Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2011/09/08/10-technical-papers-every-programmer-should-read-at-least-twice <comment><USER2> Is there a list anywhere of which Computer Science (and related) textbooks are worth reading? (Perhaps based on which universities are actually using them?)

Personally, I find that the research literature is usually (intentionally or unintentionally) opaque and that most ideas worth learning are at least 5 years old, so textbooks are the best place to actually learn things from a source intended to teach you the material.

The list I could actually vouch for would be:

      CLRS
      Russell and Norvig
      Introduction to IR (Manning et al)
      Database Systems: The Complete Book

Others that I've heard good things about are:

      Dragon Book
      Convex Optimization (Boyd)
      Probabilistic Robotics
      Foundations of Statistical NLP

I'd really like a good distributed systems or distributed databases book (rather than reading old Lamport papers or something), as well as a good statistics/probability book, and I'm not particularly interested in books about coding/engineering style any more (e.g., Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Matz's Ruby book, K&R).

<comment><USER3> Lamport's papers are exceptionally readable, I should note. His discussion of e.g. Paxos is still current and interesting and still has implications for distributed databases even though that algorithm is too expensive for frequently (like, order of magnitude hundreds or thousands of changes a second) changing data.

The Dragon is mostly old and hoary by today's standards; we frequently use GLR instead of LALR(1), it has no discussion of interesting modern developments like packrat parsers, there is next to no discussion of any part of the compiler that isn't parsing, etc. A product of its time, but not an edifice for the ages in the way that SICP is.

If you find a good stats/probability book, let me know; I've been looking for one for years and come up short. Russell and Norvig is ironically superior to most texts in the field.

<comment><USER4> You're wrong about _any_ edition of the the Dragon.

The 0th edition (green dragon, Aho&Ullman) was mostly about parsing, but talked about everything. The 1st edition (red dragon, Aho,Sethi&Ullman) was about everything not including JITs, vectorization, GCs and parallelization. The 2nd edition (purple dragon, Aho,Lam,Sethi&Ullman) is about everything, and they even dropped operator precedence (Pratt) parsing to make room for more non-parsing stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From McCarthy's paper:

> _When a free register is wanted, and there is none left on the free-storage > list, a reclamation (7) cycle starts.

> (...)

> (7) We already called this process "garbage collection", but I guess I > chickened out of using it in the paper -- or else the Research Laboratory of > Electronics grammar ladies wouldn't let me._

</comment><comment><USER6> Seconding a comment on the linked url, but adding the url, for the lazy amongst us :

lambda papers (steele, sussman) <http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html>

and btw, an interview of john backus : [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Ora...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Oral_History/102657970.05.01.acc.pdf)

discussing amongst other things, the pros/cons of fp, and his issues solving how to fit IO; not mandatory but highly refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This was on HN about 3 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2979458>

<comment><AUTHOR> Michael suggested it for over-break reading, so a retrospective seemed in order. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was going to just suggest adding "End to End Arguments in System Design" (<http://mit.edu/6.033/www/papers/endtoend.pdf>) but then realized that the entire MIT 6.033 reading list is exceptionally worthwhile.

<http://mit.edu/6.033/www/papers/>

</comment><comment> buff-a Twice? These days it takes reading them at least 5 times before I can claim to comprehend them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one who thinks it's really weird that we throw around these lists of, "things programmers must read," but we don't ever throw around lists of, "things programmers must program at least X times"?

<comment><USER10> I guess for programmers believing in code reuse X is either 0 or 1...

<comment><USER11> I've written essentially the same application several times in different languages, for different frameworks, or for substantially different platforms.

I'd also count a serious refactoring or structural improvement as having programmed something again.

<comment><USER5> I think this could be a really interesting discussion. My first reaction to georgieporgie's comment was the same as omaranto's. But in practice, like you say, we do end up doing a lot of code re-writing.

Suppose we are to explain omaranto's statement to someone who is not a programmer. My try is: given that (i) programs, whether in source or binary format, can be indefinitely replicated with virtually zero cost and (ii) we know how to write modular programs and (iii) there are plenty of useful modules available for re-use, we never have to substantially re-write anything from scratch.

But (iii) is arguably false due to a variety of reasons: intellectual property issues, incompatible platforms, "incompatible" programming languages, etc.

And (ii) is a big lie.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app - <AUTHOR> https://journalbook.co.uk <comment><USER4> I'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly.

[1]: POST [https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.sh/](https://trys-tiny- tracking.now.sh/) {"type":"hit","url":"/2019/01/10/"}

EDIT: Looking through the src [2], it appears the site will respect the user's "do not track" browser preference [3], but that's not supported in all browsers

[2] [https://github.com/trys/JournalBook/blob/master/src/utils/be...](https://github.com/trys/JournalBook/blob/master/src/utils/beacon.js)

[3] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/d...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/doNotTrack)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, this is the beginnings of a basic hit counter that I'm working on. As there's no server (it's CDN hosted on Netlify), there's no way to see if anyone's even using the site. It's waaaaay less intrusive that GA, or other tracking tools. It's simply picking up page views - ignoring IP and any identifiable information (cookies obvs. included). It also respects do not tracking indicators in your browser. Tiny Tracking will be open sourced in time.

<comment><USER5> In my mind, this completely contradicts "privacy centric" and "offline first", which to me are very important goals. Even though the _notes in the app_ are only ever stored on my computer, and even though it's metadata being sent, I would rather offline and privacy focused apps not use my network at all. That's what I aspire to anyway when I write apps for sephware.com, and I wish everyone would do the same.

<comment><USER6> Your Autumn app looks pretty sweet by the way. I've been looking for a simple WM on Mac. The other ones are always needlessly complicated (looking at you Hammerspoon). Especially after using the beautifully minimal bspwm [1] + sxhkd on Linux for years.

But re: zero analytics, aren't you curious how many people use the app at a minimum?

[1] [https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm](https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I sometimes wonder about those statistics. But I'm not curious enough to invade people's privacy or use any of the other modern marketing manipulations to boost sales. I think if you make a thing and pour love into it, people will love using it, and maybe even want to give you a little money. I've seen this first hand many times and been on both sides of it. That's why I like Show HN, and give apps like JournalBook an honest look, especially when it's clearly a passion project by a single person.

Edit: Thanks for the bspwm link btw, I've been wanting to add a class to Autumn called TileWM (to complement the existing GridWM) but I couldn't wrap my head around binary space partitioning, although I knew that's what tiling WMs usually use. The page you linked to describes and visualizes it really well and now I think I understand it well enough to finally implement it. Although, given the nature of Autumn, someone could probably implement this feature sooner using Autumn itself :D

<comment><USER7> Just wanted to say — I've been using Autumn for about a week and it may just be the perfect window manager. And I've tried them all.

BST Hammerspoon Moom Flexiglass Layouts Alfred Div MaxSnap Spectacle Magnet SizeWell Etc etc

All of them. So thank you for the hard work.

And I can't tell you how delighted I was to find THIS point of view from you out in the wild. Agreed entirely.

<comment><USER5> Really glad to hear that you enjoy my app that much! I put a ton of hard work into it and honestly yours is the first feedback I've heard about it at all, beside a close friend who beta tested it briefly. If you have any thoughts on features or APIs you'd like to see in Autumn, please don't hesitate to use the in-app Feedback form :) In particular, if you wouldn't mind sending me a copy of your current script, I'd love to see how you're using Autumn!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is my privacy centric, offline first, personal journal bash script

        EDITOR=vim
        journal() {
            mkdir -p ~/journal/`date +%Y`
            $EDITOR ~/journal/`date +%Y`/`date +%m-%d`
        }
        alias j=journal

<comment><USER9> Thanks. Are you planning on selling this as a service? Maybe with blockchain verification? How about creating a marketplace so that others can share journal templates? Is there iCloud backup? Would be nice to have private messages between members and social status that people can "like".

:-)

<comment><USER10> For those unaware: I think parent poster is being sarcastic.

EDIT: my original comment was "Don't know why you're being downvoted. That's sarcasm people!". It was flagged. I wondered why and decided to check the HN guidelines. Sure enough, I violated one: _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading._

Sorry about that!

<comment><USER11> Humor is not one of HN's strong suits.

<comment><USER12> And sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From time to time I try these fancy journaling apps. A few weeks later I have to go through the hassle of converting the data to my good old plain text file journaling format.

<comment><USER14> There are some journaling apps that target this mindset. This one[1] was posted a few days ago (in comments) and stores your notes as markdown in plain text. There are others (I am working on one as well, but its not ready). If the app forced a particular naming convention (e.g. 2018-05-10.md) would that be too restrictive?

[1]: ([https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable)).

<comment><USER13> No. Not really. [http://jrnl.sh/](http://jrnl.sh/) looks good too if you're starting from scratch.

<comment><USER15> If you're looking for something simple like jrnl but as a desktop app with a GUI, you might be interested in Mini Diary which I just launched: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934610). It also allows you to import your jrnl data and export your entries in a variety of formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good work man. Don't mind all the criticism here in HN. ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Really digging the design. Feels extremely light and calm. Although, all those animations might get a little annoying with everything transitioning-in the page.

Good work, though!

</comment><comment><USER18> I've tried various journaling apps, but I keep coming back to Emacs Org-Mode for my journals and writing because of its excellent tooling and export abilities. I keep a single .org file per year and each entry is a high level heading. I sort by entries with the latest on top by default, but before I export, I use the built in Org-Mode sort to arrange them chronologically based on the associated date tags. It's an extremely simple system, portable, readable as plain text, and GitHub has syntax support. I can't recommend it enough.

</comment><comment><USER19> A real journaling app, for the hackernews crowd, must have syncing between any kind of device (imo), including the terminal. My solution is just nextcloud syncing text files, though that may be overkill. Anyone have a good or even elegant solution for web/phone/terminal text file syncing?

<comment><USER20> I'm assuming this does local storage through the web browser. Does Firefox Sync or Chrome's Sync move that between devices for you? I don't do much web work so am unawares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a way to speed up the animations?

It may not be a real problem once I actually use it, instead of clicking around, but it makes it feel really sluggish at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any tips for a server side developers on how to create similar user interface? how was it created? fully custom? based on some frameworks?

<comment><USER23> Looking at the source code it's done with Preact and the css seems to be written by hand.

I was a server side centric dev for a long period before being able to design decent apps.

Here are my tips:

\- Spend as much time as possible on Photoshop / Adobe XD / Paint.Net or whatever software design you are using. Do not start to write any HTML or CSS before the design has all the pages done.

\- Spend time in Design Network like Dribbble to be inspired by top notch creators

\- Code stuff you see . If you see a design you like on Dribbble you should try to do it in HTML and CSS.

\- Frameworks will not make you a good front end developers. The majority of front end devs just use Flexbox these days, frameworks are less and less important for CSS you'll be faster if you just learn the behavior of html and css without frameworks.

\- Be patient

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there a OneNote, Evernote, <insert program/app name> that has the same feature set as ProtonMail? I like the idea of centralized cloud storage of notes for synchronization across devices with the same app/program, but with at rest encryption of the stored content that can only be decrypted on the client with the client's key.

<comment><USER25> There is standard notes that has the encryption and cloud sync. You can try it standardnotes.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is a better Android Diary app that saves a single .txt file per day on the sdcard.

[https://github.com/billthefarmer/diary](https://github.com/billthefarmer/diary)

Then just use syncthing to syncronize those files to your other devices.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks great! My only concern now is that i won't use it a lot because typing on smartphones sucks…

<comment><USER28> At the same time, voice to text works like a charm on smartphones.

Especially for dairy-style note taking its really painless.

<comment><USER27> Thanks. It occurred to me after hitting the "add comment" button, too. Still:

\- does not work all that great for some languages

\- does not work offline (or… maybe it does now? it didn't when i've tried it on android a while ago)

\- not appropriate everywhere (eg. public transport)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It looks really great and I find it to be very fresh, but my main concern is... what happened the the real offline alternatives?

Except for the way in which you write and access JournalBook, how is it different from a real journal that we can carry everywhere?

<comment><USER30> > real offline alternatives

How about [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/) ?

<comment><USER31> I thought the parent comment was referring to real offline journals made of treeware.

<comment><USER29> Exactly. It's not that I don't see value in online alternatives, but in this case, if the main point is to access it offline, I don't see how different it is from a physical journal.

<comment><USER30> Why use digital formats offline:

      - editing and reordering text
      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - accessibility
      - hassle/weight optimisation

Aesthetics includes theming, and also not everyone has good handwriting.

Accessibility, because not everyone is able to hand-write in the first place.

Weight optimisation, because if a laptop is non-negotiable, going digital means one less thing to remember about and carry with you.

I have multiple physical notebooks/calendars and a digital commonplace book, they all have their place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been using Joplin and been really happy with it for my purposes so far

[https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/](https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Using text files as an offline solution works pretty well too.

</comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 This has similarities to a Blazor (C# via Web Assembly) app I've been playing with recently, mainly offline only storage and import/export functionality. It works well but we're all so used to cloud syncing that it takes some getting used to when things aren't magically available on all our devices. [https://do.lord.technology/](https://do.lord.technology/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Really nice! Please get rid of the fade in fade out animation every time I click something. That time adds up, time I could be writing in my journal ;D

</comment><comment><USER35> This is dead simple and flexible, I love it! I thought maybe I could use it to do a self-initiated daily 'stand-up' for personal goals. Right now, you use explicit URLs for each day, is there anyway you could make this static for bookmarking the current day's questions? I'd like to make it my default page for new tabs, such that I don't forget to write.

</comment><comment><USER36> I realized I could never be sure about this kind of stuff, so I made my own. Took me about 5 hours to write a wpf app, it's very crude, but it even flips pages like a book, looks like a book and stores the content encrypted with a huge password which if I ever forget means the entries are lost until someone can bruteforce it.

Gives me much joy and I add features to it from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER37> Markdown files + Sublime MarkdownEditing plugin

<comment> c-smile Or my html-notepad ([https://html-notepad.com](https://html-notepad.com)) if you prefer to use better WYSIWYG. Markdown is "a poor man WYSIWIG" anyway.

Especially if you need tables there or paste images from clipboard.

Or just use [https://notes.sciter.com](https://notes.sciter.com) application. It stores document tree (db) locally: [https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/notes/res/...](https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/notes/res/db/initial.tis#L25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nice, am trying now. I am on IE 11 on my desktop (corporate environment, not my choice) and it just displays a blank screen.

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there something "bad" about journaling in a text editor and syncing that to dropbox?

<comment><USER40> For a long time my whole life was in a textfile called 'phone numbers.txt'. It had started as a list of phone numbers of my friends (I didn't have a cell phone myself; dumb phones existed but I didn't want one) and grew into a huge repository of information.

For a while now I've been using pieces of paper which I file in numerus currens style and keep inside shoeboxes. Many tend to be thicker "fiche de la police"-type cardboard so the whole thing stays up even if there are also many loose folded-in-half A4 sheets. OTOH I've almost lost notes in the laundry and still rescued them with the hair dryer.

It's also hard to represent equations and diagrams in most note-takers. Interfaces, as the etymology suggests, really get in your way! The one drawback is to find oneself occasionally without paper. But again in a pinch even business cards and receipts (you can photocopy the termal paper at home later) are possible hacks.

(Numerus currens is like paper nosql: when you file a new note, first you quickly browse through your archives for similar topics, otherwise you number it max_N+1. If there's something similar with number 110, you might number 110/A, 110/B, 110/C; if something that belongs with 110/B comes, it's filed as 110/B/1... but you can never shake the whole thing out and lose the order, so I wouldn't recommend this system to people with large dogs or small children.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is great, but I'd be worried about easily losing all of my journals by simply clearning my browser history and wiping everything unknowingly. Any plans to wrap this as an Electron app or something that could be installed on the desktop?

<comment><USER42> There is import and export in settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What's the benefit over plain text files? Is it just the prompted questions?

</comment><comment><USER44> One thing about this browser storage.. How do you migrate if/when you change computer? Is the procedure browser-dependent? I always saw those storages as a bit more troublesome than a flat CSV or something.

<comment><USER45> You could just run it in a container with a bind mount for the database path to a file path that's kept in sync with SyncThing or other alternatives.

<comment><USER46> "just"

<comment><USER45> I'm curious what about running a container like this is hard as you've implied? Take for example all the great work Jessie Frazelle has done containerizing her desktop and apps ([https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles](https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles)). Or the folks behind LinuxServer.IO. If you already have a container runtime on your system running this, as suggested, is a one-liner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Really, no mention of NVAlt or Notational Velocity? Usually that comes up on these threads. I will probably use NVAlt until it doesn't work anymore, then endeavor to craft a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there some kind of sync mechanism? I couldn't see anything about account creation. You say "offline first". Is it not "offline only"?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no sync (at this point) and no account creation by design. It's all stored in your browser - I suppose in that regard it is not 'online'!

Sync may well be coming, but I'm not yet certain how to do it securely. That being said, import & export is available now, so it can be manually sync'd.

<comment><USER49> Client side encryption with a passphrase derived key and synchronization to Google Drive? That would work great for me.

<comment><USER50> it would be easiest yes to use something avalablee to people for free where good encryption things are present. but i suppose a lot of the world is waking up to the fact these things aren't so nice really, and offline storage for personal things is better.

it would be cool to have some export or import button to save everything into some kind of archive, then you can move it between offline machines and import it into the browser to use it there.

<comment><AUTHOR> import & export are already there on the settings page :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> +1 for syncing support between mobile/laptop. This is a must to have ability to write quick notes on mobile and prose on laptop.

</comment><comment><USER52> Looks quite smooth and has a gentle feel, I like the design.

How can you add it to your home screen? There is no link nor explanation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! As far as I'm aware, you can't manually trigger the 'add to homescreen' prompt as it's a system-level interaction. Android Chrome & Firefox should trigger it, but if not it's under the default browser settings dropdown on Android, and under 'share' (I think) for IOS.

<comment><USER53> It's possible now! [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app- install-b...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install- banners/#trigger)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh sweet! That would be great on the settings page :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Haven't used the app yet but the "Facebook"ish theme and illustration-style on the first page made me recoil reflexively. Maybe because privacy is a big concern when it comes to journals and we have come to associate that colorscheme with distrust and privacy breaches lately. I think tweaking the colors and illustration style might help.

<comment><USER53> It has a dark mode with different colors. Let's not villify blue in general though :P

<comment><USER54> I agree. It was involuntary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This app would be a good candidate to integrate a E2EE framework.

Disclaimer: I'm building one based on a API/SDK architecture. [https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk- js](https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk-js)

</comment><comment><USER56> So why it's web based?

<comment><USER57> How about because it directly works on all platforms, mobile + desktop?

Also it looks like it's the platform the author was most proficient in, which is always a good reason when choosing your stack.

<comment><USER58> An RTF document would be more portable, surely?

<comment><USER57> Definitely, only with less functionality and not as pretty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> this does not work in firefox .... really works only in chrome

<comment><USER60> Worked in FF no problem for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> does this not work in Firefox ? really ?

</comment><comment><USER61> I might sound like a crotchety old man but I'm kind of tired of these JS and local storage browser apps. The tech is still just as clunky as if I were using a text file on my computer except you now require a browser to use it and run the risk of clearing your local storage or somehow corrupting it and losing everything, whereas local files a lot easier to keep track of and backup. At least that was my experience with laverna which this reminds me of.

Trying to emulate an offline app via a browser seems flimsy to me.</comment>


Aus company investing in 10 Web Startups this year - <AUTHOR> http://www.pollenizer.com/pollenizer-investing-in-web-startups/

<comment><USER2> Some very good tech companies are coming out of Australia these days. Watch this space for more good news.</comment>


Harvard's freshman class is more than one-third legacy - why that's a problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html <comment><USER2> People don't seem to get: the world isn't anywhere close to this lie of meritocracy they've been sold. There's a small fraction of society with the right pedigree who don't have to work hard and have everything handed to them because of who their parents are. This fraction is the predominant constituent of Ivy League universities, whereas merit students who worked hard are a tiny minority.

<comment><USER3> Who is handing it to them, and where do they get it from?

<comment><USER4> Basically from their parents and their parent's friends. It's kind of funny because I can see the OP's point: on the one hand people are sold this idea of a meritocracy. If you think about "the American dream", anyone no matter what their background can "make it" through hard work. But there is an unspoken implication there: that you can "make it". What happens after you "make it"? Presumably you're on easy street. You don't have to work hard any more. Your family is taken care of. They don't have to work hard any more.

I tend to think of the "American dream" more like a class lottery. Sort of like the movie Ratatouille, it's not that _anyone_ can be in the upper class, but people from the upper class may have come from anywhere. I think of people like basketball players who come out of poverty. Their mother used to clean toilets 14 hours a day and now that her son is a famous basketball player she can spend her days relaxing in a big house and she never has to clean toilets again.

But the OP is correct. No matter _how_ people made it to the upper class, once they are there their family has an advantage. Even if you start with a totally fair meritocracy where people get their just rewards, because they want to provide for their children (and their children's children) you end up with a class of "old money" who own and control most things of importance.

I'm not sure there is a way around it other than massive inheritance taxes and high inflation, which are historically not super popular ;-)

<comment><USER3> By that description, we can draw a line around the people born in regular old middle class households, and another line around the wealthy, and imagine them trading with one another, much like poor countries in the mid to late 20th century, that are now wealthy. This should demonstrate there is nothing holding back the rest of this country's population from getting wealthy too, while some rich kids inherit from their parents, or go to some rich-kids- only-(except-not-exactly) university.

A different situation is if some wealthy people engineer things so as to effect transfer payments from the middle/poor classes (or just everybody in general) to themselves. I.e., rent-seeking, which obviously exists. While I don't like legacy admissions, afaict it's not rent-seeking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a purely cynical point of view - how else do you expect to keep the spigot of alumni cash flowing if alumni kids are not going to be able to attend?

</comment><comment><USER6> Articles like this drive me nuts. There is a world of people that do have a large amount of liquid capital. However, it's a ridiculous claim to make that 1/3 of the people are some how more privileged than you in society and that's why they go there. The truth is that Harvard, Yale, Cambridge...etc are REALLY good at fostering loyalty and a sense of legacy. Very rarely is there a sense of legacy at "state university of X". Harvard simply is good at promoting legacy, while 2/3 of their student population are not legacy.

<comment><USER7> It is well-documented that these school give admission preferences to 'legacy' applicants, and that's why there's a high proportion of such students, and the OP cites and links to some of this documentation. It is not a case, as you seem to be suggesting, that children of alumni are simply more likely to _want_ to go to them. The desire to attend elite schools is obviously quite widespread, as having a degree from such is seen, not without cause, as granting you access to all sorts of opportunities.

Also, where I'm from it is not at all uncommon for multiple generations of family to have gone to the University of Michigan or Michigan State (both of which are fine schools, one is more prestigious than the other). For whatever reasons. The desire (or parental pressure) to go to a school your parents went to, when your parents went to university, is in fact not limited to Ivies and elite schools. While most public universities don't seem to give 'legacy' preferences... the U of Michigan in fact does. It is also an especially prestigious public university.

<comment><USER6> Having grown up in East Lansing, having family that have graduated from Michigan State, and currently work there, they do prioritize legacy. It's even asks on the admissions form. This is a country and world of competition. This includes students but also thriving schools. The best way to create a successful business is loyalty, which bring value to your asset. Ivy League schools would not be what they are today (Ivy League) without legacy. Sorry, but you can't have both capitalism and socialism.

<comment><USER7> Prioritizing "legacy" admissions and making it easier to get admitted if you are "legacy" is quite a different thing than what I thought you were originally suggesting, that schools have a disproportionate number of "legacy" students because they are "simply good at promoting legacy."

It's because they make it _easier to get in_ if you are legacy. You can consider that a method of "promotion", but it's not that they "simply go there" because they disproportionately _desire_ to, it's that the schools preferentially admit them.

You can think this is fine, but in fact it makes most people kinda mad, especially in the case of elite schools, because they know how valuable a degree from an elite school is as a credential, and prioritizing the children of people who already have such a credential to get it seems unfair. You can think it's appropriate, but it's dishonest to imply it's not happening.

I do like your implied admission that we should not expect "meritocracy" from capitalism. Let's start being clear about that, agreed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A cryptocurrency news scraper inspired by Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://cryptonewsagency.com/ <comment><USER2> If you model your site after Hacker News, people are going to try to use it like Hacker News, and the expected behavior of your site is incredibly not- hacker-news-like.

1\. I click on a story expecting for it to take me to the site, but nothing happens. After feeling confused, I realize it actually added some text content after the story. What? It was only after looking in the comments here that I realized I had to click the link in parentheses (which on Hacker News shows you submissions from that website, not links you to the content)

2\. I see a lot of "points", so I try to understand how things are upvoted - is it accounts? No, no accounts for your site. Is it based on the links popularity (eg trending tweets, hot news, hot reddit stories, etc)? No, there are some stories with hundreds of points, but linking to a reddit post with 2 upvotes. It's only then do I realize by clicking on the title, or the link, I'm "up-voting" it, even though it might not be good content (and in fact, each time I click it adds a point).

3\. I search for the ability to comment, but realize that's not there, but again since it looks like Hacker News I think there's comments and go to click on something that doesn't exist.

In general, I think your site could be really useful, and there's a lot of cool stuff you did, but I'd either change your design so people don't treat your site (interaction wise) like the site your referencing, or try to at least link up expected behavior in a more consistent way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments. This is very much an early prototype and I appreciate your comments. I will be looking to add the ability to comment next. Regarding adding text at the bottom I thought it might be easier for people to read a glimpse of text before deciding to open the link, I've found this useful in my own browsing. The actual link has a 5 second redirect because I am using the free tier currently for webhose.io api (a great news scraping provider). if I get enough traction I may look at getting a paid account, but this is very much a side project

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't middleclick links. Unusable for me.

Also, please don't attach /?sort=new (or remove it) to reddit threads. It overrides the user's sorting.

<comment><USER4> HN works great without js. This site I can't even click the links?

<comment><USER5> Inspired by HN without all the thinks that makes HN great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the reasons I love Hacker News is because of the high quality of content and discussion. Looking like HN is nice but the fact that your top post includes a nice little "(((bankers)))" remark from /u/BigNuts881 was a rough reminder that this isn't to be a much better than just looking through the results of a broad Twitter search.

<comment><USER7> That _is_ a good part of Hacker News, but I'd suspect if it's like any other community site maybe 10% of people bother reading comments and 1% bother to make them. There's plenty of room catering for the 90% who just want the links Drudge-style, and kicking off a community that actually has discussions is super hard work.

<comment><USER8> that's funny because I read the comments on far more posts that I actually follow the links to.

<comment><USER9> Me too. I thought most people on HN came here for the discussion -- even if that means primarily reading comments and not necessarily speaking up.

<comment><USER10> I spent about an hour yesterday learning all of these amazing insights about the solar energy industry, thanks to Hacker News comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not crypto news, but _cryptocurrency_ news.

<comment><USER12> In a world where 'literally' can be defined as 'figuratively', I'm not sure why we bother splitting hairs on terminology... what is accepted is what is accepted.

<comment><USER8> I don't accept crypto to mean cryptocurrency.

It's like saying butter when you mean butterscotch. Doesn't mean the same thing and shouldn't.

<comment><USER12> 99% of the population would have never uttered the word "cryptography" before "cryptocurrencies" started to catch on.

In either case, crypto is an abbreviation.

<comment><USER13> This is being shown on HN, not Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Side note, I find the font very hard to read. The letters are too thin and grey. Removing the "font-weight: 300;" style from the body makes it infinitely more readable.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why does a 0-points, downvoted Reddit thread with an (((echo))) have 640 points on this scraper?

<comment><USER16> I think the vote count is obviously manipulated. Stay away from this site.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built this using the webhose api to scrape and filter for cryptocurrency related topics from reputable news sources and trending forum posts. I'm a terrible designer so I eyeballed the hacker news layout and finger painted some CSS over it. Hope people find it interesting :P

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've now added the ability to comment and am fine tuning replies :) thanks again for all the great feedback.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gah. Crypto news? More like cryptocurrency. Wait. No. More like news for cryptocurrency traders.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats on shipping!

What's the tech stack you used? I see from your comments buried at the bottom that you are not a designer, so will give you a pass on the usability issues that others are whining about.

Would suggest you buy a HTML template off of wrapbootstrap or themeforest and customize it. If you can't do that, hire someone from upwork to do the customization for you.

PM if you wanna chat more. Email in profile.

</comment><comment><USER19> What is all the metamask code for?

</comment><comment><USER20> 3 suggestions.

\- when I click on the link to go to the side, I'd much rather prefer it to open as a new page because it allows for quicker loading when you hit the back button, which would then close that page and bring you back to your site without needing it to reload.

\- when visiting a link and then going back, I need to tap it twice. Just tapping once brings me to the redirect and then it just goes to the link again. This doesn't need time be fixed if the link is opened in a New tab though

\- the tickers up top should give priority to a watchlist we could build and store in local storage so sign up isn't needed. Should be pretty trivial to implement

</comment><comment><USER21> I would visit this daily if the content quality were better. Maybe start with scraping, then let people post themselves, and gradually move towards no scraping.

I like the ticker. Saves me from needing to check elsewhere.

<comment><USER22> Yes, the ticker is great! I would love a chrome extension that could attach a ticker like this to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I've simply used the coinmarketcap API to get the currency feeds, super straight forward. It fetches from the client side. Anyone can use it here [https://coinmarketcap.com/api/](https://coinmarketcap.com/api/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shit-show Good stuff, I highly recommend applying as a researcher to the top leading forecast reporting firm called cryptonaire.com. They have many clients that are large investment groups that will be using their research when the full app release is out. It would be nice to have more researchers that love crypto rather then investment. Give it a try, they are the first research firm in the industry.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Once again I'd appreciate any great 101 resources people have found explaining blockchain, cryptocurrencies and other related topics. I will look at adding more content to the 101 page. I know very little about the topic and just chose this as a random topic for news scraping. I am very much learning :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you everyone for the great feedback. Please feel free to share any helpful links that explain blockchain, cryptocurrencies, ICOs etc. and I will post on the 101 resource page. I am very new to this and only a curious observer of the cryptocurrency wave

</comment><comment><USER23> Not sure how this one got in there at number 33: "Iranian woman reported missing after waving headscarf in public without wearing a hijab". Possibly a spam comment about cryptos got parsed.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd like to see a sentiment for each article as well. If you add that, then add a green/red indicator on the price chart as well for when the news came out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, I actually had this before. I was feeding the articles into google's natural language processing API to get a sentiment index from -1 to 1 (-1 negative, 0 neutral +1 positive). The issue I was having that it wasn't really that accurate. Google NPL has trouble analysing contextual news articles. e.g. if a headline says "Bubble in cryptocurrency markets", it doesn't recognise that bubble is negative in news contexts. I have been looking for some different NPL libraries that might be better including AWS Rekognition. I'm not a data scientist so don't think I'll do very well building my own machine learning algorithm. Any suggestions of good libraries people have used for news sentiment would be greatly appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Overall the site looks nice and functions well.

The ticker a the top is hard to use as I could not see that you could scroll.

I like the concept of the 101 section, could use some more info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thanks for the feedback. I'll feed some more content for the 101s :) id appreciate any interesting posts or links anyone recommends explaining crypto currency and block chain in plan English

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any plans to add a comment system? Edit: I'm excited by the idea of a crypto focused HN-ish site, I'd love if there was a comment system :)

<comment><USER27> I thought that was Reddit is for. The /r/Cryptocurrency subreddit exactly serves this purpose.

<comment><USER28> /r/Cryptocurrency is literally all price-talk and shilling -- very few posts of self-reflection or technicals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be really great to be able to login 1) save stuff and 2) discuss articles. It doesn't even need to be threaded or have voting at first.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just added the ability to save interesting posts. You will see a button that says "favorite" under each post. You will be prompted to sign up and then it will save it your account to access at a later stage. Next up comments and discussions :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the ticker, and I like it overall. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER31> Unless I'm reading the cryptocurrency market table incorrectly, the market cap row appears to be a horizontal scroll bar.

</comment><comment><USER32> Would you mind adding sentiment analysis to this?

Ex:

bitcoin: negative; ethereum: neutral; bitcoin cash: very positive

I would love you forever.

</comment><comment><USER33> Lose the tickers. Add discussions.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't open the links for the original posts, is this happening with you all as well?

<comment><USER3> You have to click the domain (reddit.com for example) for it to open, which is of course unintuitive

<comment><USER34> Thanks. It is indeed not very intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can you say more about how you built this? How you did the scraping, etc. ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For scraping I've used the webhose api (I am still on the free account hence when u click on the link it has a 5 second redirect). I've found it is an excellent resource and easy to use API, I highly recommend it [http://webhose.io/](http://webhose.io/)

For the tech stack its just node.js and express on the backend and vanilla JS on the front end using webpack for bundling. I built this project really as a means to teach myself to write unit tests better and mock integration tests. In the first iterations I fed the news articles after they were scraped into Google's Natural Language Processing library to get the sentiment of the article. I scrapped this after it became too inaccurate.

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU Horizontal scroll bar on the ticker covers the Mktcap row.

</comment><comment><USER36> Plenty of cryptocurrency chatter on HN these days anyway.

</comment><comment><USER37> would be nice to add some kind of json feed.

maybe add some kind of account login to get the feed.

some kind of database to collect all this would be neat for some kind of price predictor

</comment><comment><USER38> I am not able to click any story :(

</comment><comment><USER39> Will you open the API like HackerNews ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I may, in the meantime you can access it via my backend service. It's a mongodb store [https://cryptoserver.now.sh/threads](https://cryptoserver.now.sh/threads)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Any plans on making the inverse?

</comment><comment><USER41> That is not what "crypto" means.

<comment><USER42> It doesn't mean cryptography either, it just means hidden.

<comment><USER41> Hah, fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> might add twitter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, I'll put that on the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is A _cryptocurrency_ news scraper inspired by Hacker News.

Reading the HN title, and looking at the site name listed on HN, I had expected there to be information relating to cryptography, which there is not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion I've gotten used to referring to cryptocurrency as crypto as shorthand</comment></comment>


Eight Years of Wrongness - <AUTHOR> http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/2008/06/eight-years-of-wrongness.html <comment><USER2> I generally hate microsoft-bashing (though a Linux user, I find it a waste of time), but this is actually insightful rather than just a "MICROSOFT SUXXORS" piece

<comment><AUTHOR> I would describe this piece as criticizing Microsoft's management rather than criticizing Microsoft. The difference may seem subtle to people who dislike Microsoft, but while criticizing Microsoft usually means criticizing what they are trying to do (bully people, monetize other people's R&D, monopolize markets), this author is criticizing their ineffectiveness in doing it.

And he does a really good job of drilling down into detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> oh man, i _love_ this. microsoft is weaker than it's ever been, and it's only going to get worse. _better_ , i mean!

i was working at be when the company went out of business, largely due to microsoft's monopolistic practices. what was left of be even won a small settlement from microsoft on just those grounds.

i wonder if this development means it's almost time for a new round of amigas, ataris, and yes, be's. that was an exciting time to be in the high-tech field, i'd love for those days to return.

</comment><comment><USER4> This rant has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the company. It is a complaint about the under-performing stock. While I am a believer in the free market, I hardly think that the stock price is the be-all indicator. Let's face it, the stock price is a measure of the speculation of a company. As fashionable as it is to bash Microsoft, it's hard for MSFT to build speculative value. There's nothing that MSFT, with Ballmer or anyone else, can do to bring the wow-factor in this climate.

With MSFT bashing the "in" thing, the personal vendettas of the likes of Neelie Kroes (<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/technology/11soft.html>), MSFT faces a futile battle if they want to raise the stock price. I applaud MSFT and Ballmer for not giving into Wall St. and foolishly trying to boost the stock price at all costs. I think MSFT is extremely well positioned to be an industry leader.

The other problem is that MSFT has become so diversified, that speculation is difficult since the success of any particular business unit gets diluted on the bottom line. In addition, no one seems to care or pick up on a lot of really great Microsoft successes. For instance, Microsoft's Health Vault (<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/business/10kaiser.html>). You can bet that if Apple came out with a program like that, the stock price would shoot up 20% overnight.

In summary, I think MSFT is still a great company that is well positioned and I am happy to have Ballmer at the top. He is a great businessman that understands how the company operates. He certainly doesn't have the charisma and cult-following of Steve Jobs, but I don't think MSFT needs that to do well.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I applaud MSFT and Ballmer for not giving into Wall St. and foolishly trying to boost the stock price at all costs. I think MSFT is extremely well positioned to be an industry leader."

Hello Mr. Investor? We want your money. What's that? No, you don't get any returns, we're going to become an _Industry Leader_.

Seriously, if they don't want to actually make money for their investors, they ought to go private. They need to buy _all_ of the stock back from the public markets and then they can do whatever they want.

If they want to sink billions into XBox just so they can thump their chest about having a successful platform, as a private company they can do that.

If they want to release products like Zune just so they can thump their chest about being the hub of the digital media lifestyle, as a private company they can do that.</comment></comment>


Experimental blood test detects cancer up to four years before symptoms appear - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experimental-blood-test-detects-cancer-up-to-four-years-before-symptoms-appear/ <comment><USER2> The real false positive rate is much higher than the 5% reported.

The false positive rate reported is ~5% in a sample with an equal number of people that did and did not develop cancer, while the ratio in reality is 1/122 (i.e., 1000 people developed cancer, 122000 did not).

Could still be a useful development, but it does make me wonder about the cost/benefits at this stage.

<comment><USER3> Eventually, this is all about cost. cfDNA assays are targetted to in the end cost less than 100 bucks per sample which for the detection of a single cancer puts you in the range of $12000 for one tumor diagnosis. Ideally, you can now decrease the therapy cost of that one diagnosis while also boosting survival chances. And $12000 is not much in tumor therapy.

The key however here is the advanced prognosis that may allow totally different therapeutic approaches, extend the understanding risk factors etc. and the fact that you do not need to have a specialist on side, taking a blood sample can in principle be done at home and the rest is automatic.

Edit: Oh, and 5% false positives is not that bad actually, I do not have numbers is my head but would expect other essays like breast cancer screening to be also in that range.

<comment><USER4> 5% false positives on people who have some symptoms of cancer isn't bad. But 5% of a 'high risk group' could be a lot - particularly if the cancer is too early to confirm detection any other way yet and possibly not treatable for several years.

<comment><USER5> But in this example - stomach cancer - you could just skip the test and do a routine endoscopy and get some tissue samples. You'd have a much higher confidence in the result.

Reminds me a bit of the PSA test for prostate cancer. More of an early warning, but with the weak predictability, doctors are moving away from routine PSA tests.

<comment><USER6> If option A is regular blood tests with an endoscopy to confirm should the blood test come back positive and option B is getting endoscopies on a regular basis, option A is a no brainer. While it might not be super invasive, I'd definitely like to keep the number of times a tube has to be shoved down my throat to a minimum.

<comment><USER5> But if the false positive rate is high, just skip the test and do the endoscopy.

<comment><USER6> No, the false positive rate is irrelevant. Let's say you want to check for cancer annually and the blood test has a 50% false positive rate:

If you only get endoscopies after positive results, you get an endoscopy every other year. If you skip the test and go straight to the endoscopy, you get one every year. Thus you get half as many tubes shoved down your throat if you get the blood test.

For a more reasonable false positive rate like 5%, you would have a 50/50 chance of getting a false positive any given decade. I'd much rather get 4 endoscopies than 40.

Indeed, for any false positive rate less than 100% (which isn't really a test to begin with) still on average decreases the number of endoscopies you need.

Really the metric that's important is the false negatives: if that's too high then I can't safely forego the endoscopy just because this year's blood test was negative. Even then though, if the blood test has a long lead time then maybe it's safe to wait and see how next year's blood test goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good econ talk on why this kind of thing (improving cancer diagnostics) is by far the most promising "cure for cancer".

[http://www.econtalk.org/azra-raza-on-the-first- cell/](http://www.econtalk.org/azra-raza-on-the-first-cell/)

I hope we have many more tests like this that can be done frequently and add to the arsenal. Great work to these researchers.

<comment><USER8> Azra Raza was also on the Mindscape podcast, really realy good interview.

[https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/12/16/77-a...](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/12/16/77-azra- raza-on-the-way-we-should-fight-cancer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes me think of an article I read about prostate cancer detection. Apparently, it is possible to detect the possibility of prostate cancer many, many years before it is going to develop with a more sensitive, modern test. Once the detection is made both patient and doctor are not in a position to ignore it. At the same time treatment may well be premature or not recommended. But the doctor is left with a dilemma because it may appear they did not take action on something they knew.

That at least was the general topic of the article. The question it raises is interesting: is it sometimes too early to know.

<comment><USER10> > Apparently, it is possible to detect the possibility of prostate cancer > many, many years before it is going to develop with a more sensitive, modern > test. Once the detection is made both patient and doctor are not in a > position to ignore it.

I'll tell you a story from when my mother was in medical school.

There was a class one day in which the students were given a pile of slides of prostate samples and told to identify the cancerous one. Many, many questions ensued, of the form "This looks kind of cancerous. Is this the slide?"

Eventually the professor announced to the class "look, there's a bit of cancer in everyone's prostate. The goal here is to find the slide with OBVIOUS cancer."

And this is, to the best of my knowledge, still the state of things in prostate cancer today. All prostates are cancerous. A man who lived long enough would eventually be killed by prostate cancer -- a cancer detectable long, long before he actually died. But most men die of other things, because prostate cancer develops so slowly.

Ignoring prostate cancer is in fact a common way to handle it, if the patient is old enough or the cancer is small enough when detected. The technical term for this is "watchful waiting".

<comment><USER11> I've heard it phrased by a doctor as "Almost every man dies WITH prostate cancer. Almost no man dies FROM prostate cancer."

<comment><USER12> Anecdotal but both of my grandfathers died from it, one at age 52.

<comment><USER13> 10 year survival rate of prostate cancer is 98%.

[https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/prostate- cancer/statisti...](https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/prostate- cancer/statistics#:~:text=The) 5-year survival rate for most men with local,prostate cancer combined is 98%25.

<comment><USER14> Note: That's if it's detected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If false positive rate is 5%, and 1000 of 123,000 were diagnosed with cancer over 10 years, this test would produce 6,100 false positives, and 1,000 true positives.

Six out of seven positive tests would be false positives.

<comment><USER16> Would having 6000 false positives be okay for being able to find the 1000 true positives?

Would further testing be able to show whether or not there is actually cancer?

Maybe they will be able to improve the accuracy of the test enough where the false positive rate of the test is <<5%...

<comment><USER17> > Would having 6000 false positives be okay for being able to find the 1000 > true positives?

I'd say no. That's 5000 people who are told they might have cancer while in fact they don't and who will then undergo further testing that is at best traumatic and at worst extremely invasive if not outright damaging.

Take intestinal cancer, for example. You can get screened for that and if you screen positive, they will take a biopsy - a fairly unpleasant and not entirely risk free procedure. Then it gets worse. If the biopsy shows some part of your intestines isn't quite in order (a likely outcome, though not necessarily one that indicates cancer) they will take out that bit of intestine, just to be safe. This is a very invasive procedure and because it's your intestines we're talking about, you digestive system will be seriously out of whack for a while - if it ever heals completely - seriously and significantly degrading your quality of life. All this for a, let's use your figures, 1 in 6 chance that you might have had cancer.

<comment><USER18> You're leaving out all choices in your decision pipeline.

If you screen positive, you can elect to have a biopsy or scan.

If your results come back inconclusive, you can elect to pursue surgical (or other) intervention.

That's what medicine is: a selection from among potential procedures, given the information at hand, informed by previous outcomes in similar or applicable situations.

In this case, we simply have more information. If said information turns out to have limited predictive power on the ultimate occurance of cancer, that will be incorporated into detection and treatment practices.

But the important thing is having _more_ information than we had before.

<comment><USER19> If the patient were a robot, this would make sense. But people are easily scared, especially by the word "cancer," and fright can lead to bad decisions. And this is a decision that's made by individuals, including the doctors, who just want to take the "safe" option.

For example, the United States Preventative Services Task Force, which effectively decides the preventative procedures covered by Medicare and Medicaid, recommended against routine prostate specific antigen testing for prostate cancer in 2012. They backed that up with data on mortality and unnecessary procedures. Prostate doctors around the country flipped out. The doctors are focused on helping their individual patients. That's good, but it keeps them from seeing the overall harm to the entire population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Original paper [1]:

> Here we report the preliminary results of PanSeer, a noninvasive blood test > based on circulating tumor DNA methylation...

I'm very surprised that parts of the methylome, the per-cell state-machine that controls what genes are transcribed, have sufficient serum concentration to be detected. I suspect that this approach should work for any diseased cell targeted by the immune system as long as the disease results in a small but unique methylation signature.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17316-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17316-z)

<comment><USER3> With most of these (cell free DNA) assays, its not a single site that you are measuring but a statistical aggregate about profiles that have been defined for a certain cell type. If you know the overall profile of prostate cells and the profile of normal blood, you can subtract the expected profile from a patient sample and the analyse the left-over fraction for whether it is just noise or is matching to one or multiple known cell types.

The surprise from this publication is only that they detect such signatures 4 years earlier than other non-invasive testing. (although nobody in the cfDNA field would be surprised about that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Guess it's time to share this again. "Cancer screening has never been shown to save lives" \- Oncologist Vinay Prasad. Detection is not the problem. It's what to do once you find it. Iatrogenic harms are real.

[https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080](https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.h6080)

With better testing, we might be able to save some people, but we might also be subjecting a great deal more people to harms through unnecessary treatment and psychological trauma.

<comment><USER22> You can't design interventions for problems that you cannot see. Detection alone doesn't save lives, but it is a necessary step to the discovery of interventions that do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We call it the "Do I qualify for health insurance?" test.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you care _even the smallest amount_ about your own, personal, cancer risk you should immediately cut your feeding window to 8 (or even 6) hours per day and start walking a few miles, daily.

I did not mention "fasting" or "diet" or "weight loss".

Just condense your caloric input into a tighter window and walk _more than zero_ miles per day.

It's silly to pursue fine grained, specific optimizations when the _juiciest, lowest hanging fruit_ is stubbornly, inexplicably, left unpicked.

<comment><USER25> Source? There's so much information about nutrition online that one should not just trust the first comment found on a forum.

Edit: I'm referring to the "feeding window"

<comment><USER26> I think the common term is "intermittent fasting" (despite the protest about the word "fasting"), which covers a range of strategies—"time-restricted feeding" is the type where the fasting period is less than a day. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting#Types](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting#Types)

There is at least some research supporting the claim that time-restricted feeding inhibits the growth of cancer in humans: "In repeated-measures Cox proportional hazards regression models, fasting less than 13 hours per night (lower 2 tertiles of nightly fasting distribution) was associated with an increase in the risk of breast cancer recurrence compared with fasting 13 or more hours per night (hazard ratio, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.05-1.76)." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982776/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4982776/)

There have also been studies in mice: "Results and Conclusion: TRF had a dramatic effect, reducing tumor growth in obese mice fed a high fat diet (HFD) to levels seen in lean mice. Tumor growth and initiation was also delayed in the transgenic PyMT model of mammary tumorigenesis. Our results further suggest that the antitumor effect of TRF is at least partially mediated by reducing hyperinsulinemia, suggesting that this intervention may be effective in breast cancer prevention and therapy." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6552025/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6552025/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems really cool, but how many cancers progress from something minor to something life threatening? Some of the treatments can be pretty invasive/lot's of side effects. I wonder how much cancer the body can deal with on it's own and never progresses?

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting, especially considering pancreatic cancer. That one can be treated if caught early on, but it hardly ever is, making it incredibly lethal, even for a cancer to be.

</comment><comment><USER29> To be clear here: these are only circulating cancers. Cancers that break through mesenchymal barriers or can affect the blood are not very common. It's great, amazing even, if you can catch them. But many cancers will never show up in the blood. Still, great work!

</comment><comment><USER30> Call me silly, but, methylation is a hallmark of aging as well. So all cancer patients would show methylation, but all methylation will not indicate cancer. If that were the case, cancer would be the only cause of natual death.

<comment><USER31> That's not what the test is doing. They are looking at methylation in specific places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cures and vaccines would be great but I feel like we are missing an opportunity with improved testing not just for cancer but also for infectious diseases. Imagine a toilet that can detect a UTI/STI or parasite or a monitor in my room that can detect airborne viral particles which might tell me I have a cold, flu or COVID before I even know about it. Then I know to treat and isolate before spreading it to others.

If we had cheap, instant, accurate tests for infectious diseases then I'd imagine we could begin eradicating some of them.

</comment><comment><USER33> Breakthrough medicinal research is great, but we should always remember that even most promising results - see the COVID vaccines/treatments we've been hearing about over the past few months - end up not viable at the late stages.

So, cautious optimism, not great hope and sensationalism, is the right attitude to take here.

<comment><USER34>
      "We are still a ways away from having an accurate blood-based 'pan-cancer' screening test.
      But it is not impossible to achieve," Pritchard says.

I think the article itself got you covered there.</comment></comment>


From 0 to Skype in 9 Months - <AUTHOR> http://bloggeek.me/skype-in-9-months/

<comment><USER2> Their voicemails seem to be public...

Just pick a key from [https://twelephone- voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com](https://twelephone-voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com)

and voila!

[https://twelephone- voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com/1rajmadugulaed...](https://twelephone- voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com/1rajmadugulaedwardallison12013-04-23T17:06:49Z.wav)

<comment><AUTHOR> You would need to know the exact millisecond of the timestamp and usernames to access it. Our plans are to allow sharing of video/voice messages publicly if the user chooses. Feedback welcome...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Salting the key should make this better.

<comment><USER2> And restrict access to this page (which lists all the keys, salted or otherwise)... [https://twelephone- voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com/](https://twelephone-voicemail.s3.amazonaws.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't yet officially released voice messaging but the feature stuck into this release. We'll correct the access on our next update (prior to it being announced). Thanks everyone.

<comment><USER3> This is a issue where you pull the plug right now, fix the issue and tell your users about. Otherwise your company just dug its own grave publicity-wise. Privacy is the foremost important issue if you handle people's communication.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on the update now...

<comment><USER4> 17 hrs since that was reported and the directory is still public.... You should probably work faster, at this time it is safe to assume that all voicemails have been downloaded...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested in the Twitter permissions required.

* Read Tweets from your timeline. * See who you follow, and follow new people. * Update your profile. * Post Tweets for you.

Does Twelephone only require posting tweets and following new people for completing positive actions by the user or is this like FB apps that spam your feed? Could those permissions be added as needed; I'm assuming that you don't need to follow new users or tweet anything for me to direct connect a Twelephone session with a current friend??

It seems incongruous you tout privacy features as a bonus ([http://twelephone.com/#learnmore](http://twelephone.com/#learnmore)) but that to use the service Twelephone gets access to everything one does on twitter.

Perhaps these are just standard permissions that twitter hands out with user authorisation?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that these are standard Twitter permissions. Twelephone only needs tweet permissions. We're not using any other Twitter APIs (other than OAuth).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Phono seems to support any browser, why does this only support Chrome and Firefox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only Chrome and FireFox support WebRTC video. We are working on adding Phono voice support for Safari, IE, and Opera using Phono's Flash and Java Applet capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> how exactly WebRTC going to solve raised questions regarding privacy ? in light of a fact that, for ICE to operate, you need STUN server and exchange ICE candidates (and SRTP keys) through WebRTC server</comment>


Improving user support requests using GitHub's API - <AUTHOR> http://archetyped.com/know/guided-github-reports/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr: No API needed. In a link to create a new issue you can URL encode the title and body to pre-fill the form:

[https://github.com/archetyped/winning-user- support/issues/ne...](https://github.com/archetyped/winning-user- support/issues/new?title=Issue%3A%20&body=%23%23%20Description%20of%20issue%0A%0A%0A%23%23%20URL%20of%20page%20exhibiting%20the%20issue%0A%0A%0A%23%23%20Web%20Browser\(s\)%20that%20exhibit%20the%20issue%0A%0A%0A%23%23%20Installed%20Software%20Version%0A%0A)</comment>


Programming   - <AUTHOR> http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/08/programming.html

<comment><USER2> It's a pity that this has the top slot because it provides no technical information about what optimizations he made and it doesn't have any benchmark information.

It's just "Hey, look at me, I'm Linus and I optimized some C code to make it fast". I would much rather see him give us some insight into optimization strategies for different architectures. He appears to know about that, but not share it.

Oddly, he was talking about how the Mozilla SHA1 code was faster than OpenSSL back in 2005: [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg01138.htm...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg01138.html)

<comment><USER3> Hmm? Just one click away is this:

[http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commitdiff;h=66c9c6c0...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commitdiff;h=66c9c6c0fbba0894ebce3da572f62eb05162e547)

Provides benchmarks and explanation, and code. What more do you want?

Edit. RE: OpenSSL/MozillaSHA speed: He was comparing PowerPC speeds at that time, and is now obviously back on Intel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our mental abilities start to dwindle at 27 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7945569.stm>

</comment><comment><USER5> So Linus wants to dump libcrypt in git by rolling his own to speed up the test suite by a "couple of seconds?"

Good for Linus-- I guess.

<comment> old-gregg He's not rolling out his own libcrypt. He's fixing a bug: i.e. getting rid of the unnecessary dependency on a _huge_ library (OpenSSH) just because of a hashing function. This is systems programming, not a brainless enterprise data pumping: you get rid of unnecessary dependencies if you want to run on cell phones and blade servers at the same time.

<comment><USER6> If all he wanted was to dump a dependency, it would have been easier to cut- and-paste a slightly slower implementation from another library. I think he's saying he _enjoyed_ it. The benchmarks are just after-the-fact justification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Did I mention that I seem to have some OCD issues?

As an advertising guy I love how L is basically saying: when submitting to reddigg print "Linus Torvalds has problems with OCD".

<comment><USER8> As a programming guy I can tell you mild OCD is basically a requirement for programmers.

<comment><USER7> I meant my comment as a positive hint to things like this Linus did in the past. Linus always was a good advertiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Horribly-chosen HN titles FTL? I'm not even going to click through.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The site name next to the title tells more than the title, and yes, it was worth the read.

Only because it was quite short, though.</comment></comment>


Don't forget about email - <AUTHOR> http://www.lindventures.com/blog/2012/04/10/dont-forget-about-email/

<comment><USER2> The people I work with (about 900 of them, all <20 yrs old) do not check their email. The only reason they have email is to create an account with a service that has little or nothing to do with email. Forget about email.</comment>


Ubuntu Touch: reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@probonopd/ubuntu-touch-reports-of-its-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-8517f8984b77 <comment><USER2> Last time I looked into UBports I was looking for a proper Linux distribution for my old tablet (Samsung p5110) but was duped b uh the ancient Linux kernel that it was running (too old to properly load systemd, according to the website).

I hope mobile Linux development will continue because Linux + Anbox might make for an amazing geek phone.

<comment><USER3> Well, it should, given that the Librem 5 and PinePhone will be shipping to end users soon, and the latter is community supported, so it should see support for a wide range of mobile OSes. I don't know what that means for development for Android devices, but at least there will be hardware platforms that are easy to get these projects running on.</comment></comment>


Unpatched Apache reverse proxy flaw allows access to internal network - <AUTHOR> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/408532/unpatched_apache_reverse_proxy_flaw_allows_access_internal_network <comment><USER2> RFC link. [http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd- dev/201111.mb...](http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd- firstname.lastname@example.com%3E)</comment>


Ask HN: Hosted DNS providers with command line client to update records? - <AUTHOR> I've used Dyn for a number of years, but I'm now faced with having to jump through whatever hoops to follow their move to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.  It's made me realise that I never really enjoyed using their service in the first place, always going to a website just to add an A record.<p>I'm looking for something new, and I'd like to manage it from the CLI (partly so I can do dynamic DNS updates myself on a schedule via cron).  The CLI support can be third party if the service has an API, but I would like it to be reasonably mature.  Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Cloudflare's DNS has a command line client. It's called curl.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon Route 53 has both a CLI and an API

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://dnsimple.com/](https://dnsimple.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Google Cloud has support for this.</comment>


The Funny Backpack Google Uses to Map the Insides of Buildings - <AUTHOR> http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2014/09/making-of-maps-cornerstones.html <comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/the-funny-backpack-to-google-uses-to- map-...](http://gizmodo.com/the-funny-backpack-to-google-uses-to-map-the- insides-of-1630558373), which points to this.</comment>


Stop Whining About Google Reader - <AUTHOR> http://hackingdistributed.com/2013/03/17/google-reader/ <comment><USER2> I think he is vastly underestimating the amount of work required to make a true Google Reader replacement. Reader was a lot more than just an RSS reader, and much more than just the front-end bits. Reading this post makes me wonder if he ever even used it or had much direct interaction with the underlying feed API and all that it offers (historical feed data, etc).

Re-read this blog post with every mention of "Google Reader" replaced with "Google Search" to get an idea of how ridiculous a notion it is that we should just shut up and make our own in a couple of months. Granted, the scale isn't _quite_ the same. Google Reader is not as difficult to replace as Google Search would be, but it is far more difficult than he thinks.

Having said all of this, it is absolutely Google's call if it wants to keep Reader going or not, they don't owe me anything when it comes to Reader or any of their other services that I don't pay for, but OTOH shutting down Reader does mean I'm going to think twice (or four times) about adopting any future Google service. They've now established quite a pattern of killing off things I've grown to depend on, and they are free to do that, but I'm free to avoid their services for fear of being burned again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was indeed a Reader user, but by no means a power-user, so I could very well be unaware of some difficult-to-duplicate parts of Reader that are hidden under the covers. Can you let me know what I could be missing?

<comment><USER3> > historical feed data

Google caches the entire history of an RSS feed from the moment it entered their database. This is in many cases unique, irreplaceable data that's going to have to be systematically extracted over the next few months, because I seriously doubt Google will release the entire data dump.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate this.

In your estimate, what percentage of Reader users have, or will, donate to the Internet Archive to perform this archival task?

At what percentage level would it be wrong to call Reader users "entitled", given that the IA folks were hurting for disk space while these complainers chose to ignore its pleas?

<comment><USER4> At what point will you stop behaving like an asshole?

Not everyone who complains knows about IA or should necessarily care about it. We are not all the same person with same needs and things we miss from reader may not be the same, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a true loss/problem for each that is not easy to replace (I tried and none of the alternatives come close which is why I WILL write my own).

<comment><AUTHOR> That kind of language will bring the discussion to an end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > A real hacker would not whine about missing code. Hackers see missing code > as an opportunity to build. Hackers like to build.

Fuck you and fuck your "no true Scotsman" bullshit. Who appointed you to be king of hackers?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I have to kind of agree here... Just because someone is considered a "hacker" doesn't mean he or she can't use someone else's product instead of building their own. Not everyone has time to build their own RSS parser and reading interface.

It's kind of like taking away a mechanic's car--they'd still be annoyed you took it away. Just because someone _can_ build something (and maybe not quite to the extent of an entire multi-billion company's skill and attention), doesn't mean they should waste time doing so. If you think you can do better, go for it, but in most cases it's better to use what's out there.

<comment><USER7> And what is a "hacker" to begin with? I believe he meant the hacker which is defined here <http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html>, and not that you should invent the wheel avoiding other products (no problem should ever have to be solved twice), on the contrary, you should fill in the gaps when it's possible (the world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved). That's the true hacker attitude, not whining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not concerned about finding another RSS reader, or about the impact on "RSS as a standard." Mostly, I'm concerned that blogs I enjoy which are "at the margin" of traffic profitability will be killed when at least some of their subscription base stop following them on Reader, and then never start following anywhere else.

Ask any company who makes money from an email list what would happen if everyone suddenly became unsubscribed and they had to just sit and hope they would all subscribe again. Listen for the wails :)

<comment><USER9> In this case, the blog should be where the readers have migrated - G+, FB, Twitter, etc. If they were on the limit, it is probably because they couldn't capture an audience big enough anyway.

I'm concerned about the standard. Because having all information circulating through walled gardens is bad. My opinion is that the root cause is not that not enough people used GReader (you didn't wrote that, but others did), but rather that Google had no (good enough) revenue model with RSS.

If a sustainable and easy to use pay model finally emerges, then open standards would keep those different sources syndicated. Because syndication is not something people will give up soon, at the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > they're attached to their Twitter feed but dontcha-know-it's-just-not-the- > same thing as Google Reader

I need to have a Twitter account to follow someone's feed. But I don't need to open account anywhere to subscribe to an RSS feed. The blog owner doesn't know who the subscribers to his RSS feed are. RSS anonymous and private. That is the difference. Twitter is like centralized VCS. RSS is like distributed VCS.

Ironically, this is also the reason why Google shutdown GR - they want everyone to "follow" others on Google+. So that all your posts are hidden in some megacorp's servers, creating a "lock-in" situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is some confusion here between RSS and Reader. RSS isn't being canceled. Anyone can download any feed any time they like.

You did need a Google account to use Reader, which made it not so anonymous and not so private.

Once again, RSS != Google Reader. They are not even the same type.

<comment><USER11> I didn't use the Google Reader web client. I'm not even sad to see it go, I think the UI is really bad. Yet, I use the Google Reader _service_ all day, through RSS clients on several platforms (none of which made by Google). I use the Google Reader _service_ to store my subscriptions and allow for syncing of my read items, starred items, etc. That's what I'll need to find a replacement for: a RSS service that interfaces with all the RSS clients that I know and love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Broad generalizations, harsh judgements about people with nothing to back them up, wise guy pretensions, a professor talking the cynical tough talk. I prefer Maddox but he didn't write about Google Reader. He does write about getting banned from Apple Stores.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just because there will be replacements for most of Google Reader's functionality, that doesn't make sunsetting GR with 3 months notice any less of a dick move.

 _"There have been far too many HN articles on how evil Google is for canceling a free service, how this product cancellation is a symbol, how Google should never have given anything to anyone if they were going to cancel it later."_

If a large company starts giving away a service that one would normally expect to pay for, and if it puts its marketing muscle into getting everyone to use the service instead of alternatives, it has responsibility towards those users for quite some time to come, having killed the market for others.

Now dozens of developers of RSS clients have to scramble to replace the GR backend that everyone is using. For example, Aaronbretthorst sent out an email today about the client he's working on:

"To be honest, I never intended to announce my project this week. I started working on Viafeeds on February 11th, and expected that I'd have at least six months to get it working and well-polished before Google shut down Reader. Unfortunately, things didn't work out the way I expected, and I've been forced to accelerate my timetable. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that I was an avid Reader user, and want to make sure that I have a product at least as good to use on my iPhone, iPad and desktop before it shuts down on July 1st."

<comment><USER13> I really don't get this idea that Google owes people something cause they gave it away from free. Google never said it was staying around for any amount of time. The API wasn't even public. This "responsibility" is an entirely made up concept. At no point did Google say "Come one and all, build on our backend!".

If someone was leeching off my unsecured wifi and came to depend it, I'd laugh in their face if they complained when I put a password on it. I could understand people getting mad if they jacked prices after shutting out competition, but saying they have to maintain a product at their own cost for third parties who gave them nothing but more work?

<comment><USER11> _"If someone was leeching off my unsecured wifi and came to depend it, I'd laugh in their face if they complained when I put a password on it."_

If you knew that your entire town had switched from dialup to using your unsecured wifi, and they installed dozens of extenders all over town at their own expense, and you knew about that but allowed it for years, and then you suddenly pull the plug, then yes, that'd be a dick move.

 _"I could understand people getting mad if they jacked prices after shutting out competition"_

I would've been absolutely fine with that and I think many GR users would've been happy to pay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author appears to be playing along as if this is not satire, but I am pretty sure it is.

Here is my case for calling it satire:

It starts off with caricatures...

      every single one of these people do indeed have Twitter
      profiles, and they are entrepreneurs also, and they're
      thinking about their next pivot, and they certainly have
      an opinion on NodeJS versus Clojure even though they've
      never gone past the tutorial on either platform [...]

Stating the obvious

      the only thing in between a hacker who misses Reader and a working
      Reader implementation past-June is... nothing

Hyperbole...

      Reader's cancellation will have absolutely no impact on RSS.
      Reader isn't RSS. It isn't anything but a consumer, one of many,
      of the RSS standard.

      whoever is in possession of your RSS feeds probably knows
      you more intimately than Target, which supposedly knows
      when a woman is pregnant before her father. It's an
      intimate relationship, based on trust.

But I didn't really become convinced it was satire until this line...

       Entitlement without effort is like representation without taxation.

So, am I the only one who sees this as satire? A subtle poke at Hacker News for taking itself too seriously? Or am I the guy who mistakenly laughs "Ha! Yea that would be crazy, right?" even though the other guy was totally serious?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's some straight-up satire:

      Only a relatively small fraction of the population, mostly
      highly intelligent, and well informed, curious individuals
      used Reader.

Source: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391119>

It's Lake Wobegon and all you need to enter is a Reader account and some outrage.

<comment><USER14> So give it me straight: not satire?

You wrote a post to HN about how those who are complaining about Google Reader (a group you admit is not all programmers) should stop complaining about Google Reader's shutdown because these people could just whip up their own alternative? And you see no other facet of this situation that is worthy of being upset about?

You very successfully just trolled HN. And that wasn't even your intention?

<comment><AUTHOR> My post ends on this note:

      Wouldn't it be much better to channel all this energy
      towards something more productive? Like, say, writing a
      few thousand lines of Rails or Django or Node JS or
      Clojure or whatever code you like to implement a
      replacement, either from scratch, or by contributing to
      an existing OSS project. It's a big world out there, we
      have not "entered a darker timeline in the history of
      the net," and it's always time to make it better, not
      demand that someone else do that for you.

If that perspective sounds like trolling to anyone, they can just click on any of the other submissions and discuss the relative merits of the Google Reader population over ordinary people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like how a company that is actually competing in this space, with an existing, operating product, has posted a blog article[1] essentially asking for their new, fresh from Google Reader, users to help prioritizing the missing features and this _hacker_ says just build your own, as if it's a couple of hours or something.

Instead of writing this, he should have made a Google Reader clone and got rich this weekend.

[1] <http://blog.feedly.com/>

</comment><comment><USER16> The point of a programmer is to save time by writing as little code as possible. You contribute to an existing project that's OSS, not roll your own bug-ridden p-o-s in the framework / language-of-the-year. You shouldn't be presumptive about 'hacker's and about Reader's users, especially when you're not heavily acquainted with the product yourself and its usefulness as a learning / info-gathering aid. Next time, don't write an article about a subject you don't know enough about, when you can just go hack yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, contributing to OSS is much better than rolling one's own from scratch. From the vehemence of the "bring-back-Reader" posts, I assumed that there were absolutely no OSS projects that were suitable, and wrote the post for the worst case, building from scratch. But contributing to an existing project would clearly be a better idea. And if all these Reader users could pool their efforts constructively, the sky is the limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No!! First Wave, now this. It's a question of trust & honest transparency. Why should anyone trust Google ever again?

<comment><USER18> Honest transparency? They've announced the move quite clearly, and have even given a timeline for its shutdown. You can still access your data and export it through Google Takeout[1].

I don't see what's untrustworthy, dishonest, or non-transparent about this. I am disappointed they're discontinuing a service I enjoy immensely, but it's their prerogative - they're not required to continue to offer a service if it's not in there interests to do so.

[1]: <https://www.google.com/takeout/>

<comment><USER11> Google Reader co-creator Chris Wetherell: _"When they replaced sharing with +1 on Google Reader, it was clear that this day was going to come," he said. Wetherell, 43, is amazed that Reader has lasted this long. Even before the project saw the light of the day, Google executives were unsure about the service and it was through sheer perseverance that it squeaked out into the market. At one point, the management team threatened to cancel the project even before it saw the light of the day, if there was a delay._ <http://gigaom.com/2013/03/13/chris-wetherll-google-reader/>

That's like Walmart moving into your small town, pricing its items so low that no local retailer can compete, watching all the local stores shut down, and when only Walmart is left they say "Not enough money to be made here, we're shutting down".

<comment><USER19> Which gives the local retailers a chance to come back, right? Or are they all gone forever?

<comment><USER11> Sure, but by that time, most of the citizens will have moved to a town that has shops. Only the poor and the elderly will stay, because they have nowhere to go. Sadly, they'll develop all kinds of health problems because they're forced to eat at fast food restaurants every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seriously, guys. Your favorite RSS reader has been deprecated. Not only is this _not_ the end of the world, it is something that one-million-percent does not matter. Let it go!

Worst case scenario: you try a different RSS reader, and it works okay. You are in no danger of missing that all-important news article or blog post that all your friends are reading.

I take it back. Worst case scenario: RSS itself implodes, is obliterated from the face of the earth, and now you have to visit news websites and (manually!) click the refresh button to ensure that you're not missing that life-or-death article or blog post.

Wait, hang on -- I take it back. Here's the really-truly worst case scenario: instead of sitting impatiently with your lips wrapped around the proverbial firehose, desperately afraid that your content-thirst can never be sated without Google's help, you go out and _actually create some content of your own_.

(Or just buy a fucking newspaper. Jeez.)</comment>