Gist-powered WebGL transitions - <AUTHOR> http://glsl.io/gallery

<comment><USER2> Suggestion: have the editor display a non-square image as the preview.

When calculating angles, most of the examples divide the point xy by the resolution xy. This creates a nice point in the 0..1 range. When calculating angles from that, things will look good if the image is square, but once you have a rectangle, things look weird since you'll have an ellipse rather than a circle.

I was trying to make one of my transitions properly calculate the angle and rotate the input image, but the only way I could test if it was really working was by saving the shader and visiting /gallery to see the preview (differently from the editing preview, the gallery preview uses a rectangle).

<comment><USER3> exactly! definitely planned [https://github.com/glslio/glsl.io/issues/23](https://github.com/glslio/glsl.io/issues/23) :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/glslio/glsl.io](https://github.com/glslio/glsl.io) : the platform itself is open-source.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYdCNTJaGss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYdCNTJaGss) : a first presentation video.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! The editor playground great too: [http://glsl.io/transition/new](http://glsl.io/transition/new) (WebGL preview updates on-the-fly while changing the shader code)

</comment><comment><USER5> It is unfortunate that webviews in Android < 4.4 and all mobile Safari versions do not support WebGL.

<comment><USER5> I just learned about a company called Ludei that has a product called CocoonJS that seems to give access to the most HTML 5 features (including WebGL) as a distributable webview [https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs/](https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs/). I wish they would be more transparent with the pricing of the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are incredibly cool, but they all lack thorough documentation.

WebGL is still voodoo to me.

<comment><USER7> The code is written purely in GL Shading Language, not specifically WebGL. Though you are right, shaders are their own brand of voodoo in a way. I would recommend reading up on vector/matrix math and thoroughly going over every line of the shaders until you understand exactly what every line's purpose is if you really want to learn them. (I'm planning on doing that myself, knowing almost nothing about shaders myself) You'll probably come out with a decent working knowledge of how to make a shader :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although I'm opposed to transitions in general, the editor/platform is really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER9> Broadway Tower gets everywhere.</comment>


Russians dent Google's world domination - <AUTHOR> http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article4596416.ece <comment><USER2> Yandex doesn't index the entire Internet though, but only some selected part of it, mostly pages under .ru and all ex-USSR TLDs, plus domains submitted to them manually. Not very impressive I must say. news.ycombinator.com, for one, isn't in their index.

Edit: in addition to ex-USSR TLDs they also index web sites that map to IPs physically located in ex-USSR, regardless of the domain.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK it's their policy to index only Russian language content and they do it pretty good. They can index domains in any zone as long as their content is in Russian.

Anyway IMHO Google gives better search results in Russian. I guess they have more users here for the same reasons Yahoo does better in Japan. It's all about culture.

<comment><USER2> The problem with Yandex is that it does index English language content, however not all users (by far not all!) are aware that it's limited geographically and by TLDs. If I look up, say, "Succinctness is Power", which should bring up PG's essay on his web site, Yandex instead retrieves a bunch of pages that mention the article and also Russian translations rather than the original. So the user is left thinking that the original is not even on the web (unless she carefully examines the links on web pages that pop up in the result set).

They were clever enough to index en.wikipedia.org, although it is usually not at the top for some very obvious requests (e.g. try "Turing Machine"), which is an indication of a rather poor ranking system.

My impression is, Yandex does not compete with Google in any way. Despite its slogan ("Everything can be found" or something like that) it's just a limited web index that doesn't even state explicitly about its limitations. And that's strange at least.

Edit: NB: they have a minimalist front-end at ya.ru

<comment><USER4> Yandex is local - limited to CIS (ex-USSR zone) in terms of people the search results (and the search index) are optimized for.

Yandex is mainstream, it's not a geeky site, and most Russians don't speak English well enough to prefer originals to translations. So most of its users just don't arrive at the limits of Yandex's index ever.

Of course it's nice for me to be able to go to google.com and search in Russian or in English or in any other language (and get results in the language I search), but it's just not what the majority of Russians needs or wants.

Their policy on the search index was 'only russian-language content' (their bot analyzes page text rather than looks at the TLDs or IPs), then a couple of years ago they started including more and more sites in english, starting from encyclopedias etc. This is possibly also because their indexing technology was deep into morphology of Russian language from the very start in late 1990-s.

PS their slogan is a bit more dramatic - 'Everything WILL be found' :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifications, but to my understanding they won't index Russian content if it's not under exUSSR TLD AND it's not physically hosted in the exUSSR. It took me 3 years (!) to convince Yandex (through submissions, mails and even phone calls) to include my Russian-language blog, only because it was under .com and hosted in Texas, despite the fact that my blog had a lot of references from the .RU space.

And no, they confirmed, it wasn't because my web site was marked as spam. They explained to me that "some" servers have to be included manually because they are beyond their "default" space.

What puzzles me is that Yandex is definitely not the entire Internet, not even the entire Russian-speaking internet, and yet it claims to be finding "Everything" without mentioning of the limitations in place. My point is, this is misleading for the users, if not just plain cheating.

Soemthing is definitely wrong with their policies with regard to indexing the Web.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely _everything_ for most "normal" users (like my sister or Russian-only speaking friends). Mentioning of Russian-only limitations or providing English-language results would be confusing for such users (most of them don't even know what Google is).

Not long ago I submitted .com English/Russian/German site to them and they refused to index anything but Russian part, but Russian part was index successfully (although the sever is in Russia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The same is here in Japan, where Yahoo has a much stronger lead. It's one thing to localize your UI, quite another to localize your approach. The second piece is crucial.

</comment><comment><USER6> /rant

There can be no doubt that Russia has many, many brilliant mathematicians and engineers (poets, writers and musicians too). Everyone knows this. And, individually, I know their people can be quite lovely. The problem is that these people are in Russia. Russia crushes all. How many times do people have to get burned by Russia to realize Russia is a trade - not an investment? How long before the wannabe czar declares "all your routers/servers/data/money/life are belong to us"? "Russians", by and large, are not affluent. A relative handful of Moscowvites are.

Mark Franchetti is obviously on the payroll but why he would write this blatant puff piece about "yet another indexer" is beyond me. These people have nothing Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft can and have put together. The only thing they do have is an advantage in the understanding of native Russian language and society. Ok, so? There is no market for Russian services outside of Russia. The rest of the world speaks English, French, Spanish, Arabic or some version of Chinese with a smattering of Portuguese thrown in for good measure.

Since the Empire struck back in Georgia, international monetary outflows from Russia have been at their highest levels since the Great Ruble Implosion of the late 1990's. Lets face it gang, when the big ugly bear flexes its muscles people run for cover. Nobody wants to be in bed with his highness, the dread nightmare Putin. Who here thinks Putin has his peoples best interest at heart? Who here thinks a goal of Russia is to increase the prosperity of its people? Putin is out for numero uno, Putin. And the main concern for Putin is Gazprom. Who here thinks that Yandex will continue to fly under the radar of the FSB indefinitely? Who here thinks an independent, privately owned and operated company can exist in Russia without connections to their political/military/underworld/secret police?

(off topic) People in the West love to bitch and moan about the US all day long. 'Hegemony', 'Imperialism', 'Totalitarianism' and, lest we forget, torture. Has everyone fallen asleep at the wheel? If you are from the West and do not have an ancestral connection to mother Russia, you have no idea what any of those words mean. It will be many generations (hopefully that short) before Russia is friendly enough as a national entity to do anything even related to business with.

In closing, if this Yandex knows whats good for them they will pull up stakes, run dont walk and leave Russia with extreme haste and plop themselves down anywhere else. London, Paris, Silicon Valley, New York, Madrid. Pick one, any of a dozen or more cities would be better than the dump that we know today as Russia.

Oh, in the fairness of full disclosure, if it sounds like I am anti-Russia in the extreme, I am. Honestly, which Olympic medalist of any color has defected from the West to Russia? We here in America have Russia to thank for our brand new Olympic individual gymnastic all-around Champion, Nastia Luikin :)

/end rant

<comment><USER7> Your simplistic view of Russia is what happens when you learn some select facts and plug them into a formula that's designed to accommodate Western societies. If every fact you know about Russia (assuming even that your facts are accurate, which is unlikely if you read Anglophone media) suddenly became true in America, things would certainly become worse. Sort of like if you added garlic salt to ice cream, it would taste worse, and this doesn't prove that garlic salt is bad.

For people who want to understand Russia, I suggest learning more about the 90s, and what was actually happening there while The Economist and the rest of them were falling over themselves with praise. It will put into perspective what they're saying now. Here's a teaser:

<http://media.hoover.org/images/graph2.GIF>

If nothing else, it will remove the desire to pontificate on "the big ugly bear" and "the dread nightmare Putin".

<comment><USER8> Suggested reading, please?

<comment><USER7> I don't know, to be honest. My knowledge of the 90s is first-hand, and of today--reliable second-hand. I have relatives there.

After my experience with Russia and Western media's version of Russia, I had been wondering how to get reliable information on nations whose cultures are isolated from the Western culture (in particular, China). I haven't come up with anything yet, so now I pretty much ignore what comes from the media, and try not to form opinions.

<comment><USER6> I second you, asdflkj. It is always best to analyze first hand sources. Unfortunately, free media does not exist in Russia. Pitty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. I can't believe they don't switch to local languages, as with google.ru.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another nice thing about Yandex is that they use Django in several project and actively contribute to it. They even held Django sprint this summer in their Moscow office.</comment>


Looks like people don't die on weekends - <AUTHOR> https://planspace.org/20200502-looks_like_people_dont_die_on_weekends/ <comment><USER2> My suggested explanation: Weekend staff don't have orders to modify cause of death on death certificates to reflect COVID-19.</comment>


Microsoft Doesn't Want You to Use a Local Windows Account - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295445-microsoft-really-doesnt-want-you-to-use-a-local-windows-account?source=opera <comment><USER2> > _The situation ironically illustrates why I didn't write about this at the > time. I did some testing on Windows 1809 last year, but I didn't allow it to > connect to the internet to finish setup. Good thing I didn't. If you do, you > can't configure a local account._

It's been like that for _ages_ , if I recall correctly.

I guess Microsoft is worried about losing that data point for serving targeted advertising. I would bet most people don't opt out, or use tools to disable that, or are a part of a corporate network and have group policies that do so.

* [https://www.privacytools.io/operating-systems/#win10](https://www.privacytools.io/operating-systems/#win10)

* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-conn...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-connections-from-windows-operating-system-components-to-microsoft-services)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know we seem to dote on Apple here, but the default behavior in OS X has been to create an iCloud account as a user account for quite some time.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, and it also creates a local login account that does not require iCloud.</comment></comment>


The Exceptional Beauty of Doom 3's Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/454293019

<comment><USER2> It's quite an interesting read. Doom 3 code base use C++ in a straigforward and simple way and it is actually the style I like the most too.

The article tells also why things are used and also why things are not used. I'm not sure how the author came to its conclusions but I would draw the same.

I think I'll have a look at the source. Also author posted an answer from John about the article.</comment>


Ask HN:  Why do people use email newsletters instead of RSS? - <AUTHOR>

A number of websites I've seen on HN over the past few years ask users to sign up for an email newsletter for updates.<p>What advantages does an email newsletter have that aren't shared by a simple blog or RSS feed? <comment><USER2> Almost no one uses RSS and it's bad for business. Regarding usage, we have 60k+ newsletter subscribers and maybe a few hundred RSS readers. Regarding business, I can't converse with you directly over RSS, so it has almost no business value as an interactive medium and customer outreach tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> More people use e-mail, once people have signed up there's a pretty good chance that they'll see messages going forward (for RSS or a blog, they might stop checking), you get some kind of id for each user (and sometimes the domain name can indicate what company they work for.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask 100 people on the street "What is an RSS feed?" That should give you your answer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you want the harsh true?

... .... Step out of your bubble and you will see no one uses RSS

</comment><comment><USER6> Believe it or not but RSS is still an obscure technology for most people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Email is a default feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> No it's not. Setting up an SMTP server is really complicated [1]. But most blogging frameworks come with built-in support for Atom/RSS.

[1] [http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html](http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html)

<comment><USER8> This is an indication that you are too focused on the convenience of the publisher. The convenience of the reader is more important to most of us wanting to get a message out.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good MOOCs to fill in self-education? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I am a self taught developer with a shocking lack of education. I'd rather not go into the why (for fear of sounding like a sob story), but suffice it to say i'm far older than my resume would lead you to believe. Despite all of that, i am very fortunate that a position fell into my lap in a startup, and i moved my way into an engineer position, to which i'm doing alright. I've been there many years, but now, i'm looking to move on to a new job.
With that said, i feel like a CS fraud. My knowledge of computer science is woefully small, and competency i do feel i have is purely in building apps and (thankfully) writing clean code. However, i fear that clean code won't get me through an interview process. Memory management, bit shifting, algorithm design and computational cost, these are the things i'm terrible at and would love to feel competent at. So, i am attempting to fix that.
I've picked up a book about interview questions as recommended by a friend (Cracking the Code Interview, for those interested), and now i want to get a more focused understanding of computer science.
Are there any CS MOOC courses that you would recommend? I am hoping to find not only a good course, but one that will also teach me the fundamentals i'm missing. In a perfect world, it would skip much of the tedious setup that a lot of classes go through, but i suspect i may just have to bite that bullet.
I've heard good things about CS50x (on edx), but i fear it focuses to much on real world applications - something i have a fair handle on already. I need CS understanding, for interviews.
As an aside, feel free to recommend any MOOCs you think might help. I seek knowledge to fill my shortcomings.
Thanks to any replies! <comment><USER2> Algorithms/data structures classes are a good start.

I hear that the Coursera algorithms classes by Prof Sedgwick (Princeton) and Prof Roughgarden (Stanford) are very good. I think the Princeton ones might not be available after the Coursera switchover so would recommend downloading the course content if you can. There were some threads on HN in the last week about it.

Also MIT OpenCourseware has Intro to Algorithms which I hear is good too.

<comment><USER3> I viewed classes from all three mentioned above and found Prof Sedwick's classes to be very structured and to my style/liking. Prof. Roughgarden is "free flowing" and may require fast thinking to follow him. Prof Demaine's classes gets very mathematical and I found myself sometimes lost in Greek symbols. But Prof. Demaine is very thorough in building the theory.

[1] Prof Sedwick: [https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI](https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI)

As @carise said, the content may be gone after June 30th and if you want to download, you can do so using coursera-dl tool

[https://github.com/coursera-dl/coursera-dl](https://github.com/coursera- dl/coursera-dl)

[2] Prof Roughgarden: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithm-design- analysis](https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithm-design-analysis)

[3] Prof Erik Demaine (MIT OpenCourseware): [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP61Oq3tWYp6V...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP61Oq3tWYp6V_F-5jb5L2iHb)

There are videos of MIT's Prof Erik Demaine's Intro to Algo's from various semesters. I think any one should do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of the big three (Udacity, Coursera, EdX), my favorite for tech courses is Udacity. The others can be great, but the level of detail and clarity of instruction on Udacity is startling. I wonder how much better an experience undergraduate computer science must be for some people.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is my own selfstudy process...it works for me...

You can take whatever university degree. Read list of mandatory subjects. Take sylabus and list of recommended literature for every subject. From list of resources take one or two and read them. Almost every course has some fundamentals and introduction to X, to get all students on the same starting line. What you will not understand just ask someone more experienced or google it. Experienced colleague* he wil tell you some hidden notes or let you know this is not so important for your future career if dont wanna be xyz. Take just one and intensive course for month.

We are not fulltime students so we dont have such amount of time dedicated for study.

*you need to have trustworthy colleague who will support you. I know some highy skilled professionals but communication and learning from them is very difficult.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another interesting resource for you to compare MOOC is class-central (not affiliated in any way).</comment>


Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles <comment><USER2> Link with highlight: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles:~:te...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles:~:text=Every%20program%20attempts,which%20can).

It highlights the text

> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs > which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

<comment><USER3> Wow, I did not know you could use the URL to highlight on wikipedia. Is there a way in the UI to generate that URL without having to do it manually?

<comment><USER2> No idea. I just learned about it myself from dqpb: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420714).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Catchy, but I can't actually think of many (or any) programs that have so expanded. GNU Emacs can, but I don't think you could really argue that it replaced some other program that couldn't.</comment>


Bees Get an Unlikely Ally: Monsanto - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/08/jerry-hayes-how-to-save-the-bees-monsanto/ <comment><USER2> Bayer (which actually makes pesticides, included neonicotinoids) has an apiarist, who did an AMA on reddit about a year ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/35l4lq/science_ama...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/35l4lq/science_ama_series_im_sarah_myers_a_professional/)

Not sure which of these two have a harder job.</comment>


Tardigrade genome has been sequenced – most foreign DNA of any animal - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tardigrade-genome-has-been-sequenced-and-it-has-the-most-foreign-dna-of-any-animal <comment><USER2> Key quotes

>Before this, the rotifer – another microscopic water creature – was believed to have the most foreign genes of any animal, with 8 or 9 percent. But the new research has shown that approximately 6,000 of the tardigrade's genes come from foreign species, which equates to around 17.5 percent.

>The team hasn't investigated exactly how this gene-stealing is happening just yet, but they propose that it's a result of one of the tardigrade's other crazy survival mechanisms – the ability to dry out until its body is less than 3 percent water, and then come bounce back once they're rehydrated.

> When this desiccation happens, scientists know that their DNA breaks down > into tiny pieces. They also know that when their cells rehydrate, there's a > point in time when the cell nucleus is leaky, allowing DNA and other > molecules to pass through. That means that while the tardigrade is quickly > patching up its own genome, it may accidentally be stitching in another > organism's genes.

<comment><USER3> Ah, so that's where Cixin Liu got the idea from for Three Body aliens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All adult tardigrades of the same species have the exact same number of cells in their bodies [1] – for some reason, I find that extremely fascinating. I wonder how this interacts with the large amount of foreign DNA in their genes.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Anatomy_and_morphol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Anatomy_and_morphology)

</comment><comment><USER5> > The foreign DNA comes primarily from bacteria, but also from plants, fungi, > and Archaea.

Or it's the other way around. Maybe singular cell life on Earth were just tardigrade cancer cells that managed to survive outside of their bodies.

<comment><USER6> Tardigrades arrived via comet and we're the descendants of their cancers?

<comment><USER7> Maybe[1]. Scientists don't like to waste time on alien life origin theory as it doesn't really solve anything, we still would want to know how tardigrades' home planet created life.

[1] with chance damn close to zero

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worth it just for the water bear gif. Fascinating history.

<comment><USER9> That's CG, not a microscope.

<comment><USER10> Here's a short documentary shot with microscopes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kPQ0GY_W8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kPQ0GY_W8)

<comment><USER11> This is beautiful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My kid loves the PBS show "cat in a hat". There is an episode about the Tardigrade (#207):

> Synopsis: Nick and Sally are trying to guess what animal is the toughest one > — is it a lion? Oh no, it must be the enormous elephant! Why not at all, > says The Cat. The toughest of all is a teeny tiny Waterbear. Huh?

> Educational Objective: How TARDIGRADES (also known as Waterbears) survive > extreme heat, cold and even being a trip into space.

</comment><comment><USER13> Zerg collecting the " _essence_ ". Nice.</comment>


Boeing to add cell coverage to planes by 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/boeing-adding-cell-phone-compatibility-airliners-2013-023456673.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone else think this is, well… a really hideous idea? One of the few not-terrible things about being in a plane is that it's one of the few places free from the cacophony of other people's phone calls.

<comment><USER2> +1. Doesn't make any sense to me. While internet connections enables people to work silently in the plane, I think giving people the possibility to get voice calls is a stupid idea ...</comment></comment>


Pjs: Pipeable JavaScript. Another utility like sed/awk/wc but with JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/danielstjules/pjs

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this simple command line tool for quickly writing map+reduce operations on datasets with JavaScript. I think it might be useful for occasional use, since I'm not a fan of using awk for anything non-trivial.</comment>


Performance Testing Web 2.0: Don't Forget the APIs - <AUTHOR> http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/07/09/3435.aspx

<comment><USER2> The online (hosted) load testing tool I'm designing will handle API's in the sense that you will be able to run arbitrary ruby code and store response times. I go back and forth on how much and if I need to lock things down, though, since the machines will have my name on them and could be used for badness. Thoughts?</comment>


One Café Chain's Facebook Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2010/03/one-cafe-chains-facebook-experiment/ar/1

<comment><USER2> Pretty solid analysis. Yes, Facebook may be effective in changing the behaviour of a very small bunch of diehards, but these are a very small percentage of customers. Facebook as (very) niche markeing channel.</comment>


The Pianist and the Lobster - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/21/opinion/editorials/errol-morris-lobster-sviatoslav-richter.html <comment><USER2> The more I learn about Richter, the more I admire and love him. Admittedly, there are some early recordings that are difficult for me to listen to as he is butchering the piece, but at his finer moments there is no better pianist. Take his interpretation of Schubert's Piano Sonata in B flat D.960. It's pure magic. He's become my favorite pianist next to Gould.

<comment><USER3> My favorite recording of D960 is the Horowitz 25th anniversary recital performance. It's at once light, powerful, and swift, seemingly abstracting away the specifics of instrumentation in its phrasing and singing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for posting this. It was a very enjoyable read!

</comment><comment><USER5> Three ny times articles on the front page currently, all behind the paywall

<comment><USER6> Does an incognito window not work for you?

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the suggestion but no, it says I'm in private mode and need to register to continue.

<comment><USER7> firefox with disabled cookies for 3rd party trackers works for me in "normal" mode

<comment><USER5> I don't have normal firefox on my phone but I just tried with Firefox focus and that works, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why you should intentionally impose scarcity - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/the_number_one_key_to_innovati.html

<comment><USER2> False conclusion, as usual.

Yes, people are more inventive when the going gets rough. They -have- to be. And the market is willing to reward them for doing more work. Because there was no way without it!

However, if you impose 'scarcity' and force people to work harder and be more inventive, what you get is a product that took more work, but isn't any more valuable. The market won't reward that... Especially since someone can come in and do it right, cheaper.

I'm going to give the opposite advice: If you want to start a business, take a look at why something is scarce and remove that limitation. People will pay for that.</comment>


Git workflows manual page - <AUTHOR> https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitworkflows.html <comment><USER2> This is valuable guidance.

The most important item IMHO is the throwaway integration branches: short- lived testing branches, suitable for multiple teams to integrate their changes with each other, prior to proposing the update to master.</comment>


Guess whose emails the NSA can't read - <AUTHOR> http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/07/guess-whose-email-the-nsa-cant-read.html

<comment><USER2> Hang on, how is it a defense to say that? Can a startup, or any other organisation, also say that? "Oh sorry, we don't have a search facility, so we cant act on your warrant"?

I'm sorry, but how can any court accept that as a defense?

<comment><USER3> A defense against FOI requests is that it would cost too much to collect the data - the logic being that companies/governments shouldn't be legally obliged to spend significant money just because someone put in an awkward request.

Of course, in this case, I still think they should reallocate some of the their budget and upgrade the email system :/

<comment><USER4> FOIA requests over a certain threshold require the requester to pay fees, so certainly the "cost" of a FOIA request can be passed along.

I'm skeptical about the problems the NSA has with searching emails, since they could probably just install some of their own tools on their email servers to index and collate. I have a feeling its more of a political lack of will rather than technological. These folks want scrutiny into everyone else, not themselves.

<comment><USER3> I agree, I'm sure that is a big factor here! I was just emphasising the usual excuse for ignoring FOI requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At least we have the answer for the old question. Nobody watches the watchers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't even think of a snarky comment. This is so ... pathetic. I think 5 year old children can come with better lies.

<comment><USER7> IBM (Lotus) Notes with encrypt on receipt set (and without transaction logging enabled, which works at the routing rather than the storage level) would do it. There is no central repository as such, each user has their own mail database, and each of those databases can be RSA-encrypted. Reading the messages requires the user's private key, which an admin can get by requesting from the user _or_ recovering the ID from the vault and using the password recovery utility (a Shamir-type back door) or brute-forcing the password. Without transaction logging, there is no global index to search other than a domain search (which requires plaintext). Even without encryption, it may be necessary to know which users to look at, since they may live in different Notes domains within the org, and the messages of interest may be in archive databases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's just their way of saying "Fuck You"

</comment><comment><USER9> On top of that, they probably still are incapable of intercepting terrorist email.

<comment><USER10> Especially considering the "terrorists" are actual employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldnt be surprised if it were true. If it is, it's probably intentional. Primitive technology gives them plausible rejection of broad FOIA requests of exactly the kind requested.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it passes the smell test. One thing they will be extremely concerned about is employees who are leaking information to the outside. I don't believe for a second that their in-house email, especially messages to outside recipients, is not deeply screened for sensitive information and indexed for later investigation of possible leaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure they keep anyone who reponds to FOIA requests as far away from the real good tech as possible. There's probably a little boolean flag on each record that says "OK to send in response to FOIA requests" that hardly ever gets checked... but if it ever does it gets transferred to the FOIA response system. So you're probably dealing with crumbs of the real information to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was hoping that the link would say that they can't read PGP encrypted messages or something along those lines. Alas, we can't be too sure about that either.

</comment><comment><USER15> In what way would you actually get rid of all these "intelligence" agencies? I don't think it's possible. I think they've successfully achieved a kind of military coup where they are always funded, always exerting control over a country and can't be removed in any way.

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER16> What funds the NSA and the entire Military-Industrial Complex? If we changed the underlying financial structure that supports it, the upper dependencies would have to change or cease to exist also.

It's taken four or five generations to build this beast. It will take generations to change it again. But in the meantime, I hope a small percentage of people will take measures to defend themselves from the coup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Satire often bites deepest, and being made to look ridiculous is what draws some of the harshest reactions from tyrannical dictatorships.</comment>


YouTube Case Study: Widget marketing comes of age - Startup Review Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.startup-review.com/blog/youtube-case-study-widget-marketing-comes-of-age.php <comment></comment>


First geologic map of Ganymede made with Voyager data - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/first-geologic-map-of-ganymede-made-with-voyager-data/

<comment><USER2> Imagine the satellite images we could be looking at, if NASA had different funding priorities:

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

[pdf] [http://trs- new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/38185/1/05...](http://trs- new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/38185/1/05-3441.pdf)

tl;dr: A low-orbiting (100-200 km), 37-ton science probe, jumping from moon to moon using nuclear-powered ion rockets.

* 1.5 tons of science instruments

* 1 meter telescope (25 cm surface resolution)

* 100 kW power supply

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a link to the companion paper published in 2010 for anyone interested: [http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3805.pdf](http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3805.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is gorgeous stuff. I can't get the PDF to render the way it looks on the USGS site, though. Lots of layers and outlines. Looks the same in Foxit and Sumatra.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.space.com/images/i/000/036/889/original/ganymede-...](http://www.space.com/images/i/000/036/889/original/ganymede- map.jpg?1392246285)

Found it using google image search with the small image in the article.

I had to narrow the search to find the original source.

Original source: [http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/multimedia/ganymede- pia17901/](http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/multimedia/ganymede-pia17901/)

Article: [http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/ganymede20140212/index.html](http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/news/ganymede20140212/index.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: EteSync – Secure, E2E sync for your contacts, calendars and tasks - <AUTHOR> https://www.etesync.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> A quick search has shown this has not been submitted since 2017.

EteSync now supports iOS, making it officially available on all popular platforms. Self-hosted option is also available.

I'm not affiliated with the project. I just think it works well, and is a good alternative to NextCloud, for those who do not need self-hosted file storage.</comment>


Avoid Comments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shaneliesegang.com/2013/02/avoid-comments/ <comment><USER2> Quote from the article: "Note: this is hastily slapped together while I'm on the road, not really edited or proofread."

Wait, what? In an article that complains about stupid, ill-conceived comments? One that identifies a famous British comedian as "John Cheese"? Physician, heal thyself.</comment>


Coronavirus Quarantine Survival Guide - <AUTHOR> https://app.involve.me/ahmedbog/coronavirus-guide <comment><AUTHOR> A very cool e-book that contains safety and prevention guidelines for coronavirus [https://app.involve.me/ahmedbog/coronavirus- guide](https://app.involve.me/ahmedbog/coronavirus-guide)</comment>


Bro IDS programs collection - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michalpurzynski/bro-gramming

<comment><USER2> For those confused about what Bro even is, please see [https://www.bro.org](https://www.bro.org) [https://github.com/bro/bro](https://github.com/bro/bro)

After that you may continue with the "don't taze me" train of thought that you probably had just like I did the first time I heard of this IDS system.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's phenomenal to see Mozilla releasing this much high quality scripts to the community.

It also shows that we really need a better "package manager" for Bro. To date, users have to manually cobble together scripts from all over the place.

I wrote up a draft of how I imagine this to look like a while ago: [https://www.bro.org/development/projects/cban.html](https://www.bro.org/development/projects/cban.html). Please get in touch if you're keen to push this effort further.</comment>


Unity Game Engine to Get Official 2D Game Support and a Built-In Ad Solution - <AUTHOR> http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/08/28/unity-game-engine-to-get-official-2d-game-support-and-a-built-in-ad-service/

<comment><USER2> Note that many 3D games need 2D components for menus, HUDs and general UI. Most Unity developers were paying an extra 100-200 dollars for 3rd party plugins that brought in better text handling, sprite atlassing, drop shadows, etc. Even if you're not planning to make a 2D game it's a big upgrade of the tool.

<comment><USER3> fwiw the most popular 2D libraries are less than $100.

2D Toolkit - $65 ([http://u3d.as/content/unikron-software- ltd/2d-toolkit/1Wi](http://u3d.as/content/unikron-software- ltd/2d-toolkit/1Wi))

NGUI - $95 ([http://u3d.as/content/tasharen-entertainment/ngui-next- gen-u...](http://u3d.as/content/tasharen-entertainment/ngui-next-gen-ui/2vh))

Uni2d - $90 ([https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3826](https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3826))

All of these have more features than what Unity just introduced so I don't see their usage declining anytime soon- until/unless Unity makes some serious improvements to their built in 2D library.

<comment><USER2> I noticed some cool features in their unveil - such as polygonal sprites rather than rectangles. This means it's cheaper to fill each texture to the screen, and it means the sprite atlases can be packed tighter resulting in less draw calls. They also changed the 2D UI so that you cannot select a sprite where it's alpha is 0 under the cursor, which makes it way easier to move and manipulate in the editor. Finally, they added an animation framework for the sprites which is powerful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel sorry for the guy who made the 2D Toolkit [0]. It's a very solid asset, but with a new built-in official competitor I think it might die, or at least slow down over time.

Would it be too cynical to think that this is part of the point of the asset store? To let independent devs run thousands of experiments at their own expense, let them all run, give them their 70%, then just reproduce and integrate the very best of these assets with the next version of Unity?

I suppose from the Unity team perspective, it looks like they can't do anything right: don't add enough features and people will complain about over- reliance on the Asset Store - but add too many features and Asset Store publishers complain.

There's probably one of those 'yeah well, sounds obvious' lessons in here: don't make your product overly dependent on somebody else's platform. Easy to say that, of course.

[0]: [https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/908](https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/908)

<comment><USER5> FWIW, all the "2D extensions" asset store publishers have known about Unity's upcoming 2D features for a while (have been part of the alpha testing etc.). Yes, their toolkit sales will probably drop, but that's what you get when targeting a missing feature of a product - sooner or later the product will add that feature. They are smart folks so I'm quite sure they will find something else to do though; or will build even fancier extensions on top of base functionality.

"I suppose from the Unity team perspective, it looks like they can't do anything right" \- I don't think we have this problem. If there's a big missing gap in features, we _will_ close it sooner or later. Yes this might upset some asset store publishers, but that's how things are. On the other hand, many of them will have had several years of really, really good sales of their packages.

 _(I work at Unity. YMMV etc.)_

<comment><USER6> So, obviously you are right and this is an issue with any platform. But I do wonder if there was a better way. Couldn't you in many cases offer these people a job at the company? I mean, I guess Unity is hiring a lot anyway.

<comment><USER5> Well, if you look at it... RageSpline guy (Juha Kiili) is working at Unity (on the same 2D stuff for 4.3), and NGUI folks (Michael Lyashenko & Philip Cosgrave) are working at Unity on the upcoming GUI system.

That said, some people do not want work for any company; they just want to be "independent". And that's ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some day they might even support proper wireframe rendering (without third party plugins)! Code based .unity scenes for easy version control? Anyone? Unity3D, what a love hate relationship I have with this thing. I will admit though, that the love grows with every day! It still boggles my mind how few issues I had developing a major project with Unity3D+C#. No stack overflow or segmentation errors, hardly any crashes. The ability to play and pause in the editor is just as great as the multi platform ability.

<comment><USER7> Unity scenes already support text serialization in the YAML format.

<comment><USER8> Have you tried merging those scenes? Even if the format is structured and in plain text, it does not mean that a human can manipulate it as a patch. The format is so convoluted and full of magic numbers, it would require a lot of experience to really merge them; or support from Unity itself, and then the choice of serialization is not really that important.

You can manage team work somehow with prefabs. But I would like to see something like Havok Vision Engine's layering system, where every layer of a scene is it's own file, thus with file locking you can work on a single scene as a team. For example, you could split the scene in layers by developer, and then have someone integrate them in proper layers. Or you could just split specific work between people with lighting layer, static layer, collision layer and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A little backstory about this- the most popular 2D plugin for Unity was NGUI (now I would say 2D Toolkit and NGUI are equally popular, but 2D Toolkit has more momentum).

The guy who created NGUI was hired by Unity about a year ago to work on their new built in UI / 2D system. And, this is what he's created. It's still massively lacking in features compared to the 3rd party 2D plugins but I think this is just a start and we should expect to see a lot of great improvements over time.

These are the 3 most popular 2D plugins for Unity, and they're all less than $100:

2D Toolkit - $65 ([http://u3d.as/content/unikron-software- ltd/2d-toolkit/1Wi](http://u3d.as/content/unikron-software- ltd/2d-toolkit/1Wi))

NGUI - $95 ([http://u3d.as/content/tasharen-entertainment/ngui-next- gen-u...](http://u3d.as/content/tasharen-entertainment/ngui-next-gen-ui/2vh))

Uni2d - $90 ([https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3826](https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3826))

Personally I use 2D Toolkit and I know for a fact he has plans to make his plugin use the new built in 2D Physics system and I'm sure he's looking at any other ways he can squeeze better performance and useability out of the new Unity 2D features.

I would _love_ to stop using a 3rd party 2D plugin but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the timing of the release is tied to the release of iOS 7. There is a Sprite Kit 2d framework in iOS 7.

<comment><USER10> Since Unity is targeting iOS, Android, Blackberry, WinPhone, Mac, Windows, Linux, Web all equally, I don't see a big correlation there. Also seeing Android's global market share, iOS is basically a fringe target for me these days, just _slightly_ above BB and MS in terms of relevance.

With their Asset Store, they can easier gauge what Unity users need so badly they'll even pay for. Unity is used a _lot_ for 2D games, yet is very 3D-centric, so there are many popular and I presume profitable 3rd-party extensions to make 2D first-class in Unity. So it makes a lot of sense for them to cater more "natively" to this segment of users.

<comment><USER11> Interesting - there are hundreds of millions of iOS devices out there and their average user spends more money on apps than the Android counterpart.

Are we already at the point where Apple is irrelevant to the app vendors?

<comment><USER12> I don't think so, because larger mobile operating system share (especially global, where you have to account for the Chinese and Indian markets) doesn't necessarily mean more people will actually be interested in your app, can find your app, or can run your app on their phones. Your potential market is larger, sure, but out of that larger customer pool how many will be able or willing to download and use your app, especially if it's something performance-intensive?

For a lot of people, the smartphone they buy is already fully functional for their needs out of the box. They get an Internet browser, media player, e-mail client, and some other utility/PDA features that are bundled with the OS. A lot of people will add 'service apps' like Facebook and Dropbox to access services they were already using, and then stop there. There is less of an incentive for people to go out and look for apps to make their smartphone more useful, like a 1990s computer purchaser going out and buying Microsoft Office and Quicken for their new otherwise-useless Windows box, and so I would argue that marketshare by itself is less meaningful a metric for comparing mobile and desktop platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now it's competing with Cocos2D.

<comment><USER14> Yeap, except it's a complete different league. Cocos2D-X (which is the real cross-platform equivalent) is an absolute nightmare for beginners. Last time I checked, there was no documentation except in chineese, and you wouldn't even know where to look when you wanted to do some networking.

Unity truly is a marvelous piece of technology and ecosystem.

<comment><USER15> I actually bought "Cocos2d-X By Example Beginners Guide" and it was very easy to get up and running with a demo application. The samples included with the framework itself show off a features and nothing has been all that complex, and I have made a bunch of 2D test applications already (XCode + iPad simulator)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning this book, I've wanted to dig into cocos2D for a while but the lack of a good beginner book kept me from getting too far. I picked it up last night and it's exactly what I've been looking for. Awesome thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having some solid experience with Unity, have to say that it was already great environment for creating 2D applications. Only sprite management and object alignment support had to be reinvented from the scratch, but some very solid addons are present on the market for pretty long time. If I recall correctly, the author of the most popular one, NGUI, was hired by Unity to implement native 2D support.

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny. I was googling for exactly this earlier today. I love the thought o using such a mature engine and tool as Unity but I mostly make 2D games so this is very welcomed news.

</comment><comment><USER18> Still waiting on that PS Vita support they promised.</comment>


Finding Your Way Through the Mall or the Airport, With a Cellphone Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/technology/11interior.html?_r=1&hpw

<comment><USER2> Do any of these actually try and use your current location on the map, or do they just give you a static version of the map and assume you can find your own way?</comment>


Is music production comparable to programming? - <AUTHOR> In software development, I have no problem to envision developing arbitrarily good applications, by building it one building block at a time. On the other hand, the last few days I have listened to extremely good music and I don't see how to ever arrive at that level. Is there a point when one has learned enough basics of music production to be able to produce arbitrarily good music? <comment><USER2> Yes, the process is very similar. My degree is in audio, my early college work in music. I don't have a computer science degree. I've known a lot of musician-turned-hackers and hacker-turned-musicians.

But I think you're missing a subtle aspect of developing arbitrarily good applications: You probably can't develop a truly great application one block at a time. Sure, you can add all the features of a truly great application one block at a time. But the devil is in the details (just like in music, art, etc.), and sometimes missing one spark of inspiration can make all the difference.

Google is great software. Microsoft Live search is a cheap knockoff with more features and flashier design and less of whatever it is that makes Google "great".

The iPod is great software. Zune is a cheap knockoff with more features and less of whatever it is that makes the iPod "great".

And those two "knockoff" examples were made after the original--they should have been able to copy the "great" aspect and one-up it, by throwing money at it. But somehow they failed. That's the subtle distinction between great software/art/music and mediocrity.

The Beatles made great music. Paul Revere and the Raiders made cheap knockoff songs with less of whatever it is that makes the Beatles "great".

jraines post sums up quite a bit of the process similarities, so I won't go into it.

Music is less objective than software--a bug is a bug, but a blue note might be on purpose and it might be the key to the song. So, it's not precisely the same. Knowing software works or doesn't might be easier than knowing if a melody is worth anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its not the same in terms of its incrementality. Generally a beat or a melody for one track wont really work for another, but it can. I don't think parts of music can be encapsulated. Still I find making music similar to coding in terms of creativity.

I think in all creative pursuits you can get very very good by consistently seeking to do better and gaining insight into what you do. If you're always thinking about the next layer of meaning and trying to stretch you'll achieve great things.

I just made the comparison in this blog post which hasn't garnered much yc interest: <http://greendestinyonyc.blogspot.com/2007/08/creativity.html>

<comment><USER4> I guess it depends on what you mean by encapsulation. If you're writing music with functional harmony, it's a very useful concept, although you typically work in reverse.

The encapsulated idea might be the dominant part of a V-I cadence, which you can replace with an extended, embellished pattern that has basically the same function but is much more interesting. V->[I-ii-iii-IV-V/V-V]

        I-vi-ii-V-I
        I-vi-ii-[I-ii-iii-IV-V/V-V]-I

And maybe at the beginning, you can reinforce the tonality with a little pattern instead of just plunking out a I. So I->[I-vii-I]. Then you have a progression like this:

        [I-vii-I]-vi-ii-[I-ii-iii-IV-V/V-V]-I

Then, you can map that pattern onto a rhythmic framework. Maybe with a generalized mapping function that you could use for a number of different patterns. Anyway I'm rambling now. Maybe I'll blog about it at some point.

(note that the vii should really be vii-diminished. The forum doesn't appear to support the little circle superscript.)

<comment><USER3> Ok more good examples of a sort of encapsulation in music. In general all I meant was that writing parts of music for the purpose of reuse would generally be considered to lessen the musical quality because of the lack of originality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are a couple approaches to making music, just as there are a couple approaches to writing code. The classical approach is that you have a melody in your head and work backwards from there. The other approach is to improvise - more like jazz, where the musicians are playing off each other and the audience.

In code, the classical approach is akin to the waterfall method. Design it all up front. Build it with statically linked tools. Hire programmers like an orchestra, based on their ability to follow the score. The iterative approach is more like jazz. Write a little bit. Bounce it off other people. Write a little more. A conversation. Duck typed scripting languages are great for that.

And then there's interaction design. This is more like a band leader who 'gets' the audience. Or, at least, someone who the audience 'gets'. This is isn't working backwards from a tune or forwards from a set of building blocks. It's a bidirectional search.

On a more pragmatic level: it takes about 1000 hours of playing with any tool to become arbitrarily proficient. Another 1000 hours of playing with people to become arbitrarily 'good' (give or take a zero or so).

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure what you mean by "arbitrarily" here, but yes -- in my experience the two are very similar:

1\. Both require long periods of focus to really get in the zone and be productive.

2\. Progress is marked by stretches of frustration punctuated by "eureka" moments.

3\. It helps to be around others with the same interests, be it Scandinavian metal or Ruby on Rails.

4\. If you do the little things wrong, you make it harder for yourself at the more complex levels. Good habits are key.

5\. Don't get too hung up on the tools in the beginning (ie overspending on guitars, amps, mixing equipment -- or switching development tools every time the next hot framework or dev kit comes out)

My advice to you is to persevere. Just like with programming, one day you will find that things which once seemed impossible are within your reach, and it's a very rewarding experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> What sort of music are you interested in? Are you talking about sound production, performing, composing?

The main difference with composing is that you are usually writing a program for a real person to perform, not for a computer to execute. This means that writing music is less exacting, but can also be more subtle.

The other big difference is that you aren't usually writing music to solve an external problem. With music, you have to invent the problems you want to solve. You might say "I want to hold an F# in the alto line for 4 measures, while moving all the other voices in a chord progression that adheres to the following restrictions..." You just make up the conditions on your own. Software, in contrast, almost always solves a concrete, defineable problem (even if you don't know what that problem will be when you start coding).

With performing, the biggest difference is that it's real-time action and communication. You have to train physically in order to be good, and learning bad habits is disastrous. Code-reading and being good at using an editor are more analogous to music performance than software development in general. With writing code, it can be a good thing to write 1,000 lines of crap, if you learn enough not to make those mistakes again. Making mistakes while performing just leads to more mistakes in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I could create a good piece of music (recording), I would be happy. Being able to perform it would be a plus, but not so important.

I tend to think more in terms of emotions I would like to express, but maybe that is insufficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can become a good player by learning what other people have played, so those would be your building blocks, Consistently creating good new music is a very rare gift, Most players (at most) create a somewhat unique style (which will include a lot of building blocks created by others) which they rely on heavily for their whole careers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps. Can you recognize the different parts of music that make it good? Have you ever had a favorite song that you love but can't stand at the same time because you hear one part or beat that just isn't right?

</comment><comment><USER9> when you get to fed up with the music you are already hearing to, and if you are a person who can create music, thats what you will probably do! Paul Oakenfold rised to the elite of DJs when he started writing music he wanted to hear!

that sounds familiar when you create an application for what people want! but I think its a totally different way of creation needing different sources of inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Is there a point when one has learned enough basics of music production to be able to produce arbitrarily good music?_

Yes.

<comment><USER11> See Timbaland, Pharell/Chad Hugo, Rick Rubin.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't qualify them as knowing the basics. I think they're musical geniuses.

<comment><USER11> OK, it was a bad example. None of them seem to have a formal grounding in music theory, except Chad Hugo who dropped out of college before finishing.

<comment><USER12> I guess, at best, you're making the argument that you don't need to go to conservatory to make pop music. While true, I think it's fair to say these guys are all really musically minded. In particular, Rick Rubin and Pharrell cut across genres really well (from rap to rock and stuff in between), which is decent evidence that they're not just lucking into popular singles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tier - <AUTHOR> Deleted <comment><USER2> How do you mitigate the down sides?</comment>


Eval – The new Haxe macro interpreter - <AUTHOR> https://haxe.org/blog/eval/ <comment><USER3> Eval here is important because of Haxe's incredible macro system. The "eval" target is the engine for macro AST transformations. While vanilla haxe was extremely fast to compile, including macros in a project would often make haxe development feel sluggish. There were various workarounds for these situations, but those added to the mental overhead of managing the project. The eval target improvement streamlines this part of the compiler, bringing it in line with the rest of the compiler performance characteristics.

The overview for macros is here : [https://haxe.org/manual/macro.html](https://haxe.org/manual/macro.html)

Some examples of macro usage are here : [http://code.haxe.org/category/macros/](http://code.haxe.org/category/macros/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic.

I've always been curious about Haxe, especially since there really is nothing quite like it out there. Does anyone have experiences or opinions to share on developing applications (e.g., games) using Haxe?

<comment><USER5> I have a bit of hobby experience. One of the reasons i picked haxe as a platform/language is that it's cross-platform, but easy to delve down into native, since it's a source to source compiler. This means you write most of your code in cross-platform ways, but when shit hits the fan, you can always fight your way out by going native (which is quite seamless - such as externs, or even embedding raw native calls directly into the haxe source, useful as a last resort).

Haxe as a language, is very similar to java/c# in style (or actionscript - <USER2> you know that language). It is superficially similar to javascript too, but has a bit of semantic differences (it's not a prototypical language). The best language feature is its macro system. It is only 1 step below the LISP macro system, since macros are actual code, and you get to modify AST at compile time.

as for the library ecosystem, there's plenty of existing libraries in both pure haxe, as well as haxe externs into target native platforms. Quality vary, but you can say the same about any language's library ecosystem. Haxe's library ecosystem is mainly targeted at games - lime, openfl, haxeflixel, haxepunk, kha, babylonhx, and many many other engine/frameworks for games exist. Most of them are relatively easy to use, but as with all open source projects not backed by a large corp, there are warts, and you often have to either workaround them, or fix it (and in the process contribute!).

I haven't written any web-server/web-app using haxe, but i think it's also a popular type of app to write in haxe.

IDE integration is great with visual studio code (and intellij too).

Over all, i can't find any faults that i can't live with or fix, and am happy to continue playing with haxe. It can only improve in time.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bedtime Bulb – Low-blue light bulb for healthy sleep – Amazon Launch - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Bedtime is a low-blue light bulb for healthy sleep. We're launching on Amazon with an introductory price of $12.99, expiring after tomorrow: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N)

\-----

Hey HN,

For almost a decade, I've been trying to solve the problem of blue light disturbing sleep and circadian rhythms. On computers and phones, software like f.lux and Night Shift are great options, but the solutions for the physical world just aren't great.

Bedtime Bulb ([https://bedtimebulb.com/](https://bedtimebulb.com/)) is changing that. I wanted to create a simple, affordable lighting product that lets you see at night while drastically reducing blue light. You can learn more about my story and the creation of Bedtime Bulb here: [https://medium.com/@yeutterg/bedtime-bulb-the-origin- story-b...](https://medium.com/@yeutterg/bedtime-bulb-the-origin- story-b48932df1723)

Bedtime Bulb is really simple to use: just replace the light bulbs you would use in the evening with Bedtime Bulb. It casts a warm, relaxing glow that has less sleep-interrupting blue light than LED, halogen, and incandescent lighting. It even has less circadian input than other products that claim to do the same thing.

To celebrate our Amazon (US only) launch, we are offering a special introductory price of $12.99. After tomorrow (Tuesday), the price will increase to $16.99.

Order your Bedtime Bulb today: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N)

Greg

<comment><USER2> Hm very cool, I've used f.lux for a while now and can definitely see the use case for a nightstand lamp.

Also like that there's no awkward app to deal with, just replace the bulb and forget about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts exactly! Thank you for your interest!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, we had a very successful launch, having grown 50% in the first week and an additional 29% so far this week.

As thanks to the YC community, I'm extending a 10% discount on Bedtime Bulb until 10/31.

Just add as many Bedtime Bulbs as you want to your Amazon cart and use the code HNFORUMS at checkout.

Product link: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H49N46N)

Greg

Bedtime Bulb

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

</comment><comment><USER3> My company is a top 1000 retailer on Amazon and we can help you get your product moving on the platform. There are a few things that you need to do to make that happen.

If you want to reach out we can discuss potentially working together. We manage a number of legacy brands in the Health and Personal Care category. My contact info is in the forum. I posted it a few weeks back

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the offer. I will reach out today!</comment></comment>


Microsoft: 'Nobody loves developers more than us' - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2848977/microsoft-subnet/microsoft-nobody-loves-developers-more-than-us.html#tk.rss_all <comment><USER3> I would love them more if Windows became more like Unix/Linux-based - <USER2> absence of a lot of supported tooling prevents me from treating Windows as a serious development environment.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, they should open-source the .NET framework or something.</comment></comment>


Prune: A Tree-Based, Home-Row-Oriented Code Editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/prune-a-code-editor-that-is-not-a-text-editor/1012061842160013 <comment><USER3> An interesting idea that's definitely worth exploring.

However, I think the conflict between tree-based editing and normal editors is completely unnecessary. In fact, you can actually get basic tree-based editing _today_ in Emacs!

The easiest language to support like this is Lisp because its syntax is about as close to pure tree as possible. And, indeed, Emacs has had structural editing for lisp for a while in the form of Paredit[1]. More recently, somebody extended this idea to Haskell[2] which is interesting because Haskell has one of the more complex, persnickety syntaxes around.

I'm not saying either of these are as good as dedicated editors—I'm not even convinced they _could_ be as good—but they are low-cost ways to try these ideas out right now without abandoning general-purpose text editing or creating a brand new tool.

[1]: [http://danmidwood.com/content/2014/11/21/animated- paredit.ht...](http://danmidwood.com/content/2014/11/21/animated-paredit.html)

[2]: [https://github.com/chrisdone/structured-haskell- mode](https://github.com/chrisdone/structured-haskell-mode)

<comment><USER4> There is also js2-refactor [1] by Magnar Sveen (of emacs rocks fame) which adds structural editing to js2-mode

[1]: [https://github.com/magnars/js2-refactor.el](https://github.com/magnars/js2-refactor.el)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really interesting, I'd love to see more about it. It's a shame they're not opening the source or at least putting up a public instance to test, I'd really like to give it a go.

I'd be very interested in some more detailed information about this. For example, I'd like to see a list of the hundred transformations required to edit JavaScript. They also mention that it is a home-row-oriented editor - what does that mean? Are the common commands available on the home row, such as navigation etc?

As the developer of a LISP IDE with structural editing functionality, this looks very interesting - please share more information!

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like Prune lives in the same conceptual space as ParEdit for Emacs.

I have heard that ParEdit is a not a toy. I have heard that, if you work in a lisp-type language, it's worth your time.

Screen cast: [http://emacsrocks.com/e14.html](http://emacsrocks.com/e14.html)

More info: [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit)

<comment><USER7> I think coding in lisp-family languages without using structural editing (aka paredit) is a significant waste of time. It takes maybe 2 hours to get used to it. If you don't use it, you will spend more time counting and adjusting parentheses than actually writing symbols, and you will spend more time fixing bugs caused by bad parentheses than thinking about the logic of your program. In addition, after you make the jump, you will never complain again about lisp having "too many parentheses".

"If paredit is not for you, then you need to become the sort of person that paredit is for. -Phil Hagelberg"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked on a similar project for a while (the poorly-named Phlisped), and I came to many of the same conclusions as these guys did. A few notes:

I'm not sure reducing keystrokes is a useful measure. I can't think of a better one, though, so at least it's something quantifiable.

Pure tree editing, with no text editor to fall back to, is important. I didn't even use textual output, while it sounds like these guys did. They also used javascript, which is interesting since it has so much syntax. Lisp seems like a natural choice to me since the tree structure is readily apparent.

Dogfooding is critical, and it's very natural for a project like this. When I got to that point, I learned so much about what was really important in an editor. Like macros -- those helped so much.

Keyboard-based editing of trees is possible, but it takes significant effort to make it feel decently natural.

Collaboration is definitely the most important thing people in this area need to learn. There are dozens of projects similar to this one, and they're generally created by solo programmers (like I did) or by pairs (like Prune). Tree-based editing will never take off until a group of like-minded programmers gets together and makes it happen. I've been pulled away into an unrelated project, but if I were to come back to this, my first move would be to get some collaborators.

<comment><USER9> I think reducing keystrokes is a proxy metric for reducing the time and cognitive load of accomplishing an editing task. It's easy to measure, and probably good enough to tell if you're getting anywhere, qualitatively. I don't think it's good enough to quantify improvement in a meaningful manner, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting notion. I am inherently skeptical, because, like many I imagine (and as the article actually discusses), I am squarely in one of the text editor camps (which shall remain nameless to avoid anyone thinking I'm intending on a flamewar).

I am certainly open to the notion of alternative forms of interaction with code, but too often I see this take on the form of an IDE with "designer-like" capacities (this is not to say that IDEs are bad, just not what I am personally interested in) or the more simple interfaces used to teach kids to code (again, not a bad thing, just not what I want to use as my daily driver).

As others have said, it would have been great if they had open-sourced the code or offered a public instance so it could be vetted (even from an early perspective). And while I will do my best to keep an open mind, the macros available in other text editors seem like they may very well be capable of handling some of the functionality demonstrated in the article without much issue.

<comment><USER11> Out of curiosity, how do you deal with not having some of the things that IDEs support?

I too am firmly in a text editor camp, but I've recently been basically forced to use Eclipse while writing Java (ick) at work. The fact that it knows a lot about the code is invaluable sometimes - auto-importing package names as you type, fixing build rules in other files automatically, code completion, type- definitions that appear with inline usage notes, etc. Granted, enterprise Java in a build environment is the ideal use case for an IDE, but many of those features are useful _all the time._ Now when I write other code, it feels somewhat archaic that my text editor of choice isn't giving me function docs/typedefs and managing dependencies as I write.

As much as I despise the text editor in Eclipse, living without those things is basically impossible. I have "solved" this problem by constantly switching contexts between my editor of choice and Eclipse, whenever I need to do something crafty. What do other people do about this?

<comment><USER10> Actually, many of the advanced text editors offer plugins that replicate a variety of the functionality you mention. To better answer your question, I am forced to reveal the text editor I prefer (please do not take this comment as a slant to any other text editor): vim.

For vim, there are several plugins that provide completion functionality (for various languages)[1]. There are things to deal with Java imports specifically[2]. (I don't know what you mean by fixing build rules.) Hey, there are even plugins meant to facilitate whole IDE functionality for some languages[3].

Personally, I avoid things like Java so I have less of a use-case for IDEs anyway. Specifically, I code in C and Haskell (and a touch of by-hand llvm-ir for fun). In C, automatic imports and the like, I do not even wish for (since it is so necessary for me to completely understand the function calls I make, I need to read the docs quite commonly which mention the header for #inclusion). And, for Haskell, I'm constantly prototyping in ghci, so I learn what I need anyway. In neithr of these languages do I feel it is helpful enough for me to desire such things. Having said that, I understand that many people disagree; not too long ago, there was a small uproar that Haskell did not have a proper IDE yet. And I am exposed to IDEs at $DAYJOB, but if anything, that has further soured me towards them.

To all their own, text editors and IDEs alike; I think I'm likely to stick to my text editor :)

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5169638/autocompletion-i...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5169638/autocompletion- in-vim)

[2] [http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=325](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=325)

[3] [http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=213](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=213)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think a big advantage to this kind of approach is the feedback you can get on your code - on-the-fly evaluation and type checking for example.

Here's my attempt: [http://sediment.io](http://sediment.io)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been working on something similar for ClojureScript (Plastic editor package for Atom) [https://github.com/darwin/plastic](https://github.com/darwin/plastic)

<comment><USER14> Wow, cool! Do you plan on making its guts available as a lib to be used under other frontends? I have a ClojureScript ncurses framework and would like to attempt a terminal editor, [https://github.com/goldfeld/i9n](https://github.com/goldfeld/i9n)

<comment><USER13> The core will be reusable as a javascript library (rendered via react.js). But you will have to provide keyboard inputs, file I/O and other APIs currently provided by Atom/Electron/Node.js.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is it home row oriented? (Admittedly, I only used in-browser search for "home" and found nothing.)

Since moving from the home row has such a _massively destructive_ , measured, and reproducedly measured effect on productivity and geek credibility, I've always thought that editors should accept no other keypresses than those on the home row. Every keyboard key that isn't caps lock, asdfghjkl;' or enter should be a key chord. (And not a key sequence, because that would not be productive: a real key chord.)

The next step is to release a physical keyboard that has exactly 10 keys, since moving the forefingers to press G and H, and moving the pinkies to press caps lock, apostrophe, and return is such a tremendous affront to good taste.

And editors should refuse to accept mouse input, as well. Ideally, touching the mouse would cause an electric shock, but that would require hardware modification.

<comment><USER16> > Since moving from the home row has such a massively destructive, measured, > and reproducedly measured effect on productivity and geek credibility, I've > always thought that editors should accept no other keypresses than those on > the home row. Every keyboard key that isn't caps lock, asdfghjkl;' or enter > should be a key chord. (And not a key sequence, because that would not be > productive: a real key chord.)

No love for unAmericans or Dvorak?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of the ideas expressed here are already available in a couple of the better Clojure development setups (known in Clojure as refactoring tools) -- since it is a lisp, that makes it a good language for implementing this stuff. However, in reality most Clojure devs are not taking advantage of all that this style of editing provides, partly because it requires more than the tool: it requires a different perspective on the code you write to think in this "refactor" way.

</comment><comment><USER18> I _think_ I can imagine what this is proposing, but it's really ambiguous to me. I'm kind of imagining a super autocomplete that's forced, always requires code to be in a valid form (barring TBD sections), and lets you navigate syntax/concepts instead of characters. I'm not sure what I'm completely missing though, as I'm sure there are some things.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've spent a lot of time thinking about the fundamentals of code editing after building this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m30s) .

My main conclusion—which has a lot in common with the Prune editor—so far, came from asking, "what are we really doing when writing code?" and settling with, "selecting and configuring 'language constructs'". I believe this same thing can be done with generic models of languages/programs, where the source code is generated after the fact as a view (and that ASTs as 'program models' are unfortunately/unnecessarily coupled to a single view). I have a two-part, illustrated essay here: [http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-programming- languag...](http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2015/06/why-programming-languages- dont-have.html)

<comment><USER20> Hi - heads-up, your site [http://symbolflux.com](http://symbolflux.com) seems to be down.

<comment><USER19> Yep, no money to renew web hosting atm :(

<comment><USER20> Ok. I'll drop you an email and see if I can help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whoa, this is pretty cool. People have been trying to do this for ages. If they've been analyzing how people code, they have some valuable data to develop from. I hope they make it! I once made a programming language with a tree editor: [https://youtu.be/w5-g0Hps6bA](https://youtu.be/w5-g0Hps6bA)

I had anyfix operators, so it was possible to write a program that read like english. In fact, I once got someone to write the sqrt function (inspired by the SICP) in Japanese: [https://youtu.be/vwgvVpCRecE](https://youtu.be/vwgvVpCRecE)

I think this is really promising to introduce people to programming. How many times have you heard someone say "programming is so frustrating! I always misplace my semicolon." Also, not having syntax means that people can use DSLs without having the pain to learn its syntax.

</comment><comment><USER22> I came up with the idea of a structure editor independently. I am still very excited about the possibility but there are still some major challenges.

1) Viewing code in a tree can be much more verbose and require more cognitive load. I would much rather see "x = a + b" than (set 'x (+ a b)).

2) Languages contain syntactic sugar. Trees do not. That syntactic sugar goes a long ways towards making things easier.

3) Text based code can be very compact. Trees tend to require lots of space on the screen. They can be compacted using s-expressions but I've always found them cumbersome to read -- especially when things get nested.

4) Trees follow prefix format. Sometimes infix and postfix styles are much easier to read.

"someString" capitalize map fn

is much easier to read than

(map (capitalize "some string") fn)

Trees require you to descend to the leaf node and read backwards sometimes.

<comment><USER23> #3 is why text still wins. text has high information density, which helps when you have lots of code to deal with.

That, and the fact that every environment has a text editor - <USER2> terminal consoles.

You can overcome the second factor, but you cannot overcome the first one that easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this the same kent beck who wrote "smalltalk best practice patterns"? Either way this is a very interesting project and a nice write up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also see [http://concrete-editor.org/](http://concrete-editor.org/) (not my project, just linking to something I found cool)

Concrete does tree based editing with projections (a la Intellij Meta/ Simyoni's Intentional) so you can see visual layouts of state machines, etc that are just as editable as the textual ones.

</comment><comment><USER25> I prototyped almost exactly this a couple years ago: [https://www.timmclean.net/json-editor/](https://www.timmclean.net/json- editor/)

I haven't had time to come back to it, so I'm very glad to see that other people are working on the idea!

<comment><USER23> This is not half bad as structural interaction goes. Kudos! It took me a while to figure out how to add a new node, but once I did find the O command, it all made sense.

It still feels like a lot of work to get something written since you have to type "EscOPS<text>EscJT" to add "foo":true, instead of just cursor over to a place and just type exactly that string. However, I can see how one could get use to that much as how vim users are used to all those arcane keychords for basic navigation. Also, there's no reason a command string cannot be made into a macro.

Do you plan to open source this at all? Seems like a good start for someone to take and add on to.

Edit: found your github, nm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember a game where you made circuit boards ... I think this kind of puzzle programming could work in low level programming, but for higher level, with millions of objects and layers of abstractions, it will be impossible.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been hoping something like this would come a long. Maybe with enough positive feedback they'll deign to release it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Didn't Jetbrains build something similar?

<comment><USER29> It was mentioned elsewhere in the comments, but I believe you're thinking of Meta Programming System: [https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/](https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/)

I regret that I have not had enough real world experience with MPS to comment on how it might relate to what Facebook is doing.

But as for real world, a JetBrains employee told me that they wrote YouTrack ([https://youtrack.jetbrains.com](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com)) in MPS, _presumably_ using an "issue tracker DSL" but he wouldn't elaborate further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very interesting concept - this would allow the human and the compiler to actually work together from the same conceptual model, as opposed to the antagonistic process it is now.

Too bad the multi-billion dollar Facebook didn't actually produce any usable code to benefit the community, for a change.

<comment><USER31> "Multi-billion" is irrelevant here because most people working for a large company don't have anywhere near that kind of budget. We're talking about two programmers who were allowed to work on a research project for a month.

Also, Facebook releases lots of great open source software. Apparently you haven't heard of React? For more see [https://code.facebook.com/projects/](https://code.facebook.com/projects/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not willfully connecting my machine to the facebook.com domain.</comment>


Effective Testing with RSpec 3, Testing in Isolation: Unit Specs - the-red-button http://blog.travisspangle.com/ <comment> the-red-button I'd appreciate any feedback!</comment>


Hidden Debug Mode in AMD Processors - <AUTHOR> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/11/12/047243/Hidden-Debug-Mode-Found-In-AMD-Processors

<comment><USER2> The linked article has been slashdotted, but does anyone know if the security implications are as horrible as I think they are? (Crossing process-kernel boundaries, crossing VM boundaries, ...)

<comment><USER3> Almost certainly not; the features are modeled after the DRx hardware debug registers. You can't access them from userland, and the debug registers are already virtualized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> French security blog w/ a copy of the text: <http://www.secuobs.com/revue/news/264198.shtml>

Incomplete?

<comment><USER5> Cached version, via Slashdot: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EzsEFco...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EzsEFcoAZDAJ:www.woodmann.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-13891.html+amd+hardware+debugging+features&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1)

Make sure you choose "text-only version" in the upper-right.

Looks like it's just hardware conditional breakpoints, nothing to see here...

<comment><USER4> Much better.</comment></comment></comment>


Accelerate or Die Hard - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vineup/accelerate-or-die-hard-a-book-more-intense-than-br

<comment><USER2> Not much to start for this "kick starter" it seems like they already made the product, and want money to click the print button.

<comment><USER3> Wish this was true mate! We've got a lot of publishing/editing/design work and xtra content generation to work on for this project. Still looking forward to it all though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trading off freedom for what? Money, wisdom, experience? Accelerators capitalize on the fear of failing. The key to success are pretty simple: being informed and working hard. You don't need any accelerator for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point! To be honest, the title could have been the first paragraph, but I just saw the new Bruce Willis move and thought it gave the KickStarter title a nice KICK

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can not wait to read this book, and I think this is something that will guide all future entrepreneurs and business people.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this thing compare to founders at work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! So, Founders at Work is a compilation of awesome interviews with successful founders looking back at their days as a startup. Accelerate focusses on accelerator programs themselves and their graduates. We do have several founders in the book that graduated from a program several years back, but in the future we will be concentrating more on the very recent graduates. Hope this helps to answer your question. Cheers, Luke

<comment><USER7> You might also want to check out my site: Seed-DB (<http://www.seed-db.com>)

Also, I'm in London, too. Get in touch and we can grab a drink. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Grab me on twitter @luke_deering

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the Start-Up Community!

</comment><comment><USER9> rock on luke... thanks for sharing lessons learned with the startup community.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to this!</comment>


Ask HN: Help explaining technical project to execs - <AUTHOR> I was hired to complete a project by the CEO of a services company.
The project was to implement CRM and Reporting for the CEO and Headquarters staff gain visibility into the day to day operations of their sales staff.
They wanted metrics including some activities, revenue and other stats.
They have 10+ different locations.
The plan I put forth was CRM Instance for each site with roll up reporting via a BI/Reporting Solution.
The CEO approved the plan, and I began working on it, but the rest of the executive team (COO, CFO, etc.) keep blocking the plan by refusing to pay for individual project pieces or engaging in other projects that are redundant to plans that are already included in my project.
I have presented in front of the group 4 times in the last nine months (a month after hiring, once in October, before the company strategic planning meeting and again during the strategic planning meeting).  After each meeting, the CEO requested the documents from me so he could share and discuss with the executive committee.
The CEO asked again to present the plan to the committee to address "concerns from fully understanding the total strategy", there are a lot of "moving parts" and need another briefing to better "understand each piece and expense better".  When I asked him if he shared the documents with the executive committee, he asked me to resend it to them.
Now, I believe the project is now setup to fail. Is there any salvaging this? What is the best way to present the plan to the various members with little technical experience? <comment><USER2> You are approaching this as a presentation and not achieving success. Try treating this as a business and each steering committee member as a VC. This means treating each member of the committee as an individual stake holder....your job is to convince EACH of them on what's in it for them....

The CEO is subtly trying to tell you that....

<comment><AUTHOR> I addressed each of their concerns in my previous 'pitches' to the committee. CFO gets better financial reporting to accurately make forecasts and decrease errors, COO gets better data on day to day operations, etc. Things go well for a week or two after the pitches but it seems to fade and they wonder what these "random project costs" are all about.

I think the disconnect is that I feel that since this project is what the CEO wants and has approved it doesn't need further "proving". I see how that might be naive of me.</comment></comment>


Proposed one-way trip to Mars complete with a Big Brother style reality show. - <AUTHOR> http://news.skymania.com/2009/06/one-way-trip-to-big-brother-on-mars.html

<comment><USER2> The lack of ethical standards of some people just frightens me.

First, he proposes sending some people to their death. I mean, seriously, do you expect to find anything but death on Mars with our current level of technology if you can't come back?

Second, he's trying to convince people and the passangers/lemmings of the proposed expedition that's it's not actually sending them to death by fake science. Anyone familiar the very basics of statistics knows that you can't talk about 'life expectancy' of four people. And living in (yet to be discovered) lava tubes? Is that his plan?

And last, he wants to broadcast the agonizing death of these people worldwide. Am I the only one who thinks that this is, at very least, questionable morals?

<comment><USER3> Well, if you put it like that it sure sounds awful. Why do you assume they will die?

I sincerely doubt they'd send anyone to their deaths nor that anyone would accept it, that would be absurd (tho accidents can happen). Consider the amount of effort, time and money such a trip would take. With the right focus, in 50 years we could have the technology to sustain life in space. However, the right focus probably means "if we have something to gain from it". I guess that's why he thinks of a "Big Brother in Space" program that would cover part of the costs. I see the idea has some logic, even if I don't agree completely with it.

On a side note, I always heard that Biodomes (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_ecological_system>) would be the answer to living on Mars or other planets in the initial phases. Not sure if I'd want to live in lava tubes.

<comment><USER4> We've had an awful lot of problems getting biodomes to work here on Earth. I'd want them to be pretty much perfected before we try them on Mars.

<comment><USER3> Well, what makes you think a lava tube is safer? :P I think they'd have to be conditioned and sealed and that might be just as problematic.

But what I said before applies here, too. With enough focus and budget we can advance in pretty much any technology we want. The question is, the ones that can make it happen (investors, governments), do they really want to do it? Does it pay for them?

<comment><USER4> I think you may be confusing me with the author of the article; I never said lava tubes were safer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Space travel is dangerous. It is very likely that at some point a mission such as this would end in tragedy. Turning that into the media circus that is reality television is an awful idea and cheapens the contribution those brave astronauts would be making.</comment>


Why Waiters Drink and Why It Matters - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/21/opinion/why-waiters-drink-and-why-it-matters.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is why I am a developer. I was in the restaurant business right out of high school, looked around me and saw success usually correlated with addiction, went back to college and never looked back.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is user management not delegated to 3rd parties like credit cards? - <AUTHOR> Why does every startup needs to store user data, passwords and personal information. Most of us reuse our passwords and so our accounts are as secure as the least secure website/startup where it was used. And, it is fairly easy to know if you are a user or not using the 'Forgot password' thing. There are other problems to take care of like rate limiting in case of brute force attacks, incorrectly configured security for OTPs, 2 factor support implementation, bad password hashing and salting, user data leaks due to incorrect use of authorization tokens.<p>I know there are companies like stormpath, auth0, userapp that are doing similar stuff but why is it not mainstream the way credit card storage, billing, support software have been delegated. <comment><USER2> I feel like Auth0 is pretty mainstream. I teach it to students at this point.</comment>


The world's newest mineral is unlike anything we've ever seen before  - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/04/26/the_worlds_newest_mineral_is_unlike_anything_weve_ever_seen_before_partner/

<comment><USER2> At first sight this story looks to be some sort of joke - really polar bear peninsular in Australia, but it seems to be real. Here is the original paper [http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/131.abstract](http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/131.abstract)

</comment><comment><USER3> Original source: [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/140424/the-w...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/140424/the- worlds-newest-mineral-unlike-anything-weve-ever-seen)</comment>