A simple git branching model - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/jbenet/ee6c9ac48068889b0912 <comment><USER2> I still don't understand why everyone has this misguided quest for a clean history. An accurate history is much more important.

Rebasing destroys historical information. I can't really see any advantages of rebasing when a merge does the same thing but leaves two things rebasing does not: 1) a point to rollback to if things don't work out, and 2) an explicit entry of when your branch was brought up to date with master.

<comment><USER3> Because clean history is easier to bisect. It's easier to visually track problems, (aha so you changed thing A in branch br12 and thing B in branch br13 as opposed to wait so person A branched into br12, then person C branched into br23, then it got merged with br74, which was merged with person D on branch br84..).

Less entagled workflow is easier to untangle and consequently understand even if it hides some stuff.

Also it's visual clutter. If your history looks like train map, your project is probably a train wreck.

<comment><USER4> This is an artificial problem. Git has almost all the data needed to present a squashed view - all it's missing is an idea of what commit a branch pointed to throughout history, so that it can merge together commits in in the "bubbles" for presentational purposes.

It would be better to fix this, so you get nice diffs, blame etc., than deal with all the other issues rebase causes.

I'm not convinced on the bisect issue either. If your app is trivial, sure, but if the features are more complex, the squashed commits will be too chunky to narrow down as usefully as a fuller history can.

<comment><USER5> I'm not convinced on the bisect issue either. I've personally done a bisect spanning 10000 changesets with 50 concurrent branches at the widest point. Found the problem right away.

We follow a similar branching model. Master is kept clean. We do all development on feature branches and merge when complete. History is fully preserved. History is a mess but it works well overall.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that you want to resolve conflicts in a rebase instead of a merge. This allows you to see where the branches diverge and fix it right away, closer to the offending commits, Preventing more work from piling up around the conflict making it harder to piece what's going on.

<comment><USER7> It _can_ mean that you fix conflicts closer to the point where they first happened, or it can mean that you have to fix the conflict in a bunch of different ways as it propagates through each successive commit. I find myself trying to outsmart the conflicts: "Ok, I know I changed such-and-such in such- and-such a way here in a few commits, so if I fix this conflict like this, then hopefully I won't have to fix that commit later..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly enough, most folks working on GitHub.com don't use this model. We actually use a simpler model, and usually merge to our feature branches rather than rebase. I'm not sure if Zach's latest talk(s) goes into this level of detail.

I think a big part of the reasoning is because we tend to push up branches _really_ early to open PR's and get discussion going. And of course rebasing public branches generally leads to hell.

I know some other .com devs will rebase privately before pushing a large branch, but I would say 80% of work is just done with merging.

<comment><USER9> I think it depends on how public and how many contributors you have to a feature branch. I think author has the assumption that there is typically one dev per feature branch.

Once a feature branch is being worked on by multiple devs (and hence multiple feature branches forked off), it is a public branch and should use a merge based workflow.[0]

I personally use a rebase workflow on private branches before merging since it makes for a cleaner history. I've seen devs merge a branch with 100+ merge commits and it absolutely destroys git history.

[0]: [http://lwn.net/Articles/328438/](http://lwn.net/Articles/328438/)

<comment><USER10> This is exact same workflow I use. If it's a feature branch that I'm working on locally, then rebase -i is my friend as I can squash commits. But, I rarely stay in a local branch for longer than a day or two for fear of losing work and no developer is an island. The second it is shared, it's merge only.

Rebase conflicts always cause more grief than it's worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We used a very similar model to this at my last job, and I'm struggling to get my current team on board with this type of process. I _think_ the main problem is that people don't trust continuously deploying master because there aren't enough tests. In my ideal world, every commit is tested (with Jenkins, Travis, Buildbot, etc), and then if the PR includes tests for the code and the build passes, the reviewer says LGTM and the committer presses the merge button on GitHub. Once the button is pushed, a build of master is triggered. If the build passes, the code is automatically deployed.

<comment><USER12> My world really changed once I started working with code bases that had excellent test coverage from the get-go.

At my last shop we combined that with pair programming, feature switches, and a few other tricks, and we basically never branched. You'd pull, work for a few hours, push, and 10 minutes later your code would be live. It was in one sense freeing: the release overhead of other shops was gone. And in another, it inspired more discipline. Knowing that everything you were writing would shortly be live kept you on your toes. You could never leave something for later; there was no later. I loved it.

<comment><USER11> That sounds really awesome!

I'm guessing I'll just have to sit down one day and write a whole bunch of tests, and then hope that everyone else will see the benefit.

So you mean everyone just pushed directly to the upstream master?

<comment><USER12> If I understand your question rightly, yes. Looking at the Github history, we did actually have 6 branches over the life of the project. All were extended technical experiments of one sort or another like trying out a new templating approach. 2/6 were merged. But all normal coding was pushed to master with no branching (beyond a local checkout and local commits, which are a sort of branching, but none of those lasted longer than a day). There, any checkin triggered tests, and any build that passed the test was pushed live.

If you want others to see the benefit, I'd encourage you to pick a specific area of the code, test the hell out of it, and make sure that a) tests are easy and quick to run on dev boxes, and b) every checkin is automatically tested. I'd start small, and one good place is a chunk of important business logic. It's even better if you use the tests to support refactoring and general cleanup of an area people know is messy.

If you do this right, then people will have two experiences coding on the project. In the tested code, it's pleasant and safe. In the messy code, it feels dangerous and scary. Over time they may get it.

Note that this is really hard to get off the ground in an established company and in an existing code base. So if they don't catch on, don't feel like it's you. (I generally cheat by being the first person on greenfield projects, so the first line of code written is a line of test code.) Also, if you get stuck while trying to clean up legacy code to make it testable, Michael Feathers' book "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" is very helpful.

Good luck, and feel free to drop me an email if you end up with more questions.

<comment><USER11> > If you want others to see the benefit, I'd encourage you to pick a specific > area of the code, test the hell out of it, and make sure that a) tests are > easy and quick to run on dev boxes, and b) every checkin is automatically > tested. I'd start small, and one good place is a chunk of important business > logic. It's even better if you use the tests to support refactoring and > general cleanup of an area people know is messy.

Ah, this is really good advice, thanks. I'll give it a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Truly, "rebase vs. every-commit-is-precious" is the "vi vs. emacs" moot question of our time.

EDIT: haha, I just reminded myself of the "Every Sperm is Sacred" song from _Meaning of Life_.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would also add "commit often, squash later". I find frequent local commits useful for quickly rolling back mistakes but they'd just clutter the main history if they got there. Usually if a commit is important enough to end up in master, it is also important enough to do the merge so most of my changes are actually 1 commit (2 if you count the --no-ff merge.)

<comment><USER15> Learning git here. Could you please explain how rebase squashes commit ? Looking at man git-rebase it seam that it detaches a branch and attaches it to the current branch. From the documentation the chain of commits is preserved and simply moved in the graph. The sequence of commit nodes of the branch are not merged into one commit node.

<comment><USER3> If you use rebase interactive like this:

       git rebase -i HEAD~n

Where n is number of commits from HEAD, you can do ANYTHING to your branch. You can stop mid rebase to add some files that didn't exist before, squash, fix, execute commands, etc.

You can even change order of commits and delete commits from history. BE VERY, VERY CAREFUL!

[https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- rebase....](https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-rebase.html) (See interactive mode and splitting commits).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you work with other people, this model doesn't work so well, IME.

In particular, rebasing is very hazard-prone if someone else may have checked out your branch.

If you're working on a feature that needs changes in multiple components and is broken without coordination, you may be working off the same branch, or have separate branches with inter-merges. Either way, rebasing will cause trouble.

<comment><USER16> _In particular, rebasing is very hazard-prone if someone else may have checked out your branch._

That's why you _never_ rebase a published branch. This is easier to manage if your team uses a central repository as the 'official' repository and everybody pushes and pulls to that one. Then you know that your branches in your local repository are not public, not published, and safe for history-altering workflows like rebase. It's only the branches that you push that you're not allowed to rebase, at least not prior to the last push.

If your team doesn't use a central repository, and you're pushing and pulling between all of your local repositories, then I'd suggest using a naming convention for branches to distinguish public ones from private ones. Eg: start your private branch names with "DEV_". If someone else pulls a DEV_* branch, then they should expect that its history might change and they'll have to deal with that when it occurs.

<comment><USER17> > That's why you never rebase a published branch.

My problem with that is my coworkers and I usually work on our own feature branch. Ideally I wouldn't push mine to the central repository until I'm done, so I can rebase on master without changing the public history, _but_ at the end of the day I don't like to leave code only on my computer (what if my hard drive blows up??) so I push everything I don't want to lose.

<comment><USER18> Git is designed so that branching is cheap. Why not create your own development branch off of the feature branch? Then use the feature branch as an integration-only branch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I never use rebase, but I don't see problems if your branch is _local_.

I would prevent rebasing after pushing the branch to remote.

Anyway this branching model doesn't looks so that simple.

</comment><comment><USER20> I avoid rebase like the plague if I'm working on a team, and if I'm not working on a team I don't see the need for it much either.

<comment><USER21> Rebase is good for when you need to rewrite or clean-up history. For example: all those "WIP" commits you'll frequently see aren't exactly helpful. If you want to rewrite history of a branch that others are actively working on, well then you're going to have A Bad Time™.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my team we do something superficially similar, but instead of rebasing we just merge changes from master into our feature branches whenever master is updated. This seems to result in fewer conflicts for us, despite what you might expect.

Also, when the feature branch is to be merged into master we do a squashed commit so that all changes from that branch show up as one commit in the main project history. The feature branch's commit history is preserved in the repository (thought not in the master branch), so it's not really any more difficult to roll back partial changes.

Our situation is likely different from many projects though, as we only ever have one developer working in a given feature branch.

<comment><USER23> > The feature branch's commit history is preserved in the repository (thought > not in the master branch)

This would require you not to get rid of the branches (remotely and locally), right? GitHub does allow you to undo the deletion of a branch, but is that only for a certain time period?

I like to delete my branches as soon as they've been merged in.

<comment><USER22> We leave the feature branch on the remote repo indefinitely, but we really don't need to do so. The diff between the feature branch's squashed commit and the previous commit of the project usually tells us everything we need to know when a problem crops up. We keep the feature branches "just in case", but in practice they're never used once the branch has been merged into production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> FWIW, this branching model works for me in a small-ish team, two years now and counting. The part about `good merge bubbles' is especially important for clean history.

</comment><comment><USER25> Do anyone know how that branch image was created? I've been wanting to do something similar.

</comment><comment><USER26> You can use tags to present a clean history of features added or releases, while still preserving the actual history of commits... Using rebase to clean- up (destroy) your history is an amateur solution to having a proper branching/tagging workflow.

</comment><comment><USER27> I suggest also reading "GitHub Flow"[1] by Scott Chacon about this topic.

[1] [http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github- flow.html](http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> I get an error loading the page, can anyone mirror? "The page isn't redirecting properly"

EDIT: I resolved it by going to github.com and signin, and then click link. Shouldn't one be able to look at gists without logging in?

<comment><USER29> works for me now

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you're looking for an automated tool to do this, take a look at gerrit. I used it successfully at my last day job. It basically enforces this model. The quality of our commit history changed quite dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER31> In a similar model, I just commit hotfixes on the master branch. What is the negative implication of this? If I had a branch for them, those would just be merged back immediately with one commit anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> No rule is sacred, and your mileage will vary. For me, having a pull-request for the hotfix helps us run continuous integration tests, code-review, and ensure relevant people get notified automatically of the fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I agree with most of what is suggested here, except forking. I think that even for small teams forks are the way to go: you get a cleaner upstream, plus you get a backup of your local repo.

</comment><comment><USER33> This feels like the working with SVN/P4 again.

Main difference here is having your work in progress visible to others in a feature branch. Also rebase -i being less of a pain than svn update.

</comment><comment><USER34> What if you pushed your feature branch and then need to fix something in that branch later? How do you handle this case as you shouldn't rebase a pushed branch?

<comment><USER23> It's fine to force push to a remote branch if it's a personal branch, that is, no one else is working on it but you.

(Or it's fine if you've previously discussed with your team the implications of force pushing to shared branches, and they're okay with that because you all know what you're doing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is exactly how you do git. Sanity. Thank you.

<comment><USER36> Maybe it's just one point of view, rather than a clear-cut, ' _this_ is how you do git.'

For example, my point of view is that master should never contain development work. master should always be _stable_. In this case, the post here does not jive with that point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> We use the exact same model but we have a dev branch for our staging server, thanks for writing it down!

</comment><comment><USER38> do you rebase before accepting pull request or before publishing your feature branch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on how you want to do it. I'd rebase on top of master before publishing, _and_ before merging it in (accepting PR).

Definitely be comfortable with rebase before you try this though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Alphabetically Ordered Keyboard for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/abc-keyboard-alphabetically-ordered-keys/id1273539648?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> The QWERTY model keyboard was designed to be used on physical typewriters and keyboards where we use all 10 fingers for typing. The letters were arranged in QWERTY because it's the optimal the order of popular usage of keys. So frequently used keys were arranged together closest to all the fingers.

Today we only used both our thumbs to type on our smartphones and there is no need to keep following the complex QWERTY arrangement (unless you are a trained touch typing ninja who knows the full QWERTY order like the back of your hand).

It's time to follow the obvious ABC order of keys in smartphone keyboards

<comment><USER2> Wouldn't it still be faster to alternate keys between both hands? The alphabetical order probably won't be optimal for that.

Besides, everyone is used to QWERTY and alphabetical order is not much better (if you have to find each key via the order you will type very slowly).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with both your feedback. This is an experimental app. For me, learning the order of keys was the most difficult part when I started to learn typing. I wonder if people who are not familiar with touch typing (if anyone exists) may find it easier. Lets see. Thanks again btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope this is just a joke I don't get.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well done! I don't have Apple device on hand to try it out.

Does Swipe to type still work?</comment>


Hunt: A high-level D Programming Language Web framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/huntlabs/hunt-framework <comment><USER2> Why does D perform so poorly for web programming?

[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

I was expecting Rust or C level of performance for D. Instead, D performs on the same level as Ruby and Python.

<comment><USER3> Why would you expect rust or C? D has a garbage collector, a better comparison would be Java or Go

<comment><USER4> The best C framework in that benchmark performs roughly equal to the best Go framework. So I don't think that garbage collector matters that much.

<comment><USER5> It's not all clear that a garbage collector isn't an advantage in actual workloads. Web apps tend to create a lot of short lived objects, and contrary to popular assumption malloc and free are not free.

<comment><USER6> The alternative of gc is not malloc and free. It's custom memory management, i.e. the code that decides when to execute malloc and when to execute free. Even a gc will ultimately call the equivalent of malloc or free. The difference is gc needs to do it generic enough that it works for all possible programs; whereas a programmer needs to do it in a way it works for this particular program.

<comment><USER7> Many GC languages like D offer the tooling to decide where to allocate as well, it is not GC for everything.

GC, untraced references, reference counting, stack and global memory segment allocations, OS system buffers.

The programmer also needs to do it in a way that works for a particular program instead of doing _new everywhere_.

The advantage being that having a GC around is much more productive for the workflows that don't need such hand tuning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does it compile to WASM so you can have the same code on client and server?

<comment><USER8> What would having symmetrical code accomplish?

<comment><USER4> You could speculatively run stuff on the client _and_ run it on the server, to achieve a speedup.

But there are many more usecases. For example, decoding and encoding of messages between client and server. Hashing stuff. The list is endless. I think that once you have experienced programming in the same language on client and server, you simply don't want to go back to the "split brain" kind of programming.

<comment><USER9> _> decoding and encoding of messages between client and server_

You can generate the message types and communication functions from a shared schema, e.g. gRPC/GraphQL/Swagger and many others, which will also lead to looser coupling and hopefully proper API version/change management.

I feel like unless you're using JavaScript/TypeScript on the server, most of the benefits of a shared language and framework will be negated by the lack of easy access to the web frontend ecosystem. (This may not be true for isolated shared modules that are oblivious to the UI, e.g. validation logic, where the surface area between it and the rest of the client code is maybe one or two functions.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I have published my package to HTTP://pub.dev - <AUTHOR> https://pub.dev/packages/omdb_dart <comment><AUTHOR> I have published my package to [http://pub.dev](http://pub.dev) This is a dart client for the OMDB API. it will return movie details like year, IMDB Rating, actors, directors, poster and much more, and very easy to use.

Package link : [https://pub.dev/packages/omdb_dart](https://pub.dev/packages/omdb_dart)

<comment><USER2> It's much better to use here a title like

" _Dart client for the OMDB API (year, IMBD rating, ...)_ "

and then add the exact same comment to explain that you did it and what it does.

(The mods don't like remarks in the title, so they will probably remove it. But I'd like to try to add IMDB to the title, because nobody knows what OMDB is.)</comment></comment>


Supercomputer model simulations reveal cause of Neanderthal extinction - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibs.re.kr/cop/bbs/BBSMSTR_000000000738/selectBoardArticle.do?nttId=18560 <comment><USER2> Models and simulations can never reveal the cause of anything; they only provide a method of analysis and provide support for theories.

The article includes a line which is much more accurate: "This new computer modeling approach identifies competitive exclusion as the likely reason for the disappearance of our cousins."</comment>


Don't be evil: Moving everything off of Google - <AUTHOR> https://blog.samwhited.com/2013/07/dont-be-evil/ <comment><USER3> Depressing thread this....

I think this thread demonstrates why the privacy issues with the likes of google, facebook, etc are pretty much vapor complaints. Essentially, people are happy in the end to sacrifice privacy for convenience. With that mind set, we can easily see why no one really cares about NSA slurping. As far as they are concerned, all the NSA has is what facebook, gmail etc, have. So, what is the problem exactly? And you know what, I can understand the point. I disagree, but equally, I understand.

Having read about how people won't move form FB because it easy to stay there, since their "friends" are there, I now realize most people really are not committed to privacy while it means some sort of inconvenience. There is even a reply here where a friend who wont use facebook is referred to as an "outcast"... Understandable, but also says it all.

Depressing.

<comment><USER4> You're presenting a false choice: It's entirely possible to care about privacy, and still use Facebook and GMail.

Simply pretend that everything you post on Facebook and GMail is in the public domain, posted in the public square.

If I never share anything I don't want public, then my privacy is guaranteed. I'd advise others with privacy concerns to do the same.

Given that you _NEVER KNOW, EVER_ that you can _100% trust_ the people you're sharing with (no matter which media you use), I think people are kind of crazy to act any other way.

<comment><USER5> Facebook tracks your external web browsing history through the use of their embedded buttons, and links that history with your profile. So even if you don't post private information to Facebook, they're tracking your private activity unless you take measures to block such buttons across the web.

<comment><USER4> ...or use Facebook in a different browser (or Incognito), or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it.

Or only use it in the Facebook App on your phone, but never log your browser in to it.

"Logging in" is completely broken on the internet - no argument, there.

<comment><USER5> The other two approaches may work, but

> or specifically log out of Facebook when you're not using it

will probably not, because they set tracking cookies that remain even when you log out.

Complete speculation here, but if they're willing to do that, who's to say they don't link traffic from known IP addresses as well? It might be linked less strongly but in many cases could still be associated in some way. They track web browsing for non-users already anyway, so if they can connect that to existing users by IP I'd be fairly surprised if they didn't.

In order to prevent this, you have to block trackers in all your browsers and devices with Ghostery or similar tools.

<comment><USER6> Browser user agent string alone is quite accurate identification [1]. Just add IP/country data on top of that..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever I read such posts (moving everything off Google/FaceBook/...), whatever the rationale, I feel like I am living in a parallel universe.

All my friends are on Facebook and as much as I dislike Facebook's piracy invasion, it's an excellent tool to keep in touch with people.

I could drop Google Talk, but as much as federation is a good thing, ironically I wouldn't have many people to talk to, since they use Google Talk/Hangouts.

Perhaps a decentralised file sharing tool is better. But everyone is using Dropbox and Bittorrent Sync will be too outworldish for colleagues/family/friends.

<comment><USER8> I've stopped using Facebook and behold - all my best friends are still here. If a friendship can't exist without Facebook, then they probably aren't your friend at all...

<comment><USER9> Here's the thing. My friends and I use Facebook to organise evenings out and other outings. We have one friend that refuses to use Facebook, so now we post an event in Facebook, and then someone has to go to the effort of keeping the outcast informed. It's actually quite a pain for your friends if you refuse to use the tool that they are using to organise themselves. It makes your friends do extra work to accomodate you...

<comment><USER10> All my other tools don't track everything I do with them, don't sell the information to advertisers, and don't spam me with dozens of emails.

I don't get why it's necessary to justify not using such a "tool".

<comment><USER11> 1) Facebook do not sell your information to advertisers. 2) The emails are pretty easy to remove - case in point, I stopped them sending me emails in 2009, and have not received one since. Linkedin on the other hand, go straight into spam because they just won't stop sending me mails...

<comment><USER10> First thing I did was disable all email notifications. Not a trivial task: I had to turn off like 30 different types of notifications one by one. However, these sly bastards just kept coming up with new notifications, that were turned on by default. So I kept getting emails from facebook, even though I thought I had disabled all of them.

That was my experience a year or two ago. At some point I deleted my facebook account, because the value I got out of it wasn't sufficient to tolerate all those annoyances: changing email notifications, constantly changing privacy settings and policies, annoying ads, annoying messages from people I barely know...

<comment><USER11> I got rid of everything a few years back. The only thing they introduced was the mentions, and i disabled that a few weeks ago (after my friends learned about it). I didn't have the same experience, to be honest. I found Linkedin much more difficult.

Mind you, the constantly shifting privacy settings are weird, its easy to be really granular (go to your Activity Log) but it is effort. You can also change privacy on a post by post basis, but its sticky, so you need to be careful. The ads never really bothered me (except for the dating ones just after i came out of a long term relationship). In fact, I never ad-blocked facebook because I could x out of ads I didn't want to see. The annoying messages from people is not really Facebook's fault, though I feel your pain....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get the point of moving other services to places that are encrypted, private, secure, and cannot be reached by NSA, GCHQ, etc.

But... email?

It goes over the internet in plain text, has substantial meta-data, and even the contents are trivially small to store.

When people want to come off of G+, Facebook, etc... great, that makes some sense. If they want to stop using Chrome Sync, and to use Firefox, install add blockers, anti-trackers, change their hosts file, use VPNs, enable Tor, change DNS provider... great, that makes some sense.

Email makes a lot less sense though. It's effectively public and what security exists is about effective as your front door lock. It keeps out the average person that passes by and little more than that.

There is actually some argument to be had that if most of your contacts use Gmail that you should stay on Gmail as the email wouldn't route via the public internet.

I am sticking with Gmail, but am using a Google Apps for Domains account for it as that allows you to configure the domain to fully disable other Google and related services (G+, YouTube, advertising, Drive, etc). I then access Gmail via Chrome Incognito and live the rest of my internet life in Firefox.

Effectively Google for me, starts each day afresh, sand-boxed in a private browser session, and with no permission to do anything else.

The only other Google things I used they have already shuttered or have announced they're doing so. Effectively when this happens I am one of the n% who don't move to G+ and roll off of Google services.

I do wonder if we'll ever hear what % of users didn't go to Hangouts when they re-branded and closed Talk. What % of Latitude users will vanish when G+ gets whatever location sharing capability. Maybe it's negligible to Google, but it doesn't _feel_ negligible when I speak to friends who used to use Google a lot more.

<comment><USER13> Did you read the post? He does not mention NSA or security as one of the reason to get off the Google services. Not one bit.

"The recent Google Reader shutdown and Google Hangouts disabling XMPP federation made me realize that any of my services could go at any time and I didn't want to be so dependant on a single provider or the integrations between services."

<comment><USER14> He also said he had stopped using Google search, which is entirely inconsistent with his "could go at any time" reasoning. Clearly there must be something else that motivates his actions.

<comment><USER15> Maybe he does not like having his search results tampered with at the behest of the MPAA?

<comment><USER16> DDG uses Bing, Bing honors takedowns, ergo DDG is "tampered".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "When you're paying for your social network, it makes you a customer instead of a product".

Wrong, you're _still_ a product. The "consumer vs. product" dilemma is a false one.

<comment><USER13> Please explain. Are you saying that App.net is using your data anyway to sell ads or something else?

<comment><USER18> Well, not sure what the OP is suggesting but your content is definitely a product that is attract other users to also pay.

<comment><USER13> Maybe, if he turns it in this way. I was however referring to what Apps.net says on their about page: [https://app.net/about/](https://app.net/about/)

"We are selling our product, NOT our users.

We will never sell your personal data, content, feed, interests, clicks, or anything else to advertisers. We promise."

<comment><USER19> Yet if there was no content, there would be no product... so they are selling your content.

Which means they are just lying in their about page.

<comment><USER20> " _to advertisers_ " are the important words to note in their claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The site uses Google hosted jQuery. Guess being tracked by Google is not an issue for them. ;)

<comment><USER22> if Google was nice and concerned with people's privacy they would not log anything on those hosted files but a simple integer hit counter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one who want the opposite? I love having everything seamlessly tied to one ecosystem. The synergy effects are worth it and I can't see a better company than Google to handle it.

<comment><USER24> >and I can't see a better company than Google to handle it.

Google hasn't exactly been a good company recently, at the very least the whole reader issue has caused a lot of worry.

<comment><USER25> Not to forget the _alleged_ heavy involvement in PRISM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any web service could "go at any time", in fact, the smaller players are more likely to fold up shop, not give advanced warning, and not offer something like Google Takeout. It's happened before. Some smaller players in the past didn't even have good backups, and simply lost user data. You could self-host, but again, unless you want to put a lot of labor and money into reliability and security, you can also lose.

I'd call the reasoning used in this article "Reader Derangement Syndrome".

<comment><USER27> I'd certainly trust Google to shut down a product more gracefully than a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> You can't call it "everything" if you keep Gmail.

Personal email would be the most important service to get under your own control, and it's the hardest of all problems to solve.

<comment><USER29> ZoHo Mail isn't bad, I've been using that instead of Google Apps at the moment. Ideally I want to switch to my own server but I never relish the thought of setting one up.

<comment><USER30> I recently switched from my own server to Zoho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [http://dbpmail.net/essays/2013-06-29-hackers-replacement- for...](http://dbpmail.net/essays/2013-06-29-hackers-replacement-for- gmail.html) is a good tutorial on replacing GMail.

GMail is excellent at search and spam filtering, everything else is just a standard e-mail service. The tutorial points out how you can at least try and match the level of spam filtering with the community based Pyzor.

<comment><USER32> Don't underestimate search though. Being able to quickly find information (content, contacts, etc.) from years of unstructured eMail communication with a simple search box is very powerful. At work I have to use Lotus Notes and Outlook and compared to Gmail they really seem stone age when it comes to find information in the archive.

<comment><USER13> Very true. Gmail does that very well, but that's not something you cannot solve if you are very disciplined on how you use, store and archive emails. Gmail makes it frictionless, and that's probably one of its biggest assets, but in some workplaces, as you mentioned, people are forced to use Notes or Outlook and you learn to live with it. It's not always as frustrating as you might think. For example, I am certainly much more "messy" in the way i use email with Gmail since I know I can find things easily, but that may be a disservice to act this way in the end. You form bad habits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >> _why do I want my calendar to be online anyways_

Wow, my Gmail calendar is the one thing I can't see doing without. View from anywhere, seeing my team members schedule, adding invites to each other's calendars. It's pretty much my task (or reminder) list as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Thanks for the Photographer.io mention! I was about to deploy Dutch and Polish language support when I noticed the traffic rolling in, so I'll be leaving that for a few hours now in case I break it.

If anyone has any questions about privacy on Photographer.io or any other general questions then I'd be happy to answer. You can also email them over to firstname.lastname@example.com if you prefer.

<comment><USER34> Great site! Switching over from 500px.com

<comment><USER29> Glad you like it! Make sure to let me know of any problems you find or ideas you have; I love getting feedback on it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Maybe if he was using Google to host his site, it would still be up.

(Yes, I'm being glib, but with a point - there are real downsides to moving away from services like Google that have industrial-strength cloud services behind them. Just because you can move to other things or self-host to improve privacy doesn't mean there aren't major tradeoffs.)

</comment><comment><USER36> As for music I think that for Linux (I guess you probably use Linux since Windows is just as evil as Chrome or Facebook) XMMS is still the best player. I use it for years now and I never had problems with it. It also comes with a Winamp-like interface and functionality.

<comment><USER29> I've been using 'cmus' recently, which is pretty decent. Far less issues with pulseaudio than with a lot of the other players.

<comment><USER37> A fellow cmus user here, I can only second the awesomeness of it and encougrage everyone interested in client-side music playback to try it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As we know all services are vulnerable at any time to disappearing. Startups failing, large companies sunsetting. It then appears the question becomes "What is the cost to me of this service going away?" where cost can be how long it would take to move to a comparable offering at that time. Then you way that up against "How much am I giving up each day/week/month if I use a service I want less but am doing so due to my fear of being "all in" and at the mercy of Google's whims?" So when I see an article like this (which I enjoyed) I tend to think the above is simply out of whack with a "I'm getting off every service"

</comment><comment><USER39> I think it's a time of opportunity now. Someone could become the provider of private internet experience to uproot Google, Apple, MS and the rest.

We need a single, all in one solution for all the basic things: email, search, video, photos, social networking, calendar, sync and maps. Have I forgotten anything? Another essential app is a Tor-like browser with strong privacy support.

All of this needs to be bundled in a private cloud app capable of handling from one person to a group with thousands of people, like, for example, a university.

We need to be able to own our own data, to have access to our logs and to be the only party who has access to our logs. This whole thing needs to be open source and thoroughly tested.

</comment><comment><USER40> Paper calendar suggestion seems kind of defeatist. I just switched to [http://radicale.org/](http://radicale.org/) (from my old nokia phone calendar, not from google) and it seems fine so far.

<comment><USER41> I spent several years using outlook, apple ical and windows live calendar. I then ended up having to write a backend for icalendar protocol and saw what a shit crock everything is. It's a miracle any of it works.

Last year I moved back to a paper diary and a mechanical pencil. It is considerably more flexible, readable and editable. I hit several brick walls with computer based calendars particularly with having to add complex events like "every third Friday but not the 25th because I'm on holiday then".

Free form is sometimes better than structure.

Its like going from a relational database to a document store.

<comment><USER42> If you want a flexible calendar application that can handle rules like that, you need Remind[1].

For example, if you want to be reminded every third Friday of the month, except on 19th of July because you're on holiday, you can write:

      OMIT 19 July MSG Holiday
      REM Fri 15 SKIP MSG My Event

Now you ask it to print the events for the next six months:

      $ remind -s6 test.rem
      2013/07/19 * * * * Holiday
      2013/08/16 * * * * My Event
      2013/09/20 * * * * My Event
      2013/10/18 * * * * My Event
      2013/11/15 * * * * My Event
      2013/12/20 * * * * My Event

As you see, it skipped "My Event" on the July 19th, because it was an Holiday.

[1]: [http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind](http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind)

<comment><USER41> I can't really be bothered with all that after basically writing that entire solution for a private company. Another metalanguage to learn...

Plus I have to have a network connection and log into a UNIX box for it which I can't do whilst I'm on the phone as it's stuck to my head at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> All good suggestions, but heavily focused on non-collaborative solutions. For example a paper calendar is no good if you regularly use your colleagues calendars to schedule events and know what is going on.

<comment><USER13> Well, people have been living with paper calendars for dozens of years and were still able to launch rockets and stuff. I think we overestimate the usefulness of some digital tools. Making it easy to schedule meetings often results in tons of unnecessary meetings - it's better to have some friction there. But I guess it really depends what you do - there are certain use cases for digital calendars, but in my experience the way they are used is unproductive.

<comment><USER44> I hate working with people who send me a note after they've already sent me a meeting request, telling me that they saw an opening on my calendar and have set up an hour-long meeting with no agenda.

It's a weird combination of laziness and an unwillingness to use other tools (email, issue tracking, typing). If they just typed up an agenda (heck, Confluence has a template ready) we could probably wrap up the whole thing while I'm goofing around on HN.

Having to go through an EA/PA to schedule meetings is one of the best ways of exchanging money for time, plus you end up having _one_ person who never makes you cringe, unless you start worrying that they're giving notice because they're starting their own company or moving across the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Another cloud file storage service worth checking out is Jottacloud ([http://www.jottacloud.com](http://www.jottacloud.com)). It has similar features to Google Drive and Dropbox but being based in Norway, it complies with stricter laws on privacy and data ownership. See for example the question "What does it mean for me that my files are stored in Norway?" in their FAQ ([http://www.jottacloud.com/faq/](http://www.jottacloud.com/faq/)).

<comment><USER46> A similar service is Wuala ([https://www.wuala.com/](https://www.wuala.com/)), which is owned by the French company LaCie. They say your files are encrypted using AES-256 before they leave your system and the key stays with you. Apparently the only thing their employees see is the number of your files and their size. Their servers are in Switzerland, France and Germany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Most people are ignoring the biggest problem that Google is causing. Gmail's virtual dominance in email field is going to be extremely hurtful for the rest of the hacker and startup community.

At the end of the email marketing remains the numero uno method of user acquisition and retention. With the new features such as priority inbox and automated classification of personal emails/promotion emails it is going to make it impossible for new consumer web startups to succeed.

<comment><USER48> If GMail kills email marketing, I will walk all the way around the world to Palo Alto and personally shake Larry & Sergey by the hand. Nobody likes email marketing, not even the people building their livelihoods on top of it.

If Google managed to snuff out such a widely reviled marketing channel, it would be an enormously disruptive force in the tech industry. And disruptive forces aren't hurtful for the startup community at all. Disruption makes room for innovation.

Sure, it'd be bad news for SendGrid, but it'd be awesome news for some lucky group of people in the 2015 YC batch.

<comment><USER47> Absolutely. As users we would all love if we get "no promotional" emails in our inbox. But this is going to give power to Google to decide which email get delivered and which does not giving an bias towards which company makes more money than others. Which is not good.

I would rather see a more distributed and open system that helps people get rid of the promotional emails or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> _The recent Google Reader shutdown and Google Hangouts disabling XMPP federation made me realize that any of my services could go at any time and I didn't want to be so dependant on a single provider or the integrations between services._

It's interesting how the recent NSA revelations didn't play a role in this decision. Providing NSA access to user data - Fine, whatever. Shutting down a service - How dare you! Evil company! Consumerism trumps the civil rights.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments and suggestions all; I've updated the post with some of the suggestions people have emailed to me (diff: [https://github.com/SamWhited/blog.samwhited.com/commit/62f00...](https://github.com/SamWhited/blog.samwhited.com/commit/62f00e5cd952f7b5fd0a0c137000139ba4455fd6)).

<comment><USER50> ownCloud designer here, thank you for all the shout outs!

There's also a great RSS feed reader for ownCloud since some time: [http://algorithmsforthekitchen.com/blog/?p=580](http://algorithmsforthekitchen.com/blog/?p=580) – installable from the App settings, would be cool if you can add that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Where is he hosting this stuff? What makes you think Linode/DigitalOcean et al would violate US law to protect a customer?

</comment><comment><USER52> Such action is extremely impotent if you still keep Gmail. Aside from chat, email is the most private service on the list and failing to give up on that exemplifies how people value convenience over privacy. This type of "activism" is almost negative if you're fighting for better privacy.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've done the same, but switched to: * Autistici/Inventati ([http://www.autistici.org](http://www.autistici.org)) for email and jabber * owncloud for files, calendar, news, contacts * cyanogenmod and f-droid instead of vanilla android and google play

</comment><comment><USER53> Lots of cheap web hosting providers offer webmail for one's own domain. Having never used Gmail I can't compare the interface, but I find it friendly enough and have no difficulty syncing the web view and Thunderbird (debranded as Icedove) at home. Even semi-technical people can do this with a little effort.

I do use the Google search sometimes, and sites that retrieve from GoogleAPIs, but frequently dumping all cookies, cache and such and changing browser details will keep you off the radar if you wish.

People speak as if it's a big hassle to avoid depending on big companies - <USER2> to avoid the tracking and wiretapping - and but it's really just a question of the relative values one attches to privacy and convenience.

</comment><comment><USER54> FWIW, I use Linux and am fairly happy with Amazon Cloud Player.

The lack of Linux support for their downloader _is_ annoying, but I don't feel the need to download entire albums particularly frequently. When I do, spinning up a Windows VM is the work of but a moment (I haven't tried running the downloader under wine, but it probably works well).

I don't mean to excuse Amazon for their Windows-only mindset or suggest that lack of Linux support won't be a big deal for you, but don't let this post discourage you from trying it in case you're a Linux user who wants to give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER55> Keeping GMail invalidates almost all the other efforts. That is the frist element of Google addiction that needs to go away. GMail is tying you down to Google and is unfortunately hardest to break free from. My choice (at least for now) is Fastmail.

Disclaimer: I feel strongly about this topic [1] and think that most of HNers should too.

[1]: [http://www.ikusalic.com/blog/2013/06/04/case-against- google/](http://www.ikusalic.com/blog/2013/06/04/case-against-google/)

</comment><comment><USER56> OK, IMHO if you keep gmail, you have not left google. Having one service with them and having multiple services with them are essentially the same.

I am trying to do the same thing. Problem is, I used my gmail address everywhere already. My contacts know me by my gmail address. Dropbox identifies me by my gmail address .. you know what I mean.

I moved my custom domain emails to fastmail. But my @gmail account can't be moved. I really don't know what to do with it. I am stuck.

<comment><USER57> Give yourself 1 year to migrate off. Tell everyone, services, etc. at the 6 month mark, put that in your sig. at the 9 month mark make an autoresponder. at 12 month, close the account.

<comment><USER57> Actually, don't close the account. Just let it lie dormant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58>
       I had a bit of trouble adapting to the kinds of results I
       was getting and what sort of language I used when
       searching (I didn't realize how tuned-in to Google's
       search algorithms my subconscious had become), but after
       using it for a while I began to love it.

I'd love to read a tutorial about how to adjust search queries to suit DDG. Maybe this is why I find it to be such a pain, and always switch back.

</comment><comment><USER59> Interesting, I have been in this line of thinking. Google has been as cavalier about user data as the rest except that it has the holier-than-thou attitude.

Made the painful move back to firefox on all my computer after being used to Chrome. I have started using DDG in desktops but still depend on google on my mobile devices. Email, I am still stuck with gmail as the primary mail box (Which I am actively working on to move out to paid account).

<comment><USER26> In what way has Google been "cavalier" about user data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I am very happy with the fact that Google personalises my search results, because 99% of the time it does it right! I remember one time where it got in the way, and getting "around" it didn't require too much effort.

Also, if I _need_ to find a replacement I will do it when necessary. I enjoy being Google's slave, because I feel treated nicely & I am happy!

Although, the fact they dropped XMPP support is a bit sad.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did another round of edits; if you sent me suggestions and they're not in there I decided not to include them for some reason (or forgot about them). Full diff here: [https://github.com/SamWhited/blog.samwhited.com/compare/979c...](https://github.com/SamWhited/blog.samwhited.com/compare/979ccd9...HEAD)

</comment><comment><USER61> I agree that it seems a little premature, but it's a good thought experiment: could you move off Google if you wanted to?

At StartHQ we provide a list of automatically generated alternatives, in case anyone wants to give it a go: [https://starthq.com/apps/?q=google](https://starthq.com/apps/?q=google)

<comment><USER62> I just took a look at Google Reader and the suggested alternatives are:

\- Google Voice

\- Google Contacts

\- SugarSync

\- Otixo

\- Dropbox

Not very helpful.

<comment><USER61> The automatic alternative detection kind of failed there. I'll update the list manually.

In the meantime, you can find all the Reader alternatives just by searching: [https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader](https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> One problem with moving away from Google is Google Maps. While OSM does have some fine maps, they don't have navigation or business search. I use Google Maps on my phone all the time to find "where's there a restaurant around here, and how can I get to it?"

Is there any privacy-preserving service that does anything similar?

<comment><USER64> Have you looked into OsmAnd [1] for Android devices? You may find it not as slick as Google Maps, but it does have Points of Interest search.

[1] [http://osmand.net/](http://osmand.net/)

<comment><USER63> I tried OsmAnd. I needed to download a bunch of map data when I first installed it; but once it had downloaded some of the maps, I still couldn't view anything, it kept telling me that it was still downloading maps (I don't know why it couldn't display the ones it had already downloaded).

Once it had downloaded all of the maps and would show me something, I tried to get it to give me directions. I could not (and still cannot) figure out how to set a destination. I scroll to a place I want to go, touch the menu button, touch "show" or "follow", and get a message "please select a destination first". I long press on where I want to go, which pops up a bubble that shows my latitude and longitude (not, say, what businesses are there like Google Maps does), and try doing directions from the menu again. Nope, "please select a destination".

There is no search by address, or anything else. If I use Google Maps, I can usually type in the name of the place I'm trying to go, and it will find the address and from there find the route. Even being able to find the route from OsmAnd has eluded me.

Ah. Just now, as I tried it again, I found that I could long-press on a location, then touch the menu, touch "use location" (at the very bottom of the menu, almost off the screen, and which apparently means "use the location that I just long-pressed", not "use the location I'm at"), touch "destination", choose to either navigate or show the route, and then get told that it can't determine the route because the location is not available as I'm indoors without good GPS signal.

It needs some substantial work before it's actually usable. For instance, it needs a prominent search that will take the name of a business or an address and route me there with a minimal number of touches and decisions, and even if I'm indoors and don't have a good GPS signal.

I use mostly free software on the desktop, for my work. When I have time to sit down and debug something and figure out how it works, I'm willing to put up with a less than ideal interface; it's worth it that I have access to the source, that I can fix bugs when I find them, that I can get in touch with the original authors and pay them to fix a bug for me.

But when I'm trying to navigate to some new location on my phone on my vacation, I need something that just works. I don't have time to fiddle around with a lousy interface. I don't have time to look up the address of my destination elsewhere, then scroll around the map until I can find that address and go through a long press and several layers of menus before I can get directions to it.

What we really need is freedom preserving software that just works. It doesn't need to have every possible option and knob. It doesn't need to offer every feature under the sun. It just needs to make it easy for me to find where I'm going and tell me how to get there, without going through endless layers of menus and making me figure out where the destination is in the first place.

<comment><USER64> Agreed that OsmAnd's interface leaves much room for improvement. Even though I have successfully used its navigation function for specific addresses, I have also run into all the problems you outline. It does seem to get better with each new release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've been extremely happy with Fastmail.fm. It's a few bucks a month, and you can't tell the difference between it and Gmail--as long as you delete emails after you no longer need them, of course.

I also started using a pen & paper planner by moleskine rather than iCal. It's actually very nice.

</comment><comment><USER66> [https://mail.opera.com/](https://mail.opera.com/) is not that bad.

<comment><USER29> Still waiting for the Linux client, but once that's about I'm going to give it a proper go.

<comment><USER66> I didn't ment the desktop client, i wanted to point to their email services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I am a poor man using services of Google. Thanks Google. I want to know how the alternative service users are so sure that this will solve their privacy issues by not using Google services. Are they insiders in NSA, or NSA cannot track you on other alternative services. HOW DO YOU KNOW ?

</comment><comment><USER68> Its a shame that they put such a ridiculous linkbait title on an otherwise good article.

</comment><comment><USER69> Isn't this something like pre-mature optimization? Most services (like Blogger for example) haven't shut down yet and probably won't. So, just because Google didn't support some open source protocol, doesn't mean we should suddenly decide to move away from a service that's really been good so far.

If the service is good enough, then why bother switching providers? At the end of the day all businesses want to profit . Also, it's a matter of personal preference - Some like Gmail and some like Hotmail. But moving away from a really good provider because it doesn't provide a 'feature X' (unless it impacts you in anyway and makes it unusable) then I see no point in moving away at all.

<comment><USER13> Because you see the trend coming. I just logged in my Picasa web albums a few days ago after a long time and now it defaults into Google + photos BS. The problem is, there are no more RSS feeds in Google + Photos. So I Have to use Google + to get access to these pictures, unless I revert to Picasa Web Albums. But it's clear Google will kill off Picasa Web Albums down the road and the RSS feeds for your pictures as well. It goes against my interest as a user, so I will actively be looking for ways out of Google as well. It's not a "win-win" situation anymore.

<comment><USER26> And what online service are you going to find that a) stays up forever and b) never radically changes the UI? Let's say you find a photo hosting service to does RSS feeds, what guarantees to you have it'll last longer than Google? For christsakes, Reader lasted 8 years for a free service, there are many non- advertising/pay-fee services that have not lasted that long.

<comment><USER13> Self-hosted solutions, probably. Since we can't trust suppliers to deliver their services consistently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Damn, Google may have people locked in more than Microsoft of the 90s

</comment><comment><USER71> Maybe Google should create GoogleEurope, a seperate comany.. The already got one offshore from the USA.. and it would bypass the USA also.. ;-)

<comment><USER72> What difference would that make? They'd probably set up a big cable to transfer data from Europe to the States anyways.

Recently, I asked an email newsletter service provider in Germany (like Mailchimp) where they store all the people's email addresses. They use some Amazon service with company HQ in Ireland. However, does that guarantee me that Amazon doesn't transfer any of the data to US data centers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> >There's no free membership, but I consider that a good thing.

You can sign up for a free App.net account with an invite. I have a few, anyone interested?

<comment><USER74> Yeah, I'd like one, please! Could you send it to the email in my profile? I can't figure out how to contact you.

<comment><USER73> Sent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> why be a google hater? .. they arent going anywhere for a while and only the non used services get shut down.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I mentiond, I'm certainly not a `Google hater.' I just don't want all of my services in one basket because I want ot be less dependant on one provider and the integrations between their services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Good idea, I may make the switch more entirely as well. I already have started with DuckDuckGo

<comment><AUTHOR> DuckDuckGo's pretty great — I started using it several months ago as an experiment and once I got used to it realized I actually preferred it to Google. The instant answers are fantastic and when they don't have what I want I can just write it and submit a pull request on GitHub. Love it. Results still aren't quite as good but they work 90% of the time (and I don't have any problem going back and trying Google during the other 10%)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> i did this several years ago, feels good knowing that google has to work hard to spy on me versus me just giving them all kinds of info about myself via search, etc.

the only thing i use is a throwaway gmail address that is mostly a spam magnet.

</comment><comment><USER78> This seems silly. Google has been consistently less evil than Microsoft, Apple, and even Amazon, and has the best services.

I'm all for alternatives (especially open source and non-US based alternatives), but if Google is still the most convenient service provider at the moment, I'll continue using them.

<comment><USER41> Evil is boolean if you ask me.

Corporations don't deserve a second chance either.

<comment><USER79> I have been somewhat of a Google fanboy (alright, too strong-a-term, but you get the idea). I encourage people to leave Google - because you know what? If enough people leave, Google will fight EVEN harder to stop blanket monitoring. When I hear Google scream from the top of their lungs "innocent until proven guilty" and "burden of proof required" then I will believe they are doing enough. Maybe Google should change it's background color to black? Until then, I fully support anyone who looks for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> The sad thing is that one would think that these migrations away from their services should worry Google, but they are apparently offset by the benefit of being able to concentrate on serving the sheeple.

</comment><comment><USER81> You can use EU based GMX.com for email in USA. I do.

</comment><comment><USER82> i kim dotcom gets his crypto email going, we can help google be less evil by moving to that.

<comment><AUTHOR> PGP and S/MIME work perfectly well. Personally, I'd be wary of any new crypto solution until it had been extensively independantly verified and burned in for several years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> _any of my services could go at any time [, like] Google Reader_

... a lead time of months, with daily notifications in the final month? But he's willing to go with other cloud services?

As for the total abandoment of google products, it seems petulant. 'I won't do Android, I'll do Cyanogen instead!'?

<comment><USER84> Is there anything to this post but petulance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Fuck it, I'm going to start writing my programs on punchcards and mailing it to Github HQ to test the results of it. Then I'll handwrite letters to my coworkers to finally switch away from the evils of email. For blogging, I'll literally stand outside of coffee shops on a soap box and talk about how boring I am. My only file storage will be a cabinet in my house. I'll hand draw my own maps. I'll do organic searching through newspaper listings. For social networking, I'll go outside and announce to the world how I'm feeling, only accepting their emotions if they like it. For photography, I'm going to buy a polaroid camera and keep the pictures in my cabinet. Fuck Android, I'm bringing back rotary phones. My feed reader will be the random clippings at starbucks.

Stay classy, HN.

</comment><comment><USER86> Let's trace the problems. I don't think Larry, Sergey, Eric, or Marissa have security clearances, do they?

</comment><comment><USER87> If you want a easy file storage, sharing and sync solution consider our Tonido product ([http://www.tonido.com](http://www.tonido.com))

</comment><comment><USER88> Move from one evil to another. Wasting the time. This is real world please!

<comment><USER89> No. Real world is full of various DNA, and we can breed less evil by choosing.

Moving from one to another is never wasting the time.

<comment><USER90> I am reminded of this cartoon, [http://pbfcomics.com/111/](http://pbfcomics.com/111/)</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud storage limitations, unlimited storage isn't always unlimited - <AUTHOR> https://blog.couchdrop.io/2018/11/23/cloud-storage-limitations/ <comment><USER2> So, Backblaze wins. Simple.

<comment><USER3> Being the best doesn't mean you win. Dropbox has the best marketing, brand, and consumer trust, as a result it's clear it's the winner.</comment></comment>


A Semi-Review of the Raptor Blackbird: POWER9 on the Cheap(er) - <AUTHOR> https://www.talospace.com/2019/06/a-semi-review-of-raptor-blackbird.html <comment><USER2> It'd be nice to hear what the experience of running a Blackbird with an AMD GPU is like, as a primary machine.</comment>


Epilogger Debuts Online Event Archiving Tool - <AUTHOR> http://betakit.com/2012/05/31/epilogger-debuts-online-event-archiving-tool

<comment><AUTHOR> Really great article by Betakit. We`re all about the attendee experience.

</comment><comment><USER2> Some good coverage for Epilogger!

</comment><comment><USER3> cool</comment>


Coffee drinking inversely associated with mortality - <AUTHOR> https://www.treehugger.com/health/drink-coffee-live-longer-even-those-who-drink-lot.html <comment><USER2> Anything that sick people do less is inversely associated with mortality. The "controlling for blah blah blah" stuff can't be believed---are the researchers succeeding at controlling for everything that affects health? Not even close.

If you see a claim about food and health that doesn't spend a huge amount of time talking about the researchers' experimental or quasi-experimental approach, just ignore it.

<comment><USER3> Nutritional science is very hard for a variety of reasons, including due to experimental deficiencies and political motivations. But that doesn't mean people should ignore articles like this.

It's an unfortunate reality that Americans must deal with the fact that the food industry has a massive amount of influence over the FDA and USDA, and historically, the industry has used this clout to preserve their profit margins as the expense of our health and well-being. An example of this is the "food pyramid" whose 2011 replacement MyPlate is still not terribly accurate.

It can take years of studies like these to pressure law makers into forcing scientific consensus onto an industry who firmly believes the FDA is there to put them out of business. Without articles like this, it's unlikely that Congress would ever both to address issues with our food supply.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ray Peat proven right once again.

[http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml)

<comment><USER4> Interesting article, although I wonder why this line:

        Coffee inhibits iron absorption if taken with meals, helping to prevent iron overload.

is spun as a positive. Most people I know with iron problems skew the other way: they are anemic because they don't get enough iron through food.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ray talks about that here:

[http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron- dangers.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron-dangers.shtml)

I, too, always thought of iron as something people would be missing often, but as it turns out, conditions related to __excessive __iron (and estrogen and PUFA) are much more common. Ray 's argument, in a nutshell, is that iron- supplemented foods and just about everywhere (due to an excessive worry of providing too little) and this contributes to the overdosing.

[https://freetheanimal.com/2015/06/enrichment-theory- everythi...](https://freetheanimal.com/2015/06/enrichment-theory- everything.html)

<comment><USER5> Except iron deficiency (and resulting anaemia) is much more common in women than in men [1]. Coffee intake should likely be reduced for women with iron deficiency issues, and avoided altogether for children and adolescents.

I say this while having my morning coffee.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21934611](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21934611) and others

<comment><AUTHOR> Iron deficiency might be the most common of deficiencies worldwide, for sure, but there are very few studies addressing the widespread chronic iron excess in a wide range of daily product consumption in developed countries.

So switching your iron sources to hand picked, natural ones while including a moderate amount of coffee in your daily diet (and not taking them together) seems like the way to go for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Leading causes of death in the US :

[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php)

#1 is heart disease

Causes: excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, no regular exercise, stress

I could be wrong but no exercise seems to be the main culprit based on what the disease actually is. Given that coffee increases your heart rate may suggest a causal link.

Edit: Link to the actual study from the article [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article- abstract/2686145) the comments are worth a look.

<comment><USER7> From near the bottom of the comments:

> _And if you have high cholesterol and you don 't want your coffee adding to > the problem, you need to use a paper filter to trap the cafestol, a compound > in coffee that raises LDL cholesterol levels._

I use paper filters because it makes cleanup a breeze. Interesting to know there is a health benefit.

> _Caffeine is a drug and every drug has its downfall. So in my opinion I > would need more evidence based medicine to prove that caffeine offers a > benefit to decrease mortality._

Given how many industry health studies have been secretly funded by industry leaders, with a financial interest in finding health benefits, these "pro- coffee" results seem suspicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Given how many industry health studies have been secretly funded by industry > leaders, with a financial interest in finding health benefits, these "pro- > coffee" results seem suspicious.

My perception is the opposite. It took decades for us to start seeing positive coffee studies. My belief is that drug companies actively campaign against health-promoting agents all the time, like coffee and aspirin.

In Brazil, for instance, every doctor will warn AGAINST caffeine, there's a huge anti-coffee sentiment in the medical community and I'm not sure how that came to be.

Ray Peat has been for many years the only voice urging us to reconsider these things.

[http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml)

[http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/aspirin-brain- cancer.shtml](http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/aspirin-brain-cancer.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help thinking about _Sleeper_ every time one of these studies comes out. Still waiting on the hot fudge sundae study.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can it help for mild haemochromatosis ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, along with balancing out copper. Ray Peat advises eating liver and shrimp once a week to provide the liver with all it needs to properly handle iron.</comment></comment>


Spotting A Phony Potential Partner On Cofounderslab - <AUTHOR> http://www.josephdickinson.com/blog/spotting-a-phony-potential-partner-on-cofounderslab/2013/12/

<comment><USER2> What is the benefit of finding a cofounder online?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not everyone has someone they immediately know. In-person, with prior engagements is best IMO.</comment></comment>


Newsflash: Display Ads On The Internet Don't Work - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/04/newsflash-display-ads-on-internet-dont.html

<comment><USER2> This article makes a huge mistake that many entrepreneurs also fall victim to:

You and your friends are not the Internet.

There've been studies done on who clicks on ads (one was even linked here). It's midwestern housewives, the same people who watch daytime TV and enter magazine sweepstakes. I don't know a single person who watches Jerry Springer, enters sweepstakes, or uses MySpace over FaceBook, yet those people obviously exist. They're worth billions of dollars.

For that matter, my friends usually don't pay attention to TV or print ads either. They Tivo past the commercials or get their TV episodes off BitTorrent. They skim past the advertisements in magazines. They only look at the newspaper classifieds if they're actively looking to buy something.

A bigger problem for entrepreneurs is that roughly 99% of startups seem to target the same 10% of the market - the part that _doesn't_ click on ads. If your users come from TechCrunch or Digg or news.YC, it's a pretty good bet that they've learned how to filter out ads. Most of the big consumer-web success stories - MySpace, PlentyOfFish, and lots that we don't hear about because they're not plugged into the Silicon Valley scene - succeed _because_ they target a demographic that most of us can't identify with.

<comment><USER3> actually, as the commenter below indicated, according to jackob nielsen's research, I am absolutely right.

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html> Summary: Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

The unethical here is tricking people into thinking popups are system dialog boxes.

The economics of the situation are clear. 100,000 magazine readers is a business. 100,000 web readers is lunch money.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, but you've completely ignored the comment you're replying to to make an unsubstantiated point. Nostrademons pointed out current research that states clear demographics interested in advertising. Jakob Nielsen's research presents generalized findings that don't contradict the research Nostrademons is referring to.

<comment><USER3> actually no I am not ignorning his point. Its just not statistically meaningful. The truth is that ___of the people that click on ads_ __, they are midwestern housewives. But there are statistically not enough of them to make many services that rely on them profitable. TV and print are broadly successful at attaining users attention. The web is not - at least for display ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, he's right, though not exactly for the reasons he states.

Display ads _are_ in fact worth much less than search ads, for most web sites. Display ads aren't about clicking, they're about exposure/influence (kind of like outdoor or TV ads without an explicit call to action). There the CPMs are much lower, since they by definition less effective at producing sales. (though they are not completely valueless, since eyeballs without immediate conversions may still eventually convert)

He's also right that most people's idea of "making money on the internet with ad-supported" has in mind the glory days of $4 CPMs on banner ads. We haven't been there since '01 or so. So everyone's economic model is screwed up.

There are only two (and a half) ways to make money with ad-supported content on the internet:

\-- 1) Conventional CPM display ads-- but you have to have _millions_ of pageviews a month, and extremely low marginal costs, to make this profitable.

\-- 1.5) Conventional CPM display ads, but on a extremely valuable niche site (e.g. a forum for doctors or lawyers). Here, though, there are probably more profitable ways of monetizing than ads.

\-- 2) Extremely SERP-friendly content with adsense/affiliate ads: If your content is targeted enough that it appears in a Search Engine Result Page (or if you can arbitrage the traffic through paid search), then you can get visitors who are in search mode (marketers call this "intent"), who will click through to your site, and then click an ad _on your site_ related to their search. Think "mesothelioma" splogs.

If none of these work for you, you should consider alternate monetization methods (freemium, subscription, traditional bizdev/affiliate programs, etc).

</comment><comment><USER6> I mostly agree with the author, but I also think it depends a lot on the ads that are used.

For instance, I think most people have become very good at mentally filtering out Google AdSense ads. But relevant, attractive, eye-catching advertisements still work occasionally.

Case in point, I have a site that I run mostly as a hobby (shameless self- plug: <http://devfunnel.com>) that has both Google AdSense and SnapTalent ads. The SnapTalent ads have always fared a LOT better than the Google Ads. I think the reasons for this are 1.) People tune out Google Ads, and 2.) The SnapTalent ads are more relevant to the readers, and often the verbiage on the ad attracts users' attention.

I also tried to make the ads blend in with the site visually.

I've gotten similar results on my blog (I guess I won't shamelessly self- promote my blog). The AdSense ads are largely ignored, the SnapTalent ads get hits. I've removed the AdSense ads from the blog because they were kinda tacky and not making money anyway.

And, no, I don't work for SnapTalent. :)

<comment><USER7> > <http://devfunnel.com>

errm, 404

<comment><USER6> heh - I just uploaded a tweak to it just moments ago. :) Pretty bad timing on my part!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Internet ads do work in certain situations.

I can see why print ads would be more effective for things like brand awareness for large companies, but I can tell you that running a small MMORPG, I am getting over 3:1 return on investment on Adwords image ads.

If I ran a print ad, people would have to care enough about the ad to put down their magazine, go over to their computer, type in the URL and then play the game. Banner ads catch people who may be idly clicking through gaming sites and are just as happy to click on my banner ad as any other link. And that click and subsequent download are so easy compared to what would have to happen with a print ad, I find it really hard to believe that print ads would have a better ROI, at least with the budget I'm spending at which is about $4k per month.

<comment><USER9> >I am getting over 3:1 return on investment on Adwords image ads.

I think you are the exception to the rule with that ROI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He makes several good points about how internet ads are ugly, easy to ignore, not as sticky as print ads, etc. In spite of these drawbacks, internet ads are compelling for providing ROI metrics and targeting abilities. And they are gaining in sophistication everyday.

The next round of ad serving technology being built now will be all digital and medium agnostic - you can push your ad on radio, tv, browser, social networks, apps, billboards, etc all using a single interface with granular targeting, ROI reports and even retargetting based on geography, past history, relationships, etc. Think Minority Report.

</comment><comment><USER11> I disagree, I think display ads work much better than text ads. Display ads have the benefit of always being SEEN, which means that I'm getting the message the advertiser wanted. When I see display ads for some TV show, game, or upcoming movie it registers with me even if I don't click though on the ad.

<comment><USER12> Jakob Nielsen says you're wrong:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html>

And my own very advanced N=1 research on myself says that too.

<comment><USER11> I'm sure Jakob Nielsen can make his statistics say anything he wants, just like everyone else's statistics. All I'm saying is that I hardly, if ever, click on a text ad but I do see banner ads. Different kinds of web surfers are impacted by different advertising schemes, we can't always fit everyone into one little box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even spammers make millions, this guy thinks that because he doesn't understand how online business works, online business doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't buy it. Where are you getting your information, or is this just conjecture?

</comment><comment><USER15> i click through ads in Gmail and I also click through some of the products Amazon recommends. why?

because they're actually relevant to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are practical reasons ads don't work, but they are bad for other reasons.

Display ads also suck because it's really hard for life to have meaning when what you do with your precious time on this planet is manipulate other humans into harmful economic behaviors. It must be hard to make a living selling a certain kind of advertising and not want to kill yourself, or at least realize deep down in your soul that you truly suck on a cosmic scale and when you are breathing your last breath, instead of reliving your life, experiencing the iconography of whatever religious superstition you happen to believe, or dissolving into blissful non-being, your consciousness will expand into a loop of all the disconnected distracted moments when people clicked on your shitty psychologically manipulative ads running over and over again. Just your soul, or whatever component of your waking experience that is responsible for your experience feeling like it's yours, and the endless distraction for an entire cycle of existence. The people who create shitty advertising must be aware of this, but incomprehensibly go on advertising, making money manipulating morons, and ignoring that increasingly desperate little voice that tells them everything is wrong, by increasing the level of distracting surface activity.

I hate advertising so much. As children of whatever beautiful, chaotic, creative force is responsible for our existence, we have to be able to do better then this. There is a practical case against advertising as a business model, but there are also other more meaningful considerations. Is a life of bad advertising and lying to yourself about the morality and implications of what you are doing really why you exist?

(Sorry for my (slight) rhetorical extravagance. I was reading Thomas Ligotti earlier with my coffee.)</comment>


AnyHub - the simple, friendly, no bullshit file host - <AUTHOR> http://anyhub.net

<comment><USER2> Simple, yes. Friendly, I'm not so sure.

It would be a bit more friendly if there were _any_ information about how the site works (are there size limits? for individual files? for total number of files? for total size of uploaded items? can I delete an item once I upload it? how?)

Many sites now offer you an ultra-minimal start page, but in a way this isn't really friendly. The only way to find out about the service is _to start using it_. That's fine, but at least most of these sites have a link somewhere to a page with information about the service. I can't find anything like that here, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Would be helpful to know what you can/can't do, and what the advantages of becoming a registered user are.

<comment><USER2> I registered since I was curious. There doesn't seem to be a way to delete items, but as a registered user I can get a list of things I've uploaded. That could come in handy later.

I would really love to know more about this service since it seems very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. However - the upload box gets rendered behind the green hills. (Firefix 3.5.3 on Ubuntu)

Edit: it's not completely hidden, but largely obscured, such that I have to scroll down before I can see the form fields.

Edit 2: it seems to be a function of window size.

<comment><USER4> Same here. (Chrome 5.0.3 on OS X). It's dependent on the site of the window though. I keep my relatively small, so that automatically came to mind.

<comment><USER3> yes, i see the same, depends on my window size (am on a 1200 x 800 laptop)

<comment><USER5> Same on my 1024x600 netbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It doesn't look useful. There's no link to an About or FAQ page. Google finds: [http://www.anyhub.net/faq.php?&l=en](http://www.anyhub.net/faq.php?&l=en) but that results in:

      [ 233.779] Stack: ce270443 dd963608 f12ad2c6 29ee6a02
      [ 233.779]        c2f9951b 94c81263 70513845 736511f1
      [ 233.780]        7eda4114 e66b1fc1 024e1e70 76bd87de
      [ 233.781] Call Trace:
      [ 233.781]  [<76bd87de>] get_page+0x7475
      [ 233.781]  [<e66b1fc1>] dispatch_request+0x7262
      [ 233.781]  [<94c81263>] http_listener+0x6973
      [ 233.782]  [<29ee6a02>] mono_runtime+0x6c65
      [ 233.782]  [<ce270443>] init+0x6574
      [ 233.783] </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=
      [ 233.785] Kernel panic - 404 not found
      [ 233.786] Halting system

Not too resilient, either.

<comment><USER7> That's just a clever 404 page, it didn't really break.

<comment><USER6> Yup. I figured that out after appropriate caffeine consumption. <sigh>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Definitely needs a progress indicator and some help with large files. Check out SWFUpload; while finicky, I've had great success with it (as has Wordpress, YouTube, etc.).

<http://www.swfupload.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> i love the simplicity, but i'm afraid it'll get popular and disappear

here's the dev's twitter: <http://twitter.com/charliesome>

and here's a forum post where he explains he hates rapidshare and set out to build an alternative: [http://www.loungegn.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=54&st=...](http://www.loungegn.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=54&st=0&p=678)

and here's the (funny) non-existent faq page: <http://www.anyhub.net/faq.php>

</comment><comment><USER10> On the subject of "write anything you like on my server," here is a fun little "Tragedy of the Commons" area for people to play with:

[https://loom.cc/?function=edit&loc=ba35327dc62909d8383ca...](https://loom.cc/?function=edit&loc=ba35327dc62909d8383ca457b406a1ab)

That location is stocked up with a limited number of usage tokens to limit the amount of data people can store there.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's a great idea. You might want to improve your wording so I know what I'll get extra when I register.

Realistically, how far can you get with no ads?

<comment><USER12> Ads will not do any good, to survive he must charge from some space threshold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried to upload a 12 meg file, but "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" after about 60 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why do I get a runtime error and files downloading any time I visit this site? Doesn't seem simple and certainly not friendly.

</comment><comment><USER15> I applaud the effort, though dropbox's public folder has pretty much removed my need for services like this.</comment>


Generate Test Cases with IPOG - <AUTHOR> http://jesg.github.io/testing/2015/06/08/generate-test-cases-with-ipog.html

<comment><AUTHOR> i was originally going to submit this as a "Show HN" but i could not choose between the ruby project[1] and the java project[2]. let me know what can be improved in the future.

[1] [https://github.com/jesg/dither](https://github.com/jesg/dither) [2] [https://github.com/jesg/dither-java](https://github.com/jesg/dither-java)</comment>


Ask HN: Restream.io but for TikTok? - <AUTHOR> I really need a way to stream to TikTok from OBS / any RTMP streaming software and seems like the big players in this space don't offer it. <comment><USER2> They want users to use their own app. You might get some insight from this unofficial API though: [https://github.com/szdc/tiktok- api](https://github.com/szdc/tiktok-api)

<comment><AUTHOR> yep saw that, was hoping someone already put it into a product of some kind

<comment><USER2> No one will support TikTok without official support from them. They could change something one day and a whole lot of work would be for nothing. I also don't know if that unofficial API would even work, if I'd designed the TikTok app it would be using a special handshake, tokens or a specific user agent to enforce only allowing streams from the official app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> as far as i can tell theres really no way to stream to tiktok seems like they only allow video uploads</comment>