Ask HN: Best tiny JavaScript framework? - <AUTHOR> I'm deciding on a Javascript framework to use in building a real time chat application with a tiny footprint. I can't use React, Angular, Ember, or Vue because they are too large. I would build the app in vanilla Javascript, but I fear that it will become more and more difficult to maintain and I will end up reimplementing many already solved problems.<p>Some of the frameworks that I've seen that are small, fast, and well-liked are Preact, Inferno, Mithril, and Ractive. Does anyone have any experience with these, or even better, thoughts on a comparison between them? <comment><USER2> I designed tko ([https://github.com/knockout/tko](https://github.com/knockout/tko)) to make it easy to re-use the best parts of Knockout using tree-shaking ES6 imports.

When experimenting with substituting a few modules, I've gotten it down to 4.5k gzipped.

It's still quite early on (alpha), but already some folks are using it in production. Plus, it's mostly backwards-compatible with Knockout.

While it might not be an ideal, usable solution for this problem yet, it's definitely moving in the direction of filling exactly this niche (among others).

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a maximum file size that you're looking for? Because Vue.js is pretty small, 23K after gzip:

[https://gist.github.com/Restuta/cda69e50a853aa64912d](https://gist.github.com/Restuta/cda69e50a853aa64912d)

<comment><AUTHOR> I love Vue and have used it before, but I would like to use an even smaller library if possible. I believe Inferno is 9kb and Preact is 3kb, so Vue isn't that far off, but I still would like to hear people's opinions on the truly tiny frameworks.

<comment><USER4> Preact's size for the amount of functionality and performance you get is unbeatable, I'd say.

If you do find something smaller, the amount of glue or performance related code you add will probably end up being more than Preact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are two that I know of that are truly tiny: Monkberry[0] and RE:DOM[1] which are respectively 1kb and 2kb in size.

[0]: [http://monkberry.js.org/](http://monkberry.js.org/)

[1]: [https://redom.js.org/](https://redom.js.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, these are very interesting libraries. I hadn't heard of either before today but they both look similar to what I am trying to find. Have you used either of them? I wonder if anyone uses them in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://mithril.js.org/](http://mithril.js.org/)

Size < 8kb gzipped (includes routing and ajax)

<comment><USER7> Do you know of any good mithril projects out in the wild?

<comment><USER8> Flarum is a good one - like Discourse but nice: [http://flarum.org/](http://flarum.org/)

Memrise.com use it for their apps.

Guild Wars 2 uses it for in-game UI.

More here: [https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/wiki/Who-Uses- Mithril](https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js/wiki/Who-Uses-Mithril)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you need tiny footprint best idea would be just to use Vanilla JS. But you can look here for some libs/frameworks for specific parts [http://microjs.com/](http://microjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the dom wrapper this guy came up with: [https://hackernoon.com/how-i- converted-my-react-app-to-vanil...](https://hackernoon.com/how-i-converted-my- react-app-to-vanillajs-and-whether-or-not-it-was-a-terrible- idea-4b14b1b2faff#.lcwbdi7ci)

I adapted it for myself here: [https://gitlab.com/heycato/domjs/blob/master/dom.js](https://gitlab.com/heycato/domjs/blob/master/dom.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> "VanillaJS is a framework written many years ago by a dude called Brendan that is rarely used anymore."

That is the funniest thing I've read all day.

<comment><USER10> oldy, but a goody: [http://vanilla-js.com/](http://vanilla-js.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vue is really small: 18kb min+gzip is tiny compared to the competition.

Check also [http://riotjs.com/](http://riotjs.com/) 9.73KB (gzip)

<comment><AUTHOR> Riot seems quite similar to Vue, and at half the size is pretty appealing. Have you used it in production before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about basically no framework with svelte? [https://svelte.technology/](https://svelte.technology/)

<comment><USER13> Svelte is a framework... that disappears at build time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My idea would be something like this.

Use any tiny View Library like Preact Inferno, etc. and use the Flux Architecture without any other framework, you implement the store by hand or using some immutable lib and use a simple dispatcher. That way you have a maintainable code since Flux is pretty popular and no big framework.

</comment><comment><USER15> One option would be to custom build jQuery and omit the parts you don't need or like. The libraries posted all have their merits; but jQuery has so much traction. That means more folks ready to hit the ground running on what you're building ... [https://github.com/jquery/jquery](https://github.com/jquery/jquery)

Edit Gruntfile.js to do that or try a site like: projects.jga.me/jquery- builder/

You can get sub-20Kb builds with just what you need. I did that recently to inline the core parts ...

One tip, if you use the builder, take a screenshot! The file generated will have a comment block with - in front of omitted modules, e.g. -ajax if you prefer plain old fetch & other useful info. But the screenshot shows exactly what options you set.

</comment><comment><USER16> For virtual DOM I don't go full React, I just use Maquette with Jade templates.

[http://maquettejs.org](http://maquettejs.org) [https://github.com/nextorigin/gulp-pug- hyperscript](https://github.com/nextorigin/gulp-pug-hyperscript)

For a small framework, I've been using SpineJS for years. [https://github.com/spine/spine/](https://github.com/spine/spine/)

Example with Maquette:

[https://github.com/nextorigin/maquette- mapper](https://github.com/nextorigin/maquette-mapper)

Using focused, quality components has let me upgrade my stack piece by piece over the years while retaining backwards compatibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, Maquette looks very interesting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have a Look at Backbone.js. [http://backbonejs.org](http://backbonejs.org) I have choosen the lib for similiar reasons and i loved it

<comment><USER18> Backbone rocks. As well as the source code, which is very easy to understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Try [https://github.com/wavesoft/dot-dom](https://github.com/wavesoft/dot-dom)

It looks like tiny React and is just 511b gzipped.

</comment><comment><USER20> Shilling my own library here: [http://simulacra.js.org](http://simulacra.js.org)

No template syntax to learn, one function API, 5kb gzipped.

</comment><comment><USER21> Choo! [https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/choo](https://github.com/yoshuawuyts/choo)

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you need a framework at all? I think you could get away with just plain JavaScript and include Handlebars if you want a templating engine.

Maybe add Jquery if you want something just above plain JavaScript.

Edit:

Another benefit of Handlebars is that if you ever do decide you need a full framework, you can use Ember and leverage your Handlebars templates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I am definitely considering just using plain Javascript. I just have a fear of maintaining plain Javascript applications - the hacks just seem to build up.

Then again, maybe I should just put the time in to make a well architecture and maintainable plain vanilla Javascript application. I'm definitely a fan of minimalism.

<comment><USER22> What "hacks" do you expect from using plain JavaScript? The biggest hack in plain JS is usually in my experience creating HTML elements dynamically based on data. That's where Handlebars would come in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just mean that over the course of building vanilla JavaScript applications, people often add layer of functionality that are implemented worse than libraries, are harder to maintain, or are not as compatible.

Like yes, I could build my own routing library, and that is probably fine, and yes I can build my own state management library, and so on, but at a certain point you are just rebuilding a framework from scratch, and oftentimes not very well.

<comment><USER22> We managed to survive and create functional websites for years without a "routing library" and without creating our own custom routing library.

But that's the beauty of using Handlebars. If at a later date you do need a full fledge framework, you can use Ember - that uses a superset of Handlebars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why do you need such a tiny footprint?

<comment><AUTHOR> I need a footprint that works well with mobile devices, slow internet connections, etc. Also, I prefer smaller frameworks as they have less cognitive load - I usually am more able to read the source code, understand the API, and so on.

<comment><USER22> I posted the suggestion above before reading this. I don't think you can get smaller than JavaScript + Handlebars. This is the route I took for pages that need to run in slow mobile devices.

You can even precompile your Handlebars templates as an optimization and include a smaller subset of the Handlebars library that is just the runtime without the compiler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah handlebars is not a bad thought. And that's cool about the runtime optimization, I didn't know that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> PX2: [https://github.com/burtonsamograd/px2](https://github.com/burtonsamograd/px2)

A better designed version of Backbone with a small footprint.

</comment><comment><USER25> NoJS (posted few days ago):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13816429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13816429)

</comment><comment><USER26> intercooler.js may fit the bill: [http://intercoolerjs.org/](http://intercoolerjs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://mithril.js.org/](http://mithril.js.org/)</comment>


Up for Some Domain Driven Design? We Can Help. (Warsaw, Poland) - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/up-for-some-domain-driven-design-we-can-help/ <comment><USER2> TLDR;

This is just a job posting.</comment>


Intro to Docker, React, and Security - <AUTHOR> https://gooddebate.org/2019/01/docker-react-and-security/ <comment><USER2> Ironically it was only yesterday that someone asked "Ask HN: Why do tutorial writers combine 10 technologies when 1 or 2 would do?"[1]

I think this is a perfect example of how _not_ to write a tutorial. It doesn't actually _teach_ anything - instead it is effectively a set of commands that someone should type in exactly and it will work.. hopefully.

I think this point in the introduction sums up this approach:

 _I'd like to point out that the broken branch wasn't working for some (still) unknown reason related to versioning between when we set up the system and when we upgraded some of the components including nodejs._

and later:

 _Note for the app we created we used nodejs v8.10.0 and npm v6.4.0, although installing newer versions shouldn't be an issue._

So.. they don't know why it broke, but any newer version _should be fine_.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950679)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's why in the 'Lessons from Docker' section in point #3 I mentioned that docker might be better off for larger projects, since it seems excessive, especially for small projects. The point of this exercise was to learn more about the technology itself, this clearly isn't a viable way of doing things in production though :) Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is a bad idea to use a full-blown Node.js web server to serve some static content. A better solution would be to build the app in one container and then build another Nginx container to serve it. This container can then be hardened (run as non-root, use a read-only filesystem). An added benefit is that Nginx uses fewer system resources (~10 megabytes of RAM will work just fine).

We're running such a setup in production; a sample Dockerfile can be found on [https://github.com/WISVCH/docker-nginx](https://github.com/WISVCH/docker- nginx).

<comment><USER4> I know that nginx is more traditionally known for hosting static content than node.js, but are there any particular reasons why it's bad to just use node for static content these days?

<comment><USER3> From a security standpoint, the attack surface of Node.js and whatever libraries are used to make `npm start` happen is a lot larger than plain Nginx.

From a general usability standpoint, a Node.js container with all build dependencies will surely turn into a bloated several hundred megabyte Docker image — an Nginx image with just the built static files is a lot smaller.

<comment><USER5> I understand you're comparing NodeJS vs Nginx there, but for my curiosity, if someone is building an API, how do you think NodeJS would compare to Ruby on Rails or Python/Django from a security standpoint?

<comment><USER3> I don't think either language is fundamentally more secure than the other.

That being said, the Node.js ecosystem feels more immature than Python's. The common practice of using microdependencies means that an average project has countless dependencies with varying levels of support — it's all but impossible to make sure every one of those dependencies is properly maintained.

The framework/library churn rate seems to have decreased though, so that's certainly good from a security standpoint as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting Started with Programming using the Internet - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone. I am not really a beginner to programming, but certainly no expert. I want to get started in making programs that can connect to the Internet to do something. Currently I work with C, Java, and Python. But, I hate Java, so pretend like I didn't just say that. I would like some help getting started in being able to make programs that use the Internet. That is vague I know, so let me try and clarify. I just want to be able to maybe take information off a webpage, and either save it to a text file or something as simple as that to start with. Maybe do the same with a small web-app, because from what I have read python can be very good at that with webpy. Anyway, if you have a book recommendation, a website, or any advice you could give me, please help a brother out.<p>Hope I wasn't to vague! <comment><USER2> When I was in your shoes I got a lot out of taking a look at the language documentation for the http related libraries in the languages I used. Often times there are good examples that'll get you started for basic stuff.

In Ruby, for example, you'd check out open-uri: [http://www.ruby- doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/open-uri/rdoc/index.ht...](http://www.ruby- doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/open-uri/rdoc/index.html)

For Java, I found both of the O'Reilly books (Nutshell and, especially, Examples) to be pretty useful.

If you're really looking to get started quickly on developing a database- driven web application, I'd highly recommend grabbing a Python or Ruby framework like Django or Rails and then making your way through Phil Greenspun's Software Engineering for Internet Applications. (freely available here: <http://philip.greenspun.com/seia/>).

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Dive Into Python (an excellent Python tutorial for people who have programmed before) covers these things in chapters 8 and 11.

<http://www.diveintopython.org/toc/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you tried understanding the Berkeley Sockets API with C? There are some good sites that cover basics: <http://beej.us/guide/bgnet/>

If you are on Windows, search "winsock".

</comment><comment><USER5> Work through the Django tutorial and then take a look at Beautiful Soup <http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ha, thats funny because I just downloaded that yesterday. But thanks for your input.</comment>


How do you group or categorize your images in a web project? - <AUTHOR> How do you group or categorize your images in a web project?<p>In a web project you must have an images directory. Do you just throw in all images or do you group them? <comment><USER2> For dynamic image content, I prefer organizing them in sub folders that are logically separate "things" (products, categories, users, etc).

If the amount of images in a folder is high, I create some sub folders starting named after the first character of the image name - just to make it more readable for myself.

So, Media/Categories Media/Products/H/headphones.png Media/Products/K/Keyboards.png

For design/styling images/logos/thumbs, I normally dump them in one or more folders (again grouped by purpose).</comment>


Google Employees Plan Global Walkout to Protest Company's Treatment of Women - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/11/01/662851489/google-employees-plan-global-walkout-to-protest-companys-treatment-of-women <comment><USER2> Treatment of Women?

I thought it was about harassment and discrimination, inequality, and transparency? [1] I dont see any mention of women.

1 - [https://twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/1057804203895283712](https://twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/1057804203895283712)

</comment><comment><USER3> I continue to be amazed that forced arbitration clauses are enforceable. Why is it possible to sign away a right as fundamental as redress in court?

</comment><comment><USER4> Primary discussion here- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275)</comment>


The 'secret underground lair' where scientists are searching the galaxies - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-17/inside-super-kamiokande-360-tour/11209104 <comment><AUTHOR> > _"I might add that if this ever happens to you, which it could, don't say > the following to the arresting officer: 'Don't open that, it's really > pure.'"_

Good advice.</comment>


Most Promising Migraine Drug in Years Held Hostage by Our Healthcare Dystopia - <AUTHOR> https://splinternews.com/the-most-promising-migraine-drug-in-years-is-being-held-1829112554 <comment><USER2> My migraine improved significantly when I cut out plant fats, might be a trace for fellow migraine sufferers</comment>


Ask HN: Should I buy a boat and live off the grid? - <AUTHOR> The situation is as follows:
I live in Stockholm but my current lease will run out at the end of August. Now it is entirely possible for me to get a new apartement. But a thought has lodged in my brain that I can not get rid of. I want to buy a boat, find a slip here in Stockholm and live on the boat for the foreseeable future. I'm sure I could handle the practicalities of it. On the pro side is the fact that I want to try to live on a boat (quite small sailboat in this case) and "off the grid". Sure it's a bit romanticised, but isn't your youth the time to make mistakes?
On the con side I'm worried my social life will suffer, I might lose friends. Can't invite people home. People don't want to date a hobo living on a boat?
So my questions is: How severe is the stigma around living on a boat? Does anyone have experience of living in a way that's looked down upon by the rest of society? <comment><USER2> I lived in a van for a year in the bay area. My social life changed for the better. Being more mobile made it easier to visit friends and family in the area.

Dating was fine, it was polarizing in a way. Some girls were immediately turned off - and that was good to know. They are less tolerant of alternative lifestyles and ideas, and so not someone I would want to be friends with anyway. Some girls were totally into it.

There was a lot of mental overhead with living in a van. Where to park, how to work in a shower each day, making sure it's safe and the neighborhood won't be bothered with me staying in the area, etc. It will be different for a boat, since it's legal and you have more facilities available.

My productivity and focus went up at work after I moved back into an apartment. Having a shower and unlimited water & electricity felt incredible. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for modern conveniences.

One side effect of van life that may apply to boat living - you become more in tune with the weather, but less bothered by changes. I'd wake up with the temperature in the mid 40s, and it would be fine. Yes I'd put on a jacket, but I'd go about my morning routine without turning on the heater and be ok with it. I would compare it with being on a ketogenic diet - you still experience hunger, but your response to it is manageable / in your control.

I think experimenting with living off the grid will give you a new appreciation of life and a healthy perspective of what's important to you. For me, once I got the bug to try it, it didn't go away until I made it happen. So if you have a good opportunity to try it out, I'd suggest going for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> YES, live on a boat (especially if it will save you money, and if you like the water/sea and don't mind the small living space)

1\. Live on a boat, (low or no rent)

2\. In the meanwhile,

        a. save lots of money!

        b. invite friends/family for excursion/fishing trip/romantic getaway on the sea

        c. enjoy the nature to yourself - instead of living inside a cramped tiny apartments

        d. have fun learning to sail

3\. Finally, after money has been saved up,

        a. sell the boat

        b. buy a house with the money saved up

        c. have interesting story to tell your friends/family/kids with your life journey

        d. teach sailing

        e. learn to appreciate all things in life

<comment><USER4> +1. This is a delightfully concise version of what my wife and I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been living aboard a sailboat just outside NYC for about two years now, happy to answer questions.

Addressing a few things:

* buying a boat that is reasonable to live on with less than a month to do so will be difficult. You need to figure out your basic criteria and find a vessel that matches, then get it surveyed by a professional. My boat is 30 years old and was relatively cheap, but it's still a large purchase that you don't want to get screwed on. You may need to sleep on someone's couch for a bit while sorting all this out.

* Boats are depreciating assets, unlike most real estate. Something to consider about buying something that won't impact your quality of life too much.

* Off the grid entirely is difficult, especially from the get go. If you are retired or otherwise able to not worry about being somewhere at a specific time, you may be able to find somewhere to anchor out and take a dinghy in to shore, but I still commute to the office and that sounds like an enormous pain in the ass. I live in a marina, and still connect to shore power to charge my laptop and have WiFi.

* My social life hasn't suffered for the boat, people generally find it an interesting curiosity, even though I gave up a lot of comforts. I don't have a refrigerator, I have an ice box. I don't have air conditioning, I open windows. I can use the head (restroom) aboard the boat, but I usually go to the marina restrooms to avoid having to get the holding tank pumped out. In the middle of winter, having to walk 100ft outside to take a shower before going to work isn't fun.

All that said, it's the cheapest waterfront property I could possibly find in my area, and I wake up every day to a gently rocking bed and usually a nice breeze. It's worth it to me for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. Luckily in Sweden it's a buyers market for boats right now, and if I don't get cold feet I'm going to look at a boat this weekend. How many feets is your boat?

<comment><USER5> That's great! Part of the reason I'd say it'll take a bit longer though is if you find a vessel that you're interested in, a thorough survey requires hauling it out of the water to inspect the hull, so scheduling with a yard, the owner, and the surveyor usually takes a bit. In my area the haul out is about $500-800, and the survey was $600 just to see if the boat was worth buying.

My boat is 35.5ft / 10.8m

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking of buying a boat that's both smaller and cheaper. That way if I regret my decision I can quickly reverse without too much economic damage. If I think it's acceptable to live in really cramped conditions 35ft will seem like heaven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A boat in saltwater is floating in an evironment that is determined to destroy it. Everything breaks. Bilge pumps die and flood your boat. The toilet reeks because bacteria grow in the copper piping and produce sulfurous gas. Wiring mysteriously shorts when the PVC coating outgasses and cracks and salt air and moisture creeps into the copper strands. Everything is exposed to the sun all day, doubly so because of water's reflections, and the UV destroys everything, too. Be prepared to fix something every week and that the cost of fixing it will be sky-high because you must use marine-grade parts to fix it. When you're not fixing expensive broken shit, you're maintaining it. Constant repainting of surfaces. If your boat has teak, you'll frequently need to strip it and sand it and re-laquer it. Motors die if not used regularly or overheat when the diesel gets old and rots head gasket seals. Fuel leaks. The lines that you use to secure your boat to the dock need constant re-tightening as the tides and waves and wakes toss your boat around. If you forget to tighten them or go on vacation, your boat will come loose and beat itself to death against the dock. If there's a hurricane, the usual course of action is to move your boat out into the harbor and anchor it securely and then ride the storm out somewhere safe.

I love boats but there is a good reason for this joke: "The two happiest days in a man's life: the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it."

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a bunch of sailing clubs in Stockholm. Before you purchase a boat yourself I'd advise you to join one for a summer. Go sailing, talk to people whos lives revolve around boats. You will get loads of useful advice.

I don't live on a boat myself, but I sail a lot and I know people who do or did live on a boat. In my experience, it's awesome for a few weeks at most (longest period I did was 3 weeks).

First off, it's going to cost a whole lot more than you imagine. I'd say triple your initial cost estimates. Everything on boats break all the time and cost a tonne to repair.

> I'm worried my social life will suffer, I might lose friends. Can't invite > people home. People don't want to date a hobo living on a boat?

Your social life will change a lot. Having a friend who lives on a boat is great when it's still new and novel, but soon they become the guy that who's always on a slightly different schedule than everyone else.

The vast majority of women will not be interested in going home with someone who lives on a small sailboat. Some absolutely will, but most really are not interested. You're seen more as that quirky guy who lives on a boat who they can tell their friends about, rather than a potential romantic partner.

So socially, it really depends on you and what you make of it. Some people will think it's really neat that you live on a boat and others will look down on you for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like the twin goals of living off the grid and having a social life, though not perfectly orthogonal, might be hard to achieve. In other words, one will probably suffer from the other. That said, if you do decide to buy a boat - get a cool one - then everyone will want to be your friend.

My association with "living off the grid" has always been finding some house in the woods at the end of a very long dirt road. If you're docking a boat in a big city, theres probably tons of people around you - that doesnt really feel like "living off the grid" IMHO

</comment><comment><USER9> You should just do it - if it's a mistake, it will be really easy to fix.

Can't speak for Sweden, but in London I'm not aware of any stigma around living on boats. A friend of mine at McKinsey, a big management consultancy firm that's as corporate as they come, lived on one and regularly invited colleagues over.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am seeking out a similar lifestyle - living off-grid and becoming self- sufficient.

You will have to start thinking differently, and the challenges you face will be unique. This new critical thinking may even improve your mental effectiveness at work. It will be like running the small business of taking care of yourself, with many tasks to complete, inventory to monitor, and expenses to pay attention to (few of which will be paid to large companies that provide services to aggregated clusters of people).

The stigma and social isolation you are anticipating will be a good thing. Through your efforts to craft a truly customized lifestyle, you will filter out those who desire dependency on traditional society. The ones that want to spend time with you will be those seeking out a similar change and adventure.

I recently visited several large cities across the US, and I have always lived in a rural setting. This experience made me realize that the founders of places like Rome and the US all went "off-grid" in the sense that they retreated from the crowded, complex societies they were born into and crafted their own life where no one else had ventured.

Personally, I view my off-grid plans as training over the next couple of decades to become an expert at taking care of myself when my body and mind deteriorate and I am no longer useful to society. I think of it as the ultimate retirement plan - gardening, solid health, and home construction as base stats to comfortably live out my final years without a dime spent on hospice.

</comment><comment><USER11> A subreddit on the subject - [https://www.reddit.com/r/liveaboard/](https://www.reddit.com/r/liveaboard/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Boats aren't cheap. To buy/refurbish, repair, docking fees, fuel, etc.

I would say living in a vehicle has much more stigma, since that's something typically done out of desperation. And so people doing it voluntary(Van Dwelling, etc) typically attract that stigma(parking, dirty, etc).

Versus living on a boat which is more 'romantic' since it's not really an option or even considered.

<comment><USER13> You can just build from scratch too:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > On the con side I'm worried my social life will suffer, I might lose > friends. Can't invite people home. People don't want to date a hobo living > on a boat?

Non sense. You are going to meet people outside of your usual social circles. Maybe you'll date someone who likes people who lives on boat and that would be cool because you are someone who wants to live on a boat.

<comment><USER15> Alright as someone who grew up in a wierd situation I'm going to argue against this.

Dating is really hard, anything that makes you weirder and means you'll be around fewer people is probably a bad thing. Plus living on a boat and being near all the salt water probably won't be good for your skin, which will make it all even worse.

<comment><USER16> this isn't really a weird/normal issue. People have all kinds of likes and ideas and preferences. If you live in an apartment or a tiny house or a detached suburban house with a long commute, you will be the kind of person with those preferences and be more likely to attract people with those preferences, or who are at least open to it.

I'm a transportation cyclist who went car-free while I was single in a car- centric inland US city, where "not having a car" is generally seen as being completely irresponsible, not having your shit together, and not being a serious person. I still dated people with the normal frequency, eventually got married, we now have a one-car household.

If you love your lifestyle, and think it's worth doing, and aren't a huge burden on other people, then other people can appreciate what you see in it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you determine the slip fees get too high, make sure you have invested in a really good anchor and chain, according to one person who recently talked about living on a boat for over 5 years in Hawai'i. He stated that those typically included with a vessel are not necessarily adequate.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe you need to do some soul-searching and ask yourself why do you care what everyone else thinks? Do you want to live life your way and for yourself or do you want to live it their way and for them? It's all in what you want and how you set your priorities.

<comment><USER19> It is sensible to thing the care about what other people think. We live in a society - and there are norms, standards, and values associated with our community. We shouldn't want to be people who can ignore the genuine values of our community. In many ways, I'm just arguing for "love your neighbor" as extending to caring about the values of your community - even when you disagree with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I actually had a coworker in the US that bought a boat and lives on it. I get the feeling that his social life is mostly unchanged. Most of us thought it was foolhardy and a little weird, but that was fine. We saw him go through quite a learning curve, one being that he can't live in it during the winter so he has to stay in a hotel. It's also quite expensive to buy and maintain and unlike houses I don't think that the value of boats increase. He's lost some luxuries like TV and wifi. My general feeling is that he probably wouldn't do it again if he could do it over, but he's made it work.

<comment><USER5> o/

I actually only had to evacuate once when it hit subzero temps! Also would totally do again, maybe with a bit more prep this time

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd suggest you to try it first, renting someone's boat for a month or so.

I had similar idea and found someone renting boat when interned in San Francisco. but eventually due to other reasons, I didn't take the boat.

at the time, I knew nothing about sailing. then, one of my friends, who is in the Berkeley sailing club, took me to sailing for few times. I started to change my mind.

I can't use a laptop on a boat. it's too shaky even docked. the moisture and the smell of an old boat is also bad.

I predict I can at best live on a boat for a week. plus, there is no shower on the boat.

I'd suggest you try it first before making decision.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are many people here in Florida that live on boats, some of them go to school or work on temporary contracts then sell the boat when they leave. Some anchor out in the river and so are truly off-grid and pay no rent.

Your entertaining style will have to change, true, especially on a small sailboat. Instead of inviting people over to watch Netflix or whatever, why not invite them out for a sail? (Oh yeah, and keep your living space tidy, no one wants to hang out in someone's moldy cluttered bedroom :) )

</comment><comment><USER23> As long as you don't overpay for it you can always sell it. My questions:

Are you allowed? How do you shower? What about a kitchen? I assume it has a bathroom? In the winter would it get too cold?

<comment><AUTHOR> The marina has good facilities and I already eat out for most meals. Re the winter. Uhm. I'm gonna isolate the crap out of the boat and hope for the best. I know of people in Sweden (and event northern Norway) that live on their boat, so I'm hoping it'll be OK.

<comment><USER24> The sea should keep the temperatures around 0, some heat loss from the wind, but that should be manageable. My experience with the Baltic countries is that the winters are actually rather warm, compared to inland countries where you can have -30 or colder on a bad day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is something I definitely have experience of, albeit perhaps in a different way. Through my own conscious effort, my life is significantly different to that of most others in many ways. Professionally I'm freelance and work comparatively little. I live in a warehouse with 6 others, I built my own bedroom. Both my sexuality and relationship style are outside the norm.

At several junctures I've asked myself the same questions you are asking now.

All of the above changes have caused me to become more distant from many of my older friends. There have been very few (if any) upsets, but certainly paths have diverged. I think this is perfectly ok and I do not see it as a negative.

The flip side of this, is that I have made multiple times more friends as a result of doing something different. It has made my life richer and better in ways I could never have imagined previously.

Also, a friend of mine has a theory wrt dating. It's something like "A lot of people are not into beards, but people who are into beards and REALLY into beards". In your case you can substitute 'beards' for 'people who live on boats'.

Plus, it is perfectly ok to change your mind after trying something for a while. Obvs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Richard Branson famously lived on a houseboat in the early days of Virgin > [https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/5-places-i-have- worke...](https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/5-places-i-have-worked-most- creatively)

</comment><comment><USER27> I wasn't aware there was a stigma. It's not like living in a car, since many boats are designed to be long-term habitable. I know someone who does this in San Francisco and he pays $280/month in slip fees, a bit cheaper than rents in the area.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if you can park a car near the dock with that? Or does this person take Ubers everywhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> The slip I'm looking at is actually walking distance from my job. So I imagine my day to day life could be quite cosy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are you really sure you want to live on a boat?

First of all it might be more expensive than an apartment, mooring(slip?) fees are quite expensive.

Second, boat maintanance can be expensive too.

I recently spent a week on a reasonable 50 foot sailboat in a nice Mediterranean location and despite amenities (3 bathrooms for 10 people, nice kitchen etc etc) I was quite happy to get back to sleeping on the ground.

This was with good sailing weather and walking on ground every day.

The pluses for sailing are the community, every port you feel at home. I suppose it is somewhat similar to RV community.

So if sailing is in your blood then go for it

If you are a casual sailor I'd say this is idea will show its negatives soon enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've wanted to buy a boat for the past two years and now that I'm out of my apartement I felt that the moment might be right. I love sailing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the UK there's not particularly stigma attached to it, but I would be careful to research the economics of it -- how much a month will you be paying to rent whatever mooring you have, how much (time and money) will upkeep and maintenance of the boat cost you, what's the initial expense of the boat and how much are you losing on a probably-depreciating asset, do you need to pay to dispose of sewerage, and so on... Do the cool things in life, but look carefully before you leap so you know what you're getting into and don't hit a brick wall of disillusionment.

</comment><comment><USER31> > On the con side I'm worried my social life will suffer

Who doesn't want to hang out on a boat? That seems like a weird concern to me. I can only speak for London but I don't think there's a stigma attached. People are curious and in some ways even a bit envious. Also the boating community (here anyway) is very social (somewhat by necessity).

You should maybe look into some the practicalities before doing anything rash though (hygiene, maintenance, connectivity etc). I found it a little stressful at times but definitely don't regret it.

</comment><comment><USER32> What kind of boat is it? My family rented a long one once, the kind that you see cruising along (British) canals and honestly, as cute as it is, I felt super claustrophobic.

It can also be very cold.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've sailed in the past and I'm quite outdoorsy so cold and crampedness really doesn't bother me.

<comment><USER33> Doing it on a vacation vs living it every single day are two very _very_ different things... I mean, I absolutely love camping and multi-day back country hiking. But I sure wouldn't want to live in the bush 24/7!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The sea is pretty harsh to equipment. I hope you're handy. :)

> Does anyone have experience of living in a way that's looked down upon by > the rest of society?

I was homeless once for a time. I used to play in bands. I met some punks I housed up with for a while. It was cramped but it was good times. You'll meet people if you make the effort to.

 _update_ : I'd also recommend looking into "off the grid" protocols like scuttlebut ;)

</comment><comment><USER35> This is not directly answering your final question, but we have a saying in Dutch about owning a boat: "Koop een boot, klus je dood." Translation: it might be easy to buy a boat, but you'll be repairing things till the end. Application: it's expensive to own a boat. Advice: think at least twice.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm doing this in Washington DC right now, it's not always easy but worth it! willing to field any questions

<comment><AUTHOR> That's nice to hear, guess I'm looking for some kind of social validation to quit caring about social validation and actually go ahead and move to the boat :)

How large is your boat? Do you experience problems with heating during winter?

<comment><USER36> I'm on a 27 foot cape dory, a classic sailboat. it's jussssssst barely enough space for myself. I have a Dickinson marine diesel fireplace affixed to a bulkhead for when it gets cold, it'll run for a whole day on one gallon of fuel but makes the boat way too hot if left on constantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You might consider renting a liveaboard vessel. That allows you to move-in quickly and to have a low-risk "out" if you decide it's not the right lifestyle for you. Your criteria for what boat to buy, should it come to that, will be much better informed after you've lived afloat for a while.

</comment><comment><USER38> Living in a boat in a slip isn't exactly "off the grid" Maybe things are different over there, but there are plenty of people who live in a boat over here. Never heard of a stigma against it.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yes. Next question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best answer so far :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You should, boats are rad. In my experience it won't be as cheap as you think - but it is still awesome!

</comment><comment><USER41> Do you want to live a "what if" life?

You know what you want to do. So do it and stop asking for permission.

</comment><comment><USER4> My wife and I lived on a 33" Hunter 336 in Berkeley, California for 2+ years. Our first child was born during that time and lived on the boat until he was 18 months old.

It was a great experience; I'm very happy we did it.

Our boat had some nice amenities which made it a great liveaboard boat: two berths (so our son had his own room), bathroom w/ builtin shower & electric macerating freshwater toilet (which I installed), stove, oven, microwave, electric hot water, fridge, large kitchen sink. We typically would shower on land at the Berkeley Yacht Club which was very close to our slip (the bathroom on the boat doubled as the shower and it was inconvenient to get the bathroom floor wet). A dedicated shower is the only major feature I'd add if I were to live on a boat again.

Social life was different. Our friends seemed less likely to just come over and hang out. But on the other hand, we got to host our friends on sailing trips and give them a very unique experience of the SF Bay. I can't speak to the experience of dating while on a boat, sorry :)

One thing to note: boats do come with a lot of maintenance -- saltwater has a way of destroying everything it touches over time. It was difficult to find people I trusted to come work on the boat without taking the boat to a boat yard (which meant moving out of our home temporarily), so I ended up doing most of the maintenance myself (shout out to my friend Eskil Olsen for selflessly spending his time helping on a handful of occasions!). I would only buy a boat if you are comfortable with learning how to fix it.

Economically we came out solidly ahead. We bought the boat for 39k, put about 13k of work into it (also a ton of my time), then sold the boat for 45k (after brokerage commission). Our monthly fixed expenses were about $500 (water, power, internet, slip fees). Considering a 2 bedroom in Berkeley would run at least ~2k+/month we probably saved ~30-40k over the ~26 months. That said, the time put into maintaining the boat was significant, and if that's not something you would enjoy, it could easily skew the value equation.

The social stigma was very manageable. People would be surprised and maybe slightly weirded-out when I'd first share that I lived on a boat, but as I'd share more I think people caught the vision. I think doing it with my wife helped normalize it. And once people were able to go sailing with us, I think they really got it.

We finally moved on land while pregnant with our second child. My favorite house-amenity is a dishwasher.

Finally, here's the (sold) listing for Chasseresse, the boat we lived on: [http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1995/Hunter-336-3037385/Berk...](http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1995/Hunter-336-3037385/Berkeley/CA/United- States#.WYNTMNPysUE)

<comment><USER42> The sold listing is interesting because of the price on it. I worked for a company that was founded to make electronic nav equipment for sailboat use in 1979, and the 'test bed' cost close to $100K, a 39' Ericson. The listing shows $54K. I checked out comparable Ericson's and they are in the same range.

<comment><USER4> Final sale price was 50k (& our broker took a 5k commission), so money in our pocket was 45k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm entertaining a similar idea - buying a motorhome. I live in the UK and not only are rents extremely high, but I have no hope in hell of affording even the deposit on a real house so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. A motorhome would offer me some nice options - I would own it outright and be able to customise it to my needs. I would get nothing back at the end of a rental contract, whereas should I decide to move out of a motorhome, I could sell it. I would have to sign long-term contracts for utilities and pay daily standing charges just for the privilege of having them routed to my house before I even used them, whereas I could just go buy a gas bottle and not pay any more once it's hooked up.

I could customise the interior of the van as much as I liked - pictures, posters, whatever. Electrical customising is particularly appealing - with all my stuff low-voltage, I could fit some solar panels to the roof, along with some deep-discharge batteries, and totally eliminate my need for mains electricity. Modern motorhomes come with the equivalent of central heating and combi-boilers so they're surprisingly warm and you have on-demand hot water for a shower. I'm sure boats could be the same. With a decent 4G modem and antenna, I might even get good enough internet access.

You say you can't invite people 'home', I disagree - some might share the enjoyment of being on a boat as much as you. Okay, if the boat is far too small, then yes, you do have a space restriction. You're also unlikely to be seen as a hobo, so long as you have a job. Over in the UK, I know a few people who live on houseboats. They're not given a hard time. In conversation, others express appreciation for the idea of living on a boat.

My main concern with the motorhome is sanitation - you'll likely face a similar issue on a boat. Chances are, you won't be able to flush your toilet straight into the river, so you'll end up emptying a chemical toilet on a regular basis. You'll also need to obtain drinking water from somewhere. Mains water and drainage are the major things I would miss. To get access to those, I'd need to look at leasing a pitch on a campsite long-term, although still easier to get out of than a flat rental. The rest of off-grid living is practical - solar electricity for low-voltage lighting, gas or diesel for heating, and the freedom to move away at a moment's notice.

In my mind, living mobile shouldn't be stigmatised. People forget that humans as a species were once highly nomadic. It's only since we invented the concept of land ownership that it's now seen as unacceptable to try to strike out on your own. The others bring up very good points about maintenance on a boat - be prepared for this. If you're going to stick to a river, you'll have freshwater, which ought to be less brutal on the boat than saltwater, but you've still got the other issues to deal with. Water is unstoppable and will get everywhere it can if you let it. Big concern for me with motorhomes is whether they're sufficiently weatherproof. Boats will be worse, but at least with a sailboat you don't have the concern of leaking propeller shafts deep in the hull that you can't get to.

Your best bet will be to take a short holiday on a boat and see how you like it. Some of my relatives did this recently as a family - one of my cousins was indifferent to it, the other fell in love with sailing and now knows what she wants to do with her life.</comment>


In offices of the future, sensors may track your every move – even in the toilet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2016/sep/15/in-offices-of-the-future-sensors-may-track-your-every-move-even-in-the-bathroom <comment><USER2> To me that seems like a giant law suit waiting to happen. especially if the camera's feed was hacked. Assuming cheap digital cameras with some kind of signal processing.

<comment><USER3> Cameras seem like overkill and are a much bigger privacy concern for the purposes given in the article. Motion sensors and NFC beacons should be fine for tracking occupancy and location (for those who opt in to that).</comment></comment>


Parting ways with a founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/06/parting-ways-with-a-founding-team-member.html

<comment><USER2> It can be a very harsh outcome when you take a founder who had to restructure his equity grant (as a condition of the company's taking VC funding) by making the vast bulk of it subject to vesting and terminate him so as to cause the forfeiture of most of that equity. I believe Mr. Wilson's heart is in the right place in how he proposes that such situations be handled (accelerate some of the vesting, etc.), but this falls pretty heavily on any founder who has made valuable early-stage contributions at a time when the risks were at their highest and presumably for no pay or other reward besides that equity of which he will now be largely deprived.

While such situations can potentially be handled fairly for all concerned, I have seen all too many instances where the motives of the persons handling the termination were less than pure, leading to harsh outcomes for founders who deserved better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I post regularly promoting single-founder businesses, and think it's useful to see this sort of post from someone who is generally respected among early founders. But the core lesson is not what Fred thinks it is. It's that most managers have no idea how to value technical work (either development or management). And funders who view the business from the distance are notoriously bad at it.

I've seen this play out few times now and have been personally affected once. In the worst case a non-technical manager replaced his CTO and doubled the size of the tech team on getting funding, only to end up firing the entire new team for non-performance about eight months and several hundred thousand dollars later. The business has yet to recover and probably never will.

I'm sure Union Square Ventures serves a purpose in helping some companies grow, But I hope those considering taking funding from them will read Fred's post and realize that when push comes to shove, Fred thinks he knows how to run and manage their business better than they do.

<comment><USER4> i don't know how to run a business at all. i've never done it and have no desire to do it. i think what allows me to build healthy and constructive relationships with entrepreneurs is that i know that i can't run a business and don't pretend that i can

<comment><USER5> This is interesting to me because Diego Gambetta wrote a book called _Codes of the Underworld_ about how mobsters and mafia members often depict themselves as utterly incompetent and incapable at doing anything other than being a mobster.

Their purpose: to signal that they have no desire to take over businesses because they lack the capability to run them. As long as you, the business owner, pay the mobster, you know that the mobster will not eventually take 100% of the profit because the mobster can't run the business effectively. And if the mobster tries to extort 100% of the profit, he knows that you'll quit or do something extreme, like go to the police or fight back or find another mobster.

The book has a lot of useful and subtle points and is much recommended: [http://jseliger.com/2010/01/07/codes-of-the-underworld- how-c...](http://jseliger.com/2010/01/07/codes-of-the-underworld-how- criminals-communicate-%E2%80%94%C2%A0diego-gambetta) . I leave it to the reader to imagine how this aspect of the book might apply to the situations being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Comment by Chris Dixon:

"My investors know when they invested that I have strong ethical views including remembering who was there from the beginning.

Not everyone believes in Milton Friedman crap that maximizing shareholder value is the sole purpose of a company."

Once again, I find myself thinking that I'd love the chance to work with Chris.

</comment><comment><USER7> I personally went through the opposite problem last year : one of my two co- founders left when the business tanked due to economic crisis.

He always felt like he did more than his share of work and received less than his share of money (he had half the share of capital, 20%, but as a compensation he always had a higher salary).

I stepped down from technical manager so that he could build the team at his will. Later, I sold him 10% of the shares for a tenth of the price (so we both had 30%) but he still felt like he was cheated.

I think that the hard times during crisis broke him down finally. I'm pretty sure it was a bad move financially for him (he wouldn't work for anyone else, and by himself he can't earn that much), he even tried to "steal" our biggest customer...

We had quite a hard time, particularly because the whole team left after him (unsurprising, it was _his_ team after all) but we got through and everything's fine again now (though on product development we've lost 6 months at the very least).

What else? If we hadn't full coffers at the time crisis hit, the company couldn't have survived such bad times.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a blog posting inspired by this and the blog's comments that covers most of the "don't do this" ground: " _Firing Founders: Mostly A Bad Idea_ "[http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/06/firing-founders- mostly-...](http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/06/firing-founders-mostly-bad- idea.html)

One major point people have been making is that " _All the top tech companies of today have had their founders intact._ " as the author puts it, and he later discusses examples. I'd be interested in any counterexamples; no one has come up with any except possibly Bob Miner at Oracle, who people are asserting wasn't fired.

My take on this is that firing a co-founder may be necessary but _very_ few companies will become big hits if it comes to that. Which argues that you want to do a really good job on selecting your co-founders and early key hires.

</comment><comment><USER9> I assume this is in the context of a VC-backed startup where the person who "has to go" can't stop the action. Even still, how is he/she actually forced out of his position and shares? Is this a board move based on term sheet rules?

And, how would this work with a bootstrapped startup where there are simply 2-4 founders with equal shares?

<comment><USER10> Often times the person shown the door leaves with far more equity than they should. That's unfortunately the last concern the board has.

And if it's early enough in the process, the board, if required for the success of the company, can recapitalize the entire structure of the company and wash out any previous employees. You have to be careful not to single out any individual when you do this, but if you do it and have good reason, it can solve these issues too.

Anyways, people are not forced out because they own too much, they are forced out because they become an immovable impediment to success.

Jack Dorsey at Twitter is a good example. And he got more equity when he quit. And he quit in a nice fashion, allowing the company to start fixing their issues and scale much faster with more experienced leadership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See also this newer item on the subject for one reason why founders are fired: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1425793>

</comment><comment><USER11> _...almost every single one of them has seen a founder or critical founding team member shown the door as the company scaled. It's almost inevitable._

That's like saying divorce is almost inevitable.

Come on, Fred, did they really need to show a founding team member the door or did they just take the easy way out? In businesses, like marriages, sometimes you just gotta work on it.

One of the few lessons I remember from business school was a consulting engagement we did as an internship. One of our recommendations was to let the office manager go. This was such a gross violation of acceptable business practice, that the project didn't even merit an "F". We were forced to redo to recommendations without letting anyone go before we could submit the project. Needless to say, this wasn't easy. It took a lot of work to find an acceptable solution.

Looking back many years later, this was one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned. I have never fired anyone and I have vehemently protested the firing of anyone in any of my related work. And my complaint has always been the same, "You're not trying hard enough to solve the problem while keeping the people intact."

Same thing here. I wonder how many business/employment relationships and marriages would survive (and even thrive) if people just took the time and effort to make it work. But all too often, short term thinking wins and we take the easy way out. What a pity.

<comment><USER4> i've been with my wife for thirty years. i know that it takes hard work to make a relationship last. and i value long relationships.

but i am telling you that many times, this stuff happens. and it can't be fixed no matter how hard the people involved try

<comment><USER12> And no matter how long your commitment is to maintain that ideal (corporate or personal) relationship, there will be times that drastic changes have to be made. But we all try; and keep on trying...</comment></comment></comment>


Google releases web browser plugin allowing the creation of interactive 3D applications - <AUTHOR> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/04/toward-open-web-standard-for-3d.html

<comment><USER2> Open source, BSD licensed (<http://code.google.com/p/o3d/>), available for all 3 platforms.

I guess Chrome and the OEMs allows Google to push adoption of the plugin, but I think it'll have an uphill struggle. It'll take a killer app for users to bother with 3D on the web, let alone choose this over rival technologies like Silverlight or even 3D Canvas looming over the horizon.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't find any mention why they went this route over the 3D Canvas approach. It seems FF was making some progress on an extension for that, too ( <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Canvas:3D> ).

Anyone know/read enough about this area to speculate why Google didn't help grow that initiative instead of doing O3D?

<comment><USER4> Christopher Blizzard's (Open Source Evangelist at Mozilla) thoughts[1] on standardizing Canvas 3D, taken in conjunction with what relevant people at Google are saying[2], makes it look like Google is just really eager to get people using "3D" on the web.

[1] <http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=1223>

[2] [http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/04/google- releases...](http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/04/google- releases-3d-graphics-plugin-for-browsers.ars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> VRML is back! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML>

<comment><USER6> The difference is that this time the timing might be right. I remember the awful pixelated and square VRML stuff severely limited by CPU speeds of ten years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Competition for Unity3D : <http://unity3d.com/>

<comment><USER8> Why didn't they just buy Unity?

It's not so much about the API these days, it's the content creation pipeline and tools.

Hmm. Have to think about this more.

<comment><USER9> Who says unity wants to be acquired?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"We are terribly sorry but it appears your graphics card is not able to run o3d. We are working on a solution."_

:-(

</comment><comment><USER10> MMORPG games where players would be able to actually affect scenery could become a reality now - not only adding objects as in SL, but any imaginable changes since the visuals would be centrally served - which opens some breathtaking possibilities...

<comment><USER11> The web doesn't open any new possibility in that respect. There are MMOs where the visuals are centrally served. The client keeps a cache that is often updated from the server side.

Really, this has never been a significant problem to stop studios from letting you mess with their worlds. There are other technical problems related to world representation, but most importantly, there are design integrity concerns. To design a world that the players can meaningfully modify but not screw up completely in various ways (mainly related to theme, playability and balance) sounds like a difficult, laborious task.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff check out what this crazy swede is doing:

<http://www.quelsolaar.com/></comment></comment>


Show HN: DomainWhirl - A free daily newsletter with available startup domains - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
About a month ago, I posted an "Ask HN" to see if there was any interest in having daily available .com domain name lists. The names would all be appropriate for startups, blogs and websites, nothing else. While the response wasn't overwhelming, it was quite positive and a few individuals got me motivated to go through with this. I decided to go with the free newsletter format so I could keep some form of exclusivity for the subscribers, giving them a better chance at getting a name they before somebody else gets to it.
You can find the old discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671129
Fast forward to today, the service and website are ready, so I am launching it and am ready to accept subscribers. You'll find that the newsletter is very lightweight and contains no ads or irrelevant content. I may sometimes slip in a quick word about projects I am working on but that's it! If you ask me, it makes it a little more human. I run this for fun as I like writing algorithms to find gems in huge lists of data. The mailing list is managed on MailChimp so no funky business; I will respect everyone's privacy.
So I encourage everyone to subscribe! It's free and is a very passive and non-intrusive way to stumble upon great domains for your projects and businesses.
Feel free to also give me some feedback on the website, especially on the copy since English is not my first language. That's it for now! Enjoy!
http://domainwhirl.com
Thanks, Nicholas
P.S. If the DNS has not yet propagated, you can temporarily use http://domainwhirl.heroku.com until it does. <comment><USER2> Your sample of domains actually look like very good and memorable names. But I'm hesitant to sign up for your newsletter because I'm not currently in need of one, but even if I were, it would be for a specific idea I have in mind, and thus, I'd be looking for a related domain name. I'm not sure if there's anyone who needs a domain name to get inspired to build a website around it, but perhaps there are, though maybe this would be a good service for people that buy and sell domain names, but that just feels like a dirty field to be in.

But good luck with it! Maybe you'll make some discoveries in the near future and implement something to make this more useful for someone searching for a specific related name. There's quite a few out there, and they all help, but I could still see some room for a new form of domain discovery.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh man, I'm very opposed to email newsletters, but this looks very nice. I am always trying to think of creative names for projects so I can register them cheap. I have a feeling I will be browsing this each morning. I am also very curious about the algorithms involved. Where are you getting the list of unregistered domains? Or are you generating good domains, then checking to see if they are registered? Are you basicly just looking for combinations of a list of words you have, or is it some other method? In all, a very impressive project, and if you be willing to share more on the technical side, I would be very interested.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Website: <http://domainwhirl.com> Temp if DNS hasn't spread: <http://domainwhirl.heroku.com>

Old discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671129>

</comment><comment><USER3> I just want to share, I have been subscribed for 2 days now, and I see a ton of good domains. For example. hotelhawks.com That sounds like a business, a great brand etc. This is a great tool, and is now my goto for brainstorming names.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds not too bad, but I haven't gotten an email yet, so I can't say anything about the service. Do you have any plan for monetizing it ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck. You would convert a lot more visitors into subscribers by making the subscription method front and center.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

I thought the block quote in the first paragraph was in-your-face enough but I'll definitely listen to this advice as I have very little experience trying to convert users. Most sites I build already have a defined audience.

<comment><USER5> It's in your face but unless you've done some A/B testing, you'd be surprised what can affect conversions! :-)

FWIW, I have an e-mail newsletter myself at <http://rubyweekly.com/> and the way it is right now is the best I've got it to convert. Every time I removed more from the page, the better the conversion, and unsubscribe rates are low (about 8 in total in the last month).

Of course, flat out "lots of subscribers" isn't necessarily your goal and you don't _need_ to optimize for that if it doesn't make sense for your plan.

<comment><USER6> Your landing page looks great, but if you want to increase conversions even more you should try putting the subscribe form above the fold. It took me about 5 seconds to figure out how to subscribe.

<comment><USER4> Either he already changed the site or you using some insanely low resolution, it's above the fold for me even on my laptop screen.

<comment><USER6> It might just be an OS X issue as I rarely have a browser window open fullscreen. If the dock wasn't there, it would be above the fold.

Then again, I bet a fairly significant portion of the target audience for this newsletter uses a Mac.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OptiKey – Full computer control and speech with your eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.optikey.org <comment><USER2> From the get started page

      "If you are unsure which computer/laptop/tablet to purchase
      and are considering spending a lot of money then please email me
      - I can offer personal advice on how to target the sweet spot
      between cost and performance (and screen size)."

So not only is he giving away this amazing software but he is also offering free, personal advice on what you need to buy working with your budget!

Truly an inspiring person.

<comment><USER3> "The way to take over an industry is not to fix the current model, but to completely destroy it and replace it with a model you know is better"

Open source is the better model for every single industry. It's coming.

<comment><USER4> Do you think open source fine art is better than one from a single artist's vision?

<comment><USER5> Art has been quite open source in its workings since centuries. Look at how artists were joining masters to learn the art and how they "forked" masters' techniques to create theirs. Personal vision is not precluded from open source, to the contrary it is encouraged.

<comment> bro-stick R&B, EDM, pop and so on wouldnt have much left without remixes and sampling.

<comment><USER6> But in that case money changes hands. That's pretty different from open source.

<comment><USER7> Nothing about open source precludes money from changing hands. Case in point: Red Hat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ke7ug/eye_tra...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ke7ug/eye_tracking_software_for_sufferers_of_alsmnd_can/)

A lot of interesting information from the author over there.

META: Interesting to note how much cool stuff is turning up on reddit first before it appears here... I feel like it used to be the other way around.

<comment><USER9> Re: META

People will stop posting to a community when they feel their posts aren't up to what they believe the community tends to accept as Par for the course.

<comment><USER8> That's my impression as well.

<comment><USER10> The way posts work on HN is a bit puzzling and not immediately obvious - I'll post something and then refresh the front page and won't even see it. The Reddit model seems simpler - I post something and it appears.

<comment><USER11> I think you're correct. A Show HN that goes nowhere fast will disappear and be seen by virtually no one. An equivalent in r/startups or similar will still be seen by a few people even if it doesn't attract comments or upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could this be covered by existing patents? Tools like these for the disabled are a big business, and patent holders have shut down competition in the past: [http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2012/06/14/dispute-ipad- app-p...](http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2012/06/14/dispute-ipad-app- pulled/15846/)

<comment> _-__--- This is a good point - how do copyrights protect intellectual property from open source alternatives? I think that this is a really good thing to open- source, but the law can be tricky to navigate. Almost like you need a degree in it...

<comment><USER13> Well, good luck shoving this code back in the bottle (read: git archive).

It's out and 22 public forks already. Who knows how many git clones...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mh-cx I wonder if you can combine this with Vim so that you could use it for lightning fast cursor movement and selections and still use the keyboard for anything else.

<comment><USER14> The problem with gaze tracking is that achieving the kind of accuracy you are thinking about isn't possible right now.

The trackers he listed have an accuracy of about 0.3-0.5 degree which at a distance of 50cm to the screen still maps to a fairly large area of about 50x50 pixel (depending on screen resolution and PPI). That's far too big to guess where you want your cursor to be placed.

Moreover, the fact that you'll see the cursor moving creates a loop in which you will follow the delayed cursor around with your gaze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how well the hardware would work with an input system like Dasher. Dasher was experiment in statistical inference and tries to be an accessibility tool as well. [http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/). I found it really fun to play around with and could get decent speeds but not great. It's true about eye tracking being prohibitively high. When we order an eye tracker for the lab, it ended up costing us £10K.

<comment><USER16> yeah, I remember dasher. Quite effective and pretty fun - agree a mashup of eyetracking and dasher could be worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In the demo, he was quick and he didn't even seem to use much autocompletion. However, I wonder if using a different keyboard layout would be helpful. Dvorak a Colmak, for example, place the more frequently used letters on the home row so you'll spend more time with your eyes there. You can evaluate different layouts with a tool like this:

[http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/](http://patorjk.com/keyboard- layout-analyzer/)

<comment><USER18> I wonder if it really matters with your eyes vs. your hands and fingers. Flicking your gaze around the keyboard seems much easier than moving your fingers around - you'll never have two fingers hitting each other.

And on the other end of the speed spectrum, it seems like it's unlikely that this will ever quite be as quick as operating even a QWERTY keyboard with fully functional hands.

<comment><USER17> This tool is for people who can't use their hands, of course.

For the average person, we're pretty close to being able to use voice instead of typing.

[https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice- stay...](https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice-staying- productive-without-harming-yourself/)

[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)

Throw in eye tracking and precise gestures ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0)) and the keyboard isn't necessary.

<comment><USER19> Instead of coming home from the office with Carpal Tunnel we'll be coming home with hoarse voices. Color me skeptical.

<comment><USER17> Some people will gladly take a hoarse voice. Ever see someone have to resort to using their nose?

[http://www.looknohands.me](http://www.looknohands.me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is amazing software and I'm glad something like this is open source. Accessibility hardware often costs a fortune (for understandable reasons) and software isn't typically cheap either. This seems to be very high quality and it has the potential to really improve people's lives. I'm glad things like this exist.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have been using voicecode.io (with dragon naturally speaking) and IR head tracking so that I don't have to use my hands for anything now with pretty good success. The head tracking mouse has a much smaller learning curve, but programming by voice has been rewarding as well.

<comment><USER17> Has anyone gotten the other solutions to work? I've been collecting my notes but I haven't gotten around to it.

[http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/programming_b...](http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/programming_by_voice.html)

<comment><USER21> voicecode.io is far ahead of anything else in terms of out of the box programming by voice. Everything else requires a lot of up front effort and essentially designing your own language before you can be productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This could be a really nice keyboard interface for VR too.

<comment><USER23> It's curious that Optikey was posted today, because yesterday I wrote a post about the promise of iris scanning technology to deliver a seamless payments experience in VR headsets.

Unfortunately, none of the VR headsets shipping in the next six months have iris trackers (much less scanners). The only headset I found was Fove, which was successfully kickstarted and ships in 2016. Fove did a promotion with a Japanese school for wheelchair-bound children, in which a child played a piano using the iris tracking function of the headset.

There are some iris scanner-equipped phones shipping in the near future, but none with iris trackers as far as I could tell.

I can share the post link if people are interested.

<comment><USER24> [https://theeyetribe.com/products/](https://theeyetribe.com/products/) looks kind of interesting regarding eye tracking, I'm curious how well it performs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is an idea: Tell me if this is stupid:

Assume you have a bunch of HUDs/AACs/Glasses/Whatever that are using this tracking tech. Assume that they are ONLY looking at the real world, not some online data/webpage etc...

There is a camera that either is fwd looking or also 360 looking.

Use the tech to eye track exactly everything that MANY people are looking at to train an AI as to what items in the real-world are important.

i.e. "the ground exists and we know its there, thus its priority in information is low" however "these signs that are being looked at have a higher context priority, and require understanding"

By doing this on a fair scale... you could train AI to use the information of "whats visually important to human navigation" to train them to navigate. This augments what other ML/AI stuff has already been going on...

I do not know if this is basically how self driving cars were developed -- but now that you have a seed of this tracking tech in open source -- it could blossom.

<comment><USER26> I don't think this is stupid, but probably won't happen any time soon. A project to correlate what humans look at to objects in the real world is probably possible, but would be a significant effort to get it to work reliably and accurately. Scaling it to a large population and processing the data to the point of providing useful insight about how we behave and look at things would be another hurdle.

Basically this probably won't happen until Google (or Facebook, or Apple, etc) decides that knowing what people look at is worth the effort/cost.

<comment><USER27> I'd be happy if all those time-and-space-stamped photos uploaded to facebook could be stitched together to make a photoessay of my vacation. That way I wouldn't even have to take a camera with me; facebook could use Other People's Pictures that I just happened to be in proximity to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great work. I wonder if the author had heard of the Eyewriter project [1]? Similar system, fully open source, but I'm not sure how active development is nowadays. It's been up since ~2011, though, so quite old by software standards (uses openFrameworks/openCV). Still, it worked impressively well when I built a derivative system.

The accessibility space needs as much open-source development as possible - most of the commercial tech, if you can find it, is locked down and outdated.

[1]: [http://www.instructables.com/id/The- EyeWriter-20/](http://www.instructables.com/id/The-EyeWriter-20/)

<comment><USER29> One of the main motivators behind OptiKey - fantastic project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can someone elaborate on the use of eye trackers in dark rooms (rooms lightened by dimmed lights or only the monitor itself)? Does it work?

<comment><USER31> My mom has ALS and has an eye tracker. The camera is infrared and shows up based on any light in the room.

From looking at the tracking software it seems to calculate contrast between the retina and the surrounding eye to track what it is looking at.

<comment><USER30> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You should take a look at EyeFluence - they have developed some incredible techniques to type with your eyes using non-dwell methods.

<comment><USER29> I will, thanks for the heads up

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Readers here may appreciate: I spoke with the dev for a piece on OptiKey: [http://www.businessinsider.com/an-eye-tracking-interface- hel...](http://www.businessinsider.com/an-eye-tracking-interface-helps-als- patients-use-computers-2015-9)

</comment><comment><USER34> As someone that suffers from RSI, I'd be interested in an Opti-mouse.

Does this exist yet?

<comment><USER26> Tobii bundles some (Windows only) integration software with their EyeX. It allows you to click on whatever you are looking at with the press of an action button (left ctrl key for me), along with a few other features (eye tracking the alt-tab switcher is what I really like). It works okay, but eye tracking isn't quite as accurate as a mouse and you either need to make your icons big and widely spaced or you have to zoom in (with an action click) before selecting the icon precisely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> [https://www.justgiving.com/Julius- Sweetland](https://www.justgiving.com/Julius-Sweetland) also raising money for cancer charity at the same time.

<comment><USER29> Thank you for including this. People are being very generous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if a version of this for mobile phones could make typing on a phone faster than fumbling with a touch screen.

<comment><USER37> Mmmm... that was a great deal slower than me using the latest Android swiping support, even counting errors. Can't speak to the other mobile tech stacks, but if you're typing on a phone is slower than that you might want to poke around, you may be missing a technology already installed on it.

(Not a criticism of the excellent work here. It's a fundamental bandwidth problem.)

Concretely: In the time the demo took to write "Meet OptiKey. Full computer control and speech using only your eyes.", I wrote in an Android text area: "I am just typing words as quickly as I can in the android interface. I'm even having to think a bit about it more that I've written so much. uh, hello world? and other stuff. I'm still going and going and going." Including the missing "now" between "more" and "that", and you can't see it but I had to correct 3 words, too. That's about three times faster on the phone I have in my pocket. And let me just say... that is impressive performance for a free eye tracking suite, in my opinion, to still be that fast with just eyes.

<comment><USER29> No you're right. Dexterous fingers beats eye tracking for text input, but my target audience can't use their hands so this is (hopefully) a good alternative.

<comment><USER37> Please allow me to reiterate: I'm _impressed_ with your work. Nothing there was a criticism. In fact it struck me as well-designed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Pretty cool, fellow Julius!

</comment><comment><USER39> This is amazing software, but will it work with me? My left eye is a glass eye and it has little to no movement.

<comment><USER26> I have a Tobii EyeX and it has the option to track a single eye. You would basically need to set it to track just your right eye, which is a piece of cake in the config (on Windows at least).

<comment><USER40> And if OptiKey doesn't support it yet, open an issue on github! :)

<comment><USER29> OptiKey will listen to whatever it's told to! If you're using a Tobii tracker you should be able to change your configuration to track just one eye. OptiKey just cares about the coordinates that the Tobii engine spits out so it should be fine. Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> this is so mind blowingly good.</comment>


Wikipedia Registers 11 New Domain Names - <AUTHOR> http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/wikipedia-registers-11-new-domain-names/

<comment><USER2> From the looks of it, they are either planning on entering the travel guide sector, or protecting their brand from others entering this sector.</comment>


OpenAI's GPT-2-Based Bot That Replies When You Talk to It - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gpt2_117m_bot <comment><USER2> I can't understand what she said.</comment>