Ask HN: What product/service to create first website for startup? - <AUTHOR> My product is about ready to launch, and I need a website for marketing/outreach. I'm a competent programmer, but my experience is in scientific computing, not front-end development.
Bootstrap or something similar seems reasonable, but I haven't done any web programming in 15 years. I don't want to spend a lot of time on web development, just want something that looks modern.
Eventually I want to add a customer and payment portals. I may apply for Stripe Atlas, but that's another Ask HN thread. <comment><USER2> squarespace, leadpages</comment>


Amazon Web Services Public Datasets - <AUTHOR> http://www.datawrangling.com/amazon-web-services-public-datasets <comment><USER2> Another good move by Amazon.

Most of what I do involves working with small to large datasets. Usually, the challenge is collecting the data & getting it into a structured form. Having this openly available seriously lowers the barrier to analysis.</comment>


We Can't Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regulation-incentive.html <comment><USER2> A lot of the comments here seem to focus on the issue of regulating FB because of their social media output and potential for spreading fake news, etc.

But the thing I would want more regulation on is their possession of personal data and the tools to target people using that data. The same applies to all similar advertising-first platforms.

If all of this data and the tools to analyze it are as powerful as the data giants seem to suggest by their marketing and actions (given the increase in collection, storage, and analysis)... Then maybe we, as a society, need to have a conversation about that. And possibly regulation of some kind is an outcome of that conversation.

<comment><USER3> Honest question: why is it a problem that Facebook has personal data and uses it in their advertising platform?

No one is forced to give their data to Facebook. It's not a public utility. It's an entertainment site, first and foremost.

<comment><USER4> > _No one is forced to give their data to Facebook._

Neither do we have to. Facebook is grabbing it all anyway. With pre-emptive measures ala ad-, cookie and tracker blocking we can _reduce_ the amount of data they get, but they still get _something_.

If they'd only collect data about their users, that would be totally fine. But they don't. They build shadow profiles of people who _are not_ on FB and track them just the same way.

FB is a whole lot closer to Orwellian surveillance apparatus than it is to entertainment site.

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to me how upset so many people got about the level of detail that the NSA collected while so many hand over their entire digital presence to FB and Google.

Maybe they think "you don't have to use FB"... By that logic "you didn't have to use AT&T or the internet at all" either.

<comment><USER4> Public opinion is shaped a great deal by what and in what way the mass media covers a specific topic. There was a lot of uproar about NSA surveillance _while it was in the news_ , which quickly died down as the headlines disappeared. _Out of sight, out of mind._

And then there's also the thing that, arguably, Google and FB give those people _something_ in return which they might consider worthwhile for _just data_. I'd question that the majority of the user population is aware of the implications of handing over data about themselves and specifically other people, who may or may not be okay with that.

<comment><USER2> > Out of sight, out of mind.

All the more reason to keep an eye on the people who control the page that so many people view their news from these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At the risk of falling prey to "WhatAboutism" it is hard for me to be concerned here when we give such free reign to credit agencies and other traditional corporate entities who can't be arsed to even keep their data secure. That has affected and inconvenienced me personally as opposed to the annoying buzz from the dumbasses who used to get their reality from a daily two hour hate from a minority of right-leaning pundits and who now thrive on fake news from Facebook and Twitter.

Their pre-existing intellectual incuriosity is the root problem IMO, not the current medium on which they gorge their ignorance. And by the time the same clowns in Congress who think it's hunky dory to tax grad student tuition waivers craft anything to regulate Facebook, there will be a new and scarier kid on the block extracting and analyzing the information at a whole new unforeseen level.

As others have said, large corporations are effectively the malevolent AIs Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking keep squawking about. Good luck with regulating that.

<comment><USER6> I'd typically be the first person to call you out on distracting from the core point, but in this case I agree wholeheartedly; I don't think you fall prey to the typical anti-patterns of whataboutism in that the broader context of American regulation and our prioritization of goals is very relevant to this discussion.

The entire "Fake news" epidemic seems absurd to me. (and frankly, an intentional distraction) Tabloids have been around literally my entire life. The only difference now is that people apparently can no longer distinguish them from fact. (Not to mention as far back as our first presidents, you can find newspaper articles trumpeting that e.g. Jefferson was in a pact with Satan and his alcoholism would overturn the country. Somehow America prevailed then; what is different now.)

Meanwhile, we have public schools in some states that can't afford more than 4 days a week, politicians for whom lying is absolutely a pathology with no one holding them accountable, and a literacy/numeracy rate far below many other first world countries.

I have many thoughts on why this comes to pass but the cynic in me is focused heavily on that the incentives in the current system (for the current power- players at least) do not align with spending resources to have a highly educated population en-masse.

<comment><USER7> I would argue that the cause of the "Fake news" epidemic is partially due to the social media. Specifically, Information Overload is to blame.

A few decades back we had and now loosing: \- Traceable reputation -- which is now lost, and much harder to learn in our uncontrolled, random and sparse feed interactions. \- Focus on topic -- social crises were build up, considered, reflected on. Nowadays, we moved into the realm of emotional reactions. Noone is expected to have mental capacity to consume as many pieces of disjoint information as we do today on social media. In an average feed, a president eats a kid, and a cat does a funny trick one after another.

The prime incentives in the current social system is the instant gratification. This new system is easy to abuse, as we are moving further away from analytical to emotional consumption.

<comment><USER8> > Information Overload is to blame.

The information overload is due to centralization and advertising.

Individuals can easily overcome information overload via compartmentalization, but Facebook works directly against that strategy by mixing sources, and mixing in advertisements.

What we need to provide individuals is a decentralized communication network that has all the features and accessibility users want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single > entity controls all of its data.

What would a break-up of Facebook look like? The most famous modern example is the breakup of Bell, but the infrastructure lent itself to a natural geographical split. It's not entirely obvious if a geographic split would work for FB, and it's not entirely obvious along what planes one could split up the company.

<comment><USER10> One option would be to Just Do It, just break the company up along that sort of arbitrary line, and expect that that will push the Baby Faces [1] to be forced to communicate with federation protocols, which could also let others in to play too. One would imagine a condition of the breakup would be that any such federation protocol that was developed could not privilege the Baby Faces amoungst each other.

It isn't necessarily the best choice, but it is one choice. I'm not sure there's necessarily a much better one, either. It's a very big problem to try to wrap your head around.

[1]: I _think_ you heard it here first, though I can't promise nobody else has come up with that. I haven't heard it before to my knowledge.

<comment><USER11> I think this is definitely a very interesting line of discussion for this problem.

I really like the idea of essentially forcing federation protocols to be developed. E-mail was an overwhelming success -- we should look for ways to repeat that success with other aspects.

<comment><USER12> What about developing federated protocols by 'just doing it'.

<comment><USER13> How about creating a open standard for social media,i.e, open API so that no matter what platform you use, you can connect to ppl on other platforms. This should introduce more competition in the market without creating a loophole to regulate internet.

so ppl would be able to choose platform based on variety of variables like advertisements, data collection, looks, usability.... just an idea

<comment><USER14> Creating standards is the easy part, uptake is a whole other beast.

<comment><USER15> Mastodon uses ActivityPub and has over a million users

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I dont trust NYTIMES to regulate itself either, or any other major news outlet there. Or any oil company, or big food corporation, or any militar company. Or the department of defense. I just dont know what is the ideal solution ,but state regulation is not the answer. It looks very dangerous.

<comment><USER17> How do you distrust governments and Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, HTC, Verizon, Comcast, etc., while still using the internet meaningfully, or really, participate in society meaningfully? In the current climate pretty much everybody understands, on some level, that by using "the internet" you are letting unknown third parties create a market out of your private life at no compensation to you beyond access to their "service". Yet we all continue tapping away on our shiny screens. In many ways it's really a deplorable, unacceptable situation.

<comment><USER18> Everyone understands that letting third parties sell your personal data at no cost to you is what happens when you use the internet, but it doesn't have to be that way.

With some meaningful regulation, we could put a stop to this overnight. The internet existed and flourished before this manipulative business model became the norm, and it would exist if we outlawed it. We wouldn't even need to outlaw it, just require explicit written consent to sell personal data.

Can you imagine the ramifications? Once you eliminate the lazy, tired, and frankly intellectually barren model of "make a mediocre service that sucks enough personal data from our users so we can sell ads against them", startups could go back to designing products that solve interesting problems that people are willing to pay for!

<comment><USER19> What does "sell your personal data" mean? Facebook (and Google) doesn't do that - it's much more profitable to keep it guarded so you can charge for services based on it (like ads) again and again.

So what specifically would that regulation say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think we can break up Google or Facebook like AT&T or Standard Oil. The data economy requires new antitrust tools, which the Economist wrote about recently:

"A break-up would be highly disruptive and slow down innovation. It is likely that a Googlet or a Babyface would quickly become dominant again."[1]

Federated social networks will never catch on if they require more work from the user for likely less utility.

Facebook is also nothing like MySpace. This comparison is tired: Facebook is orders of magnitude larger than MySpace ever was. It's not going to get squashed away by a competitor, especially given its ability (alongside Google, Amazon) to buy up would-be competitors while they're young.

I also quite dislike the idea of regulating Facebook as a utility, as I dislike the idea of that tight coupling with government. Facebook quickly becomes a tool for coercion, propaganda, and oppression.

There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy. The real risk is that a couple small players completely shut the door to new competition (which leads to more improper use of data as a few players have all of it). Regulators need to get smarter about blocking mergers (like FB and WhatsApp). New rules, like enforcing data sharing, need to be explored (although this reveals a big risk for data privacy).

[1]: [https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it- shap...](https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21721634-how-it-shaping-up- data-giving-rise-new-economy)

<comment><USER21> _> There needs to be a new set of rules built around enforcing competition around the data economy._

Agreed. In the US, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the last major attempt at FCC rework. Our world looks nothing like 1996.

My emphasis would be on a more utilized regulatory authority over two methods of entrenchment: (1) data & (2) cloud infrastructure.

Service providers past a certain market share should be limited in how they're able to wield these against competition. _If_ they choose to utilize either for their own, non-neutral services, they should be _required_ to offer them to external parties under reasonable terms that allow for existential-caliber competition.

I realize we failed at this with carriers, but I don't see how the alternative is anything other than a mono-, duo-, or tri-opoly that's able to simply buy any threat to its revenue before the company is able to scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's nothing more on this earth that Google would want than to split up Facebook. Essentially destroying its biggest digital advertising competition.

I don't trust Facebook or Google...but I also don't trust the government to regulate them (in the regard to the topic of this piece); or for government to be unduly influenced by either company's competitors trying to stifle the companies, or the possibility of limiting speech. There are so many things that can go wrong in getting government involved in this aspect.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why does it need to be regulated? What ever happened to 'don't believe everything you read' and 'do your research'? No one has ever said Facebook holds anything remotely truthful, it's a social network. Your friends are not 100% honest or accurate. Same goes for Twitter, Reddit, Quora,...etc... It's always been a YMMV scenario, but for entertainment.

<comment><USER24> The problem is that people trust their friends on facebook. How do you protect the people who can't use critical thinking to get answers?

Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their responsibility?

It seems to me that the people as a body are incapable of managing themselves and so they need safeguards. (Wow, that makes me sound like a dictator.)

<comment><USER25> > Using your reasoning, you might ask why it's bad to let vulnerable elderly > individuals be hoodwinked out of their savings. What happened to their > responsibility?

It's a bit different because in your case, we're actively reducing harm. You can't just say "censorship will fix it" or "oversight will fix it" unless we're talking about specific scenarios. Which is why, in _general_ censorship and oversight doesn't really fix anything.

This is also why laws are very detailed and specific. It would be nice to say "be good to one another" and be done with it.

<comment><USER24> I agree. It would take a very specific set of interventions.

What _could_ do good? A disclaimer every time you log in saying "Pro tip: get your news from reliable sources, not your facebook feed."? Are there any ways people could be prompted to do the right thing?

The question is then: what can be done? Just because it's hard to know how to handle the problem doesn't mean we shouldn't try to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I could easily write a headline such as, "We can't trust the New York Times to regulate itself," and be just as misguided as the headline above, for the same reasons.

<comment><USER27> I think this is a bad analogy.. The NYT is a left leaning paper, but people who have some intellectual honesty already know this..

Even if the Times went completely far far far left, they aren't the only game in town. I can choose to read any of a number of other papers, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist etc..

What alternative is there fire FB?? Mastodon.. Hubzilla..? They're great, if someone has the capability to run the service. I'd argue that most users can't be bothered to learn more than a chromebook let alone understand how to run their own server.

When you have a monopoly like this, it either needs government regulation, ( which is generally bad because it tends to hurt other similar companies), or break them up, i think this is the ideal option, but i don't know in this case.. Break it up by forcing all their code to open source, of perhaps force them to run it more federated or diaspora like and mandating interoperability with these other services..

I'm not sure what the answer is. Of course the real answer is nobody has to use Facebook.. But for a lot of people, that's not an option they're interested in, and since fb literally have all the data, it likely needs regulation which i find very distasteful and terrifying.

<comment><USER25> Why do we need to break up FB? That makes no sense to me. In previous antitrust cases, there was always the economic argument (to help out up-and- coming competitors or to prevent price gouging). But Snapchat clearly showed that new players can compete.

Are we breaking them up because they have "too much information"? What does that even mean? A move like that would be beyond unprecedented.

<comment><USER28> The point for government to breakup anything is to prevent monopoly.

NYTimes is far from a monopoly - there are tons of news site with more traffic. But there's no competitor that comes close to Facebook

<comment><USER25> And the purpose of preventing a monopoly is, yet again, generally an economic one: to prevent price gouging or help out smaller competitors. Neither of those applies to FB.

<comment><USER28> It could be a monopoly on ideology too. There's a precedent for this. Back in the early days of broadcasting, NBC was broken up into NBC + ABC for having too much control of public discourse

<comment><USER25> This is simply not true. It was an economic argument[1]. Newer & smaller radio stations could not compete. And if anyone should be broken up for monopolizing online ad revenue, it should probably be Google (Alphabet).

[1] [http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...](http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7045&context=penn_law_review)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I worked at FB during the same time, and while I admire Sandy's sentiment in principle, this article is conflating what 3rd party _Developers_ were doing with user data.... not FB.

In fact, Zynga, and many other social gaming Developers, practically went out of business as FB started to enforce data usage policies.

<comment><USER30> But Facebook was allowing 3rd party developers access to a lot of data. I've even seen my profile on a 3rd party site where the developer said "Facebook granted me access.".

It's like the NSA saying "We collect your information, but we have laws to prevent their abuse.". First you have to be caught, and then they'll punish you. There are no technical limitations. This is like someone like Equifax saying "Here's our database server credentials, but connecting to it or querying is illegal.".

<comment><USER29> Review the app perms before opt-in. "This app is requesting access to Full Name, Email, Friends, etc..."

FB trusted Developers to do the right thing with that data through T&Cs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's ridiculous to think that regulation is any sort of solution. It's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.)

Someone is always going to be thinking about the bottom line, but come on now. Facebook isn't the only internet business that the russians used to influence people. Have you looked at reddit over the last 3 years? Any and every site with influence is going to get gamed by every government who has the bandwidth to play ball. You can't regulate your way around that. Look at how the Trump administration is currently using Twitter. Is that proper? no, but it's great for Twitter. Should they refuse to service him?

Governments shouldn't be looked to for solutions. Government is TERRIBLE at solving any problems. If change is required or desired, you go about making change happen the good old fashioned way - by getting others to agree with you.

<comment><USER32> > _It 's even more ridiculous for somebody to suggest that in 2017 when we > have such shining examples of altruistic heads of regulatory agencies. (Ajit > Pai, Scott Pruitt, etc.)_

The recent "regulate Facebook" furor (as seen near-daily at the NYT) seems to feed into a larger pattern of this. There are a lot of establishment-friendly, technocratic people who don't seem to have adjusted their worldviews to accommodate the last ~18 months.

These are people who argued over the last eight years that we need the trustworthy, knowledgeable parts of government (roughly defined as "executive branch bureaucracies") to rein in the excesses of productive-yet-reckless businesses.

And then Trump became president and appointed a string of regulatory heads who support entrenched businesses and oppose the existence of their own departments. And seemingly, _no one noticed_. Whether or not Tom Wheeler and Michelle Lee were qualified to regulate the tech sector, Ajit Pai and Andrei Iancu aren't.

My opinions on regulation are not strictly libertarian. But I'm absolutely baffled by watching left-leaning voices work their hardest to empower grossly incompetent regulators who disagree with all of their goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can't force Facebook to be decentralized. Quit using it, and use real decentralized social networks. The point about trust is correct though. One surely should not trust Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER34> Linked in is way more brutal than Facebook. I(and all my friends)can take fb or leave it, put any kind of random info / pictures. LinkedIn though.. I am stuck!

<comment><USER35> LinkedIn is less of a monopoly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This reminds me of a recent TED talk: [https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...](https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads)

</comment><comment><USER37> Am I the only one who noticed a big flow of hit pieces on Facebook from papers like NYT and Guardian lately?

The thing is, I actually agree with the overall message, and that's why such a change of heart from the media is so noticeable - I've been talking about this for years, and I never saw opinions like that in the MSM. But now it seems like there's an article like that every week on the HN front page.

What happened?

<comment><USER38> Concern over Facebook being a powerful tool used to influence elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> For splitting Facebook into face babies, look at p&l lines, geographic lines, what could become api boundaries,different apps, and different apps within fb wall.

So one and more of

WhatsApp vs Instagram vs fb vs messenger

FB video vs FB ads vs fb news

FB EU vs US vs India vs...

FB identity vs fb communication vs fb ads

There was no precursor to regulating standard oil in the last century, and no precursor to regulating Google, FB, Amazon, this century.

Doesn't mean it's not warranted.

</comment><comment><USER40> The issue I see with adding gov level regulation to Facebook (or any other media) is it very quickly becomes a tool for oppressive regimes.

If Facebook builds in the tools so governments can control exactly what is posted on them then expect every single nation in the world to require access to these tools overnight.

Even nations we might think of as being very condition of the right of their citizens have content they deem illegal and would if they could be required by their own laws to compel Facebook to let them control this.

This, in the end, would not just be about public content but also about all private content, messages sent over FB messenger etc.

Do we want a popover to show up next time we share a hypothetical "dick pick" with a 'lover' saying 'awaiting review from your local authorities'? God forbid you are on holiday/changing planes in a religious extream region of the world and find yourself carted off to jail for 10 years for this.

<comment><USER41> There's nothing stopping governments doing this already. Facebook operates financially within their jurisdiction the minute ad transactions with companies and citizens registerd in that territory happen. Governments can cut this off, and it would behove FB to get in front of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The headline is probably right, but we can't trust the government to regulate it either and markets seem to be broken so there really aren't good options here.

</comment><comment><USER43> My worry is MANY Facebook employees having access to key profile data and not all their data logs can be downloaded.

For example, I know that a current employee accessed data on profiles I had viewed and shared it with another friend. Unclear how they secure PII and how such abuse can be reported.

</comment><comment><USER44> Other people could make competitors, and more importantly, people who are using Facebook could switch. It happened to MySpace. Makes a lot more sense to me than turning it into a public utility or breaking it up anyway.

Just stop using it, it really isn't that important.

<comment><USER45> Facebook has sufficient accumulation of capital to make this impossible. Build something good enough to challenge them and you will get purchased.

<comment><USER46> Facebook does not have the power to force people to sell to them. They do not have the power to force people to use Facebook. That's a fact. It's a free website, that people use of their own accord, at their own discretion. Just like someone that chooses to read NYT.

The call to regulate a free press (Facebook) is far more disturbing than any targeted advertising Facebook is engaged in.

<comment><USER45> FB's power is not a binary of either "can force" or "can't force." But they can offer an amount so high it's hard to say no, and they can manipulate their users' attention in ever more complex and subtle ways.

I don't consider FB a pure evil, just a potential danger. Their moral hazard is comparable to that of a heroin dealer—-they are incentivized to get you using the product as much as possible, regardless of the possibility that more than a small amount could be harmful.

<comment><USER47> Offering an extremely high price that surpasses the sellers expectations + potential buyers remorse and making a sale "hard to say no to" is not force. It is not Don Corleone making an offer they cannot refuse. Let's not equate voluntary exchange with a mugging

<comment><USER45> I agree, it's not force. I just don't think "force" in the literal sense is required to make it a scary situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Of course you can't trust anyone to judge himself fairly. That's the definition of conflict of interest. I suppose USA has a soft spot for Facebook because the company it's one of their champions.

It's a farce. It reminds me of church pedophilia in Poland. Various transgressions commited by priests are left for the Church to handle with its internal procedures. Which is usually just sweeping under the carpet, like moving a pedo priest to a different region. The faithful do their part - denial, and ostracism for people who criticize Church too loud.

</comment><comment><USER49> We need to regulate private data amassed by internet giants the same way we regulate data gathered by credit reporting agencies.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act [1]:

\- regulates what data credit agencies can store,

\- mandates that people be able to access data about themselves,

\- mandates that third parties cannot access a person's data without the person's consent _every single time_ ,

\- mandates that people must be able to correct false information in their credit file,

\- mandates that people be able to place a "freeze" on uses of their credit data

Each of these things translates quite nicely to private data that internet giants gather on us.

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

</comment><comment><USER50> I would take this a step further and say we can't trust anyone to regulate anything.

If it's not measurable and automateable, you can't trust it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Splitting Facebook into Face and Book will change nothing. Face will sell you out or Book will sell you out. Your choice. Instead, Facebook needs to be forced by regulators to become SafeBook. Zuckerberg will whine like a stuck pig. So be it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Facebook is an evil company that exists only to profit from harming society.

Why not take over the domain name, dismantle the company and put its board on prison?

That would make sense.

</comment><comment><USER53> And again, the big lie about Russia continues to propagate. It really is embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER54> Can we trust the New York Times to regulate itself either?

<comment><USER55> I find this to be a legitimate question. At least in my country all news outlets have a political bias one way or another, including those run by the government itself.

Is there something about NY times (I don't read it) that warrants a downvote on OP's comment?

<comment><USER56> Yes, the simple fact that it's not a de-facto monopoly with network effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Maybe FB does need regulation... I don't trust FB to do it. Obviously.

I trust the government even less.

There's got to be a better solution.</comment>


Show HN: Tipbox helps people discover and share useful tips while on the go. - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/47996308

<comment><USER2> This looks really interesting! I only watched the video without sound so far (@ a cafe) but where exactly do/will these tips come from? Will there be a way for websites (publishers) to push their content in?

This looks very interesting to me (someone with a technology background working for a health information publisher).

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, it's only on the iOS platform, so anyone with an iPhone or an iPod touch can leave a tip on any topic they can think of. There's no way to verify the source of the tip as of yet (unless the person explicitly states it in the tip). The identity of the author, however, is tied to their Facebook (and later on, Twitter) account.

If it takes off, we have plans to expand to the iPad and the Mac platforms, and then possibly a web and an Android version.

<comment><USER2> Cool. For some reason I thought you all had found a way to ingest good tips from Facebook/Twitter without having the user opt it into your platform. Sort of like a replyz.com (not at all perfect -- but good try) but for tips.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh!

Well, the app has a unique way of organising and displaying tips. There's so much more to it. Check out <http://scapehouse.com> to see what I mean. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My <canvas>-based, Photoshop-esque JavaScript color picker - <AUTHOR> http://zetamac.com/picker/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this for the An Event Apart JavaScript 10k contest but unfortunately finished it after the deadline (but not by much!).

Anyway, here it is for all of you to enjoy. Hopefully useful when you don't feel like opening up Photoshop to get a CSS color.

I'd love to hear suggestions for how I can improve it. (Sorry that the bubbles next to Lab are missing; refreshing the square on the left was too slow for it to be useful.)

<comment><USER2> I've made one for 10K too <http://10k.aneventapart.com/Entry/235>. Mine is SVG based. The code is on GitHub <http://github.com/NV/color-blender>.

<comment><USER3> I really like being able to select two colours like that - and the in-between colour is even better. Love that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really well-done. In terms of suggestions ... how hard would it be to turn it into a jQuery plugin?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really sure; I've never written a jQuery plugin before, so I'll need to look into what's required. If I have time, I'll do my best.

<comment><USER5> I've never done anything with canvas, but I've written jquery plugins. Let me know if I can help. And let us know if you post the source code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice!

I've been using this one: [http://johndyer.name/post/2007/09/PhotoShop-like- JavaScript-...](http://johndyer.name/post/2007/09/PhotoShop-like-JavaScript- Color-Picker.aspx) but yours has a few more options.

One thing I did notice though is that it's almost unusably slow in FF3.6 unlike Safari 5 or Chrome 7 where it's fine.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, canvas is ridiculously slow in FF3 in general. It's depressing... I built an isometric game in javascript+canvas, paid people to draw neat pixel graphics, but eventually dropped the project because of the performance. In Chrome it was reasonable, but in firefox I rarely got above 10 FPS.

(it wasn't the only reason I dropped the project)

<comment><USER8> Somehow Firefox became the slowest kid on the block, simply by not improving as fast as others (FF4 is better, but unfortunately change is smaller than I hoped for).

Which is really pity, it's still my primary browser and has a lot of good things going for it.

What's actually worse than FF canvas rendering performance (which, in fact, is not that bad if you measure it) is its memory management.

FF does something very weird, code that works ok in other browsers causes huge memory spikes followed by frequent garbage collection (e.g. what makes tens of KB memory use oscillations in Opera/Chrome makes tens of MB oscillations in FF).

Even something as simple as assigning repeatedly random numbers to fixed length array grows memory in FF. Canvas operations do the same, causing memory use to grow at an alarmingly fast rate.

So if you do animations (or anything which gets executed repeatedly), you get relatively fast rendering which is triggered erratically and paused due to "behind the scene" memory management (which slows down everything).

<comment><USER7> I actually had that memory problem - with canvas - in Chrome rather than in Firefox: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=20067> It was fixed at some point though.

<comment><USER8> Small world, I created a page referred to in the bug report :).

Yes, Chrome's memory management got better [1] and Firefox's got worse (at least relatively, they know about the problem and made some improvements [2], but meanwhile other browsers got even better).

It looks like while both Chrome and FF improved their garbage collectors, FF somehow got much higher memory consumption in the first place (growing memory in places where it really shouldn't - aforementioned array assignments or drawing into canvas).

\-----

[1] I remember a period where Chrome was tuning their memory management, you would get very different performance between subsequent Chrome updates.

[2] [http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in- fire...](http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/01/javascript-speedups-in-firefox-3-6/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. Really incredible work. Mind posting a packer-free version so we can look at the source?

<comment><USER10> Ditto. I really wanna dig into the source. This is a perfect widget for people to learn some canvas basics from.

<comment><USER11> You can always "unpack" the packer code

[http://yaisb.blogspot.com/2006/10/defeating-dean-edwards- jav...](http://yaisb.blogspot.com/2006/10/defeating-dean-edwards- javascript.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This actually filled a need I have for showing someone who is only mildly technical how to pick colors for a feature we're testing.

Thanks! It looks great!

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice implementation. I spent a lot of time looking at these when I was putting together a UI that needed some color picking.

When I read the headline, I thought you may have made something like my "dropper"-style color picker using canvas:

<http://github.com/sstrudeau/jquery-dropper>

Mine allows you to pick a color from an image. Two big caveats (haven't found workarounds for): < IE9 doesn't work and the excanvas VML hack doesn't help (no pixel-level access to images); and images loaded into a canvas element have a same-origin restriction similar to XHR.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nicely done. I had intended to do something like a color picker or CSS layout tool, but instead I started working on a game and got way carried away (shameless plug: <http://10k.aneventapart.com/Entry/154>)

My first time using <canvas>. It's really a lot more fun than I expected. Reminds me of the good old days of messing around in Basic.

</comment><comment><USER15> Really nice work, bookmarked for future use.

One addition that may be worth adding is being able to create a swatch based on colours selected.

</comment><comment><USER16> This should be easy to convert into a chrome extention: <http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/>

(It would increase it's usefulness, because the tool could overlay the current page and you could then compare colours.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Very nice but it would be more usable if the cross pointer would completely replace the arrow pointer.

<comment><AUTHOR> In Safari, Chrome and Firefox, it should. I couldn't get it to work properly on IE9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great work! For later, though, browsers are apparently due to be implementing color picking controls (according to the alistapart HTML5 book anyway).

</comment><comment><USER19> very nice! the only thing missing is adjusting the values with the keyboard cursor like in photoshop. Arrow-up: 1% more, Arrow-Shift-Up: 10% more

</comment><comment><USER20> Fantastic! Quite neat - I like it. If i ever decide to compete with photoshop in the browser, i'll talk to you ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> There is a slow down when dragging on left side on the grey, unlike on the right side. Weird performance glitch.

</comment><comment><USER22> very cool.</comment>


The Surprising Complexity of Animal Memories - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/surprising-complexity-animal-memories/589420/ <comment><USER2> "Psychologists once locked an ape in a room, for which they had arranged only four ways of escaping. Then they spied on him to see which of the four he would find.

The ape escaped a fifth way."

-robert a heinlein

<comment><USER3> Some documentaries also showed how monkeys would cooperate to solve a random problem. One I remember involved grabbing two different ropes to actuate a door. It took them half a second to organize try a few things and settle on each side to open the door. I don't think we would have done better out of the blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I've never seen discussed is how the behavior tests eliminate sense of smell (or some other sensory input that is different/better in the test subject versus humans) as a possible tool used by animals - several of the tests they discussed seemed like they could be explained by the test subject smelling what is the situation rather than reasoning.

<comment><USER5> A good point but to assume it applies to all tests and invalidates the metaconcept might be too strong. It would not be hard to wipe both with fruit beforehand or wipe handles with alcohol etc. So I assume within the discipline well formed experimental setups account for this because it's too easy to do, to ignore. The corvid waxworm experiment for instance is a choice between two foods not one food and none, and crucially the birds don't even bother testing the caches of insects which have aged out. Yes birds have a good sense of smell but I think this tends to a marginal issue in the experiment not a deciding factor.</comment></comment>


The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm <comment><USER2> The triumph of DOS was the licensing, not the technology itself; that's what made Bill Gates so rich. Even by contemporary standards MS-DOS was a half- assed operating system full of design flaws.

Saying that Kildall made a much better operating system misses the point. The operating system is not what made the money; Gates could have sold practically any OS with his licensing deal and made the same fortune. He literally sold the license before he even _owned_ DOS.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shit happens. Seriously, the guy was a big success by any measure, except the measure that comes with comparing yourself with Bill Gates. No reason to hit the bottle, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the full length-version of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624887>, which contains no different information. It seems likely that the other story is copied from this Business Week article without attribution for compilation among other short stories about business for an ebook.

</comment><comment><USER4> An old article, but full of lessons.

What seems to be less often known about Kildall is that his thesis was about writing optimizing compilers, and he is was the author of PL/M, a language loosely based on XPL, a language designed as a tutorial for compiler construction.</comment>


Ask HN: What means do you provide for people to contact you? - <AUTHOR> As a developer I am in a constant process of consolidating my online footprint. One topic I am not sure about yet is what public means I should/can provide for people (meaning everything from chance encounters to paying customers) to contact me.<p>How do you do that? What channels do you prefer for what and why? How do you prevent spam? <comment><USER2> Email is still a great aggregation point. Everybody can send it. You don't need an account. And if you want to, you can redirect pretty much every other channel into it.

Spam is also pretty much solved for email. Filters are so good that most of the spam/scam doesn't even try to avoid them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do prefer E-Mail too but witnessed people from my (younger) siblings generation to dismiss it as a thing you have to provide for some service (e.g. instagram) to sign in to.

<comment><USER3> I think what viraptor means by "aggregation point" is that you can scan other feeds via your inbox.

The simplest example of this is to put a "send me a message" form on your web site that will send you an email behind the scenes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know any services that provide this in a simple manner? Preferably gravatar like.

<comment><USER2> I use [https://formspree.io](https://formspree.io) and I'm quite happy with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is your server naming convention? - <AUTHOR>

What is your server naming convention? Anything interesting or unique? What do large companies with 1000+ systems do? <comment><USER2> Despite the heated arguments people have about this it really doesn't matter that much. There are pros and cons to any choice, and it's mostly a matter of personal preference.

If you're going to have < 50 servers you can very easily use cute names and it will probably never bite you. In fact, it's somewhat easier. Humans are pretty good with people-like names. Servers named with friendly names take on special characteristics in your head.

If you're going to have 1000+ servers then it's just not practical to come up with names manually. But you'll also probably just have large numbers of the same kind of server. You could have servers named gary1 - gary434 and a standard that says "gary servers run XYZ service(s)".

But, generally people encode some info in the hostname. Things like xweb23prodlax2 could be "external web server 23 in Los Angeles datacenter 2", so that's <role><instance><environment><datacenter>. If you're going to run multiple different app stacks you might also use an <app>. So hnxweb23prodlax2 might be "Hacker News' 23rd web server in LA" I don't recommend zero padding numbers (01 vs 1), since it looks bad when you break the padding's length.

You may want to separate components by hyphens (which are fine in hostnames). Don't worry about keeping them under 8 chars or anything, nothing modern breaks on reasonably long hostnames. You can also use sub-domains for parts that make sense.

hn-web-23-prod-lax2 isn't bad, and it's easy to parse reliably. hn- web-23.prod.lax2.yourdomain.tld works as well (but makes your short hostname not globally unique, which probably doesn't matter).

Naming locations based on the nearest and largest airport code tends to work well. Including a number in the location is a good idea, since you may end up with more than one datacenter in a location.

I don't like putting actual software names in hostnames. So I'd never name a server mysql5lax2. I'd use "db" not "mysql". You might swap it out for Postgres or something, so the role is what's important.

I highly recommend _not_ using IPs for hostnames (the way EC2 does). It might work for EC2 where they're committed to never changing things, but you're probably going to have at least one server change IPs at some point, the hostname shouldn't change when that happens. Same thing with putting rack #s in or other things that are likely to change (unless you absolutely know they won't).

You should use DNS (via CNAME records) to get pretty names. For example git.yourdomain.tld might be a CNAME for repo-1-corp-lax2.yourdomain.tld.

An incomplete list of things you might encode in the hostname:

<customer> (joeinc, hn)

<app> (cms, api)

<role> (web, db, dns)

<instance> (number of this type)

<location> (lax1, nrt2)

<environment> (prod, dev, qa, corp)

<comment><USER3> I work at a site with >1k hosts right now, and globally there's >>1k hosts.

One thing that wasn't mentioned was the site code. For multi site installation it helps to know whether your host is in site 1 or site 2 without referring to the fully qualified domain name. At the last 2 jobs I worked for we also encoded VM status into it (generally add an extra V or VM into the name).

> I don't recommend zero padding numbers (01 vs 1), since it looks bad when > you break the padding's length.

We totally zero pad, though our zero padding has a buffer. Otherwise, you break string sort, which is more important to us. So if you will never have more than 99 cron machines, use the 01. If you're going to have more than 100 but less than 999, use 001. So on and so forth.

We also reuse numbers after hosts end of life, though it's not immediate reuse (that would be confusing as heck). When you buy servers by the rack it doesn't matter what your numbering scheme is, you'll end up going through all the possible values.

So how do you track all these hosts when there's minimal information encoded? By database. Our host database tracks physical location, owners, after hour contacts, roles (e.g. the mysql vs postgres part), OS install images, etc.

<comment><USER2> You need some kind of server database no matter what your naming scheme. This is why I say hostnames really aren't as important as people pretend they are.

Sorting hostnames as strings tends to not be as useful/common as it seems, in my experience. In your DB you can sort based on the parsed numeric version. I've just come to dislike varying padding (01 vs 001 on _some_ servers) or breaking the padding (001 becoming 1234). But, as I said, it's all mostly personal preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The large companies I worked with typically use a combination of one or more of the following on the server names: \- abbreviated physical location (city/state/data center,availability zone/country) \- abbreviated environment (demo/test/dev/prod), \- server role (db/app/web) \- sequential number/letter

Examples: ATLWEB301 (Atlanta Web 301) DEMOVA050 (Demo Virginia 050) NYCDB015 (New York City Database 015)

The standards vary significantly, specially depending if you are talking about internal / public servers. The length also varies but most people try to stay below 15 a-z characters. I personally like to give servers more generic names and not have to worry too much about it. Ex: ATLDEMO001, DENPROD014...

If the servers are public (I mean accessible via internet) most companies refrain from using any information on the server name that could facilitate a potential attack. For example: putting DB on the name of a database server.

Small companies, on the other hand, have a lot more variety. I have worked on servers named after Lord of the Rings and Simpson characters, Greek mythology gods, etc... I had a frodo mysql server that gave me a lot of trouble.

</comment><comment><USER5> For servers: 3 letter abbreviation for location, first number indicating the iteration of the datacenter in that area, Second number is the floor of the building the system is at, hyphen, row number of the cabinet the system is in, Iteration of the cabinet in the row, hyphen, lowest rack unit the server is located in.

eg: chi18-018-23

chicago datacenter 1, floor 8, row 0, cabinet 18, rack unit 23

For switches, simply: as018-1.chi18 for an aggregation switch, int018-1.chi18 for an internal network switch, ipmi018-1.chi18 for an IPMI switch, And if you have more than switch for a purpose in that cabinet, then the name is 'as018-2.chi18'

The systems are almost always connected to a switch that's in the same cabinet. Though, we keep every system documented in our inventory system, with it's specs, IP addresses, switch ports, and power outlets. System also provides bandwidth graphs from every switch, and if a server as well as ipmi are ever inaccessible, we can remotely control the PDU & Outlet as well. Though, we always have employees onsite at each datacenter to check the console & hardware.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1] If you can visit a local telco wire office, go do so; especially with all these questions in mind. Telcos have dealt with this problem way before most of us were born.

2] Use DNS's hierarchical nature to your advantage, e.g.

tld -> domain -> telco location code -> box N = box38.lsanca.example.com

3] Your network design perspective will impact how you approach naming, so be careful you don't cement with names something where the design will change, and then your names no longer make sense.

</comment><comment><USER7> We use stuff from the kids TV show Knightmare. So our app servers are called treguard, merlin, mogdred, hordriss, database server is called knapsack, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similar to the comments below, all of the companies I have worked for (global banks) use an amalgamation.

<Location> \- 3 letters (city)

<Build> \- OS

<Environment> \- Dev/UAT/Prd/Sit

<Number> \- Server reference number

</comment><comment><USER9> I once worked on a site that used the periodic table element abbreviations for servers. Good way to brush up on your chemistry knowledge.

<comment><USER3> I had that once, but it was a compute cluster. They used scientific terms for all the other servers. All the better if it matched up with the service, like diffusion and effusion for the firewall failover pair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Used to work at a small digital agency. All of the servers were named after the director's ex-girlfriends - Anna, Bella and Ruth

</comment><comment><USER11> we name them after pokemon</comment>


The First Film Version of Alice in Wonderland (1903) - <AUTHOR> http://dangerousminds.net/comments/watch_the_very_first_film_version_of_alice_in_wonderland_from_1903 <comment><USER2> It's funny how _How It Feels to be Run Over_ ([https://youtu.be/m6F1VAPzvkU](https://youtu.be/m6F1VAPzvkU)) resembles today's VR demos in its purpose, viewpoint and content. It shows off what was at the time a new technology _and_ uses the camera itself to represent a character. (The latter isn't surprising considering the "first-person" camera is the natural default but goes against the mental model of cinema as "theater on film" with actors the camera is pointed at.)

</comment><comment><USER3> That was a particularly unpleasant website to view on mobile</comment>


Intelligence Agencies Have a "Duty to Warn" Endangered Persons - <AUTHOR> http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2015/08/duty-to-warn/

<comment><USER2> Is it like the duty to disclose zero-day vulnerabilities in American infrastructure? Because look how well that is going...</comment>


Show HN: 3D Printing Price Check - <AUTHOR> http://3dprintingpricecheck.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice work! Suggestions:

\- Unique URL for each price check page (so people can send links to their friends)

\- In each orange box on the price page, show a small picture of each material. (bonus: render the object in that material. difficulty: hard)

\- Minor: in the orange boxes on price page, don't include both white text and black text on the same background. It looks weird.</comment>


Show HN: Engage for CPAs, fast contracts for tax pros - <AUTHOR> https://www.get-engage-cpa.com <comment><USER2> Super cool cloud ware</comment>


Master chess players use hidden brain parts - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70J62T20110120

<comment><USER2> Good quote from the article:

"Systems engineers often have to depend on intuition to locate the source of trouble. Excellent engineers can't explain why they are good, it's very similar to chess."</comment>


Ask HN: my website seemingly sucks, but I'm not sure why? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there,
I've developed a website to act as "an ad hoc perpetually published online journal of publication-worthy essays written by a global community of (egotistical) undergraduate International Relations students to act as a platform for the dissemination of and discourse on their new, interesting and engaging takes on international affairs." As the homepage spiel puts it...
I've done a little bit of advertising with StumbleUpon, where I received a "thumbs up" rate of about 1.5% of my total hits, with 0 "down thumbs" -- but also 0 new sign ups. I've had the link passed around to friends-of-friends who the site is aimed at, but registration still remains extremely low and site interaction is practically at a standstill.
The site is, to me, relatively polished, straightforward, easy-to-use and otherwise a relatively neat little concept that does hold some sway in its target market as there are other sites that convey revision material and such as part of gigantic "student portals".
Thus, my question is: does the way the site operates suck? Is it a poor execution of a good idea, or the other way around? Is there anything I could do to help highlight the benefits of registration right from the index page? Being a member lets you submit papers and discussions, comments and also earn "points" (upvotes)...
I appreciate that the site doesn't fall into HN's typical remit of being a "start up", but any feedback on the website from a few Internet-wise veterans would be welcomed.
The site URL is: http://www.thesjia.net
Thanks, x03.
Edit: I think what I've failed to convey is that this is essentially meant to be an online study group for undergraduates who want useful summaries of topics written by undergraduates rather than as a proper and full Journal to compete with well established ones. It's called a Journal semi-mockingly and doesn't really aim to take itself too seriously... <comment><USER2> As any teaching assistant could inform you, nobody wants to read essays by undergraduates. Nobody wants to read international relations essays by undergraduates. No undergraduates studying international relations want to spend their spare time writing essays that nobody will read. Nobody wants to write essays and then have them distributed as PDF files with little sense of ownership.

Let's look at what you see when visiting the site.

Abstract: "An analysis into the genesis and development of Cosmopolitan Thinking and to what degree it can cope with the realisation of its desired World Order as the very mechanisms it sought come to strangle its progress." Word Count: ...

And right from the opening copy (which you quoted) the site markets itself as a celebration of being long, verbose, and obscure.

If undergraduates want to egotistically talk about international relations they can go to the inevitable debate section of virtually any phpBB forum. They're bound to find more vibrant, better-written, and better-argued essaying there.

<comment><AUTHOR> The slight angle of being egotistical was included to almost make fun of the Journal itself: it's not meant to be a serious publication, per se, in that academics and others want to read it but merely a place for undergraduates to share with one another.

It is basically meant to be a site for undergraduates to read essays on topics that are similar to their own for their own understanding at their level: it's fairly common for undergraduates to let their undergraduate friends on the same course read their essays, especially around exam times. So while I appreciate that some embittered TAs might read essays with a sense of loathing for minimum wage waiting for the sweet release of deathm viewing this site, or any for that matter, from such a tainted perspective is somewhat unfair.

I appreciate your comments regarding the verbosity and obscurity of some of the text though and I'll look into making everything a bit clearer! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It all starts with the heading:

The font makes it really hard to read. I actually have to concentrate to find out what is written in the heading.

And honestly, I wanted to stop reading after the first paragraph:

An ad hoc (ok?) perpetually (uhm...) published online journal of publication- worthy (oh dear...) essays written by a global community of (egotistical) (omg...) undergraduate International Relations students (wtf..) to act as a platform for the dissemination of and discourse on (what?!) ...

I mean, the writing is good. But not for web pages. And especially not for the first paragraph. There are so many foreign words in this, that it seems like you just tried to link as many words together as you can.

Simplify this first paragraph! Make it less "complex".

Also the paper listings all look the same. The image caught my attention at first, but then I realized that every paper has that image. Why is it so big, then, if I can't use it do distinguish the papers?

There is also nowhere mentioned what benefits I get when registering.

The site does look pretty simple, but I think this is too simple. There should be at least some structuring elements and something to make the papers more appealing.

Besides that it is an interesting idea though. After reading the topics they quite caught my attention :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't realise that introductory paragraph was such a barrier -- I'll look into getting that amended. As for the images, you're right: they're too same- same and identical, it was just meant to provide something other than text- text-text though.

I appreciate all your points and I'll look into them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> According to your twitter account, you launched 5 days ago. What did you expect to happen in that timeframe? Did you set yourself any specific goals in terms of, e.g. submitted essays?

Regarding StumpleUpon and the likes: is this where you expect your targeted userbase to be? I'd guess that people on SU are their primarily for entertainment... Maybe it would be better to promote your site elsewhere. Have you thought about getting in touch with some of your university's professors, political debating clubs, Facebook groups etc.?

Before you do this, you should have more content, though. At the moment you only have five essays. As far as I understood, the site is run by you and another undergrad. Why don't you two put up more of your own essays on the site before you expect other people (friends of friends) to do so?

I hope this helps and did not come across too harsh. Good luck with your endeavour!

/edit: why do all the essays have the same icon? Moreover you should really work on your introduction. At the moment you seem to need content, so explain to your potential writers the benefits of putting up their essays on your site.

<comment> mkr-hn Stumbleupon can drive good traffic if you have stuff to link to. PDFs don't stumble well (they're probably banned), and homepages don't do well unless they're interesting on their own.

<comment><USER4> It might be, but how many stumblers are students of International Relations?

<comment> mkr-hn Stumleupon is like Reddit. You can pick your topics. There's bound to be an SU category for that somewhere.

edit: <http://www.stumbleupon.com/discover/international-relations/>

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't have hopes that are too high for it. I attempted something similar with <http://www.logilogi.org> over the last few years, but for philosophy, and it was similarly successful (not :)

I tried most tricks in the book: fancy innovative hypertext features, badges for on ones blog, even got my GF to do a demo video, but I guess there is just no demand for such things (apart from the very few with too much time on their hands, whose work most people prefer not to read)...

(at some point there might be, but the feedback cycle of journals and tenure keeps academics out, while those that appreciate in-depth reading/conversation (on other things than news, which for a short wile gets the focused attention of a lot of people) either shift into academia (as I did for the last few years), or find other smart people to work with on a startup or something alike...)

Anyway, it is all (AGPL) Open Source, so if you want, feel free to check it out.

The reddit platform is (also) a good platform to consider, as the people at <http://lesswrong.com> seem to have got a community going (though their topic, singularity and such, is especially suited, as many tech-savvy people are into it, while at the same time it has not really taken off in most of the academic world yet...).

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, the question I find myself asking about this is, "why do I want to read essays about international affairs"? The answers boil down to:

1\. Author has a unique personal perspective (background knowledge, historical insight, whatever).

2\. Essay has a striking thesis, and defends it well.

3\. Author is a big shot, and it's useful to know what they think.

There's undergraduate work that meets criteria (1) and (2) --- but it's rare, and effectively lost amid the ton more than that that doesn't. To attract repeat business, you've got to attract the good stuff, and establish filters which separate it out. Around here, the problem of attracting the content is called the "chicken-and-egg problem", and Google will turn up some discussion.

Two further thoughts: First off, the pointers to the essays should state a thesis. As I write, the top one analyzes "the cause of piracy and the solutions available to the International Community ... using several concepts that are relevant to the failed state of Somalia ...". OK, fine (prolixity aside). He's talking about Somalian piracy. What does he have to say about it? If I don't know, I'm moving on.

Also, if you're trying to convince people your essayists' stuff is worth reading, there might be a better pitch than "undergraduate"; even "young" might work better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, great, points noted. Thanks for your feedback! :)

I think the critical point from your reply is that instead of there being a summary of what the essay is about, there should instead be a summary of what the essay is saying -- to basically relate the authors points quickly and succinctly as a teaser. We need to work on that.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- The papers in PDF is an interaction killer (you are increasing friction)

\- You have basically no content right now: 5 PDFs and the discussion is low quality.

Fix those two problems and you might get something. If the place feels empty (as it does now), people will never come back. There is no reason whatsoever for people to create an account right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, there generally seems to be a feeling of anti-PDF sentiment so I'll look into providing just a standard HTML+CSS page as an alternative. (To note though, almost every academic article is provided as a PDF directly by Journals or through repositories like JSTOR).

It's kind of the chicken and egg problem: there's no content because they're no users, and they're no users because there's no content. I'll try and "force" a few friends on to drum up everything up a little and increase the excitement of the site.

Also, thanks for the link!

Cheers, \--x03.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that the problem is one of focus, and branding.

To put it bluntly: who in their right mind would want to read essays by undergrads? Even when I was an undergrad, that's not where my interest was. I wanted to read insightful, thought-provoking, well-researched articles. If those happened to be written by undergrads, well, that was incidental.

So, my suggestion: rename the Journal as "The New England Journal of International Relations" (or some such), and kill the "undergraduate" angle.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point: the idea of it being a "Journal" isn't so much that it's Nature or Foreign Affairs or anything carrying such weight, more that it's a collection of well-written essays that cover topics that undergraduate students of IR typically cover so they can turn to them for inspiration, ideas and as revision material...

It's kind of like a synopsis of a lot of "insightful, thought-provoking, well- researched articles" as that's what undergraduate essays tend to be, rather than necessarily outstanding works of original thought.

It's an option to consider though and I'll definitely look into it...

Thank you for your feedback! :)

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn The titles on each item blend in too much, and my eye kept looking around for some idea of what I was looking at.

I'd also use alternating background colors for each item (like white and some light color) to help them stand out from each other. That's also helpful because people are used to alternating colors indicating a list of items (like in webmail and forums), so you can lean on user expectations a bit.

Other people have already commented on the copy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Clickable link: <http://www.thesjia.net>

A few months ago, a site called Feedback Roulette (<http://feedbackroulette.com/>) was discussed here. You may want to submit your site there for some additional feedback into what can be improved on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks super-useful, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the front page, I clicked on "Discussion Points", then on the top speech bubble. I got the error message "error-id, yes."

The papers only being in PDF does not appeal to me, but you know your target market better than I.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops! I fixed that error in Discussion Points. Thanks for catching it...

That's a good point, perhaps I can provide an alternative HTML+CSS option to display them in so it's kept in the browser. Journal articles are typically PDF and students are used to dealing with them, hence it was my default option. I'll investigate alternatives though...

Thanks for the feedback! :)

<comment><USER4> Maybe this would be a good starting point: <http://docs.google.com/viewer></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does my University block Dogecoin.com? - <AUTHOR>

I go to a pretty well known University in Texas that uses Websense web filtering. Dogecoin.com is blocked under the category of "malware". Does anybody know why this is?
I saw a story here on the homepage and was trying to learn a little more on dogecoin, and was surprised at the site being marked as "malware".
Thank y'all!! <comment><USER2> There's a quite decent chance that www.dogecoin.com was briefly hacked and hosting malware, and either still is, or Websense hasn't updated since dogecoin.com stopped hosting malware.

Dogecoin is a joke ecurrency, and not even the funniest joke ecurrency. If you want to buy an altcoin, I think PPC is far more likely to make it through 2014 than most.</comment>


Systemd and Where We Want to Take the Basic Linux Userspace in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2016/interviews/2016-lennart-poettering/ <comment><USER2> That Lennart Poettering (the author of systemd) says things like

 _I'd really like to see distributions to focus more on stateless systems_

seems sane to me.

You may or may not like systemd, but the code that it replaced in distros was often of subpar quality. systemd is not perfect, nor for everyone. But this is all free software, use whatever distro you feel empowers you!

<comment><USER3> Old init systems maybe are of subpar quality, but calling "not perfect" a tangled mess of DNSSEC, containers manager, nonsensical log receiver, QR codes implementation, device file manager, filesystem mounter, network manager, and IPC bus is a vast understatement.

Considering how Poettering's software fits into servers landscape, I feel heavy urge to steer away from whatever he recommends.

> [...] use whatever distro you feel empowers you!

You could say the same about iPhone: use whatever phone OS empowers you on this hardware!

It's not like there are many non-systemd distributions left, much less the distributions you could entrust with a server (or a farm of servers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So it looks like this shite really isn't just a bad dream. It really is hear to stay. Maybe it's time to switch careers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just make systemDos already and leave the rest of us alone.</comment>


My Facebook "price of coffee" experiment: 40 countries - <AUTHOR>

The other day I asked my friends in Facebook to tell me - where they are now - how much is a coffee - the quality of the coffee
It may seems trivial but I wanted to test the power of Facebook/internet.
I got 55 replies from about 30 countries + one guy in the middle of the Atlantic ocean (he works on a cruise ship).
I find this amazing.
I think this is the first time in human history that we can get so precise information, so fast and so cheaply (free). Nobody cares about the price and quality of coffee now of course. But maybe some of us will find a way to extract valuable information or insight from that. A startup idea? <comment><AUTHOR> Please apologize for not posting the results, as I did not really mean them to be important in themselves. The point was not the price/quality of coffee, but the fact that we can ask a question and get 40 replies in matter of hours from all over the world, for free. Here's the results anyway [https://www.facebook.com/tripluca/posts/10151133967508483?co...](https://www.facebook.com/tripluca/posts/10151133967508483?comment_id=24056315&notif_t=feed_comment_reply)

maybe somebody can come up with something more meaningful/interesting/valuable than the coffee price.

</comment><comment><USER2> So.... prices?

And I don't understand how you could quantify the "quality", i'd say the coffee in Vic, Australia is excellent but I haven't ever had coffee in a different country?

I be interested to know how the quality of coffee in my hometown differs from New York though?

<comment><USER3> The coffee here in Victoria, AU is amazing, I've had coffee in probably around 15 - 20 different countries and while I get the odd good coffee here and there the consistent quality here is hard to beat. Many countries in general don't actually use espresso machines(north america in particular) so the "quality" of the coffee is questionable. But in the end I guess "good" also depends on what you're used to.

BTW: Coffee here in Melbourne(at least on the north side) is about $3.20AUD(~$3.35USD) to $6AUD depending on size. If you're in Melbourne and want a great coffee I recommend Proud Mary's or Dr. Java they are both excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did you account for wild variations in the same place? In Shanghai I could get decent coffee for anywhere between 3 kuai to 30 kuai depending on where you were.

</comment><comment><USER5> > But maybe some of us will find a way to extract valuable information or > insight from that. Isn't that Google's business model (and that of many > others).

<comment><AUTHOR> well, this is an interesting point. Google can pick up and organize information only when it's been digitalized. With this experiment I was able to generate it. None of the people who wrote was planning to write down the price and quality of coffee in the next days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, what were the prices of coffee?

<comment><USER7> so.. how about that coffee price?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What were the prices of the coffee???

<comment><USER9> I started to run my own experiment of this. Here are the results so far, not 40 countries yet, but we'll see

<http://goo.gl/xtWw8>

<comment><USER6> I'll give you some US Prices. US, PA: Small coffee shop with State College, (Websters) 2$ for a single cup, good coffee.

Shrewsbury, PA (Browns) 1.5 for a cup with refills. Very good.

Scranton, PA - $3 dollars at Crimson Lion. (Hoookah Bar and coffee shop.)

Other coffee shops can be as high as 4-5 dollars a cup. W/o much if any increase in quality. Specialty drinks are insanely priced.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, added those :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Cleave (coming soon) – Enabling human context switching - <AUTHOR> https://cleave.app <comment><AUTHOR> Author here!

Ever since solving a similar problem on the terminal a few years back [0], I kept wanting to explicitly change working context, keeping application states between whatever tasks I was working on.

Cleave attempts to solve this by allowing you save and load "context" in macOS, in a manner similar to how IDEs and text editors lets you manipulate "projects" and "workspaces". These actions are available via a global hotkey that triggers the command palette, or via the menu bar.

AMA! Open Beta will be out this autumn.

I'd also love any feedback on the (admittedly lacklustre) landing page.

[0]: [https://github.com/eivindarvesen/prm](https://github.com/eivindarvesen/prm)

<comment><USER2> The landing page needs a at least some mechanics/details behind your tool. As it stands now, it's just an abstract marketing blurb that's not terribly interesting or engaging.</comment></comment>


Inside the Business of Dog Cloning - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/08/dog-cloning-animal-sooam-hwang <comment><USER2> I have a dog, have lost dogs in the past, and understand how sad it is. But man, there are so many dogs in shelters getting killed because of overcrowding that it boggles my mind that people can be so selfishly fixated on their needs that they don't think about the costs of their decisions (suffering of the surrogate dogs, the clones that don't make it, and the disgustingly high monetary costs here).

Life is full of death and sadness, people and animals you care deeply about don't live forever. Being able to deal with grief and continue living your life is an important skill to develop. I'm not sure that grasping to maintain what is ultimately unmaintainable is a healthy way of handling it. The clone won't be the same dog, if anything it's going to make it harder to grieve and move on with your life.

<comment><USER3> I have two rescues and think it is good if people adopt more of them, but I also thinks it's wrong to shift the moral condemnation to people who want dogs (puppies, clones or whatever) from whoever is abusing these dogs in the first place. I'm not angry when nobody wants to adopt a dog, I'm angry because somebody treated them so poorly in the first place. Owning a dog isn't a human need, so getting one just to treat it like trash -- and have it wind up in a shelter -- is disgusting.

Not to mention rescues can come with a lot of problems, physiologically and psychologically. I can understand why people might shy away.

<comment><USER4> As a rescue dog owner this article made me wonder how different he could be if I had the chance to raise him with love instead of neglect. Then I realized a clone would look the same but it could be an entirely different dog otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I got wondering the same things. One of our dogs is getting older, and we love her so much. I wouldn't, and couldn't afford to, do something like this, but I can understand why people might.

How different would she end up? There are a lot of mannerisms that seem pretty common to beagles, and then there's some of the weird stuff she does that is unique to her. Would we lose all that? Would it feel weird having a dog that looked just like her but acted different?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been fascinated with this since I first heard about it on NPR about a year ago. I love my dogs almost as much as my human family. In fact, I usually find myself trusting in my dogs more than other people and am that guy you see at the local dog park all the time. Point is I am the kind of person that would do this if I had the money. But i wonder how similar the dog's personality would be to the one i loved. In some ways, seeing a dog that is identical to one i loved but acting completely different would be harder than dealing with the loss itself imho.

Better to just cherish the life while it's there.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate your love for dogs, but don't you think that cloning a dog because of your love for the original is ridiculously self-centered? It's basically creating and imposing life to satisfy one's own emotional needs. It's taking living-thing-as-property to another level.

By the way, I love my dog but kind of struggle with the ethics of simple ownership of a living thing.

<comment><USER7> How is this different from people who own animal farms and purposefully breed them? Is it just because it's satisfying an emotional need rather an a financial one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People talk about this because it is a disgusting display of wealth, and morally immature to say the least.

But all technologies like this, meant ultimately for humans, will be tested on animals first.

If we are going to learn and refine cloning on dogs anyway..... they scientists might as well bring back "Captain Fluffles".

<comment><USER9> True in a sense, but much like dogs, cloning humans seems quixotic as we don't have any shortage of humans, either. Cloning organs and tissues has more potential, granted.

<comment><USER10> Yeah - but I guess it could help understand things better that may lead to further advances and so on.

Science is so unpredictable that we shouldn't restrict progress just because it feels 'creepy'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very close to being a real life form of the "PetStuffers" radio ad in Grand Theft Auto [0]!

Highlight:

        Petstuffers: when you just can't let go,
        and coming soon: Grandparents forever!

[0] Audio: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xpZbQsHSHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xpZbQsHSHU)

[1] Full Transcript + original longer rant I wrote because this $100K to clone your pet thing rubs me the wrong way: [https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb941...](https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/92a52144d1fec39ef41a6fb94118ca9a)

\---

P.S. Does this fall under the category of "it's okay to do creepy shit, as long as you're R$CH"?

Consider these 2 scenarios:

1\. Some guy clones his deceased dog in his garage.

Reaction: _That sounds creepy_

2\. Barbra Streisand pays $100,000 to clone her deceased dog.

Reaction: _Socially acceptable_

<comment><USER12> I think it's more that it's OK to do creepy shit if you're in a clean, brightly lit, sciencey looking place and you have attractive smiling people advertising your expensive services.

"Rule 1: Be attractive." applies to companies as well as people.

<comment><USER13> > _I think it 's more that it's OK to do creepy shit if you're in a clean, > brightly lit, sciencey looking place and you have attractive smiling people > advertising your expensive services._

I wonder if it is still, though. The spacious, sterile looking, brightly-lit white rooms inhabited by attractive, perfectly dressed and groomed staff have been a synonym to "some sick dystopian shit is going on here" in books and movies for quite some time now.

<comment><USER12> Fair point, there's a pretty strong association in pop culture between that kind of science-lab-stock-photo type place and morally questionable scientific experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cloning is perhaps less alarming than some of the regular practices of dog breeding, which produce breeds with chronic respiratory or joint problems.

</comment><comment><USER15> What about the surrogate dog "mothers"? I imagine that role is a pretty disgusting one to ponder.

With a mortality rate as low as 66% for a full litter, one has to wonder how realistic our dreams of human cloning really are.

<comment><USER13> > _With a mortality rate as low as 66% for a full litter (...)_

Is that because of technological limitations, or simply because they don't care if the mother survives?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Chinese have cloned a monkey. I am wondering who will be the first to clone human. Maybe the Chinese have already done it but are keeping quiet about it. Its a Brave new world.

<comment><USER17> Keeping it quiet might be a thing given the moral outrage this would trigger.

The main obstacles here are access to donor eggs and surrogate mothers willing to carry. This may already have happened. Additionally, failure rates acceptable with dogs and livestock are going to cause moral outrage. Though if you look at IVF, the success rates there are not great and it is considered acceptable anyway. Never mind the discarded embryos, miscarriages, etc. Many couples try for years before succeeding.

Ongoing progress might make a few of these things easier. E.g. producing egg cells from normal cells might become feasible. Also there is some progress with artificial wombs. Add to that improvements to gene manipulation and you are looking at industrial scale production of clones of all sorts of species. I see this more as a question of when than if. Human cloning is inevitable.

The main obstacles for this are entirely non technical. There are enough religious and political constraints that this will have to happen under the radar and in less strict countries for a while. Barbara Streisand cloning her dogs sort of moves us toward that though.

Puppies are cute and so what if they were cloned? Are human babies so different? You can bet that there are some dictators, billionairs, etc. out there that would love to have a "mini me". It's the ultimate in narcissism and hedonism. Trump might be interested, just saying ;-). He's insensitive enough to not give a F __* what everybody else things. This baby is going to be great. I will be the best child ever!

<comment><USER7> Why is cloning more narcissistic than regular procreation? We produce half- clones already, this is just adding the other half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would like to clone my dog but I am waiting for the price to drop.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love my dog, but a clone would not be the same dog, with the experiences that make her the way she is.

I cannot think about dog cloning without remembering Fry's speech upon throwing the fossilized remains of his faithful Seymour into the lava beneath Planet Express, and it tears me up everytime.

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

<comment><USER20> I cried the first time I watched that. Futurama has many episodes like Jurassic Bark that hit an emotional nerve, but the incredible thing is that most of them were written by different writers (Eric Kaplan, Ron Weiner, Ken Keeler, Eric Horsted, Michael Rowe, etc).</comment></comment>


Taiwan to talk with Google over exposed missile position - <AUTHOR> http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201902150022.aspx <comment><USER2> "Negotiations"? Doesn't Google frequently blur out military installations on request? I'm as keen to bash big tech companies as much as the next HN commenter, but this reaction sounds overblown.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237056)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommend a note taking wiki-like "super" application? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I'll start with the applications that I've already evaluated and/or used:
Wikidpad
* Pros:  fast switching between the edit and view modes;  nice syntax (especially for pasting code snippets or just raw ASCII text, nice indenting visual clues);  it is standalone application that don't require server;  the wiki pages can be kept in flat text database;  easy drag-and-drop of file attachments (especially for image files). * Cons:  doesn't have history/version control of the pages and the state of the wiki database as a whole;  doesn't have the concept of namespaces for the wiki pages;
MoinMoin wiki
* Pros:  nice syntax;  have standalone server (Python based) which makes it truly portable and standalone;  keeps the pages in flat files;  have a lots of nice plugins; * Cons: its a wiki == slow iterations of editing/taking notes, viewing, rince-repeat... doesn't have version control integration
Trac
* Pros:  All of the features of the MoinMoin wiki, except the flat file database;  Version control integration: I can use the wiki changeset feature and the wiki pages as metadata of my personal codebase; * Cons:  All of the general drawbacks of the wikis;  Not truly portable;
todolist2 (by AbstractSpoon)
* Pros:  fast, standalone todolist manager;  the tasks have this really nice and important for me feature of having an rich edit box for taking notes associated with the task with flipping between the task and the notes with a single key;  time tracking for the tasks; * Cons:  doesn't have version control built-in (it has "simple" version control by just making an automatic backup copies of the project/data file with time stamp embedded in its name).  it's hard to filter the tasks by urgency (in the GTD terms, it doesn't have the concept of the containers of tasks: Inbox, Maybe, Next action for each project, etc).  it doesn't have cross-referencing/linking between the tasks in wiki-like fashion.
Thinking Rock
* Pros:  implements GTD almost perfectly;  it has notes for every action;  portable; * Cons:  (Maybe because of the Java GUI) doesn't have simple Undo when editing text notes;  it's clunky when switching between the projects/actions tree and the editable notes editbox;  doesn't have version control;
MonkeyGTD/TiddlyWiki
* Pros:  truly standalone  almost 100% wiki  nice GTD implementation * Cons:  it's little confusing when there is no easy or user-friendly way to see an overview of the current structure of the wiki pages  I'm not sure if it scales well when there is a lots of pages/data/text/attachments.  doesn't have source control integration;  I'm not sure about version control/pages history...
So, to recap, I want an application that does the following:
* It has the speed and the ease of edit/preview iteration cycle of wikidpad. * It has the wiki pages and the associated attachments as they are (like wikidpad and MoinMoin). * It has version control for the wiki pages (like MoinMoin or Trac). * It has source control integration (like Trac). * It has the time tracking of the todolist2 and the task/project nesting like todolist2 and ThinkingRock. * It has the almost perfect GTD implementation of ThinkingRock or MonkeyGTD.
It's obvious that I haven't decided which one to use because for some reason my requirements are somehow orthogonal in the terms of the features that the aforementioned applications...not that the features are orthogonal or it is impossible or not practical...actually I think that maybe wikidpad is the closest to my ideal, which means that: * I decide to implement the features that I need (to add version control, GTD-life features/properties for the wiki pages themselves, source control integration), or * Continue to search and evaluate, or * Get some interesting and valuable opinions here
Thank you for your patience <comment><USER2> Emacs Org mode has an outliner, wiki-like internal links, and nice GTD support, all stored in plain text files. I started using it recently and like it a lot. You'd have to learn Emacs if you don't already know it, but that's not hard (I used Emacs in law school when dinosaurs roamed the earth). <http://orgmode.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> how about a look see at gitit? <http://github.com/jgm/gitit>

Its a general wiki app that by default is backed by git, though darcs and mercurial are designed to work too, and it also has the webserver functionality baked in. Oh, and it does syntax highlighting for pretty much any language if you compile it accordingly, and it supports several different backeds for rendering latex math equations!

And since its written in haskell, all you need to do change backend functionality is write a bugfree snippet of the same type as the code you're swapping out, and tada!

edit: also see <http://gitit.johnmacfarlane.net/> for a live example

</comment><comment><USER4> If you have a Mac OS X Server laying around, its built in wiki is one of the best I've seen.

If you want a WYSIWYG editor, Google Sites is a great choice. It's also very fast to switch between editing and view modes, etc.

Other than that, I'd recommend Gollum, GitHub's open source wiki library. It has a very clean frontend, supports many different markup languages (like Markdown, Textile, Creole, etc), and pages and revision history are backed by a Git repository.

It's as easy to setup as this:

      $ git init
      $ echo "Hello" > Home.markdown
      $ git add Home.markdown
      $ git commit -m "adding home page"
      $ gollum

And open <http://localhost:4567/> in your browser.

</comment><comment><USER5> (shameless plug) PpcSoft iKnow is a "personal wiki" with the following features:

\- standalone desktop application for Windows \- WYSIWYG editing \- all "pages" (or notes) are stored in a single Unicode text file \- all "pages" are _automatically_ connected to each other (no "funny" syntax) \- automatic semi- backup of changed pages (one week back)

For FULL version control, you can use any 3rd party version control system as all the pages are stored in a single text file.

However, it does not have any time tracking or task/project/TD functionality.

For more information:

\- <http://ppcsoft.com/iknow-features.asp>

(/shameless plug)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this for you, your team, or your customers? Is your goal to have the most manageable and easy-to-organize lists, or to most easily gather the resources necessary to the performance of the tasks?

I'm having some difficulty visualizing what you want to do with the version control - backup your mind-state regularly, or automatically link to specific/latest versions of source code on the software projects that are 'getting to done'.

Thanks in any case for gathering several useful tools in one place. I've been looking for a lightweight project management tool and some of these look like useful candidates.</comment>