You Are Responsible for Getting Your Ideas to Spread - <AUTHOR> http://timkastelle.org/blog/2012/02/you-are-responsible-for-getting-your-ideas-to-spread/ <comment><USER2> I've said this for a long time. Your project should carry a bit of you and what inspires you with it--if not a whole lot. It is your job to share that light with others.

It is vital to remember that you don't need to do it alone. Ideas naturally want to be spread, human are social. By getting one person aboard, you make a bigger impact than you ever thought you could. I am continually surprised how something so small can travel so fast to so many people.

<comment><USER3> Great point. I've found you need to have two ways to approach people. One is the short, clear message that communicates the unique value proposition ideally to someone who is already in the target market. The "a-ha!" moment should happen pretty quickly.

The other way takes a little bit more work but helps you develop the fist. This is where you can explain the idea more in-depth and address all the concerns and pain points the person you are speaking with is going through. You need to be able to adapt your idea and think on your feet. When this person gets their "a-ha!" moment, that person is now armed with the knowledge to address others' concerns and be your biggest advocate.

This is even more important in this age when product ideas are a dime a dozen. Your value is in how others perceive you and reflect that in their communication with others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Bottom line – to get your ideas to spread you have to connect with people in a way that is meaningful and useful to them. If you can't do this, it's your fault, not theirs.

Don't blame your customer. _

</comment><comment><USER5> Something I've had a hard time realizing is that the art of being social is a skill needed offline AND online. This includes being able to pick up on cues and being able to be a participant in a conversation and not just sit there talking.

Most of this realization came to me while trying to start a business. I learned you cannot build a product and expect or assume everyone is going to give it a try because you have good intentions.

YOU have to put in the time to clearly communicate and connect what you are solving and why they care.</comment>


DigitalOcean on-track to reach $100m ARR by end of year - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-08/cloud-computing-finally-gets-some-startups <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I wrote the article. I feel the HN community may find some of the business numbers for DigitalOcean and Backblaze interesting.</comment>


Effective emacs (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer swapping the right control and alt keys on my keyboard to switching caps lock and control; that way I can use my left thumb for meta/alt and right thumb for control. But navigation by search and backwards-kill-word are fantastic tips.</comment>


Clojure Linear Algebra Refresher: 1 – Vector Spaces - <AUTHOR> http://dragan.rocks/articles/17/Clojure-Linear-Algebra-Refresher-Vector-Spaces <comment><USER2> The author states the problem clearly: programmer rusty at linear algebra, needs some background.

But at some point, the disdain for pure math / theory becomes a hindrance IMHO. If being human calculator on paper back in college left you unprepared now, won't getting proficient with a linear algebra library, ignoring theory whenever possible do the same?

I recommend at least pairing use case focused tutorials like this with

Essence of linear algebra: [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xV...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)

<comment><USER3> The author ( _me_ ) also states that the tutorial should be used _with a linear algebra textbook_ and not on its own, and even recommends the specific (math) textbook.

I do not get how you see disdain for math there?

<comment><USER2> Maybe this line

>It is application oriented; it has more theorem proofs than I need, but it at least does not skip application examples

And that it focuses entirely on library use cases. But I see now that's the explicit goal, and I'm projecting my needs for more articles providing clarity on the theory onto your article :)

<comment><USER3> In my opinion, there is no shortage of good math textbooks of all levels providing clarity on theory. There is also no (or not too much) shortage of good numerical software for LA. What's missing is the time to be _both_ good at theory, and have mastery of numerical software, _and_ general software engineering.

As I am _not_ a mathematician, I can not write even a passably good theoretical LA tutorial, yet alone one that is better what is currently available. The goal of these articles is: You've read the math text -> here's how you can try this in Clojure. Nothing more than that.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that's totally fair

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am glad to hear Clojure is slowly getting its act together WRT numerics. I reluctantly dropped the language several years ago because the ecosystem for any kind of math/ML was just nonexistent, unless you consider a "call the terribly verbose Java libraries for everything" approach viable.

Especially nice in this Neanderthal lib is the GPU stuff.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the foundation is there (hold arbitrary fractions, 64-bit decimals... other good things). What's the go-to tool for Mathematics? MatLab?

<comment><USER4> Eh, the simplified version is:

\- Engineers (like electrical etc) use Matlab

\- Statisticians use R

\- Rich people sometimes use Mathematica

\- People with some CS background use Python/numpy/sklearn

For "purer" math, like symbolic differentiation and such, I don't really know any of those people, but I think Mathematica has a lot in that area. The others have stuff, but less developed. But pretty much every major language has linear algebra at this point.

<comment><USER6> Sadists use sas

<comment><USER7> Who, other than students forced to do so, uses Minitab?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Talking about HN effect, the price of a second-hand copy of the linear algebra textbook that I recommended doubled on Amazon as the number of available copies dwindles...

</comment><comment><USER8> > _The following two sections, Subspaces and Linear Combinations are > theoretical._

My personal take: learning and making proofs is important because you get to understand the point of the more abstract topics (such as vector subspaces, orthogonal complements, direct sums, etc.)

And then you have new tools for thinking.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and the reader should do that following the textbook. There was nothing special that I could add to that.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but the tutorial isn't suggesting the reader go do proofs. Instead he says these more advanced topics are unnecessary. I said: their necessity is not apparent until you try doing proofs; but then you see them everywhere like a man with a hammer sees nails.

Mind, his approach may well be the correct one for the context, but _you 're_ saying he's doing things _my_ way, which he's not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The mistake is in the almost first sentence:

Eigenvalues aren't defined for rectangular matrices!

</comment><comment><USER10> SVD seems like a tough way to get rank; can't you just reduce and count pivots?

<comment><USER3> SVD seems to be most safe and stable, and it is available. I see that people suggest some forms of rank-revealing QR factorization, but they are less stable, and I am not sure how to access that from LAPACK. Any practical suggestions are appreciated in that regard.

<comment><USER10> Yep, apparently this is what MATLAB does too. Learn something new every day I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Aren't Other SOPA Supporters Being Punished Like GoDaddy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcworld.com/article/247037/why_arent_other_sopa_supporters_being_punished_like_godaddy.html

<comment><USER2> GoDaddy felt the brunt of direct action because:

A) GoDaddy has nurtured a lot of ill will over the years, whether due to poor customer service, a sloppy user experience, or their absurd corporate culture of using bikini babes and right wing politics to sell, of all things, domain name registration and hosting.

B) Internet users can (relatively easily) transfer domain names. It's something they can go do right now, without much fuss and without having to police their own day to day purchasing habits.

C) GoDaddy, unlike the other businesses on the SOPA supporters list, is not a purveyor of intellectual property with a legitimate interest in preventing counterfeiting.

D) GoDaddy, as a technology business and self-proclaimed "innovator", should know better than the others, who have the dubious defense of being ignorant of how this stuff works.

<comment><USER3> Pretty spot on.

GoDaddy already has a bad reputation, and they're way easier to stop using than, say, the NFL or ESPN (for most people).

Also, GoDaddy is an internet company, supporting internet oppression. It's kind of like they're trying to throw their own family under the bus.

<comment><USER4> The thing I can't help but wonder is whether the average NFL or ESPN viewer would just sit tight if they knew their internet was about to get a lot more limited and/or expensive?

My point is that if the law is really as bad as we think it is (and it is), then defeating it shouldn't be more than a problem of explaining the law to people. And the Gandhian in me can't help but wonder whether simply informing them is enough?

"Dear America. ESPN & the NFL are about to take away your free porn -- love, Google"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> GoDaddy is uniquely influential because they're an Internet company. Members of Congress aren't surprised to find movie studios supporting a bill like SOPA. But when an Internet company does, it gives the bill a (false) appearance of broader support. Which is presumably why GoDaddy was recruited by whoever recruited them.

<comment><USER4> PG, I know you aren't inviting them to your demo day, but I hope you can commit to not not doing business with the law firms on this list and also _not sharing law firms_ with these old-media dinosaurs like ESPN and the NFL.

If ESPN hires a law firm to write this bad law which will likely hurt your business in the future, doesn't it make sense to advise your clients to not hire that same law firm? As someone who has worked with both, it's clear that the Entrenched Big Law model & the Disruptive Startup Model are obviously incompatible and the more we can do to move away from these conflicted monoliths the better we can actually affect real reform.

This will require some work and likely even severing an old business relationship or two, but these small changes from someone like you and a peer or 2 can have immeasurable effect. 1 Paul Graham taking business away from 1 Big Law Firm will do more than thousands of us can.

<comment><USER6> By and large, the law firms shouldn't be on the list. Some lawyers wrote a letter arguing that the Constitutional concerns around SOPA are non-issues; Rep. Lamar Smith and co. used that letter as a basis for including many of the firms on the official list of SOPA supporters.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law- fi...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms- removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml)

<comment><USER4> This does not change the fact that ESPN's law firm working with other big law firms wrote large chunks of this bad law just the way their clients wanted it.

Or that lawyers at law firms don't just willy-nilly write or sign these letters for free, they do it on behalf of their SOPA-supporting clients while receiving a paycheck from the law firm who their SOPA-supporting-client has hired.

Again, that's why I made the point about _sharing law firms._ All it's saying is "I'm not doing business with these lawyers who I think are being paid by clients to help them censor the internet."

And though the law firm isn't saying "our entire law firm supports this law," they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and she did find constitutional problems with it even though that is not the position of the entire firm." As I explained below I can understand why the latter isn't so troubling to some but I think the incentives these firms face are the same once they are in the business of protecting ESPN's interests.

And it will not change the fact that startups not working with ESPNs law firm will 1 - Give business to lawyers who do believe censoring the internet is unconstitutional & 2 - Remove an obvious and blatant conflict of interest.

I'm just saying, do we really want our startups to be working with the same network of big law firms that helped Disney extend copyright law duration to infinity 100 years ago? These big law firms obviously have their interests in protecting old streams of business -- I would too.

<comment><USER7> The point is that the firms themselves were not behind SOPA. If you're suggesting that we shouldn't deal with any businesses that employ anyone who supports SOPA, I think you're a little off the rails here. That won't help anything and just makes us look unreasonable.

<comment><USER8> Law firms aren't supposed to take on clients with conflicting interests. If a firm has helped one of their clients lobby in support of SOPA, they shouldn't accept clients who depend on fair use or DMCA Safe Harbor.

<comment><USER4> well _should_ is a strong word. and if you are a startup it's very possible that you don't depend on a fair use / DMCA Safe Harbor argument now but will in the unpredictable future so it's unlikely a client will ever get rejected for that potential conflict.

Is it really wise to get in bed with ESPN in the first place? that's all I'm saying. I am not and will not be the first to argue that sharing lawyers with those on opposite sides of important legislation with you is a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I strongly support "focused fire" -- picking a small number of influential and easily-targeted businesses (or members of Congress) and targeting them with everything we've got. It's an optimal strategy for creating press hits, exactly like this one, which publicize our cause.

My non-technical mother asked me today what SOPA was, and is now opposed to it -- when yesterday she hadn't heard of it at all -- because she saw an article in the news about the GoDaddy boycott. This is what success looks like.

</comment><comment><USER10> The reason I've been more spurred to action over GoDaddy's involvement is twofold:

1) I'm not surprised that the record labels and movie publishers want this law. I am very surprised that a technology company who should be impacted by this law (but aren't, because of a special exemption) would support it, and it shows irresponsibility at best. At worst, they want to use it to stifle competitors. GoDaddy, as a technology company, has more reputation on technological matters to Congress, and is therefore in a position of severe abdication of responsibility. They aren't just a dying industry trying to legislate their survival - they're a traitor from "our" industry who have sided with the Bad Guys.

2) There are a lot of very easy-to-use alternatives to GoDaddy. I can't very easily just pick up and stop using Visa and Mastercard - I'm dismayed that they appear on the supporters list (and frankly, I'm a bit surprised; it increases costs and decreases revenues for them. Feels like they're being squeezed), but there aren't easy alternatives. To be clear, I'm not talking about credit cards here - I'm talking about my debit card, for which Mastercard is the processor. Carrying cash around is both risky and impractical in many cases, and I still have to do business online somehow. Compared to those, I can easily just pick up and leave GoDaddy and never do business with them again.

I wish that I could easily boycott every company involved in supporting SOPA. Many of them can't be as cut out as easily as GoDaddy can, but I'm happy to start with the low-hanging fruit and work up from there.

I was a GoDaddy customer for a very long time - back when they had decent geek cred (yes, that was a _very_ long time ago). They've always provided good customer service to me, personally. The sexist ads were distasteful, but didn't bother me enough to cost them my business - sex sells, and it always has. Bob Parsons shooting an elephant was likewise distasteful, but that's Bob Parsons being a guy that I don't want to have over for dinner, not GoDaddy launching an initiative to hunt elephants to extinction. However, GoDaddy's support of SOPA, as a company is GoDaddy being an entity that I don't want to be involved with, and don't want to lend any financial means to. That's why I left. I wasn't looking for an excuse to leave, and frankly, it's financially costly and a pain in the ass to move a bunch of domains, but I couldn't ignore it, given the reasons enumerated above.

</comment><comment><USER11> The reason GoDaddy is being punished is because it requires no real sacrifice, and makes people feel like activists from the comfort of their chair. Transferring a domain requires no real effort, and downtime to the business is almost nil (not to mention the cost is non-existent if your domain is already expiring).

Let's look at some of the SOPA supporters: Timer Warner, Pfizer, Viacom, The Walt-Disney Company, and Wal-Mart.

Are people ready to boycott these companies and their subsidiaries? I don't think so.

I applaud companies that decided to move away from GoDaddy, but I wonder if they would've done the same thing had there been a financial loss as a result.

Real change will come when people decide to stop supporting companies that introduce these idiotic laws.

</comment><comment><USER12> GoDaddy was a very easy, even painless, target. Switch to another registrar, done. The user only loses a bit of time, and in the end still is fully operation and the "boycott" doesn't directly affect them.

Ideally we'd be boycotting Nintendo, EA, CBS, etc as well. But that would mean actual sacrifice from people.

<comment><USER13> A domain name registrar is a more directly replaceable good. Switching form one video game to another is switching to a brand new product.

<comment><USER14> Yes, and playing video games is more important than our principles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are relatively few other companies on the list the average internet (power) user _can_ boycott effectively. How am I supposed to boycott Nike or Reebok? I buy shoes like once every two years. Should I write an angry blogpost a year or two from now when I pointedly buy a non-Nike shoe?

(As an aside, why the hell are Nike or the Ford Motor Company supporting SOPA? Is it one of their subsidiaries, or just corporate solidarity?)

An effective boycott needs to be noticeable, and that means either terminating a subscription or stopping an extremely regular (daily or weekly, perhaps monthly if it's substantial enough) purchase. The only other company on the list which seems vulnerable to that sort of boycott -- unless there are far more people picking up something weekly from Tiffany's than there should be -- is Time Warner. Terminating your cable service is a very immediate, noticeable act. If as many people terminated their TWC service as transfered domains away from GoDaddy, I think it would make some headlines.

Of course, internet service is pretty screwed up in most markets. Many people don't have a choice of (high-speed) internet service provider at all, so protesting TWC probably requires turning off your internet entirely, which is pretty hard to manage. So really, GoDaddy is probably the _only_ company on the list which can be effectively boycotted.

<comment><USER16> Nike products are presumably counterfeited, the prevention of which being one of SOPA's stated aims.

<comment><USER15> Ah-ha, for some reason I hadn't thought of actual fake real objects. That explains most of the companies on the list.

Do people buy fake Fords?

<comment><USER17> There probably aren't complete knockoff Ford cars, but there certainly are counterfeit parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This SOPA support was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Call this anecdotal if you will, but GoDaddy always occupied that "necessary evil" for domain registration in my brain. If others on HN are at all like me, they probably have > 75% of their registered domains sitting and doing nothing. GoDaddy's tasteless ads, horrible UX, shutdowns of domains due to "good faith" complaints...this was just the final incentive to call it quits. Predictably irrational, absolutely - guilty as charged.

<comment><USER19> Why necessary? I distinctly remember avoiding GoDaddy due to their awful reputation when registering domains over a decade ago. The alternatives have always been available. I'm puzzled as to why so many people used them to begin with.

<comment><USER20> They're the cheapest, or close to it, though they make it up with all kinds of other tricks. I think it's really just that simple for a lot of people who don't know or don't care about all the other stuff.

Sure, _we_ know about them, but other people are looking for the lowest price they can find on a search for 'cheap domain registration'.

<comment><USER19> True. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm surprised how many technically knowledgeable people used them. This site is full of people talking about moving away. Wikimedia used them! I can see why Joe Random would, but it makes no sense to me that someone who knows what they're doing would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because it's hard, I expect. There are few companies you can boycott with just a few clicks.

<comment><USER22> Pretty much.

And if one is loyal to consumer products that have much more of a everyday influence but support that bill... well then it gets even harder. Looking at this list, I would have to stop playing any EA game (and I have played NHL games for over 15 years straight), listening/buying music from a bunch of bands (as they might be under some of these record labels), stop following the NFL or paying for any tickets to their games, stop buying any books from Penguin, never buy a Pfizer made drug, give up Time/Warner cable even though there isn't any other option in my area, and give up my Mastercard/Visa card. And that's probably just the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> because GoDaddy's product was a commodity, there is absolutely nothing that differentiated it from the rest.

Meanwhile other companies offer unique products(or at least those that differ from their competitors)...so it's harder to give up things like that.

\+ it's an internet company, so knee capping them will take off valuable support

</comment><comment><USER24> The headline is a bit misleading as the article spends barely any time with the question.

However there are a few decent reasons: GoDaddy was apparently involved in crafting the bill, GoDaddy apparently is exempt from the bill, GoDaddy wasn't well-liked by the HN/Reddit set in the first place, GoDaddy is one of the more internet-centric companies on the list.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm already boycotting Sony over other things, so I can't very well say I'm boycotting them over this.

Walmart, too.

EA, too. (Stupid intrusive DRM. I'm missing a lot of potentially good games here!)

Nintendo? Ouch. That one's going to be painful... Oh wait. No, I only buy like 1 game a year from them anyhow.

Warner Music might be tough... I don't buy much US-based music any more, though.

And the rest I never use anyhow.

So the answer the question? People are either already boycotting them, avoiding them as much as they can, or just don't buy their stuff anyhow. At least, those people who would boycott over ethical concerns, anyhow. Those who don't boycott, they don't boycott anyhow!

<comment><USER26> The one thing I dont understand is why are gaming companies showing public support of SOPA. They should know that the trend-setters in gaming industry are geeks and nerds who are all very aware of how internet works and how SOPA may potentially drain the life out of it. Also, a lot of gamers are tech-savvy enough that they will start pirating their games just to spite them.

<comment><USER27> Safety in numbers. Sony and Nintendo are both on this. They're counting on nerds being reflexively unwilling to switch to Microsoft on a matter of principle, even though Microsoft seems to be the least evil of the three.

<comment><USER28> "Microsoft...the least evil"

How times have changed, eh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always hated GoDaddy for their terrible advertisements but I've had decent service for them, so their support of SOPA was a reason for me to finally leave them. Maybe I'm not the only one that feels that way.

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone should make an app which lets us scan bar codes to know if the manufacturer is a SOPA supporter. This could also be extended to help with other things. For example, if you care a lot about animal rights it might help you avoid supporting companies abusing animals, to include suggesting alternative products.

</comment><comment><USER31> Supporters like Adobe, Autodesk? If there was good alternatives to these 2, the price of their product alone, would be enough to make us run away. Only now, open-source alternatives are getting at their level, so...

Supporters like Microsoft? So much commercial software is made exclusively to Microsoft, that is impossible for some of us, to change. I'm glad I did, but let's not kid ourselves. Microsoft has a monopoly on property software

Supporters like Apple? What are you going to do? Drop your brand-new gadgets? Stop buying? Their main business is hardware. Not only it is expensive to replace, it has also a big niche of Apple-only software that is favored by a lot of people.

A lot of Anti-Virus are supporting SOPA as well. If Internet newbies start not using anti-virus...well I don't even want to know.

Hardware companies like Intel, Siemens, Dell...Hard to replace, etc etc.

I could go on and on, but the main points are taken. And the main problem, is that a lot of products are really hard to replace. And some people just can't afford it.

And that is today's World. Now stop making conspiracy theories against Google, and side them on this!

</comment><comment><USER32> While this is a good point, concerted efforts against GoDaddy isn't a bad thing. The only way corporations will feel anything is if the entire Internet focuses on them -- we need to focus on one thing at a time and not spread ourselves across too many targets.

<comment><USER12> The problem is the internet has a very short attention span. I would be very surprised if a solid boycott against another SOPA supporting company happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The product that GoDaddy offers is a commodity. You can get domain registration with hundreds of companies unlike the NFL which offers a very unique product. Also GoDaddy has been harboring a lot of ill will with things like hidden fees over the years.

</comment><comment><USER34> For me, it had a lot to do with how obnoxious their posts in support of SOPA were.

</comment><comment><USER35> Also the fact that Godaddy has had their fair share of bad PR over the past year, there seems to be a pretty bad feeling against them anyway - this just gave everyone another excuse!

</comment><comment><USER36> Because of Bob Parsons' peculiar arrogance.

</comment><comment><USER37> Because GoDaddy lobbied for it with money, helped write it, and is exempted from it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Nice try, Godaddy.</comment>


Show HN: A Probing Hash Table Framework - <AUTHOR> https://chara.cs.illinois.edu/sites/cgeigle/blog/2016/01/29/a-probing-hash-table-framework/ <comment><USER2> Probing is great but you have to be careful in a situation where deletes are common. Robin hood hashing is a great solution for those.</comment>


Pigshell: Shell for the web - <AUTHOR> http://pigshell.com/ <comment><USER2> Older thread - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8438515)

One interesting feature is the ability to ^mount^ a local directory into the shell, so that one can do something like:

      $ cp -r /email@example.com/ /home/

<comment><USER3> No way ! That is awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is that it is very difficult to understand the documentation, it is very difficult to develop plugins (like Google Drive) and extend the functionalities, it is very difficult to run the local server in a VPS, customization (dotfiles) is also complicated and undocumented.

<comment><USER5> I agree. Mea culpa.

I am still active on the project and I am working to address the issues you mention, though progress has been slower than I could wish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The example of grabbing a page and feeding it into d3 is whizbang! ( [https://github.com/pigshell/pigshell#hello- world](https://github.com/pigshell/pigshell#hello-world) )

I tried to cat this hn page, but also got the CORS error -- trying to route through [h]ttp://localhost:50937/...

need to run psty for proxying certain things and local access ...so its not "pure client-side Javascript app running in the browser"

pretty cool nonetheless -- maybe psty could be baked into a chrome or FF extention (?)

<comment><USER5> Try

ycat [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) | hgrep .athing | html

ycat uses YQL to bypass CORS.

There are a few interesting workflows which can be done completely in the browser without a proxy: e.g. copying files from one Google Drive account to another, backing up Google Drive to Dropbox, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would like every url to be a directory, and for that site to have its data nested within that url.

<comment><USER8> I suspect this works essentially like that, if you have the psty proxy companion program running so pigshell can get around COR restrictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could we do the same thing with FUSE filesystems?

<comment><USER10> Exactly what I was thinking. That would make all linux utils available to use as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just tried to grep BBC News site but got a `cross-origin request denied` error. In the man page for hgrep, it suggests hgrep on a wikipedia page, and I got the same error.

The error in full: Cross-origin request denied (check if psty is running): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population)

I don't know how to check if psty is running. Anyone got any ideas?

<comment><USER5> Since most websites are not CORS-friendly, you need to run the psty proxy on your desktop.

python psty.py -a

For further information on psty, and a download link, see: [http://pigshell.com/v/0.6.4/usr/doc/psty.html](http://pigshell.com/v/0.6.4/usr/doc/psty.html)

Alternately, if you don't want to run psty, you could try the "ycat" command which uses YQL to bypass CORS. This is useful if you are trying to access HTML pages, rather than binary resources. e.g.

ycat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population) | hgrep table.wikitable | html

You may have to try it a couple of times; I notice that the YQL endpoint sometimes refuses connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly one of the most interesting "web shells" I've looked at. But not something I can use regularly since most of my workflow is local for developing software.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish it would at least try to do a real CORS request before giving up and forcing you to use the proxy. I have a CloudFront distribution with CORS all set up but it doesn't even try to make the request.

<comment><USER5> Please see [https://github.com/pigshell/pigshell/issues/15](https://github.com/pigshell/pigshell/issues/15) for a workaround.

Since most sites are non-CORS, trying CORS and then falling back to proxy would impose too much of an overhead for the common case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand why this runs in the browser. Surely this is all stuff you can do in a local shell? What am I missing?

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems that buying a domain name is so expensive. Why pig?

<comment><USER16> PIG Isn't GNU</comment></comment>


What does the Laplace Transform tell us? A visual explanation [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2y7n6jw5d0 <comment><USER2> CONTROL THEORY NERD ALERT! This is hands-down the best video on control theory I've ever seen, clearly depicting the relationship of the Laplace Transform to the Fourier Transform.

The Fourier Transform decomposes a signal into its sinusoidal frequency components. It is used in a bunch of everyday appliances like your guitar tuner, JPEG images (wavelet compression) and speech recognition on your smartphone or smart speaker.

The Laplace Transform, on the other hand, decomposes a signal into both its exponential factors (decaying or rising) AND its sinusoidal components. So the FT is just one slice of the Laplace Transform where the input signal has no exponential rise or decay.

In the electrical and mechanical domains, spring mass damper systems are super common, even your car's suspension! And to analyse and control them, engineers apply the Laplace Transform.

<comment><USER3> > The Laplace Transform, on the other hand, decomposes a signal into both its > exponential factors (decaying or rising) AND its sinusoidal components.

I want to clarify something a tiny bit misleading about this. In general complex exponentials are not orthogonal w.r.t. the relevant inner product. You can't really think of them as independent components that compose a function.

If you think of a function as the impulse response of a linear time invariant system, then the laplace transform of that function tells you the result of an experiment where you drive the system with an exponentially damped sinusoid. This is why the poles of the transformed impulse response tell you about the stability of the system: those are the inputs that cause the system to explode!

<comment><USER2> Aren't complex exponentials signal rotations? If you multiply a sinusoidal signal by e^(-iwt), you are essentially shifting its phase modulus, no?

<comment><USER3> Those are purely imaginary exponentials. General complex exponentials also have a real part.

<comment><USER4> And that's how the FT differs from the LT. LT is complex while FT is purely imaginary, as the video explains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually _used_ this math at home! - one of my LED lamps was flickering in cold weather, and upon opening it up I saw a primary side controlled flyback transformer to act as a constant current power supply (for ~20 LED's in series).

The flicker was due to oscillation, due to a pole too close to the right half plane. I was about to stick a bigger capacitor in the feedback compensation circuit, but a bit of maths told me that that would make the problem worse (and probably blowing up my LED's) - so instead I used a smaller resistor value, and yay - perfect flicker free light!

<comment><USER6> I noticed outdoor LED lamps flickering too, but only at dusk, and for what I thought was a feedback issue. These lamps are solar powered and turn on at night.

The cool part is that at twilight, when the light turned on, the little bit of reflected light bounced back to the photovoltaics, adding just enough light to turn the light off, which brought the system full circle. Amazingly, this behavior only occured for about 1 minute each day.

<comment><USER5> The normal solution to this is hysteresis. In most cases, it doesn't cost any extra to add hysteresis.

<comment><USER7> It does if you pay for a competent engineer in the first place who would know to do things like debounce switches and add hysteresis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really appreciate people (amateurs and professionals) who take time to make explanation of mathematics concepts simpler and easier to understand -- even for layman just familiar with basic primary school maths.

Because of such people efforts, I personally consider this to be a golden age for mathematics and an untold opportunity for younger folks (i.e. students) to finally understand the maths, get involved in it and perhaps use it in ways previously only math wizz would have used.

I wish these were available back when I was taking countless Calculus and Algebra courses at University -- all we had were Professors who couldn't explain in a simple way and books which nobody had time to read during course of semester. The end result was simply treating mathematical phenomenons as black-boxes and/or perform rote memorization to clear the course.

</comment><comment><USER9> I prefer this one:

Where the Laplace Transform comes from (Arthur Mattuck, MIT) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOboV2jgVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqOboV2jgVo)

<comment><USER10> A piece of jewel. Reminds me of chalk board talks of Gilbert Strang and Robert Gallager (also on youtube, mit video lectures) that celebrates this gift for teaching us something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is tangential, and veering very much into the off-topic .. but the Laplace transform has a special place in my heart, because after banging my head against the wall of advanced calculus and other engineering mathematics topics for 4 years, with varying degrees of success, when presented with laplace I could "just do it".

From what I recall, the transformations were so well defined and the solution space so self contained that I could solve the assignments with little difficulty.

I remember in one of the other modules using laplace to solve a problem and the lecturer remarking that it was _" an interesting approach"_. I had no idea what it meant, (though had some slight intuition about how it worked, based on previous exposure to Fourier transforms), but to this day I can't understand how I could take to it so fluently, while floundering at everything else.

Could just have been that in 4th year I gave up part time work and drinking to focus on my finals, and this improved my abilities.

<comment><USER12> The LaPlace transform is also isomorphic to the net present value problem in finance. The Wiki article on net present value even links to a paper pointing this out from a finance POV. (The problem of how the net present value of a flow varies with changes in the discount rate is also of some theoretical interest in finance, since it clarifies the conditions under which the so- called 'roundaboutness' of e.g. an investment is well defined.)

<comment><USER2> Can you expound on this? I recently applied some classic signal processing techniques to help reconcile my personal tax accounting by tracking coherence. This sorta works if you consider double-entry accounting as reverb in a linear time-invariant chamber (or echoes with unknown delay). I would love hear about any non-traditional applications of DSP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I learned all this at university, over many hours of classes, exams and practice questions.

I'd be interested if people with a science/tech/math background, but no specific training on laplace transforms, managed to understand this video. If they did, it might be a good time to replace all those university classes with this video!

<comment><USER13> Well I also did Fourier and Laplace at uni, but I'm certain it would have been easier to learn if the current explosion of videos on tech topics had happened before I'd gotten there. That 3D of the sums makes a lot of sense, because you need to motivate taking that integral somehow. In my mind I did that, but it's nice to see the video.

Quite a lot of these topics are the kind of thing where you needed to find the explanation that made sense _for you_, and despite universities having a lot of books chances were there were only a handful on any topic such as this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently (and I am no expert), The Laplacian Transform is a superset of the Fourier Transform, and the Fourier Transform is a subset of the Laplacian.

Also, apparently the Laplacian Transform can be used to convert Calculus derivative equations into algebraic ones...

Again, I am no expert; what I've noted is based solely on the claims in this video...

But, some fascinating stuff...

<comment><USER14> > _convert Calculus derivative equations into algebraic ones..._

This trick is - AFAIR from my classes - the basis of control theory math. You convert a control system to algebra, do your work there, and in the end, you convert back to differential equations.

<comment><USER15> It should say Laplacian in OP's post, not Laplacian Transform (if I am not mistaken). The Laplacian is a matrix of (partial) derivitives and is used for the equational conversion.

<comment><USER16> It should be "Laplace transform". This video has nothing about Laplacians at all.

Are you thinking of the Jacobian matrix? I'm not sure what you mean by equational conversion. The Laplacian matrix is from graph theory and doesn't involve derivatives. The Laplacian operator involves differentiation, but is not a matrix.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, sorry. You are right, I am thinking of the Jacobian.

What does the comment mean then?

> "Also, apparently the Laplacian Transform can be used to convert Calculus > derivative equations into algebraic ones..."

<comment><USER16> That's the primary reason to use the _Laplace_ transform, as seen in the video. A derivative x'(t) gets transformed into a product (and an initial condition), s X(s) - x(0), and similar for higher derivatives, so a differential equation transforms into an algebraic equation, which can be solved by rearranging. This video assumed the initial conditions like x(0) = 0, and its notation was quite sloppy/confusing in places, as it didn't clearly distinguish the names of the two functions, x(t) and X(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Transform of nightmares. Computers were not yet invented in 1974 and we were trained to design analog electronics with massive laplace matrixes and sliderules and tables. Now I not remember anything about matrix calculations and know exactly nilch about any bloody transforms.

<comment><USER18> If you know how to turn a dial on a pid-controller, you are probably already on par with 95% of the engineering work force.

I had a really good teacher on this topic, but without a formulary for time domain -> spectral domain I wouldn't come very far. And they are all pretty hard to memorize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see a follow-on that described the z-transform. The z-transform is the digital or discrete version of the Laplace transform. It's very useful for designing digital filters.

<comment><USER19> Previous video from the same author is on the z-transform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a very good, quick video that describes both of the amazing properties of the Laplace transform (how it's the complex version of the Fourier transform and how it makes linear differential equations almost trivial to solve).

</comment><comment><USER20> Also interesting to note that stock market returns map better to a Laplacian distribution. [https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2016/03/modeling-stock- market...](https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2016/03/modeling-stock-market- returns-with-laplace-distribution-instead-of-normal/)</comment>


Google has a hidden author search. Here's proof. [with video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnfdoherty.com/googles-hidden-author-search-bookmarklet/

<comment><USER2> And so; websites with many writers should add author rel attribute.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, how Google is using Google+ as an identity provider. Well, you won't be able to find "all posts by wisty", since that's not my real name.

<comment><USER4> If you don't want to be found, no. If you do, adding a nickname to your profile on Google+ will (either now or eventually) allow them to make that connection.

<comment><USER3>
wonderful

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> love it John, great script too -- looks like your hard work learning JS all day paid off ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> What tool is used providing the link info in the search results?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? It's Javascript to pull in the person's name and ID, off of which we construct the URL to get to the "author search". Do you mean something else?</comment></comment>


FastBit: An Efficient Compressed Bitmap Index Technology - <AUTHOR> http://crd.lbl.gov/~kewu/fastbit/index.html <comment><USER2> I wrote a little sparse bit matrix handler while toying around with a search engine. This is pretty rough code but it did the job, enjoy and feel free to cut it up and re-use or discard at will.

<http://ww.com/sparsematrix.zip>

the license is here:

<http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING></comment>


A self-organizing thousand-robot swarm - <AUTHOR> http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2014/08/self-organizing-thousand-robot-swarm

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they use a fairly simple edge-detection algorithm to make this happen. Pretty amazing how complex swarm behavior can emerge out of such basic instructions.</comment>


Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I'm Chris, founder of Slite (https://slite.com). We're building a tool for modern teams to write down and retrieve things that matter.
I've launched two companies in the past and basically ran them on note-taking apps. The first was a hiring SaaS and the second an on-demand fashion-delivery service, and while the two were pretty different, I needed to write down a lot of stuff: interview notes, mentoring, email and article drafts, notes on customers and so on.
I had this habit because notes are versatile, incredibly user-friendly, and immediate. They made up my personal knowledge base but the biggest frustration I had was sharing those with teammates. So I decided to build a note app that would work with teams from day 1.
This is in line with the current problems in team collaboration. A lot of people were thrilled to dump email to get on Slack, but recent conversation has shifted towards Slack killing team productivity and leading to loss of information. This topic even trended on HN a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16355454.
We're building an asynchronous writing tool for teams to organize their work with one simple yet crucial goal in mind: make sure teams stop losing valuable information and find it more quickly. We want to remove the back and forth you have on Slack, via email or even offline to find information.
We use the same channels pattern as Slack, mainly because this avoids the folders structure where content is hard to find, organize and where permissions are a nightmare. But using Slite allows you to separate use cases: channel chat a la IRC or Slack to communicate instantly, Slite to write and retrieve information.
Another major product focus is search: existing tools such as Google Docs or Dropbox Paper make it hard to organize and navigate through content (not to mention Slack where everything get lost between cat gifs). We put huge efforts on making it seamless in Slite.
With these basic differences we've already convinced hundreds of teams and thousands of active users to switch their content over from Google Docs, Dropbox Paper or other tools. We're now entering a new phase where we're focusing on integrations, allowing teams to push and access their information from anywhere in their workflows.
It's an exciting time and we'd love for you to check it out and give us your feedback. And we're eager to hear your ideas in this space. Please share your thoughts in the comments! <comment><USER2> Another note app?

I get that this is a massive problem space but with dropbox, notion, google and loads of other companies working on the exact same thing.... I have a hard time understanding why Y Combinator accepts companies like these.

Either way, excited to try it out; sounds like you've put a lot of BS&T into this.

<comment><USER3> Another note app ...... with 4000 teams using the product

<comment><USER4> I'm not denying they have 4000 teams using the product, but YC has an internal tool, so getting YC companies on board which have multiple teams per company, I think you'd reach 4000 quite quickly.

This isn't to take anything away from the app itself, but with almost 1500 companies funded by YC, and access to more connections and marketing...well, you get the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at this page, [https://slite.com/use-cases](https://slite.com/use- cases), I feel like this kind of product is an anti-pattern. The reason that it's hard to find things in slack or docs is because these apps do not well understand the underlying structure of the data and so are relegated to either full-text search, or some sort of naive clustering algorithm. Although Slack has made some advances here - such as adding context-specific buttons for actions.

Will Slite do a better job at understanding our bug reports than Github? Or understanding our applicant tracking system then Greenhouse? Our customer support than Zendesk? Every one of these tools have a search feature.

The value of Google Docs is that it stays out of my way, lets me create freeform notes, and integrates with the rest of Google. Probably the same for Paper, or any other team notes solution. Once something gets complex enough, creates work for teams, or is mission critical, it either needs to be actively managed by a team member, or move into an automated tool that does that management for us. I can't imagine the solution would be to centralize all these disparate workflows in a tool like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a super interesting point and I fully agree those examples are not well suited for all teams, especially not for larger ones.

I still think having all the information compartmentalized is a waste of time. The integrations that we are developing aim at solving this : Slite will integrate with your github documentation and your Greenhouse pipe so that the members that need the information but don't use the tool everyday (typical in an hiring process) can see the information while those whom it's the job will keep using it as usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your templates feature is useful and seems to be missing in most notes apps I've looked at. We are looking for a tool to create our playbooks in and then track the execution of instances of those plays. For example, a "onboarding playbook" can be cloned for each instance of a hire.

Similarly, we and many other companies have their own custom project lifecycle which would be a useful template to be able to create and track for each project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, that's one of the feature that is delicate to create in app without bringing too much complexity, but it's definitely the goal at some point, and our current templates are a poc of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks exactly like Confluence (no doubt it is better designed in various ways). Here is a Quora question asking for Confluence alternatives (Slite listed). [1]

Right now I am really impressed with how coda.io creates documents with structured data, which is a different paradigm that overlaps with some note taking applications.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-modern-confluence- altern...](https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-modern-confluence-alternatives- Are-there-wiki-CRM-solutions-out-there-that-meet-modern-expectations-of- content-creation-but-allow-wiki-style-organization-navigation-and-search)

<comment><USER8> As a confluence admin, i can only agree. This looks like Confluence with Hipchat and a colorful CSS integrated. Pretty sure this is where a lot of the inspiration is coming from. One can only hope they will not take the atlassian approach on solving feature-request or bug-fixes, because then it would actually be confluence :) Will give it a test run however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do you need the permission "View your contacts" (Google Contacts) when signing up? I would sign up and try the product but I'm not going to disclose all my contacts.

<comment><AUTHOR> This import is there to let you invite your team more easily after signup. You can absolutely login with email password if you want to avoid that but do note that it's just an helper, the app won't send emails by its own.

<comment><USER10> I realize this can be a little bit (sometimes more than a little bit) of a development overhead to manage, but isn't the right way to do this is to only require the minimum oauth scopes upon signing up, then add additional scopes and re-auth at the time it's needed (i.e. when someone wants to perform an import)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A Knowledge/Note based system is very useful for teams.

On my own personal project where I have a team of 8 I tried Gitbook but when I lost a bunch of stuff do with git pull that override my local changes I really disliked Gitbook.

I convinced my work to get on Confluence so we at least have a knowledge base. I find Confluence like all Atlassian products clunky, slow and cumbersome to navigate.

I really liked Backpack, however its dated and structuralized for an older workflow.

I look at Slite and think, does it handle code blocks well? Is it navigation easy and feels fast? How clunky is the rich text editor?

I personally don't like the look, the open source outline looks more professional. I would have borrow design elements from Discord than Slack.

To me this is a gimmick of piggybacking on the familiarity of slack channels to take something that has already existed (collaborative note and note-like apps). An old tool for a new generation.

Since I've built my open-source HTML5 game in Electron I feel I could whip up my own note-taking app because my feeling is I'm not going to be sold on either Outline or Slite.

I went to connect with my Google Account As soon as Slite asked to view my Contacts, I stopped. Its like asking to see someone's facebook on a first date. No Thank you.

So I go and check Outline, since its open-source but you have to have a slack account and create a Slack App, No Thank you.

I guess I should build my own.

<comment><USER12> Come and help us add other authentication options to Outline ;) I can promise you it'll be easier than "whipping up your own"

<comment><USER11> I had already opened up the Outline codebase but then stopped because The copyright is All Rights Reserved. Its not MIT.

The issue with All Rights Reserved means lets say I were to put a ton of work into Outline and I want to monetize the work I put in to provide easy hosted solutions. I can't. I'm not saying I want to monetize but I don't know how much effort I will put in and then may regret giving you so much free code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome. As a Bear power user, I've been looking for a collaborative note-app that just works. Haven't gotten a beta invite yet for mobile app (key imo), but this seems promising!

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to me that you don't mention Evernote anywhere in your description, here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, while we are definitely related by the "note" aspect, the team aspect of Slite is more important and it seems to me Evernote has never done a good job on that part.

The fact of having collaborative editing, an organization that actually works for teams & content shared by default among others makes all the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't listen to the people that say "Ugh, not another notes/docs app". They way you're thinking about the problem and how you're solving it, I believe, are right. Your product reminds me a lot of Quip... which Salesforce bought for ~$750M.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hi Chris! We all need better documentation/knowledge-base software/processes. I personally love workflowy, but have always admired the idea of gingkoapp.

Have you tried to think about hierarchical data like gingkoapp?

How about "structured data" do you have the idea of templates that require these xx data points?

A melding of the "content blocks" from project Gutenberg for WordPress & Gingkoapp's hierarchical data would make for a killer knowledge-base I'd gladly part with money to have personally & professionally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

I love as a product person Workflowy or the concept of gingkoapp (and notion quoted above also relate to that I think).

The problem of complex structure is having a part of the team writing knowledge with comfort, all the rest not able to retrieving it, it really defeats the whole purpose.

That's why we're really focused on making information easy to write and easy to access without complexity for the rest of your team. And the most straightforward feature to allow structured data to us is simple internal links, like in a wiki. You can just type @+ name of your note to create an link internal to your Slite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would you ever provide exporting/importing mechanisms for people to migrate out of tools like Confluence? Is that something on the roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking! It's actually something we're currently working on, and one of the top feature requests we have : we'll provide import from major services (google docs, confluence, paper) and export for backup purposes to google drive.

To be noted: our public API will be available soon and will let you develop sync mechanisms with other tools if needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not to be a shill, but this feels extremely similar to Notion [1] -- in fact I'm failing to see substantiative differences in the collaboration interfaces, the freeform editing, etc. How does it differentiate?

[1] [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

<comment><AUTHOR> No worry it's a perfectly fair point. In our experience, Notion is a great tool and can work within small teams adapted of product and technical people.

But the complexity of their structure makes it really hard for non technical people to apprehend. Channels make Slite easy to use for anyone in your team. The second thing is that Notion is built like google docs or paper with a loose notion of team : it's an open tool, where permissions can get messy pretty fast.

We have teams of 150+ people on Slite for this reason.

<comment><USER19> Do you have any info on what makes the teams concept better than those in Notion / Google Docs / Paper?

I also have the vague feeling that those tools have hard to understand team permissions, but I'm unclear on how Slite solves this in a better way. Either way, sounds interesting. Congrats on the launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well the 'team' is actually defined in Slite, while google docs, paper or notion have rights granted on each folder / page / doc for a loose set of people.

The easy way to see that is by checking a Google Drive structure : you have "My Drive", then some folders, some shared, some not, and in parallel "Shared with me" gathering documents that can come from outside your team, and that you can also put in "my drive"... It's centered around individuals and weirdly works for them, but is absolutely not suited to organize and retrieve content as a team.

Slite actually creates a well defined private space for your team, which makes it possible to share by default. When I update our roadmap or our hiring process, I know all the relevant people can see the channel highlighted, and can get updated. In another tool, the authors would have to push a link by email or irc to get their team updated. And this mereley because they knew that else nobody would see it had changed and nobody could retrieve it in a shared folder structure.

Completely side but awesome job on Slate! We have spent a lot of time working on editors, and might switch to it at some point, so keep up the good work!

<comment><USER19> Thanks! Glad to hear it :D happy to answer any questions if you do.

That makes sense re: teams, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This doesn't look the same as other tools to me. Maybe that's just a comment HN folk make out of habit.

One way to get exposure for this product would be to have academic pricing. The current pricing means it wouldn't be used for teaching, but with a low enough price, it might work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have not pushed that on the homepage yet, but there will be a strong discount for NGOs and academic institutions actually!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hi Chris -- the app looks great, nice work. Aesthetically similar to Slack, for sure, but there are some obvious differences as well.

Curious if you talk more about your target market? This feels geared toward smaller start-up like orgs that may already have something similar/have no legacy tie-ups.

However, have you thought about teams in larger enterprises that are likely to be hooked into the use of Microsoft Word/Excel, and especially Outlook, and may use something like Skype for internal chat? Think there are numerous folks (like me) who are on top of newer/interesting tech but have to fight hard to move people away from their habits.

Further example: would you build or allow access to legacy Exchange servers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, this is something a bit special : we clearly have an easy way to get into new companies, there is no friction on getting on Slite for them.

The thing is we solve way more issues for teams between 20-200 people, as they are the one struggling with process and knowledge sharing. The strategy we have to convince them is by integrating in their workflow : if Slite can solve their issues while requiring a low-cost setup by integrating in their toolchain, we think it can prove value quickly enough for those teams to adopt it. And clearly Skype or Office will be at some point included in those integrations.

As for the Exchange servers to be honest I have no idea and it will highly depend on our users' demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is nice. A little hesitant to migrate to something that may not be around in a few months ... Not to be the voice of doom, but it's a legitimate concern IMHO (this isn't the first note web app) ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, totally legitimate concern, I'll just say without spoiling that we're really here for the long run ;)

<comment><USER22> Great, glad to read that 8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the concept. IMO, the keys are going to be 1.) Showing how you differ from Slack 2.)simplifying, I'm already overwhelmed but I get what you are trying to do. and 3.)Ubiquity of the templates. Make it easy to make, clone, share, track them.

Edit: A few small quips. Audit how you use the word public. That's going to scare people. I assume you mean make the channel read/write for other members of my slite, not the public at large.

Someone else had this idea in the comments, I would also second the motion that adding controlled fields (select from drop down) could help with templates.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback !

For the differenciation with Slack, the similarity really stops with the channels pattern. Using Slite allows you to separate use cases: Slack or equivalent to communicate instantly, Slite to write and retrieve information.

As a back story, Slack did try something similar a few years back: they built Slack posts with a similar vision in mind. But having those burried in threads and writing in a constantly ringing place defeated their purpose. From talking to our users, it seems like really few people use posts as they were intended in the first place. At the end of the day, having to organize your content and handling collaborative edition is a job for a standalone product

For the wording indeed, a teammate just mentionned the same thing on "public" wording, we'll think of a better term, "team-wide" maybe.

As for the templating option it's clearly something we're thinking about, the challenge is to make the feature simple enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ok, got it working on desktop. But now I'm seeing something else that concerns me a bit.

I used my @gmail account to sign up and now I'm seeing 2 companies listed as groups I can join. I assume that's because these people also used @gmail accounts to create those team accounts. Either way, even with the email verification it seems like you wouldn't want to list all the companies that match the domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Super sorry for the experience this has been now fixed (it's actually a relicate, the issue can't happen on new teams)

<comment><USER24> Great! And great job fielding these questions/comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We've been using Slite for ~3 weeks. I highly recommend it - much better organization, useful templates, and by far the best UI in the space.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does it support offline mode ?

In my company, the sales team is often int the customer's building (for example for a demo) and often there is no wifi or any internet connection. So, we're looking for a documentation system that can be synchronized when opened and works perfectly offline (including full-text search).

At this moment, we are testing Microsoft OneNote.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do you compare with Confluence? Are you just trying to provide a better ease of use?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a bunch of teams that jumped from Confluence to Slite simply because they actually went from opening Confluence every month or so to using Slite daily.

The reason behind that is Slite's UX and the fact we have designed the tool since day 1 to hold not only "wikis" but also meeting notes, specs, interview, snippets and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats Chris! Look forward to trying it. But as of now, I'm getting this error.

{"data":null,"errors":{"message":"Cannot destructure property `MAILCHIMP_API_KEY` of 'undefined' or 'null'."}}

<comment><AUTHOR> Super sorry about that, we'll fix that asap! This is an issue normaly just on the mobile site, you can give it a try on the desktop in the meantime

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fixed, again sorry about that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do you have any plans for self-hosting or E2EE?

<comment><USER12> I'm part of a group working on a similar knowledge wiki product that's open- source and self hostable, you might find it interesting: [https://github.com/outline/outline](https://github.com/outline/outline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i like the templates and reminds me a lot of the "Trello prebuilt boards" shared by the community - best of luck !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ;) We're especially inspired by airtable & their "Universe" page

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks like OneNote [http://onenote.com](http://onenote.com)

</comment><comment><USER31> >We're building a tool for modern teams to write down and retrieve things that matter.

Do you re-invent paper?

</comment><comment><USER32> What about Evernote Business?

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been looking for a collaborative alternative to Evernote (which is terribly) and Google Docs (which is very functional, but in many ways terrible) for some time, and I've also looked at Notion. Slite looks beautiful, and the on-boarding is slick. But it fails in too many ways, just like Notion.

Slite channels don't scale beyond a few notes. Like Evernote, the sidebar becomes a hard-to-navigate, endlessly scrolling list of stuff, and search becomes the only way to find what you want, which is of course terrible for discovery. There's no grouping mechanism where order matters. "Collections" are sorted, but only by title or date, not manually. So there's no way to collate and _publish_ information. Google Docs, of course, has the same problem.

This is one area where Notion is marginally better, since pages have an inherent order, so you can build "books" of content (e.g. technical documentation, project plans, etc.). But you still have to manually create the navigation, since tables of contents aren't made for you. In Slite, publishing anything that has structure is basically impossible — everything is just a sea of notes. Another problem with Slite and Notion is that there are, inherently, _types_ of notes/pages, but there's no way to classify them except possibly by tag. A set of meeting notes != a project plan != a scrapbook of possible office furniture != a todo list. And so on.

The more I think about apps like Evernote and Slite, the more I think the idea of note as an independent unit of information is wrong — unless all you do is write notes that have a short life cycle, like shopping lists. To build an organization around information, the information model has to be powerful. For example, a common use case shown in screenshots for Slite and other products is the idea of a checklist. We're doing a project, we have to have some designs, do some marketing, do some development. We create an outline:

        [ ] Hire intern to work on leaflets

What's a thing that happens? Someone wants to comment on a specific task. So you have some person writing it into the document:

        [ ] Hire intern to work on leaflets *(who's gonna
            do this? Brad??!)*

then:

        [ ] Hire intern to work on leaflets *(who's gonna
            do this? Brad??!)* I'm on it — Liz :)

And off it goes. There's an inherent underlying data model here (checklists) expressed as a freely editable WYSIWYG bullet list. Documents like these quickly turn into messy junk, like a whiteboard full of scribbles, because people are all over it. Google Docs has an annotation feature for this, but it doesn't scale at all.

I've looked through the product tour and tons of screenshots looking for what people are actually using Slite for, and I mostly see disorder. Meeting notes, sure. Project planning, todo list, bugs, scrapbooking, wiki-type tech docs... none of it seems appropriate for Slite, which leaves me wondering what I _could_ use it for. I don't need another poor Evernote, I don't think anyone does, even if it's nicer-looking.

At one point I wondered if Slite could be useful for scrapbooking (example use case: collecting tons of inspirational material for guide one's interior design directions for the company office; another is collecting a bunch of products for comparison before whittling down candidates for purchase), but it's unfortunately not. You can't even drag and drop files into the web page, and once you've uploaded a file or image to the page, it cannot be moved around or copied/pasted (!).

Notion at least gets one kind of useful data model right, which is that of a wiki. Interlinking is, strangely enough, a buried feature (to you have to click on "Copy Link" of a page, then paste that, to get an inline link), but it's there.

</comment><comment><USER34> Congrats Chris ! So many things achieved since last year. I'm impressed. Keep it up !

</comment><comment><USER35> Does this do anything that Quip doesn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

We clearly have a lot in common with Quip. The main difference as of now is organization : Quip is organized exactly like a google Drive, with nested folders while Slite uses channels. It makes the content accessible, permissions easy to manage and actually shows your team important changes of the content.

The other thing really different that we're building is integrations: Quip focuses on in-editor integrations (which are great, we're working on those as well). But for the rest, unlike quip we keep a simple markdown-compliant (& thus universal) format, which let us fetch and push content to all your toolchain.</comment></comment>


This is Your Constitution on Drugs - <AUTHOR> https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/this-is-your-constitution-on-drugs <comment><USER2> When I read this kind of thing, I ask myself: "Is this similar to the way that the moment I start discussing something remotely technical with my wife, she looks like she gives up within about ten seconds?" I just can't finish an article like this without wanting to throw up in my mouth.

I read an article like this and the US legal system seems so completely arbitrary and full of holes to be exploited by whomever can put ideological judges (with essentially lifetime appointments) in place first.

Comparing this to technical systems, both laws and old legacy systems have "tech debt" that has accrued over long periods of time. But, with a technical system, you can remove pieces when they hinder the working of the system.

With legal systems, it seems like everything is based on precedent. Which mean decisions, good or bad, force future decisions in the same direction.

Is this a fundamental misunderstanding of the way things actually work? If not, is there any hope of fixing that trait of the US legal system, where our criminal justice system has so many flaws that impact so many people in such awful ways?

<comment><USER3> The US legal system is built in a way that prevents itself from ever being 'too sure' of something on purpose. It's a safety mechanism to provide some flexibility and protection in edge cases. Technology systems have a very different set of requirements for success.

<comment><USER4> It's awfully sure about statutory sentencing.

<comment><USER5> You're just not waiting long enough.

Give it another 50 years or so and statutory sentencing probably go away. It's a system that moves so slowly that it can take multiple generations to correct wrongs. I think that's considered a feature for long-term stability, but it seems like poor design to me.

If you look at a long enough timescale, we are trending in the right direction.

<comment><USER4> California's Determinate Sentencing Law was enacted not long ago, in '77. What would you call that? A local minimum? In any event, I can only wait as long as I'm not convicted of a crime which carries a statutory sentence. How long is it fair for those already sentenced to wait from the comfort of their prison cells?

<comment><USER5> It's not fair, but I meant 50 more years. I figure real change takes about 4 generations to happen.

If it makes you feel better, you can think of the non-violent imprisoned as grains of sand on the scales of justice. Your persistent outrage helps push for change in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a TLDR, look two the first two paragraphs of the last section:

"""""""""""""""""""""

The war on drugs has been fought largely with laws that were beyond Congress's powers to enact. Although it took a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to prohibit alcohol nationwide, the prohibition of now-illicit substances under the CSA took place without any such amendment. This is perhaps mainly a commentary on the Supreme Court's expansive reading of the Commerce Clause, but it should give pause to anyone who takes the Constitution seriously.

Beyond the modern drug war's legally dubious initiation, the strained legal interpretations and yawning exceptions officials have made to sustain the effort continue to warp our constitutional system. In prosecuting and expanding the war on drugs, the federal government has racked up colossal amounts of debt, fostered state protectionism, adopted countless new federal crimes, and invaded foreign countries without congressional authorization. Meanwhile, government actors at all levels have undermined Americans' freedoms of expression and religious exercise, deprived citizens of their rights to vote and bear arms, authorized warrantless searches and seizures of property without due process, and thrown tens of thousands of people — disproportionately racial minorities — into overcrowded prisons for sentences that are out of step with the crimes they've committed. These actions have changed our understanding of such foundational principles as limited government, federalism, and the separation of powers, all while casting doubt on America's commitment to the rule of law.

"""""""""""""""""""</comment>


Are Cameras the New Guns? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns

<comment><USER2> If other states in the US start implementing these so-called privacy laws, society is in big trouble. I think sometimes the people in charge forget law enforcement at the end of the day are humans and humans make mistakes whether intentionally or unintentionally. We need people keeping law enforcement honest, I don't see the harm in recording police if it's for purposes of evidence in a court case.

It's a case of, "if you're in public and funded by tax payers, are you entitled to that much privacy?" everyone is entitled to a certain level of privacy, but if law enforcement who are potentially misaligned in the morals department are making unjust arrests, there needs to be accountability here to keep the system as honest as possible.

Every time I see any kind of police activity taking place in public, I pull out my phone. It's not illegal here in Australia (yet) and who knows if this TPP agreement has some clause stipulating citizens of participating countries cannot record law enforcement. I always will regardless of the law.

It's sad that it's a class 1 felony in some states which means you could spend 4-15 years in prison. In Australia a life sentence is 25 years, heck a 15 year prison sentence is what I'd expect a rapist to get not someone filming the police...

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: article is from 2010</comment>


Google reportedly leaving Project Maven military AI program after 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/1/17418406/google-maven-drone-imagery-ai-contract-expire <comment><USER2> That still gives them between 6 months and 18 months (whenever the contract expires in 2019) to continue working on this project. They may even finish it during that timeframe. This is purely PR fluff.</comment>


What Are You Not Good At? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/glickman/2011/02/what-are-you-not-good-at.html <comment><USER2> Networking.

I live in SF and go to tech events/parties, but I rarely feel like I'm getting the most out of them. Large events and events not focused on mingling (presentations, conferences) are tough for me to crack. I often don't meet anyone at those events.

'Getting the most out of them' being meeting interesting folks with whom I can work on side projects with or generally clicking professionally.

So far my solution is putting in solid effort chatting people up at at least one small, focused event a week and attempting to chat folks up at a larger one once a month. I'm finding having a current side project is helping the conversations along.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dealing with amorphously defined tasks. I run into planning issues, time management issues, etc.

I find that defining what needs to be done as concretely and minutely as possible (within reason), does absolute wonders for my ability to manage tasks. It sometimes results in me needing to go over things many times (and risk looking the fool to someone who is not familiar with how I work) in order to clarify precisely what the expected outcome is but that is a small price to pay for super powered productivity.</comment>


The rich get richer: Loonie swaps and altcoin airdrops - <AUTHOR> http://gyrovague.com/2017/08/09/the-rich-get-richer-loonie-swaps-and-altcoin-airdrops/ <comment><USER2> Tempted to invest in cryptocurrency, however I'm acutely aware a sure sign a market is in for a fall is when I become tempted to invest, I've been saying that about BTC for a couple of years now, though.</comment>


Replacing Sawzall – a case study in domain-specific language migration - <AUTHOR> http://www.unofficialgoogledatascience.com/2015/12/replacing-sawzall-case-study-in-domain.html <comment><USER2> Expected this to be an analysis of the replacement of the "Sawzall®" trademark name with the generic "Reciprocating saw". Milwaukee used to be the only manufacturer, now everybody makes one, and in cordless versions too. It would be an interesting language study to analyze the construction and demolition domains to find out at what rate do people stop calling them Sawzalls, and how is this age or experience dependent?

And no, Googler, they're rarely used for cutting regular logs. Green wood is likely to pinch the blade and cutting will be slow. That's what chainsaws are for. Sawzalls are useful for two reasons: The blades are cheap, thin, flexible, and replaceable, so they're ideal for demolition. Need to remove a sill plate that's been nailed to the concrete? Push the sawzall blade under it and cut the nails flush. Need to remove a header to resize a window or door? Just cut it with the sawzall. Also, the blade is short, so you can cut curves in thin material. Need to cut a profile out of that installed gypsum board (language migration - was "Drywall®") or cement board? Skip the hand saw and use the Reciprocating Saw/Sawzall.

What would be further interesting is at what rate do these trends appear and disappear in other, faster-moving domains - for example, Skype still has an advantage because some people use it as a generic word for video chat. How does this affect Apple, Google, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and other providers? How long does this last? Do people still "check in" to CVS/SVN when they really mean they "git commit"?

</comment><comment><USER3> " _At Google, most Sawzall analysis has been replaced by Go. ... To ease the process of migrating from Sawzall, we've developed a set of Go libraries that we call Lingo (for Logs in Go)._ "

The eternal conflict between domain specific languages and libraries in general purpose languages.

<comment><USER4> ...and the resulting eternal search for adaptable general purpose programming languages to resolve the conflict. See Smalltalk-72 (too much), Smalltalk-76 (keyword syntax, nice compromise for making APIs DSL-ish), Ruby (hackable, but nasty), Grace's generalized method names (looks pretty awesome!)...

<comment><USER5> Grace's method names allow one to say:

        circle.at(x,y) radius(5) fill("solid")

where in Python one might say:

        circle.at(x,y, radius=5, fill="solid")

Objective C also allows multipart method names that help document the arguments.

For you young whippersnappers, this idea goes back over half a century to Algol-60 where the commas that delimit parameters to functions can be optionally replaced by ") text: (". So our procedure call in Algol-60 could be written:

        draw(circle) at: (x,y) radius: (5) fill: (1.0)

or as:

        draw(circle, x, y, 5, 1.0)

<comment><USER4> Well, Objective-C's message names came from Smalltalk:

        context circleWithFill:'solid' at:x@y radius:5.

These keyword messages actually go a long way towards bridging the gap between API and DSL.

What Grace does is based on this approach, but goes significantly beyond it in closing the gap further by allowing the parameter parts to be regular languages. So as a somewhat silly example you could have a single method that draws circles of the same size and fill at many different locations:

        context circlWithFill:'solid' at:20@30 at:30@30 at: 100@20 radius:5.

Depending on the definition of the method, the 'at:' part could be repeated 0-n times. It's pretty amazing.

[https://michael.homer.nz/Publications/DLS2015/paper.pdf](https://michael.homer.nz/Publications/DLS2015/paper.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robinhood UK launch postponed indefinitely - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/hv4qz2/robinhood_uk_launch_postponed_indefinitely/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just got the email, but there are no other announcements so this time it's link to Reddit.

       An update on Robinhood UK
       Hi there,

       We're saddened to share that we've made the difficult decision to postpone our UK launch indefinitely. We'll be closing our waitlist and taking down our UK website shortly.

       The world has changed a lot over the past several months and we're adapting with it. On a company level, we've come to recognise that our efforts are currently best spent on strengthening our core business in the US and making further investments in our foundational systems.

       Since we announced our intent to launch in the UK, we've been fueled by your excitement for Robinhood and humbled by your response. We're sorry that we cannot deliver the product we promised you this year.

       Although our global expansion plans are on hold for now, we will continue our work to democratise finance for all and we look forward to the day when we can bring this mission to the UK.
       Sincerely,
       The Robinhood UK Team</comment>


So yeah, about Clojure's syntax - <AUTHOR> https://vvvvalvalval.github.io/posts/2018-01-06-so-yeah-about-clojures-syntax.html <comment><USER2> > First, let me start by saying this: syntax is NEVER a good reason to use or > dismiss a programming language. If your approach for choosing a language is > 'I (don't) like the syntax', you're doing it wrong.

Sorry, but this is BS. A program language's syntax is an integral part of its error-proneness and hence of its safety. E.g., if putting/not putting a semicolon can crash a rocket, then that programming language's syntax has failed.

No, really, syntax matters a lot!

(This does not mean that I think Closure's syntax is bad.)</comment>


Kilim: Fast, lightweight, cheap message passing in Java. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcleangenerators.com/portable-generators/kilim-fast-lightweight-cheap-message-passing-in-java

<comment><USER2> Sounds great, but almost a year old. Guess he's writing up.

Download it from here: <http://www.malhar.net/sriram/kilim/index.html></comment>


Synthetic Speech Generated from Brain Recordings - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/04/414296/synthetic-speech-generated-brain-recordings <comment><USER2> Requires an implant, but cleverly they are using implants already required to help suppress epileptic seizures. Accurate to about 47% of a 50 word vocabulary, and only that high because they're decoding signals thrown off by subvocalization.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've wondered whether meaning from heard words is partially decoded through a similar process.

When actively listening to speech sounds, I sort of feel what it would feel like to mimic the words I hear, and this enhances my understanding of the speech. I also find that I often subvocalize the text I read.

It's like the meaning of the words are somewhat connected with the pattern required to voice it.

<comment><USER4> Is not speech and language partially the process of replaying thought processes so that the receiver can experience the same path and progression. We don't communicate facts so much as paths through a winding trail of thought.

Maybe if our neural networks had a more rigid pattern, the same activation fronts could be copied from person to person, creating cross person feelings and experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Prior discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19740923)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's going to be something like Occlumency from Harry Potter. To avoid people reading your thoughts, you will need to practice thinking nonverbally.

I realize that I already think pretty nonverbally, I don't really have an inner monologue so much as an inner visualization. Come at me NSA, you got nothing.

<comment><USER7> [https://youtu.be/jsp1KaM-avU](https://youtu.be/jsp1KaM-avU)</comment></comment>