Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2018/antitrust-the-app-store-and-apple/ <comment><USER2> While I don't care either way about the lawsuit, he did make one great point. Apple under Tim Cook is more concerned about being profitable through rent seeking than making products that people are willing to pay a premium for.

On an unrelated note, when people call Apple a monopoly because the only way that you can reach IOS users is via the App Store, I always say how is that different than the console makers[1]? But even more broadly, if you want to reach Facebook users you have to go through the Facebook and the same with Google and Amazon. How are any of the other platform providers any different?

[1] yes the physical media you buy for consoles still has to be approved by the console makers, they are cryptographically signed and they have to pay a license fee to the console makers.

<comment><USER3> > Apple under Tim Cook is more concerned about being profitable through rent > seeking than making products that people are willing to pay a premium for.

This just does not match any available data. Look at where Apple gets the bulk of its revenue and profits: hardware products and optional services.

Look at their investment: the bulk of it goes toward developing new products and acquiring new technical capabilities.

Look at their pay services, none of which are required. You don't have to buy apps from the App Store; many apps are available for free, including almost all of Apple's own apps. You don't have to subscribe to Apple Music. You don't have to use iCloud for backups, for photo management, for anything, really. You don't have to use Apple Pay.

Look at their open access to the Internet. You can load any website you want in Safari... don't want the Facebook app? Just go to facebook.com, it works great.

Look at their most popular service, iMessage, which is still free.

Look at their required software updates, which are all free. New iOS? Install it for free. New version of Garage Band? Download it for free.

I think people are getting confused about what "rent seeking" actually means. Apple's paid services are _upsells_.

Rent payments are not optional (just like paying rent for real estate--you have to live somewhere). Microsoft made tens of $billions charging for non- optional OS updates and application updates... that was rent seeking. Again: note that Apple does not charge for their software updates!

<comment><USER4> You may be strictly technically correct, but it doesn't reflect reality:

\- iCloud free tier is 5gb -- not enough for even a casual phone user with 1 minute 4k 60fps video (option on iPhones for 2-3 years now) takes 400mb.

\- The alternative to "paid" apps are ad-supported apps. You're paying either with your bank account or your data and attention. I don't think we should call this optional and otherwise encourage ad-based ecosystem. (And, side note, I argue Apple should also tax ad revenue to prevent the current artificial advantage ad revenue has over IAP.)

The rent seeking point from Stratechery is taken directly from Apple's own earnings calls where they are now measuring their success based on revenue from this rent-seeking instead of on devices sold.

Whatever is measured will drive the company focus. To sell more devices they have to innovate and increase excellence. To increase rents they have to wring more and more $$ from existing users (with a secondary focus on increasing the hassle of switching). Apple themselves explain that they have shifted their focus from the former to the latter.

<comment><USER3> > The rent seeking point from Stratechery is taken directly from Apple's own > earnings calls where they are now measuring their success based on revenue > from this rent-seeking instead of on devices sold.

I challenge you to find one instance of Apple describing their own strategy as "rent seeking".

Again: people are getting confused. Optional paid services are not the same thing as rent seeking.

<comment><USER2> Rent seeking is the amount that Apple charges for media it sells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with most of the article, but don't really like how it just breezes through this part:

 _[Apple] can leverage its smartphone share into monopoly profits on digital goods and services that are on iOS not because iOS is anything special, but because that is the only possible way to reach nearly 50% of the U.S. population._

But it _is_ something special precisely because Apple has enforced such strict quality control measures for its apps. It has refused lots of apps because allowing them would damage users' trust of its store. So just having an app show up in the store is a signal of quality. This is precisely why the store can reach 50% of the market. This is significant because without those standards from day one, I don't think Apple would have achieved its reputation as best in class which allowed it to gain the leadership position it has. So its a symbiotic relationship and you can't just focus on one side of the equation.

There probably aren't a lot of people who remember the Palm app experience which was way before the App Store. Apps were horribly unreliable and one had to rely on outside reviewers to determine which if any should be installed. Granted technology has changed drastically since then so its not an entirely fair comparison, but still I believe that you can't simply look at the App Store as a provider that could be replicated by anyone in the exact same manner as Apple if only they were allowed to. I do agree that users shouldn't be restricted from visiting other sites from within apps or even download from outside sources if a particular developer chooses to release its apps through an outside distributor.

<comment><USER6> You nailed it on the head in your last sentence. Consumers can enjoy all of the benefits you mentioned with the App Store but should still have the ability to side load apps from Safari with a big "Warning - this app is not approved by Apple and may harm your device" popup. The fact that it's not even remotely an option like it is on Android devices is the issue. As a developer I want to be able to provide my customers with my iOS software without going through the app store, and if they don't want to load it that's up to them. But we should all have a choice.

<comment><USER7> Part of the reason Android has a reputation as a malware-ridden platform is due to that freedom of choice.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure most android crap is delivered through Google Play

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think what bothers me most about Apple's behaviour with the App Store is this:

> Apple does nothing to increase the value of Netflix shows or Spotify music > or Amazon books or any number of digital services from any number of app > providers; they simply skim off 30% because they can.

30% is a huge cut for what amounts to hosting, payment processing, and basic QA. Despite taking this big chunk, quality control in the App Store feels like it's on the decline - with a bunch of malware and scams slipping through in recent years. And of course, charging 30% for non-app content distributed through the App Store is completely insane.

<comment><USER10> How does Apple get a 30% cut out of me using Netflix? If I want Netflix, I go to netflix.com, sign up and give them payment information, and then use my browser, or Netflix apps on phones, TVs, etc. The Netflix iOS app is listed as free to download. Where is Apple's 30% cut of my Netflix subscription coming from?

Same for Amazon's Kindle and video apps. Same for Spotify's app. The trend there seems to be they make the app free, and let you sign up and pay for their service on their own website (which you can do in Safari on iOS, if you want to). So I don't understand how Apple's "skimming" anything out of those apps -- 30% of $0 is $0.

<comment><USER11> Here are the rules: you can offer subscription on your site, but you can't link to it in the app. If you want to buy a subscription for Netflix/Spotify in the app, then Apple will take 30% cut. Some sites give this option with increased price by 30% to move payments to their sites, some don't.

<comment><USER10> I know you _can_ offer subscriptions and purchases in the app. I just don't understand how anyone thinks Netflix, Amazon, etc are _forced_ to, because they aren't.

<comment><USER12> They're not forced to, no, but they are forced to keep the price in the app the same as elsewhere if they choose to offer in-app purchase subscriptions in their apps; to be on the App Store, you're not allowed to offer a discount to the same subscription cheaper outside the App Store. If there is a generally- available discount (say, for a promotion), that discounted price must also be reflected in the in-app purchase cost.

The net effect is that sellers lose 30% of the potential earnings from the in- app purchases compared to getting subscriptions from elsewhere, and they're not allowed to increase in-app purchase prices by 30% to compensate.

Because Apple disallows sellers from having messages or buttons in their apps that take users to the sellers' websites in order to make the subscription, users who don't know better than to use the in-app purchase system wind up making the sellers less money — in theory. I say "in theory" since, after all, the sellers don't have to deal with payment systems, credit card processing, the sorts of hosting costs associated with popular app downloads, and so on.

On the one hand, it's clearly unfair and heavy handed for Apple to disallow those messages enticing users to the websites so sellers can take the full price. On the other hand, with apps moving to free-to-download but requiring subscriptions to function, especially big ones like Netflix and so on, it mightn't be that surprising: a 30% cut of the subscriptions might turn out to be rather reasonable given that Apple's hosting the App Store, addressing and directing complaints, handling payments, and more.

On yet a third hand, companies don't need to provide in-app purchases for subscriptions at all, mandating that users go to their websites. It's up to the sellers to decide what provides users with the least friction, though.

<comment><USER10> _handling payments_

FWIW this is the main thing I like about the App Store rules. There are some sites and services I'll trust with payment information, but there are many, many more I won't. Being able to buy/subscribe to things anyway, with Apple as the trusted intermediary handling the payment, is pretty convenient.

<comment><USER12> I don't think people give enough credit to how expensive it can be to pay the payment processors, given enough transactions. Maybe not so cost-effective for smaller businesses, but excellent for the bigger ones or when there are heavy spikes in payments.

Not only that, but letting your users not need to deal with credit card details or remembering their PayPal logins, whatever, is very frictionless and thus an attractive proposition for regular, non-technical users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the analysis that Ben does on so many pressing tech related issues.

I agree with the majority of what he said but I disagree that it is that clear cut that Apple's rent seeking isn't hurting costumers. While I'm no lawyer either, the Supreme Court case that is relevant here was dealing with the state of Illinois as a customer and the mass consumer markets are two different things and I believe the Supreme Court will deal with this in a separate lens.

Could be very well that Apple does win but the fact that a product like Spotify, to name one, is cheaper when bought through the Spotify website and more expensive on the App Store shows clearly that in fact this does harm customers. I think the Supreme Court could rule in a whole other direction on this because of that fact coupled with Apple allowing no other competition on the platform, meaning no way to download a second App Store or even link to purchasing the product on a website especially for digital goods.

<comment><USER14> In your own example, you have the option to buy Spotify through other, readily-available distribution channels. That's evidence _against_ a claim that Apple is abusing its position in an anticompetitive manner. The test for monopoly isn't what's best for consumers; it's whether a dominant player is abusing its position to restrain competition.

<comment><USER15> I think what you're saying is true for probably 99% of apps on the App Store.

In Spotify's particular case, however, Apple owns the marketplace (App Store) as well as a giant competitor in iTunes/Apple Music (and if I'm not mistaken - I'm not an iOS user- Apple Music is pre-installed on every iOS device).

<comment><USER16> The music app is preinstalled. It happens to be the method you use to access the Apple Music service (and yes, Apple _has_ been pushing that service increasingly, to my mild personal irritation).

However, it's also the method you use to access music you own that is on the iPhone, whether you've synced it from your computer or purchased it through the iTunes Store.

Now, maybe I'm just a dinosaur for wanting mainly to listen to music I own rather than streaming services all the time, but I don't think you can just claim that use case doesn't exist or matter.

<comment><USER15> I'm not saying that use case doesn't matter, but one could make the argument that the deep integration between Apple Music/iTunes into the Music app combined with a 30% premium on competitors selling music subscriptions in an app could be a non-level playing field.

Having said all of that, I think that because iOS is Apple's platform, and they should basically be able to do whatever they want with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been thinking about this case a lot as it compares to the investment industry and it's troubling. Apple is the "market maker" here, not unlike the NYSE or NASDAQ and they certainly add value to the consumer and the developer by facilitating sales for devs and offering some level of protection for the customer. Apple of course deserves to be compensated for that value-add. On the other hand, Apple has built this "walled garden", which is another way of saying monopoly, and that comes at a cost to both the consumer (higher prices) and innovation (devs spend time/effort/energy complying with Apple's app store policies).

I'm not terribly familiar with the case law but I do know that NYSE has had at least a handful of similar antitrust cases in the past. I'm not sure if the cases were getting at transaction costs but the crux of every antitrust suit is generally that XYZ action by a monopoly leads to unjustifiably higher prices. It occurred to me that as a result of this case Apple might change their pricing structure to align with the pricing strategy stock exchanges typically use. That is, a nominal transaction fee that covers _only_ the cost of the transaction but then charges the companies an annual "listing fee." That would be awful for innovation, small developers, and by extensions, consumers who would then having fewer apps to choose from.

I suppose thats just a long way of me saying that I fear the Plaintiffs may actually hurt consumers more in the long run.

<comment><USER2> _devs spend time /effort/energy complying with Apple's app store policies)._

And that's a good thing. Nintendo figured out in the 80s that crap devalues your platform and they had to approve what games were allowed to run on it. They saw what happened to Atari.

I'll download basically anything on my iPhone because I know an app can't do much damage - unlike a Windows computer or a Mac.

<comment><USER17> I absolutely agree from a consumer perspective. From the developer side though I'm certain that there are some app store policies dev's have to comply with that benefit neither consumer nor developer and are solely in Apple's interest.

I guess it's just interesting to me because Apple is both the market _and_ the market regulator here. Continuing with my stock exchange analogy Apple plays the role of NYSE and the SEC. The nature of wearing both hats means there are going to be conflicts of interest and Apple has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, not to their consumers. I see both sides but struggle to see a solution that doesn't leave app store customers worse off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Full transcript of oral arguments : [https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2018/17-204_32q3.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> A functional anti-trust would have blasted Apple a long time ago for banning competing browsers on iOS. And I mean really competing ones, that aren't using Apple's browser engine.

<comment><USER20> Browsers are huge attack vectors as they allow you to run arbitrary code. I wouldn't say there isn't a case to not allow third parties to run a platform in your platform.

<comment><USER21> Nonsense. If Apple was worried about arbitrary code they wouldn't have allowed apps in the first place. Browsers are restricted to the same security context that Apple trusts anyone who pays them $99 with.

They just don't want competition on their platform, and Apple is typically remain small enough to get away with that position. Particularly in stronger pro-anti-trust places like the EU, where iOS is less than 30% market share.

<comment><USER20> Either you don't understand what arbitrary code is or you're just too angry with Apple to want to understand it. But apps either run static code or use the Safari JS engine to run code. That's all the flavors you have. Statically compiled Swift code is much easier to deal with than whatever creative things somebody can come up with with JS.

<comment><USER21> Static code _IS_ arbitrary code. Apple didn't author it and didn't vet it. They ran a static analyzer over it (not remotely foolproof) and then trusted the actual security to the process sandbox.

Besides, nothing stops you from still running arbitrary code in iOS downloaded from the web. You're simply restricted to doing that either interpreted or via Apple's JIT. In either case you're still getting arbitrary execution that Apple never statically analyzed, interacting with any APIs that the app wants that code to have access to (intentionally or not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The same arguments hold for the entire platform-economy.

See also: Uber, AirBnb, Amazon, UberEats, ...

We need some new laws, fast.

<comment><USER23> Yup. Anti-trust legislation has lost its teeth.

Analyzing monopolies based on whether there is harm for the individual consumer is completely insufficient for determining whether a company is a monopoly. From "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox", in the Yale Law Journal:

>This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to "consumer welfare," defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy. We cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazon's dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output. Specifically, current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive. These concerns are heightened in the context of online platforms for two reasons. First, the economics of platform markets create incentives for a company to pursue growth over profits, a strategy that investors have rewarded. Under these conditions, predatory pricing becomes highly rational—even as existing doctrine treats it as irrational and therefore implausible. Second, because online platforms serve as critical intermediaries, integrating across business lines positions these platforms to control the essential infrastructure on which their rivals depend. This dual role also enables a platform to exploit information collected on companies using its services to undermine them as competitors.

[https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust- parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)

<comment><USER24> If a monopoly exists, and doesn't harm the consumer, what's the issue?

<comment><USER22> Two points:

• You don't know if it doesn't harm the consumer, because if there were more players on the market, the consumer could (possibly) have more choice and access to better products.

• The monopoly could harm the consumer in the future. At that point it may be more difficult for the market to bootstrap competing products (especially if the monopoly controls the entire supply chain). This is a bad situation, even if it doesn't harm consumers now.

<comment><USER24> You can know if consumers are dissatisfied, which is a sign of market failure. It's impossible to prove that harm doesn't exist, because you can't prove a negative.

If the monopoly does start substantially harming consumers, then I'd say that's when action should be taken, not before the market has a chance to respond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would add to this that there is no way for developers to actually know what their sales are without depending on Apple APIs, there is no way to even _communicate_ with customers without Apple APIs, etc. Furthermore, Apple forces you to take out a short-term loan with them because they won't pay you until some threshold is met every month or so (great, let me tell my web host to not charge fees this month). Sometimes they will not show you any numbers _at all_ , even for history that you know is nonzero, if your app falls below threshold for awhile.

And these are completely unnecessary Apple dependencies.

<comment><USER26> What would you suggest for knowing sales of apps without Apple's APIs? Basically all of these issues come from Apple requiring all apps to be sold through their store. For the end-user experience this has proved very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This should be looking at allowing users porting capabilities for their Apps from iOS to Android (or others). That's the real monopoly across all platforms and devices, not the App Store.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is a counter-attack by Adtech industry. They were not amused by Safari ITP 2.0 and other Apple privacy features.

iPhone market share in US is ~50%.</comment>


All about Birds - <AUTHOR> https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide <comment><USER2> I highly recommend their free birding app for iOS. It's a great intro into brid identification and it's steps to finding a bird you just saw are simple and user friendly.

It has standard packs that are for common birds in the continental US, but also dozens of others for other regions all around the world that you can download for free. I've used it in Hawaii, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Portugal.

[https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/](https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/)

<comment><USER3> I love Merlin!

My only complaint about it is that there isn't an equivalent app for spiders. And insects. And reptiles. And mammals. And...

Ok, seriously, I do wish it had been keeping track of all the birds I've identified with it. But other than that, it's pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a weird coincidence. I currently live in the city, where there is a stark absence of birds -- besides maybe coronavirus pigeons and gulls that will mug you down a dark alley -- but I'm from and work in the countryside, where I've established an acute awareness of the local bird life. I particularly like listening to bird song; I find it very relaxing. As recently as last week, I was thinking about compiling an Anki deck to help me learn to identify birds by sight and by their song. However, I was discouraged not so much by the quantity, but the subtleties in the differences (e.g., the aforementioned pigeons vs. wood pigeons: one has black stripes on their wing tips, but I don't remember which)... Seeing this, this morning on HN, re-encourages me to pursue ornithology as a hobby :)

<comment><USER5> Keep your eyes open and I think you'll find there are far more kinds of birds in the city than one might first think. Once you get into the habit it can be very rewarding!

<comment><USER6> Cities tend to have a concentration effect on birds, especially during migrations. Central Park in NYC, for instance, is one of the best places in the world for birdwatching in spring and fall. Birds migrate at night, and at first light, gravitate to the first tree they can find. Since NYC is concrete for miles and miles, a very wide area's worth of birds all funnel into Central Park (and other parks, of course) and you get amazing quantities and varieties. The same is true for parks in other cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm starting to get into birding. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good app to keep track of what birds you (and maybe others?) have seen? I'm thinking both for journaling / logging purposes so you know what you've seen before, and to know where good places to go are to see certain species.

<comment><USER6> eBird. It is the defacto site worldwide for logging bird sightings. It is free, the app is simple and powerful, and you are contributing to science every time you use it. (It is a product of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and they and other scientists around the world use the data heavily for many purposes). Also, it has lots of tools that help you learn the birds (and birders) in your area - localized histograms of sighting frequency, custom lists of birds you haven't reported yet, lists of nearby hotspots...

As far as identifying, get a field guide (Petersen's, Sibley's are good in the US). There are good forums with talented people helping if you submit pictures on reddit.com/r/whatsthisbird or on Facebook "What's this Bird?" group.

<comment><USER8> Ebird may have larger reach than any other but species sightings databases are usually mainly local / national. There are more records stored in these local databases than in Ebird. So I would answer, "it depends where you live".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this for America only?

I tried entering some species from the UK (Scotland), like the Corncrake, Lapwing and Turnstone but nothing was found.

[https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife- guides/b...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird- a-z/corncrake/)

[https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife- guides/b...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird- a-z/lapwing/)

[https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife- guides/b...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird- a-z/oystercatcher/)

<comment><USER10> Yes. From the subtitle:

ID help and life history info for 600+ North American species

<comment><USER11> But the European Starling is listed.[1] And we have Eugene Schieffelin to thank for that.[2]

[1] [https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/european_starling](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/european_starling)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin)

<comment><USER12> I've seen European Starlings in San Francisco. Birds care not one whit about human borders.

<comment><USER13> The birds cared, at least about the ocean. But Eugene didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Counterpoint: it's what THEY want you to think. Teach the controversy! [https://birdsarentreal.com/](https://birdsarentreal.com/)

</comment><comment> rc-1140 I've been dabbling in amateur birdwatching for a few years now, it's honestly a lot of fun to be able to pick out local birds that I previously wouldn't have been able to put a name to: recently discovered that there are Grey Catbirds[0] in my area.

I wish Cornell's Ornithology lab exposed some kind of simple GET-only API, would love to be able to integrate it into some kind of chatbot to get people around me interested in the birds around them.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfWx6W7B1V0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfWx6W7B1V0)

<comment><USER6> They do have an API. It doesn't have everything but does cover a lot of interesting use-cases.

[https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/664302/S1ENwy59?versi...](https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/664302/S1ENwy59?version=latest)

You can also request to download all or filtered subsets of their entire database and play with it locally.

Among other things, I built this ([http://empid.herokuapp.com/](http://empid.herokuapp.com/), source code at [https://github.com/ses4j/empid](https://github.com/ses4j/empid)) using eBird data.

<comment> rc-1140 I can't really tell if this is what I'm looking for. I was hoping for something that simply cataloged information about birds like the Audubon does, i.e., I can go to the page for the Purple Sandpiper[0] and see information about that bird and hear its calls.

Regardless, I took a look at your project. It's very cool!

[0] [https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/purple- sandpiper](https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/purple-sandpiper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Their app, Merlin, is awesome as well. I travel a lot and it has helped me identify birds everywhere I go.

<comment><USER16> I'll also recommend another Android app, BirdNET [1]. This app does audio identification. and is jointly developed by a small team of EU researchers and Cornell. Covers 1,000+ species in North America and Europe. I've found that it does a remarkable job of identification even with crappy mobile phone microphones, and even in noisy environments. It ships off a recording to a server for analysis using neural nets trained on 2.5 million samples. I'm assuming that it's using Cornell's audio recordings, perhaps others. Times when I don't get a good match, it's best guess is often correct for birds that I know.

I've seen similar apps for iOS, but haven't tried any of them.

1\. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.tu_chemnitz...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.tu_chemnitz.mi.kahst.birdnet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you haven't taken up bird watching as a hobby, you should absolutely do it.

You know that feeling of playing runescape or minecraft or some other game and finding that one rare item? Birding is like that, except in real life.

I have audibly gasped many times when I've found a bird that I had never seen before.

Get a decent pair of binoculars (nikon aculon $70 is a good cheap starter pair) and take a relaxing stroll. Birds tend to like water and the edges of two habitats (fields and woods, marsh and fields, etc).

Part of the fun is using your ears and trying to track that darn bird down.

<comment><USER18> For me one interesting aspect was to watch my "hunter sense" wake up doing it - you start out and barely notice anything at all, you walk the woods and try to see some birds, but then with time it "wakes up", and even though you're not trying, you subconsciously "know" where some birds are, or that they are there. And as opposed to actual hunting everybody is still alive in the end, so win-win ;) (unless you're watching birds of prey of course)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's everyone's favorite bird sighting?

I'm from southeast Alaska. We have a lot of interesting birds, but they tend to be fairly drab at this latitude. My favorite sighting happened on an early morning run in southwest Colorado. I was running down a mountain road at sunrise, and a western tanager was singing loudly from the very top of a tall pine. It was the most brilliant, beautiful bird I'd ever seen.

<comment><USER20> I've been into raptors for 25+ years, and at age 54 saw my first California condor. We were driving back from the North Rim and I saw this massive bird, then caught sight of the white underwing. Pulled the car over, into a couple small shrubs (I was excited, ok) and grabbed my camera. I didn't have my good binos (vintage Leica) but the camera had decent zoom. It was blasting wind and the condor was riding it like a roller coaster, sometimes straight over me, then seconds later a half mile north, then back, high, low. In the zoo, they just sit; here, it was in its element and full of life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah Wingspan[0] database as a service.

[0][https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan)

<comment><USER22> Wingspan was the first thing I thought of too ;-) I should be getting the Europe expansion any day now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Cornell Ornithology Lab produces some incredible resources for citizen science work, keeps me I'm a happy donor.

</comment><comment><USER24> You have to love the donate button for Cornell University, with tuitions of 50,953 USD.

<comment><USER25> I'd presume the donation goes toward the Ornithology department specifically, which probably isn't the best-funded in the university. It's not like they expect you to send in hundreds, just a buck here and there to encourage them to keep working on the database.

<comment><USER26> You are correct, it goes to the lab directly.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your regrets? - <AUTHOR> I was asked the other day by a friend whether i regretted a few of the major decisions that I've made in life.. That got me wondering what kind of regrets people in a similar situation to me have.<p>So what are your regrets? <comment><USER2>
      If I could live again my life,
      In the next one – I'd try to make more mistakes,
      I wouldn't try to be so perfect, I'd be more relaxed,
      I'd be sillier than I've been,
      In fact, I'd take things much less seriously.
      I'd be less hygenic.
      I'd run more risks,
      take more trips,
      watch more sunsets.
      I'd climb more mountains, swim more rivers,
      I'd go to many more places where I've never been,
      I'd eat more ice cream and fewer peas,
      I'd have more real problems and fewer imaginary ones.

      I was one of those people who lived
      prudently and fully every minute of his life;
      of course I had moments of joy.
      But if I could go back I'd try
      to have only good moments.

      Because if you don't know, thats what life is made of,
      only moments; don't lose the now.

      I was the type who never went anywhere
      without a thermometer,
      a hot-water bottle,
      an umbrella and a parachute,
      If I could live again, I'd travel lighter.

      If I could live again, I'd go barefoot
      from the beginning of spring
      and stay barefoot until the end of autumn.

      I'd ride in more carts,
      I'd watch more sunrises,
      and play with more children,
      If I had another life ahead of me.

      But now I am 85…
      and I know that I am dying.

<comment><USER3> The author of that appears to be Jose Luis Borges:

[http://books.google.com/books?ei=zvzWTNPpKsT_nAf7j7DpCQ&...](http://books.google.com/books?ei=zvzWTNPpKsT_nAf7j7DpCQ&ct=result&id=uPFIAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22I+was+one+of+those+who+never+went+anywhere+without+a+thermometer%22+borges&q=%22I+was+one+of+those+who+never+went+anywhere+without+a+thermometer%22#search_anchor)

<comment><USER4> It's often misattributed to Borges. It was written (in prose) by columnist Don Herold in 1953 for the _Reader's Digest_. Since then it underwent several changes, has been attributed to several authors, was broken into a verse form, was translated to Spanish, acquired a Spanish title, "Instantes", was then re- translated back into English often retaining the Spanish title...

It's lived a long and colorful life. But Borges didn't write it.

There's a detailed study of this poem's history at <http://www.borges.pitt.edu/bsol/iainst.php>. It's in Spanish, but Google Translate can give you the gist of it in English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, where shall I begin?

I turned down an offer of admission from MIT. Granted, I had my reasons, and had I accepted, there's an inappropriately high probability I would've had to discontinue halfway through. I guess what I really regret is letting circumstances reach that point.

What I really regret is things I didn't do. The girls I should have asked out. The musical instrument I didn't learn to play. I honestly wish I'd made more clear mistakes in high school, instead of constantly playing it safe and thereby skipping important life lessons.

I regret spending so much of my life in front of the computer. Indeed, the hacking skills I developed will help me when launching, but the social skills I didn't develop will kill me. One of my worst fears is that I will get pigeonholed into a being a backroom programmer, and this fear influences everything from my cofounder search to my current distribution of time.

On the flip side, what I regret from the past might not be so regrettable when I consider that I'm not making the same mistakes right now. It goes back to my hypothesis that what I should regret are the mistakes that I didn't make when I was younger, because I may have to make them when the stakes are higher.

<comment><USER6> So how much of that are you going to change, starting today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Believing for so long that I needed someone's money to build something.

After being unemployed for a little over 3 months earlier this year, I built a product on my own (instead of going for the safe job option, and taking the huge of risk of, you know, running out of food money) and managed to get it acquired by a media company here in Sao Paulo.

And that was quite possibly greatest lesson of my life.

Take risks. It pays off.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure this is very good advice. The people that are likely to comment here (as with product reviews) are those with unordinary experiences. Yours was positive and I am glad for you, however, for every good experience like this I suspect there are many that regret such actions.

<comment><USER7> I think you have to measure things with care. I always thought that if worse came to worst, I could always still get a shitty PHP coding job. Things are never as bad as they appear to be. I think the message is to get over the irrational fear of unemployment, and the nonsensical notion that web apps are expensive to keep running. They're not. You need a domain name and a cheap server box. If you already have a laptop, there's even free wifi everywhere. If you think about that for a second, you realize it's a wonder there aren't /more/ startups booming everywhere than there are today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I regret focusing on getting good grades in school instead of building strong connections with people.

<comment><USER10> In the same vein, dealing with women. Sex is human being's strongest motivator, choose to ignore it at your own peril.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No reason to regret anything, as I see it. I am the culmination of my 24 short years of experience. Without my experiences, good, bad or indifferent, I wouldn't be the person I am today. And I like that person.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nothing major. But currently I am seriously regretting my decision to buy an iPhone instead of android.

<comment><USER13> How come?

<comment><USER12> I took the decision a little too early. I should have checked it earlier that there is no legal way to develop iPhone apps on Linux except (probably)buying OS X and running it on a virtual machine and almost ditto goes for Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to regret a lot of things, now I don't. You learn from every mistake you make. (As I like to say in my own geeky way "Every failure == +1XP")

</comment><comment><USER15> Not learning self-discipline when I was young.

Not learning musical fundamentals when I was young.

To a lesser extent, pursuing a whack university degree :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I regret all the times I was afraid of doing something.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've loved 2 wonderful women over the last 9 years since high school, but missed out on ever being single and all that entails (one night stands, etc). I just hope that doesn't haunt me when I'm middle aged.

<comment><USER18> Trust me you're not missing anything at all. If I actually had any regrets is doing the single thing too much and going overboard too many times.

<comment><USER19> He needs to find out for himself that he's not missing anything...btw he IS missing a LOT. Being Single and being in a relationship affect your lifestyle in different ways, and everyone should take time to enjoy both.

<comment><USER18> The man says that he's in a committed relationship, but that he's scared of the fact that he might miss the "single" experience. If you tell him that he is missing "a LOT" you're giving him encouragement for him to leave that relationship to live the single lifestyle that is completely overblown by the media.

It's easy to tell people they are missing the best part of being in their twenties, when in reality it's not all that it's been made up to be, as the only thing it really contributes to one's life is a false sense of accomplishment.

Here's another golden nugget for the grandparent: Everyone talks about the single lifestyle, but that's a lifestyle suited for a really small fraction of the people that supposedly tell you it's the next big thing. You need a boatload of social skills that a great percentage of people don't really have, you need to be sort of successful at the moment, you need to have a way with women (which is something that comes from a boatload of experience), and you really need to have at least a couple of friends that are living it large as well.

I've seen friends make this exact same statement, that they are missing out and that they think they should leave the relationship they have and try the single lifestyle. It always blows up in their faces. In contrast, the two friends I had that really lived this lifestyle at the same time I did both realized they where going down fast and now one is married and the other one is engaged.

If there is one advice I can give you GP. If you have a couple of friends that tell you it's the greatest thing ever, the threesomes, the challenges, the satisfaction of bedding that model, etc... realize one thing, for every one of those men, there are hundreds (if not thousands) that won't achieve the same experiences, and the one's that do generally burn out pretty quickly. If you were single, I'd tell you to try it out and see what happens, but you're not and it would be a mistake to try to live it up just because. If you're happy with your significant other, don't sweat it, it's a lifestyle not worth your while.

Hell most people that do live it up like this don't do it because of a life choice, they do it because it's the only thing they have ever known, and it's a thing that just happened. You can't artificially become a money spending ladies man just like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well there was this girl, whom I didn't go after...

<comment><USER21> There was this girl, who I did...

Edit: Downvote? Really? Look there are some people who you _don't_ learn fuzzy little life lessons from despite the bad times. There are some people who are just bad for your soul, who drain the life from you with constant drama, _who you really could just do without._

My regret is not learning this in time to avoid being caught up with one of them, and when finding myself so, letting it go on as long as I did.

<comment><USER22> "There are some people who are just bad for your soul, who drain the life from you with constant drama, who you really could just do without."

I second that! Same situation here.

<comment><USER23> When I was young, I thought that all of life was carbon-based. Later, I learned that there are also anxiety-based lifeforms. Who we all really could just do without.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I reget not checking my email in July 2009.

Yesterday, I decided that 61 unread messages was too much, so I went through them.

In July 2009, Facebook emailed me suggesting I give them a quick call to discuss my "career goals/ambitions and opportunities at facebook". For real.

I was right in the middle of my degree, super busy with my final project, and... somehow it must have just slipped past me.

Although, as one of my friends commented:

Look at it this way: It's not like you're a _worse_ developer since then.

<comment><USER25> What exactly prevents your from emailing them back now?

<comment><USER24> Nothing at all. But it's still a shame I didn't pick the email up there and then - could have gone straight from uni to Facebook, would have been a good time to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Regrets are a funny thing. We did what we did because we lacked the help of "hindsight" which we have now. In that context, it's far too easy to end up criticizing ourselves. As for me, I prefer to not regret, but just learn from my past.

</comment><comment><USER27> I should have put a lot more thought into who I wanted to be and how I wanted to get there when I was in highschool. I'm fairly satisfied with who I am but some more forethought would have helped quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER28> Almost everything that I would do differently with the wisdom of hindsight comes down to one of two stories: it's something I could have started immediately but didn't, so I wasted time before starting it later anyway or never did it at all, or it's something I did start but then gave up on too soon or for the wrong reasons.

Put another way, it's not so much the missed opportunities I regret, but the opportunities I recognised were worth taking that I didn't then make the most of. Usually the delayed starting or early quitting was for some reason that seemed very important and logical at the time, but with hindsight just looks like ignorance, cowardice or laziness.

If there were only one thing I could teach my children, I think it would be how to act with integrity and be a decent person. But if I could teach two, I think the second would be that you can't follow every opportunity in life, but those things you do choose to pursue are worth doing properly.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a difficult one because our decisions & mistakes made earlier in our lives are what make us who we are today.

It's a cliché, but mistakes are an opportunity to learn, that means I've had a hell of a lot of learning experiences!

If anything, the only things worth regretting are mistakes that you've repeated - because they could be avoidable?

I dropped out of dental school in order to pursue a computer-science degree instead. Everyone around me told me I should have done the comp-sci degree in the first place, with hind-sight that's obvious and technically I 'lost' a year. But that one year of studying for dentistry and having to make the major decision to drop-out was fantastic experience.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every cute girl I don't talk to on the street that catches my eye. Thats a regret.

Everything to date I am happy about, no reason to complain.

</comment><comment><USER31> Regrets? I've had a few; but, then again, too few to mention.

I _could_ regret having voluntarily foregone a normal childhood in favor of solitary intellectual and artistic pursuits, but then I wouldn't have had the foundation that later allowed my to do some really neat things for a living.

I _could_ regret having dropped out of high school upon learning that I'd won enough in scholarships to attend Waterloo at a tidy profit just before graduation, but I'd probably be complaining about the idiots I have to lecture when I'm rudely dragged away from my hunt for a generalized solution to the n-sphere packing problem (which will, of course, be crucial to the moving industry when humanity evolves beyond the constraints of three-dimensional meatspace).

I _could_ regret the ethical quagmire that was my military service, particularly around the time of the Oka crisis in Quebec, but I would have to do without the discovery that I am a rather good teacher of matters mathematical and technical, and that I can speak publicly with confidence about things that matter to me.

I _could_ regret drinking myself half to death trying to solve the question of how to appear to be social while remaining comfortable in my solitude, but without a truly desperate need to save my life, I never would have been able to overcome the voluntary, learned autism I developed in childhood.

As jacobroufa said in an earlier comment, if I were to change any of that, I wouldn't be who I am today. And I have had a life that is nearly beyond imagining. I'm a high school dropout (I never did finish, or even get a GED) who has taught electricty/electronics and mathematics at college. I'm a "failed" musician (I sold six records -- not six different albums; six paid- for copies of my one and only album) who, as a utility sideman, played gigs with some of my heroes in the jazz and blues world. When educational funding dried up in Ontario during the '90s recession, I found that the only postion available for an ex-military high school dropout was shining shoes, and that drove me to but an obsolete computer and teach myself to program. It took a while (years) to meet my own admittedly high standards and to break into the industry at all as a n00b pushing forty, but I became a highly Googleable entity (once you figure out how to filter out the dead folk singer with whom I share a name) and had a reputation for innovative thinking within my little niche (Notes and Domino -- please hold the comments; the platform is much better than most of the applications written for it). No shoeshine boy, no Google hits. I've loved and been loved in return; I've had my heart broken and experienced loss -- and become more human in the process. I have a tremor disorder with an associated dementia now (and hang around places like this and Stack Overflow to stave off the decline as long as I can -- it beats doing the crossword), and suffer intermittent aphasia that sort of alternates between Broca- and Wernicke-associated damage patterns and am hugely unreliable due to physical incapacitation, yet I'm still asked to give motivational talks on a regular basis. (Yes, by people who have heard me before.)

We can spend a lifetime regretting the path not taken, and another worrying about the consequences of the next choice. But always keep in mind the sage advice of Yogi Berra: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Read as a mere Yogism, it may seem inane, but if you really give it some consideration (as Yogi did before he said it) you'll find that it is an admonition to avoid the paralysis of indecision. There may come a time when you wonder what might have been down the other path, but standing at the point of choice, tossing coins for the rest of your life means going nowhere and doing and learning nothing.

<comment><USER32> +1 for everything mentioned here. +10 for the way it was mentioned. +100 for the Sinatra reference.

<comment><USER33> (totally off-topic)

and plus a few more points for having the same as this guy:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-PQbdmQRwc>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> No regrets, really. Just thankfulness for the times I lucked out.

</comment><comment><USER35> I regret not seeking out more personal mentoring when I was younger instead of more schooling. It's easier to ask for and get when you're young-- the mentor is more likely to be flattered and more likely to see that taking a young person under his/her wing is worthwhile. It's harder (but not impossible) to do when you're older: you have less time to spend with that experienced person.

</comment><comment><USER36> I regret not forcing myself to leave my over-paid, reliable, incredibly easy job years ago. Despite building many (what I consider cool) things solo, my job search is suffering from a lack of experience developing in a collaborative environment and the problem of being too much of a generalist. This is what happens when you do everything yourself.

<comment><USER37> Never regret being a generalist.

...I think I just accidentally made a pun.

<comment><USER38> where's the pun? I don't see it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I run a small site that does this: record people's regrets. <http://regrett.com>

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not big on regrets. I make the best decision I know how and try to learn from my mistakes. Now, if you want to know my current frustrations and annoyances -- the things I am trying desperately to _not_ have become regrets -- that list is reasonably long. :-D

</comment><comment><USER41> A few things I regret: -As a college student, I regret not learning how to program earlier -Not spending more time learning how to program (I am trying to remedy this) -Not taking as many risks (Mainly having to do with some girls in my life)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is more of a public journal entry than anything, but I honestly don't regret anything. I only dated one girl before the girl who I married, I'm about to have a kid, I've worked with a ridiculous amount of great companies, I had a semi-nerdy time in school, and none of it has given me any regrets.

There's been times when I've been burned, but most of the time it was from me reaching too high for a position which I wasn't yet ready for. When I failed, it hurt really badly at the time, and I had a lot of regrets then, but now I can say it's been the best failure I've ever had.

</comment><comment><USER43> There are many things I could've regretted, but ultimately all of those things made me who I am now. I'm fairly certain I've had more than my fair share of opportunities and made more than my fair share of mistakes, but all I can do is identify them as such, learn as much as I can and try to make myself a better person.

Have a screwed up? Heck yes. Do I regret it? No way.

</comment><comment><USER44> I learnt Indian classical music till I was high school and then had to completely give it up for different reasons.I haven't practiced it much since then and I regret it badly. And I really regret not having been much involved in extracurr. activities in college

</comment><comment><USER45> Je ne regrette rien!

<comment><USER31> +1 for the Piaf reference. I'm always two feet taller and wearing armour after hearing that song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Being lazy... it's been a year and I am still inbetween novice and intermediate when it comes to javascript and php. I have the books and some tutorials but I have not really looked at them. I could be a lot farther along with all my projects if I focused.

</comment><comment><USER47> I regret not implementing my ideas into real projects, fearing the fear, predicting the worse, not making a decision on what to focus on among 5 things, writing about all this here rather than learning something.

</comment><comment><USER48> Nights I stayed in during school so I could "do work" when my friends wanted me to go out.

Basically any time I let paranoid thoughts of "I have to do work" prevent me from growing my relationships with others.

</comment><comment><USER49> That I did not become proficient in programming during my undergrad in EE and CE

About the things that I did not regret is the bold decision to come to the States for PhD: I did not regret that for a second

</comment><comment><USER50> Some people call them "regrets." I like to call them "lessons learned."

</comment><comment><USER51> " _The only thing one never regrets are one's mistakes._ "

\--Oscar Wilde

</comment><comment><USER52> wasting time

</comment><comment><USER53> no regrets.

trying to live in a way to keep it that way.</comment>


Ask HN: Sunday brunch question: Do you dream in code? - <AUTHOR>

New problems, changing languages, revisiting old code, all of these seem to make me dream in code. I'm curious how prevalent this is. <comment><USER2> I've dreamt in code a few times, but here is my favorite story.

After a long 14 day I drifted off to sleep on the subway. I had a dream in SQL about trying to figure out the best way to set up the moment with a girl I liked so I could go in for a kiss. For some reason, it involved alot of table joins and sub-queries. When I woke up, I realized I had the solution to the de-duplication problem I had been working on all day!

</comment><comment><USER3> Not regularly, but I've found bugs twice whilst dreaming ... and it's amazing when it happens!

Dream consists of looking through code... then suddenly notice something in my dream-code that isn't quite right and fix it. If I wake up I know it was a dream but am left wondering if it's a bug in real life...

Twice it has been. Brains are weird.

</comment><comment><USER4> Occasionally, yes. The oddest computer-related dream probably occurred when I was taking a computability course: cars entering and leaving parking spaces in a dream that had to do with the "pumping lemma" for regular languages.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very rarely, however I do know a developer who dreamed a full day's work where he solved a big problem and was then really confused when all of his hard work didn't exist the next morning.

<comment><USER6> did it help him arrive at a solution? i've seen a few people who have that experience - the fact that they could have a solution in a dream helped them solve the problem

<comment><USER7> This is a human behavior with a long, very interesting history. Chemist August Kekule supposedly was trying to sort out the chemical structure of Benzene, dozed off, and dreamt of a snake with his tail in his mouth:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#The_ouroboro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9#The_ouroboros_dream)

There are many other similar stories of various kinds of technical problems being solved during sleep and/or while dreaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On an abstract level quite often where I have to process things in a certain order and similar problems. It seems to me that this happens when I'm rather overworked

</comment><comment><USER9> Happen quite often especially when I study something new, I wake up with the voice in my brain that repeats commands like "dot controller" and stuff like that..

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to dream in code, but now I dream in graphs that represent data structures. This happened when I began focusing on memory layout over syntax and API signatures.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't dream in code, but sometimes I think in code. I find myself converting non-tech issues into syntax, and analyzing it for potential 'bug fixes' until I snap out of it and realize how weird that is.

</comment><comment><USER6> interesting ... was discussing this with another programmer.

</comment><comment><USER12> I dream in different languages sometimes. It's scary.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think in code. I have dreamed about code.</comment>


The open source Patch-or-GTFO (POGO) license - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mkfs/pogo-license

<comment><USER2> Out of spite, I would want to circumvent this licence by filing a bug report that the software sucks, and providing a hello world (preferably in another language), as a begining for their rewrite.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Takes a Whack at Apple in New Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/07/mark-zuckerberg-apple-comments-time_n_6283918.html

<comment><USER2> I know a lot of people will side with Cook on this one, and I'm by no means a fan of Facebook (though I haven't used Facebook since 2005), but I think Zuckerberg is rightly frustrated by this. While it may be true that customers are the product when it comes to Facebook and other social-services, it doesn't necessarily follow that Apple is any more-or-less aligned with its consumers than Facebook.

<comment><USER3> I think apple does look out for its customers well. If they piss us off too much (and they ride that edge) we won't come back. We pay them.

Now who is paying facebook. While you might think the service is worth having ads targeted to you, its important to realize thats how the service is being paid for. Apple protects your name from book sellers, eMagazines and music companies.

That being said Apple is trying to sell us music and mobile ads though, which makes you say hmmm.

<comment><USER4> I get the feeling they run iAd simply as a way to give app developers an alternative to the privacy nightmare of googles offering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's hard for me to see how you can fault Apple for charging "too much." That is how capitalism is supposed work.

Cook probably shouldn't have started with the trash talk, but to be honest I agree with him. And I think a lot less people would use Facebook if they were upfront about the information they were collecting on their users.</comment>


KDevelop 5.3 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.kdevelop.org/news/kdevelop-530-released <comment><USER2> Its a bit of a sleeper but I find Kdevelop to be the by far best Python IDE out there. Theres some arcane magic in its code completion, semantic highlighter, and ability to somehow find documentation from the ether that nothing else can compete with.

<comment><USER3> Ever try PyCharm by jetbrains? It's also pretty amazing and works on Linux. They have a neat feature where it will deep link into online documentation and it's fully customizable. I'm just wondering how it compares

<comment><USER4> I've used both and PyCharm wins for me. Much better ergonomics for handling projects, and some very useful plugins like the DB browser. The pay for version also has support for Django.

However, I'll give Kdevelop another go with the latest version and see if it's improved since last time (about 2 years ago).

I have to do some PHP sometimes (don't judge!) and it would be great to only have one IDE for both. Jetbrains PHP + Python is a bit too much to spend IMO.

<comment><USER5> You could get the flagship product, Intellij IDEA, which gives you Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, Rust, Go, JS and all the other languages JetBrains has plugins for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does KDevelop compare to Qt Creator as a general purpose C++ IDE?

</comment><comment><USER7> They have a rust plugin too</comment>


What are some great examples of well-designed personal websites? - <AUTHOR> My personal website is in need of a redesign but inspiration has not yet struck me. Everyone on hacker news reads a lot or at least visits lots of diverse websites, so post your favorite designs here and hopefully we can all be inspired! <comment><USER2> I like Derek Sivers's personal website. It is clean, easy-to-read, and has good spacing.

<http://sivers.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Bret Victor's <http://worrydream.com>. While the design is interesting, the content is killer.

<comment><USER4> are you kidding me?

the page doesn't even scroll using the mousewheel or amy possible key (arrows, space, pageupqdown). i have to use the tiny scrollbar on the right.

I'm using chrome on win 7.

completely unusable.

<comment><USER5> This is clearly by design, try clicking on something (and then scrolling!) to navigate the site like intended.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and it is clearly a fucking idiotic design. Breaking a basic navigation feature that works as intended in every other application and web page for the sake of "design" is not a good thing.

<comment><USER7> I agree it's bad design IF it were a consumer/business site. But remember, this is a personal site. Anything goes, and I think he knows better than to do this on a commercial site.

<comment><USER6> What on earth does a "personal site" have anything to do with a design being good? It's just as broken on a personal site as it is on a business site. It breaks an established, 20 year old user interface expectation and greatly hinders the usability of the page.

It makes no sense and there is no excuse for it.

<comment><USER7> because a personal site is a sandbox where you can experiment. It doesn't have to fit a mold. Same thing with an artist who is doing their own thing vs an artist who is paid to create a design for a company. You wouldn't tell the artist to paint a certain way because that's the way it's done commercially. Same thing here.

<comment><USER6> ...And what does that have to do with this? Sure, experiment all you want with your personal website, but it doesn't change the fact that the site being more "experimental" does not excuse the utterly idiotic and completely broken scrolling/scrollbar UI. It's a piece of shit and it makes the site very difficult to use on a desktop browser. This has nothing to do with "fitting a mold": it has everything to do with _basic functionality_. It's a completely failed "experiment". End of story.

<comment><USER5> You obviously have a better design sense and much more experience than someone who has been at Apple for the long haul designing UI/UX and has won the Apple Design Award! I hear that's not credible at all.

<comment><USER6> Nice appeal to authority. This nonsense coming from an _Apple designer_ only makes it worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Codrops (awesome site btw) posted a roundup of nice websites recently:

[http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/12/18/a-creative-year- disti...](http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/12/18/a-creative-year-distinctive- web-designs- of-2012/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tympanus+%28Codrops%29)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the middle of redesigning my portfolio page. This is where I am so far: <http://claudesutterlin.com>

it's nothing great but if you're interested in building off of it I'll share the code.

<comment><USER10> I love the simplicity of your site. Looks great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> i'm also in the process of creating a personal portfolio site. so far i got: <http://muellerwolfram.prtfl.io/about>

also, i think that creating a personal website is such a common use case that as a side project, i'm creating a saas webapp for creating portflio sites. checkout <http://prtfl.io> in coming weeks.

</comment><comment><USER12> here you have mine, <http://www.victordiazbarrales.com>, still working on it but its getting there! :)

</comment><comment><USER13> multiple designs - UI patterns <http://patterntap.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> i like this <http://cirw.in/blog/lspace>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks guys!</comment>


Donkey Kong and Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=987

<comment><USER2> Man, I wish I could get a look at the elite physics engine hiding within Mario's jump routines. I probably would have faked it out, you know: x+1 y+1 repeat 10 times, x+1 y-1 repeat 10 times.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"... In the fall of 1981 I was going to college and became addicted to the Atari arcade games Centipede and Tempest. I knew a little bit about the hardware of the Atari 400/800 home computer systems ..."_

Guess who just got back from Game On? (retro exhibition of 125 console 'playable' games :) ~ <http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2319687705/>

<comment><USER4> Do you know if Game On has a website or anything that lists where they're going to be next? I'd love to go if it was near me.

<comment><USER3> _"... Do you know if Game On has a website or anything that lists where they're going to be next? ..._ "

No. They have a list of where they have toured [0] but not where they are going. It might be passing through MoMA in NY soon. I noticed that the Pixar exhibition we had last year was starting there. Maybe GAME ON is following the same round? Best to contact the Barbican in the UK directly ~ <http://www.barbican.org.uk/about-barbican/contact-us>

[0] [http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event- detail.asp?ID=49...](http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event- detail.asp?ID=4964)</comment></comment></comment>


Hacks that improved my life  - <AUTHOR> http://markhayes.ca/2012/01/05/14-life-hacks-to-make-life-more-awesome/ <comment><USER2> Curing a headache: iffy.

Measuring fluids with seconds: I, for one, live in a house with water pressure that's not totally consistent from day to day. So much for accuracy.

Coffee: Is this ethical? All for a few more ounces of coffee? Brew your own if you're that desperate...

Some of the others I think are solutions in search of a problem, but I admit that's subjective and won't discuss it here.

\</comment><comment>

Also, from the HN Guidelines:

        If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous
        adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate
        "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys."

If only it was named "14 Amazing Hacks"...

<comment><USER3> You (or perhaps the article author) have/has been trolled:

"The compound that gives spicy food its kick is called capsaicin and has been used for over 9,000 years in Native American cultures to relieve painful headaches."

"used for over 9,000 years"

"over 9,000"

<comment><USER4> Neither has been trolled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you can't spare 30 seconds to floss outside of the shower, maybe attack the serious time sinks first before micromanaging less than a minute of your day. By the time you're done reading this comment, I will have wasted more time than you will ever save with any of these tips.

Also, the frying pan trick unnecessarily forces you to wash a pan later. Preheat the oven for a couple of minutes at 350F, leave the pizza right on the rack for 5 minutes, enjoy. Some pizza tastes better the second time this way.

<comment><USER6> I don't enjoy standing at my sink. I enjoy standing in the shower. I am more likely to achieve compliance with a shower based flossing schedule.

<comment><USER7> It gives you an excuse to stay in the shower longer, thus increasing the percentage of your bathroom time spent in the shower (which if you ask me, is the best part of your bathroom time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The coffee one wouldn't really work at Dunkin' Donuts. The steps of making coffee there is: Get the cup size the customer asked for, add cream/milk, add sugar, and then pour the coffee to the top. If you're going to do the whole 'a medium but in a large cup', the person behind the counter is just going to guess when he should stop and depending on the person, you might get more or less. Also if you keep asking them to make it like that, you'll eventually piss everyone off and end up getting a lot less.

If you want to get more for your buck at Dunkin' Donuts, go when they are about to close and ask for donuts and bagels. Most likely, if the people working are even remotely nice, you'll get a ton more than you ordered. The donuts and bagels get thrown away and most decent humans feel bad and try to give away as many as they can.

<comment><USER6> The machines all have programmed dispensers based on a button push.

<comment><USER9> Exactly this. All fast food places I've been to simply have pre programmed buttons that dispense the correct amount rather than manually starting and stopping the coffee pouring. I guess this tip depends on the vendor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of these seem really iffy. Brought to you by a guy who also blogs about how to interpret your dreams. Hrm.

</comment><comment><USER11> These are the same "life hacks" that get regurgitated every few weeks on sites like Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The concave shape of the bowl will amplify the sound by about 13 decibels.

Iff you keep your ear on top of the bowl maybe. (Or just buy earphones.) Your guests will rather appreciate external-powered speakers.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Turn your faucet on full blast with a measuring cup underneath and count how many seconds it takes"

There's nothing more annoying then someone wasting water like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a measuring cup underneath that catches the water which then goes into a pot to boil. No water wasted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone else tried the wine tip? Seems worth potentially losing an inexpensive bottle over to see if it works.

<comment><USER15> They don't tell you that you also get rid of the alcohol. Try blending it for a few minutes.

<comment><USER16> How does that work?

<comment><USER15> Alcohol evaporates proportional to surface area. When you blend you drastically increase the surface area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After the first couple I thought these were jokey, a la Viz's "top tips". I read on for the humour and by the end wasn't sure any more. I think it's a mix of mostly gags but with a couple of serious-sounding ones thrown in for contrast.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope I won't be the guy drunk enough to try cutting the pizza with scissors at the company christmas party.

<comment><USER19> Well, here in China, cutting food (specially raw meat) with scissors is actually quite standard in restaurants.

But I guess the pizza part may not be so common. ;)

<comment><USER20> >They're the best all-around tool on the counter, useful for butterflying or quartering chicken, trimming pie dough, shaping parchment to line cake pans, snipping herbs, or cutting lengths of kitchen twine

[http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/overview.asp?docid...](http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment/overview.asp?docid=27679)

I use kitchen shears (kitchen name for scissors, only used for food stuff and washed like knives) frequently. I haven't tried it for pizza, though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the faucet one. That's clever.

</comment><comment><USER6> > ditch the measuring cups and try this: Turn your faucet on full blast with a > measuring cup underneath

NullPointerException

Also, I didn't know I was supposed to keep the plastic things in my shirts. I thought collars are straightened with starch.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it funny that this is on #14 on the homepage :)</comment>


How We Scored 1000 Customers Within 50 Days of Our SaaS Startup Launch - <AUTHOR> https://surveysparrow.com/blog/first-1000-customers-50-days/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is an honest account of how we reached here, what we would do differently the next time, and takeaways from each tactic we implemented in first 50 days after our launch.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great post!</comment>


"No toilet, no bride" - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5977420.ece <comment><USER2> This happened when I was in college when our local "hippie-goddess" chick met this guy from the Pacific island of Yap. They were in love and he wanted to marry her, but she insisted on having "American style" plumbing before she'd say yes and go and live with him on Yap. The guy got his hands on a backhoe and put in a septic system himself. Guess it really was love.

</comment><comment><USER3> DNS seems to be acting up at the moment. For some reason news.ycombinator.com is resolving to Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Allowing articles which are not within the immediate sphere of a hacker's interest is a slippery slope.

<comment><USER3> Note that once an article is flagged enough times it is [dead]-ed. I'd encourage others to use that feature for wildly off-topic posts such as this one, and to spend a little time digging through the "new" section for stuff that is relevant to the site.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the information wheels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This headline is best enjoyed when sung to the tune of Bob Marley's "No woman, no cry."

<comment><USER6> Ha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _In a country where more households have TV sets than lavatories_

This seems insane.

Indoor plumming is perhaps somewhat involved but what about outdoor lavatories?

Maybe my image of rural Britain having outhouses everywhere is mistaken or occurred at a latter stage of development...

<comment><USER8> Think that's insane? What about _this_ :

"Some upper-caste communities are not happy having lavatories in their homes because tradition dictates that such an arrangement is unclean.

Mr Monda said: "People do not want to go to the toilet in the home where they cook food. And many old people enjoy the opportunity to go for a walk. It gives them the opportunity to check on their fields." "

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Listing of the worst places in the world for sanitation:

<http://www.wateraid.org/documents/stateofworldtoilets.pdf>

Interestingly the total number of households without is about the same for India and China ~700m

</comment><comment><USER9> This:

 _American prenuptial deals have included a wife being able to limit Sunday football games to one a season, and another having to limit her weight to 120lb (55kg)_

made me think of this:

<http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0217062contract1.html>

(Rated R for evil creepy fucker.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Everything's gonna be alright?</comment>


Photographing A Town That Never Was – The Meta Picture - <AUTHOR> http://themetapicture.com/photographing-a-town-that-never-was/ <comment><USER3> Beautiful pictures. They're even more impressive once you see the illusion. Even the fake greenery and curb and gutter seams are still hard to pick out even when you know they're there. And the lighting is excellent.

But the look -- aside from car styling -- isn't a matter of charm and innocence. It's a way of life that has been outlawed in America.

The mix of residential and commercial land use is illegal in almost all American communities, especially at the scale pictured. A few big cities still permit residential over commercial but whatever is left in most of America is grandfathered. If it's taken down, you can't rebuild it. In fact, my whole neighborhood is like that; if an earthquake hit, not one 1920s American railroad suburb bungalow on my block would meet zoning to be rebuilt.

Also, almost none of those commercial establishments has parking in front and surrounding it. The minimum requirements in almost all of America is about double as much space for parking as for all building interior space. Floor area ratios and landscape buffers usually require even more space around parking lots because they're so ugly. Today, even the shots with parking wouldn't have nearly enough and almost all the commercial buildings would be illegal. I don't see any of the residential buildings with the 2-3 independent parking spots usually required, either. Most of them -- for the sake of charm -- don't have any off street parking. Also, driveways usually can't abut the property line, so the garage has to dominate the front of the house, creating a snout house effect and eliminating the friendly front porches.

Part of the appeal of these scenes is evoking an America that has been outlawed in pursuit of faster roads and free parking. The grace and community of neighborhoods, the diversity of age and social class, and affordability have been part of the cost. Certainly this is not the first time reversing those mistakes has made a scene prettier. [0]

[0][http://www.humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city- greenwashes...](http://www.humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes- parking.html)

<comment><USER4> What interests me about this is the difference between the parking situation in the US and Europe. We don't have enough space for the kind of parking regulations the US requires. I know urban supermarkets that have _no_ parking whatsoever.

And then I think of Vietnam. 92 million people, 70 million scooters. 2-300% tax on cars. The Vietnese I know have a desire to buy a car but they don't seem to think of where they will park it. Imagine if everyone here suddenly had a car :

[http://www.panoramio.com/photo/85662646](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/85662646)

<comment><USER5> What's awful about where in live in Poland is that people don't care that they don't have a place to park. They second they buy a car, they feel they are entitled to get a parking space. Illegal parking is a massive problem here and the only place I've seen it worse was in Rome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I highly suggest going straight to his flicker feed its way better

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the flickr page. Michael Paul Smith also has a proper Homepage: [http://www.visitelginpark.com/](http://www.visitelginpark.com/)

Was even featured in NYTimes in 2010: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/automobiles/collectibles/1...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/automobiles/collectibles/14SCALE.html)

Also I feel quit uncomfortable about the OP linking to this, arguably not as annoying as others, meme aggregator page. Anything that categorizes this under _funny, images, photos_ doesn't really care about the content, other than getting inbound links.

<comment><USER6> yeah the link baiting was why i went out looking for and posted the flickr page

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am impressed that the effect holds up even after I read that the pictures were of models. Often when you learn the 'trick' to something like this the illusion vanishes, but with these pictures that doesn't seem to really happen. The road surfaces seem an bit uniform (though the odd oil slick or damp spot helps a lot) but otherwise these seem to be solidly past the uncanny valley for me.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, for me, I noticed that none of the cars (apparently) driving on the road had any people in them. It really sticks out to me, where are the people? I love his work, though, but it's like looking at pictures of that town near Chernobyl where all the people suddenly left, leaving all their belongings behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Conversely you can make a real scene look miniature by using a tilt-shift lens (I used to use the Canon 45mm). Vincent Laforet's are some of my favorites: [http://agonistica.com/tilt-shift-photography-by-vincent- lafo...](http://agonistica.com/tilt-shift-photography-by-vincent-laforet/)

(I think what Michael Paul Smith does is much more impressive)

<comment><USER11> It's funny that current TS/PC lenses cost upwards of $2000, but Michael Paul Smith stated that he has to use a cheap Canon Powershot because the cheap lens obscures the details enough to make them believable and the tiny aperture keeps the "real" background enough in focus to keep the scale believable.

<comment><USER12> A $2000 tilt-shift or perspective control lens would be inexpensive according to some architectural, or otherwise technical, photographers.

<comment><USER11> Sure, you can spend as much as you can possibly imagine on some equipment. Linhof, Cambo, Leaf. Those are more business investments for the majority of people who buy them, in a sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While most articles on HN are about the riches and the way to the riches... This man lives in a 3 rooms apartment and does magic with his hands.

That's a truly enjoyable link.

Look at his face in the selfies, he looks happier than most!

<comment><USER14> I envy him. Not like I envy rich people where I wish I could be myself in their situation. I actually wish I could _be_ him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These pictures are fantastic as far as accomplishment is concerned, it seems that in models it is the same as 3D in that it is the lighting that makes things 'real'. That is not to overlook the model making it is just that lighting, including shadows, is what matters rather than detail to make a scene convincing.

I like people in a scene and I would like to see what could be done in this aspect, to 'comp' people dressed in period attire on the streets and behind those windscreens. As soon as you have people you have a story rather than a mere scene. Lighting matters again and one could take three pictures - <USER2> full picture with foreground set, picture minus the foreground set, picture minus foreground set and pedestrians. Pop the layers into Photoshop and, a few layer mask edits later a full scene with people in it.

I must say that a million plus likes on Facebook is extremely impressive.

<comment><USER16> Matching the angles and lighting is extremely time-consuming, unfortunately. It's doable of course, but very difficult and I get the impression that this gentleman's goal is not to spend more time in front of the computer, otherwise he could achieve the same results with ray tracing and various image composition tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The cars are too clean. The pictures would look even more realistic if he sprayed them with dust.

<comment><USER8> The way I see it is that he has convincingly portrayed staged photographs of real show cars. In other words it looks like somebody took some nice cars and cleaned them up really nice to be photographed.

Weathering definitely is a great way to add to the realism though. Adam Savage (mythbusters guy) has some great videos on Tested of using various weathering techniques to make props look incredibly convincing: [http://www.tested.com/art/makers/453823-one-day-builds- adam-...](http://www.tested.com/art/makers/453823-one-day-builds-adam-savage- demonstrates-weathering-tricks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's amazing how before I saw the miniature models my brain (pattern recognition) skipped the full detail. Once I saw the models I started to notice how wheels were perfect, the houses started to look a little unreal. Also, filter does disguise flaws.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ah, this reminds me of Marwencol, albeit slightly less disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very impressive photos! Although I must say that other than the old cars it just looks like a fairly boring suburb to me (not american, maybe that's part of the reason).

</comment><comment><USER21> When I was into 3d modeling/rendering I struggled to make anything look real. This guy could write books about lighting.

</comment><comment><USER22> One of the most fabulous things I've seen for a long time. Really amazing!

</comment><comment><USER23> To me the images are reminiscent of old _Godzilla_ movies, etc...

</comment><comment><USER24> i have somewhat of a curious attraction to deceit -- this is awesome

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome. I want to take a stroll in that town/bygone era.

</comment><comment><USER26> Robbie the Robot even makes an appearance!

</comment><comment><USER27> The occasional selfies were funny :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Hollywood has been doing this forever. It's pretty well done but without any people it's strangely unsatisfying.

<comment><USER29> Sort of it makes me think of a potemkin village except it is not. I think the lack of natural items in his shots minus what is in the background is what helps his images come off as inexplicably real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow! The photos are amazing! Two thumbs up!</comment>


OVH cloud: openstack, 100% SLA, free BW in/out, anti-ddos, starting at 3€/month - <AUTHOR> https://www.ovh.com/fr/cloud/

<comment><AUTHOR> In before the common (and sane) suspicion:

\- 100% SLA: it's a cash-back agreement, not a technical promise. Also it doesn't cover the maintenance period (FYI I never had any maintenance downtime for 5 years but YMMV).

\- free bandwidth: it's a real thing in France, the bandwidth is free.

I am a happy customer of OVH since 5 years, either personally or professionally.

</comment><comment><USER2> Just a couple of notes from my quick look (I had to find the English page first):

It appears that the starting price for the cloud service is $14.99 / month. The $2.99 / month price is for the Classic VPS.

Both services offer 100 Mbps for the first 10 Tb of bandwidth, then 1 Mbps. Getting 10 Tb of bandwidth for $2.99 a month is an amazing deal.</comment>


Why you shouldn't charge your phone in your car - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/should-i-charge-my-phone-in-my-car-2017-10 <comment><USER2> Really!? They actually wrote an article about a non-issue?

"But if your car is an older model, you might want to avoid charging your phone through its USB port." \- So how many of the older cars came with the USB ports?

A 5V/1A USB charger won't drain down a car battery for a very long time! It will take 48hours with an average car battery to completely drain it while sitting idle and not being recharged at all. And how long does it take for any smartphone to fully charge? _SMH_

</comment><comment><USER3> "Business Insider" says ....

All of the "Insider" sites just aren't worth the electrons.</comment>


The End of the Golden Era of Chess - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/pal-benko-shelby-lyman-and-chess-bobby-fischer-era/597343/ <comment><USER2> Did Lyman's chess column end instantly? In just the past couple of weeks, the San Francisco Chronicle dropped all chess content.</comment>


ZXX: A Typeface Illegible to Computers - <AUTHOR> https://walkerart.org/magazine/sang-mun-defiant-typeface-nsa-privacy <comment><USER2> This is great work. But I don't understand the key point. Is this all to counterfeit OCR? By just using this font in my office program?

My gut feeling is that, given enough work, one can write some ML/AI algorithm to write OCR also for that font. But sure, the author states that this is also a symbolic work.

Bottom line: As long as a human can read the text, a computer will be able to do so, too.

We all know how hard CAPTCHAS got to solve (to us humans!) in the last year. We probably won't enjoy to read a multi paragraph captcha.</comment>


Radiation Is Said to Be Released in Russian Military Accident - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/world/europe/russia-radiation-accident.html <comment><USER2> There seem to be a lot of radiation release stories recently coming out of Russia.

It's slightly worrying</comment>


Totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent - <AUTHOR> http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/14030/large/OccupySniperPlan.PNG?1356861369

<comment><AUTHOR> " a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent."

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi- coor...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated- crackdown-occupy)

</comment><comment><USER2> Link to original article, which contains the (heavily redacted) FBI documents:

<http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html></comment>


I2P – An anonymous overlay network - <AUTHOR> https://geti2p.net/en/ <comment><USER2> They have a page comparison TOR vs I2P. [https://geti2p.net/en/comparison/tor](https://geti2p.net/en/comparison/tor)

(Nothing on the page claims it's a next generation TOR network. I don't like when submission titles are changed.)

<comment><USER3> We changed the submitted title to a description from the linked page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great to see I2P mentioned on HN. It seems advantageous to TOR minus the exit nodes.</comment>


Dishonest Programming - <AUTHOR> http://chalain.livejournal.com/39332.html <comment><USER2> What's with obsession of giving pointless names to things? I'll accept "deceptive code", or just plain "bad code", but "dishonest" and especially "immoral" aren't appropriate terms.</comment>