Jeff Lawson Builds An App In 5 Minutes Using Twilio and IBM's Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/03/using-twilio-and-ibms-cloud-platform-codename-bluemix.html <comment><USER2> Isn't that a coincidence. I just discovered the service about a week ago. I'm toying with it. I'm also discovering Gammu and Asterisk and trying to figure out what to do with all of this.

My major issue is that I'd like to use USSD or Premium Messages, but I'm afraid I might be forced dealing with mobile carriers for this (knowing that they'd _never_ accept the service I'm proposing, because it's against their rigid philosophy).

I figured another way, but for a slight increase in costs. I'm figuring out how I'd use all these things to make what I'm trying to do.

<comment><USER3> Good luck man, Twilio makes some good stuff. Allowed me to donate a great app to a non-profit that has changed the way they do things and took me all of 10hrs.

<comment><USER4> I am interested in knowing what kind of app it was? Is it possible to share something more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tried to sign up. Spent about 5 minutes trying to figure what's wrong with my password. Got signed up. Of course the system lost track on my original intent to try the Bluemix. Tried to log in again. Got a security code question. Waiting for email. Okay. Punched the security code and got question on why exactly I want a trial. Answered. Got a message that they might give me a chance for a trial.

Corporate is so corporate.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, IBM is extremely weak on UX and design overall. I got accepted into the beta and once you're in it's no more intuitive. I will say that I'm pleasantly surprised they were able to put something like this together though - I wasn't sure what would come of their Cloud Foundry / OpenStack announcements last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks pretty exciting, but extremely disappointing they are gating the registrations. Makes me wonder if they are worried about scaling this early?

</comment><comment><USER8> Signed up yesterday because of Twitter activity</comment>


Adapteva founder promises 4,000-cores with new Epiphany architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/5/6/epiphany-promises-performance-breakthrough/

<comment><USER3> >Olofsson has a new idea - or, specifically, a variation on an old one...it was common for a central processor to have a 'math co-processor' chip alongside it - a secondary processor which was designed specifically to carry out floating point arithmetic at speeds significantly faster than the main processor

This is exactly how people are currently using GPUs right now. How is this architecture better than a Fermi?

>"A guy straight out of college who's done a course in C programming can take a program and run it on our machine. There's no new constructs to run - <USER2> can take a program with legacy code and run it straight out of the box on our machine, and you can't do that on GPU."

If they're using only static compilation, this is very unlikely to be true. A few thousand Ph.D. theses have been sunk into parallelizing imperative programs. Despite the accumulation of sophisticated compiler techniques, it doesn't really work without extensive annotations and cooperation from the programmer. The programmer often ruins potential parallelism by accidentally creating dependencies between loop iterations. Even when analyzing ideal code, the program text doesn't contain sufficient information about the data size to create a good partition.

However, there's some small chance this isn't empty hype and they've actually made some cool breakthrough in runtime parallelization of imperative code. In that case, though, why would they be hyping vaporous hardware rather than just applying their fancy JIT compiler to existing multicore systems?

<comment><USER4> "A few thousand Ph.D. theses have been sunk into parallelizing imperative programs."

This waste of talent continues to piss me off to no end. Why would people willingly spend time on this problem?

<comment><USER5> Because the reward of a breakthrough is extremely high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually a Transputer, side view.

This will suffer from many Transputer's sins and some new ones.

I did a research on chip interconnects, the uniform grid interconnect had shown some unpleasant behaviours, like sudden deadlocks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Okay I Olofsson completely failed to establish ethos with me when he called MIPS a "great architecture" Anybody who has done systems programming on MIPS knows how painful it is (particularly in pre V2)

</comment><comment><USER8> anyone have more info? their site <http://www.adapteva.com/index.php> doesn't have much (no white papers)</comment>


Rate my startup: 2easyOffice.com - the easiest way for groups to work together - <AUTHOR>

We have launched 2easyOffice, the easiest way to work in groups.  Please review our website at http://www.2easyoffice.com.
If you would like to take the suite for a spin, here is a discount code that you can use to get 2easyDaily for free for one month.
HACKERNEWS1
Note that the code is only good through Wednesday (4 August).  Thanks for looking.  All constructive criticisms and advice gladly received. <comment><USER2> Page is taking a long time to load right now, so maybe upgrade your servers? Guess you are getting a lot of HN traffic.

As the other said design needs improving, and sell me what your are offering with less text, and highlight what I am getting and what the benefits are.

Took me a while to see what it was going to cost, and no way to test for free. Good luck though, seems like some good ideas in there.

<comment><AUTHOR> As I replied to the other, the site is taking a hit right now. We are looking at ways to speed things up beyond the load balancing that we already doing. Thanks.

Thanks also for your feedback. We will definitely be getting a site redesign.

As for testing for free, do you mean a perpetually free account or a discount for 30 days or something like that?

Thanks immensely for your encouragement, too.

<comment><USER2> Sorry for slow reply - just a short test account, even 7 days - just to get a real idea of why what you do is going to really work for me. Then once you got me, offer my the upsell ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You need to get a designer to redo your homepage, and you to put in some more work toward marketing. You may have a fantastic product, but the website looks like it was done in 5 minutes back in 1997. Lose the javascript "not there yet" alerts and just put some copy of what will be there.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We'll see about getting a site redesign done. I have removed the javascript alerts and put in links to copy about what will be there. I really appreciate your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too much text on the front page. Links that are there are not intuitive (IMO links should always be underlined or atleast a different color). I agree with what the others are saying about the site design. I would also suggest you lose the images on the top of the page. What really threw me off was the passphrase required while logging on. 'When you create your account, you are requested to enter a passphrase. This works in a similar way to a password, except you are not expected to enter the whole word when logging on. Instead, you are to enter specific characters of that single word as requested by the 3 boxes displayed at the login screen.' Why would you do that to your users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for reviewing our site and giving such helpful feedback.

The passphrase idea is explained in some detail here: <http://2easyoffice.com/tour7.php> The short of it is that we wanted to offer something with more security than usernames and passwords. We can include a captcha, as well or alternatively. But we thought that, if we are going to put a bit of extra work on the login, why not make it count toward more security than just the annoyance of a captcha alone? Our perspective was that users trust us with their information. We want to treat that trust with the utmost respect by doing everything in our power to secure the login process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not loading for me in Chrome

<comment><AUTHOR> It is taking a hit on traffic at the moment. I tried it in Chrome and, while it is slower than usual, it is coming up. We have load balancers on the site that should handle some of the traffic. But we are also looking into giving it a bit more juice for the current peak. Please persevere, and thanks for looking.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you read the article or the comments section first when browsing HN? - <AUTHOR> Of course you may have different protocols for different types of posts.<p>Personally, I find reading the comments section gives a good taste of the thesis of the article, and sometimes the thoughts of the commenters are way more insightful than the article itself. <comment><USER2> I almost invariably read the HN comments first. In fact I often read _only_ the comments and end up never visiting the actual article

<comment><USER3> Yeah me too. That's why I (we) created the HN Notifier Chrome plugin, to subscribe to any thread and get notifications when new comments are posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article then the comments generally, I want the context before I get to the conversation.

There are other instances when I get the gist from the headline and don't care about the story, but want to read what others have to say (for example, the current front page story about New Zealand banning foreigners from buying new houses in the country. Headline says it all but there must be something interesting to talk about if a story like that garners 444 comments)

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the section and topic. New posts section is article first, then read the comments and add my own.

There are two reasons I visit the HN front page instead of getting all my news off comment-free aggregators like Google News or more specialized equivalents.

Reason #1 is that often HN surfaces articles on topics that I wouldn't see anywhere else without a lot of digging through noise. Those I usually click straight through to the article and skip the comments.

Reason #2 is that sometimes I've already read about a topic elsewhere and feel strongly about it and want to express myself or hear how the larger community is thinking about it. Because someone is wrong on the internet! Those I dive into the comments first.

Occasionally an article will satisfy both reasons, and then I'll do both but the order of operations depends on how well informed I already feel about the topic. The better informed, the more likely to start with the comments.

</comment><comment><USER6> Comments - to read "this is bullshit and here's why" before going in

<comment><USER7> I'm with you on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> HN comments first. I read the article before contributing to the discussion though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Comments 99% of the time; and that too only the first few. Things push me to go back are: too long paragraphs of text, name-calling, insulting the other posters, too much technical scientific jargon.

Things I continue reading:

Perfectly spaced 5/6 lines of paragraphs, explaining without sounding smart :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Almost always the article first. Its easy to jump to conclusions by just reading the comments, without ever touching the article; which is bad.

</comment><comment><USER11> Comments first

</comment><comment><USER12> Comments</comment>


France can now block suspected terrorism websites without a court order - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/9/8003907/france-terrorist-child-pornography-website-law-censorship

<comment><USER2> This is just a tactic by the government to control opposing opinions.

I fear this sort of control if and when the Internet is classified as a utility.</comment>


World's Dumbest Rebrand? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/worlds-dumbest-rebrand.html <comment><USER2> Personally, I don't think "rakuten" is any wierder than Toyota or Nissan. It might take some time getting used to but rakuten is a name that has branding potential, what is "buy"? For a similar analogy, try imagining a company that sells computers calling itself computer. I think we'd all agree a rebranding would probably be in order.

<comment><USER3> _Personally, I don't think "rakuten" is any wierder than Toyota or Nissan._

Perhaps, but it's worth noting that Toyota and Nissan took something like 20-30 years of persistence to gain respect and success in the American marketplace.

 _what is "buy"?_

 _noun_ a bargain: _The couch was a real buy._

I think "buy.com" wasn't a particularly good name, but even without ever having any dealings with buy.com, I could guess that it was a discounter of some sort.

It's doubtful I'll remember the name "Rakuten" or the way its spelled.

<comment><USER4> Toyota and Nissan took so long because of anti-Japanese racism left over from the war, shortly followed by anti-Japanese racism over American insecurity about Japan's growing economic power. Since that stopped being a thing, there's been zero resistance to East Asian brands.

<comment><USER5> Anti-Asian racism is still pervasive in the US. Toyota and Nissan continue to succeed _despite_ their names.

<comment><USER4> Just like Samsung, Honda, Hyundai, Sony, Mitsubishi, Hitachi.... It doesn't appear that Asian brands really suffer at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't call them crazy. Rakuten is a Japanese brand that bought Buy.com. I believe they're just consolidating. Is it an unmemorable, weird name? Yeah, but it isn't like someone sat in a room and said "You know what I think? I think Rakuten would sound much better than Buy."

Bad ideas and poor execution happen a lot, but this was a planned move that has some meaning behind it.

<comment><USER7> Can you find one brand using a generic and relevant to the category name dominate a category? Branding is not just a go with your gut instinct...it is a science that analyzes all the Kleenex, xerox, and googles of the world, the categories that are owned by brands and figures out what works... Generic brands like apple and amazon are not relevant generic terms to their category so it can be associated in the mind with that category.

<comment><USER8> Diapers.com, Ancestry.com and 1-800-CONTACTS come to mind. Hotels.com, Staples.com, Drugstore.com and Overstock.com may be close. Some like Pets.com obviously didn't work out.

Update: stamps.com and audible.com are also good examples.

<comment><USER7> See my comment below... branding is about owning a category...you can still make money with a generic name but it will never replace the category name.

<comment><USER8> I don't care about your comment below, in the one that I replied to you asked, "Can you find one brand using a generic and relevant to the category name dominate a category". I could and I did.

<comment><USER7> none of those brands own a category in my mind. They are successful for other reasons... Despite their names, not because of them.

<comment><USER9> This is just a No True Scotsman argument. You've been given at least a dozen examples but none of them are "dominating" enough for you.

Blogger, Dropbox, XVideos.

<comment><USER7> all three of these brands are brandable. I don't think you understand the objective of branding if you think no true scotsman applies here.

Branding is the battle for peoples perceptions, and follows the rules of how our minds perceive things. Your mind is not capable of assigning meaning to a generic term. You can know what they do, but you cant associate it with a category. "American Airlines" does not mean an American Airline in anybody's mind. Just as Buy.com doesn't mean anything other than a website that might have something to do with the word buy.

Generic domains have all sorts of other value, and you can make lots of money without a good brand. But... Branding is about one thing only... Associating your name as the "Go-To" folks in a category. That association is simply not possible with a generic name.

<comment><USER9> Why is buy.com a generic domain and therefore unbrandable but blogger.com brandable?

Both are words in common usage and very relevant to their respective fields.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What this article doesn't mention is that Rakuten is the #7 site in Japan and one of the top 100 sites in the world. They bought buy.com and are consolidating brands. Although the name "Rakuten" isn't well-known to people in the U.S., given the brand they've built up in Japan, it's a perfectly rational decision to choose "Rakuten" as the umbrella name. It would be like eBay buying "auctions.com".

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's picture a similar situation 20 years ago: I own the domain "books.com" but my company is called Amazon. I own the domain "movies.com", but I choose to name my company Netflix.

Believe me, we'll get used to the Rakuten name.

<comment><USER12> The funny thing is, books.com --> B&N, but we use Amazon, and for movies.com we all know IMDB.

Someone owns ask.com, and they say it's a search engine, but I can't overcome the feeling that they're just spammers, as the name is too generic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it bother anyone else that Inc got the story wrong? I thought they were supposed to be somewhat journalistic .It took me < 30 sec on the site to find out that Buy.com had been bought by the Rakuten group. The post author is suggesting that Buy.com simply decided to change their name -- instead their owners want to slap their own name on it. Maybe silly, but not crazy.

<comment><USER14> I got the story right in this HN submission two weeks ago by simply linking to Rakuten's About page:

"Buy.com renamed Rakuten Shopping: brilliant branding or massive mistake?"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5176774> -> <http://www.rakuten.com/ct/aboutus.aspx>

As for the "journalist's" editorial, I was able to cover that in the submission title. Not much value add in this Inc article.

The rename did get me to give buy.com a new try.

I found something I couldn't find on Amazon there, and spent $300 on it. And two weeks later, I do remember the name. So, going with "brilliant".

<comment><USER15> Moreover Inc pops up spammy surveys and other elements. It was the second Inc link from HN today, and I'll now be trying to avoid them in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem with Buy.com is that "buy" is a word (or call to action), not a brand. I've probably seen the buy.com URL around here or there, but the word is so pedestrian, it doesn't ring any bells.

<comment><USER17> But "buy.com" is a brand, and extremely valuable both as a brand and as a domain.

<comment><USER18> I shop online all the time, I've never been to buy.com

<comment><USER19> Ditto. I always figured buy.com a site that snapped up the domain in the early days and either was just a shopping portal, reseller or affiliate site.

Maybe this was due to poor marketing on Buy.com's part?

<comment><USER20> I get the same feeling; probably just because 'buy' is just a too generic term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious about why Rakuten would even want Buy.com... I've never heard of buy.com before, they seem like a spammy, domain-squatting type site. I'm guessing what happened is Rakuten picked them up for their existing backend infrastructure and staff, and they're going to make the front-end a more North American version of their existing Japanese site. Their current 'global' site is pretty disappointing, mostly just focused on Japanese-made exports, where the Japanese one sells damn near everything (including food).

<comment><USER7> I never heard of rakuten until last week when I saw their CEO is keynoting at this years IRCE show. I even made a mental note to Google him later this week. now I dont need to. I am sure the site has lots of traffic and I'm sure the domain has lots of market liquidity, so its a real income producing asset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Buy.com is not generally associated with quality merchandise. A rebranding makes sense if the enterprise is will be repositioned as something other than Big Lots on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER23> _> Why would you want to position away from a URL name that has a universal, positive meaning and replace it with something that means nothing to almost everyone._

for the record, "buy" does not universally have a positive meaning. i am sick of buying stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rakuten also bought Play.com, the UK store selling video games, DVDs and music. Whilst Rakuten is now pushed pretty heavily on the site, the URL is still Play.com and the Play.com branding remains.

Curious as to why they wouldn't/aren't do(ing) the same for Buy.com?

<comment><USER25> Technically, play.com isn't actually a UK store - they're based in Jersey which isn't part of the UK and isn't subject to UK or EU consumer protection laws.

<comment><USER24> Sure, it is based in Jersey - but for as long as I can remember (10+ years?) the site has been aimed at UK shoppers.

<comment><USER26> It's definitely aimed at the UK, but what they also offer free shipping to almost anywhere in Western Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Rakuten seems to be buying many online retailers recently. They've also bought Priceminister in France. Renaming buy.com, and maybe later Priceminister, might be part of an effort to unify all these online retailers under one recognizable name.

</comment><comment><USER28> ...or it's rebranding to match the name of its parent company, Japanese-based Rakuten. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten>

</comment><comment><USER29> Just some anecdotal evidence to confirm the OP. One of my e-mail aliases, apparently the one I had set up for Buy.com (I did not pause to check), started receiving e-mails from this "Rakuten." I blacklisted the sender instantly.

The new name is abysmal.

Buy.com was already the shady back-alley version of Amazon, a domain I ventured into only when the price offered was notably better than its more above-board cousin. I don't mean to say Buy is a nefarious company, but rather my own admittedly ill-conceived notion of Buy was not (and is not) good. For all I know, they are a completely honest operation.

But with the new new name, I just instinctively and instantly turned off communication with the firm. Call it what you will, but an Asian-sounding name nudges the needle too far toward the greatest source of spam my aliases see. I have been trained by history. And my blacklist trigger finger is ready.

</comment><comment><USER30> The rebranding of 'Farnell' to 'element 14' was far dumber than this.

<comment><USER31> Why not just call yourself 'carbon' and be done with it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Something to think about - Rakuten means optimism in Japan, but it's an opportunity to build a brand everywhere else. The Rakuten brand is a "empty glass" which means the company can brand itself in any way it wants.

</comment><comment><USER33> "This rebrand is so crazy that I have to assume that somebody inside the company has gone insane."

It gets weirder. The CEO of the company (a man I respect alot) is Japanese but switched the company's "official language" to English and insisted that all his Japanese employees learn English.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7olItNyBfo>

Apparently the policy doesn't extend to domain names.

<comment><USER34> Actually, considering that Rakuten is really trying to expand internationally, it is a really bold move to change the official language to get employees to look a bit over the horizon.

Have you ever used the original japanese Rakuten site? It is incredibly awful, just like many other japanese sites, because in Japan the focus is on different things. But if you try to expand with this mentality to the west, you are going to fail and people will laugh at your crappy attempts.

So actually, I think this move is incredibly smart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The interesting part is that so many HN readers appear to be too young to remember Buy.com as a brand. That, to me, says more about their inability to market themselves than the value of the brand, which was quite strong back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER36> Another dumbest rebrand that comes to mind is Moneybookers rebranding to Skrill.

<comment><USER37> Except that Skrill is 4x faster to say, is far shorter to type in, and is slang for "money".

<comment><USER38> I must say I've never met anyone that uses "skrill" as slang for money, and if I did I probably wouldn't trust them to look after it. Similarly, Moolah is 4x faster to say and type than Bank of America but I don't see the rebrand happening any time soon.

<comment><USER39> Honestly, I would pay money to see BoA rebrand to Moolah.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This might have to do with Rakuten bought buy.com in 2010[1] and is now bringing their property under the same name.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten.com>

</comment><comment><USER41> "Buy" would be "Bai" in Japanese. It depends entirely on the audience and the brand.

Maybe it'll be marketed as Rakuten in Japan and Buy.com in the West?

<comment><USER42> Or in Chinese, bai could mean white or hundred.

Rakuten sounds like Rasputin, a good Russian brand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Weird. They spent so long working on the buy.com brand, and now they've chosen a new name - harder to remember, harder to type in. The meaning behind Rakuten, 'optimism', doesn't really fit what they do either. I'd love to know who decided to rebrand buy.com to this, and why.

<comment><USER44> Rakuten was chosen because that's the company that purchased buy.com in 2010. They're basically the Amazon of Japan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's easier for English speakers to remember buy.com than rakuten (or whatever their name is).

It's weird to go to buy.com and see a different name plastered all over the screen.

They have a right to call their business whatever they like, but for God's sake, why throw away a perfectly good brand?

</comment><comment><USER46> Buy.com is such a generic name, it's hard to associate any kind of unique brand to it. Rakuten is only 7 letters long and is associated with a meaning? Yeah!

</comment><comment><USER47> It isn't that dumb from my perspective. I've never purchased anything from Buy.com. Now that I've heard of Rakuten, I will at least check it out.

</comment><comment> cool-RR Fun fact: The name Rakuten sounds similar to the name of a medication against acne used by teenagers in Israel.

<comment><USER48> Roaccutane? I used it in my teens here in Ireland.

<comment><USER4> In America we just call it Accutane. It's the one with all the terrible side effects, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> my first thought after reading this was couldn't the author not do some background research into the freaking marketing plan behind this or what the ad agency working on promotions was thinking....or like others have mentioned, the corporate merger history. 'Journalists'. geezus.

</comment><comment><USER50> My favorite was "USAir" to "US Airways".

Soon, it too will be moot.

</comment><comment><USER51> Maybe they're rewriting the site infrastructure in Rakudo at the same time…

</comment><comment><USER52> inc.com should not talk about "dumb" i just tried to read the article on a mobile device. it was the worst possible ux experience i ever had, even worse than your standard swipeware.

</comment><comment><USER53> same logic as hello.com</comment>


Larger smartphone screens lead to increased Web usage, but only over WiFi - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/26/size-matters-for-every-square-inch-of-screen-75mb-of-cellular-data-is-consumed-each-month/

<comment><USER2> Full report that this article is based on here - <http://opensignal.com/reports/data-usage-by-screen-size/></comment>


At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/03/major_change_to_linux_home_directories_merged_into_systemd/ <comment><USER2> I think its a nice feature and totally optional. I long thought that a feature like that is useful. Generally I see no reason why user information should be stretched all over the system.

Its totally clear that this is not the right tool for all situations, but it is a nice tool.

Now, maybe it should be packed separately but I don't really care if it is there if I don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until we've shown them.

homed isn't intended for servers or cloud, or computers with many users. It's main use case is a laptop with one, to a few, users. It's not a default user home manager, and that would need some integration by desktop environments to e.g. authenticate and unlock using existing graphical login.

<comment><USER4> > Steve Jobs (paraphrased): The customer doesn't know what they want, until > we've shown them.

Systemd aside, I really dislike the whole "Henry Ford said users would want a faster horse"

Can we please stop trotting this platitude out every time a controversial new change is made?

This narrative is just an excuse for pigheadedness by developers.

It can be boiled down to "ignore user complaints, plow ahead with change anyway".

Many of the biggest failures were made by people who thought they were the next Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs himself nearly bankrupted Apple by insisting on giving users a computer without a fan, even though nobody asked for that or wanted it.[1]

I am convinced that the majority of people who say they are ignoring customers desires are actually wrong, and that we just have a survival bias.

[1]: [http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.ph...](http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/archives/appleii/0002.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Who says every project has to take industry trends into consideration?

An LFS build pipeline stamping out a Linux distro of arbitrary spec isn't going to be that hard to get going for a hardcore cloud user, the sort of person that is crazy bothered by attention given to grandpas desktop-centric way of computing.</comment>


British economy suffers brain drain as skilled workers take flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebusiness.co.uk/home-page/in-the-magazine/354171/economy-suffers-brain-drain-as-britains-population-takes-flight.thtml

<comment><USER2> Good article, but it doesn't mention where these emmigres are going. Anyone know?

<comment><USER3> Without looking it up, US and Australia for young professionals, France for old rich people.</comment></comment>


Support scams that plagued Windows users for years now target Mac customers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/support-scams-that-plagued-windows-users-for-years-now-target-mac-customers/ <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't so much a call but a browser dialog that you cannot get rid of targeting safari.

>This is a very irritating campaign, since when the popup appears, it somehow locks down the browser. You cannot quit except via force quit, and when you restart your browser it automatically restarts the lockdown. You cannot close the tab, and only force quitting again will allow Safari to realize something is wrong, and not resume the session. Which means any open tabs you have are gone.

>So it's very irritating. one of Apple's last updates to Safari was I think an attempt to stop this kind of thing. Clearly they don't have it beat just yet.

This dialog, is a large problem that the browser should solve. There is no reason for dialogs preventing the closing or leaving of a browser tab.

<comment><USER2> The issue is that Safari pops up JavaScript alerts as a native dialog box, which can't be ignored until it's dismissed (since it stops you from doing anything else). A nice extension you can use for Safari that replaces the native dialog boxes for JavaScript alerts with an HTML one that's in the page itself is JS Blocker¹. It can do _much_ , _much_ more than that though, but if that's the only thing you want it to do, then just make sure that only 'Display alert messages within the webpage instead of a popup dialog' is checked² in Settings → Other → Extra Features. It should look like this³ when you're on a webpage.

――――――

¹ — [http://jsblocker.toggleable.com](http://jsblocker.toggleable.com)

² — [http://f.cl.ly/items/0f2o110o3V1A1w1z2p0p/jsalerts.png](http://f.cl.ly/items/0f2o110o3V1A1w1z2p0p/jsalerts.png)

³ — [http://f.cl.ly/items/3g242r322C443G0j1O3J/jsalerts2.png](http://f.cl.ly/items/3g242r322C443G0j1O3J/jsalerts2.png)</comment></comment>


Goxel internals: how to store voxel data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.noctua-software.com/goxel-internals-part2-data-structure.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: feel free to ask me any question about the code.</comment>


Is The 'Longevity' Gene Sirtuin One Big Research Error? - <AUTHOR> http://www.science20.com/catarina_amorim/longevity_gene_sirtuin_one_big_research_error-82868

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to Nature article, with brief abstract:

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/477410a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/477410a.html)

New York Times reporting on the controversy:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/science/22longevity.html></comment>


Metropolitan Museum Initiative Provides Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images - <AUTHOR> http://metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2014/oasc-access <comment><USER2> On The Verge, some more background: [http://www.theverge.com/design/2014/5/19/5733060/the- metropo...](http://www.theverge.com/design/2014/5/19/5733060/the-metropolitan- museum-of-art-makes-400000-iconic-works-available)</comment>


A Universal Basic Income Would Mean Massive Tax Hikes - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/a-universal-basic-income-would-mean-massive-tax-hikes/ <comment><USER2> This guy ran the numbers [https://medium.com/@keredson/the-real-cost-of- universal-basi...](https://medium.com/@keredson/the-real-cost-of-universal- basic-income-757b6573e277#.glftfprl1) and found there wouldn't be an increase.

And the author of that article seems to miss the point of UBI, yes the ideal would be to get everyone into work, but pretty soon there isn't going to be enough jobs for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well of course, where do you think all this "free" money comes from?</comment>


Interest in "software consulting" down by 80% since 2004 in Google Trends - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consulting%2C%20software%20consultant&cmpt=q

<comment><USER2> Interest in software consulting has not gone down 80% overall, it has gone down 80% relative to total search volume over time.

Here's the same graph with "linux" and "news" added: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consulting...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consulting%2C%20software%20consultant%2C%20linux%2C%20news&cmpt=q)

Linux has gone down over time, while a generic term like "news" has gone up. I find it implausible that interest in Linux has decreased, but rather the internet is being adopted by more of the general population.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't seem to be the case. Here's Google's description of the scaling used:

      Numbers represent search volume relative to the highest
      point on the chart, which is always 100. Hover over any
      point to see the search volume at that time.

<comment><USER4> What you're quoting refers to the scaling of the axis after all the values are computed. This affects the numbers on the Y-axis, but not the shape of the graph.

The issue wting was raising is the definition of search volume. If search volume means "raw total number of searches", then the graph _might_ support the OP's conclusion (if, e.g., we assume the population remained the same and that the same set of people aren't increasing the number of times they search for 'software consulting'). If, on the other hand, it means "fraction of all searches containing the term", then it might not because, as wting points out, the fraction of searches for 'software consulting' may go down due to a flood of searches for, say, 'honey boo boo'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These graphs make it hard to separate software consulting, the particular shape of a contractual business arrangement, vs "software consulting" used as a buzzword phrase to describe something else, e.g. outsourcing (I see large numbers of hits in India) - and buzzwords change over time, like fashions.

</comment><comment><USER6> No real change when you limit to US searches since 2007: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consultant...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consultant&geo=US&date=1%2F2007%2012m&cmpt=q)

</comment><comment><USER7> Add app development

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consulting...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=software%20consulting%2C%20software%20consultant%2C%20app%20development&cmpt=q)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interest in "computers" also down by 80% since 2004 in Google Trends: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=computers&cmpt=q](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=computers&cmpt=q)

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe people figured out that not using generic keywords gives better results.</comment>


LibriVox: Free Public Domain Audiobooks - <AUTHOR> https://librivox.org/ <comment><USER2> Hey, so I'm the very part time volunteer sysadmin for LibriVox, can I use this opportunity to ask for help?

I have a day job and two kids, the amount of time and energy I give to LibriVox is sufficient to keep the lights on, but not much else.

We don't have money, in fact we don't even have a legal entity, any donations we get are handled by Internet Archive, who also kindly provide us our two servers (yes, only two).

If you want to help and know PHP and CodeIgniter, we'd be very happy to have you on board! While I _am_ a developper, it's currently Python, and not at all web related. LibriVox's tech sack has fallen woefully out of date (PH 5.6, CodeIgniter 2), and I can't bring it up to date all by my self.

I'll be honest, it's not glamorous work. There's no automated testing, anything we change has to be tested and validated by the volunteers themselves - who are awesome, by the way. But we're a fantastic little nugget of Internet, and I think we should stick around on a solid tech stack for as long as possible ;)

All of our code is on GitHub: [https://github.com/LibriVox/](https://github.com/LibriVox/)

<comment><USER3> While checking out the project on GitHub I noticed that you're using GerritHub for reviews and made me wonder whether this is holding back some people from contributing. Not that it's bad in anyway, but I assume it's something a lot of people are unfamiliar with and the description of how to use it for the project is very limited, plus work in progress isn't directly visible as PR on GitHub.

Additionally, you mention in the CONTRIBUTING.md that there's a Google doc with a lot of issues listed that should be converted to GitHub issues. Where does one find that Google doc?

<comment><USER2> I'm not married to Gerrit, and I concede that it could be a hurdle. It's what I use for my day job, so I chose it out of laziness and familiarity more than anything else. I'll probably drop it, and learn the GitHub PR tools and workflow - I've gotten a few random PRs already.

Edit: I'll talk to the volunteers about making that Google doc public, good suggestion.

<comment><USER3> I think one can go either way, but the important part is that it's clear to those willing to contribute. I think explaining a bit more how Gerrit reviews work and who is actually reviewing them, would already help, and maybe adding a link to the README, so it's easier discoverable.

Cool, I wouldn't mind copying/creating a bunch of issues on the side.

<comment><USER2> Done.

[https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox- catalog/blob/master/CON...](https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox- catalog/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

Have fun, and many thanks!

(I'll try to make time this weekend to drop GerritHub as well, and convert what I currently have there to PRs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My late father did a number of recordings for LibriVox.

In fact in the last conversation I had with him, he said to tell the people on the LibriVox forums "Cheerio" from him, so he had certainly enjoyed being part of that community.

After he died and I posted his farewell message there, it was quite emotional reading through the tributes to him and his skill as a storyteller. Later still I found a dozen or so "fan mail" letters - so he knew he was appreciated.

I'll always be grateful to LibriVox for giving him an avenue to exercise a talent that wouldn't otherwise have been public.

<comment><USER5> Your father's reading of of Oedipus Rex is superb.

Please accept my thanks.

<comment><USER4> I thank you on his behalf. Most of his fan mail was for his reading of The Prisoner of Zenda, so perhaps try that if you haven't already and the genre is to your taste?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are also a huge number of audiobooks available on YouTube.

I made a Reddit bot [0] that continually scans comments across the entire site for mentions of science fiction and fantasy book titles. It uses a dataset of book title/author pairs that were scraped from the Speculative Fiction Database, a compendium of all known science fiction/fantasy literary works.

If an SFF book title/author pair is detected in a comment, the bot searches YouTube for an audiobook of the mentioned title, then replies with a link to it should one be found.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/user/EmotionalField](https://www.reddit.com/user/EmotionalField)

<comment><USER7> Cool stuff. Is this open sourced so one can modify it to search for specfic genres of books or specific authors? Cheer!

<comment><USER6> Sure. The code's up on my site [0].

Please note that I'm a beginner programmer, so the code probably looks really ugly to professional devs. I plan on refactoring the code once I get more advanced in programming.

[0] [https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative- fiction-b...](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/)

<comment><USER8> Don't hate on your code. If it runs and does what you want, then it's good code. Refactoring later can be useful and improve things like performance and readability but what matters is that it works.

<comment><USER6> Thank you! It was the first time posting my code here, so I was kinda nervous, haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I created and maintain an audiobook iPhone app, Bound. I've been meaning to integrate LibriVox as a source but the API leaves a lot to be desired. Has anyone had experience with this? It seems like I should just use Archive.org as the source instead.

If anyone wants to check out my app: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bound- audiobook-player/id10417...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bound-audiobook- player/id1041727137)

<comment><USER10> Bound was the best $4 I've spent on an app, thanks Tim.

<comment><USER9> Wow! Thank you for the compliment. I really appreciate it.

<comment><USER11> As an android user, I'm so jelly. Those screenshots look delicious, well done.

I feel like amazon literally hasn't bothered updating their UI since the 90s. I love audible, but god damn their UI is depressing and actually makes listening to audiobooks a worse experience. There's no better alternative either :(

<comment><USER12> I can recommend Voice [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiob...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiobook) which is open source!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> With public domain ebooks in text based formats, if desired, it's easy for a distributor or for the end user to change the display fonts (and font attributes) to make it easier or more pleasant to read. For audiobooks, these factors — the voice of the narrator, the intonations and expressions, accent and more — matter to have a good listening experience. Even commercially published audiobooks are dissed on the basis of having a poor narrator. An audiobook player doesn't have a lot to provide on these factors (with the current technology) compared to ebooks.

With the above context, how is a dump of audiobooks like this useful to the masses without reviews from people who have listened to the works? The lack of reviews here is not a problem as much as the lack of a reviewing or commenting interface would be, IMO.

How do the current listeners (on HN) of works here decide what to download or not? Or is it just a matter of "download, listen and see if it's good enough or move on"?

<comment><USER14> The LibriVox app on iOS has reviews.

Otherwise, uh, it's free. Take a listen, if it works, keep it. If not, drop it. Conundrum solved.

<comment><USER15> It has non-zero opportunity cost. The search for LibriVox seems to have no indication of the user rated quality of the recording and lists entries with no completed books.

I love audiobooks, but honestly don't see an easy way to interface with this site

<comment><USER16> > It has non-zero opportunity cost.

Then just don't use it at all. Go buy a sub to Audible.

<comment><USER15> Fuck audible. I get most of my audiobooks from the public library

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _LibriVox recordings are Public Domain in the USA. If you are not in the USA, please verify the copyright status of these works in your own country before downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright laws._

Is there any easy-access repository that goes over the copyright patchwork for different works around the world? I yearn for the day when we have a more global schema for copyright/distribution rights.

As someone who travels frequently - it does my head in when a subscription content provider geo-blocks something I'm accessing.

<comment><USER18> Copyright is ridiculously hard. Beyond difficult.

Even if you have general guidance across the varying nations, most of the time you can't expect it to be compatible. In fact, I've run across differing and incompatible copyrights across states within the same nation. I've seen copyright laws that contradict themselves, and the courts reinterpreting that law in seemingly random ways, so understanding the law isn't a guarantee that you can obey it.

As things currently stand even determining who holds a copyright may not always be possible, and the person who holds the copyright may not be aware that they do.

Even just the concept of Public Domain does not exist in all countries, and does not mean the same thing across most countries - there are subtle differences that can lead to insane incompatibilities.

Distribution rights, whilst complicated, are far less complex than the tangled web that is copyright law.

<comment><USER17> Thanks - this more or less echos what i suspected but never really delved into. It is a touch disheartening - and I don't see who would be incentivised (or even capable of) clarifying/simplifying things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Highly recommend David Clarke's work, especially his Sherlock Holmes readings. For me, he's the best Sherlock narrator I've heard.

He also runs a chain of Houston coffee shops; their mugs sit proudly in my cabinet! Felt great to compensate someone for many many hours of public good.

<comment><USER20> You compensated the owner of a chain of coffee shops by buying a few mugs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a similar project for german audiobooks: [https://www.vorleser.net/](https://www.vorleser.net/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Because of the public domain licensing, some LibriVox recordings are simply copied (with the LibriVox ID removed) and sold on Audible. (Search Audible for Karen Savage - e.g. Pride and Prejudice).

</comment><comment><USER23> I prefer text to speech than LibriVox I listened to a few books, the only audio books I can listen with a narrator is when he is really professional otherwise TTS.

<comment><USER24> Which is your preferred TTS engine or product for this purpose?

<comment><USER23> I have a few years old phone which still has ivona on it, it's just perfect!! have a look at a sample - [http://www.ttsforaccessibility.com/](http://www.ttsforaccessibility.com/) I use british english, female voice, Amy - perfect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Librivox rocks dude. I volunteered and must await verification :D

</comment><comment><USER26> While I prefer text based formats myself, there can be the use for audio recordings of it, I think, such as people who prefer the audio recordings, or when it can be useful in different circumstances.

But, some things I don't know. How to deal with footnotes? What if some of the footnotes are unreferenced (like in a story I wrote)? What if the text has some word/name that they do not know how to pronounce? (What if the author also doesn't know, or if the author knew but is now dead or for some other reason can no longer speak (and didn't write down the pronounciation)?) What about foreign text? (In the story I mentioned, it is mostly in English, although there is one passage written in Latin.)

<comment><USER27> With regard to pronunciation, this is often what separates a quality reader from a poor one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A bit off topic but what's the status on any research toward leveraging audiobooks to produce text-to-speech? What are the hurdles in making it seamless and imperceptible? And what's the "theoretical" number of recorded words/hour required to produce something reasonable?

</comment><comment><USER29> I found a bug. I'm on Firefox on Windows and when I open genres in new tabs, they dont open properly. The new tab just shows the top of the genres list, even though the url is full of information regarding which genre I clicked.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you enjoy Mark Twain, the John Greenman readings ([https://librivox.org/reader/107](https://librivox.org/reader/107)) are fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER31> I love librivox. Perfect for drawing too. I find the phone app easier to use then the website though. Perhaps I might help out when I get some freetime later.

</comment><comment><USER32> Could audiobooks be used to train neural networks?

<comment><USER33> The audio files from LibriVox are commonly used to train neural networks for ASR and TTS, see e.g. [https://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pd...](https://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pdf) and [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02882](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02882)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I find their categorization amusing as this is there:

Non-fiction > Bibles > American Standard Version

<comment><USER35> Probably, a satisfactory justification can be either or both of:

1) historians/theologians reviewing a literal translation 2) believers of the faith

That said, I agree that the rest of us thinks it's a story. Maybe magical realism would be close enough?

<comment><USER36> FWIW, the Dewey Decimal system also classifies myths and religious texts separate from works of fiction. And the two are classified separately.

<comment><USER26> I suppose the Dewey Decimal System is a suitable reason to classify it as "non-fiction", but then presumably the Dewey Decimal numbers should be present (even if that is not the classification scheme of LibriVox, which is OK, I suppose).

(Anyways, the Bible is a collection of texts of various kinds. It isn't really a work of fiction in the way that most stories are, and even the texts they have are not entirely fictitious anyways; some parts might be historically accurate, some parts might be exaggerated, some parts might be lost, and some parts might be works of fiction, for example.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Teeny-Tiny Bluetooth Transmitter Runs on Less Than 1 Milliwatt - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/design/teenytiny-bluetooth-transmitter-runs-on-less-than-1-milliwatt <comment><USER2> If that is practical to use, it would open an entire new field of applications. Constrained devices currently consume roughly 50 times that much during transmission on 802.15.4 or BLE. While there are sensors who are used for 10 years on a coincell, they achive this by spending most of their lifetime in deepsleep at under 1uA with disabled transceivers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone remember the amazing backscatter tech by the UW kids ([https://www.jeevawireless.com/](https://www.jeevawireless.com/))? I've been waiting on them for years now. They were supposed to be to market by now with a $0.25 chip that does 2.4GHz at 1/10,000 of the power. They have reliable functional demos doing long range transmission using 59 micro watts. They were also working on a battery free emergency cell phone.

</comment><comment><USER4> And thus begins a Cambrian explosion of new spy devices that run (practically) forever off a button cell.

The bleed/drain rate of many batteries is far more than 1mw.

<comment><USER5> FYI this is not terribly new – BLE was already extremely power efficient and could easily run for > 1 year on a watch battery

you're not going to be able to stream audio or video from a device like this, but BLE was not designed for that anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to see what kind of range we can expect from that haha. Still a great achievement for BLE! I have an iPhone and often find it via saying "Hey Siri", and have sorely wished for a way to locate more "mundane" objects, and if this were to ever cost around the price of an ESP8266 it'd make that possible. (Yes there is tile and similar tags, but those are expensive, and I mean to have a tracker on a bunch of items)

<comment><USER7> I never understood Tile and the rest.

The only thing I want a locator on is my phone.

<comment><USER8> You've never misplaced anything but your phone?

<comment><USER9> Creating more electronic waste for that once in a year time you need to locate your keys VS spending 15 min to find them.

It's nice in theory but it doesn't really solve anything, a bit like Juicero, nike self lacing shoes, &c.

If you start putting bluetooth tags on everything you could potentially forget somewhere you're in for a wild ride.

<comment><USER10> Im envious of your ability to keep track of your things. I end up needing to use the one of my tiles to find either my keys, phone, wallet or work badge almost every other day.

When the batteries in them go dead its easy enough to to swap them out myself for new ones.

<comment><USER11> Wow! Forgive me, but why can't you just keep them in the same place? My wallet and keys are 100% of the time in the same place when I'm at home, and my phone is either in my pocket, my hand, charging in a specific spot, or on a random surface in the house. That last one is rare, but happens. It takes roughly 30 seconds to walk through the house and find it. What am I missing?

<comment><USER12> Different people are different.

I now keep my personal things in the same place at home >99% of the time, but it's taken me _decades_ of training to get to this point.

For example, I used to walk in with my keys, and would be ready to put them into their home. But there could be an interruption between the time I used the keys to open the front door and when I put them in their home. For me, that situation would often cause me to put my keys in an inappropriate place, which often caused them to get 'lost' later on.

The behaviour modification, for me, was causing me to resist any reaction to any interruption until the necessary things landed where they belonged.

Different people are different.

<comment><USER11> That sounds more like you just need to have the place that you put your keys immediately by the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Getting closer to Jim and Pam bluetooth earpiece?

</comment><comment><USER14> What would be the distance range of such tiny transmitter?

<comment><USER15> like any transmitter, this depends on the gain of your receiver :)

<comment><USER16> And the stuff you have to penetrate. I turn the power down to -40dbm on one of our products during "Just works" BLE bonding to help minimize the surface area but I have the luxury of thin plastic enclosures, decent trace antennas, and the ability to force the user to place the devices right next to each other.

<comment><USER17> Which BLE chip do you use? On the nRF51, it actually remaps -40dBm to -30dBm. With the newer nRF52, you can use NFC for OOB authentication for more security. I'd love to know more what you're working on.

<comment><USER16> The 52832 in a third party module and as you know that maps -30 to -40. NFC would have been nice but my hardware guy didn't bring the pins out on either side which is a damn shame because I don't have any user inputs other than power on/off on one side of the link. Email is in my profile if you'd like to know more

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this low enough to use ambient radio waves for power?

</comment><comment><USER19> "...magnetic monopole..." is mentioned in the photo caption :)

<comment><USER20> It's "magnetic monopole antenna". A "monopole antenna" is a type of antenna. There are different type of monopole antenna. Two of the types are called "electric monopole antennas" and "magnetic monopole antennas". Here's a paper that looks at those two types [1].

[1] [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd05/23adec09486c283e1ab348...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dd05/23adec09486c283e1ab3480db0f1d78201c4.pdf)

<comment><USER21> This is quintessence of a typical discussion on the Internet. Context matters and it's expensive to gather appropriate context. Usually it's not as simple to explain as in this case.

"I don't have to read further because I know for a fact that <this bit> is bullshit". It's a fair heuristic. It's just that it is so difficult to have a deeper meaningful discussion without some trust established first (so that you know you're not wasting your time).

<comment><USER19> As a ham with an Extra class license I'm understanding that it was a type of antenna and am now regretting this commentary but for just a moment wondered if it was an April fools page published early.

I do have an interest in magnetic antennas (antennas in general) and also appreciate the paper listed by tzs. Thank you tzs!

Sorry for dropping the SNR in here :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to "Like" Anything on the Web (Safely) - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_like_anything_on_the_web_safely.php

<comment><USER2> So why would I want to "like" something?

I'm not one of these too-cool-for-facebook types, but if I really want to share something with my facebook friends I can always just post a link, and perhaps throw in a little commentary. Liking seems superfluous and spammy, and if any of my friends start liking things frequently I'm afraid I'll have to add them to the block list.

<comment><USER3> > _So why would I want to "like" something?_

Because you're an average user who finds it convenient to press this one button?

As opposed to:

* firing up the mail client and whittling through your friends to mail only those who might be interested.

Or

* starting a blog/twitter/tumblr account and getting people to check it.

With "like", you hit one button, and people see your recommendation. And since it's mixed in with everyone _else's_ recommendations, it's not annoying like bulk-spamming people with news links and more satisfying than setting up a blog no-one reads.

I think it's dumb myself. But I clearly see why people do it. Like many annoying features on Facebook: it shrewdly exploits social customs.

<comment><USER4> I really want to check the posted URL and be sure that it points exactly where I want, and doesn't reveal anything unnecessary (all those URLs with tons of information after '?'). I'd feel very embarrassed if I had posted something spam-like. And it's not that hard. Just use some desktop twitter client, copy URL there, copy it back to the browser, try it, make some corrections if needed, and that's it. It shouldn't be that hard.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. But zero-friction and social loophole-ing [1] is awfully attractive to your average FB user.

[1] if the link is wrong, it's stupid FB's fault, not mine.

if the link has unnecessary cruft, that's fine, because only non-technical FB people will ever look at the query-string.

 _I_ don't stand out as spammy, because _everyone's_ "like"s are in the same place

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I believe this was started on HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286084>)

</comment><comment><USER5> Off the top of my head I'm not sure but I guess Facebook is unable to use javascript inside an iframe to determine the current url? What about when the like button is clicked, no way to confirm the url?

</comment><comment><USER6> Two words people: BOOK MARKS

Or if you want to get fancy, there is delicious.

(Yes, I'm being sarcastic)</comment>


Why One of Silicon Valley's Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/05/angel-no-more-why-one-of-silicon-valleys-savviest-investors-has-shut-his-wallet/ <comment><USER2> _"Everyone is competing for the same people, going after the same real estate, the same support services," Hartz says. "The natural resources of the startup world are getting scarcer and scarcer, and the cost is getting higher and higher. It's all an outgrowth of an abundance of capital."_

And largely still doing this in just a few square miles in California. Are investors so emotionally tied to one geographic area that long-term investing in other areas of the US is strictly verboten? Techstars and other programs should be demonstrating there's 'natural resources' outside of California, no?

<comment><USER3> I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley. I lived there for awhile. Its got high population density is full of a lot of fake people (people who are happy to "help" your startup for just a taste of the equity), fake investors, and an extraordinary amount of noise. I'm sure there are many people who love it for the same reasons that high pressure finance types love new york city.

But this seems anathema to building a good startup- where you need some isolation some time to focus and to keep a broad and rational perspective, not to be high on each others fumes.

Plus, the bay area is very expensive, it attracts engineers who are more likely to jump to the next hot startup, its hard to find good office space, etc.

It isn't like you can't get broadband everywhere.

And I think people really misunderestimate the importance of good engineers who stick around. Turnover means critical knowledge is walking out the door.

This makes bumfuck Ohio[1] a better place if retaining talent is important. The idea that only Stanford educated engineers are good enough to work at startups is silly. (my experience- finding the best engineers is not correlated with ivy league degrees.)

Bumfuck Ohio may not have the cool meet ups that SV has, but it doesn't have the two orders of magnitude more distractions that SV has as well. Nor does it have the jealousy driven culture where every 4th person has an overpriced show off car, etc.

The reason everyone focuses on the Valley? People are focused on venture capital, not building profitable businesses. Venture capital lives in the valley because for a lot of these VC firms a 90 minute flight to Seattle for a board meeting is just too much effort.

That's it.

[1] Nothing against Ohio, never been there, just picking it for an example.

<comment><USER4> One thing about California is that state law explicitly says anything developed on your own time with your own equipment is yours (obvious conflicts with your employer aside).

Every employment contract I have seen outside of California has said something to the effect that anything you develop, no matter whose time and equipment is used, or relevance to your job or employer belongs to them. Even if you worked for a software company, coming up with new cat food would belong to them. Many times there is also a non-compete but at least some states require payment during the non-compete period.

This lack of "friction" in California makes for a more vibrant scene in starting companies and getting people to join.

<comment><USER2> "Even if you worked for a software company, coming up with new cat food would belong to them."

As would any terrorist plans or child porn. This has come up a couple times in contracts with employers in the past, and I tell them they _really_ don't want to own everything I develop, and I've had that clause struck from a contract with a bit of pushing.

<comment><USER4> I've encountered several contracts in California where they ask you to list everything you created outside of the company. The implication is that anything you don't list was then created while working for the company and hence implicitly owned by them. They explained the provision is for my benefit. I finally just started putting in "Numerous past and future works identified with my personal copyright".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _All that money makes novice entrepreneurs do funny things, Hartz says. "That relentless competition coupled with the cash tends to train entrepreneurs to be far more aggressive and less focused on things like measurable results," Hartz says. "There are some entrepreneurs who can and should be aggressive, but they possess a certain type of pattern recognition, an understanding about what's really lifting a business."_

The investment game has got tough. Not only do you need to gamble on an uncertain business model, now you have to compete with a growing investor population. With all the noise and vying investment dollars it is not so a bad idea to sit out and hang on to your past investments.

Unfortunately not everyone has the same portfolio as Hartz....

</comment><comment><USER6>
      investment in internet companies at $1.4 billion was down
      slightly in dollar terms in Q1 of 2012 compared to the
      end of 2011

To me, this is a clear sign we're not in a bubble. Investments don't slow down in a bubble, which is exactly why they're so dangerous, they just pop.

Seems to me like investors are pretty smart this time around, and are doing everything to avoid a bubble.

<comment><USER7> That includes $250MM to dropbox in Q4. Imagine if they had closed in 2012 - the same statistic would show investments up like 40% or 50% quarter over quarter. It also doesn't include angels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "When people openly mock the consumer internet space and the excesses of it, that's when I will start investing again."

What? people are already mocking the consumer internet space

They weren't (at least not so much) 3-4 years ago, but now? instagram just broke the levees.

<comment><USER9> He was probably referring to when people were saying that you couldn't make money on the consumer internet, thus not investing, thus leaving a lot of space to those who did. People now are mocking the valuations given to some comapanies, not saying that you can't make money with consumers on the internet... ;)

<comment><USER10> Makes sense, but in that case, what is the word "excesses" doing in that sentence? I think somebody miss-transcribed the interview tape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It makes a lot of logical sense - the demand for startups is higher than the supply, and that's driving costs up. Better to buy low and sell high than buy high and hope for higher.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think we're only in a Facebook-fueled Social Network bubble. While at the same time, we are only at the beginning of genuine technology boom. Mobile and cloud computing tech isn't going to go away like a fad.

<comment><USER13> I agree but, like last time, the social crash will ripple through the real businesses too.</comment></comment>


Disney Research: Playing Catch and Juggling with a Humanoid Robot [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=83eGcht7IiI

<comment><AUTHOR> What I found the most interesting about the video was how the untrained participants reacted after the robot caught it. After they got over their initial surprise that it could catch the balls, the robot's success was also their own success.

I think this is important because if robots are to be part of peoples' everyday lives, they'll have to have some sort of social intelligence for people to accept them.

In large part, robotics and AI aren't quite there yet, so I think starting off with a humanoid robot is a tall order. Maybe starting off with something smaller and cuddlier first lowers expectations.

The last cutaway where the guy tosses it over the robot's head, and then raises his hands in celebration made me laugh. I think this is what is considered 'cute'.</comment>


Show HN: JSLint, JSHint and ESLint Error Explanations - <AUTHOR> http://jslinterrors.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the maintainer of this site. It's been around for a while but has recently undergone a major update. ESLint is a new addition and more messages are now covered. A simple API has also been introduced to make it possible to get explanations or run code against any version of any linter via HTTP. Any comments, thoughts and ideas would be welcome.</comment>


Why Doesnt Mixx Have More Users? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mixx_still_tiny.php

<comment><USER2> My guess (and I haven't RTFA): because "social news sites" are so 2005.</comment>


Pinboard Turns Three  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pinboard.in/2012/07/pinboard_turns_three/ <comment><USER2> Oh. This is a nice coincidence - I just wrote a paean to Pinboard as a great example of a product done well here [1]. (Okay, it's not really lyrical, just an everyday blog post)

This was just recently when Maciej just _gave away_ the schema to the site! [2] I'm still reeling from the awesomeness of that move..

[1] <http://shrik.theswamp.in/2012/07/youre-doing-it-right.html>

[2] <http://blog.pinboard.in/2012/06/do_it_yourself_bookmarking/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought about migrating my sporadic Delicious use over when it was $5. At some point I turned on a WordPress plugin to display recent bookmarks from Delicious and again considered migrating over when 404s started appearing in my feed, I think it was up to $7 by then. Finally Delicious was acquired and browser plugins and features started to smell bad so I paid $9. I'm sad it took me so long, not because the extra $4 was an issue but because I wasted far more of my time with an inferior product.

<comment><USER4> I set up an account in June 2009. Pinboard was the first bookmarking site I used, and as the owner says, the speed was the thing. No animated ads, blinking things or huge page load overhead.

Shortly after setting up the pinboard account, I moved the personal Web site off Wordpress back to static html. Pinboard provides the microblogging thing the way I like to do it.

[http://idlewords.com/2009/09/how_to_not_get_your_blog_hacked...](http://idlewords.com/2009/09/how_to_not_get_your_blog_hacked.htm)

(I don't use a local WordPress, huge overhead, I just use a few bash scripts).

<comment><USER5> Hi

Are your scripts online somewhere? As the creator of "frankenstein's ___.sh"[1] I am always looking at ways to improve it, mostly by peeking at other people's code.

[1] <https://github.com/nicolasH/frankensteins>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best overall bookmarking experience I've ever had, in the browser or out.

Perfect? Of course not. More than good enough? Yes.

Try it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting to contrast this post with all the posts about multi million dollar funding rounds currently on the front page.

<comment><USER8> It's refreshing, honestly. It seems to have more of a clear focus on real value to the user and it feels more like a labor of love and craft on the part of its creator, Mr. Cegłowski... its refreshing to see someone try to make something good rather than something that's simply sellable to VC's.

Now, admittedly, he's probably not getting rich off of the site – the exact number of paying users is hard to discern, but there are 7k more active users now than a year ago, so assuming 50% of people who buy in use it at least once every 30 days, then, conservatively, he's grossed somewhere north of 100k in the last year, right? Even if that's off by a factor of 2, it's not a killing – but it's real money as costs are likely reasonably low given the content he's serving and the low overhead such a small operation would require.

On top of that are the $25/year archival accounts. If 5% of all active users pay for archival accounts (that's a utter guess), that grosses another ~$29k/year. That's workable, definitely... but again, not a killing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pinboard has been nothing but a pleasure to use, for me and those I've introduced to it. I have to say that Maciej's joyful, honest, and frequent engagement with his users is a big part of that.

<comment><USER9> As an example, I remember the first time I misguidedly asked him if he used salted hashes for his passwords. He responded (and this was publicly, on Twitter) that yes, he did, but that it was nothing to be proud of, actually, and that he was going to be implementing bcrypt. It was from him that I belatedly learned how to properly store passwords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bravo to the decrease in downtime despite the increase in storage usage and diversity of active users like myself.

It looks like since I joined a couple years ago user acquisition has slowed down a bit, and the cost of operations might have gone up per active user.

2011 bookmarks/active user = 27M/16k = 1688 per user

2012 bookmarks/active user = 53M/23k = 2304 per user

2011 bytes archived/active user = 3.0T/16k = 197 megabytes per user

2012 bytes archived/active user = 5.9T/23k = 269 megabytes per user

2011 unique URLs/active user = 16M/16k = 1000 per user

2012 unique URLs/active user = 32M/23k = 1391 per user

% rate of change over previous year %

2011 2012

23.5M 26M bookmarks

65M 59M tags

13.2K 7K active users

2.8TB 2.9TB bytes archived

23h -7h downtime

13.5M 16M unique URLs

</comment><comment><USER11> I heard of it, but never used it. I currently use delicious & google bookmarks. This sounds amazing, but site fails to show what export methods it has unless I sign up first. All it says is "You can export your bookmarks in a variety of formats". Could I import back to Google bookmarks or back to Delicious?

<comment><USER12> Pinboard can export Netscape-style HTML bookmarks, Delicious-compatible XML, and JSON. It can also import directly from Delicious, but I'm not sure about Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried and used many different bookmarking services, but in the long term ended up using none. Recently the need became apparent, though, and I signed up for Pinboard.

Pinboard _is_ nice, but sadly, as much as I like it or admire its founder, I can't recommend it. Just because of the uptime. I don't think I'm a heavy user (have around 120 bookmarks since joining in March), however two times I couldn't save a bookmark because Pinboard was down.

This led to my realization that 1) the primary purpose of bookmark manager is to allow user to quickly save the page and forget about it, so uptime matters, although I took it for granted before, and that 2) reliability is (maybe the only) one nice thing about free services owned by a large faceless corporations.

<comment><USER14> I recommend historious (<http://historio.us/>).

<comment><USER13> Regular bookmarking workflow like in Pinboard or Delicious works fine for me, and full-text page search exists in Pinboard, I think. I just would like bookmarking service to be up when I save the page.

(It's not that bad if it's down when I try to access my bookmarks. If I were making my own bookmarking service, I'd probably make bookmarklet as independent as possible from the rest of the architecture.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still can't believe this model is working for this guy. $230k in 2 years is not bad for a paid-only service that people can find elsewhere for free.

<comment><USER16> Where can you find bookmarking _with archiving_ for free? (don't say archive.org)

You have to add the $25/year archival users to that number too.

<comment><USER15> Delicious and Pinterest don't let you see your old bookmarks?

<comment><USER17> Archiving as in the service also stores the content of the bookmarks, in case the original site goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I signed up when Maciej first went public with it. Was that ever a good decision. I had been using del.icio.us since 2003 (again, signed up when joshu first opened it to the public). Importing my Delicious bookmarks was painless, and there was no friction whatsoever. Yes, _actual users paying for software is a sustainable business._

</comment><comment><USER19> Pinboard and Delibar kick ass. However I would like Delibar to save the bookmark to a temporary place if Pinboard is currently down. That would be ideal

</comment><comment><USER20> Pinboard is absolutely wonderful. The only thing i'm still missing is a nice iPhone bookmarklet i can use to bookmark stuff on-the-go.

<comment><USER21> The normal bookmarklets work with mobile Safari. The trick is getting the JS on your phone. If you make a new bookmark (for any page) and then change the URL to the right JS, it should work. Originally I had to email the JS to myself, but now I have it up on pastebin.

<http://pastebin.com/mwSYY8mu>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really enjoy using it! Congrats and thanks for the good work

</comment><comment><USER23> I finally singed up yesterday. Couldn't be happier with it.

</comment><comment><USER24> congrats! the best investment of (in my case) 9.13$ ever!</comment>


SOPA witchhunters: count me out - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2011/12/sopa_witch-hunters_please_count_me_out.html

<comment><USER2> Glenn, there is a big difference between censoring and censuring. What Paul did was censure.

Also, Paul's justification for not allowing SOPA supporters to go to Demo day makes financial sense as the primary advisor to the YCombinator companies.

Demo Day is primarily an event for investors and others interesting in furthering the success of those companies in his portfolio. It's a high demand event, and in order for Paul to keep the best interest of his portfolio companies in mind should only invite those people who will add the most value.

Anyone supporting SOPA clearly is supporting an action that is at best not relevant to a company in his portfolio and at worst downright bad. This doest just apply to current YCombinator companies but all future companies.

This bill does nothing but does nothing but give old businesses that have ceased to innovate a stick with which they can beat the innovative companies with. If you are in the business of innovation, you'd censure such people too.

I challenge you to go get anything Paul has said on this matter (ref: <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg> ) and try to show that he is being a bully and not simply supporting and promoting the most rational economic decision as someone on the change/innovation side of the economy. The law should never be used to determine winners and losers. It should be there to protect the public while letting the markets decide who wins and loses.

This post smacks of taking the tone of articles written by journalists expressing the journalists' own viewpoints and extrapolating those viewpoints to be extensions of Paul's intent.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is an interesting meta-discussion here, that ought to take place. Is this "bullying"? Whether or not it is, is it a good thing to do? Honestly, I'm not sure.

\</comment><comment>----

An argument in one direction:

Say there is a bill before Congress that requires that I be shot. The manager of my grocery store announces that he supports it. I announce that I am no longer shopping at that grocery store. Am I being a bully? Is the situation with SOPA really qualitatively different?

If you think that's a bit over-the-top, then tone it down a bit. The same argument can be made, rather straightforwardly, using any number of different scenarios.

\</comment><comment>----

In the other direction, it gets more subtle:

Law is complex. Pretty much everyone thinks there ought to be _some_ copyright enforcement (e.g., if we don't enforce copyrights, then we don't enforce the GPL). Any enforcement is going to be detrimental to _someone_ ; we disagree on who that someone ought to be and what form the enforcement should take. Given that, do we really want to brand some company as "bad" because of _one_ position on _one_ bill, which, itself, is long and complicated, and hardly reducible to a bumper sticker?

\</comment><comment>----

There is a school of thought that essentially says that no moral issue is resolvable, since we all have different ideas. I very much disagree with this school, and I don't like the fact that I might appear to be pushing it, above. But I honestly don't know how to respond to the ideas presented in the posting. I would welcome others' thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article makes an argument that I've heard from other SOPA supporters today - if you don't want to work with us, don't have any alternatives and don't want to propose improvements, then we should proceed with SOPA.

Its such a ridiculous and counter-productive position to take, especially when its cloaked in the guise of bipartisan cooperation. No wonder the U.S. stands so divided with logic and rhetoric like this so freely played.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see no reason to consider PG's actions to be anything akin to 'censorship' or 'bullying' when everyone involved is merely exercising their right to Freedom of Assembly. You may remember that as one of our _other_ First Amendment rights.

      Freedom of Assembly

\- _The individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests_

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly

No one is forbidding them from making their positions known. No one is forcing them to recant those positions. No one forced them to take those positions in the first place. No one is preventing them from reconsidering their positions. And no one forced them to choose a side at all. SOPA, however, will take away websites, and with it the owner's ability to communicate with that audience, based on little more than someone's say-so, without giving them a chance to respond first.

People cannot expect to engage in activities like this that screw others over without there being consequences. That's not free speech, that's crazy talk.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a difference between ostracism and witch hunting.

The former is saying no more than "you are not welcome here" while the latter is more insidious.

Besides, it isn't witch "hunting" if the witches are putting out press releases saying "I'm a witch!"

</comment><comment><USER7> So we should just quietly wait for them to come and "discuss" it with us?

</comment><comment><USER8> > _I just don't like bullies._

It isn't bullying. It's tit-for-tat. Companies that support SOPA will hurt, economically, all of us. It makes sense to hurt them back.</comment>


Mirth & the Principled Objection of Daily Deals - <AUTHOR> http://startupharbor.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/mirth-and-the-principled-objection-of-deals/

<comment><AUTHOR> It was cool talking with Jeremy Galen @ Mirth and he raises a good point. Daily deals don't work for tons of businesses and can destroy value. So, what's the best way to bring in and retain customers and reward them without deals? I don't know if Mirth is the perfect answer yet, but they're asking the right question.</comment>


The Making Of… Carmageddon - b-man http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/the-making-of%E2%80%A6-carmageddon

<comment><AUTHOR> "We needed a reference for what someone getting run over looked like, so of course he was the volunteer nutcase and I was driving a half-ton Chevy station wagon at the time. There was a car park outside the office, so we went out there and drove into him repeatedly: he had a piece of cardboard stuck up his shirt, as if that would help. At one stage, Neil was driving, and Tony asked if he could floor it and hit him harder so he could clear the roof. Neil hit him at about 35mph and he went clear through the windscreen! The police turned up because they'd had reports that someone was being run over in a car park, but when they saw the camera and stuff they headed off."

Who knew making video games could be so dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER2> For those who still can't forget that sound effect, Patrick was the author of Crystal Quest.

I dimly recall turning up for a meeting just as the infamous station wagon/windscreen/police incident was winding down, and the reason they were going faster and faster was that the "stunt man" was finding it easier to roll over the car.

With a fair speed, lots of jumpers, and a well timed jump & turn, he could neatly roll up and over that car and tumble off the back (until the windscreen let go.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Carmageddon was my first exposure to what I would call "tinkering" with games. I was amazed at the things you could get the cards to do by changing the cars' config files for speed, weight, wheel diameter and etc. I credit this game and "reverse engineering" Geocities sites as what sealed my fate in being some sort of developer or programmer. Not to mention it was a terribly fun game to play, regardless of the customization ability. I knew it had some controversy when it came out, but it's interesting to see just what they went through in getting it made.

</comment><comment><USER4> Carmageddon was such a great game. Just pure sandbox-style fun factor from start to finish. At least half of the fun of GTA came out of copying carmageddon.

I won't lie - when I first started driving at 15 years old, I had instinctive urges to run over pedestrians. I had played this game a lot.

<comment><USER5> I hear you. Both me and my brother used to love Carmageddon. Even today, when I'm driving through heavy traffic, I tell my brother I want to "do a Carmageddon".

Hats off to Stainless :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still have Carmageddon installed on my computer. And I play it regularly. And it still makes me laugh (and get frustrated - always a good thing for the longevity of a game).

</comment><comment><USER7> I loved the ridiculous physics and damage modeling in this game. You could literally get your car bent in half and still drive around... barely :)

</comment><comment><USER8> What's funny is that I'd never heard of all this controversy until just now. I spent a huge amount of time playing that game, and marvelling at the car physics and damage modelling. It was incredibly fun.</comment>


Are there any good and reputable programming bootcamps in Canada? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in Canada right now (Alberta) on one-year long Working Holiday programme. I started Python programming 7 months ago and I want to switch careers. I'm not decided yet but I'd either like to do web development (Python, Ruby etc.) or mobile development (Obj-C, Swift).
My level is basically beginner but I do grasp the concepts quite good (getting around in command line, VIM, etc).
I've read quite good things about these bootcamps though I can see some disadvantages by not being Canadian resident (I'd be coming back to Europe) - it seems like employers are interested in succesful graduates.
What are your opinions? <comment><USER2> Toronto - [http://bootcamper.io/t/location/toronto](http://bootcamper.io/t/location/toronto)

Vancouver - [http://bootcamper.io/t/location/vancouver](http://bootcamper.io/t/location/vancouver)</comment>


ASTM Standards for Production and Testing of Medical Supplies to Combat COVID-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.astm.org/COVID-19/ <comment><USER2> To add a little context about ASTM; lightly edited from their Wikipedia page[1]:

"ASTM International ... is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services."

They're providing easier access to documents including test methods to evaluate face mask efficacy (ASTM F2101-19, ASTM F2299).

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's worth noting that this will require registration for a ASTM user account (if you don't already have one) to access their digital reading room.

From there, you can either suffer digesting via watermarked-to-death PDF iframe, or download a copy of the unadulterated PDF for offline review.

They've listed 24 standards, but F1494 is a duplicate entry, and D5733 isn't actually linked to in their reading room (perhaps because it's a withdrawn standard). So really 22 standards avaiable.</comment>


Show HN: Twurn, The app we start our work day with - <AUTHOR> http://twurn.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We start the day with a twurn to see who makes coffee for the rest of the team. We twurn again for the same reason after lunch, and again around 4pm.

We made it just for fun, but it gets used every single day without fail.

The best part is that if you lose 3 times in a row, you get a free pass the next time you lose against the same group.

<comment><USER2> shouldn't that be 'if you lose 3 twimes in a row'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Humm I'm not to sure if I want to tweet who should make coffee in our company (or any other task like that). I can't imagine using this with friends either (who is the designated driver today, for instance) as I see no point in posting that to my stream. But hey, I hope there are people that like to post such nonsense in public :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have to tweet the decision/outcome, but if you do the tweet is an @reply to the person chosen for the task, not a public tweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sweet / but I keep on loosing my Twurns..</comment>


UK's new Snoopers' Charter passed an encryption backdoor law by the backdoor - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/30/investigatory_powers_act_backdoors/?mt=1480497005626 <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069342)</comment>


Why Social Ads Don't Work - <AUTHOR> http://bokardo.com/archives/why-social-ads-dont-work/

<comment><USER2> Search != Display.

The real comparison is whether ads placed on social sites do worse than Google's display (AdSense) networks.

If they do (and it sounds like they do), it's likely because the majority of social sites don't show up in search engine result pages (SERPs). My understanding is that most/many of the clicks on AdSense come from people clicking search results, and then seeing an ad relevant to their on one of the pages they click through.

Display will never equal search; intent isn't there. The only real money to be made in display is a) via SERPs and b) branding/influence ads, whose effectiveness is not easy to measure, since it isn't about clickthroughs.

And the social sites will need to move either to brand ads or to truly _social_ ad concepts (ala facebook fan pages) that become part of the app's experience and don't draw users offsite.

<comment><USER3> that seems correct. the same reason the revenue in youtube is so low

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Social ads are only cool if they can get you to start a conversation about the product with your friends. That's why the movie trailers they show in theaters are so effective. Because if they're cool you can talk about them to your friends sitting on either side of you. And then go see the movie a couple months later when it comes out.

Facebook social ads are lame because they don't start conversations. People complain about YouTube's plan to show preroll commercials, but honestly I don't think it's such a bad idea. Except instead of showing ads in front of all videos, only show ads in front of the movies that you've favorited. Why? Because when you watch a movie that's in your favorites, it's usually because you're showing your friends. So then there exists the potential to start a conversation. And the other 90% of the time when you're watching YouTube alone the ads never bother you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use facebook a fair bit and I've gotten so used to using it that I'd forgotten it had ads. I read this article and then had to check facebook to see if it actually display ads. I've been just totally screening them out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Whatever the ineffectiveness of ads on social sites, I'd venture that tv or radio effectiveness is far worse. They just don't get graded (measured) with anywhere near the scrutiny that these ad networks do.

<comment><USER7> I'd take that bet -- but, then, I used to watch TV before TiVO was invented.

You see, kids, back in the Elder Days, when a commercial came on, you had no choice but to watch it. I mean, you could click to another channel, but then you ran the risk of missing part of the program that you were originally watching.

Nowadays, of course, I can easily go for years without seeing a TV commercial, so I guess you're right: an ad on Facebook, however ineffective, is better than an ad I never see. But TiVO users are still a minority in the world, so TV and radio ads are still plenty effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This may sound simplistic, but I think this happens due to the intent of the user when using some service.

Simply people with commercial intents, willing to spend money on something, are more likely to use a search engine than a social network.

<comment><USER9> In today's world, I'd agree with you: when you want something, you search in Google. But the trends might change (and that's the interesting part about following how social ads fare nowadays).

Provided there are incentives for people in social networks to list the commodities they own, it would be rather nice, when you're about to buy a commodity, to get (on-demand) feedback from friends that already have this type of commodity (as opposed to the feedback from the whole community). Example: how to choose among the 5 different types of GPS'es? If a friend tells you that model A works flawlessly, you might just stop cross-analysing all available models on the market and just buy model A (via a sponsored link, next to the area where you exchange feedback in your social network).

The whole web 2.0 trend with user-generated content is nice, but it's limited because one does not trust anyone equally. You need personalization (a trend in web 3.0) and/or small communities (where people can relate to each other easily, and not "to the whole world"). Hacker News is an example of the latter, where I'd say the users are much more homogeneous than those on Reddit (and that's probably the main reason why people migrated from Reddit to Hacker News).

All in all, I do see potential for social ads, but in an improved form of what we have today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is why I'm in no rush to port my app to FB, I did some trials and worked out how the FB api works with some test apps, but as far as making money from ads I don't see it.

You have to somehow get people from FB to your own domain where you can really hit them with adverts :)</comment>