How to take advantage of Redis just adding it to your stack (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://oldblog.antirez.com/post/take-advantage-of-redis-adding-it-to-your-stack.html

<comment><USER2> If you are just starting with redis, beware that the entire dataset is held in memory, and memory is much more precious than disk. Don't just throw everything you can at it just because it's fast.

<comment><USER3> ARDB[1] seems like a good choice if you want the convenience of Redis and disk persistence. It is like a Redis that's backed by Facebook's RocksDB. The redis protocol support of ARDB is pretty good.

[1]: [https://github.com/yinqiwen/ardb](https://github.com/yinqiwen/ardb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is what I always wonder about Redis:

Since it writes everything to disk, is it really faster than a SQL DB with adequate cache RAM?

<comment><USER5> When I've used Redis, I've turned disk persistence off. This is for cases where (a) consistent performance is more important than being able to recover data (like when the data expires or otherwise is used quickly, and not needed for long), and for online operations failing to a replicated slave is a more robust solution than trying to relaunch a single node and have it read data back from disk (which doesn't help you if the machine itself dies). Or, (b), the long-term persistence is handled in a separate layer that's written to separately and the Redis instances are just used for fast on-line usage (again with slaves set up to avoid losing the data from memory entirely).

You can do SQL in pure memory too, but for the use cases I've had for redis, there isn't need for a schema or firm transaction guarantees, etc, so the setup and operational simplicity of Redis wins out.

<comment><USER6> > You can do SQL in pure memory too

In MySQL, this is the MEMORY engine:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10692398/how-do-i- make-a-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10692398/how-do-i-make-a-mysql- database-run-completely-in-memory)

The InnoDB memory cache gets you pretty close as well:

[http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/11099/is-innodb- engin...](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/11099/is-innodb-engine-up-to- speed-against-memory-engine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know many of you will be well aware of how one can use redis. This is targeted for the people like me (and many others) who have just entered into this field.

</comment><comment><USER7> The hyperloglog command set has been added to Redis since this post. Hyperloglog is useful for estimating the number of unique X over a time period w/o needing to keep track of each X. So, e.g. an easy way to estimate your daily active users.

[http://antirez.com/news/75](http://antirez.com/news/75)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a few interesting use cases for Redis, including using it to reduce write contention to an SQL db:

[http://cramer.io/2014/05/12/scaling-sql-with- redis/](http://cramer.io/2014/05/12/scaling-sql-with-redis/)

The examples are in Python.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good use case explaination for Redis. But how would you do this for a production system with 100M users. If there are over 10M users logged on at the same time you cache would be of size 10M*5000 IDS? Or would each user have an individual live cache returned per session with 5000IDS. The leaderboard example makes more sense as the top scorers number is the same throughout and the board can be updated real time.

<comment><USER9> Any time you have per user data you have an a clear shard key. i.e. instead of one Redis instance you have 100 where each serves a subset of users. In practice sharding isn't quite so simple but having a clear boundary makes it fairly easy to manage.

<comment><USER7> You can shard client-side, but another option is twemproxy, which can shard the keyspace for you.

If you're using Python and want to shard in the client, check out nydus - [https://github.com/disqus/nydus](https://github.com/disqus/nydus)

<comment><USER9> I don't think that solution is viable within the constraints the parent post is talking about. There are many problems that come up with millions of users. Proper load balancing in that case is not simple and mostly dependent on the business logic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used Redis in many high scale applications and it has been working very well so far.

Primarily we use it as a cache backend, and also as a temporary storage for processing data (the expire feature plays very nicely).

in a recent project I was trying to store more information in Redis (such as view counts etc..) but faced the problem of querying the data later (as it relies mainly on keys/regexp).

</comment><comment><USER11> (2011)</comment>


Cracking Phobos UUID - <AUTHOR> https://breakpoint.purrfect.fr/article/cracking_phobos_uuid.html <comment><USER2> Fascinating article. I did note that the template function signature includes RNG, which me as I may pass a different PRNG function; those found in the Mir [1] library are excellent. Libsodium is also available in D.

[1] [http://mir-random.libmir.org/](http://mir-random.libmir.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure why UUID is really not that "secure" since the security properties are coming mostly from used PRNG. v4 is mostly just random 16 bytes that is the same as key length for AES-128.

<comment><USER4> I'm always a bit suspicious when people use UUID for secrets, because there's no requirement for UUIDs to be unguessable. They just need to be unique.

<comment><USER5> In a V4 UUID, 122 of the bits are required to be random, which as long as you're using a good RNG, should be unguessable.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but " _should_ " is the operative word here. I don't think most UUID libraries use good randomness, and the UUID RFC standard actively argues _against_ using UUIDs as anything which has to be kept secret.

(I actually wrote this about UUIDs here on HN five years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330331#10334023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10330331#10334023))

<comment><USER7> It's my impression that most of the people who use UUIDv4s for their unguessability, aren't actually using UUIDv4s at all (i.e. aren't using a distinct UUID library or runtime UUID datatype), but rather are pulling 16 bytes from a CSPRNG, and then formatting it manually into a UUIDv4 _serialization format_ and calling it done.

Sometimes, but not often, the developer will remember that UUIDs have a structure, and so will mask out the relevant bits from the CSPRNG output to replace them with the right static tag-bits to define the serialized identifier as a UUIDv4.

But usually, developers aren't expecting the other end of any conversation to actually try to _understand_ the UUID, but merely to hold onto it as an opaque 128-bit-packed or hex-string-encoded binary. Which is a valid expectation in practice! Even DBMSes with a UUID type don't actually validate the tag bits on the UUIDs inserted into such a column. There's no DBMS I know of that has a means to impose a constraint on which version of UUID a UUID-typed column should hold, or a constraint on the domain for a UUIDv1, or any of that.

A UUID might be an ADT with four distinct _generation algorithms_ —but _after_ generation, in practice, they become just opaque uint128 values, that nobody ever unwraps or parses or expects to _mean_ anything, ever again.

Which means that, in practice, there's nothing stopping people from just taking 128 bits of CSPRNG randomness, and calling that a "UUID." And so that's mostly what they do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A common case that may be hit by this could be document IDs in combination with "link sharing" where knowledge of the document ID gives you access to the document.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Contrary to other languages, D 's current standard implementation of UUID4 > isn't cryptographically secure_

It's hard to imagine a language designer choosing _not_ to make such an import part of the standard library cryptographically secure. Is there a story behind this?

<comment><USER10> Relying on a client not being able to guess the next UUID is an attempt of security through obscurity, no? I don't think it's part of the requirement.

<comment><USER11> Relying on a client not being able to guess a random number is also important for Diffe-Hellman and like, all private key generation AFAIK. I don't think anything says private keys are security by obscurity because they require you to locally generate random numbers</comment></comment></comment>


Must have app for exact time/ time zone confussion - <AUTHOR> http://time.is/apps/ipad Incredibly helpful. Time_is lets you sync across time zones to stay connected.
http://tw.appstore.com/601597rd <comment><USER2> Nice app. Really like the simplicity in design.

Btw: *confusion. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It has World clock with 7 million locations and 44 languages!</comment>


Building the Spaced Repetition Website I've Always Wanted - <AUTHOR> https://www.knowki.com/blog/building-the-spaced-repetition-website-i-ve-always-wanted

<comment><USER2> Drats, no Unicode support! I hope it saved my page/card in its original form, or else I might have to retype it again by the time support is available.</comment>


Commuter wrote novel on his phone on verge of multi-million dollar movie deal  - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7598842/Commuter-who-wrote-fantasy-novel-on-his-phone-on-verge-of-multi-million-dollar-movie-deal.html

<comment><USER2> I bought the Simplenote app for the iphone so I could be more productive on the go. I was going to try and write a novel. However, I'm settling for taking notes for my blog and apps that I'm writing. I think mobile learning and productivity are going be big in the future. Want to learn Spanish while on the go? I'm working on it. :-)

<http://www.appbrain.com/search?q=h4labs></comment>


Show HN: vim-multiple-cursors - True Sublime Text style multiple selection - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors

<comment><USER2> If there is one thing I love about vim, sublime, light table, etc.. is it gives emacs fans new things to implement in elisp!

But seriously, I love the work that has been going into all these different text editors. It seems to be net benefit for everyone. Multiple cursors are like a visual kbd-macro-edit..

Obligatory emacs equivalent source:

\- <https://github.com/magnars/multiple-cursors.el> \- <http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html>

By the ever awesome Magnar Sveen

<comment><AUTHOR> I should probably put a reference to him on the project page, as watching his video recently was a big push towards making me implement this in Vim. His expand-region plugin also inspired me to create vim-expand-region. I wonder what I'll 'copy' next. :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for mentioning (& developing) this, vim-expand-region is awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! expand-region and multiple-cursors run in the same vein in that it takes some functionality Vim already offers, and makes them a little easier to use to the average user. I'm a pretty new and definitely average Vim user myself, and remembering just 2 keystrokes to select some region of text is definitely much easier on my brain muscle than having to remember the dozen of text objects offered by Vim as well as other plugins. Maybe one day all of them will be burnt into my muscle memory, but that simply isn't the case today and expand-region helps me remain productive while learning. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Issues:

> * Multi key commands like ciw do not work at the moment

> * Single key commands that do not terminate properly cause unexpected > behavior

> * Undo behavior is unpredictable

> * Performance in terminal vim degrades significantly with more cursors

There are some more than just these. I really wish Vim were easier to hack. The cursor and drawing models are terribly rigid in Vim, so this plugin probably has to resort to some awful hackery to achieve what it does. :-(

That said, good work, but I'll hold off on trying it out, for now. I'd like at least undo to be fixed before I can use it frustration-free in my _production_ -environment, i.e. producing actual code.

I really hope you continue your work, because I'd love to see multi-cursor functionality implemented in Vim!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'd love for any issues you've seen to be reported so I can get on fixing them. I finally got the plugin to a usable state today and decided to release it early to get feedback, knowing that there're a ton of bugs and missing features. And you're right, figuring out ways to hack around Vim's peculiar ways wasn't an easy task by any means.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely fine, I love that you're doing this! I'll give it a run tonight when I have some free time, maybe even look into the undo-stuff, which I think is most important to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For everyone here writing that they don't see a need for this because vim has macros/regexp's:

Please, please, try it out. I'm telling you, this is leaps and bounds above macros/regexp's for most use cases. It's the difference between a _visual_ way to make changes, and a "disconnected" way in which you write commands and hope they work.

Seriously, I consider Multiple Cursors one of the greatest advances in text editing, and everyone who doesn't even bother to try it is just being silly.

<comment><USER6> I've been trying it, and do find it nice for small things, but a bit tedious for bigger things. Taking one of the examples in the animated GIF on the linked page, if you want to split a line on commas, with multiple cursors you have to select every single comma to 'initialize' the cursors. If the line has 3 fields, this is easier than using the regex, but if it has 10, then I find it a lot easier to just regex-split rather than spawning 10 cursors. I think I find 3 or 4 cursors nice, but past that prefer batch-style commands to manually managing a big set of cursors.

<comment><USER7> > _with multiple cursors you have to select every single comma to 'initialize' > the cursors._

I hear this. Hopefully, the author will be able to implement what Sublime has: a find all field (which accepts regular expressions), and results in multiple cursors on all the matches.

I do this all the time in Sublime and it's so natural:

Cmd+F, /regex/, opt+Enter, [replace, or commands or whatever]

It's just as fast as your usual find and replace or quick macro, except that you have instant feedback, are able to undo, jump around by word, or (with vim-mode), use t or f to find a character, ci", etc.

Selecting a match one case at a time is great, though, when you need to skip some matches. Say you have `old_var`, `old_var2`, and `old_var3`. Just start at the top of the function, and match, match, skip, match, skip, [type and replace]. Sure, you could do a regex on old_var[^\d], but depending on what you're matching and what you're skipping it sometimes is just not worth puzzling out the right regex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I threw my own attempt at this on HN a ways back, but it didn't get any traction: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4906343>

Mine supports things like multi-key commands and has predictable (if not entirely desirable) undo behavior, but it has issues in its own right. I figure we may both learn a thing or two from each other's attempts.

Vim really does need this feature to get some mindshare back from ST2, and I'd love to see this well-implemented, even if its by someone else.

</comment><comment><USER9> The rendering of multiple cursors is really buggy in tmux + vim, to the extent that it's hard to tell what has been selected.

I have used this command for the purposes of changing a variable name. It could be better but gets the job done most of the time.

> :.,$s/\<<C-r><C-w>\>//gc<Left><Left><Left>

Short demo: <http://cl.ly/image/403j153F3u1h>

<comment><USER10> I do this: *Ncw (then change the variable name) Then just n.n.n.n. until things are replaced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I must admit that I see little value in it given great capabilities that Vim already has. The three example edits can be made using regular expressions and macros.

<comment><USER12> Surely it's most obvious value is it's 100% interactive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's awesome tma. Thank you for hacking on this. I'll plan to include this into subvim (ST2 like Vim) :)

<comment><USER14> subvim? :O awesome idea (although I wouldn't use it since I'm so used to my vim setup, but I could see lots of people using it)

I'm linking it here so people can find it: <https://github.com/fatih/subvim>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for posting this. I didn't even read the article but my mind is a black hole when it comes to remembering names and I have been forgetting Sublime for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER16> It looks to me like using a regex is more practical, something like

:10,20s/poorly_named_var/nice_var/g

<comment><USER17> If you do nothing more than a scoped search-and-replace then regexp may be more practical. But if the edit action also involve moving cursors around after selection, or when some match should be skipped then it takes less effort to use multiple cursors to edit than trying to comes up with regexp and edit command that accomplished what you need.

</comment></comment><comment> alan-saul Looks great, I was actually about to start working on an identical project today!

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks great tma! Will give this a spin as soon as I can.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't need to get jealous of sublime anymore..

</comment><comment><USER20> Thank you Terry, this is great

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome. Gonna try it.

</comment><comment><USER22> what is the font used in the example gifs

</comment><comment><USER23> Slightly related: If you are using ST2 I recommend the "Clipboard Manager" plugin to have multiple clipboards, it gets anything that is copied inside ST2 or any other software, it works with multiple cursors which is really handy.

<comment><USER24> I just tested this with native copy-paste, and - at least on OSX - as long as whatever you're pasting has the same number of lines as you have cursors, you'll get that same line-to-cursor mapping.

That being said, let me also recommend my favorite clipboard history tool, Jumpcut (<http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/>).</comment></comment>


"Children under ten years of age shall not be left home alone" [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText16/SenateText16/S2104.pdf <comment><USER3> I wonder what the reasoning is for this. In Maryland kids can stay home alone at 8, and I've never heard of problems with that. Requiring supervision until 12 seems extremely restrictive. Kids alone by themselves learn responsibility, and parents need time without their kids so they can recharge.

As a parent of young kids, I'm looking forward to when they reach that age. I'd be awfully depressed if Maryland made this change.

</comment><comment><USER4> I get that sponsors of the bill are trying to protect young children from neglect. The motivation is good. The one-size-fits-all solution is poorly thought out.

My issue with this bill is the penalty for parents who leave a 9yo alone for a few minutes to pick up food, milk, help a neighbor down the street, etc. As someone pointed out last night in a FB group of parents in my community, are the kids better off in the foster care system while the parents fight an expensive, time-consuming battle with Child Services? There has to be a better way than a human purse-seine technique.

This is a poorly thought out bill. The problem of children being left for long periods unattended requires multiple solutions for the different "use cases" for lack of a better expression. At the least, we have parents who pursue drug habits and the like, are immature, and ones who are stuck on 3rd shift jobs with no support system to watch the kids. These different populations require different solutions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its a legal minefield because some parents are getting arrested for not supervising "baby sitting age" girls.

And with teen pregnancy you can end up in weird scenarios like a mom with her toddler legally requiring a grandparent, technically.

I've seen some writings that its a pretty effective weapon against people of the wrong demographic. The same crazy cat lady who files HOA complaints for having the wrong species of daisy in the flowerbed will hover over the neighborhood's jews or blacks or whatever she doesn't like, until she sees a kid alone in the backyard long enough to snap a picture, then CPS is called in. Its not that we don't like section 8 people, or republicans, or whatever, its just that we don't like unsupervised kids, you see.

I've also seen writings that in some municipalities this is the only way to handle barking dogs.

</comment><comment><USER6> More context: [http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/26/rhode-island-children- unde...](http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/26/rhode-island-children- under-10-shall-not)

It's just a proposed bill though (aka, journalist bait).

<comment><USER7> A little naive, IMO. Parents don't actually have freedom and flexibility because they are constantly watched by paranoid neighbors on a hair trigger for any possible sign of abuse. When the government creates a rule like this, it actually enhances parental freedom by officially declaring that leaving your kids alone is OK. Personally I'd like to see the age limit a little lower, but this is great news for parents.

<comment><USER8> And now the paranoid neighbors have clear rule to stand on if the kid is under 10. Gray areas go both ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We usually talk about "the nanny state" in a general derogatory way about the government interfering with and micro managing people's lives.

This is a specific instance of a government literally being a nanny. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it difficult to relate to someone who could hold this opinion. It may be a feature of not being a parent.. But how helpless exactly do grownups think kids are?

Beyond the age of 5, maybe 6, a child is surely more than capable of independent living for several days? They should be able to handle their bodily functions, feed themselves, keep themselves entertained with books and/or TV and/or the internet, play outside with their friends and cycle around (slightly depending on the living arrangement and distances involved), commute to school, get their homework done etc.?

I remember being home alone for days going on weeks during early school years, if my parents were out of town/out of country. 20-45-minute commute of walking+subway (/metro/underground) is still the norm for everyone at my (then) primary school starting from first grade.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious - did you live in the US during that part of your childhood?

I did, in a rural area in Arkansas. I was probably 12 or 13 before I was left home alone for longer than a few minutes.

<comment><USER10> A nordic capital, 1mil population, old-style city centre. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stadsplanesystem.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stadsplanesystem.jpg) (1st picture). 15 minutes walk to central railway station connecting (kind of) to the rest of the world.

I'd say the independent/free play-area radius extends beyond the inside yard sometime between 4 and 5, by 10 kids would be cycling all over the city by themselves. Most would walk 10-15 mins to their kindergardens themselves (?) from about the age of 5.

I wouldn't consider this an outlier, and my family wasn't particularly laissez-faire. Many friends would go cycle-touring or interrailing in Europe between 15 and 20. Doing a solo interrail in Europe for a month is a culturally established "rite-of-passage", although people will usually wait till they turn 18 to go alone.

<comment><USER11> Ah, then that explains it.

While your experience certainly isn't exceptional in your community - <USER2> worldwide - it would absolutely be exceptional in the US. There have been cases of parents being prosecuted for allowing their children to walk to a local park less than a mile away.

Seeing a child alone in the US is _exceptionally_ rare. This extends to age 12-14, I would say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't find a definition of brief, in either the original law or the proposed amendment.

How brief is brief? 15 minutes? 1 movie? Nap time?

</comment><comment><USER13> There's Rhode Island, and there's Japan [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7YrN8Q2PDU)

</comment><comment><USER14> In New Zealand the law requires any child under the age of 14 to have supervision. This can include anyone above the age of 14, provided adequate care is given.

</comment><comment><USER15> The land of the free? Less and less with each decade :(

</comment><comment><USER16> The definition for 12 year olds is somewhat murky... what exactly do they mean by "overnight"?

</comment><comment><USER17> "(d) Parents and legal guardians should use their judgment to access the maturity and responsibility of their children ..."

how does one use judgment to "access" maturity?

<comment><USER18> Well, you know, you end up spending a lot of time with your kids and get to know them pretty well.

How else could this question be answered?

<comment><USER8> the parent probably wanted to point out that "access" != "assess"

<comment><USER18> Oh, I see it now. That's funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Will only actually be used against legitimately neglectful parents. I'm in favor.

<comment><USER11> Laws are never used against everyone, when they're intended to only apply to one demographic.

> The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in > practice has never been so applied.

Watson v. Stone, 1941

[https://casetext.com/case/watson-v-stone#](https://casetext.com/case/watson- v-stone#)!

Oh. Nevermind.</comment></comment>


Twitter etc messages from Iran, collected on one page. - <AUTHOR> http://feedvolley.com/iran09

<comment><USER2> So the whole fuss was about 30 odd messages?

<comment><USER3> Once again, the hype and the reality with twitter don't quite mesh...

<comment><AUTHOR> The page only shows the _last_ 30 odd messages... There are a lot more than 30 messages in total :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Explore, Discuss and Buy Independent Music like never before - <AUTHOR> http://musicfellas.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, we are Musicfellas, an independent music discovery platform. In one line, we are spotify + iTunes for independent music. You can not only discover new music everyday but also support the artists you like by buying their music. Very soon, we have an iPhone app and some premium features coming out. Looking forward to your feedback.

PS: Music startups are hard. We are looking for mentors/advisors/investors/music-enthusiasts who can guide us through. Please feel free to email us. Cheers!

<comment><USER2> As someone who tried to launch a music service as well, I know how hard they are. Good luck, this looks really nice! Indie music discovery is still an area ripe for improvement IMO :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! :) Glad you enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Glad to see more entrants not backed/beholden to major labels, congrats. Very clean and well designed site, pleasant to use.

Bandcamp currently has most of the indie diy music distribution market, do you consider them your competitor? What would you consider your advantages over them - to artists? Bandcamp take a much smaller cut (15% on digital, 10% on merch [edit: forgot PayPal fees 4-6%]), offer free downloads, and are agnostic in the sense they are just a platform: customisable pages etc.

Good luck too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. Bandcamp is certainly a competitor at this point however we'll have to see how we evolve, more as a buying platform or discovery platform.

As to the advantages over Bandcamp, they are just a store, we help provide exposure as well, allowing artists to be discovered via various channels.

<comment><USER5> Can you elaborate on these various channels? It's easy to say you provide exposure, but once you have 500k bands, how do you offer any individual band valuable exposure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice and clean website. I will make sure to spread the word. What about an API? will it possible to send cross domain request and parse results in JSON?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Cross domain json calls would certainly work but our APIs are not public ready yet and not all would work as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Can an artist login be used the same as a regular one, for liking songs and such?

<comment><USER2> Reason I ask is I'm in pending mode as an artist and I went to <3 a song but couldn't without registering over again. I'd rather wait and use a single account.

<comment><USER3> Hey! Sorry but you can't use the same account as an artist as well as a user, yet. We'll be introducing that pretty soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty neat, this. Love the design. Will be sure to spread the word.</comment>


Ask HN: High quality videos similar to 3blue1brown but for programming? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not quite the same style but engineerman is pretty good</comment>


Nobody wants the product you just built - <AUTHOR> https://yetanotherhat.com/nobody-wants-the-product-you-just-built-20d793016ff5 <comment><USER2> Building a product that doesn't "scratch your own itch" is usually a dangerous path. If you aren't part of the target market you are going to be making large mistakes unless you are getting experts involved from day 1 to both validate and influence the direction of your "million dollar idea" to be something people will actually pay money for.</comment>


Git push over XMPP - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/git_push_over_XMPP/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I think there's a demand for a generic, protocol-agnostic git push framework where you can write plugins for both sending and automated receiving.

All git patches boil can be boiled down to ASCII patches. There's no reason you can't write a framework to send/receive ASCII-formatted git patches/pulls/pushes via email, xmpp, twitter, etc.

<comment><USER3> How does git handle binary/highorder byte data for patching?

<comment><USER4> Git sends data between repositories using a pack format that transfers the raw blob/tres/commit/tag objects, not patches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been wondering about the possibility of doing this ever since I saw that Joey has been working on XMPP stuff for git-annex. Would be very nice to see this become a thing of it's own.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like this idea, and kudos to the author for coming up with a pragmatic (if possibly insane) way to get things done... but when I read stuff like this:

      > Imagine if you could send git pushes to any of your friends on
      > Google Talk or other Jabber (XMPP) servers. Even though you're in
      > different places and your computers probably cannot talk to
      > one-another directly, you can share a git repository, without
      > relying on a git hosting provider such as GitHub.

I really just want to weep. Hopefully some of this will go away with ip6 (no more silly NATing for nothing). Broken networks with asymmetric bandwidth hawked by dying conglomerates protecting their ancient signalling technology (and now antiquated media distribution channels) will haunt us for decades.

[edit: quote formatting]

<comment><USER7> I agree of course.. But it's even worse than that. Seems like half the time ipv6 comes up on NANOG, they're talking about the abdomination that is NAT66. (Rest of the time they're talking about NAT46 of course.)

I have little confidence in the Internet's end-to-end routing getting fixed unless and until the Internet backbone itself changes shape to something less conducive to monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> hm as someone who always has a few servers up in the cloud i found the idea exotic at first. especially since you dont need github, any ssh connection between two computers will do. but thats not always easy and the more i think about it, git over xmpp sounds like a cool idea. but still, in the end one can just email or dropbox the whole zipped repo. and git patches and whatnot.

<comment><USER5> I think, using git for what it traditionally is used for, there probably isn't much demand for XMPP. Joey's thing seems to be expanding the horizons of what we can use git for though. Building cooler toys _out of_ git, not just with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds really neat. What's it used for, though?

<comment><USER10> Syncing between Git-Annex Assistant instances: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex- assistan...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant- like-dropbox-but-with-your-own)</comment></comment>


FreeBSD Code of Conduct - <AUTHOR> https://www.freebsd.org/internal/code-of-conduct.html

<comment><USER2> In addition to prohibiting certain behaviors directly by members of the FreeBSD community, they have this:

> We will not tolerate any member of the community, either publically or > privately giving aid or encouragement to any third party to behave in such a > way towards any members of the FreeBSD community.

Hypothetical: Ned Nazi, who is not a FreeBSD community member, gets involved in an online fight with Dave Developer, a FreeBSD community member.

Dave is able to get Ned arrested under some anti-harrassment or anti-bullying law based on the messages Ned sent Dave.

Ned says the law is unconstitutional, and the ACLU takes the case to try to get the law overturned.

Pamela Programmer, another FreeBSD community member, donates money to the ACLU.

Question: by giving money to the organization supporting Ned's attempt to get the law that stopped him from harassing Dave overturned, is Pamela violating the Code of Conduct's rule against giving aid or encouragement to third party harassers?

<comment><USER3> Obvious concern troll is obvious, but I'll bite. The ACLU is not giving aid or encouragement to Ned Nazi to behave in that way, any more that it gives aid or encouragement to the other undesirable defendants that they represent in their activities. The ACLU in this hypothetical is working to overturn an unconstitutional law, full stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Discrimination based on gender, race, nationality, sexuality, religion, age > or physical disability. Bullying or systematic harassment. Incitement to or > condoning of any of these.

They should probably take out the physical from physical disability. As written now they don't include mental illness in the list of stuff you can't discriminate against people for.</comment>


Ask HN: choose between 2 startup ideas - <AUTHOR>

I may do them both. But still:
1. App to make hiring easier. Enter your jobs, submit, and we auto-submit to all the relevant jobboards that you check. When candidates apply, easily define your screening process and move them through it with your team. Pay X$/month.
2. Translation marketplace. Translators make $, clients get fast/good service, we sit in the middle, provide acquisition and some tools and get a cut.
The marketplace idea is harder to get going (you need to find both clients and translators), but I haven't seen it done well, yet.
The hiring space is an annoying problem that everyone would like help with, so that seems ripe for a SaaS app. Good thing: even with just 1 paying client you're making some money.
Which one would you spend 2011 working on, and more importantly, why? What's your analysis of these basic ideas? <comment><USER2> 1\. There is alot of work being done in this space to my knowledge. I know pg has mentioned that there at least a couple YC startups working on this problem and there is already a contingent of sites out there.

There are many different problems in the hiring process and thus opportunity to attack it from many different angles. See some of these:

<http://www.simplicant.com/> <http://www.iapplicants.com/> <http://www.applicantstack.com/> <http://www.theresumator.com/> (sexy!)

I've never met anyone that was perfectly content with the way they find and hire people. Not that my experience is huge in this area, but I think there is plenty of room for disruption. And with that comes plenty of room for competition.

2\. I've never heard of anything like this, but it sounds like a useful tool. From my anecdotal experience with translators, it seems most of them are in such high demand that they don't need a marketplace (I know 1 in Chinese, 2 in Arabic). Then again, these are full time jobs for the people I know, it might be different for those who work as contractors on shorter projects. The bottom line is that this idea seems like it will require heavy networking effort and may not work out; I'd want to do some market testing really early to test the viability of it.

\----

If I had to choose between one of these, I'd probably pick #1 and tightly focus on a very specific problem. If you could make an elegant solution for just one piece of the hiring puzzle, you get two outs: a standalone product or a potential acquisition target as this space develops over the coming years. A translation marketplace sounds interesting but building the network/community will be challenging and time-consuming; regardless of your technical solution, you could still fail at creating critical mass. This adds risk of spending much time before you know it will fail; without market validation, I'd be hesitant.

\----

(shameless plug) If you'd like to discuss your ideas more, I've got an invitation to <http://www.sparkmuse.com> with your name on it. Sparkmuse is a community site I'm building where internet entrepreneurs can gather to get feedback, refine, and act on their ideas. We just started the alpha last week~

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny as I have also considered to tackle both of these problems.

Translation is a big problem where I work, we waste lots of time going back and forth between developers and copywriters. This should really be streamlined.

Hiring is painful now. I'm also thinking of making something in that area. I actually wrote a blog post: Things to fix: hiring software developers. <http://sparklewise.com/?p=462>

Out of the two, I agree with other commenters that the hiring app seems more promising.

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI: <http://mygengo.com/> provides a platform for crowd-sourced translations. Of course, the market is big enough for multiple players..

</comment><comment><USER5> Translation. This is a huge area. I'm working on an app that would benefit from "instantaneous" (unseen live bodies doing the work - NOT software) translation between texting parties. Also I work in a broadcast environment where we send English transcripts from Vancouver to Montreal and have to wait for days to get the French copy back. FYI the cost for that is $1.50 per WORD.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the best way to pick, is to choose the one that gets you excited and keeps you up at night.</comment>


General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy <comment><USER2> A couple of fascinating takeaways from this that don't get brought up very often when the conspiracy is mentioned:

\- Streetcars were already failing when GM and their cohorts swooped in. They just accelerated the collapse and took advantage of it to enrich themselves. In fact, the reason GM's puppet was able to acquire and shut down all these streetcar companies was because the industry was dying, and the owners of those wanted to sell before the bottom fell out.

\- The purpose of the conspiracy was not to promote private car ownership but to replace streetcars with buses, as GM and their cohorts stood to make money hand over fist because they were major players at every level of the supply chain for buses, while none of them were really involved in the supply chain for streetcars.

</comment><comment><USER3> During the Great Depression the US WPA hired unemployed writers to write travel guides to various US cities. I have a copy of the book for Los Angeles. What I found interesting is how the fabled Pacific Electric "red cars" (the streetcar system of Los Angeles and suburbs) were described. While they are often romanticized and used as a prime example of what GM destroyed, the book describing them in the 1930s wasn't that favorable, mentioning how slow and unreliable they were.

<comment><USER2> They were also just straight-up replaced by buses.

The main bus lines in the older parts of a good chunk of cities still follow the old streetcar lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This leverages a lot of modern political ideas to attempt to understand the past. The streetcar networks got through the war dilapidated from low maintenance because workers and materials were needed for the war effort. People hated the streetcars for being rough and uncomfortable, freezing in cold weather, broiling in heat, forcing all classes and types to squeeze together. The general feeling was that cars and buses on big roads were the future. Why rebuild a decaying streetcar network that no one loved when people preferred roads? Passing this off as conspiracy back in the day would probably get you accused of Communist sympathies.</comment>


TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-hides-its-free-file-page-from-search-engines <comment><USER2> Yeah they do, of course they do. They are in business to make money, after all.

The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be. It's one of the things I would immediately correct if I was king for a day.

<comment><USER3> This is directly related, I think. One reason the IRS hasn't made it easier is a deal with the industry group "Free File Alliance", which essentially privatizes this (indeed, the page TurboTax is hiding here is their Free File page).

However, while 70% of taxpayers would be eligible for free filing, in practice only 3% do — no doubt because tax prep companies make it so difficult to find and use this option. These companies are offering products like this as a carrot to prevent the IRS from competing with them, and then deliberately making them as difficult to find and use as possible.

Source: [https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to- ban-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the- government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax)

<comment><USER4> Edit: As a child comment pointed out, the issue was a brokerage account I opened in addition to the Roth IRA. (The Roth IRA deposit limit is smaller than the 401K deposit limit)

///

The problem with that is there's often caveats.

Ex: in grad school I did a summer internship, and put my profits into an IRA. Later on, I found out I could not use many free file software, because they considered handling the dividends my index funds had generated as a premium feature, even though I was below the income limit.

Eventually I found out the AARP had a free tax prep program that did not have that restriction (nor was it limited to over 65s), but it took a lot of effort to avoid paying 50+ bucks just to process a tiny, tiny bit of tax because it was in the "wrong" category.

IMHO it's not cool to nudge low income people to not save for retirement.

If anyone else has had this frustration, bookmark this page: [https://secure.aarp.org/applications/VMISLocator/searchTaxAi...](https://secure.aarp.org/applications/VMISLocator/searchTaxAideLocations.action)

<comment><USER5> I'm confused. Income in an IRA isn't taxed, so that's not relevant for taxes. If you had post-tax investments then yes it's more complicated, but that has nothing to do with IRA/401k retirement savings?

<comment><USER6> I assume they meant a Roth IRA, which does tax deposits.

<comment><USER4> I may have mispoke. In addition to a Roth IRA, I also had a traditional brokerage account. It's my understanding even if you invest in index funds/ETFs, some of the stocks in the funds generate dividends and those can be taxable even if there's no capital gains tax on the growth in value of the index fund/ETF.

Anyways, whether it was from the brokerage I opened or the IRA, I had a _class_ of income that would have made me need to pay to file, even though my total income was below 65k.

Another thing was foreign taxes paid (because some funds in one of your indexes are international). But they don't let you just say "listen, I'd rather skip the credit for those two whole dollars in taxes and not pay 50 dollars to file"

<comment><USER5> That's a rather big misstatement: most lower income people (most people in general actually) won't be investing post-tax, a 1099-DIV really is quite uncommon

It's still a shitty and stupid situation... but that doesn't mean it's relevant for most free filers.

You should be able to skip the foreign tax credit if you _manually_ enter the 1099-DIV: simply enter foreign taxes paid field on the 1099-DIV as 0, and your tax software won't offer to credit it.

<comment><USER7> Am I correct in understanding that interest paid to deposits at a credit union get you a 1099-DIV? And wouldn't that mean virtually everyone who banks at a credit union would get that form? Also, anyone who owns savings bonds or CDs. Those are out of fashion these days, but many people still get them. Your point stands that these are still not the majority of the population, I just wanted to add some more pathways a person might get such a tax form.

<comment><USER8> >Am I correct in understanding that interest paid to deposits at a credit union get you a 1099-DIV?

No, income from interest paid on deposit accounts is reported on form 1099-INT, not 1099-DIV.

1099-DIV is for dividend income. 1099-INT for interest income. They are are reported different places on your tax form.

Nowadays most people don't get 1099-INTs from their banks or credit unions because interest rates are so low most people are making no more than $1-$2 a year in interest because rates are so low and financial institutions aren't required to issue 1099-INTs for interest income below $10. I used to get them from my credit union back in high school when rates were higher.

<comment><USER7> Ok, the confusing bit for me is that credit union deposits are called shares and the earnings are called dividends. However, you still get a 1099-INT, I believe because these shares are not considered securities.

[https://budgeting.thenest.com/report-dividends-credit- union-...](https://budgeting.thenest.com/report-dividends-credit-union- account-24324.html)

<comment><USER8> Ah, yes, I can see how that would be confusing.

I never bought into all the credit union jargon ("share," "share draft", etc.) so I forgot they pay "dividends" instead of "interest."

In short, I believe this is the way it works: because credit union members are owners of the credit union, the profit paid to members are considered dividends by dictionary definition, however, the IRS considers them interest by their rules. Just like VA disability, getting a check from the government every month is obviously income, but the IRS doesn't consider VA disability income by their rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meanwhile, California makes it pretty easy to file your state taxes for free, with no intermediary [https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp)

<comment><USER10> I am the developer in charge of this, thanks for promoting it.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for your work, I'm a big fan of Calfile for the years when I'm eligible to use it. Out of curiosity are there any plans to support returns with capital gains?

<comment><USER10> Thank you for using it, unfortunately no. I don't qualify to use it myself either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using TurboTax for the last 4 years or so but I'm getting pretty tired of this story. I read an article a few weeks ago that mentioned CreditKarma has free tools for tax prep, so I signed up for it and I'm planning on using it next year.

I used to use an accountant because my taxes were kinda complicated, but once I sold my business they got really easy. Turbo makes it slightly easier, but honestly the IRS should just be telling me how much to pay or refund, given a small amount of input (like this year, change me from single to married with this other person filing jointly).

And worst, the last several years I've gotten letters from the IRS late in the year saying "You owe a few thousand dollars", this after Turbo got me a fairly big refund.

IRS: If you have a number in mind just tell me.

Oh, and you know that upsell Turbo does for "have your filing reviewed by a CPA and talk to a tax expert to answer questions on your filing"? I tried it this year: Couldn't find an option to have it reviewed by a CPA before filing, and when I asked one of their tax experts about a number related to an IRA disbursement last year, basically all he could tell me is "Yes, you have put a number in a box on the form".

<comment><USER3> I've used Credit Karma for the past two years, and I'm planning on using them again next year. I have paid zero dollars for things like investments that TurboTax would upsell to me, and as far as I know Credit Karma doesn't do any unsavory lobbying. Highly recommend.

<comment><USER12> Can I pay Credit Karma to do lobbying AGAINST HR Block and Intuit? :-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Arguably their agreement to "offer" the free service necessarily requires it's discoverable by normal means, including search.

 _"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."_

</comment><comment><USER14> I learned a little while ago that H&R Block makes a substantial amount of its revenue from "refund anticipation loans" (no citation, I couldn't find it here: [https://investors.hrblock.com/static- files/4293dedf-951d-454...](https://investors.hrblock.com/static- files/4293dedf-951d-4541-b4a8-ac80daded417) maybe my information is overblown).

Is there a reason there isn't a "Robin Hood for Taxes"? A service that makes all of its revenue off of refund anticipation loads and provides all tax services for free to entice customers to join?

Ignoring the problematic conflicts of interest involved in issuing loans it seems like this would align a lot of incentives. The company wants tax filing to be as simple and easy and free as possible, just as long as you do it through them.

<comment><USER15> Credit Karma does legitimately free filing

<comment><USER16> I prepared my taxes with Credit Karma, then with Turbo Tax, and CK was showing me a significantly higher return that TT. Upon investigating, I found that I had accidentally claimed my mortgage interested deduction twice, and didn't enter my 1099-G from my state tax refund from the previous year.

CK makes it too easy to make a mistake. TT is a much more polished product, which makes sense since they've been doing it for decades. I trust TT more than CK.

That said, TT doesn't charge you until you file. So I use both, make sure the numbers match, then file with CK for free.

<comment><USER17> Credit Karma just added free audit defense to their tax prep

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This goes way beyond dark patterns and ux strategies to push people towards paid options. This is manipulating search engines to hide their services when searching for "free tax filing". If they're going to offer free services, but hide them from potential customers, they might as well not be offering them. if they're not offering them, then they're not holding up their end of the bargain with the IRS.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, this isn't just a dark pattern, this is a black hole pattern, this is a scam. With a dark pattern there is a way, if you're careful, to navigate through things and get to the desired outcome. Here there was no such route, you had to have entered from the correct starting place to begin with to have a chance at all, and that entrance was hidden from the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I popped "file free tax returns turbotax" into Google and found the page directly listed. The page in question is [https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free- editi...](https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp)

The robots.txt for the intuit.com domain is: [https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt](https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt)

Not listing in robots.txt to block the personal-taxes folder, which has many offerings and a sub from that is the free one.

I'm not seeing the block that the story is on about in search and in robots.txt

What am I missing?

[EDIT ADD] Thank you for all the replies, I see what they did there now.

<comment><USER21> As the article mentions, it's set in the metatags of the page [https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/](https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/):

        <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />

<comment><USER22> An archive of both pages in case they try to play the "revise history" game.

[https://archive.fo/0WTCE](https://archive.fo/0WTCE)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190423172440/https://turbotax....](https://web.archive.org/web/20190423172440/https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190426004701/https://turbotax....](https://web.archive.org/web/20190426004701/https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt)

<comment><USER23> Good thinking, and nice username!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's an idea so dumb that you need to pay for a software that the only reason to exist is for you to pay your taxes, Brazil gets a lot of things wrong, but at least our government provides a software available for every platform (windows, mac, linux, ios, android and even a jar, so if it runs java, you're fine) for us to do our taxes.

You need to pay an accountant only if your taxes are complex, and even them will use the software, they just know more about how to structure your data to insert in the program, it is honestly insane that a company like turbotax is needed, but lobby is really a powerful tool.

<comment><USER13> Software takes time to develop, and time is money. Tax software is especially bad because 1. the rules are insanely complicated and 2. the insane rules change every year requiring updates.

The real question is why don't we have open-source tax software? I'd argue that since 1. IRS is publicly funded and 2. they have to write code anyway to enforce the tax rules as they change, then they should just publish that code.

At a first step, the tax rules could be published in a machine-readable format.

<comment><USER25> I get what you're saying here (and generally agree), but I really think it's worth taking a step back when "the law is too complicated for humans to follow it; machine-readable versions should be available" starts making sense.

Imagine if the speed limit was a function of current local wind speed (as measured by one of three airports, depending on the time of day), tire pressure, the azimuth of the sun, etc, and that large companies had digital speed limit signs outlawed. Saying, "Oh, we'll just mandate that all cars carry the necessary equipment to calculate the current speed limit" is probably the wrong approach. The solution is to do away with the convoluted calculation because it doesn't add value in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fuck Intuit. Shame on engineers who work there.

<comment><USER27> I'd rather shame the government that allows Intuit to have their way with taxpayers. Intuit exists primarily because of the convoluted tax filing process in the US afterall..

<comment><USER28> Intuit lobbies to keep taxes complicated so they can continue to have a business model.

[https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be- fre...](https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple- hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it)

<comment><USER29> And this is surprising because? It would be surprising if they didn't do that, honestly. The government is at fault here for selling political power and not representing the interests of the people. We could boycott Intuit, I suppose, or use different products, but aside from that, the fault and source of the problem lies squarely with the government.

<comment><USER3> I truly don't understand this logic. If I found some legal loophole by which I could indiscriminately murder people with no repercussions, no one would excuse it with "well, technically he was allowed to do this so why are we surprised?"

And if I were working with the government to _create_ that loophole… I mean, in this scenario, I'm still _murdering_ people, right? Should my conscience be clean because the government wasn't representing the interests of the people? How is any of this ethically exculpatory?

<comment><USER29> > If I found some legal loophole by which I could indiscriminately murder > people with no repercussions

That's a pretty absurd argument. And the government can actually kill people legally, by design.

All I'm saying is that Intuit is a symptom of a larger problem with gov selling political power. Intuit is trash for what they're doing, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> TurboTax was free for me up until I tried to report $10 in interest paid on student loans, which is a small, barely necessary form.

TT doesn't include this very common form in their free bundle and wanted me to pay $40 to upgrade.

While H&R Block also gets criticized- I have to say that they include this form, and I was able to file completely free for both federal and state, without having to hunt for a link- just started on their normal site. They also allowed automatic import of W2s, easy import of TurboTax previous years, etc.

<comment><USER31> What happens if you just add $10 to your AGI and omit the interest payments?

My thinking is the IRS will send you a "corrected" return and a $0 bill for the difference. Since that's what they do if you fill out incorrect information anyway.

<comment><USER32> It's a deduction so don't report at all

<comment><USER30> As far as I know, reporting paid student loan interest is a "required" form according to the IRS.

I remember looking up information about it at the time to see if I could just not report it, and that did not seem to be recommended

<comment><USER32> Really odd, it's like failing to report donations. But i guess they filed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder what the minimum-effort private organization would be which could comply with IRS rules to offer free filing of extensions, 1040ez, etc. I'd happily throw in $1k toward it (even though I'm not eligible, and thanks to Puerto Rico, don't need to file federal taxes, probably, after 2019).

Just offering a simple, responsible, and stress free process for these filings, ideally with zero advertising, or just a brief "fuck turbotax, this is why..." message, and good infosec/anti-fraud (to protect against the EIC- claim-scams against the poor) would be great. The downside is a lot of those people need immediate access to cash, so a shittier commercial option offering instant refunds for a high fee would probably still get a lot of victims.

A big company like Walmart could possibly offer this to users, too, for free, and offer instant-refund as store card or savings accounts.

<comment><USER8> I think CreditKarma is attempting to do this.

There's been other efforts in the past/currently.

Some examples:

Open Tax Solver: [http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/](http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/)

1040 Spreadsheet: [https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions](https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Planet Money had a great episode a while ago about how much more complicated tax returns in the US are than in any other country, and how TurboTax has been fighting to keep it that way: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax- hero)

</comment><comment><USER35> Who wants to just start writing a free version and start putting them out of business? Filing taxes is not the Linux kernel, I mean how complicated is it really? It's still just a matter of following directions and doing basic math. Computers are great at that. No rocket science needed. I even thought of a name: Caesar (as in "render unto..."). Caesar.org is available.

At the end it generates a PDF for printing & mailing.

After the first _x_ users we lobby for our own connection to the IRS system like those companies have.

<comment><USER36> It's not hard. It's all arithmetic.

Before people pounce on me for "trivializing it" – I've written, from scratch, Obamacare Insurance calculators that analyzed hundreds of policies with various coverages, coverage tiers, and you could type in things like "If i broke my leg on this policy, how much would it cost?" (all in real-time).

It was a lot of arithmetic but really not that bad (about 150-200 lines of mainly applying coefficients to standard formulas depending on your policy tier), but it was all addition, multiplication, and division. And it really wasn't that bad. Took about 2 weeks.

Update: Just to clarify, an analyst had already done all the legwork of collecting those coefficients and premiums and costs for me. But all I'm saying is that the actual formulas are never that crazy.

I've also written similar calculators for life insurance and travel insurance.

I really doubt the tax calculations are any different.

Ultimately you gotta remember that these laws are made by pretty average humans and have to be enforced by those same average humans. They're going to be vast, but any single rule won't be mathematically complex.

<comment><USER37> So I once worked for a company writing math calcs all day everyday for various things (real estate, insurance, algo trading, school district budgets, hazards). If you would be willing to talk more about this email in my profile. I've often thought about the tax sector and how to make it easier. I really like the idea of a "Robinhood" for taxes. So to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's a bit on the nose to see their robots.txt file state:

> Disallow: taxfreedom

</comment><comment><USER39> The government has a copy of your W2's and 1099's so they know how much you make. It's a shame that the government didn't make 'ReadyReturn' [0] the new way of filing taxes where the government sends you a packet of all the tax information they have on you and you simply make corrections to it. Many countries have something similar and it's a breeze to file taxes. Only in the US do people hate filing taxes.

Intuit lobbies hard to make taxes as difficult as possible. Their rational is that they want people to hate tax filing as much as possible so that they vote against taxes and taxes are lowered for big corporations like Intuit.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn)

</comment><comment><USER40> Can't someone create a site, listed, with very good SEO practices and content that links directly to the Free edition?

</comment><comment><USER41> Huh I didn't realize that ProPublica did blog posts (I'm used to seeing long articles from them, often with partners, like that great Katrina piece).

I used to be dismissive of newspapers re-reporting things that were not news. I probably would have been surprised to see an entire news article basically re-reporting a Twitter message and a reddit post. In retrospect though this attitude I used to have is unfair and mean. Who cares if the re-hashed reporting about the tax-filing industry's regulatory capture is brand new or just a reminder? Reminders are important.

</comment><comment><USER42> As someone who lives outside of the US, can someone please explain how the US government has not implemented its own free tax filing system? In my home country this hasn't been a thing for over 10 years.

<comment><USER43> If you print out the forms and fill them out by hand, the only cost is the the envelope & stamp to mail them in.

What the US Federal Government/IRS doesn't have is a free way to e-file taxes online.

<comment><USER8> The IRS has Free File Fillable Forms to e-file taxes online directly for free.

[https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal- taxes-f...](https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for- free)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Has anyone attempted to create an open source project for filing federal taxes?

I understand e-filing would probably be out of the question but something that could generate a pdf that you could print out and mail to the government.

</comment><comment><USER45> i called after paying 150$, i was a student for most of last years tax filing, they told me because i signed their user agreement im not eligible for a refund even though i qualified for free service

</comment><comment><USER46> Google "turbotax free" which returns [https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal- taxes/online/free-editi...](https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal- taxes/online/free-edition.jsp)

This is not recent either. I remember getting to this page from Google on tax day.

Google "turbotax" and it returns the free edition link nested under the first result.

<comment><USER8> That's the "Fremium" version. The FreeFile version is here: [https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/](https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/)

The "Fremium" version exists to upsell you to death, the FreeFile version can't do that.

You've fallen for their trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Damn, one thing I definitely don't envy about US is the lobbying. This definitely shouldn't have been left to a private company!

Indian govt websites aren't great and most look dated, and still income tax site run by govt is just about fine. No reason that the IRS/US gov should have locked themselves out of doing this.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder what Bill Campbell would have done if he were still alive? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_exe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_\(business_executive\))

</comment><comment> could-be-wrong If taxes were centralized, is it possible that one's average tax bill delta would be higher than the average deal value of tax software products?

The point being, one could argue that the private sector has more incentive to reduce your tax bill in order to take a cut of the savings.

</comment><comment><USER49> As I said on an earlier thread, I was able to file freely on turbo tax. It didn't require any special effort or searching. I'm not sure I believe this claim.

I was being bombarded by ads for free TurboTax all over the place and... it was free, so great?

</comment><comment><USER50> Much pixels and ink have been spent on this topic.

I am much more interested in first-party services for tax filing in the 50 states.

</comment><comment><USER51> I wish there was a place programmers could go to say "hey we're being asked to do this immoral shit"

<comment><USER52> Isn't that what journalists and our congresspeople are?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Hopefully we get a Robin Hood version of tax filing software soon. :)

</comment><comment><USER53> I imagine there's quite a lot of juicy information hiding behind noindex tags across the web. Is there a search engine that ignores these tags?

</comment><comment><USER54> Wouldn't this need to be listed on the disallow on the robots.txt if they didnt want them to index the page?

<comment><USER55> No. That's one approach, but the page has a meta tag that has the same effect:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />

<comment><USER20> Saw that on every page they have, not scrutinised the sanity of their code, but looks like it is part of their site template.

Also the site code - egads, 200+_ blank lines as a header, then clearly some extra padding blank lines here and there.

<comment><USER55> It is not part of their site template.

The Turbotax home page has "yes, do index" meta tags. So does their deceptive "free edition" page at [https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal- taxes/online/free-editi...](https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal- taxes/online/free-edition.jsp):

        <meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" />

You've been tricked. Imagine how easily people who _can 't_ read source code get sucked into the wrong version.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I see the issue more clearly now. So many aspects about American TAX I never understood, the one were citizens who are living in another country and paying tax there also have to pay American income TAX always seemed brutal.

Most people in the UK are PAYE and the employer does tax fillings and as such the need for a individual to file any form of tax return is lower than the American system that from my understanding - mandates it and the onus for any tax information is placed solely upon the individual. Which I would of thought opens up a larger can of worms for fraud potential from the payer and payee as well as opening up less skilled people into realms they will make mistakes to their own detrement.

Yet if you're a corporation - tax seems to offer more freedom in expression compared to individuals. Which is the norm in many a country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Sounds like the correct decision to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Govt: "We need some money from you to buy things."

Me: "How much?"

Govt: "You figure it out."

Me: "Oh, I get to pay whatever I want?"

Govt: "LOL, no, we have a figure that we want you to pay."

Me: "What happens if I guess that number wrong?"

Govt: "You get to go to prison."

<comment><USER57> You only go to prison if you willfully and purposely try to defraud the government.

It's more of a, "Pay what you believe you owe based on your best guess and the laws as you best understand them, and if we disagree we may ask you to pay more."

<comment><USER58> > if we disagree we may ask you to pay more

The opposite can happen, too. The last time they disagreed with me on how much tax I should have paid, they mailed me a check for the difference.

<comment><USER59> Did they give you 5% interest on the amount you overpaid?

Because that's what they take from you if you underpay (by accident or not).

Living in the US is like: "oh you were born and live in the US? We're forcing you to give us a huge chunk of your earnings for your entire working life, make it close to impossible to determine the exact amounts and then fine you 5% interest if you happen to underpay, but we'll never give you interest if you overpay.".

Edit: Well, as mentioned the tax system is super complex here and I obviously don't know the rules for every case. It seems in SOME cases you do get interest when the IRS owes you money but personally I've never seen this, where as I've always had to pay x% interest if I ever owed anything.

<comment><USER60> Yes, the IRS will pay you interest under certain circumstances. Two examples are when they are late processing a refund or when a prior return is amended. I got a 1099-INT from the IRS in 2018. The interest rate is not 5%, however. Also, 5% is not currently the risk free rate of return.

Also, it sounds like you're referring to the penalty for underpayment, which I believe is currently 3.6% of the total underpayment for the year [0]. This only kicks in under certain circumstances.

[0]: [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f2210.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/f2210.pdf)

<comment><USER59> What circumstances will they pay you interest? That has never happened to me.

Because this year I got hit by some underpayment penalties (with interest added on top) but at the same time I also got a refund which had no interest applied to it.

That is being self employed and paying estimated taxes every quarter.

<comment><USER61> Once I was getting a background check in which I had to certify all my debts to the government were paid.

I realized that several years back, I had worked at a temp job for a very brief time and I probably never got a W-2 and therefore never paid taxes on it. Thus, I called up the IRS, got the W-2 information which they had, and duly filed an amended return with a check for something like $20.

However, in a rather short amount of time, I got a letter from the IRS stating that they could not accept a payment for a return more than a couple years old and here was a check for the amount, plus interest.

So I can tell you they not only pay interest on your money, but they pay it on money they are returning even though you actually owed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why do low income people need any software to file taxes in the first place? If you just make a wage taxes are trivial.

<comment><USER63> It is true that lower income folks _tend_ to have simpler taxes and really don't need software. The taxes are easy on paper.

But e-file still wins. Most poor folks could really use the money they get back from taxes and it is definitely quicker. E-file also saves folks from doing things like making copies, buying stamps, and mailing. On top of it all, there is a fair amount less chance of mistakes. Not to mention that there is a sizable number of folks that cannot figure out the legalese the IRS uses for _slightly_ complicated taxes and the IRS helplines are generally of little help.

<comment><USER62> Poor people don't pay any taxes in the first place. So the point is moot.

<comment><USER19> Quick question, do you know the difference between paying taxes and filing taxes?

Also, do you understand how withholding works and how you _pay_ taxes with every pay check not just every year? And that if you have too low of an annual income to actually owe any federal tax you _need_ to file in order to get your withholding back?

<comment><USER64> Even if you file as exempt and have no withholding, you may need to file because of refundable credits (mainly EITC).

<comment><USER19> And even if, for some reason, you have no withholding, and aren't expecting a refund, you may still be required to file just because your income is above the threshold (which is about 12k I think).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> dictatorship of capital

</comment><comment><USER66> And this is news worthy, how?

<comment><AUTHOR> Congress is debating a bill that would bar the IRS from creating an official free filing system, and instead, mandate that the IRS have private companies fill that role. The concern has been that private companies use dark patterns to upsell users into buying unnecessary paid features:

[https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to- ban-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the- government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax)

<comment><USER67> Bar it from creating free filing _software_. Free e-filing pf fillable forms already exists, and would continue to exist.

Not that this makes such a measure palatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The IRS already provides a free-file option, you just need to spend more time reading instructions. [https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting- free-fi...](https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-file- fillable-forms)

Not sure what all the hate is here. If you're not completely uneducated, you can figure this out yourself.

<comment><USER69> > In exchange for the IRS promising not to create its own free, online filing > tool, Intuit, H&R Block and other companies signed a deal to offer Free File > options to lower-income Americans.

Hence the hate when they attempt to hide such an option. _Signed a deal._

<comment><USER68> There's no income limitations for what I linked.</comment></comment></comment>


Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/barns-are-painted-red-because-of-the-physics-of-dying-stars-58185724/?no-ist&utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=53e176b485-Newsletter_02_13_102_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-53e176b485-60248965&ct=t(Newsletter_02_13_102_12_2015)&mc_cid=53e176b485&mc_eid=136a77dbbe

<comment><USER2> Actually, the reason iron is so cheap is because life chemistry and tectonic- hydrothermal processes have concentrated it. The bulk of the reserves date back from the Great Oxygenation event from 2-1 bn years ago when the first photosynthetic life oxidized the iron dissolved in the ocean and precipitated it at the bottom of the then-ocean. This didn't happen to aluminium, which is more abundant than iron, to the same extent. Aluminium was only discovered in the 19th century and only produced economically as a purified metal in the latter part of that century. Iron itself took some technology to become cheap and abundant and before the 12th century BC was regarded as a precious metal (see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron) ).

The price of metals does not match their abundance in the Earth's crust and least of which the Earth as a planet.

<comment><USER3> Aluminum's also bound much more strongly to its oxides. Generally you need electrical currents to smelt aluminum, which wasn't possible until the 19th century (with one possible exception, below).

Iron, on the other hand, can be _heat_ smelted, using charcoal or coal. Iron smelting drove the use of coal as it was consuming so much by way of forests earlier. Generally, fuelwood (locally available) is more convenient than coal, only available from specific areas and mines, and which requires transport over large distances.

Overland transport prior to the 19th century was something avoided if at all possible, so coaling routes generally involved ships and oceans or rivers.

There's some evidence that a goldsmith in Rome may have found a process for smelting aluminum:

"One day a goldsmith in Rome was allowed to show the Emperor Tiberius a dinner plate of a new metal. The plate was very light, and almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith told the Emperor that he had made the metal from plain clay." From: [http://www.world- aluminium.org/history/antiquity.html](http://www.world- aluminium.org/history/antiquity.html)

Most versions have him being executed by the emperor to prevent the devaluation of copper and gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a rather tenuous connection. Nearly everything on Earth is due to the physics of dying stars. Once could also ask why so many houses in Greece are white and blue, and the answer would also be "because of the physics of dying stars."

This article focused on iron. The Earth's crust has more oxygen by mass than iron, but that point was left out.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, no explanation given for why the described fusion process stops at 53, and why heavier elements are also present on Earth.

<comment><USER3> Nuclear binding energy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy)

Iron is at the top of the binding energy curve, and hence the _bottom_ of the potential curve. Effectively, it's at the bottom of a hill with hydrogen on one (very) high side, and uranium and the trans-uranium elements on the other (less) high side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, it's not actually the physics of dying stars, but the physics of the nucleus and the fact that iron is at the binding energy maximum [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#Nuclear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#Nuclear_binding_energy_curve)

<comment><USER3> Other than _very_ small traces of helium, _all_ elements other than hydrogen are formed in stars. Mostly supernovae.

So if you want to know what stardust looks like, look around you.</comment></comment>


Ad-blockers might actually make it easier for advertisers to track you - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/04/15/ad-blockers-might-actually-make-it-easier-for-advertisers-to-track-you/ <comment><USER2> Turn off JavaScript in the browser and whitelist only sites you permit.</comment>


ARM's Cortex A57 and Cortex A53: The First 64-bit ARMv8 CPU Cores - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6420/arms-cortex-a57-and-cortex-a53-the-first-64bit-armv8-cpu-cores <comment><USER2> Looks very cool; the idea of having "big" and "little" processors on the same SoC is interesting. I wondering if this is a big win vs. just having a "big" processor that is frequently put into idle mode when not needed.

As a side note, does anyone else find the ARM naming conventions totally impossible to follow? I look at the list of ARM models ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microprocessor_core...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microprocessor_cores)) and have no idea where to begin. The family/architecture/core scheme means you can have a single chip that is an ARM11 family, ARMv6 architecture, ARM1136JF-S core. How do people make sense of this?

As someone who's writing a library that I want to be supported across all (or most) ARM cores, I don't have any idea how many different chips I'd need to test against to get a representative sample. There are so many optional features (NEON, Thumb, Thumb-2, VFP, etc) that seems to be supported in various combinations across the different models. It's like a maze and I never have any idea how a new model I read about fits in.

<comment><USER3> Does your library have to be a single compiled binary across all these variants? If so, good luck...

Otherwise, hopefully, a compiler takes care of most of the mess for you and gets you the best it can on the platform you're targeting. You might need to check that things would run on a variety of configurations - for instance hardfloat and softfloat do indeed have very different performance profiles when it comes to floats. Thumb shouldn't bother you too much as an application programmer (unless I'm very much mistaken) because it's just another instruction set for a compiler to target.

Errr....

You can get into all sorts of complications when actually looking at the platform ABIs. Debian, for instance, seem to have something of a lowest- common-denominator approach that targets features present everywhere. Which is then why someone had to rebuild it to get decent FP performance out of the Raspberry Pi which had hard-float...

Part of the complexity is that ARM is a licensed architecture. Some companies license the design of the whole core, some incorporate their own stuff and some just license the instruction set and do their own stuff otherwise.

What do you mean 'supported across all (or most) ARM cores'? Because that's huge and varies massively. There are the sub-100MHz embedded devices I happen to be working on at the moment (which may be running any of a load of different OSs), there are ARM cores embedded in all sorts of controllers where I wouldn't think you'd want to run, then there's the multi-core multi-GHz stuff from the likes of Samsung, Qualcomm and Marvell...

<comment><USER4> " Debian, for instance, seem to have something of a lowest-common-denominator approach that targets features present everywhere."

Debian actually has three ARM ports in progress.

ArmEabiPort - newer port using the "new" ABI (EABI), supported on ARM v4t and higher. First released with 5.0 (Lenny). GNU Triplet: arm-linux-gnueabi

ArmHardFloatPort - the latest 32-bit port, using the hard-float version of the "new" ABI (EABI), targetting ARM v7 and up. To be released with 7.0 (Wheezy). GNU Triplet: arm-linux-gnueabihf

Arm64Port - the latest port, for the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. Likely to be released with 8.0 (Jessie). GNU Triplet: aarch64-linux-gnu

<http://wiki.debian.org/ArmPorts>

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that's the way debian used to do it then, I know there's been a lot of movement on hardfloat support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty creative stuff. I am looking forward to AMD building an eco-system around these things. My guess is that if AMD could deliver 64 bit ARM server chips and full programming documentation to support a robust Linux server OS architecture they could take a huge chunk of server share away from Intel based machines.

My reasoning is that people started migrating to AMD when they had a 64 bit x86 architecture and Intel didn't. That showed me that folks were willing to go with AMD if they provided something that Intel wouldn't (or couldn't). Given that ARM isn't bogged down by Intel's staggering licensing challenges (chipsets, busses, instruction sets, etc) this suggests a very interesting couple of years ahead.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear how AMD's ARM chips will be any better than the other ones (e.g. Calxeda), though.

<comment><USER5> Well they could start by replacing Calexda's 32 bit physical memory addressing (4GB) with 40 bit physical addressing (1TB) all my servers have 96GB and will have 192GB on the next iteration. I'd love to put 512GB of 'flash' memory in the physical address space And then bump of L2 Cache to 12MB maybe 16MB.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, let's compare an AMD chip based on the Cortex-A57 against a Calxeda chip based on the Cortex-A57, or maybe a Samsung chip based on the Cortex-A57. The GPU is an obvious differentiator, but not in servers.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but one of the challenges for 'SoC' companies vs 'server' chip companies has been that 'SoC' companies continue to think that the 'system' is mostly just their 'chip' (hence the SoC moniker rather than say CPU moniker)

To date, I am not familiar with any ARM licensees who have made 'CPUs' vs 'SoC's, they may be out there but I've not seen them yet. Something where the ARM CPU is the core but the system designer can pick the level of IO or memory that is included. Basically a socketed ARM chip like server CPUs are socketed today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like A53 will start at 1.3 Ghz, and A57 will end at 3 Ghz. A 3 Ghz ARM CPU. Interesting:

"For those who are still looking for gigahertz performance numbers Hurley sais]d that new A-50 family will deliver performance ranging from 1.3 gigahertz to 3 Gigahertz depending on how the ARM licensees tweak their designs."

[http://gigaom.com/2012/10/30/meet-arms-two-newest-cores- for-...](http://gigaom.com/2012/10/30/meet-arms-two-newest-cores-for-faster- phones-and-greener-servers/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Any Intel employees in the crowd? What's the level of worry surrounding ARM these days?

Given Intel's high levels of competitive paranoia, news like this must have people fairly worried. Not to mention the explosive growth in adoption of the ISA over the past few years.

<comment><USER9> I spoke to my friend @ Intel a while back, and he said that the company viewed Samsung as their main rival (not AMD, not ARM). His argument was that Intel's main competitive advantage (and where the majority of spending/R&D happens) was their fabs, and Samsung was the only other company that could come close to competing on that front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish they would release the architecture reference manual to the public... all we have is the instruction set right now. Not enough to do bare metal/os work.

<comment><USER11> you can get it if you register at arm.com and agree to their legal terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't believe these will be the first 64-bit ARMv8 CPU cores. Doesn't that honor go to Applied Micro's X-Gene SOCs? They'll ship a lot sooner than 2014.</comment>


Google offers data pledge in bid to win EU approval for Fitbit acquisition - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu-exclusive-idUSKCN24E2X5 <comment><USER2> Pinky promise?</comment>


'MySpace will fail..' - <AUTHOR> http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_2102112,00.html <comment><USER2> Yeah, it'll be replaced by FaceBook...

And then FaceBook will be replaced by something that probably hasn't been invented yet. I wonder when folks will learn that "lock in" in the social networking sphere is vastly overstated...

</comment><comment><USER3> > "There's way too much advertising and they're not really respecting their > own community."

> Wikipedia is another matter, he says. "We're not similar at all - you get > involved in a community."

I don't recall ever being accused of being a sockpuppet on MySpace, and my _actual_ friends are on there. That's way, way more of a community than a bunch of blowhard editors and page defacers. Plus no-one deletes my stuff except me.</comment>


Show HN: NoteBox for iOS – Capture texts quickly and organize them easily - <AUTHOR> http://elaborapp.com

<comment><USER2> I think you need a video of your app, highlighting its unique features on your website.

Like any app category, there are numerous alternatives, so you've got to really demonstrate what makes your app different and compelling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We are making the demo video and will update the website ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great integration with other services reminiscent of a slightly similar app 'Drafts'. Automatically creating a list reminds me of org-mode. I wonder if I can automatically sync org files and swipe off todo's.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally don't familiar with org-mode. But speaking of Drafts, yes, we really like the idea how Drafts can quickly start to type texts. But we want a more intuitive interface and other features like automatically creating notes with texts copied from other apps, one button sharing, etc.

We want to make collecting and managing texts on the iOS devices easier and smarter. For example, you can copy an URL from the other apps and get a new note with webpage title + URL. That would be useful if you are gathering some information.

Thanks for your feedback. We'll make it better.

<comment><USER3> with org-mode (an emacs mode for organizing lists) you can make lists with bullets: * TODO __sublevel 1 __* sublevel 2 and prioritize them with [A], [B] etc, tag them with :tag1:, :tag2: etc, and time, schedule etc them with :CLOCK:, :SCHEDULE: etc.

I am using Drafts to edit create org files in dropbox. Your swipe feature is handy in this regard so I can more easily integrate org-mode with my mobile workflow. There is an mobile-org app but it's a bit dated, and apps like Clear with similar swiping of tasks do not export with other services or files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some feedback about the website; the nicescroll.js plugin reduces usability in my opinion. It changes the expected behaviour of my browser, and it took me a couple of tries to get the page to stop where I wanted it to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Just disabled it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm guessing you aren't a native English speaker? There are some nasty copy mistakes in there such as your heading "More Carefully Design"... try and get someone to proofread your copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. And yes, we are Taiwanese. We'll be more careful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing I miss from most note apps is the ability to tag notes with just `#tag` wherever in a note. Clicking it should bring me to the tag view.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A simple preview video just added to the website. It demonstrates how to collect texts from other apps.

</comment><comment><USER7> The category title "More Carefully Design" doesn't make sense grammatically.

</comment><comment><USER8> Though there's something weird, it's definitely a good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Can you be specific about the weird parts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> NoteBox or Draft,Which one do you like?

</comment><comment><USER10> what distinguish notebox from other note app, says Simplenote?

<comment><AUTHOR> Second, it treat notes somewhat like todos. We think every note has its purpose. They are meant to be keep for reference, do something, share, archive, or discard the idea(delete), etc. We made sharing and doing other actions easily.

For example, if you are a Evernote user, you can send multiple notes to Evetnote at once.</comment></comment>


Reprimanded by Mom after a Bad Review in the New York Times: Back to Basics - <AUTHOR> http://thepopchef.blogspot.com/2010/10/ma-dukes-responds-to-sifton-review.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the referenced review by the Times: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/dining/13rest.html></comment>


What I love about Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jseikowsky/what-i-love-about-hacker-news-9376fa220d64#.lbiyuj1iw <comment><AUTHOR> This is a small medium post I wrote a while ago. It's just one thought/observation on HN. Hope you enjoy.</comment>