Stop SOAP - <AUTHOR> http://stopsoap.com/ <comment><USER3> As someone who recently had to deal with a system with two different (incompatible) SOAP services, I fully endorse the message behind this site.

Luckily my exposure seems to be restricted to legacy and enterprisey stuff nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi - I'm Josh - the guy behind Stop SOAP.

There is no political intent behind this site. It is meant to be a joke. A joke with a grain of truth.

Backstory: I was waiting for a conference call, saw that stopsoap wasn't registered and put this together in 15min.

Deeper backstory: I'm the co-founder & CEO of Simple.com. We deal with many SOAP APIs. The upside is that SOAP provides very clear specifications as to how the API is supposed to work. The downside, is that things rarely work as expected. It is frustrating, but such is life in banking.

On a more serious note, We're Hiring. If you'd like to work at Simple, where we replace you bank & give you clean REST APIs to your finances, check us out: <http://simple.com>

<comment><USER5> Well, you may soon be the accidental hero who saved the world from slippery things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: The S stands for Simple, [http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-...](http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the- s-stands-for-simple) and Please drop the SOAP, <http://thecoffman.com/2011/01/25/please-drop-the-soap> .

<comment><USER7> protocols with simple (or lightweight) in their name usually are anything but.

<comment><USER8> Not a coincidence. Simple to implement != simple to explain to your boss ( _`it's standard industry practice'_ ). The name is meant to sell the standard to non-techies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally, a legit movement for us non-americans!! How are we supposed to protest against this? cover our pages with bubbles?

<comment><USER9> You must stop bathing for one week and blog about the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll admit to being completely ignorant about the benefits of using SOAP to communicate between servers. However I can say that for server->client communication it is the worse data representation I've ever had to work with and I genuinely hope we see the end of it. JSON maybe not be perfect, but it's so much better at delivering a structured data model then xml is.

<comment><USER11> I think I'd like JSON as a data representation a lot more if schemas for it were more prevalent. I've noticed it's a lot harder to generate valid JSON -- or rather a lot harder to escape data. With XML, this is fairly trivial. Granted, my use case is considerably different from most.

The other idea from SOAP I'd love to see applied to ReST is a descriptor document for the API. Given how poorly many ReST APIs are documented, I do miss the good 'ol WSDL. Plus, it gave me some measure of security that the API didn't change.

<comment><USER12> Does WADL provide what you liked about WSDL?

<http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl/>

<comment><USER11> I haven't heard of this before. But I'll be checking it out. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> More tragic than HN becoming an advocacy site (the beginning of Slashdot's demise) is how many comments here don't get the joke.

<comment><USER14> Since when is being a web programmer a prerequisite to participating on HN?

<comment><USER15> I think what the OP meant is that this story is meant as a parody of the avalanche of "sopa is evil" posts lately. Whether you know what SOAP is or not is beyond the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm against Stop SOAP. SOAP is a jobs-protocol.

In the current economy, consultants specialized in fixing convoluted web applications need us more than ever.

<comment><USER17> I agree. We need SOAP to stop the JSON loving bit thieves trying to steal our intellectual overhead (IO). Don't drop the SOAP!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was thinking, Spanish people must be wondering, "what do all these nerds have against soup?".

<comment><USER19> And all english-speaking people must think, "what do all these nerds have against soap?".

<comment><USER20> these nerds - they rarely shower !!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Someone went searching for "Stop SOPA" and discovered something brilliant from their typo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering how it's technically possible for a submission with over 500 up- votes to be flagged to the point of being pushed off the front page; interestingly, it was not a gradual departure, as you'd expect, but rather it seemed to move instantly, from the top spot, to number 33 or 34, on the second page.

I think it's terribly important that it be possible for the community to reflect, critically: SOPA is a serious issue, one we should all be concerned about, and more importantly taking action against. However, there is a point where it becomes an echo chamber, where we are preaching to the choir. Having nearly every submission be yet another "X is blacked out" does not necessarily correlate to communicating to our lawmakers that we do not want this legislation to pass.

Clearly this subtle, yet provocative submission's intent to communicate such a critique was understood by a number of people. I'm still unsure how it ended up bumped so quickly, but whatever the case, I hope the point wasn't entirely lost on those of you who didn't appreciate it.

<comment> mike-cardwell I suspect the absolutely dismal state of the comments helped to get it flagged into oblivion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Alright guys.. i'll admit, i dont get the joke. can any one explain? What's happening on that site and why do i see xml? (yes, i am still learning new stuff, like everyone else)

<comment><USER23> SOAP is a specification for exposing remote procedure calls via a web service. The client executes a SOAP request by making an HTTP Post request against a URL with an XML request body that specifies what remote procedure to call and what parameters to pass into it. The service, in turn, sends an HTTP response with an XML body that contains the return value from the procedure call.

SOAP services also usually include a WSDL, which is alternately said to stand for Web Service Definition List, Web Service Definition Language, or Web Service Description Language and is meant to define the methods and parameters available to the client.

Because the whole system is so complicated, cumbersome and over-engineered, the normal way to create a WSDL is to do it automatically using tooling. Unfortunately, different frameworks generate different and often mutually incompatible and non-interoperable WSDLs. So, for example, a .NET SOAP client might not be able to consume a WSDL generated by a Java framework.

The S in SOAP originally stood for "Simple", but the protocol is anything but.

<comment><USER22> Yes that comment really helps but if i am getting it right, it is something like JSON, right? like JSON is used in public API's and all sorts of server- client communication. Any particular reason to take SOAP against something like JSON?

<comment><USER23> Not exactly.

SOAP is a _protocol specification for executing remote procedure calls_ over a network. SOAP uses XML for its message formatting and data serialization, and (usually) HTTP for its network protocol.

JSON, on the other hand, is a _data serialization format_ rather than a remote procedure call format. It is sometimes used in web services - <USER2> services based on Representational state transfer (REST) - to pass structured data between the client and server, but it is not a remote procedure call protocol in itself.

REST, in turn, is a method for designing a web service so that its functionality is accessed the same way that HTTP works. In REST, the service is organized into _resources_ and _methods_ , with resources corresponding to URLs and methods corresponding to the HTTP request methods: chiefly GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

If you want to access a resource, you issue an HTTP GET request on the URL corresponding to that resource. If you want to create a resource, you issue an HTTP POST request on the URL corresponding to that resource with the data you want to post in the request body. If you want to update an existing resource, you issue an HTTP PUT request on the corresponding URL with the updated data. If you want to delete a resource, you issue an HTTP DELETE request on the corresponding URL.

Recently, many REST web services are designed to accept request data in JSON format and to send responses in JSON as well. Since web services are mainly consumed by client programs (rather than by humans browsing), JSON allows for a generic data structure that the client can consume and parse more easily than HTML, which is designed more specifically to structure documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Finally a movement I can get behind!

<comment><USER25> Well in contrary to the SOPA people, the SOAP people aren't trying to forcibly push SOAP on all of us with laws and treaties. There's enough alternatives. Let them use SOAP :p

<comment><USER26> Unless you have to integrate with their "mission critical" SOAP based "enterprise solution".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unfortunately I spent a couple years building web services tools in 2002,3. I have long since repented. Love the "S stands for Simple" link... fantastic dialog!

</comment><comment><USER28> As someone who is about to work with a client's enterprisey SOAP API, I really wish I could upvote this article multiple times.

</comment><comment><USER29> REST in peace, SOAP.

</comment><comment><USER30> One does not simply get some REST.

<comment><USER31> There is a "REST in peace" joke there as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Have you considered Dr Bronner's? - <http://www.drbronner.com/pdf/drbronner_32oz_Pep.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there even 1 legit reason why someone would use SOAP over REST, aside from legacy?

<comment><USER34> <http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-soap-when-to-use-each>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is great - put on some tweet/fb like/+1 buttons so we can help spread the word.

</comment><comment><USER36> Almost thought it was SOPA.. misspelled article..:-P Agree.. SOAP is way to verbose....and annoying to read manually while debugging...

</comment><comment><USER37> lawl

</comment><comment><USER38> Friends don't let friends do SOAP.

</comment><comment><USER39> oh i see what you did there

*sorry, reddit is down

</comment><comment><USER40> We should use SOPA againt SOAP and ask internet providers acroos the globe to block access to every server that runs a SOAP webservice.

</comment><comment><USER41> ..."Don worked with Microsoft and Dave Winer to create the original SOAP specification in 1998.":

<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/de/Box/default.mspx>

Actually, swell guy. I'm still wondering how he created such a mess.

</comment><comment><USER42> I am not Barrack Obama, and I endorse this message.

</comment><comment><USER43> So much efforts to stop law proposal X. Which is great.

What about the idea of a Open-USA or other Open-Iran where a true Meta- Democracy or whatever open society model is implemented where all efforts would be PRO something instead of hateful stuff like protesting.

This laws are proposed by lobbies that go against the interest of 99% of the persons. How is that even conceivable ?

All this big companies opposing could create a github project for open government and then elect a person that implements that.</comment>


Hatch – DigitalOcean's new incubator program - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/introducing-hatch/ <comment><USER2> > Must be backed by a partner accelerator, incubator, or VC firm.

Be nice if this could be used by people who are bootstrapping their company and don't intend to take investment or have anything to do with VC.

Although I guess DigitalOcean is relying on VCs and incubators to do the work of filtering out spurious claims and con artists.

<comment><USER3> Hi! I'm one of the co-founders of DigitalOcean. Our plan is to open the Hatch program up to bootstrapped startups around the world.

We've launched the Hatch program in beta to pilot the program to a small group of startups over the next month. While in beta, we're going to be working to refine the offering and eligibility criteria for bootstrapped startups to apply.

For now, we've included a call to action on the Hatch landing page for those bootstrapped startups who are interested in joining the Hatch program once we open it up to a larger group of startups.

<comment><USER4> This is great news. Thank you for being responsive to the bootstrap community :).

How long do you expect the beta to last for and I couldn't see a CTA for bootstrapped startups. But I'd rather send an email for consideration to whoever is running the program / support when you guys have opened the program.

Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff! Their initial offering is $100k in digital ocean credits. Other cloud services also have similar offerings for startups

Here are some links for comparison:

AWS: [https://aws.amazon.com/activate/benefits/](https://aws.amazon.com/activate/benefits/) Azure: [https://bizspark.microsoft.com//plus/](https://bizspark.microsoft.com//plus/) Google: [https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/](https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/)

</comment><comment><USER6> As DigotalOcean is already very developer friendly, it's great to see it becoming startup friendly in a financial/mentoring fashion.</comment>


Baidu Goes All In on AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-16/the-mobile-internet-is-over-baidu-goes-all-in-on-ai <comment><USER2> Background story:

Baidu totally missed China's mobile Internet market compared with Tencent or Alibaba.

It's so called O2O (a term mostly used by Chinese) market share is burning money.

Baidu's dreadful bet is today's AI hype.

<comment><USER3> Tencent's QQ (chat messenger) was the main reason for the success. QQ attracted millions of young users. Within the chat messenger you could play games and eventually blog/personal space, payment, and email were added. This type of product development is extremely common practice in Chinese Internet product. Portal experience and one-stop shop experience are critical UX one must considered in China (and Japan too) to be successful.

Baidu made the mistake of advertising itself as a search engine like Google, but failed to compete and catching up in 2000s when other competitors like Tencent was already taking up millions of active users. Yes, Baidu music exists, Baidu Bar (like Yahoo! Answers) also exists, but they are subpar.

Regarding to 360, basically back in 2000s, companies realized the best way to sell their product was (1) partnership with computer seller by bundling software just like McAcfee / Norton, and/or (2) provide toolbar so users can access content from the browsers. Tencents and others developed their own forked browsers. Then the era of virus/malware terror plague began as people learned either the software have backdoor (they all do actually), software doing weird things (e.g. system optimizer!), or people downloaded the software from an untrusted source because of piracy and poor Internet safety education (when people are pirating, they go to forums to look for software and if a thread is hot users would click on it and get convinced to try the software - little to their knowledge, most of them have backdoors).

360 was the most popular free anti-virus in China, and the company did a massive marketing campaign and everyone fell for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would support an AI solution to make Baidu uninstall possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> Badidu's slogan:

Be the Evil, serve the Evil

<comment><USER6> I thought that was the slogan of Qihoo 360.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Q to the community:

Should the wisdom of investing in ML depend on the probability of finding problems in that domain that can be solved by: regression, classification, clustering or prediction?

So, if Baidu has many problems that are likely (by whatever estimate) to be solved by those techniques, then this is wise.

The solutions would have to be valuable to Baidu (presumably, though not necessarily, by being valuable to the customers).

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this reflects Baidu playing catch-up with Google more than the mobile bet bring dead.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh, that explains the random Skype hacks, got it. Hate this company already.

</comment><comment><USER10> from the article: "while Ctrip.com, the world's second-largest online travel agent". What is the largest then?

<comment><USER11> priceline 86B$, ctrip 24B$</comment></comment>


Chromecast Audio Multi-Room and HD Audio Update - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2015/12/even-more-to-love-about-chromecast-audio.html <comment><USER2> Very cool. One thing that isn't clear, is this only with Chromecast Audio players or does it work with normal Chromecasts too? What about the older first generation Chromecasts?</comment>


If Twitter is pivoting, we should build something else - <AUTHOR> http://breus.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/if-twitter-is-pivoting-we-should-build-something-else/

<comment><USER2> I personally have high hopes for <https://tent.io>

app.net is also an alternative, but I don't see how replacing one centralized service with another centralized service is useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right about App.net. There is no point in embracing a new centralized service. Protocols are the way to go.</comment></comment>


Teaching My Cozmo Robot with Tensorflow - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/teaching-my-robot-with-tensorflow/ <comment><USER2> This is really cool! Next step: Cozmo as a surveillance solution. Theft and Violence detection with 911 support.</comment>


Show HN: A faster, minimal YouTube interface built on Angular.js and Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://toogl.es/#/browse <comment><AUTHOR> Code is on GitHub here: <https://github.com/mikecrittenden/toogles>

If you like it, there's a Chrome extension to redirect YouTube video pages to Toogles here: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toogles/kljfdbkcac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toogles/kljfdbkcacjeogbiiiikahgkmmlgdekf)

<comment><USER3> Very nice.

Why did you choose Angular over competing frameworks? I'm researching which JS framework I should invest my time in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly just because Angular just feels the best to me out of all the frameworks I've tried. I've built a few trivial apps in Backbone and Knockout and some more complex stuff with Ember, and Angular just works the way my mind works more than they do. I always feel like I know where everything needs to go (with Ember I constantly felt like I was doing it wrong) and the thick templating layer makes sense to me.

Sorry, I know that's not a very helpful answer.

<comment><USER4> I'll have to disagree with you, I think that's a useful answer :)

It's good to hear these things even if it's just anecdotal and unquantifiable. I've only really worked with Ember and I feel the way you do. It's always interesting information from someone with experience in multiple frameworks (especially when they're all so young and we're all a bit lost as to which one to build our next project on).

Nice webapp by the way!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good work overall man. Some feedback:

1\. One of the things I dig on the Youtube interface is being able to see immediately how long ago something was posted. As I (and many others) use YT as a music streaming site, a recently posted video is generally a sign that the sound quality is going to be better. Same goes for video actually. If it's posted in the last few years, the quality is likely to be HD. I suggest when you return a search result, you could place info on it when you hovered your mouse over the video pane. As you do this, the video still disappears and we get a series of specs on the video. I guess you could do this in your "upload date" field, but it seems to be limited to this month at the moment.

2\. F __* the haters - I loved how you didn't include the comments section in each video. I find no value in YT user comments. Whether someone is showing love or spitting vitriol (let's admit, 90%), I have never really found it added much to my user exp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea about how long ago it was posted. I'll add that ASAP. Glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting choice of framework, given that the PS3's YouTube application is built in AngularJS as well: [http://blog.angularjs.org/2012/08/your-excuse-to- buy-playsta...](http://blog.angularjs.org/2012/08/your-excuse-to-buy- playstation.html)

Did you find any advantages to using AngularJS, or was it just coincidence/familiarity?

<comment><USER7> Wow. This feels vastly faster and more responsive than the PS3 YouTube webapp, perhaps by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps part of the difference is that the PS3 is actually fairly underpowered by today's standards for general purpose computing (CPU intensive stuff, unless specifically made with their architecture in mind.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a decent enough youtube front end, but I'm not seeing what the framework does for you? The whole app is very trivial, using he gdata api is simple javascript and the layout is again very simple. bootstrap and a few hours of javascript would accomplish the same thing? If it had used isotope js maybe to sort/filter the videos, or mayve vegas js for some interesting eye candy, but what's the big deal here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Client side routing, infinite pager, auto-updating search results as filters/sorts are changed, good client side templating with on the fly updates, etc., are all made a lot easier by Angular.

If you're worried about page size then note that I'm not using jQuery or anything besides Angular and Angular is only like 76KB. If I removed Angular and put in jQuery and a few plugins then I'd be at roughly that same number, and I'd need more custom code to go with it. So why not use Angular?

Or, if you're just wondering why this is worthy of the HN frontpage, then I can't answer that. :)

<comment><USER9> I wasn't wondering why this was front page on hn, I've long again tried not to second guess what appeals to the masses. Just look at your own product's trending for that. Who'd have thought that Maru's first snow encounter would be youtube worthy!

I don't mind page size either, everything I've ever written has started out including jquery. Anyone that argues that jquery is too big doesn't have a clue what they are talking about (CDN's/Cache etc)

Having written dozens of web apps that use mustache, I totally get why you like client side templates (json+mustache is completely awesome), bootstrap is awesome.

My point was that with bootstrap, json, gdata, mustache etc the features you mention are all straightforward, no Angular required. Nothing wrong with AngularJS. No disrespect intended. I was just saying that I could have put that together with the technologies I mentioned very easily and quickly with all those features.

I liked it though, I wasn't trying to put down what you've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I liked it though, I wasn't trying to put down what you've done.

Thanks! No worries!

> My point was that with bootstrap, json, gdata, mustache etc the features you > mention are all straightforward, no Angular required.

Sure, but I could just as easily turn that around and say with angular, all these features are fairly straightforward, no jquery or bootstrap or mustache requred, right? Why is one better than the other? Or if they're not, why bring it up (serious question)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like it's clean and simple layout. Really nice work.

A little feedback: When someone is on video page, you have this icon <http://d.pr/i/eOEE> to increase video size. It looks more like an "index of categories" icon. I'd change that.

Also the left vertical bar to restore default layout, you are showing once video is full size is not apparent enough. I'll experiment some other colors or maybe a small "plus" like I did here <http://typezebra.com>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi again, just wanted to let you know I changed the way toggling the sidebar works like you mentioned and I'd appreciate any feedback you have time to give? <http://toogl.es/#/view/oFR4L6GegXA> is an example link.

<comment><USER10> Nice. It's far more noticeable now. Perhaps you can change the icon to a smaller one when the video is full screen, just to indicate to user he is going to make screen smaller after clicking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic, I love seeing these projects - minimal and functional - <USER2> an itch :)

Also I had totally forgotten about <https://gdata.youtube.com/demo/index.html> \- thanks for the reminder!

Nice work/code

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, the gdata API and demo is pretty nice (and VERY fast). It's been a joy to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting. I'm currently running Arch Linux on my Acer Aspire One 722-BZ197. When I try and watch HD and fullscreen videos on YouTube that screen tears and the audio and video get out of sync, but when I use toogl I'm able to watch in 720p fullscreen with no problems whatsoever. I know my poor video performance can be largely blamed on poor graphics drivers, but I have found the new YouTube layout to be fairly slow and bloaty, which definitely contributes to the problem.

Great job. I've replaced the standard YouTube shortcut on chrome with a shortcut to Toogles, and I fully intend to use it from here on out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the issues when watching YT maybe be due to YT still using Flash by default unless you opt-in for HTML5 at <http://youtube.com/html5> ? I could be mistaken there, but it seems like the embeds show HTML5 by default but the main site still doesn't.

Anyways I'm super glad you like it, please give me a holler (contact info in profile) if you have any feedback or annoying issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice work!

I am currently using this youtube extension for a more minimalistic version of youtube

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-options- fo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-options-for- googl/bdokagampppgbnjfdlkfpphniapiiifn)

There is a full version here, with some tweaks that the sandobx version can't do

<https://spoi.com/software/yto/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Hadn't seen that one before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great. I don't think I would go back to using YouTube's default layout if I could somehow see my subscriptions on the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah good point. Subscriptions _should_ be available at [http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions](http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions) but you're right that it would be nice for them to go on the homepage.

<comment><USER15> That worked for me, although it also didn't include all the subscriptions. Could that be a bug on your end, or are some channels somehow private and not others?

What I'd really like is a quick way to dismiss some of the videos from my subscriptions that I don't want to watch. That way I can come back again later and see only the ones left. I realize this is really just a 'watch later' playlist, but I'd prefer to remove things (permanently) from my main subscription interface.

Great work so far though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing that drives me nuts about the new native interface is how it handles subscriptions. I mean the feed you get is actually not that bad, but it's way too cumbersome to get to see only your subscriptions.

Is it possible from youtube's API to authenticate a user and then access his subscriptions (and maybe even the aggregated feed based on them)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's possible. Adding authentication adds a ton of cool stuff I could do, but it also makes the app significantly more complicated and I'm not sure yet if I'm willing to go there. I'll think about it.

Pull requests are always welcome though! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty awesome! The one big feature I'm missing is comments (Not visible by default, but maybe they could appear from a button at the bottom of the description?) Also, it'd be nice if the time links worked (Some videos have times in the description that help you navigate, especially on full album uploads).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm probably not going to integrate comments, but note that you can click the name of the video you're viewing to go to the YouTube page for it if you really want to see comments for it.

Would you mind linking to a video with a time in the description if you have one handy that I can use for testing?

<comment><USER17> <http://toogl.es/#/view/QR_rKSTM43I> is what I'm listening to right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks! I'll check it out.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for publishing this.

(listening to Solar Fields (and I bought this!): <http://toogl.es/#/view/c_KuGgpqbes> )

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure, thanks for using it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I generally access YouTube by typing "yo" into Chrome's omnibar and hitting tab to search. If like me you want to take this for a spin without installing the Chrome Extension you can edit the search engines list in Chrome to replace the search URL for youtube.com with

        http://toogl.es/#/search/%s

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great! I don't have Flash installed on my computer, so YouTube won't show me half of its videos (unless I'm already in fullscreen and it shows up as a thumbnail at the end, go figure). This lets me access every one in HTML5 without jumping through any hoops. Extra points for leaving out comments!

</comment><comment><USER21> I've discovered a big problem. I get different search results from your site versus YouTube. One example, I searched for "Nook HD+" (with the quotes). I get more videos at YouTube than your site shows. How is that even possible? Is YouTube limiting what you can get from it?

EDIT for typo.

<comment><AUTHOR> You found a bug! Search on my site is ignoring the "+" (i.e., search for "Nook HD" returns the exact same results which accounts for the difference) probably because I forgot to urlencode the query. Will fix, thanks!

<comment><USER21> Hitting "Upload Date" no longer reorders the video results from search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? Can you give me an example? Seems to be working OK for me.

<comment><USER21> You know how you can do YouTube one better? Offer to remember Sort. I tend to use several search terms every day. Having to manually sort each one is a real PITA. If I'm searching for "Nook HD+" and sort This Month/Upload Date, I'd like a checkbox that would keep that sort automagically for the next search terms I enter. That YouTube doesn't offer that -- and saved searches -- is a huge FAIL on their part.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about this but my concern is that it might harm more than it hurts. For example, I search for music albums sometimes and filter by "long (20+ minutes)" for that, but the other 90% of the time when searching I don't want it to keep that filter, so it would be more of a pain. Thoughts on that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is pretty cool! Not only is Angular my fav. js framework, but there are no comments underneath the videos. Sometimes while watching a video on YouTube I'll catch a glimpse of the user comments by accident and I'll feel dirty for the rest of the day. Bravo, sir.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same. I've had a few requests to add in the comments and it's one thing I'm standing firm on. :)

<comment><USER22> Side note: I would really like to see an infographic on the average number of comments it takes for a thread on YouTube to degenerate into nothing but name calling and racial slurs. Maybe separated by category, and adjusted for number of views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That is damn wicked fast on my crap PC. Now I wish YouTube allowed us to use skins. I'd use that!

</comment><comment><USER23> The layout is nice and simple. My biggest complaints:

\- can't add to playlists

\- can't subscribe

\- can't browse through a channel's playlists

</comment><comment><USER24> Really cool stuff. I think about using it instead of the usual one.

One thing though : when switching from video to video (by clicking links at the end), the rest of the webpage doesn't update (at least on my computer).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's because the player is just a plain old iframe embed. I'm planning on adding related videos to the sidebar (as a hidden-by-default tab) which will hopefully help.

<comment><USER24> I was expecting that kind of answer :). No problem ;), it still is really nice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's really slick YT front-end. You should also (unobtrusively) include your TangleTube's [1] functionality in Toogles.

[1]: <http://tangletube.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Good find :) I've actually thought about that but haven't been able to work out a way to do it unobtrusively. Any thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this.

Youtube's default homepage is so cluttered I usually jump to my subscriptions immediately, with your framework I've actually been browsing youtube channels. Never happened before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've actually experienced the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> good job. adding recommendations would provide continuity. rating preview is a good feature; i've always wondered why youtube does not provide it by default.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I was thinking of adding recommended videos as a tab (alongside an "Info" tab) when viewing a video, so you don't see it by default but you can click the tab to see them if you'd like. Does that implementation sound good to you?

<comment><USER27> It seems fine. Sadly i don't have much sense on visual design, so as long as the recommendations exist somewhere on page, it's fine for me :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Beautiful! Thanks! I'm probably going to fork it at some time to add something. I've been dreaming about this for a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice! I would actually use this to browse YouTube, whereas I don't browse YT directly now due to its bad interface.

</comment><comment><USER30> Really nice, I really enjoy the design. I have been thinking of making something semi-similar.

</comment><comment><USER31> Blazingly fast. I promptly installed the Chrome extension. Thanks for your hard work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks! Let me know if anything bugs you about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Love this. Would love it even more if there was a toggle for Night Mode though.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very fast. I would prefer bigger video squares and smaller text.

</comment><comment><USER34> It would be cool if you could log in and see your subscriptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see your new subscribed videos without logging on by clicking the "Subscriptions" tab on your user page. [http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions](http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions)

I know this currently isn't discoverable and I'm working on that, but feel free to try it out and let me know if it does what you're after.

<comment><USER34> Thanks! Looks pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is amazing. Any way you could integrate subscriptions?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see your new subscribed videos without logging on by clicking the "Subscriptions" tab on your user page. [http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions](http://toogl.es/#/user/<yourusername>/subscriptions)

I know this currently isn't discoverable and I'm working on that (and it's also funky because it's on every user page, not just your own, but I'm trying to avoid logins), but feel free to try it out and let me know if it does what you're after.

<comment><USER35> Huh, neat. However, I use a google+ account to log in, so I'm not sure what my "username" is exactly.

EDIT: Found it! <http://toogl.es/#/user/E8OXL41NDk4aZkvxSbJolg/subscriptions> but there's nothing there

<comment><AUTHOR> > but there's nothing there

Do you have anything on <https://www.youtube.com/my_subscriptions> (i.e., new subscription videos)? It just displays the "new" ones, not all of them, due to a limitation in the YouTube gdata API.

<comment><USER35> <http://i.imgur.com/SwCPbYg.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nice layout. The - mostly - flat design is very well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty much all thanks to Foundation--it's really great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You won me over. I'm definitely going to use angular.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's awesome! I really like that minimalist layout.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like the UI. A lot faster than YT, too.

</comment><comment><USER40> nice app. just quickly wanted to report a bug: on smaller resolution the sidebar cannot be scrolled down.

</comment><comment><USER41> It misses Youtube's autocomplete..

<comment><USER42> @mcrittenden -- here's some code for integrating YouTube autocomplete into the webapp (feel free to pull the 'suggest' method from the library): <http://tikku.com/jquery-jqtube-util#search_example_4>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I'll check this out. I've been missing the autocomplete too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> awesome its really fast..only i expected to see duration in thumnail for videos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah good point, can't believe I missed that. It's there now. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is insanely fast, I'm getting tempted now to dig more into Node.js

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually doesn't use Node (or any server side code) at all--it's 100% client side. It queries the YouTube gdata API using JSONP.

I'm a little surprised at how fast it is though--I think it's mostly due to the fact that YouTube returns API requests really really quickly and Angular does a good job of reacting quickly, plus I'm not using jQuery or anything besides Angular that could slow things down.

<comment><USER45> I believe this consume huge amount of bandwidth on your side, mind sharing the stats for the last 24 hour?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you mean? Why would it consume a lot of bandwidth? Videos and images are streamed directly from YouTube and all of the API interaction happens client side so it doesn't go through my server at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Start Me Up: Minnesota's First Start-Up Accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://tcbmag.blogs.com/start_me_up/2010/12/minnesotas-first-start-up-accelerator-.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure about it being the "first"; The Minnesota Cup (<http://breakthroughideas.org/>) has been around for awhile, and <http://minnestar.org> has done some micro-seed funding.

<http://speedylemur.com> is also local to Minneapolis, though I don't know how many startups they've funded yet.

Regardless, still cool news for entrepreneurs in this part of the midwest...</comment>


The Richest 1% own 75% of USA's Wealth. Join the Protest. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-street-protest-continues-for-third-day/2011/09/19/gIQAKqbffK_gallery.html#photo=12

<comment><USER2> We already have people complaining that they "only" make $400,000. It's not like a protest is going to clue them in to the fact that they have far too much money while others have nothing; they already know and do not care.</comment>


Here comes China: $95 Cortex-A9 Android tablet (video review) - <AUTHOR> http://armdevices.net/2011/04/09/95-cortex-a9-tablet-review-kinstone-ks-umd070a9/

<comment><USER2> This looks pretty decent for the price. Obviously it's not an iPad, and it probably has a resistive touchscreen, but if the screen is ok (some are better than others) and it really is an Cortex A9 then it might be the best of the Chinese tablets.

I think the best cheap one currently available is this: [http://www.dealextreme.com/p/1080p-7-touch-screen-lcd- google...](http://www.dealextreme.com/p/1080p-7-touch-screen-lcd-google- android-2-2-tablet-pc-w-wifi-hdmi-camera-tf-usb-cortex-a8-1ghz-57770) That is a Cortex A8 1GHz, with capacitive touchscreen for ~$200.

If you want cheap, and shipping now then this is ~$100: [http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-touch-screen-lcd-google- andro...](http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-touch-screen-lcd-google- android-2-2-tablet-pc-w-wifi-camera-tf-arm-v5-349-79mhz-70053). It might be fine for a single-use application (recipe browser in the kitchen, etc), but it's pretty underpowered for much else.

<comment><USER3> > It might be fine for a single-use application (recipe browser in the > kitchen, etc), but it's pretty underpowered for much else.

Does anyone actually tablets like this? I can only imagine such a tablet at the bottom of a draw underneath the hometheater warranty.

You might as well splash out on a device you're going to use

<comment><USER4> _You might as well splash out on a device you're going to use_

I have two of that device's immediate predecessor, the $100 WM8505, and I support this assertion.

I've used them mostly for messing around, reverse engineering, and playing with and actually hacking on (most of mine spend most of their time in pieces with a serial header soldered on them.)

They're fun for that, although even that can be a little tiring due to (a) crappy hardware quality, (b) crappy vendorware closed software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chinese Android tablets have actually been around for quite a while now - google 'Apad'. They're all really quite awful - awful battery life, bad touch screens, and really poor build quality have been the rule.

This will change, of course - but for now just don't expect that you're going to get a Xoom/iPad quality tablet for really cheap.

<comment><USER6> People always forget about battery life. It's nice to have a device with good numbers, but if it can't hold a charge for longer than two hours it's pretty useless.

<comment><USER7> Not true. I used the tc1100 tablet like I use the iPad now. All I did was buy an extra power cord and put it by the bed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed something fishy. The /proc/cpuinfo BogoMIPS value reads off as 569.5 in the video. A PandaBoard 1Ghz Cortex-A9 reads around 2000 per processor[1]. I realise the Bogo means _bogus_ but AFAIK within a CPU model it should still scale linearly against clock speed.

Probably a sensible explanation for this, but at the same time this is the class of device where there really is no guarantee between spec claims and reality. For instance the advertised "600 & 800Mhz" WM8505s turned out to be 350Mhz CPUs in reality.

[1] [http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/?part=4...](http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/?part=4&chap=9)

<comment><USER8> If you look at the CPU info it also shows it supports a range of frequencies from 200Mhz to 800Mhz and that the current running speed is ~280Mhz.

So presumably the CPU scales between 200 and 800Mhz based on demand to improve battery life and the bogomips score was produced at a lower clock speed.

<comment><USER4> Except cpufreq (kernel CPU frequency scaling) isn't running during the early boot stages when the BogoMIPS value is calculated.

Like I said, it's possible the bootloader starts up at @250Mhz or so and leaves the kernel to later switch up to 800Mhz. I don't know why you'd design a board like that though (normally you want to boot nice and quick), but you never know.

Also, even though cpufreq reports in Mhz those values will be extrapolated in the kernel from a base frequency & clock multiplier registers somewhere else, so it can easily be out by a constant factor.

Once some benchmarks come out it should become more obvious if there's anything to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting device, but the presentation is making me crazy.

I've seen war correspondents look more chill when there's bullets flying.

If this device is going to ship in volume, Windows Phone 7 will sell about zero units.

<comment><USER10> I kind of liked it. It was exciting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I doubt it's "as powerful as a PS3", but it shows the console-killer potential of phone+HDMI. A PS3 has 8 (faster) cores, so Moore says _wait 4.5 years._

Of course, it's the games that count; and of course sony/ms/nintendo saw this threat long ago, and have their own phone-consoles plans (IHMO).

<comment><USER12> By then, consoles will have advanced by 4.5 years though.

<comment><USER11> Yes; the crucial question is whether consoles will exceed what customers can use (i.e. overserve/overshoot).

There exists evidence that it's happening already: xbox360 and ps3 are quite old, but still selling very well, despite PCs growing more and more powerful (a longer gap than previous generations); the popularity of nintendo wii (though I believe sales are much less now); the popularity of simple online flash games; the popularity of xbox "arcade" games (some of which were web games). This has been discussed on HN before.

If your customers don't need more performance, it doesn't matter how more you offer them. Yes, disruption.

<comment><USER12> PS1 sold well into the life of the PS2 though. There will always be a need for more power in gaming, I beleive because the peripherals will need that power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Problem with cheap devices like this one is battery life. You are lucky if you can keep it up to 2 hours.

And the touchscreens are not the best in the world. Even the capacitive ones.

But if you just keep it connected and don't worry about stiff fingers it can be a great device!

</comment><comment><USER2> Site down, but I think this is the video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1aRbgqA6mE>

</comment><comment><USER14> While it is no iPad, the price point is certainly interesting. It could easily be a laptop substitute in third world countries, especially if the battery life is anywhere close to Apple's iPad. I could also see a lot of businesses (especially mom & pop shops) opting for one of these devices.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, this is what a whole lot of the world will be using. Now hundreds of millions of other people will be able to own a tablet.

</comment><comment><USER16> if this is for real not vapourware it would be stunningly good value for money

</comment><comment><USER17> If its a touch screen, why is there a mouse connected?

<comment><USER18> Why not watch the video? He connects a mouse to show how it works on a big monitor via HDMI.

<comment><USER17> Obviously I watched the video. My question was about the need to connect a mouse to a device that has a completely usable touch screen interface. Connecting the external display device via hdmi should not blank out the tablet and force the use of a mouse. Rather, one should be able to use the tablet's screen as the control interface.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure it does "blank out the tablet and force the use of a mouse".

If you've got your video going to an external display then that is where you're going to be looking.

It's not possible to interact using the touch panel if you aren't looking at the touch panel itself. So either plug in a mouse or keep glancing back and forth between the TV and the device.

* Making the entire devices touch screen a big trackpad during HDMI output would probably be nice though!

<comment><USER19> _It's not possible to interact using the touch panel if you aren't looking at the touch panel itself._

But I do that all the time with my Wacom Bamboo tablet, both with the pen and with touch input. What makes it impossible in the case of this device?

<comment><USER7> With a mouse, you can hover and see the position of the cursor. With the touchscreen, the device doesn't register your finger until you tap (click)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a Complex Financial Chart with D3 and d3fc - <AUTHOR> https://blog.scottlogic.com/2018/09/21/d3-financial-chart.html <comment><USER2> The interesting part is that the "yahoo finance chart" is really expensive at every charting library. Highcharts for example is costing 600€ with really powerfull charting functionality. Highstock which is costing 1000€ is needed in addition to high charts for simply the finance chart.

There's really a need for an opensource component. Maybe some special component: You can use it for every chsrting library. It's only rendering the scrollable part at the bottom. So you could use it with every library. And the background chart would again be rendered by custom logic, obly the "overlay" would be done by the library and emitting a ton of events that custom adapters can redraw the charts with any charting library and options you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some pretty powerful open source financial charting libraries, for example:

[http://rrag.github.io/react-stockcharts/](http://rrag.github.io/react- stockcharts/) [http://techanjs.org/](http://techanjs.org/) (although no longer maintained)

Although I'd argue that it isn't that hard to create your own, entirely bespoke, chart from scratch using D3 (and d3fc as an accelerator)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know of a library that would take care of proper text layout in visualisations? I mean things like auto line split to make chart labels look best, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question - with d3fc we have a component for label layout, but this is designed for labels within the plot area, avoiding overlaps / collisions etc ...

[https://d3fc.io/api/label-layout-api.html](https://d3fc.io/api/label-layout- api.html)

I have thought about creating a more advanced axis that provides more powerful tick label layout. We already have our own axis component:

[https://d3fc.io/api/axis-api.html](https://d3fc.io/api/axis-api.html)

The purpose of this is to support the decorate pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It does not work in firefox for me. Complains about missing polyfill "for older browsers".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well spotted, thanks. I've just fixed that :-)</comment></comment>


Los Angeles' homelessness crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-homeless-crisis-overview-20180225-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> I write software for a living, and have on more than one occasion had the opportunity to live and work in California.

Seeing the poverty and, how the poor are treated in San Fransisco, Los Angeles, and every other large US I've been to, is so degrading and offensive that the idea of participating in the financial system that sustains it is unacceptable.

Surely I can't be the only one who feels this way.

<comment><USER3> You're not alone.

I've lived in two major cities of the world, spent time in many others; However, I've never seen anything as bad as San Francisco and surrounding areas. Some of my colleagues are from Europe and felt so shocked and uneasy about what we saw.

I hate to say it, but it definitely left a bad impression of the USA on my friends and I. It certainly made me question a lot of the things the US claims to stand for.

Land of the free and home of the brave? If you say so...

<comment><USER4> > Land of the free and home of the brave? If you say so...

Yeah as in, people are free to be homeless if they didn't work hard enough. It's the Trump argument, he's a self-made man who kicked off with a small loan of just one million. A lot of Republican, anti-socialist voters are poor, but don't see themselves as poor but "temporarily underfinanced". And the truly destitute / homeless apparently lose their right to vote.

<comment><USER3> His father was a multi-millionaire [1], Donald Trump has never had to work hard for his wealth, he inherited it.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say anyway.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems that rather than trying to fight the laws of economics with rent controls, special housing, and welfare programs, the focus should be relocation and job placement in less expensive areas.

It's unrealistic to try to get someone a low end job that will support them long term in one of the most expensive cities in America.

With the $1.2B bond measure, you could rent housing for every single homeless person in LA for a good 5 years in middle America. (less than $500 a month all in).

<comment><USER6> Isn't the problem that republican controlled midwestern states chase all their homeless people out to democrat controlled big cities? They are not willing to pay anything to help the homeless. They are not even willing to look at them. They want it to be somebody else's problem. I think that is a problem with having open borders between states but not equal social programs. It leads to a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER7> Not exactly - the bigger problem is that all the republicans controlled midwestern states are shitty economies and so people move to places where they hear that people can get jobs (functioning liberal states) and when that doesn't work out they end up homeless in the new city. (Various polls of homeless people in Seattle have found that most of them were already in the area immediately before they became homeless).

<comment><USER8> Not sure you made it a Republican/Democrat thing when I can think of several high unemployment/poverty Democrat states and low unemployment/poverty Republican states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, the thing that always bothers me about how Los Angeles is reported on is the lack of normalization for population. LA is really big with a lot of people. It will naturally have higher population of homelessness.

57k/10.2m is ~0.56% homelessness, which is about par with Seattle (11.6k/2.1m = ~0.55%), but significantly better than SF (7k/870k = ~0.80%) or NY (77k/8.5m = ~0.90%).

Given LA's unrelenting rapid gentrification, wealth, and income inequality, I think the situation can easily get much worse.

But at least we're trying, trying to make the situation better, or at least slow down its progression. I'd hate to see us give up and invest in anti- loitering securitybots instead. The wealthy here haven't become that out of touch and scornful yet, but keep writing articles like this and maybe they might.

<comment><USER10> > I'd hate to see us give up and invest in anti-loitering securitybots > instead.

Why would you need securitybots? Orange County police departments already do it for free by dumping homeless people in Long Beach.

> The wealthy here haven't become that out of touch and scornful yet

I guess you've never interacted with people who live in Newport Beach. Or LA for that matter. Are you sure you're from LA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good example of how private charity doesn't work. The US has gotten ever wealthier, or primarly the 1% the exact portion of the population who should have been most capable of funding charity. Yet this problem grows. Charity is able feed people but not turn around people's lives. You need comperhensive government programs for that.

<comment><USER8> SF spends $150M on homeless and it's one of the worse cities for homelessness.

You really think money is the problem?

<comment><USER11> Am I alone in thinking that 150 million is not that much? When I was in SF i saw so much poverty and suffering I could not believe my eyes and I have seen homelessness plenty before. Build more affordable, high density homes and give them to the homeless for free for a few years with high amounts of care if you want to solve the problem.

<comment><USER8> I don't have the exact number, but if you divide $150M by the number of SF homeless it's more than $30,000 per person.

I would argue it's what we're doing with the money that's the issue, not how much money there is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reading this, I'm reminded of hobo life during the Great Depression. Hoovervilles. And in those days, you could at least get around on freight trains.

I'm also reminded of my own time living on the road. In my late teens through early 20s, as an illegal immigrant. And indeed, I spent some of that time in LA and SF. But mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Living in the forest, and squatting.

But it wasn't that bad, because I had many friends. And it was fun to drift aimlessly. But eventually, I went to college and grad school, so hey.

<comment><USER13> I was homeless for a year in my late teens. But I also felt it didn't hurt me because I was young enough to still feel that it was a choice of my own, and I did go to school.

As the article points out, only a third of homeless are addicted, so the problem is not really about the homelessness itself. It's about losing hope and being alienated by your own community. I always wondered why so many homeless people like to flock around where it's crowded.

<comment><USER12> I didn't actually feel "homeless" in a bad way. Someone we knew usually had a place where we could crash. And some source of food and money. Weed and LSD were always available, and sometimes psilocybe and peyote. But then, this was decades ago, before "homelessness" became a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every living being on this planet should have the basic right for a house. It's a primary need. Houses should not be part of the "free" economy and should not be allowed to be traded for profit. If this pyramid scheme continues the future will look very grim for billions of people.

<comment><USER9> But does that house need to be near the beach? Why not Kansas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> All of this reminds me of the modern version of the Great Depression. Economists have gotten smarter this time around and have covered up the unemployment rate and CPI, but it's mostly the same.

Studs Terkel, probably the most famous interviewer / oral historian who's ever lived, wrote a book containing hundreds of oral histories about the Depression. It sounds just like today:

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565846567/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Yh8K...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565846567/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Yh8KAb3VAXQCK)

</comment><comment><USER16> People at the top of our economy are generally oblivious to how bad things are for the bottom half. The top 0.1% commands the same wealth as the bottom 90%. Historically wealth inequality finds its outlet in political unrest, and there is probably more of that to come in the next decade. In the last election a socialist and a populist both got suprising amounts of support, even though the broader economy was supposed to be doing well. The next recession will hit the bottom 50% hard, and we could see truly strange things if that occurs near an election.

<comment><USER17> That's an easy statement to make, but I don't think it holds true for most wealthy people. Especially wealthy people in Silicon Valley. If anything, most wealthy people I know are extremely aware of how bad things are for the bottom half and regularly vote against their economic self-interest for progressive candidates.

Runaway inequality isn't due to some evil conspiracy by rich people to hoard money from everyone else. It's due to the leveraging nature of technology and the plummeting demand for unskilled labor

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a really hard problem. Some people are down on their luck and can be helped. Some people are out of control, there is no way to babysit them to normalcy. Money won't solve it.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a bit paradoxical that homeless people can be a problem in a specific geographic area. By definition, it should be easy to relocate them.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup: Parking Ticket Reminder/Payer - <AUTHOR>

I was tired of paying late fees on my parking tickets, so I created a system to detect new tickets and email me weekly reminders.  The site can also automatically pay the tickets for the truly forgetful, if the user sets it up.
It's only for San Francisco right now, but would love the wider HN community's feedback as well.  Is this something you'd find helpful?  Worth paying for?
http://www.sticket.net <comment><USER2> I'd put a big disclaimer in there somewhere that you're absolutely not responsible for late fees or anything else if your service fails. Not just for legal reasons, but because there are many non-technical people that don't understand the possibility that a service like this could fail (not to mention the small group of dummies who will undoubtedly think that your website is sanctioned by the state of CA).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great call. Definitely important -- I will be adding it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Design: I like your simple design for one reason - your call to action is up front and straightforward. That is ruined by the bright yellow box right next to it. I can't stop looking at it! Take it out or tone it down a lot. The design needs some obvious work beyond that, but the fundamentals of your site are better than most.

Marketing: You aren't selling a "Parking Ticket Reminder/Payer", you are selling a system that ensures your customers will _never pay a parking ticket late again_. Benefits, not features. Focusing your marketing message not only helps increase conversion, it also forces you to outline who your customers are. In this case it's obvious - people who get lots of parking tickets. Write your copy to those people!

Idea: definitely interesting. I know a handful of people who would uses this -today-. Also, thank you for thinking about revenue up front! Not enough people do this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought it was a little bit nifty and then signed up for it. Found a parking ticket I didn't even know I had! Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> For marketing, you could possibly "disguise" flyers as parking tickets, and put them on cars parked in areas that are highly ticketed (downtown, college campus, etc). When a potential customer opens it up, it could have a link to your site and a small call to action.

<comment><USER6> Don't do this! I'd be seriously pissed off if I saw a 'ticket' on my windshield and then realized that it wasn't one.

<comment><USER5> I'd be more relieved than pissed. I'd be more pissed off if it was an actual ticket I had to pay!

Edit: I do agree that it could possibly be a bit misleading, but the idea of putting a flyer on cars in areas where there is notorious ticketing could potentially get your product in front of real customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://www.sticket.net>

</comment><comment><USER7> On <http://www.sticket.net/request/> if I type "denver, co" in the first field and hit tab, the field gets blanked out. Safari 4 on OSX 10.5.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. Side question - is it economically rational in San Francisco for a person to repeatedly acquire parking tickets rather than seek out parking or pay for a monthly spot somewhere?

<comment><USER9> For me (Cambridge, MA) it was definitely cheaper to get and pay tickets than to pay for monthly parking at my two apts ago apartment building. I averaged well under $100 worth of tickets a month, against a parking garage charge of $250/mo, plus I didn't ever have to wait for my car to be brought out by the garage valets.

Back in college (again in Cambridge, MA), a resident parking violation was $10, and garage parking in Harvard Sq for the evening was $14. Guess how hard it was for the residents to use their resident parking spots... (They've since raised it signficantly.)

<comment><USER10> I wish it was $10, the ticket I got today (was 3 minutes late to the meter) was $30. Of course this is Somerville, but the laws seem to stay consistent between the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The application looks good. The overall idea is also good. But I got "An error occurred Application error" when I tried 2nd time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is clicking the back button the only way to get from the FAQ page to the home page?

I like the word sticket, but I don't like the ellipses afterward. It sounds weird in my head with that pause. The other thing is that maybe the "to the man" part should match the S (because you add both of those parts onto the word "Ticket").

</comment><comment><USER13> The background image is a jpg with compression artifacts. Use PNG, and if you can, a different font.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. Yeah, graphics are definitely not my forte. I'm going to have a designer-friend make me a new image. Do you think poor logos/images detract substantially from a site's credibility/first impression?

<comment><USER13> Generally speaking, it matters a lot. The idea behind your project is pretty cool and useful. A more attractive design will definitely help you acquire new customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool idea!

* Would I find it helpful? -- Yes.

* Would I pay for it? -- No (with a "perhaps yes" if the charge was per ticket, and relatively small)

And I am terrible with design, but it seems to me that you need to work on the UI a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Design definitely needs professional help :)

re: pay for it -- currently the email reminders are free, but if the user wants their tickets automatically paid it's a per ticket fee (like you suggested) of $5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This type of service has been around in Shanghai for quite a few years. Its been very useful to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Neat idea - how do you organize the payment of those tickets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many cities have online parking ticket payment systems, so paying for the tickets can be easily done with a credit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> awesome. i have this problem all the time. does this include daly city all the way through to the south bay?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just the city of San Francisco for now... I hope to add the rest soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> ...In SF in the 80s if you had outstanding parking tickets on your current car (car A) and then sold car A and bought a new car (car B), car A's tickets were no longer tied to you via the city's database. ...I had a friend who knew he was going to get a new car within a year, so he parked where ever he wanted (right on the sidewalks at times) and had a stack of tickets a foot tall within 10 months. He bought a new car and drove happily ever after!

<comment><USER19> It's people like that who make reasonable people (who are capable of following basic societal rules) want to smash things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whoa how relevant to my interests, not 15 minutes ago I went to my car to find an orange red envelope waiting for me (however I didn't get as excited as I do when it comes from a Redditor) Unfortunately I live in Somerville MA, so your app doesn't help me (yet?)</comment>


Soon, hundreds of tourists will go to space. What should we call them? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/soon-hundreds-of-tourists-will-go-to-space-what-should-we-call-them/ <comment><USER2> rich people.</comment>


Zoombombing is a crime, not a prank, prosecutors warn - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/zoombombing-is-a-crime-not-a-prank-prosecutors-warn/ <comment><USER2> A security concept so vulnerable to this should be the real crime. Kids like to troll, this has always been the case and will always be the case. I am quite annoyed the internet culture is more and more invaded by these lawyers. The internet has always and should always be built on the concept that whatever can be exploited will be and the people who open themself to exploits carry the majority of blame. Maybe that's just my wishful thinking for a more wild west anarchistic internet...

<comment><USER3> There's a term for this. "Victim Blaming".

Its also the same kind of excuses heard when a woman was dressing well and gets raped. Then the refrain is "she was asking for it", or "she deserved it with the way she dressed".

Notice that if a front door is unlocked and someone goes inside, its still trespassing. Just because its easier to commit a crime doesnt make the thing not a crime.

(Please note, that I'm making this argument in good faith. I'm sure many here have digitally trespassed on others' computer systems without permission. It's not "trolling"; its a straight-up violation of the CFAA.)

<comment><USER4> You make an interesting parallel, but the fact that you call out trespassing through an unlocked door as a crime on a website called _hacker_ news is remarkable.

<comment><USER5> No. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> non-entity > disrupting a public meeting, computer intrusion, using a computer to commit > a crime, hate crimes, fraud, or transmitting threatening communications

Uhh majority of those seem highly dependent and mostly disconnected from the actual zoomboming act and moreso with what you do once you're in the session.

Also, I'm not sure offhand what all entail "computer intrusion", but from my brief reading here[0], it seems that they must he stretching the definitions. Are you really "hacking" if you just join a meeting that someone posted openly on reddit, inviting others to troll? On the other hand, I've heard of people being prosecuted successfully for typing /../ in a URL or something along those lines.

Not defending people who do it, at least not on principle, but I'm just wary of the application of those laws. Out of all of them the first is the only that makes any sense, but zoom meetings are public now?

[0][https://www.wklaw.com/computer-intrusion-under-federal- law/](https://www.wklaw.com/computer-intrusion-under-federal-law/)

<comment><USER5> It's all about intent, not about how you did something or what.

>you just join a meeting that someone posted openly on reddit, inviting others to troll?

If you joined the meeting with the full knowledge and intention of trolling yes, that falls under statute. What that other person did doesn't really matter in your prosecution, he might be prosecuted as an accessory to your crime, but his actions don't provide you enough defensive cover.

What you're stating is like a gun murderer saying "I only pulled a lever, which billions of people do every day".

If someone posted a deep URL to a hospital oxygen system inviting reddit to troll, and you go there with the knowledge and intention to troll, and press the off switch and kill a bunch of people, you're going to be prosecuted for their deaths. "I just clicked a button lol" isn't a good defense and will probably just make the judge and jury think even worse of you. Same with typing /../, you're trying to access hidden and potentially protected sensitive information. It's like trying the handles of the cars parked on the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a lot of kids, this is the same as ringing a door bell and running with your friends. Honestly if I were a kid today I wouldn't be able to resist the urge to troll our remote class meetings with my friends.

<comment><USER7> I got a felony (which was later dropped) pressed against me for something like this. Changed my highschool's website to a rickroll, ended up in cuffs.

<comment><USER8> So how did you do it?

<comment><USER7> The system admins used the same password for everything. We ran the windows password file against a rainbow table. Once we figured out the password and that it worked on the admin portal to the website, we couldn't resist for the laughs.

<comment><USER8> LOL I don't blame you! Nice work! Sounds like you were a bright, bored kid!

What are you doing these days?

<comment><USER7> Thanks! Still a hacker. Mainly JS, React, Rails, and Flutter these days. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting topic. If I equate this to the physical world, would this be similar to a public town meeting being held with no security and no locked doors, then a protester walks in and starts protesting? What are the protestors typically charged with successfully?

This also reminds me of Gary McKinnon who logged into NASA windows servers as Administrator with a null password and no firewall. [1] He was looking for proof of UFO's. Point being, there was no security on the systems and so Gary basically walked in as a guest. No hacking required.

[1] - [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/25/gary-mckinnon- ext...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/25/gary-mckinnon-extradition- pink-floyd-hacker-us)

<comment><USER10> Isn't it more like a private meeting, say, in your house that has a door that's unlocked?

I personally dislike applying digital settings to real-world, but if you're going to make a comparison these aren't for the public or on public property.

<comment><USER11> Private homes have special protection (and would be more analogous to private computers).

This is more like invading rented lounge/room in a pub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Zoombombing isn't a harmless prank; it's a crime.

These are by no definition mutually exclusive, unless you're considering the harm of over litigious prosecutors on society.

</comment><comment><USER13> This rings as an especially empty threat. Even with account data and IP addresses, it would be costly and time consuming for the police to track down and charge the "zoombombers" \- _even if_ all the attackers were part of their jurisdiction.

Their effort would be better spent recommending alternative services or providing guidance for how to configure private Zoom calls.

<comment><USER14> They only need a couple dozen well-publicized arrests and prosecutions to deter 99% of the trend.

<comment><USER15> Yes, thankfully we don't have online drug sellers or ransomware hackers anymore. Arrested a couple and all the online crime stopped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why people are comparing this to realspace crimes. I get that we have plenty of laws covering them, but the online world is completely different. It's possible for people to commit cybercrime and still be undetected. How can you arrest someone if you can't find them? The internet is still very much the wild west, and it needs to be treated as such, with lots of locks and keys. Doing anything less is negligence.

</comment><comment><USER14> Key quote: "Zoombombers have exposed themselves to schoolchildren and shouted racial slurs."

Kinda knocks down the "hacker kids having harmless fun" image in my book.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here we see out of touch people supporting actions that can destroy lives, for no benefit.</comment>


Show HN: Hacker Spring – Instant blog by email, no signup required - <AUTHOR> https://hackerspring.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I worked hard to make this so that everyone, even Grandma and Grandpa, can now blog, make a website, or even learn to code with JavaScript!

You can send an email to email@example.com and it will automatically create a post based on your Subject and Body of your e-mail!

You can also attach javascript, css, or html files to make a full website that is hosted free by just sending an email!

I hope you guys like it!

<comment><USER2> It's a great idea. I think it would be a lot nicer to read without the typing animation for blog text. It seems like a fast site - show that off!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The animation site was actually just to show that you could attach a javascript file and embed it in your e-mail!

[https://hackerspring.com/p/protonmail.com/hackerspring/5ec06...](https://hackerspring.com/p/protonmail.com/hackerspring/5ec06c8f/hello- world)

Is an example without the javascript!

<comment><USER3> But... why? Giving a user complete control over JS code that will run directly off the site is inherently an unsafe idea, for you and for the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, a more serious answer: There are already hundreds of thousands of webhosts who offer Javascript hosting - what makes this one any less safe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As pointed out by samstave in a comment at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23209348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23209348) :

You send an email to this service to post a blog entry, and this service exposes your name and email address (as obtained from the email headers) to everyone! That's a huge privacy disconnect in a world where exposed emails can cause a lot of problems, and more so for non-technical people, which this service intends to make things easy for.

One look at the homepage of this service shows all the email addresses used by the users to post. Since the service also claims (in another comment here) that spoofed email addresses won't work, users must use a non-personal address and name if they don't wish to expose their information publicly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This site isn't an anonymous posting forum. If you want to be anonymous you can use an anonymous e-mail account, but for everyone else it's to speak with your name and your voice.

What you're looking for is a different service with different goals, and that doesn't make this one worse at what it is trying to do.

<comment><USER4> No need to get defensive. You have basically created a spam attractor for non- technical users by saying that this is suitable for "Grandpa and Grandma" and making them a lot more vulnerable to email scams.

Writing in one's voice doesn't need to have an email address attached with it. I can understand using the person's name. You could do better by not displaying the email address or obfuscating it. Or you could remove that "Grandpa and Grandma" part from your description and say that it's for those who understand how email addresses in public can get misused.

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't defensive. I'm simply stating that anonymous posting is different from named posting. That said, I will be adding a way to do anonymous posting and unlisted posting today. :-)

Thank you for your suggestions!

<comment><USER4> Named posting doesn't need to expose one's email address. You could just use the name. That was my point. There is no need to expose anyone's email address to the world, be they technically knowledgeable people or otherwise.

I still believe your site is harmful to users unless the default is publishing with just the name and no email address, with an option of publishing with the email address if someone really wants to. The current defaults seem inverted.

I'll stop with this comment since I've said enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I updated it to hide name and email by default.

If people wish to expose their name and email, they can include an email signature!

Edit: If you already posted, this page was already archived so you should create a new e-mail address if you want to be pseudoanonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a service a while back - I cant recall what it was - but it would send you a question via email asking what you did today and you would reply to it and it would keep a history...

I cant recall what that was now though.

I really like this though.

\---

Custom URLs?

I am going to try this right now. What happens....

WAIT A MINUTE. HOL' UP. SOMETHIN AINT RIGHT.

This exposes your email to anyone on Hackerspring. and allows you to effectively non-anonymously post to a forum, whereby your post is intermixed with everyone elses?

No thank you.

Here is a feature request I would like:

TO: email@example.com Subject: Join, "PHLUX"

SEND

\---

From: firstname.lastname@example.com Subject: Join, "PHLUX"

Hello,

Your new page has been created under Hackerspring.com/phlux!

Any emails you send to email@example.com will now be visible at hackerspring.com/phlux

Please enjoy your nano blog! Also, your email will never be visible, unless YOU put it into the body of your email-post sent to Hackerspring, so pllease be careful of signatures.

If you wish to delete a post at any time, simply send an email - just as you would a post with "Delete [POSTID]" as the subject of your email!

Please be sure to adhere to our TOS regarding harmful content posts.

\----

I dont want all my posts intermingled with others.

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense and I think that creates a different dynamic and community. You can delete emails by just sending $DELETEME.

There are more commands available in [https://hackerspring.com/faq](https://hackerspring.com/faq)

It was considered to do 'unlisted' posts, but in the end, what's a blog if it's not for worldwide publication?

<comment><USER5> Im confused - so my collection of posts is contained under "category +me"

Does it post inline images from within the body of the email? I must have missed that part.

And I didnt say not available to the world - I said not intermingled among everyone elses posts. That is a forum.

By your definition, HN would be a blog - as I can post to HN, and it just shows up under /new I just happen to be the poster...

Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Im confused - so my collection of posts is contained under "category +me"

Yes

> Does it post inline images from within the body of the email? I must have > missed that part.

Yes! You can include anything you can with HTML and e-mail. You can even include a .js or .css file!

> By your definition, HN would be a blog - as I can post to HN, and it just > shows up under /new I just happen to be the poster...

With Hacker Spring, it's both a blog and an aggregator. HN can be used as a blog by doing a text post! :-). Hacker Spring just has a bit more features to customize your site since it's fully geared toward this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of a blogging by email service I used called Posterous. Loved it but got shut down after Twitter bought it.

<comment><USER7> I was just thinking the same. It was the first platform I actually used for quite a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I hope you'll give this a shot too! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Damn, I really like the concept of creating blog posts simply by sending email. Solves a lot of UI problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! I really hope this takes off and also sparks a revolution of making things easier for people!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On consideration, I would prefer if it worked without js. Since the whole site requires js to load content, clicking on someone's post that has js that effs with my computer is something I prefer to avoid.

At the very least, label a post that has js so I don't click it, if you are going to require the site to function with js.

Is it really necessary that every link opens in a new tab?

<comment><AUTHOR> It now indicates that there is a script by putting [JS] next to the title. Links that redirect elsewhere have an arrow in the post title appended!

Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just added a dark mode toggle (no cookies still)! Hope you like!

[https://hackerspring.com?darkmode=1](https://hackerspring.com?darkmode=1)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have typed my website URL wrong. How do I edit?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no edit, but you can delete and repost! Just go to your sent mailbox and find the email, click on the mail you sent us, and hit reply. Then type "$DELETEME" as the first text in the body.

[https://hackerspring.com/faq/](https://hackerspring.com/faq/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Just e-mail [email protected] to post or pick your own firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice concept and cool animation!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar to Posterous?

</comment><comment><USER13> Some of this strikes me as a bad idea...

</comment><comment><USER14> From tos page

"PLEASE READ THESE TERMS CAREFULLY, AS THEY ARE A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND Podesta Pizzeria, LLC."

<comment><USER15> OP is Q

<comment><AUTHOR> You found me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a repost of a banned submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=podestapizza](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=podestapizza)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=podestapizza](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=podestapizza)

<comment><AUTHOR> > This is a repost of a banned submission:

Wrong. It's a repost of a flagged submission that was flagged due to the nature of its name and reposted. The real hacker community loved the podesta pizza name. HN not so much so I renamed it to Hacker Spring!

Good find though! Keep it up Sherlock! :)

<comment><USER17> What on Earth is the real hacker community? I feel like I'm missing out!

<comment><AUTHOR> IRC! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gmail Gets an Efficient Improved 'Compose' Experience - <AUTHOR> http://blog.timesunion.com/tech/2319/google-compose-improves-efficiency-experience/

<comment><USER2> I really like the new Compose, but I can't seem to change the send from address. The only way to change the send email is to switch back to the old interface, which is a bit annoying.

<comment><USER3> when setting the recipients, at the right there's a "cc" and "bcc" link, next to them is a "from" link as well. few more clicks then with the old interface, but that's fine for me. my only problem with this new UI is that reply cannot be popped out into this separate window

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Did this kill anyone else's Xobni? Mine no longer shows up. Tout works just fine though!

</comment><comment><USER5> I turned it off, it is limiting.</comment>