reaping the Benefits of 14nm and Going Beyond 10nm - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8991/intel-at-isscc-2015-reaping-the-benefits-of-14nm-and-going-beyond-10nm

<comment><USER2> This article proposes that the naming convention of using feature size is becoming more and more marketing and less and less connected with an actual distance. [1] Does anyone around here know what the state of the resolution of these chips' features actually is? I'm curious about the actual precision of these modern lithographic techniques. I presume at some point you get into Heisenberg's territory and things get much (differently) harder.

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/the- status-o...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/the-status-of- moores-law-its-complicated)

<comment><USER3> Here's a report of a scan of Intel's 14nm technology: [http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive- analysis/r...](http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive- analysis/resources/blog/intels-14-nm-parts-are-finally-here/)

A good example for the problem with naming conventions is that Intel's 14nm M1 has lower pitch (i.e., lower distance between wire centres) than the 14nm technology of competitors; at least as claimed by Intel some time last years and apparently confirmed by the linked article.

<comment><USER4> One way around this problem(of different densities for transistors and wires), is a new metric that multiplies the resolution of both(lower is better). Intel's metric is 3640, Samsung is 4990.It's from [1].

So Intel has 27% area advantage over Samsung. Although of course it's very design dependent.As for cost, there are other parameters, so it's a bit harder to tell.For example, today's 28nm is cheaper than the denser 20nm because it's a simpler process.

[1][https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3884-who-will- lead-10...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3884-who-will- lead-10nm.html) \- if i'm not mistaken samsungs's 16nm should be 14nm.</comment></comment></comment>


Flash vs. Ajax (merits of platforms building 'Buzzword' wordprocessor) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.virtub.com/?p=8 <comment><USER2> Heh, looks like a really nice GUI. See the video of the founder using it: <http://blog.virtub.com/?p=15>

Seems to me the difference between "web app" and "desktop app" is getting more and more fuzzy. Is it a web app because it's written in Flash? Is it a web app because it (presumably) doesn't store anything on your machine?

Given that desktop apps these days often interact heavily with data from the web (Google Earth, for instance), what exactly is the definition of "web app" now?

<comment><USER3> My definitions:

Web App: Application developed entirely using open standards, which (aims to) run in any browser, requiring no additional vendor plugins.

Desktop App: Application designed to launch from the user's desktop, without reference to a web browser.

Thick Client: Any desktop app that makes heavy use of the Internet, or any "Web App"-like thing that makes use of non-standard extensions to the browser.

Reasonable people may disagree on this, and the differences are pretty fuzzy, but my distinctions are based upon the development problems I feel each type of approach must address.

Web App: Works on (most any) platform, no installation, but you have to deal with cross-browser issues, and you're limited by the technology of the web (no local FS access, for instance.)

Desktop App: Tied to one architecture (or worry about JVM incompatibilities), installation hassles, but you get an incredibly rich set of capabilities.

Thick Client: If it's a desktop app that talks to the network, you've got all the desktop tradeoffs, plus richer data, plus worries about what happens when the user works offline. If it's a "Web App" using non-standard extensions (Flash, Silverlight) you've got to worry about whether the user has the right version installed, and licensing hassles and/or fees on the server side and/or in the toolchain. You're also constrained by the capabilities of the extensions, but, in practice, development seems easier than for a pure Web App.

I realize that these definitions mean that lots of things (YouTube) people think of as Web Apps aren't (to me, anyway), but I'm okay with that. It seems a crucial distinction that, once you're targeting the Flash client, you're not really solving the same set of (technical) problems as someone targeting a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are any of you working on Flex/Apollo UI startups? I have to admit, the demo I saw of Flex/Apollo at the Salesforce developers conference was _really_ impressive. However, my partner isn't convinced that going with a particular company's solution is the way to go, so we are sticking with javascript for our UI for now.

<comment><USER5> Your choice #1 must always be javascript. Why lock yourself to Adobe? I can state a very good example.

One of the most widely used components in flash is the webservice component. An app i built in flash depends entirely on this component. But when the latest version of Flash, Flash cs3 came out, there is no webservice component in it! To rewrite my app in Actionscript 3, i must rebuild my app in Flash cs3. Now that this component in not included, its impossible to update my app.[This component is available in Flex, and Adobe can port that component to flash CS3 in no time. They are not doing it for obvious business reason]

Bottomline is,building your business on top of any closed system is a bad idea.

[Side note: Flex is not a big thing as Adobe markets it. Its Flash itself, but built to attract Java developers (developers who come from a background where Flash's timeline concept is unheard of). Flex need to be used ONLY if you cant find a decent actionscript developer. This is because, the only thing Flex does is to provide the developer with a lot of pre cooked UI elements.But by doing so, you will end up using a lot of unwanted code resulting in bloated file size.Do you really want to build a business on top of a very generalized component set? Reducing file size 300k to 10 k is good for you.Hire a decent local actionscript programmer if you have to go with Flash.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't get the flash decision. Lots of "wow cool" flashy transitions etc, but who cares about them when you want to write a quick document quickly on the web. For that matter who cares about whether it will match exactly when you print it? All I want is a fast, quick, editor that interoperates with other things easily (eg with a javascript/ajax ui, you can resize the font from the browser etc... not so with flash).

</comment><comment><USER7> I am looking into using Flex for my next webapp</comment>


Backpack: Build Node.js Back Ends with Webpack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/palmerhq/backpack <comment><USER2> actually for my last project I started building my backend using my gulp build process.

This allowed me to have a prod build and minimize, use es2016, reuse code between frontend and backend with a pretty easy to understand process, set up special debugging builds very easily and so on and so forth.

There was really a lot of benefits to it.</comment>


Rocket – A Rust game running on WASM - <AUTHOR> https://aochagavia.github.io/blog/rocket---a-rust-game-running-on-wasm/ <comment><USER2> Even though the game itself is simple, this is an excellent experience report to help people get started using WASM. Rust's tooling for this target is still young, but it seems to be maturing rapidly. 2018's going to be an exciting year. :)</comment>


What iOS 5 owes to jailbreak developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/06/what-ios-5-owes-to-jailbreak-developers/

<comment><USER2> I agree with some of the article's points, but it doesn't mention that Apple hired Peter Hajas, the developer of MobileNotifier.

> _It is great to see these enhancements become available to millions of > users, but it affects the ability of others to innovate on the platform > independently of Apple._

Could someone explain this to me?

I don't think that stealing features from iPhone developers' add-ons is any worse from stealing from Android or WebOS. (And, for better or for worse, this is the point of software patents.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not directly related to jailbreaking, but this link on the sidebar of the OP is interesting. Published 2 days prior to iOS5 announcement. Depending on how you look at it 6-8 of the "must download first" apps are now part of iOS5.

[http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/04/10-apps-you-should-install- fi...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/06/04/10-apps-you-should-install-first-on- your-iphone/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it help you if you call it third-party research? Whatever it is, however it is, it wasn't helping 99% of us till now.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad someone is finally discussing this. IntelliScreen was the first app ($10) I ever bought on the iPhone -- long before Apple's "magical" app store even existed -- through Cydia/Rock (or whatever it was called at the time...)

<comment><USER3> Same here, also used PkgBackup to sync to Dropbox. Although I expect that will still be around since it also supports syncing non-App Store applications and settings.</comment></comment>


Soaring SUV sales keep carmakers on collision course with climate policy - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-autos-suvs/soaring-suv-sales-keep-carmakers-on-collision-course-with-climate-policy-idUKKBN1Z916R <comment><USER2> Buying an SUV is sometimes due to network effects.

If you are in a sedan, it isn't high enough to allow you to see traffic through the windshields of the SUV ahead of you, it's not much different than being behind an 18-wheeler.

So as a defensive maneuver, you also buy an SUV...

<comment><USER3> If you're following the SUV ahead of you at a safe distance, why would you need or want to see through its windshield?

One of the reasons SUVs and pickup trucks are popular here in America is that they're easy to get in and out of. About 1/3 of Americans are obese (far more overweight), and from my observations, many have weak legs and cores. SUVs are part of the same phenomenon that has popularized single-story suburban homes, bottom-freezer refrigerators, etc. I see it as less of a network effect and more of a feedback loop.

<comment><USER4> Cuz some of us are safe drivers and want to see what is up ahead instead of blindly (literally) following the car in front like a lemming

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gas taxes haven't gone up in nearly three decades. The cost of driving an automobile is divorced from the reality of what it costs to maintain roads and protect the climate.

<comment><USER6> They have in California.

[https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics- government/article23164...](https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics- government/article231643868.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a 1973 video [0] about people shifting away from gas-guzzlers because oil prices have risen so much. I wonder whether we can expect history to repeat itself here:

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClaNhx71XB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClaNhx71XB8)

<comment><USER8> An alternative is that as battery prices drop and an equivalent electric SUV can cost less (with better performance on most metrics) that we'll see a kind of Jevon's Paradox and SUVs will get even bigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As with everything else, the answer to combating climate change is Miata.

<comment><USER10> The answer to just about damn near anything is Miata, of course.

But I formerly drove a Miata, and now drive an American Medium Size (that's a rest-of-the-world extra large) SUV. Same mileage for both, about ~23mpg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have one hypothesis for part of the uptick: rear seat room for carseats. I consider myself the SUV hater of SUV haters, and I reject that you need one when you have kids (such is the idea in my part of the US), but...we bought one last year anyway, mainly to accommodate two rear-facing carseats with two adults in the front. There aren't many cars that make this work, and you'd be surprised how big of an SUV you have to get to get any more rear seat space than a regular car. Not even most of the "mid-size" models.

</comment><comment><USER12> I understand why even cheap crappy plastic SUV sell in IE AND UK so well, people are tired of speed ramps and those vehicles are great for driving through crappy roads and speed ramps in housing estates and minor roads in small towns that are cursed with speed ramps. Sitting high enough to see surrounding plus not having to slow down for speed ramps win win

</comment><comment><USER13> Why are these mutually exclusive? An electric drive train can be fitted to an SUV form factor. In fact, it might be easier to get to an acceptable range (300mi) because there's more space for more batteries (assuming each battery delivers more range than its weight continues to scale).

I think the easiest way to accelerate decarbonization is to make green tech more desirable independent of the greenness. If people want it, they'll get it and in that sense SUVs could help achieve climate goals.

<comment><USER14> Bigger cars are heavier, SUVs have terrible aerodynamic properties, bigger batteries are heavier and consume more resources bring produced. Even electric SUVs aren't really green by any stretch of the imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> No one will care when an Explorer gets 20-25 mpg and gas is still under $2.50/gallon. The comfort and utility advantages more than outweigh any possible long-term externalities in the ordinary calculus.

<comment><USER16> > No one will care when an Explorer gets 20-25 mpg and gas is still under > $2.50/gallon.

I was curious if their fuel efficiency is really that low. I've only been interested in smaller SUVs (I've got a Honda CR-V) which are up to around 28 mpg city, 34 highway for current models.

So I went to Ford's site to check. On the page for the Explorer [1] I can't find fuel efficiency info! Searching for "mpg" on the page (or on the pages for specific models) shows hits but Firefox does not actually show them. Disabling styles and doing again finds that those mentions are just in standard disclaimer footnotes.

Even more interesting is this page [2], which lists all Ford SUVs and crossovers. All of the gas powered ones (Ecosport, Escape, Edge, Expedition, and Flex) _except_ for Explorer list their fuel efficiency right there.

Ford seems to be specifically avoiding listing Explorer gas mileage. Expedition is 17/24 city/highway and Flex is 16/23, so it's not like they are unwilling to list low numbers. So what is going on with Explorer?

[1] [https://www.ford.com/suvs/explorer/](https://www.ford.com/suvs/explorer/)

[2] [https://www.ford.com/new-suvs-crossovers/](https://www.ford.com/new-suvs- crossovers/)</comment></comment>


Cost of cracking passwords with Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://news.electricalchemy.net/2009/10/password-cracking-in-cloud-part-5.html

<comment><USER2> This is only extreme because of the cost of EC2 - which is quite high.

If your doing this seriously (as in; it's part of your companies regular revenue stream) like we do then you role your own clusters (much much cheaper) and add CUDA/FPGA solutions.

This costs more up front but reduces the crack time and cost per crack phenomenally.</comment>


Sweden's coronavirus experiment has well and truly failed - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-coronavirus-herd-immunity <comment><USER2> The article jumps between national and regional without distinction and for someone living in Sweden, it makes it quite incoherent. The restrictions of limiting shopping centers, schools and playgrounds has all been national, while the majority of deaths has been in the care homes of the elderly, most located around Stockholm region. Areas outside of Stockholm looks very different and in some places where they set up dedicated covid-19 health centers they now have no patients. There are even whole regions with single digit deaths since the start of the pandemic.

There is multiple theories for this, and none are around the lack of lock-down restrictions in shopping centers, schools and playgrounds. The primary focus is on the centralization and staffing problem in elderly care, where a person spend as little as a 10-15 minutes per elderly only to go to the next one without given time between to follow proper cleaning procedures and for a long time without access to safety equipment. For the Stockholm region we also have the only subway that exist in Sweden, which is heavily used by people working in health care and elderly care. Stockholm night culture has also been blamed a bit.

When people started to die in the elderly care the reaction was sadly minor. People just seemed to expect the workers to do better. The public health agency have also admitted that this was their reaction as well, and had expected that people working in elderly care should had done better given the recommendation to follow cleaning procedures and using safety equipment. The people working in elderly care basically said: what did you all expect when we are not given time, people or equipment to do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the right question to ask is: Is Sweden any worse than its neighbouring European countries by comparing to the exact time window when the neighbouring countries were at their exponentially rising stride?

Comparing per capita death rate to its neighbours RIGHT NOW assumes that the virus progression curve was the same in each country at its start, which is flawed.</comment>


Don't Make Me Steal: Digital Media Consumption Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://www.dontmakemesteal.com

<comment><USER2> Whilst I don't quite agree with the message of the page (primarily as "Don't Make Me Steal" seems somewhat more apt for people in an actual desperate situation) I do appreciate the site.

The major advantage to a site like this is to be able to point friends or family to an easy method of sharing support for this cause.

Sadly online media/DRM isn't a problem limited to techies anymore. Almost every time I go to a friend's place to watch a movie there's a complaint that the DVD won't let you skip ads (or worse tells you not to download illegally whilst watching the legit disc!) - I'm sorry guys but I've never seen an illegal rip that actually contains a warning or an ad, the only people who see it are viewing it through a legitimate source. Once my friends started hitting the situation of "defective" Blu-ray DVDs designed not to play on their older players..

If the non-techies know there's an issue there's something deeply wrong. You can't punish and restrict the people who legitimately purchase your content and expect them to remain silent on the issue or continue the practice.</comment>