Show HN: how to approach sensitive conversations  - <AUTHOR> http://www.betactful.com <comment><USER2> Looking at this, I'm not quite sure what the thumbs up/down signify. For example, on the cancer Don't list:

 _Offer unsolicited advice. Telling people what to do when they don 't ask for help is rarely a good idea, even if your intentions are the best._

The above has 2 thumbs up and 4 thumbs down. I can interpret that two ways:

\- 2 people agree that you shouldn't offer unsolicited advice, but 4 people think this rule is wrong.

\- 2 people thing you should offer unsolicited advice, 4 people agree that offering unsolicited advice is a bad thing.

It gets more confusing with this one:

 _Be patronizing or condescending._

8 thumbs up, 8 thumbs down. Would anyone disagree that you shouldn't be patronizing or condescending when talking to a friend about their cancer? I have no idea what the thumbs up/down means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! The ups and downs are just smoke screens right now. Its just to show future functionality. We're about to present at the hackathon presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh wow, I'd recommend turning off the ability to add suggestions before actually demoing this on a stage or anything. You're at most an hour away from being flooded by all kinds of very rude suggestions.

[http://www.betactful.com/just_lost_their_mother_or_grandmoth...](http://www.betactful.com/just_lost_their_mother_or_grandmother)

</comment><comment><USER4> I recommend "Difficult Conversations", which is an excellent book on this topic. It gives many good examples of difficult conversations, analyzes them and provides great advice.

[http://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss- What-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What- Matters/dp/0143118447)

</comment><comment><USER5> I can really appreciate this idea, but, uh, how to put this: reddit/hn style upvoting and downvoting is not going to lead to good advice at being tactful.

The entire point of the site, after all, is that people don't often know how to be tactful. So asking those same people to crowdsource answers isn't going to work out.

Also, as soon as /b/ gets wind of this...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. What model would you suggest? We got the feedback that experts could be useful.

<comment><USER5> Yup. There are people who specialize in this kind of communication: work with them to get real answers backed by experience. I love the wisdom of crowds, but I think this is one case where expert opinions are key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thought this very interesting and potentially useful.

I added a suggestion under 'person going through a divorce,' e.g: ''Acknowledge it's going to be a difficult process and transition period, but give them hope they may be happier after''

When I posted my suggestion immediately had 7--8 thumbs-ups & downs. The second it was added to your site...

Let me suggest you either fix your impossible-to-not-notice bug on up/down- voting, __or__ immediately remove your "just add a few numbers..." code which makes it look like your new site has more engagement than it actually does. Since if the point of your site is to let users optimize advice for difficult situations it strikes me as wrong you'd be randomly adding numbers into that equation for the sake of making it look more useful / validated / engaged than it really is. Your 'bug' or whatever else (really) rubs me the wrong way. Fix this bs and good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a huge fuck up. I'm really really sorry that this offended you and I totally understand how it could. I didn't realize it was going to get content which is stupid of me. I'm sorry and I'm fixing it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know the intent here is well-meaning, but I suspect this app will get a lot of derision from people who dislike the "there's an app for that!" trend, or the idea that so much of human experience can be encapsulated either by algorithm or the wisdom of the crowds.

In particular, this area of human experience is very dependent on context, and what is tactful is not easily captured by a bullet point. And one of the consequences is that the wisdom of the crowds is not going to be helpful...it's not enough to say that something was tactful, because it depends on the situation and the person involved.

I've liked reading essays on how to comfort someone in times of need, not just because they're interesting, but because they show how complex it can be. Here's one column I still remember from the NYT a couple years back:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/fashion/what-to-say-to- som...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/fashion/what-to-say-to-someone-whos- sick-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

In the OP's app, for example, one of the top voted suggestions is: _Offer assistance. Example: "Please let me know if I can help."_

From the perspective of the NYT op-ed writer, that sentiment is the top thing _not_ to say:

> _1\. WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP? Most patients I know grow to hate this > ubiquitous, if heartfelt question because it puts the burden back on them. > As Doug Ulman, the chief executive of Livestrong and a three-time cancer > survivor, explained: "The patient is never going to tell you. They don't > want to feel vulnerable." Instead, just do something for the patient. And > the more mundane the better, because those are the tasks that add up. Want > to be really helpful? Clean out my fridge, replace my light bulbs, unpot my > dead plants, change my oil._

Who's right or who's wrong? I'm not saying either the OP or the op-ed writer is more correct, just pointing out how much nuance is involved here.

</comment><comment><USER8> FYI, your domain is listed as a spam domain in the Spamhaus DBL (I couldn't access it from work).

[http://network- tools.com/default.asp?prog=lookup&host=betact...](http://network- tools.com/default.asp?prog=lookup&host=betactful.com.dbl.spamhaus.org)

[http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/section/Spamhaus%20DBL#291](http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/section/Spamhaus%20DBL#291)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it can be very helpful, as I often don't know what to say. But it must be seriously moderated, esp if the answers are crowdsourced.

I thought of all sorts of funny things to say under "Don't", though I controlled my impulses. This is a site that currently teeters between useful seriousness and utter potential for hilarity. If it's meant to be the former, than the mods need to guard hard against the latter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. I think its made to be serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice. This would be great as a mobile app as well. Also you need to fix your dns configuration, can't access via [http://betactful.com](http://betactful.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ought "just lost their mother or grandmother" really be a single category? I don't know if I'm acting correctly, but I tend to approach those two conversations rather differently.

</comment><comment><USER12> good idea . I tried posting this on Twitter this is what i got " Oops! A URL in your Tweet appears to link to a page that has spammy or unsafe content."

</comment><comment><USER13> Great idea! Looking forward to the planned functionality being built in. Bookmarked for future usefulness

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI this was built for a health literacy hackathon.</comment>


Ask HN: Debt rising on DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> Using Github student pack I got $50 free credit on Digital Ocean. After 10 months I deleted my droplet. Even though it was billed $5 monthly, at the end I saw that I owe $0.04. I forgot about it for a while, logged in today and saw that I owe $0.15. Minimal transfer from PayPal is $5. How to solve this? <comment><USER2> Try contacting their support. Maybe $0.15 is small enough they'll just remove it. Them spending 10 minutes on the issue costs them more than $0.15.

</comment><comment><USER3> That sounds, to me, like snapshot billing. Any chance you have any snapshots on the account? Toss me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com or open a ticket with our support team, we'll take a look :)

<comment><USER3> I should have added to that: We're not actively trying to collect anything under $1, so to us a $0.15 balance is not something we need you to pay right now.</comment></comment>


Google Warns: bit.ly Links Are Unsafe - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=bit.ly&hl=en

<comment><USER2> Any URL shortening site that doesn't have an active block list is likely linking to _some_ unsafe sites. Singling out bit.ly in this instance is frankly unfair.

Guess who else Google warns is linking to unsafe sites:

[https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.c...](https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com)

<comment><USER3> goo.gl too, with nearly 6,300 links to Trojans, way more than on the bit.ly report: [https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=goo.gl](https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=goo.gl)

<comment><USER4> Although for goo.gl "6292349 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 826 page(s) resulted in malicious software" and for bit.ly "91856 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 721 page(s) resulted in malicious software". The % of pages on goo.gl with malicious software is much lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://unshort.me/](http://unshort.me/)

Never fear.Also could you do some enlightening of others? Some people use URL shorteners by default when they are absolutely unnecessary. Not to mention privacy policy of these services is often uncomfortable at best.

<comment><USER6> But what if we're dealing with a bitly within a bitly? A 'bitly-ception'? It's bitly's all the way down... Does unshort.me recursively check? (Oh, and what if the bitly goes to an unmarked, safe-looking site with a js redirect or etc.?)

<comment><USER5> I believe unshort.me "unshorts" it all the way. I have no tested it as I'm a lazy useless individual, but feel free to try it out.

Edit: OK, I just did a quick test, "unshorting" t.co link that hides a bit.ly link gives the final link.

<comment><USER7> Hey thanks for mentioning [http://unshort.me](http://unshort.me)

I created [http://unshort.me](http://unshort.me) and you are correct it follows all the way until the shortened url is resolved unless it is a circular link. It also stores the result in a database so it works faster once someone resolves the URL.

I also created fuseurl.com. It used to be a bitly but for many URLs but I shut it down because it started to contain a lot spams and viruses.

<comment><USER5> Well, then let me thank you for making the service work and keeping it clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> longurl.org is awesome to check what is behind a shortened URL.

Has an API too: [http://longurl.org/api](http://longurl.org/api)

<comment><USER9> HTTP has an API for that too, just make a HEAD request to the shortened URL and see where the Location header sends you

<comment><USER10> Yeah, sadly doesn't always work. Goo.gl and youtu.be sometimes send an http page consisting of

<!DOCTYPE html> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opoDBF_b- fg&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opoDBF_b- fg&feature=youtu.be">)

Which makes it far more complicated. Another occasion where it's appropriate to say "Fuck you, Google!" (also fuck you for disabling audio/video control on chrome mobile from JS, EXCEPT for google.com/youtube.com etc)

<comment><USER11> Perhaps this would be a good time to advocate link shorteners that use the standard HTTP redirect mechanism (bit.ly is one of them), so they can be HEAD'ed, and not some additional layer of obfuscation either via meta-redirect or (even worse) bury the target in some minified and obfuscated JS.

<comment><USER12> They don't want that because they don't want them to be automatically resolved so they can do metrics which is like 99% of the reason they are used in electronic form.

<comment><USER13> If they are temporary redirects, so not cached, they can do metrics from the server logs perfectly well.

<comment><USER14> Not if the intermediary, say, Twitter, de-shortens the link once, and then sends all the real traffic to the cached destination URLS. Not that they do that at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bitly has confirmed that this issue is resolved: [https://twitter.com/Bitly/status/526012694835757057](https://twitter.com/Bitly/status/526012694835757057)

</comment><comment><USER3> Every bit of technology provides benefits and threats. URL shorteners are no exception: they definitely add value (and I don't mean just from the sender's perspective, but also on the recipient's end, eg. by allowing you to customize web addresses making it easier for people to remember them) but can also lead to harm (obfuscating links to malware).

It's like saying a hammer is a useless tool because it can bust your thumb.

</comment><comment><USER16> if you're curious about following a bit.ly link, simply append a + to the end of the url and you'll be taken to that link's statistics page, which will also display the full link you're being forwarded to. a lot of other shorteners employ the same feature.

but obviously, just use an unshortener extension for peace of mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can't this just be bit.ly links to unsafe sites? That dosen't make bit.ly unsafe as a whole.

<comment><USER13> Yes it does, as you cannot sanely identify what the link is first.

<comment><USER18> Just FYI, you can append a + to a "bitlink" to preview it's url and see some stats. [http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/136551-can-i...](http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/136551-can- i-preview-a-bitlink-before-clicking-on-it)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, like that's obvious or well-known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google is definitely not a fan. I send a _lot_ of email each month (it's my business) and having bit.ly links in mail is a fast track to Gmail's spam folder or, in some cases, being rejected entirely. (Note: I'm talking bulk mail, not personal mail.)

<comment><USER21> Why would you use bit.ly links in email?

<comment><USER20> The sibling replies are mostly a load of bollocks. E-mail based publishers track clicks anyway through much better means, such as Mailchimp's click tracking - no reputable sender needs to use bit.ly to track stuff.

The reason bit.ly links can end up in mails is if third parties want to track clicks separate from the sender and the sender isn't smart enough to catch it. For example, people who want to include a job listing or some sort of sponsorship or advert in your mail. They'll often use bit.ly, simply because it works fine on Twitter, without realizing it's not a great idea in mail.

<comment><USER22> Above you said that you didn't sent spam because your recipients opted in. OK. Now you say that these email newsletters contain third-party advertising. You're sending paid advertising in an email. I would consider that to be spam, even if I opted in to your newsletter. I accept the fact that not everyone would define it that way, but I hope you see my point.

<comment><USER20> I see your point in so far as that it's fine to come up with and use one's own definitions for words, although every widely accepted definition of e-mail "spam" includes a criterion of being _unsolicited_. For example, in:

* law (e.g. CAN-SPAM or the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003) - indeed CAN-SPAM even stands for _Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act_ and reflects the US government's position, the EU's regulations refer to 'unsolicited communications' \- [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/regulation/22/m...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/regulation/22/made)

* encyclopedia (say, Wikipedia - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamming) \- or the Encyclopedia Britannica - [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/941678/spam](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/941678/spam))

* dictionaries (say, Websters - [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spam) \- or the Oxford - [http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/spam](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/spam))

* technical standards (say, RFC2505 - [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2505](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2505))

* the viewpoint of people extremely against spam, such as Spamhaus - [http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/](http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/) or SpamCop - [http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/14.html](http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/14.html)

* the terms and conditions of e-mail service providers and senders - e.g. [http://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/](http://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Eh, frankly it just seems like its google slipping up. If only a few hundred bitly links have viruses I'm impressed (I'm sure there are more but the percentage still doesn't seem that bad).

</comment><comment><USER24> All Bitly links are no longer blocked by Google Safebrowsing in Chrome or Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not using google but also safari warns about malware via google some how.

<comment><USER26> That's because Safari is using "Google Safe Browsing Service" \- You can toggle that in Preferences/Security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> bit.ly is working fine for me currently but fb.me is currently being blocked

</comment><comment><USER28> For now most shortener services give warnings. Internet is broken for next half day.

</comment><comment><USER29> I feel like Google does this many times to hurt the competition.

<comment><USER30> What is "this" in this context?

Scan websites for vulnerabilities?

Make the results of automated vulnerability scans available?

<comment><USER29> makes it difficult for website operators to exist like bit.ly to exist by warning users that there are potential risks, when the risks are almost the same if not more with their own, similar services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Microsoft could swoop in and solve this :D [https://www.noip.com/blog/2014/06/30/ips-formal-statement- mi...](https://www.noip.com/blog/2014/06/30/ips-formal-statement-microsoft- takedown/)</comment>


Bridgestone Says Airless Tires Are Coming Soon to Bicycles and Big Rigs - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/bridgestone-says-airless-tires-are-coming-soon-to-bicyc-1841140591 <comment><USER2> I remember that Sheldon Brown was very critical of airless tires:

[https://sheldonbrown.com/tires.html#airless](https://sheldonbrown.com/tires.html#airless)

Maybe this new design will bypass some of his traditional criticisms; it looks like it's not very similar to old airless tires.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, looks like Bridgestone has been saying this is "coming soon" for quite a while,

[https://phys.org/news/2011-12-bridgestone-airless-concept- to...](https://phys.org/news/2011-12-bridgestone-airless-concept-tokyo.html)</comment>


Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field? - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field <comment><USER2> I think it's a little unfair to single out engineering. A lot of jobs with large salaries tend to skew towards men:

Women are only 16% of mergers and acquisitions lawyers (the big time money guys): [https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/bclbe/Women_in_M_and_A(1)...](https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/bclbe/Women_in_M_and_A\(1\).pdf)

Women are still only 32% of physicians in 2010, despite "large advances": [https://thinkprogress.org/despite-growing-number-of- female-d...](https://thinkprogress.org/despite-growing-number-of-female- doctors-and-lawyers-womens-pay-still-lags-behind-9b43f25c0335#.svn93bmdo)

Women make up 5% of stock traders, hedge fund managers: [http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/06/19/would- more-...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/06/19/would-more-women- as-traders-make-a-difference/)

Women are only 14.6% of CEOS, 8.1% of top earners, and 4.6% of fortune 500 CEOS: [https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2014/0...](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2014/03/07/85457/fact- sheet-the-womens-leadership-gap/)

<comment><USER3> Now the question is: do these fields discriminate against women? Do women just not prefer these fields? Or do men crowd into high-paying fields?

One claim I've seen mentioned all over the place is that pay goes down when women enter a previously male-dominated field [0]. Sure, that's one way of looking at it. Was the question asked that men are actually leaving a field because the pay is going down?

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take- over...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male- dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html)

<comment><USER4> I'll take (e) All of the above.

There is strong evidence that women do not prefer these fields. There is also strong evidence that high pay is much more important for men than it is for women, so men will take less fulfilling jobs (and push harder and take more risks).

There is also some evidence of discrimination, though I haven't seen any evidence that it is stronger than in other fields, that it is systematic rather than individual. Certainly a _lot_ of what is currently being claimed as horrible discrimination in tech doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my coworkers, when he thinks people aren't doing a good job, calls them ladies or girls. He also doesn't listen to the women on our team, insists on pair programming with them if he has shared assignments with them instead of splitting those assignments into subtasks like he does with the other guys, and is in general a nice dude to the other guys and treats the women like they're junior. If the rest of the men on the dev team behaverd like that, I honestly bet there would be no women on our team. I'm not sure how to approach him about it, but the women we work with don't seem to want to take assignments with him or interact with him, for fairly obvious reasons I guess.

<comment><USER6> sexism aside, that's textbook un-professional behavior and i wouldn't accept it from a female calling people little boys as a pejorative, either.

tell your manager about it. it's part of the manager's job to deal with stuff like this. if your manager refuses to do anything about it, either tell your coworker yourself or leave.

<comment><USER5> Trouble is, we are a fifteen person startup and my boss is a friend of that guy's from way back. I honestly would feel odd mentioning it. There's no way to couch it in "what if a hypothetical person..." because he's known this guy for longer than the company has existed.

<comment><USER7> Sit down and talk with the boss. Sure, he may find it harder to intervene when it's a friend, but he may also have a _lot_ more leverage over a friend than he would over an average employee - namely, the threat of shaming among their shared friends.

<comment><USER5> The problem I'm having with it is he has to know this guy does this. It's not exactly subtle or I likely would not have noticed. He's been in the room before when it happened, and the two of them go out for drinks on Fridays and such all the time. I think it is not a problem for him or he would have pulled the guy aside and told him.

<comment><USER8> You should probably find a new startup to join/start.

<comment><USER5> That's my plan actually. Once I have nothing to lose I'm going to tell the guy he's being an asshole to the women engineers and ask if he'd consider not doing that because it's a shitty way to treat anyone. Preferably with boss present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Low pay,shitty benefits, demands to work long hours.

My wife makes HALF of what I make at the SAME employer. She does semiconductor and microelectronics back-end process engineering. I do RF/Microwave circuit design.

She transferred divisions a couple of years ago. In her old division (mine) there were TWO female engineers out of probably 100.

It's not constrained to woman though, as 80% of those who graduate with an engineering degree are no longer practicing engineering by 40 years old.

She wants to quit every day. We can easily live off my salary, but the additional salary is good for college savings (2 kids) and retirement savings.

She want's to quit and quilt full time; yes quilt. She is really good at that, applying all the engineering knowledge to CNC quilting, tricky geometry on piecing, etc.

May have to do with woman, in general, being more risk averse than men. Also less agressive for self promotion. At my employer, you must promote yourself and make your argument in front of a review panel.

<comment><USER10> What do you do?

<comment><USER11> > I do RF/Microwave circuit design

<comment><USER10> Thanks. (It was edited in.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Kimberly wrote, "Two girls in a group had been working on the robot we were > building in that class for hours, and the guys in their group came back in > and within minutes had sentenced them to doing menial tasks while the guys > went and had all the fun in the machine shop."

I see this all the time. Women don't feel able to confront men about things like this. Without speculating as to why, I'll say that when I've seen women hit back ("like a man would") it often works. It sucks but you sort of have to engage men on their level, which means meeting aggression with aggression. People are always going to try to take advantage of each other, and men respect aggression.

<comment><USER13> Note that this is a self-report. Without actual data, it loses a large part of its significance.

Here is _my_ self-report (also admittedly insignificant) -- when I was at college doing machine shop projects, there would be few girls who would enthusiastically volunteer for the machine shop. So the guys would have some misguided chivalrous instinct to say "Okay, I'll do the machine shop work", because they thought _they were expected to_. Even most American men I know today would be diffident about saying something like, "Hey Jessica, I notice you've been signing up for doing reports for the last two projects; do you want to work in the machine shop for this one instead while I do the reports?"

The outcome of this is the exact same as your reported incident, but the motivations are different. My solution would be to make sure women know that they are expected and encouraged to sign up for tasks involving a lot of physical labor and possibly danger (a machine shop isn't the safest of places, even with all the precautions).

Social attitudes can make a lot of difference, and the traditional social attitude in the US heavily favors males doing physically demanding and "dirty" tasks more than women. This affects both men and women when splitting up tasks, but it is somewhat unfair to blame it on dated stereotypes of men.

<comment><USER4> Very well put! I see a lot of situations like these that certainly have multiple and nuanced interpretations being consistently interpreted (and vastly overinterpreted) in one direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am little tired of this. The research is interesting but there should be more consideration for alternate hypotheses.

There is lot of evidence that girls are biologically wired to prefer people jobs, while boys prefer jobs with things. I really recommend Steven Pinker talk: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw)

But even if this was cultural, who are we to dictate preferences of people? I think the whole nature vs nurture debate is a non-sequitur.

The article talks specifically about three reasons:

1\. Self-doubt. It's well known that it affects girls more. But maybe it's how the brain presents risk-aversion to us? Or maybe it's actually needed for the job? Computers can be unforgiving.

2\. Assholes. Sexism goes both ways. I label an asshole as an asshole, a girl might generalize it to "men are sexist".

3\. Interesting work. Not much people in computing do world-changing work, you have to fight for it. It seems to me that there was a tacit expectation that someone will bring interesting work to you, which is IMHO false. The fact is nobody is preventing those girls to have a Github account.

I am all for removing barriers, but at some point, when we just can't see any, we will have to declare that it is a matter of personal preferences. If people are indeed happier in some other job, why not just call it a day?

<comment><USER14> By the way, research shows that guys think they are more intelligent while girls think they are less intelligent than they really are. I would like to propose a theory of why intelligent girls have more doubts about their intelligence than intelligent guys.

High intelligence is an asset. You don't want your competition (in social situation) to know that you're smart. So it's generally better for you to believe you're not that smart, yet be in reality.

However, for males, this is different; they need to show off to attract females. So they need to display their intelligence (because it's a desirable trait) despite the above. That's why they act as they were smarter than they really are.

It's similar to why in many birds, males are often wildly colored, while females have masking similar to the environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > it's been estimated that nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees > either quit or never enter the profession.

Fantastic! That's much, much better than the 73% rate of college graduates not entering the field of their major [https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent- of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/)

Of course, maybe men in STEM have an even lower rate. IDK, and this article certainly doesn't seem to know that important piece of data either.

<comment><USER7> Comparing engineering-only numbers to all-graduates numbers is not useful. All-graduates numbers are strongly affected by the very low number of jobs available for most humanities and (to a lesser extent) social sciences majors.

This article doesn't have numbers on men leaving the engineering workforce, but this one [1] does. The numbers aren't exactly comparable, since it doesn't count people that never even start working in engineering, and is from 2009. It claims about 10% of men leave engineering by age 30, compared to around 25% of women.

[1] [http://machinedesign.com/editorial-comment/more-women- leave-...](http://machinedesign.com/editorial-comment/more-women-leave- engineering-earn-degrees-same-rate-men-how-break-bad-news-screami)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is a short story about this. My wife has a computer science degree, but has since left the field to become a teacher. She worked at Foxit in software test before we got married. When we got married she moved to live with me. She doesn't like working with computers much, so she got a job at an after school program as a teacher. That went well, now she is going to school to get her teaching credential. For a while she talked about staying in software since the pay is better than in teaching. I like engineering and make enough money for both of us to have what we need. I think everyone should have a job they enjoy.

<comment><USER17> Why would someone who doesn't like working with computers much get a computer science degree?

Perhaps she was interested in computer work more like what she did while pursuing her degree but isn't interested in it if it means more of the QA-type work she did at Foxit. But if she finds teaching engaging, that's certainly also good for society, the field needs more engaged teachers with a STEM background and mindset, even if they're not teaching a STEM class per se.

<comment><USER16> She didn't know what to study, and one of her friends was studying computer science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I found it fascinating that the question we're asking is wrong. It shouldn't be "Why do women leave engineering?" it should be "Why do men stay in higher proportions?". It seems that being arrogant makes working as an engineer more palatable. I know I suffer from this problem and many of the men I know in engineering do too. So between dealing with self-doubt (the imposter syndrome) and being around a bunch of oblivious ego maniacs, why would anyone stick around?

Honestly, this article just fed my confirmation bias. I have (ashamedly) believed that the reason there were so few women around me in engineering (specifically software engineering) is because they were too smart to be lured into the mind-numbing, sedentary, OCD-laden field by money alone. Leaving the number of women in the field approximately the same as the number of men who genuinely enjoy it. The rest of us are just out for a paycheck that most women deem "not worth it" (especially if the pay is not equal -- separate but related issue). I know that there are many cases that are not this simplistic, but in my experience, I have only seen women leave teams I was on for the same reasons as men (better position/pay elsewhere). I have never seen or heard of any Mad Men style harassment or the like in my immediate environment. I'm not sure if the coloration I have of normalcy is skewed by my experience or if the coverage of the gender gap has colored everyone else's. I'm sure this is what we're all asking ourselves in this industry the more this topic is covered. Regardless, it seems that we can't have these kinds of conversations as a country until pay is equal.

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a question: Which sex of all the sexually dimorphic animals on the Earth can give birth?

Answer: Females.

The simple answer to all these bait questions is that women can and do have children, which is time consuming and whether people deny it or not, mothers are far more integral in raising a child than fathers.

Naturally, spending less time in the workplace leads to them falling behind even though they might have started on equal or greater footing as their male counterparts.

<comment><USER20> Then why is this trend so different between disciplines? And why does it impact STEM and higher-salary jobs more? What about in other countries, like Malaysia, where IIRC there are more women in engineering (or at least computer science)?

You might want to revisit your thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I think the article is primarily a collection on anecdotes the number describing the issue are amazing:

> Women make up 20% of engineering graduates, but it's been estimated that > nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees either quit or never enter > the profession. Clearly, some elementary and high school reforms are > working, but those at the college level are not.

There is obviously a mismatch. I'm wondering however to what extent the issue is at the receiving engineering job market end and what can be attributed to the pushing school side? A lot positive can be said about scholarly achievements of women but we all know there always has been limited correlation of grades with any genders success in job. Maybe some women are directed towards engineering, succeeding initially when they are faced with school type exercises? Maybe the selection at university is tuned to be hard for men and works indirectly as a selection for other traits than math?

In any case considering the magnitude of numbers I'd like to see a breakdown of where women exit. University, first year at job, 5 years and after first child. The article does not help here.

</comment><comment><USER22> There are obviously many factors here, but one major one is

> women, more often than men, add that they want to become socially > responsible engineers, working to solve major problems and making a > difference in people's lives—which is consistent with other research showing > that women are significantly more likely than their male counterparts to be > interested in engineering work that is "socially conscious" (i.e., > specializations such as environmental vs. electrical engineering).

Electrical engineering and computer science and similar fields are, for the most part, just not a great fit for people with such aspirations. There are some nonprofits in the area, of course, but overall the industry is very profit-oriented. Most of us optimize ad revenue or something like that. We spend most of our days writing code instead of interacting with people whose lives we improve.

</comment><comment><USER23> And yet, a significant portion of the comments on HN when this topic comes up:

      * Claim that there is no problem, and/or
      * Condemn any action to address this as anti-egalitarian because it treats men and women differently

<comment><USER24> I do my very best to treat people equally. For me, that is done simply by to focusing on what it takes to get the job done, trying to not be an asshole, and expecting everyone I work with to do the same. Is there more to it than than?

<comment><USER23> If some people don't want to put any effort into making society more just, that's fine. Just so long as they don't get in the way of people that do, or take pot shots from the sidelines without offering any alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any studies looking at the career trajectories of self-taught developers? Not to equate web development with actual engineering or whatever, but I think it would be interesting.

<comment><USER26> My initial impression is that if you have the motivation to self-teach you have the motivation needed to breeze past anyone going to university. You'll see a higher rate of acceptance into the job market vs college grads.

On another hand I don't think you'll only be looking at web-devs. Self study is everywhere: machining, mechanics, and other engineering like low level firmware work.

No colleges teach "important" skills like "how do I make this 300k line C program compile into a binary under 512k" or "how do I write this program so that it can run on this 50kHz CPU".</comment></comment>


Why are people attracted to 50:50 probabilities? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/why-are-people-attracted-to-50-50-probabilities <comment><USER2> > $1m rising from 0% to 1% seems much more significant than the chance of the > same win rising from 20% to 21%.

0% to 1% is a much bigger change expected value when viewed as a ratio. 20% to 21% is a change of about 5% whereas 0% to 1% is an infinite or 100% change.

I think it is fair to say that the example does not demonstrate any human bias.</comment>


Paxos in 25 Lines - <AUTHOR> http://nil.csail.mit.edu/6.824/2015/notes/paxos-code.html <comment><USER2> I'm fascinated by consensus algorithms and would love to implement one myself to synchronize unreliable systems (e.g. a network of independent sensors with a common database running on ESP8266 modules). I didn't study CS, so I didn't absorb all the underlying theory with my breastmilk. So big questions remain unanswered so far.

How exactly do I know that the algorithm is correct? (Proof, of course, but how?)

How do I know that my implementation is correct? (Unit test, of course, but how? How do I simulate/test asynchronous systems with failing communication? How do I catch all possible edge cases?)

Is there an comparative overview of consensus algorithms detailing pros and cons? (A few days ago there was a post about Paxos/Raft having abmysal worst- case performance.)

<comment><USER3> Algorithm correctness: google "tla+"

Implementation correctness: google "jepsen"

Comparative overview: I'm not aware of one, but I'm sure there's one out there. If you find one, post it. Make sure it's very recent because there have been some very significant papers in the last few months.</comment></comment>


Dictionary of the oldest written language is now free online - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/dictionary-of-the-oldest-written-language-it-took-90-years-to-complete-and-its-now-free-online.html <comment><USER2> I thought the oldest surviving texts are in Sumerian rather than Akkadian.</comment>


Mars's mysterious elongated crater - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMDV9BO3DG_0.html <comment><USER2> Why is this so mysterious? It looks exactly like you'd expect an oblique-angle impact would (and the article speculates that it is the most likely cause).

<comment><USER3> I assume that they are rare? I'm not sure if they are possible on a planet with a decent atmosphere like Earth to, given that things that shallow would be flung back into space.</comment></comment>


Amazon Redshift Clients to require adding Amazon certificate authority (CA) - <AUTHOR> Just received this, and wondering how to interpret the ask from Amazon, and why there's only a month of lead time:
Hello,
You are receiving this email because you are an Amazon Redshift customer. Your action is required by October 23rd, 2017 to ensure continued connectivity to your Redshift cluster.
Beginning on this date, clients connecting to Amazon Redshift clusters will need an additional trusted certificate authority (CA). Clients use trusted certificate authorities to confirm the identity of the Redshift cluster when they connect to it. Your action is required to update your SQL clients and applications to use an updated certificate bundle that includes the new trusted CA.
* How do I update clients and applications to use an updated certificate bundle?
Go to the Transitioning to ACM Certificates for SSL Connections documentation page at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/mgmt/connecting-transitioning-to-acm-certs.html to download a new trusted certificate bundle, and then follow the steps on that page to configure your SQL clients to use the new bundle. The steps are specific to your application or SQL client configuration. The certificate bundle contains both old and new certificate authorities, so you can upgrade your application safely and maintain connectivity during the transition period.
To maintain connectivity, you'll need to install the new certificate bundle before October 23rd, 2017 at 17:00:00 UTC. After you've configured your clients to use the new bundle, you're done.
* What if I have questions or issues?
If you have questions or issues, please contact AWS Support at https://aws.amazon.com/support or your Technical Account Manager (TAM).
Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services <comment><USER2> If you read the transition page linked in the email pasted above, you will learn that this won't affect most people.

You only need to update your trust store in a very narrow set of cases. All of the below need to be true AND you need to be running a system that doesn't already trust the AWS root CA - most systems already do. If the AWS website doesn't show an SSL error, you already trust the certs.

1) If you're actually forcing SSL verification in your client

2) If you're not using the GovCloud or China regions

3) You are using Redshift drivers prior to ODBC version 22.214.171.1240 or JDBC version 22.214.171.1245, or not using the Redshift drivers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems straightforward to me. They're going to sign Redshift certs themselves via ACM rather than paying a third party vendor to do it for them. This is a heads up so your app doesn't break when they do.

What else would you like to know?</comment>


Casual Sex: Everyone Is Doing It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/casual-sex-everyone-is-doing-it <comment><USER3> "Sex in America, the Definitive Study" is perhaps more useful.[1] This was done in the 1990s. They selected about 3000 people in the US at random, using proper random selection techniques. Each person was both surveyed and interviewed. They tried hard to convince the selected people to participate, so as not to unbalance the survey. They went to a lot of trouble to get good results. The results are thus more meaningful than self-selected surveys and surveys of college students.

The results are unsurprising, but interesting. The New York Times has a summary.[2]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Sex-America-Edward- Laumann/dp/0446671...](https://www.amazon.com/Sex-America-Edward- Laumann/dp/0446671835) [2] [http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/07/us/sex-in- america-faithful...](http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/07/us/sex-in-america- faithfulness-in-marriage-thrives-after-all.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER4> English isn't my first language, so I'm kind of confused by "cohabiting singles" in the article. Does single in the article just mean not married?

<comment><USER5> I believe so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't address the question.

The article discusses candid interviews (~2,200) volunteered to an NYU psychology professor's (Zhana Vrangalova) website ([https://casualsexproject.com](https://casualsexproject.com)).

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see why the article needs to be flagged. I found it to be thought provoking.

<comment><USER8> Fixing the title would be a good place to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nope. Promiscuity is not so frequent as can be attested to in the generally prevalent pattern of monogamous relationships.

If promiscuity were to increase over a number of generations, that would be more on account of increased safety practices and/or improved immunological methods.

</comment><comment><USER10> The most embarrassing of this whole topic is that research about it has only just started. Sometimes I really feel like we are living in the dark ages.

<comment><USER11> I understand the idea but I worry that perspective doesnt account for the reality that we live in today.

With studies and experiments you have to ask yourself : who is doing the work? who is funding the work?

The people who are doing the work may have biases ranging from "how do I get published?" To "how do I get paid". Additionally, a sample size for a test costs money. How many samples does it take to consider it worthy of repeating? How many times should a single experiment be repeated?

Usually people funding think, "how does this help me?" Which can range from "I have cancer" to "I'll make a profit". The gov on the otherhand may be more lenient but how much of your taxes do you want to use on experiments that may be useless?

The concept of "dark ages" doesnt consider what our climate really is. There are limited resources and few people with those resources believe they should be stolen to fund projects they dont care about. There is plenty Id like to be studied such as

\- is education memorization or pattern recognition?

\- at what degree does exercize enable / prevent education

\- what is the zone and how do minds get put into the zone?

But Im fairly confident these will never be studied because nobody wants to do the work and funders See cern and mars as more interesting ventures

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If both of you can separate the emotional from the physical and are open with your true intentions, then casual sex can be a nice way to avoid the emotional effort involved in a healthy relationship

</comment><comment><USER13> Not everyone is promiscuous. I am a virgin and I intend to remain that way unless I marry. That is non-negotiable.

<comment><USER14> please, don't mistake this genuine question as an attack on your opinion - <USER2> have you made this decision? do you feel as though this benefits you some way? if so, how?

again, i'm not trying to debase you/your beliefs/opinions, i'm just curious.

<comment><USER13> The only reason I posted was to state that I am a counterexample. That is all that I wish to say here.

<comment><USER15> You know you can rape your spouse too, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Clickbait. Betteridge's law of headlines. etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> I tried it once. The tactile and auditory feedback was excellent - Great user experience!

My main concern with it is accessibility...

<comment><USER18> I down-voted this entire thread. Not because I didn't chuckle, but because thid is exactly the low-quality reddit style conversation HN has been able to successfully avoid so far. The risk isn't the isolated comment, it's every thread becoming a gag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is off topic for Hacker News. Most people here don't have a lot of first hand experience with the subject.

</comment><comment><USER20> Of course everyone is doing it ?</comment>


60km Charity Cryptorun with a GPS-Powered Smart Contract - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/a-crypto-fundraising-for-a-charity-on-the-ethereum-net-with-a-strava-gps-oracle-8a24167c1dad <comment><USER2> I'm not sure Strava works as an oracle for "this person did this run"; it only proves that a run was done by _someone_. It doesn't prove the identity of the runner. Interesting idea though.</comment>


With Antennagate over, is Glassgate next for the iPhone 4? - <AUTHOR> http://gdgt.com/discuss/with-antennagate-over-is-glassgate-next-iphone-ani/ <comment><USER2> Ahh the 'gate' suffix, the most overused cliche.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't call things "-gate." Also, "no."</comment>


Ask HN: If you coded your own bookmarking service, what features would it have? - <AUTHOR>

Here are some ideas:<p>- add notes, highlight, comment<p>- full text search<p>- offline access to the page<p>- read later email notifications<p>- share privately with coworkers <comment><USER2> I had an idea once for a bookmarking app which was based on the following :

Bookmarks today are usually static i.e. we save something we like once and done. But many times, bookmarks have a life, some could be temporary (e.g. craigslist apartment search link) which don't mean much after a certain time period etc. So my idea is that we should have a bookmark service that is fluid and dynamic.

1) EXPIRATION DATE: A bookmark will have a expiration date/timestamp which is user configurable. Say be default 180 days. A week before this expiration, users gets a notification that unless they want to keep this bookmark, it will be deleted/archived. This way, your clutter of bookmarks that are no longer needed is auto managed.

2) CONTEXT: When I bookmark something and come back to it few weeks/month later, I forget the context of why I bookmarked it. Sure, many times you know why because you did it of course. But tell me how many times you have looked at a Bookmark and went "Why did I bookmark this again". Context is important because lets say I came across a nice blog on "How to Add Google Analytics on your website", I might want to bookmark because I am thinking about using it for a specific webpage for my startup. Alternatively, I could bookmark the same page to share with someone who is looking to learn google analytics. Stuff like that. Again, context also helps with #1 because if I am just apartment hunting, i won't need those bookmarks after I find a place.

3) SYNCING: A bookmark should just not be locally available on my computer but synced with whichever device/system I am using.

4) TAGGING: Tag and categorize bookmarks using an easy interface. I hate the folder structure offered by browsers today.

4) SIMILAR BOOKMARKS: A potential social feature where once I bookmark a page, based on the tag/category, it shows me other similar pages/bookmarks done by users. Don't reveal any personal user info of course but it might be nice to see what others are bookmarking in similar categories.

May be some of this is overkill but these are my desired features for bookmarks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent summary. Regarding number 2, how do you think the context problem could be solved? The application can save the tab history of how you got to the page, but then you would need to install a plugin and possibly send navigation info to an online service. Or you could add a note to the saved bookmark, but now it requires some of your time.

<comment><USER3> If other bookmarks were saved say 3 hours either side, show them in a slider style.

Granted, not every bookmark will be "next to" others, but it many cases this would give a good sense of context.

"Hmmmm a page on Google analytics... I wonder why I saved that.... oh yeah! That was just after bookmarking this page about 'Best tracking systems for WP blogs'"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless (nonetheless relevant?) plug, I'm a software engineer at [https://www.kifi.com](https://www.kifi.com), a service that we launched rather silently a couple of months ago and that covers quite a few of the ideas mentioned:

\- "add notes, highlight, comment" and "share privately with coworkers" => you can start private discussions on any page, highlight specific content (text, images). At the moment, personal notes are covered by the ability to message yourself.

\- "full text search" => this is the core of Kifi. We scrape and index pages in real-time and integrate search results right into Google. Not only yours but also your friends' public bookmarks (you can still keep stuff private) and the network's. Result validation and interesting discoveries ensue.

\- "visual bookmarks" => browse all of your bookmarks with additional information and images / screenshots

\- "tagging" => yep, and they're fully searchable from Google as well

\- "syncing" => iOS app is already live, Android on the way

We're working on several other features including offline mode, a better read- it-later experience, shared libraries, and more cool collaboration and discovery things.

It'd be great to hear your feedback about it, new ideas and suggestions very much welcome :)

I love the idea of bookmarks having an expiration date, good way to keep your bookmarks clean in the long run!

<comment><USER5> I've got to say I find the UI to be insanely beautiful out of the bookmarking services I have used. Great job. Integrating it with conversations is really interesting, although I doubt I will ever have any "kifi friends" that I would be conversing with. Perhaps add in optional-to-join public "page rooms"?

One complaint: why do I need to have this giant 'kifi' square floating on the bottom of my browser window constantly - especially when there is ALSO an address bar button? I really don't think I'll tolerate it beyond the first time I accidentally click it or find it covering up something on my screen.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback!

About the Kifi square (the "keeper"): \- you can move it by clicking and dragging it up and down \- you can hide it either on a specific domain or entirely (see settings accessible by clicking on your picture at the top right)

The reason why you would want to keep it around is that Kifi is also a communication and contextual information tool, and it will show notifications from friends and additional information about the page you're on as you browse the web.

About Kifi friends, we will release next week a new "external messaging" feature that enables you to discuss a page with people without them having to be Kifi users. I think it's pretty cool, stay tuned!

However, beyond direct communication, Kifi gets much better with friends as their keeps will enrich your own search results and soon new discovery features, so there is long-term value for you to have them on :)

Does this make sense? Thanks again for checking us out!

<comment><USER5> It all sounds great. Thanks for engaging me about it! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Around 2 years ago I wanted to learn node.js and Backbone, and did so by building a site called Bookmarkly [1] one weekend. It's pinterest-style grid of images for bookmarks, where the images are screenshots of the sites. It supports tags and search and is extremely fast at using either to find a bookmark.

I was really more interested in learning the code than the details of what I was building, but it turned out nice enough that I keep my bookmarks in it. It's also open source, and you can easily host it yourself. [2] Which is highly recommended if you're interested, since the server crashes some times and I might not notice for hours or until someone e-mails me. The site itself is really just a demo of the code.

The repo's missing one element though, which is a screenshot generation service, because I honestly don't remember the steps I went through to get PhantomJS (headless webkit) working. Maybe it'll help someone interested in making their own bookmarking service anyway.

1: [http://www.bookmarkly.com](http://www.bookmarkly.com)

2: [https://github.com/dangrossman/Bookmarkly](https://github.com/dangrossman/Bookmarkly)

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be exactly like the Firefox plugin Scrapbook, but with cross-device synchronization and maybe some del.icio.us-style tagging and visualization. Actually, I can live without the jazz.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/scrapbook/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/scrapbook/)

Another related thought is that there are too many tools : I use EverNote for photos of book covers and a quick note on what I liked about that book, OneNote for my own detailed notes or projects, ScrapBook for web pages (both just bookmarks and offline copies), pdfs on my local file system...I hate the fragmentation involved. I hate having to go, "Hmmm...it's there somewhere", and having to search carefully. I will probably be able to get rid of EverNote soon, but still, too many tools.

</comment><comment><USER8> Browser extension that inserts relevant bookmarks above Google search results.

I don't usually look at websites I bookmark. When I need them, I usually just Google it and usually go through the same process to find it again. If websites I know are interesting/high-quality (those I bookmarked) would show up in my Google search result, I would save a lot of time.

Basically, people are used to use Google to find content, and I think they will naturally do the same even if they have a bookmark that's relevant to what they're searching for. Just show me relevant bookmarks when I search on Google!

I've been telling Pocket to do that for months, but they don't listen. Do it and you might win a user (make sure to support Pocket and OneTab import).

<comment><USER9> This is exactly what [http://teamgum.com](http://teamgum.com) does. It is meant for team based link sharing. So google search is topped with relevant articles from teamgum along with names of team members. Also, it allows to connect with pocket, delicious & some other bookmarking services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that new bookmark service should be build around context(as mentioned by @codegeek) of URL, its lifecycle and its content.

It should leverage the information on the page and not only the user input. I'm convinced that the most important information in bookmark like services are the URLs saved by users and the content of the pages they want to bookmark. It's not just about building dummy database with links, references and "static" features on top of it.

I think that really good bookmark service should be self-taught based on your usage of the system, your likes and your information from social networks.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really haven't needed anything beyond Pocket (which has been fantastic).

The UI is clean and minimal: it's never in my way. Saving an article is one click away, and it's (pretty much) instantly available on all my other devices. If I decide halfway through an article that I'd like to read it on my iPad, boom, done. It even parses the article Readability-style so that I can read it clutter-free.

Is there some functionality that other bookmarking services provide that would change my life and make me wonder how I ever lived with Pocket?

</comment><comment><USER12> It would have the ability to be extremely versatile. It can be seen as a traditional bookmarks bar but also with an interface. Of course, there would be features like how you'd sort them, cross platform compatibility, support for popular third party applications (Pocket, Instapaper, etc.), and much more (which have pretty much been stated already).

The most important feature to me, would be to figure out a way to sort my bookmarks for me based on my current population of bookmarks, my browsing history, and of course, what the actual bookmarks are.

</comment><comment><USER13> Shaarli is pretty good. [http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:shaarli](http://sebsauvage.net/wiki/doku.php?id=php:shaarli)

Have been running it on my Indie Box since I moved my data home from delicious in January. [http://indieboxproject.org/](http://indieboxproject.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm extremely content with Apple + iCloud. It works seamless and it's out of the way. It's just there, but I don't have to think about it or see it.

The Reading List feature is a bonus for offline.

It's the only reason I use Safari. Maybe I'm easy to please. Simple, yet obvious and convenient.

</comment><comment><USER15> Historical snapshotting of the page bookmarked? Check once a week for differences and keep copies of all of them.

</comment><comment><USER16> A really nice interface to the bookmarks and no just the traditional bookmark bar; it is too cramped and hard to use with lots of bookmarks.

This is something I was thinking of doing a few months ago. I would be interested in contributing if you need or want the help. At the very least keep us updated!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for the answer. Let me deep some more. Every month comes up a new bookmarking service with a very cool interface but it never get adoption and last less than a year. What exactly would make the difference for you?

<comment><USER16> Yeah I have noticed the same trend. Currently I am trying out something called dragdis.

[https://dragdis.com](https://dragdis.com)

I liked the suggestion by natch 27 for offline. It doesn't have an offline feature despite have a browser plugin (I am not a huge fan of this).

In terms of interface I don't have a complete answer. I want to be able to have my bookmarks organized but a lot of the time I don't want to do it manually. Too often I bookmark something really cool but don't have to time to tag or comment on it so it disappears until I decide to organize my bookmarks which in and of itself is a pain.

Maybe somehow generate metadata/tags/etc from scraping the link or by what other people have to saw about said link? Of course this would be in addition to being able to comment/tag/etc yourself. Thumbnails of the linked page would be nice, or if it was something from imgur for example, maybe the thumbnail is just the image that is on the page? I could go on but I think you might see where I am coming from; a lot of different features seem awesome but I think a lot of testing would be needed to see what people use and enjoy most.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you that user experience is important, but seeing so many alternatives that fail makes me wonder if maybe what is needed is a disruptive feature such offline access. Pinboard has everything you need to bookmark and is fast, pleople love it. However it does not have offline access to files and I wonder if that would make the difference for some people.

<comment><USER16> That's a good point and I think you're right. I know personally bookmarks are easily put into three categories:

* Sites I visit often and don't want to have to type to access

* Things I found and want to read (or reread) in the future

* and finally pictures or funny things I want to be able to share or look at later. So almost the same as #2.

For for items 2 & 3 offline access would be a great feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it would be call for bookmarks to automatically open up or offer favorite sites based on the type of page you are currently on. For instance right now it might be suggesting current favorites of mine TechCrunch and Toolbox.com.

</comment><comment><USER9> i am part of the team which runs bookmarking service for teams ([http://teamgum.com](http://teamgum.com)). it has a sidebar as an extension which shows live bookmarks from your team, discussions & notifications. It connects with google aswell while you try & search for something.

Also, it is available cross device on IOS, android & blackberry phones for clutter free & offline reading. for IE users, it also has a web app.

</comment><comment><USER18> It would automatically remember every page I have visited without requiring an action from me (Doable on desktop browsers). There would be simple browser extension UI that would allow tags, read-later and sharing.

<comment><USER19> That would probably take no time at all with chrome [https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/history](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/history) \- push history events to a synced service, auto-tag content (with something like embedly or alchemy ?) - add some social bells and whistles, sprinkle some flat ui and CSS3 transitions on it - alakazam!

<comment><USER20> Seems to me that not only did you provide a quick recipe for an implementation, but also provided a name for it!

<comment><USER19> Shame about the Pokemon, was hoping for something more magical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i have been using diigo for 7 years or so; this is the only bookmarking app (AFAIK) that let's you _highlight text_ and add _stick notes_ on the page you bookmarked--great for research--you can retrieve the bookmarked page and immediately go to the portion of interest; it's also great for sharing links-- facilitates communication when you can highlight the single sentence or two of interest or when you can continue the dialog on the web page itself (w/ sticky note on the page pointing to the text you wish to emphasize).

</comment><comment><USER22> \- share publicly

\- discover cool bookmarks saved and tagged by everyone (ala delicio.us back in the day) NOT just by my own social network.

</comment><comment><USER23> Search... I can't believe Chrome hasn't the ability to search bookmark's content and even searching titles is cumbersome.

<comment><USER24> You should try Google Bookmarks[0], tagging and search abilities.

[0]: [https://www.google.com/bookmarks/](https://www.google.com/bookmarks/)

<comment><USER23> I did many years ago when they first came out, but they don't show up in your browser's bookmarks. Thanks for sharing anyway :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Chrome bookmarks work quite well for me. I think an expiration date with a reminder would be the only added feature I would want.

</comment><comment><USER26> Visual bookmarks are extremely helpful, particularly if they're well categorized etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> if I'm going to download something it would need to be open source. it would be nice it it synced across devices.

<comment><USER16> I totally agree, if I were to work on this I would really want it to be open source.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Express 3D Printed Gifts - <AUTHOR> http://dreamboxdev.com/nametag/

<comment><USER2> I received my custom tag and loved it!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure to be a hit present. My recipient really loved it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're recording prints as well, so we'll be able to send you a YouTube video link with the creation of your tag.</comment>


To approximate 52! by hand, compute 54! and divide by 3000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/Calculating52FactorialByHand.html?HN_20160605 <comment><USER2> No discussion of 52! is complete without [1]. A somewhat condensed version of one of the illustrations from the site.

 _52! is the number of different ways you can arrange a single deck of cards. Let 's try to wrap our puny human brains around the magnitude of this number with a fun little theoretical exercise. Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. We're going to see how much fun we can have before the timer counts down all the way. Start by picking your favorite spot on the equator. You're going to walk around the world along the equator, but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years. Make sure to pack a deck of playing cards, so you can get in a few trillion hands of solitaire between steps.

After you complete your round the world trip, remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean. Now do the same thing again: walk around the world at one billion years per step, removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean each time you circle the globe. Continue until the ocean is empty.

When it is, take one sheet of paper and place it flat on the ground. Now, fill the ocean back up and start the entire process all over again, adding a sheet of paper to the stack each time you've emptied the ocean. Do this until the stack of paper reaches from the Earth to the Sun.

Take a glance at the timer, you will see that the three left-most digits haven't even changed. You still have 8.063 × 10⁶⁷ more seconds to go. So, take the stack of papers down and do it all over again. One thousand times more. Unfortunately, that still won't do it. There are still more than 5.385 × 10⁶⁷ seconds remaining. You're just about a third of the way done._

[1] [http://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html](http://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html)

<comment><USER3> Pfft, it's much smaller than the number of atoms in the universe. Then again, after I read how to calculate Graham's number, I'm not impressed by much.

<comment><USER4> do you mind linking to what you read on Graham's number? The wikipedia is interesting, but it seems like you found something more so

<comment> Styx- Not OP, but Wait But Why did a great article on it a few weeks ago:

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams- number.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/1000000-grahams-number.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I once met a guy who said he could count anything instantly. I had to test his claim. "This is my ranch, and over there's my cattle. How many are there?"

He looked over, paused for the briefest moment, and then said, "I see 742 cows."

Astonished, I exclaimed, "That's exactly right! Mind sharing your secret?"

He leaned in a bit and proudly explained. "It's simple, really. I count the number of legs and divide by four."

<comment><USER6> I don't get it - is counting the # of legs less work than counting the # of cows? It would seem to be 4x the work, or am I being dense?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a well-known "joke", and it clearly plays off the idea of this article wherein calculating 52! is, genuinely, done by calculating 54! then dividing by a correction factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an even easier way. Start calculator on your iPhone, rotate it to landscape to switch to scientific calculator, type 5, 2, x! and observe result: 8.06 * 10^67

Yeah, really ingenious, I know... but still.. Just a couple of hours ago, we were playing this math game with my 6-year old daughter and it involved making mental additions and substations to reach a certain number ... After some time she kind of started liquefying in the chair, becoming frustrated and bored with the effort of the mental math...

But then I offered her the calculator and she immediately loved it - she could outsource the hard computations to the device and just enjoy the "game" part of the game.

At first I went - "oh no, she won't learn how to do arithmetic with her head if she uses the calculator - that's terrible !", but then I noticed that she actually did the easy parts in her head and only used the calculator for 'hard' subtractions.

In the end, the fact that we _went on_ and _enjoyed_ the game with the help of the calculator, generated a lot more mental math than if we'd have stopped playing the game.

Anyway, not sure what my point is - I guess that sometimes a calculator is even more convenient than clever math tricks - unless your game is the math tricks themselves...

<comment><AUTHOR> The point here is that these sorts of "math tricks" are the next stage equivalent of what you've called "the easy parts." After a while you no longer have to stop to use the calculator, you can get into flow and get ahead with the stuff that really matters.

It's simply the next step along a long road that not everyone travels.

And by the way - I abso _lutely_ use the tools available - calculators, symbolic algebra packages, GeoGebra, and more. It's just that not having to stop as often is a huge plus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was tempted to just plug in 52 into Stirling's formula n!~~((n/e)^n)sqrt(2pi*n) but the result isn't as 'nice'.

What makes 54 special and how would you know to try it instead?

What makes a number computationally 'nice' for humans? Is it just less computation steps under relaxed precision?

Is there a collection of heuristics for approximation?(This might be just Numerical Analysis) Or better yet, ome sort of approximate calculator software that gives error bounds?

I've heard this book is good (from HN) but haven't gotten to reading it: Street-fighting mathematics. [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_dow...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262514293_Street_Fighting_Mathematics.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's nice because 2.7 is close to _e,_ and 2.7 is a nice factor of 54, which is close to 52.

It's worth starting from the fact that e^3 ~ 20 and see if you can make that work. I'd suggest calculating 50! using e^3 ~ 20 (somehow!) - that's the next version I'll be doing. It's an interesting exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The real value being :

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000

that is, the approximation was about 80% of the real value. Half of the approximation was in Stirling's formula, and another half in approximating 2^50.

Edit: nevermind. Stirling's formula is surprisingly accurate. [https://www.google.co.uk/#safe=off&q=%2854%2Fe%29^54*sqrt%28...](https://www.google.co.uk/#safe=off&q=%2854%2Fe%29^54*sqrt%282*pi*54%29+%2F+53+%2F+54)

<comment><AUTHOR> There are two major sources of error. One is in using 2.7 as the value for _e._ That's wrong by about 0.677%, and then that's raised to the power of 54. That makes the result too big by about 44%.

Then it approximates 2^10 by 10^3, which is wrong by 2.4%. That's raised to the power of 5, and the result is too small by 12.6%.

So we divide by 1.44 and multiply by 1.28 to get the corrected answer of 7.8 * 10^67, which is extremely close to the actual answer of 8.066 * 10^67.

Finally, I used sqrt(2.pi.54) as 18, whereas it's closer to 18.42, another 2.3%. We should then get 7.8125 * 18.42/18 which is about 7.99474.

Nailed it.

Those corrections can (mostly) also be done (or at least approximated) by hand - maybe I should write a follow-up.

<comment><USER10> Is there a shorthand for calculating how much X% of error will become when raised to the power of Y?

For relatively small powers, simple multiplication seems to give results that are close enough, e.g. 0.677% * 54 = 36.6%, and 2.4% * 5 = 12%. But this is obviously not going to work once you start raising numbers to even higher powers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer ...

For very small errors, multiplying by the power is right. You can see that because of the standard expansion:

(1+e)^n ~ 1 + ne + n(n-1)e^2/2 + ...

When e is small enough, e^2 is very small, so we can ignore everything that follows.

When e is slightly larger we can use more terms in the expansion, and that works nicely. That happens in the post about the birthday problem, where an extra term is used from the expansion for _log(n)._

So you don't get it for free, but it's not a lot of extra work.

In the case of 1.024^5, which is in the post, we get:

        e=0.024
        n=5
        print n * e

        -> 0.12

So the first approximation of the error is 12%

        print n*e + n*(n-1)/2*e**2

        -> 0.12575999999999998

So the extended approximation is 12.576%. We can compare that with the actual error:

        print (1+e)**5

        -> 1.125899906842624

Pretty close.

Even longer answer: Binomial Theorem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do wish my high school combinatorics had included Stirling's approximation. It allows great approximations for problems that are really asking for it.

If there are 200 white and 200 black balls in an urn, there's no sense asking for some expected value as an exact rational number.

</comment><comment><USER12> At the risk of appearing humorless, he's not calculating 54! and dividing by 3000, he's approximating 54! and dividing by 3000.

<comment><USER13> And more precisely he's dividing by 2880, which is btw closer to 54*53 than 3000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly, there is a lot of approximation / asymptotic analysis in mathematical physics: [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LYNOGk3ZjFM](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LYNOGk3ZjFM)

</comment><comment><USER15> Next up on Square One TV: Here 's a quick way to find the square root of four. √4 = √(2•2) = √2•√2. So just find the square root of 2, multiply it by itself and you have the square root of 4!

<comment><USER13> The beauty about maths are properties. What you said is perfect - now note that sqrt is the inverse of sqr, so you can "cancel" them, and you got the result: 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a fantastic example of a back-of-the-envelope calculation!

</comment><comment><USER17> And if you dont know how to compute 54!, just approximate it by computing 52! * 3000</comment>


"Globally, Internet Traffic Passes Through 13 Root Servers" () - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120729_globally_internet_traffic_passes_through_13_root_servers/

<comment><USER2> The expression of india wanting some "control" over the internet looks like part of the bigger push going on for the UN to control the internet, which it kind of scares me. I honestly prefer the current mishmash of tech companies as stewardship. There are a lot of scary countries in the UN (China, Pakistan, United States etc) that shouldn't be anywhere near the censorship button. I could see UN "internet rights" laws looking like the european ones restricting speech around things like religions.

</comment><comment><USER3> /me is still waiting for Die Hard XXIV: Severed Root Servers

I've always thought a drama based upon a rogue group or state taking control of the root servers would make for a good sci-fi flick.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh god that is very embarrassing. How does someone so incompetent get to such a high position?

<comment><USER5> It's called 'politics'.</comment></comment>


The three levels of HTML5 usage - <AUTHOR> http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/html5-levels <comment><USER2> Strictly speaking, it's a _slash_ not a _solidus_.

Unicode actually gets it wrong, the character / SOLIDUS is not a solidus at all, it is a (forward) slash. A solidus has a much more shallow angle and was used as a separator in old British currency, and is still used in Mathematics. Ironically the Unicode character for an actual solidus is ⁄ FRACTION SLASH.

Further reading: [http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Solidus...](http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Solidus_\(punctuation\).html)

<comment><USER3> That makes his use of the term "solidus" a bit baffling (maybe it's referred to as such somewhere in the HTML5 specs?). I actually assumed he must mean both the characters in "/>" -- glad you mentioned it before I made a fool of myself somewhere.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's in the HTML spec as "solidus" because Unicode 0x47 is "SOLIDUS". That's the right thing to do in an important spec. It's just confusing in a blog post though, as most people have not heard of a solidus, and now they've learnt it wrong!

<comment><USER4> I've always used the term "solidus" whenever I refer to the slash in `/>` in self-closing elements in XML/XHTML.

In any other situation I'd call it a slash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am sure I was using anchor tags with 'display: block' long before HTML5. Did browsers support this despite it not being in HTML4?

<comment><USER6> I believe his point is that in HTML5 block elements inside the a element is valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This CSS:

        article, aside, footer, header, section {
            display: block;
        }

Does not make the new sectioning elements work in IE8. It sucks but since IE8 is the highest version of IE available for Windows XP and Win7 machines still ship with IE8 installed as default, supporting this browser will continue to be critical for all consumer sites for the next several years, minimum. Besides, using:

        <div class="header">

Is not that bad.

<comment><USER8> They do work* in IE6/7/8 with one more hack (linked later in the article):

<http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-shiv/>

*) for DOM/styling purposes. The fancy new outline algorithm isn't implemented anywhere yet :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very helpful indeed. Thanks</comment>


U.S. Border Patrol Bought 'Unlimited' Use of a Nationwide Tracking Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pky47y/cbp-surveillance-license-plate-reader-vigilant <comment><USER2> Every person, living and dead, is tracked in realtime, in astonishing detail.

We should daylight these activities and normalize it. Privacy protections would be nice, for instance. The Wild West days of these data aggregators needs to be over.

Further, other policy assumptions need to be revisited. Continued debate over our census process and voter registration databases is silly. Just run some queries.

</comment><comment><USER3> > more insight into CBP's nationwide tracking database, which it purchased > access to from a commercial vendor called Vigilant.

I can understand, sort of, why a 3-letter agency might want to have access to vehicle tracking; but why does some commercial entity have this information in the first place? Some corp is silently collecting location data on everyone (how? Buying it from phone and CCTV operators?), and everyone is ok with this? US needs GDPR, stat

<comment><USER4> [https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/about/privacy- policy...](https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/about/privacy- policy.html#californiaresidents)

It seems they're mostly license plate reading. Acquired by Motorola. This page for california residents is interesting in that it doesn't seem to have anything about the vehicle tracking in it's "Do not sell my personal information" page.

Anyone in CA want to ask them what they have?

Is it possible companies are fine selling your vehicle's data with no recourse and claiming its not "personal" data because it's data about a car?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> CBP having access to this is bad for it's own reasons, but what is equally bad is a private company tracking movement of individuals without their informed consent.</comment>


Skydio – The drone that flies itself - <AUTHOR> https://www.skydio.com/ <comment><USER2> Waiting for the cops to have these .. launch from car and record and stream for tactical view of incidents. Multiple units could work together using mesh net or net from router in vehicle.

<comment><USER3> Oh, goodie! More stuff for cops! 'Cause gumment and surveillance and cops are gonna save everyone!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get beta testers for my webapp?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've never done this, but my strategies would include: Create a landing page that ranks decently and drive serp hits to it, Make sure that the user knows how to use the system before they sign up (demo video), if you've got the money, run an adwords campaign for your target demographic, and try to make sure that your existing users invite others. Outside of that, friends, family, yayhooray, here, digg, put it EVERYWHERE. You can always limit the number of beta users if it's out too many places, and it'll help your ranking later if there's loads of backlinks.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your site? Posting a URL here couldn't hurt. I'm sure there are some HNers who would give it at least give it a chance.

</comment><comment><USER4> Feedbackroulette has been good to me <http://feedbackroulette.com/>

But you only really get as many reviews as you give yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have tried conning my friends, as well as getting Mechanical Turk workers, or posting on various sites like here, twitter, etc. Usually less than I hope for, but more than zero!

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.feedbackarmy.com/></comment>


Camping vs. Sinatra - <AUTHOR> http://librelist.com/browser//hacketyhack/2010/7/20/on-camping-vs-sinatra/ <comment><USER2> Always had a soft spot for Camping. Any web framework whose code comes in around 4k or under gets the thumbs up from me!

* Current code @ 3.499k - <http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb>

* Last WayBackMachine archive of _why repo @ 3.9k - [http://web.archive.org/web/20080527003153/code.whytheluckyst...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080527003153/code.whytheluckystiff.net/camping/browser/trunk/lib/camping.rb)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very lively note! No wonder this fellow was drawn to working an on a project by _why.

I've never before felt interested in using a Ruby framework, having recoiled from Rails in consternation (though to be fair, I wasn't quite ready for a framework). I really like the idea of a mnmlst framework. I've looked at the Sinatra and camping websites before... now I'm intrigued enough to try a project in each.

</comment><comment><USER4> He's not kidding about the small community increasing the likelihood that your problem gets looked at. I once had a small issue, and _why himself responded to my e-mails until I had figured it out.

<comment><USER5> Sure.. but _why kinda up and disappeared, didn't he....

<comment><USER6> (Disclaimer: I wrote that email)

Oh, don't worry. I know what every single byte in Camping does:

        $ git-rank-contributors -v | head -n 5
        _why <email@example.com>: 11384 lines of diff
        Magnus Holm <firstname.lastname@example.com>: 10122 lines of diff
        Jonas Pfenniger <email@example.com>: 1829 lines of diff
        Manfred Stienstra <email@example.com>: 168 lines of diff
        Sean Busbey <email@example.com>: 116 lines of diff

Besides, there's plenty of other (techarch, Bluebie, DaveEveritt, zuk and busbey are the first who come to my mind) who post frequently on the mailing list and know _plenty_ about Camping.

<comment><USER7> At 4k, it's not exactly huge. It is full of ruby that isn't exactly obvious at once, which I actually think is kind of enlightening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a big fan of how well demonstrated the code was in this email.

<comment><USER9> It's things like this email that make the Ruby community sparkly and tantalizing for all of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems a little weird to me. Like if I bought a Pepsi and someone from Coca-cola came up: "Pepsi, huh? Great choice! That stuff tastes pretty good, doesn't it? And that's the important thing. But you know, there are some pretty cool things about Coca-cola..." The opening enthusiasm sounds forced, like it's to gain my trust and set me up for a conversion. Not saying that's what's intended, just how it feels to me.

Is there some backstory I'm missing?

<comment><USER11> The backstory is that I'm gearing up for a 1.0 release of Hackety Hack on Whyday, and while the current site is in Rails, I want the _entire_ project to be exemplary for learning. So I posted a thread entitled Camping or Sinatra? where I asked everyone for their opinions... and I decided Sinatra, because I know it best, and because of a few concerns this email addresses. Then this thread comes along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is expressing your message as a valid ruby program the new YAPH signature?

His arguments are all valid for programs of a more significant size, but aren't both Camping and Sinatra oriented towards small programs, whereas you'd use something like Rails or Ramaze for bigger projects? This line gets a bit muddied by the increasing number of projects built on Sinatra, although I don't know whether they introduce ways to alleviate the points he made.

<comment><USER6> The new JAPH signature? I don't know really. I just write, and sometimes weird stuff ends up on the screen. Sorry!

Let me remind you that it was just _six (unimpressive) reasons Camping is better than you would imagine_ , not _six reasons Camping is a better fit for your project_. All I'm saying is that Camping gets so many things _right_. Not necessarily in very few lines of code or very fast, but nonetheless: I look at Camping code and nod to myself: "Yeah, this is probably the _correct_ way to do it".

Of course, this doesn't matter at all! If we cared about correctness, we would program in Haskell, not some language where monkey patching is acceptable in production code. As long as you're comfortable in Sinatra, you should continue doing that. It's that simply.

Interestingly, camping.rb on the other hand is _not_ very pretty or correct: <http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb>, and that's also what makes it so beautiful in my opinion.

Oh well, let me finish with a little quote from _why:

        On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 02:47:39PM +0200, zimbatm wrote:
        > This is not that hard to do. Maybe I should add some shortening tricks
        > document. I propose platterizing to be done only before release.

        No, let's not have rules.  I don't feel comfortable with having
        coding standards or any protocol on Camping.  The point of Camping
        is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that
        people make for "beautiful" code these days.  To show that ugly code
        can do beautiful things, maybe.

        I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the
        ideas that make Camping different.  Camping's personality is 80x50.
        It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together
        into a tight little mind-bending machine.  The challenge of Camping
        isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation.  The challenge is
        to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make
        everyone look twice.

        Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.

        _why

<comment><USER11> > Interestingly, camping.rb on the other hand is not very pretty or correct: > <http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb>, and that's > also what makes it so beautiful in my opinion.

I saw a very interesting comparison between Ruby and Python that sounds like this. Basically, it went like this: "Python's core language is very simple and pretty, and Ruby's is very complex and ugly. Yet, the very ugliness that Ruby allows and Python disallows means that the libraries that are created with the languages that are the exact opposite: RSpec is a thing of beauty, and something similar in Python isn't even really possible at the same level. So I actually like _using_ Ruby, even if I like the Python language more."

Like you said in both your email and here, it's all about what's best for _you_, not what's best 'in absolute.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My suggestion: make a simple app in both. Try out framework features you want, such as routing, source reloading, view support, testability, modularity (can I use MongoDB instead of a SQL for my models?), low level features, anything else it is important to you. Trying pushing it a little over the edge: extending and metaprogram the core classes as bit and checking error reporting (what happens if I pass out a 10000 character url?).

There you go. Two simple apps, that really stress what matters to you. Also, beware of frameworks that impose too much on you (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1534153>).

And most of all: enjoy playing around.</comment>