Ask HN: Freelancers, are you crazy dry these days?  or is it just me? - <AUTHOR> In a nutshell, I'm wondering if the market has shifted in the past 10-15 months or so, and how we can measure it.
I get the sense that, socially, we're not supposed to talk about these things.  To acknowledge that I've had trouble finding work makes me seem weak or less valuable.  To discuss money at all is a social taboo.
I don't know about y'all, but for my part, I had absolutely no trouble finding work - usually without even really trying - from mid-2011 to mid-2016.
I have no doubt that I'm valuable in the right contexts, and that hasn't changed in the timeframe I'm talking about.  I'm neither "junior grade" nor out of date.  I feel totally in my prime.
Nor have the technologies on which I'm most often contracted to work (python, usually web stuff, usually django) lost enough market share to explain it.
My rate ($6k / week) is not, in my estimation, too high for the value I provide.
So my question: is anyone else having a similar experience?  Is there a way that we can gauge changes in the market?
And then also: whether or not my experience is unique, what's the best thing to do when you have long stretches without solid work?  Learn a new skill?
I've been working a lot lately on Raspberry Pi, off-grid tech, power monitoring, etc.  I live on a school bus (http://thisisthebus.com/) and I've developed a lot of interesting tech for that purpose.  But then once you start to feel comfortable with new skills, how do you develop a new client base? <comment><USER2> Consulting is high variance, particularly when consultants underinvest in marketing/sales. It's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of; we're all in business here (some more straightforwardly than others). There is nothing wrong with making customers being hard; it's the fun, necessary hard that, combined with making customers happy, is why business drives the world forward.

Since consulting is high variance, at any given time some people perceive "the market" as being on fire and some perceive it as being in a slump, but for small consulting firms, your kite flies in basically all weather conditions.

 _what 's the best thing to do when you have long stretches without solid work?_

Do more sales and marketing.

Not kidding.

Take every happy client you have from the last two years. Send them each an email asking them how business is going and whether $FOO is still working up to their expectations. Follow up gracefully if they don't respond. After reconnecting, get them on a call to talk about their plans over next 3~6 months. Talk yourself into those plans. If you cannot talk yourself into those plans, ask if they will introduce you to 2~3 people who should have something like $FOO in their own business.

 _I 've been working a lot lately on Raspberry Pi, off-grid tech, power monitoring, etc._

Awesome projects. I mean nothing untoward with the following observation: generally, when you're solving problems for customers who are not plugged into the power grid, you're solving problems for people who don't exactly have signing authority for a $20k engagement starting next week. (I can imagine there are industrial applications for which this is not true! If you've got those leads, ignore this observation.) I might consider, if you're looking for technical skills to expand your business opportunity, whether these are the skills you want to develop or whether you want to develop ones which select for clients who have expensive problems that they'll happily pay to solve.

<comment><USER3> Take every happy client you have from the last two years. Send them each an email...

Brilliant! This falls into the 'Get Out of The Building' category of client discovery/relationship management. The best guy I've seen do this has a rotation list of 100 individuals he regularly pings for coffee/lunch meetings throughout the course of the year. The upshot, he's gets to select the projects takes on.

</comment></comment><comment> git-pull I posted about this in a thread at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13872807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13872807).

I think freelancing is dead. To sum it up, employers, including startups that'd dry up their runway in 1 to 3 years, are demanding developers go full time and onsite.

As if they really could give job security. That's the frustrating thing. They're making you jump through hoops for work that, save them being acquired, won't last.

Yes, exceptions exist. But the new norm is that. And norm means being able to have some sense of reliability, not some person's luck. Yes, I ask recruiters to look around for remote opportunities and they try to help, but the good paying jobs are back in SF and want me in the office. Full time.

Nope, no gigs. No one wants 3 months, 6 months.

Yeah, I've heard all the talk about consulting. To me, it's just more growth hack / NLP talk about value that doesn't represent the realities of being a developer in our market these days. Startups shun the thought of outside experts or opinions, unless it's a SAAS tool. These CTO's, even if they don't know better, see advice from an outside expert as losing control. I think this is because they want employees who they can mold in their image, rather than someone who could help them in a pinch.

The other thing is hiring happens a lot slower. A lot of these places keep passing over qualified candidates because they feel they have so many options.

And no, employers aren't winning either with the lack of flexibility they have. Going remote opens up yourself to a ton of candidates. They're ultimately isolating themselves from skilled workers with experience. It's completely understandable to not want to be in SF and to accommodate working remote if you're a seasoned programmer.

<comment><USER4> The software development world is more than just startups. I work as a consultant in the B2B / enterprise segment. There absolutely is no shortage of work to be done in these areas and these companies are very open to working with freelancers and consultant.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you break into that world? And is there room for serious engineering, not just consulting?

<comment><USER4> Recruiters are one way, not necessarily the best in the long run but a good short-term stopgap approach if you need to quickly find clients.

In my opinion the preferable long-term sustainable path is pretty much like in most businesses: Become useful and become noticeable. Create solutions and talk about it. A company website, blog, conference talks, networking events testimonials for instance are useful components of a marketing plan for a consultant.

As for the second question I'm not sure this is the right attitude. For example analysing a company's software creation process and pointing out ways to improve it is serious engineering but it doesn't involve writing a single line of code and often is more about human communication than hard engineering facts.

Value creation starts when you first talk to a prospective client not just when you write the first line of code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like you're approaching this from the wrong. Do marketing / sales / networking first (and do it a lot, consulting is as much about talking to people as it is about implementing solutions). Try to find out about the problems people and companies are having. Only then ask yourself how you can apply your expertise to that area.

</comment><comment><USER5> 6000 dollars a week !?

Just curious. What kind of work do you usually do for that kind of money?

<comment><USER6> $6000 a week is $150 an hour and seems to be a pretty reasonable rate.

What you are missing is: not every week will be booked.</comment></comment>


The Coming Death of Independent Podcasting - <AUTHOR> https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/on-the-spotify-joe-rogan-deal-and <comment><USER2> I'm reading Charles Perrow's 1972 classic _Complex Organizations_ which discusses both intra- and inter-organisational structure. Stoller's description of the consolidation of podcasting strikes me as quite similar to the deconsolidation and reconsolidation of the music industry, in about 1955 and 1962-1973. The golden age of decentralised music production and distribution lasted less than a decade:

 _After the critical period from about 1956 to 1960, when tastes were unfrozen, competition was intense, and demand soared, consolidation appeared. The number of firms stabilized at about forty. New corporate entries appeared, such as MGM and Warner Brothers, sensing, one supposes, the opportunity that vastly expanding sales indicated. Some independents grew large. The eight-firm concentration ratio also stabilized (though not yet the four-firm ratio). The market became sluggish, however, as the early stars died, were forced into retirement because of legal problems, or in the notable case of Elvis Presley, were drafted by an impinging environment. Near the end of this period the majors decided that the new sounds were not a fad and began to buy up the contracts of established artists and successfully picked and promoted new ones, notably The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan. A new generation (e.g., The Beatles) appeared from 1964 to 1969, and sales again soared._

 _But now the concentration ratios soared also. From 1962 to 1973, the four- firm ratio went from 25 to 51 percent; the eight-firm ratio from 46 to 81 percent, almost back to the pre-1955 levels. The number of different firms having hits declined from forty-six to only sixteen. Six of the eight giants were diversified conglomerates, some of which led in the earlier period; one was a new independent, the other a product of of mergers._

 _How did they do it? The major companies asserted "increasing central control over the creative process"352 through deliberate creation and extensive promotion of new groups, long-range contracts for groups, and reduced autonomy for producers. In addition, legal and illegal promotion costs (drug payola to disc jockeys, for example) rose in the competitive race and now exceeded the resources of small independents. Finally, the majors "have also moved to regain a controlling position in record distribution by buying chains of retail stores."353 The diversity is still greater than it had been in the past, and may remain high, but it is ominous that the majors have all the segments covered. As an executive said, "Columbia Records will have a major entry into whatever new area is broached by the vagaries of public tastes." But for a concentrated industry, the "vagaries of public tastes" are not economical; it is preferable to stabilize and consolidate them. This would be possible through further control over the creative process and marketing._

Charles Perrow, _Complex organizations : a critical essay_ , 1972, pp. 186-- 187.

[https://archive.org/details/complexorganizat00perr/page/186/...](https://archive.org/details/complexorganizat00perr/page/186/mode/2up)

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a- criti...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/complex-organizations-a-critical- essay/oclc/979139067)

Decentralisation is a frequently expressed goal of Web technologies, but so long as there is an available point of control, and a means to assert exclusive relationships or ownership, centralised control will reestablish itself, and the commons will again be enclosed.

Perrow's description in the next few paragraphs of the production side of music, and the various distribution of risks amongst headline performers, agents, labels, printing facilities, retail outlets, radio, and side musicians, seems to me to have direct correspondences to much of the consumer- facing (and business-services) Web-startup world.

Recommended reading.

(I've expanded somewhat on this comment, implicating as well Doc Searls: [https://joindiaspora.com/posts/780b1c807dc50138887d002590d8e...](https://joindiaspora.com/posts/780b1c807dc50138887d002590d8e506))</comment>


A sinologist discusses Unicode - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35136 <comment><USER2> When reading debates about reserving the digital space (not necessarily the typographic form) of certain characters, I always liken it to a typographer creating fonts for an advertisement. If the letter "g" is not needed for the ad, and the font is developed for the ad, why should the "g" glyph exist? If they release the font file (or it is extracted somehow) if "g" was never created, the space for it will exist, there will simply be no glyph for it.</comment>


What stops population growth? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/ <comment><USER2> First to summarize what he says:

It used to be short life expectancies led to people having more children. Not anymore, as most countries are in the high life expectancy group.

Basically better family planning, womens rights, and health care leads to higher life expectancies leading to: SMALLER FAMILIES.

Now I will add:

i) Divorce laws, and strict enforcement of it. I think this contributes heavily to lowering populations. But you need that because of point (ii) below.

ii) The lack of religion leads to a lifestyle that breaks down the family unit. Once the patriarchal mode of life goes out of the window, so does the population growth. In other words, women's rights. So its a trade-off.

I'm looking at you Europe.</comment>


Varoufakis parallel banking system for Greece - <AUTHOR> http://www.ekathimerini.com/199945/article/ekathimerini/news/varoufakis-claims-had-approval-to-plan-parallel-banking-system

<comment><USER2> I find it unbelievable how Varoufakis is constantly sabotaging Tsipras, just to satisfy his ego.

Even if all of this were true (which is unlikely) it would still be a nice anekdote to tell years from now, after the dust has settled. But today?

It looks he realized that he's an abysmal minister who won't achieve anything, so he dropped out and now he's playing his political game strictly in the press without any consideration for the consequences.</comment>


Dr. Elon and Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla's Production Hell - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/ <comment><USER2> "For me, the fact that we were able to build at scale, amid all that craziness, that's the real accomplishment," one former engineering executive told me. "Just think about it: We designed a car that is so simple and elegant you can build it in a tent. You can build it when your CEO is melting down. You can build it when everyone is quitting or getting fired. That's a real accomplishment. That's amazing."</comment>


JAWS – Spark SQL REST Server opensourced by Atigeo - <AUTHOR> http://xpatterns.com/our-spark-sql-rest-server-codename-jaws-is-now-open-source/

<comment><USER2> good job ;)</comment>


Ten lies about microprocessors - <AUTHOR> http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20030610S0041

<comment><USER2> _Garbage collection, threads, stack orientation, and object management take about a megabyte worth of Java virtual machine to translate into something that even today's fastest microprocessors struggle to execute._

"Struggle to execute"? Is that why JVM languages are some of the fastest languages out there? 1996 called, it wants its FUD about the JVM back.

Edit: Nevermind. The article is from 2003. (2003 called. It wants its article back.)

<comment><USER3> I think what the guy means is that if you tried to implement garbage collection, threading and object management using registers, flip flops and PROM, you'll end up with such large circuits that your chip would become way slower, not to speak of being extremely complex.

Byte code is not assembler like ASM, it has some pretty high level functions in there that are quite difficult to implement on a very low level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Compared to the big 68030, 29000, and 486DX chips of the day, the wee ARM6 > consumed less total energy than the others gave off as heat

wtf? All energy 'consumed' by a processor is given off as heat. Such incorrect hyperbole makes me doubt the entire article.

<comment><USER5> that can't be all true - isn't some of it as radiated energy in RF spectrum?

<comment><USER6> He wasn't saying that the only energy given off was that or heat or that all energy put in was given off as heat he said, you could run the arm processor on the portion of energy given off as heat.

<comment><USER7> Processors transition around 95%+ of their energy to heat so it's not a significant statement. (A little is used to communicate with RAM etc.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Poireau: A Sampling Allocation Debugger - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/backtrace-labs/poireau <comment><USER2> See also GWP-ASan: [http://llvm.org/docs/GwpAsan.html](http://llvm.org/docs/GwpAsan.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd name, French for 'leek'. Maybe they were thinking of Poirot?

<comment><USER4> It's quite passing. They are looking for leaks ("leeks").

"The libpoireau library intercepts a small fraction of calls to malloc/calloc/etc., to generate a statistically representative overview of an application's heap footprint. While the interceptor currently only tracks long-lived allocations (e.g., leaks) ..."</comment></comment>


A new type of molecular medicine may be needed to halt cancers - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21711867-doctors-must-look-proteins-rather-genes-tackle-tumours-new-type?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/20161215n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/8374158/n <comment><USER2> I just finished the cancer biography "The Emperor of All Maladies" today, and it goes into molecular medicine in the final part. It's a quick read (or else I was particularly interested and read it fast). I highly recommend it in general:

[https://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography- Cancer...](https://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography- Cancer/dp/1439170916)

</comment><comment><USER3> So far the comments have strayed mightily from the locus.

The article concerns molecular medicine. We are a computationally oriented group, and as such are better served by combining our brain trust to define and use what technological tools may avail the molecular mechanics at issue.

I've worked for a top-5 molecular modeling research center and can say from experience that there are a few things to do to rectify this dilemma. Before positing my solution(s), let's address what happens so the solutions make sense.

The proteins malform and the resulting tertiary structure does not aggregate properly, thus producing physical interactions that disrupt the typical cellular processes. These malformations are caused by genetic mutations, or by heavy atomic elements that are either stochastically introduced into the cell or are the by-product of, say, working in a plutonium factory.

The malformations are very common, and so over the aeons we have adapted a nice little helper molecule to do some repair work for us.

These molecules are called pharmacological chaperones and are fucking amazing, pardon ma Francais...

The gist of what they do reform the tertiary structure by aligning somewhat near the malformed protein and subsequently, almost inadvertently, it might seem to an untrained observer, polarize the molecule ever so slightly such that the tertiary structure reforms (there is a pun to be made here about social change, but I digress) and the unwanted behavior is no longer present.

My thesis work is geared to designing algorithms that map molecular topography so we can better predict tertiary structure (itself an enormous undertaking, AWS, Azure, BlueMix, you listening?!) and then design (using some nifty techniques I've learned in my AI classes) the organic molecule that has the most empirically demonstrative capacity for altering the malformed protein to prevent any disease resulting from said malformation.

That includes, but is not limited to, Prion diseases, many, if not most, cancers, and neuron centered degenerative diseases.

It's kind of a big deal...to quote a certain broadcaster :p

The reality is that we ARE fairly close to proving how to fix this, though Lord knows I could use a side gig to bouy me through the debts I have mounting, and I'm working on securing NHS, NSF and hopefully even some private dollars to scale my work into practical (meaning applicably utile, and not simply published) products that can solve the cancer crisis we currently endure.

Long ass answer, but that's where the state of the art is on this topic, for which I am grateful to have this forum to discuss with whomever is on the other end of this server, and for the opportunity to pursue my research with the help of my mentors and senior scientists.

For reasons begging belief I will not mention their names until we publish and hope that this brief description gives a little tinder to light a bit of a blaze under this scientifically, socially, and evolutionarily important topic.

Cheers, y'all.

<comment><USER4> One of the greatest way to advance human knowledge is to combine ideas from seemingly different domains in fruitful ways.

For example AI and molecular topography.

Another striking example is combining the 419 scam with the Sokol affair.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance- fee_scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

Pro tip: on this forum you should replace "nifty AI" with "tensor deep stacking networks", or at the least with "deep learning". Common, it's only a wikipedia link away.

Otherwise I applaud the effort.

Allow me to make yet another non-obvious and potentially super-profitable connection to your innovation: the pyramid scheme. I've been putting together some materials that can help young and energetic entrepreneurs such as yourself to improve their con game and also reach a wider audience, and more importantly, an audience with more disposable income. Generally, I offer my package for $120 and 5% participation in your net income derived from it, but I think you show extraordinary promise, so if you PM me the rate will be the practical give away of $19.99 and 3% of the profits.

<comment><USER3> This forum, you mean the one where they are arguing about whether or not being healthy might help prevent cancer after reading an article about molecular medicine?

Deep stacking tensor networks, is that what they do when they write movie scripts? Or does that involve requesting an audience with the Pope after pretending to be Henri Kissinger?

Nice touch with the scam there, so as to distract from your complicity.

You rule!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe next-gen cancer research is related to next-gen aging research. See [http://sens.org](http://sens.org)

</comment><comment><USER6> The best way to halt cancer is to ensure that they never start. Tobacco use contributes to 12 different cancers and makes up about one-third of all cancers[1]. Obesity and lack of exercise can contribute another third.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6544a3.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6544a3.htm)

<comment><USER7> Untrue. Making a car that never breaks down is impossible. Repairing cars is possible. In the case of aging and cancer, cure is much better than prevention.

<comment><USER8> > Making a car that never breaks down is impossible.

> In the case of aging and cancer, cure is much better than prevention.

There's a non-zero chance that a cure for cancer is impossible [0][1]. A "cure" for aging seems even less likely. So it's probably better to prevent, since we know that'll work.

[0] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-truly- cure...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-truly-cure-cancer/)

[1] [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-havent-we-cured- cancer-...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-havent-we-cured-cancer-yet/)

<comment><USER9> Cures for everything are possible. We are just atoms. Nothing prevents rearranging those atoms into any configuration we desire, in principle.

<comment><USER10> The big theoretical challenge is "restoring" me to a state that has never existed. I want my brain's atoms restored to a young arrangement of atoms in terms of health but while retaining its old arrangement of atoms in terms of learning.

There is an existence proof for one or the other but not for both at the same time.

<comment><USER9> True, but there is an existence proof for say, you at 25. And while strictly speaking there's no proof that you could know all the same things you know now, I find it hard to credit the idea that you wouldn't be able to retain your knowledge and your youth simultaneously.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every Library and Museum in America, Mapped - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/06/every-library-and-museum-america-mapped/5826/

<comment><USER2> Per capita would be a huge improvement. It looks awfully similar to a population map at the moment.

<comment><USER2> Erm... I guess that was the point of the map: cheer up! libraries are everywhere!

But still, it would be really interesting to see them per-capita.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's a great point. Here's a dataset of libraries per capita by state[1] that supposedly includes a map but it's not loading in Chrome...

[1] [http://www.statemaster.com/red/graph/edu_pub_lib_tot_lib_per...](http://www.statemaster.com/red/graph/edu_pub_lib_tot_lib_percap- total-librarians-fte-per-capita&b_map=1)</comment></comment></comment>


ProtonMail now the maintainer of OpenPGPjs email encryption library - <AUTHOR> https://protonmail.com/blog/openpgpjs-email-encryption/ <comment><USER2> In case anyone looks for the same thing, I saw "ProtonMail is community software, funded by the community, and open source." and jumped to GitHub to search. As stated in [https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient/issues/5](https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient/issues/5), the only open source part is the JavaScript based client, so you can't self- host ProtonMail.

</comment><comment><USER3> So my first reaction there was "there goes another non-five eyes (or nine or fourteen eyes) hosted mail service who've just painted a (or another) great big target on themselves to attract even more NSA scrutiny".

(Second reaction was "Crypto in the browser in Javascript _again?_ Didn't was already point out this is 'doing it wrong'?")

<comment><USER4> So you'd prefer not to have any crypto at all? Because 99% of people are going to use their browsers anyways.

Btw for example [https://blockchain.info/wallet/#/](https://blockchain.info/wallet/#/) (in- browser bitcoin wallet) I think has never been hacked - you might say it's a huge outlier but it is _possible_ to do well.

<comment><USER5> The issue is like this.

I load [https://webmail.example.com](https://webmail.example.com).

I see my email.

My ISP doesn't see my email.

The NSA (or anyone else who can MITM https, such as my workplace, college, etc.) can effectively turn it into http, and see the content.

We need to fix that.

So I write an encryption library in JS, loaded from [https://webmail.example.com](https://webmail.example.com) . It loads the email through an AJAX call from [https://webmail.example.com](https://webmail.example.com), decrypts it, and displays it.

The only issue is that whoever can MITMed the connection can also modify the JS file to send the key to a C&C server.

So:

"Dumb" ISP can't read #1 mail

"MITM" ISP can read #2 mail

So what's the gain?

The only concern is that it's an active attack vs a passive attack, so no plausible deniability.

But in most MITM scenarios, you don't need plausible deniability.

1\. Your workplace computer and the connection is owned by them, so they can do what they want with it.

2\. Dictatorships give themselves whatever powers they want

3\. The NSA has enough side-channel attacks to exploit.

So in which situation will a "JS" encryption help?

<comment><USER6> > The NSA (or anyone else who can MITM https, such as my workplace, college, > etc.) can effectively turn it into http, and see the content.

To be clear, unless NSA has some massive capabilities we haven't dreamed off, properly implemented HTTPS cannot be MITM'ed (via SSL stripping, or other means) by anyone who lacks access to your local machine. Specifically, by properly-implemented SSL, I mean:

1\. Serving https only, no http

2\. HSTS

3\. Certificate pinning

The situation you mention regarding workplace computers is a little different from the NSA, since they have the explicit authority and ability to install root certificates on your local work computer. Without those root certs (like if you use a personal computer at work), they lack the ability to MITM your connection, assuming the above.

<comment><USER3> If I'm the NSA, I'd already have stolen Protonmail's HSTS pinned cert's private key (possibly by burning a zero day getting into one of their web servers, possibly by "asking nicely" to some tech employee there for whom I had appropriate leverage).

But yeah - short of nation-state or very high level LEO (who're just piggybacking on their local NSA equivalent), HSTS with pinned certs is as close to "secure" as we have right now.

<comment><USER7> This is why we have HSMs.

It can in fact be "impossible" to steal ones crypto keys.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but "stealing" them isn;t the NSA's only avenue to acquire them. With Lavabit they just said "give us the keys so we can snoop all we want" \- I suspect very few of us would be able to resist like Levinson did (as in, shut your company and livelihood down, and hope they don't throw you in jail for doing so). (Fortunately, most of us won't have users with as much heat coming down on them as Snowden, but if you're building _anything_ privacy related you owe it to yourself to consider how far you'd go to protect your users if one of them turned out to be another Snowden...)

<comment><USER8> "stealing" is the only path the NSA can take in the case of ProtonMail, due to their servers being hosted in Switzerland and not within the borders of a nation that has a strong relationship with the US intelligence community.

<comment><USER3> I'd bet good money that the NSA can outsource this to their friends/counterparts/lackeys in any of five eyes, nine eyes, and fourteen eyes countries - and through less official channels involving local or flown-in thugs, pretty much everywhere else. They probably can't easily get Huawei's or Baidu's private keys, but I bet there's tens or hundreds of thousands of Protonmail sized companies in China/Russia/everywhere else that they _can_ strongarm the owners or sysadmin staff into handing keys over.

Or maybe I'm just in a way too "the whole world is fucked" mood today...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminder for the obvious: Javascript is now longer just for web browsers and GPG is not just for email. GPG is also used in B2B scenarios where files are being passed between between servers.

Also Javascript based client applications installed locally are becoming more common (think about Atom etc). Maybe we will soon also see Javascript based desktop IMAP client.

<comment><USER10> > Javascript based desktop IMAP client

Nylas N1 is an example of this (and excellent, might I add)!

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

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the kind words! (I work at Nylas.)

Here's a blog post with more details about Nylas N1 and PGP: [https://nylas.com/blog/pgp](https://nylas.com/blog/pgp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope the will accept our pull request for adding secp256k1 to OpenPGP.js enabling interaction with OpenPGP and use of cryptocurrency keys for messaging: [https://github.com/Jaxx-io/openpgpjs- secp256k1](https://github.com/Jaxx-io/openpgpjs-secp256k1)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems that WebCrypto is already implemented in browsers. Does this library make use of it, or is it pure JavaScript? If so, why is that? Most crypto algos are susceptible to side channel attacks, and trying to get that right in JavaScript across browsers doesn't look generally possible.

</comment><comment><USER14> Good stuff, paying customer and planning to stay one :) I do wonder though if you are thinking about providing PM as a browser extension based app as well? Would curb some of the issues people always bring up re crypto in browser.</comment>


Buran, the Soviet space shuttle, flew 25 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1311/15buran/#.Uom_c7IZFhE

<comment><USER2> There is one of the flying mockups in a the museum in Speyer in Germany.</comment>


Freshmeat and ohloh about to closed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.devx.com/2010/06/famed-freshmeat-software-listi.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, that really sucks. I love both sites, and FM in particular has been around - and been a big part of the open source world - for what feels like forever. If Freshmeat really goes away, that feels like the end of an era. :-(

That said, here's an opportunity for somebody who wants to put together a new clone site... Maybe featuring the best parts of Freshmeat + Ohloh?</comment>


"Pissing in the well": Shelfari spam and the social contract - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/shelfari_and_th.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see the absurdly long list of pissed-off bloggers at [http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/11/shelfari- spam...](http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/11/shelfari-spam- basically-social.php)

(Disclosure: I used to work for LibraryThing... and built their address-book inviter. I'd like to believe we implemented it a little more tastefully, though. =P)

</comment><comment><USER2> AstroTurfing is fun. Institutionalized AstroTurfing is sad.</comment>


MySpace Apps Catching Up To Facebook's? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/myspace-apps-catching-up-to-facebook-s-

<comment><USER2> Is that kinda killing with faint praise?</comment>


Ask HN: How to understand the "big picture" of your own work? - <AUTHOR> I have worked for businesses that lean towards the very small side. This has become somewhat of a hassle to me, especially when I turned into telecommute work, because I have hardly anyone to talk to about software development process and life cycle, and what impact our work has whenever we finish a milestone. If someone tells me to do XYZ, I just do XYZ without giving it much more thought but nobody explicitly states on the why this is important to company goals.
Now with eight years of work under my belt, people expect someone of my tenure to be able to demonstrate knowledge of the big picture. They will want to hire someone who makes waves.
When I was just starting out my expected career path would have taken me into a senior, then lead developer position, and probably become a software architect. But right now, eight years of work later, I am nowhere near capable to hold any of those roles. I couldn't make waves, even at a small company.
My work history and resume give the impression that my career has stalled. I honestly don't know what looks worse- an inexperienced graduate who's gone a year without work, or an experienced person whose career has stalled and currently doesn't have work.
But anyhow, I'm trying to write some "impact statements" on previous jobs and my mind's drawing a blank. How can I understand how it helped the company when so many aspects were black-boxed from me? <comment><USER2> > _I just do XYZ without giving it much more thought but nobody explicitly > states on the why this is important to company goals_

Have you gone out of your way to ask about the why? Or asked to be included in the big picture? A big part of furthering your career path is to take the reins, rather than wait to be included.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes you just have to ask.

Tl:Dr - Weekly management meetings were held. Was not a part of them. Asked to be part of them and now am included and have a better understanding of the company's operations.

My company hired me to be an internal IT guy as they would outsource everything (which got to be expensive when people just need their excel worksheet restored they deleted or something easy like getting a printer installed).

Started small by learning the infrastructure, applications and how they do business and the workflow. Now one year later I'm in charge of the security systems, server maintenance, remote help and pretty much I'm acting CIO of this general contracting company. It's not a huge company but I have 4 servers and 100 computers to monitor/update and another 50 in the field to keep updated.

I work directly under the President and CEO and although I'm not a specialist by any means in one aspect I am a good generalist in terms of knowing all the software they use and means of the company only one year later.

Now they would hold weekly "management" meetings to discuss progress on the various jobs. Originally I was never invited to these as they didn't see why the IT guy needed to be involved.

After about a year I asked the CEO, "May I be included in the management meetings going forward so I can better assess the company's direction and help plan for future projects?"

Without hesitation he replied yes and I have been attending them ever sense. Although most of the meetings are about numbers, profit and how the various projects are running it helps to see the 'big picture' and where the company makes most of it's money, where it tends to lose money and my plan is to mitigate that impact with the use of technology and better on boarding in areas where technology can prove useful.

Long story short, ask and usually you will not be turned away from wanting to learn/grow yourself in a company.</comment>


Ask: What makes you an efficient front-end developer? - <AUTHOR> 1) Are you efficient? 2) What sort of work environment, workflows, development patterns do you consider most important in getting things done? 3) How do you adapt? 4) Describe your work. 5) What would make it very difficult for you to get things done at a new company? <comment><USER2> I'll answer a few questions since no one else has yet.

1) I like to think I'm getting more efficient everyday? Some days yes, some days no. There are so many tools to learn, it's hard to learn it all, but I like to think I grow everyday.

2) I like using tmux with teamocil to setup my dev enviornment. I mainly use react boilerplate for my frontend, with yarn and django or flask on the backend running in virtualenv, using virtualenvwrapper. When I startup my teamocil/tmux session, I open several panes that contain frontend and backend dev servers, and it opens other panes that then open up the frontend and backend repos in Atom. Having this easy to reproduce dev environment has saved me countless hours, and it's nice to follow the identical process for new projects (reduces cognitive load, if docs are missing).

3) I adapt by getting frustrated about something enough to I seek out a better solution. Also I read hn often and look for interesting frontend tools/trends.

4) I work as a full stack dev at a small healthcare nonprofit. I am one of 2 full time sw engineers.

5) Antiquated build systems + bureaucracy would kill my vibe. Also disruptive would be inefficient or ineffective communication channels between design team or PMs or customers/clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting answer. Your #5 would match mine exactly. I also find your position interesting. Do you work remotely or in the office? Did you arrive there after negative experiences in other places?

#2) Did you have any difficulty getting those build tools and stacks to work together? I've done a (very) small amount of work using virtualenv and Flask as part of the CKAN framework for open data portals. Haven't approached integrating more complex front-end tooling yet, so I'd love to hear about what kind of challenges you've overcome if any. I don't fully understand how the current build system works on the backend but do believe jQuery is packaged in by default.

<comment><USER2> Hey don't have time to respond now but feel free to pm me. Details in my profile!</comment></comment></comment>


Live Announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR3g1MBsmb0 <comment><AUTHOR> From [http://www.nobelprize.org/](http://www.nobelprize.org/) The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220 000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people.</comment>


Show HN: We are launching a Uber for laundry (powered by ninjas on demand) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wash.io

<comment><USER2> Design feedback:

\- Drop the wood texture. A flat (or _very_ subtle gradient) white or blue might go better here. \- That inset drop shadow needs to go or be made much more subtle. \- Never add hover states to text blocks that aren't linked. \- Request an invite is apparently a button, but isn't styled like one. The horizontal padding should only be 2 to 4 times the vertical padding. \- Drop the blue horizontal bar under the header/menu \- Add an about page. Why should I give my email address to spammers (who else would be harvesting email addresses anonymously?)

I know you did this half-assed just to offload some of the risk to your potential customers (if time is wasted by this thing not taking off, at least it was their time wasted and not yours), but that's bullshit silicon valley MVP wankery and won't get you ahead of the curve.

This business WILL take off. There IS demand for it. However, you won't be the one making the money if you don't put everything into it now. First impressions count.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark thanks for your feedback - value your advice. would love to hear some more feedback if you have time and are interested - shoot us an email firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I were you, I would change "wash your clothes from the comfort of your iphone" to "wash your clothes by the click of a button." That makes it more uber-esque, and easier to understand for us easier. Other than that, it seems pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER4> My first question is how much does this cost? I would make an effort to have very clear pricing.

Perhaps if you had a standard sized bag that you provided: 1 bag = $X, wash, dry, iron, fold. Dry cleaning extra.</comment>


Don't Subsidize Companies That Silence Workers - <AUTHOR> https://otherwords.org/dont-subsidize-companies-that-silence-workers/ <comment><USER2> /me looking at your silicon valley companies...

This also has to do with companies hiring more contractors vs full time employee's, then there are laws, and policies and regulations around that. Lots and lots of red tape.

</comment><comment><USER3> Firing workers for trying to speak up about safety issues or starting a union is _illegal_ , is it not?

<comment><USER4> A lot of companies have really poor performance review processes, read non- existent, this can be used to justify almost any firing.

In other words: Joe didn't get fired for raising Safety issues, he just happened to have a terrible performance review so he had to be fired.

Should the company have good performance review process then it's a bit more complicated but not by much:

1\. Employee Raises Safety Issue

2\. Fail Perf review # 1

3\. Fail Perf review # 2

4\. Get put on PIP

5\. Fail to meet PIP objectives

6\. Get Fired.

So, not immediate but can be done in 6 months or less. Not to mention the old trick of making the employees life impossible, etc ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dont work their either!

<comment><USER6> This is an inherently classist attitude. I (and presumedly you) can get a new job easily and are in a labor seller's market. This often isn't the case universally or employers wouldn't be able to act like this.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree. It's easier to change job now than it has ever been in history. That's undeniable. You're not bound by the jobs in your local area the way people were 50 years ago. Between remote work and the gig economy it's safer than ever to quit a bad job and pick up temporary work in the meantime.

<comment><USER8> It's easy for people who have in-demand skills and live in certain areas. If you aren't in certain fields, the "gig economy" usually means minimum wage with no job security or benefits with an automated boss constantly pressuring you.

<comment><USER7> Which to me at least seems a far more comforting place to land than no job.

<comment><USER8> If you're young, single, and healthy, it's better than nothing. For anyone who has non-trivial commitments, it's not going to support being as cavalier about quitting jobs as was suggested up-thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Support small businesses & financial independence instead.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't subsidize for profit companies.

Subsidies are a transfer of tax payer money to a company. If a company is turning a profit while receiving subsidies, it is simply a transfer of tax payer money to business owners.

<comment><USER11> There are multiple kinds of subsidies, it's not as simple:

1) Walmart (or other) companies pay so low wages that employees are eligible for food stamps or other subsidies. This is utterly outrageous and should be a criminal offense - at least, states should be allowed to claw back the assistance costs plus a 200% fine from the company to discourage this behavior.

2) Environmental subsidies: Government pays subsidies to companies (or private persons) to install new environmentally-friendly technology which is (thanks to being new) too expensive from an ROI viewpoint. Germany did this with solar and basically kickstarted the market for home solar, USA did the same with the incentives for Tesla and other e-vehicles. Obviously, these subsidies are fine as they lead to further savings or environmental goals down the road.

3) Government gives tax breaks to companies for relocation/creating new business: these are the most contested probably as multinational entities (hello Amazon) often enough abuse them for their own profit only. Done right, however, this form of subsidies has a positive ROI as a new business pays local taxes as well as its workers, who additionally provide purchasing power in their communities.

<comment><USER7> > 1) Walmart (or other) companies pay so low wages that employees are eligible > for food stamps or other subsidies.

How would you compare that to simply not offering the job at all?

For a lot of low paying jobs, that's the deal. Asking a company to pay more for labor than said labor increases profits is unreasonable. These jobs just largely wouldn't be offered.

The same people would still end up on subsidies and don't get any work experience. I'd argue it's a worse result.

<comment><USER12> There's no real evidence that's true. There are lots of countries where minimum wage policies are providing (or exceeding) a living wage for their employees[0]. At least enough for their employees to feed themselves without government assistance.

None of these countries have a demonstrable lack of employment growth[0] at the low end, and in macro and micro economic terms have comparable growth with the US.

[0]: [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat- news/-/D...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat- news/-/DDN-20190131-2) [1]: [https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment- rate.htm](https://data.oecd.org/emp/employment-rate.htm)

<comment><USER7> The European economy is different in many ways, closer to home we've seen slashed hours [0] resulting in workers getting less overall take home pay, as well as increased prices.

Not only did it result in the poor making less but the cost of living went up.

[0]: [https://www.vox.com/the- highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle...](https://www.vox.com/the- highlight/2019/7/13/20690266/seattle-minimum-wage-15-dollars)

<comment><USER13> That article doesn't seem to say what you claim it says?

<comment><USER7> > They found that the policy "reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 > percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent ... > consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased." That means the total > amount that employers paid to workers was less with the new minimum wage in > place than projected payroll if the policy hadn't gone into effect.

Also

> Surveying employers, Romich and other researchers found the most common > response to the wage increase was to raise prices

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On the same note - don't subsidize companies full of activists. Center is a good place to be, radicalism doesn't help anyone.

<comment><USER15> ...Which can be a fine philosophy, if you define the "center" relative to some absolute.

If your idea of "the center" is "precisely between the two current mainstream left-wing and right-wing parties", then right now you'll end up with something along the lines of "well, _some_ genocide is OK, so long as it's of people I don't like."

There's no special virtue in saying "both sides have good points" all day long, no matter who the sides are that you're dealing with. The political center, by any objective measure, is way, way to the left of what the "center" is in the US right now.

Or, to put this all more succinctly: I don't think anyone whose primary position is "Nazis are bad and we should treat them the way we did in WWII" should be classified as an "activist."</comment></comment>


5 Ways Voice 2.0 Will Change Your Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.voip-news.com/feature/5-ways-voice-2-0-will-change-your-life-080607/

<comment><USER2> Google has a strange way of not just reinventing an industry (like they did with search, docs, and you could even say the calendar) but they constantly do so in such a way that is promotes the industry. They never destroy something because they can to eliminate competition. (like GM did when they bought and subsequently ripped up the street car lines to make more room for their cars)

In times like these, efficiency in the system is a must, and thankfully they are not sacrificing any for their brand.</comment>


Review: Coders at Work - <AUTHOR> http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-coders-at-work.html

<comment><USER2> I really like the people he has chosen to interview and I can't wait to get my hands on the book.

And using print statements for debugging! Glad to hear I'm in good company :-)</comment>


Rails Rumble 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://railsrumble.com/

<comment><USER2> This is the largest distributed app building competition in the world. 500 teams 30+ countries. Incredible fun and you learn a ton. Good luck to anyone who competes.</comment>


Question to UX pros, product managers etc. - <AUTHOR> Do you make prototypes before taking your products into development? If yes, do you test them? <comment><USER2> I'm a UX designer, and by no means a pro, but my workflow is usually along the lines of:

\- wireframe on Sketch (some people are faster on paper, I'm faster on Sketch/XD/whatever)

\- create what I call a medium-fidelity mockup (basic styling, all components, etc, but not much actual content)

\- create a small PWA/webpage to demonstrate behavior and flow

\- go back and complete my high-fidelity design

\- send it, and any styleguides, to the devs

Throughout these steps there are multiple rounds of iteration, review, and branching, but eventually you have a product design ready to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> I uses coded prototypes. Deckware and clickables are sub-optimal. If you can code it and put it in someones hands, it allows them to see and experience the actual value. The former explain to people what you think the value is. It's a nuanced by distinct difference.

The former encourages group think and confirmation bias; I think the problem is important and the solution brings value, therefore it does. The latter allows you to identify who your customer is.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've used

\- Paper sketches

\- simple google doc with pages set to A5 so it fits very little on each "screen"

\- either of the two can be imported into invision and made clickable for user testing

\- at least some user testing to validate nomenclature / mind model.

\- then rails :)

</comment><comment><USER5> sketch out stuff on paper very crudely, then start coding in the browser and iterate, iterate, iterate. The finished product usually looks way different than the sketch.

I've never been good at making formal mockups and transforming it into a working site.

</comment><comment><USER6> Omnigraffle - high fidelity mockups

Balsamiq Mockups - simple views

No functional prototype

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes and yes, as often as possible.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome Extension Development Kit - <AUTHOR> https://chromeextensionkit.com/?ref=welcomeHN <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, ChromeExtensionKit is a side project of mine that includes a bunch of different starter templates for basic (HTML/CSS/JS) and React-based Chrome extensions (with setup and publish scripts) as well as some fully functional example extensions for inspiration. I originally built the starter templates as I found myself setting up and configuring every extension project roughly the same way and wanted to speed that process up in the future. The kit also includes an ebook with actionable growth tips and tricks.

If anyone has any questions, I would love to answer them!</comment>


Periodis Web – A Historical Atlas and Gazetteer of Europe from Year 1 to 2000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/index.html <comment><USER4> Atlas of The World History (animated)

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

also

<http://www.timemaps.com/history>

<comment><USER5> The project I'm currently working on is called Atlastory, and would be a Google Maps-like interface throughout history. The idea is to eventually have political maps like those in the OP + specific maps for historic events.

Demo is up at <http://atlastory.com> (for now only maps are WWII and Civil War). If anyone's interested in helping out please contact me. (Currently looking for another developer to help with the much more complicated back-end)

<comment><USER6> Currently working on a similar project as well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I especially found the map of europe Year 1 vs 2000 interesting. Hopefully, it won't take another 2k years for the EU to grow back together as a community. Of course, there are the intermittent 2k years that have divided us, but if you compare the progress over the last 50 to the previous roughly 2k I think we've done quit well.

<comment><USER8> This comment exposes the elitist Europhile mindset beautifully. Yes, another Roman Empire to allow a small imperial caste to rule the entire continent is exactly what they are aiming for.

<comment><USER7> That's not what I meant to convey at all. The idea is that cultures that have a different history, a history of conflict, blood and war - as one would probably guess just by observing the lines on this map - can come together, work together and overcome their different antagonistic histories, in order to attain peace. If other states were to join, islamic states, such as Turkey, and it were to work, this would be an even more amazing historical event. I'm not saying the EU is without its problems, but I think its going far in moving away from cold-warish pre 21st century nationalistic tendencies that have led to so much disaster in the world.

<comment><USER9> > If other states were to join, islamic states, such as Turkey, and it were to > work, this would be an even more amazing historical event.

Can you define 'Islamic state'? Turkey is a secular democratic republic. Admittedly one run by religious nutjobs with delusions of grandeur at the moment, but it is technically a secular republic, not an islamic state, and does not identify as such.

Also, for Turkey to join the EU, the EU would have to provide an incentive that at the moment does not exist. Turkey has good tariffs and trade agreements with many EU states and having it's own currency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If someone was to download these images and make a simple site that links them all with transition fades to show the change over time, would it be an infringement of the Euratlas copyright?

<comment><USER11> Contact them, they licence their maps out. You can even get in high resolution SVG format: <http://shop.euratlas.com/maps_gis/index.html>

As for the copyright, see: <http://www.euratlas.com/conditions.html> as well as:

> You may use the Euratlas images and maps, as they are available on the > websites euratlas.com and euratlas.net, for educational or illustration > purposes but you must mention the source in that way: © 2010 Christos > Nussli, www euratlas.com No commercial use is allowed.

<http://www.euratlas.com/about.html>

<comment><USER12> You guys might like a TEDx talk by a friend of mine Grzegorz 'The collapse of complex societies' specifically Roman Empire. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcE0rIEHEFI>

<comment><USER11> I am already reading Edward Gibbon's _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ , and while research since its conception may have disputed certain facts unknown at Gibbon's time (it was published in 1776), it is still an excellent detailed account of the Roman Empire from 170s and onward, without ever getting boring, because of Gibbon's excellent prose.

<comment><USER13> A good popular history of the other side of the "Fall of the Roman Empire" is "Terry Jones' Barbarians".

I scare-quote "Fall of the Roman Empire" because even though Rome itself was sacked, the Eastern half of the Roman Empire kept going for another millennium, though known to us moderns as the Byzantine Empire (it was known to all contemporaries merely as The Roman Empire).

<comment><USER11> Just FYI, Gibbon goes all the way to the fall of Constantinople. He refers to it as Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire later on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great. I love maps, and I love history. I feel like I don't have enough time to read enough history. Looking at maps gives a good summary of the rise and demise of various empires and states.

<comment><USER11> Then I will highly recommend this: <http://www.the-map-as-history.com/>

It's a pay-site, but its content is well worth the small price. The commentary is excellent and the attention to detail is high, without being boring. My only issue would be that they use Flash, but I guess I can forgive this site for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I prefer the maps in Wikimedia Commons - there are some amateur maps, which may be even better than some lifted from expired-copyright atlases.

There are quite a few different historical maps of the same year/region - <USER2> is very important to have them side by side, because history is very subjective and historical maps are only a subjective and deficient in data representations of historical presence.

Maps (by century): [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_by_century_s...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_by_century_shown)

<comment><USER15> For example:

\- Bavaria is shown to be a Austrian possession in 1800, which is incorrect. Consider the implications if Bavaria was a part of Austria for a while - <USER3> there be a Southern German nation? Or would be in fact inconsiderable that Austria is a separate state given the overlap with other German states? If you have only this map as a teaching tool you are implicitly giving a false impression of history.

\- There are no Ukrainian states or predecessors (the Cossack Sich) after the 14th century on any of these maps. By omitting this state the appearance of Ukraine seems mysterious in 20th century and a key narrative in the histories of Poland, Russia and even Sweden (the winter war) simply disappears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Frontiers of Europe from -500 to 2013.

<https://itunes.apple.com/app/id543207391>

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a lot of blank space in the year one map. I bet there were people living in those places.

</comment><comment><USER18> Remarkable that the French & English won WWI when you look at the year 1900 map. Between Germany, Austria, Ottomans, and Italians, it seems that ~75% of the at war landmass was on the German side.

</comment><comment><USER19> interesting that germany didn't even come into existence until the 1900's according to this tool.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER21> News flash: there are more then 2000 years of Europe.</comment>


Is There a Plugin to Collapse Comments? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a greasemonkey script or similar that can collapse/expand comments and maybe organize them a little bit better (like reddit's grease monkey script)? <comment><USER2> Yes, yes there is:

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=hacker+news+collapse+comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> You may also want to check out:

<http://hckrnews.com/about.html></comment>


Show HN: Bias-aware news aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://partial.press <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I made this. I'm making an effort to reduce my dependency on Google products, so I created partial.press as a drop-in replacement for Google News in the age of fake news. It marks breaking headlines as coming from liberal- friendly (blue) or conservative-friendly (red) news sources. My app isn't an attempt to solve fake news or media bias. Instead, it's sort of like a health warning before you click: it makes you conscious of where you're getting your daily intake of infotainment.

In two-column mode, left-wing sources are displayed in the left column, right- wing sources displayed in the right column. Compare and contrast biased headlines on the same topic — very amusing!

Hope that helps! If you want more info, I wrote about it on my blog: [https://mckn.co/partial-press](https://mckn.co/partial-press)</comment>


Self Hosting Email Server - g-garron https://www.garron.blog/posts/host-your-email-server.html <comment><AUTHOR> I was a mail administrator for around 10 years in a fairly small business and I can't imagine why anyone would want to host their own email. My old employer contacted me because a system I had built finally died and they wanted to build a new one. Once I got over the shock that they had still been using it I suggested going with a hosted solution. I mean they're relatively cheap for good service and avoids a world of hurt for the inexperienced mail admin. At first they insisted they wanted to keep it in house so I went over what all they needed to build a new system. About a week and several "how do I" emails later I get one more: "we decided to go with a hosted solution." I was happy. They are happy even if they don't know they are. It's more of a commitment than I think some folks often realize.

<comment><USER2> > I can't imagine why anyone would want to host their own email

resisting mass surveillance

Also, whatever value Clinton saw in self-hosting.

<comment><USER3> There was a LOT of surveillance of her emails.

<comment><USER2> No doubt but targeted surveillance is very different from mass surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprised this wasn't mentioned as it's awesome: [https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)

<comment><USER5> Also [https://mailcow.email](https://mailcow.email) \-- it's stupidly simple to get a full email stack working

</comment></comment><comment> o-__-o I'm a huge fan of Zimbra, dedicated all-in-one mail solution using your favorite software under the hood that doesn't take much knowledge to administer. Plus you have support you can fall back on.

Downsides: ui starting to show its age. No container support.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not to nitpick but I think that the part about the spf record isn't that great.

The typical spf record has ip addresses, blocks of ip addresses, or hosts but I don't think just v=spf1 mx ~all.

<comment><USER7> Not for simple setups. If the same servers are used for both ingoing and outgoing, "mx" is all you want or really need.

If you use a third-party hosting service for webmail, IMAP, etc, where they might also handle outgoing for particular clients, or for hosted outbound services (EasyDNS offers this), then you would usually "include:" their SPF records rather than copy their rules and addresses.

Theoretically, hardcoding some addresses might be useful as a performance optimization or failsafe, but I'm not sure the value is that great, and it adds to the workload and disruption risk if and when you have to move networks. But maybe the value is greater than I'm aware.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that an SPF record with just mx -all gives you that. You need to put IP addresses, IP address blocks, or hosts for the spf to be valid.

Maybe the author left out the host in the assumption that the reader would understand that part but essentially mx -all tells mail servers and inbox providers to soft fail all mail from the domain.

<comment><USER7> Most of the mechanisms (a, ip4, ip6, mx, and ptr) effectively resolve to one or more IP addresses which are then matched against the sender IP address. The "mx" mechanism will query the MX records for the envelope (MAIL FROM) sender domain, query the A records for every MX record, and then try to match all those resolved IP addresses to the sender IP address. If one of the IP addresses matches, then the mechanism's action qualifier is applied, short- circuiting further resolution. As the default qualifier is "+" (pass), a match on "mx" (i.e. "+mx") means to accept the message.

If your MX hosts are the only permissible outbound hosts, and the inbound and outbound IP addresses are the same, then the "mx" mechanism is all you need. The very purpose of the "mx" mechanism and most others is to avoid having to hardcode IP addresses in your policy.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but as a matter of syntax, don't you have to specify the IP address? What is the mx refereeing to in your example?

V=spf1 ip4:198.51.100.123 ~all

I think the ptr mechanism's deprecated.

Anyway, if you're correct that a valid and complete spf record can be published without an IP address, IP address block, or included hosts, then I've learned something new today.

So you are saying that v=spf1 mx -all is a valid and complete spf record?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OpenSMTPd is simple enough to setup on your own. No need for gigantic 'dockerized' email packages where it is virtually impossible to understand what is going on.

<comment><USER9> But i want imap too, and a web-mail, oh and a Calendar and contact (with team- functionality) too, synchronize them to my phone, and i want sieve functionality, anti-spam, and because it's written a pseudo antivirus- solution. And a self-service solution so users can reset the password with 2FA...still easy?

<comment><USER10> Yes, generally if you over-complicate something it becomes over-complicated.

<comment><USER9> So you give your users the root password so they can change the password them- self....oversimplification often solves just a small portion of a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why did whoever think #FFFFFF text on the #000000 background is a good idea?

<comment><USER12> I don't have a problem with it.

Maybe you should turn your brightness down or add some more lighting in your room? Pure white shouldn't be blinding you.

<comment><USER11> I'm using BenQ SW2700PT which was calibrated, and my room is also not bright at all. The pure white text on pure black background give me headache, but I don't have any issues on [https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html](https://nim- lang.org/docs/manual.html) dark mode which isn't pure black and white.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it rude/inappropriate to address a programmer as 'RESOURCE'? - <AUTHOR>

In my current organization as well as in previous organization, always programmers are termed as a Resource..! Like they are non living thing, it sometimes feel annoying or irritating.. Like programmers are tradable like thing for managers.. <comment><USER2> The key here is "always". When I'm doing high level (resource) planning, I'll refer to programmers (which includes myself) as resources, because in that context, that's what they are, part of the entire collection of people and things we need to achieve our goal.

What other term do you expect managers to use for that? "People and stuff?" Or each role filled by a human separately, "programmers, testers, designers and inanimate objects"?

For a profession obsessed with accurately and consistently naming things, we seem to be a bit over-sensitive when the "domain objects" include us...

</comment><comment><USER3> Programmers aren't resources...not because it may be rude, but because it's totally inaccurate.

It's hard to think of people like resources in a profession where the actual number of them doesn't matter very much.

This isn't like moving a large box where you need exactly the right number of people to hold all the corners and pretty much anyone can take any corner. Instead, you want to be tracking what people know (their proficiencies, such as languages) and how good they are (their efficiencies, such as how many years experience and their track records in past projects that required the same skill). Proficiencies and efficiencies are your programming resources, not the actual people.

There are programming projects where one excellent person could shoulder the whole thing, and 10 newbies could ruin it. There are experienced people who simply have the wrong experience to be effective in a certain situation. Having some programmers "free" to work on something isn't really relevant, they have to be the _right_ programmers.

<comment><USER4> Exactly what I was trying to say, but in a much better way.

Programming as such is more like an art than an engineering discipline. Writing a complex application is more like writing a novel. Try adding authors to a late or failing novel and see what happens.

Besides, I thought that the whole programmers as resources thing was debunked in the mythical man month book.

I blame all of this on the "software engineering" movement. The discipline, if used properly, is fine. But calling people resources seem to me like skipping over the important points of the discipline and focusing on the wrong things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It used to be that the part of a business that managed hiring was called "Personnel" but somewhere along the line, its name got changed to "Human Resources". In other words, all employees became "resources".

Meanwhile, "the economy" is ascribed human attributes, as if it were a person. Consider phrases like "stimulate the economy" and "the health of the economy". (In case there's any confusion, the economy is not a person. It's an abstract concept.)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why programmers need project managers... to shield them from human interactions which you otherwise aggravate them unnecessarily :D

Seriously, I have no problem with this. More then that, I would really really like to hear more management called this way. It should be much more ingrained in the culture that management, even more than programmers, is a "resource", and exists to provide services to the working class and to make its life easier.

For entrepreneurs it's not an unusual mindset to think that the owner is the one who empties the wastebasket, but I very much doubt this is common in the corporate world. It should be, not because emptying wastebaskets is a worthwhile thing to do, but because it encourages the ideology that management is there to pave the way between the people who work and what they have to do.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was in a project planning meeting with the lead/manager and it was the first time I heard 'resources' being used for engineers as well as for hardware equipment. It did sound weird for a second, but it was not annoying/irritating.

However, it makes you realize you are only a "resource" and you can be replaced by a different or multiple "resource" if you quit or if needed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Depends on the context. We have weekly resource planning meetings, where everyone is a resource, the designers, developers, project managers, etc. We make sure each project we are working on has the required resources working on it.

As long as you're not singling out the programmers as a resource I dont see the problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> To me, it definitely is.

I find that the crippling bureaucracy usually starts when you start referring to your programmers, that did the actual work, as resources.

Programmers are not trade-able and people are not sheep.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Resource" does NOT imply that it is not living thing.

The fact that programmers are tradeable is good for programmers, because it creates more demand for programmers.

<comment><USER5> The word "resource" is also used to describe other inputs in a business, such as financial resources and natural resources (e.g. aluminum), neither of which is living or human.

While it's true that "resouce" doesn't imply something non-living, it also doesn't imply something living. Why _not_ use more human, personal language to describe people?

<comment><USER9> In the context when it's important to highlight that conversation is about humans, managers use different words.

E.g.: "I need to send my developers to security training".

But sometimes it could be beneficial to think in terms of "resources".

For example, in order to deliver the project you need some resources. That could be internal developers, contractors, or 3rd-party solution that delivers required functionality.

It may be easier to compare potential choices against each other and make business decision when you think in terms of "resource".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's jargon. Let it go.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am getting convincing answers..!

</comment><comment><USER11> IMHO no, but I dare say that'll be the minority opinion. People don't like being reminded that they're replaceable.</comment>


The Story of FundCreator, a Futures Trading Strategy Generator with Hedge Fund like Returns - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/02/070702fa_fact_cassidy?printable=true

<comment><AUTHOR> The FundCreator site is: <http://www.fundcreator.com/></comment>


Ask HN: Do you need a big network to be successful? - <AUTHOR> As an expat (digital nomad), I personally find most network meetings waste of my time and prefer to be productive instead. Do you find a big network important for being successful? <comment><USER2> Interesting question. I think you would find that the more successful a person is, the bigger their network is. But I believe what you are asking is if that big network is required from the get go. Personally I don't believe you need an extremely big network to be successful, but I do believe you need somewhat of a network established.

To answer your question thoroughly though, you would need to define what you mean by "successful" and what you mean by "big network". I think you would find that the size of your network would also be proportionate to the amount of work you need to put into becoming successful. You never know when you may need help with something, what you may need help with, or who you may need help reaching out to. The larger your network of people the easier it is to do those three things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment Jeff, appreciate it.

Being successful have a lot of meanings, so it was more on a personal level if you look back on any successes in your life and see if you needed the (any size) network to accomplish it.

A friend and I were discussing it and thinks it's a very interesting question, which is why I asked here on HN as well.</comment></comment>


Clojure 1.2 RC1 - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/4ae33f04c842783a <comment><USER2> I have a question on Clojure in general. Is it Lisp people that are flocking to it or is it trending amongst other developers as well?

<comment><USER3> I think it is both old-time Lisp'ers and JVM platform programmers looking for something more agile than Java.

I have been using Clojure for my work for several months and for me some of the big wins are:

1\. easy to use existing Java libraries

2\. lots of nice language features like destructuring, etc.

3\. nice integration with Java and/or Scala projects with IntelliJ

4\. fairly good runtime performance

And, a few hassles:

1\. error stack traces have relatively little value.

2\. The Clojure team is doing great work, but I still feel that the platform is not quite there yet compared with Java, Common Lisp, Haskell, etc.

I am in a _patient_ mood in regards to Clojure: I use it for some things now, and expect my percentage use of Clojure over other languages will steadily increase over the next few years.

<comment><USER4> Do you mind telling what are the few things that you used clojure for ?

<comment><USER3> For my current work task, I am using it for information extraction from Freebase which requires a lot of JSON manipulation. I was using Ruby but Clojure use is preferred at CompassLabs (both languages are well suited for Freebase data hacking).

I mostly use Java for Hadoop machine learning work, but I may transition to Clojure in the next few weeks (my CTO has suggested this).

Earlier this year, I added Clojure examples to my last book on the Semantic Web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Changes listed at: <http://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/1.2.x/changes.txt>

Also, the Clojure/core team (and many other helpful cats) are happy to help (see [http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_frm/thread/291...](http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_frm/thread/2917a556964dc31f))

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone on Windows able to build the clojure-contrib.jar? I keep getting errors and it appears I'm not the only one: [http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/a09f356be405ca1e/9a4f210da4e9d0bc?show_docid=9a4f210da4e9d0bc)

I wonder where I can get an RC1 build of the contrib jar. If it's a jar file, I wonder why you're supposed to build it yourself using mvn.

Edit: Don't have to build it. It's included in the zip file on the download page. The new clojure-contrib-1-2.0.jar is just significantly smaller than the version 1.1 and older.

Edit2: It appears you can indeed build on Windows if you skip the maven tests: mvn package -Dmaven.test.skip=true

Whether skipping maven tests is a good/bad thing I don't know.

<comment><USER6> Make sure you are getting the right repository. Once github began supporting organizations, we moved things to github.com/clojure (not github.com/richhickey).

You can get RC1 at the top of the download page (<http://clojure.org/downloads>). We would love to fix usability problems--let us know what got in your way of finding it.

<comment><USER5> I'm very new to Clojure (just 1-2 weeks) so pardon my ignorance/mistake. I noticed that the new clojure-contrib.jar was 466KB while the older ones were over 3MB. So I thought it was either a template or a sample file and tried to compile it myself on Windows. I got errors similar to the link in my parent post. But now I just extracted the file and it works.

So what happened that shrunk the contrib-jar that much in this version?

<comment><USER7> Much functionality was moved from clojure-contrib into new namespaces in clojure itself; clojure.jar is now bigger by roughly the same amount that clojure-contrib.jar shrank :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm from a C#/.NET background, but have been incorporating more functional programming techniques into my programming in the last couple of years. This, combined with my deepening understanding of the f.p. aspects of JavaScript (after reading JS: The Good Parts) and an interest in Lisp (after reading On Lisp by Paul Graham) got me really interested in f.p., and I started picking up Clojure in my spare time. It struck me as a standardized Lisp with access to lots of great libraries, which overcomes two of the main previous disadvantages of Lisp. I'm hoping it becomes more mainstream in the years to come, as it's a lot of fun to work on, but not something I can make much use of at work, unfortunately.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Perfect Your English - <AUTHOR> I guess my english level is pretty ok. I read most of the information on the Internet / books in english.
But I don't talk/write that much. Sometimes I don't feel that confident in my english knowledge.
Any good tips on how to be better at this? What I would ideally want is some kind of feedback mechanism that tells me when I made a mistake, for example in grammar.
What I can think of: 1) Grammarly - try to write notes in english and check text in Grammarly. But I don't like them having access to all keystrokes 2) Try to add a lot of stuff to Anki - I think a little bit to tedious
Ideally, I would have something like Clozemasters (by HN User) [1] but the database they use for english is pretty bad.
I am sure there are a lot of you for example from Europe or China that came up with some good solution to the problem of perfecting English
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13676105 <comment><USER2> Have you looked into finding English language YouTubers you could watch/listen to to get a better ear for the language? It might make your skills more native sounding. Same idea with English podcasts. I find having to study the banality of a language tedious but if I'm listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast, for example, and I like tech and am trying to hear English spoken by native speakers, then it's like I am learning without the tedium.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone browsing HN in the future, when they try to get answers to interesting questions this is what I found after an hour of googling:

[https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is...](https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/3399/is- it-possible-to-learn-grammar-through-spaced-repetition-and-if-yes-how)

this is probably the best "forum" to browse and find tactical and strategic information.

I link to the specific question, because I think I will go with autogenerated cloze Anki flashcards as adviced in the second answer.

<comment><USER3> Note that the blog post about autogenerating Anki cards linked in the second answer ( [https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating- cloze-d...](https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze- deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/) ) uses Tatoeba ( [https://tatoeba.org](https://tatoeba.org) ) as the data source, which is also where Clozemaster gets its sentences from. You already said that those are bad for learning English, so Tatoeba may not be the solution for you. But that depends on what exactly you think is wrong with those sentences. I contribute to Tatoeba, mostly translating Mandarin into German, so I'm quite interested in hearing from end users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I guess my problem with clozemaster is - I am only really proficient in two languages - polish and english. There is no way to practice English to English with Clozemaster, and I guess Polish-English pair on Tatoeba is not that perfect.

I will check Tatoeba

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm. The English in this post is probably already above the average level of English as written in the US.

I suppose one thing you could do is to simply encourage your correspondents to point out your errors. A little humbling, perhaps, but there's a lot to be said for rapid feedback.

You didn't ask, but here's a little:

 _English_ in the sense of the language is invariably capitalized.

 _okay_ is perhaps a more correct spelling, though many use _OK_ or _ok_ informally.

 _most of the information_ sounds a bit odd. Maybe just _most things_.

Probably _when I have made_.

You're missing a couple of periods at the end of sentences.

This is all rather trivial, though. Your (written) English is essentially at a native level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for pointing out the mistakes.

I guess at the end of the day I will have to pay for a teacher to point out mistakes in my speech / writing, then ankify what she points out and try to improve in this way.

I still think there might be a NLP based solution that could be of good use for people for example at reddit /r/grammar. They seem to recommend grammarly a lot</comment></comment>


The future of history lessons is a VR headset - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/3469/i-am-a-man-martin-luther-king-jr-vr-interview?zd=1&zi=gwpknwzs <comment><USER2> Double-edged sword there - fiction, by definition, doesn't care about the truth and lends itself even better to well-crafted lies than the messy truth: VR is going to be amazingly fantastic for propaganda.</comment>


GrafX2 – a bitmap paint program inspired by Amiga programs - <AUTHOR> http://grafx2.chez.com/ <comment><USER2> If you are here and you haven't seen Mark Ferrari's GDC talk, you really should sit down and watch it. He is perhaps the greatest pallete animator of all time. Even if you aren't familiar with the games he worked on, HN folks have likely seen his gallery of single-image animations linked below.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0)

[http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5)

<comment><USER3> The second link you posted leads to a 404 for me. By going to the main website I found a link to a page that seems to be the same thing, though maybe it's reformatted a bit. Here's the link:

[http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/](http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprised to see GrafX2 in front page, since it was out for ages and it's quite niche. Anyway, I'm very happy for it since it is my favourite pixel drawing tool. It surpasses deluxe paint capabilities by far, and its usability aimed to power users is unmatched. Long life GrafX2.

By the way, the lack of credit in the cover image hurts me deeply. It is made by Ilija Melentijevic (@iLkKke on twitter). One of the best pixel artists outthere!

<comment><USER5> > By the way, the lack of credit in the cover image hurts me deeply. It is > made by Ilija Melentijevic (@iLkKke on twitter). One of the best pixel > artists outthere!

Are you sure that cover image lack of credit? Try look on it under the scope, especially in the left lower corner of it -- and you will see _iLkKke_ sign! ;-)

[0] [http://grafx2.chez.com//data/medias/web/happy-birthday- guys....](http://grafx2.chez.com//data/medias/web/happy-birthday-guys.png)

<comment><USER5> > in the left lower corner

Fix: "in the right lower corner"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The old DPaint was a tough act to follow. I was disappointed in just about every graphics program I tried after my Amiga was consigned to history.

Downloaded. Wow, isn't it small? Nostalgia on two fronts! :)

<comment><USER7> The best follow ups by far were Avid Matador and Discreet Combustion.

Avid bundled Matador (and FXTree) into Softimage, which Autodesk later absorbed and killed off.

Discreet were also assimilated by Autodesk, and Combustion was later killed.

<comment><USER8> That's the second time I've heard Autodesk accused of the _" Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"_ tactic in a week (albeit implicitly in this case). Is it something they are know to do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember when after years of dabbling with Deluxe Paint IV on the Amiga I first used professional graphics software like Photoshop or Corel Draw and was utterly confused why everything seemed to be so needlessly complex with these tools: "Why can't I even draw a simple line or rectangle?"

Very different use cases and target audiences for sure. Still, from my point of view it wasn't until Pixelmator that some of that simplicity was brought back.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ahh reminds me nights spent with deluxe paint, twiddling with pixels, antialiasing them by hand, good times.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wonderful drawing program. It often seems as though C and SDL are our only hope.

edit: #2 link right now is another C/SDL piece of nostalgia: [https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE](https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm glad it got a new homepage. But these days I use Aseprite for my pixel work. It's still got a pixel art interface, but much more optimized for the artist. Take a look if you are a pixel artist.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://gfxzone.planet-d.net/interviews/x_man/x_man- intervie...](https://gfxzone.planet-d.net/interviews/x_man/x_man- interview_01.html)

src: [http://linuxfr.org/news/grafx2-enfin-en- version-2-5](http://linuxfr.org/news/grafx2-enfin-en-version-2-5)

<comment><USER5> Quote:

      What are your projects for the nearest future?

      Go home and eat (it's 19:00)!
      Attend to LTP3.
      Make a Multi-player Tetris game.
      Release a new version of GrafX2 (who said "nearest furture"? :)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I loved DPaint. It was definitely the most used program on my Amiga. I found grafx2 years ago and was happy it still lives.

</comment><comment><USER14> This program is amazing, particularly things like colour cycling (by right clicking on gradient menu), and real good brush-from-selection.

GrafX2 is to Gimp what Vim is to LibreOffice Writer, approximately.

<comment><USER5> > Vim is to LibreOffice Writer, approximately

Think, GrafX2 is to GIPM what LaTeX is to LibreOffice Writer ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >>> Scripting with embedded Lua engine

Awesome ;) Can you call the palette shifters from the API? This could make a very powerful retro texture synth engine. Or gif creator!

<comment><USER5> > Can you call the palette shifters from the API?

Every user of GrafX2 should get " _DB 's TOOLBOX_"[0] - free additional Lua- scripts for GrafX2, that has many samples on API usage.

Latest version is " _DB 's TOOLBOX v1.4_"[1] (released on December 2017).

[0] [http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12854](http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12854)

[1] [http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26080](http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26080)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This program has a great feature that I haven't seen in any other FLOSS drawing program: both right and left mouse buttons draw, and you can assign a different color to each. This is a huge productivity improvement compared to drawing with only one button, especially for pixel art.

If the middle button would center the zoomed view on the selected pixel, instead of toggling the view (a much too rare operation to deserve its own mouse button), it would be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Like many others here, I have so many brilliant memories of playing with DPaint - first on Amiga then PC. I seem to remember writing a loader for 'lbm' files so we could use the output directly in projects.

Another similar and equally amazing package was Autodesk Animator Pro - similar fond memories of using it and being blown away by how easy it was for me as an artistic klutz to create pretty pictures. There is a page with links to original source code, binaries, blog posts etc. here: [http://animatorpro.org/](http://animatorpro.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> What I really really want is a Claris/MacDraw clone just slightly modernized. Most of the current options are painfully kludgy of over-featured.

<comment><USER19> What do you mean by "painfully kludgy" and "over-featured"?

I can understand the UI looking a bit spartan to users who never used an Amiga (like myself).

I'm also vaguely interested in alternative paint programs as well, particularly open source ones.

So I'm curious.

<comment><USER18> Plenty of pixel based options that are actually quite nice, but the brilliance of Claris/MacDraw was its vector focus with a straightforward and powerful integration of interface and features.

Haven't found that combination together since.

<comment><USER19> I'll have to poke it in SheepShaver/BasiliskII sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> GrafX2 is pretty great. It has been an official Arch Linux package since 2011:

[https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/log/trunk?h...](https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/log/trunk?h=packages/grafx2)

</comment><comment><USER21> I liked this program so much, I contributed a patch to it to get it running on NetBSD a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this open-sourced?

<comment><USER23> OSI Approved license. GPLv2.

[https://gitlab.com/GrafX2/grafX2/blob/master/LICENSE](https://gitlab.com/GrafX2/grafX2/blob/master/LICENSE)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm a solo founder and I suck at sales. Help me please. - <AUTHOR> I quit my job a year ago to start my own business and I have an MVP ready now. I love all the aspects of running a business except doing sales. And to be honest, I hate it. That's just not compatible with my personality. Every email I want to write is a huge burden. Sometimes it takes hours to write one (not joking).
Somehow, I've managed to send over 100 cold emails to potential sellers (it's a marketplace app). A few of them have shown some interest but I don't know how to convince them to use my service.
I wish I had a co-founder to do this but due to some complicated reasons I cannot. And I don't have enough money to hire someone. I've been stuck at this stage for 3 months and I don't know how to get out of it.
What should I do? <comment><USER2> This sound like run of the mill sales anxiety, which is completely normal and to be expected. Not everyone can do everything!

Try to re-frame the situation, pretend you are a potential buyer and ask yourself what key things you would require or be looking for. Once you have that list, go through it and answer how your app fills those requirements. This exercise will help to remove some of the anxiety as you'll already have some pre-loaded answers to common questions.

I would also consider what has worked on you in the past, as a buyer. Marketing and selling tactics are applicable no matter the industry. So, what has made you eager to try a product? What has turned you off of a product? What have other sales people done that made you close the deal? Physically write these things out in a big list. And again, once the list is complete, make some notes on how you and/or your app can accomplish the things on the list (or avoid the negatives of the list).

Lastly, networking. Cold calls/emails are a starting point and might even be necessary down the road. However, networking is the key. As long as your not shilling some crap app, networking is what is needed. Getting one customer that is enthusiastic about your product and willing to recommend it to others is worth 10 unengaged customers in the long run. It's like hiring a sales person, except they are paying you for the app while they recommend it to others. If your product/app is of high quality, it'll stand on its own.

Some people are able to naturally sell. If you aren't a natural born saleshuman, prepare and practice. Anticipate the questions you'll receive and have answers ready. Role-play different sales scenarios. Role-play being the buyer. As you do this more, you'll naturally become more confident which will help your sales in its own way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat!

Books:

\- The Challenger Sale

\- Crossing the Chasm

\- To Sell is Human

\- The Little Red Book of Selling

Videos:

\- [https://www.heavybit.com/library/](https://www.heavybit.com/library/) has some videos that are relevant after making a few sales.

Product Description:

\- [https://www.cortes.design/post/saas-conversion- rates](https://www.cortes.design/post/saas-conversion-rates) (generally good content, not sure if it's geared towards marketplaces)

What problem are you solving? Who's the niche? Are you speaking to one of their top three pains?

Look at sales as another thing to be mastered, be proud of your product and ask for the money, start the money conversation early on. Don't forget why your doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.nfx.com/post/19-marketplace-tactics-for- overcomi...](https://www.nfx.com/post/19-marketplace-tactics-for-overcoming- the-chicken-or-egg-problem)

[https://www.applicoinc.com/blog/7-strategies-solving- chicken...](https://www.applicoinc.com/blog/7-strategies-solving-chicken-egg- problem-startup/)

[https://blog.elichait.com/2018/04/09/how-the-100-largest- mar...](https://blog.elichait.com/2018/04/09/how-the-100-largest-marketplaces- solve-the-chicken-and-egg-problem/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a friend who works in marketing and can help you with these sales calls? Perhaps you can find someone who is willing/able to provide some of their time to help you for some potential future payout or investment in the app? Because you are trying to sell a service, I don't think it's viable to ask someone to help you for free without them having a stake in the business or receiving some sort of pay out. But I would look to friends who can help first, then branch out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a personal rule of thumb, only one out of 20 people answers to any query.

IMO you simply need to send emails/fliers/etc to 20 times the number of sellers you aim at recruiting.

For the email content: It should be very short (less than 500 words) and mostly explain why it is interesting for a seller to use your platform.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>