Slate JS – A customizable framework for building rich text editors - <AUTHOR> https://docs.slatejs.org <comment><USER2> I've used Slate in a production application for about 2 years now, as part of a CMS for medical professionals to write rich content for other medical professionals and patients.

They tend to write the initial content in MS Word which they are comfortable with and then paste into the editor, then the editor has to reconcile this according to the site's structural elements. Then for editing, this works fantastically well, and allows more complex widgets and unusual design elements to be embedded and edited in the WYSIWYG context in the editor.

When the system was first being built we trialed 10-20 or so other solutions in this space, many with the same design concepts as Slate, but something about this stuck. Just brilliant.

<comment><USER3> How do you handle paste from word? Could you share some code? :)

<comment><USER4> Curious also about any gotchas, etc.

<comment> c-smile Here is "DOM canibalizer" module from my HTML-NOTEPAD ( [https://html- notepad.com](https://html-notepad.com) ) :

[https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/notepad/re...](https://github.com/c-smile/sciter- sdk/blob/master/notepad/res/htmlview/canonicalize-dom.tis)

While it looks pretty simple it cleans MS Word and browser artifacts in pasted markup pretty well.

But I shall admit that such simplicity is possible only with sciter (that html-notepad is based on). E.g. that canonicalizeDOM gets called _before_ the content appears in target document. So all this does not affect undo/redo stack, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're using Slate to for a mid-sized react application where content editing is the core. I don't want to link/plug a product video showing you how it works but imagine dropbox paper, medium editor, CKeditor 5, ...

The implementation includes mentions, pretty complex gallery/inline image functionality, galleries with size/output controls, embeds (iframely) and other inline elements.

First we had TinyMCE, Redactor, DraftJS and then switched to Slate.

I would not say it's smooth sailing from here, we're mostly struggling with pasting from word, tables, mobile support and overall performance with the number of plugins, but working on it.

<comment><USER4> What was the main reason for switching from draftjs to slate? Just curious since we've been working on various tools in the space (not directly related to either). Was it an api design issue or more a plugin/ecosystem issue?

<comment><USER6> Can't speak for OP, but draftjs didn't work well on mobile at all for a major project I tried to use it in. Had to migrate off of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that though this lists ProseMirror as one of the evaluated editors, followed by a bullet list of issues, only one of those issues can reasonably be considered to apply to ProseMirror—and that's "Re-inventing the view layer", i.e. "doesn't use React", which can arguably be an advantage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely brilliant editor! I use it for my projects - [https://writingstreak.io](https://writingstreak.io) and [https://nulis.io](https://nulis.io).

I've also recommended [http://letterpad.app/](http://letterpad.app/) to use it and they've switched to it now.

I'm a huge fan, it's insanely powerful and customizable, you can build anything you want with it.

The only problem is lack of documentation and tutorials, it's really hard to figure out how to use it beyond the very basics (for me at least). They do have a great community in the slack channel, they've helped me a lot, but better docs would make a huge difference.

<comment><USER9> [OT] Writingstreak is very interesting, and the gamification looks promising. I'm not sure I have the time to write on a daily basis, but be asured I'll think about it and eventually register.

Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER10> [OT too] Second that. I just wish there was more info on where the data is stored, etc. Looks a bit immature right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We just migrated from Draft to Slate for Riot.im: [https://github.com/matrix- org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/1890](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react- sdk/pull/1890)

In general it's been a massive improvement, with the nasty catch that IME input doesn't work reliably, impacting CJK languages and similar: [https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/7665](https://github.com/vector- im/riot-web/issues/7665).

<comment><USER12> hey - we are considering moving to riot/modular as well from Hipchat. We love that you guys use Matrix.org underneath and that its opensource.

There were a couple of irritating UI bugs around the editor that we were waiting for. this is good to hear and thanks for your work!

P.S. also the android app .... kind of needs a lot of work, but im hopeful

<comment><USER11> we're making good progress in a ground-up rewrite of the android app in kotlin with realm and Rx ([https://github.com/vector-im/riot-android-redesign- PoC/tree/...](https://github.com/vector-im/riot-android-redesign- PoC/tree/develop)), which is an _unrecognisable_ improvement.

meanwhile on riot-web we're doing our best to track down the remaining Slate- related composer glitches!

<comment><USER12> Good to know. I may have added a comment to one myself - especially around copy pasting code in the editor.

Also, just so you know... there's a lot of confusion around riot with your multiple names:

vector.im - name of the company. No social media presence.

riot.im - name of the webapp. This is your twitter handle.

modular.im - name of your hosted product where you are actually making money. For a mission critical product, you dont even have a contact-us email. You also dont have a list of features - you are assuming people who come here are super aware of Matrix features. Even this is so much better - [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/edit#gid=0)

matrix.org - half the UI source code is here (other the API reference implementation which is the only thing that a standards organization should have). So where do we file bugs ? on vector-im/riot-web (!!) or matrix.org .

 _As of Aug 2018, the only skin that exists is vector-im /riot-web; it and matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk should effectively be considered as a single project (for instance, matrix-react-sdk bugs are currently filed against vector-im/riot-web rather than this project)._

Its super weird and confusing. Riot is a cool name (and my personal favorite)... but use anything you want. Just have one name - Gitlab does this so very well (with both its open source product and hosted product)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FYI, kept hitting this stacktrace in the demo:

TypeError: Cannot read property 'key' of undefined at a.n.renderBlockButton ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:2277...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:22776)) at a.value ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:2505...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:25055)) at Mi ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:6266...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:62668)) at Ti ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:6755...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:67552)) at mo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7712...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:77129)) at fo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7743...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:77436)) at Zo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8098...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80984)) at Vo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8049...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80496)) at Wo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8032...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80322)) at Io ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7969...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:79695))

        in a
        in a
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        in div
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        in a

<comment><USER14> PR to fix it here: [https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/pull/2412](https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/pull/2412)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like some of the biggest difficulties Rich text editors in browsers face nowadays are supporting social media type inputs like mentions, hashtags, emojis, etc. while still maintaining the classic rich text selections. DraftJs is the only one that achieved that for me, I had to do some serious elbow grease to get functioning hashtags in Redactor (another rich text editor). SlateJS user mentions are far away from what users expect a mentions plugin to work like.

<comment><USER16> In which context, outside a social media website, are "mentions" a common part of text editing on the web?

<comment><USER17> Jira has mentions and it's not social media. Basically anything with users who need to communicate(?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I haven't found an editor that can act anything like word in relation to object placement. I should be able to drag images around and have it automatically format with my document. I should be able to resize just by dragging on the edges. Same goes for embeds, graphs, etc.

I believe wordpress has had some commercial plugins that could do this well, but I have not found an open source editor that redefines rich text editing at all.

<comment><USER19> The confluence's editor somewhat meet your needs.

<comment><USER18> Good call, though it's commercial as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is something I may switch to, if it proves to have any significant advantages over Quill ([https://quilljs.com/](https://quilljs.com/)) which we currently use.

Currently it seems to not support customising and/or creating your own blots (like here — [http://quilljs.com/guides/how-to-customize- quill/#customizin...](http://quilljs.com/guides/how-to-customize- quill/#customizing-blots))

Also, while we're at it, syncing operations (and example of which is shown here — [https://www.slatejs.org/#/syncing- operations](https://www.slatejs.org/#/syncing-operations)) was a hard concept to wrap my head around until I found this — [https://operational- transformation.github.io/visualization.h...](https://operational- transformation.github.io/visualization.html)

<comment><USER21> We're on quill as well - any reason you'd want to switch?

We haven't encountered any issues aside from having to write our own parsers (Delta to react native components)

<comment><USER22> I will be probably switching from quill to prosemirror because quill ignores numerous requests for shadow dom compat. It also annoyed me that its hard to get rendered delta results from it - we had some workarounds for it, maybe they provide an API for that nowdays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I made a rich text editor in 2004 and last year I made another one, and _nothing has changed_. The most annoying thing is that contentEditable works different in different Browsers. Some browsers for example use <div> instead of <p>. And browsers will add extra HTML elements! If you for example pass in <table> the contentEditable will add a <thead> element, so you constantly have to check what the contentEditable is up to. It would probably be easier to use HTML Canvas and implement everything from scratch.

<comment><USER24> You might be interested in the video linked below on how DraftJS (which was the forerunner of SlateJS) uses the virtual DOM created by React along with contentEditable to make the same tooling work across browsers.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feUYwoLhE_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feUYwoLhE_4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gitbook (powering the documentation in this link) is also using Slate but they Forked it.

Here is why [https://github.com/GitbookIO/slate/blob/master/Readme.md](https://github.com/GitbookIO/slate/blob/master/Readme.md)

All slate repos @ [https://github.com/GitbookIO?utf8=&q=slate&type=&language=](https://github.com/GitbookIO?utf8=&q=slate&type=&language=)

<comment><USER25> > We are not in any case criticizing Slate's community or the work Ian has > done. GitBook simply must focus on improving the experience of its users, > which requires fixing core issues in our editor (mainly performances) that > are impacting our business.

> Our goal is not to replace Slate with our fork within the community. We do > not expect people to use our fork. If you do, you should know that we will > not accept contributions that are not fully aligned with our goals.

This is how the Lucid Emacs situation should have been handled!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The examples all break if you click off the editor, then click back in on the editor.

<comment><USER9> Same here, under firefox 63.0, ubuntu 16.04

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Discovered Slate last night while evaluating Draft.js for building the rich text editing experience of our WYSIWYG editor.

After running into some issues with Draft.js' [1] Flow types, and going deep into the GitHub repo looking for solutions, I concluded that the project wasn't receiving enough support from Facebook to invest in it. [2][3]

After discovering Slate from one of the issues, I was extremely impressed with its documentation and well designed API. The plugin system is so good it even gives me some ideas on how to design our WYSIWYG's API.

And for people that don't use React, while there aren't any official plugins for other libraries yet, the source [4] is so readable that making one wouldn't be hard at all. I'm sure contributions would be accepted for a Vue plugin, Angular plugin, or even a vanilla plugin. In the React plugin there's a DOM plugin used already! [5]

Ian did an amazing job! Thought it was worth sharing.

[1] [https://draftjs.org](https://draftjs.org)

[2] [https://github.com/facebook/draft- js/issues/1193](https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/issues/1193)

[3] [https://github.com/facebook/draft- js/tree/master/meta/meetin...](https://github.com/facebook/draft- js/tree/master/meta/meeting-notes)

[4] [https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/tree/master/packages...](https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/tree/master/packages/slate/src)

[5] [https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/blob/master/packages...](https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/blob/master/packages/slate- react/src/plugins/dom.js)

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks promising. After working with and evaluating many rich text editors I usually consider building one myself as a nightmare, due to the interaction complexity and browser differences.

One thing that strikes me with this editor, similar to many others that are innovative and promising, is how Edge and mobile are not first class citizens.

That will severly limit the use case for the editor to niche products or embedded in apps build in Electron or similar.

<comment><USER28> CKEditor team member here :)

If you are looking for a modern, modular editor, with a custom data model and collaboration check CKEditor 5 ([https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/features/index.ht...](https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/features/index.html) and [https://ckeditor.com/ckeditor-5/](https://ckeditor.com/ckeditor-5/)). It comes with decent mobile and Edge support already (Electron is supported too). Paste from Word will be delivered within 2-3 weeks. For collaboration we already offer a complete and stable solution out of the box where you don't have to code anything. If you are curious check [https://ckeditor.com/blog/Lessons-learned-from-creating-a- ri...](https://ckeditor.com/blog/Lessons-learned-from-creating-a-rich-text- editor-with-real-time-collaboration/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am using Slate Js and it's fantastic, though there are some caveats. Mobile support is limited, slate is still not in a stable release so there may be breaking changes, and for now you're limited to using react. But when it works, it's amazing! I really like the freedom it gives you in defining and changing your own document schema and how everything is rendered.

<comment><USER30> I think the biggest fault is a lack of virtual rendering. Slate renders the entire document so if you're doc is too big, slate starts to break fast. Virtual rendering (like in the Ace Editor) solves the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The markdown shortcuts example, is an absolute joy to use [https://www.slatejs.org/#/markdown- shortcuts](https://www.slatejs.org/#/markdown-shortcuts) You type in markdown and you see formatted text

I would love to see this in use for comments on HN, Reddit, Github and everywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER32> Rich text editors' complexity is far beyond ordinary programmer's imagination, especially when complex script (like Arabic) is in it.

It is really good to see they have RTL support.

\-- However they messed up when using composing IMEs :(

</comment><comment><USER22> "Built on top of react", sorry at least for now it is too big of a dependency for most projects that are not react based. IMO that disqualifies it from being "framework for building rich text editors".

<comment><AUTHOR> The core actually doesn't rely on React at all, allowing interop with any front-end framework, or even vanilla JS. The current plugins provided officially are React plugins, but other plugins can be built for Vue, Angular, etc.

<comment><USER22> I opened package.json I can see:

        "react": "^16.4.1",
        "react-dom": "^16.4.1",
        "react-emotion": "^9.2.4",
        "react-hot-loader": "^3.1.3",
        "react-portal": "^4.1.5",
        "react-router-dom": "^4.3.1",
        "react-values": "^0.3.0",

Looks like it requires react+vdom to me to be functional, Core has a peer dependency on react too.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does at the moment based on the manifest, but after exploring the source, it's clear that this can easily be changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really cool to see this. I built temi.com on this. You can check out a demo here: [https://www.temi.com/good-audio-quality](https://www.temi.com/good- audio-quality)

<comment><USER33> Very nice tool to correct the auto-generated transcript, bookmarked

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does this work on Android Mobile? We just implemented a feature before realising Draft.js doesnt' work on Android Mobile - Our fault admittedly, but annoying none the less.

<comment><USER35> It's an ongoing issue, I believe due to the way Android Chrome implemented keyboard events. Editors that specifically avoid the HTML endstate of contenteditable in favour of constructing a parallel state using keyboard events are all trying to deal with the same issue

[https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/issues/2062](https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/issues/2062)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I do not know Slate JS (yet), but I think it is worth mentioning react-draft- wysiwyg[1], a rich text editor made on top of React and Draft. I used it in one of my projects and it was really cool.

[1]: [https://github.com/jpuri/react-draft- wysiwyg](https://github.com/jpuri/react-draft-wysiwyg)

</comment><comment><USER37> Are the examples deployed somewhere? Its a lot more convenient if I can check them out without cloning the whole repo

edit: Good morning everybody, the link is right above the list [https://www.slatejs.org/#/rich-text](https://www.slatejs.org/#/rich-text)

</comment><comment><USER38> I used slate in one of my projects but replaced it eventually with draft.js. The biggest pain points were:

Not stable yet. A lot of breaking changes between releases, so you have to update your code frequently. Breaking changes often introduced new bugs. Big in size (even bigger than draft.js).

</comment><comment><USER39> I did a full heads down comparison of a bunch of text editors for Polar ([https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)) and their practical features and I ended up going with Summernote:

[https://summernote.org/](https://summernote.org/)

it's definitely not perfect and seems to not be developed as much as the others but it handles copy and paste VERY well. I can literally copy test from my editor (intellij) and it keeps the formatting perfectly.

With Polar users need a way to reliably annotate their books and having a quality text editing component is important.

I think I'm going to look at Slate too but also look at CKEditor5... both seem like really decent options.

</comment><comment><USER40> Love Slate. Amazing plugin system -- I've started integrating a backing CRDT with Slate, enabling realtime collab. Would recommend. Coming from Draft, it's a order of magnitude more maintainable and much better developer experience.

</comment><comment><USER41> I used SlateJS a year ago and couldn't be more impressed. It struck a great balance with minimalist architecture while also providing the React building blocks I'd rather use than create myself.

</comment><comment><USER42> This looks cool - is there anything about accessibility testing - how well it works with screen readers for example? I couldn't see anything in the docs.

</comment><comment><USER43> I spent a lot of time looking for Draft like editors that would be simple, small yet have the potential for power. This project nails it! Well done.

</comment><comment><USER44> Happy to see this topic re: rich text editors back on track. It's one of those things that never seemed to evolve since the early '90 days. Google docs set the bar really high.

I have been struggling to find a good editor for my form builder site [0] and settled with quill but I like slate's approach better

[0] [https://www.inputu.com](https://www.inputu.com)

</comment><comment><USER45> Would this be overkill to use just for a textbox with realtime code highlight (for SQL)? That's the only feature I'm interested in.

<comment><USER46> Yes, you probably want something like CodeMirror [https://codemirror.net/](https://codemirror.net/)

<comment><USER47> I'd second CodeMirror - I've been tinkering with it (v2 - [https://codemirror.net/2/](https://codemirror.net/2/)) for a couple of weeks and it's pretty nice to use. I'm using a bit of simple syntax highlighting.

There's also a react wrapper (for versions 1 and 2).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I love how customizable this is. Text selection on iOS doesn't seem to work across styled text unfortunately. It would be great for RTF editing on mobile sites if it had better mobile support.

</comment><comment><USER49> Amazing that few of these editors works on mobile..

<comment><USER7> ([https://prosemirror.net](https://prosemirror.net) does)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does this have a plugin for collaborative support? I couldn't find one on the plugins page.

</comment><comment><USER51> Has anyone tried using this for building code editors, or is it strictly for wysiwyg content?

</comment><comment><USER52> Does it work with mathematical formulas (LaTex)?

<comment><USER2> Slate is not an editor so much as a framework for building editors. Which is to say yes, it would be a good basis for an editor for mathematical formulas, but you would have to create the schema yourself (MathML seems like a good starting point). Defining transformations so you could use the LaTeX syntax as short-cuts seems like it would not be too arduous – although obviously a complete implementation would be a vast undertaking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Obligatory post of rich text editors/frameworks: [https://gist.github.com/manigandham/65543a0bc2bf7006a487](https://gist.github.com/manigandham/65543a0bc2bf7006a487)

Lots of progress in this space but they all seem to be coalescing into the same basic style. For standard apps that just need rich/html input, I highly recommend Froala.

</comment><comment><USER54> Does it support katex?

</comment><comment><USER55> What format is content stored in? Is it all RTF under the hood or something else more custom? Curious to know.

Also what's the difference between using SlateJS vs. say Monaco editor which powers VSCode?

<comment><USER30> The whole point of slate is an immutable representation of a document. Without getting too much in the weeds, a document is an immutable object. Edits to the document are transforms. The obvious benefit is undo/redo is pretty simple. The more subtle benefit is that really complicated document rules become tractable. I built temi.com using this ([https://www.temi.com/good-audio- quality](https://www.temi.com/good-audio-quality)). One feature that Slate enables pretty easily is incremental saves. Since the object is immutable, you can pass changes to the server instead of the entire document by just checking element ids. You can get multi-person edits relatively easily as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Doesn't seem work in Firefox 63 - seem to get errors when clicking around:

An error was thrown by one of the example's React components!

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</comment><comment><USER57> TypeError: Cannot read property 'key' of undefined at a.n.renderBlockButton ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:2277...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:22776)) at a.value ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:2505...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:42:25055)) at Mi ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:6266...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:62668)) at Ti ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:6755...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:67552)) at mo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7712...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:77129)) at fo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7743...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:77436)) at Zo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8098...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80984)) at Vo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8049...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80496)) at Wo ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:8032...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:80322)) at Io ([https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:7969...](https://www.slatejs.org/main-1783ad63c9cf9b77dd4d.js:22:79695))

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Zappos Headers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mfli.net/thoughts/2010/07/21/zappos-headers/

<comment><USER2> "Emphasis mine."

Heh... How exactly could the emphasis _not_ be his? Last I checked the HTTP protocol didn't have any provision for emphasizing headers, so it couldn't have been the server that added the emphasis. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit amuses me:

       200 OK
       Connection: close
       Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:56:19 GMT
       Server: '; DROP TABLE servertypes; --

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, that worked.

<comment><USER5> "Breaking news: Paul Graham quits YCombinator, joins Zappos as a developer"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to join in the header-sniffing fun, here's a bookmarklet that will show a site's HTTP headers in a popup: <http://pastebin.com/pTDun3GT>

</comment><comment><USER7> Just for curiosity's sake, it would be interesting to have an estimate on how many extra gigabytes have been sent over time with these headers.

<comment><USER8> The 2 header lines are 163 bytes (including /r/n). Quantcast (probably very wrong, but the best estimate I can find) says they get 277K visits per day. Not sure what their pages/visits are, but it's that times 43GB/day.

<comment><USER9> You didn't take gzipping in account. Taking it in account, it's 105 bytes.

<comment><USER10> Headers are how the clients know to gzip the content.

You think http libs and web servers figure out whether or not something is gzipped by guessing? :)

<comment><USER11> Although it's not guilty of this particular idiocy, IE does like to override MIME types by content- or extension-based guesses. So it would, sadly, not be _that_ surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, the X-Core-Value number changes with each request (appears random).

<comment><USER13>
      1. Deliver WOW Through Service
      2. Embrace and Drive Change
      3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
      4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
      5. Pursue Growth and Learning
      6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
      7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
      8. Do More With Less
      9. Be Passionate and Determined
      10. Be Humble

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just for fun I've tried a script over the Alexa top 1M sites...

Strangest thing:

      www.vg.no

      X-VG-WebServer: leon
      X-VG-WebCache: dexter
      X-Rick-Would-Never: Know the Rules, and So Do I
      X-VG-Korken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcj8CnD5188

</comment><comment><USER15> Raanan.com (one of the Automattic staff) has a similar header - check out his X-hacker header:

"X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header."

[http://hurl.it/hurls/bf52ecc89d75c83ee8a68171bd624992607e162...](http://hurl.it/hurls/bf52ecc89d75c83ee8a68171bd624992607e1629/8af0ad1d9df2a2cbcb583024ecbdd0cb80afcf58)

<comment><USER16> That's generally on sites hosted by wordpress.com (TechCrunch and others).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Normally I would only look at the headers if there was a problem with the request.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just had a phone interview with Zappos. I mentioned this. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER19> It was an interesting recruiting idea, but it's out there now.

<comment><USER20> only people that care are stil their target, mission achieved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice way to cut out the headhunters!

</comment><comment><USER22> Zappos Head[ _hunt_ ]ers

</comment><comment><USER23> This is just awesome.</comment>


Everyday Looper Tutorial by Ed - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW5ZcjQ3I10

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I just downloaded the app and re-created this section from "Don't Worry, Be Happy" - <http://posterous.jazzychad.com/dont-worry-be-happy-31>

After spending a semester with ProTools creating multi-track recordings, I am going to have a lot of fun with this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not musical to any extent and I don't even own an iPhone (N1 here), but I'd love to play with this app after watching this tutorial. I will be recommending the app to a few of my musical friends.

</comment><comment><USER4> I own the app. It's pretty fun with a couple people contributing, but with more than 3 the little iPhone speaker gets drowned out by the laughter.

Recommended.</comment>


Asheron's Call, one of the original "big three" 3D MMORPGs, is closing - <AUTHOR> https://www.asheronscall.com/en/forums/showthread.php?73423-Asheron-s-Call <comment><USER2> I ran technical operations for Turbine for several years, from just before Asheron's Call returned from Microsoft to the LOTRO launch. Asheron's Call was the first MMO I played, as well. It had an amazing run: I think the very small team model they adopted for the last few years before updates ceased was really smart.

It was also kind of technically cool. In AC, you could literally dodge projectiles if your twitch skills were good enough, which made PvP way more interesting and tricky than most games could muster. The no-zone model beat the crap out of Everquest even if they did have to teleport people out of population centers now and again. The cost of that was hardware, though... we needed a lot of servers for each world, relatively speaking.

Man. So many memories.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, such a great game running for 17 years now I think. So many memories indeed. The team has been working on releasing the server to the fanbase but sadly they hit some hurdle and could not release it even though it was supposedly almost done. The only thing left was packaging and documentation according to the guy doing it. We all wonder what happened to stop this...</comment></comment>


Show HN: An API for gender classification - <AUTHOR> http://gender.hankstoever.com/ <comment><USER2> The only reliable way to find out someone's gender is to ask them what gender they currently think they are. There are more than two genders and an individual's gender can change with time.

A better strategy all-round would to be ask yourself whether you need to know someone's gender. I can think of very few legitimate reasons to know and record a user's gender and many of them can be dealt with by simply asking them what they'd like to be referred as, perhaps in more than one scenario.

<comment><USER3> One use I've come across for inferring genders was tackling record depupliction across multiple data sources. In one data set we might have the gender information of an individual but have it be missing in another.

Turns out gender is great to include in a blocking keys to reduce number of comparisons. Extrapolating an inferred gender in the dataset without one was incredibly helpful.

<comment><USER4> You are forgetting that the individual might consider the gender to be private information. Some people might want to use a different gender in different contexts. See the ESPN/Grantland suicide issue recently if you care/dare.

<comment><USER5> An individual that considers gender to be private information , and that uses different genders in different situations is very unlikely to be using a name that can be classified with a high degree of confidence as one gender.

A person using the name "Jack" is unlikely to be assumed to be a woman, even if that person selected "female" from a drop down somewhere. If the same person uses Jack/M and Cindy/F in different contexts, no fuzzy algorithm is going to resolve them as the same person (bar some other, stronger ID, such as a SSN).

EDIT: I initially used "William" as an example. Ironically, it turns out that name is only 57.6% male. Both Jack and Cindy are 90% male/female.

<comment><USER6> At least in the UK, Jack is a fairly common shortening of Jacqueline. The only way of determining a users gender is asking them directly, and if a person wishes to enter different values into different systems, all the more power to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it's a quite interesting coding task to write a classifier, for the overwhelming majority of applications you simply don't need to know a user's gender. Making it a public API is a bad thing.

Developers have a horrible tendency to gather as much data on someone as possible, everything they're willing to give in fact, for the simple reason of "just in case we need it later". It's far, _far_ better to gather as little as possible and build something that simply doesn't need to know specifics. If we build things that are ambiguous, unspecific for age, gender, race, nationality, etc then the world will be a better and more inclusive place. Paradoxical as it seems, more privacy actually leads to a more integrated society. That is universally a good thing (in my opinion, obv.).

</comment><comment><USER8> Without a location parameter this is pretty useless. Andrea for example is a male name in Spain and Italy as far as I know.

Also this: [http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods- programm...](http://www.cscyphers.com/blog/2012/06/28/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-gender/)

<comment><USER9> I'm Italian, my name is Gabriele and it classifies it as female. That's wrong. In Italy, Gabriele is a male name. I agree that this is useless without location information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I started searching for the most gender ambiguous names I could think of like "Jesse", "Alex", "Erin", etc. The best one I've found so far is "Angel" at 51.1% male.

<comment><USER11> This is pretty fun lol. I searched for Santa and it said 99% female haha.

<comment><USER12> Apparently god is overwhelmingly male at 99.998179%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it is important to make a distinction between gender and sex [1]. The link below is a makes a pretty good distinction between the two.

"Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women.

"Gender" refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.

[1]- [http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/](http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/)

<comment><USER12> And even sex[1] is sometimes not as binary as we make it to be.

[1]:[http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/22620/Nav/1/router.asp](http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/22620/Nav/1/router.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> why bother with a naive bayes classifier, why not just use the dictionary, when it matches the percentage is simple the ratio of the genders? I don't see the need for a classifier, I was hoping it was going to do something clever like guess the gender of a document's author.

</comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft is unknown, Linux is male, and Apple is female.

<comment><USER16> BSD is unknown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Neat. Should probably call out that it's an API for "gender classification of english names". Did you build this mostly for learning/personal purposes?

</comment><comment><USER18> "Permelia"[1] is definitely a girl's name[2].

[1]: [http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/01/31/the-baby-name- wizard/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/01/31/the-baby-name-wizard/)

[2]: [http://gender.hankstoever.com/classify/Permelia](http://gender.hankstoever.com/classify/Permelia)

</comment><comment><USER19> I spend a lot of time choosing gender neutral names for story based scenarios in proposals (the joys of corporate work).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name) has been mentioned elsewhere, but I've found it pretty useful.

Unlike a lot of people here, I don't think there is anything wrong with an API like this. It's true that it isn't culturally neutral, but there are times when any piece of information is useful.

</comment><comment><USER20>
      if probability == "59.369936" {
        probability = "?"
        gender = "unknown"
      }

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great fun, could you embed share options? I could trigger a share-war amongst my friends!

</comment><comment><USER22> My name has a 50.444139% chance of being female.

In the present case, the API is, unfortunately, incorrect.

<comment><USER23> My name has 99.99...% chance of being male. But when I change it to the English/Anglophone version, the chance is only 60.641%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the training set?

</comment><comment><USER25> Apparently Karan is female :(

</comment><comment><USER16> I get ~70% for a name I've never even heard of being used for a female.

</comment><comment><USER26> Bah I much rather use this app as it's much faster: [http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/gndr/a062944e-744e-495...](http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/gndr/a062944e-744e-4955-b685-f3197faa2560)

</comment><comment><USER27> Fun, although you might want to state it applies to the US only

<comment><USER26> I'm not even sure of that. I have seen much better results from US Census data with very different %'s of prob e.g. [http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/gndr/a062944e-744e-495...](http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/gndr/a062944e-744e-4955-b685-f3197faa2560)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> my Name is unknown . [http://gender.hankstoever.com/classify/shobhit](http://gender.hankstoever.com/classify/shobhit)

</comment><comment><USER29> John - 57.3% ?

<comment><USER30> Definitely some odd results:

Michael = 52%, Thomas = 62% (although Tom = 98%)

<comment><USER31> Thomassina is a woman's name, FWIW.

<comment><USER32> Thom is 99.999963% male though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are your favourite sci-fi  books? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER4> Anything by Alastair Reynolds - his Revelation Space series is great, and House of Suns is a fantastic one-off. He's probably the closest to Ian Banks in creating galaxy-spanning civilisations across eons of time.

Ian MacDonald is another good one. My favourite of his is The Dervish House, but his others are definitely worth reading.

Charles Stross is good. Didn't get on with Accelerando, but his Laundry books are a fun mix of HP Lovecraft/Len Deighton/IT Crowd. Halting State and Rule 34 are good explorations of pervasive augmented reality and intelligent algorithms. Also Glasshouse as an exploration of post-singularity society. Never managed to finish a Cory Doctorow book though.

I found William Gibson's Bigend trilogy a slog, but I really enjoyed The Peripheral - it's a fun read.

Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card are fantastic, but the remaining books suffer from diminishing returns (with the possible exception of Ender's Shadow). There are a lot of books in the series, but basically, the series finishes wherever you get bored reading it.

Anything by China Mieville is well worth your time.

Oh, I also really enjoyed Elizabeth Bear's Jacobs Ladder trilogy, set on a generation ship where the inhabitants have forgotten who they are and where they're going.

For some older stuff:

The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester – I was surprised at how good it is and how well it stands up. I couldn't believe it was written nearly 50 years ago.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein - possibly my favourite of his. I want to start a lunar revolution with a sentient mainframe...

I'm currently working my way through all the Hugo Award winners, from 1953 up, and there's some real gems there.

<comment><USER5> I 2nd _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have _strong_ opinions about this. My criteria for a book being science fiction and not fantasy is that is must be based on scientific thinking. The author must have done some work to determine whether whats happening in his book is at least plausible according to real science, and then work out the details of how it would actually function. So I regard most "science fiction" books and almost all "science fiction" films as really being fantasy. Essentially they are works of fantasy or dramatic fiction re-skinned with lasers and aliens instead of magic and goblins (to a great or lesser extent).

So dune is a great book but it is 90% fantasy, there is only a little bit of research done by the author on desert ecosystems.

My favourite real science fiction author is Arthur C clarke. some good books by him...

earthlight

the fountains of paradise

islands in the sky

the sands of mars

rama

songs of distant earth

Also would recommend accelerando by Charles Stross and the mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson

<comment><USER7> When I read your comment I'm strongly reminded of myself ten years ago. I held almost exactly the same view on hard scifi, and was similarly obsessed with Arthur C Clarke. But I've since loosened my definition of scifi for a couple of reasons:

a) I now think of scifi as any work intended to do more than tell a story or explore a world. Focussing on just hard scifi causes great works of social and sociology fiction like The Dispossessed to be left without a clear pigeonhole. Which is a great pity, IMO.

Perhaps the biggest chunk that gets miscategorized is cyberpunk; works like Snow Crash and Hardwired are clearly about more than whether the ending is happy or sad, or whether the hero gets the girl. Doesn't seem right to categorize them as fantasy. Better to narrow Arthur C Clarke into the sub- category of hard scifi. Loosening my uptight definition caused me to better appreciate Snow Crash in particular on a second reading a decade later. It's aged wonderfully.

You could even imagine a book with fantasy 'props' that feels scifi-like. I haven't seen it yet, but I have no doubt it can be done. (Any recommendations from others?)

b) Not even everything Arthur C Clarke wrote was hard. Rama series, c'mon! Kim Stanley Robinson is a great author, but I fail to see how he's 'more hard' than Asimov or Heinlein. Somebody described the Red Mars series to me as a reality show with dune buggies, and that seems about right. You certainly couldn't call it 'more hard' than Anathem.

Anyways, for hard scifi readers the top author today is probably Greg Egan. That I think everybody can agree on. I have other recommendations elsewhere on this thread.

<comment><USER8> You might try Mordant's Need by Stephen Donaldson for a fantasy-skinned, scifi-like approach. The magic in the books is based around mirrors, and a large part of the book is spent researching how the mirrors actually are working, what are their limitations and possibilities.

<comment><USER7> Purchased.

It occurs to me that the opposite category is also quite interesting. Books like Hammerfall and Snow Queen by Joan Vinge are fantasy with scifi elements that are hard to dismiss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Philip K. Dick (Ubik, Man in the high castle, Flow my tears the police man said)

Frederik Pohl (Gateway, the Space Merchants)

Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness)

Iain M. Banks (Culture novels)

You will find many Sci-Fi treasures by just going through [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks)

<comment><USER8> Those are my favourite two Ursula Le Guin novels too :) Very well thought- through effects of technology on culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neal Stephenson "Anathem"

Stanisław Lem "Cyberiad", "Solaris", "Futurologists' convent"

Greg Egan "Permutation City"

Jacek Dukaj "Black Oceans"

Iain M. Banks "Algebraist" (I read some books from culture series, but IMHO culture is just too overpowered to make an interesting story possible - <USER2> basicaly read to see at which point they will show their full superiority, and it doesn't work for me)

<comment><USER11> The Algebraist is my favourite Iain M. Banks book too - the breadth of imagination in it is amazing

I think Surface Detail is my favourite Culture novel. Many Iain Banks books (regular fiction as well as sci-fi) are really just wish-fulfillment stories, but they're so stylish and fun to read that I love them (plus there's usually at least one very insightful rant by a minor character to be found in nearly every book)

<comment><USER10> My favorite Culture story is actually fanfic - "Culture explores Warhammer 20k universe".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stumbled across and started reading A. E. van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" last night.

Super trippy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Null-A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Null-A)

[http://www.amazon.com/World-Null--E-Van- Vogt/dp/0765300974/](http://www.amazon.com/World-Null--E-Van- Vogt/dp/0765300974/)

<comment><USER13> Null-A is probably the Van Vogt's most famous book, but others are great as well, I loved "Slan" from the same author : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just finished reading "Fiasco" by Stanislaw Lem. Between that "Cyberiad" I feel like Lem doesn't get enough credit. Maybe part of it is not being in the Western European writer's camp?

At any rate, I would say:

Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein

The Dispossessed, Le Guin

The Stars My Destination, Bester

Childhood's End, Clarke

Stand out as some of my favorites. I'm pretty terrible at making top-5 lists, but those stand out as ones that I would read again in a heartbeat if there weren't already 50 books on the floor next to my bed waiting for me :)

<comment><USER15> If people knew of him at all, I'm afraid the Solaris films really damaged people's perceptions of Lem's work.

I've been reading his stuff since 1986 and he can be as innovative and experimental as Philip K Dick, JG Ballard, or Thomas Pynchon while still being fun and readable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most of Asimov's books, specially:

* Foundation Series / Robot Series / Empire Series

* The Gods Themselves

</comment><comment><USER17> Anything by Iain M. Banks. Start with "The Player of Games" and "Consider Phlebas".

Anything by Vernor S. Vinge especially "Zones of Thought" series.

"Daemon", "Freedom(tm)", "Kill Decision" and "Influx" by Daniel Suarez.

"The Martian" by Andy Weir.

Anything by Neal Stephenson, especially "Reamde: A Novel" and "Cryptonomicon".

Anything by Hannu Rajaniemi, especially "The Fractal Prince".

<comment><USER18> I've just finished the first three Culture novels.

Consider Phlebas starts great, but loses a lot during the rest of the book.

The Player of Games is okay, but by far not as good as people told me.

Use of Weapons is _excellent_. I'll have to re-read it in a few months.

<comment><USER19> I thought the same thing the first time I read Consider Phlebas. Having now read it over 20 times, it's safe to say I changed my mind.

My key to the novel: it's all about the nature of identity. The very first line is something of deep personal significance, but he's forgotten why. He steals identities. It ends with the mind taking his name.

It's a keeper.

<comment><USER17> I couldn't agree more. "The Player of Games" also only improved for me with time and depth of context provided by the subsequent Culture novels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Neal Stephenson, _Anathem_

Iain M Banks, _Use of Weapons_

Greg Egan, _Diaspora_ and _Permutation City_

Frank Herbert, _Dune_

Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars trilogy

Vernon Vinge: _A Fire Upon the Deep_ and _A Deepness in the Sky_

[Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]

<comment><USER21> > [Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]

The only one I can think of where they _might_ be able to stay more or less true to the source is _Consider Phlebas,_ wherein the 'hero' fights _for_ a monotheistic alien race _against_ a bunch of godless communists.

Plus I would dearly love to see the _Clear Air Turbulence_ 's escape from the depths of that GSV rendered on the big screen.

<comment><USER17> Caveat regarding note to Hollywood: Please only allow Nolan to direct, otherwise we are not interested.

<comment><USER20> Actually, I always wanted to see Luc Besson (Fifth Element) direct a movie of _Consider Phlebas_.

Edit: On the subject of Banks movies - one scene I would love to see (in addition to the CAT escaping from The Ends of Invention) is the scene with the Ethnarch and Zakalwe in UoW, might make a splendid cold open.

 _" I," said the man, "am called Cheradine Zakalwe." He leveled the gun at Ethnarch's nose. "You are called dead."_

I just realised how carefully worded that is...

<comment><USER21> If that means we get Jean Reno as Bora Horza Gobuchul, I'm in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I maintain a community created list of Sci-Fi novels worth reading:

[https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome- scifi#novels](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-scifi#novels)

</comment><comment><USER23> Since the OP asked about books not authors my favourite book is "Foundation and Earth" (Isaac Asimov), "Childhood's End" (A.C. Clarke) and Solaris (Stainslaw Lem).

</comment><comment><USER24> Everything from Asimov.

The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Culture books from Iain Banks.

The Rama series from Clarke although it got tiresome after a while.

The Sparrow and Children of God from Mary Doria Russell.

Contact by Sagan which by the way is one of the very few sci-fi books that were successfully depicted in movies.

Brave new world from Huxley. Old one but still highly relevant.

The first ones from Gibson.

The Enter series by Orson Scott Card.

Bradbury's Farhenheit 451. This one is a classic.

Revelation Space from Alaistair Reynolds who writes the most hardcore sci-fi I've ever come across.

</comment><comment><USER25> Peter Watts's _Blindsight_ \- easily the best SF novel I've read in the last decade. I haven't got round to _Echopraxia_ yet, but I doubt it'll fail to live up to its predecessor.

Also, while I have no use whatsoever for Stross's "Singularity" stuff, his Laundry Files series excels, especially for an inveterate old Lovecraft fan such as myself. If you want a taste, there are some shorts available online -- "Overtime" and "Funny Farm" are good places to start; "Equoid" is the most recent, but it's not representative, and it's also the weakest entry in the series as a whole due to its poor characterization and reliance on shock and gruesomeness rather than the more insidious sort of horror in which the rest of the series specializes.

I'm sort of surprised to see that no one has yet mentioned Heinlein; I know he's a politically divisive figure in the fandom, to say the least, but he's also the great granddaddy of the modern field, and such prominence deserves recognition. (Hell, he was pushing the Rapture of the Nerds before any of its modern adherents was even _born_!) Granted that his later works tend to bog down in self-referentiality and author tracts on the evils of Communism and the benefits of casual nudism; in his prime, though, he was an author and storyteller practically beyond compare.

In particular, his _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ remains a classic among classics; _The Puppet Masters_ even more so, to the extent of spawning practically a whole subgenre of second-rate imitations; and, for a lighter entry, his oft-overlooked _The Door into Summer_ is a sweet story in which all's well that ends well and the importance of feline companionship in a well-rounded life is not overlooked.

<comment><USER7> You better doubt it, Echopraxia fails to live up to Blindsight. Aren't sequels that match the original the exception rather than the rule?

<comment><USER25> Sure. On the other hand, I found Watts's _Rifters_ trilogy to be strong throughout, and I'd previously assumed that he'd turn in the same strong performance with his latest series.

In what way does _Echopraxia_ fail to live up to its predecessor? I'm eventually going to get around to it, but if it's going to disappoint me, I'd like to know ahead of time so that I can go into it with my expectations better calibrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder why no one mentioned "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy" (Douglas Adams) yet. I died laughing twice while reading it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Doubtless there'll be lots of strong opinions, and (hopefully, usefully) lots of duplicates that you can then tote up to get a bit of a consensus.

Iain M. Banks - all his Culture books are fantastic, but I'll single out 'Excession' since you seek titles.

Neal Stephenson's 'Anathem'

Stephen Donaldson (most famous for the Thomas Covenant tri-trilogy) wrote a 5-book 'Gap Series'. I have _very_ fond memories of it, though it's been two decades since I read it.

Philip K. Dick wrote a tonne of good stuff (and a bit of meh) but my two favourite are Clans of the Alphane Moon (the first Dick I read), and Valis (a bit more conventional to have on the favourite list)

Ursula Le Guin also has a huge body of excellent work - Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed are my favourites.

I really loved Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, though I understand it's not conventionally considered his best work.

</comment><comment><USER28> For 22+ years I believed Foundation series by Issac Asimov was unparalleled, since first read when I was 10. It changed after the _Three Body Problem_ , especially the 2nd and 3rd installments, _The dark forest_ , _The forever death_. I don't expect to add more to the list in my life span.

</comment><comment><USER29> Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312" carries on from the Mars Trilogy. Stephenson's "REAMDE", "The Diamond Age", "Cryptonomicon" and "Snow Crash" Does alternate history count her? If so, Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt" is great

</comment><comment><USER13> Really surprised to see no mention of H. G. Wells here, so I'm just going to add it :

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

You can get it at project Gutemberg, so no excuse not to read it.

Any book by French author Barjavel are also worth reading in my opinion, especially "La Nuit des Temps" / "The Ice People" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_%28Barjavel_nov...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_%28Barjavel_novel%29) ) and "Ravage" / "Ashes, Ashes" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravage_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravage_%28novel%29) )

<comment><USER30> On that note, I highly recommend The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter. He picks up where The Time Machine leaves off and takes the story into some amazing directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some which I have re-read recently and still enjoyed:

      William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy

      Frank Herbert's Dune series

      Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

      Frederik Pohl's "Gateway"

      Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a harsh Mistress"

Some which I remember liking when I read them many years ago as a teenager:

      E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series

      David Brin's Uplift series

      Peter F. Hamilton's Greg Mandel trilogy and The Night's

Dawn trilogy

      Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"

      George R. Dickson's "Dorsai!"

</comment><comment><USER32> One of the read-worthy books which immediately came to mind is Neverness [1] by David Zindell. It is actually the 'prequel' to a series ('A requiem for Homo Sapiens' [2]) which I have yet to read, but it stands by itself as far as I'm concerned.

If you like SF, mathematics and deep ideas, this might be a book for you.

[1] [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/968997.Neverness](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/968997.Neverness)

[2] [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/399921.David_Zindell](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/399921.David_Zindell)

<comment><USER33> Neverness is not a prequel since it was written before A Requiem For Homo Sapiens.

That sort of sloppy thinking would get you killed as a pilot. :-)

Also, autocorrect really doesn't want to let me type Neverness.

<comment><USER32> Prequel in the sense of being named 'A Requiem for Homo Sapiens 0'. I think I'll find my way through the manifold yet...

<comment><USER34> That's definitely retroactive, my old copy says no such thing.

Neverness is a fabulous book though. RfHS also worthwhile, but does sprawl a bit for my taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You realize not a single person has mentioned a female author? Let's fix that:

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett

The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Among Others by Jo Walton

Feed by Mira Grant

The Hunger Games!

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Grass by Sheri S Tepper

Gate of Ivrael and Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh

And the fabulous space opera:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

<comment><USER15> Octavia Butler wrote some amazing stuff too.

<comment><USER19> So I'm told, although I haven't read any. I understand that quite a lot of it's pretty grim, so I need to be in the mood for it.

There's a reason most of the things listed here are basically adventure stories...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Many of the already mentionned books. Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, in the hard science genre.

As a kid I was absolutely stunned by The Tripods. I highly recommend these books (trilogy) for your kids (10-13 yo).

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm currently working my way through Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy. His writing is incredibly insightful and psychedelic. I'd also suggest the Time Ships (only authorized Time Machine sequel) and anything from the Xeelee universe. Maybe start with Vacuum Diagrams?

David Brin's Uplift series is brilliantly written, and personifies non-human characters wonderfully.

Heinlein has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, and his writing always makes me giddy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Arthur C. Clarke: 2001

Arthur C. Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama

Pierce Anthony and Robert E. Margroff: The Ring

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes: The Legacy of Heorot

Stanislaw Lem: The Invincible

Isaac Asimov: The Foundation Trilogy

</comment><comment><USER38> The Space Merchants

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants)

</comment><comment><USER39> A couple books that I'd recommend for their attention to biology and genetics as the scientific driver:

Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative Trilogy: Survival, Migration, and Regeneration.

Maragaret Atwood, anything, but recently the MaddAddam trilogy: Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam.

Nancy Kress' Sleepless series: Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers, and Beggars Ride.

</comment><comment><USER40> I got hooked on SciFi with David Webers Harrington-Series which I found after enjoying the old Hornblower Series. Since then I enjoyed much omthe Kantaki- Cycle of Andreas Eschbach and the Collector/Justifier Series by Markus Heitz, even though they are what I would call typical german SciFi: Humans as nuisance in a peaceful and orderly Galaxy.

</comment><comment><USER41> Eric Schwitzgebel composed a list of "philosophically interesting" SF from the recommendations of 34 professional philosophers:

[http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/SF- Master...](http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/SF- MasterList-141103-byauthor.pdf)

It also includes non-printed media.

</comment><comment><USER34> Poul Anderson's "Technic" stories, e.g. "The Trouble Twisters". Must re-read some.

Somewhat more recent: pretty-much anything by David Brin.

For my taste, a lot of recent sci-fi seems to be a little _too_ focused on politics and society vs. the exhileration of a good technical solution. But do enjoy Charles Stross and John Scalzi.

</comment><comment><USER42> Haven't seen it mentioned, so I thought I'd chime in. My favorite new series has been 'The Expanse' by James S.A. Corey.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Abraham_(author)#The_Exp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Abraham_\(author\)#The_Expanse)

</comment><comment><USER43> There are some _excellent_ books in this thread (makes sense that the HN community would know their sci fi) - a short story addition to the list is "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster. Totally changed my opinion technology's impact on the modern world.

</comment><comment><USER44> Hey, I'd say Snow Crash (for history in geekery). The Ender series. Some of Neil Gaiman (I do love TPratchett, though not on this list) ..

At the moment I'm a lot into short stories, and that'd mean Ted Chiang of course, and Greg Evan, as well as some of Vinge Vernor.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://akkartik.name/post/scifi](http://akkartik.name/post/scifi)

Recommendations here that I consider over-rated: Ramez Naam, Daniel Suarez, Reamde. I also couldn't get through Three-body Problem. I might try again, though.

</comment><comment><USER45> I enjoy The Queendom of Sol series, by Wil McCarthy.

Also, A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is some of the best science fiction/space opera that I have read in several years (it won both the hugo and nebula).

It is well written and a good story. Its kind of a strange story of revenge with a AI as the protagonist.

</comment><comment><USER47> The Three-body Problem. It raises the bar of sci-fi literature in China.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Three-Body-Problem-Cixin- Liu/dp/07...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Three-Body-Problem-Cixin- Liu/dp/0765377063)

<comment><USER48> Seconded! This is a fantastic book. Be warned: the English translation of the sequel is not yet released (and you will want it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Dune - Frank Herbert

There's something mystical and very powerful about this book and the theme of conquering fear. It also reads surprisingly well considering how dense some of the political and technical descriptions are.

</comment><comment><USER50> I agree with many of the recommendations here, but am surprised to see no mention so far of "the three B's": Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and Ben Bova. All excellent hard science fiction authors.

</comment><comment><USER51> Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan is one of my favorite books of all time, and if you like it there are 2 more in the series.

Very smart, noir sci-fi with a lot of heady concept play -- some consider it to be genre-defining.

</comment><comment><USER52> Top 3 for me, would be 1\. Ender's Game

2\. 2001 Space Odyssey - I sit down with Arthur for Tea at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka - He gave me a copy of his article in which he first described telecommunication via satellites

3\. Snow Crash

</comment><comment><USER53> Lot's of my favorites already listed

Some more good ones: Ilium/Olympos - Dan Simmons Centuries - A. A. Attanasio Callahan's Crosstime Saloon - Spider Robinson Signal to Noise - Eric Nylund

</comment><comment><USER17> Remarkable consensus regarding Iain M. Banks and Vinge being top choices. Vinge I would have expected due to his background in Computer Science, but M. Banks is a very positive surprise.

</comment><comment><USER54> What about Lois McMaster Bujold ? 4 Hugo Award gota count for something ! The Vorkosigan serie is space opera so not hard scifi but it's damn good.

</comment><comment><USER55> A Fire Upon the Deep A Deepness in the Sky

both by Vernor Vinge

</comment><comment><USER56> Isaac Asimov Foundation (beside mangas!)

</comment><comment><USER57> Everything from John Scalzi, start with Old Man's War and then read through everything else.

</comment><comment><USER58> The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.

<comment><USER59> Hell yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Greg Egan - Permutation City

Peter Watts - <USER3>

</comment><comment><USER61> 'Deep Six' (short story anthology) and 'Wind-up Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi.

</comment><comment><USER21> Joe Haldeman, _The Forever War._

Michael Moorcock, _An Alien Heat_ & _Behold the Man._

</comment><comment><USER62> Prey is a novel by Michael Crichton - @everyone

</comment><comment><USER63> Snow Crash edit : and Ambient, by Jack Womack

</comment><comment><USER64> The three stigmata of palmer eldritch

</comment><comment><USER65> Snow Crash Childhood's End

</comment><comment><USER66> Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.

<comment><USER67> _Last and First Men_ is incredible and one of my favourites. Also because of it's unprecedented time scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Lord of the Light

Dune

Neuromancer

Hyperion

Snow Crash

Use of Weapons

Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained</comment>


Wikipedia Is Steadily Losing Google Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/wikipedia-confirms-they-are-steadily-losing-google-traffic-228237 <comment><USER2> Google displays their own Answer box over Wikipedia, they display their own reviews instead of Yelp, they display their own maps over anyone else's directions.

Is anyone else getting the feeling that Google is becoming a hostile platform for other businesses?

<comment><USER3> The EU!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regardless of what Google is doing, it seems like just another sign that the internet is becoming more and more a new generation of cable TV than a platform for universal knowledge. And it's becoming it with thunderous applause...

</comment><comment><USER5> A professor at Harvard, Ben Edelman, has been all over this for several years. He catalogues the anticompetitive practices of Google and other tech companies.

[http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=417579](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=417579)

</comment><comment><USER6> As mentioned in the comments of the article: What part of the lost traffic is people figuring out they can search Wikipedia directly?

I've noticed older people are more likely to search Google for Youtube videos than they are to search Youtube. Same goes for trying to search other sites, they'll search for something and include "wikipedia" in the query.

The younger ones I've noticed (really small sample size of "my siblings and their friends") actually search on Wikipedia or Youtube.

Until I started using keywords to search sites directly, I was guilty of the former method myself.

<comment><USER7> I'm partial to the former method for speed, but you almost always need to dive into the source to understand the "answer" provided. A somewhat relevant example is typing in a certain spelling of something to check correctness, and the first results are confirming your spelling, right or wrong. You click into the results, and you get "x, a common mispelling for y".

Moral of the story, Google is great for finding things fast, but make sure you validate your results against multiple sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Its mission is not to funnel traffic to intermediaries who can serve ads and skim a penny off the world's hunger for information. If the question gets answered without clicking through to wikipedia, that's better for everybody, including Wikimedia who don't have to pay to serve the query.

<comment><USER9> Wikipedia doesn't show ads.

<comment><USER8> That's debatable, depending on how you feel about Yet Another Urgent Appeal From Jimmy Wales, or the difference between advertising and NPR pledge drives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd maybe care if Wikipedia was a reliable source of unbiased information. It isn't. All kinds of extremist and special interest groups edit it to their own desires.

<comment><USER11> You're absolutely right -- and that needs to die in a fire -- but studies consistently show that Wikipedia contains generally accurate information. What we need is some way to automate the process of exposing shill editors. I would pay good money for a bullshit detector.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you accept payments as an European MVP builder in SF? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best (where best means as cheaper as possible in one month time) way to merge stripe/dwolla/paypal into your MVP, with no SSN, no EIN, and no US cofounder/attorney? Anybody with similar problem right now/in the past? Do you suggest me to incorporate? <comment><USER2> Approaching this issue as an Australian startup the easiest solution I found was to use Chargebee and Worldpay. Great support from the team at Chargebee too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, checking out right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Create an LLC, and use the EIN from that. As far as my experience goes with US banking, there is nothing to stop a foreign national from owning an LLC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much Greg, would you do that in SF, if it was you?

<comment><USER3> I don't see what SF has to do with it. It would be a California LLC.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft demos Windows 10 apps on HoloLens, and it's stunning - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-demos-how-windows-10-apps-work-with-hololens-and-its-stunningly-beautiful/

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft Hololens onstage demo

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hglZb5CWzNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hglZb5CWzNQ)</comment>


Ask HN: A great mobile screenflow app? - <AUTHOR>

What do you folks use for mobile screenflows?
I'm familiar with software such as Balsamiq or the Pencil plugin for Firefox, but it's my understanding that they mostly work with one screen at a time. I'd like to have the option to build a state flow diagram with these screens and be able to keep it updated as the app evolves, so that the team is always up to speed with the latest changes.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Powerpoint / Keynote?</comment>


'We batter them with kindness': schools that reject super-strict values - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/27/schools-discipline-unconditional-positive-regard <comment><AUTHOR> We've seen a rise in "zero tolerance" and "no exceptions" styles in UK schools.

These feel to me to be incompatible with a school's legal duties to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act.

And they seem to ignore stuff that's going on in the child's life.

So it's pleasing that there are schools that try to avoid it.</comment>


What ROI You Can Expect from an AIOps Solution [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.loomsystems.com/video-what-roi-to-expect-from-aiops <comment><USER2> Nice. ungated</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't Y Combinator's Demo day streamed? - <AUTHOR>

500 Startups streams there entire demo day.  Ycombinator doesn't for some reason ... why? <comment><USER2> Some of the companies have not publicly launched yet. I understand that the event is invite only, and mainly for investors.

<comment><AUTHOR> So just don't stream the non-public startups :) Seems to me like a massive missed opportunity for YCombinator</comment></comment>


The systemic racism black Americans face, explained in charts - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2020/6/17/21284527/systemic-racism-black-americans-9-charts-explained <comment><USER2> These charts point out a lot of issues, most real problems, in my opinion. It's far less clear that this is the result of "systemic racism", though. The idea that "poverty begets poverty" could explain a lot of it more simply.

Also, I am very dubious about survey questions. Asking someone how they _feel_ about the police is going to draw a lot of noise and crosscutting motivations. It would be far more useful to know what they _do_ in a situation where they need a policeman.

</comment><comment><USER3> >They are calling for lynching to be made a federal crime.

Lynching doesn't already fall under murder? Does America actually distinguish between murdering someone by hanging them publicly as a mob and other kinds of murder?

Sorry, I'm not trying to be facetious or anything, I'm not American, I just don't understand how that doesn't fall under other murder laws.

<comment><USER4> Things are more complicated now but after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, the Federal government began to pass various criminal and civil laws in defense of freedmen. Technically these laws were superfluous to state laws, but necessary as state laws weren't enforced fairly, including in state courts. But after marshal law, these Federal laws had to be narrowly tailored to fit within the powers granted by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments--e.g. addressing lynching. The Federal government had no jurisdiction to enforce general criminal laws, and technically it's still similarly constrained, though the boundaries have been pushed out considerably.

The now famous law (currently 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Enforcement_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Enforcement_Act)) granting people a Federal civil remedy for harms by state officials was part of this trend. Though, until the 1960s it was rarely used as Federal courts often interpreted it to apply only when a state-based remedy was unavailable or if the officer was directly enforcing an unconstitutional state law. It was [liberal] "judicial activism" that changed the precedents and made that law more readily available. And then [conservative] "judicial activism" that created Qualified Immunity, partially neutering it all over again.[1]

State based anti-hate laws seem to have come about as a way to 1) signal to the community a newfound or renewed commitment to apply laws more fairly and 2) focus resources on certain categories of crime that the community deemed especially egregious.

[1] People lauded Justice Thomas' dissent to the refusal to grant certiorari for a Qualified Immunity case. But if you read his actual dissent he not only believes QI to be wrong, but _also_ suggests the court should revisit the 1961 case, Monroe v. Pape, that actually gave S. 1983 teeth. Overturning Pape would be _worse_ than Qualified Immunity in terms of the ability for harmed citizens to hold police officers accountable.

<comment><USER5> Wait ... is lynching a federal crime or not?

If a lynching occurred tomorrow - an overt old-fashioned lynching, complete photographic postcards for sale, could it prosecuted in federal court?

I'm confused because places like the New York Times talking about legislation that would make lynching a federal crime. But a few years ago they were talking about how Doug Jones prosecutes historical lynchings as a federal prosecutor.

So apparently Doug Jones was elected to the Senate for prosecuting lynchings, which aren't actually against federal law.

Something is wrong with this picture.

I suspect that lynchings have been illegal for a very long time, but under more general Civil Rights legislation.

<comment><USER4> Judging by the article, apparently lynchings aren't a Federal crime, at least not independently of more wide reaching statutes. But a lynching is a category of crime that would readily fall within the purview of Federal jurisdiction under one or more of the Civil Rights amendments. To the original question of why create superfluous crimes, specifically of acts already considered murder under state law, it's because the states cannot always be trusted to vigorously enforce them, yet the Federal government doesn't have the power to criminalize murder generally.

I was surprised there's not already a Federal anti-lynching statute, but perhaps it existed and then was rescinded or invalidated during Jim Crow, maybe on the pretense that it was already covered by other Civil Rights statutes or that lynching as a class of crime was too ill-defined. Prosecutorial discretion to abstain from enforcement is more easily abused the more general the statute. During the Jim Crow era both the Federal Congress and Federal Supreme Court were complicit and in some cases active participants with the states in relaxing Reconstruction era reforms. The history is complex, especially when you factor in the period of marshal law. (And it's made more complex by attempts to obscure it. In my high school American history class in the 1990s we were taught that the Confederacy formed principally to preserve "states' rights", not to preserve slavery. Such semantic games work quite well over time.) Unfortunately, I already blew my monthly time budget reading about the history of Qualified Immunity last week, so haven't dug deeply into the history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Black Americans are more underpaid and more unemployed, thus more likely to commit crimes, thus more likely to have negative interactions with the police etc etc. It's a vicious positive feedback cycle.

How do we stop this?

<comment><USER7> Step 1: lots of us need to recognize there is a problem.

Honestly, I don't have much hope that we see significant improvement because the country has so many other fundamental problems (most of which apply to 100% of Americans, not just 13%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Poverty and crime. I do not deny that they correlate but I've yet to be convinced It is reflection of causality. Perhaps are we asking the wrong question?</comment>


Re: Craig Newmark - Principled Jerk - <AUTHOR> http://www.techjunkie.com/re-craig-newmark-principled-jerk/

<comment><USER2> Ad Hominem attack follows:

It is amusing to hear someone say "It's kind of nice to see a site without tweet this, share this, connect to facebook, etc all over the place." when that same person has LinksAlpha, Google+, Twitter, and Facebook links above and below every post.

<comment><USER3> Hehe, I've also noticed this. I find it convenient to have share this, connect to FB, etc. it's called innovation for reason. It make people click and type less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some people seem to think that they're entitled to hitch a ride on the huge network effect craigslist has acquired through years of patient effort. The folks are shocked,shocked that craigslist isn't thrilled to let them do so.

<comment><USER5> Well there does seem to be a sort of a "tragedy of the commons" effect at play here. CL is sitting on a natural monopoly, and not only doesn't seem to quite know what do with it, but let's face it, has also become something of a slumlord (in certain segments).

So people feel understandably cheesed and disappointed. But to say that they feel "entitled" to the spoils of another entrepreneur is a bit of a stretch.</comment></comment>