Interview with Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> https://pullrequest.substack.com/p/pr-interviews-paul-graham <comment><USER2> I'm hoping we don't continue to see yc turn into 'the old guard'.

YC folks, startups & the people yc startup school attracts that I've personally spoken to in the past few years are more imitator-types.

YC folks & startups of 2009 were more authentic & original types.

Though I suppose it's tough to avoid this deterioration in culture following $-influx & 'success', in any domain.

<comment><USER3> 2009 era YC was epic. Literally once in a century.

I was happy to be around, if not involved. Startup School afterparty at Anybots was a dream. Trevor even pinched me with his new robot (at my request).

There were posers even back then, though. I remember one guy getting very drunk, saying "Ok, this is it," and walking up to pg to pitch his startup. I'm not sure who I felt worse for, him or pg.

<comment><USER4> I was at the 2010 after party and I will always remember trying to pitch Ron Conway and he just turned around and walked away. Scoble listened to me then said "You're an idiot, RSS is dead"

Fun times for a 22 year old nerd on his first trip to USA. I grew a thick skin fast.

The fact that a random kid from Europe could even get a chance to show up and speak to all those amazing people ... priceless. Just wish I had had the chops to do more with the opportunity.

<comment><USER5> > he just turned around and walked away

> You're an idiot

That seems awfully rude of them. They don't sound like very pleasant people.

<comment><USER3> Some are. Most were nice. Some do that as a way of seeing whether a founder will get discouraged; if you know your idea will work, it's easy to respond "Actually, that isn't a problem anymore because X." That tends to perk up the ears of VCs, since old ideas are bad until they're suddenly very good.

<comment><USER6> If the intent is to test for resilience (not getting discouraged by setbacks) or for technical savvy (being able to debate the merits of the approach knowledgeably, and able to refine/pivot when problems with it encountered), I don't understand introducing the variable of rudeness.

If A being rude to B, there's a good chance B will walk away, even if B could argue their point.

If the situation is such that B can't walk away -- meaning that A has power over B -- then A being rude in that context is not only unpleasant, but possibly also an abuse of power by A.

<comment><USER7> This is way over analyzing the situation.

They are not testing for such things. Sometimes over drinks, someone might say something, possibly rude, possibly just perceived as that. I wouldn't perceive it as rude if someone said to me 'Kid, XYZ is dead!'. It's just a statement.

There are not 'introduction of variables' here.

Also, I would perceive it a rude to meet someone in a social situation and have them 'pitch' to me. That part of 'always hustling' in every social setting is one of the reasons I will never move back to the Valley.

<comment><USER4> It was definitely rude of me to go in for a pitch like that. But as a 22 year old outsider I also didn't know any better.

<comment><USER7> Not so much rude as possibly overzealous in that context, I don't think anyone cares that much, it's not something to ever worry about or linger on. It's the Valley.

It's just not something that people outside the game would handle well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > But a few years after it's over, we'll be acting as if it never happened. > We're good at that.

So melancholy, a lot of the responses seem to gravity around a general accidentalism. I feel that's true for a lot of people who have had great success, never really understanding how each of the pieces fit together to make their success and thus never feeling like they've owned it.

<comment><USER9> that's a mature and very reasonable perspective. There's an incredible amount of circumstance and luck involved in success, the right ecosystem, the right people, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For me, this interview was disappointingly short. I'd love to see Eric Weinstein or someone similar do a long form interview with PG.

<comment><USER11> But Eric Weinstein asks of his guests to practice difficult words listeners have to find in a dictionary. He practices difficult words with an ANKI spaced repetition system himself.

What I find intriguing is that Peter Thiel has yet to appear on the Joe Rogan podcast while he clearly bankrolled that operation.

<comment><USER12> Interesting—-do you have a source for either of these statements?

<comment><USER11> I'm going to find one for the first. It is in this [https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=8071](https://youtu.be/_b4qKv1Ctv8?t=8071)

The second one is pretty obvious, Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005.

With what we know of Peter Thiel I think the burden of proof is on you that he doesn't make use of the knowledge he has on specific network work effects of youtube.

Just like he installed Donald Trump with Facebook in the White House.

<comment><USER13> I'm baffled by the hostility and conspiracy theorizing Thiel provokes on this forum.

Maybe people are intimidated by his intelligence and contrarian stances?

<comment><USER14> Some students look for answers in the back of the book and then figure out how to show work which gets those answers. If you do this long enough, it turns into a cult-like reverence for "the right/approved answers".

Thiel's reasoning on one thing or another may be flawed, but he definitely doesn't work this way. And he has a ton of money. So that can make the back- of-bookers both irritated and resentful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "There is one though that I regret rejecting because it was an idea I'd always wanted to fund. I'd been looking for this company for years, and finally it showed up".

Out of curiosity: any guesses what this company might be?

<comment><USER16> Complete outsider guess : Airtable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _But a few years after it 's over, we'll be acting as if [COVID] never > happened. We're good at that._

I fear this prediction won't come true.

There's a great risk that 'health theatre' will join security theatre as a durable if not permanent part of our existence. That years from now, we'll be getting temperatures checked, schools will be shutting down for worse-than- usual influenzas, and so on.

I still can't bring an ordinary-sized yogurt on a plane, and have to remove my belt and shoes. Something made our society irrationally risk-averse, and I glumly suspect that COVID won't be the turning point in that trend.

<comment><USER18> I don't think there's any chance at all this is going to happen. Security theater in airports is perpetuated by an agency that depends on fear to secure its funding and a government that depends on us fighting the "bad guys" (even if they aren't any close to as dangerous as they want us to think).

COVID fear isn't being perpetuated by any government agencies at the national level. If anything, the federal government desperately wants us to forget that COVID exists. Once the actual risks are gone, we're going to go right back to normal, though hopefully we will have learned a lot of lessons about pandemic preparedness.

<comment><USER19> The federal government doesn't promote the covid fear only because of which party is in power right now. One of the presidential candidates promises a nationwide mask mandate, and, judging from the actions of authorities in NYC or other places, there will be other severe restrictions on freedom of business, assembly and travel.

So yes, I also tend to agree that many people will continue supporting the health theater and fears for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER20> I fail to see how this is "health theater", especially mask mandates, which show high effectiveness and relatively low imposition on personal freedoms, considering the pandemic _is currently ongoing_.

<comment><USER21> Citation needed. Where are deaths increasing?

<comment><USER22> Here in Philadelphia, cases and deaths are both spiking. Not as bad yet as the peak from April but the pandemic certainly is not past us.

<comment><USER21> I just looked it up and there were 4 deaths in all of Pennsylvania yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> this is hardly an interview

</comment><comment><USER24> As a huge fan of pg (since my early 20s), it feels bad (but also good) to see him so disconnected these days. Most of his Tweets read like the musings of "some rich dude" in an ivory tower (which is quite literally where he lives), whereas back in the day YC and pg's essays were very much "where the rubber meets the road" \-- apologies for being a bit metaphorical.

Anyway, I think he's enjoying his well-earned money, life, and wonderful family (which is great), but as far as practical real-life startup advice? Paul Graham isn't that guy anymore.

<comment><USER25> Because his deep knowledge about startups, from the perspective of running them, picking them, advising them, and investing in them somehow no longer applies? This is not the kind of knowledge that expires, like the JavaScript framework de jour.

Perhaps he likes to talk and think about other things these days, but I'm sure he's still an expert in that area. Certainly he knows more about startups than just about any HN commenter.

<comment><USER26> It's been React, Angular, and Vue pretty much for the last 5 years. Sure, there's Svelte and other libraries that target web components, but those haven't reached meaningful market share.

<comment><USER27> Off topic, please keep the discussion focused

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Honestly I never found PG's writing that insightful and ANSI Lisp was a bit of a pain to read

That doesn't take away from any of his success, which has been immense (anybody who has made over a billion is obviously amazing and had the ultimate life) but he has become too much of a cult figure in comparison to others in that stratosphere

<comment><USER29> > he has become too much of a cult figure

I didn't know who PG was until recently. I knew he was well respected on HN but I've never found that much value in his blog posts either. Maybe people like his writings in the light of his achievements, rather than for their intrinsic values.

<comment><USER30> His essays were what attracted people to YC (and HN) in the first place.

<comment><USER31> This is true, I bought the "Hackers and Painters" book before discovering HN. Pretty inspiring at the time.

This sort of interesting writing seems to have stopped in general. Spolsky and Yegge are other positive examples from that era, which of course is just 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Once upon a time I saw pg as a guy that was leveling the playing field, and I think he succeeded because of that.

As another comment pointed out, concerning his writing about the wealth tax, I think he's lost sight of the fact that's there's more wealth to be created that's outside the scope of what the wealth advisors for the uber-wealthy are familiar with.

<comment><USER33> Could you expand on this a bit or give a link where I can read more? And why do you think he has "lost sight" of that potential wealth, as opposed to the idea that many businesses are simply not appropriate for equity financing?

<comment><USER32> No. And that's a strawman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > 2\. What's the future of what we now call journalism? Is it all Substack (a > YC company)? Can we run the global-scale world with that model?

I'm new to HN and was interested to read PG's answer, because I like the civility and on-pointedness of HN, which I think is a result of its rules of engagement. So, first I looked at Substack, which I hadn't heard of before.

PG's answer suggests he values journalism, but I was surprised that Substack doesn't address the main problem of journalism, which is not a lack of "individual domain experts" \- it's a lack of a viable business model to support people who practice journalism.

Advertising is what used to pay for journalism when journalism was published on newsprint. Since advertising went to online, journalism has been decoupled from the business model. Now less than half the number of journalists are employed in USA and Australia than at the peak, less than 20 years ago.

Can anyone point me towards attempts to find a new business model to sustain journalism?

<comment><USER17> > _I was surprised that Substack doesn 't address the main problem of > journalism ... a lack of a viable business model to support people who > practice journalism._

It... does, though? Substack is a way for writers to offer subscriptions for their content. Two friends of mine are benefiting from this, one has managed to pay her bills this way and the other is well on his way.

I don't consider it a magic bullet, but it's clearly a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER34> Sure, Substack is what it is, and that's good.

I'm looking for ways to repopulate newsrooms that send journalists out into the field to cover breaking news. That's a different set of logistics, scale, and costs.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A Haskell Library for Fluent Twilio IVR - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/steven777400/TwilioIVR/ <comment><USER2> According to Twilio, IVR is

> IVRs (interactive voice response) are automated phone systems that can > facilitate communication between callers and businesses. If you've ever > dialed your credit card company to check on a balance after responding to a > series of automated prompts, you've used an IVR.

So this is the term for the prompts you have to suffer through while you're pressing "0" over and over again.

Are you sure you want to make it easier for people to build these awful things?

Why not instead invest in making your website better, training your telephone support staff to be more efficient, and polishing your product so it doesn't require your customers to call you so much?

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case, my customer requires it. As in, if it doesn't have an IVR component, they're not interested, no matter what the price (e.g. $0). Their current solution is pure IVR, and I'm hoping to add a website and SMS interaction along with the IVR; then maybe wean them off the IVR. But I've already tried to sell a non-IVR (pure web) solution and it's absolutely no chance of consideration.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate your efforts in this regard!</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking a File API onto IE8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filepicker.io/post/33906205133/hacking-a-file-api-onto-ie8

<comment><USER2> I'm thankful this type of problem hasn't come by my desk so far, but at this stage in the game I would assume that there would be a number of mature libraries for doing the ie8 iframe shuffle. I wonder why they went with a custom solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I don't know of a single ie8 frame communication library. Most are part of bigger libraries and we were trying to keep things slim.

<comment><USER3> I found three when I had to do this. None of them worked correctly, and the JQuery plugin I found had a very poor API. I ended up writing my own, because the bar set by the existing software was so low.

Filepicker.io was one of the ones I looked at, and I still think my implementation was better.

I wish I had smuggled a copy of it out of that company before I was laid off. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After going down a rat hole of implementing a cross browser file input recently, with transparent overlays and special iframes and all that jazz... definitely will be looking to use filepicker in my next project that needs it.</comment>


Silicon Valley startups are buying fewer $10,000 bikes as signing bonuses - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-startups-buying-fewer-10000-bikes-as-signing-bonuses-2016-2 <comment><USER2> This is a solid article. Steven Levitt & stephen Dumbner (of freakonomics fame) have done a 100 year look at the high end bivycle market in the surrounding areas of innovation hubs. They were able to predict a bubble witn a 97.3% confidence level.

The fed released new guidance for KPIs for the economy and it is inline with the article and the steves^2 research.

The data is pretty staggering, when you drill down on it. It would be one thing if it was just an arbitrary observation that was so insignificant it didn't matter while serving the authors main point of highlighting an inciteful and weird metric the public would disagree with to make them angry. This is not that.

Conspiracy theorists are chocking this up as just another "passing fad" and a "good way to promote teambuilding and health", one person even alleged it was good for the "environment" and "promoted jobs".

Startups are cutting down on these things because they are dead. VCs won't help you raise a series E round if you are spending over 50,000 on bikes.

It is important to realize all startups are doing poorly. If you look at google, apple, a bootstrapped mobile games company and stealthmode blockchain as a service company leveraging the gopher protocol with a fax caching layer, you will see that essentially:

1\. All companys with a website are in tech.

2\. All companies started after Alan Turing are startups.

3\. Having a website AND having an email address at your domain means you are an Internet Company.

Also, the bubble is strictly tech, the "bike slowdown" is localized, we don't expect:

Insbility to correct economy with monetary policy due to a normalized %0 percent int rate.

Inability to correct fiscal policy due to no money.

To be an issue going forward.

Its nice to see these pieces of shit in tech get what is coming from them, an unnamed source qouted in the article from winterell, stated that winter was coming snd:

>The message of more caution is not lost on all start-ups. Some are cutting back

However, they did give this one helpful qoute:

> board meeting conversations began shifting significantly at their companies > to focus on reaching profitability

The bubble is bursting. Companies that were likely to succeed and provide a net good to the world are over, tech culture is over, do you think there is a need for companies to even do accounting?

So in summation:

[ screenshot of bike ]

People are buying less bikes*

Tech companies forced to consider having a "plan" and "runway"

*possible correlation with 200 people in the world who have them don't need more.</comment>


Ask HN: Who's up for a Triangle (NC) Hackers & Founders Meetup next week? - <AUTHOR>

Thinking about scheduling a RTP Hackers & Founders Meetup for next Friday, the 17th.  I know the holiday season makes scheduling touchy this time of year, but it would be nice to get in one last gathering just before the end of the year... call it a chance to reflect on our successes and failures in 2010 and make plans for 2011.<p>If anybody is in, let me know.  If there's enough interest, I'll try to arrange a venue where we can get a room to ourselves.  If it looks like there may only be a couple of us, maybe we can just pick any pub that's convenient and head there. <comment><AUTHOR> For reference:

<http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers-Founders/>

Also, finding a venue that could confirm space for up to 30 people on the 17th proved easier than expected, so I went ahead and reserved space, and scheduled the meetup. Please see:

[http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers- Founders/calendar/15690999...](http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers- Founders/calendar/15690999/)

to RSVP.

Hope to see all of you (well... within reason) there!</comment>


Better  - <AUTHOR> http://www.43folders.com/better <comment><USER2> I'm sure I consumed my share of junk from the internet, but it was not all without value. I am glad that I have learned about so many technologies, old and new, from places like Hacker News. I may not be able to use them expertly, but when I run into a problem I know what tools are out there. I know about Lisp, Python, Perl, Haskell, EC2, Ruby on Rails, Django, Cocoa, Couch DB, scalability, functional programming, object oriented programming, design principles, VCS and DVCS, and a hundred other things. Sure, there's a lot of noise in there, but also a signal.

When I recently had a chance to work with some programmers not so steeped in internet lore, all they knew was Java, and not well. They also knew of PHP's existence, and considered it the wave of the future for web apps.

Now, if both of us were to start a web company, which do you think would win?

<comment><USER3> _Now, if both of us were to start a web company, which do you think would win?_

I'm of the opinion that while you'd have a head start, if the other programmers have the drive and skill (for studying) that they would need to succeed in any case, they would be able to pick up on the technology and principles as they go.

It's not your previous exposure to various tech principles and "internet lore" that will make you succeed, those will only give you a small head start (and some interesting material to discuss with other hackers at meetups). It will come down to skill, determination, timing, and a fair bit of luck.

<comment><USER2> It's hard to hold constant all variables except one between persons. Is it reasonable to expect that a programmer with drive and skill wouldn't know about some internet lore, wouldn't know of resources like freenode and stackoverflow.com, and wouldn't know something about the variety of technologies that are out there?

The direction of causation is tricky to unwind. I think you're right, however. If a two programmers were of equal competence, except one only knew about Java and the other sat on Hacker News all day, the Hacker News reader would probably only have a small head start. However, it would be hard to find two programmers that met those descriptions and were of equal competence.

<comment><USER4> I recently discovered that you can pay freelancers for 2 hours work on a small problem [an edge case], and save yourself 10 hours. You don't even have to pay stock, as people are pleased to be paid $80 for an hour's work.

EDIT: However, knowing what to ask for (what you need doing) is important!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've become a fan of Merlin's writing since he posted this last December.

If you enjoyed this, go read Real Advice Hurts <http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/03/real-advice-hurts> which speaks to some of the same issues, and struck a chord with me. I've re-read it at least half a dozen times.

</comment><comment><USER6> Its a nice thought, and I feel where he's coming from, but it feels like one of those rants thats a bit in denial about human nature.

<comment><USER7> Given that the rant comes from Merlin, it's likely that he has his tongue somewhere in his cheek

Edit added later: After hearing the podcast, he might just be sincere about this. Somewhat weird to see Merlin's cynicism not laced with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

<comment><USER8> Why wouldn't he be serious? As more and more people spew forth garbage onto the Internet, we just end up wasting more and more of each others' time. For god sakes, look at Twitter! Maybe there's some useful information in there sometimes, but for the most part it is pure noise -- and look how it's taking off! It's as if people would rather waste time both creating and consuming fluff than to spend the time to create and consume content that is actually worth something.

<comment><USER9> You don't think social interaction is worth something?

<comment><USER8> Broadcasting something to an undefined group of people doesn't really count as social interaction in my book. Even if it did, I'd consider it a pretty lazy and meaningless method thereof.

<comment><USER9> Your characterization of online social interaction is plain wrong. You can't assume everyone else approaches Twitter or Facebook the same way you might. People learn from each other online, argue with each other, start relationships, start/run businesses, share photos and videos, etc. I have no idea how you can overlook all the positive things to promote such a negative view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does Merlin take his own message very seriously? Take a look at his personal blog:

<http://www.kungfugrippe.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Since this manifesto came out his output has slowed significantly and it's hard to argue that his posts and blog are "better" than they used to be.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good vision, good post.

Yes, all those so-called social networks are just about an ability to say something, because it makes you feel a little better for at least several minutes. The feeling is what matters, not the content itself.

In 2000 - 2001 the livejournal.com service gained a huge popularity in Russia among mass-media and hi-tech workers. It were really good times.

It was a possibility to say something aloud, and to feel this so necessary feeling of being not alone, which, of course is mere an illusion.

That is why facebook got their 200 million users - I see them each day in those internet caffees in Thamel, uploading all the same almost identical photos and writing almost the same banal stories.

Self-exibition as another time-killing and keeping-the-mind-busy process, why not? Twitter is also here.</comment>


Clang vs GCC benchmark on UnrealEngine3 - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+RyanGordon/posts/4N6vPqaGjrV <comment><USER3> gcc at -O0 -g has always been decent enough for me, and I never saw any significant difference with clang (either in the past when gcc -O0 used to be /slighly/ slower, or now).

Things change with -Ox, but then again, who really cares? Generating optimized binaries is not something I do routinely, except when tuning for performance.

When I'm generating a binary for release, I couldn't care less if the project actually took 2x times to compile. In fact, to use feedback-directed optimization (which on some projects may make a marked difference, usually larger then the generated binary at O3 between gcc/clang), you actually have to build it twice, and _very_ few people actually bother.

clang used to be much faster at building, but then again the binary was never equally on-par performance wise. As clang is getting better at optimizing, the compilation times are getting more and more similar.

This is again, all hardly surprising for me.

I _have_ worked on projects using C++ where build times where incredibly slow. They all shared the common attribute of #include <megaheader_with_all_class_definitions> and "using namespace library".

For other projects, as long as rebuilding an object takes 2 seconds or 10, does it really make a difference? In those cases, linking actually takes disproportionately longer, to the point that compilation times are insignificant.

It's a genuine question.

<comment><USER4> Your projects aren't video games, are they? It's not very feasible to debug games at -O0, unless they're very small. And I don't how if profile guided optimization is feasible either.

<comment><USER5> I've worked on several AAA games and have never had a problem running/testing/debugging with optimizations off. There's a framerate hit, of course, but I've never had a problem debugging because of it. Trying to debug with optimizations on is usually a bigger time sink than just debugging at 20fps. When I'm dealing with gameplay code and not engine code I'll normally just build with all optimizations on except -O0 the gameplay modules so I get full framerate and perfect debugging of the code I'm interested in. But usually that's not necessary (except it gives me faster load/restart times.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Either way the flat compile time is not important to me even on projects of this size. Most of it is probably going to be linking the .o files on dev builds which is considerably quicker than a full compile cycle.

For CI builds ~ 10 mins is nothing (we're currently hitting 3 hours and managing fine with a rats nest of csc and cl compilers being invoked galore).

What really brings the shit to the table with clang is simply this:

Compiler error messages are beyond awesome as is checker.

That is all. Productivity is way up for me. I do my own clang builds of stuff because it's a lot more helpful as a compiler.

</comment><comment><USER7> So how did the resulting binaries compare for performance? Compilation happens once, execution many times.

<comment><USER8> except during iterative development, say, where maybe you execute once for test between each edit

<comment><USER9> You build Unreal Engine from scratch everytime after each edit?

I think not.

The difference will be between 1s and 2s, given overall difference in speed. I suspect that your time to think about problems will two orders of magnitude more.

Mine is - minutes between builds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So GCC takes longer to compile but produces a better optimized binary? That makes the comparison pretty useless as you can probably just reduce the GCC optimization level.

<comment><USER11> It produces a _smaller_ binary, but that doesn't really give us any information on whether it's a better one.

AFAIK Clang and GCC are now roughly neck-and-neck in terms of performance though (at least as of December) - [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm34_gc...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm34_gcc49_compilers)

<comment><USER12> GCC produces a slightly smaller binary when debug information is stripped, but LLVM produces a massively smaller binary (half as big) when debug information is included. If you're building debug, why would you care how big the stripped binary is?

<comment><USER13> This invites the question of whether GCC is outputting more _detailed_ debugging information than LLVM (which is a good thing), or if it's just being inefficient at it.

<comment><USER12> The g++/gdb experience for C++ has always been pretty bad. Anyone know how lldb compares?

<comment><USER14> In what ways is it bad? It works pretty damn good here.

<comment><USER12> Generally, failing to parse expressions at the level of abstraction of the source code being debugged: I find it fails on user defined operators, can't resolve overloaded functions, etc.

Even being able to reliably evaluate C++ expressions is far from what I want: I want to be able to execute arbitrary C++ statements (including loops), use templated objects that weren't instantiated at compile time, etc. I feel like this might be close to possible using, say, the LLVM JIT, although I haven't seen anything that implies anyone is trying to build it.

edit: for example (stock gcc/gdb on Ubuntu 12.04):

        #include <iostream>
        int main() { std::cout << "foo\n"; }

in gdb, break at main:

        (gdb) p std::cout << "foo\n"
        Cannot resolve function operator<< to any overloaded instance

edit edit: lldb doesn't fare much better (OSX 10.9):

        (lldb) p std::cout << "foo\n"
        error: no member named 'cout' in namespace 'std'
        error: 1 errors parsing expression

<comment><USER15> LLDB does JIT your expression via Clang, and then either interprets it locally or executes it in the target, and you can execute arbitrary commands - <USER2> example:

      (lldb) expr for (int i=1; i<5; i++) { printf("%d\n", i * i); }
      1
      4
      9
      16

It does still fail if the appropriate constructors, templated object instantiations, etc. aren't in the target, as you point out.

<comment><USER12> Oh, very nice. That's clearly the right architecture.

It still fails on a lot of things for me (including your above example and the std::cout example, although variants work), which I'm guessing (hoping?) is just a lack of maturity. Looking forward to see how it progresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to this: [http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-04/msg00195.html](http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-04/msg00195.html) these benchmarks are already out of date...

</comment><comment><USER17> Building Firefox for OS X using clang on my MacBook Pro takes about 8 minutes. Cross-compiling Firefox for Android using gcc 4.7 on the same MacBook Pro takes about 45 minutes. :(

<comment><USER18> But that's not apples-to-apples. How about building for OS X using gcc?

<comment><USER17> Would you expect building for OS X using gcc to be much faster than building for Android? The KLOCs compiled for OS X and Android should be about the same, though the Android build is emitting ARM code and compiling some Java files (but that only takes 1–2 minutes).

<comment><USER18> Very possible the ARM and x86/x86-64 backends are very different in compilation speed, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If gcc is producing a final binary that's twice the size of clang's, wouldn't that point to IO being a big factor in compile time?

What is this test really trying to determine? How the performance of the core of each compiler impacts productivity? Shouldn't the test parameters be adjusted to real world conditions, as seen by the test creator, then?

Like most benchmarks, you could fabricate scenarios that favor one or the other all day long. Some closer to reality, some completely synthetic.

<comment><USER20> > If gcc is producing a final binary that's twice the size of clang's, > wouldn't that point to IO being a big factor in compile time?

250MB of output adding 5mn of compile time would mean 800KiB/s. That's about what a 5400RPM HDD gets on random writes. Possible, but means GCC has an utterly terrible I/O architecture and flushes to disk after more or less every write call.

> What is this test really trying to determine?

Nothing? It's just trying to infirm or confirm the initial off-hand remark: [https://twitter.com/icculus/status/448281959538888704](https://twitter.com/icculus/status/448281959538888704)

> Like most benchmarks, you could fabricate scenarios that favor one or the > other all day long. Some closer to reality, some completely synthetic.

I'm not sure how you can get closer to reality than "I spend my days compiling Goat Simulator with Clang and GCC, let's compile Goat Simulator with Clang and GCC".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seriously, a 70MB binary?

Is this all program code or does this include resources?

<comment><USER22> Well, judging by the title, it's the Unreal 3 engine; I'd say that would end up being a pretty big binary.

<comment><USER21> The problem is performance: a small binary might end up having lots of its code in L1 (16KByte) / L2 (512 KByte) cache (dec2013 values for i7, taken from [https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Jeremy.Jones/CS3021/5%20caches.pdf](https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Jeremy.Jones/CS3021/5%20caches.pdf))... but a 70mb binary should produce a lot of cache misses.

I wonder what performance penalties arise from that.

<comment><USER23> I assume the 70MB binary statically links in all kinds of assets that blow up the file size, static arrays of pre-calculated data etc. There's no way it compiles to 70MB of assembly.

The code size would still be massively bigger than the CPU code cache, but the working set that actually matters for performance does not have to have any relation to the size of the total code itself, as long as time-critical sections are small and localized.

<comment><USER24> Considering the massive size increase due to debug symbols I'd guess that a sizable part of the 70MB indeed is assembly, at least 20MB and probably even more.

C++ templates, while being absolutely lovely to write and use, tend to do that. Every single different type you instantiate the template into produces a separate compiled copy of the whole template. Write a sorting function and use it for 5 types -> you get the same sort in assembler 5 times with differences that relate to the types they use, alongside with 5 massive symbol names (C++ template symbols tend to be really large).

<comment><USER25> > Write a sorting function and use it for 5 types -> you get the same sort in > assembler 5 times with differences that relate to the types they use, > alongside with 5 massive symbol names (C++ template symbols tend to be > really large).

To be fair, this is also why the performance of C++ std::sort beats C qsort hands down. Calling the comparator function with a function pointer is expensive compared to doing an integer comparison. Additionally, the boundary between translation units (ie. object files) inhibits a lot of optimization that could otherwise take place (and does in the C++ case, when the function calls are inlined).

There are also techniques to avoid C++ template bloat, such as type erasure. Although this makes the template code only a thin shim that provides type safety.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where do you find co-entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR>

Hey fellows,
How do you meet/find co-entrepreneur to join working on your idea (or the other way around - joining other people to develop their own ideas)? Obviously, I'm talking about very early-stage ideas.
Personally, I had twice started a new venture (both times failed) and I know that talking/arguing/brainstorming with your colleague is something invaluable (I spare mentioning the rest of the benefits). Right now, I'm in situation where I have a couple of ideas in my mind that I want to launch and see how it goes, but the lack of a co-founder kinda pushes me back.
Most of the people I know are either focus on their studies or have a nice job with nice salary and don't really want to take place in a new adventure.
So, how do you find co-founders at the very early stage? Overseas and domestically. <comment><USER2> I couldn't agree more. I'm very much in the same boat. There are some brilliant people out there, but so few of them have the drive and desire to really take a step out and try something new and different. If you want to be in touch, let me know and we'll figure out a way to exchange contact details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sure. How do you want to exchange emails?

<comment><USER2> contact me at eretzdd at gmail.com</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/ses/ <comment><USER2> What would this mean for services like Postmark (and friends) ?</comment>


EU court: Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific evidence - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/health/vaccines-illness-european-court-bn/index.html <comment><USER2> From the press release ([https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-06/cp170066en.pdf)):

"...where there is not certain and irrefutable evidence, to conclude that there is a defect in a vaccine and a causal link between the defect and a disease on the basis of a set of evidence the seriousness, specificity and consistency of which allows it to consider, with a sufficiently high degree of probability, that such a conclusion corresponds to the reality of the situation, are compatible with the Directive.

Such evidentiary rules do not bring about a reversal of the burden of proof which it is for the victim to discharge, since that system places the burden on the victim to prove the various elements of his case which, taken together, will provide the court hearing the case with a basis for its conclusion as to the existence of a defect in the vaccine and a causal link between that defect and the damage suffered."

If I'm interpreting this correctly, this seems like it's meant to protect the victim.</comment>


Why BuzzFeed Is the Most Important News Organization in the World - <AUTHOR> http://stratechery.com/2015/buzzfeed-important-news-organization-world/

<comment><USER2> I think FuzzBeed ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908316)) is way more important.</comment>


Migrating from Authy to Bitwarden for 2FA Codes - <AUTHOR> https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/migrating-from-authy-to-bitwarden-for-2fa-codes/ <comment><USER2> Great article. Seems like Authy is already becoming irrelevant to use anyway since it just presents 2FA codes which is already done by nearly all password managers.

Also, the migration here is only for 2FA codes on Bitwarden and later the author migrates to 1Password. I'm pretty sure you could choose to migrate altogether either on 1Password or Bitwarden since they both support 2FA codes.

If it were me, I'd just migrate to using Dashlane instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, you could definitely choose to use either 1Password or Bitwarden for both passwords and 2FA codes. I addressed this point in the article. I'm willing to deal with the hassle of using two password managers to avoid putting them all in one place, providing some degree of protection if one gets compromised but not the other.</comment></comment>


Google Turns 20 (fiction) - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-09-n33.html <comment><USER2> Wow, fiction for real. Science-fantasy is more like it.</comment>


How Much Does It Cost To Build An MVP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/stellafayman/2013/05/02/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-an-mvp/

<comment><USER2> This is a nonsense question with no real answer. It could be $0 to > $1,000,000,000,000. Are you building an MVP around a new cat-picture-sharing- website or an MVP around an idea for a new stealth fighter jet?

If you can actually say "Oh, an MVP, developed by a freelancer, will cost between $15,000-$30,000" (or whatever) then that's a damn sad statement about the state of startups. If we've become that homogeneous and generified in our efforts, what does that say about how innovative any of this stuff actually is?

<comment><USER3> The point of an MVP is to control costs, to avoid spending millions of $ and precious time to develop something that no one wants. The first step in avoiding spending that much money, is to be able to quantify the costs of building an MVP.

Besides, a stealth fighter jet cannot be a MVP. Maybe you have better maneuvering technology, or targeting technology, or maybe you have teleportation technology. That would be the basis of your MVP. If it still costs above $100,000, then minimize again, and again and again.

<comment><USER2> _The point of an MVP is to control costs, to avoid spending millions of $ and precious time to develop something that no one wants._

I'd argue that it's the point of the _process_ to "control costs, avoid spending millions of $ ..."

The MVP is just a tool, a step along that path. Its "point" if there is one - is to test your product hypothesis and evaluate product/market fit at a point in time.

 _The first step in avoiding spending that much money, is to be able to quantify the costs of building an MVP._

You can't do that, as you know neither the definition of "minimum" nor the definition of "viable" when you first start. That's the whole point of the iterative process. You start building to the Founders' vision, and then go out and try to find customers for that. It's only when you think that you have a testable product hypothesis that you can even speculate about what an "MVP" would look like.

I think part of the problem with these discussions though, is that "MVP" has become part buzzword and part synonym for "prototype" or "alpha" or "first version". It's not necessarily the same as those things though.

 _Besides, a stealth fighter jet cannot be a MVP. Maybe you have better maneuvering technology, or targeting technology, or maybe you have teleportation technology. That would be the basis of your MVP._

Right, that's why I said "an idea for a new stealth fighter jet". I certainly am not proposing to build a complete jet as an MVP... I can't imagine many - if any - scenarios where that makes sense. But building an MVP of the "magic sauce" that allows you to demonstrate to the DoD that your new stealth fighter jet will be better, is probably still going to be a lot more expensive than the "cat photo sharing site" thing. All I'm really saying is that there's a broad range in how much a MVP might cost, depending on the domain and the problems you're trying to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The below statement has to be sarcastic right?

Hire a freelance developer to build a prototype - Many freelance developers love working with entrepreneurs to develop MVPs and prototypes. …

<comment><USER5> _The below statement has to be sarcastic right?

Hire a freelance developer to build a prototype - Many freelance developers love working with entrepreneurs to develop MVPs and prototypes_

Why do you think that? It's honestly a part of my consulting work that I really, really enjoy.

<comment><USER6> Because far too often, 'hire a freelance developer' means, "I'll give you 20% of the company if you make the MVP."

At my university, several times a week you get people saying, "I have my MBA and I just need 3 developers who are really solid to build the idea. I don't have cash, but I'm determined and will give you equity for your time."

Developers are far too often under appreciated, and most entrepreneurs don't want to shell out a few thousand on an MVP. Sometimes, they don't pay when they're not happy with the result, despite you following every suggestion and even giving plenty of free hours to make the product better.

Lastly, those who are willing to shell out a little cash will often find the cheapest talent they can, which is great, until they start to grow and they realize they've hit a wall because it's nearly impossible to add features and improbable to redo the whole product.

But when the startup has some money, and they know what they want, and they listen to your tech advice, there's no better feeling than crafting a new company or product from a qwerty keyboard and a text editor.

<comment><USER7> "I'll give you 20% of the company if you make the MVP."

Which is not what this article is saying at all. That's why there is a dollar figure attached to hiring a freelance developer, not an equity split.

<comment><USER6> You're totally right, but I was replying to the parent comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a freelance developer. My core business is to build MVPs. The price and the duration are fixed: 3000€ for two weeks. <http://munda.me>

<comment><USER9> OK, will you dev me an MVP for an auto-aiming paint gun? I keep losing in paintball matches and I think there's a market. $3000, two weeks.

<comment><USER8> No I am not. It's my job to extract from the customer's vision what's possible to develop in two weeks. I never mention: "I materialize any idea in two weeks".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know how I can get into this business? I'm a full-stack developer and love to build MVPs, but I don't really know where to start finding new clients? Is it really only elance and odesk?

<comment><USER11> Find your own ideas, and then learn to sell them, to posible users, to possible partners. And then if you get clicks on fake buttons and or signups, start to build a more elaborated product. If you are a developer the hardest part is selling, do it from day cero. Also start a blog, I find people looking at blogs. And of course read "the startup owner's manual".

<comment><USER10> I intend of doing that, but at least at the start, I'd like to have some reliable (albeit small) revenue stream

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How long is a piece of string?

</comment><comment><USER13> Advice on MVP's from Forbes? C'mon hn

<comment><USER14> The Forbes article was posted so we could all trash it and circle jerk about how much better we are.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Simple Solution to Receive Payment for a Web App  - <AUTHOR>

Is there any solution can
1) keep anonymous for both payer and receiver
AND
2) takes care of PCI compliance also?
Thanks a lot! <comment><USER2> Your requirements are antithetical to each other. If you need to make marketplace payments, look at Amazon's Simple Payments (used by KickStarter amongst others) which prevents either of the end parties from knowledge of each other, but does not prevent Amazon from knowing about them.

PCI compliance should be trivial for any functional payments provider.

<comment><USER3> +1.

Somebody has to take the responsibility for the collected money and in this case it has to be you if you want to make it anonymous. You can consolidate from lot of payers and distribute to the receivers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Amazon Payment looks good.</comment></comment></comment>


How the NSA Is Killing American Small Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/15/how-the-nsa-is-killing-small-businesses <comment><AUTHOR> I am the one in the article. I run the trade association. If you want to help build a coalition to lobby the government, let's do it. I think we need to join the conversation not just wait and pray.</comment>


Live Track Green Sea Turtle Midori from Tonight's BBC Blue Planet Live - <AUTHOR> https://reeftracks.org/blueplanetlive <comment><USER2> The whale shark track is awesome! I didn't know they had whale sharks on the Great Barrier Reef. Cool to see where all the sharks are too</comment>


PDF goodness in Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/11/pdf-goodness-in-chrome.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEgta+%28Google+Chrome+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is there anyone else on OS X thinks the rendering of the default Preview.app is so much better than Chrome?

One of the few reasons I constantly bounce between Safari and Chrome is the ability to render PDF beautifully. I haven't yet seen a better PDF rendering engine than the OS X built-in one.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the rendering is much worse than in Preview. If you go to:

        Preferences -> Under the Hood -> Content Settings... -> Plug-ins -> Disable individual plug-ins...

you can turn it off and have PDFs revert to downloading for viewing in Preview.

<comment><USER2> Is there any way to open PDF in Chrome but use Preview.app to render it (like in Safari)?

I guess most likely it's not possible...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't understand what the big deal is with PDF support. If I click on a PDF I'd rather it download to my computer and gets opened with the appropriate application, rather than using developer time in a feature that feels out of place within Chrome.

This feature has been available in the dev channel of Chrome for ages, and until now it's still unstable. PDF's tend big documents, and it's generally the case that Chrome locks up and ends up crashing when opening a PDF that's more than a few pages. This defeats the purpose in my opinion. The moment I notice I'm loading a PDF in Chrome I go ballistic trying to close the tab to avoid the crash.

I'd rather have developers improving the bookmark manager than trying to make a browser a PDF reader also. And a bad one at it. This makes me want to go back to the Chromium nightly builds. Those where awesome and bullshit free.

<comment><USER2> It's quite a decent and neat feature if you have to read a lot of PDF's (i.e. academic paper hunting): you can quickly scan through the PDF opened in your browser and decide if you want to actually keep it. Otherwise the PDF will just be downloaded to your Download folder and then you have to read through them and clean up those unwanted.

That being said, I don't like Chrome's implementation though. Usually switch to Safari for "PDF mode".

<comment><USER5> This. I moved back to Safari because with Chrome it's so painful to do paper hunting. It's much easier and fast to skim over and then decide which ones to save and read.

<comment><USER6> And additionally, when the paper opens in-browser, the location and browse history that got you to that paper is preserved. So when you're in the web browser and see the pdf of the paper by I.M. Smart and A. U. Thor, you can tell whether you got it from Smart's site, Thor's site, or somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PDFs are such a huge part of the internet, especially in academic and scientific circles. This (soon to be) stable feature inside the browser is amazing for finally providing a seamless experience when browsing PDFs online alongside webpages. There's no performance hit, no giant plugins to install, no Adobe Update Manager yelling at you every 15 minutes to update, restart your computer, and put the shortcut back on your desktop. The instant you click on the PDF it's available. A lot of people are reporting that they didn't even realize that they were looking at PDFs after the update. They just thought it was another webpage. That's how well integrated it is.

Great job Chrome Devs, you're really setting the browser ahead of the pack.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate the good news from Google, but I've often wondered why PDFs are so important in 'academic and scientific circles'. It seems that some sort of HTML solution would ultimately work better. It's certainly a very flexible format, easy to annotate, and easy to search. I'm often frustrated by the the difficulty of searching a large collection of PDFs or providing clean annotations when I'm reading papers. I still looking for tools that are good at both of these things.

Why don't we use HTML or something similar for making papers available?

In any case, thanks Google.

<comment><USER9> HTML is not even close to provide the level of support needed for math in scientific papers. Using HTML is like going back 30 years, when we had things like troff, and later TeX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PDFs are a pain but they they exist and dare I say it, I'd rather receive a PDF from my Windows brethren than a MS Word document :-(

Having this will make my world just a little bit more convenient!

</comment><comment><USER11> My worst experience on Chrome or any browser isn't Flash or a suite of extensions I am using. Most of the pain comes from Acrobat integration that locks up a core at the worst time with all Chrome tabs seizing to function and a Chrome tab process to crash soon after. Any alternative to Acrobat is welcome, especially one by Google that can integrate seamlessly, and will allow me to finally left-click on a link to a PDF instead of downloading and opening the document separately.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, their implementation is _fast_! I've never seen a browser open a PDF as fast as it opens a Web page, but this has got to be close. Very impressive.

<comment><USER13> I've always been impressed by Safari's integrated PDF reader. It's still more polished than what Chrome has, though I look forward to Chrome closing the gap before too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The feature has been in the dev channel for weeks. I am glad they decided to implement pdf support in the browser, and I love the speed at which it works. I also love the lack of chrome and the ability to right click on the pdf and save it. However, the Foxit software they are using is not very good IMO. I had it installed previously on my machine, and it crashed a lot with files over 20 pages. Now Chrome crashes almost every time I open a large PDF file. So, I uninstalled Foxit Reader and reverted to Acrobat. It is slower to open, but doesn't crash nearly as much as Foxit.

Why didn't the Chrome team incorporate the original Adobe Reader instead of Foxit?

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how this will affect Google's online PDF viewer [1]. On one hand Google can clearly provide a faster experience by rolling their own client- side viewer, but on the other an online viewer can be used across browsers and devices, and more easily integrate with Google Docs.

[1] [http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://labs.google.com/pap...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable- osdi06.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd never use the words PDF and goodness in the same sentence. I doubt Didier Stevens (<http://blog.didierstevens.com/>) would either.

Don't get me wrong, I like Chrome (in fact I'm using it now) but it's a browser. I don't want a document viewer, I just want to surf the Internet.

<comment><USER17> The web serves files. Some of them are HTML, some of them are not. I don't have a problem with web browsers displaying anything that has a standard defining it.

<comment><USER16> But is it the browser's job to internally render the files, or pass them on to the appropriate player?

As smart as the Google guys are, PDF is a mess of a format. Why should we think that Google are better than anyone else at implementing one safely?

<comment><USER18> Of possible interest to people wondering about security of PDFs is that the current Honeynet Project Forensic Challenge requires analysis of a malicious PDF.

Not a direct link with Google, although it looks like the project itself is fairly active with Google Summer of Code.

Edit: link for interested parties

<http://project.honeynet.org/node/583>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Previously:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871521>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440463>

</comment><comment><USER20> It's a licensed version of Foxit PDF reader fwiw. It's not open source unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER21> The PDF reader in 7.0.517.41 for Linux has trouble rendering math in some documents, e.g., <http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0204033>

It might just be a font thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Finally! The Chrome team seems to be making every good decision out there.

PDF's are everywhere, but browser support--especially in Chrome--has been crap.

</comment><comment><USER23> 'PDF goodness' is a purely theoretical concept, IMHE. I'll not use any of my time testing that belief ever again, but would love to be able to abandon it... fingers crossed.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's faster to load PDFs than anything I've ever used previously. Thanks Google & Foxit.</comment>


Tiny Lib for Setting Configurations - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BoRuDar/configuration <comment><AUTHOR> Library for setting values to structs' fields from env variables, flags, files or default tag</comment>


Introducing the Novena: a homemade laptop with open source hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/20/open-source-laptop

<comment><USER2> I wonder, will there be a laptop analogue of Phoneblocks?</comment>


Show HN: Laptop.css - <AUTHOR> https://jjkaufman.github.io/laptop.css/index.html <comment><USER2> Jokes aside - and I absolutely love this - is there actually a good (S)CSS library, with freely-licensed configurable template imagery, that lets you say "I want this image to be displayed as the screen of an high-resolution photograph of a MacBook/iPad/whatever, sized so that the photograph of the device itself itself fills its container?" It's surprisingly hard to find, and I recently had to roll my own, transparency mask and all.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't answer your question with regards to devices, but for screenshots involving browsers, I believe that Screely is the best/fastest/easiest thing out there to use.

[https://www.screely.com/](https://www.screely.com/)

<comment><USER4> Slightly embarrassing that they don't have screenshots on their site.

<comment><USER5> I always find this very frustrating, how hard can it be to put a demo (or even just a screenshot) of your product? Did they not think someone visiting their site would want it?

On this note, the worst offender in my opinion is Voyager for Laravel [1], where the "play" button has been put over a screenshot of the product, but when you click on it there's a 90 second video of a guy _talking_ about the product. So. frustrating.

[1] [https://voyager.devdojo.com/](https://voyager.devdojo.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      :root {
          --laptop-content:  ...

Huh. Interesting that I never noticed that CSS supported variables like this. I haven't worked on a Web front-end for some time, but I see that this has been pretty portable since late 2017. I remember that one of the big points of using CSS preprocessors like Sass was being able to use variables. Now, it seems they're a little less useful.

<comment><USER7> Sadly not portable enough if you need to support IE. Give it a few more years though.

<comment><USER8> Does frontend developers care?

It seems to me a lot of frontend developers has a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that there exist millions of users who prefer other browsers than Chrome :-/

Full disclosure: I sometimes work on frontend myself, I have talked to such developers.

<comment><USER6> On average? No. It's easier for developers to target only one platform and switching browsers is easy enough for the average user that developers don't see much problem in putting the blame on the browser. Chrome also has greater marketing power backing it than other browsers, so it's the easy choice. That's what happens.

Should you care? I think yes. I don't want the internet to be at the whims of a single entity. It's like authoritarianism vs democracy or having a monopolistic market vs a competitive one. What's best for the tech ecosystem isn't something the average developer thinks or cares about, though. When I show my co-workers how our front-end breaks when using Firefox, they often mistake my concern of portability to be favoritism towards Firefox. I'd use other browsers, but it would just make it harder to convince them to take the bugs seriously.

<comment><USER8> Sad thing is we fought so hard back in 2006-2009 to get to get past bosses and clients who wanted us to just make it work in IE, and here we are a decade later and those who should be building on our work are tearing it apart by carelessness.

Edit: if any frontend/web developers today reads this, please do use Firefox for development. I'll tell you why:

I can only remember a single time that I wrote something in Firefox that didn't also work in the latest IE, Chrome and Edge.

Web developers I work with who use Chrome however seems to constantly have to go back and fix stuff that doesn't work anywhere but Chrome, exactly like web developers who developed in Frontpage and IE had to.

If you don't want to spend time with regressions from QA and you don't want to look unprofessional, develop on Firefox.

The happy feeling you get from doing something good for the web is a bonus.

<comment><USER6> I'm full-stack, as they say, but have been working almost exclusively on the back-end for the last couple of years. I don't think I remember a time when I did something in the front-end that resulted in it working in Firefox but not on Chrome, so you might be right, but I may also simply not remember.

<comment><USER8> I didn't intend it on you personally jolmg, but rather generally frontenders who read it :-)

Will update to make it clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, the simplicity of this is blowing my mind.

I don't think I have ever even considered using `white-space: pre` with generated content. Really fun, really cool!

</comment><comment><USER10> This is quite useful, but frankly I doubt many would be willing to put the ASCII style laptop on their web site. Literally a week ago we had to design a bootstrap carousel inside macbook pro laptop here: [https://berlioz.cloud](https://berlioz.cloud)

If you could add more style options of devices like macbook, imac, few PCs, tables and mobiles it would be so great!

<comment><USER10> and most important, don't forget the iWatch 5 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great! If you're looking for some more realistic looking (and resizable) phone or laptop devices, check out [https://github.com/philipkiely/devices.css](https://github.com/philipkiely/devices.css)

</comment><comment><USER12> Possibly the best *.github.io page i've ever seen. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER13> Bill Gates dancing... oh man.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love it. Not sure if I'd ever have a reason to use it...but I love it!

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the purpose of this?

</comment><comment><USER16> Adding an animated image of Steve Balmer and Bill Gates dancing at the Windows 95 launch is guaranteed to get an extra 10 points on Hacker News. It's just science.

<comment><USER17> Your science. My religion.</comment></comment>


Death sentence for Iranian web programmer - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/01/19/death-sentence-for-iranian-programmer-accused-of-developing-software-used-by-porn-sites/ <comment><USER2> It's always said that one of the huge advantages of programming compared to other disciplines is the extremely low barrier of entry and the extremely low cost of taking a risk. You can develop something and all it costs you is time, so scrapping it is far easier than in any physical design situation.

I don't think it's possible to discount how critical to this point of view our freedoms are. When you have a certain faith in the justice system (one generally corroborated by experience) and in the law, you have one less thing to worry about. We innovate because we not only don't fear wasting $N in materials in addition to our time, we also don't fear being dragged off to prison. Indeed, even if we _did_ fear being dragged off to prison, I can't think of any situation where you could _unintentionally_ get the death sentence for programming. Programming!

Yes, SOPA and PIPA are bad, and yes, we should oppose them. But sometimes it's good to take a step back and look at what "bad" really looks like. And take a minute to think "Wow. We are fighting such minor battles in comparison." Just a minute. Then it's time to get back in the fight. Because the minor losses slowly, imperceptibly, take you to the major battles.

<comment><USER3> _We innovate because we not only don't fear wasting $N in materials in addition to our time, we also don't fear being dragged off to prison._

That's generally true, but not in all cases.

Because I have Crohn's Disease, I've toyed with the idea of creating an app that would let a patient track their symptoms and diet, etc., to figure out what are the factors that cause a flare-up for them; and later upload the history to their doctor. But knowing (a) the regulations in the USA surrounding medical devices (does this count as one? who knows without a lawyer) and (b) the potential for liability for even the stupidest things, I've decided that the potential danger for me is nowhere near worth it.

<comment><USER4> Speak to a doctor. It's possible that there is a simple "shibboleth" you can use like "I am not your lawyer and this is not legal advise" for lawyers.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure the doctor would refer him to a specialist. In this case, a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He was living in Canada for several years and apparently made some free open source software that was subsequently used in a porn site (without his further involvement or knowledge), as is oft the case and the reason FOSS exists.

He then was arrested on a visit to Iran.

Disregarding the ridiculousness of this specific case, it sets a dangerous precedent: anyone who has written open source code that is used by sites, and possible porn sites, could be just as guilty as this guy according to Iranian law.

I think I'll skip Iran on my next vacation for now.

<comment><USER7> > I think I'll skip Iran on my next vacation for now.

They don't give a crap what an average tourist does in his homeland. Repressions are addressed toward their own citizens and foreign journalists/activists because they are a threat to the regime.

<comment><USER8> You think they looked at someone who coded a piece of free software for image uploads, that was used by porn sites, and thought "he's a threat to our regime"?

<comment><USER7> Any citizen of an opressive country who doesn't support the govt is looked at as a threat, that's how regimes treat their citizens.

The accusations are a tool, not a reason.

<comment><USER9> And the more randomly the tool is applied the more effective it is in terrorizing people. IRI is basically broadcasting to Iranian expat community that: don't even think about technically contributing to software that can be used to topple us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the real thing to take from this story is never travel to Iran (until the people of that nation replace their totalitarian government with something respectable).

<comment><USER11> Avoiding Iran isn't a problem, but there are several countries with similarly non-democratic governments and strictly islamic environments. I've done FOSS consulting in the Arab Emirates. That suddenly looks riskier now.

<comment><USER12> That depends -- if had had been a Citizen of Canada, rather than a mere resident -- Canada would have been up in arms.

<comment><USER11> The government of those countries sometimes cares about that, but they also feel the need to set an example to appease the strict islamic side every now and then.

Your government being up in arms about you may not prevent a bad outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's deplorable. So basically, anyone who has code on GitHub that a pornographer (or other Islam-insulter) could use should never visit Iran.

Seems like a clear case of a coerced confession -- he confessed to something that isn't even possible. Why isn't the Canadian government going bananas for him? They've got their own damn oil, right?

<comment><USER14> > Seems like a clear case of a coerced confession -- he confessed to something > that isn't even possible.

As I understand it, that's kind of the way things work in Iran. (Note that as a privileged white male, my knowledge of this comes from various podcasts, so my opinion written on a post-it is worth a post-it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have data on _how_ he was arrested? Was there some investigation of Iranian names in porn web sites or was he arrested because he was a Canadian resident visiting Iran and the porn accusations were pinned on him after arrest? The article says authorities spent a year assembling a case before any accusations were made.

Is this a risk any Iranian citizen returning from the West faces? To be arrested and have charges fabricated after the arrest? Are there any other cases of this?

</comment><comment><USER16> So wait a minute, the Canadian government is doing something about this, _right_?

 _"Canada condemns Iran's reported decision to execute Mr. Malekpour. Sadly, his case is far from the only example of Iran's utter disregard for human life. The regime in Tehran frequently ignores principles like due process for its citizens domestically, and international human rights obligations generally."_

From that I gather that this is being looked at as "out of our hands" by the Canadian government. Is that right? I know that relations with Iran are murky for many nations, but this is kind of ridiculous.

<comment><USER17> I think you misread it as "Canadian Citizen" instead of "Canadian Resident".

<comment><USER18> Sad, that we've made country distinctions such that one word can mean the difference between caring about whether this man lives or dies and/or whether my country should do something about it.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. Despite my misunderstanding, my original statement stands: this guy obviously did nothing wrong and someone should be working to get him out of Iran and back to Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In reply to all the Iran hostility...

Iran is not such a bad country. I can know because I've been traveling it for 5 weeks. It's a weird place, with a govt that is not much supported by the educated-youth. But not all that bad as the media try to make us believe.

US has not closed Guatanamo, where they do their own share of trial-less, unfair-trail and/or unreasonable-trial sentence execution (including death penalty). Should we all now boycott the US?

"Porn" is quite clearly just the flag under which this guy is punished for leaving (deserting) his country. Prisoners in Guatanamo similarly have an "official reason" for being there.

Believe me, here in the Netherlands I know some folks with strong sentiments agains the US, and I tell them the same: "The US is not such a bad country". So maybe it is just me :)

<comment><USER20> "Iran is not such a bad country. I can know because I've been traveling it for 5 weeks. It's a weird place, with a govt that is not much supported by the educated-youth. But not all that bad as the media try to make us believe."

I'm sorry, but if the government of a country is going execute someone for "violating the sanctity of Islam", they are a bad country.

By accepting this behavior, you are just allowing it to continue. I don't accept it and I will always be against a country that treats its citizens this way. More people need to stand up to this bullshit.

"Believe me, here in the Netherlands I know some folks with strong sentiments agains the US, and I tell them the same: "The US is not such a bad country". So maybe it is just me :)"

The US has some problems, but it's still better than 99% of the world in terms of freedom.

Unlike the US, Most of the world has state-controlled media and an Internet Firewall. Hopefully, it never happens here in the US.

<comment><USER21> 99%'s incredibly naive, more like 50%.

Just to remind you America has:

      By far the highest incarceration rate of a 'free' country
      An abnormally high murder rate
      A recent history of torture and incarceration of foreigners without trial

Not particularly free in my book, especially the propensity to lock up relatively high proportion of its own citizens.

<comment><USER22> Quite right. Plus, I'd like to add, highly corrupt legislative bodies. Perhaps not nearly as corrupt as in many other places, but the stench of money and cronyism is pervasive in American politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Iran's recent history is fraught with human rights violations. Each time stories like this are raised (on an almost daily basis), we need to support those who are actively campaigning to improve situations for Iranians, and do our part by informing our leaders of these concerns.

People can learn more about Iran's denial of education and send messages to UN members here:

<http://can-you-solve-this.org/>

Or help support campaigns such as "The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran":

<http://www.iranhumanrights.org/>

If anyone has any other information on campaigns/activists tackling human rights violations, I would love to hear about them.

</comment><comment><USER24> > "Canada condemns Iran's reported decision to execute Mr. Malekpour"

Is that really all Canada and other countries can do? Send a very, very angry letter using politically correct wording?

<comment><USER25> He's a resident, not a citizen of Canada. They don't have any explicit obligation to this guy.

<comment><USER24> Ok, I actually thought he was not Iranian either, but that makes more sense now...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I find that the article lacks the details about the software in question. In the age of hypertext no links are to be found. The problem with it is we can't for sure show how ridiculous the accusations are without having access to that information.

Or is it unknown?

<comment><USER26> Agreed, does anyone have more specifics on what exactly he developed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> More than on any other thread I've read on Hacker News, I'm driven to say on this in particular: what can we do? Iran's government site runs IIS. Pressure Microsoft to revoke their license (if it's even legit). I'm ready for war. I donated to TOR (I'll never travel to Iran) a couple years ago around the Iranian elections. This scumbag government must tumble.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is just a screwed up verson of Islam they are having in Iran. If thats what Islam stands for, I don't want to be a muslim anymore. I am sick of these stupid gready people representing any religion( in this case Islam) from wrong perspective. There is no such a thing as killing a person if he/she disgraced Islam.

<comment><USER29> Do you happen to speak Arabic by any chance? :)

<comment><USER30> What does that have to do with anything? Most Iranians DON'T speak Arabic. The ones who do are in the tiny Ahwaz region and many of them refuse to call themselves Iranis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow. Poor guy. You try to make something useful, it gets into the hands of somebody that a country like IRAN hates... and you're to be killed. Never would have guessed this stuff happened/was possible when i was younger. blows me away.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well, as usual, fuck religion

<comment><USER24> Is it the religion itself though, or is it about tying the law execution and religion?

<comment> guard-of-terra It's easy to check, remove religion and see if it helps or not.

It's of no use anyway. In most recent cases where one side was religious and other one wasn't, religious ones were usually bad guys. Stance on abortions, ID, this abomination. I can't remember them ever backing something good against secular people trying to do something bad.

<comment><USER33> In the spirit of fairness - really?

Communist Germany, USSR, Communist China/Mao, North Korea, Mussolini's Italy, etc.? All of those were or are "religious" governments?

<comment> guard-of-terra I don't remember catholic church standing loudly against Mussolini or Hitler, neither russian orthodox church standing against Stalin. They were too busy fearing for their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Stupid question time: Why isn't the title "Death sentence for Canadian web programmer"?

My naive reading of the article indicates that the man in question is a canadian citizen who was arrested when he visited Iran.

</comment><comment><USER35> What I want to know- of what country is this man a citizen? It is no less awful of Iran if he is an Iranian citizen, but it might help explain Canada's seemingly lax reaction.

(The article says he was a resident of Canada. Residency doesn't usually mean citizenship, right?)

</comment><comment><USER36> Until when people are going to die in the name of religion?

</comment><comment><USER37> can he be extradited to canada to avoid this sentence?

</comment><comment><USER38> what's an Iranian engineer to do. If you develop porn software, your government kills you. But if you work in nuclear engineering for your government, Israel kills you. I think the best policy would be for Israel to have a secret extraction program for Iranian engineers who are ideologically motivated and want to get into Internet porn engineering. Win-win-win-win (the last one is me.)

<comment><USER15> > Israel to have a secret extraction program for Iranian engineers

That's one very interesting idea. Offering citizenship and facilitating immigration will slowly brain-drain Iran which will, eventually, cause economic collapse a couple decades from now.

The only downside is that Iran's political environment already shows strong signs of brain drainage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Iran's death by stoning is particularly brutal, as you can see by this infographic (warning: if you are easily upset, don't read this): [http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.natio...](http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/2010/11/20/graphic- anatomy-of-a-stoning)

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there a chance he was a spy? I ask because there are other Iranians who have been arrested (and sentenced to death) for espionage when visiting Iran from overseas.

<comment><USER41> Are you one of the speculated pro-Iran bots sent to communities like ours who try to subvert public opinion on that backwards country?

<comment><USER14> Surely a user created only three hours ago, with only one comment and a random username wouldn't have nefarious purposes!

Better double-check. Offer him some bacon.</comment></comment></comment>


Annotate "How to Get Startup Ideas" - <AUTHOR> http://www.annotatepg.com/

<comment><USER2> I recommend ditching the pseudo-book UX with a page that scrolls vertically (like the rest of the internet). Clicking to navigate through several pages reminds me of this tweet I saw the other day.

 _"I like this thing that I'm reading on this website, but I wish it was spread across more pages." –Nobody, Ever_

Otherwise, looks great

<comment><USER3> Definitely needs tweaking (use more of the blank space), but I disagree. Scrolling is much more difficult on the eyes, since you need to track the last line you read as it moves vertically. Do this 100 times in a row and it gets pretty annoying.

<comment><USER4> There was a really cool project a few months back of a variation of vertical scrolling, where the current page is "peeled" back revealing the next page from top to bottom.

The effect was you can read as you normally would but lines are stationary so you don't have to track them. You'd reset your eyes to the top of the page after finishing one. Not sure how I'd track it down sadly.

<comment><USER5> I believe this is the project you're referring to, though it's now integrated into an ebook reader web app: <http://www.magicscroll.net/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First off, awesome. I've always wanted something like this ( _especially_ for pg's essays) and kicked around ideas for how to build something like it. A few bits of feedback, mostly on the design/interaction side: I don't think only offering twitter sign in is ideal, the pagination was not very intuitive/easily discover-able (horizontal might be ok in mobile context with swipes, but on desktop people want to scroll), the function of the bottom progress bar is also not intuitive to me (seems more like a zoom at first glance), the content itself is a little too "boxed in"- don't think there is a need to contain it like that, and lastly the mobile experience (Gnex) is lacking (everything is quite small, ui nearly impossible to interact with).

Totally understand that this is just a demo and you've probably thought of this stuff already but thought I'd chime in just in case it is useful. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER7> Are the documents hosted on here intended to be public or privately shared? If the former, I'd worry a bit about clashing with what RapGenius are doing.

<comment><USER8> Web document annotation isn't a new idea - I worked on a product called Reframe It 5 years ago doing something similar: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1swp-2QeMI> , and we weren't even close to the first to market: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_annotation> .

Just like everything else, there's room for more than one player in a market - why should they be worried about competing with RapGenius?

<comment><USER9> Interesting - I was working on DotSpots around the same time. ReframeIt was one of the people we figured were in the same space.

I've also hoped that web annotation will take off one day, but it seems fated to sputter every time.

<comment><USER8> We sure were! Fun to see someone we considered a competitor all those years ago on HN also.

I think Rap Genius are on the right track: hosted specific-document annotation seems like a good method to develop a web-annotation technology while still making money at the same time. We had a lot of interest from specific-document research organizations like lawyers and journalists, but the "annotate the whole web" pitch didn't seem to go over too well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. Presents very well. Just to reenforce points others have made:

* Why can't I scroll? ... scrolling is how I read

* That "x" to close the comments pane is very small... I probably clicked around 3 or 4 times trying to get the thing to disappear.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a great product idea, and a very simple yet powerful take on its execution. Others have pointed many ways it could be improved (scrolling, the "x" on the comment panel, etc.), but I cannot emphasize either how interesting this could be.

This makes me think of "Project Syndicate", at <http://www.project- syndicate.org/>, the public debate venue for economics/public policy thought leaders from across the board. They have an interesting discussion system based on comments users post about paragraphs. Maybe there's an avenue for future cooperation there?

One way the product could improve is if the social component of the annotation concept was made more obvious. An explanation of what happens when someone comments would be welcome.

Also, will the be available as a private/semi-private product? I could use this for my Kindle books, but would want to share only select highlights among the many I make.

Overall, great job! Good luck with the YC application!

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice!

Curious to know what you're using to parse the essays into sentences. Isn't that quite difficult in the general case?

<comment><USER13> Looks to be mostly just splitting by the period -- see article "Startup == Growth", page 17 near the bottom (splits on 1.7x at the period, although it shouldn't)

<comment><USER14> Better algorithm, just as simple, would be splitting at ". ". Making something smart enough to not split at "fig. 1" and the likes would be more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some thoughts:

1) When I click the "list" button at the top next to the essay name, it shows me the same list that is on the left side of the screen. Why? Is there something I can do there that I can't do somewhere else?

2) Why make your auth twitter? I see no value in tying it to twitter unless you are expecting people to tweet all their annotations, which seems unlikely.

3) There's a ton of unused white space on the right, which makes the app feel unbalanced.

4) The site is not very mobile friendly -- not a knock against you, but since it looks like you are already doing responsive css, I thought the mobile site would be much tighter.

5) Whoa, why are there dozens of media queries in there -- are you really changing things every 10px?

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks cool! I'd like PG annotations to be integrated as annotations from users, so you can read them and follow your reading easily (his comments can be huge but quite informative).

</comment><comment><USER16> After you click on a comment, I found closing the comment pane less simple than it could be. The x to close it is fairly small and hidden, and I think it would be nice if clicking on the comment bubble again just toggled it away and/or clicking on the text still visible on the left slid the comments away.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems quite similar to rapgenius

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks very nice.

I think allowing the article list to hide would make the app feel more balanced. Right now the main part of your app takes up a very small real estate on my screen.

Good luck on getting into YC!

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a way to create a link directly to a specific annotation? I was looking for a quick way to share a quote/annotation with someone. I'm not interested in using or signing in with Twitter.

<comment><USER20> Great idea, i just pushed a modification to have urls pointing to specific quotes. Now you can copy the url when the comment panel is opened and share that url with anybody.

<comment><USER19> Nice work! I look forward to the royalty check in the mail. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It took me a minute to figure out that I needed to click the margins to turn the page. Maybe add a small arrow or other indicator other than cursor:pointer. Other than that, very nice.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's really cool. But oh-my-god let my mouse wheel scroll.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is an awesome demo. Way to go and best of luck. I have a feeling you will go far.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ahh, rapgenius for normal docs!

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome product as usual!

How is this supposed to be monetized?

</comment><comment><USER26> Can't scroll?

</comment><comment><USER27> good idea, terrible interface :(

</comment><comment> Rick-Butler I like it, simple and elegant.</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone still using TiddlyWiki? - <AUTHOR>

In the past I had found that mGSD (http://mgsd.tiddlyspot.com/demo3.html) was a nice gtd-style todo list , even if it kept my data a bit siloed.<p>Is TiddlyWiki totally dead? <comment><USER2> TiddlyWiki is an awesome experiment in self-editing, cross-platform files. A while back, it led me on search to find the best self-editing, encrypted file to store personal info in, that could be accessible anywhere. I eventually came across Message Vault [0]. It seemed to be abandoned by its creator though. The original domain name for it was available, so I scooped it up for the purpose of hosting the file. I'm not big on crypto, so I don't know how secure it is. It's on my to do list someday to analyze it more carefully.

[0] [http://messagevault.org/](http://messagevault.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that messagevault link - looks like a nice stripped down version of the self-editing, cross-platform file idea, which I hadn't heard expressed quite a succinctly as you just put it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I moved on to OneNote for personal / confidential notes (trading strategies, mainly) + EverNote for things I would like to sync across all devices.

(A negative answer is probably not what you were looking for, but I thought it may be useful to mention to WHAT I moved on to from TiddlyWiki).

But the idea was very cool, and I truly appreciate the "small is beautiful" design that it embodies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the reponse - OneNote/EverNote are orders of magnitude more powerful; I think they make more sense in a 'cloud world'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried using Tiddly for a bit, but ended up moving to wikidpad ([http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/](http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/)) which I've been quite happy with

</comment><comment><USER5> Leo ([http://leoeditor.com/](http://leoeditor.com/)) + SpiderOak are what I use. TiddlyWiki was a fun toy, but I could never really grok its true power.

</comment><comment><USER6> Still using mine mostly as a link dump. Using tiddlyspace right now :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I never really got into it. Now I use Evernote pretty heavily.</comment>


Seven laws of sane personal computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284 <comment><USER2> "The machine is to accept no externally-introduced executable code except in the form preferred for making modifications (i.e. source.)"

Since most of the points here seem to be coming directly from lisp machine (I say this because that's what most of the site is about, from reading various articles in the past), is this how they worked? Couldn't you have executable binaries coming from another machine? For that matter, did you have executable binaries visible at all?

"The machine shall never tell a lie to the operator. It shall obey all orders given to it through the human interface devices, without attempting to pass judgement on their legality or morality. The machine shall not put the interests of any third party (including society in the abstract) above those of its operator."

This, here, is why there are people (including me) opposed to DRM and co.</comment>


Chrome Apps are coming to Android and iOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MobileChromeApps

<comment><AUTHOR> This is being developed by Google, despite being hosted on Github (and not code.google.com):

[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium- apps/mDenH67JC_Y)</comment>


The trials and tribulations of doing business in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21699956-trials-and-tribulations-doing-business-india-forbidden-fruit <comment><USER2> Bad title, it's just about how Apple can't get a store in India, was expecting a story of setting up business in India.

<comment><USER3> Agree.

<comment><USER4> Thanks very much for saving my time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I like Apple products, India is right to deny "dumping" of products that would be considered e-waste in the sourcing country.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article quotes the cheapest smartphones in stores as being ~1000 rupees. That's about ~15 USD at the retail level.

How does one go about sourcing that sort of low end phone? If I could order 100 of almost any smartphone at that price I would be very excited.

<comment><USER7> Cheapest smartphone start around 4000, while popular price point is 6-10000. No one sells it for 1000, one company promised it, but never launched.

<comment><USER8> Also, didnt the company Micromax I believe start to gain a big market there? I haven't followed much on it yet but I know them and a bunch of home grown brands have started taking over as well

<comment><USER9> Upon googling "micromax market share", the first article that comes up was written on March 16th, 2016 [1]. That shows a dwindling market share. Other articles share same opinion. Although, the company has funded a new campaign[2] and the new Canvas series of smartphones from them look promising while maintaining a low price point.

[1]: [http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-how-did-micromax- lose-n...](http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-how-did-micromax-lose-nearly- half-of-its-market-share-in-one-year-2188696) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62z2bIZfC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62z2bIZfC0)

PS: Apart from a handful of friends who own Micromax phones, I have no interest in the company whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that this is limited to Apple's direct sales business model (aka selling phones through its own stores). Apple are free to sell through other retailers like LG, Xiaomi, and several other retailers do. But they like to have total and absolute control over all aspects of their products. Unfortunately, in this case, they have come across someone else who likes to exercise pretty strong control over aspects of the economy itself.

I think the best thing for Apple to do would be to sell their products through a partnership with Reliance or another company that has a lot of stores in India. It's not like they _don 't_ partner with carriers and such in the US.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Apple is used to having everyone roll-over and let them steamroll over local laws but that's not gonna happen here. The market is still open, they are selling products in millions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Basically you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India.

Not sure if this is something Apple is ready for.

<comment><USER13> How did you conclude based on this article that you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India?

<comment><USER14> > you need to bribe everyone to do anything in India?

Not everything, but almost everything that has to do with Government. I had to pay bribe even to get my Passport, driver's license and police clearance certificate.

<comment><USER13> Getting a passport/driver's license is different from companies (Apple) asking to operate in a certain way. They deal with the highest levels in the government (Prime Minister, Finance Minister) and it is absurd to suggest that the government would ask Apple to bribe them. India has a set of rules on how foreign companies should operate and while it might be unpopular, it is still a rule.</comment></comment></comment></comment>