Site Accessibility Testing Methods and Best Practices - <AUTHOR> I've done my best to make my site accessible using the WCAG guidelines and some validation tools such as axe, achecker.ca but I feel like I'm lost in a sea of thousands of 'suggestions' but few hard and fast rules to follow to guarantee the widest reach possible.
I don't really know anybody using accessible browsers so it is hard to get real-world knowledge.  What is the most popular browesr at this point - is it a full on browser or just a plugin for FireFox (or Chrome).  Do they react different between Windows and Mac?
Are there any mobile accessibility options?  What about for iPads/tablets? <comment><USER2> Visually impaired people are using a combination of regular browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE11) and screen readers (NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver) [1]. There are differences in the output, but you can pretty much ignore them for the high level knowledge that you are looking for.

You could check some articles [2], talks [3] or courses [4] to get the basic understanding of accessible development.

[1] [https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/#browsercomb...](https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/#browsercombos)

[2] [https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic...](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/articles- and-videos.md)

[3] [https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic...](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/talks.md)

[4] [https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topic...](https://github.com/brunopulis/awesome-a11y/blob/master/topics/courses.md)</comment>


Plant fiber turning desert to oasis - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRckxnHZHb4 <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some technical details: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309745628_Desert_So...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309745628_Desert_Soilization_An_Eco- Mechanical_Solution_to_Desertification)

They do require underground water, so the concern is vegetation could cause loss of underground aquifer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The url in the title is incorrect - I grabbed the next video recommended by YouTube.

The correct one is: [https://youtu.be/cazVrq9v1mE](https://youtu.be/cazVrq9v1mE)

I have submitted a new thread with the corrected url.</comment>


Valve Announces Source 2, and It'll Be Free - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/valve-announces-source-2-and-itll-be-free/ <comment><USER2> The article attributes all these free engines to Unity but I think they've missed 20+ years of videogame history.

First, Valve has always been very open to game mods. Some of their most popular franchises (TF & CS) grew out of the mod community around HL1 and they've always made tooling available for the Source engine.

HL1 was based on the Quake engine and id has always embraced the mod community. Id software has also contributed greatly by open sourcing their old engines.

The Torque Game Engine (Tribes) was opened up to low cost licensing by GarageGames in the early 2000s.

Unreal has long made their tools available for free, though licensing wasn't quite favorable to the indie developer until more recently.

Blender made an attempt at including a game engine but it never really took off from my point of view, although they're still including and improving it.

Even Blizzard's inclusion of map tools with Warcraft 3 spawned one of the biggest gaming trends of the past 10 years, DOTA / MOBA games. Though these have all been recreated with other engines (including Valve's Source), the inclusion of modding tools with games is part of the story and some of the competition that the current crop of free tools must face.

Open source deserves a mention as well. Ogre 3D, the above mentioned Blender, and other engines and especially tools have sprung up in a variety of games and often fill missing gaps in asset creation.

Unity certainly deserves some credit, however. Their simple tooling, relatively early start on mobile, and aggressively lowering the barriers from side project to published game has definitely moved the goalposts for game tooling. The Unity Asset Store is also a great thing.

I've really only scratched the surface though. XBox DNLA deserves a mention, the role of the iPhone and mobile in general has been huge, Minecraft's until recently ambiguous quasi-open source nature, and there's many more. We're in a golden age of game creation and I hope to play some amazing new game ideas. I realize there's also going to be an abundance of mediocre imitations from creators like me but its all part of the fun.

<comment><USER3> > Ogre 3D

I recently chose to give up on Ogre3D as I was completely frustrated by my inability to make it run on mac. It's also way too big (I don't know if OOP is a reason for that, but I still tend to dislike OOP nevertheless). For example it doesn't seem that you can choose to not use the scene graph.

I loved that engine at some point, but as time passed, I wasted an incredible amount of time trying to either build it (oh the pain) or make a project run across platforms (mac especially).

I recently found an opengl 3.3 core profile tutorial (learnopengl.com, it's really good for motivated beginners), I felt really better learning that since I like to understand how lower level stuff works and how to make things as simple as possible.

Unity/source/unreal engine are great when one wants to sell a beautiful, smooth 3D game quickly and doesn't have too specific or uncommon requirements. But when you want to experiment, there's nothing else than raw opengl.

I really wish Ogre3D was lighter, or that there was be a minimal engine with plain helper functions that let you use, understand and talk to OpenGL to make the best use of it. I can understand that indie devs want to be able to use the best 3D right away, but sometimes it can be nice to give more control to the programmer.

I guess I hard a hard time learning by myself, or that I'm just trolling out of frustration. 3D is not easy and sometimes I think some small dose of KISS would be appreciated.

<comment><USER4> If you're willing to go the Java route, LWJGL is pretty close to what you've described.

[http://www.lwjgl.org](http://www.lwjgl.org) (their website seems a bit odd right now)

<comment><USER5> lwjgl is so plain it's no more than a wrapper around OpenGL context.

If you want slightly more than than(but still not a proper engine), I would wholeheartedly recommend libgdx: [http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/features.html](http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/features.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does).

In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. In the 2000s the Unreal Engine had a price tag of half a million dollars up-front plus royalties (I don't remember the percentage) on the back end. That these companies are giving their engines—even their source code—away essentially for free indicates either that (1) engine sales was never a very lucrative line of business or that (2) the promise of establishing your technology as a defacto game engine standard—the Panavision of games—is even more appealing than immediate revenue.

<comment><USER8> Engine sales used to be lucrative, quite a few companies have been based solely on that business model for years. But just like most things, the market changed over the years. High quality alternatives started to appear, big publishers started making or buying their own tech, and easier entry to market are among some of the reasons.

In my mind, the biggest contributor is simply competition.

<comment><USER9> This is a very good point. In all honesty, id Software really moved from 'making games' to 'making tech demos' with Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena. The same is pretty much true for Epic and the Unreal Tournament games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unreal, Unity and now Source within just a few days from each other... It looks like the game engine market is commoditizing rapidly.

<comment><USER11> I have a (possibly crazy) theory:

Companies like Valve and Epic have already amortized the cost of development of their engines - those are codebases that span 16 years, and both companies had multiple commercial successes. All it took was Unity to give a little nudge.

Now, IMO, the reason for giving so much for free is to keep a player out (Unity) and milk the cow one last time with the eventual royalties.

I think it's clear by now the next generation will be real-time raytracing (engines like Brigade [1]), so I wouldn't doubt they are already working on those, and to be sold in the old model.

[1] [http://brigade.otoy.com](http://brigade.otoy.com)

<comment><USER12> Real Time Ray tracing is still very far off. Brigade serves as a good proof of concept, but a lot of things are yet to be researched and implemented to make it viable in commercial sphere. Seeing the progress, I do not think commercial real time ray traced game will be a reality any time soon in this decade.

<comment><USER13> It's been "next gen" for decades. It's just a terribly inefficient brute-force approach to lighting a scene. I don't think it'll ever be viable for real-time graphics.

<comment><USER14> Even if it'd be viable, the traditional approach is much faster and easier on resources. You still want to retain a part of the GPU for physics, maybe. Or run on lower-end hardware, too. Using ray-tracing for accurate shadows or reflections in part of a scene may be viable, but I severely doubt games will just use ray-tracing for rendering. CAD and architecture stuff may benefit more from that, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In addition to the business model, another key question: source available or not?

For reference: the Half-Life (GoldSrc) and Source Engine SDKs, long free to download for modders, are on GitHub these days, but don't contain the complete engine source code.

Note: The above space previously claimed the full GoldSrc code was available, because that is what I read somewhere and is repeated at least at [1], but this appears to be incorrect. Sorry :|

[1] [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Goldsource](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Goldsource)

<comment><USER16> Do you have a link to the GoldSrc engine on GitHub?

<comment><USER17> I think it's here, as part of the HalfLife source: [https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife)

<comment><USER18> That's just the HL1 SDK--there isn't any engine source in there worth mentioning AFAIK.

<comment><USER15> Yep, I am wrong. Serves me right for repeating what I read somewhere without verifying it myself. Too bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Based on the context of the "free for content developers," it sounds to me like they mean it will be free for people developing add-on content for existing games, not that it will be free for people making their own games.

<comment> squeaky-clean I agree. If it was free for game development, they would have said "game developers" and not "content developers."

Someone in /r/gamedev posted a link to this press release. [0] It looks official, and steamdb is usually reputable. Here's the most relevant section, it definitely doesn't sound like Source 2 will be free for original game development.

> "The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the > productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is > increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content > is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, > but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and > development of their favorite games," said Valve's Jay Stelly. "We will be > making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with > recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance > as the premiere content authoring platform."

[0] [https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/](https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And to top that, not exactly an engine - but a level editor used by several Sony Studios, it also uses a framework that Sony released months ago:

[https://github.com/SonyWWS/LevelEditor](https://github.com/SonyWWS/LevelEditor)

[https://github.com/SonyWWS/ATF](https://github.com/SonyWWS/ATF) (the framework)

[https://github.com/SonyWWS/SLED](https://github.com/SonyWWS/SLED) (Debugger? for lua?)

</comment><comment><USER21> From a purely gamedev perspective, examining the Source engine taught me a lot about engine development, so it's exciting to hear about the next version.

Valve's articles on how they implemented networking in Source are particularly useful and interesting[0].

[0] [https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_...](https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking)

</comment><comment><USER22> Odd that idTech, known historically as a corss platform engine that was unique for being opened after its profit was done, is now seemingly one of the more closed engines on the market.

<comment><USER23> They sold the company, and now Carmack at Oculus. It makes sense that the values of the company have changed.

<comment><USER24> _"...the values of the company have changed..."_ \- a polite way of saying "the founders sold out".

<comment><USER25> Carmack didn't "sell out", he spent decades at id and was responsible for vast swathes of 3D technology and the open-sourcing of multiple cutting edge game engines.

He went above and beyond what you could expect of anyone who cofounds a game development house and he is treated like a literal programming icon for good reason.

<comment><USER24> _" On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software)

=> sell out

<comment><USER8> The selling of the company that you don't outright 100% own doesn't equate to the traditional meaning of "selling out".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Check out Project Reality for a great example of a very engaging game that will benefit from game engine licensing like this. Current version is BF2 based and some of the best squad based gameplay I have experienced.

<comment><USER27> Very interesting that I find this here! I was on the PR2 team for awhile before things stagnated. I don't think the team at this point over at realitymod.com would benefit from anything happening at EA in regards to BF2's license. A lot has changed and things are moving very slowly nowadays.

You might want to check out Squad (joinsquad.com)

<comment><USER26> I did take a look at some Squad footage that was released from the team months ago, looking forward to its release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does Source and Steam fit together? Would it make sense to lower a potential fee for Steam exclusive games built on Source? Would it be "risky" trusting the same company with both the game engine and distribution?

It's really great seeing Source 2, Unreal Engine and Unity lowering the bar for game developers to deliver their products.

<comment><USER29> _How does Source and Steam fit together?_

Source is an engine, Steam is a distribution platform. I think the only truly significant interplay is:

\- Source games will probably behave well with the Steam Overlay and probably work in Big Picture Mode with controllers

\- Steam recognizes the Source libraries as a distinct element, so you only have to download the Source engine once even if you have many games that use that engine

<comment><USER30> > Steam recognizes the Source libraries as a distinct element

I don't think that's correct, all Source1 games include their own copy of the engine and aren't automatically updated to newer versions etc. (Valve does update them though). The engine download is only for mods and some 3rd-party games.

<comment><USER31> What do you call Source1 games? I'm pretty sure I had a common source download for CS:S, DoD:S and HL:DM

<comment><USER32> The games you mentioned _used_ to run on the same branch of the engine, and when that does happen you only download it once. Most shipping Source games today use distinct branches of Source. There's a Portal 2 branch, a DotA branch, a TF2 branch, a CS:GO branch, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can Source 2 really compete with UR4 and Unity5? HL2 was amazing for it's time, but the reason that Portal looks so good is because most of the animations and lighting effects are pre-rendered.

</comment><comment><USER34> Can any developer comment on Source, Unity, and Unreal and how well they handle mods after the fact?

Modding in PC gaming adds such an incredible level of value and creativeness that it being a constant afterthought is bordering on criminal. Steam Workshop is an interesting mechanic, but it would be nice if an engine set out a baseline in advance that didn't require using additional services.

</comment><comment><USER35> Speaking of open source games, I hope openage becomes playable soon. I loved/still love Age of empires. Although, I have been playing 0ad and it's pretty good but has to cover a lot of ground in performance region.

</comment><comment><USER36> Honestly I'm hoping Source 2 is everything I dream it can be. I've been focused on asset creation instead of game logic so that I have leeway in deciding on engine (which right now for me is UE4).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm interested in knowing if Source 2 will only be targeting PC and Steam Machines, or if Valve has plans for Xbox/PlayStation/Wii and iOS/Android/Windows Phone.

<comment><USER38> hopefully mac also, I think all of valve first party titles run on mac so I would hope they wouldn't drop it for source 2(and mythical HL3)

<comment><USER39> Due to the new steam machines running on linux there's a high probability for the games to work for os x as well. I think (can't find the reference right now) that gabe newell really want games to be able to run on all major pc os's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So it'll be: You can use it for free, but you have to sell it on Steam? Valve will still get their pound of flesh.

</comment><comment><USER41> Headline abuse. The quote is "free for content developers."

</comment><comment><USER24> _" Announces ... Free"_ \- as if they had a choice.

<comment><USER14> Was Source even licensed as extensively as Unreal or idTech? I got the impression that most Source games were Valve's own and licensing the engine wasn't really a priority (or source of revenue) for them.

<comment><USER42> Not even close, most of the licenced Source games were existing HL2 mod projects being moved to a commercial standalone format. The only high profile original game ever developed on it outside of Valve was TitanFall, and they had to rewrite a good chunk of the engine to bring it up to modern standards.

<comment><USER43> I thought they rewrote stuff because they were using it as a prototyping tool, and its design didn't quite fit their game?

<comment><USER44> A project like Titanfall isn't going to be able to treat an engine as a blackbox library. They're going to spend a lot of time tailoring that engine to their needs.

Anytime a game developer is asked to publicly comment on using an external party's engine, that developer is probably a producer and wants to make their project look good. They don't want their game to be seen on the same level as games that CAN get away with treating the engine as a blackbox. The exact reasoning they give (or internet apocrypha) are generally not very useful to understanding the changes they do make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Half-Life 3?

</comment><comment><USER46> Half-Life 3 confirmed?

<comment><USER47> I wonder when that's going to get old. On an odd note, they did deny "source 2" to ever exist until recently. So, I guess there is hope for you.

<comment><USER48> Developing the engine (even if it is mostly incremental enhancments from the games released over the years) must have taken up signifficant resources lately. If the engine is "done" now, there should be people available to work on new titles.

<comment><USER49> Chances are, they are developing the engine alongside a new game built on that engine. That is after-all how most game engines are built.

<comment><USER48> That would be the "mostly incremental enhancments from the games released".

Releasing something publicly makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I can't find any information on steam, thought thats where the news would be.

anyways, not sure what source 2 will look like, but if it means that we can use the existing source code for games like counterstrike or any of the valve's fps series, then for fps indie developers this is a welcome news.

we should see an explosion of new types of fps games with the availability of such base to build new games from, add new content, new modes of play etc.

</comment><comment><USER51> Awesome. After long time something interesting from valve

<comment><USER52> Ouch. Steam box stuff and VR not that interesting? Though I'd really love for them to FINALLY announce a Half Life sequel.

<comment><USER53> Steam Box and VR is interesting, but only if it actually happens. So far we've seen next to nothing from the Steam Box idea except a ton of companies releasing small form-factor PCs that were originally slated to run Steam OS but then switched to Windows when Valve decided to back out.</comment></comment></comment>


Mainframes Stack Exchange website creation proposal - <AUTHOR> https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/118484/mainframes?referrer=iAGSGOUsQhhu5K9oA-93Cw2 <comment><USER2> Didn't know there wasn't one already. I'm all for it - though given the recent flood of absolute newbie questions on SO (of the kind that could be answered by a two seconds Googling effort) I will be surprised if anything useful is being discussed.

I remember sitting on a project at an insurance company with an internship girl opting for the "mainframe" career path next desk going like "wtf is this ABEND doing right there on the screen? talk about misinformation etc" ("Abend" is German for evening).

I know very little about z/OS aka MVS. Our job was migrating legacy insurance bill printing to something newer given IBM has sold off their printing division to Ricoh/InfoPoint over ten years ago. It was very inspiring, however, since I came to learn SCRIPT/VS, DCF, and GML (the precursor to SGML, and what eventually became the base for HTML).

<comment><AUTHOR> The proposal can sure use a couple questions. Even if the questions can be quickly answered by googling, once they get on a Stack Exchange site, they get a lot of benefit from the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm feeling nostalgic. EDIF is one of the best editors I have used. Now, VIM is fine too :)</comment>


Ask HN: Are you now less interested in startup jobs? - <AUTHOR> During rough or uncertain economic times, risk tolerance declines in favor of job security.
How have the last few months affected your interest in joining a startup?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> None.

Eleven startups. Net value of options: zero.

Plenty of exits, but thanks to preferences overhangs, zero value for employee stock options. Yes, got decent salary, but not FAANG level.

VCs may be able to write off 1/3 of their investments, I can't. Stop conning employees into accepting lower salaries in return for stock options.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious, can you define what you viewed as a decent salary, either as a range or percentage of market?

<comment><USER2> For my region, $150-175k, engineering. Last startup I worked at (>1 year ago) paid $120 + roughly 30k in options (so, divided $30000 by strike price resulting in N options). Company exited for 5x venture funding. Options were effectively worthless as one of the venture rounds had a 2x participating preference. Acquiring company offered same salary, no equity. I would have been better off quitting the startup and applying for a new role at the acquiring company as they were paying other engineers comparable to me $165.

The founders did ok, the investors did great, the typical employee (I was not first but was in the first 100) pretty much got screwed.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup With Me - <AUTHOR> http://startupwithme.com

<comment><USER2> If this is your site (wasn't clear from the submission), I have one suggestion:

Your slogan "Matching Entrepreneurs and Ideas" is in the page title but not on the page anywhere. I think that line does a good job telling what the site is about without making the reader wade through the front page copy.</comment>


Forecasting with Julia - <AUTHOR> http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2017/05/forecasting-with-julia.html <comment><AUTHOR> Most policy decisions these days are heavily influenced by proprietary forecasting models.

Just look at the fuss that was made because the House passed a health bill without a Congressional Budget Office score. The CBO score will certainly play a large part in the Senate's rewrite. The problem is that the CBO and other organizations like it are quite secretive about their modeling. Most of the time they only produce point estimates, and they don't publish many of the assumptions behind their modeling. When there is a bill that contains both taxes and spending, the Joint Committee on Taxation models the tax part, the CBO models the spending part, and they just smash the results together because even those two organizations aren't willing to share and integrate their models.

The NY Fed is serving as an important leader in this field. Policy analysis should be transparent and scientific, and that's what the NY Fed is moving the field towards.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Open Source Policy Center, where I work, is focussed on this issue. www.ospc.org Most of OSPC's work is focussed on fiscal policy rather than monetary policy.

<comment><USER2> What languages do you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Primarily Python.

See, for example, [https://github.com/open-source-economics/tax- calculator](https://github.com/open-source-economics/tax-calculator). We also make many of the models available through webapps like [https://www.ospc.org/taxbrain](https://www.ospc.org/taxbrain) and [https://www.ospc.org/ccc](https://www.ospc.org/ccc). The source code for those is available at [https://www.github.com/opensourcepolicycenter/webapp- public](https://www.github.com/opensourcepolicycenter/webapp-public)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was wondering why they specifically chose Julia for this (since I know little about Julia at all), and found an answer in a previous article:

> Julia has two main advantages from our perspective. First, as free software, > Julia is more accessible to users from academic institutions or > organizations without the resources for purchasing a license. Now anyone, > from Kathmandu to Timbuktu, can run our code at no cost. Second, as the > models that we use for forecasting and policy analysis grow more > complicated, we need a language that can perform computations at a high > speed. Julia boasts performance as fast as that of languages like C or > Fortran, and is still simple to learn.

[http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/12/the- frb...](http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/12/the-frbny-dsge- model-meets-julia.html)

<comment><USER4> _Julia boasts performance as fast as that of languages like C or Fortran, and is still simple to learn._

I think the greatest benefit is that Julia code is both high-performance and (mostly) high-level, which makes it easy to change. I don't mind implementing a completely-specified algorithm in C or Fortran, but making significant changes to these code bases is simply much more work than in languages like Python or Julia.

<comment><USER5> I agree in sentiment but lately keep finding Python fraudulent in that regard: folks write complex messes in it because of its deficiencies, or to just be dramatic.

<comment><USER6> However, Julia isn't Python - although I don't know enough about the latter to comment on what deficiencies you are referring to, nor do I know if Julia addresses these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> one-more-minute See also the case study on the JC website, which includes a talk from one of the developers explaining some of the rationale:

[https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/ny- fed.html](https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/ny-fed.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> code at [https://github.com/QuantEcon/RBA_RBNZ_Workshops](https://github.com/QuantEcon/RBA_RBNZ_Workshops)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's for workshop materials. Here is the model itself [https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl](https://github.com/FRBNY-DSGE/DSGE.jl)</comment></comment>


Optics Illustrations from the Physics Textbooks of Amédée Guillemin - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/optics-illustrations-from-the-physics-textbooks-of-amedee-guillemin-1868-1882/ <comment><USER2> Ooh these are cool, and the scans are high enough resolution for poster prints. I'm not sure if I can ever have too many aesthetic art-science posters hanging...</comment>


Sync 2.0: Skip the Cloud, Share Direct - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bittorrent.com/2015/03/03/sync-2-0-skip-the-cloud-share-direct/ <comment><USER2> I would love to try it but it is proprietary and closed-source. So far I am very happy with Syncthing, mostly missing public shares.

<comment><USER3> I would agree, but I find Sync's interface so much easier to use (and to explain to others). I hope the SyncThing guys keep working on that. I also don't want a command prompt window to stay open while I'm using the app...Syncthing still feels too developer-centric rather than consumer-centric to me.

<comment><USER4> I don't see any prompt when running syncthing. You're probably running it manually (eg: typing `syncthing` into a terminal). The package for your OS probably contains something to run it as a daemon (systemd.service / rc.d / launchd / whatever).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel that "Skip the Cloud" is misleading in that they still want us to rent the software. For me, half the point is being able to pay my money and walk away completely.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to figure out a better solution for creative workflow management, and BT Sync was on my list before. From my (enterprise) perspective, this is how it seems to be set up:

\- I get to host, configure, manage, monitor, and script my own infrastructure

\- I don't get any user management or centralized auth

\- Users have to create identities manually and then get people to share folders to them

But also!

\- I still have to pay for the features I want, yearly, per-user

On top of that, there seems to be a lot of marketing material telling me the high-level overview, and lots of documentation telling me the low-level interface, but I'm not getting the whole picture. I'm sold on the idea, but not the implementation. There's nothing here that tells me, as a devops/IT guy, what this will do for my infrastructure or my users.

That said, there are a _lot_ of features here that I love. Turning off 'sync all' and having placeholder files is great for a company which currently has an 80 GB SVN repository of all of our creative assets.

There's also no indication of whether I can revoke files from a user (and not just their access to future updates). When an employee/contractor leaves, I want them to stop having any of our files. Granted, they could just make copies before they get disconnected, but it's still a nice-to-have.

So, if there's any way to handle these issues (mostly authenticating users against an LDAP backend, in my case), I'm sold, sign me up. Otherwise, I have to go somewhere else (e.g. AeroFS, which can do this).

</comment><comment><USER7> I have been using it since 1.3 (I believe) and I used to be a big fan of it. I think BTSync's strength was that it was fairly simple, somewhat more simple type of system where you could just share key and start syncing; no account creation required. Now it seems to be departed into more with a strong push to identify based access control and such. When they started moving toward that (I've tried their 2.0 beta briefly) I just felt Syncthing is where my usecase belong. (Simply, all I wanted was a solution to move and update files from A to B to C.)

It sounds like 2.0 still provides the same functionalities, but in any case, that 10 folder limitation will not work with me anyways. I don't mind paying for what I use, but I just don't think it's a implementation I prefer any more...

<comment><USER8> The new 10 folder limit makes it almost useless and breaks their promise that the new free 2.0 version will provide the same features as 1.4.

<comment><USER9> Ten folders puts me at the limit just on my family LAN with each user having their own folder and me having a couple so I can have a smaller set for syncing to laptop and a larger one for desktops.

I just installed SyncThing...

P.S. I just found out it is written in Go so that is a big plus for me as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Every few years it's "Do it on a central server!" "No, do it localized!"

<comment><USER11> This is one of the familiar "cycles of reincarnation" in software: main frame vs. local PC.

First there was the main frame, with the "PC" being a dumb terminal used to access it. Then came the PC revolution, which put everything on the desk in front of you. Next came the cloud revolution, which is really main frame 2.0 with the PC (and mobile devices) demoted to dumb terminals with better UIs. Now we're seeing a renewed movement back toward personal local computing and distributed decentralized networks, and around and around we go...

<comment><USER12> Paperspace, offering an extreme version of the dumb terminal paradigm, is currently on the front page of Hacker News and Product Hunt, so it's kinda difficult to tell exactly what phase of the cycle we're in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like the Sync UI, the functionality and the speed.

But the last time I looked at the forum there were several unanswered posts about serious bugs where files were deleted on both sync peers.

This scared me away from using it.

Now, I'm not sure if it being out of beta means that these showstoppers have been fixed or just ignored.

The stated primary goal of sync is that your files will always stay private. I wish the primary goal was that my files were not deleted.

Since it's closed source perhaps they could do better by documenting their testing strategy and coverage to convince potential users of the quality of their software.

It also scares me that bug reports are managed on a forum rather than through a bugtracker: [http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/108-sync- troubleshooting/](http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/108-sync-troubleshooting/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Not too long ago you guys took a big and extensive survey. The survey had business-speak written all over it. One could sense you're going down that path in the near future; and you have.

Me and my two tablets will survive without using this service for syncing. I wish you good luck with the business model.

</comment><comment><USER15> The only thing that is really missing for me is the partial file sync. I have for example a big folder full of podcasts that I all, kind of want on my device but dont have space for. It would be awesome to, in theory, sync my hole NAS on my phone and then only partaly download some folders.

At the moment I get around this problem by having a special 'Sync Podcast'-Folder and I just copy files into it. Since my phone is only 64GB its not really that bad, but its still more work then just a click on the device itself.

So if there is any way I can get that for free, or only pay for the app. I would be happy.

<comment><USER2> git-annex assistant might be perfect for your usecase.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for mentioning git-annex. I had used it before, but never realized it eventually received an android client. Time to try it again and syncthing :)

[http://git-annex.branchable.com/install/Android/](http://git- annex.branchable.com/install/Android/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone found a document discussing how to upgrade from 1.4.x to 2.x yet?

It looks like the 1.4.x era folders are now tagged as "Classic" and has a difference in capability.

<comment><USER18> Hi there, I'm Lauren from BitTorrent. Hope this explanation helps!

When you upgrade to 2.0, all 1.4 folders will still exist. You can continue to sync your 1.4 folder with both 1.4 and 2.0 builds of Sync. The only difference is that your 1.4 folders will not gain any of the new 2.0 functionality like permissions changes and syncing on-demand.

<comment><USER17> Ugh. I'm really regretting upgrading right now.

a) There is no functionality to "upgrade" a folder from 1.4 to 2.0

b) Sync 2.0 completely clutters the namespace. I don't necessarily want all "sync'ed" folders to show up on all machines.

c) I used to be able to define where Camera Backup from an iOS device went. Now it forcibly makes me use "<devicename> Camera Backup"

d) The ability to dynamically change "sync'ed" folder names as well as folder paths still does not exist.

<comment><USER18> Sorry you're having trouble -- I hope this sheds some light on your issues and how everything works with Sync 2.0

a) 1.4 and 2.0 folders are different cryptographically. They are not mathematically compatible, so one can not be changed in any way to be another (and by the way 2.0 folders can not be turned into 1.4 folders either). 1.4 folders can just be disconnected and reconnected to become 2.0.

b) Through the MyDevices, linkages you are able to access all of the information you have added to any of your instances of Sync. This is a major user benefit - you no longer have to hunt down the originating machine to get your data. In order to remove a folder from this device, click on Folder Options > Disconnect and Disconnect from this copy of Sync.

c) Your devices are all named by you during install - you are able to change the device name in Preferences. You are now able to choose where your iOS backups are able to go from within the iOS app. Click on Camera Backup > Device List — which allows you to backup your iPhone to your computer and your NAS at the same time.

d) The application is constantly watching your file system for changes you make. If you want to change the name of a folder in Sync, change it in Windows Explorer or Finder, and in Sync it will be changed. The folders also follow your changes, move the folder where you want it to go, and Sync will follow your movements automatically. We feel that this is the best user experience as they are already familiar with moving folders and renaming folders in this manner.

<comment><USER17> Re: b)

I want to be able to hide the folder at least. For example, with 1.4, I was able to define shares between different sets of machines/devices.

Now, as I mentioned, all folders are visible, which is not ideal.

d) Here's a use case:

I connect a iOS device to a VM running BTSync. Folder shows up on VM as "<iOS device> Camera Backup" on a local filesystem.

I can't easily switch this to point to a network folder (over CIFS) with a name of <iOS device>

Worse, "<iOS device> Camera Backup" shows up on all machines with no easy way to rename. This is not good UX. Consider enabling functionality to switch names/locations in both BTSync UI and in Explorer/Finder.

<comment><USER18> B) Sorry, we don't have the ability to hide folders. If you add it to Sync, it'll be visible to you on all your devices.

D) There are a couple approaches here:

—> You can rename the folder - double click in the Sync folder list and it will show you the folder it Syncing. If you rename the folder, it will be renamed in Sync.

—> You can move the folder — double click in the Sync folder list and it will show you the folder it is Syncing. If you grab the folder and drag and drop it - you can move it to anywhere in the file system.

You can manually rename Camera Backup on your device, but we keep the "Camera Backup" name as it's often requested by name by our users.

<comment><USER17> PSA: If converting a folder from 1.4 to 2.0, make sure you first disassociate the folder from ALL machines.

I updated a machine that is usually off to 2.0 today, several days after updating other machines (total 6 devices) and the straggler promptly recreated the 1.4 folder on all the other machines. Now I have to go through and do cleanup.

Let me be clear: THIS IS HORRIBLE UX.

Dropbox is much better at the UX up to this point but I don't trust/need a copy in the cloud. But BT, please do not delude yourselves in thinking the current iteration or anything leading up to this point has been a good user experience. I've had to on multiple occasions needed to do cleanup on different machines because of this automagical behavior. Automagic is all fun and games until it does something unexpected. I'm much more in favor of predictable, repeatable behavior, particularly in an app like this.

Also, there does not seem to be a way to reset the identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The thing that I miss most is a good story for the cloud part. As it is, you have to keep one peer that is always on for convenience (we use a Raspberry Pi). But it would be nicer if a _reputable_ company (rather than a random person in their forums) would offer a permanent peer.

This can be done without sacrificing privacy using a so-called 'encrypted read-only secret', which can be derived from the secret and gives the peer the possibility to sync data only in encrypted form.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, I disable DHT, tracker and relay server. So the config is LAN only discovery or direct named host.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> well... I'm not sure I'm on board with everything on this new version. It seems to be getting in my way more. Perhaps I'll get used to it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great that there's an API, but I'm trying to think of the best way to use this in a product. You've got to get anybody on the receiving end of data to install Sync 2.0. I wish there was a way for them to offer it as a library that could be integrated into distributed software more-seamlessly to the end- user.

<comment><USER22> I could be missing something but I think this problem (sharing) fundamentally either requires some sort of non-standard software installed or some centralized solution that can utilize standard software (for example, a web- based solution). But then it's no longer decentralized.</comment></comment>