Jvm.go: A JVM written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zxh0/jvm.go <comment><USER2> If I could upvote this a 1000 times I would.

We need more people doing crazy sh*t like this. Java is a fantastic runtime - and a great language. But it has a huge amount of baggage. I'd love to see experiments int the open source arena playing around with alternatives to the standard Oracle JVM.

I'd love to see Android like alternatives for the desktop that re-use java's syntax but have less baggage and are not tied to Sun's view of what Java should be (Oracle's view of the language is actually a lot better than Sun's thank god).

There are countless Java developers who would like to reuse their knowledge but in a different set up. E.g. desktop not server, lightweight not heavyweight, systems level (like go/python) etc.

I keep hoping that one of these JVMs will end up going in their own direction one day not trying to achieve official Java compatibility.

Anyway kudos to the author.

<comment><USER3> You do realise that Oracle's JVM isn't the only one and there are many open source JVM alternatives. Quite a few of which are designed for lightweight systems:

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

And I have no idea what you mean by baggage. I am assuming you mean "features" like JNI, JMX etc ?

If that is the case then the modularisation of the JVM is something that has been underway for a number of years now. It is targeted for Java 9 release:

[http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/)

And there is no difference in the way Oracle or Sun has managed the JVM. Changes are still made through the JSR/JEP process.

And finally again no idea what you mean by countess Java developers wanting to reuse their knowledge but in a different environment.

Android is already an option as is Swing but honestly does anyone care about desktop apps these days ?

<comment><USER4> Baggage: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/313584/what-is-the- concep...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/313584/what-is-the-concept-of- erasure-in-generics-in-java)

Yes there are many JVM:s but most of them aren't any good.

<comment><USER5> They're working on real generics for the JVM, but it's a lot of work, especially to preserve compatibility (which is why it wasn't done beforehand). If you throw out compatibility it's still a lot of work though, plus you no longer have any of the libraries.

I guess if you mean by "not any good" they're slower/less featureful than the original HotSpot JVM, then, well, yes..... you get what you pay for (in terms of resource usage).

<comment><USER4> Where have you heard that? Generics were implemented using type erasure long ago because it was deemed to hard and would break to much existing code to implement them correctly. What has change to make it feasible now? Not saying you're wrong but I haven't seen any mention of any work in that direction.

<comment><USER5> Look for project Valhalla. It's doing value types, which means you will be able to write List<int> amongst other things. Obviously that means the int type cannot be erased in that context.

Nothing in particular has changed, but full generics C++ style imply value types, and value types are now on the table whereas before they were not (other higher priorities, I guess).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one way to get generics in Go.

<comment><USER7> _slow clap_

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks really neat, but there's no license or copyright notices as far as I can tell. Author, please add a license to your repository!

<comment><USER9> There's a " LICENSE.txt"[sic] file now. Looks like it's MIT licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1600 commits by one dude? 700 commits in January? An average of 23 commits a day? 12,000 lines written and 7,000 removed just that month. An average of 640 commits per month.

I may be naive. Am I missing something or this guy is an incredible code machine?

<comment><USER2> Nah, that's a perfectly reasonable pace to work at when you have:

* Predefined explicit requirements (a tight spec).

* No distractions.

* No colleagues (i.e. you're working on a non-blocking single thread of execution).

* Enthusiasm.

* An unhealthy enjoyment of coding.

I have worked at this pace and I'm sure many others have, but you need to have those pre-requisites (and they are RARE!).

Bare in mind that if you're the only developer those commits probably haven't been tested and you're not worrying about damaging other people's code.

Of course, you can't scale that model :-)

Which btw is a fantastic real world analogy of why multi-threading can suck horrifically in some cases and why that parallel execution isn't always a good thing.

NOTE: None of that takes a way from a totally awesome and fearless project to take on and complete (which I believe it is?).

<comment><USER10> I don't know about you, but I could maybe keep that pace 3 days. Maybe 5. But 2.5 months?

<comment><USER11> When I fall in love with a personal project, it happens to me too. The important factor is that I don't have anyone else to explain myself to, no one blocking my changes, I own the whole project from the bottom all the way to the top - it's basically just a giant positive feedback loop.

I checked my stats and over the last six weeks I have dedicated my spare time (of which there has been more than usual, but I have a family and work 9-5) to my current project, and I've averaged 7 commits per day with 59308 lines added, 22903 deleted.

I am feeling a little burnt out now, but fortunately the code is essentially done and all that's left is a little mop up and writing a blog post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First off -- this is really impressive! Is the author present here? I wonder:

\- How is the performance?

\- Is a GC implemented separately or is the Go one directly used (awesome!)?

\- How do calls to native JNI things operate (through CGO)? Does it work?

<comment><USER13> > \- How is the performance?

I'm guessing not great. Looks like a simple bytecode interpreter using interface virtual dispatch on the instructions (!).

> \- Is a GC implemented separately or is the Go one directly used (awesome!)?

As far as I can tell, it just uses the native Go GC, which is smart.

<comment><USER14> Java supports exotic reference types like weak references. These require close integration with the GC, and Go doesn't support them, so Go's GC can't be used to implement them.

<comment><USER15> And JNI local and global refs and heap walking via JVMTI and …

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While we're at it, wonder if it runs JGo? Go compiled to java bytecode running on a JVM built in Go.

[https://code.google.com/p/jgo/](https://code.google.com/p/jgo/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A relevant post by the author (English translation): [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&u=http:...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&u=http://blog.csdn.net/zxhoo/article/details/44104553)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is cool, but now there's a risk that tomorrow will bring us JVM.js with a kickstarter, trendy logo, and a subtle but distinct whiff of moral superiority.

Edit: so I really am a cynic, I count at least two on the first page and neither are at all as wanky as my imagination likes to think.

<comment><USER18> That is the benefit of working on hard problems that are almost entirely technical. Especially if you are working alone, and usually not getting paid, it's easy to not get distracted by fad movements or popularization in simply writing software. But unfortunately, it usually ends up being a total waste of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now put a Lisp on there, quick! Clogure?

<comment><USER20> Shouldn't Clojure work out of the box if it implements the same API as the JVM?

<comment><USER19> If it's JLS compliant, absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Will this open the door to utilizing Java libraries from within go apps?

Coming soon: scala.go (!)

<comment><USER5> No - for that you'd need a Go implementation on the JVM.

Last time I checked there was a half finished student project that does this. But not a full implementation. That's a shame. I've encountered a Go shop that was really suffering from things as basic as "our best debugger is gdb which doesn't really work" and "how do we get a stack trace from our running program?".

The Go crowd like to talk about how Go programs are small and standalone, but obviously the HotSpot JVM is not just a big pile of NOPs. You can get very small implementations of Java too, but only by cutting lots of useful functionality.

I bet if a company produced a solid, compliant Go for the JVM, that'd be a license to print money. I feel like lots of startups are coding themselves into a corner by relying on the relatively new and simple Go runtime. If they could bring their code across to the JVM and get access to all the useful tools it has, that'd be worth some money.

<comment><USER22> Go on the JVM completely defeats one of the biggest Go selling points for me: compilation to native code.

Debuggers are definitely a weak spot, though, I agree. Luckily it's being worked on ([https://github.com/derekparker/delve](https://github.com/derekparker/delve)).

<comment><USER5> What precise benefits do you look for?

Bear in mind "compile to native code" is a bit vague. JVMs compile bytecodes to native code too, they just do it on the fly instead of ahead of time. If you mean "single executable" then there are ways to do that with Java too, check out the downloadable demos on the Avian website. But many native apps are not single files and have lots of libraries they depend on, so the distinction there isn't obvious either.

<comment><USER22> One of the hats I wear is "DevOps"/"SRE" (among other things). To me the JVM is another big layer of complexity between the code and the hardware it runs on that makes debugging and performance analysis that much more complicated. Granted, it also brings tools to the table (JMX, etc). However given the choice I'll nearly always pick an application that compiles directly to a native machine code binary. It's ironic to me that the JVM was conceived as a portability panacea ("write once, run anywhere") yet outside of mobile virtually everything runs on x86(-64). So with the JVM we have this thick, unnecessary VM layer that penalizes (in terms of performance and complexity) all code running on it.

The fact that Go programs are all statically-linked (easy deployment, no weird dependency issues) and are reasonably safe given idiomatic coding patterns are nice bonuses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very cool project, I like the focus on readability (even if at the cost of performance): that makes it a good example to show to people who want to learn about the implementation of languages and VMs.

</comment><comment><USER24> Really cool. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER25> It is pretty impressive as a project, but I am not sure I get the point. JVM already exists, so we can run Java programs. Go exists so we can compile Go programs. What do I get from running a Java program in a Go-built JVM over a C-built JVM?

<comment><USER26> I've noticed from HN headlines that there's an odd focus on what programming language something is written in. Often they'll take the form of "A <thing that is already common> written in <recently popular language>", rather than a real USP. It's especially odd from a community that places so much emphasis on the importance of a good pitch.

<comment><USER27> It's important for libraries. If you're writing in Go, a Java library doesn't help you much. Think of it as an easy way to qualify leads.

For apps, it matters less but you still have to think about how easy it is to modify. That's why we care about open source, right?

<comment><USER5> This is the wrong way around for that. It won't give you Java/Go interop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a very cool project, I just hope Oracle's lawyers don't descend on this...they have a knack for ruining everything.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I mean, just look what they did to the openjdk

<comment><USER30> Any specifics for the unoriented?

<comment><USER5> The Oracle JVM is virtually all open source under a different name (OpenJDK) and there are lots of other JVMs out there. Oracle won't care about this project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh, yay, we can now get DOUBLE GC PAUSES!

I wish the README had more information about the reason this project exists. Is it just a fun toy jvm for learning? Is it meant to be eventually production-ready and performant?

Just knowing whether something is meant as a learning project or for production use vastly changes how people will approach it and I just can't tell with this one.

<comment><USER21> glancing through the source code I don't see any reason there would be double gc pauses. This appears to be a full jvm, not exec.Command("java", ...).Run().

<comment><USER32> The JVM handles the garbage collection for Java so if someone writes a JVM in a garbage collected language I would suspect two garbage collectors to be running (one for GO and one for the bytecode the JVM is running).

It would be an interesting concept to pass through Java objects for the GO garbage collector to deal with but that sounds incredibly difficult or impossible.

<comment><USER33> But that's exactly what he does if you read his (poorly translated) blog posts.

I think it's actually much simpler to do it this way. It keeps the mapping between Java and Go constructs much tighter.

<comment><USER32> Ah I didn't see those so I'll have to take a look. The reason I thought it was very difficult and maybe even impossible was mostly because passing through to GO changes the behavior or Java to a point where it could cause some adverse affects in applications tuned or expecting it to work as the other JVMs work.

Still a cool project either way.

<comment><USER33> For many things that may be the case, but to my knowledge Java doesn't make any strict assumptions about garbage collection. You can get drastically different behavior just by passing different parameters to your JVM for instance.

As long as the Go garbage collection works, it shouldn't affect how the program runs. That's kind of the whole point of GC. Hell, you could write a toy VM with _no_ garbage collection, and it would work fine until you blew your memory.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review our web app - User Interface Throwdowns - <AUTHOR> http://ninjasandrobots.com/

<comment><USER3> Polluting my Twitter feed with the votes from this is a total dealbreaker for me. Of everyone that follows me, only a small group of people read HN and will have heard of this. The rest of them are going to see some convoluted hashtags.

Is that your way of marketing this? It's not a bad idea in principle, but you're losing (1) non-Twitter users and (2) people like me who want to maintain their Twitter stream.

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, heard loud and clear. we'll do something better around that

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just something quick we (the guys at Inkling: inklingmarkets.com) whipped up. I absolutely love the 37better projects and explorations of making a design better. Here was a good one I saw today: <http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/highrise.html>

We thought we could use a site to help foster more of these redesigns and commentary around them. This is just "half a product", and was curious if anyone got any use out of it before we explore it further.

</comment><comment><USER4> Potentially cool site, but I'd really like to see the voting handled on the site and the twitter integration optional. I dislike twitter and, for the moment refuse to use it on principle.

<comment><AUTHOR> K, thanks for that, i debated about that too. I don't see it being too hard to have native comments and slurp in twitter posts.

<comment><USER5> It's probably overkill but the wordpress plugin that the backtype guys made is wonderful for reclaiming your comments.

<http://www.backtype.com/home>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Twitter message it throws off when you click "Tweet my vote" is completely non-human readable to someone not familiar with the site. It almost looks like spam. You have room to make it more verbose, which could help with virality.

Also, since you're in Chicago, why the hell don't we ever see you guys out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, that twitter message looks gross. And I wanted to keep it as short as possible so people felt comfortable adding their own message rather than just leave some redundant default text. Feel free to add a throwdown of what the default message should be? :) We'll think about it more over here too. Thanks for bringing it up.

I don't know why you don't see us :) We are pretty social.

<comment><USER6> "I voted for Robot for new versus old Yahoo. #nar #hashymchashyhash bit.ly/zombies" That's bizarre, yet descriptive, enough to invite a click. I'd say Ninja is old, Robot is new since you have old on left and new on right.

Pick a night. I'll get shitfaced with you. Ask the Pollers or Thomas or any of the other folks: it's how I roll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm probably being unfair, but I want to "feel" the proposed interaction and the single picture + text does not do it for me. I know that people are proposing and not implementing a new interface but, to me, web interfaces hinge a lot on interactions.

Maybe if there was some way to storyboard an interaction, I'm not really sure.

Also, there should be some form of anonymous voting, I didn't feel like letting this thing onto my twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. Real html of the redesign is better than just looking at an image. You can add whatever link you want so when people click on the image of your design it can definitely go to a site where you created an interactive experience.

I should probably add a "click to see more of this design" or something since it may have not been apparent that you can see whatever else the poster wanted you to see.

Also noted about not wanting to use Twitter.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We did something that would probably go well with your site for Evernote. Probably could stand a once over from a talented visual designer, but overall we're happy with the UX choices.

<http://fictivekin.com/Evernote_Redesign_A_case_study_in_UX>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet, exactly. Feel free to throw that up there! <http://ninjasandrobots.com/throwdowns/new>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think you also need to make it usable for people to ask for help redesigning a site. That's what I expected from the title 'User Interface Throwdowns' - <USER2> don't know how much use it would get.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Who doesn't like ninjas AND robots? :)

Cowboys.

<comment><USER11> I think the traditional answer is pirates :O

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> okay, I don't know if I am alone in this, but whenever I see someone mention 37signal I think "Wannabe Fanboy Ruby-extremist" which is not good!

As for the design, its okay, but the site 'raison d'etre' is not obvious thought, you also could have used a better logo! or a logo!

</comment><comment><USER13> pretty cool nate - is there anyway you can hook up mechanical turk to it and get some A|B testing out of it? or is that not the point?

<comment><AUTHOR> hey man! been a long time. you raise an interesting point, and i have thought about it, but not very long and with no real conclusion. like even summarizing ryan singer's github nav redesign:

<http://ninjasandrobots.com/throwdowns/2>

he actually ends up with a couple explorations in there.

or like the new guy at 37s. here's his backback redesign too:

<http://jasonzimdars.com/svn/backpack.html>

and he's got a couple explorations in there too.

not sure what to do with that yet. not sure if its a do 1-many of after designs? people can now of course just create many new entries with the same before design over and over. obviously not the most efficient. still have to think about this one and see where it goes.</comment></comment>


EU Officials Propose Internet Cops On Patrol, No Anonymity, No Obscure Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120921/03581820457/eu-officials-propose-internet-cops-patrol-no-anonymity-no-obscure-languages-because-terrorism.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> I really hope that TechDirt is again making a slight hyperbole of things. Because otherwise this sound pretty terrible.

And I, personally, am pretty sick everytime someone marks something as "Orwell-like" when it isn't so, but this really seems worrying.</comment>


Apple To Open Breach To Third Party APIs... - <AUTHOR> http://iphonecounty.com/apple-to-open-breach-to-third-party-apis/ <comment><USER2> About the word "API" - I don't think it means what you think it means.</comment>


The Congressman Who Went Off the Grid - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com//magazine/story/2014/01/roscoe-bartlett-congressman-off-the-grid-101720.html

<comment><USER2> "the tyranny of the urgent"

Useful phrase although I suspect that Dr Bartlett would struggle to find political common ground with me.</comment>


Ask HN: Best practice to send emails to clients? - <AUTHOR> I'm using zoho mail as my business email, but it banned my accounts after sending some emails to my client. Any better way to send the email to subscribers? <comment><USER2> Hello,

I'm Revanth, and I work as a product marketer in Zoho. We have another product called Zoho Campaigns, which is built specifically for the purpose of sending out bulk emails or newsletters to a list of subscribers. Perhaps you can give that a try.

[http://zoho.com/campaigns](http://zoho.com/campaigns)

Please write back to me if you have any questions.

Thanks.

Revanth</comment>


Codekit 2 is out - <AUTHOR> http://incident57.com/codekit/index.html?v=2 <comment><USER3> My goodness, this thread is actually worse then reddit. I never thought I would see such garbage in Hacker News before. This guy is releasing a new version of his product, of which thousands probably use. He just so happens to have a sense of humor (which anyone who has used Codekit before would know about) and you guys are picking him apart like a piece of turkey.

I actually can't believe what I am reading atm, has this industry really gotten to a point where nobody has a sense of humor or any congratulatory comments anymore? And everyone is force to pick apart every single thing?

<comment><USER4> HN has always had a vocal population of pedants who like to complain about shit they can nitpick apart for no good reason.

Combined with the other population who don't like to see tools and projects that let "lowly" developers accomplish the same things they worked so hard to do the manual/complicated way, and you get this thread so far..

Such is life...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _nonchalantly getting out credit card to pay for a great upgrade to an app I use daily to make a living while browsing through bitter comments from people that probably never even used the damn app_

</comment><comment><USER6> CodeKit is awesome and Bryan is a funny guy. I'm surprised that so many people don't get the humour on the website. I love it. Shows me Bryan's a real genuine person.

Oh and he's built an awesome product that makes my life so much easier... and he doesn't demand I pay the earth for it. #win

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks very promising and like a great upgrade from CodeKit 1.0 of which I've been a happy user for the last 1.5 years. The creator has provided excellent support every time I contact him.

I LOVE the sense of humor in the testimonials section... LULz

My one concern is does CK 2.0 create standard config files for Bower, Grunt, etc... CK 1.0 did NOT do this and made collaborating with non Mac / non CK users difficult!

</comment><comment><USER8> Codekit is a beautiful, comprehensive and powerful solution for those who don't want to/don't feel comfortable setting up Grunt or Gulp. If you're one of those people, it comes highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER9> Threads like this are why I don't waste my time on sites like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> A bit frustration that it is a paid upgrade for Codekit 1.0 users - doesn't seem like that much has been changed, and it's not as if the first version saw a ton of updates.

<comment><USER11> Well, it includes some new tools, the refreshing of projects works better but the internal server is the really cool new feature. I really think it's worth the upgrade price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bought CodeKit 1 a while ago and about a week later he announced he had been working on CodeKit 2. Basically, my purchase was immediately abandonware. He's released no new features and very few updates (just library updates) since then. When I contacted him he wrote a short message back saying there will be no free upgrades to CodeKit 2. Stuff like this just teaches me not to trust these companies, I'm always going to get screwed. So, instead of investing myself to configure CodeKit and make it a part of my development pipeline, I moved over to Grunt. I didn't get to use CodeKit 1 on a single project because I knew it was already abandoned. It took me an hour or so to optimize my grunt file and get used to it but it's all been for the best. Grunt won't abandon me or gouge me for more money. I've also been using Adobe Brackets (and playing with GitHub Atom) a lot lately and it will probably soon replace the expensive Coda 2 that Panic never updates. I've never really been a huge open-source guy but the actions of Mac developers are pushing me that way.

<comment><USER13> He does offer a discount to get the update. Also, I'm sure you can still use CodeKit 1 if you don't want to pay for the update.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like CodeKit. It safes me time/work to focus on more pressing matters.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like what I'm seeing, however the main gripe I have is that it doesn't seem to be cross-platform; it looks like it's a GUI for Grunt configuration (it seems to have similar options) though.

Compare Maven / Ant / Gradle for the Java world, instead of builds configured in the IDE; said IDE's often have a GUI component for major build configuration files.

I wouldn't mind a GUI for Grunt configs, without sensible code refactoring, those can be a bitch to maintain.

<comment><USER16> There's a GUI for Grunt in the works: [https://github.com/Mobile- Team/spock](https://github.com/Mobile-Team/spock)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm currently using gulp + browserify, it's basically the same set of features (modules, compilation, livereload), but free.

Maybe a little more configuration necessary though.

</comment><comment><USER18> Set aside a few strange things you find on this website (e.g. testimonies sound fake...), CodeKit is an excellent program, I've been using for a few years.

GruntJS and Gulp essentially do the same thing of course, but CodeKit I guess 'interfaces' all those text-based configurations and once it's configured, well, it's pretty much done and you can just let it run in the background and forget about it.

Highly recommend it!

</comment><comment><USER19> Damn, if I ever need to start taking web development seriously (right now it's only something I do for my little personal projects), I think I will buy this tool. The interface looks very nice, and it seems to integrate and simplify all sorts of useful features and workflows that I've seen described elsewhere (usually at length, with lots of documentation on how to get them working).

</comment><comment><USER20> Another solution to the 'elephant in the room' \- that frontend workflows have become too complicated for frontend developers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reading the testimonies made me wonder if this whole thing was a joke or not.

Looks cool otherwise though...

<comment> bulte-rs Are you kidding me?

The testimonials give the whola page a somewhat human touch. I - for one - <USER2> now pondering if there really is a story behind the "Mad at me since 2008" stuff about Apple's legal department :P

<comment><USER22> I had the opposite impression. My initial reaction was "how immature and technological incompetent are your users?".

I'm guessing the app is being marketed towards hipster frontend devs.

<comment><USER23> Wow.

<comment><USER24> Is double-edge sword as you may guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A few thoughts:

      - 2min and 54secondes of demo video to explain the localhost address. Sooo, boring.
      - At first, it sounded like another text editor but it's not.
      - It seems that's just a GUI skin to CLI tools

<comment><USER26> Yeah and Dropbox is just a GUI skin for rsync.

<comment><USER25> Sure, you got a point. (I've upvoted you.)

In the same time, Dropbox is more towards less savvy user and when you use Dropbox is more for the Cloud hosting than for its rsync capabilities.

<comment><USER27> Bittorent Sync then, who doesn't have Cloud hosting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Prepros does all that for free, and it works in Mac and Windows. I could never get my shop on to Codekit because the developer refuses to port to Windows.

<comment><USER28> Does it? How do I get automated refresh in iOS (and Android) web browsers? How does Prepros help out in installing frameworks? Does Prepros have support for global custom frameworks? Is Prepros able to run scripts automatically?

To me, they are not in the same league…

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps the best testimonials I've seen on an app.

</comment><comment><USER30> I really don't see the value of having the compile toolchain in your editor. If you are making a serious front-end project, you will have created a gulp/grunt based workflow so that anyone with node installed can compile it. If you rely on Codekit's features, surely you're locking people into that editor?

Is it really so hard to open a command window and run a single command?

<comment><USER4> You grossly underestimate the number of solo/freelance web developers out there who just want to get to work on the project itself, instead of learning and setting up all those things (which may be overkill for their one-person project).

"Effort vs. Result" is an important metric, and Codekit lets you just "get it done" without needing to learn how to install and set up grunt or gulp, node (edit: and uglify-js, bower, image optimization tools, sass, less, stylus, compass, etc).. It just works.

And when Codekit becomes no longer appropriate then one can spend the time required to learn and configure grunt/gulp.

<comment><USER24> Is not like configure grunt or gulp is rocket science. If you are a solo/freelance that code to get the job done, 5 to 10 minutes of your time just for configure a grunt/gulp is not a massive lost of production time, also you get more control over what you want. Don't make it look like you would spend days trying to setting up that workflow when on reality it just take less than 10 or even 5 minutes for the avarege folk. Is really learning new things that scary, because for my understanding we as developers/designers need to learn new things every day so what is the hue?

<comment><USER4> You're being specious here and you know it.

Sure it wouldn't take _days_ to set up, but for someone who has never done it before, it will _absolutely_ take more than 5-10 minutes to correctly set up and test node with grunt/gulp (and all the other tools you might need: less, sass, compass, uglify-js, bower, etc) to replace the various worklows that Codekit provides easily and painlessly.

Again I am not saying there's anything wrong with grunt/gulp, but as I said, "effort vs. result" is an important metric, and if a tool like Codekit gets me the same results faster and easier than spending time learning how to install and configure grunt/gulp and all the tools they automate, then that's a win for me.

To each their own though..

<comment><USER24> First of all, i don't know anything about my supposed speciusness (if that is not a word, then i just made it and you get it). But i would say that you are "effort vs result" matran is being a little over dramatic in this context. Setting up the workflow (grunt or gulp) would take minutes with a little "effort" from you hand, with the only cost being your time. Also we should take into account that not every "cool" people owns a MAC nor have the means to pay for the GUI tool that would like _take time to get familiar with_ , you see what i did there didn't you?. _" To each their own though.."_, i couldn't agree more. Cheers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This URL crashes Chrome on iOS.

<comment><USER32> And iOS7 Safari

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some people in this thread really need some tuning in their sarcasm detector.

</comment><comment><USER33> "A Mac App for Cool People"

Did they really have to resort to a level that low?

<comment><USER34> Seriously. An embarrassingly bad slogan.

<comment><USER35> Self-deprecation has been part of CodeKit's branding since the beginning, when nobody had heard of it and the author had to put up his first fake testimonials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The best thing on the page was the face palm user image.

</comment><comment><USER37> "You don't have permission to save the file 'CodeKit' to the folder 'Library'."

This crap doesn't even start. Sent it straight to the trash.</comment>


Kallithea: A free code hosting solution for Git and Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://kallithea-scm.org/ <comment><USER3> For a couple alternatives, check out GitLab[0] and GitBucket[1].

[0] [http://gitlab.com/](http://gitlab.com/)

[1] [https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket](https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket)

<comment><USER4> I don't know anything about gitbucket, but gitlab is very well designed, and also has a public hosted instance at gitlab.com

That said, setting up your own instance is much more complicated than it should be. Taking a peek at the docs, Kallithea seems to be just `pip install kallithea` and then a couple of configuration files. Gitlab's installation process is much more involved, and it's really only appropriate for larger installations. Kallithea might be just as appropriate for small projects with 5 members hosting a repo on one of their home servers or VPSs.

<comment><USER5> As luck would have it someone made a dockerized version (sameersbn on github) of it. We've been using it at work for the past couple months without any hiccups.

It took a bit in the beginning because of a bug in one of the docker backends that was on by default, but following the guide he provided was simple. We opted to use the built-in redis and sql servers.

Link: [https://github.com/sameersbn/docker- gitlab](https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does nobody love darcs?! _crickets_

<comment><USER7> darcs has been improving at a good rate and [http://hub.darcs.net/](http://hub.darcs.net/) is good enough for me to use for my projects.

I use darcs because we would all enjoy more innovation if were to resist the inertia of the status quo and work on improving the tools we like. Unfortunately git's slipshod user interface design can't be easily fixed through incremental development and the underlying model won't be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks pretty similar to RhodeCode, but without the $50/month price for >20 users. Ill definitely check this out

<comment><USER9> Looks like a fork.

<comment><USER10> Its definitely a fork: [https://kallithea- scm.org/repos/kallithea/changeset/24c0d584...](https://kallithea- scm.org/repos/kallithea/changeset/24c0d584ba86678ae013cd564f3fee8e39e1664d)

<comment><USER11> Yes, when RhodeCode went proprietary some folks wanted it to stay open - <USER2> result is Kallithea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> HgLab[0] is Mercurial server for Windows

[0]: [http://hglabhq.com/](http://hglabhq.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The question "Why Kallithea" really should be why "Why Kallithea over Github, Gitlab?"

<comment><USER14> Because it does hg. It's a free fork of Rhodecode, which has freedom issues:

[https://github.com/moparisthebest/unlimit- code/blob/master/r...](https://github.com/moparisthebest/unlimit- code/blob/master/readme.md)

Rhodecode started as hg-only and then added git when it seemed inevitable, but for those of us who still prefer hg, Rhodecode was the only thing we could use until the devs went crazy.

<comment><USER15> On wow. It's like something out of a dystopian comedy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does this compare in memory usage to gitlab?

</comment><comment><USER17> Too bad I can't just star this on GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER18> bitbucket is also free for small teams (up to 5 users).

[0]: [https://bitbucket.org/](https://bitbucket.org/)

<comment><USER19> It's also not self-hosted.

<comment><USER18> I guess the line "Kallithea hosts your code" threw me off. Yes, I now see that Kallithea will be something you download and install on your own X .</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's best for hacking, to build fast or to think hard? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Think hard, then build fast. Nobody said you can't do both. There's a balance though: think too much, and your "perfect" system never gets built. Hack too fast and you're going to have to rebuild when you realize you did it completely wrong.

I think it can be personal too. I tend to be more slow and thoughtful. Once I get a really great idea, my fingers start flying, but until I get to that point, it's a lot of slow prototyping and trying to think of better ways to do it (to a point).

Find what balance works for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish there was a way to tell, preferably sooner than later, whether thinking hard or building fast is better than the other. How would you know if you're doing the right thing?

<comment><USER2> Practice, my friend! Pick a project and start working on it. A year later, you'll look back and chuckle at how obvious the flaws in the project were. Rinse and repeat. After a while, you just get a sense for "am I sitting around thinking too much?" or "hmm maybe I should plan this one out before jumping in."

One thing that took me _years_ to learn is that the devil's in the details, especially if you're in uncharted territory. Thinking is what uncovers those details _before_ you're forced to do a rewrite.

> How would you know if you're doing the right thing?

Does it work? Can you look over the code and think "I did this twice as well as my last piece of work?" Those are probably the best metrics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      while (1) {
         Think() && Build() && GetFeedback()
         Exercise("1h")
         Sleep("8h")
      }

</comment><comment><USER4> What's best for warfare, to move fast or strike hard?

<comment><USER5> germany and japan moved fast, the US and the USSR struck hard...</comment></comment>


How the CIA made Google - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

<comment><USER2> Here's the bibliography of the author of this piece, for context:

[http://www.nafeezahmed.com/p/books.html](http://www.nafeezahmed.com/p/books.html)

He's certainly got his own axes to grind and his own political ideology to sell, but that doesn't have any bearing on the truth or falsehood of the facts he reports.

25 points and no other comments? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?</comment>


A simple WeChat client written in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/justdoit0823/pywxclient <comment><USER2> The meat-and-potatoes is the WeChatAPI class, found here:

[https://github.com/justdoit0823/pywxclient/blob/master/pywxc...](https://github.com/justdoit0823/pywxclient/blob/master/pywxclient/core/api.py#L50)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do the WeChat TOS explicitly allow third-party clients ?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it does. Third party clients are not entirely banned, but will get random logouts from time to time, making it more painful to use.

A little background here: WeChat has the concept of "master device" and "slave device". Master device must be a mobile client, and signing in from a slave device involves scanning a QR code from the master device. So logging in cannot be automated (barring mobile phone emulators). This, in combination with random logouts when the server thinks you are using a 3rd party API, makes such clients pretty painful to use.

<comment><USER5> I get random logouts using the official OSX WeChat client as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a limitation of wechat's login system, which doesn't allow multiple clients are online at the same time.

<comment><USER5> I only have my phone and my laptop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your WeChat macOS client on laptop is conflict with this wechat client. And you can only login in a single client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does it compare to itchat?

<comment><AUTHOR> This client is more easy and convenient to integrate in your project. By supporting different interfaces, you can compose them to do anything you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool, thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Definitely didn't spend 5 minutes wondering why WeeChat[0] even needed a client.

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

<comment><USER9> WeChat, not WeeChat [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's the most popular mobile app in china.</comment></comment></comment>


What media companies don't want you to know about ad blockers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/opinion/ad_blockers_malware_new_york_times.php <comment><USER2> It's strange that the most simple and elegant solution to ad-blocking, self hosted ads are not considered by anyone. Magazines and papers have always done this in print. Yes there is overhead, because you have to handle the content manually and it's hard, even tough not impossible to measure impressions. But with print it's always been this way and now the media industry wants to both have the cake and eat it, because they don't want to handle ads but they want the revenue.

And maybe I should clarify, how does self-hosted ads solve the problem?

\- It's hard to block ads on the same domain as the main content.

\- Just loading an image with an ad is not as much of an performance hit as javascript loaded tracking ads and thus should not annoy users as much.

\- More secure, because you can not hack one single ad service and distribute mallware to thousands of sites. Besides, the solution is less complex, and complexity always leads to bad security.

<comment><USER3> Ah, my naive friend. How can an advertiser know it's not being shortcharged? Having a "neutral" third party helps here.

<comment><USER4> The same way it works with newspapers, I'd say. Check that it is there when you expect it to be there.

<comment><USER5> Even with newspapers advertisers don't simply accept the circulation numbers that the publishers report. They pay third parties to provide independent numbers. It's not just about whether the ad appears but rather knowing how many people saw it.

<comment><USER6> So maybe there could be 3rd party company to check such things. Also ads could be sold at auction. I.e. auction for 24h display of ad in header from $1 on some news site.

<comment><USER7> Actually that's not a bad idea. Why not hit the site that the ad's are reportedly on from some IP addresses unknown to the ad provider. Do this over and over again until you have enough data to assume that say 1/5th of impressions are you then compare that to a neutral 3rd party source (Google Analytics comes to mind) of the total hits for that day. 5000 hits / 1/5 of those are impressions of your ad = 1000 impressions. Compare this to the numbers provided by the ad provider itself. All you'd need to do is spot check and it should keep everyone honest. I'm surprised people don't do this already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory uBlock Origin[1] plug with a recommendation to run it in "medium mode"[2] which offers the best bang for your buck (i.e. the most that can be blocked with the least amount of effort from the user). Dynamic filtering is extremely easy to use in this mode and gives such a huge payoff in terms of what it can protect you from vs just using filter lists.

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking- mode:-medium...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium- mode)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, ads are too big a vector for malware to ignore, so turning on ad-blocking is non-negotiable.

That being given, the only alternative for NYT and friends is for subscription which they don't have the taste for, since it gives them the true value of their journalism.

The difference in this true value, and older ad-based value: their take from the revenue-sharing agreement with malware-creators. We just got better with dealing with malware, and their malware based revenue took a hit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every time this debate pops up, I find myself asking the same question: why aren't media companies creating ads I _want_ to consume?

This is a trick question: they are. It's called native advertising.

Ad blockers block the scummy ads. It's still possible to make a living by serving ads, but it implies that one can't be lazy in his monetization strategy.

<comment><USER11> Native advertising is also scummy and often bordeline illegal. Where I live ads have to be clearly distinguishable from other content, and the native ads which are often in the form of feature articles with some slightly different background color etc., are often found not to be, resulting in fines.

I just want print ads online. I want them to be simple, static, non-trackable and non-targeted ads that clearly stand out from the rest of the content. Targeted ads should be limited to showing boat ads on a boat site, or golf gear ads on a golf magazine site.

Sites with a broader audience must simply accept that just like in print they are forced to show broad brand building ads.

<comment><USER10> >Native advertising is also scummy and often bordeline illegal

True, but in a very different way. Native ads don't serve malware and assault your senses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any website that blocks me for using an ad-blocker will never see my eyes again. End of discussion.

<comment><USER13> "Here's the thing about anti-virus. We use viruses to pay our talented journalists, editors and many other staff. When you browse our site without anti-virus it means we can't pay out staff and keep making articles you love. Please disable your anti-virus to continue."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like Indian newspapers are ganging up on their readers to force then to turn off adblockers. Goodbye, TimesOfIndia and HindustanTimes!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12007472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12007472)

Clicking on an article in timesofindia takes you to this:

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blocked.cms](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blocked.cms)

<comment><USER15> How do they manage that? I imagine they'd use JS to check if the ad loaded maybe, can it be beat by just disabling JS entirely for that site?

<comment><USER14> Yes, it can. In uMatrix:

hindustantimes.com www.hindustantimes.com script block

indiatimes.com timesofindia.indiatimes.com script block

lets you get past the blocker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Subscriptions instead of ads do still work depending on the newspaper.

See "Canard PC" who successfully funded an ads-free web version of its paper magazine (the kickstarter is even finishing today):

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/canardpc/canard-pc- onli...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/canardpc/canard-pc-online)

</comment><comment><USER17> I installed flash/java blockers when I was worried about vulnerabilities in those plug-ins, later removing those plug-ins entirely.

You should not install an ad-blocker if you really want a flash/java blocker. You'll still be vulnerable.

(Yes, there have been vulnerabilities in JS et al too, but blocking JS is a very different proposition.)

<comment><USER4> I selectively block JS, with uMatrix. I allow 1st party scripts by default, and block all else by default.

Yes it's a bit tedious to enable domains when something breaks, but I'm actually fine with that. Would of course not recommend this to just anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I pay for NYT access. If they block me because I block ads, then I'm leaving. These people do _nothing_ to ensure the security of the ad networks they use. I'm not an expert or have any contact with that industry, but my impression is that _at best_ the idea of security is an unacceptable cost.

<comment><USER18> "These people" and "nothing" was ignorant and harsh. Apologies to any white hat developers involved in these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The title is clickbait. It should be changed to mention the security benefits of adblockers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Also, let's not forget performance. Many ads make pages take forever to load and sometimes even crash.

<comment><USER21> > ..sometimes even crash

I don't think this is the case. Either way you might get one crash per millions of loaded ads. Making this argument just silly.

Not sure if you write software or not but crashes are more or less expected, just keep them below X% and it's "ok".

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure I agree. Depending on how we define 'crash', I've certainly seen ads render pages unusable or prevent my access to content. Infinite request loops, script crashes that take down desired video content, improper loading covering content, and more.

The obvious example would be sites with mediocre mobile pages fighting to serve ads. It's pretty standard to hit broken redirects, script issues, and all sorts of other crash-like behaviors visiting those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So many sites now won't serve you content unless you turn off the ad-blocker. I have done so for those sites, but now I'm thinking of just boycotting those sites. CBS News is one of them, and I think it is a bit insulting to tell users not to protect their computer when they visit your website.

<comment><USER24> Blocking them entirely is fair, and I do so in many cases to avoid accidentally going there anymore, but you can also use uBlock Origin as your adblocker and turn on the Adblock Warning Removal List and Anti-Adblock Killer filter lists, which will eliminate most of these ridiculous scripts. Sometimes so many sites in a short time add those adblocker-blocker scripts that it takes a little time for the lists to catch up, but overall it does such a good job that when people started complaining about such things earlier this year I had no idea what they were talking about because it had invisibly blocked everything for me so far.

<comment><USER23> Great tip about uBlock Origin. I am using ABP and it didn't do that, but now both are running together, actually. What's strange is that the number of ads they claim to block is different with each.

<comment><USER24> They have different filter lists and can both be further customized as well, so it's not surprising that they block different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Security but also readability is why I use addblocker. Sites I like that does not interfererar too much with adds, then I turn addblocker off for that site. However, way too many sties gets unreadable and are annoying to go to because of how adds are used and thus addblocker is very nice.

<comment><USER26> I know this is an unpopular opinion, but what makes you different from someone that walks out of cabs without paying because "cab drivers are dangerous and it's inconvenient to have to pay after i'm at my location"?

<comment><USER27> The custom and practice of the web has always been that publicly accessible pages are served without payment, and the user agent (maybe a browser, maybe a script, maybe a screenreader, maybe something else) is entitled to render a page in any way or none - users might have custom stylesheets, might or might not have support for certain elements or formats. When you put content on the web that's what you sign up for.

<comment><USER28> > entitled

I don't think this is the correct word (and it definitely enforces publishers negative preconceived notions), but they can't be relying on an untrusted party (browsers) to enforce their business model.

As you put it, the nature of the internet is that user agents _are able to_ render it however they wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> ads are just a too complicated way of making money. if they want money for their stuff, then they should remove the adds, put a nice big pay wall and voilà.

"No one who refuses to contribute to the creation of high quality journalism has the right to consume it."

I'll pay or not. But I won't have to fight an arm race anymore.

Or maybe the guy is lying : he wants a very particular kind of "contribution" to his journalism. Maybe a contribution in terms of tracking, personal information, etc...

<comment><USER30> I think any media provider out there would prefer a subscription model - it's just so much simpler. Unfortunately people just aren't paying for it as much as they need to.

<comment><USER26> I don't want to pay for everything.

I already shell out over $50 a month for various subscriptions. For my less common websites, I'd rather "pay" by viewing ads. (And I refuse to just steal the content. If the ads are too much, then don't use the site. IMO you don't get to choose if you pay for something based on how much you like it...)

And the people on HN and reddit that announce to the world that ads shouldn't exist and anything that uses ads is a terrible thing seem crazy to me.

I'm a happy ad viewer. It keeps the content free and the creators paid. If you asked people whether they want to pay for something or view ads, the answer will be ads in the vast majority of cases.

And dispite all the talk of malware in ads, I've never seen it. I'm sure it exists, but until I begin to see it in my own experience or hear from friends and family about it, I'm going to keep enjoying ads as a monetization method.

<comment><USER31> > (And I refuse to just steal the content. If the ads are too much, then don't > use the site. IMO you don't get to choose if you pay for something based on > how much you like it...)

Genuinely asking: how do you keep track of this? Do you add bad sites to some domain blacklist? How do you protect yourself from e.g. ads that auto-play audio, or take over control of the website for a period of time, or redirect to the app store on mobile?

<comment><USER26> If a website has misbehaving ads, ads I consider over the top, or are known to distribute malware ads consistently to the point where I don't feel safe, I stop going to that website.

If it ever gets to the point that I can't remember which sites I don't want to visit i'll probably add some kind of blocklist, but that hasn't been a problem yet.

The only site I can think of off the top of my head that I don't visit any more is the verge. It's just too much, and the experience isn't worth the content (and for them it's not so much the ads, but just that the site is so heavy and slow. The ads did contribute to my decision though, they are full- page and expand down and everything terrible about ads). There are more, but I honestly can't think of them right now...

<comment><USER31> So if you run across an ad that plays audio or redirects to the app store, you just put up with it and hope it doesn't happen again? I hope you can at least understand why others may want a more robust solution to guarantee that never happens.

<comment><USER26> I honestly haven't hit either of those, so it might be my own little bubble here is why I feel this way. I hear about them a lot when talking about advertising, but I've never seen them personally.

But if I did get an audio ad, or a redirect ad, and they were consistent enough that it became a problem, i'd stop using that site.

I mean, on a scale of bad things, having an audio ad play once isn't really all that high up the ladder. Yeah, it's not ideal, and it shouldn't happen, and if it happens a few times i'm going to stop going there, but it's a sound on a website. Removing an entire chunk of income from a news website because I'm afraid of hearing an audio ad (something most trustworthy sites also don't want in their ads) seems over the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ad blockers is a misnomer. They are HTML firewalls.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article is built around the same logic as saying you shouldn't drive a car because you'll end up in an accident, and that not driving is the only option.

Ad serving has problems, but you can't invalidate the claims that media companies need to make revenue by saying you want to minimize risks.

<comment><USER28> This is the thinking of people in the media industry (I know, I work there). Thats there's only two options: have the scummy ads we have now, or have none at all and media orgs die.

But no one seems to talk about the middleground - ad serving done responsibly. I'm fine with ads, as they're performant and don't abuse my computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dammit, the title is clickbait and I clicked on it. I feel dirty.

</comment><comment><USER35> NY Times guy is still justified. No, his company should not serve malware. But if I get malware and it hijacks my machine, that means my browser and machine were both insecure. An ad blocker seems to me to be a bizarre way to make up for an insecure browser.

People get this odd vehement behavior when told that companies that depend on ads won't like it if you block their ads. The grown up thing to do would be to stop using these companies if you dislike their stance against your ad blocker. Instead there is this childish whining, as though people are entitled to free news without ads.

<comment><USER36> Your computer is insecure. Mine too. Even if we applied every single patch from your OS vendor and application vendors we're left with the undisclosed vulnerabilities sold by black hats to malware writers. The ad blocker is a prevention system to limit the exposure of out computers to attacks.

There isn't a list of sites serving ads that carry malware so we have to block everybody, sorry for them all. If there were a blacklist of notorious malware carriers, much like the one for spammers, we could use it to mount a blockade. Maybe it's really the right thing to do. I'm afraid it will include most of the news sites.

<comment><USER37> Every time someone posts something like the parent comment, I just assume they're using Urbit or TempleOS and move on.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why signup rate is so low? - <AUTHOR>

I'm getting 3k+ page views per month for http://railyo.com, a private job board for Ruby on Rails freelancers. The signup rate is extremely low (around ZERO) for client/company, (it is somewhat ok for freelancers) while most of the visitors come from Google Search.<p>What am I doing wrong ? Is it a bad idea ? Should I just focus on other projects ? Any suggestion ? <comment><USER2> A few things that jump out;

1\. There's no obvious call to action. What should I do next on that screen is a text link. That's not clear enough. There needs to be two clear, bold buttons - one for developers and one for jobs.

2\. Calling the site a "private job board" is very closed language to anyone wanting to post jobs. Saying it's "kind of a private network" makes it sound like a clique or a club that I'm not a member of.

3\. It's not obvious why a Rails dev vetted by Railyo is better than any other. Why would I trust Railyo? Who are you? You're telling me why you're not eLance etc, but not telling me who you actually are.

4\. People who commission projects are generally visually-driven, market- minded people. Your site is, frankly, not very pretty. Your market probably doesn't like it.

5\. Paying $100 up front is a very different business model to the freelancing sites you're competing with. Those sites are almost always catering for the lowest-possible-price crowd rather than people wanting quality (which is who you're marketing to). Are you simply charging too much? That'd be trivial to split-test.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting to me that #5 indicates the price was $100. I look at the site 4 hours later and the price has dropped to $49, with little to no indication that this is an introductory price, more like a permanent price drop.

This affects me in two negative ways, in addition to the others that onion2k mentions. One is that you haven't properly vetted what someone is willing to pay for your services and two, you don't give a shit about your paying customers.

Say on the off-chance I signed up for your service 5 hours ago at the $100 rate and 5 hours later, you change the rate to $49, would you automatically refund me 50% of what I paid you? Would you hope I didn't notice? Would I be shit out of luck? Would I have to bring it to your attention?

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right! I'm fixing it in next push (few minutes). I had few paying customers a month ago, so I think the idea/payment model may work. Suddenly, the signup rate dropped to almost zero (this month) while the organic visitors has increased, so I was trying to figure out the possible reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run hackerjobs.co.uk and for the last year or so we've been providing free job listings. Despite that, we only get employers sign up as and when they need to post a job.

We get relatively decent traffic considering we haven't paid a penny for marketing or advertising and ultimately, our most successful technique to get new employers to sign up is to personally email them directly when I see them advertising elsewhere.

One of our biggest traffic sources come from aggregated job boards such as indeed.com and we find twitter to be surprisingly effective when we post new blogs or tweet about new jobs.

All that said and done, onion2k's 5 points are very valid too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it would also be beneficial if you could browse job listings. I normally don't sign up for a site if I can't see any 'action' on the site. Not only would this probably attract a lot more freelancers, but employers would feel more comfortable listing (and paying for) their posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've been thinking about something like this but initially I called it a "private job board", so I couldn't do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly the user interface and visual design could use a lot of work, and I think improving this would make thie biggest difference in your results. At least for me, poor design of a page makes me assume that A. Relatively little time and effort has been put into its creation B. It may not be widely used C. It may not even be actively maintained

In short, for better or for worse, for me UI is an instant indicator of how seriously I should take a site and how much time I should invest in it (when there are plenty other options to check out in that space)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I'm a developer, so I should get a designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Spelling errors don't inspire confidence. This is a particularly egregious violation:

(All Job offers: receive all job offers by email, Based on your Location: recevie job offers oly from that (or near-by) location, None: do not receive job offers by email, (note: you can always checkout latest job offers, by logging in here))

That is from [http://railyo.com/sign_up/developer](http://railyo.com/sign_up/developer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. English isn't my first language but I usually don't make this kind of sloppy mistakes.

It's probably because of some recent experiments with my development environment (e.g moving from GUI editor to vim+screen+bash, and I realize I had not enabled the spell checker yet, some lagging/rendering problem when using bash in 'full screen mode' on Ubuntu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I recorded my thoughts while browsing your site.

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26816257/railyo.mov](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26816257/railyo.mov)

<comment><AUTHOR> Vow! That was a great help. Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Apple is Building a Social Network Right Under Our Noses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codynolden.com/apple-is-building-a-social-network-right-unde

<comment><USER2> To an extent, I agree with the OP, especially on the note of who is the customer.

Google very much uses people as their products and their customers are advertisers. Their goal is to turn every single person that uses a Google product into marketable data that is monetized in turn. They want to make good products you'll use, but it is rather obvious they are designed not for a smooth, slick UX; they are designed to keep you using them so they can gather data. I use Gmail - swear by it - but open up Sparrow on Mac and see the difference in how the entire thing is laid out?

I'm very familiar with this because of the rather large amount of money I spend on Google ads (both my own money and client's money). You see, with Google paid search ads, you bid on intent: "auto insurance quote" means you're pretty damn sure you will get someone who wants a quote on auto insurance. Your ROI will be high and the CPC will also be high because of how profitable the term is. Google has mastered monetizing search with these ads; they lead and Bing follows. More power to them!

Facebook has done something quite interesting though; they make you bid on people and their interests. Instead of bidding on intent, you bid on what they like and respond to. Instead of inserting an ad that should provide content about what they are searching for right now, you are bidding on _being a part of their Facebook experience_.

This is why Zynga, Playdom, Playfish, Kabam, et al have succeeded so well. They have integrated their product into the Facebook experience - a platform, if you will - that caught Google entirely by surprise.

This platform is extremely profitable if you know how to make it work. I make over 3x the EPC (earnings-per-click) on Facebook than Google.

What FB has done so well is make the consumer not the product; you bid on their life and being a part of it. Everything you advertise on FB is something you want people to be interested in and interact with, a totally different paradigm shift from search. So despite the notion that you are bidding on people, the important thing is the product is _connecting with them_.

You can see why Facebook is something Google fears very much, and why the G+ response had to be perfect.</comment>


Ask HN: Course or book to learn Java? - <AUTHOR>

Just starting out in the comp-sci world, and decided I want to learn to build a simple Android application as a first project.  I'm giving myself 10 weeks, by the end of which I want to have sufficient Java knowledge to be able to understand the language, and hopefully implement some of it myself.  I plan on dedicating myself completely to becoming immersed in the language over the coming weeks, and plan on learning from this book:<p>"Head First Java" http://www.amazon.ca/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208<p>I wanted to check with you guys if there are any better books for the purpose, or any courses that are open you'd recommend.  I'm a complete beginner to the world of programming languages, so need something tailored for that. <comment><USER2> That's not a bad book. Once you're in to that, you might have a better idea of specific areas of Java you want to explore more (Android, as you say, or other areas) and you can go looking for more specific books in those areas.

Bruce Eckel's "thinking in java" isn't bad either. Might be a bit dated in some sections, but the basics are there. It' a creative commons free book, IIRC.

<comment><USER3> +1 for Head First Java. The head-first series is really good, makes you _sit up and learn_ :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stanford has materials for a good Intro to Java course online: see <http://j.mp/cSpFgw>

I think it's a great course for learning the basics. Its exercises and assignments are gratifying, it holds your hand through early environment setup, and it gets you writing actual, satisfying code in short order.

</comment><comment><USER5> Program Development in Java: Abstraction, Specification, and Object-Oriented Design - Liskov & Guttag

Teaches OO programming, just happens to use Java as the language.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's no reason to wait 10 weeks before you start trying to write solutions to small problems.

The feedback from struggling to write something simple is invaluable.

The issue with Head First Java is that it skips the IDE.

The purist approach is likely to leave you completely lost when you load NetBeans or Eclipse...which will be pretty much mandatory for writing meaningful apps.

Head First C# is better organized as an introduction to programming in my opinion because it covers the IDE and using a debugger...not that I'm advocating C# as a language...just that the book is better written.

<comment><USER6> Addendum: If you're just starting out learning to program, I would recommend _Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML_ as a better place to start than the Java book.

Coding HTML is probably _the_ fundamental skill. It teaches critical concepts such as syntax and debugging in an extremely lightweight environment.

HTML allows the most inexperienced programmer to start solving meaningful problems write away.

Most importantly, HTML is the best introduction to iterative development and progressive refinement.

And it is utterly painless to learn.</comment></comment>


"The 411 Parable": Goog411 vs Bing411 - Make sure you are playing the same game. - <AUTHOR> http://buildcontext.com/blog/2011/the-411-parable

<comment><USER2> I was working at Microsoft/Tellme at the time Bing411 was launched and would like to state a few facts:

\- When launched, Bing411 was essentially a re-branding of Tellme's 1-800-555-TELL service.

\- 1-800-555-TELL has been running since 2000 or something like that. I attended the 10th anniversary party, which I believe was in 2010.

\- Microsoft didn't need to launch a Microsoft-branded 411 to collect utterances, for they had acquired Tellme and had many utterances coming in under their umbrella of services

\- Tellme's bread and butter was speech recognition on the telephone and they are still in that space today, so Bing411, 1-800-555-TELL are still relevant for them.

I can also say that a lot of the speculation in the article about Microsoft's "reaction" is just wrong. But, I won't go into specifics because they aren't relevant.

I enjoyed the author's original point about making sure you are playing the same game. Unfortunately, the example used is factually inaccurate.

<comment><USER3> Don't all those points fit into the story in that blog entry? No one is saying that Microsoft needed voice data. From e40's comment: "I think the point of the article is that they don't need to mine utterences with Bing 411, and that they merely did the service to compete with Google, without knowing why Google made the service in the first place." Isn't the speculation about Microsoft's reaction the heart of the issue? If Microsoft did buy Tellme's service so that they could compete with Google's that would explain how Microsoft wasn't playing the same game Google was. Edit: I do agree that the blog post is all speculation. I'm just saying that I don't think those points prove that it is wrong.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft bought Tellme (of which 555-TELL was a very small part) in March 2007 [1]. GOOG-411 was announced in April 2007. [2]

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/14/microsoft-acquires-tellme/>

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/06/google-launches- free-411-bu...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/04/06/google-launches- free-411-business/)

<comment><USER3> From that article: "This is actually a product that Google's been testing in various formats for some time. Steve Poland (a regular contributor here) is pointing me to some posts (and here) by Greg Sterling from last year that discuss this. The earliest reports on this are from October 2006, and the service may be from an acquisition of 1-877-520-FIND. More information here." Again though.. Pure speculation.. It's not implausible because big companies do keep tabs on their competition. Also not sure if Microsoft's history with their product goes back even further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tone of this article bothers me. There are some smart people working at Microsoft. The level of discussion is higher than "Hey, google made a thing, we need the same thing."

Like the article points out, Microsoft has no shortage of utterances due to their acquisition of Tellme. Why, then, do they need to mine utterances with Bing 411? (Assuming they don't--I'm sure they do.) Bing 411 is a genuinely useful service that adds value to the Bing brand. It needs no additional reason to exist.

All this aside, the article is factually incorrect. It implies that localeze was contracted to provide Bing 411. In fact, localeze provides listings (according to the press release the article links), and are presumably one of many listing providers used. Microsoft/Tellme provide the actual Bing 411 service. I don't know for sure, but Tellme's (now Microsoft's) 1-800-555-TELL number almost definitely predates GOOG-411.

<comment><USER5> > Why, then, do they need to mine utterances with Bing 411?

I think the point of the article is that they _don't_ need to mine utterences with Bing 411, and that they merely did the service to compete with Google, without knowing _why_ Google made the service in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somehow, it doesn't seem like Google's plan was much of a secret, even back in 2007: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/goog-411-isnt-what-you- thin...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/goog-411-isnt-what-you-think/852)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, not saying it was a secret... Tim O'Reilly had it nailed back then... but the story I have to remind myself of is that too many times we go off face value rather than digging in and listening to people like Tim... This happens all over the place and it was worth capturing the story that replays in my head each time I see a new revision of it.

<comment><USER6> well, Marissa Mayer of Google explicitly stated in a public announcement in October 2007 that it was going to be used for speech recognition algorithms. And many, many news blogs published that.

[http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-management/google-wants- your...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-management/google-wants-your- phonemes-539)

Your article makes it seem like the fact that Google was using 411 for voice analysis was somewhat 'unknown' until 2009, whereas I would say that the knowledge was actually quite mainstream and, frankly, hard to ignore.

I would argue that assuming that the Bing team completely failed to see all the news articles and press releases (from Google, no less) about this for 2 years, is perhaps a little presumptuous? Maybe, as another poster mentioned, they are still getting value out of the 411 service?

I do agree with your point, and there are many many times I've seen companies do this, but Bing 411 vs Google 411 might not be the right example since Google's intentions were very clear, right from the start.

Disclaimer: I work on MS Office (completely unrelated to Bing & the 411 service, but still not what you would call an unbiased source)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I cannot speculate on Microsoft purpose of a 411 service, I think it is pretty obvious why google dumped theirs - they now have access to an enormous source of human speech through google voice.

<comment><USER8> That's what I was thinking. But it also implies that Google could drop Voice, or Gmail, or Maps, if something better comes along.

<comment><USER9> They certainly could. If you don't like that, don't rely on it, or make sure to export your data regularly. That's true of any free service, tbh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll play devil's advocate here. Are we sure Microsoft is not doing the same data mining on Bing411 as Google did on Goog411, and haven't dumped it because it is either a valuable service in their eyes or they are not done gleaning what google gleaned from their head start?

I somehow doubt this is the case but I'm not so sure we can assume that it is not.

<comment><USER11> Microsoft doesn't play the same sort of long game that google does. Microsoft plays a traditional long game: market penetration, brand loyalty, development stack, "synergy" (real or imagined), etc. Google plays a much more subtle game. They'll do something like GOOG411 just to get better voice recognition algorithms. They'll also do things like develop a state of the art web browser just to jostle the browser development community out of its laziness and propel web standards and browser performance forward. That sort of thing is just not in Microsoft's DNA to do or even conceive of doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It still seems really odd to me that Google 86'd all explicit phone number directory -related stuff. The "phonebook:" operator is no more either. Yes, I know traditional web search and Maps are pretty good most of the time, but I come across many cases where they are not. Especially when it's a residential phone number (that is otherwise publicly listed) or a less web savvy local business.

Phone directories may, in fact, be very antiquated but they're still a thing, the data is there and often useful. Why not index it? Why not let me expressly look-up a phone number anymore?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting read. But the best part for me was learning about a new free 411 service. At least once a week, I start to call Goog411 before sadly remembering the service was discontinued.

<comment><USER14> Is it really an interesting read? (this isn't a criticism of bimbly, more at poor quality blog posts in general (a particular bee in my bonnet at the moment))

The blog post basically consisted of a made up example to make a point that the blog author felt was valid. Now I happen to agree with the basic point the author was trying to make, but I think it's a reflection on the really poor quality of so many blog posts where people have some idea they want to pitch as insightful and then they fail to do any actual research and/or wrap it in a made up story. The 'parable' is pretty worthless when people like Indygreg above state that the motivations that the author guessed at was completely wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even if we accept the very dubious premise that Bing411 was motivated entirely by a misunderstanding of Google's aims for Goog411, so what? A good cautionary tale needs to demonstrate the dire consequences of whatever you're cautioning against, but you haven't actually showed anything bad happening to Bing or Microsoft as a result of their alleged confusion. Really not the best vehicle for your moral.</comment>


The internet's own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video] - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/video/technology/the-internets-own-boy-the-story-of-aaron-swartz/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+%28Aeon+Magazine+Essays%29 <comment><USER2> Just the video, embedded from youtube.

Here's the official site of the movie: [http://www.takepart.com/internets-own- boy](http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy)

Definitively a movie anyone using the internet should watch. I cried.

<comment><USER3> As did I, and that was surprising.

What moved me the most was Lessig. Aaron got right into Larry's soul, and once there, asked a simple, genuine question that could not be denied. There is a quiet power in that I find profound, as if we all operate under limits that really aren't there when we really do question.

"Sweet, sweet boy." Yeah Larry, indeed.

<comment><USER4> This. I haven't been able to watch this, because even __reading__ about it makes me cry. I didn't know Aaron, never knew anything about him before this, and I still feel profound loss and tragedy whenever I think about him and his experiences. He sounded like an amazing human being.

<comment><USER3> Me too. I did know about him through his activities. The name popped up on my radar a long time ago.

What I didn't know is he was so young. I also didn't know how many great advocacy efforts he helped to setup or founded. It's amazing! And that, I could feel, like white hot, and to be honest, got me far more politically aware.

When the Jstor event happened, I found out a lot more, and when he killed himself, I just felt loss. Profound, basic loss. And it was a hard loss, because I just began to know, and was interested in following Aaron, feeling like good things were going to happen, and then just like that, he's gone... :(

This work is really good. It communicates that aspect of Aaron to people in a meaningful way. Yes, it will be hard to watch. I found it worth it though.

I question more now. And I think about limits and norms a lot...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "But also, I must admit that I am a little disappointed in Aaron. I understand that depression is a serious disease that can fell any person, however strong. But he chose the path of the activist long ago. And the path of the activist is to fight, for as long and as hard as it takes, to effect change. Aaron had powerful friends, a powerful support network, and a keen sense of moral cause that put him in the right. That's how he got that support network of powerful friends and fellow activists in the first place" \-- J. Atwood [http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-end-of- ragequitting/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-end-of-ragequitting/)

I always felt this Jeff Atwood blog post was a good run down of why everyone was so upset over Aaron's suicide. It was a stupidly tragic mistake and Aaron knew better.

<comment><USER6> He wouldn't have been engaging in much political activism sitting in a jail cell for 38 years.

I can't feel disappointed in Aaron at all. I would probably do the same thing in his position.

I'm disappointed in a society and a 'justice' system that pushes for this to happen.

<comment><USER7> It would have been around 6 months if he would have taken the plea deal. If he didn't it still would not have been anything close to 38 years.

<comment><USER3> It was the felony and the limits on his future in politics that drove a lot of it.

Some jail time wouldn't have been enough. I think he would have done that. Maybe while in there, bad things might have happened.

But, it was obvious to me Schwartz understood code, people, how to organize and advocacy. He wanted to build a body of people and power and do some things.

To him, a felony conviction undermines all of that, and he saw it as useless, himself useless.

<comment><USER8> A felony conviction does not appear to have set Robert Morris too far back in life, or prevented him from changing the world.

<comment><USER3> Yes. It is not the end of the world. And we can see that. Options, Like having it expunged exist too.

That Aaron let it get into his head and could not or would not seek help, nor really understanding so many people would have his back is tragic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The people who could not find their way to some thoughtfulness and restraint and stop an insanely inappropriate and disproportionate legal travesty should lose their jobs and be driven out of their professions.

<comment><USER2> We should resume who did what:

* Massachusetts US Attorney Carmen Ortiz pushed for the prosecution

* MIT (can we be more specific?) did nothing to stop the prosecution (to say the least)

Please, continue...

<comment><USER10> Those curious about MIT's role should 1) Read Prof Hal Abelson's report [http://swartz-report.mit.edu/](http://swartz-report.mit.edu/) 2) Remember that a prosecutor does not serve the person who reported a crime or prompted an investigation. A prosecutor serves The State [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1423](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1423)

<comment><USER9> That report is a shameful whitewash

<comment><USER11> You're accusing Hal Abelson of deliberately deceiving the public? Or is there a better way to interpret what you wrote?

<comment><USER9> If you look at my response below, the report does not have to be an outright lie to be a whitewash. It can deceive by omission, for example. The headline of CNN's coverage of the report was "We did not target Aaron." That's true- ish. There's a lot of room between there and the truth, which is more like "We failed to stand up to stop a bad investigation and prosecution, and now we're dodging responsibility."

Would you place all the responsibility for the report on Abelson? Or do you think Rafael Reif is responsible for setting the parameters of the report to be produced?

<comment><USER11> That's why I used the word "deceive", as you did right here as well, and so I guess my response is to repeat the question I asked above.

Do you really believe Hal Abelson was deliberately or negligently --- ie, culpably --- deceptive?

 _later: added clarifying word "really"_

<comment><USER9> "Deceptive" is your word. I said "whitewash."

A whitewash is dissembling and deflecting and, ultimately, deceptive. Abelson, and the other authors of the report should have refused to write it.

But Reif is mostly to blame. He asked for the report, and used it to deflect blame.

Now here is where YOU are being deceptive. You are digging for "Hal Abelson is culpably deceptive." You would even prefer something stronger. That's a weak rhetorical ploy. Write it yourself if you want to read it.

<comment><USER11> "Deceptive is your word. I said 'whitewash'. A whitewash is [...] ultimately deceptive."

I don't feel like I'm so much trying to use debate tactics against you as to observe how uncomfortable even you seem to be with the idea that Hal Abelson was deliberately deceptive.

<comment><USER9> So you are completely comfortable defending the Abelson report, and find it completely honest. That's dandy.

Are you still comfortable with your comments here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484)

<comment><USER11> Yes. And, yes. Why? What does that have to do with Abelson's report?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone working on an project for DARPA & the FBI, having a dump of all of the court documents from PACER would be awfully useful.

([https://github.com/memex-explorer](https://github.com/memex-explorer) if you are curious)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not a fan of unnecessary reposts, but this guy's death was a huge tragedy for our generation so I don't mind more people seeing this. He could've been one of the first congressmen actually in touch with our generation, and willing to take a stance on issues he believes in rather than pander to lobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER13> I saw it and recommend it. It gives some insight into Aaron's life and legal situation.

</comment><comment><USER14> I watched it a while ago and I believe the movie talks about Aaron possibly investigating on the correlation of results found in JSTOR's academic papers database in order to conclude on the influence of financing on their results (hopefully what I'm saying makes sense... I may also very well be wrong about this claim). I am myself very interested in this topic, regardless of whether that's what Aaron was trying to do when downloading these papers. Does anyone know if such an analysis has been performed since/before/ever ?

</comment><comment><USER15> Aeon's Deputy Editor has also (just?) published a 2600 word detailed article on Aaron Swartz asking "Persecuted little guy, or powerful revolutionary – what sort of wunderkind was Aaron Swartz?"

Posted here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9505156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9505156)

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=internet%27s%20own%20boy&sort=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=internet%27s%20own%20boy&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's crazy is that the accomplices in the Boston Marathon bombings faced less jail time than Aaron. That's right people, copying documents is a worse crime than being an accomplice to terrorism.

</comment><comment><USER18> "tragic story"

</comment><comment><USER19> For those catching up, I made a timeline of the events of Swartz life and arrest: [http://newslines.org/aaron-swartz/](http://newslines.org/aaron- swartz/)

</comment><comment><USER20> They were doing exactly the same thing as him (and worse) but they killed him.

</comment><comment><USER21> People should really be upset at the first girlfriend who tipped the Feds about the manifesto for immunity.

You really have to keep most people on a need-to-know basis.

<comment><USER22> I think the movie conveys pretty clearly that she shows a lot of remorse and anger about how she was treated and the information she gave up under duress.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't matter. Her cooperating for immunity led to a ripple effect of him committing suicide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This time can we please skip the obligatory mega-thread about if Aaron was or wasn't a True Founder of Reddit?

<comment><USER24> It appears that we have skipped it. So, good job?</comment></comment>


Getting treated for coronavirus could cost more than $3k - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-treatment-costs-americans-health-care-broke-2020-2 <comment><USER2> Link 404's. It seems to redirect me to my country's version of the site, and since it's a US article, it tells me the article doesn't exist.

EDIT: Adding ?IR=C at the end prevents the redirection. Here's the fixed link for others:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-treatment- costs-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-treatment-costs- americans-health-care-broke-2020-2?IR=C)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you end up in the ICU (3-7%) it will be closer to $30,000

<comment><AUTHOR> The title from BI is misleading, $3K is probably just to test it. Isolation, oxygen therapy and care for 14 days is gonna run well into hundreds of thousands. ICU costs a fortune, and then add doctors and care.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you need another Docker based PaaS, but not for Web servers - <AUTHOR> We are considering building a service that,
like PaaS, can run your programs (in containers, like others) and charge for unit resources, not servers;
but unlike existing PaaS, is not designed for long running programs, e.g. Web servers (but still can run them, of course), but rather, short running programs which still require server level resources, like compilations, software building and packaging, continuous building/testing/integration, simulations, data processing, scientific computations, etc. and provides some post-processing for produced data.
As far as we have observed, there is no existing service of this kind. AWS Lambda may seem similar, but it's mainly for long running purpose.
So, is there a considerable real need for it? If you have this need, would you tell us more? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Like Amazon Lambda?

<comment><AUTHOR> Similar to Lambda, yes, while also being not tied to AWS, can run programs written in more languages, does not have many unnecessary restrictions on programs, etc.

We did put AWS into consideration when designing this service, and concluded that Lambda is still for long running purpose, which does not fall into the main target of our service.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Letters to Santa - <AUTHOR> Are there any services out there that you could recommend to help with getting a letter sent to the North Pole and receiving a response from Santa as a letter? <comment><USER2> Address the letter to:

Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada

Make sure to include your return address, and Canada Post will make sure Santa's response gets back to you.

[https://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/campaigns/holiday/...](https://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/campaigns/holiday/default.jsf#santa)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will this work for letters from the US?

<comment><USER2> I think so, but I'm not sure. The website says: _For our friends writing from outside Canada, please note that we are unable to guarantee delivery times outside Canada. We will do our best to ensure replies are sent in a timely manner. Letters mailed from outside of Canada require postage._</comment></comment></comment>


Wanna Start Your *mail.com Service? You'll Have To Buy It From Ad Farmers - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/06/19/mail-ad-farmers/ <comment><USER2> Author means ?mail.com or .mail.com, obviously. hpr8923my973n2487382y8mail.com is still available.

<comment><USER3> I totally clicked on the "1 comment" link to make this comment, just to find that it was already the only comment.</comment></comment>