[Ask HN Commuters]: What do you do on your commute to work? - <AUTHOR>

I recently moved to Brooklyn, NY and commute via the B or Q train to 21st Street every day. It takes about 20-25 minutes, and normally is pretty difficult to move around making it difficult to read from a book. I wish it was possible to predict when I will get a seat, as I would consider purchasing a Netbook for the commute and do real work.
I've considered using the time to catch up on RSS feeds, though the lack of any real way to get an Internet connection would make this next to impossible (since some feeds of course only post summaries) unless there was some sort of offline mode in the feed reader. Are there any apps for an iPod Touch that might work in this case?
Alternatively or, in conjunction with, I'd love to find a few semi-weekly/daily podcasts that can be listened through entirely on one trip (again, 20-25 minutes), though I wouldn't mind some video podcasts that were short, say 5 minutes or so.
So, Hacker News, what would you suggest? Do you know of such apps in the App Store to read offline content? Do you have any recommendations for (video | audio) podcasts that fit the criteria of being short and interesting? Thanks.
Edit: asking more directly now <comment><USER2> I used to take Caltrain to work (Silicon Valley). It was always possible to get a seat, so my experience might not be useful to you, but here goes. Some things I did while commuting:

\- Practice starting conversations with strangers. (I got a few dates from Caltrain, even.)

\- Taught myself the basics of Scheme by doing a tutorial.

\- Read the next book for my book club.

\- Read and wrote personal email. There was no Internet connection. My outgoing messages would get queued up and sent later.

\- Veged out. The value of vegging out is not to be discounted. Trying to fill every moment of life with something "productive" is mostly a way to make yourself a frazzled wreck.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Practice starting conversations with strangers. (I got a few dates from > Caltrain, even.)

I have tried talking to people, though not to get a date, as I'm happily married. In my experience so far, New Yorkers don't like to chat with strangers (note: This is obviously based on a small sample size).

<comment><USER2> Actually, I was usually following the strategy of "just start a conversation, and be open to the possibility of it leading to a date." I started conversations with men no less than women. The object was just to discover something interesting, something that I couldn't have found by forethought. For example, I once had an interesting conversation with a geologist about the difficulty of communicating with mathematicians, and once joined a couple frat boys as they walked down the train handing out cans of beer they had brought along.

I've heard that it's harder to start conversations with New Yorkers. Dunno. I've also heard that it's impossible to start a conversation with people on Caltrain, since everyone there is so "cold".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I got myself in a similar situation about three years ago, and since then moved and now need to use my car.

Magazines are easier to read because you can fold them and you need to turn the pages less often than books. Sadly, the ACM Queue magazine is no longer available in printed form. I also read research articles on the commute, pocket books only if I could sit down.

I initially tried and don't recommend the netbook as it is difficult to do anything meaningful in 20 to 25 minutes. And more importantly if you phase out and nearly miss your stop, they are hard to fold and put back in the bag in a hurry while you rush for the exit. I don't really know about using apps on an iPod touch or iPhone since I didn't have one back then. I found podcasts and audiobooks are the best. Some of them are hard to listen to at a safe volume in a busy and noisy place like a train or a bus. So look for good sound quality.

I change podcasts I listen to often but some I have enjoyed when commuting were things like (I may get the names wrong)

      - Big Ideas
      - Stanford Entrepreneurial thought leaders seminars
      - The project management podcast (mostly for its great sound quality)

<comment><USER4> I second audiobooks. I read mostly fiction in print form, but I find I have trouble getting through longer (400+ page) non-fiction books in traditional format. However these are perfect for audiobooks, as a good reader can really bring it to life.

I can usually get through a 10-hour non fiction book in 2-3 weeks with my 30 minute commute.

I usually enjoy a nice podcast at lunch, when I am looking for something more entertaining and less thought provoking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I pedal really hard followed by bouts of not pedaling at all.

Before the time when I biked to work and took either the bus or VTA light rail I did manage to read most of two of the intel architecture books plus some other books on my ebook reader whereas before I never would have done so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pedaling would be nice, but hot and humid days make the rest of the day at work less than fun. It's about 6 miles, with both kinds of hills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I highly recommend Instapaper for offline reading on the iPhone. It also has an added benefit that I spend less time reading long articles while at work. Instead, I just click the Read Later bookmarklet, and the article is waiting for me on my phone in easy to read, text only format.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooooh, instapaper now works on the iPod touch too. Perfect. This may be worth upgrading from iPod Touch 1.2 to 3.0 for. Thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I normally rub my eyes, and maybe scratch my ass on the way from my bed to my office, which is right next to my bedroom.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reading a bunch of these answers I think, "It must be nice to live in a place where you don't need a car to get _anywhere_ ". In Texas (specifically DFW), commuting means sitting in traffic for 30 minutes to an hour.

</comment><comment><USER9> I kept a voice recorder in my car. I could dictate to myself the rough draft of memos and letters. I would also ponder certain problems, and the vr would let me easily note thoughts or ideas I thought important along the way.

This worked well, but I found that I had to have an objective when I got into the car; that is, I had to plan it like my other work.

I still have a vr in my car, as a matter of fact, but I no longer commute so I use it far less. I can, however, take a phone call, and make notes to myself for follow-up actions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Byline for the iPhone/iPod Touch does offline caching. It integrates with Google Reader to get the data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Byline looks to be exactly what I need. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had to take the same exact commute (B or Q from south Brooklyn to DeKalb). I used to read mostly, and sometimes listen to music. I live in Maryland now and have a 5 minute drive to work (and anywhere else).

In terms of podcasts, I listen to "The Brain Science Podcast" and "Books and Ideas" from Dr. Ginger Campbell. I also listen to "Skeptic's Guide to the Universe". "Radiolab" is great. None of these are daily though.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would use the time to simply reflect & muse on the (work or home life) issues of the day (daydream, even), something which is apparently quite important for any serious progress on any intellectual project.

(See recent HN articles on same, e.g., <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=605379> .)

</comment><comment><USER13> I read the New Yorker on my Kindle.

It's very well written, and covers topics I wouldn't normally read up on. Well-researched, and thorough. Only risk is that sometimes I get too into the articles and miss my stop, but that's a reasonable trade off :)

I can usually finish an issue before the week's up, so I keep a bunch of other books on there as well that I'll pick at as well.

I've tried writing / sketching before, but it's difficult given the shakes and turns of the subway (a little easier if you can get a seat, but that can be tough as well).

I've also tried podcasts / audiobooks, but the subway is a noisy place (announcements, train sounds) and it can be hard to catch all the words. Rewinding to catch things I missed is just too annoying.

</comment><comment><USER14> I highly recommend bicycling, even when it's hot and humid and hilly. I do it, and it's an awesome start and end to the day. Also, for that distance I'd bet your commute would be negligibly longer--for me it's about 10 minutes difference for about the same distance and I'd bet you'd be even faster in NYC.

You get your exercise in, and you can't back out of the afternoon workout. You feel great, and you can ditch the gym membership. You generally have to shower in the AM anyway, so you're not wasting any time if you do it at work vice home.

If you remain unconvinced, listen to software development podcasts; I've been following the Stanford iPhone development class.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've had some time to perfect the art of commuting, London style. My first comment is that your 20-25 commute sounds quite pleasant, I'm lucky to make it in 45 (although this is, of course, a function of where I chose to live).

Commuting essentials for me are the iPhone, usually with some TV episodes on, and obviously a bit of music. I have found a good book to be the most engaging activity...newspapers or articles can be a bit too flitty; you need to be properly engaged for the "gloss over" the commute.

Having tried the RSS catch-up idea, I would advise against it, as you arrive at work/home and all those items you've trawled through are still marked as unread.

</comment><comment><USER16> Buy a motorcycle. You won't get any more reading done, but you'll have much more fun.

<comment><USER17> Not much fun in NYC during rush hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I read incessantly back when I was commuting, until I was given a smartphone (older blackberry) for work, with a rudimentary web browser. I still read incessantly, but on a screen instead of on dead trees.

Today, with a modern smartphone and decent web browser, it's hard to imagine not being able to get something useful done during travel downtime; my iPhone and my wife's G1 are fantastic portable desktops if, like us, most of your interesting bits are online already anyway.

</comment><comment><USER19> My drive to/from work is about 30-45 minutes of almost zero traffic most of the way, so it's very low stress. I listen to various podcasts. Mostly stuff from IT Conversations or VentureVoice. Otherwise it's Public Radio or the local jazz station.

When I used to commute by train, I read a lot. Mostly fiction (discovered there was going to be a Jurassic Park movie when someone next to me noticed I was reading the book!). Still haven't finished Njal's Saga...

</comment><comment><USER20> I commute about an hour (40 minutes on the subway) Brooklyn<->Manhattan. I live at the end of the line, so I get a seat in the morning _every_ time. I always take the local train, and get a seat almost every time in the evening, perhaps once a month I end up standing.

I play music to drown out the nasty noise, and usually read, sometimes play Nintendo DS. Plus the occasional nap.

</comment><comment><USER17> The subways are different from other types of commuting. On the train I use my netbook but once I transfer to the subway I'm either reading a newspaper or listening to my iPod. Audiobooks are hard to follow in that short of a stretch + the interruptions of noise on the subway, so I go with podcasts.

For me espn.com has a lot - especially Bill Simmons, if you are into sports.

</comment><comment><USER21> A while back I had a long, 1 hour train journey underground. In the mornings when I had a Palm Vx, then later one of those generic HTC phones I used this: <http://www.plkr.org/> and synced up all the news sources I read (bbc, guardian etc) - even with dialup it didn't take that long.

Audiobooks too.

</comment><comment><USER22> Social Skydiving (thankfully I'm almost done!)

</comment><comment><USER23> Everyday I take a 15 minute bus to a 15 minute train. On the bus I'll either veg out or listen to short podcasts.

Short Podcasts I recommend: -stuff you missed in history class -moth podcast -BBC global news

On the train, I'll read books off my hacker reading list (c programming, programming pearls, design patterns, etc)

</comment><comment><USER24> I listen to podcasts, Humanities courses found in TunesU, or French lessons also via podcast, depending on my mood. Search for older threads here, theres great recommendations there; A couple from my ipod: Hardcore History, The History of Rome, Philosophy Bites, French Cafe.

</comment><comment><USER25> I grab my laptop, ruby my eyes then walk to the next room, place my laptop on the desk and sit down.

</comment><comment><USER26> I scour HN shortly before I leave for my 45-minute commute on a bunch of buses. I'll Instapaper any pages I find interesting and read them on my iPod touch.

I don't do this when I get back home though. I use that time to think up ideas for my projects.

</comment><comment><USER27> I used to ride my bicyle but now I drive really really fast on my motorcyle for 5 mins. all the while singing "Breakin the law" by acdc as loud as I can.

</comment><comment><USER28> I flip open yet another Moleskine and brainstorm it full of ideas. That's 1.5 hours per day that I otherwise wouldn't have completely to myself.

</comment><comment><USER29> Learn a foreign language, e.g., japanesepod101.com.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nothing, since my 'work" is 3 feet away.

I'd suggest "reading" audiobooks. Or if you don't get motion sick, reading actual books.

</comment><comment><USER31> I read Real World Haskell on my kindle.

</comment><comment><USER32> Try Byline, it syncs with Google Reader, and caches feed items, and the pages they link to.

</comment><comment><USER33> used to be I'd listen to language tapes while driving.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hopefully do a Rin/Robert Bernocco - <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html></comment>


Curl-library: An alert on the upcoming 7.51.0 release - <AUTHOR> http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2016-10/0076.html <comment><USER2> Wow. I'm really curious to take a look at these once they're disclosed. Considering how extensively curl libraries are used everywhere, this could have pretty big impacts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you Daniel Stenberg for your work!

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anybody aware of a relative security ranking for the vulns / an indication of the maximum level of impact, similar to how OpenSSL grades their alerts before the release?

It's hard to tell for sure if curl is just bundling together several smaller vulns to save people doing 11 individual patch/update cycles, or if the implication is that one or more of the vulns are "critical".

<comment><USER5> There's CVSS:

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

The utility of such metrics is a topic of debate in the security community.

<comment><USER4> My apologies: I'm familiar with CVSS and other scales that exist, was more asking if a score is known for these particular disclosures so I can guesstimate how much of my other work I'll be sidelining to rush out the new fixed version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why wouldn't they do the merge _now_ instead of 48h before release, so they have more time to see if there's any problems with it?

<comment><USER7> > Why wouldn't they do the merge now instead of 48h before release

The idea is not to publicly disclose the vulnerabilities with too much time remaining for a release. I guess that two weeks are mostly required so as to minimize the time taken by different distros to release updates.

<comment><USER6> I was thinking about a non-public merge, but with running the tests the article mentions. I don't know anything about their build setup though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This mail is shady and not providing any critical information.

Shipping 11 secret patchs? developed in 11 secret branches? to fix 11 undisclosed security issues?

Not a single word about the vulnerabilities, the bugs being fixed, the impact, or the security risks.

<comment><USER9> This is done to reduce the impact of vulnerabilities before a patch is out. Pretty common and sensible procedure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > This release will bundle no less than _eleven_ security advisories and their > associated fixes (unless we get more reported in the time we have left).

So if a security advisory gets reported there will be less than 11 fixes?</comment>


A clever idea for stopping Wikileaks. - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/how-to-stop-wikileaks/

<comment><USER2> So Alice is somehow supposed to know the set of documents that will be leaked _ahead of time_ , generate the fakes, then somehow get them to Wikileaks so they will be leaked at the same time as the originals?

Am I missing something here? Wikileaks has the element of surprise and time. There's no way to put out documents after the fact and say "oh nononono, _these_ are the real documents" without being obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would only be effective if you know that a leak is going to occur. Otherwise, this wouldn't mitigate any specific leak as it is unknown when the leak would occur.

However, a strategy that could worsen the effectiveness of Wikileaks would be to constantly spam them with large amounts of plausibly authentic fake documents. Maybe I'm missing something but this seems like such an easy way to tie up the resources of Wikileaks that you'd have to wonder why these governments and corporations aren't already doing this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there is seldom a good reason for changing the original title of an article for posting on HN. Why was this one changed?</comment>


A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html <comment><USER2> I love the decoupling the driver from the PC idea, but I can't help but wonder where this is all heading.

Isn't Google just re-inventing the mainframe, where they own the mainframe and the rest of us are customers, er dumb terminals? In other words, is this an open standard where any two web-enabled devices can communicate? Or is it a Google-managed service ("we return the status of the print job back to you") where we're yet again investing in the success of Google? Seems like the latter to me. Perhaps I misread it.

<comment><USER3> They're proposing standards for all the levels, so, in theory, other "cloud printer" providers could do what they do.

So, in theory, it's not lock-in to their cloud.

In practice, who else is going to do this?

I suppose if there were a common OSS solution that one could run per-company or per-workgroup, that'd be great.

<comment><USER4> open standard is not open just because there are no loyalties. a standard is open when it's managed by a consortium or task force. OpenGL is one, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, if I enable adwords on my printed documents, will Google pay for the ink? Do that and i'm sold :)

</comment><comment><USER6> i really really really want dropbox to print to this. it would be nice to print from a phone or a browser, without having to open the actual file.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sure wish they'd propose something similar for scanners.

<comment><USER7> +1 to this. I wish there were a unified standard for networking scanners at all, actually. The majority of business scanners have arcane features to Email, FTP, or SMB-share the documents they scan. SMB is the usually only thing that invites practical use on a small business network, and the scanner's implementation of the protocol is almost always poor. I've encountered $5k copiers that could only copy to SMB shares on Windows XP, mysteriously failing for Server 2003 or Server 2008. I don't even want to think about trying it with Samba.

Networking a copier is no afternoon job, either. I've seen businesses where setting up their copier on Ethernet was such a bother that they just hook up the fax line instead and fax everything to their own eFax number whenever they need a PDF scan of a document.

My dream is that I could plug in an IP address/hostname to any scanner and I press Scan. The scanner contacts a daemon running on the host on a well-known port and protocol (if it's the first time, the host presents a dialog or something to confirm pairing) and then the file goes shoop over the network into a folder of my choosing.

Why does this not exist! In a networked world, scanners need to be more like faxes, except there is no fax equivalent on the TCP/IP level.

<comment><USER8> I want something less complicated than that. I want to push the Scan button, open my web browser, select the scanner from it's list of Bonjour (aka DNS-SD) discovered web services and then browse, save and delete scans from it's web interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where was this ten years ago when I needed it? I worked for a electronic medical records ISV, and we had requirements like: Print referral letters on regular paper, chart notes on paper with a special blue line on the edge, and prescriptions on a special printer. Our thick Java Swing client was at the mercy of an admin to configure each workstation correctly. Even then, we could not easily do things like print to an alternate printer when the primary one was not working.

I had envisioned some sort of document printing service which could receive a request from our back-end services to render and print, say, a RTF document using a specified set of print rules (paper requirements, micro-geographic preferences, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems a lot like IPP. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol>

I can already print from anywhere in the world to our work printers which operate on a CUPS server with authentication and SSL. I don't need a special driver, a generic print Postscript or PDF one works.

</comment><comment><USER11> My former employer spun off a company based on exactly this problem: <http://www.thinprint.com>

They did very well back then and probably still do. If I had any stock, however, I'd probably sell around the time Cloud Print looked like it would get traction...

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmm, I could see this working in an Airport Express USB print kind of way; but too bad, Airport Express still requires the printing origin computer to have the printer drivers. If Apple (or anyone else for that matter) Express can support cloud print, that would be so much nicer.

<comment><USER6> dd-wrt maybe?

<comment><USER12> Thanks - a good find.

P.S: Love the profile blurb about being lost :-)

<comment><USER6> thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a step backwards to me. Why are they even wasting cycles on this when we're obviously heading to a paperless society? Maybe they should make cloud fax services too.

<comment><USER14> Because we've been "heading to" a paperless society for 35 years now, and we've still not reached it.

Sometimes a piece of paper is just _better_ than a laptop/tablet/PDA/phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google adds more data to their store. Will Google be retaining the documents to be printed in any way?

<comment><USER16> If you readed the linked article, it says it could work offline, the whole protocols are open source.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure, but according to the patch, only client and proxy are open source. Cloud print _service_ seems to be closed.

<http://codereview.chromium.org/1566047/show>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How would this practically work? Do we need new printers for this?

<comment><USER19> Read <http://code.google.com/apis/cloudprint/docs/overview.html>

_And, finally, the number one question people ask is, "How do the printers communicate with Google Cloud Print?" The answer is, "It depends on whether the printer is a cloud-aware printer or a legacy printer."_

They're proposing a proxy for legacy printers in Chromium (that makes Windows/Mac OS X/Linux printers available to Cloud Print). They're also proposing that new printers add native Cloud Print functionality.

For Chromium OS, it seems like it will only be able to use new printers or legacy printers with specific proxy devices.</comment></comment>


Freight startup Flexport soars from 'unsexy' to $800M valuation - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/21/container-full-of-cash/ <comment><USER3> Congrats. I remember watching Flexport get pitched to PG and Sam Altman during open 'Office Hours' at Startup School in 2013.

[https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s](https://youtu.be/syoqjYLDs48?t=19m30s)

<comment><USER4> I don't get it, from the video, they say brokers make 3-5 billion a year, yet, they value the company at 800 million?

I've never seen a startup valued at this large percentage of market size

please correct me if I'm wrong

<comment><USER5> A company is usually worth a multiplier of annual earnings, since they make that money every year.

<comment><USER6> Startups are not evaluated like that though, the earnings multiplier approach only really applies to big public companies, and even then not so well - <USER2> look at Tesla or Amazon stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a customer. They are my favorite to use, but I don't use them for everything because they don't get me 100% end to end with Amazon. Other companies do. I just talked with someone about this, and I hope that they get into it, even if it's just white labelled through their interface.

I had no idea their founder also was involved in Import Genius, but that makes total sense.

Huzzah Flexport!

<comment><USER8> I've them end to end to Amazon(Germany)FBA from China purposes...are we talking about two different things maybe?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/6ao7ec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/6ao7ec/few_questions_about_flexport/)

[https://www.flexport.com/help/109-shipping-to- amazon](https://www.flexport.com/help/109-shipping-to-amazon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this an article from TechCrunch about how a company doing good, important, profitable work was previously called "unsexy" by TechCrunch and is continuing to do good, important, profitable work? Did anyone else call them "unsexy"?

> _But as the mainstream embraces startup culture and aspiring founders flood > Silicon Valley, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to chase > things that seem like a bad idea._

... how does this company possibly seem like a bad idea?

I mean, if you find writing websites in $web_framework_of_the_month more exciting (or "sexy", whatever that's supposed to mean, I don't need to know about your tech fetishes) than delivering business value, that seems like your sense of excitement is off, not that they're doing something unexpected.

<comment><USER10> Don't click on TechCrunch links. They write for a different audience.

Just read the comments over here if the topic interests you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is the article so off on "revenue" ("expects revenue of $500 million this year")? According to Forbes they do 7,000 shipments per month averaging $2k in value of which Flexport takes 15%. That's $2.1m/month ($25m annual run rate). Possibly they meant some sort of Gross Shipping Costs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Being unsexy is the new sexy for some time now.

<comment><USER13> I'm so fucking sexy then :p

<comment><USER14> Sorry for the downvotes - it's early and the caffeine and adderall is kicking in. Your joke was funny.

<comment><USER13> no worries :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one of my favourite companies in the valley. I worked in the industry shipping food/wearable tech for 10+ years and using their service was a game changer for me after using many many other 3PL's.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that Ryan has an MBA from Columbia business school, contrary to the typical founder in the valley.

<comment><USER17> I guess it depends on how you define typical.

30% of unicorns are founded by an MBA and 80% of unicorns have an mba on their exec team: [https://qz.com/176063/most-mbas-dont-found-billion-dollar- st...](https://qz.com/176063/most-mbas-dont-found-billion-dollar-startups-but- they-certainly-build-them/)

<comment><USER18> Is there any data about the success rate of mba founders vs founders from other professions ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ryan Peterson was on the Startup School Radio. Seems like a really nice guy. I'm happy for them!

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school- radio/id9...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school- radio/id992277217?mt=2&i=1000370858116)

[https://m.soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio- ep-21...](https://m.soundcloud.com/akharris/startup-school-radio-ep-21-ryan- petersen-ooshma-garg)

</comment><comment><USER20> "And while investors were happily offering it a valuation of $1 billion or more, Petersen didn't want to get in over his head and risk a down-round later if the market stumbled."

This is straight out of Silicon Valley (the show)... why wouldn't you take the best valuation for your company?

<comment><USER21> Just because it is in the TV show doesn't mean it's not based on real stuff. Silicon Valley is satire and they have some of the best consultants in the business. A lot of stuff on the show is close to reality.

Sometimes it gets it so close I kind of cringe because I've been through similar things in real life.

The tabs vs spaces argument comes to mind.

Edit: to stay on topic. As other people said, I would take a lower valuation in a heartbeat if it gives away less equity and it is enough money to get me to another round (or exit) at a higher valuation owning more of the company.

<comment><USER22> > The tabs vs spaces argument comes to mind.

Not refuting your point in the least, but that plot line made me cringe for an entirely different reason--it characterized people who use spaces as though they actually pressed the spacebar once for each space instead of letting the editor handle the work.

That said, I think it was a good decision since the majority of the audience (based on my super scientific study where I asked my wife and friend if they knew what was weird about that scene) has no idea how text editors work and it did help to drive home the point.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's my biggest complaint about the show in its four-season history. The whole thing was so inaccurate it made me furious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They have great teams and exactly know what they are doing, they took the freight industry by storm, through innovation and great user-experience. Their user-experience actually has started to re-define the old fashioned international freight industry.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the story behind why they have embraced the "unsexy" label? Do they have some sort of complex? Logistics can be an incredibly sexy problem for a variety of technical and even mathematical reasons.

<comment><USER26> I think because freight forwarding and brokering across borders is decidedly "unsexy" to most people.

<comment><USER25> Sure, that is fair. I probably didn't word it correctly. I mean if you keep repeating that it is "unsexy" people will probably believe it to be true. Why choose to send that message instead of hey we are this sexy logistics company? It's a minor detail, so I don't mean to make too big of a deal out of it. Just seems odd.

<comment><USER27> It's because tons of unsexy companies had tried doing it the other way, to the point where so many companies have done it that it's started to leave a bad taste in peoples mouth.

People are starting to get into the whole, we aren't sexy but we are solving meaningful problems thing lately.

<comment><USER28> I think there's also a certain amount of marketing. You don't want everything to be "sexy"; you want some things to be boring, unnoticed, and just work. Saying you're making shipping sexy is just saying "we're going to ignore the core logistics of reliably getting your stuff where it's going as quickly as possible", which is going to scare away customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about Amazon? they had a some similar plan, to become a global logistics network. And it's highly likely they'll be a competitor to flexport ?

What's Flexport's advantage in that case ?

<comment><USER29> I mean I'm not in the shipping industry, but I'd guess it'd be a long while before Amazon becomes very focused/involved in the particulars of the container shipping industry, where Flexport is focused. Amazon has a lot of other stuff on their plate to tackle. If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe.

But for now, just to put things in perspective, Amazon only a year ago started up a cargo plane operation with ~20 planes. Depending on the kind of plane, that's around 1000-1500 cubic meters, 400-500 metric tons for their whole fleet of cargo planes.

For comparison, a _single_ cargo ship (not even the biggest ones) caries >50,000 cubic meters and >150,000 tons. So we're talking orders and orders of magnitude difference when you account for a whole fleet.

I'd wait to see whether or not amazon expands their air freight more after using it to capacity before guessing that they'd get into the container industry.

But again, outsider perspective, so I could be way off, would welcome some info from someone more knowledgeable.

<comment><USER30> >If Amazon ever becomes such a large percentage of global trade that they can actually make use of a whole fleet of container ships then maybe.

By the time Amazon becomes a large percentage of global trade, Alibaba will already be in double digits.

And remember who has more shipping data to run algos on. In addition, Alibaba already owns an own 3PL operation, and an "Order a container shipment in 1 minute" from 1688

<comment><USER30> A great video to show just how over the top are the Chinese shipping companies over anything you have in US:

[https://youtu.be/alKYwsy-Zf4](https://youtu.be/alKYwsy-Zf4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Love it. Logistics and supply chain verticals are ripe for the taking by young, scrappy, and smart companies.

We're one of them -- and looking for more like-minded people to join us. If you're interested, hit me up at the email in my profile.

I've loved working in the logistics space, because there are so many resources already available. It's a matter of pulling them together into a package of convenience and quality, which is a fun prospect.

Still, lots of complex problems and unique constraints in the space that make for a challenging and ultimately rewarding domain to develop software for.

<comment><USER32> I share your opinions about Logistics and supply chain, especially the curation of available resources. I have sent you an email, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Much needed publicity for the whole "unsexy" supply chain startup industry. We're in that space too, and we're hiring in Seattle. Ask away, or contact through my profile

<comment><USER34> What kind of experience are you looking for a software developing position? Any internships opportunities for a CS indergrad with a statistics minor?

<comment><USER35> Flexport is hiring engineering interns too.

Our stack is React & Rails, though we don't require any specific experience. All you need is an ability to chew through difficult software problems and an interest in having real-world impact with your code. Contact me via my profile if you're interested, or apply directly at the link below.

[https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999](https://www.flexport.com/careers/job/221999)

<comment><USER36> Any opportunities for a New York based engineer? Been watching your job posts on here for a few years now, always wanted to apply but seems to be entirely in SG

<comment><USER35> Sorry, all engineering is in SF for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Speaking of bad and boring verticals to explore, any aspect of manufacturing software - CAD, CAM, PLM - please would some Silicon Valley types look into it?

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow. Nice

</comment><comment><USER39> From the article: "Flexport wholistically analyzes all its data to optimize shipping routes and simplify relationships with ports, truck drivers and anyone else that touches a container".

wholistically? ouch.

<comment><USER40> It's a word. I didn't know that, until I just looked. It's a variant spelling of holistic. I actually like it better than holistic, since the base word is more recognizable.

P.S. At least I _assume_ the "ouch" was about it being a misspelling. Maybe I'm wrong.

<comment><USER41> > _the base word_

Is it really the same word? _holistic_ comes from Greek _ὅλος_ , whereas _whole_ is a word of Germanic origin.

Of course that doesn't mean they aren't from the same Indo-European root — after all, _whole_ certainly has cognates in many languages with the same meaning, such as Russian _целый_. But Wiktionary tells me that _whole_ is from Proto-Indo-European ٭kóylos, whereas _holistic_ is from PIE ٭solh₂wós.

In any case, the initial _w_ in _whole_ is an innovation in Early Modern English without etymological justification, so a more logical choice to emphasize the similarity would be to revert to the spelling _hole_.

<comment><USER40> Probably not, but I was speaking much more informally. :) To be honest, I don't care whether it makes sense linguistically or not. It takes more than one hand to count the number of times I've looked up the meaning of holistic, because I encounter it in a context I care about so infrequently that I can never remember the meaning (at least I can never remember it accurately enough to not be unsure whether I have it correct. From context you can get the gist, but nuance may be lost). Wholistic works entirely better for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> We're hiring!

Product + Design: [https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/design](https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/design)

Engineering: [https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/engineering](https://www.flexport.com/careers/department/engineering)

<comment><USER43> Any chance that you'd be willing to hire a remote product designer?

<comment><USER42> Right now we don't have any remote opportunities but perhaps in the future.

<comment><USER43> Understandable, thanks for answering!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> All they did was lower the profit. Most everything is electronic now anyway. I have a relationship with a my Logistics company. They charge approx $2800 for a 40ft container to my door from Hangzhou. The ship takes 8-10 days on the water, approx 10 days by rail (East Coast). I'm not sure these guys could save me time or money since my containers already come on one of the fastest ships.

The problem is Container ships leave on weekends. If you don't get your shipment to the dock by early Friday it isn't going. You have to wait until next week for it to leave.

On another note he did found import genius which presented everyone's customs / shipping information for anyone else to see in a nice format. I would bet he leveraged the data to figure out how to approach the logistics industry. It gave him an advantage over his competitors that were old school. Probably mined the customs database he fed into Import Genius. It has all shipping records for almost every country in the world.

Glad to see someone shaking up the industry. Smart guy...

</comment><comment><USER45> Can someone please explain why Flexport's software is being played up as "irreplaceable by the incumbents"? If they've proved it's benefits, only a matter of time before the incumbents have an in-house version.

</comment><comment><USER30> As of now, Flexport is just a front-end to few other online shipping companies.

One of many gazillions companies doing the same.

If you ask who can be sold for a lot of moneys, it will be them: all 'seals of approval'(Thiel, YC, big banks waiting in line to underwrite for them), buzzwords, star team, and so much money and resources that they can't possibly screw up operationally

If you ask who will be dominating the market in 3 year term, it WILL be Alibaba's satellite companies, because they already are the biggest on the market, and will only have more opportunities coming as Alibaba will try to plug them as an add-ons to more services.

Another worthy thing to mention is that 'one click shipping' is one thing, and 'Wholly APIsed third party logistics, warehousing, packing, packaging, and inventory management' is another, completely qualitatively different and much higher added value.

The importance of that 'Wholly APIsed 3PL, inventory, and SCM' is that you can basically decouple nearly all physical processes from an average online store (and there are a lot of those online stores as you can guess)

Nor Alibaba, nor SV startups ever touched that 'APIsed 3PL/SCM' thing, and the current leaders on this front come from Singapore and, if my memory does not betray me, India.

<comment><USER18> You should also add low interest financing to that list, as alipay does for vendors who sell on the alibaba platform.

Btw who is this Singaporean"APIsed 3pl/scm" leader ?

Although in a sense , what the big deal, if flexe(very scalable warehousing and fulfillment provider) has an API, flexport can just easily integrate it.

<comment><USER30> Anchanto

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Do you know there is actually a way to invest in these highly valued startups? For example, EquityZen is a platform that lets people to invest in private pre-IPO companies.

EquityZen: [https://equityzen.com/?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombin...](https://equityzen.com/?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fitem%3Fid%3D15312755&utm_medium=Hacker%20News&utm_campaign=Hacker_News&utm_term=news)</comment>


The Data Deluge - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15579717&source=hptextfeature

<comment><USER2> Interesting but the article fails to even make a mention of information visualization or visual analytics (how are we going to sift through all that data to see the patterns to make decisions)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_visualization>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_analytics>

<comment><USER3> It's interesting how many different kinds of tools there are in this space.

Everything from ESRI Arc Map products <http://www.esri.com> to Starlight <http://www.futurepointsystems.com> to Palantir <http://www.palantirtech.com>.

Each is as different as can be from one another, yet there seems to be significant overlap between the products as well.</comment></comment>


Minstral - I Call To You - Z Dreaming World Audio  - <AUTHOR> http://community.freescottwalsh.info/_Minstral-I-Call-To-You/audio/754763/115712.html <comment><AUTHOR> Can you help save this content? I am about to be deleted...</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone getting sick of all the 'web apps'? - <AUTHOR> Or at least, attempts to make simple content based websites work more and more like apps?
Because it seems every site that's gotten a 'redesign' in the last year or so seems to have become some clunky, awkward to use 'app' like thing with dynamic content loading where simple text would do just fine.
Reddit's annoying enough like this (thank you mobile 'loading' screen for every page), but then you've got stuff like Wikia where it seems every single page is loaded via AJAX. Then breaks horribly because it gives me 404 errors 9 times out of 10.
Do these companies not realise how awkward these new designs are to use? Or that if you're not making a social media site, your site doesn't need to load like one? <comment><USER2> I'm going to go against what appears to be popular opinion and suggest that this reeks of a "back in my day..." complaint.

There's always been poorly-written software, poorly-created websites, bad UIs, bad UX, etc. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. Suggesting that the entire web is devolving into a vat of poor decisions is, I think, a bit alarmist. Technology changes, things progress, sometimes things get slightly worse before they get better. But I think, on the whole, things are moving in a good direction. And we'll always be able to pick out a few bad examples to justify why the sky is falling. But in the end, I much prefer the current state of affairs to the way things were a decade ago.

<comment><USER3> "I much prefer the current state of affairs to the way things were a decade ago"

It's what the developers say. Every developer has latest macbook, works on a shiny new office with AC with all the bandwidth and gadgets. And they think people all around the world also has the same thing.

Whereas lots of users don't care about the AJAX loading. Users want websites to be fast and less annoying. But, developers only care about latest hot frameworks even though that will make things slow for users.

Newest Youtube redesign is the same. It consumes more cpu and way much slower than the previous one. I know because I don't have a high end laptop and 100mbps internet. It does not matter because Google employees use all the latest gadgets.

<comment><USER4> > Users want websites to be fast and less annoying.

Well, pulling some JSON via AJAX and updating a small part of the page is faster than reloading the entire thing.

<comment><USER5> You would think so. I mean, that's obvious, right?

And yet websites are slow. That's not just "get off my lawn" crankiness, either. We're now downloading multiple megabytes, and things are rendered via javascript late in the process, so we start seeing content later than we used to, and we get the final render later than we used to.

Modern websites are largely slow and annoying, a topic that has come up many, many times--with benchmarks--on HN.

<comment><USER6> Is JS the problem though? For really heavy apps, sure, but many people consider 1 MB to be a good upper threshold for bundle sizes.

I think the biggest culprit over the web, the thing that makes me hesitant as a mobile user to visit websites willy nilly, is media content, such as images, sound, and video. Many websites look empty without media, so people splatter at least a few things on there, as do advertisements, and I think that's easily a few MB.

I also think the biggest resource that people are consuming nowadays, including well-to-do people with iPhones, is not CPU, RAM, or even battery resource, but mobile data limits.

<comment><USER7> But why are we loading even 1MB to display 2K worth of text?

<comment><USER6> If people only wanted 2 kb text pages, it'd be a different story. But rich media is often what people want, so it makes even an information lookup on native Yelp expensive. Once you bring in rich media, 1 MB of JS is very minor, and JS can be used to optimize your rich media downloading.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but why do I need that crap on pages without rich media? And why do I need to wait for my browser (since it's on a computer other than the latest model iMac) to spend 20 seconds rendering that mess of JavaScript before I can view that content (text OR rich media), when it could display vanilla HTML faster than I can blink?

<comment><USER8> I'm with you. You'll frequently see news stories with 3-5 MB of junk to augment a < 50 kB piece.That's more information than all of published human writing before 1800. Sorry, but that's stupid, and looks bad. Yes, a good chunk of that is ads, but a lot of it is loading all of two versions of bootstrap so you can use one class and similar silliness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yesterday I was thinking about the same issue that OP outlined. I tend to agree that all the SPA hype and all the additional levels of abstraction on top of HTML+JS+CSS need to go in favour of lightweight readable dead-simple sites, this is what the web is meant for in the end. For apps we have apps.

Imagine this. You know you can script JS in photoshop. So someone comes with the "brilliant" idea and solution of making apps by scripting PSDs. Suddenly all the rage comes and every dude out there boasts his new psd-app development skills on their resumes. And everyone forgets that the JS right there in Photoshop is for PSD scripting, not for making apps. Same here - CSS is for styling HTML documents. JS is for making documents a bit more interactive (think, "click that button to view some visualization"). The web environment was not made for apps and it shouldnt have apps developed on it.

<comment><USER10> > I tend to agree that all the SPA hype and all the additional levels of > abstraction on top of HTML+JS+CSS need to go in favour of lightweight > readable dead-simple sites, this is what the web is meant for in the end. > For apps we have apps.

I kind of disagree. The web is no longer about a single consistent form of content. You have sites. And you have web apps. They are not the same thing. When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, "I write web apps." They often say, "oh, cool, I've been looking for a web designer." I say, "no, I don't really do web design for web sites, I build software applications that run on a web page." So maybe the world isn't entirely used to the concept yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't a valid separation. A web app should not be like an informational web site, and vice versa. But that doesn't mean one should disappear. That's up to designers to understand, not really for users to understand.

<comment><USER11> This is a true description of the current situation. Question is: is it a good situation?

I feel like the web is a really poor paradigm for many apps. Especially business apps where users can be trained to use a more complex but more efficient interface. The web drives us all to create "universal" style applications that anyone can use more or less without training. Which is grand for the public but I think really backwards inside organisations.

<comment><USER12> I think the situation we are in with the web proves that the distribution system with the lowest friction and that allows points of friction to be smoothed out in iterations over time will win.

<comment><USER13> But the friction in Web apps is _not_ smoothed out. It only becomes worse. More and more megabytes of JS that nobody knows the purpose of -- or if they do, they are bummed as to why must they be 1.5 MB minified.

Also, HTTP 2.0 fell victim to too much pressure for backwards compatibility.

Things aren't improving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to go against the tide of opinion and say a good app done well does add to the user experience. And what really constitutes an 'app'? Does the voting up/down experience in hackernews constitute an app because it doesn't refresh the page? A site can have varying amount of dynamic content so there is no hard line.

When it's done wrong, yes it's a poor experience and is most likely done for doing it sake. With no thought to the UX experience or performance. Twitter using hash urls for the first time was one.

But if you design it from a UX and performance perspective it can work well. Especially if you allow it degrade gracefully.

For example Google maps, or Google docs etc. But also stuff like a search app like airbnb.com.

An app can have better performance then pure html pages as when you transition you can have it smoother, and only load the differences. It can improve interaction as the whole page isn't cleared and then refreshed.

Google is recommending going this way for web performance [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/p...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/prpl- pattern/)

I think in this thread we are only remembering web apps that have gone horribly bad, like reddit for example. But we don't remember it when it just works

<comment><USER13> > _Especially if you allow it degrade gracefully._

Has not been my experience. I did an experiment once -- two weeks without any JS on my Firefox. Tried to open everything in there first.

I did not count totals for the 9 days I was able to endure but I did count medians and I can tell you that only 1 in 50-60 websites had _any_ form of graceful degradation. And most of the time it wasn't graceful at all...

Sounds good in theory but it is definitely not happening in practice, is what I am saying. Businesses view it as too much expense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This too shall pass (said with fingers crossed).

Single Page Apps For the vast majority of content are such a horrible user experience, I have to believe the backlash will be swift and severe. They will be condemned to the bad ideas pile with table based layouts and Flash sites, with the latter, they share a lot of similarities.

But despite my confidence, I confess I've been mystified why they ever took off at all. They seem so clearly an impedance mismatch with the kind of static-ish content the web is really rather good at, I didn't expect them to take off the way they have. I understand fashion, and I understand when SPAs might be useful, but still. Why? (a genuine question).

<comment><USER16> Because animated transitions make the manager proud.

<comment><USER10> I hope you're not serious. When we talk about an SPA, we're not talking about how it _looks_ or _animates_. We're talking about functionality, really.

<comment><USER16> I am 100% serious, speaking from two decades of webdev experience for >10 employers. When people advocate SPAs, they usually talk about responsiveness to the user, increased engagement and other such things, but the true underlying reason is always the same and it's exactly what I said. Hard page reloads make the manager feel like their product is janky. Animated transitions make the manager proud. Every manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Getting sick of all the bloat and dynamic-for-dynamic's-sake designs, definitely. Also getting sick of companies using "cloud computing" etc. as a smokescreen to justify siphoning your data off into their servers for analysis and resale when they could easily do the processing locally.

<comment><USER18> Our 'app' runs on a radiator valve (!) and absolutely our design / privacy philosophy is that we can do a decent job without data leaving the radiator, noticeably better if we can share it within the house, and only after that and with consent, a little better still with some 'cloud' help!

[https://www.earth.org.uk/OpenTRV-demo.html](https://www.earth.org.uk/OpenTRV- demo.html)

I generally think apps on phones are a poor deal for security and reliability, so there is scope for using browsers as a portable virtual machine for all but the most critical/local of services. I was thinking this this morning before I noticed the HN story!

So, I like my _pages_ to be clean and small, and I'd like Web _apps_ to be distinct and reliable, and in some cases work off-line to avoid the need for walled-garden native code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm seeing that some of this is being driven by web developer shops who are telling clients that this is how things must be done. I was sent a 600MB chunk of crud today to be hosted that required a full lamp stack to build a web app that could have been done very nicely by a four page static site that worked well on mobile. This is has insane. These design shops (not all) don't care about building sites that help their customers, they only want to produce eye- candy that they think makes their portfolios look cool.

<comment><USER20> > they only want to produce eye-candy that they think makes their portfolios > look cool

You got it. I'm finishing up a contract for one such firm that loves to use Wordpress for _everything_ when 9/10 of their sites could be better served by static HTML pages and better CSS. But no, that's soooooo last decade, so the users get a Wordpress/Sass can of worms that requires entire LAMP and Node.js stacks to operate properly.

I was thinking about rebuilding my portfolio site in a "responsive framework", but decided against it when I realized I can achieve the same effect with static HTML and separate CSS files for each page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Enjoy what you have now. Soon enough blogs will be rendered via WASM onto a canvas bitmap using a full embedded UI something like QT.

<comment><USER22> That capability actually sounds pretty darn cool to me.

<comment><USER23> Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

<comment><USER22> And just because you shouldn't doesn't mean it's not cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was an article recently on HN with a clickbaity title "It's time to kill the web" but its core argument was that HTTP is a document delivery protocol and not meant for building applications, and I think that is the main reason why we are seeing an explosion of frameworks and poor app quality.

[https://blog.plan99.net/its-time-to-kill-the- web-974a9fe80c8...](https://blog.plan99.net/its-time-to-kill-the- web-974a9fe80c89) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321015)

(I am NOT the author)

</comment><comment><USER25> The real problem is that demand for websites and web apps has grown faster than the supply of skilled developers who can build them properly.

As a developer who can build both traditional multi-page websites and single page apps, I'd rather build single page apps from both a development productivity and UX perspective.

As a developer, when you get used to building web apps, it's just faster especially if you're a full stack developer.

</comment><comment><USER26> I work at a place where our websites should _definitely_ be about informations and accessibility. But the pression to use SPAs in order to "be cool" is so strong, almost nobody questions this decision.

Most seem to think that if you are not using Angular/React/etc, you are doing it wrong, you live in the past. But the large majority of our websites could _easily_ be plain HTML + some Javascript to spice everything!

I'm still a very big fan of progressive enhancement and of sites that do work when javascript is disabled, even if they are then not as pretty.

</comment><comment><USER27> > Do these companies not realise how awkward these new designs are to use?

No. Because if they did, they might not make the changes.

Much of this is likely driven by 'marketing' where there was/is a miss-belief that if the site is not using the newest whiz-bang tech it will see reduced "engagement".

But what the marketers can't fathom is that people come to the site for the sites content, not the sites technology stack.

<comment><USER28> So you're saying marketers can't "fathom" basic concepts about content, but are also technically competent enough to be the decision-makers when it comes to the technology stack?

If that's the case these marketers should quit and get jobs as developers, they'll get paid more.

<comment><USER29> I guess the marketing merely go to conferences and have their heads trivially washed up with the newest buzz stuff. See our numbers are tumbling and X is doing that (cool new site design), coincidence?

Also it doesn't help that developers also tend to love doing new stuff, exploring and all.

<comment><USER30> Marketing builds brands, manages products, distribution, CRM and communication.

Branding and communication go beyond reacting to numbers - it's getting a strategic vision and develop it in a way your customers relate to.

From what I've read I don't know what kind of marketing people you guys are in touch with... my god.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reddit's mobile page is frustratingly technically incompetent, especially as if you switch to desktop it works instantly.

<comment><USER32> It's telling that their mobile experience starts with an advert to "Try the app, it's better!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not using web apps at all. To be honest, I thought they were a fad and am amazed that they are still deemed successful and trendy. I haven't seen a web app so far that would even remotely match a corresponding desktop application in terms of quality and features. But I guess times are changing and people are happy with less quality, as long as its shiny and new.

Most web apps violate basic user interface design and don't even have working keyboard shortcuts. And let's not get started on user-definable menus, arbitrary undo, re-ordering of interface elements, scripting, and other advanced features.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound negative and to each his own. I personally don't use a web app for mail and have found absolutely zero use for any other web application I've tried so far.

<comment><USER18> I don't run anything other than stock apps on my phone.

The desktop is a different world.

Web _apps_ should be able to shine as portable consume-mainly low-pain deployments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Monetization - content websites turned into apps because the business is data collection.

Much of the code running in these apps bypasses engineering and source control, it is injected into the page by services like [https://segment.com/](https://segment.com/) and handled by Marketing, not Engineering. So you see cases where the app works great on dev machines and in prod loads 20x slower.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure sick of anything web-based that's not a form app (for which the web works fine -- e.g. ticket purchasing, taxes, posting, etc) -- of course regular content presentation websites are OK too.

E.g. web-based bitmap editors, web-based IDEs, web-based audio editors, web- based file management, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've been sick of web-apps since they became a thing. We should have built nicer visual designs on some weird combination of Delphi and X11 or something vaguely like that.

<comment><USER37> I've been sick of web-apps since they became a thing, too.

And for sure, I've stopped even learning web technologies, as they are more hassle than they're worth - just as much cognitive load as it takes to build a native app, with none of the benefits.

So, I build native apps. And if I need it to be cross-platform, I target SDL and OpenGL with a single GUI library that works the same, everywhere.

It means I never have to read a single line of CSS ever again, and .. I like that! A lot! Plus, all my apps run everywhere, and always look exactly the same - my users like that too!

<comment><USER36> What sort of GUI library/libraries are you using?

<comment><USER37> Depends on the use case, but generally right now it goes like this: if it can be done as a high-density Games/Games-like GUI or some kind of interactive media/content display, which 99% of modern apps are: I use MOAI. If it has to be a Business GUI with normal looking things for whatever platform: Haxe. If its a quick tool for lab/workshop: libUI.

These approaches all have their pluses/minuses too, of course, but I have found that by exercising platform chops, the workload is minimal once the homework is done.

I find it utterly pleasant to code something up in Lua, ship the bins to the devices directly, and see the same thing on every machine. Even between libui and MOAI projects there are chances to share data - i.e. use a lab tool written in libUI to generate content consumed by the game engine...

Its like the web, only completely the opposite: you're not targeting someone else app (the web client), but rather running your own client (app).

<comment><USER36> I think I may have to learn Haxe. Which MOAI are you referring to? The library I found was a mobile-games engine.

<comment><USER37> MOAI SDK: [https://github.com/moai/moai- community](https://github.com/moai/moai-community)

MOAI DEV: [https://github.com/moai/moai-dev](https://github.com/moai/moai-dev)

Warning: some effort is required, but .. once you get the hosts running on all platform targets (Win/MacOS/Linux/iOS/Android/&etc.), the true value shines and cross-platform nirvana can be attained. Bonus points for having Hanappe/Flower and/or whatever else involved as a 'higher layer' UI management abstraction on top of the GL pipeline ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've never liked them from the beginning. HTTP/HTML/CSS were created for making static documents. The problem is convenience. Convenience for users, convenience for developers.

For users, now even for me, if I go to a web site to do something that seems simple and they say "do you want to download our app?" I feel my tempature rise a bit. No, I don't want to give you a foothold on my phone/computer I just want to do this simple thing this instant while downloading nothing.

The developer case is worse: platform GUI development goes from complicated to horrendous. And if you've done it for one you've done it for none of the other platforms. What was needed here was for everyone to understand MVP (model- view-presenter), implement most of their logic in model and presenter layers and then only have the V as a thin, platform-specific bit that presented the content to the user. Instead we either got Swing (a run-everywhere library that looked exactly the same everywhere and fit in nowhere) or these lowest- common-demonitor "native" frameworks which _looked_ ok but often missed key functionality on various platforms. So they were either really ugly or really complex. And this was, IMO, a result of poor design processes: the GUI's were written such that business logic was hopelessly engangled with GUI/View code.

So the web basically gave us a kind of Swing where it _did_ fit in. So the web became a favorite GUI framework. But it wasn't designed to be a GUI framework so it was terrible at it [1]. But still, it was perceived to be easier than native (and indeed, it had advantages: much harder to embed business logic in your view because the view is written in a completely different, non-turing- compliant language) so people were happy to use it. Including doing insane things like trying to run OpenGL in the browser so they could have 3D games there (making the browser nothing more than an app delivery mechanism) or even people asking for an OS that is just a browser.

I don't know how things will turn out, but at least if WebAssembly gets popular maybe I'll at least be spared dealing with the insult to engineering known as JavaScript.

[1] Some people don't get this. In this very thread there is someone asking why there are no "native" components like date pickers and so on...

</comment><comment><USER39> The lack of self awareness is glaring. This is pushed entirely on sites like HN with endless hype and resume driven development.

There is nothing wrong with hype. The big problem is anything new avoids proper scrutiny by forcefully marketing what it seeks to replace as 'obsolete' and criticism as anti-change. If its by a big player people latch on hoping to consult or acquire employable skills and the din by vested interests becomes incessant and scrutiny by lone voices can be ignored.

This is used consistently on HN to push bad ideas aggressively until its too late, and the fact that rarely does this meet technical scrutiny early on suggests a missing technical depth in discussions.

<comment><USER13> I mostly agree with you but you're being too harsh on HN. It barely influences anything at all.

The problem you outlined does exist -- but it's forced by marketing teams and vested interests, not by a bunch of tech enthusiasts. HN's influece amounts to a drop in the sea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> One question I have - should we keep building apps in the document model (http / https), or finally create a true static document model and add a separate app layer?

I can't believe after 2 decades that browsers are still missing so many native elements - date pickers, menus, flyouts - how many of those have been written for the web?

</comment><comment><USER8> The reality is that that lightweight or even hand-coded apps and sites are faster, more semantic, and easier to maintain, and often look less cookie- cutter. But you don't get hired for knowing how to create a great web app with HTML, CSS, a server-side language, and a little JS or jquery for flavor. You get hired for becoming an "expert" in something that has only been around 2.5 years and is at the inflection point in the hype curve. What you're seeing is the result of resume-driven development.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yup, and then you lose me to some other site.

The two things that annoy me the most having the page change layout as it loads (often causing me to click on something different than I was aiming at) and lack of responsiveness. Having the UI baked into an environment that was never designed for it makes the apps anemic and slow.

Google is the worst at this, where they take perfectly fine and usable desktop app (say Picassa) and then replace it with some janky, feature deficient, "web app."

</comment><comment><USER7> The trouble is that developers have great tools for building actual web applications. You know, things like Trello or Google Docs or whatever that are actual _software_ hosted in the browser.

They love their tools, and they aren't making the distinction between software and _content_.

So they're trying to use the hammer of application development frameworks to attach the zip-tie of content, which is better accomplished with a different tool.

And it sucks for the user. It sucks hard.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes, and for quite a long time.

I think the excessive complexity often comes from imitating techniques in projects that are solving problems for different audiences at larger scale.

As an old-school web designer, I recommend Jeremy Keith's Resilient Web Design — [https://resilientwebdesign.com/](https://resilientwebdesign.com/) — to anyone who wants to make a good, fast, future-proof website.

</comment><comment><USER43> At least Flash developers already realized that Flash was not meant for content delivery.

It seems that the HTML5 proponents still need to learn that lesson.

HTML for content, plugins for rich media. I never saw a problem with that. But I'm probably getting old.

<comment><USER44> You are not getting older, (in fact you are getting older) it is just that the http protocol was never designed for this and we are paying the price. I find your approach very rational, it is something that was lost in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> There used to be a time when SPAs were meant for real web-apps (as in, things like the Admin area of your PayPal account) and everything else lived happily as website pages.

Yes, I am tired of everyone trying to shoehorn everything into an SPA. It shows developers who want to jump onto the hype-wagon without always thinking if the problem they're solving is appropriate for it.

</comment><comment><USER46> You are correct, but it is not because of concept itself but rather because of lazy implementations.

For example:

Back-end renders page and something crashes - you get 503 error and you know to refresh the page or contact support or w/e.

Shitty web-app loads multiple components via AJAX, doesn't even check for errors, some components do not load, you have no idea what the heck is happening so all you can do is inspect the JSON response in the devtools.

</comment><comment><USER47> Amen brother. Unless we want to talk about "apps" in general that - in 95% of cases - could be mobile-optimized web sites.

</comment><comment><USER48> lol. It is just in the process of getting worse. Soon you'll have "all the container apps", developers even more removed from the actual administration and even less ability for you to interact with what other people do.

On the positive side though: In 10 years you won't hear much about "web apps" anymore.

</comment><comment><USER49> btw, [http://www.reddit.com/.compact](http://www.reddit.com/.compact) is a far superior mobile UX than their official mobile site (and make sure you click "No" to the banner enticing you to try their mobile site when you first land)

<comment><USER50> You can also access it from [https://i.reddit.com/](https://i.reddit.com/). The problem is there are so many inter-reddit links throughout comments, sidebars, wikis, and submitted links that you usually end up getting booted into the newer interface at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Well, if you look at the declining numbers of downloads for native apps yearly, you can see why big companies would want to switch to progressive web apps eventually. Web components and the focus on components in a framework like Vue.js make sense in terms of UI. I think the tooling has a lot to do with the spreading of the concept of the SPA also.But I agree, a lot of sites are jumping on the bandwagon and shouldn't. You look at a site like Craigslist, that never changed and it still is a piece of art /s Anyways, I'm just a noob so my opinion is worth shit... As a sidenote, working with webpack and vue.js is amazing (no, I'm not a hipster...)

</comment><comment><USER52> Web apps never feel right to me because they are so obviously not _of_ the platform. I get the same feeling from some cross platform widget toolkits. Yes, the application may be cross platform, but it doesn't feel native anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER53> Reddit's mobile website is objectively worse than their desktop website on mobile.

<comment><USER54> LinkedIn is horrible as well. Their chat feature (on mobile web) is unusable. The Send button goes further and further down the screen as you type until it disappears... permanently. No amount of refreshing will bring it back. They took the app paradigm and ran with it until they created a broken website when in fact, a single textarea and a button would have sufficed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I don't think the "graphical design" aspect should be the only factor to consider (at least for the general trend, not for wikia in particular). SPA issues should be balanced with the horror that server-side session data is. Trying to rebuild the client-side state every time after each answer.

From a programming model POV, having the server only spit the necessary data for the new info required, and not the whole set together with GUI data, is a real simplification. Not to mention the fact that it is already the architecture you need for the other types of client (mobile and native desktop app).

<comment><USER56> > the horror that server-side session data is

Whast is horrible about this?

<comment><USER55> Well, for once it means resending over and over the same information on every page, it's just a waste of bandwidth. Then it makes sharding the server more complicated, because you need to make sure the request goes to the correct server (or you have to use a special DB just for that such as redis).

For things as simple as form validation, you need to resend the values that the person entered in case the form didn't validate. Then you end up piggybacking informations from one page to another in hidden type form fields...

If that doesn't sound crazy to you, then you should probably write "native" application again, it will remind you how simple life is when your client has the right to use its memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I believe there's gotta be a middle ground. Web Apps (and Progressive Web Apps) should be treated as the new standard because they take the best part of web and enhance it with patterns and features that we already know works thanks to mobile. Now, I agree that most implementations are very bad and need to be improved. I think the whole "javascript framework" situation is getting very close to total mayhem and I hope somebody will figure out a way to create web apps that have both functionality and simplicity to user and developer

</comment><comment><USER58> I agree the mobile Reddit is awkward to use and a horrible experience. However i dont think this is a very big issue. Sure everything started to look like Bootstrap in the last years, but IMO most people did it right without making UX worse.

Afaik most modern websites load every single request with Ajax (often through things like Turbolinks) but it feels so passive that nobody would ever bother complaining. Also it always perfectly falls back.

</comment><comment><USER59> No, in my experience such websites are faster to navigate.

</comment><comment><USER60> Pushing UI rendering to client side and other "rich client" properties stress the servers less, so it's an advantage for the app provider.

</comment><comment><USER61> Generally web apps perform better because you load the app once and it gets cached by the browser. The ajax calls to get content reduces the data that you need to transfer. It also forces you to create APIs and reuse them and on the frontend side it provides much more flexibility to modularize and reuse components compared to the clunky widget interfaces available in server side frameworks.

404s are irrelevant to the fact that the site is using an web app or not. 404s exist for the longest time and they're as common in both cases.

</comment><comment><USER62> kids these days

</comment><comment><USER63> _Do these companies not realise how awkward these new designs are to use? Or that if you 're not making a social media site, your site doesn't need to load like one?_

They have been bamboozled by so-called "full stack developers" who want to add the latest trendy "framework" to their CVs. Customers are alienated, shareholders money is squandered, and managers who let this happen are asleep at the wheel

</comment><comment><USER64> One reason I see is that there just is not enough of good enough content and people seem to want to obscure things just because they want to hide the fact that there is not anything worth checking / consuming.

</comment><comment><USER65> I see a lot of folks complaining, but the reasoning is completely blown out. "I hate spa's because they have a 50 mb library behind them". Honestly I'd like to see an example of that.

I haven't built a static website since 2005 and I seriously don't get all the contempt for spa's or dynamic sites. Horrible user experience? Maybe for those who grew up on static designs. If you do them right, which isn't even hard, they should be a much better experience, since you're not loading all the content at once.

Maybe I don't understand because there's a bunch of gripping and not a lot of, "here's why it sucks". Other than, "the web was intended to support static sites". Yeah, and computers were built strictly for scientists, so stop using yours. :)

<comment><USER31> A SPA generally has to initialize and hook everything up.

If you're being even more trendy and have turned your entire back end into an API, you then have to wait for the javascript to compile, wait for the intial document complete javascript call, post off for the data, wait for the data, run a render and finally display what the person wants.

On your dev laptop with 16 Gb and multi-core and a local database and web server, that's fast.

For all your users, it's not.

And all that for what? In the context of this discussion, maybe a fancy user menu that could have been written in a couple of kb of raw javascript by someone with more than a couple of years of dev experience that would take a millisecond to compile and run compared to the 500ms-20s of having to wait for something like React or Angular or Knockout or whatever.</comment></comment>


Dopamine fasting is a tech fad that sounds silly – but might just work - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/29/dopamine-fasting-tech-fad-might-work <comment><AUTHOR> No work and no play makes Jack a dopamine addiction free boy</comment>


Riot Games newest title "Valorant" installs kernel driver to run anti-cheat - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/fzxdl7/anticheat_starts_upon_computer_boot/fn6yqbe/ <comment><USER3> Previously on HN (2 months ago, 111 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22230168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22230168)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why do consumers allow games to install these kind of kernel drivers? Are they aware they are giving away keys to the kindom wrt the OS/computing environment integrity just so game studios can take part in an unwinnable cat and mouse chase with cheaters? Also why does Microsoft or AV products allow this without giant "you are giving away root on your box" warning signs?

<comment><USER5> People don't know what a kernel driver is nor what root access is nor what it entails. I don't think the installer even mentions it, either. They just want to play the dang game. Remember when Vista launched with that UAC prompt and people just googled how to perma-disable it?

Also, cheating really is so bad that most people will accept it anyways.

Unfortunately we don't have a software nor user culture of, for example, having an isolated partition for our important files and an isolated partition for "I just want to play some games" \-- You can imagine how streamlined and effortless and by-default this could be in an alternate universe where it was a top priority.

So people can really get hosed under catastrophic conditions like the anti- cheat becoming a remote backdoor for an attacker. I think this is really where people are let down by modern computing.

<comment> GuB-42 That isolated environment is called a game console.

We are in a weird situation with PC gaming. PCs have always been a hackers friendly platform. Both Counterstrike and DOTA started as mods. Skyrim is more of a platform than a game now. Of course, it also means cheating, but it wasn't a big deal back then. Cheaters were just shunned, or sometimes encouraged, depending on the context. No big money at stake, no big deal.

But now, we want a standardized platform for high stakes competitive play, so why not bring back consoles. They are more than powerful enough for this, and you can hook up a keyboard and mouse if you want.

<comment><USER6> people that play cs for real money target ~144 fps as the 99th percentile minimum. consoles aren't really designed for this use case.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why this has been downvoted, it's strictly true. The console is not a reasonable platform for a competitive game which is cross-platform.

<comment><USER6> I think GP was suggesting that competitive titles should only be released on consoles, so that everyone would have a sandboxed environment with intrusive anticheat. my point is more that the hardware in current consoles isn't really suited for esports titles. consoles are mainly designed to run AAA games without dropping below 60 fps too often. this means selecting a relatively weak CPU so you can allocate more of the budget towards the GPU, which will usually be the bottleneck in this sort of game. you usually want the opposite tradeoff for esports; the graphics are not particularly fancy so you can get by with a middling GPU, but you care a lot more about fps, so you want a faster CPU. counterstrike in particular is almost completely bottlenecked by singlethread performance. even with a 9900k, a discrete gpu is barely above idle.

<comment><USER7> > consoles are mainly designed to run AAA games without dropping below 60 fps > too often

This is not actually the case. It's part of what makes Doom's aiming for (and, with Doom eternal actually hitting) 60fps an exception. Most AAA games (including competitive games like COD) prioritize visuals over frame rate, and so they are typically aiming for 25-30 FPS.

Also, a number of graphical workloads are still bound by the CPU - such as occlusion culling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I work in game anti-cheat, kernel drivers are a necessary evil. If I had a choice, I would stick to usermode or even server-side only. But you would be shocked how advanced some cheating software is, exploiting every aspect of the CPU. Now it is commonplace for a cheat to use a custom-made VM hypervisor or even a UEFI bootkit — crazy! Good luck stopping that from usermode.

<comment><USER9> >kernel drivers are a necessary evil.

No they're not. Not for cheating in a video game. The reason why cheat makers have advanced to shady rootkit level exploits is because game publishers started doing it first. Stopping cheating in your games is not more important than the security of my computer period. I don't care. Find better ways to manage your game or i'll play something else. I have no interest in your anti- cheat spyware being on my computer.

<comment><USER8> I would disagree with your reason cheats went kernel, speaking as someone wrote cheats for over 10 years before "switching sides". It's because cheat software always wants to hide from the anti-cheat, and kernel mode provides a perfect place to do that.

But if you don't want to have anti-cheat software installed, that's OK! I'm a big proponent of informed-consent, and if you don't consent, nobody is forcing you to. You just won't be able to enjoy online multiplayer.

<comment><USER9> >You just won't be able to enjoy online multiplayer

No, i'll be able to enjoy online multiplayer in one of the many, many games whose devs don't feel like they need to monitor and control my computer to provide a quality game.

<comment><USER10> It's a naive viewpoint. Prime example: Counter strike. Even with VAC(valve anti cheat) measures, the game is full of cheaters. Those aren't super intrusive, and the game simply isn't fun for anybody who cares at all about competitive gameplay. So people move onto other platforms that support more intrusive anticheats. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but given your stance, that would just mean every FPS game will be rendered borderline unplayable because of all of the cheaters on it. And I mean, if that's your point--to just not play competitive FPS games, then I'm not really sure what we're even arguing here.

<comment><USER11> Right. The vast majority of players moved to the platforms with the most intrusive anti-cheat of all years ago: games consoles.

The market spoke. A few geeks with hangups about kernel drivers are irrelevant next to the masses of people who will happily buy entire dedicated gaming computers designed from the ground up to be physically tamperproof.

<comment><USER10> I should have been more explicit, but by other platforms, I meant ESEA/Faceit that provide their own anti cheat systems that run independently of VAC. I'm not sure I'm really seeing many people go to ps4/xbox simply because of some cheaters on PC?

<comment><USER11> Well, most gamers went to consoles over time and there was certainly a thriving cheating scene there, that the console makers (at least Microsoft) were able to push back and destroy. Multi-player is pretty popular everywhere so it's probably a factor, though I'm not enough of a gamer to care. My skillz are so weak it feels like everyone is cheating all the time :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If this driver is so minimal that it is nothing more but an interface to userspace, opening the source would benefit everybody.

It really means nothing when a company audits itself.

<comment><USER8> If they open-sourced it, cheaters could fork it and completely neuter the anti-cheat functionality.

<comment><USER13> Security through obscurity isn't good security. The cheat writers won't be stopped just because they don't have the source. And with open source, the vulnerabilities it has can be found and fixed by everyone.

<comment><USER14> It's all about obscurity when dealing with this type of malware. They are advanced rootkits used by malicious users tampering with distributed systems that must trust the client to a high degree or they simply will not work. As soon as obscurity is used by either side it inevitably becomes the tool both sides are forced to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As long as they tell you, great.

Cheating really ruins online games for many of us.

<comment><USER16> I agree that they should definitely inform you of the extent of the anti-cheat system. I have never been able to take online gaming seriously due to how easy it is to cheat and how many people there are in the world that simply don't care about ruining others experience.

Until it is impossible to cheat it will always be a casual experience only. Maybe this is what it takes to actually prevent cheaters, but I doubt it. It's an arms race and they will always find a way around it.

<comment><USER15> It's better to try vs do nothing. The solutions to all arms races is not just do nothing.

<comment><USER16> I'm not suggesting not trying. I'm just saying this won't be the final nail in the coffin for cheating.

<comment><USER17> There will never be a final nail. It's a game of cat and mouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How long before cheaters can buy a specialized robot/deep learning machine that has a high speed camera and servos that they can point at their computer screen where it can watch the screen and work the keyboard and mouse for them? (Or, better yet, the robot plugs into USB providing it's own keyboard/mouse/controller input and video output is recorded via a simple VGA or HDMI...)

I think these physical types of cheating systems already exist for smartphones. Last time I mentioned it, some people hinted at systems you can setup for phones - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991775).

Perhaps we're just waiting on the right software for this type of revolution to occur in PC gaming. I can't think of what's lacking right now though - <USER2> the pieces seem to be in place.

<comment><USER19> Would be trivial for less graphically cluttered games. Your external cheat could run a copy of a game engine constantly matching player position/orientation and comparing rendering of empty map to video feed from low latency capture card. Simple visual diff is all it takes to identify even 1 pixel of enemy peeking from around the corner. You could inject visual overlay on top of external video signal and auto trigger mouse click when crosshair points at potential differences. No fancy AI/deep learning required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I saw one of the threads on reddit about this yesterday with the usual litany of privacy/security complaints and had a random idea - make it optional. Put people that decide to remove it in an alternate queue with server-side anti- cheat mechanisms only, maybe disable competitive/ranked game types for them.

<comment><USER3> They would use cheats to tell the server that they aren't cheating, to get placed into the "not cheating" queue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is unfortunately why I switch to console exclusively for gaming. I personally prefer a powerful PC especially with keyboard and mouse, but it's just so much harder to cheat on a console nowadays, and I don't want to install this stuff.

<comment><USER22> You don't even need to cheat on consoles, most games come built in with it, I think they call it aim assist. Or you can just use a keyboard and mouse and suddenly your better than all the controller users.

<comment><USER23> "Cheating" in video games is generally understood to mean using a technical means to gain an advantage not intended by the developers. So it's not that.

<comment><USER22> The console players I know seem to consider mouse and keyboard cheating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's also a thread on /r/pcgaming about the anti-cheat causing performance issues in other games, even though Riot says it only runs when Valorant is running.

</comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone in this HN comment section actually read the discussion on Reddit? According to the devs you can delete the executable if you're really that worried.

They also talk about in more detail here:

[https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-null- anti-...](https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-null-anti-cheat- kernel-driver/)

<comment><USER26> This is straight up funny, and I think well written, with good detail for the target demographic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Didn't the infamous SecurOM also do this?

<comment><USER12> You can find a lot of examples in the copy protection space, other examples are Starforce or the Sony rootkit.

None of that came without problems for the users...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why I have a PC dedicated only to gaming and other machines dedicated only for casual web browsing. There's too much maintenance for a PC if it's multi-use.

</comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (aka pubg) do the same, but as a Chinese company?

I stopped playing when they started forcing you to install something so intrusive.

<comment><USER30> Riot is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company.

<comment><USER31> A minority stake. Disney has one too. Doesn't mean Mickey Mouse is backdooring overwatch.

<comment><USER30> > Tencent paid $400 million for a 93 percent stake in Riot Games.[2][9] > Tencent bought the remaining 7 percent in December 16, 2015; the price was > not disclosed.[2][10]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Instagram filters in real life - <AUTHOR> http://1000memories.com/blog/97-old-school-instagram-filters-using-vintage-cameras-and-film

<comment><USER2> That site leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

After that recent "How many photos have ever been taken?" post with a misleading graph <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3001988> now another "infographic" quality post that again screams "look at me, I am linkbait". Those text snippets that are easily assembled from Wikipedia and other sources.

Changing the submission to include "hacking" is quite blatant.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Sometimes it's just _too_ obvious.</comment></comment>


N95DECON – A scientific consortium for study of N95 FFR decontamination - <AUTHOR> https://www.n95decon.org/ <comment><USER2> I still wonder how well venting it for days is (say 10 days in a relatively dry room).</comment>