HappyOrNot terminals look simple, but the information they gather is revelatory - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satisfaction-at-the-push-of-a-button <comment><USER2> I was leaving Lidl recently with my toddler and whilst demonstrating to him how to use the terminal I accidentally pressed the 'sad face'.

There was a collective gasp from all the checkout operators, so I assume there is a direct impact to their performance rating. We pushed the super-happy face a few times to compensate.

<comment><USER3> It seems like it would lose a lot of its effectiveness if the people at the store can see what you rate them.

<comment><USER4> No, not really. I think it's similar to NPS. It's visible to the store clerks to allow them to correct their mistakes on the spot, instead of having to involve corporate teams. It's the same idea as the one behind short development cycles. It gets you faster to the goal. And the ultimate goal for the company is to provide good service and not to have another way to evaluate employees.

<comment><USER5> How could store clerks correct or even understand their mistakes just by seeing a frowny push? The data most likely do go to corporate (which will return to the PoS as retribution), as evidenced by distress seen on the staff's faces when the frowny button was pushed.

NPS is a disaster. Since it's directly tied to financial consequences for staff, (1) staff beg for 10s, (2) anyone who knows how NPS works and has a conscience always gives 10 in order to protect staff from maangemetn abuse.

<comment><USER6> I never understood why they even bother with 5- or 10-point systems when the only "good" signal is a 10. If that's all you want to collect, just _ask me if I was happy or not_. Don't give me a bullshit range and hope I know that only the most sparkling of reviews will save the employee I actually like.

<comment><USER7> Because these people aren't doing NPS, they're doing cargo cult Goodhart management.

NPS has ten steps because that granularity allows you to track improvements even in good teams.

If all you're doing with NPS is taking people out back and shooting them for a 9, then you're missing out on a lot of value.

<comment><USER8> Doing NPS is impossible, because nobody will use the intermediate ratings.

Besides, people are pretty much incoherent about what is the difference between a 3 and a 7. Some people's 3 are a much higher rank than other people's 7.

Putting 10 options in front of random people is mostly useless. There are very few places where it will lead to meaningful choice.

<comment><USER9> Netflix documented this pretty well. They also know that a 3 on a Monday means something different than a 3 on Friday night, even from the same person.

These and other things came out of the competition to improve the success rate of the recommendation system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now THAT is what professional PR looks like.

<comment><USER11> You could even say "this" is what professional PR looks like, since getting this on HN is certainly part of the PR as well.

<comment><USER12> In 2018, a reasonable person might suspect that _this_ is what professional PR looks like, too, since a forward-thinking advertising firm wouldn't necessarily balk at hiring people to post nice things about it. :)

<comment><USER13> It's professional PR all the way down.

<comment><USER14> No no, at some point there still has to be a broad layer of tortoises or the whole thing collapses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to see an article about this, I knocked together a React app the other month for my company based off questions from rands famous "Shields Down" [https://medium.com/the-blueprint/shields- down-c291f015618f](https://medium.com/the-blueprint/shields-down-c291f015618f) using this method.

[https://github.com/gaving/happy-or-not](https://github.com/gaving/happy-or- not)

Never got around to analyzing the data, too scared.

<comment><USER16> Are you kidding? Go take a look! Either you feel good about your company, or you get a chance to make it better - you win both ways!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is one of these in the grocery store near my house. The store has very long lines between 5 & 6 P and I noticed that the terminal conveniently disappears during that time. It's always there on the weekends though.

<comment><USER18> Won't the absence of ratings be suspicious to management?

Maybe they have an employee pressing random buttons in the back room at frequent intervals.

<comment><USER19> Maybe they just get a daily report?

<comment><USER20> The ratings are timestamped

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We used to have this in society; it was the actual frowny or smiley face, like on your actual face. We gave them to each other all the time (well, maybe not in Finland). The problem now is that the people who get that information cannot do anything with it, because all of the power is too far up the hierarchy.

<comment><USER22> Are you saying that when a cashier asked, people didn't automatically smile and say "I'm fine, thanks" no matter how awful they felt the experience was?

<comment><USER8> When a store clerk was doing badly, somebody would tell him, because he would personally know many of his clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here we have a form of analytics that doesn't piss people off, because, as noted in the article, it makes it slightly more difficult than the standard javascript package to sell you more shit just because you wanted to let the store know they were not earning your business.

I wish larger companies would take note

<comment><USER24> Human interaction is both under- and over-rated by tech companies.

On one hand, we spam the ever-living shit out of people with email ads, push notification ads, etc to try to generate engagement.

On the other hand, we sometimes go out of our way to remove the human element from other parts of the loop: consider how rare it is to see a prominent "never ever recommend me this [show|song|book|whatever] again" button. With the massive number of potential features to choose from for finding similar pieces off content, I'd like to have more control there. Like a way to tell Spotify "I want my Discover Weekly playlist to only pull from songs that are less than 5 years old" or such.

<comment><USER23> Spotify actually _does_ have a "Never recommend this song or this artist again" feature. If you click on the "No" symbol next to the heart in your daily mix or Discover weekly.

<comment><USER24> > Spotify actually does have a "Never recommend this song or this artist > again" feature. If you click on the "No" symbol next to the heart in your > daily mix or Discover weekly.

Ooh, thanks.

The iPad app seems to be missing this... No heart, either.

Now to google to figure out the heart vs the + button, too, hah.

<comment><USER23> It also works better than the "thumbs down" button on spotify radio, which always seemed to play the disliked tracks _more_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to run an email based version of this aimed at tracking company/team mood. It was indeed frictionless and we collected a large amount of data (especially compared to annual employee surveys or every biweekly retrospectives), but it wasn't very actionable on it's own.

The best outcomes we ever achieved were triggering a conversation. Helpful, but I'm not sure I would call it "revelatory".

</comment><comment><USER26> I've seen HappyOrNot terminals in airports (typically at airport restroom exits: "How clean was the restroom?"). This seems like a terrible idea from a health perspective! These terminals could be a serious vector for spreading illness, especially for people leaving a dirty restroom in a high-traffic international airport.

<comment><USER27> Not much worse than a regular door handle, I expect?

<comment><USER28> I can't remember the last airport I was at where there was an actual door you had to open. Although that is probably more for convenience w/bags than cleanliness.

<comment><USER29> I am assuming the airport had stalls with doors, and those doors had latches. I admit I don't travel very widely, but I'm yet to see hands-free stalls.

It shouldn't be hard to order the sequence of steps such that washing your hands is your last activity before leaving the bathroom.

<comment><USER28> That's true. I've seen these buttons at the Seattle airport, and they were positioned at the door. But that doesn't mean they would have to be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was thinking of taking a Amazon IoT button (or particle photon since I found it again) and make it call a tech support line / inform IT if something is broken. Would other people be interested in a tutorial to how to do this?

<comment><USER22> The Amazon IoT button quickstart guide is a tutorial for making the button send an email to an address of your choice, so arguably this already exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The interface is very friendly -- it's so simple that I find it compelling to use. A button press doesn't take any time out of my day or any data I wouldn't want to share. (Hopefully there are no strings attached e.g. video monitoring.)

When they started appearing near my local pharmacy, it was placed next to a stand of toys with giant cute eyes, which drew my attention to the "matching" happy face. Nice job on strategic placement, I thought.

<comment><USER32> Reading the article, yes, you're leaving more information than you think (but maybe not more than you're willing to share).

Video monitoring is mentioned in the article together with timestamping. A store had a "customer satisfaction" problem in the morning, so together with video footage, they could determine there was slow-starting employee who was at fault.

> One client discovered that customer satisfaction in a particular store > plummeted at ten o'clock every morning. Video from a closed-circuit security > camera revealed that the drop was caused by an employee who began work at > that hour and took a long time to get going. She was retrained, and the > frowns went away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unless I'm missing something, timestamps seem to be HappyOrNot's only defense against malicious users.

While that works against a toddler who relentlessly taps the unhappy button, it's an ineffective defense against a manager intent on manipulating feedback.

<comment><USER34> Or a camera pointed at the button

<comment><USER24> Less invasive potential starting point: compare number of impressions with number of sales, look for suspicious outliers. More sophisticated options could be derived from similar easy-to-get numbers, too, like amount of foot traffic, door openings, etc.

<comment><USER5> But this would never happen, since the gimmick is to deploy a system to generate vanity metrics, not solve any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The timing of this for me personally is very interesting. I encountered and used one for the first time at IKEA yesterday. Their terminal was aimed specifically at customers' parking experiences, which makes me think they already know what kind of responses they're going to get.

<comment><USER36> That's interesting that they'd measure the parking lot experience. I wonder how they can change the parking lot experience to experiment with happiness levels. Route traffic differently through the different aisles? Provide shuttle services? Add distractions/things to read/music on the walk into the store?

<comment><USER35> Yea, those are all really interesting suggestions! I assume they'll be trying some small changes to see how they affect the experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A portion of this story reminded me of the "Story of Manna" by Marshall Brain regarding the automated fast food restaurant.

These days, it would be very cheap and easy to wire up simple "HELP" buttons at all the trouble points in a restaurant, along with cameras and machine vision (other than cameras in the bathroom). And those sensors could create a synthesized view of a restaurant or department store, or whatever. The synth view can then inform where help is needed.

But these sensors, low energy cpu's and radios are already attainable at the cheap. And at industrial productions, could be as low as $.50 per button. I'm really surprised why nobody has done this yet - and I read the article and found that yes they have. It's called HappyOrNot, and it's for surveys and quality control of every metric in 1 variable.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just on general principle, I wouldn't hesitate to jab the frowny face at a gas station with blaring "Gas Station TV" crap on the pump screens.

</comment><comment><USER39> I run into these all the time in Finland. I have never actuated their buttons. I often have feelings about the quality of the establishment or the experience but they can never be expressed adequately by a 1-5 scale. I suspect the data gathered has a significant bias.

<comment><USER13> The thing that really annoys me is when the question doesn't match the way the data's used. My ISP asks for a rating out of 10 for "how likely would you be to recommend <ISP> to family and friends" after every support call, but the phone operators explicitly tell you that they're rated on the score that you give them. Those are two different questions - I'd like to rate the phone operator highly, the back-end technical administrators as average (they once assigned the same IP address to myself and another customer - it's disappointing that this is even a manual process!) and the ISP as a whole as 'could be improved' due to their lack of upstream bandwidth at peak times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Never seen this before.

Maybe this is evil of me, but I think it'd be super interesting to strictly vote "very unhappy" on everything. What kinds of changes do you think businesses would implement if people were still buying stuff despite claiming to feel very unhappy?

<comment><USER41> The interesting data is whether or not the business is getting better or worse over time, so any outliers in the data probably wouldn't change anything at all. If they're not outliers then a policy of voting "very unhappy" regardless is just adding to weight of other very unhappy voices.

<comment><USER13> The problem with this is that once every vote is "10 or bust" your signal saturates and becomes meaningless.

What they really need to ask, if you're right about what they want to measure, is "Was your experience today better / same / worse than last time?" And then they need to stop pushing for you to click "better" every time, "same" should be the usual response unless they've actually improved notably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think this is very clever. There is a lesson in doing something so simple, as opposed to our engineering reflex to over-engineer everything.

My first exposure to an effective business metric was my first consulting gig which was at Domino's Pizza HQ. Tom Monaghan was convinced that shorter delivery times led to increased sales. He had been unable to convince the franchisees of this, so he started a "Service and Delivery" program. Each month, secret shoppers would order pizza two different times, record the delivery time (starting when they hung up the phone) and rate the quality of the service. I wrote the program to crunch the numbers, sorting by sales, and sorting by delivery time. The two lists had a very high correlation. He published these lists each month in a company newsletter. When I started the process, the delivery time was like 34 minutes companywide, and a year later, the time had been reduced to 28 minutes average. The sales rankings validated his intuition.

(The program had to be discontinued, after there was a lawsuit relating to a death caused in an auto accident involving a pizza delivery driver.)

So the lesson here for us engineering types is, as patio11 says, is to find a way to do business value in what you are about to build.

</comment><comment><USER43> This seems simple, but it's actually very savvy. I don't have time to sit on an already long customer service call to answer a goddamn survey. I don't want to fill out yet another form on your gosh darn website. But let me mash one button on my way out? Hell yeah! Only too happy to vent or praise, if it literally takes a half second.

<comment><USER44> I agree. My first idle thought reading the article was "I could have done that.", My second thought was "I totally wouldn't, I would've made it way too complicated."

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I love these terminals, and I almost always push the feedback button when I have been in a store where they have one.

</comment><comment><USER46> One issue with these is that they don't always ask you to rate what you expect. For instance, my local Walmart has one with a small sign above asking you to "rate your experience with self checkout" yet everyone who checks out with a cashier uses the button assuming you are resting _any_ checkout experience.

</comment><comment><USER47> I recently visited some place with these stupid emoticon buttons, probably an airport restroom. They're the same as the Uber star system: press the smiley- est button or nothing at all.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hi can any statistician help? How many samples are we supposed to collect? Would this solution work in small boutiques where only you get 4 or 5 samples a day?

</comment><comment><USER49> I will not stop pushing the happy face on these fucked-up orwellian totems piece of alienation s __*.

</comment><comment><USER50> I still don't know what these things are- the only picture on mobile was a animation from an artist...

<comment><USER51> [https://www.happy-or-not.com/en/smiley-terminal/](https://www.happy-or- not.com/en/smiley-terminal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'd like to see a comparison of results of regular HON (where buttons are arranged bad to best) vs. the one with randomly positioned buttons vs. color only buttons (no smileys).

</comment><comment><USER53> It there a secret sauce or barrier to entry here? This seems like an a weekend project to replicate...

<comment><USER54> Doing it at scale. Making the terminals. Selling the service to businesses. Deploying the terminals.

<comment><USER55> Sales is the hard part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> How long until these NB-IoT devices get hacked cause havoc?

</comment><comment><USER57> They seem to me to be an efficient disease spreader, especially in flu season, I always press with the back of my knuckle for that reason.

<comment><USER58> The only place I've run into one of these so far was leaving an airport bathroom, which is pretty much one of the last places I'd want to share a button with strangers. There's a reason those places typically don't have doors.

<comment><USER22> Makes sense for "somewhat happy" ratings, but I imagine that if you found the bathroom disgusting, you would still find some way to press that button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I have nothing against the terminals themselves; they serve a good purpose. It's just that the smileys somehow look a bit disturbing to me. Maybe I'm in minority but jeezs why did they have to go with so goofy looking faces. The very happy face especially looks like it has a hefty underbite. But happy to see them succeeding, I think giving customers a way to vent out after bad customer experience matters a lot.</comment>


Sixth Edition of ABCL Released (Common Lisp for the JVM) - <AUTHOR> http://abcl-dev.blogspot.com/2017/06/abcl-150.html <comment><USER2> blogger didn't let me add a comment there.

The manual fixed one part of "compile to JAVA Bytecode", but still has the headline "Compiler to Java 5 Bytecode". Please remove the 5. It's now 6-8.</comment>


SixApart sells LJ... so friggin' WHAT?!? Somebody PLEASE write the bigger story here. - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/12/sixapart-sells.html <comment><USER2> this is a good point. lj is an enormous site and the rumored price (reported in a russian newspaper) seems low.

i'd also be interested in hearing about lj founder brad fitzpatrick's departure and the return reported as part of this deal.</comment>


The Real Face of Jesus - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbookmag.com/life/a41399/jesus-real-face/ <comment><USER2> I like that the idea of Christianity being in any way European gets ripped apart with evidence like this. Bring back European Paganism!</comment>


YCombinator Winter 2020 'Sorry' Popup - the-dude https://apply.ycombinator.com/interviews <comment> the-dude Is there any information / confirmation what this actually means at this specific time?

I get the 'Sorry' popup.

edit: as mentioned in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18290018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18290018) & [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19671556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19671556)

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point I think it's irrelevant. I got a 'Sorry' popup before I sent out my application.

<comment> the-dude Had you applied before?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was our first application. Also it makes sense that 'sorry' is on default considering the majority of applications don't get interviews. I'm just speculating. Im focusing on the 'at this time' component of your question.

<comment><USER2> I got to an interview, and gave a solid presentation to becoming an $50M/yr company. They're response was "how do you get to $1B". I honestly didn't know and even though I gave some BS answers they saw right through it. They aren't interested in successful companies, they want explosive companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plan 9 from Bell Labs (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html <comment><USER2> Plan 9 pops up on the front page from time to time, and I see a lot of people expressing a lot of misconceptions about it. I know there are at least 2 or 3 other Plan 9 users on this site, and they help try to clear up some of the questions.

I've done quite a bit of poking around in Plan 9, but of course I don't know all of it. I've hacked in the kernel and worked on the 64-bit version as well, I've fooled with the compilers, and I've hacked on the window manager.

If anyone wants to ask questions about some aspect of Plan 9, I'll do my best to answer--and if I can't, I bet others can jump in and take over. It would be great to clear up some of the misconceptions, myths, and FUD!

<comment><USER3> Ok, first question, why aren't we all using Plan 9 instead of a linux-based OS? Maybe more importantly, what could the next upstart kernel/OS do different than Plan 9 if it wants to be more successful?

<comment><USER4> * It's not enough to be better to displace something ubiquitous (as unix like systems are today). You likely have to be orders of magnitude "better".

* Do not be hostile to your potential users. (The community that formed around Plan 9 as it went open source were quite hostile, there's no need for public beatings just because someone suggests to port X11 to Plan 9 even if it's a bad idea).

<comment><USER5> > The community that formed around Plan 9 as it went open source were quite > hostile

I remember at FOSDEM a few years back, there was this Spanish dude and some of his friends, who were frothing-at-the-mouth fans of Plan 9, and, as they became progressively more inebriated in the place where a bunch of us were staying, he kept ranting louder and louder (and more by himself) about the perceived injustices and deficiencies of a world where Linux was more popular than something so beautiful, so elegant, as Plan 9.

It was ... a bit disturbing to watch. That kind of passion should be reserved for relationships with other people.

I think part of the problem with its diffusion was that it only became free software a decade _after_ Linux, with no clear niche to attack (see: Crossing the Chasm) and make its own.

<comment><USER6> I like how you use "perceived" to modify Linux's deficiencies but "frothing- at-the-mouth" to describe individuals whose perspectives differ from yours. It's just so nicely objective.

<comment><USER5> Reading comprehension: "perceived" refers to the "injustices of a world ..." in my comment. Also, I've met plenty of people who disagree with me who don't froth at the mouth. For instance, BSD vs Linux used to be a Topic of Debate on the internet, and often the BSD guys would be fairly rational about what they preferred (of course some of them frothed too, just like some of the Linux fans).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading through the archives of the Plan 9 mailing list at <http://9fans.net/archive> you can follow along with the progress of Linux and the web as they completely displaced and then decimated operating systems research, culminating in famous Pike's utah2000 paper. You see each casual user show up on the mailing list demanding "modern" features, arguing about the license, screeching about security "holes" they don't understand, before, ultimately, declaring that they are retreating to Linux (or, later, Mac OSX), where at least they can play Flash games and login to turbotax.com and watch Youtube videos.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish it had stuck.

In a related vein, I idly wonder if there's a project around intended to bring useful security to a practical Unix derivative. Nobody uses a big timesharing box any longer (for all reasonable definitions of nobody); and the protections mooted to keep "users" away from "wheel" are basically pointless and counterproductive in a world where attacks come from outside. Apple's code- signing is one reaction to this new reality; what's the current status of capability based systems?

<comment><USER9> You can do quite a bit in Linux with CGroups and SELinux. Projects making good use of those are Fedora, Systemd and Chromium browser.

<comment><USER8> I'll check it out. Next up, doing away with POSIX.

<comment><USER2> POSIX defines a pretty good framework, which is why Plan 9 is POSIX-ish. They changed things that they thought needed improvement. I just wanted to point out that doing away with POSIX merely to do away with POSIX isn't necessarily wise; if you don't have a better idea to use instead, you'll just end up reimplementing much of POSIX under another name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I sent an email to Bell Labs a couple of weeks ago suggesting that Plan 9 be released as "public domain" code. I even suggested that this could be a great way to honour the late Dennis Ritchie (who worked there, of course), getting the code "out there" for all and sundry to use, no strings attached. Unfortunately, I didn't get a reply, so I guess the email was deleted without being read. ( Probably thought "Arrrrgh! Another one of those P.D. zealots!" ) ( And they'd be right.... ;) )

I just think it is TRAGIC and a HUGE waste that such an elegant and beautifully-designed OS as Plan 9 continues to basically sit in a backwater, ignored and unused by almost everyone. And it is sitting there when I am _convinced_ that a P.D. release would see its use rocket into the stratosphere.

 __What would be the harm __in releasing it to the public domain? It is already open-source so it's not as if any revenue would be lost. It would be a good P.R. opportunity for Bell Labs too (and as I say, a nice way of honouring D.R.

Let's face it - if Unix itself had been released as P.D. in the first place, then there would have been no need to reinvent it (as with the BSDs and Linux). It could simply have been continually improved upon. That's where I'm "coming from", as it were.

SQLite shows what is possible with P.D. code. It is apparently used in darned- near every smartphone out there, so it's not as if companies won't use P.D. code if it is good enough. If it meets their needs, they will go for it.

<comment><USER11> The LPL which Plan 9 now uses is basically equivalent to the BSD licence. It's non-viral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The linked text is from the 90s. Not exactly news. But Plan 9 was a big improvement over Unix. Unfortunately, good things are often ignored.

<comment><USER13> A lot of the ideas in Plan 9 were ported to Linux. UTF-8, the /proc filesystem, and the idea of union filesystems. Also Plan 9 is arguably better because of what's _not_ in it <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhatIsNotInPlanNine>

<comment><USER11> /proc in Linux is nothing like /proc in Plan 9 though. Not only that the exported files are completely different conceptually and in their internal format, but on Linux I can't bind /proc from another box and do remote debugging with tools that know nothing about where the process runs.

Also Linux union mounts are clunky and not as useful as they are in Plan 9 because you can't have private namespaces if you are not root.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of my friends from University developed quite a bit for Plan 9. It's nostalgic to see this again.

<comment><USER15> what university was that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Phew, Nostalgia indeed. I looked a Plan 9 back in late 90's when we were doing research for alternative OS's and ways of sharing stuff securely across a network without the cruft of DFS...

It had a lot of promise. What did become of it I wonder?

<comment><USER17> Coraid ships ATA over ethernet storage based on Plan 9.

Bell Labs still uses plan 9 internally and develops it.

9front is a community fork of Plan 9 with a bunch of interesting changes.

There's a small but interested community of die-hard plan 9'ers that care about it, and the principles it set forth. A lot of it came from some very good, very sane development with people who often spend more time thinking than coding (a virtue we could all benefit from I think)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> it's a shame the first paragraph is exactly what we're once again moving away from. all hail cloud computing

</comment><comment><USER19> And the relationship to Inferno is...?

<comment><USER20> Inferno is kind of like Plan 9 running on a VM, with its own peculiarites like a really nice shell language. Having a VM, versus integrating with the host os like plan9port or cygwin, lets you use new features of the os like directory binding and the /env directory of shell variables. There's an os command to run programs on the underlying host, be it windows, windows with cygwin, or linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Let me know when they release a decent editor for it...

<comment><USER2> As gchpaco points out, both sam and acme are pretty usable. Acme makes a good enough programming editor that I use it for all my coding at work, while I keep a tarball of the original sam port on a server for those times when I have to use a system with a crappy version of vi and no admin privileges to install something better.

Oh, and you can run Vim on Plan 9 now. But it's kind of like visiting a foreign country and eating only McDonalds.

<comment><USER20> I used emacs for 11 years (93-04) and then acme-like editors (wily, plan9port acme, Acme SAC, Inferno acme) for 8 years (04-). Acme (especially guide files) made a distinct and pervasive change to my working style that emacs never did: sped me up, prevented me from forgetting, gave me help just when I need it, and reduced errors. Inferno's VM gave me a minimal unix environment whose executable and my scripts I can take via usb to clients' machines.

<comment><USER22> Is there any articles about workflow/philosophy of sam ? I recall stumbling upon few videos, too introductory to be interesting compared to the emacs/vim- fu we're used too nowadays.

<comment><USER20> <http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/> reproduces the original paper by Rob Pike, which goes into some detail, and at length. <http://sam.cat-v.org/> collects links to sam implementations, papers, and paraphernalia (such as ssam, which I originally wrote with Russ Cox). To better learn sam in a workaday role, figure out why the sam idioms at <http://sam.cat-v.org/cheatsheet/> work (I have Acme versions of many of these at [https://raw.github.com/catenate/acme- fonts/master/test/1/acm...](https://raw.github.com/catenate/acme- fonts/master/test/1/acme/Edit/sam)).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apache BookKeeper a replicated log service - <AUTHOR> http://bookkeeper.apache.org/ <comment><USER2> You had me interested at "replicated log service", and then lost me at Java.</comment>


Startups are about giving back - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsgivingback.com/

<comment><USER2> I hate the term 'giving back'. What has someone given you that you should give back?

Why not just say, 'give'?

<comment><USER3> I feel that in the software community we're standing on the shoulders of generous giants who have coded and open sourced so much of our tech stacks; written guides, tutorials, and tests; answered our questions in forums and chats. Granted, this seems like a more entrepreneur centric project, but I'm pretty sure that we're all benefiting from the works of entrepreneurs anyways.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any startups looking for young programmers? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm a student from a high school in Toronto, ON.
I'm looking for a co-op placement I can do for credits. I would like to work in web/Android development.
Are there any startups that are willing to take in young students (for free!) out there?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> What are the conditions that will give you credits? usa based company? incorporated? contracts? more information please

</comment><comment><USER3> A bit of note:- Do mention how to get in contact with you?</comment>


KH-12 Kennan Keyhole Secret Military Spy Satellite Photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-debris/astrophotography/view-keyhole-satellite/ <comment><USER2> Even more striking is the fact this was (likely) taken _by hand_ [1], and with just a 10-inch aperture telescope!

[1] [http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space- debris/astrophotogr...](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space- debris/astrophotography/astrophotography-space-debris/)

</comment><comment><USER3> website seems down, but google cache here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9jrWlnp...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9jrWlnpM_5wJ:www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space- debris/astrophotography/view-keyhole-satellite/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER4> If only we had a KH-12 on the ground we could use to take pictures of KH-12's overhead...

<comment><USER5> You have much bigger telescopes than the KH-12 on the ground, it won't help you much tho, magnification doesn't work with telescopes as you expect, and you can always stack lenses to get more magnification but it won't matter.

Large telescopes have a much bigger field of view that's pretty much it. Even angular resolution wont matter that much at these distances, satellites that look like a blob on a prosumer telescope will look like a blob even if taken from a full scale observatory.

<comment><USER6> That's not really correct. Most large telescopes have a small FoV for starters (couple of arcminutes at best). Bigger telescopes gather more light and can thus see fainter objects.

The biggest limit to angular resolution (beyond some rather small diameter optic) is atmospheric seeing. This prohibits you from resolving anything smaller than 0.5-2 arcseconds (depending on the site conditions) regardless of the optic used.

But there are to compensate for atmospheric seeing: Adaptive optics (AO) and Lucky Imaging (you don't integrate for a long time, but only take very short exposures and once in a while you get lucky and the atmosphere doesn't distort the image much and you get a very high resolution image). AO is what's usually available at very large telescopes, while Lucky Imaging is usually done on medium to small telescopes. And for LI gathering more light (and therefore a bigger optic) does help.

So yes.. with a bigger telescope and a fast(er) camera you would probably be able to take a better picture (and moving to a place with good seeing would certainly help as well).</comment></comment></comment>


Short URL hints / autodiscovery RFC - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/a/snaplog.com/wiki/short_url_hints Love it or hate it URL shorteners are here to stay. Here is a draft proposal for a simple spec that would allow them to play nice with sites that already have their own short URLs <comment><USER2> Very interesting proposal here... though I think having the consumer do an http request to get the "link" from HEAD is a bit too much to ask, for a few reasons:

* It takes bandwidth

* It's (presumably) before a pageload, and is blocking... the latency to load the original URL to get the "link" gets added to the consumer's pageload time.

* Now you have to deal with "timeouts"

Ideally, "link" should be used by the browser, and not the web service. By the way, other such auto-discovery systems are OpenSearch (first proposed by Amazon, and is pretty widely adopted) and FavIcon.

At any rate, I think tinyurl, and bit.ly, etc, are a pretty fast and easy solution at this point. They should improve their services by including a "title" attribute to the link they give you, which says the URL and/or page title it's going to.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback!

good point about the bandwidth and timeouts.

also, browsers could definitely use the link information. Thought the idea is for the twitter clients (and other micro-blogging tools) to not obfuscate a URL with shorteners in the 1st place.

granted some sites will always need tinyurl.com, etc but there should be a way for sites to specify their own short URL versions of their long URLs

also as i understand it, adding a title attribute would break the purpose of using a URL shortener - i could see the link with title would take up more space than the original URL in HTML code.

also thanks for the opens search and fav-icon suggestions. i will update the RFC.

<comment><USER2> _also as i understand it, adding a title attribute would break the purpose of using a URL shortener - i could see the link with title would take up more space than the original URL in HTML code._

I always thought URL shortening was just to make the HREF short... not the source HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So is it short_url or short_uri or short-url or short-uri or "short url" or "short uri" or shorturl or shorturi?

"shortlink (<http://code.google.com/p/shortlink/>) doesn't have any of the disadvantages of its predecessors...

Sam

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://laughingmeme.org/2009/04/03/url-shortening-hinting/>

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://wiki.snaplog.com/short_url#TOC-Suggestions-from- commu...](http://wiki.snaplog.com/short_url#TOC-Suggestions-from-community)

the rev attribute is deprecated from HTML5

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The spec seems to assume you are using XHTML. Maybe it should make it clear that in HTML4 pages the self-closing tag syntax is not required?</comment>


Basic HMM algorithms in Lisp?  - <AUTHOR>

Hello All,
I am in a rush and I am almost certain that if I did some better searching, I could find such code without having to bother all of you, but...
Does anyone know where I can find some LISP code that does all the basic HMM algorithms (forward, Viterbi, Baum-Welch, etc.)? I could definitely roll my own, but, like I said, I am in a rush these days.
Regards, MM <comment><USER2> Lush probably has them, maybe biolisp.</comment>


Ask HN: Were you hired by posting to "Who wants to be hired thread"? - <AUTHOR> The volume of responses on the threads deter me from posting to it.
Have you successfully landed a project or a job by posting to it? What was your experience?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Mostly positive based in previous questions "Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from "Who wants to be hired?" threads?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330818) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062296)</comment>


The Eclipse of Liberalism (1900) - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/the-eclipse-of-liberalism/ <comment><USER2> "The following was printed in the newspaper "The Nation" on August 9, 1900."</comment>


Reversing aging in mice using young blood plasma - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1?2 <comment><AUTHOR> Excellent twitter breakdown from David Sinclair, PhD: [https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715...](https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715..).

Some key points:

\- _The result is so literally incredible that even the first author, Prof. Steve Horvath, didn 't believe it at first. I suggested he check if the rats were mixed up, but he assured me he checked their genomes. The rats weren't mixed up and the data is the data._

\- _Accumulation of fat in old tissues was greatly reduced. All health-related blood biomarkers they assessed (lipids, liver function, blood cells) "were altered towards the values of young rats, without exception."_

\- _Level of oxidative stress, and (wait for it) senescent cells were reduced "by a very considerable degree". Presumably, the immune system cleared the senescent cells. This is what the field is looking for._

<comment><USER2> That tweet has been deleted. Can you post the whole thing? Wonder why it was deleted.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't, I just wrongly copied the link. Here's the proper one: [https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715...](https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1259912928695857152)</comment></comment></comment>


WWII Atomic Bomb Project Had More Than 1,500 "Leaks" - <AUTHOR> http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2014/08/manhattan-project-leaks/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating subject, title seems a little baity, though. There were 1500 investigated reports of leaks, most of which were more along the lines of a guy saying a little too much to family, store clerks, etc. Foreign spies, not so much.

Still, that's an amazingly small number of leaks for such a huge project.

<comment><USER3> "Foreign spies, not so much."

The Manhattan Project (along with many other portions of the US government at the time) was in fact plagued by Soviet spies.

<comment><USER4> more like foolish "useful idiots" who leaked to the soviets because they thought we ought to share with our allies rather than a famous 5 type spy ring.

One could argue that Roosevelt was also taken in by uncle Joe to a lesser extent if you read the history of the various 3 power summits.

<comment><USER5> Yes that's typically who actually spies for governments, people that are manipulated by the field agents. A typical agent's job is to recruit and collect data from those recruits.

For a fascinating take on this I suggest the book _See No Evil_ by Bob Baer. He talks a lot about his experiences as a CIA agent doing just that in a lot of interesting places during the cold war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently read "Surely you're joking Mr Feyman" which had a number of anecdotes about the Manhattan Project's security from sneaking through fences to picking safes. It makes the whole project sound a little more human, even if the results weren't.

You can draw several analogies to computer systems and security products as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> someone here recommended this book a month or so ago [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb)

I'm about halfway through, well worth the (long!) read.

<comment><USER8> I've been reading "Command and Control" after it was linked here a month or so ago [1]. It's fascinating to see just how lax the US was about nuclear safety for almost 2 decades before really researching how to make nuclear and hydrogen bombs safe (the book doesn't cover the Soviet side of the story, but it's my understanding they were just as risk prone if not more so).

Excellent read, highly recommended. First book I've had time to fit in in a long time and I'm really glad it's such a joy. There are many paragraphs that make you laugh quite unexpectedly.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/nukes-of- hazard](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/nukes-of-hazard)

<comment><USER9> >>(the book doesn't cover the Soviet side of the story, but it's my understanding they were just as risk prone if not more so).

Right at the end of the book there is a few pages about Soviet systems, saying that there were always inherently safer, because no one trusted anyone,so they had launch codes and interlocking safety mechanisms pretty much from the very beginning of nuclear age.

Would also very highly recommend that book.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the Soviets had that tight controls and they often just came down to trusting the officers in control of weapons - during the Cuban Missile Crisis the commanders of troops on Cuba, and of submarines, could have used tactical weapons to defend themselves:

"the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow"

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And yet the soviets got wind of it when they saw that at some point there wasn't any american research about nuclear decay published anymore.

</comment><comment><USER12> Url changed from [http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/08/secret- history-...](http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/08/secret-history-atom- bomb-now-available-full-online/92156/), which points (indirectly) to this.

The historical docs themselves are at [https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan_district.jsp](https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan_district.jsp).

</comment><comment><USER13> And this is why we landed on the moon.

Seriously. The Manhattan project involved 130,000 people at its peak and lasted four years, and it leaked.

The Apollo program involved 400,000 people at its peak and lasted eleven years.

<comment><USER14> Ditto for all conspiracy theories that require massive numbers of people to be involved. Notably many 9/11 conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER8> Would 9/11 really need that many people to stage? The actual plot was executed by a fairly small number of people; surely faking it wouldn't take more than an order of magnitude more, especially when you control much of the process of investigation.

I don't believe it was a conspiracy, but I also don't think that there's a fundamental reason why it definitely couldn't have been.

<comment><USER14> I remember an estimate was that it would require 7,000 people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Open source or closed source (business model)? - <AUTHOR> I and a collaborator have started a project with components and infrastructure to build line-of-business applications using ReactJS and .Net. We have planned to make it open source in a first moment and try to sell support and other services. We are working on this project for two months, and we realized that it will be a lot more work than we thought. Now we are not sure whether we should be creating a company with paid components and services (yet another one =), or if we should continue with the open source idea, and charge only for offered services.
In the open source argumentation side, if the project succeeds, then we may have additional contributions from other developers world wide. But, is that a real pro? For a line-of-business project? Who's going to contribute since the target audience is generally companies instead of individuals? Another pro is that we may have more visibility, maybe faster than if we made it closed source.
In the closed source side, there is the pro of making it more profitable... but maybe this is just a misconception? That's the question. Is it easy to sell components these days, or is it easier to sell services only, and not worry about payd license?
This is the project repo: https://github.com/gearz-lab
What business model do you recommend us? Advices are very very welcome! And I'll be greatful forever =D
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Have you considered a hybrid of the two models? Have an open source framework, but build and sell closed source components?

I tend to find that business customers require a mixture of generic services and custom software. You can offer a basic set of functionality as open source, but sell customization or niche components.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking on making it all GPL, and sell services/support, so that enterprises could use it internally or externally on GPLed software, but when they needed to build closed source external software, they'd buy a license.

There is a problem with GPL though: we cannot sell licenses if we merge in other contributors code, because we wouldn't have the copyright to license that under another license other than GPL. That wouldn't be a problem if we never accept contributions.

We could also sell support, consulting, build up entire software solutions... the problem then is time. At this moment there is only me and a friend in the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would go freemium. Make the base app open-source and free (as in freedom, though you could also make it free as in beer, too).

You could do something wonky with your license where it's free or nearly so for noncommercial use and then scale up the licensing costs by some metric for commercial use.

Or you could go the normal freemium model and determine via beta customers what businesses will actually pay for and then charge to do that well. I'd pick this option.

Realistically though, if it's the type of product that only enterprise will ever be interested in, then the discussion is mostly moot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our focus is in enterprise solutions for now... but it could interest individuals building web applications.

We also thought that a good option would be to make it all open source, and build our own applications with that. These applications would be our source of income, instead of the core framework and components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought about this a lot for my project, a suite of NLP tools.

I decided to go for a dual license. You can use the project under the Affero GPL, or you can buy a commercial license for a fee. The idea is that the GPL'ed version would be unattractive to many companies, and the fee is small.

I still have people interested in contributing to the project, even though they have to sign a contributor's agreement that allows me to license their contributions outside the AGPL.

</comment><comment><USER5> You might want to read this thread on HN before you decide:

"I am done with the freemium business model"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3416108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3416108)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm... it seems to me that's a specific of that kind of business. But it's good to know about these failures, and their circumstances.

Great thread. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd give serious thought to these two articles:

"Hey, software makers: Skip the sales team. Go freemium to build a $1B business"

[http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/10/hey-software-makers- skip-t...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/10/hey-software-makers-skip-the- sales-team-go-freemium-to-build-a-1b-business/)

And... [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of- zenef...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-zenefits- founder-parker-conrad-2015-2)

<comment><AUTHOR> My god!!! I've always been a big fan of Attlassian... but I could never imagine it was a $3bi business. That's a powerful example. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Selling support is difficult to scale. Especially with only one or two people on your team. The only real way for it to work at this level is if it's support through email only (or you will have angry customers and lose them fast).

It would be better to sell a proprietary app, build up some capital and then hire a team to scale the support of your OSS side of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> We thought about using the framework and components to make an app and sell that instead. The only downside is that we'd have to focus on two things now: the open source core framework and components, and the proprietary app. On the other hand, what you said makes sense, maybe an app is a better starting point in terms of strategy. We'd have to think what kind of app we could build too... these decisions are giving me a lot of headaches (in the literal meaning of it).</comment></comment>


Inflatable eyeballs - <AUTHOR> https://www.designsinair.com/inflatable-sculptures/inflatable-eyeballs/#gallery/1b966cb2f5b79606a86079628d1abccd/168 <comment><USER2> Kinda neat, kinda freaky .. all in trees ...

I mean, the artists could have got a bit more creative. I guess it's easy to personify trees though</comment>


Measuring and Simplifying at Happiest - <AUTHOR> http://hq.happie.st/instrumenting-happiest/ <comment><USER2> Given I've been waiting for the page to load for 5 minutes I'm assuming their server isn't at it's Happiest.

Text Only Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://hq.happie.st/instrumenting- happiest/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1)</comment>


Homeless lose battle to keep Third Street camp – sort of - <AUTHOR> http://wmbr.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for putting the wrong url, here's the correct one: [https://www.wlwt.com/article/homeless-lose-battle-to-keep- th...](https://www.wlwt.com/article/homeless-lose-battle-to-keep-third-street- camp-sort- of/22630920?utm_campaign=WLWT&utm_content=5b6501b804d3016f5501a346&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=trueAnthem:+New+Content)</comment>


An introduction to medieval cities and cloud security - <AUTHOR> https://arcentry.com/blog/an-introduction-to-medieval-cities-and-cloud-security/ <comment> yjftsjthsd-h This is indeed an excellent description of one security model. I would, however, add a note to the reader that there has been some discussion over the last few years about whether it's actually safe to have an inner trusted zone, or whether every single house has to be completely defended to the point where a compromise of the outer wall is almost a non-event. (Google's BeyondCorp being the best known example)

<comment><USER2> Note that there is still the concept of "inner trusted zones" with something like BeyondCorp, the difference being that access to the zones is controlled by credential via an Access Proxy rather than by network topology.

Of note, individual servers do NOT need to be individually fully defended, they are protected by a firewall which only allows the Access Proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> quick search shows this Peter Norvig blog

[http://norvig.com/carcassonne.html](http://norvig.com/carcassonne.html)

fun

</comment><comment><USER4> I love these types of articles, great work!</comment>


Rapid packing container - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xExVzADFeWo

<comment><USER2> I'm NOT an engineer but I get several packages a day from various vendors. Their are so many flaws in this design, at least from the video demonstration of it. I hate when people disable comments and voting for a video, clearly they are afraid of critics. If the box is as easy to open as they show on the video (push down and it pops open) will lead to it opening during transit. Good idea but I think their lack of actual shipping experience or the process a package goes through is leading them to make assumptions that are incorrect. Also, cardboard is already 100% recyclable so reducing use of cardboard isn't a benefit for shipping other than weight. It makes the box more likely to take damage... Tape isn't an issue with recycling the cardboard as far as I know.</comment>


Advertising is devastating to my well-being - <AUTHOR> http://briancarper.net/blog/523/advertising-is-devastating-to-my-well-being <comment><USER2> Dupe. This was discussed at length (144 comments!) back in March. I remember because a) I mocked the pathetic _"It so happens that advertisements are devastating to my well-being."_ statement and got voted up, and b) a swarm of pro and anti ad blocker posts hit HN over the following 24 hours. It was almost as fun as the iPad launch.

Added: Aha, here it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172302>

<comment><USER2> Does flagging even work on HN? This seems a prime candidate so I'd have assumed it'd have picked up a fair number by now. We're seeing not only a dupe link, but a dupe discussion too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Businesses exist to milk you of as much of your money as possible._

How sad. I wonder if OP actually believes this or if it was just part of his rant. Or maybe he didn't get enough hugs from his first boss.

I'd like to think that there are still many of us who need to earn enough to insure continuation of business without sacrificing our souls or the original purpose of all our hard work.

<comment><USER4> Are you perhaps unfamiliar with capitalism?

I do not think it is somehow a controversial statement that employees of a corporation have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profit. He may have stated it in a controversial or misleading way, but it is not untrue.

Additionally, it seems you have interpreted it as some sort of polemic regarding work/life balance, an interpretation which I do not believe is supported by the text.

<comment><USER5> Capitalism is not about "milk(ing) you of as much of your money as possible." Yes, maximize revenue _within the context of the law and ethics_. His comment about milking people of all possible is the hallmark of charlatans and con men.

<comment><USER6> Well, "maximize revenue within the context of the law and ethics." leads to a standard of manipulating legal policy however possible and defining subjective values like "ethics" in the a context favorable to an organizations motives.

Any company that can't or won't do these things is at a severe disadvantage to the competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hrm. Not voting this one up.

His suggestion (don't know if it's facetious or not) of requiring a 'contract' is obviously a non-starter. Any site that tried that would lose visitors to non-contract sites, and since most people don't block ads, the contract site would simply be losing revenue.

> I run my own website(s) at a loss specifically because I'd rather pay out of > my own pocket than force people to look at ads. Admittedly my sites are so > small that it's not much money. But there you have it. If I had to generate > revenue to keep my sites going, I would find a way other than advertising to > do it. Or I'd shut them down.

"Find another way". Uh-huh. Like? And, if you think the content is good, wouldn't shutting them down be a loss for the world?

To hijack the thread for something more useful, a concrete example I'm wrestling with is <http://langpop.com> \- people like it a lot, but programmers are also adept at ignoring advertisements, so it doesn't get much revenue. Now, it's mostly a fun project - it wasn't something I ever created to make money on, but I'm getting to a point in my life where it's time to do more things to make money and do fewer "let's see where it'll go" fun projects. (This saddens me, because I love to explore and play and create, but c'est la vie). In any case, people like it, so there must be some value in it, and I've certainly invested some time in creating it, but so far I have not really found a way to _capture_ some of the created value for myself.

<comment><USER8> I don't think he intended the suggestion of requiring a contract to be a "starter." Although he'd love internet content providers to take a realistic assessment of what their content is really worth (My favorite movie critic put ads on his site a few years ago and I read it much less frequently now, even with adblock) what he reasonably expects is for companies to stop whining about adblock.

<comment><USER7> I'm not too worked up about adblock - the people who use it likely dont' click anyway. However, were the internet to move to an equilibrium with adblock as the norm because of massive adoption, it would cause serious problems for many content providers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >(By contrast, books (for example) are awesome. I pay for a book, and then I read the book start-to-finish with no ads, no distractions. A few pages at the back maybe, but I can ignore those. Books are nice.)

This reminded me of a line from Neil Postman's book _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ :

>Imagine what you would think of me, and this book, if I were to pause here...and then proceed to write a few words in behalf of United Airlines or the Chase Manhattan Bank. You would rightly think that I had no respect for you.

<comment><USER10> That sums up my opinion about the article as well. What I wonder though, is why people don't relate their distaste for online advertising to ads via conventional media. Advertisements are equally frustrating regardless of medium, and are by definition disrespectful to any half-educated person (ie. not a "consumer").

<comment><USER9> It sounds like the author _does_ relate his distaste for online advertising to ads on conventional media. He notes that he doesn't listen to commercial radio or watch commercial television.

<comment><USER11> Yes, by grossly overestimating the ratio of content to ads, and ignoring the fact that they can be ignored in those media too. My newspaper ads can be removed and thrown away - the first thing I do. My radio station is 50 minutes of music per hour (or 100% if I listen to public radio). Tivo solves the television problem.

He's a precious fusspot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you don't want to look at ads, just be prepared to pay subscription fees for everything.

<comment><USER13> If only this were an option!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, an entire blog post dedicated to a straw man argument.

The opening sentences of the linked article:

 _There's an interesting article on Ars Technica about how blocking ads is somehow unethical, and "devastating to the sites you love". The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake of a company's profits... it would be hilarious if it wasn't so repugnant._

Now, from the Ars Technica article referred to:

 _My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil._

<comment><AUTHOR> Whether OP's response was emotional or not, it touches the matter.

Note it's very easy to look for fallacies when you are detached from the subject. The question is if the person doing this wants to make the world a better place in his way or is just a policeman for the sake of verbal purity..

<comment><USER14> It touches _a_ matter, but not the matter of the article he thinks he is arguing against.

The OP is against advertising, on two grounds: 1) that he doesn't want to be exposed to things against his will, and 2) that business is by its very nature unethical.

You're right when you say that these are emotional arguments, and not logical ones.

The fact that the OP "wants to make the world a better place in his way" isn't comforting to me; as Shaw pointed out, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My point isn't one of "verbal purity"; rather, I'm just trying to take the words seriously enough to follow through their implications.

(I assume, by the way, that the OP would be upset to find that his post was linked to on HN, because that link could be viewed as a form of advertising for the piece, and we know how he feels about advertising....)

<comment><USER15> > (I assume, by the way, that the OP would be upset to find that his post was > linked to on HN, because that link could be viewed as a form of advertising > for the piece, and we know how he feels about advertising....)

I'm not in love with the OP's piece myself but I think this is being unfair to it. There's at least a quantitative if not a qualitative difference between informally posting a link in a forum designed for it and the sort of weaponized mass psychology modern day advertising has (d)evolved into.

The piece is wooly and rambling and not a particularly coherent argument, please don't sink to its level when criticizing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Billboards actually break my train of thought when I'm walking around. I hate that.

<comment><USER17> I remember reading that they're illegal in some south american countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18>
         Stop trying to track my every move online. How many    people understand tracking cookies? How many companies make it clear that every click is being recorded and data-mined? How is this ethical?

This is ethical in same way that some one can record information about you walking down a private street. There is nothing un ethical about data mining

</comment><comment><USER19> On the internet at least the solution is simple. It's called Ad-art (<http://add-art.org/>). Advertisement elsewhere, such as on billboards is more problematic to deal with, but if you are at the cutting edge of augmented reality this is not necessarily a problem either. [http://blognostic.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/what-augmented- re...](http://blognostic.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/what-augmented-reality-can- do-for-real-reality/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This simply rehashes and old and badly made argument from months ago...

I mean, the Ars article was a bit "out there" but he clearly hasn't really read it (e.g. _The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake of a company's profits... it would be hilarious if it wasn't so repugnant._ )

<comment><USER2> You realize this IS months old, dude? :-) It's a dupe, as is this discussion.

<comment><USER20> Heh, oops.

Oh well; I saw another post from this blog earlier in the day and never really considered that it was an earlier entry :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In a twist that the author certainly did not intend to happen, his description of books as an ad-free medium led me to think of a model where out of copyright books are printed with in-page ads and distributed for free. Would that work? :)

<comment><USER22> I've actually seen books with ads before, it is not a new concept. Those were rather old books, too (pre-internet). Only very few ads, though, maybe three pages in the whole book.

I like your idea with the out of print books!

<comment><USER23> Filling covers of the books with ads is very common (I can find them in many books printed in the last 100 years, mostly textbooks, technical manuals and paperbacks, of course), but I haven't seen ads anywhere else, yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I disliked this article the first time and I still dislike. Tears from crying don't solve problems, busting your ass and coming up with innovatives solution do. I agree advertising sucks... a lot, but we can fix it. If there is discussion here, I hope it's on how to fix the problem, not cry about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I guess he doesn't use Google

</comment><comment><USER26> The very big difference between buying a book and listening to a tv, radio programme or reading a website is that for the former you actually pay about £10 or £20, for the latter you do not.

As for the contract point, I think there is an implicit contract between the publisher and the reader that they can access the content for free as long as they are willing to accept the slight intrusion of the ads.

As for the ethical matter, I do think that he is being a free loader, accessing content which is free only because of the many who do not use an ad blocker. In one way therefore he is cheating and that is unethical. It is perfectly fine, selfish and normal behaviour, but hardly angelic or ethical simply because he is not fulfilling his part of the bargain.

If he hates adverts so much and a significant minority acts as he does then publishers will either be forced to start charging for their content as Times Online has began to do and as they do for books, or valuable information will stop being generated, thus, making us all poorer.

Finally, this is capitalism, if you do not like it, you might be welcomed in North Korea or at least in China.

<comment><USER27> Pretty sure I pay for my cable television, and for magazines, which are nothing but ads. I'm aware of the business models behind these, but unfortunately I'm not given a choice to pay more for completely ad free media.

<comment><USER26> Depends what magazine you read. Speaking of the ones I buy occasionally I actually like their advertisement and in some way to me it is as valuable as the content. How else would I find out of what to do on a Saturday night or which firm to send an application to for a job, or which college is better, or about the new cool car that has come on, or the very cool new iphone etc.

They do not annoy me. Adverts become annoying when they are repeated on and on and besides adverts are easy to ignore in most cases.

<comment><USER16> Isn't the price of a magazine more a filter of intent than something to cover costs? That's why if you cancel your subscription they'll offer to renew you at a fraction of the advertised price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ridiculous, ignorant, and a repost from months ago.</comment>


Show HN: Tdo – keyboard driven, hackable todo list - <AUTHOR> https://mstijak.github.io/tdo/ <comment><USER2> Wow, really neat. I like how simple it is but for non-HN users, the onboarding could probably be a bit better. As another user mentioned, if the user visits for the first time, prefill with some tutorial content for the user to learn how to use it.

How can I be sure this is stored? There is nothing in the UI indicating that the stuff I write in the app will stay until the next reload or next time I open my browser, neither is there a Save button somewhere. You should ensure the user that the stuff is saved somehow, maybe with a "Saving" indicator or similar.

Also something I couldn't figure out (or maybe this is a feature request), how can I move items across the list? Tried dragging it to another list, but doesn't seem to work.

In general, love the simplicity, keep doing great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good idea. I'll add it to my list :)

It seems that you have missed the Settings and Help tabs :)

Tasks are saved in localStorage. Alternatively, you may create a GitHub Gist access token and save it there. Just follow the instructions on the Settings page. It's easy.

You can move tasks by selecting them and pressing Ctrl + Left/Right/Up/Down.

I'm not sure if drag/drop is really needed, once you get used to it.

<comment><USER2> Ah, indeed I did! But I was also hinting on that there is a reason I missed those.

By making it easier for people to discover these features, you make it a better app :)

So instead of writing in the settings that it's saved in localStorage, _show_ that it's actually saved somehow.

Also, if someone tries to drag a task, give them a hint to use ctrl+arrows instead of just having it in the help.

<comment><USER3> Valid points. For starters, maybe just show the Help section by default for new users?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This matches really well on what I think when I imagine what I would like to see the application landscape to trend towards. So, good job!

Some background: I do not like terminal (curses) applications, and renaissance around them. But I understand why they they are attractive to some; they provide simple, focused, efficient, keyboard driven UIs. The reason why I'm not attracted to them is that I think that the same can be achieved more elegantly (and simply better) without the limitations of 80s character video terminals. And tdo is a demonstration of that idea; an UI that is not too far removed from something that you could imagine finding in a terminal (admittedly the inverted colorscheme might have influenced my initial impression), but still with benefits of more modern tech.

Sadly the modern tech in this case (and in many others) comes with huge amount of baggage; html5+browser stack can't really be described as lightweight, if compared to something like ncurses+rxvt stack. This is the one thing I really would like to see; a native UI toolkit aimed squarely for making applications like this with weight more comparable to ncurses than anything else. Sure, it wouldn't be replacing things like Qt or HTML5 for everything, and probably tons of people will hold on to ncurses anyways (for better or worse reasons), but a man can still dream?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really nice. It would be good to check for a first time visitor, ala localstorage or cookie, and show quick instructions. Overall, very slick and could see as a great electron application that gets pulled up via keyboard shortcut. Similar to Notational Velocity, but as a to do list.

<comment><USER6> What would Electron get you other than an additional 400 MB of memory consumption?

<comment><USER7> It would get us another go at beating the already very dead horse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice work!

I built something similar a few years ago: [https://hollyapp.com/](https://hollyapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Does it support markdown? Markdown support is a very important feature as it allows you to easily format tasks, put links inside, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm already using this for all my project notes. IMHO, this is the most user- friendly TODO app I've ever encountered. And behind the covers it allows me to have heavily personalized lists with important tasks jumping at me out of the screen.

Marko, I hope you'll keep this one up, I'd really hate to have to export my lists to another app...not that I have an alternative on my mind :)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty neat. It feels a little like a distilled version of Trello.

I think you did a great job of using the space that I have. I made my browser full screen on a 4k monitor and I was happy to see it use all the space without sacrificing space or readability. I restored my window size and everything repositioned itself perfectly. Really nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It like keeping things minimal as my lists tend to become very busy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would be neat to have the Help Tab as a slide-in window of sorts, so as we're getting started it's very easy to just glance at the shortcuts instead of having two tabs open

</comment><comment><USER10> With boards, lists, and tasks you're already up to three levels of nesting. I really like [http://www.workflowy.com](http://www.workflowy.com) for its simplicity and unlimited nesting ability.

</comment><comment><USER11> Another to-do list, keyboard-driven, more flexible and complete in some ways, lacking in others (desktop-only right now), also hackable: [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) .

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really great, I love the simplistic design.

The thing is, it _is_ keyboard driven, but not necessarily accessible for visually impaired users. I would like to see ARIA attributes, a more semantic interface and better color contrast.

</comment><comment><USER13> Neat, I like organizational apps. Any [https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/) users here comment on what they think of Tdo?

<comment><USER14> They're two entirely different classes of programs. In my mind, a good to-do lists has the feature set of being able to manage both 'evergreen' (i.e., informational stores) or ephemeral (i.e., time-logging / task completion) with ease.

The first thing that stuck out at me was it was browser only. I want my information close at hand. I use a tiling window-manager, so I can just keep Chrome open 24/7 and within a day or two be a key-stroke away from Tdo, so that's not too much of an issue, I suppose, but being able to `tmux attach` from any console and hit `1 (my leader key is `) to get to my main emacs instance is far more convenient. (In fact, I've xmodmap'd my Windows key to swap to that screen with a permanent instance of my terminal with my pane containing nothing but org-mode, so I'm never more than a keystroke away from reading my notes/adding a task/jotting something down, but I digress)

Second, it claims to be 'keyboard driven' but none of the GNU Readline (standard bash/emacs bindings) or vim hkjl's work. The second I have to leave my homerow, my workflow is broken. The arrow keys along with F5 through F8 on my laptop are keys which immediate "no gos"* I can't muscle-memory-hit.

Thirdly, it's not nearly as feature rich as TaskWarrior (which, despite being a time-tracking tool in name, has enough functionality re: tags and search, that I consider it to be an information store).

Not that it's trying to be as far as I can tell. To use an analogy from a bygone era, its functionality is oriented more towards what you'd put onto Post-its rather than what you'd write on your legal pad.

* Pro-tip, map R_alt + hkjl to the arrow keys and you won't ever have to use the arrow keys again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it's keyboard driven, probably "?" should bring up a modal with a summary of keyboard shortcuts. Many apps (gmail, trello, intercom, twitter, facebook, etc..) do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or switch to the Help tab. Note taken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really well done! Feature request: would love to see a VIM mode. I think VIM semantics would be really intuitive here. Obviously more of a "power" user feature.

<comment><USER3> Great idea, I'd love this one, too. "hjkl" is a given, "x" to complete, "D" to delete. Any additional suggestions?

<comment><USER17> I was going to suggest "o" and "O" to add new task below/above selected task, but nope, that's already there! The only other vimmy thing I can think of is "/" to jump into the search box. I'm trying to think of reasonable shortcuts for switching boards, closest Vim has is "gt" & "gT" for next/previous.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way of selecting the first task item with the keyboard. Once you've got one selected, you can move around easily with hjkl, but there's always at least one initial mouse click.

I've been putting off adopting Trello for a while, but this seems like a great opportunity to dive in. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wrote something similar - a command-line based task management system with an integrated web view.

[http://todolist.site](http://todolist.site)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to add command line interface, but in the current API-less architecture that's not possible.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have added some of the features that were suggested in this thread. Most notably, I added a new board - Tutorial which explains key things. Thanks to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like it. Have you considered increasing the contrast between the text and the background? Or perhaps my monitor isn't as good as yours? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This color scheme works well for me. If you don't like it you can try a different body color. Just go to Settings and put `body { color: white; }` in the Custom CSS field.

<comment><USER19> Yes, thanks. For what it's worth, I was (obliquely) referring to this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743628)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is really nice!

Before I dive too deeply, how does it do with sync? If I access it from multiple computers, will they play nicely together?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tasks can be saved to a GitHub gist. This works well across multiple computers if you're not using the app on two computers at the same time. There's no server here, GitHub API is called directly from the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What libraries did you use for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you asked. tdo is based on the Cx front-end framework - [https://github.com/codaxy/cx](https://github.com/codaxy/cx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can you add monospace as a fallback for Consolas?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. I missed that. It's getting late so I'll do it tomorrow. Meanwhile you can add custom css rule in settings and override the default font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >keyboard drive, hackable todo list

org-mode?

</comment><comment><USER24> nice, I love it. If I used todo lists, I'd use this.

</comment><comment><USER25> Slightly OT, but...

No idea why people are so obsessed with making lists. I've never needed lists in my life.

If something is important, I'll get to it. If not, I'll forget it and to hell with it.

<comment><USER15> A list allows you to forget things even if they're important, because you learn to trust the list to bring it back to you when you're ready for it.

It's a way to clear your mind and allow you to focus on what's important right now without being distracted by thoughts of other things which are also important but not relevant to the task at hand.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where can I find interesting conferences in my area? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend a website for finding local conferences? <comment><USER2> Try Linkedin Event Search: <http://events.linkedin.com>

Other sites:

<http://conferencehound.com/>

<http://allconferences.com>

Scientific and engineering:

<http://physicsworld.com/cws/events>

<http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~mathijs/conf/>

<http://www.conferencealerts.com/engineer.htm>

<http://www.medscape.com/medscapetoday/conferences>

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a need for a website like this - meetup is the closest thing I've found, otherwise you just kind of have to be in the know. Find one person who's well known in the circle you're trying to find conferences for, then email them or google them to see other places they've spoken. All you really need is that one insider to find out everything that's worth going to.

But outside of that advice, someone needs to build this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Meetup is great, I've used it to find a few startup grounds in my area but conferences seem to be a little out of it's scope. Maybe there is a gap in the market for this kind of website to be developed. It could even be helpful for smaller conferences trying to get more traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're in school and wanna attend some IEEE conferences, login to <http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/>

ELSE

if you're not sure which conferences but are sure about the topics/area of your interests, easiest way is to create 'Google Alerts' at <http://www.google.com/alerts> if you have not used them.

</comment><comment><USER5> What is your area? That would help. In my area, I find many of the most interesting things are on eventbrite. But it all depends on where you live and what is popular with the local 'scene' (also what you find interesting).</comment>


Where the Heck Is Microsoft's "Edge?" (Left Behind for Dead) - <AUTHOR> https://wolfstreet.com/2017/12/17/where-the-heck-is-microsofts-edge-left-behind-for-dead/ <comment><USER2> Google actively hinders using Google services on Edge at least by using annoying pop-ups which basically tell you that your browser is outdated. People less tech-savvy than me WILL switch to Chrome/Firefox etc after that. I have a feeling that this borders on monopoly abuse in a way similar to what Microsoft did when Microsoft had the dominance with IE.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once long term support ends for the older OSes, lagging corporations will most likely jump to Windows 10. That IE share should drop even lower and be absorbed mostly into Edge.

Regardless of total market share, having a modern, actively developed and maintained browser in Edge on corporate machines should make the web landscape much better - ES Next, no ugly IE hacks or polyfills, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm more surprised by the statement that Mac OS is running on 21% of machines, that's absolutely massive.

<comment><USER5> That's just in one North American country I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hehe. Edge is quite an accurate name, it stays at the edge of every graphic.</comment>


Winklevii Facebook appeal rejected - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/11/technology/winklevoss_facebook_lawsuit/

<comment><USER2> Call me an old dude (which I am), but can we please not make fun of people's names? The joke is funny, I laughed, but it is not good to do this in a public place like HN.

<comment><USER3> Also, if you want to do it right, use a dual form for expressing a pair, -o. One Winkelvos, two Winkelvo, a family of Winkelvi.

Duals are used for pairs or things, like eyes or hands, in Latin and Ancient Greek. In Sanskrit, duals are even more common. (Respect your elders, learn some outmoded grammar today!)

<comment><USER4> I don't remember anything about pairs being a special case in Latin (At least roman style Latin, not catholic style Latin), even in the 3rd declension nouns (which are the ones that pluralize via -i).

<comment><USER3> As far as I recall, it's mostly duo, ambo, and 2nd declension nouns by analogy in archaizing poetic passages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious: why the editorializing in the title of this submission? It seems to me the original CNN title is perfectly sound.

<comment><USER6> "Winklevii" did appear in the CNN article. Judging from a quick Google search it's been used before (42,000 results) <http://www.google.com/search?q=winklevii></comment></comment>


Ask HN : About risks - <AUTHOR> I live in South East Asia. With my current stable job and moderate spending, I expect to have a million dollar savings in 8 years. (don't need to pay for rent. living expense is low ,about 1000$ per month,  Capital gains from my investment can fully cover my expenses. I can save 100% of my salary).
My country's economy is expected to grow very fast in coming years. Number of Internet/mobile companies are close to zero now. So there are lots of startup opportunities. If I choose the startup route , I might have 10 million (my target) or even 100 million in 8 years. Or I will just fail and become broke .
If I  choose my stable job (I don't dislike it), I will always ask myself the question "Is that it?" and there is no way I can get 10 million in 8 years  (my financial target) with my current job though 1 million is still pretty nice.
Other than financial considerations, I have always wanted to start a business and be my own boss. But coming from a low income family make me nervous about the risk of failure and opportunity cost of time & money. I am 31.
Which should I choose? <comment><USER2> Let's assume you'll have the opportunity with 39 to post here again with 100M in your bank account and I'll ask you _What 's next?_

What do you reply?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't thought that far. My goal right now is to have financial security so that I can live a comfortable life and never worry about money(reasonable spending of course). I think one should have a 10 year plan. Now I have two directions. Continue with a job or do a startup. just try to weigh the pros and cons.</comment></comment>


Pinching and The Droid - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/pinching_and_the_droid

<comment><USER2> For all the fanfare of iPhone's pinch-to-zoom, just give me a button for zoom. Shoot. Honestly the iPhone could use a few buttons to make some of these actions easier, especially when holding the phone in one hand (pinch-to-zoom and pinch-to-zoom-out are definitely NOT trivial manuevers to pull off with just one hand). The Droid looks like it has four buttons on the face, let alone the plethora of buttons on the slide-out keyboard. So long as you can press a button for these actions, or at least program a button for these actions, I'm perfectly happy.

<comment><USER3> The iPhone's pinch zoom lets you control the focus and amount of zoom interactively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That this shows up in the EU version of android is another red flag that this is about software patents.

</comment><comment><USER4> My HTC Hero allows me to Pinch-Zoom emails and webpages. Did HTC just implement it themselves?</comment>


Housing Crisis Not Over Yet: Median Home Price vs Median Income by Region - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/business/economy/22leonhardt.html

<comment><USER2> These comparisons to 1979 prices are misleading. Boston, SF, and NYC all experienced a flight to the suburbs in the 70s and 80s, followed by a return to city living in the 90s. These places are very different now than they were in 1979.</comment>


Librem 13 coreboot report: It's Alive - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/librem-13-coreboot-report-february-3rd-2017/ <comment><USER2> > After that, I'll work on disabling the Intel ME

I don't know anything about PureOS and I've never seen coreboot in action, but this genuinely sounds like a selling point.

Intel HW without the dreaded ME would be super-nice.

<comment><USER3> PureOS is just a Debian derivative (which attempts to get FSF approval like some other distros).

Purism has been talking up their work on a free firmware and disabled ME for two years now. They haven't gotten anything working until now.

I like what they're trying to do, and (roughly) how. I bought a Librem 13 and received it a year ago. But my overall impression is that they just didn't have the familiarity and expertise they needed on the software and firmware (and not enough money to buy enough expertise). Thus the slow and long-stalled progress on the coreboot port, the very slow and still somewhat disappointing development of the touchpad driver (which was the only driver they had to do real work on), and the confused/misinformed promises about the ME for the first year or so of the project.

But there isn't an alternative that's better in all dimensions, at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the 2015 Pixel laptop a good fit except for the limited storage ? I'm guessing that it supports coreboot out of the box, probably has all drivers upstreamed, and has a great display. If there were a way to upgrade the storage, that would be the ideal laptop. Also, Google might release a new Pixel laptop this year too.

<comment><USER5> It's not on this list: [https://www.coreboot.org/Laptop](https://www.coreboot.org/Laptop)

Does it even have a supported chipset?

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that both Pixel laptops run coreboot. This page says so: [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer- information-f...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information- for-chrome-os-devices/chromebook-pixel-2015) .I think Google is one of the major contributors to coreboot. I hope they release a full fledged laptop with expandable storage.

<comment><USER6> Can confirm, 2015 pixel is a great relatively linux friendly linux laptop running coreboot. Until recently the sound driver wasn't in the upstream kernel, but it is in 4.9 (but still isn't perfect).

But everything else is great.

<comment><USER5> Awesome. 'Tis pricey tho'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py It kills me that every device I own has a secret RPC-capable OS running on it. Intel ME on my laptop, radio OS on my cell phone.

Why have hardware companies always wanted to bundle crappy software?

<comment><USER7> By "radio OS" I assume you mean the baseband controller firmware?

It would be nice if it was open source, but it's a bit more understandable than the Intel ME. The baseband firmware often has regulatory requirements the rest of the phones doesn't have. It comes from a different vendor, and is compartmentalized. I too would like it to be open source, but it seems like a different situation.

<comment><USER8> The regulatory requirements are bullshit. I can build out of spec transmitters in my garage. If I use one, I get in trouble with the FCC.

The requirements as they stand are nothing more than an excuse for shitty networks to spend less on reliability and security while providing a convenient backdoor for state-level actors.

<comment><USER9> It's much more likely that a ton of people start installing dodgy firmware they got off the internet than they start building jammers in their garage.

Imagine if such a firmware had a slider that boosts the transmitting power. People would love it but the network as a whole would suffer.

<comment><USER8> How difficult do you think it is to build jamming equipment? If you are technical enough to install new firmware, you can follow directions to block cell phone calls in your immediate vicinity. It just takes a Google search and a soldering iron.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A question about me_cleaner: can malware simply re-enable it? Or does using me_cleaner "brick" the ME system permanently?

<comment><USER11> It removes enough parts of the ME firmware that it's stuck in whatever mode initialized by the ME's boot ROM (which is in-chip).

In principle it might be possible to upload code through an undocumented interface and get it to boot up later. Nobody (outside Intel) knows.</comment></comment>


Gmail is going through our emails too deeply no? - <AUTHOR> Alright so over the weekend I figured it was a good idea to reach out to a personal counselor to discuss a few things and while thinking and writing out an email, to my suprise gmail just added the following 'see an individual therapist.' after I started typing 'se...'.  Now call me crazy but this level of parsing through my previous emails, seeing the email address this individual is sending from and triangulating on some very specific personal items is disconcerning to say the least.  Not only is my mail being totally scoured for any help typing but I'm sure these algorithms are being used or will be used to help others, not us who use the service.<p>Anyone changed over to a pay service?  How does it work for you? <comment><USER2> I switched to Fastmail a while back and it has worked perfectly. I still use Gmail's calendar but someday I may use Fastmail's calendar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Switched to Protonmail (PM) few months ago ... looking forward for their storage + calendar solution. Or at least they should release some public API to build our own .)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check it out today</comment></comment>


Dude PA – Personal assistant based on the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dude-pa/dude <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, This is a side project I have been working on since a few months. Since I am fairly new to production level programming, I would be very thankful if you could critique the project by giving advice related to coding practices, feature suggestions, or anything else you think is necessary.</comment>